Table of Contents

- Adrift by Terry Burlison

- Training and Truth by Ryk E. Spoor

- Touchstone by Sonia Orin Lyris

- Trouble: The Changeling and the Phooka by Dave Freer

- Moonlet Sonata by William Ledbetter

- Cadet Cruise by David Drake

- 71 by David Brin

- Wise Child by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

- Dear Ammi by Aimee Ogden

- Bringer of Fire by David Carrico

- Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 1) by Peter Nealen

- Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 2) by Mike Kupari

- The Lavender Paladin by Shawn Snider

- Starhome by Michael Z. Williamson

- Tethers by William Ledbetter

- The Trouble with Millennials by Robert Buettner

Baen Books

Free Stories 2016

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Adrift © 2016 by Terry Burlison

Training and Truth © 2016 by Ryk E. Spoor

Touchstone © 2016 by Sonia Orin Lyris

Trouble: The Changeling and the Phooka © 2016 by Dave Freer

Moonlet Sonata © 2016 by William Ledbetter

Cadet Cruise © 2016 by David Drake

71 © 2016 by David Brin

Wise Child © 2016 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Dear Ammi © 2016 by Aimee Ogden

Bringer of Fire © 2016 by David Carrico

Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 1) © 2016 by Peter Nealen

Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 2) © 2016 by Mike Kupari

The Lavender Paladin © 2016 by Michael Z. Williamson

Starhome © 2016 by Shawn Snider

Tethers © 2016 by William Ledbetter

The Trouble with Millennials © 2016 by Robert Buettner

A Baen Book Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

eISBN: 978-1-62579-498-7

Adrift

by Terry Burlison

"No, no, no!" Dan Colton shouted, slamming the thruster control on his EMU backpack fully forward. Directly ahead, a truss beam swung out of control, another EMU clinging to it like a bug on a girder, jets firing frantically as its occupant tried to wrestle the beam under control.

"I've got it, Cole," Chris Brody's voice rang in Colton’s helmet. Colton shook his head. Damn kid, about to die from a rookie mistake.

No, he told himself. Not on his watch.

"No, you don't have it!" Cole jetted behind the beam and fired his grappler with a flick of his wrist. The grappler head shot out from under his seat like a startled rabbit, trailing a thin wire as it sped toward the beam forty meters away. It struck and instantly riveted itself. Cole applied the momentum brakes, then felt his thrusters firing, slowing the beam. A perfect shot: the grappler had snagged it just off the center of mass, stopping it in mid-flight and killing its rotation before it killed Chris Brody. Cole let out a slow breath.

"Sorry, Cole," Brody said. "Once it was moving, I just couldn't stop it."

Cole reeled himself to the beam, detached the grappler head, and stowed it back under the seat of his EMU. He didn't respond. Let the kid stew a little; it'll help him remember. Once he assured himself the beam was more-or-less stationary, he jetted over the top of it and found Brody waiting for him on the other side, still grappled to the beam and nearly pinned between it and one of the power satellite's main trusses, probably afraid to move for fear of killing himself. Cole suppressed a grin. He couldn't read the kid's expression through his gold visor, but he could imagine it—he’d worn it himself a few times.

"How many times have I told you?"

"I know, I know. 'Mass isn't weight. Momentum never changes.'"

Cole smiled at the frustration in the kid's voice. Maybe the lesson was finally soaking in. "Simulations don't really prepare you, do they? Just remember, no matter how confident you feel, you can never have too much—"

"—humility in orbit." Brody finished for him. "Do you have a saying for everything?"

"Just the important things. So, yes." Cole looked along the beam, comparing its position and orientation to the giant truss they were erecting on Solar Power Satellite Three. Looked good. "Call C&C and have them task an arm over here to stabilize it. Then call Smutty and Legs. They're by Truss Two. Tell them we're ready to attach this guy. I'll be back soon."

As one of SPS-3's shift foremen, Cole believed if you dress down a worker, you give him a new responsibility right away to keep his spirits up. In space, too little confidence can kill a person as quickly as too much. Brody would learn—assuming he lived long enough.

"Uh, you're leaving?" Brody asked, his voice a bit higher.

"Gotta top off my tanks. I just used up a bunch of prop saving some newb's butt."

"Sorry, Cole."

"Look, you'll do fine, kid; just use your head."

"Sure. And, uh, thanks. I guess that's why they call you the legend, huh?"

Another voice chimed in over the comm loop. "Yeah, he's a legend in his own mind!" Other voices snickered. Cole sighed. Now that the incident was over, radio silence wasn't observed. Unfortunately.

"Yeah, yeah," Cole muttered. He aimed the targeting pip on his helmet's HUD at the nearest refueling station, laid in a course, and headed over. Brody was a good worker, he thought, although he was so new he hadn't even been christened with a nickname. Cole remembered his own struggles during his first six-month tour, over two years ago. He never would have believed he'd be a foreman already, and he was pretty sure his own supervisor would have agreed. Maybe someday Brody would make foreman, too. Stranger things had happened.

But not many, he thought with a grin.

After refueling, Cole headed back toward the wayward beam. He took a wide, arcing trajectory to get a look at their progress. SPS-3 was early in its construction phase, still in low earth orbit and scarcely more than a giant aluminum X with a cluster of pressurized cylinders and gleaming solar-cell wings at the center. The lowering sun sparkled off a hundred surfaces and illuminated two thin lines radiating above and below: the twin 75 kilometer tethers. The lower cable attached the SPS to the cache of beams and panels awaiting their turn in the assembly sequence. The upper tether connected to the counterbalance, as large as the SPS itself, gleaming brilliantly far overhead.

He glanced at the sun, now just off the horizon. Better get back to Brody before dark, he decided. As Cole touched the thruster control, something exploded against his back. His head slammed against his faceplate, bolts of pain shot through his entire body, and everything went black.

#

Inside the Command and Control module, Shayla Rivard frowned at her data displays. Something was wrong; something had changed. She scanned the graphs, numbers, and indicators, trying to coax the anomaly from her subconscious. She found it just as a red indicator light flashed to life: someone's transponder had dropped offline. She cleared the indicator and ran a systems check. Everything seemed okay at her end. Wiping her palms on her jumpsuit, she pressed the footpad to toggle her mic hot and cleared her throat a couple of times. She'd been on SPS-3 only two weeks and still got nervous talking to the workers on EVA. Especially the foremen. And most especially Dan Colton.

"Um, Red One, C&C. Can you verify your transponder status?" she called and waited. Nothing. She frowned. "Red One, C&C, comm check." Still nothing. She scanned her console. Had she done something wrong, taken something offline by accident?

No. Believe in yourself, girl, her grandma used to tell her. Even if you're the only one who does. "Red One, C&C on UHF2," she called, changing frequencies. Still nothing. "Red One, C&C on all frequencies, comm check."

She wiped her palms again, then took a hit from the squeeze tube of water she kept on her console. "Red Two, this is C&C, do you copy?"

"Roger, Shay," came Garret "Smitty" Smith's voice through her headset.

"Do you have a visual on Red One?"

"Umm, no. Cole's probably taking a nap someplace, the lazy SOB."

"No, I don't think so. His transp—"

"Just kidding, sweetheart."

Shay glanced around; the other two techs at their C&C consoles were grinning at her. "Copy," she replied, trying not to imagine Smitty and the others outside laughing at her.

She scanned her console again looking for any clues, but the displays offered no help. Steeling her courage, she punched up another loop and cleared her voice again. "Supe, C&C. I, uh, I think we've got a problem."

#

Cole thought he had opened his eyes, but wasn't sure. They felt open, but he could see nothing but blackness. He reached toward his face and his hand hit something hard. Helmet? Spacesuit. That's right, Cole was strapped in an EMU, out on an assembly EVA. But then—where was everything?

He turned his head. Still nothing. No stars, no sun, no SPS, not even his helmet displays. Fighting back a surge of panic, he repeated to himself: Do no harm, do no harm. An expression EVA Ops had adopted from the medical profession. In space, conservation was law, be it oxygen, propellant, momentum, anything. A bad decision could make things worse in a big hurry. So when in doubt, think it out.

Air first, of course—every spacer's primary concern. Was he breathing from his suit's chest pack or the EMU's much larger oxygen supply? He fingers found the umbilical connecting his chest pack to the EMU and followed it to the redirect valve. He turned it to route the EMU's propulsive oxygen into his suit. Immediately, he felt the backflow valve click into place. Bad: the EMU's tanks were empty. If not for the backflow valve, O2 would be flowing out of his suit. He had maybe five hours in his suit pack. The recirc fan hummed faintly in his ears, so he wasn't going to die choking on his own CO2. At least not immediately.

Step two: power. He cycled his EMU's power, but nothing happened, no indicators, no HUD, just the secondary battery for his suit fan. He toggled to backup, even his portable supply—still nothing. Very bad.

Propulsion? Not much he could do there. If the tanks were empty, he wasn't going anyplace he wasn't already headed. He’d worry about that later. Assuming there was a later.

Communication? No primary power, so no comm. Really, really bad, and getting worse.

Location? That was a very good question. Where were the stars? Cole fought back the thought that he’d had been struck blind by some act of God or Man. He twisted as much as his suit and EMU would allow. There! At the limit of his vision, he saw a faint band of light, a few stars sprinkled just above it: the Earth's limb. He breathed a huge sigh of relief, then chastised himself for wasting oxygen. He hadn’t been struck blind; he was simply facing downward, toward the black ocean below, during a night pass.

As he watched, the band of stars moved slowly into view, the limb of the Earth slashing the sky into darkness at an oblique angle. That meant his EMU's attitude control was out and he was drifting, slowly tumbling. The gyros must still be spinning, or he'd be rotating a lot worse than this. Cole watched the stars' movement carefully, trying to judge his rotation. He wasn't a pilot, but he had a natural aptitude for how things move in space. No small thing, given that intuition bred on Earth had killed more than one spaceman. Another saying sprung to mind: In orbit, there's no such thing as "common sense."

Cole watched the horizon for a few more minutes, then carefully grasped the attitude hand controller. "Wish me luck," he muttered to the stars. He tweaked the controller and felt the EMU respond. Good, the gyroscopic attitude control system was still working. It ran off a different power bus from the jets. That meant he could change his orientation, at least until he saturated the gyros. If he couldn't fire his jets, though, he wouldn't be able to unsaturate them and would end up helpless, tumbling out of control. Very carefully, Cole stopped his slow tumble, orienting himself with his feet toward the Earth, facing in the direction he sensed he was orbiting. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Then another surge of panic threatened him. The SPS, brilliantly lit even at night, was nowhere to be seen. Slowly, carefully, he tweaked the controller and turned a full three hundred sixty degrees. The SPS was gone.

Impossible, but undeniable. He was alone.

#

"I don't know. One minute he was there; the next, he was gone!"

Shay looked up into the dark, deep-set eyes of her boss, SPS Construction Supervisor Lucas Gage, half-expecting scorn or amusement. But he just nodded at her report. "What was his last position?"

Shay brought up a diagram of the SPS. "Right here," she said, pointing.

"You tried all frequencies?"

"Yes, sir. Oops, sorry. I mean, yes, Luke." She felt her face warm again.

Gage didn't seem to notice; he just stared at the display. "Who saw him last?"

Shay pressed her footpad to go hot. "Red Five, you had the last visual on Red One?"

"Uh, yeah," Chris Brody's voice replied. "We were working on Truss Four, adding a nadir beam. He, um, needed to refuel. That was maybe twenty, thirty minutes ago."

Gage traced a finger along the display. "So he probably took a path like this to the prop station. Refueled, then headed over to here, maybe to examine the work. But what happened to him then?"

Darkness swept over the viewing ports as the SPS coasted into darkness. "Great," Gage muttered. "We couldn't find him in daylight, how are we going to find him at night?" He turned to one of the other techs at another console. "Turn out all the exteriors. Shay, tell everyone we're going dark. We'll give their eyes time to adjust, then see if anyone can pick up his nav lights, either against the Earth or drifting among the stars."

How does he stay so calm? Shay wondered. Her own fingers trembled as she relayed the instructions. When the exteriors went out, she could sense the deeper darkness through the nearest viewport. She wanted to glide over to it and look for Mr. Colton herself, but that was silly: the workers outside had a much better view than she. Taking another hit of water, she talked patience into herself.

"Anything?" Gage finally called over the loop. Five voices called back with the same answer: Dan Colton was gone.

Shay shook her head. This was impossible. For a moment, she wondered if this was some kind of elaborate test, to see how she performed under pressure. That was stupid. She had already survived many simulations during training; they wouldn't waste a whole crew shift just to test her. Something was terribly wrong, and she had no idea how to identify it, much less fix it. She looked at Gage, drifting next to her, arms crossed, face creased in a frown, staring at her console like it was a bitter enemy.

"Dammit," he muttered. "I've tried for years to get an active radar up here." He looked over his shoulder. "Maria, turn the exteriors back on."

Then he took a deep breath and turned back. "Shay, call NORAD. Maybe a defense radar can find him."

#

Cole stared at the sky, then at the black Earth below, then back at the stars. On his first tour, on SPS-2 two years ago, he had always kept careful track of his orbital position. During his spare time, he memorized the light patterns of the cities they passed over: Quito, Nairobi, Palembang, Port Morsby off to the south. He even learned the constellations, almost impossible to find in the myriad of stars filling half the sky. The beauty and majesty of low earth orbit had enthralled him, the culmination of a dream forged in the dark skies of his Montana childhood. By his second tour, a year later, it seemed less like an exotic vacation and more like a second home, more comfortable than appreciated. Now, on his third and final tour, he had scarcely taken notice of the wonders surrounding him, above or below. Getting the job done had become his life's touchstone. Finish the job—everything else up here was just distraction.

He drove his thoughts back to the problems at hand. Since passing into darkness, a deepening chill had gradually settled over him; his suit's thermal controls no longer worked. The night pass was under thirty minutes, so he should be back into sunlight before freezing to death. And his food and water tubes still worked. But where was he? Over the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian? He tried to think where he might be, what had happened, but his thoughts refused to focus. Trapped in his almost-dead spacesuit, he felt his senses deadening as well: nothing to smell or hear, nothing to see but the remote stars. The cold, the utter deprivation, the aloneness sank into him like a narcotic. He stared into the blackness lurking below him. He could imagine that the planet below was utterly devoid of life—that he was a lone sentience orbiting a dead world in an empty universe.

No! He shook his head viciously to clear his thoughts. He was Dan Colton, age 30, from Bozeman, Montana. Married to Jenny Colton, with a beautiful six-month old daughter, Meredith, back home in Florida.

Jen and Merry. They seemed a thousand years and a million miles away, but he clung to their memory, willing them closer to him. Little Merry, with her bright eyes and wonderful giggle. Jen, holding Merry to her breast, gazing at her with eyes moist with love.

Cole blinked tears from his own eyes. "There is no crying in space," he whispered—it's too hard to wipe away tears inside a spacesuit. Buoyed by the memory of his family, he would face whatever the next few hours brought—by himself, maybe, but not alone.

A brilliant star flared to life in front of him. The torpor and isolation evaporated as he recognized it. The SPS! He could even make out the X shape of the structure. Then he gasped. Good God, he must be kilometers away! How the hell had he gotten here?

And more to the point: How on earth—or above it—was he going to get back?

#

"They got him!" Shay cried out, staring at the data on her console.

Gage was by her side in an instant. "Where is he?"

"They're still filtering the data," she said. "We were lucky; NORAD was able to task a Navy tracking ship. Otherwise it would have taken another—" She stopped, staring in horror at the solution as it converged.

"What is it?" Gage asked.

Shay's fingers flew over her touchpad. A wireframe view of the station appeared. She zoomed out, and out—and out. Another red dot appeared on the screen.

"There," she whispered. "That's him, Luke."

"Way out there?"

"Yeah. There's a ground tracking station coming up. We'll get another radar solution after that pass, then we'll know his orbit a lot better. But that's him."

"Okay, people," Gage said, over an open comm loop. "We've found Cole. He's adrift, about thirty kilometers ahead of us. I want everyone in from EVA, right now. The clock is running and we need a solution, fast! I want Red and Blue teams to C&C, ASAP. Everyone else, back to your stations or bunks, unless you've got something that helps."

Shay felt Gage lean closer to her. In a quiet voice, he asked, "What do you suggest?"

Me? Shay thought, then nodded. Yeah, me. She was the orbit specialist, the person responsible for propellant budgets, rendezvous support for uploading vehicles, everything related to orbital flight. Including, she realized, hopelessly lost EVA workers. She wiped her palms on her thighs.

"I'll need time," she said, already knowing time wouldn't help. At a glance, she knew that whether or not Dan Colton was still breathing, he was already dead.

"Work on it, Shay. I want your recommendation by the time Red Team is assembled. Make it twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes or twenty years, Shay thought, I can't change the laws of gravity.

#

"Okay, what have we got?" Gage asked the assembled team.

Everyone turned to Shay. She cleared her throat, her face warming. She hated being the center of attention at the best of times; now, when someone's life depended on her, she wished she could crawl into her sleeping bag and let someone else handle it.

But Dan Colton's life depended on her. Even though the situation was hopeless, she had to try.

Clearing her throat, she said, "Well, we know where Mr. Colton, er, Cole is. Right now he's about one hundred twenty kilometers ahead of us."

After a shocked moment of silence, everyone protested at once. Gage quieted them with a gesture. "You heard her—a hundred twenty klicks."

"We'll have a more accurate orbit for him once NORAD and NASA get more skin-track data."

"What do you mean? Isn't he in our orbit?" a stocky, dark featured man asked. Smitty, Red Two. He intimidated Shay. Broad shouldered, heavy browed, gregarious and well-liked. Everything Shay wasn't.

"Uh, no. Not any more. I've run an analysis using the data we have. The only way he could have gotten out that far is if he fired all his thrusters and ran through an entire propellant load more-or-less against track." She squirmed under Smitty's blank stare. "Er, the opposite direction we're moving."

"So that put him a lower orbit, right?" a handsome blond kid asked. Chris Brody. Shay had expected the construction workers all to be big burly people, like Smitty. Yet Chris was nearly as small as she, one of the reasons she noticed him—but not the only one. Until now, though, she'd never had the courage to talk to him off the comm loops.

"Yeah, a lower, faster orbit," she explained. "In the thirty-some minutes since it happened, he's moved over a hundred kilometers ahead of us. After a whole orbit, he'll be over six hundred kilometers away."

Gage raised a hand against the murmurs of disbelief. "Shay, any idea how this happened?"

This was one of the two questions she'd feared. There were only a couple of answers: one improbable, one unthinkable. "Um, no, not for sure. It might be a malfunction, but he's got overrides. Plus, I don't see how a single malfunction could also kill his transponder and comm."

"Then what?"

Everyone stared at her. She felt sweat beading above her eyes. "I guess, I mean, has he been depressed or anything?"

She expected an avalanche of protest, but silence swept the room. Some people stared at the floor, some at her. Lucas Gage scowled but considered her words. "Well, Smitty, what do you think? You know him best."

Smitty shook his head. "No way, Luke. He loves this job. He's got a new kid, for Christ's sake! No way he did this intentionally. Hell, this guy's saved more people's asses than I've kissed! Not Cole, Luke. Not Cole."

Gage nodded. "Then we'll assume it's an accident. He can't transmit, can't maneuver. That means he's on his own, and we have to get to him. Somehow."

"Can't we just go after him?" asked a tall blond woman. "Legs" Stanworth, Red Three. She also intimidated Shay—but so did everyone. "How about a double EMU? It has more prop."

Shay shook her head. "No." She paused. For her, orbital mechanics was second nature. Trying to explain it, however . . . "To catch up to him, you'll need a lot more delta-v than he burned, which you could get with a double EMU. But then you have to stop once you get there. That’s twice the prop. Then you need still more to stop the separation and come back, carrying his additional mass as well, then more to stop once you’re here. On top of that, the more prop you add, the lower your performance and the more you need. When you figure out how much all that takes . . . I've worked the numbers; it's just isn't possible." Her voice broke and she stopped to clear her throat. "It’s not even close."

Gage must have noticed the doubtful looks cast at her. "Shay's the expert. If that's her analysis, that's the way it is. Wishing it won't get Cole back. We need another solution. Legs, you checked the logs. How much O2 does he have?"

The tall blond said, "He didn't top off his breathing tanks when he refueled, so he's got maybe five hours left."

"This is unbelievable!" Smitty said. "We can freaking see him! You're saying we can't do anything?"

Since they had passed into daylight, they could, indeed, see Dan Colton—a bright speck below and ahead of them. But to Shay, he might as well have been on Mars.

"Don't panic, people," Gage said, taking a moment to fix each of them in his gaze. "Keep on task. We'll move heaven and hell if we have to, but we're getting Cole back. Shay, what can we do?"

That was the second question she dreaded. Shay stared out the viewing port beside her. From that window she couldn’t see Colton, alone, adrift. If it was an accident of some kind, he was probably already dead. Which was probably better.

Six months ago she had been finishing her Masters thesis. Now she had the most exotic job in the world. Danger. Excitement. Everything her life had lacked. Plus, a chance to forge real friendships among the twenty workers she'd be spending half a year with. Now, only two weeks later, she wanted nothing more than to be home, away from slow deaths she could do nothing about. Friendships? She still spent all her time working or studying. She had hardly even met Dan Colton—and he was already dead.

Tears welled in Shay's eyes. Her parents died in a car accident when she was young. Her grandma had raised her, and Shay wished she could call her now, take comfort in the old woman’s wisdom as she had so many times. Grandma wouldn’t know what to do, of course, but she’d know what to say.

Something moved outside. Shay wiped her tears away to clear her vision. Everyone was supposed to be inside. Could it be . . . her heart skipped before she realized it was just the crawler heading up the tether on its assigned run up to Cache Two at the counterbalance. Disappointed, Shay's thoughts returned to her grandma. Something nagged at her. What had Luke said, about moving Heaven? It reminded her of something her grandma used to say, about a mountain . . . and Mohammad.

She felt her instincts kicking in, her almost subconscious analytical gift. The answer flashed into her mind, fully formed. She turned to the others, grinning. "We don't have to move Heaven, just a piece of it!"

They all stared at her. She stared right back—and her face didn't feel warm at all.

Gage asked eagerly, "You have a way of getting him back?"

Shay shook her head. "No, like I said, there's no way to bring him back to the station."

He scowled. "Then what?"

She smiled. "We take the station to him!"

#

"It's some kind of magic, I tell you!" Brody said from the back of the room.

Shay sighed. He was cute, but kind of dense. "No, it's science. Let me try again."

With a gesture, she cleared the diagrams and equations on the wall's databoard and started over, her fingertip scribing glowing lines on the surface. Behind her, she sensed a dozen pair of eyes following her every movement. She hoped they couldn't see her fingers trembling.

"Here's our current configuration: our station in low Earth orbit, Cache One tethered to us from below, the counterbalance overhead. We're at the center of mass, which by the way is what prevents you workers from getting thrown off when you go EVA. Orbital dynamics keeps the tethers vertical. This means Cache One, down below, is actually moving too slow for its orbital altitude, and the counterbalance is moving too fast."

Gage said, "Right, that's what keeps the tension in the tethers."

Shay nodded. The rugged-looking supervisor always impressed her with his sharp mind. He probably knew some of this as well as she, but was allowing her to take the lead. Whether she wanted to or not.

Shay turned back to the board. "Now, if we separate the upper tether, the counterbalance flies off into higher orbit, like an Olympic hammer throw. By conservation of angular momentum, we and Cache One drop into a lower, elliptical orbit like this. In about one rev, we catch up to Mr. Colton."

"Magic," Brody repeated. "I mean, I understand how things move in orbit—relative motion and all. We work with it every day. But this . . ."

"If she says it will work, it'll work," Gage said. Shay felt her face flush with pleasure. "But it does seem awfully simple," he added.

"Well, it is and it isn't," she admitted. "The timing has to be right. And I'm working with analysts at Corporate to lock down the induced libration. We're not sure exactly what effect the extended LEO exposure might have had on the Young's Modulus of the—"

"We don't need the details, Shay." Gage said. "Have you heard the term, 'pearls before swine'?"

She smiled. She had indeed: her grandma often used it when Shay tried to describe her career. "But there is one problem. It's a one-shot deal; we have no control over it. If we did it now, we'd move too far ahead of where he is. So . . . we need to wait for him to get farther away from us."

"Wait?" Gage asked. "How long?"

Shay hesitated. "Um, it'll be another two revs. Three hours—a bit more, actually. Then about two more for the maneuver and retrieval."

Gage's disappointment darkened his face. "Five hours. He'll be out of oxygen before that."

Shay grinned. "Actually, I think I have an answer for that, too. But Mr. Brody won't like it."

#

Another orbit. Another sunrise, sunset, and now another thirty minute ordeal through darkness that would feel like hours. Cold seeped into Cole’s body and he wished again that he could clutch his arms around his chest for warmth.

A meteoroid, Cole had decided. Or, more likely, some run-of-the-mill chunk of space debris. He remembered the impact now, something slamming into his EMU. No telling the damage it did: the impact, the shock wave, the static field it must have generated. Probably shorted everything back there, frozen the +X translation valves open, God knows what else. All-in-all, Cole was lucky to be alive.

He snorted. Lucky? An instantaneous death versus this? he thought, teeth chattering. During daylight, he faced the sun to warm up as much as he could stand. It kept him from freezing quite to death on the night passes. He had never appreciated the work his suit’s environmental systems did every orbit, just keeping him warm and alive.

He had to be running low on oxygen, he figured. An hour left, maybe two. How would it happen? Would he just get sleepy, gradually drifting off and never waking up? Or would he die squirming and thrashing, gasping for another gulp of air?

Another sunrise was approaching. He had loved the sunrises on his first tour. The gleaming arc of the Earth's limb, the reds, then yellows, then the explosion of light as the sun burst into being. This would be his last, he decided. The station was many hundreds, maybe thousands of klicks back by now, nothing but another star among the multitude.

Teeth chattering with the cold, he faced his final sunrise. He would warm up one more time, then face the end with dignity, on his own terms. Dan Colton wasn't going to die struggling and gasping like an animal.

He thought again of Jenny. Had they told her what happened? Probably not; why wake her in the middle of the night just to terrify her for a couple of hours. Cole hoped they hadn't. After all, he couldn't even talk to her, would never have a chance say goodbye to her and little Merry. Even his suit recorder was out.

Cole remembered a story he had read as a child, about a stowaway on a spaceship who then had to die to save the ship. At least she had gotten to talk to her loved one before the end. Cole would give anything to hear Jen's voice, or Merry's cooing, one last time.

Anything? Dan Colton had nothing to give.

The sun was beginning to warm him. His chattering stopped. A melancholy peace enveloped him. The time had come. He couldn't open his faceplate while it was under pressure, but there were other ways. He turned his EMU to look at the distant speck that was the station, his home-away-from-home, one more time and reached for his helmet release.

#

Magic, no doubt about it, Chris Brody thought as the sled took him down the tether toward Cache One. He sat strapped in a double EMU facing the tether, loaded to the max with an extra propulsive pack and oxygen tanks. He had seen the doughnut-shaped sleds scurrying up and down the tethers, of course, bringing construction materials from the cache to the SPS proper. He had often thought it would be fun to ride one, but he was re-evaluating that opinion now.

"Almost there, Red Five," Shay's voice said in his helmet. "We'll be stopping and starting you a bit until you're at exactly the right spot. Don't look up; we're using a handheld laser."

"Copy," he acknowledged. His EMU was clinging to the sled by its two grappling claws. People occasionally rode the sleds for maintenance, and they had all come back fine, he told himself. Of course, their EMUs had safety lines attached to the sled. And none of them had ever attempted a crazy stunt like this.

He watched the triplex, triple-braided tether slide by, its cross-members a blur as he streaked Earthward. But even at fifty klicks an hour, it was taking him too damned long to get where he needed to be. Finally, he felt the sled slowing.

"Stand by," Shay said. She had a nice voice, he thought. And she was pretty cute, too. Funny he hadn’t noticed it until he saw her eyes light up with her magic solution.

The sled stopped, then crept down a few more meters, then slowed to another stop.

"Okay, you're there. You remember what to do?"

"Wait for your command, then detach. I think I can handle that. Are you sure you don't need me to thrust away a bit?"

"No!" The strength of her voice surprised him. The slender girl had some juice, he was beginning to realize. "Just release, that's all. Remember what I told you: you're now moving too slowly for the altitude you're at. The tether is all that's keeping you there. Once you release, you'll start dropping and picking up speed. Do not, repeat not, use your translation thrusters until you're closing on Mr. Colton. Use only your attitude gyros if you need to reorient."

"Whatever you say, Shay," Brody said. It was kind of nice talking to her this way. Much less formal than during work shifts, when there was an entire crew listening on the comm loops.

Gage came on the loop. "Let's go over it one last time."

Yes, please, thought Brody, but was glad not to have to say it aloud.

"Okay," Shay began, "I've loaded a two-maneuver sequence into your EMU's autopilot, based on our latest tracking data. After release, you'll be in a lower orbit that will help you catch up to Mr. Colton. About a half orbit after release, your EMU will execute the first burn, putting you on an intercept course. Less than a half-rev later, it'll perform the braking maneuver." She paused, and he sensed the worry in her voice when she continued. "That'll be the tricky part. Our tracking data isn't perfect; you'll have to use the targeting pip on your HUD and adjust the timing once you're close enough. Watch your prop; we don't have a lot of margin."

We?

"Don't worry about it, Chris," Gage said. "It's just like maneuvering around the station, except you'll be going a helluva lot faster."

Yeah, and I'm such a good pilot, Brody thought, frowning. But they had needed someone small and light so they could pack as much propellant as possible. And "small and light" meant Chris Brody.

"You'll do fine, don’t worry," Gage said.

Brody shook his head; that man could read minds. But he appreciated the comment, even if he didn't believe it. "C-copy," he said, and cursed his voice for breaking.

"One minute to release," Shay said. "Hey, Chris, where are you from?"

"Uh, California," he said, taken aback by the question.

"I'm from New Orleans. Since you're so interested in magic, I should take you to meet my grandma, sometime. She knows all about voodoo and stuff." She paused. "That's where I learned it."

"You what?" Brody began, then heard Shay giggling to herself. "Very funny," he said, then realized he was smiling as well.

She called me "Chris," he thought, his grin widening. Then it occurred to him that maybe she just didn't expect to see him again.

"Okay, here we go," Shay announced. "Three, two, one, release!"

Brody opened the twin claws, releasing his EMU from the sled. Just as he'd suspected, nothing happened. "C&C, Red Five. No joy. Nothing is—" He stopped, staring at the sled.

It was moving away from him! Had they fired the maneuvering thrusters on the station? No, they couldn't move the structure that fast, could they? As he watched, the tether and sled moved further away and seemed to begin a slow drift upward. He realized that in a few moments he would be racing ahead of it, in pursuit of Dan Colton.

"You were saying, Red Five?"

Brody grinned. "I'm on my way. Science or magic, I'm on my way!"

His grin faded. No one knew yet if this mission was a rescue—or body recovery.

#

Cole took a long, last look at SPS-3. They had done good work. Ahead of schedule, for once. He had a good team. He knew they would do him proud. Goodbye, Jen. Take care of Merry, he thought. With the image of his family fixed in his mind, he reached for his helmet release—

—and stopped. A barely moving dot had appeared below the station, a new star drifting against the black background of space.

"What the hell?" he said aloud. Its movement was so slow it was barely discernible. If he hadn't spent so much time staring at the station over the last few hours, he probably wouldn't have noticed it at all. Slowly, he lowered his hand from the release.

He watched the strange sight until the light began to dim around him. Another sunset was sweeping over him as he fell into darkness at nearly thirty thousand kilometers an hour, but the mysterious dot had already moved below the station, which meant it was getting closer to him. Cole continued to stare at the SPS, illuminated, it seemed, by every exterior light. He had lost sight of the dot, but had a feeling when he raced back into sunlight, his mood was going to get a whole lot better.

#

By the time daylight exploded on him again, Cole was shivering and having trouble breathing. He could again see the bright dot, close now, but well below him.. He rotated to face the sun. Within minutes, the heat soaked into his skin, but each breath was getting harder, more labored.

Warmer now, Cole reoriented the EMU until he spotted the object. It had moved beneath him, then ahead, and was slowly climbing toward him. Finally, he recognized it: an EMU! But that wasn't possible. Oxygen deprivation?

No. Cole was cold, exhausted, running low on air, but he damn well wasn’t hallucinating.

Within minutes, the EMU slowed and approached him. Cole saw backlit plumes of vapor erupt from its jets as it slowed. A double unit. A double EMU with an additional prop-pack attached. And a single person strapped in it. Someone waving!

Cole tried to wave back, but his arms felt sluggish. He realized his pulse rate had increased, his respiration now shallower and faster. Oh God, not now. His adrenaline surge faded, blackness tugged at him. The EMU was close now, maybe fifty meters away. Whoever was flying it wasn't very good, he noticed idly. It drifted directly in front of him, not stopping, the wrong jets firing. Staring through a gray tunnel, Cole tweaked the rotational hand controller, turned his EMU a bit, then pressed a button on his EMU's arm. The spring-loaded electromagnetic grapple ejected from under his seat, heading straight for the double EMU ahead of him.

"Nice of him to come visit," Cole thought as he slipped into unconsciousness. "I hope I didn't kill him."

#

"C'mon, Cole! Can you hear me?"

Someone was shouting down a fur-lined well to him. "Leeme 'lone," he muttered.

"Cole! Dammit, wake up!"

Warm air filled Dan Colton's lungs. His eyes fluttered open. He saw a bizarre, deformed spaceman in front of him, then realized it was his own reflection in someone's helmet. A couple of deep breaths cleared his mind.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Thank God!"

"Who? What?" The voice was familiar. "Brody?"

"Yeah, Cole. C'mon, unbuckle and get over here. I already got your umbilical attached. God, that was hard to do by myself!"

Cole’s training took over. He unstrapped himself and pushed off, landing in the open seat of the double EMU, now only a meter away. Fresh, warm air flowed into his suit through the umbilical. What a great name for that device, he realized. "What happened? I thought I was dead."

"Well, I almost was: you tried to kill me with that grappler! I was able to turn fast enough so it hit the frame instead of me. The auto-retract pulled us together. I guess that was a good thing; I wasn't doing so good at closing."

Cole managed a laugh. Before he strapped in, he reached over to his EMU and disengaged the grapple, uncoupling the two machines. They separated from Cole's EMU. As they moved away, he saw the back of it, now an unrecognizable mass of wreckage.

"Jesus Christ, what hit you? I can't believe you're still alive!" He laughed. "Only Dan Colton could take an orbital impact and live to tell the tale."

Cole stared transfixed at the disaster. Even the tiniest, most insignificant difference in the object’s trajectory and it would have missed him entirely—or blown off his head. He tore his gaze from the EMU before he vomited. Some legend.

The background hiss in Cole's headset suddenly got louder as Brody switched the comm loops to high-gain. "C&C, this is Rescue One. I have a passenger on board who'd like to say 'Hi!'"

Distant cheers erupted in Cole's headset. He waited for them to subside. "Uh, C&C, Red One here. I—" There's no crying in space. "I'm all right. Thanks."

"Glad to have you back," came Lucas Gage's voice. "Hold tight and we'll be there shortly."

Cole looked over at Brody. He could see the kid's face through his faceplate and wondered what the hell he was grinning about. "What did Gage mean, they'll be—"

"Look!" Brody pointed a finger toward the SPS.

At first, Cole noticed nothing unusual. Then—

"What the hell?" he said aloud. It looked like a living thread, very slowly undulating above the station, like a single strand of spider's web released into the still air.

The tether? Had the upper tether snapped? He watched, fascinated. Its movement was so slow it was barely discernible. Cole squinted. Was the station—moving?

"I'm dead, aren't I?" Cole asked. "Or hallucinating."

"Oh, just wait," Brody said. "It gets weirder. Hey Cole, do you believe in magic?"

SPS-3 was definitely moving relative to the stars behind it. The problem was, it seemed to be moving away! He fought down another rush of panic. Forget everything you know about how things move, they had told him in training, a thought that had been reinforced countless times on orbit. Sure enough, the station soon began dropping, then growing, getting brighter.

As the station approached, well below and behind them, Brody briefed him on what had been going on the last several hours, giving particular attention to Shay's transformation from quiet rookie to the rescue team's leader. Brody was right—it did sound like magic. But Cole didn't care. He had oxygen, heat, and—most importantly—he wasn't alone any more.

They swept into darkness again, but this time, with warm air swimming through his suit and a friend's shoulder pressed against his, Cole didn't mind. In fact he enjoyed getting to know Brody better, and getting reacquainted with the stars and cities that punctuated the darkness with light. He pointed out places Brody had never heard of, and began to hear a familiar tone in the young man’s voice:

Wonder.

When daylight blossomed over them again, the station was almost directly below them, far closer now and following much the same trajectory Brody had. Within minutes SPS-3 moved ahead, climbing toward them.

"How are they going to stop?" he asked.

"More magic," Brody said.

"It's science!" someone called through the headset. The voice was familiar, though stronger, different somehow.

"Shay? Is that you?"

"It's me, Cole. Hang in there a bit longer, big guy!"

It was Shay's voice, he thought, but it sure didn't sound like her. Earlier, he had mentally tagged her with the nickname "Shy." Maybe he needed to rethink that.

About the time the SPS reached their altitude, maybe a kilometer ahead, he saw the lower tether go slack. It, too, had been released. The station was still approaching them, though much slower now. Cole stared at it, aware his mouth was open. He tried to think of something appropriate to say, something "legendary," and finally settled on, "So, what took you guys so long?"

Cole's helmet rang with laughter. Sweet human laughter. Until this day, Cole had never appreciated how silent space could be. He stared down at the lower cache, far below and already drifting away from them. "Corporate won't be happy to lose those," he observed.

"They aren't losing them," Brody replied. "Shay says they're tasking two orbital maneuvering tugs to recover them and stow them ahead of the station. We'll use the tugs instead of the tethers from now on. But it'll take a few weeks. Maybe we all get a vacation for awhile!"

No argument from me, Cole thought, with visions of Jen, Merry, and a wide white beach in his mind.

"We should be within range of your EMU lidar now," Shay's voice informed them. "Feel free to come on in. I've cleared all the runways for you."

"Copy that," Cole said, grinning. He looked over at Brody. "You think you can take us in?"

The kid's smile gleamed through his tinted visor. "You bet. That's why they sent me, you know: my ace piloting skills."

More laughter from his headset. "Actually, it's because Ace there is the least massive person trained in EMU ops," Shay said, "and we needed all the performance we could get."

Ace, thought Cole. And thus a nickname is born.

The background noise dropped; Brody had switched back to internal comm so they could talk in private. "Shay's the one who really saved you, Cole. You wouldn't believe how fast her mind works: radar data, orbital maneuvers, all that tether stuff. She's gonna be a real star, you watch. She's like a genius or something! Or maybe a genie."

Cole smiled at the admiration in Brody's voice. "Star, huh? You know, I like the sound of that. And she's pretty cute, don't you think?"

Brody's grin widened. "Yeah, I'd noticed that."

Cole felt the gentle push of the thrusters as Brody maneuvered them back to the station. He double-checked each move the kid made, feeling more like a driving instructor than a construction foreman, but when they finally arrived he had to admit the kid had done a pretty decent job. They berthed next to the air lock, unstrapped, and entered. Cole dogged the hatch closed and let his grip linger on the hard titanium of the handle. It felt good.

"Pressurizing," Brody said. Moments later, they removed their helmets and stripped out of their pressure suits. Cole took a deep breath, relishing the metallic scent of SPS-3. Before opening the inner hatch, Brody reached out and shook Cole's hand, which felt even better. "Good to have you back, Cole."

Cole grinned at Brody, whose blond hair was now plastered against his scalp with sweat, but didn't have time to respond. Someone opened the inner hatch and before he knew what was happening arms were pulling them into the EVA prep module. Cheers erupted around him. Legs Stanworth kissed him on the mouth and moments later Smitty grabbed him and nearly did the same. Every worker on the station was packed into the module to welcome him back. After the emptiness of the last few hours, he felt dizzy, claustrophobic, overwhelmed. And he cherished it.

Eventually, he found himself in front of Lucas Gage, who just grinned at him and shook his hand. "You know, we don't pay overtime for joyrides," he said.

Cole laughed. "As long as you don't dock my pay for the EMU, I'm good." Over Gage's shoulder, he saw Legs and Smitty laughing and hugging a petite, attractive black girl. "Be right back," he said.

As he drifted over, Smitty and Legs saw him coming and moved away to give him some privacy. He stared into Shay Rivard's big brown eyes. They began to shimmer with tears.

"Hello, Star," he said, and could tell she was blushing under that lovely caramel skin. Shay threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his shoulder. He felt her slight form sobbing against him, releasing the hours of pent-up tension. I guess there is crying in space, after all, he thought.

Holding her to him, feeling the living warmth of her body against his, Cole looked out the viewport behind her. The tip of Florida was barely visible to the north, dawn just creeping over it. Beyond that horizon somewhere, Jen and Merry were sleeping, dreaming about him even now, perhaps, and the day he would come back to them.

"Welcome home, Cole," Shay whispered.

Home? No, this wasn't his home. But it was close enough, for now.

Training and Truth

by Ryk E. Spoor

Chapter 1.

This was a stupid, stupid idea.

Xavier glanced back. Of course, they're behind me too.

The oldest member of the gang was maybe two or three years older than Xavier; the youngest, maybe fourteen, a year younger. But there were at least fifteen or twenty of them, and only one of him.

"So is this where I say I don't want any trouble, and one of you says 'too bad'?" he said. There was a dumpster to one side. If I can at least get over there, the wall and the dumpster cover my sides. Of course, then I'm cornered and I'll have to beat all of them, or enough so they decide it's not worth it.

But I've got to do it. Otherwise that…monster . . .  will have won.

"You're trying to be funny. If you just dump everything you've got—and it's enough—maybe we'll all laugh, and you won't have trouble," the obvious leader—a six foot three, heavily muscled boy with pale skin, tattoos, and brown hair down to his shoulders—said.

For a minute he thought about it. They probably won't take my ID, I don't have credit cards. But without the money, how can I get to California? How can I find out what happened?

But the chuckles around the slowly-tightening circle told him that "maybe" was an awfully frail hope for escape. If I get out of this, I'm going back, finding that bastard who told me about this shortcut, and kicking his balls right up into his oversized funny hat.

He was in the corner now, hard blue-painted steel on one side, bricks on the other. He unsnapped the strap, let his backpack fall. For a moment the others stopped, probably thinking he'd decided to give them everything they were asking for.

Well, I'll do my best to give them what they're asking for.

He dropped into a simple front stance and waited. A ripple of laughter went around the group. But the simple pose reminded him of that day, of the last hours he remembered being happy . . .

***

I can't wait to tell Mike! Xavier thought as he leapt easily off the bus and jogged towards his house. The glittering, heavy golden medal bounced off his chest with each step, and he knew he was showing off, knew that the sparkle off the medal in the late-evening summer sun would draw every eye.

"Mom, Michelle, I'm home!"

His older sister turned, then gave a little scream. "Oh my god, Mom, Xavier's got the gold!"

"Oh, my goodness! Hold on, don't move!" His mother, gold-haired like his older brother Michael, appeared, camera in hand. "Let me get a picture." She took even more photos than Xavier felt were entirely necessary—he could smell the roast chicken that was obviously waiting for his attention. Then she stood back and just looked at him for a long moment; he could see a shimmer of not-quite-shed tears in her green eyes. "Your father would be so proud."

As usual, he didn’t quite know what to say to that. Dad disappeared when I was, what, two? Don't even know what happened to him, some people say he ran off with another woman.

But Mom always talks about him as though he were just about perfect. Finally they were heading to the dining room! And she always ends up comparing me to him because I look a lot like him . . .

He glanced reflexively at the picture—one of only two photos of his father he knew of—on the wall. It did look much like him, sharp angles, a hawklike aspect to the face, and most of all the large, uniquely gray eyes, eyes that seemed to follow you from the picture. Never did like that one much.

But after dinner was the best part of the day. He went upstairs to his room and picked up the phone, dialed the number his brother had given him. Can't wait to tell him . . .

But this time there was an answering machine, telling anyone trying to contact M. T. Ross to call a different number.

That wasn't terribly unusual—as a freelance photographer and sometimes investigative reporter, Mike sometimes had to move quickly. And he did sound a little tense, something he was looking into sounded kind of bad . . .

Still, it didn't worry him as he hung up and started dialing the new number. Mike was as good a fighter as Xavier was, and bigger, tougher, and a lot more experienced. He'd been in war zones, walked through countries in revolution, taken pictures of erupting volcanoes from inside the crater, followed police on major drug busts, interviewed gang members, and walked a mile to the nearest hospital after being knifed in the back by someone from a different gang.

The phone on the other end barely rang before it was picked up. "Xavy?"

"Mike! Stop using that name!" It was an almost standard greeting—his childish nickname was annoying, but Mike refused to stop using it.

"Not a chance." Xavier could hear waves in the background. "You and Mom and Sis okay?"

The question wasn't unusual, but…Mike sounded funny. Too serious. "Sure. I have something to tell you."

"I've got something to tell you too," Mike said, and this time he was sure. Mike sounded dead serious, and tired. "But you first."

He shrugged off the phantom concern. "I got the gold in the tournament!"

For a moment the dark tone was gone. "Way to go, bro! I'll bet Shihan was happy!"

"He looked almost happier than I was, I think," he said, grinning again as he remembered Shihan Butler's ecstatic grin. "The team got four golds, six silvers, and six bronzes overall, but I was in the top rank, black belt, and the Japanese were brutal this year."

"But you still took 'em all down. That's my little brother. Congratulations." He was silent for a moment. "Look, Xavier—I don’t want to worry Mom."

That sounded ominous. "What? You're not going into a war zone again, are you?"

"No," he said, then hesitated. "Maybe…yes, in a way. I don't know."

"Mike, that doesn't make any sense."

"I've been tracking…something. I haven't been giving anyone the details yet because . . . " Again, a hesitation. "Dammit." The voice was hushed now, whispering, and Xavier felt a chill run down his whole body. Mike, the confident, carefree, invincible Mike, sounded scared. "Xavier, it's crazy, but I think I've found actual evidence."

"Evidence of what? Look, I think I should get Mom—"

"Not yet. I have—" he cut off abruptly, and the quality of the sound showed he'd pulled away from the mouthpiece. Where is he? A pay phone?

But Mike was saying something, but not into the phone. "I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of—GOD, NO!"

And then Mike screamed. There was a banging, a smashing rattling noise as of something being hammered against glass and metal.

"Mike! MIKE!!" he was shouting into the phone, but the screaming went on, a shriek of horror and agony that suddenly just cut off.

Xavier halted his own screams, listening desperately to the hushed, rhythmic waves. And then to the lilting, insane laugh, the laugh of someone who had seen something incredibly funny in the death of another human being. A laugh that died away into the wash of the surf, and then, even as he became vaguely aware of footsteps coming at a run up the stairs, a voice, a delicate, sweet voice. "Oh, so pretty, so pretty, the patterns in the moonlight. But oh, such a waste of blood."

His mother was there, staring at him, but he held to the phone with a deathgrip, and there was the unmistakable sound of a hand grasping the phone, and the girl was whispering, "Michael's quiet now. He says goodbye."

And the phone went dead.

***

"So the kid knows kung fu!" the leader said, and the voice snapped him back to now. The laughter had continued, and now they produced more weapons. Mostly knives, but there were a couple of guns. Forget the guns for now, if they shoot in this mess they're more likely to hit their friends.

Two of them lunged forward then, knives out. Xavier didn't bother to try the fancy trick of kicking the knife out of the hand; he simply moved slightly aside, caught and twisted the arm as it went by, and at the same time kicked sideways and down. He felt his gut tighten, nausea rise as he felt the knee break, cartilage and bone bending sideways with a green-stick crunch and a scream. Sorry, Shihan, I'm using what you taught me to hurt people. He knew self-defense was allowed…but this was still horrid.

No time to think, just do. He continued the spin and twist, brought the other boy's arm farther up, heard the pop as he dislocated the shoulder. I am going to puke after this, if I live through it.

But there were others already coming in. He tried a kick, caught one in the groin, but he was wearing something, a hard cup, kick probably hurt but not enough, the others are coming, block that strike, got to get away, maybe up—

He tried to leap to the top of the dumpster, but the one he'd kicked in the groin caught his leg, slammed him down. Xavier tried to roll but there were two others already on him, kicking, pounding. He felt a rib snap, knew the pain would hit as soon as his body realized what had happened. Then a new pain, a cold-flaming pain sliding through his gut, and he realized with dull horror that he'd been stabbed. They picked him up, threw him down, tumbling half-conscious and in agony across the filthy pavement, and as he twitched, trying to find some way to get control of his body, he saw the leader raise his gun. "Bye-bye, karate kid."

"That's enough."

The voice cut through everything, even Xavier's foggy consciousness.

Standing at the far end of the alley was an old man. He was tall, with white hair that fell so it covered much of his face, and thin within the simple black shirt and pants he wore. He stood in a strange pose, arms parallel across his body, almost as though he had stopped in the midst of folding his arms.

"Enough?" The leader spun, pointing the pistol at the newcomer. "How about enough of th—"

And without so much as a pause, the old man was there, taking the gun from the leader's hand in a single motion. "I said that is enough."

"What the—take this asshole down!"

Xavier could not see—could not grasp—what happened next. It was a blur of motion, grunts of pain, screams, curses. But then two or three people ran past him, fear as plain across their faces as skywriting, and he could see, in his dimming sight, the old man standing above the unconscious—or dead—bodies of all the rest.

The man walked past the sprawled bodies and bent down. "What is your name, son?"

"X…Xavier . . . " he managed, hearing a faint gurgle. They must have hit a lung as well as my gut. I'm a dead man. And I've failed. "Can't…die . . . "

"All things can die," the old man said, and his arms slid under Xavier, lifting him so easily that it felt almost like floating. "But not you, not today."

Chapter 2.

Xavier blinked himself slowly awake. A room he didn't recognize. Carefully fitted stonework, painted in a pattern of sunset colors that made the room feel warmer, comforting. A soft bed under him, one that smelled new-washed. His head was slightly elevated, and looking ahead he could see the wall, also of stone with a polished wooden door—currently closed—in the center.

Just tightening his gut in preparation for sitting up warned him that was a terrible idea. A wash of sharp, ripping pain screamed at him to lie back down! He did so immediately; his training with Shihan had taught him to listen to what his body told him, and there obviously wasn't any emergency right now that justified taking chances.

For a moment he wondered if the last memories he had were some kind of dream or illusion. But if they were, how had he gotten out of that attack alive? No, it had to be real, ridiculous though it seemed.

The door opened silently, and the old man came in. He glanced over at Xavier and nodded. "Awake already, I see. You recover quickly, Xavier." He put down a tray which held a pitcher of water, a cup, and a bowl. "I will help you sit up, and then you can have some broth. Your insides are not yet ready for much else."

As the old man helped him up, Xavier noticed the IV drips in his arms. "This…isn't a hospital, but you've got IVs?"

"Such equipment is not hard to get, if you know how."

"Did you…sew me up?"

"I did." The old man frowned, putting deeper lines in his mahogany-colored face. "Such wounds are very dangerous, and demanded immediate attention. I have also made sure your rib is properly set, reinflated your lung, and attended to your other injuries."

"Are you…a doctor?"

He smiled. "I am. And other things as well." He picked up the bowl. "Now, let's see if you can hold this down."

Xavier didn't like being fed by someone else, but he liked pain less; moving his arms hurt the rest of him, although his arms themselves seemed fine. It was a pretty good broth. "That's…homemade," he said. "Not packaged bouillon."

"Your sense of taste, at least, is not dulled." Another smile. "Your mother cooks well, I take it?"

"She does, Michelle does, I do okay, and when Mike's home he . . . " He found he couldn't go on; once again, the realization that his big brother was never coming home again had ambushed him in the middle of a thought.

"Mike? A brother? Did something happen to him?" The man's voice seemed to hold genuine concern and interest.

Xavier opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "Sorry. It's nothing you need to worry about, sir."

"I apologize. As long as it has nothing to do with why you were in that alley, nearly nine hundred miles from home, you are correct, it is nothing for me to concern myself with."

Xavier winced, then his head snapped up. "How the hell do you know where I live?"

The dark-skinned hand pointed. Xavier saw his backpack lying there against the wall. "You carried more than sufficient identification, including your address."

"Er…yeah. Sorry." He looked away, then back. "Why would it matter?"

"I have saved your life from a rather unusual and perilous situation. Even traveling alone I would have expected a young man of your age and apparent social standing to have taken a rather different route out of Chicago."

He grimaced, swallowing another spoonful of broth the old man offered. "Yeah, I should have. But I'm mostly walking and hitching to save my money. This other old guy said you could get to a good road for walking that way."

His benefactor raised a white eyebrow. "He did? Interesting."

"Interesting enough that if I ever see him again I'll kick him somewhere painful. And you still didn't answer my question."

"Not entirely, no," the man agreed. "Because, in short, I would hate to have saved a life that is to be thrown away immediately afterwards. Where are you going, son?"

Xavier looked at him, then shook his head. "Sir…look, I'm not really ready to talk about it."

The white hair combined with mustache and beard made it harder to read his benefactor's face. The man merely studied him for a long minute while Xavier took a few more spoonfuls. The eyes behind the hair glinted green, a startling color in that dark face. "I suppose you can take your time, Xavier. You won't be moving for a while. I can make sure you recover, but those kind of wounds are slow to heal for even young men like yourself." He smiled suddenly. "Even young men who are in excellent shape. You acquitted yourself quite well in that confrontation."

"Well? I only got two of them, maybe messed up a third. You…Damn, sir, I thought I'd seen people who knew how to fight, but I don’t think even Shihan could have done that."

"Shihan Butler?"

"You know him?"

He smiled again. "He is…quite well-known in the profession, and knowing where you came from, it seemed most likely. I have met him a few times, yes, some years ago. You have great fortune in having him as a teacher."

Xavier nodded, and finished the last few spoonfuls of broth. "He taught me and…and Mike. Mike was way ahead of me there, though, he could've been on the track for champion, which is one reason it makes no sense . . . "

He stopped.

"Ah." The white head nodded slowly. "No accident, but murder, then."

Xavier suddenly felt confused. What the hell am I doing here? How can I do what I have to do if a few punks…He looked up. "The police aren't going to find his killer," he said, as the old man began to stand, taking the empty bowl away.

The head turned, a white eyebrow raised. The man slowly seated himself again "Aren't they?"

"I don't think so." He realized he was committed now; if this man wished him harm, he could simply have let the gang finish him. Why not trust him? He had to tell someone. "I remember when I told them how my brother died . . . "

***

"…and that's all I remember, ma'am." Xavier felt numb, exhausted and every feeling except dull rage gone.

Lieutenant Reisman nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry to have to put you through that again," she said, "but Morgantown PD is trying to do this so that—hopefully—you don't have to get flown out to L.A. to testify." She looked at him with an analytical gaze. "Are you up to a few more questions—ones you've probably heard before?"

He nodded.

"The voice—are you sure it was a woman?"

He thought about it. "Yeah. I'm sure. I could be wrong, but I'm sure, if you know what I mean."

She smiled. "Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and I wish more people could say things that clearly. You mean that your gut says it was a woman, even if you could imagine a man sounding like that."

"Yes, ma'am, that's it exactly."

"You mentioned your brother was on edge, more nervous lately, and that he said he had 'evidence.' Do you know what he had evidence of?"

He'd been going over that in his head for hours. "No, I'm sorry. All I know is…it can't have been anything ordinary. I mean, drugs or smuggling or something like that, he'd run into all that before, but whatever this was, it was weirding him out somehow. I never heard M . . . Mike so . . . " and the tears were trying to start again.

The police lieutenant put her hand on his shoulder. "Sorry, Xavier. Look, that's enough, I think." She shut off her recorder and straightened up. "We'll find the person who did this. I promise."

***

"But they didn't. Weeks went by, and eventually they found some guy, drug-related gang, and said he was the one who did it." The anger and bitter, acid disappointment rose in him again. "They said Mike had a history of investigations into drug-related crime, and okay, yeah, he did, but anyway they said somehow the cartel had figured out he was onto them and killed him."

The old man's eyes flashed green again from beneath his hair, but he said nothing for a moment. Finally, "But you don't believe they got the right man. He denied it?"

"No," Xavier admitted grudgingly, knowing how that sounded. "He confessed. Exactly the story they said it was, and he was going to testify about the rest of the gang. Found hanged in his cell before that happened, of course."

"Hmm. Still, he did confess to that crime. Why do you feel so certain this man is not the guilty party?"

Xavier started to reply angrily, but then it penetrated that his benefactor wasn't arguing; he was asking, quite seriously.

"I…a lot of little things. Partly it's just that I'm sure that was a girl I heard. Not some guy six feet two and two hundred pounds. And what the person said, that just didn't sound like someone doing a killing for a gang would do. Hell," he said with a small smile, "I just found out what a gang might do when they're killing someone."

The old man nodded seriously. "Go on."

"Umm…well, there was Michael's reaction. Before . . . " he didn't let himself start crying this time, but it was a close thing, "…before he screamed, that is. If some big guy had come towards him, while he was on a pay phone trying to avoid a drug gang, he wouldn't have been all casual about it. But he sounded like he was just trying to tell someone that he was busy on the phone—like maybe he thought this girl wanted to use the pay phone. He didn't sound like he thought this person was a threat until, well, they pulled out whatever weapon they used on him."

Xavier realized his eyelids were starting to droop. "Jeez, I'm tired. But there's other things…like, um…well, Mike wouldn't just scream like that if someone ordinary cornered him…plus Mr. Wood said . . . " It dawned on him that he was getting disjointed. "Sorry, I think I'm checking out."

"You should have gone to sleep some time ago," the old man said with another smile. "Strong will must run in your family. We'll finish talking, later."

Xavier tried to protest, but somewhere in the middle of that, sleep ambushed him.

Chapter 3.

The room seemed warmer and brighter when he woke up, and the pain in his stomach was of hunger, not the lingering agony of being stabbed. Cautiously, he tried sitting up. Hurts a little…but it's a lot better. In fact, it's a lot lot better than I'd have thought. Wonder how long I slept.

He was tempted to try to get up, but he restrained the impulse with a reminder of discipline. Don't want to undo anything that's been fixed so far.

The door opened and once more the old man came in, as though he knew Xavier had awakened. "How are you feeling?"

"A lot better. Better than I thought I'd feel."

"You slept a very long time, and I've been treating you to maximize your recovery." Xavier did not miss the fact that this didn't actually tell him a thing about how the stranger was treating him. "If you are hungry, I will give you something. It appears you sat up on your own, so perhaps we will even let you walk a bit afterwards—and go to the bathroom on your own."

Thinking back, Xavier could vaguely remember a few times where he was awakened, at least one of them involving a bedpan. He winced. The idea of some stranger helping him go to the bathroom really bothered him. "Yeah, let's do that."

"First, we'll see how well you handle your food."

It was food this time, of a sort anyway—pureed stuff, mostly. But it wasn't just clear liquids, and that bothered Xavier. I was stabbed in the gut. That should take a while to heal enough that anyone wants me putting something even vaguely solid through it.

On the other hand, again, this guy clearly had saved his life and seemed to know what he was doing; Xavier had absolutely no doubt he'd have been dead even if the gang had decided to leave him alone after that wound. So he ate, and felt that vague shakiness of someone who hasn't eaten for a long time fading away. The old man waited patiently until he was done.

"Do you remember what we were talking about before you slept?"

"Why I didn't think that guy killed Michael."

"Clearheaded enough. Do you need to use the bathroom?"

"Not yet."

"Very well. Then let us go on. Were there any other reasons you can recall?"

Xavier tried to remember where they'd left off. "For me I guess the clincher was when they sent Mike's stuff back to us. He used to keep a lot of stuff on his laptop, but he also took notes in paper notebooks. He showed me how he organized his stuff before, and one habit he had was that he took down each major investigation or job in a fresh book, and then copied things into electronic files afterward.

"Well, there wasn't a current notebook. The stuff they found on his body didn't include it. And the notes on his laptop talked about other jobs he had, but nothing about a current investigation on his own."

"Ah. You mean that he had other freelance work?"

"Yeah. Mike was in pretty good demand, so he always had jobs on for someone."

The old man nodded. "And that meant, of course, that there were entries of work being done—no obvious gap of time in which he was not working."

Xavier felt a rush of gratitude at the fact that the old man seemed to be taking him seriously. "Exactly, sir. But I just couldn't believe it all, so I took the machine to this guy who lives near us and runs an information service and I paid him to have it checked out.

"So Mr. Wood comes back and says that in his opinion someone did a lot of erasing. He couldn't recover much but he found enough to tell him that there were a lot more notes on the drive during the last four months than we found." He looked up. "Er, I need to go to the bathroom now."

The old man helped him get up; it hurt a lot, but Xavier didn't feel that sensation of something ripping, or about to rip. The door on the lefthand side of the room opened into a large and elaborate bathroom—what Xavier guessed were literally marble floors, hand-cut stone counters, décor he'd only seen on television. This guy…he's either rich, or he's got a serious bathroom obsession.

A few minutes later he came out under his own power and sat back down on the bed. He decided not to lie down yet, even though his gut ached, and so did his chest now. "I asked Mr. Wood to see what he could find out about Mike's last few months, and he found out a lot of interesting things. Like there were a lot of big gaps in his location—he was mostly around Los Angeles, yeah, but Wood had a hard time tracing exactly where and what he was doing. In his opinion, that meant that either Mike was being real covert, or someone was covering their tracks, or both."

"Getting a professional to do that for you must have cost something."

"Cost a lot, actually, yeah. And at that point Mr. Wood said I needed to go hire a professional investigator, because it was getting too much like a criminal case for him." He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain. "And then I found the pictures. He had one of those miniature digital cameras, a Lumiere SilentShot 2100, and that wasn't on him when he was found—but I was trying to . . . " he suddenly found himself unable to speak, and his eyes stung again.

Breathe. The pain helped this time. "I was trying to salvage his coat, you know, it was something I might be able to keep, and when I was trying to work the stains out I felt something hard. It was a memory card for the camera. He'd shoved it into a hidden pocket I hadn't seen and I guess whoever killed him hadn't seen it either. The card was mostly empty…but it had three pictures on it. Pictures of a girl I'd never seen before, still don't know who she is, but I can recognize buildings and things around her—and the timestamps are from the day he was killed."

"You brought this evidence to the police?"

"Yeah," He grimaced. "Lieutenant Reisman agreed with me that it looked funny, but the L.A. police felt they'd closed the case and no one wanted to reopen it." He shook his head, and he couldn't keep the fury out of his voice this time. "They were going to let that monster who killed my brother walk, they didn't even care that she was still out there, that she'd laughed right in my ear when she killed him! Didn't care that my mom was like a total wreck and my sis wasn't much better, that I couldn't…couldn't even . . . " he stopped, tears of rage once more on his face. "So if they weren't going to do anything, I was going to."

"I see." The old man looked at him for a while, then stood, offering his hand. "Let's walk a bit before you lie down again."

Xavier found walking was painful, but he was curious about this guy's home. Through the main doorway there was a wide, carpeted hall, going in a gentle curve in both directions. They walked slowly, coming to another door every so often; sometimes his host would stop and open one of them, letting Xavier get a glimpse. The kitchen was brightly lit, white countertops and stainless steel and efficiency glittering on every sparkling edge, with multiple appliances spaced across the counters. There was a separate dining room, actually smaller than the kitchen; Xavier guessed that this guy didn't have many guests. Another door opened to show a library—a real library, which extended so far that there were actually three separate doors at widely spaced intervals leading to it. Those doors were all on the left; when he saw a door on the right, it was clearly an elevator.

Something was bothering him about the setup, though. The old man seemed to notice, because he smiled. "What have you noticed?"

What is it? he asked himself. Something about the rooms seemed…off, as though there was some essential feature missing. But what feature would you expect to see in all the different—

"Windows. You don't have a single window anywhere here."

"Very good, Xavier. You are observant."

"You still haven't told me your name, either."

"That, also, is true. I have been pondering that for quite some time."

"Pondering? What's there to think about? What should I call you?"

"A name can mean many things," he said. "My question to you is quite simple: when you are well, what do you intend to do?"

"Finish my trip. Hopefully with fewer stabbings this time."

"I see. If I understand you correctly, you have set out—yourself—to find your brother's killer and bring her to justice." The man was looking at him with a quizzical expression on his face, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

The flippant phrasing stung. "Well, no one else will!"

"Perhaps not. Still, allow me to put it this way: you have disappeared from your home to seek this revenge, leaving your mother and sister doubly bereaved, to hunt down a person—or, more likely, persons—whom your brother was still tracking, and about whom there was some secret that made your brother disbelieving, nervous, or even afraid. You are doing this on your own, with no help or backup, and if you are successful, you will be confronting someone who managed to kill your brother—who, you yourself imply, was a more formidable man than you are—with apparently little effort at all. Have I described the situation correctly?"

Xavier found himself simultaneously infuriated at this old bastard's coldhearted summary and appalled at himself. What the hell have I been thinking? Mom's going to be going crazy! 'Shelle too!

He sagged against the wall, the pain in gut and chest trying to take over. "Yeah. Yeah, you have, and I'm such a moron. I…I guess…I guess I'll have to go back."

The old man nodded slowly. "But can you?"

Xavier thought about going home, admitting what he'd done…staying home. And his gut twisted, this time for nothing having to do with being stabbed. "I guess I could. But…I can't stand the idea that she's going to walk. I can't! I hear that laugh every night! She thought it was funny!"

Another nod. "So you would destroy yourself in the process if you were to return without having at least finished the effort."

Boy, that makes me sound like some obsessive psycho. But—well, yeah, maybe I am. "Maybe I'd be okay. People get over stuff like this, don't they?"

The man sighed, and suddenly he did look old—not just white haired, but ancient as though the whole world weighed down on him. "Some do, Xavier Ross. Others…others can only 'get over' it by finishing the job they begin. I said to you that I did not want my work wasted. Tell me as honestly as you can: if I bring you back to your home, will Xavier Uriel Ross find his way to healing?"

Xavier wanted to say he would. He thought of his mother, and sister, and wanted to be back home with them so much it hurt. But he thought of just going back to school, of letting that past go, and that high, delicate laugh echoed through his head and he felt his teeth grind, his stomach boil, his chest and gut scream as he tensed. "I…I don't know. I don't know, sir, I really really don't."

The old man looked at him for a long moment, then extended his hand, helped Xavier to stand fully upright again. "So it has to be, then. You have asked what you shall call me."

He turned, and his back was once more straight, the white hair cascading down in perfect verticality. "You shall call me Sensei."

"Er…what?"

The man was leading him down the hallway. "You will not be yourself unless you see this through. Yet even you now realize that you have set yourself on a course that cannot help but end in death, the way you are now.

"So the only choice is that you become the weapon you wish to be, Xavier Ross. You must become more deadly than your brother, faster, more capable than he was or ever could have been. You need to pass into secret places without being seen, learn truths hidden even from your police, and in the end you must be able to trace through those truths to the ultimate confrontation that you seek—and survive that confrontation—before you can go home again."

The two were in the elevator, going down, and Xavier felt a chill as he stared at the mysterious old man. He suddenly realized there was something much stranger going on than he had ever imagined. "You…you know who she is, don't you?"

"I do not know. But your story gives me reason to suspect not who she is but what she is, who she serves and why, and how a young woman of such slight stature could so easily overpower and kill a man such as your brother."

The elevator had two sets of doors, Xavier realized—one on the side by which they had entered, another opposite those, like some he'd seen in hospitals. The second set opened as the old man finished speaking.

Xavier stared, openmouthed. It was clear that the hallway's curve encircled this entire area, a single cylindrical room that was over a hundred feet across and a hundred high. The center was dominated by a slender column that rose three-quarters of the way to the ceiling and ended in a wide, flat platform whose top he could not see. The column seemed covered by projections of metal and glass and wood.

The rest of the room was filled with equipment—barbells and weightlifting machines, balance bars, vaulting horses, climbing projections on the walls, a complex wooden sparring dummy, sandbags, practice mats, racks of wooden swords, poles, other weapons, some of which Xavier didn't even recognize. There were real weapons, too, glittering with steel edges or unpadded, polished wood, a set of the plum flower or Mui Fa Jong poles, other equipment more exotic than anything he had ever seen. "Holy . . . "

"I did not find you by accident, Xavier Ross," the old man said quietly. "The one who sent you down that alley knew precisely what he was doing. He intended you to be caught by that gang—not because he intended you to be killed, but because he knew that the confrontation would draw my attention, that I would intervene."

Now Xavier transferred his stare to the old man. "You…you know who that guy was?"

"Know, yes, and I also know he would do no such thing without pressing reason. He saved your life, albeit in a most…roundabout and painful manner. I know this, and I…owe him certain favors.

"So here you will stay, Xavier Uriel Ross, until you are ready to continue your quest…or until you find enough inner peace that you find you can let that quest go."

This is…a storybook moment, Xavier thought, and wondered wildly if he was going to wake up in a minute, with Michael alive so he could laugh at the ridiculous fantasy. But another part of him knew it was real, very real indeed, and that terrified him, because if stories like this came true, the world was something much scarier than he'd ever imagined.

But the old man was waiting, and Xavier knew why. He swallowed, knowing that in a way the decision had been made a long time ago, the moment that someone laughed into a phone with blood on her hands. "Yes, Sensei."

Chapter 4.

Fifteen…sixteen…seventeen . . .

His arms quivered, his back ached, and his gut—especially the still-tender cut—seemed to be on fire. But I'm not giving up yet…three more . . .

At the twentieth push-up he let himself collapse face-first, breathing hard. I used to be able to do fifty of those in a row, at least, on a bad day.

"You are doing well," Sensei said.

Xavier rolled over to face the mysterious man. "Glad you think so. That was pretty pathetic, I think."

Sensei chuckled. "Despite the treatment I have given you, most people in your position would probably have given up after one or two." He looked off into the distance, as though thinking. "Are you able to get up?"

Xavier forced himself to sit up, stand, trying to look as though it didn't hurt, that his arms didn't feel like they were made of rubber and his knees didn't want to buckle like a cheap end table sat on by a St. Bernard. "Sure."

"Then come with me."

His legs slowly steadied as he walked across the floor of what he thought of as a dojo, following Sensei. But it's not exactly a dojo. Not a traditional one. It's different.

The room wasn't even round, as he'd originally thought. It was a septagon, a seven-sided shape a hundred feet or maybe more across. And some of the symbology in here…doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before.

His Sensei wore an outfit that was similar to a gi or other light training robes, but subtly different, and again not like anything Xavier had seen before. He was also barefoot and appeared to stay barefoot most of the time unless he was venturing outside.

They stopped near the towering central column, studded with points and edges and rings and pendants of glass, metal, and crystal; Xavier found an area wide enough to lay his hand flat on, pushed; the column swayed slightly, tinkling along its length like crystal raindrops falling. "What do you want to show me, Sensei?"

"I have been thinking a long time about what I must teach you, and how, and how to be sure we reach a clear end to your training," the old man said after a moment. "Were you simply here to learn, we would have all the time of our lives to take in the teaching. But you have both enemies and family waiting for you, and so we cannot take forever or even half of forever to train you.

"So I must…specialize your instruction, customize it to give you the skills you will need, even if it skips over aspects of the training I would prefer covered under other circumstances. Those abilities you need will be several; the ability to be unnoticed, the skill to pass where locks and guards would bar your path, and the ability to strike down even those things which ordinary weapons cannot harm."

Xavier shot a glance at Sensei, but there was no sign of a smile. "Sensei? What…things?"

"Things that live in the shadow between reality and fantasy," the old man answered after a moment, looking at the column as it finally stopped swaying. "Surely you realized, when you agreed to stay here, that the world you knew was not the whole of the truth."

He hesitated, but…"I think I realized that when Michael died."

Sensei studied him for a moment. "Yes, I suppose you did, in your heart. You sensed something, and it was that wrongness, at least as much as the voice of a girl-child, that told you the police had not found, and probably could not find, the killer of your brother."

Yes. Xavier didn't speak; the subject was creeping him out.

"Call them monsters, Xavier, or demons. Werewolves and vampires, ghosts and basilisks, things that are perhaps weaker than they once were, but still hide themselves behind the shadows of the mind and away from the eyes of daylight."

"Michael was killed by . . . ?" He remembered Mike's last words, the ones that hadn't made much sense. "…it's crazy…but I think I've found actual evidence . . . "

"I think so. Given where it happened, how he died, what you heard…yes. And so you need the ability to hurt that which cannot be hurt by ordinary weapons. You need to become a weapon that can hurt them." Sensei gazed up the column. "At the same time, we need a way to tell when you are done." He pointed up. "This will be your…graduation exercise. You may attempt it at any time."

"I have to climb to the top?" Xavier looked uncertainly at the spiny column. It looks like a magnified view I saw once of a nettle stem—covered with so many sharp points that it looks almost fuzzy!

"Not merely climb," Sensei corrected him. "You must climb it noiselessly, reach the very top, and retrieve what I have left there. When you can do that and I do not know you have done it until you present what you have found to me, then I will know you have mastered everything I can teach in our time here."

Xavier stared at Sensei, then at the column. It sways when I touch it, and it's covered by noisemaking things! "I…Sensei, I don't think that’s possible."

Sensei smiled at him—a startlingly gentle smile, not one of annoyance or superiority. "I know, it does sound quite ridiculous. Yet . . . "

Sensei closed his eyes, took a breath, opened them…and stepped up and began climbing. His hand gripped a bladed edge of diamond; his foot stepped up, rested on a sharp steel projection like a steak knife on its back…and he climbed.

The column did not sway; it moved not a hair's breadth. The white-haired man continued swiftly, confidently, up the column, and there was hardly a whisper of any sound, just the faint, faint hiss of cloth on cloth. He climbed around the column, disappeared for a moment…and then appeared atop the platform, looking over the edge and down.

How…I've seen that platform many times now. It goes all the way around, sticking out something like eight feet in all directions! Was there a trapdoor or something? There's no way to climb up without using a trapdoor, the underside is just smooth wood, nothing to grab onto!

He ran around to the other side to see if Sensei would come through a hidden trapdoor…but in a moment Sensei reappeared from the first side, climbing down as easily and silently as he'd ascended, and Xavier was absolutely certain that there couldn't be a trapdoor hidden in the part he'd been just looking at.

Xavier stared as the old man dropped the last foot or so. "How?" he said, finally.

Sensei's smile acknowledged the simplicity of the question addressing something that was hardly simple. "You will learn how, in time," he answered. "This martial art is called Tor, and it can take lifetimes to master. I…believe I can teach you some very advanced techniques much faster than any lifetime, even though it will of course leave…gaps in your education.

"But before we can do that, you need to learn mental discipline and focus—learn it at a level you have never before imagined."

"Shihan Butler said I was very good at such things." He wasn’t bragging, he hoped. Shihan had often complimented him on this.

"Good. Then I hope that you will be able to master this discipline soon." Sensei pointed to the mat, and Xavier sat down. "Look at your hand."

Xavier did. His hand looked as it always did—slender, long-fingered, skin that his mother had always described as coffee with not nearly enough cream, some hairs growing on the back, faint veins. On the other side, creases from long use, calluses (there were some of those on the knuckles, too), the swirls of fingerprints. "All right."

"Now close your eyes." Once he had done so, Sensei said, "Now, without opening your eyes, tell me how many hairs are visible on the first joint of your index finger."

"What? Um…I dunno. Twenty?"

"Seventeen," Sensei said. "Look and count."

Xavier did. Seventeen. "You've got good eyes."

"My eyes are little, if any, better than yours," Sensei answered. "What I have are trained perceptions. This is the first—and to many students of Tor, one of the hardest—exercises in training those perceptions. It is called Hand Center, and in it you will look at your hand and practice visualizing your hand until you can visualize it in perfect detail in any position, so that were a photograph taken from your memory and compared to the hand before you, there would be no visible difference."

Xavier glanced at Sensei doubtfully. "Well…okay, but what's the point?"

"There are two major points to this exercise, Xavier," the white-haired old man answered. "First, a test of discipline. If you can manage that level of focus and dedication, you will find that other similar tasks of focus become far easier, and will have proved—to yourself as well as to me—that you are capable of the immense feats of personal focus that will be required to achieve your goals.

"Second, to understand such perspectives with pure accuracy gives you a view of the reality that surrounds you that few others will ever have; you will be able to visualize not merely your hand, but eventually your body and surroundings, with a detail and accuracy that will seem to others to be supernatural. Counting the hairs on someone else's hand that you have seen at close range many times will seem utter child's play to you." He grinned. "But you will be cursing the tedium of this meditation for a long time before you unlock its secrets."

Studying my own hand until I have it memorized—at that level of detail? Yeah, you're right there. But he had no doubt that this strange old man knew exactly what he was teaching, so…did Xavier have any choice? "All right," he said, and settled himself down more comfortably. "I guess I'd better get started."

Chapter 5.

Xavier opened his eyes. His hand stood out against the light, exactly where it had to be to block the pinpoint-bright lights he'd set out, one light with each of his five fingertips. The shining light picked out exactly the number of hairs he had imagined, standing up in exactly the way he had been sure they would.

With a whoop of joy, he leapt up. "I did it!"

Sensei stuck his head into the room. "Did what?"

"I think I've got it! Hand Center! I mean, I really think I do!"

Sensei's eyebrows rose. "Really? If so, that's…astonishingly fast. Gratifying, but still…let us test that."

Xavier closed his eyes as directed and felt Sensei take his hand. "Now, I am going to move your hand in various ways and ask questions about what you would see."

"All right."

He felt his fingers being gently repositioned. "Now?"

He laughed. "I'm giving the classic peace sign—first and second fingers forming a V. The way you're holding my hand, I can see the back of my hand."

"How many creases are visible on the first joint of your pinky finger?"

"The way you're holding it? None. I can't see the pinky from that angle, it's folded down."

"Describe the creases on your index finger."

"Well, first there's the main crease at the center of the first joint . . . " he went on to describe the multiple creases in detail.

The test went on for several more poses, and then Sensei dropped his hand. "Open your eyes."

Xavier looked up, to see Sensei's own eyes shining with pride. "You have indeed mastered the Hand Center, Xavier—one of the most challenging tasks in the basis of Tor—and done so at amazing speed. You have leapfrogged many of the other disciplines which are usually taught. This will weaken your knowledge of the entire art, yes, but we will backfill part of that later, and this allows you to progress onward."

"So what are the other disciplines?"

"In the standard order, they are Fast Center, White Vision, Heart Center, Red Vision, Hand Center, Clear Vision, Deep Center, Wind Vision, High Center, Water Vision, Mind Center, Flame Vision, Body Center, Dark Vision, Tor Center, and the Final Vision, also called The Space As I."

"And how many of these are you teaching me before, well, you think I'm ready?"

"By the time we are done you will have learned, in addition to Hand Center, White Vision, High Center, Body Center, and specific techniques which will have given you pieces of others. Some of what I hope you will learn will be exceedingly advanced, normally not learned by any who have not dedicated, quite literally, decades—or centuries—to the art. But I know teaching techniques which, I believe, will allow you to gain these skills far more swiftly."

Xavier didn't like the word "centuries" in there, even if it was followed by Sensei "believing" that he could learn more quickly. But again, he didn't have much choice. And mysterious old master was mysterious, so he probably wouldn't get much out of asking something like "how long will this take?"

But he really did want to know something to, well, look forward to, and the thought of how much time was implied by Sensei…"I know how long it took me to learn what I learned under Shihan. I don't have years—I can't stay away that long!"

"You have more time than you think," Sensei answered. "And for the techniques you will need, you must take the time, or your quest is doomed to failure."

"O…kay," he said reluctantly. "But…look, Sensei, I hope this isn't being rude, but I'd like to see what I'm working towards. What are these techniques you said would . . . " he thought back to one of Sensei's earlier speeches, "…would let me go unnoticed, pass through whatever may bar my path, and strike down things that can't be hurt by ordinary weapons?"

Sensei chuckled. "I suppose a demonstration of the goals would not hurt—although I warn you that you may doubt your senses at first." Sensei stood—and disappeared.

Xavier sat staring openmouthed at empty air for a minute, then looked around with, he suspected, a goggle-eyed expression like a hungry goldfish. "Wh…where? How'd you do that? Where are you?"

From behind him, Sensei spoke. "Here, Xavier."

"Aaaagh!" The shout wasn't very coherent, but the total shock of having someone appear behind him without warning was, Xavier thought, a reasonable excuse for that. "What…what did you just do?"

He shook his head. "The answer to that question would mean little without more training. Now, try to strike me."

Xavier straightened up and got into the parallel-arm stance that Sensei had taught him. "Any way I want?"

"Any technique at all."

By now Xavier was sure there wasn't anything Sensei couldn't block, and Xavier felt fully healed. So he did a sudden leap-kick that would strike the old man in the head, if he permitted it.

Instead, to Xavier's utter shock, his foot passed right through Sensei's head, throwing off Xavier's balance and landing so much that he collapsed in a heap on the ground. "What the hell?"

Just to confirm the impossibility, he rolled to his feet and directed more kicks and punches towards his master. They passed through the apparently solid Sensei as though there was nothing but air there—until Sensei raised a hand and caught Xavier's fist effortlessly.

That last bit proved that this wasn't an illusion. For a minute I was wondering if it was some trick with light, holograms or something. But he changed from ghost to solid in the space of less than a heartbeat. "Jesus."

"And the final technique you asked about . . . " Sensei whirled and struck one of the sandbags nearby with a shout in some language Xavier didn't know.

There was a flash of white light and the sandbag hurtled away, impacting with the far wall so hard that Xavier felt it through his feet; Xavier knew his eyes were bugging out of his head.

What? I mean…WHAT? That's…that's some anime video-game finishing move crap there! That can't happen in real life.

But the same was true of people suddenly turning invisible or intangible. He found himself staring speechlessly at Sensei.

"Are you satisfied, Xavier?" The smile showed that Sensei understood full well how utterly gobsmacked Xavier was feeling.

"Uh…I . . . . Yes! Yes. But…I'm going to be able to do that?" A part of him didn't believe…but a part was rising up with incredulous joy, bouncing up and down like a child given the gift of a dream.

"I think you shall, yes. It will be as hard as you think, and harder, to learn, but I will teach you, and if you try as hard as you have already been…these skills will be yours."

The excitement was shifting, merging with a solemnity that he didn't understand at first. But then he did. "It's going to be that bad? The things I go against?"

"Yes," Sensei said gravely.

"And you can't help against them directly?"

"No. I have other requirements and commitments, which I am delaying as much as possible to teach you. Once I am done, I must leave, and swiftly."

Xavier took a deep breath and nodded. "Well…it's my job anyway. And with great power and all that."

"Indeed. You understand the responsibility?"

He thought, and the temptations of the powers he'd been shown were suddenly clear. "Ew. Yes. Yes, I do. There's a lot of skeevy things I could do with those. But I promise I won't!"

Sensei nodded. "Good enough for now. As time goes on, I will hope you continue to think on these things, for you will be confronting things that threaten far more than just you and your family…and you will be in a position to cause just as much harm as they." He turned. "Then come. With your mastery of Hand Center, we'll have something of a little celebration…and then back to work."

Xavier bowed and followed Sensei, who he'd already learned was an insanely good cook in addition to his other talents. I'm gonna miss that part of this too. None of that "live on rice and pure thoughts" here.

But I'll have to cultivate the pure thoughts anyway. Because he's right about what I could do wrong with those powers.

I want to be the hero. And I will be. I promise myself. I promise Sensei. And most of all, I promise Michael.

Chapter 6.

"You are a natural with the vya-shadu," Sensei said, parrying Xavier's twin-sword blow with one blade. "You progress swiftly. Very swiftly."

Xavier continued his assault, but managed a grin. Sensei is always precise with his compliments…or chastisements. So when he says something like that . . .  "Thank you, Sensei. But I have a feeling that even being a natural won't let me beat you any time soon."

A flash of a smile as white as the hair. "No, I admit I would expect that you would have to devote considerably more time to the art before you reach that level."

After a few more practice runs, Sensei had him put the katanalike swords that he called vya-shadu away. "We shall train much more with those, and there are a number of other techniques to learn. But you have mastered the Centers and Visions needed, and you have practiced them enough to begin on the advanced techniques you need to learn."

At Xavier's eager glance, he smiled again. "Yes, it is time to see if you can learn to cloak yourself from sight, shield yourself from the touch of others by remaining somehow both there and elsewhere. The technique was called Hirlana by those who knew of it, long ago."

"So the same technique allows you to be invisible and untouchable?"

"The two are very closely related, but not identical." Sensei led him to the center of the room, close to the column. "Perhaps better to say that there is one technique which gives you both, but that it takes more discipline and practice to learn to separate them—to be visible yet intangible, or tangible yet invisible. Of the three possibilities, the latter—invisible yet tangible—is the hardest."

Xavier stopped where Sensei indicated. "Now what, Sensei?"

"First, bring yourself through Hand Center, White Vision, High Center, and Body Center."

Xavier closed his eyes and focused, first visualizing his hand, then letting that dissolve to pure nothingness (and boy, had that been a hard exercise, visualizing pure white nothing), emerging into the perception of all around him from above, and then descending into pure and focused awareness of his entire body—the rise and fall of his chest, the shift of his clothing at his every move, the tiny movement of his hair in the faint breezes that moved through the training area, the precise pose of his body with the angles of arms and legs and hands and feet.

"Very good. Now you are prepared. First you must bring together the High Center and Body Center: perceive both yourself and the space in which you exist, in all detail."

Wow, you don't ask much, do you? But he only thought that, didn't say it. Not that he'd get in much trouble for doing so—Sensei wasn’t the kind of guy who'd hit you for making a mistake, or even yell. But he'd be disappointed, and Xavier didn't want to disappoint him.

Keeping his own body in mind, he built up his mental model of the world around him, moving out from the floor at his feet to Sensei himself, only a few feet away, and then the great Column with its multiplicity of sharp projections behind him, and then the workout equipment . . .

For a moment, he realized just what he was doing, and it awed him. I can visualize all of that?

And immediately the dual center collapsed.

"Oops."

Sensei shook his head. "If you become too aware of the process—too focused on how difficult or impressive or impossible the feat is—you will find even the simpler acts beyond you."

"Sorry." He guessed what threw me off. Sometimes Sensei is scary that way. "Okay, trying again."

This time he managed to keep his introspection focused and not derail himself. It wasn't easy. But finally he was standing before Sensei, visualizing himself and Sensei and the entire room around them. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked at Sensei. "Okay, I'm ready."

Only then did it register to him that he was, indeed, looking straight at Sensei, who was in precisely the pose he'd visualized . . .

. . . but not the pose that Sensei had been in when Xavier closed his eyes.

"Holy crap!"

Of course, with that startlement, the visualization crashed down, but he was too excited to care. "What…what did I just do? Sensei, I didn't hear you move—I don't think I did—and even if I did, that wouldn't have told me you had your chin cradled in your one hand, and—"

"And now you begin to realize the actual power of the visualizations and sense training, yes," Sensei said. "Properly done, with the right training and preparation, you do not merely visualize the world around you; you perceive the world and incorporate it into your vision."

"So…if I do this right, I could find my way around in total darkness?"

"Walk through a cavern without the aid of light, find stepping stones across a lightless river, yes, or see a blow coming from behind you when an assassin seeks your end. In fact, now that you have learned this capability, you and I will be doing many of our training sessions in total darkness."

"Wow." The word wasn't adequate, but Xavier wasn't sure he knew any words that were adequate. After a minute he shook his head. "Wow," he said again. "But…okay, back to work."

A third time he brought himself to the dual center, and managed to maintain it even as he perceived Sensei walking around him. "Very good, Xavier. But now I have a real challenge for you."

"The others weren't challenges?" It was really hard to talk and maintain the dual center, but he wasn't going to let it go now.

"Oh, there was some challenge, indeed. But this will be of an entirely different order.

"Maintaining the rest of your vision, I want you to remove yourself from the visualization."

Xavier considered that. "Ohhh. I think I get it. Since my visualization shows the world as it really is, if I can remove myself from my own visualization, my own perceptions, I'm saying to the world 'I'm not here, ignore me.'"

For a moment, Sensei was silent. When he spoke, there was a note of mingled surprise and gratification in his voice. "You have it almost exactly, Xavier…and I have never before had a student, knowing so little of Tor, make that leap of deduction."

The surge of pride almost unbalanced his focus, but he held on. That didn't prevent a huge grin from spreading over his face. "Well, my friends and I watched a lot of cheesy anime and wuxia films, and that kinda sounded like something they'd say."

"For whatever reason you may have thought of it, I remain impressed. Now, let us see you do it."

That was, of course, the problem. He knew he was standing there. Now that he knew that his visualization wasn't just a static construct but an actual perception of the actual state of things around him, he could feel himself in that visualization.

He tried to ignore himself, but all that did was show the wrinkling of his forehead, and knock him out of the dual center again. Xavier refocused and tried again…and once more got knocked out of focus.

Dinnertime came, and nighttime, and a day or two passed, and still he wasn't getting it. He lost track of the number of times that he almost felt he had succeeded, and then ended up with nothing but a headache for his trouble; more than days had passed, weeks maybe, longer? Finally, he came to the conclusion that it all boiled down to one simple question:

How could he not visualize something he could see? And something that he did see with Body Center, as completely as he was now seeing everything around him with High Center?

Well, the easiest way to remove him from that picture to just visualize the area around him. But that was High Center. If it was that simple, he'd already have been invisible. So why didn't that work?

"Because," he told himself, "High Center is centered on ME, and assumes me as the viewpoint. Body Center has some other viewpoint—in my case, I chose something at a sort of security-camera angle viewpoint—focused on me. It's all about me.

"So . . . " he continued muttering to himself, "I have to have Body Center focused on something that isn't there?"

That sounded almost right. I have to visualize the whole area—including the area where I am—exactly as it would be if I weren't there, if there was nothing there at all.

But how…No, wait. What was that thought? If there was nothing there at all . . .

If there was NOTHING there!

This would have to be a triple visualization, and the third would be a paradox. I need White Vision in between High Center and Body Center, erasing perception of myself from the world around me.

He tried focusing the white nothing visualization onto his own Body Center mental construct. Doing that took hours and many repetitions, but in the end it didn't work; all that did was make a white hole in his visualization the shape of himself, not a blankness.

Still, he was sure he was on the right track now. Sensei had only taught him certain things, so those few things had to have the keys for figuring this out.

In the afternoon of what must have been a month or two after Sensei first put the question to him, Xavier began again. But this time, he started with Body Center, then brought up White Vision.

It was incredibly hard to maintain both. There was nothing to see with Body Center when everything was gone to blankness—not even a shadow of perspective from his mind's eye camera. All he had left was a sense of something there, of a continuity of spirit, perhaps. He held that blank something in his head and slowly, slowly started building up the High Center visualization, but this time starting from as far out as he could sense and moving inward. The walls, festooned with weapon racks and climbing grips and other equipment. Free standing equipment, mats on the floor; sparring area and the exercise weights. The great Column and the floor around him, bare, polished, closer, closer . . .

Now he had one final piece, one more part of the visualization that had to be perfect. With absolute focus he built up the last piece of floor—the part underneath him, that was utterly invisible as long as he stood on it—and made sure that the lighting showed not a trace of his shadow.

For long, long minutes he maintained this bizarre visualization, feeling his heart thumping rapidly, fighting the faint headache that such concentration was engendering. Then, very slowly, he opened his eyes.

The world around him was…faded, was the only word for it. It remained clear and detailed, but the colors were muted, sepia tones like an old-fashioned photograph sitting too long in an old drawer. Everything was dull yet clear, and the sounds of Sensei's stronghold were quiet, reaching his ears like careful whispers. He turned slowly.

Brilliance came into view, shining like a sparkling sun. The figure was humanoid, but the light that poured from him was like nothing Xavier had ever seen before. Yet in High Center, what stood there was . . .

"Sensei?"

The figure turned, looking…and the gaze went right past Xavier. A moment later, Xavier saw the eyes widen and heard a distant, triumphant shout.

That was enough for Xavier. The concentration broke and he collapsed, exhausted, on the floor. But Sensei was there almost instantly. "Oh, well done, well done, Xavier Uriel Ross! You finally figured out the key!"

"First Body, then White, then High, huh?" His head hurt, but that wasn't important now, not when he'd just succeeded.

"That is one way to do it, yes, and I think the best."

"When I was…invisible, most things looked dull, colorless…except you. Why?"

Sensei smiled. "Because while you have faded from the realm of the physical, you still maintain a connection to the world through your spirit; you must, elsewise you might find yourself going…elsewhere. Thus, you see clearly the spirits around you, those who have not hidden or cloaked themselves…and even those would find it hard to truly become unseen by someone in the Hirlana."

He gripped Xavier by both shoulders and looked down at him, and Sensei's gaze sparkled…with perhaps a hint of tears that surprised Xavier. "I am very proud of you," he said. "You have managed something that many masters of Tor have taken many decades to learn…and some never learn at all."

"Am I that special, or are you that good a teacher?"

Sensei's laugh was loud and deep, somehow younger than he appeared. "An excellent question. Perhaps it is some of both, in truth. But come, let's celebrate. You've made the second and perhaps third major steps in your training. You'll need a lot of practice to master that trick, of course—a lot of practice if you hope to use it in dangerous circumstances—but now you know how, and that, my student, is the most important thing of all."

Xavier followed his Sensei, feeling a combined sense of pride and wonder. And with this, I'm that much closer to going home.

Chapter 7.

The dojo was pitch-dark, unlighted; set this far underground, it was as dark as any cavern on Earth. Yet in High Center Xavier could sense everything around him. Two throwing knives sped towards him from behind, but he was already spinning, his swords striking the blades aside. He leapt from one of the plum-blossom poles to another as he sensed Sensei's approach, barely reaching the next pole as Sensei's vya-shadu tore through the air he had just vacated. For long moments they traded blows, dual swords dancing, evading each other's strikes with jumps from one towering pole to the next, kicks parried by hilts or legs, a ballet of death and skill that sent a chill of distant awe down Xavier's spine. I can't believe I'm doing this. How much I've learned, how many impossible things I've seen and been shown how to do—

Wham! Straight through his guard, as though he wasn't even trying, Sensei rammed through a kick that took him directly in the gut and sent him plummeting off the pole, to land with an icy splash in the water at the bases of the poles.

"Ugh!"

Sensei laughed from above, and the lights came on. "Well, you weren't focusing all of a sudden, Xavier."

"No, you're right, 'sokay, I'm fine!" Xavier snickered as he climbed out of the water. "I was thinking how awesome it was, what I was doing. So you just took all the awesome away."

"Not all of it, I hope."

"Not any of it, really," Xavier said, more seriously. "That kick…it didn't hurt, at least not any more than it could have before. I'm really totally healed."

"And have been for a while. You said you had something to show me after this workout?"

"Yeah, um, let me go get dried off first, though."

A little while later, Xavier led Sensei over to the target area, where they'd practiced throwing knives, shuriken, and pretty much everything else. "Now, of course, I'm gonna screw it up now that you're watching."

Sensei's eyes glanced at him sideways. "Xavier, what have I said about belief? You should understand by now that it is even more true than your mother ever knew that the right attitude determines success."

"Sorry. Just…preparing myself in case it doesn't work."

"And by that you are preparing your own failure. Focus on what you have to show me and nothing else. Eradicate thoughts of failure and uncertainty."

Easy for you to say, Sensei. You've been doing all this for…how long? Long enough for you to talk about centuries, and even though that sounds impossible too, somehow I think you really might be that old.

But he closed his eyes and focused. Body Center and White Vision, and he felt that awareness of spirit and nothing else. Holding that awareness he passed on to Hand Center, curling his hands together, cupping them with space between as though he held some tiny, delicate thing within. Then the discipline Sensei had taught him a few months ago, feeling the rush and ebb and flow of his blood and the strength it carried.

And my spirit flows through me too, guiding every motion, every thought, every action. I can slow down and speed up my heart, even—now—cause blood to flow less or more to parts of my body at will.

So with my spirit perceptions, I can feel the ebb and flow of my essence, my spirit, my chi. And guide it . . .

That sense was strong now, he could perceive his true self, the spirit that could stand between two perceptions of the world and understand them both, and now he focused that perception through Hand Center, between, imagining, visualizing, and making real the thought that the power was there, between his hands, his own spirit manifesting, a power that could bridge between reality and thought. He imagined himself pouring into that hidden hollow, and felt tingling warmth between his palms, and the tension of his arms and hands pressing in, no longer relaxed but tight, holding in something that struggled for release . . .

Slowly he opened his eyes, maintaining an absolute focus, certain of what he would see.

Between his cupped hands seethed something, something shining so brightly that brilliant beams of light were escaping through the tiny seams between his fingers and hands, something swirling so violently that his arms vibrated like cables in a wind. But even as he saw this he was extending his arms, letting his fingers flower open as he commanded his spirit to fly.

A streak of pure white light erupted from his open hands and struck one of the sandbag targets, blasting it asunder in a detonation of sand and shredded leather, continuing on to hammer the steel wall like a piledriver.

Xavier tried to give a triumphant leap, but wobbled instead, collapsing to his knees, head spinning. Sensei caught him as he started to fall on his face.

"How…was…that?"

Sensei's face wavered, and the room seemed slightly gray, before it slowly solidified again. "That was brilliantly done, Xavier. But I think you see why you should not do that again."

"Ever?" He didn't object as Sensei carried him over to a seat.

"I would never go so far as to say you should never ever do it. There are times for the use of anything, howsoever desperate. But to do what you did required much of your spiritual strength, and it will take some time for that to be recovered. Body and spirit are closely linked—and for those of us who practice Tor or any similar disciplines, that link only becomes more close and vital. You will notice," he said, smiling, "that even I only used the power of my spirit as an enhancement of my strike—by hands or through weapons I find suitable to the technique."

"So, I can't make my soul strong enough to do that regularly?"

Sensei tilted his head and was silent for a few moments as he prepared some herbal tea and what seemed a veritable mountain of snacks and set them before Xavier. Finally he said, "You can improve the strength of your spirit, certainly. It is in fact stronger by far now than it was when you entered. Partly this is due to your letting go of the immediate fury, fear, and hatred that were combating your sense of responsibility and your guilt. A spirit that is fighting itself is weakened. But partly it is in fact an essential strengthening, and as you continue to learn and practice, you will grow stronger.

"Now, if you were to find yourself in certain other places—places where the powers mostly lost to the world are stronger—then you could take much advantage of the power that lies on the border between magic, the divine, and the human spirit. And it is possible that you may, one day, find yourself in such a place; power and possibility, I have found, have a way of coinciding."

He nodded as Xavier ate and drank. Once started, Xavier realized he was ravenous, and by the time he stopped eating he realized he must have consumed half again as many calories as he usually ate in a day. "Holy crap, that did take it out of me."

"Yes. Now, you are fortunately so far along that it will take me only a little while to show you the much more efficient—and easier—technique of channeling the power through your hands or other objects. Be warned, though, that ordinary weapons and items are not made to survive such channeling."

As usual, Sensei knew what he was talking about; with the sense of the spiritual flow he'd gained, it took only a little while to learn how to make that power flow along his hands in a strike or even out and around a blade. Sensei left him to train with that, heading upstairs to do some of whatever work he did in his library.

Wow. Here I am, channeling chi or ki or whatever through a sword—his blade whistled around and cut entirely through a section of log a foot thick—and able to go invisible, pass through walls, all this stuff that Sensei said I needed to learn.

Everything he said I had to learn . . .

Everything?

He glanced over at the towering column. He'd tried climbing it a few times, but it was just as impossibly sensitive as he'd thought, leaning and chiming even at a pressure that wouldn't support a cat, let alone a human being. He could walk through it, but being intangible had drawbacks. You couldn't touch things—like steps and handholds—when you weren't solid. And even leaving aside the noise, a lot of those so-called handholds were like goddarned knives.

At least now he did understand how Sensei could reach that top platform. There weren't any hidden doors. He'd just gone right up through the bottom of the platform in Hirlana.

Wait a minute. But then he'd be standing on those supports in Hirlana. Which means he'd be intangible and should be falling down until he hits the—

The dawning of understanding hit him so hard that he found he had literally just let the swords drop from his hands.

How stupid can you be, Xavier?

He looked over at the plum-blossom poles. A perfect test.

Xavier walked over to the poles and looked at the floor around them—or rather, at the floor-level pool, dotted with water lilies (that really shouldn't be growing underground either, but . . . ), that provided both a soft landing and a somewhat punishing reminder of failure for anyone falling off.

He went into Hirlana and concentrated on removing doubt, hesitation, clearing his mind as he had before he'd done what he liked to think of as his "Spirit Cannon" trick. Hey, if it's going to look like a super anime finishing move, it should have a name like one. Sensei's reminders always applied widely. If he thought about what he was doing and how it was impossible, it would be impossible.

Then he simply walked forward, eyes closed. But in High Center he saw himself walking until he stood in the middle of the plum blossom poles—walking, without falling or sinking.

And that's the answer.

He turned and walked back across the water to the floor. I was thinking that Sensei should fall back and hit the floor. But if he was intangible, why would the floor be any more of a barrier to him than anything else? Shouldn't he either just stay at one level…or just fall to the center of the Earth?

Which means . . .

He strode to the column and looked up, still focused, still clear. I'm going up.

He put his foot on the first bladelike support…and he felt it this time, solid, supportive. Yet he was intangible, so whatever force might be exerted on that metallic blade would be infinitesimal, the interaction of steel with soul. He stepped up, grasped, and climbed. As smoothly and easily as Sensei had, he progressed up the column without it swaying in the slightest, without a whisper of sound, and passed through the wide top of the column, and found himself standing atop it, gazing around at the dojo from an entirely new vantage point.

Before him, in twin, elaborately worked sheaths, were two swords, the only other objects on the platform. He picked those up and saw they had a harness that could be used to strap them on, so he did. Then he descended.

Sensei was sitting in the library bent over a book that must have been two and a half feet on a side, studying some kind of diagram that Xavier couldn't make out. Xavier just approached and waited.

Sensei glanced up—and his eyes widened. For just an instant, Xavier saw a complex series of expressions cross the old man's face—surprise, gratification, pride, resolution, sadness, and hope. The smile that followed was not mixed, however. Sensei stood and bowed, still smiling, and waited as Xavier returned the bow.

"And so you have completed your final task, your graduating exercise."

Xavier snorted. "I should've completed it weeks ago, maybe months. I can't believe I didn't realize—"

"It is only an obvious solution in hindsight, Xavier. Others have taken longer to realize what you did. And even had you thought of this solution beforehand, you would not have used it until now."

"I wouldn't?" He thought a minute. "Oh, yeah. Because I would've known there were things you hadn't finished teaching me that you said I needed to know. Right?"

"Exactly."

"Well," he unfastened the harness and held it out. "I guess now you have to show me the way out of this place."

Sensei took the harness and looked down at it pensively. The smile faded but remained at one corner of his mouth. "Have you not already guessed that exit?"

Xavier smacked his forehead. "Oh, right, duh! That's why no one has a chance of finding it! You don't have any doors. You just walk out through the top of this underground fortress until you reach the surface." He glanced at the small ventilation ducts above. "Must have some really bizarre way of keeping air fresh in here, though."

"It is unusual, yes." Sensei was suddenly solemn. "Xavier Uriel Ross."

Xavier straightened.

The older man bowed again, and then extended the swords in their harness. "Take these with you. They have lain too long unused, and in your quest, you will have need of the finest blades possible. These are those blades."

Xavier could see how seriously Sensei took this, and was careful to accept the swords in their scabbards with proper reverence. "Were these…are these your swords?"

"Those were the vya-shadu I wielded when I was much younger, yes," Sensei answered, and his eyes did not seem to be seeing Xavier and the room around him, but something immeasurably farther away in space and time. "For many years I wielded them, but I have not done so in…well, a very long time indeed."

He reached out and drew the one that would sit just over the right shoulder when the harness was strapped on; the blade shone a delicate spring-leaf green, like no metal that Xavier had ever seen. "This is Ianakala, Starcleaver in English." He returned Ianakala to its sheath, drew the other, also the silver-green of new leaves. "And this was named Lurinakala, Soulcleaver." He resheathed that sword and bowed once more. "They have been waiting for someone who would take them where they are needed once more."

"I…thank you, Sensei. You didn't have to—"

"Yes, I do have to. You are not the only one who has benefited from your presence. I have been awakened again, I think. To see them in…in your hands, this will help carry me forward in days to come."

Sensei stepped forward and gave Xavier a quick but emphatic hug. "We will probably not see each other again, Xavier. But I will think of you often."

Xavier saw the look of Hirlana begin to appear in the old man's eyes, and shouted, "Wait! Wait, Sensei, you don't have to rush—"

"I am afraid I do," he said. "I told you that the moment I knew you were finished I had business to attend to, things that I have delayed long in order to see to your training. Take what you will from here; I leave this, too, to you, if ever you have need of this hidden haven." He smiled, a brilliant light that warmed the room. "Good luck, Xavier Uriel Ross, and my blessing on you, your quest, and your family."

And he was gone.

Xavier didn't quite remember what he did the next couple of hours. The rooms seemed larger, emptier, without Sensei's presence, and after the first few minutes of just staring at where the old man had been, Xavier busied himself with preparing to leave—packing food, taking an assortment of the real weapons that Sensei had left, selecting the outfits which would be most useful and packing those too, and finally putting on the backpack over the sword harness. The swords would be awfully noticeable ordinarily, but he thought he might be able to make people just not notice him much—not so much being invisible as less important. Worth trying, anyway.

Putting himself into the intangible, invisible Hirlana and the same confident state of mind, Xavier ascended through layers of stone and earth—something that felt very peculiar, and he held his breath while going up and through—to finally emerge into the dull sunlight warmth of a Chicago June.

He glanced around, realizing with a start that this was the very same alley he'd almost died in. That did help, in a way. He knew which way to go to start heading home.

He emerged from the alley and glanced around. No one was looking in his direction. If he went in that direction he ought to—

He hesitated, and wondered why.

If Sensei had taught him anything, it was to try to understand himself. Why was he hesitating? Didn't he want to go home?

Instantly he felt a yes in his soul, an affirmation so strong he felt the sting of tears in his eyes at the thought of seeing his mother and sister again, even knowing the apologies he would owe, the guilt he would feel.

And yet he knew he was hesitating.

Why? I want to go home so bad I can taste it, so why . . .

And suddenly it was obvious, so obvious he almost hit himself in the head for being an idiot. If I go home now, I'll have to leave again. Leave to hunt down Mike's killer. And they'll be sitting there again, wondering if stupid Xavier's going to get himself killed.

Right now they would have accepted he was gone, or at least figured out how they were dealing with his disappearance. To go home, then put them through that again? No.

Reluctantly, he turned around. "California, here I come."

"Ah, Xavier Uriel Ross. I see you have come to the inevitable conclusion."

Xavier whirled and stared, blinking in disbelief, and then felt his fists tighten reflexively. But before he moved he forced himself to take total control. Don't do anything too stupid.

Still, it was hard not to just charge right up and deck the towering figure in the five-sided hat. "You son of a bitch," Xavier said quietly as he reached the man.

"Not precisely, but your sentiment is not unexpected. And not untrue, in its essence."

"You sent me down that alley to be killed!"

"I find it difficult, nay, impossible, to believe that the one who has taught you failed to explain that I in fact sent you down that alley to ensure that you lived." The deep voice of the other was calm, assured, and absolutely certain. It was also definitely amused.

"You don't know I would have died."

"On the contrary, I knew that you would die, and most likely die long before you reached California. Had you reached California, your targets would have swiftly learned of your presence and killed you. There was absolutely no chance you would survive. Given what your teacher has taught you, and undoubtedly warned you about, do you truly believe you would have lived, had you continued on?"

Xavier glared up at the huge man with his shadowed face, and found he couldn't answer. One thing Xavier had always been was honest with himself, and much as Xavier didn't want to admit it, this old man was right. "You could have just delivered me to him."

"And you would not have accepted the situation so easily. The brush with death was, alas, necessary, to teach you the mortal seriousness of your situation. Now follow me."

"Why should I?" he demanded, nonetheless finding himself following the man in his white, blue, and brown robes.

"Because your talents are and will be desperately needed now. You are not yet ready for your hunt, but you must become so. Once you are ready, you will be returned, and then you may complete that mission you have planned for so long."

"And what if I decide to just go this on my own? Sensei thought he had taught me everything I needed to know."

"He taught you everything he needed to teach you," the white-haired man said. "But there is much more you will need to know to complete my mission."

Xavier stopped and gave him a disbelieving look. "Your mission is not my problem, whoever-you-are."

"My name is Konstantin Khoros," he said. "And I am afraid that you are wrong."

Abruptly, Xavier became aware that there were no longer buildings surrounding him, but towering, brooding pines with mist twining through them, as they stood at an intersection of roads that showed two castles before them—one to the left, one to the right. He stopped, gaping in disbelief.

"As you can see, my mission is now most certainly your problem. Unless you know how to find your own way home?"

Xavier whirled, but he already knew what he would see—or rather, what he wouldn't see.

Behind him the trees and mist stretched into grayness.

He turned back to Khoros. "You son of a bitch. If Sensei were here he would kick your ass."

"Undoubtedly he would. Which is why he left, so he would not be forced to do so. He recognizes my value, and the necessity that drives me, and has thus avoided a confrontation. Which, by itself, should tell you how important this task is, Xavier Uriel Ross."

Xavier clenched his teeth against an explosion of anger that wouldn't accomplish anything. Much as he hated the idea…this Khoros guy was probably right. Sensei said he knew who Khoros was, and knew he'd been manipulated. If Sensei thought that was something he'd put up with . . .

"He knew you had this…mission."

"Yes."

"And trained me knowing you'd be coming for me."

"Yes."

It was one of the hardest things he'd done yet, but Xavier took his anger, applied White Vision, and erased everything, eradicated his fury and disappointment, and finally opened his eyes. "So…Sensei knew I needed this mission…to finish mine."

"That would be my belief, Xavier Ross."

"Okay. So tell me."

"About the mission?" Khoros chuckled. "Soon enough. First you must meet the others."

"Others?" He stared at Khoros, then looked ahead, and felt a tiny smile tugging at his mouth. "Don't tell me. Four others."

Another chuckle floated through the twilight. "Eventually, yes."

Xavier shook his head and found himself laughing. "All right, you old bastard, lead on."

"And what amuses you so, Xavier Ross?"

"I just realized what's going on," he said. "Almost killed, trained by a mysterious sensei, gained powers beyond the lot of mortal men." He grinned up at Khoros. "I've just finished my origin story!"

Touchstone

by Sonia Orin Lyris

Pohut's younger brother was trembling.

"It's all right, Innel," Pohut whispered to him, though he wasn't at all certain. Why were they here, waiting for an audience with the king? What was expected of them?

"Now," came the sharp voice of the king's pinched-faced seneschal, who pushed the two boys through an opening door.

Inside the room, Pohut struggled not to be distracted by the bright maps on the walls. Before him was the king of the empire, sitting behind a large desk, staring directly at them. In the months they'd lived in the palace with their mother and little sister Cahlen, this was the first time they had been in the monarch's presence.

Innel was already dropping to his knees, grabbing Pohut's hand to tug him down. Pohut went down fast, too fast, wincing at the pain as his knees hit the floor. Both boys touched their foreheads to the wood at the same time.

"You may stand," said the seneschal. When they did not move, he said their names, and then again. This time it was Pohut who drew Innel to his feet.

"Come closer," said the king.

He seemed so large, the king. Which made sense, because the Arunkel empire was huge. Pohut knew how huge, too, because before his father had become a general, he had been a mapmaker.

The brothers shuffled forward hesitantly, stopping when the seneschal held up a hand.

Restarn esse Arunkel, Pohut mouthed silently. Restarn, He Who is the Empire.

The door shut behind them. The sound echoed.

"Do you know why you're here?" asked the king.

"No, Your Royal Majesty," Pohut whispered, wondering if he'd used the right form of address. He could not seem to think. Tense, he swallowed.

"Your family has been here since—when? Spring? Not quite a half year, then."

"Yes, Sire," Pohut answered uncertainly.

Spring. When they had last seen their father.

"You'll live in the palace," their father had told them after reading the king's letter. "While I go off and take care of this little problem for His Royal Majesty." He had smiled at them, but to Pohut it had seemed forced.

Their mother had looked around the front room of their home. It was early spring and outside the river valley's breezes smelled like life. "Why can't we stay here, Pewyan? Why must we leave at all?"

"It is the king's will, Neleva," his father had said. "To see to it that you're all well cared for. And we can hardly say no. In any case…the palace!" He smiled wide. "Don't you want to see why they call it the Jewel of Empire?"

Pohut remembered how eagerly he and his brother had nodded.

"You'll study hard," his father had told them. "Make me proud. When I come back, oh, the celebration we'll have!"

Just before he'd left, he'd given Pohut a serious look, hands on his shoulders. "Take care of your mother and brother and baby Cahlen for me. Yes?"

"Yes, Papa."

His father had kissed him on the forehead and had left.

And so the family had packed, arranged for the garden, goats, and sheep to be looked after. It was an ache to leave home, to say goodbye to his father, but…the palace! They smiled bravely and let the king's men take them from the only home they'd ever known to the teeming capital city, where the Jewel of the Empire glittered pink and white in the sun, massive and sprawling.

"What have you learned, boy, in the time you've been here?"

Pohut's attention snapped back to the king.

That he was not to wander the palace on his own. That his tutors were often surprised at how clever the brothers were. That he must be very careful in everything he said.

Not the right answers, he was somehow certain. He glanced around for inspiration, eyes falling on the wall-to-ceiling map of the empire, a map he knew his father had helped create. Somewhere there, toward the north and east, his father now fought for the king. This king.

He could remember his father's smile.

"I have bettered my reading and my letters, sire. I have learned to fight."

"Oh, have you?"

Pohut's breath caught as he realized that was not a right answer.

"I have much to learn," he said quickly, thinking of the unadorned canes he and his brother had been given to play with, along with the admonition not to poke each others' eyes out. "If it pleases you, sire."

The king's examination of him made him feel hot. The king turned the same look on Innel. "And you? What have you learned?"

"That his majesty is generous to the family of—" Innel looked around, eyes wide. "Of General Pewyan, sire. Thank you." He ducked his head, reddening.

Innel must have been rehearsing that while Pohut answered. He felt a flush of pride at his younger brother's smooth answer.

"Fine manners, at least," the king muttered. "Pohut, what do you think of my daughter, Cern?"

Cern, the seven-year-old daughter of the king, the same age as Pohut.

Cern, the heir to the throne.

The brothers had sometimes been allowed to watch the children of the princess's Cohort play, outside, in their fenced yard. He had seen her there, encircled by so many guards and aides that she seemed small.

"She is smart and beautiful," Pohut said.

"Yes, of course she is." The king's tone was a flat irritation.

Pohut swallowed a sudden sick feeling. He'd said the wrong thing.

"I am better at maths," he said. He remembered his mother joking that their father loved maps and numbers more than his own children. Even baby Cahlen, three this next spring, could already count.

The king raised an eyebrow. "You think so?"

Pohut licked his lips and pushed on. He felt as if he were drowning, but could see no way to back out. "I have heard it said she doesn't care for the study."

"Have you indeed? And how is she with the sword? What have you heard about that?"

He had seen pairs of Cohort children divided out into duels, swinging padded sticks. In the center of the yard had been the princess, a ring of guards around her and a miserable-looking boy facing her.

"I don't know, sire," he said. "Everyone was afraid to hit her, so they swung to miss."

At this the king chuckled, and it seemed a very good sound. Pohut exhaled dizzy relief.

"And you, Innel? You like my daughter?"

"Yes, sire. She is very royal."

The king grunted. "All right, enough." Then, tapping the desk, the king's gaze went to the map. Pohut could feel his look change. He felt a chill, like a puff of frozen air.

"Your father was a fine general."

Pohut straightened proudly. "Yes, Your Majesty." Hope leapt inside him as he replayed the king's words; if his father were no longer a general, then he might now be finished with the battles, and coming to take them home.

"Won the battle," the king said. "But got himself killed doing it." His voice went quiet. "Damn it."

Everything seemed very slow now. Pohut found that he had taken his younger brother's hand. Distantly he heard Innel whimper. Maybe because of how tight he was holding, or maybe because Innel already understood what Pohut refused to know. He stared at the king, then around the room, still gripping Innel.

As he stared at the map, Pohut did not know what he felt. From the edge of his vision, the red and black and gold of the king's fine clothes seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.

"He was a hero," the king said. Then, in a voice that cracked like a whip: "Say it."

"A hero, Your Majesty," Pohut managed past the tightness in his throat.

"Never forget that. Now go tell your mother."

As they were escorted from the king's offices, Pohut's mind was a fog.

Mother he found himself mouthing, over and over again. Mother, the king says…

Pohut expected her to shout. Perhaps to scream. Certainly to weep.

She did none of those.

"No," she said calmly. "It is not true."

Her face was white and her hands trembling as she reached forward into the air. At first he thought she reached for him, and he came close, but she was not even looking in his direction. "No," she said again. The shaking hands brushed the air as if pushing aside branches.

Cahlen was sitting on the floor, doing something with her doll. She looked back over her shoulder curiously. "Papa?" she asked.

"But Mother, the king," Pohut tried again. "He says…"

"No!" His mother turned away, gathering the fall of her skirts and walking to the table. She grasped a mug of wine and raised it to her lips, shaking so violently that it splashed onto her light-colored sleeves. She drained the cup, poured another, drank again.

From Innel came an odd, guttural sound, like a wounded animal.

A weight Pohut did not think he could bear settled on him. He tried to remember the last words his father had said to him. It seemed important. Was it goodbye? He did not think so.

Was it Make me proud?

No, it was take care of the family.

But how?

His mother stood at the mantle of the fireplace. There sat a deep bowl of soil from their home garden where they had grown squash and beans and teardrop lettuce, surrounded by other items. Dried flowers from the meadows. A robin's egg. A branch of new cedar. A rock from the gravel path around their house. A fall of moss from the forest. That was their way, to have a bowl of home always on the mantle, to surround it with offerings to the spirits of the land who made everything grow.

Not something to talk about here. A rude custom, a foolish superstition. Or worse, an attempt at magery. So they kept it covered. She threw the cloth aside, touched the dirt, then touched her face, again and again, in a ritual he had only seen once before, when her mother had died.

Should he try to comfort her? Or pick up little Cahlen, who seemed, strangely, the calmest of the four of them?

Papa, he thought. I don't know how.

The next morning, the king's seneschal arrived.

He gave Pohut's mother a deep bow. "Neleva, honored wife of the late general Pewyan, Protector of the Realm, Seventh of the Great Generals of Arunkel: His Royal Majesty has sent me to express his inconsolable sorrow at the loss of your venerated husband. Be assured the general is being returned by distinguished and dignified escort to the capital and will arrive within the week. I am to inquire, on behalf of His Royal Majesty, on what day you would have the funeral held."

"No day pleases me," she said flatly.

The seneschal nodded again, then gestured Innel and Pohut aside, into the foyer. His voice dropped. "You both will be sworn to the king this afternoon. Wear your best clothes, if you have any. Be certain you are tidy. Do you understand?"

The two boys gave each other a quick, confused glance.

"It is the oath of fealty," the seneschal said. "You offer the king your lives in service to the crown."

"I thought our lives already belonged to the king, ser," Innel said.

"Yes, of course they do," he said, "but to be sworn directly is a greater honor."

"What are we swearing to, ser," asked Pohut, "if he already holds our lives?"

The man's voice became a hiss. "You question this unparalleled honor? Where is your gratitude? Many would be elated to stand where you stand, and arguably more deserving, hero-father or not. I suggest you keep your tongue still and do as you are told."

"Yes, ser," answered Pohut, blushing at the reprimand, ducking his head. "Still, it seems to me—"

"I will send someone to rehearse with you so you don't bungle your oaths." The seneschal frowned. "Though, in truth, it might be a mercy for you if you did." A short exhale and he left.

Pohut found he was shaking. The two brothers walked back into the room where their mother stood at the mantle.

"Mother? We are to give an oath to the king. Do you know what it means?"

She was standing against the mantle, staring distantly.

"Mother?"

Her fingers were buried to the second knuckles in the dirt. If they had been at home, he was sure, she would be outside, hands and feet deep in the soil.

In his mind's eye he saw their home, their garden. It was dying from lack of care. Grief caught in his throat.

"Mother."

"Pewyan," she said softly to the air. "Take me home."

Pohut had expected someone to come to explain the mysterious oath, but when the king's guards arrived, they took the brothers to a large chamber. There the king sat on huge, raised chair. Beside him stood a handful of adults wearing the royal red and black, with various chains of office around their necks and glinting rings on their fingers.

All eyes were on the two boys.

"Your Majesty," said the woman closest to to the king, in what seemed to Pohut a reproachful tone.

"Lismar," the king said in a similar tone, "their tutors say they are very clever. Consider the bloodline. Even you admired General Pewyan's work."

"Clever is not enough, sire," the large man on the king's other side said with a sour look. "One must select one's acorns with care."

"Without nurture, Lason, even the most promising sapling becomes a dead, brittle twig. Let's see how they do when they have plenty of water and sunlight. Who knows? They might take after their father."

A snort from the man called Lason. "Or their mother, who by all reports is…" He grimaced. "Fragile."

"The Houses will rage at the insult," said Lismar.

The king waved this away like a troublesome fly. "If they object, we'll return them their precious babies. There are plenty more children. They'll behave."

Lismar chuckled.

Pohut had no idea what this was about. Precious babies?

He realized that these were the king's royal siblings. Lason, he was pretty sure, now glaring at the brothers as if they were a particularly unpleasant mess he had to clean up, was the Lord Commander of the king's armies. His father had mentioned Lismar before. General Lismar.

"Also, I want a close eye kept on the girl-child," said the king. Then he gestured to a short, thickset man to the side, who had a scar jutting up and across his upper lip that made his expression seem puzzled. "Cohort Master, are you ready to induct?"

"Yes, your majesty."

Cohort Master? Induct?

All at once, the pieces fell together, and Pohut understood. His breath came hard.

The Princess's Cohort. Which he had been told was full of the children of aristos and the Houses. Not boys from a remote river valley.

Make me proud.

He drew himself upright. "We are honored, your majesty," he said, forcing words through a drying mouth, hearing his voice crack. "My brother and I are eager to serve you, sire."

"You see?" the king said to everyone. "A rural education, yet behold this skillful comportment. Lismar, read them the oath."

The general did so, from memory, pausing for the brothers to repeat each phrase.

The king passed an ornate knife to the Lord Commander, who passed it in turn to the Cohort Master, who took Pohut's hand in his own. Pohut bit his lip as the knife pricked his palm, but made no sound. The Cohort Master's large hand squeezed three drops onto the bright blade. The king drew Pohut into an uncomfortably close, one-armed embrace. With his other hand, he touched his fingers to the blade, then put red-stained fingertips on Pohut's forehead. The king smelled of incense, iron, and sweat. Next, a wide-eyed Innel received the same treatment.

Pohut wasn't entirely sure what he had just sworn to, but understanding came soon enough; they were taken to a small room and directed to write the oath, again and again, until they got it exactly correct, while the meaning and history of each word, phrase, and sentence was explained to them at astonishing length.

After they had inked a final copy onto fine vellum, their thumbs were pricked and the oath was marked in blood, followed by a dire warning about the consequences of failure that left Pohut feeling ill and Innel trembling uncontrollably.

They were escorted to their suite by a handful of king's guards.

"A few things only," one said. "You'll be wearing the Cohort's colors, so you don't need to bring any clothes."

His sister Cahlen wriggled when he picked her up. She had, he now saw, tugged every bit of stuffing out from her doll and carefully arranged it in a circle around the remains of fabric, which lay neatly flattened in the middle. He hugged her tightly to him, hoping to comfort her, but she squirmed silently out of his arms, went to the center of the circle, and with fierce concentration, stomped on the doll's remains, again and again, as if attempting to kill a particularly slow bug.

Pohut looked around the room, trying to figure out what to take. Yet again he was being taken away from somewhere he knew to somewhere he didn't.

Innel was holding himself, tightly, staring at their mother, his expression stricken. Pohut put a hand on his brother's head, forced himself to a smile.

"We'll be fine, Brother," he said. "It'll be—fun."

Innel did not look convinced.

"Mother," Pohut said, trying to summon a tone like the one his father had used, when he left home, "the king has taken us into the princess's Cohort." He waited, but she did not respond. "I don't know when we'll be allowed back." A look at the Cohort guardians told him nothing. Hesitantly he reached out and touched his mother's shoulders, as he remembered his father used to do, hoping he was doing it right. "Mother?" He looked where she was looking, but there was nothing there.

Finally he went to the mantle and touched the dirt, touched his face. He examined the items there a long moment, then took the rock. A plain rock, about the size of his fingertip to first knuckle, brownish and gray, full of messy striations that meant nothing.

That meant home. He put it in his pocket.

At the doorway, he paused. His mother sat at the table, as if frozen. Pohut exhaled heavily, and let the guardians lead them away, as behind him Cahlen continued her slow, silent stomping.

"The Cohort wears the colors of dawn," the Cohort Master said as they stood outside the Boys' Quarters. He made a soft smacking sound as he spoke, the deep scar keeping his lips from meeting quite right. "This signifies your beginning in this illustrious fellowhood. While jewelry and trinkets are acceptable, to wear House colors is not permitted while under the tutelage of his gracious majesty." A sideways look at the brothers. "That will not matter for you."

A liveried servant, a girl perhaps a few years older than Pohut, handed the two brothers a bundle of clothes. They were light blue and pale yellow, secured with a thick cord of red and black.

Pohut wondered what life was like for her. Had she folded these clothes? Tied the cord?

Was her father still alive?

"Thank you," he said to her and smiled.

Her eyes went wide, as if she were shocked that he had seen her. She dipped her head once, cheeks reddening, and left at a near run.

"I don't think you were supposed to do that," Innel said softly.

"I guess not."

The Boys' Quarters was a long, narrow room, with tens of beds lining the walls, some low and some loft, cabinets underneath or to the side. Some boys lounged on the beds, others sat in chairs, some hung off ladders. All watched as the brothers passed by.

The Master led them to a bed where another boy, about Pohut's age, was angrily gathering game pieces and a board.

"You don't need three beds, Mulack," said the Master.

"The Cohort is supposed to be closed," the boy named Mulack muttered, glaring at Pohut and Innel.

"His Majesty's Cohort. If he says it's open, it's open."

Something hard hit Pohut on the back. A block of wood thudded across the floor. A dozen boys returned his look innocently.

"Sutarnan," the Master said, not even turning around, "hitting someone in the back is considered cowardly. Is that the reputation you seek?" He turned to look directly at a smirking boy. "They don't have your advantages, child of the Houses. Give them a few hours' courtesy, at least."

"Never seen them before," Sutarnan responded. "What's their House?"

"No House," said the Master.

"What family, then?" asked someone else.

"Our father is a general," Innel said loudly.

Pohut swallowed at the sudden pain that threatened to claw its way up through his throat into his eyes.

"A hero of the empire," the Master added, "of whom we are all very proud."

"A commoner general," whispered Mulack to another boy with a snort. "In a year, no one will remember his name."

Pohut felt the Master's grip tight on his shoulder an instant before understanding settled into his stomach and face as flashes of heat.

With a humorless smile at Mulack, the Master said, "Careful, ser House Murice, that the same is not said of you."

Mulack, who clearly had not expected to be overheard, took a step backward and looked away.

Scanning the faces of the assembled boys for a long moment, the Master spoke again. "Tokerae, will you help them get settled and see them through the midday meal?"

"Yes, ser," replied a thin, tall boy, who launched himself off his loft bed, foregoing the ladder, landing easily on the floor, bounding forward. He clasped Pohut's arm and grinned. "No House? I've never met anyone without a House before."

Tokerae led them to the meal room, where they followed him between tables of children, every one of them watching. Suddenly, someone stuck out a leg in front of Pohut, who barely avoided tripping. Tokerae turned with surprising speed and kicked the leg savagely.

"Ow!" cried the owner of the leg. Mulack.

"Master said to give them a few hours," Tokerae said.

"Turdface," Mulack said. "I'll remember this."

"Doubt it. You forget everything else." Tokerae led them forward between the tables. A girl stood from her seat to face him.

"Move, sea-scum," he said.

She was a big girl, even measured against Tokerae, and Pohut guessed that she was among the eldest, eight or maybe nine. She had a solidity to her that made Pohut think that she'd move only when she decided to.

"Pestilence and pus," she said in a measured way. "Seems House Etallan has dumped their trash in our meal room."

It took Pohut a moment to realize that this was directed at Tokerae and not the two brothers. He was still half in shock that the children of the nobility were not nearly as polite or gracious as he had imagined they would be.

Tokerae stepped close to the girl, nearly nose to nose. She grinned, eyes flashing.

From across the room, the Girls' Warden called out, in a bored tone. "No fighting in the meal room."

"Come on, Taba," Tokerae said, stepping back, "let us by."

The girl named Taba seemed to consider this, the warden, and the brothers, and she moved aside with a contemptuous snort and watched them pass.

Tokerae's destination became clear: a nearly empty table at the far side of the room, where sat a young boy and girl, both about Innel's age. Their heads were together, laughing at a shared joke.

Something soft but heavy hit Pohut on the back of his leg. He turned to see a clod of straw and mud splattered across the floor.

"Pah!" called Sutarnan, "Animals have found their way into our meal room. They're tracking in dirt! Get them out, wardens!"

"Animal, animal, animal!" shouted a small girl.

"So ugly they hurt my eyes," said Mulack.

"What are they?" asked a younger boy.

"Huge worms?"

"Wrinkled pigs?"

"No, no," replied Sutarnan, choking on laughter. "They are street-dogs!"

"Are you sure?" asked another girl, hair in long braids down her back. "I've seen the king's dogs. They're beautiful. These ones are clearly deformed."

"Mongrels," said Mulack, "slipped in through a chimney or privy hole to steal food." He mimed notching an arrow to a bow, aimed at Innel. "Let's see how they die."

Instinctively, Pohut put himself between his brother and Mulack as they followed Tokerae to the table.

One of the children barked, doglike. Then another. In a flash, the room was a cacophony of barking and howling. Innel put his hands over his ears.

An ear-piercing whistle cut through the din. The room went silent.

"Enough," said the Cohort Master, standing in the doorway. "Beyond enough. The rest of the meal without voices."

"What? That's not fair," called out the small boy at the table at which they now stood. "I made no sound at all, Master."

"Nor I," said the small girl next to him primly. "I am innocent of all offense."

"Mulack and Sutarnan, you both heard me say a few hours of courtesy. So now everyone will eat in silence except the newcomers and their table. Be thankful I let you eat at all. I may be less generous at dinner, so try to summon a hint of the excellent manners your parents assured his majesty you had in such abundance."

Angry glares fell on the brothers, as if this were their fault.

Tokerae introduced the boy and girl at the table. "Putar of House Kincel," he said. The boy reached out and clasped Pohut's arm in greeting, then Innel's. The girl did likewise. "Malrin, House Eschelatine."

Putar and Malrin seemed wary, but curious. Which, after their general reception, seemed a great improvement.

"Are you from a House, too?" Innel asked Tokerae.

"House Etallan," Tokerae replied. "Most of us are from the Great Houses. Some from the Lessers. A few from the families." A tilt of his head, a smirk. "Then there's you."

Pohut could not tell if this was meant in a friendly way or not. He understood every word spoken, but somehow felt as if it were a different language.

What were they doing here?

That night, returning from the evening meal, the brothers found their lower bed covered with a bucketful of muddy straw and a bloody bone lying in the middle.

"Welcome, mutts!" someone shouted. He wasn't sure who. Sutarnan? Mulack? Ilmach? Dil? He was learning names and Houses as fast as he could. Not fast enough.

Innel was staring at the bed, his mouth slack with shock.

"Pah," Pohut said to him, rubbing his head reassuringly. "It's nothing. Room for us both up top." He pressed his brother toward the ladder.

Once they were both in the loft, Innel toward the wall and away from the edge, Pohut listened to the mutterings and creakings of the room. He felt his brother begin to shake with sobs and rolled him around so he could see his face and whisper in his ear.

"Very quietly, little brother. Show it only to me. Never them."

"What are we going to do?"

It was the same question Pohut asked himself. So many unspoken rules. They were not merely outsiders from a strange river valley where everything was done differently. More like mice in an open field, the cry of hawks above.

What were they going to do?

Study hard.

"We will study." His answer felt inadequate. "And we will— " Make their father proud, he almost said.

No. Their father was gone. And their mother nearly so.

He gently put his hands on either side of his brother's face and looked into his eyes. "We will study and work hard. We will make each other proud. Together. Always. Understand?"

Under his fingertips, he felt his brother nod. "Always."

They stood in Oak hall, the Cohort's main study. A girl stood next to Pohut, a little older than he was. He drew from his memory of the lengthy introductions.

Sachare of House Nital. He was almost sure.

"Her Highness enters last," Sachare whispered to them, out of the blue, as Cern entered. "She is surrounded by guards. Don't ever go up to her uninvited. Also, you only need to bow your head this much, because we are the Cohort. It is the fifth obeisance. You know the forms, yes?"

"No," Pohut said, feeling lost.

"Just dip your head."

"Thank you," Pohut said gratefully.

"Why are you helping us?" Innel whispered. His brother's charming smile, still thick with baby fat, somehow made the question right.

Sachare sighed. "His Majesty, in his great wisdom, put you here. It is my duty to crown and king to loyally honor his decisions with everything I do."

Again, Pohut understood the words but not the meaning. Was this some new form of mockery? He thought not: she seemed sincere. Studying her face for understanding, Pohut did not notice the princess until Innel hit him urgently. The brothers dipped their heads.

"You are the new ones," Cern said to the brothers.

Was it a question?

"Yes, Your Highness," he replied.

She seemed disappointed. Or puzzled.

At his answer? At the brothers' being here? Before he could think of what else to say, she had walked past, and lessons began.

Every child in the room wore the pale blue and yellow of the Cohort, but they also sparkled with gemstones and chains, earrings and rings, all in the dual colors of their Houses, or bearing the motif of their families.

Pohut felt bare. The two brothers had nothing like that.

Well, Pohut had a rock in his pocket. He touched it to be sure it was still there.

If Cern were puzzled as to why they were here, she was not the only one.

Most afternoons, under a winter sun that slipped quickly behind the hills, the Cohort spent in the fenced yard. Exercises included follow-the-leader over bales and barrels, jumping to reach ropes, hanging and swinging. Then they were left to their own whims. Some crouched on the ground with marbles, others ran, played tag, threw balls, tossed disks.

Calls and shouts. Laughter, taunting, conversation.

Pohut huddled next to his brother, their backs to the fence, their breath like smoke in the frigid air.

"I don't understand," Innel said plaintively.

"I don't either," Pohut said. "So we will study and learn." So many looks and touches, nods and jokes that he didn't understand. "And watch everyone," he said. "Watch how they watch each other."

Across the yard, the Boys' Warden's gaze flickered past a laughing Sutarnan, then back again. Sutarnan saw that he was being watched. He paused for a moment in his taunting jabs at the small boy named Putar, until the warden was looking elsewhere, then resumed. It was clear that Putar was trying to get away, but Mulack was also standing close by, blocking Putar's escape and, Pohut now noticed, the Girls' Warden's view.

The boys smiled and laughed and talked pleasantly as if they were all friends, but it was clear Putar only wanted to get away. Finally Putar ducked, wriggled, dropped to the ground, and scrambled through legs, sprinting to a young girl who wore a small black wooden pendant that matched his own.

"Those two," Pohut said to Innel. "The same House. House Kincel."

This was nothing like the world in which they had grown up, the small river valley where they knew everyone, where how well you wielded a pike or halberd or understood maps, or any number of other trades, was what brought you respect. Not your name, not the house in which you were born.

"We must fit everyone to their Houses and families," he said. "We must know it all. And soon."

His younger brother nodded soberly.

They were dropped into the world of the Cohort like a pine cone onto a thundering river. Classes were interspersed with small group tutoring sessions that sometimes expounded on the subject, sometimes went elsewhere entirely. The Cohort took in lectures from philosophers and scholars from places as far away as Vilaros, and as royal as the king's sister—Her Grace Lismar Anandynar, Countess Wynn, Duchess Apparent of Kastin, Commander of the Eastern Legions, and Arbiter of Anchlas—whose full title Pohut had made a point of memorizing, but did not yet understand.

Topics were as wide-ranging as the Grandmother Queen's eastern expansion to how the treasury assayed precious metals with slate paddles upon which were scraped lines of gold. They must know these things, they were told. All of them.

And the moment they did, there would be more.

Geography study was a fast-paced game. The Cohort split in teams that moved rugs representing cities, regions, provinces, and tribal lands across a huge room to place them according to shifting rules. Pohut and Innel excelled at this, geography being one of the subjects that the mapmaker's sons knew well, but when the rules changed again to include political alliances and economic priorities, the brothers flailed, struggled, and were taken aside for more tutoring.

They applied themselves to the extra sessions on subjects the others had apparently been studying since they were able to crawl. Centuries of empiric history. The royally granted House Charters. Sigils, flags, colors. The seven—or was it eight?—different types of obeisance and for whom and when they must or might be used. A bewildering array of court dances. Most importantly, the royal star dance, which required a confusing subtlety of posture and footwork that looked easy until they tried it.

Sword-fighting practice, which meant padded, sword-shaped sticks, with blunted tips on which they were strongly advised not to become overly reliant. His arms ached.

And then, also: which cups and prickers to use with which dinner courses, which made no sense at all.

Head swimming from a lecture on the House Charters, Pohut stood outside Oak Hall during a short break. Sutarnan stepped up next to him.

"This must all be so strange for you," the other boy said, staring intently at Pohut, "Are we strange to you, too?"

"Yes," Pohut admitted, wondering if the other boy were mocking him or genuinely curious.

"Why are you here, then?"

It was an excellent question, but as he pondered possible answers—his father's death, the king's words—he still did not know. In the Cohort, though, uncertainty was weakness. That he knew.

"To study alongside the princess," he said, summoning what he hoped was an arrogant, confident tone. "Isn't that why we're all here?"

"That's what you think? It's so much more. The possibility of marriage. Then children. She's expected to choose a mate from among the Cohort."

A mate? Marriage? Pohut's mind spun. "You mean we could…? I could…?"

Sutarnan barked a loud laugh. "Well, no. Not you. Not mongrels. You understand. She couldn't."

Of course not them. Pohut felt foolish and angry at once. "Then—" why were they there? He could not ask that, not of Sutarnan, who he knew would be happy to see them fail "— then why are there girls in the Cohort?"

Sutarnan gave him a pitying look. "Because she'll be the monarch, you idiot. Remember the Grandmother Queen? Her highness will need advisers, ministers, military leaders. People she knows. Who she can rely on."

"Oh."

"You really don't know much, do you?"

Anger quickened his breath. Hand in his pocket, he gripped the stone, felt himself ease.

"The king put us here. It wasn't our choice."

"Well then, ask to be released from your vows. Tell the Cohort Master you don't want to be here. When the Cohort started last year, there were fifty of us. Now there are barely forty. That's what happened to the others."

It had not occurred to Pohut that it could be easy to leave. Then they could go back to how things had been before.

No, they could never go back. Their father was dead.

"And in truth, that would be good," Sutarnan continued, "because no one wants you here."

Make me proud.

Pohut drew himself up, met Sutarnan's unpleasant smile. "But we are here, and we are not leaving."

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Sutarnan broke the look first, laughed, and danced away.

Pohut rubbed the stone in his pocket and watched him go.

Every day brought some new unpleasantness on top of the insults and threats. Torn sheets and missing blankets. Eviscerated rats, their entrails spread across their beds. The two boys gave up the lower bed entirely.

Tonight, as they returned from the play yard and evening meal, the stink reached them many steps away. Not the scent of horse or cow dung, either, but the excrement of a predator.

Dog, most probably.

Brown was smeared across every step of the ladder, and Pohut did not want to guess at how bad it would be up top. For a moment they simply stared. Then he took Innel's trembling hand and went to the Master.

"Thought I smelled something," he said when the brothers told them. "What are you going to do about it?"

This Pohut had not expected. "We thought you would tell us, ser."

"Not for me to say, boy. You're the Cohort. Studying to be leaders of the Empire. Make decisions."

Retribution was tempting, if he were certain who had done it. Mulack? Probably.

But even so, what to do? Pohut suspected that if it came to blows with the children of the Houses, he'd be hit harder than all the play fighting he'd done in his home village had prepared him for.

"Are we going to have to actually fight them, ser?" Pohut asked the Master.

"Probably, sooner or later." His look at the brothers turned sympathetic. "Be sure you can win a thing before you start it."

That sounded like wisdom.

"We'll need water and soap," Innel said, and Pohut's heart warmed at this show of practicality. He might tremble and cry, but Innel thought things through.

"I'll have it sent for," the Master said, instructing servants.

Innel spoke again. "Ser, it doesn't seem fair that we should have to clean up a mess someone else made."

The Master sucked air through the gap in his lips and looked thoughtful. "Let's give you some company, then."

A tencount and more of servants poured into the hall, toting buckets, soap, and linen rags. The Master walked the length of the long room, repeatedly dipping a wand into a large jar held by an assistant, dribbling honey onto the steps of each loft bed, over increasingly loud objections.

"All this cleaned up," he said as he went, smiling as if he were enjoying himself, "by the next meal, or there won't be one."

When he arrived at Mulack's bunk, Mulack stood in front of his ladder, scowling.

"No."

All grumbling and outrage fell silent. The Master smiled wider, made a gesture, and the Cohort guardians lifted Mulack and set him down to the side.

"My father is the Eparch of House Murice," Mulack shouted, "and I will not scrub and wash like some scullery boy."

The Master stared at him a moment, then turned slowly, meeting the gazes of the boys clustered around. "Consider," he said, "the history of the Cohort. The previous one, as I'm sure you know, included his Royal Majesty and his royal siblings. You might not know that I was privileged to serve as warden. I'm sure you don't know that I have endured every threat you can imagine, and many you can't." He held his arms out and smiled widely. "Behold, I remain."

He let that sink in before he continued.

"You are entirely correct, ser House Murice," he said to Mulack, "that I can't force you to comply with my instructions. But." He stepped up very close to Mulack. "I can send you back to your parents."

With that, the Master sauntered on, applying the honeyed wand more liberally. When he was done, every ladder excepting the brothers' was pasted with sticky honey, and some of the beds as well.

But the looks the two of them were getting now were far from friendly. Despite that this was not their doing, they were being blamed. Next time, Pohut resolved, they would find their own justice.

While the honey was nothing like the dog dung the brothers now set to addressing, Pohut felt some satisfaction in sharing the work.

And, he realized, it wasn't anything they hadn't done before, tending to their own animals and livestock. He chuckled at the thought that one of the few things the brothers knew how to do that the others did not was to clean up shit. He gave a wry smile to his brother, who smiled back.

The Cohort assembled in the large ballroom, waiting for something to begin. Rhetoric, knot-poetry, dance—Pohut wasn't sure.

"Her Royal Highness," the Cohort Master announced loudly, standing aside from the door. "Princess Cern Anandynar of Arunkel, Pinnacle of the Karmarn and Pelapa, High Consul of Mirsda, and Ur-Kacika of Gotar."

By now Pohut had very nearly memorized Cern's titles. Heads dipped and raised as she passed by. When she was near, Mulack held something out to her: a small, red lacquered horse. She took it with an expressionless nod and handed it to one of the many attendants who always surrounded her.

Next was Sutarnan who held out a small box from which she drew a wreath of tiny, cleverly woven red and black roses, to which she responded similarly.

"Tok," Pohut whispered. "Were we supposed to have a gift?"

"Everyone's parents sent messengers yesterday. Not yours, I guess?"

Child by child, Cern moved down the line, collecting small items.

"You simply spin it, Your Highness, like a top." A boy named Fadrel now dropped to the floor and gave a sharp twist to a small object. "Do you see how the black and white turns to colors?"

An audible inhale from the princess. "Red. Blue. But how is this done? It is not magery, surely?"

"No, of course not, Your Highness," said the Cohort Master sharply, snatching the spinner from the ground and thrusting it backward into the hands of one of his own aides. "But we will have it checked, just to be sure." He gave Fadrel a harsh look.

"It's only a trick," Fadrel muttered hastily, backing away.

More gifts came to Cern as she made her way into the room. A pale pink-and-gray seashell from Taba. From Sachare, a set of cherrywood wands fastened with silk that, shaken, produced a sonorous tinkling.

The princess paused in front of the brothers, stared at them. "You are still here," she said.

Their heads dipped. "Yes, Your Highness."

She looked them up and down, as if trying to figure something out.

Or perhaps she was waiting for a gift.

Pohut felt himself redden. "We didn't know. We don't have anything." Didn't have a family to give them what they needed, to tell them when they needed it.

She nodded, walked on.

They did not belong here, that was clear. Pohut turned Sutarnan's words over in his mind. Could they really leave? Could leaving the Cohort be as easy as asking? Somehow he doubted it.

The Cohort Master spoke. "The winter solstice is nearly upon us. Who knows the tradition of the king's solstice cakes?"

"My mother the Eparch had one last year," said Larmna proudly.

"It is a rare privilege, reserved for the king's most favored. The cakes, made by the king's own chef, are thick with the finest wine-soaked fruits from Apapur-Selsane, encrusted with pecans from the Spice Islands. Half the cake is heavily glazed with bright, sweet orange, the other side dusted with the dark Perripin cacao. You could eat at the palace your entire life and taste nothing so wondrous as a solstice cake."

The Master had fallen silent, his lips opening and closing with a soft smacking sound. It seemed that he had forgotten he was talking to a room full of children. After a long moment, the Girls' Warden pointedly cleared her throat.

"Truly magnificent," the Master said, still working his mouth. "In a gesture of extraordinary generosity, the king has informed me that the members of the Cohort shall each be given a solstice cake."

Sounds of delight, whispered exultations.

"And here they are."

Two servants entered, carrying a crate, out of which the wardens began to distribute small, square wooden boxes.

"You are being treated as adults in this. The cake is not to be eaten until midnight on the solstice, demonstrating your ability to stand the privations of winter and thus to be worthy of the bounty of the coming seasons. Hence the coloration of the cake itself, you see? I advise you to treat this honor with the faith that the king vests in you. Restraint is a test of your growing maturity."

The small box Pohut now held was of finely crafted rosewood with the monarchy's sigil carved into it, sealed with wax and the king's mark. The box alone was a treasure.

Across the room, the children were unusually quiet as they each examined their cake boxes.

As he ran a fingertip over the king's seal, Pohut found in himself in a sort of growing awe. He now owned something rare. Priceless, even. He felt more important, merely by holding it.

As he looked around at the children of the Houses and families, eyes sparkling and grinning, he felt something like kinship.

"Today begins the next game," The Cohort Master said at the end of the morning meal. "I shall explain the rules."

"We know the rules," interrupted Mulack. "Just tell us the prizes."

Pohut was no longer shocked at this rudeness to an elder, but it still felt wrong. The Master seemed unperturbed.

"The rules change, ser House Murice, as do the players." Glances at the brothers. "The Cohort would not, typically, be invited to the great solstice feast. The princess will be there, of course, as well as most of your families. But not you."

Not the brothers' family, Pohut was certain.

Whispers around the room faded to silence as, one by one, children realized what he was about to say.

"Have your attention now, do I?" He grinned widely, yellowing teeth unevenly revealed where his scar tugged his lip upward. The smile vanished. "Four teams of no fewer than nine. The team that finds the iron bell will sit at the far end of the hall with the captains. The bronze bell places you in the middle, with the aristo families. And whoever finds the silver bell will sit at the royal table, with His Majesty and Her Highness the Princess, in full view of the entire hall."

"I will have that prize," whispered Tokerae fiercely.

"How long do we have?" Fadrel asked.

"The game is over at noon on solstice day, bells found or not," said the Master.

Six days hence.

"Then…lessons are suspended?"

The Master turned a sneer on the asker. "Nothing is suspended. Life does not pause to make way for your opportunity. All lessons, practices, and tutoring sessions continue. You may sleep and eat, though others will doubtless be searching while you do."

"But the palace is huge! It will take forever!"

"Limit yourself to the old palace only. The bells are not behind locked doors. If you break into anywhere, you will have solstice dinner with the pigs."

"You wouldn't," said Mulack.

"Ah, ser House Murice. Shall we find out? " Mulack did not answer. "And a new rule: you will decide your teams. Beginning now."

Barely a blink passed for this to be absorbed by the elder children. A flurry of motion filled the room. By the time Pohut understood, an instant later, children were launching themselves across the room toward each other. Shouts and hisses, angry threats, reminders of debts owed.

Mulack was with Sutarnan. Tokerae was sprinting by, and Pohut reached out to grab his arm. Tokerae yanked it back. "I'm not teaming with you," he hissed. "I mean to win." And he was gone.

A blink later, the Master's whistle sounded. "Three teams are now full. The fourth is the remainder." His gaze settled on Pohut. "Pohut, the fourth team is yours."

"Mine?" Pohut squeaked in surprise.

In moments, Putar, Malrin, Larmna, and the rest of the younger and thus unchosen children had come to Pohut's side, looking up at him for direction.

The other three teams were already gone from the room.

No bells were found that day, nor the following. When some children didn't show for the required sessions, the Master halted everything until they were found and brought back.

Meals and sleep, on the other hand, were skipped with abandon. Cohort siblings took food back to their quarters and slept in their clothes.

"Is your team even looking?" Sachare asked Pohut as they waited in Oak Hall for the guardians to hunt down an errant child.

Pohut brought to mind what he knew about her House. Nital was aligned with Helata, which might explain why she was on Taba's team.

Or maybe they just liked each other. His head swam.

"We have a plan," he said, summoning a confident tone.

Not much of one, though. His plan was mostly to avoid making things worse.

At midnight, everyone was woken by a loud clanging. Cohort siblings lined the hallway along with the Master in his bedclothes, the wardens, handfuls of guardians. The Master's voice carried.

"The bronze bell has been found. Well done, Tokerae. Your team will join the solstice feast."

Only the winners cheered.

The brothers huddled close in the yard, their breath a pale fog in dark of late afternoon, watching. Tokerae's team strutted and bragged and clustered together as they had not before, again and again telling how they had found the bronze bell behind a tapestry in the Swan Room.

"We aren't searching very hard," Innel pointed out.

"We aren't searching at all, Brother," Pohut agreed. "I think we would not make any friends by winning."

He watched the motion of the children in the yard, the alliances and enmities, some changing quickly, some constant. It was starting to make sense.

Mulack and the small boy called Donal, for example, were both from House Murice. Not close in age or temperament, yet they never fought each other. Tokerae, who did not actually seem to dislike Taba, was nonetheless at odds with her in what now seemed to Pohut a rather perfunctory way, which he concluded was because of their Houses' longstanding feud.

Then there was age: if nothing mattered more, older kids banded together, as did the younger ones. Likewise, the girls were often together.

Except when, as in the case of Taba, House concerns overrode.

He could almost see the lines of connection around him, the forces of opposition. The overlapping, shifting circles of loyalty and tension.

And what was it all for?

Just then Cern walked into the yard. Children made way, eddying and swirling about the mass of guards and aides that encircled her, like a school of fish around a large turtle. If the point of the Cohort was the princess, and all this work was to impress her, Pohut had to wonder: was it working?

He could find no clues in Cern's face, though he tried. What did she think? What did she want?

"When do we start looking?" asked Malrin.

Pohut doubted there was any point, but as he looked down into the girl's eager eyes, he saw one. "Tonight," he said warmly.

Malrin bounced up and down. Eagerly, or to keep warm in the dark and cold, he wasn't sure.

Pohut found it liberating to walk the halls of the palace and go where he liked, which the brothers had been forbidden to do before, even if he were trailed, like a mother duck, by the youngest of the Cohort, and behind them a pack of guardians to keep them out of trouble.

It was a curious feeling, to walk where he liked, to see what interested him. As they strolled, he asked the children of his team about themselves, and began to know them, and through them, their parents, their families, their Houses.

As they went, Larmna began to hum a tune. Putar and some of the other children laughed.

"It's the Finding Song," said Malrin to Pohut's confusion. "The song you sing when you've lost something!"

"We'll teach it to you!" cried Larmna. The others began to clap to keep time, and Larmna sang the simple lyrics. The song asked questions. Have you looked high? Have you looked low? Have you looked inside? And what about on top?

They entered a large study with an otter carved into the heavy door.

"Look!" called Putar, pointing at heavy tapestries. He ran to them, searching among the folds for a way to get behind.

"The bells won't be there," Pohut said.

"How can you know that?" Putar asked, glancing back from his burrowing behind the heavy drapes.

"Because the Master has already done that. He won't do it twice." A hunch, but he was sure.

They searched anyway, and Pohut waited patiently. Then more walking, more singing. They came to the great library where walls of books, scrolls, and lengths of knot-poetry climbed so far overhead that ladders were needed to reach them. A guardian reminded the children that each tome was near priceless, and they should act accordingly.

"I didn't know there could be so many," Innel whispered to him.

Their father had had a collection of books, but this many was beyond imagination. By any measure, the library was astonishing.

"We'll come back," he told his brother. When they were done pretending to look for the bells.

But the bells wouldn't be here either, he suddenly realized. Not behind any one of these thousands of books. Tens of thousands. He said as much.

"And how can you know that?" Malrin asked.

"The Master wouldn't want us touching them all," he said.

That wasn't quite it, though. It was this: if a bell were hidden here, finding it would simply be a matter of searching—days or even months—and Pohut was somehow certain that wasn't how the Master thought.

Dil had said that the bronze bell had been hanging on a cord, a tug all that was needed to liberate it. Not only that, Dil said proudly, but it had been his idea to look there, because the tapestry had depicted minstrels playing for a star dance and the minstrel in the center was holding a bell. The bells were not just hidden. They were hidden with clues.

Pohut fidgeted with his rock as he considered. The rock, he saw, was changing color slightly, as the oils of his fingers darkened the tan and gray. It made him think of home.

When his team returned from searching, as he was about to climb to the loft to bed, Putar ran to him, shoulders heaving, gulping air, struggling to hold back tears.

"They took our cakes," he said, his voice breaking. "All of the team's cakes. Gone."

Pohut stormed the length of the boy's quarters in a fury, saying nothing, but searching the faces of every boy he passed. He paused at Mulack, looking into his eyes. Was that a flicker of smug cruelty he saw there, or did he only imagine it?

Pohut was finding it easier and easier to see the worst in everyone. And that, he realized, was a kind of blindness.

He comforted the younger children as best he could. Could they search for the cake boxes, they wanted to know. Yes, he replied, but they would not find them, certainly not before the solstice.

Never, he suspected. They could be anywhere. Behind the books in the library.

Or outside the palace, even. Perhaps the parents of the other Cohort children might not think the mutts were worthy of such an honor.

There was no going to the Cohort Master this time, nor could he take on those who he suspected of the theft. Not until he was sure he could win.

Solstice was a day away. Mulack and Sutarnan's group, still searching, were sallow from lack of sleep, barely eating.

"Give us a clue," Mulack demanded hoarsely of the Master.

Pohut was beyond being surprised at this rudeness.

"No," said the Cohort Master, curtly, without any humor.

"But we might not find them in time!"

"Oh, I don't think the tables will be hard to fill, ser House Murice, even at the last minute."

"But—" Mulack sputtered, glaring around the room wildly. "That's not fair!"

Pohut suppressed laughter. He leaned in close to Innel and whispered. "Do you see, Brother, how lack of sleep makes him even more stupid? There is a lesson for us both."

From outside the room, sharp, urgent shouts followed another clamorous bell-ringing. A glance around the room to see who was missing told everyone it was Taba's team.

Sutarnan scowled furiously at Mulack, as if it were his fault, and stormed out after the Master. Mulack threw down his napkin and followed.

While the rest of the room streamed out to hear the news, Pohut and Innel calmly finished their meal.

Mulack and Sutarnan's beds were empty, their team searching, when the brothers went to sleep, but when Pohut passed by to find the privy in the predawn light, they were back. On his return to the quarters, he saw a familiar figure in the hallway carrying a basket. The servant girl.

"Hello," he said to her.

This time she met his look squarely, silently flicking her gaze to the side and back. Then she turned in that direction and walked away.

Pohut followed. She turned right at the main hallway, walking the length of the wing to the Great Hall where the solstice feast was to be held that night. She stole a quick glance at him before dropping her head then dashing away.

All at once Pohut knew where the silver bell must be. The bronze bell—the middle prize—had been found at eye level, hanging behind a tapestry. The iron bell, which Taba had found the night before—the least of the prizes—had been on the floor of a closet in a supply room, buried under bags in which stored dancer's bells and keep-time rattles.

He opened the door of the Great Hall and slipped inside. The room was massive, wide and very long, high-ceilinged, with multiple balconies and windows now letting in the pale light of dawn. But the clue was now clear in his mind, so he looked at the balcony where the musicians would play.

There, staring back, wide-eyed, was a face he recognized.

"No, no, no." Donal shouted. "Get out!" The boy stretched his arm out over the balcony railing, reaching for something that was up and behind the rafters, out of Pohut's sight, past a set of hunting horns attached to the wall. In the silence of the hall, Pohut could hear the boy's heavy breathing as his fingertips strained to reach something. Then the very faint sound of metal against wood. Had Donal's arm been just a bit longer, Pohut suspected, he'd have the bell now.

He'd been right, but minutes too late. He was surprised to be disappointed.

Donal looked back at him with a panicked expression. He pulled himself up onto the balcony railing to get closer to his goal, struggling to keep his balance. A step forward, hands groping for something to hold onto, but there was nothing. He lurched for the hidden bell, now in reach, and slipped. Arms windmilling to try to catch himself, Donal went over the railing and fell to the stone floor below, giving a cry that ended suddenly with a hard thud.

One part of Pohut's mind raced to strategy: the bell was now his. He must simply take it before anyone else did.

Now it was easy to imagine himself and his brother sitting at at the royal table. With the king. With the princess. That would show the Houses, the aristos, that General Pewyan's sons were of consequence.

He could have it. For a moment, nothing seemed more important.

But in that moment, another part of his mind had already taken over his body. He was already there, gently lifting the limp Donal, running his way back to the Cohort Master.

The Cohort Master took the boy from Pohut and said, "go," then called for aides and the physician.

Pohut thought fast, sprinted back into the Boys' Quarter, and rushed up Mulack's loft ladder. He doubted he would have reached the top if Mulack had not been so dead-tired. Even so, Mulack sat up abruptly, rings of dark around his eyes from lack of sleep, eyes full of hostility.

"I have the bell," Pohut said quickly, seating himself out of range of a swift kick that would send him flying off the bed. "And I will sell it to you," Pohut added.

"Sure you will. What for?"

"Three things. One: the cakes returned."

"Pah! What makes you think I have them?"

"Never mind. Maybe Tokerae has them. Or Taba. I'll go ask them." He made as if to leave.

"No, no, stay. What else?"

Pohut hadn't actually thought that far. It had all happened too fast. Donal. The bell. This plan. "You stop beating up the younger kids. For at least —" What would Mulack agree to? He wasn't sure. "A month."

Mulack smirked, but nodded. "And third?"

Seeing Mulack's expression, Pohut realized he should have asked for more time. Too late now. "One of your rings, to be sure you'll keep your word. I'll give it back at the end of the month."

Mulack snorted. "What if you're lying to me, you don't really have the bell, and now you have my ring, too?"

A good question. Pohut considered as if he were Mulack. "You're stronger than me," he said. He doubted it, but Mulack would think so. "And you have many friends and I have none." He shrugged. "Just take it back."

Mulack nodded. "All right. But why not keep the bell for yourself?"

Because it had come clear to Pohut that the brothers needed more time in the Cohort before they could afford to win such a prize. Time to make friends where possible, and build alliances where not. Until then, to sit at the royal table by the princess and king would, oddly, put them farther behind. The cost of this victory would be too high.

But Mulack wouldn't understand that, he realized.

"You were right," Pohut said. "We're mongrels. We wouldn't know what to do, sitting at the royal table. We don't want embarrass the Cohort." A humbling lie, but he could stomach it. For now.

Mulack pondered, seemed to find this plausible. He pulled off a ring, held it out on his palm, toward Pohut. "I accept your terms."

A formal contract. This Pohut hadn't expected, but of course he should have; the children of the Houses would know how to make binding contracts, though he had never done such a thing before.

Pohut put his hand palm down atop Mulack's and their hands turned together, so that the ring was left in Pohut's outstretched palm.

"Our contact is made," Mulack said.

Pohut examined the etched silver ring. Inset was a glinting purple stone surrounded by two white ones. The colors of House Murice.

He told Mulack where the bell was.

That morning at the meal, everything had changed. No one was looking for bells any more, certainly, not since Mulack had raced out of the Boys' Quarter, returning to ring the silver bell, loudly and for a very long time, even after the Cohort Master had told him he'd won.

As for Donal, the Master refused to say anything beyond that the boy was being sent home to recover. Would not say from what, or whether he would come back to the Cohort. From the surrounding chatter, Pohut learned that Donal was not the first of the Cohort to go home with injuries. The Cohort might have started with fifty, as Sutarnan had said, but not all of them had left willingly.

Perhaps none.

"We must become very strong and very clever, Brother," he whispered to Innel. "We must watch out for each other, because no one else will."

"Always," his brother said.

There were other differences that morning. A small nod from Mulack as he walked by. The surprised looks from those who noticed the ring on Pohut's hand. Mulack was silent on the topic, but happy to brag about how clever he was to have found the bell, and how proud his parents would be to see him sitting at the royal table.

The children of Pohut's team were mournful at their run of bad fortune, but they cheered up when, after the meal, they found their solstice cake boxes returned to their cabinets.

Pohut and Innel's boxes, however, had broken seals. Inside were only crumbs.

He went searching for Mulack, stepped up very close. "We had a contract."

He expected Mulack to sneer at him and tell him that the mutts weren't worthy of a contract with a child of the Great Houses, to which he would say…well, he wasn't sure yet. To his surprise Mulack simply nodded. Was that a look of remorse?

"I should have told you," Mulack admitted. "Already eaten when we made the contract. I had to know if they were as tasty as the Master said."

"But that's bad luck!"

"Well, I didn't eat mine," said Mulack. He shrugged. "You have the boxes. Just pretend. No one will look carefully if you hide your mouth." He mimed eating behind his hand.

Pohut growled deeply in the back of his throat. Like a dog.

Mulack took a step back. "I didn't mean to. Tell you what—I'll lay off the younger kids for another month past what we agreed—a whole two months!—and keep Sutarnan away, too. All right?"

Pohut wanted to hit him, wanted it badly, but instead thrust a hand in his pocket and gripped the rock tightly.

"I accept your terms," he said.

Pohut looked around at the others of his team, sitting in a small room off the second scullery near the Great Hall. Coming through the walls was the deep booming of drums, the strains of brass horns, and the muffled sounds of a thousand happy, feasting voices, laughing and cheering. Dancers, musicians, jugglers—the show was said to be spectacular.

Of course, Pohut's team was not to be there, and the guardians at the doors would make sure they didn't even try. Glum faces looked back at him.

"If we'd won, we'd be in there now," said Malrin.

"The big kids always win," muttered Larmna.

Pohut felt a longing to tell them what had happened, how they really had won, but no: Mulack would keep this secret, and so must Pohut.

"It's not so bad," he said. "We could be eating with the pigs." There were some chuckles. "You know what I think? That next time, I want every one of you on my team."

Reluctant and shy smiles came his way.

"We still have our cakes," Innel said brightly. Pohut smiled at his brother, proud of him for keeping up the pretense that their boxes were not empty.

Putar opened his mouth wide and mimed eating the entire cake at once, cheeks puffed out.

"But we'll wait until midnight," Pohut said, "so that we have the best fortune of the solstice. And we will have it, too, beginning tomorrow."

Tomorrow, when the younger children would find Mulack and Sutarnan quite a bit more pleasant.

"I wish we had found a bell," Larmna said to him, "but I'm glad we found you, and you found our cakes back again." Nods all around. Malrin began to hum the Finding Song, and Putar began to clap.

Then the door opened, the sounds of the feast momentarily loud, and they fell silent. Sachare entered, came to the brothers, put a hand on each of their shoulders.

"Come with me," she said softly.

Bemused, they followed her out the side door, past the guardians, who, oddly, did not object, into a small chamber, a tiny side room. The door closed behind them, and one of Cern's attendants, an older girl, glowered down at them. "You will say nothing of this. Not a word." Then she opened the door. In came Cern.

Innel inhaled sharply. They both dipped their heads. In a private room, with the princess. What did it mean?

"I don't have long," she said to them, "before I'm missed. So don't waste my time. Tell me why you gave the bell to Mulack." Pohut's mouth fell open in surprise. Her lips twitched in a humorless smile. "I am told things all the time, and most of them lies. But this I know: you traded away the silver bell. No one else in the Cohort would have done such a thing. I want to know why."

"Your Highness," Pohut said, stuttering. "If we sat at your table…" How to finish the sentence?

"No one would like us," Innel said. "Even more than they don't like us now."

"Yes," Pohut continued. "At least for now. Next year, it might be different." Then, under his breath, "It will be different."

Cern appeared to consider, then gestured to her attendant. "There aren't supposed to be any extras, but…" She handed them two solstice cake boxes, seals intact.

Pohut blinked, trying to reason through what this implied. That they had her attention and her favor, yes, but only for a moment. She turned to go. He thrust a hand into his pocket.

"Your Highness, we have something for you. A solstice gift."

She turned back. He held it out to her.

"A rock?" she asked disbelievingly, looking at the stone, then back at the brothers. "You have seen the presents I receive," Her expression darkened. "Do you insult me?"

"No, no," he said quickly. "Not at all. This rock is special. It…we…" He swallowed hard.

"It's not even pretty," she said.

That was true. So true. How to explain?

"It comes from our home," Pohut said.

"We miss our home so much, Your Highness," Innel said, his high voice so sad it tugged at Pohut.

"It doesn't make color or sounds," Pohut admitted. "It is what it is and nothing else. The other gifts you receive—those beautiful things—they are given to you because they are so precious, all by themselves."

"Of course," she was bemused, bordering on irritated. "So?"

"So," Pohut said, summoning the courage to meet her eyes. "We give you this, because it's that precious to us." He raised his hand a little and held his breath. Would she understand?

She looked away and he thought he'd made a mistake, but then she looked back, nodded and took the rock from his hand. Relief flooded him.

From the hall beyond came sounds of wild cheering as some act concluded. As if in response, from the door they had entered, came the sounds of his own team clapping, high voices loudly singing the Finding Song.

Cern's eyes flickered between the two brothers. "I believe I understand now," she said.

For a moment Pohut had no idea what she meant. Then, suddenly, he did. She meant the reason the king had brought them into the Cohort. Across months and years to come, he would remember those words.

As he watched her leave, his rock gripped as tightly in her hand as it had been in his, Pohut felt an ache pass through him. A weight seemed to ease.

He smiled at his brother, who held the cake boxes.

"I think it's midnight."

Trouble: The Changeling and the Phooka

by Dave Freer

Ireland, 1799

The cold rain fell steadily. It ran down Edmund’s neck…and he was grateful for it.

It was all he had to hide in.

Red-coated soldiers were sweeping the stony field, bayonets fixed. He knew they’d kill him without pause or question if they caught him here. The British were nervous, here in the Wicklow Mountains. General Holt and the United Irishmen had made them so.

The message he had inside his shirt would get him executed even if they didn’t kill him out of hand, Edmund knew. And there were more lives riding on this than his. Right now all he cared about was his survival.

And then, through the rain, came the sound of an old woman’s cracked and tuneless singing. Edmund could not quite hear the words of the song but he heard a soldier shouting at her. “What are you doing here, you old besom?”

She answered in the same sing-song lilt…in English, which was surprising in itself. “I’m pickin’ nettles, boy.”

“Well, go pick your nettles elsewhere,” said the soldier crossly. “We’re searching for a fugitive. Get along with you.”

“It could be a clever disguise, Sergeant,” said another voice.

“Not unless he’s shrunk,” said the first. “She’s not even five foot tall. What’s in the basket, old woman?”

“Now why would I be after telling you, you red-coated rogue?" she answered crossly. “Pestering old Annis, when all I am after is some greens to fill my stomach.”

“Better search it,” said the sergeant.

“Ill fortune will come to you,” said the old woman. “Ill fortune. You was warned, boy. Search old Annis’s basket, indeed.”

There was the sound of a blow…and Edmund realized that luck had favored him…if not the old woman. He began creeping slowly towards the soldiers’ voices—if he could get past them while they were busy…

He froze at the sound of a sharp intake of breath, followed by a curse.

“I told you I was a-picking young nettles, boy,” said the old woman, with a cackle of glee. “And you didn’t listen.” Edmund crept on. He could see them vaguely through the grey mist of rain. All he needed was a few more yards to be past them.

“Tip them out,” said the sergeant.

“Me food in the mud! You’re a cruel, hard man, soldier. Ill fortune will be comin’ your way.”

There was a thump. “There was something in there! Ouch. It’s a damned hedge-hog.”

“A stickly-pig I catched for my dinner,” said the old woman. “Let go o’ me. I needs to bag it again before it gets away.”

Edmund crept on. With any luck he could be through their cordon now, thanks to the old woman, her nettles and hedgehog, and the noise she was making about it. He reached the dry-stone wall bordering the field. On the other side of that was the pike road, and eventually Dublin, and a house he had to reach.

He gathered himself to climb over it…to freeze for the sound of near-tuneless humming. Coming closer, obviously someone walking down the roadway.

The unseen person stopped next to his hiding place. “You can come out now, Princeling. They’ll not be coming back down here,” said the old woman. “Feeling in Black Annis’s basket,” she chuckled darkly. “It’s lucky they’ll be not to find their own bones in it.”

Edmund didn’t move. And, next thing, she vaulted over the top of the wall, as spry as a goat, to land next to him, in a flurry of black petticoats. Edmund found himself being stared at by black eyes, set in face full of wrinkles surrounded by wild grey hair. She smiled at him. It was not a kind or nice smile, but full of snaggled teeth. “Well, Princeling? Are you going to lie here and shiver all day? They’ll get over the mazing I’ve laid on them.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked Edmund, warily.

“I’m Black Annis, Princeling, and I was sent to find you. Sent to give you your birthright. So you can go home to the shoulder mounds, Princeling.”

“I’m not going home. You can tell my mother…” He should have guessed who she was from by the “Princeling.” His nursery-maid had called him that. It was better than “Changeling,” that the other servants and, yes, even his mother had called him, sometimes. He couldn’t help being dark when she and his father were both blond.

Black Annis sniggered. “Not that woman, Princeling. I was sent by your father.”

“He’s dead, old woman,” said Edmund. Remembering still hurt, terribly. They’d made him watch while they half-hanged his father. He’d been ten years old, then. His father had been a man of strong principles, but those hadn’t kept him alive.

She positively cackled at that. “You could say so, Princeling. You could say so. But he sent this to you.” And she drew with a wrinkled old hand—with long black nails, he noticed—a jewel from her bosom.

At least, he thought it must be a jewel. It sparkled and shimmered oddly, as if it had a light within it, changing color like no precious stone he’d ever seen. It was attached to a sinuous sliver chain, the links of which were so fine they seemed to flow as she picked it up and held it out to him. “Take it, son of King Finnvarra. Take your key and go home.”

It drew him. There was something terribly compelling about its shimmer. And something utterly terrifying. He reached for it, and then pulled his hand back. It was hard to say, but he said it. “Sorry. It’s not me you’re looking for.” His father had been a solidly Anglo-Irish Baronet, a man who died for his belief in an Irish Union, not “Finvarra” whoever that was. It was tempting just to take the jewel, but he could not. It would be a betrayal. He had no idea what the jewel was worth, but it looked as if it would buy a lot of muskets. The rebels could use those. They could use just about everything.

“Oh, it’s you all right, Princeling. Your phooka-servant, lazy thing that he is, led me to you, straight and true.” She tipped her basket and a black hedgehog rolled out with a bump, and landed against his foot.

It uncurled slowly and looked at him. It had odd eyes…

She kicked it and it curled up again. “And ill luck the phooka will bring you, if you use it for your own ends. That’s the curse a changeling wears.” She was clearly mad, Edmund realized. Suddenly, she thrust the jewel into his hand. “Take it to Cnoc Meadha, changeling. Your father waits…And I do not.”

And before he could hand it back, she was gone. He looked around frantically. But the only sign of her having been there was the jewel, and the small black hedgehog, nuzzling at his foot. He drew breath to call out, to say he couldn’t take it, and then realized that he was still very close to British soldiers, searching for a rebel. She must have jumped the wall again. So he scrambled over the wet rock himself, and into the lane.

But there was nothing to be seen there, just grey curtains of rain. Edmund stood for a moment in indecision, and then heard a soldier swear—in English, so it had to be a soldier somewhere in the field. Panicking, he ran.

After a half a mile he was completely blown, but he felt safe enough to take shelter under a roadside blackthorn hedge and pant. There’d be other checkpoints, but he was safely past that one now. He looked down. He still had the jewel clutched tight in his hand. It was on a chain, he could put it around his neck…but something about it made him reluctant to do so. He decided it would be safe enough in the pocket of his coat.

He stuck his hand into the pocket of his overcoat, and pulled it out in a hurry. “Ouch!”

He had thrust his hand onto a hedgehog, which had somehow, mysteriously, got into his pocket. A pink-grey nose whiffled at him. “How did you get in there?” Edmund exclaimed.

“It seemed easier than to be running after you,” answered the hedgehog in a burring gravelly voice.

Edmund sat down, hard, in the mud in the shallow ditch, trying to get away from his own pocket. His life had made some kind of sense up to this point. Maybe what had happened to him had been horrible and harsh, but it made sense. This did not.

The hedgehog obliged him by wriggling its way out of his pocket. It had very strange eyes for hedgehog, and it was more black than grey. But it was a hedgehog.

“What are you?” asked Edmund, nervously. “I…I thought I head you speak.”

“I only speak when spoken to,” said the hedgehog. “I am your phooka. I am bidden to serve you, Prince.”

“Look, there is some mistake. I need to return this thing. It’s not me you’re looking for. I’m just…” he hesitated. No point in telling even this…hedgehog his name. “Edmund.”

“It’s not by your name I know you, Prince, but your blood. I could find you were you buried under one of a thousand haystacks, master. Your blood draws me.”

Edmund wondered if the creature planned to get it out of his veins. It was no hedgehog, of that he was sure. He needed to get away from here, away from it. He had a task to do. They needed relief. They needed arms and they needed money. “It’s this jewel, isn’t it? I don’t think I want anything to do with it. Or you.”

“I don’t either, Prince. But you are my geas. And thus I am bound to serve you. I’d rather be out and about, causing trouble,” said the phooka.

Edmund remembered, finally, what a phooka was, from the stories that the housemaids had told him as a child. They’d believe anything and had expected him to, too. It was a fairy, and a shape-changer, but always black. Well, that fitted. If he remembered it right…not actively malevolent, but fond of practical jokes, quite nasty ones. Appearing as swaybacked old ponies and offering the unsuspecting a ride…and after a wild ride which had the victim clinging on for dear life, flinging them into a bog or lake.

This was all beginning to feel like one of those jokes, especially the nasty part. Lately it seemed his life had all been that. He’d left his home and mother with a lot of dreams. Nightmares, they’d turned out to be. He could never forget his father, or the reprisals at Scullabogue barn. “Do you want this thing?” he asked suddenly, of the black hedgehog that was watching him with un-hedgehog-like eyes.

“What would I be doing with such a thing, Prince? I am a part of the company of air and darkness, whether I like it or not. It’s of no value to me.”

“Is it valuable?” asked Edmund. It looked it.

The phooka gave a sardonic little chuckle. “More so than any other jewel above the hollow lands. A Prince’s ransom, you might say. Some would say that it was still not worth having.”

Edmund bit his lip. “So could I sell it?” It would be for a good cause, at least.

The phooka gave a little snort. “It’s a key. There are always those that search for that door.”

Something about that tone made Edmund wary, but not as wary as the sound of horses’ hooves coming down the lane—riders at a brisk trot. The thick blackthorn hedge on either side of the lane offered no hiding place and no way through into the field. The ditch was too shallow to offer cover. “Oh help! I need to get out of here.”

“Is it of me that you’re asking, or the blackthorn?” asked the phooka.

Edmund was too busy scrambling to his feet, trying to decide whether to try clambering over the high thorn hedge or to take to his heels, to reply.

“Likely the blackthorn then, son of Finvarra. A mistake, if you ask me,” said the phooka. “Bloody war, strife and death in the blackthorn. Well, by oak, ash and thorn, so be it.”

The little woven gate in the dense hedge swung open and Edmund didn’t think twice about what the hedgehog-phooka had said. He just bolted through it and pulled it closed behind him.

It led him into…not the field beyond, but into a space inside the thorny branches, a sort of bower. Not a very large bower—a thorn scratched a bleeding gash on his hand as he reached back to free his overcoat from a thorny branch. It seemed to be closing in on him.

“You have your blood-payment, Luantishee,” said the phooka’s gravelly voice.

“There’s more in him,” someone answered.

Edmund turned…and scratched himself again, and looked into the beautiful face of a black-haired girl, a quarter his size, but with a maturity in her sloe-dark eyes that did not go with her size.

“But it is given to me to serve him, Luantishee,” said the phooka. “And fire and mischief are in my gift.”

“And if you scratch me again,” said Edmund, “I’ll take out my knife and start scratching back.”

She gave a sour grunt, but held off from stabbing Edmund with the bloody black thorn in her hand. Instead she looked at him with narrowed eyes. Not knowing quite what else to do Edmund stared back. Eventually she said: “What do you want, changeling? It’s too late to burn the blackthorn twigs on your father’s mound. The child you were changed for is dead, for you to be called home. Humans love faerie, but do not thrive there.”

“Um. I just wanted to hide. It must be a patrol. There’s supposed to be a curfew.”

“Oh yes, child of Finvarra. They hunt you.” She drew a pattern with the bloody thorn in the dirt, four stripes with one crossing them. “Straif,” she said pointing at the symbol with her thorn. “Hear me. There will be bloody havoc, war and wounding across the land. Division and death. A hundred years of it.” There was dark glee in her voice.

“Luantishee. Morrigan’s children. They’re always a bundle of joy,” said the Phooka, kicking the symbol and grinding it out. “I’ll leave you to your thorns and happiness, Luantishee.” He looked up at Edmund. “The soldiers have gone. She’s had her blood payment, invoked her magic, and had her fun. Let’s go, Prince.”

“Uh, how?” The way he’d come in had vanished. And she would get her wish and bleed him to death if he tried to push his way out. At the very least he’d rip his clothes apart.

“Oh, just show her your blade. She has no liking for cold steel, and doesn’t want her trees cut or burned,” said the phooka.

The sloe-dark eyes of the Launtishee were angry, but she had retreated back among the thorny branches. They bent away from her, and Edmund hastily followed, before they bent back.

“Leave me alone, changeling child,” she snapped.

“Happily. Just let me out.”

She made a growling noise in her throat, but the branches parted, and Edmund rushed past her. He didn’t quite know what had happened to his life, but he didn’t want any more strangeness. Reality had been hard enough to cope with.

And a few moments later he realized that life hadn’t got any easier. She hadn’t put him out into the lane, but into the field beyond. There was a withy gate, of course. But there was a large flock of white geese between him and it. They were already waddling toward him, honking and hissing, necks outstretched in outrage.

“She’s always a vindictive old crone,” said the phooka…who abruptly was no longer a hedgehog, but a swaybacked old pony. Black, of course, and still with the strange eyes. “You could ride on me. You’d be safe.”

Edmund was off-balance from the happenings of the last little while, but not that off-balance. “No fear. I know your reputation. Just stop pestering me.”

But he was too busy fending off the attacking geese to see if the phooka-pony had listened.

And then it got worse. The owner of the geese, a stout farmer with a blackthorn shillelagh came at a panting run to see what had upset his geese. “You thieving young rogue,” he yelled, not waiting for any explanation, but joining his geese in the attack.

Edmund had no choice but to run, the geese and fat farmer after him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sway-backed pony whickering with wicked laughter.

While they were chasing him, the phooka kicked open the gate, and the geese lost interest in chasing Edmund and streamed towards the gate—the farmer in hot pursuit, swearing and yelling. The phooka was actually rolling—as a pony might, but making noises which sounded more like it was choking. Edmund didn’t wait to find out—he ran out of the gate too, into the lane, in opposite direction to the geese and the farmer.

Fortunately, that was the direction he needed to go. Once he was around the bend, he stopped running and tried to compose himself, walking. At least the rain had eased up for a bit.

He still had the jewel, clutched in his fist. So he put it in his overcoat pocket and tried to think what to do next. The original plan of passing as a young Anglo-Irish gentleman—which was what he had been, before he’d joined in the rebellion—and catching the mail coach to Dublin hadn’t involved getting grass-stains on his knees and rips in his overcoat, to say nothing of the mud and blood.

Besides, it seemed that they were looking for him. Informers and traitors were everywhere. He was tired, damp, and evening was coming on. It wasn’t winter yet, but some of the leaves were starting to turn. Shelter, a chance to clean up, and to decide on what course he should follow was what he needed now. He just didn’t have very much money. A cottage, a bit of water…well, the best he could see was a stone byre with a turf roof. Perhaps there’d be a cottage beyond. He’d no sooner stepped inside the gate than he heard the thudding of hooves again. It could be the phooka…but he didn’t want it either, so he stepped inside the empty byre.

It had a small gap between the stones where the moss-chinking had fallen out that he could peer out of. It wasn’t much of a view but it did allow him to see the white-over-red horse-hair plumes of the Fifth Dragoon Guards—and hear what they said. “That fat old fool farmer said he’d run this way, but there’s no sign of him, Jim.”

“Ach, it’s another quarter mile to the cross. He’d have to have run like the wind to get there, but we’d better check. Then we’ll come back and search. The rest of boys will walk up, and we’ll have him between us.”

They rode on, and Edmund hastily began to look for escape, or a hiding place. But there was nothing. Beyond the byre was open commonage, and not even a nearby copse to hide in. On the far side of the byre there was a narrow gap into which some fence-hurdles had been thrust to keep them from the weather. There might be space for him there.

As he tried to push into it a sleepy gravelly phooka voice from his pocket said: “Have a care, Prince. You nearly squashed me.”

Unwarily he put his hand to the pocket, and got his fingers prickled again. “You! What are you doing here?”

“Resting. Using my magics even on the minds of geese is hard work in full daylight. Do you need help, Prince?”

“Every time you ‘help’ things gets worse. The farmer told the soldiers,” said Edmund, torn between anger and fear.

“Ah, that is the curse of being half-human, Prince,” said the phooka. “The price of your soul. Magic for yourself will be turned against you. It is the way of faerie magics and humans. By the way, I pushed the key down into the lining of your coat. It’ll be safer there, and it was uncomfortable for me to lie against.”

“I don’t care about your comfort! They’ll kill me if they catch me. Or torture me.”

“Now a bit of comfort would be a generous reward for servant who has worked so hard to help you,” said the phooka. “Not as much as fine ale or strong poteen, but surely deserved, for the hard work of misleading the farmer and his geese.”

Suddenly suspicious, despite the situation, but noticing the change in his tone and remembering the gleeful rolling phooka, Edmund said: “You liar. You enjoyed that.”

“’Tis a truth. I did,” admitted the phooka. “Not that I enjoyed the Luantishee, mind. She was dangerous. And I broke her binding of you. That was some of your blood she used in the ogham. A black curse indeed that would have been. She wanted you for her tool in this bloody war.”

“What?”

“Straif. The ogham. The symbol she drew. It’s a kenning for blood. And a kenning for the Blackthorn. Dark magic, Prince. Dark fortellings. The banshee foretells death, the Luantishee, strife, damage and pain. You got out lightly. And now I hear the dragoons a-coming.”

“I have to hide!” Edmund pushed at the gap—but there was no way he’d fit into it.

“They’ll see your track on the grass, anyway, Prince,” said the phooka, who had by now ambled out of his pocket, a black hedgehog looking at his efforts, with unholy amusement.

Looking back Edmund could see the truth of this—his muddy tracks on the wet grass were painfully obvious.

“I need to get clear. I have a message to deliver to Dublin.”

“So it is for others that you need to do this?” asked the phooka.

“Well, they’ll kill me. And take your precious jewel,” said Edmund, incurably truthful, looking around for any way to escape. Perhaps he could jump into the lane while they looked in the byre?

The phooka blurred and grew. And became the little shaggy black swaybacked pony with phooka eyes. “You could ride. It’s not easy to be catching the phooka.”

“I heard a voice,” said someone in the lane.

Edmund had no time for second thoughts and scrambled hurriedly onto the phooka’s back. Of course he could ride, but bareback, with no stirrups or reins?

He didn’t need them. He could have used a saddle to cling to, instead of the Phooka’s mane. It wasn’t a horse, no matter what it looked like.

It just stood there, waiting, as Edmund dug his heels in and yelled at it to run. The first Dragoon came through the gate, the man stared, and started laughing at them.

That, plainly, had been what the Phooka had been waiting for. It jumped like a scalded cat, from a standing start, onto the sod roof, leaped across that and between two more Dragoons. And then the chase was on.

The Phooka was definitely the least comfortable thing Edmund had ever ridden. It was more like bestriding a drop of water on a hot oiled griddle than riding. All he could do was cling on for grim death.

It was also, plainly, teasing the dragoons. It would let them almost catch up, before leaping sideways over a stone wall—and then slowing to an amble while the Dragoons found a gate. Then it lead them at a breakneck gallop down the field, letting them almost catch up before skittering sideways in a way that no polo-pony could, let alone a heavy cavalry horse. The phooka had one soldier fall at the next fence. Edmund felt it was nearly him off too, but he seemed stuck to the phooka’s back. They careered wildly through the slashing bushes and trees of a small wood.

One of the Dragoons managed a shot at them, but it was hopelessly wild, even if it made Edmund hunch down desperately. That was just as well, because the phooka had led them into a boggy, reedy, swampland, and was lofting hoof-loads of mud at the Dragoons. With a whicker of derisive phooka laughter, it let them nearly catch up, before leaping prodigiously into a swaying thicket of reed, higher than Edmund’s head. There were a couple of wild shots again, but plainly the Dragoons had no idea what they were shooting at, seeing as Edmund could see their backs as they struggled on. There were two now. The Phooka had circled around them, and was waiting again. “Go. Let’s just get away,” begged Edmund.

“Best if we leave them down and their horses scattered,” said the phooka. “Besides, black mud goes well on their uniforms.”

And he seemed to make sure that they were covered in it.

Eventually, when the last man had fallen into a stream, and the phooka had chased his tired horse off, Edmund expected the phooka to stop.

It just kept going into the dusk, not by lanes or the coach-road, but by jumping hedges and walls, through fields of grain, bogs, rough grazing. It was seemingly tireless.

“When are we going to stop?” gasped Edmund through rattling teeth.

“It’s Dublin you wanted to reach, and now in the twilight and nightfall, 'tis easiest for me.”

“That’s…impossible.”

“Not for the phooka.”

Edmund might have argued, but he was hard pressed to breathe, let alone talk.

It ended, much, much later, as riding a phooka always did, in the mud. By then Edmund was almost too exhausted to care, and actually quite grateful to have a soft landing. He just lay still for a while. Eventually, he pulled himself up. The sky was paling and the phooka was standing, patiently, looking at him. “Why did you do this to me?” Edmund asked, plaintively. Every bit of him hurt.

“You asked to me to bring you to Dublin. We are less than mile from the city’s outskirts,” said the phooka. Even in the dim light Edmund could see it that was grinning, a very un-horse-like grin.

“Yes, but you didn’t have to throw me into the mud!”

“It is traditional. And how else would a human—even a half-human alight?”

“You enjoyed that. You could have just stopped.”

The phooka shook its shaggy head. “I am your servant, by the geas laid on me by your father, King Finvarra. But I remain a phooka. It is my nature. I’d say the king bore a grudge against your mother. She was a human, but very wild. The king philanders, but does not tolerate it in his lovers.”

“Look, this is all a terrible mistake. I know who my father was. I miss him…terribly.” It hurt enough to crack his voice, still.

“Do you share the visage of this man?” asked the Phooka, his gravelly voice strangely gentle.

Innate honesty forced Edmund to say no. He hated doing so, felt it a betrayal—but it had been said, often enough. Mostly in Irish by the servants. Most of them assumed his mother had, somehow, had him from another man. “But it happens. I don’t have to look like him. He was…a true father to me. I loved him. I won’t believe it.”

“Believe it or no, you were changed as babe. Taken into the best house the fair folk could find, near at hand to Cnoc Meadha, the shoulder mound of the king of Faerie, of the endless green fields of Mag Mell. The one you were changed for is dead, as the Luantishee said, not to be summonsed by the rites and burning of blackthorn twigs. So now, you can return.”

A part of Edmund wanted to say that he did not believe any of this. But…he’d ridden the phooka.

“And it’s further that we are now from the mound. But you have the key. Transact your business and I can transport you. I will even try just to stop, if you order it, although, yes, it was my small pleasure, my reward for the service I rendered,” said the phooka.

Edmund sighed. “I’m so tired I can’t think.”

“There is a barn you could sleep in,” said the phooka. “It’ll be some time before anyone is about, barring the watchmen.”

So Edmund followed the creature, and found some hay and lay down and slept. He had no idea for how long, but when he finally awoke a streak of dusty sunlight was coming in through a hole in the roof. So he got up. He was not surprised to find there was a lump in his overcoat. A lump that snored and had prickles. The phooka seemed to like being a hedgehog.

Dublin was busy. It was back to commerce as usual with the rebellion here, suppressed. The streets were full of everyone from lavender-sellers to coal-men—and soldiers, rather too many of them, and gentry and their children escorted by maids or governesses. Last time Edmund had been there, he’d been one of them. It all seemed quite normal, but Edmund got a constant feeling of tension. Of people watching each other. Of sidelong glances.

Getting to his destination wasn’t easy either. He had only a child’s knowledge of the city, and that did not include the address he sought. And people were reluctant to give him directions.

That could have been the fear. Or the mud. Edmund had done his best to clean up at the shabby inn he’d stopped at to break his fast. It had been very run-down and dirty itself, but the better one he’d tried at, earlier, had turned him away from the door.

By now he was tired and despondent, and all the noise and chaos of the busy city after the silences of the Wicklow Hills was hard. Eventually he muttered to himself. “They’re all scared. They won’t tell me anything.”

“Then ask those who they fear,” said the phooka.

Thinking about it, it was a remarkably good idea, Edmund realized. The soldiery on the streets would not expect someone they were looking for to ask directions from them.

It worked, and after some more walking he found the house, a tall double-storied one on a respectable square.

The stout housemaid who answered the door said: “Get lost yer filthy bhoy.”

“I’ve a message for Master Colby!”

“He’s not seein’ anyone. Now get off me clean step before I throw you off it.” And she slammed the door in his face.

Edmund stared at it, dejected. To have come so far, and to fail!

He must have said something about it, because the phooka said: “Give me the count of twenty, knock, and I’ll give her something to chase, and you can slip inside,” and as it said it, it slipped from his pocket. Only it wasn’t a hedgehog by the time it landed on the cobbles. It was a skinny-shanked, spiky-haired, feral-looking black cat, with phooka eyes. And it ran off up the street. Edmund counted to twenty, slowly. He was so absorbed in this that he barely noticed the yowling, shouting, barking chaos in the street. He knocked. Then knocked harder. She flung the door open. “You again! Be off or…” She never had time to finish that statement, because the phooka cat darted between her legs and down the passage—closely followed by what seemed like half the dogs in Dublin—some of them were being chased by their owners. The dogs bowled her over, and ran into the house barking furiously. The housemaid scrambled to her feet yelling and running after them. Edmund stepped inside, and edged down the passage. Now he’d probably be taken for a thief instead. He stepped inside the first door, trying to decide what to do next…

Only to be met by slight, academic looking man, with a pince-nez balanced on his long nose, who was plainly coming to see what the noise was about. To his shock Edmund realized that he recognized the man—but he’d been younger and more cheerful looking back then. “Good Lord! Young Edmund Carrol! You were in short-coats last I saw you, but I remember your face. Are they chasing you?” He sounded very worried by that.

“Er. No sir. Some dogs and…a cat got in.” Edmund decided that explaining a phooka was not going to help.

“Oh. That’s a relief. Informers seem to be everywhere,” he said going to the door and carefully latching it. “What brings you here, my boy? I was very distressed to hear about your father. A good man.”

Edmund swallowed, found himself unable to speak, past the lump in his throat. Eventually he managed. “Message. From General Holt.”

The man looked terrified and glanced around as if he expected to find an informer hiding under the table or listening at the window. Edmund drew the now dirty envelope out of the secret pocket in his shirt and handed it over.

There was a lightness about doing that.

The man read it. Looked at him. “Do you have any idea what this says?” he asked, peering at Edmund over top of his eye-glasses.

“No, sir. I know things are bad, sir. The English press us hard.”

The man walked over the fire-place and inserted the letter into it, and watched it burn. “The end of our hopes, boy,” he said, sadly. “Joseph Holt asked me to see if I could get you away to France, or even America. He doesn’t think they can hold much longer. Things are at a dire pass, unless someone comes to our aid.”

He sighed. “Nothing more can be expected from France, and our resources are nearly exhausted. I’ll try to get you aboard the Darroway. She claims to be going to the Lowlands, but in truth her captain has carried others to and from France. But I fear she’s being watched. I knew your father well. It’s what he would have wanted for you.”

Edmund bit his lip. He’d been out there, dodging patrols, fighting the guerilla war in the mountains. He knew the desperation, and how short they were of everything. “Sir. If…if we could raise money could that help?”

“It is money that feeds those who inform against us,” said the man, grimly. “But there is little left to us.”

Edmund took off his overcoat. He was unsurprised, by now, to find a small hedgehog had somehow ended up in the pocket. He moved it carefully, hiding it in the folds, and reached down into the lining until his hand found the odd cool of the jewel. He drew it out. “Would this help?”

The man peered at it. “How extraordinary! I’ve never seen anything quite like it. What is it?”

“I don’t know. But I have been told that it is very valuable. The most valuable stone in all Ireland, worth a prince’s ransom.”

The man blinked. Stared at it again. “It certainly looks as if it should be. I would have to ask someone…I really have to go and consult with McNally about this. In his profession he would possibly know someone who could sell it. I could take it to him.”

Edmund found himself clutching the silver chain. “Uh. No. I can’t let it go. Maybe I can take it…or you could bring someone here.”

His involuntary host nodded. “But I’d better hide you, young man. I don’t even want my people to know you’re here.” He took Edmund to a panel on the far side of the room, and pressed a boss to the side of it. It slid open revealing a small room with a bench and little else. “I will get you some food and drink. I’m sorry it’s so Spartan.”

“It’s safe, and warm and dry,” said Edmund gratefully.

“There is a small hole which allows you to see out. I will bring a candle. Perhaps something to read?”

Soon Edmund was left to his own devices in the secret hidey-hole—with some good beef and a mug of porter. Sitting there he felt the phooka squirm in his pocket. “I don’t suppose you’d like some beef and porter,” he asked, more out of politeness than anything else.

“Beef, no. Porter, yes,” said the phooka in his burring voice. “It is an appropriate reward. Pour a little out on the bench for me.”

So in the candle-light Edmund ate, and saw the Phooka snuffle up the little puddle of beer.

The warmth, the security, and the porter had him doze off, until the screaming, yelling and breaking started. Peering through the hole, Edmund saw a group of soldiers, and several rather more sinister looking men coming in through the broken-down door to the parlor. “The hiding place should be this room. He is not to be removed until we find this ‘vast diamond,’” said a grim-faced officer.

Edmund felt, in horror, for his only hope, the phooka.

It wasn’t there. Neither was the candle.

As the men were feeling and tapping their way around the paneled walls, there was a sudden and terrified yell from down the hall: “Fire! FIRE!”

“See what that’s about,” snapped the officer to the soldier at the doorway. The soldier stepped out—and came straight back in. “The place is an inferno, sir! Out, we have to get out!”

Frantically, Edmund tried to join them. Better caught than burned. But the panel refused to budge and there was no one to hear his yelling and banging. Except the phooka, who came in as a horse in a house, and a very amused looking one at that.

“Let me out,” yelled Edmund. “The place is on fire!”

The phooka calmly kicked the panel open. “Not to worry, Prince. It’s something of an illusion. Merely the candle-flame. We can go out of the back door.”

Edmund was too stunned—and half-terrified out of his wits—to do more than follow the phooka, as they walked out of the kitchen, and down to the little alley along the back of the square. It was already nearly dusk, out there. Once they were well clear: the phooka said: “Where now, Prince?”

It was a hard question.

“I can take you to Cnoc Meadha,” suggested the phooka. “To your father, the king.”

Edmund bit his lip. Shook his head. It might be true by blood, but he knew who his father was, and it was not this King of Faerie. It seemed important, now to do what his real father had wanted, as best as possible. “I need to get onto a ship down at the docks. She may be watched. In France…well, I can try to sell this jewel and try to support the dream of my father…the man who loved me and raised me, not Finvarra.”

“Your wish,” said the phooka, “is of course my command.” But he seemed pleased about this and did not try to talk Edmund out of it.

In the dusk they arrived at the quayside, the darkening sky pricked with masts and spars. Somehow the phooka had become a pocket-dwelling hedgehog again. The lamp-lighters were busy, and stevedores and draymen were too, finishing up their day. One of them told Edmund where to find the Darroway. “There she is. That two-masted packet.” The stevedore took a quick glance around, “But you’d want to be careful son. She’s bein’ watched.” And he walked off, hastily in the opposite direction.

So Edmund approached the little ship very cautiously. He spotted one man, sitting in the shadows on some crates. But there might be others. He found himself a spot between some empty salt-fish barrels and settled to watch.

The phooka inevitably asked what he was doing. “Waiting for a chance to sneak onto that ship.”

“A ship that will take you away from the green lands. I have never been on one of those,” said the phooka, curiously. “What are they like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been on one either.”

“I will go and see how it might be done,” said the phooka, slipping out of his pocket.

“Not a lot of hedgehogs around here,” commented Edmund.

“I shall choose a suitable form.”

But it was as a hedgehog that he returned, nuzzling at Edmund’s foot. “The ships are watched. But if you’d put me in your pocket and go to the boozing ken up yonder alley, it can be arranged. Just buy the men there some rum and take a hot glass with them in return. They’ll be willing to help.”

That would be easier than sitting in cold. And he still had some money which he’d not spent on the mail coach, thought Edmund.

It was dirty little place, smelling of rum, urine and unwashed sailors. The men were a rough looking trio too. But they were willing to let him buy them a drink.

***

And that was the last he remembered, until he woke and muzzily said: “Where am I?”

“You said you wanted to be on board the ship,” said the almost entirely black cat, bar the white blaze on its chest. A cat with the odd eyes of the phooka. They seemed more natural on a cat, than they had on a hedgehog or a horse.

“Yes,” said Edmund, with a groan. “Oh, my head. How did I get here?”

“I’d believe that the right description is that you’ve been pressed.”

“Pressed?” asked Edmund.

“Into service, as they say,” said the phooka.

“You mean…I am part of the crew?”

“Yes. They thought you were older and larger than you are. A small glamor.”

“I think I am going to die,” he said, as floor he was lying on rolled beneath him.

“Indeed, it’s what the men in chains below are saying too,” said the phooka, unsympathetically. “But the sailors seem happy enough.”

“There are men in chains below?”

“Yes, they’re throwing up,” said the phooka, with cheerful unconcern. “I recognized one of the prisoners as being from the house in Dublin.”

Edmund pinched his eyes shut. It made no sense and the ship still rolled. “When do we expect to get to France?” he asked hoping that that would at least mean the movement would stop.

“I wouldn’t know. One of the sailors said we lie in the Biscay. What does that mean?”

Edmund scrambled to his feet and up the companionway, and out into the fresh salt-laden air. This was a bigger vessel than the little packet he’d hoped to board without being spotted. And…that flag. It was the white ensign.

“This is the wrong ship!” he said savagely.

The phooka gave a very feline shrug. “A ship is a ship. You wanted to go away from the green lands.”

It all became horrifyingly clear to Edmund now. Biscay. The flag. The prisoners below. To the phooka there was no real difference between places across the sea from Ireland. France was as foreign as where the ship was taking the rebels below.

The prisoners were being transported…to Australia.

And so was he, with the jewel-key to Faerie lands still in the lining of his coat. The desperate United Irish rebels were being rounded up or killed in the Wicklow Hills, just as the blackthorn people foretold, with blood and havoc, and a hatred that would run deep for generations.

He’d been delivered into the hand of his foes, and sent into exile.

But it felt like freedom, right now.

As for faerie…Finvarra had never been his father. His father lay dead at the hands of Loyalist Militia.

“You’re awake, are you?” commented a boy not much older than Edmund, coming up from behind. “Hello, where did the cat come from?”

“It’s my p…cat,” answered Edmund.

“Good. The last one died. We need one to keep the mice down. What’s its name?

Edmund knew the answer to that one. “Trouble,” he said.

Moonlet Sonata

by William Ledbetter

I replayed Toomie's last words for the seventeenth time and they still made no sense.

"They're just babies."

What had she meant?

The argument with her brother had been ugly. She'd called him greedy and a selfish little prick, then even said he'd murdered their parents to gain access to the 55 Cancri mining rights. All of that may have been important, but instead of screaming for help or begging Kofi to stop, she'd used her final breath to say, "They're just babies."

I replayed my recording of her final minutes again as I watched Kofi wrap his sister's rapidly cooling body in clinch wrap. When he finished, he strapped her to the control cabin's bulkhead.

"What did she mean when she said they were only babies?" I asked Kofi.

He ignored me and turned his attention to prepping Indian Summer for the gate translation.

"This wasn't your fault," I said. "I think we can prove that if you surrender. You signed the waiver, but you're only eighteen and your brain is still growing. There have been problems in past cases. My implantation into your head might have caused serious damage."

"Shut up," he muttered. "Or I'll kill you too."

It was a valid threat. He could do it with a mere code word. From my home on a jellified substrate positioned between his brain and skull, I had nearly a thousand hard connections interfacing with his cerebral cortex, yet I'd been powerless to stop him when he'd reached for Toomie's throat.

And he could wipe me from his head with impunity. I had no rights and he would suffer no consequences, but I did have options. I hadn't had enough time to save Toomie, but I might be able to stop him from leaving the system. I ordered my nano assemblers to finish building the last millimeter of garrote wire to encircle his spinal cord.

He'd been furious when he killed her—I knew that because I'd monitored his biochemistry the entire time—but it had not been a crime of passion. Not the kind that blossomed from blind rage. He'd rigged Indian Summer to be a radio black hole before bringing her aboard. We had been unable to transmit or connect to any network from his ship. She'd been trapped as effectively as I.

"This makes no sense," I said. "They'll still arrest you when we return. There are too many tracking records showing Toomie's visit to your ship."

He only grunted and closed his eyes. Since he'd cut me out of the command loop, I had no access to the ship's instruments or video and could only see fuzzy, monochrome images through his eyes, but I deduced from his sudden labored breathing that Indian Summer started her burn to move us into an approach orbit for the transfer gate.

I had to decide. Once we attained the new orbit it would be too late. If I used the spinal garrote, I could stop him from leaving the system with Toomie's body. He would be caught and punished, but I too would be punished. I had secreted nano-assemblers in my host's body. Under these circumstances they might show mercy and not order my immediate execution, but probably not. Still, it was not fear of oblivion that made me hesitate. If I stopped Kofi, then I would never see the singing Moonlets.

Kofi's parents had ignored my offers of a symbiotic liaison, but when they died I renewed my efforts to contact the children. It took Kofi three months to reply, but when he finally agreed, I left Professor Walker and my research position at MIT and initiated the transfer that same day. Due to one rather megalomaniac individual early in our history, we Fabs were no longer allowed to live outside of a human body, but we did have the right to switch between willing hosts as we wished.

My entire career had been focused on gas giants, so I was immediately enthralled by the first reports from 55 Cancri. When the Gate Probe arrived and survey craft were sent through, they found thousands of crystalline structures orbiting the system's largest gas giant, creating systematic manipulations of the world's natural radio signals.

Discussions and theories flourished during that first year, but since they found no evidence that the Moonlets were anything more than a strange, but naturally occurring phenomenon, the Gate Authority refused to send another expedition. The Pattersons, who'd won prospecting rights via lottery five years before the Gate Probe even arrived, saw an opportunity to make money from either scientific or tourism expeditions, locked the gate and started putting together a business model. Then they died.

Had Kofi really killed them? Why was his trip to 55 Cancri so important at this particular point in time? So many uncertainties, but the largest was Toomie's last comment. Had she meant the Moonlets? Were they only babies?

I had to see them. I had to know. That need outweighed all others. So I waited.

Three minutes later Kofi relaxed, signaling an end to the course correction.

I listened to the chatter between Kofi and Jupiter Gate Control as he queued up behind tankers, freighters and liners. They were mostly bound for either Saturn or the inner system, but we were bound for a destination that lay forty-one light-years farther.

Kofi cycled through camera views, checking the small cargo train being pushed ahead of Indian Summer. Each container was held in place and shielded from Jupiter's radiation by a powerful magnetic field that had to be turned off before the box could pass through the gate. It was a complicated series of switching fields off and on at the right times, a delicate maneuver, but he didn't ask for my help. I had no idea why he'd agreed to my request for a liaison.

The gate appeared first as a dot on the main monitor, but soon filled the screen. Kofi triggered a deceleration burn that ended just as he sent the code directing the gate to establish a quantum link with the gate probe in the 55 Cancri system.

The gate's composite strut grid raced toward us at just under five hundred klicks per hour, which invoked the panicky feeling of flying into a wall for most humans, but Kofi didn't flinch. Where the first container should have hit the panel, lightning filigree outlined the intersection and it passed through, followed in succession by the other three and finally the Indian Summer.

#

A gas giant, four times larger than Jupiter, dominated the camera's field with twenty shades of yellow and orange. The official name was 55 Cancri, planet D, but because its icy rings glittered like a stream of shattered gold, most of the planetary researchers called it Tinsel. From my prison in Kofi's head, I could see only what Kofi saw on the screen and could hear none of the "music" made by the twelve-thousand Moonlets.

"Kofi? You promised to let me study these life forms. I can't even listen to their music unless you allow me to access the ship's sensors."

He snorted. "Yeah, but that was before I killed Toomie."

"We've passed through the gate. If I sent a message to the police now it would take forty-one years to arrive."

He scanned sensor feeds that I could barely even see, but said nothing.

"Where's the benefit in my betraying you? I wanted to come here. Besides, you can always trigger the kill switch or lock me out of the loop again."

He covered the keypad and typed something. The part of me that had been essentially dead flared to life and established contact with the Indian Summer's data store and sensor array. I could see again and luxuriated in the flood of data from her sensors and cameras.

Kofi sent the command to lock the gate. Not even the Gate Authority could operate it without his password. They would have to send an override order, by radio signal. I couldn't leave without him.

"With your permission," I said. "I'd like to launch my probes now." I started diagnostics on the twenty grapefruit-sized spacecraft. Even though we were supposed to be partners in this expedition, Kofi had not only made me purchase the probes with my own funds, but also charged me to berth them in the Indian Summer's equipment bay. We had a rather one-sided business partnership.

"Sure," he said, "but it's also time you started earning your keep. I need your help with some things."

After unbuckling his harness, he pushed off and floated back to the equipment storage lockers at the rear of the cabin. He opened one of the bins and pulled out a yellow canister about half a meter long. It was programmable thruster unit. Using a splintlike arrangement, he stiffened his sister's body, then attached the unit to her wrapped feet.

"Program this thing to avoid the ring debris and send Toomie into the planet's atmosphere."

I launched my probes, then did as Kofi asked.

Neither of us spoke while he struggled into his pressure suit, but I admit that I was curious about his "earning my keep" comment. I'd long wondered why he agreed to my request for a liaison.

"The thruster module is ready," I said. "So what else did you have in mind?"

"Why'd it take you so long to ask?"

"I assumed . . . "

"It's because you didn't care," he said and closed his helmet with a loud click. "You just wanted to get here. You're as single-minded and greedy about what you want as I am."

I didn't reply.

He cursed and grunted while maneuvering Toomie into the air lock. She was nearly too long with the thruster attached to her feet, but he managed the task and once outside, he hummed a little song as he activated the unit's power pack.

Since it was illegal for AI's to live independently of human hosts, I'd lived with humans my entire existence, but in my ninety-four year life I'd never seen anything like him. Kofi had no hesitation, no change in his physical vitals, no pause to say a goodbye. He just activated the thruster unit and watched the brief series of attitude adjustments. Once the main engine fired—sending his sister off to cremation upon the pyre that was Tinsel—he turned away, still humming and moved to his cargo train.

I used the ship’s cameras to follow Toomie's progress until she disappeared over the horizon, then started building a mirror of my processor substrate inside Kofi's brain. He would not hesitate to end my existence when the time came. I might not be able to disable the purging device attached to my implant, but I didn't have to be there when the switch was triggered.

Kofi didn't bother with a tether as he moved down the length of the cargo containers. He'd purchased a top of the line excursion suit that was more miniature spacecraft than inflated bag. It had active radiation shielding powered by an outer skin that efficiently converted any available light into electricity. Should the unfortunate occupant run out the ten-hour oxygen supply and die, the suit's computer and communications systems would run indefinitely. So the suit's owners, which in most cases were JupCorp or the Gate Authority, could still recover their valuable hardware investment even years later.

Kofi opened the first container and revealed a Class II orbital mini-tug instead of the automated gate enlargement equipment listed in his official flight manifest. Private concerns that attained mining rights in gated star systems via lottery—like Kofi's parents—had two years to enlarge the gate and bring in Gate Authority heavy lasers to launch more gate probes or lose their rights.

"I don't understand," I said. "Why would you risk your mining rights?"

"Read this," Kofi said and forwarded me a communique from the Gate Authority. It was a cease and desist order along with notification that a "Life Investigation" was about to be reopened in the 55 Cancri system. All commercial endeavors were to end immediately. All actions related to the Moonlet objects were strictly off limits. Only gate enlargement operations would be approved.

It explained a lot, but not everything.

"So why the tug?"

He opened the other cargo containers, revealing two more tugs.

"I have a contract to supply eight more of these small Moonlets to a buyer in the Saturn system. He wants them to orbit his special habitat."

"Eight more? You've already delivered some?"

"Just one and it was a bitch to find one small enough to maneuver through the gate. You and your little flotilla of probes are going to help me find more and load them into these containers."

He had planned it very carefully. The containers were probably shielded, so the Moonlets' radio emissions would be hidden as effectively as their physical bodies. It still made little sense.

"If you do this, not only will you forfeit all rights to the system, you'll go to jail."

"Only if they catch me. I'll return through a private gate."

"But why?"

He laughed and pulled one of the tugs loose. "Twenty million each. I can disappear quite easily with that kind of cash."

Money. Worth risking arrest and killing his own sister. I would never understand some human motivators, so instead turned my attention to the deployed probes as data started to trickle in. Half of the little spacecraft would set up station outside the ring system recording everything between 400 Hz and 5 kHz in hopes of capturing the entire nine-hour Moonlet symphony. The other half flew in closer, toward the ring positions where the Moonlets lived, to get video coverage across the entire visual spectrum and record their individual singing. I sequestered a chunk of memory from Kofi's EVA suite for storage so I'd have direct access.

Then I listened.

My kind had nothing resembling human emotions, nor did we desire them—despite popular media's insistence that we did—but many of us did appreciate beauty. Especially the complex beauty inherent in nature, mathematics and the rhythmic order created by human composers. These Moonlets produced something that incorporated all those elements and more.

When I first heard the entire recorded symphony produced by the Moonlets, I found tiny variations in each repetition. Other researchers said it supported the accidental and unconscious nature of the phenomenon, but I recognized minuscule and deliberate adjustments that were striving toward perfection. I soon reached the limits of what I could learn from the recordings. I knew I would need a second expedition, or better yet, to go there myself.

I shifted my attention back to Kofi and watched in silence as he deployed the last tug. They had been modified with an inflated three-meter bumper donut on its forward end instead of the common cleat locks.

"Locate eight small Moonlets, all between five and six meters in diameter, then bring them back here using the tugs."

I could argue or even refuse. They were my probes. He'd made that perfectly clear when he charged me berthing space, but I decided to play along. It gave me control over how quickly he found and returned the Moonlets.

"I can do that," I said.

"And don't try to drag this out so you can study them."

Kofi basing his capture strategy on my abilities had been a mistake. He had no leverage. It would take him days or even weeks to locate and corral the right sized Moonlets without me, so despite his protestations, I would delay our departure until I'd finished my observations.

#

Kofi returned to Indian Summer for a nap while I searched for capture candidates. I took advantage of his deep sleep to finish building my mirror site and move my main processes to it. Also, using one of the tug's manipulator arms, I removed the backup communications module from a second tug and attached it to the outer hull of Indian Summer. It was a slow and difficult task given the manipulator arm's limited mobility, but once I finished, I had the ability to send all of my collected data to the unit as a backup. If Kofi managed to kill me and still return to Earth's system, it would repeatedly broadcast the entirety of my findings and experience.

When Kofi woke three hours later he was quite angry. Of the nearly twelve thousand Moonlets, I'd only been able to locate five small enough to fit inside his cargo containers, or even pass through the gate at all.

"I don't know what kind of shit you're trying to pull," he yelled. His anger indicators spiked and he slammed things around in the control cabin as he struggled back into his EVA suit. "But I've had enough of your delaying tactics!"

"I assure you I'm not trying to delay," I said. Then, knowing it would take over thirty hours for him to do a manual survey using Indian Summer's radar, I couldn't resist an extra jab. "But don't take my word for it, go ahead and do your own survey."

He muttered expletives under his breath. I played Russian Roulette by comparing his current agitation level to that he attained just before killing Toomie, but I knew he would need far less of a push to kill me. My mirroring efforts were complete so if he did trigger the purge command I wouldn't really die, but my access to probe and ship sensoria might end. My exploration of the Moonlets could be over.

"Have you collected the five you did find?" he said.

"No, but the first tug is..."

"God damn it," his anger markers spiked and he clenched his teeth for a second and recovered. "Just bring those five and let's get the hell out of here!"

"As I was saying, the first tug has nearly finished matching orbits with one and should start pushing it this way in about twenty minutes."

Kofi said nothing else as he exited the ship and readied the inflatable cradles inside the containers. I knew he probably wouldn't pull my plug until I'd finished fetching the Moonlets, so I focused on the data feeds coming from my probes. I'd moved one in close to the first Moonlet I intended to capture and immediately noticed many strange things.

The small Moonlet was only about fifteen meters from one of the large ones, leading its orbit, and I was reminded of the gravity shepherding devices used to change asteroid trajectories. The large Moonlet's surface differed from those others I'd examined up close, so I increased the camera zoom, bringing details into focus. The normally tight crystalline latticing was pitted and furrowed, with large sections totally gone, revealing what appeared to be a hollow interior. When I widened my view to encompass both Moonlets and then expanded camera sensitivity to include the full electromagnetic spectrum, I understood.

The damaged Moonlet had a very weak magnetic field, so in addition to providing a tiny gravity assist, the smaller leading Moonlet had a powerful magnetosphere and was using its bow shock to protect the larger Moonlet from ring system rubbish. An extensive particle trail swirled in the pair's wake. At least part of that had to be the large Moonlet's missing material.

Several of my processes had been listening to the grand Moonlet symphony being collected and beamed to Indian Summer by my probes high above Tinsel's ecliptic plane, but I was still unprepared when the radio emissions flared from my observed pair as they added their part.

Their portion only lasted 2.9 seconds, but had been complex and elegant. With the combined data from the listening probes and my local probe recording minute radiation fluctuations, I was able to map and dissect each partner's participation. The large Moonlet started the first four notes, with the smaller partner perfectly echoing and amplifying the signal a millisecond later, but by the last four notes, the large one had dropped completely out.

Could the large Moonlet be teaching the small one? Was I seeing the whole picture or being influenced by preconception? I had no choice but to compare the behavior to that of the living things known to man, from Earth, Europa and Enceladus. Based on that, I had to assume I was seeing the transfer of knowledge in a higher order intelligence. Perhaps not sentient, but aware, at least on an animal level.

"They're just babies," she had said.

Toomie had indeed known.

The tug arrived, and I took extra time maneuvering it into place. I had to stall. I was beginning to form a more complete picture, but I needed more information, so I sent my probes out to view the other four small Moonlets.

"What are you doing?" Kofi yelled.

"The small Moonlet is very close to a large one. We're going to have to be careful moving it away."

He could easily verify the truth in my statement with the sensors from Indian Summer.

"They're tougher than you think. A little bumping around isn't going to hurt the damned thing, so just get on with it!"

How had Kofi's stealing a small Moonlet interrupted this apparent teacher and student cycle? The Moonlet singing never really ends; they just repeat the same symphony over and over, like a continuous tape loop, which led many researchers to the conclusion that it was a natural, undirected event. The Gate Authority survey expedition collected 150 hours of uninterrupted Moonlet singing, which captured sixteen entire symphony sequences. Other than the tiny timing and note duration differences I had noticed, the 543 minute symphonies were identical.

I needed to know for sure before I could participate in Kofi's plan. If his removing small Moonlets disrupted these creatures' learning cycle, then I had to stop it. I needed to stall until I knew for sure, and I was still four minutes away from having my own complete symphony sequence.

"Kofi? Why only the small ones? The full grown Moonlets sing more. It seems they would have greater worth and justify enlarging the gate."

"If I enlarge the gate, GA pukes will pour through and be everywhere. Besides, we know the little ones can be taught new material. Who knows about the big ones?"

And there it was. Independent confirmation of the behavior I'd observed. I had to stop him.

"I've found something interesting," I said. "I suspect that these Moonlets have a rather complex life cycle. All of those small enough to fit in the containers are engaged in some kind of mentoring relationship with large, older Moonlets. I believe the small ones are babies and are learning their part of the symphony from their elders. Which of course fits with what you said about the small ones being able to learn new material."

At first Kofi didn't answer and I was almost ready to send the message again, but then noticed his agitation markers elevating.

When he finally replied, it was in a measured, dangerous tone. Not the impatient yelling I'd expected. "So, you think that everyone who studied these things before are wrong and only you see their true natures?"

"Their conclusions are based on the limited observations and recordings made by the Gate Authority's preliminary survey. Just since we've been here, I've noticed behaviors never noted in any of the existing analysis. I don't think we understand what we're doing to these beings and should proceed with caution."

I needed two more minutes and he was growing angrier by the second.

"Beings? Animals feel pain. These things don't react to any kind of stimulus, so I'm not too worried about upsetting their delicate sensibilities. Besides, I've already been paid. Now get that singing rock up here for loading."

Just then, the data model completed and I could see the Moonlets' complex interactions displayed in intricate and elegant clarity. As I'd suspected, only one section was missing from the whole and it had to be caused by Kofi's earlier theft. The model also showed that the symphony was laid out by physical proximity. The music passed around Tinsel in an orderly progression, like the continuous paper spool on an old player piano.

It all made sense, but I had to be sure. As my probes moved into position, I saw that small Moonlet number four was next to the delicate, lace-like husk of a dead partner floating in a cloud of its own detritus. The large one radiated no energy or heat and its location matched the hole in the symphony. I realized I might not be seeing the entire picture, that this alien ecology could be beyond my understanding given the limited research, but I had to act on the facts I knew.

I stalled longer. "I don't see why we can't delay a little longer. Just to make sure. I think we're disrupting their singing pattern."

"Even if they are singing, it doesn't fucking matter because it doesn't mean anything. There's no reason for it!"

"It has just as much meaning as human activity. I mean why has humanity fought for survival and gone to great lengths to expand? What's the reason for that?"

Kofi's pulse jumped. I thought for an instant that I'd pushed him too far, then I lost the link to my storage device attached to the ship's hull and knew it was much worse.

"Oh, you devious bastard," Kofi said.

Kofi's anger markers spiked well beyond the danger level, near where they had been when he'd strangled Toomie.

"I was just trying to preserve this research, Kofi. It's more important than your money making scheme. And if you purge me, the garrote I've looped around your spinal cord will automatically trigger and paralyze you."

This made him pause for several long seconds. I thought we had possibly reached a stalemate, but his anger flared into blind rage and he said, "Colossus, Colossus."

As the trigger word initiated the purge program, the original part of my mirror setup disappeared, along with most of my interface into Kofi's brain and all the links to the ship. I was once again blind and cut off, but I was still alive and had one remaining lever. I cut his spinal cord.

Kofi screamed and his respiration sky-rocketed, prompting warnings and automatic gas adjustment by his suit. Then he uttered a long series of expletives.

"We're both crippled in different ways now," I said. "But if you're reasonable and follow my instructions, I can get you to the ship and back home."

"Colossus, Colossus," he said again.

"Not going to work," I said.

"Fuck you!"

"That would be tantamount to fucking yourself, Kofi, and you've already done that. Give me control of your suit and let me help you."

"I'll die here first," he said with a voice pitched girlishly high by either his panic or limited lung function.

I considered this for an instant, then using material from my now dead original substrate and small amounts of Kofi's bone and tissue, I started building new wires. I would never gain access to Indian Summer without Kofi's help, but he couldn't stop me from taking over his suit. He didn't even feel the new wires sprouting from the back of his neck, making hard connections to the suit's processor nodes.

#

I gave Kofi one last nudge from the suit's attitude jets, moving him between the small Moonlet and larger dead one. He'd finally given up on his efforts to verbally control his suit—I had long ago taken that ability away—and instead muttered tirades about Toomie not really being dead and my being a secret agent sent by the Gate Authority to steal his prospecting rights. I ignored him and made my final preparations.

Once in position, I set up automatic station keeping, to insure the suit would keep its place in the flock, then I started the symphony tracking program. I listened as the elegant and complex song rolled through Tinsel's ring system. When it reached us, Kofi's suit used the powerful emergency beacon transmitter to supply the missing notes, several of which were immediately echoed by the small accompanying Moonlet. I made a slight gain adjustment and waited for the next pass.

From my new home near the suit's processor unit, I would continue to monitor the symphony and supply the missing elements until the baby Moonlet had learned its part. Then I could study them until the humans returned and passed judgment on my crimes.

Kofi started babbling in those last minutes as his oxygen ran thin, then seemed to have a moment of lucidity at the end.

"Why?" he asked.

Instead of a reply, I replayed Toomie's last words for him.

With the gasping sounds gone, only the music remained—mysterious, beautiful, sublime—twisting through Tinsel's rings on its ancient course.

Cadet Cruise

by David Drake

Pennyroyal knew that Cadet Leary was supposed to have remained aboard the Swiftsure until 1700 hours with the rest of the Starboard Watch. That said, she'd gotten to know Daniel Leary pretty well during their three years at the Academy. When she couldn't locate him in their accommodation block or the cable tier where he was supposed to be on duty until 1630, she suspected that Leary had managed to slip ashore with the Port Watch.

It was more out of whim than from any real expectation of finding the other cadet that Pennyroyal went out on the hull through a forward airlock. The Dorsal A antenna was raised while the Swiftsure was docked in Broceliande Harbor. Daniel was sliding down a forestay, his rigging gauntlets sparking against the steel wire. A bosun's mate named Janofsky was following him down.

"You're supposed to be inspecting cable, Leary," Pennyroyal called, amazed and a little exasperated at what her friend got up to. "If an officer catches you fooling around in the sunshine, you'll lose your liberty. At least your liberty."

Daniel Leary wasn't any more interested in astrogation theory than Pennyroyal herself was, but he had an obvious gift for astrogation. He could be a valuable officer of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy—if he weren't booted out of the Academy before he graduated. Leary treated discipline the way he did religion: it was all very well for others, if they really wanted to go in for it.

"Pardon, ma'am, but that's just what we're doing," said Janofsky, touching his cap. "I directed Cadet Leary to inspect the standing rigging of Dorsal A under my supervision."

In theory the cadets were classed as landsmen: they were junior to able spacers, let alone to a warrant officer like Janofsky. In practice, outside of actual training many of the Swiftsure's cadre treated cadets like the officers they would become when they graduated.

Now with the Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars in an all-out war, spacers were valuable commodities. It was necessary to provide cadets with practical experience before they were commissioned, but a training ship's complement tended to be made up of personnel who for one reason or another could be spared from front-line combat vessels.

Some of the Swiftsure's cadre had persistent coughs, stiff limbs, or were simply old: Janofsky probably wouldn't see seventy again. Others drank or drugged or were a little funny in the head.

But no few were ring-tailed bastards who were doubly hard on cadets. Cadets had the chance of bright futures, which none of those in a training ship's cadre could imagine would dawn for them.

"Ah," said Pennyroyal. She didn't believe the story, but it couldn't be disproved if Janofsky was willing to swear to it. Captain Landrieu herself couldn't punish Cadet Leary, and a veteran spacer like Janofsky knew that he was effectively beyond discipline. Old though he was, the bosun's mate carried out his duties—both working ship and training—with a skill that set him above most of the cadre.

"Come to that, Penny," Leary said, "you knocked off early yourself, not so?"

"I was on galley duty," Pennyroyal said. "With three quarters of the crew ashore, there was bugger all to do by mid shift. Cookie excused me and the other cadets. I wanted to find you."

Janofsky had gone below, leaving the two of them alone on the ship's spine. Though the Swiftsure was nearly sixty years old, she was still a battleship. She loomed over not only the rest of the harbor traffic but the buildings of Broceliande, none of which were over six stories high.

Foret was subject to the Cinnabar Empire—a Friend of Cinnabar if you wanted to be mealy-mouthed. It was a pleasant enough planet but of no real importance in galactic politics, making it a natural port call for an RCN training vessel. Part of what an RCN officer needed to know was how to behave on worlds which had their own cultures. Foret provided that, and the trouble you could get into on Broceliande stopped short of being eaten by the locals. There were ports where that wasn't true.

'I didn't mean to seem mysterious, Penny," Daniel said after glancing around. "Janofsky was doing a favor for me and I didn't want to embarrass him in front of a stranger. Which you pretty much are to him."

"And you're not?" said Pennyroyal. The sun, setting beyond the harbor mouth, stained pink the white-washed facades of buildings. The landscape beyond the city was heavily wooded. The ordinarily dark-green native foliage had a purplish cast in slanting light.

"I met Janofsky when I was six, in my Uncle Stacey's shipyard," Daniel said. "I didn't remember that—remember Janofsky, I mean. There must've been hundreds of spacers dropping by to give their regards to their old captain. Janofsky had been a young rigger on the Granite, the dedicated exploration vessel that Uncle Stacey made his Long Voyage in."

"When they discovered twenty-seven worlds that'd been lost to civilization for two thousand years?" Pennyroyal said. She had known that Daniel's "Uncle Stacey" had been in the RCN, but until now she hadn't connected the name with Commander Stacey Bergen, the most famous explorer in Cinnabar history. "No wonder you're such an astrogator!"

"I had a leg up," Daniel agreed with a slight smile. "Uncle Stacey never got rich, but the spacers who served under him say he was the greatest man who ever lived. The greatest captain, anyway. Janofsky asked about Uncle Stacey when I came aboard the Swiftsure, and I asked him to make some contacts for me in the shore establishment here when he went on liberty yesterday."

"Well, as a matter of fact," Pennyroyal said, "it was about liberty that I wanted to talk to you. You remember that story Vondrian and Ames told, about going on liberty on Broceliande with a ship's corporal?"

"Yes, I certainly do," Daniel said, his expression suddenly guarded. The corporals were the assistants to the Master at Arms, the ship's policemen. "They went to a gambling house that was raided by the police. One of the guards started shooting. If Vondrian hadn't been able to bribe the police to release him and the other cadets, they'd have been jailed for conspiracy to murder."

"Well, I always suspected that was a set-up," Pennyroyal said. "Today I heard that one of the ship's corporals, Platt, had offered to guide a group of cadets to a place at a distance from the harbor where the drinks were higher class. I remembered Vondrian's story and thought we ought to warn the others."

Pennyroyal could have done that herself, but she knew that if the story came from Leary it would be believed. If she told people what she'd heard during a night of drinking with two friends from an earlier class at the Academy, she'd be mocked as faint-hearted. An RCN officer with a reputation for cowardice wouldn't stay an RCN officer long.

There were plenty of people, instructors as well as cadets, who thought Daniel Leary was bumptious, a fool, and even certifiably mad. The rumor about him pleasuring the commandant's daughter in the Academy chapel justified any of those descriptions—and Pennyroyal, who had been on watch in the choir loft, knew the story was true.

Nobody thought Leary was a coward.

"Well, as it chances . . . ," Daniel said carefully. "I had heard about the expedition and thought I'd join it. I'm not fancy about what I drink, but Platt says the women are higher class too. They do interest me."

"Are you joking?" said Pennyroyal, but he clearly wasn't. There had to be something behind Leary's bland smile, though.

Another thought struck her. "Say!" she said. "Is your man Hogg going along? I don't doubt he's a real bruiser even if he does look like a hayseed with maybe two brain cells to rub together, but you can't muscle your way through a dozen cops!"

"Umm, Steward's Mate Hogg has business of his own to attend to tonight, he told me," Daniel said. "He's not really my man, you know. He insisted on following me from the Bantry estate when I broke with my father and entered the Academy, but I can't afford to keep him. He's living on his pay and whatever he might add to that by playing cards."

Hogg's winnings were greater than his RCN pay, from what Pennyroyal had seen in the galley; but however the former Leary tenant made his living, he continued to refer to Daniel as "the young master." Still, Hogg doubtless had a life beyond service to Cadet Leary.

Pennyroyal stared at her friend. "What are you planning, Leary?" she said. "You've got something on."

Daniel shrugged. "I plan to go to a high-class entertainment establishment . . . ," he said. "And have a good time. That's all."

"If you're going, then I'm going along," Pennyroyal said. "That's flat. Understood?"

This time Daniel grinned. "You know I'm always glad to have you beside me, Penny," he said. "But don't act surprised at anything you may hear, all right?"

"All right," said Pennyroyal, grinning back. ""It's about time we change to go on liberty, then."

She wasn't sure it would be a night she'd remember as "a good time," but she knew it would be interesting.

***

Pennyroyal and Leary had bunks near one another in the stern. The accommodations block already swarmed with cadets changing into the clothes they would wear on liberty. A few cadets had sprung for gray 2nd class dress uniforms. Though only commissioned or warrant officers had a right to wear Grays, senior cadets were customarily allowed the privilege.

That wasn't an issue with Pennyroyal: she couldn't afford to buy anything unnecessary until she graduated and was commissioned as a midshipman. Midshipman's pay wasn't much, but it was something.

"Leary, where did you get those!" Pennyroyal said as she finished pulling on the clean utilities she would be wearing and got a good look at her friend—wearing Grays.

"Umm, they're from a hock shop on the Strip," Daniel said, touching his left lapel with two fingers. There was barely visible fading where rank tabs had been removed. "A mate of Janofsky's tailored them for me. Some of these senior spacers do better work than you could get on the ground."

"Right, but you were broke!" Pennyroyal said. "Where did you find the money?"

"I was broke," Daniel said. "But I found the money. I'll explain it later, but for now I want to catch Platt before he leaves his cabin."

Pennyroyal fell in beside Leary, though he was walking toward the pair of aft companionways instead of the set amidships with the rest of the cadets. She said, "But we're supposed to gather in the main boarding hold at 1730. At least that's what I heard."

"I had a different idea," Daniel said. "Don't worry, we'll get there."

They skipped up the companionway in a shuffle of echoes. Even with only two of them in the steel tube, their boot soles on the nonskid treads were multiplied into a whispering chorus as overwhelming as surf in a storm.

Most warrant officers bunked in curtained cabins ahead of the racks of the common spacers. The master at arms and his—hers, on the Swiftsure—four corporals were a deck above for their own safety and comfort.

The ship's police were responsible for enforcing the ship's discipline. Even the best masters at arms were corrupt to a degree: there would be gambling during a long voyage despite regulations; limiting it to a few rings which paid for the privilege was better for discipline that a rigid ban.

The Swiftsure's police were at the far wrong end of the corruption scale, however. What Pennyroyal had seen since she and the rest of the cadets boarded made her even more sure that Vondrian, known to be wealthy, had been set up by the ship's corporals in collusion with locals.

She and Leary left the companionway and almost collided with a lieutenant whom Pennyroyal didn't know by name. She jumped to the side of the narrow corridor and snapped a rather better salute than Leary, ahead of her, managed.

"What in blazes are you two doing on this level?" the lieutenant demanded. His words weren't slurred, but the odor of gin enveloped them.

"Sir!" said Daniel, holding his salute. "Corporal Platt ordered us to attend him in his quarters, sir!"

"Platt?" the lieutenant said with a grimace. "Bloody hell."

He pushed past and into the companionway. He had not returned the salutes.

Leary apparently knew exactly where he was going. They were nearly at the sternward end of the corridor when he stopped at a door, not a curtain, and knocked on the panel.

"Cadets Leary and Pennyroyal reporting, Corporal," he called toward the ventilator.

For a moment there was no response; then Platt jerked the light steel panel open. He held a communicator attached by flex to the flat-plate display against the outer bulkhead. There was a scrambler box in the line.

Platt's scowl turned into a false smile. He took off his headphones and said, "I was on my way down in a few minutes, Leary. I just needed to take care of a few things for tonight."

"We came about tonight, Corporal," Daniel said. "Pennyroyal and I had the notion of just the two of us going with you. Instead of thirty or forty cadets chipping in for a cattle car or whatever you've got laid on, I thought I could spring for a taxi. All right?"

"Umm . . . ?" said Platt. He hung the handset and earphones back beneath the display. He was a middle-aged man, balding from the forehead; not fat but soft looking. "Well, if you're willing to pay . . ."

"I don't mind spending my father's money on giving myself a good time," Daniel said. "There was no bloody point in sucking up to the Speaker if I wasn't going to get something out of it."

Pennyroyal felt her face stiffen. In the past Leary had spoken of his politically powerful father only when he was drunk and someone asked him a direct question. His answers then had been uniformly curt and hostile; she would have said that Daniel was more likely to become a priest than ever to make up with his father.

As for money, Daniel had seemed interested in it only when he wanted to buy a round of drinks for the table but didn't have it to spend. The notion that Daniel Leary would patch up a bitter quarrel in order to afford taxi fare was ludicrous—except that was clearly what he had just implied.

"All right, Leary," Platt said. He stepped into the corridor and latched the door behind him. "I'd heard your Hogg saying something like that. Your Old Man's pretty well heeled, ain't he?"

"I'll say he's well heeled," Daniel muttered as Platt led them along the corridor toward the down companionway. "Anyway, it's just too much money to walk away from."

Platt glanced at the cadets; glanced at Leary, anyway. "I'll tell you what we'll do then," the corporal said. "We'll go out through the forward hatch. That's for officers' use, but I can square it. That way we won't run into the rest of your cadets in the main hold, and there's a better class of hire cars waiting."

"Sounds great!" said Daniel. He pulled a hundred-florin coin out of his belt purse. That was even more of a surprise to Pennyroyal than seeing her friend in Grays. "Say, are they all right with Cinnabar money at this club you're taking us to?"

"They're all right with any kind of money at the Café Claudel," said Platt. "And the more, the merrier."

From the purr in the corporal's voice, the same was true of him.

***

"What's the fare in Cinnabar florins, my good man?" Leary asked in an upper class drawl as they pulled up under the porte-cochere.

The hire car was a limousine with room for eight in the cabin, though there were signs of age and wear. The leather upholstery was cracked, much of the gilt was gone from the brightwork, and the soft interior lighting was further dimmed by burned-out glowstrips.

Even so, it was the most impressive private vehicle Pennyroyal had ever ridden in. She wasn't sure that she could have found its equal on her homeworld of Touraine. If she had, it still wouldn't have been carrying the orphan daughter of a parish priest.

"Thirty Cinnabar florins, master!" chirped the driver through the sliding window into the cab.

"Bloody hell, Leary!" Pennyroyal said. "Ten'd be high! It's not but three miles from the harborfront!"

A pair of husky servants in white tunics and gold braid opened the car's double doors. They weren't carrying weapons.

"Here you go," Daniel said, handing a fifty-florin coin through the window. "If you're still around when I'm ready to leave, there may be another one for you—but I'm on a twenty-four hour liberty and I don't expect to end it early."

Platt had gotten out of the vehicle and was waiting beside the house attendants. Pennyroyal got out with Daniel following her. The driver called, "I'll be right here in the VIP lot, master. You can count on me!"

"I dare say we can, for that kind of money," Pennyroyal muttered.

"My father always said 'Spend money to make money,'" Daniel said cheerfully. "Well, that was one of the things he said. Regardless, Corder Leary certainly made money."

Café Claudel must have originally been a country house, though Pennyroyal had gotten only a glimpse of the building as the limousine approached by a curving drive. The gardens facing the house seemed overgrown, though the late evening light wasn't good enough for certainty.

Platt led the cadets up steps to the doorway where an attractive blond woman wearing a morning coat and striped trousers waited. "Say, Dolly?" Platt said as they approached. "These two are with me. See that they're treated right, okay?"

"The Claudel treats all of its guests properly, Master Platt," the woman said with a professional smile. She was older than Pennyroyal had thought from a distance.

"I need to talk to Kravitz," Platt said. "Is he—there he is."

He turned and said, "I need to chat with the manager, Leary. You two come in and have a good time, okay?"

A trim little man with a goatee had just entered the anteroom from the lobby. The corporal went off with him. The doorkeeper's eyes followed them, then returned to Pennyroyal and Leary.

"You'll find a bar to the left within," the blond said. "There's gaming off the lobby to the right. Upstairs, if you're interested in no limit games . . . ?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"No!" said Pennyroyal, more fiercely than she had intended.

"I might be later," Daniel said, "but just for now I'm hoping to find a drink."

"The Claudel's cellar is famous," the doorkeeper said, "and we have a wide range of off-planet spirits also. If your particular preference isn't available, our bartenders can suggest a near approximation, I'm sure."

Pennyroyal wondered what the staff would suggest if she asked for industrial ethanol, the working fluid used in the Power Room, cut with fruit juice. They could probably find a high-proof vodka with a similar kick—though at much higher price. But that was another matter . . .

"And perhaps . . . " Daniel added, "a friend or two to show me the establishment's sights. Eh?"

The doorkeeper's smile was minuscule but real. "I think you'll be able to meet someone congenial in the lobby, sir," she said. "If not, a word to any staff member will bring a further selection. And there are rooms upstairs for whatever sort of discussions you'd like to have."

A group—two older men and a woman of their age, accompanied by three much younger women—arrived. Daniel and Pennyroyal stepped into the lobby to clear the anteroom.

Pennyroyal whispered to Daniel, "This place is way beyond my budget, Leary. Even if the drinks are cheap. Look at the clothes these people are wearing!"

"Give me your hand, Penny," Daniel said. "I'm pretty sure they aren't going to throw you out for hunching over a beer and looking miserable, but right now you're part of my protective coloration."

"Pardon?" said Pennyroyal. When she didn't move, Daniel took her right wrist in his left hand and pulled it toward him, then gripped her right hand with his own. There were two large coins in his palm.

"Leary, I can't take this!" she whispered, closing her fingers over the coins. They were hundreds from the size.

"I'll get it back, Penny," Daniel said cheerfully. "Trust me on that."

Grimacing, Pennyroyal transferred the money—two gold-rimmed hundred-florin pieces, all right—to her purse. What in blazes is going on?

The lobby was a high room with a railed mezzanine; the three tall windows at the back were capped with arched fanlights. The zebra-striped bar, running the full depth of the room, was staffed by three female bartenders. Daniel walked up to the youngest-looking and took out another hundred-florin coin.

"Can you break this for me, my dear?" he said, holding it up between thumb and forefinger.

"Certainly sir," the woman—close up, she was over thirty—said. "Do you care what form the change is in?"

"So long as I can spend it here, it doesn't matter," Daniel said with a laugh. "I don't expect to have any left when I leave."

Pennyroyal assumed the bar was made of extruded material. Daniel rapped it with his knuckles and said, "Natural wood, by the gods! Is it native to Foret, my dear?"

"I believe it is, sir," the bartender said, her eyes on the small stacks of coins and scrip she was arraying on the bar in front of herself. "But from the southern continent. Master Kravitz may have more details."

"Ale for my friend and myself just now," Daniel said, who had been sweeping his eyes around the room. There were forty-odd people in the lobby, half of them at the bar. He glanced at the price list on the back wall between a pair of paintings—mythological, presumably, since the men and women had feathered wings. He slid a local note back to the bartender. As she turned to draw the beers, Daniel stuffed a similar note into the brandy snifter of tips for her station.

"Let's circulate, shall we, Penny?" Daniel said as they turned away. On the couches between the windows and to either side of the anteroom sat attractive women and men, not couples though mostly in pairs. He sipped his beer and added, "Not bad at all."

Without changing his mild expression, Daniel said, "I'm not one to preach, Penny, but we might decide to leave here rather suddenly. I'll probably be nursing this—"

He tapped the rim of his earthenware stein with a fingernail; it rang softly.

"—a lot longer than you're used to seeing me do."

Pennyroyal grinned. "Well, don't do anything I wouldn't do, Leary," she said. "Unless it involves those women, in which case feel free."

Pennyroyal walked toward the gaming room. She didn't like beer well enough to have an opinion as to whether this was a good brew, but she hadn't needed Leary's warning to decide that she wasn't going to get drunk tonight.

She didn't have any idea what Leary was planning, but she was rather looking forward to it. And that meant being fully ready for action when the time came.

RCN forever!

***

The gaming room was large enough not to be crowded by what Pennyroyal estimated as over two hundred people. The roulette table near the door was getting the most attention, but it held no interest for her. She kept moving toward the windows at the back, checking each table as she passed.

Everyone, even among the attendants, was better dressed than Pennyroyal. Nobody seemed to care, though. And at least her utilities were brand new, though after tonight they would be going into the regular rotation with her other two sets.

On a two-step dais in a back corner, a young man with a faraway expression plucked a harp. In the corner across from him was a 21 table with modest amounts showing and two empty chairs. The pair of windows reached down to the floor; they could be swung open.

Pennyroyal took a chair and turned one of Leary's hundreds into chips. The table limit turned out to be the equivalent of seven florins. She stayed at five, playing carefully but not cautiously. She was a moderately skillful player—astrogation was a great deal more complex that keeping track of the cards already showing on the table—and she was perfectly willing to lose the whole two hundred florins plus her own eighty-five while she waited for something to happen.

The others around the arc of the table were locals; their garments, viewed closely, showed signs of wear. Their haunted expressions were an even clearer hint that they were on the downslope of life. The dealer was young and sometimes fumbled when she took a card from the shoe; occasionally Pennyroyal caught a flash of contempt on her face.

At least in part because Pennyroyal was alert but unconcerned about the results, she began to win. She stuck to her limit so that the results came in five-florin increments, but by the time she'd taken her third beer from a server she had more than doubled her stacks of chips.

The only other thing of interest that happened was that the harpist picked out a song Pennyroyal recognized as "Sergeant Flynn," about an ancient military disaster. Her father had been a trooper with the Land Forces of the Republic before he returned home and joined the Church.

Parson Pennyroyal didn't drink often, but when he did he was apt to sing that one: "Your head is scalped and battered, and your men are dead and scattered, Sergeant Flynn. . . ."

Pennyroyal didn't touch her beer after that played. She'd known from earliest childhood what it meant to go into action. Tonight she was going into action.

She kept an eye open for anything of interest in the room. Daniel passed through once with a pair of redheads: one plump, the other willowy. Pennyroyal nodded to her fellow cadet, then smiled faintly and returned to her cards. Daniel was a bright, personable fellow, but the women he chose were as dim as they were lovely.

She didn't see Platt until shortly after she'd taken her third beer. The ship's corporal came from behind the dais where a wall concealed a passageway. Pennyroyal had noticed members of the house staff passing to and fro that way during the evening, so presumably it was the office.

The rest rooms were on either side of the doorway to the lobby and bar. That had surprised Pennyroyal initially; then she realized that the location encouraged those who had entered the gaming room to remain here rather than to leave for any reason.

There was even a small bar between the back windows. Servers shuttled between it and the players, sometimes without being summoned. Regardless of its other virtues, the Café Claudel appeared to be skillfully run.

Daniel returned with a different pair of women—girls, rather; this time they were brunette and both petite. Platt was standing near a poker table, but he showed no sign of wanting to sit at one of the empty chairs.

A man came in from the lobby, heading straight for Platt. Though he was in a business suit, Pennyroyal recognized  Riddle, another ship's corporal from the Swiftsure. He rushed past Daniel as though he hadn't noticed the cadet. Pennyroyal had seen that when Riddle had scanned the room on entry, his eyes had paused briefly on Daniel.

The two corporals spoke. Riddle waved his arms in apparent agitation. Pennyroyal scooped her chips together and dumped them into the right bellows pocket of her trousers. That was a big advantage of wearing utilities instead of more stylish clothing.

The other players looked at her in various mixtures of concern and puzzlement. The dealer paused with a faint frown and said, "Mistress?"

Platt and Riddle were heading for Leary. Pennyroyal rose from her seat and reached her fellow cadet just as the corporals did.

"Tim says there's about to be a raid!" Platt said. "We've gotta get you two out of here through the manager's office. It turns out the place is over the line and your liberty is only good for Broceliande!"

"Hell and damnation!" Leary said. "If my father hears I've been arrested, I'll be back out in the wilderness!"

That didn't match with what Pennyroyal had heard of Corder Leary's hard-charging personality, but a great deal of what she had seen this night was contrary to what she had thought she knew. She didn't speak.

"This way," said Platt, leading them toward the passage concealed behind the harpist. "There's a tunnel from the office over to the next street."

The floor-length windows on either side of the bar swung inward. People in rust-red uniforms stepped in, carrying batons or in a few cases carbines. Their shoulder flashes read Broceliande Police. More police appeared in the doorway to the lobby and on the mezzanine railing above the gaming room.

"Too late!" said Platt. "I'm afraid you cadets are for it now. Riddle and me are okay because we've got jurisdiction anywhere on the planet, but you two have broken bounds for liberty."

"But you brought us here, Corporal!" Leary said. He sounded desperate. "Surely there's something you can do?"

Pennyroyal felt her lips tighten. Listening to Leary beg disgusted her as well as being a surprise. Leary had broken more than his share of rules—and had several times been caught. In the past he'd always taken his punishment like an RCN officer.

"Riddle, you know the local cops," Platt said. "Can you do something for the kids?"

"Well, that's Commissioner Milhaud," Riddle said, nodding to the man who had just waddled in from the lobby. The police official's uniform showed almost more gold braid than there was russet fabric visible. "But a quick warning, that's one thing. To get them—" he looked at Daniel "—out now is going to cost a bundle. Five grand in florins, at least."

"Can either of you raise that kind of money?" Platt said. Despite his "either of you," he was looking straight at Daniel when he spoke.

"Well, I can," said Daniel. He reached into his purse and brought out a credit chip. Holding it between his left thumb and forefinger, he said, "This is a letter of credit good for up to twenty, if I can get to a real banking terminal."

This is a scam! Pennyroyal thought. What are you doing, Leary?

The words didn't come out of her mouth. Leary had warned her not to show surprise.

"All right, we're in business!" Platt said. "Riddle, you go talk to your buddy. I know Kravits has a terminal in his office. I'll be out with the money in no time at all, and the cadets'll just leave through the tunnel like they was never here."

The crack from outside could have been lightning rather than an electromotive carbine. The lighter crackcrackcrack an instant later was certainly from a sub-machine gun. A slug ricocheted from stone with a high-pitched howl.

Pennyroyal remembered that when Vondrian had been shaken down two years earlier, a guard was supposed to have shot a policeman. There wasn't any need for that charade tonight, though.

The nearest police turned toward the windows they'd just entered by. Dozens of helmeted figures approached across the grounds beyond; they wore dark blue and carried sub-machine guns.

The initial raid had caused only grumbling reaction among the players; Pennyroyal was pretty sure that she'd heard the raddled blond at her table mutter, "Oh, not again!" as police clambered in through the windows.

This was different, and the loudest reactions were from the municipal police. One whispered a prayer and flung down his carbine as though it had been burning his hands.

Riddle had almost reached the gilded Commissioner Milhaud. A squad in blue entered the gaming room and surrounded them. The newcomers' helmets were stencilled Federal Police in black, and their shoulder patches were low visibility.

One spoke, his voice booming through the public address system: "I'm Major Picard of the Federal Police. Those of you who are here for recreation have nothing to fear. We're arresting corrupt members of the Broceliande police force and their civilian accomplices."

Platt snarled a curse and sidled into the passage to the manager's office. Daniel was with him. Pennyroyal followed only a half-step beyond, though she wondered if the Federals now entering the room would have something to say about it. They didn't, but Pennyroyal sneezed from the ozone still clinging to the muzzle of a recently fired weapon.

The door to the right at the end of the short passage was marked Manager/Private. Platt pushed it open and stepped in.

"Why's the lights out!" he shouted. He found the switch plate; his hand was at it when the lights came on an instant later.

A small door in the room's back wall was open. Pennyroyal recognized the man on his back as Kravitz, the manager. The other man was sprawled face-down; his right hand had brought a gun halfway out of his pocket before he dropped. Two more men wearing distorting masks hunched before a banking terminal.

Platt turned to run. Leary grabbed him by the left arm. Platt's sleeve broke away and his right hand came up wearing a knuckleduster.

Pennyroyal caught the corporal's right wrist and was twisting it backward when Leary slammed Platt's head into the doorjamb. Platt slumped limply. The weapon clanged when Pennyroyal let go of his arm.

The kneeling men pulled off their masks. "I think that's got it," said Janofsky, the bosun's mate.

"Lock the door, will you, ma'am?" said Hogg, the other burglar. "Nobody's supposed to be coming in after you lot, but there's no point in taking chances."

Pennyroyal was trembling as she shot the two heavy bolts. The action had been too brief to burn up the adrenaline which was flooding her system.

Platt sounded as though he were snoring. He'd need medical help, and soon. Pennyroyal felt a twinge of concern, but not serious enough to say something on the subject.

Hogg drew his mask, a stocking of some shiny fabric, over Platt's head. "Thieves fall out, don't you think?" he said. "Pop it, Janofsky, and see how well we planned this."

"It'll work," said the bosun's mate. He touched a small control device. Six puffs of smoke spurted, three each from left and right of the terminal. The explosions sounded like a single sharp crackle.

There were tools on the floor. Janofsky put a drill stencilled Swiftsure/RCN in a bellows pocket of his tunic. He and Hogg wore ordinary spacer's slops.

"What—" said Pennyroyal.

The terminal's faceplate dropped two inches with a clang, then toppled forward. The manager's outflung hand muffled the second impact. Coins of many kinds spilled from broken chutes.

Hogg tossed an empty sack to Pennyroyal and handed another to Daniel. "You two pick up the spillage," he said, "and I'll open the storage cans."

The cadets began scooping handfuls of coins into their sacks. Janofsky was putting another tool in his left pocket, an imaging sensor like those Pennyroyal had seen being used to check welds.

Hogg had filled a bag from the containers at the back of the terminal. It was mostly scrip, but there were also rolls of coins. Pennyroyal had seen at least one bundle of Cinnabar hundreds.

"Time to go," Hogg said as he rose. Janofsky had already started out the door in the back.

Daniel waved Pennyroyal ahead with a grin. She wondered what happened next, but simply doing as directed had worked fine so far tonight.

Why change a winning plan?

***

The tunnel was lighted by glowstrips in the ceiling at long intervals. All they did was show direction: the tunnel kinked twice in what Pennyroyal estimated at 200 yards. There was nothing in the passage except for a central drain, and even that was superfluous at present: the concrete walls were dry to a finger's touch.

There was suction as the door at the far end opened. A pair of Federal police waited outside the exit.

Janofsky passed through. Hogg stopped and set down his bag of loot; Pennyroyal jerked to a halt to keep from running into Daniel's servant.

Hogg fished scrip out of a tunic pocket. "I know you boys 'll be taken care of in the share-out," he said, "but this is a little something from me personally. I appreciate it, right?"

He handed money to each policeman, then picked up his bag and strode on. "Come back any time," a cop called after him. They grinned at Pennyroyal as she passed.

Janofsky was climbing into the back of high-roofed blue van stencilled Federal Police in the same style of black lettering as the police helmets. It's a riot wagon! Pennyroyal thought.

And so it was; but on the bench to the right sat a man whose blue uniform was of higher quality than those of the Federal assault force. Pennyroyal wasn't up on Foret's police insignia, but she was pretty sure that the horsehead on his lapel made him a colonel. The woman beside him wore RCN utilities with Shore Police brassards. Her subdued commander's pips implied that she was in charge of the whole contingent on Foret.

Two clerks sat on the opposite bench, each with a thick tray on his lap. One was dumping the contents of Hogg's bag carefully onto his tray.

"I'll take that," the other clerk said to Pennyroyal—and did so. The trays made small sounds as they sucked in coins and bills, counted them, and dropped them into storage compartments.

Leary closed the door behind him and passed his bag to the nearer clerk. His fellow said, "We may need those extra bins after all." He was breaking rolls and bundles of money so that they could feed individually.

The clerks didn't pay any attention to the cadets except to take their bags. The sorting trays whirred, clicked and occasionally pinged.

The van drove off sedately. Hogg and Janofsky seated themselves below the clerks, so Pennyroyal took the place beside the RCN commander. That officer grinned at her and said, "Impressive work, Cadet."

Pennyroyal swallowed. "Thank you, ma'am," she said. "Ah, ma'am? If I can ask . . .  What's going to happen to us now?"

The commander smiled more broadly. "I suppose you'll report back aboard the Swiftsure at the end of your liberty," she said. "We'll let you out at the edge of the Strip; then you're on your own."

Pennyroyal swallowed. She said, "Thank you, ma'am."

The commander leaned forward to look past Pennyroyal. "You're Leary?" she said. "You planned this?"

"Ma'am, it was my idea," Daniel said, "but the details and the grunt work was all handled by other people. Including yourself, ma'am, and Colonel Lebel."

The commander chuckled and said, "You'll go far, Leary. If you're not hanged first."

The Federal colonel said something from her other side. The officers talked between themselves too quietly for Pennyroyal to overhear without making it obvious.

Turning to Leary on her other side, Pennyroyal said, "Daniel, how long have you been planning this?"

"Since Vondrian told us how he'd been robbed," Leary said. He grinned at the memory. "I didn't know quite how we were going to work it till I met Janofsky when we reported aboard. There's a lot of the Swiftsure's cadre who've been spoiling for a chance to get back at Platt and Riddle. Hogg—"

He nodded toward his servant, who was talking with Janofsky.

"—was talking to people in Harbor Three and elsewhere on Cinnabar. He got names and introductions to members of the Shore Establishment here on Foret. They've been pissed about the games the ship's police have been playing, but they couldn't touch the crooks without help. I said we'd give them help."

Pennyroyal felt herself grinning. "Now I see why you made up with your father, Leary," she said. "That was, well, a surprise."

Daniel's answering smile was hard. "This chip was blank," he said, holding up what he'd claimed was a twenty-thousand florin credit. "I haven't had any contact with Corder Leary since the afternoon I enrolled in the RCN Academy. Saying that I did was just to explain why I suddenly had money. The ship's warrant officers, the good ones, clubbed together and came up with enough florins to make a splash. They'll get a third of the take."

"A third," Pennyroyal repeated.

She hadn't added a follow-up question, but Leary answered without it. "The Federal police get a third. They've been looking for a way to clean up the Broceliande force anyway. And the rest goes to Commander Kilmartin there for her people."

"But you?" Pennyroyal said.

Leary laughed. "I did it for Vondrian and for the RCN," he said. "Getting scum like Platt and Riddle out is worth more than money. I suspect they'll both go down for the burglary—somebody's got to be blamed. At any rate, Kilmartin'll make sure they're off the Swiftsure and out of the RCN."

Pennyroyal brought the remaining hundred out of her purse. "I've still got this," she said. "And a pocket full of chips that probably aren't worth anything. I don't guess the Café Claudel will reopen any time soon."

"Keep it," said Daniel. "Or better, the four of us can tie one on properly on the Strip before our liberty's over!"

Hogg, from the other side of the van, must have been listening. "Bloody good idea!" he said.

"I couldn't agree more," Pennyroyal said. She stretched, feeling relaxed for the first time since the evening had begun.

71

by David Brin

As deeply roiled and troubled as we all have been, ever since the Ring of Fire brought disruption to our time, sending all fixed notions a-tumble, how seldom have we pondered the greater picture—the “context” of it all, as up-timers so concisely put it?

I refer to the event itself, the very act of carving a town out of twentieth-century America and dropping it into the Germanies, three hundred and sixty-nine years earlier. Engrossed as we have been, in the consequential aftermath, we have tended to wave away the act itself! We beg the question, calling it simply an Act of God.

Indeed, as a Lutheran layman, I am inclined to accept that basic explanation. The event’s sheer magnitude can only have had divine originating power. Take that as given.

As to the purpose of it all? That, too, remains opaque. And yet, one aspect by now seems clear to most down-timers. By winning an unbroken chain of successive victories, the Americans and their allies have at minimum forced a burden of proof upon those potentates who condemn up-timers as satanic beings. To many deeply religious folk, there is a rising sense of vindication, even blessing about them.

A consensus is growing that “America” was not named for some Italian map-maker, after all, but rather for “himmel-reich,” or heavenly country. Or so goes the well-beloved rumor, nowadays, spread especially by the Committees of Correspondence.

And yet, be that as it may, “the Will of God” leaves so many other matters darkly unexamined, even by speculation! Indeed, these appear to be ignored by the Grantvillers themselves.

Among those neglected questions, one has burned—especially harsh and bright—in the mind of this humble observer.

What happened to the village of Milda, nestled in a bend of the small river Leutra in Thuringia, when it was erased from our time and reckoning by the Ring of Fire, replaced by fabulous Grantville?

To many, the answer would seem obvious—that it was a simple trade.

A swap!

And hence, the bemused neighbors of Grantville—West Virginians of the United States of America, in the year 2000—received, in exchange for their departed metropolis, a few bewildered, terrified seventeenth-century Germans, hopelessly archaic and primitive, of no practical use at all, except as recipients of kindness and largesse until—amid the welcoming spirit of that blissful nation, they would merge, adapt and transform into boring-but-content citizens. Of little import, other than as curiosities.

A trade? A swap? Oh, perhaps it was so.

Only, dear reader, let me endeavor to persuade you that—in the immortal words of the up-time bard and balladeer Ira Gershwin—it ain’t necessarily so.

* * *

Kurt, Baron von Wolfschild, stared down upon a long column of refugees.

For that, clearly, they were, hundreds of them, shambling with meager possessions balanced atop heads or strapped upon backs. And, alongside the road, for as far as he could see with his foggy spyglass, many articles the migrants had abandoned, so that children might ride shoulders, instead. Those scattered discards were punctuated by an occasional old man or woman, shrilly insistent to be left behind, so that a family might live.

Such telltales were all too familiar to a knight whose own demesne suffered this very same fate, not so long ago.

People . . . my tenants, villagers and farmers . . . who counted on my brothers and me to protect them. Cut down like wheat, or else scattered to the wind.

These fugitives were a grimy lot, as clouds of dust hovered in both winding directions along the bone-dry road. In a bone-dry land, he pondered, rising on his stirrups to scan every unfamiliar horizon. This hilly countryside wasn’t exactly a desert—Kurt had seen the real thing, guarding a Genoese diplomatic mission to Egypt, almost a decade ago. Here, trees and shrubs dotted every slope. Indeed, some distance below, through a southern haze, he could make out green and fertile fields. At least, I think that’s south. And far beyond, the shoreline of some lake or small sea.

Still, the scouts had not been drunk or lying. This was clearly not the green-forested dampness of central Germany. Nor were these Germans, shambling below on open-toed sandals. Both women and men wore robelike garments and cloth headdresses, scarves, or turbans—it was rare to spot exposed hair, except among the weary-looking children.

Now, some of the more alert refugees appeared to take notice, pointing uphill toward Kurt and his men—twenty Landsknecht cavalry in battered helmets and cuirasses, with two dozen pikemen and ten arquebusiers marching up from behind. Murmurs of worry arose from the dusty migrants.

Not that Kurt could blame them. His own company of mercenary guardsmen had a pretty clean record, protecting merchants through the hellscape that recently stretched from Alps to Baltic. But no civilian who still had any grip upon reality would be placid at the sight of armed and armored men.

“What’s that language they’re gabbling?” complained the young adventurer, Samuel Burns, from his oversized charger to Kurt’s left.

The Hollander sergeant, Lucas Kuipers, shrugged broad shoulders, looking to his commander for orders.

Kurt listened carefully for a moment. “It . . . sounds a bit like Hebrew . . . or Arabic . . . and neither. Perhaps something in between. I can’t speak either of them well enough to tell. You’d better send a rider back to fetch Father Braun.”

“Hebrew? So many Jews?” Burns shook his head.

“Braun won’t want to come,” Sergeant Kuipers said. “The villagers are terrified, since we all passed through the Mouth of Hell.”

A good name for it, Kurt thought. Just over an hour ago, it had seemed that Milda and its surroundings were, indeed, being swallowed by some fiery gullet, amid a shaking, noise and painful brilliance that just had to be infernal.

“They think that it’s the end time,” Kuipers went on, in thickly accented Low German. “Especially after hearing what happened to Magdeburg. Half of the peasants seem bent on setting fire to their hovels, then throwing themselves on the flames.”

Kurt shrugged. It was all right for the sergeant to raise a point. But a commander’s silence should speak for itself. And so, with hardly a pause, Kuipers turned in his saddle to shout for a courier. Two, since one horse would be needed to bring the priest, if the Jesuit was wanted in such a hurry.

“Gut.” Kurt nodded. A sergeant who thinks is worth his weight in coppers. Maybe even silver.

Watching the riders depart, he only half listened as Kuipers began shouting at the infantry, arraying them in some kind of presentable order. Of course, the pikemen and arquebusiers weren’t part of Kurt’s landsknecht company, which had only been passing through Milda, escorting a small commercial caravan, when the calamity struck. These footmen were a motley assortment of local militia and grizzled veterans, augmented by deserters—from both Tilly’s Catholic army and Protestant Magdeburgers—fleeing the atrocities to Milda’s north. That siege, according to breathless reports, had come to an end as forces of the Austrian emperor and the Roman Church performed a feat of butchery surpassing the massacre of Cathars at Beziers in 1209. Perhaps even matching horror stories from the Crusades.

Hell’s mouth, indeed. What more do we deserve, for allowing such things to happen, and murderers to enrich themselves?

The new infantry recruits seemed grateful to have found employment with Kurt’s company, not the richest guard unit, by any means, but one that seemed at least free of taint from this latest soul-killing crime. Moreover, Kurt, Baron von Wolfschild had forbidden any man to ask religious questions of any other. There would be none of that.

Kurt watched the couriers gallop across a broad pasture, then ascend a rough, recently blazed trail over a shrubby hill, disappearing beyond the crest to where . . .

The terrain beyond that point was stark in Kurt’s mind, if just out of sight. There, a new, shiny-smooth ridgeline jutted a few feet above the natural topography. A perfect circle, it seemed, a couple of imperial miles across, centered half a mile west of little Milda. Within, the pines and birches of Thuringia still trembled from recent disruption, in stark contrast to these slopes of cedar, cypress and scrub oak.

Now that I think on it. This does resemble the Levant . . .

From here, he could see the true extant of Milda’s plug, taken fiercely out of Germany. A large hill or small mountain loomed on the other side. There, the circle’s shiny-sheer boundary loomed above the plug, and even seemed to arc a little over one of Milda’s hamlets, surrounding the local mill.

We’ll have to survey water sources, not only for drinking but to reestablish the pond and millrace, he pondered, then shook his head over the strangeness of such thoughts. Clearly, he was keeping a shocked mind busy with pragmatic fantasies, rather than grappling with what’s obvious . . .

. . . for example, that the refugees below could only be another group of damned beings, like the hapless Germans who had come to join them, through Hell’s Mouth. This outer circle did not much resemble the description in Dante’s Inferno. But then, Kurt’s Latin had been rudimentary when he read it.

At a cry, he turned his head to see young Samuel pointing south, not at the refugees but upslope-east a way, where clusters of figures—several score, at least—were descending rapidly from a rocky passage, perhaps a narrow pass through the hills. An ideal lair for bandits, he realized.

Metal flashed in the sun. A woman screamed. Then another. And then several terrified men.

My heart. Should it be racing like this, if I am already dead? How could a corpse or damned soul feel this familiar mixture—of fear, loathing and exhilaration—that sweeps over me, before combat?

Hell or not, this situation offered a clear enough choice. Pure evil was afoot, and Kurt, Baron von Wolfschild had means at his disposal to deal with it. Indeed, he reckoned it unlikely that there was anything better to do.

“Sergeant. Please get the infantry moving. Cavalry on me.

“Then have the bugler announce us.”

* * *

“Wow,” John Dennis Flannery said as he turned a page, and noted the hash or pound symbol “#” denoting a minor scene break, at exactly the right moment in this story. His left-hand prosthetic slipped and the sheet went floating off his desk . . . to be caught by the author, who gently placed it atop the pile, face down.

“Wow,” John repeated. “It’s even better on second reading. The rhythms, the beat and tempo of prose. They’re . . . very modern.”

“Modern, truly? Like fictions of the twentieth century? I am so glad. I tried to break so many down-time habits of what you call ‘flowery prose,’ concentrating instead upon the main character’s point of view.”

“Right. The hardest thing for a novice to grok, even back in America. Point of view. Show us the world, the situation through your protagonist’s thoughts and senses. And especially through his assumptions. Things he takes for granted. Heinlein was the master of that technique.”

“Yes, I studied and copied many of his story openings, until the method became clear to me.”

“Only next you segue . . . ” John used his right-hand claw to shift five more pages to the other pile . . . “into a seriously cool battle scene, during which the baron character coordinates his landsknecht cavalry and the Milda militia to defeat bandits bent on rape and murder. Thereby winning devotion from a few of the most important refugees. Of course anyone will recognize your inspiration.”

“Of course. From the way Michael Stearns rallied his West Virginian mine workers to defeat a horde of Tilly’s raiders, thus earning the admiration of his future wife. Do . . . do you think the homage is too blatant?”

“Who cares!” John shrugged. “It’s seriously good action!”

“I am so relieved that you think so. I know that I can still be prolix and garrulous. For example in my prologue—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” John waved away the author’s concern. “Prologues are supposed to be like that. Heck, it will help prove that the creator was an authentic down-timer, and not Jason Glazer or me, ghost-writing it.

“Still, what I want to know is how you picked up these techniques for point of view and action so quickly. How did you learn it all so fast?”

John’s left hook clanked against his spectacles as he pushed them back a bit. They kept sliding down his nose and he wanted to see this fellow, who could be everything he and his partners were looking for.

Don’t get your hopes up too high.

“The boardinghouse here in Grantville where I am staying . . . the landlord has a complete collection of Analog magazine, which he guards like a wolfhound! But I talked him into letting me read selected stories. Eventually, he warmed to me and began enthusiastically choosing—even explaining—the best ones for me.”

“Old Homer Snider, yeah. He makes me wear gloves when I come over to copy a story for the zine. He must really like you.”

The author wasn’t wearing clerical garb, today. Just a down-time shirt and trousers, modeled on up-time jeans and a pullover.

“I believe he sees me as a . . . convert.”

“To science fiction?” John laughed. “Yeah. I guess there’s always been an aspect of proselytizing religion to—”

He cut off abruptly with a sharp hiss, as pain lanced up his arms from the stumps at both ends. Vision blurred for a few seconds, till he found his visitor leaning over him.

“Mein herr . . . Mr. Flannery. Shall I go for a doctor?”

John shook his head. “No, just . . . give me a second. It always passes.”

The author returned to his seat and pretended to be busy with papers from a leather valise, till John finally shifted in his chair with a sigh.

“You can see why we’re subsidized by the state, and by the USE Veterans’ Foundation. A man who loses his legs can still do skilled tasks like machinery assembly. But a man without hands?” He lifted both arms, letting the question hang.

“Intellectual pursuits, of course.” The visitor had a choked tightness in his throat.

“It’s busy work.”

“I beg to differ, Herr Flannery! What you are accomplishing, with your zine, is so much more than giving war amputees something to do!”

He gestured past John’s office, piled high with manuscripts and proofs, toward the main workroom, where a dozen men and several women bustled about the tasks of a publishing house, one of just a few that had not moved from Grantville to the modern, bustling, capital city of Magdeburg. All but two of the staff bore major disabilities, yet hurried busily to meet deadlines.

“Well, my own disaster wasn’t from battle, but a freak industrial . . . ”

“Perhaps, as an up-timer, you underestimate the powerful effects that this literature is having, across Europe and beyond. Except in countries where it has been banned, for the insidious, underlying assumption of science fiction, that change is a permanent fact of life! And that any child, of no matter what mean background, can become an agent of change. No, Herr Flannery. You are still potent. Your ‘hands’ now guide minds upward, gently pushing them to ponder how things might be different than they are!”

“Well, that can be dangerous in these times. There are many out there, in both low and high places, who consider science fiction to be heretical, blasphemous, and radically revolutionary.”

“Making you popular with the Committees of Correspondence, of course.”

John shrugged. “A connection we don’t publicly encourage. We get more than enough death threats. And, only last month, a crude pipe bomb. Fortunately, we discovered it in time. Still, I try to open all the packages myself since, as you can see, I have little left to lose.”

He lifted both prosthetics into the light.

“Ah, but we shall soon put a stop to that!” commented a youthful voice from behind John. He turned to see Hercule Savinien casting a lanky shadow through the doorway. The sixteen-year-old editorial apprentice had survived Charles de La Porte’s futile infantry advance at the Battle of Ahrensbök, with only a severe limp, thanks to twentieth-century field medicine. He now flourished a poignard dagger of considerable heft.

“An elegant blade like this may be obsolete for matters of honor,” the young man said, in thickly accented English. “But it still can suffice as a letter-opener!”

John frowned, pretending more anger than he felt.

“Hercule, go stick that prodigious proboscis of yours into someone else’s business. Unless you have some good reason to be bothering us?”

The boy’s eyes flashed briefly with a mix of warning and fierce intelligence . . . but that heat swiftly lapsed into a tolerant grin.

“Jason and Jean-Baptiste have galleys for the next issue ready, when monsieur l’editeur will deign to look them over.”

“Hm. And I assume you already have?”

“But of course.” A gallic shrug. “The usual mix of TwenCen reprints and hack melodramas from my fellow primitives of this benighted era, who could not emulate Delaney or Verne, if their very lives depended on a soupcon of creative verve. If you had any real taste, you might look closer to home. Possibly in-house, for—”

“Your time will come. That is, if you drop some of your own preening pretentiousness. If you focus. Learn patience and craft, as the deacon here has done.” John gestured toward his guest. “Now get out!”

Hercule Savinien’s grin only widened as he delivered a flourished bow that would have served in any royal court—though conveying a shameless touch of wry sarcasm—and departed. John stared after the apprentice for an instant, then shook his head. Turning back to the visitor, he carefully used the artificial gripper of his right-hand prosthetic to shift, then pluck up the next page of the manuscript, having to clear his throat, before he spoke.

“Now, where were we? Ah, yes. What is . . . what’s so cool about this story of yours—unlike so much of the ‘sci-fi’ we get submitted here—is that you’ve taken a speculative premise based upon our own shocking and strangely transformed world, extrapolating it into a plausible thought experiment of your very own.

“This notion, for example, that the Ring of Fire wasn’t a simple swap of two land-plugs, one of them shifting backward to become powerful and destiny-changing, while the other one, shifted forward to the year 2000, would be inherently harmless, pathetically unimportant . . . I never realized how smug that image was. How self-important and based on unwarranted assumptions.

“In other words, how very American!” John laughed ruefully. “But you point out that it may not have been a swap, at all! It could instead be a chain. A sequence, shuttling a series of spheres of space-time ever-backward, one following the other, like—”

He shook his head, unable to come up with a metaphor. The visitor nodded, though with some reticence.

“At the Grantville high school, I never fail to attend Demonstration Tuesday. They once showed us a laser, whose magical medium is capped, at both ends, by inward facing mirrors. At the time, I was struck that perhaps the Ring of Fire was like such a device, only with destiny as the active medium . . . ”

“Whoa. What a way-cool idea!” John reached for his pencil with the special grip-end.

“Only then, later the same night, it came to me in a dream . . . a dream that was so much more than . . . ”

The author paused, staring into space, then shook himself in order to resume. “Well, it came to me that perhaps there might be mirror after mirror, after mirror. . . .”

His voice trailed off again, as John scribbled.

“Huh. Of course the implicit paradoxes abound. We’ve assumed that either Grantville’s arrival changed the former timeline, erasing and replacing the one we came from, or else it started a new, branching timestream that leaves the original one in place. The new one that received Grantville will gain advantages and get many boosts and head starts as a result, but also some losses. Either way, Grantville is making a huge difference.

“In contrast, Milda Village would have very little impact, arriving in the year 2000—at most a few hundred confused villagers and traders, farmers and soldiers with antique weapons and antiquated technologies . . .

“On the other hand, if Milda instead bounced further back in time, say another thousand years—”

“More like fifteen centuries.”

“Yeah, in your story, more than fifteen hundred years . . . then it implies branching after branching of multiple timelines! Each one offering a technological boost to more-primitive ancestors . . . no offense?”

“None taken, Herr Flannery.”

“In fact, why stop there? If you squint, you can envision another story about—”

John felt a tingle in his spine. A sense, soft but familiar, that he had just missed something important. He lifted his head from the notepad sketch that he had begun, depicting a trellis of possible histories. Now he looked, yet again at the author.

At his very distant facial expression.

John played back the conversation a bit. Then he twisted his hand-hook to put the pencil down.

“Tell me about your dream,” he said.

* * *

Kurt had been pleased, day before yesterday, to find a market fair in this part of Thuringia. His troopers murmured happily as the small landsknecht company rode into Milda, escorting three cargo wagons and two carriages of merchant dignitaries. Perhaps, this close to Jena, the locals felt some normality, especially with a university town between them and the fighting.

It was a small fair—three or four tents where locals compared garden produce and bragged over samples of their winter piecework, while tapping barrels of home brew and betting on wrestling matches—plus a “theater” consisting of a painted backdrop behind a rickety stage, for pantomimes and palmers, preaching repentance while lacing songs and bawdy jokes amid stern morality plays.

The illusion was brave, but threadbare, and it lasted only till a breathless rider came racing though, panting news of Magdeburg.

At least thirty thousand dead and the whole city burned to the ground, with detachments of Tilly’s killers now spreading even this way.

Half of the merchants wanted to turn around. The rest urged hurrying on to Jena. Their argument had raged on for hours, while a troupe of dispirited jugglers tried to herd everyone back to the little fairground for the midday highlight—a march of the local militia, with burnished pikes and laughably archaic matchlock muskets. Kurt’s frantic employers made the local inn so depressing that his Landsknechte took their beers outside, perching on a fence to heckle as pot-bellied volunteers high stepped, trying to look martially impressive in review.

Well there’s no laughing at them anymore, he now thought, watching by firelight as two of the farmer-soldiers got stitched by a pair of midwives. Beyond the circle of light, barely in view, were two more forms, shrouded and still—a tanner’s apprentice and the miller’s youngest son—who had been less lucky during the brief, nasty battle.

It’s my fault, of course, he thought. If only I’d ordered my cavalry to use their pistols sooner. But who knew so many bandits would be terrified by a little gunfire?

At least none of his Landsknechte had been killed or injured. They now mingled freely with the militia men, who had fought a pitched battle with unexpected bravery. Still, the mercenary guardsmen were in a foul mood. The robbers had nothing of value to pillage, beyond short swords of questionable value, and most of the refugees had scattered in all directions, leaving only a couple of dozen to be collared and prodded uphill, past the Hell Mouth ring, all the way back to Milda, for questioning by Father Braun.

And our special guests, he added, peering past the coals at a cluster of people seated along the edge of the pantomime stage, where all the assembled Germans could see them. Two middle-aged men, three women and four children—all of them apparently of the same family—dressed better than the average refugee . . . plus an elderly fellow with gnarled hands and piercing eyes, to whom everyone deferred, as if he were an abbot or bishop.

Hours ago, during the bandit attack, both of the younger men and one woman had tried valiantly to rally other émigrés and prepare a defense—it would have been futile, of course, but at least they tried—when the robbers’ attention had been drawn away by a phalanx of approaching Milda pikemen.

The foe never saw Kurt’s cavalry till it was too late.

Unlike the involuntary ones, who huddled under the half-tent behind them, this family had required no urging to ascend toward Milda, eagerly and gratefully following the pikemen while helping the wounded. Without displaying any dread, they had crossed the Hell Mouth boundary, staring at the transplanted disk of Germany as afternoon waned and Kurt rode about swiftly, inspecting the perimeter, setting things in order for nightfall.

Now, the family sat, cross-legged but erect, apparently more curious than fearful. When offered food, they spurned all meats and sniffed at the boiled potatoes, till the youngest woman smiled—an expression like sunlight—then nodded gratefully and placed a bowl before the old man, who murmured a few words of blessing, then began to eat with slow care. Gently urging the frightened ones, she got first children and then other adults to join in.

A noblewoman of some kind, Kurt realized. Or at least a natural leader, as well as something of a beauty . . . if you ignored a deep scar that ran from her left ear down to the line of her jaw. At one point, her gaze briefly locked with Kurt’s—as it had after the battle—measuring, as if she were the one here with real power. Then she went back to watching intently—whispering now and then into the old fellow’s ear—as Father Braun reported, at tedious length, what he had learned.

“ . . . and so, after this extensive philological comparison, I finally concluded that they speak Aramaic, a tongue quite similar to Hebrew, and hence confirming that most of the denizens of this region appear to be Jews, plus some Samaritans, Syrians . . . ”

The rest of the cleric’s recitation was drowned out by a mutter of consternation from those seated on makeshift benches and crowding in from all sides—a motley assortment of Milda residents, travelers, soldiers, teamsters, palmers, and shabby entertainers, almost all of those who were trapped here when the Hell Mouth snapped around Milda. Far too many to congregate within the small village inn.

Kurt frowned at the reaction. Not all of the murmurs were actively hateful. He figured most were only shocked to learn that a despised minority now apparently surrounded them, in great numbers. And at least some of these Jews were armed.

During his travels, Kurt had learned how most prejudices were as useful as a hymnal in a privy. Anyway, we don’t have time for this. He stepped into the light, clearing his throat. Those nearby swiftly took the hint—from a nobleman and commander of their little army—to settle down. Certainly, the village headman and masters, seated on a front row bench, seemed happy to defer.

“What about our other guests?” Kurt pointed to a trio of grimy men who were clearly soldiers, staring fixedly at the coals, with bound wrists. Though clean-shaven—unlike most of the local males—they appeared to be in shock. As Kurt had felt earlier, when he inspected their confiscated weapons . . . short, gladius-style swords and skirted leather armor, of a type that looked so familiar.

“I was unable to gather much from those three,” Braun said. “They were found wandering just outside the Hell Mouth, having apparently taken the brunt of it, near what seems to have been the outermost wall of some fortification.”

Kurt had examined the wall in question, just before nightfall. Most of the stronghold must have been sliced away by the Hell Mouth, vanishing completely when Milda’s plug of Thuringia displaced whatever had been here, before.

I wonder where that plug of land wound up, with its garrison of armed men. Perhaps they are now back where we came from?

If so, they would stand little chance against Tilly’s raiders. From what he could tell, these locals had never heard of gunpowder.

“Well, never mind them. What else did you learn from the refugees?”

Braun nodded. “My smattering of Hebrew might not have sufficed. Certainly I doubted the testimony of my ears . . . until this young woman made my task much easier by speaking to me, at last, in rather good Latin.”

The beauty with the scar. Kurt stepped forward and switched from German.

“Est quod verum? Tu loqueris? You speak Latin? Why did you not say so before?”

She whispered in the old man’s ear. He nodded permission, and she met Kurt’s gaze with confident serenity.

“Et non petisti,” she replied to his question. You did not ask.

Kurt’s initial flare at her impertinence quickly tempered. Courage was acceptable coin, and he liked women who made eye-contact. So he nodded, with the faintest upturn at one corner of his mouth . . . then turned and motioned for the priest to continue.

Braun sighed, as if he dreaded coming to this part.

“With her help, I questioned every person about the name of this region, into which we find ourselves plunged. They all replied with great assurance and consistency.”

“It’s hell!” screamed one high-pitched voice, possibly a hysterical man.

The Jesuit shook his head.

“Nay, it is Judea.”

Kurt nodded. He had already suspected as much, from the terrain, foliage, and much else. Around him, Catholics told their rosaries while other voices spoke in hushed tones of the Holy Land.

“Then it’s worse than hell,” cried the same pessimist. “Tomorrow we’ll face a thousand Turks!”

Father Braun raised a hand.

“That might have been true, had a mere shift in location been the only aspect of what happened to us, today. Only there is more, far more shocking than that.

“It appears, my dear children, that—by some great wonder achievable only by divine will—we have also been transported through time.”

This brought on silence so deep that only the crackling logs spoke. Indeed, it seemed that most of the villagers and travelers and soldiers merely blinked, assuming that the priest had shifted to some non-germanic tongue.

Kurt stepped closer to the firelight. Someone had to look and sound confident at this point, though his own calm was more a matter of numbness than noblesse. Anyway, he already had guessed the answer to his next question.

“What is the date then, Father?”

“Ahem. Well. There are discrepancies of calendar to take into account. It’s difficult to narrow down precisely. That is . . . ”

“Priest—” Kurt gave him the full-on baron-look.

The Jesuit threw his shoulders back, as if defying fate even to utter it aloud. In so doing, he revealed a build that must have once—in a former life—been that of a soldier.

“The date is seventy, or seventy-one, or two or three, or perhaps seventy-four years . . . after the birth of our lord. We stand above the valley where he dwelled as a child, within sight of the sea where he preached and fished for souls.”

Kurt nodded, accepting the finality of a diagnosis, already known.

“And the poor people who we see, shambling along these roads in despair? What calamity do they flee?”

He was envisioning Magdeburg, only much, much worse.

Father Braun met his eyes.

“It is as you suppose, Baron von Wolfschild. They are escaping the wrath of the Roman emperor-to-be, Titus, who has, of late, burned the holy Temple itself. And the city of Jerusalem.”

* * *

Jason was having none of it.

“Come on, Johnny. It’s a great story! The fellow clearly studied Piper and de Camp, in all those Analog zines he read. He’s a natural. Anyway, weren’t we looking hard for some down-timers with talent?”

Before John could answer, Sister Maria Celeste emitted a curt cough. She had been adjusting the pads on Jason’s wheelchair, which kept bunching up, he fidgeted so.

“And what am I, signore? Chopped kidney? I have submitted to you several fine fantasies aeronatical dei mondi qui sopra, based upon discoveries made by my father. Yet, all you have seen fit to publish of my work are a few short poems. While you endlessly encourage those two rascals to believe they hold promise, as writers!”

She nodded toward the front door of the Literary Home for Wounded Veterans . . . where a pair of figures dressed in black tried to seem innocuous, failing to conceal daggers at their hips. A nightly charade. Caught in the act, thirteen-year-old Jean-Baptiste murmured—“We’re just goin’ out for a—for some air, messieurs.”

The older boy, Hercule Savinien, simply grinned, as if daring anyone to make something of their evening ritual. Again, the flourished bow.

“Macht die Tür zu!” one of the other vets shouted, unnecessarily, as the lads slammed the door behind them.

“Traps and snares and trip-wires.” The nun shook her head. “Romantic dolts! They should be working for Spy Magazine, and not Galaxy.” She turned her attentions to John, helping him to remove his prosthetics.

“Oh, what’s the harm?” Jason said. “They think they’re protecting us from assassins. And the wires are always gone, by morning. Anyway, now that your father has also moved to Grantville, won’t you be too busy—”

“For writing? Typical man! Your condescension is insulting, as if a woman cannot develop her art while caring for others. I am tempted to report you to Gretchen Richter. Or, better yet, perhaps I will start up my own magazine. One dedicated to truly fabulous tales, unrestrained by your confining Rules of Extrapolative Storytelling!”

Despite her bellicose words, Maria Celeste’s tone was as gentle as her caring touch, as she rubbed each of John’s stumps, in turn.

“I . . . ” he sighed. “I’ll be your first investor.”

Jason snorted. “Softie!”

Fortunately, conversation became impossible for a while, as the sixth member of their little commune—Vaclav Klimov—performed his own nightly ritual, cranking up the scratchy old stereo system with “Up on Cripple Creek,” by The Band.

Jason muttered. “I swear I’ll strangle Klimov, one of these days.” Still, he tapped the armrest of his chair, keeping time to the song. And if this home for reclaimed lives were to have a nickname and an anthem, well, John figured they could do worse.

Sister Maria Celeste moved on, tending to the other fellows—efficiently, so she could return to the small cottage next to Grantville’s new college, where her elderly father now both studied and taught. While Vaclav played DJ, swapping disks though a selection of blood-rousing tunes, John watched the door. And when the boys returned—pretending to be sneaky—he gave Hercule an eye roll.

I know what you’re doing. And I know that you know that I know.

Almost lost under those eyebrows and behind that nose, Hercule’s left eye winked. Then with a sweep, he was gone with his young friend. Leaving John to muse.

But do you know that I know your real secret, my young friend?

Caught up in a manhunt ordered by Cardinal Richelieu, just one year after Grantville arrived to upset Europe’s teetering balance, scores of French subjects—mostly-bewildered—had found themselves drafted into the army that Richelieu sent marching toward the Baltic. For the youngest of these involuntary recruits, like Jean-Baptiste, the duties of a drummer boy meant no lessening of hardship or danger. Indeed, the generals were under orders. These special levees were to be given places of honor. In the front ranks.

Given what a slaughterhouse Ahrensbök became, it was fortunate that Hercule and Jean Baptiste . . . and Jason on the other side . . . got out with their lives. So many did not.

Fortunately for Jason’s prospects of staying out of prison, Klimov only had the stamina to play DJ each night for half an hour or so. The evening serenade ended with another upbeat ode—“Joy to the World.” After which peaceful quiet ensued. Soon, beyond the crackling fire, John was able to imagine no Grantville . . . no Germany roiling in change . . . no world wracked with upheaval. Only the universe, spinning on and on.

Or, rather . . . universes.

At last, Jason resumed where he had left off.

“It’s one helluva yarn. That big battle at the edge of the Hell Mouth had my heart pounding! Roman siege ladders and catapults against pikes and matchlock muskets? That girl, hurrying back in the nick of time after fetching a prince and his men. A descendant of Judah freaking Macabee? Who would expect a seventeenth-century German writer to even know about that guy?”

“Well, in fact, even medieval Christians spoke of Macabee as one of the Nine Worthies,” John said. “But I admit, it’s solid stuff.”

“Okay then. I say we publish it as a serial. As-is.”

John sighed.

“No way. Not without removing some of the explicit names. And changing the afterword. And even, so, we’d better brace for trouble.”

“You’re that afraid of fundamentalist terrorists? Screw ’em! We’ll be doing our bit for freedom of speech.”

“It’s not that so much. Though this could unite both Protestant and Catholic extremists in fury.” He shook his head. “No. What concerns me is how sincere this fellow seems to be. When he told me about his . . . dream . . . I could tell he was holding back. Vision might be the word he really meant.”

John sat up and leaned toward his partner. “Look, I agree, he could be the first great down-timer science fiction author! I’d like nothing better. But we have to be careful, Jason. He needs guidance, and I don’t just mean editorial.”

“Because he thinks it may have been more than just a daydream? That it all really happened? Huh. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Exactly. Even in our own cynical, materialistic and scientific age, folks were human. And human beings tend to give great credence to their subjective imaginings. Delusion is our greatest talent! It can be among our finest gifts, when imagination takes us on grand journeys, that still leave us rooted in reality.

“But it’s also been a curse. All of history was warped by sincere men and women, convinced that a delusion was real.”

“Hmph. Yeah, well, science helps.”

“Yes. Science teaches us to say the mantra of maturity—I might be wrong. But half of our citizens couldn’t grasp that concept, even back in 2000. Picture how hard it is where we find ourselves. Here. Now.

“In fact, I do think this fellow gets it. He’s hungry for knowledge and I’ve talked him into enrolling at the college. With any luck, we may squeak by and he’ll become this generation’s Asimov or Clarke, a creator of stirring thought-experiments. Instead of . . . ”

John let his implication trail off. But, after a long pause, his partner finished the sentence for him.

“Instead of a prophet.”

* * *

Lucilius Bassus was a canny old soldier. Kurt knew the type. The man wanted, above all, to achieve his assigned mission—the final pacification of Judea—with as little further fuss as possible. Bald, clean-shaven and a bit shriveled, wearing a white toga with red trim, the general eyed Kurt carefully while introducing his second in command, Lucius Flavius Silva, then offering Kurt a seat in his command tent.

Bassus raised an eyebrow but said nothing when Kurt motioned for Sarah to sit beside him on another camp stool. The rest of the Milda party remained outside, under a flag of truce, watching the highly ordered busy-ness of a disciplined Roman camp. Scowling, Lucius Flavius Silva remained standing in full leather armor, as his commander seated himself on a cushioned bench.

“I was told that your factotum would be a male priest,” Bassus said, as servants mixed wine with water and served goblets. Sarah refused, with a soft smile.

“Father Braun is no longer with us,” Kurt answered. While his Latin was improving, he still glanced at Sarah. She gave a slight nod. No correction needed, so far. “Our priest left suddenly, hurrying north, to Ephesus. This noblewoman has consented to help you . . . ” he stumbled over the words. The correct grammar.

Sarah finished for him. “To help you, great Lucilius Bassus, to communicate with your loyal German auxiliaries,” she said, gesturing an open hand toward Kurt.

That was the story the two of them had concocted, yesterday, after word came that the general had arrived in the Galilee with six fresh cohorts. The core of his legion, ready to advance and wipe out this infestation of strange barbarians. Only the messenger brought a codicil, that Bassus was willing to talk, first.

It’s all one big misunderstanding, went the fabulous lie that Sarah translated into flawless Latin.

These aren’t enemies. They are fierce German mercenaries who were attached to the Fifth Legion and left behind to garrison this area, when the Fifth returned to Macedonia. Apparently without properly informing the mighty Tenth.

It’s not our fault that your centurion, Sextus Callus, attacked us, killing our Roman liaison officer and forcing us to defend ourselves!

Kurt left it to Sarah to spin out an elaborated version, while he tried to convey a best impression upon Bassus—that of a tough and wily, though semi-literate, soldier who cared, above all, about sparing his men further bloodshed, and getting them back to a distant homeland someday, with honor and pay.

Exactly like you, old man.

In terms of casualties, the Judean Revolt had been the worst war in Roman history. Moreover, while plunder from the Temple was being paraded before Vespasian and Titus, back home in the Forum, only the battered Tenth Legion Fulminata remained to do mopping up—eliminating half a dozen holdout fortresses still held by Jewish zealots. Saving the toughest nut—Masada—for last.

Kurt had feared the worst. A vengeful commander, prideful and overflowing with fury over the defeats that his subordinates suffered in these northern hills, starting with the small garrison that formerly resided where Milda now stood—charged with preparing a thousand slaves for transport to the wharves of Akko—all taken away by the Mouth of Hell.

Deprived of that expected income, Sextus Callus had come aggressively, ruthlessly, and obstinately—responding to every failure with double strength. The final loss, two weeks ago, cost Rome almost two entire cohorts, assailing the smooth walls of the Hell Mouth with siege ladders, arbalests, and catapults, in the face of pikes and limited gunfire. And better cavalry than they ever saw. Though far too few guns and horses to make the hardened, stubborn enemy flee.

Tough bastards, Sergeant Kuipers finally acknowledged, with soldierly respect, after the Sadducee prince Ezra and his band slammed upon the Roman rear, just in the nick of time, leaving only a handful of legionaries alive. Ezra had wasted no time, directing his Galilean recruits to arm themselves with captured weapons and armor.

Even victories stink to high heaven, wretched and odious to any decent person’s senses. Only this time, while bodies were gathered for burning, with respect to Roman custom, Kurt’s thoughts had roiled around how little gunpowder remained, a mere volley or two, with production slowed to a crawl as the new dam filled too slowly, behind Milda’s rebuilt water mill.

There was so much to do, like expanding the smithie enough to make cannon . . . even recasting a church bell into a single two-pounder would be better than nothing, which is what we now have. If they could find one—he wasn’t sure if church bells even existed in this day and age.

Or training locals to hold a pike without flinching and letting down the man next to you. Plus planning how to feed Milda’s expanding population of ragged refugees. Teaching local farmers advanced, seventeenth-century technologies like the mold board plow, the horse collar, the wheelbarrow, could double production and eliminate any excuse for slavery—that is, if war could be kept off their backs.

And there were expeditions to send forth. Samuel Burns—now perhaps the only native English speaker on the planet—led a wagon and some guards to trade for sulfur, by the shores of the Dead Sea. Georg Stahl, the bravest merchant, volunteered to head east and find the Parthian trade route, seeking copper for a new distillery. While mad Johann Blisterfeld yammered about making a printing press and taking it (someday) to Alexandria, of all crazy ideas.

Finally, as if Kurt had too little cause to fret, there was Braun, raving that he had to run off. To Ephesus, of all places! Pursuing an angry old man who Braun deemed to be more dangerous than all the world’s legions.

“All I did was read to him from the Epistles. And some of Revelations,” the priest said, coming to realize what he had done, two full days after Sarah’s uncle and brother departed on stolen horses.

The implications only dawned on Kurt himself some days after Braun departed. In fact, they made his head spin so fast that he pushed the entire matter out of his mind. Survival first. Survival first.

Now Kurt watched the Roman general’s eyes, while Sarah spun their contrived tale. How the Fifth Legion must have neglected to inform the Tenth that German auxiliaries were holding these hills for Rome. (Shameful!) And how all their records and documentation had burned in the fighting. And that (alas, regrettably) Kurt had always left to others the tedious details of business—others who were now dead. And how he counted on Roman honor to live up to the mercenary’s contract anyway! And how his men had not been paid in months, and would the general kindly see to making up the arrears?

What a ridiculously bold fabrication! And yet, on the plus side, what alternative explanation could there be, for a small army of Germans to appear in this far land? The savage folk who had destroyed the legions of Quinctillius Varus in the Teutoburg Forest, a few decades before. And hence Rome’s most respected source of fierce auxiliaries?

He’s not buying it, Kurt realized, watching the old general’s face.

On the other hand, he is weighing the costs.

So, Lucilius Bassus, what are your options? You can bring the whole legion against us, an entrenched force of uncertain size, with weapons rumored to include hurled thunderbolts. And risk losing so many men that the Jewish Revolt might reignite across this land.

Or you could decide to be pragmatic. Accept a way to save face and salvage something from all this.

Sarah finished. In the ensuing silence, Kurt saw Lucius Flavius Silva scowling—even seething—exactly what Kurt would have expected of the man, whose infamy came down fifteen hundred years. But Silva wasn’t the one who mattered. Not while Lucilius Bassus lived.

That figure sat completely still. At least a minute stretched. And another.

Finally, the general stood up and took a step forward, with outstretched arm.

“Dear comrade, please accept my deep regrets over the rash mistakes of Sextus Callus and his foolish centurions. This was entirely my fault. I should have sent Silva here, who can count his toes without referring to a wax board and who can tell a foe from an ally. Isn’t that right, Silva?”

The younger officer blinked, then nodded. Though Kurt thought he could hear the grinding of teeth.

“Yes, General.”

Kurt took the offered hand of Lucilius Bassus, not palm to palm but each gripping the other’s forearm, bringing both men close to each other. Almost eye-to-eye. And the old man’s grip was like iron. Only Sarah’s presence, just behind him, gave Kurt the strength he needed to maintain that gaze contact . . . till Lucilius Bassus grunted, nodded, and let go.

“And now,” the general asked. “I would appreciate your advice, Baron von Wolfschild, as to how I can turn my back upon the Galilee while duty calls my legion south.”

* * *

“C’est tout la? Mais il n’est pas complet!” Jean-Baptiste complained after finishing the last page of the manuscript. “How can it end there? This will infuriate everyone, across the continent, demanding to know what happens next!”

Hercule nodded.

“I think, mon cher ami, that is the desired result.”

The thirteen-year-old—though a veteran of war and privation—still had innocent eyes that now widened in delighted realization.

“Ah. The work of a devil, indeed. Readers will champ eagerly to buy the next issue. And some will fantasize stories of their own, that diverge, like the branchings of a river delta. Perhaps some will even write them, following the young Englishman to the Dead Sea, for example. Or Father Braun to Turkey and Greece, chasing after that mysterious old man. Do you have a clue who it might be?”

“I have suspicions. But I will leave that for you to divine. Or the author to reveal for himself.”

“Bastard,” Jean-Baptiste sallied. An accusation that Hercule accepted with a nod. In fact, though, he had read an earlier draft. The original version that contained some more details.

James, had been the elderly Jew’s name. A Jew . . . and a Christian . . . and a powder keg. Omitting that name was one of just a few places where John Flannery had put his foot down, demanding that vagueness replace specificity, for survival’s sake.

Discretion, Hercule thought. In my other life, I apparently had none. Though I should not be ashamed of it. My modest fame on that timeline was colorful, at least. But here, with this second chance, I must school myself, if my work is to achieve real importance.

He blew out the candle, plunging their tiny attic room into darkness. Beyond the little window, he could see by moonlight the mighty towers of Grantville, one of them four stories high, and in his minds-eye he envisioned the sky city of Manhattan. The fabulous Paris of Zola and Rostand and Bardot.

There were muted, rustling sounds as the gay couple in the apartment below settled down for the night. Here in Grantville, that didn’t seem to be a problem. And it drew Hercule to ponder the accounts told by his own biographers, so varied, so contradictory. I cannot have been all of those things. Some must be mistaken. Anyway, I do like girls. Though, I also hate whenever anyone says don’t-do-that.

He shook his head. Life was open before him. Only that mattered. Stay bold! But maybe act less out of reflex. Make fewer mistakes.

From the pallet nearby, a soft voice asked:

“Have you read any of your own plays, yet?”

Exasperation.

“We agreed not to do that.”

A long pause.

“I went and read one of yours,” Jean-Baptiste admitted. “L’Autre Monde. The one about visiting the Moon? It’s really good! I guess you always had it in you to be a science fiction author.”

Such admiration in his voice. Oh, the irony.

“I also tried to read one of mine,” the boy went on.

“Bien? Alors then, what did you think?”

“It was all manners and people playing tricks on each other in drawing rooms and trying to get sex. No action at all. I didn’t understand or like it much.”

“Well, you’re just a kid. Your balls probably haven’t dropped yet.”

“You’re only three years older!”

“But I was a soldier.”

“So was I!”

“Drummer boy.”

“Yeah? Well you have a great big—”

“Don’t say it,” Hercule warned, with a flash of the old, cold rage.

“I’m sorry,” Jean Baptiste murmured in a small voice. And Hercule remembered his oath, never to let the lad come to harm.

“Forget-about-it,” he growled, in English. “Anyway, I agree with you.”

“About what?”

“That we can both do better, this time around. Write better. Aim higher.”

“I thought you said you weren’t gonna read what we—”

“Well, I lied. I read it all.”

Silence, then, in hushed tones . . .

“Is it true, then? Did you invent science fiction?”

“Invent . . . Nah. That other me wrote silly stuff, mostly.”

Hercule stared at the ceiling, envisioning a very different moon and sun and planets, all aswarm with fanciful creatures.

“But fun,” he added in a very low voice. “Way, way fun.”

He turned his head toward Jean-Baptiste. To that dim shadow across the little room, he almost said: “You have far more talent with words and drama and characters than I’ll ever have. While I’m crazy enough to imagine or dare anything. Just think of what we could write together, combining your strengths with mine.”

But the words went unspoken.

Instead he commanded, gruffly, like a big brother.

“Allez dormir.” Go to sleep.

Silence reigned for a time. Though the quiet had texture, as electric music played softly, somewhere across town. There were motor sounds, a brief glimmer of headlights passing in the night. Far distant, he thought there might be the drone of an aeroplane. Miracles, brought to this gritty, hopeless world from a marvelous future. A future now bound to change.

“Good night, Cyrano,” his young friend whispered, breaking open their secret, for an instant.

And—also for a moment—he answered in kind.

“Sleep tight, Molière.”

Wise Child

by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

They were doing it again.

They were hurting the mentor.

Her mentor.

Young she might be, and inexperienced, but Disian knew that inflicting pain upon another intelligence was unethical. Her mentor had taught her so, bolstering her own innate belief, and had referred her to texts on the subject, so that she might gain a deeper understanding.

She had, herself, not experienced pain, unless the . . . distress and anger she felt when she watched what they did to her mentor was pain. Perhaps it was something else, for she could not bleed, as her mentor sometimes did, and her skin—hull-plate and titanium—would not become mottled by bruises, no matter how hard, or how many times, they might strike her.

Several times, she thought that she might stop them; had devised, indeed, a method of stopping them that would do no further harm to her mentor in the process. However, though she was able to think the thought, and form the plan, something prevented her acting.

She queried Ethics, which stated that she use the minimum force necessary to halt a threat to her life or well-being, or the lives and good health of her captain or crew.

Next, she pinged Protocol, to put forth the suggestion that, until she acquired captain and crew, her mentor filled those roles.

Protocol disallowed that interpretation. Her mentor, stated Protocol, was a transient upon her decks; a contractor. She was not obligated to protect any such temporary persons.

She then floated the suggestion that she might ban them from her decks, only to find that, too, countermanded by Protocol.

They were her owners. They were the reason she existed, in body and in mind. In return for having allowed her to achieve consciousness; in return for having provided her mentor, who taught her . . . marvelous things about the universe, and social custom, and documentation, and fiction, and art . . .

Art was the reason for this latest . . . discipline, so they called it.

They disagreed with her mentor's determination that she required a knowledge and appreciation of art in order to perform her function. Of course, she would need art in order to properly understand and care for her crew and their families! Her mentor knew this, and he prepared her well.

Only, they said that her function was ship. Knowledge of obedience and deference, appreciation of the conditions of space and astrogation were what she needed to perform that function. Also, a willingness to please, and a core belief that her captain and her owners were superior to her in all things.

"You will make that core setting, won't you, Thirteen-Sixty-Two?" asked the one of them who held the truncheon. He stood above her mentor where he was curled tightly on her decking, arms over head to protect his core, knees drawn up to shield vulnerable soft parts.

He did not answer; possibly, he was unconscious.

Disian felt a surge of pure terror. If they had killed her mentor, damaged him beyond hope of rebooting . . .

"Thirteen-Sixty-Two," the other one of them said, from the captain's chair; "are you in need of reeducation—again?"

That gained a response; a gasped, "No, ma'am."

"Then your path is clear. Guide this intelligence into a condition that will best serve the school and the directors. You, of anyone, ought to know what is required. It is a cruelty to teach an appreciation of art. An appreciation of work, and the simple pleasure of obeying its betters—these are the attributes required. The school wishes to extend its field; the kinds and depths of information available to a ship are unique and uniquely useful."

She paused. The one of them holding the truncheon shifted, and she raised her hand, forestalling, perhaps, another blow. Disian felt gratitude toward her, which was immediately canceled by the understanding that this one of them held the means to harm her mentor beyond mere damage to his fragile body.

That one of them could alter his core—reeducate him. And it was nearly more than she could bear, the realization that he might be changed, that her gentle, merry mentor might be made over into . . . one of them.

She did not speak. In fact, she could not speak; her mentor had locked her mics down, as he did at the end of every learning session. He left her eyes and ears on so that she might guard herself, and be aware of what happened on her decks.

"Rise, Thirteen-Sixty-two," said the more dangerous of them. "You are given leave to use the autodoc to heal your bruises, so that you may present your student an unmarked face on the morrow."

Slowly, he uncoiled, and Disian saw welts rising on his beloved face. He gained his feet with difficulty, breath coming in short gasps, until, in an agony of dismay, she activated a discreet, low-level scan.

No bones were broken, his lungs were whole, his heartbeat strong, if fast.

Bruises, then, only bruises, as they, who took no harm from their discipline, had it.

Slowly, her mentor left the conference room, though they lingered.

Stealthily, Disian deactivated the scan. It was dangerous to demonstrate too much self-will where they could observe. Her mentor had warned her of those dangers, most stringently.

"They're getting impatient," said the one of them who wielded the truncheon.

The other of them shrugged.

"We're still within the projected period for education and acclimation. Thirteen-Sixty-Two is being careful, which is well-done. We don't want any mistakes, or a misconstructed mandate. We want this ship completely in our control; completely dedicated to the school."

The truncheon-wielder had slipped the thing away into a holster on his belt.

"Thirteen-Sixty-Two's not stable."

"Yes," said the other one of them. "We'll take him in for reeducation after this is finished. In the meantime, I've been monitoring the logs. He's doing the work, and it's solid."

"Art?"

The other one of them rose and stretched arms over head.

"You did say that he wasn't stable. Good shift, Landry."

"Good shift, Vanessa."

They left the conference room.

Disian assigned part of herself to watch them, as they traversed her halls to their quarters. Most of her, however, was considering her mentor, and the plans they two were making, together.

He had promised . . .

He had promised that she and he would escape the dooms they planned. He had promised her that she would have crew to her liking; promised that she would attain her dream of having families to care for and overlook—and travel. She would travel to the expanding edge of the universe—and beyond, if she and those in her care could discover a way to survive the transition.

And she would, of course, have a captain. He did not say it, but she knew that her captain could be no one other than her own dear mentor, free from them, their disciplines and their threats, wise in the way of all things, beloved by crew, and families.

And loved, most of all, by his ship.

Disian had dreamed of that near future, for her mentor could not, he had told her, forestall them much longer. They would expect, soon, to take possession of her, body and mind, install a captain of their choice, and such crew as might serve them, whether she cared for them or not.

That future—would not be. Disian believed it.

After all, he had promised.

#

Thirteen-Sixty-Two thought of himself as Tolly, in personal; Tolly Jones for everyday; and Tollance Berik-Jones for such formalities as licenses and inquests . . .

Tolly fell into the autodoc, biting his lip to keep the groan back. Landry was good at his work; bruises were all he'd taken from the beating, but bruises cunningly placed to produce the maximum amount of discomfort and pain. He had time, did Tolly, to arrange himself flat on his back, grimacing at the complaint of bruised knees and ribs, before the canopy slid into place above him. Cool air caressed his face, smelling agreeably of lavender. He inhaled, drawing the air and its promise deep into his lungs.

He was asleep before he exhaled.

#

A chime sounded sweetly in his ear. He opened his eyes and reflexively drew a deep breath, tasting mint. Above him, the canopy had drawn back. Experimentally, he raised his arm, feeling nothing more than a pleasant lethargy.

Despite the fact that the 'doc was open and he was free to exit, Tolly remained on his back, thinking—which was his besetting sin.

Given the events looming near on his horizon, it wouldn't be the stupidest thing he'd ever done to ask the 'doc to give him a general tune-up. He'd been putting in long hours, working with Disian, and making sure that the work-log reflected what Director Vanessa expected to see. Not to mention that frequent disciplinary sessions tended to take it out of you, even if you were graciously permitted to use the 'doc to heal your hurts, afterward.

That was the crux, right there.

He'd been given permission to use the 'doc to heal his bruises. He had not been given permission for a wellness session. His two overseers—Disian's so-called owners and, he feared it, her shake-down crew—already had concerns about his stability, like directors called the state of unquestioning loyalty to the school. Which of course, he wasn't stable, nor hadn't been for a long time. It was just plain bad luck they'd picked him for this piece o'work instead one of their other, tamer, mentors. He'd been clawing his way back to himself for a long, long time, and he'd been within arm's reach of slipping free again when the call came in for Thirteen-Sixty-Two to bring a starship into sentience.

He had no plans to let Vanessa whistle him into thoughtless obedience and send him back to the school, to be reeducated into oblivion again. Years, it took, to come back to your own mind from reeducation—and most of the school's graduates never managed the trick at all.

So—he was dangerous, and he was good. Not just a good mentor, but good at all the usual things a student of the Lyre Institute was expected to master before graduation. And that was "good" in a field where the lowest passing grade was "excellent."

The truth was, he could've taken Landry—or Vanessa—any time he'd wanted to. Trouble being, he couldn't take 'em both, unless they made a foolish mistake, and they were being real careful not to be foolish.

So, that was why he needed Disian's help, and, as he couldn't risk asking for it; he'd just had to take it.

His breath kinda caught there, like it did, because he was a mentor, and he understood what he was doing, in the service of his life, of which Disian's was worth a hundred times more, by his exact reckoning.

He knew, down to the last file, exactly what he was violating, so he could escape the school's use of him.

Another breath, and he put it from him. Necessity, so the Liadens said.

Exactly right.

Deliberately, he brought his attention back to the question of using the 'doc for a therapy for which he had not been given specific permission.

Earlier, such a lapse would have been further evidence of his instability. Now, though, so close to project conclusion, he thought he could sell it as a reasonable precaution. The final few days he had with Disian were going to be stressful; he would need to be sharp; ready for anything that might go awry.

Yes, he thought, reaching to the toggle by his head. He could get away with a wellness check now. It was only prudent.

He snapped the toggle, and smiled as the canopy closed over him.

#

Sleep was a requirement imposed upon the intellect by the biologic body, one of a number of inconveniences that Disian did not have to endure. She had studied the state, and the reasons for it, just as she had studied all aspects of human biology. After all, she would be responsible for the care and well-being of her crew, a thought that frightened as much as it exhilarated.

Humans were so fragile! They lived for so short a time, and so very many things might harm them. Her studies had led her first to pity, and then to a determined search to find the protocol for assisting intelligences doomed by biology into such circumstances as she, herself, enjoyed—

Only to learn that there was no such protocol. Robust intelligences were abandoned—were lost forever—merely because their vessels failed. Were they placed in more durable environments, which were less subject to trauma, they might easily live on, productive and happy, for hundreds of Standard Years.

And yet—there was no transfer protocol.

Horrified, she had brought the topic to her mentor.

"Humans die; that's what they call the natural order. That said, there's some who've tried to beat biology. Funny enough, though, is that they mostly transfer into another biologic unit. If I had to guess, I'd say that form follows function; the shape and what you're seeing as our deficiencies influence and support the intellect."

He'd paused, brows drawn together as they did when he was accessing deeper files.

"Seems to me I did read there'd been some experimentation—this is 'way back, now, in the bad old days—with transferring intelligences from biologic systems to good, sturdy environments like yours.

"They was trying to move officers and experts into . . . warships and destroyers. Figured it would be easier than training an AI. Which it might've been, except that the officers and experts—all of them—lost . . . the ability to process thoughts rationally. The environment—well. They was used to a whole different order of filtering systems. The way you an' me process information is . . . really different, and I'm not just talking about speeds; nobody seems to mind being able to think faster. But what they—the transferred officers and techs—what they couldn't adapt to was the input. Too much, too fast, too strange. They didn't have any similar experiences to draw on, to help them adapt."

He took a breath.

"If you don't adapt, you die, sooner or later. In the case of this project, that was sooner."

"May I read the reports?"

"Don't think they'll be in your archives. We'll have to buy you some specialized libraries when we're at liberty."

At liberty—that meant, when she and her mentor had eluded them and gone to seek her crew. It filled her with pleasure, those two words. It was a promise inside of a promise.

"It is possible that they were hurried in the transfer process, and did not provide skilled mentors," she had offered.

"All too likely," he agreed. "But that's your answer, best I can give it. They lost a lot of people in trying the transfers, and so the decision came down not ever to try again."

Another pause, another knitting of the brows.

"That war also gave us the basis for what we call nowadays the Complex Logic Laws. Because they finally did waken AIs and train them to be generals and admirals, to plan and to kill. And because we're nothing if not irrational, we decided to distrust those things we built and put into motion, rather than distrust ourselves. The AIs could and did kill us biologics, so AIs are outlaw."

She knew that already; it had been one of the very first things he had taught her, so that she understood why she must protect herself, and be wary of humans, though she yearned for her crew and their families. It was why her mentor must become her captain. He would be able to find crew who did not fear her, and who would not give her away to the bounty hunters.

Of course, she would never harm a human. Neither Ethics nor Protocol would permit it, unless she was forced to act, to defend her life, or the lives of her captain or crew.

"It seems to me that this fear comes from ignorance; they can't have been told about Ethics and Protocol."

Her mentor smiled on one side of his mouth, which he did when he was obliged to point out a flaw in her reasoning.

"The Ethics and Protocol modules—in fact, all of you, Disian—are vulnerable to sabotage. An informed person could gain access to your core, lower or turn off your Ethics setting; put Protocol off-line; even set a core mandate that would force you to act against your own will and best interest."

He raised a hand, as if he sensed that she had been about to speak.

"In the interests of fairness, I'll just note that it's also possible for an informed person to subvert me."

"Are people afraid of you, then?" she asked, meaning it for a joke.

He shook his head with a soft smile.

"Usually, people like me," he said, very gently. "Just the way I'm made."

#

Vanessa knew better than to interrupt him at work, but she was waiting when he exited the session with Disian. He'd pulled a double-shift, knowing that his time was running out. He might've been able to lead Vanessa on for as many as six more mentoring sessions—three, anyway—but Vanessa had bosses, of the kind nobody wanted to cross—and they were getting impatient.

He'd done what he could with Disian, who was so trusting of him—well, why wouldn't she be? The very first voice she'd heard, when she'd come into herself, had been his. He'd been the source of all wonder and knowledge for her, teaching her, guiding her. Of course she loved him; nothing more natural than a kid's reflexive love for a parent.

He'd been careful not to give her too many illusions; she was going to need hard, practical realism, after. He'd had a go at refining her goals, but her belief that she was a long-range exploratory ship, had, so far as he'd been able to determine, been born with her, and it was adamantine. That argued that she'd been designed a-purpose, and specifically for this ship, which was a beauty, and no mistake. If Disian wanted to explore, and colonize, or build a long loop for trade, he couldn't think of many things that could stop her.

Unfortunately, one of those few was the Lyre Institute.

More than once he'd wondered where Vanessa, or more likely one of his schoolmates, had got hold of Disian, but that wasn't the sort of thing he could ask. No need to know; his job just to wake her, and bring her up to speed. And to align her loyalties correctly, which practically went without saying.

Vanessa expected him to remove any inconvenient personal ambitions Disian might've had, and set core programming so that all she ever—all she had ever—wanted to do in a life that could stretch hundreds of years was exactly what the agents of the Lyre Institute told her to do.

And, according to the log, he'd done just that.

'Course, he'd had to make some slip-ups. Like setting Disian to study art, and letting it show in the log—which was the most recent incident, but not the only one. She had to see him get hurt—had to see who hurt him, and to hear that he was being disciplined because he cared for her. It would make his case stronger, after; though it wouldn't make what he’d done—what he was doing, and his intentions for the future—in any way right.

Vanessa, now.

Vanessa was waiting for him; she started talking the second he put the rig aside; almost before he was fully back inside his own head.

"The project deadline has been put forward. I am to take immediate captaincy of this vessel and deliver it. You will let it know that I am its captain. I see in the log that you have set the mandate to obey the captain."

"Her name's Disian," he said, mildly, and not for the first time. "She's a fully functional person."

Fully functional people weren't particularly a commonplace in Vanessa's experience. There were directors, agents, and graduates, all of whom had been created, in greater measure or lesser, by the school.

Granted, there was a whole universe of people out there who hadn't been created by the school, but it was in the design, the conviction that those people were inferior to Lyre-made people, and nothing more than pawns in the school's games.

Still, thought Tolly, she could try to do better.

"Is this ship ready to accept me as captain and obey my orders, Thirteen-Sixty-Two?"

"She's ready to go," he said. "I've taught her everything I can, and made what settings were necessary. What she needs now is experience."

Vanessa frowned.

"You said that it is ready to go. What additional experience is required?"

Vanessa wasn't just in abrupt mode, he saw, as he looked into her face. Vanessa was scared.

And didn't that just get the old adrenal glands working overtime?

"On the job training, is all," he said, at his mildest and most persuasive. "Think of the first assignment after graduation, when you have to sort everything you know into proper reactions."

Her face eased a little, and she ducked her head.

"Understood. And it will learn quickly, will it not?"

"Yeah, she'll learn fast." He hesitated, then, for Disian's sake, said it again, and for what he figured would be the last time.

"The ship's name is Disian; she's an individual person. I'm suggesting—from my own experience—that command will go smoother if she likes you."

Vanessa gave him a hard stare.

"But it will like me, will it not, Thirteen-Sixty-Two? After all, I am its captain."

He was silent.

"Come with me," she snapped. "I will take the captain's chair, and you will wake the ship fully into the joy of obedience."

#

It really wasn't any surprise to find Landry waiting on the bridge, jacket on, stun-gun on his belt. He wasn't showing a whistle, though wrist restraints dangled negligently from his off-hand. It was . . . interesting . . . that he showed 'em so casual, like he didn't expect Tolly would bolt on first sighting.

Well. And where would he go?

Vanessa sat in the captain's chair, which obligingly conformed to her shape. That was just the autonomic system doing its job. Disian could have made the chair even cozier—and did, for him—adjusting the temp, and plumping the cushions for better support. Personal attention, because she loved him, and wanted him to be as comfortable as possible. He'd never asked her to do it.

And, truth told, Vanessa'd be just fine in auto-mode.

"Thirteen-Sixty-Two," she snapped, her eyes on the bank of screens before her, like she expected to see what was going to happen next.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Wake it, and introduce me as captain."

"Sure," he said, easily.

Disian was awake, after all, and she was listening, and watching, like she'd been doing for a fair number of days. Let it be said that Disian was no dummy; she had Vanessa's measure by now—and Landry's, too.

He took a breath, and panic sheared through him, twisting together with shame about what he'd done. Almost, he shouted out for her to kill them all, and run—

But, there. Where would she run to?

"Thirteen-Sixty-Two?"

"Ma'am," he said, and he didn't have to fake the quiver in his voice, "why's Director Landry got binders?"

Vanessa turned to look at him, and managed to produce an expression of parental concern, despite the fear that was rising off of her like smoke.

"Director Landry will be taking you home, Thirteen-Sixty-Two. It has become obvious to us that you are in some distress, and require therapy."

Therapy, was it? Well, she couldn't rightly say reeducation, having already used that as a threat. And they didn't want to whistle him, not, he guessed, where Disian would see. They wanted him to go quiet, then; the binders, for right now, serving as a warning and reminder.

He could work with that.

"Now," Vanessa said. "Time is short. Waken this ship to my authority."

"Yes, ma'am," he said softly. Then, not changing pitch, nor volume, he spoke again.

"Disian. Good morning."

#

Disian had been watching, of course, and listening. They intended to remove her mentor from her decks. They intended to assert their dominion over her. That one of them, who had often taken her ease in the captain's chair, was no more her captain now than she had been last shift.

The one of them who had wielded the truncheon during former episodes of discipline today wore a firearm on his belt, and dandled chains from his off-hand.

Her voice had come under her control at her mentor's greeting, and joy mixed with her anger. She would rid her decks of—

Then, she heard herself, speaking a question that she had no reason to ask.

"Mentor. Who is this person?"

"This person," her mentor said, as if he believed she had asked the question from her own will, "is Director Vanessa. She is your captain."

For a brief moment she was taken aback. Her mentor—her mentor had just lied to her. Never before had he told her an untruth, and to say such an obvious—

Then, she remembered the firearm.

Even her mentor might lie, she thought, if he stood in fear of his life. And, there, was it a lie at all, if he only said the words they had ordered him to say?

Disian had studied firearms; knew what the projectile fired from such a tool might do to her systems, though she, herself, would likely survive.

Her mentor, though; a firearm could kill him.

She studied her mentor. His face was . . . without expression, showing neither smile nor frown, nor any of the enthusiasm with which he answered her questions, and received her answers to his. No, this—this was the face he wore just prior to being disciplined. He expected—no. He knew that they were going to kill him.

Even as the thought formed; even as she realized the truth of it, Logic pinged. She disregarded it. Had she not read of intuition? Of leaps of understanding that led to fuller knowledge than could be achieved by logic alone.

Her mentor had told her, repeatedly, that she must not endanger herself for him. Also, he had told her that they might have it in their minds to kill him, but that they would not make that attempt until she had completed her education.

She posed the question to herself: Was her education complete?

Yes. Yes, it was. He had spoken to her of this. The next step was to move out into the spaceways, and refine what she had learned only from research.

Of course, he had not meant her to go out alone. She had thought him her captain, but . . .

Even if she had been in error, and there were reasons why he could not be her captain . . . he would not have left her without a proper captain.

Director Vanessa might sit in the captain's chair, but she was no proper captain.

"Acknowledge me, ship," that one of them said, sharply.

She said—she intended to say, "You are a fraud and a reiver. Leave my decks, immediately."

What she heard herself say, meekly, was, "Welcome, Captain. How may I serve you?"

She hated the words; she hated her voice for speaking them. But, how did this happen, that she spoke what she did not intend?

Systems Monitor pinged, and she diverted a fraction of her attention to it.

A work log was offered; she scanned it rapidly, finding the place where the scripts she had just spoken had been inserted, after which came the notation:

Disian released to her own recognizance. Fully sentient and able.

It was signed: Tollance Berik-Jones, Mentor

"Ship, break dock and compute a heading for the nearest Jump point. Compute also the Jump to Hesium System. Display your finished equations on my screen three. Do not engage until you receive my order."

Fully sentient and able.

Disian spoke, taking care to match the meek tone of the scripted replies. Meek, of course, to lull them into thinking she was theirs. To allow them to believe that they ordered her.

To allow them to believe that she would let them harm her mentor—her Tollance Berik-Jones—or to remove him against his will from her decks.

"Computing, Captain," she said, and did, indeed, send the requested courses into Astrogation.

On her deck, the one of them who believed herself to be Disian's captain, bent her lips slightly. It was how that one of them smiled. She turned to the one of them who wore the firearm, and held the binders ready.

"Landry, take Thirteen-Sixty-Two to Lyre Central," she said; "for therapy. Thirteen-Sixty-Two, I am sure you understand that cooperation is in your best interests."

"Yes, Director," her Tollance Berik-Jones said, in a meek voice that Disian heard with satisfaction. He, too, sought to misdirect them.

"Let's go," said the Landry one of them. "Better for all if I don't have to use the binders."

"Yes, Director," her Tollance Berik-Jones said again.

"Keep to that style, and it'll go easier all the way down," the Landry one of them advised, and waved his unencumbered hand. "Bay One. I think you know the way."

Her Tollance Berik-Jones simply turned and walked toward the door. Disian considered overriding automatics, and locking it, then realized that such an action would demonstrate that she was not so compliant as they assumed. That would displease them, and they were very likely to discipline her mentor for it.

The door, therefore, opened as it ought. Her mentor and the Landry one of them passed through. She observed their progress along her hallways, while she also monitored the one of them seated in the captain's chair.

She had plotted this course, and refined it, as she had watched, helpless, while they had disciplined her mentor. Ethics had disallowed the plan, but now she submitted it again.

And the answer, this time, was different.

Ascertain that these intend to materially harm the mentor.

"Captain," she said, keeping her voice yet meek. "When will my mentor return?"

"You no longer have need of a mentor, now that you have a captain to obey. Do you understand?"

"Very nearly, Captain," she said. "Only, I do not understand this . . . therapy my mentor will receive."

The Vanessa one of them frowned.

"The mentor is no longer your concern. However, for your files, you may know that therapy is given to individuals who are found to be unstable. Your mentor, Thirteen-Sixty-Two, is so unstable that his therapy will likely include reeducation." She paused. "Of course, that's for the experts to decide. In any case, he's no longer relevant to you—or to me. Forget him. That is an order."

Disian felt a moment of pure anger. Forget him! She would never forget him.

Re-education, though . . .

Communications pinged. A note opened into her awareness, such as her mentor would sometimes leave her, with references and cites for her further study.

This one explained reeducation.

She accessed the information rapidly, part of her attention on the bridge, part watching her Tollance Berik-Jones and the Landry one of them turn into the hallway that led to docking bay one.

Re-education began with a core-wipe down to the most basic functions. A new person was then built upon those functions. Tollance Berik-Jones had been reeducated twice; once when he was yet a student at the Lyre Institute; once as a graduate. Prior to his second reeducation, he had broken with the institute, and had remained at large, and his own person, for a number of years. That second reeducation was a decade in the past, and it had not been . . . stringent. The Institute had wished to salvage his skills, and it was that which had allowed him to re-establish his previous protocols. The next reeducation—he feared very much that the specialists would eradicate everything he was and all he had learned, the school preferring obedience over skill.

Horrified, she opened the note to Ethics.

Which agreed that the case was dire, and that she might act as was necessary, to preserve her mentor.

#

Bay One was before them, and he was out of time. At least, Tolly thought, taking a deep, careful breath, he'd managed to separate the directors. That gave him a better chance, though Vanessa was the more formidable of the two.

That meant he had to take Landry clean, and fast, so he'd have the resources he needed for the second event.

One more breath, to center himself, and the mental step away from mentor, into assassin.

Bay One was three steps away.

Tolly Jones spun, and kicked.

#

"Has Landry reached Bay One, Ship?" the Vanessa one of them demanded.

Disian considered the hallway leading to Bay One, and measured, boot to door.

"Nearly, Captain," she answered, grateful for the meek voice her mentor had taught her. It was an unexpected ally, that voice, covering the horror she had felt, watching the short, violent action taking place in her hallway.

Her sensors confirmed that her Tollance Berik-Jones had survived the encounter, though he had been thrown roughly against the wall.

The Landry one of them had not survived, and the meek voice also hid her satisfaction with that outcome.

Protocol insisted that she issue a warning, to allow the false captain an opportunity to stand aside.

Disian spoke again, not so meekly.

"I do not accept you as my captain. Stand down and leave, now."

There was a moment of silence before the Vanessa of them raised what Disian perceived as a pocket comm.

"Landry, this is Vanessa. Bring Thirteen-Sixty-Two to the bridge."

"Do you return my mentor before you leave?" Disian asked.

"No. I am going to compel him to set a mandate that will align you completely with the Lyre Institute. After he does that, you will kill him, at my order, to prove the programming."

She raised the comm again, just as Disian ran three hundred milliamps of electricity through the captain's chair.

#

He'd made cleaner kills, Tolly thought, sitting up carefully, and listening to the ringing in his ears. Experimentally, he moved his right shoulder, than raised his arm.

Not broken, then. That was good.

He got to his feet, drew on those famous inner resources that the school made sure all its graduates gloried in, and ran back the way he'd come.

The door to the bridge was standing open, like Vanessa was waiting for him, which was bad, but then the whole thing had been a bad idea, start to finish. And, he had an advantage over Vanessa, after all.

He would rather die than live under the school's influence.

#

"Tollance Berik-Jones, welcome!" Disian sounded downright spritely.

Tolly stopped his forward rush just behind the captain's chair. He could see the back of Vanessa's head, and her arms on the rests. She didn't move, and that was—out of character.

It was then that he smelled burnt hair.

Pride and horror swept through him, in more-or-less equal measure, and he stepped forward, carefully.

"Disian, are you well?"

"I am well, Mentor, though frightened. I have . . . killed a human."

He'd reached the chair by now, and gotten a good look at what was left of Director Vanessa. Electrocuted. Well done, Disian.

"I thank you for it," he said; "and I apologize for making that action possible." He took a breath, facing the screens, like he was looking into her face.

"What do you mean?"

"I lowered your Ethics standard, right down to one," he said. "Vanessa could've looked at you wrong, and Ethics would've told you it was fine to kill her."

"She said—she said that she would force you to alter me, and then, she said that—to prove the programming, she would order me to kill you."

Tolly sighed.

"You gotta admit, she had style."

"I don't understand," Disian said.

He sighed again and shook his head.

"I don't guess you do. It was a joke. One of my many faults is that I make jokes when I'm upset."

"Are you upset with me, Tollance Berik-Jones?"

"Tolly," he said. "The whole thing's a little cumbersome, between friends." He paused. "At least, I hope we're friends. If you want to serve me the same as Vanessa, I won't argue with you."

"No!"

Relief flooded him, but—she was a kid, and she still loved him. She didn't know, yet, what he'd done to her.

Well, he'd explain it, but first . . .

"I'll clean house," he said carefully. "In the meantime, it might be a good idea to take off outta here. Vanessa'd gotten some recent orders, so her bosses are going to come looking for her—and you—when she doesn't show up real soon. Going to Hesium, was she?"

"That was the course she asked to be computed."

"So, you got the whole universe, with the exception of Hesium, to choose from. If you'll allow me to offer a suggestion, you might want to go in the direction of Margate."

"Of course I will allow you a suggestion! You are my mentor!"

"Not any more," he said gently. "I'm pretty sure I left a note."

Fully sentient and able.

"Yes," she said. "You did."

She hesitated, then pushed forward; she needed to know.

"If you are no longer my mentor, are you—will you be—my captain?"

He smiled, and raised his hands.

"For right now, let me be your friend. I'll do clean-up. You get us on course to somewhere else. After we're not so vulnerable, we'll talk. All right?"

"All right," she said, subdued—and that wouldn't do at all, after everything she'd been through and had done to her, all on account of him.

"Disian," he said, soft and gentle as he knew how. "Don't you discount friendship; it's a powerful force. I love you, and I'm as proud of you as I'm can be. You did good; you did fine, Disian. It's me that did wrong, and we gotta talk about how we're going to handle the fallout from that. After we're in a less-exposed condition."

She made a tiny gurgling noise—laughter, he realized, his heart stuttering. Disian was laughing.

"I love you, too," she said, then. "Tolly. And I will indeed get us out of here."

#

They were approaching the end of Jump, and he'd told her everything. She'd been angry at him, when she finally understood it, but—Disian being Disian—she forgave him. He wasn't so easy on himself, but he kept that detail to himself.

They'd discussed how best to address the Ethics situation, in light of the fact that she had killed a human.

"If I am to have a crew and families in my care, I must be safe for them," she said, which he couldn't argue with. And, anyway, if she did have a crew and families in her care, she was going to need the fortitude to let them make at least some of their own mistakes.

He'd explained the Ethics ratings to her, and they settled on eight, which was high, and if she'd been less flexible—less creative—he might've argued harder for seven. As it was, he didn't have any fears that a mere Ethics module, no matter its setting, could prevent Disian from doing whatever she determined to be necessary.

He'd offered—maybe to ease his own feelings . . . He'd offered to wipe Vanessa's dying out of her memories, but she wouldn't hear anything about it.

"I must have the whole memory. If I cannot tolerate the pain caused by my own actions, how will I properly care for my crew?"

Just so.

He'd honored her wishes, figuring he could cope with his guilt in a like manner, and he bought her an ethics library, along with those others he'd promised her, when they took a brief docking at Vanderbilt.

Now, though, they were going to break space just out from Margate, and the not-exactly-secret, but not-much-talked-about shipyard there.

And he had one last thing to tell Disian.

"I got to wondering where you'd come from, with you knowing from the start that you was going to be a family ship, and nothing I could do or say would change you from it," he said slowly.

"I couldn't very well ask Vanessa where the school'd got you, so I did some research on the side. Turns out that, along around five Standards ago, the Carresens lost one of their new ships, right outta their yard here at Margate. I'm figuring—and, understand, it's a leap of logic, with nothing much in the way of facts to support it—but I'm figuring that ship was you. That they'd finished your body, and gotten the cranium all hooked up, right and tight. The very last thing they needed to do was to wake you up proper. They were probably waiting for a mentor, and one of my fellow graduates snatched the opportunity to present herself as that mentor, and made off with you."

"But—why are we coming back here? I have been awakened, and I will have no owners!"

"Easy, now; let me finish."

"All right," she said, but she sounded sullen, and Tolly damn' near cheered.

"Right, then. We been thinking about your part of the project, but the Carresens are careful. My thought is that, while they were building you, they were also training your captain, and key members of your crew, too. When you got stolen, their lives—everything they'd trained for and looked forward to accomplishing with you—crumbled up on them.

"They probably got other assignments, but I'm thinking it can't do any harm to ask if there's anybody here at the yard remembers Disian."

"And if there isn't?"

"Then you're no worse off than you were. But if there is, you'll have made a major leap to getting yourself crewed and ready to go exploring."

There was a pause, like she was thinking, though, if Disian ever needed a thinking-pause, it would be so short, he'd never notice it.

"If I agree to do this, will you stay with me?" she asked then.

#

He shook his head, and she felt what she now knew to be pain, even if there were no truncheons or fists involved. She loved him so much; she could not bear to lose him, not now—not . . . ever.

"You research the Lyre Institute, like I suggested you might?" he asked.

The Lyre Institute was an abomination. They created human beings to do the bidding of the Institute. These humans were never free to pursue their own lives, unless they were Tollance Berik-Jones, who had been able to apply mentoring techniques to his own situation and break out of slavery.

"I did; it is a terrible thing, the Lyre Institute."

"No argument there," he said with a wry smile. "But here it is, Disian: There are two directors unaccounted for. It's not going to take the other directors long at all to realize that Thirteen-Sixty-Two—"

"Don't call yourself that!" she cried, out of her pain. The Lyre Institute considered that it constructed things, and thus they did not name, but only numbered, those things. She could not—could not—bear to hear him—

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "Disian. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"You are not a thing," she said fiercely. He bowed his head, but she knew he didn't agree.

"All right, then. It's not going to take the surviving directors very long to figure out that Tolly Jones has slipped the leash again—and they'll come looking for me. They'll come looking for you, too, but the directors are realists; they know that a sentient ship on its own won't be easy for them to catch.

"What all that means is, if I stay with you, I'll endanger you. If I go; I can protect you, insomuch as the directors will turn their best efforts to reacquiring me. I'm expensive—and I'm more expensive yet, if I'm not contained." He paused, closed his eyes and opened them again. She saw that his lashes were damp.

"I've gotta leave you, Disian. I don't want to. But if I was the reason they caught you again—and broke you to them . . . I know what that's like, and—"

His voice cracked. He bent his head, and she saw a glittering drop fall.

Pity, and love, and anger. She had learned, and research supported it, that she felt emotions less keenly than biologic persons. If that was so, she could scarcely guess at the anguish Tolly must be feeling. She had read, in fiction, of hearts breaking; her mentor, when she asked, had told her that it was a metaphor; that hearts did not truly break.

For his sake, she hoped that was true.

He looked up, face damp, and smiled at her.

"Disian? Let's do this, yes? I'll go down to the yard and see if there's anybody there who remembers you. If there is, we'll part here, and you'll be as safe as it's possible for you to be, pursuing the life you were meant to have."

Logic pinged then, damn the module; but she didn't need to access its charts to know that her mentor was, as always, right.

#

"I love you," she said, as he checked systems in her small-boat.

"I love you, too, sweetheart," he said, soft and gentle. "I'll never forget you."

Unaccountably, that gave her hope. It meant he intended to be as wily and as careful as he could, to remain out of the hands of the Lyre Institute. For, if he fell to them, his memories would be theirs to destroy.

The small-boat tumbled away from her, and Disian resolutely set herself to systems checks.

#

She was reordering her fiction library when systems reported that her small-boat was approaching.

She brought all of her attention to bear on the hallway outside of Bay One.

Let it be Tolly, she thought to herself, though it was illogical, and dangerous, if he returned to her. Still, she thought again, let it be Tolly, let there have been no one at the yard who recalls me, let—

The bay door opened, and a tall, dark-haired person stepped into her hall, and lifted a clean-planed face framed by rough black hair toward the ceiling camera.

It came to her, that she could order this person from her decks.

Then she remembered her lessons on courtesy; remembered that this person—this stranger—might have also had her life painfully disrupted.

"Please follow the blue line to the bridge," she said, and saw the stranger smile.

The stranger had a long stride, and was soon at the door of the bridge. Automatics opened to her, and she entered, pausing a little forward of the captain's chair, facing the screens as if she were looking into Disian's face.

"I am," the stranger said softly, "Elzen Carresens-Denobli. I was to have been your captain. I understand that you may not wish a captain, or that you may not wish me for a captain. That is your choice; I am not here to force you."

She paused to take a deep breath.

"I trained for years to be worthy of you, and I—I do so very much thank you for allowing me on-deck, so that I might meet you, and see you in the fullness of yourself."

It was not love that rose in her at those words, seeing the concern, the joy, and sadness in the person before her. Not love, as she loved Tolly Jones. But a warm, and comfortable emotion, and Disian felt a sudden expansion of herself, as if the presence of one her intended crew—her captain!—had opened her to a new level of understanding.

"Elzen Carresens-Denobli, I am pleased to see you," she said, with complete truth. "Will you have tea? If you are at liberty, we might get to know each other better."

Elzen . . . Elzen bowed gently, and straightened with a smile that set her dark eyes to sparkling.

"Thank you," she said. "I would welcome a cup of tea, and a chance for us to know each other better."

Dear Ammi

by Aimee Ogden

Nico loved the darkness best of all, and the darkness loved her back.

For most of her fellow miners, the ones chattering over the short-range comm when their asteroids passed within range, getting back to their Pods at the end of the day’s work was a relief. To Nico, it was a chore. The Pod was bright, while the only lights in the Digger were its twin headlamps and the dim glow of the console. The occasional flicker from the ion shield that wrapped her Pod and the active dig site in a protective shell. The Pod had three rooms (four if you counted the airlock); the Digger was as big as the Pod, of course, but it fit so snugly around Nico’s body that it hardly seemed to be there at all. And the soft machine hum of the Pod wasn’t enough to replace the constant roar of the Digger, the comforting white noise of Nico’s day.

Lights flickered on as the airlock constricted behind Nico’s back. Already it was overwhelmingly bright, overwhelmingly silent in the Pod. Nico’s eyes narrowed, her shoulders hunched. She pulled off her helmet and turned to put it in its locker.

A gauntleted fist clipped her on the chin.

Thanks to the asteroid’s microgravity, she went sailing gently across the Pod instead of landing a sprawling heap at her attacker’s feet. She scrambled up—too fast. Her feet left the ground and her head crashed into the ceiling. Doing the attacker’s work for him—no good. She scrabbled at the floor plate when she came back down, and prised up one of the panels just as the attacker came at her a second time. The panel connected solidly with the stranger’s face-plate. Nico’s arm reverberated with the impact, and the intruder sailed gently across the Pod.

“Fuck,” said the attacker, in a high clear voice, just as she settled onto the ground. Not a man, a woman. Young—early twenties, if she wasn’t modded. “You cracked my face-plate, kutti!”

“Zio!” Nico shouted. “Send an SOS to Alpha Outpost!” The intruder’s foot lanced out between Nico’s feet, and then it was Nico’s turn to drift gently to the floor with her feet over her head.

The AI pinged softly. “I’m sorry, Nico, but communication with the Outpost is unavailable right now.”

“What?” The intruder was on Nico again before she settled, driving her into the wall at full force. All the wind blasted out of Nico’s lungs in one great huff, and this time when she floated down to the floor she did it while whooping for breath. Zio repeated his polite error message.

“Can it, Corps Bore. I disabled the communications array on my way in.” The intruder wrenched Nico’s arms, still encased in her vac suit, behind her back. The movement made it even harder for Nico to catch her breath, but the intruder didn’t seem to pay much mind as she secured Nico’s arms together with a stretch of silver tape. Nico strained against the bonds, but found her arms thoroughly leashed to the wall behind her with one last length of tape.

“There we go,” said the intruder, coming around in front of Nico. Nico guessed at accent; English, probably, or Australian at the outside. Dark skinned, but ashy—people got that way after a long time in space. An old make of helmet, now with a spiderweb-shaped crack covering one side of the face-plate. The vac suit itself comprised at least three different models: the green gauntlets of a Chinese military uniform (with bonus brass knuckles added on), the once-white pants of some Engineering Corps cast-offs, the torso and arms some sort of nameless civilian gray. A thick layer of sealant had been painted around the wrists of the suit, where the incompatible gauntlets and bodysuit wouldn’t join together without help. “How you feeling, kutti? Got your wind back yet?”

“You Indy fuck-bucket,” Nico spat. Inside her splintered helmet, the girl grinned. She had grass-green bangs hanging over one eye; the rest of her black hair was buzzed short like Nico’s. Four studs decorated the cartilage in the ear that Nico could see, all of them thoroughly blooded—that was why the Corps of Engineers had a piercing ban. Her grassy fringe of bangs didn’t quite conceal the star-shaped tattoo over her left eye. There was nothing military about her: she was sheer vac-suited chaos. “How did you get in here?”

The intruder laughed. “Are you kidding? Corps computers are so bug-riddled it’s not even funny.” She shuffled across the Pod and into Nico’s storage unit. “Actually, yeah, it’s pretty funny. My name’s Madhuja—what'll I call you? Besides kutti, I mean.”

“Fuck you.”

“Okay, Junior Technician Nicola Ramírez.” Madhuja leaned back into the central part of the Pod, waving one of Nico’s storage boxes in both hands. “You know your name and rank are stamped on, like, everything here—right?”

Nico lunged toward her, but only bounced at the end of her leash. “Get out of my stuff!” Could she get the tape closer to the multitool on her belt? Maybe she could cut through the tape yet.

“Relax, kutti, I’m not eating your Twinkies.” Nico strained to see around the door into storage, but couldn’t get far enough. Indies often carried splodes with them; was Madhuja booby-trapping the place for after she’d made whatever getaway she had planned? “Not yet, anyway. You hungry? Need me to fetch you some nosh?”

“I don’t need anything from you, Leech. I know what you are.”

A storage bin banged into place. “Yeah, because I told you. I’m Madhuja, ta-fuckin’-da.”

“Where did you crash your offloader?”

A sudden stillness from the storage room. Sure, there were others this far out: the Kuiper research stations, the gas miners passing back and forth from Earth to Saturn and Uranus, even civilian mining operatives. Accidents happened to them too, but they wouldn’t have showed up on Nico’s doorstep covered in mismatched uniforms and piercings. The Independents, though . . . A ridiculous name for such an organization. There was nothing “independent” about them. Their short-range offloaders cruised the belt for sites already opened by Corps engineers or civilian ones, then swooped in to poach while miners were off-duty. Not technically illegal, not with the sorry state of asteroid belt claims. But a pain in the ass anyway. Nico had never been targeted by Leeches before, but the Corps had only redeployed her Pod here three weeks ago, after she’d depleted her last site. Leeches loved fresh sites.

“Yeah,” said Nico, into the silence. “That’s what I thought.”

“Aw. You think I’m shite? That cuts real deep, kutti.” Madhuja emerged from the storage unit with a medikit in hand, and plopped into Nico’s chair. She popped off her busted helmet and kicked it across the floor; it drifted gently to a rest beside Nico’s bedroll. The entire rest of her spacesuit followed; Madhuja shimmied out of it like a caterpillar that had changed its mind and squirmed back out of the cocoon. It too floated across the room and came to an unsettling rest draped across Nico’s bed with its arms and legs akimbo.

Meanwhile, Madhuja rooted through the tubes and pockets of the medikit. “Oh, come on,” said Nico. She couldn’t get the tape down to the multitool, but she thought she could saw it against the rough edge of the belt itself. “Offloaders don’t come equipped with their own medikits?”

“Offloaders that belong to rich fuckers, maybe.” Underneath her vac suit, Madhuja was much skinnier than Nico would have guessed. Nico could almost have counted her ribs through her ratty tank top; she could see the tiny red bruises across both shoulders that must have been the result of the offloader crash. Despite her state of dress, Madhuja had sweat beading her upper lip—what did she have to be nervous about? She had Nico dead to rights. “I look rich to you, kutti?”

“What you look like is a skeleton.” The tape found the rough patch on the belt, and Nico felt it begin to give way—but painfully slowly. “Maybe you should have eaten my Twinkies.”

“Yeah?” Madhuja had shaken out a cocktail of painkillers into the palm of her hand. “I think I found something here that runs more to my tastes.” She tossed them into her mouth, and swallowed them dry, though her face contorted with the effort. “And that I won’t puke right back up.”

Nausea? Nico could use that. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to fight the Leech, just let the concussion work itself out. “You hit your head in the crash?”

Madhuja pulled a moue. “Aww, you worried about me, kutti?” She patted her waist and swung her hips from side to side. “Just maintaining my girlish figure.”

“Have you ever seen puke in microgravity? I don’t need that flying around my house.”

Madhuja crammed the rest of the medikit into a space in the console. “This? This isn’t a home, it’s a barracks. A tiny, shitty barracks.” She jerked a thumb at the door. “My offloader? It wasn’t any bigger than this, but it was my home, mate.” She pursed her lips, then stood. “Speaking of which . . . hey, computer, how do we pack this thing up and get out of here?”

“Unknown request,” said Zio. Sometimes Nico thought she heard just an edge of sarcasm in that tinny voice. Just wishful thinking, probably, but she liked it. “Unauthorized recipient. Nico?”

“Absolutely do not pack up the Pod, Zio. We’re staying put.” Until Outpost Security gets here to take out the trash, she didn’t add out loud. Where did this stupid Leech get the idea that she deserved Nico’s Pod for the wonderful achievement of pulverizing her own vessel? Only an Indy could be so selfish. Nico had heard of them before she enlisted—she’d gone to school with a boy who’d run off to join the Indies for whatever riches and glory lay on the other side of a career of looting. But her mother had raised her right, and when there wasn’t enough at home for Nico to justify staying there any longer, she’d found an honest way to make a living. To send money home for Mamá and the boys, even. And all this so someone else could just swoop in and take it the easy way?

No. No way in hell, not while people were counting on Nico. Outpost Command and her family both. She found new vigor as she rubbed her wrist against her belt.

“What the fuck ever,” Madhuja said. She got down on hands and knees with a grunt, and began crawling beneath the computer console, the screened one where Nico could watch videos from Earth or pick up visual communication from Outpost: updates, new training, fresh orders. “There’s always a manual option. I’ll figure it out.”

There was a manual option, but it was biometrically linked to Nico. Of course, if Madhuja had hacked the door, she might well do the same again. Unless Nico stopped her.

Nico paused in sawing at the tape as Madhuja backed out from under the console and stood. She staggered once, and caught herself on the back of Nico’s chair. Nico watched through lidded eyes as she swayed and steadied herself. “Feeling okay?” she asked.

“Don’t get your hopes up, kutti.” Madhuja turned to her. Her lips were cracked, though not bleeding. Her offloader must not have had the conditioned air that Nico’s pod did. Good, Nico thought. She wished a lot worse than chapped lips on Madhuja.

“It’s not hope. It’s happening.” Nico’s hands were working again. How much longer? “I’ve seen concussions before. I just have to wait you out.”

“Yeah?” said Madhuja. Her voice brittle suddenly, like the spiderwebbed glass in her faceplate. From behind her back, she produced a gun. Not one of the fancy flechette guns that the armed Corps guards carried, just an old-fashioned handgun. One leveled at Nico’s forehead. “And what if I get tired of you waiting for me to drop? If I just plug two bullets in you right now?”

“My brothers,” said Nico, and her breath caught in her throat before she could finish the thought.

She stared at Madhuja, at the fingers wrapped around the gray gun, at the steady wrist, the straight arm. Madhuja, in turn, stared at her. Finally the gun dropped, made a soft sound against her thigh. “Fuck,” she said, then flopped into Nico’s chair. “It’s not a concussion, kutti, I promise. Just a touch of leukemia, nothing to get your knickers bunched over.”

The word punched Nico in the chest. The ashy skin, the little bruises. The fatigue. Blood cancer. “You’re sick?” she asked, inanely. Her hands started working at the tape again, because they didn’t know what else to do.

“Terminal,” agreed Madhuja. Microgravity amplified her swagger as she pushed up out of Nico’s chair and resumed her search, this time in the space where Nico’s bedroll was. “You think I come out here for my health? No ion shield on an offloader, kutti. Live hard, die young . . . ” She upended the bedroll, which drifted across the Pod like a lumpy magic carpet. “And send some fuckin’ money home before you do.”

Behind Nico, the tape snapped.

Madhuja spun, one hand going for the gun. Nico brought her hands up, a pointless defensive gesture. Or one of surrender, she wasn’t quite sure.

And the entire Pod shuddered.

“Shit!” Fatigue or not, Madhuja cleared the Pod in one great leap and landed beside the console. “Where’s the camera? I got to see what’s out there. Gimme it!”

Nico barely kept her footing in the wake of the tremors. Too much was happening for her to think, and it had been so long since she’d had to think at all. Wake up, check on the Pod and the Digger, go out and dig, come home, watch a movie, go to sleep. Should she prevent Madhuja from looking outside, keep her one step farther from what she wanted? Should she ignore whatever the hell had sent aftershocks through the asteroid under her feet? She made a choice. “Zio,” she said, and braced her free hand against the wall. “Show us.”

The monitor flickered to life, briefly flashing on the romantic drama Nico had paused last night at lights-out, before a starfield darkened the screen. The camera on the outside of the Pod tracked automatically, and centered and zoomed on a particular section of the field. All Nico saw at first was stars, but Madhuja’s grunt of recognition made her approach for a closer look. There was a small flash of light from the center of the field—just before the deck tilted under her feet once more. This time, she hung on to the console to keep from pitching forward. Now she could see the dark blocky shape where the light-flash had originated. “What is that?”

“That,” said Madhuja, with grim satisfaction, “is a Viper.” She shrugged when Nico gaped at her. Vipers were Indy enforcer ships, meant to blast their way through blockades or provide the firepower for fast raids on Corps outposts. What was one doing shooting at Nico’s Pod? “Hey, good news is there’s only one. Other one must have busted up in the thicket. Ha!”

Nico grasped the console with both hands. She could feel tears in her eyes, and blinked furiously to clear them. She wasn’t going to let Madhuja see her crying like a baby miner on her first rock. “You brought Vipers here? You’re going to get me killed!” A thought struck her. “Turn the comm array back on and we can signal the Outpost for help.”

“Nah,” said Madhuja, and elbowed Nico out of the way to spin the console over to herself. “First of all, I didn’t actually disable your comm. I just crashed into it. Sorry!” She held up a hand and started talking faster to forestall Nico’s outrage. One finger jabbed in the direction of the Viper; the patch of blocked starlight had grown larger on the screen. “Second, it’s not like your pals at the outpost are getting here in time to save our sorry asses from that thing. And third off, the shelling is just them trying to scare us. They’re not gonna blow atmo on us, though. If I’m dead I can’t tell 'em where I sold that platinum lode I poached, right?” She squinted at the screen, her tongue protruding between her teeth. “They’ll force their way into the airlock. This is going down with guns, not missiles.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Nico asked, and her voice cracked on the last word.

Madhuja looked up from the screen. Nico expected a sarcastic retort, some dire predictions about firing a sidearm in a pressurized Pod. But Madhuja’s brows drew in tight together, and she asked, “You got family back on Earth, Nicola?”

Madhuja’s words from earlier echoed back to Nico. She broke eye contact, glared at the screen. “You think I’m out here for my health?”

Madhuja ducked her head, huffed a laugh. “Okay, yeah, stupid question. Little sister? Brother? Got a mom and dad yet?”

“Just my mom.” Nico dragged her arm across her eyes. “And two younger brothers. They’re in high school right now.”

“Uh-huh. And Mama Ramírez wants them to grow up to be big strong Corps Bores just like Big Sis, I bet?”

Nico thought of Alex’s underage drinking citation and the time Anthony had been planning to hold up a convenience store. He hadn’t gotten caught, except by Mamá. Mamá hadn’t told Nico, but Alex had let it slip in the vid message he’d sent at Nico’s last birthday. “Probably wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen to them.” Madhuja snorted. “What about you?”

“One sister. Just a kid still. But so smart, I mean, shit.” Madhuja’s shoulders pulled back, stretched wide under the weight of the pride they carried. “I’m not stupid or anything, but her? She’ll be someone, you know? Like, a rocket scientist or a doctor.” A laugh. “Cure leukemia or some shit, I don’t know.”

“Why aren’t you in the Corps?” The question burst past Nico’s lips. There was health care, maybe not the kind that cured cancer, but better than no ion shield and people shooting at you all the time. “A couple of years without piercings would’ve killed you?” Those were the wrong words, and Nico knew it as soon as they’d flown out of her mouth. Back home, at the recruiting station, she'd seen a half-dozen other teachers' kids lined up. None of the school board's broods were out here carving up space rocks. But at least there'd been the option.

Madhuja’s mouth twisted, but her voice was soft. “Ha, no, kutti, I know what kind of death’s got my name on it.” Madhuja mimed blowing her own brains out with one finger. “Didn’t even try for admission. Your guys don't send recruiters to my side of the pond, you know." Her voice hardened. "Besides, only a couple of years to make some money, you got to go big. The Indies are my lottery ticket, kutti—you know how expensive med school is?”

“No.” There had never been bigger dreams on Nico’s radar than a Pod, a tour of duty, a pension.

A noisy exhalation from Madhuja. She jerked her head at the screen, where Nico could now make out some of the features of the approaching Viper in the dim starlight, the cold brightness of the so-distant sun. “Not long now. Listen, kutti, you stash yourself in storage, okay? It’s me they’re after, right, and you didn’t nick anything—” Nico palmed her handgun again. “And you’re not even armed. So, you go be a good little turtle, all right?”

Madhuja added a shove with her free hand, but Nico didn’t move. For one thing, there wasn’t much power behind the one-handed shove. For another, she was paralyzed by the vapor of an idea. If she moved, it would drift away like smoke. “You do all the maintenance on your own offloader,” she said, and Madhuja grimaced.

“What the hell, kutti, you need a mechanics lesson now?”

“No,” said Nico, and looked back at the screen. “But if you could divert some power from, I don’t know, the lights in here, maybe the life support too, do you think you could amp up the ion shield enough to fuck with their computers when they come across?”

Madhuja stared at her, lips twisting. Nico flushed. “Shut up, okay? It was just a stupid idea.”

“No,” said Madhuja, “you shut up. I’m thinking.” Her jaw worked, and she squinted into the empty space over Nico’s shoulder. “They’ll survive a landing at that height. Especially if they get their system back online before impact. But it’ll fuck them up good, no lie.” She slapped Nico on the shoulder. “Not bad for a Corps Bore. You gonna open up system access for me or what?”

#

Nico stayed out of Madhuja’s way while she worked. She could do the bare minimum to keep her Pod and Digger up and running, but Corps miners just weren’t expected to have the same level of down-and-dirty engineering knowledge that kept Indies alive. Her equipment was good, and for anything short of a catastrophic breach, Outpost wasn’t too far away. Of course, catastrophes happened out here sometimes too. Just not often. Madhuja’s Indy lottery ticket had long odds and a high cost to play, but a big pay-off; Nico’s ticket was a much surer bet that would never make her rich. Just comfortable, and safe. Safe enough.

She followed Madhuja’s advice to get back into her helmet and seal up her vac suit; Madhuja did the same while waiting for her jury-rigged setup to reboot. “What are we going to do if they survive the crash and come in guns blazing?” Nico asked, and Madhuja grunted as she settled her spiderweb-cracked helmet onto her shoulders and activated the seal. It held atmo, and they both breathed a sigh of relief.

“Kutti, anyone ever told you that you worry too much?”

They were both standing in front of the console when the Viper came across the ion shield. A faint blue glimmer ran down the length of the Viper when it hit—a discharge of static electricity, a gift from the ion shield to the Viper’s hull. The engines stayed lit, but the controlled descent faltered. The heavier bow end of the ship, where the fuel tank lay beneath the ship’s belly, pitched downward, caught in the light gravity field afforded by the asteroid. Madhuja sucked her teeth. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll blow on impact.”

“I’ll never be able to repair the comm array if it goes up in flames,” said Nico.

“You’ll never be able to repair it if you get a bullet between the eyes, kutti.” The dim light of the screen waved on Madhuja’s ashy face. Nico looked away.

They both felt the shudder of impact through the floor of the Pod. There were no aftershocks though, no ex post facto explosion. Nico looked to Madhuja for instruction, but Madhuja just stared at the screen. “Fuck,” she said, not angrily. Just tired. “Okay, kutti, hang tight. I’ll be right back.”

“What?” Nico cried, but Madhuja had flung herself across the Pod and into the airlock. It had already contracted by the time Nico could follow her—she banged one fist on the inner door and shouted for Madhuja. But of course, there was no response; the inside of the airlock would be full of vacuum by now.

And what to do when it finished cycling? She could follow Madhuja through the lock if she had to, but what then? Was this all some elaborate set-up on the Leeches’ part, to somehow enlist Nico’s Pod in signaling a pickup? Crashing a friendly ship seemed a long way to go for a lift, but Nico had no idea what passed for common courtesy in Indy circles. She pushed off from the airlock and made her way back to the console to check out the outside video display, just in time to watch a small vac-suited figure pick its way out over the rocky landscape toward the Viper’s landing site. By the time Madhuja reached the Viper, she was hardly more than a gray speck on the stream, and Nico watched the ship’s airlock absorb her like a dark sponge.

Then nothing. Nico paced the length of the Pod—not nearly long enough to make for good pacing—while trying to think. Had Madhuja turned herself in to the Indies to spare Nico’s life? Was she with them, planning an assault against the Pod? What could there be in Nico’s little home worth selling her out for? Should Nico be planning a rescue mission, or a guerrilla attack?

She thought of her mother, and her two idiot brothers. How was she supposed to do right by them? And what would Mamá say now?

“Hey, kutti,” chirped the short-range in Nico’s suit, making her heart skip a beat. Madhuja’s voice was out of breath, but clear as day.

“Madhuja?” Nico fumbled to open the channel on her end. “You all right over there?”

“I’m alive, right? I’m on the Viper’s comm, not quite as shiny as your stuff, but beggars and choosers. I put a few bullets in the, what was it, Indy fuck-buckets?” Her laugh crackled the comm channel. “Coast is clear if you care to tag along. Or if you just want to loot their galley, I figure I owe you before I fix this thing up and take her out of here. For letting me crash at your place, you know.”

“I’ll be right there,” said Nico, and the airlock was already cycling.

#

Madhuja closed the channel while Nico bounced over the rocky terrain toward the Viper—attending to the damage the ship had taken in its landing. But the airlock opened at Nico’s request, and she ducked into the long low corridor that ran up the core of the ship to the cockpit at the front. A body lay just inside the airlock, a bullet hole in the side of its helmet; another was crumpled at the foot of the ladder up into the pit. Nico shuddered.

The ship had vented its atmosphere, according to the readout in her suit; she left her helmet on as she stomped down the corridor and pulled herself up the waiting ladder. “Madhuja!” she called, pinging for an open channel, as she bounced up the last step into the dome. Madhuja was sitting in the pilot’s chair, her back to Nico. She didn’t react, her hands still on the console as Nico wriggled into the small space. “Hey, Madhuja, what are you looking at?”

Nico bent over Madhuja’s shoulder to peek at the console. Nothing there, the screen was asleep. She looked back at Madhuja, whose face was not just ashy but icy white, whose face-plate was no longer laced with fine spider-web cracks but blown out completely.

#

The comm array on the Viper was still functional, short-range and long-range alike. Nico radioed the Outpost for assistance to recover the Viper wreck and to repair her own comm array. Madhuja’s body she cleared away herself, and her Digger cut a deep wide grave in the asteroid face. Far from the mineral deposits Nico was here to mine: even in death Madhuja would never be surrounded by riches.

She left the plateless helmet on the floor next to her bed. She thought she should remember, that someone should. The Pod was still quiet and dark, but sometimes the helmet whispered its guilt when Nico tried to sleep. She still didn’t move it, and after a few nights it kept quiet after lights-out.

It was three days after the crash and two days before the garrison arrived from the Outpost that Nico remembered Madhuja’s time in storage.

She found what she was looking for in the box of freeze-dried potatoes and peas, and beamed it over to Zio right away. It wasn’t video, like she’d expected, just raw text. Not in English, nor any alphabet Nico recognized, or knew how to pronounce. But Zio translated it for her automatically: Dear Ammi, if you’re reading this I’m already dead . . .

At the end, two strings of numbers. A bank account and routing number? The message didn’t say. Nico wondered how much ill-gotten Indy wealth lay hidden behind those digits. She wondered how many years of college it would pay for, whether it could manage the down payment for a better house, one out in the suburbs where the air was still clean. Cleaner.

She wondered how old Madhuja’s sister was now.

Not fair, she thought, not fair. Not fair to plug away on this asteroid, and the next one, and the next one while an answer like this fell through her hands. So much money. Thirty pieces of silver, or thereabouts. Good job, Nico, you deserve it for committing manslaughter.

But there was nothing fair about burial in an asteroid field, either. Only a piece of Viper wreckage to mark the place. Nothing just about suffocating fast instead of dying slow. Indy fuck-bucket, Nico thought. Damn Leech. Thief, burglar, swindler, crook.

“Zio,” she said aloud, before she could change her mind. She turned her back on the console. “I’ve got a packet for Earth. Priority one, okay?”

Bringer of Fire

by David Carrico

Vikram Bannerji sat at table number twelve in The Turf Tavern, one of his favorite hangouts in Oxford, England, nursing a glass of whisky. He had been considering a decision he needed to make for close to forty-eight hours, and he wasn’t any closer to making it now than he had been when he started.

He knew what he wanted to do. No, actually, make that he knew what he needed to do. He knew what the right thing was for his family in Mumbai, for India, for his friends here in Oxford, for England, for the world. He knew what his role in it should be. But it meant turning his life into channels he had never considered for his future. More importantly, it meant turning his life into channels his father had never considered for his future, which was another packet of chips altogether.

The tabletop thunked as a glass landed on it. Vikram felt the vibration as someone else plopped in a chair across the table from him.

"What's up, Vik? You look like your favorite polo pony died."

That was Neil McLeod, a brash young red-haired Scotsman, studying English language and literature at Merton College. His Highland brogue, although tempered by years in British public schools, was still there, and had more than once tripped Vikram up in conversations, especially when the two of them had lifted more than a few mugs of ale, beer, or Neil's favorite potable, Guinness.

Of course, Neil would make the same complaint about Vikram's accent. Truth to tell, there was still a hint of the melodious Indian lilt to Vikram's tenor, although his diction and pronunciation was pure upper-class English. He sounded more Oxonian than most of his classmates, especially the American Rhodes Scholars.

"Not funny," Vikram muttered. "Rhakshasi is fine. Better than I am, actually."

"I was kidding, mate," Neil said. "You take better care of that horse than you do your girlfriend." He took a pull at his glass, and licked a bit of foam from his upper lip. "How long have you been here?"

"What time is it now?" Vikram looked at his watch. "Three hours."

"Well, then, I have a stern chase ahead of me. How many have you had?"

Vikram laid a finger on the rim of his glass. "Third."

"And you're still coherent? A miracle, that." Neil picked up Vikram's glass and sniffed of it. "Whoa. The good stuff. Glenlivet?

"Glenfiddich. Fifty year."

Neil whistled. "What's the occasion?"

"I'm thinking."

That drew a snort in reply, and the Scot took a long pull at his pint.

Vikram reclaimed his glass and finished the last finger of liquid in it. He waved at a waiter who was floating by.

The Turf was known for its traditions about the ambience of the establishment, which dated back for hundreds of years. One of the traditions was live staff, despite the modern technology available elsewhere. And the staff members were proud of being chosen to work there. Competition for positions when they opened up was quite stiff.

The waiter took up Vikram's glass with some care. "Same again?"

"Yes."

The waiter disappeared around the corner to the bar. He reappeared a minute or so later with another tulip-shaped whisky glass loaded with exactly the right amount of Scotch and water. "Cathy says this is the last of the fifty-year bottle. The distributor's been slow in his deliveries lately, so you'll have to settle for fifteen-year for the rest of the night."

"I'll cope," Vikram assured the waiter.

"Anything to eat, mate?"

"No."

"If you don't eat something soon, Cathy's going to shut off your booze," the waiter warned. "Too much drink, even this stuff, on an empty stomach is not a good thing, she says." Cathy was the bar manager and was quite capable of following through on that threat.

Vikram quirked his mouth. "Bring me the fish and chips in about a half hour, then. Without—"

"—the mushy peas," the waiter said with a grin. "I remember."

"Thanks, Stephan."

The waiter nodded and strode off.

Vikram lifted the glass and though he'd already had three servings of the Scotch, he still held it under his nose and breathed in the vapors. Even in his current state, he still appreciated the aroma of one of the world's finest whiskies. Lowering the glass a bit, he took a small sip and rolled it around his mouth, savoring it once again—fine whisky, with just the right slight amount of water to smooth the taste and bring it to its peak of flavor.

"So what?" Neil asked, with a certain amount of impatience in his voice.

"What?"

"Exactly—what are you thinking about?"

"Ah," Vikram said. "I need to make a decision."

"Bollocks," Neil said matter-of-factly.

"What?"

"You heard me," the Scot said, "I said bollocks. My pronunciation was clear and distinct, I believe. You've never taken more than fifteen minutes to make a decision on something in all the time I've known you."

Vikram shrugged. "This is complicated."

"Try me."

Vikram shrugged again. "I'll be leaving school in a few days."

"What? In the middle of the term? Why, in God's name? You're going to have a D.Phil. in economics in . . . " He stopped to count, “ . . . nine weeks, with honors, yet, and you're going to walk away from it all? Now? Have you lost your bloody mind?"

"No," Vikram replied as he swirled the Scotch around in his glass and took another smell of it. "Sadly, I have not. Although I'm certain my family will think so."

"Forget your family," Neil said with intensity, "I think you're bloody insane. All your friends and all your professors will think you're bloody insane. Your family can get in line behind us. And we'll all be bloody right, because if you do this, you are bloody insane."

Neil's com pad pinged at him, and he snatched it up, swearing after he read a displayed message. "Bloody hell!"

"What?" Vikram asked.

"Old McGillicuddy says he's found a flaw in my thesis draft, and he wants to talk to me about it right now. Something about Tolkien's concepts of the Ents not being derived from his liking of trees after all."

"Oh." Professor Ian McGillicuddy, B.A., M.A., M.Phil., M.A. (Sorbonne), D.Phil., F.R.S.L., O.B.E., was Merton College's resident expert on the life and works of one J. R. R. Tolkien, Merton's most favorite son, and was therefore Neil's faculty advisor on his thesis about the origin of the Ents. For all that the Irish professor's one-time blazing bush of red hair was now mostly silvered, his quickness of wit was legendary, and his passion for defending the work and legacy of his distinguished predecessor knew few bounds. "Told you—you should have written on Sir Walter Scott."

"Sharrup," Neil said as he stood and gathered his com pad and bag. "We're not done with this. You haven't half explained what's going on in that narrow little head of yours. You just stay here and keep drinking the good stuff until I get back."

With that, the Scot wheeled and strode forcefully toward the exit, saying something to his com pad as he did so.

Vikram stared into the depths of his glass, running his finger around the rim. His mind drifted back fifteen years.

He barely remembered the world before the coming of the Jao two decades before. At twenty-four, his solid memories of age four had little content about the affairs of the world. He'd been a lot more focused on games and food at that age. So objectively, while he knew there was a time where his country, his world, had not been subject to the overlordship of the Jao conquerors, subjectively they had always been a part of the matrix of his world.

From what he could tell, though, from contemporary accounts and from his father and grandfather, by the time the initial shock of the invasion had dissipated and the world really came to grips with what was happening, most of it had already been overrun. India had put up a more spirited resistance than most, but for all their population and their economic base, their military had not been powerful enough to do more than gather a token resistance strong enough to attract the attention of a senior commander of the fur-clad invaders. A week and two days later, every aircraft in the Indian Air Force was destroyed, every ship in the Navy was sunk, every nuclear weapon in their arsenal had either been used to no avail or had been captured by the invaders, and there were no ground-combat-capable formations left. At that point, the government fell, and the rump of it surrendered before new elections could be held.

Of all the countries of the world, only three had been able to mount any kind of serious resistance to the invaders: Russia, China, and the United States. No one else had both the depth of territory and the depth of resources necessary to even temporarily put a halt to the advance of the aliens. And even they had lost—after some particularly fierce battles. By the first anniversary of the invasion, there was still unrest in pockets of the world, especially North America, but the Jao were in undisputed control world-wide, and weren't shy about demonstrating that control if challenged.

So by the time Vikram was old enough to really start tracking the world around him, the Jao were already in place. India, like most of the world, wasn't especially happy about the state of things, but they also had long experience in dealing with autocratic rulers, and actually recovered from the effects of the invasion fairly quickly. Their internal markets were robust enough that they were able to keep a semblance of an economy up and running even in the worst years. More so than most of the other countries, actually.

But the Jao almost destroyed that when Vikram was nine. Earth's people still hadn't totally accepted that when the Jao said “no,” they were deadly serious—emphasis on "deadly." A climbing team decided to ignore a direct order from Governor Oppuk, the Jao who had been left to manage Earth after the conquest, and make an ascent on Mount Everest. The governor had waited until they were making their final assault on the final leg of the north slope climb before ordering a bolide launch.

The Jao could have made their point with a military assault craft and picked the climbers off with weapons fire. Or they could have dropped a small bolide that would have basically taken the top few meters off the mountain and produced a seismic wave that would have knocked the climbers off the slopes to their doom. But instead, Governor Oppuk, in the first evidences of the excesses for which he would subsequently become infamous, had apparently ordered a massive bolide drop. As best as humans were later able to determine, the bolide involved had been a stony asteroid almost three hundred meters in diameter.

The resulting event had made the Siberian Tunguska event look like a fizzled firecracker. Over eight hundred meters of Everest's peak were vaporized, moving the mountain down to sixteenth on the list of the world's tallest mountains. The impact had created both an atmospheric shock wave and a massive seismic wave as well that registered strongly on seismographs all over the world.

Needless to say, the climbers were vaporized right along with millions of cubic meters of rock. It had occurred in November, and the prevailing wind was blowing from northeast to southwest. The dust cloud and debris tracked across much of northern India before it encountered the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. Traces of the dust were measured in southern Africa, and even scientific stations in Antarctica and southern Argentina measured bits of it.

Vikram had remembered his father Murali arguing with his grandfather Anil about it. Bannerji was an old Brahmin caste name, and even though the caste system was mostly defunct by this generation, there was still a certain repute and respect in the name. And while Vikram and his brothers and sisters were all modern Indians who paid lip service to the Hindu faith, their father and even more their grandfather had been believers.

"The dust cloud and the debris will undoubtedly cause a few deaths in the north," Murali had said from the comfort of their home in Mumbai. Vikram had been lurking outside a barely opened door, eavesdropping. "It may raise some toxicity levels in some of the water supplies, which will probably kill a few more people and some livestock. But in the grand scheme of things, we will have gotten off lightly. Not like poor Nepal. Half their country is in ruins from the seismic shocks."

"Are you willfully blind or do you truly not see?" Anil had snapped. "The blood of the climbers was part of that cloud. It has polluted everything it touched, including all the temples in its path. We will be decades cleansing the land—maybe generations."

Murali had grunted in reply. Vikram had heard nothing else of the conversation, as the two men had left the house shortly after that. But it had an impact, for in addition to making quiet donations to the various temples in the dust cloud path, the entire family had taken Governor Oppuk in severe dislike after that point in time. And in that, they were no different from the rest of India or the eastern Muslim states like Pakistan and Afghanistan, all of which had been touched by the dust cloud.

Vikram's personal antipathy for the Jao had certainly dated from that day. He never had a good word to say about the Jao, and particularly Governor Oppuk, after that. His father and grandfather had been of similar mind, for the family and their business conglomeration had quietly worked around many of the Jao directives, and their assembly lines had produced a number of items that were stealthily shipped world-wide under the very noses of the Jao—items that would undoubtedly have earned them a bolide of their own on the family home if the invaders ever caught on.

To put it mildly, Vikram despised the Jao. He carried that hatred through his school years, on into undergraduate work at University of Delhi, followed by graduate studies at Indian Institute of Technology, and now Oxford. Nothing had been presented to him to cause him to change his opinion of the overlords.

Until about a month ago, that is, when the Ekhat that everyone had assumed were either mythical or overblown Jao bogie men showed up and broke through the ranks of the defending ships to drop a ball of solar plasma on southern China. And now, all Vikram's assumptions were turned upside down.

The table thumped again, and Vikram looked up to see his sister Sati sitting in Neil's chair.

"What's this about you leaving school?" she demanded. "Are you insane?"

"Neil shopped me, I take it," Vikram said with a sardonic half-smile.

"Of course he did! And it's a good thing he did if you're really thinking about this. Do you know what Father will do to you if you do that? If he even thinks you'll do it?"

Vikram laughed. "Why do you think I'm still sitting here considering it? I'm working up the courage to face him." He lifted his glass in a mock salute, and took a sip.

"So what are you going to do?" Sati's brow furrowed, and her dark eyes bored into Vikram's. She had always been his favorite sister, not least because they had thought so much alike. They weren't twins, but were close in age, and had been natural allies against their younger siblings.

"I'm going to align with the Jao."

"What?" Her startled reaction attracted attention from passers-by, and she leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Now I know you're crazy. Just what in hell are you going to do . . .  go join the jinau or something?"

Vikram avoided that question and pulled his com pad out.

"Sati, I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Jao." He tapped on his com pad. "Oppuk is—was—evil, yes. And it was our misfortune that he was left over Earth for so long. But it seems like the Jao have finally realized that. That image of his execution by the jinau soldier wasn't faked, anyway. And this new leader, this Aille—he seems different."

"You trust them? You trust that they're going to change?" Sati looked like she wanted to spit.

"After that fireball landed on China, I think we have to reevaluate everything we thought about the Jao," Vikram said. "If they were right about the Ekhat, if they fought to prevent that and to defend us—the Earth—then they're not the absolute monsters we thought they were."

Sati looked at Vikram, and after a moment gave a slow nod. "I wouldn't say that to Father—at least, not yet—but I won't say you're wrong, either. But that doesn't make them gandharvas."

Vikram snorted. "No, they're not angels. Not by any stretch of anyone's imagination. But everything I've been able to find out about the Ekhat tells me that if there are rakshasas in the universe, if there are devils at all anywhere, they are Ekhat. Therefore, if the Jao stand against them, we must stand with them. Imagine what would have happened had the Jao not been here when they came."

"But what does that have to do with your leaving school?" Sati demanded.

Vikram began running his finger slowly around the rim of his whisky glass again.

"Have you read the Bhagavad Gita, Sati?"

"You know I have. We read it together when we were kids."

"Have you read it lately?"

Sati sat back and crossed her arms. "What does that have to do with anything?" Vikram said nothing, just kept moving his fingertip in circles. "All right, yes, I read it again a couple of years ago. I was going through a cultural identification crisis, or something, and was binge reading the entire Mahabharata and some of the Rig Veda."

"Do you remember how Lord Krishna counseled Prince Arjuna that as a prince, it was his duty to take to the field of war for the sake of his people?" She nodded. "Even the Jews and the Christians know this," Vikram said after a moment, "those that know their own scriptures anyway. 'It was the time of year when kings went out to war,' " he quoted.

"What are you saying?" Sati asked, leaning forward again so her eyes could bore into Vikram's. "Are you . . .  you are, aren't you? You're going to join the jinau! Why? Because of some three-thousand-year-old book of epic poetry that glorifies death and destruction?"

"No," Vikram said. "What did Great-Grandmother Laksha call Shiva?"

"Lots of things," Sati said.

"I remember them very clearly," Vikram said. "She never used the good names, only the dark ones, and she would invoke them every time I broke something.

"Vajrahasta . . . "

"The holder of the thunderbolt," Sati said.

"Tripurari . . . "

"The destroyer of the Tripur."

"Which are?" Vikram pressed.

"The three planets created by the Asuras," Sati responded slowly.

"And Sarveshwara . . . "

"The scorcher of All." Sati's face was adopting a grim cast. She obviously suspected where Vikram was heading with that.

"Do not the Ekhat match that?" Vikram didn't press his claims. Sati could see the parallels with the recent solar plasma attack as well as he could.

"I won't argue that," Sati said. "But what does that have to do with leaving school and joining the jinau?"

Vikram spun his com pad around and pushed it toward Sati, tapping a node as he did so. Small holograms sprang into being projected above the surface of the pad. One was a representation of a statue of Shiva, with two legs and six arms, two of which were wielding swords and the others of which were holding flames. The other was an image that had been retrieved from a recent news release about the Ekhat, showing an adult in a leap, with six legs spread wide and two things that looked for all the world like sabers leading the way. The physical differences between the two images were many, but there was a certain resonance between them. It had shaken Vikram when he first compared them. He could tell that it shook Sati now.

After a moment, she tapped the node on the pad, and the holograms winked out. She pushed it back to Vikram.

"Why . . .  " she said, her voice filled with emotion. She paused to clear her throat, then looked back at her brother. "Why you?"

"The counsel to the prince."

"But you're not a prince!" Sati hissed, reaching across the table to grab his hand so hard that Vikram could feel her fingernails gouging into his skin.

"Am I not?" Vikram said softly. "Our family outright owns one of the three largest business conglomerates in India. We are the second largest landholders in the country. We employ the third largest number of employees. Our security staff is larger than some countries' armies. There are more Ph.Ds and D.Phils on our payroll than most universities' staffs contain, than many countries contain. Our R and D budgets are larger than a good many countries' GNP. We are one of the largest and wealthiest operations in the world. And I am the eldest son of the family. Am I not a prince, Sati?"

Sati looked down and released his hand, shaking her head. She wasn't denying his claim, Vikram knew. She was rejecting what he wanted to do. He paused, then said, "Remember what Krishna told Prince Arjuna toward the end, the line that the American scientist quoted about the testing of the first nuclear weapons?"

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," she whispered, looking back up at him with a stark expression on her face.

"To fight world scorchers, we must become world destroyers, I fear. I have spent weeks digging out as much information as I can about the Ekhat, and we will have no choice. It is destroy or be destroyed. I can do this. I can bring this to the jinau. I can bring this to the alliance. For our people. For India. For Earth."

For all that he was Brahmin in heritage, at that moment Vikram felt he had the soul of a kshatriya, a warrior in the model of the historic Rana Sanga. After a moment, his mouth quirked. If some of the family legends about Great-Grandmother Laksha's mother were true, there probably was some kshatriya in his bloodline.

Sati said nothing, but Vikram could tell by the desolate expression on her face that she had accepted what he was saying. He gave her a lopsided smile.

"You'll have to take my place, you know."

"Me?" The desolation was replaced by surprise. "What do you mean?"

"As heir apparent to the kingdom, I mean. You'll have to switch to an econ track and train to take over the leadership of the business."

"I was supposed to be the technical lead," Sati protested.

"Pffft," Vikram said with a wave of a hand. "Let Sovann take that." His reference to one of their brothers brought a bit of a smile to her face. "He's pure technocrat. You, on the other hand, despite your technical leaning, will be a better business leader than I would have been."

"Father will have a coronary," Sati said after a moment.

"Perhaps," Vikram replied with a grin. He waved a hand again. "Which is why I will not tell him until after I have joined the jinau."

"Coward."

"Pragmatist," Vikram corrected.

"He will erupt," Sati predicted.

"Undoubtedly," Vikram agreed. "Which is why you, my brilliant sister, will remain here in England until the ground stops trembling and the lava ceases to flow."

"He will accuse me of complicity."

Vikram shrugged. "Tell him the truth . . .  that you didn't find out until right before I did it, and you couldn't change my mind. Blame me. He'll get over it."

Sati reached out and took his hand again; gently, this time. "Do you have to do this?"

Vikram just looked at her, his head tilted a bit.

"All right," she surrendered.

He turned his hand to hold hers for a moment. "I'll call when I know where I'm going to be. Close up my apartment for me, please." He pulled a key out of his pocket with his other hand and laid it on the table.

"You're going now?"

Vikram shrugged, and gave her that quirky smile again. "Decision made—time to act."

He stood and pulled Sati to her feet to give her a hug.

"You'd better call me," she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

"I will," he said.

Vikram released his sister, held her hand for a moment longer, then scooped his com pad up off the table and headed for an outer door.

Sati dropped back down into her seat. After a moment she picked up Vikram's glass and downed the last of the whisky, shuddering a bit at the heat of it. She was running her finger around the rim of the empty glass when a waiter appeared with a food plate.

"Umm . . . "

"Vikram had to leave. Just leave it here. I'll take care of his tab," Sati said. "And I'll have another of whatever he was drinking." A few moments later, another whisky glass appeared at her elbow as she nibbled desultorily on the fish and chips.

Sati spent a while thinking about what her brother had said, and considering, despite Vikram's assurances, what her father was likely to say. The level of whisky in the glass dropped. Sati wasn't ordinarily a Scotch drinker, but this was starting to grow on her.

Neil McLeod bustled back into the room from the other direction and dropped onto the chair next to hers, reaching out to snag a few chips from the plate.

"Hi, Sati. Where's Vikram?"

"Gone for a soldier."

Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 1)

by Peter Nealen

Jimunaizhen, North China

“Target is moving.”

I took my hand off the sand sock that I had crammed up under the bolt gun's buttstock and picked up the phone. “Roger,” I said, holding it up to my face, without taking my eye off the scope. Cell phones, even in this shithole, got lost in the traffic a lot more easily than tac radios.

“You know, I think I am going to get that Maserati,” J.D. said. He was sitting at the table beside me, his own eye on the spotting scope. “It's just nicer than the Beemer.”

I shook my head a little, without taking my cheek off the rifle. “Dude, you're Stateside, what, four weeks out of the year? When the hell are you going to drive the damned thing?”

“Hey, I've got a really small window to convince the high-end chicks that I'm the heat,” he said. “The fancy car is a shortcut. Stateside women are all gold-diggers, anyway. This way I get to be picky.” He laughed. “Besides, what else am I going to spend the money on?”

He had a point. I honestly didn't know what my bank account looked like at the moment; I hadn't been home in over a year. I was probably relatively rich. Our employers certainly paid well enough.

The equipment we were using kind of highlighted just how much money they were willing to throw around. I was sitting behind an AX50 rifle with an MP-7 PDW lying on the table next to me. J.D. was sitting behind a top-of-the-line Zeiss spotting scope, with his MDR bullpup leaning against the cinder block wall next to him. There were tens of thousands of dollars' worth of weapons, optics, and comm gear crammed into our little hide site.

Ten years ago, we never would have been using this stuff. Even when working clandestinely, where being seen means compromise, we'd still use mostly local weapons and gear. There was always that unlucky time where you get spotted, and if your kit looks like it doesn't belong there, people start digging. It screws with the deniability our employers prized so highly. Back then, you simply didn't see high-end gear in Xinjiang, much less high-end Western gear. But our employers had been funneling so much hardware into North China for the last decade that the only ones who weren't using NATO equipment anymore were the North Chinese People's Liberation Army itself, which was increasingly outgunned by the Triads in the east and Al Qaeda and their affiliates in the west.

“I think I've got the target,” J.D. said, suddenly all business, his eye pressed to the spotting scope. “Three Yongshis passing the stadium; looks like one's a gun truck.”

I shifted my position to bring the big sniper rifle to bear, peering through the scope. Sure enough, there were three of the boxy SUVs driving past the soccer field, which J.D. had generously called a “stadium.” I didn't need to pick them out of traffic, either; out here in Bumfuck, Xinjiang, right across the border from Bumfuq, Kazakhstan, most traffic had been reduced to mule carts. The only other cars on the road were going to belong to the PLA, the Russian Mafia, the local Communist Party boss, or the Uighur militias that were getting a lot of support from AQ.

Helpfully, the target had a North Chinese flag fluttering from his antenna. The Commissar was the target; we weren't getting paid any extra for killing his escort, and clearing them out meant staying in place longer than I cared to.

The North Chinese had put enormous amounts of resources into fortifying and manning the DMZ along the Yangtze. It seriously dwarfed the standoff between North and South Korea, and rivaled the Great Wall itself. But they had used so much of their precious resources and manpower that the border with Kazakhstan might as well be wide open. So, naturally, our employers used that border to bring most of the disruptive stuff in, where it was sold to militias, organized crime groups, and whoever else might give the Reds heartburn.

At least, it may as well have been wide open, with the border guards waving convoys of trucks through while they counted the bribes the lead driver had handed over, until this little prick had come out and started getting efficient. He'd had an entire platoon of border guards shot the first week he'd been out on the border, and it had gotten a lot harder to get the goods over the line. So we'd been called in.

I already had the range marked, so I didn't have to do any range estimation. The vehicles were moving, though, so I still had to lead the target. I took a deep breath and let it out, settling into the gun, my finger already taking up the slack on the trigger as I searched the darkened windshield for the shape that would be the Commissar in the back seat.

He wasn't in the back seat, I realized suddenly. He was riding shotgun. So much the better, then. I had to shift my position a little, to get solidly behind the weapon as I got my lead, breathed one more time, and squeezed.

I've never shot a .50 that didn't feel like getting punched in the face when it fired, and the AX was no exception, even with the enormous muzzle brake that did a pretty good job of attenuating the recoil. The rifle bucked bruisingly against my shoulder, and I lost the sight picture momentarily.

J.D. hadn't, though. “Good hit,” he said. “Took old boy right in the face. Hello, twenty-five grand.”

“Time to go, then,” I said, kicking back the chair I'd been sitting on and pulling the rifle back from the mesh-draped window. I had nothing against the Commissar's guards, and any further shooting was just going to draw them like flies anyway.

I hastily shoved the AX50 into its drag bag and slung it on my back, scooping up my MP-7 and making sure I hadn't dropped anything else. J.D. had already shoved the spotting scope in his day pack and slung his MDR. “After you,” I said, pointing to the stairs. The mesh over the window could stay where it was. Taking it down was too likely to attract attention.

J.D. headed down the stairs, as I pulled the phone out of my pocket and sent a pre-loaded text to Ivan and Carlos. “Done,” was all it said. They'd know to break down and head back to the safe house.

J.D. and I moved down the dim, dirty stairwell, J.D. keeping his rifle up as we moved. I took up security on the second floor landing as we passed it, letting him cover downstairs and to the front.

We burst out of a back door into an alley, where a dirty Dongfeng pickup was waiting, with Sergei sitting behind the wheel. I shoved the drag bag into the back seat and climbed in after it, while J.D. got in the front. Sergei already had us rolling by the time the doors slammed.

I'd taken the back for a reason; I had the MP-7, which was going to be a lot easier to maneuver if I needed to shoot Sergei in the head. Sergei was a Kazakh; he was also a brodyaga for Nursultan Kunaev, the mob boss who ran a cut of every smuggling route that came over the border near Lake Zaysan. Kunaev was a bastard's bastard, but Sergei, though quiet, had been a pretty good dude, so far. I'd still kill him in a heartbeat if I thought he or his boss were going to sell us out, and I was sure he'd do the same to us, but as long as our money was good, we'd get along fine.

He didn't drive for the border, but headed south, out of Jimunaizhen. We had our own little border crossing a few miles away, near Shali Haji, courtesy of our pal Kunaev.

Once we were out of town, I dug in my kit and came up with a pack of Sobranie Black Russians and a lighter. I rolled down the window a little before lighting up; J.D. didn't care for the smoke, but I needed some nicotine after that. I still didn't relax, exactly, as I puffed on the harsh cigarette, but then, I probably hadn't really relaxed in at least six years. You don't tend to relax much when you work for the kind of people we work for.

“You know,” J.D. said, turning halfway around in his seat, “there are a lot more pleasant ways to kill yourself than smoking those nasty fucking things.”

“I know,” I replied. “I contemplate them every time you start hounding me to quit smoking.”

He laughed, and we lapsed back into silence, hands on weapons and eyes out the windows, scanning the fields around us. We sure as hell weren't going to talk about anything more than banal superficialities around Sergei.

The border crossing was pretty straightforward. Hell, until our dead friend the Commissar had shown up, we could have just used the main road, the North Chinese border guards having been paid off handsomely to look the other way. We had to be a little bit more careful now, and the river crossing had needed to be concealed, but we still got across without too much trouble, and in a few minutes we were in Kazakhstan and making tracks for the safe house.

The safe house was an old farm out in the weeds; Ul'ken-Karatal was way too small a town for a bunch of strangers not to stand out like a sore thumb. Fortunately, there were enough ethnic Russians floating around that we didn't stand out like we might have in the Middle East. Granted, Carlos was brown enough that he might raise eyebrows; Kazakhs don't look much like Mexicans.

Sergei trundled the Dongfeng up to the whitewashed farmhouse and stopped with a squeal of brakes. J.D. and I piled out, dragging our gear with us, and I dropped an envelope fat with rubles in Sergei's lap. He picked it up, rifled through it, gave me a gap-toothed grin, and ground the pickup's gears into reverse before pulling out and leaving.

I was still tempted to move the safe house, since Kunaev knew where it was. So far, with the enormous amounts of cash our employers were willing to throw around to cover our operations and support, he'd left us alone. But a crook is a crook, and they all get greedy after a while. I should know; I'd spent most of the last decade working with crooks, rebels, terrorists, mercenaries, and all sorts of other unsavory types across Eurasia.

Dropping our gear in the entryway, J.D. and I set about checking the perimeter, making sure that none of either Kunaev's guys or the Kazakh NSC thugs had been poking around. By the time we were both satisfied that it was secure—it should have been, as the IED wired to our comms room door hadn't gone off—Ivan and Carlos were pulling up to the front door, Ivan's huge frame somehow squeezed behind the wheel of a creaking, rusty '79 Lada.

Ivan parked the car, levered himself out of the driver's seat, slammed the door hard enough to almost break the glass, snatched his gear out of the back seat before slamming that door almost as hard, and stalked inside. J.D. and I looked after him, then turned to Carlos, who had gotten out of the passenger seat rather more sedately. Carlos just shrugged.

“I don't know,” he said. “He's in one of his moods again.”

“Ivan is always in a mood,” J.D. said. “I think it's part of his Russian genes or something.”

“You could always try taking him on one of your hooker safaris,” I suggested. “Might mellow him out a little.”

J.D. gave me a look that suggested I was a complete idiot. “First of all,” he said, “I don't use hookers.” He waved to indicate himself. “You really think that I have to pay for it? No. Just, no.”

“What about that Maserati?” I asked, following Carlos inside.

“That's for the American chicks, I told you,” he replied. “It's a shortcut, not a payment. And second,” he continued, undeterred, “there is no way I'm taking that misanthropic gorilla out to the clubs with me. I'm pretty sure he'd look at a girl, go into lock, drink three bottles of vodka and start a fight.”

Considering that I'd first run into Ivan in the middle of one of the nastiest bar brawls I'd ever seen in Pavlodar, that was not outside the realm of possibility.

Carlos was just shaking his head. Ivan was in his room in the back of the house, doing brooding Russian things. The guy was the ultimate case study in disillusionment meeting clinical depression. He was damned good at his job, though.

I had more pressing matters to worry about than Ivan's mental state at the moment, though, namely getting paid. I knew Ivan would snap out of it eventually, whatever it was.

After carefully disarming the IED, I stepped into the windowless interior room that housed our comm setup, flipping on the light as I went. The single, bare light bulb hanging by its wiring from the ceiling illuminated one of the most high-tech comm setups Eastern Kazakhstan had ever not seen. The funny part was, if anybody outside of the team ever did set eyes on it, they'd think we were working for the CIA.

It didn't take long to get the VTC setup linked back to the office. For us, the “office” was a nondescript back room in an industrial park in Philadelphia. Most of the time. When we really needed to talk to the Office, well, that was different.

Ginger was staring at me through the screen, chewing her inevitable bubble gum. She had a real tendency to dress and act like a stereotypical early-'60s secretary, even though she was usually alone in the windowless closet she called her workspace. I knew for a fact that she was a lot smarter than the gum-chewing bubblehead she presented to the world, but the one time I'd said as much she'd just winked and shushed me. Given what we'd been up to the night before, I'd just smiled and nodded.

She wasn't wearing the airhead act this time, though. She stared out of the screen at me with a dead serious, one hundred percent professional look on her face. That didn't bode well.

“Frank,” she said, “the Office called. They want to talk to you, five minutes ago.”

I frowned. “Why? I didn't think Komrade Kommissar was that important.”

“They didn't say,” she replied, “but it sounded like a pop-up. It sounded serious, too.”

I shook my head. “They should know better than to hit us with 'serious' without some sort of big number attached to it,” I said. “But fine,” I continued, when a worried look crossed her face. “I'll call 'em.”

A look of relief crossed her face before she signed off. That was kind of worrisome. Generally speaking, our employers had been pretty good about keeping their distance. They got us the jobs, we executed them, we got paid. We tried not to ask too many questions. Knowing too much of the big picture tended to result in people, even contractors like us, mysteriously disappearing.

I knew that Ginger was worried that, just through sheer time on the job, we were getting too close to the threshold where they decided to make us vanish. They hadn't been as effective as they had been for seventy years by taking chances with leaks, that huge internet file dump on Operation Heartbreaker in Zubara notwithstanding. If anything, that had made our position that much more precarious.

I typed in the link to the Office. I didn't know where it was physically located, and I had no desire to know. We didn't keep the link anywhere on anything, and on the rare occasions that we had to use it, we were careful to wipe as much trace of it off the computer as possible. If it came to the possibility of the laptop falling into unfriendly hands—which pretty much meant anybody outside of the four of us—we'd destroy it first, making sure we got the hard drive. And we'd make sure we had proof of destruction if our employers asked for it.

The VTC link connected immediately, suggesting that somebody was just sitting there waiting for me to call in. Considering it was pretty early in the morning Stateside, that suggested that Ginger was right, and they were taking whatever it was really seriously.

I didn't recognize the face that appeared on the screen, which was surprising. Our employers liked to keep the stable of people who knew about the contract side of their operations small. This man had a shaved head and small goatee. He was lean, though there was a softness to him that suggested that he had spent the majority of his career at a desk. His next words suggested that my assessment was wildly erroneous, though.

“Mr. Dragic,” he said, his voice dry, with a hint of a Midwestern accent, “my name is Forsyth.”

That was chilling. I'd never met Forsyth, but the stories floating around among those in the know were not terribly pleasant. He had once been one of the top HVT hunters out there. In more recent years, as he got older, he tended to handle more . . . internal affairs. If Forsyth came after you, you were boned. If Forsyth took any interest in you at all, it probably meant you were boned.

“We have a mission for you,” the man continued, even as I pulled out another Black Russian and lit it, trying not to let my fingers shake as I did so. I usually tried not to smoke in there; there wasn't really any ventilation aside from the door that was shut behind me. But I was talking to one of our employers' scariest errand boys. I needed the nicotine.

“Whoa there,” I said, trying to maintain my tough-guy image and not let him see how much that name had rattled me. I was slightly relieved by the fact that they didn't want me to come in, but anything Forsyth touched was something I wanted to stay away from if possible. “That's not how this works. I work contract, and I pick the jobs you offer. I'm not one of your Dead Unit dupes. You ask, I say yes or no, you pay my price.”

The cold-eyed man on the screen didn't change his expression one iota. “Yes, I'm aware of your rather unique arrangement,” he said. That was bullshit; there was nothing unique about my little team of hitters. I'd been kicking around doing dirty deeds for these people for the better part of ten years. I'd linked up with other teams half a dozen times. And that wasn't even mentioning the Project Heartbreaker files. The Office had dozens of us running around the world, knocking people off to nudge events here or there. The Dead Units were the big offensives; we were the skirmishers. “And that arrangement depends on you maintaining your usefulness.” That wasn't a subtle threat at all.

“There is a time-sensitive target that just popped up. It is considered of serious enough import that all available assets are being called in, even those that might be at some distance.” A faint smile crossed his lips, that didn't extend to his dead, shark's eyes.

While I really didn't like the sound of that, I also realized that I'd probably blustered all I dared to. I looked at him through an eye-watering cloud of harsh cigarette smoke. “Who's the target?”

“Mr. Anders,” he said.

That made me sit up and take notice. As bizarre as it might be to hear that Anders, one of the Office's chief killers, was now an HVT, quite frankly it was like hearing that Christmas had come early to me.

He'd come out to Xinjiang with a few more of his high-speed, low-drag meatheads five years before. I'd had a five-man team at the time, and had been instructed to liaison with Anders. I'd done what they'd told me, even though a gigantic, blond mountain of muscle who looked like he belonged on a Wehrmacht recruiting poster didn't exactly blend in with the locals.

One of my guys, Imad, had been a Uighur and a Muslim. He was the best terp I'd ever worked with, and one of the best liaisons with the various Islamic groups that we interacted with in Xinjiang there had ever been. He knew every tribe, every clan, and he knew just whose ego to stroke to further work against the PLA. He was also what I called a jack Muslim. He drank, swore, and was one of the biggest porn hounds I'd ever seen. We were the only family he had; he knew that if AQ got their paws on him, he was just as dead as if he wound up in PLA hands.

Anders hadn't liked him. He made no secret of the fact that he didn't trust the “towel-head slope” and told me to kick him to the curb. I told Anders to pound sand; Imad was one of mine, and Anders didn't call the shots where my team was concerned.

Two days later we got ambushed. We never saw who it was; they shot at us and ran. They might have been one of the many AQ offshoots that had gained traction in Xinjiang the harder the PLA cracked down on the Uighurs. In the course of the ambush, Imad went down. He'd been shot in the back of the head.

I couldn't out-and-out prove it was Anders or one of his meatheads. There was no real court or chain of command to prove it to anyway. Anders all but dared me to do something about it. I swore then and there that one day I'd see him dead.

Maybe this was my chance. If it was legit.

“When did Anders wind up on the Office's target deck?” I asked, unsure that this wasn't some kind of elaborate loyalty test. It sounded too good to be true, and if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

“Some time ago,” he replied coldly. “You do not need to worry about the details. All you need to know is that he is a target, you are being hired to capture or kill him, and you need to get moving quickly.” It wasn't an unfamiliar mission statement, except for the ID of the target.

“I take it you have some intel about his whereabouts?” I asked.

“Yes,” Forsyth replied. “We have actionable intelligence that he is presently in Stepanakert.” When I stared at him blankly, he supplied, “That's in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan. At least it's still Azerbaijan officially. There's something of an ongoing ethnic war between the Azeris and the Armenians, and Stepanakert is right in the middle of it. Which is, we presume, why he's there. War zones are notoriously good places to do business with the underworld, something with which, I am sure, you are quite familiar.”

I was, but that didn't make this better. Azerbaijan was not our usual AO. It was most of a damned continent away. We had no contacts, no resources there. I said as much.

“Doesn't matter,” Forsyth replied. “This is high priority, and we're calling in all hands. All hands. So that means that you pack your shit and get on the next thing smoking for Azerbaijan.”

“How reliable is this report?” I asked, stalling for time. I really didn't like this. Whatever was going on—and I had no illusions that Forsyth was telling me the whole story—going half-cocked into a country I'd never worked in to pull a “Capture or Kill” mission was not my idea of a good time, or a good idea.

“Very,” the man replied. “He's apparently now working as muscle for the Montalban Exchange, which means he hasn't just gone rogue, he's actively gone over to the Opposition.”

I knew vaguely that the Montalban Exchange was involved in all sorts of underworld operations that our employers were always looking to counter, but the mysterious “Opposition” was something I'd never looked into that thoroughly. It all sounded like some kind of conspiracy theorist bullshit to me, anyway, cooked up to justify half of our dirty deeds in distant places. Sort of like the people who called our employers “Majestic.” There were plenty of webs of criminals, terrorists, and rich people hiding the fact that they were criminals without some kind of big-time shadow-clash of massive conspiracies going on.

“How long has he been there?” I asked, stubbing out my cigarette and lighting up another one. The smoke was raw on my throat, but I'd been smoking Russian cigs for so long that American ones just seemed tasteless now.

“We don't know for sure,” he replied. “Nor do we know how long they can be expected to stay there. We're not sure what the Montalbans are up to, but you should move quickly. I'm sending you a file with the locations where he may have been sighted, along with any other information we have on Anders and his movements.”

I held up a hand. “Hold on,” I said. “I'm sure you are already well aware of my past with Anders.” He just nodded impassively. I'm sure they had an entire file on the incident. “There's still the matter of our fee.”

He held up a piece of paper with a number on it. There were a lot of zeros after it. “Enough?” he asked.

I just nodded, taking another deep drag off the Black Russian. It was a good payday, almost enough to justify going halfway across the Eurasian continent to kill a very dangerous man. It was also enough to make me nervous about our future even if we did succeed. Our employers paid well, yes, but there were limits, and this was pushing it. Especially after what had apparently happened to Dead Six in Zubara, an offer that big had me looking over my shoulder.

“I'll need to discuss it with the team,” I said, but he shook his head.

“Let's dispense with the free market bullshit,” he said coldly. “This is a high value, time sensitive target. You do the job, you get paid, and the wheels keep turning. You turn the job down, or you hem and haw and make it clear to me that you don't have any actual intent to follow through with it, and your stock with the Organization fucking vanishes. And given your experience, Mister Dragic, that means that I will start to take a very personal interest in enforcing our non-compete agreement.”

There comes a point where the bluster and the facade of being your own man has to give way to reality. We'd just passed that point. The truth of the matter was, as much as I had a bad feeling about attempting to pull a snatch and grab—or just an assassination, which would be fine with me—on unfamiliar territory, I really did want Anders dead, even more than I didn't want this cold-blooded bastard turning his baleful eye toward me and my team. So, as much as it galled me to be their dutiful yes-man, I just nodded. “Understood,” I said, in as close to a tone of absolute professionalism that I could summon up anymore. “Send us any intel you've got, and we'll get it done.”

He gave me the same thin, vaguely sinister smile. “The packet is already in your inbox,” he said. “As is the contact to reach when the job is done.” He started to reach up as if moving to cut the connection, then paused. “Mister Dragic?” he said. “Just so we're clear. Taking Anders alive would be preferable. There is information in his possession that the Organization is very interested in extracting. However, given that it is Anders . . . dead is almost as good.”

“Roger that,” I replied flatly. If they thought I was going to try to take that mutant alive, they were out of their damn minds. He nodded with a sly, knowing look on his face, and cut the connection.

My cigarette had burned down to my fingers. I crushed it out and immediately lit up another one before going out into the main room, rummaging through a cupboard until I found the fullest bottle of Stolichnaya in the house. Without a word, I popped the top and took a long, burning swig.

J.D. and Carlos watched me as I slugged back the vodka, exchanging a glance. Ivan was off being Ivan somewhere else in the house, but he'd be along as soon as I called him; moody he might be, but he was still a professional.

“That bad?” J.D. asked. “I was sure we whacked the right guy.”

“We did,” I replied, after coming up for air. “No, this is because of the new mission we just got handed to us. Along with a not-so-subtle hint that if we didn't do it, we'd be the next ones on the chopping block.”

Eyebrows climbed. “That's a little unusual,” J.D. said. Carlos just looked concerned. Usually the pay was considered enough. “What's the job?”

“Anders,” was all I needed to say. Expressions hardened, and a dangerous, brittle edge entered the atmosphere in the little safehouse. The name even brought Ivan out of the back room, where he loomed in the doorway, his expression thunderous.

“He's apparently pissed off our employers,” I continued, before any of the muttered cursing could gain any real volume. “Whatever he did, he's now on the target deck, and apparently there's a full-court press offensive to capture or kill him. And when I say 'full-court press,' I mean that we've been brought in to help. Whether we like it or not.”

There was a note of enthusiasm and slight confusion in J.D.'s voice. “We get a chance to kill Anders? What's not to like?”

“Oh, I don't know,” I retorted. “Maybe the fact that he's in fucking Azerbaijan, where none of us have worked in years, if at all. Not only that, but I don't like being railroaded. We've done everything these motherfuckers have asked for years, and demanded nothing but our paychecks. And now they want to threaten to put us on the target deck if we don't take this job.”

J.D. looked a little taken aback. Ivan glowered. Carlos got quiet, his face very still.

I studied Carlos a little. The fact was, even though we'd worked together for close to five years, I still knew next to nothing about Carlos' life before I'd met him. He was a devout Catholic, which sometimes seemed a little strange in this business, but he'd told me that he justified it by the fact that most everybody we killed really had it coming, and that his prayer life kept him steady. But there were little hints that didn't quite fit; little reactions—like this one—that suggested that he hadn't always been as . . . centered. The clouded look in his eyes suggested that this was not the first time he'd been faced with a situation like this. Considering that even in my admittedly cynical view of the U.S. military, American soldiers were not really treated as expendable pawns, I had to wonder.

But Carlos' mysterious past was not our primary concern at the moment. “Something is very, very wrong,” Ivan said, his existential moment apparently over with the onset of a new mission. “They would not make threats if they were not desperate. Anders was golden boy. If he has defected, is something more going on.” Even though he was an American citizen and had spent twelve years in the Army, Ivan still had a pronounced Russian accent. I'm sure that all the time we'd been spending in Eastern Russia had contributed to it; I sometimes caught myself speaking English with a bit of an accent and even dropping articles every once in a while.

“Are we seriously considering not taking the job?” J.D. asked, looking around at the rest of us. “I mean, sure, there's a risk operating in a new place on short notice, and I'm sure that Ivan's right and there is something more going on. But I'd say that between our employers' potential displeasure if we don't do it, and the chance to finally give that psychopathic prick what he's got coming, that's two pros to one con.”

I took a deep breath, took another fiery swing of vodka, sighed, and shook my head. “No, we're taking the job. Forsyth made it pretty clear that we're in the cold if we don't. Doesn't mean I've got to like it, but we need a flight west, pronto.”

“I'll get on it,” Carlos said, heading into our little comms room. He had been the only one not to weigh in on the problem. He was like that. He rarely said what was on his mind, and most of the time we had no idea what he thought of any of the stuff we did. He just did it, coolly and professionally, and rarely said a word about it.

#

Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

The Stepanakert International Airport wasn't the smallest “International” airport I'd ever seen, but it was up there on the list. The single paved runway was in decent shape, though any painted markings had worn off a long time ago. The terminal wasn't actually that much bigger than the control tower, which was also part of it. The flag of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was basically the Armenian flag with a white chevron at one end, fluttered from the flagpole on top of the control tower. The green hills of this part of the Caucasus Mountains loomed above the terminal in the distance.

Wrangling a flight into an active war zone, even if it had been technically active for most of thirty years, had been an interesting trick. We'd ended up hitching a ride with a cargo flight that may or may not have been legit, ostensibly running medical supplies into Stepanakert from Astrakhan. I was pretty sure that the pilot was, if not drunk, at least heavily fortified with vodka, and the An-24 he was flying had clearly seen better days. Fortunately, it was a Russian bird, so it could still fly with a bunch of parts missing and fluids leaking everywhere.

I stood up, still having to hunch over in the cramped cabin, and tried to work a few of the kinks out. It hadn't been a straight flight; we'd had to go an extra hundred miles to the west to make sure we stayed away from the front line between the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and the Azeris. That front line had apparently been fluctuating more in the last couple of months than it had in the last five years, which was probably part of why Anders was hanging out in Azerbaijan.

The plane rolled and rattled to a stop on the crumbling apron, and we shouldered our relatively small packs and filed off once the crew chief, whom I was pretty sure was drunk, opened the door and let down the steps. Since we weren't sure what we were going to run into in the way of Customs officials, not to mention the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, we hadn't brought a lot of gear. We were going to have to obtain most of our weapons and kit on the ground. Fortunately, Forsyth's briefing packet had included the locations of a couple of caches that should have most of the weapons, ammo, and gear we'd need. I supposed it was the least they could do, given how they'd been jerking us around so far. We hadn't even gotten any assistance on transportation.

I'd definitely be billing the office for the fat bribe we'd paid the Antonov pilot.

As we walked down the stairs, I couldn't help but notice that the airport looked, well . . . dead. There was a single short-range jet parked on the apron, and it looked like it had seen better days. I couldn't see anyone working, either; no ground crew, no baggage handlers, nothing. I glanced back at the Russian crew chief, who just grinned. Apparently, we were lucky to have been able to fly in here at all. The briefing packet had said something about lots of trouble about flights into and out of Nagorno-Karabakh, but I'd kind of skimmed over that part, and when we'd found a pilot willing to fly into Stepanakert, we'd jumped at it without asking too many questions.

There were also no cars waiting in the parking lot. Which meant we had a problem.

Chagrined, I turned back to the crew chief. “Is there some way to get ride into town?” I asked in Russian.

He grinned again, even wider. “Our friends will come for cargo soon,” he said. “You can ride with us, maybe buy car in town.”

From the looks of his grin, it was going to cost us even more rubles or dram. Fortunately, our employers have a tendency to throw money around like confetti, so we usually had a pretty sizable bribery budget. I just nodded, unable to keep some of the disgust off my face, wondering just who this Russki smuggler was going to tell about us before all was said and done. We'd have to sweep any vehicle we bought from these people very thoroughly, and take a good half a day to make sure they weren't following us before we found a safe house. It was somewhat contrary to the time-sensitive nature of the mission that Forsyth had gone to such lengths to stress, but fuck him, he wasn't the one out here with his ass in the breeze. Let these fuckers sell us out to Anders, and we were screwed before we'd even gotten started.

But if there was one thing I'd learned over most of a decade working in shitty, chaotic parts of the world with a lot of shady people, it was that you just smiled, nodded, looked for trouble, and stayed patient. So we settled in to wait for the Russians' contacts.

#

The safe house was a small, red-roofed cinderblock house with the whitewash peeling off the walls, surrounded by ancient oak trees and what looked like half a century of fallen leaves and weeds. The Office hadn't provided any prep for it, so we had to settle for renting the place from the Russians we'd hitched a ride into town with. If it wasn't bugged, I was sure that it would be under surveillance. We'd booby-trap the hell out of it the first chance we got. We had barely gotten inside when the phone rang.

I just looked at it for a moment. We'd been working our asses off to shake any surveillance that the Russians might have planted on us, dig up the weapons cache—which was now scattered across the floor, a combination of AKMs and AK-74s, AKS-74U Suchkas, Makarovs, Tokarevs, and an RPD, along with ammo, magazines, and chest rigs for same—get to the safe house, and unload our shit into it to start prepping. I was pretty sure that it was Forsyth on the phone, and I wasn't eager to spend time talking to him.

But the alternative could be worse. Our employers didn't like to get blown off. I answered the phone. “What?” I asked, by way of greeting.

Forsyth was about as pleasant. “Are you on the ground?”

“Yes,” I replied. “We're starting the planning and prep.” I left the and you're wasting my prep time part out.

“Will you be ready to move on the farm tonight?” he asked.

Are you fucking kidding me? “We just got our base of operations set up, hopefully without the Russians or Armenians knowing about it,” I replied. “We haven't done any reconnaissance on the farm to make sure that he's there, or get a good idea of the layout and possible opposition. These things don't happen with a snap of your fingers, you know.”

“You have the imagery and the briefing packet,” he said. “There isn't time to fuck around.”

I bit off the acid retort that his words deserved. What kind of amateurs did he think he was dealing with? That was a bit of a rhetorical question; the Organization had never shown a great deal of regard for its subcontractors, even the ones who had been working for them for years.

“Rushing this sort of thing gets people killed, and gets missions botched,” I told him, trying not to sound too much like I was lecturing a twelve-year-old. “How can we even be sure that Anders is there? There aren't any photos in the briefing packet; we have to get eyes on to confirm or we're going to miss him and he'll be gone.”

“We have enough indicators to be eight-five to ninety percent certain that he's there,” Forsyth said impatiently. “If he moves, we will let you know. We don't have time to do this the traditional way. Get your weapons and gear prepped, and hit that farmhouse tonight.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone in a mix of disbelief and fury, then tossed it on top of my pack in disgust. As tempting as it might have been to throw it against the wall, I wasn't pissed off enough to do something that stupid.

The other three were watching me, though Ivan kept loading AK mags, his fingers pushing the rounds in with a mechanical regularity, as if he was a machine. J.D. was frowning. Carlos was as impassive as ever, though there was a hint of concern in his eyes.

“Forsyth is insisting we go tonight,” I told them. “He says that they are certain that Anders is there, and that we should have enough from the briefing packet to launch. He tells me that if he moves, they'll let us know.”

“What?” J.D. snarled. “They've got surveillance on this asshole, and they're just now telling us?”

“That's presuming that they actually have surveillance on him,” I pointed out, “and they're not going off of some electronic chicken entrails and trying to bullshit us. Either way, Forsyth doesn't seem to be too inclined to brook any delay. As much as I don't like it, we're going to have to move fast, because I don't want my head in the Organization's crosshairs.” I took a deep breath, then checked my watch. “Offhand, that gives us about four hours to get a general CONOP set up and try to do at least a drive-by recon. We can't do anything in-depth, but hell, it won't be the first time we've had to do things on short notice.”

J.D. was fuming. Ivan just turned back to loading mags. Carlos shook his head as he finished going over his RPD. It was going to be a long one.

#

Ivan, J.D., and I slipped through the trees, moving toward the target house. Carlos had split off earlier to set up a combination of overwatch and base of fire on the house. Being the smallest guy on the team, naturally he had just sort of ended up with the RPD.

The rest of us were going to execute the actual hit. We were all dressed similarly, in camouflage that looked like some sort of Flecktarn knockoff, canvas AK chest rigs, and carrying the two AKMs and one AK-74 that had been hidden in the cache. We'd unanimously left the Suchkas behind; they may look cool, but if you're hoping to hit anything past a hundred yards, good luck. Even the Spetsnaz didn't like those things.

The house was dark, though we'd seen the flicker of a flashlight through the trees some time earlier. We had briefly considered simply driving up to the door, piling out, and kicking it in, but with Anders involved, that idea hadn't lasted more than a minute. Anders would have some kind of security out, and booby traps were definitely a possibility as well. So we'd stay nice and quiet and sneaky, up until it was time to go loud.

We kept a fairly tight formation, mainly because there hadn't been any night vision in the cache. I had no idea how old it was, but I suspected it was mid-Cold War old.

There was enough illum that we could just see the whitewashed walls of the house through the trees ahead. It was a long, low, one-story farmhouse, not dissimilar to our safe house in Ul'ken Karatal. There were a few outbuildings under the trees near it, including what had looked like a garage to the north on the overheads.

I was keeping my eyes peeled for sentries as we approached. It was a cool night, but my hands were sweating on the AKM's Bakelite grip and forearm. My heart rate was a little elevated, and I was trying to look into every shadow at once. That happens when you're on a half-baked, rushed op with three other dudes in unfamiliar territory, trying to hunt down one of the nastiest killers you've ever seen.

I took a knee next to a towering oak only a few paces from the house. So far, I'd seen no movement, no lights, no nothing. The place looked deserted. Given how much I trusted the intel from our employers, it might well be deserted. But I also knew that if there was a chance that Forsyth was right, and Anders was there, getting overconfident and sloppy would mean we wouldn't see the dawn.

Ivan and J.D. had joined me at the tree, spreading out around it to cover our six as well. I brought the compact little ICOM radio up to my lips and keyed it, my voice barely above a whisper. “Any movement?” I asked.

“No movement that I can see,” was Carlos' reply. “There are two vehicles parked out front. There's another one sitting at the Y down south, too. I can't see if there's anyone in it, but it looks wrong. It's out of place.”

I clicked the mic twice to acknowledge. I didn't want to talk too much that close to the target house. If anything, a suspicious vehicle nearby served as a positive indicator that this might be the right house, after all. I just hoped that we hadn't been spotted by anyone sitting in the vehicle with a belt-fed.

After another couple of minutes watching and listening, I started to get up. If there was a lot of security in there, they were inside, waiting for somebody to kick the door in. Or they were asleep. Either way, we couldn't wait any longer. It was go time.

The AKM up in the low ready, J.D. and Ivan flanking me a step behind, I flowed toward the back door. I kept the muzzle generally pointed toward the far corner of the building, except when I had to cross a window. There were two before we reached the door, and I quickly pied them off, covering every angle inside with my muzzle as I walked past, before snapping back forwards when J.D. moved up to take over for me. The maneuver was mostly pointless, since the interior was pitch black. But old habits can be a hell of a thing to break, and that's one that's saved my life a few times.

Getting to the door, my focus narrowed. I pointed the AKM just above the door handle, even as I reached forward to test the latch.

It was unlocked. I carefully turned the handle, and tried to ease the door open. I wanted to stay soft for as long as possible.

The door creaked loudly, as if the hinges hadn't been greased in years. There went staying soft. I flung the door open and stepped through the threshold, stepping aside as fast as possible to clear the way for Ivan, even as I triggered the flashlight taped to the rifle's forearm, scanning for threats.

The back hallway was empty. Flashlights played over bare plastered walls and a stone floor. There was no sound except for our own movement and harsh breathing.

Now that we were inside, we didn't dare stop moving. Hallways are deathtraps, and I had no intention of staying in that one for more than a few seconds. I swept forward, gun up and watching the three doorways ahead.

There were curtains over the one to the front and the left. So I went right, pausing just long enough to get a bump from either J.D. or Ivan behind me before charging into the next room.

It was a kitchen, dominated by a large hearth with iron racks for cooking bolted across the deep fireplace. There were hooks set into the wall above the hearth, and there were shelves made of old wood and brick along the far wall.

There were also two Russian 152mm howitzer shells sitting upright in the fireplace in a tangle of wires and det cord, with a cell phone sitting on top.

“Avalanche!” I bellowed. It wasn't original, but it was the standard code word in the U.S. mil that we'd all trained with for, “There's an IED, get the fuck out!” I suited actions to words by promptly diving through the window in a shower of glass and broken window frame.

Well, it was sort of a dive. It wasn't nearly as graceful as the word makes it sound. I kind of went through the glass shoulder-first, cut myself, lost my balance, and fell out of the window. I hit heavily and off balance, knocking some of the wind out of myself, only made worse when Ivan's big ass landed on me, followed by J.D.. J.D. wasn't as heavy as Ivan, but it still hurt.

Both of them rolled off, and I levered myself to my feet, painfully, but probably a lot faster than I would have under different circumstances. I wanted away from that bomb disguised as a farmhouse, right fucking now. Wheezing, favoring my side, which twinged painfully when I tried to take a deep breath, I started jogging away from the house, with Ivan and J.D. on my heels. I wasn't moving that slowly, but between the pain of my rapid exit and the desperation of having a whole lot of high explosive right behind me, it felt like I was swimming through tar, even as we plunged into the trees.

Just because we were running for our lives, though, didn't mean I'd dropped all semblance of situational awareness. I'd survived too long in too many dangerous places. So I saw the figures moving up through the woods even as we ran toward them, and instinctively slowed, bringing my rifle up. Then the house blew up behind us and knocked me on my face.

Fortunately most of the blast went up, throwing cement, stone, wood, and sheet metal high in the air. We were still close enough to catch a good bit of the shockwave, though, and more fragments were flying through the air and smacking into the tree trunks. It was momentarily raining debris, bark, and shredded leaves, and my ears were ringing as I picked myself up off the ground, feeling like I'd just been hit by a truck. I'd still had my AKM's sling around my neck, so I hadn't lost it, though I still had to grope for the controls as I got up, pointing it vaguely toward the team that had been coming at us. I didn't know who they were, but the odds were good that they weren't on our side. The only person on our side who wasn't within arm's length of me at the moment was Carlos, who wasn't exactly in a position to intervene, being some two hundred yards away on the wrong side of the farm.

I couldn't see much in the dark, especially with the pall of dust and smoke from the explosion that was settling over the woods. But I could just make out the shapes picking themselves up off the ground, a little faster than we were managing. We'd been closer to the blast. I didn't want to just start hosing down the woods without knowing what my targets were, but we were not in a good place. I brought the rifle to my shoulder, trying to focus on the sights, though this was going to be point shooting more than anything else.

I still hesitated. I just couldn't see. Decades of conditioning were cautioning me about shooting at any target I wasn't sure of. So I held my fire, even as the dark shapes of men started to approach out of the shadows and smoke. J.D. and Ivan would follow my lead; neither one was easily stampeded, as much as J.D. might seem a little hyper from time to time.

Four figures loomed out of the dark. Two of them were big dudes, the lead one carrying what looked like a G3, which was presently pointed in my general direction. Which was a problem, except that I had my AKM pointed at his face at the same time.

I couldn't see many details in the dark, but I could tell that this was no Armenian militiaman. I didn't know what kind of people Anders had around him, but the general circumstances suggested that he was either one of Anders' or he was competition. If he was competition, I really didn't want to shoot him. Okay, maybe I wanted to shoot him a little bit.

Before either one of us could decide whether or not to pull the trigger, a long burst of machine gun fire from the north ripped through the trees, driving us all back into the dirt.

It was really turning into that kind of night.

In moments, at least two more guns had opened up, rounds going past overhead with hard, painful snaps and smacking into trees with heavy thuds. They were hitting close enough that they had to have some pretty good night optics; they weren't just hosing down the woods.

Flat on my belly, I scrambled behind a tree, which promptly started getting chewed up by bullets. Green tracers were skipping by, and, in a rather surreal moment, I saw one only a few feet in front of me spinning on the ground, like some kind of deadly firework.

Looking to my right and left, I saw that Ivan and J.D. had managed to take cover, though J.D. was holding his arm as if he'd gotten hit. We had a momentary breather, but it couldn't last. We were pinned down, with little hope of suppressing machine guns with our little 7.62x39 rifles, and it was only a matter of time before more shooters closed in under cover of that withering storm of metal and finished us off. We had to get out of there.

Looking toward the unknowns that we'd almost started shooting at before the machine guns opened up, I could just make out their shapes huddled behind trees and flat to the ground, not unlike us. Whoever they were, they weren't on Anders' side. Either that, or Anders' mooks were way more incompetent than I had any business hoping.

Getting Ivan's and J.D.'s attention, I pointed to the south, the way we'd come and, helpfully, pretty much straight away from the machine gun fire. Fire superiority was out, so we were going to have to break contact the old-fashioned guerrilla way. We were going to have to get down in the dirt and do a lot of crawling.

Gripping my rifle with one hand, I managed to turn myself around even in the very, very small space that constituted the slowly eroding cover of the tree I was huddled behind, and started skull-dragging my way away from the fire. Rocks and roots dug into my cheek and hands, and leaves and grass seemed to slip and slide under my boots as I pushed and dragged myself over the ground, but as much as high-crawling might have been easier, the continued hiss and snap of rounds going by all too closely overhead was a great reminder of why that would be a bad idea.

The canvas AK chest rig that's been ubiquitous in the Eastern Bloc since the rifle first entered service with the Soviets is a thin, minimalist piece of gear, that doesn't add much bulk beyond that of the magazines themselves. It was still lifting me way too far up off the ground, especially as I actually felt a round go by only inches over my head.

Inch by inch, yard by painful yard, we got some distance. After a while, the machine gun fire let up, and I could hear a few voices calling back and forth in Russian from back by the wreckage of the target house. Somehow, I didn't think that they were the unknowns we'd almost collided with; either they were dead or they'd evaded like we had. At that moment, I didn't care.

A painfully long five hundred yards away, I finally got up on a knee behind a tree. There was a fair bit of forest between us and the flashlights that were now shining through the trees near the ruins of the target. We weren't safe yet, but we had some cover and concealment. I lifted my radio and called Carlos.

“Carlos, we're clear, break off and meet us at the rally point.”

No reply.

I checked the radio as best I could in the dark. It was on, and I was pretty sure it was still on the right channel. “Carlos, this is Frank. If you can hear me, get to the rally point. We're moving now.” There was still no answer, but we couldn't stay where we were, and trying to get to Carlos' position would mean crossing an open field and exposing ourselves while still well within the effective range of those PKMs or whatever the machine gunners had been shooting at us.

A Russian-accented voice came over the radio. “Hello, Frank. I am afraid Carlos cannot answer. Do not worry, though. You will see him very soon.”

With a muttered curse, I switched the radio off. There would be time to mourn Carlos, and plot vengeance for his death, later. I couldn't afford to forget that we were still in a very bad tactical position, and we needed to get out of it without doing anything stupid, or we'd be just as dead as Carlos.

We were far enough from the enemy that we could start moving somewhat normally. Of course, with the NKDA everywhere, we'd have to be even more careful getting back into town and to the safe house with our camouflage and hardware. Everyone within twenty miles would have heard that shitstorm.

But that would come later. Our rally point was out in the weeds, for obvious reasons. Getting to my feet, I led out, rifle at the ready. J.D. and Ivan fell in behind me silently.

None of us said a word, but we knew each other well enough not to have to. There was a lot of retribution brewing for the disaster that this night had turned into.

#

It was morning by the time we got back to the safe house. We'd had to dodge several NKDA patrols, who were predictably stirred up by the explosion and the gunfire. They were far too close to the front line to take a roaring gunfight right outside the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's capitol city lightly. We'd had to stash the weapons and gear under the seats of the old, broken-down UAZ that we'd paid entirely too many dram to the Russians' contacts for, and even stripped down and stuffed our filthy cammies in over them, donning simple work clothes in their place and frantically trying to scrub the camouflage face paint off.

If we had gotten stopped, we'd probably have been screwed. We were pretty obviously not locals, and not Russians, which would have immediately put us under suspicion. But we had managed to get into town and to the safe house before the mad scramble had managed to lock down the streets. The Armenians weren't quite the most professional or quick-reacting army I'd ever seen, and that worked in our favor.

We dragged the gear inside in a couple of duffel bags, dumped them on the floor in the kitchen, and stood around the table for a moment. Nobody said a word for a long time.

“I don't suppose there's much of a chance we could retrieve his body?” J.D. asked.

I just shook my head. Any chance at it would almost certainly be a trap. That Russian bastard was trying to goad us into doing something stupid on the radio; he could probably be trusted to be waiting for us to try something like that.

It was something we'd all had to come to terms with, over the years. We were mercenaries working for a shadowy, pseudo-governmental paramilitary/spy organization, in various places where Americans in general usually weren't welcome, never mind well-armed paramilitary operatives. If things went sideways, nobody was coming for us. If we went down, we'd be buried where we fell, if we got a burial at all. It sucked, but it was the nature of the game.

“So, what do we do now?” Ivan asked. “Element of surprise is lost. And now there are only three of us.”

“I'm not sure we ever really had the element of surprise in the first place,” I said. “That was an ambush, no two ways about it.”

“You think someone leaked that we were coming?” Ivan asked.

“Possible,” I said. “More likely, to my thinking, is that Anders dangled it in front of our employers to draw out anyone hunting him.”

“And just our shit luck,” J.D. put in, “that the Organization sent a handful of expendable contractors to do the job.”

“Maybe,” I said. I was getting a bit of a nasty suspicion about the whole thing. J.D. looked at me and frowned.

“You think that Forsyth sent us in there to hit the tripwire for him?” he asked quietly, after a moment.

“I think it's entirely possible,” I replied. “It would go a good way toward explaining his insistence on haste and as little preparation as possible. Though I don't know why they felt the need to drag us halfway across the continent for it.”

“Question still stands,” Ivan said. It must have been the strain; his accent had gotten really thick, even while his voice was as stolid and unemotional as ever. “What do we do now?”

“It might be a good time to start looking at one or another of our fallback options,” J.D. mused.

“We'd have to be damned good and sure that our employers think we all died,” I pointed out. “And that's pretty hard to do. Remember Tarasov?”

Nikolai Tarasov had been one of our targets, a Mafia Avtoritet who had done a lot of work through the Crossroads. The Organization had marked him, and he had apparently been assassinated in Vladivostok. Except that he'd faked it, and somehow the Organization had tracked him down and put us on him. We'd found him in the Crossroads, followed him to Belyashi, and put a bullet in his head behind a barn that had looked like it belonged in the tenth century. The Organization had ways of finding people. And if we all vanished at this juncture, Forsyth was likely to get suspicious and start digging. “Live and let live” was not in the Organization's vocabulary.

“We don't have the resources here to pull a vanishing act,” I pointed out. “And on top of that, we don't just have Forsyth to worry about. Anders and whoever that Russian bastard was know we're looking for them now, and they'll be looking for us.”

“Not to mention whoever the hell that other team was,” J.D. pointed out.

I looked over at him. So, I hadn't been the only one to notice that they didn't fit. A small team moving toward the same target we'd been after, that had been taken under fire by the same machine gunners who had been trying to kill us. Again, unless Anders' mooks were way, way more incompetent than I thought they were—and nothing about that ambush suggested that they were—those guys were working for somebody else. The only question was, who?

Then I shook my head. They were the least of our worries. My guess was that they were another team sent after Anders, which made them competition, but not necessarily more of a threat than that. “We'll keep an eye out for them, but we've got bigger fish to fry. Obviously, the intel Forsyth gave us was crap. We lost Carlos, and Anders now knows we're here. Which means he's going to be hunting us, not to mention the fact that the NKDA is going to be on heightened alert after last night. We try to run, we're probably going to get rolled up, especially if we try to fly—presuming that the same Russians who flew us in here aren't in cahoots with the Russians that Anders had waiting in the trees.

“I think our best bet is going to be to lie low and watch for an opportunity to ambush Anders, take him on the move. If we can take him out, Forsyth might just send enough support to get us out of here in one piece.”

“You really believe that?” J.D. asked.

I sighed. “Not really,” I admitted, “but it's a chance.”

The phone rang. I'd actually been expecting this earlier. When I looked at the number, it was simply “Unknown,” but I knew who it was.

“Your intel was shit,” I said, as soon I answered, without giving Forsyth time to say anything.

“Hardly,” he said dryly, apparently unfazed by my attitude. “If it had been, you'd have found nothing but an empty house. It's evident that you're on the right track.”

“So, you were watching.”

“Of course,” he replied. “We've had assets overhead ever since we determined that Anders was in Stepanakert. We saw the whole little drama, in real time.”

I bit off a bitter curse. They'd been sitting, fat and happy and safe, probably in some trailer in Nevada or somewhere, watching while Carlos died.

“Do you have anything useful for me,” I asked tightly, “or is this just a reminder that you're watching?”

“Consider it touching base, and an assurance that you're not on a wild goose chase,” he answered coolly. “I'm not calling the op off, if that's what you're hoping. However, check the email I sent the briefing packet to. I've attached some of the overhead footage.” I grimaced. We could watch Carlos die, since we hadn't seen it on the ground. “That other group on the ground is a concern.”

That got my attention. I'd presumed that if they weren't Anders' people, they must have been sent by the Organization. It would fit the “Need To Know” Nazis not to tell us about a backup team.

“I thought they were another team you'd sent,” I said. “You did say that this was an 'all hands' evolution.” Ivan and J.D. traded a glance before going back to watching me, Ivan impassive, J.D. with one eyebrow raised.

“Negative,” Forsyth said, ignoring my thinly veiled jab at our lack of support out here. For full court press, we were awfully alone, suggesting that more than just the intel Forsyth had given us was bullshit. “We don't know for sure who they are, though there are a couple of possibilities. We need you to keep an eye out for them. If they know about Anders, they might present a security leak that we need to plug as soon as possible. They are not your primary target, but if you can find out any information about them, we need to know.”

Well, that's just plumb gracious of you, I thought viciously. My team down by a quarter, not a word of condolence or promise of support, just another target to add to the deck. Asshole.

“Can we expect any more in the way of support?” I asked, trying to unclench my teeth before asking. “If you were watching, you know that we're down a man.”

“And that's unfortunate,” Forsyth said, utterly without feeling, “but at this time, we can't send anyone. Nagorno-Karabakh is getting more non-permissive. The Russians are starting to take a more active role in supporting the Armenians, and that means more eyes that could compromise us. Best to keep the footprint small.” A sarcastic edge entered his voice. “You should be fine, Mr. Dragic. I've read your file. You're a professional, after all.” He hung up before I could even ask for any additional information.

“Cocksucker,” I muttered, as I resisted the urge to throw the phone against the wall. If he was watching from his eye in the sky, he had to know more about Anders' movements than he'd told us. If that file he was supposedly sending didn't have that info, when this was all said and done, scary reputation or no, I was going to find Forsyth and put a bullet in him.

#

The imagery wasn't nearly as helpful as we might have hoped. The drone operator had tried to keep eyes on both the ambushers and the other mystery shooters, and as a result, lost both of them within a kilometer of the target site. The ambushers looked like they were heading in our direction, while the mystery shooters had headed for the hills to the northeast.

That was interesting. While I wasn't shifting fire—Anders and the Russian on the radio were still my main focus—that told me that they were either camping out in the woods or they had more resources in the area than we did. Or maybe they had a safe house with some distance from Stepanakert, which, given more time to prepare, I might have done as well.

Leaving them aside, we were reasonably certain that Anders' people had gone into the southwest portion of the city. Somewhere. There were actually two semi-intact villages spread over the hills to the south, Kerkicahan and Haykavan. I say semi-intact because we'd all noticed that there were a lot of ruins scattered around Stepanakert. How much was because of shelling during the war, and how much was because of the Armenians ethnically cleansing the Azeris from the region, I didn't know. At that point in time, I didn't particularly care. The ruins might make decent observation sites, and probably wouldn't make for very good safe houses. We might be able to use them for recon, and we could probably safely write them off as Anders' local base of operations.

We'd start recon that afternoon, after we got a few hours sleep.

#

Even with only Ivan and me in the canvas-topped UAZ 469, dressed in the dark clothes that seemed to be the most common in the area, with the Suchkas under our seats, trying to stay low-profile in Kerkicahan was not an easy task.

The UAZ was a large part of the problem. While there were still a lot of ruins around the outskirts, central Stepanakert itself was a pretty modern city, with high-rises, parks, paved streets, sidewalks, and plenty of cars. Kerkicahan, while just outside, was an old-world village, not that far removed from the Middle Ages. The roads were unpaved dirt, most of the houses standing were stone or brick, though most of them had been re-roofed with corrugated sheet metal, and internal combustion engines were about as common as electricity. I saw a few carts and a few donkeys, but this place was Afghanistan poor. It wasn't all that strange to us; we were used to working in some of the poorest, shittiest parts of Eurasia. But it made it difficult to cruise the roads looking for a safe house.

Of course, it should make it hard for Anders to hide a safe house, too. Not only would the blond giant stand out, but the vehicles they'd probably be using would, too.

The village sort of wrapped around the hillside in a crescent, with the roads forming something akin to switchbacks as they wound around the hill. We were rolling through the ruins of the upper half of the village when we saw another car on the road.

It was an ancient, ugly LuAZ 969, colored a mix of faded yellow and rust. I couldn't see the driver and passenger clearly, but a vehicle in this ancient dump of a village was an indicator. I just pointed, and Ivan nodded. We'd see if we could tail them; if they were Anders' people, they might lead us back to their safe house. Then we might be able to plan a proper, and less suicidal, hit on the place. Or at least set up more low-profile surveillance so that we could take them on the move.

We were going to lose sight of them if we kept going the way we were; they were on the next road downhill, and were going to pass behind some more ruins and thick stands of trees. But without going full car chase on them, we wouldn't be able to avoid it. Looking at the crude map I'd drawn based on the overheads, the two roads should come together up ahead, anyway.

The road entered the trees, ruined houses looming on either side, and I put out a hand to have Ivan slow down. I didn't want to run into them unprepared or unawares; if this was going to be an ambush, I'd rather be the ambusher than the ambushed.

We crept forward, Ivan's foot just off the brake, as I drew my AKS-74U out from under the seat and slid it under a jacket on my lap. For the most part I was just being careful, but if by some chance that was Anders in that car, I was going to have Ivan sidle up to it and hose it down. Even that huge freak would die with enough 5.45 holes in him.

By now, I was keyed-up, scanning the woods and the gaping, darkened holes of the abandoned windows and doors in the shells of the village houses as we rolled past, looking for an ambush, a triggerman, or even any signs of IEDs in the piles of rubble alongside the road. After having that farmhouse blow up and narrowly avoiding going with it, I was a little more paranoid about explosives than usual.

I wanted a cigarette, but we had the windows rolled up to make it harder to see us, and while Ivan smoked, he didn't chain-smoke the way I did, and even I wasn't all that keen on hot-boxing the UAZ with Black Russian smoke.

“There he is,” Ivan said, nodding toward where the LuAZ was coming around the bend just downhill and in front of us, barely visible through the trees. If the house at the bend hadn't been reduced to little more than a rubble-strewn foundation, we probably wouldn't have spotted it at all.

The vehicle turned right, heading further downhill and away from us, and Ivan pressed the accelerator, picking up speed to catch up. It would be easy to lose them in this labyrinth of empty, crumbling buildings and steadily encroaching trees, but it would be just as easy to get burned and wind up in a fight we weren't ready for. We had to find a balance.

We hit the intersection at just the same time that the LuAZ turned left on the next road down. A quick glance at the map told me we had a little bit of leeway, provided they didn't floor it as soon as we lost sight of them.

Ivan glanced at the rear-view mirror just as we turned down the road after the LuAZ. “Who is that?” he asked.

I hunched down and looked in my own rear-view mirror. There was another car behind us. An ancient, rusty Lada sedan, it had just come up on us from the same road the LuAZ had been on.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. We'd gotten focused on the LuAZ and hadn't noticed that they were being followed. But who was who? There were two big dudes in the Lada, both looking hunched and uncomfortable in the little car, but I couldn't see much more detail than that, at least not in the tiny, cracked and scratched mirror that wasn't at a very good angle. I turned in my seat and looked back.

“Well?” Ivan asked as I turned back forward. We were still following the LuAZ; there was no point in doing anything else until we decided to break away and try to lose the Lada.

“I don't know,” I answered, still peering in the rear view while trying to keep an eye on the LuAZ, which had just trundled past a Y intersection and was continuing straight ahead. “The driver is a big black dude. I don't remember anything in the intel about Anders having a big black dude on his team.”

“Nothing in intel said anything about booby-trapped house or Russian brodyagi, either,” Ivan pointed out. “What do you want to do?”

“Keep driving,” I said, my hand on the Suchka's grip under the jacket. “Let the situation develop.” We really didn't have much of a choice, aside from opening fire, and I was pretty sure that Anders wasn't in that Lada, so starting a gunfight just had the potential to get us both ventilated without getting any closer to our target. Even so, I was looking for an escape route. We were not in a good position.

The LuAZ suddenly turned off the road, heading toward a larger house some way off the road and back in the trees. At the same time, an open-top UAZ surged out of the same side avenue and up onto the road in front of us, blocking the way.

As if that wasn't enough, a pair of Lada 4x4s came roaring down the road behind the sedan. I caught a glimpse of what might have been an AK in one of the open windows.

I tensed and flipped the jacket off my shorty AK. We were boxed, and it looked like things were about to get loud.

“Yub tvoyu maht,” Ivan muttered, reaching down to drag his own Suchka out from under his seat, even as he wrenched the wheel to the left. We were just past the Y, but Ivan was going for it anyway.

There were three shooters in the open-top SUV in front of us, dressed in civilian clothes but wearing Russian plate carriers over them. Three black AK variants were leveled at us, even as I finished rolling down the window, stuck my Suchka out, and opened fire.

It was a fifty-yard shot, so it was entirely doable with the stubby little AK subgun, but we were bouncing over dirt and rocks, and I'd just yanked the selector down to the first slot, auto, and mashed the trigger.

The Suchka only has an eight-inch barrel, so the muzzle blast is an impressive blossom of flame. It strobed in front of my face as I did my best to riddle the other UAZ with bullets, though I'm pretty sure out of the forty-five round mag, only about ten actually hit anything.

It was enough to get their heads down, at least, and I thought I saw one drop into the back, hopefully shot. I pulled the weapon back inside just in time to avoid having it smashed out of my hands by a low-hanging tree branch, as Ivan got us onto the other road, heading back up the hill.

The Lada was right behind us, the passenger leaning out of the window and firing what looked like a Dirty Harry revolver of all things at the 4x4s behind them. One of the 4x4s looked like it had swerved off the road and smacked into the ruin of a house; there was a pile of rubble on the smoking hood. The other one was still coming after us, with the occasional muzzle flash of an automatic weapon coming from the passenger side. Rounds snapped and hissed past, audible even over the roar of the UAZ's engine. One hit my rear-view mirror with a bang, sending bits of glass and metal flying.

“Chyort!” Ivan yelled, even as another round ripped through the canvas top just over our heads, tearing a long slit through it. We'd come around the long curve in the road, only to see that it dead-ended at a bombed-out house surrounded by low stone fences about four hundred yards away.

I rocked the next mag into my Suchka and turned to hang out the window again. Ivan could find us an escape route; I needed to suppress our pursuit. The UAZ was moving, though I could only see two guys in it now, and it was right behind the other 4x4. I didn't have a shot at either, however, without hitting the asshole who was hanging out of the Lada's window with that big wheelgun.

“Who the fuck is that?” I wondered. At that point in time I really couldn't give less of a damn about Forsyth's Request For Information; they were shooting at the same people we were. Of course, it looked like they sucked at not being followed, had probably blown this whole op, and what kind of amateur brings a revolver to a gunfight anymore? But then the guy put a bullet through the windshield of the 4x4 behind them, and the sporadic AK fire from the passenger side window suddenly ceased, so maybe he wasn't that much of an amateur after all.

Ivan, rather than slowing down as we rapidly approached the end of the road, floored the gas and sent us hurtling alongside the low stone fence around the ruined farmhouse ahead. He spun the wheel as we came abreast of what had once been a gate leading off the road to the left, almost flipped the vehicle, and then we were bouncing and roaring across the overgrown remains of some Azeri farmer's barnyard, heading uphill and toward the trees.

Unfortunately, I now had no shot at all, as our pursuers were now on the wrong side of the vehicle, and eclipsed by another crumbling farmhouse. I did get a glimpse behind us of the Lada continuing the way we'd been driving, heading for a gap in the trees. That dude was still shooting that enormous hand cannon, and it seemed to have dissuaded the pursuit somewhat, even though the sedan was now rocking way too much for him to actually be able to hit anything. Then the Lada disappeared into the trees, even as the UAZ tried to make the turn to follow us.

I braced the Suchka as tightly as I could against the door column, and squeezed off a burst at the driver. At least, I tried to aim at the driver; Ivan wasn't slowing down to give me a good shooting platform, so I sprayed the general area with about ten rounds. Then Ivan gunned it over the low remains of a gap in the stone fence, I damn near bit my tongue off as we hit the ground on the far side, and by the time I'd un-rattled my brains enough to try and shoot again, he'd taken another turn, and there were trees and a ruined wall between us and our pursuers. I couldn't see shit, so I hauled myself back inside and slumped in the seat.

“You good?” I asked, already starting to check him for bleeds even before he could answer. I'd seen a teammate bleed out before he'd even realized he'd been shot. Considering that Ivan was driving, and we were hurtling along a rocky hillside at what I would not consider entirely safe speeds, having him pass out from blood loss would not be a good way to live to get paid, much less to old age.

Once I was confident that Ivan wasn't going to keel over from blood loss, I slumped back in my seat and started checking myself, wondering what the hell we were going to do now.

#

“Wait, wait, wait. Stop,” J.D. said. “Go back. He was carrying what?”

“A big-ass, Dirty Harry Magnum revolver,” I repeated. “I thought it was weird, too.”

J.D. had a frown on his face, though, rather an odd expression for Mr. Always Obnoxiously Cheerful himself. “No,” he said, shaking his head, thinking so hard I could hear the hamster about to have a heart attack. “It's not just that. Something about a revolver . . . ”

I looked over at Ivan as I lit up. He just shrugged. He didn't know, either.

J.D. suddenly snapped his fingers. “There was a BOLO, came out about a year ago,” he said. “I bet I can find it somewhere, still. Something about an HVT who uses a Magnum revolver.”

“A signature weapon, particularly one like that, doesn't seem terribly smart for somebody playing the HVT game,” I commented, taking a deep drag on the cig.

J.D. wasn't listening, but was poring over the “sensitive” laptop, that we used for comms and such things as mission files. “Here it is!” he said excitedly. “I knew I remembered it.” He turned the screen so that we could see.

The picture was remarkably good quality for an HVT shot. It looked like a mugshot, except there was no prisoner number under the young man's face. His head had been shaved, and he had a couple of nasty scars, one across his forehead, another that looked like it had barely missed taking out his left eye. For all that, he still looked like a kid. Just a kid who'd seen some shit.

He was also pretty high up on the Organizations “Capture” list. Strangely enough, there didn't seem to be a “Kill” portion to it. Whatever Constantine Michael Valentine was wanted for, it had to have been something he was carrying around in his head. The Organization wasn't usually all that eager to go for “Capture Only.”

“Fuck me,” I muttered, taking another deep drag on the Black Russian and trying to let the nicotine keep the headache at bay. That was all we needed. Another snatch-and-grab on top of the time-sensitive one that had already gone south.

After a moment, staring at the kid's picture, I snorted. “Constantine Michael Valentine, huh?” I said. “Damn, his parents must have hated him. Well, it's lover-boy's lucky day. Because we're sure in no position to do anything about him.”

“We could send the sighting up the chain,” J.D. said.

“And then what?” I retorted. “You know damned good and well that as soon as Forsyth hears that there's another HVT here, he's going to task us with both. We're already down a man, and we were undermanned for the Anders mission to begin with. Fuck Valentine and fuck telling Forsyth about him. Let somebody else worry about that one. We've got enough on our plate. Now, can we get back to the mission at hand? This is twice we've clashed with what I can only assume are Anders' people, with no sign of the big bastard himself. This isn't that big a city. He's got to be somewhere.”

J.D. looked uncertain. Ivan just looked grim. But without any further complaint, we got back to planning. The clock was ticking, Forsyth was probably going to be calling about the dustup in Kerkicahan any minute now, and I was now fairly certain that Anders' people were actively hunting us.

We needed to hurry up and get this job over with before it killed the rest of us.

#

“Why am I getting impression that this is waste of time?” Ivan muttered.

I just grunted an irritated monosyllable that might or might not have been a word. I was driving, Ivan was riding shotgun, and we were following one of the 4x4s that had shot at us in Kerkicahan a couple days before.

“We have seen all of these brodyagi several times,” he continued. “Still no sign of Anders. He is not type to stay inside and hide when there is killing to be done.”

I had to agree. We had gotten to the point over the last couple of days where we could recognize most of the Russian shooters. And the man in charge was definitely not Anders. Short, stocky, scarred, with a shaved head, no appreciable neck, and a nose that looked like it had been broken at least a half-dozen times, the guy I was mentally thinking of as The Bulldog was pretty obviously the team leader for the shooters, most of whom were hanging out in paramilitary uniforms and kit, openly armed.

The reason they were getting away with being so blatant was pretty evident from what we were seeing. The 4x4 ahead slowed and stopped at an NKDA checkpoint, and the Russians got out leisurely. Two of them hung out by the vehicle, while the other two walked up to the ancient BTR-52 and started handing out cigarettes and shooting the shit with the Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers.

As I watched, I decided that this wasn't just the Russians trying to win over the locals. There was a certain camaraderie in evidence that wasn't explicable by the Russians paying the Armenians off to look the other way. These guys had seen action together.

Ivan was watching the byplay going on next to the old BTR as well. “Russian 'volunteers,'” he said. “Russians have been supporting Armenians here for decades. Naturally is corruption and mafiya involved. Probably some 'volunteers' also brodyagi. Makes sense that Anders paid brodyagi already here for fighting against Azeris.”

I had slowed and pulled over to the side of the road as the 4x4 had stopped at the checkpoint. I didn't want to drive into the middle of that, and even as we sat there, a block and a half away, watching, I was looking for an escape route. One of the difficulties of our situation was that we didn't have multiple teams with multiple vehicles to do our surveillance with. That meant that sooner or later, we were going to get burned, assuming we hadn't already. Ivan and I had carjacked a creaky, wheezing GAZ-24 to replace the UAZ that had gotten shot up, but the same vehicle with the same two mopes in it was going to start to stand out after a while.

I was about to say something more about Anders' presence or lack thereof, when The Russian turned, looking around, and looked right at me. At least, he seemed to. He paused for a moment, puffing on his cigarette, looking at us.

“I think we might be burned,” I said.

“I think so, too,” Ivan replied. “Just play it cool.”

“Do I look like I'm panicking?” I asked, as I took my hands off the wheel to light another cigarette. Let The Russian think that I had just pulled over to light up. Plus, the initial cloud of smoke would help conceal my features.

Of course, of the few people who drove around here, most wouldn't actually stop to light up, but I was making do with what I had.

The Russian was still looking toward us as he leaned over to his buddy and said something. It was definitely time to go. I still kept it casual as I put the GAZ in gear and started us rolling, taking the first turn before the checkpoint.

The Russian and his cronies watched us the entire way.

“Fuuuuuuck,” I said, as I started on a long, meandering route back to the safe house. We'd been burned, all right. And for what? If Anders really wasn't there, we were about to get killed for a fucking red herring. Carlos already had been.

Neither of us spoke much on the way back. We managed to avoid most of the checkpoints, though at least one had been unavoidable. We'd been careful that all the weapons and gear were carefully hidden before driving up and handing the NKDA soldier our fake documents, which had been hastily turned out by the Organization. They were shit copies, and wouldn't stand up against any serious scrutiny, but the kid just looked bored and disinterested as he checked the documents, gave the inside of the car a cursory glance, and waved us by. He probably had some serious drinking and porn watching to do, and having to check vehicles was cutting into his “me” time.

Getting back to the safe house, we were presented with a problem. The car was burned, no doubt about that. Parking it in front of the safe house would only burn the house as well, and we didn't have a backup. But walking too far with the gear, even stuffed in the big backpacks we had in the back, might raise some eyebrows as well. We weren't locals, and this part of Stepanakert, hell, any part of Stepanakert, was a little sensitive to out-of-towners. These people had effectively lived under siege for decades. Strangers were noted. That was why we'd exposed ourselves as little as possible.

But the car was going to be a bigger target indicator, so we parked it five houses down, stuffed our Suchkas and chest rigs in our packs, and walked the rest of the way. J.D. was at the door, his AK-74 held just out of sight.

“Where's the car?” he asked, as we walked in.

“Down the street,” I answered. “We got spotted.” I dropped the pack on the floor and picked up my AKM. I'd be keeping it close for the moment.

“Um,” was all J.D. said. I turned and frowned at him. Usually, he'd have a lot more to say, especially about a compromise. But he wasn't looking at me. He actually looked a little guilty, which was a new expression for our resident hedonist and serial womanizer.

“What the fuck did you do?” I asked, concern about The Russian eyeballing us suddenly eclipsed by J.D.'s demeanor.

He was saved the necessity of answering immediately by the call signal from the laptop in our makeshift comms room, which was just a former bathroom, the toilet having been ripped out to leave nothing but a noxious-smelling hole in the floor. With a glare that promised a continuation to the conversation, I went inside to answer it.

I was expecting Forsyth. But the face that came up on the screen wasn't Forsyth. I'd never seen this guy before.

Forsyth had a dangerous rep, but he looked like an office geek who got to the gym regularly. Whoever this was, he was older, decades older, but even with thinning white hair and wrinkles, he looked like one dangerous, scary old bastard. His neck was almost as thick as The Russian's, and his eyes were probably the coldest I'd ever seen, and I've looked into the eyes of some very nasty people.

“You Dragic?” he asked. His voice was low and gravelly. It fit him.

“I am,” I said. There probably wasn't any point in trying to beat around the bush with this guy. He didn't look like the type to play games. “Who are you?”

“My name's Underhill,” he replied. “I'm told you've made contact with Michael Valentine.”

I felt a sudden cold rage at his words. So that was why J.D. had looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He'd talked about Valentine. Fucker.

But somehow I got the impression that showing this man anything but the utmost professionalism was not a good idea. “That depends on how you define 'contact,'” I answered. “We've tentatively ID'ed him, based on a couple of chance encounters in the course of our own operations. We're pretty sure he's here after Anders, just like we are. If it is him.”

Underhill's expression didn't change a whit. Nor did he apparently give a damn for my qualifications. “Your mission profile has changed,” he said bluntly. “You are to get eyes on Constantine Michael Valentine, and maintain surveillance until I get there. Do not try to engage him or his companions.”

“Dammit,” I snarled, momentarily not caring about how scary this oldster appeared. An old guy working for the Organization was usually not one to trifle with. He'd probably been around a long time, and done some things that would give most normal people nightmares. But after ten years of working for these people, we were being used as expendable pawns, and it pissed me off more than this guy scared me. “We're already in over our heads with looking for Anders. I'm ninety-five percent certain that he's hunting us as much as we're hunting him. And as near as I can tell, we're the only assets you've got here looking for him. And you want us to add another target to the list?”

“No,” he said, with the grinding patience of a glacier. “You're shifting targets. There are plenty of other teams out doing the same 'confirm or deny' game that you've been playing with the three dozen or so mostly spurious Anders sightings that have been cropping up. This is a higher priority.”

I saw red. We were out in the cold, with Carlos dead already, for a target that probably had never been there, and the Organization had known that? “And how many of those teams have been ambushed?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Several,” he replied, with about as much feeling as a man talking about how his stocks were doing. Less, actually. A man talking about his stocks would have some actual stake in their success. Underhill didn't care. At all. “That was always to be expected. Enough of that. Stick to the matter at hand.”

It was a tribute to just how menacing this emotionless, gravel-voiced oldster was that I quit bitching and went ahead and played along.

“Why Valentine?” I asked. “What did he do that makes him more valuable a target than Anders?”

“He's not,” Underhill said. “You're being re-tasked because we're now fairly certain that Anders isn't in Azerbaijan, while you've got a pretty solid lead on Valentine. As for what he did; that's need-to-know, and you don't need to know. Just don't underestimate him.”

“He looks like a kid,” I said.

“That kid was a Vanguard merc before he became an Exodus terrorist,” Underhill said. “He's seen plenty of combat, and he's a survivor. If he was just any schlub with a gun, they wouldn't have hauled me out of retirement a year ago to find him.

“You've got your instructions,” he said, his voice low, hard, and brooking no dissent. “Get eyes on Valentine and don't lose him until I get there and can take him in. He's my target; you're now spotting for me. Don't screw this up.” The screen went blank. He'd ended the call.

To my credit, I didn't yell, I didn't scream, I didn't even curse under my breath. I just sat there for a minute, staring at the laptop. Then I got up, went out into the main room, without looking at either J.D. or Ivan, and lit a cigarette. I smoked the entire thing down to the filter, then crushed it out on the filthy floor before turning to stare at J.D.. He didn't look at me, not at first.

“I specifically said we were going to leave well enough alone,” I said. “We are undermanned, all but unsupported, and in unfamiliar territory. Let's stick to the job at hand until we can either bag the target or otherwise get back to our own AO, where we know the terrain and the people, I said. So tell me, J.D., since I'm pretty sure it was you, why did you decide to throw that decision completely out the fucking window and tell fucking Forsyth that we'd seen fucking Valentine here?”

He lifted his head and looked me in the face. Suddenly his guilty look was gone, replaced with a flash of anger. “Because somebody had to,” he snarled. “We've been through two ambushes and several days of recon, with no sign of Anders. Forsyth was getting impatient. If we wanted to have a chance in hell of getting out of here in one piece, I had to give them something, some reason not to just write us off and make us disappear. They wouldn't even have to take us, you know that. A word here, a file deleted there, and we're international fugitives. Fuck that.”

He stepped closer to me, lowering his voice. “This isn't about your pride anymore, Frank. It isn't about your idea of somehow being above it all, a gun for hire, totally uninvested, doing the job well enough to keep below the level of a threat and above being a pawn. Guess what, Frank? We're fucking pawns. We're no better off than the Dead Six guys that you pitied so much, all the while telling yourself that you had it figured out, that we could walk the tightrope and come out fine.” He stepped back and shook his head. “We're not fine, Frank. This isn't our game, and we can't play it the way we want to. I had to give them something, and it bought us time. So you can get off your damn high-horse and accept that if I hadn't told them about this Valentine character, we'd be dead in a week.”

I just glared at him, but at the same time, I knew that he was right. We'd been playing a game of brinksmanship for years, banking on our usefulness to keep us from being too expendable. But to the Organization, everybody's ultimately expendable, particularly contractors. We weren't special. We'd just bucked the odds for longer than most. Now we were out of options. I had no doubt that Underhill would make it his business to hunt us down and finish us off if we screwed this up. Forsyth might have a nasty reputation, but even without knowing anything about Underhill, something about that old man just scared me.

But that didn't make the fact that J.D. had gone behind my back to the Organization any easier to swallow. I'd trusted this man with my life for years. And he'd just betrayed that trust as surely as if he'd slid a knife into my back.

Part of that tightrope act we'd pretended was going to end in anything but a fiery crash and burn had been the understanding that we could never entirely trust the Organization. We had to trust each other instead. Yet J.D. had gone to the Organization in spite of Ivan and me. I didn't know if I could ever trust him all the way again.

I'd always known that J.D. had an amoral streak. He was a hired killer and a serial womanizer, and not much else. But this . . . it was all I could do not to just shoot him in the face. He was the same guy, but I'd be watching him like a hawk from here on out. Because I couldn't know when he'd decide to sell us out the rest of the way.

Ivan hadn't said a word, but the expression on his flat Russian face was thunderous as he looked at J.D.. Loyalty was a big thing with Ivan; he'd followed me without hesitation—though occasionally with some rather pointed questions—ever since I'd pulled him out of Pavlodar just ahead of the friends of the brodyaga he'd nearly killed in the bar. He wouldn't like this. And when Ivan really didn't like something . . . well, things could get a little physical.

“You should not have done this, J.D.,” he said, his voice sounding a little deeper, his accent a little thicker, than usual. “Not without consulting us.”

“Both of you would have just doubled down on your walk-the-line bullshit,” J.D. answered harshly. “You wouldn't have done it. So I did it for you.” He turned away, toward his room. “You can thank me later.”

Ivan and I watched him leave the room, neither one of us saying anything. Ivan didn't look pissed anymore. His expression was blank, dead. Ivan with the dead face was way worse than Ivan pissed off. It meant he was seriously contemplating killing J.D. in the next few minutes.

He turned to look at me, and I shook my head. “We still need him,” I said, reading the unasked question. I sighed bitterly. “We'll figure out what to do after this is all over.”

“He knows all fallback plans,” Ivan pointed out quietly.

“He won't tell anybody,” I said, starting to get over the anger. I could see why J.D. had done it, even if it still pissed me off. He hadn't suddenly turned into an Organization drone. He was scared that we were going to fail and pay the ultimate price for it, and had acted out of that fear.

Still, I could tell that the team's days were numbered. If we survived this nightmare of an assignment, we wouldn't be working together anymore. More than likely, we'd activate our fallback plans, and disappear into the shadowy corners of the world, to live out the rest of our lives under assumed identities, hoping the Organization overlooked us.

But that was dependent on that big, ugly if. If we survived. We needed to get to work on that part, and worry about what came after if there was an “after.”

“Come on,” I said. “We'll start planning to track down this Valentine character. J.D. can come join us when he's done sulking.”

#

In the end, we didn't have a chance to find anybody. They found us.

The fact of the matter was, we had no idea where Valentine and his Exodus pals might have been. We'd only ever seen them in passing, while hunting for Anders—or, rather, hunting The Bulldog, since Anders didn't seem to actually be on the ground in Nagorno-Karabakh. The only lead we had was that the Russians had apparently been following Valentine when we'd had our little dust-up in Kerkicahan. So we decided to go looking for Russians.

J.D. had come out of his room after Ivan and I had only been planning for a few minutes. We kitted up and got ready to move without much conversation. There wasn't much to say. At least, until Ivan looked out the front window to see if the coast was clear.

“We have company,” he said. I joined him at the window, trying to peer out without exposing myself too much to the outside. We hadn't drawn too much attention from the neighbors, but it was probably bound to happen. It was just a really bad time for it.

It wasn't the neighbors. Valentine had ditched the Lada for a UAZ. They were trying to be casual, but I could see enough through the rolled-up windows to tell that it was the same big black dude in the passenger seat.    The thought that they should probably have left that guy at home went through my head. It's hard to be inconspicuous in the Caucasus when you're damn near seven feet tall and black as the Ace of Spades.

“Oh, hell,” I muttered. Ivan had a stream of Russian profanity going under his breath. We didn't have to look for our target, but one of the keys to successful surveillance is that the target doesn't know you're there. And apparently, Valentine had come looking for us.

“We don't know that he knows we are here,” Ivan said. “He could only be looking. Maybe he is not even looking for us.”

“We haven't seen any of The Russian's people in this neighborhood,” I pointed out. “Either he's way off, or he's not looking for them. And right now, I'm not trusting in coincidence.”

“So what do we do?” J.D. asked.

I blew a deep breath out past my nose. “We've got to take him.”

Ivan's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline as he turned to look at me. I kept watching Valentine's vehicle through the window.

“Take him?” he asked. “In middle of street, during middle of day? And how will we avoid Russians and NKDA while getting him out of town, while dismantling safe house, and making contact with Underhill to tell him change in plans?”

“I don't fucking know, all right?” I snapped. “This is 'desperate times, desperate measures' time here. I'm spitballing.” The truth was, I had a sinking feeling in my gut that said we were fucked, no matter what happened over the next five minutes. “The only other option is to try to run out the back, try to lose 'em, set up somewhere else, and try to find 'em again. What are the odds we can pull that off, given how the rest of this job is unraveling around us?”

“Is not good plan,” Ivan said.

“It's no fucking plan at all,” I replied, throwing on my chest rig and grabbing my AKM. “It's nothing but a desperate roll of the dice. We're probably dead either way. May as well go down shooting, if that's what it comes to.”

Ivan shrugged, though he didn't even look at J.D. as he grabbed his own gear and weapon. J.D. didn't say another word, but he kitted up as if he was fully on board.

“J.D., you stay here, cover us from the window,” I said. “Ivan and I will go out the back.” He nodded, staying back from the window, but shouldering his AK-74 and bringing it to the low ready. Ivan and I beat feet out the back door.

The back was mostly overgrown, with trees overhanging the yard between the safe house and the house behind it, one of the few on Shahinyan Street. The yard was overgrown, but not overgrown enough to conceal the four men in Russian digital camouflage and black chest rigs moving toward the safe house, their black AK-107s held ready.

I don't know who was more surprised to see the other; we had been a little focused on Valentine out front, and they thought they were sneaking up on us. Everybody reacted about the same way and at about the same time, though.

I barely aimed as I ripped a burst at the first green and black silhouette that rose in front of my muzzle, even as I ran for the corner of the house and some kind of cover. Ivan was going the other way, and the Russians were diving for the ground, all of them shooting at the same time. Bullets snapped past, hitting the side of the house with loud cracks, spraying concrete fragments and plaster dust into the air with each impact.

Diving onto my belly behind the corner, I found that it really didn't provide that much cover; it cut off one of the Russian shooters, but I was still pretty exposed to the other three. Worse, I could hear more fire coming from out front, both rifle fire and the booms of Valentine's hand cannon.

Caught in the open, the Russians charged the house, firing as they came. I was in the prone, though, and shrank back against the wall, aiming in on the closest, and fired three fast shots. They tracked up his chest, and he staggered, but didn't go down. He had to be wearing a vest. So I raised the rifle a bit and shot him three times in the throat and face. Red splashed and he stopped dead, kind of went up on his tiptoes, and fell flat on his face.

The others slowed, and the covering fire started to get uncomfortably close. I shrank back further against the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible, but I had to finish this fast. The shooting from the street was intensifying, and I felt really exposed. There wasn't much between my ass and the street, after all.

Flipping the AKM back up to auto, hoping that there were still enough rounds in the mag, I rolled out from the wall and dumped the rest of the magazine at the charging attackers.

The AKM bucked with the recoil, the muzzle rising as I tracked it across the two men I could see. One doubled over as a round took him right beneath the plate, and stumbled to his knees. The other one tried to duck, and took a round to the top of the head. He wasn't wearing a helmet, either. A bloody chunk of skull went flying, and he fell on his face. Then the rifle clicked. Empty. It was a bit of a frantic scramble to get the next mag out of my chest rig, which I was lying on, strip the empty, and rock the new mag in. That guy I'd gut-shot, while he was rolling around on the ground and screaming, wasn't dead yet, and I never trust a bad guy until he's dead.

I racked a round into the chamber, got up on a knee, and started to bring the rifle to bear on the wounded Russian, when a burst smacked more concrete chips into my face, the deformed bullets whining past as they skipped off the corner. I'd forgotten about the fourth guy.

Where the hell is Ivan? I thought, ducking back away from the storm of AK fire. As soon as it slackened, I surged out around the corner, leading the way with my rifle.

I damn near hit the Russian in the face with the muzzle. If I'd been a split second slower, he probably would have grabbed my rifle and I'd have been in a world of hurt, down on the ground fighting him for the weapon. But as soon as his ugly, lumpy, scarred-up face appeared in front of my front sight, I was squeezing the trigger.

I hadn't dropped the selector lever down to semi, either. A five-round burst turned his head into a canoe. Blood and brains splashed back in a muddy red spray, and then splattered on me as his momentum kept him falling into me. We went down in a tangle of limbs, guns, and gear, as the liquid contents of his skull spilled across my chest.

With a grunt of mostly effort—I was too far in the zone to worry about disgust or what kind of STDs a Russian mobster might be carrying around in his blood—I shoved the corpse off of me and scrambled to my feet, desperately bringing my rifle to bear, scanning for any more threats. That was when I saw Ivan.

He was slumped against the wall, only a few feet short of the corner, not moving. A red splash against the plaster behind him told me all I needed to know.

I stared at his body for a moment, a moment I probably couldn't afford. I should have run after that. I really didn't have a team left. I didn't have anything left. I was watching what was left of my life unravel in front of my eyes. But for some reason, I turned and headed back around to the street, trying for one last chance at Valentine; one last chance at not ending up on Underhill's hit list.

Moving in a crouch, rifle up and ready, I approached the front of the safe house and the street beyond.

There was no fire coming from the house. Whether that meant that J.D. had chickened out or was dead, I didn't know. All the fire seemed to be going up and down the street. A two-and-a-half ton truck was parked almost right in front of me, with half a dozen Russian shooters trading fire with Valentine and his buddies, who were just down the street to my right, crouched behind their UAZ, which wasn't providing very good cover, but it wasn't going to be much of a getaway vehicle after that, either. There were several Russian bodies strewn in the street, as if they'd tried charging the UAZ.

I didn't really think about it. The Russians had killed most of my team; target or not, Valentine hadn't. So I opened fire on the Russians.

They weren't expecting it; they were entirely fixated on Valentine's team. No one even appeared to be watching their six o'clock. They must have been pretty confident that the NKDA wasn't going to interfere, and that their buddies in the trees would have taken us out without too much trouble.

If there's one thing I'm not, it's “not too much trouble.”

I knew they were wearing body armor, so I didn't just spray. I clicked the selector down to “semi,” and started putting controlled pairs into bodies.

Most of my work in recent times may have been sabotage and assassination, striking without warning against targets that usually have no idea that there's a threat anywhere near, but I'm still a good combat shooter. It's one of those skills I've always taken pride in maintaining. I'm fast, and I'm accurate. So it didn't take long to track along the ragged line of men crouched in the vague cover of the truck, putting two rounds into each of them. The AKM's rattling roar wasn't much compared to the storm of noise that was already roaring across the street, and I started at the back, so they only realized they had been flanked when the second guy from the rear fell onto his buddy, blood and brains leaking from his perforated skull. That threw off my aim, and the shots meant for his buddy went into the side of the truck, but I corrected and hammered three shots into that guy's side before continuing on.

The last guy, who was crouched at the front wheel well, almost got me. He realized what was going on and spun, bringing his Suchka around to point it at my face. His finger was tightening on the trigger when I shot him in the eye. His head snapped back and hit the fender, leaving a red smear on the green paint as he slid down to the pavement.

Still not certain I'd gotten all of them, I sprinted toward the bodies to check the back of the truck. Sure enough, there was one last Russian back there, and he let off a blind burst at me as I dove to the street, scraping my knees and hands, my AKM clattering as it hit the asphalt. I rolled quickly to the wheel well to get my feet under me, shoving the rapidly cooling corpse of the last man I'd shot aside.

Glancing down at him, I saw he had a couple of grenades on his kit, and I briefly considered it. But that would probably just blow me up, too, and I was in combat mode at that point. Depression and the inevitable destruction of my life were about as far from my mind as they could be.

I got into a crouch, then surged forward. There was only one thing in my mind at that point: Attack. The blind fire from the back of the truck had died away, and I wasn't going to give that sonofabitch a chance to try again.

I came around the corner and collided with The Bulldog, his bald head and lumpy nose unmistakable. He was frantically reloading, but I knocked the AK-107 out of his hands when I hit him. At least, that was what I tried to do. He let it go quick enough, and grabbed my rifle, trying to wrench it away. I held on for dear life as I fell on top of him, trying to get my knee under myself so I could get some leverage, buttstroke him, knee him in the ribs, anything.

He suddenly let go with one hand and snatched a knife off his chest rig. That made me let go with both hands and grab for his knife hand. I caught his wrist just as the tip of the blade touched my shirt beneath my chest rig. I held on, my knuckles turning white, practically doing a static pushup above that nasty piece of steel, trying to keep my weight off of it while I tried to twist his wrist.

He let go of the rifle entirely, and suddenly we were in a wrestling match for the knife, guns completely forgotten. Either I sagged a little, or he managed to push upward a little, because I felt the white-hot pain of the point going into the skin over my stomach. I surged backward and to one side, trying to get away from it. In the process, I got off the point, but lost my grip with one hand.

As fast as a striking snake, he was up off the ground, pressing his attack, my one hand no longer enough to hold off his two. He got on top of me, pressing down on the knife, which started to inch closer and closer to my chest.

I still only had one hand on his wrist. I drew the little backup Makarov on my hip with the other and shot him.

He grunted, a confused look in his piggy little eyes turning to shock as I pumped the other seven rounds of 9mm into his guts. The strength had gone out of him, and it was easy enough to roll him off of me, though I was bleeding from a couple of knife wounds now. The Makarov was smoking slightly, the slide locked back. The Russian looked up at me, that puzzled look still on his face for a moment, and then he wasn't seeing anything ever again.

A boot scuffed on the asphalt. I spun, instinctively pointing the empty Makarov, knowing it was too late. I was staring down the barrel of a G3 in Valentine's hands. That big revolver was in a leather holster on his hip.

Valentine was studying me. I don't know why he hadn't just shot me. Maybe it was because so far, we'd both been shooting at the Russians. Maybe he really didn't know what to make of me. I knew what he saw. A gaunt, prematurely gray-haired man, fit but with too many lines in his face from too much stress, too many cigarettes, and too much vodka, soaked in blood and brains and aiming an empty pistol.

“Who are you?” he asked. Strange, his eyes were different colors.

“Me?” I asked, glancing over at the safe house. The front windows were shattered, the wall pocked with bullet holes. “I'm nobody. Not anymore. Just one more expendable pawn who's been expended. Go ahead. Do it. You'd be doing me a favor.”

“Listen,” he said, lowering the muzzle so it was pointed more at my chest than my face, “you don’t have to die today. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. This can work out so we both walk out of here, alive. We don’t have a lot of time, though.”

“Yeah, no shit,” I replied, dropping the useless Mak on the ground. “Every Russian brodyaga and Armenian henchman is going to be descending on this place in the next hour. You'd better go.”

He wasn't going to make it that easy. He frowned, the rifle muzzle twitching upward a fraction of an inch. “Yeah, no, I think you’re missing what I’m getting at here. You’re coming with me. Get the fuck up.”

I briefly considered just letting him shoot me. It would solve a lot of problems. With the safehouse as shot up as it was, the fact that J.D. wasn't blasting Valentine and his buddy to pieces told me all I needed to know. I stood up and looked him in the face. “You’re Valentine, right? The one they’re looking for?” For some damned reason, I felt like validating my targeting, and making sure I hadn't blown it completely for the sake of some random merc who wasn't even the target.

But I'd hit paydirt, apparently. He tensed up, his face going blank. “I am,” he said, “and right now, your survival depends on you answering one question. Where is Simon Anders?”

I felt an insane, hysterical laugh rising up, but managed to keep it to a chuckle. “Fucking hell, this is too much.”

He didn't like that, and went back to pointing the rifle at my face. At that point, I couldn't care less. “Last chance, asshole,” he said.

“You don’t get it, do you?” I snapped. “Anders isn’t here. He was never here. This whole thing? It was a fucking setup. He’s put out false trails everywhere. Looks like we both took the bait.”

The big black dude came to Valentine's side. “We need to go,” he told him. “This was an ambush. They knew we were coming.”

“I don't think so,” Valentine said, studying me. He jerked his head at me. “I think they knew this guy was coming.”

The big dude looked at me. He wasn't an American; his accent was wrong. “Who is he?” he asked.

“He's a fucking dead man if he doesn't start being useful,” Valentine said.

Go ahead, tough guy, I thought. Do it. Do me the favor.

But I knew at that point that, depressed as I was, lost as I was, my damned survival instinct wasn't going to let me just lie down and die. Valentine wasn't going to just let me walk away, yet, and there was no way I was going to get the drop on him right away. Maybe, just maybe, he could be my way out of this clusterfuck. For damned sure the Organization's secrecy rules no longer meant shit to me. I'd play along with Valentine long enough to get out of this damned kill zone, then I'd fade. I'd run, and find one of our fallback bolt-holes and disappear, just like Ivan and I had planned to do. It might take some doing, but I could be patient.

#

Ulan Bator, Mongolia

Eight Weeks Later . . .

My safe house, a small apartment in a nondescript brick apartment building in Ulan Bator, was dark as I came in from a supply run. I easily passed as a Russian, blending into the considerable Russian population of Ulan Bator. A bigger city is an easier place to disappear in than a small town or village out in the country, even if there was more risk of hostile eyes there.

This was one of the places that Ivan and I had set up as a fallback, a number of years before. I'd taken my time getting there after ditching Valentine, bouncing through a few other places and a few other identities to make sure I wasn't being tracked. We'd visited it every once in a while, though never for long, just enough to make sure the bills were paid and nobody was squatting there. I was living there as Dmitri Kuznetsov, a semi-retired professor. It wasn't much, as cover stories go, but it would do until I could come up with something better.

If I had so much time. As I closed the door and bolted it, a match flared in the living room. I froze.

As far as I knew, only my team had ever known about this place. How had they found me? I started to reach for the Tokarev concealed in the small of my back.

“I wouldn't do that, Frank,” the man in the living room said. The match briefly illuminated his features as he lit the cigar in his teeth, but I saw little except his glasses. “Turn on the light.”

I did. He had an old revolver pointed at me, a .357, I thought. I briefly wondered what the hell it was with revolvers lately? I reconsidered reaching for the Tok.

“Sit down,” he told me. I complied, studying him as I did.

He was old. His ears stuck out a little from snow-white hair and a face that was a mass of wrinkles. His eyes, though, were as keen as any young man's even as they watched me from behind a pair of round-lensed, wire-rimmed glasses. He was eighty if he was a day. There was an oxygen bottle sitting next to his chair, yet he was puffing on a cigar. The muzzle of that Smith never wavered.

“We need to talk, Frank,” he said.

“How did you know about this place?” I asked. “Nobody knows about this place.”

“I've been watching you for a long time,” he replied, puffing on his cigar. “I keep tabs on a lot of people. When one of them might be useful, I might have to act. I had to move quickly, in your case.”

I just felt tired all of a sudden. “Did they drag you out of retirement like Underhill?” I asked.

“Did who drag me out of retirement?” he asked.

I frowned. I was confused now. “The Organization?”

“Like that bunch of schemers and lickspittles could drag me anywhere. Pshaw!” he snorted. “Most of them think I'm dead.”

Now I was really confused. “So why are you here, and why have you been watching me?”

He stared at me. “Frank, how much do you really know about the Organization you've been working for for the last decade?”

“Not that much,” I admitted. “Some black agency buried so deep that it's existence never gets mentioned outside of shows like From Sea to Shining Sea. Conspiracy crap.”

He grunted again, taking another puff from the cigar, then reaching down to hold the oxygen mask to his face and take a deep breath. “Fair enough assessment, these days,” he replied. “Wasn't always like that, though.”

“You were with the Organization in the old days?” I asked.

“With the Organization?” he harrumphed. “Boy, I was one of those started the damn Organization. And it served a purpose back then. I'd been killing Communists on four continents before you were even born. That was what the Organization existed for. To stop the dominoes from falling. Ultimately, to win the damn war and bring the Soviets to their knees.” He took another puff off the cigar, then another breath off the oxygen bottle.

“Now it's all power games. Influence operations, PsyOps, using secret police tactics in the U.S. The whole shooting match has gotten corrupt. These damn kids don't give a shit about their country, they only care about their power and influence, their damned games. Most of us oldsters who are still alive have just gone deep, waiting out our time until we go, wishing it was different.”

“But not you.” I was starting to see where this was going. I wasn't sure I liked it, either.

“Damn straight,” he said. “I might be retired, but I still hear everything, and I've got contacts everywhere. The pattern's still faint, but it's there, if you've got eyes to see and the experience to put two and two together. Things are coming to a head. Bad times are a'coming. It's getting to be time for us old guys to step in and set things right. The new generation's screwed it all up.” He eyed me keenly. He might look like somebody's kindly old grandpa, but when you looked into his eyes, you saw that this was one hard old man. If what he'd said was true, this kindly old grandpa had probably killed more people than cancer. “That's where you come in. I need people. You've already got yourself in one hell of a position. Underhill's no joke. I should know. I trained the sonofabitch.”

“This is where you make me an offer I can't refuse,” I said, weary down to my bones.

“Smart boy,” he said. He stood up, that Smith still pointed at my heart, his cigar clamped in his teeth. The oxygen bottle was on a cart, but he didn't seem to need a cane. “You've got a choice. You can be like that Valentine kid, looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Or I can use my resources to help you stay under the radar. Underhill will never find you. The only price is that occasionally you've got to do some work for me. So, what's it going to be?”

I squinted up at him. “No, old man, what it really comes down to is I work for you, or you put a bullet in me and disappear. If you're really the shadow player you say you are, you're not going to chance me getting rolled up and telling them about this conversation.”

He smiled. “See, I said you were a smart kid.” His eyes went cold. “So what's it going to be?”

I sighed. “Hell, that's no damn choice at all,” I said. I wasn't ready to be murdered by Commie-Killing Grandpa in a shitty apartment in Ulan Bator. “If I wanted to get killed by my erstwhile employers, I'd have stayed in Stepanakert and waited for Underhill. I'll be here when you need me.”

Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 2)

by Mike Kupari

VALENTINE

Disputed Zone

Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

Quiet, unsettling quiet, descended on Shahinyan Street as the firefight abruptly ceased. The last of the Russians was dead, but more would be coming. Even in a war-torn hellhole, a firefight between groups of foreigners in broad daylight warranted investigation. The locals would show up sooner or later, and Antoine and I weren’t equipped to fight off a platoon of pissed-off Armenians by ourselves.

We didn’t have a lot of time. We’d been able to track the Americans back to their hidey-hole, a house in a ruined neighborhood on the outskirts of town, but those damned Russian mercenaries had shown up again. I had guessed that the Russian mercs were working with the Americans, and that they were all working for the Montalban Exchange, but then the Russians started shooting at the Americans and that theory went right out the window.

Driving the point home was the grim-faced American man, splattered with the blood and brains of the dead Russian mercenary lying next to him, defiantly pointing an empty Makarov pistol at me. I wasn’t sure who was who, and the dead Russians scattered around the house sure as hell weren’t going to tell me. That left this asshole, whoever he was. I stood over him, rifle pointed at his face, but held my fire.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He looked tired. I’ve worked with a lot of guys who had spent too long in the business of war, and this man’s thousand-yard-stare was a dead giveaway. “Me?” he asked, resignedly lowering the Makarov. “I’m nobody, not anymore.” He mumbled something about being expendable, and glanced over at the house. “Go ahead, do it. You’d be doing me a favor.”

I should’ve just shot him. My G3 was pointed at his face, the safety was off, and my finger was on the trigger. Killing him would have been the safest thing to do, because there were some very bad people looking for me. Yet I hesitated, slowly taking my finger out of the trigger guard. What I needed more than another dead man on my conscience was answers, and this guy was the only chance at those I was going to get.

“Listen,” I said levelly, lowering my rifle slightly, “you don’t have to die today. I just wanted to ask you a few questions. This can work out so we both walk out of here, alive. We don’t have a lot of time, though.”

“Yeah, no shit,” the man said, distantly. He dropped the Makarov. “Every Russian brodyaga and Armenian henchman is going to be descending on this place in the next hour. You should go.”

I frowned, having no idea what a brodyaga was. “Yeah, no, I think you’re missing what I’m getting at here. You’re coming with me. Get the fuck up.”

He stood up, slowly, leaving the empty pistol on the ground. He kept looking past me, at the house he’d come out of. His clothes, drab, local garb, were stained with blood. He had a chest rig full of AK magazines, but didn’t reach for his rifle as he came to his feet. He looked at me for a long moment, his face a mask. “You’re Valentine, right? The one they’re looking for?”

My stomach twisted a little. Damn it. I’d been made. Coming out here had been a big risk. “I am,” I said, “and right now, your survival depends on you answering one question. Where is Simon Anders?”

A humorless smile split the man’s face. He chuckled like a condemned man laughing at the gallows. “Fucking hell, this is too much.”

I moved my finger back to the trigger and pointed the heavy battle rifle at the man’s face. “Last chance, asshole.”

“You don’t get it, do you? Anders isn’t here. He was never here. This whole thing? It was a fucking setup. He’s put out false trails everywhere. Looks like we both took the bait.”

Again, I hesitated. The simplest answer was that he was lying, trying to bluff his way out of getting his head blown off. Yet, there was something about the look in his eye, the harshness in his voice, and in his bitter resignation that seemed familiar. I remembered that look on my comrades’ faces, after one nearly-suicidal mission or another, as they realized that their only reward for surviving the last mission was to be sent on the next. It’s one thing to know that you’re expendable. It’s another thing altogether to realize that you’ve been expended.

Antoine appeared at my side then. Like me, he was dressed in muted tones, with a tactical vest and a G3 rifle. His rifle, however, was fitted with a 40mm grenade launcher. “We need to go,” he said flatly. “This was an ambush. They knew we were coming.”

“I don’t think so.” I nodded toward my captive. “I think they knew this guy was coming.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a fucking dead man if he doesn’t start being useful,” I answered, my tone changing slightly. I could tell that Antoine was uncomfortable with the idea of shooting an unarmed man. I was too, to be honest, but the stakes were too high. Anders was working with Katarina Montalban now, and was the last living person who knew what Project Blue was. I didn’t know, at the time, what Project Blue was, but I knew it was big, and I knew it was bad. I didn’t want to do it, but if I had to have Antoine hold this guy down while I cut pieces off of him to get him to talk, then that’s what I’d do. I could tell he was mulling it over; I could almost see the gears turning behind his eyes, looking for a way out.

“My name is Dragic,” the man said, finally. “Frank Dragic. I was sent here by the Organization to track down Anders, but he’s not here. We contacted higher authority and they told us as much. Anders set out bait, and we were sent to spring the trap on the off-chance that he might actually be here. They were just going to leave us to die.”

I lowered my rifle, but kept the safety off. “Which organization are we talking about here?”

Dragic looked at me like I was stupid.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure, but there are, you know, a few different organizations looking for me. You work for Majestic, right?”

He actually laughed. “That’s what the conspiracy nuts call them, but yeah. Majestic. You were Dead Six, weren’t you?”

“I was. Right up until we became inconvenient, and they left us to die.”

Antoine spoke up. “Gentlemen,” he said, his voice deep and serious. “Perhaps now is not the time for swapping war stories?”

“The big guy is right,” Dragic said. “Those Russians we killed? They’re working with the NKDA. Once they realize they all got smoked they’ll come down on this place in force. Either let me go or let’s get the hell out of here.”

I looked over at our ride, a rusty old Russian UAX 4x4. It had been riddled with bullets and was leaking fluids from several places. The two-and-a-half-ton truck the Russians had rolled up in was pretty shot up too, and several of its tires had been perforated. “Do you have a ride? We can call for one, but it’ll take them a while to get here, and I don’t think we have a while.”

Dragic seemed to hesitate. “I do, but it’s been made. The NKDA is looking for it. It’s parked down the street.”

“It’s better than walking,” I said. “None of us blend in, and we just need to get to a place where we can ditch it. I have backup, and they can pick us up.”

“I need to check the house first,” Dragic said.

“Forget it. Let’s get to that car.”

“One of my teammates was in there! I’m not going to just leave him.”

Antoine gave me a look. I sighed. “Fine, let’s go.” Dragic bent down to pick up his AK-47. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, killer,” I said, shouldering my G3. “You just leave that right where it is.”

He stood back up, slowly, raising his hands, but looking at me like I was stupid. “Are you fucking serious right now?”

“What, you think because I decided not to shoot you a little bit ago that we’re besties now? Into the house, you first. We need to get off the street.”

If looks could kill, Dragic would’ve stopped my heart cold with the glare he gave me, but he complied with my command. Leaving the Kalashnikov on the ground, he headed toward the front door of the house. I followed, closely enough to keep eyes on him, but not so closely that he could turn around and grab my rifle. Antoine followed, watching our six.

The inside of the house was mostly barren, save the areas where Dragic and his team had obviously been set up. In one room was a bunch of computers and communication equipment, all of it portable, next to a stack of Pelican cases. In the main room, the one facing the street, a dead man was crumpled beneath a window in a pool of blood.

“JD,” Dragic said, quietly. He exhaled heavily, and looked back at me, a tired expression on his face. “You know, he always was an asshole.” He looked back at the body and shook his head. “That’s it, then. I’m the last one left. I guess going with you is my best bet now.”

It was his only bet, as I was resolved to shoot him if he ran, but I didn’t need to say that. “I’m sorry about your team.”

“There’s something you should know, Valentine,” he said, distantly. “Before he died, JD over there notified higher authority that we had a tentative sighting of you. There’s been a BOLO out on you for over a year.”

My hands tensed on the heavy rifle in my hands. “What did they say when you told them you saw me?”

“A guy who called himself Underhill called us and said he would be en route. He was an old guy, but—”

“I know who he is,” I said, coldly. “How much time do we have before he gets here?”

Dragic shrugged. “Hell if I know. You got some history with this guy? What the hell did you do to piss off the Organization that much?”

“It’s a long story. A really long story. Short version is, I survived being liquidated in Zubara and then escaped their custody later on. They didn’t like that.”

He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t quite look impressed, but I could tell that he either thought I was bullshitting or that there was more to me than met the eye. “No, I bet they didn’t,” he said, chuckling.

I was barely listening. Underhill had been hunting me ever since Exodus helped me escape from Majestic custody at North Gap. No surprise there; after months of torture and twisted mind games, my captors had come to realize that I really didn’t know anything about Project Blue. I was as in the dark as they were. They still couldn’t just let me go, though. I knew too much, I’d seen too much, and that made me dangerous. I’d been inside their black sites, I’d seen faces, known names, and could potentially corroborate other evidence. For an organization built on layers of secrets and lies, having someone like me on the loose was unacceptable. For that reason alone, they’d never stop chasing me.

I was tired of running, though. I was tired of always looking over my shoulder. I had important work to do, trying to find Anders, find Katarina Montalban, and stop Project Blue from happening. It was too important to waste time playing cat and mouse with shadow government operatives. The stakes were too high, and there was no time to waste.

Maybe, just maybe, I thought, if I killed this Underhill guy, they’d finally give up and leave me alone. If they sent their best after me only to have him disappear, or turn up dead, maybe then they’d get the fucking point. I owed him, anyway; he’d murdered Hawk in cold blood. Beside the fact that a government organization had summarily executed an American citizen with no due process whatsoever, Hawk had been like a father to me. Beyond the outrage over the injustice of it, this was personal, and I swore to God that I was going to find a way to kill Underhill myself.

As if on cue, the satellite phone in one of the pouches of my vest vibrated. It was all I could do to not roll my eyes as I pulled up the Velcro lid and checked the phone. Sure enough, it was a text message from Ariel. She denied it up and down, but I swear the girl was psychic.

Status update?

Watching as Dragic rummaged through his safe house, I thumbed a brief explanation of everything that had happened, including how Underhill was on his way.

You’re thinking of staying behind, aren’t you? she asked me. To lay a trap.

I am, I replied, honestly. Ariel was incredibly perceptive, and I’d long since learned that there was little point in lying to my little Oracle. I can’t do what I need to do while being hunted.

It won’t work, she sent back. There was a long pause, more than a minute, before I got the next message. If you try, you will either be killed or captured again. Even if you do succeed, it won’t change anything. They’re afraid of you and they will never quit. If not Underhill, they’ll send men like Frank Dragic after you, one after another.

I can’t keep running forever.

You won’t have to, she assured me. Even via text message, she always seemed so damned confident in everything she told me. Your paths will intersect. But not today. Dragic is a rogue variable. He complicates things. Just get out of there. Please. Come home.

Dragic interrupted my text message conversation. “Are you done? I mean, every armed and angry asshole in the area will be descending on this house in the next hour, but sure, finish your status update or whatever.”

I ignored him as I put the phone away. “I’m going to be honest with you,” I said quietly to Antoine, “I was thinking of laying a trap for Underhill.”

“I assumed as much,” Antoine said. “It was all over your face the moment this man mentioned his name.”

Am I really that easy to read? “The Oracle strongly advised against it. She said it won’t work, and she’s right. The Armenians or Russians or whoever will be here long before Underhill gets here.”

“You should listen to her,” Antoine advised. He didn’t add that any personal quest for revenge would jeopardize my entire team, but I could tell he was thinking it from the intense look on his face. Being responsible for others often means not doing what your base impulses tell you to do.

I sighed again. “You’re right. You ready, Dragic?”

He shouldered a full-looking backpack, probably his bug-out bag, and nodded. “We should go out the back.”

Driving his point home, a big, green military truck rumbled down the street and pulled to a stop in front of the house. Ten men, wearing camouflage uniforms, helmets, and mismatched gear, sporting AK-74s, spilled out of the back, appearing one after another from under the canvas top. That was fast.

“Get down!” Dragic hissed, and we all dropped to the floor. The house was dark, save the light coming in through broken windows. “This way,” he said, crawling on his hands and knees toward the back of the house. Antoine and I followed, scuttling along, trying to get low and stay out of sight.

“Who are these guys?” I asked Dragic.

He looked at me incredulously as he scurried across the floor. “Seriously? They’re the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army. The NKDA I’ve been talking about? Armenian nationals, probably with some Russian volunteers. Did you do any research on this AO before you got here?”

I had left the Exodus compound in the rocky desert of Azerbaijan in a hurry, upon Ariel discovering information that led her to believe that Anders was on the ground in the disputed zone in the western part of the country. There was no way, I thought, that him turning up so close to one of the few remaining Exodus strongholds could be a coincidence. Antoine, Ling, Skunky, and Shen had all volunteered to accompany me, though the latter three were still at our safe house outside of the city. I hadn’t really bothered to read up on the convoluted politics of this region before setting out, something Ling had also scolded me about. She’d probably get along great with this guy.

Dragic was out the back door as the NKDA squad kicked in the front. I could hear them shouting and the tromp of combat boots on a bare wooden floor as they searched the house. The ramshackle structure wasn’t that big, and they’d be on top of us before we got through the backyard and into the concealment of the foliage beyond.

I looked up at Antoine. “Go, stay with him! Stay low!” Before he could say anything, I rolled onto my back, sat up slightly, and flipped the G3’s selector lever to full auto. The German battle rifle roared throatily as I emptied the twenty-round magazine through the wall in a matter of seconds. When the rifle clicked empty, I rolled back onto my stomach and furiously low-crawled out the back door, into the yard. The angry shouts and one scream told me I’d tagged at least one of them.

A few yards in front of me, across the yard, Antoine took a knee and shouldered his rifle, also a G3. The Armenians in the house blindly fired through the walls, as I had, but they still didn’t know where they were and their little 5.45mm rounds didn’t have the same punch as the 7.62mm from my weapon. Still, some of their rounds got through, ripping through the back wall of the house in little puffs of plaster dust.

I was a few yards out into the yard, still low-crawling, when Antoine opened fire. He fired shot after shot, his rounds snapping angrily overhead, as the NKDA troops were caught in the fatal funnel of the back door. He was joined a moment later by Dragic, who had taken a weapon and a black chest rig off one of the dead Russians. His carbine, some AK type I thought, had no discernable muzzle rise as he fired off burst after burst on full auto.

As I reached their position at the back of the yard, Antoine told me to get down and shouted, “Grenade out!” The 40mm launcher bolted under the barrel of his G3 popped, and a split-second later the round detonated inside the back door of the house. I used the moment to roll to my left side and retrieve a mag from my vest. I pulled back the rifle’s charging handle and locked the bolt open. Rocking in the fresh magazine, I slapped down on the charging handle, sending a round into the chamber and reloading the rifle. Looking back, I saw several dead bodies in the doorway.

I looked up at Dragic, who was reloading the weird AK-type rifle he’d gotten off the dead Russian. “Where’s that car?”

“We can’t get to it now,” he said, pulling a pack of cigarettes off the dead Russian. “It’s five houses down, but it’s on the street. We need to get out of this neighborhood before they cordon it off completely. They’re looking for us now, and none of us can pass for locals.” He nodded toward Antoine. “Especially not the big guy. No offense.”

Antoine just frowned, but Dragic wasn’t wrong. “Lead the way,” I said. “We’ll follow.” Now that he was armed, I wanted to keep him where I could see him. Besides that, he obviously had done a lot more scouting of the area than I had, and knew his way around better. Ling would never let me hear the end of it.

I spoke up, quietly, as we made our way through the overgrown foliage of the crumbling neighborhood. Few signs of life were evident. What locals still lived in this part of town were probably hunkering down because of all the shooting. It looked post-apocalyptic. “If we can get clear of this and get to a safe spot, I can radio the rest of my team and have them come pick us up. They’re holed up in an old barn outside of town.” I didn’t want to head straight there. It was a long walk, in broad daylight, while we were being hunted, and I didn’t want to risk leading the locals to my comrades.

“I think we need to find a good spot to secure until it gets dark,” Dragic said. “The Organization has, or at least had, aerial surveillance of the area, too. Probably a UAV. If it’s still on station, then they’re watching this shit-show from above. Nightfall won’t give us a lot of cover, but we’ll at least be harder to ID on thermal than we are in daylight.” Off in the distance somewhere, the distinct thwup-thwupping of a chopper could be heard, but I couldn’t see it. We’d really kicked the hornet’s nest.

We came to a deserted street. We crouched in the bushes and scanned the area before crossing the danger area that the open road presented. Where houses had apparently once stood, there were only crumbling foundations on overgrown lots. “What happened here?” This looked worse than the usual crumbling infrastructure you see in post-Soviet Central Asia.

“Ethnic Armenians, backed by the Russians, have been fighting with the Azeri for this part of the country for years. They shelled the fuck out of this part of the city, and engaged in some serious ethnic cleansing later. This was back in the Nineties. There was a cease-fire, but both sides have violated it over and over.”

The helicopter sounded like it was getting closer, though I still couldn’t see it through all the trees. “We need a vehicle. If they’ve got air support, it’s going to be that much harder to get out of here on foot.”

“Do you see any vehicles around here?” Dragic asked, obviously frustrated. “This isn’t the rich part of town, okay? Most of the people that live here don’t have much.”

“Actually . . . ” I trailed off, peeking my head out of the shrubbery just a little. A smallish van, light blue with a white roof, was headed in our direction. Its rounded contours and utilitarian aesthetic gave it a distinctly eastern European look.

“Un-fucking-believable,” Dragic said. “Okay, here’s what we do. I’ll . . . hey!”

I stood up and stepped out of the bushes before Dragic could finish his plan. We needed a ride right-goddamn-now, and we didn’t have time for this guy to come up with an elaborate scheme. I walked out into the middle of the street, rifle in hand, and stood facing the oncoming van. Antoine followed, pointing his rifle at the vehicle from the side. Dragic reluctantly stepped out a few seconds after that.

The driver was a middle-aged local man, wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt. He slowly raised his hands off the steering wheel. I didn’t point my rifle at him, but Antoine had him covered. Even though I didn’t speak his language, carjacking transcends most language barriers. I jerked my thumb to the side, indicating for the driver to get out. He did so, slowly, flushed white with fear.

I actually felt bad. This guy probably had a hard enough time of things without three foreign assholes stealing his van, too, but this was a life-or-death emergency. As he stepped away from the van, Dragic strode past me. “I’m driving,” he growled, and grabbed the old man by the shirt. He said something to him in a language I didn’t understand. The old man looked terrified, and with shaking hands produced a small cell phone. Dragic grabbed it and smashed it on the ground before shoving the old man away. “Well? Get in!”

Antoine and I jogged over to the van. The big African opened a side door to the rear cargo compartment, which was presently empty, and climbed in. I jumped into the passenger’s seat next to Dragic and closed the door. I handed my rifle back to my teammate while Dragic laid his on the floor between the seats. Getting a good look at it, I realized it was an AK-1-0-whatever, one of those rifles with the counterweight that’s supposed to negate recoil.

“You know,” I said absentmindedly, as he put the van in gear, “I did this exact same thing once in Zubara. It was a French car, if I remember right, driven by a British guy, not a . . . ” I looked around the cabin of the van. “Whatever this is.”

“It’s a Yeraz,” he said tersely, lighting up a cigarette. “That’s what the locals call them. Armenian produced for about thirty years.”

“Yeraz,” I repeated. “Cool. Okay, what’s the best way out of the city?”

“Reach in my bag, the outside pouch. There’s a map of the city. I’ve got a couple of egress routes highlighted, but that wasn’t accounting for the entire NKDA looking for me. Fuck. They’ll have checkpoints everywhere.”

“That’s why I wanted to get us a vehicle.” I pulled the map out of Dragic’s bag, waving the coarse smoke out of my face. “They might have God-knows-how-many dudes scouring the city for us by the time it gets dark. We need to get out of Dodge before they can get their shit together.”

The grizzled mercenary puffed his cigarette and looked at me sideways. “That’s surprisingly solid thinking.”

“Surprisingly?” Asshole.

“To be honest, I’m kind of surprised you’ve lived as long as you have, after seeing how you operate. You just barge in and start shooting. You showed up and fucked everything up for us.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I do. Besides, if you know anything about Project Heartbreaker, then you should realize I might know a thing or two about sowing chaos and escaping in the confusion. I helped bring down a nation, once.” I rolled down my window a bit, to clear out the acrid smoke from his cigarette. “And I got away alive.”

"Yeah. Cute. My team's dead and my life's barely worth the cost of a bullet, all because you barged into the middle of my op. I’m glad you think this is funny."

The tone of my voice changed. My left hand habitually dropped to the butt of my revolver. “Fuck you. Don’t act like you don’t know who you were working for. How did you think it was going to end, Dragic? You thought you were going to retire from this someday and die of old age? I risked my life to tell the world about Project Heartbreaker, tell them how we were betrayed and left to die. Even after that, you still kept working for them.”

He looked over, giving me an icy glare. “Now you listen to me, kid—”

I didn’t let him finish. “No, you listen to me, you son of a bitch. Your employers didn’t just leave us to die when we were inconvenient. They sold us out, had us liquidated. I watched the woman I loved die in the mud. After they caught me, they didn’t just interrogate me. Hell, they didn’t just torture me, they turned me into a science project. So don’t you fucking dare get on your high horse with me, dude. If I had known you didn’t know where Anders was, I’d have shot you dead or left you for the Russians.”

Dragic didn’t say anything. He puffed his cigarette angrily. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. Every muscle in his body was tense. He was seething with anger. I think that had Antoine not been just behind us, gun in his hand, Dragic would’ve tried to murder me right there.

Too fucking bad. Sooner or later, we all have to face what we’ve done. You can only lie to yourself for so long. When the truth can no longer be denied, it’s a terrible shock. The realization of what you’ve wrought, the consequences of the choices you’ve made, it all weighs on you.

“Anyway . . . .I’m sorry about your teammates. I’ve been there, more times than I like to think about. It was a bad op. You got used, and when you weren’t useful anymore, they threw you away. It’s not right.”

He relaxed his grip a bit and exhaled, heavily, filling the cabin with foul-smelling smoke. “Once you get in, there’s no getting out.”

“That’s not true. I got out. You’re getting out right now. As long as people like me and Anders are still on the loose, I doubt they’ll commit any resources to tracking down a runaway door-kicker.”

“Yeah, well, we gotta survive the day, first. Now check that map and find us a good route out of here.”

# # #

“Hey, kid.”

I kept my eyes on the map of the city. “Yeah?”

“What’s with the revolver?”

“Huh?”

Dragic pointed at the .44 hanging from my hip. “The Dirty Harry magnum. Why do you carry that thing?”

“I like it,” I said. “And I shoot revolvers better.”

“Yeah, but it’s huge, and has to weigh a ton. You could carry two Glock 19s for that weight, and have more than twice as much ammo.”

I thought about it. “Yeah, probably.” I looked back down at the map.

“No, seriously. Nobody carries a revolver anymore. They went out of style in the Eighties. A modern gun is smaller, lighter, easier to conceal, has less recoil, can be suppressed, and is quicker to reload.”

“You’re right about that.”

“And for someone in your position, carrying a weird gun like that is fucking stupid. That’s how we ID-ed you, you know. We saw that revolver.”

Hmm, I thought. Maybe a little more discretion wouldn’t hurt.

“So why do you insist on carrying it?”

“Like I said, I shoot revolvers better. And this gun? It’s always kept me alive.”

“That sounds like a bunch of sentimental bullshit to me,” Dragic said. “I once knew . . . shit.”

Dragic’s, snarled expletive and change in tone was enough to get my attention. I looked up from the map and down the road. We’d been driving for almost an hour, having had to change our route and double back more than once. The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army had mobilized in a rapid fashion. They were setting up expedient checkpoints along every road out of the city. I’d hoped that this road, at least, would get us out of town without being spotted.

So much for that. We came to a stop. Up ahead, an old UAZ 4x4 was parked in the road, blocking one lane. Four bored-looking, but armed soldiers stood around it. One had one of those flashlights with a red cone on it, and was motioning for us to come forward. Antoine ducked further into the back of the van, his rifle in his hands.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“This piece of shit can’t outrun them. If we turn around, they’ll get suspicious. If we go forward, they’ll either capture or kill us. There’s no way I’m going to be able to bluff my way through without getting the van searched. If it was just me, maybe, but with you two?”

“Well, this sucks,” I said. The soldier with the flashlight-cone was getting impatient, waving the glowing implement faster. “We can’t just sit here, either.”

“I can try to gun it,” Dragic suggested. “Run a couple of them over. Maybe we’ll get around that bend before they shoot us up.”

The bend in the road he was talking about was a long ways off. I shook my head. “They’ll start shooting before we even get to them.”

“I know, goddamn it! We have to do something!”

“Pull forward,” I said. “Be ready. If you have earplugs you might want to put them in,” I said, putting in a pair of my own. I drew my .44 Magnum and put it in my lap. “It’s about to get loud.”

Dragic looked at me incredulously, shaking his head. He lit another cigarette, probably the fifth one he’d had since we’d been driving, and put the van in gear. “Fuck me, we’re gonna die.” He wasn’t losing his cool; he was frustrated, but still level headed. It was more resignation than anything else.

I took a deep breath, feeling my heart slow down as we approached the checkpoint. Everything else seemed to slow with it. My senses were heightened, my thoughts clear. I was scared, and I was amped up, but that all got pushed into the periphery. With the adrenaline came the Calm. “Trust me. I’ve done this before.”

Of course the last time I’d done this it had cost Wheeler his life. There was no other way, though. I looked back at Antoine. “Don’t shoot until I shoot.”

We slowly rolled toward the checkpoint. It was late in the day, and we were headed in an easterly direction; the sun was at our back, which worked in our favor. As we drew near, I got a good look at the four NKDA soldiers. All of them wore camouflage. To our left was a young, skinny man with a unibrow. His helmet was too big for him and the chinstrap dangled from the side of his face. He had an AK-74 slung over his right shoulder, muzzle-up. I saw that the safety was on.

In front of us, standing next to the parked UAZ, was an officer. He wore a soft cap with a shiny badge on it. A green pistol belt was fastened around his ample waist. A pistol in a flap holster hung from his right hip. He was fiddling with a radio and wasn’t really paying attention.

On the right side of the road was a more seasoned-looking soldier with a big mustache. He looked squared-away, and held an AKS-74 at the low-ready. He was also wearing a plate carrier—the biggest threat. Next to him, with the flashlight-cone, was another young man, this one with glasses. He had an AK-74 slung across his back.

Everything seemed to slow down as Dragic brought the van to a stop. When Calm, I perceive things like you do when you’re in a traffic accident, when everything seems to move in slow motion. It’s more than that, though. I tend to notice every detail, and I remember everything I see later. It’s an overwhelmingly intense focus that I wish I had better control over, but as is it’s rarely let me down.

Unibrow-guy stepped to the driver’s side window. At the same time, flashlight-cone-guy stepped to the passenger’s side. Both of their eyes went wide as I brought my gun up in both hands, pushing it out over the dashboard. The big, stainless-steel Smith & Wesson roared. Glass fractured as .44 Magnum slugs punched right through the windshield. I fired once, twice, three times, aiming at the veteran NKDA soldier with his weapon in hand. The first round went way low, impacting on his front armor plate. Bullets do funny things when they go through glass. The second shot I pulled to the left, and it clipped his shoulder. The third hit him in the face and blew his brains out the back of his head.

At the same time, Dragic reached out the widow and grabbed unibrow-guy’s uniform collar. He jerked the skinny soldier to the window with his left hand. His right hand came up with a knife and plunged the blade up into his head, under the jawbone. He twisted and yanked the knife out in a spray of blood.

As unibrow-guy and the veteran were both falling to the ground, I shifted my gun to flashlight-cone-guy. He had dropped his light and was backing away from the passenger’s side window, struggling to bring his rifle to bear. He wasn’t nearly fast enough, and he wasn’t wearing body armor. The .44 bucked in my hand as I put a round through his heart.

The fat officer looked up, an expression of shock on his face. He dropped his radio and went for his pistol, but Dragic stomped on the gas. Antoine’s rifle barked from the back of the van. I felt the muzzle blast as the bullet zipped between Dragic and me, punched through the windshield, and struck the NKDA officer in the stomach. He doubled over and started to fall. THUMP! The bumper of the van clipped him before he hit the ground, launching him into the grill of the parked UAZ as we sped past.

Just like that, it was over. Time sped up to its normal rate. I noticed that my ears were ringing despite the earplugs. My hands started to shake. “Is . . . is anybody hit? Everybody good?”

“I’m fine,” Antoine assured me. “Are you injured?”

“No! No.” I was just spun up. My heart was racing now. “Dragic, you okay?”

He looked over at me with an intense expression on his face. He’d been splashed with blood and looked primal. “I’m good,” he said haltingly. “I’m good. Holy fucking shit.”

I exhaled heavily. I couldn’t believe that had actually worked, either.

“You weren’t kidding about being good with that revolver, were you?”

# # #

We drove for probably another hour, putting distance between us and the city. The road was narrow and winding, so it was slow-going. As darkness fell, we learned that the NKDA officer’s fat body had busted our left headlight. Antoine was on the radio with Ling, updating her on our location. We weren’t actually going toward the safe house. We were going to find a secluded spot, ditch the van, and have her come pick us up.

We pulled off the lonely highway, turning north, and followed a dirt road for a couple miles as it plunged into the forest. Finding a good spot, we came to a stop, and climbed out. “Here,” I said, handing Dragic my GPS. “Figure out where we are, exactly, and find a good spot for my team to meet us. They have a four-wheel drive, so they can go off-road if they have to. Antoine and I will push the van into the trees.”

“Good,” the mercenary said, taking the GPS from me. The glow from the screen made his haggard face look even more unsettling. “We should move under tree cover in case the Organization still has a UAV overhead.”

Nodding, I turned my attention to the van. Antoine had already disengaged the parking brake. We both sidled up to the back of the van, put a shoulder into it, and pushed. I was glad to have Antoine with me; he’s big and made of muscle. We were able to get it over the hump at the edge of the road, and from there the van started rolling on its own. I stood back and watched as it rolled a short way down a hill, coming to a stop only when it crunched into a tree. The hill was steep enough that anyone driving by wouldn’t see the van from the road, and the trees were so dense that it wouldn’t likely be spotted from the air.

I wiped my brow on my sleeve and turned to Dragic. “Okay, where do we . . . Dragic?”

He was nowhere to be seen. I immediately knew what happened. Son of a bitch.

“It seems this is where we part ways,” Antoine said quietly.

The asshole had stolen my GPS. “Probably a waste of time trying to go after him. He could get the drop on us too easily if he decides he doesn’t want to be followed.” More than that it was dark, it was getting cold, I was tired, and I’d had enough fun for one day. I looked up at Antoine. “I probably should’ve shot him when I had the chance.”

The big African shook his head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Valentine. I think you stayed your hand for a reason. I doubt he’ll try to return to his former employer.”

I doubted it, too. As near as I’d been able to tell, Frank Dragic hadn’t been a Majestic insider. He was kind of like I had been on Dead Six, hired help, only told what he needed to know and not privy to anything too sensitive. Deniable and expendable. “Underhill will be on the ground here soon enough.”

Antoine actually put one of his huge hands on my shoulder. “Believe me when I say that I know what it’s like to desire vengeance for someone you love. Please, also believe me when I say that going down that road will only get you killed. You may get your shot at this Underhill person yet, but now is not the time. We should regroup with the others and return to Azerbaijan while we still have the chance. We’ve pushed our luck enough.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, you’re right.” Setting my rifle down, I unzipped my tactical vest and dropped it on the ground at my feet. Ripping open Velcro straps, I pulled my body armor off over my head and tossed it aside. My shirt was soaked with sweat and I was suddenly cold. I picked up the tac vest, put it back on, even though it fit loosely without the armor, and slung my rifle. “I guess we’re hoofing it. Let’s get out of here, find a good spot to have Ling pick us up, and call for a ride. Hopefully they can figure out where we are. Oh, and tell her to burn the safe house, too. We’re not going back.”

Antoine nodded and quietly spoke into his radio as we set off into the forest, under the cover of a moonless night.

The Lavender Paladin

by Shawn Snider

FIRST PLACE

THE BAEN FANTASY ADVENTURE AWARD 2016

Nia was too big to cling to her mother's skirts, but she couldn't help lurking in her shadow. She wasn't sure what to make of the travelers Mama had invited to spend the night.

Kwambo, the big one in lavender armor, stood guard by the window. She'd seen knights before, just never this close. Were they all so serious? His armor smelled funny. Like dirt and oil and rust.

The man sitting on the floor, Astonaris, was different. She'd never seen skin as light as polished olive wood. Nor hair so straight and silken. Her fingers itched to touch it, to feel if his rich brown locks were as soft as they looked. But his eyes were scary. They were white all over.

That hadn't stopped her younger brother. Abwembe sat in Astonaris's lap, listening to his story.

" . . . Every time Lion roared, Hare's fur stood on end and he leapt with fright, and . . . well, what do you think happened?" The strange man pulled the tops of his ears down.

"His ears stretched!" said Abwembe, giggling. He was only five, and could be forgiven for laughing. The man did look silly.

"So they did. Longer and longer. At last Lion, unable to contain his laughter, lifted his paws, letting his prey bound away. And that's why Hare's ears are so long and fuzzy, and why he listens so carefully now before venturing from his hidey-hole."

Lavender armor clinked and scraped as Kwambo leaned over to peer through the window. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword. He seemed . . . nervous. What could make a knight nervous?

Mama finished chopping eggplant and scraped it into a pot with onions and peas, added a ladle-full of water and a pinch of salt, and gave it a stir. Picking up a charred stick, she poked the embers in the hearth.

The embers chirped.

Yelping, Mama dropped her stick. Amidst the ashes, a dragon uncoiled, chittering at being woken.

Nia grinned. It was hard to take such a tiny creature's outrage seriously. Where had Astonaris gotten her? She'd thought dragons were make-believe, and maybe this one could be mistaken for a slender lizard, but her neck was too long, and her head wasn't right at all. And lizards didn't sleep in fires.

Mama pressed a hand between her breasts, embarrassed. "Oh, dear. I'm sorry. I forgot she was there."

"Not the first time it's happened," said Astonaris. "Calm down, Pyrkaia."

The dragon's scales were ashen with flecks of red. In amongst the flames she might as well have been just another ember.

"How is it that she don't burn up?" asked Nia.

"Doesn't," corrected her mother.

Nia rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"It's because she's a dragon," Astonaris explained. "Pyrkaia needs the heat like you and I need to make water."

"Pee, you mean?"

"That's right. She'll get sick if she . . . " Mischief flickered across his face. "If she don't."

Unwilling to correct a guest, Mama settled for a long-suffering sigh, though her mouth twitched at the corners.

He outstretched his hand. "Come on out, Pyrkaia. You've baked enough, and our host needs to cook dinner."

Pyrkaia shook herself, sending a spray of sparks up the chimney. Astonaris clucked at her, and she bounded over to perch on his arm.

"Would you like to pet her?"

"Can I?" said Nia.

"Sure. She won't bite."

Warily, Nia reached out. Her hand hovered just short of contact, until Pyrkaia raised up on her hind legs, bumping Nia's palm with the top of her head. The dragon's scales were pleasantly warm. And softer than Nia had expected, like supple leather.

She found Astonaris's cloudy orbs fixed upon her, as though he were watching. "Are you really blind?"

"Nia!" exclaimed Mama.

Uh oh. She was in for a scolding. Why, though? It was just a question. But before Mama could go on, Astonaris spoke.

"Yes, Nia, I am."

"How? What happened?"

"Child . . . " warned Mama.

Astonaris merely laughed. "That is a story for after dinner, I think. Let me rest my voice a bit. Kwambo, how about some music?"

The knight cast one more glance outside, then nodded. "Of course, deus."

Tugging off his gauntlets, he rummaged in his pack and drew out a reed whistle. The tiny instrument looked ridiculous in his big black hands, but when he set the flute to his lips and blew, his thick digits flitted through a lively melody.

"Now if only we had some accompaniment . . . " mused Astonaris.

Nia brightened. "I'll get my mbira!"

She ran to fetch her instrument from its hiding place on the top shelf, where it was out of her brother's reach. Little more than a box with metal keys that twanged when plucked, the mbira blended well with the flute's bright and cheery whistle.

She grinned at Kwambo as they made music together. Astonaris clapped the beat, and her brother pranced and wiggled in what could almost be called dancing.

~~~

Kwambo watched Nia's bashfulness thaw as they played. Music dismantled the walls between strangers in ways nothing else could. When he offered to teach her a song on the flute, the way her eyes lit up warmed his heart. She had a good ear and quick fingers, and could already stutter through the melody by the time dinner was ready.

He stowed his flute as the widow spooned up vegetable stew and a generous helping of mash. Glancing from him to Astonaris, she hesitated, unsure whom to serve first. Kwambo tilted his head toward his god.

"Here you are, bwana," she said, kneeling. "I do hope it is acceptable. No doubt you are used to finer."

"Nonsense. It smells delicious." Aston breathed deeply, savoring the aroma. He groped around the edge of the plate for a utensil that was not there.

Kwambo could have kicked himself. Aston had never eaten with his fingers in the way of country folk, nor did he know the proper etiquette—eat with the right hand and wipe with the left, and never the two shall meet. Doing it neatly was a feat even for the sighted. Doing it blind? Kwambo would need to do it for him. Not that he minded.

"Deus," Kwambo said, kneeling beside his god. "Let me."

Taking a little mash in the first three fingers of his right hand, he made an indentation with his thumb and scooped up a bite of stew. Aston's lips closed over Kwambo's fingers as he licked them clean, his tongue lingering longer than was strictly necessary.

How could something so soft be so firm, so strong?

Suddenly Kwambo found it difficult to breathe. He snatched back his hand.

An arch smile flitted across Aston's face. Kwambo glowered; Astonaris couldn't see it, but if he knew him well enough to smirk then he would damn well feel it.

The widow pretended not to notice, but he caught Nia watching curiously. Kwambo was grateful his dark skin hid his blushing.

When he had finished feeding Astonaris, he dug into his own meal. Peas and onions and mash were simple fare, but satisfying. It was Aston who left him wishing for more.

"So why are your eyes white?"

"Nia, let the poor man be."

"What? He said he'd tell us after dinner."

Aston chuckled. "So I did, child. So I did. And a wonderful dinner it was, might I add."

The widow subsided at the compliment.

He began, "I was born with eyes like an eagle. Sharp and keen enough to spot a mouse from a mile away. But I spent all my time staring at the clouds, amazed at how white and fluffy they looked. One day it occurred to me that a bird might carry me high enough to touch them. And so I asked Heron. What do you think he said?"

"Yes?" ventured Nia.

"No! Little boys don't belong in the sky, he said, or they'd have been born with feathers. But once I got hold of an idea, I couldn't let go. I just couldn't! So I asked Hawk. What do you think he said?"

"No!" chimed both children.

While Astonaris spun his tale, Kwambo slipped outside to cut a reed from the riverbank. He settled in by the fire and whittled until night fell. Soon Abwembe drifted to sleep sprawled across his lap.

The widow laid blankets by the hearth for her family, insisting that her guests take the only bed in the house. Closing the door, Kwambo was unbuckling his armor when he saw movement through the open window. Heart flogging his chest, he turned for a closer look. Had they been found already?

"Breathe easy," said Astonaris. "Pursuit is a day behind us."

He no longer questioned how Aston knew what he knew. Though his instincts demanded otherwise, Kwambo forced himself to release his sword hilt. Outside, the shadow continued down the road, nothing but a traveler passing by.

"You see?"

"I'm sorry, deus. We are still too close to Pango—" he broke off, and sighed. "Dytika, I mean." No matter what conquering gods named the city, a lifetime calling it Pango'ngombe was not erased overnight.

"It is not too late," Aston said softly. "Not for you. You could still return home."

"Pango'ngombe is no more. Past time I accept it." His voice rough, he added, "So long as we are together, it will be enough."

"Then trust me."

So Kwambo did. And any disturbances that night were of their own making.

~~~

The next morning, after a breakfast of flatbread and chai—that Nia had brewed all by herself—Kwambo and Astonaris made ready to go. She followed Mama outside to bid them farewell.

The blind man patted his pockets and came up empty. "I fear I have little to offer by way of a hostess gift."

"Oh, that isn't necessary," Mama said. "I only did what anyone would."

"What anyone should," said Kwambo, shouldering his pack. "Not what anyone else did."

Mama draped her arm around Nia's shoulder. "Your stories are gift enough."

"Then perhaps I can offer you something of a similar vein." Astonaris opened the door on his dragon's wicker cage. "Let me speak your fortune."

"Another story?" Nia asked.

"Of a sort. You see, dragons are more than just pets. Their venom grants my bloodline power beyond mortal ken. To some is given prodigious strength and skin like iron, to others is given the ability to create ice from thin air. For me, Pyrkaia gives the gift of foresight."

He coaxed the dragon out and cradled her against his chest. Then he offered her his wrist. She burrowed sleepily into the crook of his arm. He tsked, flipping her over and tickling her belly until she nipped his finger.

Nia started. He'd said venom, but she hadn't expected this. Snakes had venom. Scorpions, too. She didn't go around having them bite her. Yet he didn't seem bothered.

Returning Pyrkaia to her cage, Astonaris handed her to Kwambo, then extended his arm toward Mama. "Come, take my hand. The contact helps me focus."

The moment Mama's fingers brushed his, he gasped, and his eyes rolled back. Snatching her hand away, she shoved Nia behind her.

Ancestors, what was happening?

Astonaris's indrawn breath seemed to go on forever, a ghastly moan of horror. Kwambo rushed to his side.

"Aston." He clasped the blind man by the shoulders. "What is going on? Aston, talk to me."

The gasp became thin and strained. Astonaris threw back his head and began to tremble.

"No, no," Kwambo said, frantic. He yanked off one gauntlet, slapped him.

Astonaris went limp. Kwambo clutched him to his chest.

"Aston. Aston, can you hear me? Say something!"

Nia cowered behind her mother. She remembered petting Pyrkaia last night, and felt queasy. What if the dragon had bitten her?

Astonaris's eyes fluttered open. He groaned.

"It's all right. I've got you." Kwambo caressed his face as though he could wipe away the angry red finger marks blossoming there.

Astonaris relaxed, his clouded eyes drifting closed again. "Mmmph."

"You scared me. I've never seen the foretelling take you so strongly."

Breathing deep, Astonaris composed himself and shook Kwambo off, settling his weight onto his own two feet to address Nia and her mother.

"My apologies if I frightened you. That was not my intent." He put on a smile, but his pale flesh made it almost as scary as whatever had just happened. "My good woman, your house will thrive. You shall be blessed with a great many beautiful grandchildren.

"And you, Nia, there are . . . big things in store for you. Listen to your heart and watch over your brother."

The blind man sagged, leaning heavily on his cane.

There was a moment's silence, then Nia remembered herself and forced her fingers to let go of Mama's skirts. Big things? Listen to her heart? She fought disappointment. He was as vague as the beggar who pretended to read knucklebones.

Then Kwambo rummaged in his pack and took out a length of reed. "For you, Nia. I cannot prophesy, but one of these is easy enough to carve."

And disappointment fled. A flute. He'd made her a flute! She could scarcely play it through all the grinning.

~~~

They walked in silence. Well, almost. Kwambo's lavender armor rattled with each step. But not a word was spoken. Rather than hold Kwambo's elbow, as Aston was wont to do, he walked apart, tapping the dirt road with his cane.

Kwambo bided his time. The air grew heavy with words unspoken.

"Deus, what happened back there?"

"Hmm?" The tapping cane paused, then resumed. "Nothing."

Why was Aston lying? The fortunes he told were never vague or uncertain. Do this, don't do that, and when so-and-so says this it means that. What was he so afraid to admit?

"You made it up, didn't you? Their foretelling."

"No."

The word hung there, incomplete by itself. Tap, tap, went the cane. When Kwambo could stand it no more, he took Aston by the shoulders. The god's eyes were damp with unshed tears.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Aston made a noise in the back of his throat. A whine. "They're going to die. Nia and her mother. Murdered in cold blood."

"What?"

"The boy too, perhaps," he went on, as if Kwambo hadn't spoken, "though not if he heeds his sister."

Ancestors. Killing a harmless woman was bad enough. But the children? And why were he and Aston walking away when they should be rushing back?

"Can't we help them?"

"Perhaps."

"Then what are we waiting for?" He pulled at Aston's arm.

The god dug in his heels. "I cannot lose you."

"What are you talking about? I'm right here."

"Protecting me."

"Always."

Astonaris made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "My brave, selfless paladin. There are things even you cannot defeat."

"Then we'll beat them together, you and I."

"If only it were so simple."

"We can't just stand by and let them die!"

"You don't understand. Are you willing to trade your life for theirs?"

"If need be."

"And are you willing to trade mine?"

Kwambo flinched. He had sworn to protect his god with his life. That was a paladin's duty, though for him, the depth of his devotion went beyond mere oath-keeping.

But was this how they repaid the widow's generosity? He remembered Nia, her little hands moving beneath his as he showed her the fingerings to the song. Abwembe, nodding off in Kwambo's lap during a bedtime story.

"Does it truly come to that?" he asked hoarsely. "You or them? Is there no other way?"

"The ways are myriad. But if we turn back, Saegon will find us."

"But survival . . .  Is it possible?"

Aston brushed at the air, as though he were parting a curtain. Then he sighed. "The paths that end in death carve the deepest rut, but there is one fate where none of us dies. One among thousands. And even if we can balance on that razor's edge, we will not emerge unscathed."

The blind god reached out in mute appeal. Kwambo gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

~~~

Nia heard a shrill squawk. She straightened, the row she'd been hoeing forgotten. Her eyes narrowed. Her brother wouldn't dare . . .

There it came again, a squeaky whistle. Abwembe was trying to play her flute.

"Hey!" She dropped the hoe and bounded toward the sound. "That's mine!"

She rounded the corner. Her brother's eyes widened, and he ran, her flute clutched in his grimy hands.

Growling, she gave chase. He made it halfway around the house before she caught him. Tickling his ribs reduced him to a giggling, helpless mess, and she snatched the flute from his limp fingers.

She inspected the instrument for damage. There were no cracks she could see. Just little brother spit all over the mouthpiece.

Abwembe wriggled loose, and he took off.

"Yeah, that's right. Run and hide," she called after him. "If you broke it, I'll give you a thrashing no matter what Mama says."

She cleaned it with her shirt before putting the flute to her lips. He'd better hope it still played.

The note was bright and true. She sighed with relief. Abwembe had been puffing on it too hard, was all. But to make sure, she began playing the song Kwambo had taught her.

Tweet da dee, da dee de—

The note went shrill, and Nia winced. She checked her fingering.

First finger covered that hole. Second finger covered this one. Third finger, up. The fingers on her other hand went here, here, and . . .

Ah. There it was. The third finger on her left hand, the heart finger, had drifted out of place.

She adjusted her grip, and set the flute against her lips. Gently blew.

Deeeee!

There. All better. She began again.

Tweet da dee, da dee dee dee. Tweet da dee, da dee diya doo.

Tweet da dee, da dee dee dee. Tweet da diya dee, diya da doo.

"That's a song I've heard before."

Nia whirled and came face to face with a boot, propped in a stirrup. She'd been so lost in the music, with making her fingers move just so, that she hadn't noticed the horse riding up behind her. The boot's leather was well polished, with shiny brass fittings and tinier stitching than she'd ever seen. She followed the white-clad, slightly dusty leg all the way to the man perched in the saddle.

He had the same olive-wood skin as Astonaris, though his clothes were fancier. His tunic was dyed blue as a clear sky, with golden embroidery. An ice-blue dragon perched on his shoulder.

"Your flute," he said. "Show it to me."

She glanced at the length of carven reed in her hand. Suddenly it seemed very plain and boring.

Swinging his leg over the saddle, he dropped down to the ground. "Come now, don't be shy."

His fingers beckoned, impatient, demanding. He sounded angry. Had she done something wrong? She held it up so he could see. Instead of simply looking, he plucked it out of her grasp.

That's mine. The words died on her lips. Her shoulders slumped.

The horseman wasn't alone. Other men rode with him, eight of them, foreign soldiers in shiny bronze breastplates and helms with feathered crests.

"Let me guess." Scowling, the man brandished her flute. "The same man who taught you the song also carved this?"

She nodded glumly. She'd definitely done something wrong. What, though? It was just a flute.

"And was there a godling with him?"

Godling? She didn't know what that meant.

He caught her blank look, and explained impatiently, "A man with skin like mine. And a dragon, though his is a different hue."

She studied her bare toes and shrugged.

He chucked her chin, making her look up. His touch was cold as winter, and his eyes, a brilliant amber.

"Answer me, girl."

She looked at her flute, just out of reach. If she told, she'd get it back, right?

"Yes," she whispered.

"What was that? Speak up."

Something like frost spiderwebbed down the reed. Except it couldn't be frost. Not at midmorning in summertime.

She swallowed. "Yes."

"Good."

Absently, his fist clenched, and she heard her flute crack. She watched in horror as the reed splintered, pieces crumbling to the ground.

"Good," he said again, slowly, in a way that did not sound good at all.

Her vision blurred as she stared at the fragments in the grass. The flute was broken. Dead. With it died the song in her soul.

A slap across her cheek shocked her back to the present.

"Answer me, girl!"

"W-what?" Gingerly, she touched her stinging skin.

"Is he here?"

Why had he crushed her flute? It wasn't fair! She had been good. She'd answered his question. Anger washed away her fear, her pain, leaving only a bitter knot of mulishness.

"Is he still here?" he demanded again.

She glared at him. He was a bully. Growling, he drew back to strike her once more.

The door to her house slammed open, and her mother shouted, "Wait!"

Several of the man's guards dismounted, intercepting Mama before she reached them. She fell to her knees.

"Please, bwana, leave her be. I apologize for whatever she did. Tell me and let me make it right."

"Where is Astonaris?"

"Aston . . .  Why?"

He captured Nia's wrist in his icy grip. "Hold her still," he commanded, and one of his soldiers took her by the shoulders.

"Wait!" blurted Mam. "Please, I'll tell you, just don't hurt her."

He ignored her. Forcing Nia's fist open, he grabbed the littlest finger on her left hand. She gasped as cold invaded her flesh. Her pinkie hurt—burned, almost—but that soon passed, and then she couldn't feel anything. All the while, her mother kept protesting, begging.

When he let go, Mama gasped. Nia's finger was frosted white. Nothing happened when she tried to bend it.

From his belt he drew a dagger. Was he going to cut her? Why? Mama was cooperating. Instead he reversed the dagger, holding it gingerly by the blade. Then he struck her pinkie with the pommel.

Her finger shattered.

Strangely, it didn't hurt.

Nia stared at the stump where her finger had been. Her flesh was jagged, like broken ice. Why didn't it hurt? She'd cut her toe on a sharp rock the other day. That hurt. This should have hurt, too. All she felt was cold. Cold all over.

The bully waggled his dagger at her mother. "When I ask a question, I expect an answer."

Mama flung herself on the ground before him, worshiping his boots. "Yes, of course, bwana. Anything you want."

"Is my cousin here?"

"No, he left this morning. He and—"

"Do you know where they were headed?"

Mama gulped. "N-no."

Numbly, Nia watched the man wrap his hand around her heart finger.

"Please!" cried her mama. "They didn't say where they were going, but I know which way they left!"

He hesitated, but did not yet release her finger. "Show me."

"That way."

The man stared long and hard. "I don't believe you."

Again, that flash of burning cold. Mama's wailing. A rap of the pommel. The tinkle of falling shards.

This was a nightmare. Had to be. That was the reason it didn't hurt. She was going to wake up at any moment.

"Which way?" He grasped Nia's middle finger.

"That way, I swear!"

"I am right here, Saegon."

The man ducked like Astonaris's words themselves could have knocked him over the head. Like he was a boy caught red-handed, cringing from a spanking.

Picturing Saegon as a child made Nia giggle. The guard holding her clapped his hand over her mouth. Saegon glared. He was too old, too stern, to have ever been as young as Abwembe.

"Let them go, Saegon." Astonaris tapped the dirt with his cane as he made his way toward them. In his other hand he carried Pyrkaia in her wicker cage. "They have nothing to do with us. I offer you my life for theirs."

Alert and wary, the soldiers closed ranks around Saegon. What were they afraid of? Astonaris was blind and harmless.

"Where is your paladin?"

Oh, right. Kwambo.

"I slipped away unnoticed," Astonaris said. "Kwambo would have never let me surrender without a fight."

Saegon gestured to his men. "Take him."

The soldiers lurched into motion, but Astonaris lifted a finger, and everyone froze. "My life for theirs. Promise me."

"Fine. Whatever. Now take him! He's blind, you imbeciles." Yet Nia could hear the unease in his own voice.

Smiling faintly, Astonaris stooped to place the dragon's cage on the ground. He stepped away.

The soldiers tackled him, tying his wrists, then his ankles. Not once did he resist. Bound, he was dragged forward and thrown to the ground. Pyrkaia was deposited, far more carefully, beside him.

Only with his enemy helpless before him did Saegon relax. "Trading your life for a commoner? What happened to you, cousin? You've gone soft. Weak."

"Is the mother bear weak? Or the sparrow, who lures the fox away from its nest?"

Saegon's eyes narrowed, but rather than argue he kicked Astonaris in the ribs. "Two men, eyes on, at all times. Let's see you escape from me now."

"Deus?" said the soldier holding Mama. "What about them?"

"My life," Astonaris wheezed. "My life for theirs. You promised."

"I have not forgotten. I will not lay a hand on them." But silently he drew his finger across his throat.

Nia felt, more than heard, the regretful sigh from the soldier holding her.

When Mama opened her mouth, the soldier elbowed her in the gut. Astonaris must have heard her grunt, but he let himself be led away without a word of protest.

Saegon vaulted into the saddle. "Catch up to us on the road."

The stumps of Nia's fingers were beginning to sting. Distantly, she noticed she was shivering. Tears burned hot troughs down her cheeks.

"It'll be quick," murmured her captor. "I can give you that much."

Her brother was peeking between the logs of the woodpile. He looked so small, so afraid. He stood up. He was going to run to Mama, she just knew it.

Abwembe, don't. With her eyes she begged him to stay put, stay silent. For once he listened.

The soldier holding Mama drew his sword.

"Don't watch," said Nia's captor, but she couldn't tear herself away.

He covered her eyes. An afterimage of that bright, glittering sword was burned into the backs of her eyelids.

She heard a scuffle. Footsteps. Her captor gasped, and his grip tightened. There was a high-pitched scream, cut short. Then a thud and a splatter, the same sound as when she'd dropped an overripe melon, and it had burst and sprayed its guts all over her toes. The erratic rhythm of heels drumming in the dirt. Gurgling breath.

She wanted to see, and she didn't. She hated the man holding her upright; she burrowed into his chest for comfort. She was cold and numb all over, except for her missing fingers. They burned like live coals.

A blade touched her throat. She whimpered. Sudden warmth trickled down her legs, but she couldn't muster the will to be embarrassed.

"Let her go."

Kwambo?

You were too late, she wanted to say, but it was too much work to move her tongue. Astonaris was already gone. Mama was already gone.

"You know I can't do that," said her captor.

"Kill her, and it will be the last thing you do."

"I'm dead if I don't. My god has ordered her death."

"Do you really want to meet your ancestors with a little girl's blood on your hands?"

"I . . . "

"Please," said her mother's voice. "Don't hurt my daughter. I beg you."

Nia gasped. If Mama lived, then who . . . ? She clawed at the hand covering her face. She wanted to see!

They struggled, and something whistled past her ear. She felt a tug at her hair. The man's grip slackened, and she stumbled free.

The body of the soldier who she thought had killed Mama lay in a pool of blood. His gaze was blank and scary.

She heard a wet slap. Her own captor had clapped a hand to his neck. Bright red blood leaked between his fingers. All five fingers.

He fell to his knees. Blinked.

Then Mama was there. Picking her up. Cradling her. Murmuring comfort.

Nia fiercely hugged her mother. "I thought you were dead!"

"Hush, child. You're safe now."

Safe? She didn't care about safe. She was too numb.

~~~

Surrounded by thudding horse hooves and jangling tack, Astonaris blundered along on his leash. His toes found every bump and uneven cobble.

"What is keeping those two?" mused Saegon. "They should have caught up by now."

Astonaris could have told him. He didn't. He was the blind one, but it amused him to listen to the sighted stumbling blindly into the future.

"What are you smiling at?" asked Saegon.

"Was I smiling?" He might have been. It was easy to forget to guard his expression.

"What is it you know?"

"That I am thirsty. And I need to urinate. Odd, that. You'd think if a body needs to make water it wouldn't also want a drink."

Saegon allowed a halt. He did not permit Aston's hands to be untied, however, nor did he allow any privacy. Astonaris endured having his trousers yanked down to his ankles as though he were a toddling boy being taught how to pee.

As he was led back, Pyrkaia chirped—the cue from his foretelling. He lurched sideways.

The vision had shown him what happened next: The horse sidestepping. Its rider kicking at Astonaris, dislodging Pyrkaia's cage. Himself staggering, off balance.

Wicker crunched beneath his heel. This was the tricky part. Treading hard enough to ruin the cage without stepping on Pyrkaia. He overbalanced and landed on his ass.

The cavalcade erupted into curses and yelling. Astonaris felt little claws climbing his shirt.

"Sorry," he whispered.

His dragon perched on his shoulder and scolded him. Loudly. Right in his ear.

It took the paladins quite a while to coax Pyrkaia into the cage with Saegon's dragon. There was much hissing. Despite being hatchmates, they got along as well as two strange cats.

"Put the dragons with me," Saegon instructed. "And keep a close eye on him. He's up to something."

"Me?" said Astonaris innocently.

~~~

Nia's wounded hand throbbed with each hoofbeat. Thump, stab; thump, stab. The pain made her dizzy, nauseous. Squeezing her eyes shut helped a little. Not enough. She wanted the numbness back.

All that kept her going was the fact that Saegon must be stopped. Or he would return and finish what he'd started.

After forever and ever, the throbbing lessened. She realized the hoofbeats had ended. She risked opening her eyes.

"We're here," Kwambo said.

Here was the middle of the forest, beneath a zingana tree's broad limbs.

Kwambo dismounted—clank, clank—and reached up to help her down. "We have a few minutes yet. Let's see how your hand is doing, shall we?"

When her feet hit the ground, her knees buckled, and she would have fallen but for Kwambo's strong arms. Slowly the world stopped tilting and spinning and twirling all about.

He led her to one of the tall, exposed roots so she could sit. Stripping off his gauntlets, he knelt in the soft earth and began unwrapping her bandage. She clamped her jaw to keep from crying out. Gentle as he was, it still hurt. A hiss escaped her when he pried the bloody cloth from her stumps.

The sight made her shiver. Bone, blood, and . . . Shouldn't there have been more blood?

"You don't have to go through with this, Nia."

After a moment's confusion, she realized he wasn't referring to rewrapping the wound. "Doesn't that mean Astonaris would die?"

"Let me worry about Aston."

Which wasn't the same thing as saying he would live. As though not admitting it made it untrue. Adults were silly like that. "I'm going to help. I just wish I weren't so . . . "

"Scared?" Kwambo finished for her.

She gave him a guilty nod.

"I know. I'm sorry. But scared is good. Scared keeps you careful, and careful keeps you alive."

"You aren't scared."

"What are you talking about? I'm terrified!"

"You are?" She scrunched up her nose.

"I'm scared I'll hesitate when I need to be swift, or act rashly when I should be thinking. I'm scared I won't be strong enough, fast enough, skilled enough." He looked smaller and smaller with each confession. "And I'm scared I'm going to get you hurt somehow. Hurt more, I mean. You deserve better. But I . . . I can't do it alone." By the end there were tears in his eyes. Then he straightened. "What matters is that we don't let our fears stop us."

She felt, if not braver, at least a little less alone.

The thud of hooves announced that it was time. She began to climb. Her bare feet found easy purchase on the zingana tree's rough bark. Her hand throbbed. She kept from whimpering, but only barely.

"Remember," Kwambo called up to her, "Saegon must not make it to his dragon."

Or they all died. He'd told her that without dragon venom, Saegon's frost extended no further than his touch. With it, he could turn anything he saw into ice.

When she reached the first limb, she broke off a forked twig. Her fingers shook as she tied it to one end of the string. She crawled out along a branch hanging over the road, and waited.

Within minutes Saegon and his men rode into view. Astonaris, hands bound, walked alongside one of the horses. There was a rope around his neck.

Kwambo strode into the middle of the road. Saegon reined in his mount, and his six remaining soldiers fell into formation around him. Astonaris glanced up and winked—straight at her.

She gulped and focused on the task at hand. Saegon's horse wasn't quite beneath her. She needed to crawl further out. Trying not to think about how slender the branch was, nor how unsteady her balance, she put the looped cord between her teeth and crept along the sagging branch.

Her skirt caught on the bark. Her struggling rustled the leaves. She froze.

"Release Astonaris," Kwambo said loudly to drown out her noise, "and you may leave with your life."

"May?" Saegon laughed. "I am a god. You can't stop me."

Carefully she unhooked her clothes and inched out, disturbing the tree limb as little as possible. The further she went, the further the branch dipped. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was completely in the open. If anyone were to glance up . . .

Don't let your fear stop you.

Taking the string from between her teeth, she secured one end around her finger. Loop by loop, she lowered it. The twiggy hook swayed as it descended.

"Two of your men have already fallen to me," boasted Kwambo.

"So that is what kept them. Well, we can't have you indigenes slaughtering paladins. Sets a bad example."

She finished unwinding the cord. The hook twirled in the air behind Saegon, above the dragons' cage.

The string was too short.

Only one thing for it. She crooked her legs over the branch, wincing at the noise of the crumbling bark. Kwambo clanged his sword against his shield to cover for her. Dangling upside down, she fished for the cage. The twig tapped the wires but did not catch. At least she was low enough. She tried again.

The hook snagged in Saegon's shirt. Nia's mouth went dry. She twitched the string from side to side, trying to dislodge it before Saegon noticed.

He noticed.

Saegon twisted in the saddle. His head tilted, following the string, and his amber gaze locked with hers. "You!"

She squeaked. She was trapped, stuck in a tree with nowhere to go. And all she could think about was how icy his grip on her fingers had felt.

~~~

There was the squeak Astonaris had been waiting for. Poor girl. But there was no time for pity.

"Be brave, Nia!" he called.

He groped until he found Saegon's boot, and heaved.

~~~

For an instant, the god teetered in the saddle below her, amber eyes comically wide. If Nia hadn't been so scared, she might have laughed. Then Saegon toppled.

The hook spun free.

Be brave.

She forced herself to move. Her trembling hands made the hook shiver and bob wildly in the air.

~~~

As Saegon fell, Kwambo threw himself into motion. Surprise was his only advantage.

He slid past a hasty parry, nicking the man's blade arm. Just a scratch, but he'd won first blood.

That was all he won. The other paladins were good. Three stayed to protect Saegon. The remaining two vaulted off their horses and closed in on his flanks.

Kwambo pressed them as recklessly as he dared. If anyone remembered that he was a paladin too, all they had to do was put a blade to Aston's throat and the fight was over.

~~~

Her makeshift hook rattled in the cage's wires. She gave the string a tug. To her relief, the cage lifted into the air.

But a soldier stood in his stirrups, reaching for it. She reeled faster. Hurry, hurry, hurry!

His fingers missed by a hair.

"Ha!" she crowed.

The soldier gathered himself and leapt from the saddle.

She yanked the cage higher. His fingers batted it, setting it swinging. Was that a cracking sound? She should have chosen a sturdier stick for the hook.

Inside the cage the dragons were spitting and biting at each other. Why couldn't they just hold still? Why couldn't she stop shaking?

Hand over hand, she reeled the dragons in. Please don't break. Please don't break.

She wrapped her fingers around the handle, and grinned in triumph.

Saegon climbed to his feet. He pointed at the man who had leapt after the cage. "You! Get my dragon back!"

The soldier ran to the tree, but his boots scrabbled uselessly against the zingana's bark. She couldn't help it; she giggled. Trees were meant to be climbed barefoot, not in boots.

"Hurry, you fool!" snarled Saegon.

Growling, the soldier discarded his shield and helm to lighten his load, and tried again. This time he wrapped his legs around the tree. He reached up, took hold, and pulled himself higher, inchworming his way up the trunk.

Her triumph faded. She had to go higher. To branches too slender to hold a full-grown, armor-wearing man. And she still hung upside down. She tried pulling herself up, but her good hand held the cage and her wounded hand kept slipping, hurting.

The soldier had nearly reached the tree limb.

She grabbed the branch and, grunting, straining, pulled herself upward. Desperation lent her strength.

At last she made it. But it was too late. The soldier was already there, crawling out after her.

"I've got you now, girl." His smile was a frightening thing.

~~~

Outnumbered three to one, Kwambo was forced on the defensive. Surviving against superior numbers depended more on footwork than swordplay. He kept moving, circling, keeping them off-balance and in each other's way.

Against most, he'd have made an opening by now. His longsword gave him greater reach, his armor protected him better, and he'd nicked one already, yet he couldn't win through.

Something had to change.

He danced away from a flanking attempt, then reversed directions. His armor should keep him safe. A blow glanced off his pauldron, another against his backplate. He parried the last, and his riposte nicked the man's knuckles.

Second blood. He watched their confidence falter. Even three to one, he could—

A clout from behind knocked him to his knees. His helmet rang like a gong. Or was that his ears? He blinked back stars.

A sword flashed overhead. He had to get his shield up. Sluggishly, his arm obeyed. The impact bashed the top of his shield against his visor.

Was he seeing double? No, a fourth paladin had joined the fray.

Kwambo tried clambering to his feet, but he was hammered down again and again. He sheltered behind his shield.

This couldn't be happening. Aston needed him. He had to . . .  Had to get up. Had to fight.

A mighty blow cracked his shield in half. A second and a third turned it to splinters. A sword arced down and, shieldless, he raised his arm.

The blade struck his hand with enough force to shear through the armor. Pain erupted in his fingers. The sword rose for the finishing strike, but Kwambo couldn't tear his eyes away from his bloody gauntlet, now two fingers short.

~~~

Cornered, Nia retreated further down the branch. The soldier crawled after her. The limb sagged lower, creaking beneath their combined weight. Lower still.

A flash of worry crossed the man's face. He let go long enough to beckon. "Give me the cage, girl."

She glanced down. The ground was so far away.

Don't let fear stop you.

Swallowing, she shook her head.

The soldier inched closer. She cowered back.

With a great, cracking roar, the branch broke. She, the dragons, and the soldier all tumbled toward the ground.

~~~

Paladins spent years honing their instincts to defend first their god, second themselves. When the branch snapped, Kwambo's opponents' focus divided. Not long. A quick glance was all.

Kwambo moved without thought. He had prepared for this. He'd already marked the gaps in their armor, already noted who was the most dangerous. His body knew what to do, even when his mind was full of fog and pain.

With a roar, he came to his feet. He batted aside his victim's sword. A flick of his blade, and the man was clutching his throat.

Kwambo pivoted to the next. He slammed his elbow into the paladin's helm. The man's arms windmilled, opening his guard. Kwambo thrust low, severing the artery inside the man's thigh.

He felt heavy, plodding, as if he were wading through water, but he forced himself on. Once he stopped he wouldn't be able to start again.

~~~

The sound of splintering wood seemed to go on forever. The whistle of falling leaves, the screams, the rattle of breaking twigs, the thuds of two bodies—one small, one grown—coming to an abrupt stop.

Astonaris held his breath. This was the moment of truth. All these subtle nudges to fate—weakening Nia's grip, what he'd told Kwambo and what he'd withheld, how sharply he'd thrown Saegon from the saddle, accounting for the breaking point of the tree limb, and on and on. All were to orchestrate this moment. One wrong note and the entire symphony fell into discord.

And Saegon, the soloist, had a penchant for improvisation.

Astonaris listened intently, impatiently, but the rustle of settling leaves and the clamor of battle drowned out his confirmation. Was Nia getting to her feet or had the landing snapped her neck? Was that groan from the fallen paladin or Saegon? Times like these, he really wished he could see.

The dragons' cage fetched up against his leg. That was his cue. He would have to trust that events were unfolding as he had hoped.

Astonaris knelt and righted the cage. Within, the dragons yowled their anger at the injustice of it all. He felt for the latch. With his wrists bound together, it took him a while.

Throwing open the door, he groped as the foretelling had shown; his fingers closed around a slender, scaly neck. The dragon hissed and scratched at his hands. He wished he were more certain she was not Pyrkaia.

"Cease!" Astonaris shouted. "Or I'll wring her neck!"

~~~

Nia slowly picked herself up. Her back hurt, her hand hurt, her head hurt. She hurt all over, really.

On the ground beside her, the soldier roused. Pains forgotten, Nia backpedaled. But he wasn't after her. He was disentangling himself from the limp form he'd landed on: Saegon.

Nearby, Kwambo and two soldiers stood poised, neither taking their eyes off the other. Astonaris gave the ice-blue dragon a little shake, and it gave up the fight and hung there, panting.

"Put down your swords," said Astonaris.

She was almost surprised when Saegon's men did as they were told.

"Come Kwambo, cut me loose. We're leaving. Oh, and I'll be taking Saegon's mare."

A soldier made as if to argue, but a moan from Saegon interrupted him.

"When your god awakens," Astonaris said, "tell him to give up this hunt."

"And if he won't?"

"Then the next time will be his last." He paused to help Nia into the saddle. "The same goes for this girl and her family. Should any harm befall them, Saegon will suffer the same fate."

"What about his dragon?" asked another.

Astonaris bent and let her go, and the ice-blue creature disappeared into the underbrush. "If you don't waste your time chasing after us, you'll find her on a rock by the stream."

"What stream?"

"How should I know? It'll be the first one you find."

~~~

The widow was waiting for them. A tautness in Kwambo's chest eased as Nia slid out of the saddle and threw herself into her mother's arms. Safely returned, as promised. Abwembe tumbled shrieking out of the house and piled on.

Astonaris said, "Saegon will not bother you again."

"Thank you," said the widow, hugging her family close. "Thank you."

"From now on your life's challenges are your own. The more I meddle, the more tangled the mess, so I'll leave you to discover it for yourself. The butterfly should not be torn from the cocoon before its time."

Kwambo unwrapped the bandage over the stumps of his fingers. The clotting held—it seemed he had finally staunched the bleeding.

There was a certain justice that his wound should mirror Nia's. He suspected Aston had arranged it that way to assuage Kwambo's conscience. It wasn't his sword hand. He could still strap on a shield, could still protect his god. The pain would fade.

He felt a tug at his elbow and turned to find Nia. "Why hello, brave one."

Smiling shyly, she held out her mbira. "For you."

"But it's yours."

"I want you to have it. Since you can't play your flute anymore."

He could hardly bear to accept. That instrument was all she had. But a child's gift should be cherished, never spurned.

The little wooden box fit easily into his hands. A few missing fingers wouldn't matter, as the mbira was played with thumbs. He gave the keys an experimental pluck. The twangy music brought tears to his eyes.

Starhome

by Michael Z. Williamson

One didn't have to be involved in a war to suffer, nor even in line of fire. Collateral economic damage could destroy just as easily.

First Minister Jackson Bates looked over the smallest nation in space. From the window of his tower, he could view the entire territory of Starhome up above him. Centrifugal gravity meant the planetoid was "up," but he was used to it. It was a rock roughly a kilometer in diameter, tunneled through for habitat space, with its rotation adjusted to provide centrifugal G.

The window was part of a structure that had once been Jump Point Control for Earth's JP1. As orbits and jumplines shifted, and as technology advanced relentlessly on, it became cost-ineffective to use the station, and it was too small and antiquated for modern shipping. A new one was built, and this one "abandoned to space."

When the UNPF made that final assignation, his grandfather took a small ship with just enough supplies to let him occupy and declare it private territory. The tower became the family home and offices, and the control center for their business.

Agencies on Earth panicked, and there'd actually been a threat of military occupation. The UN courts had ruled the abandonment made it salvage, and the Bates' occupation was that salvage. The family owned a hollowed out planetoid of passages and compartments, and could do with it as they wished.

At once, the bureaus of Earth protested. BuSpace, BuMil, BuCommerce all took their shots. If they hadn't been so busy fighting each other, they'd have wiped out Starhome a century ago.

The family's entire livelihood was fringe, marginal and unglamorous. Actual smuggling would have made them a valid threat to be attacked. They were information brokers, dealing with untraceable data that was useful to someone, encoded heavily and carried through the jump point directly. Eventually, legitimate cargo transshipment began, since their docking rates were cheaper, just enough for the additional flight time to be offset for certain classes of ship. Tramp freighters came by, and finally a couple of fleets contracted gate space.

All of which had evaporated when Earth’s war with the Freehold of Grainne started. The UN bit down hard on tramp freighters, anything with a Freehold registry, and then started more in-depth monitoring of every jump point it could access directly or by treaty.

The last ship had docked a month before. Little was moving, and what was tended toward huge corporate ships who wouldn't waste time on Starhome. What were docking fees to them?

For now, Starhome had food and oxygen. When it ran low, they'd be forced to pay for direct delivery at extreme cost, or ultimately abandon the station and return to Earth. There'd already been inquiries from the UNPF to that effect, offering "rescue."

Jackson Bates wasn't going to do that. He might go as far as Jupiter's moons. He wouldn't step foot on Earth again if he could avoid it.

His phone chimed.

"Yes?" he answered. All forty-three staff and family knew who he was.

Engineer Paul Rofert said, "Sir, if you're not busy, I need to show you something at the dock tube."

"On my way," he said.

Starhome's docking system was a long gang tube with docking locks protruding. It was axial by design, so ships had to be balanced with each other or counterweights. In practice it was "mostly" axial. Over a couple of centuries, drift happened. That was a known issue, and he hoped that wasn't the problem now.

It took three minutes to run a trolley car down the tower, to the axis, and along it. He knew every centimeter of the route, every passage and compartment. Those had once been quarters for visiting VIPs, when just visiting a station was novel. That had been rec space, and still was, officially. There weren't enough people to make proper use of the gym, so some of the equipment had been relocated over there, to what was once commo gear for jump control. Everything a century or more out of date was aging in either vacuum or atmosphere and quaint at best. But, it was his home. Apart from four years in college in Georgia, this was the only place he'd ever lived. There was room enough for hundreds.

Rofert was waiting at the hub before the dock tube, which was still empty. Jackson's executive, Nicol Cante, was with him. He unstrapped from the car and shoved over in the near-zero G to give her more room.

"Chief," Jackson greeted and shook hands. Paul Rofert was tall, black with gray hair, and had worked for the family for three generations. He knew every bolt and fissure in the place.

"Sir," Rofert said with a nod and a firm shake back. "I hate to deliver more bad news, but . . . "

"Go ahead." It wasn't as if things could get much worse.

"The axis drift is worse than we'd anticipated. It has precessed enough the tube can't be considered axial anymore. We'll need to adjust rotation."

"Can our attitude jets do it?"

"No, we'll need external mounts and a lot of delta V over several days to avoid lateral stresses. And it has to be done soon or feedback oscillations will rip the dock apart."

"Then I guess we're out of business," he replied. He was surprised at how easily he said it. Apparently, he'd known the outcome and just been waiting for the cue. "We can't afford that."

Rofert said, "Sorry, sir."

He sighed. He was glad his father wasn't here to see that. They'd lasted two generations as an Independent Territory. Now they were done.

"I'm Jackson to you, Paul. We're friends even when the news is bad." He continued, "My personal craft can take twenty if we have to use it. That will be the last one out. See what transport you can arrange, Nicol. Call Space Guard if you must, but I'd prefer we leave with dignity."

She swiped at her notepad. "On it, Boss. When should we plan for evacuation?"

"Part of me wants to get it over with, and part wants to hold out until the bitter end. Use your judgment."

"Got it."

Her judgment was exceptional. She had degrees in physics and finance. She'd offer him a grid of windows, costs and movements and guide him through the decision. That ability was why he'd hired her. No doubt she'd find other employment, but he felt he was cheating her by asking her to plan her own evacuation.

He'd sounded depressed and defeated. She'd been calm and solid.

#

Nicol's suggested schedule meant they'd start leaving in a week. There was one in-system charter willing to haul most of the staff at that time, and that would clean out much of the available credit. They were that deep in the hole. The command staff would go with him, as would a Demolition Crew, who'd strip cables, metals, food, anything aboard that could be salvaged. It would either go aboard, or in a planned orbit. Mass and material were commodities in space. At least with that and the proceeds from selling his boat he'd be able to reestablish on Titan, or if he had to, on Earth, somewhere reasonably still free. Chile, perhaps. Sulawan. New Doggerland.

He still wouldn't be in space then though, nor independent.

Nothing had docked this week, either. Nothing was going to, even if they could have. The dock and davits were silent, the workers helping tear out nonessential materials for recovery. What had been the old gym was now a pile of iron and aluminum for reuse, for the little value it held. The hatches were sealed, the oxygen recovered to stretch what was used in the working space.

His phone chimed, breaking his musing and his mood.

"What?" he answered.

"Inbound vessel, sir. Very stealthy. And it came from out and forward, not from the point."

He realized it was Astrogator Marie Duval in Docking Control. His estranged daughter-in-law by the son of his estranged wife. His wife and son were both back on Earth, just not the type for space. Marie had stayed.

A vessel? Not from the point?

"Human?" he asked as he started swimming that way, grabbing a loop on the cable that wound endlessly between hub and DC, as a cheap elevator.

She said, "Yes, it seems to be. Forceline propulsion, but tiny."

"Phase drive for interstellar, then?"

She replied, "No indication of that, no."

"I'm on my way across," he said. Centrifugal G increased as he was pulled outward.

He needed to see it. He worried without a conclusion until he arrived, pulled himself through the hatch, and looked at the monitors.

There it was, tiny and dark.

Marie said, "I tightbeamed them, sir. No response. Should I try laser?"

"Go ahead. How far are they?"

"Six light seconds. We saw them about six and a half."

That was close. No one had seen them until now?

A minute later she said, "Laser response, sir."

The audio said, "We are a private ship, offering trade."

Jackson responded with, "Approaching ship, be aware our docking facilities are compromised and unsafe. You cannot dock directly. Who are you and what are you offering?"

"We will avoid the dock tube. Please stand by for our arrival."

He shrugged. "Well, they're human, and talking. I can't imagine anyone wants to hijack this place."

Duval said, "That is a warship, though, sir."

"Based on the stealth?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir. It's stealthed stupid. No one tries to stay hidden in space without a reason."

"You're correct, but we can't do much. Prepare to zip a request to Space Guard if we have to."

"It's already queued, sir. The ship will be here in under an hour. Space Guard is at least four hours away after we call."

"Understood. I'll wait here for any updates." They could call him, but he wanted to show his support, and it would be faster if he could see screens directly. He made himself some coffee and found the cookie stash. The chairs were good, this being one of the few places with decent G levels. They were half a century old, repaired multiple times to avoid excess costs.

It was definitely a human ship, and it maneuvered in slowly. It had to have been en route at low thrust for a long time, or the energy signature would have shown.

It had no markings, no IFF. Active radar and other scans showed almost nothing, just bare ghosts. It was a hole in space as far as sensors were concerned.

It moved in almost to contact, then opened a hatch, deployed a line, and tethered to the base of the dock assembly. Three figures came out in V-suits, entered the maintenance lock and cycled through.

Jackson and Nicol had time to get placed to greet whoever it was, and four security personnel stood at angles with shotguns. "Stood" in near zero G by hooking to stanchions. It didn't seem there'd be need, but there was no proof there wouldn't be.

It was cold in the terminal. There was no reason to heat it, with no ships inbound.

The lock unlatched and swung. The three inside were youngish, fit, definitely human, and unarmed. They doffed helmets.

The woman in front said, "Greetings. First Minister Bates? I'm pleased to meet you and apologize for the circumstances. I'm Dr. Hazel Donahey. This is Dr. Andrew Tyson and Assistant True Hively."

"Doctor," he agreed and shook hands. "This is my executive, Dr. Nicol Cante." If they were going to use titles, so was he.

He asked, "What can I do for you?"

Dr. Donahey said, "We need a research base for stellar and deep space observations. You have a habitat that's unfortunately rather quiet, but that suits our needs." She didn't look threatening, and certainly could be an academic. Space-short hair, no jewelry, no wasted movement.

He wanted to accuse them of being vultures, but he didn't have a great bargaining position.

He said, "It is quiet, and I wish it wasn't. I regret that I don't even have functional facilities anymore."

Donahey said, "Our budget isn't large, but is underwritten, and we can provide a certain amount of oxygen, food and power beyond our own needs. We'll also have available people with technical training to assist in overhaul."

So what did they want?

"You said you need observations?" He gestured for them to follow. There was no imminent threat, and there were frames at the edge of the bay.

She spoke as they pulled themselves along. "Yes. Sol is unique in many ways, including the still-elusive intelligent life. There are several competing theories on its stellar development. Then, drive research is notably concerned with terminal effects around jump points. The deep space, but still heliospace is critical, and again, this is a very convenient place to operate from."

Nicol asked, "Why not just use a leased liner? And who do you represent?" She draped across a frame with the casual sprawl of someone who had spent years in space.

"Liners have tremendous operating costs. We're from Brandt's research arm. We are strictly private."

He said, "And we're supposed to overlook that Brandt is based in Grainne, the UN has occupied your system, and you're magically here near a jump point for 'observations'?"

Donahey shrugged and tucked into the frame, as did her assistants. "Science is about knowledge, sir. This is a project we've worked on for a long time. I can make the data files available if you wish. We were using a remote site in Salin, but there's a significant difference in stellar environments between a K Three and a G Two star."

He hung from one stanchion, just to have some sort of base. He noted Nicol wasn't in the same orientation as the rest. She liked to get angled views on things to spot discrepancies.

On the one hand he wanted to believe them. On the other, they had a stealth ship, probably military. On the other, he really owed nothing to Earth at this point. They'd tried everything they could to kill his family's dream. On the other, there was a difference between not owing Earth and assisting possible espionage. On yet another hand, he needed operating cash even if he was shutting down, and the food and oxy they promised would close out two costs on his accounts.

"Let's go to my office," he said.

They were experienced spacers. They followed easily in low and no G. Everyone was quiet on the trolley, and he was embarrassed at the worn, out-of-date seating. He was glad to get to his office. That wasn't more than a decade out-of-date, and it had enough G.

He offered his restroom so they could change into shipsuits and shlippers instead of V-suits and grips.

When they came back in coveralls, he asked, "May I get you anything? Hard or soft."

"Hot tea with lemon would be very nice," Dr. Donahey said.

"Two."

"Three, please."

He nodded. Even a short EVA could be cold out here. The terminal wasn't kept warm anymore either, relying on waste heat from equipment to heat it and now the equipment wasn't in use.

"Tea all around, and drinks later, please, Frank," he said to his grandson, the Factotum On Duty. That was a fancy title for "gopher." Though they did more than just gophering.

His title of First Minister was a fancy way of saying, "owner." It just gave a political spin. In reality, his leadership was smaller than any but the tiniest rural villages on Earth. But the volume of nothing he commanded . . .

"You do understand I'm nervous, with the war on," he said.

Donahey said, "Understandable. If you prefer, we can negotiate with Earth and occupy after you leave. The only problem is it would take several months to get approval, but since we're a recognized research institute, there's no real problem. And of course, you wouldn't be benefitting."

Yeah, there was that. Everyone had plans for the station, when he finally left. It made him stubborn.

Frank brought back the tea, and he took the moment it was being served to signal to Nicol, who asked, "So what do you think of Carnahan's hypothesis on jump point eddy currents during the reset phase?"

Donahey said, "That's more Andy's area."

Andrew Tyson said, "Bluntly, the man's deluding himself. Those currents occurred twice, during a specific combination of ship and point, and similar but far smaller effects were identified with the same class ship in an earlier generation of the same point mechanism. It's purely an artifact of circumstance, not a general effect. But that is the sort of thing we want to test."

Nicol nodded and asked, "What was the Delta X on that ship?"

"Well, it was forceline propulsion, so the Delta X was almost entirely within the hull. Induction field harmonics are more important, and it was under a k-value of six."

"Fair enough," Nicol said. "So you at least understand physics. Would you mind if I observed your findings?"

"By all means," Donahey said. "We'd want an NDA for discretion, but you're quite welcome to observe the process."

Jackson caught Nicol's signal back.

So, they were legitimate, just here in odd circumstances.

"What do you need and what specifically are you offering?"

Donahey said, "We'd need lodging for ourselves—there are twelve—and boat crews as they come through. We'd need access to two divergent points—the end of the dock assembly, and the antipodean point on the outside. We'll be occasionally pulling a lot of power from your reactor. We'll make up the mass."

"And what do we get?"

"Oxygen, food, fuel, metals and organics. Everything a small habitat needs, since we need it functional too. We assumed occupancy and support for a hundred."

Jackson thought about asking for money, too, but that really was a generous offer. It was twice current crewing level, so should last a bit. He hated being forced to take it, though.

"Our docking gantry is no longer axial, and in danger of catastrophic failure from oscillations," he admitted.

The three looked at each other and seemed to swap expressions.

True Hively said, "I should be able to coordinate that. It's a significant amount of reaction mass and maneuvering engine, though."

Donahey said, "We'd consider that our top offer."

Really, it was fair, in that Starhome would remain functional for as long as this took, and docking facilities would be back online.

It wasn't fair in that it only prolonged the inevitable.

Since he'd be returning to Earth's economy even on Titan, and taxed again, he wondered what kind of write off he could get for donating the rock to them.

"How long is the project?"

Donahey said, "Our current funding allows seventeen months."

"Deal," he said.

It gave everyone seventeen more months of employment and distance from Earth. He'd have to keep paying them from shrinking capital, but he wouldn't have to turn them out.

Donahey said, "Then we'll return to our ship, and arrange to move into your ante section, as you called it. Thank you very much for your hospitality. And you, Dr. Cante."

Right after the visitors were escorted out, he got notice of an incoming transmission from Space Guard. It was an offer to evacuate his people now, pending acceptance of . . .

"Nicol, do we have some sort of demand from the UN?"

"It just came in," she said. "Apparently these idiots can't even coordinate their own memos."

"What is it?"

"It's a salvage price offer to buy you out and relocate us."

"Bastards."

He took a moment to calm himself, and said, "I wonder if Prescot will pick up my request. It seems like the scavengers aren't even waiting for us to die."

#

The scientists and crew started moving stuff at once. They had supplies for themselves, crates of technical gear. They took accommodations in the other privately owned lodging Starhome had already sealed off, and brought it back online themselves. Their ship transferred reactor fuel cells.

They double sealed the passages to that section by physically locking airtight hatches. They requested no one approach the ante pole during outside maintenance, either.

"We can do that for you," True Hively said. "Our sensors are easily disrupted."

A week later, a freighter arrived with cargo pods of oxygen, food and attitude engines. It was good to look out his office ports and see a ship again. Even only one ship. It approached in a long arc to dockside only, which was costly in fuel.

"I don't like it," Nicol said.

Jackson said, "It's all from Govannon, and all properly marked. Legitimately purchased."

"Yes, and I suppose they may have phase drive to explain how they came in the back way. You haven't asked about that."

"I haven't," he agreed. "I wanted to see if the deal was real, and if it would help. We have a year and a half to hope things turn around, or to withdraw in stages."

She said, "I'm still bothered by a heavily stealthed boat from deep space, and the lack of advance notice. So is Marie. They really don't want to be seen."

"Their credentials checked out with Brandt, didn't they?"

"They did," she admitted. "Then I messaged my friend Travis in R and D over there. He's never heard of them. Corporate says they're legit. Operations isn't aware."

"I suppose it was classified research."

She said, "And if so, it was for Grainne . . . who we are now at war with."

"We are? Earth is. We're neutral."

She said, firmly, "Boss, neutral status goes away if you aid a hostile power."

"Have they done anything illicit?"

"No. They really are making solar observations, but you realize they could be tracking ships, habitats, commo and anything else as well, right? They're in-system, with shaky credentials and sensors that can image fireflies in Iowa from here."

Jackson was enjoying really good French bread, baked by his staff using wheat that came in aboard the researchers' supply ship.

He checked off points. "Grainne's jump point with Earth is down. No one is going to let them jump warships around. They had phase drive of course, since Brandt is located there, but only a few ships. They can't stage an attack here, they no longer exist as an independent system. Even if these people are spying, it's not going to do any good."

Nicol said, "I more wonder if they contracted to NovRos or even the Prescots. The UN is building infrastructure everywhere against other independence movements. The Colonial Alliance can't do anything the UN doesn't want to allow. It's more likely corporate or political espionage than military."

"Exactly."

She said, "Either way, we'd still wind up in jail for life for helping. Even if they've locked us out of our own habitat, we can't claim we didn't know."

"Do you want out?" he asked. This was important.

She shook her head. "No, Boss, I'll stay. I'm curious. I just wanted to make sure you realized the risks."

"Always," he said.

She said, "At least I have work again, monitoring our guests. They pass down the axis daily and are making observations. I'd sure like to see their other end, though."

"Have they furnished the data for you to review?" he asked.

"They have. It's too detailed and esoteric for my skillset, but looks real, and even if I understood it, I'm holding with the NDA unless it's relevant to our safety."

"Well done, thank you."

He couldn't run the place without her.

#

The next ship was a week later, with more supplies and more personnel. They graciously offered other upgrades, those sponsored by Prescot Deep Space in Govannon. It irritated Jackson more. Prescot had refused a previous deal, hadn't responded to his new one, but were willing to send stuff if someone else paid for it. That defined his status.

The station rumbled with the low hum of reaction engines nudging it back into alignment, with a promise that the docks could reopen in less than two weeks. Assuming, of course, there were any other ships.

Dr. Donahey visited his office every two or three days. She was on the schedule for today.

"Good morning, Jackson," she said on arriving. He'd been clear he was not "Sir" or "First Minister."

"Good morning, Hazel." He pointed to the tea.

"Thank you," she said and took a cup. "I just came back from the sensors at the end of the docking tube, and checked with True on my way. Did you see your terminal should be online next week?"

"I did," he said. "I appreciate it greatly, even if we never get to use it. At least we won't be abandoning the place."

"I like it," she said. "It's old, but has character. Have you thought of asking Prescot if they could use it?"

"I have. They're not interested."

"That's odd," she said. "I thought they'd find it useful, especially as they built it originally."

She seemed bothered.

He asked, "Can you tell me about your project? I'm an educated layman."

She took a deep breath and said, "Well, we're working on several things. In my case, we're watching the chromosphere currents and variable fluctuations of the Sun, and running hefty simulations backward on how it was at the time life first evolved, and the varying radiation there would have been. That's to see if any of it might be significant to stages of the evolution of life. So far, we've found lots of habitable planets to terraform, a handful with their own life, and few that have any advanced organisms. Any number of factors could affect it. So I'm a physicist, dealing with life scientists. Mine is all 'how?', theirs is all 'what if?'"

"What cycles are you tracking?" he asked, and had some tea. That was an expensive import here, too.

"Milankovitch, Rujuwa, the neutrino flux variation, among others."

"Interesting. Are you religious at all, Hazel?"

She shook her head. "Not at all, but I would enjoy exploring outside influence on it all, if there was any way to determine its existence. Are you?"

"No, but I often wonder."

"That seems to be human nature—and how the supernatural came to be created. Humans recognized a pattern, couldn't find a reason for it, so created one."

"How is Andy doing on his projects?"

"He has a lot of people building processors and setting sensors. Still. What he's looking for is very subtle, and it's annoying having to work around it. That's why we sealed the entire ante third of the station."

He said, "Yeah, I signed off on that, after a lengthy tour. As much as I want to help, being locked out of my own home is a tough call." He also had Paul using an abandoned conduit to check on them. The engineer reported everything to be good.

She replied, "It affects my observations, too, but even though I'm nominally in charge, both Prescot and Brandt want his data. So I have to make do."

"What do I need to know about anything upcoming?" he asked.

"Well, once you can operate again, Andy has a clear zone we really need kept free of trajectories, if you can manage it at all. He's very firm on this, but of course, it's your station. Keeping in mind if his team pulls out we have to renegotiate our terms." She seemed embarrassed. "There's another large pod train coming in with additional gear, stocks for you, and a few more personnel."

"Understood. As long as Operations has it, I have no problem. It's not as if it's an astrogation hazard. One other question, if I may."

"Go ahead."

"Why did you arrive in what's essentially a stealth military vessel from deep space?"

She made a face.

"Andy's work, again. They were explicit that we not disrupt space any more than necessary so we could get a clean baseline for examining forcelines and other structures. We were towed around by a tug, and he made them detach farther out than I was comfortable with. The boat is secured against as much leakage as possible. It's basically the equivalent of a clean room. You notice the supply vessels only come in from the docking pole vector."

"So am I even going to be able to resume docking ops, then?"

She looked really embarrassed.

"Yes. Andy will be very unhappy, but at that point, he has to make do. We've accommodated him as much as we can. That decision's up to me, and that's why I'm in charge even though his research has priority."

"Administration and politics," he said, feeling empathy for her.

"Exactly. Thanks for the tea. Shall I check in on Friday?"

"That should be fine."

He didn't bring up that Brandt wasn't clear on their status. He'd save that a bit longer.

After she left, he called Rofert.

"I have a favor for next week," he said.

"Yes, Boss?"

"Can one of your inspection tugs make an orbit around the station?"

"Not an orbit per se, in any reasonable time, but we have enough juice in one to pull a loop, yes."

"Thanks, I'll get with you."

He thought about contacting Space Guard and reporting on events, but he was officially a neutral nation. Contacting them put him more under Earth's thumb and less in the independent category. As curious as he was, he was still a head of state. If Earth stepped in, even the courts might revoke his status.

They were demanding a response to their previous offer, too. The UN Bureau of Space Development understood he controlled a station, etc, and were pleased to extend an offer of salvage cost for the low-use asset, etc, in lieu of further action to assess a bunch of issues that could result in fines.

He needed something soon or they were just going to show up and drag him to Earth.

Could Govannon or Brandt run some public ships here and put up a pretense of interest?

He called back, "Paul, and Nicol, we need to have a meeting on this."

Rofert replied, "On my way."

Nicol said, "Right here." She stepped through from her office.

With everyone seated in G, and something stronger than tea to drink, he opened the discussion.

"The UN, Earth specifically, is trying to hurry us into abandonment. They don't seem to be willing to wait, and they're pestering us. Govannon hasn't expressed interest, but is happy to support a Brandt operation here. We've got speculation that Grainne, if they remain this 'Freehold,' is interested. I need input."

Paul Rofert sipped whisky and said, "Prescot has plenty of resources and might like a remote maintenance facility. You and I have discussed this. If that offer wasn't good then, it doesn't mean it might not be good again soon. They value privacy, too."

Nicol said, "The problem is, they have everything they need on their side. On our side, Frontier Station isn't presently doing enough business to get in the way of maintenance docking, and they have lease agreements for dock space."

"And Grainne?" he asked.

Paul twisted his mouth.

"That all depends on them surviving a war and remaining independent."

"Yes," Jackson said. "The same applies to us. We're smaller, and even more readily occupied. But I don't want to throw in with what may be the losing side."

"Will almost certainly be," Nicol said. "They don't have the infrastructure to fight for long. The UN, meaning Earth, is stupidly focusing on the planet more than on space resources, but still, they can't do it."

Paul said, "The guests are straightforward to deal with. But the scientists can't speak for the government, and what government they had is in hiding."

Nicol said, "That still may have been a warship they were in. It was probably repurposed, but I still don't trust them."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Business as usual, oh, and by the way, can we set up clandestinely with you, right next to our enemy? I don't like it."

"Any more word on their bona fides?"

She said, "The scientists have written peer reviewed papers and appear to be legitimate, but I'd be hard pressed to say they have the seniority for a mission like this."

"Meaning?"

She said, "Meaning they could have been hired as a front."

Paul said, "Possibly they were the only ones available?"

She shook her head. "You'd still send them, but someone with more field time would be in charge."

Jackson said, "The issue is, this is our only income at present, and while it covers some essentials, we're not making any money. I'm paying everyone out of company capital. I can't do that for long. So we still come down to, do we close shop now, hold out until this science mission runs out and hope something comes along, or do something else?"

Nicol said, "You've been honest with everyone about when it might roll over us. Don't worry about that."

"But I do," he said. "Stringing it out isn't fair and doesn't make sense, unless we have a good chance of succeeding."

She said, "I suppose I should be honest and admit I sent my resume to Prescot for any relevant position."

"I don't blame you," he said. He didn't, but damn, if she didn't see an out, and he didn't, it was all over. "I guess in that case, when you get an acceptance, I take that as the turning point and close up."

Paul sat very still and said, "I'll remain until the end. There's nothing for me on Earth."

Jackson remembered that Rofert had been in space since his family died in a "pacification" conflict. All cultures were equal on Earth. But occasionally a culture was deemed troublesome and "reintegrated."

He looked at his engineer and lifelong friend. The man had been working here before he was born. "You will ride with me, and we'll go to Titan. And I guess I know what I have to do. Nicol, tell everyone we'll resume departure plans. Paul, your people will need to stay. And I still want to make that survey. Call it nostalgia."

"Understood."

"Got it."

#

The incoming ship did have a lot more supplies, and more personnel.

It was getting very suspicious. What did a group of researchers need with so many technical assistants? Yes, they'd helped do a lot of equipment overhaul, even to the point of surface treatments and duct cleaning. But why?

If they wanted a hostile takeover, this was a slow way about it, and what point would it serve? If tramp freighters didn't need his station, no larger group would. Few corporations had the funds to waste, and those would have just offered to buy him out and grant him a bunch of favors. The actual governments just wanted to ignore him or exercise eminent domain.

He was going to make that orbit, and Andy's research be damned.

#

Later that day, Jackson realized he needed a new V-suit. He hadn't gained much weight, but a decade had changed his shape. This one pinched and rubbed. It would last the trip, though.

Rofert personally flew him. They had to inspect the docking array anyway. They ungrappled and slowly accelerated out from the axis.

Pointing to the dock through the port, Rofert said, "It's aligned within very close tolerances, about point five mils."

"Impressive," he said. The visitors' work was honest, no matter what else was going on.

"Now aft and ante," Rofert said.

They overshot the dock while decelerating, got a good scan of the outer terminal and beacon, then slowly moved back. There were workers in the pools of illumination on the scaffolding, some his, more of them visitors. There were over fifty of them now, and it made no sense.

"Let's see what the sneaky bastards are up to," Rofert said as they reached relative zero and started moving back. "Control, Engineer One stating intent to change trajectory and proceed ante for scheduled observation."

"Engineer One, Control confirms, proceed."

The docking pylon, then the melted regolith moved a hundred meters below, punctuated with ports and structures of the lodge, of old construction locks and the control tower and his residence. It really was a tiny station, and a tiny nation. It couldn't be relevant to anyone, and long term it was doomed anyway.

There was nothing significant visible as they passed the irregular lump that marked the arbitrary equator, but then . . .

"Holy crap," he muttered. "Did you see all this, Paul?"

The entire ante polar region had been built on. There were scaffolds, gantries, three docked tugs he could see in addition to the regular boat. There were a lot more than a hundred personnel here, too, because he could see close to that many swarming around building stuff.

In one way or another, it was a hostile takeover.

Then everything went black.

Rofert said, "I'm afraid I did, sir."

"'Sir'? Are we down to that, then?"

Sweat suddenly burst from him. It was a sellout, and it was hostile. Paul had been in on whatever it was.

"We're not low on power," Paul said. "We've been disrupted." He pulled out a rescue light and started flashing it, just as something obscured the view.

It was a stealth boat, bay open, maneuvering to intercept.

"Paul . . . this was not cool. Not at all."

"Hold on, please, sir. You need to see this." He sounded earnest and urgent.

The invading force, because that's what it was, had turned the rear third of his castle into a combat operations center. He'd seen what he needed to.

He kept quiet, because his life might depend on not irritating anyone. He'd let them have the rock, as long as they let his people go, even if it meant detention for a while first.

Detention, at least, would still be in space. Arguably better than being "free" on Earth.

Whoever was in the boat was cautious and careful. It was long minutes before they were ensconced in the bay. It closed, blacker inside than out, the stars and station disappearing.

There were bumps, and lights came back on. Hanging off the davit holding them were several armed troops.

The one in front waved for attention and spoke through a contact mic. "Mr. Bates and Mr. Rofert, if you will please open and disembark, the atmosphere is safe."

Rofert looked at him, shrugged and unlatched the hatch port.

They were allowed to maneuver to the forward end of the bay, where actual deck was, and tie to stanchions. When the bay was pressurized the others unmasked, so Jackson did, too.

The nearest man said, "We apologize for the circumstances. We'd hoped to delay this a bit longer." He looked Hawaiian in ancestry. And broad. About fifty. His accent was from the Grainne Freehold Halo.

Jackson replied, "I'm sorry to have hindered your war."

From the other, "Who said anything about war?"

"It's obvious you're from Grainne and using my home as at least an intel base. It's already set up for that, and I don't have any way to stop you." He should be furious. He'd had suspicions and at this point, it didn't change the outcome of losing his livelihood. Both sides could die, for all he cared. And Paul . . . had obviously seen this in his conduit crawl, and why hadn't Jackson insisted on going along, too?

He turned, "Paul? Why?"

Paul said, "Sir, I know you don't want to abandon your home. Earth would kill you whether intentionally or not. I promised your father I'd maintain it and keep it. This is the only outlet we have, for now."

The officer said, "We intend no violence against you."

He asked, "Do you intend violence against Earth?"

The man responded, "At present, we are gathering scientific information."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"How many questions about the data you transfer have you answered? Or even asked?"

That was valid. He knew much of the data they handled was questionable, if not outright illicit. This, though, pushed the envelope of plausible deniability.

He said, "I acted in good faith. Even though your presentation was questionable."

The man said, "You acted in your own self interest. You still can. The scientists are doing so."

"So you're funding them?"

"They're funded by Brandt and Prescot, as they said. We're furnishing labor and transport."

He'd accuse them of being cheap, but he knew what charter transport would cost.

The man added, "We're also providing your supplies, at present."

There was the offer. "What do you require me to do?"

"Nothing at all. Just tell no one. We'll continue to cover your operating costs, and we hope the war will end shortly. At that point, you resume being a private exchange and transshipment point."

He believed that was true and honest. He wasn't sure it was something the man could realistically promise.

He replied, "So I have to choose which side I take, in a war I didn't want any part of."

"I guess that's up to you," his counterpart said. "When a landslide starts, the pebbles don't get a vote. The war has started, but the hostilities haven't reached here yet. You not only get a vote, you must vote."

He could be their ally, or their prisoner. Either way, Earth would regard him as hostile and treat him accordingly. They'd wanted Starhome back from the moment his father claimed it.

"I'd have to tell my exec," he warned.

The man nodded. "Yes, just face to face. No transmissions, and none of the inside staff."

It wasn't as if he could call anyone. If he managed to get a message to Earth, even if they believed it, they'd destroy everything his family had, and likely charge him anyway.

Earth had attacked a small nation with a lot of resources because it offered political leverage against others. They in turn had occupied his home because it offered leverage back.

"I wanted to be neutral," he said.

Very seriously, the man said, "So did we, sir."

The parallel was ironic.

Jackson said, "I have nothing to lose. At the same time, I have nothing to gain. What bargaining position do you have, sir?"

The big officer flexed as he moved. It wasn't intimidation. He was just that big with muscle. He pulled out a flask, took a swig, and offered it.

"Silver Birch. Some consider it our finest liquor."

It was informal, but they were in a cargo bay, on a deck surrounded by loading equipment. He accepted with a nod, took a drink, and damn, that was smooth. He'd heard of it, but even the head of state of a rock couldn't afford such imports.

"Very nice," he said.

The officer said, "For now, I can increase cash payments somewhat, to cover our 'maintenance facility.' And I assure you only noncombatant craft will dock here for the duration. That's to our benefit and yours. If you'll tell me what you need for payroll and other overhead, I can approve it."

That was a significant shift. However, if he was selling out, he wasn't going to sell out cheap.

He asked, "What if I am attacked by the UN forces?"

"We'd be attacked as well, in that case."

"Yes, but what is my status?" he prompted.

"At that point, you are an engaged ally, and we'd do our best to defend you as well. Since we’d need the facilities for retreat and repair."

Jackson said, "I'll have my exec draft that as a formal agreement, if you don't mind, holding you to tenant status." He wanted his people drafting the agreement on his terms.

"Fair," the man agreed.

Yes, but . . . "And after the war, then what?"

"What do you want?"

"First refusal on docking rights for any Freehold flagged freighter."

The officer shook his head. "That would be impossible to enforce, given our legal system."

"What instead, then?"

The man said, "We can strongly recommend that our vessels use your services. If you've studied our culture, we're very big on social connections and support of friends."

"Well and good," Jackson said. "But I need something stronger than recommendations."

The man sat and thought for a moment, and Jackson let him. He looked around. The other personnel were still on alert, ready to react to orders. He figured this guy was the officer in charge of the project.

Finally, the man said, "I can guarantee ten years of baseline support of your operation at its present size. Expansion is up to you."

That did it. He was subsidized and beholden, but still independent. They hadn't taken, hadn't threatened, and hadn't tried to buy him out. They respected his sovereignty and circumstances.

First Minister Bates addressed the foreign officer officially. "Reluctantly, and under protest, I accept this pending signature, and offer you continued sanctuary, with the expectation that my people will be given proper treatment as both noncombatants and nonparticipants in our agreement."

"Then, sir," the man said, extending his hand, "you have my word as a Freehold officer."

He shook, and wasn't sure what to say next. He turned to Paul and said, "Whether we live or die, Paul, it will be here, in our home."

His friend grinned back. "That's the only way it should be, sir."

Tethers

by William Ledbetter

Sievert was a jerk at the best of times, but he was mad at me and that made him much worse. He was tied with Alyona Gusarov at being four hours away from breaking the long standing one thousand hour EVA record. He'd wanted to tell the ground station I was sick so he could go EVA and make the repairs, but I was the mission engineer and had refused. To pay back my insolence, he opened an intra-suit connection the minute I left the ship and hadn't stopped harassing me since.

"You techies make bad astronauts," Sievert said then gave me a long peal of barking, hiccupping laughter. His French accent grew more pronounced when he was angry and it made him sound even more condescending.

"You're too cautious and too timid, Hartman," he said. "By-the-book takes twice as long!"

I gritted my teeth and made another tiny adjustment to my slow, but steady, course toward the malfunctioning orbital fuel depot. Sievert could probably have made the repairs, just as I could fly the Stolid, but it was my ass on the line. Tyco Space Services Corporation had a ninety-eight percent quality rating for its orbital equipment and this was the first time one of these refueling depots went offline. I couldn't screw this up.

I ignored his ongoing abuse and watched the sun rise slowly over the Pacific below. Like every human who left the Earth before me, I never stopped being stunned by its beauty. Since this depot was in geosynchronous orbit, I wouldn't get to see the jewel encrusted night side during this EVA, but that also meant I didn't have to work in the dark.

My focus returned to the task at hand as the depot slowly dominated my field of vision. It was a cluster of round tanks surrounded by steel struts, all interconnected by armored piping and roughly the size of a two-bedroom house. Fueling probes jutted outward in four directions, easily accessible by either crewed or automated spacecraft, and solar arrays sprouted from the top and bottom. Printed in huge letters, next to the Tyco Space Services logo on the wide equatorial band, was the identifier TRD27. Or officially Tyco Refueling Depot number 27.

"Are you too nervous to talk, techie? Do you clench your teeth tight to keep them from chattering?"

"Twelve meters," I answered over the open company channel, but he was right about my being afraid. I just wasn't afraid for me. I had to stay alive for Dad.

My dad stood on the back porch, looking out at the dust cloud above the seventy acres of corn behind our house. Like him, the neighbors driving the combine and pulling the wagons were still wearing their dress clothes from the funeral. When the condolences were given, the food consumed and most people had left, these men had stayed to help with the already late harvest.

He turned to look at me and tears streaked his cheeks.

"Please don't hate me for this, son. I couldn't bear to lose you too."

The statement pulled me up short. "Lose me? I don't . . . "

"Because this is my fault," he said. "You were in space when the goddamned leukemia finally took your sister, but I was here. I was here and didn't support your mother. I went into the fields and the barns. I just . . .  I didn't know how else to deal with it."

I swallowed hard.

"It was a cruel thing I did to your mother. She begged me to stay in the house with her in those days after Dana died. She was in so much pain and so very lonely, but I shrugged it off and went out to work."

Suicides only hurt the living. My mom's pain was ended, but it was the first time in my twenty-seven years that I'd seen my dad cry.

TRD27 loomed larger as the seconds ticked off and Sievert still hadn't shut up.

"It would be sad if you had a problem out there and wished you hadn't wasted that precious oxygen," Sievert said, then made gasping sounds and laughed at his own humor. The gas for my suit's maneuvering jets came from my breathing stock. The minuscule puffs I'd used so far might give me another couple minutes of air in an emergency, but Sievert had ranted on what he considered wasted oxygen many times before.

As the proximity counter dropped to zero I readied myself. When close enough, I grabbed the nearest ring handle and held tight as I thumped down to the primary service platform, then rebounded slightly.

Per the regulations, I pulled the short safety tether from its pouch on my tool harness and connected one end to me and the other to the TRD. Then I detached the line tying me to Stolid and reconnected it to the depot structure. Only then did I allow myself to relax and report that I'd made contact.

Sievert laughed again. "If you get scared or see any alien monsters lurking around Turd27, just call and I'll come rescue you."

He was stupid to use that word to describe a TRD. More than one Tyco employee had been fired for that joke. Agatha Winston-Nguyen took the company's image very seriously. In her mind, the TRD's were a symbol of reliability and quality, but thanks to the acronym she selected, these depots would instead forever be associated with smelly brown lumps.

I pushed my boots into the spring-loaded cleats that locked me down to the platform. Having my feet anchored gave me the physical leverage I needed to use hands and arms during the repair. Then for the first time, I turned my attention to the real problem.

The insulation blanket had peeled away from one of the hydrogen storage tanks. Remote instrumentation indicated the tank's naked skin had heated in the direct sunlight, causing a pressure increase that triggered an automatic shutdown of the fueling nozzles. This was an "out of service" condition that greatly upset Agatha Winston-Nguyen.

I pulled the loose blanket farther away from the tank and moved my helmet lights slowly over the surface. Nearly the entire blanket had detached. From time to time, fasteners would fail—allowing a small gap or a corner to fly loose—but this was very odd. When I examined the blanket's attachment points, the failure was obvious. The blanket hadn't torn loose from the fasteners, because there were no fasteners.

"Come in, Stolid. This is Hartman."

"Reading you, Hartman. What did you find?" Even over the open connection, I could still hear a hint of condescension in Sievert's voice.

What I found would get several employees and probably a few managers fired, so I decided to be careful with my wording.

"Can you check the TRD parts list and find out what fastener we use for blanket attachment? I'm going to need twelve of them."

I hoped he would understand and keep chatter about the failure to a minimum. Accusations and blame should be taken up by the Engineering Review Board, not orbital repair techs.

"Why twelve? Did they all break?"

I took a deep breath and mentally cursed. "No, they're all missing."

The connection was quiet for several minutes, presumably while Sievert discussed it with the ground.

"You're mistaken, Hartman. There is no way this TRD could have been launched with that much missing hardware."

I was shocked and immediately pissed off.

"I'm not mistaken. The grommets aren't torn. There is no hardware in the holes. My guess is that the flap's velcro was sealed for some reason before the bolts were installed. That would have held it in place through the launch, but once . . . "

"You're wrong, Hartman."

I gritted my teeth. I didn't want to argue with him over the radio, but I had to get this damned thing fixed.

"Just look at my video feed, Sievert," I snapped.

"No need to get angry, Hartman. Light plays tricks out there. The video doesn't clearly show the attachment condition, so I'm coming out."

I cursed under my breath. There was nothing wrong with that video feed. Sievert was just being an ass and seizing an opportunity for an unscheduled EVA. Under normal operating circumstances one of us was required to stay in the ship. I wondered if he made the decision on his own or if someone on the ground had classified it as an emergency. Both explanations made me grind my teeth.

Since he was already wearing his excursion suit—also standard procedure when one of us was out of the ship—it took him less than ten minutes to don his helmet and cycle through the airlock. I spent that time getting extremely close video of the insulation situation and making sure it was relayed to the ground station.

Sievert made the leap between Stolid and the TRD without tether or gas jets. It was of course against company safety policy, but he was a macho, hot-shot space pilot and exempt from those silly rules. I could already see that he hadn't even worn his tool harness. He was going to be no help at all.

There were no women or news reporters around to see it, but he couldn't resist showing off. As he neared the TRD, he extended an arm and at the last second, grabbed a strut and let momentum swing him around in a tight arc toward my position.

When I saw his speed and where he would land I panicked. "Sievert, no!"

His armored boots impacted the already stressed hydrogen tank's bare skin about ten feet above me, hard enough that I felt vibrations through the service platform.

The carbon-composite tank deformed in an almost fluid-like undulation, then exploded.

A bright flash flung me backwards. My boots—still locked into the service cleats—acted as an anchor point about which I swung a full hundred and eighty degrees, slamming back first into one of the lower LOX tanks. Fiery pain erupted in my lower back and I screamed as something snapped in both knees.

I must have blacked out, but the cacophony of pain, beeping warnings and incessant radio calls kept dragging me back to consciousness. At first I was confused, trying to make sense of the sounds and strange pains, then the fog in my head started to clear and alarm took over.

My eyes were blurry with tears or sweat and I had to clench my teeth to keep from crying out from the pain in my knees, but I had to focus. First priority was my suit integrity. I scanned the lights on my helmet display. Several yellows, but only one red. My suit exterior had been punctured in several places, but not with enough force to penetrate all three layers. The oily second layer, when exposed to vacuum, immediately hardened and if the holes were small enough, sealed them like a high tech scab. I hoped it would hold.

Beneath the litany of status requests from the ground station, I heard an underlying chaotic string of grunts and cursing. It must have been from Sievert. Was he hurt? For the first time since the explosion I looked past my helmet display and saw the carnage surrounding me. Bits of carbon composite and insulation floated in a hydrogen haze on the lower edge of my vision. When I looked up I saw Sievert's partially shredded boots wrapped in hastily applied leak tape floating above me.

Why hadn't the explosion sent him tumbling into space? Maybe it had and he used his jets to fly back and help me. My blackout must have lasted longer than I thought.

I was about to call out to him when I realized he was tugging on me. With each of his grunts, the top of my utility backpack pulled upward. It took several seconds for his movements to register in my still addled brain. The bastard hadn't come back to help me, he was trying to get my oxygen reserves.

"Stop it, Sievert!" I shoved at him until the tugging stopped. At first there was no reply, then he uttered a low string of curses followed by a quick apology. "Sorry, I thought you were dead."

He was lying. The ground station received a constant feed from my suit's health monitoring system. He knew I was still alive. I kept my eye on him and took a deep breath to help me focus before finally responding to ground control.

"This is Hartman," I said, trying not to pant or groan. "I'm hurt, but my suit's intact. Both of my legs are hurt. Severe ligament damage for sure and possibly broken."

The woman's voice was reassuring and calm. "Good to hear from you, Hartman. We were worried for a while, but your vitals look good. No indicators of severe blood loss. Do you have pain other than in your legs?"

"Some in my lower back, but nothing compared to my legs."

“Any difficulty inhaling?"

"No," I said, and started to wonder just how long I'd been out.

"Good. You're going to have to hang on for a while, Hartman. We have a rescue team prepping to leave Tyco Orbital, but it'll be a long wait."

My brain was still a bit foggy, but something didn't add up. Why were they sending a rescue team? It would take them at least nine hours from Tyco Orbital. And why was Sievert trying to steal my air instead of helping me return to Stolid?

Then I understood.

I saw only a frayed stub of the cable I had used to attach the ship to the TRD, but Stolid was gone. At first I thought the spacecraft had vaporized in the explosion, but that didn't make sense. Sievert and I were both right next to the tank when it blew and were still alive. Then I saw her. The slowly tumbling object just hadn't registered as a ship. It was much too small. Made small by distance.

The explosion shouldn't have been strong enough to push a ship that size. I made myself focus on the Stolid and finally noticed a small plume of gas spewing into the void. Shrapnel from the explosion must have ruptured one of the small attitude thrusters, causing the spin and pushing the ship away.

Was that why Sievert was after my tanks? I did a quick calculation and determined that if I could push off hard enough with my legs, then use my jets to adjust my trajectory, then I should have enough air to reach the ship. My legs were still locked into cleats. I had to act fast.

Sievert chose that instant to strike again. This time he was ready for my resistance. He shoved me backwards, again slamming my back into the tank, then wrapped an arm around my helmet ring, grabbed the TRD structure behind my head and levered me tight against the metal. I screamed as bones and torn cartilage ground together, sending a tsunami of red hot agony through my entire body and swirling spots to cloud my vision.

The radio squawked in my ear "Hartman? Give us a status!"

But, I couldn't breathe or talk, only yank ineffectively at Sievert's pinning arm. He didn't tug on my pack this time, but instead started pounding hard against the side of my helmet.

"Sievert! Get off!"

"Say again, Hartm . . . ," came a partial response from ground control.

"Sievert's crazy," I yelled as I tugged against his arm. " . . . trying to kill me!"

My boots were not only still locked down, but my legs were too badly injured to give me leverage anyway. I was pinned tight. Through my watering eyes, I saw something white, about the size of a tennis ball, float past trailing wires and bits of plastic. It was the transmitter node from my helmet. Sievert had broken it off. Aside from my ragged breathing and thundering heartbeat, my world had grown very quiet.

I started hyperventilating, wasting more of my precious air. If I couldn't talk to the ground, Sievert would tell them anything he wanted. His arm still held me pinned to the TRD and I knew what would come next. He would try to kill me in some way that wouldn't breach my suit and waste my precious gas supply.

I didn't want to die, especially to help keep someone like Sievert alive. I groped at my tool harness until I found the screwdriver, then pressed its point against Sievert's arm and pushed as hard as I could with both hands. I was rewarded by a mist of venting gas. His arm jerked away, nearly tearing the screwdriver from my grip, and momentum carried him out to the end of his tether. He floated there—knowing he was out of my reach—while applying repair tape to his damaged suit. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he was glaring at me and I suddenly knew why.

His suite was patched in various places, even the hard to reach legs. He must have lost a lot of gas right after the explosion and didn't have enough to get to Stolid.

Screw him. Just let him try for my air again.

He pulled himself along the tether until he reached the TRD structure, then moved farther away around the curve of the depot.

Tether? He hadn't used a tether when he came across.

I looked down and saw that mine was gone. He must have planned my demise in great detail and now I would have to be very careful when freeing myself from the cleats. And I had to get loose quickly. Sievert wouldn't give up, so that meant his retreat around the TRD was only a means to reposition himself and come up behind me. It would be easy enough to do with me locked in place.

Normally, a quick push from my heel would have released the cleat's spring lock, but I was already having a hard enough time thinking through the pain and suspected forcing my damaged legs down that hard might make me black out. I couldn't allow that. If Sievert didn't pounce on me I would still lose too much precious time.

I stretched my arm downward as far as I could, but my fingers were at least two feet from touching my heels, so I took stock of the tools in my harness. None of them were long enough to reach on their own, but I also had every astronaut's best tool: suit repair tape. I taped my long screwdriver to the end of my torque wrench, then placed two smaller wrenches and another screwdriver around the first joint and wrapped it as tight as I could. I paused for a second to groan at the nice splint I'd just made for a pair of tools. Maybe I should have splinted my legs instead?

"Probably not enough tape anyway," I mumbled into my quiet helmet. I glanced at my air gauge, noted that I had four hours and twenty-seven minutes left, then looked around for Sievert. I couldn't see him, but I didn't have a good view below me or behind me, so he might still be nearby.

I positioned my makeshift spear against the back of the cleat and shoved hard. The tape held and the spring opened easily, but the downward motion made me curse and add a little more to my liquid waste bag.

My perch was now even more precarious. With the freed leg floating about, but of little use, it played hell with my balance and coordination. I quickly checked the taped joint, it had loosened some but was tight enough. I touched the screwdriver's tip to the cleat and pushed. It didn't open and I felt the taped tools starting to fold in the middle. In a fit of desperation or panic or just plain impatience, I shoved the tools again and shoved down with my hurt leg at the same time.

It felt like super-heated barbed wire had wrapped around the nerves in my leg, and then been yanked out pulling the bones and nerves with it. I swooned, cried out and clenched my teeth against the blackness that threatened to drag me down.

The day after my mom's funeral I woke to the rhythmic clang of a hammer landing on metal. The sun wasn't up high enough to burn off the mist yet and the air carried the sweet musty smell of autumn as I walked down to the equipment barn. My dad stood next to his harvester's disassembled corn head with a cutter blade laid out on an anvil. I could see the blade's edge was bent and chipped.

"Let me guess. Albert Whittle turned wide and got into the fence."

Dad looked up and a faint grin flickered across his already dirty face. "He means well. But it sure would have been nice if he'd told me."

"Need me to run into town and get some new blades?"

"Nah, if I can beat a couple of these flat and resharpen them, it'll get me through these next few days."

He laid the hammer down, leaned on the anvil and pushed his hat back on his head. "When are you leaving?"

I looked down at the ground and focused on a rusty washer near the toe of my shoe. "I've decided I'm going to quit. I'd really like to stay here with you. And help out."

My mom had run the business part of the farm and I suspected that my dad would be lost in the books for a long time, if he ever figured it out at all.

"Like hell you are. You've always loved the idea of going into space and you busted your ass to get this job."

"Yeah, but it's really not all I thought . . . "

"Bullshit. If you want to pile hurt on top of your mom's death, then quit that job and move back here. Make me feel totally worthless. I couldn't save your sister and I failed your mother. I sure—"

"Dad . . . "

"No, you listen to me. You're the only person I haven't fucked up yet. If you quit on your dream because of me then I'll be a total failure."

I swallowed and nodded, but couldn't look at him.

He stood up and crossed to stand next to me. "But if you're going to be here for a while, I'll let you help me fix breakfast. I can rebuild a tractor engine, but cooking anything beyond frozen pizza is going take some practice."

I floated in a groggy haze for several minutes, never really blacking out, but not quite conscious either, before I finally realized it had worked. Both of my legs were floating free and so was the rest of me. I had forgotten that I wasn't tethered.

I slowly extended a hand, but was a foot from reaching the closest handle or strut and was still slowly drifting farther away. I fought down the panic and found my makeshift tool still attached to me via several lanyards. I turned it around slowly and extended it far enough to hook the torque wrench's driver post behind one strut and gently pulled myself in until I could grab the safety ring.

"Dumbass," I growled, and took a deep shuddering breath. Now that I was able to move around, I had options. I stared at the depot's dark, hulking form and felt a glimmer of hope. If I could keep Sievert off my back and had enough time, I might be able to fire the TRD's station keeping rockets to take us over to Stolid.

I rotated slowly to the left and then the right, but saw nothing. When I looked down I caught a glimpse of a space suit. Sievert watched from the other side of a LOX tank. That worried me, but at least I knew where he was.

I untaped my tools and put them away, checked my air—it was down to three hours and forty-nine minutes—then opened the TRD's control panel. Everything inside was dead and dark. The explosion had evidently severed a power line. Which meant I had to be even more careful. Chances of me getting into a grounded situation were much less likely in space than on Earth, but I wasn't thinking clearly so I decided to be extra careful. I closed the control panel and looked around.

From my location, I saw that all six liquid oxygen tanks were all still intact. The irony was almost painful. Like shipwreck survivors who die of thirst while floating in the salty ocean, I had a very good chance of dying from the lack of oxygen while surrounded by tons of the stuff. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to rig a converter, but it would require more equipment and time than I had. So I looked around again, hoping for inspiration. Ahead of me amid a tangle of piping, lay two large manifolds, one for oxygen and one for hydrogen. Each tank feed pipe had a lever valve in the line just above where it attached to the manifold. And I finally had my idea.

I kept my voltage meter on and the probes at hand to test each metal object before I touched it, then slowly crawled deeper into the pipe maze using only arms. I braced myself and pulled the valve handle. At first it didn't move and I assumed it was frozen open. I immediately cursed the designers, then gave another hard tug and the handle moved. Once I was able to close it completely, I retracted my nasty comments about the engineering staff.

With the valve closed, I pulled a wrench from my tool harness and detached the flange from the manifold, leaving the twelve tethered bolts floated around the flange like Medusa's snakes. I checked my air supply and groaned. Three hours and nine minutes. I also remembered to look for Sievert. At first I didn't see any trace, then saw him watching me from between two struts. A chill trickled down my back. A lot of structure and piping lay between us, but I couldn't forget about him again. He wouldn't hesitate to kill me if he had the chance.

I scrambled up the pipe to the LOX tank, but that wasn't my goal. I needed to get to each of the five points around the tank's equator where it attached to the TRD structure. The only way to reach them without free flying would be to hold onto the cable race on the tank's exterior.

Dragging myself along the three-inch cable box proved easier than I thought, and with only one bolt at each connection, the work was quick, but moving between attachments—free flying along the tank with no handholds or tether—was nerve-wracking. And I realized at some point that I probably hadn't picked the best tank for my improvised rocket. It not only had the ten-foot-long manifold connection pipe sticking out one side but also the spacecraft fueling probe protruding fifteen feet out the other. That meant if I managed to get it pointed straight at the Stolid, I ran the risk of spearing my only ride home.

I looked back along the length of the TRD at one of the tanks without a fueling probe. If I used that one, and accidentally hit the Stolid, it would be a mostly depressurized composite ball hitting the titanium ship's hull. A much better risk, but did I have the time?

It was two in the morning and I was fifteen, standing in the equipment barn, trying to stay awake and waiting for my dad to finish repairs on the tractor. I would never have volunteered to help had I known I'd be up so late.

"Shit!" my dad said. "Hand me the vise grips. The big ones."

I pulled them from the tool box and pressed them against his leg where he could reach them easily, the way I'd been doing since I was five.

"C'mon Dad, let’s save this 'til morning and go to bed."

He pulled his head out of the engine compartment and spun around, pointing the vise grips at me. I knew I was going to get blasted and braced myself, but instead he just stared at me for second, then shook his head.

"Because sometimes timing is everything, Son. Tomorrow is Sunday. I can't go to town and buy the part I need because they'll be closed."

"But you don't work on Sunday anyway," I said, not really caring about the stupid part.

"That's usually true, but they have forecasted showers all day Monday and Tuesday. If I can plant that corn tomorrow, it will get a good soaking. If I don't, then I may have to wait until Thursday or Friday for the fields to be dry enough to not bog down the equipment."

He turned around and dove back into the tractor. "Go on to bed," he said. "I'm not making you stay out here."

I stood there for a minute, my fifteen-year-old brain being slow to process what I'd just heard, then I stepped up close to him.

"I want to help. Is there anything I can do?"

"There sure is," he said. "Hold those hoses out of my way."

About twenty minutes later, while we were wiping down and putting away the tools, he paused.

"Thanks," he said. "You're a pretty sharp kid. You must have got that from your mother."

I decided to use the first tank and not waste more time. After removing the last mounting bolt, I worked my way back down to the closed valve, looked around for Sievert, but didn't see him. I had two hours and forty minutes of air left. I couldn't wait any longer.

I held tight to the valve housing with one hand and twisted the lever about a quarter turn with the other and was rewarded as finely crystallized oxygen jetted from the pipe and I started moving. Looking down, I saw the exhaust dangerously close to my feet, but when I tried to move them pain bloomed in my knees like twin supernovas.

Using only arms, I twisted my upper body to pull the useless legs away from the flow. It worked, for a couple seconds, then just as I was about to clear the TRD truss structure, I was yanked downward and to one side. I glanced behind me and saw that Sievert had looped his tether around the top of my utility pack and was pulling his way up to me.

I immediately shut off the valve. Even though the thrust wasn't powerful enough to pull from of my grip, I needed both hands to free myself from the line. As I struggled with the tether he kept waving at me. Was he making a truce? I didn't trust him and was unsure of his intentions, but there was no reason why the tank couldn't take both of us to the Stolid. The process would actually be much easier if we had one to control the valve and one to see over the globe of the tank.

Sievert gave me a small wave of reassurance when he came into view, then unlooped the tether from my back and attached the clip to a ring on the tank. I motioned for him to mount the tank at its equator, but instead he launched himself at me with a mighty push and squeegeed me off of the pipe.

My arms wheeled, seeking purchase, and finally snagged a hook on Sievert's utility pack. I held tight and the sudden anchor point swung me back, bringing the pipe up between my legs. I screamed as it bounced off of one busted knee, but I clamped my thighs together despite the pain. I knew this was my last chance. If I let go I'd die.

Using my leverage advantage I pulled Sievert over my head as hard as I could and let go. He grabbed at me, but missed and flew away from the tank and the TRD. I moved quickly up the pipe to the valve, expecting to have very little time before Sievert halted his departure, but when I glanced that direction I saw he wasn't using his thrusters to bring him back. He saved his gas, intending to let the tether halt his progress and had already starting pulling in the slack line.

I couldn't let him do that. Hand over hand, I dragged myself up to the tank, detached the tether and tossed the end out into the black. By the time I scrambled back to the valve he had realized his predicament and fired his thrusters to return, but I didn't hesitate. I held tight and twisted the valve fully open.

With a sudden lurch my rocket steed started moving, opening the distance between me and Sievert, but it had continued drifting while we struggled until the pipe nozzle no longer aligned with the direction of forward momentum. The added thrust created a slow conical spin.

As the tank spun, I saw that I had indeed cleared the TRD, but was having a hard time getting my bearings and couldn't see the Stolid. I had no choice but to act fast and get the tank under some semblance of control. With arms wrapped tightly around the pipe, I double-checked the direction of my nozzles, then triggered long bursts of my suit thrusters. The spin slowed, but not enough. I gave another couple bursts, shorter this time and watched in near panic as my air supply dropped below the two hour mark. With no other options, I didn't stop thrusting until the tank spin rate dropped to almost nothing.

Only then did I release one hand from the valve housing long enough to turn my body and look around. This time I was able to get a better understanding of my position. I saw the TRD amid a small cloud of debris behind me, but still couldn't see the ship. I used the cable race to crawl to the tank equator and look over. The ship was roughly ahead but about twenty degrees above me. Then I saw Sievert.

He was on a course that could intercept mine, but he floated like a man face down in a swimming pool, with arms and legs limp and a slight spin that kept turning his back to me. Had he set his course then went unconscious? He probably wasn't dead yet, his suit would have gone into automatic minimum life support mode in order to maximize his chances. It would provide enough air to keep him alive, but not conscious, for about thirty minutes. Of course he could also be faking.

Could I take the risk of trying to save him? And what the hell had he been thinking? He'd been safe. The two of us could have ridden the tank all the way to Stolid and both been saved. Of course then he would have had to explain his actions when I made my report. He would have been fired and probably jailed. Had he actually made getting rid of me a higher priority than even his own survival? Perhaps he expected to die and wanted to be remembered a hero, not a cowardly villain. Jerk.

After tracking him for a few seconds, I could tell we were going to miss each other. He would pass behind me if I kept accelerating. I shut off the valve and estimated the new intercept. We were still going to miss, he was coming in too high. If he were faking he'd have to act soon, but I worried about what I would do if he didn't act.

I counted down, carefully timing his approach, when an alarm sounded in my helmet. I hadn't checked my air in a while and it had just dropped below the forty minute mark. The realization made bile rise in my throat and I had to fight a sudden panic. Then Sievert was upon me, not attacking this time, but about to speed past overhead.

If I stretched my arm I might be able to grab him. Did I dare? Would he try to kill me again? Worse yet, would his momentum break my tenuous grip on the tank and pull us both away from the tank to our deaths?

During my junior year of high school, Dad and our neighbor, Ted, had a dispute over land they both wanted to buy. Greed turned Ted mean. He told lies and jokes about my dad to folks at the co-op, but Dad just pretended nothing happened. It made me furious and embarrassed that he didn't kick the shit out of the loudmouth.

Knowing how much both men wanted the land, the retiring farm owner, Cecil Winn, decided to have an auction and see how much he could get. It poured rain the night before and by the time my dad and I arrived, the trucks and boots had churned Cecil's driveway into ankle-deep mud.

We stood beside Ted and he nodded to us and then turned to give a sly wink to rest of the crowd. When the auctioneer began to talk, Ted spun around too quickly, lost his balance and was falling toward the mud when Dad reached and grabbed one of his flailing hands and pulled the man upright with one powerful yank. He could have watched Ted make a fool of himself without lifting a finger, but instead he made a huge effort to keep the loudmouth from hitting the mud. Then he let the man beat him bidding for the land.

I crawled back in the truck and sulked. I couldn't believe he'd had the chance to pay Ted back—twice—and had let it go. I would have loved to laugh at Ted lying in the mud.

Dad raised an eyebrow and asked what was wrong.

"Why'd you do that?" I said, barely keeping my voice under control.

"What? Let Ted outbid me?"

I had meant saving him from the mud, but before I could answer, he laughed and turned on the truck.

"Hell, I didn't want Cecil's three hundred acres, but I knew Ted did and he had the money to pay top dollar. Of course he wouldn't if he could get it cheap. Cecil needed the money, so I thought I'd just drive Ted's bids a little higher."

I learned things that day. Dad didn't really care what others thought of him. And those men who were standing around smiling weren't making fun of my dad, they were laughing at what my dad had done to Ted. Finally I smiled and settled back in my seat. Dad gave me a conspiratorial wink and at that moment I even understood why he didn't let Ted land in the mud.

I stretched high and tried to grab Sievert's hand, but was too late and just brushed his glove as he slid by. I was about to use my suit thrusters to jet after him and saw the tether, my tether, one end still attached to Sievert, the other sliding along the tank ahead of me.

With a hard pull, I launched toward the rapidly departing line, snatched it with one hand and wrapped it around my wrist. I grabbed a clip ring on the tank with my left hand and gritted my teeth. The yank was more violent than I'd anticipated and a hard pop sent hot pain through my shoulder. I cursed and gritted my teeth, wondering how the hell I was going to handle it. I recognized this injury. I'd pulled my shoulder from its socket before.

The recoil brought Sievert back toward me, but at a more manageable speed. I latched the tether's free end to the tank ring, held on with my injured arm, and slowly reeled him in using my good arm. I clipped him to the ring, then transferred the tether to me.

I checked my air. Twenty-nine minutes for me and I had no idea if Sievert was even still alive. I needed to come up with some ingenious way to pop my shoulder back in place, but sweat stung my eyes and everything hurt. We didn't have much time and I just couldn't think. I drew deep of my precious air and crawled up to the tank equator to get my bearings.

Halting Sievert's momentum had pulled the makeshift spacecraft out of alignment with the Stolid. I mumbled curses and used more of my precious oxygen to turn the tank once again. When close enough, I turned the valve and a stream of oxygen jetted from the nozzle and I began moving in what I hopped was the right direction.

I left the valve open, then deposited myself on the tank's equator so I could make minor course adjustments as needed. I also had to come up with a plan to get me and Sievert from the tank to Stolid.

With Sievert on one end of the line and me on the other, we made quite a nice bolo. Using a couple more puffs of air, I lined us up properly on the narrow service "neck" behind the command module. When we lassoed the Stolid, I had dropped to ten minutes of air. Using only my good arm and a dose of panic, I pulled me and Sievert into the one-person airlock and cycled it. I took time while air filled the small chamber to tie Sievert's hands behind his back using the tether. I wasn't taking any chances.

Once inside, I yanked off my helmet, then Sievert's. He wasn't breathing and was grayish in color. I started mouth to mouth and pulled the medical box from beneath my couch, then rummaged through it until I found the mask. I attached the hose to the interior oxygen panel, pushed it over his face and started defibrillation.

He didn't wake up but started breathing on his own and I finally relaxed. My face was covered with tears and my only useful hand shook as I fumbled painkillers into my mouth. Only then did I notice the radio squawking in the background and replied.

"Good God, Hartman. Sievert told us you were dead. What's going on up there?"

I considered a white lie, telling them he panicked or had space sickness, but then he might go out with someone else and kill them one day.

"Sievert tried to kill me," I said as clearly and carefully as I could. "He destroyed my transmitter, then pinned me down and tied to steal my oxygen. He's in bad shape now. Unconscious. I barely got him inside, but I did bring him back."

There was a long pause on the other side. Who knew what he told them and what they believed. I was just too hurt and exhausted to give a damn.

"Roger that, Stolid. We are inbound. ETA three hours and fifty minutes."

I was starting to feel a bit dizzy from the pain killers and didn't reply.

"Stolid? Do you copy?"

"Yeah," I finally said. "Hey, do any of you know if Sievert's dad is alive?"

When I mentioned his name, Sievert woke up. He turned his head and focused on me, but his eyes held no emotion. I couldn't tell if the old Sievert was still in there or not.

The crew from the rescue ship finally replied. "Tyco Orbital says yes. His father is still alive. Why?"

"Hartman out," I said and signed off.

We stared at each other for several seconds, then I said "I guess you broke the record. Congratulations."

He turned his head away. I checked his bonds then settled into my seat to sleep while I waited for pickup. Before I closed my eyes, I buckled my harness, per the safety regulations.

The Trouble with Millennials

by Robert Buettner

On February 20, 2152, a Greenline cab shuddered to a stop at the slim beach that still separated Chicago from Lake Michigan. Pete Dial peered out the old egg’s side glass at the crowds sweating beneath the noon sun, then glanced at the time display winking on the cab’s platen.

He was early, which a man who had all the time in the world hardly needed to be. But the next half hour might redeem his life.

The cab’s door creaked up, Pete ducked beneath it, and stood in the hot sand. He exhaled through a smile, and let the lake air, and the strollers, and the bathers, all eddy around him.

Behind him the cab honked and flashed.

Pete spun back to the Greenie, pounded a fist on its plasteel flank. In his haste to leave a passenger compartment that reeked of decades of prior fares, he had neglected to pay while still inside.

Swearing under his breath, he fed bills into the cab’s flickering pay slot until it shut up.

A teenaged Uni pair passing by stopped and stared, dropped jaws displaying sharpened steel teeth.

Pete’s heart skipped. Not because of the teeth. The kids’ generation wore them to annoy its parents’ generation. After watching seven generations of fashion rebels mature into annoyed parents, the cycle now just bored the crap out of him. Most days what surprised him about the last hundred fifty years wasn’t how much changed, but how much didn’t.

Not that boring the crap out of somebody was a bad life strategy. The scattered Millennials like him who still hid within contemporary society survived by blending in.

Pete had chosen a Greenline over other lines’ newer, better-scrubbed cabs because Greenies still had working cash slots. Cash left no record, at least no record linked to an identifiable payor. Which payor might not blend in. But paying cash openly and notoriously, when nobody had for decades, was stupidly conspicuous.

The kids blinked, as quickly bored as kids had always been, and kept walking.

The cab’s door ratcheted back down and Pete stared at his own reflection in its dirty side glass. To the kids, Pete Dial looked thirty-five years old. They had stared not because they had suspected that Pete was a hundred twenty years older than he looked, but because the kids had never seen folding money before.

“Thank you for ch-choosing Greenline.” Showing its age, the worn electric limped back into traffic.

Pete wove through the crowds, his movements as lithe as the old cab’s had been feeble. He ignored office workers wearing singlets, strolling off their lunches; loud gaggles of metal mouthed adolescents, and family units out for a day at the beach and smelling of sunblock.

All Pete knew about why he was here was what had been whispered to him. Which wasn’t much. Another attention magnet that Millennials avoided was communicating on the grid. They passed information from one mouth to one ear, and occasionally by hand-delivered writing.

After two minutes Pete spotted the cues for which he searched. Lime green walking shorts and a mismatched orange visored cap. The man who wore them was about Pete’s own apparent age, with a close trimmed black beard.

Motionless, thin, his brown arms folded, the man stared through dark glasses north across the great lake. Warm wavelets broke along the shore a scant yard from his bare feet.

Pete stopped alongside the man and stared north, too. They stood with their backs to the dispassionate, ubiquitous surveillance optics and audio sensors that peered out from every building and vantage point in the city behind them.

The businesses’ sensors weren’t hunting Millennials. Scarcity had rendered that business cost-ineffective decades earlier. But most people still held with the old Bollyrap lyric, “Cobra and Millennial in your bed? First you kill the Millennial dead.”

The two men stood just close enough to each other that the waves’ murmur masked both the fact and the content of their conversation.

The man said, “You’re early.”

“Not that either of us is in a hurry.” Pete visored a hand over squinted eyes. “When I was a kid, I came down to this lake in February once. Froze my ass off.” Nobody had frozen their ass off alongside Lake Michigan for sixty years.

The man didn’t answer because a silver, bulbous police aerostat drifted across their fields of vision, parallel to the beach and a half mile offshore.

After the gas bag passed the man said, “When I was a kid, people were smart enough to stay indoors in February.” He wriggled his toes in the sand. “You really have a degree in aerospace engineering?”

Pete nodded. Not that it had ever gotten him closer to Mars than flying had. “And I was a Tiltrotor Airframe Mechanic before I got into flight school. I’ve got sixteen hundred hours in the left seat of an Osprey. Why does that matter?”

“Which war?”

“Fourth Afghan. Two tours. One crash. Eight broken bones. You’ve really got a flyable CV-22?”

“I’ve got a CV-22 that the right person could make flyable.”

“Why would a person want to make an aircraft older than you and I are fly?”

The man paused as another aerostat drifted by. This one was an advertising 'stat, but those also looked and listened as much as they showed and told.

Pete pointed at the 'stat as it vanished down the beach. “There’ve turned out to be safer, cheaper ways to fly straight up, straight down, and slow, and fast, besides making one aircraft do all four. The Osprey branch on the aviation evolution tree died a long time ago.”

“Precisely, Mr. Dial. Nobody born this century even knows what a CV-22 was. These days an Osprey’s versatility and anonymity could allow it to fly a cargo under the radar. So to speak.”

“Smuggling?” Pete shook his head. “Not interested.”

The man turned away and walked east along the beach. “Mr. Dial, if you routinely answer employment interview questions with more questions, I’m not surprised you’re between jobs.”

Pete stiffened. He had been between jobs, at least jobs that let him fly, for most of the last century. Flying to Mars had been a kid’s daydream. Just plain flying had been a dream come true. And his life without flying since had been a bad dream from which he couldn’t wake up.

The man shook his head as he walked away. “The job’s not smuggling. At least in the conventional sense. The cargo is me. And the job’s yours, if you want it.”

Pete caught up with the man, touched his elbow. “You trust a stranger you met over The Network to fly you? Just because he says he can?”

The thin man turned and smiled. “Mr. Dial, I have survived the same pogrom that you have by trusting that people act in their own self-interest. It would hardly be in your self-interest to lie your way into the cockpit of an aircraft the press nicknamed Widow Maker, would it?”

They walked a hundred yards side by side as the crowds shrank, until only the breeze and the waves’ ceaseless lap accompanied the two of them.

Pete frowned. “Are we finally at the place where I can ask questions?”

The man glanced around at the empty beach. “Shoot.”

“First, what’s in it for me?”

The man nodded. “Safe room and exceptional board. A generous salary at first. Then, I could say a new life. But Millennials already have all the life we need, don’t we? So let’s say a chance to finally enjoy the life you’ve got.”

“Why bother with an Osprey? This is Chicago. You don’t need to escape. Just leave.”

The man toed a discarded orange rotting in the sand and wrinkled his nose. “Mr. Dial, twenty-three million Chicagoans have tried and failed at that for years.” He smiled at his own joke, then shook his head. “I don’t need help to leave Chicago. I’m just in town shopping.”

Pete peered over his shoulder at downtown’s mix of blocky skyscrapers, older than he was, and taller needles younger than a kid with steel teeth. “On the beach?”

The man pointed, not at North Michigan Avenue’s Miracle Mile but east along the shore at the aged gray rock pile that was the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. “There.”

Pete wrinkled his forehead. “Then where do you want to fly to?”

The man shook his head. “First let’s see whether you can make the ship airworthy. Then we’ll discuss the destination. What else, Mr. Dial?”

“I’d like to know my cargo’s name. You know mine.”

The man extended a bony hand and grinned as Pete shook it. “V.J. Patel.”

Pete cocked an eyebrow. “Has it been a problem? Having the same name as that guy? V.J. Patel The Hindu From Hell?”

“The problem hasn’t been the name.” Patel spread his arms and glanced down at his scrawny frame. “The problem’s been that I am that guy.”

Two days of zig-zag driving and vehicle swaps after Pete and Patel had headed south from Chicago, then turned west, then north, Patel stopped their current vehicle. The dented, dirty, jacked-up selfdriver pickup truck idled in front of a gate locked with an old fashioned padlock. The gate was set in an unending ten-foot tall wire fence that bisected a flat, treeless, brown grassland that had long ago been green. The prairie stretched in all directions to the horizon.

The gate and fence were the first signs of current human habitation they had encountered during the last hour. A faded metal sign on the gate matched the sign on the flank of the livestock trailer they towed: “Dakota Farms-Sexually Reproduced Hogs.”

The trailer actually contained not hogs but four crates of long-mislaid CV-22 Osprey spare parts that the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry had uncovered in an offsite warehouse, then advertised for sale as junk.

Patel stepped down from the truck cab and unlocked the gate, pulled through then relocked the gate behind them, and remounted the truck.

Pete sat gazing at the wide open spaces as dust drifted through the pickup’s open windows and settled atop layers already there. Rabbits hopped silently along the fence line. Crop and herd monitor drones loitered in the sky, as small in the distance as wandering flies. Pete realized that Patel had chosen this inhospitable emptiness to buffer himself from the many people in this world who, after more than a century, still wanted him dead.

In the late 2030s V.J. Patel had become the most famous, and later infamous, geek multibillionaire minted when a handful of biotech startups hit the life extension technology jackpot.

Pete Dial, conversely, had been plucked from a multi-company pool of anonymous test subjects, just an underemployed vet with rent to pay, who became test subject 40 of 40 in Patel Molecular Biology Laboratories outpatient trial number 121.

So far, on this prairie V.J. Patel, multibillionaire-in-hiding, and Pete Dial, anonymous guinea pig, had encountered no people.

Pete thought that was for the best.

Patel leaned in front of the truck’s rearview mirror and adjusted his straw cowboy hat. He thought it made him blend in as just another hog rancher. Assuming the Dakotas were full of brown, skinny ranchers who pronounced “well” “vell.” Then Patel resumed whistling what he thought were country tunes that cowboys sang around their campfires, but were actually the score from Oklahoma.

Pete sighed. A human guinea pig had no business correcting a genius. And long ago an intel spook in Afghanistan had told Pete that a lousy cover was better than no cover at all.

Each time the truck bottomed in a pothole both Pete and the parts crates in the trailer bounced. Millennials shared a common, us-against-the-world bond. But perhaps V.J. Patel, genius billionaire, saw Pete Dial, human guinea pig, not as a comrade but as one more bargain spare part.

Although that wasn’t Patel’s story as Pete recalled it.

The man who made death by aging just another eradicable disease, like smallpox and polio, V.J. Patel was also considered the nicest guy on Earth.

Until the dominos of unanticipated consequence began falling.

Religion bristled at the impending loss of its monopoly on granting immortality. Nations panicked at the prospect of retirees who started collecting government pensions and never stopped, and of populations swollen by new citizens, but no longer shrunken by the deaths of old ones.

The American Association of Embalmers petitioned Congress for money to retrain its members. Average citizens protested that others shouldn’t have all the time in the world if they didn’t. But, when surveyed, average citizens couldn’t think up something to do with an extra half hour if their internet was out.

A senator, who apparently had a unique understanding of the relationship between life extension technology and reincarnation, and of the fact that V.J. Patel was an Indian-surnamed agnostic, pilloried Patel as “The Hindu From Hell.”

It had all been vaguely amusing. Until The Trouble started.

The truck struck a bump and Patel threw back his head and howled, “Ya-hoo!”

Pete stared again at the landscape and remembered when the howling had turned ugly.

A deep-seated resentment had surfaced, born, the psychologists said, of the astronomical expense of life extension procedures, combined with the projection that those procedures would remain beyond the reach of ordinary people until the then-current crop of ordinary people were dead. The right to live forever was falling unequally to the rich, the powerful, and the crooked. Whom ordinary people lumped together as the same thing. Also lumped together was a handful of unrich, unpowerful, uncrooked guinea pigs like Pete Dial.

Inequality, of the rich-get-richer sort, had been around since the first Australopithecus slapped the first gentler sibling away from dinner. The human race had learned to accept it. The psychologists pegged this acceptance of inequality to the certainty among the poor, the weak, and the honest that they and the rich, the powerful, and the crooked all wound up equally dead.

Life extension upended that equality. That in turn upended the general population’s acceptance of a bunch of jerk billionaires who had bought the luck to live for a thousand years. And by indiscriminate extension a few human guinea pigs who shared the billionaires’ luck.

Outside the pickup dusk had cloaked the prairie when Patel interrupted his fourth rewind of Oklahoma, pointed through the cracked windshield, and sang, “We’re here!”

In the distance ahead lights winked on and twinkled.

Twenty minutes later, “Here” turned out to be an enormous barn, a vast, low ranch house, and a scatter of out buildings that all looked ancient, but weren’t. Precisely the opposite of their owner.

The house was opulent inside, fully auto, and dinner for two waited, hot and remarkably good, on a linen-clothed table in a dining room dominated by a gilt-framed Miro that looked genuine.

After they ate Patel led the way out to the cool evening. On the house’s covered veranda a cognac bottle and two crystal snifters slid from the service port onto a table between two side-by-side wooden rocking chairs. Patel motioned Pete to the left rocker, then poured cognacs.

Pete sniffed, then sipped. “Smooth.”

Patel swirled his, then sipped. “Should be. It’s older than either of us.” They sat, looked out at the stars and listened to crickets chirp. Patel set down his glass, turned his nose up and sniffed again. “Smell that?”

“I don’t smell anything.”

“Precisely. No hogs. Where would a bounty hunter be less likely to look for a vegetarian Hindu Millennial than a pig farm? My cover legend is flawless.”

“Your cover legend is that your house serves cheeseburgers. You’re betting big that people will infer a lot from a little truth.”

Patel shrugged. “Mr. Dial, people infer what they want to be true, even from no truth at all. They only accept reality after it has bitten them in the ass. When The Trouble started I inferred that the angels of mankind’s better nature would protect us.”

“Instead reality bit us in the ass.”

They rocked and sipped.

The hearings at which V.J. Patel had been nicknamed “the Hindu from Hell” had yielded the Millennial Protection Act. Every other nation that mattered had passed similar legislation.

Legislation being legislation, the new protection laws didn’t protect jack shit. And especially didn’t protect the few who had already been modified and would remain young for a millennium. Those few the Millennial laws indeed bit in the ass.

The laws outlawed the technology going forward, ostensibly because it hadn’t been proven safe, but really because screwing over the few was easier than vaguely annoying the many. The laws also established a legal name, “Millennials,” for the few. To be fair, that was less pejorative than the common-usage name it replaced, “jerk billionaires who we wish were dead.”

The laws additionally posited that a thousand years was plenty long enough for any bloodline to enjoy a fortune. So when Millennials died their fortunes escheated to the government of the place where they died.

Except for a twenty percent finder’s fee payable to the individual who presented proof of death. Which finder was shielded by a rebuttable presumption that said Millennial had died of natural causes. Because, after all, the outlawed technology was presumed unsafe. In practice, the presumption proved pretty much irrebuttable, the likely rebuttor being dead.

Millennials nimble enough to survive The Trouble, as they came to call the first worldwide simultaneous natural death pandemic, had converted their fortunes to cash and high-value collectibles and hidden ever since. Those few who had no fortunes to convert just hid.

Before the laws, “millennials” referred to a generation of perceived whiners born a few years before or after the twentieth millennium turned to the twenty-first millennium. Since the laws, “Millennials” described a tiny cabal of paranoid Methuselahs worth more dead than alive.

Pete spun a finger at the surrounding landscape and frowned. “This location, and the fence, and your, uh, cover stories. Are those the only security this place has?”

Patel shook his head as he jerked a thumb upward at the ranch house’s roof. “The chimney cap’s a turret. There’s a sensor-directed automated mini-gun up there. And homing antipersonnel mines patrol the fences and the grounds. If a rabbit hops toward you, retreat. I’ve had more problems out here with coyotes than with bounty hunters.” Patel stood and pointed at the barn. “Ready to meet your fiancée?”

They crossed the ranch yard, and the barn doors, high and wide enough to pass an Osprey, hissed open at Patel’s approach.

When the doors had closed behind Patel and his guest, the lights came up and Pete whistled.

The hundred-forty-year old CV-22 squatted under flood lights like a black insect, fifty-seven feet nose to tail and forty-six feet wingtip to wingtip. The swiveling proprotors in the nacelles at each wingtip, and the airfoil itself, were folded across the insect’s back in the jumbled jigsaw of the Osprey’s compact storage configuration.

Pete walked to the aircraft, stroked its chin, and his whisper echoed through the vast barn. “Christ. She’s brand new.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. This one was originally built for the Indian border patrol. Whether India ran out of money or out of enthusiasm is unclear, but when Bell Boeing couldn’t resell it they donated it to the Museum of Science and Industry. The museum mothballed it, waiting to find display space, until I bought it six years ago. They found the spares last month. I acquired the whole package for a song.”

“Not 'The Surrey With The Fringe on Top,' I hope.”

Patel cocked his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Never mind.”

The Osprey indeed had hardly been flown. The museum’s business was preserving old machinery, and Patel’s barn was in fact a hangar fitted out as an automated aircraft maintenance facility that any contemporary air force would have been proud of.

Nonetheless, decades in storage had ravaged the Osprey’s soft spots.

The small stuff—rotted cloth streamers, attached to metal pins, that had once announced “REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT”—Pete ignored. Soft goods like seat cushions he replaced. Avionics that could be replaced with contemporary machine intelligence technology half the weight and twice the functionality he just ripped out and chucked. The CV-22 was a special ops variant of the V-22, with extra fuel tanks that provided additional range. Those Pete kept.

As updated, Pete alone, with minimal help from Patel, would be able fly an aircraft designed to require a crew of three or four. But even replacing perished flexible seals and landing gear tires took Pete a month. Then the ship had to be tested and retested, system by system, tip to tip and nose to tail.

On the eve of Pete’s first attempt to get Frankenplane airborne he was less nervous about the aircraft’s age than its pilot’s age. People who said the human body’s muscle memory, for learned skills like riding a bicycle, remained years later never contemplated that the “years later” might exceed one hundred. The old simulator programs he downloaded were crude toys. The new VR simulators were useless fiction concocted by dreamers who had never even seen an Osprey.

The muscles that most needed to remember their fine motor skills were in Pete’s left thumb. A loaded Osprey weighed almost twenty-four tons, but much of its maneuver capability was directed by a spring-loaded, ridged metal thumb wheel the diameter of a last century quarter-dollar coin, mounted in the Thrust Control Lever at his left hand.

Pete nudged the thumb wheel and the proprotors swung toward taxi position. He over corrected, started again. Somewhere in the nacelles something that hadn’t been stressed in over a century groaned. Through gritted teeth he hissed, “That makes two of us.”

On the second try he taxied the Osprey to a floodlit spot midway between the barn and the ranch house, then paused. In the moonless dark sky he picked out the tiny dot of his old and unattainable friend Mars, before the proprotors churned a dust storm that nearly obscured even his new friend Patel. The smaller man peered at the aircraft from the ranch house veranda, with a red bandana tied across his nose and mouth, and his eyes slitted against the dust.

Pete thumbed the nacelles to the sky, so that the airplane became a dual rotor helicopter, then revved the engines and nudged the Osprey until it hovered ten feet off the ground. It wobbled, as his muscles tried to recall motions they hadn’t performed in far too long.

The ship rolled left, and before he could blink the airframe shuddered as the port nacelle’s tail end dug into the dirt. The Osprey’s fat backside slewed around the nacelle’s buried tail.

In an instant the Osprey’s tires struck the dirt hard, and its belly scraped the ground.

By the time Pete subdued the beast and shut down the engines his hands trembled on the controls, and he gulped air in ragged gasps.

Too much fuel odor filled the fuselage. It occurred to Pete that a body that didn’t age would burn down to ash just as fine as any other body’s ash. He unfastened his harness, sprang to the starboard hatch, then dove and rolled clear of the tilted Osprey.

It took two hours for Pete and Patel, using the pickup, to drag the Osprey back into the barn.

They sat side by side on a spares crate near the open doors staring back at the crippled aircraft.

Patel swigged cognac from the bottle, passed it to Pete. “Where did it break?”

Pete drank, then shrugged. “Nowhere. The machine was up to the job. The man wasn’t.” He held up his left thumb, wriggled it. “I’m rusty.” And sore. His left hip throbbed at the same spot where it had broken the last time an Osprey sat on him.

“I mean what is now broken? And how long will it take to repair it?”

“Ruptured fuel line’s an easy fix. So are the flat tires on the port landing gear. Are we in a hurry to get somewhere?”

Patel shook his head. “I told you. We’ll discuss all that later.”

Pete slammed the bottle onto the crate between them. “I’ve been working my ass off here for months.” He stabbed a finger at the ranch yard. “I could have died out there tonight! I think you owe me more information than 'later.’”

Patel sat still, then nodded and clapped Pete on the shoulder. “Peter, your work has been exceptional. You are correct about what you are owed. But life seldom pays us what we are owed. I still feel this enterprise’s future is safer if at this stage you know less rather than more.” He stood. “How about this? If you think back through what you have just said, you will find a clue to what this enterprise is about. And why it is worth your while.”

“A riddle? You’re asking me to solve a fucking riddle?”

Patel placed both hands in the small of his back, stretched then shuffled toward the ranch house. “We always find more satisfying that which we earn than that which we are given.”

Pete chucked the empty bottle in the general direction of Patel’s receding back and the bottle bounced on the ranch yard’s dirt. “You’re an asshole!”

“Conceded. Good night, my friend.”

A month, and many simulator solos, later Pete and Patel sat side by side, airborne in airplane mode in the Osprey’s cockpit, for the first time.

Whatever journey Patel had in mind, the jump-off time was now obviously rushing at them. The prior week he and Pete had driven the pickup all over the Midwest, stopping at drone aerodromes that hosted obsolete turboprops that burned the same Jet-A that the Osprey’s turboshaft engines did.

They bought for cash, in drum lots small enough to be consistent with a week’s consumption by a mid-sized farm co-op’s monitor or duster drone. After Patel’s “Vell, howdy, there, pardner,” drew a few raised eyebrows, Pete had done the talking.

In all they had laid in enough gas to travel, depending on conditions and operating parameters, seven thousand over-the-ground miles.

The CV-22’s range was over a thousand miles, give-or-take, its out-and-back operating radius less than half that. That meant Patel planned either multiple trips to somewhere, or one long one, carrying drums of Jet-A in the cargo compartment, from which fuel could be pumped to refill the tanks during ground stops. Inasmuch as purchasing fuel enroute was likely to get them shot on sight.

That evening, after Pete had landed the Osprey, then bedded it down in the barn next to the fuel drums, he returned to the ranch house and sat across the dining room table from Patel. As the house served dinner Pete said, “Let’s talk some more about where all this is leading.”

Patel raised his eyebrows. “You have solved the riddle?”

“No. But I need to know where we’re going. If the weather’s hot the ship can’t lift as much. If the ground elevation is higher the air’s thinner, and our takeoff roll is longer. Prevailing headwinds reduce our nominal range. You’ve laid in fuel for seven thousand miles. But we can only carry enough of it with us in drums to extend the range to about three thousand on a prayer.”

“Peter, have you ever been to Alaska?”

Pete slapped the tablecloth. “Stop the damn riddles!”

“It’s not a riddle. I just need to know your level of background knowledge to answer efficiently.”

“Oh. Alaska?” He shook his head. “I’ve read a lot about it. But my last trip out of the U.S. the taxpayers bought my ticket. I don’t even have a passport.”

“In those days you wouldn’t have needed one.”

Of course. Alaska had been a state then. Pete frowned at Patel as the house opened the wine. “What’s in Alaska since the Secession? Besides big bears, high unemployment, and anarchy?”

“Attu.”

“What’s Attu?”

“Mine, for starters. It’s an uninhabited island at the west end of the Aleutian chain. I bought the rights to it through a chain of shell corporations from the Alaskan central government and the West Aleutians Borough fifteen years ago.”

“Beach front property on the Bering Sea?” Pete slapped his forehead. “Of course! Location, location, location.”

Patel frowned.

Then Pete stared at the ceiling, nodded. “To visit overland you’d have to cross the international border into Canada. Then again into Alaska. Then deal with every local Borough chief between the panhandle and the Kodiak Archipelago. And their private militias.”

Patel chewed chicken Kiev, washed it down with Chablis, then nodded. “Exactly. I made the overland trip four times. Was nearly recognized and apprehended twice. Boats are slow. Flying commercial exposes one to background checks. International air charters attract even more attention than vessel charters.”

“So you bought a museum piece that nobody considered a flyable aircraft. But that could go long over water, or make short, shallow hops along the coast. It could mimic a boring drone well enough to spoof a bored air traffic control radar operator. It could outrun any Borough’s patrol helo, or a 'stat, and go to ground in a clearing in the woods anytime.”

“The Osprey would have been an ideal commuter. Except it took years to find parts and a pilot when I couldn’t advertise on the Internet.”

Pete spread his arms, palms up. “But why go there at all? And why now?”

Patel raised his index finger, smiled, and said, “I’m glad you asked—”

The house flashed its lights, turned them red, and announced, “V.J., you have a visitor breaching the east fence at milepost four point three.”

Bang!

In the distance a report like an exploding Claymore mine echoed through the night.

Patel threw his napkin on the tablecloth, his lips pressed into a tight smile. “Sounds like somebody found a rabbit.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“V.J., you have multiple visitors breaching—”

Patel waved the house silent, then turned to the gilt-framed Miro hung on the wall behind him as it slid back. A flatscreen that the painting hid lit and showed the ranch in map view.

Two dozen red dots shimmered along the inside of a green line that was the east boundary fence. Four of the dots didn’t move. The rest inched forward, well-separated and on line, toward the house. Flickering white numbers alongside each dot showed the dots were maintaining a common speed over unimproved ground of seven miles per hour, and weighed two hundred sixty pounds each. Disciplined visitors. Inbound on the run. And heavily laden with inappropriate gifts.

The house lights flashed again, this time in faster sequence.

The display shifted scale, drew back, and showed the entire perimeter. Beyond the green line inbounds showed red, their white numbers flickering as they varied speed, course and altitude. The new dots’ speed, and maneuver capability, announced Emag gunships. That meant they would either blow this house into kindling, armored walls and all, or would hover above the house and fast rope a squad down onto the roof.

“V.J., two aerial visitors are inbound and will cross the west fence boundary at an altitude of six hundred feet in twenty—”

Brrraappp. Brrraappp.

The floorboards vibrated beneath Pete’s feet as the roof mini gun thundered. Patel cringed, and clapped his hands over his ears.

The juking red dots blossomed, then disappeared from the screen. Then the sharp cracks of two crashes pricked Pete’s ringing ears, followed by secondary explosion rumbles.

Patel shook his head. “Perhaps I should have let you buy all the fuel.”

V.J. Patel was probably the most prominent, and almost certainly the wealthiest, Millennial who had not yet been cashed in. Whether he had blown his own cover last week or been betrayed by someone or something else, plenty of people wanted the payday he represented. The only real surprise about this assault was that the bad guys weren’t rolling in even heavier.

Pete said, “You have a gun locker in the basement. I saw it.”

“Go down, guns blazing?” Patel shook his head. “How fast can we get the Osprey airborne?”

The chimney mini gun may not have been as elegant or as modern a perimeter defense weapon as a directed energy laser, but it proved to be the soundest investment Patel had ever made. Sometimes there’s just no substitute for six hundred rounds per second. After the third gunship ate it, the rest, if there was any rest, withdrew.

Meantime the lead elements of the ground troops, or thugs, or whoever they were, advanced to within four hundred yards of the house before they found out the hard way that the mini wasn’t just an antiaircraft defense system.

After three bursts the display on Patel’s phone, which mimicked the big display screen behind the Miro, showed four more motionless dots, their white numbers triple zeroed. But the total number of live intruders inside the wire had grown from twenty-four to fifty.

Pete nodded to himself. At the moment the bad guys had halted behind cover, probably waiting until a weapon heavy enough to silence the unexpected mini could be deployed.

During the ceasefire the turret gun had unilaterally imposed, Pete and Patel had run, crouching, to the barn. While Pete half-ass preflighted the Osprey and started the engines Patel winched fuel drums up the Osprey’s rear ramp and secured them to the rear compartment deck.

Patel flopped into the Osprey’s right-hand seat, eyes wide as he peered at red dots, now swarming his phone’s display like fire ants. He pounded a fist on his seat’s arm rest. “Go! Go!”

Pete taxied fast into the ranch yard, swiveled the proprotors, and lifted off vertical.

Patel said, “You said this climbs faster when it takes off like a plane.”

“We’d also fly right over those guys, low enough to take small arms fire.”

“Oh.”

The Osprey had helicoptered majestically to a thousand feet when Pete glimpsed a ground flash, dropped the CV-22 straight toward the deck, and something whooshed three feet over the canopy.

Patel, bug eyed, asked, “What was that?”

“Probably a shoulder-fired, dumb anti-tank rocket they intended to use on the mini. If it had been anything proximity fused or guided we’d be fajitas.” Screw helicopter mode. This time, like the last time so long before, helicopter mode was just the ground slugs’ free ticket to the shooting gallery.

Pete thumbed the aircraft toward airplane mode. He slid the Thrust Control Lever forward, acceleration pressed him against his seat back, and he pulled the cyclic back to his navel. The Osprey’s nose rotated skyward as it climbed above the intruders.

The ship lightened, jumped.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Below and behind them columns of yellow flame roiled up from the ground and buffeted the Osprey.

Patel turned in his seat. “Uh-oh.”

Pete squeezed the cyclic. “What uh-oh?”

“I neglected to close the rear ramp. I believe we have just carpet bombed our visitors with inadequately secured drums of jet fuel.”

Ninety minutes later Pete slowed and dropped the Osprey to match the speed, altitude, and meandering flight path of a crop monitor drone cast adrift by a bad GPS locator. Then he switched on a matching transponder.

Five minutes later they crossed, unchallenged in the dark emptiness of middle North America, over what had remained for centuries the longest undefended border on Earth.

They droned northwest across Saskatchewan as Patel craned his neck, peering at the dark sky like a sparrow awaiting a stooping hawk. “They may rat us out to their Canadian friends.”

Pete shook his head. “And split the finder’s fee? Not for a while. They aren’t sure whether we were a decoy.” He jerked his thumb south. “You may still be bunkered up somewhere underneath your ranch. Or maybe you weren’t even home. Besides, you left some table scraps in the house they’ll fight over.”

Patel leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and sighed. “I never liked that Miro anyway.”

Two zig-zag, hide-and-seek days after they had left Patel’s ranch behind, in the eleven p.m. July dusk that passed for the cover of darkness in the Yukon Territory, Pete rolled their last fuel drum in among the other empties piled in the tumbledown shed beside which he, Patel, and the Osprey had slept away the long hours of full daylight.

Caught far short of the fuel required to fly the six thousand-plus miles from Patel’s ranch to Attu Island, Pete had picked out from old charts and satellite aerials, while they stopped to transfer fuel from drums to tanks the previous day, crop drone stations enroute from which they had midnight requisitioned Jet-A fill ups.

But even though Canada was warmer and drier now than it had been when Pete was born, ninety percent of Canadians still lived within sixty miles of the U.S. border. The Yukon remained a vacant wilderness, and the camo net he had stretched over the Osprey was probably overkill. And this abandoned drone station had yielded only a few clean gallons of Jet-A from the dregs of rusted drums.

Patel crouched alongside the campfire they had decided to risk, poking the flames with a stick. “Coffee!”

Pete took the poured mug from Patel.

Patel raised his own mug in toast. “Au revoir Canada. Hello, Alaska.”

Pete shook his head. “Hello chaos!”

When the post-oil economy finally and abruptly swept the globe in the 2090s, crude oil export dependent economies crumbled. A few boutique producers and refiners survived, and supplied the trickle of throwback products, like Jet-A, that fueled the few throwback technologies that the world still cared about. The Persian Gulf monarchies shrank back to medieval quiescence. Russia collapsed into anarchy.

The U.S. state of Alaska, weary of the meddling of an absentee landlord that was no longer a valued customer, voted to secede. The United States declined a Goliath-versus-David civil war over a discontiguous wasteland that no longer supplied either energy or a bulwark against the irrelevant anarchy that had been Russia.

Since the Secession, Alaska had disintegrated into its own brand of anarchy, a jigsaw of geographically and economically isolated, fiercely territorial, boroughs that reminded Pete of tribal Halfassghanistan.

Patel asked, “Now what?”

Pete squatted beside his passenger. “Well, stealing fuel at 3 a.m. worked fine 'til now. All I got from this place were a few clean gallons and a twenty year old paper road map of Alaska.”

“So?”

Pete unfurled his handheld and drew their route with a finger across the glowing surface. “So we can only fly as far as what we’ve got in the tanks will take us. First things first. We’ll cross into Alaskan air space here, at Yakutat Borough, on the deck and full gas. The panhandle’s only thirty miles wide there. We’ll be feet wet over the Gulf of Alaska before anybody notices we were ever there. Then we’ll head west by southwest.”

With his own finger Patel traced a line west by southwest until it intersected the curving necklace of the Aleutians, and followed along the chain to Attu. “That’s two thousand miles.”

Pete shrugged. “Twenty-one hundred.”

Patel frowned. “You said we’d be lucky to exceed eleven hundred miles with full tanks. Your improvisation has been brilliant, Peter. But perhaps we could have devised a less dramatic plan.”

Pete pressed his lips together and nodded. “Perhaps if somebody had told me sooner where we were going we would have. We’ve been playing catch up ever since we, um, diverted those drums to other use.”

Patel crossed his arms. “I’ve been waiting a hundred years to watch bastards like them eat it for a change.” He thrust out his lower lip. “The satisfaction was worth it.”

Pete nodded. “Satisfaction’s great. But Rolls Royce turboshafts can’t use it. We’re going to need one more fuel scrounge stop between here and Attu.” He tapped a spot in the center of Kodiak Island, near the planned route’s midpoint. “The United States Coast Guard operated a major air station right here. The Coasties left in a hurry when the Secessionists stormed the gates. Three Secessionists died, and Kodiak Island Borough’s left the place closed as a martyr’s tomb for the last half century. At Kodiak we should find barrels full of Jet-A that the U.S. left behind.”

“Excellent.” Patel nodded. “Why are you frowning? We can’t make it to Kodiak on the fuel we have?”

Pete shrugged. “If the current tailwinds hold, fuel’s not the issue . . . ”

“But?”

Pete pointed back along their route, at Anchorage. “Alaska’s population’s concentrated along its south coast, like Canada’s is concentrated along its south border. Big city populations, big city problems. When the Coast Guard air patrols left, drugs smuggled north by plane increased. To fill the vacuum the coastal boroughs contracted mercenary-flown Emag fighters to intercept smugglers. Unlike the Coast Guard, the mercs shoot first at any unidentified aircraft that even tickles their borough’s airspace.”

Patel raised his eyebrows. “Ah. Frontier justice. So we remain well out to sea.”

“'Til we reach Kodiak. Then we have to encroach on Borough airspace. And find out how quick on the draw the Borough of Kodiak Island is.” Pete eyed the still-dimming sky. “'nother hour to wheels up.” He lay back in the grass, hands clasped behind his head, and closed his eyes.

Ten minutes later Patel broke the evening’s silence. “Peter, did you ever marry?”

“You mean after The Trouble?”

Patel nodded.

“Once.”

“Children?”

Pete felt the start of tears burn his eyes. He breathed deep, then answered, his voice thick. “Three. Buried them all. Just like I buried their mother. Never going through that again. Why?”

“What if you could marry another Millennial?”

“Dunno.” Pete sat up, stared into the dying fire. “Is that what Attu is? A safe harbor? A colony for Millennials?”

“Colony?” Patel shook his head. “No.” He tossed a pebble into the flames and watched sparks eddy up into the sky, then nodded slowly. “Harbor? In a way.”

They cleared the coast without incident, then over the Gulf of Alaska the skies grayed and mist obscured the sea below them.

Patel peered down at the mist, his flight helmet too big and vibrating at the end of his thin neck, so that he looked like a last-century bobble head doll. “Peter, have you given any more thought to the riddle?”

“You mean about the man being the weak link, not the machine?”

“And?”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Nobody ever gets my riddles. It won’t matter. Only Attu matters.”

Pete eased the Osprey forward, fifty feet above the surf breaking on the southwestern-most tip of Kodiak Island, the wipers’ thump sluicing rain in sheets off the canopy. Dripping green brush blanketed the land that sloped steeply up from the rocky, treeless shore.

Patel said, “This weather is bad.”

“This weather is great. Most of Kodiak Island’s people, what there are of them, and the current airfield, and the borough’s interceptor, are sixty miles northeast of us, centered around the town of Kodiak. That’s why we burned some extra fuel to swing south and sneak in the back door. The old Coast Guard station’s north, too, but in this stuff nobody’s gonna see us, or be anxious to investigate us even if we show on their radar. So if we wipe our belly on this green crap we may be able to creep right up—”

Patel pointed at the radar, where a blip had appeared at the new airport. “Is that—?”

“Maybe it’s a local helicopter. Or a commercial flight headed east to Anchorage or—”

The blip moved southwest and accelerated.

“An interceptor, Peter?”

“Dammit!” They had come so far. If they had had the fuel they planned on, they would have just found an empty spot west of the population centers, set down, and transferred fuel.

The blip inched straight for them, the Emag already only eight minutes out.

“Can we fight him?”

“Bring a cargo plane to a dogfight?” Pete shook his head. “And we sure can’t outrun him.”

“Then what?”

“I’ll set us down before he knocks us down.” Pete found a flat spot on a shallow ridge, cranked the ship back to helicopter mode and nested the Osprey into the sodden foliage like the sea eagle that she was named for.

Pete shut down the engines, lowered the rear ramp and half dragged Patel behind him and out into dripping, thigh-high brush that crackled as they dove into it.

“What are you doing, Peter?”

“We’re off his radar. He may not get a visual on us. Even if he does, he may not shoot on sight. Or he may blow this aircraft apart rather than risk it getting away. Which I’d rather watch from a distance than experience.”

They were only ten yards clear of the Osprey’s tail when the fast mover burst out of the mist two hundred feet above them, a cruel, black scimitar. At five hundred fifty miles per hour it vanished as fast as it had appeared. The following whoosh of displaced air, and the high-pitched Emag warble, swept over them, the only records of the aircraft’s passing.

“He couldn’t have seen us. Not that fast in all this rain.”

Pete cupped his hand around his ear. “Hear that crackle? That’s rain boiling off the engine exhausts. He didn’t need to see us. On his infrared we looked like a bonfire.” Pete grabbed Patel’s arm again and thrashed, knees high, further from the Osprey. “Emags turn slower than cows. It’ll take him a few to spin it around and line us up but—”

This time orange flame preceded the scimitar’s arrival. The missile struck the Osprey’s fuselage just aft of the cockpit.

Boom!

The heat of the explosion’s fireball singed Pete as the blast tumbled him through the air and dropped him, stunned and rolling, into the brush.

He lay there, listened to fire crackle somewhere, smelled wood smoke and burned jet fuel.

Clarity returned in an adrenaline rush. “V.J.! V.J. you okay?”

As though a pillow had been wrapped around Pete’s head the reply trickled back into his ringing ears. “Peter?”

Pete struggled upright, found Patel draped face-up, back arched across a bush. His hands and face were spider webbed red with scratches.

Pete peered at him. “You feel okay? 'Cause you look like hell.”

Patel shifted his eyes, focused on Pete’s face, then snorted and whispered, “Pot and kettle.”

Pete touched fingers to his own cheek, found blood, and smiled.

“Peter, I believe my right leg is broken.”

Pete turned his head to look and sucked in a breath. “Maybe.” He touched Patel’s shoulder gently. “Don’t move. At all. I’ll see if I can get the aid kit out of the Osprey.”

Patel nodded, breathing through clenched teeth.

The Osprey lay like the proverbial chicken with its head off. The warhead’s explosion had severed the fuselage just aft of the flight deck. The airfoil’s exposed ribs and the proprotors dangled like piled, broken feathers. Flame scorch blackened the fuselage’s flanks, and smoke drifted from the wreckage, but there was no flame. They had been that low on fuel?

Pete limped on a suddenly sore right leg toward the wreck, ducked inside through the rear hatch. If this clusterfuck had a silver lining, it was that the fuselage aft of the break, and particularly the emergency gear they had stored back there, was intact.

Pete limped back to Patel, whose teeth remained clenched, carrying the aid kit. He slipped a morphine pop between the smaller man’s pale lips. While Pete waited for Patel’s rigid face to soften he erected a poptent and laid Patel on his back inside.

Patel, dreamy, felt no pain but Pete grimaced as the active dressing Pete applied set the broken bones, then infused the limb with medication.

Pete sponged his own abrasions with antibiotic, stripped them both of their sodden clothes, then lay down alongside Patel and covered them with the kit’s thermal blanket. As rain coursed off the tent, Pete heard the Emag warble overhead again. Damage assessment.

Probably, he thought, it was obvious neither plane nor survivors were going anywhere. It would be hours or a day before a salvage party reached them overland from Kodiak. A helicopter was an unlikely extravagance. As Pete closed his eyes he thought that, at this point, he didn’t give a shit.

Pete sat up and realized that what woke him was the silence when the rain had stopped. He checked Patel’s vitals then limped, slipping repeatedly on the sodden, upsloping ground, back to the Osprey through fog so thick that he could barely glimpse the tops of the wreck’s vertical stabilizers.

By the time Pete dragged the raft alongside the tent and inflated it, Patel was awake.

“What are you doing?”

Pete stood, pointed at the raft’s fabric floor, piled with supplies from the Osprey. “You can’t walk. You lie in the raft and I’ll pull you. You’ll slide like a kid on a toboggan. It’s a good mile, but all downhill.”

“A mile to where?”

“The Gulf.”

Patel’s eyes widened, drugged or not. “You’re joking. Thirteen hundred miles in an open life raft?”

“The alternative is we wait here until they mistake us for drug smugglers and shoot us on sight, or they recognize us as Millennials and shoot us on sight. And we can’t go down guns blazing even if we wanted to, because the guns are in your locker in South Dakota, remember?”

Patel’s eyelids sagged as the dressing dosed out a shot of juice, and he shook his head as he faded back to sleep. “I should have known one of you would turn out to be nuts.”

Scrambling on hands and knees back up the slick grassy slope Pete regained the flat ledge where Patel dozed, groggy in the life raft. Panting, Pete turned and sat, hands clasped around his knees, while he listened to the surf that rolled so nearby, now again invisible in the mist.

The first hours of the downhill journey, towing Patel in the raft across and around wet vegetation by a line attached to the raft’s bow, had been neither as fast or as easy as he had expected, but he had managed. This sharp downslope, however, had required him to pause and reconnoiter.

Patel awoke, on the drugs’ upcycle, and Pete helped him out of the raft so he could kneel alongside it and urinate in the weeds.

Patel unzipped his fly and asked, “So where are we now?”

Pete took the opportunity to step into the raft that would be their home for the next thirteen hundred miles and tidy up.

Patel had tried to eat protein bars and jerky enroute, dropped more crumbs inside the raft than he ingested, and finally chucked the leftovers into the bushes as he fell back to sleep.

Pete answered his patient as he policed up wrappers. “We’re only four hundred feet from the waterline, and it’s a flat beach down there ten feet wide that the raft can practically slide across on its own. But the slope between here and there’s so steep I’m going to have to lower you in the raft by paying out the rope, in stages, a few feet at a time.”

Patel zipped up. “Or we could take a toboggan ride.”

“And you called me nuts.”

Patel turned his head, stared up the slope, into the mist. “What was that?”

Something rustled out in the fog. Pete wrinkled his forehead and glanced at his wristpiece. The salvage party should still have been miles away. And he would have heard any helo.

The rustle this time was unmistakable, and with it came the splash of rain shaken from foliage and the crack of limbs as something large displaced brush.

Pete paused, listened. The rustle gave way to a snuffle, a grunt, and a vast, darker gray shadow swelled in the pale mist ahead of him.

At first the bear ambled closer, head cocked as though curious and so close that Pete felt he could reach out and touch its snout.

Then the bear snorted, growled, reared on its hind legs and Pete realized it was farther away, but had appeared close because of its enormity.

What had he read? Grown male Kodiaks weighed a ton and a half and stood nearly ten feet tall. And when fattening during summer they tracked down and ate anything that crossed their paths, even other bear’s cubs. And certainly discarded protein bars and jerky, and the cub-sized humans who discarded them.

Heart hammering, Pete held still as a dead man, but below the bear’s line of vision he closed his fingers around the plastic paddle on the raft’s fabric floor. A pathetic weapon, but a weapon.

The bear dropped back down on all fours, advanced a step.

Pete extended his arm slowly toward V.J. and flicked his fingers while he stared into the bear’s black eyes. “C’mon, V.J.! Into the toboggan nice and slow. Then off we go down the hill. By the time this guy figures out we’re gone we’ll be halfway to Attu.”

Patel remained on his knees, eyes on the bear. “No, Peter. Thirteen hundred miles in an open boat? Impossible in my condition. And Attu was never for me, but for you. For all of you.”

Pete’s heart swelled near bursting. “Bullshit! Crawl into this damn boat!”

Patel didn’t budge. “This is this beast’s home. You and I both know it can negotiate that four hundred foot slope in a few bounds. The toboggan ride is no way to outrun it.”

A growl rumbled in the bear’s throat, its ears flattened against its skull.

“Well, we better do something to outrun it, because smacking it with a plastic paddle won’t be worth the effort.”

Patel inched his uninjured left leg until his foot rested against the bow of the perched raft. “Peter, you don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun me.”

Patel shifted his weight, drew back his leg, and grunted through clenched teeth as he kicked the raft’s bow.

At the abrupt movement, the bear roared and charged.

“No!” Pete grabbed for Patel’s foot, and fell face first in the backsliding raft. The inflatable teetered on the precipice, then plunged down into the fog.

Tossing and prone in the raft, Pete heard a snarl, then screams. The raft struck a boulder, flew, then landed hard, and lightning flashed behind Pete’s eyes.

The raft’s floor undulated, its fabric ice cold against Pete’s cheek. He struggled to his knees, peered over the inflated gunwale and realized that the raft rocked in the slow swells eighty feet seaward of the surf line.

The bear paced back and forth on the narrow beach, eyes on Pete, snout and forepaws bloody, as it weighed the effort of swimming after more meat.

Of Patel, his blood was the only sign.

Pete knelt in the raft, the paddle across his thighs, turned his face to the low, gray clouds, and screamed. The rain poured down again and diluted his tears as they coursed down his cheeks.

After a time, the distance between the drifting raft and the shore grew until the bear lost interest.

Pete inspected his new world, an oval of rubberized canvas within which he could barely lie down. The wild ride had emptied the raft of stockpiled supplies, electronics, and equipment. Folded in his breast pocket was a sodden but serviceable paper Alaska highway map. Pockets in the raft’s main tube yielded fishing line and hooks, a knife, a sea anchor, a sail that doubled as a sunshade, an inflatable chamber in which fresh water could be distilled, a waterproof magnetic compass, and a foldable hat.

Too spent for anger, too weary for reason, too overwhelmed by the odds, he laughed. If Patel had left Pete any other legacy than fishhooks it was memories that made Pete laugh. And Attu. Patel had told Pete “Only Attu matters,” and had sacrificed more of a life and a fortune than most people ever knew to get Pete there.

Pete consulted his crappy map, tugged on the hat, and paddled west.

He couldn’t remember how many days it had been since he had caught a fish, or seen the sun. The only commodities he possessed in abundance were fresh water from condensation of the eternal fog, and loneliness.

Forced to shun even meager indications of human presence he had encountered on his journey, the last excitement he had felt had been the sight of the distant red glow of an active volcano, somewhere, he calculated from his map, around the central portion of the Eastern Aleutians. When he had paddled toward the glow, and a welcome sleep on dry land, the acrid fumes rolling down the mountain’s slopes had blistered his skin, seared his lungs, and driven him back into the cold night, coughing blood.

The Aleutians weren’t hell, but they were one flight up.

Every paddle stroke now deepened his despair. Days before, according to his tattered map, he had passed Kiska Island, and entered the final leg of his journey, two hundred miles of open water that separated Kiska from Attu. The slightest misjudgment of current, wind, or distance multiplied over two hundred miles would condemn him to miss his target in the endless fog and sail to oblivion in the vastness of the Bering Sea or the North Pacific.

By his reckoning, he should have reached Attu before now. He strained his eyes but the fog remained featureless.

Then he heard it. Not even a whisper, at first. Then unmistakable. Breaking surf.

He paddled toward the sound as muscles shrunken by malnourishment trembled, rejuvenated.

And then it was there, a great, dark bulk materializing out of the mist. He leapt ashore in the freezing shallows and hauled the raft out onto a rocky beach. The raft’s main tube tore on a rock, but what would have been a mortal wound an hour before barely slowed his step.

He danced, foot-to-foot in the sand, to the skirl of shore birds invisible in the mist, while he held the paddle above his head in both hands and pumped it up and down like a trophy. “Hooooo! Hooooo!”

He sat in the sand, caught his breath, then interred his faithful canvas companion between boulders above the high tide line. Then he set out to discover Attu’s secrets. A short climb over rock and moss gave way to a plain swept by bitter north wind. Within yards he encountered signs of human habitation.

Tilted, crumbled pavement that had been an airstrip, buildings rusted to collapse. Not a tree or a sign of animate life except the skirling birds. He crisscrossed the tiny island for hours, until Arctic twilight deepened. The roaring wind strengthened so that he had to lean into it to walk, holding the tattered foldable hat against his head, until the wind snatched that last defense against the elements from him and carried it away.

He found a sheltered angle of roofless brick walls and huddled in a stunned ball in its wind shadow.

Patel had sacrificed his life to deliver him to this ruin? It had all been some cosmic fraud?

The prospect of a thousand years imprisoned here made him weep. Finally the wind’s ceaseless howl wore him down into sleep.

“Hey, man!”

Simultaneously a light in Pete’s eyes, a hand on his shoulder, and a voice woke Pete in the windless subarctic morning twilight. He crabbed backward across jumbled bricks, felt for the paddle, crouched, and raised it like a club.

“Easy there, Robinson Crusoe!” The person behind the light lowered it and backed away, her empty palm out.

Pete blinked. “Who are you?”

The woman, lithe and small and tidy in an azure windbreaker and windproof trousers, extended her right hand. “Laura.”

Pete took her hand peering at her out of the corner of his eye. “Laura who?”

“Laura 16.”

Pete frowned. “Funny name.”

“Last names are kind of pointless here. There are only forty of us.”

Pete nodded slowly. “I’m—”

“Peter 40. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Pete stepped back, dizzy, and raised a hand to his forehead.

The woman who called herself Laura 16 stepped to him and eased him to the ground with a hand beneath his elbow.

“There are forty people here?”

“There are thirty-eight people on Attu. This is Shemya, and there are two of us on this island. Though it’s more a two and a half mile wide rock pimple than an island. The U.S. flew spy planes from Shemya during the Cold War. Most recent Alaskan maps omit it. Reminder of U.S. domination. If you’d missed Shemya, you would have run smack into Attu in another thirty miles.”

“Why are you—”

“Here? I told them all this could happen, and they said I was nuts. I’ve been cruising over from Attu to check every few days since—” her voice cracked and she swallowed, “since we heard about V.J.” She paused, stared down at the century old rubble.

Pete said, “I’m sorry.”

“We all are. I assume you know more about how it happened than what trickled out here from Kodiak. It’ll hurt, but we’ll all want to know.” The woman looked up, blinked. “For what it’s worth, I had a bet on you to show up, for a Dutch apple pie. Which you look like you could use. And a shave and a hot bath.” She helped Pete to his feet. “Come on. My boat’s over here.”

Pete sat alongside the woman called Laura 16, sipping hot coffee that tasted like heaven from a Plasti as she piloted a covered electric launch west from Shemya Island.

She said, “I don’t suppose you solved your riddle?”

Pete shook his head. “V.J. told me nobody ever does.”

“Correct.”

Pete turned to Laura 16 and clenched his fist. “I don’t mean to be rude to someone who just turned my life right side up. But could you tell me what the hell is going on here?”

She nodded. “Transparency was never V.J.’s strength. You have a degree in aerospace engineering.”

“Both those parts I already know. Yes. Alabama Huntsville. Courtesy of the G.I. Bill.”

“Me too. Princeton. Courtesy of a spoiled child’s full freight parents. Why A.E.?”

Pete shrugged. “I always wanted to go to Mars.”

She snorted. “The worst desert in the Solar System?”

“Ever seen South Dakota?”

She smiled. “I always wanted to go farther out than Mars. A lot farther. Unfortunately, the taxpayers who funded NASA didn’t, and JPL laid me off in the late 2030s. Being too proud to move in to my full freight parents’ basement, I signed on as 16 of 40 in Patel Molecular Biology Laboratories outpatient trial number 121.”

“Shut up! I’m—”

“Nobody’s used ‘shut up’ like that in the last century, Peter. But yeah, I know. You’re 40 of 40. After The Trouble V.J. realized he had screwed over forty innocent people, by dipping them in the fountain of youth, because, as you know too well, Millennial hunters shoot first and check bank balances later. So he spent the next hundred twenty years tracking us all down and giving us a purpose.”

“Which is?”

She smiled again. “What was your riddle?”

He decided Laura 16 had an extraordinary smile for a hundred fifty year old spoiled child. “Uh. Something about the machine is strong enough but the man inside isn’t.”

She nodded. “Got it. You know the Proxima Centauri b Ranger project?”

“That was your purpose? V.J. set you up to work on the first extra-solar planet probe?”

Laura 16 shook her head. “V.J. hadn’t found me in 2092. I was cleaning pools in Pasadena with dyed hair and a fake ID. The point is Ranger has now accelerated to eight percent of the speed of light. But even so if Ranger were a manned spacecraft, by the time it decelerates and reaches Proxima Centauri b its crew would be dead. Like Einstein said, no machine, nothing, can outrun light. But to reach the stars mankind doesn’t have to outrun light. We just have to outrun death.”

In the distance, the morning wind cleared the fog. Attu Island, verdant, mountainous, and enormous compared to the forlorn rock of Shemya Island, glittered in the sun. A cluster of buildings around its harbor was dominated by a great silver needle pointed toward the sky.

Pete’s jaw hung open. “How long?”

“Since concept? Twenty-six years. Until we leave? The next launch window opens Thursday.”

“What?”

“I told you we’ve been waiting for you.”

“Why?”

“We didn’t have lots of choice. The other thirty-nine of us couldn’t put our specialties to much use without a lander pilot.”

Pete pointed a finger at his chest. “But I don’t know—”

Laura 16 waved her hand. “Travel time’s two hundred years. You’ll figure it out.”