The Firelighters

(A Learning Experience, Book VII)

Book One: A Learning Experience
Book Two: Hard Lessons
Book Three: The Black Sheep
Book Four: The Long Road Home
Book Five: The Long-Range War
Book Six: Their Last Full Measure
Book Seven: The Firelighters

Christopher G. Nuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
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Contents
Cover Blurb
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Afterword
Appendix: Belos
How To Follow

Cover Blurb

The universe is not a very nice neighbourhood.  

The strong races rule the galaxy, doing as they please; the weak are enslaved or driven from their homeworlds or simply exterminated by the ruling powers.  The Solar Union’s only hope of survival is to master GalTech, and improve upon it, before the Galactics realise the human race is no longer trapped on a primitive world, at the mercy of any spacefaring race who stumbles across it.  But GalTech keeps its secrets close, and time is not on humanity’s side.

But there is one hope.  On a primitive world, enslaved by a far more advanced race, there is a research lab with the keys to galactic technology, offering the promise of unlocking everything if they can be captured and returned to Sol.  And so a highly-trained team is dispatched to steal the tech at all costs, even if it means setting the entire planet ablaze …

Author’s Note

Although this book is technically Book Seven, it is set between A Learning Experience and Hard Lessons and stands, as much as possible, on its own.  You don’t need to have read any other books in the series to follow this one.

CGN.
Prologue

It was the height of ironies, Admiral Mongo Stuart reflected as he studied the holographic chart of the sector, that he was both one of the most powerful humans in the known universe and little better than a scavenger warlord, keeping his fleet together with spit and baling wire while crawling around the edge of civilised space, hoping and praying the Galactics didn’t decide to eradicate them.  The Solar Union was the most powerful human state in history, so independent from the planet it had left behind that it did not need to hold its nose and compromise its principles when dealing with tyrannical governments, and yet Mongo had no illusions about the outcome if the Galactics rediscovered Sol before the Solar Union was ready to meet them.  It was … galling.

He studied the chart without really seeing it, lost in reminiscences.  It had been fifteen years since he and his friends had been kidnapped by marauding aliens, fifteen years since they’d fought back and captured the alien starship themselves, fifteen years since they’d decided to take the ship and use it to found their own civilisation, rather than handing it – and the keys to absolute power – to a federal government none of them trusted and most of them hated.  It had been a gamble, all the more so when they’d realised that their kidnappers were little more than pirates and scavengers, but they’d pulled it off.  The Solar Union was growing with every passing year, a new society taking shape outside the gravity well, beyond the reach of Earth’s failing governments.  It wasn’t perfect – Mongo was honest enough to admit that the system had flaws – but it worked.  There were boundless opportunities for those prepared to work.  Humanity was enjoying a renaissance in everything from science to popular entertainment.

But it could be lost very quickly, if the Galactics came calling.

Mongo considered himself a realist.  The Solar Union had more firepower, and more freedom of action, than any previous government, but the military he commanded was puny compared to the immense fleets the Galactics could dispatch to trouble spots, fleets so large they outmassed every wet-navy fleet that had ever existed.  The Solar Navy was tough – and the military had mined hundreds of mil-SF books for tactics that could be deployed against stodgy unimaginative enemies, yet the Galactics could soak up losses of a thousand-to-one and still come out ahead.  The key to humanity’s safety, in a universe full of predators, was a strong military, but there were limits to how fast the navy could expand.  And there were other problems.

His terminal bleeped.  “Sir,” his eAssistant said.  “Commander Singh has arrived.”

Mongo nodded, curtly.  “Show him in.”

The hatch opened, revealing a young-looking man in a simple spacer tunic.  Mongo pointed to a chair, studying the man thoughtfully.  Most spooks were prone to overestimating their own intelligence, and their ability to shape events on the other side of the world, but Singh was old enough to understand his own limitations.  He had also spent more time than most in alien company, although Mongo knew that didn’t always translate into understanding.  Most of the other space-going races were very alien and yet their thought processes were just close enough to humanity’s that it was easy to be surprised when one was blindsided by a piece of alien logic.  The xenospecialists insisted that any species that clambered out of a gravity well had to share a certain understanding of how the universe worked, perhaps even a certain level of intelligence.  Mongo wasn’t so sure.  He’d seen enough to know that two different intelligent races could follow entirely different chains of reasoning to arrive at the same conclusion. Why not? Two human societies could do exactly the same thing.

But, of course, everyone has to follow the Tokomak, he thought.  The unquestioned masters of the known galaxy had put their stamp on everything, from interstellar trade and communications to warfare.  They’d set the rules while carefully ensuring they also had loopholes to act against their own rules without openly breaking them.  Mongo suspected the other Galactics resented the hell out of it, although they didn’t seem inclined to resistance and revolt.  We’re damn lucky the Tokomak are too stagnant to take advantage of their own system.

He met Singh’s eyes.  “I read your proposal,” he said.  “Do you think we have a reasonable chance of pulling it off?”

The spook looked back at him.  “Yes, sir,” he said, simply.  “We may never get a better one.”

Mongo kept his face impassive through long practice.  Singh might have come up with the proposal, and convinced himself it could be done, but he wasn’t the one who would be carrying it out.  Mongo would have assigned him to the mission, if he hadn’t thought the spook would probably be a burden on his teammates.  And yet … he keyed his terminal, bringing up the proposal and going over the high points.  There were too many question marks for his peace of mind, too many parts of the proposal that would have to be put together on the fly, too many points that might make the entire concept completely unworkable.  Singh, to his credit, hadn’t tried to hide the known unknowns when he’d submitted the proposal.  But it was the things they didn’t know that could bite them.

“No,” he said, finally.  “We might not.”

The risk was considerable.  There were humans, the descendents of alien abductees, living amongst the Galactics.  Soldiers, mercenaries … there was no reason to think his team, if it was caught in the act, would be traced back to Sol.  Force Recon teams were carefully outfitted to conceal their origins, with modified GalTech weapons and equipment rather than anything designed and built on Earth.  And yet … Mongo had been a sailor long enough to know that anything that could go wrong probably would, often at the worst possible time.  If their precautions proved insufficient, the entire galaxy would land on their heads.

No, he thought.  It’ll be little more than a punitive expedition.

“We need it, sir,” Singh said.  “A tech raid may be our only hope.”

Mongo nodded, irritated.  He already knew that.  There were limits to how far humanity could unlock the secrets of GalTech, limits to how much they could reverse-engineer and put into production themselves.  They dared not let themselves become dependent on interstellar corporations, supplying weapons and starships the human race couldn’t duplicate.  It would give the Galactics far too much influence over everything humanity did, if not an absolute veto.  Sure, the corporations might insist there were no hidden surprises – command codes – hidden within their products, but Mongo didn’t believe it.  And his staff didn’t have the expertise to be sure.

He snorted.  He’d always mocked senior officers – and the federal government – for spending days, weeks or months trying to come to a decision everyone involved had known was inevitable from the start.  It had been deeply frustrating as a young officer, watching priceless opportunities slip away because his political masters – uniformed or not – insisted on debating the issue, or consulting lawyers, or pontificating on something that had nothing to do with the problem at hand.  And now he was doing the same thing, torn between hope for the future and fear of what could happen if the mission went spectacularly wrong.  The sheer scope for utter disaster was mesmerising.

But we need that tech raid, he thought.  Or we risk disaster anyway.

He didn’t need to look at the starchart to know the truth.  Sol was on the very edge of explored space, hundreds of light years from the nearest major alien settlement and thousands of light years from the heart of interstellar civilisation.  They’d been incredibly lucky that the waves of interstellar expansion had burnt out before they reached Earth, which hadn’t stopped a handful of aliens from visiting the planet a few hundred years ago and kidnapping enough humans to form a breeding population, but it was just a matter of time before someone more dangerous than a scavenger race returned to Sol.  Mongo had seen the projections.  They might be based on incomplete data, but even the most optimistic estimates suggested that they had less than a century before they were rediscovered.  And then …

If we’re lucky, we’ll wind up like the Indians under the British Raj, he thought.  And if we’re unlucky, we’ll be treated like the Native Americans instead.

His lips quirked.  Put that way, the decision was easy.

“We’ll take the risk,” he said.  “I take it you have the briefing notes already prepared?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Mongo said.  “Dismissed.”

He watched the younger man leave, then keyed his terminal.  “Contact Force Recon Command,” he ordered.  “I want the Firelighters to report here as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir.”

Chapter One

The city was devastated.

Captain Riley Richardson kept his eyes open as the team drove their jeep through the first checkpoint, their forged paperwork – and a small bribe – more than enough to get them through without any identity checks.  The guards were jumpy, eyes flickering from side to side as if they couldn’t decide if they were more scared of the rebel factions or their own leaders.  Iran had been convulsed by civil war during the last five years, fighting surging back and forth in a manner reminiscent of the First World War, and any hope of a peaceful settlement had been lost long ago.  Riley was all too sure that when – if - the rebels broke through the network of trenches, antitank traps and fortified buildings, there would be a ghastly slaughter.  The defenders would be lucky if they managed to escape the city in time.

He remained wary as they drove down the street.  The first bloody uprising had shattered the city.  The rebel bombings – and terrorist raids – had only made it worse, inflicting horrendous misery on the population for little or no tactical purpose.  The city’s masters were the worst of all, conscripting every able-bodied man into the defence forces and forcing them to work hard, keeping them from thinking about overthrowing their masters and trying to surrender to the advancing rebels.  A handful of corpses dangled from ropes, left to rot, as a grim reminder of just what would happen to anyone fool enough to raise a hand to the government’s officials.  Riley had seen some horrible sights in his time – he’d been a soldier for nearly fifty years – and yet, there was something about this city that chilled him to the bone.  It felt dead.

“No women on the streets,” Sarah Wilde, called Sally by all, subvocalised.  She was dressed as a local man, like the rest of the team.  No one had bothered to check and even if they had, they wouldn’t notice anything odd about the team unless they had access to GalTech scanners.  “No children either.”

Riley nodded.  No women on the streets was almost always a bad sign.  Civil wars – and wars of religion – were always harder on the women, who were left to try to feed their children and pray for their menfolk to return safety.  The local government wasn’t even trying to help them, as far as he could tell, although there was little they could practically do.  The rebel lines had isolated the city, making it impossible to bring in food from the countryside.  It was only a matter of time until everyone in the city starved to death – or was forced to surrender.  He shuddered to think about how many people would die in the next few months.  

“They’re still jamming us,” Charles Isabel put in.  “They know we’re coming.”

“They know we’d do something,” Riley agreed.  “Do they want a fight?”

He felt his expression darken as they made their way towards the centre of the city.  The Solar Union had made it very clear, time and time again, that anyone who wanted to immigrate was welcome – and any terrestrial government that tried to stop them would be severely punished.  It was astonishing how reasonable some governments had become when they’d realised their most productive citizens would leave if they weren’t well-treated; it was astonishing, too, that other governments thought they could get away with keeping their people from emigrating.  Riley couldn’t blame anyone here for wanting out, even if it meant leaving the old world behind and flying into outer space.  Hell, the local government should have been delighted.  There would have been fewer mouths to feed.

“Maybe they want a heroic death,” Charles suggested.  “Or they think the jamming will keep us from intervening.”

Riley shrugged.  The jamming would prevent the Solar Union from teleporting anyone out of the city, along with the assholes keeping them prisoner, but it hardly kept his fellows from dropping a team of armoured soldiers into the city from orbit or simply sneaking through the trenches and into the city itself.  Perhaps they thought they could use the would-be emigrants as human shields, although that would be foolish.  If there was one thing Riley and his peers had learnt, in their careers, it was that allowing human shields to deter them would merely ensure all their enemies took and used human shields.  He was quite happy to take risks to capture terrorists, just to make sure they were hanged for breaking the rules of war.  They couldn’t break the rules openly, then try to claim their protection.

“Deploy the drones,” he ordered.

“On it,” Sally said.  “Interlinking relay systems coming online … now.”

“Good,” Riley said.  The enemy jamming was alarmingly good, for something that had been patched together from pre-Contact tech, but the microscopic drones were designed to serve as tiny relay stations as well as sensor platforms.  Their images were patchy, and some parts of the city were worryingly opaque, yet it was far better than nothing.  Combined with the drones orbiting high overhead, it was unlikely anything could sneak up on them.  “Let me know the moment you find the hostages.”

He took a breath and checked the live feed from the drones as they rounded a corner and headed towards the government complex.  The enemy hadn’t realised it – he assumed – but their jamming was so powerful it was easy to pick out the source.  It would be easy, too, to drop a KEW on it from orbit, although that would take out the entire complex and most of its inhabitants.  He’d considered using a smart missile, but even that would put the hostages’ lives at risk.  Besides, it would be a great deal more satisfying to breeze through the front gate and lay waste to the complex.

Don’t get cocky, he reminded himself, firmly.  Just because their tech is primitive doesn’t mean they’re dumb.

“We won’t get through the gate,” Charles said, curtly.  “The guards are being too careful.”

Riley watched the guards for a long moment, then nodded.  The guards looked like irregulars, or terrorists, but they were checking papers and searching everyone who wanted to enter the complex with a professionalism he would have admired if they hadn’t been on the wrong side.  He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover they had a list of authorised visitors too, like high security sites in the west.  Anyone not on the list would be – at best – detained.  Here, with the city bracing itself for a rebel attack, it was likely that anyone they caught would be hanged without a trial.  They didn’t have the time for interrogation.

“You know the plan,” he said, his implants updating as more and more data flowed in from the drones.  “When I give the word, click your forcefields on and charge.”

Charles snickered.  “Perhaps we shouldn’t bother with the jamming,” he said.  “We can do the mission ourselves.”

Riley smiled, then shook his head.  “They’ll bring in reinforcements the moment they realise they’re under attack,” he said dryly, although he knew perfectly well the team already knew it.  They hadn’t had much time to plan the operation, but they were experienced professionals.  “We’ll need reinforcements.”

He braced himself as they drove up to the gatehouse.  It was admirably secure.  The compound walls had been enhanced with Hesco bastions, protecting the defenders from IEDs and VBIEDs; the bunkers, set further into the complex, covered the gatehouse with enough firepower to deter any local attacker.  The complex itself was studded with murder holes – he couldn’t help thinking that whoever had cut them had done so entirely at random – and the roof covered with antiaircraft weapons, including one he was sure dated back to the Second World War.  It wasn’t as laughable as it looked.  The guns had been surprisingly good at killing tanks, back in their day, and rebel technicals had even less armour than early tanks and armoured cars.  They might just be more useful than anyone thought.  

“Five seconds,” he subvocalised.  Microbursts flickered between the team, designating targets.  The defenders wouldn’t have a chance to realise they were under attack before it was too late.  He smiled, tightly, as the guards approached.  “Go!”

He drew his pistol, his enhanced arm moving inhumanly fast, and started to fire, cutting down the guards before they could react.  The rest of the team fired at the same moment, Charles and Sally pouring superhot plasma into the bunkers while Terry and Josh opened fire on the rooftop defences.  Something exploded, pieces of debris crashing down … Riley smirked as he jumped out of the jeep, activated his force shield and ran towards the jamming equipment, with Sally right behind him.  A defender appeared out of nowhere, pointed his AK-47 in Riley’s direction and opened fire.  The bullets hit the force shield and harmlessly bounced off, ricocheting in all directions.  Riley shot the man and kept going, even as the defenders rushed to the murder holes and opened fire.  It felt as if they were panicking.

Long may they stay that way, Riley thought, darkly.  He kept a wary eye on the live feed from the drones as they closed on the walls.  The force shields were good, but an enemy that refused to panic could slow the team, even hit them hard enough to break the shields – directly or indirectly – and kill them.  We have to move fast, without being slowed down.

The ground heaved.  He glanced back, just in time to see a pair of fireballs rising in the distance.  The orbiting drones, watching for enemy movements, had hit targets … hopefully, that would slow the enemy reaction long enough for the team to complete its mission and get out.  He turned back to the wall, shoved a molecular disintegrator against it, and hit the switch.  The wall collapsed into dust.  The men inside spun around, too late.  He switched his weapon to stun and opened fire, the defenders twitching painfully as they fell.  They’d have headaches later, but at least they’d be alive.

“This way,” Sally said.  The jamming was so strong it was interfering with the microscope drones.  “I think …”

She kicked a door with her enhanced strength.  It shattered, revealing a hodgepodge of outdated computer and communications technology and a young man who gaped at them in horror, then threw up his hands.  Riley stunned him anyway, just to be sure.  The young man – he was barely out of his teens – looked like a tech nerd, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be dangerous.  Too many terrorists had taken to modern social media like ducks to water, openly broadcasting their vile deeds to the world while sneakily passing messages from cell to cell in codes that defied the algorithms.  Riley designated the young man for pick-up – if he had been conscripted, he would be grateful – and stepped back to watch the door as Sally went to work.  She was an expert at dealing with hybrid tech.

“Someone’s been telling tales,” Sally commented, curtly.  “Lots of layered shit here …”

Riley nodded.  Governments the world over had been working, desperately, to come up with ways to block teleport signals and, to be fair, they’d largely succeeded.  He wondered, idly, who’d shared the tech, although the basic concept was simple enough anyone could put it into practice.  Teleport signals were incredibly complex and there were limits to how far their systems could compensate before the signal was too badly corrupted to be reconstituted.  Teleporting was normally perfectly safe, but using teleporters in a combat zone was asking for trouble.

“Too primitive to infiltrate,” Sally added, after a moment.  “Luckily, we can just cut the wires.”

Riley grinned.  “Do it.”

He checked in with the rest of the team as the jamming faded away.  The enemy was trying to get organised, local forces storming the walls with the clear intention of trapping the team inside the complex.  They didn’t seem to care about the fact they’d also be trapping their leadership, unless someone on the outside was hoping to take advantage of the chaos to launch a coup.  It would be a poisoned chalice, if they succeeded, but the lure of absolute power – even over a besieged city – was hard to resist.  The ground heaved as the drones rained death on the surrounding streets, clearing the way for the reinforcements.  New icons flashed in front of his eyes as the first Marines started to teleport into the city.

“They won’t be able to get the jammers up again in a hurry,” Sally said.  She’d done more than just pull the plug.  Once the power was off, she’d activated her lancers and melted half of the outdated junk.  “Let’s go.”

Riley nodded and led the way out of the room at a brisk clip.  The live feed from the drones was updating rapidly, now that the jamming was gone, turning the fog of war into a memory.  The surviving defenders were scattered, a handful running for their lives … straight into the armoured marines taking position outside the complex.  The remainder were heading for the prisoner barracks.  Riley gritted his teeth as he picked up speed, barely noticing an armed man coming at him.  He stunned the man on automatic and darted past before the unconscious body hit the ground.  The stairs would have made a pretty good chokepoint, if the defenders had been thinking clearly, but they hadn’t even tried to make a stand.  He threw a stun grenade down the stairs anyway, just to be sure, and followed, gritting his teeth as blue light flared below.  His hair threatened to stand on end.  He’d felt the edge of the detonation even through the shield.

“In there,” Sally said, as the ground heaved again.  Dust fell from the roof.  “Quickly.”

Riley crashed through the door, ready for anything.  The prisoners stared at him in shock.  Women, children … he hoped the grown men had been conscripted, rather than simply hanged, but he feared the worst.  The oldest boy he could see looked to be about twelve, if that.  His teeth clenched.  It wasn’t the first time someone had conscripted child soldiers, but it never failed to shock him.  It was an atrocity if ever there was one.

“Hold still,” he snapped.  His Farsi was rusty, but it would suffice. “Don’t move!”

He triggered the teleport scanner.  The system ran a series of checks, making sure the local jamming remained down, then linked into the drones and activated the orbiting teleporter.  The prisoners froze, eyes wide with horror as their bodies dissolved into white light.  They’d be reconstituted on the orbital platform, where medics would tend to their wounds and provide what reassurance they could.  He felt a flicker of sympathy.  Religious authorities all over the world were still trying to decide if teleporting was no better than suicide, killing the original person and then creating a duplicate that thought it was the original.  The Galactics had proof the teleporter didn’t do anything of the sort – and apparently teleport duplicates were the stuff of science-fantasy - but the explanation was too complex for anyone who didn’t have a degree in quantum physics.  Privately, there were times Riley wondered if the Galactics hadn’t simply cooked up a tissue of lies to keep the younger races from thinking about it.

“Sir,” Charles said.  “We have the leaders.”

“Teleport them into custody,” Riley ordered.  The city’s masters would stand trial for their crimes.  If they were found guilty, and he couldn’t imagine any other outcome, they’d either be sent to a detention asteroid or executed.  They probably weren’t the sort of criminals who could pay their debt to society through indentured labour or military service.  “Josh?”

“We swept the lower levels,” Josh reported.  “Got a handful of prisoners and a shitload of records.”

“Take them all,” Riley said.  The records might be useful.  Who knew?  If nothing else, they’d be informative when historians came to write the history of the civil war.  He put the thought aside as another explosion shook the ground.  The live feed from the drones revealed the rebel forces, advancing against the trenches as they scented weakness.  “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.”

“Looks like it,” Charles agreed.  “I don’t want to say we’re surrounded, but we’re being fired on from all sides.”

Riley nodded.  “We’re done here,” he said, keying his communicator.  “Bring us home.”

He closed his eyes, skin itching as the teleporter took hold of him.  The techs swore blind he was imagining it, but his imagination had always been very powerful.  He staggered, slightly, eyes snapping open as the teleporter let go.  It had been fifteen years since he’d joined the Solar Navy, fifteen years since he’d first used a teleporter, yet he’d never gotten used to it.  The sensation was too disorienting, even for him.

“Sir,” Captain Yu said.  “The remainder of the team and reinforcements are being pulled out now.”

“Very good.”  Riley sighed inwardly as the adrenaline started to wear off.  There would be paperwork.  Lots and lots of paperwork.  The Solar Union had less than the United States Navy, but … he shook his head.  There had to be at least some organisation or the results would be absolute chaos.  “We came, we saw, we kicked ass.”

And it was a walkover because they weren’t prepared for us, he reminded himself, sharply.  The locals hadn’t understood the full potential of GalTech.  The Galactics did.  Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the Solar Union and the Galactics came to blows and then …  The next engagement will be harder.

“Yes, sir,” Yu agreed.  “You have a message from Command.  You have one day’s planetside leave, if you wish it, then you are ordered to return to base.  I think they have something in mind for you.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Riley said.  He hadn’t expected any leave.  The fact they were being given a day off, with full access to the teleporters, was worrying.  It suggested they were being tapped for something very dangerous … he snorted at himself.  If he’d wanted a nice risk-free life, he would have become an accountant or a doctor or something – anything – other than a soldier.  “I’ll pass the word to the team, then go planetside.”

Yu made a face.  “I wouldn’t go down there on a bet,” he said.  “It isn’t the world we grew up in.  Not anymore.”

“No,” Riley agreed.  The younger generation had broken all ties to their homeworld.  He was too old to cut the links completely.  “But I have family down there.”

Chapter Two

“It’s good to see you again, Sally,” Penny Wilde said.  “But you’d better come in before they see you.”

Sally Wilde tried not to grimace as her younger sister welcomed her into the apartment.  It was hard to believe Penny was seven years younger than she was – the gray air and wrinkles suggested otherwise - and harder still to believe her sister still lived in the same cramped apartment.  The rust belt town had been slowly going downhill for decades, ever since the nearby factory had been shuttered, but the decline had picked up speed in the last five years.  Too many locals were packing up and moving to the Solar Union, abandoning their old homes and apartments to anyone who wanted them.  The result had not been pleasant. 

“It’s been a while,” she said.  “What happened?”

“The inner cities moved out to the suburbs,” Penny said, curtly.  “And it isn’t safe to be on the streets now, after dark.”

Sally tried not to grimace.  She knew what that meant.  She also knew Penny could pack up and move to the Solar Union any time she liked.  It wouldn’t be easy – a United States teaching qualification was worse than useless in the Solar Union, where the founders had watched helplessly as their former country degenerated into a feudal nightmare – but her sister was smart.  She could go back to school, get a teaching certificate that proved she actually knew how to teach, then go to work in a school that had the power to fire incompetent teachers without going through layers and layers of bureaucracy.  Penny could do it.  But she was too stubborn.

She looked around the living room as her sister bustled into the kitchen and came back with two mugs of coffee.  A handful of photos hung on the walls, their parents and grandparents, but otherwise the room looked and felt as if it was nothing more than a temporary accommodation.  Perhaps it was.  Penny might have hoped to buy, once upon a time, but housing prices had skyrocketed nearly everywhere and the apartment block had been snatched up by a corporation.  They were chomping at the bit to evict their residents and hike up rents for newcomers, even though the area was degenerating rapidly.  Sally was mildly surprised they hadn’t resorted to extra-legal means to get their tenants out.  These days, who’d stop them?

“It’s been a while,” Penny said, as she passed Sally her coffee.  “What are you doing these days?”

“Tech support,” Sally said, a statement that was technically true while concealing almost everything.  She’d grown up with a techie father, who’d introduced her to the joys of taking apart computers and other pieces of technology and wiring the components together to produce something completely new.  The military had snapped her up, deploying her to various combat zones to support the troops.  She’d stayed in the same role even after making the jump to the Solar Union.  “I’ve been unlocking the secrets of GalTech.”

“Which put the nearby nuclear plant out of business,” Penny said, sarcastically.  “Thanks.”

“And most of the employees made their way to the Solar Union,” Sally pointed out.  It was a great deal safer to work with nuclear fission in space.  The relatively small amounts of nuclear waste that couldn’t be recycled or reprocessed could be shot straight into the nearest star, removing the problem permanently.  “They’re quite happy there.”

Penny stared into her coffee.  “Are you happy?”

“Yeah,” Sally said, after a moment.  “I have a fun job” – that was an understatement if ever she’d said one – “and a very promising career.”

“Unlocking alien tech,” Penny said.  “Do you ever do something new?”

“The more we learn about alien tech, the more we can use it for our own purposes,” Sally said.  “The Galactics are surprisingly unimaginative.”

Penny’s lips twitched.  “So were the bureaucrats who handed out locked computers to the kids.”

“It must have been a surprise when the machines were unlocked really quickly,” Sally agreed, mischievously.  She’d heard the stories.  The corporation that churned out the machines had programmed them to offer a strictly limited set of options and no more.  They were little better than word processors, internet browsers and a handful of other things.  They couldn’t play videos without the right encoding, let alone browse the datanet or download porn.  But with the right tools, the limitations could be easily removed.  “How big a scandal was it?”

“It got hushed up,” Penny said, tartly.  “No one wanted to admit the system had failed.”

Sally rolled her eyes.  Kids – and teenagers – hated any sense of restriction.  They’d grown up with stories of the internet, and the datanet, being a land for everyone, with websites and forums that catered to nearly every interest, be it mainstream or niche.  Hardly anyone bought hardwired computers and laptops these days – no one trusted the producers not to shut them down remotely or use their access to engage in social engineering – and the only way to get them sold was to force the schools to buy them … all in the name of child safety.  And the teenagers had no trouble figuring out how to get around the limitations.  If she’d been a few decades younger, she would have been in the lead.  She’d been coding almost as soon as she could walk.

But that’s not so easy these days, she thought, tiredly.  Her sister was fighting the good fight, but educational standards had plunged to levels no one had even imagined possible, now that most of the good teachers and technical-minded students were heading into space.  Given time, no one will even be able to figure out how to hack the machines and get online without restriction.

She changed the subject.  “How’s Danny?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard from him,” Penny said.  A flicker of pride crossed her face.  “He’s a pretty good asteroid miner.”

“I might have a message in the buffer,” Sally said, thoughtfully.  She checked her civilian message box whenever she passed a civilian datanode, but that wasn’t possible on a military base.  Force Recon teams weren’t supposed to have any contact with outsiders when they were on standby, waiting for the call to action.  She could have circumvented the rules and gotten away with it, probably, but it wouldn’t have been fair.  The rest of the team didn’t have the same opportunities.  “What did he say to you?”

“Apparently, he found a solid gold asteroid,” Penny said.  “I think he was joking.”

“Probably,” Sally agreed.  It was possible, but astronomically unlikely.  “At least he’s doing well for himself.”

“He’s part of a group-marriage,” Penny said.   “Is that even decent?”

Sally sighed inwardly.  Her sister had always been conservative, something that struck her as odd.  But then, she was a teacher.  She had seen so many fads come and go, from absurd fashion statements to sexual relationships that shocked people a few years older, that she probably clung to her beliefs out of the need for something solid in her life.  Besides, the fads always died, leaving human wreckage in their wake.  The teenagers Penny taught were just not mature enough to cope.

“The Solar Union firmly believes you can do what you like, as long as everyone consents and is of age,” Sally said.  Steve Stuart and his family had been sick to death of people telling them what to do, with reason.  Sally agreed wholeheartedly.  “If he’s happy in his group-marriage … well, good for him.  You have every right to find the concept repulsive, but no right to stop it.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Penny said.  “And you?  Do you have a partner now?”

“Not really,” Sally admitted.  She rarely had time to meet anyone who wasn’t part of Force Recon – and therefore off-limits.  The handful of men and women she’d dated on leave had never turned into permanent relationships, not least because she’d never had the time to commit to them.  But that was none of her sister’s business.  “And yourself?”

“Jim fucked off and vanished,” Penny snarled.  “Since then …”

She shrugged, expressively.  Sally understood.  Her sister had been pretty when she’d been young, but she didn’t have access to rejuvenation tech.  She looked old enough to be Sally’s mother and that meant … no one was interested, probably.  It was a shame.  Penny was a good person, if you overlooked her flaws.  But her husband had left her and no one was quite sure what had happened to him.  For all they knew, he might be dead.

“I’m sorry,” Sally said.  “You know, you could come to the stars.”

“There are kids who need my help,” Penny said, quietly.  “They’re all I have left.”

Sally tried not to grimace.  The school had been a good one, once, but it had been going downhill when they’d been children and had yet to hit bottom.  The kids were poor and deprived, denied parents who gave a shit about their education; the teachers were mostly time-servers, incompetents, or careerists putting in their time before they started to clamber up the ladder to the heights of educational bureaucracy.  Penny was one of the few exceptions and they weren’t enough to turn the school around.  She and the handful of others didn’t have the authority to do anything, not without jumping through hoops devised by people who’d never seen a classroom.  There were students who’d committed sexual assault, or worse, and they couldn’t be expelled.  And then the bureaucrats wondered why the smart kids headed to space as soon as they could.

One can’t fix stupid, Sally thought.  

There was a sharp knock on the door.  Penny tensed, her face freezing.  Sally felt her blood run cold, combat implants coming online automatically.  Something was wrong.  Something was very wrong.  Her sister didn’t show that kind of fear … 

Penny’s voice shook.  “Stay here.”

Sally met her eyes.  “Are you in trouble?”

Her sister didn’t answer.  She just stood and headed for the hallway.  Sally hesitated and slipped after her, moving so lightly it was unlikely Penny would have heard her even if she wasn’t fearful.  It was horrific, almost impossible to comprehend.  The look of helpless fear that had crossed her sister’s face …

She stayed behind as Penny opened the door.  Three young men stood there, wearing gang colours and carrying knives.  One of them had a gun in his belt, an oddity in a town where carrying a firearm in public could get you arrested.  But then, the local police had been going downhill too.  The good cops had got out.  The bad cops had stayed, doing as little as possible as they waited to reach retirement age.  Sally rather suspected they were going to be disappointed, when they retired.  She’d seen the figures.  The pensions crisis was only going to get worse, unless the government found a new source of income.  It wasn’t going to happen.

“You know the rules, bitch,” the leader snarled.  His face twisted into an ugly leer as he brandished his knife.  “You pay protection or we cut you up.”

His eyes moved to Sally.  “And you?  Who are you?  Her daughter?”

“None of your business,” Sally said, her implants mitigating her anger.  A protection racket … her earlier thoughts came back to haunt her.  The corporation had enough clout to get the gangbangers arrested and locked up for the rest of their lives, but why bother?  They served a useful purpose, assets so deniable they didn’t know they were assets.  “I’m just visiting.”

The gangbanger leered.  “Show us your tits or we’ll cut you up.”

Sally met and held his eyes as she walked forward, her enhanced muscles preparing themselves for the coming fight.  The gangbanger’s face showed a flicker of uncertainty as she walked right up to him and punched his face with boosted strength, his skull cracking as he stumbled backwards and crashed to the floor.  Sally snatched the gun off his belt, hand moving so rapidly it practically blurred, and glanced at it as she opened the magazine and ditched the clip.  The pistol was crude, probably put together in an underground workshop, and so poorly maintained she dared not pull the trigger.  If she’d kept her weapons in such a state, her court-martial would’ve been the shortest formality on record.  She held the pistol up and squeezed, hard.  The metal crumpled like paper.

She smiled at the gangbangers staring at her.  One had wet himself.  The other looked as if he was going to be sick.  Sally was tempted to kill them both.  They could have made something of themselves, if they’d tried, but instead they preyed on the helpless residents, demanding protection money, selling drugs, molesting and raping anyone young and female who crossed the path and God alone knew what else.  They deserved to die.

“Run,” she hissed.

The gangbangers turned and fled as if hell itself was after them.  Sally tossed the remains of the pistol after them, then looked down at their former leader.  There was no hope of saving his life, even if she teleported him directly to a modern hospital.  His skull had cracked, fragments of bone driven straight into his brain.  The nasty part of her mind whispered he probably didn’t have a brain, but it didn’t matter.  He was dead.  His body was slowly realising it.  

And Penny had fainted.

Sally carried her sister back into the apartment, shut the door behind her and put Penny down on the sofa.  Her mind raced.  The gangbangers were scared, for the moment, but macho idiots like them rarely accepted defeat.  Their reputation depended on being the roughest, toughest, pieces of shit in the district, ready to fight at the drop of a hat.  They might round up a few dozen friends and lead them back to the apartment or, if they answered to drug dealers or whatever further up the chain, arrange for the police to come calling instead.  Sally wasn’t afraid of the gangbangers, but the police would be a political nightmare.  Her superiors would be furious.

And I couldn’t let them take me into custody either, she reflected, as she held the mug of coffee under her sister’s nose.  I’d be lucky if they didn’t let the gangbangers into the cell to beat me to death.

Penny started, jerking awake.  “What …?”

Sally hid her amusement.  Penny had known her younger sister had been rejuvenated, of course, but she didn’t know about the genetic enhancements or combat implants that had been woven into her body.  There were all sorts of stories about the Solar Marines, some of which were so fantastical they threw the more plausible stories into doubt, yet … Penny had no idea what Sally really did for a living.  The idea of her sister being strong enough to crack a man’s skull with a blow … Sally wondered, suddenly, if her sister would be afraid or envious.  She’d had both reactions in the past.

“I … fuck,” Penny said.  Sally hadn’t heard her sister swear since they were kids.  “What did you do?”

“What do you think they would have done to me, if I’d done what they wanted?”  Sally had no time for bullies.  She knew the type too well.  They wouldn’t have stopped after they’d feasted their eyes on her breasts.  They’d have demanded more and more … and, with nearly anyone else, they’d have gotten it.  “How long has this been going on?”

“Four years,” Penny said.  “Pay or …”

Sally could guess.  “You can’t stay here,” she said.  The gangbangers would return, eventually.  There were stories of people who lay in wait and opened fire, slaughtering the gangsters, but most of them ended poorly.  The government didn’t like people who stood up for themselves.  Penny couldn’t even hope to defend herself.  “Come with me.”

“But …”  Penny stood on wobbly legs.  “My life …”

“Your life here is over,” Sally said, flatly.  She knew her sister really did care about her job.  God knew she’d stayed in the post, even as it grew harder and harder.  “They will be back.”

“And they’ll blame me for you,” Penny said.  “Fuck.”

“Pack, quickly,” Sally urged.  She didn’t think Penny had very much to her name.  Their family had never been particularly wealthy.  “You can leave the apartment to the landlords.”

Penny glanced at her.  “Sally, what happened to you?”

“Good question,” Sally said.  She wasn’t sure how to explain.  Two-thirds of her service record was classified and the remainder so vague she suspected anyone who looked at it would know she was Special Forces.  She’d never thought she could become a high-tech commando, but … it was astonishing what genetic modification and tech implantation could do.  “Let’s just say I had a few improvements.”

She helped her sister fill a couple of suitcases and grab the pictures from the wall, then placed them in the middle of the apartment.  Penny would have to pass through the dormitory asteroids, where new immigrants were given the basic orientation before they were allowed into the Solar Union proper, but her suitcases could be taken directly to Sally’s civilian residence.  They could wait for Penny there.  Hell, there was no reason Penny couldn’t use the residence herself.  In truth, Sally was hardly ever there.

Penny took one last look around the apartment, her face grim.  Sally felt a stab of sympathy.  Penny had spent years trying to build a life for herself and it had all been futile, an endless struggle against a system too bloated to be anything other than a blight on the country.  It might not be openly malicious, but it didn’t matter.  The country their father and grandfather had known was gone.  

She sighed.  “What now?”

Sally keyed her communicator.  “Now, we teleport home,” she said.  She had enough leave left to organise her sister’s transfer to the dorms, before she had to head back to base.  The unexpected leave they’d been given was clear proof something was up.  “And we leave this world behind.”

And she knew, even as she spoke, that she would never return.

Chapter Three

“So,” Charles said, as the team assembled in the secure asteroid base.  “How was the ranch?”

“Fucked up and probably fucked,” Riley said.  He hadn’t expected to inherit his family’s ranch – his elder brother had taken the helm, when their father had died – but it was still the family home and he’d made a point of visiting as often as possible.  “Ten gets you twenty the ranch gets repossessed in a year or two.”

He scowled.  His family had turned a patch of New Mexican wasteland into a ranch and made it a success, even in the modern era.  They’d served their country well too.  He only had one male relative who hadn’t served his time and he had been crippled as a child, forced to spend most of his life in a wheelchair until GalTech had given him back his legs.  And how had their loyalty been repaid?  The distant bureaucracy issued rules and regulations that were – at best – completely impractical and promised severe punishment for anyone who didn’t follow them to the letter, while the state government was under pressure to return the land to people who had never owned it.  Riley liked to think the ranch would be safe, but the cynic in him doubted it.  There were too many politicians ready to sell their people out for votes.

“Don’t fret about it,” Charles advised.  “Burn it to the ground.  They want it.  They can have it as your family found it.”

“Thank you, John Galt,” Riley said, sardonically.  “I’ll be sure to take your advice … the moment I have my brain removed and replaced with an orange.”

“It would be a great improvement,” Charles teased.  “But seriously …”

Riley nodded, curtly.  There was no way to explain, not to someone who really had worked his way up from nothing, just how important the ranch was to his family.  It was theirs.  It was the core of their family, their home … their forever home.  The idea of burning it to ash, just to spite the opportunists who thought they could move into their property and run it themselves, was horrific.  It wasn’t as if they had stolen the land.  Sure, it had been taken during the US-Mexican War, but it had been so empty and desolate that there’d been almost no permanent residences at all, at least until the ranches had arrived.  And yet …

He put the thought aside as the rest of the team joined them, sharing brief comments about their leave as they waited.  He felt a thrill of anticipation.  The Firelighters had been deployed all over the world, and even on a handful of alien worlds, but most of those deployments had been carefully planned.  This one felt like an operation put together at breakneck speed, the kind of deployment that could be either brilliant, with the team enjoying the freedom to operate as they saw fit, or a total disaster, the team hastily thrown into a combat zone to plug a hole in the defences or make a desperate play for victory … or even delay the enemy long enough to evacuate the remainder of the force and escape.  He wondered, idly, which one the new deployment would be.  They’d find out soon enough.

The hatch opened, revealing the briefing chamber.  Admiral Mongo Stuart stood by the podium, flanked by Colonel Harper and a dark-skinned officer Riley didn’t recognise.  The man didn’t hold himself like an experienced operator, suggesting he was a backroom spook rather than someone who went on deployments with his team.  Not always a bad thing, particularly in the Solar Union, but not someone who could be relied upon to understand how the real universe worked.  Riley had seen enough impractical operational concepts to know that some ideas had to be firmly squashed before the senior officers saw them, thought they were brilliant and tried to insist they were carried out.

“Please, be seated,” Admiral Stuart said.  Riley eyed him with considerable respect.  The admiral had spent the last fifteen years pulling together a navy that might, one day, be able to stand up to the Galactics.  Riley knew how much he’d done – and how far they had to go.  “There is much to discuss.”

Riley sat, his team following suit.  It was hard to read the admiral’s face – the man was well-practiced at concealing his thoughts – but the spook seemed torn between excitement and fear.  Riley hoped that didn’t mean the spook expected to accompany his team.  The man might be good at his job, but that didn’t mean he could become an operator in the blink of an eye.  It had taken Sally years to qualify, despite having served in combat zones before transferring to the Solar Union, and Riley had had his doubts until she proved herself as an asset.  A liability would have been quickly moved on before she got someone killed.

Admiral Stuart nodded to the spook.  “Commander Singh, the floor is yours.”

“But the roof is ours,” Charles put in, quickly.

Riley shot him a sharp look.  The joke would have been funnier if Charles hadn’t been making it for years.  It was old enough, he thought, to predate both of them.  He’d never bothered to look it up to check.

Commander Singh picked up the terminal and keyed a switch.  A holographic image materialised in front of them, a blue-green orb that looked like Earth, but with very different landmasses.  There was one large continent and one large ocean, Riley noted, rather than a handful separated by seas.  It wasn’t uncommon, on worlds that weren’t geologically active, but it still looked wrong.  There were times when Riley envied the new generation.  They were growing up in a world where aliens, and alien worlds, were just a fact of life.

“The planet Belos,” Commander Singh said.  “Your destination.”

“You don’t say,” Josh said.

Commander Singh ignored him.  “Belos has an unfortunate history.  It possesses no less than three gravity points, one of which is connected to a chain that leads all the way to Tichck Prime.  The Tichck discovered Belos and the Belosi roughly two thousand years ago – there is some suggestion one of the points along the chain was concealed for some reason, as they really should have stumbled across the planet much earlier – and wasted no time in laying claim to the system.  The Belosi themselves, unfortunately for them, were barely entering the gunpowder age.  The Tichck had no problems establishing a legal protectorate over the planet.”

Riley grimaced.  The Galactics had few qualms about brushing the interests of primitive races aside, when they conflicted with their own, and coming up with self-serving justifications afterwards.  The hyper-capitalistic Tichck were particularly unpleasant when it came to exploiting other races, and he feared for anyone who fell into their clutches.  They made the worst of humanity’s exploitive capitalists look like saints, screwing each other – sometimes literally – as much as they screwed other races.  He was surprised the Tokomak tolerated their bullshit.  But then, the Tichck were strong enough to give a race as stagnant as the Tokomak pause.

“The natives had no chance,” Commander Singh continued.  “The Tichck effectively enslaved them, forcing them to raise and harvest genetically engineered crops that form an essential part of their economy.  The plantations have actually had a serious effect on the planet’s biosphere, a problem made worse by ground-based factories, that has – we believe – made life uncomfortable for the Belosi.  Think a poisonous factory in a Third World country, only worse.  Much worse.  Some projections suggest that, if the ecological damage isn’t fixed, the Belosi will eventually be unable to live on their own world.  The Tichck don’t care.  They’ve also been importing labourers from all over the known galaxy.”

“And turning the Belosi into household slaves,” Admiral Stuart said.  “If any of them ever got off their homeworld, we don’t know about it.”

“Poor bastards,” Riley said.

Sally leaned forward.  “Is there no resistance?”

“We don’t know,” Commander Singh said.  “The Tichck insist the Belosi are happy in slavery.  They may be correct.  Depending on how they’re brought up, they may think their slavery is natural and right.  There may also be an underground, particularly amongst slaves who have contact with other Galactics, but we simply don’t know.  We do know they live under pretty harsh laws.  They are, amongst other things, forbidden to read and write.”

“Charming,” Charles said, darkly.  “It’s Dixie again, isn’t it?”

“Worse,” Josh said.  “Much worse.”

Riley leaned forward.  “This is all very interesting and horrific,” he said simply, “but what does this have to do with us?”

Commander Singh keyed his terminal.  The display changed, zeroing in on an alien megacity and focusing on a large complex.  “Over the years, Belos has become home to a number of corporate headquarters and installations,” he said.  “The Tichck encourage this, both to boost their tax revenue – the interstellar corporations are so wealthy that even they can’t hide all their income – and, we think, to ensure they have supporters if someone challenges their cruelty.  One of these Corporations is the ... well, the name roughly translates to Fly-By Night.  It’s a Tokomak-dominated corporation, one that attracted our interest as a matter of course.  And what we found changed everything.”

Riley hid his annoyance.  Why did briefing officers feel the need to be so dramatic?

“Fly-By-Night is doing research, we suspect, that isn’t quite authorised by the Tokomak Government,” Commander Singh said.  “They believe, officially, that they have reached the limits of technological development and there is no point in trying to develop anything new.  Unofficially, we believe this is designed to keep someone from coming up with a silver bullet that would render their entire fleet nothing more than scrap metal in a single moment.  If you effectively rule the galaxy, why would you want someone to rock the boat?”

He paused.  “The important point is this,” he added.  “There are no less than five Level-VI GalCores in their installation.”

“You’re kidding me,” Sally said.  “Five?”

“Five,” Commander Singh confirmed.  “Apparently, there was quite a kerfuffle over import rights before the objections went away.  We think Fly-By-Night paid a very hefty bribe.”

Riley sucked in his breath.  “And they’re Level-VI cores?”

“Yes,” Admiral Stuart said.  “We need them.”

“If we had them, we could do anything,” Sally said.  The enthusiasm in her voice made Riley smile.  “Anything.”

Terry raised a hand.  “And for those of us who know nothing about such things …?”

Commander Singh shot him a doubtful look.  Riley kept his face under tight control.  It never hurt to hear something twice, as irritating as it could be, but …

“The problem with GalTech,” Commander Singh said finally, “is that the base of every last piece of technology is governed by programs intended to limit its use.  In theory, a fabber – even a very basic fabber, the kind you might find in a starship machine shop – can produce absolutely anything; in practice, the limits woven into the base program make it impossible to churn out anything not on the approved list.  This is so hardwired into the system that trying to hack and remove it is impossible, even for our best.  It wipes the entire command system clean and bricks whatever you’re trying to hack.”

He paused.  “It isn’t just fabbers, either.  It’s pretty much everything, from navigational computers to weapons and tactical systems.  We think there are command codes, hidden within the baseline programming, that can be used to shut the system down, if the Galactics wish it.  There are enough worrying signs within the systems we’ve examined to make it impossible to discount the possibilities.  What this means, to all intents and purposes, is that the Galactics let societies become dependent on GalTech, knowing they cannot get past the limits imposed on them.  Combined with their vast military superiority, it ensures they have no problem putting the younger races in their place if the shit hits the fan.”

Terry sounded as though he was being deliberately obtuse.  “And the GalCores?”

“They are the keys to unlocking the base programming and tinkering with it,” Commander Singh said.  “Level-I to Level-III GalCores are fairly common and used frequently, and we obtained a couple on the black market, but they cannot be used on all pieces of GalTech.  We need Level-VI GalCores to unlock weapons, stardrives and a handful of other technologies we need to understand and reverse engineer before our time runs out.”

“So you want us to steal the GalCores,” Riley said.  It sounded doable.  He suspected they’d have to make their way to Belos and evaluate the situation directly, before they decided if it actually was possible.  “Right?”

“Yes.”  Admiral Stuart looked from face to face.  “We need those cores.”

“We might be able to take them,” Terry mused.  “But how do you know they can’t be bricked remotely?”

“As we understand it, that’s impossible,” Commander Singh said.  “That said, we want more than one GalCore to give us room to experiment without risking everything.”

“It stands to reason we should be able to hack the systems,” Sally said.  “Can we not try?”

“We have been trying,” Admiral Stuart said.  “We may succeed.  But we dare not count on it.”

“It’s like one of those old movies, where you have to cut the right wire to keep the bomb from exploding,” Colonel Harper commented.  “And there isn’t a right wire.”

Admiral Stuart leaned forward, voice cold and grim.  “Your orders are to obtain the GalCores by any means necessary, then get them back to Sol,” he said.  “I won’t presume to give you any more detailed orders, as we simply don’t know enough to make operational plans, but I trust you to handle it.”

Riley smiled.  It was nice to have a CO who understood his limits – and also trusted Riley and his team to do their jobs.

Charles raised his hand.  “How are we getting there?”

“You’ll take passage on a modified freighter that fell into our hands,” Commander Singh said.  “We’ve used it to infiltrate operatives before, with a cover story that would be difficult to disprove, even if you run into a customs agent who refuses to take the customary bribe.  Even if they do realise something is going on, they won’t be able to draw a line from you to us.  But you’ll be briefed on that later.”

Admiral Stuart nodded.  “I won’t deny we have doubts about the mission,” he said, flatly.  “The Tichck are known for being vindictive little bastards and we went back and forth for days debating if the prize was worth the risk.  An open clash with almost any interstellar power, right now, would be utterly disastrous.  But we need those GalCores and we have been unable to find another way to obtain them.  They’re normally kept so deep in enemy space that intruders would be noticed immediately, well before they got into position.”

“The Tokomak don’t let anyone onto their homeworld unless they have special permission,” Commander Singh put in.  “Sending a team to Tokomak Prime is impossible. We know very little about it.”

“It is vitally important you do not let yourselves be taken alive,” Admiral Stuart added.  “If you fall into enemy hands, we are relying on you to commit suicide, rather than risk letting yourselves be interrogated.  We dare not assume you cannot be forced to talk.”

Riley gritted his teeth.  He’d started his military service in a time when the old decencies had been thrown out the window, when captured personnel could expect to be humiliated on live TV or interrogated with everything from drugs and sensory deprivation to simple old-fashioned torture.  The team’s implants were supposed to make interrogation difficult – misleading lie detectors, blocking mind probes, even shutting off pain - but he knew better than to take it for granted.  The Galactics had pioneered the tech in his body. They knew it as well as, and probably better than, the doctors who’d inserted the tech under his skin.  It wasn’t impossible they could shut it down …

And if that happens, suicide will become the only option, he thought.  But it might not be possible without the implants.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought.  Suicide was a mortal sin.  There were times when it was justified, perhaps to save lives, but … it made him uneasy even to consider the prospect.  And yet, what choice did they have?  He knew the balance of power.  He knew what the Galactics would do, if – when – they rediscovered Earth and the Solar Union.  The best humanity could hope for would be far less than they wanted.  He liked to think that humanity would hold itself together and eventually win its independence, but the galaxy teemed with races that had lost their homeworlds and found themselves living on the margins, struggling desperately to keep themselves alive.  There were humans among them … there might be others, too, if the human race lost the coming war.  His suicide would be a small price to pay for humanity’s survival.

“I understand, sir,” he said.  The words threatened to catch in his throat.  “I won’t let you down.”

“None of us will,” Charles agreed.  “We knew the job was dangerous when we took it.”

“Really?”  Terry chuckled.  “I thought this was a sewing circle.  How could I have been so misinformed?”

“That’s why I keep telling you to read the briefing notes,” Riley teased.  “You’re just like the deserter who ran the wrong way and got the Medal of Honour.”

Admiral Stuart cleared his throat, loudly.  “Commander Singh will provide you with the background notes and condensed infodumps,” he said.  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that they are all highly classified and, from this moment, you are in lockdown.  If, for whatever reason, any of you cannot go through with the mission, you will remain here until the operation is completed.”

Riley nodded.  It had happened before and, no doubt, it would happen again.

“You are also taking a specialist along with you,” Admiral Stuart added.  “I’m sure you’ll find him helpful.”

Riley felt his heart sink.  “Sir?”

“A local expert, of sorts,” the admiral said.  “I suggest you listen to him, if nothing else.”

“Yes, sir,” Riley said.  A native guide?  Perhaps … he’d see.  There were ways to deal with a local, if he proved too awkward or dangerous to tolerate.  “We won’t let you down.”

Chapter Four

Sally had known, from the moment she’d become involved in working with GalTech, just how unpleasant the Galactics could be.  They seemed to shy away from outright genocide, although she feared races had been probably been wiped out, but otherwise there were few limits.  The biological barriers between races, it seemed, bred a racism that was far – far – more poisonous than anything humanity had inflicted on itself, made worse by the simple fact the Galactics were much more advanced than their subjects.  They’d effectively won the lottery – they’d developed high tech before encountering alien races – through sheer luck, but the Galactics didn’t see it that way.  They thought themselves the legitimate lords and masters of creation.

And yet the experience of many weaker races had been an abstract concept until she’d started to read the briefing notes.

They told a horrific story.  If anything, Commander Singh had understated the case.  Belos hadn’t just been invaded; it was being terraformed.  Alien-formed.  The natives would find their world more and more uncomfortable until it could no longer support their existence, leaving them to die off while their masters imported new slaves to fill the gap.  The Tichck were known for being unpleasant, the kind of capitalists that made human robber barons look like saints, but this was horrible even for them.  An entire race was going to die just to save their masters some money.  There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in humanity’s history that compared to the looming atrocity.  Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin could not have dreamed of an atrocity on such a scale.  It was so vast as to be almost beyond comprehension.

She downloaded the remainder of the files into her implants for later perusal as the team was shown through a pair of security doors.  She noted a sudden lack of local processors – the asteroid had an internal datanet, one not connected to the overall network – her heart sinking even though she’d been in lockdown countless times before.  It felt as if they were truly isolated, unable to make contact with the rest of the universe.  She’d never become one of the WebHeads who spent most of their time online, interacting with the real world as much as possible, but she still enjoyed the freedom of going online.  You could be anything you wanted online, anything at all.

Which is part of the problem, she thought, ruefully.  Some of the WebHeads forget the real world exists.

She put the thought aside as she checked her inbox.  The last message, from the dormitory asteroid, confirmed Penny was settling in and undertaking her citizenship courses.  Sally allowed herself a tight smile.  Penny had less to unlearn than many others – and, of course, she wouldn’t have been so good at her job if she’d lost the ability to learn.  She’d certainly not be held back by cultural issues that had no place in the Solar Union.  Sally hoped – prayed – it would work out for her sister.  She would certainly have all the advantages she needed to make something of herself, more than most immigrants.  And once she gained her certification …

The next set of hatches opened , inviting the team into the bowels of the asteroid.  Sally tried not to roll her eyes.  The base was a maze, carefully designed to ensure the teams saw as little of each other as possible.  There were sections for the Firelighters alone and sections none of them could go into, on pain of court-martial.  She thought it was a little silly, personally, but she understood the risks.  Force Recon – and a handful of other units she wasn’t supposed to know about – did the dirty and dangerous missions, the ones that had to remain classified until well after the Solar Union was established as an undeniable galactic superpower.  She had faith in the security implants, really she did, but what they didn’t know they couldn’t be made to tell.  Their implants were derived from GalTech.  The Galactics might have a way to subvert them.

Commander Singh glanced at them as he led the way into the briefing room.  “This is Nine,” he said, nodding to a man sitting on a chair.  “Your … native guide.”

“Nine?”  Josh smiled.  Sally could feel it.  “Seven of Nine?”

“He doesn’t have the tits,” Terry put in.  “He …”

Riley glared them into silence, then looked back as the man stood.  “Welcome to the Firelighters,” he said.  Sally knew him well enough to know he didn’t mean it.  Not yet.  Nine would have to prove himself, just as she’d done, before the team would accept him as one of them.  “We look forward to working with you.”

Sally studied Nine thoughtfully as he shook hands with Riley.  Josh’s joke wasn’t as far-fetched as one might have thought.  Nine was a heavyset man, skin broken by implants that had been rammed through his flesh and inserted into his body.  Sally tried to hide her grimace as her gaze sharpened, assessing the quality of the work.  The nasty-looking marks – possibly even infections – around the implants suggested whoever had installed them hadn’t given a shit about him.  The implants would serve their purpose, she was sure, but they’d also ruin Nine’s life.  He wasn’t a male Seven of Nine.  He was more like Locutus of Borg.

Or possibly Excretus of Borg, the nasty part of her mind whispered.  

She leaned forward, not bothering to disguise her interest.  Nine looked like someone had combined a number of racial traits into one, leaving him with light brown skin, darker brown eyes and light hair that was patchy and rough, as if he’d been scalped to create room for the head implants.  It was a common look, for the descendants of humans kidnapped years ago.  The aliens hadn’t bothered to draw a distinction between different racial groups, nor – from what she’d heard – had they hesitated to tinker with their genetics to produce the desired outcome.  It worked in her team’s favour, she told herself.  If the mission failed, and the team was slaughtered, they’d be taken for descendants themselves.  Or so she hoped.  There were enough humans serving as alien mercenaries to ensure fingers wouldn’t automatically be pointed at Earth.

“I thank you,” Nine said.  His voice was raspy, accented with traces of Galactic One.  English was clearly not his mother tongue.  It looked as if he had at least one implant in his mouth, probably a crude subvocaliser.  “I look forward to working with you too.”

Josh cocked his head.  “Why you?”

Nine showed a hint of a smile.  “Because you need me,” he said.  “I’ve been to Belos.  I know it.”

“Nine was an indentured mercenary,” Commander Singh explained.  “He served various masters before buying himself out and entering the open market.  We were lucky enough to recruit him as one of our agents.”

Riley took a seat.  “I was under the impression it was impossible to buy out a contract ...?”

Sally wondered the same thing.  Implants, even the cheap knockoffs a butcher had inserted into Nine, were expensive.  Most cyborgs were effectively indentured their entire lives, unable to earn enough to pay off their debts.  Sally had encountered a handful of deserters, lucking on the edge of explored space, but they’d made it clear they couldn’t return to the core worlds.  Or wherever they’d been bred.  If they were caught, they’d be in deep shit.

Nine made a rasping noise.  It took Sally a moment to realise it was a laugh.

“There was a slight incident in which I misreported just how many goods had been recovered, and only corrected myself after my bosses agreed a price … quite understated, of course, but when they discovered how much I’d actually recovered they had to pay out enough to repay my debts and buy my freedom.  They were very upset.”

“I bet,” Josh said.  “They didn’t have you to kick around anymore.”

Sally nodded in agreement.  Debt peonage only worked because it held out the hope, no matter how faint, of eventually paying off one’s debts.  If it became clear there was no hope of escape at all, the debtors would start plotting escape or open rebellion.  The cyborgs she’d met had taken the decision to run, abandoning their masters once and for all.  Nine had been incredibly lucky to escape his indenture legally.  She suspected Josh was wrong.  Nine’s masters had probably been very glad to see the back of him.  If the rest of the cyborgs started trying the same trick …

“I take it there’s no arrest warrants out for you,” Riley said.  “Is there anything we should know?”

“No.”  Nine sounded very certain.  “I left my indenture on good terms.”

“Good for you,” Charles said, although his tone suggested otherwise.  “What’s it like, growing up on an alien world?”

“It was normal, for me,” Nine said.  “You learn your place very quickly and you rarely, if ever, get a chance to climb out of it.”

Charles grimaced.  Sally understood.  Charles had ancestors who’d been slaves in the old United States, unable to make anything of themselves unless they’d taken their lives in their hands and fled to the north.  The plantation slaves had been trapped, held in place by the colour of their skin.  The cyborg humans had it worse.  Their masters weren’t even human.  Nine really had been lucky to escape without becoming a wanted fugitive.

“When this is over, we can take you down to Earth,” Josh offered.  “See what you make of it.”

“We knew very little about Earth,” Nine said.  “We knew our ancestors had been taken from somewhere, but that was about it.”

“Ouch,” Terry said.

Commander Singh cleared his throat.  “I believe we have a schedule.”

Sally nodded and took a chair as Nine pressed a half-metal arm against the terminal.  It really was a crude piece of gear, she noted, promising herself she’d take a careful look at his implants when she had the chance.  They were so deeply woven into his brain, and his nervous system, that they probably regulated his behaviour more than he knew.  Did he feel fear?  Excitement?  Arousal?  The Solar Union had put strict limits on just how the tech could be used, but the Galactics didn’t follow the same rules.  Why should they?  To them, Nine and his peers were nothing more than tools.

“There are three major races on Belos,” Nine explained.  A hologram appeared in front of them.  “The Tichck, as you should have been told, are the unquestioned masters of the planet.  Their seniors own nearly all of the land surface, as well as the primary, secondary and service industries.  They have the system so thoroughly locked up that their juniors rarely, if ever, manage to rise to the top.  Anyone else, from any other race, doesn’t even have a chance to get on the ladder.  The only good thing about them, from our point of view, is that they firmly believe a contract is a contract is a contract.  They’ll do their best to weigh the contract against you, if you have to come to terms with them, but once the contract is signed it is set in stone.  They do not break their contracts.  Ever.”

Sally studied the alien hologram thoughtfully.  The Tichck looked tall and thin, with greenish skin and bulging eyes … no nose, as far as she could tell, and the ears were so integrated into the skull it was hard to pick them out.  Most known races were humanoid, including nearly all of the Galactics, but there was no mistaking the alien for a man in a rubber suit.  The alien was just too strange; its body was too thin, its arms too angular, its limbs bending in impossible directions.  The plain toga it wore was the most human thing about it.

“The plainer the dress, the higher the status,” Nine added.  “They seem to believe their seniors should not make displays of wealth.  Everyone knows who they are already.”

“We don’t,” Terry said.

“You will.”  Nine keyed the terminal again, replacing the image of one alien with another.  “The Belosi are servants and slaves, little else.  Very few of them have any rights at all, as far as the Tichck are concerned, and the handful that do can lose them at any moment.  Their original culture is effectively gone; they certainly know very little about it.  They are born into servitude, their position ground into them so thoroughly they cannot even think of rebellion.  They will take whatever abuse their masters dish out because they think their masters have every right to do it.”

“That can’t be right,” Charles said.  “Are there no rebels?”

“I was on Belos for five years,” Nine said.  “I never met a Belosi who showed any gift for independent thought.  They do as they’re told and nothing else.  I saw one get whipped across the face by a Tichck child and just … take it.  They cringe and cower and crawl on their bellies, submitting to whatever their masters demand.  Their spirit was brutally crushed years ago.”

“Shit,” Charles muttered.

Sally nodded in agreement as she studied the hologram.  The Belosi looked closer to human than the Tichck, although they were shorter and squatter than the average human.  Their arms and legs looked muscular, their faces oddly flat … they’d never pass for human, she thought, but they could have passed for humanity’s cousins.  And they were little better than slaves to an alien race that cared nothing for them …

“You’ll notice brownish growths on their skin,” Nine said, tapping the terminal.  The alien’s clothes vanished, revealing genitals that looked disturbingly alien.  “They’re not natural.  They’re the result of the ongoing ecological damage.  They are … they can be treated, with modern medical technology, but the Tichck rarely bother.”

Josh leaned forward.  “Do they hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Nine admitted.  “We were never encouraged to ask.”

“We think the growths eventually turn cancerous,” Commander Singh said, “although we have no hard data.  It could be something akin to skin cancer or it could be something a great deal worse.”

Sally shuddered.  The growths would be unpleasant even if they weren’t eventually fatal.

“The third and last major race are the Subdo,” Nine said.  “They are a client race, like the Belosi, but they have some rights within the Tichck Consortium.  They were originally imported as tech workers – they do the high-tech and space-based work the Belosi cannot, such as mining the asteroids and gas giants – yet they’ve expanded rapidly, to the point there are thousands of them in the megacities doing a multitude of other jobs.  They tend to genuflect to their masters and look down on everyone else.  They’re just as abusive to the Belosi as the Tichck.”

He paused.  “There was some suggestion there are factions within the Subdo who want to re-negotiate their contract with the Tichck.  They do look for loopholes in the contracts and take advantage of them wherever possible, but they don’t appear to go any further.”

“They’re probably scared to resist openly,” Riley said.

“Or they’re concerned about what will happen if the galactic order gets upended,” Sally added.  “They might not wind up on top.”

Nine turned the projector off.  “There are a multitude of other races in the system, on the planet and scattered across the system, but none of them are particularly significant in raw numbers.  A handful are important in political terms, the kind of settlers the Tichck would need to protect to prevent their homeworlds from demanding harsh measures or sending punitive fleets to do it themselves, but very few have the influence to get the Tichck to do anything.  The Tokomak are about the only exception and they rarely use their influence openly.”

“There is some suggestion the Tokomak have quiet links to the Tichck Consortium’s investments within the system,” Commander Singh reminded them.  “They certainly wouldn’t set up a corporate research station so far from their homeworld unless they were sure of its security.”

“They would be right, normally,” Riley said.  “If the statistics are accurate, the system will be a tough nut to crack.  The entire Solar Navy couldn’t hope to break through the defences.”

“But a small team might make it,” Commander Singh said.

“They are arrogant and overconfident,” Nine agreed.  “You can take them by surprise.”

Sally wondered, suddenly, just how much he’d been told about the mission.  It wasn’t easy to brief someone without needing to put them in lockdown afterwards, if they refused to go.  God knew she’d be pissed if she was told she would be effectively imprisoned … she supposed he might have been told enough to intrigue him, without anything that would have broken security if he’d decided against accompanying the team.

“Good,” Riley said.  He looked from face to face.  “There are limits to how effectively we can train for the mission, given how little we know about our destination and target, but we’ll start running through basic drills tomorrow.  Our departure date is one week from now, long enough to make sure we know what we’re doing.  There will be a standard deep-clean before we depart, so make sure you don’t bring anything incriminating.

“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, boss,” Terry said.

“Just you wait,” Riley shot back.  “Read the files, see what questions they raise, and make damn sure you write your farewell letters.  And don’t forget they won’t be going straight to your families.”

“They need to decide what lies they’re going to tell,” Josh agreed.  “Can my family be told I died in the middle of an orgy, in which I satisfied five girls and then …?”

“Shut up,” Riley said, without heat.  “It’ll be something neutral and you know it.”

Sally nodded.  If she didn’t come back, Penny would be given a very bland explanation that covered up the truth.  No one outside a handful of officers would ever know what had happened to them … hell, even they might not know the truth.  The team could set off and then … vanish so completely that no one ever saw them again.

“Report to the training room at 0900 tomorrow,” Riley said.  “Dismissed.” 

Chapter Five

“So,” Riley said, as Sally joined him in his office.  “What do you make of our cyborg friend?”

Sally frowned.  Riley waited, patiently, for her to organise her thoughts.  She wasn’t the kind of person he’d normally expect to see on a Special Forces team – in the old days, there would have been no hope of her keeping up with the SEALs – yet he had to admit she had insights denied to normal soldiers, as well as an understanding of GalTech that left most of the team in the dust.  He was mildly surprised she hadn’t been snapped up by the reverse-engineer teams, where her talents might boost the human race’s development of galactic-level technology, but he wasn’t going to complain.  Sally had proven herself.

“Whoever installed his implants was a butcher,” Sally said, finally.  “The implants were inserted without any consideration for anything beyond cold practicality.  They are placing considerable stress on his internal organs, to the point I think he’ll have a heart attack in a few years if he lives that long.  They’re also inflicting a considerable amount of cellular damage, both from the crude insertion and low-grade radiation.  Frankly, I think he’s damn lucky to be alive.”

Riley grimaced.  “Did they let him go because they knew he wouldn’t last long?”

“Perhaps,” Sally said.  “Although, by his own account, he’s been a free man for ten years.  That’s quite long enough to do some damage if he wished.”

“He could have come to us,” Riley said.  “We could have used him earlier.”

“Why should he?”  Sally shrugged.  “That’s like expecting a modern-day American to be loyal to William the Conqueror, King of Britain.”

Riley took her point.  “Is there any other damage?”

“According to the medical report, his sperm count is very low,” Sally said, with none of the embarrassment he would have expected.  “He’s perfectly capable of sexual activity, but the odds of him siring children without medical assistance are very low too.  I wouldn’t care to bet against the children having some sort of hereditary damage, at least without additional medical support.  He doesn’t seem too worried about this, which strikes me as odd.  Most men enjoy the feeling of being fertile even if they don’t want kids.”

“I see,” Riley said.  “The implants must make sex difficult.”

“There’s a fetish for everything these days,” Sally said.  “I dare say he won’t have any trouble attracting partners, if he wants them.  I’m not sure he does.”

“You could ask,” Riley teased.  “Or is he gay?”

Sally stared down at her hands.  “It’s … odd.  Nearly every man is at least aware of a woman nearby, even if he has no interest in her.  Gay men can appreciate a pretty woman even if the women don’t have the right genitals to attract them.  Even asexual men … it’s possible his upbringing in a largely alien environment skewed his development, in ways we can’t easily understand, but it’s still odd.”

“We have dealt with people from other cultures before,” Riley pointed out.  He’d served in enough foreign places to know that their cultures, and ways of thinking, were often very different, to the point it was hard to come to mutual understanding of anything.  “Is he giving you, or anyone, a hard time?”

“No.”  Sally looked up.  “Not deliberately, at least.  But he feels more alien than a man from the other side of the world.  And we may not be able to predict his thinking.”

Riley had to admit she had a point.  His generation – the pre-Contact generation – had grown up in a world where resources were limited, nothing was stable and no one was allowed to live their lives untouched by the culture wars.  The new generation, growing up on asteroids where everyone had enough to eat, space to live, and practically bottomless resources had a very different way of thinking.  He suspected, deep inside, that it would bite them eventually – rejuvenation tech alone meant conflict between the old and the young, hopefully after the Solar Union had established itself – but for the moment it allowed the youngsters to be idealistic in a way Riley would never be.

How much more can we do, and become, he asked himself, if we never have to worry about feeding ourselves again?

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” Riley said, finally.  They needed a native guide.  Nine was the closest they’d get.  “Can we modify his implants to prolong his life?”

“Perhaps, from what the doctors told me,” Sally said, after a moment.  “The problem is that the implants are deeply wired into his nervous system, as well as his brain itself.  We may be able to extract the implants from the former, but the latter poses significantly more problems.  The slightest mistake would kill him instantly before we could get him into stasis.  My best bet is that the implants were designed to be permanent, without any way to remove them safely.  His masters probably calculated there was no need to bother.  If he caused problems …”

She made a slashing motion across her throat.  “And that would be that.”

“Yeah,” Riley agreed.  “He was just disposable to them, wasn’t he?”

“The doctors certainly think so,” Sally said.  “Did you read their report?”

Riley shook his head.  “I haven’t had time.”

“There’s signs of gene harvesting, dating all the way back to his childhood, and some genetic hackwork that doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere,” Sally said.  “There’s also hints that sperm was collected, when he hit puberty, and we don’t know precisely what happened to that.  Their best guess is that he and most of his peers were grown in exowombs, then decanted and raised in a crèche rather than being assigned to parents.  That might explain the odder parts of his personality.  He never had the chance to learn how to be human.”

“Poor bastard,” Riley said.  His brother had adopted a child who’d been abandoned by his mother and left to grow up in an orphanage.  The child had needed years to be convinced he wouldn’t be abandoned again.  “How did they even live like that?”

“Many didn’t,” Sally said, quietly.  “The Galactics have strict laws against cross-species adoptions.   Their caretakers, and I use the word with utter scorn, didn’t give them anything like the love and attention they needed.  Reading between the lines, I suspect anyone who deviated too far from acceptable behaviour was … culled.”

“Murdered,” Riley corrected.   He’d seen some heartless bastards in his time, men who thought nothing of committing the most terrible crimes, but none of them had ever done anything like that.  “They have to be stopped.”

“If this mission succeeds, we’ll have the key to stopping them,” Sally said.  “If you don’t mind …”

“One final question,” Riley said.  “Any thoughts on tactics?”

“Insufficient data,” Sally said.  “Unfortunately, Nine was never assigned to Fly-By-Night and never shown around their compound.”

Riley nodded.  If Nine had known everything they needed, he’d have wondered if they were being conned.  The Galactics didn’t need to bother, he thought, but … who knew?  Maybe they thought they did.  Humanity had been in contact with the wider galaxy for fifteen years and they still knew too little about friends and enemies alike.  If they had any friends … 

“Dismissed,” he said, quietly.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He looked back at his terminal as Sally left the office, the hatch hissing closed behind her.  The final days before departure were always filled with paperwork and training, the former a pain in the ass even in the Solar Union.  He flicked through a handful of files and requisitions requests, silently thanking the Stuarts that supply and logistics officers knew their place – under the frontline officers – as he signed off on them and forwarded the messages into the buffer.  His team knew what they needed and he trusted them not to abuse the system too much.  He should probably say something about Josh and Terry downloading thousands of movies and television serials, but they’d need to keep themselves sane on the freighter.  It wasn’t as if they’d have enough room to swing a cat.  

His heart sank as he reached the final duty.  He’d written a farewell letter the day before his first deployment, before the Solar Union had come into existence, and updated the letter with every subsequent mission, but … it still bothered him to look at the files.  The military was right to insist that everyone wrote a will – anyone could die, even elite operators – yet … he shook his head as he brought up his will and reviewed it.  He didn’t have much to leave his relatives.  His civilian apartment and bank account was almost all he had.  The handful of other trinkets probably wouldn’t interest anyone outside the military.  

This could be the end, he thought, coldly.  They were going to head deep into enemy territory.  They could be discovered at any moment.  And they had strict orders to kill themselves rather than risk interrogation.  It was funny, he reflected, that he was less worried about a firefight than an infiltration mission.  But then, firefights were often more predictable.  If this goes wrong …

He reread the farewell letter, just to be sure, then filed it away.  It was vague to the point of uselessness, although his brothers did know he was in the military and had served their country long enough to understand that some encounters were never made public.  It hadn’t been that long since they’d attended a funeral where the pastor had buried an empty casket, the body apparently lost … reading between the lines, Riley suspected there’d been something fishy about the whole affair.  He’d lived and breathed the concept of no man left behind … and, when a man died, he’d done everything in his power to recover the body and take it home.  But he’d probably never know.

The job has always been dangerous, he reflected.  And you knew it when you took it.

He rubbed his forehead.  The training was getting to him, the tension starting to pile up.  He’d read and reread the files, dug deeply into the briefing notes until he found himself feeling like a kid desperately cramming for his exams.  There were limits to how much studying anyone could do and … there were limits, too, to how far they could trust the files.  Commander Singh wouldn’t lie to them, he was sure, but humanity had barely scratched the surface of things they needed to know.  If it was impossible to condense everything about Earth, and the human race, into a single book, how much harder would it be to do the same for the whole galaxy?  

It isn’t what we don’t know that’ll get us, he reminded himself.  It’s what we don’t know that we don’t know.

The door chimed.  “Come!”

Charles stepped into the chamber, looking tired.  “This is where you’re hiding?”

Riley snorted.  “Is that the sound of someone volunteering to do my paperwork?”

“Only if you pay me,” Charles countered.  “I think a few … billion … credits should just about cover it.”

“Dream on,” Riley said.  There were a few dozen billionaires in the Solar Union, and a couple of trillionaires, but he didn’t know anyone who’d spend that much money on paperwork.  “Do you know how much I could buy for a few billion credits?”

Charles grinned.  “Your own private mansion-asteroid?  Your own starship?  Your own planet?”

Riley shook his head.  “Did you come to disturb me for a reason, or are you just wasting my time?”

“I came to save you from your burden of paperwork,” Charles said, striking a faux-affronted pose.  “My heroism will be the stuff of legends.  They’ll make up new awards to give me.  Wine!  Women!  And song!”

“You need to write your own farewell letter,” Riley said.  “I say again, you need to write your own farewell letter.  I repeat …”

Charles held up a hand.  “I did, I did, stop nagging,” he teased.  “Really, what are we?  An elite military unit or an ex-wives club?”

Riley grinned.  “Why can’t we be both?”

“Fuck knows,” Charles said.  “I wrote Jason a letter.  God knows when he’ll get it.”

“And it’s his birthday soon,” Riley said.  Charles was the only one on the team who had children, a son and a daughter.  “I’m sorry.”

“I couldn’t leave you in the lurch,” Charles said.  “Going with you, with the risk of having my ass shot off, or staying here in lockdown … not much of a choice, really.  But I won’t be there for his birthday.”

“Yeah,” Riley agreed.  His own father had been on deployment more than once during his childhood.  He’d missed quite a few of Riley’s birthdays.  It had taken Riley some time to understand why.  “He’ll understand.  Eventually.”

“It still isn’t easy for any child,” Charles said.  “Even here …”

“No,” Riley said.  There was nothing they could do about it either, not now.  “But if this operation succeeds, they’ll grow up in a safe universe.”

“There’s no such thing, not for us,” Charles countered.  “The universe is never safe, and you know it.”

Riley nodded, curtly.  “How did the training go?”

“Terry and Josh did fine,” Charles said.  “Terry won the shooting match – God knew, we’d have torn him a new asshole if he lost – but Josh is slowly catching up.  We should put him into sniper training when we get home, if only to expand our collection of skills.  Nine … it’s hard to say.  He did his job, but there was something oddly lumbering about it.  It was more like watching a heavyweight boxer than a trained operator.  Really.”

“Curious,” Riley said.  He’d never faced a cyborg in battle, but they had a reputation for quickly and savagely quashing all resistance.  “Did his implants get stepped down when he left their service?”

“He says no,” Charles said.  “He may take a real skirmish seriously.”

“Let us hope so,” Riley said.  “At worst, we may have to leave him on the freighter.”

“No, at worst we’d have to kill him,” Charles said.  “Remember the temp at Bastion?”

Riley grimaced.  The young man had been working for the insurgents – out of fear or conviction; he neither knew nor cared – and he’d led Riley’s old unit into a trap.  He’d been shot in the confusion and no one was sure just who had fired it, although Riley had wondered if it had been one of his teammates.  It was quite possible.  The war had been growing darker and there’d no longer been any tolerance for treachery, no matter what the motive.  The CO had certainly refrained from asking too many questions.

“It’s different,” he said, finally.  “Nine went through all the checks before he was assigned to us.”

“So we are told,” Charles cautioned.  He wasn’t too pleased with having to take a newcomer along at short notice.  There just wasn’t time to integrate Nine into the team properly.  “We’re short on really effective native guides.”

Riley couldn’t disagree.  Solar Intelligence had spent the last fifteen years trying to establish contacts and spy networks within known space, but it was a slow and unsteady process.  Sure, there were literally millions of information brokers who sold intelligence for money, yet they were both expensive and somewhat unreliable.  It was difficult to bribe aliens, let alone convince them to help or simply blackmail them.  Something that would make a human do anything, anything at all, to keep the secret a secret could be utterly meaningless to an alien race.   He’d heard of one minor disaster that had backfired so badly they’d been damn lucky it hadn’t been traced back to Sol.

And the few that do know of us fear we’ll be squashed when the Galactics realise we’re here, he thought, coldly.  It was entirely understandable, but it was also incredibly frustrating.  No one wants to join the losing side.

“We’ll find more,” he said.  They had time, for the moment.  “And we’ll keep sending agents of our own into the alien worlds.”

“Odd we get away with it,” Charles commented.  “Don’t they give a damn about security?”

Riley had to admit he’d wondered the same, years ago.  The aliens could have kept humans – and all the other unwanted visitors – off their homeworlds with ease, if they bothered to try.  But galactic society was so big, and there were so many races milling around, that there were few worlds that barred entry to anyone unless they were on a watchlist.  Even that was hardly enough, if the blacklisted person travelled a few hundred light years from their homeworld.  There were places with tighter security, but not entire planets.  As long as they were careful, they could get quite close to their target without setting off any alarms.

“It would be like trying to set up heavy security at each and every point of entry,” he said, finally.  “It would be incredibly wasteful and probably pointless.”

“And everyone with an interest in keeping the gates open would bitch up a storm,” Charles added.  His lips twisted in disgust.  “To hell with national security!  There’s money to be made.”

“Yeah,” Riley agreed.  He’d heard, through the SEAL grapevine, of a WMD being smuggled into the US on a cargo ship.  They’d been damn lucky to catch it before the terrorists could move the weapon further into the country.  Searching each and every cargo ship was a logistical impossibility.  They really had been incredibly lucky.  Personally, he suspected someone had tipped the searchers off.  The CIA had been prepared to pay millions for actionable intelligence.  “Right now, we’re counting on it.”

Charles stood.  “You’d better put in some time on the range too,” he said.  “I told the team you’d buy dinner if someone outshot you.”

“Here?”  Riley pasted a horrified impression on his face.  The base’s food wasn’t bad, and there was plenty of it, but it was hardly five-star.  “What did the team ever do to you?”

Charles laughed and left.

Chapter Six

Sally tried not to take it personally as she stripped off her clothes and stood, arms outstretched, as the security officer ran his scanner over her body.  Another went through her bag, bringing out everything one by one and scanning it too, before inspecting it to make sure there was nothing that might lead investigators back to Sol.  The precautions had always struck her as excessive – there was no reason to assume the Galactics would draw any connection between the Firelighters and Earth – but she understood the paranoia driving them.  Her lips quirked as she was pointed into the next room, where she had to wait for her clothes to be returned.  If Penny had undergone such a search, she’d be in hysterics by now.

Not without reason, Sally conceded, as she clasped her arms under her breasts.  The scanner had never gone into her body, but the experience was still unpleasant.  If I hadn’t known this was coming, I wouldn’t have been happy either.

Her lips twitched as the security officer entered, placed a pile of ruffled clothes on the table and retreated as silently as he’d come.  Sally reached for her underwear – plain white synthetic – and pulled them on, the nasty part of her mind hoping the bastard had enjoyed fingering her clothes.  The rest of her knew he was only doing his job.  The synthetic materials the human race had inherited from the Galactics were common, so common nearly every known race used them.  If they’d been made of something unique to Earth, it might have been dangerously revealing.

Or so we are told, Sally reminded herself.  She finished dressing, then checked her bag.  The officers hadn’t removed anything, thankfully.  She wasn’t surprised.  It was hardly her first rodeo.  But better to be safe than sorry – or dead.

She put the thought out of her head as she stepped through the next hatch, the air seemingly to grow colder as she entered the landing bay.  The starship directly in front of her – a light freighter little bigger than the average wet-navy destroyer – took her breath away, even though she knew that the Galactics considered it a tramp freighter.  God alone knew how many owners it had passed through, over the last two hundred years, before human agents had purchased it for a song.  The ship had vanished off the books long ago.  Sally suspected no one knew who owned it now.

No one but us, she thought.

The rest of the team joined her, looking slightly discomfited.  No one seemed angry, which was a relief.  Riley would have chewed anyone who broke the rules a new asshole, even if they’d done it by accident.  They stared at the ship for a long moment, then started to walk towards the gangplank.  Sally couldn’t help thinking, as she let Riley take the lead, that there was something unreal about the blocky crude starship.  But then, the visible wear and tear on the hull – and a handful of patched sections – were clear proof the vessel had been plying the spaceways for centuries.  She hoped, as they walked up the plank, that the hull was sound.  It would be the height of irony to die because their vessel came apart in transit.

“Captain,” Riley said, as he reached the hatch.  “Permission to come aboard?”

“Granted,” a dark-haired woman said.  Her face suggested she was in her mid-twenties or early thirties, but from the way she held herself Sally guessed she was older.  “And drop the military act.  It’ll only get you killed.”

Sally smiled.  She liked the woman already.

The interior felt … odd.  It wasn’t the first alien ship she’d seen – the team had captured a few over the last five years – but all the proportions felt slightly out of kilter, as if they were designed for a race so close to humanity that the differences were all the more jarring.  The hatches were too high and yet too thin, the gravity was a shade lighter than she expected and the lighting was subtly wrong.  Her implants compensated automatically, adjusting her sight and gait until everything felt normal.  Nine didn’t seem to have any problems, she noted.  But then, he’d encountered more alien environments than the rest of them put together.

She followed the woman into a tiny compartment and looked around.  The mess hall – it was a kitchen and a mess hall wrapped into one – was surprisingly cramped … she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised.  A crew of three could handle the ship, as long as they didn’t run into serious trouble.  She wasn’t sure how many people had been assigned to the light freighter.  It was unlikely the spooks would want her to have a large crew.

“Be seated,” the woman said, turning to face them.  Up close, it was clear her shipsuit had been designed to look slovenly.  Sally wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been a past master at making herself look sloppy and harmless too.  “I’m Captain Kristina Jonas, Captain of Vanderveken.  I have spent the last decade exploring the nearby sectors, gathering intelligence and contacts for my superiors, so I suggest you listen to me.  My crew and I will get you to your destination.  After that … good luck.”

“Thank you,” Riley said, politely.

Captain Jonas gave him a sharp look.  “We will depart shortly.  Once we are in FTL, you will be granted access to the paper files detailing your – our – cover story.  Memorise them well because they will be destroyed before we reach the first gravity point.  We have no reason to think we’ll draw attention, but better safe than sorry.”

Terry coughed.  “Paper files?”

“They leave no trace on our computer cores,” Captain Jonas said, with heavy sarcasm.  “The Galactics, by and large, rely on their networks for everything.  They are also very good at poking through the files, even the remnants of deleted files, and uncovering things we’d prefer remain hidden.  Paper is far more secure.  Half the Galactics have never even seen a paper book.”

“Poor bastards,” Sally said.

“Wait here,” Captain Jonas said, as a dull clang echoed through the ship.  “I’ll be back once we’re on the way.”

She turned and left, closing the hatch behind her.  Sally had the uncomfortable feeling they were prisoners, even though it wouldn’t be that hard to escape.  She sighed inwardly and settled back into her chair, trying to relax.  She’d spent enough time on starships to know that the crew needed their guests to stay out of their way while they took the ship out of the hangar and into space – and, if they got in the way, the crew would be quite within their rights to put the team in irons.  It wouldn’t end well for anyone if they did … she closed her eyes, taking a long breath as a dull whine ran through the hull.  The antigravity nodes felt a little unbalanced, suggesting the crew didn’t bother to perform any kind of basic maintenance.  She hoped to hell that was an act too.

“The captain looks pretty nice,” Terry said.  “You think I have a chance?”

“She’d have to be desperate,” Charles said, crossly.  The whining was getting louder.  “This really isn’t the time to piss off our hosts.”

Sally nodded as the deck shuddered, the gravity field quivering as the freighter hovered into the air and glided towards the hatch.  She could visualise it in her mind’s eye, even though her senses rebelled at the thought of something so large actually flying.  Light freighters were designed to land on a planetary surface, something that made them popular along the edge of explored space and often unwelcome further towards the core.  And yet, they’d never quite gone out of service.  They could go places their bigger sisters couldn’t.

And they’re also completely expendable, her thoughts added.  No one will notice or care if a light freighter vanishes, somewhere in the middle of interstellar space.

A low quiver ran through the hull, followed by a sensation that left her feeling as if the world had turned upside down.  Captain Jonas had activated the stardrive, taking her ship into FTL and rocketing away from Sol at nearly a dozen times the speed of light.  It was hard to believe the ship was one of the slowest starships in service, or that others could be halfway to the next sector by the time she reached the nearest star.  And yet, given the sheer size of the known galaxy, it would have been impossible to maintain any large-scale political organisation without the gravity points.  Perhaps it wasn’t surprising there were so many gaps in the towering interstellar civilisation around them, so many systems and ships and exile communities that had simply dropped off the map.  Interstellar space was so vast that no one, not even the Galactics, could hope to know every nook and cranny.

“We’re on the way,” Josh said.  “Anyone brought a deck of cards?”

“Just a set of alien cards,” Charles said, opening his bag.  It was perhaps unsurprising humanity wasn’t the only race that had come up with the concept.  “But we can take out a few suits and have a working deck.”

“Deal me in,” Riley said.  “Normal rules apply, at all times.”

“Spoilsport,” Terry said.  “I like winning money.”

Josh stuck out his tongue.  “Really?  How would you know?”

Sally dug a reader out of her bag, declining the invitation to join the game.  She’d never been fond of games of chance, even though she was very good at calculating the odds.  Besides, Riley had flatly forbidden his team – well before she’d joined them – from gambling for money, or indeed anything more consequential than sweets and biscuits.  Sally agreed with his reasoning, even if the others did grumble that he was treating them like children.  Getting into debt through gambling was a good way to fuck up one’s career beyond repair.

Captain Jonas returned, nearly an hour later.  “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” she said, curtly.  She was carrying a set of folders under one arm.  “We just had to alter course to lay a false trail.”

Riley looked up from his cards.  “Can they track us?”

“Not out here,” Captain Jonas said.  “But we want to make sure we approach the gravity point from the right angle.”

“They might demand access to the navigational computer,” Nine said, suddenly.  He’d been browsing his eReader, rather than joining the game.  Sally had no idea if he didn’t know how to play or if he just didn’t feel sociable.  “Do you have a way to hide our trail?”

“The system was accidentally broken, then put back together by a mechanic who didn’t know what he was doing,” Captain Jonas said.  She sounded irritated.  “Suffice it to say the record-keeping is terrible, completely useless.  The whole thing would come apart if they tried to remove the core and take it to a lab.”

Sally nodded.  She’d accidentally broken similar systems herself.

“Anyway” – the captain held out the folders – “this is your cover story.  Read it and memorise.”

“And weep?”  Josh frowned as he opened his folder.  “How good is this story?”

“It depends,” Captain Jonas said.  “It’s a very plausible story.  It will certainly be very difficult to check, certainly in a hurry.  There are also built-in incentives to keep them from looking too closely.  But if they get suspicious, they might just tell us to fuck off until our credentials are checked properly.  If that happens, we’ll have to vanish.”

Sally said nothing as she opened her folder and read the first page.  “This planet,” she said, slowly.  “Does it actually exist?”

“YingTong?”  Captain Jonas nodded.  “They might ask a few questions if there was no record of the planet at all.  Of course it exists.”

“Right,” Riley said.  “And you live there?”

“This ship is registered there,” Captain Jonas said.  “It’s a cover for multiple sins.”

Sally read the file slowly and carefully.  YingTong was a world several hundred light years from Earth, right on the edge of explored space, that was barely habitable.  The Galactics had glanced at the biosphere and decided it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to turn it into a proper colony, so they’d abandoned the system to exiles, scavengers and outright criminals, the latter veering between genuine criminals and freedom fighters.  Surprisingly, for a world with so many disparate groups – each composed of multiple different intelligent races – the planet actually had a working government, one that was slowly trying to industrialise before the ever-expanding border washed over their system.  It might have been worthless then, but it wasn’t now.  The Galactics might take the system from its government if the government couldn’t defend itself.

“Remarkable,” Riley said.  “There are humans there?”

“Quite a few,” Captain Jonas said.  “Some from alien worlds, like Mr. Nine.  Some from Earth, mercenaries and settlers spreading into the galactic mainstream.  Us hailing from there too is hardly implausible.”

Sally frowned.  “But you’re serving as a government representative?”

“YingTong doesn’t believe that some races are automatically better than others,” Captain Jonas explained.  “It isn’t implausible that a human would be sent out, with other humans as bodyguards, to buy components the government can’t find elsewhere.  Going so far from the colony to make the purchase actually works, because Belos is so distant it’s unlikely anyone cares enough to worry what we purchase.  Not that it matters, of course.  The whole thing is just a cover story to get you down there safely.”

“And we’re your bodyguards,” Riley mused.  “With all the permits and everything?”

“More or less,” Captain Jonas said.  Her lips twitched into something one might have called a smile, if one applied a certain amount of imagination.  “A great deal depends on how officious they’re feeling.  They may insist on you leaving your weapons on the ship, no matter what sort of ID we have, or they may let you take them everywhere.  The fact we’re offering a shitload of money for technically restricted goods will tempt them into not asking too many questions.”

“Technically,” Josh mused.  “Can YingTong even afford … whatever it is you want to buy?”

“No,” Captain Jonas said, simply.  “There’ll be a loan, of course.  A lot of backroom wheeling and dealing, to let the sale go through without running afoul of export restrictions.  The interest rates will be alarmingly high, naturally, with high penalties for non-payment.  They’ll see it as a win-win.  If the loan gets repaid, with the interest, they make a profit.  If not, they get to stake a claim on the planet they can sell to someone else.”

Nine seemed to loom, even though he barely moved.  “The Tichck cannot resist a deal,” he rasped.  “But you have no authority to make such a deal.  You are not a real planetary representative.”

“No,” Captain Jonas agreed.  “It won’t get that far.  The negotiations will be spun out for quite some time.  I may not even have to deliberately prolong the agony.  The locals will be trying to see how many ways they can screw us or figure out who else might be involved and what they might offer instead.  Even the simplest and most streamlined of Galactic negotiations can take months, if not years.  You will have enough time to figure out how to carry out your mission, then withdraw.”

“It seems too complex,” Riley said.  “If they trace it back to YingTong …”

“There are ways to cover our departure,” Captain Jonas said.  “The truth is, getting to Belos and entering the megacity is easy.  Getting close to your target … that’s going to be considerably more difficult.  If it’s anything like the others I’ve seen, there will be no way to get close to the compound, let alone scout it out, without tripping alarms.”

Sally frowned.  The scheme did seem a little too complex.  It was possible, as they made their way to their destination, they’d work out a better way to do it.  But … the captain might well be right.  The local entry stations – spaceports, orbiting stations, orbital towers – were unlikely to deny them docking permission.  The odds of them being allowed to get close enough to their target to scope it out, without a very good excuse, were low.  And they’d only have one chance to pull the tech raid off.

“We’ll keep the cover story in mind,” Riley said.  “Where do you want us to sleep?”

“There are two cabins,” Captain Jonas said.  “You’ll be shown there later.  I’m afraid they’re going to be very cramped.”

“We’ve slept in worse,” Josh said.  “It can’t be as bad as a foxhole.”

Captain Jonas nodded.  “Stay in your cabins, if possible.  Ideally, stay out of the way of my crew.  There are food processors over there” – she waved a hand at the kitchenette – “that produce regular meals …”

“Oh, no,” Terry said.

“… And a number of food packets in the drawers if you want something a little more fancy,” Captain Jonas continued, ignoring Terry.  “Please don’t take more than one a day, as the crew deserves a share too.  If you have any problems, let me know.  Until then … make sure you know your cover stories properly.  We’ll destroy the papers before we leave FTL.”

She turned and left.  The hatch closed behind her.

“This could end badly,” Charles said.  “If YingTong gets the blame for our stunt, they’ll be in deep shit.”

Sally nodded.  From a cold-hearted point of view, better the blame fell somewhere other than Earth and Sol.  But from a humane point of view …

“We’ll need to work out ways to ensure they don’t,” Riley said, curtly.  “If possible.”

“Yeah,” Terry agreed.  “If.”

He brightened.  “A few weeks on this ship, more than enough time to get the captain to warm up to me.”

Riley snorted.  “If she spaces you, I’ll still expect you to report for duty,” he said.  “And if you don’t, I’ll space you myself.”

Sally rolled her eyes, then bent over the folder.  She had a lot of reading to do.

Chapter Seven

The thing no one ever believed about interstellar travel, Riley had often reflected, was just how boring it was.

It was true they were travelling through interstellar space at a rate most people would have difficulty comprehending.  It was true that after a week in stardrive, they had already left Sol far behind, so far the distance was just numbers, figures even an experienced spacer had difficulty putting into words.  And it was also true that they were cooped up inside a relatively small starship, with very little space for everything from basic exercises to full-fledged training.  Cabin fever was a very real possibility.  Riley kept his team busy – reading the files, discussing possible tactics, relaxing with eBooks and movies – but he was all too aware there were limits.  It was no surprise to him that the galaxy’s elite sailed the starlines on ships that made luxury cruise liners look like tramp freighters.  A vessel the size of the Enterprise-D was more than big enough to make up for the lack of outside contact.

He forced himself to study, memorising the important details even through the files were stored in his implants.  He’d learnt the hard way that implant data was never quite as real as data he’d studied personally, something akin to a student borrowing books from the library and then expecting their contents to migrate into his head through … well, something.  He scanned the files on their target, noted everything from the various alien cultures to their biologies, and made mental notes of all the questions he wanted answered.  They knew too little to be sure of anything, at least until they reached their target.  He hoped they’d be able to access a planetary datacore.  If nothing else, it would give them the official line.

“I hope you’re ready for inspection,” Captain Jonas said, as they approached the first gravity point.  “If they decide to check us out …”

Riley looked at her.  “What are the odds?”

“Impossible to say,” Captain Jonas told him, flatly.  “It depends on who’s in charge of the transit arrangements.  They may take one look at our papers and wave us through, or they may decide to search our ship before allowing us to proceed.  Too many customs officers enjoy flexing their muscles, when they see someone who can’t protest to higher authorities and get them sacked.  They may decide to be unpleasant to us just because they can.”

“Charming,” Riley said.  He’d met a bunch of TSA officers who’d operated on the same principle.  “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“Quite,” Captain Jonas agreed.

Riley nodded.  The captain might be abrasive and sharp-tongued, but she took her duties seriously.  She’d gathered up all the paper briefing notes, counting them all very carefully before tossing them into a matter disintegrator, and then checked the cabins to be sure there was nothing that could lead straight back to Sol.  Riley had gone through the cabins himself and he’d found nothing, save for the files locked in the team’s implants.  In theory, they should automatically wipe themselves if anyone tried to access the secure storage.  In practice … he couldn’t blame the captain for being paranoid.  One screw-up could mean death for the entire human race.

Some of us will survive, he told himself.  He’d heard rumours of colony ships, outfitted with the best technology to hand, being sent far – far – from the borders of explored space.  It would be a challenge to rebuild the human race from scratch, even if they found a safe hiding place, but it might have to be done.  We’ll survive, and we’ll come back, and we’ll kick their ass.

He took a breath as he looked around the bridge.  It was a cramped compartment, crammed with a mixture of galactic consoles – primitive, by their standards – and datacores that had been spliced together into a reasonably coherent whole.  It looked as though it was held together by spit and baling wire, although the captain had assured him it looked a hell of a lot worse than it was.  Any snooty customs officer who saw it would laugh, rather than see the freighter as a potential threat.  It galled Riley to be thought primitive, someone so dumb he couldn’t count past ten without taking off his pants and someone so gauche he’d do it too, but it did have its advantages.  Better to be underestimated than overestimated.  

The captain leaned forward.  “Take us out of stardrive.”

A low quiver ran through the ship.  The screens – no holographic projectors for a tramp freighter – lit up, revealing the gravity point and a handful of ships making their way through the twist in time and space.  The rough line looked disorganised, the ships altering position slightly as more starships passed through the gravity point and vanished into FTL.  Riley guessed whoever was in charge was trying to move them along as quickly as possible before anything bad could happen.  The odds of two ships accidentally occupying the same point in space were very low, and he’d been assured interpenetration was extremely rare, but if one ship materialised on top of another the results would be very bad indeed.  It was hard to convince himself that, statistically, there was no danger.  The constant flickers as ships jumped in and out argued otherwise.

“Transmit our IFF,” Captain Jonas ordered.  “Request a transit slot.”

Riley held his breath.  They’d done everything they could, but a careful inspection of the ship and her passengers might be utterly disastrous.  One mistake, one oversight, could lead to all hell breaking loose.  He prayed, silently, to a God he wasn’t quite sure he believed in, that the Galactics weren’t paying close attention.  The tramp freighter was one of many, passing through a gravity point light-years from anywhere important.  There was no reason to pick her out from the swarm and order her to wait, while an inspection crew was dispatched.  No reason at all.

“We are cleared to proceed,” the ops officer reported.  “They’ve given us a low-priority slot.”

Captain Jonas nodded, curtly.  “Take us into position.”

Riley breathed a sigh of relief, then frowned as the screens updated.  He’d expected something akin to a Deep Space Nine wormhole, the first time he’d made transit, but the gravity point was effectively invisible to the naked eye.  There was a faint – a very faint – sense of distortion, as if light was being bent around something that wasn’t quite there, but he wasn’t sure it wasn't anything more than a figment of his imagination.  He knew the gravity point was there and yet …

His frown deepened.  There was a small space station holding position near the gravity point, backed up by a handful of automated weapons platforms and cutters, but little else.  The gravity point was barely defended, so weak a single alien battleship could brush the station aside and claim the system for themselves.  It struck him as absurd.  The gravity point was important beyond words, the interstellar counterpart of Gibraltar or Singapore, and yet the Galactics weren’t trying to defend it …?

“Are we missing something?”  It was hard to put the question into words.  Simple common sense insisted the gravity point should be heavily defended.  If it was a bottleneck … his lips twitched.  He’d given up on Deep Space Nine because it was brutally obvious that fortifying the wormhole would have kept the evil shapeshifters from getting a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant.  “Where are the defences?”

Captain Jonas smiled.  There was no humour in her expression.  “The Tokomak forbade any other races from fortifying the gravity points,” she said.  “They have the biggest fleet in the known universe.  The last thing they want is someone setting up defences that will bleed their fleet white, even if they do manage to punch through eventually and take the system.  If the locals tried, the Tokomak would come down on them like a ton of bricks before they could get the defences in place.”

Riley wasn’t convinced.  “Surely, they could just tow the planetary defence stations to the gravity point?”

“Don’t tell the Tokomak,” Captain Jonas said, sardonically.  “More practically, the major powers don’t see any reason to rock the boat.  The gravity points are open to all.  They don’t want one power to start setting up defences and start charging higher fees, or everyone else will follow suit and interstellar trade will come to a halt.  But yeah, we think most powers have contingency plans to fortify the gravity points in case of emergency.”

She nodded to the screen.  “Brace yourself.”

Riley took a breath as the gravity point loomed up in front of them.  It was huge, by starship standards, and yet tiny on an interstellar scale.  A pair of ships blinked into existence nearby, bare seconds apart; they drove forward, dropping into FTL as soon as they cleared the boundary.  Riley had a mental impression of the customs officers shaking their fists after the disappearing ships, although he suspected they were more likely to be glad the vessels were gone.  The risk of collision might be low – even the largest starships were little more than specks of dust, on such a scale – but it couldn’t be discounted completely.

The gravity point seemed to grow bigger, the screens blanked, the universe itself seemed to blink … and then everything snapped back to normal.  Riley was almost disappointed.  There were some people, he’d been told, who reacted very badly to gravity point transits, but he … he’d felt nothing.  What little he had felt could easily be his imagination.  It was hard to believe they’d hopped nearly two thousand light years in less than a second.  He wasn’t even sure the transit time could be measured.

“Helm, set course for our destination,” Captain Jonas ordered.  “Hit it.”

The helmsman, a young officer who reminded Riley of himself when he’d been a younger man, flicked a switch.  “Aye, Captain,” he said, as half the screens blanked.  “FTL engaged … now.”

Riley nodded, curtly.  They were so far from Earth that very few, if any, Galactics knew anything about humanity’s homeworld.  The few humans they’d met would be descendants of alien abductees, not travellers from Sol.  He relaxed slightly, even though they’d have very real problems getting back home if they couldn’t pass through the gravity points.  The odds of anyone tracing them back to the homeworld were very low indeed.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said.  “I’ll see you for dinner?”

Captain Jonas nodded, shortly.  She had never really warmed up to the team – understandable, Riley supposed, when she might have to abandon them on Belos if the shit hit the fan.  Riley had no illusions about that either, as unpleasant as it was to consider that they might have to make their own way home.  He’d been on deployments where supposedly secure landing zones had been compromised, forcing the team to either head to the secondary location or even make the long walk to the coast so they could be picked up there.  The less said about one particular covert deployment to Iran, back in the old days, the better.

And the flirting probably doesn’t help either, Riley thought, as he opened the hatch and made his way to the tiny observation blister.  Spacers tended to be surprisingly practical about such matters – there were no shortage of stories of asteroid miners having brief torrid affairs and then going on with their lives without recriminations or resentments – but the captain seemed immune to anyone’s charms.  She probably finds us a little annoying.

His lips twitched.  Or a lot annoying.

He opened the next hatch, then blinked as he realised the observation blister was already occupied.  Nine stood in front of the transparent bubble, staring into open space.  Riley hesitated, unsure as to whether he was intruding on a private moment, then stepped into the blister himself.  The eerie darkness of FTL felt like a yawning abyss, pulling him into the shadows.  There were people, he’d been told, who couldn’t handle it at all.  They refused to go anywhere near the blisters, or even portholes, when a starship was underway.

Nine glanced at him, moving with odd jerky motions.  Riley had watched as the team went through combat exercises and he’d noted a lot of odd things about the cyborg, from his habit of remaining still – as if his body never had any involuntary motions – to the fact he could slip into something that looked very much like berserker rage without ever actually losing control of himself.  His implants regulated his behaviour in ways the team’s implants did not … in ways, the reports noted, that were explicitly forbidden in the Solar Union.  Riley didn’t like the implications.  When the Galactics finally rediscovered Earth and moved to crush the Solar Union, they might be facing human cyborgs in battle.  

“Sir,” Nine rasped.  “Is it time for the next training exercise?”

Riley shook his head.  Nine wasn't very good at making small talk either – or anything, really, apart from fighting.  The psychologists had noted the cyborg had little sense of morality, even when compared to the Taliban or Nazis.  It wasn’t that he would do horrible things because he gloried in them, the report had stated; it was that he had no feelings about carrying out his orders, whatever they happened to be.  He would slaughter an entire town – or something even bigger – and feel nothing.  It was deeply worrying.

Sure, his thoughts mocked.  Would you prefer someone who got off on looting, raping and murdering?

“I was curious,” he said.  “How many times have you sailed between the stars?”

“Many,” Nine said.  “I was a soldier.  I was shipped from trouble spot to trouble spot, deployed, then shipped onwards again.  It was my life.”

Riley cocked his head.  “Why did you want out?”

Nine said nothing for a long moment.  “I was …I was searching for something, without knowing what it was,” he said, slowly.  “And … I wanted the freedom to choose my own battles.  And …”

“I understand,” Riley said, although he wasn’t sure that was true.  He’d met men who fought for their country, or for a cause, or even for money, but Nine was … different.  Was it possible there was, somewhere in his mind, a racial desire for freedom?  Or … was he just drifting aimlessly from place to place, now that he was free?  He wouldn’t be the first person to find his freedom, then discover he had no idea what he wanted to do with it.  “Where were you raised?”

Nine shook his head.  “I could not tell you.”

Riley nodded.  He’d expected nothing else.  The cyborgs hadn’t been told anything about their homeworld, not even the name.  The spooks had asked all sorts of questions, trying to see if they could figure out enough to deduce the location, but they’d drawn a complete blank.  It might be a mere hundred light years from Earth or it might be on the other side of the known galaxy.  As far as the cyborgs were concerned, they’d been put on ships and transported to their first staging base.  They’d seen nothing they could use to figure out where they’d been born and raised.

He stared into the darkness.  They could be going anywhere, anywhere at all.  Captain Jonas might have lied to them, might have decided to set sail for a rogue colony rather than Belos … there was nothing, in the inky soul-destroying shadows, to indicate their course and speed.  It would be almost laughably easy to keep the cyborgs in the dark.  One could easily spend a couple of weeks in FTL, turning in circles, before reaching a destination only a day or two away.  Everything they’d been told might be worse than useless.

And yet the spooks think we should keep asking, he thought, darkly.  It seems a little pointless.

“You had a chance to see something of Earth,” he said, instead.  “What did you make of it?”

“It was a world,” Nine said.  “It was … just a world.”

“Nothing special?”  Riley felt a twinge of pity.  “Not worth your time?”

Nine said nothing.  Riley sighed.  He’d always felt a little thrill when he’d returned home, even though the United States was no longer the country he’d been proud to serve.  He knew others who felt the same way, who talked of returning home to a country that existed more in rose-tinted memories than real life.  He’d met too many Irish-Americans who seemed to think their country hadn’t changed at all, since their ancestors had headed to America to build newer and better lives for themselves.  He’d also been there.

People complained about the lack of peat bog houses, he thought, wryly.  And the locals just roll their eyes.

He studied Nine, wondering how they could have a meeting of the minds.  Nine wasn’t interested in girls, or history, or drinking, or anything else he might use as a conversational icebreaker.  They shared an interest in shooting, but neither of them were outright gun-nuts.  He’d been raised to see guns as tools, things that served a great purpose, not the be-all and end-all of life.  If he’d been raised on an alien world, amongst aliens, he’d have wanted to know about his heritage.  But Nine apparently disagreed.

“There’ll be more time for exploration later,” he said.  Perhaps they could go hiking.  The natural beauty of Earth’s mountains touched every soul.  “After the mission is completed …”

“Belos will prove a challenge,” Nine agreed.  He spoke as calmly as if he were discussing the weather, as if the challenge neither excited nor scared him.  “There will be many problems to overcome.  But we shall overcome.”

“Yeah,” Riley agreed.  It was funny how he had no trouble dealing with aliens but found the cyborg to be more than a little disconcerting.  No one expected the aliens to think like humans.  Humans, on the other hand, were meant to be human.  “We will.”

Chapter Eight

“I don’t think the captain likes me,” Terry whined.  “She just won’t listen to anything I say.”

“Perhaps you need a better approach,” Sally said, from where she was lying on the bunk staring at nothing.  Her brain ached, cabin fever howling at the back of her mind.  She felt as if she’d grown weak and lazy, even though the combination of constant exercise and genetic enhancement meant there were limits to how far she could fall.  “Or maybe you just need to realise it wasn’t meant to be.”

“But it is,” Terry protested.  “We’re meant to be together!”

Sally rolled her eyes.  Most Force Recon operators were horndogs – on leave, the very first thing they did was head to the bars and try to pick up girls – but Terry was extreme even for the Special Forces.  He’d chase a girl, loudly insisting he’d fallen in love, then move on very quickly to the next … and the next … and the next.  There were times when she wondered if the rejuvenation process had glitched, trapping Terry in permanent adolescence.  It was true that most people, upon having their age rolled back, found themselves pulsing with teenage hormones, but they tended to grow out of it very quickly.  Terry, on the other hand …

“Go jerk off in the washroom,” she advised, crossly.  She could hardly blame the captain for refusing to open her legs for anyone.  The Solar Union was a lot better, when it came to equality, than pretty much any planetside country or community, but it could still be awkward if a female commanding officer had a relationship with a subordinate, even if the subordinate was not technically off-limits.  “And don’t forget to shower afterwards.”

A low quiver ran through the ship, the lights flashing once to signify they’d dropped out of FTL.  Sally felt a tired little thrill as she linked her implants into the starship’s datanet and peered through the sensors, surveying the system they’d just entered.  She’d read the files – and done her best to absorb the raw numbers – but they hadn’t come close to convoying the sheer size of the system.  She’d thought Sol was industrialised and yet … she swallowed hard.  Belos made Sol look deserted.

“Fuck it,” Terry said.  “Hit the bell when it’s time to dock.”

Sally barely heard him scrambling into the washroom and closing the hatch behind him.  She was hypnotised by the sheer scale of activity.  Hundreds of thousands of starships, interplanetary transports and other vessels were making their way around the system, some heading towards the planet and others to asteroids, gas giants and giant alien facilities.  There were entire streams of starships coming and going from the gravity points, so close together she thought she could climb onto the hulls and hop from ship to ship even though she knew it was an illusion.  The industrial nodes were so numerous they seemed to blur together, their energy signatures so bright she wondered what might be hiding in the shadows.  There was so much productive capability, right in front of her, that the system could keep an entire sector supplied with everything it needed, from colony equipment to defensive warships.  She knew how much effort the human race had put into industrialisation, over the last fifteen years, but Belos could effortlessly outproduce the entire Solar Union.  She’d known there was a gap – of course she had – yet … that big?

The United States outmassed the Japanese during World War Two by a factor of nine to one, she reflected, a figure that didn’t take into account better technology, better training and a leadership that didn’t believe quite so much of its own bullshit.  The gap between us and the Galactics is far wider …

Ice ran down her spine.  She’d known, intellectually, how important their mission was.  But coming face to face with the sheer power of the Galactics was like being slapped across the face with a reality she would sooner ignore.  There were more ships orbiting the planet in front of her than the Solar Union could hope to deploy, cautioning her that the Galactics could crush Earth through their sheer weight of numbers.  The figures she’d seen, the figures she hadn’t quite believed, echoed at the back of her mind, mocking her.  She believed them now.

The live feed only grew worse.  There were twelve planets in the system, eight rocky … all heavily developed.  The four gas giants were orbited by cloudscoops, industrial nodes, defensive platforms and God alone knew what else.  The files stated the system population was well over twenty billion … she swallowed hard, again, as she tried to calculate if that was true.  It might well be.  There were certainly enough space habitats orbiting the planets – and in free orbits around the star – to house millions, perhaps billions, of inhabitants.  It was hard to tell how big the settlements were, on the rocky worlds, but even a relatively small settlement could support millions of settlers.

“Jesus,” she muttered.  She felt her mind reel.  It was too big.  She knew, now, why so many people didn’t quite believe the danger, why they thought the Solar Union was being overly cautious.  It was nearly impossible to grasp the system in front of her.  The little she saw – a tiny fraction of the whole – was so big …  “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”

She scowled.  The admiral had never made any bones about the desperate need to find a silver bullet, a weapon that would render the vast alien fleets little better than scrap metal.  God knew humanity had come up with all sorts of science-fiction weapons, designs that might actually be practical with GalTech … given time, they would find something they could use.  But would they have the time?  She was starting to wonder if they had a chance …

Concentrate on the defences, she told herself, firmly.  The rest can take care of itself.

She sucked in her breath.  Belos was surrounded by a small galaxy of icons, from three giant orbital towers – evenly spaced around the equator – to orbiting shipyards, industrial nodes and asteroid habitats.  Three giant orbital weapons platforms dominated nearspace, each bristling with weapons … she guessed they were backed up by automated platforms, but she couldn’t pick them out.  There were just too many objects orbiting the planet.  Hundreds of ships glided around the high orbitals, some making their way into the planet’s atmosphere and others holding position … she remembered, suddenly, how quick the captain had been to dismiss the idea anyone would notice their arrival.  Sally believed her now.  There were so many ships coming and going that no one, not even the Galactics, could hope to search even a tiny handful of newcomers.  The system population rose and fell with every passing hour.

“Jesus,” she said, again.  “They weren’t kidding, were they?”

Her heart began to beat erratically.  Her implants automatically compensated.  Sally sat up, disconnected from the sensors and opened her eyes.  The cabin felt unreal after she’d taken in the sensor readings, but … she took a moment to calm herself, trying to concentrate on the mission.  It was bad enough, she reflected, when she’d discovered just how big her homeland was … this was worse.  The entire United States of America, and her population, would vanish without trace in the alien system.  She concentrated on her breathing, her thoughts settling down.  They had a mission.  They would carry it out or die trying.

And you thought the tales of First Contact were exaggerated, her thoughts mocked her.  She had read the stories and noted how Steve Stuart and his friends had reacted with sheer disbelief when they’d come face to face with their kidnappers.  She’d even wondered if it was borderline racist.  She knew, now, it wasn’t.  She’d just seen something that told her, in a way she could not ignore, that the world had changed forever.  They'd never even considered meeting aliens until they did.

She scowled.  But the Galactics have been around for thousands of years.  If we hadn’t met them then, we would have met them later.

The thought nagged her for a moment, her mind scrabbling for something – anything – else to focus on.  She’d read a handful of books suggesting that, without the Solar Union, the United States and Europe would have healed themselves … personally, she thought the alternate historian had been a little too optimistic.  Even if it had worked … there would have been contact, sooner or later, and it might not have ended so happily.  The couple of books that took alien contact into account had been surprisingly – suspiciously - optimistic.

Terry stepped into the room, looking like a man who’d just had a shower.  “Did we arrive?”

“Yes,” Sally said.  She tried to think of a way to explain what she’d seen, then gave up.  He wouldn’t believe her, not until he saw it himself.  “We’d better get ready.”

She stood and scooped up her knapsack, making one last check of the contents.  The paranoia had seemed unduly paranoid, ten minutes ago.  Now … she ran through everything, then slung the knapsack over her bag and made her way down to the mess.  Riley was already there, watching the screens.  Charles, on the other side of the chamber, was drinking coffee and making a point of not looking.

“This is not even the biggest system,” Nine commented.  He was the only one who didn’t seem a little stunned by the sight in front of him.  “There are others that are far – far – larger.”

Sally nodded.  Years ago, she’d briefly passed through the USS George H. W. Bush.  The supercarrier had been immense, so huge it was hard to believe it was one of a fleet of such ships.  The system in front of her was so unimaginably large her mind revolted at the thought of there being anything bigger.  If Belos was so heavily developed, she asked herself, what about the alien homeworlds?  Tokomak Prime might be so big as to be completely beyond her imagination.

Josh looked pale.  “How did they do this so quickly?”

“It wasn’t quick,” Nine said.  “They took the planet and set up a handful of industrial nodes and stations.  And then they installed more.  And then they invited others to install nodes of their own.  And then they needed places for the workers to live, which meant bringing in more immigrants, and then …”

Sally nodded, crossly.  The original Thirteen Colonies had been tiny, compared to the North American continent.  It would have been hard for the first settlers to imagine how vast their country had eventually become, in a mere three hundred years.  The Tichck had had much – much – longer to turn the system into an industrial powerhouse.  She dreaded to think how effortlessly they could outproduce Sol, if they set their minds to it.

We wondered why so few of the lesser races developed their own industrial bases, she reminded herself.  There were limits programmed into GalTech, the same limits they were working to subvert, but she’d thought someone more used to advanced tech would be able to find ways around them.  I guess we know now.

She shook her head.  She’d had a cousin in the Peace Corps, before it had been shut down, and she’d grumbled about outsiders flooding the native markets with cheap products and worse advice.  Why would any poor nation bother to develop its own industry when outside products were better, and outside powers reacted harshly to any form of protectionism?  Why bother even growing food, when outsiders shipped it in by the ton?  And yet, when the imports stopped …

They won’t, here, she told herself.  If something happens to Belos, there are plenty of other systems that will take up the slack.

“I need a drink,” Josh said.  “Can I have some rotgut?”

“No drinking on duty,” Riley said.  There was a grim note to his voice that suggested he was badly shaken too, although he’d been on extra-solar missions before.  “I understand the impulse, but …”

He broke off as Captain Jonas entered.  “We have been cleared to dock at the orbital tower,” she said, shortly.  “We have been denied teleport access codes and frequencies, so you’ll have to make your way down the surface through the tower.”

Charles looked up.  “No free orbit?”

“We’re a tramp freighter from a world no one has ever heard of,” Captain Jonas said, sardonically.  “There’s no way in hell we qualify for the teleport frequencies.  They’re for important people, don’t you know?”

Sally nodded.  The Galactics had figured out how to block teleport signals almost as soon as they’d invented the teleporter.  They’d had no choice.  An enemy warship with a teleporter could beam bombs onto its target, rather than trading fire on equal terms.  It hadn’t been difficult.  Earth’s governments had done it without access to GalTech.  She was a little more surprised the locals allowed the teleporter under any circumstances.  But then, it was astonishing what someone would do if you offered them a great deal of money.

“We can cope,” Riley said.  “Will they search the ship?”

“I don’t think so,” Captain Jonas said.  “But … we have to be careful.”

Sally sat down and accessed the sensors, again, as the planet grew until it dominated the horizon.  Belos looked very much like Earth, she noted, and yet there was something almost sickly about it.  She recalled the briefing notes and shuddered.  The Tichck were polluting the planet, in a bid to reshape it, and the locals were suffering.  There was so much gunk in the air that even if some kindly god erased the alien interlopers from the planet, she doubted the biosphere would ever recover.  It made humanity’s worst environmental disasters look harmless.  

The orbital tower drew her eye despite her mind insisting, loudly, that it just couldn’t exist.  The tallest building humans had ever built was nothing compared to the alien megastructure … it was huge, so vast she couldn’t even begin to calculate how many apartments, factories, ships and whatever else could cram into the tower.  The giant spaceport facility – she could see hundreds of ships, attached like barnacles to piers – was huge, yet it only took up a tiny percentage of the whole.  It was astonishing, mind-blowing, to realise she was looking at the kind of port one sent ships one didn’t want visitors to see.  It was still far larger than anything humanity had ever built.

Riley cleared his throat.  Sally logged back out of the sensors.  “We’ll have no trouble remaining unnoticed, as long as we don’t attract attention,” he said, calmly.  “Keep your eyes open and remain calm.”

“Yes, sir,” Josh said.  “I’m very calm, sir.  Can I take my sick leave now, sir?”

Sally had to laugh.  “Can I take my sick leave too, sir?”

“Only if you’re kind enough to be sick on the target,” Riley said.  “We’ll need a day or two to get settled in, before anything else happens.”

Sally accessed the sensors again.  The megacity below was … huge, like everything else in the system, a mixture of towering skyscrapers and weird alien-buildings put together by designers who didn’t think in a human manner.  She’d read stories of overpopulation, back in the days humanity had feared the population would just keep rising until civilisation collapsed under the weight of so many bodies, and they’d all featured giant soulless apartment blocks.  The Tichck, it seemed, had actually put the concept into play.  It was so big she doubted anyone could walk from one side to the other in less than a week.  No human city was anywhere near as vast, or utterly inhuman.

Terry cleared his throat.  “Where are we even going to stay?”

“There are hotels,” Riley said, as if they hadn’t spent the last few weeks planning the operation.  Every spaceport and orbital tower had at least one enormous multiracial hotel, offering rooms and facilities suitable for nearly every known race, and there were nearly always available rooms.  The exchange rate would be murderous, of course … nothing ever changed.  Earth’s seedy red-light districts, outside military bases and harbours, were just the same.  “We’ll find one online before we leave the ship.”

“It would be suspicious if you didn’t,” Nine put in.

Sally couldn’t disagree.  The ship was too small for them to want to stay onboard.  She found it hard to believe anyone would stay on a starship willingly, even one of the giant liners she’d seen in the files.  Why stay on a ship, no matter how luxurious, when you could see a whole new world?  No, questions would be asked if the team stayed on the ship.  Everyone would understand why they went to the hotel as soon as they could.

“Hey, Nine?”  Terry waved at the cyborg.  “Are there any facilities suitable for humans down there?  Or women?”

“Be careful with any alien VR systems,” Sally said, as she logged out for good.  “If they’re not configured for human mentalities, they’ll leave you with a headache – or worse.”

“Don’t experiment at all,” Riley said, firmly.  “We have a job to do.”

“Come on, boss,” Terry said.  “Live a little.”

“You could try an alien woman,” Josh teased.  “Or …”

Sally tried not to show her disgust.  The Galactics had strict laws against interracial relationships.  Personally, she’d thought they’d never needed to bother.  It was rare for any human to find an alien attractive, even the ones surprisingly close to humanity, and actual relationships were the stuff of erotic fantasy rather than real life.   There wasn’t even much human-alien sexual porn on the datanet.  The VR would be safer, if it was checked before Terry put the feeder on his head.  If not, he’d deserve everything he got.

“That will do,” Riley said.  His voice denied all prospect of further disagreement.  “We’ll have a day or two of rest once we’re down, then get to work.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said.  

Chapter Nine

It was easier, Riley told himself, not to think about the sheer size of the orbital tower complex.  It was bigger than the largest airport he’d ever seen, a maze of dingy corridors and security checkpoints that somehow managed to feel both organised and remarkably haphazard.  The air was breathable but smelled unpleasant; the gravity was a little higher than Earth standard, although he had no trouble tolerating it. He’d been through worse airports back home.  He kept his eyes open, trying not to notice the flat-edged holograms that popped up every few metres, alien avatars trying to sell him products that were, he suspected, of very limited use to a human.  He had no idea what the devices did, or why anyone would buy them.  The only thing he came close to recognising was a torture instrument and he was fairly sure torture wasn’t it’s intended use.

He frowned, old memories suddenly rising into his mind.  He’d had a friend once, a Royal Marine who’d visited America and commented, sardonically, on the discrepancy between the most advanced country in the world and the state of its airports and other critical infrastructure.  Riley understood what he meant, all too well.  The New York of stage and screen bore little resemblance to the real city, one blighted by economic damage, poor government and ever-rising crime.  It looked and felt as if the Galactics had the same problem.  Belos was an incredibly rich world, but the signs of poor government were everywhere.  The towering ultra-civilised civilisation they bragged about, when they condescendingly explained to the primitive races that they were being taken in hand for their own good, didn’t exist.  He wasn’t really surprised – the Tichck were well known for demanding immediate results, not long-term investments – but it was still disconcerting.  He’d expected better from races that had sailed the stars well before humanity had discovered the wheel.

It looked more impressive before we docked, he thought, tartly.  We couldn’t see any detail from up there.

The adverts grew louder, and more obnoxious, as the corridor widened, allowing them to join a flow of intelligent life – for a given value of intelligent – as they made their way down to the security checkpoints.  It was jarring, enough to make his head spin, to realise intelligence came in all shapes and sizes, from aliens surprisingly close to humanity to intelligent centipedes, spiders, and things so alien he couldn’t draw any sort of comparison.  Bright lights flashed, laser-light beams sweeping the crowd and trying to drum advertisements into their skulls.  His implants flashed a warning as a beam blinked across his eye, cautioning him of subliminal prompts designed to encourage him to buy whatever crap the advertiser was selling.  It wasn’t configured for humans, thankfully.  He gritted his teeth, silently hoping the advertising agencies on Earth never got their hands on such technology.  Subliminal advertising was illegal, from what he recalled, but in his experience big corporations could get away with almost anything, if they made the right political contributions.  Hell, if the idea took off, the politicians would be using subliminal advertising themselves.

He put the thought aside as the checkpoints loomed in front of him, manned by row upon row of uniformed Subdo.  The administrators looked about as warm and friendly as the TSA, although he was fairly sure they wouldn’t have wandering hands.  His implants blinked more warnings, cautioning him of scanning beams sweeping across the crowd.  Sweat prickled down his back, even though they didn’t seem to be focused on him and his team.  Their implants should pass muster – they were based on perfectly legal GalTech – but if the locals took a closer look they might get suspicious.  The air seemed to grow warmer, hot and steamy, as they reached the checkpoints.  The din was growing louder, the sound of hundreds of aliens speaking a multitude of galactic languages blurring into a single impossible racket.  The bright yellow boxes looked faintly absurd.  Riley knew they were nothing of the sort.  If the administrator decided to abuse his power and search the team …

Riley kept his face expressionless as he handed over their travel papers.  It was unlikely, to say the least, that the Subdo could read human body language, but there was no point in taking chances.  The alien plugged the datachip into his system, scanned the intro page, then removed the chip and passed it back, saying something Riley could barely hear.  It was their responsibility, apparently, to make sure they didn’t break any local laws.  If they did, they’d be in deep shit.

He bent his head in the posture of respect to the alien – politeness cost nothing, even though the exaggerated movement galled him – and led the team onwards, passing a handful of security guards.  Riley felt a moment of kinship – he couldn’t read their faces, but he’d bet his back teeth they were as bored as he’d been when he’d taken sentry duty – even though they were aliens.  He pushed the feeling aside as the corridor grew ever wider, a handful of higher-status aliens and their escorts shoving their way through the crowd.  Riley couldn’t help remembering the time he’d seen local dignitaries, in the Middle East, demanding priority and to hell with whoever was in their way.  It was no surprise to him that the region had collapsed into repeated bouts of civil war.  There was only so long someone could tolerate such treatment before they snapped and tried to lash out.

“They’re pinging us,” Sally said, so quietly Riley wouldn’t have heard her if his ears hadn’t been enhanced.  “I think they’re pinging everyone.”

Riley frowned.  His implants hadn’t been pinged, but he’d locked down the communications function before they’d left the ship.  Trying to access the tower’s datanodes was asking for trouble, at least before they were through the checkpoints.  “Trying to hack our implants?”

“More like trying to check the software,” Sally said.  “The firewalls should handle it.”

“Keep an eye on it,” Riley said.

The corridor widened again, leading them into a shopping complex lined with stores selling everything from starship supplies and personal tech to food, clothes and things he couldn’t even begin to understand.  He smiled, despite himself, as they kept walking, doing their best to ignore the throngs milling about.  It really was an airport lounge, selling overpriced junk to customers who literally didn’t have anywhere else to go.  He wondered, idly, if the aliens heading in the other direction had had their bottles of water confiscated, something that seemed more likely to annoy airline travellers than save lives.  Probably.  The Galactics had every reason to be concerned about someone hijacking a ship in orbit and trying to slam it into the planet.  There was certainly no shortage of alien terrorist groups who’d like to try.

He glanced back at his team as they reached the elevator doors.  “Any trouble?”

“This place is a little overwhelming,” Terry said.

“Get used to it,” Nine advised, curtly.  “It’ll only get worse.”

The hatch opened.  Riley blinked, then mentally kicked himself for being surprised.  He’d expected a small elevator, the kind of unit he’d see in an apartment block, but the interior was easily large enough to hold hundreds of intelligent beings.  He supposed it wasn’t too surprising, as they headed inside and found seats designed for humanoid races, only slightly uncomfortable.  The elevator might drop fast enough to give any human safety engineer the willies, but it had a very long way to go.  They’d be trapped inside the chamber for at least an hour.

He looked around as the hatches slammed closed.  The lights began to flash, gravity rippling slightly as the elevator plunged downwards.  He was mildly disappointed there were no portholes – he would have paid extra for a window seat – but it didn’t matter.  The vending machines looked either broken or worse than useless, doling out sludge that might not be safe for human consumption.  Adverts kept flickering, passengers muttering angrily as the lights darted across the seats.  The nasty part of his mind wondered if the advertisers weren’t shooting themselves in the foot.  If he’d been bombarded with so much nonsense, he would have flatly refused to buy whatever the advertiser was selling.

Josh coughed.  The smell was getting worse.  “How long?”

“It’ll end when it ends,” Nine rasped.  “Wait.”

Riley shot Josh a reassuring look.  They’d done everything they could to prepare for alien encounters – and they’d visited a handful of nearby worlds – but Belos was just too big, too alien.  They weren’t xenophobic – Force Recon couldn’t afford to recruit anyone who was – yet … this world was very inhuman, so alien that it would be easy to let their preconceptions blind them to reality.  Worse, perhaps.  On Earth, any government that mistreated Solar citizens could expect swift and certain punishment; here, if the team was arrested for any reason, the Solar Union would have to grin and bear it.  If they ever found out.  It would be all too easy for the team to vanish without a trace.

It’s like visiting the pre-Contact Middle East, he thought, sourly.  They treated visiting Westerners poorly, when they stepped out of line, and treated Third Worlders like slaves, in the certain knowledge there would be no comeback.

“We’ll have a couple of days downtime before we move,” he said.  No one would think anything of it.  The Galactics didn’t have jet or starship lag, but they did understand it took time to get used to a whole new world.  Besides, it wasn’t as if they were particularly important.  Captain Jonas had cautioned him it might be quite some time before they got an appointment at Fly-By-Night.  They just didn’t have trillions of ready money at hand.  “We’ll cope.”

The elevator shuddered – a frisson of fear ran through him – the gravity field shifting again before steadying.  They were helpless, trapped in a compartment with hundreds of aliens, totally dependent on a piece of technology that was clearly past its prime.  Riley had never been scared of flying, but he understood why some people found it hard to relax on an airplane.  His old instructors had called airline passengers “pre-packaged hostages” and he’d been right.  If an SF team had to storm an airliner, innocent civilians were going to get hurt or killed.  Hell, one didn’t need terrorists.  Travelling on an aircraft meant putting your life in the pilot’s hands. 

Josh looked at Nine.  “Is that normal?”

“Normally,” Nine said.  It was hard to tell if that was a joke – he hadn’t shown any sense of humour – or a deadpan response.  English wasn’t Nine’s first language.  “Belos is a very old world.”

The elevator juddered to a halt.  The hatches rattled open.  A rush of warm air, tainted with a stench Riley didn’t want to place, greeted the passengers as they stood and hurried out of the elevator.  Riley didn’t blame them, although his team’s departure was a little more sedate.  The elevator might be huge, by human standards, but it had also been painfully cramped.  He was mildly surprised someone hadn’t started a fight.  

He frowned, then stopped as he saw the Belosi.  They looked like cleaners, carrying their gear as they shuffled past the humans and into the chamber, hastily mopping the deck and wiping the chairs before the other hatches were opened to allow the next set of passengers to head to orbit.  It was hard to be sure, but the patches on their skin looked incredibly unhealthy.  He lingered, a chill running though him as he saw humanity’s future in their dull eyes.  They were so badly beaten down that resistance was not only futile, but inconceivable.  He’d wondered, more than once, why so many people put up with severe mistreatment.  It was better to fight and die than live on your knees.  But if there was no hope of victory …

“Jesus,” Charles muttered.  The scene had to hit him hard … hell, it hit all of them.  “That could be us.”

Riley nodded, turning away to give the aliens what privacy he could.  He’d known how cruel and callous the Galactics could be – he’d read all the reports, from the kidnapping attempt that had led to First Contact to the medical reports written by the men who’d studied Nine and his peers – but it was still hard to believe until he saw it with his own eyes.  He’d been in places, human places, where husbands and fathers had absolute authority over their wives and children – and no one thought anything of it if the patriarchs beat their wives and children bloody – but even they had never been so horrible.  Even they …

It didn’t get any better as they made their way through the lower complex.  The Belosi were everywhere, bowing and scraping and performing every menial job from carrying luggage to sweeping the floors.  They grovelled – sometimes literally – in front of visiting aliens, rubbing their bellies on the floor … Riley had visited a posh hotel once, where the staff had been experts in reading their customers and calculating how much understated grovelling was appropriate, but this was worse.  He saw individuals from low-status races enjoying the grovelling, enjoying their chance to torment someone lower on the totem pole than themselves, and shuddered.  He’d seen some spoilt brats in his time, children in adult bodies, but this was horrific …

It is the way of the world, Edmund Blackadder whispered in his head.  The abused always kick downwards.  I am abused, so I kick the cat; the cat pounces on the mouse; the mouse, finally, bites you on the behind.

He shook his head to clear it.  Slavery – and other tyrannical systems – were bad for both slaveowners and slaves, yet …

Nine stepped past him.  “The aircars are this way,” he said.  “We can’t stay here for long.”

Riley nodded.  They couldn’t afford to attract attention.  Most of the passengers who’d come down the elevator with them were already far ahead, as if docking at an orbital tower, making their way down to the surface and setting foot on an alien world was something they did every day.  A handful of tourists were gawking – Riley wasn’t sure what they were gawking at, as the lower levels were little more than an oversized airport exit – but even they were on their way out.  There weren’t so many shops on the lower levels either.  A couple even looked to be on the verge of closing down.

He put the thought aside as they walked through a pair of heavy metal doors and into a giant hangar, crammed with oversized aircars.  The operator, a Subdo, took their credit chips, then keyed his terminal.  A large aircar – Riley couldn’t help thinking the vehicle was designed for a race considerably bigger than the average human – hovered into the air and came over to land beside them.  The doors hissed open.  Riley thanked the Subdo, passed him a small gratuity, and led the way into the vehicle.  There was more than enough room, thankfully, for them to spread out a little.  They’d worked together for years, more than long enough to grow used to each other, but there were limits.  Sometimes, you just needed some space.

The aircar hovered into the air and plunged down a tunnel – Riley couldn’t help thinking of a starfighter launching tube, something that had proven a little impractical in real life – before bursting out into the sunlight and joining a flock of aircars heading towards the giant city.  He turned his head to see the orbital tower, larger than anything humans had ever made, reaching up and up until it vanished in the clouds.  His head ached.  It was hard, almost impossible, to grasp the sheer scale of the thing.  It was just too big.  The aircar’s hum grew louder as it flew onwards, sliding into place as if it were flying in formation.  Riley hoped to hell the control systems were up to the task.

We’re putting our faith in distant computers to fly us to our destination, he thought.  He’d never liked the idea of self-driving cars, even before some of them had been bricked by hackers – or, worse, directed to drive straight into the nearest wall.  If something goes wrong…

“Just like home,” Terry commented, as a pair of smaller aircars raced past them.  “You want to bet those guys are teenagers?”

“No bet,” Josh said.

Riley nodded in agreement as the city came into view.  It was a striking combination of immense wealth – there were mansions and skyscrapers, the latter seemingly as high as the orbital tower – and grinding poverty.  Shacks and barracks surrounded the city, security barricades keeping the occupants from crossing motorways and troubling the city’s inhabitants.  He didn’t need to look to know which race lived there.  He’d seen similar arrangements outside far too many cities, back on Earth …

“You know, when I was a kid, I read a book about aliens who’d solved all their problems and looked down on us because we hadn’t,” Charles said.  His voice was so flat Riley knew he was upset.  “Don’t you wish we’d run into them, instead?”

“Yeah,” Riley agreed.  The grinding poverty below was completely unnecessary.  If the Solar Union could feed its entire population effortlessly, with a tiny amount of GalTech and a certain willingness to engage in long-term thinking, why couldn’t the Galactics?  There was no technical reason why they couldn’t.  All the old arguments about handouts and dependencies didn’t apply, when food and water were cheap.  “It would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

He peered down.  There were dozens of intelligent beings in the slums consisting of at least two different races.  More, perhaps.  The aircar was moving so rapidly he had to use his implants to record what he saw, then replay it.

“They don’t care enough to bother,” Nine said.  “If you’re not useful to them, you’re nothing.”

Riley shivered.