u/Spooker0

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Until you release or kill him.

The way the alien said it almost made it seem like it didn’t matter much to him which option she chose. He could be bluffing, but she didn’t know.

Which severely limited her bargaining power.

“I’ll release your friend,” she shouted back. “If you release all my people and leave our colony alone.”

Six Claws Klarnoth didn’t even need to think about it. He replied, “Not possible. We still need them and you as bargaining chips. For your Precursor Metal factory.”

As she figured.

She injected as much steel into her voice as she could. “We’d rather sabotage it than allow you to take it from us.”

“I don’t think so. We have studied your people,” Klarnoth said. “I think they will not allow you to all die for machines. I think they will give up the factory, especially because we will take it from you either way.”

She wasn’t sure whether he was right about that.

“Now, stop stalling. I will give you five seconds to decide. Then, I will start killing your people. Five… four… three… two…”

He did not appear to be bluffing. Not at all. And ultimately, she was responsible for her people, whom she put into this position.

“Alright! Alright!” she shouted. “Fine. I’ll release him!”

Julia knew she was giving up all of her leverage. Her only piece of leverage. But there wasn’t much of a choice. If the Karnolians were willing to massacre her people even if it meant killing one of their own, she had nothing anyway. The only play she had was for time, and they both knew it.

She shoved Garbote out. He’d recovered somewhat from his little adventure with the tear gas grenade, enough for him to slowly stumble back to his squad.

“And his equipment,” Klarnoth demanded.

Reluctantly, she threw his defunct armor out as well.

“Come out of hiding.”

His gun was still aimed at her colonists. Without much of a choice, she and the other colonists in the mess hall emerged, joining the other prisoners on the street. The Karnolian marines wasted no time slapping restraints on them.

“How did you subdue one of my marines and get him out of his armor?” Klarnoth asked curiously.

“We found your armor manual release lever on the back of his neck, and—” She nudged her head at Garbote. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Garbote was too busy being looked at by their equivalent of a corpsman to answer questions.

“Whatever. That is not important. It is… almost impressive,” he admitted. “But we have more important matters to discuss now.”

“Sure, we can discuss things calmly… What do you want from us?”

“You will tell me how to disable your sabotage devices for the Precursor Metal factory.”

“Look, Six Claws Klarnoth. May I call you Klarnoth? Are you related to Karveth, by any chance—”

Klarnoth snorted. “Your silly negotiation tactics will not work on me, primitive. I know what I want, and I know what I have. I have your people. I know you care about them.”

“If you kill my people, you’ll have nothing to negotiate with for the Dustballium factory up in the hills.”

He gestured at the rows of captives. “I have over two hundred of you. If they will trade the factory for two hundred of you, they will likely trade it for one hundred and ninety-nine of you. Or one hundred and ninety-eight. Or one ninety-seven. And so on.” Klarnoth shrugged. “Yes, I will eventually have a bigger problem getting you to comply when I run low on live prisoners to threaten you with, but I know you will give up before then.”

Julia swallowed hard at his cold, bare logic. She recognized her mistake. The deployment of the marines, leaving the colony nearly defenseless. She’d been prepared to fight an enemy operating with alien equipment but the tactics of the moonies. Intellectually, she knew that the aliens were different; she hadn’t really internalized that difference until the angry teddy bear laid out his cruel logic for her.

She recognized the one his gun was aimed at. It was one of her scientists. One of the atmospheric scientists who came on the initial Polaris expedition. Eric. Eric… something. She didn’t know him that well, but like all the Dustball colonists, she’d interviewed him before he joined the project. She passed him in the mess hall from time to time. She’d seen him work on the machines in the colony’s laboratories. He’d given her a tour of them once. She was responsible for him.

Defeated, she sighed. “I’ll comply.”

“How do you stop the sabotage devices for the factory from activating?” Klarnoth asked again.

“I can’t,” she replied. “It’s manually activated by the marines inside the factory. It’s designed not to be remotely disabled.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “Tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth,” she insisted. “There is no mechanism to stop the manual activation. You can’t do anything about them, and the marines have been instructed not to follow my orders if I’m compromised—”

Klarnoth raised his gun. “Five… Four…”

“That’s the truth! I’m telling you—”

“Three… Two… One…”

“Please… I’ll help you—”

Bang.

The shot echoed in the streets. Eric crumpled, lifeless, a spreading pool of dark liquid beneath him. A ragged scream tore from one of the other captives, then cut short into a whimper as another of Klarnoth’s soldiers leveled their rifle in warning.

Julia trembled with rage and helplessness. She stared at Eric’s still form, bile rising in her throat. He was in his twenties. A bright, young scientist, one of humanity’s best. Curious and brave enough to join the expedition to another star system. To put his trust in her, to protect him. Now, he was dead because of her failures—her miscalculations, her inability to protect her people.

Klarnoth lowered his smoldering weapon with casual indifference. “See, primitive? I am not bluffing. Now, you know I am not one of the Vorshnik clowns you’ve made friends with, and you will tell me the truth. How do you disable the sabotage mechanisms?”

If she hadn’t had her base impulses trained out of her by years of war, she would have lunged at him.

There was no room in the Navy for rash actions. For pointless last stands or acts of brazen stupidity. In an orbital fleet where battles were decided by cold, hard physics, such human instincts were counterproductive, ruthlessly trained and weeded out of officer cadets before they had a chance to get spacers under their command killed.

Julia knew that the Karnolian marine might be much shorter and smaller, but he was in heavy armor, holding a weapon, and she was not. She suppressed her instincts, exactly as she had been trained.

She repeated, “You can’t. There is no remote override.”

“I still don’t believe you.” Klarnoth picked another one of her colonists out of the crowd. One of the moonie construction robot operators. One of Lucas’s. “Tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth!” she insisted. “There is no way to disable it from here. What would it take to convince you—”

“Thirty of your dead colonists would convince me,” he said as he put his rifle to the moonie’s head. “Then, we can move on to question two. You get to decide how much you want to keep the secret. Five…”

Seeing no other option, Julia snorted coldly at the Karnolian. “That’s not even one of mine.”

“Four—What?”

“She’s a moonie. She’s not one of mine, idiot.”

Instead of getting angry at the insult, Klarnoth stopped counting and stared at her in confusion.

Sensing an opening, Julia explained, “You Karnolians have factions too, right?” She took another glance at the big blue flag on his shoulder. “You’re from Faction Blue?”

“Faction Blue?” Klarnoth asked incredulously. He rolled his eyes derisively as he pointed a claw at the flag on his shoulder. “Faction Blue? Are you colorblind? Don’t you see my flag?! We’re Faction Dark Blue!”

She suppressed her instinct to swallow too. “Right. Faction Dark Blue. We have factions too. You’re pointing your gun at a moonie. She’s not one of mine, stupid.”

He stared off to the side, into the distance, as if quietly consulting his radio. Or maybe he was just stunned by the revelation. Probably the former. After a few seconds, he said, “Oh. Right.” Then, he pointed his gun at another one of her colonists. “That’s one of yours?”

Julia shook her head. “Nope. Guess again. That’s a moonie too.”

Klarnoth’s rifle lowered as he pressed his paw to his helmet. This time, he was definitely on the radio. She could see his mouth move rapidly inside the helmet.

While they talked, Julia re-analyzed the situation. The Karnolians had a squad here. About eight or nine marines, she counted. Another one or two going around the rest of the colony, rounding up the rest of her people. They must have already neutralized the four marine guards she had at the armory; if anything, that would have been the first thing they did.

From the way they were threatening her and from what Klarnoth said, the plan seemed to be to try to figure out if they could disable the sabotage mechanisms remotely, before trying to negotiate for it with the colonists as hostages. That meant that the marines at the factory site were likely still operational. They just didn’t know the colony was under attack yet. Or if they did, they weren’t going to cross the open to try to rescue the colonists unless they were stupid.

But… she looked at the number of marines the Karnolians had.

There were only eight or nine, at most a dozen, running around in her colony. Even with their heavy battle armor—she’d gotten a taste of how durable they were earlier—a dozen wasn’t enough to control it for long. If most of her colonists were civilians, it might have been, but Dustball was no ordinary colony. Most of the moonies were former Lunar marines and spacers. A dozen marines was simply not enough.

She knew this because she’d been in many planning meetings back on Earth, running simulations and wargaming security breaches. How the moonies could take over. How they could take control of the radios, overpower the guards at the armory, overwhelm the supply landing pad. Which buildings they needed for good lines of sight, which vantage points could cut logistical routes, which roads needed to be curved to slow down VBIEDs…

Klarnoth had finally finished his talk with whoever was on the other end of his radio. He turned back to her crowd of colonists. “Which of you are not moonies?” he asked. “Raise your paws.”

Shockingly—and to Julia’s relief, none of her colonists were in a hurry to volunteer their hands. With some of her civilian scientists, you never knew.

Klarnoth made a disgruntled-sounding noise as he pointed his rifle at random, looking for Julia’s reaction. “This one? Or that one? Are you not a… moonie?”

Today, we are all moonies.

She kept her face neutral, refusing to look at the crowd of people she failed.

“Are you a moonie? What about you?”

A few seconds of the cruel exercise later, he gave up. He cocked his head. “I think it does not matter. If I start executing your people at random, some of them will be people in your faction that you care about. And I have plenty of your colonists.”

He pointed his rifle back at the original moonie. “Now, tell me the truth. How do I disable your sabotage machines? Five…”

Julia closed her eyes.

“Four…”

There was nothing else she could do. She’d failed. She had nothing, and they both knew it. And worse, she failed to convince the Karnolian that she was telling the truth. This was a no-win scenario. Like a prisoner being tortured for intelligence they didn’t have, all she could do was take the pain and wait for death.

“Three… Two…”

“Stop!” a shout rang out in the crowd.

She opened her eyes at the voice.

The familiar voice.

Samira.

“Stop! That’s one of my people,” Samira said, standing up in the crowd. “I’ll tell you how to do it.”

He stopped his countdown to gape at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m Samira. I’m the head of my faction here,” Samira replied proudly. “We own half of the Dustballium factory. I can tell you how to override our sabotage failsafe.”

Klarnoth looked… a mixture of surprised and excited. He pressed his paw to his radio again. This time, it was quick. “You are Samira Fardin, head of the—local supervisor of Faction Luna?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Your people made us an offer on the radio the other night. Are you going to honor it?”

“That offer was made by Faction Red…” He hesitated for a long moment. “But we will also honor it if you can guarantee the working foundry intact. No sabotage. If not, then we can give your people no guarantees. The lies end. And death it is.”

Julia turned to look at her uncertainly. “Samira… what is he talking about? What offer?”

Samira didn’t look at her. Instead, she stared Klarnoth in the eyes. “Deal. A working Dustballium foundry, for my people’s safety and for us to be allowed to remain in this colony. You won’t go back on your word?”

“Of course not! We are a people of honor, not like the juvenile clowns!” Klarnoth insisted. “Now tell us, how do we get in? How?!”

“Samira, don’t do it,” Julia warned. “He’ll betray you in a second—”

Samira turned to stare at her. “Betray us? Please. You narrow-sighted grounders see treachery everywhere. It’s just projection. That’s all your paranoia is.”

“They’ll kill your people too,” Julia begged. “They’ll massacre you after you give them what they want.”

“Like your ships massacred us in the Christmas battle of ‘77?” Samira snorted. “More grounder hypocrisy.”

Julia recalled the raid, the memory swirling in her head. She snarled angrily, “We didn’t start it. And if it weren’t for your 1158th Battalion marines, we would have painted the regolith of Luna red with the thin blood of you traitors and—oof!” She doubled over in pain as Klarnoth walked up to her and bashed her stomach with the butt of his rifle.

“Shut up, primitive!” Klarnoth ordered, then he looked back at Samira excitedly. “How do we disable the failsafes?”

“I have a radio coded to a special frequency that bricks the sabotage device. It’s in the admin hab.” Samira pointed at the distant building. “That one. Let me go grab it real quick.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not giving you a chance to escape. You’ll take me to it, and…” Klarnoth pointed a claw at one of his marines. “Four Claws, watch the prisoners. If any of them try to run, kill them all. And once we take out the… sabotage device… you know what to do.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thonk.

Crash.

Julia raised an eyebrow at the sounds but continued chowing down on her morning hash browns. Weird noises were a regular occurrence for the Dustball colony. There was always some construction project or scientific experiment going on.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

That… was not.

The high-pitched scream pierced her thoughts and jolted her awake like the full cup of coffee she hadn’t finished.

Thonk. Thonk. Thonk.

She ran to the windows of the mess hall. Civilians outside ran to-and-fro in full blown panic. Dozens streamed past.

Bang.

Something hit the ballistic-resistant window in front of her like a hammer, spiderwebs forming in it as it bounced off. A second later, there was a soft pop, and a cushion of white smoke blossomed from a dark cylindrical object on the ground outside the mess hall.

What in the…

Her vision drifted in the direction of the marines’ armory, a hundred meters away just down the street, only to see…

There were two armored figures in the street, each carrying a weapon. As she watched, one of them launched a projectile with another thonk. It hit one of the civilian scientists in the back as they ran. They crumpled to the ground, motionless.

She squinted into the figure’s faceplate, as if confirming something for herself. But she already knew what it was going to be before she even saw the insignia proudly displayed on their chest and shoulders.

Karnolian.

Karnolian marines. Two of them. And judging by the distant screaming sounds in the colony, it wasn’t just these two.

Aliens.

She felt…

Somewhat relieved, actually.

It was illogical, her subconscious knew. The colony was far better suited, far more prepared to deal with a moonie uprising than… whatever this was. But for some odd reason, she couldn’t stop that irrational sense of relief flooding into her guts.

Thonk. Thonk.

A squad of the aliens. At least. Maybe more.

She looked back at the carnage outside. The white smoke seemed to have some kind of incapacitating effect. She saw a woman slow down mid-sprint, hobbling for a few steps, before she collapsed into the gravel, coughing hard while rubbing her eyes.

She recognized the symptoms.

Tear gas.

Julia looked back up at the streets. The routes to the admin hab and armory were blocked off.

Where are my marines?!

Then, it occurred to her. Most of the marines were deployed up in the craters, near the Dustballium factory. It was cold-blooded to abandon the security of the colony, but when she couldn’t do both, it was only rational to try to protect the most valuable assets of humanity first.

Julia took a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe—

She stopped herself.

Her base was under attack. This was an attack.

Not a complex interstellar trade negotiation involving two, possibly three, hostile species. Not balancing her oath to Earth against the ultimate survival of the species.

A military attack.

This was what Julia was here for. Her self-doubt, built up for months, dissipated in less than an instant as her training took over, conscious effort not required.

Stop. Observe. Decide. Act.

If the aliens were taking the colony, they were likely here for hostages to trade for the Anomaly site. They’d rehearsed this before. The marines were given strict orders not to cave in or negotiate. There was a chance they’d violate their standing orders if they saw the civilians of the colony being massacred, but there wasn’t much she could do about that.

That was the first possibility. The second possibility was, the marines might be under attack simultaneously. Their position might have fallen already. That was more important.

She reached for her datapad.

“Colonel! Marcus! Are you there?” she called into it.

There was a brief moment where she thought he wouldn’t answer, then his face appeared on her screen. “Yes? Commodore?”

“Colonel, we’re under attack! The colony’s under attack by Karnolians. Contact Camel in orbit, launch your drones, and defend your positions. Do not mount a rescue attempt on the colony for any reason. Contact the other two species and threaten to scuttle if they don’t intervene. We’ve been through the plans.”

Marcus seemed to hesitate for a second, then replied, “Yes, Commodore. Drones are on the way. We’ll hold our positions and raise Camel. Don’t worry. We’ll follow the plan.”

Wait a minute.

“Colonel, authenticate, challenge: anvil.”

“Commodore?”

“Challenge: anvil. Authenticate with the word of the day.”

Marcus didn’t reply, just stared at the camera with glassy eyes.

Ah. Nice one, assholes.

They had gained control of her communication lines after all.

She switched the radio off.

The marines were supposed to put in a wired connection between the Anomaly site and the armory, but that project had been delayed for some other priority. On second thought, this was not some hasty operation. They’d gotten the radios. The armory had likely already fallen anyway, and unless the aliens were stupid, they were going to be watching that too.

All the firepower she had was inaccessible: a dozen kilometers away, in the hills with the marines. She immediately ruled out running for the Meerkat rovers. The aliens must have deployed in some kind of atmospheric landing shuttle, and driving a light rover armored to the equivalent of sheet metal across kilometers of open ground was suicide.

Even if the marines could help her, there was no way for her to contact them, besides hoping that the ships in Camel Squadron overhead would see what was going on and let the marines know. Or even better, provide fire support.

There was nothing she could do at the moment to influence that outcome.

On to the next priority: her colonists and herself.

She glanced out the window. One of the armored figures was heading her way now—strolling at a leisurely pace, almost. Their weapon was aimed at the door.

Julia looked around her. A small group of her civilian scientists were huddled around her, looking at her with fear in their eyes, as if expecting she was there to solve all their problems.

The mess hall didn’t have much in the way of defenses. All the actual weapons in the colony were in the armory, and the security of the entire Dustball project was designed around not having too many things that could be used as improvised weapons. In case the moonies were to try something. The most dangerous things she had access to in here were a bunch of prison-safe plastic meal trays and… her eyes fell on the bright red fire extinguisher attached to the wall.

Stop. Observe. Decide. Act.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thonk.

Four Claws Garbote marched down the main street of the primitives’ colony, launching his gas grenades at anything that moved.

Truthfully, he wasn’t that excited about this mission.

Garbote was a space marine trained for special operations. His duty was to carry out the most dangerous, most difficult jobs for his faction. And, if lucky, he’d have a chance in his life to be deployed to an alien planet for glorious war. Mostly against Sakvins. Hopefully against the Vorshnik clowns one day. That wasn’t something that had happened for a long time, but that could change any time, and he could dream. He lived and trained for the thrill of battle. Real battle.

Subjugating some random primitive colony out in the middle of nowhere with barely any armed defenders didn’t qualify. The riskiest part had been slipping past their ships and orbital defenses, and that excitement was for the pilots. And that turned out to be trivial anyway.

Thonk.

He watched another grouping of the primitives collapse to the ground from the gas. Not very sporting.

But whatever his personal thoughts, he was also a soldier. He did what he was ordered to. He approached the downed targets and efficiently slapped restraints on them one-by-one.

Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.

He counted the number of prisoners he’d taken in his head. As he went for number twenty-one lying flat on its belly, the human on the ground suddenly came alive. They turned over and swiped their leg at his in a quick motion. Faster than he could react.

Clunk.

If he wasn’t in his hard shell marine armor, he’d probably have fallen over. Instead, the human howled in pain as their ankle contacted solid metal.

Garbote sighed in disappointment at the lack of challenge, wishing for a moment that he could get out of his armor for a more even fight against this primitive. It looked big and strong, enough for a real brawl to the death. But that would violate his orders and thus his duty. He turned the writhing primitive over and fit a set of restraints on them before they could recover.

Twenty one.

He looked back up, at the scattered primitives in the streets, sprinting away from him while screaming. He let a group of them go, knowing that the rest of his squad down the street would take care of them.

Analyzing the colony’s structures, Garbote saw a building ahead of him with a strong thermal signature.

The structure might be alien, but the layout he could see through its windows was not.

Ah, the kitchen.

He approached it curiously and looked into its dark interiors through the windows. There were eight or nine frightened-looking primitives clustered inside, their main front door shut. By the looks of it, the humans had barred the inside of it with some thin, metal stick.

He knocked on the window and gestured at the humans inside to come out. A couple of them pointed at him in fear with their elongated claws, but they didn’t comply with his polite instruction.

Primitives. What can you do?

He sighed, took aim at the door with his motorized leg, diverted all his suit power to it, and gave it a good, hard kick.

Bang.

The door came off its hinges. Then, power to his arm motors, and he flung it aside.

Thonk.

He shouldered his launcher and sent an incapacitation gas grenade into the room. Their kitchen was bigger than most other compartments in the colony, but not big enough to hide from the gas inside. He waited a few seconds for the gas to fill the space.

Then, a few more.

Hmmm.

He frowned. The gas should have been filling up by now. At the very least, they should be coughing, if not running out of the enclosed room in pain and panic.

He went back to the window and peeked through it again. The primitives in there were still looking and pointing at him in fear. But definitely not coughing and crawling on the ground like they should be. And no smoke.

The gas grenade probably failed to activate. That happened from time to time.

Defective equipment. No matter. I’ll do it myself.

He stepped through the front door.

A lot of things happened very quickly.

First, he noticed an overturned, orange bucket in the middle of the room, wisps of white smoke leaking out around its edges. His subconscious realized that was how they got rid of his gas, but his conscious thoughts hadn’t quite caught up to that yet.

“Now!” he heard his translator squeak out into his left ear.

A stream of white foam flew at his faceplate, coating it with a sticky, opaque substance. Instinctively, his arm came up to block it, which did… nothing. Then, he tried to wipe the obscuration off, but that didn’t accomplish anything other than spread a thick smear across his vision. His training kicked in, and with a flick of his claws, he switched the visuals in his helmet to his backup exterior camera.

That worked.

Garbote regained his sight just in time to see a massive mess hall table rushing at him from his left.

Whooomp.

He raised his left arm to block it, activating its motors to resist the incoming pressure… then was astonished to see its motorized strength fail against no fewer than a dozen primitives shoving against the table in tandem with all their strength.

Crunch.

The large steel table squeezed him against the wall of the cafeteria, pinning both his arms against him and the structure. His launcher weapon clattered uselessly out of his grip onto the floor.

What in the name of the God of Battle?!

Garbote struggled to get out of the pin, using both his arm motors to try to create some space for him to escape the trap. His metallic joints strained against the table, applying a level of force that biological beings simply weren’t capable of resisting—

“Heave!” he heard the primitives scream in unison as they collectively pushed on the table.

Crunch.

The increased pressure crushed his left arm against his neck. If he weren’t wearing hard armor, he suspected they’d have instantly broken his arm, all his ribs, and probably his neck. Instead of dwelling on that alternative reality, he urged his armor to work harder to get him out of there.

One of his arm motors directed a complaint—something about overheating—into his helmet display. He dismissed it with a snarl and directed all the power in his armor back into it.

“Again!” the primitives yelled. “Heave!”

He struggled as he directed his leg motors to join in the fight with any spare power, trying to squeeze in any direction he could against the primitives’ table.

Any… direction… will… do…

Garbote’s legs gained some purchase as their motors activated, sliding the heavy table laterally even through the tension. Centimeter by centimeter, he slowly slid himself out of the jaws of the cursed primitive trap.

Then, a flash in his vision.

Thud.

One of the humans—a woman—swung a red, metallic cylinder into his armored faceplate.

It bounced right off, sending her off balance, sprawling to the ground.

Ears ringing, he laughed at her weak effort, still pushing himself out of the trap with his leg motors, centimeter by centimeter… until he saw her pick herself off the ground. He realized there was nothing stopping her from—

Thud.

The primitive swung again with the cylinder. This time, she braced herself and didn’t fall over. She swung again. And again.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Garbote was pretty sure that his faceplate was made of some tough metallic-ceramic composite, tougher than any armor the humans supposedly had according to his mission briefing. But it was head armor. It still had to be made of material that was light and thin enough to fit onto his head and still be operable in case the suit lost power.

It should be… strong enough, right?

Thud. Thud.

Right?!

“Again! Heave!”

His leg slipped as the group applied another burst of pressure. The table edge crushed him back into the wall, resetting the progress of his escape attempt.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

The primitive with the metal cylinder swung repeatedly at his faceplate. Then, the sound he really did not want to hear…

Crack.

A spiderweb crack appeared in his visor. He stressed his armor’s motors to their limits, still trying to squirm out of the absurd table trap to no avail.

Come on, come on.

Crack.

A tiny hole appeared in his digital vision. Luckily for him, the helmet armor was made to last. Even if a small section was breached, the overall armor integrity was still intact. It was designed to take quite a bit of abuse, and it would take far longer for the primitives to pry him out of there… At least none of them had any firearms. The first step of the plan was to take over their armory, and that part seemed to be working at least…

The human in front of him swung again.

Thud. Crack.

Another tiny hole in his faceplate. He desperately tried to squeeze his right arm free from the wall. Maybe he could stop the crazy primitive with the cylinder to buy himself some more time…

Just… a… little… more…

Thud. Thud. Crack.

Yet another dented hole, a little bigger than the other two. He could taste the dry local air flooding into his nostrils from outside. If he wasn’t fighting for his life, he’d swear whatever was in the kitchen smelled delicious.

“Heave!”

Calming himself, Garbote analyzed his tactical situation a little more dispassionately. If he exerted force in the right direction, in between the primitive group’s heaves, he calculated he should have enough time to get out from under the table. All he needed was for them to get a little more tired, a little weaker in their pushes, and once he detected the weakness, he could overpower them with his mechanical strength. He had more battery than they had stamina; that was the point of one of these suits.

And his helmet should protect him for long enough. It would take a lot more hits to create an opening that the primitives could reach through—

Wait, what are you doing?

The woman had dropped her metal cylinder. With a crazed-looking grin, she wrapped a wet rag around her nose and mouth, tying it with a knot behind her head.

Huh?

Then, she turned her back and bent down to the overturned orange bucket on the ground. The bucket with faint white smoke still slowly leaking out its side.

Wait… Oh. No! No! No! No! No! Ahhhhh!

He realized what she was going to do, about a second before she picked up and quickly doused the bucket with his own live gas grenade, right over his breached helmet.

In the Union Navy bootcamp, there was a basic training exercise nicknamed “the gas chamber”. It was a confidence exercise, to teach recruits to trust their NBC gear to protect them against chemical weapons.

First, the recruits would don their gas masks. Then, they would enter a sealed room with some activated tear gas. They would stay in there as a platoon for as long as the instructors needed to confirm that their masks were properly fitted. And finally, the recruits would take off their gas masks, and they would have to recite their names, ranks, and Union Navy serial numbers before they could leave the tear gas chamber.

For some, it was an unpleasant experience; for others, excruciating, or even debilitating.

Exposure to tear gas was no joke. Even for just a few seconds. And the gas chamber exercise used up about one or two tear gas grenades’ worth of spiciness, for the whole room.

Poor Garbote breathed in nearly the entire dose of his riot control grenade, all by himself, as its chemical irritants rushed into the cracks and holes in his faceplate.

He lasted two whole panicked breaths before he went into shock.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Julia carefully rinsed the residual effects of the nasty chemicals from her nose under the water tap.

“Commodore?” one of the civilians peeked into the kitchen.

She dried her face. “Yeah?”

“The alien soldiers are outside. They’ve surrounded us.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” she said, picking up her fire extinguisher again as she approached her small captive, now peeled out of his marine armor. She picked him up and dragged him to the door, staring at the alien marines lined up outside as fiercely as she could with tears and snot still running down her cheeks uncontrollably. She put her back to the wall and shouted at them, “Who is in charge over there?”

One of them stepped forward, his armor boosting his voice. “I am Six Claws Klarnoth. Primitive leader Julia Kessler, you have one of my marines there?”

“Yeah.” She coughed twice as she peeked out at the streets again. The Karnolians had subdued and restrained a few dozen of her colonists, neatly lined up in rows next to them. “We’ve got him in… custody. What do you want, Six Claws Klarnoth?”

“First, I want you to release my marine. And if you do not,” Klarnoth said, pointing his rifle—a lethal looking one this time—at one of her captured scientists. “I will start executing your people, one-by-one, until you release or kill him.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Would you mind telling me what you guys were talking to the Karnolians about a couple nights ago? I can’t help but—”

Lucas snorted. “… spy on us? Typical.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “I was going to say: I can’t help but wonder what you’re chatting about. You guys were talking for quite a while, huh? Hours.”

“Oh, fine… I’ll let you in on the secret: we were just having a Star Wars watch party,” he replied casually.

Her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“No. Not at all.”

“For… thirteen hours?!”

Lucas shrugged. “After we finished with the original trilogy, they insisted we show them the prequels too.”

“That’s—yeah, okay, I guess that would add up to about thirteen hours,” she said slowly as she did the estimates in her head.

“Yeah. They were pretty disappointed that the Ewoks didn’t show up again. I think that was their favorite part. Probably reminds them of themselves.”

“Hm… You know they made two other standalone movies with the Ewoks, right?”

“I—no? What?!” Lucas sputtered.

She nodded seriously. “Look it up. They should be in the colony’s vast content library.”

“Standalone… Ewok movies… Are they… any good?”

“God, no. They’re aggressively terrible movies. But who knows? They’re aliens. Maybe they’ll love them.”

“We’ll… see about that.” He stared at her for a moment, then tilted his head. “So… what happened back in Sol?”

She was surprised by the question but feigned ignorance. “Hm? What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t be asking me about our talks with the aliens that openly if you weren’t desperate for answers. And your marines have been very, very busy since the resupply shuttle landed… We notice these things, grounder. So there are only two options: either your people have ordered you to do something stupid, in which case you wouldn’t bother to ask me questions, or something big happened back in Sol.”

Julia considered lying to him. Considered telling him that everything was fine back home.

That’s what they would do if they were in my shoes, or maybe—

“There’s been a shooting,” she blurted out. “In Serenity. Assassination… attempt on your prime minister. Possibly… Probably.”

“What?”

“State of the Alliance speech. Someone took a shot at your—your Prime Minister Farid.”

He didn’t react how she expected. She didn’t know what she expected, but it was certainly not… nothing.

Lucas’s calm face betrayed no emotion as he said, “I see. You said assassination attempt. Was it… successful?”

She shook her head. “We don’t know. The shuttle left right as it was happening. In fact, it was delayed by two hours, and if it had not been, we wouldn’t have gotten the news this resupply cycle.”

“I see,” he repeated.

“All we have is the recorded live feed from your news services. I can show you…”

Julia carefully watched his face as she played the video for him on her datapad.

Shocked? Angry? Excited?

She couldn’t tell.

“Well?” she asked as the video finished. “Do you… know who it is?”

“What?! You think I just… know every face on Luna?! You know there are like over two hundred and fifty million residents on Luna, right?”

“You know what I mean. Which group’s responsible.”

He shrugged. “I know about as much as you do.”

“We didn’t do it. It wasn’t us.”

That one took him a little longer to process. But after a pause, he nodded reluctantly. “You grounders don’t have the balls for something like that.”

She let the insult slide. “Maybe it’s one of those LLF nutjobs?” she asked, still carefully watching his reaction.

“Maybe. But there’s no need for you grounders to always just jump to conclusions about us—It could be anyone, okay?”

“The colony… do you think that they might… have people here?” she asked.

“No.” Lucas shook his head insistently.

“No what?”

“No, the LLF does not have a cell on Dustball.”

“How—how do you know?” she asked.

“I just know.”

“Samira once told me that—”

“She probably told you what you wanted to hear. To satisfy your paranoia. There is nothing up our sleeves, nothing at all.”

“What about Samira herself? She seems to have become distant lately. She’s mixed in with a few people, like that LIA character—”

“Are you surveilling her?”

“Yes, but it’s not personal. We’re surveilling everyone at the colony for its security, including our own people.”

“That’s—look, I told you I would help you with messages, but I’m not going to spy on my people for you, grounder. I’m no Union collaborator.”

“This is serious, Lucas. Is the Lunar Liberation Front on Dustball now? Is Samira part of it? Is she that far gone? We know that you have LIA operatives and former Lunar Navy—”

His jaw tightened. “Yes, some of us fought in the war. Many of us. So did you. But the people who killed—who might have tried to kill our prime minister… you think we’d want them in our colonies?!”

“No, but how would you know if—”

“We were all vetted extensively for this mission. All of us were,” he insisted. “You knew Samira. She trusted you.”

“And then I broke that trust.”

“Yes, you did.”

“So you’re saying that she might have the motive to try something violent—”

“No. No, not at all.” Lucas shook his head. “Listen, grounder. Samira would never join the LLF, not while her parents are still alive.”

“But what if—”

“And that is just something… you’re going to have to trust me on, grounder.”

Julia stared at him, quiet for a full minute. She sighed. “I wish it were that easy.”

“I wish it were too.”

They both just stared across the table at each other silently for a full minute.

Lucas broke it with a sigh. “What are you going to do?”

He was polite enough to not phrase his actual question: how are you going to overreact?

She answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

He grunted, then nodded his head. “Good.”

“Good?” She looked at him for a moment, then understood what he meant. “What about you? What are you and your people going to do?”

“I don’t know either.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Brussels

William Weber stood up and, with a wave gesture, brought up a preliminary three-dimensional rendering of the reconstructed scene on the table. “Gunman in the 24th row. From our sources on the ground, his first shot shattered the bulletproof glass, obstructing his vision for his subsequent shots. The structural integrity of the hull held. Then, one of their marines took him out. That’s what the last few shots were. The gunman’s second bullet deflected off the glass and hit one of his advisors. She’s in critical condition at the hospital. And a few in the crowd are being treated for injuries from the stampede.”

“Was the shooter… one of ours?” President Salma Haldar asked uneasily.

“Fortunately not. Was a second generation Luna-born.”

“Good, good. Whew.” Salma breathed a sigh of relief, then looked around. “I mean, it’s not good that someone took a shot at their—”

“I understood, ma’am,” Will said with a hint of a smile on his face. “The Lunar Republic liaison sent us an urgent message earlier, informing us that Farid was still in control and their military forces were… I quote… ahem, standing ready to face any challenge and deal with any threat, foreign or domestic.”

Salma rolled her eyes. “Right, so we don’t try anything in the uncertainty. As if we’re eager to wade into that mess again after the last few years. They can have all the fun they want up there.”

Will swiped for another slide. “The Serenity Index is down four points in after hours trading. We expect a dip when the market opens in New York tomorrow morning.”

“Great. Fantastic,” she said sarcastically. “They sneeze up on the moon, and we catch a cold down here.”

“Our experts expect that recovery should be relatively swift, as long as the situation doesn’t worsen.”

“Yeah, and that last part’s carrying a whole lot of water for our markets right now. Big if.”

“Right. But my money’s on them being right. His Cabinet ministers closed ranks immediately. The Lunar colonies all called Farid to express sympathies, outrage, all that jazz. From what we heard, the Governor of Tranquility is calling for a LLF crackdown. Total purge, was the phrase leaked to the media. She’s going to take the demand public next week if Parliament doesn’t fund a formal investigation. And we know that she’s close with Farid. Their relationship’s personal, and this attack feels… different. This is a big moment for them, for what kind of place they want Luna to be.”

“Finally. Maybe this kick in the butt is what will make them take their persistent extremist threat seriously,” Salma speculated.

“We can dream. In the meantime,” Will said, turning off the slides. “The State Department is drafting a response.”

Salma winked. “Express sympathies, condemn the attack, with a generous offer of assistance we know they’ll decline?”

“More or less. With a slight tinge of the typical Union arrogance aimed at their immature political system. You know, the usual.” Will smiled at his own joke. “There is a silver lining, at least. It’s not a bad time for us to remind the public of the general threat posed by radical moonies. Makes us look good to voters when we straddle that delicate balance. The message is simple: we don’t want another war, but we’re not blind to reality.”

“General threat, huh? They’re not shooting up my speeches.”

“Not yet, ma’am. But the Union Guard informed me they’ll beef up the security for your events for the next few weeks too. In case of copycats.”

“Great. More security… Is this going to affect their upcoming elections?”

“Likely, but which way is… uncertain. We can’t know the downstream political effects of this, not yet. It might embolden the radicals. It might rally support for the incumbents. Our models for their politics are still shaky. And it’s hard to extrapolate when they’ve only had one Lunar-wide election since the war.”

“Yeah, and what happened last time… not exactly something that inspires a whole lot of confidence in their stability.”

Will winced. “We weren’t exactly… yeah, that was a—that was a moment. I mean, we get to make fun of them for it now, but that could have been… bad.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. At least their response then was decisive. Let the—let people know where they stood, I guess…” Salma’s voice trailed off as she recalled that live broadcasted humiliation of the Lunar Republic. For some in the Union, it felt cathartic watching them struggle to find their footing after the armistice, but she knew better. On that day, they got a glimpse of the alternative to the current government on Luna. And the alternative was… not better.

“Are you suggesting we should have a stronger response at this point or—”

“I’m concerned about our Dustball project. Whoever takes power up there next January, we have no idea whether they’d honor our preexisting agreements. Like Dustball colony. How’s that going, by the way?”

Will checked his datapad. “Another return shipment from Dustball arrived successfully last night. No disturbances there yet. They’re on the lookout for anything similar. As for the contents of the shuttle, our scientists are going wild over that Dustballium stuff. The moonies’ are too. Maybe too excited. Lots of talk about it in places they think we’re not looking.”

“At least someone is having fun. Where are we on that funding proposal for a joint scientific project to study the alien metal? What’s with the naming anyway?’”

“The aliens call it Precursor Metal, but we sell it as Dustballium. It’s a branding thing; not important until you think it is, and we think it is. The funding for the joint project is… making its way through the Assembly. We’re hoping to keep it quiet enough to slip into the defense omnibus without any amendments, but it definitely can’t be called the Imbrium Joint Project. Our people can’t have those attack ads hanging over them in the upcoming special elections.”

“That’s what they want to call it?!”

“They said it’s their analogy to the Manhattan Project—We’ll agree on a new name.”

Salma stood up as she prepared to go to her next meeting. “Excellent. Let’s keep it up. More of these opportunities, as many as we can seize.”

“Yes, ma’am. Peace through cooperation?”

She smirked as she recalled the phrase her critics recently coined mockingly. “Peace through sunk cost fallacy. Like that Dustball colony, don’t you know?”

Will scowled at the reference. “You know that only millennials and zoomers still watch late night comedians for political satire, right? I swear, that whole format is going away when they all die off in a few years.”

Salma wagged a finger at him with a wide grin. “Millennials and zoomers? Watch yourself! That’s nearly two billion esteemed elders of our most reliable voting bloc you’re talking about there!”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Warlock to Tiger-4! The moonies have launched! I say again, thirty-five plus launch flares detected on infrared!”

“CIC identifies vampires as Spearfish-class, 80% confidence and climbing. Verified inbound trajectory!”

“Tiger-4… Not this again.” Julia sighed, her breath fogging the inside of her visor. She instantly recognized the telltale marks of the frequent nightmare.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. And out.

“Garbled feed from the Antarctic PAWS Array…” Tara’s voice trailed off as Julia unbuckled from her crash seat.

The straps released themselves. She slid down onto the cold hull plating next to her command seat.

Tara looked at her questioningly. “Commander?”

Hiss.

Julia’s fingers fumbled at the latch of her helmet. With a sharp twist, she freed it from her vacuum suit. The blurred world bent around her, her hair lifting in some artificial breeze. The helmet thunked softly against the deck when she set it down.

It was odd. She knew she was supposedly in near-vacuum. It was condition zebra. The ship atmosphere should have been pumped out for their safety.

Her throat expected frostbite. Her lungs expected fire.

Nothing happened.

Sometimes the nightmare killed her right away and woke her up. This time, her brain just… let her be. Curious, maybe, about what she would do. She didn’t really know. Then again, perhaps that was a tautological truth.

Screens flared and blinked around her, their light washing across her bare face. She sat there a long while, numb. Staring. The ship’s engines hummed like a low heartbeat beneath her.

“Commander, are you alright?” Tara asked, staring down at her in concern.

Somehow she could hear her voice through the lack of air. The wrongness of it should have wrenched her awake. But no. Her head never worked that way.

Another sigh, heavy. She patted the floor next to her twice. “Come take a seat, Tara.”

“But… the moonies. We have to defend the ship. And then we have to kill the moonies. Get them all,” Tara replied earnestly. “They killed me, remember?”

“Just… come sit here and… Just sit here.”

“Okay…” The ghost hesitated, then drifted over, magnetic boots clinking faintly on the hull, and lowered herself down beside Julia. “What’s wrong, Commander? Are you alright?”

No. No, I’m not.

Her brain refused to let up. “Why not?” Tara asked.

“I just want to talk.”

Tara looked at Julia quizzically for a moment, then shrugged as she removed her own helmet. A few strands of her brown hair spilled onto Julia’s shoulders. “Alright. What do you want to talk about? Have you heard about the new Spearfish-II missiles they’ve been experimenting with at—”

That was exactly what Tara would have said. Minus the part about the new generation moonie missiles. Those were from the last days of the war. After Tara was killed. Her subconscious didn’t care much about avoiding such anachronisms.

“It’s my nightmare,” Julia cut her off. “So we’ll talk about what I want to talk about. And I don’t want to talk about that.”

“What do you want, Commander?”

“I… don’t know.” Her next words caught in her throat. After a long pause, she forced them out. “Why did we go to war with the moonies? Why did we fight them? What was it all for?”

Tara smiled at her gently. “Why fight the moonies? Why not? They shot first.”

“Yeah, but why them?”

Tara’s smile softened, her dimples deepening in the dim glow. “Who else should we fight instead?”

“I don’t know… the Canadians?”

Tara laughed. She was so beautiful. And so young and innocent. “You’re American. You guys love the Canadians. To us not from your continent, we can’t even tell the difference other than those little flags you have by your names on the ship roster. Why would you want to fight them?”

“Don’t let them hear you say—And the moonies—they aren’t so different from us either, are they?”

“They call us grounders, you know?” Tara’s voice hardened with her hazel colored eyes. “They think we’re not as good as them. The Green Crater massacre. You seen those videos? They just rounded up a bunch of us, bunch of us Earth-borns into one of their craters, then made them take off their helmets in vacuum. The children, too. There was one girl, she was just eight or nine—they’re animals.”

Julia shivered. “Yeah, but that was only a few of their crazies. And we do some fucked up things to them too.”

“That’s just the war, isn’t it, Commander?”

She shook her head slowly, feeling more of Tara’s long hair brush against her face. “I guess it is. I guess—But they really aren’t that different from us. They wake up. They go to school. They go to work. They go shopping. They have elections. They’re like us. Why don’t we fight one of those actually screwed up places? One of those places back on Earth, where they don’t even have electricity. Where they hang twelve-year-old kids for stealing water or whatever. Where was that place again? Congo? We should team up with the moonies and beat them up instead. We’d wreck them in a week.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we would.”

Something wasn’t right. Didn’t sound right.

“Easily.”

She noticed the voice change next to her. Richer, deeper, older. The smell changed too—from nothing to something like burnt metal. She knew the smell.

Julia turned her head.

Samira.

If this was the first time it happened, she’d be surprised. But this had become so frequent, she almost expected it. She just stared.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The air felt thicker now, warmer.

Samira gave a short snort beside her. “Hypersonic cruise missiles to take out their airbases, if they even have those. Combined arms assault with heavy orbital and air cover. Ground combat operations aimed at the capital; cut off highway access connecting rural areas; peacekeeper robots to deal with the ensuing insurgency for minimal political fallout. Would their old intermediate rounds even penetrate your marine armor? Doubt it. Not to mention ours. Maybe the faceplate if they get a lucky angle. Yeah, we’d fuck them up so bad.”

God. That’s… not her. That’s me. That’s my own brain talking.

“I can’t believe I’m tactically analyzing the feasibility of invading a sovereign Union state on the sole basis that things kind of suck there,” she muttered.

Samira’s image smirked. “You’re a grounder. War. Violence. That is what you do. For hundreds of years. Thousands. It’s what you’re good at.”

“And you moonies are so above it all.”

Samira laughed. And Julia let her; it was a melodic laugh, free of the sarcasm or bitterness she expected. Just like Tara’s. “Yeah. We are, aren’t we? We literally are above it all in your night sky. And every time we look back at Earth, we see almost all of our species’ history. It’s all there. Gives us a bit of a different perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe. Maybe it does. Maybe your people are just morally superior to ours. Unconstrained by our gravity and our grounded perspective.”

“Maybe we are. Gravity is destiny, after all.”

Like one of those posters they had, back in the day.

Join us on Luna! Inside every human being, there is a Lunar Dream waiting for you!

Julia shot her a side-eye. “Or… maybe there is no better. The only better is whatever you can achieve with force.”

“Might makes right.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

“Ah, the moral nihilism sets in. There’s that short-sighted grounder in you. Again.”

She stared into Samira’s eyes for a long moment, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Samira. I really am. About trying to screw you over. Personal, or not, it was wrong.”

Samira raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“It was stupid. Wasn’t even rational. Not even for my planet. For my people.”

“That’s what I said!”

“You wouldn’t have done the same if you were in my boots.”

“No. Probably not. Maybe not.”

“So… there. I said it.”

Samira gave her an expression of amusement. “Now you just have to say that to the real me and not just a figment of your imagination. And maybe I’d forgive you.”

“I wish things were just… all that simple.”

“Sometimes… they are.”

“Yeah.” Julia looked down at the floor. “Maybe.”

There was a long lull, or at least it felt like a long lull in her dream. Time didn’t feel quite the same in her own head.

Samira asked, “Do you miss her?”

“Hm? Who?”

“Tara. Do you miss her?”

“I do.”

Samira looked at her gently. “Did you love her?”

“Yeah, I did. In some ways like a daughter. In others, like a little sister.”

“Do you want her back now?”

“Hm?”

“I’m your brain, after all. I can turn into anything you want while you’re here. I can change back into her.”

Julia stared at Samira’s face for a moment, contemplating the absurdity of negotiating terms and conditions with her own brain. “I—No, you’re fine.”

“Cool.” Samira closed her eyes and sidled closer, leaning on her shoulders.

“I’m tired,” Julia said as she leaned back. “It’s… been a long day. I just want to take a nap. I just want a good, long night’s sleep…”

Yawn.

“Good night, Julia,” Samira murmured.

The bright lights around her bled away into nothing.

A good night’s sleep.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Julia woke up late, after nine. It was Saturday, and Harry let her sleep.

Still, it felt odd, waking up at the same time as most of the civilians in the colony. She hurriedly jogged over to the mess hall to grab a quick breakfast.

Which was why she was in there when the shooting started.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“That’s… very cool, Doctor Clement,” Julia said politely, trying her best not to tune out the geologist as she explained some new find. She knew by now that if Cynthia had something actually interesting and relevant, she would eventually get around to it.

“Indeed. So that’s how we know all the other craters were likely formed around the same time without even having to sample them!”

“Fascinating.”

Cynthia paused to look up at her. “You seem… distracted, Commodore.”

“Sorry,” Julia apologized with a stifled yawn. “It’s… I’ve got a lot on my mind lately.”

They’d known each other long enough for her not to be offended. “I see. I can… come back another time.”

“It’s fine… It’s just… the moonies.”

Cynthia stiffened slightly at their mention but seemed to force herself to relax. “Them. What’s their problem now?”

“Hm? Their problem?” Julia asked. “No, no. It’s actually something else. I’m—It’s a problem of trust. I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about it lately.”

“Trust.”

She nodded. “Trust. About whether I should trust the moonies. Whether they can be trusted to work with us. And the aliens too. Whether they can be trusted to fulfill their ends of any potential agreement… What do you think?”

Cynthia looked at her in mild surprise. “What do I think?”

“Yeah. Trust. How do you trust anyone? Or anything?”

“I trust my rocks,” the geologist said with a small smile. “As for people… I’m afraid that’s your field, not mine.”

“Yeah? Your rocks never lie to you?”

Cynthia shook her head. “Never.”

“How do you know? Where do you get such faith?”

“Because, Commodore, it’s not faith,” Cynthia said. “It’s record. Track record.”

“Yeah?”

The geologist smiled. “There was a joke I heard about thrice a year from my students. A teacher is taking her class through the Natural History Museum and they pass by a gigantic model of a dinosaur in the lobby. She asks the tour guide: hey mister, how old is this dinosaur skeleton? The tour guide thinks for a bit, and he replies: it is sixty-five million and fourteen years and three months old. Wow, that’s amazing, the astonished teacher says, how is it that you can tell with such precision? Do you know the rocks where it came from? Did you do carbon dating on them?”

Julia couldn’t help but wink back at the geologist, echoing her own words. “And the tour guide says: of course not, carbon-dating only works out to a few thousand years. Good for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but not for anything older than that. We used measurements of potassium isotope decay.”

“Exactly!” Cynthia beamed back. “Nah, the tour guide replies confidently, when I first came here, they told me the model was sixty-five million years old. And I’ve been here for fourteen years and three months.”

“Hah, I’ve always wondered just how precise those measurements can get. There’s got to be some healthy amount of guesswork involved when it’s tens of millions of years old, right?”

“Guesswork?” Cynthia shook her head. “You know where I’m from, Commodore? From my file.”

Julia tilted her head. “France, right? That was before you worked on Mars for a while.”

“Yes. Before that. I was born in a small town, a commune, in southern France called Pierrelatte.”

“Pierrelatte. Pierrelatte. Love the name. Rolls right off the tongue. Sounds familiar,” Julia said politely.

“It is—you are unlikely to have heard of it before, except maybe in one of our files. It’s a tiny town. However, you have probably heard of the facility nearby, Tricastin.”

“Ah, yes. Tricastin. The place where they make our bombs and laserhead missiles. The moonies sent a few crazies to try to sabotage it during the war, if I recall correctly.”

“Yes, it’s the headquarters for the Union’s Energy Commission.”

The Energy Commission, which was the polite and friendly way of saying, the department of creating and maintaining nuclear weapons.

“That’s where you’re from?”

“More or less. The site used to make nuclear weapons for France. My grandparents worked there. Now, it makes nuclear weapons for the whole of the Union. A century ago, back in 1972, scientists at Tricastin found something strange. They were doing regular inspections on their supply of uranium hexafluoride, a compound used for enriching uranium, when they discovered that some of the samples had an unusually low concentration of uranium-235.”

“That’s… concerning. Highly concerning.”

“Oh?” Cynthia looked at her in surprise. “Yes, it was. But why would you say that?”

“Because U-235—that’s the good stuff, right? Low concentration, so I’d assume someone managed to steal some of it before it got to the facility. Who were the French fighting in 1972? Algerians?”

“I think… that whole thing was before that time. France was relatively peaceful back in the 1970s, but the rest of the world was not. So yes, isotope theft was a major concern, that someone in the supply chain had nefariously diverted some of it to secretly make nuclear weapons in other countries. They traced the problem back to a uranium mine in central Africa, the Oklo mine in Gabon. And they found that the concentration of uranium-235 at the mine was much less than you would expect from normal uranium ore. And when they dug around more, they discovered even more unusual clues. Certain isotopes of neodymium and ruthenium at the site were elevated.”

“Neodymium and ruthenium?” Julia furrowed her brows. “Someone had detonated a nuclear weapon right there at the mine? At a mine? That makes no sense.”

“That’s—” Cynthia stopped and looked at her for a long moment. “Sometimes I forget how… uneven our public education system is.”

“Uneven?”

“I would not have expected you to know so much about… such niche topics in nuclear physics.”

Julia smirked. “Heh. Me neither. But my understanding of nuclear weapons is not a byproduct of the Union education system.”

“Ah, the Navy. The war.”

“Yes, it’s in almost all of our weapons, especially later in the war when we realized just how useless everything else was when the enemy was so far away. So anyway… uranium in Gabon. Who blew up a nuclear weapon there?”

Cynthia smiled. “Nobody.”

“What about all the isotopes and the—”

“There was a sustained nuclear fission reaction at Gabon,” Cynthia said.

Julia nodded knowingly. “Like an old power plant.”

“Exactly, like a fission plant. But… there were no nuclear power plants in the area. There weren’t even any on the entire continent at the time. The fission reaction happened 1.7 billion years ago.”

“1.7 billion years ago?! Wait. Is this—are you talking about the Precursors? They were on Earth?!”

“No. Not at all. The reaction in Gabon—it was completely natural.”

“The rocks just… did that.”

“Yup. The rocks just did that. It was a set of completely unique geologic conditions; the high uranium concentration, the groundwater acting as a neutron moderator, the way that the fractures in the ground were oriented to let the water seep in, the increasing oxygen content of the Earth at the time… Then, it happened.” Cynthia gestured with her hands in waves. “The water comes in, the nuclear reaction starts, boils the water away, the reaction stops. Then, more water comes in, and it starts again. Every three hours, in and out. For a few hundred thousand years, there was a completely natural nuclear reactor in Gabon, heating and boiling water with the power of Prometheus—all this before any humans had ever been born.”

“Every three hours?”

“Every three hours. We calculated that from the xenon gas isotopes trapped near the site. Thirty minutes of reactions, then two and a half hours to cool down and for the water to flow back in. At a small uranium ore site in Gabon, 1.7 billion years ago. Because that… is what geology gives you: the tools to determine what happened on Earth billions of years ago, down to the hour, sometimes down to the minute. As you can see, no faith required.”

“Impressive. Very impressive,” Julia said after a long moment. “And has this happened anywhere else? Another site? Maybe on another planet?”

“Yes, actually,” Cynthia said, eyes lighting up in excitement. “On Mars. There’s this—”

Julia stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Huh. That’s odd. Shouldn’t that be unlikely on Mars, especially given the timing?”

Instead of annoyance at her interruption, Cynthia’s excitement actually grew. “Wait! Yes! But why would you say that?”

“Because uranium-235 is always decaying. And Mars is about the same age as the Earth, so the event would have to be around the same time as Gabon, right? And oxygen. They wouldn’t have the oxygen and water, because their atmosphere would have been gone a long time before that.”

Cynthia stared at her for a good few heartbeats. “Oui—yes, that is… right. How—” She blinked twice. “Yes. That is… all true. And scientists were befuddled by why we found some signs on Mars that indicated it was possible a natural reactor had been present. There were craters, gas samples, and there was even some speculation that an uncontrolled criticality event—an actual, natural nuclear explosion, like a bomb—had taken place north of Acidalia Colles.”

Julia exhaled hard. “Indeed. When you eliminate the impossibilities, the only question would be how. There would need to be some geological mechanism for uranium concentration. Some way to oxidize it so that the uranium becomes soluble without widespread oxygen in the atmosphere. That’s the only plausible way to explain all the observations.”

“What? How—how do you—”

She stroked her chin. “Perhaps… some pockets of perchlorate-rich regolith. Or maybe large impact events that melted the crust, serving as potential pathways for fluid flow.”

The geologist goggled at her, mouth half-open.

Julia just looked back at her innocently.

It took Cynthia a long few seconds. “You… read my paper,” she stated. “You read my first PhD thesis paper.”

Julia broke out into a sly grin. “Uranium Concentration and Natural Fission Potential in the Early Martian Crust. By some young geology student from a little-known French town with a name that sounds like an artisanal coffee order.”

Cynthia buried her face in her hands. “You—I thought I was going crazy! What the hell?”

“Ahahahaha! Ahahahahaha!”

“Okay, okay. It’s not that funny. I get it now. You read all our files and—”

“Ahahahahah! How uneven the Union education system is. I can’t—I can’t! Ahahaha!” Julia wiped tears from the edge of her eyes.

With her face in her hands, Cynthia couldn’t help but join in the chuckling.

It took them both a while to recover. “You…” Cynthia jabbed a finger in her direction. “You have been spending too much time with the Vorshnik aliens.”

“I have, haven’t I?” she asked merrily. “It’s only fair I pass on some of that joy from Shachos.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Not merely a collection of settlements, not merely a coalition of domes and stations scattered across the surface of beautiful Luna…”

Lunar Prime Minister Farid, dressed in stylish Lunar gray, looked down at his prepared speech in front of the massive crowd in the lobby of Serenity Interplanetary Spaceport. Not everyone could pull it off, the Lunar gray, but it went with his eyes. He had the right look for it.

Usually the moonies held their formal events of state in their rebuilt parliament building, but this was no ordinary speech. This was their annual State of the Alliance speech. By tradition, it was held at the site of the first major victory of what they referred to as the Lunar War for Independence.

It was only day two of the uprising. The spaceport was controlled by Union peacekeepers at the time. Some had defected or deserted; some were evacuating with the civilian passengers. And a few stood their ground, knowing this was likely Earth’s last stand on its Lunar colonies.

For that same reason, the Lunar leadership wanted the spaceport. Badly. Its control would strand the remaining Union peacekeepers near Serenity, scattered units that were just beginning to consolidate after the chaotic events of the day prior. Paramilitary Lunar troops, many of whom had just swarmed and taken control of the Union’s armories, emerged from their hidden cells and converged on the hardened semi-military structure.

The moonies’ stories told of legendary feats. A brave and glorious army that rose up from the regolith and beat back the mighty Union. In reality, it was a bunch of untrained kids hopped up on go-pills, throwing themselves at the prepared defenses like mindless lemmings, hoping that the marines defending the facility would run out of ammunition and supplies before the attackers ran out of bodies. The barrels of their machine guns and autocannons on the exterior glowed red with heat, their massive radiators shredded by small arms fire in the first minutes of battle. The defenders resorted to literally pulling the thermal cooling loops from spare suits—or in some cases, the suits of their dead comrades—and wrapping them around the gun barrels to keep them from melting.

The Union Naval Marines held the site for ten hours. For ten hours, they shuttled emergency supplies and troops from their stations in Lunar orbit under fire. Their forward orbital control recon units called in heavy artillery on endless waves of enemy troops approaching the isolated station through the open, expansive Lunar landscape.

Then, orders came down from the Lunar leadership. Survival of the spaceport facilities was optional. The captured artillery pieces on Serenity Hills began firing. The defensive close in weapon systems that were only ever intended to intercept sporadic mortar fire from small insurgent cells were quickly overwhelmed. Shells hit, and they hit accurately, blowing out the ballistic glass panels throughout the spaceport, exposing its hallways and lobbies to vacuum.

They depressurized the spaceport. Hundreds of civilians were still trapped or evacuating, and the moonies depressurized the spaceport.

A few air pockets survived, and some of the Union Naval Marine defenders still had backup oxygen, but they were quickly trapped as they retreated into the interior of the spaceport. Exposed to vacuum and with indirect fire pounding their strongholds to bits, the constant machine gunfire slowed to a stop as Lunar troops streamed into the ruins of the spaceport. By the twelfth hour, the Lunar Alliance was confident enough in its victory for its leaders to rover in to celebrate in its massive lobby.

Hence, the tradition. The State of the Alliance speech would always be held there, in front of the crowds of Lunar residents and citizens, some of whom helped bring about its independence.

“We are not a union of blood, nor of soil, nor of regolith. We are a union of ideals,” the prime minister said, raising a fist with passion. “An alliance built upon our common dreams and shared hopes! A people, not of one nation, but from the best of all nations. Our inheritance, not just a windfall of property or money, but of something greater than all of us. Of the ideals that make us greater than the sum of our parts—”

“Booooo!” a voice in the crowd shouted. “Out! Out! Out! Farid out now!”

As the cameras panned to the dissenter, he attempted to unfold a large poster before two security guards grabbed his arms. The protester continued to struggle and chant his slogan as the guards escorted him out of sight.

The crowd cheered to drown him out. “Luna! Luna! Luna!”

Prime Minister Farid looked barely flustered. He acknowledged the interruption with a quick wink as the cheers died down. “Ideals… such as the freedom to yell at your own elected politicians, not unaccountable Union bureaucrats in Brussels.”

The crowd cheered again, with some chuckles to dispel the tension.

He continued, “When our forebears first set foot upon this desolate place, many only saw dust and silence. Where they once saw a barren wasteland, we now see opportunity. A boundless frontier where humanity could be reborn. Where our own ambitions are not divided by the flags of old Earth, but united by our aspirations. Our belief that freedom must fly higher than the skies of our home world. That prosperity and justice are not lead weights on an inflexible scale. Our unwavering belief that no balance ever needs to be struck between our dreams and our rights as an independent and prosperous people. That very belief—”

“Collaborator!” another loud voice in the crowd shouted. “Grounder puppets!”

As the cameras searched through the crowd, they settled on a tall woman near the back, spitting slogans as she unfurled her poster for the cameras. It read, in dark red with gray streaks: Blut im Regolith.

Blood in the Regolith.

The guards quickly moved in to detain and remove her as well.

“Luna! Luna! Luna!” the crowd chanted to drown out her words. “Farid! Farid! Farid!”

Farid grinned as he quieted the crowd down with his waving arms. “Thank you. Thank you all.” He wagged a finger at one of the Lunar Marines in polished gray armor next to the stage dramatically for effect. “Be gentle with the kids. Extremist or not, we are all children of Luna, whether we are born and raised in the cradle of our new civilization or—”

Bang.

A gunshot rang out.

Then, the sound of glass. A shower of glass.

The crowd screamed. The camera captured a chaotic scene, pandemonium in the lobby as people ran for the exits, for a brief moment before it fell to the ground.

Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The video ended.

The administrative hab was silent for a long minute.

“What… do we know… for sure?” Harry asked quietly.

Julia shook her head. “Not much. This happened right as the incoming supply ship left Sol. Got lucky with that too; it had been delayed by two hours at Battlestar Four for extended security inspections. If not, it would have warped here before it got the news.”

“Their prime minister—Did they get him? Did we get any other instructions?”

“No. Nothing other than the live news feed. We won’t get anything from Brussels for another week, even if it’s an emergency.”

He asked the question she was expecting, his voice quiet. “Was there—do you think there was a hull breach?”

“None that we detected from our ship in orbit.”

“I heard glass.”

Definitely not something you’d want to hear anywhere in a Lunar colony.

“The glass. I think it might have been some—some kind of ballistic shielding for their prime minister. But we can’t know for sure.”

After a small pause, Harry asked, “So… that’s… not our shooter, right?”

Julia arched an eyebrow and said nothing.

“I’m just saying…” he added hurriedly. “They’d warn us to be on alert… if we were going to try anything back at home.”

She cleared her throat. “Ahem. If we had that kind of… initiative in Brussels, the war wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. No, it’s probably one of the moonies’ own crazies.”

“What do we do now? If they have people in our colony…”

She thought for a long moment. “I… don’t know.”

“And the timing feels… suspicious.”

She swallowed. “You think maybe the assassination… was step one? Start a coup on Luna right after a shipment was supposed to leave, with the supply ship carrying a message to do something here, before we were supposed to get the news?”

“But… are we important enough to be the tinder for a—”

“Yes. Yes, we are. Look around you.”

“It’s… a possibility,” he speculated. After a moment, Harry shook his head. “But that seems unlikely. Too many moving parts in that plan, even assuming the motive is there.”

“But not impossible.”

“No, not impossible.”

She stood up and stared out the window at the setting Dustball star. “Should we hold the mail messages from the colonists? One of them might include… orders or cell activation instructions from home.”

He joined her at the window. “If they try something, it won’t be tonight.”

“No?”

He pointed in the direction of the armory. “Probably not. Our marines have night vision; we own the night here. That’s why in the uprising back on Luna, they began in the morning hours of the Lunar day at Serenity. Gave them two full weeks of daylight for operations before nightfall.”

She declined to mention the night vision goggles that some of the moonies in her colony might have. That joke was more funny with Marcus when things weren’t this tense. “Well, that won’t be as much of a problem for us here. They’ll only have twelve hours of light.”

“They won’t need all twelve,” he muttered darkly.

She gazed out the window for another minute, then sat back down. She slumped down into her desk in despair, cradling her head in her hands miserably. “This isn’t just going to be us from now on, right?”

“Us? What?”

“Looking out at our colony every night, wondering if it’s going to be our last night, before the people who work alongside us decide to murder us in our sleep. No matter how many concessions we’ve given them. No matter how long we’ve worked together. No matter how much trust we try to build…”

“Do you think—do you think Samira is going to be part of it?” Harry asked gently.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. She doesn’t talk to us. She’s doing who knows what with her people. It’s… my fault. It was stupid what we did,” Julia rambled. “I saw the treasure and I don’t know. I thought I was doing it all for Earth, but I just—it was just habit. Habits from a war that I promised we wouldn’t bring here…”

Harry sat down across from her. For a long moment, Julia thought he was going to say something. Comfort her. Tell her she missed something. That she was just being unnecessarily paranoid. Or to chastise her. Tell her she brought this all on herself. That she could have chosen another path.

Anything.

He said nothing.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Distance to target, one kilometer.

At such low altitude, grains of sand flicked past its lens. Enough to register on the sensors, not enough to obstruct its vision.

Buzzzzzzzz.

The noise its wings made was barely audible. The sound profile was dampened to match the ambient wind shear. If there was some imperfection in those sound waves, nobody was around to hear it.

Not here anyway.

It adjusted its vision, overlaying its focus with data from the infrared spectrum. Heat signatures blossomed ahead. This planet was dry. All desert, no water. Heat did not retain well near the surface, especially during the night. Like now. That was convenient; everything that was actively heated stood out. The cold was not great for its batteries, but those would last long enough anyway.

It could see track marks and footprints in the fine sand. They were made not too long ago. About half an hour. Probably more recent. Some of the track marks still had traces of residual heat, leading towards its target.

It followed them closer.

Target area in visual range.

It matched the small entrance ahead with the satellite imagery loaded in its memory. Perfect match. There was only so much that could be seen from orbit, but from what could be seen there, this was it.

Two of their vehicles were parked just outside, their engines still warm. It conducted a brief check for any equipment that could end its mission and found none. Instead, it marked the four potential threats patrolling the opening.

It evaluated its options.

Kill?

As it analyzed the targets, it saw that they were encased in some kind of armor. Nothing too fancy. Steel and ceramic composites. The ballistic faceplate was the weakness. Some kind of transparent ceramics. Its light weaponry was much too small for it to be confident in its chances of success. Especially not all four of them at once. An attempt would almost certainly trigger immediate detection. It discarded neutralizing the adversaries.

It wasn’t here for them anyway.

Evade.

It hovered above them, slowly approaching, allowing the sound of the distant shifting sands to cover the quiet beating of its wings.

Wait…

It waited patiently, watching the four unsuspecting figures as they diligently scanned their areas of responsibility.

Wait…

That was a common problem with biological beings used to living in gravity. They’d evolved to look forward, to scan their front with their limited peripheral vision. They didn’t look up. If they did, they might have seen what was hovering just fifty meters above them. Probably not; it was very small, after all.

Go!

Spotting a lull and gap in the guards’ attention as they swiveled their heads to and fro, it dove down and into the opening behind them.

No alarm went off. No shouts of surprise. No anomalous radio traffic.

All as expected.

Proceed.

It slowly continued deeper into the tunnel, hovering near the walls as it moved. This was the dangerous part. As the walls narrowed, its chances of detection increased. The chances weren’t high, but they weren’t zero either. It saw more evidence of recent activity on its infrared scans. More footprints.

It didn’t dare use its active lidar module to map its surroundings. Even the primitives’ equipment had a good chance of detecting its signal emissions if it had attempted that. Instead, it simply allowed light to filter in. The sensors adjusted to the dim lighting of the cave tunnel, taking careful note of every nook and cranny it could spot.

About fifty meters in, it lost connection to its controller. If it boosted its weak signal, it could probably re-establish that connection. But not here. It saw the jammers and signs of electronic warfare equipment on the guards earlier. Primitive as they were, these people weren’t going to miss something as basic as a radio transmission burning through the jammers, and it was too small to mount something more sophisticated.

There was no need for that anyway. It knew the mission. It could think and strategize perfectly fine on its own.

Then, it heard noises. Relevant noises.

Voices ahead, amplified by the echoing tunnel.

Human voices.

It could make out bits of what they were saying. A few microseconds of thought, and it decided that this was an important side objective. Enough to spare the battery. It focused in to isolate the voices.

“—long has it been?” A woman. It took a couple seconds, but to its mild surprise, the voice signature was actually in its database.

Commodore Julia Kessler. Local administrator and chief negotiator.

“Couple hours now. You said to get you when they’re done. But I just thought you should get an update.”

This one was also familiar.

Colonel Marcus Tanaka. Highest-ranking marine.

“Right. What do you suppose they’re chatting about… for so long?” Julia asked.

“No idea. It’s an encrypted two-way communication. We can have it sent back to Earth on the next run. But by the time we get through it, the information will likely become irrelevant anyway.”

It analyzed the communication near it and quickly identified a connection between a radio in the colony and a ship in orbit. It put it out of its mind for now; if it could detect and collect data on it, its handlers would be able to hear it too, and they had far better signals intelligence than the tiny drone—its weight measured in tens of grams—now listening in on the human conversation.

The woman sighed. “Pity.”

Marcus hesitated for a moment, then suggested, “There’s an easier way if you really want to know.”

“Yeah?”

“You can ask the moonies.”

She snorted. “Good one. And I thought Shachos was a joker.”

It fluttered into the larger chamber where the two humans were talking. With a glance, it translated a sign nearby “Anomaly Chamber”. Whatever that meant. It archived the information for future analysis.

Marcus pointed at his datapad device on the table. “Yeah, I suppose they’re not exactly an unbiased party here. Honestly, this is a little out of line, even for the moonies. Conspiring with the aliens?”

“Well… I did give them permission to talk on the radio,” she said slowly. “Lucas demanded that they should be a part of the negotiation process. Not like we can really stop them. They have half the product.”

“Yeah, you gave them permission to talk to the aliens in orbit on their radio. For cultural exchange and trust-building. Not… whatever this is.”

“Maybe they’re… having a Star Wars watch party?” she speculated. The drone could tell there wasn’t much conviction in her voice even with its limited analysis instruments.

“And chatting with the Karnolians?! Really?! The teddy bears? Didn’t Shachos just tell you that they’re up to no good?”

Interesting intelligence. Mark for later analysis.

“Yeah. I told the moonies about that too. They didn’t seem too worried,” she said glumly. “What do you think they could possibly be talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Marcus admitted. “Nothing good for us, I’d wager.”

“You know…” she said after a while. “There is one way we can figure out what they’re talking about.”

“Other than beating it out of Lucas?”

She grinned. “We could ask Shachos. They have significantly more advanced cryptanalysis equipment. I bet their ship’s listening in too.”

I bet they are.

“If we can trust them to accurately convey information about their rivals.”

“Well… other than that, I guess we just have to trust the moonies… for now,” Julia said.

Internal faction conflict. Save data for later analysis.

Marcus sighed too. He said, “Trust, and consider the worst case scenario. They could be selling us out. Get some kind of exclusive deal with the aliens, leaving us holding the bag.”

She nodded. “They could be.”

“I hate all this uncertainty. It was so much easier when we knew who and where the enemy was. I thought we left this kind of war behind when we—” The human stopped speaking for a moment, and the spy drone absentmindedly tried to predict what he was going to say.

Some kind of historical event? Some time frame? Store for later analysis.

It almost missed the narrowing of the human’s eyes.

“What? What is it?” Julia asked, detecting what it did as well.

“What’s that… buzzing?”

No way. That is… just not possible.

“I… don’t hear anything.”

“Did we import any bugs from Earth? For the moonies down at the farm?” he asked, his right hand slowly migrating down to his hips.

What?! How could he possibly—

“No? What are you looking—” She turned around, aiming her eyes exactly where it was twenty meters above them.

Ah, crap. I’ve been made. Continue with primary mission immediately.

Bang.

It barely saw the human marine draw his sidearm, dodging the incoming supersonic projectile just in time as it saw Marcus depress the trigger. The metallic-ceramic projectile split into a few dozen micro-projectiles with a human-sized spread, each barely missing the fast dodging drone. The spreadshot rounds were designed to thin out autonomous quadcopter swarms, but they’d be perfectly lethal against this drone too—if any of those sub-projectiles hit.

Go! Move out of his line of sight now.

Bang. Bang.

There was a one-meter-wide hole in the ground, in the middle of the chamber. That was most likely where its primary objective was anyway. As it approached, it identified the primitive pulley elevator system. It sped down into it, breathing a sigh of digital relief as it put some solid cover between it and its discoverer. At the bottom, there was a corridor leading into a different-looking facility. A facility with shimmering blue walls.

Bingo.

That was when it detected a radio transmission from the humans. It decided the message was probably important enough to decrypt, so it did, which cost it a few minutes of battery time.

That was fine; it had plenty.

“All units in the AO! Unidentified reconnaissance drone detected in the facility, dragonfly-sized! Take it out!” Marcus ordered.

Good luck with that.

As it flew through the primary objective entryway, it turned a corner right into another surprised human. Their weapon was aimed up at the drone, its bright flashlight blinding the sensors if not for its now-active lidar and echolocation mappers.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt.

It dodged a burst from the human’s rifle, which barely missed its position. Surprising accuracy. Not accurate enough, but it noted the deviation from baseline in its log for future analysis.

Another voice, another of the guards chimed into their radio frequency. “It went past me! I think it’s headed down for the factory floor!”

Down. Thanks. That’s good to know.

As if he could hear its thoughts, Marcus ordered into the radio a second later, “All units, comms may be compromised. Scramble net and go gray.”

The drone instantly detected transmitters in the area switching a more complex encryption scheme. It analyzed it for a short few milliseconds. It was still possible to decrypt, but it was going to take more than two minutes for its tiny processor.

These guys are annoying.

It switched to boosting its audio sensors. In the echoing tunnels, it could still hear their voices from far away. After a few seconds, the drone found the deep hole the human referenced earlier, temporary scaffolding lining its walls, and dove down into it.

“I saw it! It’s gone in the staircase!” one of the marines shouted.

How can they even see me?! That must be more than a coincidence.

It briefly contemplated the possibilities for a moment. They couldn’t have detected it with their primitive instruments; the drone’s electronic stealth module made sure of that. The only other choice was… they saw and heard it with their biological senses. That was odd. None of the other alien species in its database could track such a small object and hear such a quiet buzz.

But it did have historical records of another faraway alien species that evolved on a planet where they had bugs of a similar size that were deadly to its inhabitants. It dwelled on the speculation for a second before adding it to its growing list of tactical discoveries to transmit for analysis later.

“This is Commodore Julia Kessler,” her calm voice said into the radio as the drone descended the dark hole. It could hear the quiet voice sneaking out of the headset of one of the marines below it. “I’m authorizing a total facility lockdown. Let the moonies know.”

“Commodore, we have six marines down here, plus the moonies have their—”

“We’ll pay for whatever we break,” she ordered coldly. “They’ll understand. Lock it down now.”

Break? Lockdown? Huh?

“Yes, Commodore… Primed and ready. Lockdown in ten… nine… eight… seven…”

The drone contemplated the mystery with increasing urgency as the voice counted down, even as it reached the bottom of the dark staircase. There was only a single corridor at the bottom, and the humans had helpfully put signs on the walls, with arrows pointing exactly where it expected its primary objective would be.

“Six… five…”

It ran through a few more options. None of them seemed to pose an immediate threat to its operation. Unexpectedly alert and accurate as they were, it was on the alert for that now; it could dodge whatever the humans threw at it. Probably. It zoomed past the hallways into a larger chamber.

Jackpot.

It reconsidered its own vulnerability and the implications of the countdown. Given their apparent ability to see it with their biological senses, there was a small but non-zero chance the humans could take it out or find some way to prevent it from leaving. It would be out of their expected baseline capabilities, but not by too far.

Might as well call home now, since I’m detected anyway.

It took in the sights, readying the imagery and all its collected data for burst transmission.

“Four…”

It started to consider less likely possibilities for the countdown as it diverted power to boost its own miniature radio device. Three seconds was plenty. It only needed a few milliseconds for—

The humans rudely didn’t even give it the courtesy of abiding by their own countdown. Perhaps the drone would have expected that if it’d analyzed its archives for how human children played the game of tag.

The guards at the EMP device pulled the lever on three.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“A priest, a pastor, and a rabbit are in a hospital. The nurse asks the rabbit, what’s your blood type? The rabbit says, I’m probably a type-o. A type-o! A type-o! Get it? A typo! Ahahahahaha!”

Julia stared at Shachos, who was flashing red and orange all over.

“Holy… shit!” she said after she overcame her shock.

“Gahahahah! Isn’t that just the best joke you’ve ever heard?”

“No, holy shit! You learned that… joke format, the historical concept of typos, about our religions, rabbits, our blood types, not to mention the English language… in just… what? A year?”

Shachos’s face turned an ambient orange as he clapped two of his appendages together. “Yes, and what a year well spent! It’s amazing! Your language leaves so much room for ambiguity. It is perfect for these types of jokes! Whoever invented English must have been among the greatest pranksters in your history!”

Julia tilted her head. “I—Hmmm… I’m not sure they’d see it that way, but thanks, I guess—”

“I also learned French and Swahili, but this joke is significantly less funny in both.”

“Huh? I don’t know either of those languages, but I imagine it’s… not funny at all in both.”

“Bahahahahahaha! It tickles me that your people instinctively understand the nature of humor! Tickles me, yes! Tickles. The gifts your species has gotten through the pure accident of birth—they are amazing! Just amazing! You have areas of your skin that are literally designed to make you laugh when rubbed! When rubbed! Can I try—”

She took a step back in slight alarm. “I… would rather not.”

“Ahahahaha! I will have to try on another willing human. Yes, I will.”

“I’m… sure we can find someone who would… um… enjoy—enjoy that.” Julia sighed. “Anyway, Fleet Master, I’m sure you didn’t invite me to your ship to trade a few jokes. Well, actually… I guess maybe you did.”

“Ahaha. No. I did not. I did not, indeed.” Shachos went back to a neutral yellow. “You are here because there is… some concern among our people, about the progress of the negotiations. A little concern. Maybe more than a little.”

Julia raised her eyebrows. “Concern? What concerns? I thought things were going well? As far as I know—the feedback I’ve gotten from our negotiators is all positive!”

“Yes, that is part of the problem,” Shachos said. “Our people have worked hard on our offers. And we know what the Karnolians and Sonckles have offered you. Yes, we do. Our offer is by far the best! It’s not even close. Our location is a big advantage! A very big advantage. For providing security. Security from… Well, security, you know. But… our people are now asking, why haven’t we come to an agreement yet? Why not? And I do not know what to tell them. Because I do not know the answer. I have my suspicions, yes, but I do not know for certain. No, I do not.”

She thought for a moment. “It’s a few issues. First of all, we’ve got the technology transfers. Your people’s offers are very good, but so are the Sonckles’ and Karnolians’, and they’re not only matching yours. They’ve both agreed to more open testing of their military tech than you have.”

“As I’ve said, we have a policy of not revealing all of our military technology,” Shachos explained. “But… we are willing to privately demonstrate some of what we have. Yes, we are, as long as your people sign agreements not to disclose the funniest things you see to the Karnolians or the Sonckles. Yes, they just need to agree. And I promise you they will be better than the Karnolians’. Many times better. I promise you!”

“Right.”

As if detecting her skepticism, Shachos added, “Besides, I think that is not your main concern. It is not.”

“No, it’s not,” she admitted. “I’ll be frank. You are not competing against the Karnolians. Nor are you competing against the Sonckles. You are competing against both of them combined, or a deal that involves both you and the Sonckles.”

“You want both our technology and the Sonckles’ technology.”

She shrugged. “If we can get it.”

“That is what I guessed. Yes, it is.” Shachos hesitated for a moment. “I—I think your people are making a mistake. A big mistake. With your singular focus on technology. Technology transfers.”

“Our focus on technology transfers is a mistake?” she asked with a little surprise.

“Yes. As a new species, it is expected that you would look for that. Yes, it is. But maybe you should reconsider your priorities.”

“Our priorities?!”

“Yes. Your priorities. If I were you, I would not place such a heavy emphasis on getting our technologies. No, I would not.”

“Why—why the hell not?” she asked, wondering just how he was going to spin this.

“Because… it is the most enticing. The most exciting. Very exciting. New discoveries! But it is not worth that much. No, it is not.”

“What—what are you talking about?!”

Shachos thought for a moment, then pointed one of his appendages at her. “Think. Imagine. Imagine this. Imagine an island pops up in your big ocean. The very big ocean. Your biggest ocean. The uh—the…”

Apparently learning Earth’s geography was less important than jokes about typos and religions.

“The Pacific?”

“Specifics? No, I mean the ocean.”

“Yeah, the Pacific Ocean—” She glanced at his face and sighed. “Ah, you’ve learned about malapropism—”

“Ahahaha! Yes! The Specific Ocean. Ok, ok. No more. Imagine a new island in the Pacific. Imagine there are millions of humans living on it. Many millions. And they are like you. All like you. Except, instead of computers and spaceships and warp drives, they have just discovered how to make fire from rocks. Very primitive. Imagine that island. Imagine how funny that would be!”

“Alright. I am… imagining that in my head. Newly discovered tribe of millions in the Pacific. What about them?”

“Now, imagine they are friendly. Imagine you start to exchange ideas and people with that island. Your people arrive in boats. In planes. Spaceships. How long do you think it will take for them to learn how to use your technology and how to make them?”

She thought hard. “Hm… well, if they were regular people open to our contact… First, the Union would probably pour development aid to the island. Then, there would be some kind of push to bring their education standards up. And if they send their children to schools in developed parts of the Union, and some of those children return… with non-extractive institutions set up to facilitate modernization, it will just be like the development of—” She stopped herself as she realized that a virtually identical scenario had historically occurred, and not just once.

Shachos glowed orange as he saw what she realized. “Yes… How long? How long?”

“One generation. Maybe two,” she said quietly after a moment. “Twenty to thirty years.”

“Yes. Maybe twenty years. Maybe thirty. Maybe more. But not much more. Not thousands. Not even a hundred years, maybe. From making fire… to making spaceships. Just a few decades, not much more.”

“Right. And you think that’s… how long it will take us to catch up to your technology level? You’ll share with us… just like that? With or without the Dustballium?” she asked skeptically.

“It might be more than a generation,” Shachos admitted. “But not much more. We have an open society like you. Very open. We do not guard most of our technology jealously. Not like the Sonckles. How to make ships and medicine and efficient power plants… those are not a secret among our people. The best is a secret, sometimes, yes. The very best. But only the best. The components we use for colony ships and for civilian transport ships… most of those are not secrets. Not at all. And if you learn that, you are only a decade or two behind our best. Closer to one than two.”

Except for the vaunted Vorshnik ship engines, she suspected he had a point about most of the rest of the technology. “You’re saying we can catch up thousands of years of advancements in a very short amount of time, to near the state-of-the-art, regardless of whether you try to keep it from us.”

“Yes, it is impossible to keep such things secret in our species. Impossible! Even if we try our best, even if we forbid our scientists and engineers from working with you, you can simply bribe them or hire them. That is not very hard. No, not at all. We simply are not used to keeping secrets like this. There are too many people who know how to make such things and operate our advanced machines. The plans for such devices for non-military use are not secret. You can maybe even get someone who is not a scientist or engineer to copy and steal them for you. Or you can buy from us with something else, yes. And you can use the same trick you are now using for the Precursor Metal; you can pit our producers against the Karnolian and Sonckle ones for your other needs. Such rapid technology transfers are an inevitable part of any exchange between our people. As I say, the technology is very exciting, but it is not as valuable as your people think. No, it is not.”

“That… might be true. But we’ve only just met each other. Your existence will create problems and opportunities in our societies that we haven’t yet anticipated. There’s a lot more planning that needs to be done before we have any confidence…”

“We have good simulations and projections; some of our funniest leaders think your people will be among the top fifty most productive star systems in our territory within twenty years. Twenty years. Maybe twenty-five,” he insisted. “Even without the—the Dustballium. Yes, they think that. Maybe it is true. Maybe it is not. But most agree it is not far off. Not far off at all.”

“Well, I guess… that isn’t impossible. It might seem inevitable,” she conceded. “But technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It solves problems, and they can solve our problems now. If you’ve got a drug or invention that can extend our life expectancy by a year, we can save hundreds of thousands of lives every day. We can’t wait twenty or thirty years for that! Or rather, it’s a moral dilemma that we have no easy answer for.”

“Yes, hm… we likely have something like that for you,” Shachos agreed.

“Multiply that by… all our problems. As a species, we value progress. Maybe it is shortsighted as you say, but ultimately… yes, it is important for us to get what we can, as much as we can, as soon as we can, regardless if exchange seems inevitable in the near future anyway.”

“Hm… I understand. Yes, I understand. We will have to think more about that. Yes, we will. We may adjust our offer.” Shachos turned yellow again. “You said there were other issues with our offer?”

“Security.”

“We will pledge to protect your colony! We can protect you!”

“And we respect the commitment that pledge implies… But again, we think our security could be best ensured by a deal where multiple species make that same pledge.”

“We will not allow an alien fleet in our system! No, we will not,” Shachos said adamantly. “That is… a matter of our security.”

“Maybe not a full battle fleet. But a token tripwire force from the other two species might be acceptable, no?”

“A tripwire force? What is that?”

“Like… a few ships that are stationed in the system. If harmed, it could compel them to go to war against whatever destroys them,” Julia explained. “To deter aggression from anyone else.”

Shachos was a confused greenish yellow. “Why… would that work? If they wanted to go to war, they would. Yes, they would. And if they didn’t, they would simply order those ships not to engage with an aggressor. Space is big. Very big. It’s not like war on the ground. This idea will not work.”

“It’s… well, I don’t know if it would work with their psychology and their view of war,” she confessed. “But I’d feel safer if there was more than one alien species with warships over Dustball. I mean… I’d prefer if the total number is zero, but if it’s greater than zero, then I want that number to be as large as possible.”

“That seems… irrational. But that is your position. Yes, that is your position. We will do our best. We will. We will consider working with the Sonckles.” He flashed a distasteful green that reminded her of the color of vomit. “But we will not work with Karnolians. Official policy, that is out of my limbs. All four of them. And even if it is not, blegh. Maybe the Sonckles. I will try. I will try.”

“Thanks, Shachos. I think we’ve all but said this to your people officially, but… despite what you tried to pull with our shuttles, I’m glad we ended up being deep in your territory.”

“Ahahahahahaha! Yes! It would be very funny if you discovered warp and found yourself in Sonckle or Karnolian territory. Yes, very funny. For a few weeks. Maybe a few months. Maybe a little more. Then, it would not be very funny for you.”

Julia snorted. “Heh. Probably not.”

“Oh, yes. I have something for you. Yes, something for you.”

“Oh? Something for us? Another practical joke?”

“No, not a joke. Not a joke at all. We have some news to tell you. Yes, some very big news! We have spies and… methods. We know what our neighbors are thinking. And what they are thinking is not funny at all.”

Alarmed, she asked, “What… they are thinking? What are they thinking?”

“The Karnolians, they know they are not in a good position. Yes, they know. They are not happy. No, they are not. But we have no specific intelligence. Nothing specific. Nothing… Pacific. Ahahahahaha! Anyway, we just know… it is… mildly serious.”

“What do you mean by… mildly serious? Are they going to try something? Like fire on you and try to take over this planet? Or invade your territory?”

“Hm… no, I think… even they are not that stupid. But they may try something at the negotiations. The Karnolians are not very creative people. Not very creative or funny. Not at all. But not stupid either. They have a few serious pranks up their sleeves.”

“Serious… pranks. So what kind of thing are they likely to try?”

“We… don’t know. But… my people say, the situation is mildly serious, and I thought you should know this. Yes, I did.”

“Well… thanks. I guess we can… watch out for… something, I guess.”

“Yes you should. Yes you should.”

“Are you sure you don’t know what they’re planning? Does it… maybe have something to do with… Skruma?” she asked hopefully. “You ready to tell us about—”

“Ahahahahahah! You are still trying to figure that out! That’s adorable! You’re adorable. It will be very funny when you figure it out. Yes, very funny.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“We’ve got a real problem.”

Julia looked up sharply. Marcus stood just inside her office door, his datapad tucked beneath one arm. He had closed the door behind him, which was not unusual in itself, but it was the way he gripped his rifle. She could tell something was different.

“What is it, Colonel?”

“Surveillance logs.” He crossed the room and placed the screen on her desk. “Samira. She’s skipped every progress briefing this week.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Julia glanced at it. “She’s not pleased with us, for some mysterious reason.”

He ignored her sarcasm.

“That’s not the new part,” he said as he tapped the slate. She recognized the white-hot thermal imagery as it appeared. Two figures stood in the narrow service alley behind the scientists’ dormitories, half hidden beneath an exterior ventilation duct.

“She tried to give us the slip,” he explained. “But she doesn’t know we used the cover of one of the resupply shuttles to covertly deploy utility cameras to the dorm roofs.”

Julia’s eyes lifted from the image. “Give us the slip? Are you following her?”

“Of course,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Whatever she says, she’s the project manager on their side. She’s the top of the official Lunar hierarchy on Dustball. If the moonie troublemakers want to start something now, they’ll need her tacit approval at least, if not her active participation.”

Julia looked back at the image. “Right. And who is…”

“We’ve been following her movements to see who she’s talking to.” Marcus swiped across the screen. Five more images appeared, each time-stamped on a different night. The locations varied by only a few meters. The people did not. “She’s been meeting with Sarah Weeks behind the dorms in secret, every one of the last six days.”

She leaned closer, trying to decipher the face from the thermal imagery. “That Lunar Intelligence Agency spy?”

“Yup. LIA Deputy Director during the war. According to her file, she was demobilized before she joined the project. But… you know…”

“Why did we even allow people like that to join the colony project?!” she asked, knowing the answer already.

“It was her or someone just as unsavory, I bet. I mean, the moonies funded half the project, and we thought we were going to be growing potatoes and looking at rocks, not alien ruins…”

“And why is Samira mixed up with someone like that?”

“The answer seems obvious,” Marcus said.

“I know.”

The office fell silent but for the quiet ventilation fans.

“Do you want us to arrest her?” Marcus asked after a while.

“Samira or the spy?”

“Either. We can bring them in for questioning.”

“Under what—”

“We can hold them for forty-eight hours before we have to formally charge them. And there isn’t a magistrate in a few light years, so by the time two supply ships come and go, and we have to actually deal with the legal issues… the crisis might be over.”

“One way or another.”

He nodded a second later, almost reluctantly. “One way or another.”

Julia frowned. “That might make things worse.”

“What I’m worried about,” Marcus said, “is that things are already as bad as they can get.”

“I know.”

“If the moonies riot, they riot. We’ve got guns. We can deal with an angry mob. If Samira and that LIA spy are cooking something up, it’s going to be worse than whatever happens if we take them off the board now. They know the base. They know the personnel. The infrastructure people are Samira’s people, formally or otherwise. If Weeks has been building a network as well—”

“I know.” She pointed up, at the ceiling, and beyond it. “But there’s also the aliens overhead to think about. If things kick off down here, that gives them an excuse to go ahead with their own unsavory plans. Unlike the moonies, we can’t just shoot our way out of that problem, even if we want to.”

“It’ll be even worse if the moonies—”

“I said I know.”

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

“Alright. What do you want us to do, Commodore?”

She rubbed her exhausted eyes. “Give me some time to think it over.”

“How much time?”

“The next supply shuttle isn’t for another week. If they try anything, it’ll have to be around that,” she decided. “We have that much time.”

“And if we don’t? If they move before that?”

Julia sighed. “Well, the Karnolians have a saying…”

Marcus nodded. “War it is.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Brussels

“The Southeast Asians can’t tolerate any more increases in the oil price. At over two hundred dollars a barrel, their annual budget parameters will need to be recalculated. Or worse.”

President Salma Haldar looked up in alarm. “Or worse? What are they saying now?!”

“There are talks—there are rumors out of Kuala Lumpur that they might start a regional movement to unpeg from the Union dollar,” Will said.

“A currency exit?! What are they going to use? The moonie dollar?!”

“No, ma’am. They’re reviving talks of an old currency proposal. The Asian Currency Unit. The moonies will almost certainly recognize its legitimacy immediately if they announce it—”

“Ridiculous! None of us can go it alone! Not when the moonies are out there,” Salma scoffed.

Will shook his head. “That’s not their main concern. I think Serenity has someone in their ears, convincing them that a weaker local currency will fuel their export-heavy economies, so they can take advantage of low prices to funnel surplus agricultural products to Luna. One of their long-term priorities is that we dilute and weaken the Union dollar against the price of Helium-3, and—”

“Yes, and I’ve got two hundred representatives calling me every week, asking if I can influence the Central Bank one way or another. Raise interest rates, lower interest rates, monetary easing, tightening… some of them are asking if I can abolish the UECB outright! And my answer remains the same! Go ask Chairman Vogler in New York. We’re not in charge of monetary policy here! Don’t they understand the whole point of a politically independent central bank?!” she asked in exasperation.

Will rifled through a stack of papers in front of him. “That’s… actually one of their complaints too. They’re still not happy about your appointment of Vogler as the head of the Central Bank. They call him an unelected bureaucrat who is still working for the interests of shareholders at his old job at Deutsche Bank.”

“Yes! Perhaps instead of merely being unelected, we should have picked some random crank who is both unelected and unqualified? Or maybe we can run a worldwide referendum to vote on interest rates every month?” she asked sarcastically.

“The Malaysian Prime Minister has proposed—”

“Or…” Salma raised her voice. “Maybe we go with his preferred candidate, who is under investigation by the Office of Justice for bribery and tax evasion.”

“The investigations are still ongoing. He claims it’s political—”

She pointed a finger at Will. “Will, you go tell Kuala Lumpur that if they want to go it alone now, that is their choice, but we won’t take it lying down. There will be consequences. When we joined the Union dollar, we all agreed that we’d be all-in on the risk-sharing. All of it. They don’t get to offload their risks and then decide to take a break when the bill comes due!”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll… talk to them about it. It’ll just be easier if—if we’re also doing something about the oil shortage.”

“We’re trying. Right, Secretary Garcia?” Salma turned her attention to her Secretary of Natural Resources. “Where are we on that?”

“Still in discussions to raise the production quota for next year. It’s… not looking good. Lots of resistance from the producers, and even if they agree, we’re barely on track to meet our decarbonization targets for 2100 as is.”

“Right. How many votes are we short?”

Garcia swallowed, then answered, “About fifty votes in the Assembly.”

“Fifty votes short?! That bad?”

“That’s… a low estimate, Madam President. Three of the seven Security Branch chairs come from massive net producers. There’s a reason the quota formula hasn’t changed in thirty years.”

“What will it cost me for those discussions to… look better?”

“Look better to who? We can leak portions of our meeting notes to the media all we want, but I doubt that’ll help you with the Southeast Asians.”

Salma looked out at her blank-faced advisors. She sighed. “It sure would be nice if we found some natural resources we can use alongside those magic beanstalks on Dustball.”

Will perked up. “I asked. Hydrocarbons would be far too uneconomical to ship from Dustball even if we dug some up. The only reason that the Dustaballium is worth it is—”

“Yes, yes. I know. The scientists briefed me. It’s literal magic, apparently.” Salma dismissed an anticipated argument with the wave of a palm. “How are those trade discussions going anyway?”

“I’m hearing mixed things from the ground,” Will started to say.

Secretary Wilders chimed in. “What I’ve heard is… Commodore Kessler began by ceding half our supply and thus all our leverage to the moonies. I don’t know what would possess her to do that!”

Will sighed. This was not the first time they’d had this discussion, not even this week. “It’s half their colony too.”

Wilders was insistent. “I had my people go over the charter. The fifty-fifty split in colony exports in the agreement only applies to natural resources and their refined products. Alien artifacts are by definition not natural resources. This is closer to intellectual property, which is owned by the originator party—”

“Intellectual property? The metal?! What kind of mushrooms were you on when you came up—”

“And in the event of a dispute, as majority owner of the colony, not to mention the only ones with marines in the colony at the moment, we get to decide where it all goes.”

It was obvious from his expression where the secretary thought all of the Dustballium should go.

“Look. That’s… one… possible reading of the charter,” Will said cautiously. “But barring extraordinary circumstances, I’d defer to our commanders on the ground. There were reports of a potential moonie uprising in the colony a couple months ago… when they found out we were trying to do—well, exactly what you suggested. It seems like a significant portion of our decision-making since that has been restrained by that potential threat.”

“Then, send more marines and start arresting the troublemakers! At the very least, we should send a higher-level commander out there. Someone with more combat experience, perhaps, given what’s happening with both the aliens and the moonies…”

Will sighed and said firmly, “Commodore Kessler is still the best fit, and she has extensive combat experience. That list of replacement candidates you sent me last week was a joke. General McCoy? Isn’t he facing charges for money laundering in Singapore? Hey, let’s play a game: how many more corrupt Union officials can we bring up in this meeting? And where are we getting the money to send and then sustain twenty thousand additional marines for an orbital deployment in another star system light years—” He stopped and glanced briefly at Salma. “Secretary Wilders, I really didn’t want to hijack another daily presidential brief for this discussion again. Maybe we can take this somewhere else?”

Salma shook her head. “Wait, no. I want to hear this. Why aren’t we surging troops to Dustball? We’ve already got an entire squadron out there already, right?”

Will looked torn, but his loyalty compelled him to answer. “Ma’am. I think we need a clear-eyed view on this situation.”

“Clear-eyed view. Meaning?”

“I think we need to start considering the possibility that we lose the colony. The entire colony.”

The room was quiet for a few heartbeats.

“Lose… the colony?” Salma asked.

“Yes, if the aliens decide to take it all from us. If they do that, we still need our ships and marines to deal with our enemies on Luna. If we surge—”

Salma raised an eyebrow. “Our enemies on Luna?”

“Our former enemies on Luna. I apologize, Madam President. If we rush everything we have to Dustball, and we lose everything there to the aliens, we’ll be left vulnerable here, back in our home system. That’s the most catastrophic outcome I’ll entertain here, for now, but… it can get worse than that too.”

She considered it for a moment. “Alright. Hm… Right, the moonies. What are the moonies thinking? What are they doing?”

“Well, it’s hard to tell what they’re planning on the dark side. Our satellites don’t see literally everything…”

Secretary Wilders knew exactly when to jump in when he had a point. “As far as all our intelligence indicates, they’re doing nothing except pouring everything they have into building up their warp and interstellar launch capabilities, so they can be in a good position to flood the Dustball system with their own ships and troops when the time comes!”

“We can’t just play copycat with Luna,” Will argued, a little more feebly this time. “It’s—it’s—”

Salma smirked. “The Haldar Doctrine?”

That was what administration critics had initially lambasted her for. “What Would the Moonies Do,” a single line from a leaked State Department talking points memo, became a common staple of parodies of her foreign policy on the late-night shows and social media. As time went on, her general policy of matching Luna’s rhetoric and action eased tensions in orbit and proved popular among the voters, and those parodies became less biting and more affectionate.

“I was going to say… inappropriate in this context,” Will replied unhappily, knowing the argument was lost.

Salma thought for a moment, then took a deep breath. “I think we’ll keep the commodore in charge, for now. It seems like a critical time for them there, and a change in leadership could cascade into far bigger problems. As for a troop surge…” She looked at her advisors and shrugged. “We are Earth. We can do everything at once. It’s time to leverage that. Ready our ships and marines for a larger scope deployment to match the moonies’ posture, if they escalate—or if they back down. Squadron for squadron, ship for ship, battalion for battalion. And if it looks like it’s the aliens who are going to take the colony from us, we’ll… make contingency plans for that as well.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“I inspected the radioactive contents of the samples with a mass spectrometer,” Cynthia explained. “All industrial activity stopped at the line. All signs of civilization, snip, done.”

“At the 125 million year mark?” Julia asked, her brow furrowing.

She nodded. “All at the mark, to the year. Maybe to the day. And I’ve looked at our other samples. All stopped at the same time.”

“Hm… 125 million years. That’s—I think I’ve seen that figure somewhere else…” Julia picked up her datapad.

Cynthia didn’t look anywhere else. “Yes, one other place. Exactly one other place.”

“Which is…”

“The crater. That’s the age of the crater.”

“You know this because…?”

“Geology.”

“Right. Carbon-dating?”

“No, that only goes out to a few thousand years. Good for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but for anything older than humanity, we measure potassium isotope decay.”

“Right, geology. So… the Precursors… They were killed by whatever made that crater,” Julia summarized. “An asteroid.”

“An asteroid that quickly ended all signs of civilization on this planet.”

“How quickly are we talking?”

“At most a few years.”

“A few years, huh?”

“Two or three, at most. Possibly even on the very day of. We’ll need more evidence for that, but it happened very, very quickly. Let’s just say… there’s nothing I’ve found above the glass line so far.”

The glass line.

Julia tilted her head. “Sounds… intentional and violent.”

“And… probably not actually an asteroid.”

“Not actually an asteroid?”

“A civilization like the one that built the factory, they’d have asteroid defenses and warning systems and… well, we already know they’re a multi-planetary species from the other aliens. If there was a catastrophic asteroid hit on Earth, and assuming there was still an Earth left afterwards, how long do you think we’d survive after?”

“Hm… not so easy to kill millions or billions of people, I guess. And their friends on the other planets would be back, trying to pick through the wreckage and rebuild.”

“Right. Unless they can’t…”

“Enemy action, huh?” Julia asked, a slight chill running up her spine.

“That’s… our theory anyway.”

“Don’t you mean hypothesis?”

Cynthia gave her a tired, humoring smile. “Hah.”

“Anyway, that’s—uh—good work, doctor. Monumental discovery. I’ll be sure to let the people back home know to give you credit and all that.”

“Give me credit?” Cynthia looked at her with alarm. “That’s what you’re—You don’t sound very… concerned about this, Commodore.”

“This?”

“The whole Precursor aliens going extinct due to violence thing?”

“Huh? Should I be?”

“Well… it’s the people whose grave sites we’ve been robbing… It seems like this would be concerning to you.”

“Why? Do the core samples tell you when the bad guys who killed them are coming back? I mean, it’s been 125 million years. What are the chances any of the parties involved are still kicking around?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. Just… is it a good idea to go digging through their trash? What if we—I don’t know? What if we accidentally activate a signal and the bad guys come back?”

“Like a bat signal for the bad guys?”

Cynthia scratched her head. “Well… yeah. What happens if we wake them up by accident or something?”

“The bad guys who killed all the people who made the machines that pour out invincible metal for their helmets and space elevator pipes?” Julia shrugged. “Then we’re all dead, right?”

“That seems like something worth avoiding.”

“It is. I’ll—uh—I’ll tell our people we should avoid touching anything that looks like it could be a transmitter or something.”

“That’s… a start.”

“Great. Anything else?”

“No—no, that’s all. I thought you’d take this more… seriously…”

She smiled softly at the geologist. “Oh, believe me, doctor. I’m taking things very seriously. But the biggest extinction risk I’m worried about right now… it’s not the guys from 125 million years ago, who might or might not themselves be gone. It’s the guys up in orbit right this moment, plotting and scheming us out of our golden goose. For whom our folks back home… may just be unfortunate collateral damage if they have their way.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Harry was knee-deep with paperwork on his datapad when Julia finally returned to the administrative hab that night. He barely looked up to greet her as she entered.

“How are the alien negotiations?” he mumbled.

“It’s… going.”

He peered at her. “That bad, huh?”

She sighed. “It’s a balancing act on the tightest of tight ropes. For the long-term security of our colony, it’d be best if—when we come to an agreement—they all believe that they’re not getting screwed. That’s made more difficult by the fact that, on our way to said agreement, we do need them all to believe that the other parties are trying to screw them over, harder than we are.”

“Sounds impossible. I’m sure you’ve got it handled.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. And then after that… Then, we have to sell that agreement to the moonies.”

“Always easier said than done.” Harry grunted noncommittally. “Who’s closest?”

“Shachos. The Vorshnik are by far the most agreeable. They’ll settle for a straight material for tech deal, and they’re somewhat willing to cut in the Sonckles if they have to. For us, the greatest benefit of going with them is that Dustball and Sol are in their territory. Not only would a deal not run into any future issues around our physical positioning, we won’t have to wait for them to work out some kind of transport agreement with the other species, which we’d have to do if we went with the other guys.”

Harry nodded. “Sounds ideal. And they seem nice… relatively. Less prone to crazy antics. Well… the bad crazy at least. Might be less inclined to go back on their word. What’s the downside?”

“The two others both refuse to consider cutting the Vorshniks in. The Karnolians just dislike them in general. Not enough to go to war directly—sounds like that didn’t work out so well for the teddy bears last time. But enough to not want them to win. Glonk, on the other hand, seems to think that his species is God’s gift to the galaxy, and we should be grateful for the opportunity to hand them our treasures in exchange for their superior technology.”

He furrowed his brow. “That arrogant sea turtle. Do we know that their offerings are actually the best?”

“Possibly. We were discussing ways to stack up their weapons tech against each other today. They do have weapons trade amongst themselves; the Karnolians buy them from the Sonckles by the ton, especially on the factions level. The sea turtles are famously willing to sell to both sides of a factional civil war, and they have licensed production facilities on several Karnolian planets; those are export variants though, so probably significantly less powerful than what they have. All three have given us the topline specs for their weapons, but it’s hard to compare just on paper. Hence, Karveth and Glonk want a live-fire test. Shachos refuses.”

“Because their technology just isn’t as good?” he asked.

“Either that, or, as he claims, the lack of outside insight on the exact capabilities of their weapons is a deterrent against their neighbors. They rarely go to war. If the Sonckles and the Karnolians can’t be certain how powerful their ships are, then the potential risk for them trying something nasty is significantly higher.”

“What do you think? If you had to rank them, based on the specs they’ve given you and everything they’ve said, whose offerings are the best?”

“Like their ships? On a tonnage basis?” Julia clarified.

“Sure. Just on that.”

“The sea turtles, probably, if you take out the water in their species-specific life support requirements,” she said after a moment of consideration. “The Sonckles. Then, the Vorshniks, by a small margin. And then there’s a big gap, with the teddy bears at the bottom.”

“Don’t buy from the Karnolians, essentially.”

“They’re just trying to promise us in quantity and variety what they can’t afford in quality,” Julia said, nodding. “But yeah, they’re the furthest away from a deal. And I think they know it. Shachos made some snide comments about Karveth being replaced by another faction’s negotiator earlier today.”

“This insult ends today! War it is!” Harry mimicked.

She guffawed at the loyal imitation. “Yeah. They’ve got an ascendant faction, the blue faction, that might replace Karveth’s reds. I pinged our analysts up in orbit in Camel Squadron. Might be worth trying to get some information on them, in case they do take over their side of the negotiations. Or even if they don’t…”

“Use them against Karveth.” He snorted lightly. “You know… we should be glad the aliens aren’t playing us and the moonies against each other. Get us to bid against ourselves.”

“More nightmare fuel, thank you very much.” She shook her head wryly. “What about you? How were things while I was playing host?”

Harry gestured at his datapad. “The bunker’s almost complete. And Marcus reported in. Dug in. His troops are ready for the long haul, as much as they can anyway against enemies that are so much more advanced than us. Then again, their weapons look incredible and we wouldn’t want to face them in battle, but when you talk to them, you realize they’re not so different from us after all.”

She snorted. “Yeah, that’s the comforting part, that they’re not so different from us. Just with better, deadlier toys. Real comfort.”

He looked deep in thought for a while. Then he asked, “How do you feel about these negotiations?”

“They’re going as well as we can expect. I think we’ll have to come to some sort of agreement on the specifications—”

“No, no. I didn’t ask you how it’s going. I asked you, how do you feel about them?”

Julia narrowed her eyes. “How do I… feel?”

“Yeah.”

“How do I feel?” She paused, thinking for a long moment. “I feel… scared. I’m scared.”

Harry didn’t look surprised. Not at all. “Me too.”

“We are manipulating them, and they all know it. They’re not dumb.”

“No, they’re not.”

“And the thing about manipulators… if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the people who think they are the ones moving the pieces on the chessboard, they—we are the easiest people to manipulate.”

“That’s part of it,” he agreed. “But not all. What scares me more is the way they came into it. The way they look at us. The way they barely bother to acknowledge our existence at the meetings once they start the discussions.”

She shuddered. “Yes. The way these aliens interact. On the surface, there’s this veneer—this… veneer of civilization. Treaties, protocols, rules. And then, you dangle a piece of meat in front of them, and you realize that none of that’s really there. When you open your eyes, you find yourself deep in the jungle. Alone. With nothing to stop them from tearing you apart to get to the prize.”

He pointed a finger at her as he straightened up. “Yes, the jungle. A perfect analogy.”

She tilted her head. “Yeah?”

“There is a story, a way of looking at our own history, that describes exactly that. That before the war with the moonies, before the Union, that was how things were. The history of Earth. Once, humanity lived on the constant edge of war. The colonial wars. The world wars. The cold wars. Chaos and instability. Then, whether it was because everyone got tired of the fighting or because the strongest bullies got to be in charge, there was a brief moment of quiet in the jungle, where even the birds were silent. In that lull, people built cities out of the forest, the ferns became farms, and the killing fields became beautiful orchards. Civilization came. Peace and order.”

“And everyone lived happily ever after.”

Harry knew she was being sarcastic; he shook his head anyway. “Not effortlessly. It takes a lot of people to keep the jungle at bay. It’s not just the sentries and guards on the walls with their weapons, keeping the wild animals out. It’s also the farmer, making sure that the weeds don’t overrun their crops. It’s the road pavers who mark the start and end of the town. It’s everyone who decides: we don’t want to live in the jungle. Because all it takes is a few bad apples to amplify the temptations. Maybe it was more free when we didn’t have all these rules, from a certain point of view. Maybe the walls that protect us from the jungle—maybe they aren’t so important after all. Maybe my upstairs neighbor wouldn’t be practicing drums at six in the morning. Maybe it isn’t worth all this effort. So brick by brick, they take down the walls. Bit by bit, civilization recedes. And the jungle grows back, until chaos consumes us all.”

“Right, civilization is a conscious effort. This veneer has to be maintained. Sacrifice and understanding and all that.”

He nodded. “It is a difficult project for everyone involved, but there is nothing else like it.”

Julia thought for a moment. “The sad thing is, I’m not convinced that we aren’t chipping away at the walls ourselves right now. Hell, the first thing I did when we found the Precursor site… was to figure out how best to stab the moonies in the back so we can keep everything. We’re the ones playing the aliens against each other, forcing them to pursue their own selfish interests with our goading. We are the ones growing the jungle back, to enrich the fruits of our little garden.”

“That’s… yeah, that’s possible.” Harry then shook his head. “But don’t be too harsh on yourself.”

“Why not? You cautioned me against it. My failure was foreseeable.”

“Maybe. But like you said, any of them would have done the same, right? If the aliens found the artifacts instead of us, it’s not like they’d be sharing them with us. And if the moonies found it first, they’d be doing the same thing we did. They’d squeeze us out and try to negotiate their own deals with the aliens. Technology, resources, whatever. They wouldn’t hesitate for a second before they cut us out of it.”

She hesitated a while before she replied, “I’m… not so sure about that.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, an eyebrow arched.

“I don’t—I don’t know. The moonies—I’m no longer so sure about that.”

He seemed to accept that non-answer. Instead, he shrugged. “We might never know.”

She stared off into the distance. “We might not. I—I don’t understand the moonies. Once, I thought I did. Maybe the war made things simpler, or maybe it was the end of it that did. But now, I think—I really don’t get them. Some of them speak about a grand vision of humanity—peace, prosperity, the whole gamut. Others treat us like the scraps they left behind when they set off to build their new Garden of Eden.”

“You mean… they’re like us. Human. Some well-intentioned visionaries with ideas greater than themselves. Others, greedy and fallible. And mostly, a bit of both.”

“Maybe. Maybe what I’m scared of… is that they can actually do it. That they can do what we were never able to, that we still aren’t able to. Peace. Order. Or, in your analogy, clearing the jungle.”

Harry looked amused. “You mean… together, right? Make peace… with us, right? Because the moonies can’t realize their vision of grand civilizational peace and harmony without us,” he said. “By definition, they can’t.”

“Never thought about it that way, I guess…”

She closed her eyes and sighed, aware that his eyes were still on her.

She opened them a long moment later. “In that story of the jungle, how did humanity recover? How did we keep it at bay? Hell, how did we get out of it in the first place?”

“You know the answer to that. How does any great civilizational project get off the ground?” Harry took a deep breath. “Yeah. Who knows? Maybe it really isn’t worth all this blood and effort.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Nice to see you back at work, Doctor,” Julia said with a faint smile. “My schedule will be filling up with your meetings soon, I presume?”

“Yes, Commodore. I—I—” Cynthia stopped herself.

Julia softened her voice. “I know… it’s not easy. What you went through. If you need to talk to someone…”

She shook her head. “No—no, I’m fine. They didn’t—I’m fine.”

Julia’s eyes lingered on her for a moment. “Good. Good. If you do, you can talk to Dr. Wrona. He’ll get you sorted. Drugs, or talking to someone—anyone—about it… it’s helpful, from… personal experience.”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll—I’ll do that.”

“And… you know what? I’m assigning you a couple of Marcus’s marines, for your own protection.”

“What? No. I don’t need—I’m fine.”

“It’s just a precaution. In case any of the moonies try to kidnap you again. Marcus?”

“I have a couple I can pull off routine patrols. We did consider protecting her, but thought that would draw too much attention before… all this.”

“I’m sure—I’m sure I’m fine. I think they won’t bother me again.”

“It’s not really up to you,” Marcus said. “There’s a lot of value in what you know.”

“Really, this colony is as safe as it gets!”

“Yes. With all your decades of experience in personnel security and threat assessment, your opinion on this matter really carries a lot of weight with me,” Julia said dryly.

Cynthia looked like she was going to protest but deflated. “It’s—fine. As long as they stay out of my way.”

“I’m sure they’ll do their best… So, that request for an urgent meeting?” Julia smiled. “Got another lake you want me to drain?”

“Right. Meeting. No, no lake. I found something!”

“What have you brought me today?” Julia asked, pointing a finger at the transparent cylinder in her hands. “Core samples, eh? Anything new? Something else about the lake? Thirty-five kilometers beneath us, huh? I think I’m going to give the order to stop rationing water next week.”

Cynthia shook her head and placed the cylinder on Julia’s desk, where she pointed at the marked line. “Commodore, I—I think I know what the Precursor aliens were doing here.”

“Could have started with that…”

“What is on this planet, Commodore, other than the Precursor ruins? What would Dustball have offered a presumably advanced civilization that would entice them to colonize it in the first place?”

“Not much, I suppose. There’s a lot of sand and nothing here.”

“A lot of sand and—” Cynthia stopped herself, then looked Julia in the eyes. “Ah, you are messing with me.”

Julia returned a smile. “Sand and nothing, and a large deposit of water a few dozen kilometers beneath our feet.”

“Precisely. Precious water, which is not rare among the stars, but is rare in such large volumes to be extracted. For a few light years.”

“Right, so this planet was… what? Some kind of water mining operation for the Precursors.”

Cynthia looked minorly surprised that she managed to figure that out. “Yes. A water mining operation is my guess.”

“And you know this how?”

“The way that the rocks are. There used to be more water. Then, there wasn’t.”

“The way that the rocks are.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

“So here, they had a whole city. A whole city of people who lived here… People who went to work. People with families. With their entire lives.”

“And now, it’s just sand and nothing.”

“Sand and nothing, and a preserved cache of the most valuable machinery in the known galaxy.”

“And a way to bring all that water to space.”

“Right. I suppose they must have had a launchpad somewhere, or… wait. What if…”

“You got it.” Cynthia beamed.

“A space elevator. A space… pipe, of water? From the surface to orbit?”

“Made of…”

“Living metal. Dustballium. Is that… possible?”

“It’s harder than a space elevator design, which relieves compression pressure with tension. But until we figure out the limits of Dustballium, the only people who can answer that question…” She looked down.

“Sand and dust,” Julia guessed.

“Crudely.”

“And the foundry we found…”

“That was likely what it made. The pipe that goes to space.”

“Ah.” Julia pointed a finger at her chest. “That’s why you’re here. You want to go digging for where that giant space pipe must have fallen down.”

“It’s… probably buried somewhere out there.” Cynthia gestured out the window of the admin hab. “We’ll figure out where it is soon. Roughly. And then we’ll dig it up eventually.”

“That’s it? You’re not… going to demand I give you some of my marines to help you dig?” Julia smiled. “Maybe stop a construction project for half a year while you take their robots to go digging for it?”

Cynthia shrugged. “I did file a proposal for more equipment. I suppose you’ll get to it when you get to it.”

The scientist had changed. Julia wondered what it was. Her overnight kidnapping by the moonies.

Or…

Perhaps it was Julia who had broken her. Forcing her to keep the secret. The threats.

She felt a well of guilt threatening to spill. Julia stared at her a bit longer and grunted. “I suppose so.”

“We’ll need to find roughly where it is first anyway. It probably fell around the same time the Precursor civilization did. Based on that, we can try to figure out where the ground level that used to be here would migrate.”

Or maybe Cynthia was simply more interested in something else than a rusty old pipe. If the Dustballium could rust. That seemed unlikely.

“So the foundry… it made this space pipe, not helmets?” Julia asked. “What about the ballistic helmet remains we found in the facility?”

“Well, it…” Cynthia looked uncomfortable for a moment. “No, it likely made helmets too. At the end.”

“At the end?”

“At the end. It clearly wasn’t designed to only make helmets. It was probably supposed to be just to make Dustballium. Then, it was repurposed. When they needed to.”

“When they needed to.”

“It didn’t help them much, I don’t think.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

125 million years ago

“They’re here!”

“By the creators…”

Xenilath’s reflective eyelid snapped shut, filtering the ultraviolet glare as she stared into the cloudless sky. A massive cylinder hung above the horizon.

It was still far beyond the atmosphere, but it was already visible to the naked eye. A dark, silver-gray shape the size of a small moon, one end gleaming where it caught the light of their sun. It didn’t appear to be moving.

“They’re finally here,” she whispered.

“Help me get the equipment inside!” a coworker yelled. He had both arms wrapped around the handle of a heavy storage crate, his feet slipping in the soft sand as he dragged it toward the factory entrance.

“What’s the point?” someone else said. He stood beside an abandoned cart, staring upward. “We’re all dead anyway.”

“Inside!” another worker shouted. “Get inside! The walls might protect us!”

“Hasn’t helped anyone anywhere else,” the cynic muttered.

A gust of hot wind swept out from the factory, carrying dust, machine oil, and the smell of the chemical ponds. Loose sheets of packing material tumbled across the yard. Somewhere far off to her right, an unattended machine chirped.

“If anything, die with dignity,” someone said with a shaking voice. “The damn eaters… Don’t give them the fear they want.”

Xenilath looked again at the cylinder in the sky. In that moment, she decided that if she was going to die here, she wasn’t going to do it screaming like a coward.

Not like the people in the recordings.

She grabbed the other end of the crate. Its metal handle burned against her paws from sitting in the glare of the system star.

“Lift.”

Together, they hauled it through the entrance.

Only a few workers were still at the factory. Most had gone home to be with their clans, to crowd into the underground shelters and pretend that a few meters of dust and metal, living or not, was going to protect them from the coming apocalypse.

Xenilath didn’t have a clan, so she was here.

The inside of the factory was darker and cooler, though the air was thick with the smell of hot metal and insulating resin. Ventilation fans rumbled in the ceiling. This place built this planet. Made it the way it was.

This planet wasn’t particularly populated. No anomalous astropolitical positioning. No complicated entries in the history of the civilization. No rare resources, bar one. The substance of life. The millions who lived here were the bare minimum necessary to support that simple yet critical mission. Xenilath had lived her life here, as many before her did. For a hundred generations, this planet had supplied the water that made comfortable life possible for eighteen billion souls in six neighboring star systems.

Some billions fewer now, now that the eaters were here.

And now, the factory had been reopened and repurposed to churn out implements of war. Half-finished products and critical equipment lined its dimly lit hallways.

A squad of soldiers had gathered in the production chamber. They surrounded Xenilath’s supervisor, their weapons still slung across their chests, and all of them were shouting over one another. Xenilath left her crate by the wall and jogged over.

“What’s going on, Supervisor?”

“Xenilath, come here.” Her supervisor warily waved her closer with both arms. “Maybe you can make these soldiers see sense.”

“No, you make your supervisor see sense!” their leader snapped. His uniform was streaked with dust. The dust of the planet, it got everywhere. “We need your equipment!”

“It’s over,” the supervisor said, his voice strangely calm. That was scarier than the shouting. “It is already over. Don’t you see?”

He gestured toward the rows of workstations.

“What good will a few helmets do you? We are not a mass-production line. Never have been. These are custom units for the super-marines who went up to sabotage their ship a few weeks ago.” He dry-laughed. “And where are they now? Dead. All dead. Nothing can stop the eaters. Nothing.”

“Anything will help,” the squad leader said. “Don’t give up yet. They might still attempt a landing here—”

Her supervisor slowly shook his head.

“What for? There’s nothing useful down here, as far as they care about. No command bunker. No defense batteries. No launch facility. Just a water pipe that goes up and up, for planets that are already dead and those that will be soon.” He spread his arms. “There’s nothing here they want. The only thing they’re here for is you and me.”

“Just because you’ve given up—” the squad leader began.

Blaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggg!

Xenilath flinched as the air-raid alarm blared through the chamber, covering up whatever the soldier was going to say.

Thump.

The heavy doors ground and then slammed shut. The impact shuddered through the floor. Horizontal bars behind the door locked into place one after another with deep mechanical bangs.

For a few seconds, no one spoke.

Xenilath stared at the sealed doors. They were a pace thick and made of living metal. She noted idly that if they were going to break, it was going to be the hinges that gave.

However thick the door was, it wouldn’t help them for what was coming.

“See?” her supervisor said quietly. “They’re not landing. There’s nothing here they want… Only what they want dead.”

The soldiers exchanged glances. A younger one tightened his grip on his rifle.

“Hang on,” the squad leader said. He raised one hand to the receiver. Static crackled from it between voices. “I’m picking up something from orbital defense.”

“What?” Xenilath asked.

Hope blossomed in her chest.

Had someone stopped them?

Had one of the defense fleets survived?

The squad leader listened. The hope died in his eyes before he even spoke.

“What?” Xenilath demanded.

“They’ve launched. At us. Twelve.”

Her supervisor closed his eyes. “Planet killers. One for each pipe.”

“No,” someone whispered.

Xenilath saw the truth settle over the soldiers.

Two of them turned to one another and embraced, military decorum forgotten. One buried his face against the other’s shoulder, consoling themselves in their final moments. Another lowered himself to the floor and began murmuring the old creation prayers under his breath. More joined him.

The squad leader remained standing. He straightened his uniform, adjusted the strap of his rifle, and stared at the sealed door as though he still intended to fight what came through it.

Xenilath wanted to say something.

She didn’t know what.

She thought about her dreams. An entire world inside her. And millions of them, one for each life across the planet.

Would anyone even remember her? Remember this place? She didn’t have an answer for that.

“The electronic dampener,” she muttered, staring up at the ceiling.

“What?” the soldiers turned to look at her.

She glanced back at the squad leader. “This facility… we have an electronic dampener upstairs. It’s only activated when we process the living metal foundry. If—if the eaters are to come… it might slow their war machines. Buy us some more… time.”

She felt lame even as she suggested it, expecting them to ridicule her.

“Good idea,” the squad leader said seriously instead. He nodded his head approvingly. He gestured at two of his soldiers. “Go upstairs and turn it on. Anything can be the bit that helps.”

“It’s on the top floor. There are signs. You won’t miss it.”

“Thank you, worker.”

“For what?” Xenilath asked.

He shrugged without an answer.

They simply stood there, the distant voices in the soldiers’ radios getting more rapid. She tried to block them out of her mind.

Boooooom.

The sound of the pressure front arrived first, rolling through the ground and into her bones.

Dust sifted from the ceiling. The lights went out. The red emergency strips lit up for a brief second, then went out. She didn’t even have time to register that it was because of the newly activated electronic dampener.

“Was that it or—” someone began.

The entire factory lurched upward.

Xenilath felt her feet leaving the ground. Then, she felt no more.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“And which ones work?” Samira asked coldly.

Julia gestured around her. “Nine of them. We’ve marked them with orange stickers on the top. The ones that work.”

“Nine functional. And how many of the broken ones have you removed?”

“Just the two you saw us move to the colony last week,” Julia replied, watching her reaction carefully. “The rest are attached to the factory floor.”

The moonie’s face gave nothing away. “So two, plus the three here. Five non-functional. We’ll need to test them all ourselves, of course.”

She shrugged. “You’re welcome to them.”

“Any that you’ve hidden from us?” Samira asked, looking away from Julia.

“No.”

“We’ll be verifying that for ourselves too, of course.”

“You’re welcome to check the rest of the facility.”

“Assuming you haven’t lied about this like everything else, what’s the split?”

“Five-four for the working ones, two-three for the broken ones. One of us will get an extra working one and the other can get an extra broken one. It doesn’t really matter how many you get; your bottleneck will be your ability to feed raw materials in and get the product out of this room—”

“We’ll take five of the working ones.”

“Fine by me. We’ll take the extra non-functional device.”

“And we’ll pick the specific ones we want.”

“Samira…”

Samira added, “Our guys will be in this room twenty-four seven. And once our marines get here, they’ll be in here too.”

The Lunar Marines wouldn’t get there for at least a few more months, with their first warp ships, so that was a small concession to make. Julia sighed, swallowing what she was going to say. “Sure. As long as they learn the sabotage protocol for the machines and the room too.”

“Whatever. Anything else you’ve removed from this room?”

“Some of the alien artifacts. Most of it was trash or just samples of debris. And the samples we took before we… revealed the chamber, they were all confiscated by the Vorshniks in orbit.”

“Okay, we’ll take half of whatever you removed as well.”

“Samira… we don’t have to—” She sighed again in exasperation. “Sure.”

“Control over the EMP device above us. We want two of our guards on it at all times, with full veto authority, starting tonight.”

“Two guards? Who?”

“That’s our business. Two guards. You have a problem with that?”

Julia stared at her for a moment and then shook her head. “No. I’ll put a couple of our marines on it too, when you do.”

“And one last thing.”

“Yes?”

“We need to verify you don’t have a clanker, hidden away in some dark corner in this facility, working on something else you’ve hidden from us.”

“We don’t. This was everything,” Julia said stiffly. “We gave you access to everything.”

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem for you to remove all electronics from this facility by the end of the day and activate the EMP for a few minutes. Just to make sure there’s nothing else.”

“We—I’ll let the scientists know… We have nothing to hide.”

“Nothing to hide… anymore? We’ll see.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lucas was neck-deep in a construction trench with his work crew when Julia arrived. The way they stared at her when they saw. Even the way their construction robots’ cameras tracked her looked hostile.

“Lucas!” she called out.

He didn’t hear her over the noise of their machinery. Or pretended not to.

“Lucas!” she yelled as she got closer.

“What?!” His neck snapped over. “Oh. What do you want, grounder?”

She squatted to just above his eye level. “Department head meeting at sixteen hundred.”

He cupped a hand to his ear. “What?”

“Department. Head. Meeting. At. Four. Read your messages on the colony network!”

“I’m good. You guys go ahead without me.” He turned around.

“We need your progress report on the hillside bunker—”

Hand at his ears again. “What?” he asked as he backed away out of view. “Can’t hear you! Come back another time! Next year?”

She’d consider having him arrested and deported. Kidnapping. Assault and battery. Harboring contraband. Unauthorized use of radio. Resisting arrest. Anything, really.

But Cynthia refused to cooperate on the charges. And while nobody at the colony was irreplaceable, not even herself, there were some people who could spark trouble if they were, Lucas chief among them.

The colony was already high-strung. She could see it in the way that her department heads refused to look at each other in the meetings. The way that the colonists had gone back to segregating at the cafeteria. The sharp divide between the moonies and her civilians had blurred before recent events; she hadn’t even noticed until they went back to their old habits.

It wasn’t just people refusing to sit at the same lunch table. Official complaints. Fights. Bad fights.

There hadn’t been any fatalities yet under her watch, making Dustball officially the safest administrative unit in human history when Census Day rolled around, but that was mostly due to its small, working-age population and the diligence of Dr. Karol Wrona. If the worrying trends she saw continued, even that was about to change soon.

Julia could have Lucas demoted. Not sent home, just… a smaller responsibility. But there was also some risk in that.

She looked down at the construction site. It wasn’t like his actual work efficiency had slipped. The construction crew was still reporting ahead of schedule somehow. The entrance to the hillside bunker would be completed in less than a week. The rest of the digging was autonomous work.

She sighed as she craned her neck to look up into the sky.

The hillside bunker. It’d be needed. The aliens had been kept at bay so far, mostly by each other, while negotiations were ongoing. But she wasn’t sure how long that’d last.

Then again, she wasn’t sure how long a bunker dug into the hillside would last if they really wanted to come down here and take it all by force either. Even if it was protected from above by two hundred meters of solid granite. Probably not very long.

Then again, what else do we have but our best?

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Brussels

Salma was still reading over a briefing for her next meeting when Will cleared his throat.

“What is it now?” she asked.

“Madam President, there’s a new study out of Tranquility University, about public education standards.”

She didn’t look up right away. “Public education standards?”

“Science, math, reading. Test scores. You know, things of that nature.”

That made her glance up over the edge of the page, already suspicious. “Another one of those?”

“They published an index. It’s caught some attention in newsrooms. It’ll go out first thing tomorrow.”

Of course they had. She tossed the briefing packet onto her desk and leaned back in her chair. “Let me guess, Luna is number one. Again.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Just out of curiosity, when you eliminate the option that had its entire existence generously subsidized by the richest nations and corporations and investors of Earth for half a century, which member state is next? Norway? Korea?”

Will checked the datapad, even though he clearly knew the answer already. He cleared his throat. “Earth.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Earth is number two.”

“No, I heard you the first time.”

“I figured.”

“An index on public education standards,” she repeated, eyes blinking in disbelief. “Luna is number one, and Earth is number two.”

“Yes, ma’am. They didn’t feel the need to break out the member states into their own categories and rankings—”

She held up a hand. “So it’s an index with… exactly two entries. And all this petty, pointless… pissing contest tells you is what everyone already knew, that if you spend about as much money on every single pupil as the entire education system of Suran spends on textbooks, Luna has—at the end of the day—a better education system than Earth does, on average.”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations, Luna. You’re the best. Take a cookie on your way out…” She squinted at him. “Is this a joke?”

Will’s expression stayed admirably straight. “No ma’am, it’s a paper out of their new Lunarology Department.”

“Lunarology. That’s a real academic field now.”

“They certainly would like you to think so. And last I heard, they’re pretty good with the academic stuff up there.”

“Don’t encourage them.”

“I try not to.”

Salma’s eyes narrowed a little as another thought struck her, and then a sly smile crept across her face. “Wait a second, I bet this new index doesn’t include physical education.” She pointed a finger at him. “The most important of all education standards, of course.”

“Actually…” He glanced back at his datapad. “It does. One of their input metrics is physical education. Apparently pupils on Luna can jump higher, lift more mass, and throw a ball further than pupils on Earth.”

Salma stared at him for a long second. “They can lift more mass—Is this a joke?”

He continued, “They are also using some tricky math to show that their public schooling physical education programs improve life expectancy at birth, more than ours do.”

“Life expectancy at—”

“The paper’s just making a point, ma’am. It’s to illustrate how even things like education ranking indices that rank Luna well can shape the way people think. Bias them against peoples—”

“Yes, Will.” She waved that part away impatiently. “I’m well aware. More moonie whining about cultural bias, on a planet they swear they want nothing to do with. I’m sure I’ll be hearing about this paper the next time I have to talk to them up there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Tomorrow, half the pundits would call the paper silly. The other half would pretend it mattered deeply, and by afternoon someone in the Assembly would be demanding a comparative standards review just to avoid looking complacent. And somewhere on Luna, Salma’s counterpart would almost certainly be enjoying himself.

“And… just to humor them a bit, did this paper have any actual recommendations? Maybe we should simply reduce the size of Earth to one-sixth of its current mass so our kids can jump higher and lift more, like theirs can?”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind that, ma’am.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t either, judging by their tepid response to our arms control discussions.”

“Eh. They probably won’t nuke us. Even during the war, they didn’t dare. Eighty percent of their population lives in Serenity. If we hit it with a couple city busters, that’s it for them.” Will made a cutting motion at his neck in emphasis.

“Yes, yes. I paid attention in that security briefing,” she said dryly. “They’ll all be dead in a month if we hit their life support. That’ll be fantastic news for all of us down here who survive the apocalyptic return fire.”

The Union Guard had extreme contingency plans for a nuclear exchange. There was an underground bunker, just for her. It was built to survive a dozen or so Earth-penetrating nuclear warheads. Which was a real comfort because they told her that after the Director of Military Intelligence gave her the estimate of how many tens of thousands of warheads were in the moonie stockpile. Not all of them were bunker busters, but still…

If the bunker could survive twelve, surely the war planners in Serenity couldn’t come up with the genius plan to throw a thirteenth nuke at her bunker.

Will shrugged. “I’m just saying… it doesn’t matter how much we both cut down on our stockpiles—”

“I get it. I get it. Anything else? Other than more… jokes from our neighbors at our expense, on a slow news day.”

“There was a message shuttle. Dustball is… recovering from the… ahem—incident. They’ve informally agreed to a we-split-they-choose arrangement. The protests and riots have stopped, and people are going back to work.”

“You mean the coup attempt?” she asked, an unhappy expression forming on her face. “That we tried to start? I’m still not sure how you talked me out of replacing Commodore Julia Kessler.”

“Her plan—it could have worked,” Will grumbled. “Apparently, we’re going to be rich now. From that Dustballium stuff they found. Just… half as rich as we’d be if Julia’s plan worked. Because the moonies are going to get half of it now. Unless…”

Salma’s eyes narrowed. “Unless… what?”

“Secretary Wilders wants us to order her to take all the moonies in the colony into custody and then forcibly take the rest of it anyway.”

“Doesn’t he want me to replace the commodore entirely?”

Will nodded. “Yeah, he’s been sniffing around the Union Navy for someone who would do that without needing a direct order at all. But that’s a terrible idea now. Even if the moonies don’t start a war, the aliens who are talking to us might not take kindly—”

“A terrible idea… now? Only now?” she asked sarcastically. “Really?”

“The moonies probably won’t nuke us over it.”

“Probably not.”

“Not a full exchange, at least. Their escalation ladder is supposed to be pretty tall. Two or three nukes, possibly, as a warning. They’d be aimed at the Pacific Ocean or near military objectives down in Antarctica—”

“Please close the door on your way out of my office, Will. Thank you.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Clever aliens.”

And very much familiar. It was almost disappointing.

Karveth stared up at her from behind the edge of the conference table. As she leaned back in her own chair, from Julia’s angle, only his eyes, ears, and the top half of his furious little snout were visible. That somehow made the glare even more severe.

“Well?” he demanded. “What is it, primitive? Make an offer better than our baseline now!”

“Yeah!” Grobret added, popping up beside him like a second angry puppet. “Make an offer!”

“Very clever,” she repeated. “But… we did expect some shenanigans. And we have made some preparations.”

She touched her datapad. The lights in the conference room dimmed automatically. A projector embedded in the center of the table came alive with a soft whine, filling the white canvas at the front of the room with an image of a darker space.

A picture of one of the machines on the factory floor, with the other machines in the room out of view.

Karveth stood up on his chair to see better. Grobret copied him half a second later. Shachos leaned forward, the hues on his face already shifting towards nervous yellow. Glonk drifted to the front of his tank, his nose pressing lightly against the glass.

Julia let the image hang there for a moment as the aliens stared.

“We are prepared to sabotage and destroy the Dustballium machine,” she said. “Look at the control levers. If our airspace is breached, we have fashioned a device that will pour liquid Dustballium into the controls and turn it solid. Once that is complete, the machine is rendered inert. Then, we’ll glue the chamber doors shut with Dustballium and cause a cave-in with a nuclear charge.”

The room was quiet enough for her to hear the projector hum.

Shachos’s face oscillated between yellow and blue. “Please, Julia, we’ve heard this joke enough times. Julia, your marine—Marcus—has already threatened us with that. As I mentioned to him, we have ways of undoing that. We have more advanced technology than you. We can dig the site out and cut through the door. Then, we can remove the extra Dustballium from the machine controls, and we will be able to operate it again. Either that, or we can reverse engineer the machine. Yes, either way we can. Combined, the three of us—”

“The four of us!” Grobret objected, catching their attention with a raised paw.

The Vorshnik fleet master ignored him. “The three of us combined have more than enough technology to do that. Yes, we do.”

“Yes, Marcus did mention something about that to me.” Julia smiled thinly. “But… he also mentioned, you let slip it’s a process that will take a significant amount of time. Not just a few years. At least decades, possibly centuries.”

A sliver of blue crept onto Shachos’s confident scalp before it dissipated.

Ah, so you know exactly where this is going.

“Yes. Yes, that is true,” Shachos conceded after a moment. He gave the other two delegations a quick look, then steadied himself. “It will take long. But we are patient. And if you do the math on how much this is worth for our three species, it will work out for us. Yes, it will.”

Yes, and we are all self-interested, rational beings who act in a logical manner, based solely on the information available to us at the time.

“Hm… I’m sure it will,” she said, in a tone she knew the Vorshnik could fully understand. “So… I’m just curious. And I know things are real friendly between the three of you. After you’ve cut the door open and gotten to the machine, which of your species will be responsible for dissecting it, learning its secrets? In the decades and centuries before you produce a copy? And for that matter, which one of you is going to be responsible for cutting the door open in the first place?”

From the shifting colors on his face, it was apparent Shachos got it.

The Sonckle did not. The alien sea turtle swam a little circle in his aquarium.

Dloooob fweeeep gweeeep. “We will, of course. Everyone knows that the Sonckles have the most advanced technology and the most experience with rare Precursor artifacts. Our historical research institutions are by far the most prestigious in this region of the galaxy, and—”

“That is not true. Not true at all!” Shachos protested, spreading all four of his limbs. “That is only the case in school rankings and indices fabricated by your people! The machine will remain here on… Dustball. Here on Dustball. Not to be removed from our territory. Our territory! In the event the controls are sabotaged, our scientists will promptly move in and reverse engineer the controls. Yes, they will.”

From her experience, the thing about this little trap was that even if its victims knew they were in it…

“Anyone but the clowns! Anyone but the clowns!” Karveth banged his clenched paw on the table in rhythm with his words, still aiming his death stare at Shachos.

“Anyone but the clowns!” Grobret agreed.

How very human.

Julia grinned at Karveth and his second in turn. “Ah, I see. And of course, to make sure that this agreement of yours holds for… a century or two, the Karnolians will be stationing over Dustball…”

“A faction fleet to guarantee its security!” Karveth said.

“A big one, with lots of ships!”

“No!” Shachos’s face was all blue. “There can be no alien fleets in Vorshnik territory without our approval. Not without our approval. And especially not Karnolian ships. They break down all the time, and they can spread their debris all over our transport orbits. Yes, our orbits.”

Karveth slapped the table. “A faction fleet, at least!”

Julia said with a smooth and serene expression, “Alright, so figure that one out amongst yourselves, preferably before you decide to kill us all. And make sure you include some ironclad guarantees so that no one decides to break your agreement in all that time you’ll need.”

“Maybe even two faction fleets!”

Julia tilted her head. “Another thing… since we’re on the topic of reverse engineering: Shachos, did your scientists figure out what exactly was in those custom mixes we gave you?”

Karveth stopped banging the table. One paw stayed suspended in the air. He turned to look between Julia and Shachos. “Wait. Custom mixes? What are you talking about? What custom mixes? Custom mixes of what?!”

Seeing that, Grobret turned to Shachos as well. “You’re hiding something from us, Shachos?”

Julia opened her eyes as wide as she could in mock surprise. Of course, Shachos would know what she was doing, but she was less sure about the other species. She doubted if it would matter anyway. “Oh. Oh, no. I’m sorry. You didn’t get to tell your new friends about those custom mixes yet, Shachos?”

Glonk swept aside a patch of nutrient flakes and dirty liquid from his vision as he looked down on the table. He jabbed with one of his flippers.

Pweeeeeeeeeeeeb. “Shachos? What is the primitive talking about?! What is this talk of custom mixes?”

Shachos was a yellowish-green color that resembled vomit. “We—we—”

Julia put her right hand to her chest lightly. “Oh, Shachos, I’m sorry. I guess… I just assumed… you told everyone that you already confiscated a whole batch of five hundred kilograms’ worth of our liquid Dustballium when you made that shakedown pact with them,” Julia said in her best “I totally did not expect this” voice. “Or was it maybe more? I don’t remember exactly how much—”

“We—we—” Shachos sputtered.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Karveth stomped heavily, shaking the thin floor of the hab. “You… what?!”

Shachos hurried to explain, “There were still some delicious vegetables in that compartment! Delicious vegetables! It wasn’t the full five hundred kilograms. Not at all. Most of it was—”

Technically, he was right. Most of the illicit cargo was unrelated samples from the chamber; the pure Dustballium probably only came up to a few dozen kilos. Less than a hundred, Julia estimated. She didn’t think to have Dr. Clement measure it all before the geologist snuck them in with the potatoes.

Judging by her limited knowledge of alien body language, she suspected they wouldn’t have cared anyway.

Shloooob shloooob meeeep. For good measure, Glonk angrily banged twice on his thick aquarium glass with his flippers. “Five hundred kilograms of Precursor Metal?! Five hundred?! Five hundred?! Shachos! You lied to us!”

Okay, how much did the diplomatic translator censor out of that rant?

“I did not lie. We do not lie. It is not a big deal—I simply forgot to mention some barely relevant context. That is not the same, not the same at all. No, I did not lie.”

“Liar! Liar! Liar!” Karveth shouted with a quivering claw.

Julia turned to Grobret expectantly, just in time for his sharp claws to come out in accusation as well. “Lies from the clown! War it is! War it is!”

Shachos apparently didn’t care at all what the Karnolians thought of him, but the Sonckle’s opinion mattered, at least a little. He turned to the aquarium to explain to the alien turtle, “Glonk, I promise! I promise it wasn’t the full five hundred kilograms. She is completely exaggerating. Totally exaggerating. The actual amount of—”

Julia didn’t let him finish his sentences, and Shachos’s natural inability to get to the point was really working against him here. “Ah! I see! Now, I see why you agreed to that deal, Fleet Master Shachos. While there’s this decades-long effort to reverse engineer the sabotaged machine, the Vorshniks will have access to… as I understand it, the largest find of both solid and liquid Dustballium in known galactic history.”

“I did not mean to—”

“How much did you say it was? Several times more than everything that’s been found so far?” She nodded sagely as she shot an exaggerated wink at him. “Something along those lines. With that, your civilization may advance decades, maybe centuries, in just a few years. And by the time the door is cut open, you’d be far ahead of the rest of them technologically. Your species would be perfectly positioned to use the product of those machines as the reverse engineering efforts start to bear fruit in a few decades. That is indeed an excellent plan. If I were in your shoes, I would do the exact same. Very clever—”

“Deal’s off with the unreliable clown! No deal!” Karveth climbed into his chair and stomped. “They’ve betrayed us all! The lies end today! War it is!”

“War it is! War it is!” Grobret added, though Julia could swear he looked less angry and more… excited.

Glonk swam over to face Julia. He tapped twice on his glass, almost politely.

Greeeeeng shreeeep vlooooom. “Humans, we have a revised understanding of the situation. We would be willing to accept a significantly lower amount in an exclusive deal. We will deploy our warships to defend your colony from the unscrupulous Vorshniks through a long-range jump gate. As you can see, they are as untrustworthy as they are unserious—”

The sliver of blue on Shachos’s face blossomed and deepened. “Glonk, you can’t do that! This system is well within our territory. Yes, it is! Your armed warships are not allowed to enter Dustball without our permission. That is a breach of our treaties—”

“We’d like to cut out the clowns too!” Karveth insisted. He banged a fist on the table repeatedly and gestured between himself and Glonk’s water tank with the other.

Grobret made sure he was not excluded. “Just the three of us. Us serious peoples!”

Julia brightened up with a deeper smile. “Sure, Karveth and Glonk and—I mean, representatives of the Karnolian and Sonckle species. Thank you for your interest. We have a number in mind. An upper-bound of half a ton in formed Dustballium per year, with your provided molds. Which as I understand it, will still be an immense boon for your industries and your research. Would you two species like to split the quota allotment fifty-fifty?”

Pleeeeeeeeeb. “No, if there’s going to be a hard limit, we’d rather pursue a deal without the Karnolians at all.”

Thought so. Didn’t even need to think about it, huh?

She feigned a frown, hoping their translators would catch it. “C’mon, Glonk. I can see Karveth and you are good friends, and I wouldn’t want something like this to come between you two. Maybe another ratio? Sixty-forty? I’ve heard Shachos say your technology is far superior to the Karnolians, but that’s just his perspective. What do you think?”

Gloooom fweeeeeep bloooop. “Shachos is dishonest, as he has just proven to us all, but on this matter, he is actually correct. You don’t need the Karnolians at all. They are barely two hundred years ahead of your species on the standardized technology curve we use to measure civilizational development, and you are evidently developing much faster than they are. They have nothing. We can provide everything Karveth claims to have and far more. The complications of his quarrelsome species would not be necessary in our deal.”

“Aww, Glonk, I’m sure all species have something wonderful to contribute to the galaxy, like their beautiful art and wonderful culture, and we’ll work out a fair exchange rate—”

The discount Ewok didn’t hear her at all.

“You what?!” Karveth exclaimed as he turned to point a claw angrily at the water tank. “I knew I couldn’t trust you backstabbing mud-drinkers! Our partnership ends today! War it is!”

“War it is! War it is!”

To his credit, Shachos seemed far less upset by the breakdown in decorum, with his constant flashing of red, orange, and yellow. He chimed in. “Julia, we are willing to go below the prior baseline too. We will take a lower amount than the greedy Sonckles, and we’ll match their technology transfer. Any technology they offer, we can match. Yes, we will match them. You can keep any molds we give you for research, and we’ll provide all schematics in two versions. Yes, all our schematics come in two versions, the domestic blueprints with all the funny jokes and the export variants without. Your people can have both, which I know your people will appreciate. And for the items we also sell to Karnolians and Sonckles, we will also include the explanations for the jokes for their humorless—”

Shreeeep gluuuub gluuuub. “Human, don’t be fooled by the bottom-feeder’s attempts at distraction. His species crawled out of the seafloor of sentience no more than a hundred thousand years ago. Their technology is worth less than landcrawler sewage! Ours is by far superior, by any metric you would care—”

Karveth had climbed onto the table. He beckoned eagerly at Julia. “We have the best weapons and ships, and we have the most variety! I’ll show you, primitive! I’ll show you! You can come with me to a live-fire test!”

“Come with us! We’ve got the best!”

Shachos turned bright red briefly as he chortled. “Ahahahah! If you want to see how terrible Karnolian weapons are, you don’t need to go to one of their rigged demonstrations. Not at all! Just go watch them try and kill each other in the Garshorli sector; we have obtained footage, it’s pathetic. Very pathetic. Extremely—”

“Your unserious people don’t even know what an honorable battle is. When is the last time you were in battle, Fleet Master Shachos? Your ignorance ends today! War it is!”

“War it is! War it is!”

In her mind’s eye, Julia saw a storage bunker full of munitions like a powder keg waiting to be lit. All it needed was a little more fuel…

“Folks, folks.” She lifted both hands. “I know we’re all very excited to get started on this comprehensive negotiation, but let’s take the temperature in this room down just a notch. We’ll start discussing the rules and framework around the bidding process soon. I just wanted to mention one more thing. Just one more thing before we get started. It’s not a main item, just a little… side request about the machines in question.”

That got them to quiet down.

Karveth stopped mid-stomp. Grobret froze with one claw in the air. Glonk stopped swimming in circles. Shachos even shut up.

Julia looked at the image of the machine. Then she looked back at them.

“There are actually two machines in the chamber,” she lied.

No need to tell the aliens how many actual backups she had.

“One of them appears to be intact but has not responded to commands. We plan to dissect and study it, for scientific purposes. We’d like to request technical assistance from one of your scientific communities in that project. Just a small scientific team. Now. Since we’re all good friends here, which of your species has the most experience with advanced metallurgic—”

Dreeeeeeeeep cheeeeeep.

“No, we do! We do!”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

There were four alien representatives. For a meeting that would decide the fate of an entire human colony and possibly humanity’s first real place in interstellar politics, Julia had expected a bit more. Rows of attendants. Advisors whispering into alien radios. Security escorts with strange weapons. Instead, the conference room looked almost bare now with its five occupants.

Perhaps this was just how things were done when the pomp and ceremony were over.

Or perhaps they didn’t take it all as seriously as the humans did. She didn’t know if that felt better.

It was one of the colony’s administrative modules, hastily converted into a diplomatic venue, dominated by a polished table in the middle. Its floors were reinforced to support the heavy alien life-support equipment. One of the moonie construction engineers had tried to hide an exposed bundle of cables under neat white plastic covers, which only made it look more obvious.

If the aliens noticed the ad-hoc nature of the whole thing, they didn’t comment on it.

Or maybe this was just going to be the human aesthetic from now on, Julia thought idly as she looked out at her counterparts.

Across from her sat Shachos, representing the Vorshniks. That made sense. He was in the same boat as her. Either his people liked the way that he had handled things so far, or nobody else wanted to take the fall for it when it all went horribly wrong. Or they just thought this would be the funniest outcome.

To her right, the Karnolians sent a guy named Karveth. He was barely a meter tall, wearing a form-fitting, vacuum-ready suit adorned with a comically large red flag on his shoulder. The flag was not painted on. It was an actual patch of stiff fabric attached only at the top, fluttering with the moving air in the admin module. He looked exactly like the pictures. Brown fur. Massive, fluffy ears. Beady eyes. A snout permanently wrinkled in annoyance. If Julia squinted, she could swear it was the largest, angriest teddy bear she’d ever seen, stuffed into tacky-looking military parade dress.

Karveth wasn’t alone. There was another, identical-looking Karnolian sitting to his right. His nametag said Grobret, Second to Karveth. Grobret’s red flag was smaller, drooping from his shoulder. Other than that, Julia couldn’t tell the difference between the two of them. Same fur. Same ears. Same tiny glare. Same expression of perpetual offense.

The Sonckles, on the other hand, looked absolutely nothing like the pictures that Shachos had sent them in that first contact meeting.

Yes, they were an aquatic species, hence the massive water tank taking up an entire reinforced section of the conference room. The tank had to be brought in from orbit in three prefabricated pieces and assembled by machines that refused to let any of her marines within ten meters of it. The cylindrical column was almost as wide as the conference table, stretching from floor to ceiling. A small light lit its interior from underneath, proudly displaying every drifting particle in the dirty-looking water. Bits of nutrition hung in it. Snacks for its occupant.

Glonk, the Sonckle representative, floated in it all.

And Glonk was not a dolphin.

Not even close.

Glonk looked more like a sea turtle without a shell than anything. His skin was some muted shade of gray-green, with darker patches along the shoulders and throat. Four broad limbs that paddled around the aquarium lazily. A flat, leathery head with folds around the eyes and a wide mouth that opened slightly whenever the translator spoke.

Julia pulled up the original picture they’d received from the Vorshniks on her datapad, examining it from every angle.

Then she realized.

The picture didn’t look like a dolphin.

It was exactly a dolphin, with some extra fins and facial markings. The Vorshniks had obviously gotten that picture of an actual dolphin from somewhere on Earth and made their alterations. In hindsight, it wasn’t even a very good manipulation. There were imperfections, some odd edges and artifacts that even she could spot now that she was looking for them. One fin had the wrong shadow. The fake markings didn’t quite wrap around the snout. The water background repeated in an obvious way once she was looking for it.

In a way, that was a nice touch; a home-made prank from Shachos, not one outsourced to advanced computer algorithms or professional photo manipulators.

It only fooled all of humanity’s top scientists and diplomats.

Good one, Shachos. Got us good on that one.

She smiled and winked at him. He flashed her a quick bit of cherry red on his face when he saw her expression.

With the representatives seated—and Glonk… floating the right way—she cleared her throat. “Welcome, friends, to our planet, Dustball. I represent the Union of Earth, from our home planet, and we all know why we are here today. We are here to discuss a framework under which we can begin the sale of—”

“Excuse me, civilized neighbors… and Karnolians,” Shachos interrupted her. “I apologize for this interruption, Julia. But as a matter of tradition, since this meeting is taking place in our people’s territory, we need to complete our diplomatic protocols. Yes, our diplomatic protocols. For starting a meeting. Yes, we have special protocols, special things we must do before such a diplomatic meeting.”

“Oh, please no,” Karveth the Karnolian grumbled. Julia wasn’t sure if he caught the snide little insult from Shachos or if that mutual feeling already flowed the other way. “By the God of Battle, not your stupid traditions. Let the primitive talk.”

She was still considering how to respond to his insult when Grobret, his second, added for emphasis with a slap on the table, “Yeah! Not your stupid traditions again, Shachos!”

His paw made a surprisingly loud crack on the table, enough that he looked very satisfied with himself.

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Glonk’s water tank let out a high-pitched squeal, which modulated for a couple seconds before the machines caught up and started to translate. “I agree. We can skip your tedious traditions for today. Fleet Master Shachos, please.”

“No, no,” Shachos said, his face switching between orange and red. “I must insist. We must. It is an important part of our diplomatic culture. We must do this.”

Karveth stared daggers at him. “This is stupid. You always waste our time with these pointless—”

Bweeeeeep bloooouup. “Just… let him do it, Karveth. It will be faster.”

Even the machine translator sounded resigned.

“Um… right,” Julia said uncertainly, looking between the four of them. “What’s your—what’s your tradition, Shachos?”

Shachos turned bright orange. “We always begin our meetings with a friendly joke. Yes, a friendly joke. This is important. Very important.”

Julia suddenly had a very good idea why the other three representatives were doing the alien equivalents of rolling their eyes. Karveth was glaring at Shachos. Grobret was staring at something on the ceiling. Glonk had rotated slightly in the tank, drifting upside down for a moment before a jet of bubbles pushed him back.

She didn’t see another way out.

With a deep sigh, she said, “Yes, Shachos. Go ahead. Tell us a joke. Can it be a quick one please—”

“I will tell one… in your honor, human. Since you are the host. Yes, in your honor. In your format. Yours. Okay, okay. Here is a good joke. A businessman, a spacer, a colony administrator, and a village idiot sit down at a bar. What does the village idiot say?”

None of the other aliens were jumping—or swimming—in to save her, so Julia asked, a little afraid of the answer, “I don’t—I don’t know, Fleet Master Shachos. What does the village idiot say?”

“The village idiot says. Ahahaha. No, no. Please. The village idiot. The village idiot says. Ahahahahaha.” Shachos wheezed so hard his shoulders shook. His face turned bright red. He took a couple of deep breaths, and then squeezed out in a low voice, “The village idiot says… Oh, please no. By the God of Battle, not your stupid traditions. Let the primitive talk. Ahahahahahahahaha!”

Silence and stony stares in the room.

Shachos was undeterred. He gestured at each of them with his four limbs. “Do you get it? Do you get it? Because… Julia you are a colony administrator. I am a spacer. Glonk sells and trades items. And Karveth… Karveth! Ahahahahaha!”

Blam.

Karveth slammed his meaty fist on the tabletop and stood up angrily onto his chair, pointing a shivering claw at Shachos. Which… was probably not as intimidating as he meant it to be because he only came up to Julia’s shoulder even when she was seated. “Enough from the clown! Every single time! Our people have tolerated your insulting antics for centuries. But it ends today! War it is!”

Grobret stood up next to him in solidarity, pointing a second claw at Shachos. “War it is! War it is!”

Gluuuub gluuuub fweeeem. “Settle down, hatchlings. Shachos, enough. Karveth, sit down. You two can fight a war tomorrow. Today, I want to know what the humans’ price is for handing over this entire planet and its possessions. Julia, your peoples are interested in technology transfer, of course. What kind of technology are you looking for? Whatever you are looking for, if it is possible, we have it.”

It took the two Karnolians a moment to calm down. Karveth sat down with a loud hrrmph. Then, his second sat down… with a louder hrrmph.

Julia looked at the aliens present and took another deep breath as she read the report that professional Union trade negotiators had prepared for her. “Thank you all. At this time, we are not interested in selling Dustball colony, or the planet. However, what we are interested in are long-term agreements to sell solid, formed Dustballium to specific buyers. Solid, formed Dustballium only. You will provide the molds. The Dustballium final product will be manufactured here, on Dustball, or on our home planet—or on Luna, in our home system anyway—and they will be transferred to your people in exchange for the items or technology we are looking for. The quantity we are willing to sell at the standard rate will be rationed on a curve to preserve price stability, but we reserve the right to sell additional units at an elevated price. Information on all sales will be transparent, and we have developed a series of risk management instruments—insurance and hedges—to protect against production fluctuations or possible delivery issues stemming from—”

Meeeeeeep blaaaaoop gweeeep. “Let me interrupt you, Julia. We navigate these waters frequently. Your intentions for how you will swim are clear, and I respect it. However, there is just one complication for you. There is something you may be interested to know.”

“Complication? Can you please elaborate, Glonk?” she asked.

Bloop bloop greeeeeng. “Yes. I’ll let you know what we have discussed. Representatives Karveth and Shachos and I, we have already decided on one thing before we came down to your planet. We will jointly accept your control of the site and your right to sell its products under some circumstances. However…”

Here it comes.

Gweeeep fweep fweep. Dreeeeb dreeeeb bloooouup. “We have discussed expectations. A lower-bound of a unit that is round and familiar to you: one thousand tons per year. That is the amount of Precursor Metal we expect to swim—or crawl—away with for free. Additional quantities can be negotiated for your gain. That is simply the low-bound. If your framework does not satisfy all three of us, or if it does not meet that baseline, we have agreed: we will jointly take control of this site, and we will manage it together, splitting the Precursor Metal product equally between the three of our species. Or else.”

The room went still. She waited for him to finish, but he didn’t continue. As it turned out, that simple two-word expression carried the same connotation in alien diplomatic culture as it did in human ones.

Julia’s face tightened as she looked at each of the representatives in turn. “Was that a threat?”

Karveth turned to look at her imperiously. As imperious as one could be with only half his face above the rim of the table. “Yes. Of course it is a threat! This is extortion. We are extorting you. Do you not understand the simple concept, primitive?”

Julia was about to speak when Grobret cut in, adding, “Yeah! This is a threat! Don’t you understand—”

Anger flared in her. “Representative Karveth, you and—and—your friend, I will overlook your—”

Greeeeep vreeeeb blooooum. “I know some primitive species welcome the challenge of a fight, even if it is nonsensical and irrational to do so. But I will also warn you, if you do not meet this baseline, we will not only take your planet from you, we will kill all your colonists. Including the ones who do not fight. No one will be spared. I know that will bother you. Hopefully, it makes you reconsider the possibility of an irrational last stand or resistance.”

Glonk floated there in the tank, broad mouth slightly open as his nutritious seaweed floated past it.

That’s… one pleasant sea turtle.

Julia turned to Shachos. “What about you, Shachos?”

Shachos flashed subdued blue as he looked down. His energetic eagerness was gone, replaced with a somber seriousness she didn’t know his people were capable of.

“Are you in on this shakedown too?” she asked again.

He said slowly, “Glonk is… describing a serious scenario we would like to avoid, of course. We would strongly implore you to meet the baseline requirement. But that was what we agreed to in orbit. Yes, it was. It seems ruthless. Very ruthless. And needlessly violent. But surely you understand. This is a serious matter. This is important for our industries. This will benefit all of our peoples. We cannot—we will not allow you to ration the Precursor Metal and take all its benefits for yourselves. No, we will not. Especially since you cannot defend it yourself. If we have a deal, we will provide your defense. Defense for your colony from—well, defense for your colony. Yes, we will provide it all. Julia, please.”

Julia stared at him.

Then at Karveth, tiny clawed paws interlocked, leaning on the table.

Then at Grobret, who was trying to copy the uncomfortable pose.

Then at Glonk, floating in a tank full of dirty water, patiently waiting to see whether humanity understood the shape of the cage it was in.

Or rather, the cage he thought it was in.

Julia sighed. “Clever aliens.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Well… looks like we have to work together now,” Julia said glumly.

Samira shot daggers at her. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was just… page one of the entire mission description for the colony, but somehow you grounders all missed it all! Let me know if you need another copy of it. You can have mine!”

The moonie project manager still hadn’t recovered from her betrayal. Not even after the Whirlwind was intercepted and forced to land back on Dustball by the aliens. The Vorshniks, specifically, because they were not the only aliens in orbit now.

After that incident, the Union Navy arrived first. To protect the Union’s first and most valuable interstellar possession. Six ships of its finest Camel Squadron, at first. Then, a couple weeks later, six more to fill out the squadron.

Naval intelligence estimated that the squadron would last all of about thirty minutes against Shachos’s singular cruiser—the Triple Dash. But Union Naval Intelligence was probably pulling that number out of vacuum, extrapolating based on remote sensor readings and the performance of a single missile fired to threaten a supply shuttle escaping with contraband.

In any case, they spent a couple days unloading all sorts of “defensive” equipment to the planet. Enough to invade a small Union country. Early Christmas for Marcus. He did get his toys after all.

As some favor to the moonies, they’d carried messages and orders from their own command back in Serenity to the colony. The moonies were still constructing their first FTL-capable ships, courtesy of the alien technology transfer. Their new orders told them to do what they thought was best for Luna, essentially. At some point, you just had to trust the people on the ground to do the right thing, and nobody understood that better than the Lunar Navy.

The Karnolians arrived a few days after Camel Squadron.

Three different ships arrived, all from different Karnolian factions. It seemed like there was some disagreement over which one of them was supposed to represent their species, because there was a lot of active radar target locking and such in orbit—the Union Navy sensors eagerly drank up their signals. A couple days later, two of the ships left, leaving just one in orbit. It was about one and a half the size of Shachos’s ship and with very similar design cues from the exterior. Apparently, the rivalry and cultural exchange between the two species had led to a similar development path in warships and weapons. The Karnolian Battlecruiser, the Union Navy labeled it.

The Sonckles arrived last. Their representation was a singular, austere messenger vessel named the Righteous Depth. No bigger than a shuttle. Unlike the Karnolians and Vorshnik, their ship’s appearance was utterly and unmistakably alien. Whereas a Union Navy officer with imagination might see how the Triple Dash might be something that humanity would field in… a few generations of catch up—give or take, the same would not be said about the Sonckle ship. It was entirely curved—not a single sharp angle on the entire organic looking vessel. There were darkened bubbles along the spine, dotted throughout the ship with little regard to symmetry or any rationale that naval intelligence could deduce. And its engines flashed red and blue as it activated. The Union analysts speculated that those were probably just decorative LED lights. Probably.

To her own surprise, Julia had not been relieved of command. Instead, the people in charge back home decided either they liked the way she’d handled things so far, or they were going to give her another chance. Or they saw this all going downhill soon and nobody else wanted to take the fall for it. Honestly, she wasn’t sure which one she preferred.

For the moment, her task was to convince the people that she’d tried to screw over just a few weeks ago that they needed to present a united front of humanity in front of the aliens.

Easier said than done.

“Look, Samira, I already said I was sorry. And I’m sorry, on a personal level. I lied to you; I made you look stupid. That’s on me, and I’m sorry. I really am. But this is bigger than us now. This is about our species. Not just my planet. Your moon, too.”

From her expression, that did not soothe Samira. If anything, it was agitating her even more. The moonies could get that way when reminded they didn’t live on a real planet.

Julia hurried to explain, “What I mean is, this negotiation with the aliens thing. It’s not personal. We need to work together. Earth and Luna. We can get a massive species-changing deal out of this. I’m talking hundreds of years of technological development, skipped. Imagine all our problems at home, solved overnight!”

“Yes, yes. All our problems, solved overnight. You know our biggest problem on Luna, right?” Samira shot back bitterly. “You know what it is, right? We both have elections. Both our peoples. You have your Union Assembly. And we get the news in Serenity. We can see what you talk about. What your politicians campaign on. Infrastructure. Technology. Poverty. Ideology and religion. Your societies. Your economies. Your own petty squabbles as you wrestle among yourselves in the dirt. And when you’re bored, you talk about us. You talk about how you’re going to deal with the pesky rebels on Luna on a slow news day. Those are your problems.”

“What does that have to do with the negotiations—”

“We have our Parliament too. And I know you watch us closely. Which means you know what our politicians and our people talk about. We talk about which developing nations on Earth we can negotiate backchannel agreements with, to ensure the continuation of our water and air supply. We talk about which of your representatives are feeling disgruntled with your government, who might feel some sympathy for our people, for the next time you vote on what to do with our refugees among you. We talk about your natural disasters—some tsunami in the Indian Ocean, or some earthquake in West Asia. So that we might send some emergency aid that could buy us some goodwill, in the hopes that a few of you might call your leaders and say, the moon people pulled my mom out of the rubble. Maybe they’re human, like you and me.”

She stared at Julia, eyes hard.

“We talk about you. We always talk about you. We only talk about you. Because you grounders—you are our biggest problem.”

Samira turned to leave. “And until you understand that, until you—personally or as a representative for your planet, I can’t care less at this point—until you figure that out, this whole working together thing… it’s not going to go anywhere for either of us, is it?”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“About the incoming alien representatives.”

Julia looked up from her reading at Marcus. There was a lot of it. The Union didn’t know much about the aliens, so they put everything in. From the first contact package to rumors to random signals picked up from light years away. Most of it was probably junk.

“Yeah? What about them?”

“You ever read the story, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms?” Marcus asked.

“We ran through a little bit of it in military history at the college back in Pearl. That was China, right? What about it?”

“There was this period, where there were three powers, near-even in strength. They each attempted to balance the other two against each other. Each tried to play kingmaker when they were weak, forcing the stronger powers to compete against each other first while they rebuilt their strength.”

She nodded. “Right. Balance of power theory. Pretty sure it wasn’t unique to that period. Who won, by the way?”

“One of them. Actually, I think it was none of them. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I just thought our situation… it reminds me a little of that,” Marcus said as he stared off into the distance.

“Oh, but there’s a much better, much less esoteric analogy that is also less… romantic.”

He looked back. “What is it?”

“When the European settlers arrived on the shores of North America, they met these indigenous peoples. The colonists were technologically more advanced, and when they started to fight, the Native Americans were outmatched. So they traded for better weapons. Wasn’t that hard. They were rich in resources, there were several different European powers, and plenty of the settlers were willing to sell guns that were used by the native tribes to kill their fellow colonists just a town over. Muskets. Breach loaders. Lever action rifles. By the end of it, some of the Native Americans were using better weapons than the armies they were fighting. Just ask Custer.”

Marcus gave her a thumbs up. “Which was how the Native Americans won the wars, defended their continent from the outside invaders, and lived happily ever after.”

“Right?”

He sighed. “I mean… that’s just… depressing to think about in our situation. I always thought they were fighting with bows and spears against guns and that’s how they lost.”

“Oh no, that’s the… common misconception. The indigenous peoples weren’t stupid. They upgraded. It didn’t take much convincing, really. At some places, they fought with similar weapons, sometimes with similar tactics. They lacked the industrial production capability to make many of their own guns and ammo, yes, so maybe that’s a lesson to learn. But at the end of the day, it probably wasn’t just the weapons.”

“Then what was it? How did they really lose?”

She shrugged. “Smallpox, measles, and flu, probably. I think that’s what got most of them.”

“Great. Don’t accept any strange blankets from aliens?” he asked.

“A perfectly reasonable lesson to learn from history.”

“That, and don’t be too busy fighting each other when the outsiders are knocking at the door. That usually happens quite a bit in these kinds of situations too, if I remember right.”

“True. The settlers were really adept at playing the different tribes off each other, especially in the beginning.”

“Simple trap, but quite effective, against us primitive humans,” Marcus said.

Julia nodded along for a second and deflated. “Unfortunately, it’s easy to see such a trap coming. I’m sure the indigenous peoples saw it too. Much tougher to avoid the metal jaws of it as they clamp down on your legs though. What are we supposed to do? Just sing kumbaya with the moonies when they’re refusing to even work with us on a united front?”

He sighed. “I know, right? Extinction’s looking more and more like the attractive option every day.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Tiger-4 to Warlock! We have passive locks on three… possibly four bandits. How copy?”

Static.

“Tiger-4 to Warlock—”

“Captain, they’re not receiving us. Too much jamming, and our backup sats are being swarmed by the frontline ships.”

“For Paradiso.”

That wasn’t really a question, but he confirmed it with a nod. “Aye. For Operation Paradiso. Camel and Alligator Squadrons are forward deployed to screen against new moonie ships, in case they launch more from the far side. Command has deemed L-1 a lower priority theater for the next six hours.”

Captain Julia Kessler stared at the signatures on her sensors. “We’ll get launch authorization on the way. Our course intercepts theirs in…”

That was a question. “Thirty minutes to get within maximum effective range at minimal burn, Captain.”

“That’s plenty of time for us to get Brussels on the phone. We’ll get permission to engage.”

He voiced her inner doubt. “And if it isn’t? If we don’t?”

She took a deep breath. “We’ll launch anyway. We’re weapons free on any moonie ships past the line of contact. Standing rules of engagement.”

“Captain, do you think maybe we can wait and see if we get orders—”

“Negative, Commander. We’re on our own out here.”

“Yes, Captain. Preparing to engage.”

Julia felt the officers on her bridge move around in a time-lapse. Of course they did.

This was a nightmare of her own making.

She deserved this.

She didn’t get this nightmare often. She didn’t make a tactical mistake here. She made the right decision. But that was the weird thing about the brain; it didn’t look at your after-action report to decide what to torment your sleep with.

“We have three, no… four, solid. Green for lock.”

“Shrew buzzer at three hundred kilo. Can we proceed?”

“I see her. Get her out of my track. I’ve got a chameleon coming into my view.”

Time slowed to normal as she focused. She cleared her throat resignedly as she called into her microphone. “Tactical, prep for husky launch.”

“Bridge, tactical ready. What profile on the huskies, Commander?”

She was too focused on the question to even notice she’d been addressed by the wrong rank.

What profile on the huskies?

Nuclear x-ray lasers.

Game of dumb luck.

Guess the number, and die if you get it wrong.

Except, this time she got to shoot first. And this was a time that she guessed right. The correct answer was twelve.

Or at least, that was her answer at the time. In hindsight, Julia could have said anything more than ten and the result would have been identical.

The moonie ships didn’t see the missiles coming until they went active. They were ballsy, saw the volume coming was too thick for a one-volley interception and went for a close-in intercept profile on their counter-missiles. Too close. Probably praying that the laserheads hit only non-critical components.

Ninety percent of her missiles made it through. Magazines, batteries, bridge. Straight up vaporized one out of the four ships; they didn’t even feel it. She stayed around after, long enough to collect life pods from the other three.

Four ships. Brussels’ approval to engage came as they were plotting return trajectories.

“Commander Kessler? What profile?”

Julia looked at the back of the ghost. It was illogical. She was dead long before this mission. “Tara…”

Tara was all business. “What range, Commander? We can decide on the way, but the computer needs a tentative to optimize the launch parameters.”

She could see the sweat seeping through, drenching the back of Tara’s neck. Cooling system, hard at work.

“Tara…”

This is not real. I am in control of this reality. I am in control.

“Optimal launch window in thirty seconds before we break off from minimum abort. I need a number now, Commander!”

She sighed resignedly. The moonies were going to die anyway. They were already dead, years ago. “Whatever you want, Tara. It’s up to you.”

The ghost turned. “Are you alright, Commodore?”

This time, she noticed the discrepancy in the rank she was addressed with.

Huh? Commodore? You’re getting lazy, brain…

She looked in the EVA helmet faceplate again and let out an involuntary gasp of shock.

It wasn’t Tara.

Julia just stared.

God, what’s going on in that soup of yours, brain. What are you doing to me? That’s so fucked up.

It was Samira.

The hazel eyes. The slender outline. The long hair tucked in a bun, stuffed in the helmet. The questioning frown. The dimple in their cheeks. She hadn’t realized the similarities before, but… why the hell not? Just two different women that she failed.

Add it to the rotation.

Samira stared at her accusingly. “Do you know what you’ve done, Commodore?”

You’re not even dead.

“Commodore? Commodore?”

She just stared.

“Are you alright, Commodore?”

She felt a grasp on her shoulder and woke with a gasp.

Harry. Staring down at her in concern.

War’s over.

This was Dustball.

“Sorry, you told me to wake you when you took the sleeping pills.”

“XO,” she mumbled as she shook the cobwebs from her head. “Sorry, give me… a second… Okay. Are they here yet?”

“Yes, Commodore. They’ve just arrived. The alien representatives. Are you ready?”

“Ready?” Julia took a deep breath as the colors of reality came back to her. “To meet all the neighbors in one place? Not at all. But let’s go.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“We may have to take those machines from you.”

“You can’t do that,” Marcus said, alarm rising in his chest. This was the worst-case scenario. “Dustball is our planet. You guys sold it to us, remember?”

Shachos switched rapidly between blue and green again, obviously struggling with the decision. “Yes, yes. We sold the planet to you. But I don’t know the specifics of the agreement. I didn’t read it. I don’t read documents. No, I don’t. But maybe it does not include ancient alien artifacts? Maybe there is a carve-out? I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“No, it’s def—definitely the whole planet, Shachos. No exceptions. Go read it. You sold the whole thing to us,” Marcus said nervously. “And you people, you’re a people of your word, right? You wouldn’t lie to us and go back on your deal, right? That’s not funny.”

“Hehehehe. Yes. Yes, we tell the truth mostly. So I will tell you the truth now. This is a difficult decision for me. Yes, yes, it is. I like your people. Yes, I do. You are a funny people. You are. But this is a serious matter. This could be worth… too much. Too serious for what I think about, personally. Too serious for my feelings. So serious that I must do what is right for my species. Yes, maybe. And it is more than just my species. It is also for the protection of your species! Yes, protection. You may not understand, but we are helping! Yes, we are. Still, this is a difficult decision, yes it is. I am trying to decide between going down to the planet and taking your machines. Or not. Maybe. Maybe not. It is difficult for me. Very difficult decision. I need to think more.”

Helping. Sure. Helping yourself to some of our treasures… We are minutes away from you contemplating the necessity of exterminating us all to keep this quiet, if you haven’t already.

Marcus sank into in his comfortable Vorshnik chair. Not only had he feared exactly this. He’d seen the same thing play out. Suran. High-grade gold mines. Locals. He was even about to start echoing one of them. “You can’t take our planet from us, Fleet Master,” he said dully. “If you try to take what we found by force, our people will fight. We’ll fight back. There will be bloodshed between our peoples.”

“Yes, I have already considered that,” Shachos said, flashing a distressed blue again. “I have considered it. But you will not stop us. You have only four to five marines at the site on a normal day. We can see. And it is far from the dig site to your town. Kilometers of open ground. If your people try to cross the open, we can—we can stop them from orbit. We have the orbit. We have the high ground. Then, we only need to clear the site. Only four or five of your marines there. It would take us… maybe one squad. Maybe two squads. Maybe three squads. Maybe your marines are very prepared. I have two battalions with me on this ship, and for this purpose… I will be able to call for unlimited reinforcements if I need to. Near unlimited. We will take the dig site. Your government will object, but when it comes to these matters, they will not start a war they can’t win against us, not over a squad of marines. This is the unpleasant reality. This is not something I enjoyed thinking about. Not at all. But your resistance is a small factor. A very small factor.”

“Have you considered that my marines might rather destroy the facility—the ruins, rather than let you take it intact?”

“Yes. That is also a small factor. But I do not think you will do it.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think… we’ll sabotage something we’re going to lose anyway? Spite is like… our defining trait as a species, Fleet Master.”

“No, no. I believe you will try it. We would too, for something this valuable. Let me correct myself. I do not think you will be able to do it. These machines, they must have lasted millions of years. Many millions. Many, many millions of years. A long time. They must be made of the Precursor Metal. Very strong. Unbreakable for you. I do not think you can destroy them, even if you want to. No, I don’t think so. I think if you are smart—and you are smart, and if you try very hard, you will be able to bury the facility very deep. You may cause a mountain collapse. So it will take us many weeks to dig to it and to find the right place. Or you may play a practical joke on us where you hide the machines. But I do not think you are able to destroy the machines themselves. It would be difficult.”

“Not at all. In fact, it is very easy to sabotage the machines. I thought about this… for some other reason.”

No reason to bring up the specifics of our rocky relationship with the moonies now.

“Easy? How? How would you do it?”

Marcus abandoned his facade of ignorance. “Well, if you’re right, and you say we can make the Precursor Metal… we’d simply make enough liquid metal and encase the whole machine in it, then we’d turn it solid. Might not even need to do the whole machine; maybe just gumming up the buttons and mechanisms inside will do. Now, I hear it’s a pretty hard metal. Unbreakable, even. So you’d just have a big brick of it where you can never get to the machinery inside…”

“No. That is where you are mistaken, Marcus. We are not you. You can’t break it. We do have ways of breaking it. We have more advanced technology than you. It takes time. But I think we can. I think we can break through it, if you use that method to sabotage the machine. It will take a long time, many years. Decades, at least. Maybe centuries, but it is possible. And if not, we can study it and make another like it. We have an understanding of the Precursors. We have technology you don’t. We can do it.” This time, Marcus could read some uncertainty as it swirled on his face.

“You’re not sure,” Marcus guessed. “You’ve never done something like this before, because you’ve never found this much of it before. You’ve certainly never found one of their working machines before.”

“That is… true. Yes, it is. But we think we can figure it out. Yes, we think so.”

Marcus swallowed. “Quite a risk you’d take.”

“A risk, yes. But a small one, I think. A small risk. I consulted my experts. That is what they say.”

“That’s what people always say before they get themselves into a war. It’s just a small risk. We’ll win. It’ll be easy. Just a couple months, and we’ll be home by Christmas. You ever been to war, Fleet Master Shachos?”

“No. No, I have not. We are not Karnolians. We do not go to war every other week. I have trained, and we practice, but I have never been to war. I do not dream of battle and terrible violence. It is not funny. It is not in our nature.”

Marcus nodded. “True. You guys are peaceful. You don’t like to fight. And you know what? Good for you. I’m glad we turned up in your territory, I really am. But that does remind me of something else. Something that might factor into your decision. Maybe just a little. Maybe a lot.”

“Oh? Something that might factor into my decision? Something… funny?”

“Yes, Fleet Master. For me, at least. Say… how long have you been holding me here? My sense of time is usually pretty good, even on warships, but this is a strange ship, and that kind of messes with my sense of time. I think I’ve been here… about six or seven hours?”

The alien looked taken aback by the question, the sudden change in topic. But he answered anyway. “Yes. That is about right. One third of a day on Dustball has passed since you came onto our ship. Six or seven hours—you are about right.”

Marcus sighed. “Then, I guess it’s fine for me to tell you this. Before you took our ship, I sent out a message drone.”

“Yes, we saw that. It was a small drone. We let it go. We did not think it was big enough to carry anything. Too small. And it was only on our sensors for a few seconds. Ten seconds. Maybe more. Maybe less. We might not have been able to destroy it even if we tried. We were told that the contraband cargo was half a ton. So we assumed you did not load it all into your tiny drone. You did not. Your contraband is here.” Shachos pointed at the artifacts on the table. “Here with us.”

“We didn’t load any cargo on it, correct. But we did send a message back to our home system.”

“Yes. I thought that was likely too. You told your people what you have found? Now they know as well? They will come here with warships? Soon?”

“Maybe.” He decided that it wouldn’t matter whether Shachos knew that anyway. Marcus admitted, “Yeah, that’s part of it.”

“And the other part? Was there another part of the message? Something more important? Because I think… it is another small factor, your warships. If you bring your fighting ships to this system, it would be a factor.” Shachos turned blue again as he pondered the potential unpleasantness. “A small factor, and a very serious one. I think your species has four ships that can go to warp. Maybe five. Not six. Not yet. Soon you will have more, but only four or five now. And your people’s ships are primitive. Your weapons are weak; your engines slow, your armor thin. They will not pose a deadly threat to us. Not at all.”

“Yeah, I figured not. I did send a message to ORBCOM, so they might deploy some ships here. Probably won’t stop you. I don’t know; I’m not an expert, and you’d know much better than me, Fleet Master. But… I also sent another message to our people. That we’re about to be discovered. So, if we don’t show up immediately after the message drone, they should contact your neighbors. The Karnolians. The Sonckles. The whole neighborhood’s invited. Those messenger ships should have gotten there by now. The Karnolians have probably already blown theirs up by now. Anyway, we told them what we found. So… the two of us are not the only species in the galaxy who know about our dig site and our discovery now. Your neighbors do too.”

It took a few seconds, but the implications visibly dawned on Shachos’s face. “You… told… the Karnolians about this?! The truth? And the greedy swimmers?! No… No, you did not. You did not. Tell me you did not. This is not funny, Marcus. Please, tell me, Marcus. Tell me you are joking. This is not funny. Not funny at all.”

Marcus had thought Shachos flashed the deepest blue possible on his scalp earlier, when the fleet master was contemplating war and violence. But no, now his face was an even darker blue. Far darker.

He grinned in satisfaction at the fleet master’s distress. “Oh yeah, I did. Sorry, buddy. I did. When you shot that missile, that’s when I knew you guys could get serious if you wanted to. I knew you guys were pretty smart, that you’d figure this out. And I figured you were going to get all cynical on us on this. And… welp, turns out I was right. So yeah, sent that message. Can’t say I really regret it now.”

Shachos covered his eyes with his appendages. “No. No. No! You are telling the truth. No! This is not funny! Not funny at all! This is very serious. So very serious. You told them all about it? How could you? How could you?! The Karnolians! They will not see this as a funny prank. They will not! They can’t! Don’t you see?!”

Marcus sighed dramatically as he stroked one of Shachos’s stretched appendages sympathetically. It felt… like rubber, exactly how it looked. In a minute, the poor fleet master had gone from planning his extravagant retirement party to watching it slip out of his grasp, nearly despondent. “Of course, it’s risky for us. The threats are far more open now. But… well, you were going to try to take it from us. I did tell you that spite is one of the defining traits of our species, so you can’t say this is a big surprise.”

“Nooo! Marcus… Why? The Karnolians and the Sonckles! Noooooo! This is serious. They are not like us! They are very serious peoples! Very serious!”

Marcus continued, “And… being the puny and primitive species that we humans are… I can only assume that these two species, your neighbors, being the rational-ish species that have survived in the galaxy for so long, would much rather negotiate for some freshly boiled Precursor Metals from us—liquid or solid. I bet they would much rather buy it from the primitives with a single star system. Much rather try to con us out of it with trivialities, with obsolete technology from their trash. We primitives love our shiny things. I assume they’d much rather try to negotiate with us monkeys, than you… the smart Vorshniks, who are wise to all their funny business and might decide not to share or sell at all. Actually, I think they might consider it very serious if you were to forcibly take the site from us now with your warship. So serious, in fact, that they might even consider… terrible violence. Don’t you think so?”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“This much metal in liquid form. It is close to your planet’s total worth. Yes, it is.”

Marcus scoffed. “I don’t believe you. Just for some weird liquid thing? C’mon now, Fleet Master. I know you’re doing this thing where you try to exaggerate the crime, shock us with the sentence to get us to plead guilty. But this stuff… it’s not actually worth—”

Shachos’s face shifted full red again. “Yes it is! Yes it is! It is! I promise! It is! I tell only the truth! It is extremely valuable. You are—No, I promise. This is rare. Very rare. Extremely rare. It is. Its discovery will make headlines across all our planets. And our neighbors, they will ask questions when they find out. Many questions. Too many questions. We should not tell them. This…” He carefully shook each of the three bottles in sequence. “This and this. All of this… This is so much! So much! I don’t think anyone has ever found this much! No one in our part of the galaxy has found so much. No. No, they have not! We can’t just—we can’t simply find some collector who wishes to purchase this. No, we can’t do that.”

There was a common joke Marcus had heard once.

If you’re being mugged and you have ten thousand dollars in your pocket, you’ve got a problem. If you’re being mugged and you have ten million dollars in your pocket, the mugger’s got a problem.

Getting detained with this much value, if the fleet master wasn’t doing one of those odd pranks… this—this was now a big problem. For Shachos. For Marcus. For the entire colony, if not Earth. Possibly even for the Vorshniks in general.

But Marcus had been in stickier situations, and he was still kicking around. He leaned back into his chair. “So… ahem, let’s say you’re right. This is—this is worth a lot. Like a lot, a lot. A lot more than you need to retire on, obviously.”

“Oh, yes, a lot more. This is—no, this is not something I would use to retire on. No. That is… that is too much. This begins to concern my people. Do you understand? My people. My species. All Vorshniks. There is no mover in the galaxy who can launder this much—I cannot disappear with this. No, I can’t. Nobody can. You understand this, right?”

Ah, I see. I’m now negotiating a bribe with your entire species, not just you. Same game, higher stakes. Now we’re talking.

Marcus sighed, as if wistfully. “Of course, we could be… persuaded to part with some of it as a gesture of friendship between our peoples. Maybe one bottle of it as well? Your people may have that. And one of the helm—the punch bowls as well. Nobody needs to report anything to the rest of the galaxy. But… we would like to keep the rest… for our own scientific curiosity, of course. And if we happen to find any more on the planet—and I think we can come to an understanding on bringing in some of your experts too? Surely we can come to some kind of… longer-term arrangement. A private arrangement with you, or not—up to you. Like you said, collecting duty, right?”

Shachos looked at him, flashing orange, blue, and green for a while. “Yes, that is a suitable place to start a negotiation. A suitable place. The final price would be much funnier than that. More than one bottle, of course. You would open with one. I would open with two and a half. You would offer your silence and favorable future deals with your species. And that would be very funny, seeing as how interesting your people have been so far. So we would come to an agreement somewhere in between. Maybe one and a half each, yes. One and a half bottles. Maybe more. Yes, maybe a little more. Less than two, certainly. Yes, yes, less than two. If this was all you were carrying, that would be the nature of our discussion. It would. But… this is also not the only other thing we found in your contraband collection. No, not the only thing.”

The alien reached out under the table, and this time, he pulled out a singular used water bottle.

Except, it didn’t contain the original Dustballium tar they found in the foundry chamber. This bottle contained the early experimental tar that they made in the machines. The tar that had been boiled from random bits of sand and rock that Gary found in the chamber. Instead of the dark blue of the first three bottles, the liquid in the bottle was tan and dark brown. In a similar consistency and with a similar surface sheen as the original. But distinctly a different color.

Which did not escape Shachos’s notice. At all. “This…” he said.

Uh-oh. He knows.

It only took Marcus half a second to figure out why Shachos seemed so agitated. He’d figured it out. They were like two poker players, staring across a table, both pretending to be fools, desperately hoping that the other would fall for their little facade. A dance of the clumsy where both knew they were going to trip over themselves, but both were hoping the other did first so they could get off the dance floor with their pride intact.

“What about this?” Marcus asked innocently. “We found this too. In the same place as the other ones. Maybe there’s a bit of grime and dirt in it? Is it maybe worth a bit less because of that?”

“No.” Just a simple no. Shachos flashed distressed blue. Dark blue. Very distressed, then. “No.”

Marcus leaned in. “What is it? How much is this worth?”

Shachos was quiet. “I… don’t know.”

“Hm… if you can’t price it, then how do you expect us to come to an agreement on the—”

“No… I think—I don’t know what this is, exactly. But I think you know what it is.” Shachos pointed two appendages at him, face deeper blue still. He said slowly, so slow that even Marcus could tell without the computer translator, “I think… you are not telling the truth about something. I think you know what this is. Exactly what it is. I think you know very well.”

Marcus gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, buddy, no clue. It’s just stuff we found in some dark rooms—”

“I think you know what it is, because you made it. You made this. You did not make the other ones. But you made this one. Yes, you did.”

Marcus froze. For only a heartbeat. He recovered. If Shachos had been telling the truth about the value of the material—and Marcus had an inkling that he was—the fate of Dustball as a human colony was at stake. At the very least. “What? No, sorry. I have no idea, Fleet Master. We just—we just found it in the same place as the other liquid.”

“That is the truth,” Shachos agreed conditionally. “That is likely true. You did find it in the same place. I think—I think you found a place where they made these…” He pointed at the helmets. He continued, flashing blue and green again. “And in that place, you found these…” The bottles of the original formula. “And you found the machines that made them, and you used them to make this…” He pointed at the last bottle. Then, he pointed all four of his appendages at Marcus. “I think that is what you found. You found the machines. Machines that make Precursor Metal. You found them. And not only are there machines that make it, they work. They must work. They must. That… is what you found.”

Bingo. Ten out of ten for deductive reasoning.

Marcus shook his head adamantly as he lied. “No. That is not true. Not true at all. We found the metal. And we found the liquid. Two different rooms, in the same facility, by the way. And then, for the liquid, the liquid was in different vats. Different colors. That’s just how we found them, Fleet Master.”

Shachos stared at Marcus for a couple seconds, flashing orange and blue. “You know, human. When you see our faces, you see colors, do you not? You do see the colors on our faces changing?”

Marcus squinted into his face, wondering where the fleet master was going with this. “Yeah. Red is for funny. Blue for not funny. Right?”

“Yes. Yes! You know the patterns. We can see them too. Much more clearly than you do. More nuance. Much more. But your faces. Your human faces, your patterns show too. Did you know that? Your patterns show on your faces. Your feelings. They are written clearly on your faces. And not just your faces. On the rest of your body too.”

Marcus tried to keep his expression neutral. “No, I didn’t realize you could read our faces and body language.”

“I can. I can,” Shachos insisted. Then, he pointed at a device mounted on the corner of the conference room. “And our machines can. Yes, they can. We have gotten very good at reading faces. That is our thing, yes it is. And I have been a fleet master for a long time. I read people. That is my job. I do not need the machines. I can read you. I can read your face. And you… are not telling me the truth. Not at all. The liquid metal, the wrong-color one… you made this, right?”

“No, of course not. That’s crazy.” Marcus scoffed. “Make it? We didn’t make it.”

“Not the truth.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Fleet Master. It was all just there.”

“Not the truth.”

Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Maybe you’re not so good with the faces thing after all.”

“Still not the truth.”

He sat back. “What do you want me to say, Fleet Master Shachos?”

“The truth. I want the truth. The place where you found the machine that made these. Everything. I want the truth. I already know where you are digging,” Shachos said. “It is very obvious from our ship. We can see where your colony is down there. The lake. The town. And there is that place in the hills, near the crater. We know that is where you dig. You bring a lot of dirt out. We have been watching you for months. To see what the punch line of your joke is. To see what is so funny. But… this is not a joke. This is not funny. Well, it could be funny. But it is not, because you are not telling me the truth. And if you don’t tell me the truth, then I need to investigate. I need to bring my marines and my pranksters down to the planet. To where you dig. To find the machines. And to… inspect them myself.”

“To find the machines,” Marcus repeated. “And what are you going to do if you find them on our planet?”

“That is more complicated. Yes, more complicated. Yes, it is.” Shachos’s face coloring wavered. “It is very complicated.”

“There’s nothing complicated about this, Fleet Master,” he insisted. “It’s a simple question. What are you going to do… on our planet?”

“It’s complicated,” Shachos repeated, his eyes staring off past Marcus. “It’s not so simple as you say.”

“Come on, Shachos. Be honest with me.”

“You have not been honest with me either. No, you have not. As I have had to tell Julia earlier. I did not enjoy having to say all that to her. These things are serious. They are not funny. We do not enjoy thinking about these things. No, we don’t. I would rather not. But… it is my duty. Marcus, my species has people like me so we could consider serious situations like this. So that others in my species do not need to.” Shachos shook his head, his face now solidly blue. “But I will be honest with you now. Yes, I will be.”

“What are you going to do when you go down to our planet and—and search through our dig site?”

“If it is what I expect… And from the color of your face and your body, I think it is what I expect. If it is as I expect, I think… I think we may need to take those machines. We may not have a choice. We may have to take those machines from you.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“They’re telling us to cut our engine output and prepare for boarding,” the pilot said as she turned. “The Triple Dash. Huh, what an odd name for a ship. There must be some kind of story behind—”

“What?!” Marcus asked incredulously. “Cut engines? Have they done this before?”

“Not on any of the previous trips we made here.”

Marcus muttered, “And boarding? What for?”

“Inspections. They seem to think we’re carrying some kind of valuable alien artifacts on board. The alien warned us not to dump anything,” the shuttle pilot said. She shrugged. “Crazy. Maybe it’s one of their practical jokes? I heard these Vorshniks like their jokes. Whatever. An inspection tour shouldn’t take us too long…”

“Valuable alien—How far are we from warp?” Marcus asked urgently.

It was the pilot’s turn to be confused. “What?”

“If we run for it, how far are we to warp?” he asked again.

“Run for it? We’re—Wait—” The pilot looked at the expression on his face and understood immediately. “Holy shit! We actually are carrying alien contraband on board? Interstellar contraband?!”

He asked, much more seriously, “How far, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Um… right. Colonel, we only just reached low orbit. We need… maybe thirty minutes before our next burn, then to make it to an orbital altitude where we can safely go to warp at our current mass, another—”

“What if we dump some of our stuff?”

“It doesn’t work like that, Colonel,” she explained patiently. That was fair. Marcus was only a marine. He couldn’t be expected to understand complicated things, like fuel mass and thrust ratios and orbital apogee and such. “We can dump all your cargo out the back, dump all our extra fuel, and it’ll reduce our mass by like… five percent? It’ll barely affect how fast we can go to warp… Wow, I can’t believe it. Technically, that makes us the first human interstellar contraband smugglers, doesn’t it?”

“Well, no, the moonies snuck nailguns into the colony a couple trips ago. But… maybe—maybe if we run for it, they won’t shoot at us. It’s only like an hour, right? Maybe we can delay them that long?”

“Um… that’s a bit—Do you want me to risk it?”

“Duh. Tell them a lie. Say we’re running out of air or something.”

The pilot talked with the alien radio operator for a couple of minutes before she turned back to Marcus. “Yeah, no, they’re not buying it. They’re pretty adamant about us cutting thrust now, or else.”

“Can we… outrun them?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never… raced an alien ship before.”

Hope blossomed on Marcus’s face. “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”

“I… doubt we’ll outrun their missiles. I mean… even our missiles can shoot us down at this range. And theirs are more advanced, right?” The pilot glanced at the orbital charts as an indicator lit up on the dash. “They’ve placed themselves on an intercept course in higher orbit… My God… their missile bay doors are opening. Are they actually going to shoot at us?”

Marcus leaned in. And sure enough, on the infrared optics, a new open compartment had appeared on the exterior of Shachos’s ship. “What? Maybe it’s just—We have pretty good rapport with these guys. Let’s just keep talking to them on the radio as we burn—”

Boop.

“Target lock! Active radar threat detected at—”

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Vampire! Vampire! Vampire! We’ve got incoming!”

“Jeez.”

“Colonel, we can’t outrun that! I’m putting the reactor on minimum,” the pilot declared as the sounds in the back shifted an octave.

“Crap. Alright, alright. Tell them we’re complying! We’ll think of something else.”

The engine noise behind them wound down.

The shuttle pilot looked at her threat interface and breathed a sigh of relief. “Their missiles just cut thrust. Looks like they’re being held in reserve. But I think these guys aren’t bluffing. They’re serious… If we actually have contraband, what do we do? I don’t want to go to alien prison!”

“I have an idea,” Marcus said. “You have an emergency mayday drone, right?”

“What?!”

“That new mayday drone we carry. Is it warp-capable? Can it go to warp from here?”

“Yeah, but that thing’s tiny and only for calling for help. So unless your alien artifact is the size of a ring box, you’re not going to fit anything in it.”

Marcus nodded. “Excellent. I just need to record a message.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

The aliens led Marcus onto their ship. It was… strangely familiar.

Inside, it looked nothing like a human warship, with its hundreds of utilitarian compartments and handholds, not to mention the areas that were outright in vacuum. It kind of looked like a luxury liner, with wide corridors, bright hallway lights, and carpeted floors.

Marcus wondered when the last time these aliens went to war was. Hopefully that carpet was at least fireproof.

All that, of course, did not take away from how dangerous they would be in battle. As demonstrated by the singular missile they launched at the Whirlwind, before they deactivated it. He didn’t see its exact specs, but he was pretty sure the results wouldn’t have been pretty.

The aliens escorted him to what looked like a conference room. Comfortable wooden—it looked like wood—table, with soft, height-appropriate chairs. They left him there, alone. There were gadgets around the room, positioned exactly where he would expect surveillance cameras to be. Marcus figured that they were watching him. As some kind of guest. Or… “guest”. At least they were pretending like he was a guest; that had to be a good sign. No handcuffs yet. He wasn’t sure how interstellar diplomacy worked when official government-owned resupply ships were caught smuggling contraband through friendly territory. Not that this was just any regular contraband inspection, though.

He sat there for a few hours—six or seven. More accurately, he napped. He could nap anywhere, a skill he had learned over many deployments. And the chairs were very comfortable. The Vorshniks knew how to make good chairs.

Marcus woke up as the door opened to admit one of the aliens. He recognized him by the rank patch on his chest before he recognized the face. He stood up to greet him. “Fleet Master Shachos.”

“Colonel. Marcus,” the alien greeted back through a translator module on the desk. “Please sit. Welcome to our ship. Welcome. The circumstances are not very humorous. No, not at all funny. But welcome to our ship, nonetheless.”

He sat. “What is the nature of our detain—of our delay, Fleet Master Shachos? We would like to return to our home system as soon as possible.”

“I’m afraid that is not possible before you answer our questions. Not at all.” The alien flashed turquoise on his face as he plopped himself down into a chair facing Marcus. “No. Not at all. We have found many pieces of contraband on your ship. Serious contraband. Very serious.”

If this were back in the Union, this would be more or less the point where a lawyer—if he had one—would tell him to shut the fuck up. But these were special circumstances. This was light years from home. These were aliens. However unfamiliar they were to him, he was also unfamiliar to them.

Adapt and overcome.

“Contraband?” Marcus said, acting surprised. “What kind of contraband?”

“Alien artifacts. Many alien artifacts. From the Precursor civilization. Normally, those are not allowed to be transported through our space without paying a duty. No, not without a duty. And especially not… these contraband items.” At a gesture from him, the door opened, and another one of the aliens came in. They placed a sack on the floor next to Shachos.

“Thank you, Ship Master Grodnits,” Shachos muttered as she turned to leave.

Clank.

The fleet master took out a trio of the Dustballium helmets and laid them on the table in a stack. “These… Precursor artifacts. Very serious. Very serious indeed.”

Marcus shifted in his seat as he glanced at the alien ballistic helmets. “What’s the problem? They’re just… some weird-looking bowls. We’re taking these back home to study the history of ancient alien civilizations. It’s part of our ongoing scientific mission here. Is that… going to be a problem for your people?”

Clank clank clank clank.

Shachos drummed the top of the helmet with all four of his appendages. “The problem, Marcus, is that these are made out of a very, very funny metal. Very funny metal. They are of high value. Very high value. Extremely high value. So the duty on them is also high. Extremely high.” He pointed his three-fingered appendage at Marcus. “And your ship attempted to escape our boarding attempt. So it seems like you knew our interception attempt was not a joke. Not a joke at all. Duty evasion is normally a little funny. Not very serious. But duty evasion of this much value? Of this much? That is a serious matter, yes it is.”

“Value? Duty? How much can these old bowls be worth?”

Shachos looked at him, his face flashing dull orange and green. “You don’t know? You really don’t know? Come on, Marcus, be honest with me. Yes, just be honest.”

“No. Well, I mean, they’re tough. And they look old. They have to be tough to survive that long, which is cool. So if I patch those holes on the bottom, I figured they’d make a pretty good punch bowl at a party.” He forced a smile onto his face, hoping the aliens wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “Funny story to tell about it too, with you guys boarding us and everything. How much could they be worth?”

“It is not the function. It is the Precursor Metal. And the amount of it. The amount of it that is present on these artifacts…”

“You mean the odd-looking dark blue stuff?”

“Yes. Yes. The Precursor Metal. The Precursor Metal!” His tone turned hush, and he nearly whispered, “Living metal, made by the Precursors.”

“Huh. The color looks cool, I guess. How much is it worth?”

Shachos flashed orange and green again. He lowered his voice. “I will tell you. Yes, I will. Because it will be funny to see your reaction. Yes. This metal. One of these…” He picked up one of the helmets, giving it a twirl on one of his upper appendages. “One of these… is about one thousandth of one percent of your home planet’s total annual production. We calculated, yes, we did.”

Marcus didn’t know how much point-oh-oh-one percent of the Union’s GDP was, precisely. But he had an inkling that its Union dollar value ended with -illion, and not with an M. He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth in shock. Half in genuine surprise, half for dramatic effect, for the alien’s benefit.

“No. No way! You’re joking! It’s not!”

Shachos delighted in his shock, finally showing some red on his face. “Ahahahaha! Yes! Yes it is! Yes it is! I do not have reason to lie to you! Yes. It is at least that amount! At least! Maybe more, because it’s… so much in one place. Yes, maybe more. Maybe much more.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

“It is. It is. It is a lot! And…” Shachos insisted as he looked around furtively. “If these three were all that you were carrying, then… maybe we could come to an understanding. An understanding between you and me. Just… you and me. Do you understand?”

A bribe.

Marcus understood immediately. He put a slick grin on his face and raised his voice. “Sure, yeah, no, of course. Fleet Master Shachos. You should have started with that! I’m a very understanding person. We all are. We’d be happy to come to an arrangement regarding these artifacts. You know what? In my culture, it is rude to come to one’s home without a proper gift. So… consider… one of those? Consider one of those our gift to you? Why don’t you pick which one you want? One of those is a little bigger—”

Shachos turned light orange in slight delight. “Yes, yes. I can imagine already. A very funny life for me. My entire crew can retire with just one of these helmets. To somewhere hilarious. An absolutely hilarious planet where we do not worry about many serious things, like laws and regulations and collecting duty.”

Marcus played along and nodded. “Yes, just imagine!”

“It would be mildly serious, not too funny, to find someone to sell this. This is a lot of Precursor Metal. It would need to be a very good merchant. Or a mover, as you would say. Good connections. Someone who can move this much value in rare artifacts. Trustworthy. Very good connections. And they would take a big share of the profit from us. Very big share… But yes, I am a fleet master after all. It is possible I know someone like that. Certainly possible. And it would be a very funny retirement for me. And my people, don’t forget my wonderful and loyal crew. Yes. Yes.” Shachos seemed to take a moment to bask in the thought. Then, he faded back to dull green. “However… these three were not the only artifacts we found. Not at all.”

Shachos took out three water bottles from his sack and laid them on the table. “These… what do you suppose these are, Marcus? What are these?”

He knew exactly the answer the alien was looking for. Used water bottles, filled to the brim with Dustballium tar.

“They’re water bottles,” Marcus replied. He squinted to read the old labels still stuck to them. “Aqua… Refresher.”

Shachos turned the label around and read it. “Aqua… Refresher,” he repeated in near-perfect English.

Marcus opened his mouth in surprise again. “You speak our languages!”

“Just twelve of them,” Shachos replied modestly. “I have been learning and practicing. Very funny languages. Very funny jokes. But that is not my point. What is an… Aqua Refresher? I think the root word has something to do with water, no?”

“Yeah, it’s a brand of water. It’s got…” Marcus picked one up and read off the labels slowly. “Zero calories, but rich in magnesium, apparently.”

“Magnesium? Your people can consume magnesium?! You can?!”

He squinted at the labels. “It’s… not a lot of magnesium… Only a few parts per million. Probably just a marketing gimmick for bottled water, I think.”

“You trade in rare samples of water?! Very rare samples? You do this?”

“We… It’s complicated. It’s—You know what? I won’t defend it. We have branded bottled water. It’s silly. Let’s move on.”

Shachos examined the labels on the water bottle again. “Hm… that is funny indeed… but this label is not telling the truth. This is not water.” He tipped the bottle, filled with Dustballium tar, watching the swirling colors flow slowly back and forth as he tilted the bottle. Mesmerizing. “This is not water at all. Not at all!”

Marcus shrugged. “No, we simply used it to hold our collected scientific samples. As you can see, we didn’t value this very much. We even put them in used drinking containers.”

“These… are no ordinary scientific samples. Not ordinary. Not at all.”

“What are those, then, Fleet Master?” Marcus asked.

“You don’t know? You really don’t know?” Shachos flashed orange. “You sure you don’t know?”

“Well, we have some idea,” Marcus said noncommittally. He’d have been happy lying to Shachos all day, but at some point, telling the truth might get him some information, so he figured, why not? “It’s from the same place we got the metal stuff. The Precursor Metal you’re talking about. Maybe it’s some kind of alien… paint? Varnish maybe? Just a guess, though.”

“You really don’t know? You don’t know about Precursor Metal in liquid form? This is Precursor Metal in liquid form! In liquid form!” Shachos basically shouted the last part in excitement.

“Ah.” Marcus scratched his head, then frowned. “So it’s… another few billion Union dollars?”

“No! No! Not at all!” Shachos shrieked in high pitch. “What? No! Not like the other artifacts at all!”

“Huh?”

“The Precursor Metal artifacts,” Shachos explained as he calmed down, pointing at the helmets again. “They are rare curiosities. Some are funny. A few are useful for good jokes. But they are not really useful. Not truly useful. You cannot melt them down and remake them like regular metal. We do not have that process. They are simply collectibles, mostly only good for looking at. As you say, for scientific study. But this metal… in liquid form… it is useful. Very, very useful. Extremely useful. You can put this in a mold, and there is a process—I do not know it. But there is a process to turn it into a solid, to turn it into something of use! Yes! We have experts who make small amounts of this into tiny blades for factories, blades that never dull. Blades that never dull! For factory use! Very useful. Extremely useful! And they have other properties that you don’t know… yes, they do. Yes, they do. Other interesting properties…”

“Like what?”

Shachos hesitated for a moment, then said, “They conduct electricity very well. Too well. Too well to be normal.”

Marcus had occasionally paid attention in high school. “Super—superconductors?”

“Ah yes, you know then. Yes, you know. They are room temperature superconductors. Very useful for many applications. We have those, from other materials. We have other room temperature superconductors. But these never break and don’t need constant maintenance. And they require no additional energy to maintain! So they are more useful than normal! Very useful. And…”

“And what, Fleet Master?” Marcus encouraged.

Shachos looked around furtively, then turned back to Marcus. “I will tell you, yes, because it is not very serious information. The other species know it too. This metal has some other properties your species does not know yet. There are tiny components in deep-space warp sensors made of this. And tools in our facilities that make our ship engines and warp drives. And other… applications. Yes, many other uses. So many! That is why the liquid form is worth more. A lot more! Unlike the solid metal, the liquid form can be shaped and used. Only once, but only once is needed.”

“Ah. Right. I guess that makes sense. So how much is this worth in liquid form, compared to the—to the punch bowls? Twice? Thrice?”

There was a long moment of quiet in the conference room. Marcus was mostly holding his breath as the alien fleet master seemed to calculate in his head.

“I don’t—I don’t know,” Shachos stuttered as he finally broke the silence. “I don’t know. Not exactly. I’m not a rare artifact collector. But this much? This much?! This much Precursor Metal in liquid form? It is several times your planet’s total annual production value. Many times. Maybe worth more than your planet’s total wealth! Maybe more. Maybe not. Probably not. But it is close. It is on the same order of magnitude! The same magnitude. Just this bottle is—is close to your planet’s total worth!”

Close. To the total worth of Earth.

He stared at the alien’s face, wondering if this was some kind of terrible joke. From the solid blue on Shachos’s scalp…

Well, shit.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Commodore? It’s Shachos. If we don’t take his call, he might not—”

Julia nodded glumly. “I’ll take it. Give me a second…”

She rubbed her exhausted eyes, took a deep breath, and put her best smile on her face. “Go. On my datapad.”

“He’s on now.”

She stared into her datapad with her frozen smile. “Hello, this is Commodore Julia Kessler of the Union Navy. How are you doing on this funny day, Fleet Master Shachos?”

“Not very funny. Not very funny at all,” Shachos complained as his image resolved on her screen, his face the color of ocean blue. “I’ve just heard something very serious. That your resupply ship currently burning into orbit of your colony… it is carrying alien contraband forbidden by treaty. Forbidden by agreement! Contraband! Do you know anything about this?”

She feigned confusion. “Contraband? What contraband? Fleet Master, is this one of your practical jokes—”

“Do you know anything about the Precursor Metal?”

“Metal? What metal?” she lied. “I have no idea about this, Fleet Master. None at all. Seriously, this better not be one of your jokes, Shachos. I’ll get you back for this—”

“Excellent! Excellent!” The blue on Shachos’s face dissipated slightly. “Then your people should not mind if we board the shuttle for inspection? To check if a great prank is being played on my people? If it is, we must experience it to the fullest—”

“Hehe, well. There’s a…” Julia swallowed hard. “There’s a—a small problem. Our ship in orbit. It’s uh—it’s a returning supply ship. Very limited in resources. It needs to head back to our home system as soon as it can. You know how we are, we humans. Very quaint and primitive. Our ships don’t have a lot of air and resource reserves, so if you’ll allow us to—”

“That is fine. We will share our air with your people when we board. We know you can breathe our air. And we will fill up your air tanks. Yes, we will. For a marvelous prank like this, it is the least we can do in return for our humorous neighbors. Yes, we will board your ship and refill its resources. What is a trivial bit of resources between friendly neighbors? Very friendly—”

“Fleet Master Shachos, please. We would really prefer if you didn’t. Come on, surely you wouldn’t want to waste your time—”

Shachos switched between blue and green on her screen. “Commodore Julia Kessler. I know you and your people—and all of our other neighbors—you think of us as unserious people. And we appreciate that. Yes, we do. We appreciate it. We love it. We are a funny people. Very funny, if I may say so myself. Very funny. But please do not mistake that for carelessness or stupidity. We will board that ship. And we will inspect it for any serious violations of rules and agreements and for contraband. We will inform your ship master to cut thrust immediately and make no attempts to go to warp, or we will treat it as a serious ruse. Yes, a very serious ruse indeed. Please do not try to stop us or warn them to dump any cargo. That will also be treated as a serious ruse.”

Then, the image cut out as the transmission terminated.

Julia stared off into the distance. “It’s just… some alien artifacts. Why would he care…” she muttered to herself. “What? Why?”

Samira heard her. A smug expression on her face, she said, “It’s obvious that this is valuable for them too. That’s why he took so long to verify how much there was. Did you hear him? A ring? A pedant? Or a cup? Measuring in milliliters? Think he expected a quarter of a ton of it on your shuttle?”

Julia glared back at her. “Yeah, obviously it’s valuable to them too. We knew that! So?”

“So? You really haven’t figured it out? So? So? So?” Samira said mockingly.

“Figure out what?”

Samira laughed. “I can’t believe it. Oh, I just thought they might delay you a bit… The aliens… they’re not so different from us after all.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Samira wheezed. “Look in a mirror, grounder. What you did to us… That’s what the aliens are about to do to you. You thought you had it. You thought you had it home free. But… looks like there’s always a bigger, greedier fish in the pond, isn’t there?”

Julia shot her an annoyed glance and turned to Gustav. “Gustav, can our surface-to-orbit defense systems reach the Vorshnik ship? Can we reach the Triple Dash?”

Harry and Samira both immediately turned to look at her, matching incredulity on their faces.

He spoke first. “Commodore, are you—are you out of your mind?! This is their star system.”

Gustav replied a moment later, “Commodore, our portable launchers only have enough delta-V to reach low Earth—I mean, low orbit. Even if we can reach it now, that Vorshnik cruiser will almost certainly be able to shift out of the way once we launch. And there’s no way we’d do any damage to them. The portable launchers are for defending against landing shuttles, not capital warships. Especially not advanced alien—”

“Okay. But your rockets can reach the Whirlwind?”

Not ideal, but better than discovery. It was possible that the Vorshnik would discover the secrets in the debris field, but the chances would be significantly lower than if the ship were captured intact.

“Only for the next fifteen minutes,” Gustav replied. “After that, their altitude and acceleration will be impossible for—”

“Julia, you can’t do this. I know what you’re thinking. You can’t do this,” Harry pleaded. “Marcus is on the ship.”

“Fifteen minutes.” Julia stared up at the sky. “Gustav. How soon can we fire on the Whirlwind?”

Harry turned to the marine. “Gustav, do not fire on that ship! That is a Union Navy ship. That’s one of ours! Your colonel is on that ship.”

Gustav looked between the two of them in indecision. He was so young, she noticed; not young enough to have missed the war, but young enough to still have that self-doubt, immature enough for that imposter syndrome. “I’m not sure… Commodore, I don’t—I don’t know.”

She turned her attention to him and asked coldly, “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t… know if I have the authority to order my marines to fire on one of our own ships. I—ma’am, would you—would you like to relieve me of command?”

That surprised her for some reason; she wasn’t sure why. It was the only logical thing to do. Julia looked at him sharply, ignoring the doubt creeping into her gut, multiplying.

Samira just stared at her, shaking her head. “You’re insane. You’ve gone insane.”

“You don’t know what’s at stake,” Julia snapped, pointing a finger at Samira. “You have no idea what you guys just did.”

“Yes, she does,” Harry insisted. “And so do I. This is—Julia, Marcus is on that ship! This can still be salvaged. It’s just Shachos. This doesn’t have to end in violence. Marcus can still find a way. Trust in Marcus.”

Earlier, the expression on Samira’s face was one of rage; then gloating. Now, it was just pity. “What… happened to you?”

Julia stared at the people in the room as the edge of her vision dimmed. Her heartbeat pounding in her ears. The opposing forces arrayed against her.

All she saw in her mind’s eye was the tactical map on the Defiant. Three red triangles, facing down her blue in the center. She could take them. They were near, and she had the advantage of surprise. Zero closing, off-aspect on their bow sensor cones; they didn’t know she was coming.

If she could set an ambush, the missiles would reach the closest two simultaneously. Detonate simultaneous, ready counter-missiles for the third. Julia saw two of the reds blink out, and a third reacting slowly, its random vector indicating the confused reaction of an inexperienced captain under attack. The missile cells should be reloaded by the time they could spot her infrared signature through the debris. After that, one for one, she didn’t have the tonnage to trade but she had the momentum—

Where am I? What… the fuck am I doing?

The fog in her head lifted, briefly.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Julia, are you alright?” Harry asked. His concerned voice was far away.

Breathe in…

She didn’t need to calm down, or to snap herself out of something. She wasn’t paralyzed with fear or indecision. She needed something else. Her training kicked in. The Union Navy training. At the Academy in Pearl.

In space, you can’t trust your instincts. You can’t trust your gut. That kills you. Here, you will learn not to act on instinct, but data and procedure. Your gut kills you, your brain keeps you alive.

That coldness—that chill they drilled into her twenty years ago. And there it was. For a moment, she was the same calculating spacer as the captain who ambushed four moonie ships at L-1.

Breathe in, breathe out.

She felt the adrenaline kick in. She resisted the temptation to dull her senses to the hormones; allowed it to flood her, warming her limbs, a rush of blood into her brain.

Stop. Observe. Decide. Act. That was the decision loop drilled into Union Navy officers. Stop and introspect first. Identify where the hull breach was.

Target fixation. Ah, there it was. That was what she was experiencing. Excise it.

Gone.

Her shallow breaths turned into longer ones. The tunnel in her vision expanded.

Julia saw the new target. It had moved without her noticing, some time in the last twenty minutes, and she was still shooting at its outdated position. Sunk cost error. Loss aversion. Adjust for it all.

Done.

Remove the old threats from the sensor board. Prioritize the new ones. Update the plans. Who was the adversary? Discovery? No longer. They were already discovered. There was a new enemy. Get inside their decision loop.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Julia?”

She could hear Harry just fine now.

The doubt slowly left her. Her confidence returned as she made new decisions.

“I’m here… We’ve failed,” she replied calmly. Coldly. “But you were right, XO. Now, it is up to Marcus.”

Then, she turned to Gustav. “Begin preparations to disperse into hardened structures. We may come under orbital attack at any time. Release Samira and Lucas. Go find the geologist, Cynthia Clement, and bring her to medbay. Also, I need four of your marines. Bring shovels, a rover, and at least two of your utility robots. We’re going down to the Anomaly site now.”

His face was one of relief. “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

Samira fled the room without a glance back as soon as she heard that she was free to go.

Gustav directed his marines on the radio. And they filed in, their steps quickening as they received their instructions.

“What do you plan to do?” Harry asked, his concern unabated.

Julia looked at him calmly. “We’re going to clear the hallway down there of the debris we put there to hide it from the moonies. We may not be the most technologically advanced species in this area of the galaxy, but we are also not a bunch of poor villagers being pushed out of a high-grade gold mine in Suran. If the worst comes to pass. If Marcus fails… We will have backup plans for our backup plans.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

“I… see,” Harry said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Gather the colony. Let them know the truth, all of them. Would you like a marine escort?”

Harry shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I’ll… try to work with Samira. If she’s still… open to… well…”

The mention of Samira threatened her self-control for a brief moment. Julia suddenly felt very, very tired. She realized… she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in… at least three weeks.

Since they discovered that foundry down there.

“Good. Give that a try. And can you get Dr. Wrona for me?”

He scrutinized her face, then nodded. “Are you alright?”

Julia could feel the effects of the exhaustion setting in. Her vision dimming again, her options limiting, despair setting in.

People adapt; that’s the miracle and tragedy of the human brain. In war, under continuous stress, they slip into a kind of waking sleep, moving on instinct the way a driver drifts down an endless highway, hands steady on the wheel while the mind wanders somewhere safer.

Alertness dulls; their judgment grows blunt. Whole days can pass in a mechanical haze.

When the sky splits open, when death draws near, when they choose to, something snaps awake inside them. For a moment or two, they can be at their best—nerves lit, choices sharp—drawing on a hidden reservoir of strength they hadn’t known.

But that moment never lasts. It can’t. No one can live forever at the edge of the seat. No amount of training or pharmaceuticals can fix that. Not even for the best of humanity, and she was having some doubts about whether that had ever applied to her.

Without registering it consciously, Julia had been back at war for three weeks. She’d just drawn on her last reserves.

And the real threat had just begun.

She gave him a thin smile. A tired smile. “No, Harry, I’m not alright.”

He sighed as he sat down heavily next to her. “Yeah… I know.”

That was when Julia noticed the new wrinkles around his eyes. He’d been in the trenches with her the whole time. The same water-soaked foxhole, looking out at the dark-clouded horizon.

“We’re in it now, aren’t we?”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“I was in the middle of something important!” Samira said angrily, shrugging off the two Union Naval Marines carrying her in by the shoulders. Her boots hit the floor hard. “Am I under arrest?”

“No,” Julia said. She kept her voice flat. Controlled. “But you are being detained… for now.”

Samira’s eyes narrowed. “What are the charges?”

“No charges, yet. I have a couple days before I need to do that.” Julia hated herself for how clean she made that sound.

There was not a hint of surprise on her face as Samira slow-clapped. “Ah, fantastic. The Union justice system in action! Wonderful!”

Julia rolled her eyes. “You’ll be released soon. There’s… just something I need to explain to you. And I need you to not be out there with your people when that happens.”

Gustav, now her highest-ranking marine here, leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Launch in five.”

Samira was unimpressed with her explanation. If anything, she seemed even more agitated than before. She looked out the window towards the launchpad, only a couple kilometers away. “Where’s Marcus?”

Julia glanced past her. The Whirlwind stood locked in the tower cradle. Even from here, she could feel a faint vibration through the floor. Pad systems spinning up. Fuel lines venting in white bursts around the hull. She let her view settle on Samira and shrugged. “Marcus is not with us. He will be… away for a while.”

To Julia’s surprise, Samira didn’t look shocked or surprised. Instead, she looked… disappointed? “He’s on your resupply shuttle. He’s on the Whirlwind.”

Before Julia could ask how she knew that, the loudspeaker announced, “Launchpad clear. Launch in T-minus thirty… twenty… ten… five… four… three… two… one… liftoff!”

The UNS Whirlwind boosted from the launchpad into the Dustball sky in a cloud of smoke. Its bright exhaust trail climbed above the horizon.

As she lost sight of it, Julia allowed herself a sigh of relief and turned back to Samira. “While Marcus is gone, his second-in-command, Gustav, will take over on security matters in the colony. But… that is not why I have you here today. There is something else, relating to the—the future of the colony.”

There was not a hint of curiosity on Samira’s face. Just… what was it?

“I already know,” she spat.

“What?”

Pure rage. That was what it was. “I know. I know what you did. You screwed us. You fucked us, hard.”

Julia kept her reaction hidden and crossed her arms. “What do you mean? Samira? What are you talking—”

“You found something inside the Anomaly site. Something far more than the EMP weapon. Down there, the day that Marcus fell, he found an ancient alien factory. A whooooooole alien factory, where they make that indestructible metal the dome is made of. I know how you covered it up for an entire month while conducting experiments in there with that robot you snuck in. I know how you used that fake Dustball potato excuse to hide all your secret samples and artifacts on the shuttle. I know your plans to watch all of us while you move your marines from Earth to fully take over the colony from us. I know everything.”

Julia couldn’t hide her shock this time. “How? How could you possibly—” She looked around for a second before she came to the realization. There were only three other people in the galaxy who had all this information. And the only one unaccounted for… “You—you found this out today. Or you’d have done something about—where is Cynthia?”

“She’s alive.”

Her blood chilled. “What have you done to her?”

“Nothing she can’t sleep off.”

Julia didn’t say anything, just stared out the window at the Whirlwind, barely visible now as it rose in the Dustball sky.

“You lied to us. You lied to me,” Samira accused.

Julia nodded, mostly to herself. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“You lied to me, and you screwed us. You know, that’s really on me.” Samira snorted to herself. “For trusting a grounder. I thought—I really thought you wouldn’t. That you couldn’t do something so monumentally stupid.”

“Would you have done any of it differently if you were in my shoes—”

“Yes! Of course! Of course I would have!” Samira shouted. The two marines next to her tensed up at her volume.

Julia gave her a mild shrug. “Doubt it.”

“I thought you were different. I really did,” Samira snarled. “That day Marcus fell down the hole. When we went looking for something to tow him up. Lucas asked me, what if Marcus finds something down there and just hides it in his backpack? And you know what I told Lucas? I said, nah, if he did that, the commodore would share it with us. Julia would share it all with us. Half-half, she promised us. God, I was such an idiot.”

Julia looked away. She didn’t need to see the betrayed expression on Samira’s face to know its genuineness.

“Only a grounder,” Samira said, shaking her head. “Only a grounder can travel twenty-nine light years, to a whole new star system, a whole new planet, and discover something new to screw us over on. Only a grounder. And your first instinct is… to accuse me—accuse us, say we would have done the same?! Hell, I don’t think it’s even fair of me to accuse your entire planet of billions of people of short-sightedness. I think a good chunk of your own people would have given us a little more charity, a little more humanity, than you! Cynthia did! She told us with the barest of prompting!”

Julia didn’t say anything. She only kept staring out the window.

A couple minutes later, she turned back to Samira and took a deep breath. “If it makes you feel the slightest bit better, I am sorry. It wasn’t personal.”

“Fuck… You. Not personal? Not personal?! For cooperating with you, I sold out my people. They’ll remember this. They’ll remember me. Samira Fardin, the naive idiot who sold out Luna to the grounders for a pinky promise.”

“That’s not what I meant to do—I’m—I’m sorry, Samira.”

“You should be…” Samira joined her next to the window, staring up at where the Whirlwind had vanished from view. “You will be.”

Julia looked sharply at her. That last part sounded less like a promise of vengeance and more like… a prediction. “What—what do you mean? Wait, where’s Lucas?”

Before she could reply, Gustav picked the moment to tap her on the shoulder. He shot a glance at Samira, but immediately whispered in Julia’s ear. “Commodore, you need to hear this.”

“Hear?”

He handed her his radio.

“Hello. Can you hear me?” It was Lucas’s voice, repeating. “This is Lucas Montoya of the Lunar Republic. Hello. Can you hear me? This is Lucas…”

Julia looked up sharply at the clouds above. She immediately pointed at Harry. “Call Marcus on the Whirlwind. Warn him.”

“Warn him about what?”

She looked at Samira. The project manager’s expression was indescribable. She turned back to Harry. “I don’t know. Have him look out for anything suspicious. Maybe the crew. Maybe the cargo. Maybe they snuck something in last minute.”

Harry passed the message on in his headset. A minute later, he turned back to her. “Commodore, Marcus received the message. Says there’s nothing out of the ordinary so far. But… there’s something odd.”

“Odd? What is it?”

“The moonie’s repeating message. It’s from somewhere in the colony.”

“Yeah, I know. Where is it? Someone find Lucas!”

“I don’t know, Commodore, but it’s transmitting with a directional antenna. We’re only catching it as it bounces off the atmosphere. But… it seems like the message is not aimed at the Whirlwind.”

“What?”

“It’s aimed… at the alien ship in orbit.”

As she was still deciphering the meaning, there was a scratching sound in the radio.

Then, a familiar voice.

Or rather, a familiar chuckle.

“Gahahahahah! Human colonists! Yes! Anything funny down there today?”

It took her half a second to realize what the moonies were planning.

Oh. Oh, no.

“This is Lucas Montoya of the Lunar Republic. I need to speak to your fleet master regarding an urgent matter. It’s a serious matter.”

“I am the fleet master. Fleet Master Shachos! Serious matter? I hate serious matters. Hate them. But life is a balance. Where there is humor, there must also be the serious. Yes, there must be balance. What is the matter regarding, Lucas Montoya of the Lunar Republic?”

“I’m afraid I must report a very serious matter indeed, Fleet Master Shachos,” Lucas’s grave voice said in a low tone. He was almost whispering, probably hiding somewhere in the colony, possibly in a closet or something… Lucas continued, “The grounder ship going into orbit. The Whirlwind. It is a rogue ship, carrying serious cargo. Very serious cargo. In fact, we know it is carrying alien artifacts found on Dustball. Many alien artifacts. From an ancient civilization. If we recall from your species’ messages to our people about the—uh—the Treaty of Free Interstellar Passage, such items are forbidden without prior registration and paid duties. It is contraband.”

“Ancient artifacts? That… could be a very serious matter indeed, Lucas Montoya of the Lunar Republic. Very serious. If what you say is true. If it is not… some joke?” Shachos’s voice carried a small tinge of hope in it.

“Not a prank, I promise. Fleet Master Shachos, as Dustball is technically in your species’ territorial space, you need to carry out inspections. Yes, cargo inspections. You need to stop the ship, and you need to inspect its cargo to verify that I am telling the truth.”

“We may stop ships for inspections… Maybe not. It depends. It all depends, Lucas Montoya of the Lunar Republic. All depends. What is the nature of the alien artifacts? Are they funny? Are they valuable? Is it a large amount? It must be serious enough for us to board a ship of a friendly neighbor. Especially one as funny as your species. Yes, it must be serious enough. If it is mere trinkets, we are not in the habit of policing every little violation. There is some latitude in my duties to let some things slide, if you know what I mean. It is—”

“It’s… serious. Very serious. Extremely serious,” Lucas’s voice insisted in the alien’s cadence. He’d obviously been practicing Vorshnik radio etiquette. “Very extremely serious. The artifacts are made out of this odd metal from an ancient civilization. Strange metal. Very strange metal. Very strong. Does not break. Does not cut. Heals itself. Very funny metal in any other context, if I must say so myself. But bringing it on a ship through your system space without informing you? That is an offense of great seriousness, no?”

There was silence on the radio band for a long moment. “Strange, strong metal from an ancient civilization. Metal that heals itself, you say. As you say. Is it dark blue, like the color of our faces when we are serious?”

Oh… no…

“Shimmering blue.”

There was another long silence. An uncomfortably long one.

Julia’s heart sank. She pointed to Gustav. “Get your people together. Find Lucas. And shut him down. Now.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve already got two of my marines out trying to track that signal—”

“All of them, now!”

“Yes, Commodore.”

Shachos’s voice came back on the open radio. “How much of the metal? How much? And what is it? Is it a ring? Is it a pendant? Is it a cup? Is it a big cup? Small cup? Is its displacement more than half a milliliter?”

Half a milliliter. Oh… fuck no.

“It’s helmets,” Lucas said. “Ballistic combat helmets. And other various… samples. And I don’t know how much there is, but they hid it in the manifest as half a ton of potatoes. So if I had to guess, about half a ton… Okay, maybe not half a ton. Like a quarter of a ton.”

“A quarter of—a quarter of… a ton of Precursor Metal.” Shachos seemed oddly few-worded. Julia didn’t even know their species stuttered.

“Yes. Is the translator correctly converting the units? Two to three hundred kilograms, roughly. About five times the mass of my body.”

“A quarter of a ton? Ton? Are you certain?! Is this… a joke? If it is, it is a very good joke, Lucas!”

“No. Not a joke. Not a joke at all. I am certain it is on the ship. It is likely contained in compartments that purport to be fruits and vegetables. You should stop the ship, and carry out—Hey!” Lucas’s voice yelped in surprise as shouting in the background bled through the radio transmission. “No! That’s my radio! Don’t touch it!”

The radio feed tapered off into static.

Julia looked between the radio operator and Samira, who was smirking right back at her. Julia said, hopefully, and mostly to herself, “Maybe Shachos will think he was joking. We are a comedic people to them. It’s possible they’ll think that—”

Harry glanced at a blinking light on his datapad. “Commodore, it’s Shachos’s ship in orbit, Triple Dash. They’re hailing you. Highest-priority, non-accident emergency signal.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

“What do you mean… you lost it?” Marcus asked, staring at his squad leader. “Where did you… see it last?”

“I checked it out of the armory this morning,” Gustav recalled, his skin a sheen of sweat that had nothing to do with the distant Dustball sun. “I checked the cafeteria security tapes; I still had it at lunch. Then, I went down to hydroponics. Talked to Matthias. Then, atmospherics monitoring station. Then… resupply pad patrol.”

Marcus’s voice rose. “And then back to the armory?”

“And then back to the armory, where I realized I didn’t have it anymore.”

“So… hydroponics, atmospherics, resupply pad, and everywhere along the way.”

Gustav hung his head. “Yes, Colonel.”

Marcus buried his face in his palms. “All moonie territory. You didn’t… leave it on a table somewhere, right?”

He shook his head adamantly. “I checked my suit cameras. I didn’t even brandish it.”

“Someone grabbed your stun gun out of your holster, without you noticing?” Marcus asked in disbelief.

“Well, I, uh…” Gustav swallowed. “I wasn’t using my retention holster for it. Was just looped in my belt by—by the handle strap.”

Marcus stared at him a moment, then sighed and shook his head.

Julia stepped in. “Do you have a list of suspects?”

“Yeah, about a couple hundred,” Marcus replied dryly. “It’s just… Arggggh.”

“Yeah.” She stared out the window for a moment. “How bad is this?”

“Bad.”

“Can they… use it to obtain other weapons? Escalation?”

Marcus shook his head slowly. “Shouldn’t. I’ve doubled the armory guard presence. It’s a zapper, so it wouldn’t really affect those of us wearing marine armor, but…”

“Add it to the stockpile?”

“Add it to the stockpile.”

There was a growing count of missing things that the moonies in the colony could use as deadly weapons. That was inevitable in a colony this size. Things were going to go missing, from the marines or from the toolshed. Some of them were actually missing, lost in a crevice at the edge of the colony or blown away by the wind; others, the circumstances were more suspicious.

She sighed. “At least we can fabricate a replacement here, without having to add it to the list of things we’ll need on the next resupply from Sol.”

“Right. Just a simple stun gun. Not much to it. Barely susceptible to the…” Marcus’s voice trailed off.

“What is it?”

Marcus said slowly, “Barely susceptible to the EMP weapon in the Anomaly room. That’s why I have my people carry them there. They can still be affected because they have batteries, but their circuitry is easy to reprint and replace even if the EMP accidentally goes off… or something.”

“Yeah?” Julia could tell he had something on his mind.

“Commodore, why do you think there’s an EMP weapon protecting the site?” Marcus asked. He looked around, then added, “Why would you protect a helmet factory with an EMP?”

She thought for a long moment. “No idea. I’ve tried to think up something, but they’re… aliens, you know?”

“Have you ever been to a dairy processing plant?”

“What? A… dairy processing plant?”

“Yeah. Where they process dairy. Milk. Cheese. Yogurt. Stuff like that,” Marcus said.

Julia had no idea where he was going with this. “No, I’ve… never been to a dairy processing plant.”

“I have, once. School field trip when I was little. They asked everyone if they were sick or had been sick recently. And if you were, you weren’t supposed to go in.”

“Right, so you don’t contaminate the product and get all the milk drinkers sick.”

“Yes, and no. It’s not the viruses and bacteria on you they’re really worried about.”

“No?”

“It’s the good bacteria inside the food in the factory they care about. If you’re sick, you might have taken antibiotics. And the antibiotics might interfere with the bacteria in the cheese.”

“Huh. I’ve… never thought of it like that. That’s… interesting. But what does that have to do with—”

“Now, have you been to a munitions plant? Or somewhere where they manufacture explosives?”

Julia suddenly felt tired. “Marcus, there are a lot of factories I haven’t been to. What’s your point?”

“In those places, you’re not allowed to wear fleece,” Marcus continued slowly. “Because that might generate static electricity, and that… can make the explosives go boom. In fact, inside one of those, they make you wear an anti-static wristband to be safe.”

She sat up straight for a moment as the thought hit her. “Anti-static… You think… the EMP device has more to do with the functionality of the helmet factory than with protecting it from enemies? You think it’s protecting the facility from… its own employees?”

“I think… in some stage of the production, electricity is bad because it might interfere,” Marcus said, showing more excitement as he talked through his own hypothesis. “I think—what do you suppose is going to happen… if we apply some electricity to the Dustballium tar?”

Julia stared at him for a couple of seconds. “You think that might make it all go boom?”

“No. Not at all. I think that might be what turns the goo into a solid helmet.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Julia, Marcus, Harry, and Cynthia stared at the thin disk of shimmering blue through the robotic camera.

Shimmering blue and solid.

Well, shimmering blue-ish, with some tans mixed in. The coloring was still off, but that was a work in progress. They were getting closer every day.

“We did it. We made Dustballium. From rocks and dust… to tar… then all the way to metal. And it can be done in twenty seconds flat. We just need molds.”

“I can’t… believe I didn’t think of this earlier,” Cynthia grumbled. “Electricity. Of course. We tried just about everything else in that chamber. If we had more than the three of us working on this, someone would have thought of this on day one… One of the atmospherics scientists, for sure.”

Marcus looked at Julia. “What do we do? Should we… bring some of that out?”

She checked the time on her datapad briefly. “The resupply ship’s landing tomorrow morning. We’ve already packed up everything. By the time Gary moves the rocks and we send robots on another expedition to relay the new samples out… it’ll be too late. And even if we do, there’s no way the moonies buy an excuse and let us add something to the manifest without additional inspections; they’re already on the lookout for suspicious actions like that as it is.”

“So… for the next resupply? Next month?”

She shrugged. “We did pack some tar samples. We can include this video and the instructions in our messages to the scientists back home. They can try it themselves, and they can observe it happen under lab conditions too. We’ve done what we can here.”

“Then what? What about the moonies?”

Julia took a deep breath. “I’ve decided… I’m going to tell them the truth. The moonies, our people, all of them.”

Harry looked at her skeptically. “The truth. What… truth?”

“Once the resupply leaves, I’m going to tell them what we found. I’m going to tell them what’s going to happen once the ship returns next month. And then I’m going to give them all a choice, to keep working for the colony on the project they were on, or to go home on the next trip. They’ll have a month to decide what they’re going to do.”

Harry stared at her for a long few heartbeats. “And the moonie troublemakers?”

“They’re all about to become troublemakers tomorrow.” Julia shook her head sadly. “Harry, they’re patriots. Whatever their contracts say, they’re soldiers. They love their planet, like you and me. That’s why they came here, away from their families. On an uncomfortable, undeveloped colony twenty-nine light years from home, on a five-year commitment minimum. None of them are going to have any doubts about what we’ve been doing here.”

“And all of them are going to react poorly,” he finished for her.

She sighed. “To say the least.”

“Maybe… heh, maybe that’s a compelling reason not to tell them tomorrow,” Cynthia said nervously, her own commitment to transparency and scientific advancement apparently forgotten now that the full implications had sunk in for her.

Marcus pointed a finger at her. “Julia, doc—she’s… got a good point. Maybe we should just keep lying to them until we get some more armed resources here. It’s worked out so far.”

Julia shook her head. “Cynthia, Marcus, guys. These are the people who have grown our food, filtered our water, and generated our electricity. They’re the people who have done everything for us in the past few months just so we can go digging for alien treasures in a cave somewhere. Besides, they’ll find out before the next resupply anyway. No way we keep it hidden that long. And since they’ll find out sooner or later… they deserve to hear the truth from us.”

“We should tell them the truth… so they can—so they can get zapped or killed trying to do something stupid to stop us from claiming it all for Earth?” Marcus countered.

“If… that is their choice. We won’t be able to delay it much longer, and at least if we come clean, maybe we can soften the blow—”

“You’re presenting our cheeks to them and saying, here, take a free shot. At us. At me and my marines. Because they deserve it. And you’re praying they won’t take the shot. Or if they do, we can survive it.”

If it wasn’t Marcus saying it, she might have suspected it was some kind of guilt trip. But he didn’t mean it like that. Julia shrugged. “Essentially. If you want to put it that way.”

“That’s… nuts, Commodore.”

“Well…” Julia said after a long moment. “Not you.”

Marcus frowned. “Huh?”

“Your cheeks won’t be here. You’re going back with the resupply tomorrow. To figure out what we need for the security of the colony. It makes sense. Someone needs to tell ORBCOM what we need next, and who better than you?”

“Wait. Wait. Wait. So… let me get this straight,” Marcus said. “You’re going to set off a bomb in the colony tomorrow, while I’m gone, leaving you alone with a pack of rabid moonies who are going to have a perfectly rational and completely sane reason to try to stage a coup and murder you all. Unless they’re in a hostage-taking mood. Any other bright ideas?”

Julia shrugged. “Nope. That sounds about right.”

“I can’t talk you out of this insanity?!”

“We’ll be fine, Marcus. We’ve got the guns and the marines; nothing’s changed since yesterday. Your XO, Gustav, he’s a good marine, right? I’m sure he’ll handle things when you’re gone—”

“Did you forget that he was the one who lost his zapper this afternoon?”

“Ah, right. Still… I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

The trail between the administrative building and the scientists’ hab was now a paved road, gravel crunching under Cynthia’s work boots.

At night, Dustball was so peaceful. There were no insects or birds. No moon in the sky. Just the stars and the colony’s night lights.

Peaceful, but shivering cold. She tugged her warm thermal jacket closer around her chest and kept walking, arms tight to her sides. The habs weren’t far. Just a short ten-minute walk. She could make out the blue safety beacon on its roof blinking in the distance.

Her headlamp flickered twice, then steadied itself.

It had never done that before. Odd.

The chilling wind howled in her ears as she stumbled through it, slowly making her way back. That… was when she heard the scrape behind her.

A soft crunch in the gravel.

She stopped. Turned.

Nothing. Nobody.

Most colonists slept early. Part of the habits of a new colony like this. It wasn’t like there was a serious night life scene or anything. Not even the moonies. So… early to work, early to bed.

She stared into the dark, scanning it with her lamp. Still nothing.

Just the wind, picking up a curtain of sand behind her in the beam of her headlamp. It flickered again.

“Damn equipment,” she muttered as she adjusted it on her head.

There was a sharp crack behind her.

She turned again. Nothing.

She frowned.

That was odd. Dustball was a lifeless planet. There were no branches, nor leaves.

She walked a little faster. Heart pounding.

Another crunch behind her. She didn’t look this time, just ran. Sprinted.

It felt stupid. There weren’t any predators around the colony. In the small part of her brain that was still functioning rationally, Cynthia reasoned that if anyone asked, she’d just say she was in a hurry because it was cold. And it was cold.

She ran straight into the scientists’ hab area, her heart still pounding as her keycard unlocked her room door. She slammed it shut and locked it behind her, only breathing a sigh of relief after she did.

What… was that?

Cynthia wasn’t superstitious. And she read the briefs. There wasn’t anything on this planet. Just other humans. Which was dangerous enough, but these were other colonists. It was a tightknit community.

Well, maybe not so tightknit once that supply ship cycles and the commodore drops that bombshell tomorrow.

She flipped on her room light, then frowned. There was something out of place. Her bed? No. Her desk…

A man’s voice behind her. “Hello, Cynthia.”

She spun around, her fist balling up as she did.

Lucas.

She relaxed slightly. Even if the skinny moonie was looking for trouble, she had twenty kilograms on him…

“Lucas! What—what are you doing here, moonie?! This is my room!”

He didn’t say anything, only stared at her with a crazed grin in the low light. He held out something in his hand. Something dark.

“What are you—”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

5 years ago

The man glared into the screen as he scoffed. “We are a recognized civilian ship, carrying noncombatants only.”

Even through the spotty video footage—heavy electronic warfare degraded transmissions in this orbital volume near-constantly since the start of the war—Julia could see the wrinkles around his bloodshot eyes. “What do you want to do? Board us for inspections? See if you can shake us down for the gold in our teeth? We’re carrying refugees, for God’s sake!”

That was the truth, as far as Julia could tell. These converted cargo haulers past their projected end-of-service dates were packed from wall to wall with Lunar colonists. Mostly workers in non-essential jobs or families. While the Lunar Alliance had large stockpiles in their underground caverns, their supplies were not endless. The week that the first shot was fired, they instituted wartime rationing.

Asking the already resource-conscious Lunar colonists to use a little less was not difficult. And in the early days of the war, the fervor of “revolution” meant they had no shortage of political will to implement drastic measures. But there was only so much they could ask of everyone. The baseline requirements of a human body were relatively inflexible, and even with the recyclers working overtime, every mouth to feed was a burden on the Lunar Alliance’s limited supplies. The easiest way to relieve the projected shortages was to reduce the total population they needed to support. A million here, another million there; it added up.

Deportation flights, as the Union State Department called them.

It’s basically Lord of the Flies up there, one of their officials had said. Serenity’s going to crumble, any day now.

The Lunar Alliance had a variety of patriotic ways to spin them during the war, but that was essentially what they were. While a few of the colonists on the flights were conveniently outspoken critics of the people deporting them, it was obvious that most of them were ultimately still loyal—albeit non-essential—citizens of Luna. They were promised that they’d be allowed to return once the war was over. As long as their Navy fought on, their Lunar Dreams lived on. Many had families who were still on Luna, some fighting on the frontlines; some of them might even have been shooting at Julia last week!

A few fringe Union politicians floated the idea of rejecting the refugees, but letting deported Lunar colonists suffocate to death in vacuum was too much for most people on Earth, even in war. After a couple of visceral incidents in medium Earth orbit that turned into publicity nightmares, the Union Navy quietly changed its policy to one of annoyed tolerance. As much as was practical in an active, shooting war anyway.

Julia was not in charge of Union policy, nor its navy, nor even the ship. She looked up from her tactical station at the captain, wondering what he’d do.

Captain Michael Collier glared coolly at the refugee ship captain. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. Contraband inspections, as permitted by law and treaty. Prepare your crew and passengers to be boarded. Non-compliance will be regarded as a hostile act against the Union—”

“Have fun with that, paranoid grounders. I’ll show you a hostile fucking act…” the moonie captain cursed under his breath as he cut the transmission.

It took nearly 30 hours for the marines to comb through the refugee ship, as thoroughly as they could in microgravity. They confiscated two home-printed coilguns and a few dozen sharp objects that could be construed as “deadly weapons”.

What they failed to find were six Luna Liberation Front operatives among the passengers. Two months later, those operatives went missing from a refugee processing camp in southern Germany. As the Union propagandists said on the radios, Earth really was a beautiful place of plenty. From a local LLF cell, the operatives obtained fake identities, weapons, and enough explosives to blow up half of a football stadium. Which they predictably did, during a crowded game.

The Lunar Alliance officially condemned the terrorist attack as the act of a radical extremist group and offered to participate in a joint investigation, one which the Union angrily declined. The Luna Liberation Front didn’t need more inside information to plan their next attack.

Captain Collier was cleared of suspicions of negligence in the resulting internal investigation. He did what he was supposed to, and the failure was one of intelligence or security, not command. Plus, the war had progressed to the point where the Union Navy could not afford to waste its veteran naval officers. Collier was back in the captain’s seat in two weeks. A month after that, he was killed in action—along with three hundred of his ship’s crew—by a Loggerhead laser mine at L-1.

Julia rolled a six on a six-sided die. She survived. But a little part of her did not. She realized this as she absentmindedly watched the news in the hospital. A squad of trigger-happy Union Naval Marines went nuts and shot up a dozen unarmed colonists on another one of those refugee ships, and she felt…

Nothing.

Maybe that made her unsuited to command. Psychologically compromised. No longer fit for service. That was what the news had called those marines as they were court-martialed.

There were Union Navy computers back in Brussels that had detailed profiles on all of its officers. Every single one of them. They all had regular medical check-ups. The Navy knew who was ready for battle. They knew who was ready to break. That way they could replace the ones who couldn’t cut it anymore. Send someone else in their place.

After her second ship, Julia thought for sure that this was the end of the war for her. Maybe they’d transfer her back to Pearl; have her teach cadets what she learned about squadron tactics. Maybe some desk job back in Brussels. Maybe Stockholm.

Instead, when the orders came, it was congratulatory.

She’d been transferred to a new ship. She was going to be its captain.

Captain Julia Kessler.

Effective immediately.

She stared at the words in disbelief even as she read them. Surely there had been a mistake. There must be someone else more suited for the job. Someone who hadn’t just had everyone they cared about blown up by the moonies two weeks prior. Someone who had her war experience and seniority, except they would be more level-headed. More ready for battle. There must have been a mistake.

But deep down, even as she strapped herself into the big chair, Julia knew the truth.

War in the hazards of space. Unglorious, unglamorous. She belonged to a selective group of Union spacers. A shrinking sliver on a Venn diagram. Those who had been shot at and those who were still breathing. The wrinkles around the eyes you could pick out of a group. The knowing head nods in the hallways as she mustered out of Battlestar One.

If there was someone else, they’d be here in this seat.

There was no one else.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dustball

Without looking up, Julia knew Marcus had entered her administrative hab again. The giveaway wasn’t anything in his armor. Marcus was too professional to allow his leg motors to squeak. They were probably oiled thrice a day. In fact, there was some technology in there that made each of his steps sound like a regular person, enough to defeat most commercial gait detection software…

No, it was the way he stepped unhesitatingly through the door, like the first marine in the stack, making dynamic entry through the fatal funnel, that implied supreme trust that his comrade one step behind him would obliterate whatever would have shot at him when he crossed the threshold. Habits.

And of course, Marcus knew she knew. He didn’t wait for her to look up from her mountain of paperwork. “Lucas applied to go in again. Tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah?”

“Another expedition request. He wants to bring in—”

Julia finally looked up. “What? A shovel?”

“A bulldozer. And a couple clankers. He says it’s only fair, since we bring ours in. He’s going to try to remove the debris.”

“The debris that we made Gary put there.”

“Unit 18.”

There was a knock on the door to interrupt their disagreement about what to call the utility robot they had inside the Anomaly site, exploring the jackpot foundry room tirelessly, day and night.

There were only two other people who’d be here at this hour. “Come in, Doctor, Harry,” she greeted warily.

Cynthia and Harry entered.

Cynthia was… quiet. She’d been like that since Julia threatened her with treason charges and an implicit threat of a bullet if she revealed the truth to the moonies. That kind of threat tended to have that effect on people.

As long as she works and keeps her mouth shut.

Harry looked more haggard. Paperwork and endless meetings with department heads had that effect on people, but he was keeping a lid on things at the colony, so it wasn’t like Julia was going to ask him to stop now.

“Right,” Julia resumed the conversation as they settled in. “So… Lucas wants to go in again tomorrow. And he wants to remove the big rocks Gary put there to cover the hallway to the factory room. I’ll just deny the request. We’re so close to the resupply run; nobody needs to die for this secret.”

“Deny his request? For what reason?” Harry asked. “I doubt he’s going to settle for an it’s not safe again.”

“I don’t know. Make something up. Something… scientific sounding. Any ideas, Doctor?”

Cynthia considered it for a moment. “I don’t—you can tell him that we need to do some sampling on the debris for clues about where and when it’s from.”

“Exactly,” Julia said as she typed it into her datapad. “Good one, Doctor. If he wants to excavate anything, we need to sample the debris first. Scientific priority. That’ll delay him a couple days. We don’t need forever, just until the Whirlwind comes and leaves.”

“I just… I think I’m not comfortable with all these lies, Commodore,” Cynthia said in a small voice.

Julia stared up at her. “Do you want to work with us on this or not?”

“I do… It’s just… We’re spending so much effort and destroying the archaeological record just to cover up something that… I don’t know—There’s just—Ah, forget it, I’m sure—”

Julia interrupted her. “No. Say it. What were you going to say?”

“This feels like something that should belong to all of humanity. Or… not even humanity. The aliens upstairs too. Maybe this find belongs to the entire galaxy.”

There was a long silence in the room. Everyone else found something interesting on the walls to look at.

Julia nodded. “I… understand why you would think that.” She felt lame even as she said it. “And for the archaeological record, we are cataloging everything, as much as we can. And we’re keeping great records.”

“Right,” Cynthia muttered with a sigh. “With the robot.”

“Exactly. In fact, in some ways, it’s even better than a pure human archaeological team, right? There’s a trail for everything! If we ever need to find out whether we missed something important, we’ve got Gary’s electronic records that a digital intelligence can comb through, reconstruct, and make sense of in the future.”

“The marines’ robots, they’re… not exactly designed to dig through historical artifacts, you know?” the geologist said dryly. “They’re made to shoot at things. And the foundry, since it works, you wouldn’t want to accidentally damage it, would you—”

“Actually, Unit 18’s a mechanical mule. For carrying things around,” Marcus corrected. “It can shoot—mostly operate the heavy weapons, but it’s only supposed to do that in an emergency.”

Cynthia didn’t seem to really care about the intricacies of specialized Union Naval Marine combat robot model variants, so Julia quickly changed the topic. “Anyway, did you get a chance to review our findings for the last two days?”

The doctor took out her datapad. “Yeah. We still don’t know how the foundry pools work. But given what happened last time with that pile of sand we put in, I’m pretty sure at least two of them are still functional. Probably more.”

“Right. The sand.”

A couple of weeks ago, Gary drained all the Dustballium tar from one of the foundry wells.

Then, he threw the switches. Each had binary settings, on or off, like the EMP device upstairs. It was about as simple as it could be, and there were only six of them on each well. Assuming that there was a specific setting that did something interesting, there was at least a 1 in 64 chance that any arrangement of them would be that. As a robot working day and night, Gary could go through 64 settings pretty quickly.

Monkeys. That’s what we are.

Cynthia also brought up the possibility that it might require the EMP to be on to be functional. Luckily, they didn’t need to find a way to try that. The utility robot got… something in the first try: the all-on option.

It boiled all the loose sand remaining in the well after the existing tar in it was removed.

Boiled it. That was surely not the scientific term for what happened, but even Cynthia didn’t object to that characterization; she didn’t have another word for… whatever the hell happened.

Gary put more debris into the well. Just loose pieces of sand and rocks from the chamber.

It boiled it all too. In seconds. Right into tar form, right there in the circular well.

The color wasn’t quite right. And the consistency didn’t look exactly like the other stuff either. But the machinery was… doing something. It turned out the left-most switch was what activated it. An on-button for the whole machine, basically.

Oh, and one of the switches activated a small gate on the side to allow the overflowing tar out of the well, dripping onto the ground in two separate streams.

So that was two of the switches figured out. Four more to go.

“There’s probably some optimal raw material that needs to go in there. Maybe more iron or perhaps something rarer,” Cynthia speculated. “Gold. Aluminum. Carbon. Blood sacrifice.”

“Blood sacrifice? Come on. Really?”

“Organic material, I mean. Who knows? But the tar—it’s not just the sand melted in high heat, for sure.”

“You’re sure it’s not?”

“Yeah. The samples we got out. That… Gary snuck out. The debris and sand in the room is pretty common stuff we have on Earth too. There’s some silicates. Some calcite. Clay. But mostly basaltics. I’ve seen my share of volcanoes.” Even in her most reserved form, Cynthia still couldn’t resist adding that last part. Occupational hazard of being a world-class academic, apparently. “And none of those things, when melted, look like that tar. No foaming, no bubbling, and even when it cools, it’s still in tar form? Nah, if it’s some kind of simple furnace or heating process, we should expect glassy, or grainy with pumice, and it should turn back to solid once the stuff cools. But it doesn’t; it’s somehow changed its room temperature state into a liquid.”

“Right.” Harry nodded in agreement. “And when Marcus checked with Unit 18’s weapon rangefinder, the tar messes with it. Just the Dustballium. So there’s something special about it, like the real stuff.”

“And the room is not filling up with carbon monoxide or dioxide. Which you’d expect if there’s calcite being melted. Or your robot would be complaining about it.”

“The Canary sensor suite,” Marcus added. “We double-checked with it. No elevated levels of contaminants other than what the robot itself is putting out.”

“So… our problem now is just… turning the tar into a solid form,” Julia summarized. “And then have Gary try to cut the material to see if it does the same thing as the Dustballium. The self-healing thing. And the indestructible thing.”

“Or sneak it out to see if we can cut it here. Compare it with our instruments out here.” Cynthia sniffed. “But if you want me to do more work on this, you’ll need to bring my geology team in on it. They’ll get suspicious if I just start testing random samples of mystery tar.”

“Let’s… hold off on that for now,” Julia said after a second of consideration. “We don’t need to make a decision on that until we ship our first samples home.”

“Right.”

“Where are we on having Gary disassemble one of the foundry wells and bring it out piece by piece?”

Marcus shook his head adamantly. “Looking like it’s not going to be possible for now. There are rivet-like joiners on the bottom, so they don’t look like something that’s supposed to be maintained or repaired by operators. But even if whatever’s on the inside of these machines is something we can disassemble and reassemble, the outer pieces would be too big anyway. Especially since…” He stole a side glance at Cynthia. “Especially since we don’t want the moonies to find out what we’re doing.”

Julia sighed. “Ah well. We expected that. The scientists back home will have to settle for the result samples and the helmets. And then… the moonies will find out sooner or later, but preferably after we get our experts on materials and archaeology out here on a supply run. And more marines.”

Harry spoke up sharply. “More marines. And then what?”

“Then… we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

“Commodore,” Marcus said slowly. “If you want us to put half the colony under house arrest… we’re going to need to be prepared to shoot some of them. Possibly more than a few. And possibly… not with zappers.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we have to. If you or any of your marines are not comfortable with that mission—”

“No, no, we’ll do that if we have to. That’s what we’re here for,” Marcus explained. “But we’ll need a full crowd control and work succession contingency. In case the moonies go all in.”

Harry objected, “That’s… everyone who is essential to the functioning of this colony. Our food. Our water. Our fabs, emergency supplies. The robots can replace most of their work temporarily, but I’m not sure if they can do enough of it at the efficiency we need.”

“We’ll need to ration. Maybe we’ll need to ship some of the moonies home while we bring in replacements from Earth. The non-essentials need to be deported to relieve shortages.” Julia rolled her eyes. “Oh, the fucking irony.”

Harry stared at Julia. “Yes, and the timing of everything is urgent. But even Marcus hasn’t accounted for everything. The people who need to be brought home each trip need to be accompanied by marines. Enough marines so the moonies being deported—who will be extremely motivated, to say the least—so they don’t get any creative ideas on the way home. Every part of that security plan needs to be improvised. Our reinforcements need to be vetted back in Sol. Everything we’ll need—it needs to be planned out now. Here. So it can go back with the upcoming supply run, with the artifacts to convince the people back home of what we’re doing. And to convince our own people here. Some of our scientists and our own people may object—”

“Bah. There is a no-strike pledge in each of their—”

“Do I need to be here… for—for… this conversation?” Cynthia asked nervously. “Is this—This is all legal, right? Should I go?”

“Dustball colony is a Union Navy base. I have full command authority here, Doctor, and I’ll take full responsibility for any actions in a Union court of law—”

“We’re just about done,” Harry said at the same time, not taking his eyes off Julia. “Commodore… Have you really considered this? Really thought this through?”

“We’ve been through this,” she said. “You all know the plan, and we all knew this was a possibility the day we cracked open the Anomaly chamber.”

Harry persisted. “And you’re all sure about this? All of this?”

“About… what exactly?”

“We would be kicking the moonies out, from a colony that the charter gives them half of. We are talking about exercising the nine-tenths of the law. We are talking about starting another war,” he said, an inscrutable expression in his eyes.

They’d had a month to look at the Dustballium. Everything it did. Everything it could potentially do. The hushed mentions of it in the few records the Vorshnik aliens had given the first contact team. And that was only the start of the real dig. What Marcus found in a quick detour, and what a single utility robot discovered in a month with the severe constraints on its activities due to secrecy.

There was no question what this was about. None.

This was about the future of humanity. Who inherited it. And what it meant for its fragile place in the galaxy.

Julia had been to war. For five years, she fought the moonies. She had the scars—physical and not—to show for it. And it wasn’t just her. The end of the war; neither the Union nor the moonies had come out unscathed. Despite only a small percentage of the populations being subjected to its greatest risks, the corrosive effect of war was everywhere. In a brutal contest of wills with no clear winners, its tendrils wormed its way into the human way of life. But she didn’t really understand what it was for. What that war was over. Not at the time.

This time, as she glanced at the alien artifacts displayed on her datapad, she understood this. She understood the prize. She understood the danger. The other guys, they’d do the exact same thing.

“Commodore, do you think… this is all worth it?” Harry asked softly.

She stared at the shimmering tar on her datapad screen.

This. All of this. Is it worth starting a war over?

Of course.

Of course it is.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous