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  They had run. They were still running.

  She hadn’t wanted to engage the sLume drive at first, worried the notable expansion and contraction of the fabric of space might be detected, and god only knew how fast those alien ships were capable of flying. But she’d thrown so much power at the dampener field on their retreat the field’s module had overloaded and fried out. Thankfully the silica-sapphire matrix filter caught the backflow and prevented any damage to the LEN reactor.

  Figuring an unmasked full-power impulse engine was likely to attract at least as much attention as initiating a warp bubble, she had relented and switched over to vanish at superluminal velocity. Thus far no alien ships had trailed her to blow her out of space.

  Beyond its designated requirements, feeding more power to the sLume drive did not result in greater speed. The limit to how rapidly it propelled her and her ship through space was built into the design of the drive, and no amount of power in creation could make it go any faster. So she’d also turned the heat and lights back on.

  She would lessen the frequency she dropped out of superluminal. Two days in between particle dumps should be fine, so long as she did so far outside any outpost of civilization. She’d run the sLume at 100% instead of the 95% she typically did to minimize wear and tear. Together with high-tailing it out of Metis at full speed from the start rather than meandering around on impulse as she’d done coming in—and the fact she intended to acquire herself a goddamn superluminal travel waiver for inside the Main Asteroid Belt—and she should be able to trim nearly a day and a half off the trip home.

  Three and a half days had never seemed so long.

  But it wasn’t three and a half days. As soon as she escaped Metis communications would return. She could warn people. She could get the information to her mother, who could get it to those who mattered, and they could…deal with it.

  The Earth Alliance armed forces were very capable. Certainly they were very large. Not state of the art, but reasonably advanced. Were they strong enough? She imagined it depended on how many ships were still to come through the portal. Perhaps if the Alliance cooperated with Senecan forces—she cut a glance over to evaluate the state of her Senecan companion.

  His jaw had locked in place, and his eyes were flaring as hot as the bright blue core of Messier 32. But his expression was one of…of pained patience, which only made her want to strangle him more. At least he had acquiesced in one respect—he shut up. She should probably start talking before her two seconds ran out.

  “I am not trying to allow genocide to be committed upon your ‘people.’ I am not leaving them to the wolves, to those…things, okay? I realize Seneca and its friends lie directly in the way of any path to Earth and are located substantially closer to Metis.”

  She forced herself not to pace in a manner which might be interpreted as hysterical. “The instant communications return, you can comm your boss or your President or Chairman or whatever it is you call him or her. Comm whoever the hell you desire. Send the visuals—send the entire fucking data set. Talk to them for hours. Whatever you feel you need to do to prepare them is fine by me. I want you to warn them.

  “All I am saying is I’m going to Earth, and I’m not taking a two-day detour to Seneca on the way.”

  He sank back with a sharp sigh against the wall behind the data center, where she had been pulling in the information captured and trying to begin to organize and categorize it while they raced at maximum speed away from the center of Metis and its otherworldly portal and army of monster ships.

  That was earlier though. Before the argument.

  He had assumed they would be heading to Seneca forthwith to warn his government of the danger in person. A logical enough assumption she supposed, given Senecan space extended practically to the outskirts of the Metis Nebula and thus its inhabitants may be in a wee bit of clear and present danger.

  She wasn’t going to Seneca. She didn’t care to go there when things were peachy, much less when aliens were knocking on the door. For one, on Seneca she’d be dependent on him and not even remotely in control of her situation. For another, she possessed a direct line to the highest ranks of the Alliance military; she needed to get to Earth and if necessary yell and scream at her mother and her mother’s bosses and anyone and everyone else required until they understood the magnitude of the fucking problem. And she had no time to waste.

  The shock of witnessing an invading army of unimaginably powerful aliens emerging through an unfathomably advanced portal had left them both on edge and not exactly at their best. When he had expressed his assumption regarding their destination, she had protested. He had misinterpreted. Words had ensued.

  After seeming to search her face for a moment, as if for reassurance of the truth of her statements, his chin dropped to his chest. It was followed several seconds later by a weak nod. “Okay. I hear you. And I’m…sorry I accused you of being insensitive.”

  “I believe the term you used was ‘soulless’?”

  “Right.” A desperate-sounding breath escaped his lips. “All of those ideas sound reasonable, and I’ll likely do most of them. But what then?” He looked up at her from beneath long lashes, his gaze less hard but no less troubled. “Where does that leave me?”

  She dropped her hands to the rim of the table and leaned into it, allowing her eyes to drift down rather than hold his. “Look, if you want I can drop you off on Gaiae. I know it’s small and the residents are kind of creepy, but it has a spaceport and regular transports. You can get home from there. It’ll cost me four hours or so, but I’ll compensate somehow.”

  Unable to resist any longer the pull of his stare boring into her, she raised her head to again meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, but we have no time. It’s the best I can do.”

  “Thank you. I—Gaiae will be fine.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched but exhibited no definitive direction, forcing his jaw to relinquish its clench of death. His Adam’s apple bobbed a heavy swallow. “You said ‘if I want.’ Is there an alternative? Are you asking me to go to Earth with you?”

  She opened her mouth to respond…and let it close. That was precisely what she was doing, wasn’t it? Well.

  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “Why?” A few hours earlier the tenor of his voice would’ve been playful, even teasing, when uttering such a question. Now it was somber and dark, weighed down by responsibility and the dread which came with terrible knowledge.

  Why, indeed. Her eyes slid away from the intensity of his stare, and she made a show of inspecting the checkerboard of data sets spread out above the table. “Two voices are better than one. I stand a better chance of not being deemed crazy if you back me up. Yes, I recognize I have hard data to back me up. Still, you’d be shocked at how little bureaucrats respect hard data.”

  “Is that all?”

  Stop. Please. This was a conversation she was so far from ready to have. “Don’t be an ass.”

  “I’m not being an ass. I’m simply asking if there’s another reason why you want me to go with you.”

  She ignored him and expanded the set containing the visible light images. “I need to get this data into some semblance of order so we can send it along as soon as we’re clear of the Nebula. It’s still in raw form and a jumbled mess right now.”

  After a moment’s pause—she didn’t know what he may have done or what expressions he may have displayed during the moment, because she didn’t look at him—he joined her at the table.

  “We need to do a lot more than organize it. I barely comprehend half of this, and most people won’t understand any of it. Presentation matters. We need to structure the data so it tells a story, one which is compelling and easy to understand in a couple of minutes.”

  Her eyes cut over at him. “We?”

  For the briefest second the trademark smirk returned. “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Touché.”

  He sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose, then pulled her gaze
in once again. “Listen. I would…I would like to go to Earth with you. I don’t know if I will be able to do so. There’s a good chance once my superiors see this information they’re going to ask me to come in. And while I enjoy a significant amount of freedom in my job, in this situation I won’t be able to say no.”

  She nodded, possibly too quickly. It felt too quick. “Of course. We’ll play it by ear. If it takes them a while to decide I’ll need to drop you on New Orient instead, but I can make it work. It’s fine.”

  It wasn’t fine at all, but she told herself she had far more important problems to worry about right now. Like how to break the news to the world—or at least its rulers—that the elusive aliens everyone had been searching for had at last been found, and they most decidedly did not appear friendly.

  30

  ARCADIA

  Earth Alliance Colony

  * * *

  Arcadia’s orbital defense array detected the approaching ships at a distance of 0.2 AU beyond its outer atmosphere.

  The detection was expected. The commander of the 3rd Wing made no attempt to hide the force’s arrival, as it was futile to try. A flight of stealth electronic warfare ships deployed in an advance position and began scrambling the array sensors, introducing errors into their targeting mechanics. A number of bolts from the enormous plasma weapons nevertheless reached the frigates forming the bulk of the Wing.

  Long, dark and sleek, Senecan Federation frigates stretched for one hundred forty meters. They were constructed of a lustrous amodiamond metamaterial which absorbed and reflected the steel blue glow of their powerful twin impulse engines. Plasma shielding and reinforced layered p-graphene lattices deflected and dispersed the majority of the high-energy plasma, though in the opening seconds two frigates suffered critical damage from direct hits and were forced to disengage. The remaining frigates targeted the orbital weapons infrastructure and drew its fire while three fighter squadrons launched from the Wing’s carrier ship.

  The Arcadia Earth Alliance Forward Naval Base went on full alert the moment the defense array picked up the approaching ships. Fighters were scrambled to guard the mouths of the nearby atmosphere corridors and patrol the surrounding airspace. Eight SAL turrets ringing the facility activated and began searching for targets.

  The Senecan squadrons didn’t take the corridors however, for to do so would have been to fly directly into a massacre. Instead they battled the punishing atmosphere in nine flights of four, each flight closing in on the base from different directions and altitude.

  Arcadia’s topography was mountainous and lush, and the base lay nestled in a vale at the northern end of a long valley. The valley entrance was heavily guarded by automated systems, and four of the eight SAL turrets were positioned along the gap in the mountains. Drones dispatched with the 2nd flight broke off to engage the turrets, while the accompanying fighters followed three seconds behind to eliminate the automated defenses.

  Senecan fighter jets possessed exceptional maneuverability, even in-atmosphere. Constructed of a hyper-light honeycombed metamaterial and sculpted into sharp edges and acute lines, they sacrificed non-electronic defenses for speed and agility. The jets raced over the mountains bounding three sides of the base, braked to a near stop at the crests and dropped into the vale, pulse laser weapons firing in long arcs through the surface facilities.

  The offensive did not go unchallenged; in fact it was met with considerable resistance. Alliance fighters engaged the attackers in the sky above the base. Ships on both sides suffered catastrophic damage, the fiery wreckage often causing yet more damage to the facilities upon impact with the ground.

  Alliance fighter jets featured considerably sturdier hulls than their Senecan counterparts. This meant, though more difficult to destroy, they were also slower and less agile. Several attempts to chase down the Senecan ships led to mountainside collisions when an Alliance fighter was unable to execute the hairpin maneuver its quarry performed to clear the treacherous terrain.

  Over 8,300 troops were stationed at the Forward Naval Base. Most of them were noncombat servicemen—ship and equipment technicians, engineers, administrative officers—and the remainder were troops who rotated through in tours on the frigates and supply and patrol ships which called the base home. Thus for fully ninety percent of the base personnel, there was simply nothing they could do to repel the attack.

  Many of the personnel present realized this and bunkered down in the most fortified area of the facility, an underground storage warehouse. In the end this kept the loss of life disproportionately low when measured against the destruction inflicted.

  Nevertheless a few soldiers, caught in the throes of battle-rage, charged onto the field of battle wielding shoulder-fired SALs. But even ocular implant-aided human eyesight could not hope to track the movements of a Senecan jet. One hundred percent of the shoulder SALs missed their targets; seventy percent of the wielders—exposed and in the open—perished.

  With the automated turrets eliminated, the sixteen Alliance fighters were relentlessly whittled down by the superior Senecan numbers. When the last one fell, twenty-six Senecan fighters remained to wreak havoc on the base facilities unimpeded. In thirteen minutes the attackers disabled or destroyed every structure more than forty square meters in size, save the massive headquarters building. They settled for blowing out all its windows and leaving two thirty-meter craters in its core.

  Mission parameters successfully completed, the Senecans bugged out, taking the easier corridor routes on departure. The orbital array weapons had by this point been obliterated by the frigates and they faced no resistance as they exited Arcadia’s atmosphere and docked with their carrier.

  All told, the 3rd Wing of the Senecan Federation Southern Fleet lost two of twelve frigates and ten of thirty-six fighter jets. Though the Arcadia base was not a Regional Command Center, as the closest military facility to Federation space it constituted a strategically and politically important location. In twenty-seven minutes it had been, for all intents and purposes, eradicated.

  31

  SIYANE

  Space, Northeast Quadrant

  * * *

  By mid-afternoon the Siyane finally left the Nebula behind for the comparatively empty void of space. They had worked late into the previous night, a visceral, slow-burn panic driving her and him both forward.

  Alex had wanted to study the data captured, to try to understand what these aliens—or at least their ships—truly were and what they might be facing. Caleb, being the practical sort, had pushed her to first catalog, organize and summarize the data, so if nothing else they would be able to send the information out to others as soon as the ability to do so returned.

  Being still more practical, he had also forced her to sleep for a few hours—even if ‘sleep’ meant crawl in bed and proceed to toss and turn for the bulk of those hours. She couldn’t say whether he had taken his own advice and gotten any sleep himself.

  Breakfast had been fruit and warmed-up bread consumed at the data center; lunch, neglected. They slowly pieced together a coherent package which could be delivered alongside a brief summary and nightmare-inducing visuals, and waited for their connection to the rest of the galaxy to reappear.

  She raised a somewhat erratic eyebrow across the table at him. “So do you think we should lead with the panoramic shot of the seventy-eight superdreadnoughts or the enormous close-up of the synthetic tentacle creature from Gehenna?”

  He chuckled in response; it came out half-strained, half-weary and half-genuine. “When I was six years old, my dad called himself taking me camping in the mountains outside Cavare. I woke up in the middle of the night to find this kartinga—you’ve probably never seen one, but it’s sort of a cross between a tarantula and…an enormous locust—hanging in the air a few centimeters from my face. I say we lead with the tentacles. It’ll make a stronger impress—” He broke off mid-sentence. “We’re coming back online.”

  A second later her eVi lit up in a deluge of
comms and data deliveries. Far more than usual came in marked ‘urgent’ or ‘priority’ or ‘important,’ and she had to override the force-loading mechanism before she got blinded by pop-ups.

  She picked out a recent message from Kennedy, because why not.

  Alex,

  Well, this is going to bollocks up all our fun, isn’t it? Whatever it is you’re doing that has you off the grid, stay clear of this mess, will you?

  — Kennedy

  What? With some reluctance she selected the most recent communication from her mother. It was marked ‘priority,’ but hers were always marked ‘priority.’

  Alexis,

  Wherever you are, you must realize it’s best if you come home now, for your own safety.

  — Miriam

  “Okay, what the hell is happening?”

  He held up a finger to silence her, irises jerking across an unseen whisper. She ignored her remaining forty-seven messages to watch him.

  Finally his eyes focused on her. They looked…complicated. “I think you’d better turn on a news feed.”

  “What is going on?”

  “I don’t even…just turn on the news, okay?”

  “Right.” She gestured toward the embedded screen on the opposite wall and tuned it to a generic Alliance news feed channel.

  “Again, we are reporting that in response to what they say is confirmation the Earth Alliance was responsible for the attack on Palluda, the Senecan Federation military has retaliated by destroying the Alliance Forward Naval Base on Arcadia.”

  “They did what?”

  “A spokesperson continues to deny the Alliance was involved in the Palluda incident or that it was in retaliation for the assassination of Trade Minister Mangele Santiagar last week. However, they—hold on, we’re getting word the Prime Minister is about to speak. Let’s go live to Earth Alliance Headquarters.”