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  Something had clearly gotten under their skins.

  “Trillion, you in here?” The shock of hearing a woman’s voice in this dripping-with-testosterone sanctum ripped him from his train of thought. “Where are you hiding?”

  God, no. What’s she doing in here?

  Not that he should be surprised—boundaries of any kind were anathema to Lyssa Baltacha. L.B. was a raker, a civvy one at that, and though she and Gus got on like a house on fire most of the time, she had a prickly temper and an even pricklier, sarcastic sense of humor that didn’t always translate well to strangers. Especially not those bursting to take a leak before an epic slog across the galaxy.

  He inched behind the man in front of him, suddenly amused, curious to see what she’d do.

  “You blind, lady?” A burly man stepped back from his stone as the gravity drainage flow inverted, flushing the trough water up in streams into the reserve waste tank. A measure of how frequently the restroom had been used today. The man magnoed his fly and glared at L.B., whose fists on hips and pointy-out elbows held her beige cloak agape, revealing a loose bloodred two-piece that hinted at her trim, petite figure inside. “I said are you blind? This is men only, sweetheart.”

  She flicked a glance at his crotch. “All evidence to the contrary, Bub. Now where’s that no-good Trillion? I know he’s in here.”

  Several men ahead of Gus raised their hands, shared an in-joke at L.B.’s expense, then mocked her with rude hand gestures. Assholes. She pretended to ignore them while she continued scanning the line.

  “All right, you got me.” As he strode out toward her, Gus deflected taunts and jeers, finally bowing to them all on his way out. At least the mood had lightened in the restroom. But when L.B. turned to follow him out, a jet of wastewater shot out from one of the stones, slapping the floor tiles and drenching the assholes who’d ridiculed her.

  “Now that’s what I call pissed off,” he quipped, escorting her away, but she wriggled out of his embrace and threw back her hood to reveal a frizzy black mess of hair she clearly hadn’t touched in a day or two. Not like her at all. L.B. might be a jaded raker, promoted and demoted umpteen times by IC and OC journals alike before going freelance; she might have been twice burned by divorce despite being only twenty-four; but she always looked good, sometimes lovely, and always, always took pride in her appearance.

  Except today. “What’s turned you so savage, L.B.?”

  “I told you, I’ve got something urgent to show you.” With a winglike wave of her cloaked arm, she motioned him to follow her to the grav chair elevators. “It has to be the Starwarp Café.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s quiet there, and there’s no surveillance.”

  “You’re being mysterious for a—”

  “Trillion, shut up. I know very well you don’t care about anything or anyone, not even me. You’ve wallowed in apathy for so long it’s practically your religion, but trust me, when you see this, you’re going to start giving a shit. And if you don’t, you’re going to get an epiphany from me—size four, right up your stubborn a-hole.”

  “Hey, wait there just a minute.” He stopped her before they reached the grav chair conveyer. “What’s all this about?”

  “Those raids they’re talking about, this amber-red alert.”

  “Yeah, so? There’s nothing new there.”

  She sidled close, stood on her tiptoes, whispered, “You don’t know what this is. They’re a helluva lot more than raids. I’m telling you it’s the prelude to a full-on Sheiker invasion, and ISPA is scared shitless.” The words echoed in his reconstructed ear, tones modulating and falling away like tennis balls over a xylophone. “Whatever assignment they’ve cooked up for you, forget it. It’s not going to be enough.”

  You have survived.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” he whispered back.

  “Nothing, nothing at all. It’s what we’re going to do, you and me, right now.”

  “Which is?”

  “Whatever we can, Trillion. Whatever we goddamn well can, before it’s too late. Before the whole lot of us are extinct.”

  Chapter Three

  The empty café, with its tall sparkling alcoves and digital onyx ocean undulating under the see-through floor, was eerie and majestic at a time when it should be bustling. It was lunch hour already and the only signs of life were the gold bar-shaped transports outside the window, floating away in formation, awaiting their turn to enter the warp gate.

  Gus ordered a black coffee, L.B. a mug of cinnamon McCormick’s. The beverages arrived in record time, up through the table’s grav waiter chute. After checking behind her, L.B. slid her seat around the bench track and pressed close against Gus. He leaned away a little, unused as he was to physical contact, but she only leaned after him to close the gap. Her Rama Core perfume had faded—likely she’d been too distracted to apply it this morning—but its traces were pleasant enough.

  “First things first—I’m not after any kind of story here. I want you to know that up front.” She tapped her knuckles on his metallic shoulder in order to get his full attention. “We clear on that?”

  “If you say so.” Not that he didn’t trust her, but L.B.’s convictions tended to last until she got bored with them, which was soon and often. Having an insatiable curiosity was vital for a raker, yes, but so was an ability to prioritize, to focus all your energy on one story at a time. For L.B., journalism was more like a meandering, nonstop conversation—she touched on far too many topics, explored a few with bravura insight and left the majority partially addressed. Put simply, her mind was overactive and unfocused, the result of mandatory meds to suppress her coining, or astral projection, ability. An outlawed gift, deemed as a threat to colonial security.

  Unbeknownst to the authorities, both her mother and father were powerful fugitive coiners living under assumed names on Rama Core B. Their sought-after abilities had inspired a galaxy-wide manhunt a couple of decades ago, but no one had ever found them. Those same abilities—which L.B. refused to demonstrate, even to Gus—were, she claimed, even more potent in her. Far too potent for any meds to suppress. But like all registered coiners, she took the daily meds anyway, checked in with her psych evaluator once a month on cue, and tried to forget all about the extraordinary gift evolution had bestowed on her. All so she could fit into a society that didn’t trust her.

  At least she’d trusted Gus—a profound trust that even her psych doctors didn’t have. And in turn, she knew all his scars and insecurities, a litany of phoenix burns he hadn’t shared with another soul since the accident.

  Sometimes it felt as though they were nebula kin, flotsam and jetsam in a sea of cold stars. A sea with no end…

  “I lifted this raw footage shot from the video diary taken by a Pi diplomat on the 100z border.” The flexi-screen she unfurled shimmered like a pearl scroll, then flickered to a full-frame photograph. “He’d just returned from his latest negotiations with the Finaglers.”

  “Those sneaky alien bastards. No doing any good with them, so why bother?”

  “Because they’re pissing in the same pot as the Sheikers—when you’ve seen this, you’ll know how dangerous that is.”

  He scanned the photo but couldn’t see any such evidence at first glance. The diplomat had forgotten to switch his button camera off while passing through a secured area, and it had accidentally recorded the aftermath of an intelligence briefing—the admirals weren’t there, but the liquid smart-chart they’d used to map enemy movement in the sector hadn’t been reset. The multimedia files, vectors and annotations were all visible through the room’s open hatch.

  “Can you zoom in?” He pointed at the smart-chart.

  “Way ahead of you.”

  The perfect resolution surprised him. Obviously this diplomat was a VIP with expensive toys…and a di
stracted mind. He’d captured with breathtaking clarity the full scope of the threat—an invasion force at least fifty times larger than anyone had previously guessed. Dozens of worlds, moons and asteroids in Sheiker space glowed bright red on the chart, and the numbers beside them, ranging from several hundred thousand to tens of millions, described a combined artificial energy output surpassing that of the entire ISPA fleet in the outer colonies.

  War.

  More than just illegal settlers on those rocks, the Sheikers, once the nefarious and powerful overlords of border colonies, stripped of their crime-riddled territories by ISPA, were clearly not content to live quietly in exile. No, they appeared bent not only on reclaiming those territories confiscated from them, but invading the outer colonies en masse, thereby challenging ISPA itself for domination of a vast swath of allied quadrants.

  And given the Sheikers’ long, notorious alliance with the Finaglers—a sly alien race that specialized in trading for fringe technology on the black market—and the speed and stealth with which this invasion force had been built, it was unquestionably a joint venture. Oh, the Finaglers would publicly deny it, of course—their legal chicanery would absolve them of any infraction—but a blind cave dweller could see they were the sponsors of this unprecedented act of aggression against ISPA.

  The ramifications were unthinkable.

  Gus’s organic hand began to shake, chattering his cup on the tabletop. He used his cybernetic hand instead, which he was only just starting to feel again—the ritolin had begun to wear off. “Christ. How much time do we have?”

  She gave his organic hand a squeeze, then rested her hands and chin on his artificial shoulder, looking away behind them across the empty café. “I don’t know. Weeks? Months? You’re IPR—you tell me.”

  “Whenever they reckon we’ll be weakest.” He realized he was holding his breath too long between inhales, so he sucked in a lungful. “They haven’t mobilized yet—that’s something. Gives us time to…time to…ah, shit, I don’t know. I really don’t know what we could do to repel that kind of armada, not while we’re stretched so thin and the conscription bill has been shelved.”

  “I heard that too. So we’re stuck with the personnel we’ve got plus any volunteers we can recruit between now and…whenever they choose to strike,” she said. Gus could almost feel the cogwheels spinning in her overactive brain. “Not going to be enough, is it? If ISPA can’t conscript, they’re going to have to make a galaxy-wide announcement, letting everyone know the bind we’re in.”

  “Which they won’t do,” Gus replied. “That would signal to the Sheikers how weak and panicked we really are. They’d attack immediately and hold nothing back. No, what we need is some way of galvanizing the colonies so that it appears as a recruitment push, a proactive swelling of the ranks, rather than a recruitment pull in obvious reaction to the threat of invasion. Remember, a push as opposed to a pull.”

  “Semantics.”

  “No, the difference is actually profound. You don’t drum up public support by ordering them to support you. You get them to think it’s their own goodwill and patriotism generating the support, and you do it by selling one side of the argument a thousand different ways over a period of time. People have to believe they’re the crucial factor in the equation, that if they fight for ISPA they’re making the difference, safeguarding the lives of innocent women and children. And by that same token, if they don’t make the right choice and ante up, they’re personally responsible for the deaths of loved ones and brave comrades doing their bit. There are many ways to spin it, but if they feel like they’re being forced into a fight they don’t believe in, you’ve lost before you start.

  “Put simply, it’s their job to make the decision, it’s our job to own the argument.”

  “No shit. You guys could spin a web out of fresh freaking air.”

  “You’d better believe it. But this time, we’re—” He caught his reflection in the restless oceanic floor—a face frozen in time but shifting in memory. You have adapted. He thought of Dad and Perihelion, while leaps of logic skipped from wave to artificially rendered wave inside the onyx. While the Battle of Perihelion itself had been a disaster for both sides, one factor above all had swung public perception emphatically to an allied victory.

  The survival of two pilots. Unscathed. Undefeated.

  Many years ago, their names and their legends had galvanized the colonies like none before or since. They were phenomena, long ago retired from ISPA, yes, but by no means forgotten.

  The idea shot through him like the slenderest javelin of light tossed only once from the purest, warmest spot in space-time.

  Perihelion.

  He took a sip of something hot, not realizing it was L.B.’s drink until the treacly aftertaste made him shudder. “Follow me,” he whispered. “I think I’ve got the answer.”

  After easing up from his shoulder, she rolled up and pocketed her flexi-screen. “It was my drink, wasn’t it. Good stuff, that McCormick’s—geniuses drink it, you know.”

  “Well, add one more to the list, ’cause you’re gonna love this, L.B.”

  “Oh? Should I lie down now or after?”

  He limped across the watery floor, offered her his organic arm. “What’s the one thing a person needs in order to follow?”

  “Um, a leader, I guess.”

  “Right. And when you think of pilots and ISPA, which are the first names that spring to mind?”

  “That’s easy. But they’re—”

  “But nothing. They’re the answer, L.B. Trust me. They’re our thrusting, pitching, rolling, yawing fucking answer to this threat.”

  “Yeah, they’re also fat and retired.”

  “Who cares? They’re Cardie and Brink. As long as they’re not dead, they can cheat death again for us, can’t they?”

  “Um, that’ll be you, Trillion, if you dare ask them to join up again. They’re off-limits—legally.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You’ll see. I’ll watch, if it’s all the same with you.”

  “How long to Ireton Four?”

  “Long enough to get your affairs in order.”

  “How long to Mars after that?”

  “Long enough to hear ‘I told you so.’”

  Chapter Four

  A little over five hours remained on the warp-gate clock before their turn in the queue. The jump would seem instantaneous to Gus and L.B., but umpteen hours would have passed in reality—crucial time, as every moment brought the impending Sheiker invasion that much closer. If only they had a ship with its own warp drive, not this standard-issue space jalopy ISPA hadn’t overhauled since the year dot. Painted gold, yes, but not much more than a cramped, utilitarian bullion bar with three-sixty wing thrusters and a wonky rear psammeticum drive.

  Gus groaned through a few basic physio exercises in the waiting room before the gangway, his pectorals aching like hell whenever he lifted his cybernetic arm above shoulder height. But he was loath to up his ritolin dosage—especially now, with arguably the biggest challenge of his career ahead of him. Over the next several days, he’d need to be as lucid as humanly possible. Even L.B., who often said he was smarter than he claimed to be, thought this plan was dipped in shit and hung out to dry before it even began.

  “You’ll do yourself an injury there, Trillion. Why don’t you wait till we get to Ireton, hire a masseuse?” L.B. balled her toes into fists, an action that unpeeled her soft-mold shoes like white bananas, and then put her stocking feet up onto the bench. She read the digital seat arm magazine—Frontiers Weekly, accounts of deep-space exploration—while humming a soothing tune.

  “We won’t have time,” he replied. “Besides, the last massage left me black and blue.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Hey, room for one more?” a smooth young voice shot up
the corridor, followed by a sleek gray suitcase that slid and spun along the hard floor. Of a sudden it stopped, ten feet short of Gus and L.B., as if bolted down by an invisible clamp. An uncertain “Whoooooah!” grew louder as the boy hung on for dear life while the case’s electromagnetic cord reined him in at high speed. His grav-lev soles allowed him to surf the corridor at a height of a few inches.

  “Let go, Barani.” L.B. leaped to her feet and joined Gus behind the suitcase, ready to catch the youngster after his stunt. But the lad had given himself too much slack, and he must have been doing thirty miles an hour by the time he jumped the case, bowling both Gus and L.B. over like ten pins.

  After helping them both up, he apologized profusely, even cuddling up to L.B. as though he were a lost baby gorilla who’d just found its mother. Though Barani was something of a prodigy as a nudger—Gus used the lad exclusively on his field assignments—he never said a false word when they were together in private. “You know I didn’t mean it. I’d do anything for you guys. Promise you won’t kick me out?”

  “You know better than that, sweetie.” L.B. was as fond of the little rascal as Gus was. She’d even let Barani stay in her apartment for a few weeks last year, so he could hide from the mining syndicate that had clocked his identity on Crichton’s Folly—where he’d infiltrated a Catholic school and successfully recruited dozens of school leavers and apprentice miners into ISPA’s Outer Colonies Academy. Not bad for a fourteen-year-old born nebula, orphaned before he was two, and forced to compete in games of mental dexterity in his foster mother’s inter-colony traveling fair for several years.