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  Andy nodded. “Brought a big shipment back from the elevator, too.”

  Phineas grunted. “Thing makes me nervous. I don’t care how far away they put it. I hear that thing is over twenty thousand miles high, and if something ever went wrong with it and it fell over the wrong way…”

  A sharp laugh from Andy. “It’ll never fall over, Phin. The physics are as dependable as your beer is good.”

  “Ah. Well, they must be pretty dependable, then.” Still, Phineas sniffed sharply. “How’s the weather out on Alex?”

  “Could be a lot worse.”

  Alexandria was one of the two planets Darkstream’s employees and former employees had colonized after arriving in this system, which company execs had christened the Steele System. It was a bit of a mouthful to say “Alexandria” all the time, though, so everyone shortened the planet’s name to “Alex.”

  Andy shrugged. “The biggest dangers are inside Habitat 2. ‘Hell is other people.’ Someone said that once. Back in the, uh…”

  “Yeah,” Phineas said with a nod.

  “Pansies,” Bob O’Toole said around a belch. Lisa had no idea why Phineas let the man stick around when he constantly insulted him like that. On the other hand, Bob O’Toole could very well be keeping the Bucket afloat, with all his drinking, so maybe it made sense after all.

  “What are you talking about, Bob?” Andy said.

  “Just saying,” O’Toole said, enunciating everything in that sarcastic way he had. “Grown men, whining about every little thing—sounds like you need yourselves a safe space to go cry in. Hmm? Why don’t you go back to the Milky Way, if that’s how you feel? Back where they give everybody a medal, including the losers, so that even a pansy like Captain Leonard Keyes could come to get respect.”

  “Keyes is a great man,” Phineas said quietly.

  That twisted O’Toole’s face into a sneer. “Great man? Ha!” For a second, Lisa thought the jerk was about to spit, but he seemed to know that really would get him kicked out. “Dead man, probably,” he said instead. “Everyone in the Milky Way’s dead by now, I’d wager. Nineteen years is more than enough time for the Ixa to wipe out every last one of them. And soon enough, they’ll come for us.”

  “Cut it out, Bob,” Tessa Notaras said, voice icy, white hair swinging as she turned to glare at him once more.

  Bob did cut it out. He always heeded Tessa. Most people did.

  Lisa’s com, which the company had set to permanent speaker-mode, squawked: “Attention all combat units. There has been a shooting at the southern collection node. Converge there immediately. Code red. I repeat, code red.”

  The message repeated once, and Lisa found herself exchanging bewildered glances with Andy.

  “You’re probably the closest soldier to there,” he said.

  Oh, God. Lisa’s hand strayed toward her pistol unconsciously, but she caught herself. I’m not ready for this.

  Her only training had been running combat sims while lucid. She’d never faced off with an actual person holding an actual gun. Her heart pounded, and she hadn’t even left yet.

  “You okay?” Andy said. “You’re kinda pale.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she snapped.

  “You’re on foot, right? I doubt you’ll get there in time, traveling that way. I can give you a ride on my bike.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Okay.” Lisa took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 3

  Gabriel Roach

  Gabriel Roach woke with a splitting headache and a mysterious sense of guilt. He normally felt guilty, actually, but this guilt was new, about something else.

  For a few moments after waking, everything was a mystery. It took a moment for him to piece together where he was and what he’d done last night.

  Then the pieces started falling into place. He was very hungover. The reason: last night, he’d downed way too many vodka cranberries at the summer festival, which this year had been hosted by Northshire, the village he’d been contracted out by Darkstream to protect.

  And lying in bed beside him was Mayor Sweeney’s daughter, Jess.

  Ah, yes.

  That was where the guilt came from.

  Memory flooded back, from after they’d stumbled into his private quarters at the end of his unit’s barracks, which he enjoyed because of his position as Captain of the Guard.

  He remembered what they’d done together, in and out of lucid.

  He wanted to vomit. There’d be a record of the lucid parts, if anyone cared to review his history. That was something new to worry about, for the rest of his career.

  What he’d done last night was unprofessional, self-indulgent, and not to mention—

  “Gabe?” Jess said sleepily, pushing herself up on one elbow, a strand of auburn hair falling across her face.

  His hand sprang forward of its own accord, yanking the blanket up before it could fall any farther. “Keep yourself covered,” he snapped, too harshly.

  —not to mention, at twenty-one, Jess was eighteen years younger than him.

  He began a frantic search of the floor, hunting down each article of clothing and tossing it in her direction without looking directly at the bed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jess was sitting up now, and clutching the comforter’s edge to her chin, thankfully.

  “This was a mistake,” Gabe said, his fingers landing on a shirt, which went sailing over his shoulder.

  “That’s not what you said last night.”

  “I was ossified last night.”

  “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you’re stone-sober.”

  “You’re imagining things.” She wasn’t, of course. Gabe had definitely looked at her. And unlike most of the other women he’d ever looked at, the crazy thing was, he thought he might actually be catching feelings for Jess. She was so quirky and unbridled, such a distillation of youth, so—

  Listen to yourself, Gabe. You’re a walking stereotype. “You’re twenty-one, Jess.”

  “So what? I’m a grown woman and I’m perfectly capable of making up my mind about what I want. I want you.”

  “You can’t have me. I’ll lose my job, for one.”

  “We won’t tell anyone, then.”

  “That’s not going to work. Darkstream can basically read my thoughts before I think them. It would be just a matter of time before it comes out that I’m sleeping with the daughter of the mayor whose village I’m assigned to protect!”

  Gabe began to pace back and forth across the tiny bedroom, shooting glances through the kitchenette whenever he passed it. The window out there featured a view of the walk up to the barracks, and he wanted to spot anyone approaching long before they reached him.

  The time on the wall caught his eye, which clued him in to the fact that he had to go on patrol in fifteen minutes. Cursing, he ran to the locker near the door, dragging out his fatigues and pulling them on article by article.

  Behind the clothes, a rack held his SL-17, and he unclipped it, checking the action and the magazine before turning once more to Jess.

  “I have to go on patrol. Keep the door locked and don’t open it for anyone. Stay away from the windows. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Gabe—”

  But he was out the door, slamming it behind him and strolling down the path toward the village proper, trying not to look as ruined as he felt. Eresos’ mildew smell invaded his nostrils at once. You couldn’t get away from that odor, no matter how far you cut back the forest.

  Gabe had been the very first person to set foot on Planet Eresos, and he still wasn’t used to the stench.

  As was typical behavior for the universe, Mayor Sweeney was the first villager he encountered.

  “You look like hell,” the mayor said.

  “I look worse than I feel,” Gabe said. “I call it being ugly.”

  Sweeney barked a laugh. “You’re far from that. Not judging from the way the village girls look at you, anyhow.”

  Gabe forced a strain
ed chuckle. “I’m sure that’s not true,” he choked out.

  “Sure it is. Anyway, we’re all at least a little hungover. I won’t tell Darkstream if you won’t. Listen, have you seen Jess?”

  For a brief second, Gabe froze. Then he unglued himself from his terror enough to say something: “Jess? No. Why, is she missing?”

  “Ah, I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s not like the Quatro have been active lately. Her and her friends probably decided to take the party into the woods again, after us adults went to bed.”

  Jess is an adult too, he wanted to say, for various reasons. But it didn’t seem wise. “I’m going on patrol, but if I see her I’ll send her your way, all right?”

  “Thanks, Gabe. I can always count on you.”

  “Sure can,” he said, flashing a grin, trying not to make it awkward-looking. He turned and marched on.

  “Hey, Gabe?”

  He froze. “Yeah?”

  “I wanted to ask you something. About Jess.”

  Slowly, Gabe turned again, sure he could actually feel the blood draining from his face. “Yes? What is it?”

  “You don’t…you don’t think Jess is a liberal, do you?”

  Gabe blinked. Then he brayed laughter, so forceful the spit flew from his lips. “Jess? No. No way she is. Jess knows which side her bread is buttered on.”

  Mayor Sweeney shared in his laughter. “You’re right, you’re right. And she does the buttering by herself!” The mayor’s grin threatened to crack his face clean in half.

  “Uh, yeah! Exactly.” He suspected the butter metaphor had gone astray at some point, but it was good that Sweeney was laughing. Instead of smashing my face in with a plank. “Anyway. I’d better start my rounds.”

  “You do that. Talk to you later, Gabe.”

  Continuing on, Gabe scanned Northshire, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Problem was, after the once-annual festival, everything seemed out of the ordinary.

  Toby Horton lay sprawled in the middle of the village green, snoring like a bandsaw. Wrappers and drink containers littered the ground. Speeders from other villages were parked in a haphazard circle all around the settlement, their sleek contours glimmering in the morning light. The vehicles were modeled after stolen Winger tech, which rumor said that Darkstream had gotten by spying on the species using micro-wormholes.

  Back when we used micro-wormholes.

  Anything could be hiding behind those speeders.

  Focus on what matters. What would Darkstream most want you to protect?

  That was easy. The collection facility, first, which the company had provided in exchange for sixty percent of all resources collected. That looks fine. Second, the farming equipment Darkstream leased to the villagers in exchange for sixty percent of whatever food they produced. Third, the self-erecting structures, and the machines the villagers had used to expand their town with wooden buildings.

  And finally, Darkstream’s military operatives, plus the weaponry they carried. Gabe decided to check on them next. The current shift would be at their usual outposts, and he’d have to make a wide loop around the village to get them all.

  On his way, he heard a grinding sound coming from behind one of the speeders, which was slowly inching forward. Gripping his assault rifle, Gabe jogged over, raising the gun to sight down the barrel at whatever was pushing the vehicle.

  His gun barrel dipped the instant he saw it, and he suppressed the urge to scream in frustration. Then he dashed back toward where he’d last seen the mayor, forcing his aching legs to move as fast as they were able.

  Gabe found Sweeney in front of the door to his residence, hunting through a set of keys. The mayor turned when Gabe shouted his name.

  “What’s going on?” Sweeney asked.

  “Some idiot parked in the middle of a Gatherer route. Right now, their speeder’s getting shredded.”

  “Let me see.”

  Gabe used his implant to summon footage of the incident, then flicked it over to Sweeney’s.

  The mayor frowned. “That’s Randy Bradshaw’s. Damn idiot was probably drunk when he got here.” Stuffing the keys back into his pocket, the mayor jogged back into Northshire. “Let’s track him down.”

  They found Bradshaw snoozing in one of the vegetable gardens. The robot in charge of planting, watering, and weeding was gently jabbing him in the abdomen over and over, its servomotors whining and beginning to smoke as its entire frame shuddered. Bradshaw showed no sign of registering the machine’s efforts.

  Without a word, Gabe walked over and grabbed Bradshaw by both arms, dragging him through the garden between two furrows and throwing him against the fence that ran around the perimeter. That done, he proceeded to slap Bradshaw’s fleshy face until he began to blink and sputter.

  “Wha? Whaa!”

  Gabe grabbed the man by the front of his beige jacket and shook him. “Your speeder’s obstructing one of the Gatherers, jackass!”

  “My speeder?”

  “It’s getting totaled. You need to move it, now!”

  Bradshaw began to panic, patting his pockets and shaking out his pant legs. “Can’t find my v-lenses!” he moaned.

  The mayor picked up a pair of glasses from the spot where they’d found Bradshaw sprawled. Dirt tumbled from the v-lenses to the ground.

  “You’d better hope these still work,” Sweeney growled. He tossed them toward Bradshaw.

  Gabe caught them, certain the whining cretin lacked the motor skills to do so. Then he slapped them onto Bradshaw’s face, who began to wave his hands in the air, tapping an invisible interface and then moving his open palm as though guiding something.

  “Okay,” Bradshaw said. “Okay. I got the path cleared.”

  Resisting the urge to punch the man in the gut, Gabe turned to the mayor. “We’d better go confirm.”

  Sweeney nodded, shooting Bradshaw one last glare before turning to leave the garden.

  They passed the collection facility just as the automated bay door was admitting the Gatherer, which looked undamaged after its tussle with Bradshaw’s speeder. That was to be expected. The speeder, on the other hand, would almost certainly have to be written off.

  The Gatherers morphed into whatever shape best suited a given task, their gleaming exteriors a fluid surface of blades that spun, shifted, retracted, and jutted, depending on what the situation called for. They could become an impenetrable, seamless shell, or they could turn into a lance capable of running a person through.

  They weren’t weapons, though, and they used their diverse abilities only to gather Eresos’ many resources and bring them to preprogrammed deposit sites, which was where the colonists had originally set up their villages.

  The Gatherers’ behavior was highly predictable. They mined the planet’s various ores and minerals, bringing them to preset destinations, where vast underground chambers waited to receive the payloads. And when you put a speeder in front of one of them, that speeder got wrecked.

  The Gatherers were well beyond humanity’s ability to manufacture. No one knew who’d built them, and no species had ever returned to claim the resources they’d collected—not in the two decades since Darkstream had arrived.

  The only certain thing was that without the Gatherers, the Steele System’s economy would not have ramped up nearly as fast as it had.

  After double checking to make sure Bradshaw’s speeder was truly out of the Gatherer route, Sweeney exchanged glances with Gabe. “I’ll have a talk with Bradshaw. Tell him if he wants to attend future events in Northshire, he’ll have to get with the program.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Hey, Pioneer!” a voice shouted.

  Gabe turned. “Pioneer” was the nickname the others in his unit had given him.

  Seaman Sawyer dashed toward them across the village green. It always seemed odd to Gabe, using the “Seaman” rank when basically all their contracts took them planetside. But Darkstream had decided to use naval ranks across the board.

  “Wha
t is it, Horse?”

  “It’s Allendale, sir. Word just came in that they were attacked overnight.”

  “Attacked? By who? Quatro?”

  “No. An Ambler.”

  “What the hell.” Amblers were two-legged war machines, ten meters tall, and clearly made by whoever had made the Gatherers. They patrolled the Gatherer routes, meaning you had to watch out for them whenever you left a village in a speeder. But they never came near the deposit sites. Not till now, apparently.

  “Is there anything left of the village?” Gabe asked.

  “The Darkstream unit stationed there managed to drive it off before it could wipe out Allendale completely. That’s Chief Banks’s unit, right? Most of Allendale’s residents were here during the attack, thank God. But there’s no guarantee the Ambler won’t come back to finish the job. It must be malfunctioning.”

  Gabe nodded, swallowing. “We need to put it down.” He’d only fought an Ambler once, and the price paid in human life had been heavy. Since then, no one had taken down another one, mostly because Darkstream judged it was not worth the damage to company assets. Such as its employees.

  Until now, probably.

  “What do the higher-ups want?” Gabe said. “Have we heard from them yet?”

  Sawyer nodded. “They want us to deal with it.”

  “Figures. Tell most of the boys to gear up. You stay here with Robinson and guard Northshire, all right?”

  “Got it.”

  Gabe exchanged looks once more with Mayor Sweeney. “Good luck, Gabe,” the man said.

  “Thanks,” he said, turning toward the barracks, to figure out a credible story for Jess to tell her father about where she’d been. That done, he’d have to successfully smuggle her out, before heading out to Allendale. “I’m going to need it.”

  Chapter 4

  The Crazy Part

  Habitat 2 raced past them as Andy gunned the hoverbike’s engines, the ground falling farther away as the bike’s energy cycle spiked.

  Lisa’s head crept toward the overhead parallelogram lights, designed to simulate sunlight shining through skylights, and she subvocalized to Andy using her implant.

  “I didn’t know hoverbikes could do these kind of speeds.”