Tessa’s eyes snapped open. The icy haze that had blanketed her mind was gone, dissipated instantaneously. Izzy’s words still echoed in her mind, but it took a moment to move, to find the strength and the memories of how to move, the controls of her body that set flesh and bone into gear, alive and full of purpose.

Turning stiffly, she pulled the two MRE packets out from behind her seat and robbed them of their nanochem heaters, adjusting the slips of condensed fuel and oxodizing nanites for a slow burn that wouldn’t injure her once she had them stuffed into her pockets, but would keep her warm for a little while. Days, maybe. The meals would provide enough food to survive for a dozen days or so if she spaced them properly, only ate when absolutely necessary and let the photosynthesizing phytoproteins in her body do the rest. Survival would require dropping into a state that was almost hibernation, almost comatose, but she knew that Izzy was right– it was possible. She could stave off death just long enough for Blavatsky to mount a rescue and pull her dead rig out of the ice.

Pressing aside hunger, Tessa willed herself to wait until the last minute before eating the first MRE and focused on activating her Ninsar implant lacing instead. The process was excruciating, especially in the cold of her iced-over cockpit, but as the complex melatonin phytoproteins in her body rose steadily to the surface, darkening her skin to a ruddy, greenish-brown, she felt the distant warmth of Delta Fujisaki trickling into her body, tingling electric somewhere in her core. Eventually, the pain of the transformation subsided, and as the soft caresses of Oridius’ sun filled her mind, washed away the aches, the edge of a smile peeked across her lips. Happier memories danced at the edges of her mind again, a parade of pastel and sensation that drifted watercolor through the half-waking haze, edges and frames of Izzy, Dimitrov, Phoebe, Alan, her grandmother, others she had loved. Moments and faces blurred, feelings, touches, kissing. The first meal came in the middle of it all like a chore, cold, flavorless and wet. Hours later, it was done, and then the nightmares came, settled into the deeper places of her mind and carried her down with them.

Days passed in a darkening, deepening blur as ice built across her canopy and was scoured free again by vicious, gusting winds. Eventually the nanochem heaters wore down, left her cold again before the soft glow of the experimental implant lacing she’d been given as part of Project Amaterasu flickered to a soft standby, wrapped her in an insulating shield of light and fragile warmth. The air thinned steadily, and as she drifted into a deep, coma-like sleep, she felt her body slowly dying around her, stiffening into the seat, stifling in the heavy air. Izzy’s death replayed over and over again in her mind, an endless temporal loop that she lived through each time, unable to stop events from unfolding as they had, unable to change the course of her life and save the woman she loved. Only the chrome tentacles of a Cygnan soldier reared out of the dream to save her in the end, save her by dragging her away into the night to witness other horrors, to see through her grandmother’s eyes as hateful civilians spat at her, beat her, screamed at her for being born with modified DNA, for being the distant descendent of lab-grown product. Stones flew, bruised skin, cracked brittle bones, and beyond it all, a younger Tessa watched the entire thing quietly, unnoticed, spared because no one knew of her heritage, her relationship to the old woman they hated so openly. Only she knew, Tessa and her grandmother, and so Tessa watched in terrified silence as the older woman was kicked, mistreated, beaten, the only parent she had ever really known, and tried not to cry.

Beyond the second meal came dreams of copper and burnished brass, hazy Martian cities through blurry, rainwet glass. A voice, the sound laced with the static of an audiofeed. Abomination. Abomination. Abomination! Izzy’s voice, her fist, stabbing bright into the air. The cheering, Pope Vultaggio stepping onto the stage, Catholicism’s envoy to the stars in every way, every brilliant flash of white and grinning gold as he handed Izzy a rolled piece of parchment, the key to her future. I love you, Tessa. Came the whispered edge of thought, remembered through the mental link they’d shared, the touch that had connected their minds, so rare, so rare, a connection she’d never shared with Dimitrov, never shared with anyone besides Izzy. I just want you to know that I love you, Tess. Izzy breathed into her thoughts, the lingering mental touch echoing back from a time when they were one, when things seemed so much easier, life so much more meaningful, death a tiny phantom on a forgotten horizon. I will always love you, no matter what happens.

I miss you, Izzy. If only there was some way...

Some way.

Deeper dreams ripped through the screen of the foggy, love-hazed memories with a sound like lightning, clawed open her reality to the sharp clarity of darkness and stars. She shivered uncontrollably, then stared, looked out and beyond the cold void to a fighter, her fighter, her rig as it floated dead in the sky. Touches of light flickered here and there, and then it was gone, pulsing as it punched into the fabric of reality and left a flickering wave of haunting resonance in its wake. Thought came echoing back to her, a turning backward of time and thought, the movement of digital numbers in reverse. A way.

The way.

Light cracked into icy darkness, shattered the vision. A face, familiar, the bite of cold wind, sleeve edge of self-heating all-weather gear. The etched brass on his uniform caught light: Esquer. Memories came trickling back slowly. Major Esquer, Odin squadron, brother to my Freyja squadron on the Hephaestus. She pulled in a deep, sudden breath, and as it rose, it caught in her lungs, airways cold and thick from disuse. A gentle hand reached toward her as the energy shield her body had been generating flickered away, and then a voice.

“Major Eisenherz? Can you hear me?”

This is real. Relief came pouring in. Rescued.

For the first time since she’d set foot on Oridius, she breathed a sigh of relief, truly felt it, truly welcomed the feeling of being alive. One stiff, icy hand reached up, touched his cheek.

“Damn, it’s good to see you.”

Time passed in a cold, painful blur, forgotten. Somewhere in the grey-white haze, she felt herself stir, toss on the edge of welcome sleep. Death lurked skull-white just outside the glossy frost clinging to the canopy of her corpse-like rig but never came in, only leered in at her though ice, grinning, taunting her with a voice like relentless, scouring wind. How much time passed before she finally woke again, there was no way to tell. Her eyes simply drifted open, found themselves staring blankly off into featureless grey-white abyss.

Survival lingered on the edge of her mind, tried to grab a foothold but only scrabbled loosely, unable to gain purchase while her thoughts spun off in darker directions, uncaring, wishing for death, holding on to the receding pain that still hung on in her butchered arm. Thoughts of Izzy came rolling back like distant thunder, memories of movement, moments, touching, life and thought that brought smiles to Tessa’s tortured lips, stole them away when she awoke to the cruelty of cold reality. Tears like thick, icy jewels lingered on the edges of her eyes, hung there, refused to break, refused to let go until she blinked, wished again for death, for Izzy, for some release from the hell she’d locked herself into. Her hand crept toward the space between her seat and the fuselage where the bullpup rifle had been strapped, grasped empty air. She sighed, and the sound came sad and tired. No easy way out.

Just a little longer, and it won’t matter. Came the dismal thought again. Freezing to death or dying of starvation. Not great ways to go, eh, Izzy? The edge of a smile formed across her lips. Oh well. Take what you can get.

Or not.

In the haze of her mind, a shape moved, picked up colors. Tessa swallowed. Izzy.

When Izzy came to her, it was as if in a dream, her pale, bloodless face behind ice, staring back at Tessa over aviator-frame glasses. Chestnut hair flared in an unfelt breeze, drifted in wispy strands across the fabric of her blood-spattered flight suit. Sound came slow, as if from a distance, echoing surreally before it blossomed into Tessa’s mind, rich with all the silky tones she remembered, all the nuances of a voice she had missed so completely, a love she had never forgotten.

Why are you so eager to die, Tess?

In her mind, Tessa closed her eyes, swallowed distantly. I miss you, Izzy.

I know. Izzy managed a smile back. But it isn’t your time, Tess. You shouldn’t be seeking death like this.

What does it matter? Tessa asked. I’m going to either starve to death or freeze before they get here anyway.

No, you’re not. Izzy crossed her arms, made a gesture. Remember the MREs that Blavatsky had packed in your rig? Or what about your implants? I’m in your mind, Tess. I know what you’re capable of now. We both know that you can survive this if you do it right.

My life hasn’t been the same without you, Izzy.

And Dimitrov’s life wouldn’t be the same without you, Tess. Izzy said softly, letting the fire rise in her voice as she continued. Time to be a real woman about this and think about someone other than yourself for a fucking change.

I’ve thought about others my entire life, Iz. Tessa shot back. Being an LC isn’t just about leading, its about protecting, its about keeping people alive. Why do you think I risked everything to join the TCGND? Because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to protect people, keep them safe. It’s time I thought about what is right for me. She paused. For us.

That’s the old you, Tess, the you I fell in love with. Izzy made a brief gesture. We both know you’ve changed. You’ve gone back to that wild bitch you were when we first met, only you’ve taken it further, gone a totally different, self-serving direction with your life.

I had to. Tessa said simply. You were everything to me. You were my life. I had to start over and go in a new direction.

This isn’t forever, Tess, you know that, and it isn’t goodbye. Take care of what you need to do, take care of the people who care about you. We’ll see each other again sooner than you’ll probably like.

Tessa laughed a weak, tear-soaked laugh.

I doubt it, Iz. I miss you so much.

I know. Izzy said softly. Now get back there and do what you have to do.

And then, in the space of a blink, she was gone, leaving only the cold crust of ice on the canopy in her wake.

Amidst the sea of destruction, Tessa’s Seindrive stood out like a trapped, aluminum eagle. A closer glance told her all she needed to know, told her instantly how extensive the damage had been, how suddenly unlikely her rig was to fly. Didn’t matter– all that mattered was the running, the trying, the distance between her and the rig, between her and freedom.

“Status!” She yelled, and the Seindrive’s display panel lit up obediently, polyquid surface hot with the colors of damaged hull sections, non-functional systems, probable workarounds. In the upper left hand corner, cast in brilliant crimson, numbers ticked down from fifty-seven. Seconds until detonation.

So close.

Swallowing apprehensively, she closed the distance between herself and the rig as quick as she could, eyes flying across the readouts. The deep scorching from the transport’s thrusters and the damage that both debris and Gilgamesh had done was considerable– entire control surfaces were crushed and mangled, the switch-over assembly that facilitated the change from conventional to stardrive gave back intermittent and disturbingly unreliable readings, and enough of the interconnecting hardware had been toasted to make even getting off the ground unlikely. Her good hand found the panel as eyes flicked across the timer. Thirty four. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep, shaky breath. One chance. In her mind, she found the hazy triggers for her implant lacings, forced them into action. Make it work.

And then, reality froze. All at once, she felt the Seindrive as if it were her own body, felt the connection that the experimental Kvasir implant hooked into her mind, a cable of thought bridging her brain to every system on the Seindrive. Seconds ticked past like hours, and as her mind hunted through the displays, she felt the meat of her body reacting sluggishly, the Horus implant coming online through mental static, surging through hands, reacting with the metals within the Seindrive.

One chance.

In a single, desperate move, she bridged the gap between the two implants and willed the Seindrive to fly, willed it to kick into action and rise beyond the torn and gaping mouth of the bay’s roof and into the sky. Broken connections knitted like eager fibers, assemblies reorienting themselves, bypassing at the speed of reflex, uncaring of what they damaged, what they destroyed in their relentless reforging of all that made the Seindrive quick and agile. The resident AI screamed as her mind ripped through it, sectioned it and used it like a buffer for her brain, burning it out almost instantly as it was forced and cauterized into a new network of artificial neurons, control lines. All that mattered in the moment was the escape, was getting free. No matter how many systems her ascent mangled within the rig, she would get free.

Engines and maneuvering thrusters flared, S-Vectoring panels shifted and dilated into N-space. Within seconds, she was in the air, her arms, wings blurring as they tasted the frigid air, felt the bitter bite of strong, icy winds. Tortured fuselage creaked with the effort of lift, and then the final connection found its mark, pumped new heat and new power into the drive that throbbed within her metal body like a massive, mechanical heart.

Seven seconds. The thought came instinctive as she leveled out, ten meters over the complex’s roof. Somewhere, distantly, she licked her lips, felt her hand punch the throttle to max. Engines flared. Seconds.

She was three hundred and forty-one meters from the edge of the effect radius when Erebus disappeared, swallowed in a flash of light and cracking, shattering ice. Teeth bared as wings strained against the sudden pull, the pressures of a suckback which was designed to forcibly contain anything that the lab might unwittingly spawn. New-forged connections in her Seindrive body flared, caught fire, split, and as the yanking shockwave of the wake matrix reached its crescendo, every system in her rig flared suddenly and went dark. Within seconds, she was falling, screaming, sliding back toward the hungry hole in the ice as she dropped. Eyes closed, and then the jarring impact, the smashing of plating and paneling against glacial ice as the wake dragged her backwards, pulled her dead rig steadily faster and faster toward the open mouth of the rip in space and time which had swallowed Erebus. Snow and ice flew in chunks past the canopy as the dented and scarred nose of her rig carved a wide trench, digging into white like fingers clawing, desperate to catch hold of something, anything, before it was too late. In her mind, movement and reflex fell into a hazy cache between her body and the dead rig, too tired, too weak and beaten to engage with or disengage from either. Instead, she watched blankly, blearily, as the hungry edge of the crater the implosion wave had torn into reality got closer and closer, became everything, inevitable.

And then, as suddenly as it had opened, the implosion pinhole to N-space winked out of existence, leaving only Tessa’s rig perched precariously in the snow, dead thrusters poking out into eerily clean air over the massive crater where Erebus base and six kilometers of glacial ice had stood calm and undisturbed only moments ago. She breathed raggedly, let her good hand disengage from the dead systems, fall back to the side.

All around her was white desolation. Tessa’s rig was dark, silent, cooling as the mangled life within it bled away, and for a moment, even the howling, icy wind seemed to wait and take notice, quietly stunned by the devastation Erebus had left in its wake.

Tessa pulled in a deep breath, collapsed backward into her seat, closed her eyes.

Now all I have to do is wait. She thought.

Just wait.

She swallowed.

Death will be here soon.

The voice had been Myyaelae’s. Her hackles rose instantly. Get clear?

All at once, eyes swung past the dreadnaught to the one emergency transport straining against gravity a handful of inches off its support cradle, ragged edges of torn tethers flapping as it rose. It was strictly a short range rescue vessel– no weapons, no armor, no way to fight or defend itself, but as she watched, it turned slowly in the frigid air, maneuvering thrusters firing in bursts, bringing the ominous embers of the transport’s massive main ignition assembly into view.

And then the weight of the Gnarian’s words hit her full force.

Get clear!

There was hardly time to swallow. A single thought caught fire in her mind.

Move!

Time shot past like an arrow, every borrowed second poured into the Horus lacing, the reverse-engineered Coralate weapon that was her only hope when it came to breaking Gilgamesh’s grip on her dead arm. Teeth bared as metal flickered, flexed, shimmered at the edge of fluid.

The thrusters fired in the next instant.

Locking all maneuvering rockets at full and jamming the main assembly to max turned the rescue transport into one giant, unstable flamethrower. Wide tongues of plasma-hot helium 3 exhaust reached out, bit into and washed across Gilgamesh in blinding waves, bathing the dreadnaught in a tide of fire that pushed past to lick at Tessa’s already scorched skin, burning into the fabric of her uniform. She screamed as the flame overwhelmed the Cygnan’s autonomic defenses, turned half of the thing to glowing slag in an instant. Gilgamesh reacted violently, pivoting, swinging, fingers of one massive, metallic hand biting into the transport as the other loosened suddenly, dropping Tessa to the floor that lay hard and cold far below.

Reality spun sickeningly as she fell, and then the ground reached up to meet her, fire-sore jaw cracking against deck plating as darkness shot into her eyes, played starry along the hazy ache, pain blossoming and then receding in the face of numbing shock. Reality seemed to throb and pulse nauseatingly around her, closing in and pulling out again as she watched the burning dreadnaught wrestle with the transport, tearing at flaming thrusters with melting, frenzied fingers. In its harness of liquid steel, the Cygnan’s blue skin caught fire instantly, bubbling and popping, its scream ripping air with vicious, mind-shattering vibrations that penetrated the mind like the sharp blade of a tiny knife.

Within seconds, the struggle was over. Little remained of either the dreadnaught or the transport, just piles of slag and beaten metal, the struggling fires barely burning across tortured and glassy steel, flickering as they tried to keep the deadly cold at bay.

Somehow, working, moving beyond sight, beyond sound or memory, Tessa found her way to the shattered cockpit of what had once been the transport, stared half burnt, half-frozen, half-dead into the smashed and blood soaked interior. Her butchered arm hung limply at her side, blood matted, cauterized and frozen. Myyaelae was gone.

In a moment, it won’t matter. came the broken, tired thought. None of it, none of this will matter. In a moment, the timer on the implosion wake matrix would click over and swallow all of Erebus, all the ruin and death and secrets, leaving nothing but a cold, empty hole in the alien ice. There would be nothing, no records, no sign of struggle. Nothing.

Dimly, she felt the odd stirrings of life, of regrets moving within her, memories of Dimitrov urging her to move, to live, to turn her eyes to the Seindrive that sat crouched against a debris pile in the center of the bay, like her, burnt and beaten but still functional, still ready to fly.

In the faint, crackling haze, she thought she heard Myyaelae’s voice, a gentle whisper that rose up to move mountains within her, triggered a cascade of light in her dimming, dying soul. Vaguely, she listened, and as the words played along her mind, she felt that light growing, filling her with the strength she needed to move again, to turn and put the first, stumbling foot on the debris strewn path of deck plating that would lead to freedom.

Go, Tessa. You have to go. Get out of here before it is too late to save even one of us.

She swallowed. The Gnarian had saved her life again, had used the transport as a last bid to save her, paying for her escape with his own existence. At the very least, she had to try, had to make some semblance of an effort to get clear in time, to escape and survive, if only to prove that Myyaelae’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

She closed her eyes, pulled in a deep breath, and as her eyes drifted open again, she ran.

She ran, and she put every last ounce of fight she had left into it.

Gilgamesh?

Tessa shook her head. Didn’t matter. In one smooth move, she seized the wing of her Seindrive with one hand, swung up through the viciously frozen air and onto the frame, then dived into the cockpit. Hands darted on reflex, found the release straps, yanked free the stocky, modular bullpup rifle strapped down beside the seat, reserve clips rigger-taped to the stock. Her mind tracked to readiness as the muzzle of the rifle rose, caught the Cygnan monstrosity between wireless neural-link, smart-targeting crosshairs. Fifty rounds. Armor-piercing explosive tip glass-fracture carboceramic composite caseless. Perfect for Coralates. She didn’t even spare Myyaelae a glance– her attention was wholly on the Cygnan.

“Myyaelae.” She growled. “Can you move?”

“It is difficult.” Shifting of steel, clang of metal. In the swirling abyss of frozen half-night that brewed beyond the ripped-open exterior paneling, the thing twisted an edge slowly inward, leered at her with the flickering red haze of multispectrum visual tracking. Myyaelae’s voice rose in the rushing, almost deafening wind again, but the sound was lost, obliterated as the amalgam of Cygnan and Commonwealth technology leapt through the breech suddenly and hit the flight deck with enough force to buckle the plating, trigger a new cascade of debris from the shattered ceiling. Tessa’s hands tightened across the rifle.

“Run.” She growled, eyes riveted to the sight. Hold it. Don’t piss it off. Don’t fire until absolutely necessary. Nothing, no sound, no movement. She made a sharp gesture. “Go! Get out of here, Myyaelae!”

“Leave him, Major!” The Gnarian shouted back. She glanced over at him, caught his eye as he stood his ground. “We must go now, while we still can!”

“You first!” She shouted, eyes drilling hard over her rifle and into Gilgamesh, pinning him, unwilling to let him go. “I’ll catch up!”

“Don’t be a fool!” The Gnarian shot back. “He will kill you!”

“Maybe,” She shifted, tracking the dreadnought as he moved, pulled himself upright. Not yet, not yet. “but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“He’s a D-9 class military dreadnought designed–”

“Spare me the specs, Myyaelae! You should know better than anyone else that he’s not going to just let us go if we bug out together now. He’ll try to kill us both.” She paused, pulled in a shaky breath that burned icy to the depths of her aching lungs. “Only one of us is getting out of this the easy way, so beat it before we both die of exposure out here.”

“Major!” He tried again, and she could hear the cracking in his voice.

“Just go!” She shouted back. “You saved my ass once, now it’s time for me to return the favor.” Gilgamesh was moving again, half-crouched and hunting, eyes intent on the Gnarian, but tracking her from the side, tracking her as sharply as she was tracking it. Jesus, that thing is huge.

There were no more words. As Myyaelae turned and broke into a ragged sprint for the least damaged transport, Gilgamesh dropped into a loping, heavy-handed run. Tessa’s rifle bucked almost imperceptibly in her hands, cold air eating up the flare, eating the noise as rounds chewed toward the dreadnought’s armored side, burst on plates of liquid chrome that rose to protect it.
As the thing stopped and turned toward her, she swallowed reflexively. She hadn’t even hurt it, and now that she had its attention, the sense of cold dread which shot into her heart froze her more than the icy weather did, made her acutely, painfully aware of the ache lingering in her flesh. One thought burst into her mind, shot heat into her stiffening arms, paralyzed legs.

Move.

Feet pounded across the debris-beaten frame of the Seindrive and left the edge of its wing at the same instant that Gilgamesh left the ground, shoving her rig out of the way to get to her. There was no time to think, no time to react or move– a drop, a quick roll put her out of the way, rifle coming up, emptying the rest of the clip into the shimmering flux of liquid chrome that flared around the sapphire flesh of the Cygnan. tearing into metal and skin where the defenses didn’t kill the bullets outright. One massive hand shot in, clipped her, obliterated the rifle in a single swipe and left her spinning, lost in cold darkness for a moment before her hands found icy purchase, flung her to her feet. Every move came in reflex, impossibly fast, vision a blur that never solidified as she darted, swung herself away like a bird in frantic flight.

But in its armor of Commonwealth steel, the Cygnan was still faster. With hardly more effort than stretching, Gilgamesh plucked her out of the air by one flailing arm, shattering the bones there as it seized her. Lines of loose crimson bubbled past Tessa’s lips at crazy angles as the massive arm flexed back, swung her like a rag doll until she was face to face with the red haze of its eyes, the eager, bleeding Cygnan melded to its chest. Tessa winced, bared bloody teeth against the incredible pain, fought to ignore the butchered remains of her arm. Here it comes, came the thought. So close, Izzy. She swallowed, the edges of a smile flickering against her lips. And I get to take one of those blue fuckers with me when I go. In its melded, flowing, liquid harness, the Cygnan chittered at her, flexed independent bladed limbs.

“Yeah? Take a good look, you ugly fucker.” She laughed, grinned past the ache, the blood freezing to her face. “I’m the last thing you’re ever going to see.”

And then the radio in Tessa’s rig lit up in a flare of colors, catching her eyes as sound blared through, voice loud with static.

“Major! Get clear of the dreadnought!”

“Go! Now!”

As the last door rushed open and the sharp, cool air of the hangar washed over them, Tessa breathed a sigh of relief, grinned openly. In the center of the bay, Tessa’s Seindrive sat tethered to the deck, hovering on suspensors like an eager falcon. A dozen paces further, the hunched and shadowy forms of two short-range rescue transports crouched in their harnesses, automatically primed and ready for flight. Myyaelae pulled free, limped across to the door controls.

“Disengage the tethers on your semiatmospheric.” He managed, eyes focused entirely on the panel as he keyed in a sequence of command codes. “I will follow close behind. There is an emergency supply shelter sixty kilometers due east. I will transmit the exact coordinates once I am aboard one of the transports and the autoflight beacon is locked upon it.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Tessa grinned, already loosening the straps on her Seindrive. “I take it there’s enough food in the shelter to last us a few weeks, if HQ can’t get someone out here sooner than the Hephaestus.”

“More than enough.” Massive, man-sized locking bolts slammed back into the wall as they disengaged, lights flashing on either side of the bay doors. “The emergency supply shelter was designed and outfitted to provide for the needs of the entire staff of Erebus for up to three months.”

“The entire staff?” She ducked under her rig’s shimmering S-Vectoring panels, yanked free the last strap. “Must be a big shelter.” Her grin softened a little. “Here’s hoping we aren’t the only ones to escape. Could get lonely.”

Myyaelae turned back, sagging to one side as he favored his injured leg.

“Indeed.”

Tessa’s eyes lingered on his, and as one burnt hand came away from the wing of her rig, she stared at him, vestiges of her smile falling away, turning to something softer, concern edged with curiosity, shock.

“How many do you think made it?”

Myyaelae looked away, keyed a final sequence on the panel, then turned to limp toward the transports. Tessa’s lips parted, but as she hesitated, she thought better of her words and looked away instead. Part of her knew the answer, hated knowing it. There were other escape craft elsewhere in the facility– had to be, ways that researchers and staff might have escaped. . .

“There isn’t much time.” The Gnarian said gently. Tessa nodded, swallowed.

“Right.” She let the strap she’d been holding go, hauled herself up onto the wing of her rig and popped the canopy. Glancing back at Myyaelae, she caught his eye, the deep, resounding sadness there. “See you in the sky.”

The edge of a smile crossed the Gnarian’s face, and as he paused a moment to look up at her, his alien lips parted on the edge of speech.

The sounds never came.

In a roar of shattering composite and rending steel, massive fingers of glassy chrome ripped into the bay’s high, overhead ceiling and peeled back exterior sheeting and support beams like soft wax. Tessa’s move came reflexive– in less than a breath, she had dived for the deck, putting the body of her rig between her and the falling shards of torn steel that dropped from above like massive vines thick with overripe fruit. Somewhere in the haze, the pelting, clashing fall of steel, she heard Myyaelae cry out, and then another noise, a gurgling howl that echoed through everything, reverberated across every inch of steel and chrome in a way that left a frightened chill in Tessa’s heart, a chill that settled colder into her flesh than the open, frozen air of the planet as it rushed in to fill the bay.

And then she heard the sound, impossible, haunting.

Clicking.

Swallowing past her fear, Tessa grabbed onto the wing of her Seindrive, used it to haul herself back up and onto her feet again. Cruel, bitter air bit into her lungs with every breath, already freezing skin to a solid, icy edge. Shivering in a hunched heap and propped oddly on his one good leg like a broken, sinuous marionette, Myyaelae stared wide-eyed at the thing that sat perched at the ragged edge of the torn-open roof, its flesh all twisted, liquiferous metal moving like surging muscle. To Tessa, it looked like some kind of cobbled-together automaton of flesh and glassy, moving chrome, vaguely modeled after the bizarre, multi-limbed bodies of Cygnans, but with vestiges of its once humanoid appearance still clinging to the design, manifesting in absurdly large hands, vaguely human legs and a biped torso all unmolested by the changes, the mutations which the Coralate soldier had forced into the design. To Tessa, it was surreal, an abomination of blue skin and cybernetic soldier three times her size staring down at her from the edge of frozen infinity, but to Myyaelae, it was terrifying. Recognition blasted through him, left him reeling, slack jawed, freezing as he stared.

“Gilgamesh.” He breathed. “Great goddess, we are in your hands now.”

The heel-handed punch came reflexively, the palm of her hand seared as she knocked away a living pipeline intent on swinging a gout of inferno into her face. All around her, steel bent and fractured, chunks of razor-edged metal flew, and then she heard the alien screech and solid thunk of steel obliterating bone as a jagged sliver three feet across buried itself into Myyaelae’s leg, pinned him to the floor. In the center of it all, in the center of the ruin and the fire, the hot, debris choked air that lay wavy over a wide swath of broken destruction, she saw it, saw him. Blue skin bound by a writhing exoskeletal mass of liquid steel flickered jellied and sapphire at the end of the shattered corridor.

Strength rushed into Tessa’s body, an anger and a confidence fueled by her hatred of the Coralate, the need that rose within her to use all that she had been given, all that she had fought for to crush this thing that was hunting them, hunting her, this alien abomination that, in her eyes, seemed almost to represent the entire species that had driven humanity so far back toward the core of what had once been the mighty Terran Commonwealth, had killed billions seemingly without reason, without provocation, without mercy. Teeth bared beyond thinning lips, fingers flexing, hands tense, strong, ready. She felt the new implant stirring within her even before her feet left the ground, even before the Cygnan ripped a support from overhead and hurled it at her like a massive, spinning spear. Movement came on reflex; another implant laced within her system came online, flared golden, an aura of hot light that slowed the support’s approach just enough to catch, hands tensing against the distant weight as the steel beam froze improbably in the air less than a foot from her. She swallowed, panted with the effort of holding it, then closed her eyes, willed it out of existence.

Splitting apart into a thousand wet droplets of chrome that washed across and around her, the beam flowed through hot air and solidified into a broken mass, a heap of cool, glassy slag between her and Myyaelae.

“Nice try, asshole.” She panted, eyes narrowed, watching. The Cygnan stirred for a moment, almost as if watching her back, studying her. Breath came labored, tired, laced with the burn of exertion. Tessa licked her lips, swallowed. “Look at you.” She panted. “Not so bad anymore, huh? How’s it feel to face down someone who can bend steel like you?” The Cygnan shivered and clicked, humming and modulating that hum with clacks and movements of its knife-like digits.
And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone, darting back off into darkness so quickly she could hardly track the movement. Tessa blinked, her hands tightening, flexing to hard fists. Hatred flared within her, drove her forward.

“M– major!”

Tessa hesitated midstep. Slowly, sluggishly, realization came back, memories, the strings of responsibilities rising up before her like a wall, keeping her from rushing off after the Cygnan. She closed her eyes, breathed a sigh. Myyaelae.

She turned slowly, let her eyes find his. “He’s gone.” Bared teeth and oozing blood yanked her attention to his leg, and within seconds she was at his side, hands hesitating inches from touching the shard that had caught him, left him immobilized. “Jesus, Myyaelae.”

“Your human gods and messianic figures aside, Major,” he gasped, voice half calm, half pleading. “It is incredibly painful.”

“Maybe I can. . .” She swallowed, hesitated again. Beyond the flames, the wreckage, something moved, creaked. Tessa drew a sharp breath, bared her teeth against the dull ache building again in her tissues, intensifying as it spread through her flesh. She looked back at the Gnarian, almost afraid to touch the chunk of steel in his leg. “We’ve got to get this out of you.”

“It will be difficult, but I will try to walk.” He swallowed, looked up, met her hard, calculating eyes. “Once it is removed.” He made a strange gesture. “The hangar is not far.”

“Good.” Her fingers flexed anxiously. “Because I don’t think I can carry a big guy like you very far, at least not this soon out of surgery.”

Myyaelae nodded in understanding. “If I begin to slow you down, then you should abandon me.”
“Shut up a second and let me get this thing out of you.” Tessa said, chastising softly. In the silence, she met his eyes levelly, studied the seriousness there for a moment before she shook her head and turned back to the shard of steel. “This is probably going to hurt.” Myyaelae made another silent, enigmatic gesture, leaned back, closed his eyes.

Swallowing against her reservations, her doubts, her fears, Tessa pulled in a deep breath, forced herself to focus as she closed her eyes. Tracking down the mental triggers for the implant didn’t come easy– the dull ache lingered on in her mind like static, numbing senses, hiding edges of concept that had once been sharp, clear. In the haze, hands found the shard, found the hot, blood-matted flesh of Myyaelae’s leg, found the structure, the flow of the steel, played into latent movement, followed each cohesive atom as they moved together, flexed apart. Willing the steel to move consciously, pursuing it instead of flinging it into action by sheer reflex, was more difficult, required more control. Brows furrowed, lips parting, and then, as her hands flexed across the steel one final time, it all gave way, running out of his leg and across the floor like quicksilver.

“Alright.” She panted, dropping back on her haunches, then offering him a hand as she stumbled upright again. “Lets go. Let’s. . . let’s get you out of here.”

Myyaelae nodded gravely. “It will be close.”

“How long?” She asked, wiping a thin trickle of crimson from the corner of her mouth with the edge of a burnt and blood-darkened sleeve. The ache was getting worse, flaring in her chest and spreading like the throb of torn tissue, broken bone, but it didn’t matter. Ignoring it, she managed a quiet: “Do you know?”

“Vaguely.” The Gnarian winced. “We have less than ten minutes.”

“Should be enough time to get clear.” She glanced absently up the hallway. “How big of an effect radius are we dealing with?”

“Ten kilometers.” Came Myyaelae’s level response.

“Not bad.” Tessa managed the edge of a grin. “Still, we better get the heck out of here before that timer gets any lower. Implosions that suck all matter into N-Space have never really sounded like they’d be that much fun to experience first hand.”

“Agreed.” He turned, extended an arm. “I will, unfortunately, require some modicum of assistance.”

Tessa grinned, slipped under his arm, supported him as they pushed forward through the wreckage.

“Sure, I think I can manage that.”

“The activation of Epsilon protocol and the death of Doctor Radavich has set in motion a series of containment safeguards which will make our escape difficult, but not impossible.” Myyaelae moved smoothly, helping Tessa along until she broke away, forced herself to walk on her own feet. The Gnarian watched her for a moment, vaguely concerned, but she held her own, met his eyes defiantly, stare for stare as she hugged the burnt and beaten chest of her uniform with one blood-stripped arm. “Fortunately, there is only a single security door between here and the hangar bay where the shuttles and your fighter are kept, but it should pose little problem.”

“Why–” She choked, coughed. “Why the hangar? Shouldn’t we get to Central?”

“There will be no one left in Central.” Myyaelae made a complex gesture, glanced down a darkened, passing hallway. “Facility wide evacuations are already in progress.”

“Evacuations?” She coughed again. “What? Why?”

“One of the containment procedures which was automatically activated is the timer for an implosion wake matrix.” He glanced at her, watching for a human reaction which never crossed her tired, soot smudged face. “Judging by the estimated time of the doctor’s death, we have less than seventeen minutes before the facility generates its own momentary singularity and is obliterated by it.”

“And then it’s adios muchachos.” She managed.

“In effect.” Came the Gnarian’s level response.

“How far are we?”

“Close.” Myyaelae glanced back at the hallway behind them, turned forward, gestured. “The first security door is just up this way, around the corner.”

Tessa nodded, then, forcing herself to move faster, stumbled into an anxious trot. Seventeen minutes. She shook her head, pushed harder. Move, Tessa.

Hands came up hard against the wall near the secure door. An abandoned security checkpoint looked back at her from behind untouched glass. Myyaelae arrived an instant later, already slamming his identification card across the reader lock. Deep within the door, something clicked, and then a red light flashed back at them. Tessa swallowed reflexively.

“I do not.” He swiped the card across the reader again. “It should accept my code.” He jammed open the override panel, pressed his hand into the touch display. “It should. . .”

Tessa pulled in a deep breath, eyes tired, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“I–” He tried again, pushed his hand into the override as he moved the card back and forth in front of the reader. “I do not know.” Features tightened, and then he crossed quickly back to the checkpoint station, pulled up a security feed on a nearby console. Thumbing through a series of displays, his agile, Gnarian fingers called up a red-lit screen jammed with scrolling security data. Neon eyes stared at the lines for a long instant, searching, dilating green, studying.

“Someone has raised the security protocols to omega level.“He spun back, fixed Tessa with a hard, uncertain glance. “Safety locks are engaged by passcode, and only direct access to Doctor Radavich’s administrative account can override it.”

“Then we have a problem.” Tessa swallowed, stepped forward. “Radavich is dead.” Lips parted, breath coming faster, flirting with frantic as the edges of terror and anger pushed past her training and sunk their claws into her heart. “How the hell do we get out?”

“There. . . is a feature” Myyaelae said, reaching over her to key another sequence into the console. “A means to keep the system from becoming completely locked down by accident.” Fingers moved fast, tripped through data, backed out of displays blocked by security lockout. “The doctor’s password is filed with the ITPKF back on your homeworld for emergency use by the EPMC, but with communications locked down, there is only the failsafe within the system itself which is accessed through a security hint system.”

Tessa’s heart skipped a beat. Hope. “Can you pull it up?”

“One moment.” Myyaelae’s long, narrow fingers tapped through a series of scarlet data strings, and he pursed his lips in some form of frustration. “The hint is an image.” He looked up, exasperation clear in his vibrant eyes. “A mammalian creature I cannot identify resting on a checkered sphere. Likely it is a form of puzzle, or the password itself could be embedded–”

“A mammalian creature?” Tessa swallowed, mind spinning. The universe was full of mammals. Hell, Earth was full of mammals. She put her hands in her pockets reflexively, started as paper crunched under the fingers of one hand. An instant later, the thought came, filled her mind with the cool burst of realization, of hope, knowing. She crossed over to him, eyes darting for the panel. “Show me.”

“You have experience with cryptography?” He asked, eyeing her as she nodded silently, absently, eyes already seeking the screen over his shoulder. The image was clear, simple, a two-dimensional photo of a dog, black and white, one paw draped across a half-chewed soccer ball. Tessa breathed as the empty dialog box came up, blinked, waiting. In the pocket of her uniform, her hand wrapped across the piece of paper Blavatsky had left for her, the single word written there echoing through her mind like an omen, a secret that had the power to bring reality and probability to its knees.

Jericho.

It’s the name of a dog. You’ll know what it means when the time comes.

Tessa swallowed, sucked in a long, uncertain breath. Myyaelae’s fingers tensed over the console keys as he met her eyes.

“I know what it is.” She swallowed again. “It’s Jericho.”

And then the walls exploded in a flurry of flame and broken, surging metal.

The vatgrown was the first to fall.
They were less than fifteen paces from the lab when the Cygnan struck, and it struck fast, true, moving like a soldier. Precise and inescapable, it flexed like a weapon, separating the air between them and spreading the derivative across the deck in a flash of crimson that washed across everything, blinded the doctors, sent Tessa stumbling away, hands spasming as she ricocheted off a nearby wall, collapsed to her knees. Somewhere in the haze, she heard Jiri cry out, scream gurgling off, peaking, breaking abruptly. Darkness fell an instant later, and then she felt it, felt the way the room surged, came alive around her, around it, became part of both of them. Somewhere nearby, inches from her back, the thing chattered, hammered out a series of clicks that shot ice into her spine, made her hunch further into the wall, hands splaying against cold, malleable steel. Memories of Izzy came flooding back, ripped through her psyche like a never ending loop of barbed wire. For one terrible instant, she saw her death, saw fate unfolding around her, swallowing her as it had swallowed Izzy, leaving nothing but butchered flesh, bones, scattered memories.
And then the thing seized her.
In one swift move, she was in the air, Slamming against the opposite wall, steel flexing in surreal ripples where she hit, metal giving in thick gelatin waves. She could hardly see the thing in the darkness, but she knew it was there, could feel it pressing into her, watching her, its long, spider-like limbs forcing her further and further into the heaving steel as it inspected her, studied her. Deep within, something stirred, lit up and flared, a protrusion, a dark occlusion in the familiar lake of her mind, her soul. Lips parted, teeth coming free, baring. . . and then, inside, something shattered.
The scream came on reflex, and as the sound tore from her lungs, the thing screamed with her, hammering her with vibrations that crested cruelly, viciously. For the briefest edge of a split second, she could see into its mind, knew it could see into hers. It was like the connection she’d had with Izzy, only stronger, more brutal. Images of pain, hatred, suffering, confusion all shot through her brain, coring existence, ripping into and through each tissue-thin sheet of soul like Swiss cheese. Its mind was so utterly alien, so powerful, so structured in its own, complex, hive-like way that it overrode her senses, left her fighting on a surging sea of conflict and burnt-off emotion. All around them, the walls and ceiling began to rumble and flex in protest, reacting to the clashing instructions and fragments of mental commands that mixed and tingled through their grappling bodies, until at last something flexed so hard that it broke apart. Fire shot into the darkness, flared and blossomed like an apocalyptic flower as reality seemed to fall in around them, collapsing into the sudden, grasping singularity of her mind, its mind, their mind, drowning out everything with a deafening crash of steel and glass.
When she awoke again, she was surrounded by fire. There was blood in her eyes, aches throbbing along every nerve, across her spine, through every implant laced into her flesh. Lips parted, teeth baring against the pressure, the heat, the weight of everything that had collapsed over and around her. Trapped in the burning wreckage of the hallway, hardly able to move, she forced one grasping, beaten hand toward the still, ashen face of Jiri, crimson splashed and motionless, laying just a handful of paces away. She knew even before she touched him, before she traced a finger across his tired cheek, that he was dead. One bitter, salty tear traced the edge of each of her eyes, dropped.
Gently, resignedly, she lay her head among the gritty debris of the floor, breathed a tired sigh. She had no memory of where the Cygnan had gone, but figured it had been caught in the debris fall as well, probably crushed and killed. She hoped it had been killed– there was no way to tell, no room or strength left in her to wiggle or squirm in an attempt to see. And if it’s still alive somehow, if it escaped. . . She swallowed, panted through weak breaths. Jesus.
A lot of people are going to die.
She hesitated, closed her eyes. Why am I never one of them? She thought bitterly, and the thought carried so much weight with it, so much finality, that she bit the inside of her lip, twisted, rested her forehead against the surface of a chunk of cool, hard steel. A shuddering gasp shook its way wetly from between her lips, left her half curling into herself, unable to move, unable to face the quivering mass she had become, the gutted reality so full of death which stretched on around her, rigid and labyrinthine until it reached the predatory ice.
And then, she heard the voice. His voice.
“Major.” Myyaelae stared at her, vibrant green eyes lit with fearful neon intensity as he shouldered aside a piece of warped steel and reached for her, every inch of his golden, rippling skin blurring, lost and hazy, as if he were the fading edge of some distant dream. “Let me help you.”
“My– yaelae” She coughed, fingers moving, twisting, unfolding slow, like the movement of someone else’s digits. Fear clawed at her heart, but she pushed past it, forced herself to move, to meet his eyes. She sputtered, strained, felt his hand close gently across hers.
“Come on.” He urged, cradling her wrist as he pulled, helping her work free. “We must get you to safety before the Cygnan returns.”
Tessa glanced up, swallowed against a suddenly dry throat.
Before the Cygnan returns.
It’s still alive.
Her own words flitted back to her mind, almost as if to haunt her.
A lot of people are going to die.

“Doctor Radavich.” The voice of a vatgrown derivative cracked the tense silence, snared Jiri’s stunned eye immediately. The sleek clone crossed the distance between them solidly, firm in every step, eyes hidden under the dark lenses of her wrap-around ocular implants. Her tone was smooth, emotionless. “An automated order has been issued for all personnel in this section to be evacuated to a safe area immediately.”
Tessa exchanged blank glances with Foster. Jiri blinked, mouth trying to find the words, fumbling in the silence.
“What?” He glanced once at Foster, once at Tessa, hesitating. “But we...”
“This way, sir.” The vatgrown urged, half turning toward the door, expecting them to follow. Doctor Foster rolled up his noteputer, stuffed it into his labcoat.
“What’s going on?” Tessa asked. The vatgrown hardly spared her a glance.
“You don’t have sufficient clearance to request that information.”
“But I do.” Foster shot back, gave Tessa the edge of a smile. “What’s the situation?”
“Loss of containment.” Came the hurried response. “Epsilon protocol dictates that all personnel within the sphere of predicted movement be evacuated immediately.”
“Epsilon!?” Jiri asked suddenly, fear creeping into his voice, shining clear in his eyes. “They– they’ve lost it?”
“Lost what?” Tessa broke in, eyes flicking to Jiri’s, flitting back to Foster’s. Jiri swallowed, refused to meet her eyes.
“The Cygnan.” Foster said, voice tired, distant. Tessa paled instantly, opened her mouth to say something, but the two researchers were already speaking again, conferring with the derivative. The Cygnan. One of the Coralate. My god. “We’re ready, but both Doctor Radavich and I will need a full report on the way.” The vatgrown nodded once, gestured, started for the door, both labcoated men following instantly.
“Wait a minute.” Tessa spoke up again, refusing to move. “What Cygnan?” She shook her head, locked eyes with Jiri’s as he turned his frightened gaze back on her. “Jesus, Jiri. Don’t tell me you’ve got a fucking Coralate soldier here, on Erebus.”
Jiri glanced back at Foster, caught the narrow edge of a frown, hesitated, half frightened, half searching for an answer. The vatgrown stood silent, patient, waiting.
“Please.” Tessa glanced at the vatgrown, the two researchers, a quiver building in her voice as memories of Izzy came flooding back, memories of blood, liquid chrome, the rattle and click of blueskins in the darkness. She swallowed, hesitated. “Please tell me that I heard you wrong.”
“We, uh.” Jiri licked his lips fearfully, hesitated again. “Well, you see, it was in containment. . .”
“Containment.” Tessa nodded, licked her lips. “And that makes it okay?” She shook her head, laughed ironically. “You’ve got one of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy loose right now in one of humanity’s most cutting edge experimental research facilities, doing only God knows what, and it’s okay, because it was in containment!?”
“It...” He hesitated, held up a finger “Well, I–”
“It’s a sentient being, Radavich!” She shouted back at him. “You don’t see any problems with that? You just–” She made a frustrated gesture, “figured you could lock it up and experiment on it!?”
“Desperate times require, uh, desperate measures.” Jiri said quickly, eyes going to the floor. “T-Try to understand, we know next to nothing about Coralate technology. We were desperate. We are desperate!” He swallowed, glanced up, then glanced away again immediately. “We need any edge we can get over Coralate! To design, much less build a device that allows integration with Coralate technology without the complete and working model to study. . .” He hesitated, searching for the words. “It would be like witchdoctor building plasma gun from nothing but sticks and handful of unused slugs.” Desperation haunted his eyes, left him almost begging. “Now, with all due respect, Major, we must–”
“It’s going to kill a lot of people now that its out.” Tessa said levelly. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“Epsilon protocol is in place to prevent just such an occurrence.” Foster spoke up. “Now Major, if you please. You can voice all the objections you wish as we walk.”
“There are a number of security turrets which should pick up Cygnan once it crosses one of the contact points in monitoring grid.” Jiri wrung his hands, looked up, caught the eyes of the vatgrown, swallowed. “The autonomic defenses within base should be enough to handle situation, but we would be safest in facility control center.” He hesitated, gestured. “We can continue exercises once situation is resolved–”
“Yeah.” Tessa cut him off suddenly, swallowed as she looked away. Radavich and Foster watched her carefully, even as she glanced back and breathed a quick sigh, gestured resignedly.
“Fine, yeah, let’s go.”

“Coffee?”
Doctor Clarke looked up from his console, blinked tiredly at the other man. Doctor Pomo was tall, skin paler than his starched lab coat, eyes darker than the coffee in the pair of steaming mugs he carried. Beyond him, the sterile floors of Charlie Lab waited dim, empty.
“Yeah.” Clarke said absently. “Thanks, Tom.”
“What’s up?” Pomo gestured at the console, handed off a cup. Clarke had practically every diagnostic algorithm in the system up and running, a barrage of scouring software that hunted through data for problems, leaks in the system, sought information and distilled it into biometric readouts, data that could be consumed in charts and graphs.
“Charlie’s awake again.” Clarke sighed, set the cup down, rubbed at his eyes.
“Again?” Pomo shook his head, took a sip. “Any idea what’s bugging him?”
“No clue.” Clarke made a vague gesture. “I’ve tried upping the dosage of the sedation compound, but he keeps shrugging it off like it’s nothing.”
“Have you tried the beta compound Doctor Ngiko has been working on?”
“Not yet.” Clarke breathed a sigh through his fingers, glanced absently back at Pomo. “The dosage charts are still all screwy. Radavich will have my ass if anything happens to Charlie, so I’m saving beta for last resort.”
“Well, he’s not actually awake awake yet is he?” Pomo arched a worried eyebrow. “Can you tell if he’s lucid or not?”
“The readings are all over the place.” Clarke breathed a tired sigh, put his face in his hands again. “He’s getting better and better at fooling our equipment.”
Pomo leaned in, tapped a few keys on the console as Clarke paused, watched him pull up charts that kept track of the dosages of administered chemicals. Pomo’s eyebrows rose suddenly.
“Stan, if you’re worried about killing him with too high of a dosage...” Pomo trailed off, shaking his head as he let his words hang in the air.
Clarke made a quick gesture. “I know the numbers for the alpha sedation compound are high, but he’s not like us– his body is keeping up with it, Tom.” He shook his head. “He’s filtering the shit like you wouldn’t believe.”
Pomo opened his mouth to say something, but the edge was lost in the shriek and crunch of something smashing itself against the abused metal of the containment door at the far end of the room. Both researchers whirled, caught the tail end of the hammering, saw the way the only barrier between them and their subject shook with each successive impact.
Pomo licked his lips, mouth coming open in fear. “Jesus!”
“That’s not good.”
“You’re telling me.” Pomo ran an arm quick across his forehead, swiped at the sweat there. “He’s never done that before. Not that I’ve ever seen.”
Clarke swallowed, nodded. “There’s no record of him ever being this lucid before.” He looked up, met Pomo’s eyes. “Should we. . .”
“Stan, check the seals on that door.” Pomo said suddenly, turning back to the display. “Bastard is definitely aggravated about something.”
“Door seals are holding.” Clarke winced.
“Did you check for electromag activity?” Pomo hunted through the diagnostic displays, opened a feed to the complex’s external system reports. “Maybe the star in this system is. . . ”
“That was the first thing I checked.” Clarke turned in his chair, glanced over, eyes lingering worriedly on the door before they slipped up to meet Pomo’s again. “There’s no unusual coronal activity, no difference in ambient field density or the electromag spectrum.” He shook his head, pushed a hand nervously through his hair. “Whatever it is that’s got him all worked up, we can’t detect it.”
“There’s got to be. . .” Pomo blinked, tabbed through another handful of displays, hesitated, glanced back at Clarke. “Wait. . . today isn’t the day that Radavich starts his trials with the Horus project is it?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Clarke looked up “Why?”
Pomo pulled in a breath, held it. “You don’t think...?”
Clarke’s eyes searched the other man’s face, hesitant, afraid– then, paling suddenly, he breathed. “Oh. . . Oh no.” He turned back to the display, stared wide eyed at the readouts. “Jesus, Tom.”
Pomo stared blankly at the screen. “Is there any way you can check it?”
“Y– yeah.” Clarke fumbled with the display, pulled up another diagnostic readout. “Every time they switched that damn thing on before, we. . .” He hesitated, eyes searching through the data. “We caught a spike in Charlie’s neurosilicate levels, but nothing like this.”
“It’s part of someone’s body now, Stan.” Pomo swallowed, eyes flicking from the data to Clarke’s eyes “If he can feel it when they power it to idle and the system itself is just a bundle of nanites, then...”
“Then we have a serious problem.” Clarke hesitated, fingers moving idly, terrified. “We have to contact the Doctor.” He reached for the intercom. “We have to–”
“Listen!” Pomo hissed. Clarke hesitated, glanced back at the other man, fear mingling with curiosity in his eyes.
Clarke swallowed. “What?”
Pomo stood, hands shaking. Clarke’s eyes tracked his movement, lips parting as the other man whispered. “Jesus. Do you hear that?”
“Hear?” The hair stood up suddenly on the back of Clarke’s neck, fingers trembling. The sound itself was a dull scratching, a whispering throb of steel on steel. Seemingly as one, the two researchers turned toward the containment door, Pomo’s mouth falling open, Clarke hesitating for an instant before he breathed a broken, quiet: “Oh, oh holy shit.”
It all happened so fast, there was hardly time to breathe. Tentacles of living steel wedged themselves between the airtight creases in the door, internal mechanisms coalescing into hungry, vicious spikes that ate at the pavecrete threshold, struggled to unseat the door. Pomo’s hands tightened reflexively. He swallowed, turned back to the console, eyes alive with panic, terror. “Stan! Hit him with the beta compound!”
“What?” Clarke was on his feet now, eyes riveted to the containment door, unable to rip themselves loose. He hesitated, blinked. “N-no, we have to get out of here! We have. . . we have to...”
“Just. . .” Pomo turned, arms tense. In one fluid movement, he shoved Clarke aside, stabbed at the console. The other researcher stared on in horror, watching as Pomo opened the feeds on the beta compound, jammed the dosage to max. Beyond the containment door, the thing snarled, slammed itself against rapidly weakening steel. “Take it, damn you! Jesus Christ!”
“Tom!” Clarke grabbed him, tried to rip him away from the console. “Dammit, we have to go! We have to–”
“There’s no effect. . .” Pomo blurted, unable to tear his eyes from the data scrolling across the screen. “There’s no. . .” He shook his head in disbelief. “The beta compound isn’t having any effect. . .” He turned, watched as the containment door flexed impossibly. “Oh. . . oh my god.”
“This is containment control!” Clarke stabbed the intercom, words drowned out by the screeching howl that ripped through the air as the containment door gave way, reduced to shreds of quasi liquid metal that boiled and flexed across the distances like chunks of a living being, hungry and vicious, unstoppable and insatiable. Clarke swallowed, terrified. “It’s out! We’ve had a breach! Charlie is out!”

“It’s not moving.” Tessa frowned tiredly. Beside her, the kindly old face of Doctor Foster wrinkled into a soft smile.
“Give it time, Major.” He breathed a gentle sigh. “Give it time.”
Tessa pulled in a deep breath, held it briefly. “It’s just an extension of my T.K, a modification of my natural abilities.” Her lips creased slightly in thought, eyes never leaving the chunk of steel sitting motionless within the cylindrical sample container. “I mean, the Horus tie-ins are all autonomic and passive, right?” She glanced back at the doctor for a moment, caught his blank, half-smile. “I just have to visualize the molecular cohesion of the object changing, becoming fluid and. . .” She stared hard at the object, willing it to change. “And, voila.” She frowned. In the container, the steel stayed solid, refused to shift or move.
“Maybe if you try. . .” Jiri stepped up, eyes on the chunk of steel, then tracing back absently to meet Tessa’s curious look. He stroked his chin absently. “Perhaps. . . try visualizing fragment as already in flux, already in movement.” He paused, made a hesitant gesture. “Look at fragment as liquid, not as solid. “
”Okay.” Tessa closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Liquid, not solid. The exhale came quietly, left through her nose. Liquid, not solid.
“Now,” Jiri gestured at the sample. “Try increasing speed of molecular movement.”
Shifting in her stance, Tessa’s mind focused on the fragment, looked into and through it, saw the component pieces within it, crystalline and solid but, on a deeper level, still ultimately in flux. She could see the hints of movement there, the traces of life in what outwardly seemed dead. Increase speed. Brows knitted, forehead creasing with the strain, the tingling pain that seemed to stab up and down her nervous system in tiny, needling waves as she focused on the subatomic structure of the steel, forced it to move, to oscillate at a speed and frequency that the metal as a whole resisted at first, but ultimately began to fall into sync with.
“She’s doing it.” Doctor Foster smiled softly, entranced by the data. “I’m picking up movement within the core of the sample consistent with readings taken on Coralate-controlled samples. Astounding!”
“Excellent.” Jiri breathed, awed. “Now, expand it outward, Major. Will the entire sample to move as cohesive entity.”
Tessa’s closed eyes tightened as she swallowed, voice hoarse with the effort. “Okay.” Jiri glanced at her, eyes concerned, lingering on her for a moment, checking for signs of pain, weakness. She winced, pulled in a deep breath.
“If it hurts, we can–”
“No.” Tessa cut him off, shook her head, then pulled in another deep breath as she forced herself to focus on the sample. “I– I can do this.” Jiri looked up at Foster, caught his slow, steady nod.
The steel seemed to hesitate for a long moment, a static stillness eager to quiver, to become alive, but as seconds stretched on, Tessa’s face became paler, her features more strained. Fingers trembled with the effort, the concentration. Jiri opened his mouth to say something–
And then, suddenly, the sample shifted. In one smooth movement, it shimmered and turned to mirrored chrome. Rough edges became glassy curves of liquid alloy, and as Tessa struggled to hold the shape, to speed up the inherent movement without losing the overall cohesion of the piece, Jiri pulled in an amazed gasp.
“Incredible.”
“I’ve almost. . .” The creases in Tessa’s forehead intensified, deepened, lips drawing back, thinning over bared teeth. “Dammit, I. . .” Pain rose within her, ate along neurons like runaway fire. Sparking suddenly, the pain shot into her, stabbing through her spine on a wave like a jagged spike of living ice, hands spasming uncontrollably. Losing her hold on the sample, she felt it drop away suddenly, slip through her grasp with a sharp crack that echoed in her mind like the whipsnarl of imminent oblivion, of finality. When she opened her eyes, she blinked reflexively, stunned.
Jiri bumbled silently off to her right as Doctor Foster stared on, noteputer falling away slowly, coming to rest at his side.
“My god.” Tessa breathed, shook her head, unable to find the words as she stared at the cracked sample container, the sharp, thin lattice of glassy steel suspended within it by the long, needle-like spires that had solidified as the entire sample had exploded into a quasi-liquid suddenly, trying to razor its way out and into open air. Just like that day. She blinked, swallowed. Just like the shards of Coralate steel that killed Izzy.
She looked at her hands reflexively, fingers quivering with excitement, fear, hatred and loss all shot through with a burning, inescapable pain that consumed every nerve and fiber in her flesh, left her shaking on the ebb and flow of a stabbing, electric ache. She bit her lip in the tangle of emotions that ate at her, left her stunned, unable to move. Blood dribbled across her chin, stained the collar of her Ultima Thila uniform.
My god. Her lips drifted open.
What have I become?

Three days in a suspension tank. That was Jiri’s estimate. Strip down to your skivvies and stand in the glass tube while the nano-goo pumps in around your feet and the suspension systems wired into your nervous system quickly put you under. See you in three days, Jiri had said, his smile soft and optimistic. She remembered seeing Myyaelae’s blank, austere face staring back at her from behind glass as a grey fogginess crept into her vision from the sides, carried her under the waves of a numb, dreamless sleep, a layer of mist between depthless grey oceans.
Three days.
It didn’t feel like three days. It felt more like three years, but then part of that was the surgical process that stretched on in a nanite-fogged dream for another fifteen hours beyond the tank. Experimental implants based on alien technology weren’t something you rushed. The gulfs between human technology and the technology of any XT species were as great and varied as the gene sequence patterns of the creatures that had dreamed them into existence. They reflected a unique and complex tree of thought and evolution which had sprung from the primordial ooze of wholly different planets and found a billion years or so in which to reproduce and diversify in wholly different directions. Mixing anything alien in origin with anything human took time, took emulation software and adaptive hardware. It wasn’t the kind of thing that you just built and slapped into someone’s body in the hope that it would work without a hitch, much less the kinds of disastrous consequences that had become less the exception and more the rule. It took surgical testing, a quasi-invasive nanite guided and driven procedure that was constantly integrating, testing, extrapolating, retesting, comparing against optimal performance models and adjusting, always adjusting molecule by molecule, until something close to flawless was achieved. The fact that Horus wasn’t just some cohesive chunk of technology that could be scooped out if something went wrong slowed down the process even more. Lacings took more time than straight installs simply because of their saturation, the way they became a part of the body, a network of a thousand artificial cells working together to serve a single purpose.
The dossier on Horus had been packed with all the details she had clearance to see as both major and test subject, but she hadn’t taken the time to do much more than skim it. Apparently it was designed to be piggybacked on another experimental implant that had been laced into her body, making the process of integrating the alien tech that much more time consuming and tedious. Hence the three days steeped in nanite goo, the fifteen hours wired into a bank of optical leads carefully monitored by close to a dozen serious-looking labcoats, and everything else they had plugged between her body and her berth.
And then, suddenly, she was awake.
“Ouch.” She breathed. Her voice came hoarse, eyes heavy. Jiri was at her side, his hands on the bar of her bed, face blank, tinged with traces of concern and curiosity that faded under his own haggard features, his tired eyes.
“Try not to move too much.” He said softly, and Tessa winced in response. Everything was tender, every inch of flesh infused with the warm burn of bruised flesh and day-old broken bones. “You’ve only been in post-op for about an hour.”
Lips cracked apart, just an edge, wet with the tip of a tongue eager to speak, but a spike of pain changed her mind and she nodded feebly instead.
“Rest if you can, Major.” Jiri smiled genially, the soft crease of grandparents and healers. “Your body just needs a little time to get used to the lacing.”
Just a little time. She swallowed weakly as the dull fog of sedation set in again, carrying her off to sleep.
Just a little time.

“So what does Me-yay–, Meh-ay” Tessa paused, brows knitting as she took a sip of her coffee, made a gesture.
“My-ee-aye-lay” Jiri layed it out carefully, made a gesture. “Myyaelae”
“What is it that Myyaelae does around here?” She watched him over the rim of her cup as she pulled in a long, leisurely sip of coffee. “Why bring a Gnarian on board with a project like this? They’ve got no real practical experience with Coralate technology.”
“No, but, ah, the Gnarians, they,” He took a sip of his coffee, watched the surface, made his own simple gesture. “They have some experience with the concept of living metal.”
“Living metal?” Tessa hesitated, glanced at her coffee, glanced back. “You mean like the way their ships have that, er...” She gestured. “That cohesive biosteel stuff that allows them to change their shape in flight?”
“Mmm!” Jiri nodded quickly. “Yes, yes.”
Tessa arched an eyebrow carefully. “And it’s the same as the technology that the Coralate is using to kick our ass out there?”
“No, no not the same.” Jiri set down his coffee, made a careful gesture. “Very different. Gnarian biosteel is actually organism. Cygnan composite is modified at atomic level by waveform and vibration, gives illusion of life.”
“So we’re back to my original question, then.” She gave a weak, ironic laugh, took another long sip of her coffee. “Why bring a Gnarian on board?”
“Because they know more about basic principles of nanomorphic metal than anyone in entire Commonwealth.” Another gesture, offering, open-handed. “If we were to have any hope of understanding Coralate technology, we knew we would have to bring someone from Gnarian Science Conclave here to help us.”
Tessa shook her head. “Amazing the Alliance went for it.”
“Yes, well, it took some doing, I’ve heard.”
“Hm.” Tessa nodded noncommitally. “Do you get a lot of XT’s out this way?”
“No, not usually.” He said simply, hesitating a moment in thought. “Doctor Ngiko on red level is on loan from Imnigrad homeworld, but that is it.”
Tessa’s eyebrows rose,
“What’s it like working with one of them?”
“Different. Very different.” Jiri smiled briefly. “You see, Imnigradi communicate through pheromone secretion, so translation unit is most miraculous machine I have ever seen. It literally convert sound to complex series of tactile patterns on Ngiko’s belt which he, er... it, then mentally convert into thought pattern for equivalent smells.” He paused, grinned excitedly. “After a while, you start to recognize certain general scent like frustration or, er, relief, but on the whole mostly you just find yourself wondering if you look as repulsive to them as they do to you.”
“I bet.” She drained the last of her coffee, set the little recycled paper cup on the table between them. “Look, no offense to you or your station, Jiri, but I’m not much of a cold weather person and I’ve got a schedule to keep with the Hephaestus, so. . .” She trailed off, letting the words hang in the wake of their unspoken conclusion.
Jiri hesitated for a moment, confused, then nodded suddenly, the edges of smile breaking across his features. “Right! Yes, of course.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Of course. I am sure that suspension berth is ready by now. I will check with Myyaelae to make sure, but for now we can get you down to surgical bay and begin sedation process.”
“The, ah,” Tessa hesitated, gestured to her empty cup. “The coffee won’t. . .?”
“The coffee?” Jiri blinked, then shook his head suddenly. “Oh no.” He grinned. “The café, it only serve decaff.”
“Now he tells me.” She grinned back.
“Placebo effect.” His grin spread, widened. “Most pilots I have met are addicted to some stimulant or other. Coffee is most common.”
“Smart man.” She gave him a wink, the edge of a grin.
Jiri laughed wryly. “So they tell me.”

“Everyone,” Jiri grinned, made a nervous, excited flourish. “Major Tessa Eisenherz!”
Tessa entered the lab to the thunder of echoing applause, couldn’t help but grin as she caught the smiles of a handful of medico/tech types, each draped in the same basic cut of starched white labcoat. Radavich shuffled forward, gestured toward the pack of eager researchers.
“Major,” He grinned again. “Major, I would like you to meet Doctors Basani and Pomo, Doctors Maltz and Fafner, Doctor Clarke. . .
Tessa nodded to each of the doctors in turn, shook hands and smiled, but her smile soon faded, caught at the edges like the edge of a sweater catching a nail. Her eyes locked with the one member of the team who stood out the most, a man who’s eyes shone like green, neon thunder, rich and alive as they stared back at her evenly, matched her gaze look for look.
“You’re a Gnarian, aren’t you?” She asked suddenly. Jiri bumbled mid-introduction, looked up at her as the researcher who had caught her gaze pulled in a resigned breath, cracked his neck majestically.
“I am.”
Tessa’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly, ignoring the stares that looked up in worried interest around her, watching, framing her and the Gnarian researcher in a tense vignette. “I’ve never met a Gnarian before.”
“Well,” He said simply. “Now you have.”
“Yeah.” Tessa cracked the edge of a smile, breathed. “So, I thought the Gnarians were staying neutral.” She made a gesture, unable to keep the edge of disdain out of her tone, disgust bubbling within her, pushing her. “Just hanging back and watching while the Blueskins obliterate the Terran Commonwealth.”
“The Alliance is still neutral.” He said simply, features already darkening in that strange, broadening, fiery way that accentuated his species eyes, the bright neon colors of their compound retinas.
“So why are you here?” She almost demanded. “Did your talks with the Coralate go to shit?”
The Gnarian wrinkled his sharp, thin nose at her, knitted his fingers together in irritation. “The politics of my people are none of your concern.”
“Ah, Major, I. . .” Jiri raised a finger, tried weakly to work his voice into the conversation.
“Right, because I’m just another dirty human, huh?” She shot back, genuine anger rising into her tone. “I know how you people think. The sooner we’re gone, the better.” The Gnarian’s features hardened visibly. “We’re just an infestation to you, an infection of primitives that sprung up on a modest little ball of dirt unfashionably close to your borders.” She couldn’t help it; she sneered reflexively. “Not like we’re people or anything.”
She heard the audible crack as the Gnarian’s spine flexed in the alien way that betrayed a shift to a defensive wariness, a predatory reaction clinging to the roots of his ancestral tree. As he stepped forward, she followed his eyes, didn’t flinch even as she was forced to stare up at him. Impossibly huge, the Gnarian researcher towered over her like a monolith of golden skin that seemed almost mammalian, almost human, except in the way that it rippled, thick and deeply segmented like a sheet of a million interlocking scales over thick, knotted cords of cable-like muscle.
“You are a short-sighted and impulsive people.” He said, voice strong, powerful as it hammered her with its alien intensity. “You have grown very little from the provincial primates you were five centuries ago. You infest every planet that you set foot on and consume them until there is nothing left.” He growled. “If you attract enemies by your greedy approach to nature, then you will deal with them alone. I am here merely on the basis of a trade of research knowledge. While I work here, observing your progress with the Horus device, I both lend knowledge and absorb it, and once the device is safely integrated into your too-often butchered body, I will take my leave of this facility and return most gratefully to my own people.”
“Make sure you tell them about just how short-sighted and impulsive we really are.” She grinned, sharp and wide. “Really uncivilized.”
“And antagonistic.” He stated.
“Yeah.” She sneered again. “Can’t forget that, can we?”
“Doctor Radavich, I believe the suspension berth still needs to be prepped.” The Gnarian growled, glanced once at Jiri, made an incomprehensible gesture. “I shall attend to it.”
“I–” Jiri tried to speak, couldn’t find the words, even as he watched the Gnarian slip away, even as the other researchers stared on in dumb shock. “I don’t know what to say, Major.”
“It’s okay.” Tessa pushed a tense sigh through her teeth, pressed her fingers into her eyes. “It’s my fault.” She shook her head, looked at him, let the sad edge of smile crease her face. “The Gnarians know how strong the Coralate is. They know that the Coralate doesn’t care about diplomacy or neutrality, and yet they don’t care.” She breathed another sigh, looked away. “They’ll never admit it, but the Gnarians can’t stand us. They think the universe would be better off without us, and that’s why they haven’t done anything.” She pursed her lips, met his eyes again. “Makes me sick.”
“Myyaelae actually is rather kind to staff.” Jiri said meekly. “He is not like other Gnarians I have met. His heart is more kind.”
“I have no use for any of them, Jiri.” Tessa shook her head again. “As long as our ships and our people are the only ones being massacred out there, I’ll have something against the Gnarians. I’ve seen the footage from the invasion of Rowan. I know what their ships can do, and I know why we never see those ships in the field when we need them the most.”
“It has been long flight for you, yes?” Jiri tried a smile, made a weak, dismissive gesture. “Maybe some coffee is in order before we get started, hmm?”
“Yeah,” Tessa closed her eyes, pulled in a long, slow breath. “Coffee, sure.”

“Major Eisenherz.” The lanky, rugged man came seemly out of nowhere, edges of his pressed white labcoat flicking, security lanyard swinging, light catching his ID. Twin women with wrap-around ocular implants and loose clothing unobtrusively armored at every joint and plane flanked him as he walked, matching his long, excited strides.
Tessa blinked, just a split second of interest, curiosity, then shook the man’s quick-offered hand, responding with a smile of her own as he grinned a wide, eager grin. Part of her kept close, sharp tabs on the two women, but paid them no more apparent mind than she would have any other security staff. The only thing that made these two different was their extreme, almost factory-grade similarities, a hint at the fact that they were very probably vatgrown Derivatives, custom humans made in batches like tools and disposed of just as easily. GMOs, came the thought, Genetically Modified Organisms. It took every ounce of control she had not to swallow, not to let the nervousness, the mass of anxious emotions brewing in her chest show.
“It is pleasure to meet you,” The man grinned again before she could respond, his accent thick, a colonial hybrid colored by a language which had made its way into space from some Slavic stretch of eastern Europe. Russian, maybe Czech. “I am Doctor Jiri Radavich, head researcher of Horus Project.”
“Pleasure, Doctor.” One gloved hand came to rest almost shakily on the smooth top of the flight helmet hanging clipped at her side. Radavich nodded in response, just a light, casual nod, a gesture of easy understanding. He missed the reason for her nervousness by a solid mile.
“So!” He clapped his hands together, “You are interested in grand tour, or would straight to surgical bay be better?”
“Surgical bay.” Tessa swallowed lightly, gestured. “You can give me the abbreviated tour on the way there.”
“Very good.” He grinned again, then snapped his fingers. The twin security guards clacked to attention like a pair of soviet assault rifles and fell in behind the doctor and the major as if by reflex, flanking them as they walked.
“You are. . . excited about Horus Project?” He asked, smile still wide, the grin of a kid faced with an arm-load of presents.
“I’ve read the stripped down version of the technical specifications.” She nodded, evenly meeting the wiry doctor’s pale brown gaze. “I know what it does.”
“It is remarkable piece of technology.” Radavich grinned again, rounded a corner, shaking his head as he led her past a series of mirrored observation windows, doors labeled with unrevealing, four digit numbers. “Truly astounding.”
“Not half as astounding as some of the other things you probably do here, eh?” She grinned, ducked under the low edge of a blast door ten inches thick. “What other projects are you working on out at this end of the galaxy?”
“Many things.” Radavich made a loose gesture, waved once to a guard, pausing a moment as security fields went down, crackled the air in their wake. “Many things, but majority of facility is devoted to Project Horus and Project Gilgamesh.”
“Gilgamesh?”
“Sorry, Major, but you see, your security clearance. . .” He shrugged sheepishly, slid his card through a card lock securing another set of doors. “It only extend as far as Horus Project.” Doors opened, the chrome-steel interior of a cavernous elevator enfolded them with light as they stepped inside.
“Shame.” Doors closed, Radavich smiled, keyed a sequence on the elevator’s polyquid touch display.
“Ah,” He grinned as the elevator sunk five stories into the snow, raising a finger in a gesture that was quick, playful. “You would not say so if you were to see stack of confidentiality agreement staff have to sign just to get access to project,” He shook his head, “Gilgamesh is worst.” He made another gesture, identification jingling on his security lanyard with the movement. “Worst.” The elevator slowed, quivered around them, doors opening to another featureless hallway. “Some day, I almost wish someone else was head researcher. Seems like I am always signing something.”
Five doors down, Radavich paused again, lingered beside another numbered door, chewing his lip absently, identification card in hand. After a moment, he looked up again, met Tessa’s eyes in a solid, almost studying way. She blinked reflexively, smile fading to seriousness.
“What is it?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” He grinned again, made a dismissive gesture. “You must excuse me. You are bit of legend in biotech community.”
“A woman is more than the sum of her implants, Doctor.” She grinned back.
“Yes.” He nodded, “Yes. Ah, please, let me introduce you to staff of Horus Project.” He turned quickly, swiped his passcard through the doorlock, paused as the door whisked open.
“We are all very excited to be meeting you.”