“Yep. I was a kid on Hokkaido when it happened. Economies imploded, there were intersectional fights, governments rising and falling by the week. Folks who were happy to see the Chancellors gone went after the loyalists. Total chaos. I would’ve loved that shit if I’d been old enough to appreciate its beauty.”

  “It sounds like a time in history better suited to your appetites.”

  I appreciated the compliment. Theo was a pain in the ass, but he knew me inside and out.

  “I’ll study every public archive from that year, with a few dozen filters to narrow the options.”

  “Sounds like a longshot, Royal.”

  “Yep, but only until you finish your search.”

  “You want me to find Vash.”

  Now, the tricky bit. Theo wasn’t going to be pleased.

  “The holochart said he’s thirty-seven. Search birth records in every province of the northern territories across 5351 and 5352. Filter for blue-eyed boys. That will slice your options. Track his childhood through medical and school records. When you have a visual match and a family name, show me. Then I want you to sneak past the encryption walls of every interprovince shipping company. Personnel records, ownership holdings, the lot of it.”

  Theo grunted. Did he only now realize what I was asking?

  “You expect me to break off a piece of my essence.”

  “This won’t be your first rodeo, my friend.”

  “I was designed to exist inside syneth- and organic-based lifeforms. The last time I rummaged through human-designed data spools, the countermeasures made my life miserable. You don’t know what excruciating means until you’ve been there, old man.”

  I made a mental note: Show empathy.

  “It hurts. I get it, Theo. I don’t like losing part of my D’ru-shaya, either. But there’s a limit to how far Bart’s tech can hack their systems remotely. When I was a god, I went anyplace I damn well pleased. Now, I’m sentenced to live as a human. It’s a hell of a sacrifice. But there’s no going back, my friend. Faster you find what I need, faster the pain ends.”

  Tap, grunt, sigh, tap, grunt, sigh, tap.

  “You’ll owe me for the next century, dumbass.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Ready?”

  “Screw you, Royal. Open your wrist.”

  I rolled back my left sleeve and transformed the flesh into undisguised syneth. The silver tendrils coagulated until they resembled a cannon. A pebble-sized white orb – a fragment of my D’ru-shaya – propelled through the opening. It targeted the interactive holo in front of me and entered Azteca’s global stream.

  Theoretically, it could remain inside those systems for years without losing connection to Theo. It could penetrate every data spool, expose every secret, cause global financial panic, and set people to war against each other. It would also go insane.

  The D’ru-shaya was AI created by and for gods. For it to pillage mere data spools and human-designed artificial intelligence was akin to a king rummaging through waste bins of rotten food in search of a bite to eat. Theo would always remind me of his humiliation.

  My human hand reformed, and I started my research with the simplest bit: The gear tattoo.

  I found countless similar images, given that the shape mimicked a basic machine part. Narrowing the search to tattoos produced poor results. I dug as deep into public archives as Bart and I could, but nothing linked the symbol to any particular social group, religion, political persuasion, shadow government, or other fanatical entity.

  Surprising. Aztecans enjoyed their conspiracies as much as other humans light-years away, but no one linked the shape to a cult. Either Lumen lied through her ass and I bought her nonsense, or these people had contacts who were quite adept at shielding themselves.

  I approached my search from a different angle by asking simple questions. Why use a gear? What was the motivation? The first asshole to wear it must’ve drawn inspiration from a logical place.

  That gear was inspired from somewhere.

  No. From some time.

  I found the answer in Lumen’s own words. She said their cause focused on the future but had its roots in the colony’s founding.

  I searched images of that shape through history. That’s when I discovered my prime suspect: Founders Memorial, featuring ruins from the early days of colonization.

  A black cylindrical structure a hundred meters in diameter and at least as long rested on a barren stretch of sand along the east coast of Ixtapa, three thousand kilometers away. It was worn down by the centuries, but its outer edges were grooved. I paired a head-on view beside the tattoo. Both contained a wide opening through the center.

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

  A perfect match. I chugged whiskey and dug deeper.

  The cylinder once housed the engine core of an Ark Carrier. Those bad boys were two to three miles long, the biggest ships ever built by humans. Each behaved like a small city in space.

  The Chancellor caste on Earth dictated terms back then. They assigned colonies by ethnicity and race until Earth was cleansed of everyone not fitting the Chancellors’ gene pool. They ferried the undesirables on Ark Carriers.

  According to the Memorial’s official stream pages, this was the site of the only known Carrier crash in history – eleven hundred years ago. The Chancellory didn’t release a cause. Six thousand colonists died when the Orpheus crashed, but the survivors built a settlement nearby, the first on Azteca. The so-called Founders.

  OK, so Lumen’s cult was nostalgic about the original Aztecan pilgrims. What of it?

  This felt like a dry well. It told me nothing about the group or their aims. I prepared to move on, setting an eye toward the year 5358, when I asked the AI to filter for all stream references to the Orpheus crash. Most articles and historical documents appeared to rehash the same details, but a few entered the fray under the designation ‘myths and legends.’

  I found some real whoppers. One story said the Orpheus disappeared in huge chunks over the course of three nights, leaving only the engine housing behind. Another fanciful tale said a few settlers reported visions of a “special light” rising from beneath the surface to consume the ship. Those same people claimed to hear voices. Soon thereafter, everyone in the settlement became deathly ill but for those who saw the light.

  The Chancellors sent a military detachment to the settlement, but most died from what the doctors called a terrestrial virus not detected during exploratory missions. They resettled the living and quarantined the area to “cover up the great revelation.” Or so wrote the true believers. Perhaps Lumen descended from these delusional fools, or heard this bullshit when she was a kid and never let it go.

  Whatever the case, I realized I was wasting my time. Oh sure, I traveled the universes with Moon and saw wonders I still had a hard time processing. But this old rock?

  Hell, nothing of consequence ever happened here.

  With that hour of my life wasted, I moved on to 5358. Halfway through a disjointed search that produced little tangible results, Theo roared to life.

  “I found a family name.”

  His brief, agonized report included locations, dates, and medical records. It provided me with the necessary launchpad. When I returned to 5358 with new filters, history told an amazing story. The more I dug, the sweeter the treasure.

  Before long, our searches crisscrossed at interprovince shipping, criminal activity in three major cities – the last of which was Machado – and an unexpected familial connection.

  Three hours and an empty bottle later, I shapeshifted my hand to pure syneth and grabbed the white orb when it escaped the painful universe of human tech. Before I could compliment Theo on brilliant work, he came down hard:

  “That’s it, asshole. I don’t care what percentage you offer. Next time you want me to shovel through their shit, do it yourself.”

  “I’m sure you don’t mean that, Theo. You did incredible work. We know everything now.”

  “I’ve been violated. I won’t shake this feeling for years.”

  “Sure, you will. Look, give yourself a nice, long sleep. Tune me out. Don’t listen to Addis and her endless whining. Be at peace, my friend. You’ll love what’s coming next. Trust me.”

  “Fuck you, old man.”

  I reckoned there was no satisfying Theo. In that moment, I honestly didn’t give a damn. I tapped my ear bead and told Moon to meet me at home. He wanted the details, which I summed up in two words.

  “We win.”

  21

  T HIS IDEA WILL END BADLY.” Moon reached his conclusion after hearing my plan and taking a quiet moment for reflection. He glared at me from the bed in our bunker. “We won’t hold their loyalty for long.”

  “You know your problem? You don’t appreciate brilliance in real time, my friend.”

  “Royal, we’ve squandered most of our hard-earned credits. We’ll ask these people to do shit they’re not capable of. When did you get it in your head that we’re the salvation they’ve been looking for?”

  I wasn’t expecting this slap in the face.

  “Moon, are those cold feet I hear?”

  “No, partner. I’m using my critical thinking skills, like you’ve been encouraging for years.”

  He had a point. I did see deeper, circumspective thought as the key to stamping out his tendencies toward madness. Questioning my vision was a different animal.

  Better I not ruin the evening with slings and arrows.

  “My friend. Please. Consider the grand scheme. Before we fell from the heavens, we saw the future. We understood how certain events line up. Yes?”

  “What of it, Royal?”

  “We saw two immutable events locked into the timeline. We waited seventeen years for the first. Then the future President Aleksanyan arrived at the fort on schedule. The second event will happen in fourteen months. She’ll be assassinated. Everything she’s doing now will blow back in her face. Her death will set off years of chaos.”

  “That only happens if every gram of causality follows the timeline, partner. But it’s already breaking wrong. We were supposed to work for her until the final month. Now it’s possible we’re out of a job, and you want to set up our base of operations here. Train an army in Desperido! That was never part of the timeline.”

  Moon took great joy in murder and mayhem. He wasn’t nearly as entertaining in moments of relative calm.

  “What else do we know of the future, Moon?”

  “Not much. The timeline was murky down the way.”

  “Yes, because the President’s death will set loose untold variables. We never saw how our kingdom rises. Only that it does. I believe we’re exactly where the timeline demands. Desperido was always meant to be our proving ground. It won’t interfere with our work for the President or shift the likelihood of her death. We will be in primo position to ride high while another Collectorate collapses.”

  Moon stared at the short butt of his cigar. He held it between thumb and forefinger. Normally, he’d press the tobacco and incinerate it.

  “We spent centuries learning about the mechanics of time, partner. We controlled it.”

  “Sure enough. Our playground. Maximos deos.”

  “Now, the only way we defy it is by running fifty times faster than humans. We play games without knowing the result.”

  “Eh. I’ll have to disagree. We bring two thousand years’ experience to the table. We know humans better than they know themselves. We’ll never fly blind, my friend. I won’t box us into a corner or lead you astray. On my honor – or whatever’s left of it.”

  He incinerated the cigar butt.

  “You’re right, partner. Two thousand years, and I never had reason to doubt you. But this plan has little margin for error.”

  “That’s why it’s going to be such great fun, my friend.”

  I led him into the second chamber, where our modified kiosk produced ingredients for a large meal.

  “Turn up your olfactory sensors, Moon. Tell me that isn’t the most incredible surf and turf you’ve ever smelled.”

  He sniffed the food cartridges.

  “It’s great. Not Aztecan, though.”

  “I’ll call it proof of our sophisticated taste, learned through years of interstellar commerce.”

  Moon chuckled when he saw the beverage I chose.

  “We’re going to serve wine we stole from Qasi Ransome?”

  “You and I appreciate only the best. Trust me, Moon, they’ll be dazzled.”

  Moon studied the bottle and returned it to the counter.

  “You remember what happened the last time we sat down to dinner with humans?”

  “Oh, sure. I think about it every day. We ended a war, saved billions of lives, killed almost as many, and changed reality itself. The night sky bloomed, my friend.”

  Moon reached for a fresh cigar.

  “And what else, partner?”

  “Then we paid the price of admission and woke up naked outside the Fort of Inarra.”

  “Exactly.” He lit the cigar and retreated to the front room. “I don’t want to host another dinner. Find a better way to win them over.”

  Moon never fully recovered from his post-traumatic stress. I understood his struggle. Life can feel anti-climactic when you’re no longer able to destroy a planet single-handedly.

  Oh, well. I had buried the headline for too long. I opened my pom and chased after Moon.

  “You need cheering up. Take a gander.”

  Moon grabbed the pom and studied the holo. His eyes widened. The good news from our bank account reflected off his pupils.

  “What? It came through?”

  “The notification arrived a few minutes after I finished my research. Full payment for the Qasi job plus fifteen percent.”

  Was that a smile I saw?

  “Two and a quarter million UCVs. Why didn’t you lead with this?”

  “If I started with the big headline, the rest might’ve cast a pall on the proceedings. A good salesman saves the best for last.”

  Now, he beamed. A rare happy-teeth sighting from my partner.

  “Did Bart detect a beacon from 40-Cignus?”

  “No. It’s possible they’ll send their compliments, but that ain’t usual protocol.”

  “What do you make of the extra fifteen?”

  “They’re grateful for the intel. No idea what they found on those poms, but the Q6 revelation must’ve set their brains afire. One person directing a multi-planetary insurrection? Yikes. My best guess? They’ll draw up a list of suspects.”

  “We won’t have to wait long for the next beacon.”

  I stowed my pom.

  “They’ll be keen to cut the head off this snake sooner than later.”

  “Suppose they unmask this person and send us in. If we killed Q6 before he set everything in motion, wouldn’t we alter the timeline?”

  “Eh. Not likely. Q6 is too powerful. He’d have backup plans in place. It’d be like interstellar whack-a-mole. No, my friend. We’ll carry out the job, no matter who’s the target. In the meantime, we have ample credits to spare. Feel better about Desperido?”

  He slapped me on the shoulder.

  “I do, but not this damn dinner. Tell me there’s another way.”

  “Yeah, no. It’s time to wine and dine. Don’t worry. I’ll handle the salesmanship. Just sit and nod. You’re not the best at dinner chat.”

  He helped me prepare the meals, fix the plates, and arrange them under domes – just like we did at our universe-changing dinner party nineteen years ago. We packed the domes into carriers along with the wine and a pair of other special items.

  We delivered them to the cantina by rifter.

  Night had settled in, but the usual crowd did not grace the cantina. The day’s bloody events must have darkened the mood. Go figure. A care worker and the old anarchist Maximillian sat at the bar sipping beers and chatting with Ship.

  The boy raced out from behind to greet us.

  “Where were you? Nobody’s seen you for hours.”

  “We had important work to complete in light of today’s tragic occurrence. I trust you managed the supply depot well?”

  “Got through the rush. Two volunteers helped me out.”

  “Any skirmishes?”

  “No, but everyone was buzzing about the gunfight. They don’t know what to make of it.”

  I sighed. “Or whether to trust Ilan and me.”

  Ship shaded his eyes.

  “People are confused. Lumen spent all afternoon with the injured assassin. I heard a rumor that he might be her son. Old-timers like Max say a young boy lived with her in the early days.”

  I wrapped an arm around my protégé.

  “We should leave that detail to the rumormongers for now.” I glanced around the table where we learned about Vash’s lineage. “You washed away the blood, I see.”

  “Yes, sir. I visited Lumen after we closed the depot. She told me to get the place in order and reopen. It’s been slow.”

  I pointed to the closest pair of tables.

  “Ilan, why don’t we push them together and set the places?”

  “Sure, partner.”

  “Ship, we’ve planned a special evening for a select few individuals who deserve to be feted.”

  The kid grimaced. “What does that mean?”

  “Honored. Celebrated. Appreciated. Do me a great favor. Fetch Elian. On your way back, tell Lumen she is urgently needed. Do not take no for an answer.”

  “I, uh, I don’t know, Raul. She’s in a bad place. I’ve never seen her so down.”

  Odds were she wouldn’t feel much better after dinner.

  “If she pushes back, say Raul and Ilan are not asking.”

  The kid likely seared the image of me dragging Vash across the central avenue. He knew not to quibble.

  “Don’t worry about your patrons. I’ll send them on their way.”

  “Yes, Raul. I’ll go fetch the others.”

  I took a moment with Moon, who had arranged the tables.

  “Set a place for each of us at the heads. Two on that side for the young men, one over here for our cantankerous proprietor.”

  Moon mumbled as he started for the rifter.

  “I hate dinner parties.”

  My charisma went into attack mode. I approached the patrons with open arms.