“We can start tomorrow. However, I’d like to do it in waves. Nonessentials first. I’d like for you and Pierre to remain a few more days, until we’re certain the ship is free of sabotage and you can be of no more assistance.”

  “Keeping us around for some leverage, Admiral?”

  “You know the way we play. Yes? I have reviewed the system logs to determine a suitable drop point.” He threw open a window. “Until recently, the Chancellors had an Alliance cell operating near the city of Joombi on Boer. Are you familiar with it?”

  “I’ve never been to the dark quadrant.”

  “Then this location is perfect. You might have to spend several uncomfortable days among the locals, but they are allies – or at least, they believe as much. Has the Chancellory informed any Alliance partner of its intent to go alone?”

  “Not to my knowledge. But I don’t have access to the Admiralty’s inner circle, and I’ve never met a colonial emissary. I joined Scylla as a volunteer after we stole it from the shipyards on Euphrates.”

  “That must have drawn considerable attention.”

  “No. It was planned months ahead. We had inside help. People might suspect the Chancellors, but no one can prove it.”

  “Or want to admit it. When word travels across every world of the Inventor’s disappearance, plus the Chancellory’s betrayal, the Alliance will collapse … or the most radical, Splinter-driven factions will ignite a fire under it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if the Alliance decides the Chancellory kidnapped the Inventor and is using him to build its own little empire? If you think being nomads is difficult, add the threat of ten enemies united against you.”

  Ham imagined her mind racing through the possibilities, a cold insight taking over.

  “No. I’m sure the Admiralty has been cautious. They didn’t realize how unstable Captain Romilius was. They’ll know to be more prudent.”

  “Ah. Prudent, as in, trying to take Aeterna from the immortals?”

  “It’s going to happen, even if it takes years.”

  “No. It won’t be years. The Admiralty won’t wait that long. And when they do try, everyone on their ships will die. You claim Exeter is a way in, but that will fail, too. Special Services will no doubt get ahold of him. They’ll brainwash him, of course. Send him to Aeterna as a spy. When we gathers the appropriate intel and reports back, they’ll make their move. And then they will die. Siobhan, if I can deduce their strategy so easily, do you really believe they’ll deceive the Aeternans?”

  “You’re clever, Admiral. You are. I’ll give you credit for surviving and taking this ship. But you assume the new Chancellory follows the same script as the old one. Most of us are not like Dayton Romilius. We are committed to taking Aeterna and leaving the colonies and Earth behind forever. The immortals were a mistake. When we get rid of them, the other thirty-nine planets will forget about them and move on.”

  Damned if he didn’t admire Siobhan. She spoke without a drop of irony or the hint of emerging madness. She knew this was the final play for the Chancellors: A new home or a tragic end. The days of dominion were long gone.

  He was sad to see her leave three days later. In the landing bay, he left her with a final message before she boarded Horn:

  “The Admiralty will not be happy with you, Siobhan. I recommend you tell them you gave away nothing about their plans, nor did you allow us open access to the system logs. In return, I will not share your plans with the Alliance.”

  “Why would you be so generous?”

  “I’m not. These colonials are willing partners to a delusion, sold to them by a man who will bring unlimited chaos and destruction if he and his tools are not destroyed. I believe the Chancellors would do far more to rehabilitate their image if they pursued Amayas Knight rather than Aeterna. But, I do know what Chancellors are like when they become fixated.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. For what it’s worth, I won’t forget your warning. If another captain like Dayton Romilius tries to lead us to our graves, I’ll shoot him between the eyes, too.”

  “Leave that to someone else next time. You were fortunate to survive one mutiny. A second?”

  They left on good terms. She was the first Chancellor with whom he felt comfortable in more than a decade. There was a sadness, of course. The great waste of it all. And now? A final bout of lunacy among the surviving factions of hardliners.

  Ham allowed himself some time to process in peace. He studied the stars from behind the cascade barrier. He spotted a few colonial suns, but the constellations from this perspective matched little of what he knew.

  “We were great once.”

  Horn completed its roundtrip through Worm in thirty-seven minutes. Ham met Yusef outside the Scramjet.

  “Successful drop?”

  “No issues. They were quiet. Relieved, I think.”

  “Any word about the first group?”

  “No one was waiting at the drop.”

  “Good. Another item off our list. If we might step inside Horn? I’d like to have a word.”

  They sat beneath the nav matrix. Ham hesitated. Was this smart?

  “Yusef, I’ve never asked any of you to give me a full accounting of the brutality of war against the Chancellor Swarm. In my experience, soldiers are reluctant to discuss the savagery they unleashed onto others. Even the more zealous Guardsmen had limits. But my choice to hand over Exeter will live with us far beyond today, which is why I feel obligated to ask these questions. As the longest serving Talon, you are best positioned to answer.”

  “Call it straight out, Admiral. I’m the old fucker.”

  “You beat me by two years.”

  They shared a laugh.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Was Exeter as outstanding a warrior as you all claim?”

  “He was. Vicious when he had to be. Bloodthirsty even.”

  “How much of it was a product of RJ’s influence?”

  Yusef sighed. “Now, I don’t know. I can’t go inside his mind.”

  “You don’t have to. During battle, did they stay close together?”

  “Oh, sure. You could be certain of one thing: If the unit needed to split up, the Colonel would assign X to his squad.”

  “Did that bother anyone?”

  “Not as such, assuming they did their job, which was always.”

  “Did you ever see them engage in excesses?”

  “What do you mean, Admiral?”

  “I think you know. Acts unnecessary to achieve victory.”

  “War crimes?”

  “If you want to call them that.”

  “The Colonel had a policy: No prisoners, no quarter. He believed it slowed us down. No one argued. ‘I surrender’ became another way of saying, ‘Please shoot me in the head.’ They were Swarm. We obliged. Where are you going with this, Admiral?”

  “Indulge me. Did RJ often show no distinction between Chancellors and civilians?”

  “Swarm units used civilians as shields. Many Talon commanders hesitated. The Colonel believed we had to make the Swarm change its tactics. We attacked the shields head-on, regardless of consequence. It made us one of the most effective units.”

  “With an extraordinary body count, no doubt. After a victory, or a lull between battles, did RJ and Exeter spend that time in each other’s arms?”

  “They made the most of it.”

  “Do you not see the sickness, Yusef? They reveled not just in each other, but in the blood they shed.”

  Yusef threw up his hands. “Admiral, now you’re past the line. I can’t talk about this.”

  “No one likes to speak about the monster inside. Humans can cross the stars in a blink, but there’s a blemish in our makeup that has not evolved in a million years. When we wake it, the blemish takes form. Given the proper circumstance, it becomes a controlling feature. Most of us see it coming. The fear of death and the idea that we must remain accountable to ourselves in this single life is the greatest defense against the blemish taking over. RJ and Exeter have no such fear. I believe their response to the war was to surrender. Yusef, do you honestly believe RJ can be made whole if he no longer has Exeter?”

  Ham saw Yusef age in seconds. Ham took the slow, agonizing silence to be the answer he expected.

  “If the Talons had a vote, would they choose to set aside this mission and hunt for Exeter?”

  “If we had evidence of his location? Yes. He earned his armor.”

  “But we have no evidence and may never. Can the Talons set aside their loyalty to Exeter and RJ to pursue the mission you crossed the divide for?”

  “We will never betray them. They never betrayed us.”

  “What if you knew they did?”

  Yusef left his seat. “Admiral, I can’t talk about this anymore.”

  “Understood. And I hope we never have to. I ambushed you, and I do apologize. Yusef, if our mission is to continue, I have a responsibility to examine every threat outside and within. Thank you for helping me see the larger picture. RJ means a great deal to me.”

  Yusef didn’t seem to take offense. Ham doubted Yusef would pass along this conversation to other Talons, though he accounted for every possibility at this stage.

  Leaving the Scramjet behind, Yusef changed the subject.

  “Speaking of the larger picture, Admiral. Have you reviewed my report about the wormhole findings? Cando said he was waiting on you to discuss them in an open meeting.”

  “I’m sorry. The past few days have been overwhelming.”

  Yusef’s report detailed Horn’s experience escaping a particle weapon inside Worm after sabotaging Scylla.

  “I did review the data, Yusef. Your escape was nothing shy of miraculous – and also genius. But what it revealed about wormholes is the sort of revelation that could darken the future.”

  “I agree. What do you recommend?”

  “For now, we shelve it. Our plate is overburdened, as is.”

  “Understood. At least we have an advantage, should we encounter the same scenario again.”

  “I’d prefer we never do.”

  Ham contemplated these unresolved matters – among many – on the eighth day since taking Scylla. He refused to lead this team into another disaster like Artemis but also had the distinct feeling he was overthinking. Was he trying too hard to compensate for a failure? Wasn’t that the sort of frustrating behavior that led to him abandoning his post and escaping to Hokkaido all those years ago?

  He was heading toward engineering to discuss the ship’s status with Kara and Cando when he failed to notice a door ahead and to his right slip open. When he reached it, a figure appeared.

  Ryllen was waiting.

  His laser pistol was unholstered, dangling at his side.

  “I know what you’re trying to do to me, Ham,” he said. “I told you I’d kill you first.”

  41

  R YLLEN STOPPED SLEEPING DAYS AGO. If he closed his eyes and allowed the night to take over, he’d be vulnerable. He would awaken inside a room under heavy guard if his enemies were generous. More likely, he’d never return, floating frozen through space. Not even an immortal could regenerate out there.

  The last time he drifted off – two days before crossing the divide – he said goodnight to X. Their lives were going to change if the mission succeeded; their mountain would be scaled at last. They were going home. He laid with X, taking in his lover’s distinct musk. He wondered if, like their gray eyes, the natural aroma was common to all bioengineered immortals.

  He didn’t want to know. For a year, Ham encouraged Ryllen to seek out the Aeternans. He had no desire then and less now. What did they offer that X could not? They were cowards, hiding away in a blockaded star system. They weren’t experiencing the joyous cycle of fighting and dying. They weren’t saviors or lovers or butchers, when real life gave them the opportunity to be all three.

  “We’ll be heroes,” he told X. “The Swarm won’t see us coming when we hit their counterparts. We’ll start a revolution.”

  “As long as I kill Amayas and destroy the Splinters,” X said, “I’ll go anywhere with you, RJ.”

  Yes, you will. Just us.

  X believed in RJ, but he also needed RJ.

  They were Talons but not Talons. They were meant for more and better. Together.

  The future was uncertain but for that single knot in the fabric.

  Yet the story of the faithless and the treacherous never seemed to change. At all turns, those who claimed to be friends, mentors, or loyalists to RJ and X looked askance, hoping their true feelings might not be detected. They used RJ and X for their genetic variant, casually pushing them into suicidal scenarios then claiming amazement at their rebirth. At some level, they saw the immortals as abominations whose usefulness had a limited window.

  What value did Colonel Jee have to his unit if the war ended tomorrow? They needed him now; but what of peacetime? What of those promises about lifelong friendship and unceasing fealty? And of X? After all he did to save Talon lives, was he again to be discarded? First, it was the Caribs of Everdeen and their daily horrors. Then the Inventor, casting X away when the experiment was concluded. And now Ham, with the longest of knives. Not a single Talon stopped him.

  You promised.

  Ryllen sought the right moment to respond, but events unfolded too quickly and beyond his control on an unfamiliar ship. He kept enough wits about him and stayed his lip in mixed company to avoid alerting anyone to a threat of reprisal.

  Silence and compliance proved his most effective tools. He listened as Ham and Cando laid out the grid system the team would use to sweep every square foot of Scylla for potential sabotage. They said a search might require three days of long shifts. No more surprises like Artemis. Chancellors were too clever by half. Lesson learned.

  He did not propose torturing or spacing the prisoners this time. He did not request guard duty when Horn slipped them across to a drop point on Boer. Ryllen took his assignment and worked harder than anyone else. It wasn’t tough: He buried his mind inside the monotony like he did as he burrowed the team out from Y-14. Like when he was their underappreciated savior. Again.

  Ryllen was assigned the forward half of the Connector Bridge, as it was labelled in the Inventor’s design. His job: crawl through every access tube and cross every gangway along the skin of the curved tunnels. The Connector Bridge had three distinct rings. The outer shell rotated to generate gravity and concealed the thirty-two bands forming a corkscrew array of particle weapons. Its circumference of a hundred ninety meters seemed much greater when Ryllen squirmed through arteries a fraction the size of the claustrophobic exhaust ports leading from Artemis. Scylla’s dark arteries reflected the glow light on his armor.

  He didn’t mind carrying out Ham’s paranoid orders. What was the likelihood of a desperate Chancellor planting an explosive device this deep into the machine after Scylla lost core power? Did they already anticipate losing the ship to the enemy? Did they prefer to detonate the whole thing with themselves inside? Ham said Chancellors didn’t commit suicide.

  Ryllen squirmed for hours, his comm stack always on per orders. Were they most concerned with constant status reports to review the data in C&C? Or were they more interested in knowing Ryllen had yet to go rogue?

  He stopped at every junction relay and opened the box with a phasic driver. He allowed the stack’s holo to verify that the box components matched the design then moved on.

  He navigated around the particle projectors and nuclear ignition bells, inside which lay the fluid components necessary for a weapon that could send a Swarm fleet into full retreat. Ryllen imagined firing this beautiful monster on Swarm battleships and the cities who turned their allegiance and allowed the Swarm to take up defensive positions. He saw the fire rising through the clouds.

  Thousands. Millions. It was the fate they earned.

  Every enemy deserved death, natural or otherwise. But who were the worst to measure? The enemies who declared themselves, or the ones who hid behind the uniform of friend, brother, sister, and mentor? Were not the most insidious those who presented themselves as allies?

  Ryllen contemplated these matters as he complied with orders.

  Squirm. Scratch. Wriggle. Duck. Analyze. Scan.

  Repeat for every access point.

  He refused the first suggestion to take a meal break. An hour later, he refused the second.

  “This is an order, Colonel,” Cando said. “You have nothing to prove.”

  Ryllen bit his tongue.

  Except why you never should have been promoted over me.

  He ignored the order and continued working.

  Ryllen ate once – on day four after the takeover. He timed his presence in the galley to the departure of Horn with the bulk of the Chancellor prisoners. As automated food generators went, this wasn’t bad. He spent most of six years in war zones; naturally cooked food was rare and often vile. He developed a taste for the nuances of synthetic variants.

  More important, he was alone.

  If only these assholes had the courtesy to keep it that way.

  Po Wynn and Myra Faun, who knew Ryllen during his Green Sun exploits and stood at his side on Mangum Island, did not appear surprised to find him at a corner table, his back turned to the entrance. He heard their banter as they waited at the autochef and carried their trays to the only occupied table.

  “Do you mind, Colonel?” Po asked.

  “I’m not your Colonel, and I mind.”

  “We need your advice, RJ.”

  “You don’t need anything from me. The Admiral and the Major have it covered.”

  “It’s about home,” Myra said.

  “I don’t know what that is. I’m trying to eat in quiet.”

  “OK. OK.” Myra whispered to Po. They set their trays down at the nearest table and took their seats, both of which faced Ryllen.

  They didn’t say a word, but Ryllen felt their unwavering stares. He dropped his fork.

  “Say what’s on your cudfrucking minds and be done with me.”

  Po choked on his words but regrouped.