The egress slid open, and we were on our way.

  “I cannot wait to leave this shape,” Moon said.

  “Hold your syneth until we’re in worm, my friend.”

  We jumped into the leather swivel-back loungers on either side of the nav. I glanced out the forward window. The sky flashed.

  “Thunderstorm coming up fast from the east. This oughta be an interesting jump.”

  I set my hand over the Nav Op and raised the systems holo. I started the worm drive catalyzer and selected our destination. Not Azteca. Yet.

  “Diagnostics are all green,” Moon said. “Let’s go.”

  “Hang on. Setting fin retraction to four degrees. That’ll give us maximum fuel efficiency.”

  “Now you’re just being a cheap bastard,” Theo said. “You got enough Carbedyne to swing through the Collectorate twice over.”

  “Are you Bart’s Captain?”

  “I should be.”

  “No, you ain’t. I operate my ship as I see fit. Prick!”

  “Hah! You call this little can a ship?”

  I ordered Bart to take off. Soon as we cleared the tree line, our little can would create a wormhole aperture.

  “Theo, you must not care about retaining remote access. Maybe Addis would like more responsibility. How about that?”

  He laughed at my bluff. Theo knew we’d never hand over critical duties to that emotional wreck. We all agreed: Addis tried hard, but she lacked confidence. Performing her normal duties for Moon took everything she had to give.

  “Hold tight.”

  Rain pelted the forward window as the worm drive catalyzed a beautiful aperture. It was a gray swirl with an interior vortex. As soon as we entered, the first few seconds were a bitch. Bart was a sturdy little thing, and I’d come to love him, but the ship was not built to resist the entry and exit forces associated with black matter substrata, where wormholes existed.

  Understand, I wasn’t scared. Not in the least. In my prime, I wouldn’t have noticed the turbulence. Unfortunately, the human body didn’t respond well to being slammed around the cabin.

  To make matters worse, our pain threshold dropped remarkably when we fell to Azteca.

  I performed a system diagnostic after the aperture closed behind us and settled into a pillow-soft ride to our next destination. This little baby didn’t have the structural mass of true starships, but it was built with the strongest armor civilian money could buy. The tracker showed us twenty-nine minutes out from our destination in the system 40-Cignus.

  “That was fun, my friend. Whatcha say we drop out of these shapes and clean up?”

  “Finally.”

  We retreated to the tiny cabin, where Bart provided us with a mini-kitchen, body waste disposal, and pull-out bunks – none of which we required. We only cared about the liquor cabinet and the clothes locker.

  We stripped down and stored the Chancellor suits before we shapeshifted. Our templates were six inches shorter and less muscular.

  A long time ago, we gave up our human bodies to ascend. Syneth made it possible. No chemical compound since the dawn of time matched its capabilities. At its best, syneth could build any structure and transform into any organic being. When we ascended, we took the form of our old selves because the wolf and the serpent had a reputation to uphold. A brand, you might say. We morphed at will into damn near anything.

  The good old days.

  Syneth’s core matrix lost a crap-ton of its potency when we devolved into our current status. We still used it to create objects that weren’t too big or overly complex and already stored inside the matrix before we fell from grace. Our internal structure allowed us to mimic any male ethnicity or body type, young or old. There’s no planet where we wouldn’t blend in.

  Just like when we ascended, syneth required a default template. Think of it as a favorite suit to wear to work. We designed our new template to match the primary ethnicity of Azteca. We weren’t keen on associating with those people – or anyone, tell the truth – but we didn’t have much choice. Definitely came in handy years later during our distasteful encounter with public transport.

  I didn’t need Theo to help with the transition. I closed my eyes and envisioned my template. That’s all it took.

  I lost six inches and ninety pounds in about five seconds.

  Didn’t feel a thing.

  When I opened my eyes, I stared into a mirror on the port bulwark and admired one handsome son of a bitch.

  Tan skin, brown eyes with a slight tinge of amber, a rustic five-day beard, and chocolate hair falling down to my shoulders.

  “Hello, Raul. Been awhile, my friend.”

  Raul meant wolf, so the name wasn’t a difficult choice. I only used my Aztecan identity on rare public encounters.

  My Aztecan buddy Ilan reemerged to starboard. His name meant serpent. He resembled me like a close cousin might, plus a full beard. His hair was midnight black and twice as long as mine.

  We dressed casual for home. Jeans, flannel shirt, wool vest, leather boots. I left my duster in the locker, but Moon didn’t feel complete without his. Fortunately, our bodies didn’t perspire, so we never bothered dressing for the season. When you live in the middle of a desert in thousand-year-old ruins, comfort matters.

  We settled into the swivel backs and indulged in our favorite leisure activities. I swigged from a bottle of silky-smooth whiskey while my co-pilot enjoyed vodka and a fat cigar, the latter of which he created fresh from his own syneth then lit with a fingertip flame.

  I stared outside. Traveling a wormhole offered no spectacle. It was like plowing through an endless domain of gray clouds. But that shit was peaceful. Bart operated at minimum levels, carried along by the stream. I loved silence in proper doses.

  “A day like this, Moon? It’s helping us build a future.”

  He exhaled a massive plume of smoke that formed a little fog bank against the window before it dissipated.

  “That’s what you said after the last three jobs.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “I hope to hell not. We can’t go back.”

  “The future is bright, my friend. We’ll have this gig for another fourteen standard months. After the Prez dies, we’ll be free agents. By then, we’ll have enough credits to play by our own rules.”

  Moon sighed long and hard. I heard his skepticism. It happened every time I brought up the timeline.

  “You don’t know if that future is locked in.”

  “Haven’t seen anything to suggest it ain’t. She’s paranoid, enemies are rising everywhere, and now we know there are heavy-hitters in play. Nah. Time’s running out on the Prez. She’s had a nice run, done a lot of good work, but she’s pissed off too many people. The walls are closing.”

  Moon chugged vodka and burped afterward.

  “How do we know today’s job won’t accelerate the timeline? What if Q6 freaks out about what we did on Qasi and speeds up the plan?”

  I shrugged. “Q6 is too well positioned. He’ll know better than to go after the Prez directly. The outrage – not to mention the damn security response – would screw up his plans with the Shipping Guilds. Nah. I doubt her assassination will have anything to do with bringing down the Collectorate. That woman has made a ton of enemies. Just one with a strong motive will see an opportunity.”

  Moon pulled hard on his cigar.

  “I got a suggestion, Royal. When we file our mission report, let’s don’t mention Q6.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I can’t explain it. Just have a feeling we’ll set something new in motion. We’ll be out of a job in weeks instead of months.”

  “But if we keep quiet?”

  “Nothing changes in the short-term. She sends us more missions. We got nothing else except these missions, Royal. I want more days like this.”

  “Yeah, I saw that twinkle in your eyes when the club went sunrise. Have faith, my friend. If it’s more jobs you want, then we need to kick the President’s paranoia in high gear. That means telling her about Q6. No worries, Moon. The timeline will hold.”

  I’ll admit I wasn’t as confident as I sounded. My partner made good points. But I know what I saw when we studied the time continuum. If we stayed the course, we’d head down a predictable path.

  Chaos was my endgame. I wasn’t about to screw it up.

  6

  W E TUMBLED OUT OF WORM within a hundred kilometers of our destination: An asteroid in the dead system 40-Cignus. This forgotten realm of space on the fringe of the Collectorate offered nothing of value. That made it the perfect location for the drop.

  I suggested it to our contact after we procured Bart. The President’s man, Leonard, never trusted us and thought even the briefest of visits to Azteca posed a security risk to the President. I set him at ease with this alternative.

  The process of commissioning our services was more convoluted than necessary, but it ensured a steady flow of jobs. Leonard (or someone acting on his behalf) jumped into 40-Cignus for a brief diversion from his interstellar flight plan. He left an old-fashioned memglass inside a titanium casement hidden in a shallow fissure on this asteroid. Before leaving 40-Cignus, he broadcasted the first five notes of Symphony New World on deepstream, straight into Bart’s transceivers. If anyone intercepted the signal, they’d think it was background echo. It alerted us to a new job.

  Next, we traveled here, inserted the memglass into an old device called a hand-comm (rapidly being phased out by poms) and began mission prep. The President’s people were thorough. Our targets and the rationale were clearly stated. They set a damn fine table.

  Today, we returned the favor. I set down Bart on the mile-long asteroid twenty meters from the drop and dictated our mission report. That included images and sound bytes recorded by our D’ru-shayas. Theo merged Addis’s data with his own. My syneth grew a memglass which I then inserted into the hand-comm and edited. Moon protested again about Q6, yet he understood: Push came to shove, I had final word. Moon wasn’t stable enough to warrant fifty percent authority.

  I tucked the finished product into a small box with the eight Huguenot poms and triggered Bart’s cascade barrier. I didn’t need to suit up for the walk. Simulations proved we could exist in a vacuum for seventeen minutes. It was a far cry from ye olde days, when Moon and I traveled across universes unfettered. I set my respiratory system on pause and leaped from Bart. I jump-skipped in the light gravity until I reached the casement, where I stored the proof of our success.

  A wave of nostalgia grabbed me by the boots. Asteroids brought back a flood of memories and maybe even a touch of emotion.

  I once lived inside a rock similar to this one when I was still human. Learned the secret of the universes there. I reckon it was fitting that Moon and I ended our reign as the gods of time and space on that same asteroid.

  We had folks over to dinner. The night blossomed, and before long we changed reality itself.

  Good times.

  Depending on your point of view, we were heroes that day. Nearabout lost everything, too.

  Eh. We went in with eyes wide open. We could complain about what we don’t have anymore, but I preferred to focus on what remained. It’s enough to put us back on top someday.

  Civilization was never orderly for long. Creatures like us thrived in chaos; from what I saw in the continuum, that weren’t far off.

  I returned to Bart three minutes before my syneth core might have gone into distress. After we lifted off and before I catalyzed the wormhole aperture, I gave my partner the honors.

  “Send the beacon, Moon. Sooner they collect the evidence, sooner we get paid.”

  Moon transmitted the five notes of Symphony New World. I wondered what the ancient composer would have thought about his music being used by professional assassins.

  The journey home crisscrossed nearabout the entire Collectorate. The trip lasted seventy minutes by wormhole. Felt like forever.

  Yeah, yeah. It didn’t sound like much effort to traverse an entire sector of the galaxy. Humans called it a game-changer, but Moon and I once jumped whole universes in a fraction of the time.

  No barriers. No sitting in comfy chairs staring out the window at gray swirls. No taking insults from a smartass D’ru-shaya who reminded you how far you’d fallen. Or worse, asking when you planned to upgrade your house to quality digs.

  I no longer reminded Theo that we lived rent-free and abided by the terms of our deal with the Prez. Theo didn’t care much about sensible arguments. Truth be told, Moon was losing patience, too.

  So, I heard no excitement inside Bart when we exited the aperture two kilometers from home. We stared at the dry red expanse of the Naugista Plateau, the northern region of the largest desert on Azteca. Except for the occasional Albuen tree, low-growing cacti called pralones, and some lizards, life gave up on this region long ago. Funny that because our home – the Fort of Inarra – was built by some eager-beaver colonists in the first wave of landings. Talk about a hell of a miscalculation.

  Give those folks a little credit: They knew how to build a durable stone wall. That sucker stood four meters tall, stretching fifty meters east to west and twenty north to south. From a distance, the fort blended into the landscape. A thousand years of wind had painted the stone burnt red.

  The interior was another matter. Most of it weren’t more than piles of stone that might’ve intrigued archeologists. Moon and I never needed much, though, so we took shelter under the two fortified buildings with passable roofs. We used syneth to fill in the gaps. We built a small cistern to draw water when the six-day monsoon arrived like clockwork every fifteen months. We slept under the stars when we were bored, dug for pralones roots to keep us busy on pointless days, and bided our time with stories of the glory years.

  Oh, and I watched over Moon, hoping the occasional moments of incoherence didn’t mean he was regressing into insanity. He was good for now – job assignments brought clarity.

  I dropped the fort’s security shield before bringing Bart in to a soft landing amid the ruins.

  Yeah, about that shield. Life might have abandoned the Plateau, but more than a billion people lived on Azteca. Between researchers, treasure seekers, drug runners, and idiots who got their bearings crossed, our humble little home did see the occasional visitor. They didn’t need to know our business or come to suspect our identities.

  The shield was invisible, designed with a clever feature. It allowed intruders to pass through. But if they weren’t authorized, and Moon or I didn’t disable it within one minute …

  Does the term crispy critter mean anything?

  Harsh but necessary.

  We spent months using syneth to construct a well-stocked armory (I’m a forward-thinking guy). We also built a kiosk with an organic matrix that fed us on the occasions we felt like eating. Add on a few other luxuries, and the Fort of Inarra was a treasure chest for the asshole who knew where to look.

  During our ten standard days off-world, I never worried about the fort’s defenses. Turned out, I got a little too cocky for my own good.

  Moon sensed trouble the instant we stepped off the ship. He spoke with the cigar tucked between his teeth.

  “Something smells wrong here.”

  I sharpened my olfactory regulators. The air was crisp, dry, and uninspiring. Then I had to chuckle at myself for taking my partner literally. Felt a little guilty for chastising him about the sock metaphor a few hours ago.

  “What’s up, my friend?”

  “We’re not alone.”

  “How? The shield data showed no intrusions.”

  We walked over a long patch of pralones, a ground cover cactus that passed for a garden-variety weed to the uninitiated. Yet its tiny sacs, a few inches beneath the surface, stored enough water to save a human dying of thirst. Moon often used a trowel to dig up those sacs for hours on end. The exercise kept him focused.

  He pointed to the bare soil between the pralones and the ruins of the nearest interior wall.

  “Those footprints aren’t ours. They’re too fresh.”

  Damned if he didn’t have a point. The hard winds off the desert polished the red sand every day, and we’d been absent for ten. Shit.

  “If they didn’t enter through the shield …” I said.

  “They tunneled in.”

  “That’s determination, my friend. Either they’re still here, or we’re too late. If it’s the latter, I don’t hold out much hope for the armory.”

  “If they’re here,” Moon said, “I’ll burn those bastards. We worked too hard for them to steal our …”

  “Yeah, no. Hold your syneth, Moon. Let’s do this right. You run the perimeter, find the tunnel entrance. If they saw us land, I guarantee they’re on the move. Intercept, but don’t fry them all. Bring one in for some quality facetime.”

  “And you?”

  “If we’re lucky, those greedy assholes got no idea we came home. They’re still inside, amazed at their good fortune. I’ll deal with them. Worst case? I’ll inventory the damage.”

  Moon didn’t waste time. He raced to the west wall in a blur, clambered up by morphing his hands into grapplers, and leaped over. I grabbed my pistol and cursed.

  We made a passable life for ourselves out here. All we needed was another fourteen months of peace, then we’d have the resources to start fresh.

  “I warned you,” Theo crowed. “I said the shield wall wasn’t going to cut the mustard.”

  “Bullshit. You don’t get to rewrite history, Theo. In fact, I seem to recall you saying the subsurface was too unstable to build a tunnel without bringing in heavy equipment.”

  Theo laughed like a mustache-twirling madman.

  “What do I know, dumbass? I’m a D’ru-shaya, not a mechanical engineer. If I said something like that, I must’ve been talking out the side of my mouth.”

  “Oh, really? What mouth? If you ain’t gonna be helpful, curl up in a corner of my subconscious and go to sleep. I got work to do.”

  Theo huffed a little then vanished, as did the itch in my brain. I walked around the partially collapsed wall, pistol at my side. I didn’t need it, but I wanted these fellas to know I was a serious man. The footprints were everywhere. I estimated at least four intruders.