"What about these?" Evan pointed to a row of symbols he'd copied from the console's main display.

  "Targeting, maybe? Hard to say for certain." Johnson shook his head slowly. "I can give you general principles, but the Ascendant is thousands of years old. Most of what we know about Maker technology comes from fragments and partial records. Nobody alive has actually studied that ship's systems."

  Harris had been listening from his seat. "What about defenses?"

  "If it follows standard Maker design philosophy, it'll have some kind of shield system. Probably segmented, so you can redistribute power to wherever you're taking fire." Johnson flipped through Evan's notebook, studying the symbols Evan had copied. "These could be shield controls. This symbol usually means 'barrier' or 'protection' in other contexts."

  Evan turned to another page. "And these?"

  "Point defense, I'd guess. Interceptors for missiles and smaller attack craft that don't require the power draw of the main weapons to damage." Johnson studied the symbols. "But again, I'm working from general knowledge here, not specifics. You'll need someone with real expertise in Maker engineering to give you definitive answers."

  "Where do I find someone like that?"

  "The Guard is sure to have people in Oridian who've dedicated their lives to studying Maker artifacts. Once we establish communication through you, we can try to get the right specialists aboard," Johnson paused. "Assuming they're willing to join your crew."

  The plane hummed around them, carrying them north toward New York. Evan continued working through his notebook with Johnson, but the limitations of the exercise had become clear. General patterns. Educated guesses. Nothing definitive.

  He needed more than this. He needed someone who could actually read the Ascendant's systems, not just speculate about what the symbols might mean.

  "I don't suppose there's any Maker tech that can upload information directly into my brain?" Evan asked, overwhelmed by how much he didn't know.

  "There could be in Oridian," Johnson replied. "There are plenty of planets that haven't been fully explored."

  "I was hoping maybe something a little closer to home."

  "Sorry, not that I'm aware of."

  Harris watched from his seat, his expression thoughtful. "Sounds like you've got a lot of learning ahead of you."

  "Years of it," Evan replied. "And I don't have years."

  "Well, you gotta start somewhere."

  25

  The plane descended through a layer of thin clouds, revealing a landscape that couldn't have been more different from the Nashville sprawl they'd left behind. Rolling hills covered in autumn colors stretched toward distant mountains, the trees a patchwork of red, orange, and gold that made the countryside look like it was on fire. A small airfield materialized below, a single runway cutting through farmland. A regional airport that served general aviation and small aircraft rather than commercial traffic.

  Evan watched through the window as the jet touched down with barely a bump. The aircraft slowed, the engines whining as thrust reversed, and they taxied toward a cluster of low buildings at the runway's edge. A couple of Cessnas sat parked near one of the hangars, and a man in coveralls was working on a well-preserved biplane on the far side of the tarmac.

  Another Range Rover sat waiting near the terminal building. Black, with windows tinted dark enough that Evan couldn't see inside. Two men in suits stood beside it, their postures relaxed but alert.

  The cabin door opened, and the two suited men climbed aboard. They moved with the same professional efficiency Evan had seen from the Null Guard operatives in Nashville, their attention immediately going to Harris.

  "Mr. Harris." The speaker was the older of the two, maybe mid-thirties. "We're here to help you deplane."

  Harris grimaced. "I just need a hand on the steps."

  "Of course."

  Johnson rose from his seat, collecting the jacket he'd draped over the armrest during the flight. He extended his hand to Evan.

  "This is where you get off, Mr. Marshall."

  Evan shook his hand. "You're not coming with us?"

  "I'll be heading to Louisville. Part of the team keeping watch on your niece."

  "That's an important job," Evan said. "More important than anything else we've talked about."

  "I understand." Johnson's grip tightened slightly before releasing. "You have my word, Mr. Marshall. That boy won't be touched. Not on my watch."

  "Thank you."

  Johnson nodded once, then retreated to the rear of the plane. Harris was already near the exit, the two men ready to support him, one of them holding his crutches, as he hobbled down the steps to the tarmac. Evan slung the backpack over his shoulder and followed his friend to the asphalt.

  The Range Rover's rear door opened. A man stepped out. He was older than Evan expected. Late eighties, if he had to guess, with a completely bald head that gleamed slightly in the midday light. His face was lined with the deep creases that came from decades of living, but his eyes were sharp, alert, carrying an intelligence that age hadn't dimmed. He moved with surprising ease for someone his age. No cane. No hesitation. Just the confidence of a man who'd taken good care of himself over the years.

  When he smiled, it transformed his face entirely. Warm. Grandfatherly. The kind of smile that made you want to trust its owner even before they spoke a word.

  "Mr. Harris, Mr. Marshall." He extended his hand to Harris first, who was balancing now on his good leg and his crutches, with the two suited men still flanking him. "Brennik Tal. It's a pleasure to meet you both in person."

  Harris shifted his weight to shake the offered hand. "Thanks for having us."

  "Thank you for coming. Both of you." Brennik moved to Evan, his grip stronger than expected, the skin dry and papery but the underlying strength still present.

  "Likewise," Evan said.

  "Please." Brennik gestured toward the Range Rover. "We have some distance to cover, and I imagine you have questions. We can talk on the way."

  The two suited men helped Harris into the vehicle's rear seat, his injured leg propped on the hump of the driveshaft housing. Evan climbed in on the other side, while Brennik settled into the front passenger seat. One of the suited men took the wheel, the other remaining behind on the tarmac as the Range Rover pulled away from the aircraft.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, the airfield falling behind them as they turned onto a two-lane road that wound through the countryside. Brennik turned slightly in his seat, his attention going to Harris first.

  "Mr. Harris. I understand you served alongside Evan in the Marine Corps."

  Harris shifted, adjusting his injured leg. "Three deployments. Afghanistan, mostly. He was in my squad."

  "And you stayed in touch after you both left the service?"

  "Off and on." Harris's jaw tightened slightly. "More off than on, to be honest. Evan went through some rough times after he got out. He wasn't always easy to reach."

  Brennik nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. "But when he called, you came."

  "I didn't even have to think about it."

  "That kind of loyalty is rare." Brennik's gaze moved to Harris's injuries, the cast visible beneath his sweatpants, his arm still wrapped tight against his chest. "And it came at a considerable cost, I see."

  Harris shrugged, the motion careful to avoid jostling anything that might hurt. "Little annoying, but nothing I can't handle. I've had worse."

  "Have you?"

  "Well." Harris shrugged. "Maybe not the ankle. But the arm, sure. Took a round in Afghanistan that did more damage than this. Marsh saved my life out there another time, after I was shot. Man's a damn hero."

  "I was just doing my duty," Evan replied.

  "Duty," Brennik said, turning from Harris to Evan. "Belief in something greater is the true measure of a man, in my opinion."

  "Like the Null Guard?"

  "Precisely." That grandfatherly smile returned. "I imagine when you stumbled across a toy starship at a garage sale, you never expected it would lead to all this."

  Evan let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "That's putting it mildly."

  "Life has a way of taking unexpected turns." Brennik settled back in his seat, his body angled to maintain eye contact with both men in the back. "Some of us spend decades preparing for a single moment. Others have that moment thrust upon them without warning. I've often wondered which is more difficult."

  "Right now, I'd vote for the second option."

  "I suspected you might." Brennik's expression grew more serious. "Adam told me you'd learned a great deal from the Skytrace commander before his unfortunate demise. About the Makers, the relic ships, the history of Oridian."

  "Enough to understand why everyone wants the Ascendant so badly." Evan's fingers brushed the strap of the backpack resting against his leg. "But there's still a lot I don't know. The commander mentioned the effigy has been on Earth for two thousand years. Is that accurate?"

  Brennik was quiet for a moment, his eyes distant with what might have been memory. "The honest answer is that we don't know for certain. What I can tell you is that the effigy resurfaced on the factions' radar in the early nineteen sixties. Our informants reported a surge of activity. Resources being diverted. Operatives being deployed to North America. Something had triggered their attention."

  "What happened?"

  "It vanished again. Just as quickly as it had appeared." Brennik spread his hands. "One moment the factions were scrambling to locate it, the next they were back to their usual operations, as if the whole thing had been a false alarm. We never learned what triggered the initial interest, or why it faded so abruptly."

  Evan thought about the garage sale in Montana. The woman who'd sold him the effigy, claiming her grandfather had made it in the sixties. The story had seemed plausible at the time, a craftsman creating an unusual toy for his grandson. Now it felt like a cover story, layers of deception obscuring a truth that might never be fully uncovered.

  He could easily picture the grandfather activating the ship by accident and fleeing it just as quickly, putting it on a shelf and forgetting it had any importance outside of a strange memento. A blip on the trackers that faded as quickly as it popped up.

  "Could someone have activated it before?" he asked. "Before the sixties, I mean?"

  "It's possible. The Arcaeon gates weren't rediscovered until roughly two centuries ago in Earth time, but the effigies came with the Makers. If someone triggered the transfer before the factions had any presence here, there would have been no one to notice." Brennik paused. "Of course, we know for certain that no one saw the Ascendant in Oridian before you arrived. If a previous owner activated the effigy, they either didn't try to fly the ship, they never traveled to occupied space, or something prevented them from doing so."

  "Like not being able to read the interface," Evan said.

  "Or they died before they could figure it out," Harris added.

  "Both are excellent possibilities," Brennik agreed.

  The Range Rover continued through the countryside, passing through a small town that consisted of little more than a general store, a church, and a handful of houses clustered around a single intersection.

  "You said you came through the Arcaeon yourself," Evan said. "What was that like?"

  Brennik's expression shifted, something darker passing behind his eyes.

  "Painful. Disorienting. The transfer strips away everything external to your body. You arrive naked, hairless, with nothing but your own flesh and whatever knowledge you carry in your mind." He touched his bald head with a wry smile. "The hair never grew back, in my case. A small price to pay, I suppose."

  "Adam told me you snuck through. How did you make it out with literally nothing?"

  Brennik laughed this time. "The factions maintain a shared security presence, which can make things difficult. But since they can't actively communicate with those on the other side without using an effigy, they can't always get advanced notice about who might be coming through. After that, it's a matter of convincing the guards you belong to the faction you say you do. I've always been persuasive."

  "You got Marsh to come here," Harris said. "The other factions burned him so badly, I wasn't sure you could pull it off."

  "The Null Guard isn't like the other groups. We don't answer to an Emperor. Only to ourselves."

  "You answer to yourself," Evan said. "Everyone else answers to you."

  "I lead the Null Guard, but I'm very open to hearing from others about our operations. Believe me, the same can't be said for the rulers in Oridian. Not most of them, anyway."

  "Going through the gate is one way, right?" Harris said. "What made you decide to go through with it, knowing you could never go home?"

  "That's a good question." Brennik fell silent for a long moment, staring out the windshield at the road ahead. "I was young," he said finally. "Idealistic. I'd made contact with the Null Guard in Oridian, learned about their mission, their beliefs. I saw what the empires were doing. The constant skirmishes along the borders, always testing one another, always squabbling over this and that. I could see how they were positioning themselves for another catastrophic war, either through ignorance or arrogance. The thought of billions dying, of history repeating the Makers' mistakes on an even larger scale..." He shook his head slowly. "I couldn't stand by and watch it happen. While the Null Guard operated in Oridian, they had nothing on this side of the gate. No way to intervene to prevent the capture of the effigies or disrupt any other empire plots on this side of the universe."

  "So you came here."

  "I came here. Along with six others who shared my conviction." Brennik's voice softened. "They're all gone now. Age, accidents, the occasional confrontation with faction operatives. I'm the last of the original group."

  Harris shifted in his seat. "That's a long time to carry a mission alone."

  "Thirty years before we gained any real traction," Brennik agreed. "Thirty years of building from nothing, acquiring resources through whatever means necessary." A faint smile touched his lips. "Not all of it legal, I'm afraid. The early days required...flexibility."

  "And now?"

  "Now we have operations across the globe. Over a thousand members, spread across six continents. Roughly a third are defectors from the factions, people who saw the truth and chose to act on it. The rest are second, third, fourth generation, descended from our original founders or recruited from Earth's population, usually through marriage."

  "Wait," Harris said. "Oridians and humans are compatible?"

  Brennik laughed again. "Oridians and humans are identical," he replied. "Cut from the same cloth, just distributed billions of light years away."

  "How?"

  "One of the universe's favorite mysteries. Perhaps the Makers visited Earth long before any of us truly knew them. Perhaps that's why they exiled themselves here."

  "That's wild to think about."

  "Isn't it? I try not to question and just accept."

  They talked for another hour as the countryside rolled past, swapping stories from their lives and careers. From Force Recon operations in the Middle East to a tale about a complex Null Guard operation that had almost found the Möbius effigy in their hands. Harris made sure to steer away from the mission where Bautista had died, which Evan appreciated immensely.

  The Range Rover finally turned off the main road onto a smaller lane, beneath a weathered hanging sign that read STRUTHER FARM. Apple trees stretched in neat rows on either side, their branches heavy with fruit. Signs appeared at intervals: U-PICK APPLES, FRESH CIDER, FAMILY FUN.

  "This is it?" Harris asked, a note of skepticism in his voice.

  "This is it," Brennik confirmed.

  They passed a farm stand where a young woman was arranging baskets of apples for display. A petting zoo occupied a fenced area to the left, a few goats and sheep visible inside. Families wandered between the attractions, children running ahead of their parents, completely unaware of anything unusual about the property.

  The perfect cover. Who would suspect a clandestine alien organization operated inside a traditional country farm?

  The Range Rover continued past the public areas, following a service road toward a large red barn at the rear of the property. The driver pulled inside, the vehicle's headlights cutting through the dim interior. Hay bales lined the walls. Farm equipment sat in orderly rows. Nothing to suggest this was anything other than a working agricultural operation.

  Then the floor began to descend.

  A hydraulic whine filled the air as the concrete platform beneath the Range Rover dropped, taking them down into the earth like an aircraft elevator moving between the flight deck and the hangar on an aircraft carrier. The descent continued for what felt like thirty feet before the platform settled with a soft bump, the barn's interior replaced by smooth walls lit with recessed fixtures.

  "Well," Harris said, craning his neck to look around. "This is very James Bond."

  Evan had to agree.

  The space that opened before them was nothing like the rustic barn above. Sleek. Modern. The walls were reinforced concrete, painted a light neutral gray that made the fluorescent lighting seem brighter than it was. They drove forward into what could only be described as an underground garage, easily the size of a football field.

  Vehicles filled the space. SUVs like the one they were riding in. Sedans in various configurations. A row of motorcycles parked against one wall. A pair of armored trucks that wouldn't have looked out of place in a military convoy. Everything maintained with obvious care, everything ready for immediate deployment.

  The Range Rover pulled over to one side.

  The door beside Evan opened before he could reach for the handle.

  "Mr. Marshall."

  Adam stood there, that same confident grin Evan remembered from the Skytrace compound. He wore a suit now instead of tactical gear, but the alert posture was the same, the ready awareness of someone who'd spent years operating in dangerous environments.

  "Welcome to Null Guard HQ."

  Evan climbed out, taking in the scope of the facility with new appreciation. Whatever he'd expected, this exceeded it. The resources required to build something like this, to maintain it, to keep it hidden from both the factions and regular government oversight, were astronomical.