“I believe it,” Nicholas said out loud.

  “The Swarm also has some additional properties you might find useful, especially when paired with—”

  Nicholas stopped the video, barely paying attention to Grimmel’s last words. He had the information he needed to do what he wanted with the drone right now.

  “I want to send the Swarm out to tail the ship down to the planet, assuming they have the ability to transmit to us with the moon between us and the planet,” he said. “Yazz, did you find any info about that in the specs yet?”

  She leaned over one of the terminals, scanning through the document. “Nick, the data here is…I…it’s off-the-charts genius level stuff. It’ll take me weeks to understand the math.”

  “I don’t need details, just a yes or no.”

  She scrolled through the document, pausing at a table of numbers. “Yes. You should have communication range anywhere as long as you’re within…” She used a finger to trace the line across. “...an entire light year. How is that even possible?”

  “It’s Grimmel Corporation, love,” he replied. “It seems anything is possible. “All right, everybody...” Nicholas paused. He could create a chain of command, but that didn’t mean they suddenly knew how to do jobs they were never trained to do. It would come in time.

  Provided they lived that long.

  “I’m heading up to the flight deck. Gills, I’m going to drain the hold of oxygen and open it to vacuum to let the Swarm out. After that’s done and the air is restored, take Macey and Scott below decks and go through our ordnance. I want to know exactly what we have, and how much of it. If that UFO changes course toward us, we may need to take off in a hurry so be ready to scramble back to your seats at my order.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gills said.

  “Briar, I want you to go through all the files in the TOYBOX folder. Become our expert on the additional resources Grimmel provided us for this mission.”

  “Yes, sir,” Briar said.

  ”“Yazz, you have the crew.”

  “Yes, sir,” Yasmin replied.

  “All right, people, let’s go.”

  As everyone responded to his orders, he hurried up the ladder to the flight deck. “Any change with the mystery ship?” he asked Jennifer as he passed her seat and dropped into his.

  “No, Captain. The ship is maintaining its heading to the planet.”

  Nicholas activated the safety system under his left hand and navigated into the TOYBOX listing. He scrolled past DAG and tapped on BZZ. The entire forward surround immediately became a single, wide-angle representation of the drone’s view of the hold forward to the hatch. He tapped on the ship controls to split the view, shrinking the view of the hold to half the surround. A view of the planet below and the other ship heading toward it took up the other half.

  He closed off the hold to the rest of the ship, a thick transparent seal sliding down over the ladder. Compressors then quickly pulled the air out of the area to conserve it before flashing lights warned of the deck’s imminent exposure to the vacuum of space. The whole process took under thirty seconds, leaving an open hatch for the Swarm to exit out of as soon as he gave the order.

  “Swarm, this is Captain Shepherd. I assume you have access to Foresight’s sensor data. I’m marking a target for you on the threat display. I want you to follow it to its destination at a safe distance. Do not let it pick you up on its sensors.”

  It seemed odd to give natural language instructions to a drone instead of programming them in or piloting it himself, but the Swarm responded, rising from the table it was on while he was still issuing the commands. Green energy flowed from the rear of the drone, pushing it forward at surprisingly high speed.

  As it blasted out into space, Nicholas quickly closed the hatch to the hold and activated the pump to replenish the compartment with breathable atmosphere. He looked back up at the surround in time to see the drone change direction, not by flipping or turning, but by reconfiguring itself so the back became the front. The single camera view changed to dozens of individual feeds before settling back into one image.

  “I’m starting to think Grimmel was an alien too,” Jennifer said behind him.

  Nicholas looked over his shoulder at her, floored by that very possibility. “You know, I’m starting to think you might be right.”

  Chapter 5

  Through both the Swarm’s feed and Foresight’s threat projection, Nicholas watched the drone accelerate as it sought to make up lost ground on the unidentified starship. Burning at nearly fifty Gs, it took only a minute for the Swarm to make up nearly half the distance between the two vessels, the green glow of its thruster output visible on Foresight’s feed. Then the red wedge on the projection morphed into the real signature of the spacecraft, leaving Nicholas stunned.

  “That can’t be,” he said, pulling up the target sensor data on the HUD. The target ship floated directly in front of him, its specifications printed to the right of the 3D model.

  “It’s Foresight,” Jennifer said. “It’s us.”

  “It’s not us,” Nicholas countered. “It can’t be us. But it is the exact same design, right down to the last inch.”

  “If Grimmel really was an alien, then maybe he didn’t build Foresight. Maybe he arrived on Earth in it.”

  “Maybe. I’m just not sure I’m ready to subscribe to the whole Grimmel-was-an-alien idea. But this is definitely strange.” He activated the ship’s comms. “Yazz, take a look at the Round Table if you haven’t already. Gills, belay my prior order to inventory the ordnance. I want everyone to remain secure in their seats.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gills replied.

  “Nick, that ship looks just like Foresight,” Yasmin said.

  “Doesn’t it, though,” he replied. “And we have a distress message on repeat from someone who sounds just like Grimmel. What the hell is going on here, love?”

  “I wish I knew. This whole thing just keeps getting stranger and stranger.”

  “Have you ever considered that Grimmel might be an alien?”

  Yasmin laughed. “No. That’s silly. We both had dinner with him. He likes to cook, he appreciates fine wine…”

  “I was told he doesn’t have much in the way of a family history.”

  “That’s not an indication that he’s from another planet.”

  “And knowing how to cook isn’t an indication that he isn’t. How do you explain everything he invented? Look at where we are and how we got here.”

  “He didn’t come up with a lot of the advances Grimmel Corporation made. He just funded the crazy ideas that nobody else wanted to listen to. Besides, what does it matter if he was an alien? He was obviously helping humankind, and he sacrificed himself to save us from the trife queen.”

  “We don’t know that he sacrificed himself. They didn’t find his body, remember? I guess my point is, if he was an alien, he wasn’t the same as these others at all. Which would mean there’s a third party involved in all this.”

  “An ally?” Yasmin said. “I can get behind that.”

  “How do we know he’s an ally? This whole thing could be an elaborate trap.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. You’re jumping to so many conclusions you’re liable to break your legs. Grimmel was a good man. A benefit to society. Thanks to him, millions of people will escape the trife.”

  “That may be, but he did say the mission to pre-scout the destination planets for the arkships was a lie. That would mean those five to seven ships he talked about are still headed for a dead-end journey to nowhere or they’re not in any jeopardy of that happening at all.”

  “Wait,” Macey said. “Cap’n, what are you saying about a lie?”

  “Not now, Macey,” Nicholas replied. “I don’t like any of this, Yazz.”

  “We don’t have to like it, we just have to forge ahead if we want Luke back. If it turns out Grimmel was an alien, then so what? If it gets us Luke back, if it helps us against the enemy, I’m all for it. And if this is a trap, what could we have done about it anyway?”

  Nicholas couldn’t argue her point. “Okay, you win. We’ll worry about the what-ifs later, and right now, we’ll just…” He shook his head. “...follow the yellow brick road.”

  He returned his attention to the display, monitoring the view from the Swarm. It had reduced its velocity, hanging back nearly ten thousand kilometers behind the target.

  “Frank, what’s the target’s estimated time to entry?”

  “Twelve minutes, nine seconds,” Frank replied.

  “Nothing to do but wait.”

  Nicholas settled into his seat, splitting his attention between the feed and the projection, watching for signs of any new incoming spacecraft. The Foresight clone hadn’t reacted to the Swarm moving in behind it, which was a good sign. He much preferred observing from a distance to going down to the surface straight away, especially considering the composition of his crew. Luke’s friends had handled everything better than he could have asked of them. They were good kids. But they were still kids, not Marines. And while he believed everything he had told them about their potential when they were gathered around the holotable, he wasn’t ready to lean too heavily on those beliefs just yet.

  Not until he had to.

  The minutes passed slowly, the target ship slowing as it neared the planet’s atmosphere. The Swarm slowed with it, matching its velocity almost perfectly to maintain the distance between them. Nicholas wasn’t sure how the microbots would handle the heat of entry, but he imagined the AI on the tiny machines wouldn’t allow them to destroy themselves.

  The Foresight clone passed effortlessly into the atmosphere. The Swarm followed, not only surviving the heat but absorbing it and using it to recharge each individual crystalline battery. Nicholas didn’t know how much energy each microbot might hold, but judging from its performance so far, it had to be a lot.

  The Swarm passed back sensor data as it trailed the target downward toward the broadcast. Information about the planet’s composition appeared on the projected HUD between Nicholas and the forward surround, comparing the world with Earth. The continent shapes were different of course, but the composition of the atmosphere was nearly identical. The gravity almost the same. The air breathable, the water potable. Looking past the blue glow of the thrusters on either side of the target ship, Nicholas marvelled at white clouds drifting over a verdant landscape adjacent to a sparkling blue ocean.

  “Amazing,” Jennifer said. “So beautiful.”

  Nicholas nodded. It was almost as though Earth had been restored to its original glory before humankind settled in and started polluting the planet. Everything seemed pristine and untouched. A paradise. It was perfect.

  Probably too perfect.

  Nicholas refused to let the view distract him. The target ship quickly bled off altitude, the Swarm remaining close behind. The distance between the ships didn’t allow Nicholas to see their destination, the place he was most interested in.

  “Swarm, can you change your position to get a clear view of the planetside marker?” he asked.

  The drone responded, dipping lower and then reconfiguring to give itself a deep keel with the camera feed located at the bottom.

  Nicholas’ heart leaped into his throat, muscles tensing.

  He didn’t really have any expectations of what he would see. Even so, the reality of it hit him like a sledgehammer.

  The planet didn’t look pristine because no one had ever lived there. It looked pristine because it had regenerated in what had to be millenia since something killed whoever had lived there, leaving the city below in utter ruin.

  Chapter 6

  The destruction below reminded Nicholas of the bombed out cities on Earth. Shattered and scarred. Except whatever had happened here occurred a long time ago.

  The remnants of densely packed skyscrapers rose over vegetation that had edged its way into what had once been a massive population center. Trees grew up through the cracked concrete and asphalt. The broken and crumbling portions of the buildings had given way to moss, vines, and other plant life that seemed to hang from every foothold it could find.

  Birds of varying shapes and sizes launched between the skyscrapers, fluttering through an almost literal urban jungle. Further back, what appeared to have once been a large, round cement structure lay cracked open like an egg, one half holding water, the other covered in brownish muck. The exposed contents of the structure appeared to be a power plant of some kind, the metal pipes and enclosures that composed it rusted and broken, time having slowly worn it all away.

  An arrow appeared on the feed, an augmented reality overlay to show the planetary marker Frank had created. It was coming from a large, low-lying complex on the outskirts of the city in a slightly less heavily vegetated area that could have passed for a medical center or industrial park. The projected path of Foresight’s clone would bring it down on a small patch of open terrain a few kilometers from the park. It was the only place Nicholas could see in that area large enough to accommodate a ship of its size.

  From the nature of the city, it was already clear that, like them, the second ship seemed to be responding to the message. That meant it’s systems were both searching USSF encoded channels and advanced enough to break the encryption. If Grimmel was an alien, could this ship belong to another of his kind? Maybe it had come here to find him.

  Nicholas would get answers soon enough.

  The Swarm dropped back further as the target starship continued to descend slowly toward the landing site. It split itself apart then, the microbots separating from one another and spreading out in a more bird-like formation. The single feed Nicholas had enjoyed was replaced by dozens of smaller views, too small for him to make out any detail.

  “Swarm, I need a maximum of four feeds sent back to my display,” he said.

  The feeds merged until only the requested four remained, enlarging to fill the space on the forward display. Each fragment sent a feed from a different location, giving Nicholas four different perspectives of the Foresight clone as it finally touched down on its skids. The microbots spread out even more and moved toward the starship, taking refuge in nearby trees, the machines not only moving like birds but also acting like them.

  Nicholas couldn’t help being impressed by their artificial intellect.

  “Frank, pass the Swarm feed to the terminals in the main compartment,” he said. “I want everyone to see this.”

  “Confirmed, Captain Shepherd,” Frank replied.

  Nicholas picked out the best view of the forward hatch and waited for it to open. For something or someone to come out. Every few seconds, he spared a quick glance at the threat display to ensure they remained safe behind the planet’s moon.

  So far, so good.

  The hatch slid open, the tongue-like ramp extending from it to the grassy surface. The position of the sun cast the interior of the starship in shadow.

  “Talk about keeping an idiot in suspense,” Gills said.

  “I hope you’re referring to yourself,” Macey replied.

  “Be quiet, both of you,” Nicholas said. He would expect the others to break his simple ground rules and talk out of turn, but Gills should know better.

  “Sorry, sir,” Gills said.

  Nicholas manipulated the feed the moment he saw movement at the hatch. Enlarging the view of the microbot with the best vantage point, he squinted as someone finally broke through the wall of darkness, moving onto the ramp and slowly descending.

  A man, immediately identifiable by his USSF Marine Advanced Combat Armor, complete with a sleek helmet and dark visor that completely hid the wearer’s face. Not that it mattered. Seeing a Space Force Marine emerge from the spaceship—a P70 plasma rifle pressed against his shoulder, ready to fire—was enough to advance Nicholas’ heart rate to the next level.

  “What the hell?” he whispered.

  The Marine quick-walked down the ramp, swinging the rifle left and right, searching for threats. Reaching the ground, he used hand signals to gesture to others on board.

  Nicholas watched a unit of Marines come down the ramp and step onto the planet’s surface. He gawked at the second Marine down. Heavily muscled, he had to be close to seven feet tall. Instead of a plasma rifle, he hefted a mini gatling gun, its ammo feed connected to a pack on his back. The other Marines looked miniscule next to him, especially the two women in the detail.

  All of them wore full combat armor, hardened white ballistic plates over a rubbery, spider-steel suit. The equipment was highly impervious to trife teeth and claws, top-of-the-line and hard to come by. Enough so that the Marines at Fort Hood didn’t have access to what these Spacers possessed.

  So who were they?

  He could tell by the way they fanned out at the base of the starship that they were highly trained and experienced. Their movements were fluid, sharp and confident, and they carried themselves like they knew they were a big deal.

  The Marines quickly formed a half-perimeter around the starship.

  “Where did we get a second ship like Foresight?” Gills said, asking the next question on Nicholas’ mind.

  “Maybe it’s a trap,” Briar said. “To draw us out. If they look like allies, we’re more likely to expose ourselves.”

  “You watch too many movies,” Scott said.

  “She may be right,” Yasmin said. “Nick, we can’t risk it.”

  “I agree,” he said. “Maybe this is a trap. Maybe it isn’t. The enemy has already disguised itself as a security guard. They could easily appear as Space Force Marines.”

  “With another Foresight?” Yasmin asked. Grimmel’s the only one capable of building something like it.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “We’ll just have to keep watching them for now. See what they do.”

  “Sir, what if they get to the source of the recording before us?” Scott asked. “What if they take something we need?”