“You’re getting quite skilled, Heil’bek,” Tea’va said. “We’ll make a pur’dahm of you, yet.”

  The Dread was sitting behind Gabriel, allowing him to control the Ishur through an assembled duplicate of Reza’s tablet. It allowed him to use his fingers to manage vectors and thrust, instead of needing to place his hands in a vat of goop to transfer electrical impulses through the organic subsystems.

  “I’ll pass,” Gabriel replied. “Maybe we can make a human of you, instead?”

  Tea’va hissed softly. “Perhaps.”

  The pur’dahm was more than a model soldier. Gabriel was beginning to think of him as a friend.

  “Disembarking in twenty seconds,” Gabriel said, watching the symbols. Eventually, the tablet would be able to convert it all to alphanumerics, but Reza hadn’t gotten that far yet.

  “Spaceman Locke, are we ready to transmit?” Theodore asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Miranda replied. “The message is loaded into the system. Transmitters are online and at full-power. From what Sarah told me, there’s no way the rebels can miss this.”

  “Not unless every listening device on the planet is dead,” Theodore replied. “I only wish the Dread weren’t going to hear it, too.”

  “They’ll be getting a nice earful, at least,” Gabriel said.

  “That they will.”

  “T-minus Five seconds,” Gabriel announced. “Four. Three. Two. One. Disengaging phase generators.”

  He slid his finger on the tablet and tapped a button. The ship responded immediately, vibrating softly as the spiked nacelles that surrounded the main structure began to fold back. He closed his eyes, feeling the shift in his body as they were gently released from the stream and back into realspace, the blankness ahead convalescing into a sea of stars.

  “Status?” Theodore said.

  “We’re right on target, sir,” Gabriel replied.

  “Good. Get us headed for the next insertion point and prepare for the next slip. Spaceman Locke, trigger the transmission.”

  “Yes, sir,” Miranda said. “Transmitting… now.”

  Of course, there was no visible evidence of the transmission. Even so, they had just released a recorded message from Theodore St. Martin to the United Earth Rebellion, as he was calling it, giving them a time and place to be in eighteen days. Knowing the Dread would be listening in, he had also added a second message, in their language, just for them.

  “Transmission sent, General,” Miranda said.

  “ETA to stream insertion?”

  “Seven minutes, General,” Gabriel said.

  “How’s our radar?”

  “We’re free and clear, sir,” Gabriel said.

  “And too far out for the Domo’dahm to waste his energy trying to catch us,” Tea’va said. “Especially now that he knows when you’ll be coming back.”

  “I know you don’t agree with this one, Mr. Tea’va,” Theodore said. “We have to trust in our people to get their jobs done. If they do, it won’t matter what your leader throws back at us. We’ll be just as indestructible as they were when they took the planet from us.”

  “He is not my leader,” Tea’va said sharply.

  Theodore smiled. “My apologies, Mr. Tea’va. No, he isn’t.”

  “Five minutes to slip,” Gabriel said.

  “Sir,” Miranda said. “Something just came up on my terminal here, but I don’t know how to read it.”

  “Mr. Tea’va, would you mind?” Theodore said.

  “Of course, Dahm St. Martin.”

  Tea’va stood and circled to the back, where Miranda was sitting. Gabriel lifted his head to watch him, curious about what Miranda had seen. When Tea’va reached her terminal, he glanced at the message, and then his eyes darted to Theodore and back again, almost too quickly to notice.

  “It is nothing, General,” he said. “A confirmation that the transmission has completed. Would you like to repeat it?”

  “No. Once is enough. Thank you, Mr. Tea’va.”

  “My honor, Dahm St. Martin.”

  Tea’va returned to his position behind Gabriel as the countdown to the next slip continued.

  “You’re sure it was nothing?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes, Heil’bek. I am certain. A standard status message. That is all.”

  Gabriel nodded and returned his eyes to his terminal. He forced himself to concentrate, but something was eating at the corner of his thoughts. He had spent enough time with Tea’va to become familiar with his body language, and as much as he wanted to believe what he had seen was nothing, he didn’t.

  As he triggered the Ishur to re-engage its phase generators and return to the slipstream, he resolved himself to have that conversation with Zoelle after all.

  And soon.

  28

  “What do you have, Sergeant?” Donovan asked. He was crouched behind a small outcropping of stone, ten klicks east of downtown Austin and the rebel base.

  “Call me Sarge if you have to use a rank,” Kroeger said, lowering the pair of binoculars he was carrying. “I’m still not used to this enlisted shit.”

  “It makes organizing units easier to not have vigilantes roaming around. It’s a matter of convenience as much as anything.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Anyway, to answer your question, it looks like we waited a little too long on this little scavenger hunt.” He passed the equipment to Donovan. “Damn jackals are all over the place, even if they don’t have a clue what they’re doing.”

  Donovan raised the binoculars, looking at the Dread outpost two kilometers distant. It was the same one the Austin rebellion had hit earlier when they had captured the rifles and the tank but left the mechs behind. As he swept his eyes across it, he noticed the movement of people outside of the open entrances. They were dirty and disheveled and carrying old human rifles. They didn’t look like much of a threat.

  “The mechs should be to the eastern side,” Orli said.

  Donovan glanced over at the clone. He was glad Ehri had convinced her to see his way of thinking, and to start using her original name to prevent confusion.

  “Where?”

  She pointed to a larger bulb to the left of the hub. “In there.”

  “That’s what we came for,” he said.

  “It’s a good thing you picked the Dread guns out before they showed up,” Kroeger said. “It’ll make things a lot easier.”

  “Bullets can still hurt us,” Soon said. “And I’ve been shot at enough recently.”

  “Those are humans down there,” Donovan said. “I’m not too keen on killing them.”

  “You’re suggesting we go talk to them?” Ehri asked.

  “Yeah. We don’t want the property, just the mechs. They certainly can’t use them. They probably don’t even know how to open them up.”

  “Major, how much experience do you have with jackals?” Kroeger said.

  “You’re the only one I’ve encountered before,” Donovan replied.

  Kroeger smiled at that. “Trust me. I’m reasonable compared to most of those assholes.”

  “You don’t think they’ll hear us out?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen. We’re going to go down there. You’re going to ask to speak to the man in charge. Someone will go in and talk to him, and maybe they’ll lead you back, or he’ll come out. You’ll tell him you came for the mechs, and he’ll say, what’ll you give me for them. You’ll politely explain that they aren’t his, he’ll respond that they most certainly are. You’ll ask him what he wants, and he’ll point to her.” He pointed at Ehri. “Or her.” He shifted his finger to Orli. “Or, maybe even him.” He pointed at Soon. “Just depends on which way the wind blows for him. Of course, you’ll say no, and before you know it, we’ll be shooting at one another at point blank range. They’ll die, we’ll die, and the whole thing will be net zero because all of our pilots will be dead.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Soon said.

  “I’m dead serious. How did we meet again?”

  “Point made.”

  “You think we should just take what we want?” Donovan asked.

  “Yup. It’s us or them, Major, and these assholes gave up civility a long time ago.”

  “That doesn’t mean we need to come down to their level.”

  “It damn well does if you want to come and go in one piece.”

  Donovan leaned back, eyeing his team. Kroeger, Ehri, Orli, Soon, Corporal Wilkins, and another of Colonel Knight’s men, Corporal Hicks.

  “Civil or not, they’re still human,” he said, trying to rally support. “If we get rid of the Domo’dahm, restore some sense of community, they could come back in line.”

  “No, they can’t,” Kroeger said.

  “Why not? You did.”

  Kroeger laughed. “I’m good at faking it; that’s all.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Think what you want, Major.”

  “I agree with you, Major,” Ehri said. “We are all God’s children, and we have no right to kill one another without just cause.”

  “Agreed,” Orli said.

  Soon shrugged. “I don’t think it’s up for debate. You’re in charge, sir. You tell me what to do, and I do it.”

  Donovan hesitated, a part of him wondering if he was about to make a mistake.

  “Okay, we’ll go down and talk to them. Kroeger, I want you to stay here.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a crack shot. If things start to look bad, I want you dropping them before they can drop us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The rest of you, let’s go.”

  Donovan stood. So did all of the others, save Kroeger. He adjusted his Dread rifle, putting it on the ground beside him and swapping it out for an older human rifle that he had taken from the rebel’s armory. Donovan had thought it odd he had brought the piece at the time, but it seemed the newly minted Sergeant had expected a problem like this.

  “This thing’ll drop a bear at half a kilometer,” Kroeger said, catching him looking at it. “It’ll pulp heads if that’s what it comes to.”

  Donovan hoped it wouldn’t come to that as he led his squad down the side of the incline and toward the outpost. They were still a ways out when the guards spotted them, yelling to one another and calling for reinforcements. Within seconds, the size of the jackal army had expanded from a handful to nearly fifty. Against six? He started to think he should have listened to Kroeger after all.

  “Just stay right there,” one of the guards said. A heavyset woman in a pair of torn pants, her head shaved. “Not another step, or we’ll kill every last one of you.”

  Donovan stopped moving. His squad halted behind him.

  “My name is Major Donovan Peters,” he said. “Earth Rebellion.”

  “Major? You think you’re some kind of soldier?” one of the other jackals said.

  “Yes,” Donovan replied. “I am a soldier. We’re trying to get the Dread off our planet.”

  “Ha,” the woman said. “That’s a good one. How do you think you’re going to manage that, pretty boy? You can’t hurt the Dread. Everyone knows it.”

  “Really? Then where did all the Dread who ran this base go?”

  “They left, I suppose. All the better for us.”

  “They left?” Donovan said. “What about the bodies? The clones?”

  “Didn’t’ see them.”

  Donovan didn’t know if the woman was being intentionally obtuse, or if she was outright lying. He didn’t care. They couldn’t afford to waste time here.

  “There are some Dread mechs in that part of the base over there,” he said, pointing toward the bulb. “The rebellion cleared this base. You’re welcome to it, but we want those machines.”

  “We’re welcome to it?” the other jackal said. “Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t get to decide for us what is and isn’t ours.” He approached Donovan, looking angry and making Donovan wonder if Kroeger might get twitchy.

  “You’re right,” Donovan said, putting up his hands. “My apologies. Look, the rebellion is planning to move against the Dread capital in Mexico. We know how to pilot the machines in there, and we want to use them against the Dread. That’s the only thing we came for.”

  “Well, Major,” the woman said. “This is our home now. It was empty when we got here, so we have every right to it. You want something from our home, there’s only one way to get it.”

  “Which is?”

  She rubbed her fingers together in a timeless suggestion. Donovan stared at her for a moment. This was going down exactly how Kroeger had said. He should have listened.

  “I’ll bargain,” Donovan said. “But only with whoever’s in charge.”

  The woman smiled. She was missing half her teeth, and the other half didn’t look very good. “I thought you might say that. Frank, go get the boss.”

  The man closest to the doors retreated into them, vanishing a moment later.

  They stood facing one another in tense silence until Frank returned, moving ahead of who Donovan assumed was their leader. He was a lanky man with a thick mustache and wiry muscle, wearing a leather jacket over his bare chest and a pair of jeans.

  “This better be important,” he muttered as he left the safety of the compound. “I’ve got a lot more important shit to deal with than another one of those so-called rebellion armies. Poor saps. You’d think they’d be tired of dying for nothing by now.”

  He saw Donovan, stopped moving, and smiled. “My man Frank over there tells me that you have an interest in the contents of this here-”

  He stopped talking when his head exploded, splashing the woman beside him with blood and bone.

  Three more of the jackals were down before Donovan heard the first report of Kroeger’s rifle.

  What the hell?

  He raised his weapon, barely getting a bolt off and into the jackal immediately ahead of him before they fired back. Then he was moving, rushing toward the enemy. If they were trapped at close range, it was better to make them risk hitting one another. He had to trust that Kroeger wouldn’t hit him.

  The night echoed with pops as the jackals overcame their shock and started shooting for real. Three more fell to Kroeger’s sniper rifle, but Donovan barely had time to see it. He dove into the melee, firing the Dread rifle directly into the flesh, filling the air around him with the smell of cooking meat and blood.

  Screams followed the echo of gunfire as everything turned to chaos. Donovan didn’t have time to think or time to plan. He simply reacted, letting his instincts to survive take over as he waded into the enemy, smashing one in the face with the rifle, bringing it back and shooting, grabbing one of the jackals from behind and throwing him just in time to let him take a bullet. He dropped the body, aiming and firing. He saw Kroeger take out two more.

  He saw Soon ahead of him. There was blood on his hand, and he had dropped his weapon. He looked confused and frightened. He put his hands up as Donovan rushed toward him, trying to reach him. He shook his head, afraid. Donovan saw the jackal aiming his weapon at Soon. He watched that man’s head vanish as well when Kroeger finally got him in his sights. Soon didn’t drop his hands, though. He stood there, frozen, despite the fact that he was clear.

  Donovan reached him, tackling him, pulling him down. He rolled over, quickly scanning the field. Where was Ehri? There. Orli? There. Wilkins? He didn’t see Wilkins. There. On the ground. Was he dead?

  Two more shots rang out. Then everything was silent.

  Donovan counted five breaths before he moved, pulling himself to his feet. There were bodies all around him, half of which had been cut down by Kroeger. Ehri was up and moving, too. So were Orli and Hicks.

  Kroeger was running down the slope toward them.

  Donovan turned around, leaning down and putting out his hand to help Soon. Soon didn’t take it.

  He didn’t move at all.

  “Major,” Kroeger said, his voice raspy and out of breath as he reached them. “Major. Shit. I’m sorry. I had to. I had to do it.”

  Donovan spun around, acting without thinking. His fist connected with Kroeger’s jaw, hitting him hard enough that the older man fell back on his ass.

  “What the hell was that?” Donovan shouted. “He didn’t even have a chance to ask for anything.”

  Kroeger stayed down. “Major. I know you’re pissed.”

  “You have no idea,” Donovan said. He was shaking with anger. “Did you see him make a threatening move?”

  “No, Major. But-”

  “Soon is dead, damn it. So is Wilkins, and it’s your damn fault.”

  “Major, wait,” Kroeger said.

  “We had four pilots. Now we have three, you asshole. I said-”

  “Hold on there a minute,” Kroeger shouted. “With all due respect Major, you don’t know shit about shit. I’ve been out here. I do. That mustached asshole I killed? I know him. Shit, I thought that bastard was dead. He would have killed you. No matter what you said, no matter what he agreed to, he would have killed each and every one of you, and not quickly, and not in a good way. Go inside, Major. Step in and see. I bet the evidence is just waiting in there.”

  Donovan clenched his jaw. His head was pounding, his entire body numb. Kroeger’s words beat through it, giving him pause.

  “Who was he?” he asked.

  “His name was Myles Sarkova. He used to be part of another group called the Innocents. We ran together for two years. Major, I never said I was a good man, but that guy made me look like a damn cherub. Last time I saw him he was dead in a ditch. At least, I thought he was.” Kroeger spit on the ground. “Shit. If I had known it was him, I would have never let you go down to parlay.”

  Donovan stood in silence for a moment, feeling a sudden wave of guilt crash over him.

  “It was my fault,” he said, and he believed it. “I should have listened to you in the first place.”

  “Yeah, you should’ve,” Kroeger said. “But I get why you didn’t. I felt the way you do once, before I learned better. If we win this war, if we free the Earth from the grip of the Dread, that doesn’t mean everything goes back to being just like before. Not right away. It may seem crazy, but it will get harder before it gets easier. I guarantee it.”