“What’s wrong now?” Rollo asked. “Why are you grinning like that?”

  “The Spartans were known for giving laconic answers,” I said. “Laconic means ‘brief’ or ‘terse.’ Molon labe was probably their shortest answer ever given. It meant, ‘come and take.’ Can you imagine that? Thousands of enemy surrounded them, demanding their surrender, and they said, ‘Come and take,’ like giving the Persians the finger.”

  “What did the Persians say to that?” Rollo asked.

  “Something like, ‘Our arrows will fly so thickly that they will block the sun.’ The Spartans answered a second time, saying, ‘Good. We’ll fight in the shade then.’”

  Rollo smiled ruefully so only his upper teeth showed.

  “Molon labe also meant something else, too,” I said. “You know how some in the U.S. Government wanted to grab all our guns?”

  “I do,” Rollo said.

  “Well, people had begun writing molon labe on blogs and stuff. It meant the same thing, ‘Come and take.’ The idea being, if the government sends its agents, they’re going to have to kill us first before we surrender our guns to anyone. In other words, we’re going to fight to the death for our freedom, even against government tyrants.”

  “And that’s our answer to the Jelk?” Rollo asked.

  “That’s right,” I said. “We’re going to stand like men to the very end. Only I’m planning to change the outcome of the story, at least compared to the Spartans. I plan on winning, not losing. I’m going to kill our Persian king.”

  “That would be a good trick,” Rollo said.

  Yeah. It would, especially since the Starkiens had already found us.

  I studied the main screen. It showed the jump point near Neptune. The point wavered. It meant yet another ship was coming through, maybe more.

  “What kind of vessels are the Starkiens bringing in now?” I asked. “Are they more beamships?”

  N7 made adjustments on his panel and brought up a zoom image. The regular Starkien ships were as big as city blocks. It made them much smaller than the battlejumper. That was important in a space battle. A lesser engine generated reduced wattages compared to a big one. A smaller ship also had lesser mirrors and coils, meaning a much weaker laser.

  “This is interesting,” N7 said.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Show me.”

  N7 indicated the screen. A vessel exited the jump point. It had a different kind of geometric design.

  “That doesn’t look like a Starkien ship,” I said.

  “It is not,” N7 said.

  “It doesn’t look like a Jelk vessel, either.”

  “I will save you time as you attempt conjectures. It is a Lokhar military missile.”

  “I knew it looked familiar,” I said. “What kind of missile?”

  “A teleportation bomb such as we saw in Sigma Draconis,” N7 said, “but a bigger version than the one we used reaching the battlejumper.”

  Teleportation bomb—the idea put a cold lump in my chest. As the name implied, the thing teleported across distances. It meant one couldn’t shoot it down as easily as it approached, because one minute it was far and the next it materialized right next to you. Then: kaboom! It was a tricky bit of business.

  “What’s the range of those things?” I asked. “How far can one teleport?”

  “An interesting question,” N7 said. “I will check the data banks.”

  “Did the Starkiens pick those up after the battle at Sigma Draconis?” I asked.

  “We did during the battle,” N7 said. “Why couldn’t they do the same thing afterward?”

  I nodded. That made sense.

  As I waited for N7 to find the missile’s range, I started feeling even worse than before. My bones felt as if they pulsated with pain. I gutted it out, even as sweat pooled under my collar. My stomach began roiling and twisting.

  The main hatch opened, and Jen floated in. She was beautiful, with a sweet face. I particularly loved her warm hands. A healer by nature, she was the heart I lacked. Maybe that’s what attracted me so deeply to her.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Normally, she smiled. Fear and worry showed on her face now. It put red splotches on her cheeks. “Look at him,” she said. “What’s wrong with you people? Can’t you see he’s sick?”

  “What?” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not,” she said. “Ella brought me the gun, the one that fires biodegradable toxins.”

  “The sliver?” I asked, as I began to shake.

  “Rollo, help me,” Jen said. “We have to get him into the healing tank now. He must be dying. The toxins are killing him.”

  “N7, have you come up with the distance yet?” I asked.

  Our android said something that I didn’t fully catch. I might have asked him a second time. I’m not sure. A klaxon began to wail. It startled me. I opened my mouth to demand to know what was going on. Then I must have passed out, because I remembered nothing after that.

  -5-

  I must have been dreaming as I floated unconscious in the healing tank. Did the dream come because of the toxins or from the drugs Jen injected into my system?

  I don’t know.

  The dream seemed to have something to do with one of our missions, one we’d fought as assault troopers for the corporation.

  Claath had wanted something called the Altair Object, a piece of Forerunner equipment. The structure turned out to be massive, many kilometers long and wide, a torus or donut with a black hole in the center. The object had been in the middle of an asteroid maze, protected by the Lokhar Fifth Legion. They manned the many asteroids and the laser domes and missile pits on them.

  The Starkiens had brought us near the maze. Androids like N7 piloted our boats from them and we burst out on attack sleds. Our task had been to kill the Lokhar legionaries on the asteroids. Once done, big ships could clear the space junk. The reason Claath hadn’t used massive nukes to simply blow the asteroids out of the way, I guess, was to make sure nothing harmed the artifact and because we fought on holy ground or in holy space.

  In essence, we assaulted a giant space shrine.

  We lost half our assault troopers hitting the asteroids, but we made the tigers flee. Until then, everyone had thought the religious fanatics invincible when faced as ground-pounders.

  Did I mention the Forerunner object had religious implications for the aliens concerning the Creator? Crazy, huh? But it was the truth. I imagine Creator meant God or God to the aliens. Who would have expected loads of extraterrestrials to be zealots for God?

  In any case, I remember as if it happened yesterday. The Lokhar legionaries fled from us, fleeing in single ships and with thruster-packs, heading for the Altair Object. I guess Claath and the others called it that because this all took place in the Altair star system.

  As I’ve said, a maze of asteroids orbited the Forerunner artifact. In this case, forerunner meant those who had come before, the First Ones, in other words. As the defeated Lokhars raced to the torus with the black hole in the center, it began to glow like the Holy Grail.

  That freaked me out at the time. It freaked out all of us. Then it got worse. The giant artifact became ghostly faint and then disappeared, taking the nearest Lokhars with it to some unknown destination.

  We killed the remaining tigers. Well, the assault troopers didn’t. We retreated and let the Starkiens butcher them with nuclear-tipped torpedoes. Those put nice colorful explosions on the screens like big pieces of popcorn. Since the holy object had done a bunk, the baboons could employ heavy weapons without worrying about harming the artifact.

  I didn’t dream of the battle, as might be expected. No. I dreamt of the Forerunner artifact, where it had gone. The dream felt all too real.

  I floated alone in space far enough away from the object that the thing looked small. I knew it was the artifact because of the strange glow. That’s exactly how it’d been at the end of the Altair battle. I almost swear I could hear angels singing.

  I didn’t want to be out here in space like this. In the dream, I drifted in my assault trooper gear, wondering how to get back to my ship. I twisted around and saw that the battlejumper was a pile of wreckage. I was stranded, adrift in space.

  Swallowing in the dry throat, I looked at the object again. I realized I had to reach it, although I didn’t know why. I used a thruster pack and headed that way. Long before I made it to the artifact, I passed drifting Lokhar legionaries. Once, I happened to spy a tiger face. Horror twisted the features. The tiger had died petrified. I realized then all the Lokhars were dead.

  I took my thumb off the thruster pack control. I wanted to leave this area of space. As I floated toward the artifact, I noticed a swirl of dark matter behind it. Something waited in the swirling particles, something evil and old beyond reckoning.

  Nothing had told me, but I knew it to be evil because that was the way with dreams. I twisted around, looking for stars. I couldn’t see any, and that seemed impossible. There had to be stars.

  This is important, I told myself. You’re seeing this for a reason.

  What reason? I licked my lips, trying to gin up courage. My suited thumb hovered over the thruster control, but I couldn’t force myself to continue traveling closer.

  I had a hard interior debate with myself. I needed to check this out. That was the truth. So I finally pressed down my thumb. Instead of feeling the pack push against me, light blinded my eyes, horribly bright light. What did that signify?

  “Creed, darling,” a sweet voice said to me.

  Terror coursed through my body. Was that the Creator? Did He speak to me? I felt grossly unworthy for this.

  “Creed, you must wake up. It’s time.”

  Huh? Wake up?

  “Help me, Rollo. Help me lift him out of the tank.”

  I heard liquid slosh and then I felt a stab of cold on my bare shoulders. Someone tore a mask off my face and I breathed canned ship air once more. A whiff of my girlfriend’s perfume finally broke the dream-spell.

  I opened my eyes to medical banks, cots, tubes, hypos and Rollo helping me toward a length of bed with white sheets. I left a trail of puddles on the deck plates.

  Jen toweled me off before pushing me down and pulling covers up to my chin. The sheets were smooth and clean. Then I recalled the dream.

  “The object,” I said, weakly.

  “Rest,” Jen said, smiling tenderly.

  “What happened…?”

  “You were very ill,” she said. “You should have come straight to sickbay after getting shot.” She frowned. “If the android had pumped more slivers into you…”

  “The thing almost killed me?”

  “Yes,” she said, with a warm hand against my cheek.

  I wanted to ask her something important. Instead, my eyelids closed and I slept.

  My lids snapped open a few minutes later. Well, I thought it was a few minutes. It turned out being three hours.

  “What happened?” I said, my voice sounding raspy as if I gargled sandpaper.

  Jen turned around. She stood beside a table, inspecting something I couldn’t see. She smiled. It put dimples in her cheeks. She came around the table and walked to me.

  The grav-plates were working then. Good. We could employ hard maneuvering if we had to.

  Jen sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my forehead. “You’re not hot anymore,” she said.

  “There were klaxons before,” I said.

  “Which ones?” she asked. “There’s been several emergencies.”

  “On the bridge before I went down. What’s been going on?”

  “You almost died,” she said.

  “I mean with the ship.”

  “Oh.” She turned away and picked up a communicator, clicking it on. “Rollo, he’s awake.”

  In a few seconds, Rollo towered over the bed. “You okay, buddy?” he asked.

  I flexed my left hand and glanced questioningly at Jen.

  “Your body is still healing,” she said. “You might feel lightheaded for a day or two. You should rest.”

  I flung off the covers and sat up. She was right, though. I felt dizzy. I closed my eyes, but that didn’t help the pain in my mind.

  “Did you get the scout?” I asked, meaning the one at Mars.

  “You haven’t been out that long,” Rollo said. “Our missile is still accelerating at it. N7 believes the scout will remain behind Mars instead of trying to make a run for it. That means the missile will have to decelerate before it can swing around the planet to make the attack.”

  “That’s smart on the scout’s part,” I said. I scowled. “There was a klaxon before while I was still on the bridge. What happened? Did the Starkiens use one of the teleportation missiles on us?”

  “Not yet,” Rollo said. “According to N7, the missiles have a similar range to our main laser, about ten million kilometers. They can possibly teleport farther, but the mechanisms become more unstable the farther they try to materialize. If they become too unstable, they reappear scrambled and useless.”

  “So why did the alarm sound?” I asked.

  Rollo frowned, putting lines in his forehead. He used to have a long thin face. Now it was puffier due to the steroids. “Oh yeah, we spotted a second scout.”

  “Another Starkien vessel?”

  Rollo nodded.

  I cursed. How many scouts did the baboons have sprinkled throughout the solar system? Perhaps as importantly, how long had the scouts been here?

  “You need to relax,” Jen said. “You shouldn’t get yourself excited. Your body needs time to fully recover.”

  I glanced at her. I loved Jen, but… No, no, never mind. I’m not going to say anything negative about her. She was a good person, a healer, in love with a killer. The innocent rabbit living with the wolf: sometimes I wondered how we could make a go of it for the long haul.

  “The second scout was near the Jupiter jump-point,” Rollo said. “It darted into it and left the solar system.”

  That was even worse. I lurched to my feet, and swayed as if drunk. A warm hand steadied me.

  “Creed,” Jen said.

  “The Starkiens not only know we’re here,” I said. “They’ve obviously gone for reinforcements, and down a different jump route than the one they used coming here.”

  “Yep,” Rollo said. “That about sums it up.”

  “We have to leave Earth,” I said.

  Rollo nodded.

  “But does this mean we should head for the Pluto portal?” I asked. “If we do, we’re going to have to face the beamships and their teleport bombs.”

  “That’s the consensus.”

  I mulled that over before asking, “Are any of the last three freighters in orbit yet?”

  “Nothing has changed with them,” Rollo said. “In my opinion, they’re grounded forever.”

  I muttered to myself like an old man hating a new idea.

  “By the way,” Rollo said, “Diana has been trying to get hold of you. It sounds urgent.”

  “Who’s Diana?” Jen asked.

  Rollo answered for me. “She’s a freighter leader, one of those still grounded on Earth. Creed talked to her before he left on our first corporation mission. She liked what Creed said and has been organizing her people for prolonged resistance.”

  “Against the Jelk?” asked Jen.

  “Yep,” Rollo said. “She’s one of Creed’s strongest supporters.”

  Jen glanced at me, and she wasn’t smiling.

  I ignored her for now. I had enough problems to deal with. I didn’t want to bring jealously into this.

  “There’s something else,” Rollo said.

  I heard it in his voice. This was why he’d been waiting around for me to wake up.

  “Let me get dressed first,” I said.

  “You should rest,” Jen told me for the umpteenth time.

  “I can’t rest, darling,” I said. “This is go-time, but I appreciate your concern.”

  “You’re risking a relapse,” she said.

  I laughed, and I pulled her to me and kissed her on the lips. Then I gave her a good squeeze. She felt great.

  “Thanks,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m really glad I have someone around who worries about me. Now I have to do my part and keep you safe.”

  She hugged me and looked up into my eyes. I could see her fear and worry, but she nodded.

  I grabbed her butt and gave it a squeeze. Since the first moment I laid eyes I her, I knew I wanted her beside me.

  “What were you working on at the table?” I asked.

  “The ammunition,” she said.

  “What ammunition?”

  “The one shot into you.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I put on the rest of my clothes and tested walking. I could feel the dizziness threaten my equilibrium, but less than earlier.

  “You have something to show me?” I asked Rollo.

  “Outside, yeah,” he said.

  I got the feeling he didn’t want Jen to see or hear about it. So I asked, “You’ve been searching the ship like I said?”

  “That’s right,” Rollo said.

  “Let’s go.”

  We left sickbay and walked down the corridor until we turned a corner. Then I stopped, leaning against a bulkhead as I faced him. Maybe Jen was right.

  “What do you have?” I asked.

  Rollo handed me a cardboard-thin tablet, small like a smartphone with a tiny keyboard.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I showed it to N7,” Rollo said. “He’s believes it’s a long-range communication device. The thing’s memory has a list of operable and inoperable battlejumper weapons systems.”

  I’d been turning the device over in my hands, tapping it with a fingernail. It was made of a light metallic alloy.

  I looked up. “One of the android assassins had this?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s does N7 think?”

  “That the android sent periodic updates to the Starkiens with it,” Rollo said.