“So why a human habitat? Why collection gear?”

Liss sighed heavily. She knew the peacekeepers on Vorsha weren’t going to let her go without an inspection.

“As you can see, I’m running cargo. Farm on Nivselana needs this habitat to ship their humans, needs the collection gear because humans are clever buggers. Here’s the paperwork.”

Fortunately, Xele was very good at what she did; the purchase order from the human farm on Nivselana was in perfect order, down to the credit transfers. A call to the padcode listed went to voicemail; messaging received an automated reply thanking them for their business. True, if the peacekeepers sent someone out to the farm at the address listed, the people there would be very surprised that they were suddenly in the human business, instead of growing hustanit, but then, the peacekeepers weren’t going to dig that far.

The peacekeeper grunted. “Peten, you know we’ve already searched this for contraband.”

“If you found any, let me know. I don’t want it on my ship.”

The peacekeeper shook her head. “It’s clean. Just want you to know….”

“You’re watching me. Yes, I’m aware. You’re all watching me so closely. Makes me feel all warm inside. Now, if you’ll be so kind, I’m trying to get my time bonus.”

“Your passengers decided not to disembark here?”

“They were going to hitch a ride from here to Nivgrelau anyhow. I’m saving them time.”

The peacekeeper tried to think of other legal reasons to delay. Finding none, she said, “I’ll let Valhalla know to expect you.”

“Call ahead to Nivselana, too. Valhalla’s pretty understaffed, you know.”

The peacekeeper rolled her eyes, and signaled over to the dock workers to load up the habitat.

“Pleasure as always,” Liss said.

It was less than a day to Valhalla, and the fuel run went smoothly. Valhalla itself was mostly staffed by mercs, with just a couple Imperial officers overseeing it. There were plenty of other stations like that, and most of them were terrific places to pick up side jobs, but not here. Well…that wasn’t exactly true, but to get the side jobs, you needed to know Pryvani Tarsuss well enough to have her arrange them.

It was funny, Peten thought, as they prepared for departure. So many people thought Pryvani Tarsuss was a party girl. But among the people who got down in the muck, who got dirty…none of them were fooled. They all knew someone who’d made a run somewhere for someone who was probably working for Tarsuss – but not clearly, and with plausible deniability baked in all the way up the line. She never did her own dirty work, but that didn’t mean that those who did couldn’t add two and two.

Peten thought, briefly, about ignoring the job, ignoring Margu, flying straight to the mountain and asking for a meeting. But Pryvani Tarsuss had better things to do than talk to an unindicted co-conspirator who had just barely managed to avoid prosecution.

Not because Tarsuss wouldn’t meet with someone like her. Because Tarsuss would meet with someone better at this than she.

“All right, we’re ready,” Margu said, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat. “Dizmona, you’re up.”

Xele tucked her hair behind her ears and set to work. It wasn’t simple work, mind you. She had expected there to be defense systems, and there were – but they were running on at least seven different protocols, some of which were tied to the same systems.

“This is impressive,” she said, as much to herself as anyone.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Margu said.

“Whoever put this together doesn’t trust a damn soul in the universe,” Xele replied. “It’s almost like the system is guarding against itself. Take one down…and you amp the others up.”

“Akelois, Valhalla control, you are clear to depart.”

“Can you take care of it?” Peten asked, as she prepped the engines.

“Just a moment.”

“Don’t have a moment. I need to know, now.”

“Just a moment.”

“Akelois, Valhalla control, repeat, you’re cleared to depart.”

“Frak, kid, now or never.”

“I think…maybe….”

Liss couldn’t wait. “Valhalla control, this is Akelois, just dealing with passengers, you know how it is.”

“You need a moment?”

“Thanks, but they should be okay. This is Akelois departing. All right, kid, do I have to blow out of here?”

“I’ve got Valhalla’s sensors up. They’ll see us make the jump to warp. But the orbital defenses…frak, the Dodecahedron isn’t this well-defended.”

“Making the fake jump to warp in sixty seconds….” Margu noted.

“All right. I think…the cloak won’t fool it for long. But…okay. I think I can make us look like a sensor ghost long enough to get through.”

“’Think?’”

“Look, it’s 75 percent. Maybe. I’m doing my best here, this…I’ve never seen anything like this, okay?”

Liss shook her head. “Tell me it’s eighty.”

“What?”

“Tell me I’ve got only a one-in-five chance of dying today.”

Margu looked over at Liss, and smiled slightly.

“I…sure. Eighty percent.”

“All right. Margu, set to engage cloak, access key code one-seven-seven-three-null. Kid, now.”

“Okay. I’m…okay,” Xele said. She wasn’t used to this. This wasn’t intuitive. She was trying to stay one step ahead of the code, trying to keep it guessing. She couldn’t keep all the systems from seeing them, but if she could keep the infrared sensors and the phase canons confused, keep them showing different readings…and then the gravitic sensors, she could trick them for a second…just a second….

She was sweating from the exertion. Seven different times, she saw the system starting to wake up to their presence; seven times, she threw up hexadecimal sand, blinding it to the small freighter inbound on Avalon.

She kept an eye on the altitude. The system was designed to track orbital incursions. Once they got to a thousand kilounits, they’d be safe. 1800…1600….

She fired off one last line of code, one that caused three systems to return checksum errors. They would need a few seconds to clear, and by that time….

The ship shuddered as it entered the atmosphere, and Xele finally relaxed. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, we’re through.”

“Now you just have to get us out,” Margu said. “Vilum, you ready back there?”

“The habitat is ready,” Vilum replied over ship’s comms.

“We’ll be wheels down in three minutes,” Liss said. “Remember, this is a smash and grab. Any humans who get away, whatever. Clock’s ticking the second we set down. We grab, we go.”

“We know the plan, Liss,” Margu said.

“Yeah, well, knowing the plan doesn’t mean you’ll execute it. Margu, sensors, get me a view of that habitation as soon as it’s in range.”

“Coming up over the horizon in three…two…one….”

The system brought up long-range visuals of the town. If Liss had been less focused, she might have taken time to admire it. It wasn’t a mass cluster of stray humans. It was a small city – yes, primitive, but laid out like any colonial town on any colonial world, at 1:24 scale.

“All right, we’re going to land half a kil west of the habitation. Prepare to…what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Liss blinked. Something…no, somethings. They were over the habitation. Flying…drones, maybe? Small, though. But they were….

“Shaka, attackers,” she said, turning the ship.

“What?”

“Attack craft. Look to be…they’re flying ballistically. Heavier-than-air aircraft. Non-gravitic.”

Her ship could outmaneuver them. She knew that much. She dove low, skimming the ground, daring whoever was piloting the drones to come at her.

She was closing on them fast; they were sub-sonic. She smiled. “Okay, they’re no real threat. Just some….”

Suddenly, the collision system woke up, tracking four inbound missiles.

“Never mind,” she said, turning up, trying to lose them, but each turn caused the missiles – gravitic thrust-seeking missiles – to get a better lock.

Had Liss pulled back on the throttle and pushed the ship back up into orbit, they would have made a clean getaway. The missiles were only effective if you kept trying to land.

But Liss was trying to land, so she turned away from them, and let them get close. They were reading as very small – bullet-sized, maybe, maybe smaller. They wouldn’t destroy her ship. Just dent it up a bit. She could buff it out.

Finally, the first missile found its mark, and Liss braced for the slight concussion from the explosion. But there wasn’t any.

She looked back quizzically, just in time to hear the tell-tale crackle of a detonating EMP.

By the time she heard the third crackle, the ship’s controls were dead, and they were spiraling in for a crash landing.

* * *

“Moonshot, splash one! Nice shooting, Olus!”

“Zeroes, Moonshot, cut the chatter, stay engaged. But…yeah, nice shot, Eclipse.”

“Eclipse, thanks Zeroes,” Ikinsilokagos Olys Xysai said, keeping his eyes on the target. “All fighters, target is disabled and going in uncontrolled.”

“Roger that, Eclipse, Zeroes to Paletine Forward, target is going down roughly seventy kilometers outside Paletine on a line roughly between Paletine and Mons Paletine. Recommend we bring ground forces in, they seemed pretty determined, over.”

“Roger Zeroes, this is Paletine Forward Actual. We’ll be setting forces on the double. Over.”

“Roger that, Stratichos Tarsuss,” the wing commander called. “We’ll get an exact position to you shortly. Red squadron out.”

“I should say,” Zhan continued, “that we will do so if you want us to. We do recognize….”

“If you weren’t here, we’d be in trouble,” said the Mayor of Paletine. “Joca, I owe you an apology, I think.”

The young councilor shook her head. “Mayor Calen, I’m just glad the Atlantaeans were here. Stratichos Tarsuss, I know you just have a platoon, do you need us to get our peacekeepers ready?”

“I don’t know yet, but hopefully not,” Zhan said. “With your permission, I’d like to call in reinforcements; we can have them on the ground within four hours.”

“Your mechanical transport is amazing,” Mayor Calen said. “I would never have imagined it. I must ask, Stratichos…why have you not tried to conquer us?”

Zhan smiled; Calen was a cagey leader, and that was a rather astounding admission. But given their relative strength, he was right – Paletine would have easily fallen to Atlantis.

“You left Atlantis for a reason, Mayor. We would love for you to join with us again. But not by force. So long as you are willing to live in peace with us, we will be with you. There’s been enough death.”

“The Goddess knows that’s true,” Calen said.

Yes, she does, Zhan thought.

“Please, call your soldiers in. And when this battle is done…we will discuss how to repay you.”

“I strongly doubt that will be necessary, but I appreciate it. Paletine Forward Actual, calling Wonderland Actual.”

“Stand by, Stratichos,” a voice said, followed by a brief pause, and a different voice. “This is Actual. Zhan, what’s your status?”

“Epistratichos Xanthopolous, we’ve splashed the bogey, appears to be a small cargo ship. Was definitely inbound to Paletine. Requesting you deploy two Jacks units to bolster the platoon we have in place, I want to make good and sure these idiots don’t make the citiy.”

“How far out are they?”

“Estimating 80 klicks, on a line between Paletine and Mons Paletine.”

“Roger that. We’ll deploy the Roughriders and the Roustabouts. We’ll drop them twenty klicks west-southwest of the city, signal the platoon to set up a landing area.”

“Lysis, you read my mind. Checkback in five. Paletine Forward out.”

“Wonderland out.”

“All right,” Zhan said. “Are there any farms between here and the wreckage we need to know about?”

“There’s a small village,” Joca said, looking over the ordinance map that Zhan was studying. “Cemertetus. Here, about eighty people. That’s the closest to them.”

“Right, we’ll set the perimeter outside that town. Hopefully the morons get the hint, restart their ship, and get out of here.”

“And if not?” Calen asked.

“If not,” Zhan said with a smile, “they will deeply regret that decision.”

* * *

“Is everyone in here okay?” Vilum asked, poking his head into the cockpit.

“Thanks, I’m good,” Liss said. “Kid, you all right?”

“Not asking about me?”

“No, Margu, I’m not.”

“I’m okay,” Xele said. “Was that what I thought it was?” she asked, checking her computer.

“You’ve got a cut,” Vilum said. “On your arm.”

“This is more important,” Xele said, sighing in relief. “Fraking Helios. Lucky I’ve got good insulation on the surge protector. Where the frak did they get an EMP?”

“Tarsuss must have given it to them,” Margu said. “How long until we can restart?”

“It’ll be at least an hour before we can lift off, at best,” Liss said, looking at her one working display. “Good news is that we’re wired to handle an EMP, but we’ll need some time for the system to reset before the diagnostics can come back online. I’ve got enough redundant wiring that at worst, we’ll have to reroute a few power couplings.”

“Vilum, will you check to see if the equipment made it through the landing?” Margu asked.

Vilum was busy bandaging Xele’s wound. “As soon as I’m done with this,” he said.

“We don’t have much time. If the equipment’s intact, we need to go.”

Liss stopped poking at her panel for a moment. “Wait – what? Margu, you can’t be serious. We were just forced down by an EMP that you yourself said came from Tarsuss. They have ballistic jets. Either they’re drones, which means that they’re being controlled by the Titans, or….”

“Or what?” Margu said, getting up.

“Or they’re being flown by the humans.”

Margu laughed. “Right. Pull the other one, Liss.”

“They sure looked like fighters to me,” Xele said. “Thanks, Vilum,” she added. “I mean, a drone wouldn’t be flying ballistically. At least, not with the tech Tarsuss has access to. Right?”

“Even if she’s given the humans toy jets, it means nothing. We have a job to do.”

“This job just got a hell of a lot harder than a mek run, Margu,” Liss said. “Whether they’re jets or drones, Tarsuss has to know we’re on the planet.”

“I’m sure she does! That’s why the clock’s ticking. Get the ship up and running, Liss. Xele, Vilum and I will head out on foot.”

How far are we from the city?” Liss asked.

“Half-hour’s walk, give or take, at least with the habitat in tow.” Margu said.

“Frak,” Liss said. “I’m gonna regret this. Give me fifteen minutes, I’ll go with you. If Vilum can lend me a hand, I can get the ship into its preflght reboot. By the time we get back, it’ll be ready for us to restart thrusters. But if you get us killed, Margu, I will fraking make your afterlife miserable.”

Margu smiled. “That’s the Liss I know.”