Obsolete Weapons

By Doran Eirok/Darren Robert Grafius

Originally written for NaNoWriMo, November 2004

CHAPTER 1

The first time anyone ever asked my name and I didn't feel like telling them I was 'Unit Four,' I said my name was Arcai Grid. It's not a name that really means anything; in fact I had just made it up myself a few hours previously. But it sounded good to me so I kept it. I guess that's the sort of thing you think about when you're adrift in an escape pod by yourself for an indefinite amount of time, and you don't have a name.

Of course, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. My story doesn't completely begin when I first told someone my name, although it was a rather significant early turning point. In any case, there's a good deal before my quality introspective time in that escape pod that needs to be told.

I have no memories of my life before the age of fifteen. That's normal for people like me, but it isn't something I'm particularly happy with. However, all the research I've done on the subject has told me there's no way to restore those memories once they've been that expertly wiped, so I try not to spend my time worrying about it too much. I've got all my memories since then, and I make a general habit of focusing on what my life is doing right now in the present.

That being said, my present situation wouldn't make much sense without first telling all about my past, so I suppose I'd best get to it and quit rambling on about all my random thoughts. I'll have plenty of time to do that as I go.

I was born in late October to some people somewhere that I neither know nor remember. For some reason I was sold to a specialized military school at a young age to be trained as a future soldier. These schools aren't terribly common but there are a few of them around if you know how to look. They're the sort of institution that is only barely legal so they keep a pretty low profile. What they do is take in kids when they're young and train them up using very specialized methods, so by the time they're fifteen or so they have all the training necessary to be part of nearly any type of combat unit imaginable. The school then sells its pre-packaged, microwave, just-add-water soldiers to governments or companies that want to put together some sort of military unit. They're not cheap, of course, you don't go to one of these soldier factory outlets to buy cannon fodder. You go there if you're filthy rich and don't have the time to invest in building up your own special forces unit. You just go buy it off the shelf.

Now I'm sure the other part of this that sounds not quite right to you is when I said I was sold to one of these schools. This is something that isn't terribly common these days for obvious reasons, but it does still happen. Sometimes parents just can't afford to care for all their children and the kind of money they can get for selling one is enough to pretty much make all their worries go away. There are numerous other reasons too why it might happen, but it gets pretty speculative in a hurry. It's not a particularly normal thing to be willing to sell off your children so it's hard to make guesses about the reasoning behind it. Of course, it's always possible that I never had any parents like that in the first place and was engineered and raised artificially. While that is technologically possible these days, it tends to be prohibitively expensive when compared to just buying someone's unwanted child. So the latter is what usually happens, and the likelihood is that's how my story began.

All of this I found out in bits and pieces later on, but the first actual memory I can recall is of waking up on a top bunk in a small barracks of some sort.

There were seven of us.

The other six all seemed to be waking up just as I was, blinking and looking around a little confusedly. You could see the awareness in the eyes of each one, that searching, untrusting look of a warrior in a strange place. I had it in my eyes, too. I knew hand to hand combat, I knew how to operate just about any type of firearm known to modern man, I knew how to operate several classes of atmospheric fighters and ground combat units, I knew how to navigate and pilot spacecraft, I knew military tactics. But I did not know where I was or how I got there, and I had no memory of ever actually learning any of these skills. I just knew them, the way an infant knows how to breathe. Fifteen years of knowledge and experience, distilled and packaged until it was indistinguishable from instinct.

From what my soldier's eyes could see, everyone else in the room was in the same boat. Sitting up in bunks, curling legs under ourselves to a slightly more defensive position, taking in the surroundings and learning as much as we could about the situation before moving. Our collective analysis was interrupted by an overhead speaker clicking on and a cool, male voice announcing itself to us.

"Good morning and welcome, soldiers. Right now you can't remember anything clearly and are wondering where you are, and that's all right, it is to be expected. Today is your first day. The seven of you are here to train together and form a single, solid military unit. The skills you have gained in your previous training will be focused toward this end. Get yourselves dressed and ready, and in ten minutes you will all be briefed more thoroughly on your purpose here. Welcome to Project Shadow."

We all sat there, staring up at the speaker, and then turning to stare at each other. It was unnerving how similar we all moved, how much we all mirrored each other in our timing and actions. Nearly as one, we gave a small shrug and found a locker next to each bed containing a set of clothes in simple browns and greens, as well as a tall, sturdy pair of boots for each. We all dressed ourselves agreeably, not speaking to each other, not needing to. We were soldiers, and even if we didn't know where we were and how we got here, we knew that we had been given orders. And that's all a soldier really needs.

***

To this day I remember clearly the words that speaker announced to us, although at this point it was long enough ago that the rest of my memories are a bit more blurred. Right on schedule the door to the room opened and a man led us down a brightly lit hallway to a gymnasium, and we formed a line. There were no windows and the walls were featureless and gray, offering no indication of what sort of place we were in.

It was in that gymnasium that we were given our designations, and I was assigned the noble title of 'Unit Four.' At the time I approved fully of this; we all did. It was simple and to the point, adequately efficient for a military team. We were Project Shadow, the group of us, and we didn't need individual names or identities. They would only distract us from being able to function as a single unit.

Yeah, well, we were all pretty young and agreeable then.

They put us to work, constantly drilling us in many sorts of exercises, training us with the specific equipment that we'd be working with. About half a year went by like this, and by the end of it we were a very tight group. We knew we could take on anything if we had our charge rifles and a solid formation and good leadership.

Our leadership was a broad-shouldered man who we never knew as more than Commander Barker, the cool voice who had welcomed us into the world over that speaker in the barracks. He was well suited to us; always right to business and completely no-nonsense. He was a pretty gruff fellow but we didn't mind, emotion was one of those things we didn't remember very clearly and didn't have any use for as a military unit. So it was Commander Barker and us seven soldiers that made up Project Shadow.

Thinking back on it all, it's interesting how much I never questioned. None of us ever wondered even briefly who we were actually working for, government or military, or what Project Shadow was. We just obeyed orders, doing what soldiers do.

In any case, after that half year or so was up, we moved. We got up one morning and dressed as usual, and assembled in the gym, but then Commander Barker started passing out more gear to each of us. One charge rifle, one small charge pistol, a utility belt with all sorts of random goodies, a duffel bag with a few changes of clothes, and finally a long reddish coat. The last seemed a little strange; sure it was designed well to allow for good mobility and the armored lining was a plus, but the mottled rust color seemed a bit garish. Trusting our commander dutifully though we took all these and outfitted ourselves, putting all our gear on. Commander Barker motioned for us to follow him then and we did, down the only hallway we'd ever known, past the mess hall and training rooms, and finally out a large metal doorway none of us had ever been through before.

We found ourselves in a very large hangar, housing a small space frigate in its center. The outer doors of the hangar were closed, so natural daylight was still only a shadow of an idea to us, not to be found in our memories. We were escorted onto the small gray ship through a ramp in the back, and sat on benches along either side. Commander Barker disappeared through the door to the cockpit, and after a few minutes the engines hummed to life around us. There was another, more distant mechanical whine, probably the hangar doors opening. Naturally there were no windows in our part of the ship, so we had only the sounds and feelings to guess from. We felt the ship lift into the air then on its hover fields, and start to move forward. Acceleration; slowly at first and then gaining speed more quickly. There was a pull toward the back of the craft as it began to climb, the hover engines humming loudly to either side of our cabin. A low, building roar took over as the fueled rockets ignited to push us to escape velocity, and after several minutes all the sensations of motion and gravity began to decline.

Weightlessness. The feeling of it sparked something in me, not a memory, but perhaps the shadow of one. I couldn't remember, but I knew I'd felt it before. I was also surprised in that moment to discover that I liked it. Going weightless felt free somehow, breaking free of the gravity of a world seems symbolic in a way.

An opinion. An emotion.

It gave me a good deal to think about during that trip.

CHAPTER 2

I think all of us dozed on and off as we flew toward wherever we were going. That's another thing that we had learned how to do as the perfect soldiers; we had some conscious control over our metabolism and internal workings so we could regulate just how deeply we wanted to sleep at will. Things like that. Sooner or later though, after some number of hours, there was a high pitched hum from below the deck plates somewhere and the feel of our flight changed on a barely perceptible level. That would be the spatial density modulator doing its thing, returning us to the normal proportions of space. We must be arriving at our destination. We all stirred ourselves back to full consciousness and glanced at each other.

It was an interesting dynamic between the lot of us, unlike anything I've known since. In all our time together we hardly spoke to one another, and when we did it was always the language of combat and command. We never spoke to each other about the weather or complained together about how rigorous training was. For the most part we were silent to one another, only sharing a glance here, a nod there. Anyone on the outside would think we all hated each other and were inhumanly cold to one another for how much time we spent together, but that isn't what it was about. We didn't speak because we didn't need to. The seven of us were a single organism the way an ant colony is a single organism. We didn't see ourselves as individuals, as special and unique people. Each of us was just one member of Project Shadow. Nothing more, nothing less.

The ship vibrated slightly and a low roar began to build. My instinct-knowledge told me we were in atmospheric re-entry. We all sat up a little straighter, managing to look sharp and crisp despite the long red coats we were wearing. I felt gravity returning, little by little. The low hum of the hover engines faded into hearing, and we glided along, some unknown altitude above some unknown planet.

After several more minutes we slowed and descended, until with a soft thud the landing skids touched down and we made landfall. As one we turned our heads expectantly toward the cockpit door as it slid open, and Commander Barker stepped out into our cabin. He nodded to us and then started passing out small devices to us, a small box of some sort with a series of spidery hoses leading out from it. We all puzzled over them a moment before he showed us how it worked, clipping the box to the shoulder of his coat and arranging the hoses to run across his face, plugging into his nose. We followed his example.

"The atmosphere here is breathable but the composition isn't quite what you're used to. This filter will keep you at peak performance," he explained. He then nodded and turned to face the back of the ship, touching a control panel. There was a heavy thud of the aft ramp being unlocked, and then it opened.

The wind wasn't all that strong, but the sudden sound of it compared to the silence of the cabin when it had been sealed made it seem like a hurricane roar. The next thing that was immediately apparent through the opening doorway was a reddish glow, and suddenly our garish coats made perfect sense. The ramp descended to rest against the ground, which appeared to be a metallic landing platform with red dust blowing over it. The Commander started down the ramp, his tall boots echoing on the metal deck of the ramp as he motioned for us to follow. We stood up and did so, walking down onto the landing platform behind him.

To our credit we managed to keep our composure quite well and stayed looking like a well-trained military unit, even as we looked around like rural folk coming to a huge city for the first time.

I'll never forget that moment.

Our small, gray boxy shuttle was already taking on a slightly reddish tinge from the blowing dust in the air. I had to squint to keep it from going in my eyes. The landing platform was a large metal circle, flashing blue lights marking the edges. Ahead of us was a cluster of connected buildings, crafted of a simple and robust architecture designed to be built quickly and then withstand harsh elements. They were all the same color of dull metal covered with rust-colored dust, exactly the color of our coats. Beyond the buildings, and as far as the eye could see in all other directions, an endless expanse of rolling red dunes strewn with small rocks dominated every horizon. Overhead, a large, single sun of a dull gold color was the highlight of an otherwise featureless sky of a duller gold.

It wasn't exactly pretty by most people's definitions, but to us it was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. The first time we'd ever been outside, the first time we'd seen anything natural, the first time we'd seen sunlight.

Commander Barker let us take in the view for a moment, and then motioned for us to follow as he led us toward the buildings. We entered the nearest through an airlock, and once inside the Commander removed the filter from over his nose. The rest of us followed suit and continued after him as he led us deeper into the compound, showing us first to a small barracks, largely similar to the other one we'd been used to. He left us there to rest up for a while and recover from our trip, and then came back to summon us a few hours later. And thus began the second part of our training.

The compound's gymnasium and training facilities were quite similar to what we knew from before, so we spent some time each day going over the usual drills, keeping all of our training solid in our minds. The highlight of my military career though was when we started learning to pilot the Agile Combat Robots.

Now, you must understand. Agile Combat Robots, or ACR's, may just be the most fun thing that the human species has ever devised. You have a robot that's roughly humanoid in shape; two legs, two arms, a head. Except that it's very big, and you pilot the thing sitting inside the head. Strap as much firepower as the ACR's weight allowance, power output, and cooling capabilities will let you, and go have some fun.

The general idea has been visited many times in old science fiction stories, always as a fun and larger-than-life way to conduct a battle. As machine systems became more and more advanced through time, creative engineers who watched too many cartoons started wondering if there was actually something to the idea, and the experiments began. What is the advantage of piloting a giant humanoid robot, anyway? One of the longest standing arguments has been that something with legs is a lot more versatile at dealing with rugged terrain than something with wheels or treads, but it also is rather less stable in obvious ways. If the legs are taken out, the ACR topples and is essentially helpless. It's harder to do that to a tank or something, and while a tank can't move nearly as fast as an ACR, it has a lot fewer intricate moving parts that need to be serviced and maintained.

As far as building, servicing, and maintenance goes, the evolution of technology eventually diminished those problems until it was reasonable to mass produce giant humanoid robots. All the internal workings could be automatically regulated and serviced until they didn't require a great deal more specialized maintenance than a tank or even a common freight truck, as long as you kept on top of things. So with the greatest economic issues of building and maintaining them solved, the remaining concerns were just in the theory itself, whether or not there was any real use for robots like these.

What sold the argument finally was the growing popularity of implants. In an increasingly data-driven world, people wanted ways to communicate with the computer systems around them at the speed of thought. Technology and the anatomy of the human brain came together and crafted a small device that could be surgically installed into the base of a person's skull and wired into their brain, leaving a small, unobtrusive data port on the back of the neck. The person could then plug into pretty much any computer device and share and store data as fast as they could think it. At first the technology was simple and extremely expensive, only for the super rich, very specialized employees of large corporations, and of course the military. The story's so old now that it's obvious; give it a few more years and technology got better and cheaper, to the point where these days most affluent people have an implant because it's just so much more convenient. Anything you can do on a personal computer you can do in your own head now with just a thought, as well as communicating your very thoughts into a computer. Needless to say the gaming industry exploded when implants became commonplace, because what's more immersive than just plugging the game into the back of your neck and being able to experience it with all your senses like you're really there, and have the game react to your every thought?

The connection with Agile Combat Robots is along these lines, interestingly enough. While any ACR has some basic manual steering controls that'll get you by in a pinch, they're designed to be operated entirely by thought. You sit yourself in the cockpit and jack in. Suddenly you aren't your normal human self sitting in the cockpit chair, you are the robot. When you think about moving your legs and walking, the ACR walks. When you move your arm, instead of playing with the padded armrest the ACR raises its massive metal arm. If you want to see something behind you, the ACR's head is fixed but it patches you into an aft sensor as fast as you can think it. In effect, the ACR emulates the movement and capabilities of a human being, as precision-designed by nature itself, and is controlled directly by thought. This makes it faster and more dynamic than a tank or even an aircraft could ever hope to be.

The next obvious step is to emulate other creatures with different capabilities suited to different tasks, but so far humanoid ACR's are the most common by far. The development and use of them has been pretty sporadic because they're so specialized. In the age where it's possible to lay waste to an entire planet from orbit, there aren't a lot of applications for specialized ground combat. They do pop up here and there though, just enough to keep the market for ACR's open but not enough to drive a particularly intense research and development industry.

So that's pretty much the background on them. ACR's are a strange quirk that always seem like they shouldn't really have any reason to exist, but every so often something comes along for which an ACR is the ideal solution. Additionally there's a small but rabid underground following of ACR pilots who swear by them and wouldn't give up ACR combat for every interstellar war cruiser in existence. I've been accused more than once of belonging to such a following myself.

***

Hey, I warned you that I'd ramble. Anyway, before we could get moving on any more than the basics with ACR's, we all needed implants. All of us already had basic ones in our head; they were pretty standard at the military schools that we'd came from. The kind of experience that makes somebody good at something still comes from actually doing it a lot, but it does make teaching the essentials rather efficient if you can just download it directly into the brains of your students. So we all had them, but the powers that be behind Project Shadow wanted us to have better ones. We all underwent some surgery to have our basic implants replaced with some sort of special model that our superiors had developed, and after a few days the difference became clear during our drills.

By stimulating certain parts of the brain to do certain things, send certain messages to the body, and release certain chemicals, our new implants effectively made us capable of more. We could be stronger than most people, move faster, last longer. Chemicals like adrenaline and a bunch of others I'd need a medical degree to remember the names of could be regulated to an extent by our implants, so we gained more conscious control over just how far we could push our bodies.

It made us a stronger, faster, more durable fighting team, so we decided it was a good thing.

Once we'd gotten used to the new mechanics of our bodies, we started on the Robots in earnest. We were taken to a large machinery bay where eight ACR's were lined up, one for each of us and one for Commander Barker, all shiny new and ready for action. They looked basically humanoid in shape with a few noteworthy differences. The head was disproportionately large so that the pilot could fit inside without the ACR needing to be around ten stories tall. Instead they were closer in height to two or three. Also, the head was set down into the torso of the machine so that the most obvious target wasn't quite so exposed. The rest of the frame was a little on the beefy side to make it more robust and allow for the thick armor they carried, and the end result looked a little like a cross between an angry dwarf and an angry linebacker.

We each climbed up the ladder rungs set into the back of the units and climbed in. The cockpit was pretty cramped, but most of the time you spent in an ACR you’d have your awareness outside the unit anyway. We plugged the data cables into the back of our necks and strapped ourselves in, and waited.

CHAPTER 3

We watched through the narrow cockpit windows as Commander Barker's ACR rose from its resting crouch with a chorus of mechanical whirring. The machine plodded over and turned to face all of us, and a voice was transmitted into the backs of our heads by way of the Robots' radio comlink.

"The theory behind operating these machines you already know, so I don't need to explain everything to you. Jack in, run basic systems checks, then power up and stand your ACR's up. Be careful and slow about it. Even soldiers with your training can mess up and topple over, and I don't need to remind you what a bad thing that is."

Having your ACR fall over was the worst thing that could happen to a pilot. You could right yourself easily enough, but the fall could cause damage to the ACR and injury to the pilot, and getting back on your feet wasted time in battle and left you pretty exposed. The fact that the Commander reminded us to be extra careful, even knowing our skills, was a testament to how serious an issue it was.

Jacking in essentially involved thinking and sending the message from your brain to the ACR's computer that you wanted to establish a full link. I did this, and my perception faded to the external sensors. Even while jacked in you were just a thought away from returning your awareness to your own body, and it's not like the ACR takes over your entire mind. If your body gets an itch while you're piloting the robot, you still feel it.

I told the ACR to give me a system check, and it did so. The reactor started to power up with a low hum, somewhere beneath me in the torso, and I was informed that it was operating within normal parameters. Coolant levels and systems were all in top shape, all joints and related machinery was fully functional. Communications and navigation were good, and then of course there were the weapons systems. The fun part.

My ACR, like everyone else's, had dual pulse cannons on either wrist and a medium-range tactical missile rack on either shoulder. Shoulders and wrists were where weapons tended to get put on most ACR's, and in general they were customizable so you could outfit them for whatever specific mission you happened to be running. The combination of pulse cannons and missile racks that ours sported was a pretty standard armament; well-rounded and nasty.

The systems check only took a few seconds, and when it was finished I started to raise my ACR out of its resting crouch. I did so with the care it was due, and my fellow soldiers did the same beside me. To our credit we all stood up smoothly and without incident, the sounds of eight giant robots echoing in the large room.

"Good," came the Commander's voice over the comlink. He usually would just nod in approval, but the head didn't move on an ACR. He turned to face the large door of the bay and waved a metallic arm for us to follow him. The large doors creaked as they unlocked and began to slide apart, revealing the reddish glow of whatever this planet was. Some of the rust colored dust blew into the bay as we followed the Commander's ACR out into the blowing winds, until the doors closed slowly behind us.

The first several days we spent just walking around, getting used to the feel of piloting our machines. Eventually we moved on to practicing combat formations, weapons training, and finally some practice skirmishes between ourselves. ACR training began to take up most of our time for the next several months, and by the end of it we had a solid feel for ACR combat, specific to the terrain of this world. We were smooth, we were efficient, and we were deadly. We were Project Shadow, and we were starting itch a little for an enemy to engage with our skills.

***

When we'd been on the red world for about six months, making all of us about one year old in terms of our memories and sixteen in terms of our bodies, we got our wish. Commander Barker told us the time had come to put our training to use, and we strapped our belongings to the inside of our ACR cockpits and set out across the red gravel. Our caravan lasted the better part of a day with only a few brief stops, and close to nightfall we arrived at a small camp with a single, small and hastily-constructed building. We parked our ACR's for the night, and the Commander told us that the following day we'd be raiding an enemy installation. The intelligence he showed us in the morning indicated they had a few tanks and some stationary cannon turrets, but nothing too dangerous to a well-trained ACR strike force like us. We were to eliminate the defenses and then capture the installation, whatever it was. After a thorough mission briefing we were off, ready and eager to face our first real combat.

In the end it pretty much was as easy as we had expected it to be. The turrets were taken out with missiles before we ever got in range of them, and we literally ran circles around the tanks and infantry and laid down fire until they had all been disabled or surrendered. A short while after the battle was over, several large trucks pulled up and started offloading men and equipment. Allies of ours, taking over the work from us now that the battle was done. The Commander didn't let us stick around to watch, ushering us back to the camp. We were just soldiers, what happened after we were done wasn't our concern.

I felt something this time, however, something a little different, something deep inside. At the time I dismissed it, but thinking back it might have been the beginning of a small feeling of indignation.

That mission was the beginning of a campaign that took us far and wide over our red world. Most of our missions tended to be similar to that first one, strike missions that involved neutralizing the resistance of a small outpost as efficiently as possible. As the months progressed and we got deeper into what seemed to be a small war, the missions got a bit harder as our enemies toughened up their security. We started coming up against other ACR's, but clearly not with pilots that had had our level of training. We also seemed to be getting deeper into enemy territory where the defenses were more well-established, but we adapted and honed our skills quickly enough that it never remained much of a challenge to us. A few of our team took hits occasionally, but never enough to make any real difference through the thick armor of our machines. All in all, the plain simple truth was that we were damn good and we knew it.

It went on like that for almost another year, until I was somewhere around the age of seventeen. It was, oddly enough, one of the happiest times in my life. It doesn't take very much to be happy when you have the kind of standards that we did. All we wanted was to follow orders and be victorious, which were two things we did very well. That made us rather easy to please.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that it would all fall apart sooner or later.

CHAPTER 4

It was night, and we were all sleeping rather soundly after another battle that day. We were sleeping in the barracks of the small equipment relay facility we had just taken, and outside a small army of people were working late into the night. Engineers and technicians, most of them, but all we had been told was that they were our allies, part of the people we worked for. Commander Barker generally kept us away from them so we never had much chance to determine what they were actually doing, though for the most part they seemed to be simply repairing the facility we had taken and restocking it for their own use. Whatever that use was, of which we didn't have the first clue. But it was okay, were just happy to be following orders and we didn't care what we were actually fighting for.

At least most of us didn't.

Feelings had been stirring within me on a deep and subtle level for the past several months. There was never anything specific, just the odd pang of some emotion or another at seemingly random times with no reason I could find. I'd started having dreams more recently, in the past few weeks. I seldom remembered them, but when I did they were just feelings, and reminded me of what I'd felt breaking the gravitational pull of our first planet. That feeling I'd gotten, like I was breaking free of something, rising up, growing. It wasn't the sort of feeling that really fit in with being a mindless and obedient soldier, so I think those dreams were part of what made me start to question things a little. Start to wake up.

That said, it wasn't any bold act of defiance or noble quest for freedom that made me stumble upon what I did that night. Instead it was the not-particularly-noble problem of having just woken up from another dream I didn't remember, coupled with the entirely un-noble problem of having a full bladder.

Hopping down from my bunk I walked to the washroom adjoining the barracks we were staying in. There wasn't anything particularly exciting about what I did in there, until I became aware of quiet voices echoing down on me from above. Not being an overly religious person it didn't take me long to realize that the voices I heard were traveling through the ventilation duct that had an opening in the washroom ceiling. It was hard to be certain where the voices were coming from exactly, but it didn't really matter. I kept silent and listened, curiously.

"Are you certain? You know what this could mean, don't you? What we'd have to do? We have to be absolutely certain of the danger before we do anything; we've invested far too much." That was Commander Barker, though it took me a moment to place the voice when he actually spoke with emotion. It sounded like worry, which was hard for me to accept on a very fundamental level.

"Well there's no way to be completely certain, if we had that kind of certainty we could eliminate the threat. But what evidence we can find points to it. There's a leak, and the word could get out of what we've been up to here." I didn't know this voice, but it had my attention. A leak? A spy? Someone taking secrets about Project Shadow to our enemies?

"We can't let that happen."

"It could happen, Gerald. And we have to be ready. Rumors are one thing, but if the Justice Council gets convinced to launch an investigation and they find evidence of the project, we'll all go down. Hard."

Gerald. It was hard to imagine our steadfast and gruff Commander Barker as a Gerald, for some reason, despite my lack of basis for comparison. But what I found more interesting was this mention of the Justice Council. That didn't make sense. I knew in that un-memory instinct of mine that the Justice Council was a government department. I began to consider the possibility that Project Shadow, and whatever entity was directing it, was perhaps not exactly a legal operation. I could almost feel my mind growing, hungry for more, hungry for purpose and reason and explanation.

"I've invested so much in this project. We all have. We can't just kill... we can't just destroy the evidence. Not after all the time and money we've poured into this. And we're so damned close, too! The Heps only have a few outposts left over the formation and their defensive units are down to nearly nothing. Another week and we'll have forced them out of the sector altogether. Two years of work, and we're one week away from seeing it completed."

"I know, dammit!" The other fellow was getting pissed off now, but kept his voice low. "I've invested as much time and effort as you have and I don't like this either. But we have to consider the possibility that it will be necessary. If this all gets out to the public and the Council sends an investigation here, and if they find all of this... if they find them... we're through, it's all over. A lot more than just two years' work."

Barker was silent for a while. I heard a low sigh. "Hell," he grumbled darkly.

"I know. Hopefully it won't come to that, but we have to be ready. For now we'll just keep moving as planned."

Barker grunted softly, and I heard footsteps, growing slowly more quiet. "I need a drink," he grumbled. And then I couldn't hear them anymore.

I just stood there for several minutes, not moving, not making a sound. Eventually I gathered my wits and came back out of the washroom, returning to my bunk. Everyone else seemed sound asleep. No one had heard any of that but me.

What was Project Shadow? What were we a part of? Who were we working for? Who were we fighting against? I'd heard our commander start to use the word 'kill.' I had a sinking feeling I knew who he was talking about, and just what this 'evidence' was, but I couldn't be sure of anything. My mind was awake now, searching, questioning.

I didn't sleep the rest of that night. There was no way I could. Having your mind suddenly awake like that, questioning and examining everything you've been through for two years wasn't exactly something you slid right into easily. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what was going on. I had only begun to realize that things were much more complex than I’d ever realized, and that our lives may be in danger from more than just our enemies.

The conversation I'd overheard became the source of a lot of frantic, desperate pondering over the next several days. There was a growing paranoia within me now, a realization that we might all be betrayed and murdered sometime in the next several days. I also realized that that one conversation might be the only clue I would get, and I had to figure out as quickly as possible what it all meant if I wanted to survive.

CHAPTER 5

The next day we set off for another battle, and it proved to be our biggest one yet. We were in our ACR's from sunrise nearly until sunset, circling around a large enemy compound, feinting and retreating, charging and fighting. Unit Six actually got the left arm shot off his ACR, the closest thing to a casualty we'd had so far, but he himself was fine. I got a few scorch marks myself, but ACR armor is built to last.

It was probably the hardest battle we'd yet had to fight, and we were exhausted and proud of ourselves when we finally won through. This compound was the largest we'd yet taken and had every sign of being some sort of regional command center. We'd taken something big. I kept thinking back to what I'd overheard. The Commander had talked about us being close to the end of something, the enemy only having a few outposts left. I wondered how close we were to this, if this was perhaps even the last stronghold that we had just taken.

Of course, he'd also said something about killing us to destroy evidence, so that was getting most of my thought.

I had to start with what I knew. I knew from the memories I no longer had that there was a central government that generally let private companies and colonial councils do their own thing, but had some regulatory and planning functions. I knew that the Justice Council was a department of this government that dealt with the investigation and prosecution of corporations and institutions that were guilty of illegal practices. I knew that Commander Barker and whoever he had been talking to were worried about something being discovered by the Justice Council and the general public, and that someone was feared to be in a position that they could leak evidence out that would incriminate them. And I knew that Barker and whoever else he was working with or for was considering the possibility of destroying evidence to cover their butts if they had to.

The rest was speculation. Commander Barker spent pretty much all his time with us, so I doubted he had any other major projects going on and it stood to reason that the project he was so worried about having discovered was Project Shadow. I didn't know how much fell under the description of Project Shadow beyond our small unit, but my best guess was still that we were the main part of it. I didn't know who was in charge of Project Shadow, who we were fighting for and to what end, but reason seemed to point toward the likelihood that it was some organization or institution that was up to something illegal. Project Shadow itself was an illegal act, somehow, and Barker's worry was that the Justice Council would found out about it.

Which left the last bit of speculation, the one that was the biggest leap and worried me the most. The thought that we ourselves, the soldiers of Project Shadow, were the 'evidence' Barker had said they might have to destroy. When he started to say 'kill' and then rephrased it.

Any way I thought about it, that still seemed like the most likely possibility. Depending on how things turned out with this leak they were worried about, the seven of us might be looking at our deaths very soon at the hands of those we served.

I kept my eyes and ears open over the next couple days, taking in everything I saw and trying to match it with what I knew and what I had speculated, and keeping alert for anything else I might overhear. It didn't do a great deal of good; Barker did a thorough job of keeping us separated from anything that was going on that we weren't directly involved with. However, I did think I noticed a number of subtle things in the people around us when there was anyone. The engineers, what I saw of them, always seemed a bit agitated and nervous. Freight carriers parked in the compound weren't completely unloaded, and all the ground and air vehicles we saw always seemed to be ready to leave on short notice. There was that air of alertness and uncertainty about the place, and it only solidified my worries.

Two days after the battle for the compound, Commander Barker woke us and told us we were done here on this red world. We would leave our ACR's here and get on a transport shuttle that would take us to our next assignment. We all packed our bags and dressed ourselves, filing out to a landing deck.

Somehow I just knew that this was it. My fears had been correct, and we weren't being taken to another assignment. We were being taken somewhere to die.

There was little I could do besides keep alert, though. A shuttle was waiting for us out on the deck, identical to the one that had brought us to this world a year and a half before. Barker filed us straight into the cabin of it from our barracks, not giving us much chance to look around or think about what was going on. I considered making a dash for it right then, but my options really didn't seem good. We were right in the middle of the compound and there were armed guards all around. Supposedly they were just standing watch, but the way their eyes followed us I was pretty sure they knew what was going on and had instructions to shoot us if it looked like we suspected our fate. I wondered if the other soldiers noticed. They were all as smart and observant as I was, but the difference was that they hadn't overheard what I did the other night and didn't suspect what was going on. They weren't looking for the signs like I was.

Truthfully I had thought of trying to tell the others, that we might all find a way out together. But I didn't, because I knew how they thought. I knew what I would have thought if a single one among us had stepped up and told us they had overheard something like I had. If I had no proof of my own, and someone spoke of mutiny. If I had spoken of it, they would have turned on me. That wasn't fear; that was certainty.

If I thought I could make it to my ACR I probably would have risked bolting for it, but the positions of the guards, the layout of the compound, and the lack of cover were all against me. We were all pretty close together too, and if, or when, I suddenly decided to make a move, the other soldiers would obediently turn on me, not sure what I was up to but certainly not trusting that it was any good. So I waited, not certain if I had just missed the only chance I might get, but telling myself that trying to take control of the shuttle later on could give me a better chance at success. Once we were in flight I only had the contents of the shuttle to worry about. It would be a smaller battlefield where I'd have better knowledge and control over all the factors.

We sat on the benches along either side of the cabin, and Commander Barker came up the ramp along with a pilot for the shuttle, and closed the ramp. He didn't look at any of us as he walked to the cockpit, taking off his breathing filter. He closed the door behind him, closing off our view of the only windows on the craft, and before long the engines began to hum and we were lifting off the ground.

I was thinking very fast now, trying to figure out how they were likely to do it. They'd have to dispose of our bodies somehow, and empty space offered a lot of convenient options for this. Sure enough, we climbed higher and higher until the fueled engines began to fire, lifting us toward space.

It would have to be something that would get all of us at once. They couldn't just shoot each of us; that would give us a chance to fight back. Given how the door to the cockpit sealed, gas of some sort was my best guess. So I had to figure out what signs there would be, how I'd know when I needed to act.

The shuttle had a single escape pod, at the aft of the ship right next to the ramp. The way I saw it I had two options. One was to try and take control of the shuttle, but I realized that would involve having to fight every single person who was on it with me. The other choice was the escape pod. It was on the opposite side of the ship from me and I was one seat from the back of the craft on the port side. Without any resistance I estimated it would take me about two steps to get to the hatch after leaping up from the bench. I didn't think I would be quite that lucky, but of the two options, fighting a few people and getting the hell off that ship sounded preferable.

I started planning as I sat there, the ship climbing higher and higher and gravity beginning to lessen. I had to do something to disable the ship, or time it right so there was enough confusion on board to let me escape. I wouldn't do myself a lot of good if they just shot up my escape pod as soon as I cleared the shuttle. Even a little transport like this was bound to have at least one small pulse cannon.

We all still had our pistols on our belts. Letting us stay armed was risky for the Commander and the pilot, but they probably figured that disarming us would seem strange enough to us that we'd get alarmed. This was both good and bad for me, because while I had my gun, everyone else who would be trying to stop me had one too.

The plan I finally settled on was still a huge risk, but it would have to do. I sat there quietly, showing nothing on the outside, just relaxing, but my mind was prepared to move my body into action at any moment. Everything hinged around my estimates of how fast I could move, and how fast I thought everyone else could react.

There was no gravity now. It could happen at any moment. Just waiting.

Waiting.

The door to the cockpit clicked and slid open. My finger twitched a little but I remained where I was, looking over to the front of the ship. Commander Barker was standing in the doorway, the cockpit window showing black space behind him. He glanced around, looking at all of us.

What the hell was he doing?

"I want to tell you all that you did a superb job. All the work you've done has been terrific, smooth, and efficient. You should all be proud. It's been nothing but an honor serving with all of you this far."

Oh. He was clearing his conscience because he was about to kill all of us. Well, that was really sweet. Group hug. Asshole.

Still, I had to give him some credit. He cared about us and wasn't happy with what he had to do. It did make me a little sorry that he had to die.

The other soldiers looked a little surprised, but then smiled gently, proudly. Poor bastards. It was a pretty neat sentiment from the Commander, if you removed the part that he was about to kill us.

He smiled gently at all of us, then turned to go back into the cockpit. This was it, I knew it. The cockpit door slid closed, and then I heard what I'd been waiting for. That extra click that was the lock being engaged.

And I moved.

Now, I should clarify a few things. The way our implants work, manipulating the body's chemicals to make us stronger and faster, there are conscious and unconscious levels to it. When we really get into battle and everything's happening so fast, we slip into this kind of 'battle mode.' We let our instincts and our training take over, and we just go without really thinking about it. We set an objective and then just let our bodies go to it.

It's also worth mentioning that firing a charge pistol inside a small shuttle in deep space is generally agreed to be incredibly suicidal.

I leapt up, already propelling myself toward the escape pod. As I stood I threw off my long red coat to act as a distraction, reaching down with my right hand to draw my pistol. I turned my body so I was still moving toward the pod but facing the front of the ship. I aimed and pulled the trigger.

The first bullet squarely hit the door to the cockpit. So did the next three. I was at the door to the escape pod and I hit the panel to open it. I heard startled curses of surprise from the far side of the door, and it slid open. At least they wouldn't be pumping poison gas into the cabin just yet.

The other soldiers all gave a start and took a split second to start reacting. Unit Two was the one sitting right beside the escape pod, so naturally he was the one who got in my way. He threw himself at my waist as I reached the escape pod, trying to tackle me and knock me over. That was the most logical move for him given his position, so I was ready for it. I managed to twist and move backward, using my left hand to shove him to the side so that most of the force from his tackle was redirected around me. It still did serve to move me away from the hatch though, and Unit Five was on his feet now and drawing his gun.

It was the only thing I could do. My gun was already out and pointing roughly in that direction, so I aimed and landed a shot between his eyes. I dove for the hatch as his body floated limply, shoving it toward the front of the craft and into the path of the others rising to stop me.

Then I was in the pod. I punched the panel to close the hatch, and it slammed shut. Unit Seven's head appeared in the small window, glaring at me. Not stopping for an instant, I flung myself into the seat and slammed the red ignition button.

Not having taken the time to buckle my restraints I was flung against the door as the pod shot away from the shuttle. It shrank rapidly as I watched, pushing myself back into the chair and buckling the harness. The ship just hung there in space, and now came my real gamble. Any moment it might turn toward me and fire, and it would all be over. But it just hung there.

There was a flash visible through the cockpit window. Gunfire. Gunfire coming from the cockpit, at that. Which probably meant either the pilot or Barker. They must be panicking, trying to kill off the soldiers right then. I saw more flashes then as the ship became smaller and smaller, a different angle on them suggesting they were coming from the cabin. There was a battle going on in there, and with that much gunfire on that small a ship it didn't seem like a good place to be.

I flicked on the magnifier, and the view out the small window was replaced by a display showing a close up of the ship, compensating for my increasing distance from it. There was a ragged, bright blue flash from the shuttle windows, then a dull blue flickering glow. It looked like firelight in the wrong color. The crossfire must have finally hit one of the power conduits. The way the light was flickering like the fire was blowing also indicated... yes, the cockpit window had been breached by at least one bullet. The shuttle was losing atmosphere, so it was only a battle between the vacuum of space and the reactor fire to see which would finish the job.

The reactor fire won. There was a bright flash and the magnifier automatically switched off to avoid burning out the imagers. Through the window I saw a silent, blinding flare envelop the starboard engine, dying then to a flicker. The reactor had burned out, and taken a good portion of the hull with it. There wasn't a massive explosion that blasted the ship to bits, which was just as good for me. Debris at that speed would make short work of my escape pod just as sure as a pulse cannon would. So when these kinds of engines went critical they tended to do what that one just had; flaring up as the internal chain reaction went spiraling out of control, burning and melting the engine and the ship around it until there wasn't enough of the reactor left to keep the reaction going. What was left was a broken, charred, lifeless shell drifting in space. Chances were all the people still alive when it went had been incinerated in an instant to something barely identifiable as organic material.

And I was the only one left.

Just me, in an escape pod, in the middle of God-knows-where.

It wasn't that much of a stretch to say that I'd killed them all, the pilot, Commander Barker, and the rest of Project Shadow. Eight people. Seven of which were the only people I had any memory of ever knowing in my life.

I wondered what kind of person that made me.

I told myself that if I'd done nothing, they'd all still be dead anyway, just that the pilot and Commander Barker would be alive still instead of me. It helped a little, but not much.

I was alone, completely. For the first time in my memory. I was no longer a soldier, I was no longer a unit of Project Shadow. I had no orders to follow. I had no team to belong to. It was just me. Unit Four. A number, not a name, and even that now meant nothing.

I let myself feel, no longer having any reason not to. I let the emotions awaken within me, emotions that I had been born with but were repressed during my unremembered conditioning and then buried during the last two years as being useless. I let them all out, let myself feel the full range of everything I should have felt in the last two years but didn't.

I must have sobbed for hours.

***

I laughed, too. At everything and nothing. I felt everything I could in that cramped pod with only the black of space to keep me company out the window. With only the soft blue emergency light to illuminate the pod, I could see the brighter stars outside, turning slowly as my pod rotated lazily, drifting through nothing.

***

I withdrew into myself, slowing my metabolism to preserve myself. The rations and energy they pack on escape pods like this are generally estimated to last twenty days. I reckoned I could push thirty if I was careful enough about it.

I could watch the hours tick by if I wanted to; my implant was capable of sending signals which my brain interpreted as a green display at the corner of my vision. But watching that too much would just drive me insane, so I tried not to. I spent a lot of time thinking, wondering if I'd done the right thing, guessing at more of the conspiracy that had created me, wondering who I really was and how much I wanted to go through my whole life as 'Unit Four.' I also thought a little about if I ever was found and picked up by anyone before I died, what I would tell them.

***

Light. I opened my eyes and squinted as a particularly bright star drifted across the window. Except that it was growing brighter, and moving against the rest of the starfield.

A ship.

It came closer and closer, revealing itself as a long, aged but sleek looking craft polished to a dark silver. What looked like the bridge was streamlined and had a docking port beneath it. As it came closer and started to pass over the top of my pod, I could see that behind the bridge section was a long, rotating cylinder that accounted for maybe half the overall length of the ship. It was a frigate small enough to land in an atmosphere but large enough to have its own artificial gravity. The last part of the ship to drift over me was more boxy and flanked by two long, angular engines. Power systems and cargo holds, no doubt.

The ship passed overhead, leaving my view out the window. A moment later I felt a gentle lurch as my pod was grabbed by the ship's magnetic beam. No doubt they were bringing me into their cargo bay.

I couldn't really tell myself that I was being rescued and I should be happy, because I had no idea who these people were and what they were likely to do with me. But it still felt good, being found by someone. I'd had about enough of the loneliness of empty space. A brief query to my internal clock told me it had been twenty three days.

The edges of a cargo bay door came into view, closing around me. It was like being swallowed backwards by some great beast when all you could see was the mouth you had just disappeared down. There was a dull thud as the pod was set down on the floor of the cargo bay and magnetic clamps were switched on to hold it in place. The cargo bay doors closed and locked before me, and a small display inside the pod told me that air was being pumped into the room. When it had reached safe levels, I still waited a little. For one thing, I figured whoever commanded this ship would be here to meet me shortly. For another thing, I was exhausted.

After a moment I saw movement outside the pod. I undid my restraints, and pressed the button to release the hatch. The doorway slid to the side, revealing two people.

Standing right in front of me with his legs apart and a hand resting on a large pistol at his side was a man who looked to be getting on in his years but still appeared healthy. He was clean shaven and had shoulder length gray hair, and was wearing jeans and a light sweater. Behind him and to his right was a girl looking to be about seventeen with brown hair slightly longer than his. She wore a t-shirt, black jeans, and tall boots that came up to her thighs. She was also holding a small pistol at her side. Both of them looked wary but not hostile. Just cautious, as I would no doubt be in their position.

"Well, looks like you've been through some hell. What's your story, eh?" asked the man.

I called on the fiction I'd devised, one of many things I'd had time to think about while adrift in space. My voice croaked just a little with my first attempt; I coughed and tried again. "I was one of the crew on a small freight shuttle. One of our power conduits caught fire somehow and it killed everyone else. I managed to make it to the pod just barely, and saw the reactor go critical and burn out just after I bailed."

The man nodded softly and gave a quiet, noncommittal grunt. To me it seemed to say 'I think you might be full of crap but we'll sort that out later.' He extended a hand to me, offering to help me out of the pod. I took it, nodding gratefully and climbing out. I steadied myself against the doorway of the pod as I let my boots find the magnetized deck of the cargo bay. With a little metal in the soles of your boots it made a reasonable system for pretending there was gravity.

"We're freelance freight haulers if you're wondering. This is my ship, the Kingfisher. Welcome aboard." He offered a smile, and shook my hand. I shook his, returning the smile as best I could. I realized I'd never really smiled before in my memory.

He started walking down the bay, toward the rest of the ship. I followed him, the girl holstering her gun and falling in beside me. "My name's Carver Tellurian," the man said. "This is my daughter Sera." I turned and nodded softly to her, trying that smile thing again. She nodded back at me, smiling lightly herself. "What's your name?" Carver asked.

"Arcai Grid," I told him.

CHAPTER 6

I followed the man called Carver across the bay to a ladder, and the three of us climbed it. Passing the small engine room took us to a circular hatchway that opened on a long cylindrical tunnel.

"We should take you to our medical bay and have a look at you. You seem well enough considering what you've been through, but we should check everything out just in case. Won't take long, and we'll set you up in some quarters afterward. I imagine you're well ready for a shower and a bed you can stretch out in."

I nodded, seeing no reason to argue the point. The last bit was true enough. I felt like hell and my entire body was sore, even in zero gravity. Escape pods were made to save your butt, not to keep you at the peak of health. The risk of atrophy was rather small compared to being able to save your life at all from the myriad horrors that space travel could offer. The smaller escape pods were, the more able you were to fit at least one on small shuttles, or extra ones on larger ships. Muscle damage and malnutrition were things that could be dealt with after you got rescued, but the conditions in the escape pod only needed to be enough to keep you alive.

The three of us filed into the tunnel and glided down it, pushing every so often on the hand rails. When we got to a break in the tunnel there were three ladders leading outward, down shafts that led away from the central corridor. The shafts were slowly rotating around our tunnel, leading outward or down, depending on how you looked at it, into the rotating canister of artificial gravity. Carver led me down one, the outward pull slowly increasing as we went. It always seemed awkward to start following a ladder like that feet first, but by the time you got to the end of it there was about the normal amount of gravity that you'd find on an earth-sized planet. So you went feet first in order to avoid landing on your head.

Sera still took up the rear as we walked down a narrow hallway, Carver leading us into a cramped room with a medical table. I stumbled once in the hallway, my muscles regarding the artificial gravity after 23 days without it with an attitude of you've-got-to-be-kidding-me. Sera caught my arm and kept me from falling all the way, which I appreciated. It reassured me that she wasn't just heading up the rear so she could shoot me in the back the first time I did something suspicious. The friendly smile she offered reassured me further. She had a sort of aura about her that just marked her as a friendly person, one of those people you could trust and not have to worry about. I found myself wondering how long I'd be around on this ship.

Both of them helped me to stretch out on the med table, and Carver tapped at a console beside it for a moment. There was a soft hum and a few lights came on overhead, the scanner array doing its thing. I kept still, sighing and closing my eyes for a moment. The scan only took about ten seconds, and Carver nodded. "Everything looks fine. You're in remarkably good shape considering. Just a little dehydration and the beginnings of some muscle atrophy, usual stuff for a long haul in a pod. Ease your body back into it, don't eat a fifteen course meal or run a marathon for a few weeks. Drink plenty of water. Other than that, take a shower and get some sleep, you deserve it. I'd guess you feel at least as bad as you look." He winked at me as he helped me off the table again. I hadn't actually thought about how I must look. It just occurred to me that I hadn't showered or shaved for 23 days. My respect for both these people shot up quite a bit for not making me aware of this fact before now.

They led me down the corridor again to another door, opening it up to reveal a cabin that was about as tiny as it could get. It was economical, you had to give it that. A small closet-sized bathroom took up one corner, housing a sink, toilet, and shower cubicle. Taking up one wall of the cabin was a loft with a desk and computer terminal below, and a bunk bed above. There was also a small dresser, and enough floor space to stand still and little besides.

It looked luxurious. I'd never had my own room before. At least not that I remembered.

"If you need anything else just use the terminal and holler for one of us. Other than that, sweet dreams. No rush on waking up." Carver and Sera both grinned, then walked out of the small room, closing the door behind them.

They seemed like awfully nice and easygoing people, just a father and daughter running a freelance freighter service. There was a fair demand for freelancers like that; it wasn't economical for every small colony or outpost to hire a professional company to do all their shipping for them, particularly when it came to various specialized goods. Freelancers were versatile enough that they could usually find whatever obscure and outdated power converter you needed at a good price and then deliver it to you themselves. The fewer links in the system, the better for the consumer.

I found myself trusting them, almost wanting to tell them the truth about me. But that wouldn't be too smart just yet. I wasn't familiar with the nature of things, I didn't know what I'd been a part of and how big it was, or how likely I was to have enemies everywhere. So keeping my pie hole shut about it seemed like the best idea for the time being.

I leaned back against the bunk bed and sighed, looking down at the floor. My feet were straddling the room's only window, a square viewport in the gently curving floor. That tended to weird out people who weren't used to gravity wheels and space travel, but there wasn't much good to sticking a window in the side wall. All you'd see would be the hallway or the next cabin. Down was outward from the space craft, and currently all I could see through the window was black. If I turned off the lights and let my eyes adjust, I'd see the stars outside slowly tracking across the window as the wheel turned. For now though, I headed to the small bathroom and turned on the shower as I started to peel off my clothes.

I caught a glance of myself in the mirror. Gah. I decided they'd taken a substantial leap of faith in assuming I was even human. And again my respect for them rose, Sera especially. It didn't seem normal that a girl my age should smile at me like that and help me not fall on my ass when I looked like something that would make the wolfman run screaming.

I stepped into the warm water of the shower, and in an instant everything I'd ever learned in the military about efficiency and purpose just winked out of existence. I forgot that I was on a space ship with finite resources. I forgot that I had no past. I forgot that the only people I'd ever known had just tried to kill me, and that in return I'd turned all of them and their ship into a deep space charcoal briquette. I just stood there and leaned against the wall of the shower, letting the steaming water flow over me and trying not to look down at what color the water was by the time it hit the drain.

I have no idea how much time I spent in there, it could have been ten minutes or an hour. When I was done I simply toweled myself off halfheartedly and pulled myself up to the bunk, and flopped down and went out like a light.

***

When I finally woke up some hours later, I chuckled to realize I'd never even turned off the lights. I stumbled down from the bed and did so, then returned to it and slept for several hours more.

When I woke up next I was starting to feel almost human. My muscles were at least thinking about forgiving me eventually for what I'd put them through. I climbed down from the bed and realized I had no clothes apart from the ones I'd came in, and I hadn't thought to have them washed or anything. They were still lying in a dirty pile on the bathroom floor. I went in and picked them up, then stuffed them into the personal washer built into the cabin wall. Handy things, those.

I went to the bathroom and shaved and made my hair a little more presentable. I wondered if the razor and comb were just left in the cabin as a standard practice of if they'd readied the place just for me. The former seemed more likely.

I sat down at the cabin’s computer terminal and started to look it over a little while I waited for my clothes to finish. I tapped into a public news site and glanced over some of the headlines, trying to start getting a feel for what kind of universe I was really in. Everything seemed to fit with the perceptions I had in my head, but I didn't see anything offhand about horrible secret military conspiracies being uncovered. I'd have to keep an eye open.

A soft, overly cheerful series of ascending beeps informed me that my laundry was done. I walked over and took it out, a bit wrinkly but clean and dry. I shook each item out a little and then put it on, and I felt pretty much alive again.

I pulled on my tall boots and sat down at the terminal to contact Carver or Sera and inform them I was awake. Carver nodded and smiled, then started down to meet me. There was a knock after a minute or so and the door swung open. Both Carver and Sera walked in and closed the door, each leaning against the walls while I turned the desk chair around to face them. Carver was wearing a different sweater of a light gray and a pair of blue jeans, and had a mildly grave look on his face. Sera wore those same tall boots and black jeans, but now had a black t-shirt with a small cartoon image of a fox on it. Her expression wasn't too readable. They both still had their pistols on their belts. I frowned a little, curious.

"Let's talk," began Carver. Okay, I was in some kind of crap. I shifted just a little in my chair to feel my gun, then remembered I'd left it back in the escape pod. Again with the crap. I looked up at Carver and listened.

He seemed to take the prompt. "The residue on your escape pod is consistent with your story about a reactor burnout. However there are a number of interesting things. The log files on the escape pod indicate that you'd been in there for 23 days, but there should have only been 20 days of rations. There are still about four more days' worth, and your scans didn't return the kind of malnutrition most people would show from such a situation. There's nothing overly wrong with that, maybe you've got some kind of Zen thing going on where you can put your body in hibernation. If so, more power to you, sounds cool, I'd like to know how to do it too. Next item. Your scans showed that you have a very interesting implant with some capabilities I've never seen commercially available before, and even the black market would go pretty wild over. Which leads me to guess that you're from some military operation, an idea supported by the uniform-looking outfit you're wearing, even though spacers wear all sorts of crap these days. Next item. The story you gave put you as a crewman aboard a small freight shuttle. We're freighters ourselves, so we know the territory around here, where the ports are, what kind of ships go where. And your story doesn't fit in anywhere with it. Next item. Also contained in your escape pod's logs was the video record of your ship's destruction. There are some interesting flashes that look like gunfire, and some interesting hull breaches that look like bullet holes. Next time you're going to lie about why you're in an escape pod you'd do well to delete the launch log. Last item. I probably don't need to tell you that a very thorough search of every database that's worth anything didn't turn up a single valid entry on the name 'Arcai Grid.' So. We're listening."

Ouch. Okay, so my fake story was pretty crappy, even if I did try to work in as much truth as I could. I hadn't thought about the escape pod logs, and I hadn't thought about the medical scan showing them the details about my implant. Sloppy.

No, not really all that sloppy. Just... ignorant. From one perspective I was only two years old, after all.

I sighed. Carver and Sera just stared at me, waiting. I briefly thought about making up some other lie, hoping I could do better. But that first story was one I'd spent several days refining, and it had just been ripped up one side and down the other. It didn't leave me particularly confident in my ability to come up with something that much better in five seconds.

I looked at them. I thought about my impression of them, how they seemed friendly and well meaning. They were right to be suspicious of me, I sure as hell would be. Reason and military training were warning me to be cautious, that I shouldn't trust anyone. Some kind of instinct, and what I could maybe call my heart, were telling me something different.

"All right," I began, sighing. "You're right. The ship I escaped from wasn't a freighter, it was a transport shuttle. I'm the only survivor of a small, elite military unit. There were seven of us, and none of us had names, or any knowledge of who we were fighting for, or any memories older than two years. All we had were orders and training. What I escaped from was an attempt by our superiors to kill all of us in order to hide evidence, because whatever we were involved in was apparently illegal and there was a fear that it was about to be leaked out to the public. And now everyone except me is dead."

They both stared at me, their eyebrows rising slowly almost in unison as I spoke. "Okay, get up. I can see this is going to take a while and we'll need someplace more comfortable," Carver said with a small chuckle. He opened the cabin door and started out. Sera was giving me a curious look, interested and eager to hear my story apparently. I stood up and followed them out, and they led me in the direction of the front of the ship until the small corridor ended in a lounge at the front of the rotating gravity canister. The front-facing end of the room curved up gently until the floor became the front wall, the transition taken up by some large windows that showed the bridge area of the ship and the view out ahead.

Carver motioned me to a comfortable looking chair, and I sat down. Sera took a seat opposite me, and Carver worked a moment at a small counter before coming over and setting down some plastic cups of water before each of us on a small table. He took a third chair, and then looked at me expectantly. I grinned softly, and started from the beginning.

I told them everything. The truth. Largely as I have told it to you thus far.

We all relaxed back into the chairs, getting comfortable as I went on. I had to stop for water from time to time, and they just waited quietly.

I finally got to the end of my story, telling them how I fought my way into the escape pod and watched the ship burn out, finally making up my own name during the long and uncertain wait. Then I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair, feeling completely exhausted. They both just waited a while.

I finally heard a gentle sigh. I think it was Sera. "Wow," she muttered. I grunted my agreement softly. The further I distanced myself from everything I'd been through in the past two years, the more absurd it seemed. Actually telling someone the story of the whole thing was an awfully good way to distance myself from it.

Carver stood up and stretched. I opened my eyes and looked at him. "Hell of a story," he finally said. His eyes had a gentle, almost sympathetic look to them, implying he was more willing to believe this one. He turned to Sera and nodded. "Want to give it a check?" The girl stood up and nodded her own head, walking over to sit down before a nearby computer terminal. She started working at it, and I watched her a moment, a little fascinated by the intensity of her focus and concentration. I wondered if I looked like that when I was absorbed in doing something like piloting an ACR.

"Hungry?" Carver asked from over by the counter where he'd gotten the drinks. My stomach answered before I did, offering a gurgle that might be better described as a roar. Carver grinned, thumbing through a cupboard of food packages. "You've sure as hell earned some food for yourself. Sorry we didn't offer you any before, just got kind of caught up in everything. Meat loaf okay?"

I blinked a little, mildly startled. "Um... sure. Sounds great..."

"Good. Somehow we ended up with a lot this time and Sera and I are sick of it." He grinned again and stuck one of the packages in a microwave for a moment. I stared at him while we waited for the food to cook, my mouth open while I tried to settle on something to say.

"Well... what do you think?" I finally asked.

Carver chuckled. "Sounds a lot more likely than your last story. Sera's just checking some things out, both to verify and to hopefully fill in some of the holes in your knowledge." The oven gave a cheery ding. Carver took out the package and brought it over, setting it down before me along with a fork. I took off the packaging, and didn't think I'd ever smelled anything that wonderful before. Which is probably kind of sad when you can get that excited about prepackaged space ration meat loaf, but I was happy.

"What is there that she can verify exactly?" I asked curiously after finishing the first several mouthfuls of the meat loaf. Carver grinned, looking over at Sera for her to answer. She waited a moment, finishing up whatever she was in the middle of, then smiled at us.

"Well, so far I've mostly messed around with deep space geography. The speed and trajectory of your escape pod when we found you give us a pretty good idea of where your shuttle had its... incident. The log video shows roughly what type of ship it is, and if I check that with our database..." she trailed off, typing again for a moment. Her face wrinkled with a little irritation, like the whole process was going too slow for her. She grabbed a small data cable from the console and reached around to plug it into the back of her neck. So she had an implant. I glanced at the back of Carver's neck, and he didn't seem to have a port. It seemed that these two were well off enough to afford one implant between them, but it maybe wasn't something they just took for granted. They also of course could afford their own ship, but it was an old one so there was no way to tell how they came by it in the first place.

"Okay. The log makes it look like your transport was a Mitchell-Orion Freight Shuttle, five years old at most. Could be a number of subclasses but that's getting picky, and they've all got about the same range which is what we care about. C'mere."

Carver walked over to stand behind her, watching the screen. I stood up and did so as well, smiling a little. It was interesting seeing her doing what was something she obviously excelled at. I again found myself comparing it to what I must be like in the cockpit of an ACR.

The monitor in front of Sera showed a largely black screen with a number of dots and symbols, and a three dimensional grid. The whole scene was rotating slowly. A star chart. Sera pointed at a blue bird logo hovering in the center of the display. "Here's where we... eh, just a moment." She sent a few commands to the computer, and I saw a small display open and then minimize just as quickly on the screen as she opened some other program in the background. The lounge around us started to come alive with a low, ambient bass rumble and some soft drum work. It wasn't loud, just soft background music, and the memories I didn't remember threw their two cents in to inform me it was a kind of music somewhere between ‘trip hop’ and ‘jazz’. "Better," Sera commented, grinning. "Now, here's where we are." Again she tapped the blue bird icon in the center of the rotating starfield. "Here's the most likely path and range of your escape pod." A yellow line appeared on the screen, leading out from the Kingfisher's icon. The map zoomed out to accommodate a line that was 23 days long. "The escape pod as well as your own telling put the shuttle at about three hours out from its starting point, this red world of yours." A transparent red sphere shot out from the other end of the yellow line, encompassing a couple white dots on the screen. "This is the range that a shuttle like that could probably travel given three hours and a favorable spatial density reaction. There are only three stars in that radius, and according to public map files none of them have systems with habitable planets.” Before I could object, she kept going. “But that doesn't mean crap. It just reinforces your thought that whoever was in charge of all this was up to something secret and illegal. Some planets aren't marked in the public records if they're privately owned and the owner has enough money to pay off the Interstellar Survey."

Something just seemed kind of wrong to me about somebody owning an entire planet. "Seems like a likely possibility, but if whoever I was working for owned a whole planet why would they need to stage a war there? Were we trying to invade it and take it over from someone else?" I mused aloud.

Sera chuckled. "No sense in speculating too much. I'm just getting started. The public maps are just what's available to everyone, so it's what gets crapped up the most by people with overactive needs for privacy. They can't get into everything that way though, so if we look at a more specialized database..." The screen began to flicker as new windows popped up, images and text streaming by too quickly to read. The display settled then on a new map, also rotating slowly as the other one had, but rather than just showing individual dots for stars as the other map had, this one also had an intricate and confusing web of clouds and lines in every color of the rainbow. It was hard to make any sense of. "...such as a raw deep space survey return, we'll have more luck," Sera finished, picking up her thought where she'd left it. She must have glanced over and noticed my confused look. "This is essentially the raw data from a survey mission conducted about twenty-some years ago. All that fuzzy stuff is showing density and type of interstellar dust and debris, electromagnetic properties, and all the other stuff that's actually out here. You can't make much sense out of a map like this without isolating specific features and just looking at them individually, it's too jumbled otherwise. Maps like this are what the modern public navigation charts are derived from. This doesn't have all the stations and colonies and shipping lanes, but it's got the raw astronomy. And that'll do just fine since we're only trying to find a planet."

Carver leaned over and said to me in a stage whisper, "Just ignore her, she never shuts up about this kind of stuff once she gets going."

Sera laughed and swatted at him lightly. "I consider it my civic duty to educate those who are less privileged," she retorted with a wink. The screen changed again, many of the dust clouds and channels fading out. The features she'd drawn on the first map overlaid on the survey, and the display zoomed in on the red sphere showing the shuttle's travel radius. The three stars inside the sphere were then zoomed in on, one at a time. "All right. HSI 1428 has three satellites, but two are tiny lifeless rocks and the other's a gas giant..."

"What's HSI?" I asked. She didn't seem to mind educating about this sort of thing.

"Hammond Star Index. The last major star survey conducted in this region. The stars and planets just all get numbers at first until there's some pressing reason to name them something prettier, like a resort colony wanting their star to be called Ye Wondrous Burning Sphere Above Ivory Sands or some crap like that."

Despite myself I laughed. I wasn't sure I'd ever done that before.

"Anyway. HSI 1429 doesn't have anything, just an asteroid belt. Which leaves 1430, and naturally... five satellites, the second of which was noted as having a breathable atmosphere." Sera glanced back at me, a cute grin on her face. She waited a moment and I smiled at her, but when I didn't fall on my knees and worship her amazing skill she snorted and turned back to the screen. It started to flicker again as she ran another search. "Ah, paydirt. Planetary surveys. Sloppy bastards, the cheap public maps are the only ones they edited the planet out from but they didn't even make an effort here." She sounded almost disappointed. "The official designation according to the Interstellar Survey is still HSI 1430 B, but the planetary geologists called it Ochre II when they conducted their survey of the place. Largely a red sand desert, iron-rich obviously, most of the ecology takes place in the higher temperate latitudes where a native lichen feeds the atmospheric cycles. Noteworthy features include various rare metallic ore deposits of potential economic value." She looked back at me to see if I was impressed yet. I was staring intently at the screen, squinting at the display that showed a barren, rust red sphere. Sera seemed more pleased with my reaction this time, and grinned. "Home sweet home?"

"Can you find any images from the surface of the planet? I mean, it sure sounds like the place..."

Sera snorted again. "I'm sorry, even my mutant superpowers have their limits." The screen flickered as she performed another search. "Ownership records. Here's an interesting fact, Ochre II is jointly owned by two corporations. Each owns about half the planet. That's probably why it's only edited out of the most simple public maps, I'll bet that's all they could agree on. They're both mining firms, for the most part. Reactive Industries and HepTech Resources Conglomerate. I'll do more searching on each of 'em but I need a break."

I frowned as a memory surfaced. "...HepTech. There was something... when I overheard Barker through the vents that first time... he said something about the 'Heps.' That's what he called our enemies. I'd forgotten until now." I looked at Sera, perhaps a little more desperately than I intended to. "Could that be it? This other one, Reactive Industries? That's who I worked for? They're the ones who created my unit and put us all through that war? A... a mining company?"

Sera shrugged as she reached behind her neck to pull out the data cable. "I'm going to look into it more, and I'll certainly keep you informed. For now just calm down. We'll figure out what your story is." She offered me a reassuring smile as she stood up and headed over toward the kitchen counter to get herself some food. I leaned against the console and stared after her, wondering how something as simple as her gentle, caring smile could make me feel that much better.

CHAPTER 7

Carver stretched his arms out beside me, cracking a few joints. "I'm gonna head up to the bridge for a bit. You kids be good now." He grinned and started toward the door, then paused a moment. He turned back to face me, and extended his hand. I hesitated a moment, then grasped it and shook gently. "Welcome aboard the Kingfisher, Arcai Grid."

With that he turned and exited the lounge, leaving me standing there staring after him. He'd used my name. That was the first time anyone ever had. It made me shiver a little. Somehow his use of it felt like an affirmation, both of the name and of the fact that he accepted my story as truth and I was trusted enough to remain here. It felt good to me, like given enough time and depending on how things turned out, I could come to really belong here. I'd have to think about that, and work up the courage sometime to ask Carver about it.

I heard Sera clear her throat, and I glanced over at her. She was sitting down at the small table, her meal already cooked and half eaten. "You can sit down, you know. You don't need permission," she informed me, winking. I found myself smiling back at her, and I walked over to sit down opposite her.

"I could just be reading into things the wrong way, but... it sort of feels like you and your father are actually willing to believe me and trust me now. Not that I'm complaining, but why the sudden change?"

Sera glanced up at me. "Well, first and foremost you gave us a story that wasn't full of crap finally." She grinned. "Your new story makes sense and fits in with everything, and it does explain why you lied at first. We just knew your first story wasn't the truth from the moment you told us, so we weren't particularly inclined to trust you. Truth goes a long way, though."

I nodded softly. "There's still a lot you don't know about me, though, a lot you can't be certain of."

She raised her eyebrows a little. "Well, we aren't just handing you the security codes for the ship, now, are we? And if you want to be technical about it, I've got a gun and you don't." She shifted a little in her chair to show the small firearm at her belt. "But, that's not really deliberate. I just usually wear it. You don't, like, want us to not trust you or something, do you?"

"No, no, I'm happy... I'm really glad that you both do seem to believe me and trust me... it's just... it's a little hard to accept, I guess. I'm not used to... well, I guess I'm not really used to much of anything."

Sera set her knife and fork on her plate and rested her chin on her hands, and looked at me. I sighed quietly, then raised my head to look back at her. She just started at me for a while with an unreadable expression, until I started to fidget a little. "...what?"

she waited a moment before speaking quietly. "They really did it to you, didn't they?"

I frowned a little, looking away and trying to find something to let my eyes settle on besides her. "Yeah," I muttered. "Yeah, I guess they really did." I sighed and buried my face in my hands, rubbing my eyes a little.

"Arcai."

I shivered again, and looked up at her. She had a very gentle look on her face. "It's in the past now, and you never have to go back. I won't pretend I can understand what it's like to be robbed of your past like that, but at least you've got a future now. You have right now. Everybody spends their whole life trying to find themself. You're just a little behind schedule is all. But now's as good a time as any to start."

I just stared at her, not knowing what to do or say. I couldn't move or look away, I couldn't talk, I couldn't think. This was just too strange and new to me, being the target of this kind of tenderness. Having someone care. Hell, my eyes were even starting to water a little.

I hastily wiped at my eyes with the back of a sleeve, feeling kind of embarrassed. "I guess you're right... it's just hard. Going to be hard I think, at least at first. I just have no idea where to begin."

Sera smiled, shrugging a little. "Why not right here? Sounds like you're a pretty wicked ACR pilot, can you service them too?"

I blinked. If there was any link at all in her train of thought between these things I didn't see it. "Uh... yeah, we had to service them in the field a lot, patch them up after combat and make sure all the systems were running smoothly. That's the biggest downside to those things, you have to be obsessive about maintaining them. Any ACR pilot who really wants to be good at what they do has to know how to service his own machine on the road."

Sera chuckled. "I'd sass you about how a simple 'yes' would have covered it, but I ramble just as much when I'm answering a question so I'll let you off. Dad and I don't deal with ACR's a whole lot, but the kind of skills you need to service them are widely applicable. If you're good, it wouldn't take a lot of work to modify your skills so you knew your way around starship engineering and reactor mechanics and such. And there's a pretty high demand for that."

I tilted my head, interested. "That's a good point, I hadn't really given any thought yet to employment or how I'm going to survive in general. Would you be able to drop me someplace where there might be a market for my skills?"

She shrugged, grinning. "Well we'd have to check with my dad of course, but you're pretty much looking at a market for your skills right here. As freelancers we do all sorts of work, it isn't just freight hauling. We're both pretty good mechanics, so we end up doing custom repair and service work for people too. If you get too big a group it doesn't work, but three's at least as good a number as two."

I stared at her. "Wait, you mean I could just stay on with you and your dad and work with you two?"

"Well like I said, we'd have to check with him. But if you're telling the truth about your skills and training... heck, if you were willing you could train both of us up in some of your military skills. The Kingfisher's a good bird, if we fixed up her defensive systems a little we could even hire out as an escort ship."

My head was reeling a little. Sera seemed to notice and smiled at me, letting up with her suggestions. "This all sounds really great... kind of too good to be true. I need a little more time yet to really get used to all of this, so just... go easy on me." I chuckled.

"Don't worry about it. We can talk about it and figure things out. For now you just worry about resting up and keeping your head on. You can use any of the consoles to look at news sites or anything like that if you want, try to catch up on the state of the universe and all. Just take it easy, Arcai. You'll get things sorted out. We'll help." She offered me that warm, gentle smile again. It almost seemed to have some kind of stunning effect on me. Sera seemed to remember the last few bites of her lunch then, spearing the now only barely warm pieces of steak on her fork and wolfing them down.

I sighed a little, and offered her the best smile I could come up with. I realized it was something I needed to start practicing. "How did I end up on this ship with you two, of all the possibilities... I had pretty much prepared myself for the possibility that I'd be facing a fight to defend myself as soon as I got picked up and stepped out of that escape pod."

Sera grinned. "Well, you won't need to worry about that from us. We just look after ourselves and try to do what seems right. When we're lucky we can even make money doing it." She winked.

I found myself returning her grin. "Well maybe you can make money off me, if I can be as productive as you hope."

She giggled a little. "We'll see how useful you are. Seriously though, it's all up to you. I can train you up a little, show you how starship engines work under the hood, and then if you like you can stick with us. Otherwise, we'll look after you until you feel ready to try it on your own and then it's your call."

I sighed, smiling at her again. "Sera... thank you. You... you're both being really wonderful to me."

She just shrugged and grinned, standing up and carrying her empty food package over to the counter. "About time somebody was, don't you think?"

***

I realized I'd been sitting there being distant and thoughtful for a while when Sera cleared her throat at me again. She was sitting at the console again, and I stood up and walked over. She patted a desk chair beside her, and I sat in it.

She'd plugged the data cable into her neck again, and the screen was flickering. For the most part it was changing fast enough that I couldn't make anything out, but more than once I saw a small, stylized red and black logo that read 'Reactive Industries.'

"So what exactly is it that you do?" I found myself asking as I watched the screen go. "Are you some sort of hacker?"

Sera grinned. "Nah. Real hacking tends to be a little more illegal and a lot more technical than I like dealing with. I don't have that kind of gift or tolerance for coding and programming. What I'm doing is just searching, all of it is perfectly legal. None of this involves digging into secure databases or anything, although I can't really be held responsible if someone's incredibly sloppy and their secret stuff accidentally ends up in the public domain. It happens more than you might think. No, it's really just about knowing what to look for and how to look for it. There's a lot of information out there."

"I'll bet... So what are you looking for now?"

"Anything and everything involving Reactive Industries and Ochre II or top secret military activity."

"Don't tell me you can just search for that..."

"Well not in those words, no. They aren't quite that sloppy." She grinned. "Like I said, it's about knowing what to look for." The screen stopped, settling on a display with a lot of raw text, looking to be a list or table or some sort. Sera skimmed over it, then grinned more widely. "Now I wonder why a mining company like Reactive Industries would order eight Agile Combat Robots from Gryphon Systems Inc. and have them shipped to Ochre II about a year and a half ago. That seems most interesting."

I grinned at her, and looked closely at the screen. "G-127 Hellcats. That's the model we were piloting. And eight of them... those must be them. A year and a half ago lines up, too, that's when they brought us to Ochre II."

Sera scrolled down in the list. "This is an order and shipping log from Reactive from around that time. Looks like most of what got shipped to Ochre II was just mining and surveying and engineering equipment, the ACR's were the big exception. Wanna see what HepTech was up to around then?"

I smiled and nodded to her. The screen flickered through a few windows again, and then brought up another, similar-looking list. The only graphical difference was that the red and black Reactive logo at the top of the screen had been traded in for a yellow seven-pointed star with the text 'HepTech Resources Conglomerate' beneath it. Sera scrolled down the list, scanning for anything out of the ordinary.

"Hm... what kinds of things did you come up against when you were running your ACR missions?"

"There were a few other ACR's near the end, but mostly it was gun turrets and light tanks."

"They must have ordered the ACR's later on, they aren't showing up here. There's some equipment for gun emplacements, but those by themselves aren't all that out of the ordinary." She considered a moment, then looked over at me. "Didn't you say you were just training for the first several months? The actual battles only began about a year ago, right?"

"Yeah, that's right... so if HepTech wasn't arming for battle in advance the way Reactive seems to have been, they might not have any records this early. Can you search for more recent records? Like from one year back or so, when we started attacking them. They would have ordered tanks and such then I'd wager."

Sera snorted in mock indignation. "Can I search for more recent records... honestly." The screen flickered only a moment before another list was brought up, still showing the HepTech logo. This time, the first several entries showed orders for tanks, heavier gun turrets, infantry rifles, and a couple ACR's. All things I clearly remembered fighting against. Sera just looked at me and folded her arms across her chest, looking expectant.

I scanned over the list, and grinned. "All right. You're good."

"I know," she responded casually, winking.

"Is there a way that you can save these records? I don't know yet what's going to happen with all of this, but these files along with the testimony I could give... seems like this would be enough to bring both Reactive and HepTech into some heat from the Justice Council..."

Sera said nothing, only pressed a small button on the front of the console. A small data disk was ejected from a slot and she handed it to me, winking. I took it and stared at her. She just offered a cute smile.

"Good, hell. You're fantastic."

"Thank you." She grinned, opening her hand to take the disc back. I gave it to her and she put it back in the drive. "I'll keep looking over the next few days. I should be able to find a bit more. It looks like Reactive definitely struck first, at least with all-out military force, but the way HepTech fought back instead of appealing to the justice council isn't particularly legal either. Like you say, if you presented this with a testimony you could get both corporations into a lot of trouble." She stroked her chin a moment, looking thoughtful. "Honestly though, Arcai, I'm not sure I would just yet..."

"I know," I said, interrupting her. "I wasn't planning to, at least not yet. Laying low for a while seems like the best plan to me. Reactive was afraid of a leak, so I'm inclined to wait around and see what comes of that. At some point I might go to the Council and tell them what I know, but jumping into that right now when I don't know much seems pretty hasty."

Sera nodded her approval. "Good man. That's what I was about to suggest myself." She reached around and unplugged the data cable from her neck, setting it next to the console and then turning off the display. "Well I've had about as much of this as I can handle for now, it gets tiring on the brain. Want a tour of the ship?"

I smiled. "That would be great. Whatever you want to do, really, you've already done so much more than I could have asked for."

"Bah. Just doing what I do." She smiled. "I find digital things and I fix mechanical things. That's about how I spend my time. The rest is personal stuff." She winked again as she stood up from her chair and stretched.

I stood up myself, looking at her curiously. "What do you mean, 'personal stuff’?”

She offered a cryptic smile, turning and starting for the doorway. "Maybe if you get to know me better you'll find out."

I laughed, knowing she was just messing with my head and trying to make me insanely curious. The annoying part was that it worked flawlessly.

***

I'd already seen most of what the gravity wheel of the Kingfisher had to offer. The lounge took up about the forward third of the rotating cylinder, wrapping all the way around it. It was where Sera and Carver ate and spent a lot of their down time. The middle third of the wheel held the six small cabins, three of which were currently in use. The aft portion housed the small medical bay but otherwise was mostly devoted to the environmental systems.

I found myself watching her as she led me through the small corridors, her tall boots clicking on the deck plates lightly. They suited her quite well, I thought. Overall she wasn't one of those stunningly beautiful people who look like fashion models; she looked more what some people might describe as ‘plain’. The way I would describe it though, she looked more 'real' than the type of people you see in magazines and films. They were artificial people in an artificial world. This girl before me was a real person who was full of life and spirit as those images could never be.

I startled myself by realizing that I found her very attractive. I almost stumbled right there in the corridor.

This of course started a whole barrage of new thoughts to me, ones that I had no experience with and was ill-equipped to deal with. I quickly buried these feelings as deeply as I could, utterly not ready to deal with them yet.

Sera started up one of the ladders toward the core, and only looked briefly back at me; too short a time for my blush to have been noticed, I hoped. I followed her up the ladder, gravity gradually decreasing until we were both floating in the circular corridor that ran through the middle of the grav wheel. She smiled briefly at me, looking back to make sure I was still with her, and then led me to the rear of the ship.

The boxy aft section of the Kingfisher consisted of a small engineering room, the two cylindrical reactors humming softly to either side of us and their output lines disappearing into the outer walls on their way to the engines. Next to each shaft was a small access hatch, but Sera led me through the larger door at the back of the room. It opened out onto a balcony that overlooked the large cargo bay; the two story room that took up most of the ship's aft section. My escape pod still sat just as I had left it, and the bay also held a small shuttle that would probably hold four people at most. Sera told me they used that to make planetfall when they didn't need to take the whole Kingfisher down, but the larger ship was capable of landing in an atmosphere. The bay also held a large arrangement of crates and barrels, the current cargo that they were running to wherever.

Sera spoke as she showed me around, telling me more of the details about the Kingfisher's engines and their current mission. It was all the sort of thing that was important to me since I was there, but doesn't make for a particularly exciting retelling. She familiarized me with what all was on board, taking me next up a ladder from the engineering room to the top deck. Perched over the cargo bay was another lounge, this one with large windows looking out the back of the ship. Not being in the gravity wheel this one had a level floor, but also had no gravity. Sera explained that this lounge saw more use when the Kingfisher was grounded, but also was a fun place to just hang around in zero grav during trips.

We moved back toward the front of the ship by way of a small access corridor on the top deck that ran just over the top of the grav wheel. It mirrored a similar structure on the underside of the ship, the two corridors framing the gravity wheel effectively and offering structural support to the whole craft. When our small corridor ended against some exposed machinery that Sera informed me was the guts of the forward weapons array, she pushed herself down a ladder shaft leading back to the main deck.

This brought us finally to the bridge. It was a large room with small windows set at regular intervals, and virtually every spot of wall taken up by a console of some sort. Chairs were spaced regularly at the terminals, bolted to the deck. At the head of the bridge a particularly large window looked out ahead of the ship, and Carver sat at one of the two consoles just before it. He turned around in his chair, his movements a little lazy in the lack of gravity, grinning at the two of us. "Giving him the tour?"

Sera grinned and nodded. "We found out a little more, it looks like Reactive and HepTech decided to have a private little war with each other. Looks like Reactive started it, but HepTech moved pretty fast to arm themselves and fight back when things got dirty. The whole lot of it's illegal, of course; the Justice Council sort of likes knowing about it when there's a war going on. Especially if it involves players as powerful as those corporations."

Carver grunted and nodded. "Indeed... How are you doing with all of this, Arcai?"

I thought about that a little before answering. "I think I'm doing all right. I suppose in a way I'm still sort of in shock from all this... but then I did have a lot of time in that escape pod to try to come to terms with all of it. It's just kind of weird learning just now what I've really been doing for the past two years. Who knows where I was before that."

"Probably one of those mail order soldier schools," Sera mused. "That's what it all sounds like, really. Reactive wanted to wage a secret little war on HepTech for whatever reason, but didn't want to train up their own soldiers from scratch. Too expensive, takes a long time. So they just go to one of these schools and order seven ready-made marines. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes and no. I feel like I've heard of things like that... I know of them, now that you mention it, but I don't remember anything."

Sera nodded softly. "Well, you wouldn't. They train people up at these schools until they know all sorts of useful military things, then wipe their memories but leave the skills and sell them to whoever's buying. It's sick. But the loopholes are there in the legal system so it happens, and they keep it quiet enough that most of the public don't know to raise a fit about it."

I sighed, leaning against a wall. At least I tried to until I remembered I was in zero grav, so the attempt just made me float around at a funny angle before I grabbed a handrail to stop it. "Yeah... I know. I don't remember, but I know. Kids wind up in those schools because their parents don't want them, can't afford to have them around or put them up for adoption or whatever." I looked over at Sera. "They delete all the personal histories too, don't they? So I can't ever know who my real parents are."

She nodded at me sadly, sympathy and compassion showing in her eyes. I sighed again quietly. "Well, I don't remember any of it anyway... It's like you said. I don't have a past, it's gone and I can't get it back. But I've got now and I've got the future, so that's what I'll worry about." Sera smiled a little. I glanced over and saw that Carver was too.

"Good lad," he said, nodding in approval. "No one should have to go through what you have, but you've still got a life to live and there are a lot of better things for you to be doing with it than feeling sorry for yourself all the time."

Sera chirped up again then, grinning at her father. "Like joining up with us as a tactical specialist and engineer?"

Carver blinked, looking at Sera as though trying to assess if she was serious or not. He then glanced over at me, looking thoughtful. "You serious? Kingfisher ain't a luxury liner, if you want to stay on here you'll need to be able to earn your food and a bit more."

I nodded, feeling oddly like I had something to prove. "I know, I understand this is your livelihood and you don't have the resources to put up with idle passengers. I haven't worked with starship engines before, but I can fix pretty much any part of an ACR with simple tools, and Sera said I should be able to apply that to the systems on your ship without too much difficulty. I want to help you out for what you've already done for me, and frankly I don't have anywhere else to go. If I can't make myself useful enough though, you can always drop me at your next port and I'll make my own way somehow. But I'm willing to work hard if need be." I don't really know where my passion came from. I think somehow I needed to prove, both to Carver and Sera as well as to myself, that I could be useful as something other than a mindless soldier. Also, that feeling hit me again of what good people these were, and how this place could come to feel like somewhere I belonged if I remained here. The thought of that was enough to make me almost a little crazy with my desire to stick around.

Carver grinned. "Calm down, I didn't mean we were going to shove you out the airlock if you didn't start swabbing the deck this instant. It's just that what we do runs on a slim profit margin, so if we're going to have a third crewman to divide the spoils with you need to be helping us make enough more that we can afford to do so. But if you're right and you can carry over your ACR skills and apply them to starship engines then you could be a great help. Sera and I both know how to service this bird as well as any, but if you got good with it too we could make a good team for hiring out. Your tactical skills could find us a new niche to explore, too. It's up to you, Arcai. I don't want to push you one way or another, but we've got another couple days before we reach port and until then you're stuck with us anyway. So we can start bossing you around and you can see how you like it." He chuckled warmly at me, and I couldn't help but laugh.

"Fair enough. When do I start doing what?" I asked.

"Tonight I can show you around the engines in more detail, and we can start actually working tomorrow," Sera said. "There's some alignment work I've been needing to do and it'll go better with two. But for now I want a nap and then some dinner."

Carver just snorted. "You kids and your stomachs. I should just kick you both off and run the ship myself, then I could actually afford the food."

"Bah, you'd go insane from boredom without me to sass you around," Sera noted.

"Maybe insanity would be a welcome respite from you and your sass."

"You wouldn't get any business without me. People hire us because I'm cute."

Carver couldn't keep up the banter in the face of that, he had to laugh. So did I for that matter. Sera just smiled innocently. "Go take your damned nap and get out of my face," Carver said, still grinning. Sera giggled and pushed herself toward the circular hatch to the grav wheel, waving over her shoulder. Carver chuckled and shook his head, turning back to tend to the console he was working at. He reached an arm back and waved me forward, and I pushed off from the wall until I drifted up beside him. He motioned me into the chair at the neighboring console and I sat.

"So you really want to stick around here with us? You think freelancing is the life for you?" he asked, but smiled good naturedly as he did.

"Well it's as good a place as any to start. Like I said I don't have anywhere else to go really. If I don't stay with you two, I guess I just get off when you arrive at your next port and try to find work of some sort. Here at least it seems like my specific skills could be useful, and I certainly like you two well enough."

Carver chuckled. "Glad to hear it. As far as I'm concerned you're welcome to try it out and see what you think. It could turn out to be different or more work than you care for, or you might decide you love it. We've had a third person working with us a few times, it's come in handy for certain missions but eventually they'd just want to move on and try to make it by themselves. If that's the case with you that's fine, but for now you're welcome to stick around and help out if you can deal with Sera nagging on you all the time."

I laughed. "I'm sure I'll manage okay. So far she's just been really helpful and wonderful to be around."

He grinned at me. "Mm hm, I'm sure she has." I glanced over at him, hoping I wasn't actually blushing. He winked at me. "Don't worry about it. It's not hard to guess or see how you feel. I don't need to give you any kind of 'stay away from my daughter' speech, she's old enough to make her own choices and so are you. Just don't do anything stupid, she knows how to handle herself. If you pissed her off I'd still put my money on her, whether you were ex-military or not."

I smiled, bowing my head a little. "Point taken. I guess it's just kind of easy in my situation to be a little dazzled by someone like her. Someone who actually gives a damn."

Carver smiled. "She's a good girl. Good at helping people feel better about themselves. It's neat to see her do that, makes a father proud."

I leaned forward against the console, still smiling. We sat in comfortable silence for a while, and I felt like I was really starting to connect with both Carver and Sera. I was becoming more and more certain that I wanted to try and stay here with them, at least for a while. I was finding that I had friends, and it was an addictive feeling.

"Oh, Arcai," Carver said after a while, reaching for something at his belt. I tilted my head curiously at him, and gave a small start when I saw what he was holding. It was my gun, and he was handing it to me. I opened my mouth to say something, but couldn't really find words. The kind of trust he was showing in me blew my mind, so I hesitated, just staring stupidly at the weapon. He finally pressed the pistol into my hand and winked gently at me.

CHAPTER 8

We passed a while longer in silence, just staring out the forward window. With the bridge lights as dim as they were, we could see some of the brighter stars out there. Eventually I decided to head back to my cabin for a little, so I bade Carver farewell until dinner and pushed off to drift back toward the hatch to the gravity wheel.

I groaned a little as I descended the ladder back into gravity, and instantly understood why starships had to have artificial gravity. My body had gotten used to the few hours I'd been in zero grav just now, my muscles reverting to the state of partial atrophy that my long trip in the escape pod had put them in. I had to brace myself against a hand rail as I made my way to my cabin, grumbling as I collapsed into the desk chair. I'd have to start exercising if I wanted to have a functioning body left the next time we made planetfall.

I flicked on the computer terminal, and grabbed the data cable that was stored beside the display. After plugging it into the back of my neck I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I was too tired to look at a screen just then, and the idea of jacking into a computer directly sounded comforting even if it wasn't an ACR.

I just stared aimlessly at the display that materialized what felt like somewhere behind my eyes, and then decided to start looking. I didn't have Sera's skill at searching, so I'd leave that to her, but I had plenty of work to do on my own in terms of orienting myself.

I started surfing current news pages, eagerly soaking up any shred of information I could find that would help place me where I was. I was determined to learn about everything that was going on in the real world, as though somehow a few hours of reading news headlines could make up for fifteen years of forgotten memories. I squeezed my eyes shut as I jumped from site to site, skimming headlines faster and faster, somehow hoping I'd see something I recognized. Somehow hoping I could see some magic words that would trigger a memory and bring it all back to me, and give me back my past. I stopped thinking and just gave my mind over to the desperate search, knowing that if I actually thought about what I was doing I'd realize it was hopeless. But I couldn't handle that, so I just shut off my brain and searched, and searched, and searched.

***

I awoke with a bit of a start to find Sera standing over me with a concerned look on her face and her hand shaking my shoulder gently. "Arcai? Are you all right?"

I'd fallen asleep. And the light, crusty feeling on my face told me I'd been crying. I didn't remember that.

I groaned and shifted in the chair, sitting up. "Yeah. I'm fine," I muttered. My tone of voice made it clear how I was really doing, I wasn't really lying to her but I just didn't feel like actually saying the truth. Sera understood, and squeezed my shoulder gently.

I pulled the cable out of my neck and glanced at the display. There were about fifteen different windows open on various news sites and articles on every topic imaginable. I sighed and closed them all before shutting down the terminal and letting the data cable retract into the holder beside the display. I must have really gone nuts.

Sera kept her hand on my shoulder until I stood up, rubbing my eyes a little. "We're about to eat dinner," she informed me softly. "You don't have to join us right now if you don't want to."

"No... I do. Thanks." I glanced back at the now inactive terminal, and sighed again. "I really do agree with you, what you said about the present and future being what's important now, that it's okay if I don't have a past... I feel that too. It's just hard. It's going to take me some time yet."

I was surprised when she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a brief but tight hug. I tensed a bit, not quite knowing how to react at first. I got used to it pretty quickly though, and though she released me before very long I decided I wouldn't have minded if it had lasted longer. "I know, Arcai. It won't heal overnight. You take all the time you need, and in the mean time we're here for you."

For some reason my mind heard her last words as 'I'm here for you,' and I wondered idly if that was what she really meant. I figured it was probably just my own hopes misinterpreting her words, so I dismissed the thought. Just knowing that she could be a friend to me was really all I needed anyway.

"Thanks, Sera. Really."

She smiled at me. "Let's get you some food."

I nodded, thinking that was a pretty good idea just then.

***

Carver was waiting for us in the lounge, and had a table set up in a slightly different section of the large room. I was pleased to see that dinner wasn't just more prepackaged rations like lunch had been, and apparently at least one of these two knew how to cook. The smell of home-made chili wafted through the room, and I must have looked like some sort of zombie as I walked toward the scent and sat down at the table. Carver and Sera both grinned, seating themselves and dishing me up a bowl.

"Remember, go easy on it. If you eat too fast you'll just make yourself sick and that won't do you any good," Carver reminded me. I nodded softly, only barely hearing him for how intently I was staring at the bowl before me. Both of them chuckled and served themselves up, then started in on the chili and motioned to me that I could do the same.

It was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten, quite simply.

When my initial feeding frenzy was over and I was on my second bowl, conversation finally started. It seemed that Sera and Carver had been about as hungry as I had.

"Arcai, you don't really have any extra clothes with you, I'm realizing. I've got some older stuff I don't wear a lot, that looks like it'll fit you well enough until we reach port and you can get some of your own," Carver offered.

"Thanks, that would be great. Though I can see a problem in that I don't have any money of my own."

"I'll loan you some for clothes," Sera offered. "Not a fortune, mind, if you want designer brand name stuff you have to save up your own money. But I can get you started and you can owe me."

I smiled. "Thank you. Hopefully I won't have to keep you waiting long."

"If you take to the engineering well enough then it shouldn't be any problem, you can make it back up to me just by helping out around the ship. But we'll see how that goes tomorrow." She grinned at me.

We finished eating and all helped clean up, storing the remaining chili in a small refrigerator. For the next few hours Sera took me back to the engines and opened up the access hatches, and gave me a bit of a crash course in the basics of how they worked. Some of the elements of them that got into high level quantum physics went beyond me, but Sera promised to help me get my head around it. A lot of the remaining workings were hardly different from components of an ACR like I'd worked with before, or various fighter craft that I knew how to service from my unremembered schooling. I began to see what Sera was talking about, and agreed with her that I ought to be able to pick up a lot of this without too much work. But that would be for tomorrow morning. For now, we were both exhausted from a long day and managed to make our way back to the cabins. I stripped off my clothes and, to my credit, actually remembered to turn off the lights this time before collapsing on my bed and falling asleep.

***

After I woke up the next morning and put on some of the old clothes Carver had given me, I met Sera back by the engines. She told me I was going to help her align some of the internal systems so the two engines would match each other more naturally, which would reduce the need for the engines to modify their own outputs to match. The result would be more efficient and run smoother. Sera instructed me as we went, and before long we were working together pretty well, each of us in one of the engine compartments while Carver monitored the output from the bridge. I even managed to make myself extra useful by contributing a few military tricks of fighter craft engineering I'd learned in the soldier school. Sera and Carver were a little hesitant about it at first, given that I couldn't actually remember learning fighter craft engineering, but after looking over the work and having me explain to them exactly what I'd done and how it worked, I managed to convince them. The fact that the engines ended up operating just as well on three quarters of the power helped sway them too.

We finally got to lunch sometime during what according to the ship's clock was late afternoon, and we were starving. After the long day's work we just turned it into dinner and took a while at it.

"So, we've still got tomorrow out here but then the next morning we'll make planetfall at the Renn colony," Carver informed us after we'd filled our bellies enough to be capable once more of conscious thought. "That's earlier than we had originally planned, thanks to what you kids managed to do with the engines." He turned to me and grinned. "Seems you're making yourself pretty useful already. Our client will probably pay extra for the early arrival."

I smiled at him. "Glad to help. It's a really strange feeling... not remembering learning any of it. I don't know that I know these things, but when I see the engine there I just suddenly realize I know how it works, and I know how it can be modified to run better, what parts are redundant, what points in the system are inefficient. It feels really weird."

Sera chuckled. "Well then you understand why we were so hesitant to trust your crazy modifications at first. But the way you explained them it all made sense, and the diagnostics speak for themselves. You did good, Arcai."

I felt pride then, not as part of a team but all for myself. It was another new feeling, and another one that I found myself quite happy with.

Later on after dinner, Carver had headed up to the bridge to make sure everything was working well and that we were still on course, leaving Sera and I alone, relaxing in the lounge and staring out the windows. It was a little disorienting watching the bridge of the ship spin around slowly as we orbited around the axis of the ship, but one learned to ignore it. We sat there quietly for a while, just enjoying the silence of each other's company.

A soft tone from the overhead speakers signaled the intercom activating, which was followed by Carver's voice. "Hey you two, cut the lights down there for a bit. Arcai should see this."

I glanced over at Sera curiously, and she just grinned back at me as she got up and walked over to the nearest control panel. She touched a button on it and the lights dimmed down until they were off, leaving us in darkness. There were only a few soft indicator lights from some of the nearby appliances, and the slowly pulsing navigational lights outside of the bridge. There wasn't any light spilling out of the bridge windows, apparently Carver had turned them off up there too.

"What's going on?" I asked. My eyes began to adjust to the darkness slowly, and some of the brighter stars out ahead resolved in my vision.

"Just watch." I couldn't see more than a shadow of her but I could hear the smile in her voice. I turned my gaze back to the large windows in front of us, and squinted.

I noticed that the brightest star I could see looked to be directly ahead of us, probably where we were headed. Other bright stars were now plainly visible, and the longer I looked the more I began to see. The blackness of empty space slowly became alive with distant light as more and more stars came into my vision. Away off to ship's starboard side was a brighter mass, a great cloud in space that marked the direction toward the center of the galaxy. It was beautiful, watching the stars present themselves to us, watching the night sky come alive with all those billions of points of light. Space still felt cold and lonely, but faced with a sight like that it couldn't feel empty. What made you feel so humble and small about space wasn't how cold and dark and empty it was, but rather how full it was. Just how much was really out there.

I looked over at Sera again briefly, wanting to see what she looked like by starlight. The light was dim enough that there still wasn't much to see, so I smiled and looked back out to space.

I must have missed it at first, my eyes focusing on the stars as they adjusted to the darkness. But when I looked back anew I realized what Sera and Carver were showing me.

Out ahead of the ship and filling my view was a soft reddish glow. An enormous cloud of gentle red light was there, highlighted in places by a deep blue. Some distant part of me of me dutifully informed me it was a nebula. The rest of me thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, or would ever see.

I didn't speak for a long time. I couldn't. I felt like I was witnessing something sacred and wonderful, and breaking the silence would ruin it.

We must have sat there together for about an hour just watching it. After a while the nebula started to dim a little, starting to lose the battle against the bright star that we were heading for which was growing slowly brighter. Sera stood up finally and yawned quietly, then started toward the door. "Good night, Arcai. Sleep good."

"You too," I said quietly. When the lounge door opened the corridor lights were blessedly dimmed to a low level so they didn't ruin my vision or the atmosphere that the previous hour had created. I was grateful for that.

After another few minutes I got up myself and followed Sera's example, heading to bed. Again I slept soundly, only dreaming of soft, dancing colors against the black of space and a feeling of warmth and belonging.

***

The next day involved less hard work, and since I didn't have anything I had to jump right into upon waking I started by running some laps around the gravity wheel. The circular corridors that ran around the wheel were effectively endless, and I tried not to think about how similar the setup seemed to a hamster wheel.

I met Carver a little ways into my run as he showed up to run laps as well. As I paused to say good morning I glanced down the lengthwise corridor I was near, and saw Sera running herself the next circular passage down. Apparently I'd discovered the official exercise routine of the ship, and my muscles were both complaining bitterly and thanking me for making some real use of them again.

When I was done I joined both of them for breakfast, and afterward accompanied them to the bridge where they started showing me around the controls. I got so I had a basic understanding of how the ship was piloted and operated, while the star ahead of us grew steadily brighter.

I found myself scratching at my chin a little from time to time. After shaving that first day I'd decided to hold off a little, letting a small beard and mustache start to grow. It seemed like something new to try, and probably I was wanting to distance myself from the clean shaven, buzz cut military look I used to have. My hair was looking a little riled as well from staying uncut. I wasn't sure if the facial hair would work yet or if I was too young, but after being a mindless military weapon for two years I was willing to try looking a little scruffy.

We had lunch, and then they showed me around a little more, and we did some light work checking up on a few systems. Nothing exciting, but everything we did made me feel a little more comfortable, a little more at home here with Carver and Sera. Dinner especially was the time when we just relaxed and talked, and the remainder of the evening I spent looking over Sera's shoulder as she searched for information about my past.

There wasn't a whole lot more to discover from what we'd already found or guessed. Reactive Industries was a large mining corporation that shared the ownership of Ochre II equally with HepTech Resources Conglomerate, which was a similar mining corporation. Public databases of course didn't have anything about Project Shadow, and all the detailed geologic records of the planet were owned by the two companies and not available anywhere.

It was anyone's guess why Reactive decided to order eight ACR's and a prepackaged strike team to attack HepTech, but Sera's best guess was that they just wanted to wrestle the control from HepTech of some ore body that was on their land, or perhaps chase them off the planet altogether. The latter seemed less likely, as it would leave HepTech with nothing to lose and they would probably go to the Justice Council. If it was a smaller resource that Reactive was after, like a single high-value ore body or something, HepTech most likely chose to fight back rather than doing the legal thing and reporting to the Council. Government agencies were notorious for taking a very long time to step in and actually do anything, so Reactive probably could have taken whatever it was they wanted and then been long gone while HepTech was off being good and legal. It was situations like this that turned a company's security staff into corporate armies.

Sera stayed up a bit later to do a few more things on the computer when I decided to turn in. I turned the lights off and fell asleep, knowing that tomorrow morning we'd reach Renn and make planetfall. Tomorrow, things would start getting even more interesting.

CHAPTER 9

Something woke me the next morning, though as I opened my eyes I wasn't sure what it was. My room was still dark and the ship's clock beside my bed listed it as being around nine. I stayed lying there for a few moments and wondered what had woken me, until my room started to glow dimly with a soft blue color. A blurred square of silvery blue light appeared on my ceiling, slowly tracking across it to the far wall before continuing down toward the floor and fading out. For an instant I was confused and wondered what was going on, but then I figured it out and hopped down from my bed. I knelt on the floor, gazing downward through the cabin window, and waited.

The brighter stars against the black backdrop of space drifted by as the gravity wheel of the ship turned, moving my outward view around the Kingfisher's axis. Before long the lower edge of my window started to glow again with that blue light, and something started to roll into my line of vision.

I had to look away and squint at first. It was so bright after the black of space. A mass of white and blue hung below me, pouring its light up into my cabin. I saw clouds of every sort, stacked atop one another, hovering in the beautiful swirls of weather systems. Beneath them was a great ocean of blue, seeming to glow in the sunlight where the clouds weren't casting shadows upon it.

My view continued to track over the world, coming upon a continent. The land mass was painted with every shade of green and brown imaginable, and near the coast the deep sapphire of the sea was broken by splotches of an impossibly brilliant azure where coral reef systems protected shallow sands from washing away. Subtle differences in shadow and color belied a small folded mountain range as my view moved further inland, eventually giving way to taller mountains with white tracings of snow marking the peaks and ridge tops. Beyond the mountains, the emerald green of tree tops slowly gave way to oranges and reds as autumn descended on that part of the world. Beyond that, a dusting of white was visible on the land.

The world began to drop away beneath me as the white snow and sea ice blended with thick, winter cloud tops. Finally the broad curve of the planet's edge moved across my vision, and the limb of the atmosphere faded into nothing until the window beneath me showed only the black of space once more.

I was completely entranced. My mouth hung open as gazed downward, just waiting for the gravity wheel to come around again and show me the world. I didn't move from that spot for a long time, just letting my vision roll over the world again and again. Each time my heart warmed with joy as I saw it again, each time I mourned as the world dropped away from my sight. A small distortion appeared suddenly in the center of the window, and it took me a moment to realize it was a fallen tear.

An entire planet seen at once. Countless different lands and processes at work, geology and weather and so many others. It was like the most beautiful painting ever devised, created by some artistic genius that tried to capture the essence of all creation in a single image. Looking at a world like this, it was impossible to ignore the simple truth that it was all one massive, interconnected system. The entire planet was a single organism, and every animal on it, every tree, every rock, every drop of water was like a tiny cell, just one more essential part of the body that came together with all the others to make something greater than their sum.

It was everything that the geographers and earth scientists had tried for so long to tell us, all captured in a single vision.

***

As I woke up a little more it occurred to me that I could go to the lounge and have a more continuous view of the planet, which I assumed was the home of the Renn colony. I dressed myself and did so, and found Carver perched over a cup of coffee next to some of the windows. The planet was visible outward from the ship as I moved further into the lounge. It was just as beautiful as it had been from my small cabin window, but being able to finally see it all at once took away some of the drama.

Carver glanced back at me and smiled, raising his cup of coffee in greeting. "Morning. Beautiful, isn't it?"

I walked over to sit in a chair beside him, staring out the window at the world and nodding softly. "I've never seen anything like it," I said truthfully.

"It's a hell of a sight, especially the first time. Seeing a world from orbit. But even as long as I've been doing this, it isn't something you ever really get used to."

I smiled softly. "How long have you been doing this, anyway?"

"My whole life. I went around with my mother and father when this was their ship, working with them the way Sera works with me now. The Kingfisher's been in the family for three generations now, four if you count Sera. My grandparents first bought it new, and it's been passed down and refit repeatedly since then. She's old, but if you know how to keep her running she'll fly for a long while yet."

I looked over at him, raising my eyebrows a little. "Wow, I had no idea this ship was quite that old. I'm impressed."

"Well, you do what you have to with what you've got. But they build these ships to last, and pretty much all the systems can be fixed up or replaced when they need to be. We work hard at it though. We get by well enough but the kind of money it would take to buy a whole new frigate isn't something we really have."

I nodded at that, staring at the world for a while before speaking again. "Why exactly are we here, anyway? What's the mission that you two are on?"

"Simple freight run. We picked up some specialized machine parts for a new industrial facility they want to build on Renn. It's a pretty new colony, so they don't have a lot of their industry or economy established yet. There's always a stage at the beginning of a colony's life when they have to import a lot of their equipment from off world, unless they want to build everything from scratch the way prehistoric man did." He chuckled softly. "Few colonies want to wait around and do that. Freelancers like us get a lot of business from new colonies like this, because larger shipping firms tend to charge more than they can afford at this stage. That, and the big firms want long term contracts they can invest in, not one-time equipment runs like we do. It makes for a pretty good system. It can be a little exciting too; since we stay with the newer colonies for business we tend to hang out on the frontiers of developed space."

I listened with interest, fitting all of this in with what I already knew. "Makes sense... so what are we waiting for now, I thought you said the earlier we got the cargo delivered the better?"

"Yeah, but the colony only has so many landing pads. We've registered to land in about an hour. Speaking of which, I should go start making preparations for landing. Go make sure Sera's awake if you don't mind, and then get anything out of your cabin that you'll be wanting planetside. We turn off the grav wheel when we land, and it isn't the most convenient place to try and walk around in when down is a single direction." I chuckled, nodding as I saw the truth of that. I got to my feet and started for the door, Carver finishing his coffee and stowing the mug. "Sera will show you how to lock your cabin down, then meet me on the bridge. I'll take care of the lounge."

That made sense, too. There were all sorts of messes that could be created by gravity being suddenly in only one direction, so you didn't want anything to not be strapped down. I walked down the hall to what was marked as Sera's cabin, and knocked on the door.

"Come in," came her voice from inside. I opened the door to find the room dark, with Sera crouching on the floor over her window. The blue glow of the planet was just receding. She'd been doing exactly what I had done when I woke up. I smiled at that.

"Good morning. Carver just wanted me to make sure you were up, said we're making planetfall in about an hour."

She stood up and smiled at me, nodding as she reached over to turn on the lights. She stood beside her bunk in shorts and a rumpled t-shirt. "Just give me a moment to get dressed," she said, walking into the small personal bathroom and closing the door. I glanced around her room as I stood by the doorway. It was identical to my cabin in terms of layout, but that was about where the similarity ended.

The walls were utterly plastered with posters. There were art prints and large photographs and paintings, and every last one of them was of foxes. I started at them in wonder, dropping my jaw just a little. Many were scenes of foxes of every color they came in in the wild, adults or pups or both, but a few were paintings of what looked like foxes that had assumed a humanoid form. Beside her bed was a color pencil sketch of one of these, a foxlike person standing on two legs, complete with tall boots and jeans and a t-shirt, and a tail sticking out behind. The bottom corner of the picture was simply signed, 'S.T.'

"See what I said about personal stuff?" said Sera's voice. I jumped and looked over to find her dressed and leaning against the wall beside her bathroom door. She was smiling, but I couldn't help but feel embarrassed like I was somehow invading her privacy by seeing the contents of her cabin.

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Don't be, I've been meaning to show you." She grinned and crossed the room, tucking in her sheets and then reaching across the bed to retrieve a velcro strap. She fastened it and another like it over the bed to hold everything in place when the gravity changed. "As you can see I've got a bit of an affinity for foxes."

I couldn't help but smile. "I noticed a few hints. Why foxes, if I may ask?"

She smiled, leaning against the bed a moment. "I can't entirely say, really. I guess they sort of represent some important things to me, a sense of freedom and connectedness with nature... but there's a lot more to it than that. I find them really beautiful. I even kind of... well, I feel a sort of connection with them. I have this kind of dream, that I want to be one." She glanced over at me, looking suddenly a little nervous. That was the first time I'd seen her look uncertain about anything. "If that makes any sense. If it doesn't that's fine, if you want to laugh about it go ahead and get it out of your system now." She started to look just a little defensive, like she was bracing herself for me to say something derisive.

I didn't. "Sera... I think it's really wonderful. Sure, maybe I can't quite understand it or relate to it, but if you've found something that special and important to you, then it's a good thing. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of it."

She just stood there and blinked at me, as though not quite understanding my words for a moment. I hoped I'd said the right thing to her. Somehow it was just what came out, and it made sense to me. Maybe if I'd had the memories of an entire childhood growing up in 'normal' society I'd have thought there was something strange and wrong about Sera's beliefs, but as it was it just seemed so much more simple than that. So she loved foxes and wanted to be one, so what? It brought her joy and didn't harm anyone. I didn't have any business passing some kind of judgment on her over that, and I didn't think anyone else did either. And since I'd come to care about her rather strongly as a friend over the past few days, I was happy for anything that brought her joy.

She walked up to me and threw her arms around me, hugging me tightly. It startled me, and I must have made some kind of noise indicating this. If she'd been further away I might have found myself in a defensive posture, but as it was she just giggled a little at the squawk I apparently made, and I instead found myself returning her hug.

"Thanks, Arcai. Maybe it just doesn't seem like anything strange to you, but you'd be amazed how hard it is to find people who wouldn't think I was some kind of freak for feeling that."

"There have to be other people out there somewhere who feel what you do, don't there?"

"Well, there are, true enough. There's a whole community, really, but... even there it's hard for me to fit in, somehow. People come to wishes like that for a lot of different reasons, some of them shallow and some of them very deep. For me it's... it's almost a spiritual thing. It just feels right to me on a really deep level."

I had to smile at her. "Then follow it. I've never had the chance to feel that way about anything myself, at least not yet... if I have any dreams like that, I haven't yet discovered them. But you have this, and it sounds like a really wonderful thing. Something you shouldn't ever let go of." I really wondered where all of this was coming from. It seemed unusually sensitive for a guy who had virtually no memory and had been a mindless soldier for all his waking life.

I guess love will do that to you.

I tensed a little, that last thought startling the hell out of me. Sera noticed and released the hug, leaning back to look at me. "Something wrong?"

I opened my mouth and realized I had no idea what to say. I could just tell her the truth, tell her about the realization I was starting to come to, but given how short a time I'd known her I really didn't have the courage to begin to try to tell her something like that.

The intercom toned. "Hey, you two kids done locking the wheel down yet? Get on with it and get your butts up here, I've got everything else ready and we're descending in five minutes."

"Sorry dad, we're almost there!" Sera called back. She grinned at me and glanced around the cabin, hurrying over to lock the drawers on her dresser and desk. "All right, that's all for here, let's go get your cabin secured."

I nodded and followed her to my own cabin. My thoughts were all kind of muddled by then, and I tried not to think too much about anything apart from locking down my cabin, glad of the mundane task to focus on. Sera made sure everything was secure in the bathroom for me while I found the velcro straps beside my bed and used them to secure it. In a few minutes we were done, and I was following Sera up the nearest ladder to the axis corridor, and then to the bridge.

"Okay it's all set," Sera announced as we drifted onto the bridge.

"Good, about time too," Carver said with a chuckle. He tapped at the console before him, and one of the many ambient hums aboard the ship faded out and vanished. I glanced through one of the aft looking windows and saw the gravity slowly rotating still but beginning to slow. "System checks all show us ready to descend, so if you two will take your seats we'll get to it."

I followed Sera to the front of the bridge. She took the seat beside Carver, and I strapped myself into a console just behind them along the port side. "We'll try to make your first planetfall in the Kingfisher a smooth one, but we can't promise anything so hold onto your butt," Sera advised me. I grinned and made sure my harness was snug. I then watched out the large forward window while Carver worked at the controls, and the planet started to rise into view.

Carver and Sera both worked tirelessly at the controls, adjusting the pitch and roll of the ship constantly. I recognized a lot of what they were doing from what they had showed me about the Kingfisher's controls, but I couldn't always keep up with how fast they were moving. I had a display active at my own console, just to help them monitor for anything going horribly wrong in the ship's systems but for the most part it was their show.

The ship shuddered just a little as it started to contact the upper layers of the atmosphere. Before too long, flashes of orange danced at the lower edges of the windows. Carver and Sera kept working through all of it with an intensity I found impressive. Taking any ship through re-entry was a dangerous and tricky business, and the Kingfisher was close to being as big as ships came that could still enter an atmosphere.

That said, they did a fine job of it. I got to just sit back and watch as we dropped lower and lower into the atmosphere. Glancing out the aft windows of the bridge I could see a blue glow coming from the engines, and some lines that looked vaguely like dim, blue sunbeams aiming downward into the air below us. That was the ship's hover field, keeping us aloft as it guided us downward.

As we broke through the cloud deck, the land became visible below us. The assembly of greens and browns I had seen from orbit slowly resolved into individual forests and plains and lakes, and I saw a few other ships moving about through the air. Below us a patch of gray widened and sharpened into a city. It wasn't enormous but had a few tall skyscrapers and some residential districts that looked to stretch up the coast for a ways. The city itself, the Renn colony, was situated on a small bay. As we descended further, I saw that we were headed toward what looked to be an industrial sector on the outer edge of the city.

We lowered until we weren't too high above the taller buildings, and I felt a gentle lurch. There was now another set of the soft blue hover beams contacting our ship, but these ones were reaching up from the guidance towers below, helping to safely steer us down to the landing platform. Warehouses and factories rose slowly around us, until we were finally set down gently on a wide landing platform. The hover beams from both our engines and the guidance towers faded to nothing. Carver and Sera both shared a sigh and tapped a few final keys, and the hum of the engines slowly wound down. Outside, it looked like a sunny and inviting afternoon.

"Well here we are. Renn colony. I've already submitted our internal environmental readings to the Health Department and we've got permission to exit. We're got landing clearance for the next five hours, I can do the business transactions if you like while you two go shopping. You can find some clothes for Arcai, and here's a few other things we should pick up while we're here." Carver handed a small data pad to Sera, who stuck it in a pouch at her belt.

"What about Arcai's escape pod? Are we doing anything with that?"

Carver raised an eyebrow and turned to me. "I'd forgotten about that. There anything you want it for? If not, I can probably sell it off for materials for you and give you the money."

I tilted my head, considering. "Actually, if you could that would be great... I sure don't need it anymore. How much do you think I could get for it?"

"Oh, there are a lot of useful systems in there, plus the alloys and such. At least a thousand credits."

My eyebrows shot up at that, and I stopped in the middle of unbuckling my safety belts. I glanced over at Sera. "Maybe I won't need you to loan me money for clothes after all."

She chuckled. "Well, you don't have an ID card yet and that always takes a few days to process, and it's hard to buy anything anymore without one. It's probably easiest if I still pay for things for you today, and then once we leave here we can go online and get you registered. You can pay me back then."

"Will that be a problem, getting me registered like that? Since according to the government I don't exist?"

"Nah, they're pretty easy about giving out ID cards and all, there are any number of reasons why a person might not have one. It just takes a few days is all, and I didn't think to do that before now. Been to busy finding out who the heck you were." She chuckled, and I did too.

"Well all right, let's get to it," Carver said, standing up and walking toward the hatch at the back of the bridge. "The representative from the Industrial Council should be here any minute, and you two can take the shuttle into town. Just be back here in a bit less than five hours."

"Will do. Call us when you get the final figures or if you need anything," Sera said as we followed him down the axis corridor. It seemed a little odd actually having gravity in this part of the ship now. We passed through engineering and emerged on the balcony of the cargo bay, and Carver moved to a small control panel and tapped a few things on it. The large doors at the back of the ship started to slowly fall open then, the warm afternoon sun pouring in. We climbed down the ladder to the deck, and Carver went to start fussing with the cargo while Sera led me to the small shuttle. "See you in five hours!" Sera called. Carver grinned and waved as us, and we waved back before turning to enter the small craft.

CHAPTER 10

The Kingfisher's shuttle was a small boxy craft of a dark blue. It sat two in the front and three in the back, with a small cargo bed behind. There wasn't very much to it but it would work well enough to make the trip between a planet and an orbiting ship, or in our case, a quick drive into town.

Sera and I hopped in, and she started the craft up. The shuttle lifted up on its hover field and pivoted to face toward the exit, and then Sera drove us forward out of the bay with another wave to Carver. The afternoon was bright, though it felt a little strange given that according to Kingfisher time and my own body it was still morning.

We drove away from the landing field, past a few travel and fuel stations, eventually finding our way onto a main road that took us through the large industrial buildings and toward the city center. "Why don't we just do our shopping at the service stations here?" I asked.

"We could, but they drive up the prices by the landing platforms to make a bigger profit from the offworlders. It's cheaper to go into the city and shop where the locals shop, if you've got a shuttle that can get you there easily like we do."

"Ah. What about fuel?"

"Kingfisher doesn't need any. Neither does the shuttle. They're both self-sustaining. That was the first really big project I helped my dad on, back when my mom was still alive. They decided they were sick of having fuel costs take such a huge bite out of the profits, so they splurged a bit and replaced the engines and reactors. It took us the better part of a year to complete all the work, but it's been worth it. See, the ship used to use old style fueled rockets to climb to space, but the technology that uses energy and magnetics to create hover fields has expanded a lot in the last 30 years or so. If you get a good enough reactor and keep it serviced, it's completely self-sufficient. The power needs are higher and you've got to work a lot harder to keep it serviced, but if you know what you're doing it's a lot more economical and clean."

"It sounds like a lot of work, certainly... you haven't ever mentioned your mother before." I noted softly, altering the subject a little.

Sera nodded gently. "She died about seven years ago, when I was ten. The way my father and I get along and work together, it was like that with all three of us. When she died we both took it really hard, but in the end we held fast to each other and got through it okay." She hesitated a moment. "Now I'm just worried about dad."

I tilted my head and looked at her. "What do you mean?"

She sighed softly. "See... a long time back, just after I had been born, mom and dad took a job from a merchant, hauling some cargo for him. He needed it shipped through a kind of nasty region of space where things get a bit stormy, and according to him his own ships weren't capable of dealing with it. They'd left me with my grandmother during that mission, she was still alive then. Just as well, I guess, but... well, they were less cautious then, a little newer to freelancing. They couldn't have known, they didn't know what to look for. Turned out the merchant had lied to them and the cargo was hazardous and illegal, and he had hired them to cover his own butt because he didn't want to get caught with it. It leaked some nasty kinds of radiation, and by the time mom and dad figured out what was up and jettisoned the crap they'd already taken some of it.

"There wasn't much that could be helped, what was done was done. Neither of them would be able to have kids again, so I was all they were going to have. Also shortened their lifespan considerably, that's what finally got mom. They pressed charges of course and won, that bastard merchant is still rotting in a prison and the money awarded helped finance the new reactor, but it doesn't make the damage go away. Dad gets by just fine, but we never really know when it's going to hit. Could be two years or twenty."

I sighed, reaching out and resting a hand gently on her shoulder. "And there's nothing that can be done to heal the damage?"

"Not really, no. There might be some experimental things that are both uncertain and way more than we could afford, but in general that type of damage is so widespread and insidious that there isn't much to be done. Even with all the genetic therapy and nanotechnology we have today."

"Damn... Sera, I'm sorry..."

She nodded softly, shrugging a little. "It's horrible and it's not fair, but there isn't anything else we can really do about it... We just make the best of what we've got. The way dad tells it, he's had a long and good life, so he's going to try not to grump about it too much when his time comes. He's worked hard to make sure I'm ready for it, too... I know pretty much everything I need to in order to operate the Kingfisher and the business by myself. But I don't think that's the kind of thing you ever can really be prepared for."

I nodded softly, not really knowing what else to say. I just squeezed her shoulder gently. Outside, the industrial sector had given way to a friendly-looking environment of mixed land uses. We drove down a landscaped street lined with storefronts below and apartments above. Sera started looking around for parking, and we eventually found a space.

She shut down the small shuttle, but waited a moment rather than getting out. She leaned over then, resting her body against mine, and I found myself wrapping my arms around her and hugging her against me. We just stayed that way for a short while, before Sera sighed a little. "Thanks, Arcai. Sometimes it just feels good to be held by someone."

I smiled at her. "So I've been learning." She smiled back at me before getting out of the shuttle.

We stayed away from further heavy conversations as we spent the next few hours shopping. Sera picked up a number of general supplies for the ship, mostly restocking the food stores. We then found a moderately inexpensive clothing store and set me loose in it. I'd picked out a reasonable supply of underwear, socks, black jeans, t-shirts and a few sweaters, when Sera reached into a pocket and pulled out a small phone.

"What's up?" She said into the receiver. She nodded a little, listening, then started to grin. "I'll put him on." She handed the phone to me. "Here, Dad wants to talk to you."

I tilted my head curiously and took the phone. "Yes?"

Carver's voice came through pretty clearly. "Just thought I should let you know, Arcai. First of all we got all our own business taken care of and you'll get a cut of the profits. You earned it with all your help on the engines the other day. But more interestingly, I checked around a bit about your old escape pod, and found a buyer. Seems there's a pretty high demand here for a lot of the component parts; even escape pods have some pretty high end stuff that new colonies like this don't get to see much of very often. It's a bigger demand than I had thought."

I waited. "...Yes? And?"

I could hear him grinning on the other end of the line. "Twenty-eight hundred."

I almost dropped the phone, and Sera laughed at my reaction. "What...! That's like three times what you told me thought I could get for it!"

Carver laughed. "I know! I wasn't expecting it. But it's all yours, a nice little nest egg to start your new life on. So feel free to treat yourself if you see anything in town that you like."

"Carver... wow. Thanks a lot."

"Not a problem. I was checking around anyway to secure our next mission, it was hardly out of my way at all. So you kids have fun and I'll see you when you get back."

"All right, see you then!" The phone clicked as he hung up. I handed it back to Sera, and must have still been looking rather stunned because she giggled at me.

"How's it feel to have money?" She asked, grinning.

"Kind of strange," I answered truthfully. She giggled again.

"You should probably find yourself something nice to mark the occasion, don't you think? We've got you some clothing to get you by but it's all boring and useful. Find something that you don't actually need."

I smiled, thinking about this. I didn't have any ideas really yet, but I started walking through the store, just glancing around.

It was looking at coats that I finally found something appropriate. A long dark leather coat drew my attention, reminding me a little of the long environmental overcoats we'd worn on Ochre II. I tried it on and liked how it fit. The leather seemed thick and durable and warm, and it wasn't bright red like my environmental coat had been but I thought this was just as well. Somehow wearing the large coat made me feel a little more impressive and sure of myself or something, so I decided to get it. Sera informed me it went well with my boots.

When we were making our way toward the checkout, I pleased myself with a moment of brilliance. I told Sera I needed to go use the restroom, and used my running off without her to find a small plushie of a red fox. When I returned and presented it to her, she laughed and hugged me.

"I just wanted to get you something for all that you've done for me. I know it's not much, but it seemed appropriate," I explained.

She smiled at me. "It's wonderful, Arcai. Thank you. It's special coming from you, as one of the only people I've found that really seemed to just accept me for what I am, with all my foxy weirdness. You just feel like someone I can really open up to. Which is neat since I've known you less than a week." She giggled a little, hugging me again.

I smiled, holding her close. "I guess I could say I just try to do what feels the most right to me. Though I still don't quite understand where that could come from, since most of my memory is only of being a mindless killing drone..."

Sera pulled back and smiled into my eyes. "You follow your heart. Even if you didn't think you had one for those two years. You do, underneath the orders and the training and the killing. You just didn't remember it. But I think there's always been a real you inside there. That's not something they can erase or take from you just by trying to make you forget for a while. You're just finding yourself again, like waking up after sleeping."

"If I am finding myself, it's with a lot of your help, Sera," I told her seriously, smiling.

"Bah. Just doing my part," she said, grinning at me. "Let's get back to the ship before dad starts freaking out. The fees for going over your rented landing time are hell."

***

We checked out of the store with the promise I'd pay Sera back for everything when we got back to the ship. The drive back was quiet and comfortable, and evening was falling as Sera drove the shuttle into the cargo bay. There was a new assortment of enormous shipping crates there, and I wondered where we were off to next.

Carver met us as we pulled in, waving and smiling. "I got us another job while you two were out. We're taking these to Alaris Station, it's about ten days from here," he explained, motioning to the crates. "It's a bunch of machinery that new colonies tend to rent while they're getting established, but don't need to keep around once they get their own industries going. There are also a few containers of produce that we ought to be able to sell pretty well at the Station. Arcai, here ya go."

He handed me a small credit pad. It was essentially a wallet sized card that resembled a calculator, having a number pad and a small display and a link plug on the back. This was what most people used to carry their money electronically these days. I'd never had one before, but when I turned on the display to see how much was in it my eyes widened.

Carver grinned. "That's the money from your escape pod, along with your cut of the mission profits. We set some aside to put toward operating and maintenance costs of the Kingfisher, as well as general expenditures like food, and then divide up the rest."

"Wow... I guess any amount would seem like a lot to me since before now I've never actually owned any money, but... Carver, thanks."

"Not a problem. You more than earned your keep on those engines the other day. Besides, unless or until you decide you want to strike out on your own, you're part of the crew now." He smiled. "Nice coat, by the way."

"Yeah, it suits you," Sera agreed with a smile, resting a hand on my shoulder.

I grinned. "Well, it sort of reminded me the environmental coats they had us wearing on Ochre II. More than that I just liked the look and feel of it." I turned to Sera, nodding down at her tall boots. "And you sort of have your trademark boots, I figured I liked the idea of having a trademark coat or something."

Sera laughed. "I like these boots."

"Well, we'd better get a move on if you two don't have anything else you need to see to planetside. Our rented time expires in about ten minutes," Carver pointed out with a chuckle.

I glanced at Sera, hefting my bag of new purchases. "Nothing else I need."

Sera grinned at me and squeezed her new plushie under her arm. "I'm good."

Carver grinned and nodded, and we followed him up the ladder and toward the bridge, closing the cargo bay doors on the way.

***

I helped them keep an eye on how all the systems were functioning, but the Kingfisher was designed so that it could make orbit with only one person at the controls if need be. Two was plenty, so there wasn't much for me to do besides sit back and enjoy it.

The engines hummed to life and took on that blue glow, and the hover fields glowed more brightly in the failing light. The ship eased slowly off the ground, then started to pick up speed a little. Once we were high enough to be well clear of the structures we started to fly forward. The city lights passed beneath us as our flight started to angle upward, the engines' openings glowing brightly. They flared up then and we began to accelerate quickly, and I was pressed back into my seat. The feel of it wasn't much different from that of the troop shuttle, but it was a little smoother using the hover engines rather than fueled rockets. The engines themselves were notably quieter as well, although the roar of our friction against the thinning atmosphere was the same.

I closed my eyes and relaxed as the force pressing me into my chair gradually lessened, and gravity with it. I smiled as the pull of it subsided, and I eased out of my chair slightly against the safety restraints. When I opened my eyes the windows showed only the black of space, just a few of the brighter stars visible as usual. I glanced over and saw Sera watching me, smiling.

"Neat feeling, isn't it?"

I smiled back at her and nodded. "The first time I remember having a thought or an emotion that was really my own, it was when our troop shuttle was taking off to take us to Ochre II. Somehow it just feels... free. Liberating."

Sera tapped at a few final keys on her console, then unfastened her safety harness, leaving Carver to adjust the navigation settings. She pushed herself over to rest beside my chair and smiled. "I know what you mean... it's one of my favorite feelings. Something I never get tired of experiencing."

I smiled, turning to gaze out the window. Looking back, I could see the planet of Renn, a wide crescent of it illuminated. As we flew out from behind the world and emerged into the sun, the windows on that side of the ship automatically tinted themselves darker to block out the harsh brightness. Behind the bridge, the gravity wheel slowly began to turn.

I remembered the money I owed Sera, and reached down to take the credit pad out of my pocket. "I should pay you back."

Sera smiled, and motioned out the front window of the bridge. "In a moment. You should see this if you never have before."

I turned and watched out the front window, unbuckling my harness and getting up to hover beside Sera so I could see better. Carver made a few final workings at his console, then decisively hit one final button. A new hum began to resonate through the ship, beginning low and slowly climbing to a higher-pitched whine. Outside the ship, seeming to form a rough sphere around us, a soft golden glow flared into being. It was at its brightest directly ahead of us, rays traveling outward from it and back over the ship like a bow wake, then the glow faded out just as quickly as it had begun. Out ahead of the ship the stars seemed to brighten for an instant, then everything returned to normal. The stars looked no different than they had a moment ago.

Sera tapped my shoulder then and motioned for me to look out the aft windows. While the stars were all distant enough to not offer any indication of our velocity, Renn was shrinking into the distance behind us at a dizzying speed. The sight made it seem odd that we didn't feel any acceleration aboard the Kingfisher, but the truth was we weren't actually going any faster. Rather it was the density of the space immediately around us, within the range of the ship's Modulator, that had altered. Within that pocket we were traveling at a perfectly normal speed, but relative to the space outside the density shell we were hurtling along at a rate that made interstellar travel possible in a matter of weeks or days.

I stared out the aft window, watching the planet recede into the darkness until the glare of its sun began to drown it out. "I'd never seen that before," I said quietly. "There were never any windows on the troop shuttles."

Sera moved a little closer to me, leaning against me just a little. "Now you have."

I smiled, and floated there beside her as we watched Renn's sun slowly fade behind us.

CHAPTER 11

Sera and I found ourselves sitting in the lounge down in the grav wheel for a while after that, not having a lot that needed to be done. We joined our credit pads and I transferred the money I owed her to hers. She carried the fox plushie around with her the rest of that day, which I found rather flattering. I allowed myself a small degree of pride, thinking I'd done a good thing.

"You know, Arcai... there's one last little part to my whole fox thing that I haven't told you. That I've hardly told anyone."

I looked up at her from my cup of coffee, setting it down and giving her my full attention. "What's that?" I asked quietly.

She sighed a little, staring out the window and not answering right away. "Well... you know I have this desire to sort of... be a fox. That it goes beyond just liking them and feeling a connection with them. A lot of people who feel like that about something are content with their desires, sure they'd like it but they aren't about to go doing anything really crazy to try and get it. But me..."

I tilted my head and smiled softly as she trailed off. I waited a little while, then prompted her. "You'd be willing to take risks to make that dream come true?"

She nodded gently. "I've done some searching and reading on the subject. It's possible, and it's been done. Using genetic therapy and nanotechnology... I need to keep researching it, I'm not quite clear about the specifics of the process, but there are specialists out there who can actually... change you. It's a really new field, and it isn't very well-advertised. As I understand things, it's an industry that keeps itself pretty quiet. Nervous about the kind of backlash it could cause and all. There are a lot of controversial issues to it. But... I'd be willing to do it. I've been trying to get in touch with someone who does it, or at least someone who's undergone the procedure." She turned then and met my gaze. "They can change you, Arcai. You tell them and show them what you want, and they can alter your body."

I stared at her, a kind of curious wonder in my expression. "In your cabin, that drawing... there's a sketch I saw beside your bed, sort of a humanoid fox person. You drew that, didn't you? Is that what you... want to look like?"

She smiled, nodding again. "Yes... that's sort of my ideal self. How I'd really like to be." She sighed softly, leaning back in her chair and looking up at the ceiling. "It's not like I have anything against my body now, I'm happy with myself... It's not about changing something that I'm unhappy with. It's about becoming what I really want to be. Being on the outside what I feel I am on the inside."

I smiled at her, stroking my chin a little. The few days' worth of beard I had felt a little scratchy but I was starting to get used to it. "If you're wanting my opinion on all of this, it's still the same as what I told you before. I only see someone I care about having a dream that's very special to her. It brings you joy and doesn't do anyone any harm, so I hope it comes true for you. And if there are risks to it, well… you’re capable of researching it well enough to make an informed and responsible decision on whether or not it’s worth it."

Sera smiled and looked back at me. "You never stop impressing me, Arcai."

I shrugged and grinned at her. "It's just how I feel. Maybe we're both incurably weird and misguided, but if that's the case at least we're that together."

She chuckled at that, lifting up her feet and resting her boots on the low table between us. "I guess so. And maybe that's all that matters. Weirdness is a pretty subjective judgment anyway."

I smiled and drank more from my coffee.

***

There aren't a lot of specifics to tell for some time after that. The mission went smoothly, as did the next one and the one after that. I settled into a very comfortable place with Carver and Sera, effectively becoming a part of their family as well as their crew. Both of them took me under their wing as I slowly became more comfortable with my presence in society.

The relationship that I had with Sera seemed to stabilize and hold itself at that point for a while. We were closer than friends, effectively becoming like a brother and sister to one another. We both understood each other and our personalities fit well, and everything about our friendship was warm and comfortable. I came to realize that I did feel strongly for her, and that I saw her as something more than just a close friend or adopted sister. I imagine I did a poor job at hiding it, and Sera seemed to have a natural ability to know what I was thinking in any case. She never spoke of it though, and the two of us seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement that it wasn't the right time to change things just yet. We needed to be close in our innocence for some time longer. Then, perhaps... but that was the future.

I became better and better at working with the Kingfisher's engines as well as her other systems, and after a while Carver and Sera even let me pilot the ship from time to time. After a few months I was nearly as good a pilot and engineer as Carver and Sera. I paid them back for it by doing what I could to teach each of them some of the military skills I'd picked up, everything from hand to hand combat to marksmanship to deep space battle tactics. They both took to it well, and Sera even started expressing an interest in adding some modifications to her own implant to give it capabilities like mine. She was getting good enough at working with machines of any size and complexity that Carver and I just shrugged and left her to it when she started planning her designs.

Things went like that for some time, easy and peaceful and comfortable. Almost a year passed, Sera and I both having turned eighteen, when Carver came over the intercom from the lounge one day and told us to get our butts off the bridge and down there with him immediately to see a newscast that was airing.

***

"Sheesh, dad, what's going on? The universe exploding or something?" Sera asked as we walked into the lounge. Carver was sitting at a chair before one of the monitors, and waved us over without a word. The monitor was showing a news broadcast from one of the major networks, with an anchor sitting at a desk and talking. Sera and I shrugged at each other and walked over to stand behind Carver, watching.

"...Representatives from both companies have offered no comment at this time. However, our Dean Petersen interviewed Justice Councilor Richard Nye earlier this afternoon, and we take you to that now."

The screen changed to show two people sitting in a lounge of some sort, facing each other. Both wore suits and boringly professional haircuts, although one was a younger man and one was a bit older, with flecks of gray showing at his temples.

I glanced at Carver out of the corner of my eye, wondering what this was all about.

"So Councilor Nye, what can you tell us on a general level about the situation on Ochre II?" The younger man asked.

Oh.

"Well, Mister Petersen, what we have here is a situation that's unfortunately all too common these days. Two companies had a conflict between them, and rather than seeking legal council and taking the issues before a court of law, they sought to handle matters themselves through violence. It is despicable, and reflects very poorly on the judgment of all involved," the older man answered.

"Yes... now, the two companies, Reactive Industries and HepTech Resources Conglomerate, what specifics can you give our viewers about the nature of this conflict?"

"Well the matter is still under investigation, so I'm not at liberty to discuss details. What I will say however is that evidence has been presented to show that Reactive Industries took illegal and hostile actions toward HepTech. We have obtained evidence that Reactive trained a small, elite military unit in the piloting of Agile Combat Robots, and then sent these soldiers on a series of missions against HepTech installations. These missions involved trespassing, destruction of property, and theft of land. I should mention however that no solid evidence has at yet been presented implicating HepTech Resources Conglomerate in any illegal action."

"But it seems likely that they would have defended themselves against the attacks, violently if necessary, doesn't it Councilor? And they never contacted the Justice Council to report illegal actions on the part of Reactive Industries or sought aid, did they?"

"I'm not at liberty to speculate on the matter."

"Hm, very well. Does the Justice Council have evidence or a belief as to why this private and secret war, as it were, was conducted in the first place?"

"Ochre II is a desolate world with an atmosphere that is barely breathable. The only resource that gives it a significant economic value at present is the planet's mineral wealth. Each of the two corporations owns a hemisphere of the planet and mines these ore bodies. About seven years ago, tensions were seen to be elevated between Reactive Industries and HepTech and a number of territorial rights disputes broke out. At the time, the solution was to create a five kilometer buffer zone along the property line to try and prevent further disputes. More recent geologic soundings however have located a particularly valuable ore deposit straddling the buffer zone, and the evidence suggests that Reactive Industries wanted to mine this deposit without pursuing a legal means to do so. The company turned to violence and created its own small army, and set it lose on the area to try and chase HepTech out."

"What sort of legal action will Reactive Industries be faced with over this?"

"It will depend on how strong and widespread the evidence is once it settles. At present, Reactive Industries will be facing a temporary moratorium on mining operations on Ochre II, and an investigation will be conducted to determine who is responsible within the company. Depending on the internal extent, the entire company could be forced to give up its ownership rights on Ochre II altogether. It is difficult to say for certain, however, as the evidence is more solid in some places than others. No trace has been found as yet of the military personnel involved, for example. Since we haven't found any solid evidence to implicate HepTech, an inquiry will be held to ascertain their role in the incident."

"I see. Thank you very much for your time, Councilor Nye. Are there any closing comments you wish to make?"

"No, Mister Petersen, thank you. It's been a pleasure."

"Very well. Thank you again Councilor."

The screen changed then, cutting back to the studio with the anchor at his desk. A graphic in the upper corner of the screen showed a reddish planet and a picture of an ACR firing a pulse cannon, with the caption 'War in the Shadows.' "That was Justice Councilor Richard Nye. Just to recap the events of this story, the Justice Council announced this morning that it had obtained evidence of an illegal, private war between Reactive Industries and HepTech Resources Conglomerate, two large mining corporations, on a remote planet in the Hammond region known as Ochre II. The investigation will continue, and we'll keep you informed here at News 90."

I stared at the screen, not really listening as the anchor went on to the next story about a shipping strike causing a food shortage on some colony or another. I sighed softly, and realized Carver and Sera were both watching me.

I looked back at each of them in turn, not really knowing what to say. Finally I shrugged at Sera and said quietly, "Well, looks like you were right about pretty much all of it."

Sera stepped toward me and wrapped her arms around me, hugging. "Things are starting to resolve, it looks like... maybe you'll see some justice for all they put you through finally."

"We can hope. It doesn't seem quite right, though... HepTech isn't taking much heat, but they were just about as guilty as Reactive was. They didn't strike first but they sure as hell took military action rather than legal action. Why did they do that, anyway, do you figure?"

Carver answered this time. "Probably because it would take too long. HepTech could have just appealed to the Justice Council and gotten them to come stop Reactive from attacking them, true enough. Legally, they should have. However, the Justice Council is a government department, and as such, it takes them at least half a year to do something as simple as sending a message to Reactive Industries saying 'hey, quit it.' HepTech probably didn't want to wait that long. In six months Reactive could have had the entire ore formation practically mined dry. By the time the Council would have arrived they'd just be back on their own side of the property line, whistling innocently. At least, that's the way HepTech must have seen it. Either that or HepTech had legal infractions of their own they didn’t want uncovered. They might not have struck first but they did seem to have some awfully heavy armament for a bunch of mining outposts. They might have had the same idea, Reactive just beat them to the punch."

I nodded softly, staring out the window of the lounge. Sera was still close beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder. I leaned into the contact a little. "So... I guess the question is what the hell do I do now?"

Sera tilted her head. "Maybe nothing. At least not yet. If I were you, I might wait a while... let things settle down and sort themselves out more. Maybe even wait until it stops being a major headline in the news, just let everything calm down. Then if you want to, you could think about contacting a member of the Justice Council with your testimony."

I nodded softly. "I suppose so. In a way it's tempting to do just do nothing at all, just forget and leave it all behind me... but then, I can't help thinking about Reactive. Somebody there decided to start Project Shadow, somebody decided to use us like that. And somebody decided to murder all of us because we were nothing more than dangerous evidence." I looked over at Sera, and frowned. "And that pisses me off a little."

***

All three of us watched the news rather obsessively over the next several weeks, waiting for any updates on the case against Reactive. The evidence didn't seem grow much, at least not that they told the public about. As the story began to drop out of the headlines, it looked like some top people at Reactive would at best get fired, at worst get arrested over it. Reactive would lose their rights to mine Ochre II at least for a few years, but HepTech was forbidden from mining the large formation in the buffer zone, as it still wasn't on their land. The Justice council would be keeping a closer eye on Ochre II to make sure they behaved themselves and didn't try to mine the formation despite the ban.

When it finally dropped out of the news, the last word seemed to be that Reactive would get rather severely beaten down and HepTech would get off with a slap on the wrist. The Justice Council sent out a request for anyone who had further evidence or testimony to step forward and contact them to help the case against both companies.

I knew that HepTech had been pretty deep in it. I had clear memories of defending ourselves from attacks by them, and they'd had mining equipment established and in operation in a lot of the outposts we hit. Outposts that must have been in the buffer zone over this ore formation, indicating that even though Reactive started the fighting, HepTech probably started the illegal mining. It was a pretty big mess, and I had a few things to contribute to it.

All the same, I still wanted to wait a while longer yet. I talked it over extensively with Sera and Carver, and I finally settled on the idea that at some point when I was ready, they'd drop me off on Sagan, the well-established colony where the Justice Council was headquartered. I could strike off on my own for a little while and hire out while I offered what I knew, and then when I was done with all of it I'd rejoin them.

With a plan of action firmly decided and agreed upon, I promptly went back to sitting on my hands and avoiding it. Somehow it was all still so fresh in my mind, and I felt like I needed more time and distance before I could just walk up and tell the Justice Council everything I'd been through without losing control of myself somehow. Chances are I was just making excuses and running from myself a little more, hiding in the comfortable little niche I'd found for myself with Sera and Carver. And why not? I'd found a sort of contentment and purpose that most people spend a long time trying to find. And offering testimony to the Council wouldn't directly help me out any.

But, it was the right thing to do, I reminded myself. Truth goes a long way, Sera once told me. So I was resolved in my heart to go through with it. I just had to wait a little while longer until I was ready. Until the right moment came along and gave me permission to leave the Kingfisher and face my past alone.

It was a year and a half or so later, when I was newly twenty and Sera was nineteen, when that moment came.

CHAPTER 12

I was manning the bridge, and we were ten days into a fifteen day freight haul. We'd just finished a job working at a small colony to conduct some repairs to their low orbit fighter craft, and help train some of their mechanics. By now I had a pretty comfortable amount of money saved up and generally feeling pretty good about the state of my life. Sera and Carver were really good at that. To them I was just another member of the family, and that feeling of belonging was something I'd really gotten used to.

All the systems were functioning normally, and we were on course with the navigational sensors completely clear. Sera and Carver had been off together in the lounge for quite a while it seemed, so I thought I might head down there and check in on them. I checked everything over once more, and then headed to the gravity wheel.

When I entered the lounge I found Sera and Carver sitting opposite each other over a small table. Carver was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, and looked to be taking a brief nap. Sera was leaning forward over the table, resting on her arms and staring into a cup of coffee. The scene of them was peaceful, so I smiled a little.

Sera turned to look up at me after a moment, with a rather unreadable expression on her face. Suddenly something just felt sickeningly wrong to me. All was not well.

I stopped smiling.

Oh God.

I hurried over to the table, looking at Sera, looking at Carver.

It looked for all the world like he was just taking a nap. He was even smiling gently. When I looked back at Sera I could see where the tears had dried on her face.

She leaned toward me and I crouched down beside her chair, wrapping my arms around her and holding her close.

She stayed silent for a while, just holding herself tightly against me. Eventually she spoke softly.

"He knew it was coming... he could feel it, that's why we stayed here together... spending his last... Arcai I'm sorry I should have called you, told you so you could come too... but I just didn't think..."

I held her tighter against me, rubbing her shoulder gently. "I understand Sera, it's all right..." It was about all I could think of to say. She had enough to worry about without feeling guilty.

She shuddered a little, and I just kept holding her. "At least... at least he knew it was coming. He told me he felt okay about it... We had a long time to talk together. So... so that was good."

I nodded gently and didn't trust myself to say anything. I felt some tears falling from my own eyes. Carver had been more than a friend to me; he'd become a father to me as well as Sera.

And now he was gone.

Sera and I held each other like that for a long time, not saying anything. We both closed our eyes, silently letting our tears flow.

***

The last five days of that mission went by in kind of a blur. We didn't say a lot to each other, but just about every time we were within several meters of each other we stopped whatever we were doing and hugged each other tightly. We cried off and on, and a couple times I held her as she sobbed hysterically.

Truth to tell, she did the same for me a few times.

We needed to get by it, let out all our pain, let it be real and raw and brutal. By the time we docked at the Poseidon Center and delivered our cargo, we were both in marginally better shape.

We waited for a while before taking on any more jobs, giving ourselves a few weeks to recover. We got together with a few other freelancers and friends that Carver had known, meeting up on the colony he'd been born on. We held the funeral there.

I obviously didn't know anyone, but Sera knew a few of them. It was all pleasant enough, but kind of surreal. I guess funerals always are. Sera spoke the most about her father, and I even worked up the courage to say a few things. I don't really remember what I said, but it was something about him being a deeply caring and noble person who was like a father to me when it mattered the most.

I think Sera told anyone who asked my original story about having escaped from an exploding freighter. I hadn't decided to come out in the open with my story yet, but I was realizing it was past time I do that.

I told Sera as much some days later, when we were sitting in the lounge together over dinner. We'd taken on another job, coincidentally taking a cargo shipment to the Sagan colony where the Justice Council met.

"It just seems like it's high time I get on with it. Go to the council and offer what I can."

Sera smiled. "Heaven knows I've been bugging you about it for long enough. Are you really feeling like you're ready?"

"I think so. It's not just that I should, I want to. What's hard though is that I... I don't want to just leave you, especially now."

"I'll be all right, Arcai. Truth to tell, this could actually work out pretty good. I've been thinking lately, I could use the time to go and find myself, as it were. If we both just split up for a month or two... I'll leave you on Sagan, it's got some big cities and I'm sure you could find some work... and you go tell your story to the Justice Council. While that's all going on, I can go take the Kingfisher off on my own. I'll take a few jobs myself, but... well, okay. Remember how I told you about the fox thing? How there are people who can really do that?"

I looked up at her, widening my eyes a little. "...You're going to go through with that, aren't you?"

Sera nodded. "I... yes, I am. I want to. I've been researching it more and more, and there's someone at a station out on the frontier... I want to do it Arcai. Maybe it's completely crazy, but it's my dream. And the way I understand things, it's really within my reach. I can do this. I can become what I've always wanted to be. How many people really get that chance?"

I smiled softly. Her conviction alone was enough to convince anyone. "I think it's a good idea, Sera. I think it's wonderful, and you should follow your heart with it. The only thing is, be careful. This just feels in my gut like the kind of thing where something could go horribly wrong, or people could try to take advantage of you. Follow your dream with all your heart, but keep your wits about you. Just be careful and take good care of yourself. I don't think I need to tell you that you mean a lot to me."

Sera smiled at me across the table. It was one of those really deep, true smiles that really comes from the heart, the kind you don't see all that often. I smiled back at her, but shivered a little.

She sat there like that for a little while, staring at me and smiling until I started fidgeting a little. I grinned at her. "All right all right, I get the idea. It's just the truth. I care about you a lot and I don't want anything bad to happen to you, and I don't want anyone to mess around with your dream."

Sera stood up and walked around the table to stand in front of me, and then she sat down lightly on my lap, grinning. It startled me and made me squirm a little. The leather of her tall boots creaked softly as she settled in. I looked up at her and blinked, somewhat confused but not objecting. She seemed to fit well there and it was comfortable.

And then she leaned down and kissed me.

It felt like a few years went by before it occurred to me to kiss back, rather than just sitting there with my eyes wide in shock. I gently wrapped my arms around her and held her close, my whole body tingling.

Eventually she pulled back, leaving me staring at her breathlessly. It was hard to think. She giggled a little at me. I imagine I must have looked rather silly, though at the time I didn't seem to have a lot of control or awareness over what I was doing. "I care about you too, Arcai."

She leaned against me, snuggling in as we both leaned back in the chair. I smiled warmly at her as my brain started to catch up with me, and I leaned in to kiss her again.

We stayed like that for a while, cuddling together and kissing each other. The kisses got a bit more enthusiastic with time, as we both more fully realized that we'd each been wanting this for some time now, and finally the time seemed to be right. We could admit what we felt for one another and act on it.

Some time later we were still snuggled up together in the chair, gazing out the window together at a small, brilliant violet nebula. "Sera..." I began, the words coming naturally as they always do to one who felt as I did just then, "I love you."

"I love you too, Arcai."

I couldn't help but shiver. The significance of those words being spoken to me touched me on a deep level, and it is a moment that I have never forgotten.

***

After that it was another month or so worth of travel to get to Sagan. We'd been flying around the frontier, and Sagan was a well-established colony deeper into developed space. Given that it was going to be our last month together for a while, we spent it well, frequently being close with one another.

We talked a lot about our new feelings, and decided between us that things perhaps shouldn't go further just yet. We were both about to go our own ways for a little while, and when we got back together we'd both be different. Only having a month left together, we agreed that things could be a little awkward if our relationship took on that deeper level right now. So we decided to wait.

We made it about five days before changing our minds.

We'd had a nice dinner together, treating ourselves a little with some of the more special food we had along, and when I walked her back to her cabin we started kissing again. Eventually I found her pressing herself against me and pinning me slightly against the wall as we kissed, and, well... you don't get details. That's our own business.

***

After that we made very good use of the rest of the month. There was a lot to explore. When we finally reached Sagan we'd found a new place in our relationship together. We just really felt connected, joined, and that we perfectly understood one another.

Underneath that however was something even deeper and more special to us. We knew that we were about to split up and go our own ways, follow our own paths. We had to find ourselves, in the sort of way that you can only do when you're alone. We knew that when we saw each other again we'd both be different, and we didn't know quite how. It made our relationship over that month all the more special, knowing that we'd always love each other but that it wouldn't ever be quite the same again. Until we were back together, we'd be letting each other go.

What was so neat was that we both understood this and accepted it fully. There was no bitterness, no jealousy, no sorrow or anger, nor would there be no matter what happened.

Even so, after we delivered our shipment we stayed in orbit for another week, just to have the time together.

***

We waited until we were good and ready to go our separate ways, making sure we each felt okay about doing so before she finally took me down to the planet in the shuttle. During the trip there I'd been job hunting and communicating with potential employers, and had managed to land a position that seemed right up my alley.

Phoenix Agile Engineering was a small business that owned a block in Sagan's industrial sector. It made its money by designing, building, and servicing Agile Combat Robots. They'd only been around a couple of years so far, but were being quite successful. According to what I'd read, their designs were sturdy and reliable, yet innovative. They'd brought some good ideas into the field, and some speculators were thinking if they expanded their business over the next several years they'd have a real shot at dethroning Gryphon Systems as the industry leader in ACR's.

The thing was, while Phoenix could design and build ACR's with the best of them, they only had one or two people on their staff who really had the training to pilot them well. So what they needed was somebody who knew ACR's well enough to come in and train up a small team. Their hope was to get a set of employees who were proficient in at least the basics of ACR operation, that could then be used to advertise the product by live demonstrations and possibly even hiring out for a few missions.

I was the one they hired for this job, and it would last for about a month while I trained fifteen young cadets in how to pilot an ACR properly and well. It would pay tremendously well, and the chance to jack in to an ACR again for the first time in almost three years was something that sounded very tempting to me.

So that's how I found myself standing on a landing platform at the Sagan colony next to the Kingfisher's dark blue shuttle, with Sera and I giving each other a rather passionate farewell kiss.

Eventually we pulled back, staring warmly into each others' eyes. "Arcai... take really good care of yourself, okay? And keep in touch. You know how to reach me."

I smiled at her happily. "I will, Sera, I promise. And you too. I really hope everything works out well for you. I hope it's everything you've dreamed of and more."

She smiled, and kissed me again. "I think it will be. I'll keep in touch. And I'll be careful. You do too, chances are everything will go just fine with the Justice Council but these kinds of things can have layers and such that you don't know about. So just be cautious."

"I will, Sera." I smiled, hugging her tightly. "I really love you..."

"I love you too, Arcai. Now go give 'em hell. I'll see you in a couple months."

I grinned at her. "You too."

She smiled warmly to me as she climbed into the shuttle. I stepped back a little to give her room, watching as she closed the door and powered up the engines. The shuttle slowly lifted off the deck, and I saw her wave and blow a kiss to me. I returned the gesture and smiled, and watched as the small craft turned away and started toward the horizon. It faded to a small speck, then flared brightly as the engines fired to ascend to orbit. I watched as long as I could see her shuttle, and my heart ached in spite of the certainty we'd both found that this was the right thing.

Some tears rolled down my face. I wondered if she was crying too.

For the past three years I'd been so close to her that I'd always known when she was crying, I'd always been there to know how she felt and what she was doing. Suddenly she was gone, off on her own adventure, without me. She'd be living, going through the day to day normalcies of her life, but without me there to share in it.

I wondered if that felt as strange to her as it did to me.

And I couldn't ask her if it did.

I shuddered a little, wrapping my arms around myself. This was still the right thing to do. We both knew it. We had to be apart for a time, and grow separately, We had to know that we were capable of surviving on our own.

I wondered how different it would feel when we were back together again.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I had to get a hold of myself. I'd have plenty of time over the next two months to dwell on all of this, but for now I decided I'd do well to get off the shuttle deck before something landed on me. I picked up my duffel back and swung it over my shoulder, and started toward the service terminal. Somewhere in the lobby would be a representative from Phoenix Agile Engineering, and it was time for me to find them. I had a job to see to.

CHAPTER 13

The service terminal looked like pretty much every service terminal anywhere. High ceilings, large windows to let in the daylight, and a lot of people seeming to just be waiting around, or walking around and looking at shops in order to convince themselves that they were doing something more purposeful than just waiting around.

According to what I'd worked out with Phoenix Agile Engineering, they'd have a representative here holding a sign with my name. It didn't take long to find such a person, since Arcai Grid doesn't seem to be a particularly common name. The handwritten sign was held by a young man in a gray mechanic's jumpsuit. He smiled when I walked up to him, and I nodded in greeting.

"Arcai Grid?"

"That's me. You're from Phoenix?"

The man nodded, moving the sign over to hold in one hand and extending the other one towards me. "Ken Marcel. I'm an engineer with the company. If you'll follow me, I'll take you back to the compound. You'll meet the rest of the team there."

I smiled and nodded to him, and followed him out of the terminal. He led me to a loading zone beside the parking ramp, and waiting there was probably the biggest truck I'd ever seen. It was robust and boxy and a worn color of red, and sturdy enough on four heavy axles to support the ACR that was crouched on the flat cargo bed behind the cab. Proper huge wheels supported it, sturdier for that kind of heavy duty hauling than hover fields. The truck was of a construction that made it look like it could be driven through a brick wall and come out with only a few scratches and superficial dents, and would almost look better for having the added character. However, it was the resting ACR that I found myself staring it.

Where the Hellcats we'd used on Ochre II had been a relatively featureless gray in color, this design was painted a brilliant, metallic blood red. The Hellcats had also been a little boxy and angular, distinctive in their own way but designed purely for function and rolling off the assembly line as quickly as possible. The ACR on the bed of this truck had a smoother, sleeker, more organic look to it. The trained eye could tell it would still be just as effective in combat, but here was a machine that caught the eye nicely. To the people that had designed it and built it, it wasn't just a machine; it was a work of art.

Ken noticed me admiring it and grinned. "P-21 Red Dragon. It's a slightly older model of ours that we don't make anymore, we've moved on to the 22's as our main unit. A customer just finished the lease on this one, but I don't think it's been completely decided what we'll do with her yet. Might just take her apart for parts, or if Mister Rand is optimistic enough about the future of our company we might keep her around as a collector's piece or something. First commercial model we produced and all. Not that she's much different from the 22's, but you know how it goes."

He hopped up and climbed into the cab of the truck, and I got in the passenger side. The engine roared to life and he drove the large truck out into the city.

***

We stayed mostly on the outskirts of the actual city, using the wider cargo roads that were specifically designed for things like our truck. Once we reached the industrial sector we turned down a broad street, and then eventually came to a block that was guarded by a high steel wall with a few tall buildings within. Ken drove the truck in through a gate, and parked the truck in a courtyard of sorts. Before us was a tall building with a massive door, presumably the main storage hanger of Phoenix Agile Engineering. Beside it was a smaller machine shop where most of the construction and servicing went on, and then a taller main building that looked less industrial and held the offices and such. At the far end of the compound was a large grassy training field where I imagined I'd be spending a lot of time over the next month.

Ken and I hopped down from the cab. A small group of people were walking over toward us from the main building. The man in the lead was a young but intelligent looking fellow in a business suit. Behind him was a blond-haired woman carrying a data pad and also wearing a suit, and a slightly older man with a tall, solid build and graying hair in a dark blue mechanic uniform.

The man in the suit smiled and extended a hand to me. "I'm Arthur Rand, the owner of Phoenix Agile Engineering."

I shifted my duffel bag and shook his hand, smiling back. "Arcai Grid. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"And you. It sounds like you've got a lot of good experience working with ACR's. This is our accountant, Susan Brown, and our chief mechanic, Erasmus Stone." He indicated the woman and the man with him, respectively. The woman smiled and nodded, and the man just gave a brief nod. "Mister Stone is who you'll be working with directly the most; he's in charge of the cadets you'll be teaching. If you want to come with me, we can work out the details in my office." I nodded, and followed the trio inside.

The accountant and the mechanic didn't say a whole lot through most of the meeting, just sitting quietly and letting Rand and me talk. We just worked out the finer points of what he wanted the pilots to learn, how much I could realistically do in a month, that general sort of thing. They had a small apartment on site where I'd be living, and as it turned out I'd be piloting that older P-21 Red Dragon that Ken had brought back from the star port. I was eager to get in the cockpit and try it out, but first I was shown to my room and allowed to settle in briefly. After that I went to talk with Erasmus Stone and work out how I'd be teaching his men.

His office was small but had a nice view of the training field. He was sitting behind his desk, but my eyes were more immediately drawn to the walls of his office, where a display rack held a small collection of swords. I wasn't well versed in the nomenclature of weaponry that archaic, but one looked like what you'd call a longsword, another a rapier. There were a few others that I was less certain of.

Stone followed my gaze, and smiled. "I collect a little, and do some fencing in my spare time."

I looked back at him and smiled. The morning sun was pouring in the office window, highlighting the flecks of silver in his hair. He was tall and well-built, and had a grace and economy of movement about him that made me wonder if he'd been a soldier at some point in his life.

"In any case. I'll be working with you to train up the cadets. Some of them are mechanics here already, and some just hired on to be pilots. I've worked with all of them a little already so they have discipline, but I've never operated an ACR before so you'll be teaching all of us."

Right down to business, then. I liked this guy already. "Well enough. And we start this afternoon, yes? Mister Rand said I'd be using the older P-21, what will the rest of you be piloting?"

"We've got a pack of P-22 Gold Dragons that are fresh off the line. The capabilities are pretty similar to the Red so there won't be any real difference apart from the color. I imagine you'll want to give her a run to get used to the controls before we get started?"

"If there's time, that would be wonderful. It's been a few years since I've been in a cockpit."

Erasmus nodded, and led me out of the room then. I followed him to the large storage hanger where the red ACR was crouched. "Just take her out to the training field and run around a bit, whatever you like."

I nodded and grinned, and climbed up to the cockpit. On the outside she was beautiful, the design sleek and smooth but also very sturdy and robust looking. The shape spoke to me of fluidity and strength working in unison, but then I've been told I get a bit carried away with my passion for ACR's.

The armament was similar to the Hellcat I once piloted, with dual pulse cannons on each wrist, except that the shoulder mounts only involved one missile rack. The other shoulder had a dangerous-looking close range grenade launcher of some sort. It looked like all kinds of fun.

Jacking in felt like waking up out of a coma. Having a massive metal machine of war that bristled with firepower at the control of your every thought was one of the feelings you don't ever quite get over. I instantly decided I liked the feel of this one much better than the Hellcats, too. The motion seemed smoother and quicker, and it responded to my commands in more subtle and exact ways. The technicians here at Phoenix clearly set out to make a superior product, testing it to perfection instead of just rolling something off the line as quickly as possible the way Gryphon Systems seemed to do with the Hellcat model. I was in love. I hoped Sera would understand.

I spent most of the morning just running the ACR around the training field, moving around and trying out some of the old exercises I'd used to learn piloting in the first place. All my old skills seemed to come right back to me as if the last time I was in a cockpit was yesterday. I managed to pry myself out of the machine to eat some lunch, and then first thing afterward I started to meet with the cadets.

It was as Erasmus had said. They all seemed to be well disciplined already and knew how to follow orders. I wouldn't have to waste time yelling at anybody, which was just as well since I didn't imagine I'd be too good at it.

I introduced myself and explained what we'd be doing and how we'd be learning. I found myself thinking back to Commander Barker, and I think I probably emulated his style quite a bit. I guess you stick to what you know, but it seemed to work.

I hadn’t thought of Barker in a while. In a strange way, I missed him, and remembering him brought up a small pang of guilt over murdering him. Even if it was to stop him from murdering me.

When we all jacked in and got on to the training field, the cadets formed a line with me opposite them. All of their ACR's were a polished gold color, quite attractive. The general shape was virtually identical to my machine, and Erasmus' ACR was distinguishable from the other Gold Dragons only by a silver stripe across one shoulder.

Over the next several days I started them with walking, then with more advanced movements. I trained them pretty much using the same approach that had been used for me, and they seemed to take to it about as well. I gained confidence as I went, watching their progress and being pleased with how it was going.

***

About a week into the job I was meeting with Arthur Rand, updating him on how the training was coming along. He seemed as pleased with the results as I was, but then at the end of the meeting I suddenly was struck by a rather mad idea.

"Mister Rand... the ACR I'm piloting right now to teach the cadets, the Red Dragon... what exactly are your plans for it after I finish my work with you?"

"Well, we hadn't really decided yet. It'll depend a little on what sort of condition it's in by then, but we might just end up scrapping it for the parts. We don't build that model anymore, but it's similar enough to the P-22's that we can use most of the components for repair work. Why do you ask?"

"Would you consider keeping her whole and selling her, if you had a buyer?" I really didn't know what I was going on about. This was crazy.

I seemed to have his attention. He looked interested. "...Certainly I would. Most people now would rather just get a new 22 than bother with a used model that wasn't in production anymore, so if we actually had a buyer I'd probably leap at the opportunity and offer a pretty fair price." He raised his eyebrows a little. "Are you offering, Arcai?"

"Yes, I am." Like I said, crazy. Still, I'd found out in my job hunting that it was significantly easier to get a job as an ACR pilot most places if you had your own ACR. So it was a strictly practical decision, you understand, utterly devoid of any selfish desires at all.

Rand smiled at me. "Well then... I imagine we can work out something good. Since you're already working with us and using the ACR..." With that we got swept into a conversation working out the details, they'd just take a little out of what they were paying me, which still left it at a pretty sizable amount, and when the month was up I'd be the new owner of that red beauty I'd grown so fond of.

It all went by in kind of a haze, and it took me a while to realize that I'd just bought an ACR for myself. I had to laugh when I got back to my room as the sheer insanity of it. An ACR wasn't the sort of thing most people bought on impulse. But whatever. Most people could remember something before the age of fifteen and were born with a more interesting name than Unit Four, too.

***

The other thing I did around that time was to finally get off my butt and contact the Justice Council. I got a secretary and asked if I could schedule an appointment to meet with Councilor Richard Nye, the man I had seen interviewed about the whole Ochre II incident. Apparently he was popular and the secretary wanted some kind of good reason why I was worthy of an appointment, so I told him I had a witness testimony to offer on the case against Reactive Industries over Ochre II. When he didn't seem convinced, I told him a little more about how I had been part of Project Shadow, Reactive's pet military unit. That seemed to get him interested, and he told me that Councilor Nye was off world for a few weeks, but he would schedule me in for an appointment when he returned. It conveniently lined up to be the day after I'd be finishing my job with Phoenix, so I accepted gratefully.

I'd have to tell Sera I finally committed to offering testimony. She'd be proud. She'd been bugging me for the past year about it, and never understood why I was waiting all that time. I didn't quite understand it either, but now at least I was finally moving on it at least.

***

I was frankly impressed with how quickly the cadets were coming along. I think my own teaching got more enthusiastic after I started to think of the red ACR as really being my own, and something compelled me to name it the Doom Hammer. It seemed like a good, solid, imposing name that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies, not that I really had any. But I liked the idea of it.

By the fourth week the cadets were all doing great. Even if they wouldn't be as deadly as Project Shadow had been, they all operated as a smooth team. They knew how to communicate with each other on a battlefield and adapt their tactics in a moment, and they knew how to deal with most types of enemies they'd ever be likely to come up against. To be truthful, I was quite proud of both them and of myself. Erasmus Stone seemed pretty happy about the whole thing as well. That was just as well since the cadets would be falling under his command solely once I finished my work.

Erasmus and I seemed to hit it off pretty well, and during the month we eventually took to hanging out together, sometimes sharing a drink together at a nearby bar in the evening. We never spoke a whole lot, and didn't need to. He came across and gruff, silent, and very no-nonsense. Sera and Carver had shown me how to be warm and friendly, but I still had that soldier mentality at my core that responded well to companionable silence. Before long I had myself completely convinced that Erasmus was some flavor of ex-military. But that wasn't the sort of thing that soldiers like us ever asked one another about. We just knew, and that was enough.

As week four drew to a close, we both felt very good with how the cadets were doing. I felt good that I'd managed to teach them well, and Erasmus felt good that I'd be leaving him with an effective fighting force. They'd be able to hire out and make about the best possible advertisement by example for Phoenix, and they had the training to be able to take on actual combat missions as well if they wanted to.

Arthur Rand seemed greatly pleased too, though he didn't watch our training sessions too closely. He wanted to wait and see it all during our final demonstration that we'd perform before the whole company. That was the target that we were all working toward, and we worked fervently to make sure each of the cadets were fully ready as the day drew closer, then finally arrived.

CHAPTER 14

It was a clear day when Stone and I assembled our ACR's with the cadets' on the training field. Arthur Rand and his accountant sat on a set of bleachers beside the field, along with pretty much the entire staff of the company. They were eager to see what their own product was capable of in the hands of skilled pilots, and we were just as eager to show them.

The first half of the demonstration was almost more of a dance than anything. I led the team through a series of formations and parade movements that simulated things you might do on a battlefield. While we could communicate silently through our ACR's comlinks, I shouted my orders over the Doom Hammer's loudspeaker for the benefit of the spectators. For the second half of the demonstration we staged a mock-battle, breaking into two teams and waging war with the harmless beams of light that the machines could emit for training purposes.

Our audience seemed well impressed. We were all congratulated enthusiastically during the celebratory party that was held afterward, and I joined the cadets in letting it go to my head a little. I felt good about how I'd managed to impart my knowledge, and the success of my month's work was plainly visible in their performance.

***

By evening I was tired and ready for bed, but I wanted to send a message to Sera before turning in. When I turned on my terminal to do so, I saw that I had a message from Councilor Nye requesting that I contact him as soon as I was able. My appointment with him was scheduled for tomorrow, but I imagined he wanted to get in touch and verify what information exactly I had to offer. It wasn't too late yet so I dialed up his office, and the secretary of his that I'd talked to several weeks before showed up on the screen as he answered.

When I announced who I was he seemed to recognize the name and nodded, informing me that the Councilor had been expecting my call. He patched me through to him, and the screen changed to show me the older man I'd seen in the newscast a year and a half ago. For all I could tell he was wearing the same suit as then, with the same unthreateningly normal haircut.

"Ah, Mister Grid. Thank you for calling, I'm glad you got my message."

"Me too. Am I still scheduled to meet with you tomorrow?"

"Yes, that's all arranged. I just wanted to talk with you a little beforehand to determine what the nature of your testimony was. This matter concerns several of my colleagues who are working on this case as well as myself, so I want to find out who else I should bring to our meeting."

"Ah, of course. Well, I imagine your secretary passed some of this on to you, but I am the only surviving member of Project Shadow, the military team that was created by Reactive Industries for their Ochre II campaign. They trained us up and then had us pilot Agile Combat Robots against enemy facilities. Near the end of it I overheard by chance a conversation between two of our superiors that made it sound like they were worried about information being leaked to the public, and that they were considering killing off my team to get rid of evidence. They tried to do this then while we were on a shuttle, but since I had been watching for it I was able to make it to an escape pod. I saw the shuttle get destroyed behind me, killing off the other members of my team and the commander who had been our immediate superior. I was picked up by a freighter some weeks later."

The Councilor listened intently to my abbreviated story, steepling his fingers before his face. "I see... and you would be willing to offer this testimony in a more detailed form in person before a panel of the Justice Council? This could help us greatly in the case against Reactive Industries."

I nodded, gaining a little enthusiasm as I went now that I was finally getting into this. "Certainly. They did a good job of keeping us in the dark for a lot of it, just training us and having us do our work, so at the time it was hard to fit anything into a bigger picture. However I can offer you a detailed account of my experiences, as well as providing some files I've found from both companies that fit in with them and augment how everything fits together."

Something about that seemed to get his attention, and he frowned at me through the screen. "You say 'both companies,' what exactly do you mean by that?"

I frowned back at him slightly, mildly confused. "Well, Reactive Industries and HepTech Resources Conglomerate. They're the other party involved, and last I was aware the case against them was struggling a little to find enough evidence to convict them. I'm not sure that I have enough to do that all by myself but my testimony should definitely help the matter."

Councilor Nye leaned close to the screen, frowning and looking suddenly very serious. I realized suddenly that I shouldn't have said some part of this, but I couldn't understand why not. "Listen to me, Arcai," he began, looking grave and a little nervous. "The issues at stake here are complicated, more than you realize. As it stands now, Reactive is in a bad place legally and the company isn't expected to survive, but HepTech is poised to take total control of Ochre II's resources. Now, there are some powers involved here that would like nothing better than to see Reactive go down and leave HepTech as the sole owner of Ochre II. Powers to whom justice means nothing and self interest is all that matters. The knowledge you have is dangerous, Arcai, and we have to be careful who learns of it." He sighed then reaching up to rub at his temples. "I'll tell you what. I was going to just have you come to my office tomorrow but I didn't realize you'd carry with you such sensitive information. We'd better meet somewhere a little more secure. You are staying at Phoenix Agile Engineering's facility right now, yes? How about I have a driver of mine come and pick you up tomorrow morning around eleven?"

I nodded softly, staring at his image in surprise. I let a little fear show too. This was clearly not something I'd anticipated. "Yes, I'm at Phoenix... I'm just finishing up my work here so that will work well."

"Good. My driver will show up there tomorrow morning and call for you. When you meet him, tell him it's a nice morning. He'll say it's not as nice as in the mountains. That's how you'll know he's with me. If he doesn't say this, he's someone I didn't send and you should get out of there immediately. You're in danger, Arcai. Be careful who you trust."

I swallowed and nodded. "All right."

"Good then. I'll see you tomorrow. Be careful."

With that he closed the connection, leaving me staring at the screen.

Well, crap.

I wasn't a complete fool, and I realized pretty quickly that more likely than not the Councilor himself was a member of the conspiracy he'd made reference to. I know that may seem like a bit of a leap, but I could tell. If he was outside of such a conspiracy, he should have been happier that I could offer information against it. For that matter they should have found evidence of some sort to make some kind of move against HepTech a long time ago, but for almost a year now all they'd suffered was an 'investigation.' I should have realized it sooner, before I shot my mouth off. I was dealing with governments and huge corporations, there were bound to be relationships going around that I knew nothing about.

I grimly informed myself that chirping up and telling Nye that I could and would offer testimony against HepTech as well as Reactive was about the stupidest thing I'd ever done.

In any case, what's done was done and now I had to deal with it. I considered my options. I could try to bolt for it right now and just not be here when the driver showed up tomorrow, but I didn't see where I could really go. The Justice Council no doubt had resources that would enable me to track me down and find me if I ran for it, and I wasn't entirely keen on just abandoning my new ACR either.

I sat up in bed and thought about it for a long time. I didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

***

By morning I'd resolved to go with the driver when he showed up. I knew it was dangerous, and would probably qualify as the second stupidest thing I'd ever done, but it seemed at this point like I had to take the risk. I needed to find out more about what was going on. I did have an advantage as well in the fact that Councilor Nye in all probability thought that I'd bought his story, and I would come in all innocent and trusting of him. He probably didn't know that I'd seen through his lies, so that would work in my favor.

Someone once said that knowing there was a trap was the first step in evading it. I felt like I'd read that somewhere, and it made sense.

When I woke up after finally managing a few hours of sleep, I sent a message to Sera. I wasn't sure if they'd have my communications tapped now so I encrypted the message as best I could and avoided going into details, but I told her briefly of my conversation with Councilor Nye. I didn't directly tell her I knew he was full of crap, but I dropped a few subtle hints that I imagined she'd be able to pick up on and anyone who intercepted the message would not.

I ate breakfast with Arthur Rand and Erasmus Stone. While they didn't know the specifics and weren't aware of my past, I had told them about my meeting with the Council. They wished me well at it. I thanked them and didn't tell them about my conversation with Nye the night before. Rand told me I could stay around for a few days free of charge and keep the Doom Hammer stored with them until I found my next job, which was generous of him. He was pretty happy with the work I'd done. I'd been searching for my next job and had a few possibilities lined up, but that wasn't the top thing on my mind just then.

At eleven in the morning, the driver showed up in a fancy black hovercar, and called for me. I went out to meet him with my gun tucked at my back beneath my coat. I doubted I'd get the chance to use it if I needed it, but it made me feel better having it. He was wearing a suit and looked about as normal and forgettable as it was possible for a person to look.

"Nice morning," I offered.

"Not as nice as in the mountains."

He opened the back door of the car for me and I got in and sat down. He closed it and walked around to the driver's door, getting in and starting it up. We started driving through the city, and neither of us spoke.

I was terrified but I think I hid it expertly. All the same I was still reasonably certain that, even though I had seen no alternative, getting in that car was the second stupidest thing I'd ever done.

CHAPTER 15

When I woke up, I had to blink a few times to clear my vision. I found myself sitting in a folding metal chair in a small room that was largely featureless.

Something about that really didn't seem right. I didn’t seem to remember falling asleep.

The last memory I had was getting into that car to go see Councilor Nye.

Dammit. They must have gassed me or something. They knew the kind of training I had and weren't taking any chances. I'd underestimated them, and now I'd gotten myself in rather more trouble than I'd been planning for.

The room was dim with bare cinder block walls and one overhead light fixture. There was a heavy metal door, and a large mirror set into the wall opposite me. My coat and my pistol were missing.

Ooh, goodie. An interrogation.

"You'll have to forgive our rudeness, Unit Four, but this is necessary I'm afraid. We'd like you to tell us everything about your experiences on Ochre II. It's really just offering the testimony you were going to give us anyway, so think of it that way."

The voice was Councilor Nye's, and it was coming from a small speaker set into the wall beneath the mirror. No doubt it was a one way mirror and Nye along with his fellow conspirators were sitting behind there watching me.

This was really going to suck.

"Why the setup? Wouldn't it have been easier to just let me tell you normally?"

"Perhaps, but it's more controlled for us this way. We can be more sure you're telling us everything. We couldn't be certain how much you would trust us."

So they didn't know that I'd seen through him, but they were smart enough to realize that I might have. I hadn't considered that. Stupid. "So now that you've kidnapped me and brought me here against my will, what makes you so sure I'm still going to feel like talking to you?"

"It's your life story, isn't it? You've hidden it for so long, and here you were all ready to tell it to someone finally. You aren't going to give up that chance now, are you, Unit Four?"

I hadn't really noticed when he called me 'Unit Four' the first time, but the second time it caught my attention. I'd never told him that had been my designation. I shivered a little, wondering where he got that from and how he knew. I'd only told Carver and Sera, so either they'd somehow gotten information from tapping them or something, or there was a very large conspiracy going on that was much broader than I'd guessed.

This was looking worse by the moment.

"We have records and testimony from Reactive Industries with regard to the team you were part of. It was called Project Shadow. You woke up one morning in a barracks with six other soldiers, and didn't remember anything except how to fight. That would be the first thing you ever remember. Isn't that right, Unit Four?"

Fear was very quickly turning to anger.

His voice was maddeningly calm, almost clinically disinterested, but the way he rattled off my most personal memories was relentless. I didn't like that he knew all of this about me. I pretty much just didn't like him at all. And I really didn't like being called Unit Four.

He prompted again. "You don't even know where you were to begin with, do you? Before they took you to Ochre II you'd never even seen the light of day. Don't you find that sad, Unit Four?"

Anger was very quickly turning to rage.

I stood up from the chair and walked over to the door, grabbing for the handle. It was almost certainly locked but it was something to do. I could always try and wrench the handle right off with a burst of strength from my implant, too.

But naturally, they'd thought of that. There was no handle on the door at all, nothing to grab on to. And the door looked solid enough that even my strength wouldn't be enough to dent it.

"Sit down, Unit Four. Talk to us. Tell us everything. What happened on that shuttle? Did you kill the rest of your team? What made you to do that? What made you betray your own men? How do you live with yourself knowing that you put your life above theirs and left them all to die while you got away in the escape pod?"

That did it. "What the HELL do you know about it!?!" I snarled, turning to face the mirror. "You don't know me. You don't know a damn thing about me and you don't know a damn thing about what I've been through. Who the hell do you think you are, all you people, thinking you can just screw around with people's lives like this? What gives you any damn right!"

I grabbed the folding metal chair and flung it with all my might at the mirror. It made a loud clang and crumpled, falling in a heap to the concrete floor. The mirror was stubbornly undamaged.

Clearly I had some free floating hostility toward the people who'd made me what I was. It didn't matter that I wasn't talking to the executives of Reactive Industries, and that whatever this conspiracy was it probably wasn't directly related to my creation as a soldier. It didn't matter. At that point it was all the same to me, all a big mass of heartless people who controlled everything else and screwed around with human lives. I was completely blinded by rage.

"Yeah, I woke up with no memory and no idea who the hell I was. We all did. And what's really sick is that we didn't care, we just followed our damned orders and did whatever we were told. Because that's all we cared about, that's all we'd been programmed to care about. So I hope you're happy, all of you bastards. I hope you're very damned happy."

It all went by in kind of a blur, but after that I just kept talking. I growled every word, my rage seeming to guide me. And for some reason I told them everything I knew about Project Shadow.

In retrospect, I suppose they must have drugged me before I woke up, given me something to make me talk. That's most likely. At the time I didn't really know what I was doing, just letting my rage take over. Somehow I felt like I should tell them everything to make it clear to them just how much they'd screwed with me, as though they might care what I'd been through. As though they might feel the way I felt, that the deaths of the rest of my team were their fault, not mine.

I also dimly realized in some part of my mind that I wasn't expecting to survive this. They were going to learn all they could from me, and then kill me. Until they did I wanted to throw as much of my spite and rage at them as I could.

All the same, I managed to stop myself before telling them anything about Sera and Carver and the Kingfisher. All I'd tell them was that I got picked up by a freighter. Maybe the drug was starting to wear off, or maybe I cared enough about protecting Sera that my will broke through. I don't really know. It seemed to frustrate them a little, which gave me a little more strength.

"Just tell us, Unit Four. It doesn't matter. We can find out easily enough on our own, who picked you up and what the ship was. Just make it easier on yourself and finish your story."

I'd managed to avoid saying anything about the last few years after my time in the escape pod, and I was intent on keeping it that way.

"My name is Arcai Grid, asshole."

"Very well. It doesn't matter. We'll find out on our own. We've learned all that you have to offer of use, in any case."

Well, this was it. They were going to kill me, I was pretty sure of it. They'd taken my gun, but dammit I could still put up a fight. I just hoped I could take a few of them with me.

"You are useless now, Unit Four. Your time is over, and no one has any purpose for you. You're a broken gun that no one wants nor cares about. You no longer mean anything. The best you can do is just fade away and vanish."

I was so far beyond rage now. I think tears were running down my face, but I don't remember. Every muscle in my body was tensed, and I held myself right on the edge of frenzy. They were going to open that door, and then they were going to shoot me. But I didn't care. I was ready to let myself explode, to give over to that killing frenzy. Let them fill my body with bullets. I was reasonably certain I could make it several steps and kill at least one of them before it would actually stop me.

"Goodbye, Unit Four."

The door clicked open. I let myself go and I ran at it, knowing this was it, and that my life was over.

I wish I could say I thought about Sera, but right then there was only rage.

I shoved the door open, hard, and found myself in an empty hallway. There was another door right next to mine, presumably to the room behind the mirror where my interrogators were all sitting. There was no one in the hall, so I guessed they were just waiting for me to come into their room. They were most likely all waiting with their guns pointed at the door, wanting a nice view of me when I came in and died. Fine. I didn't care.

I spun and unleashed a vicious kick to the door, a less solid one than that of the room I’d been in, breaking it open and knowing my death was right there on the other side. I followed the door immediately, charging into the room and knowing I could take out at least one of them before I even felt the bullets. I simply didn't care. I wanted to die. There was too much rage for anything else. I wanted it to all end right there.

My training as a soldier dutifully noted the layout of the room as I burst into it. It was pretty much exactly as I expected, a series of padded chairs turned to face through the large window that looked in on the interrogation room that I'd spent the last several hours in. A video camera on a tripod silently recorded the view through the window.

What struck me most of all however was that the room was otherwise completely empty.

CHAPTER 16

The first thing I did was smash the video camera against the wall until it was no longer recognizable. That much rage doesn't just go away in an instant.

They hadn't ever been there in the first place. The whole interrogation had taken place by remote control. That driver must have just drugged me and left me there. Wherever I was.

I found my coat and gun sitting in the viewing room. I put them back on but really wished I had someone to shoot. I just sat down for a while, shaking and trying to calm down. I must have cried but my memories aren't very clear.

After a while I figured I'd better find out where I was. I moved back out into the hallway, which was more of the featureless cinder block architecture. There were a few metal doors on either side, but all the ones I tried were locked. In one direction the hallway ended eventually in a dead end, but the other way ended in a door. When I tried this one it opened on daylight.

I had to shield my eyes a little from the harsh sun after being inside for so long. The drugs were probably still wearing off a bit, too. My internal clock told me it was late afternoon. The building looked to be some kind of old warehouse or machine shop or something, and the setting was the very picture of the middle of nowhere.

The land around for about as far as I could see was flat prairie. A cracked driveway led away from the building, grass growing out of the asphalt. I followed it to where it joined with a two lane country road which was paved, but didn't look to be especially well-traveled. I couldn't see any vehicles in either direction.

So they'd interrogated me, taken nearly every bit of information I had that they might care about, then told me I was useless and meaningless and abandoned me in the middle of nowhere.

Apparently I wasn’t even worth the expense of a single bullet to them now.

I felt kind of sick. I suppose when I realized what was going on I had expected to become some kind of fugitive, running from a massive conspiracy that wanted to hunt me down and silence me. Running because the whole system was out to get me.

The reality was just the opposite. No one was out to get me. No one wanted to silence me or kill me, no one wanted valuable information from me. No one cared.

I sat there on the side of the road for a while, and tried to tell myself that wasn't true. Sera cared. She was out there somewhere, and I mattered to her. Right then she seemed so far away though, so distant that it was hard to keep any sort of perspective. My broken and wounded mind wouldn't really accept the thought of her as the source of comfort it should have been. I sighed.

Well, nothing for it. I had to figure out where the hell I was and how to get back to Sagan. One handy perk of my military issue implant was the GPS receiver it contained, so I was able to figure out that I was so many dozen miles east of the city. With another glance up and down the road, I shrugged and got to my feet, and began to walk.

***

There was no distance, and there was no time. I was just walking and thinking about as little as possible. The terrain didn't seem to change much at all, though eventually I started to see some low hills on the horizon. I supposed the city was somewhere past those. I was walking into the sun as it grew lower in the sky, and I started to get a headache from squinting.

I kept walking.

***

I heard the sound of an old style diesel engine approaching from behind me at some point. I turned and waved my arms, and what turned out to be an ancient combustion-powered bus slowed and then stopped for me. Finally, some luck.

While most passenger vehicles these days used hover technology powered by various flavors of fuel cells or micro-reactors, sometimes all the poorer locations could afford was an older method of transportation; an internal combustion engine with physical wheels and all. These rural transportation buses didn't have a wealthy or large enough clientele to support the high startup costs of more modern technology, but there was just enough of a customer base to let them exist in the first place. Such old school tech was a lot easier to service in a rural shed, and acceptable petrochemical deposits could be found and readily mined on most worlds with a biosphere. So, rural expanses of colony worlds were often dotted with these rickety old busses that were likely as not to carry as many goats and chickens as humans. People had to make a living or get around somehow.

I paid the driver and thanked him graciously. Fortunately he was bound toward Sagan, so I sat next to an old man with a scrawny dog on his lap, a beat-to-crap cowboy hat, and a vacant stare that marked him as being short a few marbles. And I waited.

***

It was well after dark by the time we pulled into a bus station on the outskirts of town that looked to be in a state of disrepair comparable to the rest of the low-income housing nearby. Even in idealized, generally wealthy planned communities like the Sagan colony, once a settlement reached a certain size it had to allow for people of all socioeconomic classes. Government policies and social programs can keep things in shape for so long, but all it takes is a few terms of administrators in power who'd rather reign in the government controls and let the developers and private multistellar corporations have their way for things to get awfully crappy in a hurry for a city's poor. And once they're there it's hard to go back.

Suffice to say, the sleek and efficient public transit systems that kept downtown Sagan wired didn't run out here. So I had more walking to deal with, this time through some rather shady neighborhoods. The fact that I had a gun and some of the best military training available didn't make me any more eager to find myself in a scuffle. I was still in a pretty bad mood and didn’t really want to leave a trail of bodies across town.

I got lucky and didn't run into any problems, but it took another several hours of walking to get back to the Phoenix facility. The industrial sector was clear on the other side of the city, and naturally was about the only other part of town not serviced by the public transit lines this time of night so there wasn't much point in walking downtown to catch a tram.

Sometime around midnight it decided to start raining.

It was about three in the morning by the time I got to the facility. I had to bang on the window of the gate house to wake up the guard who was on duty and get him to let me in. He looked tired and puzzled, but the computer identified me as okay so he let me in and then promptly fell back asleep.

I was exhausted and my feet hurt like hell. Now that my thoughts were catching up with me I couldn't get Councilor Nye's words out of my head, and they seemed to be playing over and over in my mind. Telling me how useless and meaningless I was until it was driving me nuts.

I knew if I just went to my room I wouldn't get any kind of decent sleep regardless of how exhausted I was. I needed something to do, so I just wandered the halls of the compound a little until I found myself in the garage staring up at the Doom Hammer.

What the hell, why not. I climbed up the ladder rungs embedded into the ACR's spine and settled myself into the cockpit chair, closing the door behind me. It's probably kind of silly but somehow it's harder to feel tiny and insignificant when you're in the cockpit of a giant machine of war. It helped a little.

I patched into the compound's computer through the ACR, figuring I might as well check my messages. It always seemed like a good thing to fall back on.

There was one waiting from Sera.

Despite everything I'd been through, I smiled. I opened the message to read it, and the small display monitor in the ACR's cockpit displayed it as white text on a black background after decoding it.

***

Arcai,

It's wonderful to hear from you! I'm really glad that everything's gone well with Phoenix. It must feel neat being able to use your skills for your own gain rather than somebody else's. I'm really happy for you.

That's great that you got an ACR, too! About time you got your own, really. Did you think to check the measurements to make sure it'll fit on board the Kingfisher? Hehe. No worries, I'm sure we'll be able to fit her in just fine.

As for this business with the Justice Council... well, I'm going to speak plainly about it since I'm frankly convinced I can encode this message better than anything they've ever seen before. I read your meaning, and I agree with you that it all sounds pretty fishy. I should have at least suspected something like that, but I didn't, I just assumed as you did that things would be more simple, that you could just go offer your testimony and help bring Reactive and HepTech both down and they'd thank you for it. Bastards. I guess these kinds of corporate-government messes get so complicated there's never a way to really predict when they'll show up.

By the time you get this message you'll probably have been to the meeting and come back. I really hope everything went all right for you, Arcai. It's a dangerous gamble, but I'm with you that it seems like the only option. Write me back when you can and tell me what happened, how it all went down. Though to be truthful, I'm not worried. You're strong and resourceful, and you can take care of yourself better than most might give you credit for. They don't know you like I do. I know how sturdy you are deep down. There's nothing they can put you through that you can't bounce back from.

Now then. I'm afraid I have to be a little bit selfish, Arcai, and talk about myself for a little bit too. Hehe. I took a couple short jobs after dropping you off on Sagan, nothing big really. Mostly just working my way back out to the frontier. And I made my way to that station I'd told you about.

Arcai... I've done it.

It's everything I'd dreamed of and more.

I wish I could really explain to you what this is like for me, but quite simply I can't. It just... for me it goes beyond words, beyond comprehension. My greatest dream has come true. And I want to share it with you, to show you in person what this is like for me. I've decided against sending an image file... I want the first time you see me like this to be in person.

I'm so happy, Arcai. This change... but also the woman who did it. She's a really fascinating lady, and we've formed a rather deep friendship even in just the few days I've known her. She's a fox too so we've already got some things in common. If we get a chance I'll have to bring you so you can meet each other sometime. I think you'd like her.

All of this, Arcai... it's beyond wonderful, for me anyway. It's so easy for everything we know in this day and age to seem mechanical and sterile and programmed, but... there is a sort of magic that's alive in the universe. The kind of thing that's really deeply special that touches the bottom of your heart and makes you believe in things that you can't explain. I don't know if that makes sense. I know you maybe haven't had the chance to find something like that for yourself, but now I really have. So maybe that can give you a little more hope in such things. And as always, I'll be with you every step of the way to help you search.

I love you, Arcai. I don't want you to think that I don't care about what's happening to you, quite the contrary, I desperately do care. But at the same time I think you deserve to know what I'm going through and just how happy I am with all of this. You're so special to me and I want you to know how I feel.

Write back soon, love. I really hope everything is all right with you. I've been thinking about you a lot. Take good care of yourself.

Love,

Sera

***

I sat back in the chair, staring at the screen and smiling like an idiot.

Some people, when they're grumpy and have had a really crappy day, don't like hearing about other people's happiness. They get feeling jealous and offended by that happiness, even when it's someone they're close to.

Personally, I think that's incredibly stupid. Knowing of her joy put things in perspective for me, reminding me that all is not as bad as it seemed from my own narrow point of view. Even from just reading text off a screen, I felt Sera's joy flowing into me, lifting me up out of the dark pit of despair and loneliness I'd felt all day. Even over all that distance, she could still do that for me, give me the strength I needed to face anything.

I closed my eyes, smiling. Sera was okay. She was a lot more than okay. Somehow that knowledge made my own pain dissolve and fade considerably, back at least to a level that I could deal with. If she could have that much joy, I could survive and pull through. As horrible an experience as I had been through that day, when I fell asleep my thoughts and dreams were only about Sera.

CHAPTER 17

I woke up slowly and peacefully with something warm and bright shining in my face. I yawned widely as I opened my eyes, and had to squint. The morning sun was pouring in the high window of the garage across from me, a shaft of it illuminating the cockpit interior.

As I started to move and get up out of the chair my back erupted in pain, its way of politely informing me that falling asleep in the cockpit of my ACR was the third stupidest thing I had recently done. I managed to convince it to let me walk at least on a limited basis after a few minutes, and set about pulling my boots back on before exiting the cockpit. People were probably wondering where I was.

I hadn't gotten more than a few steps from my ACR when Ken walked in a side door of the garage. "Arcai, there you are! Stone's been looking all over for you. Where've you been, man?"

"Getting a tummy tuck. Where's Stone?" I asked, rubbing my eyes with my palms.

"He's in his office right now, you should go see him. You..." he began then paused, seeming to catch up with the conversation. He furrowed his brow curiously and glanced at my stomach.

I waved him away tiredly, starting for the door to the main building. Some people were just so easy to harass that it wasn't any fun.

Ken was true to his word though, and Erasmus was in his office working at his computer terminal. When I walked in he looked up and gave me a wry grin.

"Morning, Arcai. You look like hell."

"Thanks. Ken said you've been looking for me."

"Yeah, Jason said you got in late last night but then you weren't in your room. I was just curious about how your meeting went yesterday."

"Ah, sorry about that. I ended up sleeping in my ACR of all places, don't ask me why. Ugh... yesterday..." I rubbed at my head, leaning against the wall and trying to figure out what to tell him. Erasmus had become a friend and I kind of thought he deserved the truth.

He sighed gently, resting his chin on his fist, elbow on the desk. "They gave you the ‘obsolete weapon’ speech, didn't they?" He said quietly.

I froze, staring at him. My eyes went a little wide, and I tried to work my mouth but couldn't get any sound to come out.

Erasmus grinned just a little. "When you get your voice back, ask me how I know."

It took me a few moments. "How do you know?"

"Because I've got a story from my youth that's pretty similar no doubt to yours. Because people like us get good at recognizing one another after a while. Because soldiers always know other soldiers, but especially our type of soldiers. With that haunted look like deep down they have no idea who they are and what they can trust because half their memory is missing. And because I remember that look that's on your face now, that look like the entire universe has just told you don't mean anything and has utterly abandoned you. I last saw that look many years ago when I was young, staring back at me out of a mirror."

I managed to stumble my way to the chair across the desk from him, and collapsed into it. My eyes never left his. "Erasmus."

"Hm?"

"Tell me what the crap you are talking about right now."

He chuckled softly, and leaned back in his chair. "All right. If you've got a little while and don't mind postponing that shower."

"What shower?"

"The one you smell like you need. You fell asleep in the cockpit of your ACR, or more likely passed out from exhaustion because those seats aren't all that comfortable. So whatever it is you wore yourself out doing last night didn't leave you smelling like a rose." He softened all of this with a lopsided grin.

"Ah. Yeah, I'd been walking and riding rural busses for about twelve hours straight. But you have to give me your story first."

Erasmus smiled. "Okay. I was raised in a military training school, hardened into a soldier and then sold to a small colonial government that wanted to build a small military. I have no memories before the age of seventeen because they wiped them when I was sold. This sounding familiar?"

I nodded softly. "Mine go back to fifteen."

"Lucky. They keep starting younger and younger, don't they. My buyer was a small colony that wanted the planet it was on all to itself, but had to compete economically and politically with a rival colony. So they decided to try force, and bought a small army. I guess they had the money but their citizen base wasn’t eager to get their own hands bloody, or something. The funny part is, due to a treaty that the two colonies had signed, no energy or projectile weapons were allowed on that world. The parent government that watched over the colonies monitored imports and industry closely to make sure they didn't defy this, so the ridiculous solution that they came up with was that they would wage their war with archaic weaponry like swords and spears." He glanced over at the small rack of swords against the wall and nodded at them. "So that's what we were trained in, and what we waged war with for three years."

I raised my eyebrows. "And I thought ACR pilots were dangerously overspecialized."

Erasmus chuckled. "Sword mastery isn't a very marketable skill these days. It took the government a while to clue in to what the colonies were doing, and then a while longer to pass new legislation to make it illegal. In the meantime, the war raged on. When they finally made the colonies stop fighting, those of us who were left had to find some way to make a living on our own. There's some work to be found in theater and with historical fencing hobbyists, but most of my earlier work just drew on my more general military training. Instructing small units and such, not unlike what you've done here over the past month. It's only in the last ten years or so that I've taken up the sword again. It all came right back to me, though. I imagine you can relate."

I nodded. "Same as it is for me with ACR's." I sighed, resting forward against his desk. "For me it was two mining companies competing for resources. You might have heard about Ochre II in the news a while back; that was the place. I'm the only one of my unit left. They tried to kill us all off to get rid of evidence when they grew afraid that someone was about to leak information about the war, and I was the only one to make it out. I've spent the last few years since then working with some interstellar freelancers, until now. When I decided to directly draw on my experience as an ACR pilot, and somehow thought that offering testimony to the Justice Council would be a good idea."

Erasmus stood up and stretched a little, walking over to the sword rack and looking over the old weapons. "When the government stepped in and ended the colonial war, we were all wondering what we were supposed to do then. We were just specialized soldiers and nothing more, all we had was our knowledge of war tactics and bladed weaponry and hand to hand combat. They pretty much just told us, ‘tough crap.’ Our purpose was over, no one needed us anymore. We were obsolete weapons. What was it with you, some kind of under-the-table alliance between the Justice Council and one of the companies?"

"Something like that. I guess they wanted to hear what I knew, and when they decided I wasn't a threat they told me pretty much the same thing. That I didn't matter and no one wanted me, that the best I could do was just to fade away." I growled a little. The memory still wasn't pleasant.

"For what it's worth, I think you've proven them wrong pretty well even over just this last month. You've done good work here, and proven that there are applications for your skills." Erasmus reached up and took the rapier down from the rack, cradling it in his arms. The blade was long and slender and well-polished, and the hilt an intricate and graceful network of sweeping rings and bars. I guessed that every part of the weapon had a specific name and purpose, but I didn't know them. Erasmus no doubt did. "They say that we're obsolete weapons, that there's no more use for our skills, that we have no place. But it isn't really true. You and I are living proof that there's a niche for everything these days. There are always places that we can apply our abilities."

He saw me watching the sword, and turned toward me and held it out. I curled my fingers around the handle and lifted it, feeling the weight of it.

Erasmus continued. "The other thing that I told myself then, that I still tell myself now, is that there's more to us than that. Despite how we were raised and whatever it said on our packaging, we are more than just our skills. We aren't just weapons, obsolete or otherwise. As hard as they tried to make us forget it, we are real people with hopes and dreams. Follow your heart, find something that's important to you, and cling to it. Because they can't ever take that away from us, Arcai. They have no power over us anymore. They lost it all long ago, and it's only because they resent that fact that they tell us these things, try to beat us down."

I sighed quietly, handing the sword back to Erasmus. He rested it back on the rack. "It's just hard to see it sometimes. Hard to remember all the time, when they tell you that you aren't worth anything."

He nodded softly. "Truly. But we get by. After all, we're warriors. We were made to weather worse than this."

I had to smile. "I knew when I first met you that you'd been some kind of soldier, Erasmus. But I never guessed you had a story so similar to my own."

He grinned. "We're out there, scattered among the stars and trying to make our own way, trying to decide what we are. It's an awfully brutal and weird universe where people will do things like this, make creatures like us. And you know how the military schools justify it? It's not legal to actually own a sentient being, not in this part of space anyway. So they don't own the soldier, they just have legal ownership of all the training they invest in him. The actual person is just a fancy package for the product, or something. And that's what they can sell to colonies or companies. That's how they justify slavery in this day and age. It's complete crap."

I made a disgusted noise, leaning back in my chair. "So what now?"

"Sorry?"

"What do I do now? What did you do then? How do you move on after something like that?"

Erasmus sat down across from me and stroked his chin. "Well, that's just what you do. You move on. It takes a while, sure, but it's what you have to do. I started looking for work, and I eventually found it. Worked my way up from there until I perfected and broadened my skills, and figured out how to market them better. Eventually I was able to take better and better jobs, until I landed myself the permanent position here."

"Well... yeah, but that's not what I meant. I mean... what about the people responsible? The people who did all of it to you, didn't you ever want to... I don't know, go after them?"

"Hm. Well, the colonial leaders were all arrested and imprisoned for war crimes. Still rotting there for all I know, if they're still alive. Yours are still free though?"

"Yeah. Well, Reactive took a bad hit, but I guess it's the other side of things that's still around. The Justice Council, HepTech. The Councilor who told me all that crap yesterday. I don't like the idea of him just walking off after that."

"Well, you could always hop in that ACR of yours and pilot it downtown and stage a one man rabid assault on the Justice Council's headquarters. I wouldn't recommend it of course; if the city's internal defenses didn't blast you to bits the Council Building's would. But it's up to you to figure out how strong your rage is. A more sensible option might be submitting your evidence to the news media, the same stuff you were going to give to the Council. More likely than not it won't amount to anything and the Council can cover their butts easily enough, but at this point it won't cost anything and will annoy them a little."

I chuckled. "I may do that. I know someone who's good at finding information, too. Maybe she can dig up some fun facts on the guy."

Erasmus grinned at me. "Maybe. Whatever you decide to do, Arcai, I wish you the best of luck. Just stay strong, don't give up, and don't let it get to you. They can never know you like you do. It sounds cheesy but you're the only one who can tell you who you are."

"Yeah... thanks, Erasmus. For everything."

"Here, take this," he said, sliding a small data disk across the desk to me. "It's nothing much, maybe nothing you'll find interesting. It's just a set of teaching programs I put together a while back about fencing with various weapons. You taught me how to pilot an ACR, so this seemed like the least I could do. From one obsolete weapon to another." He winked.

I smiled, and offered a hand. He smiled back at me, and took my hand and shook it firmly. "Thanks, Erasmus. Been a pleasure," I said.

"You too, Arcai. Feel free to keep in touch, you know where to find me."

"I'll do my best. Take care."

"And you."

We smiled again at each other, then I turned and walked out of the office, heading back toward my room.

***

I got that shower and a nice long nap in a real bed. When I woke up I stayed in my room for a while, dealing with finding my next job and transportation to get me there. I also set about sending a message to Sera, which took the better part of a few hours. There was a lot to tell her; about what had happened yesterday, about my conversation with Erasmus this morning, and especially about how happy I was for her dream come true.

I spent a while thinking over the last part of the message, and then finally decided to admit that I was eager to see her again when it would work out. Being apart for a while was a good idea and I think it did both of us a lot of good, but the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I wanted to be with her. For both business and personal reasons.

I hoped I didn't come off sounding like a lost puppy or anything, after all we'd only been apart a month. But it had been a hell of a month for both of us.

***

I ate dinner with Arthur Rand and Erasmus Stone. Arthur still couldn't keep quiet about how excited he was over the new ACR training his men had, but I didn't mind. It was fun knowing that all that enthusiasm was my fault. I decided I liked Phoenix Agile Engineering, and promised I'd be a loyal customer. That got him going all over again, and I had to smile. Rand was a very excitable man. Erasmus just grinned quietly at me through most of the meal.

***

Later that evening I packed my duffel bag and strapped myself into the Doom Hammer. The whole staff saw me off, and it was rather touching. I felt like I'd made a lot of friends over the past month, so I resolved to make a point to keep in touch with all of them as much as I could.

I walked my ACR to the star port by way of the same freight roads I'd come on a month ago. My ride was an old cargo ship run by a trio of grungy but good-natured freelancers. The Geos 9 was a large metallic sphere with landing pads, engines, and cargo doors at the bottom, the bridge at the top, and an internal gravity wheel around the equator. They'd offered the most reasonable price I could get if I wanted to lug an ACR around with me, which still seemed like a lot. Another more practical point in favor of teaming back up with Sera.

I secured the Doom Hammer in the hold and climbed up to join the crew in the bridge. Liftoff was at midnight sharp, and was a bit of a rough ride since the Geos 9 was a fat old bird that flew solely off fueled rockets and had never seen a hover engine.

All the same, I loved it. I watched out the windows as the nighttime lights of Sagan colony were left behind us, then to be followed by the clouds, the air, the gravity, and finally, the feelings of despair and loneliness I'd picked up so recently.

CHAPTER 18

My next job was to be another month-long position, this time working at a frontier colony in the early stages of development called New Leelanau. The trip out there would take a few weeks aboard Geos 9, and I passed a good share of the time down in the cargo hold playing around under the hood of the Doom Hammer. I didn't make any modifications, but mostly just cleaned up and polished the terminals and ran some tests, primarily as an excuse to become more familiar with all of the workings.

I also sent messages back and forth with Sera. She told me a little more about the friendship she'd developed with the woman who had changed her, and she'd taken on a few new jobs out in that region too. We ended up deciding that after my work was done on New Leelanau we should get back together again. Over the course of a few messages back and forth we arranged it so she'd bring the Kingfisher to the colony the day I was finishing up, and then we'd load the Doom Hammer in the cargo bay and fly off together.

It sounded pretty nice to both of us. Having that to look forward to would make the next several weeks go by easily for me. Sera agreed with my thoughts about getting back together; our time apart had been something we both needed, and we'd each had the chance to go through some very important personal experiences. But now that we'd had that chance and each grown from it, we missed each other and wanted to be together again. I was glad we were on the same wavelength about that.

I managed to offer a little engineering help to the three-man crew of the Geos 9 in exchange for some of cost of the trip, but Ben, Ashton and Karl had things under control for the most part. Geos 9 was what I might call rickety at best, but these guys knew their stuff and were good at anticipating what would need fixing next, getting to it just before it might start to be an actual problem.

As much as I trusted their mechanical expertise, it still made for a long trip. I learned to keep things strapped down in my cabin even when the grav wheel was operating, because sometimes the motor for it would get quirky and start slowing down, temporarily lessening our artificial gravity to that of a small moon.

It felt strange being an idle passenger and not having work to do very often. I'd gotten used to being on the Kingfisher where I was part of the crew. Nonetheless I passed the trip without dying of boredom or the ship exploding, and after the scheduled few weeks we came into view of the small blue dot that was our destination.

***

New Leelanau was a rather new frontier colony that was geared largely toward attracting higher-income residents. The individual towns were small and quaint, and the terrain around the colony was rich with small lakes and forests and sand dunes and islands. The whole site was on the edge of a massive body of water that was technically a lake but looked more like an inland sea. I had to wonder how long the developers spent doing site suitability analysis to find a place that was so similar to the colony's namesake, which I discovered was a similar region back on Earth.

Since New Leelanau had to be its own self-sustaining colony, it couldn't all be picturesque small towns and beaches and orchards. For a human settlement to really function you just can't get around some unsightly necessities, like power plants and industrial facilities and a low-income labor force. New Leelanau put these things in their own small town, a sort of sacrificial site in an inland valley that wasn't visible from the other settlements. Even so the developers had taken care to make the low-income housing livable and well-organized, and the factories and power plant were all pretty clean.

This industrial settlement was where they located the freight star port as well, keeping ugly brutes like the Geos 9 out of the way of the stylish luxury liners and private yachts that made up the traffic for the primary star port. That's where we made planetfall, and I said farewell to the crew as I walked the Doom Hammer out onto the landing deck.

***

My job for the month didn't involve my ACR, sadly. I had hired on to teach the colony's security force how to be a security force, instructing them in the operation and servicing of low orbit fighter craft. As such I stayed near the industrial town, not partaking in the peaceful and safe beauty of small town streets and golf courses and the like. That was fine by me; I didn't think I'd really care for being around that many disgustingly rich people that much.

The Doom Hammer had a spot in a storage hangar for the month, and I had an apartment on the small military base. It all went pretty well. I had more confidence now after how well things at gone during my work for Phoenix, and the people here seemed to take just as well to my instruction.

One week passed into another, and finally the end of my month there started to come into view. I was counting the days down in my head until I'd see Sera.

I had taken to spending some of my free time walking atop the dunes near the coast. The terrain was beautiful and the massive lake had a unique charm to it. It was similar to being on the ocean, but the air didn't have that salt smell to it. It was very much its own environment.

I found a path that led to a high overlook amidst the dune grasses, and I took to watching the sunsets from there. It was a good place to sit and think. I did a lot of that, thinking back to the things Erasmus had told me, wondering at my own definitions in my mind as to who and what I was.

Councilor Nye had told me I didn't matter, that I was a broken gun that no one had any use for.

In a way, I realized that he was partially right. The thing was, that statement was true for a mindless soldier I used to know who had been named Unit Four. It was not true for a young man named Arcai Grid.

Arcai Grid. A name that I made up, that didn't mean anything. And yet it was who I had become. Who I was now. Like Erasmus had said, a real person with hopes and dreams. A real person who knew his way around a lot of military tactics and mechanical systems, and who could pilot an ACR with the best of them. A real person who, somewhere in the stars over his head, had a young fox-looking woman who loved him and cared about him.

Well, I thought. That doesn't sound so bad after all.

I could live with that.

***

When there was just a day or two left before my job was finished and Sera was due to arrive, I decided to go ahead follow Erasmus' suggestion of sending my findings and testimony about Project Shadow and Ochre II to a few of the larger news organizations. He was right, chances were it wouldn't amount to much but it might at least make things a little frustrating for Councilor Nye and whoever else he was working with. To me, that was worth it. I sent the whole package anonymously, only signing it 'Unit Four.' That was truthful enough. The media wouldn't have an easy time of tracking me down and harassing me, but Nye would know who it was. I could always reveal myself later on if I decided I wanted to.

The security force at New Leelanau seemed about as pleased with my work as Phoenix had been, and I made some good money by the end of the month. There was even a similar performance where the new pilots flew some fancy formations I'd taught them in their fighters, showing off for the military staff. They liked it enough that the started talking about putting on a show for the full colony a few weeks later. That evening there was a small reception with lots of hand shaking and back patting. When I went back to my cabin for the night I packed up all my things and turned on my terminal to check the news.

I allowed myself a grin as I read a few headlines about the old Ochre II case being opened up again and some officials being under investigation in a possible scandal. Additionally there was a whole lot of Councilor Nye declining to comment on various things.

I flicked off the terminal and showered, and then climbed into bed. Sera would be arriving tomorrow morning, not just to see me but to take me with her.

I didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

***

I may have managed to put away a couple hours of actual sleep by the time my alarm went off, but when it did I was awake and full of energy. There wasn't much to do in terms of getting ready since I'd already done all my packing the night before. I swung by some of the offices and said my final farewells to the people I'd worked with, and then made my way toward the star port.

It was a cool day, a bit windy but sunny with only a few small, puffy clouds. I sat at the edge of one of the landing decks with my long leather coat blowing in the breeze. My hair was getting long enough by now that I'd taken to tying it back in a tail, and it was blowing a little too. The forest ran nearly right up to the edge of the decks, stopping to leave just enough room for the heat shields and guidance towers.

I just waited there, checking my clock obsessively. A few cargo ships came and went, dropping off or picking up various supplies. When the time drew near that she was scheduled to land at, I was scanning the sky, my heart leaping a little at every bird or craft I saw.

When one small dot began to resolve into a long and sleek-looking ship, seeming to descend right toward the star port, I knew at once it was the Kingfisher. As it drew closer I could make out the engines, the now-stationary gravity wheel, even see the soft blue glow of the hover fields being projected downward.

As it drew closer, the guidance towers around the landing deck hummed to life. Some warning lights flashed atop them and around their bases, and then they began to project their beams toward the hull of the Kingfisher. The ship glided over the trees until it slowed to a hover directly above the landing deck, then started to lower.

I realized I was grinning like an idiot as I watched it descend. Landing feet lowered and locked into place, and finally it came to settle with an impressively small amount of noise just before me.

The bridge deck was the equivalent of about one story up from where I stood, and between the angle and the sun's glare I couldn't make out anything through the windows. Right below the bridge was the small circular doorway of the forward docking port, and that's what I watched intently, guessing Sera would probably emerge through there.

After a few brief moments she did. With a soft hiss the airlock doors slid open, and there she was, standing in the doorway and grinning about as hugely as I was.

She looked completely different, at least at first glance. Her head was that of a fox, complete with triangular, oddly expressive ears atop her head, golden eyes, and a somewhat pointed muzzle. Below that her body had primarily the same humanoid shape as before, save that it was now covered largely with a soft reddish fur. Her throat and chest bore white fur, and the fur on her forearms and hands was black. Over all of this she was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and of course her usual thigh high boots. She'd made some modification to the jeans apparently to allow for the long, bushy tail that poked out the back of them, the same reddish color with a white tip. Her boots too seemed to have been altered or replaced to match the new shape of her legs and feet, which now seemed better described as paws.

The sight of her standing there as a living, breathing fox-person wasn’t without a sense of the surreal as my brain took a moment to make sense of it. Standing still the sight was the tiniest bit unnerving, perhaps, but when she moved it was with a natural grace that my brain seemed to have an easier time of.

To someone who had known her only casually, she might have been unrecognizable. To me, I knew her at once. The way she stood, the look in her eyes, the shape of her face despite its altered appearance, they all spoke to me of Sera and looked just like they always had. As her grin widened and she started toward me, I could see there was more to it at the same time. The way she walked and held herself, she seemed somehow more complete. More sure of herself. She looked for all the world like she belonged in this new body of hers, more than she ever had in her old one.

While her foxy appearance was certainly pleasant to look at, even if it would take a little getting used to, it was that life and joy that I could see in her movement that really made her attractive to me.

All of these observations went by pretty quickly for me. What I was actually doing went by in kind of a haze, though Sera told me since that I kept grinning as I started toward her.

We met and wrapped our arms around each other, hugging as tightly as we possibly could. We held each other like that for what felt like an eternity, and then she slowly drew back and kissed me. I wondered at first how awkward it would be kissing her when she had a muzzle, but she'd clearly given it some thought and seemed to make it work pretty well. I pretty quickly got lost in the feeling and quit worrying.

"Sera... you look wonderful," I managed to say sometime later. She smiled happily, obviously having hoped I would approve.

"Thanks, Arcai. It's great to see you."

"You too, Sera."

We held each other a while longer. We both had tears streaming down our faces as we quietly said mushy things to each other that I can't completely remember. After a while Sera finally brought reality back into things, informing me she'd only been willing to pay for a couple hours of landing rights given the outrageous fees they were charging. I nodded, still grinning at her, and led her toward the storage hangar to show off the Doom Hammer to her while I made it ready to load into the Kingfisher's cargo bay.

She was happy to see it, and graciously suffered through my raving about its capabilities for a good few minutes before gently reminding me we'd better get a move on. I grinned and piloted the ACR around to the back of the Kingfisher. It fit nicely in the back of the cargo bay, and didn't take up too much space once I'd lowered it into a storage crouch and magnetically fastened it to the deck.

We got the ship all sealed up and ready to go, and before too long were rising toward space again. Blue skies cleared and darkened to reveal the black of space, a few stars slowly coming into view as I once more left gravity behind me. Sera piloted the Kingfisher out to a safe distance from New Leelanau and parked it in orbit. When I asked her what her plans were, she turned to me with a suggestive smile, telling me that some very important things had to be dealt with before we took on any new jobs. I took her meaning and grinned, and stood up to follow her slowly swaying tail back toward the gravity wheel. I think I was about as eager to see what this would be like as she was to show me.

THE END