Sergeant Tomas grimaced. He wasn’t in the best of shape. He hadn’t been eating as much as he should during the weeks before being frozen, and cryogenics was less than perfect, even with the cocktail he’d been injected with before he was frozen.

  Even worse… this woman had been genuinely trying to help him. She’d just cleaned out the filters, replaced them… and even now he could see the bluish color starting to fade from his skin, as the cocktail slowly left his bloodstream.

  If they wanted him dead, they could’ve killed him. But at the same time, they weren’t on the Alliance's side of things. His comms access was cut-off, and they were taking him straight to one of the United Worlds hub systems.

  For… what? Interrogation? Simply a just-in-case if he refused the job offer, they were going to imprison him to keep him quiet?

  He had no idea why they were trying to keep things a secret. But he needed to report back in. Which meant… he needed his men thawed out.

  He kept a firm grip on the woman’s shoulder, and looked at her. She’d had her comm active, earlier, and he could actually hear it, thanks to the sensitivity of his own implants. But… it had gone silent when he grabbed her.

  Had they stopped talking to her? Or were they somehow talking directly to her brain?

  He glanced at the back of her neck; he couldn’t make it out through the helmet. But… she must be implanted. He started dragging her back to the wall. “I don’t know what you’re talking to your friends about now. But I want to make it perfectly clear. If anyone comes in that door without one of my friends getting thawed out first, I’m killing you.”

  She was strangely calm, for having a cutter at her throat. “Well isn’t that a nice way to pay back the people who saved your life. Then again, not sure why I expected any better from slaver scum.”

  He frowned. “Slaver…. Wait…Are you one of them?”

  “One of who? The overwhelming majority of people who have some kind of genetic augment? Yeah.”

  Tomas shook his head. Hell. Impossible to tell with these freaks. How was she modified? Strength? Surviving in a vacuum? If not for his implants…

  Suddenly, the door jerked open. Tomas turned to face it, pulling the girl between himself and the suit of powered armor; it was in Republic green, which was a bit strange, and had a rifle in hand… also a Republic make. What the hell?

  But even as he started to speak, to threaten… a sudden lurch. The woman had managed to toss him, slamming him into the wall beside the door… and he bounced off the wall… for a moment, he just floated free in the air, no gravity, no magnetic boots, just his goddamned underwear, nothing to throw to get him moving anywhere but the cutter in his hand.

  The power-armored form was entering, stepping closer… Tomas stared down at it for a moment, as the woman backed away, her boots making soft clicks… The laser cutter wouldn’t do jack against that armor.

  Fuck. This was going to hurt. But he needed that rifle.

  He closed his eyes, hoping the medic hadn’t disabled anything when she was clearing out the filters… and tensed his muscles in a specific pattern he’d been trained on for weeks after he was implanted. Upper back twice. Lower back twice. Left shoulder twice. Right shoulder twice. Jaw clenched. And….

  Pop.

  His implants all went offline to preserve as much function as possible. A moment of searing, terrible, pain. Every muscle clenched at once.

  The lights… flickered. Fuck. Not a single one failed. This thing must be hardened like a warship.

  The power armor, though? Was frozen. Must’ve been too close, had stopped moving completely. Maybe he had a chance. The automatics would have stopped working… hopefully the doctor lady didn’t take advantage while he was struggling to get everything started again.

  It was an awkward reach to get to his back, to the manual reconnect. But he… suddenly, his hand was grabbed… and he was spinning through the air….in the lack of gravity he couldn’t be sure, for a moment, which direction was up… only that there was a tuft of long curly red hair… a silver-white surface… and then an abrupt, painful, thud.

  Followed by darkness.

  ***

  Elise sighed… looking at Kyle, standing there in his power armor… at over forty thousand credits worth of medical equipment which was, for the most part, now just a pile of junk.

  She was suddenly glad she hadn’t asked Kyle to chip in the extra thirty grand for that cloning tank that could make replacement parts. That thing definitely wouldn’t have survived this.

  On the plus side… the marine was out. Unconscious. Unfortunately, though? Aside from whatever backups were in storage, all the gear she’d need to check his status was completely wrecked. Thankfully none of the hardened gear was affected, which was most of what was on the Sapper. In fact…

  The power armor gave a twitch… and then took a step forward, magnets attaching to the floor as it advanced.

  Kyle looked down at the man through the armored helmet, then up at Elise. “Fuck. What the hell was that? Did he have a damned EMP grenade built into himself?”

  She studied him… gently poking his prone body with one foot. “...Probably. Given how slow he was after, it worked on his stuff too. And as scrawny as he is now…”

  She sighed… and turned back to Kyle. “Zero G can fuck with wound recovery. How’s integrity?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “She’s fine. Minor plate replacements and we’re back in business. I’ll run another batch of scans as we accelerate, just in case.”

  Elise shook her head. “Just… don’t go anywhere yet. He’s still alive. And until I’ve got him thoroughly secured, still a possible threat. I… guess I’ll go ahead and pop that filter back out so I can sedate him. Feels wrong, though.”

  Both of them stared at the man for a moment… before Kyle shook his head. “The control panel outside the medbay is fried, but comms are still good. Kyle to all hands. We’ll be resuming acceleration shortly. Poisseux, if you wouldn’t mind starting the engines, we’ve got… a fair amount of equipment to replace here.”

  Elise looked around at all the dead monitors. “...I don’t suppose you’ve got replacement CPUs for all this stuff?”

  “...Actually… it’ll take some effort. But I can actually probably fix all of it up by replacing the CPUs with organics. Though…. Do you have backups of all the software?”

  She blinked. “...Yes, actually. So… we’ll be back at a hundred percent?”

  “Its gonna take some effort, and be weird, but yeah.”

  As the ship started moving again, they could hear clattering… as the surgical laser smacked to the floor. Somewhere else in the ship, they heard a loud string of cursing, as something struck a surface hard enough to vibrate the floor.

  “...Well. That sounds fun.”

  ***

  A few hours later, the crew had gathered together on the bridge once more, Kyle leaning back in his chair, Thor’s body with a nasty bruise across the face, just lying there limp, strapped into his chair… and his image in the emitter beside it.

  “...There’s just something weird about seeing your body right there, and you not talking out of it.”

  A soft buzz, as the image shrugged. “Ehh. I’m gonna have a headache for a day or so. Might as well avoid it. Why feel pain when I don’t have to?”

  Kyle shook his head.

  “Okay then. We’re on the way to Ash. We’ve got one heavily restrained and sedated marine. A bunch of former slaves, a few Alliance crew, and, of course, a Kraken egg. And a… weird alien plant thing. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page before we get there.”

  Thor’s image nodded. “Honestly, I think there’s only one thing to do.”

  He looked around the bridge. “We hand the lot of it over to the dubs after negotiating a kick-ass reward, and then get ready for the third galactic war. Which we probably end up fighting alongside your uncle’s company.”

  Kyle nodded for a moment. “Is it worth starting a war over, though?”

  “They killed people to keep it secret. So clearly the Empire thinks it is.”

  A buzz from Poisseux’s emitter. “Governments kill over trivial bullshit all the time. That being said… if they’ve built some alternate FTL method by copying the Kraken, and have been hiding it for centuries? Who know what could be going on. Remember what happened when that Kraken tried to hit us and missed?”

  Kyle grimaced. “Impossible to forget. Practically killed an entire planet in one hit.”

  Poisseux continue. “So imagine what that means. Planet-destroying superweapons. If the FTL isn’t tied to black holes like the darkspace is, it might mean they can leave the galaxy and build a base in Andromeda. If you can use it while in darkspace, it could mean traveling across the whole galaxy in seconds.”

  Elise sighed. “And we don’t even know if thats all they have. There might be a hundred other creatures they’ve researched.”

  Kyle leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. “So… we hand it over to the dubs. And… hope for the best. Well. I was expecting to find something. I had no idea what. This… is probably about as important as I thought it would be.”

  Sherry glanced at him… and then at the others. “...I will say, though. I was in this for exploration. To learn. To discover. I… don’t want to crew a warship. I think… after we drop off the stuff with the dubs… I want to stay at Ash.”

  They all looked at her. Elise was the first to respond. “I… think I can agree with that. I don’t think any of us are soldiers. We got out. We explored. We did something truly important. I can be happy with that. We don’t need to be out there… killing people. I never wanted to actually kill anyone, and I almost killed that Tomas guy.”

  Kyle looked between the two of them… but before he could respond, Poisseux buzzed in.

  “If the news goes public, and everybody knows about the monsters, I want to team up with Zeke again. If not… I’m with Kyle. Though, after watching how those interceptors handled that Kraken, I want a gunship, and I’ve got ideas for it, before next time.”

  Another buzz. “Oh, and I’d appreciate that new body you offered either way, but if there’s any way I could get natural silver hair for it, that’d be great. We can talk about later.”

  Kyle shook his head in amusement. “...Whether I’m exploring or going to war, you’re welcome along, Jen. If my family is going to war, I’m joining them. Maybe on my own, maybe signing up with the Skulls. I can understand you not joining… or joining, whichever way it goes.”

  Kyle hoped they all stayed behind. It was seeming more and more as if his initial idea to go it alone… was probably the best one.

  ***

  The remainder of the voyage back to Ash passed without much event. Parts were repaired and replaced. The medbay was completely re-tooled, freshly grown organic components replacing all the old chips; and they confirmed that the now-sedated marine hadn’t suffered any long-term harm from Elise’s impromptu Judo demonstration.

  They also confirmed that some of the imaging tools weren’t compatible with using organic hardware to run them, and ended up improvising for the MRI.

  The stealth plating was replaced. A new scout drone fabricated. The Drop Pod refurbished.

  Aside from the fuel and the food, and a few replacement parts, the Sapper would be ready to take off again almost immediately after arrival. Which hopefully wouldn’t be needed, but then…

  When she emerged from darkspace on the edge of the Ash system, the Sapper was immediately pinged by two nearby starships.

  The first, Kyle recognized immediately. The Last Rites, the flagship of the Butcher’s fleet. The moment he brought it up on screen, he stared, eyes tracing the form.

  She’d been born, centuries before, as a Directorate Destroyer-class ship. And when she’d dived through the AI blockade to deliver nuclear fire to the factories producing the swarms of AI drones… and the civilian population centers surrounding them… she’d received numerous critical blows, only surviving through the miraculous work of her crew.

  And… the repairs had been done in a fashion only the Skulls could replicate. The actual bones of enormous aquatic leviathans had been fused with high-grade alloys through some sort of process that any outside group would find both pointless and absurd, and where AI-driven suicide bombers had blasted holes in the hull, there was now an actual armored ribcage.

  She looked… menacing. Dangerous. And had been the flagship of the entire company for years to come, a symbol of an organization that could get the job done, regardless of what it took.

  She’d obliterated dozens of United Worlds warships, back in those days. But now…. Here she was. Floating perhaps a few hundred kilometers from the UWS Cyprus; an enormous carrier built to deploy hundreds, or even thousands, of fighters, gunships, and secondary craft.

  Kyle had no idea what his uncle had told Admiral Thorn to get him here. But… he doubted the man would want to be kept waiting. “...Hail both ships. Ask where we need to have the meeting…. And where to bring the cargo.”

  He might be about to set a war in motion. He might not. Only one way to find out.