The Burning World: A Learning Experience, #8

Cover Blurb

The Belosi saved the human race. Now, we’re going to return the favour.

Fifty years ago, a human covert operations team – The Firelighters – raided Belosi, a world held in bondage by the alien Tichck, and rescued thousands of Belosi from slavery, taking them into space to form the core of a future liberation force. Since then, a cloud of secrecy has descended over Belos, with no word of the fate of the trapped Belosi allowed to escape the system. Now, with the Tokomak War over and the Galactics in disarray, the Solar Union intends to honour its promises to the exiled Belosi, by supporting their fleet in a bid to reclaim their stolen homeworld.

But the Tichck have plans of their own, and with the former masters of the universe no longer a threat, they can finally make their own play for supreme power.

The first war is over. The second is about to begin.

Prologue I

From: Covert Operations of the Solar Union, Baen Historical Press, 101SY.

The founders of the Solar Union faced very real problems balancing the need for operational security against their deeply held beliefs that secrecy was the beginning of tyranny and the creation of any sort of covert intelligence and/or operations service was asking for trouble in the not-too-distant future. The founders, as former citizens of the United States,  were uneasily aware that bodies like the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau Of Investigation had expanded rapidly since their foundation, to the point they became a threat to American democracy while simultaneously losing the ability to carry out their original functions, leading to a series of scandals that did nothing to bolster their reputation and eventually played a major role in the collapse of the United States.

And yet, some degree of covert operations, shrouded in secrecy, were unavoidable.

It is difficult to exaggerate just how puny Earth was a mere seventy years ago. The raw numbers do not convey the gap between human and galactic military power, nor how easy it would have been for even a low-rank galactic power (the equivalent of a third world state on Earth) to conquer Sol. The Solar Union needed to remain hidden from the galactic mainstream, while developing the technology needed to challenge the Tokomak - unquestioned masters of the known universe - and ensure humanity’s physical safety. This required a number of covert operations, ranging from the deployment of mercenary troops to earn galactic currency to intelligence gathering operations carried out hundreds of light-years from Earth. Many of those operations remain classified to this day, for fear of retribution. Only a handful have been declassified, and many more will remain classified until the current crisis is over.

The basic details of the covert operation on Belos, fifteen years after First Contact, have remained secret until now. The inhabitants of Belos – the Belosi – had the extreme ill luck to inhabit a system with no less than three gravity points, practically ensuring that they would be conquered by someone more powerful well before they developed technology of their own. This bad luck was magnified by the fact their conquerors were the Tichck, a race known for a cutthroat attitude to business and a willingness to do whatever it took to build and keep their power. They crushed the Belosi, then enslaved them on a scale beyond anything ever seen on Earth and exploited their homeworld ruthlessly. This tragedy was far from unique, in those days, but what made it interesting to humanity was the establishment of a top-secret research consortium on Belos. This consortium’s installations played host to seven GalCores, the keys to hacking and subverting the vast majority of GalTech. If humanity could obtain the GalCores, by foul means as fair means were simply impossible, it would give the human race a chance to catch up before their existence was discovered by the galaxy at large.

A covert operations team, The Firelighters, was dispatched to Belos, with orders to secure the GalCores without revealing humanity’s involvement in the affair. Their first attempt to steal the enemy technology failed, forcing them to flee into the countryside. There, they made contact with rebel Belosi and discovered, to their horror, that the planet was on the verge of becoming uninhabitable. The Belosi were likely to become extinct. Using a combination of galactic technology and human ingenuity, the Firelighters set out to give the Belosi a fighting chance.

The operation, aided and abetted by a persistent Tichck refusal to admit the Belosi could be dangerous, was a major success. The uprising secured control of one of the three big megacities, giving the team a chance to obtain the GalCores and cover their tracks so completely human involvement was never suspected. (The Tichck blamed the incident on one of their rivals, and war threatened until the Tokomak poured water on the blaze.) More importantly for the Belosi, the team captured hundreds of starships capable of carrying vast numbers of refugees and evacuated as many Belosi as possible into interstellar space before the Tichck, now aware of the seriousness of the threat, could launch a counterattack. By the time the Tichck regained control of the high orbitals, nearly two hundred thousand Belosi had been evacuated.

The team returned to their home base, where it was decided that the Solar Union would continue to provide a degree of support to the Belosi, who had lost their homeworld, but that support would remain firmly at arm’s length. Many people who were in the know about the operation regarded the decision as dishonourable, even if they realised the importance of maintaining Earth’s security. Had the Tichck proven humanity’s involvement, or even suspected it to their own satisfaction, the results would have been disastrous. The Solar Navy of 15-40SY was simply incapable of defending Sol against a major galactic power, and there was no reason to believe the Tichck would show mercy. Quite the opposite. The truth remained concealed until after the Tokomak War, which ended forever the belief that the Tokomak were the masters of the universe. Humanity had beaten them, and nothing would be the same again.

And then, with the galaxy in flux, everything changed.

Prologue II

The servants were Tokomak. Of course.

Chairperson Harpeth watched them bustle about, bringing the directors of the Tichck Consortium food and drink, and allowed himself a sharp-edged cold smile. Hiring servants from the galaxy’s hyperpower – former hyperpower – was a display of wealth and power on a scale few could match, conspicuous consumption taken to an extreme even most Galactics found distasteful. The Tichck did not. It wasn’t sufficient to have enormous wealth, enough to purchase hundreds of star systems or corrupt the most virtuous minds of the galaxy; they wanted – needed – to show the universe they’d arrived. The servants were expensive, but that was the point. They needed to show off their power in a manner none could deny.

His smile sharpened briefly, revealing sharp predator teeth, as the holographic display flickered to life. Other races might look at stars and planets, gauging the balance of military power, but the Tichck looked at economics, silently assessing their possessions, clients, debtors and the many – many – galactic influencers who owed them favours. Harpeth knew – he had no illusions – that his race was hated throughout the known galaxy, yet it hardly mattered. The Tichck had never heard of Caligula, but they would have agreed wholeheartedly that the entire galaxy could hate, as long as it feared. And they were feared.

He leaned back in his chair and studied the display. The consortium was so rich, even in the galactic downturn that had followed the war, that it couldn’t be described in a manner that didn’t involve incredible superlatives. There were entire accounting corporations devoted to keeping track of their possessions, from planets and interstellar trade alliances they owned outright to stocks and shares held in companies that didn’t know – or care – who had an interest in them; there were hundreds of thousands of powerful figures who had taken out loans, then discovered – too late – that they were expected to repay their benefactors in something other than money. And there were alien institutions that would have been very surprised, if they’d discovered who was patronising them. It wasn’t so easy to push them in the right direction, but Harpeth had always enjoyed a challenge. In his experience, academics were the easiest to corrupt of all.

The servants finished their tasks and retired, bowing as they left the compartment. Harpeth wondered, idly, if their immense salaries made up for the indignity of serving a lesser race, then asked himself if their salaries could be cut in the wake of the war. It would make the point that the Tokomak were no longer what they were, that their people could be abused with impunity. They had lost most of their power in a single catastrophic war and now they were vulnerable. Perhaps it was time for the other powers to take their long-awaited revenge. Or just teach the galaxy’s former masters what it felt like to have your fate decided on a world hundreds of light-years away, by people who knew nothing about you and cared less.

There was no small-talk. Each and every one of the directors had clawed his way to his post, each and every one of them knew their peers were plotting against them, planning to bring them down by any means necessary. They were not friends and never would be, nor did they even admire each other’s skill at decades-long political manoeuvres that ended with one party dead or disgraced, a fate most of the directors would agree was worse than death. Harpeth had wondered, sometimes, if the endless competition was bad for the race, forcing them to dominate each other as much as the surrounding galaxy, but there was no point in trying to calm the competition. The Tichck had evolved on a very harsh world, their ultimate survival in doubt until they’d managed to climb into orbit, and their instincts hadn’t changed at all. How could they? The galaxy was a very dangerous place. And competition meant the strongest would always rise to the top.

The galactic situation has changed beyond imagination, he said, calmly. The shift had shocked him, even though he and his ancestors had been working patiently for the day the Tichck could displace the Tokomak and take control of the known galaxy. The idea of a relatively new and primitive race from thousands of light-years away being able to fight its way to Tokomak Prime, destroying hundreds of thousands of starships in the process, was just absurd. And yet it had happened. We have a window of opportunity to take control.

There was a long pause. The Tichck were not a particularly cautious race – their evolution had taught them that some opportunities only came once – but they were aware of the risks. The balance of power had been slipping in their favour for centuries, leaving them positioned to take over ... and now, everything they wanted was right in front of them, inviting them to reach out and take it. The prize was absolute domination of the known galaxy, the destruction of their foes and profit on a scale beyond even their dreams. But the risk was incredibly high.

We will never be a popular race, Harpeth said. They didn’t care about the opinion of most other races, save perhaps the Tokomak, and yet they were wise enough to know they were hated. If we do not take power, someone else will. And that will be bad for us.

We have power and influence even over our enemies, Chairperson Tomah said. We could continue to build our power from afar.

Harpeth dismissed the caution with a wave of his hand. The interstellar economy was in ruins. Their control over the interstellar banking system had never been complete and now it was worse than useless. It was just a matter of time until their enemies started repudiating their debts, or simply refusing to pay. The Tichck had a powerful fleet, true, but they couldn’t fight a war with the entire galaxy. Once the chain of debt repudiations began, they would be unstoppable. It could not be tolerated. They had to act fast.

Our enemies are already moving to secure the gravity point nexuses, Harpeth said. They will splinter our lines of control, intentionally or not, and make it difficult to retain what we already hold, let alone expand it. It is just a matter of time before they unite against us, or even merely form coalitions that will lock us out of hundreds of interstellar marketplaces. And that will be the end.

He let his words hang in the air. The Tichck really were unpopular. He could understand it, intellectually, even though the idea that there was something morally wrong in expanding their control in any way they could was beyond him. The galaxy was red in tooth and claw, an uncivilised nightmare where the strong did as they pleased and the weak suffered what they must. He knew what his people had inflicted on others, in their quest to dominate the known universe, and knew it would be inflicted on them if the worm ever turned. They were powerful, true, but if the other Galactics united against them the war could have only one ending. The Tokomak had thought themselves untouchable. The humans had proved them wrong.

We must act now, he said. This is our chance.

There was no debate. The directors knew the situation as well as he did. The lure of absolute power was irresistible. The Tokomak had been fools not to exploit their hegemony mercilessly, but the Tichck would not make the same mistake. They would take control of the core worlds before anyone could rise against them, then secure the rest of the galaxy and beyond. Their ships would carry their goods from world to world, their military would blast open the doors protectionists tried to slam in their face, their economic might would turn every other race into their servants, better yet, their slaves. It would be an empire that would last forever, led by a race that competed amongst itself to ensure only the strongest took the helm.

This is our day, Harpeth said. And we will seize the opportunity without delay.

Chapter One

There was little overt difference between the darkness of interplanetary space and the darkness of interstellar space, but spacers often felt the latter was far darker and more dangerous than the former. The sheer vastness of the vacuum between the stars was just too big to grasp, while the sense of being utterly alone – even on a crewed starship – was almost impossible to overcome. Intelligent life pretended to believe there was nothing outside, with starships battening down their hatches and remaining in FTL from the moment they left one star system until they reached another. There were rumours of things in the darkness, strange voices whispering from the shadows, none of which had ever been even remotely substantiated. And yet, nearly all intelligent spacefaring races had similar stories.

Colonel Riley Richardson felt alone as the handful of gunboats hung in interstellar space, even though he was surrounded by a dozen Belosi. They were good friends and allies, allies who deserved better than to be kept at a distance from the Solar Union, but ... he still felt alone. The Belosi seemed unique, in that the vastness of the interstellar wasteland didn’t disturb them ... and yet, he admitted, the monsters they’d left behind were far worse than anything they might find between the stars. It was hard for their elders to recall, sometimes, the homeworld they’d been forced to flee, and their children – of course – didn’t remember it at all. Riley wondered, at times, if the Belosi would eventually evolve into a migrating race; he was fairly sure their elders feared they would, if they didn’t fall further down the galactic scale. There was no shortage of scavengers roaming the rim, somehow keeping themselves going by picking over the leavings of more advanced and dangerous races. The Belosi could easily go the same way if they weren’t careful. They weren’t the only race that had been effectively kicked off their own homeworld.

The sensor operator looked up. I have two ships inbound, she said. Five minutes to contact.

Riley nodded, feeling a twinge of disquiet. The Belosi were alien – no one could mistake them for human – but they had picked up a lot of human culture, something that bothered their elders even though they knew little of their own culture and distrusted what few records they had been able to salvage. The Tichck had not just invaded Belos, hundreds of years ago; they’d destroyed the indigenous culture – cultures - so completely no one had any idea what it had been like before the invasion. Riley had friends who were Native American, friends who had tried to rebuild their pre-Columbus societies on the Outer Cantons, and they’d had problems recreating authentic tribal societies. But they’d known nearly everything, compared to the Belosi. There was no way to be sure what their world had been like, and it was unlikely that would ever change.

And so they act like us, he thought. Poor bastards.

He studied the sensor display as the seconds ticked down. The Galactics had developed FTL sensors capable of providing warning, if an enemy fleet was nearing one’s system, but it hadn’t occurred to them – until too late – that someone might improve on the concept, to the point of being able to yank a starship out of FTL without warning. The human race had made it work, and the Belosi had taken the original concept and run with it. Riley felt a hot flash of almost parental pride as the gravity net deployed ahead of him, silently cursing the fates that had crushed the Belosi before they could take flight. The Exiles – as they called themselves – had had only fifty years of access to modern technology, but they’d mastered it with terrifying speed. The Solar Union could not ask for a better ally.

One minute, the sensor operator said. Fifty seconds ...

Prepare to engage, Riley ordered. Or to run.

He felt, more than heard, the rustle of discontent running through the cockpit. The thought of breaking off was unthinkable, even to spacers who knew it was just a matter of time until they ran into a genuine warship. The FTL sensors insisted their quarries were freighters, but there was no way to be sure. The Tokomak had fooled humanity’s sensors by having freighters tow warships through FTL, and there was no reason the Tichck couldn’t steal the idea for themselves. They certainly didn’t suffer from the not-invented-here syndrome.

Something flashed, in the darkness of interstellar space. Riley glanced at the display and breathed a sigh of relief as he spotted the two freighters, skidding through space in a manner that defied logic and reason. Their FTL fields had collapsed, but not quickly enough to keep from giving the ships a shove in the wrong direction ... a shove that, if the ship was unlucky, could easily snap the vessel in half. He hoped their FTL drive systems had been fused by the sudden disaster, trapping the ships in realspace. The gravity nets were very effective, but they only worked once. A crew with a working FTL drive and time to react would be able to overcome the gravity net and drop back into FTL, outrunning their tormentors in seconds ...

The gunboat shivered, slightly, as the helmsman brought the drives online, driving right towards the freighters. Riley grimaced, inwardly, as the demand for surrender was broadcast, in a manner that would make surrender very unlikely. The Belosi had good reason to hate the Tichck, and refuse to take prisoners, but he’d told them time and time again that that was dangerously counterproductive. There was nothing to be gained by forcing the enemy to fight to the death. He gritted his teeth as the range closed, the enemy crews fighting desperately to bring their shields up before it was too late. They really hadn’t been expecting to be ambushed. His lips twisted in grim amusement. Statistically, they’d be right.

Enemy teleport denial nets active, the sensor operator said. The gunboat shuddered as it crashed through the enemy shields, such as they were. I’m bringing the matter stream projector online now ...

Riley braced himself as the gunboat crashed into the freighter with an audible thud. The enemy crew would know they’d landed, would be scrambling their defenders – if they had any – to seal off the outer compartments, expecting the pirates to burn through their hulls and storm into the ship itself. The Belosi had a different idea. It was incredibly risky, even by humanity’s standards, but it had caught the enemy by surprise time and time again. No one had survived to report home.

He snapped his helmet into place, an instant before the teleport field caught him and the rest of the assault team and dematerialised them. There was a hint of a ghostly presence – the techs swore blind he was imagining it – a suggestion that he was trapped in a submolecular realm, and then the real world rematerialised around him. A Tichck stared at him in horror, and astonishment, then reached for a sidearm with surprising speed. Riley shot him with his stunner, feeling a flicker of relief as the alien collapsed. The Belosi would have killed him without hesitation, if he’d tried to fight. And yet, they needed prisoners ...

The rest of the bridge crew were Subdo, but they grabbed for weapons anyway. The assault party blasted them with capture goo, leaving them helpless until they could be freed and taken prisoner. It was riskier than stun weapons, but a charge that could stun a Tichck might easily kill a Subdo ... they were lucky, Riley told himself, that they were Subdo. They were, in their own way, just as much the victims of the Tichck as the Belosi themselves. They were more favoured slaves, true, but slaves nonetheless.

He turned and plugged his hacker datachip into the captain’s access port. It should have granted the boarding party complete control of the datacores instantly, but – not entirely to his surprise – access was denied. The Tichck seemed to have rejected galactic standards on the freighter, something that struck him as odd. Most races tended to modify their military datacores to make it impossible for the Tokomak to hack them easily, but they rarely bothered to do the same for freighters. The hacking crew went to work trying to crack the protections. Riley turned and surveyed the bridge. It felt... small.

Charming, he reflected. The Tichck would have no trouble, but they were amongst the shorter races. The Belosi and their human allies felt uncomfortable, and he was fairly sure the Subdo felt worse. Did they make the interior deliberately smaller to cut costs?

We’ve sealed the airlocks, the hacker reported. But the cargo holds are completely isolated.

Get the tow cables attached, Riley ordered. In theory, they had enough time to search the ship from top to bottom; in practice, there was no point in taking risks. Better to tow the freighters through FTL, then loot the cargo holds once they were completely safe. I’ll see to the holds.

He passed command to the lead Belosi, then made his way through the hatch and down a long corridor. The freighter was mostly cargo space, with a handful of living quarters ... he glanced into one chamber and winced, remembering the very first night he’d spent in barracks. The Navy hadn’t wanted SEAL candidates to grow soft; they certainly hadn’t put them in five-star hotels but compared to the chamber in front of him the navy had treated him like a king. The Tichck hadn’t bothered to do more than install life support gear and a handful of blankets, yet another cost-cutting measure that would come back to bite them sooner or later. He hoped the Subdo were discontented enough to switch sides when given the chance. If not, they’d be dropped on a stage-one world and given enough resources to survive until the end of the war.

His eyes narrowed as he passed through a pair of sealed hatches, both strong enough to give an enhanced human a very hard time. The Tichck hated spending money and yet they’d gone to great lengths to secure the cargo holds, something that really was odd. He triggered his implants, bringing up his enhanced sensors, as he stepped through the final hatch. The cargo bay reminded him of a colonist-carrier ship, lined with row upon row of stasis tubes, all opaque to prevent him from seeing the contents. He frowned as he keyed the computer screen, trying to bring up the biological life readings, but access was denied. Again. The entire system was completely isolated from the rest of the ship, he noted; it had been designed to remain functional even if the freighter lost power. Whatever was inside the tubes, and his imagination provided a number of very disturbing answers, the Tichck were intent on it not getting out.

He raised his head and allowed his eyes to wander around the giant hold. There were hundreds of stasis tubes within eyeshot, and if the other holds carried the same cargo there could be over five thousand or more. It depended on how tightly they’d been packed into the hull ...

His communicator buzzed. Sir, we have an incoming warship.

Riley cursed under his breath. It could be a coincidence, and it might well be, but they couldn’t count on it. A skilled naval crew could shadow a freighter from a safe distance, remaining outside detection range, while dropping in and out of hyperspace long enough to take sensor readings and then resume the chase. They weren’t that far off the shipping lanes, and there was only one least-time course between the two nearest settlements, but ...

Get the freighters into FTL as quickly as possible, he ordered. The warship might not realise, at least at first, that the gunboats were towing the freighters. Even if it did, it would be leery about following them into the unknown. They'd have to assume they were flying straight into another ambush. We’ll deal with the cargo later.

Something moved, behind him. Riley ducked on instinct, barely enough to save himself as an enhanced arm swept through the air above his head and smashed into the nearest tube hard enough to shatter the protective sleeve and disable the stasis field. Riley swung around and cursed as he saw the two cyborgs, one advancing towards him and the other staggering out of the tube. They were human, pale skin warped and twisted with implants that had been put together by sadists and inserted in a manner that would make Mengele blanch. Riley had known the Tichck made use of human cyborgs, descendants of humans kidnapped from Earth centuries ago, but this ... he ducked another swing, trying to put enough distance between him and his opponents to draw his pistol or unsling his rifle. It wouldn’t be easy. The cyborgs might not be as advanced as their Solar Union counterparts, unless the Tichck had made advancements in the last few decades, but they were incredibly dangerous and cared nothing for their own lives. It wasn’t clear if the cyborgs were being guided by a central processor, or if they were being allowed to operate on their own, yet it didn’t matter. Up close and personal, they were almost unstoppable.

And there could be five thousand of them on this ship, Riley thought. The first cyborg kept coming; the second looked dazed, his body lurching as if he was being dragged to his feet by an invisible force. Snapping out of a stasis field shouldn’t produce that much confusion, but who knew? That’s an invasion force ...

He darted backwards again, then ducked as the first cyborg boosted and threw himself at Riley with incredible speed. The force of the impact sent him tumbling backwards, the cyborg landing on top of him and drawing back a fist for the final blow. Riley measured the cyborg’s strength – the Tichck had definitely improved their implants – and then yanked his knife from his belt and stabbed upwards with his enhanced strength. The cyborg shuddered violently as the knife went into his chest, then tried to strike Riley anyway. He barely managed to shift his head before the blow hit the deck. Hard.

Riley yanked the knife out – the wound was already closing, another improvement on the early cyborgs – and threw it up, straight under the jaw and right into the brain, The cyborg let out a rattling sound, then fell to one side. Riley shoved him away, watching in horror as the implants fought to keep the body alive long enough to continue the fight. It was hard not to feel sorry for the cyborg. He had been grown in a tube, conditioned to obey from birth, implanted with tech that made disobedience pretty much impossible ... Riley had no idea if the Tichck had worked out there’d been a cyborg with the mission on Belos, but they were clearly not taking any more chances. He bent down, recovered his knife, and made certain the poor bastard was dead. It was difficult to be sure. The implants really had been improved.

The second cyborg fell out of the tube and stood up, moving in a jerky manner that suggested he was drunk.  Riley drew his pistol, making sure to conceal the movement, and put a plasma pulse through the cyborg’s head. He couldn’t help feeling guilty as he keyed his communicator to report in, then checked the rest of the tubes to make sure the stasis fields remained firmly in place. The cyborg hadn’t deserved the death penalty – if he’d ever had an original thought in his entire life, it had been against the will of his creators – but there’d been no choice. He’d been too dangerous to leave alive and, without the control codes, there had been no way to put him back in stasis. Riley had no idea why they’d let one of the cyborgs out of his tube ...

They knew we were going to board them, he thought, numbly. And the cyborgs might have been their only hope.

He tapped his communicator. Leave the rest of the holds sealed, he ordered. We won’t try to open them until we get the ships somewhere safe, then see what they conceal.

His mood darkened as he turned away. The Tichck were incredibly wealthy. Cloning five thousand humans and turning them into brain-dead cyborgs would cost nothing more than pocket change, as far as they were concerned; Riley would be surprised, very surprised, if there were only five thousand. They could easily churn out millions of cyborgs, crafting an unstoppable army that would not, that could not, turn on its masters. The Tokomak had forbidden it, but the Tokomak were gone.

I checked the navcomp, the sensor operator said, when he returned to the bridge. The ship passed through Belos.

Interesting, Riley said. He felt uneasy. He wouldn’t feel any better until they got the ship somewhere safe and made sure the cyborgs were firmly in stasis. What was it doing there?

I don’t know, the operator said. But the crew will.

We’ll find out, Riley said. It wasn’t unusual. Belos had been an interstellar nexus for centuries. The events on the planet’s surface hadn’t made the gravity points vanish, ensuring that interstellar shipping would keep passing through the system for centuries to come. And then we can decide what to do next.

He sighed, inwardly. The Belosi had advanced in leaps and bounds, since the refugees had been evacuated from their homeworld fifty years ago, but they had a long way to go before they could challenge the Tichck openly. The Solar Union had been reluctant to make any open commitment to them, even after the Tokomak had been given a bloody nose. Riley understood the logic, but he couldn’t help finding it dishonourable. The Solar Union wouldn’t have survived without the Belosi. They owed them. And yet the risk of helping them openly was too high.

But he knew, as he forced himself to sit and wait, that times were changing ...

... And that which had once been considered unthinkable was now very plausible indeed.

Chapter Two

It’s a busy system, the pilot cracked, as the shuttle dropped out of FTL. You think we’ll hit something?

Ambassador Sarah Wilde resisted the urge to hit him with an effort. Pilot humour had never been a particular favourite of hers, even after spending decades with the exile fleet and their sense of humour. The Belosi had adapted surprisingly well to most elements of human culture, but some elements – practical jokes, for example – should probably have been left out until the Belosi matured to the point they could handle them. The xenospecialists asserted the pranks were a reflection of just how deeply the Belosi had been enslaved over the centuries, along with their desire to indulge their freedom in every way they could, but Sarah still found them irritating. They had fewer restraints than most human pranksters, and a society that had more tolerance for them.

She calmed herself with an effort and studied the display. Sol had never been so busy. Hundreds of thousands of drive signatures were clearly visible, from warships and diplomatic vessels to colony and exploration ships heading into the great unknown. The Solar Union had never been completely confined to its home system, but the need to remain unknown to the galaxy at large – and then the great war – had limited the number of ships that could explore the unknown regions. Now, with the war over, the dam had burst. The human race was expanding as never before, plunging into systems unexplored even by the Galactics. Who knew what they would find, out there?

Her eyes lingered on a single icon, representing Earth. Humanity’s homeworld had never recovered from the political and economic collapse that had swept over the planet, driving the most capable and innovative of the population into space. Sarah knew there were factions within the Solar Union who wanted to do something about it, to crush the madmen ruling the globe and thereby bring the benefits of civilisation to the entire human race, but it wasn’t a desire she shared. There was no point in trying to help people who didn’t want to be helped, people who didn’t even have the determination to leave the homeworld and make their way to the Solar Union. If they wanted to wallow in their own shit, and put up with leaders who had little conception of reality and cared less, that was their problem. She still believed that most of the chaos that had swept over the United States, or what was left of it, had flowed from people believing they had a right to poke their nose into other people’s private business.

She shook her head as the covert intelligence base came into view, a seemingly-deserted asteroid complex that had been mined out years ago and then converted – according to the official paperwork – into an outer canton that remained isolated, even from the rest of the outer cantons. Solar Intelligence probably went to a great deal of trouble to keep inspectors from visiting the canton, or simply bamboozled them with a cover story backed by holographic and VR images. It wasn’t that difficult, she supposed. The official population was very low, with no prospect of it ever rising. The inspectors had far too many other cantons to visit, from the relatively normal to cantons based on social concepts that had been impossible to test, back on Earth. This canton simply wasn’t very important.

The pilot docked the shuttle, then smiled as the hatch hissed open. Good luck.

Sarah nodded, curtly, as she unbuckled her seatbelt and stood, grabbing her knapsack with one hand as she headed for the hatch. A lifetime in the covert operations service had left her with a habit of bringing only what she needed, although – she had to admit – it had been decades since she’d taken part in a proper operation. She wasn’t even sure she was still on the register, after being seconded to the exile fleet. Her superiors would probably insist she ran through the training modules again, if she wished to remain qualified. Her augmentations were still first-rate, but her mindset had changed. And that meant she might not be prepared to go into danger again.

The air shifted as she stepped through the second hatch, her implants flashing up alerts as her body – and augmentations – were probed by invisible sensors. Sarah felt a tickle running over her body, a grim reminder that every last atom of her body was being scrutinized by unseen eyes and uncaring AIs. The sensation was imaginary, she knew, but she could still feel something crawling over and through her body. More alerts flashed up as hacking programs attacked her internal firewalls, only to be deflected. That was a relief. Her implants had been top of the line, decades ago, but science marched on. If the hackers had been able to gain access to her central processor, they might have been able to take control of her.

Or prove someone else might have been able to do it, Sarah thought, as the third hatch hissed open. If our enemies got control of me, they could watch through my eyes – or worse – as I returned home.

She put the thought aside as she stepped into a