 
### Gabriel: Zero Point

by Steve Umstead

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Steve Umstead

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Prologue

_November, 2166_

North American Federation Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island

"Which one is he?"

Vice Admiral Eriq Cafferty looked up from his flexscreen at the sound of his attaché's voice behind him and rubbed his eyes with one hand. The unforgiving steel bleachers he sat on played havoc with his lower back, and the squeaking of sneakers on the polished hardwood floor from the far side of the gym was starting to give him a headache. He twisted one hip, trying to get a bit of relief while at the same time politely facing his questioner.

His attaché, Lieutenant Commander Alejandra Basilio, was looking across the wide gymnasium at the sweat-drenched recruits crashing and banging into each other. Behind her sat a bald man in civilian clothes. His eyes were shut, most likely going over neuretics information. The two of them along with Cafferty had entered the gym a few minutes earlier and took a seat as far away from the action as they could to observe unseen.

It was ostensibly a pickup basketball game, but as they observed, fewer and fewer baskets were scored, while more and more grunts and curses were heard.

It was obvious to Cafferty that the young officer candidates were blowing off steam. Today marked the nine-week milestone in Officer Candidate School, and these six, five men and one woman, passed their Victory Runs the previous day. As of today, they were regarded as Candidate Officers, a position of some esteem and authority within the twelve-week long OCS class. According to Cafferty's flexscreen, all distinguished themselves in one way or another, and passed each and every one of the NAFN's toughest tests along the way. But only one had unanimously blown away the instructors with his mettle, determination, and intelligence. _Not to mention scoring off the charts in raw skills_ , Cafferty thought. _As best as they could be measured._

"The blond," he said to Basilio.

Basilio squinted. "Ah, sir, two of them are blond. At least I think so. They're all dripping with sweat," she said, wrinkling her nose.

Cafferty smiled. "The big one."

"Oh, the bang _er_ , not one of the bang _ees_ ," she replied.

Cafferty slid his flexscreen closed and pointed with it. "Yes, bang _er_." He waved the tube. "He's been giving the instructors a hell of a time keeping him challenged on the courses. I'm sure you've seen the results of...damn."

The flexscreen tube slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the metal bench in front of them, then bounced down through the bleachers, striking several more benches on the way down to the floor. The sound echoed off the walls, and the sneaker squeaking ceased.

Cafferty heard a low, "Oh shit," from the game, then a much louder, "Admiral on deck!"

The six on the court snapped to attention facing the bleachers as the basketball bounced lazily away, coming to rest near the far door. Cafferty let the silence linger for a few moments, thankful for the rest it gave his ears, then waved a hand.

"At ease, Candidate Officers," he called out. As one, the six went to sharp parade rest. He heard their low breathing sounds as each of them attempted to maintain a perfectly still composure while trying to catch up on oxygen. _Tops in their class_ , he thought as he stared across the gym. _These are the young men and women who will be leading us into the next decade, taking over for me and my generation's bad backs._ He twisted his other hip and felt a small, satisfying crack.

He waited a few more moments, then said, "Candidate Officer Gabriel, report on the double."

A tall man snapped to attention, then jogged towards the two officers on the bleachers. Upon reaching them, he came to rigid attention again, staring at the wall above their heads.

"Officer Candidate, er, Candidate Officer Evan Gabriel, reporting, sir!" the young man said.

Cafferty chuckled. "Took me a while to get used to all the different names I was assigned during OCS as well." He looked back at the other five, who were still at parade rest, and saw several curious glances in his direction. He waved his hand again. "Back to the game, candidates."

The five looked at each other uneasily. Finally the lone woman in the group walked over to the basketball, picked it up, and threw it two-handed into the chest of one of the others. The game, or grunt-laced brawl, picked up where it had left off.

Cafferty folded his hands on his lap and turned his attention back to the young man in front of him. "Tell me, son. How does an additional title of Regimental Commander sound?"

One eyebrow rose almost imperceptibly on Gabriel, but his gaze never left the wall. "Quite an honor, sir!"

"An honor I understand you deserve based on what I've been told by your instructors. You'll be nominally in charge of several other candidates for the final three weeks of school. Is command something that interests you?"

"Absolutely, Admiral," he replied with a tiny nod. "It's why I applied to OCS."

Cafferty returned the nod. "And your friends out there," he said, glancing at the basketball game. "Can you command friends? Send them into battle? Send them to die?"

He saw Gabriel's jaw clench. _Good, emotion_ , thought Cafferty. _Can't have robots in the Navy._

"Sir, I don't have any friends," he replied, and Cafferty caught a minute change in the tenor of his voice.

Gabriel's file, the one Cafferty had pored over that morning on the flight in from Toronto, read like a Greek tragedy. Lost his mother to a rare form of untreatable cancer when he was only nine. Lost his father in an accident in the immediate aftermath of the Shanghai asteroid event when he was twelve. Lost his older brother when he had unexpectedly left Earth several months ago to pursue business on New Tokyo. He had no other immediate family, and he enlisted in the Navy, with the backing and help of his only other surviving relative, an uncle, a Navy man himself. He bounced around from one location to another, never staying in one place long enough to create any connections.

When Gabriel was a noncom serving in South Africa, he applied for Officer Candidate School. His commanding officer put in a glowing recommendation, part of which said that Gabriel would most likely be _his_ commanding officer within a few years if he was granted entry.

What the file didn't technically say, but Cafferty easily understood, was that Gabriel was alone and had been most of his life. He put his heart and soul into the military, and his achievements and grades during the first three quarters of OCS showed it. Looking at the square-jawed young man standing in front of him, hazel eyes boring into the wall, Cafferty knew Gabriel had been meant for something greater than grunt work. He suspected the man was destined for an important future.

"You have three more weeks of OCS," said Cafferty. "After which time you will graduate to O-1, an Ensign, and be assigned to a North American Federation Navy regiment either on Earth or off-world. Do you have any preference as to where you'll be sent?"

"No, sir," Gabriel said immediately. "Happy to serve wherever I'm sent, sir."

"While we both know everyone has some type of preference, I appreciate your flexibility," said Cafferty with a small smile. "And that is the correct answer, of course."

"Admiral, if I may?" said Basilio, and Cafferty nodded.

"Mister Gabriel, what are your goals?" she asked.

Gabriel shoulders shifted. He blinked twice, but regained his composure. "Ma'am?"

"Your goals," Basilio repeated. "Why are you here?"

Gabriel opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. After a few moments, he answered, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm not sure what you mean." His eyes never left the wall behind the bleachers, but Cafferty saw a flicker of uncertainty in them.

Basilio leaned forward. "Why did you enlist in the Navy, Mister Gabriel?"

Gabriel cleared his throat. "I'm not entirely sure, ma'am. I... I had nothing else. And it's something..." He paused.

"Go on," said Cafferty.

Gabriel's lips twitched and he blinked deeply. "It's something I thought I'd be good at. And I feel I am good at it, ma'am. Sir."

Cafferty nodded slightly. "That you are, son. Seems as though you may have found your calling."

He turned to Basilio. "Anything else, Lieutenant Commander?"

She shook her head. "No, sir. That's all I wanted to hear."

Out of the corner of his eye, Cafferty caught Gabriel's gaze shift slightly to the man who sat two rows behind Basilio. Cafferty saw that the man had focused his eyes on Gabriel like targeting lasers.

"Never mind him," said Cafferty. "He's just an observer. From another department."

"Sorry, sir, I..." Gabriel began, only to be cut off by Cafferty's raised hand.

"No worries. Please," he said with a wave, "rejoin the game. If I recall from my OCS days many years ago, you've only got a few hours open today, then it's back to the grind." He stared into Gabriel's eyes. "But I'll be watching you, son. Following your progress. I think you have a great deal of potential, Mister Gabriel. Don't waste it."

Gabriel's posture tightened. "Aye aye, sir. Thank you, sir!" he snapped, then spun on one heel and jogged back to the court.

Cafferty watched him go, then grimaced as the pain in his back shot through his system once again. "What do you think, Alex?"

"I think it's an excellent class, Admiral," she replied. "And I think that Gabriel is obviously the standout. I also think..."

"I want him."

Cafferty turned at the sound of the voice behind him. The man in civilian clothes stood up and stepped down the rows of metal benches, his clanging footsteps competing with the sneaker squeaking from the far side of the gym.

"You can't have him, Pete. You know that," said Cafferty as the man reached the bottom of the bleachers. "At least not yet. He needs to get his feet wet first."

"Then get them wet, Eriq," replied the man. "Authorize an accelerated pay grade jump. Bump him to O-2 right away. I know you can do that."

Cafferty shook his head. "And he needs trial by fire. Isn't that what you're always asking for when you cherry-pick my finest?"

"Put him under fire," said the man as he glanced over his shoulder at the basketball game. "You know there's a shitstorm brewing in the Canary Islands. And you know you'll be sending people, regardless of the election results next week."

The man turned towards the rear door. "Give him a wartime command. Get him to O-3. Then give him to me." He walked out of the gymnasium without another word.

Cafferty watched the twin steel doors swing shut behind the man, then looked back towards the court. The six recruits were banging into each other, harder than before, as their time off wound down. He saw Gabriel posting up a heavier but shorter man, backing him down into the paint while dribbling. Just as he was about to turn and shoot, the young woman darted in and picked his pocket. She fired the ball back to the top of the circle where her teammate waited. His uncontested jump shot snapped the netting as it sailed through the basket. Gabriel's expression at the minor failure was pure disgust.

"Admiral, may I ask who that man was?"

Cafferty answered without turning from the game. "An old friend from Naval Special Warfare doing his own recruiting." He stood and stretched his back. "Every now and then he stops by to see a class. I suppose Gabriel caught his department's attention as well as ours."

"And you're okay with that?" Basilio asked as she stood up.

He smiled. "As long as it's only every now and then. Sometimes a young man or woman comes along that doesn't belong in the regular Navy. Someone meant for something bigger." He watched as the recruits played on, sweat soaking through their workout clothes, turning the gray fabric black. "And this time, it seems to be young Mister Gabriel."

The two officers stepped down the bleachers. Cafferty stooped to pick up his dropped flexscreen tube and grunted as his back pain flared up. Basilio quickly bent and retrieved it for him.

"Thanks, Alex," he said. "I'm not as young as I used to be."

"None of us are, sir."

Basilio walked towards the doors as Cafferty took one last look at the court. The bodies were crashing together once again. He heard a voice yell, "C'mon, big E, is that all you got?" He smiled and turned towards the door to follow Basilio out.

Good luck, Mister Gabriel.
Chapter 1

_July, 2168_

_North American Federation Battlecruiser_ Coral Sea, CCS-188 _, on station in the Belt_

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Evan Gabriel sat alone in one of the cushioned auditorium-style seats in the Ready Room, staring at the blank wallscreen. For what must have been the tenth time, he checked his neuretic brain implant's clock. _Nineteen-hundred hours._ Forty minutes he had been sitting, waiting, for some unknown reason, and now his stomach protested the lack of food by grumbling every few minutes.

He was assigned to the NAFS _Coral Sea_ five weeks ago. He'd just started to get the lay of the land of the huge battlecruiser, one of the largest in the North American Federation Navy fleet, when he received word that he was to be transferred. To where, he had no idea. The message arrived at his shared stateroom under an Eyes Only code merely stating that his request for transfer had been approved, and he was to meet his new commanding officer in the Ready Room at eighteen-thirty hours.

He hadn't requested a transfer.

The _Coral Sea_ was on patrol in the Belt with her massive particle beam cannons run out the side ports throughout the cruise as a show of force to the pirates who had been terrorizing the mining guilds for months. Gabriel already participated in boarding missions in his short time aboard. The first was two days after his assignment: the Coral Sea's cannons disabled a pirate frigate's engines, and was dead in the water. He and his squad rounded up the shell-shocked crew, the ship was scuttled, and sent on a ballistic course into the sun. The second mission was more exciting, as one of his squad had put it. At least it was at the beginning.

They'd taken one of _Coral Sea's_ assault shuttles and tracked down a pirate group who had built a hide on one of the Belt's huge asteroids. The firefight that ensued cost not only every one of the pirates' lives, but also one of his squad: Gilly. Seaman Ernesto Gillman was only nineteen years old, and Gabriel could still see the anguished look frozen on the kid's face after shrapnel from the IED shredded his environment suit.

Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut at the memory: just days old. Still fresh. Every loss hurt, as he already learned in just over a year as an officer, but nothing that would have prompted him to request a transfer.

He started to check his neuretics clock again when the main hatch to the Ready Room slid aside and a bald man walked in wearing Navy-issue service khakis. Gabriel saw the flash of a silver eagle on his collar, and quickly stood to attention.

"Be seated," the man said. He walked up to the first row of seats, standing just a few feet away from Gabriel.

Gabriel sat down and looked at the captain. The clothing was different, but the bald head and intense eyes he recognized.

"Yes, you remember me," the captain said. "From an impromptu meeting back at Newport, a little over a year ago."

The man in the gym, the one in civvies. The one who didn't speak.

"My name is Captain Pyotr Biermann," he continued. "I'm here with your transfer request."

"Sir, I didn't request a..."

The captain held up a hand. "I know. However, I did." He withdrew a sheet of hardcopy from his shirt pocket and handed it to Gabriel. "Along with a promotion to full lieutenant, pay grade O-3."

Gabriel leaned forward in his seat and accepted the folded paper. He opened it, scanned the text, then looked up.

"I don't understand, sir. NAVSOC? My tour on the _Coral Sea_ isn't up for another five months."

Biermann smiled, but Gabriel noticed the smile didn't reach his eyes. "Something else has come up. First, tell me about the Canary Islands."

A memory flashed across Gabriel's mind of a smoke-covered hill, illuminated by sporadic energy pulses. The sounds of heavy weapons interspersed with the screams of wounded men. His team hunkered down, pinned by superior numbers and positioning.

He shook off the dark memories. "Ah, the Canary Islands are off the coast of Africa, and are..."

"No bullshit, Lieutenant," Biermann snapped, and Gabriel closed his mouth. "Your participation in the Canary Islands operation in March."

"Sorry, sir," he replied. "The Spanish asked for the NAF's help when the Canaries were invaded by the West African Union, and our squad was one of the first in. Amphibious assault, four surface ships came from the south under heavy air cover. But we had no idea how well armed the Westies were, and..." His voice trailed off.

"And?" prompted Biermann.

More smoke, more energy fire. More screams.

"And we lost a lot of people. I lost a lot of people."

"Including two of your graduating class, isn't that correct?"

Gabriel ground his teeth together and stared back at Biermann, wondering why he was opening up such a sore wound. After a few moments he said, "Yes. Ensigns DePalma and Cristoff."

"You were their squad commander." Biermann stepped closer to Gabriel. "How did that make you feel, Lieutenant?" he asked, emphasizing Gabriel's brand new rank. "Leading your friends to their deaths?"

Gabriel paused a moment before answering. He saw images of Anya DePalma's pained face as the pulse rifle blasts tore into her stomach and the burned body of Taj Cristoff lying in the mud, one arm missing.

"Captain, with all due respect," he said in a low tone, "I believe you were there when I told Admiral Cafferty that I don't have any friends."

Biermann nodded. "Indeed I was, Lieutenant." He turned from Gabriel and walked to the front of the room, stopping at the wide briefing wallscreen. He reached out and ran his finger along the bottom edge of the wallscreen frame as if checking for dust. Without turning back to face Gabriel, he said, "I've kept an eye on you. You performed admirably in the face of overwhelming odds and didn't hesitate to lead your team into harm's way for the greater good. For the mission. And that's someone I need."

He turned from the wallscreen. "Which is why I requested your transfer to Naval Special Operations Command. Now," he said, boring his eyes into Gabriel, "MacFarland?"

Gabriel struggled to maintain his composure at the mention of the name. Captain Llewelyn MacFarland, or Dredge as he had his friends call him, was the CO of the combined Navy and Marine assault force, but he directed the battle from a plush command tent in a secure NAF base in Morocco. As the battle quickly turned from an assault to a bloodbath, MacFarland continued to order the outmanned and outgunned soldiers forward. The NAF had suffered over 90% casualties that long weekend, a battle that would later become known as Francisco's Stand after the commander of the Spanish assault force that had finally broken the WAU's hold on the island.

Gabriel never met MacFarland in person, and for that he was glad. He wasn't sure how he'd react.

He cleared his throat. "Captain MacFarland is a well-respected Navy officer."

Biermann raised an eyebrow, silently prodding Gabriel to continue.

After a long quiet minute, Gabriel asked, "Sir, may I speak freely?"

"You may. I'd expect nothing less."

Gabriel took a deep breath. "Captain MacFarland is a well-respected Navy officer, one with powerful family connections, and he's... ambitious."

Biermann's smile returned, but this time it crept slightly into his eyes. "That he is, Lieutenant. You are observant and seem to be a fairly good judge of character." He walked back to stand in front of the first row of seats where Gabriel sat. "There may come a time where you cross paths with MacFarland. Perhaps more than one. And I'd like you to... keep an eye on him. Be my eyes and ears. He is ambitious, no doubt. And he does have family connections. But he's also reckless with command, as you experienced."

He looked up at the ceiling. "But that's a discussion for another time." He brought his gaze back to Gabriel and said one word. "Cielo."

Gabriel cocked his head at the mention of the orbital military research station. Not sure where Biermann was going with this, he remained silent.

"I'm sure you're aware of Cielo's functions," Biermann continued. "Weapons enhancements, propulsion design, biomechanical research, and so on. But, as with any military project, there are certain... endeavors that remain out of the public eye. And some that even our esteemed Congressional Oversight Committee does not, and will not, know of."

He crossed his arms and stared into Gabriel's eyes. "Please be aware what we are about to discuss is highly classified. Part of that hardcopy you are holding authorizes an immediate bump in security level. But it also defines the consequences, if you divulge any confidential information. The North American Federation Navy has the legal right to make you disappear. Understood?"

Gabriel glanced down at the sheet he still held, not bothering to read through the fine print. Part of basic training drilled into him the need for secrecy and trust, and at this point he had no reason to break that trust. Nor anyone to even break it to.

"Understood, sir," he said with a slight nod.

Biermann returned the nod and uncrossed his arms. "Good. Now tell me, Lieutenant. Have you heard of the HAMR program?"

Gabriel blinked at hearing the acronym for one of the Federation's most whispered about secrets, one he had heard about through the typical method — gossip. HAMR, or Human Augmentation and Microcellular Replacement was the word on the street, which was quite a mouthful for gossip to pass on, so Gabriel had assumed there was at least a grain of truth behind it.

Super soldier, some called it. No one could prove it existed or had met anyone associated with the project, but the rumors alone gave pause to more than one potential NAF enemy. During the Canary Islands battle, one of the prisoners Gabriel's squad had taken, when questioned why the WAU hadn't used the battlefield nuke everyone knew they possessed, said they were keeping it in reserve in case the NAF sent in HAMRs.

Gabriel blinked again, pushing away the memory of the battle. He could still smell the scorched mud, something he knew he'd never forget.

"Only rumors, sir," he answered. "Nothing definitive." He knew where Biermann was going with this, and while he felt rising apprehension, he also felt something else — a twinge of excitement.

"Of course nothing definitive, Lieutenant," Biermann said with a small smile. "Otherwise it wouldn't be a secret project. I want you to be a part of it. I need you on my team."

He turned and walked to the hatch. "Now, I'm not a tech whiz by any stretch, so I want you to hear the HAMR details from the horse's mouth." He stopped at the hatch, one hand on the edge. "You'll be accompanying me to Cielo on my cutter. Captain Rivera has already been notified of your transfer. Meet me with your personal gear in Docking Bay Two in fifteen minutes. That should give you enough time to say goodbye to your squadmates."

He stepped through the hatch, but before it slid shut behind him, he called over his shoulder, "Welcome to Naval Special Warfare, Lieutenant Gabriel."

Gabriel stared at the closed hatch for a long minute after Biermann left. _Transfer, hell_ , he thought. _I've been Shanghaied._

It wasn't how he expected to be joining the Special Forces, but the fact of the matter was, it was done. He next twinge of excitement was quickly washed away with the lingering memory of Gilly's face.

As Gabriel rose to leave the Ready Room, he knew that wouldn't be the last casualty he'd see in his career.
Chapter 2

The high velocity cutter run from the _Coral Sea_ in the Belt to Cielo in high Earth orbit took over seven hours. Seven hours of uncomfortable 1.9G acceleration and deceleration, during which time Gabriel tried to nap. One thing his relatively short military experience had taught him was to catch some sleep at any opportunity, including times when his body weighed nearly five hundred pounds.

Captain Biermann had done the same, so the transit was mercifully quiet. The clank of the docking collar onto the cutter's hull brought Gabriel out of his light sleep, and he opened his eyes to see Biermann floating in front of his acceleration couch, one hand holding a ceiling-mounted strap.

"We've arrived, Lieutenant. Gather your gear and follow me."

Gabriel unfastened his safety belt and rose from the couch. He pushed off from the ceiling clumsily and floated towards his gear, strapped down against the rear bulkhead of the cutter's transit lounge. He bounced off the bulkhead and grabbed one of the gear straps to steady himself. It wasn't his first time in zero-G; all naval personnel had multiple sessions of weightless experience throughout their basic training, and he had even more during his twelve-week OCS stint. But this was the first time he had been under heavy Gs for several hours straight, and his muscles rebelled. It felt oddly like his drop capsule experiences, only instead of trying to adjust to standard gravity after high Gs when the capsules landed, he was trying to acclimate himself back to microgravity. He hoped Biermann wasn't paying too much attention to his awkwardness.

He looked up from the gear package to see Biermann's back as he floated out of the open hatch. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, he unzipped the straps and pulled his bag free, then pushed off the bulkhead to follow.

Cielo Station was a traditional Stanford torus design, resembling a spoked wheel rotating around a central hub that provided artificial gravity to the habitable spaces arranged along the near mile-long circumference of the wheel. Originally designed as a luxury space hotel, the NAF purchased it shortly before completion when private funding ran out and the owners sold at pennies on the dollar. The NAF completed the build and boosted it to high Earth orbit — over 27,000 miles in altitude — to keep it from prying eyes and the ever-growing number of LEO stations and geostationary satellites, as well as to provide an easier jumping-off point for naval vessels entering or leaving orbit.

The central hub was reconfigured and extended by over a thousand feet in each direction, giving Cielo the ability to dock up to sixteen ships concurrently, from tiny shuttles up to Navy frigates. The planned luxury suites had been stripped and converted to research bays, most of which were accessible to any personnel allowed to dock. However, some bays were off-limits to all but the highest security clearance levels. Including an innocuous, unmarked gray door in Section Six.

Gabriel followed Biermann's retreating figure as they stepped from the transfer hub into the main corridor, and he gratefully felt the .7G pull his body to the decking. The brief elevator ride had given him a chance to steady his muscles, which still quivered from the heavy G shuttle ride. Now, as he walked along the brightly lit hall, his body relaxed. He checked his neuretics: eighteen-thirty on Cielo's time system. His stomach growled. The nutrition bar and water bulb during the twelve-minute zero-G flipover on the flight wasn't cutting it for a full day's meal.

"Captain," he said, only to be stopped short by Biermann's raised hand.

"Dinner can wait," he said over his shoulder. "Trust me when I say you don't want a full stomach right now."

Gabriel was about to question what Biermann meant by that statement when the captain stopped at a gray door with a palmscan pad mounted on the wall beside it. He looked back at Gabriel, then gestured to the pad with a dip of his head.

"They're expecting you, not me," he said.

Gabriel approached the pad and glanced back at Biermann. "But they don't have my scan information on..."

"Sure they do," Biermann interrupted. "You wouldn't have gotten this far if we didn't have everything on you we needed."

Gabriel looked back at the pad. The excitement he felt back on the _Coral Sea_ gave way to more apprehension. Being recruited by Special Warfare was one thing. Feeling like his future was already laid out before him by someone else was quite another.

He reached out and pressed his palm against the pad. It was warm to the touch, and lit up green behind his hand. He felt a slight electrical tingle in his arm. After a few seconds, the green light disappeared and the door slid aside, revealing a red-tinged room beyond. With a quick glance at Biermann, Gabriel stepped through the door.

His eyes quickly adjusted to the dim red light, and he saw a dark-shirted woman on the far side of the room. She looked up from the table she stood in front of.

"Ah, Lieutenant Gabriel," she said. "You're here."

The lights suddenly switched to bright white and Gabriel blinked several times. The woman walked up to him and extended a hand. Now that the lights were on fully, he saw her shirt was actually a light blue pullover, and was not the typical white lab coat he always assumed scientists and doctors wore. He couldn't be sure if she was either, or neither.

"Doctor Moira Knowles. A pleasure, Lieutenant."

Gabriel set his gear bag down and shook her hand. "Ma'am." _Doctor it was._

She smiled. "Ma'am. How formal. You Navy types are all alike. Call me Moira. Or Doc, whatever you prefer. Just not ma'am. That's for my grandmother."

Gabriel pursed his lips. "You're not Navy?"

Her smile turned into a laugh. "Oh, hell no. I get paid far better as a private researcher. I moonlight here because this project is my baby. And for better or worse, it can't be worked on anywhere else."

"Captain Biermann said..." Gabriel started to say as he looked over his shoulder, but stopped short when he saw Biermann had not entered the room. The door was already closed.

Knowles released his hand. "Captain Biermann will meet us when the procedures are complete, Evan."

Gabriel turned back around to face Knowles. "Procedures?" His apprehension returned, and he missed the fact she used his first name.

Knowles scrunched up her brow. "Yes. Didn't Biermann explain them?" She frowned when Gabriel didn't answer. "Of course he didn't. Damned spooks are always too busy. Dumps it on me. I get it."

She turned and walked back to the table where she had been working. Gabriel looked left and right, scanning the lab, as he thought of it. His neuretics showed it was forty-two feet wide, the width of all of the bays along Cielo's wheel, and just under two hundred feet long with a slight upward curve to the floor in each direction. One end of the lab was taken up by a wallscreen; the opposite end, closest to where Gabriel stood, held a bank of smaller screens, all blank. In the approximate center of the lab was a massive state-of-the-art holotable, also switched off. The only active equipment, it appeared, was on Knowles's work table: several open flexscreens, a large device that resembled a 3-D medical nanoscope Gabriel had seen years ago in his boot camp clinic, and dozens of electronically sealed specimen containers.

But the most prominent item in the lab, and the one that gave Gabriel the most apprehension, was the large plastic structure he had walked past to join Knowles. It was a rectangular box with rounded corners, around eight feet long and three feet across; the same three feet in height. White in color except for a glass lid, it sat horizontally on four thick steel pedestals, one at each corner, and reminded Gabriel of a coffin.

The lid was open, swung vertically on a hinge at one end, and Gabriel glanced inside as he walked past. The inside was also smooth plastic, though unlike the bright white exterior, it was matte black with several small holes on the bottom and dozens of studs along each side. _A claustrophobic spa therapy tub_ , a part of his mind said, but the more rational side of his mind overrode that. _Stasis capsule._

Gabriel pulled his gaze from the capsule and walked up next to Knowles. She was peering into the top of the nanoscope, apparently unconcerned with her guest.

He cleared his throat. "Procedures?" he asked again.

She glanced up from the scope. "Sorry," she said, turning from the table to face Gabriel. "Just making sure my machines are synced and ready to go."

He watched as Knowles picked up one of the specimen containers and carried it to the capsule. She tapped the container against the surface, the soft click echoing in the quiet room. "This is the heart of the augmentation program. And no, it's not a coffin." She smiled. "I can see it in your eyes, and the others that have come through here thought the same thing. No, Lieutenant, this is not your final resting place. On the contrary, this is your zero point."
Chapter 3

Gabriel stared at the capsule, Knowles's last two words resonating in his head. _Zero point._ Before he had a chance to ask the doctor what she meant, she continued.

"Zero point doesn't refer to the mythical energy source, or the grade point average of some of the grunts I've met. It's a term referred to by the Pakistani philosopher Aban Gurmani about a decade ago in his book. He used the term to signify a rebirth, but not like being born again. More of a..." Her voice trailed off as she looked up at the ceiling. "A new beginning. A starting point. Nowhere to go but up. When I was involved in the planning stages of the augmentation program a few years ago, I was reading Gurmani's book, and I thought it was an apt description of what we do."

She walked back to the table and picked up another container. She turned back to Gabriel, holding them both out in front of her. "These are my machines. These will give you a new beginning, Lieutenant Gabriel."

Gabriel looked at Knowles, then at the capsule, then back to Knowles. He still wasn't completely sure what was happening. _Machines. New beginning. Augmentation._ He glanced back at the door, but Biermann wasn't suddenly standing there with answers. Not that Gabriel trusted him for answer. He had a growing suspicion that Biermann concealed much more than he gave up. But at least Biermann knew what the hell this woman, this program, were all about.

"The rumors that you've heard, I'm sure, are probably pretty accurate," she said, pulling his attention back to her. "Although to be quite honest, I really hate the acronym. Hammers. Sounds like stupid, blunt tools used as overkill. You, like the others before you, are neither stupid nor blunt. Are you?"

Gabriel still stared at the two containers Knowles held. He looked up at her face, where her eyes bored into his. "No ma'am. Er, doc."

"The augmentation project was created to give the NAF better soldiers," Knowles continued. "Not blunt tools but surgical, powerful, intelligent instruments. I'm proud to be associated with the project. And you," she said as she pointed to Gabriel with one of the containers, "should be proud to have been selected. Very few make it through the preliminaries from what I understand."

"Doc," he said, shaking his head, "I'm still quite a bit in the dark. Not to be too blunt, no pun intended, but I'd appreciate some specifics."

Knowles walked up to him and handed him one of the containers. He accepted it, then peered inside the clear plastic...and saw nothing.

"What level mil rets are you running, Lieutenant?"

He looked up from the container. "Level Four. Four point two actually."

She nodded as if she expected the answer. Gabriel realized her question was just a formality to get him comfortable; he knew she must have his full personnel jacket. And probably more.

"Part of the augmentation process will be a complete software upgrade on your existing neuretics gear. Nothing surgical, strictly wireless updates, but it's quite a jump. You'll come out of this with enhanced Level Seven rets, a power very few people in the military possess. Actually very few in the private sector have such a level, just a handful of the richest. But even those privileged ones don't have the military capabilities you will. Enhanced combat routines, more powerful passive and active scans, automatic defensive subroutines. That's the mental part. But the more exciting part are these," she said, indicating the container he held.

He turned the small box over in his hand, still peering inside.

"You won't see anything, Lieutenant. These are nano-level machines. Far below even standard microscopic view. They are self-replicating nanites which will be placed inside your body and will go to work on the physical parts of you, replacing some of your cells and tissues, augmenting and enhancing your body's natural structure."

Gabriel suppressed a shudder as a childhood memory came to him out of a deep recess. He was very young, maybe five or six, walking on a beach in Jamaica with his parents and older brother. He saw a uniquely shaped piece of driftwood at the edge of the tree line, and ran over to pick it up. It was heavier than he expected, so he pulled harder. He was surprised to find that it wasn't driftwood, but a rotting stump of a palm tree, and underneath was a huge colony of fire ants. Within seconds the ants had swarmed over his body, nipping and biting at his skin. He spent the rest of the day crying, wrapped in cold, wet towels as his brother played in the ocean.

What Knowles described to him sounded an awful lot like fire ants.

"Lieutenant, I assure you this procedure is completely safe." She must have noticed the look on his face, so he cleared his throat and handed the container back to her. "It's based on long established muscle regeneration therapies the medical community has employed for almost a century," she said as she accepted the container.

"To what end, ma'am?" he asked, glancing back at the capsule.

Knowles returned to the table and set the two containers down. She turned back to face him and leaned against the edge of the table, crossing her arms. "Augmentation. Making your body stronger than it can be on its own, faster, quicker to respond. These nano machines will replicate and spread, and use your body's natural proteins to create muscle fiber overlays that are six times stronger than your natural fibers, yet be even more flexible. They will create links to your neurological system, reducing signal time and degradation. They will interface with your neuretics systems in ways far deeper than what you have now. Your body will become an instrument for your mind to wield."

Gabriel took a step towards the capsule and ran his hand along the open edge. "So this is part of Captain Biermann's Special Warfare program."

"Yes."

He looked at the studs along the inside of the capsule. "This is done without surgery?"

"If you mean peeling back your skin with knives, there is none of that," Knowles replied. "The neuretics upgrade is done via wireless interface, and the nanites are introduced to your system by multiple auto-injectors. Those nodules you're looking at. The only surgical procedure is the medpack, but that's after this process is complete and integrated."

He turned back to face her. "Medpack?"

"A small device is implanted near the base of your spine above your gluteus maximus muscle, on the right side. This device contains refillable pharmaceutical microsyringes, controlled by your autonomic neuretic systems. Somnatin as a sedative, adreno when you need a burst of energy, and so on." She waved her hand. "We can get to that later. We can only implant that device when the augmentation is fully completed. So with all that being said, it's time for you to get in the tank."

"Hold on," he said. His head was swimming. Less than twelve hours ago, he was aboard the _Coral Sea_ , having just finished dinner in the mess with his squad, and was preparing for a scout mission into the Belt to root out a suspected pirate hole. Now he was here, about to be invaded by machines he couldn't even see, for a man he barely knew, to support a program he didn't fully understand.

"Lieutenant Gabriel," she said, taking a step towards him. "I talked to Captain Biermann at length about you. I've read your file. Twice. You've expressed a strong desire to join the Special Warfare unit. Your test marks are off the charts. Your leadership skills, whether you believe this or not after the Canary Islands incident, are top notch. Your life is the Navy, and I don't think I overemphasize that."

He looked back at Knowles and her unblinking gaze. She was right, on every account, and he knew it. Everything he'd done from the moment he enlisted, through Basic, through OCS, through the Canary Islands, and into his current mission aboard the _Coral Sea_ , led to this moment. Deep down, he knew she was right. He was having a hard time admitting that the Navy was truly all he had.

But there was something else he saw in her eyes. Something that said there was more to this procedure that she was letting on. Something that... pained her.

He shook off the thought and rubbed his eyes, pressing on them until he saw stars. Opening them, he saw Knowles still staring back at him. She had just put into words what he never could.

"Zero point," he said.

She nodded. "A new beginning."

He looked at the capsule. _A new beginning, as a HAMR_. Knowles was right. He should be proud to have been selected. Or recruited was more like it. Shanghaied. But even though his apprehension was still pinging at him, he knew this was his next step. His parents, his brother, his family: gone. His fellow OCS graduates, scattered among the stars. The Navy was really all he had. He'd already given his life to them. And now he'd give his body and mind. He knew it was the right choice.

"All right. I'm in. What's next?"

She turned, walked back to the table, and picked up a small piece of folded cloth. She walked back to Gabriel. "Put your gear bag under the table there, then strip and fold the clothes you're wearing, placing them on the end of the table."

She handed him the folded cloth. He took it by one corner. The folds fell apart to reveal an absurdly tiny pair of paper-thin men's briefs.

"You've got to be shitting me," he said.

"That's 'you've got to be shitting me, ma'am', Lieutenant," she said with a twinkle in her eye. "The tank will be filled with an oxy-sedation fluid which will immobilize your body and respiration systems while you are submerged. The fluid will keep your blood oxygenated and allow the nanites to move throughout your body without any white blood cells trying to kill them. This procedure requires a minimum of twenty hours to complete, so we can't have you awake or moving during the process. We also can't have you wearing any clothes that prevent the auto-injectors from penetrating your skin in the proper locations. Hence, paper underwear."

Gabriel grimaced, still staring at the briefs. "Why not just a birthday suit?"

Her eyes twinkled again. "That's completely up to you. However, there is some disorientation when coming out of the tank. I'd hate to have you wandering around Cielo, buck naked and dripping wet, wondering where the bathroom is."

_Bathroom_. "Wait. You said twenty hours? What about food, or... waste?"

"All handled by the oxy fluid. It will nourish your body, though not like a double cheeseburger, and remove waste as well."

His stomach growled at the mention of a burger. "So I'll be breathing in my own waste?"

Knowles cocked her head. "Hmmm, never thought of it that way. Good point. We'll have to look into that in the future. But in the meantime, Biermann says you haven't eaten in quite some time, which is good. So let's get started."

"Fantastic," he muttered. He slid his gear bag under the table with one foot and tossed the briefs on the table. Knowles turned her attention back to her nanoscope. He took one last glance at the capsule, then stripped down.
Chapter 4

The plastic was unnaturally cold against his skin as he stretched out in the capsule. It felt more metal than plastic. The glass lid perched above his head, still hinged open, blurring the designs on the ceiling panels, probably leftover from the original luxury suites. He wriggled to find a comfortable position.

"All set, Lieutenant?"

Knowles's face appeared above him, looking down into the capsule.

"The underwear itches," he replied. "Other than that, yeah, I suppose so."

She smiled. "Itchy underwear will be the least of your annoyances. I forgot to tell you. The oxy fluid is ice cold. And the scout nanites will be injected prior to sedation, so you may feel some... discomfort the first few minutes."

"Scout?"

"They pave the way for the rest of the machines. Scouting pathways, blood vessels, arteries, and the like. Just making it easier for the others. But some patients have complained of some initial pain. No worries, Lieutenant. You'll be under sedation in a matter of moments after the process begins."

"This gets better and better," he growled.

Knowles's face disappeared for a few seconds, then returned. "Tank is online. Relax, take a few deep breaths. Like I said, the fluid is ice cold and will startle your body when it enters your lungs. Go with it. In the womb, we all breathed like this. It's natural." She smiled. "Sort of."

Her face disappeared and reappeared again. "The process has started," she said as the glass lid began to slowly descend. "I'll see you on the other side, Lieutenant Gabriel." Just before she pulled her head back, he saw the same flicker of emotion on her face he had seen a few minutes ago. Sadness? Worry? Before he could say anything, her face was gone.

He closed his eyes as the lid connected with the capsule with a thunk. He heard air hissing, then from under him came the freezing cold fluid. His body tensed and he clenched his teeth, trying desperately to push the thought of drowning aside. The liquid poured in and cascaded over the tops of his legs, then stomach and chest. His skin puckered at the cold and he took short, sharp breaths. His fingers curled, nails pressing into his palms.

The liquid reached his mouth and he squeezed it shut, involuntarily holding his breath. He knew the process; it was the same as long-range high-acceleration ships used for inertial dampening for crewmembers in stasis. But to a human body, it was completely unnatural, regardless of what Knowles said about the womb.

He was now completely submerged and shivering uncontrollably. His lungs burned for air. He opened his eyes, and the freezing liquid stabbed at his eyeballs. It was as if looking through pale blue gelatin.

His lungs could take no more, and he gasped for breath. Spasms racked his body as the fluid poured down his throat and into his airway. He spasmed several more times, and the image of being pushed under by an ocean wave flashed across his mind. He willed his body to relax, and finally the fluid filled his lungs and his body settled. One last gasp and spasm, and Gabriel was breathing liquid.

Through the rushing waterfall sound of the liquid in his ears, he heard a mechanical whirring. He felt a pinprick on his right thigh, then a matching one on his left. Six more pinpricks: one in each arm, one each on either side of his rib cage, one in the bottom of each foot. _The scout injections_ , he thought. He imagined them like cartoon robots, running down red corridors to their jobs, leaving bread crumbs behind for others to follow. He started to smile, when he felt a burning sensation in both feet. The image of the fire ants came back to him as the same burning crept over his legs, then sides, then arms. Suddenly the burning was coursing throughout his body, and he began to panic. This wasn't the discomfort Knowles alluded to.

The burning intensified, like miniature plasma torches being placed against his skin in a thousand places. He struggled to move, but the paralytic chemicals in the fluid had taken effect. He was immobilized, the nanites started their work on him, and he was still awake.

He grunted as the burning continued. He couldn't even grit his teeth, and his eyes were still open, staring at blue-tinged ceiling panels. Then the sedation kicked in. His vision began to gray, but the burning increased to an unbearable level.

Gabriel screamed in silence.

"Evan, where are you?"

He heard his mother's voice and giggled. She'd never find him in here. He was tucked into the roots of a large mangrove tree at the edge of the river, where it emptied into the ocean. The water rushed by him, cascading over rocks and fallen trees, making a whooshing sound he could easily blend into and disappear.

The mangrove was his fort. He was safe inside it. No one could find him, and even if they did, they'd never be able to get to him. The roots were far too close together for an adult to squeeze through. Even his brother Zack was too big, and that was saying something for a nine-year old. Being six had its advantages.

The whooshing increased, and the water rushed by faster and louder than he had ever seen before. His mother had told him the day before to be careful at the edge of the river, as the rains had fallen hard up in the Blue Mountains. He didn't know what she meant by that, as the mountains were hours away by car, so what did that have to do with the river? But as he watched the river rushing by, now swollen and agitated, carrying more and more tree stumps and debris, he got scared.

"Mom!" But he knew his voice wouldn't carry over the rushing water. He couldn't hear her anymore either. He started to push out from the mangrove when suddenly a huge tree floated past and crashed into the roots in front of him. He barely got his fingers off the roots before it hit. The impact of the tree crushed the roots, pressing them in towards him. He yelled louder when he realized his only way out of the mangrove was now blocked by the tree and crushed roots.

"Mom!" His heart thudded in his chest, and he frantically tried to spot an opening he could fit through. _There!_ A space between two roots led out, but directly into the angry river, not towards the calm ocean. He had no choice.

He pushed towards the opening, forcing his body between the roots. Halfway through, his hips got caught. He pushed at the roots behind him with one hand while pulling himself forward using hanging branches in front of him. All around him the water rose.

"Mom!" he screamed again as the water reached his neck. He sputtered as a wave crashed over his face. He pushed and pulled, but his body was stuck. And the river grew more angry.

The water closed over his head. It was unusually cold.
Chapter 5

Gabriel's fist lashed out at the mangrove and struck something hard and unyielding. He coughed, and thick viscous fluid bubbled up through his throat. The warm water receded around him with soft gurgles. Both ears popped, and he opened his eyes.

The river and the mangrove were gone, leaving behind nothing but dripping glass in front of his face. He reached up with the same hand he had punched with and touched the glass. With a hiss, the seal popped and the lid of the capsule slowly rose.

He sat up, coughing up more thick liquid. Aches penetrated his muscles, and he slowly grabbed the edges of the capsule. The pale blue liquid was gone, replaced by clear water that drained beneath him. His head swam with dizziness. _Must be the spin cycle after the rinse_ , he thought.

He looked around the room, once again tinged in red lighting as it was when he arrived. _How long ago?_ He sent a command to his neuretics to check the time, but received no response. He pulled up his neuretics' Mindseye visual overlay and was greeted by a static-filled image with two white words: SYSTEM REBOOT.

Software upgrade, he remembered. He dismissed the Mindseye feed and rotated his body to swing his legs over the side of the capsule. Pain shot through his system as muscles pressed against bone and tendon. It felt to him like a terrible case of the flu. _Or getting my ass kicked_ , he thought. The nanites must have done a thorough job in moving throughout his body, as the aches came from every possible source, right down to his toes. He looked down at his pruned, dripping feet and flexed his toes, being rewarded with ten distinct cracks.

He looked around the lab; even the slight motion of turning his head sent pain shooting from his shoulder blades through the base of his skull, and the dizziness came again. _Disorientation indeed._

The lab was empty. No sign of Knowles. His folded clothes were where he'd left them on the table, along with a bottle of water. With a heave, he lifted himself out of the capsule. His wet feet slapped on the hard floor, and he grabbed onto the edge of the capsule to support himself. With a deep breath, he flexed his shoulders backwards and twisted side to side. The cracks and pops sounded like firecrackers. His body felt swollen, like he had had too much to eat and drink. He let go of the capsule and looked at his forearms. Whether a trick of the lighting or his dizziness, he swore they looked bigger, and were crisscrossed with bulging veins. He clenched one fist and felt the muscles pull down the length of his arm. _Yes, definitely different._

The room was quiet save for the last few burbles of the water draining in the capsule. The wall screens were off as before, and Knowles's nanoscope was powered down. All of the specimen containers were gone. The room was, for all intents and purposes, empty. Not exactly how he pictured his emergence from the procedure. _Zero point, sure._

He looked down and saw the briefs were still dripping water down his legs, and felt a sudden chill as the cool lab air hit his skin. He took tentative steps to the table, and an image of a stumbling newborn giraffe flashed across his mind. In spite of his aching body, he smiled.

"Hey doc," he called as he grabbed his shirt. His congested voice sounded like he was just getting over a chest cold. "I'm out."

As he pulled the shirt over his head, his neuretics signaled a successful reboot and came back online. He queried them for elapsed time, and page after page of data returned, too fast for him to keep up. He sent a stop command, realizing he had a whole new system to learn. He remembered his upgrade from Level Three to Four mil rets and the days it took going through all the new capabilities. He knew he'd be in for a steep learning curve.

The data showed twenty-one hours, thirteen minutes since he entered the capsule. He pulled off the wet briefs and got dressed, then socks. His boots were under the table. He started to reach for them when he saw something out of place in the corner of his vision. He stood back up and looked over the table, but didn't know exactly what he was looking for. He turned his head slightly, hoping his peripheral vision would pick it out again. _There._

He picked up the water bottle. Behind it was a round red mark, in stark contrast to the spotless white lab table. He peered closer. _Blood?_

The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, and his neuretics threat assessment algorithms kicked in automatically. Passive scans searched the room without orders from him, all returning negative. The room was empty.

He set the water bottle back down, a few inches further from the blood drop than it was before, and again something caught his peripheral vision. On the floor, to his right, another drop. A few feet past that, another. And another. Leading to a large storage locker mounted to the bulkhead next to a computer workstation.

He glanced back under the table. His gear bag, with all of his extra clothing, personal belongings, and perhaps most importantly his weapons, was missing.

Now the hair on his arms stood up. Something was definitely wrong. His passive scans showed nothing amiss, but the blood and missing gear told him differently.

He walked slowly over to the locker in sock feet, trying to get used to the disorientation and different musculature. His head moved as if on a swivel, and he felt all of his old combat techniques come back to him. He reached the locker and sent a low-level active scan into it, but the heavy steel construction blocked most of it. A small corner of his mind noted the vastly increased power and detail of the Level Seven active-scanning package, even on the exterior of the locker, but his attention was focused in front of him.

The locker was approximately nine feet tall, six feet wide, and two feet deep, with two wide doors on the front, each with a small handle. It had a slot for a scan pad, but the slot was empty. By design or otherwise, he wasn't sure. Either way, the door wasn't locked, and the blood trail stopped right in front of it.

With one last passive scan of his surroundings, he reached out and turned a handle, stepping quickly off to one side.

The door slowly swung open with a metallic squeak, and he sent the same low-level active scan inside. Empty. Shelves, bottles, cases, nothing more.

He peered around the edge of the door. At the bottom of the locker, under the lowest shelf, was a crumpled pile of light blue fabric. The same shade of blue Knowles was wearing when he met her the day before. And it was stained with blood.

His neuretics howled a protest in his mind as they detected a threat just outside the main door.
Chapter 6

Gabriel padded softly over to the only door to the lab, scanning left and right for anything resembling a weapon. Nothing. The lab was bare. He flattened himself against the wall next to the door and reached out with a passive scan.

Two bodies were in the corridor outside the lab, and both were armed. Judging by the power signature and the heavy EM leakage, the weapons were cheaply made Chinese knockoffs of M-74 pulse rifles. Neither was stealth shielded, and neither broadcasted any type of signal via neuretics or other means. They were quiet, but not invisible. And with the types of rifles they carried, Gabriel ruled out the possibility of friendlies.

His neuretics linked into Cielo's security system. It was secure, but his new Level Seven had no issues burning through the NAF firewall. The security system showed no breach or alert; the station was operating as normal. _Then who the hell were these guys?_

His Mindseye showed the ghostly passive scan image of a body stepping close to the door and reaching out, while the other stayed a step behind, rifle at the ready. Gabriel didn't dare go active to pin down their armament or equipment; if they had the most rudimentary of neuretics, he'd announce his presence like a lighthouse beacon on a dark night.

The door slid open, and Gabriel watched as the blocky barrel of an M-74 copy poked into the room followed by a man in black combat gear and half helmet. The rifle barrel pointed to the man's left, away from Gabriel. _Perfect_.

The gunman stepped into the room just feet away from Gabriel, and allowed the second man to enter. The second rifle only made it inches into the room when Gabriel reached out and grabbed it from under the barrel.

The pulse rifle was followed by the startled face of a man looking down at the weapon being pulled away from him. Before the man had a chance to react, Gabriel slammed the barrel upwards into the man's face, then yanked down on it again, hard.

Blood spurted from the man's shattered nose and upper lip as he stumbled into the room. Gabriel threw the rifle to one side, and smashed the heel of his other hand into the man's chin. The intruder's eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped to the floor.

In the split second the engagement had taken, the first man in the room still hadn't fully turned to face the fight. Gabriel took full advantage of the man's hesitancy and lunged forward. He detected a neuretics transmission coming from the gunman, and his own neuretic combat algorithms reached out to jam it. A distant part of his mind again was impressed with his new software upgrade.

The rifle swung in his direction, and he blocked it with his right forearm. When the barrel cracked and bent around his arm, the gunman's eyes went wide. Gabriel's left hand chopped at the man's throat just above the collar of his combat armor. The shattered rifle clattered to the floor as the man grabbed his neck and fell to his knees.

Gabriel kicked the wrecked gun away and it skittered across the hard floor. He bent over and stared into the man's wide eyes. His neuretics were still blocking the weak transmission the man continued to try to send.

"Who are you?" Gabriel asked in a low tone. "Where's the doctor?"

The man gasped for air, alternately sucking in air and trying to wheeze out words.

"Don't...know...who...you're...talking...about..."

Gabriel grabbed the man's collar and pressed his knuckles into his throat. The man's eyes bulged.

"Who sent you? What is your target?" Gabriel growled.

The man grabbed at Gabriel's wrist, trying to pull his hand away from his throat.

"Gabriel...target..." he gasped.

"Who..." Gabriel's neuretics picked up an inbound transmission, sent to the gunman. He saw a bloom of red static appear in his Mindseye, and the man's eyes rolled back in his head. His head lolled to one side and Gabriel released his collar. He was still detecting life signs; the man was unconscious. He ran a check on the transmission.

Data wipe.

The gunman's neuretics had been remotely erased. How deeply, Gabriel had no idea, but he'd seen the same during the Canary Islands battle. Several of the prisoners of war they had taken unexpectedly passed out, then woke with no memory at all of the operation.

The wipe was troublesome, as now he'd have to figure out on his own who was behind the attack, but the wipe also gave him a key piece of information. His neuretics traced the transmission to a location within Cielo itself. He now had a target.

He turned away from the gunman's limp body and stepped over to the second attacker, who was face down on the floor. Blood pooled around his head from a smashed nose and lip, but like the first one, he was out cold — only this one was by Gabriel's hand. He sent a tracer worm transmission into the man's neuretics and found the same thing: he'd been wiped remotely.

He rubbed his right arm where the other rifle had smashed into it. His skin had been cut by the plastic and metal barrel and dripped blood, but he felt little pain. The enhanced muscles underneath his skin absorbed the blow and prevented bone damage, and apparently whatever Knowles had injected into him prevented the bulk of the pain from reaching his nervous system. _Interesting_. He crouched and wiped his hand off on the fallen gunman's sleeve. The pulse rifle Gabriel used against him lay against the bulkhead wall near the doorway. He reached over and picked it up, palming the trigger pad to arm it. _Shit_. Neuretics code locked. He was an unarmed target on an unfamiliar space station, still recovering from a full day under sedation.

A neuretics threat alert buzzed in his head. Another warm body was on its way down the corridor. He stood and squeezed the disabled pulse rifle in frustration, and an icon popped up in Mindseye.

_OVERRIDE_ _COMPLETE_

The pulse rifle clicked and he felt a tingle in his hand, signaling the weapon was armed and ready to fire. A feral grin creased his face. _Thanks doc, wherever you are._

He glanced down at his sock feet, then looked across the room toward his boots. _No time,_ he thought. _And maybe quieter without them._ He pressed the stock of the rifle into his shoulder, raised the barrel, and stepped to the doorway.
Chapter 7

Cielo's corridors were relatively narrow, and their smooth walls afforded no cover whatsoever, as Gabriel remembered from his arrival the day before. The only exceptions were the elevator bays. Around Cielo's 4,750-foot circumference were eight elevators that led "up" into the central docking hub, and each of those took up half of the corridor's twelve foot width. The vertical steel tubes offered a natural defilade every 600 feet or so along the sloping hall, and Gabriel knew the opposing force would use them for cover.

His neuretics pulled a schematic of the station from Cielo's security system and projected it into his Mindesye, then plotted the position of the most recent threat. He pushed the image off to one side, not wanting a full HUD at this point, and sent out a more powerful passive scan.

The flashing icon was behind the closest elevator bay, as Gabriel himself would have been, and in the direction of the transmission origin. He quickly popped his head through the doorway. Without the steel walls and bulkheads in his line of sight, his neuretics were able to "see" into the corridor. His passive scan pinned down the likely transmission source as a small room about halfway around the torus, on the same side of the hallway as the lab. He had nearly 2,000 feet to go, past three elevator bays, and at least one hostile in his way, most likely more.

He pulled his head back into the lab, lowering the pulse rifle, and glanced down at the unconscious gunman slumped against the bulkhead. His modern plate-on-fabric combat armor appeared to be NAF-issued, but the weapon most certainly was not. The boots didn't match the armor, the armor bore no insignia, rank, or name, and his unkempt hair stuck out from under the ill-fitting half helmet. The helmet was a combat-rated generic model used by dozens of third-world armies with rudimentary electronics and communications, no HUD visor or face shield, and no direct neuretics link. He was a walking contradiction, or in his case, a sleeping one. _Who the hell are these guys?_

He rechecked his data. It was 163 feet to the first elevator bay, and his first obstacle. He debated sending an active scan to fully plot his route, but again dismissed it as being too risky. _Wait. The security system._ He pulled up the station's security program and went through the system packages visually in Mindseye, like flipping the pages of a book. He stopped at a folder marked AV and requested access. The sentry algorithm only gave token resistance before his neuretics breezed through.

He found the video monitoring systems for the corridor and began searching. Within seconds, an image seen from above of a man in combat armor crouching behind the gray steel elevator bay popped up. Gabriel flipped through more vids and found two more hostiles, both taking cover behind the elevator bay closest to the transmission origin. No other vids picked up anyone in the corridor; it was completely empty. Again he wondered about the identity of the attackers, as the security system showed no elevated threat levels anywhere on the station. Yet there they were, and the station seemed devoid of any other personnel. According to Cielo's standard operating manifest, dozens of researchers should be on duty at any given hour, not to mention the regular comings and goings of Navy personnel. Something was seriously wrong with the entire situation, but Gabriel put that thought off for now. He had a more immediate threat — three armed hostiles in his way.

He was about to step into the corridor when a thought hit him. With three hostiles along the shortest route to his target, the longer route may be undefended, and it was a circle after all. He enlarged the station schematic, then frowned as he scanned the data.

According to the station plans, Cielo had four heavy carbotanium blast doors along its circumference that sealed off a quarter of the corridor in case of atmospheric breach or accidental release of materials from one of the research labs. The security schematic showed the one to Gabriel's left, or in the direction of the long route around the station, was closed. He sent a signal to the system to check the door's status, and it showed hard-locked, meaning manually dogged, apparently from the other side, according to the readout.

They were leading him.

The station was empty, only one route was available to him, and it led through armed gunmen. It was most certainly a trap, but why? Gabriel looked back at the locker on the far side of the lab, where the bloody shirt lay. If someone wanted him dead, the easiest way would have been to do it while he was under sedation, fast asleep in a pool of goo in a sealed container. Something else was going on here.

A memory nagged at him: the assault on the pirate hideout on the asteroid a few weeks back. He and his team had rooted out and captured or killed a dozen pirates by going door-to-door through the makeshift surface station the pirates had built using leftover or stolen prefab units tied down to the dusty asteroid with steel cables. And now here Gabriel was, about to embark on an eerily similar door-to-door mission with a singular target, only this time, he was alone.

His thoughts were interrupted by his threat assessment pinging him. The security system video feed image, still projected into a small corner of his Mindseye like a holovid picture-in-picture, showed the nearest gunman edging around the elevator bay, and the other two starting to move as well.

He took one last look at his boots under the table and sighed. Bringing the rifle back up to his shoulder, he turned and stepped into the corridor.

The limpet mine was unexpected.
Chapter 8

After the fact, Gabriel would come to realize that what saved him from the explosion was not his upgraded neuretics, or his augmented body, but his natural reactions — and his memory of the asteroid mission. His memories, as he thought later on, while painful, had saved his life.

As he stepped into the corridor, a flicker of memory from that mission flickered. He and his team, in microgravity, made their way between two of the prefab units. Gilly was point man, and Gabriel was a few dozen yards behind, with the gap growing. Gilly's quick pace stirred up dust into a cloud that hung in the airless environment. They were maintaining comm silence, so Gabriel had no way to tell Gilly to slow his movement. He wanted to push forward, grab the young seaman by his shoulder, but his own heavy boots and reverse retro thrusters, designed to keep the team grounded in less than .02G, slowed him.

He was about to send a point-to-point neuretics burst when he saw a lump on the side of the prefab Gilly was passing. It was most certainly out of place; the color was whiter and the area was cleaner than the rest of the dirty, graying prefab unit. And Gilly didn't see it.

Silence secondary at this point, Gabriel toggled the comm and shouted, but it was too late. The IED attached to the prefab detonated, probably a proximity sensor Gabriel later reported. Shrapnel tore into Gilly, throwing his body heavily into the prefab on the opposite side of the crude path the team walked. Gilly bounced off the plastic wall and skipped along the surface of the asteroid.

Gabriel yelled into the comm. "Active sensors, spread out! Rush all units, go!"

He switched off his retros and shoved off the surface. He angled his body forward and engaged the thrusters again, this time reversing them. They pushed him forward a few feet above the surface towards Gilly. He knew before he arrived the nineteen year old was gone. When he grabbed his drifting body, he saw Gilly's face through his helmet visor locked in anguish. His skin was puckered with blisters from the decompression, and the blood that leaked from his mouth, nose, and eyes had frozen into dark stains.

The limpet mine on the wall of the corridor was thin, barely an inch in depth, and was all but unnoticeable. However, the color was a slightly darker shade of industrial gray than the corridor, and the overhead light strip cast the barest of shadows underneath its raised bump. But the corner of his eye caught it, just a split second before it detonated.

He turned his upper body away from the mine, taking his right hand off the pulse rifle and shielding his face with his forearm while he twisted towards the opposite wall and dropped to one knee. The mine was head-height, and he was counting on it being directional, like what had killed Gilly. If it was a wide-dispersal Claymore type, he didn't have a chance.

The explosion was deafening in the narrow corridor. His ears instantly popped, and he felt multiple impacts on his right arm and right side of his face. He completed his twist and drop and felt heat wash over his upper back. He dropped to all fours, the rifle clattering to the floor, and coughed with the impact of the pressure wave.

His neuretics alarms pinged incessantly. His ears rang like a thousand church bells, and he shook his head to clear the noise. He opened his eyes and saw the rifle through the smoke that filled the corridor. The acrid tang of spent explosives mixed with the pungent odor of burned plastic assaulted his nose, and he coughed again to clear his airway. He grabbed the rifle and sent the arming command again, receiving an operational status.

His neuretics gave one more alarm: the closest gunman had entered his line of sight down the sloping tunnel. His vision was blurred from the shock and the corridor obscured with gray-black smoke, but his neuretics painted a perfect tactical picture in his Mindseye.

Energy pulses sizzled past Gabriel. The gunman fired blindly into the smoke, hoping his target was low and still near the lab door. Gabriel's quick move away from the mine to the opposite wall saved him again.

He ordered the tactical scan projected into his internal heads-up, and a red icon appeared, just over a hundred feet away and moving rapidly towards him. He turned and rose on one knee, brought his own rifle up, and linked the sights with his neuretics. Though it was a cheap Chinese knockoff of the M-74, it still possessed the same electronic targeting systems.

Blue crosshairs centered on the approaching icon, and Gabriel pressed the trigger pad. Three coherent light bursts spat from the end of the blocky barrel, disappearing into the smoke, leaving twisting vortexes in their wakes. The incoming fire ceased immediately, and the red icon stopped moving.

He stood up and grabbed for the wall as dizziness washed over him. The smoke began to clear as Cielo's environmental systems attempted to process the air. The sharp burnt odor was still present, and reminded him of the scorched mud he trekked across during the Canary Islands campaign. Smells were the most powerful triggers of memories, he had been told once. He'd just as soon get rid of the memories as well as the smells.

His right arm began to throb, and he felt something sticky on the right side of his face. He wiped the blood off his cheek and rubbed his hand on his pant leg to clean it off. He felt the sting of several small cuts, but no major damage, and his vision was no longer impaired. Glancing at his bloody arm, he wasn't as confident, but for now it still worked, and he had two more targets that knew where he was now.

The ringing in his ears subsided to the point where he could hear the air recyclers whirring above him. The smoke had all but cleared, and he could now visually see the fallen gunman down the corridor. He was sprawled face-first on the floor, another M-74 copy lying a few feet in front of the body.

With a quick check of his pulse rifle's charge, he took off at a run towards the gunman's body when the lights went out in the corridor, plunging it into darkness.
Chapter 9

Gabriel froze in mid-sprint and waited, listening. No sound but the overhead air recyclers. He tapped into Cielo's security system for the video feed, but was greeted with static feedback. The system was offline along with the lighting. He was blind in more ways than one. But so were the remaining two hostiles. And he still had his heads-up fed by his own scans.

He pressed his back against the wall and reached out with a passive scan. He detected the signs of the two hostiles. They had stopped moving when the lights went out; they appeared to have been caught off-guard as he was, or perhaps it was another part of a larger orchestrated plan. _Orchestrated_. He rolled that word around in his head for a few moments. The dogged hatch, the limpet mine, the gauntlet of gunman, the security feed outage. Even the blood drops in the lab. All were pointing to a set strategy. But by whom or why, he had no idea. He only knew he had a missing doctor and captain. And a target.

His heads-up showed the location of the room where the remote wipe transmission originated. No activity or electronic leakage from the room, and no sign of life inside, though he dismissed that as inconclusive. The thick steel walls of Cielo prevented much of a passive scan from seeing through, and the target room was no exception.

The other two hostiles hid behind the next elevator bay, so they were still over a hundred yards away. He cautiously moved up the corridor, hugging the wall, and approached where the downed gunman lay. Suddenly Cielo's backup lighting kicked in, and strips along the walls inches above the floor lit with a light blue glow.

The gunman was a woman, he saw as he kneeled down beside the body. Her lifeless face was turned towards him, eyes open. The blue lighting made her skin appear ghostly white and her eyes black. Her close-cropped hair showing from under the half helmet was unisex, almost military style, unlike the two men in the lab, but there was no doubt it was a woman.

Gabriel rocked back on his heels and set the pulse rifle across his knees. _A woman._ He knew she was a combatant, someone tasked with killing him, and had even fired first, but something deep down inside of him hurt. He had killed before; had actually become quite good at it in the past few years, even received a commendation as an enlisted man after an operation in South Africa after singlehandedly taking down a particle cannon nest manned with four gunners.

But none of them were women.

No one he had ever faced and defeated in combat was a woman.

It made a difference.

The body had three burn holes in the back of the armor. His shots were straight and true and had dropped her immediately. Quick and painless. A twinge of discomfort from his right arm coursed through his system. _Maybe not completely painless_.

He took one last look at the woman's unseeing eyes, and thought back to the bloody pullover in the lab. He clenched his teeth, remembering there was still a woman he needed to find.

He noticed the woman had a waist pouch strapped to her body armor. He leaned over and unsnapped the pouch. Inside were two frag grenades and two gas canisters. He grabbed the frags and shoved them into his left thigh pocket. He shifted the pulse rifle from his right arm to his left and picked up one of the gas grenades. The black stencil on its silver surface read, "CS-30." His neuretics immediately ran the code through a database and displayed "2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile 30-s" across his Mindseye image. He frowned and reprocessed the data, asking for plain English. _Tear Gas - Temporary Effect_ , came the response. _Well, these might come in handy_. He put both into his right thigh pocket.

He pushed up from his kneeling position and checked the position of the other two hostiles. They were taking advantage of the cover provided by the far elevator bay and stayed motionless. He glanced in that direction. The elevator bay where the dead woman had been hiding was just twenty feet away. He had a choice: take cover behind this bay and wait for the hostiles to come to him, or take the fight to them. He squeezed the pulse rifle's trigger guard and knew what his strategy would be.

Still shoeless, Gabriel took off at a dead run.

The icons hadn't moved. Both were still behind the defilade created by the wide elevator bay. At this distance, still over two hundred feet, Gabriel wasn't able to determine their armament, but based on the last three, he had to assume pulse rifles and possibly grenades.

_Grenades._ As he ran, holding the rifle with his undamaged left arm, he patted his right thigh pocket and felt the two tear gas grenades. He remembered the other three hostiles had half helmets only, no gas protection. If the other two were the same, he could use their own weapons against them.

He slowed to a jog, 140 feet from the bay. The icons were still unmoving, but he had no doubt they heard the explosion and the rifle fire. They were waiting for him. He pulled one gas grenade from his pocket and his mouth twitched in a small smile. _They may be waiting for someone, but they probably aren't expecting me_ , he thought as he flicked the arming switch.

He stepped his pace back up to a sprint and threw the grenade overhand. It bounced once a few feet from the elevator bay, then detonated with a flash and pop. Smoke spewed from the top of the canister as it rolled past the elevator bay and came to a stop just feet from where Gabriel's heads-up showed the hostiles taking cover.

It wasn't long before two gasping, choking forms came out from behind the bay. Gabriel was on them in seconds. The closest one to him brought his rifle up with one hand while the other hand pawed at his face. Gabriel knocked the rifle aside with his own and smashed the stock into the man's face. The man staggered backwards into his partner, who at least had the good sense to throw the man aside and bring a magnetic pistol to bear.

Gabriel's momentum from his run carried him into the second man and the two crashed together. Gabriel heard the pistol click twice before the two of them fell to the floor, and his neuretics blared an impact alarm in his head.

As they landed in a heap, Gabriel slammed his pulse rifle into the forearm of the other man's gun hand. The gunman cried out in pain as bones shattered, and the pistol fell from his grip. Gabriel pulled his other hand back, curled it into a fist, and swung. The impact of his fist with the new power of enhanced muscles snapped the man's jaw, and his eyes rolled up into his head. He fell to the floor, gurgling coming from his throat. He lay still as blood pooled under his mouth.

Gabriel looked over at the other man, who was lying on his side, unconscious and bleeding from his shattered nose. He stood up from the second man and rubbed his eyes. The tear gas was as advertised, a temporary effect. It smoked out the two men, but dissipated in a matter of seconds. _Either that or my systems have been upgraded more so than I was told._

He looked down at the two men. One was out cold with a badly broken nose. The other had several broken bones, including one that, if treated soon, would have him eating through a straw for a long time. If not treated... He clenched his fist and felt the power of the augmented muscle fibers.

HAMR indeed.

His neuretics pinged again and projected a medical diagnostic. He looked at the image in Mindseye and saw that in addition to the wounds from the explosions, apparently he had taken one of the two pistol rounds the second man had fired. Just below his rib cage, on his left side, a through-and-through. Now he was bleeding from at least half a dozen wounds, and while none were life threatening, he'd need medical attention soon. Or at least some bandages. He thought back to Knowles's description of the medpack and wished he had completed the procedure before all of this shit went down.

_Knowles_. He pulled the station schematic up. The target room was just on the other side of the next elevator bay, so he was less than 500 feet from his destination. He reached down to pick up his pulse rifle and noticed the barrel was cracked where he had slammed it into the hostile's arm. He frowned and kicked it aside. The broken jawed man armed with only the mag pistol. Gabriel grabbed it and tucked it into his waistband, then picked up the first man's pulse rifle. As with the first one, his neuretics tapped into the code lock and armed it. He felt the tingle of connection in his hand and turned towards his target.
Chapter 10

The security feed was still offline, but Gabriel's passive scans showed no additional threats between him and the target room. The room where he hoped to find answers. Where were Knowles and Biermann? Who were these gunmen? And why the hell were they trying to kill him?

He ran at a medium pace, feeling the strength in his legs with each step. The nano machines had done their job. He felt different from head to toe; his muscles felt almost refreshed, like just waking up from a nap and taking a long, slow stretch. In fact, he thought as he ran, he was waking up from a nap. A very long one.

This was a zero point for him. He was different. Stronger, faster, more capable. He only hoped he'd live through whatever this was to be able to use all his newfound abilities.

He slowed as he approached the last elevator bay. He could see the door just past the bay. It was closed and had a simple palm lock. It was very nondescript, like most others he saw on Cielo, but behind this one was his target.

He took one last passive scan of his immediate surroundings and walked slowly around to the other side of the elevator bay. Suddenly a flashing icon popped up in his Mindseye. His neuretics threat assessment algorithm had detected movement, but his scans were clear. He froze and brought the rifle up. Again the icon flashed, but had no vector or location.

Gabriel spun around, rifle up and armed, but the corridor was clear behind him. He looked up at the ceiling, but saw nothing. The dim light wasn't preventing him from seeing; his scans enhanced his vision far better than even radar would be, but he still saw nothing. He queried his neuretics to pin down the source of the movement, but his systems couldn't. Something was moving, close, but it was invisible.

_Make them react._ A voice from his past echoed in his head. His instructor back at RTC Great Lakes, showing recruits how to flush out an unseen enemy. _Don't be predictable, be unconventional. Draw them out by forcing their hand._

Gabriel pressed his back to the wall of the corridor and slowly reached down and pulled the two frag grenades from his thigh pocket. They were close-quarters models, smaller than ones used for room clearing, and both easily fit into one hand. He used his thumb to flick both arming switches. He threw one down the corridor he had just come from, and one a few feet past the door he was approaching. Both rolled to a stop around twenty-five feet from him in opposite directions. He was now in the middle of the explosion zone of two grenades, and he hoped he remembered the correct blast radius of these particular models.

Gabriel dropped to his knees and covered the sides of his head with his forearms. He heard a muffled curse just before the grenades went off.

The blasts were within a split second of each other, sounding like two firecrackers going off. Gabriel heard the corridor walls get peppered with shrapnel as the grenades dispersed their anti-personnel contents. He had calculated the distance properly; only a few pieces of metal struck him, and none with enough force to cause any damage. The same couldn't be said for his unknown and unseen companion.

Gabriel's neuretics lit up with a bright red icon, just a few feet before the target door. Stealth suit, he saw. The hostile stumbled away from the explosion, his electronics and heat blocking suit shredded from the impact of the frag grenade shrapnel. In the dim light, with the stealth suit's capabilities, the man was invisible to anything short of a full power active scan, and almost had the drop on him. _Almost_ , Gabriel thought as he stood up from his crouch and started towards the man.

The hostile recovered quickly. The suit offered some protection from projectile impact, so his disorientation was only momentary. He pulled a wicked looking curved blade from a hidden pocket and lunged towards Gabriel.

The distance was too close for Gabriel to use the rifle as anything more than a club, and the mag pistol was tucked away behind his back. He flipped the rifle backwards as he moved, grabbing the barrel, and parried the blade arm of the hostile.

The man grunted as the rifle stock struck his arm, but he held the blade securely, and Gabriel lost his grip on the smooth rifle barrel. It fell to the floor behind his attacker. Now that Gabriel was up close and personal, he got a better look at the man. He was tall and broad, about his own size, and the head covering of the stealth suit was torn in several places, showing part of his face. The man wore a cruel leer as he swung the blade in a wide arc towards Gabriel's head.

Gabriel stepped back as the blade whooshed through the air in front of him. As it passed, he lashed out with his free hand and struck the back of the man's elbow, and was rewarded with a sickening crack as the bone snapped.

The man howled in pain, and quickly shifted the long blade to his good hand. Gabriel began to reach behind him for the mag pistol, but the man stepped forward and flailed with his broken arm, apparently oblivious to the pain. His hand caught Gabriel's wounded arm just as he pulled the pistol from his waistband, and a shock of pain staggered Gabriel. The pistol, like the rifle, fell to the floor. He stepped back, as did the hostile, and each man warily eyed the other.

Gabriel was now unarmed, wounded, and apparently evenly matched size-wise with his attacker. Evenly matched except for the blade, which reflected the dull blue light as the man waved it in front of him. The two were just outside of arm's reach, and both of them dripped blood from multiple injuries. Gabriel knew he'd have to end this conflict quickly, as whoever was behind the door was well aware of his presence at this point and could be preparing for an assault.

Realizing this, he ran a full active scan on the room, all the while staring into his attacker's eyes as they slowly circled each other. Gabriel was now on the door side of the corridor as they changed positions. The scan showed two people in the small room, no sign of weapons, no electronics save for a reading from a basic comm terminal. Whoever was in there wasn't likely a threat. Whoever was running this show was counting on the five — no, six, he thought as he eyed the blade again — mercenaries to take him out before he ever opened the door.

Suddenly the other man stepped forward, inside the arm's reach area, blade outstretched. Gabriel calmly deflected the slow move to the side, but was caught off guard by the man's foot crashing into his lower leg. He grimaced in pain as his knee collapsed inwards, feeling his tendons stretch. He dropped down onto that knee.

His attacker took another quick step in and swung the blade down. Gabriel raised his left arm to block the incoming blow, and then saw his own opening. As the blade arced downwards, Gabriel lashed out with his right fist deep into the man's stomach. The blade fell from his grasp and bounced harmlessly off Gabriel's left shoulder, and the man doubled over. Gabriel fired his open left hand upwards into the man's chin and heard teeth shatter as his lower jaw smashed into his upper.

With a grunt, the man toppled over onto his side, blood leaking from a corner of his mouth. His eyes squeezed shut and he moaned in agony. Gabriel, still on one knee, grabbed the fallen knife and held it to the man's throat, leaning in.

"Who sent you?" he asked in a low tone. He had the distinct feeling of deja vu from his questioning in the lab not ten minutes ago. It felt like days.

The man only moaned in reply. Gabriel repeated the question, and finally the man opened his eyes. To Gabriel's surprise, he smiled, his mouth a mass of bloody gums and gaps where teeth had broken off.

"The devil," he ground out. A wet chuckle came from his throat. "I'm from hell."

Gabriel pressed the knife further, drawing blood. Before he had a chance to speak again, the man's arm shot out and grabbed Gabriel's fallen pistol. His broken arm came up from the other side and grabbed Gabriel's knife hand and pulled.

Gabriel cursed his lack of focus and caution as he lost his balance on top of the man. He rolled off away from the pistol that was swinging his way, pressing the man's broken elbow into the floor in the process. He felt a lump under his upper back as he rolled, and knew immediately what it was. He continued the roll and as he came off the lump, his right arm grabbed his fallen pulse rifle. Before the man had gotten the pistol fully aimed, Gabriel squeezed off a three-round burst. The attacker's arm slumped to the floor as wisps of smoke rose from the side of his body.

Gabriel clenched his teeth against the pain from his twisted knee and pushed himself to his feet, using the pulse rifle as a crutch. He ignored the pistol; with one injured arm, he only wanted the burden of one weapon. And the scans he was still running showed no weapons from behind the door. Or so he hoped.

He limped over to the door and checked the pulse rifle to ensure it was charged and armed. The door's entry pad must have been on backup power as it was illuminated and appeared unlocked. He took a deep breath, and palmed the pad.

The door slid aside. He rolled into the room, popping up on his good knee, and sighted down the pulse rifle's barrel at the location of the two icons. His eyes widened in shock and his jaw dropped at seeing who stared back at him.

"Welcome, Lieutenant Gabriel. What took you so long?"
Chapter 11

Gabriel lowered the rifle slowly and looked left and right. The room was small, less than half the length of the lab he just left, with only a utilitarian steel desk taking up any floor space. His neuretics completed their automatic sweep and confirmed the room was empty. No wall units, no screens, no other furniture. Empty.

Except for the two familiar faces that stared at him from behind the desk.

"You can safe the weapon, Lieutenant," said Biermann from his seated position. Knowles stood just off his left shoulder, her face a mask of anguish. Her eyes were focused squarely on Gabriel's bloody face and right arm. When she noticed Gabriel looking at her, she lowered her gaze. He noticed she was wearing a clean, unstained, light-blue pullover.

His mind raced. He'd been 'awake' for less than fifteen minutes, and behind him in the hall lay four bodies, added to the two in the lab. Two were dead, and one more would probably be dead within the hour without medical assistance. All at his hands. And all... for what?

"Captain," he said, still struggling to wrap his brain around the situation, "what's going on? Who..." His voice trailed off as he heard a sound behind him. He snapped the pulse rifle back up to his shoulder as he spun to face the new threat, chastising himself for taking his attention away from his passive scans.

Two men in civilian clothes walked through the door, hands raised above their heads. The first man in stopped, glanced at Biermann, and then continued into the room. The second man slowly followed, staring at the barrel of the rifle Gabriel held.

"Lieutenant, safe that weapon now. That's an order," came Biermann's voice from behind him.

"But sir," he began, only to be interrupted.

"Please, Evan," said Knowles, her voice low. "We don't want anyone else hurt."

He lowered the rifle, letting the barrel drop to face the floor. He held it with his right hand and reached across with his left hand to squeeze the throbbing wound on his upper arm. The pain from the mine's shrapnel was only now starting to penetrate the mask of his adrenaline rush. The mag pistol wound in his side hadn't yet gotten that far, but he knew very soon the pain would find its way to his nervous system.

Hurt, Knowles said. So they knew. The remote wipes came from this room, and Gabriel guessed they must have been monitoring his movements the entire time. Probably using the same security system he had. He thought back to his initial plan to round the torus in the opposite direction, only to find the blast door sealed. He suspected then someone was leading him in a certain direction, but he never expected it to be Biermann. Or Knowles. This was all so... orchestrated. That word jumped into his consciousness again. But to what end? He ground his teeth together and glared at Biermann.

"Sir, with all due respect, someone needs to tell me what the hell is going on here."

Biermann held up a finger dismissively and turned to the two other men, who now stood in front of the desk. The shorter man, the second one in the room, kept flicking his eyes over his shoulder to Gabriel as if he expected an attack. Gabriel shot him a glance and he quickly turned back to face Biermann.

"Report," said Biermann as he stood up from the chair.

The taller of the two civilians answered. "Two KIA. Four wounded, one seriously with what appears to be a broken jaw and several cracked vertebrae. The two in the lab have already been taken back to the holding cell, and a medical team is on their way for the others, as requested." He glanced over his shoulder at Gabriel. "Your boy did a hell of a job out there."

"Bloody tornado, if you ask me," the shorter one said under his breath.

"I didn't ask," said Biermann in a sharp tone. "Collect the weapons after Med is through, then get the cleanup crew to work. Station personnel will be back in just over an hour, and as I see on the monitors, the walls could use some panels replaced."

"You got it," the taller one said, then turned and walked out of the room without a second glance at Gabriel. The shorter one walked up to Gabriel and held out a hand.

"Rifle," he said, his eyes not meeting the much-taller Gabriel.

Gabriel looked at Biermann, who had come around to the front of the desk and was leaning against the edge, arms crossed. The captain nodded. "Rifle, Lieutenant," he said.

Gabriel looked at Knowles, whose face was lined with sadness. Biermann stood impassively, staring back at Gabriel. The short civilian extended his hand further.

Without taking his eyes off Biermann, Gabriel tossed the rifle against the near wall, where it bounced and clattered to the floor. He took four quick strides, bumping the civilian out of his way, and stopped within inches of the captain.

Biermann stood upright away from the desk and met Gabriel's stare, having to look up a few inches into the taller man's face. His arms stayed crossed, and a small smile crossed his face.

"Something on your mind, Lieutenant?" he asked.

Gabriel clenched his fists at his side, his inner turmoil raging. The pain from the through-and-through was starting to creep into his system, and his arm still throbbed. The blood on his face had nearly dried, and he felt the sticky substance crack and stretch as he worked his jaw. But all of those sensations were secondary to his anger, which was now directed squarely at his commanding officer.

"What was this, Captain? Some sort of... test?" He spat the last word out in disgust.

Biermann stared at Gabriel for a long moment, then turned away and walked back behind the desk. He waved the shorter civilian out of the room. Gabriel saw that Knowles had her eyes lowered and wouldn't look back at him.

"Of course it was a test, Lieutenant," Biermann said. "I'm not going to buy a weapon without trying it out first. I'm sure you've test-driven cars before, right? Think of it that way."

"No one died when I test drove a car," Gabriel said. "Sir," he added through clenched teeth.

Biermann looked off to one side, his eyes unfocused. "They chose their fate long ago."

Knowles turned from the desk and slowly walked towards the back wall of the room, her head down. Gabriel watched as the slump of her shoulders gave way to a posture of frustration as she put her hands on her hips. He could almost feel the emotion radiating from her. The same tangled web of thoughts he was experiencing.

He stared at Biermann, whose gaze remained on the far wall. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Biermann looked back at him, and Gabriel saw a flash in his eyes. "What that means, Lieutenant, is that those people were nothing but criminals. Each of them a murderer, or rapist, or traitor to the Federation." He stood up and fixed Gabriel with his stare. "They chose their fate long ago. Every one of them has given up their right to be a member of society, and every one of them was sentenced to death. We give them a chance to reduce their sentence, to change their fate, by participating in a test. This test. A test you passed, Lieutenant. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing here."

Gabriel's head spun. Images flashed across his mind: the barrel of the pulse rifle smashing into a man's face, blood spurting from his wrecked nose; burn holes in the back of a woman's body armor; the crazy angle of a man's lower jaw.

He leaned over and placed his hands on the front edge of the desk, breathing deeply, trying to wrest control from the emotions flooding his system. Two dead, another four injured, by his hand. For a test.

"Does that make a difference to you now, Mister Gabriel?" Biermann asked. "Now that you know who you killed?"

"You bastard," came Knowles's voice as she turned back around. "That's a loaded question and you know it. How can any of them who come through here answer that?"

Gabriel's head came up and he looked at Knowles, whose face was red. From anger or frustration, he wasn't sure. He saw flashes of the emotion he detected in the lab. This was what she was concerned about. But why would she be caught up in this type of operation?

He looked back at Biermann. "I don't believe you."

Biermann pulled a folded sheet of hardcopy from a folder on the desk and read from it.

"The two men who were sent to the lab. Falk, Walton H. Tried and convicted of murder in the first degree of a shopkeeper in the commission of a robbery, Denver. Bathory, Ian W. Serving a life sentence for rape, but killed two men in a Mexico City prison, so was sentenced to death."

He opened the sheet to the inside fold and continued. "The two you gassed and took out. Ruggieri, Samad M. Traitor to the NAF, sold state secrets to the Chinese which directly resulted in the deaths of fourteen foreign service agents last year. Sentenced to death for high treason. Sefu, James K. Kidnapped and killed two women from a daycare in Calgary. Sentenced to death." Biermann's face cracked into a small smile. "The tear gas was very inventive. You're the first to use that tactic. I liked it."

He turned the hardcopy over. "Gorog, Markku L. The big ugly guy outside the door. He's a real winner. We were saving him for a special test, and you drew him. Professional hitman from Croatia. Killed twelve minor members of the NAF government two years ago for reasons unknown. He's been on ice since then, waiting for diplomatic extraction, but that fell through. So he became ours." He pursed his lips. "Wasn't sure if you'd get past him. Again, very inventive, using our own weapons against us in an unexpected way. Shows outside the box thinking. I can use that."

Gabriel stared at him for several long moments before speaking. "And the woman?" he growled.

Biermann leaned towards him across the desk and stared back, not looking at the hardcopy. "Bustos, Erika M. Housewife from Sacramento. At least that's what she was to neighbors. In reality, she was a serial killer. She singlehandedly killed over twenty men in a two-year period. Kidnapped them, emptied their bank accounts, tortured them, and burned them." He leaned in closer. "Alive."

Gabriel clenched his teeth, thinking back to the pale face and dead eyes lying on the floor of the corridor.

"Before you accuse me of lying, Lieutenant, feel free to look it up. Pull up news faxes from northern California, 2164. And make sure to get a look at her images in those stories. She was sentenced to die by lethal injection last year, but was hanging on by appeals. She made her choice, and she was even given a second chance, here."

Biermann walked back around from behind his desk and stood next to Gabriel. "What you need to understand, Lieutenant Gabriel, is that not all enemies come in clearly marked packages. Once you realize that, you're on your way."

Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed. Criminals, serial killers, rapists, traitors. No matter, he knew the images of their faces, of their pain, of their deaths, would haunt him for a long time.

He opened his eyes. "On my way where, Captain? What is this all for?"

Biermann nodded slowly. "The ones who came before you have asked the same question. There are threats to the Federation, threats we know about, and ones we don't, which can be even more dangerous. In order for us to protect the freedom of its citizens, the Federation needs the best in technology, intel, and training. And people, Mister Gabriel. The most valuable assets any military force can have are its people. People like you. We're here to take the best soldiers to the next level. And," he said with a mirthless chuckle, "the saying is you can never make a good omelet without breaking a few eggs."

Gabriel looked at Knowles, whose face was now clouded with anger. His mind whirled again. This was all happening so quickly, he knew he needed to clear his head, or the adrenaline running through his veins would get the better of him, and Biermann might end up paying the price.

He turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"Lieutenant, where the hell do you think you're going?" snapped Biermann.

Without breaking stride, Gabriel responded over his shoulder.

"I'm going to get my shoes."
Chapter 12

Gabriel walked through the doorway only to be greeted by the taller civilian standing watch over a cleanup crew replacing wall panels damaged by the dual frag grenade blasts. The lights were on and the overhead recyclers hummed steadily, clearing the smoke. The stealth-suited body was gone, leaving behind a small dark stain where blood had pooled. A maintenance worker walked over with a bucket in his hand.

"Excuse me, sir," he said as he edged past Gabriel and knelt to work on the stain.

The civilian looked back at Gabriel. "Hell of a mess. Hard to believe anyone survived."

Gabriel turned away without answering and headed down the corridor, lost in his own thoughts. Yes, he had survived. Survived a test, which still gnawed at him. Was he that expendable that the Navy could throw him into a meat grinder of armed convicted felons? And a limpet mine to boot?

The walk back to the lab was over a third of a mile. In his mad dash to the target, it seemed to take merely seconds to cover that distance. Now, as he walked slowly past another cleanup crew — a man scrubbing blood off the floor in front of the elevator bay and a woman patching a mag pistol round hole in the wall panel — that same distance seemed to take days.

This had all been a test. A test to see if he was good enough to become a weapon, as Biermann had termed it — a weapon in the hands of the Federation. _Jesus, that sounds ridiculous_. It seemed like only yesterday he was graduating OCS in Newport, with DePalma and Cristoff at his side. Within months, they'd be dead, and he'd be reassigned. And now here he was, the product of some top-secret military procedure, walking back to the lab to get his shoes. Past the evidence of his handiwork.

The body of the woman — Erika Bustos, Biermann said her name was — was gone, but he could see where she had fallen. The cleanup crew hadn't yet gotten this far down the corridor, and bits of burned armor lay in the middle of the floor. The remnants of his precise three-shot burst that had ended her life. He knew Biermann was telling the truth; he hadn't needed to look up Bustos's history. Something in the way he'd rattled off the names and crimes struck him as genuine.

So here she had fallen. A serial killer of over twenty men. Someone who was running at him firing an energy weapon, trying to end his life so she could extend hers. Could he blame her? No, not for the second part. For her crimes, she deserved the punishment. But for her efforts, did she deserve this fate? He wasn't sure. He only knew that he was responsible for the very end of her life, and again deep down killing a man felt different. It was something he couldn't quite put into words or even a concrete idea, it was just... a feeling.

The two walls outside the lab were complete wrecks. The wall where the limpet mine was attached was shattered and cracked, but the wall on the opposite side of the directional charge was completely destroyed. The panels had warped and snapped, and the heavy steel bulkhead beneath them was exposed and blackened.

He walked up to the mess and ran his index finger along the edge of one of the burnt panels. If he hadn't reacted to the memory of Gilly's death on the asteroid and recognized the mine for what it was, his upper body would have suffered the fate of the panels in front of him.

The steel bulkhead was peppered with pockmarks, evidence of the force of the charge. It wasn't meant to scare, or injure, or maim. It was meant to kill. He'd been tested throughout his life, from grade school through high school, from Basic through OCS, in the field and in the classroom. But never had a test been this... deadly. He gave thanks to whatever god was watching over him, or whatever nano machines were running through him, that he passed.

He turned and walked into the lab. The initial attackers were gone, as the civilian informed Biermann, and the lab appeared just as it had before the assault. His boots were under the lab table, and his water bottle sat placidly where he left it. The tank's lid was still raised, and his soggy briefs sat underneath it where he'd thrown them. But the steel locker he left open was closed, the one with Knowles's bloody pullover in it. She was in on the whole thing, and had apparently done this with many others.

"Lieutenant?" A voice came from behind him.

Knowles. He walked up to the tank without acknowledging her and stared inside.

"Evan," she said. "We need to talk."

He stared into the tank. It was still wet, small beads of water remained in the bottom. He looked at the nodules along the side, the injectors that had begun the process.

"Zero point," he said.

She walked up to the tank and stood on the opposite side. "It's a lot to take in all at once, I know."

He looked up. "How do you know? How many procedures have you done? How many of...of us have died in this damned test?"

She looked down into the tank before replying, and when she did, her voice cracked slightly. "You are the seventeenth person to come through here. I can name each and every one of them. Fourteen men, three women. To me, you are not weapons, or tools, or hammers. You are people. Each one of you different and unique." She looked up and met his gaze. "Six died during the test."

He ground his teeth together and leaned his forearms on the edge of the tank. The broken skin on his right arm protested as it stretched and began to bleed again. "Six? Jesus Christ. How can you..."

"Because it works. Because this program can do far more good than harm. Because..."

"You're a damned doctor," he said sharply. "How can you allow patients to die like this, knowing what they have to face? How can you put people through this?" He looked up at the ceiling. "And how many prisoners have died on your watch? Can you name each and every one of them, Moira?"

Knowles dropped her gaze again and paused for a long moment. "Biermann is a bastard. There's no other word for him. But he's right, and he knows what he's doing. In the long run, this program works, and the product of this program must be tested before it goes into the field and puts other people at risk."

He laughed. "Do you hear yourself? Product. It. You're contradicting yourself, doctor. Either we are people, or we're tools. Which is it? Do you know anymore?"

He turned from the tank and stepped over to the table. He reached under it and picked up his boots and began putting them on. He felt a wetness under his shirt, and remembered the mag pistol wound. _I'm a wreck,_ he thought. _And this is a successful test?_

"Evan, you have to understand. You of all people. You've been through death before, all the way back to your mother..."

He spun to face her. "Don't ever bring up my mother," he snapped.

She recoiled at his tone and posture. "I... I'm sorry. I only meant..."

"Forget it." He bent over and fastened his second boot, then stood back up. "I know what I got myself into. And you're wrong. I am a weapon, I suppose. A product that has to be tested. I get it. Don't worry about your precious tools being damaged."

"Wait," she said. "Listen. I know what I do here is... controversial. But I do it for the best reasons. And you... you're different than the others."

He shook his head and grabbed the water bottle. "Don't try to flatter me, doc. And by the way, doing it for the best reasons is an excuse some pretty damned terrible people in history have used to justify their actions. You might want to avoid using that phrase in the future."

That stung her, he saw. Her face clouded and she wrung her hands. "I know," she said, and took a deep breath. "I know. But what I said about you... I meant it. There's something different about you. I'm not even sure what it is. You have a past, you've had your share of problems, but..." She took another deep breath. "Heart. You have a heart. I don't even know how or why I'd say that, but... well, there it is. And I'm sorry."

He rocked back on his heels and memories flooded over him like a waterfall. Her words, what she just said to him about heart, were almost exactly what his mother used to say to him as a small child. Words he remembered all these years later. Images arose in his mind of Ekaterina Gabriel poking him in the upper chest. _"This is your strongest muscle, Evan. You have a heart like no one else."_ Words she repeated in the hospital, dying of cancer. Some of the last words she ever said to him. _"Use it,"_ she had said. _"Listen to your heart. It's your strength."_

He looked down at his forearms, the first thing he noticed when coming out of the tank. Muscles he hadn't had before going in, but superficial muscles. Not like what his mother had told him he had as a scrawny six-year old.

"Evan, are you okay?"

He looked up at Knowles. She was staring at him with a look of concern; he could see that in her eyes. The same look she had given him as the tank lid closed over him. Her feelings were genuine, and she genuinely was concerned for him, her job and its controversy aside.

He thought back to his brief conversation with Admiral Cafferty's attaché during OCS. She had asked him why he enlisted in the Navy, and his answer was that he had nothing else, and thought he'd be good at it. And he was good at it. Thinking back to signing his original enlistment paperwork, he knew then he was following his heart. As he was when he expressed a desire to join Special Warfare, and as he was when he willingly underwent an experimental medical procedure to augment his abilities and turn him into an even more capable soldier.

"I understand," he said. "And this is who I am now." He held up a hand as Knowles started to speak. "I appreciate your concern. I really do. But this is the path I've chosen. I understood the risks, though not to this extent," he said with a small smile.

Knowles walked over to the locker where the planted bloody shirt was. The blood drops on the floor between the table and the locker were gone; the cleanup crew apparently wanted to make sure everything was back in order. _Maybe for the next test,_ he thought, grinding his teeth _._

She opened one of the doors and reached inside, withdrawing a white box. She returned to Gabriel, holding it with both hands.

"Let me see the gunshot wound," she said as she placed the box on the table.

"It's fine," he said, waving her off. "Bleeding stopped."

"I'm sure it has. My nanites have added benefits all around. But I want to make sure." She opened the box and picked up a small plastic device shaped like an old-fashioned turkey baster.

He frowned, knowing what was coming. He pulled up his shirt, and Knowles bent to peer at his wounds.

"Through-and-through. That's good."

"For you, maybe," he said.

She smiled. "And for you. No surgery, at least until the medpack procedure tomorrow." She used the device to squirt a grayish liquid liberally over both his entry and exit wounds. Gabriel stared at the far wall, knowing the biofoam would sting. And it did. But not like the auto-injectors did. Everything had changed for him. Everything was new.

Knowles pressed a self-seal patch onto each wound, then closed the box. Gabriel lowered his shirt, noting with a corner of his mind that while his wound may be have been cleaned up, his bloody shirt with two holes in it still showed he had a hell of a morning.

Knowles stared at the medical kit after she closed it for a long moment.

"What's next for you?" he asked. "More tests?"

She gave a faint smile, then turned from the table.

"Something tells me this program will be winding down soon." She looked around the lab. "I think some of the equipment may have been damaged in this last test. Plus, I believe I may be looking into retirement. I hear Jamaica is a beautiful destination."

Yes, she certainly had read his jacket, he thought.

He was about to answer when an overhead speaker crackled to life with Biermann's voice.

"Lieutenant Gabriel, if your mission to retrieve your shoes was successful, please report to my office on the double."

Gabriel squeezed the water bottle until the top popped off. Knowles laughed softly and bent over to pick it up off the floor.

"Take care of yourself, Lieutenant," she said, handing the cap back to him.

He looked back at her and saw that relief and satisfaction had replaced her apprehension and sadness. Maybe this was over for her. But it was only beginning for him; that he was sure about.

"Zero point, you say," he said.

She smiled. "Make the best of your new beginning, Evan."

He nodded. "Thank you, Moira. And you too."

He turned and walked out of the room, purposely not looking back. Only looking ahead.
Chapter 13

Biermann was seated at his desk when Gabriel entered. All the cleanup crews had finished, and according to the station security system he had tapped back into, the blast doors were all open and Cielo's personnel were returning to work. He made a mental note to ask Biermann how he had cleared the station for his test. And another mental note not to kill the arrogant bastard.

"Yes, you have your shoes. Isn't that nice," Biermann said, rising from his chair. "Have a seat. There's a priority transmission for you from Admiral Cafferty in Toronto. He'd like to speak in private. And there's a wet towel on the end of my desk. Make yourself a little more presentable, Lieutenant."

Biermann walked past Gabriel and through the door without another word. The door slid shut behind him. Gabriel walked around to the back of the desk and sat down, looking at the blank comm terminal. Blank except for small text that read, "VOICE CODE NEEDED."

He pursed his lips. Voice code? What voice code? He picked up the towel and wrung it out into the plastic container it sat in and wiped the dried blood from his face. He used the black screen as a mirror and rubbed until he saw nothing but jagged red marks in his cheek. _As good as it's going to get_. His neuretics medical alerts had mercifully ceased as his body got caught up healing the rest of his body.

"Ah, hello?" he said hesitantly as he dropped the bloody towel back into the container.

The terminal beeped and "ACCEPTED" replaced the other text, then the screen lit up with the face of Vice Admiral Eriq Cafferty.

Gabriel wasn't accustomed to communicating with superior officers over vidcomm, so he wasn't sure whether to stand at attention or just sit patiently. He chose the latter.

"Lieutenant Gabriel, good to see you again, son," Cafferty said. "Captain Biermann has briefed me on the results of the procedure and the, ah, operation. I had a feeling you'd come through with flying colors." His face grew slightly as he leaned closer to the video pickup. "I've had my eye on you since before OCS. And so has Pete, ah, Captain Biermann. Which is why you were chosen for this. How are you?"

"Sir, I understand. If I may speak freely, an hour ago I would have questioned a lot of what went on here, but I understand. Captain Biermann has been... thorough. And Doctor Knowles has been helpful. I'm... I'm okay, sir."

Cafferty nodded. "Excellent. From what I understand, it's a hell of an adjustment. And Biermann's test is... difficult. Anyway, the reason for my call. Lieutenant, I believe you have a bright future in the Navy ahead of you, and I'm proud to have you under my command. You'll find you may be serving two masters for a little while. Myself in the regular Navy, and Captain Biermann in NAVSOC. I need you to understand we all have the same goals, regardless of the chain you find yourself under. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir, quite clear."

"Good," Cafferty replied. "And speaking of command, Captain Biermann has briefed me on your upcoming mission. It's an extremely important one that needs to be handled with the utmost discretion. I think you'll find a lot of what we do involves political overtones, and they can be... tricky."

Gabriel furrowed his brow, and Cafferty must have seen the movement. "Lieutenant, has the captain briefed you?"

"No sir, he has not. Honestly, I still haven't gotten checked out by Med yet."

Cafferty grimaced. "Oh for shit's sake. Pete's priorities are always somewhere else." He leaned away from the video pickup. "Get the captain back in to talk to you right away. In the meantime, Lieutenant, I'll be following your progress. You've got a lot to look forward to. I believe you're going to be a busy man."

"Thank you sir, I will do my best."

Cafferty smiled. "I know you will, Mister Gabriel. Best of luck to you, son."

The screen blanked and Gabriel sat back in Biermann's chair. Everyone seemed to have a path laid out for him but himself. That wasn't something he was comfortable with, but that was the nature of the military. He had learned that long ago, but sometimes it still rubbed him the wrong way. Like the test, he didn't like being led, or herded, in a direction he didn't truly want to go. But as his mother told him, he'd continue to follow his heart.

The door slid open and Biermann entered. He walked up to the desk and stood with his arms folded.

"Good conversation, Lieutenant?"

Gabriel sighed inwardly. _Back to business._

"Yes sir," he said as he stood up. "The admiral said you were supposed to brief me on a mission, sir."

Biermann smiled, but as Gabriel had seen several times before, the smile didn't reach his eyes. "Yes, of course. You'll actually be shipping out immediately after Med is done fixing you up. There's been an incident on Ganymede. One of the major mining companies, Ouro Limited out of Argentina, has had an uprising of sorts. More of a riot according to the data we received. And they're asking for our help with a hostage situation."

"Hostage situation?"

"Yes, several miners were taken in the riot. And even though Ouro Limited is a South American company, they're asking for a favor from the NAF. As Admiral Cafferty said, many of our missions involve political overtones."

Gabriel realized Biermann had tapped into the private conversation he had with Cafferty, and wasn't surprised at all. Biermann struck him as someone who wanted to be in control at all times. And he understood.

"The NAFS _Jesse LeRoy Brown_ , PFS-710, a NAVSOC training frigate, is headed to Cielo as we speak, and she'll be docking within the hour. There's a Navy squad on board. However, their lieutenant came down with measles, and they're currently in need of a squad leader. Therefore," Biermann said, inclining his head towards Gabriel, "you're up."

Gabriel frowned. "Measles," he said.

Biermann's dead-eyed smile returned. "Yeah, how about that. Hasn't been a confirmed case in decades, and boom. Not sure if it's divine providence or just plain coincidence, but an opportunity presented itself. And here we are."

_Here we are_ , Gabriel thought. _Zero point. Nowhere to go but up._

<<< END >>>

Keep reading for excerpts from all three books in the Evan Gabriel Trilogy!
Preview of Gabriel's Redemption, Book 1

Evan dove into the clear blue water, leaving the safety of the catamaran behind, and swam deep, adjusting his goggles as he kicked. He felt more than heard his older brother Zack hit the water behind him, then a second hollow splash as Tyler followed. Evan knew he was ahead of the other boys, that he'd find his quarry first, but he also knew in the back of his mind he was the youngest and the smallest, and still had to work the hardest.

As he passed twelve feet, he took a quick peek over his shoulder, pinching his nose and snorting to equalize the pressure. The nearly transparent Caribbean water allowed him to see that his sixteen-year-old cousin Tyler had already caught and passed fourteen-year-old Zack, another age and size advantage Evan didn't have.

At eleven, Evan was fortunate enough to still be able to hang out with the older boys...but today was different. He could feel it, something in the warm salty air. He knew this time _he'd_ be the one telling stories over conch ceviche on the beach, the one who'd be the center of attention once he retrieved the first shell from the white sand bottom. He spotted the perfect candidate, partially buried and barely noticeable. Easily the largest anyone would find today. He kicked hard away from the charging Tyler, reaching out with one hand...

*****

Gabriel awoke with a start, jerking his head up from the tattered pillow, and instinctively reached out for his gun. His right hand found it in its customary place, less than two feet from his head, on the peeling laminate of the nightstand. His fingers closed around the Heckart's worn grip, his neuretic brain implants sending the code to arm and charge the weapon. Every muscle in his body was tensed like steel cord. _What the hell woke me up?_ he thought. Something in the air, some out of the ordinary sound, something over and above the usual Jamaican street buzz.

He sat up in bed, weapon held tightly. The reassuring tingle in his palm indicating the Heckart was armed and fully charged. He peered around, eyes adjusting to the feeble moonlight leaking in the cracked window. Hotel room just as he left it, window opened less than three inches to combat the stifling Caribbean heat, a heat unusual for December. His neuretics fired off a quick burst, confirming none of his motion alarms had been triggered. _What was out of place, what caused the sharp reaction?_

He debated running a somewhat-risky active scan when the sound of clinking glass wafted in from outside and his eyes darted to the window. Muffled laughter, an old man coughing, the screech of a cat, and more clinking as last night's Red Stripe bottles were kicked over. More coughing, a muttered patois curse towards the cat, then silence.

He slid noiselessly to the window, staying out of the dust-filled moonbeams piercing the seedy hotel room. Back to the wall, weapon next to his ear, he stole a quick glance outside. His second floor room afforded a sweeping view of the street and its dilapidated buildings. Years ago Jamaica was a tourism mecca, but that had changed drastically since the Dark Days and the ensuing devastation of most low-lying land areas. This Ocho Rios street was a living example of third-world society's collapse: strewn with garbage, overflowing dumpsters, and countless lost souls looking for the next day's meal, drink, or narcotic.

Below him, across the street, was a gaunt Jamaican, the upper half of his body bent into a dumpster, refuse flying out behind him as he dug through the mess. At his feet were dozens of empty beer bottles, softly chiming a mournful melody as his bare feet brushed against them. A pathetic-looking cat sat in judgement on the top of the waste container, watching silently, waiting for its chance at scraps.

Gabriel scanned the full length of the street in one direction, then stepped back. Edging to the other side of the window, he repeated the security sweep, weapon at the ready. He switched his left eye to infrared, still wanting to avoid an active scan that may alert another to his presence. Nothing. Just a sad old man, a reflection on the post-Dark Days society in general, had interrupted what may have been his only true sleep in weeks.

He shook his head slowly with a grimace, and moved back to the bed. He checked his neuretics' passive sensors, and satisfied he was alone, set the safed Heckart on the nightstand. He crawled back into bed, turning the sweat-stained pillow over, and tried desperately to get back into the childhood dream he had woken from.

*****

"Unbelievable, Evan," said Tyler. "Never saw anything like it. You were like a kid possessed out there." The sixteen-year-old crunched into another tortilla chip slathered with habanero salsa. "Biggift freakin' conff I ever faw." Chunks of tomato tumbled from his mouth onto his lap, then onto the white sand.

Zack chuckled in agreement. "Can't believe your skinny ass could lift it up from the bottom." His tortilla was more carefully constructed, just a few pieces of conch ceviche and a spoonful of the spicy salsa.

Tyler laughed, salsa mixed with tortilla crumbs flying from his lips. "Zack, you couldn't even get past ten feet. How do you even know he got it? Maybe it was me all along, and I'm just giving little Mr. Gabriel the credit. Next time try clearing your ears."

Evan just listened silently, chewing on conch. He held another skewer of the white meat over the edge of the bonfire the boys had built after beaching the catamaran at their secret family spot, a tiny deserted island just south of Cuba. He smiled to himself. _Nice to finally be the center of attention_ , he thought.

He looked over at his father and uncle, sitting on beach chairs at the waterline with a bucket of iced Carib lagers between them, talking and chuckling in muffled tones. He hadn't seen his uncle in three years; always off-planet on some secretive Special Forces mission. And his father...well, he hadn't really been around much either, at least mentally. Ever since Evan's mother died, his father had been distant, withdrawn. He was glad to see him smiling again.

Maybe my uncle will even let me finish his beer like he did that time when we...

"Hey, Ev, finish your snack and get us some sodas!" yelled Tyler, wiping his hands on his bathing suit.

Zack stood up, knocking Evan's soda bottle over, the once-cold liquid seeping into the white sand. "Oops, might as well make that three. Go on, little man, time's a-wasting!"

The two older boys ran towards the water, kicking sand up as they flew by the adults. His uncle flicked a bottle cap at the boys as they ran, laughing. _Back to reality_ , Evan thought, his conch victory long forgotten. He launched himself from his chair towards the water...

*****

_There!_ The sound; the mysterious, unexplained, almost inaudible sound that woke him the first time. His eyes flew open, gun already in hand and tingling, his rigid body heading for the window. Outside, nothing. No old man, no cat, no movement. Something's wrong, and now that dream's gone for good. He queried the motion alarms; again all reported back as clean. Padding over to the hotel room door, he heard the stairs outside in the hall creak. He froze, glancing at the digital clock on the nightstand. Oh-four-thirty, not a time for anyone to be stalking the halls.

The creaking came closer, definitely on his floor. His passive scan didn't detect anyone - _wait, there_. Two of them, both hazed in a weak stealth field. He sent out a low-level active scan, and it burned right through the government-issue stealth. His Mindseye system superimposed images across his vision - two bodies, one short, one massive. End of the long hall, 80 feet away, walking slowly in his direction. His scan showed no weapons, not even kinetic or blunt instrument. Nothing more solid on either of them than a pair of glasses on the short one, and a large belt buckle on the larger one.

He pressed his back into the wall next to the doorframe, waiting. The creaks increased in volume, then stopped. They were right outside the door. The gun's carbotanium was cool on his cheek as his finger brushed absently on the trigger pad. Neuretics on full alert, he waited.

Oddly enough, they knocked. A soft knuckle rap as if they didn't want to wake anyone. He continued to wait, ready to spring. Another knock, this time slightly louder. "Evan Gabriel?" came a light call, almost falsetto.

_Bizarre_ , he thought. If someone tracked him down, all the way to Jamaica, it couldn't be a social visit. He had done his very best to erase any evidence of his whereabouts. So why were they knocking and announcing their presence?

"Evan Gabriel, we know you're in there. Already talked to the night manager, showed him your picture," came the falsetto voice. After a pause, it continued. "Please, we need to speak. We've been traveling all night."

Now he was beyond puzzlement. Assassins or commandos don't usually ask politely to chat with their marks before dropping them. He stepped away from the wall a few inches and pressed the barrel of his weapon to the surface of the door, leaning his head across to peer out the peephole. He regretted not having placed any AV bugs in the hall. _Laziness will get you killed one of these days_ , he thought.

Two men stood outside his door, one barely tall enough for his head to be seen through the hole, and one large enough to probably have trouble fitting through the door. Both in business suits, jackets open, both empty handed, and both sweating profusely. The short man waved, peering up at the hole. "Sir, we really need to speak," came his tiny voice. "You know we're unarmed, we picked up your scan. Honestly I'm dead tired. Please, just a moment of your time."

He slid to the other side of the door, changing hands with his pistol, wrestling with the paradox. No one should know he was here, and if someone did, he'd probably be in jail — or dead — by now. And Fat Man and Little Boy outside called him by name without blowing down the door and coming in with a full squad. _Can't live forever..._

"Who are you, mon? Who 'dis Evan you be speaking of? Go 'way, now, I needa rest," he tried in his best rasta accent.

He heard a soft snort. "Mr. Gabriel, it's been a very long day and night for us. This won't take but a minute. We'll both turn around and put our hands on the opposite wall. Please, just open the door so we can talk."

He brought the gun back and ran another scan. His Mindseye image showed that both men had stepped to the side of the hall and were in frisk-me position, hands on the chipped plaster wall, the big man's nearly touching the ceiling. He sent a disable command to the motion alarms and slowly undid the locks with his left hand. His right hand still gripped the Heckart tightly. He turned the knob.

Pale yellow light from the hallway spilled into the hotel room as he edged into the doorway, fully charged and armed mag pistol trained on the two men. "Slowly turn around to face me, hands on top of your heads," he said in a low voice. "And I want those shit stealth fields off."

Fat Man and Little Boy did as instructed; Gabriel's neuretics confirmed the fields dropped. Little Boy motioned with a downwards nod of his head. "I have an envelope for you, it's in my right inside pocket." His eyes never left the muzzle of the pistol, the targeting laser dot placed squarely over his heart.

Gabriel slowly moved the pistol in Fat Man's direction, the dot jumping from man to man. "You, right hand on top of your head, reach across with your left hand and take out the envelope. And please, it's been a long night for me as well. Don't give me a excuse to wake everyone else up with two bodies hitting the floor."

Fat Man complied, obviously understanding the danger inherent in the nearly silent and highly lethal 7mm Heckart, and reached over in front of Little Boy, withdrawing a small beige envelope with a red seal from the other's jacket pocket.

"Toss it over," Gabriel commanded, weapon still pointed at the men.

Fat Man gave a snap of the wrist, and the envelope dropped neatly at Gabriel's feet.

"Actual paper, huh? How quaint. What's in it?" he asked, flicking the gun towards the envelope.

Little Boy sighed. "Commander Evan Gabriel, NAF Naval Special Forces, by order of the Director of Naval Intelligence of the North American Federation, you are hereby recalled to active duty."

Fat Man grunted, finally speaking. "Something big's come up. We're here to take you back home, sir." He cracked a grin, revealing a missing front tooth. "Whether you like it or not."

For the first time, Evan Gabriel's pistol wavered. Of all the places he could have gone to hide out and escape the world, his childhood vacation retreat of Jamaica seemed to be the perfect backwater location -- the last place anyone would look for him. And now, it was all over.

"Let me get my shoes."

<<< END SAMPLE >>>
Excerpts from Books 2 & 3

**Scene from Gabriel's Return - Book 2**

The sun was just dipping below Eden's horizon as Captain Jamar Chaud escorted his team to an unmarked prefab building near the back of the compound. The eight men and women had just returned from another supply raid and were still coming down off an adrenaline high when Chaud had received a call from Prophet's right hand man, Zeno.

He had mixed emotions after disconnecting the call. He had known Zeno for many years, even before Prophet had taken over leadership of their group, and his voice sounded... distant, almost scared. Prophet had requested the team's presence for a quick meeting after the supply raid, to "celebrate the success of the university mission" as he had put it. Chaud had known Prophet a few years as well, but certainly wasn't within the man's inner circle, so he felt a bit of turmoil about the summons.

His team walked quietly between the smaller huts and tents of the compound. _Professionals, every one of them,_ he thought again with an inner pride. Near-perfect mission the other day, zero casualties on their own side, and successful retrieval of the special package Prophet had asked for. _So why the odd feeling in the pit of the stomach?_

He reached the building and rapped on the door. His team came to a loose parade rest behind him.

"Come," a voice answered, muffled behind the plasteel.

Chaud palmed the lockpad and the door hissed open. No one was standing there to greet them, so he walked in, the team following on his heels.

The inside of the building was poorly lit. He considered switching on his IR implant, or calling out, but shook the thought off. _No sense in jumping the gun and looking nervous._ As his eyes adjusted, he saw he was standing in a large room, no separating walls or furniture, other than a long banquet-style table in the middle, ten chairs around it, and two men seated facing them. Zeno, and Prophet.

Chaud looked at their leader. Prophet had only recently risen to power in the rebel hierarchy, assuming command of the hundred-odd freedom fighters just a few years ago after the untimely assassination of their former head. He was ruthless, Chaud had seen, but not stupid. Able to see both tactically and strategically, Prophet had quickly enabled their group, one of five splintered bands of thieves for the most part, to assimilate the others and grow to their current size. He rewarded the loyal, purged the weak, and brutally eliminated the disloyal. He had been given the name Prophet, Chaud remembered, for a very good reason. No one else could have possibly foreseen how much more powerful a single group could be than a spread-out handful of terrorists. Chaud followed willingly; he had seen his own brother killed at the hands of the fascist Eden government puppets, and swore revenge years ago.

Zeno stood up from his seat alongside Prophet and walked over to Chaud. "Jamar, my friend," he said, extending a hand. "I'm so glad to hear of your success. Thank you for bringing your team over so soon after another mission."

Chaud took the shorter man's hand in his own and shook it. "Of course, we are honored to be here." He turned and waved towards his team. "I believe you know everyone?"

Zeno nodded. "Yes. Especially Miss Werth," he said, casting a longing glance at the team's sniper. Werth didn't respond, keeping her eyes fixed on the dim wall above Prophet's head.

"Anyway," Zeno continued. "Please, all of you have a seat." He walked to the table and motioned for the rest to follow him. He pointed each team member one by one to a seat, almost as if they were numbered. He took a few extra seconds to help pull out Werth's chair for her. He walked around to the other side of the table and took his seat next to Prophet, the portly Zeno a physical antithesis to his slim leader.

Chaud sat down and pulled his chair in a few inches, leaning his elbows on the synthoak table. He was seated directly across from Prophet and stared into his face; he was sure Zeno sat him there for that reason. Prophet, an unassuming man of medium build and average looks, would never have struck fear into the heart of anyone. Until they saw what he was capable of. It was all there behind the emotionless face.

"Captain Chaud," Prophet said in a low tone. "Thank you very much for your successful mission at the university the other day." He nodded to Zeno, who stood again and picked up a large decanter of what appeared to be red wine from the center of the table. Just then Chaud noticed there were wine glasses set in front of every person, but no napkins, utensils, or plates. _Good thing we ate before walking over,_ he thought.

Chaud caught the scent of the locally produced merlot as it splashed into his glass. Once the glasses were full, Zeno filled Prophet's, then his own, and resumed his seat.

Prophet raised his glass. "Congratulations, one and all. We've made progress in not only hurting the fascists, but have also acquired a significant asset in our fight towards toppling the governmental system, and the people in power."

Nine more glasses joined Prophet's in the air with a chorus of _hear, hears_.

Chaud took a small sip of the wine, not wanting to appear rude, but not wanting to imbibe too much so soon after combat. He remembered many a mission where he drowned his highs and lows in the bottle afterwards, and the next morning was never pretty. His team, he noticed, didn't share any of his reservations. Most glasses were set back down on the table with scarcely a drop of red left in them.

"Now I have additional information. You," Prophet said, motioning around the table with his wine glass, "are my top team. My most trusted team. We have very important people to make happy, and very special guests on their way."

Maybeck, sitting to Zeno's right, coughed into his hand. "Sorry, sir," he said, clearing his throat.

Prophet continued as if he hadn't heard the man. "Our financial backers, who you folks have so kindly helped out with the mission, will be providing us with significantly more in the way of matériel and supplies in the coming months. The asset we acquired makes that all possible, as our backers have plans far larger than our little civil war."

Maybeck coughed again. Chaud looked over at the man, whose face had started to turn a lighter shade of white. He gritted his teeth. _Idiot_ , he thought for the second time in the past few days.

"There is a team on their way from Mars, sent to reacquire that asset from us," Prophet said. "If...no, _when_. When we eliminate that team, we will be provided with additional personnel, both military and political, by said backers, to once and for all get rid of the status quo, and rebuild Eden the proper way."

He set his empty glass down on the table with a loud thunk. "However, we cannot afford any missteps. Any at all. Even the smallest ones, with the team I know is coming, could prove fatal to our entire group."

Maybeck coughed loudly, his breath now laboring.

Chillemi, seated on Maybeck's right, leaned over and grabbed his shoulder. "Hey man, you okay?" he asked.

Maybeck gasped, scratching at his throat. Chaud started to rise from the table to find out what was going on with the man, but stopped when he saw Prophet's look.

"We cannot afford any missteps," he repeated, staring into Chaud's eyes.

Chaud sat back in his chair, his mouth coming open a fraction. Prophet continued to stare at him, and a wave of queasiness hit.

"Mister Maybeck," Prophet said, finally breaking the stare with Chaud to look down at the wheezing man. "Do you know of the jerumba plant?"

Maybeck's eyes grew wide, and he clawed at his throat. His fingernails left red furrows as he gasped for breath.

"The native jerumba plant, as some of you are probably aware," Prophet continued, "secretes a highly-lethal toxin from its flower at the very end of its life each year to dissuade predators from eating it before it goes into hibernation. It's odorless, colorless, and perhaps most deadly, tasteless. Curiously enough, we've found it dissolves in wine even faster than in water, and enters the bloodstream much more quickly with alcohol as the catalyst."

Maybeck struggled to speak. "But...but," he coughed. "Every...body...had...wine..."

Prophet gave a tired smile. "It was already in your glass."

Maybeck gasped again, coughing as his airway spasmed. He looked wildly at the others around him; no one wanted to meet his gaze. Chaud watched helplessly as his man struggled to breathe.

Prophet continued. "The toxin acts on the respiratory system of the predator, and constricts air flow. Which is what you're feeling now." He looked at Zeno and indicated with a small wave for him to refill his glass, which he hastily did.

"After that, to prevent the predator from continuing to eat the plant, the toxin attacks the nervous system. This effectively paralyzes the animal, which then dies slowly from asphyxiation. However," he said as he took a sip of the wine, "with humans being larger than the plant's natural predators, the toxin works much more slowly on the nervous system. So what happens is the predator, in this case you, simply chokes to death, fully aware and cognizant of the situation, able to experience every last painful feeling to its fullest."

Maybeck was pulling at his shirt collar in a desperate attempt to breathe. Chaud watched him as he grabbed Chillemi for support. He stood up from the table and gasped for breath through his closed throat.

Chaud swallowed, but knew deep down it was a necessary demonstration of power and intolerance for poor performance. Maybeck had screwed up the shoot at the university, and if things had gone differently after that, they may have lost some people. And it wasn't his first mistake. As Chaud watched the dying man fall to the floor, gurgling his last breaths, he knew it would be his last mistake.

"Now," Prophet said, looking back at Chaud, "where were we?"

<<<>>>

Scene from Gabriel's Revenge - Book 3

Gabriel could hear the thin Mars atmosphere whipping past his combat helmet's visor. Visibility from a thousand yards altitude was excellent, enhanced by his helmet's optics, but no matter how hard he stared, there was simply nothing to see. Even the approaching dust storm barely visible in the distance held no interest for him.

Ordinarily, a typical first-time visitor to Mars would gawk at the wide open plain and the terraced steppes of the northern rim of Valles Marineris, or marvel at the flashes of dirty gray water ice in the shade of some of the peaks, or point excitedly at the ancient dust-covered Russian and Japanese landers. But today, like yesterday, his mind was elsewhere.

The last time he had set foot on Mars was over a week ago, kissing Renay goodbye in the skyhook terminal. There was a young boy who had been hesitant to approach him, and he had won him over with a tiny gift of a patch. The image of Renay's smile at that small action flashed across his mind, and he closed his eyes to the outside world.

The ache in his chest returned, a similar type of ache he had felt many years ago when he learned of his father's death during the Dark Days. But there was something else there, something different from that feeling of despair he had borne for years. He knew Renay wasn't dead. And he was going to find her.

The secure call he had just received from Major Andon had surprised him, but not completely. Now that he had specific information in hand, information he hoped he would have prior to arriving at Eos Chasma, he was feeling more confident in the plan he was formulating.

He gritted his teeth as for the first time, he regretted bringing his team. He opened his eyes and looked around at the battlesuited soldiers arranged around the perimeter of the hopper's platform. They stared back, though he knew they weren't seeing him, that it was just an illusion brought on by his regret. He was sure they were looking at their HUDs, or going through their individual battle preps, or in the case of Brevik, maybe napping. They put their full trust in him, as they had for months now, and they followed him unquestioningly. Even now, with an unspoken plan of attack many outsiders would consider seat-of-the-pants, they were here.

He pushed down the regret. He brought up the schematic Andon had sent him, and he felt his lips tighten into a grim smile. _Now we have a target._

The engines' scream changed pitch as Ky delicately balanced the hopper on four tongues of flame and began their descent. Gabriel closed his eyes again, thinking back to some of Tomas Katoa's final words on Eden. " _Joining my friends in the SAR_ ," he had said. " _They've got larger plans._ " He clenched his armored fist hard enough that it crumpled the hopper's safety railing he leaned against. _They were behind all of this_ , he thought.

"Commander I've got... I don't really know what I've got."

Takahashi's voice over the team net snapped Gabriel's eyes open. He immediately linked into Takahashi's sensors and put the image on his helmet's HUD. The marker showing the research outpost was circled in blue, and a tiny red icon had just popped up adjacent to it. His neuretics instantly tagged it as a threat and his linked Otero systems spun up to full readiness.

"Hang on, we've got..." His voice was cut off in a roar of high explosive.

He tasted blood.

Gabriel opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness tinged with green. His fuzzy brain took a couple of seconds to process the fact that his visor was pressed into the Martian surface, with only his combat helmet's internal readouts illuminating the few inches in front of his eyes.

He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and winced at the pain feedback. He had bitten through the tip of it.

" _Oh hell_ ," he said in a low voice. A reflex almost made him spit out the blood, but he caught himself before he fouled the inside of his visor. He swallowed, grimacing at the taste, and took a quick sip from his water tube to wash it down. While he drank he sent out a neuretics scan, not trusting the Otero's systems just yet. The impact of the crash had been hard; a throbbing ache in his lower back confirmed that.

The scan came back showing his team scattered across a swath of land fifty yards across. All pinged back with life signs. He activated the team net, but stayed still. He wasn't detecting any potential enemy, but there was no sense in giving them a moving target. _Or crawling target_ , he thought, noting his own face-down position.

"Everyone report in," he said, and took one last drink to clear his throat. One by one, verbal status reports came back, all except Olszewski. He checked his Mindseye map and saw that Takahashi was closest to the MDF soldier's position.

"Ensign, check the private. But do it slowly," Gabriel said. He sent out a low-level active scan out an additional hundred yard radius. Clear. He raised himself up on all fours and checked their global position. They were just under two hundred yards west of the research outpost. _And from whoever shot us down._

"Commander, Stan's out cold. Steady life signs, probably a concussion," Takahashi said. "Want me to hit his suit's adreno?"

Gabriel shook his head inside his helmet, not remembering no one could see the movement. "No," he said. "Not until we're behind cover." He remained on all fours and did a visual sweep using his retinal IR implant. Nothing but the team and a pile of flaming wreckage that lit the night sky. A pile of wreckage that pinpointed their exact location to the enemy.

"Lieutenant," he said. "Gather up the equipment. They'll be coming to make sure we're down for good, so we have to move quickly." He scanned the local area map again. "Here," he said, sending the map and a highlighted location to Brevik. "Behind this rock formation. It's shielded from their probable approach by the edge of the wadi we're in, and far enough away from the hopper fire. Take..."

"Commander, ah..." It was Negassi. Her icon showed her nearest the wreckage, right next to... _dammit_.

"Go ahead, Specialist," he said, suspecting what she was calling about.

"Sir, the pilot... he's gone."

Gabriel had forgotten about the pilot. He had only scanned for team links, not untagged civilians. The environment suit Ky had been wearing wouldn't have protected him at all in the crash. The heavy Oteros barely did, as evidenced by Olszewski's concussion, but without powered armor and active restraints, a fall from their altitude was unsurvivable.

"See, told you," muttered Sowers.

Gabriel was about to chastise the petty officer when his battlesuit flashed a warning in his HUD. Multiple icons were headed their way from the direction of the outpost.

"Incoming. Move."
Other Available Works

_Find The Evan Gabriel Trilogy at your favorite e-book retailer, and also in paperback!_

**GABRIEL'S REDEMPTION** (Book 1)

**GABRIEL'S RETURN** (Book 2)

**GABRIEL'S REVENGE** (Book 3)

**GABRIEL'S JOURNEY** (Complete Trilogy)

