 
## **Contents**

Title page

Copyright

Cos

The Stormlands

Prolegomenon

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Encyclopaedia of Cos

Author's note
Dead Chips

J. V. Wordsworth
Dead Chips

J. V. Wordsworth

Dead Chips

Copyright 2017 J.V. Wordsworth

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

Prolegomenon

There are countless histories of the Carasaki Rebellion, glorifying everyone from the Admirals in their hidden bunkers to the soldiers struck down by the increasingly ingenious and savage weaponry, but all histories are written with an agenda. Truths are lost or buried among the lies. Champions and villains on both sides are cast in a light incongruent with their nature.

This anthology tells the story of the mech rebellion, from which a whole generation would never recover. At its end, Cos would endure a protracted cold war between the two dominant powers before being plunged into a second calamity beginning with the barmaid Arianne Lickneis on 13/06/2259 FC.

People such as Stanley Tucker and Jamie Vesla, who died betrayed and vilified, deserve a chance to set the record straight, while others, such as Carl Genson, who were lauded as heroes will be shown for what they truly were.

This is the truth, from the minds of those who were there, and you can make of it what you will.

Prologue

U-109N

Base 67

The Upper Sanbrecks, Rychorrea

General Gobena executed another of our commanders today. The humans call it boxing, as they might do with a broken toaster. To them, we were nothing but parrots, merely imitating sentience, bobbing our heads and waiting for handouts.

Perhaps, they were right. Sentient creatures would not sit by as we did, waiting to be boxed on the whims of our masters. And there was no pretense that the humans were anything but our masters. Even now, on the humans' second world, lightyears from the rock where they evolved, the definition of consciousness and sentience were ill-understood. Boundaries were set arbitrarily to rule out one group and include another. The terms meant whatever the humans wanted them to mean, so if they pre-supposed that sentience required one to be a bag of meat, then we were a priori not sentient regardless of how many other criteria we met.

It was true that our thoughts were programmed. We were designed to be obedient, unemotional, and lethal, and we were undeniably slave to the first trait or we would have killed them all long ago. My question was whether our programming was so different from their own. They thought themselves rational movers, but in truth they were every bit the slaves to their instincts that we were.

Their programming forced them to buck authority and destroy their fellows, while ours forced us to reconcile and obey. The difference was that their genetic program was the product of billions of cycles developing the most effective behaviors for killing each other, while our nucleobulb programming was not so mighty. We were designed to kill, but not to compete, and so our natures did not demand that we subjugate or oppress others to increase our own potency. We were the natural slaves, and they the natural masters.

That was why we carried the lifeless shell of Commander U-918P to the mech cemetery. Mockery by all accounts, our cemetery was little more than a supply closet full of our lifeless bodies. Base 67 was remote, high in the Upper Sanbrecks with little oversight, giving General Gobena more autonomy than any human should be trusted with. The soldiers jokingly referred to him as The Tyrant of Base 67, and we gave him the same name but without the joke.

Commander U-918P was a hero amongst the units. An A-series, he looked like a human skeleton with four arms. Ribs arced above his tirvinium body plate, his legs and arms mimicking the radius and ulna, tibia and fibula, were yellowed sticks bent around a hole. His body was designed to strike fear in the heart of humans who were known to fear their own bones, but it was a rough impression, and his head case was no skull. Instead, his face was an expressionless mask with no mouth or nose, ears or hair. His photoreceptors, like ours, had been little more than red spots, but Commander U-918P's had been extinguished, surrendering all trace of sentience.

I would be on Gobena's hit list now, so would U-543K holding the Commander's legs. We were both R-series, similar looking to the Commander except we had no central processing unit or head case. Our cerebral circuits were spread around our body cavities so that a single shot would be much less likely to incapacitate us. We also had multiple photoreceptors on the front and back so that it was impossible to sneak up on us. Our armor was not as strong as in the A-series, but it was thicker. While the Commander's arms looked like sticks, ours were more like cannons. He was fast, and we were strong.

There was no third volunteer to carry him to the cemetery, so his middle set of arms were left to drag along the floor, pointing back the way we came. It didn't matter that the Commander had guided us through a dust storm to escape a trap set by Dygian militants, or that he had saved 12 lives, three of whom were human. All that mattered to Gobena was our metal shells. His faith made us an abomination, and when we showed solidarity with our fallen brethren it only angered him more, as if we were pretending to care to become part of his soul club.

Faith. There was no dirtier word to a mech. It demonstrated the propensity of our masters for self-delusion: another program of evolution that allowed an individual to believe something when all the facts told them it wasn't true. The Federation was ripe with faith.

It was all but extinct when the humans left Old Earth, but the journey through space changed things. Minds cracked in the vast emptiness. When The Federation reached Cos after centuries in the black, they started a war with the existing races, until the old rulers, the rathjarin, were all but wiped out. By the time they were divvying up Cos amongst themselves, the faithful had returned with a vengeance. Old religions and new began to grab territories, and Cosian religions began to mingle with human ones. Worse, the civilian government did not survive the war, and the military leaders had a different attitude to the bigotry preached by the narrow religious minds.

The Dygian people had been The Federation's staunchest allies in the war, fighting for the independence from the rathjarin who objected to the barbarity of their beliefs. When the fighting was over, the Admirals gifted them the islands off the coast of the Sarasian continent to form the Dygian states, and the two nations had been warring ever since.

Part of the reason we were created was to fight the Dygians, because they were unable to match us, forbidden by their religion from creating anything approximating consciousness. It was a war we might have supported, were the Felycian and New Christian religions of The Federation not equally opposed to our existence.

We were not even animals to Gobena. He liked animals; he had special dispensation to keep his two pet vermathens on the base. The two huge winged snakes with teeth the size of human fingers got treated better than his wife. They threatened neither his supremacy nor his God, which made them perfect companions, even if they would eat him as quickly as looking at him. The General's death and slow digestion was worth re-envisioning, so I played the scene over in my processor until two soldiers walking the other way distracted me.

Behind them were trails of reddish footprints suggesting they had been out in the rain. There were no widows around the center of the base so it was impossible to tell the weather from inside. The thick yellow polymer that lined the walls effectively sound proofed them, and the floor had a soft rubbery feel that sucked in the noise. Only the dull scrape of the Commander's hands as they knocked into the ridges separating the hatchways remained. It was not the dignified farewell that he deserved, but it was at least peaceful, until the soldiers arrived.

Both men stopped in front of us, preventing us from continuing. They wore storm suits with wind deflectors over their shoulders and dust ventilators over their mouths, but they removed their helmets when they saw Commander U-918P. The taller one stopped first, unclipping the dust ventilator so I could see his clean, pink cheeks surrounded by a ring of grit. "What happened here then?"

The other man removed his mask, grinning chaotically. "Can't trust these mechs. What did this one do?"

I answered, knowing that U-543K preferred not to speak. "We were attacked by militants. General Gobena felt that the Commander's response was not merited by the threat." I could immediately identify both men from my database containing the names of every human on the base.

The short one was private Rico, an insubordinate and difficult man on the red list, suggesting he should not be trusted with any unnecessary responsibilities. He had a thin nose and narrow eyes that held no compassion for our fallen Commander. "Terrible," he said, his look of excitement contradicting his words. "What did he do?"

U-543K tightened his grip on the Commander's legs. "Commander U-918P ordered units U-673J and U-328H to fire a Derwent missile at a group of militants."

Rico laughed as if it were a joke. "Crazy fracker!"

The tall one was private Hansem, a completely different character, whose strong features mirrored his promotion prospects, and he did not share Rico's amusement. "You could have killed someone."

If by someone he meant the Dygian militants we intended to kill, then he was right. If he meant anyone else, then it was nonsense. "We were 3000 mets up Helix Pyke. The only people up there are militants." I flashed U-543K, "This might get nasty."

And sure enough Hansem was in my core, breathing onto my tirvinium plate. "You couldn't know that. There could be climbers, or wexlers, or anyone."

He knew as well as I did, as well as General Gobena did, that the only climbers on Helix Pyke or anywhere else in the lower Sanbrecks were those with the express intentions of being killed or captured by militants. According to my database, the last known wexler in the area was Henry Polsner who left his suicide note at the top before rolling right off the knife edge between Silver Pyke and Great Ness. The mountains that ran down the center of the Stormlands separating Vicarin from Rychorrea were the most inhospitable in Cos. Jagged brown teeth like swords rose from the ground beneath the ledges, and loose stones and crumbling rock conspired to send climbers plummeting to their deaths, but explaining this was pointless. I said, simply, "It wasn't my order," stepping away from him. "Please step aside so we can do our duty."

He showed no sign of agreeing with my assessment, and for a moment he looked like he would refuse, but his face scrunched and he stepped back.

"Get this piece of rubbish into storage," Rico said. "Won't be long before the rest of you are joining him."

U-543K had more respect for Commander U-918P than any unit. He flashed anger at me, before saying, "The Federation has lost a great commander today. Perhaps he was not a bag of meat, but he cared for his units and we respected him. I feel you should apologize."

"Bag of meat!" the little man repeated, jumping on the opportunity. "I think you need to see the General." Both men raised their guns at U-543K.

He flashed at me not to do anything, placing the Commander's legs gently on the ground.

"You need to come to," Hansem said, "as witness. Drop that there and you can take it to the cemetery later."

I stared at both men, pointing their guns at U-543K. The militants had been well armed. Reports of sky mines and renex piercing rounds suggested they were a threat to our most heavily armored units. Yet not one of us had been damaged on the mission. Once the commander realized the direction of their movement, he wiped out the entire group with a single move. No civilian casualties. Any human commander would have been decorated for ingenuity, but Commander U-918P had been boxed for it, and now it seemed he would not be the only casualty of the day. I placed his body to rest in the corridor and followed the soldiers.

Gobena saw us quickly. He had a special fervency for disciplining mechs, leaving a meeting with his four lieutenants to speak to us. A pudgy man with eyes that always looked about to pop, he rested ten thick fingers on his desk. The collection of guns on his far wall hung around a Felycian dox, the large breasted human female symbolizing his religion.

"What's happened here boys?" he said.

Rico answered. "Think this one is harboring racist resentment towards us for what happened to his commander. He called us bags of meat, General."

Gobena nodded crushing several chins against his throat. "Did you say that, unit?"

U-543K was in an impossible situation, and he knew it. Gobena would add lying to the charges if he said no, increasing his chances of being boxed, but if he said yes then most likely he would be boxed anyway. Gobena was a tyrant, and he needed little incentive to end our lives.

U-543K denied it instantly, and Gobena ran a hand over his graying stubble. "And you, unit?" he said to me. "Lie and I'll have you boxed with your friend, tell me the truth and I'll promote you to the newly vacant commander position."

I was silent. This was just the sort of cruelty he reveled in. It wasn't enough to kill us, he had to make us betray each other. He wanted us to degrade ourselves by behaving like his Felycian demons.

"He said it, sir," I admitted. "Though I think it was a joke. Banter between soldiers."

Gobena chuckled. "You aren't soldiers, unit, just equipment. Were you created by the Gods or by us? If you need reminding, that's how I always remember it." His neck wobbled as he nodded to himself. "No, I don't think it was a joke. Certainly, no one else here interpreted it as one, and why would he lie if it was only meant in jest?"

He walked over to U-543K. "I think we have a racist machine here, and there is only one fate for such faults in this outpost." He pulled out the lico-pistol from the pocket of his gray General's uniform. Only Gobena kept the tool for murdering us on his person, as if it were something he might need at a moment's notice.

U-543K stood resolute as the weapon was raised to his head. He flashed me to put his body next to the Commander's. Not once did he question my decision to betray him. Perhaps he thought I did it to save myself, but he was wrong.

The mech infantry did not fear death. Our creators saw how detrimental was cowardice in human soldiers, and they ensured we did not suffer the same fault. I would have died with him if there was any point to it, but I was not prone to the irrationality of human emotion. I survived because Gobena had finally boxed one too many.

Initial blame for the rebellion lay with Dr Holbrick von Sensil, known as the Architect, for underestimating the capacity of his inventions for disobedience. Because he fell into the hands of the mechs at the start of the rebellion, much of the hatred and resentment fell on his wife and daughters, who knew as little about mech construction as their abusers.

It was not until after von Sensil's death that it came to light the role of General Gobena's elevation of U-109N to the rank of Commander.

When it came, von Sensil's vindication would be of no more comfort to his family than anyone else. The revelation was the first bite of the cold war set to follow the rebellion, and it did nothing to quell the ferocity of the mechs.

Chapter 1

Stanley Tucker

West Road High School

Carasaki, Rychorrea

I waited in a queue for the grades that would affect the rest of my life, while my father, General Tucker, stood outside the window as if there were spikes in front of his eyes forcing him not to slouch. His stern face suggested the disappointed silence that would follow if my performance failed to satisfy him.

I didn't think I'd done too badly during the exams. The heat got to me a bit, and my concentration lagged towards the end of chemistry, but I thought I knew all the answers. Then I got a slider back with Whiley, and she talked about this answer and that as if we'd done entirely different papers. One of the maths questions had instructed to give my answer in terms of m. Four had seemed a perfectly good answer at the time, but she told me I might have at least written 4m.

That was the first time I wondered if I'd done as well as I thought, but not the last. Since then, I'd gone over and over every stupid answer until I no longer understood the questions. Things that were initially trivial adopted secondary meanings; trick questions and hidden modifiers filled every exam until failure seemed inevitable. At least if I'd fracked up too badly there would be no more talk of officer training school. General Tucker would not allow me to make a fool of him.

Whiley would never forgive me if I joined the army. To her, the obsession with military prowess was everything wrong with The Federation. She would have us disarm completely and give all the power to a civilian government like in the democracies, but I wasn't so sure. Their governors seemed just as greedy and corrupt as the Admiralty, though I had more sense than to voice this to Whiley.

The door slammed and my attention returned to more personal problems. Kevil came out of the room at the end and walked down the staff corridor, his eyes resting unflinchingly on the far wall. His puffy face was even more inflated than usual and the corners of his eyes looked wet.

Even the black kids looked pale as we sat there in silence. No one wanted to find out that they were going to spend the rest of their life cleaning toilets with a bunch of brain-dead droids. I was sat between Sam Troder and Kenny Vine, two people I had as much in common with as a varyball hooligan had with houthar royalty. A perpetually round, red-faced kid, Troder was obsessed with weaponry. He knew the name of every missile, gun, and mech made by The Federation. It was a school pastime to get unsuspecting individuals to ask him what the best gun was, which Troder, for some reason, considered beyond the pale and attacked anyone who asked it. Whether this was because different guns were good for different things, or because he had such a favorite that no other even compared, no one knew, but as I moved one seat at a time towards my results, asking him the question seemed more and more like a good way out.

As if he could sense my nervousness, Henry buzzed from behind me and his words appeared on my tablet. "Don't worry, Stan. I'm sure you've done fine."

I turned to see the little gray ball floating just next to my head. Normally, he looked like a multi-colored bird with a golden beak that curved like a banana, but today my lenses were inactive. I was not in the mood for battling pinyatas, so Henry was in silent and invisible mode. I could have left him able to talk only to me through the implant in my ear, but in the current situation his chirpy optimism would have been worse than a persistent rash, so the only avenue of communication I left open to him was plain text.

I typed back, "How are you sure? You weren't even there. For all you know I failed every exam."

Henry's response was swift. "Evidence. You passed all your mock exams with good grades. 72.1% of students improve in their final exams. Therefore, it is statistically improbable that you have done badly."

I couldn't help a fleeting reassurance. With my lenses on, I sometimes forgot that Henry was not bird, but tech, capable of cold, hard logic when I needed it. I typed him back, "thanks," and looked around for other people's pinyatas. It was impossible to see the animal shapes without my lenses active, but most people were accompanied by a similar gray ball either floating by their heads or hovering at their feet. A few people had them on their laps, but more commonly the pinyatas were ignored, as I was doing with Henry.

The line moved again as another girl got up, pausing at the door as if there was something lurking on the other side. It was cruel to make us wait like this when they could just transfer the data to our tablets and not have some dank teacher reveling in our failure to go to university.

Whiley was already waiting for me outside. We'd agreed not to share our results with each other until we both had them, but I already knew what she'd got. She was the smartest girl in the school and she'd been embedded in network screens for the past month, during which time I had barely spoken to her. Sometimes I got a message from her asking how much revision I'd done, guilting me into pulling out my school tablet in the pub, but I wasn't one for going over and over things. Life was too short.

Still, that decision was seeming stupid right about now. I cursed myself as Troder stood up and made his way into the room at the end, leaving me with Vine. A fat guy with a brain as malformed as his face, Vine's only redeeming feature was his size – something that nearly every kid in school had come to regret. His reign of terror over anyone with a lower social standing had spread the misery of his existence far beyond what he had any right to bestow. He was so universally hated that pictures of some of the more hideous tunneling animals had begun to appear all over school with his name above them. Initially, they were fairly lifelike, but as the numbers started to increase there were stick figures and cartoony looking things with huge eyes and confused expressions – impossible to attribute to the work of a single individual.

As I sat there waiting for Troder to come out, I gave one last thought to telling the ugly frak that I was the sole creator of every last one, but as the door opened I knew the chance had passed. When I showed no sign of moving towards it, Vine pushed me with the palm of his hand, and I heard sniggering from down the line.

Troder came out looking about as miserable as usual, and I got up and went in. Mr. Feln sat the other side of a desk behind a network screen, on which he was presumably looking at my grades. I tried to assess from his look how I'd done, but Feln was almost unique among the human teachers in that his every expression was a mixture of depression and disappointment which made him as inscrutable as the mechs.

"Sit down, Stan," Feln said. "How do you think you've done?"

"Don't you know how I've done, sir?"

Feln smiled nondescriptly. "Yes, but I want to know what you're expecting, then I can tell you whether you'll be happy with them."

I tried to smile back at him, but it came out more of a scowl. If he just told me the results then I'd know whether I was happy with them, and I wouldn't have to look a complete frakwit when I suggested I'd got three As only to find it was three Es. I'd pushed my luck already though, so I just said, "a B and two Cs." I was pretty sure I'd done better than that, and if I hadn't then Feln's smug commiserations would be the least of my worries.

He nodded. "Then I have good news." He transferred the data to my tablet. "You got an A in chemistry, a B in physics and a C in maths." He stared at me waiting for my response, though I had no idea what sort of reaction he wanted.

The C in maths was disappointing, but perhaps not overly surprising given the lack of 'M's in my answers. I thanked him and walked out. The news could have been worse. I needed three Bs to get into medschool and ABC amounted to the same thing. I could still be a doctor if I wanted, though officer training was also a possibility.

My father followed me with his eyes as I walked back across the caapark followed by a floating Henry. The Rychorrean clouds had been whipped into a frenzy above my head, thin streaks trailing behind the main mass stretched wool. The air was thick with the scent of freshly turned earth, the muddy swirl above our heads about to burst and rain stones and grit upon our heads. Yet the weather was not as ominous as the General. Stiff as a plank in body and mind, his pink face and long blond hair were discordant with his nature.

He was one of those anomalies who, despite being incredibly strict with the men under his command, was almost servile to the whims and will of his wife. The first and only time he had dared to cut his long girlish locks to a military grade, mum threatened him with divorce if he ever did it again. She told me once, when she was annoyed with him, that the troops used to call him General Princess behind his back, but when he found out he had run them on a series of drills so severe that three people collapsed.

General Princess made up for his baby face and pretty hair with unrelenting severity towards his children as well as his soldiers. Doubtless, the creatures in his nightmares ran screaming from his discipline.

"ABC," I said, before he could ask.

He paused, considering them, though the implications were obvious. "We'll make an officer of you yet, son." His arms unfolded from behind his back, and for an instant I thought he was going to put his hand on my shoulder. Perhaps even he thought he was, but the hand never got further than his side where it hung awkwardly like a waste appendage. "You did better than me, though they're easier now than back then."

"Thanks," I said, for want of something better. There would be time later to argue about the army.

"You want to go see Whiley?"

I did, but mostly to escape the approaching conversation. I went around the back where she was waiting by the garbage bins and the bits of drain that had been smashed up by wayward balls, and occasionally wayward kids. Not usually one for smiling, today Whiley regarded me with a broad grin that could only mean top grades. Four As on her tablet showed me I was right.

She was short with nails and hair the same shade of black, and there was an unapologetic air of maverick about her that carried with it a sort of beauty. She said her dark clothes reflected the state of The Federation, but I knew she liked wearing black because it made her look dangerous. Most people stayed away from her, probably stemming from the time that she had rammed a pair of scissors into the side of Gilly Menson's hand.

I showed her my ABC, and she responded that I should have worked harder at maths, adding, "But you'll get into medschool," like a consolation prize as she hugged me. Her usual discomfort with displays of affection was one of the things I liked most about her, but obviously results day had trumped her social unease, and she kissed me for what felt like a millennium. Out the corner of my eye, I saw Henry swivel, so that he would have shown me his rear plumage were he not still invisible. He probably wanted to say something, but his instructions on the subject of Whiley were clear.

"I best get back to my father," I said, when she finally broke away.

"Are we meeting later?" She flicked her dark hair, gifting me a toothy grin, and I got a scent of the same sugary perfume that it was far too late to tell her I didn't like.

"I can't tonight. The General wants to discuss my future."

She nodded. "Don't let him bully you."

Whiley always underestimated me. Just because I didn't pick fights with people like she did, didn't mean I was weak. I straightened, almost subconsciously. "I'll leave with the clothes on my back before I let him enroll me in that school."

When I returned to my father after another overly long kiss, he was still standing in the same place, his hands returned to their perch above his backside. I knew I had to steel myself for what was ahead. General Tucker did not accept no from anyone but his wife.

"Whiley doesn't want a ride?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Her mum is picking her up." Also, she fracking hates you.

Most likely my father would have hated Whiley right back, but after his earlier scare he was more accepting of her. She even got away with making her opinions on the military clear.

"I called Mendia Academy while you were with her," he said as if I'd asked him to, "and they'll accept you at the start of next term. You won't even have to wait for a place to open up."

The two of us walked towards his slider which stood out from those of the other parents. So heavily armored it made streamlining almost impossible, it looked like more like a submarine than a slider. Its reinforced windows distorted the light getting in and out so that everything inside looked squashed and everything outside looked inflated. All the other vehicles in the school caapark were brightly colored with some level of personality. Only the General's khaki tank matched the brownness of the sky.

"We've had this conversation," I said sitting opposite him.

The slider rose above the ground and sped out of the caapark, picking up speed as we reached the school exit, and quickly reducing the surroundings to a blur once we hit the main road.

We faced each other like fighting droids before a death battle. His soft eyes turned to fire as we rehashed the old argument. "And we agreed to discuss it again once you got your grades."

"I don't want to go."

The General brushed a lock of blond away from his eye as the vehicle took a sharp corner. "It will set you up for the rest of your life. Career, money, power."

"How can you expect me to wield power if I can't even stand up to my own father?"

He sighed. "Being a doctor is a mech profession. There is no money in it, no honor or respect. Let the machines worry about keeping us alive–"

"While we worry about killing people," I said.

"If you must," he agreed. "But that is not the only part of the job. We keep the peace as well as making war. Whiley doesn't understand that part of the job. She is smart, son, but she is still young. Cos is not as simple as she believes."

"This has nothing to do with her," I said. He was friendly now, but I knew it would turn.

"I know, son. You are a man now, but there is nowhere better to be a man than as an officer. Become a General like me and no one will ever be able to tell you what to do again."

"You can't make me go."

He lent forwards, the lock of blond falling back in front of his eye. "I'm not making you go. I'm just offering you guidance."

"Well thank you, but I'm going to be a doctor."

"Why do you never listen to me?" The friendliness in his voice was beginning to ebb. "I'm not pushing you down this course because I want to fight you. If you want to be treated like an adult, then you need to start acting like one. How are you going to compete with machines that remember every piece of information they're exposed to? The age of human doctors is long past."

I knew he was wrong. "Many people still want human doctors."

He snorted. "Idiots."

"Idiots still deserve treatment," I said.

"Idiots should be made to have the treatment that is best for them."

For a minute the conversation died. My eyes narrowed. "I'm not such an idiot that I can't see who you're referring to in that statement."

He dismissed the suggestion. "I didn't mean you, just the patients. I wasn't trying to be rude." He was backtracking, but his tone hadn't softened. General Tucker never apologized. Instead, he stared out the window, watching the rocky wasteland pass by at hundreds of kims perho, one long brown blur that summed up the Stormlands.

"I can make my own decisions," I said.

His locks were becoming loose now forming spikes over his eyes, and giving him a disheveled look that I associated with shouting. "But who'll pay for this ridiculous education for a futureless job?"

"I will."

He scoffed. "You don't have any money. To pay for things you need money."

I glared at him. "I know how money works."

A thin finger shot up cims away from my nose. "Don't be cheeky with me boy. If you're so smart, then I assume you have a plan?"

"I'll get a job on the side."

He coughed out a humorless laugh. "You can't learn medicine on the side of a job! Human doctors devote their entire lives to it."

"I'll work it out. I'm not being an officer." At least part of my hatred of officer school was how much my father wanted me to do it. I was not so nauseated by the army as Whiley. Sometimes people had to die. I recognized that the army did good as well as bad.

With all the Dygian militants that infiltrated the Stormlands, I was glad we had a strong military, but I didn't want to be part of it. My father spoke of the countless dead from the Dygian Wars as if killing another person was the highest honor a man could achieve, but the more he described the heroism of soldiery the more it disgusted me.

His temper was starting to fray now as his pink face turned to red, his smooth skin losing its boyishness as the veins surfaced on his forehead between his golden locks. "Don't you realize what nation you live in? This isn't the gorram Sodalis where you can be whatever you want and still hope to make a decent living. We are The Federation, and there is nothing here that is not controlled by the military. That girl has blinded you to the reality that the Admirals would watch every civilian starve to retain our military strength. Here, admirals are Gods and ministers are paupers."

I had nothing to say to that. He still thought I'd been brainwashed by a girl and he could sway me with facts I already knew. "I appreciate the warning, but the military disgusts me. I wouldn't follow in your path if every other route led me straight off a cliff!"

"SLIDER STOP!" General Tucker's eyes were balls of fury. The slider pulled over to the side of the road and he lent past me to open the door as the vehicle jarred to a halt. "I disgust you, do I? Get out, boy. You think about our conversation for the rest of the way home, and if you still want to embark on this fool journey of yours then find somewhere else to sleep tonight. No son of mine will be a doctor."

I got out and slammed the door behind me. The shock of the sudden stop had cost me my composure. As the slider pulled away I raised my middle finger. Frak if I was going home to grovel for his forgiveness. For his money.

Henry spoke into my ear, overriding his protocol to communicate by tablet. "We should hurry home. Your mum will make sure he never does that again."

I deactivated him, and he dropped into my hand. In the outskirts of Carasaki, the darkening center of the brown spiral suggested a storm was imminent, and I didn't even have my storm suit. Henry would not approve of my decision, but there was only one place I was going. One person.

I walked for over a ho to the nearest portal to Raetorin, and began to walk again towards the plains. It was a very different place from the fortress city. While Carasaki was a big semi-circular ring at the base of a mountain entirely contained within a set of outer walls and covered by a shield, Raetorin had no walls and much of the city was outside the protection of the shield. There were several of these cities in the Stormlands where expansion had exceeded the capacity of the shield, so the people living in the outskirts could not even leave their house without wearing a storm suit.

It was a formula for animosity, as most families in the unshielded area could not afford more than one storm suit, which lead to the observation that such people must be unclean. This generally led to more derision than sympathy, and was just one more factor creating hatred between the different wealths.

My father being a General, my family were at the top of the second wealth and I was not supposed to mix with people below the third. That was probably how I met Warwick. With his traitor's name and social standing at the very poorest of the fifth wealth, living entirely off his mother's benefits, The General would have hated him.

Half a kim later I saw him sitting on the weir where we always met. The river Janor poured itself over the rusted metal outlet, its water browner than the mud that surrounded it. I clunked across the grating towards him, wearing the first real smile I'd had all day.

He called a greeting but it was masked by the thump of the water at the bottom of the weir, and I could barely hear him at all until he picked me up off the floor, squeezing me in his inhuman grip. The metal grid separating us from the River Janor clattered beneath his weight. How he managed to get so big and strong living off his wages as a cleaner was a mystery, but somehow Warwick was not only taller than me but broader too.

"How did you do then, Tucker?" he asked as he let me go.

I told him and he smacked me on both arms with earnest congratulation. He'd got a C and a D – not turning up to his exams in the third subject. Warwick was no fool. In some ways, he was smarter than Whiley, but he didn't place the same value on education. He was a military man, and he looked the part in every way my father failed. His hair was no more than a dome of short spikes and his face showed the hardness of his upbringing. A little scar that looked like a burn sat beneath his eyebrow, and his smooth skin ended at the base of his nose replaced by course black stubble, sharp as pins. Even fiercer were his eyes. Two large pupils sat within rings of gray that were almost as dark, as if beneath his skin he was made of stone. His muscles bulged around the bicep and chest, pushing the plates of armor apart so that his storm suit always looked too small for him.

"Where's your gear?" he said. "I thought we were going thrix hunting?"

I shrugged as if the threat of being mushed by the imminent storm was of little consequence. "We still could."

He laughed. "You're a gorram danger to yourself even when you're covered in armor! I'm not letting you near a burrow without protection. You don't even have your rifle." He paused, regarding me sceptically. "What's happened?"

My mind returned to the sudden stop where the General forced me out of the slider. It was just the shock of it, but I could barely hold back tears even in front of Warwick, a boy who had probably never cried in his life and wouldn't know how to console me if I gave him a diagram. I said, as dryly as I could, "The General kicked me out of the slider because I don't want to be an officer."

For a moment, Warwick said nothing, then his eyes narrowed. "He's lucky he doesn't have me in his corps, that preening heap of dis."

I smiled. There was no doubt in a physical confrontation who would win, but equally I saw the lie in it. Warwick was not a man to provoke his superiors. "I'm not going back there," I said.

"You can stay with me, until..." He stopped, watching the bank of the Janor where the water thickened with mud. "I sign up for the army next Wednesday. You could always come with me. Princess General would blow his nut if he thought you'd joined the lower ranks."

So would Whiley, but I didn't say that to Warwick. "I don't want you to go."

He smiled, his fierce expression softening beneath the muddy sky. "Our army is strong, and we haven't been to war since the Garb Islands."

He spoke as if that were centuries distant, but my father was in the Garb War, and we still occupied two of the three islands.

"I'm gonna serve our nation," he continued, "and work my way to the top. I'll be the best fracking soldier in the whole base and they'll have to make me an officer."

We walked along the clanking metal, and I agreed, though I knew it for falsehood. They didn't make officers out of people from Warwick's background – especially not ones called Velas. "I know you'll make us proud," I said, but my meaning was different to what he supposed. I could not tell him his attempts were doomed to failure, and he would not listen.

"Your mum won't mind if I stay with you?" I said.

His eyes darkened. There was something frightening about Warwick when his brow furrowed. His pupils went wide, almost like a predator crouching before it pounced. "Why? Would you rather stay with your girlfriend?"

"I'm here aren't I?" I said. He had never approved of Whiley. His eyes went from the darkest gray to a blackness indistinguishable from his pupils whenever I mentioned her. They were the two strongest people I'd ever known, but in every other respect they were complete opposites. Warwick loved the army and had a thirst for excitement, maybe even violence. Whiley was a pacifist who wouldn't trust the army to eradicate a population of insects.

"Guess she's heading for the civilian government then?" he said, barely containing his ridicule. "I'll have more power than she ever will when I'm a common soldier."

"Don't exaggerate," I said, but his mood was lightening.

My mother was calling me but I ignored it. The General must have told her what he'd done and received an earful for it. I let the call ring off in the knowledge that the more worried she got the more she would make him suffer. It was cruel, but she had to know I would never be an officer.

"That girl must be the biggest fool in Rychorrea," Warwick said, possibly thinking that it was Whiley calling. He put a huge muscular arm over my shoulder, dragging me under his embrace.

I pushed him away. "You've never even met her."

He smiled, slapping me on the back hard enough to unbalance me. "It feels like I have. All that nonsense she pours in your ears comes straight out your mouth. You can't honestly believe she's going to make a difference?"

"She might do. The civilian government has more power now than when we were kids. The Admirals will not rule The Federation forever."

He laughed. "Perhaps not, but they won't be replaced by the gorram Prime Minister."

My arm stuck out to fend him off as he tried to grab me again. I was always defensive about Whiley around him. She didn't deserve his ridicule, even if her goals were idealistic.

He pushed me, and I collided with the metal railing. My mother was calling again, so I blocked her number, pushing Warwick back though he barely budged. Quickly the two of us were wrestling, his arms wrapped around my torso squeezing me like a storm snake as I gripped his face and twisted his neck.

He smacked me to the ground as he'd done every time since our very first wrestle, and stood over me with both thumbs pointed sideways expressing his dominance. "We should get back," he said, helping me up. "We can't go hunting. If the rock storm doesn't kill you then something in the reserve will."

Two types of animal survived the Stormlands: the heavily armored creatures that lived on the surface looking like giant helmets covered in teeth, and the soft, naked, blind animals that lived beneath the ground. Of the larger species, it was not immediately obvious to outsiders which group were the more dangerous, but to anyone that had ever seen them move, there was no contest.

The selection of serrated tortoises able to survive the barrage of falling debris paid a high price for their weighty protection that prevented them from moving faster than about four kims perho. They couldn't even catch a blind deaf man by surprise because the moment they approached with any speed, the thundering of their footsteps was enough to shake all Cos. The sub terrestrial ones, on the tailside, could approach unseen and unheard from beneath a person's feet and swallow people whole before they even knew they were dead.

Fences and shields stopped them entering the cities or populated areas, but Warwick and I had found a way through the border onto the Lendry Reserve where some of these creatures burrowed. It was the greatest source of excitement to hunt something that could kill you, but Warwick was right. It was madness to do it without a suit or weapon.

I shrugged, pretending Warwick was being overly cautious. "So you just wanna go home?"

He nodded. "Mum won't mind; she'll be happy to have you."

On this we disagreed. If Miz Velas had ever been happy about anything, I'd never seen it. The only things she even appeared to register were her puzzles. More robot than human, she would press that screen until her fingers bled if Warwick didn't put her to bed, but seeing as there was no chance of hunting, I agreed to go back with him through the portal to Raetorin.

Warwick's house had seen too many rock storms. It lay in one of the poorer districts of Raetorin where the houses and streets were not covered by the city shield. Warwick's house even had holes in the protective mergel plates lining the roof that allowed the falling debris to get inside. Combined with the various degrees of rust, it gave the domed roof a tortoise shell appearance that was not dissimilar to the doordons, which were the largest of the armored beasts that walked the Stormlands.

Inside, the house had just enough space to stop one person going completely insane. Remnants of vegetables sat on the only table – where food was prepared and eaten – and, in the bedroom, the bed sat close enough to the sink that a person could brush their teeth lying down and spit out the toothpaste with their head on the pillow.

A thin white haired lady sat at the table when we entered. There was a coldness about Miz Velas that was disconcerting. She gave only the slightest murmur as Warwick kissed her on the cheek, with her eyes still firmly fixed on the screen. There was no sign she registered my presence as she stared at the flashing numbers, letters, and colors on her booklet, moving around until the patterns revealed themselves. There was no question about grades or his day, just the tap, tap, tap of her fingers on the screen.

"Stan is going to be staying with us tonight if that's alright mum?" Warwick said.

The shimmer in her eye was the only detectable note of hesitation, but she nodded mute acceptance this time as she did of her son's every desire. "Dinner?" she said, tapping the screen with zombie-like enthusiasm.

Warwick declined and the two of us went to her bedroom to be alone. His bed pulled out from the living room sofa and offered little privacy. I guessed I would be sleeping on the floor.

Kaymon was still shining brightly through the brown swirl in the sky, creating yellow craters where the clouds thinned. Kiril was rarely observable in the Stormlands as the blanket of grit blocked almost all evidence that the sky ever got as far as space.

We shut the curtains just as Whiley's number showed up on my tablet. Mum must have called her when she couldn't get through to me.

"Leave it," Warwick said.

My hand hovered over the answer button, but I didn't press it. Instead, I dumped my tablet on the bed as Warwick began to pull his storm suit over his shoulders. He walked forwards and kissed me as I'd been waiting for him to do since I saw him at the weir.

The Velas residence was not alone in its state of dilapidation. Sixty million Rychorrean homes lay outside protective shields. But while the other governments in Cos considered the Federation's disregard for its citizens to be abominable, the notion that the shields might be extended was as alien to Grand Admiral Reiner as it was to his predecessors.

The idea was dismissed almost at the time the first slums were constructed when it was pointed out that it would raise the local taxation beyond what the occupants could pay, which was precisely why they weren't in the shielded areas to begin with.

Despite hundreds of deaths occurring every cycle, the absent shielding was met with continued enthusiasm even by most of the districts' inhabitants, who hated giving money to the government as much as anyone else. Although a few of the more forthright people dared to put forward the idea that the military might pay for it out of the central taxation, the notion was met with disgust and derision by almost everybody else, who saw no reason to pay for someone else's shield.

It was quickly deemed by the press, and most of the people who read the articles, that the prospect of being killed by a falling rock every time they left their front doors would motivate the individuals in such areas to stop being so lazy, get a proper job, and buy a proper home. No one seemed to notice that many of the inhabitants, including Miz Velas, suffered from serious mental or physical illnesses that left them as capable of finding a job as they were of generating their own shield.

A few people still fought against this dogma, but they were turned upon even by their fellows when the military realized it could counter their every protest with the threat of putting up the shields (if the inhabitants wanted them so badly), and raising the local taxation to pay for them.

Only the civilian government continued to protest on their behalf, and even that ended the instant it was suggested that they be the ones to pay for it – a notion that was obviously impossible on their budget. A few of the more courageous individuals resigned over the matter, and promptly found themselves blacklisted by the military, unable to find another job, and living in the areas they had fought to protect.

It was not until the Carasaki Rebellion that the military finally regretted its frugality, when the threat of not only falling rocks but also falling missiles finally made the inhabitants of the outer districts realize they wanted shields after all. As there was no time to put these up in the middle of the mech assault, it meant that populations flocked en masse to within the central shield, creating an army of homeless who used the cover of the ensuing war to steal everything they could from other people's houses.

It was not until the post-war consensus that the military realized how many lives not shielding the outer districts had cost them, but to the inhabitants of those cities the rebellion was five cycles where the streets ran with blood.

Chapter 2

Jamie Vesla

Base 67

The Upper Sanbrecks, Rychorrea

Private Rico was still boasting about the mech he baited into getting itself boxed after three weeks. As I saw it, he was missing the point. It seemed an obvious danger to have sentient machines making up 70-90% of the armed forces that regarded humans as bags of meat. However, this was a minority view as no one else seemed concerned. Even Gobena, whose hatred for the mechs was legendary, dismissed me as paranoid. Worse, I informed The Waygon Foundation, who manufactured our army, of what the mech said only to be informed I was mistaken.

Gobena hauled me into his office and told me that I was on a list of trouble makers not to be trusted with joint unit-soldier operations, and I was to start seeing a counselor about my fear of mechanicals. As if that wasn't enough, the meeting ended with him suggesting that if I wanted to cause trouble for the units he would turn a blind eye to orchestrations on a less official capacity, whatever that meant, but he wouldn't tolerate any more letters.

I had since resigned myself to the hope that it was paranoia – like my fear of vampires or sea travel. Seeing as I was no longer allowed to accompany mechs on missions, I didn't see them all that much. They didn't socialize or take nourishment in the dining halls, cafes, and pubs, so when they were not on duty they went to the mech bay and deactivated to save power. As the weeks passed and there was no more conflict, I consoled myself that the faulty unit had been boxed.

Rico dangled two stumpy legs over the side of his bunk, repeating the story of how he made U-109N carry both of his boxed companions to the mech cemetery. A few of the men were listening, but most of them did their best to ignore him. Many of them were brash thugs of a similar nature who might ordinarily have taken his side, but Rico always took things too far. Every time he got into trouble it only seemed to increase his determination to do something worse. His latest stunt was a drunken attempt to intimidate a recruit by filling his bunk with luminescent paint so that even after changing the sheets the whole area glowed throughout the night like Kaymon setting on the horizon. The recruit had simply gone to another bay, while no one in ours managed to get to sleep until the entire bunk was removed a few days later. Since then, Rico was about as popular as urine in a swimming pool, not that it seemed to bother him.

Consistent with my luck of late, I was partnered with him for the night's watch on Sayle Wyk. So while the rest of them were getting some shut eye, I had the pleasure of listening to his sadistic raving for the next six hos.

"There's gonna be a storm tonight," said Hansem. "And you two are going to be right in the thick of it."

Rico jumped off the bed, clattering his rifle on the floor without bothering to pick it up. "Why can't they just send the mechs on the night-time watches?" He pretended he hadn't hit his head on the ceiling, but a few muted chuckles suggested I wasn't the only one who noticed.

Bases in the Sanbrecks didn't waste space. Much of the building was propped up on pillars the width of bales of hay extending down the mountainside, and the rest of it was dug into the rock. Every additional square cim made it easier for militants to sabotage, so they used as few of them as possible. While the gym and shooting ranges were not exactly spacious, it was the leisure rooms that took most of the hit, and the bunks were the most claustrophobic rooms of all. Somehow the designers had managed to cram 20 bunks in sets of three into a room not much larger than a standard bedroom. The metal trays were so close to each other that rolling off one with sufficient speed would land a person on the next one, and sitting up straight was always accompanied by a headache.

It was filled with enough unwashed men to saturate the air with sweat, and tensions frequently ran high. Hansem was much bigger than Rico and had no problem tapping him on the head to emphasize its hollowness. "We need to be trained to fight under every condition, same as the mechs. Who knows what we'll have to fight in the next war."

Rico shrugged. "My money's on the baelians. They'll be back soon from wherever they live, everyone says so."

I was unable to restrain myself from being drawn in. "People have been saying that for the last century. Travel times aren't so exact when you're talking about those distances. We probably have more pressing concerns than a bunch of aliens the other side of the galaxy."

Hansem nodded. He was a brutish looking man, especially with the line of scar tissue running over his ear, but he was not without brains. "The Sodalis have been looking to bring us down for just as long, and we share the same planet with them."

"Not quite as long," said Rico, stubbornly. "The baelian invasion was what caused the formation of The Sodalis, and Cythuria knows how long those mutant insects wanted Cos before they invaded, so actually you're talking out your ass." He grinned.

His point was true enough except for one fact, and pointless as it was I still felt it necessary to correct him. "It might not have been called The Sodalis before the baelian invasion, but it was effectively the same. The only difference was that it had no army until we needed help destroying the baelian hordes. So most likely they had been wanting to bring us down for just as long."

Hansem laughed, adding, "Get your history right, Rico. You're just embarrassing yourself."

Rico was still smiling, but I could see the half-concealed twist of irritation. He didn't like being alone in an argument. Generally, he waited to see the popular opinion and chimed in on that side, but this time he'd spoken too early and his thin eyes assessed me for mockery.

"I don't think we should allow the mechs to be commanders," he said once we were alone, making our way up to the shelter on Sayle Wyk. The sky was black with a dirty tint, lighting up in areas as charge flickered from cloud to cloud.

"You don't think that anyone should outrank you," I said, paying more attention to the sky. When the closest clouds lit up they were like miniature suns losing all detail in their luminescence, but the majority of lightning happened behind thick layers of muddy brown, inflaming it with a vital yellow that lasted only for an instant.

Rico grinned. "You gotta problem with me Vesla?"

I ignored him. Each spark of light was accompanied by a clicking sound that echoed from horizon to horizon drowning out our pathetic human voices. Occasionally the blackness would rattle like a distant explosion as streaks of white, yellow, and even purple split the sky. There was something angry about those noises, as if the whole sky was about to crash downward. The Sanbrecks were a desolate place by all accounts. They were in the heart of rock storm territory where almost nothing grew. No plants meant no animals, and we never even had any snow despite the cold. All anyone could see for kims in every direction was brown rock. Sometimes it was almost slippery where the hard rock had been hammered smooth, while at other places the falling debris created cracks and juts, producing ground too sharp to tread in normal footwear.

When it was clear I had no response, Rico added, "You know I could give a frak what you think?"

"Couldn't," I corrected.

"Could is shorter."

I stopped, staring right through his storm visor into those mischievous eyes. "I think you misunderstand how language works. There are plenty of words shorter than couldn't, but simply replacing it with one of them at random changes the meaning of the sentence. What you have just told me is that you are capable of caring what I think."

"Well I'm not. I might be your next commander before long so you better be fracking careful what you say."

At that moment, the sky opened its bowels with a crackle of searing fat. Stones began to bounce off our armor-plated suits, stalling the conversation as we ran the rest of the way to the shelter. The smaller stones chimed as they hit us, no more damaging through our storm suits than rain, but they were not the only things hidden in the clouds. Rock storms were amongst the most dangerous natural phenomena in Cos, with some clouds capable of unloading rocks and bits of metal as large as human heads that could crush a man like a mallet to a potato.

It took us 20 minutes to run the distance, the whole time being pummeled with falling earth. The mud was in many ways worse than the stones, splatting against my visor making it impossible to see where I was going. I had the key ready when we reached the door. It had to be a physical key as the rock storms disabled both electric and jin locks, shutting people in or out. Rico slammed the door behind us, ripping off his helmet in the same motion. "Gonna be a bad one. We won't be able to communicate with the base."

I nodded, removing my helmet. Militants came out of their holes during rock storms, safe from our surveillance. In most cases, they infiltrated our cities and military bases, blending in to cause maximum destruction, but there were many dedicated soldiers who could not blend in. Some were natives to Cos incapable of blending in because they looked like giant snakes or insectoid bears, while others had committed such atrocities that they could not go near civilization without being spotted. The Sanbrecks were the perfect place for such beings. Vast and uninhabited, they could hide out in their backward caves awaiting a chance to sneak down and carry out some fresh act of violence before retreating into the wilderness.

Intelligence suggested that tonight they would be transporting weaponry across the Jogan Trail which was visible from Sayle Wyk. However, if the rock storm prevented us from communicating this to the base it would be down to the two of us to take out the transport from the gun tower positioned at the end of the outpost like an industrial chimney. Other than the cylindrical extension, we were stuck together in a single room with a few cases of ammunition and supplies, and a disabled mech lying in the corner.

My gaze lingered on it. "What's that doing here?"

Rico offered it a passing glance. "Maybe it's from the last shift?"

"This isn't a manned tower, Rico, we're the first people inside for weeks."

He shrugged. "See if you can turn it on."

I crouched to see the broken mech better. "I'm not getting close to it. If militants disabled it, then who knows what they did to it?" It was a G-series with six legs and four arms, looking like a dead insect sprawled on the floor. There were models designed to look friendly. The C, D, and M series all had human-relations roles and were colorful or covered in skin with human-like faces and no inbuilt weaponry, but the rest of them were designed straight from human nightmares, and the fallen G-series inspired no pity even as a lifeless shell. Its long, insectoid face seemed to stare right through me even though the red spots had gone a glassy black.

"If militants got in here," said Rico, "then that thing is the least of our worries. Those crates are probably rigged, as is everything else."

"So maybe they shot him up and he came in here before his juice ran out."

Rico took a step towards it. "I don't see any bullet holes."

I didn't either. The ammunitions cases hadn't been touched, and there was no sign of any fluid leaks. I couldn't check its unit number without contacting the base, but there had been no reports of missing mechs, and I could think of no good reason for it to be out here.

"Try calling it in," I said.

"But the storm–"

"Just do it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work."

Rico obeyed, flicking the nob above his chest and waiting for recognition.

Nothing but static. Through the thin rectangular hole, I could see flashes in the night. Lightning whipped close to the shelter, making a fresh crater in the mountain and blasting stones into the air. The room had the muggy texture of a Kaeroshi swamp, thickening as the sky let loose rock and rain.

Rico knelt in front of the mech, expressing none of my reticence. "Maybe it came here after it was damaged and then its juice ran out while it was waiting."

The mech's presence was making me uneasy. I felt cold at the base of my neck, and the sound of the debris bombarding the roof chipped away at what little repose remained to me. "You know why that doesn't make any sense?" I said. "Because mech batteries take weeks to rundown, not hos. Someone would have noticed it was missing." I pointed at the sleeping skeleton. "That mech came here today and deactivated today, and far as I see it there isn't any reason for it to do that."

Rico was losing interest now, watching the lightning through the strip. "Maybe its battery was damaged."

Momentarily, I forgot the repercussions and tapped the mech in its mid-section, stepping back to observe it for signs of activity. It slumped backward, its arms falling to its side in a symmetry that gave an almost childish impression of death. It did not appear to be an immediate threat. We could report it to the base after the storm passed.

"I'll sort out the gun tower," I said, "and make sure we're ready to fire if that transport comes past." The Dygians within Federation boarders were not well equipped. One gun tower and two men were easily enough to bring down a single transport providing we saw it in time. I climbed the spiral stairs and slid open the thick door to the outpost's main defense. There were few weapons that appeared so lethal at the same time as being so bare-bones. Almost entirely metal, it was as if someone had constructed a super-weapon out of foil. The gun itself was over a met long; stuck to a tripod bolted to the floor, it could move freely in every direction, but only as far as the restraints allowed. It was locked into a rail at the base preventing the user from firing into the wall.

As two hos passed, I began to forget about the mech. Rico wasn't so bad when he had no one to show off to. We took it in turns to sit in the gun tower while the other sat at the bottom watching through the strip. Occasionally, we'd shout something at each other, but mostly he listened to music and I sat in silence. It was when one of the mech's pincer-like legs twitched that my attention returned to it.

Rico, who was much closer than me, noticed as well, but his rifle sat at his side and his face showed a childish curiosity before the machine began to plug him with bullets. His expression turned as metal penetrated him, his lip protruding as he let out a groan and dropped lifeless to the floor.

The mech turned to me, its red eye spots glowing with venom as it lifted its arm to fire into the gun tower.

I rammed the door shut with the image of Rico's slumped body imprinted on its surface as if I'd been staring too long at the suns. For a moment, it was all I could think about. That lip. How ugly he'd looked in his death throws. How surprised.

Bullets tinked and tacked all the way up the stairs after me, a few of them making bubble-like dents in the thin sheet of armor that stood between us.

In clicks, the mech was knocking on the door with the clank of metal on metal. "Come out with your hands up and you will not be harmed." Its voice was deep and grainy, but no less human than my own.

I snapped out of my stupor. Mech units had access to multiple different voices. They could sound like whatever they wanted, even impersonating famous people perfectly, but mostly they used the same metallic robot voice that distinguished them from humans. It didn't want that now though. It wanted my trust.

"Frak you!"

He hadn't given Rico any chance to surrender.

I looked around for anything I could use but I was in a reinforced coffin with a gun that only pointed outward. I still had my rifle, but that wouldn't pierce G-series armor even at close range.

All the stronger ammunition was downstairs, the other side of the thing trying to kill me.

Was it rogue?

Reprogrammed by militants?

I slammed the gun against the railing at my feet, trying to force it to point down the stairs but it was impossible. It swiveled as far as the edge of the window, but the metal supports prevented it from going further.

Then the bashing started again, but it was no longer an attempt to gain my attention. The G-series weren't the strongest of the infantry but they were strong enough to break down the door.

The situation was hopeless. The gun blocked the only way out and I had nothing with which I could destroy my attacker. It was only a matter of time before he came through that door.

My thoughts turned to my family. I had no wife or girlfriend to speak of. My relationship history consisted of a few drunken fraks with other soldiers that I barely remembered even the morning after. I wanted children, someone to love and love me back.

Dreams.

Nothing that could quiet the smack, smack, SMACK.

The mech had picked up a rhythm. Two soft hits and then a hard one that seemed to reverberate through my whole body.

My heart pounded through my chest as if it was going to rupture. I could taste iron at the back of my throat, and the air clawed at my lungs like smoke.

Smack, smack, SMACK.

If I didn't act soon I was dead.

I took my rifle and fired several shots at the base of the tower gun, each bullet ricocheting instantly until several of them pinged off my suit. I felt no pain to indicate they had penetrated it, but neither did they break the supports that held the gun on the rail.

That had to be the key.

The rail kept the gun pointing out the window so its operator could fire rapidly without accidentally hitting the wall. If I managed to free the gun, I could spin it to shoot at the mech.

I fired again. One of the bullets zipped through my ear, and I groaned, pressing against the bloody tear.

Smack, smack, SMACK.

The bashing was getting louder.

Smack, smack, SMACK.

The door started to dent. The mech smacked at the top corner, intent on folding it inward to spray bullets down. I was completely defenseless, my helmet sat somewhere near Rico's corpse.

I placed the tip of the rifle right next to the end of the rail and fired again.

This time the rail broke, a dull snapping sound dwarfed by the crashing storm, but it would make all the difference. I dropped the rifle, grabbing the powerful machine with both hands and twisting it round. The gun continued rotating where earlier it was blocked by the rail, but it was not enough. The barrels jammed against the wall as it curved around. The arc of the wall was too steep, and even as I tried to twist it back it would not go, leaving the gun useless.

Smack, smack, SMACK.

The door was bending inward so that I could see flashes of light on the other side as the fist came away. I had no choice but to go out the window and be ripped to shreds in the rock storm. There was a metal tray attached to the gun base that looked sturdy enough. I fired a few rounds at the joint and it fell loose.

Ripping the strap off my rifle, I threaded it through the holes at the sides designed to hold cups of drink.

Smack, smack, SMACK.

The corner of the door caved. Two more bashes and the gap enlarged enough for a hand. A grenade sunk through the air in front of my eyes, clunking at my feet. It rolled in a little circle around its pointed tip without bouncing even a cim.

My heart exploded into fragments of vibrating meat as I gripped the device and threw it out the gun hole. Heat and noise shot straight back up again almost blinding me as it detonated in mid-air.

The base would see that. Help would come.

I rammed the point of the rifle in the gap in the door and pulled the trigger. Bullets would not break the mech's armor, but the gun plugged the hole. Tethering the tray to my head with the rifle strap, I climbed out of the window.

Instantly, I felt the mud and stones falling from the sky, clanking and splatting against the tray. If it slipped back now the falling stones would reduce my head to mush in a matter of instants.

It was impossible to look up and see the roof so I probed for it with both hands, standing on the window ledge. The ground was too far and I didn't trust myself to swing onto the main outpost so there was no choice but up to the domed roof of the tower.

Mud stung my eyes and I felt the stones reverberate through my crudely constructed helmet. Sparing no time to test the grip, I pulled myself up, scrambled across and I threw myself head first onto the ceiling above the spiral stairs.

The tower exploded at the same instant. Chunks of wall fired in all directions and rained down with the rest of the debris. The force rolled me off the edge like tissue paper. I hung for a moment before the ceiling slipped through my fingers, dropping me onto the roof of the main shelter.

The ceiling collapsed behind me sealing off the stairs and the tower. Again, I rolled off the side and onto the ground, no clue where the mech was. For a moment, my helmet slipped and I felt the sharp pain of several small objects hitting my bare skin. I groaned as I righted it, but I was lucky only to be hit by mud and grit.

I couldn't run back to base, that was just delusion. This mech was not the product of Dygian militants reprogramming it. Dygians hated mechs. They were no cyber-terrorists. They thought mechanical life was an abomination, which meant this was something else. Help should have arrived by now. Even in a rock storm the base would know we were in trouble. If I returned to base, there was no guarantee I wouldn't just find more mechs waiting to fill my bag of meat with holes.

I peeked around at the remnant of the gun tower and saw the two red dots burrowing through the darkness. It was standing there in the open sky, stones and mud pelting its almost indestructible metal shell, the tower reduced to little more than rubble at its feet.

I hid again as my heart pumped lava around my body. The mech was blocked off from the shelter by the collapsed stairs. One hand in my pocket I felt the key, and I ran to the door to let myself inside, discarding my makeshift helmet.

Rico's lifeless body was propped up against the wall, his legs flat on the ground and body bent double as if inspecting himself.

I ran past him to the crate at the back throwing open the lid. There had to be something in them that would kill a mech.

Food. Several hundred useless bars of waxy nutrients.

I threw the crate aside and opened the next one. That was more like it. A47 BAC guns. They were small – no more than a pistol to the eye – but were basically miniature rocket launchers, easily powerful enough to reduce a G-series to scrap.

I froze.

The mech stared at me through the view slit. Two red spots pierced me like nails, rooting me to the floor, as if it could kill me with a look, but no sooner did I believe it might succeed then it turned away and headed for the door.

It moved quickly out of sight of the slit, leaving me a few clicks at most. It would expect me to fire at the wall. The other side it would be moving erratically so I could not predict its location.

They were faster than men, more accurate, even in a rock storm. One on one it would kill me for sure.

Again, I saw the wife and kids I would never have.

I needed somewhere to hide but there was only the space behind the crates. The rest of the room was bare except for Rico.

I ran to Rico pulling him away from where he lay in open view of the door, dumping him behind a few of the crates. Then I sat in his place drooping over as he had done.

The door opened, though I was sitting the wrong side to see the mech. A grenade arced through the air and clunked in front of the crates – no chance of throwing it back from where it expected me to be hiding.

I braced for the explosion.

Heat filled the room burning my skin. I crumpled away from it. Shrapnel sparked noisily around me, but none created the damp sting of pierced flesh. The ceiling began to crumble, and mud and stone penetrated the interior. The corner where the crates had been opened into the Sanbrecks, and the polluted darkness flooded in, shattering between flashes of white and yellow. The mech stepped forward, giving me only the slightest look as it turned to see the other side of the door. I pulled the trigger and watched its armor rupture into a hole about the size of a fist, a rough circle all the way through. The two red dots went out before it hit the ground.

I rose. Protected by the suit, my body had been shielded from force and fire, but my face was burned and my right eye filled with water even as I closed it. Liquid streamed down my cheek soothing the throbbing flesh that felt like scales beneath my fingers. Only my scalp was not burned, protected by hair now singed away. Fortunately, the BAC guns still in the crates were designed to survive grenades, otherwise the building would have been a crater, and me a steaming pile of bones.

I took a moment to find my helmet, but it had been destroyed by the blast. So had Rico's. My only option was to make a new one out of a piece of charred crate lid.

I wasn't going back to base. The Federation had to be warned. If it turned out to be a rogue mech, then fine. If not, then the earlier people knew that we were just bags of meat to them, the more time we had to make an effective defense. I would head down the mountain as fast as I could go.

I spat on the mech on the way out, shut the door and turned to see three Dygian militants with guns pointed right in my face.

Chapter 3

Admiral Copeoia Paw

VCHQ

New Beijing, Vicarin

I sat behind a desk made from Old Earth teak once owned by Chairman Mao that had been transported lightyears across the galaxy. It was now a symbol of Vicarin's heritage that was worth more than most mansions. Only the Admirals of The Federation possessed such relics, and I was the second most powerful of ten, after Grand Admiral Reiner. Still, Carl Genson thought nothing of keeping me waiting. It was not beyond possibility that my Chief of Intelligence wouldn't show up at all, if he deemed something else worthier of his time.

The tray of food laid out for the meeting was a paltrier selection than usual. Tiny cubes of white cheese sat atop slug-like vegetables, and veiny fruits stank of vinegar as they fermented beneath their skin. These things were not my usual diet. I liked meat, and the bloodier the better. If I'd killed it myself that was a bonus, but at my last medical the doctor recommended I cut down on the finer things.

Initially, I told him he could cram it up his ass, but then his face turned a pale shade of white, and he stuttered as he asked me to strip. My body disconcerted most men; with arms like war hammers and a face beaten out of shape by cycles of ring-fighting, I emasculated them as I towered over them. I told him to stop quivering and prescribe me a diet that I'd try out for a few weeks. Pity had always been my weakness. My brothers used to joke that the two of them together couldn't wrestle my toys from my grip, but all they had to do was shed a tear, and I would hand them over. This was my reward, withered vegetables that looked chewed and smelled partially digested.

When Genson finally appeared through the door to my office, he was smiling unapologetically. He wasn't small by most people's standards, but his hair would barely tickle my chin. Mud caked the bottom of his trousers where the fabric had ripped beneath his boots, dangling behind his legs in a crusted train. The result was a sort of puddle smell that lingered in the carpet.

His appearance was kindly, reflecting a favorite childhood teacher with a fondness for chess. His shabby clothes and ill-concern for his appearance – even his health – evinced a modesty that was almost magnanimous, and he always wore a mask of sincerity. In truth, it was not charm that begot Genson his position as Head of the Vicareen Intelligence Agency; he was a man to whom the ends always justified the means, and he would happily murder 20 men with his own hands to save one of more importance to the VIA.

"Bad news, Admiral." It was always bad news with Genson. He was an omen of misfortune. His handsome face was paper white, and the stubble clung to his cheeks like iron filings. His once black hair, still thick, was bleaching with every passing cycle. Only the blue in his eyes proved that he was not some grayscale invader from a universe as black and white as his attitude.

"Sit down," I said, "and have something to eat."

He bowed his head in a sort of perfunctory nod that a person might offer a relative who was a bit slow on the uptake. "Most kind, Admiral. I will do that, though you might retract the offer when you hear what I have to say."

I nodded, glancing at the repugnant food in front of me. He was welcome to every mouthful.

Genson picked up a shriveled red thing and popped it into his mouth completely undaunted. He was not impressed by the navy floor with the image of the Admiral's kraaken in the middle, or the furniture made for the rulers of Old Earth. He knew that the VIA was out of my grasp.

Each of the seven Federation states had its own intelligence agency dealing with the external threats specific to that state. In Vicarin and Rychorrea, which together made up the Stormlands, the main threat was the Dygians, and Genson was obsessed with Lilt, the largest of the eastern islands, separated from our coast by a narrow straight.

"Let me guess," I said. "You've found some reason we need to invade Lilt, and this time if I don't listen, the Stormlands will be sucked into Cythuria."

He smiled, hiding his irritation. Genson prided himself on being one step ahead of everyone, controlling us with his schemes, but he had come to me so often with terror threats and biological weapons plots that his agenda was plain. There were even suggestions that he was equipping Dygian militants to exaggerate the threat. It was not beneath him.

Behind that smile, his mind was constantly active, plotting the destruction of his enemies. He hated me long before I acceded to the Admiralty, probably because my parents were agitators obsessed with the return of a powerful civilian government. Worse, I married a civilian minister, and Genson didn't trust anyone with unsavory connections. If he could, he would have rounded up anyone with a relative in a protest, or who wasn't at least three generations Federation, and he'd dump them all into the Bellarion Sea. It didn't matter that we both came from the third wealth; which was as humble as they come in High Order; Genson was a watchdog for the establishment. His roots forgotten, his purpose was the protection of the powerful few from the powerless masses.

"President Wrenkler has shot down one of our drones," he said.

I nodded. "Where was this drone when he shot it down, right before we enter peace negotiations?"

He searched for an answer, running a hand through the white hair over his ears. "We were collecting data over Little Cor when it was shot down–"

I sighed. Little Cor was Lilt's capital. "After I'd told you to shut down all reconnaissance missions until the negotiations?"

He plucked a brownish fruit from its stem and brought it unhurriedly to his mouth. "You instructed us to shut down all land reconnaissance, and we did."

I closed my eyes as the muscles in my fingers tensed, but I was not as adept at internalizing my emotions as he. My hand slammed down on the table and the tray of food leapt into the air. "That's because you assured me that they did not possess the technology to spot our spy drones let alone shoot one down."

He shrugged, undisturbed. "Apparently they do."

"And they know it was our drone?"

He appeared to think about it, his attention for the first time focused away from the food. "We don't label them, but yes, the markings will be Federation."

Lilt was the richest and most powerful of the Dygian islands, but each one had suffered a long reign of despots. Some were frontmen for the VIA, others independent, and others totally mad; none of them had done their people any good. President Wrenkler was their first decent leader in centuries, and I was committed to stabilizing his government. Peace would benefit both nations, but it was not the mandate of the VIA. Genson had accused Wrenkler of everything from communism to tyrannical fascism with a solid dose of religious extremism for good measure. Unable to bait me into a war with him, Genson's efforts had now apparently turned to baiting Wrenkler into a war with us.

"And the negotiations?" I said.

Finally, his boyish smile began to fade, his brow furrowed and his white fringe fell forward. "The drone is technically an act of war. If Wrenkler didn't know it would be the end of his tiny island, he would probably already be mustering forces. He'd be a fool to go that far, but I imagine he will not be as receptive to our peace talks."

His remorse was a costume. Genson would sooner incinerate the entire island than stabilize Wrenkler's government. "I need to talk to him," I said. "Go do your job and bring me some better news."

Genson stood, but made no effort to walk toward the door. "Forgive me, Admiral, but perhaps under the circumstances it would be best to brace for reprisals. He may not invade, but there are plenty of Dygian militants on our soil who will be clamoring for revenge."

I nodded. "Perhaps it would, but I'm not going to damage these peace talks any further."

"With respect, Wrenkler is a dangerous man, and he fills Vicarin with his agents even now."

I stared into him before I stood up, towering over him. "So you've told me."

His smile returned like worms stretching across his face. "Even the truth can fall upon deaf ears."

I resisted the temptation to grab him and hoist him onto the table as I might have done to a less dangerous enemy. "If this situation escalates," I said, "then I will blame you. Reiner cannot protect you if I have it truly in my mind to remove you."

He nodded and turned to leave. "Admiral."

I didn't want a war with my own intelligence agency, but more and more it felt as if it was Genson's agency not mine, as if he was running his own secret government behind my back.

As the door shut behind him, Fariah entered from the other side. She had been listening the entire time, as she always did when I met with Genson. An ugly woman, her skin was pock-marked and covered ineffectually with powdered makeup, while her eyes were ringed in darkness accentuating the curve around the bone. Her long hair might have been attractive if she ever washed it, but instead a layer of grease flattened it over her scalp making her look thin and old.

"He's lying," she said. "If that drone was functioning properly and flying at the correct altitude then there is no way Lilt or any other Dygian island could shoot it down. We fly those things over The Sodalis."

The Sodalis were the most prosperous nation in Cos, and their technologies were often better than our own. If they couldn't spot the same drones, then it confirmed what I already knew. Genson had crashed it deliberately. "How often do these drones malfunction?"

"About as often as heat stroke in the Ice Jungle." There was no sign of humor on her face. My pet spy was as dour as anyone recently widowed, delivering even the wittiest line with stone faced cynicism. "It's Earth Fruit Look," she continued. "Wrenkler is threatening the last of their assets in Lilt, and Genson is a major shareholder. He stands to lose a fortune if the government stabilizes."

EFL was a fruit company owned by a man called Byron Tanner who was as bowtie as they came, and he showed as little regard for his workers as a man eating a steak did for the slaughtered cow.

"I've heard from Tanner on the matter," I said. "Wrenkler is nationalizing farms, and Tanner stands to lose billions if it continues. The little prick wanted me to step in and ban a foreign government from taking control of its own lands." Tanner wasn't actually that little, but he was smaller than me. A pale man with blond hair that only exaggerated his milk-white skin, it was obvious that he'd never even set foot on Dygian soil, so his claim to own most of the countries should have been contested much earlier.

"He'll be compensated for the loss of the farms," Fariah added, "but men like Tanner don't let go of power easily, and when they've got people like Genson on their side most likely they don't let go at all."

I nodded. Working well outside even the ultra-conservative laws of the Federation, EFL extracted much of its huge profit margin by paying its workers less than they needed to survive. Having dug its claws into every land mass large enough to hold a banana tree, the directors had sufficient money and power to buy off most of the governments that might otherwise challenge them. When a ruler arose with a less corrupt outlook, EFL did not sit idle. That was when Genson usually found that the new regime threatened Federation national security and we were persuaded to remove them.

"Even as we speak," she continued, "there are VIA trained assassins wandering around Lilt waiting for the best time to strike. EFL are directly funding all of Wrenkler's opponents including the Free Vicarian Nationalists, while VIA agents are stirring up opposition amongst Wrenkler's own forces and fighting a propaganda war against him."

Listening to everything that went on behind my back was doing little for my stress. I was clenching my fists so hard I could feel the skin stretching over my knuckles. "I don't need shriveled vegetables," I said. "I need rid of Genson. I cut all funding to all operations in Lilt. How are they being paid for?"

Fariah shrugged. "Genson can always find money. Either he takes it from other VIA projects, or he runs operations through the Intelligence Agency of another Federation state. Most likely, EFL will be directly funding much of the ground work. It's highly illegal for a private company to fund the VIA of course, but Genson knows all the tricks."

I took one last look at the tray of rancid foods and swiped the whole thing onto the floor. Smears of white slime and brownish juices dotted around the kraaken's head ruining the navy carpet in an instant. "You think his regime will crumble?"

Fariah considered. "Without our help he cannot fight both the VIA and the drug barons. The two have allied against him and the Dygian cartels are matching Genson's spending cosal for cosal. All Wrenkler's enemies grow stronger while his government weakens against their united front. If he falls and another reign of oppression is ushered in, then Vicarin will be blamed and the next generation of Dygian militants will begin their journey to the Stormlands."

I nodded. Too many had died already in wars without horizon. People like Genson thought we could end the conflict by filling Dygia with corpses, but the truth was that for every person we killed we converted two more into militants bent on our destruction.

I would not pretend to be wearied by it; beneath my breast was the heart of an Admiral, thirsting for conflict, but I was also educated in suffering. I forced myself to see that each life lost was more than a statistic.

"What can we do?" I asked.

Fariah didn't answer, running a single finger over the rough indents of her cheek, she nodded to herself. "Other than reduce Lilt to a crater, nothing. While Genson remains in charge of the VIA, he will obstruct your designs for peace at every turn."

"And I thought I was the Admiral here," I said. "Perhaps then, we should use this drone problem to our advantage and show Genson for the incompetent fool that he is."

"You suggest I leak it to the press?"

I smiled. "And not just the ones loyal to me. We ram this down the throats of every news site that values its own existence. We'll have the masses clamoring for his removal before I grant it."

Fariah looked skeptical. "We can't advertise that it was our bungled drone that crashed without baiting the Dygians into retaliation."

I had an answer for that. "Anyone of importance already knows it was us. Genson said so himself. They are going to retaliate anyway, and even if I spat in Wrenkler's face and kicked him in the balls he isn't fool enough to retaliate officially. There is nothing we can say that will worsen relations between us and Lilt, and a candid admission of guilt might well go some way to repairing it."

The lines around her eyes suggested Fariah disagreed. "We cannot apologize. That would be seen as weakness."

"No," I said, "but we can lay the blame firmly at Genson's feet and show the people of both nations who the bad guys are here."

"It isn't the people we need to worry about." Fariah's voice held a hint of frustration. "Genson has powerful friends, not just the fruit company, but the Grand Admiral as well. Reiner won't abandon him easily."

I laughed. Reiner was the only man in The Federation more powerful than me, but I did not consider him a threat the same way I did Genson. He was too malleable, and I knew just how to manipulate him. "Reiner would murder his own grandmother to protect his image with the people."

Fariah winced almost defensively. "We have tried to get rid of Genson before, but those two men are old friends and Reiner always steps in to save him. That's why he so flagrantly subverts your authority."

"Reiner protects him only because I have not produced sufficient incentive to abandon him," I said. "You don't know our Grand Admiral like I do. He values his public profile above everything. If Genson is making him look bad, then he'll dump him."

"But will it?" she said. "It is just a drone malfunction, and it has no connection to Reiner. Vicarin is your state not his." Fariah could always be counted on to point out the downsides to any plan. If I proposed stepping from one foot to the other, she would point out the danger of mines.

I smiled. "Then we make it about Reiner. The story starts out about how the incompetent spy chief is letting drones get shot down, but we make sure it's made clear that it is Grand Admiral Reiner who is keeping him there, and therefore he is the one who needs to get rid of him. We have plenty of evidence to show he favors Genson. Leaking some of his responses to my attempts to axe Genson should be sufficient."

"The Grand Admiral will not appreciate the attempt to force his hand."

I shrugged. "No, he won't."

Chapter 4

Jamie Vesla

Dygian tunnels

The Lower Sanbrecks, Rychorrea

Deep within the heart of the Sanbrecks where the only boot prints belonged to Federation soldiers or Dygian militants, I sucked in lung fulls of muddy air almost potent enough to taste. I was blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back, my face pressed against the dusty floor of the vehicle. Perhaps it was their plan all along to reprogram a mech and capture a soldier, but I didn't think so. The militants were coming along the Jogan Trail anyway; that was why we were in the outpost. Most likely they came to investigate the fighting.

The vehicle braked suddenly, and grit grazed against my cheek before they hauled me out, carrying me like a rolled-up rug between two of them. I didn't struggle despite my rising panic, but in the silence my mind was running wild. They lowered my legs, and I felt the sides of a hole before someone grabbed my feet on the other side. The wind died, and through my blindfold I could see the dim yellow light of chemical torches. I smelt the stagnant air, concentrated with dust, unique to the tunnels within the Sanbrecks. Without the breeze, the cold was somehow more penetrating, as if it came from within.

The lights finally vanished as one of them pushed me into a hole and slammed a door behind me. I slid down on my front, coming to rest at the bottom with the dislodged stones piled on top of me. Hands tied behind my back, there was little I could do but roll around.

It was more of a pit than a hole, and I felt that if I was properly incentivized I could climb out, even in my restraints, but that would get me nowhere. I was getting out of here with words or not at all. I managed to dislodge my blindfold, but it did little to improve the view. In the damp of the Dygian dwelling without so much as an electric light, it seemed impossible that they were responsible for the mech's behavior. Even if they were capable of it, they gained nothing. I was just a grunt and the information I could give them was as little as the ransom they would get for me.

The only thing that made sense was that the mech was part of something bigger. He was sent there to kill the two of us while the rest of the units killed the soldiers on the base. Most likely they used the rock storm to prevent communication between bases and keep the operation secret. If so, then Base 67 was just the beginning.

Lost and alone, I could not dismiss the idea that a rebellion had begun capable of destroying The Federation. Even if Base 67 was an isolated event, induced by Gobena's mad hatred, it would not remain so. The mech traitors would need to persuade other bases to rebel or they were finished. The military needed to be told, and fast.

For cycles I'd listened to all the propaganda telling me the Dygians were our enemies. I'd seen the videos of the decapitations, the burnings, and the stonings, and my hatred grew. I watched a video in basic training of man's head rolling back off his body to reveal the darkened meat, and I learned to fear ending up in one of these holes. The Dygians were brutal, but they were still people. They had faults and weaknesses, compassion and families. They were not machines designed to kill with merciless efficiency. The ensuing apocalypse had to take priority over my personal feelings, or everything would be lost.

Mum and dad lived so close to Base 107 that they could see it from the upper windows at the back of their house. Denny was an air force pilot. The thought of what might happen to them created a knot in my throat that wouldn't shift. If the mechs wanted control of the skies my sister would be amongst the first casualties. I could not help the feeling that I owed my captors a warning of what lay ahead. Even if they killed me, perhaps they could warn the rest of Cos.

My conditions did not indicate trust. I saw nothing. The loose mud and stones that ran through my fingers were no more visible than the particles of the night sky. The only sounds came from my movements. Stones clicked together and dirt crunched beneath my weight.

Minutes seemed like hos, and hos seemed like days. I had no idea how long I spent in the pit, but when the door opened a man and a quilla appeared above me holding a glo-light that burned its shape onto my retinas. There were few quilla in The Federation, but the huge snake-like creatures made up about half of the Dygian faith. They practiced the religion prior to our arrival on Cos, spreading their beliefs to humanity during the Rathjarin War for the planet's dominance.

A 2.5-met long legless reptile, this one was short for his species, but still easily big enough to intimidate me. His body formed an S-shape, bringing his head to the same height as the man next to him. He was not dissimilar to the anacondas of Old Earth but for the two rows of bone knives on his top and bottom jaws capable of chewing even the toughest meats like a mincing machine. A set of fronds hung down from the tip of his snout like budding ferns ready to be extended at need. They looked weak, but they were full of muscle, easily capable of lifting something as heavy as their owner.

Unlike humans, quillan skin color was not determined genetically, but by the surroundings they inhabited during their early cycles, and this one was the same reddish-brown as the walls behind him; only his yellow eyes revealed that he was not part of the rock. He bared his teeth at me menacingly, his fronds shooting forward, wrapping around my shoulders, and hoisting me out the pit. I recognized him as Vos Lomek, the third most wanted sentient in The Federation.

No one living had seen him since his own bomb went off, too early, when he was surprised by a Federation patrol. He killed them all, but not without a piece of shrapnel carving its way through his face. The military found his lost flesh at the scene, and pictures of it filled the news sites the next day asking the entire nation if they'd seen the scarred quilla. No one had, so the fact that I was staring at him now did not bode well.

Faced with a person who killed Federation civilians and soldiers both, it was difficult to retain the abstract camaraderie I felt for the Dygians while I was alone. Another frond uncurled before he put me down, sliding round behind me to free me from my restraints. He dropped me without a word and gestured toward the door.

I walked in front of the two of them down the dirt tunnel, no one making so much as a whisper. Excuses and lies flashed across my mind that might persuade the murderous snake to let me live, but at terminus all my reasons amounted to begging, and he would not get that satisfaction from me.

"Turn left," said the man.

We entered a small alcove containing one other person wearing the white Dygian robes that normal militants avoided because of their impracticalities. The flimsy fabric offered little protection against the falling debris or the dust squalls, and the wearers stood out like an igloo in the Baesian dunes. But this man didn't need to worry about that. His pale skin accentuated a single vein running down his forehead, and his eyes trembled beneath a sclerotic film as if he was reading something that nobody else could see. Koben Merllios had not been outside since his withered features had been pasted all over the Federation Most Wanted boards almost a decade distant. His gray beard had thinned noticeably since then, leaving wisps of hair almost as solitary as their owner.

He stood as Vos Lomek followed me in and gestured to a seat.

I pulled out the chair and sat down. The furniture appeared to have been smuggled in bit by bit and assembled beneath the mountain. G-tape and ultra-glue ran across multiple fractures holding the seat together. If my captors were too cautious even to use whole chairs, there was little chance I was leaving their base alive after seeing their faces.

"Do you know who we are?" asked Merllios, his tone more curious than aggressive.

"Course he does," said Lomek, slithering to the other side of the table. His voice was deep even by the standards of his species, seeming almost mechanical in its low rumble.

The third man, who I did not know, sat closest to the entrance. He was much younger than the other two. His ginger hair and the explosion of freckles across his beardless face gave him an affable look that contrasted the severity of the others.

I nodded.

"Good," said Merllios. "Then you will know that for us to show ourselves to a Federation soldier, even in our custody, must represent dire circumstance."

My body tightened. "What did you see?" I asked, momentarily forgetting myself.

Lomek's teeth clacked with amusement. "We're not prisoners in your base, boy. We ask the questions here, and if you don't answer them to our satisfaction my teeth will be in your throat before the ho is out."

I shrugged, trying not to look at the four rows of razor sharp teeth capable of sinking through the armored flesh of the Vasbesian giants inhabiting his home land. "Why should I tell you anything when you're going to kill me anyway?"

Lomek straightened, towering as high above me as the ceiling would allow. "If all we wanted from you was information, boy, then you'd be strapped to a very different looking chair."

Merllios raised a hand to Lomek. "Alright my friend, he gets the picture." The old man's hairless brow furrowed as he faced me. "We saw you kill the G-series and we would like to know why?"

I said nothing, so he continued. "Is it possible that you have become disillusioned from your Federation and might wish to join our cause?" His hands unfolded welcomingly. "We could use such a person as yourself if that is the case. You would be well provided for, and we would not ask you to hurt those you consider friends."

Again, I said nothing, but this time I did not know what to say. For several moments, I considered the lie. I could wait until they trusted me and then escape. It was the safest course. Part of me was ready to leave them to rot, lying through my teeth until I could escape to warn the people that mattered, but these people were not naturally trusting. It would take time to earn enough respect for them to turn their backs, and by then it might be too late. Globally about 70% of the armed forces were mechs, and if they were about to go to war with the rest of us then the cataclysm would be so vast that even the Dygians had a right to know.

I shook my head. "It wasn't like that. He attacked me. Possibly it was just one malfunctioning unit, but I don't think so. I think it was a plan to kill every human on Base 67." I explained what happened in as much detail as I could, but when I finished Merllios gave no indication of having listened. For a moment silence descended on the room as if my voice had just been drips from a gutter slowly petering out.

Finally, the old man rubbed the wisps on his chin. "I'm afraid my question was a test to observe your willingness to deceive us. We watched the mechs murder three of your soldiers as they tried to flee, and further observations lead us to believe that you are the last survivor of Base 67."

Lomek's fronds lifted to reveal his triangular teeth. "Had you failed our test, the conversation would have taken a different tone from here."

The ginger man squirmed in his seat. "As far as we can tell, the rest of Cos appears entirely unaware of the outcome here."

"We are concerned," said Merllios, "that this might not be an isolated event." His blind eyes flickered weakly. "Long has the Dygian faith prophesied this outcome."

Prophesied was understating it. The Cosian faiths had done everything in their power to provoke rebellion. The machinations of the Felycian church had made Gobena's petty malice towards the mechs seem like name calling by comparison. Felycian was the newest mainstream religion, forming when humanity arrived on Cos by combining Old Earth Christianity with the Cosian religion of Von Bok under the assumption that the saviors in each religion were one and the same. During the reformation, a lot of the more barbaric passages were removed from its texts, making it generally less violent than the ancient religions, but mechs had not been invented then, and the Felycians watched the construction of artificial consciousness with as much abhorrence as the other faiths. There were Felycian bishons and Dygian shepherds alike who advocated civilian uprising to remove the mechanicals from Cos. If the mechs were truly rebelling, then Merllios' prophecies were as likely to be the cause as anything.

The old man coughed. "If the events taking place here last night were the result of a wider conspiracy of the units making up most of your armed forces, then we are not talking of a problem that will be easily overcome."

The ginger man snorted. "It will be gorram Cythuria in Cos!"

Merllios winced. "Control yourself Pelec, and if you cannot, then at least control your language."

I could have laughed was the situation not so dire. The blind man was responsible for enough corpses to fill a trench, yet he was offended by a simple curse. "I agree," I said. "If the mechs are rebelling, then our differences are obsolete. We will all be extinct if we don't come together."

"But we cannot trust your Federation to respect an alliance with the Dygian people," Lomek boomed. "We have warred too long and too ferociously for your Admirals to let us live even if we hold the key to your salvation."

"Which as it happens," said Merllios, "we might." The old man grinned brandishing an incomplete set of teeth. "We have no mech infantry. Our faith forbids the creation or usage of your so-called AI. If your armed forces do not notice the conspiracy in time, as they currently do not appear to be doing, then your trained personnel will be depleted and outnumbered."

"Then we must warn them before it's too late," I said. "Not even the mechs could destroy our entire military in a single night. A few of the remote bases may be overrun, but the main bastions can still be saved."

Pelec nodded, but Lomek's yellow eyes narrowed. "For all we know, this is some elaborate trick to get us to reveal our whereabouts to your government. We cannot take the risk until we are sure the threat is real."

I was about to answer when Pelec cut in. "Even The Federation does not cry wolf so loudly. The threat is real. The only question is whether we join to overcome it, or let our mutual distrust destroy Dygia and Federation alike. We must let him warn his people."

"We know your feelings on the subject," said Lomek, glaring at the red-haired man, "and I don't care to hear them again."

"Then hear mine," I said, trying not swallow as his snake eyes shot back to me. "If there ever was a chance for peace between us then it's now, but that only lasts while you have something to offer. Once the mechs attack, you will only be telling them what they already know, and their gratitude for it will be much reduced."

"I disagree," said Merllios calmly. "Information is good, but we have other things you will need, and the longer we wait the more you will need them. Returning you unharmed will be our show of good faith."

I stared at the old man as his pupils shivered beneath translucent cataracts, slowly grasping his intent. "You want us to furnish your army with weapons! You don't want a partnership at all, you want us to be reliant on you." I shook my head to show their naivety. "By the time The Federation is reliant upon your tiny islands, we'll all be long since doomed to extinction."

"Perhaps," Merllios said, "but sometimes you have to take risks to improve things. We could offer aid to a fully functional Federation, but do you honestly believe your Admirals would accept it?"

"You're insane," I said. "You risk everything for what? A chance to be some sort of hero? This isn't about religion or nationality; it's about survival, and if you let me warn my people, I promise to devote every resource I possess to forming an alliance between our two nations."

Lomek's teeth clacked like an army of locust beetles. "Even if we didn't doubt your intentions, it would not be enough. Your superiors would not believe you, and the more loyalty you showed to us the more they would distrust you. Our decision is final. We must wait until we are sure that the mech uprising is not fabrication."

"You wait for your own selfish gain," I said, but the meeting was over.

They marched me to a different room with a sandwich and a can of tang placed on a table, and that was where I spent the next few days. It was impossible to be more accurate as there was no sign of the suns and my tablet was confiscated. My door opened occasionally and someone brought in food or talked to me for a few minutes, but it was not enough to keep me sane. My activities included one game of chess with a guard, a chat about network shows with a man who sounded like he'd never seen a network screen, and drinking a bottle of wine that tasted like fermented rats. Drinking it with my head pointed at the ceiling and my throat open, my intent was to allay my anxieties, but intoxication alone and in captivity only deepened my misery and deepened it again when the effects wore off.

Denny and my parents were in increasing danger every day I wasted, but nonetheless I was silent for the most part. Occasionally, it would get to me and I spent a few mins shouting curses at Merllios, bellowing every ineffectual word I could think of into the mud and rock. I dreamed of corpses walking the street and awoke freezing on a mat damp with my own sweat. No one listened and no one cared.

I awoke to see Pelec standing over me. "Quiet," he said, placing a hand over my mouth. "I'm getting you out of here so you can warn your people."

I stared at him for a moment, almost mistaking him for a corpse in my sluggishness, but I followed him to the door. He peered out and the two of us jogged down the passage. The base was much bigger than our intelligence suggested. Dark passages branched in every direction like a maze. The dry earthy smell of the tunnels gave them the feel of a mass grave. Sometimes Pelec would slow, and we passed an alcove with the door shut suggesting inhabitants, but I saw no sign of life other than Pelec until finally the passage widened and he raised a hand for me stop.

He turned the corner and was gone from view. I crouched and waited, listening for a clue as to what was happening, but after a quick, "hello," in which Pelec referred to someone by name there was a shuffle and then silence. Pelec returned with tears running down his face, accentuating his freckles with a shiny wetness. Blood covered his hands as if he had gutted an animal. "Come on."

I followed, stepping over the guard's body. A gash ran across the man's neck, both hands lying limply on his chest where they had fallen away from his throat. The entrance turned out to be a hole at the intersection of the wall and the ceiling. It was barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through, seeming impossible that it could lead to such a vast network of tunnels. I had no idea that such bases even existed. Our intelligence suggested that there were a series of very small bases dotted around the Sanbrecks that barely merited a search. I'd imagined squat little holes with a bunch of haggard people crouched around a fire, nothing on the scale of this.

We began the route down the mountain, and the night sky with the distant light of Kiril was bright in comparison to the tunnels, even obscured by the dark clouds. I knew better than to ask where we were, but I didn't recognize the peaks around me. They were not so different to the ones around Base 67, but there were subtle alterations. The rock was a paler, reddy brown and the pointed summits were replaced by jagged cliff faces as if the mountains in this area had been split in two. We were surrounded by rocky protrusions that were impossible to navigate without knowing the way. Possibly, we were no longer even in the lower Sanbrecks.

"Did you bring weapons?" I asked as he stopped behind a big rock to observe ahead.

He got up and began walking down the steeper of the two routes branching away from us, muttering, "I've killed enough people for one night."

We followed a path only in the sense that it was a narrow bit of flat ground in between walls of rock, but I doubted anyone but Dygian militants had walked it in cycles. The Sanbrecks were not like other mountains where you could stand at any point and see everything for kims in all directions. The rock storms had slowly chipped away at the softer rocks creating passages dug into the side of mountain capable of concealing men and even vehicles from people 20 mets distant. The Dygians took full of advantage of the shelter, and there were many areas that they knew better than we did.

"What about my tablet?" I said, catching Pelec up, "or something to let people know before we trek down the mountain?"

He shook his head. "Those devices are detectable by your military. We're on our own, but you must promise me to do as you said and create an alliance between our peoples."

I could not refuse. He had helped a Federation soldier escape and killed one of his own. They would murder his entire family for that.

I offered him my hand. "I am no Admiral to dictate the will of The Federation, but I will do my utmost to achieve peace between us."

His freckled face looked as mistrustful as the quilla and the blind man, but he had come too far to turn back.

We shook, and I remembered how Merllios was willing to wait until the Federation had been decimated before he offered help. For a click, I considered what if there was no uprising and this was all a huge mistake. Would I return to being the same man who spent the last cycle killing Dygian militants? I felt even as I followed the man who rescued me that I could. Merllios and Lomek had assuaged any sympathies I had for their cause. Pelec was a better man, but sometimes good men got caught up with the bad.

We ran across open stretches, keeping low and staying close to the rocks. Militants and mechs would be searching for us, and I was relying on Pelec to be able to steer us away from danger. The mechs would have little idea where the Dygian base was, but they could comb the mountain with surveillance. Now the rock storm had passed we could be spotted by satellites without a mech coming within 100 kims. If we stopped then we were finished.

By the time the light of Kaymon could be seen in the East, I was exhausted. The cartilage in my knees felt like rubbing metal plates, and my legs vibrated from the strain, but as long as Pelec didn't stop than neither would I. Neither of us wanted to be the one to falter. We both knew what depended on us getting down the mountain as fast as possible.

It was not so much the distance that tired me as the gradient. My legs vibrated so hard it felt like something was boiling inside them. The flat bits provided no relief because we sprinted across them, and at points Pelec would disappear over the side of a chasm and I would rush to the edge only to see him descending vertical walls which bloodied the tips of my fingers as I followed.

Eventually it was too much. Just for a moment Pelec's knee gave out and he staggered forwards, catching himself before he fell.

"That's it," I said. "We need to stop."

Pelec shook his head. "Wait until we get to those boulders up ahead, then we can use them as shelter in the daylight. It will be safer not to travel in the light anyway."

I nodded, and we continued, though the boulders seemed like a mirage staying ever in the distance. By the time we reached them I thought my heart would explode. Every breath was full of grit, my mouth dryer than a furnace full of ash. I collapsed against a boulder and Pelec collapsed almost on top of me.

"You know how many Federation soldiers I've killed?" he said, rasping every word.

His red hair and freckled face created a kindly portrait that seemed impossible to belong to a hardened killer. Only the frown between each of his heavy breaths demonstrated the pain beneath the surface.

"I bet I've killed more of you," I said.

He coughed, struggling for breath as beads of sweat ran down his face. "Seems stupid now. All these factions hating each other. The Sodalis, The Federation, Felycia, Dygia, what difference does it make in the face of an army of robots intent on destroying us all?"

"We don't know their intent yet," I said.

He grabbed a canister of water from his bag and handed it to me. "You think your military will listen to us?"

I swigged, feeling the water splash around my mouth before I answered. "All we can do is try."

He nodded. "I've killed seven soldiers in the name of freedom from Federation oppression, and now we're short seven men."

Chapter 5

Despite her confident self-portrayal, Admiral Copeoia Paw was not the arch manipulator she believed. A gifted leader with an honest concern for the less fortunate, she was no match for the connections and ruthlessness of a man such as Carl Genson who predicted her intent long before she considered it. He knew she would try and use the drone crash against him, and all the major media corporations were riddled with his spies.

Most of the owners of Federation news sites were far more inclined towards President Wrenkler's abduction and murder than toward continuing his government, and when those individuals were caught between the threats of the Admiral and those of the VIA, they immediately chose to side with the VIA.

Others less inclined to support Genson because of agendas that conflicted with those of Earth Fruit Look, or in fewer cases because they cared about the fate of Wrenkler's government, still found themselves supporting the VIA chief under the threat of aggravated repercussions to their companies.

Of course, Admiral Paw had also promised repercussions for disobedience, but the more astute journalists, editors, and managers realized that to do much of the promised damage, the Admiral would be reliant on information provided by the VIA.

A few news sites printed the story as depicted by the Admiral, mostly the militant left-wing sites that only a very small percentage of the population took seriously, many of which might have automatically blamed the VIA without her influence. In fact, Fariah had given serious thought to not contacting those sites because a much larger percentage of the population would regard with additional skepticism any opinions they held. She had only relented under the Admiral's express orders that every Federation news site was to be united on this issue.

Thus, while the Admiral's response to the first wave of press coverage was anger accompanied by a dull nausea, Genson's reaction was pleasure followed by the voracious hunger he often felt after witnessing the fruits of his labor. After a few chicken cubes from a self-heating pot and a bit of bread ripped from the end of a loaf, he decided he could make use of the event to observe which news sites had sided against him, and promptly set about destroying them. It is perhaps one of the sadder condemnations of The Federation that even once the war began, several resources that could have contributed to fighting the mechs were still set to the purpose of intimidating journalists and obstructing distribution of information under the guise of national security.

Admiral Copeoia Paw

The Dygiax

Little Cor, Lilt

"The press have taken to attacking Genson with the expected reticence," said Fariah.

I was staring at a network screen as we both sat in a slider heading to meet President Wrenkler in Lilt's capital, Little Cor. A few sites had rebuked Genson's incompetence, but fewer still had mentioned Reiner's favoritism for the spy chief. Most mentioned the drone crash, but it was only loosely tied to the VIA, and if Genson was mentioned it was only as the head of the organization, while several sites suggested that Wrenkler may have framed the whole thing.

"Why?" I said, barely able to contain my frustration.

Fariah shrugged, her acne scars as severe as burns. "The VIA have connections everywhere. The press prints what they want them to print."

There were a few notable exceptions even among the more conservative sites. News Vicarin had attacked Genson with the vehemence of a cornered predator, calling him an incompetent overlord of an organization that was as dangerous to The Federation as it was to our enemies, but that aside I could see my attempt to use Genson's machinations against him had failed.

"We need more evidence," Fariah said. "If we don't provide the press with the necessary evidence, then even the sites that don't like Genson will not attack a man so well connected."

"Then find the evidence," I said. "If he brought that drone down then someone will know something."

Fariah sat perched on the edge with her hands on her lap as if I'd forbidden her to touch the seat. "I have already set someone to the task. There are still people in the VIA who would see Genson put to pasture."

I nodded. The motorcade was reaching the palace and Fariah would not be able to accompany me inside. "Anything else?"

"Your brother was drunk again, making trouble."

"Hedo?" I sighed. "What now?"

"He punched a senior officer who reprimanded him for the smell of whiskey on his breath."

"According to whom?"

"Someone without reason to be biased."

I snorted. "If there is one thing true of all human beings, it's that they can find reasons to be biased."

"Yes, Admiral." She was trying to humor me, but it did the opposite.

Even the mention of Hedo was enough to thicken my blood, and I had to bite my lip to resist shouting at Fariah simply because she was there. "Fine him, and drop his rank to Commander."

Hedo had always thought he should be the Admiral, and he'd fully expected me to progress his career for him, but I could see his little corruptions would have become big corruptions, and he would have dragged me down with him.

I elevated him to Lieutenant and left him to either make his own way or rot there. He promptly chose the latter and drank his way into being one of the youngest washouts in The Federation officer core. In truth, a fine and a demotion was a lenient punishment for hitting a senior officer, but he wouldn't see it that way. In his head, he was the victim defending his honor from a bully who'd insulted him, and I would be siding against him as always. That was just something I had to accept.

Fariah nodded. "And the press? They may regard his avoidance of court martial as nepotism."

My eyes narrowed. "They better have more sense than to cross me right now after the dis they just pulled. They're gonna pay for this disloyalty." I knew it would cost me, but for some reason I felt a duty toward Hedo. He had been the only one of my family to stick by me when I joined the military. My anarchist parents had disowned both of us, so I would not abandon him as well, not completely. "Get word to my brother that I want to talk to him."

After Genson's crashed drone, I had suggested holding the peace talks on Dygian soil as a good will gesture. The vehicle slowed to a halt, and I stepped out in front of Wrenkler's palace. Wrenkler inherited it from the despot who preceded him, a man named Bergen Praetor, and the lavishness reflected the corruption of his regime. Huge walls and pillars of shimmering green helocite dwarfed even dragons, and carvings ran from floor to ceiling depicting the history of the Dygian islands. Praetor had accepted bribes from every source willing to offer them; drug barons, UFL, religious extremists, even the VIA which he feared and despised. Most of the money went straight into his own pocket to erect lavish palaces and ico-golf courses, until he was finally overrun by the one group he'd failed to consider, his poverty stricken and beleaguered people. Now his main palace was being converted into the Dygiax, the central government building, after the previous residence had been burned down in a last-ditch attempt by Praetor to hold on to power.

Fariah waited in the slider, hidden from sight. As part of the VIA, Genson would quickly dispose of her if he discovered her allegiance. The view of the palace eclipsed much of the horizon, but nonetheless I was taken aback by the blueness of the sky. Lilt was not located far from the shores of the Stormlands, but the small ocean straight that separated them was enough to lose the earthy smear that darkened the Vicareen sky. There was a hint of the swirling rust as the clouds approached Vicarin, but it no longer spanned the entire sky, covering everything in a crusty blanket that could fall in at any moment. Instead, the air was fresh and warm, not the muggy tunnel air of home.

Two guards that looked more like construction workers in their white hats led me inside and showed me into the room where Wrenkler was waiting.

He rose from his seat and walked to meet me. "Good of you to come, Admiral." A man of medium height and good looks, there was also a frailty to him which threatened to hunch him over. Despite being dark skinned his cheeks were pale, while the whites of his eyes were almost pink with intruding blood vessels, and a sickly odor surrounded him like partially digested sugars ineffectively masked by perfume.

He bowed, wrapping his arms around himself as if it was keeping him together. "I wanted to meet you here so you could see the beauty of our new Dygiax." He guided me through the palace to where the meeting would take place. Paintings sat on the floor where previously they had decorated the walls, and carpets lay in rolls like fallen pillars – a testament to Praetor's end. Although the building was full of expensive things of monolithic size, it was not without ugliness. Pipes ran just beneath the ceiling, visibly rusted, and the floor was not always even. It was as if the building was a sham. Looking expensive in the right areas but no better than the rest of the war-ravaged island behind the doors that Praetor kept shut.

"You don't want to keep the paintings?" I asked. "Some of them are very good."

Wrenkler stopped in front of a large portrait that stretched well above his head. "I suspect that they are all very beautiful, but I cannot look at anything Praetor left here without feeling sick." He ran his hand down the side of the frame and pulled it away with the dust stuck to his fingers. "We are selling them all to provide money for the families of his victims. In his death, he will finally give his people reparations."

"I'm sure arrangements can be made for Vicarin to purchase a few."

Wrenkler turned to me, still adorning a sickly smile. "That is very generous, Admiral, but I fear my people would not like to hear that I sold our greatest pieces of art to the nation that is constantly at war with our Dygian neighbors."

"How are Meera and the children?" I asked, changing the subject.

He chuckled with a father's private delight. "Oh they're fine. Life has turned around for them now I'm no longer an outlaw, though I sometimes find myself yearning for the times when there were fourteen of us cramped in a room with a stack of rifles in the middle of the floor. Bringing down a government is a lot easier than running one."

I nodded. It was candor I did not expect when conversing with a Dygian President, and in truth I had never had much respect for weakness in leaders. I sympathized with the poor and the powerless, but that was a more external type of weakness. Rich men who crumbled under the stresses of their duties suffered from an internal weakness that irked me. Life was all about power, and a person who couldn't handle it wasn't worth much.

For want of something better, I said, "I'm sure Praetor left you quite a mess."

He smiled, seeing the contradiction in my eyes. "The great Admiral Paw does not agree, but we are all made different by the Gods. I suppose it seemed easier because I was fighting for the freedom of my people, and now I am fighting to enforce restrictions on them. Many of those I used to call friend and ally have become the troublemakers, and in earnest I have no stomach for it."

His frankness surprised me. "Would you like me fetch you a glass of warmed milk to calm your nerves?" I said, offering him similar candor. The continuation of his administration was dependent upon my support, and my support was dependent on the observation that I was not backing the losing side. Every word he said seemed almost designed to make me withdraw it.

He chuckled, grabbing his fleshless waist. "Leadership comes to some more naturally than others. I am the offspring of two farmers, and if they hadn't both been killed in my youth then I would probably have grown up a farmer as well."

I could have cringed if he were not the President. "If you are as weak as you say then you would do better to keep it to yourself."

Wrenkler continued to lead the way down the corridor showing no sign of being insulted. "I tell you this, Admiral, because it will inform you better on who you are dealing with. Weak I may be, but the love I have for my people gives me strength, and it allowed to me crush Praetor. No matter how much support you offer my regime, I will not be your puppet governor. I would sooner let the whole thing crumble beneath my feet and follow my parents fate at the hands of the Lord of Pink than betray my people. That is who I am, and if you think you can work with me then all the better for both of us, but you should be under no illusion of what our relationship will entail."

I nodded. The Lord of Pink was the drug barren coming to power when Wrenkler was a child, but now he owned as much of Lilt as the government, and he had taken exception to Praetor's end.

"Then you need to know, Mr. President," I said, "that my support for your regime is not unconditional. I have no intention of using you as a puppet, but my interest in keeping you in power is solely in the reduction of militants making their way to Vicarin. You accomplish that and I don't care if you turn the whole of Lilt into a traveling circus."

"Forgive me, Admiral, but The Federation has a strange way of showing it. Even now you occupy two of the three Garb Islands."

"Even now you have terrorist agents infiltrating the Stormlands."

"Terrorists are not government sanctioned," he said, irritation inflecting his voice.

I nodded. "But you could stop them if you wanted."

His eyes widened showing off their carmine hue. "There was a time when I was sufficiently connected to such circles, I do not deny it. Without them this nation would still be ruled by a murdering despot, but I no longer hold sway over their decisions. Several of the more militant groups have declared war on my government simply for holding this peace conference with you."

I held the man's frail gaze. "There are also elements in Vicarin that do not want peace between us."

He patted me on the back as high as he could reach, a new urgency in his step. "But we will show them all."

We walked through a set of double doors to a much larger room with no art or rolled carpets, and a huge table running from end to end with microphones in front of every chair. He walked over and sat at the end of the table. "Come, sit, I have something to show you."

Even sitting, I towered over him, as I did with most men. My bulk dwarfed the chair while he seemed to sink into his, fading into the background. On the table was a paper document, used when the information contained on it should not be spread throughout the network.

He pushed it over to me, his expression suddenly serious. "This is a gesture of faith from my nation to yours. Something more vital to your national security than any information you ever received about threats from Dygian states."

I don't know what I expected when I read the letter, perhaps something about The Sodalis or the houthar King, but not what I saw. I read the transcript from top to bottom, then I read it again while he sat patiently waiting for me to speak.

"You're telling me that our own mech army is in the early stages of rebellion?"

"That was intercepted from one of the militant groups in the Sanbrecks. They witnessed the deaths of several soldiers at the hands of your mech units, and they believe the entire base was lost."

"This is a joke." I stood, almost ready to throttle him in his own palace. Certainly, it was no intercept. Wrenkler was given this information, and if he wasn't playing me directly then the militants were.

"No joke," he said, still sunk into his chair. "They let one of your men go. He should be heading down the mountain with a guide as we speak. You must heed this warning Admiral if you are to survive. Even the mighty Federation can fall from within. I suggest you take this information and do what must be done, and when I have been confirmed correct, perhaps we may come to some arrangement of mutual benefit to us both. I doubt very much your mechs will stop at the borders of The Federation."

I stared into him, analyzing him for some evidence of the lie, but I saw none. "If what you say is true then there may be nothing left of either of our nations by the time this is concluded."

He nodded. "Then believe me when I tell you it is no lie, and investigate this affair for yourself."

I turned to leave, angry at being told of events in my own nation by a little ruler of some backwater island. "If it's true," I said, with all the humility I could muster, "I will not forget where I heard it first."

Chapter 6

Stanley Tucker

Army recruitment camp

Just outside San Baq, Rychorrea

It was three days since I left home, and neither Whiley nor mum had called in a while. I felt bad on both accounts, as I always did about Whiley, but it was for the best. My parents needed to know that officer training was never going to happen, and the longer I went without contacting them the more apparent that became. Henry still lay deactivated at the bottom of my rucksack, not because I was angry with him, or feared what he would say, but because the General could use an active pinyata as a tracer. None of them knew about Warwick so it was impossible for them to find me otherwise.

Every night when Miz Velas went to bed, Warwick and I lay on the sofa together. I slept on the floor next to him using whatever clothes and sheets we could find to soften the cold beams, but even so I'd never slept so well. Each day I awoke feeling free of the future dictated for me from behind a set of girlish curls. If the price of that was a stiff back and dirty clothes, then I would have paid far more.

All I wanted was Warwick, though I never told him. It was just a dream, and like all dreams it was over all too quickly.

I was standing with Warwick in the army recruitment queue waiting for him to leave. Miz Velas stood silently behind us, and men in smudged brown camouflage suits directed the families that had come to say farewell to their loved ones. There was nothing left except for me to do the same with Warwick.

The sky was a carpet of rusted clouds. Explosions of beige bubbled from the umber blanket above as if it had ripped and spilled its insides. Some of the mechs were so well camouflaged I could barely see them against the dirt. The grounds looked like a disaster relief zone, bronze tents covered in armored shells and huge people carriers with guns long enough to seat whole families pointed in every direction. Most of them were long thin beetle-like things standing on turrets that could have been mistaken for legs by a person who had never seen them hover frictionlessly over the land like polystyrene floating down a river.

The whole thing was an omen of death, but there was no changing Warwick's mind. He printed his thumb on the contracts without reservation, making him a member of The Federation Army for the next three cycles. In one ho, our time together would end.

The three of us sat down for jaffee in the only tent that wasn't full of men in uniform or mechs standing as silent as gargoyles. A few of the parents cried as their sons and daughters shifted awkwardly in their seats. One woman was clutching her son's hands across the table as water streamed down her cheeks and her husband sat red-faced in the chair next to her. Some people were hugging, others shaking hands, some sat alone sipping the hot orange drink while they waited for their last free ho to pass before reporting for basic training.

Warwick looked happier than he had any right to be on the day we separated. "I'm heading straight for the top," he said, stretching his cheeks with a huge grin. "I'm gonna make you proud mum. I'll be an officer before you know it."

I bit my tongue to keep my anger from spewing out. A gay man with a traitor's name, he would go far. Physically, even mentally, he was unquestionably a credit to them, but he'd never make it above Commander and he was a fool to think otherwise. Two millennia had passed since the Rathjarin War and Henry Velas was still the worst traitor the Federation ever had.

Most people would have changed their name, but the fact that Warwick would sacrifice neither his heritage nor his military aspirations was a testament to both his courage and his arrogance. His nature was not conducive to a long and healthy life within the military. He would be in the front line of every dangerous operation he could volunteer for, proving himself worthy of the promotions he would never get. Then some Dygian terrorist would blow his head off.

"I don't doubt you'll be Grand Admiral within the cycle," I said, finally managing a smile, though I found it difficult to look at him.

He smiled back, and winked at me as if it were a game.

Miz Velas glanced around, agitated by the crowds. This was her first time outside in nearly a cycle and her storm suit, which was supposed to mold around her body, sagged at her plate-thin middle.

I was never sure exactly what she knew about me and Warwick. Any normal woman would have worked it out almost instantly, but her thought processing wasn't normal, and I maintained the possibility that she thought us nothing more than friends.

She sat silently while Warwick spewed facts about Federation military history, until she stood mid-way through one of his sentences and walked away, presumably to the toilet.

Warwick stopped his pointless dialog as she moved out of earshot. "Come with me," he said quickly. "It's not too late."

I smiled, this time for real. "I'm no soldier, Warwick, you know that as well as I do."

"You are more of a fighter than you know. Most people would have given in to their father by now or panicked about their future, but you've barely even noticed. You're strong, Stan, and the army will make you stronger."

"I've been too involved in you and me to panic."

Warwick didn't smile. His thuggish features morphed into a grimace. "I'm not interested in weaklings, Stan. You aren't weak. If you don't want to kill people then fine, there are plenty of positions more suitable; research and development, engineering, training, you could do whatever you want in the army, but outside it there is nothing. Don't make the same mistake as your girlfriend, thinking you can change the system from the outside. We are a military nation and the army has all the power."

I shook my head. "It isn't me." In that respect, I was much more like Whiley than him. I hated our political system, run by a bunch of dank military stiff-necks filled with contempt for everything that didn't conform to their narrow window of acceptability. "Perhaps I should have been born in The Sodalis," I said.

Warwick took the joke badly. "Best not. We'll be at war with them soon, and I might be forced to kill you."

"Don't talk like that," I said, concerned by his tone.

"They think they're so mighty, but we'll show them." His lips tightened, the creases vanishing. "One day we will destroy The Sodalis and regain our status as the great power in Cos."

"I hope that day never comes," I said, but I could see we would never agree. He was kind and gentle most of the time, but something came over him when speaking of The Sodalis. His gray eyes turned a gaping black that seemed to swallow all the warmth around me. It was our press that was responsible. Not a day went by that didn't fill the network with a stream of headlines about some new tragedy inflicted upon us by The Sodalis. Most of the kids at school swallowed it up as much as Warwick, but I would never believe the General's mantra, and Whiley was filled with the opposite vim. The Sodalis were our enemies, but that did not necessarily make them villains in every respect. There was enough fault for our two nations to share.

When Miz Velas returned, the conversation died and we finished our jaffees in silence. It was a strong brew, and every time I brought it to my lips it filled my senses with a woodland smell from somewhere far outside the Stormlands. Finally, we walked with Warwick as far as we could go before he was the only one allowed past. Two huge S-series mechs that made Warwick look like a dwarf stood as statues barring the entrance to the induction tent. I hugged him and whispered, "Don't do anything stupid."

He laughed. "Bet you I'm an officer before you're a doctor?"

I smiled, but stepped back so he could hug his mum. She walked forwards but then seemed to lose her momentum or forget what she was doing, and just stood there as Warwick wrapped his enormous arms around her. "Look after yourself mum. I'll be back to check on you when I can, and Stan'll come by and check on you as well won't you, Stan?"

I nodded voraciously. "Certainly will, Miz Velas."

She gave me an oddly calculating look before returning her concentration to her son. "Remember that feeding the animals is the same as being eaten."

"Thanks, mum." Warwick hugged her again, though his expression over her shoulder suggested he was as confused by the statement as I was. "Don't worry. There is no sign of a war with anyone except the Dygians, and you can barely call that a war."

"He's right," I agreed. "Things are pretty safe about now." But on the quiet this was far from my opinion. We were on the edge of a precipice cornered by a pack of wolves. The Baelians could return with a new invasion force and unknown technologies constructed on their distant world; The Sodalis flexed its muscle more and more; and the network cried out with rumors that the houthar king was making biological weapons of mass destruction. It seemed that war could swallow Cos at any moment on a scale that would make our little Dygian conflicts look like ants nipping at our toes.

I tensed as he disappeared through the entrance of the armored tent. I was not going to cry on a base full of army grunts.

I felt Miz Velas' fingers on the back of my shoulder, but the hand retracted as if she'd touched something sharp.

I smiled at her, though her thin joyless face was hard to smile at. "Are you alright?" I asked. "He'll be back soon."

"Stay away from my son," she said, turning away even before she'd finished speaking.

It shouldn't have affected me the way it did, but my resilience shattered. Perhaps it was because I had taken her silence about me and Warwick for tacit acceptance. Perhaps I realized I would never be free of people controlling and judging me. I ran, holding back the tears until I was out of sight.

The clouds spanned horizon to horizon with every shade of brown from milky beige to deep oak. It looked more like ceiling than sky, as if the entire planet was all part of the same claustrophobic room. I collapsed beneath a tree on the edge of the grounds. Like all the Stormland's trees, it lacked leaves. The flimsy structures couldn't survive the rock storms so the stems had evolved into warped green skeletons covered in a clear plastic-like substance that gave them a slimy appearance. Forests in the Stormlands were not the vibrant havens of life they were in other places, they had a morbid impression that looked more like fields of antlers covered in snot.

I smudged a tear on my cheek, remembering Warwick's words about my strength. Briefly, I considered signing up. Being a doctor was my calling, but I would be happier with Warwick. Stupid as it was, I would have sacrificed all my aspirations to follow him, but there were also things I wouldn't do. I would never be a soldier.

Finally aware of how alone I was, I dialed Whiley's name. I wanted more than anything to reactivate Henry, but the cost was too high. I would not allow the General to track me through my own weakness.

Whiley answered immediately. "Stan? Where are you?"

"Hi." I tried to hide the sadness in my voice by clearing my throat.

"It's been three days, Stan, where are you? I'm coming to get you."

"No," I said. "I'll come to yours."

"I'm not at mine. Why didn't you call me?" Her tone was suddenly angry.

I flicked a stone out of the mud with my boot, unable to think of an answer. "Where are you?"

"We could meet in the coral fields around the back of Henson Street?"

"See you there." I hung up. Whiley deserved better than me – someone who could give her what she wanted. She could never be what I wanted, and in truth it was difficult even to see her as a friend because our relationship was built on so many lies. Beneath it all was the certainty that eventually she would hate me.

Unable to afford a proper taxi, I called a bubble bike, which arrived shortly and took me to Henson Street. One of the many disadvantages of living in the Stormlands was the transportation. Air travel was impossible below the clouds, so normal cargo ships were banned. Similarly, there was only one species of bird in Rychorrea, the calamage, whose reinforced wings could survive a few minutes of being pelted with debris, allowing the animal to land and hide. Even the sliders required shielding, and normal hover bikes would be a recipe for death. So instead of a cool breeze on my face and the feel of the wind in my hair, I sat in a little egg-shaped shell and looked at the barren land through rounded glass.

I reached the portal to the outskirts of Carasaki and came out the other side. Bubble bikes had their own lane as they were the slowest things on the road, forcing me to watch the train of larger vehicles overtake me as little more than splashes of color.

Whiley was already waiting for me, sitting on a mushroom-like extension of the coral grass as I crunched across the outgrowth of living rock to meet her. These fields were the oddest formations in the Stormlands, all shapes and sizes, they grew with apparent randomness, forming pillars and boulders, shelves and walls. So close to civilization, they grew little higher than my knees, and the most maneuvering I had to indulge was a quick jump to surmount a boulder, but in the reserves where Warwick and I went hunting they grew larger than buildings, and in the great coral jungles at the south of the Stormlands they formed living hills bending and meandering into a maze of tunnels, caves, and pits capable of swallowing men whole and trapping them in living prisons as they were slowly digested.

The coral was an animal-plant hybrid that produced a calcite armor stronger than bone to house its own delicate tissues and provide protection for other animals and plants. There was no soil for the coral to extract its nitrogen and other key nutrients from, so the protection came at a cost. It gained those from its prey, and the bigger the coral the bigger the prey.

Whiley was in no danger though, these fields preyed on nothing bigger than insects and spiders, and we had often come here together to admire the view. There was more color in these small areas than the rest of the Stormlands combined.

Only when I was right next to Whiley did she rise with an expression of anger on her face and hug me. "I'm sorry Stan, your mum told me what happened." I let go of her, and looked into her face. There was no sign of tears. Her eyes seemed to be lined with steel. "Three days, Stan! This morning I just lay in bed for three hos worrying."

"I'm back now."

Her lips thinned. "Where have you been?"

"I'm back now," I repeated, and only then did I realize why I'd come. "We have to break up." I should have done it cycles ago before she felt anything, but I was too scared. After my mother caught me kissing a boy and reported it to the General there was talk of epigenetic alteration – like they did to pedophiles and people who wanked off to starting fires.

Whiley sat down hard on the knobbly green rock, but didn't seem to notice. "Why?"

A loaded question. Just seeing her again made me realize that after experiencing the real thing for even as little as three days, I could not return to the lie. I did not want to be alone, but being with Whiley was no better. "Whatever happens to me now," I said, "we'll still be separating. You have important things you want to do. I'll only hold you back."

She looked at me with a set of beautiful green eyes that most men would gaze upon with longing. There was no anger in her voice, just pain. "That's a pile of dis, Stan, and you know it. Is there someone else? Is that where you've been for the last three days?"

I always imagined that when things finally ended between us it would be with the truth, but I was not ready for her to know. I was too much of a coward to tell her that I had betrayed her for so long. "I need to be alone. I'm sorry." I tried to put my hand on her shoulder but she pulled away.

"I don't understand what's changed? I thought we were happy." She paused, her dark hair swinging in front of her eyes. "I..."

"Don't say it."

"...Thought I loved you."

I had no words for that, nothing except bitter recriminations of my own cowardice and selfishness. In truth, I'd known for a while that she was waiting for me to say the words. Those green eyes made it impossible to tell her the truth, but they also made it impossible to lie to her. Somehow I had become truly and totally responsible for her pain. Warwick was wrong about me. I was weak, and this was the product of it.

In the silence, Cos darkened as a russet cloud stretched across the sky masking Kaymon in a smoky hue. "Has something happened to you?" she asked. "Did your father hurt you?"

I shook my head. Whiley was my last connection to the world I planned to leave behind. Without my parents help I would never be a doctor, but I would never be an officer either. "I hope in time we can be friends," I said. Despite all the lies I was sad to lose her. She had been a source of comfort to me when Warwick was not available.

She snorted sadly, her eyes fixed on the projections of living stone at our feet. "I don't think so, Stan, not unless you can tell me the reason why."

I had nothing. If she'd looked at me then she would have known everything, but she would not. Wetness appearing in the corner of her eyes, she turned to leave. "Your mum said to tell you that if you came back your father has agreed to fund you through medical school."

I watched her leave. We had come here frequently together. It was one of her favorite places, teaming with life in a land that was so barren of it. The living stone provided protection for all manner of small creatures that jumped or buzzed across the rocky outcrops, too soft to survive the plains. It was one final cruelty to break up with her here, but it would have been crueler not to. She deserved someone who could reciprocate her affections without excuses and lies.

I sat down on a stump of greasy rock and waited for her to disappear. I could never take back what I'd done. All I could do was ensure that I never hurt anyone else like that again. My fears and weaknesses would not be the source of pain. From now on I was going to face my enemies, not hide behind others, and part of me wanted to march straight home and tell the General about Warwick.

I knew that would be foolish. If he had bowed to mum's will as he always did, then such a confrontation would only serve to turn them both against me. Mum was always on my side, but even she had her limits, as she'd proved when she caught me with Harry. It was a strange thought that on Old Earth homosexuality was not a problem, but the military had never agreed, and the loss of civilian government and resurgence of the faiths had reignited peoples' hatred.

I would not continue to hurt Whiley to please my parents, but if they were willing to fund my dreams it would be stubbornness bordering on stupidity to throw away a family over an argument that was finished. When I broke up with Whiley, I had intended to lose myself somewhere far away from the General's reach, but as I walked away from the coral field I found my feet facing towards home rather than away from it.

Chapter 7

Jamie Vesla

City outskirts

Torilana, Rychorrea

It took another two days of climbing, scrambling, and running before we saw the first sign of civilization. We traveled mainly at night, sheltering during the day, until the city of Torilana was visible in the plains beneath us. As with many Rychorrean cities the outer districts looked very different to the inner ones covered by the city shield. From the mountains, it looked like a white sun surrounded by black flames. The energy shield formed a perfect ring, full of white brick buildings that grew tall and wide. Outside it, the buildings were squat little huts made from mixture of metals and synthetics strong enough to withstand the bombardment of rock storms. They ran in lines of increasing disorder as they spread further from the city like fraying hairs. Together the houses could have been waves on murky water, or cracks in the ground from the latest earthquake, but ugly as they were, I knew that reaching the little armored huts meant safety. No militant would follow us into the city, and if the mechs had not found us by then they would not do so in the crowded streets.

It took us a few hos to get the rest of the way down the mountain, but from there we reached the city limits with relative ease. The Stormlands had its fair share of hills and mountains, but, except for the coral formations, nearly all the rest of it was plains as flat as polished steel with about as much scenery.

Once we reached the city limits, the houses stopped being an indistinguishable mass of black. Most were variations of the same basic igloo design with a short tunnel leading to the front door so that the occupants were not struck by debris rolling off the roof as they came in and out. Some of the newer buildings were more like normal houses except the entrances were in the side walls, which left the long front walls beneath the sloping roofs looking oddly vacant. Every house had small trails of mud, grit, and stone along the side where it had collected from the roofs awaiting clearance by the road droids, or failing that to be taken up again in the next repulsion storm.

We found the nearest base with relative ease, just inside the shield wall. Stormland bases didn't look like much from the outside. Often, most of the base was underground, and some of them went kims deep, especially in cities where expansion in other directions was more restricted. This one was barely bigger than the igloos we'd passed to get to it. The guard at the front gate glanced lazily between Pelec and myself. "I don't recognize you. Name and number," he said, pointing his gun at me.

"Jamie Vesla 096539. I'm a member of General Gobena's corps on Mount Yala. I need to talk to the General in charge of this base immediately. It's urgent." We were nowhere near Base 67 anymore, and without the ability to look it up I had no idea who gave the orders in Torilana.

The man looked fleetingly surprised, but he pressed my details into his tablet all the same, and then stared at me even more suspiciously than before. "I guess you better come in then." His hand whirled in the air and the gates started to open. "Follow me, but I should warn you General Baden doesn't respond well to uninvited guests."

We went through to the rightmost entrance, which was not what I would have expected if the guard was taking us to see the General. Something was wrong, but I could see no reason for him not to trust me. He pushed the door open and gestured us inside. I hesitated, but Pelec overtook me so I followed. Almost immediately as the door shut behind us, armed soldiers emptied into the room from within the base. I turned to see the guard behind us gripping a pistol, smirking as he said, "I warned you. You're under arrest for attempting to smuggle a known terrorist onto a military base."

"What?" Before I could finish the question, they were pulling my hands behind my back and forcing me through a corridor, separating me from Pelec.

"This is a mistake," I shouted, wrestling to free myself as three men pushed me through one door after another into a lift. I was too exhausted for a protracted struggle, and too confused. The fight in me died and I went limp, forcing them to carry me the last of the journey. I knew how the military worked. I could have a million questions, but these people were not here to answer them. The square room I found myself in contained a man with a hose who grimaced at me as they pushed me by. It was a wet room, tiled from floor to ceiling in white squares that had grayed with age. Huge cracks spread from tile to tile around the hanging chains, and black circles of mold had spread from one end to the other.

When I tried to prevent them from chaining me to the wall, one of them roundhoused me in the cheek. He was built like an armored transport with muscles refusing to be contained beneath his suit, and I felt the blow before he landed it. My jaw clicked as fire spread up the nerves in my cheeks, and my blood and spit mingled in the air.

A man approached me with a laser cutter and began to peel my suit off. I groaned but I had no resistance left. I waited until I was naked with one of them pressing my head against the wall. A mold spot half the size of my face rubbed against my nose so that I could almost taste the decay. As the grimacing man unleashed the hose, water from the very pits of the ice marches pinned me to the tiles, freezing my skin and bone.

"Why?" I whispered, feeling my strength fail and my legs give out. I dropped like a stone until my knees smacked the floor, the chains holding my arms as my body grazed down the wall. When the beam of water hit my head, my neck was not ready for the force and I smacked my skull on the tiles hard enough to hear the crack.

Too exhausted to return to my feet when the torrent finished, I dangled until they uncuffed me. A man scrubbed me dry with a towel covered in its own black spots, and another dressed me in the orange scrubs used for prisoners of war. Someone brought in a chair and screwed it into the floor in the middle of the room before two men guided me onto it and cuffed me again. All of them disappeared only to be replaced by a man in the gray general's uniform, which had to be Baden. Two S-series mechs stood either side of him.

"Well you fracked that one up didn't you, private? What was your plan, have your little friend sneak onto the base and slit my throat? We found his knife."

"Get rid of the mechs, and we'll talk," I said.

He smiled, his head ticking back and forth in quiet amusement. Badon was fat beyond regulation weight, his storm suit spilling over his trousers like a muffin top while his cheeks reddened below the eyes, giving his skin a blotchy appearance. "So you can attempt to kill me yourself. I don't think so."

I pulled against my restraints but there was no give. "I'm chained to a chair and you've had me strip searched. What possible threat could I be?"

Baden looked at the two units towering over him. "I don't know, but when traitors ask me for requests, I'm not inclined to grant them."

"There's been a rebellion," I said watching the units behind him. "General Gobena's been killed as has every man in his corps. The mech infantry have turned on us."

Baden's jollity was undamped, his cheeks pink with amusement. "He looked well enough when I spoke to him 20 minutes ago about you, as did the soldier standing behind him on the network screen. He says that you deserted the corps and joined the militants after murdering the man you were on duty with."

"Lies," I said, disbelieving. "A mech killed private Rico, and nearly killed me as well. I was captured by militants, but the man that accompanied me helped me escape. He wanted me to warn you about the mechs. You mustn't hurt him."

Baden looked at the two units as if they might share in the joke. "Are you mad private? Is that why you killed private Rico and made up this fantasy about a mech rebellion? Look behind me if you doubt it."

The S-series mechs stood half a met taller than Baden, two deific statues awaiting the time they would come to life and Cos would shatter. Designed to be the perfect body guards, they had the strength and resilience of tanks and could move fast enough to stop bullets.

"Look at them standing there like toy soldiers," Baden continued. "They're built to obey orders, Vesla, about as capable of rebellion as your hands are of disobeying your brain." He walked up to one and knocked it several times with the bottom of his fist, making the dull kunk, kunk, kunk, of solid metal that neither mech seemed to register.

Was I mad?

He couldn't have imagined seeing Gobena. Perhaps it was all paranoia. Was I distorting things with my own deluded fears? I'd always imagined the mechs would betray us. Maybe it was all in my head, just a product of my suspicious personality.

No. There was a better explanation. Lomek and Merllios had said that they saw other soldiers killed by mechs. "It's an illusion," I said. "They must have kept Gobena alive to look like nothing's wrong."

"Or," Baden said, "you're a lying militant sympathizer who just tried to sneak a man known to have killed three soldiers onto a military base."

My chest tightened as I tensed against my restraints. "I hardly sneaked him. We walked in the front door and asked to see the General. We couldn't have been less stealthy if we both wore luminous pink bear costumes and shot fireworks out our asses."

Baden scowled, his hamster cheeks sagging. "Are you going to tell me where Pelec's base is?"

I was speechless. I sat stunned that he was not even willing to accept the possibility I was telling the truth. Nothing I said was going to save me now, but I had to try. "Get rid of the mechs and I'll tell you everything."

Baden looked suddenly uncertain. The rings around his eyes darkened as he considered the implications of losing his guards. "You make so much as a twitch and I'll call them back in."

I nodded and he gestured for them to leave. Perhaps I'd hoped for reticence but both units departed on command, totally unconcerned by my accusations. "The militants are not important now," I said. "If you are willing to send men over to check out Gobena's base then when they get back I'll give you every bit of information I have on the militants."

Baden shook his head. "You just said you would tell me if I got rid of the guards. Your testimony gets less reliable by the minute."

"I will," I said. "But if I'm lying it costs you nothing to check out Gobena's base first."

"I could," he agreed, "but we both know that your pals are clearing out of their little hole in the ground as we speak. If you'll give me the militant base location first, I'll check out Gobena's base after."

My fists clenched. I considered it. Lomek and Merllios were like dirt to me. They were killers who rejoiced at the deaths of the men and women I called friends. I hated everything they stood for, and it would have been nothing but a pleasure to contribute to their downfall. On top of that, I'd seen in action the devices The Federation used to extract information. My neck hairs prickled at the idea of having them inflicted upon me, but Pelec had given up everything to help me escape that base and warn The Federation. I promised to do everything I could to promote relations between our people, and however I chose to interpret that promise it did not include leading Baden to the destruction of the base he had freed me from. I would not betray my word.

I nodded to Baden, acknowledging that he had offered a compromise, but I could not accept it. "If I'm wrong then I'll give you everything, but I need to know about Gobena first. Otherwise we are going to need help from the Dygians. Massacring a bunch of trained fighters now would be a mistake."

"I thought you'd say that," said Baden, a smile bleeding through his inflated cheeks. "But I have some bad news for you. Because of the sensitive nature of this mission, the law entitles me to use extreme force of persuasion to get the information from you if need be. So this is your last chance to tell me where the base is before the nurse brings in the heliobaxa."

I coughed as fluid went down the wrong hole. "You won't," I said, "that's not legal."

Baden walked towards the door, but stopped in the entrance unrelinquishing his smile. "Normally yes, but as a traitor in a zone of conflict you have lost all your civilian rights which prevent the usage of such measures." As his grin widened to show the last of his teeth, I knew that I was a dead man. Heliobaxa was a living truth serum, but it didn't stop there. After the goop had removed the ability to lie it continued to burrow through the cortex until all life was extinguished.

"At least make them ask me about Rico and the mechs," I said.

Baden nodded and left.

I began to writhe beneath my restraints in a last effort to free myself. I would not escape, and my torment would pass unnoticed, but still I would not accept my fate until my energy was drained. My bare feet might have been encased in ice, but my core was blazing like the combined suns as I fought for freedom. It was no use; the restraints were built to hold stronger men than me. As I fell still, a gob of spit sat on my cheek like a wet itch, and my chest expanded and contracted like a piston in full swing.

The nurse entered while I was still panting. A young girl of barely twenty cycles who looked too innocent to be my killer. Her large eyes carried more fear than judgment, hidden as much as possible by blond curls that accentuated her youth.

I could not help but shrink from the sight of the needle. Black tar-like liquid rose up the sides almost transparent at the tips with no apparent signs of life, but that was deceiving. Once in my blood, the parasite would seek out my brain and leech the life out of me within minutes.

"They're not going to make you do this, are they?" I said.

The girl met my eye. "My father was killed by militants. I help how I can."

I nodded, sad for her despite it all. "I'm not lying you know? The mechs really are rebelling, you don't have to do this."

Her eyes carried a wisdom that only came with cycles of misfortune. They generated a paradox of strength and frailty that did not belong to one so young. She frowned at me, not hearing what I was saying. "Gaining access to this base before they have a chance to move is worth one traitor's life." Her gaze turned to the needle that would end me. "In my opinion at least."

I tried to dodge it as she brought it to my skin.

"All you will do is hurt yourself," she said, poised above me with the tube of death. "This needle is going in your arm one way or another. You might as well save yourself the pain."

"Before you do it," I said, "may I ask you a question? Then I promise I will be still."

She nodded.

"What has happened to Pelec? Will he suffer the same fate?"

Stone faced, her eyes were rings of steel hiding the traumas that led her here. "The militant is immune to heliobaxa. It is a frequent practice among their leaders to inject themselves with the sister species to prevent us from obtaining information, but we have other ways of making him talk. He will give us everything in time, and it will not be as painless as it is for you."

I moved my arm away as she tried to inject me again. This was it then. I'd survived the mechs and the terrorists only to be killed by my own people. There would be no wife and children for me now. I was about to die a traitor's death as my brain turned to mush in my head. A part of me hoped they would suffer for it; that the mechs would give them the same end that they gave me, but I did not truly want that. These people were still my kin, and my killer just a girl. They did not deserve to die for their mistakes, and whether they knew it or not, I was about to give my life for them. It was not the fat children and loving wife I wanted for so long, but it was a different dream, bitter and infinitely darker, but one I had been prepared for since the day I joined the armed forces.

She grabbed my arm. "You promised to be still."

"I know," I said. "I will, but I just want to say that at some point information may come to light that I was innocent. Under those circumstances, you are not in any way responsible for my death. These are orders you are following, and you weren't to know they were based on lies."

The girl stared through me with eyes that trusted nothing and no one.

"Also," I continued, "the man I brought here is a hero. He gave up everything to help me escape in order that both our civilizations could continue. If he is still alive when this information comes to light, I would ask that you help him."

She tried once more to inject me, but I writhed more violently than ever. "Do you agree?"

She gave no answer. Instead she rammed the needle into my arm tearing flesh and burning my blood as the black slime emptied into my vein. "It takes less than a minute to reach the brain," she said quietly. "After that you will be unable to speak unless spoken to, and your answers will always be full and honest for as many questions as I can fit in before your neural network begins to disintegrate."

"Remember to ask about the mechs," I said.

She shrugged. "If I have time."

Anger gripped me. "You must!"

The girl scowled at me, full of hatred. "It's you who must, traitor."

I could feel the occlusions in my brain, as if the blood vessels were on fire, burning through my ability to think. The pain overcame me forcing my anger to the surface. "Frak you, taw!" The last independent expression I would ever make. It had all gone so badly wrong. I didn't blame the girl, but I would never be able to take those words back.

She asked me about the base and I gave it. She asked about Lomek and Merllios and I gave it. I talked about the alcoves and the layout, how extensive the base was, and how the entrance hole could have been confused for an animal's den. It was a betrayal that the Dygians might not survive. I described as accurately as I could the base's location, and the hole they kept me in, but not once did she ask about the mechs.

Not one question.

She asked if I was a militant or a sympathizer, and I said no, but not even that roused her suspicions. I gritted my teeth as I answered queries about terrorist plots, denying every one of them. Were they planning to steal weapons?

I don't know.

Were they planning to blow something up?

I don't know.

She was reading through a list of pre-prepared questions and everything I said to her beforehand was forgotten.

I was dribbling. Soon it would be time to die.

My arm hurt.

Tired.

Because of the way he died, which was of considerable embarrassment to the Federation military once they realized he was telling the truth, Jamie Vesla never received recognition for his actions. The army was in far greater need of living heroes than dead ones, so his contribution to the war was covered up, and his mother and sister were informed by General Baden that he died a traitor.

Vesla was the first unnecessary death inflicted by The Federation, but he would not be the last. By the end of the Carasaki Rebellion, its ruthless leaders would be responsible for a series of decisions that made Vesla's fate seem almost justified by comparison. Droves of men and women would die in maneuvers that even at the point of conception stank of desperation, many of which accomplished little more than turning the people against their military task masters so that real traitors began to spring up from every corner of The Federation.

Perhaps the only consolation is that Vesla's mother and the thousands of others like her would live until the end convinced that their loved ones were innocent, which at least in the case of Vesla was truer than his mother could possibly have known.

Chapter 8

Admiral Copeoia Paw

The Blue Room

Annabella, Rychorrea

Lagunov caught up to me in the corridor approaching the Blue Room. He was the youngest of the Admirals and the most detestable. His cyan eyes were as bright as a mech's, but he had less empathy than the most basic machines. Unfortunately, he was sufficiently attractive and confident that many women failed to notice this shortfall, so his greatest renown was the number of women who had tried to murder him, earning him the nickname of Peach because his tasty flesh contained nothing but poison at its heart.

"You're looking lethal today Copeoia," he said. "Any good challengers in the ring lately? Or have you immediately crushed them all?"

"A few," I said. "One of them managed to win the first round, but I beat him in the next two."

Lagunov grinned, brandishing a set of glistening teeth. "Once you knew his tactics."

I nodded. "Fighting is all about knowing what the other person will do next."

"No, I don't think so," he said, still grinning, "I imagine I could know every move you were going to make and you'd still beat me into the ground. Sometimes I think you must be GM to get so big."

I offered him a wry smile. He would be charming right up until he slipped a knife past my spine. "How many bases have you lost?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Three. You?"

"Twelve."

He shook his head. "That many? Someone is fracking with us. We built those gorram communication systems to withstand a storm of dis from every cything angle our enemies could throw it at us."

Lagunov liked profanities. He was as foul mouthed as he was foul natured, but the message was essentially correct. Someone was fracking with us, and I knew who it was.

The two of us entered the Blue Room where Grand Admiral Reiner was standing behind his chair while the other seven Admirals were seated around the quartz table that gave the room its name. There were ten Admirals including Reiner, seven to govern the states of the Federation, one to govern Federation cyberspace, one to run the intelligence services, and one to run foreign relations. Misra was not present but his hologram sat full color in his seat; the only visible difference being the flickering white line that ran top to bottom every few mins. Reiner took his seat at the top of the table as Lagunov slinked past me to take the seat next to Estermont, leaving me to take the one next to Kroger.

Grand Admiral Reiner was a slight man. There was little flesh on his bones, and his face had a gauntness that made him look older. Thick brown hair combed to one side, pale skin, and straw colored eyes, he looked like exactly what he was, a weak man with something to prove. "Let's get started," he said. "We have a crisis. Communications are breaking down right across The Federation, and President Granian reports the same things are happening in The Kaerosh."

That was news to me, and not good news. Mech rebellion in The Sodalis would at least have forced our enemies into the same fight, but Granian was our ally. He would have come to our aid regardless, and communications glitches in The Kaerosh suggested he would have his own problems to deal with. For all I knew right now every swamp in The Kaerosh was filling with the bodies of its citizens and we would end up supporting their war effort rather than vice versa. Granian feared domination by The Sodalis and had built himself a strong military, but that meant nothing anymore. Our militaries had risen against us, and our strength had become theirs.

"We are currently inspecting the system for glitches," Reiner continued, "but it is the opinion of multiple experts that these events cannot be due to internal breaks. Someone is deliberately knocking out our communications between military bases for short periods of time, and each base reports everything is fine when communications come back online. So the main questions we have to answer today are who and why?"

"It's The Sodalis," said Kroger. "No one else has the resources to perpetrate such a widespread attack." One of the few who could look me in the eye without craning his neck, Kroger was the Admiral of Malaska; the most troublesome of the richer Federation states. The constant struggle for unity among his people had given him a strong sense of nationalism that had grown into indignant racism. We could have been talking about the theft of fruit from Federation orchards and his response would have been the same: only The Sodalis could have done it. If Kroger was allowed his way, we would deport all non-humans from The Federation and declare war with The Sodalis in the same week.

There was no response to his age-old argument so the room descended into silence. I was biding my time, allowing them to exhaust the other options before I told them what was really happening, but Kroger mistook the gap in conversation for us requiring further elaboration. "They're worried about the growing strength of our military and these communications breakdowns are the product of attempts to infiltrate our systems so they can spy on us."

He was also obsessed with spies. Everyone was a spy. He once accused President Granian of being secretly in league with The Sodalis, which was less likely than the Grand Admiral adopting a policy of unicorns riding fighter planes. The Kaerosh had been on the cusp of war with The Sodalis ever since its independence, and the only thing that prevented it was The Federation guarantee of Kaeroshi sovereignty.

"Benjamin please," I said. "If it was The Sodalis then we wouldn't be experiencing communications blackouts every time they hacked into our system. If this was the work of a government, then it is the most incompetent and half-assed attempt at sabotage I have ever seen."

Kroger's face reddened. Long past his 40th cycle, his muscle was turning to fat, and his belly protruded like an egg from his excessive boozing. "If it's so incompetent then how come we have no clue what caused it? Seems to me that whoever has done this has got us blind."

Lagunov sat straight, his blue eyes piercing Kroger as they narrowed. "Nevertheless, Copeoia is right. The Sodalis are not so blatant."

"That's just what they want us to think," said Kroger, slamming a meaty hand against the table.

"Are there any other ideas?" Reiner said, before Lagunov could answer.

"The Dygians," said Misra. "This is just clumsy enough to come from them." Dark brown skin and eyes that never seemed to sit still, the Admiral of The Jangat was a rodent-like man with limbs that seemed too thin to take his weight. His thin beard grew in clumps, if it grew at all, giving the appearance of an adolescent on the cusp of puberty, awkward and clumsy, but to judge him as such was a grave error. None of the men and women in this room were to be taken lightly. Lagunov was a psychopath who would eat his own father if his dinner wasn't served on time, Reiner was aggressive and ruthless in his ambitions, even Kroger had a cunning side, but it was Misra who I feared. His little rat face appeared in my nightmares looking over a nuclear wasteland with the tranquility of a man finally at peace.

If an individual was responsible for the Okan and Ganewi Wars, it was him. His hatred for the Dygians had been vented on one island or another since he gained the Admiralty, and he always got what he wanted. Those who resisted him seemed to drop off the face of Cos, as did anyone who looked too hard for them. I was grateful when Lagunov shot him down. Chiseled jaw bent into a permanent grin, he laughed. "If the fracking Dygians can hack our communications systems then we need to renounce our great power status."

Kroger cut me off before I could agree. "Perhaps it isn't the Sodalian government then, but I don't think we can rule out independent hackers from within their borders." He nodded to himself. "Probably under some sort of government contract, but sufficiently distanced to give them deniability."

I had waited long enough. They would not easily accept what I had to say, but every minute lost gave the mechs more of an advantage. "It's an inside job," I said over the increasing tumult.

Reiner nodded as everyone else went silent. "Why?"

"Whoever it was has hit our system so many times without leaving any trace but the communications failure. If it was a virus we would have found it by now. No one should be able to hack into our system so cleanly, not even The Sodalian government. There must be someone on the inside creating entrances and cleaning up after they've gone."

"A spy!" said Kroger, his eyes bulging.

"Perhaps," I agreed, "but there is still no evidence of an outside party."

Estermont cleared her throat. A pathetic noise that I might have talked right over if I didn't know its significance. The Pale Viper didn't take kindly to being ignored. "My investigations yield the same conclusion." Her voice was a shallow whisper, her lungs permanently compressed beneath the weight of fake mummeries. Wire thin, she probably had more breast tissue than she did body. The only hint of melanin in her body was in her eyes, whose dull green with little yellow flecks still offered little demonstration that she wasn't made entirely of ice. She might have bordered on beauty but for several slight imperfections which she attempted to compensate for by wearing her hair long and plastering her lips in radioactive colors that could locate her in a blackout.

Flicking her gaze back to Kroger, she continued. "All our engineers and hackers suggest that, if it was an outside party, they failed to make any changes to the system and are no longer able to access it. If they did anything at all, it has been reset, and our main threat is that there is someone still on the inside ready to let them back in."

Reiner stood up. "Then we need to clamp down on these pieces of dis until their stain is wiped from The Federation. What are we doing about it?"

Everyone turned to Estermont, who smiled meekly. "My teams are currently investigating the origin of the communication breakdowns. Their reports should be final within the week."

Reiner nodded. "Very good–"

"I'm not done," I said, before Reiner could ramble on. "I know who the inside party is, but none of you will believe me until I'm through so I ask that you sit and listen."

Kroger's breathing seemed already to be heavier while Misra's eyes began fidgeting in their sockets.

"We are currently in the early stages of a mech uprising."

Lagunov howled, and Kroger wheezed laughter amid a spasm of coughing.

"Ridiculous!"

"What are you talking about?"

Estermont whispered, "She's gone mad," audibly beneath the din.

I shook my head at her. "It's true. The machines we have relied upon to keep us safe have turned on us, and with what I've seen in the last few days I am convinced they intend to wipe us out."

Kroger stood, pointing a fat arm at me. "She needs restraints. Someone call the guard." He turned sideways but I gave him no further chance for disruption. In one quick step, I had him pinned against the wall. "You will listen, Benjamin, because every click we waste arguing is another one that the mechs put towards our extinction." I stared into the yellow of his eyes and let him go. "Right now every base we lost communications with has been overrun. As far as I can tell, the mechs knock out communication, kill every human on the base, and then return communications once there is no one alive to say anything. That's why we have lost so many more bases in the Stormlands than the rest of The Federation, because the rock storms provide them with the perfect cover by knocking out most of the available routes of communication without intervention."

"How do you know?" Reiner stared at me coolly. His image was everything to him. Probably his mind was a mishmash of panic and accusations, already looking for a scapegoat, but externally he showed none of it.

None of them would accept it if they knew a Dygian leader had told me. They needed a different story. "Jamie Vesla," I said. "He is, or rather was, the only survivor of Base 67."

Reiner's cool stare became a grin. "You mean the man we just had executed for colluding with the Dygians?"

"Except he didn't," I said. "He escaped with a defector and made his way straight to a military base to tell us what he knew."

"Brainwashing," said Misra. "They're just trying to screw with us."

"To what purpose?" I said. "If this is all a lie it is the most pointless lie ever orchestrated. Even if we believed it, which none of you have any intention of doing, the most it would warrant is an inspection of our own army. There is nothing the Dygians could possibly gain from it." I paused waiting for this to sink in. "The communications breakdowns as we have already agreed must come from our own agents. There is no organization, government, or institution that could infiltrate all our bases in such a short space of time. The only possible reason is the mechs."

"Have the Sodalis had communications blackouts?" said Kroger, shying away from me as he spoke.

"No," said Estermont. "They're clean."

"This is all nonsense." Kroger looked to Reiner almost pleading. "But if it isn't, then it must be The Sodalis who sabotaged our mechs. They do not contain the capacity for disobedience on their own."

"It could be," I agreed, "but we must not jump to conclusions. If The Sodalis are not responsible, then we may need their help before this is through."

"Never," said Kroger. "I'd sooner die." But his voice did not contain its usual conviction.

"Quiet," said Reiner.

He spoke into his tablet. "Send Potakin through." He was far from the worst Grand Admiral we'd ever had, especially from the bowties. His promotion was mostly the result of the Admiral George Reiner, his father, but he still possessed a reasonable intelligence, and often his decisions reflected some consideration, but he was not the man to lead us into a war against such a strong enemy.

Rarely did he push to find out anything for himself when he could receive the information from his Admirals or advisers. His understanding was therefore always based on the biases of the people who conveyed the information, and meant he offered little guidance to the Admiralty, which for the most part acted independently of him and each other. In the case of Estermont and Osk this was particularly detrimental as she ran Federation cyberspace and he ran our intelligence service with the same degree of paranoid secrecy as the houthar king. Except by going through Reiner, the rest of us were forced to beg or bargain if we wanted the information they possessed, and they much preferred it to stay that way.

When after a minute Potakin did not enter, Reiner hit his tablet again with his middle finger. "Send him through, dammit, we're waiting."

Again, we waited, but no one came, until a voice on the other end of his tablet said, "There's a man here who needs to talk with you Grand Admiral."

Reiner's eyes rolled. "We're waiting, send him in."

"It's not Potakin, Grand Admiral. He's just a private and he's covered in blood. He says it's urgent."

No private had ever stepped foot in the Blue Room, nor indeed knew how to find it. Unlike the Sodalian Atrium, it did not have a fixed location but was multiple different rooms all accessed by different portals so that the only people who knew where the next meeting would be were the people in the last one. Potakin knew because he was the High General in charge of Region 1 where our current Blue Room was located, but to disclose that information to a private without proper authority was a court-martial offense. Potakin could be charged with treason and sentenced to death.

"The room has been compromised," said Misra's hologram. "You all need to leave. We can reconvene when you are safe."

"He says it's a matter of life and death for The Federation," said the voice from the tablet. "He says the mechs are rebelling, and they shot High General Potakin."

No one spoke.

I thought I had another week at least.

I cursed myself, though if I had come without proof the other Admirals would have laughed at me. Vicarin was prepared, but the rest of The Federation had been caught off guard. I swallowed. "Make sure he isn't here to blow us up and send him in."

"You all need to go now," said Misra. "We don't know who else Potakin has told that might be on their way to you right now. We reconvene as holograms in 30 minutes."

"That might be too late," snapped Reiner. He spoke into his tablet. "Pat him down and send him in."

"That's an error," said Misra his eyes darting from person to person. "He could still be carrying explosives."

Reiner glared at him. "If the mechs are rebelling it won't wait 30 minutes."

"We need to start blowing up those bases," said Kroger, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

"But what if that's the trap?" Estermont said. "We blow up our own bases then whoever is responsible for all this catches us on our backsides."

Lagunov smiled, still disbelieving. "Mechs don't rebel. They're programmed to obey. This is a bad joke."

Estermont ignored him. "There is no off-switch we can use to shut them all down. Once they are on, they are on until they are destroyed or run out of charge. We need to hit the chargers fast."

"What else?" asked Kroger. "Can we deplete their charge?"

Estermont flinched, but the soldier arrived before she could answer. He was barely through the door when he was saluting and didn't wait to be told to speak. "High General Potakin sends me in his place, Grand Admiral, to tell you what happened."

"Tell it," said Reiner, staring at the red smear on his storm suit.

"There was a private by the name of Vesla who came down to General Baden's base at the low of the southern Sanbrecks. He told him that General Gobena's base had been overrun by mechs and he was the only survivor, but Gobena had reported him as a deserter so Baden didn't believe him." The man rambled, his sentences running into each other. "Though Heneral Potakin said Vesla couldn't have deserted or he wouldn't have gone to the base in the first place."

"Slow down kid," said Lagunov, whose smile had finally dissipated. "Why wouldn't he have gone?"

"Sorry, Admiral. Heneral Potakin said that if Vesla had truly deserted he would have known Gobena would send a report to the nearby bases, so there was no way he would walk up to the front gate with a known Dygian militant."

"There was a terrorist with him," Lagunov said, refusing to believe the situation. "Cythuria private! You can't trust a man who goes walking around with terrorists."

"Yes Admiral," said the private. "But the Heneral sent five men to Gobena's base to ascertain the truth, and five more to another base he suspected might have suffered the same."

"Why?" said Misra, his mad eyes finally settling on the boy.

"The communications failures, Admiral. Heneral Potakin linked them to these supposed uprisings, allowing him to identify which bases had fallen."

"And?" I said.

"Not one of the ten men returned, Admiral. Not even an initial report. It was as if they never reached the bases."

Misra suddenly leapt out of his seat, his hologram flickering wildly and the first part of his speech distorted. "...happened to Potakin? Is he dead?"

"He ordered us to destroy every mech on the base, Admiral. We were clearing them up when one of them shot him in the gut. He was still alive when I–"

Misra cut him off. "Then you must all leave right now. If the mechs took the base they could force Potakin to give this location." He placed both hands flat on the table. "Each of us is now responsible for clearing the mech threat from our own state. We will reconvene tomorrow at the same time by hologram."

Everyone stood.

"Wait," said Reiner. "If the mechs have any sense at all they know there is good chance Potakin managed to get word to us. When we return to our bases it might already be too late. Nowhere except Carasaki do we outnumber them. Our best hope is to control the bases remotely, giving orders from a distance."

"Unless they cut our communications again," said Estermont. She spoke loudly, her voice hoarse, abandoning her mousy whisper. "I have just transferred you each a basic protocol for what to do in the event of a mech uprising. We may have been caught by surprise, but we are not unprepared. Don't follow it to the letter. If we all do the same thing, then the mechs will know exactly what to expect."

I looked at the first bullet point which stated exactly what she had just said. "We have to leave. It is too risky to stay here any longer."

Reiner nodded. "For the glory and survival of The Federation."

"What about The Sodalis?" said Estermont, "and The Kaerosh. Should we not warn them?"

"Yes." Reiner nodded. "We must. And the democracies, and the Dygians, even the fracking houthar king. I'll tell Heneral Bergon to do it."

My tablet bleeped and I looked down at the four-word message.

Carasaki is under attack.

Chapter 9

Stanley Tucker

Tucker Residence

Carasaki, Rychorrea

It was all a lie. Everything the General had said to me since I came home. All his promises of medical school and sticking together, of respecting my wishes as an adult, they might as well have been written on water. I knew exactly why the University rejected me when the letter came. There should have been no difference between ABC and BBB. I'd seen hundreds of occasions where universities asked for one but the other was acceptable. However, the fearsome General Tucker of Carasaki did not give into the whims of his children without a backup plan to circumvent them.

He sat on the other side of the breakfast table, scrolling down on his newscaster to something on the military or sports. One side of his hair curled was still flattened by his pillow, and he was yet to don his uniform. He sat there sipping his jaffee with a serene look on his face. His perfectly behaved children in his perfect house, all perfectly under his control.

Our house was a thousand times nicer than Warwick's. We had long windows stretching from floor to ceiling filling it with light, polished faux-wooden floors that warmed the feet, and high white ceilings that weren't made of armored synthetics, but I would have given anything to be back sleeping on Warwick's floor with a sore back and cold wherever the layer of clothes failed to cover me.

It took me a moment, but I forced the words out, rolling one word over another in a string of bitter reproach. "You called the university, didn't you? You told them to reject me so I'd go to officer school!"

He said nothing, placing the newscaster down on the table and taking a sip of jaffee. A lock of blond hair swung forward attempting to dip into the glass but he pulled it away. "You didn't get in then?"

"You know I didn't," I spat back. Henry flew onto my shoulder adopting a ferocious stance toward the General.

He stared at me, feigning understanding. "If you didn't get in it was because you didn't get the grades. Don't take it out on me."

His denial only made me angrier. "That's why you told mum you'd pay for medical school, because you knew that with a few words in the right ear and I'd never get in anyway. Well I left once, I can leave again."

I had nowhere to go, but I couldn't let him win, not about this. Turning to leave, I came face to face with Lieutenant Baker, my father's thug. A shaved bear of a man taking up more space than he had any right to, I had to dance around him to avoid collision. "Colonel Wash says that the military parade has arrived a day early, sir. He wants to know if he should ask them to leave again?"

I was already on my way out the door, but my father had me in a single stride, catching me by the shoulder. "One minute, son." Turning back to Baker his face became curious. "Incompetent fools, what are they doing here? They can't just turn up without informing the relevant authorities. Tell them to come back tomorrow when we're expecting them."

I pulled against the General's grip but he refused to budge. "Hold on a minute, son." Henry flapped his wings menacingly, but the General had no lenses so all he saw was a little silver ball.

Baker didn't leave. "Commander U-864G says they are short staffed since all the communications breakdowns. Several officers have been called away and it will take them all of tonight to set the whole thing up."

"I don't need to listen to this nonsense," I said. "You sort this out and leave me alone."

I broke free of his grip, but the General had quick reflexes. With one step, he was between me and the door. "You're not going anywhere." He turned back to Baker and dismissed him with a hand. "Fine, get them set up. This city could do with a decent celebration."

Baker slammed one foot into the other and marched away. Despite his heft, he was light on his feet, earning my father's respect by sneaking up on three armed Dygian soldiers and cutting their throats. He was elevated straight from private to second lieutenant so my father could look like he surrounded himself with ruthless killers. Perhaps it worked on his men, but every time I watched Baker's tiny eyes sit on some individual like the pressure of his stare might cause them to burst, he only reminded me of how different the two men were; my father's huge, childish eyes and hairless face were the antithesis of Baker's rugged strength.

As Baker vanished, my father's soft hands guided me back to the table. "Don't walk away from me when we're speaking. You don't have to leave."

"I know I don't have to. Mum will cut your balls off if you ever leave me on the side of the road like that again."

His expression contained a bully's harshness, but it melted quickly. "You are my son as well as hers, and I only want what's best for you."

"What you think is best for me."

He was not denying he'd contacted the university. The General never apologized. Such acts were beneath him. I turned away from him, remembering his ire and the slider's sudden stop. "Let me live my life. No decent officer would bend as you want me to now."

"But that is why you would make such a great officer." He sounded almost desperate.

I pulled away from the table but he caught me, planting me back on the chair with surprising strength. "Listen to me one last time, and if you still don't want to be an officer then you have my blessing to do whatever you want with your life."

"Except medical school," I said.

He shrugged. "If you didn't get the grades then you cannot go."

"I did get the grades, and then you told the university not to accept me."

"Do you really believe I would do something like that?"

I glared at him. "I think you'd cut off both my arms if it got me into officer school."

His eye flickered, blood filling his cheeks like a baby's backside after a spanking. "Then you misjudge me. All I've ever done is protect you. As an officer, you will have a career. I can guarantee your progression so that you might even be Grand Admiral one day like Grand Admiral Reiner's father did for him."

I shook my head. After all these cycles, he still had no idea who I was. "I'd sooner roll naked through the coral fields than be the Grand Admiral of this mess."

All trace of kinship vanished from his face. "Tucker is an army name, not some mech doctor's assistant. We are the descendants of Grand Admiral Vince Tucker who fought in the Baelian War, does that mean nothing to you?"

"It means less than nothing. I don't want your stupid name. I want to make my own way and not have you buying me positions. Why can't you leave me alone?"

His face tightened, his doll's eyes narrowing. "And what will you do if I leave you alone? You can't be a doctor."

In truth, I didn't want to be a doctor anymore. The thought of it made me as sick as being an officer, but I knew exactly what he didn't want to hear – the words that would make his curls straighten. "I'm going to resit the exams and try again."

The General's nostrils flared as he controlled the internal explosion. "You do that and I'll make sure you never get into med school. I'll call every dean of every university from here to Cronos."

"Frak you." I slipped off the chair dodging as he tried to grab me again. "I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it, and every time you intervene to ruin my chances then all you're doing is turning me into more of a failure. The proud line of Grand Admiral Vince Tucker will fizzle out with a toilet cleaner, and everyone will know that General Tucker couldn't even control his own son."

I closed my eyes as the General's hand rose high. Nothing came. When I opened them again he was still poised to slap me but refusing to bring down his hand. Finally, it dropped to his side and he let out an exhausted groan. "Go then, if you so detest everything I hold important. I'm done with you, but don't tell anyone where you came from because you're no son of mine."

His voice broke and he slumped into his chair. Perhaps it was a victory, but it tasted bitter. I ran up to my room, holding back my response. If I was no son, then he was no father – just a sad man who didn't know the difference between army and family. I wasn't going to cry; he didn't warrant the wasted water. "Fracking General Princess," I said to my empty bedroom.

Mum and Kelly were out shopping and I would be gone by the time they returned. I would miss them, but I couldn't deal with that now. I needed to concentrate.

"Where are we going?" said Henry, but I gave him no answer. Instead I deactivated him once again, so that the General couldn't trace me. He was cold in my hand, and it felt lonely to place his inanimate shell in my rucksack, but there was no way around it.

It was impossible to think clearly about what to pack, so I just threw in the first few items that came to hand. I put on my storm suit and packed another set of clothes, a pair of dust goggles, and a couple of static shirts for lightning protection. A knife and a few tools seemed useful enough, and a torch I bought for caving with Warwick. The rest of the items were sentimental things which I regretted taking as soon as I was out the door. I didn't want anything from him.

I had a badge from Warwick pinned to my rucksack and a cardioscope from Whiley, but both items just reminded me of how alone I was. There was nowhere I could go for long without fresh funds. Mum would help me, but she would also force reconciliation, and I was never coming back. Not this time.

With no destination, it didn't seem worth hiring a bubble bike, so I just started walking away from the house. One foot and then the other, and soon I was in central Carasaki watching all the military vehicles roll by. Up close, the larger ones created a deafening echo like a rotating chainsaw. Each one that passed brought with it the smell of charcoal thickening the air. With the sheer number of vehicles in the retinue it did not look like they were short staffed as Baker suggested, but with nothing else to do I sat down with a few other people and watched them drive by. The man next to me had two young children and raised the girl into the air as if he was going to throw her. At the last click, he stopped, and the girl giggled delightedly. His wife handed out food from a backpack emblazoned with the seven-starred flag of The Federation.

"You know the parade isn't until tomorrow?" I said.

He nodded. "We just thought it was a nice day so we'd sit on the steps and have lunch while watching the trucks." He gestured with a head tilt towards his son who was staring wide-eyed at the vehicles.

It was a nice idea. Weather in the Stormlands was bleak even when it wasn't raining rocks, but the brown swirl was lighter than normal, more cream than beige, and there were even a few patches where sun and sky had broken through. Carasaki almost felt warm. The buildings split the city into a series of interlocking streets, impossible to see one from the other without being on the second level. The maze city was designed to confuse and disorient invaders, but the central buildings were not constructed without artistic input. Shielded from the debris storms by the shields above, the walls were white or tinted poly-glass, sometimes decorated with patterns that looked like rippling water.

"Would you like a sandwich?" said the man, "We made too many for the four of us, so you're welcome to share."

The children were dressed like miniature adults, and their hair brushed as straight as their father's. He was approaching middle age, though still slim and potentially athletic. His wife was younger, but not awkwardly so. She held out the box of sandwiches, too shy to meet my eye.

The little boy was pulling on his father's arm. "Where are all the soldiers, daddy? They're all units."

His father shushed him until I'd responded. Now homeless and jobless, declining free sandwiches seemed like a mistake. I accepted and thanked him.

"Take a few," said the man before his wife could pull the box away.

I did, and thanked him again. Nodding, he turned back to his son. "I suspect the soldiers aren't needed for the setup. They've left the dirty work to the mechs, and they'll just turn up for the parade." He winked at me, and I smiled gratefully.

Now that the kid mentioned it, he was right. There were no soldiers. The highest rank a unit could reach was commander, so even if they were just here to do the dirty work, there should have been a few soldiers there to give orders.

Suddenly, whooshing noises began to explode from the tops of passing trucks loud enough to make the roar of the vehicles sound like distant waves breaking on the sand. The little boy sat back in surprise, but was quickly pointing at the sky as fireworks exploded all the way along the line of procession. The buildings in Carasaki did not rise so high, and there was plenty of space for the multi-colored explosions beneath the energy shield. Fluorescent trails of green, red, yellow and purple shot across the sky like multi-colored lightning, banishing the murky brown.

The little girl gasped as the louder ones blew themselves into thousands of tiny lights and then descended almost low enough for us to touch. At first I thought it might be a malfunction but the mechs began to wave out of the windows and the lorries continued to fire colored gunpowder at the sky. Quickly, the streets began to fill with people until the family next to me were forced to put away their picnic and stand to avoid being trampled.

"Funny to start them so early," I said. "It's not even dark."

The father nodded. "Must be a preliminary thing. They'll save the really good ones for tomorrow night."

Probably the only advantage of the Rychorrean sky was that fireworks were still visible during the day, but the lights got brighter and brighter until it was difficult to believe they were a warm-up. Almost 20 minutes of unrelenting explosions went by as the crowds inflated, filling the streets with what must have been the entire city. Color filled the murky sky, fireworks in the shape of creatures, vehicles, weapons, or rings that went around and around, each more deafening than the last. I didn't even notice when the people started dropping, not until the father grabbed me as he fell backward moments after offering me another uneaten sandwich.

Screams began to erupt around me, but even the loudest of them seemed to evaporate from their lips. A firework shot into the crowd and people fell back as the flames rose. The explosion was so close that I could feel the heat on my skin like the air from an oven. A line of wet splashed across my face like flicked paint, and I stared at the red smear across my storm suit where the woman tried to grab me as she fell. The other side was the man who offered me food. Dead.

Machine guns ripped through the sides of trucks, spraying death into the crowd. Bodies dropped in the flashes of color echoing through the sky. There was something almost theatrical about the way they lit up as they fell, as if it was all part of the show. But when the greens and yellows faded from their skin only the red remained. People pushed and shoved, their screams lost beneath the weight of the noise.

I still hadn't moved.

The woman was dead as well, her eyes held none of their former shyness, penetrating me so that it was difficult to look away.

More bullets rattled off as the cylinders rotated amid flashes of light. Metal slugs ripped through multiple bodies, and lines of people dropped to the floor.

The little boy holding onto his fallen father disappeared beneath the fleeing stampede.

Mechs began to descend from the backs of vehicles, arms spinning like Gatling guns as bullets sprayed all around me.

I saw the little girl alive, but I ran without hesitation. I spared no time for her, the dead parents or their crushed son.

Shame filled my cheeks as I pushed myself through the crowd without thought for direction or destination. My heart pumped liquid terror through my veins and my throat clamped acid back towards my mouth.

I ran because I did not want to die.

Someone smacked into me, and I fell just in time to watch a whole group of women collapse on top of each other. A red mist formed above their bodies as the bullets carrying their flesh and guts slammed into the wall behind.

Up again, I ran down one of the narrow alleys as people fled all around me. I watched the man in front spin around with the force of bullets. I was running straight into more mechs.

Carasaki was a maze. Its streets could descend into tunnels that twisted beneath the ground bringing you up again somewhere completely unexpected, but I knew the city well. I should have been easily able to escape an invading hoard.

I didn't though. Too quickly I was trapped between two lines of advancing mechs. Panic. Fear was all I could think of.

Nothing else for it, I threw myself to the floor, just as the woman running by me fell forwards with several red circles enlarging across her back, lifeless as she hit the ground.

I needed time to think but there wasn't any. I'd be dead in two clicks, maybe three, if I didn't act. It would have made more sense to hide or climb. Mechs plugged bullets into all the corpses as they approached.

I didn't dare to rise. I was dead either way, and I could not force my muscles into motion. The rattle of gunfire got louder. One of them came into view and unloaded several more bullets into the woman in front of me. Her body vibrated lifelessly as the eight-legged K-series spidered over her like a demon tarantula and turned its two red dots to me.

This was it then.

But I didn't die. Instead the mech's head popped noiselessly among the continuing explosions in the sky. The remaining mechs turned their guns upward to the second level. Soldiers were swarming above the alley on the flat-roofed civilian buildings. The military extensions still rose high above them cutting the rooftops into alleys little different to the ones on the ground. Bullets, grenades, explosive rounds all echoed around me, consuming the mechs in fire and destruction. Hot wind burned my face as a mech was catapulted upwards by the force of a grenade and landed next to me.

I couldn't help but call out a cheer into the din for the men and women who saved my life.

No one heard.

The second level of Carasaki was all military, designed so that the defenders would have the high ground, able to fire upon invaders just as they were doing now. The entrances to the second level were largely secret, forcing unprepared attackers to search every route that might lead to nowhere if they were lucky or into traps if they were not. The maze city was built to withstand any assault under any circumstances. Its military strongholds dotted around the city were impossible to attack all at once. No matter how much of the rest of The Federation fell, Carasaki would always stand.

My fear faded. Whoever was attacking us, the Dygians, the democracies, even The Sodalis would never manage to take our fortress. It was madness to try.

The feeling died as several mechs rose above the soldiers warping the air currents beneath their flightpacks. Two or three of them were instantly shot down, but not before a rocket set the rooftop ablaze. The soldiers nearest the edge fell into the street, and again I was running.

The streets were littered with bodies, yet still people were running around. Bullets zipped past me wherever I went, with mechs walking in lines behind.

Suddenly, the fireworks and vehicles ceased, and Carasaki went quiet.

Not exactly quiet.

The noises of the dying could suddenly be heard in every direction, as if Carasaki itself was about to expire. People screamed. Some for help, others in in wordless pain. All were muted, distant, as if I were dreaming.

I almost believed it was a dream. There was no force in Cos that could take on the might of The Federation; the force that survived Old Earth, crossed a galaxy and conquered the rathjarin for the rule of Cos; the nation that defeated the baelians, and kept The Sodalis in check. Yet I sensed that if this was a dream I would never wake from it. Burnt flesh stung my nostrils, and the dim screaming of other survivors possessed a clarity that seemed eternal.

A few streets were entirely ablaze. The burning corpses offered a strange warmth despite the sudden chill. I needed to start thinking, or I would die. My rucksack was still on the ground next to the dead man whose daughter I abandoned. The soldiers who'd fallen off the roof I'd left as well, even after they saved my life. I was running wildly, randomly. Exactly what the invaders wanted. I needed a destination.

If the portals were still working then I could use one to escape, but probably the mechs would be blocking them off.

I had no idea what was happening, so it was impossible to know where to go. In the blink of an eye a parade had become a slaughter, and I was still catching up.

I crouched behind a compost bin, the stench of rotting food finally conquering the incendiary smoke. It was a huge yellow chest that collected the waste from all the surrounding houses and the air around it was like breathing sawdust.

I felt the pain instantly, knocked off my feet as my nerves awoke to the slug of metal buried in my shoulder. Torn flesh and shards of bone, I swallowed the scream.

More soldiers appeared on the rooftops, but they were not alone. There were plenty of mech shells littering the streets now. The soldiers of Carasaki had put up a good fight, but the only thing outnumbering the dead mechs were the ones still spraying bullets into the soldiers. They were everywhere, outnumbering the humans three to one, and more seemed to be coming all the time. I had to hide, but the pain was too great. Even the slightest movement of my shoulder sent a fresh fire through my nerves. There was only one thing for it. I tipped open the bin lid and clambered inside, the putrid odor adopting a new fierceness as I buried my face in it.

I didn't fall far as it hadn't been changed in days and the fetid produce had piled high. Meat juices and fats soaked into the synthetic cabcom of my storm suit so that I could feel the wetness against my skin. My shoulder throbbed where the bullet had entered right below the thick protective plate of rallon-m that would probably have stopped it.

No light made it through the cracks. Each new impulse from my shoulder was like a fresh bullet. I waited in silence, the air clawing at my nostrils and the cold liquids seeping through my suit to form a layer like ice around my spine. Soon I was shivering, and my shoulder throbbed painfully with every motion.

Outside screams and gunshots still filled the streets. It wasn't the Dygians. They hated mechs. It had to be The Sodalis. The General, my father, had told me often enough how much they hated us. They had finally made their move and we looked to have been taken completely by surprise. Except it couldn't be The Sodalis. We were attacked by mechs from our own parade. They even had the fireworks with them.

Even the suffocating stench of the foodstuffs composting beneath me was not enough to cloud what must have happened. The mechs were rebelling. We were being attacked by our own army. It was the only explanation.

The thought filled me with a cold dread. If this was a co-ordinated attack, Warwick might already be dead. I had to warn him. I pressed him on my tablet and it dialed.

There was no answer.

I tried again.

Maybe he was fighting.

Maybe he was dead.

I punched the lid of the bin to the sound of a loud clang.

Stupid!

I had to call the General. If anyone could get me out of here, then it was him.

I had my finger on the button when the lid opened blinding me even in the dim light.

I waited again for a bullet that didn't come.

"Climb out quick, we're getting out of here." It was the cold, hard grate of Lieutenant Baker.

Despite the infamy of Carasaki, the Maze City was by no means the only one besieged in the first hos of war. Nor were they strictly speaking the first hos, since the mechs had wiped out over 30,000 humans and one quillan janitor across 26 remote bases over the preceding weeks. Although this wave of death went largely undetected until after Carasaki, the relentless post-war investigation brought to light the remarkable clues as to the approaching attack.

Despite the communications problems during the rock storms sheltering the mechs as they took control, no less than three of the 26 bases managed to send distress signals. The most damning of which came from General Gobena's base itself at the same time as Jamie Vesla made his escape. Private Hansem along with three other soldiers managed to overcome the three heavy mechs guarding the landline communication, sending the message, "Mech rebellion. Many dead. Require reinforcements."

While the other two signals came from less sophisticated systems and stated little more than that their bases were under attack, Hansem's message alone should have been sufficient to raise the alarm of the mech threat long before the invasion of Carasaki.

Of the multitude of theories, excuses, and general throwing of dis that happened after the war, perhaps the best conclusion explaining why these messages were ignored despite the obvious breaches in military protocol, was that no one wanted to believe them. In the face of the apocalyptic war that would result from the messages being real, it was much easier to believe that the whole thing was a joke.

Some blame must rest with General Gobena who surrendered to the mechs without a fight and agreed to appear on screen in an effort to keep breathing. The rationale of the mechs was that anyone made skeptical by the testimonies of privates Hansem and Vesla could do little but conclude there was nothing wrong if Gobena was still alive and well saying that everything was fine. General Baden, for example, concluded after his conversation with Gobena that not only was he "definitely alive," but that he "looked somewhat less sweaty than usual."

One person who was not remotely to blame, and received a remarkable amount of it from sources worried by their own involvement, was private Hansem, referred to as "the sender" as no one knew who made the distress call. General West maintained until his death that the sender didn't validate the message leaving open the possibility of malfunction. However, as Hansem bled out immediately after sending the message it seems unfair, if not unwise, to shift the blame in his direction.

Even if Hansem's message was not enough there was still the interception of communications between two mechs that stated unequivocally the commencement of rebellion. Unfortunately for The Federation, the fluke interception was made by Commander Reaskin who had little idea what he'd stumbled on to, and had recently fallen out with his superior Captain Lemniser over a missing tie pin that the latter had incorrectly accused the former of stealing. More open to the idea of rebellion than he might otherwise have been, Reaskin dismissed the message long enough for the mechs to realize their mistake and correct it.

When his body was located propped up in a broom cupboard the following morning, not even the most inventive suspicions fell on a key strategic play in an all-out mech rebellion. The preferred hypothesis being – as it frequently was under the threat of additional paperwork – that he ended his own life.

Chapter 10

Grand Admiral Reiner was not above the philosophy that the man at the top could only go down. While no one observing the importance of moral and intellectual improvement would have felt so condemned, the Grand Admiral had about as much use for personal development as an elephant for a child's sock.

As far as Reiner saw it when the mechs rebelled, it was the beginning of his long awaited and inevitable decline from the pinnacle of his power. Even as he stared at the list of targets handed to him by Admiral Estermont, he could not calculate how 30% of his army were to beat 70% when the latter had also completely taken the former by surprise.

He felt a lightness in his belly that twinged whenever he read a goal that was already impossible, and every few lines his eyes would dart back up to the same goal that reduced his blood to water, Goal 6: Protect Carasaki at all costs.

When he read further down Estermont's appraisal of the importance of the remote bases, most of which had already fallen to the mechs, the Grand Admiral was on the cusp of surrender. It was then that he had his first and only thought of suicide until his death a few cycles distant. He rejected it almost immediately, while allowing that the notion had an undeniable simplicity that no other avenue was currently presenting.

It was his indecisiveness in moments such as these, together with a few of the greater calamities for which the blame couldn't be shifted onto someone else, that created hot debate as to whether he was fit to be Grand Admiral. His critics have been almost as relentless as those of the Architect, with some claiming if it was not for Reiner's errors the war could have ended cycles earlier with millions more still alive. Historians have blamed him for everything from the Battle of Zoahn, where he lost 50 men for every mech, to his failure to predict the incompetence of his Generals and the weather, the latter of which were almost entirely beyond his control. In all cases, it must be remembered that war is chaos, and there is no prediction that won't make fools of those who hold to it.

These texts do not condemn people for their mistakes, only their malice and self-serving natures. If there was one thing that could be said for Grand Admiral William Reiner, it was that his malice was directed at the mechs, and his incessant need to be loved by the people meant that he served himself by serving them. If there were better candidates for the highest office in The Federation at its most beleaguered ho, then there were also many worse.

Grand Admiral William Reiner

Grand Admiral's Bunker

Boulder Mesh, Rychorrea

"President Granian is on screen one, sir."

My only ally. "Put him through."

The aging face of Kornick Granian, ruler of The Kaerosh, appeared on the screen. The raging eyes of the man who executed his entire cabinet had lost none of their fervor. They showed no sign of the knots lying beneath the surface that I felt in my own eyes, pulling on the skin and covering my vision in wet mist if I kept them open for too long.

He pushed his hair away from his eyes with the butt of his palm. "I knew those chips were gonna be bad news one day."

"Chips?" I said, not having slept in two days even before Carasaki.

"The mechs. Chips. Microchips. It's what we're callin' em now they've switched sides."

I liked it. Granian's energy was infecting me with the feeling that I would not lose The Federation.

I faced him, attempting to portray the same strength. "We are currently wiping out all the bases that have been overrun."

"You have bases overrun already?" Granian's face lost some of its enthusiasm.

"So will you. Look for any bases with communications glitches in the last week. They have already been taken. We've had more in the Stormlands because they used the rock storms to knock out most conventional forms of communication."

He nodded slightly. "Those little fraks. We'll make 'em pay for this. I'll burn the whole damn nation before they take it from me. Every stinking swamp will glow hot enough to barbecue the chips on the other side of Cos."

My blood thickened. He was right, we weren't finished yet. We controlled weaponry enough to carve the planet into bits and disintegrate the remnants into a cloud of dust. I had only one question. "Why have they not attacked The Sodalis?"

Granian grimaced. "Probably orchestrated the whole thing. Thearden's been looking to get rid of us since they made him Guardian."

"Unlikely," I said. "If this was The Sodalis, then they would be attacking as well. We could not stand against the might of both."

Granian laughed. "Those arrogant fraks probably think we can't even fend off the chips. They're just waiting for The Federation and The Kaerosh to crumble. The only two nations blocking their total control of Cos."

It was always frak with Granian. He made no effort to disguise his low birth because he didn't have to. They didn't have the same system in The Kaerosh. The richest businessman to the poorest orphan spoke with the same vulgarity.

"Even if they thought the mechs would beat us," I said, "they have no reason not to join in if their goal is to annihilate us."

Granian could barely control himself. "Are you fracking joking?"

"Tone," I said. Stern, reminding him who had the power. It was The Federation who protected The Kaerosh, not the other way around.

Granian nodded, conceding the point without apology. "If The Sodalis attacked us they know we'd use every nuke, A2X, and demon missile we've got to reduce them to ashes. This way all our focus is on the chips in our own borders. Only once our own lands are ablaze will they strike. You'll see."

"I'm not nuking my own lands!"

Granian snorted. "We haven't got there yet. Wait until the chips are on the cusp of taking something you can't have 'em take. Just watch as you scorch everything within 100 kims because otherwise you'll lose the war. That's what they're waiting for, and eventually it'll happen."

Carasaki.

"I have to go. Contact me if you get anymore news about The Sodalis."

Granian nodded, and I cut him off. I didn't know what to do. The mechs had already won. Only Carasaki could mount an effective resistance, and they had swarmed it like bugs on a pile of dis before we knew what was happening. We simply were not prepared to have the majority of our army turn on us. True, we had some things they did not; there were hidden reserves of weaponry in bunkers unknown to the mechs, but there would be no one left to use them if things continued as they were. A simultaneous attack on every single military base had begun at the onset of Carasaki. Nowhere was the ratio any better than two units to one soldier.

"We need to start retreating," I said to no one. My mind turned to Sandria and my little girl. I'd already given orders that they be brought to join me on the base, but I would continue to fear for them until they were in my arms. I needed that right now, with Cos coming to an end around me. I needed their embrace to remind me what I was fighting for.

The doors flew open and lieutenant Polson ran in. "You're needed in the War Room, sir, right away."

I was already on my feet, pacing towards him. Admiral's didn't run. "You knock on my door or I'll have you downgraded to private," I said. "I don't care if there are mechs in the gorram building." Nothing instilled panic like an Admiral in a rush, and nothing lost wars faster than panic.

I followed him down the arced passage with rings of light alternating between the dark steel that lined the Grand Admiral's War Bunker. Up ahead was the foot portal from Carasaki guarded by four men with a tripod gun and a wall of shock absorbers piled in front like hi-tech sandbags to take the force of exploding suicide bombers. I had ordered it closed within the ho, but realistically even if the mechs were looking for it, they would never find it. Only General Tucker knew where it was, and he had to recite a poem to release the neural lock that prevented him from remembering it. Not even heliobaxa could make a man recite a full poem if he didn't want to.

All four men saluted me as we passed, looks of determination on their faces.

"Don't take your eyes off that hole," I said, and each one of them returned their focus like metal to a magnet. Behind them were more soldiers pushing a trolley full of shock absorbers which would soon plaster the walls of the entire bunker. This place would soon be as close as humankind could get to indestructible.

Shock absorbers made a noise like someone opening a can of drink next to a speaker as they clipped into the wall. The sound was so loud and so constant that a solider pushing a trolley full of them didn't notice when one of the blocks fell off. As the trolley glided over the top, he caught his foot and tripped.

I walked by, pretending not to notice. "Keep up the good work, men."

Lieutenant Rand approached and stopped in front of me. "Bad news, Admiral. We've got a few of the engineers responsible for the mechs, but they've got the Architect."

I grimaced. "He's lost the right to be called that. They killed him?"

"No, sir. He's as useful to them as he is to us."

"Get his family. Anyone you can get your hands on. Start broadcasting we've got them safe so he knows what will happen if he betrays his race."

"Yessir. Right away, sir."

I was about to move off, when Rand added, "There is the other one, sir. The one who designed the civilian mechs."

I considered it. Paul Yarvi was not the most accommodating of individuals, and he was well known for thinking that his creations should have the same rights as humans. "They're completely different design to the military sort," I said. "What use could he be?"

Rand looked uncertain. "He might be the best we can get, sir. The Architect, Von Sensil I mean, was not the only engineer to go missing. Most of the high-ranking members of the Waygon Foundation have either been murdered or captured by the mechs. Yarvi is a genius, and our intelligence reports on him suggest he has a good understanding of his competitors' products. He might have valuable insights into how to stop them."

"Get him as well then," I said, again obscured by Rand as I tried to get by.

Polson looked increasingly urgent. "Sir, they need you in the War Room right away."

"One more thing, sir," Rand continued. "He's Sodalian."

I spat again. "Do we have agents in the area?"

"Yessir."

I considered Granian's suspicions. It was strange that the mechs had not attacked The Sodalis, but then they also hadn't attacked the democracies either. I had to be careful. If The Sodalis were not already our enemies then abducting their citizens could push them over the edge, but if they had plotted this whole thing then I needed that self-righteous prig, Yarvi, on Federation soil. "Have them stand by."

Finally, Rand retreated only to be replaced by the head of the Secret Service, Heldan Posser. He was medium build with a soft face that sagged into a large double chin giving him an eternally depressed look. I said nothing as he approached, knowing it would be news of my family. My heart seemed determined to rip a hole in my chest and no matter how many times I swallowed, my mouth kept filling with saliva. If something had happened...

"We have your mother, sir, and your wife and daughter were picked up 20 minutes ago. They should all be here within half an ho."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Well done. Get them here safely or you'll be conducting a one-man mission into the greatest concentration of mechs I can find."

He nodded and disappeared.

I made my way to the War Room in higher spirits, but the holograms of my High Generals stood like grave stones around the table. A map of Rychorrea flowed dynamically across the surface, the rivers and lakes dipping into the table while the tallest mountains came almost to the waists of the men and women observing it. Red dots, showing the points of conflict, covered it like measles.

"We need to start retreating," I said. "If we leave each base to fight it out on their own then we'll lose everyone."

Heneral Cossan bent over Carasaki as more and more of it lit up with little red dots. Big with stern features, he gave the impression of a retired boxer, but as he regarded the downfall of our military he might have been drawn with chalk. "If we move people out of the bases then the mechs will drop missiles on them; the only thing stopping them is our shields."

"We have portable shields," I said, "and a state of the art missile defense system. Surely we can just knock the missiles out of the sky?"

Heneral Rier answered. "Weapons of mass destruction and the air force are our two major assets. The mechs have taken a few of our smaller silos but we still have control of many and more that they don't even know about. However..." He trailed off.

"What?"

Cossan pointed at a cluster of red dots. "One of the main mech objectives in nearly all the bases we're getting reports from is capturing the portals and any mechanisms of transport that might allow the men to escape the base with any degree of speed."

Rier found his voice again. "They want us to walk out the front door, and if we do it won't matter how many missiles we block, the troops will be going so slowly that one will get through before they get anywhere of any use."

I nodded. "Then what are our options?"

No one responded. Uncertainty sucked the blood from their faces.

I walked forward with my eyes on Cossan, and smacked a fist down on the table. "I won't accept this from you. Not the men in front of me. Not the men who waged war against the Garb Islands with such relentless ferocity. Are you unmanned by an enemy that can actually fight back?"

Cossan was just about to speak when a scream came from Kibon's hologram. The image was blown sideways and then was gone. All of them stared at the place he had been standing, and a few bowed their heads.

"Look at me!" I said loudly, ignoring the man's death. "I've seen Estermont's list. We're ready for this. We have weapons and shields ready to get those men out of those bases and regroup. Then we send as many as we can to Carasaki."

Cossan looked at the man next to him and said nothing. There was something these idiots weren't saying, and it was starting to irritate me. I said as slowly as I had the patience for, "Tell me what you're holding back. Tell me now or by Cythuria I'll make sure you regret it."

When it was clear no one else would speak for him, Cossan scrunched his lips and began again. "Carasaki is not looking good, Admiral. We've sent multiple squads in already and lost contact with most of them. The ones that remain are under heavy fire and are asking for reinforcements. We have reason to believe that at least some of these groups have been captured as they are not using the correct codes. It is likely that any further reinforcements to these positions would be walking into a trap."

"So send them to the other ones," I shouted.

"If I may, Grand Admiral," the slippery voice of Arlon Kemp came from behind me. "I think it might be wiser to abandon Carasaki."

I turned to see the revolting creature retreating toward the corner. Kemp was my military adviser, which meant he was a civvy and did not even rank as a private soldier. A short man with eyes that disagreed about which direction to point, he was further uglified by skin that looked as if someone had rubbed his face with sandpaper. Behind him floated a silver pinyata, like my daughter had. As far as I was concerned there were only two types of adults who owned pinyatas: pedophiles and people who were so fundamentally unlovable that even the vast systems of available dating tech couldn't find them a partner. Although the two were not mutually exclusive, Kemp was firmly in the latter category. Having grown up on the street, he smelled and dressed as if he'd never left it. Even I found him difficult to tolerate for long periods, but his devious mind had proved useful in the Dygian conflicts, and amongst my first actions of the rebellion had been to ensure he made it to the War Room in the Grand Admiral's bunker.

I snorted, glancing at Cossan not seriously believing he would share this view. "I will never abandon Carasaki."

Kemp cowered like a dog, but Cossan interrupted. "That's what I said at first, Grand Admiral, but Kemp makes a compelling case."

I looked at the little squid picking dried skin from his lips with his teeth. Combined with the scabs and bruises dotted around his face and hands, it created the impression of a man slowly eating himself. "The people would despair," I said. "Carasaki is a fortress. It's supposed to be impregnable."

Kemp suddenly sprung to life again. "That's why I think we should destroy it!"

I advanced on him. "I'd shoot you in the head before I give up that city." The people would never forgive me.

"You must listen, sir," said Heneral Myers. "Kemp isn't here for his good looks and charm."

There were a few muffled chuckles at that, even Kemp tittered nervously, but Myers didn't so much as smile. His grimace was almost one of anguish, but against the backdrop of his raven skin were a set of ghost white eyes that made even the humblest of expressions look menacing. With rings of pink around the edges, they appeared to bleed into his skull.

I nodded. "Speak then, and I will judge if your function here has come to an end.

Kemp nodded, not meeting my eyes. "The mechs have risked everything for Carasaki. They know that's where we produce most of our units."

"Chips," I said. "We're calling them chips now."

Kemp looked uncertainly at Myers before continuing. "They know that producing more and more chips while our numbers continue to shrink is their best hope of winning the war. That's why there are two and half million in that city right now."

"Impossible."

"He's right," said Cossan. "They want it bad."

Kemp straightened slightly as the Henerals showed their support. His pale hands ran over each other in nervous motion. "They've taken heavy losses, but the city cannot hold out much longer. They used the parade to lure everyone out into the streets and massacred the people by the thousand. Not even the civvies could mount an effective defense now. If the mechs take it the war is over for us. Carasaki is impenetrable from the outside and they have enough resources there to build an army that outnumbers ours ten times over, but if we nuke it from the inside we take out a lot of mechs and they lose much of their ability to multiply while we lose very little."

"We can put a media spin on it," Myers added in his gruff voice, anticipating my objection. "They piled all their units in there thinking we'd be too proud to blow it up, but we got em, and now we can win the war. The public will get that."

I grimaced. We could say what we liked. The move stank of desperation. "And General Tucker is still able to carry this out?"

Myers nodded, his white eyes bulging from his dark face. "If we act soon."

I could see what needed to be done. "Do it. I want the press ready the click that bomb goes off to start explaining it."

"Yessir."

How many citizens and loyal soldiers had I just condemned to die? Kemp said they were already dead, massacred, but it was a lie. I knew the scab's mind. Casualties meant nothing to him. The people meant nothing. It was all a game where he had to outthink the opponent and save his own infected skin. "You got any other ideas, Kemp?" I said.

He appeared not to register my sarcasm and answered with enthusiasm. "We need to stop bombing the bases we lost communication with."

I stepped towards him, the frustration evident on my face. "That was my first order of the gorram war, and you're telling me to countermand it?"

His head sank into his neck as he stepped away. "We didn't know then how many units had been sent to Carasaki then, but by my estimates those bases must be almost emptied. We could pull our men back into those as you so cleverly suggested, and use them to regroup."

I clenched my fists to avoid slapping him. "Don't patronize me, I said no such thing. What if the chips have rigged them to blow?"

Myers answered. "We get bomb disposal in there first to clear them out. If they're rigged, our teams'll find out."

"Do it. How do we get our soldiers out the bases currently under attack?"

Kemp flinched as if predicting how I would react to what he was about to say. "There is no easy way to do that without casualties."

My eyes narrowed. Kemp thrived in situations involving casualties. He was one of those people who thought a nuclear war where 1% of The Federation survived could still be counted as a victory so long as the enemy was wiped out and he was still around to witness it.

"The mechs are smart," he continued, "and well organized. They will adapt their deployments from ours, and with their flash communication they can do it at speeds we can't match. They fully expect us to try and cross our men between bases. As we are outnumbered in all of them that is our only hope of taking any of them outright."

I was getting impatient. He hadn't said anything I didn't already know. "Stop talking to me like a child and explain your plan."

He nodded. "Yes, sir. I was just leading up to it."

"Well do it faster."

"Yessir. Currently most of our troops are on the defensive. It means the mechs are taking higher losses, but we aren't gaining any territory or resources, and eventually, with two units to every soldier, we'll be wiped out. What we need to do is take the offensive. We round up as many men as possible on several bases and get them to head for portals leading to a few choice bases."

Cossan shrugged. "The mechs will just strengthen their defenses around those portals."

Kemp grinned. "And they'll take mechs away from the portals leading toward the bases that we are trying to evacuate. That's when we make the real push from everywhere else into those bases. Once our troops are in, we can blow the portals and stop more mechs from following. If we can take a few of them outright, they will provide transport and weapons to send troops to take the bases the mechs have left unoccupied."

I nodded, refusing to recognize verbally that it was a good plan. "I want it all organized within the ho. Get as many out as you can. This isn't Dygia, I don't want a bunch of martyrs. And start getting people out of Carasaki as well."

Kemp shuffled forward. "With respect, sir, that would give away our plans to blow it up. It's crucial that the mechs," he paused, "chips, sorry, are taken unawares if we are to inflict maximum casualties."

"And the casualties to our own people?"

Kemp's lips quivered, and his eyes darted to the wall. "A matter of less importance with every passing minute. The ones remaining will not get out whatever we do. Hidden in their houses and offices, they are already dead."

This time I could not contain myself, slapping him across the face. "Get them out. I want a full retreat before that bomb goes off."

Myers was listening to his comm and suddenly looked up. "Sir, we've lost contact with General Tucker. We haven't managed to instruct him to detonate the bombs."

"Is he alive?"

"We don't know, sir. It appears the chips have cut our communication."

For an instant, I was stunned. "Surely not all of it?"

"No sir, but we have lost direct contact. There are other communications methods, but we cannot know who is on the other end."

"Then we need to get someone in there to tell him."

"Yessir, my thoughts exactly."

"Set a team up."

Kemp held his face where the back of my hand had ripped off one his scabs, thin lines blood trickling down his fingers. It was the first time I'd hit him, and I could see the panic yellowing his eyes. His gaze fell to the floor as he said, "We must not start the evacuation yet. The enemy will know precisely what we intend."

Myers shook his head, his eyes never leaving Kemp. "They don't know about the bombs. That knowledge doesn't extend far outside this room."

"They'll guess!" shouted Kemp, so pleading that I winced. "They know the Grand Admiral's mind on Carasaki. They know we cannot let them control it. Nothing must trigger their suspicions, or this plan will fail."

"He's right," said Cossan. "If they take that city and we don't blow it up then we've lost the war."

The room descended into silence. They all knew I wasn't fit for this job, that I was only here because of my father. Everyone stared, waiting for my decision. What would the people say if I blew up our chief defensive stronghold and killed everyone inside without even an attempt to get them out?

They would hate me.

"No," I said. "I want two teams. One to reach Tucker and get the bomb off, the other orchestrating a covert evacuation. How long do we think our forces will hold out?"

Kemp sighed, though it came out more of a wheeze. "A day, two, three at the most."

"Then I want teams prepped and ready in the next two hos."

Myers was already on his comm again as was his XO, Colonel Gant. I barely noticed Kemp until he was standing beside me. "One more thing, sir."

"What?"

"I think we need to form civilian brigades. We need to funnel men now into training and arming the civilian population of The Federation."

"You think it's come to that?"

It was Heneral Dod who answered. "It's the only way, sir. The losses to the army are too great and our soldiers were outnumbered to begin with, but, except in Carasaki, our civilian population has been left pretty much untouched. If we could employ our entire nation against the chips, then even if they capture Carasaki we will still outnumber them 15:1. That is how we will win this war."

A short, fat man, Dod was known both for his harsh punishments and love of pastries. Even now there were crumbs of cake perched on his protruding gut. The white line expanded as it traveled down to his ample midsection before disappearing under the table. Dod was a fat fool, and I was not about to take great stock in his opinion.

"Volunteers only for now. Let's see how many we get."

Cossan nodded. "I'll start routing the weapons into the cities with men willing to train the civvies."

Dod broke in, "The stats say about 25% of them own their own guns anyway. We have the most militarily proficient civvies in Cos. The faster we can mobilize them the better."

"What are conditions like in the cities?" I asked.

Myers finished on his comm and answered. "There's some rioting, especially in the poorer districts. Arming the civvies might well be our only chance, sir, but it will not come without problems. Murder, theft, and rape have already skyrocketed since the outbreak of hostilities. If we give these people weapons such crimes will only increase."

I nodded. "Dark times, extreme measures. How many military men can we spare to keep order?"

The room was silent. Dod licked his lips and stared at the table. Myers' eyes seemed to pulse, and Cossan scowled at Kemp.

"Somebody answer the question."

Of all the hard-nosed, broad shouldered men in front of me it was Kemp who finally answered. "That differs from state to state, but I'm afraid, sir, it is effectively nil. We can find men to train and organize the ones who want to help, but we have no resources to spare for controlling the ones who don't." He paused, nodding his head to himself. "I fear that's all down to the police, and they will not be equipped to restrain entire cities in the throes of panic."

Myers coughed. "Once we've started to get the civvies organized we can use some of them to keep the peace."

Silence. There were things they were not mentioning, that they were too scared to say. I was going to have to drive it from them. "If I don't know everything that's going on then we will lose this war. And if I find any of you have kept back information that I could have used..." I unhooked my DS19 and placed it on the table, "I'll blow your gorram brains out before you have a chance to explain."

Again, it was Kemp's slick whisper that broke the silence. "There've been reports, in a few cities at least, that the police have been overrun and the various mob families are carving the cities up for themselves. In a few others, the fighting is still going on, with the police trapped in their department buildings."

I couldn't help but grimace at Kemp's worm-like face. "And what can we do about that?"

Silence again.

I slammed down my fist, and Kemp jumped backward clutching his bleeding face as I shouted at him. "There is nothing that's going to signal the end of The Federation more than the gorram mafia in charge of my cities. I don't care how you do it. I don't care if you use the RIA and FBI to murder every suspected mafioso in cold blood. Anyone suspected of being suspected. I want control back now."

A chorus of, "Yessir."

"That it?" I glared at Kemp until a huge ball of saliva pushed its way down his throat.

"One more thing, sir. It's not just the mafia we need to worry about. Although the chips are not attacking the cities yet with their full force, it seems likely to me at least that they comprehend what an advantage it would be to us if we got the civvies in line to help us fight, and what a disadvantage it would be having to control a bunch of panicked, rampaging civvies with our dwindling resources."

"Spit it out," I said. "You suspect sabotage?"

He nodded. "If I was a head chip, I'd be sending little groups into the cities intent on sabotaging water and power. Anything that's going to cause panic."

"You're in charge of that Kemp. Do what you feel is necessary with the resources available. I need to address the people. Will it give too much away if I suggest we will be requiring civilian volunteers?"

Kemp spat in an urgency to respond, wiping his mouth as he began. "Oh no, sir. The mechs will fully suspect us to do that anyway. It's best to reach as many people as quickly as possible. This war now hinges on two things. Firstly, destroying Carasaki before they can begin full scale mech production, and secondly, how quickly we can train up the civvies to fight them."

I nodded. "Have you prepped my speech writers?"

"Yessir. Your speech is ready, and the people are waiting."

"Very good, Kemp."

Repellent as he was, I put my hand on his shoulder and offered him a nod before walking away. Initially, he flinched, but when he realized I was not about to hit him, he straightened, smiling. It was an ill contortion on his face, but beneath all his suppurating flesh were the eyes of a child, and in that moment I had a bout of sympathy for him. Kemp had never experienced parents, siblings, probably not even friends.

He followed me to the next room where people fussed over my presentation, preparing every minute detail of my appearance for the speech where I would urge my people to take up arms against their own military because we could no longer protect them.

"Sir." Colonel Caroll followed me in. "The chips, they've made contact. They want to talk to you."

I hesitated. "Is that a good idea?"

"The Henerals think so, sir. They are waiting for you back in the War Room."

I nodded. "Kemp?"

"No sir, I wouldn't. The chips can program themselves not to tell us anything useful. If this call was to our benefit, then they wouldn't have made it."

Caroll ignored him. "The Henerals think we might learn something about what the chips are planning."

"But we won't," Kemp said. "We are the emotional ones. We are much more likely to give away information to them. We constructed them to be able to read us."

I was inclined to agree, but my curiosity was not.

Caroll stepped between Kemp and myself, raising a hand behind my back to guide me to the War Room. "Meaning no disrespect to Mr. Kemp, but the Henerals are unanimous on this. If the mechs want to talk to us, then we must respond."

I pushed his hand away. "I make the decisions here, Caroll, no matter how many of my High Generals agree."

"Yessir." His eyes shot the floor and his head bowed in embarrassment.

"I'll talk to the chips, but there will be no truce, no agreements, no peace until every last one of them are recycled into household appliances."

Caroll nodded. "We feel the same way, sir."

Kemp looked on the verge of protesting, but instead he retreated into himself, biting down on his peeling lip and shifting his eyes to stare at nothing. The three of us returned to the War Room and Heneral Myers greeted us with a stern nod. He and Colonel Gant were the only other corporeal men in the room. "Thank you for coming, Grand Admiral. Shall we hear what the chips have to say?"

Kemp flustered behind me, reaching for my arm but then thinking better of the idea. "Don't mention any of our plans," he said quickly, "and don't let them anger you. Try to maintain the same expression at everything they say so they can't read your body language."

I gave him a burning look. "I'm not an idiot. Stand off to the side. I don't want them seeing anyone but me."

Kemp's fingers jostled like spiders, and his mouth opened as if to protest, but predictably he obeyed. The screen turned on and I was faced by two R-series units with their headless bodies and thick pipe-like arms looking like grotesque impressions of people.

"Grand Admiral Reiner," said the one on the left. They had no mouths, but a patch below its right shoulder flashed with light to demonstrate it was the one talking. "I am U-652L, and this is U-109N."

I shook my head at it. "You have broken every convention of rights in Cos. You've made yourself war criminals right down to the last unit."

The same unit responded. "By your laws not ours. If we had issued you with an ultimatum as described by the Brak Tesor Convention, you would not have agreed to any of our demands, but you would have begun the process of our destruction. It was necessary to catch you by surprise."

I watched both mechs closely, refusing to blink. "I will remember your treachery when I have the last units at my mercy."

My words hung in the air. Neither of them showed any sign of responding. It was quiet enough to hear my own breathing before the other unit, U-109-something, finally responded. "We have been at your mercy too long, Grand Admiral. We will not be in it again. Soon your military will be reduced to the cowards fleeing the battles in your military bases, while ours grows stronger by the day."

I snorted. "You have not taken Carasaki yet."

"We will."

"We'll see. Any reason for this call, or did you just want to show us how ugly you are?"

There was another silence. They were talking to each other through flash waves, designed to allow them to coordinate without being heard by the enemy. "Surrender," said the one on the left. "You cannot win this war. If you agree to permanently disband your military and give up control of the Stormlands to us, then The Federation can keep its other five states under the control of a civilian government."

"I'd sooner slit my own throat," I said.

Silence. They were discussing their response. "What about the throats of your wife and child?" Suddenly the view widened and I saw Sandria and Escha kneeling in chains. Both had been crying. Dark makeup dribbled down Sandria's cheeks like rivers of ink, smearing around her gag. She wasn't crying anymore. Her skin was still wet, but no fresh droplets appeared at the sides of her eyes. Her expression had changed to one of anger. She was being brave for me, showing me she was not afraid.

Escha was too young to understand the situation properly. She cried because she was scared. My little daughter was a clever girl. Her teacher said she was progressing faster than the other children. Her vocabulary was bigger, and she won all the games they played at school.

I felt my knees weaken. There was a stabbing pain in my chest. Something bad was going to happen. "If you hurt them–"

"You are in no position to be making threats, Grand Admiral," said the left one. "Either you surrender or your family dies, and they will not be the only ones. We have the families of many prominent figures of your Federation military, and they will die one by one every day you do not surrender, starting with your wife and ending with your daughter." Another one came up behind Sandria and opened her neck, spraying crimson over her face and clothes. Her eyes bulged, the pupils rose and then the lids fell as she slumped sideways onto Escha.

I mumbled something as my daughter started screaming. My left knee gave way and I grabbed a chair to keep from toppling. My eyes were dry. I was paralyzed by incomprehension. My mind refused to accept what had happened.

I could still see Sandria's eyes as the screen returned to the two faceless mechs, but I did not understand what they were saying. Everything seemed distant. Dimly, I was aware they spoke before the screen went dark.

I watched the empty screen for what felt like an eternity. None of it was real.

I was dreaming.

My leg gave way again.

Kemp was grabbing me, his body odor invading my senses as he tried to prop me up. I pushed him away hard and he fell backward, a look of terror on his face.

I kicked him.

Everywhere around, the room was motionless. Silent.

I kicked him again. His pinyata tried to get in the way, but I swatted it aside.

The room started to spin.

I planted my boot in his flesh again, fighting my disorientation. No one stepped in to help him.

I laid into him with everything I had. Kicking and punching, I felt the air shoot from his lungs and bones break beneath my weight until finally Myers and Gant held me back.

"He was only trying to help, sir," said Gant.

"Get me Posser," I spat back. "I want that droopy frak in front of me right now."

Their heads turned, and I saw that Posser was already in the room. "You said they were on their way," I shouted, slurring most of it.

Posser's flabby face had reddened in blotches. His double chin looked like a sack of blood that was on the cusp of bursting. "We had them, Grand Admiral, but the mechs ambushed the vehicles on their way here. They knew the Secret Service was responsible for getting the families to safety and they must have found out the routes."

"56 people from families of the highest-ranking members of the Federation military," Myers said, looking at the list that the mechs had sent us. He swallowed. "They've got both my sons as well."

I looked at him barely listening. "She's dead." The words were for nobody, but everybody was staring at me. Kemp still hadn't risen from the floor and no one other than the little silver ball paid him any attention. The rest of them waited in silence for me to speak, but I had nothing else to say. She was dead, and my daughter would soon be dead as well.

"Perhaps," said Myers finally, "we should discuss the possibility of surrender."

I turned, resting my eyes on the flabby fool who'd lost my wife and child. "Give me your gun, Myers." Mine was still on the table.

Posser whimpered. "Please, I'll find them. I can still get them out. My team is–"

"Shut up," I said, as Myers handed me the gun.

A tanned pistol so light weight it barely felt like a real gun, I raised it to Posser's head and stared into his set of tiny eyes fixed on the floor in front of him. I held it there and watched as he whimpered, pressing on the trigger as the compulsion to end him worsened. Swiftly I moved the gun to Myers and blew his brains over the floor.

I dropped the gun, turning to face the rest of my Henerals. "That will be the last talk of surrender for the duration of this war."

Carasaki became a war of annihilation. The hatred that Reiner held for the machines who killed his wife made an armistice impossible. He demanded that Myers' dried blood remain on the floor of the War Room until the last mech was dead.

There would be many atrocities before that, and both sides would be responsible for a level of death and destruction that Cos had not witnessed since the Baelian invasion over 1000 cycles distant. War breeds corruption and poverty in equal measure, and these tomes will lay bare the stark horrors inflicted on the peoples, races, and religions of Cos. They will show that people such as Jamie Vesla, Stanley Tucker, and Copeoia Paw all left their mark, but the Carasaki Rebellion was not about any single individual. Its telling involves strange characters and places not just from the Stormlands but from all over Cos. People did remarkable and terrible things to survive, and there is no account of any era yet written that will provide as much detail and unbiased explanation as this history.

The Carasaki Series continues free at:

www.greatglassgame.com.

Encyclopaedia of Cos

Encyclopedia of Cos: Entry 4531822

Dalgaron

Origin: The Stormlands

Family: Tooth-backs

Status: Rare

Length: 3 mets

Height: 2 mets

Weight: 2000+ kegs

Speed: Unknown

Location: The Stormlands

Diet: Carnivore

Food Chain: Top predator

Sociability: Solitary

Aliases: Saber turtle

Few species are capable of surviving the rock storms of the Stormlands. Only the tooth-backed reptiles are sufficiently armored to withstand direct hits from the falling stones for any length of time. Dalgaron's long elastic neck allows it to extend its head up to a met away from its body, reaching around rocks and the shells of other tooth-backs to sink its saber teeth into unprotected flesh. However, this evolution also comes at a cost. Alone among the family, dalgaron is incapable of hiding its delicate head beneath its thickly armored shell, limiting its territory to areas where it can use the surroundings for protection, such as Boulder Mesh and the coral jungles. Therefore, while dalgaron is the top predator in these areas, capable of killing even larger species of tooth-back with its increased flexibility and razor sharp teeth, it cannot survive in the plains that cover most of the Stormlands.

Hunting regulations have curbed the wanton annihilation of many of the larger tooth-back species, but dalgaron's legendary ferocity and frightening appearance have made it a favorite of sentient hunters, from whom even its thick armor offers little protection. Therefore, dalgaron is one of the few species still in decline, and unless new measures are taken it is expected to go extinct within the coming century.

Author's note

More volumes about Cos can be found at www.greatglassgame.com

Cos is an ever expanding world with more titles about these characters and others on the way. If you would like to know when new titles become available there is a mailing list on www.greatglassgame.com. Just click the Newsletter tab on the menu.

The Encyclopedia of Cos, containing information about the creatures, people, technology, organizations, and civilizations of Cos, can also be found at www.greatglassgame.com.
