Chen hadn’t mentioned the surgery and additional augments they’d receive. Convenient.

  He asked his 2iC to follow-up. Make sure they’d gone. The 2iC reported back and confirmed. He also mentioned she’d taken the contrabass with her.

  That broke Chen, “She took What on holiday?”

  The clinic was on the rogue planet Velithra. Once a super planet, now a shadow of itself. Cracked bone and molten breath with a fractured twin in tow. Another of those “oops” moments in history

  It was also drifting towards Drexari space, light years from anything.

  High gravity, extreme heat and toxic atmosphere made it a perfect spot for anyone, but humans. So, with invasion plans sorted, a Drexari hive ship flew in, eliminated the small Confed garrison, killed the resort staff and took the resort’s exclusive guests hostage, including her squad. Two marines and six Panthera.

  Then the Drexari started sending home photos.

  “Hi Brood Mum, this is me in the gravity therapy pools.”

  “Having a great time, loving the cold rooms. Wish you were here.”

  “The culinary domes make twenty flavours of ice cream. Yum yum.”

  Before the invasion. Drexari spies hacked the resort’s records and cross checked each. Feebee was listed as a new recruit, yet to graduate and cleared to play a bizarre, ancient Terran instrument, the contrabass serpent.

  The Drexari were on alert and looking for the Silent One. The one who’d been there when the metal serpent sang. Could it be her?

  Was it a coincidence? They checked further.

  Her medical history conveniently overlooked the extensive augmentation surgery. Her service record was sketchy at best. Her medals, awards and citations including those recently received were omitted.

  Their search confirmed, the Silent One wasn’t on active duty.

  Despite that; as a precaution, a Drexari orbital strike took out her villa in the early morning. A simple query, made on a free on-line AI, had told them that’s when normal humans slept.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  A QI mod had added some small print; “AIs can make mistakes. Check important info.”

  Or maybe they’d ignored it.

  Either way, unlike normal humans, she was sitting by a volcanic pit playing Hissy. She’d just finished a twenty-eight-mile run before breakfast.

  Nanites were scrubbing toxic gases from her lungs. Adaptive skin, a recent augment, scattered excess heat. Active comms was off.

  She was invisible to even the most detailed sensor sweeps.

  The Drexari had no chance of seeing her.

  She was relaxed; calm and still; in the zone.

  Her nanite-packed skin shimmered as she moved, rendering cloaks superfluous.

  Above her, low clouds of glowing microbes cast dim light across the lava field.

  Across from her, the remains of an archology slowly fell into one of the pits, its once majestic superstructure now just food for the ever-hungry lava.

  Hissy’s real name was Va’thruan but Feebee liked Hissy. She let it go, feeling herself above such things and with her deep, rumbling, serpentine voice, called out to the universe.

  The universe responded.

  A copse of bioluminescent coral trees pulsed to the cadence of her tune.

  Feebee’s green mote rose into the air. Other motes, small sentient flecks of light, glitched into existence as she played. And then Hissy lit up in response.

  Her glyphs pulsing in time as she groaned and moaned tones of release beneath the caress of Feebee’s gentle hands.

  Motes, increasingly attracted to Hissy’s voice and her glowing glyphs, twisted and danced around the serpent’s core. It was magical.

  Ordinarily she would have reacted to the gentle nudge from her QI, but she was utterly in the moment, surrounded by sentient motes dancing to the tunes she played.

  She ignored it.

  The QI became insistent, annoyingly so.

  Again, she ignored it, putting the intrusion down to an over-zealous setting or some new augment she’d forgotten to dampen.

  The QI couldn’t wait; it was frantic. So, it took the initiative, enabling Feebee’s multi-spectral vision.

  It did the trick, distracting her.

  She stopped playing.

  The motes paused their dance around her, hovering in place. Waiting.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The apartment has gone dark.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘An Orbital strike just took out the resort. More specifically, our villa.’

  ‘Really, here?’ asked Feebee looking around.

  ‘Yes. Encrypted Drexari comms confirms an invasion of our location.’

  ‘Not again! What is it with these guys.’

  The QI ignored her and continued, ‘I am also detecting movement, some Drexari coming this way.’

  That got Feebee’s attention. She reacted immediately, looking for cover, somewhere to hide with Hissy.

  There; shadows on a rocky shelf nearby.

  She picked up Hissy and jogged over to a fissure in the rock face. Feebee fitted in easily; however the contrabass serpent wheezed and tried to breath in as they squeezed into the deep shadows.

  ‘Make me some green and blue chocs.’ She instructed the QI, ‘and a hunting knife.’

  ‘Ack’

  Feebee felt the backpack shudder slightly as the recently installed nano-forge started synthesising.

  ‘Can you translate what they are saying? Give me it as text.’

  The QI grunted.

  Feebee smiled inwardly, I’ll take that as a yes.

  Almost immediately, text started to scroll across her overlays.

  What you gonna do tonight when we get off?

  I like the look of the cold rooms. This place is so hot.

  Feebee put Hissy down and moved with infinite caution. What she called ‘still motion’.

  She could see two Drexari wandering about, looking down at the resort with their backs to her.

  They had rear facing eyes, so care was necessary.

  ‘Are they combatants?’

  ‘No easy way to tell,’ responded the QI with a mental shrug.