As the dust cloud plumed, Evy switched on the heat signature overlay on her helmet. They’d just blown a hole through an especially thick wall. She would have preferred laser torches, but they had to recoup time and using det chord was much faster. It was a risky move; few things held more value on a space station than its walls. Walls kept everything separated, compartmentalized. Walls kept everyone inside alive. Knocking one down meant altering the carefully controlled environment of the station. And they had to minimize damage to the station. The mission brief had made that explicit. It struck Evy as odd that it needed to be pointed out.

  She found one body stumbling through the dust cloud. She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the clear hallway. He couldn’t have weighed more than a buck sixty-five and looked young. The young man was startled by the sight of the massive Jingo guarding the hallway.

  “Nikolus Dimitriou?” she asked.

  The man coughed and nodded. “That’s me.” Then he looked around frantically. “Where’s 2246B?”

  Another pair of figures emerged from the dust cloud.

  “She’s right here,” said Zekk. He moved alongside a figure a little larger than a child.

  “What is going on?” it said.

  Evy took in a sharp breath. She had seen androids, cyborgs, and all manner of biological entities throughout her life. But she had never come across anything like the creature that stood before her. According to the brief, it had been grown inside a pod. Its body contained both organic and inorganic material that comprised its skeleton, muscle tissue, and processors. Neither fully robotic, but not quite human, this creature resided somewhere in between. It struck her that it resembled the bodies she had seen in the large chamber.

  Evy pushed the thought aside and said, “We’re here to save you and we’re behind schedule. Get moving.”

  She nudged Niko down the corridor and the group began moving. A smaller woman with a complicated looking headset fell in just behind Niko. Her fingers twitched as though typing on an invisible keyboard.

  “Niko, is she another good person that is also bad?” 2246B asked.

  The young man nodded and then shot a look at Evy. “That’s certainly what they’ve been paid to do.”

  Evy narrowed her eyes behind her helmet. “Don’t get smart with me. You were late.”

  “So were you,” Niko fired back, “something I plan to bring up with your superiors.”

  Jingo laughed. “You can certainly try.” He shot a nasty look back at Niko. “But you should know you aren’t worth as much as the freak.”

  Niko pushed up on his glasses. “She’s not just a ‘freak’ and without me, she won’t go with you.”

  Jingo turned and looked as though he would strike the human, but Evy snapped at him. “Stow it. We don’t have time for this. You hurt him and it comes out of your pay, got it?”

  Jingo glared at her and then turned to resume forward movement. “Aye aye, captain,” he said with mock respect.

  Evy ignored it. “Tracer, we’re about to reach you. Cover our six.”

  “Roger that,” came a voice over her comms that sported a country twang.

  “Zekk, check our route ahead.”

  The slicer’s thermoptic camo engaged, and he disappeared once more. 2246B let out a startled squeak when he did.

  Evy turned to the woman with the strange headset, “Silk, status on countermeasures.”

  “Staying ahead of them, but just barely,” replied the hacker.

  Hackers were an invaluable part of any merc team. A good hacker did almost half the job by keeping automated security systems out of play. Thanks to the layers of closed systems that stations like this often employed, hackers had to be on-site to do their work. This meant that they frequently had to do this under fire. It was not an easy job and Evy made sure Silk was protected on mission and well rewarded.

  “Keep at it.” Pounder’s shredded body flashed in Evy’s mind. They didn’t need more surprises like that. She turned to Niko and 2246B. “Stick with me like glue and keep pace. Do not stop for anything.”

  Niko took 2246B’s hand and nodded. The creature looked uncertain but followed Niko regardless.

  Evy ran through the next phase of the mission in her head. This would be the most dangerous part of the op: getting the objective out of the station. Any number of things could go wrong. The timer on Evy’s HUD told her they had just under ten minutes left to reach the extraction point. Reaching Niko and 2246B had taken longer than that. Despite that, they had timed their entry well. Aside from the unexpected goon squad, they hadn’t come across other station personnel. The timer ticked down to nine minutes left. She gritted her teeth and pressed on. Jingo set a good pace. Hopefully, it was enough.

  They passed by the remains of the squad they’d taken down earlier as well as Pounder’s body. Niko looked as though he might throw up, but the man regained himself shortly after they moved away. 2246B was another story. It examined the bodies intently, as though absorbing every detail of the scene, studying it. 2246B’s demeanor became grim afterwards, her face becoming hard. It unnerved Evy a little.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  At one point, Zekk had them veer away from their path toward another part of the station. New territory. Intel told them this would lead them to the cargo bay. They had entered the station through a maintenance hatch, but that way would not work for leaving. The tight winding corridors and shafts that accommodated stealth made a speedy exit next to impossible. The cargo hangar presented a possible way out, but it presented more challenges in the form of additional station personnel, open spaces, and little cover. Plus, it was clear that the station had stronger security than originally anticipated.

  At the back of her mind, Evy couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else intel missed or was purposely leaving out. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly; it was a knot of impending dread stewing in her gut.

  It wasn’t the Andrani Collective. They were a known quantity. If the Andrani arrived before extraction, Gecko squad chances of making it out alive dropped practically to zero. When the Andrani purged a location, they did so thoroughly and completely. It wasn’t her new squadmates from Serpent. Again, she could count on them to be ruthless, self-serving bastards.

  Her mind went to Specimen 2246B. Intel hadn’t told them much about their objective other than it was a new kind of lifeform, a perfect fusion of biological and cybernetic ingredients. The way 2246B watched them, the way it spoke, the facial twitches and reactions, they made it easy for Evy to forget that 2246B was in fact an artificial lifeform. What drove the creature forward? What kind of technology had Mamertine Solaris delved into? Few things drew the attention of the Andrani.

  The Collective served as a kind of technology police. If a nation or company—and who could tell the difference these days?—developed tech that the Andrani deemed dangerous, they would swoop in like the angel of death and wipe the slate clean. As in, no trace that the facility had once held people or technology of any kind. Since their purges began a few thousands years ago, not long after humans began re-colonizing the galaxy, companies and nations tried varying efforts that ranged from appeasement to outright defiance to deal with the Andrani. All efforts failed. The group would brook no appeal and seemed impervious to military offenses. Every force amassed against them was annihilated, no matter how powerful. If antagonized enough, the Andrani completely erased the organization, company and nation alike.

  The Andrani never seemed to have any ambition beyond the removal of the technology. Attempts to communicate with them were met with silence. They simply showed up, removed the offending tech and personnel, and left. All investigations into their point of origin or their destination after these raids proved fruitless. Even their names was a moniker applied by the news media; their activities were first recorded in the Andrani star cluster where humans first began to proliferate across the stars. The “Collective” part of the name denoted their single-minded nature of the attacks, perhaps even a religious affinity, though to what god was anyone’s guess.

  The remaining companies and nations pooled their collective knowledge to determine the technologies that stirred the Collective’s ire. The list came down to the following: planetary-level weapons of destruction, manipulation of the space-time continuum, quantum manipulation outside of communication, and artificial intelligence.

  That last stuck in Evy’s head. Did an AI reside within 2246B? She had seen service droids before, but they possessed single-purpose programming and never operated outside of that programming. Technically, neither could and AI, but where an AI differed from the dummy droids came down to learning. An AI could learn and adjust its own programming, improve itself beyond the limitations of their initial creation. That’s what made them equally amazing and dangerous. If one listened to some of the more extreme elements of the Grand Library, it was an AI or perhaps multiple AIs that brought about the Great Calamity that stunted humanity’s expansion throughout the galaxy.

  The Calamity was a veritable black hole in human history. However, one part of the story everyone agreed upon: it birthed the Andrani Collective.

  Evy had always wondered at the criteria the Collective imposed. The way she saw, if humans wanted to do something stupid to themselves, then they deserved whatever happened to them. Except for AI. Something about humans creating a being with the potential to surpass its creators creeped her out.

  If Mamertine Solaris had dipped their toe into those waters, Evy wasn’t so sure she disagreed with what the Collective would do to this place. And here they were removing an important piece of that. How would the Collective react? Would they notice the missing specimen? Would they pursue Gecko across the galaxy to ensure they completed their purge? If they did the latter, then what the squad was doing could endanger not just themselves, but the SaCaleta merc company, to say nothing of the mysterious client that set them on this path to begin with.

  Evy kept these thoughts on the backburner, allowing them to simmer, but never occupy her full attention. They were on a mission. The job needed finishing, and she would see it through. But afterwards? Afterwards, Evy might just take an extended leave, maybe a permanent one if the worst-case consequences proved out.

  Zekk’s voice brough her full attention back to the job. “Squad ahead, boss,” said the slicer. “In the cargo bay. Heavies like before. Won’t be pretty.”

  Evy cursed inwardly. They didn’t have time for another firefight.

  “Understood,” she said. “Post up and await orders.”

  “Roger.”

  To rest of the team, she said, “Gecko, halt.”

  “What’s up?” said Jingo.

  “More heavies in the cargo bay like we saw earlier.”

  Evy thought for a moment. She then said to Zekk, “Mark waypoints for Tracer.” To Tracer, she said, “Follow those markers to and establish a position, but do not fire until I give the order.”

  Tracer replied, “You got it, XO.”

  “I’ll take ‘em,” said Jingo, hefting his heavy laser. “Just point the way.”

  “Negative, Jingo. Last resort.”

  “Pansy,” muttered Jingo.

  At this, Evy grabbed the collar of his suit and flipped him on his backside. Keeping him pinned to the ground, Evy pressed a knife to a soft spot in his armor.

  “Are we going to have a problem, soldier?”

  Jingo’s helmet shook frantically, a motion that matched his voice. “No ma’am. I just—”

  “Just what?”

  Jingo swallowed. “Just don’t want my talents to go to waste.”

  Evy eased the pressure on the knife, stood, and helped Jingo stand to his feet. “I have a feeling you’ll get to use your talents plenty, Jingo.”

  Evy turned to Niko and 2246B. “You two stay with Silk. While we’re gone, she’s in charge. You do exactly as she says, do you understand?”

  “You’re leaving us?” said Niko.

  “We have a problem to deal with that requires my full attention, so yes.”

  Before Niko could say anything else, 2246B said, “You will kill again?”

  Evy nodded. “It’s part of the job. To keep you safe.”

  “So, killing is...good?”

  Oh boy, thought Evy. She did not have time for this conversation. “Sometimes,” was all she said. To cut off further questions, she said, “Stay inside that office and await our return. Open the door for no one else.”

  Niko nodded. “Understood.”

  “Silk? Cameras in the cargo bay.”

  “Already on it, XO. Ten seconds.” She waved at Niko and 2246B. “Come on you two.”