7WE DROP INTO THE ATMOSPHERE like a meteor, streaking down through the upper layers with a speed I can feel all the way down in the pit of my stomach. Flares of gold blaze across the viewscreen, fireworks of heat and light that illuminate the cockpit from every angle, while just beyond, tendrils of cloud begin to materialize. In thin furls at first, billowing up in a nearly invisible counterpoint to our breakneck fall, then coming together in heavier drifts of white, pink, lavender, and teal. They close around us, cutting us off from the black of space to cocoon us within froths of pastel mist that gleam gold-edged and glowing under the suns’ light.

I clutch the armrests of my seat, exhilaration gripping me as our acceleration only increases. The mists are blurring before my vision, the individual colors bleeding together as we slice through the atmosphere like a laser through ice. Our descent is so smooth that the rapid patter of my heart feels at odds with the ride, barely a tremor to mar our passage but for the soft roll of the mists rippling out from the ship like waves around a stone dropped in a pond. And like a stone, we continue to sink, pulled down and down by the strong arm of the mysterious planet below. A rhyme from my childhood suddenly flashes into my mind.

Desert, forest, ice, or sea—

What new world waits for me?

Before I have time to wonder, a faint whistling whips through the cockpit, and the ship jerks up without warning. My body lurches against the restraints, heart skipping a beat before I realize it’s just Chen hitting the brakes. The ship is slowing down now, its speed checking noticeably though it doesn’t feel like we’ve dropped nearly far enough to hit landing distance. Turbulence buffets us from either direction, pushing the ship this way and that, and then a thick bank of clouds whooshes up on all sides. Dense, heavy things that obscure the screens and blot out the sun. For an endless minute, we’re shut within the cloudy void, walled in by condensing vapors that hover in the strange place between air and liquid, and then we’re free. We tumble down out of the cloud line—

—and into the rain.

I hear it first, pattering across the cockpit light and steady, and then the visual comes, silvery drops sprinkling down around us even as translucent mists continually rise up in curling flumes from below. I marvel at the effect, unable to imagine what could cause weather patterns quite like this. “What is this place?” I dare to ask.

Angelou smiles, not one of his sly grins but something almost tender, a slight upturn of the lip that gravitates up his face to light his eyes. “Show him, Chen.”

Our pilot flicks her hand, and the floor beneath my feet turns to mists. I gasp, my body reacting before my brain can reassure it the floor is still there, now merely digitized with the view below. I’m about to ask what this is all about when up through the thinning mists it appears like a crystal flower unfurling its petals toward the sun.

A sky station.

Sheer awe has me slipping my straps and stepping out across the cockpit for a better look. Directly below, the central habitat glitters like a cut diamond, its faceted edges catching the light and refracting it in heavenly beams through drifts of lilac and white. Gossamer spokes of all lengths spool out from the center in a dozen directions, each ending in its own crystalline habitat wing, while landing bays curl like vines between the walkways. The design is irregular, every habitat a different size and shape, but somehow the irregular petals only make the station more exquisite, like a wildflower blooming in a garden of rising clouds beneath a silver rain.

“This is where we’re going?”

Angelou nods once, and I shake my head in disbelief, murmuring, “This isn’t like any military base I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s because it isn’t a military base.” Angelou releases his straps and comes to stand beside me. His gaze never leaves the station, and it occurs to me that if there’s a heart lurking beneath that sly exterior, it lives solely for that crystal world adrift in the mists.

He nods to the station below. “This is the most important place in the whole of the Expanse. It is the place where the war will truly be won or lost, the fulcrum upon which everything else rests. Success here means the survival of the human race; failure will bring only death. It is a place only few have the privilege of calling home, and now, you’re one of them.” Angelou extends his hand, eyes glowing with a cerulean fervor that seems to emanate from his very soul, and slowly smiles. “Welcome, Sorenson, to R&D.”

Research and Development? Impossible! I’m no scientist. What could they possible want with a guy like me in R&D?

My head is spinning. That this place, this sky station hanging within the pastel mists of some far-flung planet, could even exist at all is mind-boggling. That I could somehow be a part of it is only more confounding. My thoughts are so scattered, I’m not even sure how to put my astonishment into words.

Apparently my consternation shows on my face. “Surprised, Sorenson?”

“I don’t get how this place is even possible,” I admit, “let alone what I would be doing here.”

“Don’t you?” Angelou raises an eyebrow, as if doubting I could really be so clueless. His eyes narrow. “Do you know why, after all this time, we’re still fighting this war?”

I shrug. “We can’t kill ’em. At least, not without killing ourselves in the process. The human bomb—” My throat chokes up, and I cough a couple of times to clear it. “The human bomb the Tellurians created is so destructive, it would completely destroy the territory we’re trying to reclaim, along with any people living there. No point in killing the enemy if it destroys the very thing we’re trying to save.”

The strangest look flashes over Angelou’s face, but before I can even attempt to decipher it, it’s gone. “Exactly. We can’t kill them. We can’t capture them—not in ghoul form, anyway. We can’t even communicate with them. All we can do is fight a defensive war. Quarantine infected areas, evacuate survivors, contain squatters; do everything possible to prevent them from spreading. But no matter how rigorous our protocols, eventually a few find a way through. The fact of the matter is that until we can do one of the three—kill, capture, or communicate—we’ve already lost this war.”

I inwardly shiver. Though Angelou said nothing I didn’t already know, I’ve never heard it phrased that way before: We’ve already lost this war.

“That’s why R&D is so important,” Angelou continues, gesturing at the crystalline station winking gold within the clouds at our feet. “While the Navy and Guard and Ground Forces are putting up a valiant fight on the front lines, ultimately our survival depends on whether the people in that station can find a way to neutralize the enemy, one way or another.”

I slowly nod. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is— “But why am I here? I can see why you’d need scientists and researchers, even support personnel, but why a guardian? You didn’t really bring me just to be a janitor or waste scrubber, did you?”

Angelou shakes his head. “You disappoint me, Sorenson. You may not be a scientist, but I would think your resourceful mind could see your use. Think about it. What’s the one thing you have to do once you create a prototype for a new technology?”

“Well, test it to make sure it works, I guess.”

“But how do you test a prototype on a ghoul when you can’t capture one?”

“I suppose you’d have to take it out into the field.” The light flips on in my head at last, and I can’t help flushing in embarrassment that it took me so long to see. “That’s why I’m here. To take their technology out into ghoul territory to see if it works.”

I don’t need Angelou’s affirmative to confirm my theory. It all fits together now. After all, a guardian like me—young, strong, trained to handle ghoul- and squatter-infected situations—would be far better equipped to brave enemy territory without dying or becoming infected than the typical science personnel. And even if I were to get taken, so what? Guardians like me are a dime a dozen. Not like these scientists, whose brilliant minds may be humanity’s only hope of survival. To put someone like that at risk if there’s someone else who can do the job would be lunacy.

I stare down at the floor once more. Even with our speed checked, we’ve dropped most of the way to the station in the last couple of minutes, and now the shining compound looms up beneath us, so close I can start to see small details. Lights, viewports, even the shadow of movement within one of those gossamer walkways. It’s beyond beautiful, and yet the more I look at it, the more my awe turns to uneasiness. Something about this place, this station in the sky, isn’t right. The shining compound, the rising mists, the silver rain. There’s something ugly about this pastel paradise; I can feel it in my gut. Within the swirling mists and the golden light, something untenable is hidden, like a monster waiting to snap its teeth should we go too far.

I bite my lip, struggling to figure out what it is that’s bothering me, but before I can pinpoint the source of my unease, Angelou speaks.

“Regret taking the job?”

I lift my head and meet the challenge in Angelou’s gaze, strangely energized by the crackle of intensity in his eyes. “Not for a minute.”

He laughs. “I knew you were the right choice. Now before we land, there’s one more thing.”

He pulls out his metal case and opens it on the seat he stashed it under. It takes everything in my power not to crane my neck to try and see what’s inside. Angelou pulls out a short injector.

I eye the metal tube suspiciously. “What’s in that?”

Angelou returns my gaze levelly. “A coma capsule.”

My eyebrows shoot up. I’ve heard rumors of these, but I didn’t think they were actually real. Supposedly they freeze your tissues into a form of living death, liquefying your brain stem and putting you in a permanent coma while still keeping you alive just enough to imprison the Spectre in your head. The squatter gets a useless host, and the human gets an ugly half-death. At least until they die from exposure or thirst, that is.

I shiver at the idea. As a guardian on the front lines, I’m prepared to face death, even infection and quarantine on a penal planet, but this . . .

My gaze involuntarily goes to Chen where she sits silently at the pilot’s yoke. Is he for real? I can’t ask the question aloud, but she seems to know what I’m asking anyway, lips twisting in reluctant empathy as she raises one arm to reveal the tiny bump on her wrist. I spy the same bump on Angelou’s. Pushing up my sleeve, I stick out my arm. “Go ahead.”

The injector is cold, but the capsule burns as he shoots it into my wrist. I listen with half an ear as Angelou explains how to trigger it. It’s only after he puts away his injector and restows the case that I think to ask, “Can it be triggered remotely?”

“Yes.”

His answer doesn’t surprise me in the least.

My mind flashes back to our very first conversation in the Rose Room on the CES Triumphant, to Angelou’s answer when I asked about the potential danger.

I’m not going to lie to you. If you join this unit, chances are when you leave, it’ll either be under quarantine or in a body bag.

I finger the spot where the capsule was inserted. Only now do I understand—there is no chance about it.

Back in my seat, I watch as we make our final approach to the station, spiraling down through the misty rains like a leaf drifting down toward the ground. If anything, the place only grows more striking the farther we come, and yet for all its outward beauty, I still can’t escape the feeling that something about this place isn’t right.

My eyes scan the base once more—the habitats, the walkways, the mist. Though there’s nothing outwardly wrong with any of it, my earlier sense of unease is back tenfold, and I can’t help thinking: I’m missing something.

“Why a sky station?” I ask after a moment. “I thought the energy expenditure required to hold such a station aloft was too high to make it cost-effective. Why not just build a space station?”

Angelou shrugs a shoulder. “Simple. You can’t start putting extra artifacts in orbit around a planet without someone noticing. When the enemy can be anyone, anywhere, secrecy is our best defense. That’s one of the reasons we chose this planet: the atmosphere. The mix of gases plays havoc with standard scanning equipment, making it almost impossible to detect the station if you don’t know it’s here.”

If you can’t put it in space, why not just put it on the ground? Unless there’s some reason you can’t.

I stare down at the station again, but this time instead of looking at the base itself, I look around it. For a long minute, I see nothing. Just falling rain and rising vapors.

Falling rain and rising vapors.

Like something just below the station is heating the air abnormally hot, forcing it to rise up until at last it cools and condenses into thick clouds, raining back down in showers of gleaming silver, only to evaporate and repeat the cycle once again. A horrible suspicion takes shape in my mind. Blinking my eyes rapidly to magnify the view, I activate the infrared in my combat lenses, and gasp. Stretching as far as I can see in either direction is an ever-shifting latticework of red light nestled within the orange and yellow clouds. Horror fills me as I realize just what I’m looking at.

It’s a planetary net!

But planetary nets are used for just one thing these days, which can only mean . . . Prism is infected.

R&D is hanging directly over a planet full of Spectres.