Onboard Sky Station Epsilon-065

Secret Research Base for Division 7

THE CARRIERS ROSE UP FROM the mists, breaking atmosphere to sail up past the exospheric line and into space. Black on black, they soared almost invisibly against the void’s dark expanse, sleek and silent like a fleet of predators on the hunt. For survival, for vengeance. For the taste of redemption slicked hot and heavy across the blood-soaked stars.

Hands clasped behind his back, the Doctor watched them fly away through the night until they were gone from every last feed flickering over the curved walls of his sky-lit office. Though he didn’t consider himself a sentimental man by any means, he couldn’t help feeling a surge of pride at their passing. Pride, hope . . . and fear. The sort of icy disquietude that only comes when the very highest of hopes are pitted against the very worst of repercussions should one fail. But, as he reminded himself time and time again—

Failure was not an option.

Clearing away the center feeds, the Doctor linked into the interstellar communications buoy in orbit. Both recipients responded directly to his links, faces filling the ports on either side of him. He greeted them with two words:

“They’re away.”

The Admiral nodded once. “As are my people. And everything else?”

“The schematics and software for the OP modifications are being transmitted to all staffed OPs as we speak, under the guise of a routine security upgrade. Once the software uploads have been completed, we should be able to link every OP into the master system.”

“Good. What about the ships?” she asked with a glance at the Chairman.

“The drone ships have been modified and sent out as ordered,” the Chairman confirmed. “All should reach their target destinations on schedule. Additionally, all hardware necessary for the modifications has been manufactured and distributed where needed.”

They consulted on specifics for another half-hour, verifying drug supplies and military deployments, communication lines and contingency plans, but even the Admiral was eventually forced to concede that everything was, so far, going to plan. She idly clasped her hands behind her back and shrugged a shoulder.

“Then I suppose all we have left to do is wait.”

Silence descended, its thick web fraught with hidden fears and tacit dissent. The Doctor scanned the Admiral, trying and failing to read what lay behind her studied indifference. At one time, he’d been able to read her like a tip-pad, but in the intervening years she’d made concealment an art, and even he rarely knew what she was thinking anymore. The Chairman, too, was uncharacteristically quiet today. With a minute shake of his head, the Doctor spoke, compelled by the silence and his own unquiet thoughts.

“It will work.”

Now the Admiral’s reaction came, a twist of the lips that disappeared as quickly as it came. She leaned forward, face looming up on the holo feed.

“I’ve heard that before.”

The urge to slap her cracked through his palm, never mind that she was a thousand light-years away and he’d never raised a hand to anyone in his life. That she should bring that up now, of all times! But he stilled his temper, knowing she was only trying to provoke a rise from him, and simply repeated his original statement.

“It will work.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “We shall see.” With that, she linked off.

The Chairman followed soon after, linking off with only the tersest of goodbyes, leaving the Doctor alone once again. Sinking down into his chair, he tried to put aside the Admiral’s words and couldn’t. Even after all this time, the reminder of his worst failure still rankled.

The failure of the Nova Technology.

They’d followed the specifications to the letter, using the Tellurians’ schematics and data to create a weapon identical to the one that took out New Sol Space Station and its entire complement of ghouls so brilliantly. But although they’d done everything as instructed, they could not duplicate the results. Planets, colonies, evacked stations teeming with ghouls—they’d used the weapon in every possible location, but though the bombs always worked and the Spectres appeared, when the light finally died, the ghouls never died with it.

The worst was Luna Internment Camp 3. Not a Derelict, like all their other testing sites, but a squatter camp. The carnage was horrific, the death toll unspeakable. Out of a camp of ten thousand, 7,843 dead in the blink of an eye, and for what?

A weapon that did not work.

Not that the rest of the Expanse knew. Everyone had meekly accepted the official story: that the weapon was simply too destructive to be effective. An easy story to push, as it was essentially true—with one minor detail excluded. Only a handful of people in the highest echelons of command knew the real story, and all of them—the Admiral, the Chairman, the engineers working for R&D—simply believed the Tellurians had provided faulty or incomplete schematics for their weapon. It was the only logical answer. But though it was the only explanation that made sense, the Doctor had never been able to accept that. There was a reason it had worked on New Sol and nowhere else. Had the Spectres somehow found a way to defeat the Nova Technology? To withstand its killing effects so that when the explosion came, they stood firm? Or perhaps they’d found some way to sabotage the Nova bombs themselves. As a scientist, he couldn’t reject the possibility no matter how much he might want to, nor could he deny the inevitable conclusion that followed:

If they’d found a way to defeat the Nova Tech, the Archangel might be next.

For months they’d been seeing the signs; that of an enemy poised on the brink of a new offensive, one whose nature could never be fathomed nor timing discovered. If the enemy had somehow uncovered the plan, or if they struck against them in some other way before the Archangel could do its holy work . . .

No, he couldn’t afford to think this way. He was a scientist, not a strategist, and for all her faults, he trusted the Admiral to do her job and keep the enemy at bay until the time was right. In ninety days, he would personally input the commands that would send the Archangel surging across every planet, colony, and station in the Expanse. And then, bathed in the glory of its light, every ghoul would die.

They would die, because if they didn’t, the entire human race would.