If I’d been hoping to see what was inside, I’d have been disappointed. I hadn’t expected to see anything more than an airlock, but there was no airlock here.

Instead, what appeared to be glass with a hazy golden sheen blocked our view of the inside. Between experience with alien technology and years of consuming science fiction, I felt sure it wasn’t glass.

“Walk through the golden force field,” Rachel told us over the comms. “There’s an atmosphere in there. The Artificers usually set it to be similar to the atmosphere of the nearest planet with intelligent life, but it might have adjusted to the Abominators’ preferences. Those weren’t always breathable.” Continue reading Waning Moon: Part 8 →

I let the jet drop toward the ground, landing on the red dirt of Mars, thinking again that I could have visited purely to visit at any time, and that I was now only here because of this.

Behind me in the cabin, everyone set their suits to full coverage, helmets reforming over their heads.

I checked outside. The circle-shaped structure that ascended from the ground, seemingly made of Martian dirt, felt taller now that I’d landed. It wasn’t quite a mesa, but it was at least 20 feet taller than it appeared when we sat inside the jet. Continue reading Waning Moon: Part 7 →

“Sorry,” Cassie threw the picture from her implant onto the feed for screens in the jet.

I slowed the jet down further because now that we were no longer working at the speed of thought, we needed a second. I already had cloaking on. Hopefully, Rook hadn’t figured out a way to detect it.

He’d figured out how to block Cassie’s blade and Grandpa’s monomolecular tech before our last fight. The cloaking tech wasn’t on full display, so he might not realize we had it, but you never knew. Continue reading Waning Moon: Part 6 →

“Look,” Rachel said, “Accelerando said that my vitals aren’t showing anything unusually wrong. If we’re going to go to Mars, let’s go. I’d rather take my chances with alien tech. Except maybe for Magnus, we may be Earth’s greatest alien tech experts now. We’re not the greatest experts on the Nine. Let’s go. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we meet with Paladin.”

“That,” Marcus said, “she’s right.”

Jaclyn shook her head, “I don’t like it, but you’re making sense. I’d still like to look at Rachel before we get to Mars.” Continue reading Waning Moon: Part 5 →

“You’ve got an inventory list?” I asked.

“Close enough,” Cassie said. “I’ve got multiple inventory lists, all of them protected from the different Abominator clone lineages by security that we’d never get through—except now everyone’s dead. Thanks to Abominator inheritance law, the property, including intellectual property, reverts to the eldest clone lineage within the same group of sublineages. With everyone dead, all of it reverts to the control of anyone left with a Citizen’s Mark. As the last remaining representative of the Abominator civilization, I inherit everything.”

“Unless Victor’s still here,” I said. Continue reading Waning Moon: Part 4 →