Also by Alexander C. Kane

The Andrea Vernon Trilogy:

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection

Andrea Vernon and the Superhero Industrial Complex

Andrea Vernon and the Big Axe Acquisition

The Orlando People series:

Orlando People

Dade County Death Cruise

Dragon Heist

Scum of the Earth

Alexander C. Kane

Scum of the Earth

Copyright © 2024 Alexander C. Kane

All rights reserved.

This edition published 2024

Cover art by Christian Bentulan (coversbychristian.com)

ISBN: 978-1-68068-306-6

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

This book is published on behalf of the author by the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency.

This book was initially an Audible Original production.

Performed by Scott Aiello

Sound recording copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, LLC

You can reach the author at:

Website: Alexanderckane.com

Facebook: facebook.com/alexanderkane

Instagram: @alexanderckanebooks

Twitter and Threads: @alexanderckane

Dedication

For Virginia, who has patiently waited for me to finally write a dedication at the start of one of my books.

Acknowledgments

Many wonderful people helped this book along the way. First, thank you to my two children, Oscar and Shirley. Much like the Merg, you have invaded my home and forced me to do your bidding. You inspire me daily and I’m sure I’ll apologize when you someday find this book and ask why I compared you to a genocidal alien race.

My wife Virginia is wonderful and kind and patient and continues to motivate me whenever I begin to doubt myself.

My agent, Ethan Ellenberg, pushed me to write this book and make it into the best version of what it could be.

I needed a bug expert, and I turned to Dr. Michael Perry of UC San Diego. The author of the book about bugs in Scum of the Earth is also named Dr. Michael Perry. I thought about doing something really clever, like name him Dr. Perry Michaels, but it didn’t sound right. Also thank you to Mike’s wife, Bridget, who taught my wife and me how to do the first dance at our wedding.

For anything about space travel, I turned to my friend Justin Cold, who just knows stuff. Thank you for answering my texts about what happens if I turn off a spaceship.

Phaea Crede kindly listens to me ramble on the phone whenever I get stuck on a book and helps me find my way. Appreciate you.

Betsy Mitchell is the editor of this book. Thank you to her for everything she has done for this book and for my career. She is the absolute best.

Thank you to Sam Morgan, my former agent. He was with me for five books and none of them had an acknowledgments section. Sam, I officially acknowledge you. Thank you for dragging me this far.

Steve Feldberg at Audible took a chance on my first book and here we are on book number seven. He continues to support my writing and I will help him hide a body if he ever asks. HOLD THIS BOOK UP AS EVIDENCE AT THE TRIAL, I DON’T CARE.

Raelene Gorlinsky and Martha Punches are superhumans who got this book fixed up and ready to print. They corrected the many, many errors I missed while writing it. This Acknowledgments section was probably full of errors before they got to it. Maybe there were question marks where there should have been periods? Who knows! This feels like a good time to admit I don’t know how to type an em dash. I just type a normal dash and hope someone will catch it later.

Shivali Gulab and Shahir Daud loaned me their spaceship so I could see what faster than light time travel feels like. Thank you and sorry about the mess I left inside, but I swear that scratch was on it before I borrowed it.

During the writing of this book, I was atomized during a horrible accident with a nuclear-powered garbage disposal. Jake Boy and his children Iris and Evy Boy found all of my individual atoms and put me back together so I could finish the book. Jake, Iris and Evy also invented the nuclear-powered garbage disposal so I’m not thanking them too much.

Kalena Hornkohl saved me that time I fell into a volcano. She flew right in and grabbed me, and I appreciate that. Benna and Kevin Arburtha worked with me when I was stationed on an intergalactic mining colony and gave me a new perspective on the space rats. Boyce and Charlotte Thompson found me frozen in ice, used their heat superpowers to melt said ice, and then were pretty agreeable about me marrying their daughter. Sarah Wishnietsky traveled back in time to warn me that this book causes the end of the world and I needed to never write it. It was a little confusing how it would lead to Armageddon, but she explained it very slowly and it all made sense. Crud, I was supposed to not write the book. You know what, it’s fine. It’ll be fine.

Could not have written this book without Vickary Kane and Gary Kane because they are my parents and I would not exist if they had not had me. That’s just science. Also thank you to the Kanes of Great Neck: Sarah, Michael, Elliott and Auggie.

Thank you to author Leigh Bardugo. I do not know her and she had nothing to do with the writing of this book, but I opened up my copy Ninth House before I started writing this section to make sure I was spelling Acknowledgments correctly.

Chapter One

If you had asked Ezra Barker before the invasion whether, given a choice, he would serve an alien race that had conquered Earth or die a noble death, he would have said he would proudly die for his country and his species. Luckily, no one had ever asked him, so there was no one around to call him a hypocrite.

To be fair, he had not been given much time to consider the decision when it was presented to him. At the time of the invasion he was, notably, the youngest chief of staff to any of the sitting Senators in the United States Congress. He was efficient and clever, particularly when it came to obscuring the truth. He would not have admitted it before, but he could see now how his previous job had prepared him for his current one. He knew how to chop up an opponent’s sound bite and turn it against them. He could take a study, twist the facts in every direction, make up a few parts only his opponents would check anyway, and get that thing to say whatever The Senator needed it to say.

The Senator. There was a woman he would have told himself would never betray humanity. She would have taken a stance at the front of the alien horde and shouted out something folksy and patriotic. “You will never break the American spirit!” or “You can kill me, but you can’t kill the greatest nation God has ever created!” The Senator did not say anything like that, however, when the Merg seized Washington, D.C. She actually hid in her office until the Merg found her. Ezra, hiding in his own adjoining office, heard The Senator scream, “Anything! I can help you! People listen to me! I’m important! I’m very important!” The Merg believed her, apparently, and now The Senator really was The Senator, as the aliens had murdered all the others. Ezra liked to believe The Senator’s colleagues had also begged and pleaded, but had just done an inferior job of it. When a nine foot tall, six-legged, three armed insect-like Merg busted into Ezra’s office pointing some sort of energy cannon at Ezra’s head, The Senator had simply said, “He’s with me. That’s Barker.”

That was it. The decision was already made for him. “That’s Barker.” And now they referred to him as Barker like it was some sort of title. The Senator and Barker. The Senator had assumed she’d be placed in charge of the whole country, seeing as how she was the highest ranking government official still drawing breath, but she had been wrong. The Merg did not care about human job titles, hierarchies, or even borders. They cared about blind loyalty and unabashed thorax-kissing sycophancy, both of which The Senator excelled at, but they still only placed her in charge of Sector 24518, an area that included parts of Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, none of which The Senator had represented. There was disappointment she had not been able to rule her home state, which no longer existed as a political entity anyway, but The Senator always persevered. Barker tried to follow her example.

The new job was harder and easier than the old one. There were no prying reporters to worry about, but his masters could incinerate him if they felt he had failed them. He didn’t have to live in D.C. anymore, but post-invasion life in what used to be St. Louis was not his style either. He never had to check polling data, but everyone he knew who hadn’t been killed yet hated him. They could not say this, but he knew it. Whenever the Merg had to trot out The Senator for a new announcement, there was Barker right behind her. “Rations have been reduced.” “The age for compulsory voluntary service in the mines has been lowered to seven.” The Senator had a special talent for showing that this decision was hard, but she knew it would be best for Merg 12, the planet formerly known as Earth. He wondered sometimes what things were like in other parts of the world. What remained of communication with the outer world were The Senator’s conference calls with the leaders of other sectors on the continent previously known as North America. Ezra just sat in an office working on The Senator’s schedule, sending out assignments to those under The Senator’s command, wondering if the number of people killed by the Merg was in the tens of millions, hundreds of millions or billions, and crying uncontrollably for at least forty-five minutes every day.

Barker wondered if The Senator felt the same shame and regret. In meetings, The Senator always appeared chipper and motivated. She talked as though she was the most important leader in the world, and not someone who delivered announcements and followed directives from her evil extraterrestrial masters. The Senator was in charge of her district’s Health and Safety Department, a police-like force that had a number of stated missions, but really just captured anyone the Merg considered a threat or annoyance, tortured them for information, and then murdered them. Technically, control of Health and Safety gave The Senator her power, but HSD was like a knife whose handle was also a knife. That was how The Senator described it to Barker, at least, and it made sense. She also described it as a loyal attack dog with rabies. The point was the HSD was best left to run its business and not be bothered because even The Senator did not want to upset anyone in Health and Safety. While The Senator occasionally intervened, she mostly just took the data from Health and Safety, gave it to the Merg, and then reported back to Health and Safety whom to hurt. But, she always made it sound like her decision, her very difficult but ultimately wise decision.

Someday, Barker figured Health and Safety would come for him and possibly The Senator. It had happened to others. Kissing bony Merg butt and backstabbing your own species only did so much. The aliens had killed plenty of leaders. Barker could tell when they had a conference call and some new voice showed up to say, “This is Jerry Ratliff formerly of Ratliff Motors in Macon, Georgia, I’m afraid Judge Eggert ain’t around and I’ll be taking over Sector 24673.”

It was awkward to even think about because no one had a title, just a job. Were they governors, administrators, mayors, czars, wardens, zookeepers? No one wanted to be the first to suggest a new idea to the Merg. “Perhaps we should call ourselves Directors?” might seem innocuous, but the Merg took any suggestion that humans knew better than them poorly. Zap zap. Dead. That quick.

Barker looked at the clock tick on the wall. Another day as a traitor to humanity had come to an end. Now, he could just go to home and cry in a different building. Technically, his work day had ended fifteen minutes earlier, but there were other people who worked in the office and he wanted to walk out knowing he would not have to see any of them.

“Have a good night, Senator,” Barker hollered at The Senator’s closed door.

“Really great work today, Barker!” The Senator cheerily called back.

Barker had prepared multiple death warrants, scheduled a delivery of rare metals and other minerals humans had been forced to mine back to one of the Merg home planets, and sent a team to turn off the water for thousands of people, for reasons the Merg had not explained.

Barker stepped out of the modest two-story building in what it was illegal to refer to as St. Louis. This was 38.63, 90.20, Merg Sector 24518 of Merg 12. The first numbers were its coordinates. The Merg loved coordinates and numbers and hated place names, which made having a conversation about most locations confusing without having an online map, and the Internet was a thing that existed in the most limited and unreliable sense. In order to distinguish between two close-by locations, Barker would have to write it out to several decimal places, which was correct to the Merg and useless to the humans Barker and The Senator communicated with. People would mostly nod at Barker as he read off a series of numbers and hope they would never actually have to go to this mystery location. This was not the worst part of life since the Merg arrival, but it was still not good.

Two Health and Safety agents met Barker at the sidewalk and flung open the door of a waiting car. He walked quickly with his head down. You had to be careful. Barker was not The Senator, but he was part of the Merg’s form of provisional government, and no one liked him. His picture was likely tacked to the wall at the local headquarters of Reconquest, the ultra-secret rebel group that had been formed in the days following the invasion. They might not accomplish much with his death, but they were a crap organization that never accomplished much anyway. Organization might have been too kind a word really. If they did somehow kill him, he imagined he might feel something like pride and hope in his final seconds. “They finally got somebody,” he might think.

Barker lived in a well-maintained apartment in what he tried his best not to call downtown St. Louis, very near where the baseball team used to play. Protected Apartments 38.62, 90.19 was the official name of the building. He lived alone, which seemed preferable. His parents and other close family members had been given comfortable living quarters as a reward for Barker’s loyalty and service. Had he wanted, he could have them all in the same building but he never wanted to see them and catch the looks they’d give him. That “yeah, but at what cost” solemn nod.

In a sense, he did not live alone, however. He had Brush Woman.

Brush Woman lived across the street in a Worker Village, which meant a repurposed apartment building where they kept humans crowded and underfed. No air conditioning in summer, no heat in winter. Twenty bodies sharing one-bedroom apartments. Sleep where you find room. If you don’t have enough, fight someone else for theirs or just give up. People really only spent six hours a night in Worker Villages anyway, the rest in manual labor for the greater Merg good.

Everyone who lived in a Worker Village was dirty and angry and hopeless. But every night, Brush Woman stood by her window brushing her hair. And Barker watched. He marveled at her, this woman still holding on to what her life had been. She was young, maybe she’d been a college student when the Merg invaded. Or a travel agent. Maybe she was going to go to Hollywood to be a star. Maybe she was a first-year lawyer.

She looked straight ahead, as if she was back in that place before all of this.

Barker could have asked to meet her. HSD would bring her to his office no questions asked. But what would he say, “I’m a villain and I stare at you every night thinking about who you might be. Can we get a coffee after your mandatory sixteen-hour shift ends?”

Maybe he could get her an office job. Move her to better housing. But what if she failed at her given tasks? Or if she complained? Or if she had a third cousin in Reconquest? Then they’d both be dead or worse. He felt like such a coward.

He stared at her, willing her to just look at him. Her window was open and even though he was on a higher floor, she could just look up and their eyes could meet and without saying anything they would both communicate that they understood their shared condition, neither one free. She could just look up.

A knock at the door startled him. It could only be HSD or someone who lived in the building, so either he was going to be executed or someone wanted to borrow some milk. He could have checked through the peephole, but he really didn’t know which he’d prefer, so he opened.

“Barker!” yelled Clay, a young man who also worked in The Senator’s office, but in a room far away from Barker so that Barker would never have to see or talk to Clay. And yet here he was.

“Hello,” said Barker.

“Hello,” Clay said, mocking Barker’s inflection. “Buddy, let’s go out.”

“No, thank you,” said Barker.

“No, thank you,” Clay again mocking Barker. “Buddy, we gotta live.”

Barker wanted to dispute this point, but instead just said, “Long day.” Clay was a throwback to Barker of the just out of college political aides who treated Washington, D.C., like the sequel to their fraternity days. That he could still muster this attitude in the dismal existence of Merg 12 really spoke to the persistence of his shitty personality.

“I’ll lend you some clothes if you’re worried about your clothes being ugly.”

“I like my clothes,” said Barker.

“Really?” said Clay. “I mean, I guess that makes sense, you wear the same ones on the same day each week, so you must be happy. And weird.”

“I don’t wear the same clothes,” said Barker. “I have a color pattern I follow. Mondays are for gray, Tuesdays are for red … you don’t care, I know, but there’s a thought to it. It simplifies my life to have each day have its own color.”

“Bro, it’s cool,” said Clay. “You look fine.”

“I have an early day tomorrow.”

“Barker, I know you’re all about work, but we’re the kings of this town. Let’s enjoy it. There are still bars. You know that, right?”

This was, technically, true. Citizens who directly served the Merg in the HSD were allowed into “recreation zones” which sometimes served drinks that were alcoholic. Not the good alcohol The Senator hoarded, more likely foul homebrewed beer and bathtub gin, but they did play music.

“We’re not kings,” said Barker. “We are servants.”

“Okay, yeah, sure. But there are women out there looking to have fun and would love to spend time with big shots like us.”

Barker knew he was a bad person, a coward unable to reverse the course his life had taken, but the idea of using his position as Merg patsy for sex was especially distasteful to him. He wanted to say something powerful to Clay, to make him see the error of his ways, to instill a sense of shame in him. But Barker didn’t want to make an enemy. Even if he was right and someone else was wrong, drama was never good to the Merg. They’d just kill them both and move on rather than try to figure it out.

“Maybe next time,” said Barker.

“I’ll be your wingman. You need to fix your hair, but you look fine. You used to be a wrestler, right?”

“Swimmer,” said Barker.

“See, you’re an athlete.”

“In college,” said Barker.

“Well, whatever, just pretend you’re still in college shape and go.”

“Have fun without me, Clay.”

“I’m gonna have a good night!” Clay shouted. “The best night, Barker! And I’m going to tell you about it tomorrow and you will feel so bad you missed out!”

Clay was already walking down the hallway, but continued to call back. “You’re going to be like, ‘Oh, Clay, please take me with you next time! You’re so cool and you know where all the hot ladies are!’ Because when Clay goes out, it’s epic, man. Tonight is going to be epic!”

Barker closed his door.

Chapter Two

“Hey, Hayes. The deceased’s name is Damian Clay, worked in The Senator’s office. Looks like he was decapitated and someone cut off his dick,” said Officer Patterson.

HSD Sergeant Connor Hayes felt a number of emotions in that moment, standing on a dock beside the Mississippi River past midnight, looking down at a dead body covered with a blood-stained sheet. Other officers milled about, looking for evidence or at least trying to appear busy and important. No one else seemed to have heard the dipshit assigned to him break protocol.

“Do you see a Hayes?” Hayes asked. “Or do you mean Sergeant Hayes?”

“Sorry, Sergeant Hayes, I—”

“What do you see standing behind me, Officer Patterson?”

“You mean the Merg?”

Two Merg, stood outside the building, both of them unarmed. A human translator stood in front of them. They just stood, watching the HSD officers looking over the scene.

“I mean the Merg,” said Hayes. “Do you think this is the day to be informal?”

“They don’t care what we call each other, they don’t even—”

Hayes held up his hand and it took strength not to slam his subordinate’s face on the ground. “They care that we are doing the work we are richly rewarded for doing. They care that we solve this and discover who has harmed a member of The Senator’s staff. They care or they would not send two of their own. That behind us is a message. It is bright and clear. Can you see it? The message is, ‘Don’t screw this up.’ Do you get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And yet here you are, coming in unshaven, a direct affront to department policy. You call me Hayes like I’m your buddy from bowling league. Your HSD shirt is untucked in the back. You are spitting in the eye of the Merg. The beings who have given you everything. You could be living over there!” Hayes pointed at the Worker Village across the river with disdain.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” said Patterson.

“You have to decide if you want to reward the Merg for their generosity or if you want to piss them off. You want to live with the filth in that building? Because we made our choice and they made theirs.”

The kid was new and they’d given him to Hayes to educate and shape into a real HSD, and it was clearly going to take some work.

“I like my job, sir,” said Patterson. He had started this conversation with a bored “Let’s get this over with” look in his eyes, but now there was real fear. He tucked in his shirt in the back.

“Good,” said Hayes. “Very good. HSD is not easy, but we keep this planet safe from those who don’t appreciate the Merg. And they appreciate our work and we live comfortably. Our families live comfortably. So, yes, I know that we were called in early, and you did a great job of getting here and ID’ing the body. But now we are all business. Did they recover it?”

“Sergeant Hayes?”

“Damian Clay, his—”

“The head or the penis?”

“His head,” said Hayes.

“Yes, they left it by the body, it matched the photo ID.”

In the old days, there might be fingerprinting or DNA swabbing, but that wasn’t the Merg way. They weren’t going to build a court case, they were going to kill a lot of humans to send a message. Hayes just needed to point them in the right direction. In a way, that made his job easier, and he appreciated the Merg for their belief in swift justice over the slow criminal-favoring court system. But there were challenges. No cameras anywhere, the Merg did not care for them.

“We have to get this right,” said Hayes.

“Should we say something to the Merg?” asked Patterson, young and stupid and lucky to have Hayes.

“You want to ask them to prom, boy?” asked Hayes. “If they wanted our thoughts, they’d ask for them.”

Curtains opened in the Worker Village across the river. There was no day and night to those people. The mines were open day and night, and it was just a matter of what shift you worked, everyone coming in and out. Some were coming home and taking a look for themselves at the investigation, others were taking one last look before sleep.

Connor Hayes had lived forty-five years of his life without the Merg and two with, and the biggest difference he could see since the Merg landing was that finally people had to work. No more government handouts, no cushy jobs at online magazines writing about video games or comparing waffle brands. Now, you woke up, you worked the full day, and you went home. It was good, honest work and to many, it felt like a punishment. They sabotaged the Merg, they burned down Merg buildings and stole Merg ships. It was not surprising to Hayes, but still embarrassing. Never mind the technology the Merg had brought. Never mind the promise of eternal prosperity once the Merg resource extraction operation finished. This was a blessing, but some people wanted everything handed to them.

Hayes looked away from Patterson at the Workers Village across the street. Every person there could push a little harder, think a little smarter, and they’d be elevated to manager, get an upgrade in their accommodations. Did they do it? No, they lived like swine because they had the ambition of swine.

“Somebody over there saw something,” said Hayes.

“Maybe,” said Patterson, not realizing the insubordination of his comment. That only “maybe” his superior officer had been correct. It was embarrassing for both of them, but Hayes didn’t hear the translator behind them saying anything, so at least the Merg didn’t know.

“Somebody over there saw something,” Hayes repeated in a less patient tone.

“Of course, Sergeant Hayes,” said Patterson. “I can instruct the floor captains over there to ask for information from the residents if you want.”

“No, I don’t want,” said Hayes. “Because I don’t want to spend a year waiting for a bunch of sub-human filth to summon the courage to rat out their fellow traitors.” The Worker Village was dead silent when they walked inside. It was a telling silence, considering the thousands of inhabitants. A building full of waking, sleeping, fighting, crying, defecating, screwing, eating, and all manner of other activities and not a single noise. Everyone knew they were there and no one wanted them coming to the door. Cowards, thought Hayes.

“What’s the resident count?” Hayes asked.

“About two thousand,” said Patterson.

“Lot of people,” said Hayes. “Now, you’d think someone here might know something. Two thousand people in this building. A high-ranking government official has his body dumped right outside their windows. Someone saw something. Someone knows something. And I’ll bet you they’re scared right now.”

“Of course they’re scared,” agreed Patterson.

“Gonna go floor by floor!” Hayes yelled, loud enough to be heard and for everyone to understand he was not happy to be here. “Gonna start on the first floor and work our way up. Nobody talks, bad news for the first floor. We go to the second floor and nobody talks, why that’s even worse news for the second floor.”

“I’m sure there’s someone brave enough to speak up,” said Patterson.

Hayes truly detested Patterson. He was talking about this like these people were children about to get a shot at the doctor and they had to put on their big boy pants or whatever garbage. These weren’t children, they were vermin hiding information about a terrorist.

“Longer I wait, the worse it is. If I have to break down a door, you won’t like what I do. I know some of you must have loved it. Maybe you saw them dump the body, maybe you saw them cut his head off and you thought it was one big joke. Another one of the humans who work for the Merg dead. Any of you tough guys want to come say it to my face? Because you are running out of time.”

“Well, maybe we’ll—” Patterson began, but Hayes waved him off.

“Pick a room,” said Hayes.

“For what?”

“Pick a room, Officer Patterson.”

Dim as Patterson was, he still seemed to understand that he had been given the power of life or death. It was clear, pick the room where we’re going to kill a bunch of people because the Merg are outside and we look like fools.

A door opened and Patterson looked pathetically relieved he didn’t have to make the tough call. A middle-aged man, maybe a few years younger than Hayes, dirty from his labor, stepped out. “I saw it,” he said. “I saw them dump the body.”

“Who is them?” Hayes asked.

“I … ” he started and then hesitated.

“It’s best that you help us quickly,” said Patterson.

“I’m gonna burn this whole building down,” said Hayes. “You watched an official of the state get murdered, probably every creature in this building saw it, and you bunch of lowlifes probably loved it. No one called HSD, no one told their floor captain.”

“No,” said the man.

“Did you just say no?” asked Hayes, heat rising up his neck. “Like I’m some dipshit who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You want to hit me, don’t you?”

“I do not,” he said.

“Get one free shot,” he said, leaning his chin at the man.

“You need to tell us what you know,” said Patterson, probably thinking this was some clever game of Good Cop/Bad Cop.

“He’s here to waste our time,” said Hayes. “Thinks anyone who doesn’t burn down government buildings or sabotage Merg ships is a traitor. Don’t you?”

“No,” he said, but it was pretty clear he was lying. “I’m trying to tell you something.”

“Tell me then,” Hayes said. “Tell me why I should hogtie you and your friends and let this sty burn around you.”

“Didn’t report it because the guy got tossed out of an HSD car,” he said.

Hayes’ gun was out and pointed at the man’s head before Patterson could react. The young officer just froze there, looking like he was going to piss his pants.

“Bullshit,” said Hayes.

The man, to his credit, did not flinch. “Said Health and Safety. Red and gold logo. They tossed the guy out of the car, then his head. And then they just drove off.”

Hayes thought about it. Thought really hard. HSD in his district was straight, no crooked cops out helping Reconquest, he knew that. But that logo was used all over. That car could have come from anywhere.

“You see any faces?” Patterson asked.

“No, but it was a big guy,” the man answered. “Big like muscles.”

The hell was happening here, Hayes wondered. Reconquest didn’t have muscular people. They were all underfed and none of them did any labor. “All right,” said Hayes. “All right. Give Officer Patterson your information and we’ll get back to you if we need to follow up.”

Patterson took out a pen and Hayes tried to take stock of the situation. He couldn’t tell the Merg there was a maniac HSD officer going around killing people, but he couldn’t lie to them.

It was a stolen car. Of course it was a stolen car. They just needed to find out where the car came from, but that was going to take time, and the Merg would not be patient.

So, clearly someone in this building had stolen the car for Reconquest. He just needed to decide who the person was. That was easy enough, and then he could bring out the offender to explain that he had confessed. That made enough sense for the Merg and was the kind of progress they wanted. Still have to find the car and the killers, but their associate is here and you’re going to watch him die. That would have to do. Of course the car thief would deny it in front of the Merg because he saw the consequences for his actions. Or maybe not if Hayes convinced them denying their crime would only make it worse for the rest of the building. And it probably really was the criminal. These kind of things worked out like that, at least in the sergeant’s mind.

Hayes had convinced himself it was true, that the thief was here, on the first floor. They just had to go grab him. “Patterson,” said Hayes. “Pick a door.”

Chapter Three

The Senator was a woman who understood how two ideas that seemed mutually exclusive could both be true. There was a nuance to life she grasped that others did not. For instance, everyone loved The Senator and appreciated the work she did. Also, many people wanted The Senator dead. This was no contradiction to The Senator. Everyone loved her, but some of the people who loved her wanted to kill her. Yes, they knew she was working hard, doing her best for mankind, but to some deranged individuals, she represented the Merg, a species many people resented for their occupation of Earth.

The Merg were helping the Earth. The Merg were also destroying it and taking its valuable resources. Again, both true. Sometimes, The Senator understood, you have to destroy to create. Earth, or Merg 12, had been on a long march of progress for thousands of years, and often that meant knocking down huts to build skyscrapers. The Merg were knocking down a lot of huts, but they were going to leave this planet better than they found it.

The Senator was an incredibly important person to the Merg. The Merg did not want her opinions, and one false move or errant comment would cause her immediate death. Certainly the Merg had to recognize her leadership abilities, her savvy understanding of humanity, but they had their own rules and customs and so they were a little quick on the trigger. Politics was a game, she knew, and one she was quite capable at. She was the head of the Health and Safety Department, their trusted leader whom they loved and feared. She was also at the mercy of the Health and Safety Department. Yes, she was top dog, but it was a precarious position. Health and Safety officers held massive amounts of power, but they too had to worry about making a misstep. The goal was always to never upset the Merg, the benevolent masters of the planet.

So, whenever The Senator heard HSD footsteps, it could be good news or very bad news. And she always knew when it was HSD footsteps. It was those boots. They never squeaked, but they just sounded different than everyone else’s shoes.

Those boots approached, and The Senator tensed. It was an inopportune time. First, she was on the roof of one of the tallest buildings in Sector 24518. The Merg always liked to have meetings high above the ground, and this was an important one with several Merg present. She was already off her game since Clay, the pretty man who worked under Barker, hadn’t shown up for work and he was supposed to have created notes to prep The Senator on the issues being discussed. “Apologies, The Senator,” said a male voice.

The meeting had barely begun and now this. Luckily, she had Barker. Barker was her rock. He had not missed a beat and was discussing all the measures they were taking to handle what sounded like a delivery and maybe some kind of VIP visitor from Merg 1. She wanted to ask Barker to take their HSD visitors aside, but it would be far worse if she had to continue the presentation without him. There were five big old Merg, each with a translator staring at her and she gave the one finger “just a sec” motion and walked over to the HSD officers.

She recognized the older one; a sergeant, one she’d seen before. This calmed her some because if she was going to be arrested, the Sector Chief would be there. Unless this man had already arrested the Sector Chief and now he was going to throw her off the building. No, she told herself, nothing dramatic would happen in front of the Merg.

“Senator,” said the younger man, whom she had never laid eyes on before but did not mind looking at. “I’m Officer Patterson. I believe you know Sergeant Hayes.”

“Always a pleasure,” said The Senator.

“Beautiful day,” said Hayes.

Another complex pair of truths. It was a beautiful day in the sense that they lived under the protection and guidance of the Merg, but it was also dark and gray like it always was because of the pollution caused by the Merg’s worldwide mining operations. Both these things were true.

“It is,” said The Senator. “How may I help you two gentlemen?”

“I’m sorry to say we come with bad news,” said Hayes. “Damian Clay, your aide. It appears he was assassinated last night by Reconquest.”

“Oh no,” she gasped, feeling momentarily guilty for not remembering his name moments earlier and cursing him for not showing up to work. “That poor young man. You’re sure it was murder?”

“Yes,” said Hayes.

“Oh yeah,” said Patterson who seemed to instantly regret his casual tone, adding, “There was some desecration of the body.”

“What did they do?” The Senator asked. “Don’t hold back, I was raised on a farm.” Technically her parents owned multiple farms and she did not live on any of them, but she had often visited.

“He was … ” Patterson paused.

“Beheaded and castrated,” said Hayes.

“Oh wow,” said The Senator. “The whole rooster.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Hayes. “I believe they are sending a message, so I wanted to put you on alert.”

“What should I be on alert for, Sergeant?” she asked.

Both of them looked uncomfortable, but in different ways. Patterson looked as if he was hoping Hayes would speak first, because he didn’t want to screw this up. Hayes just looked unhappy, like this question was insulting to him.

“The body was thrown out of a stolen HSD car,” Hayes finally admitted. “Stolen from another sector. We found the car thief in a Worker Village and he was dealt with along with the rest of his roommates who had not turned him in. We have not recovered the vehicle yet, however, so please be cautious.”

The Senator realized what a precarious situation this was for HSD. They couldn’t tell her to be on the lookout for someone posing as an HSD officer. HSD had to be respected without question. But she did have to worry about it.

“I have full faith in you to handle this quickly and efficiently,” said The Senator. “Let me know what resources you need.”

“Ma’am,” said Hayes, “can you tell us anything about Mr. Clay? Had he gotten any threats? Had he mentioned anything suspicious lately?”

The Senator thought about this. She had to be careful because Clay had been a member of her staff and any flaw of his reflected back on her. He was a twenty-something man, and as The Senator knew, boys will be boys. Clay liked to go out and have his fun and then come back and tell a red-faced Barker all about his nights. Had Barker ever had sex, The Senator wondered.

“He was a hard-working young man who loved to serve the Merg, I’ll tell you that,” said The Senator. “And that’s why they killed him. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. Here we are trying to help humanity and they kill him and cut off his rooster. My word. He was a good man.”

“Did he have hobbies?” Patterson asked. “Friends?”

“He liked to socialize,” said The Senator. “Great dancer, I’m told.”

“Did he have a wife or girlfriend?” Hayes asked.

“Oh, no, he liked to spread it around,” she answered too quickly and without thought. “By which I mean he was still looking for Miss Right.”

“Of course, ma’am,” said Hayes. “We’ll hunt down his killers.”

“I know you will,” said The Senator, not really convinced. HSD might actually catch the perpetrators of a crime every now and then, but they dealt in volume, not accuracy. A lot of people would die because of this, and that would serve the Merg, but how would Clay up in Heaven feel looking down right now? Not good. The Senator excused herself and returned to the meeting.

Barker sat alone in his office digesting the information The Senator had given him. Clay was dead. Body mutilated. There had to be a reason. Well, the reason could be Clay thought he was invincible and took too many risks, but Barker didn’t think so.

Reconquest was closing in on him and The Senator. That organization, if you could call it that, was a mess, less an organized resistance than a bunch of vengeful sadists who hated each other almost as much as the Merg. They had never struck someone connected to The Senator before. And not just killed him. Not just a shot in the dark. They had taken him somewhere, probably tortured him, and then left his headless body on a dock. It was brazen, it was shocking. It was daring HSD to exact retribution.

But what if it were a distraction? What if there was a plan behind it? You leave a body like that and it looks like brutal vengeance, but why grab Clay? Besides the fact that he was often drunk and easily lured. A woman could have walked up to him wearing an “I’M WITH RECONQUEST” hat and he’d never notice if she’d had a nice body.

No, he figured the reason to go after Clay was information. He knew The Senator’s movements, helped Barker plan her schedule. He was a step below Barker in security clearance, but he still knew plenty that Reconquest would find helpful, and once you’d extracted that knowledge, you had to get rid of him. Make it look like revenge had been the motive. And right now was a particularly suspicious moment. There was a big Merg coming in to visit their sector. And possibly aliens from other planets. The Merg never acknowledged there were other intelligent species out there, but Barker had spent two years teaching himself Merg and had caught on to a lot of things they didn’t want him to know. Which was something Clay had known.

Crap, thought Barker. Crapcrap. Why had he told Clay? Because he had always worried about what The Senator would do if she had lost him, and he’d seen Clay as his replacement someday. He’d tried to teach the young aide, but Clay found it boring and Barker had given up. Crapcrapcrap.

“You’re upset,” said The Senator.

He had forgotten she was still in the room. Usually, if she had bad news, she would drop it and then walk out the door. “I’m just worried they might come after us next.”

“They can try!” The Senator proclaimed loudly. “Come after this farm girl and see what you get!”

Barker nodded. He had invented the idea that she was raised on a farm. He had arranged firearms training so she could film a campaign ad where she popped off shots from an assault rifle. “Of course,” said Barker. “We have HSD to protect us.”

“See, that was the other thing. Be on the lookout for a fake HSD car. Clay’s body got tossed out of one.”

“An HSD car?” Barker asked.

“Correct.”

“They’re sure it was a fake car and not HSD?”

“Why would HSD murder Clay?” The Senator asked.

“They wouldn’t,” said Barker. “That’s ridiculous.” There were many reasons HSD might kill Clay, but they wouldn’t have come in here to ask questions after.

“I’d tell you to take the rest of the day off, but we’ve got too much to get done,” said The Senator.

“No, definitely,” said Barker. “We’ve got shipments coming in, minerals going out, the big event to plan for. I’ll be fine. Work will help.”

“I’ll leave you to it.”

An HSD car, he thought.

Chapter Four

Most private businesses were closed, as mass production of human goods had ceased with the Merg’s arrival. People didn’t need to do taxes, because there were no taxes and no currency. If it didn’t directly or indirectly help the Merg’s extraction operations, it didn’t get made or it didn’t get done.

Restaurants and bars did serve the Merg’s needs because they were perks available only to their loyal servants. The Senator and her staff and HSD officers could go any night of the week. Floor captains in the Worker Villages and labor supervisors received passes every week or so. Mines, factories, quarries, and other sites usually handed out a pass to the top performers each month. That made these spots a mix of different status levels. Highly powerful and connected officials shared space with the guy who smelled like a sewer but had shoveled faster than anyone else on his work line.

Hayes had been thinking about The Senator saying that Clay liked “to spread it around.” Guy was young, trying to have the fun young men always had before. And he was a big shot, but only so many places he could go. No way this man was hiding out in his apartment every night of the week. An old sign out of front of the bar Patterson and Hayes approached read “EDGARS PUB,” but the more meaningful name was hand written on a big piece of cardboard taped above the door, “AUTHORIZED FACILITY FOR FOOD AND BEVERAGE- APPROVED BY HEALTH AND SAFETY.”

“Should say ‘The Health and Safety Department’ there,” Hayes noted, but he let that go.

Patterson held up a fist to knock, but not before Hayes opened the door in front of him. Hayes stepped through, calling out, “Health and Safety!”

The interior of the bar was clean, as one might expect for an establishment visited by the most powerful people in the sector. But bars and restaurants, even for the highly connected, struggled to find food and drink that matched the expectations people had pre-Merg. For drinks, you hoped they’d have something that was bottled years before because with the water being what it was, beer just wasn’t going to be what you wanted it to be. As for food, well, you closed your eyes and dreamed of better days ahead when the Merg had finished their extractions and left the place a paradise. But cleanliness, Hayes knew, was not something these places could afford to be loose on. Looks were everything, and one bad experience for a VIP got your place shut down and your staff sent to the mines.

“Kitchen ain’t open,” said an ancient woman sitting behind the bar reading a romance novel.

“Ma’am, we’re not here to eat,” said Patterson.

“But that kitchen opens if we say it does,” said Hayes. “Unless you didn’t hear the words Health and Safety when we came in.”

Patterson looked uncomfortable, but Hayes knew it was best to let these people know who was in charge. The kitchen staff were all there. They might be sleeping, but food services was a cushy alternative to hard labor, so those lucky cooks and waiters were supposed to always be on site, ready to go.

“Sure,” said the old lady. “You keep me posted on that.”

“This is Officer Patterson and I am Sergeant Hayes. I want you to remember those names because we’re going to ask you some questions and if you give us what we want you’ll be able to tell your friends how kind Officer Patterson and Sergeant Hayes were to you.”

“Willa Stockton, don’t care one way or the other if you remember my name.”

“Did this man come into the bar last night?” Patterson asked, sliding a picture over.

“What the hell is this?” Stockton asked. “This is a kid at his high school graduation.”

“College,” said Patterson.

“Wouldn’t recognize anyone looking like that,” said the old lady. “Smiling outside under the sun. You got any pictures of him under dark clouds behind him, maybe with a forced smile? Cause nobody looks like that anymore.”

“Lady, you got something you want to say?” Hayes asked. “Because if you’re claiming the world was better before the Merg, we can go down to the station and talk about it.”

“Oh no,” said Willa, making it clear that was exactly what she meant. “Just it doesn’t look like anyone who comes in here.”

“Damian Clay,” said Hayes. “Works for The Senator.”

“Clay, yes,” said Willa. “He’s here all the time. He do something?”

“Dead,” said Patterson.

Willa Stockton froze for a moment, as though Clay was her reason for being so cocky, that she didn’t fear HSD because she had her own protection. “This is a clean place,” she said.

“Maybe not,” said Hayes.

“No one’s ever gotten sick off the food here,” Stockton claimed.

Hayes considered letting her know he was murdered, but he enjoyed her nervousness, “Was he here last night?”

“Yeah,” said Stockton. “Comes here most Tuesdays. Think he’s got a bar circuit he hits up.”

“Different bars every night?” Patterson asked. “That’s odd.”

Patterson had hit upon a very good point. It wasn’t like any one bar was so different from the others, which might sound like a reason to mix it up, but there were no special events anywhere. No live music unless somebody brought a guitar for some reason. Also, and Hayes knew this well, one drunk slip-up could get you killed. You said something you shouldn’t have, you gave away too much info, you said something critical of the Merg, and everybody in the bar had an obligation to tell HSD. If anyone at a bar reported you, HSD would ask everyone else who had been there why they hadn’t. Having a local was safe, people knew you. People might forget they didn’t hear that, maybe have a little trust in their fellow patrons.

“The young man … ” Stockton paused to think of how to phrase this part properly. “He wasn’t here to enjoy a nice drink and chat with friends. Didn’t have friends. He wanted to meet young women who needed help. He could help them, but first they could come back to his place.”

“Doesn’t sound like you liked him very much,” said Hayes.

“Didn’t.”

“He help the women?” Patterson asked.

“Did you know you can help someone out of kindness without being a scumbag and without your dick getting involved at all, Officer?” Stockton shot back.

Hayes flinched a bit, thinking that the deceased’s manhood was no longer involved in anything other than a sewer or maybe floating down the Mississippi River. “You’re calling an officer of the Merg-appointed government a scumbag,” said Hayes.

“Did that, yes,” she said.

Hayes thought about a few things. First, he didn’t have time to haul in an old lady. Second, this was taking too long and he had to find Clay’s murderers. Third, anyone this cocky probably had a shotgun behind the bar. “You know any of the women he … helped?”

“Most people just flash their pass and ask for a drink. Don’t remember many names.”

“Can you tell us the name of the woman he went home with last night?” Hayes asked.

“Didn’t leave with a lady,” she said. “He went home with one of yours. HSD guy.”

“How’d that go down?” Hayes asked.

“Your good Samaritan was having a slow night. Not many people in, mostly other government types. Looked like he was going to turn in when one of yours came in, whispered something to him, and they left.”

“Uniformed?” Patterson asked.

“I said one of yours,” Stockton noted. “Had on the HSD black shirt and green pants. Can’t tell you apart from everyone else naked.”

“We smell better than most,” said Hayes.

Willa Stockton nodded thoughtfully at this. “You know, the one who came in, he did smell a little like work. That smell you get off people who labor all day, toil in the fields or mines or what have you. You HSD crew, like a field of daisies.”

Hayes pushed forward. “What did the man in the HSD uniform look like?”

“Big muscles. Clean shaven like HSD. Italian or Jewish or maybe Hispanic.”

“Narrows it down,” said Hayes trying to give back some of the rudeness.

“I try not to stare at HSD, Sergeant. Tell me that’s wrong.”

“Usually a good instinct,” Hayes agreed with a bit of threat in his eyes. “You see which way they went?”

“Out the door and out of my life,” answered Stockton.

“You see that fake HSD again, you let us know immediately,” Patterson advised.

Hayes was already walking out the door. This was a nightmare. Reconquest, a crap organization run by tools and nimrods, was a step ahead of him. The Merg would have no patience. Didn’t these bastards see they were going to get hundreds, maybe thousands of people killed? And for what? To kill some low-level punk who brought coffee to The Senator. There was nothing special about the guy. His security level meant he knew when the paper clips were getting delivered. What could he know? Or were they sending a message? If so, the message sounded a lot like, “You can’t trust Health and Safety.”

He was under control. He was good. But he was going to have to be more persuasive.

Hayes marched back inside and slammed his fist down on the bar. “Clay come in here last week?”

“Did,” said Stockton calmly.

“Who was the last woman he took home?”

“Don’t recall.”

“Patterson!” yelled Hayes. “Get the names of everyone who works at this dump. Round them up and have them brought down to the station.”

“They’re good people,” said Stockton, trying to seem calm, but her eye twitched at the threat.

“We’ll see when we get down to the station.”

“I don’t know names for any of the women,” said Stockton, still calm, not pleading. “But I know where he took them.”

Barker was like an appendage of The Senator. There were a number of conference calls that were above Barker’s clearance level, but The Senator considered that more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. Still, his job was to remain silent and occasionally write notes out to explain what everyone was talking about. The Senator was all about the big picture and she needed Barker to fill out the details.

All of the Sector Chiefs or Sector Heads or Sector Tsars or whatever of each Merg region that once would have been called North America were going over productivity numbers, the Merg listening in and making noises to show approval or disappointment with each number.

Humans were not supposed to understand Merg language, but Barker had been piecing it together over the last two years. Their oral communication sounded like a series of scratchy clicks, but he had been listening and taking notes. Notes that would get him killed if found. He hadn’t done it for any real reason other than it was a challenge, like a jigsaw puzzle that might explode if it realized you were solving it. The Merg had translators, but they were kept separate from the general population. They had no interest in humans becoming fluent in their language. On the other hand, the Merg seemed to understand all human languages, whether by some sort of biological phenomenon or technological advancement.

Barker had gotten many of the words and had figured out the syntax. It was different from most of the languages he knew. He had been a linguistics major in college and spoke English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, German, and Lao. He had chosen Lao because he heard it was really hard to learn. And yet, Merg wasn’t that complicated. He reasoned that like Earth, the Merg likely developed many languages before modernization. If there was one language used by all the Merg, it might be a simplified combination of many tongues. Well, not tongues because the Merg didn’t have tongues.

The Senator scribbled a note and showed it to Barker. It read, “Did I tell you they cut off Clay’s rooster?” Barker nodded.

The Senator shook her head in disbelief at the thought of it. Doing his best not to let his mind drift to such things and especially such things potentially happening to his own person, Barker handed The Senator the numbers she had to read off in the meeting.

She read them off like it was her state of the union. “Lithium up 2.2 percent over last month. Neodymium up 1.6 percent. Terbium up 3.7 percent. Montmorillonite up 2.1 percent.”

Each element pronounced perfectly. Barker was proud when he didn’t think about what all the words and numbers meant. She was incredible as a conveyor of ideas. He believed she would have been president. A great one. The Senator continued through the list until she finished and proudly declared, “That is increased production across the board, everybody. Not bad, not bad. And all that while we’re preparing for the big event.”

There were a number of clicks and scratches at that. A human voice, a peer of The Senator, asked, “What big event?”

The Senator froze and turned a paler shade than Barker had ever seen on her. He scribbled furiously and shoved the pad into her hands. “THE big event, friend. The day we provide our kind friends the Merg with everything they need and they leave us with a perfect world. No event bigger than that.”

The Senator had ad-libbed the last line, which was good, so he gave her the thumbs-up but then slashed his hand back and forth in front of his throat to let her know to cut it there.

“Praise to that,” another human replied and soon everyone on the call was applauding.

Through that, Barker could hear the scratchy clicks. He could make out meanings he knew. “Good.”

“Thought bad, was good.”

“Not about the visitor.”

Visitor. He knew that word. In five days, the following Monday, they were getting a special visitor who was also a mystery. This individual was going to land at Dock 42.58, 87.82, a launch and landing port for incoming and outgoing Merg ships in what used to be Kenosha, Wisconsin. From there, the visitor was headed to a facility in Zero City, formerly Chicago. The only city he could think of with a Merg-approved name, for a tragic reason that Barker preferred not to think about.

Barker wasn’t supposed to know about the visitor or even the existence of the dock or the Zero City facility. Only The Senator was supposed to know. The thing about it was, Zero City didn’t produce anything. It didn’t mine, it didn’t receive, it didn’t process. Barker knew what went into and out of every single mine, quarry, foundry factory, or mill. He knew what buildings held prisoners (for the short period of time they ever held anyone). Zero City had zero humans and it wasn’t housing Merg troops, because Barker knew exactly where those were and even if there were a secret barracks, he’d still have to send food and supplies there for the Merg. Chicago, Zero City, was completely empty. A ghost town. Or at least it was supposed to be.

He tried to push this idea of out of his mind, because this kind of knowledge could get a man beheaded and his headless body left beside the Mississippi River. Barker’s eyes flicked to the note The Senator had written about what happened to Clay’s manhood. It made him uncomfortable in so many ways. Beyond the obvious pain and death, Barker did not enjoy being touched most of the time. Not always. It just took time for him to feel comfortable with a person, and so the thought of Reconquest grabbing, holding him down, made him want to run screaming out of the room. They won’t come after you, he told himself. Yes, this knowledge he had was dangerous, but no one knew what he knew, not even the Merg. Except for Clay. Clay knew Barker did all the work. But Clay didn’t talk, Barker thought. Why would they have done that to him if he talked? He asked himself that question again. Why would they have done that to him if he talked? Because it was better than what they would have done otherwise?

Barker stood up as though he was going to run out of the room, hands shaking. The Senator saw him, but ignored him because this was just something Barker did. He had had panic attacks long before the Merg arrival. So many that they were just like light rain outside to The Senator, nothing worth thinking about. Barker breathed. He thought about cheese. He thought about penguins. He thought about the clicking sound of the wheel on Wheel of Fortune. He was okay. He needed to help The Senator.

Chapter Five

It was, Hayes had thought, an abandoned warehouse. About a mile or so upriver from where Clay’s body had been dropped, the old building had stood in disuse for years, as far as he knew. No signs of life inside, and if Hayes had a thousand years to solve this crime he never would have thought to check this building on his own.

And now that he was here, he was well and truly screwed. His first opportunity to avoid this screwage came at the front door, which he had not expected to open, but did. A simple turn of the knob and a step inside. And there facing him were three armed guards. Not HSD, bouncers with shotguns. Completely illegal and yet there they were, three skinny men in black jeans and black turtlenecks looking at Hayes as though a bee had just flown in and trying to figure out if it was best to ignore him or shoo him out the door.

“HSD Sergeant Hayes and Officer Patterson,” said Hayes.

“Okay,” said a bouncer.

In retrospect, Hayes should have said, “Well, nice meeting you,” then gotten out of there, reported the illegal weapons and let this become someone else’s problem. Instead he said, “I need to speak to the proprietor of this establishment.”

“Are you on the list?” asked a bouncer.

“I’m on the list of Health and Safety officers who can haul you in. Patterson here is on the list of guys who can get off three shots before three dopes with shotguns get off one.”

He had no idea how skilled Patterson was with the gun, but he said this to make him the prime target if it came to violence.

“Buddy,” said a bouncer, “I don’t think you want to go in there.”

The man was correct, but Hayes did not believe it in the slightest. “I do,” said Hayes.

One man took out a walkie-talkie, and Hayes being Hayes, he just walked right past them and opened the door behind them.

“You can’t—” one began to say, but it was too late.

Inside were many things that did not make sense. First, there were many humans, hundreds. But then a dozen or so Merg. The humans were socializing. Casually drinking, chatting. Loud music played. The warehouse had been converted into a space with two floors, with most of the middle area used as some sort of … arena? It looked to be about an eighty by eighty foot space sitting a couple body lengths below the first floor. People looked down and checked the space, but it was empty and they went about their business. Something was going to happen there, but Hayes was becoming less concerned with what as he thought more about the appearance of the Merg.

A lot of things weren’t illegal in the sense that the Merg didn’t care about them. HSD did nothing if some mongrel at a Worker Village stole from some other mongrel. It was only a problem if it bothered the Merg. But that was human law. The Merg had their own rules and Hayes knew they were not supposed to fraternize with humans. They were not supposed to share space with humans in any non-professional capacity. And they definitely weren’t supposed to arm humans. So, Hayes was coming to the nightmarish realization that he was witnessing Merg breaking Merg law. He was screwed.

He couldn’t report Merg for breaking rules. They’d rip him apart and then deal with the accusation after tossing him in a mass grave.

And fucking Patterson was there, a person he could definitely not trust with a secret.

“What the hell is this?” asked Patterson.

“Lamp Town,” said one of the bouncers from behind. “We tried to warn you.”

Lamp Town. The name made no sense and all the sense. Electricity was an issue for those in the Worker Villages. Lights were not allowed at night. Even HSD had to conserve and were not supposed to use electricity after sunset, but this building was lit up like a sporting event. The music stopped and everyone, human and Merg, directed their attention to the center space.

“Sergeant Hayes, I think we should probably discuss this situation outside,” said Patterson.

“Can’t get worse,” said Hayes. Doors opened on opposite sides of the center space, and a Merg walked out of each one. Hayes could not tell the difference between most Merg, they were giant and vaguely insect-ish, dark red beings walking around on six legs that ended in sharp, clawed feet, and with three powerful arms, two at the side and one in the front. The arms all ended in spiked claws that always seemed ready for violence. These two Merg did not look any different, but each had a bandana tied around their massive heads, one red and one blue.

Hayes, like most humans, had seen his perception of what was and was not possible flipped upside down, tied in a knot and flung into the ocean in the last couple years, but he still refused to believe what he was watching even as a human announcer called out, “Fight of the night! Red versus Blue!”

Patterson had been right, they should have left already.

A bell sounded and the two Merg began to circle each other. Hayes had seen firsthand what Merg aggression looked like. Their weapons were far beyond human technology but there was art to their unarmed violence as well. Watching them two years earlier, seeing their power and skill, Hayes had been the first one he knew who had given over his allegiance, had exposed former friends who were hiding out looking for opportunities to sabotage the Merg. He had saved those people from the futility of opposing the Merg, a species that clearly had come to help themselves and humans. Had he not given their locations, they would have brought more into their cause and cost more lives. And that loyalty to the Merg had been rewarded. He had no regrets, wasn’t even sure why he was thinking about it now, watching this fight.

Red feinted as though it was going to grab at Blue’s leg, but then rolled on its side to get behind it. So quickly he had never seen it jump, Red was on Blue’s back, almost riding it. Blue kicked like a bull trying to unseat its rider, and then flipped over, landing on its back, Red slammed beneath it.

The crowd was screaming. The whole scene was so loud. And so bright. Lamp Town, he thought.

The two combatants had scrambled away from each other and began to circle again. Red remained the aggressor. Halting its circle to spring at Blue, it leapt in the air, front arm aimed right at the insectoid face of its opponent. Blue flipped onto its back again, this time to kick away Red just before it could land, knocking the Merg ten feet in the other direction. Again, the human crowd burst into cheers. Hayes could make out a few phrases here and there. “Take him out!” “Hell yeah, Blue! Hell fucking yeah!” It was like pre-Merg sporting events. He had not seen anything like this in years. He wished he had never seen this.

Is one of these Merg gonna kill the other, Hayes wondered.

“Blue’s got this,” Patterson said to him. He’d forgotten about Patterson. Patterson who could let word of this slip and screw them both.

Again, Red and Blue circled one another. This time they approached each other slowly, inching closer with each movement. They jabbed out their front legs, testing the other, looking for a reaction. Waiting for the right moment.

Red leapt ahead, grabbing a front leg of Blue with its front arm claw, using its side arms to grab two more legs. Without delay, Blue pushed off with its back legs, rising in the air as its weight fell against Red. The two were now locked together, arms and legs kicking, stabbing, ripping, grabbing as they rolled on the floor. Blue tried to slip out, but Hayes could see that Red was the stronger of the two. Looking tired, Blue tried to headbutt, which was ineffective or might have just missed. Now Red was on top, legs pinning Blue beneath it. Blue’s body went limp except for one leg that tapped furiously against the floor.

“It’s all over!” yelled the announcer and the crowd shrieked out, the loudest moment of a loud night. Red was off Blue, helping his opponent back up. Well, Hayes thought, at least Patterson had been wrong about who would win.

He turned back to the bouncers. “Take us to whoever is in charge here.”

“Mr. Clay hasn’t been in the last two nights,” said one, and Hayes wanted to punch him in the face.

“Damian Clay?” Patterson asked stupidly.

“Just take us to whoever is second in command,” Hayes demanded.

Brush Woman was there again, and everything seemed right with the world. Rather, Barker could ignore most of the things wrong with the world for a few moments.

Still, there was Brush Woman. Barker wondered what he would do if she looked up. Would he motion for her to come over to his apartment? It was tricky, but he could do it. But what would he do with her here? He felt something about her, but not in any actionable way. If there was something he wanted from her, he couldn’t ask for it due to the uncomfortable power dynamic.

You could just find out who she is, he told himself. You could make a couple calls, see if you could find her work that wasn’t manual labor, that came with a better place to live. The evil thought rose that he wouldn’t want to do that because then she wouldn’t be in her window at night. On the other hand, anything could happen and she’d be gone. He couldn’t let her stay there. But what if he offered to help and she refused. If she chose a slow death in the mines over any association with a … it was hard for him to even think the word, but it was collaborator. What if she refused to take a helping hand from someone who used that hand to sign countless death warrants.

“I want to help,” he said to his empty apartment, and he meant everyone. He had entered the world of public service to help. That was a lie, really; he found it exciting and wanted to be connected to something powerful, but he enjoyed the idea of helping. And now, with Earth being plundered by an enemy he was actively and enthusiastically supporting, it seemed like there were so many ways he could help. Most of those ways would get him killed, however, so he was probably going to do absolutely nothing.

Just look up, he thought over to her. Just look up and tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it no matter the cost.

Brush Woman finished with her hair and retreated back into her room. Barker sighed dramatically and lay down on his couch.

Hayes and Patterson stood in front of a simple wood desk in an office that was untidy but otherwise unremarkable. Behind it sat a young woman in her early twenties chewing bubblegum.

“This is real awkward for all of us,” said the woman.

“Who are you?” Patterson asked.

“Probably best we don’t talk names,” she said. “Just call me Manager. That work?”

“Right,” said Hayes.

“Listen, I sense you’re not here about this whole thing,” Manager said. “I think it’s best we all just forget anything that happened here. But that leads me to ask why you’re here.”

“Damian Clay is dead,” said Hayes. “Picked up by Reconquest last night.”

“Yeah, heard about that,” said Manager, not overly fazed.

“How did you hear about it?” Patterson asked. It was a fair question in a sense, but not one Hayes wanted to know the answer to.

“Skip that one,” Manager insisted.

“So, you run the show now?” Hayes asked.

“I do.”

“You don’t seem sad about Clay’s death.”

“That’s because I knew him.”

“You two ever … ” Patterson began to ask but seemed oddly sheepish and ended the sentence with, “engage romantically?”

Manager smiled. “Did you two ever engage romantically?” she asked, pointing back and forth between Hayes and Patterson.

Hayes was trying to contain his anger. He was used to dealing with powerless lowlifes who had to beg him not to bring them in. He was used to having the power. Now a girl was just sitting there laughing at him. He had to contain himself. This could go south quick.

“Don’t get mad, buddy,” said Manager. “We’re all friends. Clay was Clay, now he’s dead.”

“He ran this place?” Patterson asked. “He set this all up?”

Manager put her feet up on the desk. “Oh yeah, I’ve been here from the beginning. You know who he works for. He has all these connections, but he was always looking for angles. See, these Merg, they hate us. They’re the ones murdering this planet, but they hate us because they’re stuck here. And they’re super aggressive, but they can’t act on it. Like, it’s totally forbidden to fight each other, but the last few months it keeps happening. Don’t ask me why, but they’ve only gotten more so. So, Clay sets this up. Turns out, they love humans screaming for them. They love the audience. The man’s a genius. Was a genius, and a turd.”

“This breaks so many laws,” said Patterson.

“Rules, not laws,” said Manager. “Real difference there. Merg don’t write laws, they just give a bunch of rules. And Clay found the ones who don’t want to follow rules. They come here, they fight, they love it. Humans get to come here, watch Merg beat the shit out of one another, have a few drinks, pretend the sky isn’t poisoned and the planet’s not dying, and have some nightlife”

“The electricity,” said Patterson. “How?”

“Another good one to skip,” said Manager.

“What do you get out of this?” Hayes asked.

“A lotta stuff. Old bottles of wine, batteries, chicharrons. People give lots of stuff to come here.”

“Contraband,” said Hayes.

“I’m going to say, I don’t think it’s a good idea to report this,” said Manager. “I can find another warehouse, but if the Merg rip your head off, you can’t replace it.”

“We were never here,” said Hayes. “I want to go back to our question about people who would kill Clay. I don’t think this is a lovers’ quarrel or a disagreement over money. I think Reconquest targeted him, I think they tortured him for information. I want to know what he knew that would be useful to them. That’s it. That’s all I care about. Answer that for me and then we were never here.”

“They tortured him?” Manager asked.

“Beheaded and castrated,” said Patterson, shifting in his seat as he said it.

“Oh wow,” said Manager, more surprised than upset. “Cut the thing right off. Okay, well, clearly Clay ran this whole thing, but we don’t do names here mostly. He doesn’t know which Merg is which and he doesn’t know most of the humans here either. The VIPs, yeah, but not the average grunts. He knows some because they’ve done him a solid or slept with him, but then they invite people and he doesn’t want to know who they are. Whole complicated system for invites that you REALLY don’t want to know.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” Patterson began, “you would certainly benefit from Clay’s death. It looks like you’re in charge now.”

Hayes wanted to grab his partner by the ear and yell, “It was Reconquest, you dimwit! Stop wasting time!” But he held back.

“Buddy,” said Manager, “I don’t mind you saying so, but your idea doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m gonna kill Clay for what? A few more bags of potato chips and a bottle of Sutter Home someone found in an abandoned apartment? We’re not raking it in here, we’re just trying to have a good time until the Merg finish us off.”

“Until the Merg what?” Hayes asked, all the blood shooting to his face.

“Oh man, sorry,” said Manager. “We don’t get a lot of people who believe the whole ‘We’ll leave you with tech that will make your world perfect’ line here. No offense, Sarge.”

“It’s not a line,” growled Hayes, his hand rubbing against his holstered sidearm.

“Okay, sure,” said Manager.

“It’s not a line!” Hayes snapped. He was out of control, and this was not the place for it. A perp at the station was one thing, but he was in no man’s land here.

Manager did not seem at all fazed. “I’m not interested in arguing with you. You wanted help finding whoever killed Clay, I told you what I know.”

“There’s one more thing,” said Patterson, the dolt who didn’t even know how mad he should be. Sitting there calmly with one more question. “Did you ever see a large man, muscular type, dressed as an HSD officer driving an HSD car?”

“Jesus!” hissed Hayes, no longer interested in playing it cool because Patterson had just screwed them both over with his question.

“Dressed as an HSD officer?” asked Manager, who to her credit was less stupid than Patterson. “Clay got done in by a fake HSD?”

“No,” said Patterson. “No, real HSD, but we believe he was from another region and we just wanted to confer with him on the case.”

“Oh man,” said Manager. “Buddy, you got bigger problems than I thought. I’ll keep an eye out for the big guy though.”

“You tell anyone,” said Hayes, practically spitting, “and I will come back here and—”

“Watch your mouth in my house,” interrupted Manager. “You saw three guns when you came in, but you need to worry about the ones you don’t see, isn’t that right? You get up, and you walk out without another word or nobody ever finds your body. And you miss out on the new Eden the Merg are supposedly bringing. And if you think about coming back, don’t. Test me if you think I can’t get to you.”

“We will not be talked to this way,” said Patterson, but Hayes was already walking out the door. Hayes just kept walking, downstairs, around corners until he was outside. Right to the car and then driving away, leaving Patterson to figure out his own way home. Hayes hoped the bastard realized it was for his own good because if he’d seen Patterson’s face again that night, he would have killed him.

Chapter Six

Barker usually loved early meetings, being one of the few people in the office. The Merg held meetings whenever they felt like it, and Barker had no idea what early meant to them. He did not actually know if Merg slept. Even if they did, he had no idea where the ones he communicated with on conference calls were. They could have been down the street, in the Pacific, on the Merg moonbase, or somehow communicating from back in their home galaxy. As little as he knew about science, it seemed unlikely to be able to converse with someone in real time who was light years away, but it could still be possible.

“The Merg would like an update on the state of preparations for the visit,” said the translator on the other line. It was always “The Merg.” They never had their own names, and Barker had no clue if it was their nature to think of the whole rather than the individual or if they just didn’t consider their names as any human’s business to know.

“Going swimmingly,” said The Senator. “We’ve had HSD do several sweeps of the area to clear out any riff-raff. We’ve taken laborers off their standard assignments for cleaning duties at the facility.”

Barker heard scratchy clicks and could tell they were asking about transportation. “And the roads,” said the translator. “The Merg would like an update on the roads and any potential issues from the landing site to the facility.”

“We’ve had road crews up there working to make sure it’s smooth sailing. No potholes, no downed trees,” said The Senator.

A thought was trying to force itself into Barker’s brain and he was trying to shove it back wherever it had come from. A curious thought. A very dangerous thought. He needed this topic to pass so he could let it go.

Scratchy clicks.

“The Merg want to know if there is anything more you can do. They need the roads clear. They need to move swiftly from the landing site to the facility.”

There was that thought again. He saw Brush Woman in his mind and he could not stop wondering if the person he wanted her to think he was would go to Zero City to see if there was anything there that could help humanity. He tried to ignore her but there she was in his head. Barker was writing. He did not like what he was writing, but the thought had won. It had infiltrated his mind and now he was writing it on a note to The Senator. For a moment, it seemed as though she would reject the idea, but then she gave a big smiley thumbs up.

“I’m gonna send my boy Barker,” said The Senator. “I’ll have him drive the road and do a spot check at the facility.”

Scratchy clicks.

“The Merg are pleased.”

Weirdly, Barker could make out the Merg saying nice things about him. “Good worker.” “The helper, he is a clever human.”

“Yes, he is best for this work.”

Barker had never realized the Merg even knew who he was. Even before the arrival, Barker was used to being ignored by most people while doing everything The Senator needed. Sure, there were politics nerds in D.C. who knew of him and either praised his savvy or called him a cut-throat, but all of America had known The Senator, the woman who might have been president by now. “The Merg are asking when he is able to go,” said the translator.

“He’s leaving right now,” said The Senator, shaking her head no because she still needed him on this call.

Barker was not happy about this trip, more so because it had been his idea. He did not want to know what was inside the facility in Zero City, because he thought it highly possible the pursuit of that knowledge might have been what killed Clay, but twenty minutes later he was sitting in the front seat of an HSD cruiser, a disinterested office driving the two of them down the highway. Barker was supposed to be looking for obstructions, but it was difficult to focus when he couldn’t stop wondering what was inside the facility. Weapons? A portal to another dimension? Absolutely nothing and this was pointless?

Yes, he liked the last answer. Clay was killed because he took risks, not because he knew about the visitor and the facility. Barker would not take any risks, therefore he would not die. Simple, clean.

Then he realized this was a risk. Driving up there to snoop around and find out what this thing was a giant leap over a pit full of crocodiles and metal spikes. He was sweating.

“Road looks good,” said Barker, trying to clear his mind.

“Yeah,” said the HSD officer.

This had been the level of discourse for hours as they drove north on I-55. Barker had never been socially graceful like The Senator, but life under the Merg made everyone more hesitant in conversation. Saying something as simple as “Bloomington is beautiful this time of year” could get you killed. It’s not Bloomington, your cities have no names, you live in a Merg sector of a Merg planet. If Barker was feeling especially saucy he could point and tell the officer, “There used to be a really good pizza place off this exit. Miss that place.” And then he’d get to wonder whether the officer had told his superior that Mr. Ezra Barker was lamenting the loss of a pizza restaurant because of the Merg and was ungrateful for the bounty Earth is destined to receive.

But, awkward stop-start banter was the level of conversation Barker reached with most people pre-Merg, so couldn’t put it all on them.

“You done this drive before?” Barker asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the officer. “We’ve been checking on this stretch all week.”

“And it all looks good?”

“Yes, sir. No issues.”

Barker did not want to chat, and he knew the officer didn’t either, so it was no great loss. Rather, Barker wanted to scout the road and identify any potential issues. He figured the Merg were planning to use large vehicles to transport the VIP and whatever else was coming in. He had no clue how big, but he took notes about road quality and potential obstructions. He had a running list of the height of each overpass. This was where Barker excelled, in the details. In diagnosing and eliminating potential problems before The Senator ever had to hear about them. This is why he was here. It made sense. He wasn’t trying to uncover what the Merg were up to. That was rolling the dice with his life, and Barker was not a gambler.

They were about twenty miles outside Chicago when he noticed a few Merg walking along the side of the road heading toward the city. It was odd. You didn’t just see Merg out and about. There were maybe a million of them on the whole planet (a wild guess on his part), and they spent most of their time in the special communities. Merg showed up to intimidate or murder, usually. If a factory was underperforming, a few Merg might show up to remind everyone of the consequences. If Reconquest had stolen one of their ships and HSD hadn’t killed enough random humans in response, a few Merg would show up at the station to ask why. And yet here they were. Three Merg walking north. Barker almost asked the officer if they should offer the Merg a ride before remembering they wouldn’t fit and it was best to just ignore them.

About a minute later there were more Merg. Five more heading toward Chicago. Walking at a brisk but steady pace in the same direction as Barker and the officer.

“Surprising,” said Barker.

“Yup,” said the officer.

Barker looked ahead and saw more. Hundreds more. Before he could register his shock, it was clearly thousands. Merg were packed up against each other on the sides of the road and the median, but not in the road. It was like the documentary he had seen about the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti, but all Merg. “What … ” Barker started to say, no clue where the sentence was going.

“Yup,” said the officer. As the car came up on them he saw one Merg bump into another, and then it turned to violence. Kicking and grabbing and clawing. Merg never attacked each other, not that Barker had seen. He craned his neck as they passed the two, saw other Merg separating them and continuing on.

“Were they here last time you came up?” Barker asked.

“Sir,” said the officer, trying to collect his thoughts. “I do not make it my business to notice where the Merg are or are not. But no. No, this was not like this a couple days ago.”

It just kept going. And it wasn’t just along the roads, he could see others in the distance walking through fields and schoolyards. He tried to do the math in his head of how many were here and his brain stopped functioning. Stop doing fucking math, his brain said. Focus on not doing something that gets us killed.

“We’re going to the facility?” the officer asked.

“Yes,” said Barker. “Doing a walkthrough at the request of the Merg.” He wanted to keep talking and explain he wasn’t up to anything, but he’d already said too much. “Yes,” he said, unable to stop talking. “Going to the facility.”

He was shaking a bit. He had to pee. Desperately. But the only option at the moment was pulling the car over and he was not comfortable peeing in front of tens of thousands of aliens.

He held it.

In his kitchen, in his house, inside the gated and heavenly fortified village for Health and Safety Department employees, Protected Community 38.65, 90.43, Hayes felt in control. This case had challenges, but he was standing in his kitchen, looking out at his clean, safe neighborhood, and drinking a decent cup of coffee.

He could handle this. The previous night hadn’t happened. Clay had been killed by Reconquest posing as HSD with a stolen HSD vehicle. The car thief was caught and already dead. The killers, well, they were hiding out in a Worker Village. Cowards all of them, using the people who did all the labor as human shields. It was unfortunate, but a hundred were going to die. He had the building picked out. But the car. What good would it do to tell the Merg they’d killed everyone responsible and then ten times that number to send a message, if that damn car showed up at another crime. They just needed the car. He could think this out.

“We’re out of bread,” said his daughter Erin as she slunk into the dining room.

“Go out to the food depot and request some,” said Hayes.

Erin was seventeen and at that stage where she was smarter than everyone, especially her father, and the one truth no one but her could appreciate was how bad her life was.

“You go get the bread, Connor,” said Erin. “Those perverts who work at the food depot are gross. They told me if I put out, they’d give me extra rations.”

“Give me their names and I’ll take care of them,” said Hayes. “Why do you smell like cigarettes?”

“Probably because I smoke cigarettes, Connor.”

“Stop, it’s gross. It’s not ladylike.” Hayes huffed. “Where do you even get cigarettes?”

“From the perverts at the food depot.”

She was messing with him, acting out. She wanted to make him mad. “Stop smoking cigarettes. And stop calling me Connor.”

“You got it, Hayes.”

“You want to say something to me?” Hayes asked. “You want to have another fight about how sad you are to live here when you’re lucky I have the job I have?”

“I just want you to get more bread.”

Katrina, Hayes’ wife, walked through the living room into the dining room, floating like a lost angel. She was in her nightgown with her bathrobe over it. She wore sneakers without socks and looked lost. “Dear, we need to get ready. We’re having lunch with the Chans this afternoon.”

“No, Mom,” said Erin, all sweetness now. “No, they called and canceled.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. We should still go up to the lake though. Perfect day for it. This is not our house.”

“We moved, Mom,” said Erin.

“Oh why? Are we still close to the lake?”

“Yes, Mom,” said Erin, with love and empathy she only reserved for one of her parents. “We’ll go there soon.”

Katrina was gone again. Off to haunt some other room. Once her mother was out of earshot, Erin said, “Actually, sorry, the Chans didn’t cancel. That was two years ago and the Chans are dead.”

“Enough,” said Hayes.

“They survived the initial invasion but then Dad sold them out to the Merg.”

“It’s not an invasion, you ungrateful little witch!” Hayes barked.

He was about to go off, but he heard a tap on the glass. There was Patterson, who had somehow made it back to the neighborhood from Lamp Town. He looked rested and shaved, which pissed Hayes off even more.

“Hello!” said Patterson. “Can I come in?”

“The hell are you doing out there?” Hayes asked.

“I was ringing the front door bell,” said Patterson.

“It’s broken,” said Hayes. “Need to get a new one.”

Hayes opened the kitchen door and let in Patterson.

“Hey, Stretch,” said Erin in a tone Hayes did not enjoy.

“Hello, miss. I’m Officer Patterson.”

“New partner?” Erin asked.

“He was placed with me,” said Hayes, not wanting to explain why he, a sergeant, had to babysit a mere officer. “You got a first name, Stretch?” Erin asked.

“Malachi,” said Patterson, clearly nervous with the interrogation. “Officer Malachi Patterson.”

“I like it,” said Erin.

“Go to your room,” Hayes ordered. “We have business.”

“Cool,” said Erin. “Sorry for invading your space.”

She left and he reminded himself to take a breath. He wanted to go up to her room and break something for the way she spoke to him. To take something she cared about, the way he cared about his job, and show her what it’s like when people don’t treat you with respect. But there was no replacing things these days. They weren’t making new TVs or mirrors or hair dryers. You had what you had.

“So, sorry about last night,” Patterson said. When Hayes did not respond verbally or with even the slightest facial movement, Patterson continued. “But, some good news. First, had a great workout walking home.” Again, no reaction from Hayes. “And I think I’ve got a lead on our muscle man.”

“Okay, good,” said Hayes, trying not to get too hopeful.

“I talked to someone who knew Clay, a manager at a place he frequented.” It was uncharacteristically wise of Patterson to not say out loud that he had stayed in Lamp Town and continued his conversation with Manager after Hayes had left. “And she said she knew a big muscular guy. Said Clay used him for security sometimes. As a driver.”

“Got a picture of him?” Hayes asked.

“No, I asked. But! She said he had a tattoo of a snake or a lizard on his right forearm. And he used to sometimes pick Clay from work to bring him to La … the place where she works.”

Hayes’ mind worked through a number of questions. “Gotta be our guy.”

“I think so.”

“So, how did he get the car?” Hayes asked, more to himself than Patterson. “Did Clay get him the car? Did he decide to just make his guy into HSD all on his own? Find a way to get him a car and a uniform?”

“Could he do that?” Patterson asked.

Hayes gave a look as if to say, “The man set up an illegal underground Merg fight club and has been running it under our noses.”

Patterson seemed to catch his meaning. “He was connected.”

“We’re looking for a car, but maybe that car’s back at the base,” said Hayes. “If he could sneak it out, he probably had a way to sneak it back in. Why drive around in the vehicle you used to ditch the body?”

“And he knew people saw him. He did it in broad daylight.”

“It was night,” said Hayes.

“Right, sorry, but still. He knew we’d find out about the car. That we’d be looking for it.”

“The car’s at HQ,” said Hayes.

“So,” said Patterson, clearly nervous about saying something that could possibly upset Hayes. “Are we still looking at Reconquest? Or is this something else? Maybe our guy was looking to take over Clay’s … maybe he saw what Clay had and decided he wanted it.”

“Maybe,” said Hayes, puzzling over it. “But why cut his head off? And the other thing. Either it was personal or it was Reconquest.”

“Or that’s what he wanted us to think,” said Patterson, and it pissed off Hayes what a good point he was making.

“We gotta find that car,” said Hayes. “Everything else we figure out from there.”

Really, there wasn’t much to figure out once they had the car. If they had the car, they didn’t have to worry about it showing up again with another dead body that would get the Merg’s attention. All he’d have to do was tell his boss he’d found a note in the car with the location of the conspirators. They would be executed along with all of their roommates, and life would go on. For Hayes, there was hope finally.

He was up, he was grabbing his keys, and he was walking out the door. “Let’s go,” he yelled back to Patterson.

“Oh, I get to ride in the car this time?” Patterson asked.

Hayes laughed. Maybe the kid was all right.

Chapter Seven

The Senator’s phone rang, and she did not like it. There was no scheduled call, and she didn’t have Barker here if she needed something done. Somebody in the front office must have transferred it back here, but they needed to warn her about what she was getting into. This is what she got without her boys Barker and Clay. Poor Clay, she thought.

She answered the phone.

“The Merg wish to speak with you,” a translator said.

“Sounds wonderful,” said The Senator.

There were noises and then, “They would like to know if there is an update from Mr. Barker.”

“No,” said The Senator. “Long drive and he’d only call if there were issues, so it sounds like everything is going smoothly.”

The Senator had a knife in her hand. She had decided a long time ago that if she was going down, she wasn’t going down alone, so if someone was about to rush the door and take her they were getting it in the eye.

“Very good. As soon as he gets back, they will want a debrief.”

“He would love to provide that for them.”

Scratchy clicks.

“And they need the name of the HSD officer who transported him.”

This was the first real sign that something was wrong. The Merg did not care about names unless they needed to know who to kill. “You betcha,” said The Senator.

“Do you believe Mr. Barker will be able to debrief this evening?”

They were going to kill Barker. A lot of people enjoyed calling The Senator stupid on social media when that had existed. They mocked her gaffes and her lack of understanding on modern technology, but she thrived on underestimation. She might not be able to assemble a laptop but she knew the Merg as well as anyone still living. “Tonight, hmmmm,” said The Senator. “That should be fine. Oh, you know what, can it be the morning? Barker gets real barfy after long car trips, and it might be best to let him sleep this one off rather than have him let loose in HSD HQ. That all right?”

Scratchy clicks.

“That is acceptable,” said the translator.

And the call was over.

This was very bad. Bad for Barker, but in some ways worse for The Senator. First, she needed Barker. He did all of the work while she provided the charisma and leadership. Also, this meant that whatever was in Zero City was bad, bad news. And worst of all, Barker wouldn’t last ten seconds if they tortured him to find out what he knew. He’d be confessing to stuff they hadn’t even asked him. She could see him tied to a desk yelling, “I sign The Senator’s signature on all her forms! I sit in on top secret calls! I can do a passable impression of her so sometimes I talk for her in meetings! She’s hoarding supplies!”

This was not good. She had until the morning to fix this, but she needed Barker to fix it. She couldn’t call him because the only people with reliable phones were HSD. So, she could call the HSD officer escorting him, but that would invite too many questions later. She could meet him at his apartment when he returned and tell him the score, but she’d seen him freak out about far less than this. He’d nearly peed himself when he’d accidentally hit his car door against another car and scuffed the paint. Magnify that by the order of a death sentence.

She had until the morning.

The streets of Chicago/Zero City were full of Merg. Well, no, not the streets. The sidewalks, the parks, all the spaces between the streets. This was a fortunate thing, because if they had been blocking the road, it wasn’t like Barker could lean over and blast the horn.

“Hey, get outta the road, jackass!” was not a thing he could yell at the creatures who ruled over him.

So, they kept driving. As they got closer, Barker saw more and more examples of Merg acting aggressively toward one another. Not fighting, but lots of shoving. Often, one Merg would shriek and stand up on its rear legs and shake its arms and another Merg would match. They’d just go on yelling at each other until other Merg moved them apart.

“You leave my name out of the report,” the officer said.

“The what?” Barker said, not really paying attention and unprepared for the man to engage him in dialogue.

“I didn’t see shit, I don’t know shit. I wasn’t here. You don’t remember which officer drove you here. Got it? Please, I mean. Just please leave me out.”

Barker was confused but just said, “Sure, never even got your name.”

Once he thought about it for a second, the answer was clear. People who worked in secure Merg facilities were never going to leave until all the Merg departed the planet after taking the resources they needed. More likely, they’d die in there. Anyone who knew more about the Merg than most people was vulnerable. No one knew what they ate, how their bodies worked, or what their sleep cycle was, and they had every intention of keeping every single secret, no matter how small. This was not small. This was a hundred thousand, or more, probably more, Merg all bunched up together acting like a bunch of animals in …

No, no, no, Barker thought. He didn’t need to know what was going on. Didn’t need to understand a thing. Just had to assess and report. The roads looked good, no obstructions. Great, time to go home.

“I’m going to walk from here,” said Barker.

“Good idea,” said the officer, whose name Barker had successfully forgotten. “I’ll be here when you come back. One hour.”

“One hour,” said Barker. “If I’m not back in one hour, you should go … to wherever I am and save me.”

They laughed, both of them, and it was the closest Barker had ever come to breaking the rule, the big rule. The rule that says the Merg are good, and anyone who even hints otherwise is an enemy. To suggest he might need saving when he was surrounded by the benevolent Merg was something this officer could go and tell his superiors and he’d be done. In a life of wise decision making, Barker was putting his life on the line to make some unnamed HSD laugh.

He was out of the car, walking forward. There was a job to do, a report to make. He had a map that told him how to get to the facility, constructed in Grant Park, but he really didn’t need one. He just followed the gaze of all the Merg.

Barker had not been in Zero City since the arrival. This was not too surprising, as he did not travel much in general, but this city was not one he’d been keen to see. It was the warning to everywhere else. The first few days, the resistance to the Merg had been stout throughout Chicagoland. Guerilla warfare in the streets, and what would become Reconquest successfully raiding Merg supplies and killing a surprising number of the enemy. It continued for a week, Barker had pieced together. And then it was all over very quickly. Barker did not want to think about it, but here he was. It was not his doing, he reminded himself. It would have happened without him, without The Senator. What had he really done during those first few days? Assigned a few early Merg loyalists to infiltrate the resistance. Rerouted supplies for the effort. The Internet had still been somewhat functional and he’d found a few maps of Chicago’s underground Pedway system. Barker never fired a shot. Never gave an order. And yet, two years later, here he was in a ghost city. Zero human inhabitants. Some had gotten out, he knew. Some had fled before the Merg sent a giant swarm. Not the quantity that was here now, but thousands of them, ripping through the city. He shuddered a bit thinking about it, what it must have looked like. He wondered how they’d killed so many and the city still looked so well-preserved.

He continued moving forward, holding up the ID badge on the lanyard around his neck like he was trying to get backstage at a rock concert. He was a few blocks away, walking down Ida B. Wells Drive as close to the middle of the street as he could get. Merg shoving and pushing against each other all around him, everywhere but the street. And then two began to grapple and they fell right in front of him, close enough to touch. They rolled back and he had to jump out of the way. The two Merg screeched at each other and it made Barker freeze. They were going to get him, he decided. This was the end. They would stop fighting each other and turn on him.

But then two other Merg scuttled into the street and separated the combatants and it was over. They were back on the sidewalk, bumping against some old storefront. Barker wondered if he just broke down crying in the street if anyone would judge him. And he needed to pee.

It could no longer wait and it was the most important thing in the world. He turned down a side street hoping there might be fewer Merg, but there weren’t. He was standing there and he made a decision. And suddenly there was Barker, the only human surrounded by hundreds of thousands of aliens in the empty shell of one of America’s great cities, peeing in the street. It felt freeing.

He felt like a new man.

One minute and ten seconds later, Barker was back on his walk and headed toward the park. Soon after that he saw it, the thing. The facility. It was a shiny metal structure, about three stories tall, round like it might house a small basketball arena. There were two rows of armed Merg surrounding the building, facing the arriving Merg, as if to say, “Welcome, we know why you’re here. We’ll kill you like a human if you come any closer.” The Merg guards wore copper headbands of some sort, and Barker felt very curious as to why. They were not a decorative group, the Merg, and the headbands looked mechanical in nature. Possibly a communication device, he thought.

Barker proceeded, again with ID lanyard held high. He nodded at the armed Merg, carrying heavy laser based weapons that would be instant death if they turned on him. A quick demise as opposed to getting ripped apart, he supposed. “Barker,” he said, as though they cared.

None of the Merg reacted. They just stood there, blocking his way.

“Ezra Barker, I work for The Senator.”

He had to figure they knew that or they would have already murdered him. He looked at the big shiny metal cylinder building. Was that where the big fountain had been here, he wondered.

“Mr. Barker!” a human voice with an Australian accent called out.

“I’m Mr. Barker!” he yelled back, ridiculously. He was the only human there and he’d just been yelling his name, and yet he repeated it, “Ezra Barker!”

The crowd of armed Merg parted slightly and from the building emerged a woman in her forties wearing a dress suit that was very smart and professional given their setting. He himself was in a pair of khakis and a sky-blue button up that had started to fray around the collar. Something he would have replaced by now in pre-Merg times, but now he had to hold onto all of his shirts because the one time he had requested new clothes from The Senator, the Merg had delivered several shirts and pairs of pants that were a) not his size and b) probably recently removed from corpses. He would just hold onto his current wardrobe.

“Mr. Barker, the Merg thank you for your presence here,” said the translator.

Barker knew better than to ask her name. Translators were just there to speak for the Merg and did not want to be acknowledged as human beings. It only made things worse for them. Behind her, four Merg appeared, unarmed and older. They looked softer, a little more … wrinkly wasn’t the word, because they didn’t wrinkle, but more worn. They seemed to be elders, if that was something the Merg cared about.

“Honored,” said Barker.

“The vehicle transporting the visitor will be twenty meters long, nine meters tall, and ten meters wide.”

“Weight?” Barker asked.

There were scratchy clicks among the elder Merg and the translator said, “Confidential.”

“Of course,” said Barker. It didn’t really matter because he wasn’t an expert in roads, but you had to fake a lot of stuff with the Merg. “Within the metropolitan area, you’ll have some tight turns. I would recommend removing street signs, light poles, any unnecessary obstruction. Is there time for that work?”

The Merg, who understood English just fine, discussed this among themselves. He caught bits. “Time cannot change.” “Schedule! Schedule!” They kept using a word he didn’t know, but they were talking about the “Current scratchy click” and the “new scratchy click.”

“Yes,” said the translator. “Do you see any security concerns?”

This was the strangest question he’d been asked. What concerns could there be for the Merg? They’d conquered the planet. They controlled it. Yes, Reconquest blew up some random buildings and stole some loosely guarded supplies. But, they were like a puppy yapping at an elephant. Lots of noise, no hope of causing real damage.

“Hard to imagine any human could sneak in here given the current conditions,” said Barker. “Thermal scan the buildings if you’re worried. Reconquest probably couldn’t get any aircraft near here, but I’d have armed lookouts placed strategically on top floors of the buildings. If humans are the concern, we can increase shifts at all labor facilities. Anybody who’s plotting will have less time and energy and it’ll be harder for them to disappear.”

Sometimes Barker caught himself saying something evil without thinking about it. “Very well,” said the translator.

This close to the facility, Barker realized it was not solid metal all the way around. There were rectangular holes, windows he supposed, situated around the top of it. Not many, and not large, but it seemed like an odd design to him. What was inside, he started to ask before reminding himself what a dangerous question that was. “Do you want HSD near the facility?”

“No,” said the translator.

“I would get them on the roads all around here, then. As close as you can get them. If this is a critical need, we can pull in from other parts of the sector, and I can request additional HSD from other sectors.”

The translator waited for the elder Merg to confer and then said, “Do that. We trust you and The Senator to make arrangements to maximize security and minimize any disturbance to the visitor.”

A massive Merg eye peeked out from a hole in the facility. Huge. Barker nearly gasped, shocked by the size. And it must have been standing. The facility had a Merg bigger—seven or eight times bigger—than any he’d seen before. It was a monster among monsters. He did his best to remain calm, but the eye fixed its gaze on him.

“I can write up a full report,” said Barker. “After I check the route from the landing site to here.”

“Today,” said the translator. “And then debrief with HSD in the morning.”

“Sure,” said Barker, who didn’t understand the need for a report and a debriefing, but didn’t want to question the Merg and needed to get out of there before he threw up or had a panic attack thinking about why there was a giant Merg, a thing he didn’t know existed, staring at him.

The eye receded, and he thought he caught a hint of brighter color on the head of the giant Merg, but he wasn’t sure.

The elder Merg turned their back and began to walk away.

“Mr. Barker,” said the translator. “Please leave.”

“I—”

“There are two humans here and we can’t both be here at the same time. You the one from elsewhere and I the one who was here before. It would be chaos. It’s very important that only one of us is here at the same time.”

“Okay,” said Barker, his mind taking a moment to process what she was saying, which mostly sounded like nonsense.

“Why would I shake your hand?” she asked.

“I … ” He didn’t know what was going on, but he held out his hand to shake. The translator shrugged back at the elders as if to say, “What a weird guy, right?”

The translator shook his hand and said, “Strong arm.”

“Thanks?”

“I have to go, Mr. Barker!” said the translator, seemingly annoyed as though he had eaten into her time. The Merg scratchy-clicked some more and she said, “The Merg insist you hurry, you’ve spent long enough here. There will be a helicopter for you at the landing site to return you home. Your report will need to be done tonight. Do you understand?”

“I do,” said Barker. “I understand.”

Chapter Eight

Hayes opened another set of doors and looked. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just another HSD cruiser.

“Sorry if this is a dumb question,” Patterson began. “But what are we looking for?”

“Blood stains, first,” said Hayes. “No way they drive around with a headless guy and keep the seats clean. Check the trunks, too.”

Sector 24518, the Merg administrative district that encompassed parts of multiple former U.S. states, was patrolled by thousands of HSD officers. That big land area was broken up into lettered subsections, and Hayes worked in Sector 24518A, that A, the first letter of the alphabet, basically giving it, to his mind, the status of the capital city. The Senator’s office was there, and they were the most prestigious of the HSD precincts in the sector, which were not called precincts, but that was the best way he could think of them. Two hundred and forty-three officers and seventy cars which were kept in a guarded underground lot. This last part was lucky. Because it was guarded, the cars were all unlocked. “People gonna be mad we’re doing this?” Patterson asked.

“If we don’t get done quick, yeah,” said Hayes. “Cars get switched around a lot, so technically no car belongs to any officer, but some people don’t view it that way. So, let’s be quick.”

Hayes felt excitement, real glee at the prospect of being done with this case. Any moment now he was going to find the car used in Clay’s killing, and it would be done. And he never had to think about Clay or Lamp Town or Manager ever again. He would probably think about Manager, though. He held grudges, and the very thought of how she spoke to him set him on edge.

He quietly opened another cruiser, scanning for some sign that a dead body had recently been a passenger in this car. Any moment it was going to present itself.

“Hayes! Patterson!” a voice called.

“Yeah?” asked Hayes, looking up to see Sergeant Ponce, an officer his age with short cropped hair staring at him with annoyance.

“The hell are you doing? It’s actually the chief who’s asking, but I’m curious, too,” said Ponce.

“Trying to find something,” said Patterson.

“Better be good,” said Ponce. “Chief said now.”

Chief Echevarria ran HSD in Sector 24518, which made him the most powerful human in the sector besides The Senator, at least in theory. In practice, The Senator had to keep HSD happy and HSD did not have to keep The Senator happy, so that math said the chief was more powerful. Echevarria was ancient, a guy who had been enjoying retirement when the Merg landed, but enlisted immediately in the effort to support the planet’s new caretakers and quickly found his way up to the top of the ladder. He had a warm smile, but you had to remember he hadn’t gotten this rank with kindness and charity.

“Come on in, Hayes, Patterson,” said Echevarria.

“Hey, Chief,” said Hayes.

“Chief,” said Patterson.

“I’m gonna ask why you young men are searching through HSD cars like our garage is a crime scene, and you’re gonna give me a really good answer like you were both sleepwalking or you lost a baby in one of them or something that doesn’t make me think the two of you have lost your god damn minds,” said Echevarria.

“We’re working on—” Patterson began, but Hayes put a hand on his shoulder.

“Chief,” said Hayes, “you want the real answer?”

“I like you, Hayes,” said Echevarria. “You cut to the heart of it. Tell me the real answer and then I’ll tell you if it’s worth risking your life for.”

“Damian Clay,” said Hayes. “We think he had a security guy he was dressing up as HSD, and that guy killed him.”

“Dumb idea on his part, but he’s dead and his jimmy is at the bottom of the river, so not his problem anymore. Doesn’t explain what you’re up to down there.”

“I think he found a way to steal one of our cars,” said Hayes, and this was dangerous territory.

“You found the car thief, right?” Echevarria asked.

“Yeah,” said Hayes. “He got taken care of in front of the Merg.”

“That was good work,” said Echevarria. “You’re good at this, Hayes. You know what the Merg want, and I think you’re worried about that car showing up at another crime and the Merg asking why you didn’t find it the first time. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir,” said Hayes.

“And you, Officer Patterson?”

“Yes, sir.”

Echevarria took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s fix this right here and now. We’re gonna find the charred remains of the vehicle used in the murder tonight. Elton and Quincy will discover it, and report back that it was crudely painted to look like an HSD car. Didn’t even have the letters in the right order, HDS it said. Killer left their worker ID card in the vehicle, we’ll track him or her down in a Worker Village. Case closed, Merg appeased. Done.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Hayes, who could have kissed the man in that moment.

“Just ask for help next time,” said Echevarria. “We’re all in this together.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hayes.

“Because you start looking around HSD, you’re sending everyone the wrong message,” Echevarria continued. “Nobody wants to see that. And, don’t go looking in places where you might find the wrong things.”

“A mistake on my part,” said Hayes.

“Very sorry, sir,” said Patterson.

“All is forgiven,” said Echevarria. “You’re done with this case. You did a commendable job. But we’re moving on. Merg asked us to pick up Ezra Barker tonight.”

“The twitchy guy who works for The Senator?” Hayes asked.

Echevarria nodded. “Merg sent him to take care of something. He’s writing up a report on it. You’re gonna get the laptop he wrote it on, and then take care of him. Merg told The Senator we’re coming to talk to him tomorrow, but she’s smart and knows what that means, so you two are going tonight. To talk to him.”

“Got it,” said Hayes.

“They also want the HSD who drove him up there. Please bring that individual in.”

“I believe that officer is at the Worker Village across the street from Barker,” said Hayes. He wondered if Patterson was keeping up. They were going to kill Barker, but for the HSD they were going to take out a rando from the Worker Village and claim that body as the officer. The actual living officer would get a name change and come right back in the department as a new recruit. It took some clever paperwork, but it had been done before, Hayes knew. The Chief had also not done it before when he thought the Merg were watching too close. HSD took care of their own when they could get away with it.

“Should be a quick night,” said Echevarria.

Hayes had been making a lot of boneheaded moves lately, but he knew that phrase meant to get out of the Chief’s office now.

Patterson was out a few seconds later with a smile on his face. “We’re clear!” he said.

“Yeah,” said Hayes. “But we got a shit assignment for screwing it up.”

“I don’t get it,” said Patterson.

“The Senator’s pet, Barker,” said Hayes. “Gotta be careful. This guy’s smart, connected. Be careful around him. He didn’t climb this high and stay this long being soft-hearted and defenseless, regardless of what he looks like. And even if it goes smooth, we’re making an enemy of The Senator. You might say it’s not our decision, but she can only get mad at us. Hope she doesn’t find out who took care of it.”

“And if she does?” Patterson asked.

Hayes shrugged. “Hope we get a call about her next.”

Chapter Nine

In his apartment, Barker was putting the finishing touches on his report. While he knew some about security and highway infrastructure, he was just mostly just guessing what an expert might say about preparations for this event. Could the highway support the vehicle transporting the visitor? Definitely.

Would the slow-moving truck be susceptible to attack? Yes, but there were steps to avoid that based on the couple conversations he’d had with security at political conventions.

Was there a need for more HSD? Given the priority assigned to this visitor, yes.

What the hell was the translator talking about at the end? Best not to think about. Best to push into the uncomfortable-truths drawer in his brain. She had called him the one who came from elsewhere. Why wouldn’t she just use the word visitor? It would have made much more sense, except that “visitor” was how the Merg had been referring to the individual everyone was planning for. So, if one wanted to dissect it, she was likely trying to tell him something about the visitor without using that word. This was like the board game Taboo, where you had to get someone to guess a phrase without using certain phrases. This was not a game, he reminded himself. This was serious and he knew a dangerous amount of information. He’d need to be very quiet after turning in this report and hope they forgot about him until after the visit. Then, his knowledge would have no value, and he could relax. He sat on his metal chair looking out the window, waiting for Brush Woman. Any moment, he thought.

The translator had said it would be bad for him, the visitor, to be there at the same time as her, the one who was already there. She said that right in front of a facility holding a gigantic Merg. So, clearly, someone was coming to replace that big Merg, but the other one had to be gone first. Dead? Why would that matter, and was that giant Merg a … the …

Shut up, he told his brain. Shut up, shut up, shut up! But, why did she say he had a strong arm? He most certainly did not have a strong arm. He hadn’t lifted a weight since college. He couldn’t do a pull-up to save his life. You want to save your life, Barker thought to himself, then why don’t you drop this forever?

And there she was. Brush Woman. Hello, he said in his mind. How was your day? She seemed troubled this evening. Sad, maybe. He wanted to find out what her problems were and solve all of them.

“I could do it,” he said aloud.

A knock at this door made him nearly fall out of his seat. His heart raced before he could remember that only people who lived in the building or HSD were allowed in.

“Just a woman! Moment! Just a moment!” he called out. Out of a weird protective instinct, he set his laptop on the top row of his bookshelf, the biography section of his collection. He felt like he should do some prep before opening the door, but he was fully dressed. There was really nothing to do, but it felt like there should be some transition between Brush Woman and something else.

He breathed. He opened the door to see two HSD officers standing in front of them.

“Hello!” he said too enthusiastically, like he was covering. Like they’d caught him doing something wrong. “Sergeant Hayes and Officer Patterson,” said Barker.

“Good memory,” said Hayes.

“Try to remember everyone who interacts with The Senator,” said Barker. “Everyone is important to us. Please, come in.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barker,” said Hayes.

Barker was already back at the window by the time the door was shut. While he did not want to act rudely toward two HSD, he also only got a few minutes each night with Brush Woman and he did not want to blow it.

“Is this about Clay?” Barker asked, trying to act like he wasn’t staring out the window, but he was definitely staring out the window.

“No,” said Patterson.

“Yes and no,” corrected Hayes. “Looks like we found the scumbags who did it. Bunch of terrorist wanna-bes. Not really part of Reconquest, just a bunch of deluded butchers. They spray painted HSD on the side of some old car with and thought they were clever.”

“Oh, okay,” said Barker, not at all interested in the details of the crime, which even in his distracted state he knew were most likely fictional. If HSD said the case was closed, it meant they’d killed enough people to make the Merg happy.

“We are here for your report,” said Hayes.

“Sure,” said Barker. It made enough sense. The internet was not a dependable thing and so rather than email the file, Barker had assumed he’d just hand over the laptop and be handed back another one that would be somewhere between two and twenty years old and may or not have a cord to recharge the battery. It was a bad system, but one that he’d worked with this long.

“Sir?” said Hayes.

“Yes, Sergeant Hayes?” Barker replied.

“The report,” Hayes nudged.

Barker realized he was barely paying any attention, but he just needed another minute. This was Brush Woman time, and he couldn’t explain that to them, but in a way they understood. She was standing there, giving him a feeling nothing else did anymore. Maybe he’d never felt this way before, whatever this was. She had so much power, just brushing her hair as though this world deserved her. It didn’t, and he wanted to tell her that.

“Of course,” said Barker. “Just a moment, gotta remember where I put the laptop. If you want a drink, you can grab one from the fridge, anything you want.”

Hayes was up and looking through his limited collection of beer and soda, but grunting as though it was better than what he was used to. He heard the younger officer, Patterson, say, “Sarge, we have to … ” and then trail off.

“After we get the laptop,” said the sergeant.

It started to seem strange to Barker that they were here. And as weird as Barker was acting, the young officer seemed even more uncomfortable. Like he didn’t want to be on this task, even if it was only a laptop pick-up. There was a sense of something being wrong in the back of his head, but it was like hearing a car alarm from down the block. Something bad was happening somewhere, but most of his brain was busy appreciating Brush Woman, and did not have time to decode the body language of Officer Malachi Patterson.

“Haven’t seen one of these in a while,” said Sergeant Hayes, the clink of a beer leaving his collection.

“Go for it,” said Barker. “I don’t really drink much, just have them here in case of visitors, which, well, you guys are visitors.”

Sergeant Hayes laughed at that in a way that felt wrong. “Just let me know where the laptop is and we’ll be on our way,” said Hayes. “You can stay by the window doing whatever you’re doing.”

“Sure,” said Barker knowing his time with Brush Woman was almost at its end for the evening. He wanted to call out. He wanted her to look at him. Just turn and look at him.

And then, she did.

For the first time in all these weeks of him staring, she looked up across the street and made direct eye contact with Barker. The shock of seeing someone staring back at her was immediately evident in her face, and then tragedy. In the moment of confusion, the brush slipped from her hand and fell down four stories onto a heap of trash bags piled up outside the Worker Village.

“No, no, no,” said Barker aloud. “You don’t need it.”

“Sir?” asked Patterson.

“We do.”

Even though he was talking to himself, he knew it was a lie. She did need it. Brush Woman would not be Brush Woman without a brush. How could she leave that lying in the street? In the old days, she could pop on down to buy a new one at Brushes Are We or The Brush Factory or International House of Brushes or Hey, Heard You Like Brushes or wherever to buy a new one. But, now, nothing was mass produced for human use. There was no replacing it. “You can’t go get it,” said Barker, willing her to hear him. He was correct in the sense that she was not allowed to go out on the street at this hour. Health and Safety enforced a strict curfew. Failure to follow that curfew got you brought in for questioning. HSD could question a curfew violator for days, or at least hold them for days until they felt like questioning them. You would, at minimum, miss a few shifts and thus lose rations. And if someone had recently done something to upset the Merg and HSD felt it was possible that someone was you, it was bad news. Very bad news.

“We need to get it,” said Hayes, but the two officers did not live in the same world as him at that moment.

Brush Woman stared down for a while and Barker tried to transmit the thought that maybe, just maybe it would still be there in the morning. Probably not, he knew, but maybe. More likely an HSD officer would notice and grab it for themself or a loved one. Trash pickup might grab it. Scavengers out intentionally violating curfew and doing a very professional job of it might get it. They’d ride by on bicycles and HSD would probably not want to bother or maybe they had a deal worked out with the officers.

Barker realized he could get her a new one. He could do it, he could figure it out. This was his moment, this would be how he could do one good thing and save the day, and maybe they’d talk. He just needed to open his window and tell her. Except he had no idea if this window opened. He looked around frantically, trying to find a latch or a handle or lock. He had never thought to open it before because many people wanted him dead and the Merg had given him bulletproof glass. Well, someone told him it was bulletproof.

“Mr. Barker, are you okay?” asked Patterson.

He tried to move the window with his hand, just pushing hand against the glass to no effect when he saw her go. He knew she was going after it, that she was going to run out on the street and try to retrieve it. He stood there, helplessly. He was going to watch the woman he … he didn’t know what the verb was, but he somethinged her. He was going to watch HSD pick her up and ruin her life more than it was already ruined. She could be dead tomorrow.

Curiously, Barker found himself dashing out of his apartment, into the hallway, down the stairs, the two officers whose presence he had just remembered calling after him.

He had never been brave, had thrived through his cowardice, and now it looked like he was going to play the hero. Honestly, the risks to him were low. He had his ID card that could get him out of just about anything human-related. By the time he was saying, “Hey, just gotta … ” to the armed doorman of his building as he sprinted out into the night air, he had developed a plan. And he needed one. He saw a uniformed HSD officer approaching Brush Woman, who was pushing aside trash bags, trying to find her lost treasure.

“Hey, lady!” called the officer, and she froze.

“Excuse me!” called Barker as he approached, trying to look cool and catch his breath. He panted, embarrassingly so, he imagined, as he held out his identification, showing he was very important indeed.

“Can I help you, Mr. Barker?” the officer asked, a tall man who was far more muscular than anyone he’d seen in a very long time.

“This woman is with me,” he said. “She’s … just a second, whooo.” He breathed in and out deeply as he approached the woman. “She is providing insider information regarding organizing within the building. Sorry, I was supposed to escort her over to my building so there would be no confusion with the curfew, but I lost track of time.”

He realized that he had engineered a story that would now result in her coming over to his apartment. That had not been the plan, but it was … he felt okay about it.

Brush Woman stood right next to him and said, “Yes, that is correct.” She placed her right hand on his shoulder and it was the most warmth he had felt since the invasion. It was joy, it was pure.

And then in a moment it was pain and electricity shooting through his body. He collapsed, realizing he had been tased. Why? How? In front of the HSD? She’d signed her own death warrant. He tried to call out, but he couldn’t. He lay helplessly on a pile of trash bags for a few moments until a car pulled up. The back door opened and the officer grabbed him and threw him in the back while Brush Woman sat in the front passenger seat.

He didn’t understand. How could she do this?

“Go,” said Brush Woman as the two officers tied Barker’s hands behind his back. He could almost speak by the time they gagged him.

“You know where you’re going, Arkansas?” Brush Woman asked the driver.

“Hell yeah,” said the woman, Arkansas. He was going to die. Brush Woman was going to kill him and it was going to be ugly and painful. It could take days. He looked at the back of her head, now feeling oddly calm with this realization. She had patiently baited him, built him up to this moment. Something else dawned on him. He realized what he felt for Brush Woman was love. He loved her, more now than before.

Brush Woman turned to face Barker and said, “Death to Merg. Death to Collaborators.”

It had confused Hayes when Barker had run. The guy was smart, so maybe he knew what was up, but he wasn’t brave. That much Hayes could read on him. The smart move would have been to bribe him and Patterson. Wouldn’t have worked, but it was better than running. Where was he going to go, Hayes had thought with a little amusement. The way he’d run out, Hayes figured the man would be lying in the street gasping for air.

Hayes felt so unconcerned, he took a swig of Barker’s fancy beer before following Patterson down the stairs. And sure enough, Barker had only found more trouble by the time Hayes caught sight of him again. There he was, being pulled into an HSD cruiser. Some filth from the Worker Village across the street was there, and Hayes was puzzled as to what he’d missed. Did he assault the woman? If so, who cared? Guy had a high-level security ID. He began to call out to the officer to let go of their catch when he saw the man. A big guy. Muscular.

Hayes’s heart seized. He was watching his own funeral.

“Stop!” yelled Patterson.

Hayes reached for his gun, but the car was already speeding off. He fired off a pointless round, no clue if he hit anything, and ran for his own car.

“Go!” yelled Hayes to Patterson, who was already headed for the vehicle.

The sergeant shoved Patterson to the right to let him know that Hayes would be driving. He couldn’t trust this kid. This dimwit who had just let Barker run past him out the door.

Hayes turned the car on and sped off as Patterson bumped against him, not enough time to buckle in before the first turn. “Come on, come on, you sons of bitches,” said Hayes, barely words really as he ground his teeth together. They were dead. Patterson was too thick to know that, but Hayes knew. They were dead and the only way to come back from Hell was with Ezra Barker.

The getaway car turned left around a corner just as Hayes caught a glimpse of it again. “Got you, got you,” he mumbled to himself.

They took the same corner and suddenly there was a kid, barely a teenager, standing on the far side of the street holding up something in his hands. Looked like a folded up blanket for a millisecond before he threw it right at their car. A basketball sized chunk of rock. Just before it impacted them, he could see “RQ” written on it in bright red letters. Reconquest.

Hayes tried to swerve at the last second, but the rock landed on the hood then bounced into the windshield, cracking it and then scraping as it slid off and then onto the ground. “Shoot that fucking kid!” Hayes yelled.

Patterson’s gun fired, and he said, “Think I got him,” but it was a lie. Just an obvious lie.

The windshield was a mess, but still there, and Hayes could see enough out of it. They were headed for the highway. He knew that, he felt it. They thought they could get out of the city and he wouldn’t follow them. But he had a real car that ran on real gas, not whatever they’d been shoving in that stolen knockoff.

Hayes tried to push the thought out of his mind that only a couple hours earlier he had believed Clay’s killers were using a real HSD car straight from the lot. No, this was some old heap of junk with an amateur paint job running on kitchen grease. It had to be.

Driving alongside the old baseball stadium, Hayes caught them exactly where he thought they’d be, headed for the on ramp. “Got you, got you, got you,” Hayes muttered.

He had his own gun out, ready to save this whole mess. He’d be a hero. Here was Barker, here was Clay’s killer, here were a couple other Reconquest dirtbags. He’d hang them all up like they were the catch of the day.

He had a better car, he was a better driver. Turning onto the on ramp, he watched how much the getaway car had to slow down. They had no idea, had never met anyone like him. He knew this turn, could make it full speed. Hayes was foot slammed down on the accelerator, going wide to swerve onto the on ramp. And then there was the enemy car, fully stopped. He had only a moment to wonder before it reversed. In perfect, beautiful motion, the car slid backward, right past them. Before Hayes could even realize it he was staring at the driver. A girl. Late teens. Laughing at him. She was laughing. In the brief moment he saw the driver, she did a little celebratory shake with her shoulders. He leveled his gun, but his eye caught the trap they’d set for him, two abandoned cars blocking the ramp, Hayes heading full speed right at the middle. His foot leapt from accelerator to brake, the car skidding to a halt just before collision. He reversed, a three point turn to get them back down off the ramp, back in pursuit. But now there was a massive pickup truck blocking the entrance to the ramp. It was brilliant. They’d trapped him. A figure leapt out of the driver’s side of the pickup, facing away from Hayes, and ran off. Both Hayes and Patterson let loose with their sidearms, but it was pointless. They had no angle, they were done.

They could break in and move the truck, but the race was lost. They were done. Hayes stepped out of the car and crouched into a catcher’s stance, his head in his hands.

“We gotta call this in,” said Patterson.

Hayes had not noticed himself stand, and yet there he was, hands grabbing at Patterson’s shirt collar, knuckles shoving into his neck as he slammed him up against the car.

“Use your useless fucking brain for a second! What do you think is going to happen if we ‘call it in?’ What do you think they will do to us?” Hayes asked.

“I know the chief won’t be happy,” said Patterson, “but—”

“They will kill you. They will slit your throat and leave you in a hole. We just let someone with knowledge the Merg decided is too dangerous for him to have, jump in a car with a bunch of Reconquest traitors! You’re fucking dead! I’m dead!”

“Chief wouldn’t—”

“He would! He has! For a lot less than this!” Patterson was new to this, but Hayes wasn’t. Hayes had seen what happened to officers who screwed up something the Merg cared about.

“Hey, maybe you’ll catch him in a good mood and maybe the Merg will realize whatever Barker knows isn’t that bad, and then maybe, just maybe! Maybe they’ll only strip you of your job and send you to a labor camp. Do you know what happens to ex-HSD in the mines? Or in the Worker Villages? Because I’ve seen that, too! And your family!”

Hayes stopped. His family, he thought. His wife, his daughter.

“My sister and her husband live in the compound with me,” said Patterson.

“You go down, they go to work. And everybody’s going to know where they came from. They’ll show up with soft hands and no scars two years into this, and they’ll be lucky if they die quick. So, no, we are not calling it in.”

Hayes let go of Patterson and resumed his self-pitying crouch.

“We blew it,” said Hayes. “We had one job and we blew it. After everything the Merg did for us, we just let him go.” Hayes hated himself. He had taken a sip of beer while his future ran out the door. He’d never see it now. Never see the day the Merg used their tech to restore the planet and usher in the new utopian age. He’d be dead.

“What do we do?” Patterson asked.

“Right,” said Hayes. He was acting like it was over, but there had to be something they could do.

“Do we run?” Patterson asked, and Hayes hated him more than ever.

“Abandon our posts?” Hayes asked. “And make them think we were part of this? You want to die as a traitor? And what happens to your sister and her husband?”

“Okay,” said Patterson. “So, we went to Barker’s apartment, but he wasn’t there. We got the laptop, but he was already gone.”

“No good,” said Hayes, happy his partner was at least thinking close to rationally. “Too many people saw us. HSD in the building. We don’t have him, questions get asked, so we need to have those answers.”

“We chased him here,” said Patterson. “And we disabled the car.

“Right,” said Hayes. “Wasn’t an HSD car. We’re the only ones who got a good look at it.”

“Yeah,” said Patterson. “Yeah, yeah. So, we came here. Reconquest tried to—”

“No,” said Hayes. “Reconquest never had him. Not for a second. He tried to run away. He stole a car and drove off. He’s around anyone else for a second and we screwed up.”

“Okay, right. Okay, so he drives up here, we ram him with the car. Jump out and there he is. He’s got a gun to his head and boom … shoots himself in the head. He does it up there and his body falls right into the river, floated downstream.”

Hayes gave the kid a grimace. He had it, but he wasn’t admitting the other part. “Gotta be a body,” said Hayes.

“But we don’t have a body.”

“We’re going to go get one,” said Patterson.

“No, but—”

“What did you think we were doing about the HSD who drove Barker today?”

“I didn’t know what was supposed to happen,” said Patterson meekly.

“Two fake bodies instead of one,” said Hayes, and suddenly, saying the words, it seemed possible.

“They’re not fake bodies.”

“We’re going into a Worker Village,” said Hayes. “We’re taking two people who probably did some bad stuff. Probably Reconquest members, right? One looks like our guy, one looks like Barker. We go back to Barker’s apartment and grab the laptop. And we’re gold. We’re safe.”

“Sarge,” said Patterson, dangerously close to forming his own opinions.

“Your sister is safe,” said Hayes.

Patterson said nothing. And it was decided.

Chapter Ten

The biggest reason Arkansas had yet to be killed in action was luck. The second biggest reason was that she appreciated the first. She was not more skilled, smarter, or cunning than any of the other Reconquest pilots who died on their first mission. Most never got a second flight under their belt. She had flown eighteen, however, and there were a few things she’d figured out.

1. Don’t try not to die. That’s what the Merg expect. In the entire history of Earth, nothing had been as successful at killing humans as the Merg, and they’d only discovered the planet a few years ago. By now they’d seen every way humans tried to avoid death, so it was best to fly straight at them, screaming the whole time and expecting death, deliver your payload, and then turn left and fly home when you didn’t actually explode.

2. Read the manual. A lot of Reconquest pilots came from the military. Arkansas came from vocational school and had multiple certificates in HVAC repair and installation. She’d never been on a plane, much less a stolen alien spacecraft, before the invasion, and so she had to read all the manuals. Spies and translators had died truly gruesome deaths for her to be able to read those manuals, so it was the least she could do. Other pilots skimmed them and then when they hit the button that they thought would activate the laser cannons, they lowered the temperature in the cockpit by two degrees being shot out of the sky.

3. Don’t do drugs. A lot of people tried to wash away their misery with drugs. Arkansas also did this, because the world was sorrow and the right drugs helped you make it through the worst of it, but she was clean on flight day. Except for the uppers Reconquest gave her to help her focus. Actually, skip this one, she definitely did a lot of drugs.

4. Don’t make friends. It can be distracting if your buddy Robert blows up during a mission, so it’s best to never get close to him in the first place, and only refer to him by the name Drywall for some reason until he dies and over the comms someone says we need a moment of silence for Drywall and then it doesn’t matter what his real name was. Never know anyone’s real name, never talk about your old life, and if you have sex with anyone, say something really disrespectful after so neither of you will feel anything if the other dies. Arkansas wasn’t her real name and she was from Louisiana, but somebody called her that and it seemed fine.

5. Don’t question orders. Not because the orders are good. Reconquest had never been a well-run organization. It wasn’t even an organization. It was a collection of survivors, many of whom would have hated each other before the invasion. Lots of people still hated each other, but for different reasons than they would have before. No one got promoted in Reconquest for bravery and competence, they got promoted from other people dying, getting caught, or abandoning the cause. The people who gave orders might order an attack based on strategic value, but more likely they felt like they had to do something or maybe they just felt helpless and thought this bad idea would help. One could imagine a Reconquest higher-up saying, “Let’s teach ‘em a lesson!” as they came up with a plan that felt aggressive but was really just self-defeating. “Let’s teach them a lesson!” The lesson most Merg had learned at this point was that humans are unorganized and love pointless aggression. They get off on sending pilots on a run to destroy a supply depot of little value that gets Drywall killed and you’re just shouting, “Robert! Robert!” over and over again, but no one else knows that’s his name because they hadn’t been sleeping with him and formed a connection even though they knew they shouldn’t because they would one day have to watch him die. If you question orders like that, you might lose hope.

Arkansas had already lost most of her hope, but not all, and she was feeling pretty good after she’d evaded those HSD holes in St. Louis. She might die tomorrow, but she’d never forget the look on the old one’s face as she reversed past him with her shoulder shake. He had that angry mall cop look in his eyes. “Excuse me, miss, but that is not acceptable!” he probably wanted to say.

It was so fun. She was in an abandoned grocery store in or near Iowa City and she was doing that cool thing where you push real fast on the shopping cart and then put both feet up and then just ride that thing. This was great. She hadn’t been in a grocery store since the invasion and she was going to make the most of it.

They were moving on soon, and she was feeling a little excited. Yes, that car chase had been cool. Well, it had been cool for her, but her partners in rebellion, Sums and Rupture, had been freaking out the whole time. “Why are there HSD here?” Sums had yelled, like they hadn’t formed a whole back-up plan where Sums got to drive the car around doing boss shit. They had the kid with the rock, they had their buddy set up by the on-ramp. All went smooth.

“Yoooo!” yelled Arkansas, just zooming down the aisle. No food here, that had been cleared out years ago. Just good times.

“We gotta move!” Sums yelled, and sure, cool, but Arkansas had a couple more vroom vrooms with this bad-ass shopping cart. She missed the HSD car, and didn’t completely agree they had to abandon it. HSD cars were actually well-maintained, unlike pretty much every other vehicle. And maybe it was suspicious, but any car on the road these days was suspicious. Anyway, soon she’d be flying again, and that was the real stuff right there.

“Arkansas!” Sums yelled.

“On my way!” yelled Arkansas.

“No time for this,” yelled Sums, a woman who seemed very concerned about time after living in that Worker Village for weeks to hook Ezra Barker.

“No time!” yelled Arkansas. “I got you!”

Arkansas was up by the front of the store, and there was Sums looking unhappy, but beside her was Rupture, big giant man that he was, holding one of those scanners for groceries, aiming it like a gun.

“Pew pew!” he yelled.

Arkansas laughed. “I’m hit!” she yelled.

Barker was waking up, or maybe he’d been awake. The last he remembered he was in the car and now he was in an abandoned auto factory. Half-assembled cars left on the line. Dust-covered coffee mugs sitting where their owners had left them when they realized none of this mattered any more.

They had given him something. Could be something like a truth serum, but Reconquest was not a well-run organization with capable agents and certainly not dependable doctors, so they probably didn’t even know what they gave him. This was good though, they wanted him to talk. This could all go very smoothly. He just needed to focus because he was craning his head around looking at cars and not at the person in front of him. He could do this. He was a professional at handling people, he just needed to start on the right foot.

He snapped his head to forward-facing and saw Brush Woman holding a blood-stained hunting knife and smiling.

“I am going to cut off all of your favorite body parts and shove them in all of your least favorite body parts,” she said.

“Hello, Brush Woman,” he said. “I am Ezra Barker.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, but I might slip up because you’ve been Brush Woman for a very long time to me. You’re very important to me.”

He was admitting that less because of the drugs swirling through his system and more because he was going to die and he’d been lying to himself and betraying his species for so long. It felt good to say honest, true things.

“You’re important to me too,” said Brush Woman, and it made him smile even as he knew she meant it in a very temporary, very specific way. “You have information I need.”

She was wearing a beaten-up leather jacket and ripped jeans. No new clothes being made except uniforms for workers, and yet she was still stylish. “What do I call you?” he asked.

“You don’t call me anything.”

“Brush Woman,” he said, not meaning to. She scowled.

She was beautiful to him, but in a very different way than when he had first seen her. Before she seemed vulnerable, something he could protect. Now, she exuded power and confidence. Barker had always found himself drawn to power, and nothing said power like a knife to your throat and your hands tied behind your back. Oh, his hands were tied behind his back, he realized.

“Okay,” said Barker. “You can call me Ezra or Barker or Ezra Barker.”

“They gave you too much,” she sighed. “Let’s cut to the chase. You know where the weapons depot in this sector is and you know when the mineral shipments fly off-planet and from where.”

“I would like a moment to consider how to answer this,” said Barker.

“Wasn’t a question,” said Brush Woman.

“You see,” he continued, “I know you and I are alone here.”

“You’re what?” said a woman he had not noticed before even though she was sitting across from him right next to Brush Woman.

“Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there,” said Barker. “I’m Ezra Barker.”

“Everyone knows your name, bro,” said the new woman. She was so young and she spoke with such a strong Southern accent.

“You’re very young. Wait, Arkansas. You drove.”

“I drove,” she confirmed.

“Are you old enough to drive? Sorry, no laws like that anymore. But you’re very young.”

“Older than you think, Barker.”

“Hey!” snapped Brush Woman.

“Sorry, Sums,” said Arkansas to Brush Woman.

“Sums,” repeated Barker. “What a beautiful name. Were you a math teacher, is that why they call you that?”

Sums death-stared at him and then Arkansas in a way that confirmed he had been correct. She turned back to Barker and was about to speak when Barker said, “I’m sorry, I’m not dodging your question about the depots and the docks. I’ll tell you anything you want, I really don’t want to get hurt, I hate getting hurt. Dying, that’s going to happen, good, okay, but I don’t want any punching or stabbing or burning. Now, you say I know where the depots and docks are, and I want to say, ‘No that is above my security clearance. Internally, only The Senator knows that information,’ but if I said that you would say I’m lying and punch me in the face or cut off my finger.”

“Right,” said Arkansas, pulling out a pair of pliers. “Actually, first I’d take one of your teeth.”

Barker paused, he hadn’t even considered they’d go for his teeth.

Sums nodded, “Even after you begged to tell us everything, we’d still take a few.”

“I don’t want that,” said Barker. “But, if I tell you that I do have that information, that means The Senator has broken protocol and allowed me to view forbidden material, which could cause serious problems for her.”

“You got messed up priorities, Barko,” said Arkansas.

“Yeah,” said a man sitting on the other side of Sums whom Barker had also not noticed previously.

“Oh, hello,” said Barker.

“You’re Ezra Barker, I get it,” said the man. “I’m Rupture.” Just a very large muscular man. It was so impressive to Barker to see a muscular Reconquester. They were always so gaunt, so underfed.

“Did you kill Clay? Damian Clay?”

“You hear him specify?” asked Arkansas. “Like we were confused about which Clay got his head chopped off.”

Sums nodded. “Yes, we killed your friend, and—”

“Coworker,” corrected Barker. “Sorry, but we weren’t friends.”

“Don’t give a shit, buddy,” said Sums. “Answer my question. Weapons depot and launch centers.”

“The Senator is a good person, she is doing her best,” said Barker. “So, I will only say yes, I know the information, yes. The weapons depot is in Milwaukee. It’s good to say the name instead of the coordinates. The launch center is near Kenosha. We just call it a dock, but that’s fine. It would be kind of you to at least give them a couple minutes notice before you blow them up. It’s mostly Merg there, but there are also some humans. They can’t leave, you see. Ever. They work there until they die or I don’t know what. If they left they could tell people where they work. When are you going to ask me about Zero City?”

“Focus, Barker,” said Sums. “We’re asking the questions.”

“And we’re not blowing it up,” said Rupture, to the annoyance of Sums.

Barker was confused. “You’re … The latest shipment that’s sitting at the dock is just explosives for mining, no guns going out. You could blow a big hole in something, but they could track the chemical signature quickly enough you wouldn’t be able to do much with it. I suppose you could get it to the dock but if you’re not using it to blow up the dock, you’re walking around with a bomb leaving a trail the Merg can find anywhere on the pla—oh my god!”

“Don’t stress yourself about it,” warned Sums.

“You’re going to space with it? To do what? Blow up the Merg base on the moon?”

“His brain just goes click, click, click,” said Arkansas.

“Please don’t do this, you’re the most important person in my life, Sums.”

“I don’t know you, I kidnapped you and I’m going to cut you open and let your organs fall out when this is done.”

“I feel,” he began, but she was losing her patience with him and he didn’t want the pain. “How did you know I’d fall for it?” he asked. “What about me made you know I’d watch you every night?”

“Yo, man,” said Arkansas. “She’s hot and you’re a sad, lonely, horny guy. We’re not Freud over here doing psych evals on you. Ain’t no one got the Barker dossier.”

“Give us the exact location of the weapons depot and the scheduled off-world launches for this week. Not the cities, the exact locations. Right now.”

“Sure,” said Barker excited at the opportunity to make himself useful to Sums. “Untie me and give me a pen and paper.”

The three of them looked at each other uncertainly.

“Do I look like a hero to you?” asked Barker. “Give me the pen and I’ll give you the coordinates, cross streets, whatever. I’ll give you all the codes, the passwords, and the call and response cues. Those change weekly, and they’ll probably change them since I’ve been kidnapped.”

“Except you’re not supposed to know them anyway,” noted Sums.

“Hey, good point!”

Rupture grabbed Sums’ knife while Arkansas set down a piece of paper and a green colored pencil. “All we got left besides yellow,” she said.

Once Rupture had cut Barker free, he began to write down the information.

“Also, even if you did know them, they wouldn’t think you were going to tell anyone, because you died,” added Rupture.

Barker, still under the effects of whatever they gave him, tapped at his chest to make sure he was still solid.

“Bro, you’re not a ghost,” said Arkansas. “HSD claimed you died. Those cops probably had to cover for losing you.”

Barker nodded and set back to the work of betraying the Merg and The Senator. He gave precise directions to both sides and even drew a couple little maps on the back. It felt only slightly wrong, but Sums wanted this. The woman he loved needed to know.

“Listen,” he said, “I know you don’t like me, but you’re the only person who’s meant anything to me since the whole thing.”

“Since the Merg invasion which you have been assisting at the expense of your fellow humans,” Sums clarified.

“Yes, but listen. You have to break into the weapons depot, which are guarded by Merg and humans and are covered in automated laser weapons. Once you get in, if you don’t know exactly where to look, you will never find what you’re looking for. Everything is written in Merg language. You have a translator, I can see you have a translator based on that smirk. Fine, you find what you’re looking for and a full contingent of Merg troops will converge on you. They will blow up that whole depot and everything in it rather than let you escape. If you do somehow get out, you are headed to the launch center, which is the only place I can think of harder to break in. Once you get there, you will have to murder dozens of Merg to get to a ship and then hope no one noticed while you wait patiently for the twenty-eight minutes it takes for launch after a ship is locked in for takeoff. It is not a minute less than that. Twenty-eight minutes and the launch is activated on site. You need a Merg, not a human, a Merg, to activate the launch and there is no way they are going to do that knowing it’s got humans aboard. Then you are going to outer space, a place none of you have likely been, on a ship designed for a completely different species. Every Merg ship in orbit will descend on you before you can even get the seats adjusted.”

“Barker doesn’t like our odds,” said Sums.

“Well, it’s sad he won’t live to see it,” said Rupture, standing behind Barker, still probably holding the knife.

“Wait, don’t kill me,” said Barker. “Not yet. We have to talk about Zero City.”

“We have to kill you,” said Sums. “You’ve been helpful so we’ll make it quicker and less painful than it would have been.”

“Still gonna be slow and gruesome though,” noted Arkansas. “He keeps talking about Chicago.”

“What about Chicago?” asked Sums.

“You had Clay, you tortured him for information, he had to tell you something about the visitor,” Barker insisted.

“Yeah, some visitor is flying into Kenosha,” said Rupture. “He also told us you do all the work in the office and you know all the info we need.”

“But the visitor!” cried Barker, knowing he sounded like a whiny child. “Do you understand what the visitor is!”

“Some big Merg,” said Sums. “Listen, you’ve been helpful.”

“A very big Merg! A giant Merg! The visitor is landing in Kenosha and being transported in a giant vehicle from there to Zero City, sorry, Chicago. I was there yesterday.”

“You’re lying,” said Sums.

“I saw what’s there! It’s a Merg, a building-sized Merg. And there are hundreds of thousands of Merg in the city waiting.”

“For what?” asked Arkansas.

“I don’t know,” said Barker. “But the translator, there was a translator, and she tried to warn me. Or tip me off. She said it would be bad if I, the one who wasn’t from there, was there at the same time she, the one who was there, was there. Okay, that’s confusing, but we couldn’t be there at the same time.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Sums.

“The old one and the visitor! She couldn’t say visitor because the Merg would know that word. She put it that way so I would know. The new one and the old one can’t be on the planet at the same time. The visitor is the new one!”

“Everyone else is lost, too, right?” asked Rupture looking at Sums and Arkansas for confirmation.

“I think it’s a Queen,” said Barker, the words he had been holding back. “The Merg in Chicago, they kept fighting. Aggressive behavior.”

“Huh,” said Rupture. “Yeah, Clay ran a Merg fight club. Lately they’ve been real aggressive.”

“Clay did what?” asked Barker.

“Merg fight club, long story,” said Rupture. “I worked security for him.”

“He got you the HSD car,” said Barker. “He made you into his own impostor HSD.”

“Click, click, click,” said Arkansas. “Bro don’t miss nothing.”

“It worked out for Clay for a while,” said Rupture. “He was a piece of garbage.”

“Yeah, you beheaded him, so he paid the price. Cut off his unit,” said Barker, and Sums nodded like she was enjoying a fond memory.

“Wait, I wanna hear about the Queen,” said Arkansas.

“The new Queen is coming, and I think it’s going to be breeding season,” Barker explained.

Arkansas nodded, “So there’s a line of a million Merg in Chicago waiting to go give the Queen the hot business. They’re just going to take turns?”

“I’m not a bug guy, but I think that’s how ants do it,” said Barker.

“How you do it?” Arkansas asked.

Barker blushed and Arkansas smiled.

“Oh also,” said Barker, “the translator shook my hand and said I have a strong arm.”

“You have puny arms,” said Sums. “Like, you exhale loudly when you pick up a stapler.”

“So why did she say it?” Barker asked.

“I don’t know either but it must mean something.”

“Arms like a finished paper towel roll,” said Arkansas.

“What if this is the chance?” said Barker. “The big chance! You go and blow up something or you get blown up trying and you miss this one shot.”

“We should just kill him and then talk it over,” said Sums. “We’ve got all the info.”

“Please,” said Barker. “Kill me when it’s done, but I can help. I know everything about this sector, I know the Merg as well as anyone, I understand their language, at least a little. And they’re all worried about this visitor, about it going smoothly. They had asked for a report on security for it and do you know who wrote it?”

“Was it you, buddy?” asked Arkansas.

“It was! I can help you.”

Barker could see that, despite their hard, steely faces, he had won over Arkansas and Rupture. Sums, however, still looked ready to gut him.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?” Barker asked.

“Why do you want to help us? Because you don’t want to die or because you want to free this planet from the Merg.”

“I’m not sure how to answer,” said Barker. “Because you told me not to talk about how important you are to me, but watching you has been the only thing keeping me going and, yes I don’t want to die, and yes, I would rather the Merg were gone, but I’m mostly not a brave person who would stick my neck out to stop it. But, my neck is already very stuck out at the moment and you’re here and I can help you. I will help you if you just don’t kill me right now.”

His response had made Sums angry in several ways. Here she was, for instance, a freedom fighter being hit on at her place of work. And here was Barker, someone she clearly hated, making it very clear he could help her.

“I’m going to kill you,” said Sums. “You’re a traitor and I’m the one who’s gonna shove the knife in. Don’t forget that.” She looked over at Rupture and said, “Tie him back up.”

And so, Barker realized he wasn’t going to die just yet.

Chapter Eleven

The Senator had declared she had to see the body. Barker was a survivor. Sure, she had saved him during the initial arrival when the Merg were killing everyone in D.C., but she knew he’d have found a way. The man seemed soft, and that’s how people underestimated him. He was not physically tough, or really mentally tough. He just had a knack for hanging on, a quality he had transferred onto The Senator in her darkest times.

So, she wanted proof that it was true. And she wanted to look HSD in the eyes when they lied to her about what had happened. The Merg, benevolent and caring as they were, had tricked her. Had told her Barker was getting debriefed or whatever in the morning. She’d thought she had time, but she took it as a sign of respect for her savvy that they grabbed him early. They knew she’d be a step ahead. And she had been. She had worked up a whole plan to send Barker off on a highly classified mission and take the debrief over the phone or whatever. They’d see through it, but it would give Barker time to figure it out. Why hadn’t she called him? The Merg didn’t bug the phone lines, they would never have known. Could have just dialed him up and told him he was about to get offed. She thought it would only make him more nervous and he could use the night’s rest before fleeing.

Now Barker was dead and she was lost. She had depended on him for years, long before the arrival. But since then it had been different. She’d been expected to do all these mundane tasks, things she had no aptitude for but Barker excelled at. He knew everything about the office and all the work that got done. Things she was supposed to know. Those productivity reports, she didn’t even know where he got them from. Were they delivered? Did he have to run some program on his computer? The hell was she going to do? They’d send her a new person or she’d grab someone else from the office, but how did you say to someone who wasn’t Barker “I need you to do all the work, even the stuff above your security clearance. It might get you killed but it’s just the way we work here”?

HSD Chief Donny Echevarria, probably the oldest living human in Sector 24518, greeted her at the bridge. It was a remarkably bright day. Not bright by the old standards, but sunnier than normal in a world where the sky was perpetually a dark, sickly gray.

“Senator,” said Echevarria.

“Etch,” said The Senator, not smiling, but a warmth emanating from her face, as if to say, “I’m willing to eat whatever garbage you’re about to throw at my face and thank you for feeding it to me.”

“He was a good man,” said Echevarria.

“The best of us,” said The Senator.

“You sure you want to see this?” he asked.

“I do,” said The Senator. “I want to say goodbye and the Merg don’t do funerals, so let me look at him.”

“Up here,” he said.

The two officers who’d interviewed her about Clay were standing on the side of the bridge near the river. Harkins and Schmidt or something. The younger one tried not to meet her gaze, but the older one was all bravado, daring her to say something about what really happened to Barker.

“Our boys went to pick up the report last night,” said Echevarria. “Young man, Barker, he seems to have gotten paranoid.”

“Paranoia can be a virtue in politics,” said The Senator. “Although it looks like it wasn’t the right move.”

“No,” said Echevarria. “He made a run for it. Right out of his apartment and out of the building. They just wanted to get the laptop, kept trying to tell him. But he split, hopped in a car. The Worker Village across the street had a few outside that the floor captains can use in emergencies, and they leave the keys inside. Whether he knew that or got lucky, couldn’t say, but he drove off. Got this far, but Patterson and Hayes were right on his tail. He stopped, jumped out of the vehicle, hopped up on the guard rail … he took his own life.”

“A gun?”

“Yes,” said Echevarria. “Not sure where he got it from, but yes. The shot likely ended it right there, but the impact caused him to fall down from the ramp to the ground. I’m afraid it’s not a pretty sight.”

There was a sheet over the body, but she could see his khaki pants and his brown boat shoes sticking out. The right hand was covered, but the left hand was just sticking out. Odd, she thought. He was wearing a red long-sleeve shirt. She recognized the shirt, it was certainly something Barker would have worn around his apartment, but yesterday was Thursday and red was not a Thursday color for Barker. The man had all kinds of weird rules about how he dressed, some mix of superstition and an obsessive need for order. Thursday was a blue day. Dressing had been a challenge since the arrival and a lack of clothing stores, but Barker was Barker and he hadn’t just given up his compulsions overnight.

This was … well, Barker was alive, that was great. But there was definitely a dead guy here. Why would HSD just kill a guy to lie to her about this? They had planned to kill Barker, the chief certainly seemed to believe Barker was dead.

But look how nervous that young HSD was. Tap, tap, tap, with his right foot. That was certainly something. Again, The Senator was adept at believing multiple seemingly contradictory things and that came in handy now.

Barker was dead. Reported by HSD, a wonderful institution that never screwed up. On the other hand, Barker was clearly alive. Both were true. He was alive in a literal sense, but dead in an official one.

Barker had killed himself. Officially true, clearly. Also, HSD had killed Barker on the Merg’s orders. Wasn’t hard to put together the pieces on that. Echevarria wasn’t trying that hard to hide it, just saying the things you said out of respect. “Oh no, we didn’t kill your boy Barker, you’re The Senator, we would never.” They would say it had been a big misunderstanding and Barker’s family would get to keep living in a protected community for a little bit longer. But there was one more true thing: HSD had tried and failed to kill Barker. Echevarria didn’t know it, but those two HSD did. They’d screwed it up, killed a Barker lookalike, with a shot to the face, then shoved him over the on-ramp so he’d be unrecognizable.

It upset The Senator. Some people thought she was heartless, but she did value human life. She had always seen herself as protecting the little people, the ones who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Yes, many, many people died every day in her sector, but she did what she could to make that number a little smaller. And these HSD just went and grabbed some poor guy and killed him to cover their screw-up.

“Ma’am,” said the older officer. “Sergeant Hayes, we met the other day. This is Officer Patterson. We’re very sorry for your loss. And we’re sorry we couldn’t get to him in time.”

“Thank you, sergeant,” said The Senator.

“Would you like us to lift the sheet?” Hayes asked.

The younger HSD, Patterson, was on the verge of tears. He was holding in a breath, about to pass out in front of her. Hayes, he looked like he was just out for a walk on a nice day.

“No,” said The Senator. “That’s him, I know it’s him. I thought I wanted to see him, but not like this.”

“I understand,” said Sergeant Hayes while his young partner finally exhaled.

“I think I just wanted to show up and it was a big mistake, but that’s my boy Barker,” said The Senator. “Flights of angels sing you to your rest, buddy.”

Hayes had not slept.

The staging of Barker’s death the night before had been complicated. Patterson had gone to grab the laptop and clothes from Barker’s apartment while Hayes went off in search of a Barker lookalike for the body. He had considered making Patterson get his hands dirty, but he did not trust him enough to not bone something else that night.

This project would have been doomed in an earlier age with people all over carrying cell phones. DNA, even fingerprinting, would have proven their crime, but this was now. No cameras, and no fingerprint records, no DNA lab running tests. Hayes had hoped for someone who was magically the spitting image of their guy, but speed was more important than accuracy. He emptied out one floor of the closest Worker Village, took the one that seemed close enough in height and hair color, and brought him out to the scene. He wasn’t happy about it, but it was a thing that had to be done. The Senator had worried him, not in the obvious and embarrassing way it worried Patterson, but he still feared she might notice a missing tattoo or birthmark. He’d let the gunshot, the fall from the ramp, and the water do most of the work, but there could always be something.

But, nothing. The Senator ID’d the man as Barker, the Chief moved on with his life, and everybody won.

It ate at him, however. The idea that he was selfishly hurting the Merg. That Reconquest could use information gathered from Barker to hurt the beings who had trusted him, had given him so much. He had screwed up and there was no one to talk to except Officer Malachi Patterson, who was sitting in the car with him and desperately wanted to talk about it.

“What if they dump his body and everyone sees it’s him and they know we lied?” Patterson asked.

They were sitting outside a mine entrance, providing a reminder to the laborers to work hard and be nice to their supervisors. This was easy work, better than having to round up a bunch of suspected vandals or thieves from a Worker Village.

“No one is looking for him,” said Hayes. “If a body shows up that looks like him, it won’t have his ID, because we have that. If they leave a note that says, “Hey, this is Ezra Barker,” we say they’re lying and that’s it. The Senator ID’d the body.”

There were a lot of things the Merg had made easier, in Hayes’ opinion, and one of them was this conversation. In the before world, he would have had to worry about Patterson wearing a wire, but there was no longer any Internal Affairs Bureau. There were barely any investigations. If Patterson ran to the Chief and spilled his guts, they’d just kill him and Hayes would be dead before he even knew what happened. There was no lessened punishment for squealing. So, Hayes could speak freely.

“What if he shows up alive?” Patterson asked.

Hayes laughed. “You think those Reconquest thugs are going to give him a mean talking to, maybe hand him a letter with all their grievances and then send him on his way? Patterson, they’re going to torture him for information, then throw some of his parts in the Mississippi and some others in the Missouri. Then they’ll huff a bunch of gas and accidentally blow themselves up. They’re useless crybabies who got lucky and pulled off one kidnapping. Well, two, but Clay walked right into that. Don’t expect them to get competent or develop a conscience for their fellow human beings. Barker’s dead.”

“There was nothing we could do,” said Patterson. “Right? I mean, he was staring at something out the window. And then he ran for it, but he wasn’t running from us, was he? What if he planned it?”

“If he had a car outside waiting for him, he wouldn’t have waited for us, he would have been gone. No, something out there baited him. He was incapacitated by the time we got outside. Drugged or something.”

“I saw a hair brush outside,” said Patterson. “When I went back to get his clothes and the laptop. I looked around where they took him.”

“Getting into dangerous territory,” said Hayes. “I think someone was outside he knew. A woman. Maybe he was involved with someone from the Worker Village.”

“Hope he washed afterward,” Hayes chuckled to himself.

“We could go back. Ask people if they knew who Barker knew.”

“You are going to get us killed,” said Hayes, voice calm, trying to be understanding with the young officer. He was scared, he wanted to fix things.

“Right, right,” said Patterson. “I’m just worried they’re going to find out.”

“No,” said Hayes. “The only way anyone finds out is if we lead them right to it. Give it a couple days, and you’ll calm down.”

“But what if they get something out of Barker?”

“Yeah, been thinking about that, too. How do we protect the Merg and not expose ourselves?”

Patterson nodded, but Hayes could tell he was more concerned with himself than the Merg. It upset Hayes, seeing this kid who was able to keep himself and his family safe and comfortable because of the Merg have no sense of gratitude. “Barker went up to Zero City,” said Hayes. “We got Clay running a secret club, Barker seeing Zero City. Both working for The Senator.”

“Maybe they go after her next,” said Patterson. “Maybe Clay led them to Barker and Barker leads them to The Senator.”

“Why go after Barker in between?” Hayes asked. “If they wanted The Senator, what can Barker give them that Clay can’t?”

“And that hair brush,” said Patterson. “Nobody has a hair brush in a Worker Village. Something like that doesn’t just fall out on the street. It’s gotta mean something.”

Hayes rubbed at his eyes. He’d humored the kid for too long and made things worse. He’d have to let this go, he’d tell him.

The radio sounded. “Hayes!” yelled a voice.

“Yeah,” said Hayes, answering it.

“Get your ass down here, Chief needs to see you now.”

Chapter Twelve

At the time of the invasion, Arkansas had been seventeen, learning to install and repair heating, ventilation, and air conditioning units. Life had been relatively good to that point. She worked part time at a burger place that let her eat fries for free on her breaks and she loved fries. She still lived with her parents, and had a twenty-six-year-old boyfriend with a motorcycle who had a friend at the movie theater who would sneak them in for free. While she was not wealthy or even sniffing a middle-class lifestyle, she, like so many people pre-invasion, had a phone that gave her access to most of the assembled knowledge of humanity. When she wanted to get out of town and eat barbecue somewhere else, she could tap-tap and get the opinions and ratings of hundreds or thousands of people on her options. Was the food good? Did the hostess use a tone that caused some dude to lower his rating from three stars down to two? All this was right there for her to find.

When she went to a movie with the biker and there was a good-looking star in it, she could fire up that phone afterward and see if that man had ever appeared naked in a movie. It was the best. She might not have realized it, but it was the peak of human existence. A lot of things had been taken from her, real serious things, people she loved, but in her most shallow moments she longed for the joy of finding out that the star of the super hero movie had done an art film where he appeared fully naked, the whole thing hanging out for her to appreciate.

The internet still existed to some extent. The collaborators were able to use what was left for their Merg business, but most people had no access. There were muckety-mucks in Reconquest who could find workarounds to communicate across the continents and share info. And maybe there were still some old sites up, but Arkansas wasn’t a muckety-muck and she hadn’t been able to use the internet since a day or two after the invasion.

And so, with Sums willing to briefly listen to Barker’s claims before finally executing him, they were in The Prairie du Chien Memorial Library in either Wisconsin or Iowa, searching the long abandoned building for some information about ant colonies and their Queens. Well, that was what Sums and Rupture were doing. Arkansas stood guard over a shackled Barker while she flipped through the romance section.

“Okay, so this is a strange request,” Barker began.

Arkansas who was in the middle of a paragraph where a dark and remorseful groundskeeper was giving the business to the prim and proper headmistress, and her mind was primed to assume this was going to be a real deviant proposition.

“Yeah?” asked Arkansas.

“Do you see that polo shirt over there? The green one?”

Arkansas nodded, accepting that this was going to be a boring request. “Great,” continued Barker. “So, today is Friday. And on Fridays, I prefer to wear green. Green, to me, is a very Friday color and I feel most comfortable when I’m wearing the color I associate with a day and I’m still in the blue Thursday shirt you picked me up in.”

“Man what?” asked Arkansas.

“I have a thing about colors,” Barker explained.

“Days have colors?” said Arkansas. “Is this like astrology? Cause I dig astrology.”

“Yes, then. Yes. Much like some people believe the planets and stars affect our lives, I believe wearing a certain color on a certain day is good. Well, not that I necessarily believe there’s some magic power to the color, but it’s in my head and it’s hard for me to stop thinking that I’m wearing blue on a green day.”

“This what collaborators been worried about?” asked Arkansas. “I seen everybody I know die, some fast, some slow. And you been terrified of not wearing yellow on a Wednesday?”

“Orange on Wed … and no, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry, and I wish the arrival had never happened.”

“Did you just call it the arrival?!” yelled Arkansas, her blood already up from the romance novel, all the emotion now channeled into anger.

“You’re the one who didn’t want to kill him!” Sums yelled from the other side of the library.

“Invasion,” said Barker, starting to look a little desperate. “Of course, of course it’s an invasion. You have to understand that I’ve had to watch every word very carefully. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything, I never wanted it to happen, and I’ve been just hoping it would all end. The invasion or me, that one of them would stop, but that didn’t happen. And the color thing has been since I was a kid. And I’m really trying to keep it together. I think I’ve been helpful to you, and I believe I might be able to assist you in overthrowing the entire Merg occupation, see I said occupation, but I just need to wear green, can you please just let me change shirts? I’m begging, please.”

“You ever been with a girl?” Arkansas asked.

“I’m very uncomfortable,” said Barker.

“Found something!” Rupture yelled over to them “Get over here!”

“I’m interrogating the prisoner!” Arkansas hollered back, but Barker was already waddling over, his movements hampered by his hands being cuffed and his knees tied together.

Arkansas found Rupture and Sums in the Science section of the library looking at a big, heavy book with a shiny illustrated cover. Insects of the World by Dr. Michael Perry. “Looks like a kids’ book,” said Arkansas.

“Kinda,” said Sums. “But it’s got information on different types of ants and what happens when their Queens die.”

Rupture showed the page he was looking at. “Some Queens only mate at one point in their lives, but with like a bunch of dude ants and then she stores their sperm for the rest of her life and uses it over her lifespan to continue to reproduce.”

“Must be one fun night though,” said Arkansas. Sums and Rupture looked at her and then each other like there was something wrong with her. Which, hey, a little but she was nineteen and should be exploring her sexuality in the comfort of her small southern town. If she had come from a different background, maybe she’d have gone to college and done all kinds of weird stuff there, but she wasn’t and there was an alien invasion and everyone she’d gotten close to was dead, and now they’d sent her to work with these two on the mission, and Arkansas strongly suspected Sums and Rupture were doing it but in a sad, perfunctory sort of way and neither liked each other very much. Arkansas very much missed her old man Drywall in that moment.

“So, that might explain all the aggressive Merg around Chicago,” said Sums. “It’s mating season, and that’s where the Queen is.”

“But she’s old,” said Barker. “She looked old, so maybe they’re bringing in the one to replace her in time to mate.”

“They’re not ants, though,” said Sums. “They’re Merg, and we’re making a lot of guesses based on the story of a bastard collaborator.”

“Some colonies die when the Queen dies,” said Rupture. “Ants, that is. She releases pheromones, which are like really smart smells, and when she stops, whole colony falls apart.”

“Yeah, but ants don’t have spaceships and lasers and junk,” said Arkansas.

“That is my concern as well,” said Sums. “Even if Barker the traitor is telling the truth, and even if he’s right that they’re replacing the Queen, this is an advanced race. They’ve overcome their biology in similar ways to how we overcome ours. Toothpaste, telescopes, eyeglasses, airplanes. They’re not going to all just die because the Queen died.”

“But that’s not what the translator said,” Barker reminded everyone. “She said they couldn’t be together.”

“Two Queens,” said Rupture, flipping through the book. “Would they have to fight? Does the Merg Queen use the pheromones? The smart smells? If so, maybe it gets confused.”

“What if it’s not a pheromone?” Sums asked. “It’s a big planet, hard to spread a smell. Maybe it’s telepathic or it’s something broadcast by the Queen over a frequency.”

“That’s cool,” said Arkansas, “but what does it matter? If they could survive without a Queen and the big concern is not having the two in the same place, they’ll just wait until this Queen dies and then bring in the new one. Or they’ll just kill the old one. So, if Barker is telling the truth, and if he’s understanding the translator correctly, we have to hijack the new Queen and protect the old one. And we only know where one of them is. We’re supposed to connect with the rest of the team in a matter of hours. There’s no way.”

“I thought you were the team,” said Barker.

“Please never tell me what you think,” said Sums.

“Nah, man,” said Arkansas. “This is an international effort.”

“I heard the rest of the world stopped talking to Reconquest in the … the United States,” said Barker, stumbling a bit over actually saying the name of the country for the first time in years.

“You heard right,” said Rupture. “But we got you and we were going to blow up the moonbase, so now they’re willing to give us another shot.”

“We’re still blowing up the moonbase,” said Sums.

Arkansas had begun to wander as they argued. She was in the Children’s section, looking down at books her parents had read to her. There was a poster of a cartoon space shuttle that read, “LET READING TAKE YOU TO THE STARS.” She stared at the spaceship for a moment. Then she scrambled around looking for a particular book.

When she returned to the others, Barker was pleading. “Please, just listen to me, you can’t let this chance pass.”

“I can do whatever I want, traitor,” said Sums. “I listened to you, we came here, but we know nothing, and even if I wanted to back your idea, which I’m not saying I do, I’m not backing down from our plan and I’m not convincing the others to back it when we don’t even know when this other Queen is coming from the Merg home world.”

“Not coming from the home world,” said Arkansas. “Ain’t gotta change the plan much neither.”

“You know something I don’t?” Sums asked, and her tone did not sit great with Arkansas.

“Queenie’s on the moon,” said Arkansas. “Hands in the air!” she ordered Barker.

Barker obeyed and Arkansas smacked his left arm with a children’s hardcover book. “Translator told him he’s got a strong arm. Not strong arms, strong arm.”

She showed the book to Sums and Rupture. On the cover was Apollo 11 headed through space toward the moon. “Who was the first human on the moon?”

Sums, despite herself, smiled. “Couldn’t she have just said the moon instead of giving us a puzzle we’d all feel silly for taking so long to get?”

“Neil Armstrong,” said Barker.

“Yeah, we already got that, traitor!” Sums yelled.

Hayes was calm, cool. There were many reasons Chief Echevarria would want to see him and Patterson again. Immediately.

The idea that the Chief had already figured out that Hayes and Patterson faked Barker’s death in hours when he absolutely did not want to know it seemed implausible. Patterson had thrown up twice on the drive over. Some small doubt had begun to creep in, however, minute though it was. Maybe Barker had a tattoo they hadn’t noticed? Maybe Reconquest had released a picture of him and demanded ransom. No, the latter didn’t sound like them. What the hell was a ransom to the lowlifes in Reconquest? A thousand cans of dog food and some porno mags? Hayes was sorting through the possibilities, not in fear, but in order to prepare himself for the meeting. Hayes wanted Barker dead, Echevarria wanted Barker dead, the Merg wanted Baker dead, so it was best he was dead. He didn’t need to be a genius, he just had to suggest something plausible and the Chief would nod and they’d be done with this.

“Come in!” Echevarria yelled from his office. No secretaries or receptionists in the HSD.

Hayes walked in with as neutral a face as he could, but could do nothing to hide his partner who looked like a puppy with food poisoning.

“The hell happened to you?” Chief asked Patterson.

“Told him don’t eat if the can’s got a bulge,” said Hayes.

“I was hungry and it looked fine,” said Patterson, as though he were gunning to win the best supporting actor award.

“Got something you’d want to know about the thing you were on,” said Echevarria.

Hayes thought, if they’re going to kill me, it’s now. Because he didn’t say he had a question. He said he had something, so there’s no interrogation. It was a small office, but his back was to the door.

“The Barker thing?” Patterson asked because he had no clue when to keep his mouth shut.

“No,” said the Chief. “Got a call from an officer up Forty forty-three, ninety-one seventy-nine.” Echevarria was giving them coordinates because you couldn’t say cities, but even Hayes couldn’t really piece together where that was. It was one side of the Iowa Missouri border, he could guess. “Found an HSD car in a ditch.”

“I see,” said Hayes.

“Now, we all know the incident down here was with an impostor car.”

“Yup,” said Hayes.

“And this officer, she made it very clear that the cruiser up there is a genuine HSD vehicle.”

Unspoken here was that this officer, who no longer had a friend in the Chief, had broadcast this information in such a way that the Merg now knew as well.

“Must be confused,” said Hayes. “Probably not an HSD car.”

“It’s officially an HSD car,” Chief pronounced, meaning, “The Merg aren’t getting fooled this time.”

“We’ll go pick it up,” said Hayes.

“That would be much appreciated,” said the Chief. “And find out whose fault it is.”

The meeting was over, but this time Patterson grasped it as quickly as Hayes and they were both out the door. “An HSD car? Is that … ” Patterson began but the thought hung there.

“That’s our boy,” said Hayes.

The Chief was sending them to clean up one mess, but Hayes was one lucky break from cleaning up the bigger one. That was it, the car Barker had been in. They left a clue. And now all he had to do was find the next one. He was gonna make it right. He was going to find Barker and murder his kidnappers. The car, Lamp Town, Barker, Reconquest, the punk kid who threw a rock at his car. All of them were going down.

“We got a job to do,” Hayes announced.

“Picking up a car?” Patterson asked.

“Saving the day,” said Hayes.

Chapter Thirteen

Where some people saw danger, The Senator saw opportunity. She had primaried a well-liked incumbent and won. She had survived an alien arrival and come out not only alive but as the most powerful human in her sector. And now, something big was happening in Zero City. She didn’t know what the thing was, but it was so top secret Barker was supposed to die for knowing it. But Barker was out there. And as dangerous as her situation was, Barker was her parachute, her safety net, and her guardian angel. If he was alive and she needed help, he’d be there. Most people, even most leaders, would run and hide from whatever the Merg were up to with their visitor and Zero City, but she was a force of nature and she was going to get there herself, impress whoever this mysterious guest was and show them what she was made of. The problem right now for humans and for the Merg was an absence of leadership. They were in a strange period, during the harvesting of minerals and other resources that required massive amounts of unpaid, mandatory human labor, but before the Merg left them with the technology to make it all worth it. The planet needed a leader to see them through these challenging times and beyond. The Merg needed a woman who could get humanity to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel.

She was the woman. She was the light.

Surely, everyone would be able to see that.

There were some challenges here. First, she wasn’t invited to Zero City for the event. Barker had been invited and still got a death sentence. Barker, however, while a brilliant political mind, was not a charismatic man himself. That was her. So, she just had to charm the Merg.

Another problem was now there was a massive amount of work that Barker used to do that now sat, very literally, on her desk. If she didn’t do the work, questions would be asked. If she did the work, she’d screw it up because she’d never done it before. That would cause more questions, even more uncomfortable than the first set.

These problems were doorways to the future where she was the leader of a united Earth. She just had to kick down the door and make a seat for herself at the table. That was almost a line Barker had written for her in a speech. “I’m not opening doors, I’m kicking them down and making a seat for myself at the table.” No, that wasn’t quite it. She wished she could remember the line.

Regardless, she was going to burn down the office.

Barker was wearing green and so he could focus. Arkansas had taken pity on him and let him put on the Prairie du Chien Library polo and now he could start thinking about some things while he sat, hands tied behind his back, in the middle of an abandoned auto factory waiting to meet the rest of the Reconquest team and see if they killed him on sight.

“Yo, what were the cops doing in your place anyway?” Arkansas had asked him.

“I was giving them a laptop,” he had said.

And that made a little sense. But not a lot of sense.

“They were going to kill me,” he said before realizing that it had been a few minutes since Arkansas had asked and she had already wandered off. He had seen something dangerous, seen Zero City full of Merg. They didn’t want anyone to know. Reconquest knowing was a worst case scenario, but he still wasn’t sure they’d be able to hurt the Merg. Even if they believed him, and the trio with him had only just barely been willing to concede he might be telling the truth. He wished he had The Senator with him. She had a natural charm that won people over. He was not the convincer. He was the one who planted news stories about The Senator’s election opponent “possibly” committing cannibalism on a mission trip.

“They were going to kill me,” he said again. Had The Senator known? Had she tried to save him? He was supposed to participate in a debriefing in the morning, but they sent two HSD to get the laptop that night. Was that them thinking ahead and realizing he might sniff out their plan to off him?

“I’d be dead already if I hadn’t been kidnapped by the people who are actually going to kill me,” he said. He wanted to talk to The Senator so he could explain what he knew and prepare her for what was coming. He didn’t actually want The Senator here in this place. His life for so many years had been protecting and elevating her. And even she might not be able to win over his new acquaintances. Would she try to rescue him? Of course not. Assistance had mostly been a one-way street, and Barker had liked that. He wondered what he would do if he were saved from this group. If HSD kicked open the door, guns blazing. He’d be devastated, he realized. As much as Brush Woman, now Sums, wanted him to get over it, she had been the best thing in his life and the idea of anything happening to her pained him. But if it did happen, he’d go right back to The Senator and resume his work.

Wait, except HSD was going to kill him, so there was no escape. There was someone else here, Barker realized. A man with a face that seemed hawklike when he scowled, as he was currently doing. He was middle-aged and wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit. “You see?!” he was yelling at Arkansas as they stood beside an unfinished sedan, left on the assembly line when the Merg arrived.

Barker, tied to a chair, tried to crane to see what he was pointing at as he spoke, but he leaned too hard and the chair tipped, sending him crashing to the ground.

Now everyone was staring at him.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Ezra Barker.”

“The traitor,” said the Frenchman. “They said they would tell me why you are not dead yet.”

“Yeah,” said Arkansas. “Figured we’d wait for everyone to show up.”

“Iku will … ehhh,” the Frenchman paused. “Well, he will do something. I am Manivelle.”

“You’re the mechanic,” said Barker.

“You know me, traitor?” Manivelle was more impressed with himself than angry or scared.

“Your name means something car related,” said Barker, fluent in French but not in automotives.

“It does,” said Manivelle, not elaborating. “Yes, I am the mechanic and the translator. Which is why you must listen to me.”

It took Barker a moment to realize he was addressing the last sentence to Arkansas.

“Brother Manivelle, I am trying to look over the ship design,” Arkansas said.

“Then look at this copy, the one you have is the original,” Manivelle insisted.

“No, don’t speak French, don’t want to see it.”

“You don’t speak Merg either.”

“But I know that. Your version has me wondering what ‘levier inconnu’ means. I need to digest this.”

“Can you fly it?” Manivelle asked, standing and towering over the young woman.

“Course I can fly it,” said Arkansas. “For how long and to where are some other questions to ask.”

Manivelle lit a cigarette. “If I am going to die in space, I want to die in an explosion that destroys the Merg base, not on the ground while you stare at the control panel.”

“I get it, my man, you are an engineer, a scientist. I am a pilot, an artist. Me, I got my studying to do. Now, we’re gonna be best friends real soon, once we figure all this stuff out.”

“My best friends can read French.”

“Mon frere,” said Arkansas. “What’s that mean?”

“My brother.”

“I like it. Now listen, mon frere, a ship is like a lover. You can just look at a schematic of the reproductive system and then go, ‘Umm, yes, tap penis three times. Rotate clitoris to forty-five degree angle.’”

“What are you talking about?” Manivelle.

“Sorry if I made that too sexual for everyone else, but you get my point. I’ll fly it, I just have to get the sense of it.”

Officer Stephanie Li wore a cowboy hat, which was not part of the HSD uniform. “Howdy, boys!” she said, standing next to the official vehicle that had eluded Hayes the previous evening. She was chipper, oblivious to the trouble she had caused at HQ.

“Hello, Officer Li,” said Hayes.

“Howdy,” said Patterson.

The three of them were standing beside a ditch on the side of an old country road surrounded by open fields and farmland.

“Looks like y’all lost something,” Li quipped with a smug smile. Hayes hated her.

“Don’t believe so,” said Hayes. “One of your officers stepped away from the vehicle and you mistakenly thought it had been abandoned.”

“Nope,” said Li. “That’s city right there.”

“All the cars look the same,” said Patterson.

“Nope,” said Li. “Paint jobs the same, make and model the same, but you city boys got to put those sweet steel grills on the front of yours. Whole rest of the sector never got ‘em, at least none I’ve seen.”

Hayes exhaled. Li had to know how this worked. She’d screwed up and he was giving her a lifeline. “Merg aren’t happy about it, HSD car going missing,” he said.

“Imagine not,” said Li. “Well, at least they’re getting their car back.”

“You sure not one of your cars has that grill?” Hayes asked, trying his best to give the hint with his eyes.

“Sergeant Hayes, you tell whatever story you want when you get back to the capital. Anyone calls me, I’m not letting my people take the fall for this. And please don’t act like you’re doing me a favor when one of your crew left this here.”

“None of our crew left it here!” Patterson shot back.

“What?” asked Li. “What does that mean? Who did?”

Patterson looked at Hayes for guidance, but Hayes shot his stare straight up into the sky. “Well,” said Patterson. “That is a confidential matter.”

“Someone stole an HSD car?” Li asked.

“We can take it from here,” Hayes announced, sick of this conversation.

“Sure,” said Li. “They left the keys on the dashboard, but—”

“Patterson, drive it out of the ditch,” Hayes ordered. “And Li, we’ll follow up with any questions on this matter.”

Li was staring straight past him. “Wow, hey, get in your car.”

“Are you telling me what to do?” Hayes asked.

“Bison!” yelled Li, jogging back to her own vehicle.

Sure enough, a herd of hundreds of bison was running through the field headed straight for them. “Sarge?” Patterson mumbled as Hayes sprinted toward their car.

It was beautiful in a way, the bison looked majestic as they ran, the earth shaking as their massive frames stampeded by. In another way, they were headed straight for Hayes and he thought he very might be about to die. The door opened and Patterson stumbled in.

“Buffalo?” Patterson asked.

“Apparently,” said Hayes.

The bison were only steps away, and the herd managed to run past, gracefully veering around the vehicles. They came so close Hayes could have reached out and touched them. One seemed to stare at him for a moment, turning its head to take in the sergeant before passing and continuing on with its herd. By the time they had all passed, it already felt like a dream. Hayes stepped back out of his car.

“Most farms up in these parts got broken up,” said Li. “Small towns empty, everyone sent off to the camps or to Worker Villages in the big cities. So, people let their animals loose. Got a couple big herds of bison around here. They’re thriving again, weird to say.”

“Good for them,” said Hayes.

“Seen a couple tigers,” said Li. “Must have been let out of whatever zoo and now they’re just around. They’re doing okay now, but the pollution, yeah, we’re not supposed to talk about it, but gonna be a real collapse of the food chain. You know they’re supposed to blast a new mine up by Petenwell Lake? Not good.”

“Officer Li, I think everything the Merg do is good,” said Hayes, trying to nudge Officer Li out of treason.

“Of course, of course,” said Li. “Just, you know, hate to see the animals hurt by it. But of course.”

“Officer Li,” said Hayes, “let’s say we were looking for someone driving a vehicle.”

“Say someone who had stolen an HSD car and then switched to something else?” Li suggested with a tone that was on the verge of sparking Hayes’ temper.

“If someone were driving north from here, and didn’t want to get picked up by HSD, where would they go?” Hayes asked.

“Dangerous,” said Li. “It’s a lot more spread out here, but any vehicle gets attention. Not a lot of joyriders these days. If they were in a delivery truck, they could have gone to a lot of places. We don’t usually stop those, usually they’re on Merg business.”

Hayes had to tread lightly here. He wanted to ask HSD to pull over every vehicle on the road within a thousand miles, but they wouldn’t do it, and what would he say if they pulled Barker out of one of the cars? He had to find them. He alone, and technically Patterson.

“Anything suspicious come over the radio today?” Hayes asked.

“Besides the abandoned HSD car?” Li asked, but she dropped it when Hayes scowled. “Normal stuff. Couple of escape attempts from the camps, but all were found and dealt with. We still got a few people living out in the woods. Merg come by every now and then with the heat sensors, but looks like they missed a few. Eh, somebody threw a fallen branch through a floor captain’s window last night, then ran off. Food delivery truck crossed over the Marquette Joliet Bridge.”

“What’s remarkable about that?” Hayes asked.

“No connections there on the routes. You gonna report me if I use the old names instead of coordinates?”

“It never happened,” said Hayes.

“The Mississippi River there is the border between Wisconsin and Iowa. Now, those states don’t exist anymore, but it’s still a good landmark up in these parts, so when drawing up the maps for who sends which food to which camps, it’s still a good border. Driver might have gotten lost or maybe there’s some shortage we don’t know about on the other side over there, but there’s nothing close. Right over the bridge is Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, as it used to be known. And it’s empty, most towns around it are empty, and it’s a long drive before you hit something inhabited.”

“Yeah,” said Hayes. “We can check it out.”

“Long drive,” said Li. “It’ll take you three or four hours.”

“Yeah, probably not worth it,” said Hayes.

“And like I said, don’t pin the car thing on us out here,” Li warned.

“Yeah, I know. The grill,” said Hayes. “You have my word.”

Li looked at him as though she was trying to assay the value of his word, but then let it go. “All right. You end up going up there, call ahead and let the local HSD know.”

“Sure,” said Hayes, not at all planning to do that. “You let me know if you hear any more suspicious activity in that part of the sector.”

“You bet,” said Li, unconvincingly.

Li tipped her cowboy hat and walked over toward her vehicle. Hayes casually walked over to this cruiser, opened the door and pulled out a map. No one was making new maps, so it had all the old place names. He found the Marquette Joliet Bridge and shut the door from the outside. “What do you notice?” Hayes asked Patterson.

“They … I have no clue,” said Patterson, having the decency to not waste his time.

“Let’s assume that truck is our perps. They’re driving north. They stayed west of the river for hundreds of miles, then they decided to cross right here. Why would they do that? If they were headed for Zero City, they went way too far north, but … ” Hayes dragged his finger directly east across the map, landing on Milwaukee.

“Still not following.”

“You haven’t been here the whole time,” said Hayes realizing he was acknowledging information he should have forgotten for his own sake. He continued, “I was sent there in the beginning. It’s a weapons depot. Guns, explosives, stuff like that.”

“So it’s not about Zero City,” said Patterson. “It’s just a raid.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Hayes.

“So we call … we can’t call it in.”

“No, but we can go there. I’ll tell Chief we found the car. He can handle it from there. Someone’s probably going down for it, but then somebody let that car disappear out of the garage. I’ll tell him we got a thing to look into and he won’t ask questions cause he doesn’t want to know.”

“And what do we do?” Patterson asked.

“We drive to the depot. And then we save the day.”

Chapter Fourteen

Arkansas was looking at the blueprint of the ship she would fly into space if everything went according to plan. In her mind, she was pulling levers, pressing buttons, maneuvering, shifting, dancing between the controls. She was sitting in a chair that was more like a sofa because Merg bodies were not human bodies. There would be restraints that would not fit her, so they’d either find a way to rig something or they’d bounce around and hope for only mild concussions. The interstellar craft were completely different from the shuttles and short flight haulers she’d stolen over the years, but there was enough there, she believed.

“Hello!” said a middle-aged woman wandering into the building.

“Hey-o,” said Arkansas. “You another one of the crew or just like a lady who likes to explore deserted auto factories?”

“Campal!” she said. Arkansas, only now devoting her full attention as she removed herself from the fantasy of the mission working perfectly and her blasting them all out of the gravity well and into glory, saw that a great deal of the left side of Campal’s face was not really there. It looked as though it had been there at one point, and then something exploded and it was gone and mostly just scars and a non-working left eye.

“Where you from?” Arkansas asked.

“Sri Lanka,” Campal answered.

“That a Sri Lankan accent?”

“It would be strange if it were German,” Campal replied before laughing to herself. “Ah, we are friends.”

“Cool,” said Arkansas.

“What is your role?” asked Manivelle.

“Y’all don’t know each other?” Arkansas asked. “I thought y’all came together.”

“No,” said Manivelle. “We came from our own battles for this. It did not make sense to travel together.”

“Yes,” agreed Campal. “For instance, if we were all together and all of a sudden the Merg blows up our van, boom, there goes our plan. ‘Oh no, we are all dead!’ Ha ha, it would be very sad.”

“Explosives expert?” Arkansas asked.

“You are correct,” said Campal. “Did you guess because of my face?”

“I mean, a little, yeah,” Arkansas admitted.

“Is fine,” said Campal. “Learned my lesson that day! Much better now!”

“Sorry about that then,” said Arkansas.

“It is fine. Less time on makeup every morning,” said Campal, laughing uproariously at her own joke.

“I like you, buddy,” said Arkansas.

“It was very painful. Thank you, we are friends.”

Arkansas wanted to ask questions, was curious about this lady’s background. Just like being an ace pilot before had nothing to do with being an ace pilot now, explosives experts weren’t anything like what they used to be. Sure, there was a fair amount of homemade bomb-making, but a lot of it was using stolen Merg gear to blow something up, and that required a whole different skill set. In her old life, Campal could have been a mad bomber or worked the opposite side for the police, but she also could have been a doctor, juggler, a data processor. You never knew anymore.

“All right,” said Sums, emerging from a back office. Her eyes were shot, like she’d been looking over documents or had been freaking out about this suicide mission.

“We got another one,” said Sums, seeing Campal.

“Demolitions?”

“Campal, and I prefer Explosives. I make explosions,” she explained.

“Sums, nice to meet you. As the leader of this endeavor, I look forward to working with you.”

“You are not the leader,” said Manivelle. “Not according to my briefing.”

“I’m the leader of the weapons depot mission,” said Sums. “And I haven’t seen the other guy yet, so I don’t have time to wait for someone else to make a decision for me. He shows up, maybe he has a different opinion, then we talk.”

“Looking forward to it!” boomed a deep voice with a powerful Nigerian accent.

“Guessing you’re Iku,” said Sums.

“Correct,” said Iku. “And people say the American Reconquest has its head up its ass. Happy to see you’re on top of things.”

“I was just about—”

“To explain why your collaborator is sitting there breathing in oxygen and out carbon dioxide,” said Iku, finishing her sentence in his own manner. He was strong, not as built as Rupture, but there was a solidity to him. He had fire in his eyes, as though he was in complete control, but he would release the dragon if he had to.

“You want to talk about this now?” asked Sums.

“I do,” said Iku. “Last message I received said that the hostage had given you all possible information. Which to me, meant that the collaborator had earned a quick death. Painful but quick. And yet here he is, alive. Are you Americans the butchers you’ve always been? Have you tricked him and now we will watch as you punish him slowly for his sins? Or are you Americans the fools you’ve always been and he has fooled you into letting him live?”

Sums looked unmoved, like she dealt with these kinds of questions every day. “Not fools, not butchers. We’re going to make the best move for this mission. And if you’ll listen, we’ve got information you do not.”

“How impatient of me,” said Iku, sitting down beside Arkansas. “Please continue.”

“Barker might be more help than we thought.”

Iku laughed, not loudly, but a gentle laugh like he was a parent patiently watching his toddler use the wrong end of the spoon.

“He has given us useful intel on the weapons depot and the launch center,” continued Sums. “He may be useful on site at both locations.”

“I see,” said Iku. “Well, fools not butchers today. This is why the Americans were not put in charge of this mission.”

“There’s more,” said Sums.

“Always more,” said Iku.

Arkansas shifted a bit, feeling a weird kind of discomfort that felt almost nostalgic, what she imagined it would have been like to watch her parents fight except her parents never did that in front of her. She sensed this might lead to a showdown and she wasn’t sure if she was going to be expected to back one or the other. She’d only just met Sums and Rupture the night before, but she had known them first. But then Iku was the leader of this party, at least in theory.

“Our hostage Barker,” said Sums, “believes there is an opportunity to end the occupation once and for all.”

“Is that what Ezra Barker says?” Iku asked, staring at the collaborator. “And does he offer proof?”

“He said he saw a giant Merg in Chicago,” said Sums. “There are a ton of them gathering there and he thinks she’s a Queen and it’s mating season.”

“Oh, ‘he said’ and ‘he thinks.’ No proof then,” said Iku. “We are taking the word of this man and you want to risk the entire mission because he seems so honest and contrite. So, we are going to change our mission and kill this Queen then, yes?”

“No,” said Sums. “We think there’s a second Queen on the moonbase. If we can get both Queens on the planet at the same time, we think it will make the Merg … short circuit or something like that. Cause chaos, give us all a chance to end this.”

Iku stepped forward and with his long strides was over to Barker in an instant. “Try your lies with me, rodent!”

Barker’s eyes opened wide, and his sweat glands burst open as he squirmed in the chair. “It’s true,” he said weakly.

“Tell me I should trust you, Ezra Barker.”

Iku wrapped his massive hands around Barker’s head, looking like he might crush his skull or pull him into a passionate kiss.

“I’ve done things,” said Barker. “Bad things. But I’m not lying.”

“Tell me the things you have done,” Iku ordered, his nose millimeters away from Ezra’s own.

Barker’s eyes shot left and then right, like he was looking for someone to save him, but Iku just stared right back at him. Sums and Rupture did not move or speak, just stood back and waited. Arkansas stood, but only to move over and get a better view.

“I am a collaborator,” said Barker on the verge of tears.

“I know what you are,” said Iku pulling out a long knife. “Tell me what you did.”

“I just do paperwork.”

“You are a killer,” said Iku, reaching around and cutting the rope around Barker’s wrists without looking away from the man’s eyes.

“I don’t hurt anyone.”

“You are a killer.”

“I never meant it to turn out this way, I was just trying to help.”

“Who did you kill? Tell me their names.”

“I work in an office and I try to help,” Barker mumbled, scared and desperate, hunting for the words to end this. “I work for them, I know I shouldn’t have and I just want it to end! I just want it all to end!”

Barker sounded like a child to Arkansas, a small crying child having a fit.

“Confess your sins, Ezra Barker,” ordered Iku. He lifted the man up by the shoulders, Barker standing awkwardly, looking terrified of everything around him.

“I deserve it, you think I just want to live, and maybe, but I know I deserve it,” said Barker. “I’m sorry, I just, I work for The Senator, and she’s trying, she’s trying to make it better, but there’s a price for all of it. I know that sounds like bullshit because I live in a big clean apartment and I eat well and I wear nicer clothes while everyone else is suffering and living in squalor, but there’s a price to pay for it.”

“Relieve your conscience,” said Iku.

“I just do paperwork.”

Iku’s palms squeezed against Barker’s cheek and he leaned down to press their foreheads together. “No more lying,” said Iku. “Tell me who you killed.”

“Frank Westley, Keisha Rich, Veronica Salazar,” said Barker, his tears flowing right into Iku’s thick fingers. “Those are the ones I signed yesterday. It’s supposed to be The Senator, but she doesn’t like it so I sign them for her. I signed their death warrants. There are more but the names all run together. There’s a processing facility in what used to be Springfield, and their output slowed down and I knew the Merg would want someone to pay for it, so I picked the ten names. I chose ten workers, ten humans, and I never met them but I know they died because I picked them. I don’t remember the other names. Mary or Marie, William or Wendell. I forgot their names and I went back to work.”

It looked to Arkansas that Barker’s body had just quit on him, that the only thing holding him up was Iku’s hands.

“Would you kill me, Ezra Barker?” Iku asked. “Would you write my name down and kill me?”

“I’d have written any name down,” said Ezra.

“You are a killer,” said Iku.

“I’m a killer,” said Ezra, now fully weeping.

“How can we trust a killer now?” asked Iku. “How can we trust a man who would send me to die just to make the Merg happy?”

“It’s the truth!”

“You are a killer and a liar! You want to trick us. You want to write down all our names.”

“I just want it to end.”

“Tell me what you want to end,” said Iku.

“The Merg, the occupation.”

“You are the Merg. You are the occupation.”

“I can help.”

“Write down my name.”

“No.”

Iku grasped Barker’s head tighter. “Write down my name, killer!”

Barker collapsed on the floor as Iku let go of him. His tormentor’s head tilted down, full of contempt and without pity. Barker crawled away, toward Rupture.

“Crawl, pig,” said Iku.

Rupture extended a hand to help Barker up, but then the collaborator reached out and grabbed Rupture’s knife from his belt.

“Yes,” said Iku, as though he had expected this.

Rupture froze, so shocked he did not move. Barker stood there holding the knife, staring at Iku,

“Do it,” said Iku.

Barker held the knife up to his own left arm and cut. A shallow wound, but soon the blood flowed. He knelt, dropped the knife and dipped his right pointer finger in the wound. And then he used that blood to write the capital letter I on the floor.

“K, U,” said Iku.

Barker wrote out the other two letters, spelling out Iku’s name in blood on the dusty floor. The Nigerian took a knee next to him, then pressed his own hand against the Barker’s wound. He gasped and Iku began to write BARKER, holding the arm firmly in place, the palette for his masterpiece. When it was done, the two men stood.

“We are two dead men, Ezra Barker. Those are our death warrants signed on this floor.”

“Yeah,” said Barker. “Now can I tell you about the Queens?”

“I am all ears.”

Chapter Fifteen

Fire departments did not exist in any kind of useful sense, so The Senator’s office building was just going to burn. Fires fell under the Health and Safety Department but The Senator did not believe anyone working for HSD had ever worked in a fire department, so most attempts to put out fires were incompetent, doomed efforts. First, HSD officers had to drive over to where they kept the fire engines, then draw straws on who’d have to drive the things and rip out into the street, knocking over street signs and mail boxes. When they got to the fire, they’d likely find the hydrants no longer worked, and they’d just stand there, hoping for rain. In some cases, locals might try to extinguish the fire themselves, and HSD was fine with that. These were not individuals who really wanted to risk their lives to stop a fire in someone else’s building. It was not a great system. The Merg might not want to lose workers to fires, but The Senator imagined they weren’t staying up late nights worrying about it. She had ideas for this and many other things once she convinced the Merg to elevate her position, but she had a few more steps to take first.

“Those bastards!” yelled The Senator. “Those Reconquest cowards! You want to set fire to me, you come at me right now!”

It was, to her, real emotion. Yes, she had technically committed the arson, but Reconquest had lit the metaphorical match. If there had been no resistance to the Merg, Clay would still be alive with his rooster intact. and there would have been no reason for the Merg to order Barker’s death if they hadn’t needed to worry about Reconquest learning whatever Barker knew about Zero City.

The Senator was angry, but also proud. She’d never committed arson before and she’d nailed it, just a beautiful job. Most of her knowledge of how to burn a building down came from watching television pre-invasion, and it actually was just that easy. Bunch of gasoline, lit match, flames.

The building, not some grand government building but just a two story modern office on the outskirts of the old city, looked beautiful as she burned. The Senator wanted to stand there and admire her masterpiece, but there was more work to do.

The Merg were here, well, two of them. They stood there, watching The Senator from down the street, just as she hoped they would. She had worked for two years with Barker on a plan for her ascension. Like Barker himself, the plan was detailed and overly cautious. She took elements of it and then made it fit the current situation.

Chief Echevarria had seemed reluctant when she’d informed him of her plan.

“I’m seventy-eight,” he had said. “I don’t want more power, I just want to keep my family alive.”

That was a noble sentiment, but The Senator and The Chief’s fortunes were intertwined, so he could help her or not, but if she failed, he failed. And if she succeeded without him, that probably wasn’t great for him either. “The building’s already on fire, Etch,” she had reminded him.

The Merg were in front of her before she realized it. They moved so quick, even the human translator was right there.

“The Merg are concerned,” said the translator.

“I hear that,” said The Senator.

From a nearby Worker Village, dirty, flea-ridden humans walked toward the fire, drawn in like moths. There were hundreds of them, all looking shocked at this turn of events.

“Would you give me one moment, please?” The Senator requested.

“The Merg will allow it,” said the translator.

The Senator walked over to the crowd, which outnumbered the HSD present by ten to one. Any one of them with a little bit of ambition, a lot of anger, and a reasonably-sized shiv could run up and kill her with little opposition. The Senator pulled out her knife.

“I’m not afraid of you!” she yelled, waving her weapon in the air like it was a flare she was using to flag down help on a deserted island. “You want to burn me down? You want to burn down everything we’ve accomplished here in Sector 24518? Come get me! You’re gonna find this farmgirl doesn’t go down easy!”

The crowd halted, stopped and stared at the sight. They all loved her, but some of them hated her, but the ones that hated her still loved her, she reminded herself. This was going to work.

“We’ve produced more than every other sector over and over again! We’ve done a lot for the Merg and they’ve done more for us! And some people are afraid of that. They want to burn it all down because they don’t want us to win. Well, I do! I’m not going to sit around waiting for some Reconquest coward to take me out. If you hate Sector 24518, and you hate the hard working humans who are building something here, then you hate me. Come get me, you scum!”

The Senator was pointing the knife everywhere. At people, at the sky, at herself. It was a wild display, she felt like a character in a Shakespeare play.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked. And then, they were coming at her. Dozens of men and women. All carrying buckets.

They rushed past her and toward the building. Wheelbarrows carried more buckets. They sprinted over and tossed the water, likely taken straight from the river a quarter mile away, into the fire. Then they ran back to reload.

It wasn’t going to actually help douse the blaze, but they all knew that. Echevarria’s people had given them all buckets and offered them the carrot or the stick. They all took the carrot.

The Senator strutted back over to the Merg. “You see that?” she asked.

“The Merg see it,” said the translator.

This was the moment. She could not turn back; she had asked the Merg a question, a rhetorical one at that. Already she had overstepped her boundaries, so she would have to give herself new boundaries or die.

“I’m doing everything I can to serve the Merg,” The Senator said. “These people, they believe in me, they believe in this sector. But, I got problems. I have Reconquest coming from other sectors trying to stir the pot. The Merg are wise, far more so than a simple farmgirl like me, but I can do so much more if they’ll give me the tools.”

“The Merg would like to know what tools you are asking for,” said the translator.

“There’s no one person who runs everything between all the sectors on this planet,” said The Senator. “No one who has all the information, has the say-so to make the tough decisions, and has the guts to use that power to crush Reconquest. Let me be that person, and I’ll burn every one of them like they burned my building.”

There was silence before the Merg started making their Merg noises and the translator said, “You are asking to rule the world.”

“No,” said The Senator, seeing this trap. “The Merg rule the world, I just want to help them.”

She had made sure to stand in a way that the Merg would see all the people running back and forth with buckets, her loyal constituents. Another few moments of silence passed before the Merg noises. “The Merg are willing to consider this on a trial basis.”

And just like that, she was ruler of the world.

Ezra Barker was a weeping mess. Yes, he had cried earlier, but now that he was alone, the true sprinkler show could begin. He was alone in an office, handcuffed to a chair, but in a show of increased trust, only one hand was secured. They had also given him a bucket for relieving himself. It felt like more than he deserved. And so he cried, big thick tears punctuated by liquidy gobs of snot. It was a sight. He had known he was doing something wrong, had felt it in his bones, but he’d just kept doing it. If asked if he regretted his decisions before his abduction, Barker would clearly have lied and said he loved his work because answering otherwise was a betrayal of his alien masters, but he would have thought inwardly that he hated it and it was wrong, but what else could he do, and if he didn’t, someone else would have taken his place. Now, Barker grasped the real horrors he had committed. Someone else would have committed them if it hadn’t been him, yes, but it wouldn’t have been him. He’d had a choice and he chose evil.

It had been, in retrospect, really easy to do.

How many people he’d known had died because someone like him typed out their name at random to fill a quota? It would have been someone else who did it. Why couldn’t it have been someone else?

He heard footsteps and tried to compose himself, wiping his nose. It was not that he was ashamed of the tears, but of the self-pity. He had no right, he told himself.

Campal, the explosives expert, opened the door. “Hello, Barker,” she said with a warmth that made him think she was about to kill him.

“Hi, sorry,” he said.

“Sorry because you are covered in tears and mucus or sorry because you enable the aliens who have killed everyone I ever loved?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, still not entirely done crying.

“Yes, well, those are words. I am going to unlock your restraints because Iku and Sums wish that you join us. Do I need to explain what will happen if you try to escape?”

“I won’t,” said Barker.

“So, you know what we will do?”

“Yes, well, I can guess what you would do.”

Campal unlocked the handcuffs, freeing Barker. For a moment, he thought about running for it. Thought about what he’d do and where he’d go. It was all a fantasy, because there was nowhere left. Down in the factory, the crew was gathered around a white board. Iku stood in front of it, smiling menacingly as Barker joined them.

“Ezra Barker,” said Iku. “We have had a spirited discussion about how long to let you live, and you know, we are not yet decided.”

“We said we weren’t going to tell him that,” said Sums.

“Eh, you asked that I not discuss his impending mortality with him, but I did not agree,” said Iku. “But, you are alive now and you can help us right now as we discuss our plan.”

“Sure,” said Barker.

“Question,” said Iku. “How long do we have?”

“Today’s Friday, visitor is supposed to arrive on Monday. Assuming my belief is correct that it’s the second Queen and they can’t be on planet at the same time, the first Queen has to die by then. So we have two days at most.”

“It’s got to be tomorrow,” said Sums.

Iku drew a square at the top of the board with a dry erase marker. “The weapons depot.” He then drew a line straight down and a triangle in the middle of the board. “The dock.” Another line ended in a circle at the bottom of the board. “The moonbase.” The last line curved back up and to the right, and he drew a diamond parallel to the triangle. “Zero City.”

“Got it,” said Barker.

“There is this American tendency to fill gaps in conversation with meaningless words,” said Iku. “Please don’t feel like you have to nod and say ‘Right’ or ‘Yeah’ while I am talking. Now, we start at the weapons depot. Yes?”

“If that’s a real question, then no. The mission is on the moonbase and you need to capture the second Queen alive, so why go to the weapons depot and risk ending the entire mission right there?”

“I appreciate that you are challenging the plan already, traitor. I mean that. If we are to get off the moonbase alive and with the Queen alive, we’re going to have to disable or destroy it. But also, let me explain the life of a freedom fighter, because it is very different from the life you have been living. When you want something done, you send your HSD butchers, and they do it. With us, we have the disadvantage in numbers and technology. Very few Reconquest missions accomplish Goal One. So, we must have secondary goals. If we are to believe you and you are correct and we can grab the Queen from the base and bring it back here and it breaks the brains of all the Merg and we take back our planet, wonderful. But, we might die at the moonbase, so we need to be ready to destroy the moonbase so we can say, “At least we destroyed the moonbase.’ Or we might not even make it there, we might get caught at the dock, so then we need to be ready to destroy the dock. Without the explosives, what is our secondary plan? We are all likely to die very soon, and the farther we go, the more meaning our deaths will have. If we die and the Merg do not bleed at all, that is a tragedy.”

“I see your point,” said Barker.

“The other option is going to the moon without a giant explosive and I do not wish to do that,” said Iku. “So, better to have it. I need to steal something from the weapons depot that can destroy the moonbase and can cripple the dock. How will I do that? Can I just use the codes you have given us?”

“No,” said Barker. Even with the tears and the introspection, it still felt wrong to betray the Merg and The Senator, and that made him pause. Then he looked at Sums, and he remembered this was for her. He continued, “They’re not going to let you in unless it’s an authorized transfer. You’d need the truck, the physical order, and the driver. The humans there know all the drivers, keep pictures just in case.”

“How do we get the driver?” Iku asked. “And the truck.”

“It’s going to be heading up to the depot early in the morning, two HSD cars in escort. They use the same roads every time. No one changes up the path because no one wants to do anything different. No HSD officer likes attention. Even if they found a better way, they’d never take a risk and they’d never make a suggestion to the Merg.”

“So,” said Iku, “we will use the information you are giving us to murder HSD, kidnap the driver, force him to do as we say. And then we will kill the driver. Are you uncomfortable with this plan?”

“I’m always uncomfortable,” Barker said honestly. “HSD won’t be reasoned with, but the drivers, they’re just doing what they have to do.”

Iku nodded. “And if we let this driver go, will he keep his mouth shut? Will he love us more than the family he keeps safe because he serves the Merg?”

“You can tie up the driver and leave him somewhere,” said Barker. “The real question is, how are you going to take out two HSD cars with four total officers inside without them calling it into their HQ? Even if you killed everyone, they’ll still know you stole the truck and they’ll be able to guess why pretty easily.”

Barker was enjoying this. He loved troubleshooting, loved poking holes in a plan and then sewing those holes back up. He had handled so many crises for The Senator, this was like he was back in his old life now.

“I see,” said Iku. “So, we steal the truck after it is loaded.”

“No,” said Barker. “That’s worse. The truck, it’s a fifty-foot flatbed, by the way. They’re going to load five crates on it, and each crate contains an explosive that could destroy most of this factory by itself. Those boxes and the explosives themselves have tracers and each can be triggered remotely. The Merg have plenty of explosives, plenty of trucks, and plenty of people to drive them. They think anything’s wrong, boom. HSD says they’re under attack, boom. The Merg might blow it if HSD calls in a tree blocking the road. They’re worth so much more to Reconquest than the Merg, they don’t want you to have them.”

“So, we steal the truck before,” said Iku.

“The less bad option, yes.”

“Could we take out their radios?” Sums asked. “Jam them or take out a cell tower?”

“No,” said Barker. “The cars are normal pre-arrival … sorry, pre-invasion cars, but the radios are Merg, satellite based.”

“We got snipers for this?” asked Rupture.

“No,” said Iku. “Reconquest no longer has anyone we would confidently call a sniper.”

Barker sensed there were at least a few specific snipers who other people in this room were discovering had died, but he pressed on, “Wouldn’t matter anyway. You’re going to take out two speeding HSD cars with guns? The windows aren’t going to be rolled down. You’re going to drive up the depot with shot out windows and blood on the seats.”

“Got a thing for this,” said Sums.

“A thing?” Iku asked.

“Discuss later,” Sums muttered quickly, and Barker had to assume he was the one who wasn’t allowed to know things.

Iku tapped back on the square at the top of the board. “Assuming we are successful, we get to the depot, and they let us in.”

“After the driver says the codes and gives the call and response,” Barker noted.

“Yes,” said Iku. “After that, they let us in, and they load the truck.”

“Yes,” said Barker. “Truck gets loaded, and then drives back with HSD escort.”

Manivelle sighed. “And if we leave even the slightest hint that something unusual is happening with the shipment, at any moment they could blow all of the explosives.”

“Sounds beautiful in a way,” said Campal.

“And then we go to the dock,” said Iku, pointing at the triangle on the board.

“No,” said Barker. “There are sensors on each explosive, like I said. Anyone notices they’re not headed right where they should be going, boom. Dock is in Kenosha, due south. The explosives are supposed to go to a new mining site by Petenwell Lake, northwest.”

“This mission needs months of planning,” said Manivelle.

“It’s going tomorrow,” said Sums, a finality in her tone.

“So, we have to get the sensor off,” said Campal.

“Can you do it?” Sums asked.

“Probably,” Campal answered. “Ha ha!”

“You’re going to have to do it on an uncovered flatbed truck driving down the highway.”

Campal pointed at the scarred side of her face and said, “It has been this many days since our last workplace accident.” Then she laughed.

“And then we swap the explosive into another truck and go to the dock.”

“No one who doesn’t work there allowed inside,” said Barker. “And the dock is covered in armed Merg. Drivers just drop their loads at the dock and then leave. Rest of the business is handled by the workers there.”

“So, how do we get in?” Iku asked.

“You’d have to sneak into a container bound for one of the Merg worlds,” Barker suggested. “But you’d also need to get that container into an authorized truck. It would also be a flatbed, but a different flatbed. Those are the big monster double trailer semis.”

“Are there other aliens out there?” Rupture asked. “Sorry for interrupting.”

“Yes,” said Barker. “My Merg language skills aren’t perfect, but I hear the Merg talking about others and rivals.”

“Oh wild,” said Arkansas. “Any of them wanna come help us kill some Merg?”

“No idea how to contact them and not sure if they’d care about us,” Barker replied.

“Do you know where those trucks are coming from? The ones going to the dock?” Iku asked.

“Yes,” said Barker. “I know all the deliveries that are happening this week, which are all regularly scheduled.”

“And the drivers who take minerals and gas to the dock, I’m guessing their faces are known to the humans there,” Iku said.

“Correct.”

Iku tapped the board with his fingers. “So then we are on a ship. Whoosh, it’s going to the moon. Now, we kill the crew and take over the ship.”

“Arkansas time,” said Arkansas.

“Yes,” said Iku. “Young Arkansas flies to the moonbase. How long will that take?”

“No clue,” said Barker. “Depends on what time of day you’re leaving. The moon orbits the Earth, so the distance will depend on where it is in its orbit at the time. But, Merg ships are much faster than ours. Not sure how fast.”

“Full throttle, Barker,” said Arkansas.

“And then we are there,” said Iku pointing at the circle at the bottom of the board. “How do we find the Queen? How do we load her safely into a ship and then launch again?”

“Don’t know,” said Barker.

“No good,” said Manivelle.

“It makes sense that she’s there,” said Sums. “If this is right, and it’s time for the old Queen to die, they’d want to keep a backup Queen somewhere close, and if two Queens can’t be on the same planet, they keep her on the moon.”

“Yes,” said Iku. “So, we are launching back with the second Queen. Meanwhile, once they uncover our plan, again assuming Barker is correct, what is keeping the Merg from simply killing the first Queen?”

“You need people in Zero City,” said Barker. “In Chicago, I mean. They might not realize what we’re up to at first, but if they can see what we’re trying to do, you’re right, they could just kill her. If it’s worse to have two than zero, they’ll do that. So, you need people who can defend their Queen.”

“Ahem,” said Manivelle. “This man told us there were, what, hundreds of thousands of Merg in Chicago? How do we fight that many? Killing one is hard enough.”

“Those Merg ain’t there for killing,” said Arkansas. “They’re there to go to Pound Town with the Queen.”

“I am unfamiliar with Pound Town,” said Campal.

“Mating,” said Sums.

“Ahhh, I see,” said Campal.

“Maybe that Queen is about to die and so the new Queen is the one they want to hit it with,” said Arkansas. “But if that first Queen’s got her pheromones like ants or she’s sending out some signal out of her brain to control them, they’re not going to want to kill her.”

“But there must be a plan for this,” said Manivelle. “They are not ants. They are a highly technological species. At least some of the Merg will be ready to kill her.”

“So,” said Barker, “you need people in Chicago.”

“Thank you, Traitor,” said Iku. He called him by the name so easily and without malice that it became clear to Barker that he was just always going to call him that from now on. “Everyone besides Barker, we will convene later to go over the brilliant plan that Sums and I are going to devise for tomorrow.”

Arkansas lingered after the meeting. Campal drank a warm beer and chatted with Manivelle as he smoked a cigarette. She felt like talking to either would be intrusive. Iku and Sums had disappeared to work on the plan for tomorrow’s impossible tasks.

“You looking at something?” Rupture asked Barker in a tone that was confrontational, but only slightly.

“I’m sorry,” said Barker. “I just … I’ve been wondering. You’re a very big man.”

“Yeah,” said Rupture.

“How?”

Arkansas laughed a bit at the question. Rupture did not.

“Right,” said Rupture.

“You never told me either,” Arkansas noted. She had occasionally wondered about his physique. In the old days, it would not have been weird, but there was only so much food now, and the Merg slavery benefits package did not include a gym membership. Some people had to be strong for their jobs, but even they didn’t look like Rupture.

“Yeah, well,” said Rupture and that looked like the end of it for a few seconds. His head dropped and he thought for a while. Then up popped his head. “Never really told anyone. I was really into it before, strength training. Belonged to a gym, went all the time. Took some stuff I shouldn’t have, but hey, didn’t kill me, and the aliens’ll get me first now anyway. I was bigger than this. Huge. I was living in Port St. Lucie when the invasion happened. I lost people, really anyone I cared about on day one. And even then, with all of it going on, I was really afraid of losing what I built, my body. People were fleeing, looting grocery stores. I went to the GNC, stole a bunch of protein shit. And I hid.”

“Like a bunker?” Arkansas asked.

“I heard on the radio they were doing heat scans to find people. I lived in an apartment building next door to the restaurant I used to work at, so I went over there with a bunch of sweatshirts, like three layers of sweatshirt, and I hid in the walk-in freezer.”

“Nice plan,” said Campal.

“I don’t even know if they really used those things or not,” said Rupture. “There were so many people they grabbed, they might have just figured they’d come back, or the people they missed would have to come out eventually. I just grabbed all the stuff I stole and stayed at the hotel. Used their equipment. It was like … ” Rupture paused trying to put into words a thought that it seemed he’d never said aloud before. “I was still more scared of losing my body, becoming weak, than about the aliens.”

“Yeah,” said Barker, as though that made sense to him even though he was super scrawny.

“I stole food from where I could find it,” said Rupture. “Stole a fishing pole and caught some that way. Every now and then scavengers would come through town and I’d hide. And otherwise, I just stayed in the hotel lifting weights. Every day. Every single day. Over a year like that. Then, I went on a food run and a Reconquest crew found me. I lied, told them I’d escaped a camp or something. Think they knew I was lying because some of them actually had done that and could tell I didn’t know what I was talking about. They didn’t care though.”

“How do you keep it up now?” Barker asked.

“Well, like I said, I’m not what I used to be,” Rupture replied and he looked genuinely sad. “But I don’t need it, I guess. I try to eat when I can, lift what I can, but it’s hard to keep up regularly. Your associate, Damian Clay, he took care of me. Reconquest wanted to get close to him, knew he was up to something, and I offered to work as a bodyguard. He loved how big I was, think it made him feel tough having someone like me around. So, it helped. My body got us Clay, Clay got us you, and hopefully you get us the Queen.”

Arkansas tried to read Rupture’s expression, but it was changing, like he was having an argument with himself in his mind. “Gonna go walk around,” he said, and he was gone.

There was silence after he left for a moment, like everyone was thinking about their own decisions for a few moments, which Arkansas always tried to avoid. There were people she’d lost, there were risks she hadn’t taken.

“Put Traitor in one of the offices on the second floor,” Iku said, from down the assembly line.

“Hands and feet cuffed?” Arkansas asked.

“What do you think, Traitor?” Iku asked. “Perhaps we should let you sleep unshackled. Let you wonder if you could make it out without notice or if we would find you and teach you a lesson in helplessness. Could you sleep with no restraints?”

“I’ll take one handcuff if that’s all right,” said Barker.

“Very good,” Iku agreed. “And Traitor, I watch you always. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Barker.

“Always. Your time will come. You always knew there was a price to pay and tick, tick, tick.”

Barker just stood there, not sure what to say. Campal grabbed him by the arm and led him up to the offices.

Arkansas walked outside, just to get away from everything, to live outside the world of Reconquest and the Merg for a few minutes. Around the perimeter of the factor she strolled, thinking about the ship, thinking about how she’d fly it. About five minutes or so after she’d left, she stumbled upon Iku staring up at the night sky.

“Hey,” said Arkansas.

“Yes, Arkansas, what do you see out there?”

She followed his line of sight out into the darkness, but even this far from the cities, the sky was still too much smog to see the stars.

“Black clouds,” she said.

“For now,” said Iku. “You are nervous.”

“Yeah, like normal nervous,” said Arkansas. “I’ve flown missions before.” This was true enough. Yes, she had to think about the what ifs. What if everybody does their job and then I can’t get us off the planet? What if we pull this whole thing off and then I screw up entering Earth’s atmosphere and kill us all? She always had some amount of second guessing.

“Many missions,” said Iku. “More than anyone living. Perhaps more than anyone dead. You have a talent for flying a Merg ship and not dying.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Arkansas, feeling more nervous about this conversation than the mission. “I can’t shoot, can’t fight very well, even with all the training. But, I can drive and I can fly. Merg stuff, not human planes and helicopters. Never tried either of those.”

“You can fly,” said Iku, in a way that sounded like he was saying something deep that she didn’t get.

“You think Barker’s telling the truth?” she asked.

“Traitor is a killer, he admitted it,” said Iku.

“So, no?”

“We are all killers now,” said Iku. “The Merg made us all killers. Killers and thieves and liars. They come here and they take our resources, but it is not enough. They must take from our spirits. Would Traitor lie to save his life? Would he sabotage us to protect the Merg? Yes. He would. Who is his master now?”

“Us?” Arkansas guessed.

“Yes, perhaps,” said Iku. “Perhaps, not. We are fools to trust him at all. But we would be fools to turn our backs on the idea has given us. The end of the Merg. The end of the occupation.”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Arkansas said, worried Iku would mock her for her naivete.

“Good,” said Iku. “That is good. Arkansas, what would you do if we won? If we killed all the Merg and took our planet back?”

“Scream, cry,” said Arkansas.

“And what would you do the next day?”

Arkansas could not think of an answer, but then she caught sight of movement out in the darkness beyond the factory gates.

“Those are friends,” said Sums coming toward them, other humans twenty feet or so back of her. “Got a delivery.”

“You order a pizza?” Arkansas asked.

“No, better.”

“Who’s bringing it?”

“B Team,” said Sums, and Arkansas felt like walking back inside. B Team was, to her, short for Bye Cruel World Team. Better Luck in the Next Life Team. While most of her missions bordered on suicidal, B Team missions were designed as exactly that. They weren’t supposed to survive, it wasn’t even planned. No one got forced onto a B Team. People just got tired of it all, beat down by the failure and the loss and the pain, and one day they’d tell someone, “Ready for B Team.” And then they’d be on B Team.

“Did not know we were getting a B Team,” said Iku.

“Wasn’t sure they’d get here in time,” said Sums.

Arkansas averted her gaze as six human beings walked through the outer gate and up to the factory’s front door. She didn’t want to see them and they didn’t want to look at her. Two were carrying a large crate between the two of them, and they quietly set it down in front of Sums.

“There a plan?” asked one of the B Team.

Sums handed over a sheet of paper. And then they left. They might be sleeping in tents in the woods or inside some other empty building, but they didn’t want to be here.

It was a full minute before anyone said anything.

“We got a plan?” asked Arkansas.

“For the weapons depot, yes,” answered Sums.

“There will soon be a plan for the dock,” said Iku.

“Okay, so what’s in the box?” Arkansas asked.

Sums smiled. Iku smiled.

It took a minute for Sums to find a crowbar and return to open the crate. When she did, Arkansas leapt back.

“What?! You’re scared the juice out of me!” Arkansas screamed. “Wait, is that real?”

“No,” said Sums. “It is not.”

Chapter Sixteen

It had been a long drive to what had been Milwaukee for Hayes, but blessedly he’d had some time to himself in the car, as Patterson had taken the recovered cruiser and followed behind. The young officer had complained that the car smelled like urine, likely a parting gift from the Reconquest bastards who had stolen it, but he still drove right behind Hayes.

It was pleasant, just him and the road. There was radio in spots. Merg music only, Hayes assumed for fear of human music being used to pass information over the airwaves. Or maybe they just didn’t care for it. Hayes had no problem with Merg music, even though most humans found it to be just a series of atonal high-pitched beeps and metallic scratches. Hayes enjoyed the music because he had a deep appreciation of the Merg, and so it helped pass the time as he sped down the highway.

He had elected to stop an hour and a half outside the city as the light faded. Hayes felt confident driving around his own city at night, but empty, little-used country roads could be dangerous places. There were scavengers and raiders hiding everywhere. Every now and then the Merg would try to flush some out, capture them and put them to work, but there were still some out there. A couple HSD cars could be easy targets for them. There was an HSD station near the old University of Wisconsin-Madison, and they let Hayes and Patterson sleep on cots they kept around for visiting officers.

The next morning, Hayes had taken the opportunity to shower and shave before redressing in the clothes he’d worn all the previous day. Today is the day, he told himself. You catch the scumbags, kill them before they cause any trouble, and you never have to think about Ezra Barker ever again.

They were delayed slightly that morning when Hayes noticed Patterson had not shaved, and sent him back so as not to embarrass the department. And then they were off, together again in one car. They left the recovered cruiser at the station.

“Do you think we would have found anything if we’d kept looking?” Patterson asked. “I mean, when we were searching the cars. Like, could we have found something, stopped them from taking the car.”

“No cars were taken from the HSD garage,” said Hayes, trying to make it clear with his tone that this was not a subject for discussion and that Patterson needed to teach his brain to remember this properly. “An officer from HQ took his vehicle north on patrol, had engine problems and had to leave the vehicle by the roadside. He failed to inform his superior in a timely manner and caused the confusion.” Hayes wondered what officer Chief had picked to take the fall on that one. Wasn’t going to cost him his life, but the Merg liked to see somebody pay for their failures. Might lose rations or might be confined to his house for a couple weeks.

“Yeah,” said Patterson. “Yeah, sorry about that, not sure what I was thinking.”

It was silent for the next thirty minutes or so until Patterson asked, “How long you and your wife been together?”

“Nineteen years married, twenty years together,” said Hayes, not eager to discuss, but less willing to display discomfort on the subject.

“That’s great, that’s really great,” said Patterson. “How’d you meet?”

“She worked at the coffee shop I used to go to.”

“Wow, you asked out the girl at the coffee shop. Bold move, Sergeant.”

“She asked me out,” said Hayes, dangerously falling into a happy memory. “I’d been coming in for months and one day she asked if I only drank black coffee. I said no, I drank diet soda and beer. She said she drank whiskey sour. I said okay. She said it was about time I took her out and got her a drink since she’d been making mine for so long. I said okay.”

“That’s great,” said Patterson.

“She was different than me,” Hayes said, realizing he was oversharing but he wanted to say it. “Very artsy. I don’t think any of her friends liked me. I was so straight. But she didn’t care.”

“She just needed new friends.”

“Yeah, we didn’t really have couple friends until we had Erin and moved into our house and then the Chans … ” Shit, he thought. Shit, not now.

“The Chans?” Patterson asked.

“Old friends, used to live by us,” said Hayes. In his mind, he could see his daughter’s face, hear her say, “What? You’re ashamed now? Don’t want to tell your friend how you got your HSD job? By turning in the only friends you had? Don’t want to talk about how me and their son Rick used to always play together and now they’re all ash?”

“You got a girl?” Hayes asked.

“Me, no,” said Patterson. “Hard to date with the job.”

“I’d say that, too, if I was ugly,” Hayes said and they both laughed. The Chans, thought Hayes, but he pushed through and focused on the road.

The weapons depot was an unremarkable warehouse, neither brand new nor especially run-down, near the lake in what had once been an industrial area of a Milwaukee suburb. There were other warehouses sharing the street, as well as office buildings and chain restaurants all around in the surrounding blocks, but none of those had been used in years. There had once been a parking lot in front of this building, but now there were boxes of munitions or explosives piled high in those spaces, high fences blocking access, but not sight.

If one did not know what the place was used for, one could have driven by it and thought it held mundane supplies like food or toilet paper or medicine, not laser-based rifles and explosives that could turn a downtown into a crater. The security was there, if a little difficult for a civilian to detect, but it was not overwhelming. The Merg wanted things to move quickly, and they’d rather have Reconquest run off with a box that would soon explode in their hands than build a fortress.

And Reconquest did keep trying. Every so often they’d steal a Merg aircraft, which the Merg prized too much to blow up. Hoverships and soundbreakers were the two most commonly taken, never the spacecraft. Reconquest was too dumb to figure those out. Hell, maybe all humans were, Hayes reflected. So, they’d grab a hovership while it was delivering supplies, fly around and have a big tantrum in the sky, maybe throw bombs down on a factory or an abandoned car lot. Then the Merg would shoot them down, retrieve the ship, and fix it right back up. It was system that worked pretty well for the Merg. They got to keep their aircraft and kill Reconquest pilots, if you could call them that. Chief Echevarria had once told Hayes that he’d heard through an informant that no one in Reconquest had ever flown more than three missions. Still, Reconquest kept sacrificing their bumbling incompetents just to try to make the Merg as angry as everyone in Reconquest was. It was lucky, Hayes thought, that the Merg were so much more patient and understanding than the scumbags in Reconquest.

“How long we going to hang out here?” Patterson asked.

“It’s been ten minutes,” said Hayes. “Are you bored?”

“No,” said Patterson, even though he definitely sounded bored. “It’s just, even if you’re right, and I think you’re right, who knows when they’re going to hit this place?”

“They crossed the bridge,” said Hayes. “They’re heading right for here.”

Barker had promised he would not run or do anything to compromise the mission, but he was still bound and gagged. The gagging was the true indignity. He recognized he had brought this upon himself, but he was also helping them. Another insult was that they had not shared the plan with him, which he could have advised on. What was the point of that, he asked himself, bumping up and down in the back of the delivery truck. He had been doing great, guiding them and pointing out all the pitfalls. And then, nothing. Cut off.

He was seated between Rupture and Manivelle with Sums and Iku sitting across from them. There was plenty of room in the empty truck meant to hold dozens of pallets of food boxes, but Rupture was right up against him, like a warning. Rupture, notably, was wearing his HSD uniform again. The only thing besides them in the back was a crate, which he had offered to help load onto the truck, but everyone had ignored him until it was gagging time.

“Okay!” yelled Arkansas from up front. “We gotta crash this thing now.”

Barker tried desperately to make eye contact with someone in the back. Were they all just going to die? No one met his gaze and when he tried to make some noise through the gag, everyone was busy bracing themselves.

The truck swerved left, then right, tires squealing loudly against the asphalt. Barker felt certain the truck was about to tip over, slamming his skull against one side or the other, his brains leaking out, his teeth smashed, his last words drooled out through a dirty piece of cloth stuffed in his mouth.

But then it stopped and everyone else just got up like this was their stop on the train. He was angry, despite his relief at the lack of pain. This was petty, since he knew he was a hostage or a prisoner or something to that effect and not a real part of the team. He had to focus if he was going to get through this, but it was hard. Today was Saturday, which was a white day, but he was still in the same khaki pants he’d worn since they’d grabbed him outside his apartment and the green polo they’d taken from the library. Sums was wearing a white T-shirt, stained with dirt and a little blood, but it counted. It would fit him. He tried to think of a way to ask the woman who held his life in her hands to take off her shirt and give it to him, but every time he visualized that conversation it ended with a knife through the face.

Everyone was out of the truck and no one had told Barker to stay or follow, so he stood and hopped. His legs were tied together at the knees and his hands cuffed behind his back, but he was able to move himself over to the backdoor of the truck with some effort. Then he had to figure out how to get down. It was three, maybe three and a half feet down to the ground, but he did not want to twist his ankle. He pictured Sums saying, “Well, Traitor’s got a bad ankle, time to shoot him and leave.” And everyone else just nodding. So, he just sort of rocked back and forth, feet edging over the back of the truck.

He took one more look and suddenly he was falling face first toward the ground. It was going to hurt. He braced for permanent damage to his face, but then he was just floating. Magically floating above the ground.

“Careful there, guy,” said Rupture, and Barker realized the big man had grabbed him by the back of the shirt and was holding him there.

Rupture threw an arm around Barker’s waist, lifted, and Barker was standing solidly on the ground.

“No screw-ups,” said Sums. “And no confusion here. This is my op.”

“Of course,” said Iku. “You are in charge until we have the explosive.”

“Until we get to the dock,” Sums corrected.

“Well, not how I recall it, but a conversation for later.”

Rupture had picked up the large box and set it on the ground. “Now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Sums, helping him lift off the top.

Barker tried to scream which was mostly muffled by the gag and staggered backward when he saw a Merg inside the box. He fell onto his butt and rolled away, wondering how jt had found them. Where were the others? He couldn’t run, so he just froze, waiting for the end.

But no one else was moving. He looked up to see the Reconquest team staring down at him. Why would a Merg hide in a box, he asked himself. They didn’t hide, they just showed up and murdered everyone.

“Okay, so it definitely looks real,” said Sums.

“A lot of things scare the little man,” said Manivelle. “Perhaps he was worried he would get a, how you say, little wood piece from the box.”

“Splinter,” said Arkansas.

“Yes, a splinter.”

“Rupture, cut off his gag,” Sums ordered, and the big man did, also helping him back to his feet.

Able to speak for the first time in hours, Barker took a moment to spit and adjust his jaw. “Did one of you do something to that rag you shoved in my mouth?” he asked.

“No,” said Sums. “Not just one of us. About this thing here, you spend a lot of time with Merg. Meetings, inspections, tucking them in at night.”

“You’re asking if I thought it was real,” said Barker. “Yes, I clearly thought it was real.”

“Very well,” said Manivelle.

“All right, Rupture, you and Arkansas go place it by the front,” Sums ordered. “Barker, back in the truck. No one told you to get out of the truck.”

“No one told me anything!” Barker yelled, and he could instantly tell he had crossed a line for them. Everyone was looking at him, wondering when the prisoner had gotten so saucy.

“What did you just say to me?” Sums asked, looking like she was eager for him to repeat it.

“I’m going to hop back to the truck,” said Barker.

“You don’t like it here, I can fix that,” said Sums.

Barker began to hop back to the truck, but Sums followed him. “You think we need you?” she asked. “You think we need you so bad you’re part of the team?”

“I’m very sorry,” said Barker, trying to hop as quickly as he could, but then Sums gave him the slightest nudge and he was falling again, landing on the side of the road, gravel digging into his arm.

“Sums,” said Arkansas. “Come on.”

“Come on what?” Sums asked. “You want me to help him up and kiss his boo-boos? You know what we lost? You know what happened to people we love because of people like him.”

“Ain’t about him,” said Arkansas. “About the plan.”

“Yeah,” said Sums. “Right, yeah. Just letting him remember it.” Sums didn’t seem like an apology person, so that was probably the most she was going to give Arkansas in the moment. “Somebody throw Barker in the truck.”

Barker knew he deserved it, but it wasn’t about deserve. Nobody had gotten what they deserved, it felt to him, since the Merg showed up, and having been around politics as long as he had, it rarely worked that way before. He just wanted them to treat him one way or the other. Either he was useful and they would listen to him or he was garbage and they should torture and kill him. He preferred the former. Actually, he really didn’t want the latter at all and would take the current situation over that.

Campal and Manivelle lifted him back into the truck, setting him back down in a seated position on the floor. It was a couple minutes before Sums, Iku, and Arkansas returned. No Rupture—and Barker had started to piece together the plan. Sums grabbed him by the hair. “You don’t talk to me unless I tell you to, got it?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Barker.

“You understand what’s about to happen?” She was still holding his hair in her hand.

“I think so,” said Barker.

“You are going to listen. You hear HSD say anything that sounds like code or doesn’t sound right, you tell me.”

“Yes,” said Barker.

It was twenty minutes of silence after that, and Barker took that time to imagine the scene the two HSD cruisers and the flatbed were arriving at. There was a food delivery truck in the middle of the road. The area around was flat for miles, empty of people. Skid marks behind and there was a Merg lodged under the front tire.

Barker held that image in his head, tried to picture what he would have made of it if he had seen it a couple days earlier on his drive to Zero City, to Chicago that is. A dead Merg, and Rupture in his HSD uniform.

And then he heard the cars, heard them speed up toward them and slam on their brakes. “Jesus!” Barker could hear an officer yell after stepping out of his car.

“Help!” he heard Rupture yell. “Help! It’s not dead, it’s still alive, you have to help!”

It was really brilliant, Barker thought. And where had they gotten a fake Merg made? Manufacturing was only for Merg purposes, but somebody put together a real masterpiece for this.

“No way, man,” said one HSD.

“No, no, no,” said Rupture. “This is not good. Help me save him.”

Barker had wondered if Reconquest really understood HSD, but this made it clear they did, to an extent. HSD would have to call it in. This was a dying Merg. But when they did call it in, everyone there would have a lot of questions, and the Merg might just kill everyone involved.

“What the hell happened?” an HSD asked.

“I just found this!”

“You gotta go now,” said Barker, speaking without thinking out why.

“Excuse me?” Sums asked.

“Go now! They’re going to figure it out. They won’t trust him for stopping because they would have kept going. And he doesn’t have a car, so how’d he get here?”

Sums looked at Iku and they nodded at each other.

“Where’s your car, friend?” an HSD asked.

Sums and Iku hopped out the back.

“Partner took it back to base,” said Rupture. “Here, let me show you … ”

Gunfire erupted. Bang bang bang bang bang bang.

Barker lost track of how many shots. It was several seconds of silence after that and then a voice he had not heard before yelled out in a thick New England accent, “Stay back! You stay back!”

“What’s happening?” Barker asked, and Arkansas was already poking her head out to sneak a look.

“Shit,” she said.

“What?” Barker asked.

There were more shots and Sums, Iku and Rupture retreated to the back of the truck. “Driver,” said Sums.

“He loves the Merg so much,” said Iku dryly. “He wants to keep serving them.”

“Thought the drivers did not carry guns,” said Campal. “That was in the briefing.”

“They’re not supposed to,” said Barker. “But if I’d been included I would have … sorry, but sometimes they do because they worry about … this exact thing.”

“We have to kill him,” said Rupture. “The driver, not Barker yet. Kill him and try to make one of us look like him.”

“Won’t work,” Barker noted. “I’m sorry, please don’t be angry, but that just won’t work. They know the drivers. It has to be him or you won’t get it loaded. Then you’re breaking in and everything will blow as soon as you’re out of the depot. It won’t work.”

“Okay,” said Sums. “I’ll distract him. Rupture, you sneak around the other side and catch him from behind.”

“I can do it,” said Barker and everyone looked at him like he claimed he could fly. “Not the fighting, but I can talk to him.”

“No chance,” said Sums. “No one trusts you.”

“We’re wasting time,” said Barker. “Right now he’s aiming a gun, but he gets a chance and he’ll radio this in. Let me talk to him. I can do this. He makes a call or you kill him or he kills himself, which he is definitely considering right now, and you’re done. Plan is over and Merg are going to swarm this whole area.”

“The traitor,” said Iku, but then he paused for a moment. “He is not wrong.”

Sums looked as angry as he’d ever seen her, but she made her decision quickly. “Cut him loose and unlock the cuffs,” she ordered.

While Rupture cut the rope and Campal freed his hands, Barker said, “I need one thing though. Sums, can you take off your shirt.”

Her knife was out and at his throat. “I’m just gonna do him like Clay right now.”

“I need the shirt! It’s a white shirt!” Barker pleaded. “It’s Saturday, it’s a white day. I’m sorry, I’ll look away, but I can handle this better if I’m wearing white.”

Sums set down the knife, and once his hands were free, yanked Barker’s shirt off him. He flinched at the intimacy of it, and then felt even more uncomfortable when he was briefly shirtless, but then Sums removed her own and tossed it to him.

He walked out with hands up toward the driver. “I’m unarmed!” he yelled.

“Dumbass move on your part!” the driver yelled back.

“Do you recognize me?” Barker asked. The truck driver was hiding behind one of the police cars, a rifle aimed directly at Barker’s head.

“Dead man,” said the driver, more correct than he realized.

“Ezra Barker,” said Barker. “I work for The Senator.”

“Nice try. I’m watching that truck if you think you can sneak up on me. You let your friends know I’m gonna shoot you, but maybe they can get away before I take the tires out on the truck.”

They were only about fifteen feet away from each other. Barker was oddly calm. He was always nervous, but this felt like the first time in the lifetime that had been the last two days that he felt any control.

“I’m Ezra Barker. I work for The Senator.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I’m supposed to be dead,” Barker said, realizing of course this man had probably never heard of him, and there was no news story about his death because there was no news.

“Gonna be,” said the driver.

“I’m Ezra Barker, that’s why I know you, and because I know you, they all know you.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“I signed the work order for this pickup. Two four five one eight zeta gamma four five seven. The first five digits is just the sector number, so that’s not impressive, but I got the rest of it right, too, so you know I’m serious. Your name is Quentin Reedy, you live in Protected Community Two Four Five One Eight Forty Seventy-Two, Eighty-Nine Fifty-Nine. It’s near Peoria. I see you want to kill me, but I’m going to say it again: I know it, so they know it.”

“You touch my family, I’ll kill you,” said the driver, Quentin Reedy.

“No, no, no,” said Barker, although that was the exact idea he wanted to put in the man’s head. The Senator was much more skilled at this, saying something so everyone would know it but in a way that felt like she hadn’t wanted to say it and of course that wasn’t the point, but now you knew it. You weren’t going to just unknow it. “I’m just trying to convince you that I am who I say I am.”

“Ezra Barker,” said the Reedy. “Okay. You’re Ezra Barker.”

“HSD staged my death because they didn’t want the Merg to know what happened, that I got taken by Reconquest.”

“Okay, good for you, not being dead.”

“Quentin, you’re afraid.”

“Not of you,” said Reedy, but he was.

“You think if you comply, you’ll get caught, the Merg will kill you, and then they’ll go after your family.”

“Your RQ buddies are the ones who are going to kill me, genius. I could do whatever they say and knit socks for all of them and I still get it.”

“I’m alive,” said Barker. “It’s not what you think. Look at me, walking and talking.”

“Barker, I got bad news for you. You’re dumb and you’ve got gravel on the side of your face.”

“I fell.”

“Sure,” said Reedy. “Listen, they haven’t killed you yet, but they’re clearly going to. ‘Death to Merg, death to collaborators.’ It’s not just a thing they say. I got buddies got taken by them. They only found parts of them.”

“This is the big one, Quentin,” said Barker. “It’s not about revenge, it’s not about piling up bodies. It’s about our planet. It’s about humanity.”

“They gonna blow up the whole Earth?” Reedy asked. “Because these charges ain’t that big. Otherwise, they’re making some dents while they get themselves killed. And us, Barker.”

He said ‘us,’ Barker noted. That was good.

“Quentin,” said Barker. “I’m going to be very honest with you.” He was likely not going to be honest, but it was just a way people started sentences. “You can keep firing that gun, maybe take out a couple of us, maybe even somehow escape in that giant truck. And then you’ll get to the depot and you’ll explain how Reconquest managed to find you and killed four cops, but you’re fine. And you’ll tell them Ezra Barker told them, and they will not believe you because HSD knows I’m dead. And they will interrogate you and maybe you miss enough days from interrogation that you get busted down to the mines. You move to a Worker Village. You have everyone wonder who the new guy is, maybe he used to be HSD. You know about ex-HSD in the Worker Villages.”

“Option two?” Reedy asked.

“You drive the truck,” said Barker. “You just drive the truck like you always do, two HSD cars with you to protect you. You pick up your load. Now, there’s going to be an incident on the way, and you’ll be dead, like I’m dead. Just to them. But you and me, we’ll be alive. And you don’t trust Reconquest, but these are good people I’m with. We can join them. You don’t believe me, but I’ve been alive for two days with them. Take the two days. Maybe there’s a third. And your family is eating cereal and working service jobs, not the mines or the factories. They sleep on beds. Clean beds. You might not believe you’ll survive, but you know I’m right about the other part.”

“I don’t believe anything Reconquest says.” Quentin was tightening his grip on the rifle.

“Because you’re smart,” said Barker. “You and me, we made the smart choice, not the right choice. This time they’re the same thing. Let’s you and me make it through to the end of the day, okay?”

Chapter Seventeen

Hayes had expected more action at the weapons depot, but really, things were remarkably quiet. For such a large building, there was very little movement in or out. One small truck had come in and gotten a single crate loaded into it and one semi had taken a couple pallets holding what Hayes believed to be ammunition or fuel or whatever the laser rifles the Merg used required for ammo.

“So, besides the obvious,” Patterson began, “what are we looking for?”

“What’s the obvious?” Hayes asked.

“Barker shows up or that girl who was driving the getaway car,” said Patterson.

“Those are obvious,” Hayes agreed. “Let’s think how they’d do it. Barker knows more than us about shipments, so they’d know what was coming in and out. So, assume they’re going for the catch of the day, the biggest ones they can find. How do they get them?”

“Steal a truck,” said Patterson.

“No chance,” said Hayes. “Those are kept under heavy guard. And on the way here, they got an HSD escort.”

“Then after the pickup?” Patterson guessed.

“Same HSD escort going back,” said Hayes. “If Reconquest came anywhere near, our guys would make one call and the Merg would swoop in. And, I heard they got tracers on everything anyway.”

“So, what’s the plan then?” Patterson asked. “Their plan, I mean.”

“I think I figured it out. They wait until the truck arrives for pickup, watch it get loaded, and then they attack. Try to take out the driver, set off the explosives and see if they can take out the whole weapons depot.”

“Makes sense,” said Patterson.

“Can’t think of any other way they can cause their trademark meaningless destruction. So, we just camp out here, wait for them to show up, and end things before they start.”

Patterson nodded confidently. Hayes was glad the kid wasn’t overthinking this. Yeah, Reconquest had grabbed Barker and gotten away, but they got lucky in a thousand different ways to get away with it. And they hadn’t been armed. “That’s a big one,” said Patterson, pointing at a long flatbed truck headed for them.

“This is it,” said Hayes, no doubt in his mind. He reached in the back and grabbed his shotgun and waited. The truck drove slowly, stopping outside the entrance. It would need to pull past and then back in, but first the guards had to check the driver’s papers.

“Where are you? Where are you, you little cowards?” Hayes asked.

Patterson had his service weapon resting on his thigh, thankfully pointed away from Hayes. The young officer’s leg bounced just slightly. Up down, up down. He was ready.

“Here we go,” said Hayes. The flatbed had two HSD cruisers as escorts, and that calmed Hayes who had worried it would be only one.

“Should we warn them?” Patterson asked.

“No time now,” said Hayes. The truck pulled past, and the HSD cars followed, but then the flatbed began to reverse and the HSD cars had to reverse as well to move out of the way. Hayes laughed, and he felt a little of the tension get relieved.

“You ever done one of these escorts?” Hayes asked.

“No, never,” Patterson answered.

“Well, now you know, let the truck back up and don’t block the entrance.”

The flatbed pulled in and Hayes’ eyes flicked back and forth between the truck and the HSD. From across the street, he could see the first car, with a male officer behind the wheel and a female officer beside him. He had hoped it might be someone he knew, but he’d never seen these two before. The other car had pulled next to the first on the far side from Hayes’ vehicle, so he could not get a good look. “All right, come on,” said Hayes. “Show yourselves. Don’t be shy.”

Hayes was scanning everywhere, looking for any sign of Reconquest. Would they come from the sky? Were they under the streets? In the sewers?

“Truck driver’s looking down for some reason,” said Patterson.

“Don’t look at the driver,” Hayes ordered. “Scan for Reconquest. They’re here, they’re coming.”

But they didn’t. The flatbed was loaded, five giant crates spaced evenly on the lengthy truck bed, and the driver slowly pulled back onto the street. The HSD cars made U-turns and took the lead as they drove off.

“You see that HSD’s face?” Patterson asked.

“The hell is going on?” Hayes asked. “That had to be it.” Or maybe he’d been wrong about all of this. He’d driven them all over the sector for nothing. They didn’t kidnap Barker as part of some grand plan. Reconquest kidnapped Barker because they were angry and violent and amoral.

“Like half her face was just gone,” said Patterson, but Hayes was too distracted to care about an HSD with a face thing. The gate was closing to the weapons depot. He saw the guards chaining up the exterior. They were done for the day already. That was it. No more pickups.

“They couldn’t have snuck in,” said Barker.

“No way,” said Patterson. “We were watching the whole time.”

“I know, that’s what I said,” Hayes barked. He was frustrated. As happy as he would have been if he had been proven wrong, if Barker just got tortured and thrown in a wood chipper and was no longer his problem, he still had the problem of not knowing. He had to breathe. He was overthinking this. He was letting his fear of getting caught for screwing this up push him right into getting caught.

“We did everything right,” said Hayes.

“We did,” said Patterson, clearly trying to calm his sergeant.

He needed to leave. He needed to drive home, return the HSD car, go back to normal life and push away all the anxiety about this situation.

“Okay,” said Hayes. “What did you say about the HSD?”

“When they turned around, one half of her face was super scarred. Like not there,” said Patterson.

“All right,” said Hayes. “Strange, actually.”

The Merg did not seem fond of disability. He’d never seen an HSD with any disability. Really no one in any of the other service fields either. The Merg seemed to take issue with it. He supposed she could have been injured in the line of duty, but getting your face blasted off didn’t really happen to HSD.

It was the kind of thing that happened to Reconquest.

“Anything else you want to share with me now?” Hayes asked.

“Hole in her shirt. And it looked a little discolored.”

“I’m colorblind,” Hayes said, but he knew it sounded defensive. It wasn’t his fault his partner had noticed clues and not done enough to draw them to his attention.

“Well, it’s a black shirt, but it had a hole and it looked, I know this is weird, a little big on her. And like I said, the truck driver kept looking down.”

“Down at what?” Hayes asked before answering for himself. “Someone else in the cab. They were right fucking there!”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Stop apologizing and drive the car!”

“Where?” Patterson asked, and Hayes had no answer. It had been only a few minutes, but they had to be on the highway, headed one direction or another. Or they had a hiding place in the city.

“They gotta be headed to Zero City,” said Hayes.

“What about the tracers?” Patterson spat out frantically. “You said there were tracers. Then we can just track them.”

“The Merg have those!” Hayes yelled, so mad at Patterson for wasting these precious seconds. “We don’t, and we can’t call in to say, ‘Hey, we just sat and watched a robbery and now we want you to find what was stolen.’”

But the kid had a point, he told himself. He wanted to say Reconquest had its head too far up its ass to know the packages could be tracked, but they were two for two against Hayes now. If they did know, maybe they’d follow the path for a while, long enough to make whoever looked at that sort of thing assume all was safe, and then they’d book it for Zero City.

“Where the hell is that delivery supposed to even go?” Hayes asked.

“We can ask the workers at the depot,” suggested Patterson.

“They won’t tell us,” said Hayes, fuming this time at his partner. “They will ask why we’re asking and then they will call HQ and Chief will have us interrogated and then bad things happen to us. We’d be better off just shoving a gun up to one of their temples and demanding an answer. Maybe then we’d get something.”

He was strongly considering the idea when Patterson yelled out, “Petenwell Lake!”

“What the hell is that?”

“Petenwell Lake! It’s northwest of here! Officer Li said they’re blasting a new mine. That’s where the explosives are going.”

Arkansas was standing on the bed of a truck moving seventy miles per hour down the highway, staring down at an explosive charge that would blast her into dust if she coughed funny in front of it. She blamed herself for speaking up the night before when Campal had asked if anyone knew their way around a toolbox.

“Yeah,” she had said. “I mean, I know what all the tools are.”

Campal had smiled, “Okay, very good. You will help me disarm the tracker and the self-destruct mechanism.”

“I drive,” Arkansas had argued. “Cars, truck, spaceships, whatever. That’s what I do. I’ll be driving.”

“Does anyone else know all the tools?” Campal had asked. “I need you to hand them to me very quickly and I cannot have any delay to explain the difference between lineman’s pliers and diagonal pliers.”

“I can drive the truck,” said Iku. “I was a soldier back home, and I did my share of driving. No carpenter, however.”

And now she was on the back of the truck, bugs smacking against her face, the polluted air rushing into her nose.

“Spanner screwdriver!” yelled Campal. The explosives expert had already opened the crate, baring the spherical bomb to the open air. They could only hope no one saw them for as long as this took, because they were clearly up to some shit.

Arkansas, clinging to Campal’s massive, unorganized toolbox for fear one bump could send it flying into the road, reached in, rooted around and pulled out the tool.

“Thank you!” shouted Campal.

“You ever do this before?” Arkansas asked.

“What?” asked Campal.

“You ever do this before?! Disable a tracker?”

“Oh, yes,” said Campal. “I mean, yes I have tried before.”

The charge looked like a concrete sphere, about six feet in diameter with a flat base. At that base were several electronic displays, knobs, buttons and such. Arkansas wondered which ones would make it explode into her face. She tried to push that thought away.

“Coping saw!” yelled Campal.

A few moments later, Arkansas located the tool, not in the toolbox, but in the secondary bag full of other random tools and some chewing gum and a couple of pornography magazines.

They were running out of time in many, many, ways. First, they’d left four dead HSD in a ditch, not having enough time to stash the bodies. Someone would find them eventually. Also, Campal, Iku, Sums, and Manivelle had posed as those HSD at the depot, but their shirts had bullet holes in them. Luckily the blood stains did not stand out on the black shirts, but it was entirely possible someone at the depot had noticed something amiss. Or maybe when they’d followed the truck too close and then had to reverse so it didn’t slam into them while it was backing up into the depot. Another instance when Arkansas should have been driving, but Sums had said no. Rupture and Arkansas had both been seen by the two HSD at Barker’s place, so Barker hid in the backseat of Sum’s car, and Arkansas, the smallest group member, crouched down under the passenger seat in the truck cab with a gun pointed at the driver, listening to each word he said and checking it against everything Barker had written out. Every passcode, every call and response. It was like she was an acting coach ready to murder her student if he screwed up his lines. Two trips in a row she did not get to drive, and for no good reason. Like the turd HSD she’d outdriven after they picked up Barker was going to be up in Milwaukee for some reason. Like he was there for a Brewers game and a bratwurst or whatever. She should have been driving then and she should be driving now, she announced inside her own mind.

The main way they were running out of time was that they had the B Team ready to help move this explosive off the truck in Slinger, a town about thirty minutes from Milwaukee. No one told Arkansas why they couldn’t just pull over and do it on the road, but Iku and Sums had set it up, and they had decided to pull off and go to some farm.

“Mallet!” Campal yelled. “Not a hammer, a mallet!”

Arkansas wanted to say she knew the difference and that’s why she got put on this crap job, but she just reached in and pulled out the mallet. When she handed it to Campal, the explosives expert held it for a moment, as though she was uncertain it really was a mallet, then she muttered to herself as she started to lightly tap at a piece of what Arkansas assumed to be the tracker.

“Bad!” yelled Campal.

“What’s bad?” Arkansas called back. “The mallet?”

“Mallet is good!” Campal shouted and then set back to work. Arkansas had been unclear about whether the tracker and the self-destruct were the same external object, but now watching she was pretty sure there were two different pieces Campal was working on.

“Going bad!” Campal yelled.

“Make it go good!” Arkansas yelled back and oddly Campal smiled at this and gave a thumbs-up with her mallet hand.

They hit a bump and Arkansas thought she would be thrown from the flatbed. She lifted into the air and was flying in the air, headed for the edge, but then gravity and momentum took over and she landed on her face.

“Very good!” yelled Campal, about something.

Arkansas picked herself up, saw that she was still holding the toolbox, but the other bag had shifted precariously close to the edge. She bent down to grab it, and when she looked up, there was an HSD car in the distance. Not enough distance, really.

“Iku!” Arkansas yelled, but there was no way he was going to hear her. That failing, she waved at Manivelle driving one of their own HSD cars. He waved back and she pointed behind him, then made a motion like she was turning a steering wheel back and forth and turned her right hand into a pistol and fired imaginary bullets all over the place. Manivelle nodded, then sped up to pull even with the truck cab and tell Iku.

“HSD!” Arkansas yelled.

“Not happy!” Campal replied.

“They shoot one of these things they gonna explode?”

Campal did not look back, continuing to work while saying, “No, but still death. Radio is deadlier than the gun.”

The flatbed began to slow down and Arkansas was about to scream when she looked back to see they were getting off at the exit. She just saw a number, no town names, so she had no idea if they’d made it to Slinger as planned or if they’d just have to tell B Team to meet them here. Wherever they were was likely to be a hole in the ground soon, since there were five giant death bombs with fully functional trackers and self-destruct mechanisms. Arkansas wanted to ask what the hell they were going to do when Campal finished with just the first one, but she didn’t want to distract the explosives expert and the answer was likely “We die but only from four earth-shattering explosions instead of five.”

“Drill!” Campal yelled.

Arkansas pulled the drill out and handed it to her, then heard the door to the truck cab open and watched the original driver, Quentin, tumble out onto the side of the road.

“Shit!”

They passed him and she couldn’t tell if he had even survived, but it was particularly bad news. She had been hoping the HSD behind them just happened to be in the neighborhood, which was a longshot to begin with. Now they were going to find this driver, and alive or dead, that was the end of uncertainty.

“No power!” Campal yelled. “Try the other battery!”

The HSD car was definitely going over a hundred miles per hour and it was about to reach the exit. Arkansas searched frantically in both bags until she located a battery pack for the drill.

“Running out of time!” Arkansas yelled.

“Hey!” Sums yelled, her body hanging out of the cab. She reached over and grabbed the exhaust stack, and then swung her body onto the truck bed. It was dumb, but it looked cool. “So I fucked up.”

“Maybe he’ll slow down HSD!” Arkansas called back.

“Bad!” yelled Campal.

A gunshot fired, the HSD catching up and taking a speculative shot, perhaps more a statement of intention than a real attempt to kill anyone.

“Bad!” yelled Campal. “Hammer! Biggest hammer!”

Arkansas handed her a hammer, then looked up to see the HSD car stop for a moment, pausing likely to pick up Quentin the escaped driver.

“Very bad!” Campal yelled, starting to just hammer the crap out of the tracker on the explosive charge.

“Should you be doing that?” Arkansas asked.

“Got it loose!” Campal answered. “Just a little more and … ” She hammered and hammered, and then stopped for a moment and turned. “If we live for a couple more hours, I’m going to have to tell you something, and you’re going to be mad at me.”

Campal lifted the hammer high above her head and slammed it down one more time on the tracker.

“Get him in quick!” Hayes ordered.

Patterson had leapt out and grabbed the man, and pulling him into the backseat.

“You gotta call it in!” the man was yelling.

“Did you just jump out of the truck?” Patterson asked.

Hayes had only stopped thinking it would be Barker and the whole business could be done, but this was clearly just some guy, now bleeding in their backseat.

“I’m Quentin … ” the man said, pausing to catch his breath. “Quentin Reedy. I’m the driver. Reconquest! It’s Reconquest! They made me!”

“All right,” said Hayes, accelerating onto the exit ramp, again catching sight of the flatbed with two HSD cruisers, one in front, one behind. “What’s their plan?”

“You have to call it in! They have to blow the charges.” Quentin began to laugh. “Boom! Just call it in and the Merg can activate the self-destruct. You need to drive the other way and just call it in. We’re too close. And you have to tell them I jumped out of the truck. I did everything I could, but they knew who I was.”

Hayes was noting that this man was telling him a lot of what he had to do. He had this under control and didn’t need some truck driver to tell him how to do his job. “I’m gonna take out the tire on the rear cruiser,” said Hayes, rolling down the window. He leaned out and fired, missing the first time. “Come to daddy,” he said.

“Please listen to me!” yelled Quentin. “Or let me out! There are five charges on that truck. Any of them could kill us from a half mile away. You have to stop the car and call it in. They will blow the charges, there is a plan for this kind of thing.”

Hayes’ second shot pierced the rear passenger side tire of the stolen cruiser, and it swerved off the side of the road. He took another shot at the driver, but the man was already ducking by the time he drove past. Quentin Reedy was still yelling, but Hayes did not want to listen. The man said they could just call it in, but how long would it take? What if they abandoned the truck when he stopped his pursuit? He didn’t need some dweeb flicking a switch on a computer, he could handle this himself. They were on an old state highway, two lanes speeding past long-abandoned homes. Hayes was quickly coming up to the flatbed, and oddly there were three people standing on it, hiding behind the charge on the rear of the bed.

“Are those geniuses hiding behind a bomb?” Hayes asked, chuckling to himself.

“Sarge,” said Patterson. “You’re better at all this than me, but if we back up a bit and let them ahead, we can call it in, see what they want us to do, still stay close enough to catch up with them.”

There was some logic here, that giant beast wasn’t about to lose them on a two lane road in a residential neighborhood. They could call it, wait it out, and probably get treated to a pretty fun fireworks show. But then he saw her. The girl who laughed at him when she drove off with Barker. Not even thinking, he leaned back out and fired at her, bullet bouncing off the giant bomb.

“Bad idea! Bad fucking idea!” Reedy yelled.

“Swerve a little bit back and forth so she can’t take cover,” Hayes ordered, and Patterson complied.

“You remember me, sweetheart?!” Hayes yelled at her, not really caring if she could hear. “You still laughing? You still dancing over there! Cause I caught you! You’re mine!”

He fired again, not particularly concerned that they had left the town and moved into farmland. He emptied his clip.

Reedy had mercifully stopped complaining, and Hayes gleefully shoved in the new clip, his elbow guiding the steering wheel, practically humming to himself with excitement. He was going to put a bullet through her eye and then they could talk about the plan. Then, they could call it in.

A bullet pierced the glass between Patterson and Hayes. Reedy was screaming, but it sounded like in a panicky way and not a mortally wounded way. Hayes caught sight of the shooter, a woman, probably mid-thirties, leaning around the side of the big bomb on Hayes’ side. He took a shot and she took cover. He waited for her to poke back out and then pop-pop, blood splatter and she was down.

“Now the other one,” he said.

He had her. The girl who laughed at him. He began to pull back on the trigger.

And then he felt the impact from behind. The HSD car he’d taken out by shooting the tire had caught up and slammed into the back of them, burning as hard it could on a bare rim, sparks flying behind it. Patterson swerved, almost into a ditch before righting the car.

“Dammit!” yelled Hayes.

They were so damn close. The flatbed, going way too fast, was turning onto a dirt road leading to an old farm, everything shaking, but nothing tipping as it took the wide turn, smashing off part of a gate on its way in.

Hayes took a shot at the HSD cruiser behind him, but missed as Patterson took his own turn, following the flatbed. They were now coming down a row of trees leading further into the farm.

“Get in front of the flatbed!” Hayes ordered, buckling in.

But then there were more of them. They were waiting for them in the trees. They weren’t even wearing camouflage, just three Reconquest assholes in jeans and soiled T-shirts firing rifles.

Hayes was yelling at Patterson, and then suddenly Patterson’s forehead had a hole in it. Everywhere was blood and glass. The car slipped off the road and slammed into a tree.

He had no time to think. They were going to kill him. This was a set-up. Reconquest had set him up. This was an assassination. No, no, no, I’m going to survive, he thought. He would survive and the kid would be okay, and they’d get Barker. Fucking Barker.

He pushed himself out of the car, watching the flatbed and the two cruisers continue merrily on their way down the path. He heard footsteps, and he turned, firing a shot into the throat of his would-be assassin.

The other two were just standing there, trying to reload their rifles. He caught one in the chest and the other in the leg. He kept firing until his clip was empty again. They were dead and he was screaming.

He ran back to the car to find his partner’s lifeless body resting against the steering wheel.

Quentin Reedy was crying. He didn’t even know the kid, so he was just crying for himself.

“I’m going to call it in,” said Hayes. He was calm. He was in control.

Quentin Reedy laughed in a morbid sort of way at this. Hayes reloaded his gun with the last clip he had left in the car.

“Tell them they need to blow it now,” said Reedy, sounding defeated. “And tell them they had The Senator’s guy with them. Ezra Barker.”

“He’s dead,” said Hayes.

“He’s with them and he’s helping them,” Reedy insisted. “You haven’t listened to me and look where it got us. They have him and the Merg need to—”

And Reedy was dead. Bang. One shot at close range and Hayes had killed him.

Really though, Hayes thought, Reconquest had killed him.

“No time! We have no time!” Sums was yelling, and she was referring to the mission, but Barker really thought she could also be alluding to the steady stream of blood out of her left arm.

“You’re injured,” Barker said. All he wanted in that moment was for her to be okay.

“We have seconds until four of these explode and we’re all ashes in a crater,” Sums announced.

There were three vehicles in the barn: the flatbed, or really just the rear of it, another delivery truck, this with a twenty to twenty-five foot bed with what looked like a hydraulic tilt and a giant shipping container sitting on it, open at the back, and a similarly sized crane truck. Manivelle was operating the crane while Rupture and Iku did their best to tie chains around the explosive charge so Manivelle could lift it.

There were three other people Barker had never seen before holding rifles and standing by the entrance to the barn. Barker wanted to ask who they were, but he didn’t think anyone wanted to talk to him now.

“Barker!” Sums yelled. “Help with the bomb!”

Barker swelled with joy at Sums asking him to participate. This was not a healthy response, but he still felt it and jumped up onto the flatbed as quickly as he could. It was a challenge because there was not a simple spot to attach the chains, and they could not move the charge, not even with the combined strength of the three of them.

“That was that cop,” Arkansas said, leaning out of the cab of the new delivery truck, which Barker noted was either stolen or painted to look exactly like an official Merg vehicle. It had the sector number, the correct coordinates of its base, and the silhouette of a Merg standing up on its rear legs painted across the side.

“Go!” yelled Iku.

“Is it on?” Manivelle asked.

“As good as it’s going to get!” Rupture declared.

The explosive charge lifted off the back of the truck, and wobbled as though it might fall right onto the ground, but it maneuvered well enough. Arkansas slowly backed her delivery truck up to meet it while Iku and Rupture leapt off the flatbed to help guide it onto a pad set up for it inside the container. Barker followed, but it was already inside by the time they got there.

Sums had also hopped down and was rushing toward the container. “Finish securing it on the way, time to go!”

“HSD coming,” one of the strangers announced, not really much emotion in his voice. “Just one.”

“Do your best to kill the HSD,” said Sums, but Barker sensed a “but it doesn’t really matter” in her voice and he realized these people weren’t leaving. They were staying in the barn that would be vaporized.

Manivelle had jumped out of the crane truck and boosted Sums into the container. Soon, it was all of them in there except Arkansas behind the steering wheel. Iku slammed the door shut and they were in complete darkness.

Barker felt the truck move, and they were off, going out the far side of the barn from where they’d come in.

“They’re not leaving,” said Barker.

He heard a flick and saw the light from Iku holding a small kerosene lamp. “No,” the man said. “No, they will stay.”

“But, why? There’s no reason.”

“Bodies,” said Sums coldly. “That’s the B Team. They don’t come back. They were here to help us if we needed help, which we did. And we always figured HSD would come here before the Merg blew the charges. Well, we hoped they would at least. We wanted them to see there were humans still here so they wouldn’t think we ran off with one of the charges.”

“Ah,” said Barker.

“We go out the back way, and he never sees us,” said Iku. “Inside that barn are five trackers, and as far as the Merg know, five charges.”

“And three people,” Barker said.

“Six,” said Sums. “There were three at the front.”

“Okay, I only saw three,” said Barker, but no one cared what he saw.

“Death to the Merg,” said Sums and everyone else joined her in adding, “Death to Collaborators.”

Hayes walked unsteadily toward the barn, holding his Merg radio in his hand. It was quite a marvel, always a perfect connection. He was a couple hundred yards away, which seemed too far to him at the moment. Patterson was dead. The kid.

“This is Sergeant Connor Hayes,” he said. “Officer down.”

“Sergeant, please transmit your coordinates.”

“I followed a transport from the weapons depot near here,” he said, not trying to ignore the question, but not in the right mind to answer it. “It was stolen by Reconquest. They’re in a barn with it on this farm here. I see two or three of them guarding the barn. I’m … ” He remembered there was a button to transmit coordinates. He knew that, it was strange he had forgotten. “Okay, you have them.”

“Please confirm,” said the dispatcher. “The transport truck was stolen.”

“Correct,” he said.

He was about to ask if they were sending medical, which seemed pointless, but before he before he could speak the world exploded.

At least the world he could see in front of him. It was a giant blast of fire that obliterated the barn and knocked over trees. He was on his back and he had no clue if it was because of some kind of shock wave or if he had just fallen down. And then he was running for the trees, fear of falling debris propelling him forward. He slipped, and got back up, sprinting frantically, hearing sounds of large objects landing around him.

And then, it was quiet.

It had been so quick. They just blew the whole thing. It had been a farm and now it was a crater and ash and the air tasted like metal.

It had taken a second.

He cursed the truck driver, Reedy. He cursed Barker. He cursed Reconquest.

“All of this for nothing!” he yelled at the crater in front of him. “You killed the kid for nothing! Just to blow yourselves up!” He stood and spit. And then he collapsed.

Chapter Eighteen

The Senator was the most powerful human being on Earth. She thought of the quote about Alexander the Great from the movie Die Hard. Hans Gruber says, “When he saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.” Something like that, and then Hans Gruber fell out of a building. That was a lesson right there.

The Senator was neither weeping nor falling, but she was starting to realize she had reached the end of her ambition. The entire world was the breadth of her domain, and it was only downhill from here. Her whole life had been about reaching greater heights, and it occurred to her now that her job from now on was to cling to power and not get killed. It was like a game she could only win by dying peacefully in her sleep decades later. She did not like this game, but that was the price of success.

And to be clear, it was not an easy game. She previously only had to worry about managing her own sector. Now, any hiccup on any continent and some angry, impatient bug-looking aliens would be demanding she fix it.

And apparently there was a big hiccup. Because her new Barker, a young woman named Alyssa Bowersox, was yelling her name while Merg hoverships landed outside her new office, a hollowed-out former big box store a couple miles away from her old office. There was lots of space, lots of humans typing on computers, monitoring situations in other sectors now that she was in charge of everything.

“Senator!” yelled Alyssa Bowersox, running down an aisle to find The Senator at her oak desk in what had previously been the electronics section.

“Give it to me!” The Senator yelled, but before she could Merg were coming through the doors, perhaps a dozen, which was a larger number than she recalled seeing in person in quite a while. Usually they just sent two.

There were six translators walking briskly beside the Merg as they entered. “The Merg desire to speak with The Senator!” announced one, an older man with a great speaking voice, maybe a stage actor before the arrival.

“I’m coming!” said The Senator, rising and stepping toward them, showing an urgency because it was a really big building and she wanted them to not get angrier on the walk. “Give it quick,” she whispered to Alyssa.

“Reconquest stole some big demolition equipment, tried to run off, HSD named Hayes called it in.”

Hayes, she noted. She wasn’t great with names, but she was pretty sure he was the one who tried to pass some random corpse off as Barker.

“And?” The Senator asked.

“They traced it and activated the self-destruct.”

“Hayes?”

“Alive, partner and truck driver dead.”

She was reaching the Merg. She could not read Merg expressions, but the translators did their best to convey emotions and all of them looked like she was getting thrown off Nakatomi Tower.

“Thank God I sent Hayes up there!” The Senator yelled. “Man’s a hero, a true hero.”

The Merg chattered, and she felt like she’d thrown them off at the start, which was definitely a positive. “The Merg are displeased,” said the lead translator, and those had been the last words a lot of people had heard.

“I’m displeased for them!” The Senator called out. Too loud, she told herself. “I’ve just started taking over the job of organizing all the sectors under your glorious control, which is this whole green and blue marble we got here, and these other sectors, well, we got work to do.”

“The Merg would like me to note this happened in your home sector.”

“Exactly!” said The Senator. “The troublemakers are all coming in here from other sectors trying to ruin what we’ve achieved here. Chief Echevarria and I had Hayes and his partner … ”

“Malachi Patterson,” said Alyssa Bowersox.

“That poor man,” said The Senator. “We had them trying to root out a gang from 24519 that had snuck in looking to cause trouble.”

“The Merg were curious why officers based here were so far north,” said the translator.

“And that’s why,” said The Senator, feeling pretty good that she was nailing this. “I’m working on cleaning all of this up, spreading what is working here in 24518 to the rest of Merg 12.”

She did not like the chatter she heard. Barker was the only non-translator she knew who could at least a little understand the Merg, but even she could tell this was not great. She needed to think quick.

“And what I’m hearing from my people through their investigations is this is about upsetting … the visit.”

This got the Merg talking very quickly with all their scratchy clicks. “The visit is a secret.”

“It’s supposed to be,” said The Senator. “But we got leaks. Other sectors, that is. That’s how they stole that truck. And if it weren’t for my officer, they might have used those suckers to blow up something valuable to the Merg. Me and my team, we’re going to root out all the traitors and cowards for you. Find out who’s behind this and make an example of them. And we’re close.”

Scratchy clicks, and then the translator said, “The Merg wish to know how close?”

“We’ve got them on the run already,” said The Senator, wise enough to not give a measurable answer, one that could later be used against her. “Not that what happened today was a good thing,” she paused, letting them understand that she was about to tell them that what happened today was a good thing, “but they had a whole plan based on us being disorganized, unprepared, and my Sergeant Hayes, he blew the whole thing up. Literally yes, but also, there goes their whole plan, there goes their best people, they’re dust and vapor and now we’re just doing clean-up duty. Rounding up the leaders, and showing what happens to humans who betray the Merg.”

“The Merg are hearing that you have the leaders,” said the translator. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Our HSD are closing in, matter of time. Should have them by tomorrow.” The Senator felt this was a perfectly achievable timeline. Just grab some tall people and execute them. The Merg seemed to believe tall people were naturally troublemakers.

“The Merg wish to know what you will do with these leaders,” the translator said.

“Kill ‘em,” said The Senator, a simple answer but given with gusto.

“The Merg wish you to bring them to Zero City for the visitor. She will be hungry,” said the translator.

“Great,” said The Senator. “Done.” She felt very unnerved by the translator’s suggestion that the visitor was going to eat humans in front of her, but she also wondered how many people she needed to provide. She made a mental note to call Echevarria and tell him to just send a few full buses to Zero City.

“The Merg will see you there as well. Tomorrow morning. Zero City. The visitor will arrive the following day.”

“It’s an honor,” said The Senator, slightly concerned they might be feeding her to a Merg in a couple days.

She was alone. No Barker, no Clay. There was no one she could really trust.

Except, oddly, there was.

“You need a doctor,” said Barker, and nobody wanted to hear it, especially Sums.

“I’m fine,” she said, still bleeding.

“Your job is done,” said Iku. “Take Traitor and Rupture and go to Chicago.”

“Don’t want Barker,” said Sums. “Take him to the moon or kill him, we’re done.”

Barker wanted to point out that he was in the truck with them and could hear everything they were saying, but clearly they knew. He was a piece of cargo at this point. He’d told them everything they needed to know, and that was it.

“You should take Traitor for the same reason you cannot trust Traitor,” said Iku.

“You can trust me,” said Barker, worried there was pain coming.

Iku’s eyes flickered from the lantern light, the only source of illumination in the container. “Traitor, do you know what you are?”

“I’m sorry,” he began to say, but it was clear he’d gotten the question wrong.

“No, we are past that for now,” said Iku. “You are not a hero or a coward. Not a villain or pacifist. You are a survivor. You are the man who comes back from every mission because that was what mattered most to you. The world will burn and Ezra Barker will light a cigar from its embers. No one on this planet is better suited to survive the Merg than this man. Take him, and never turn your back on him.”

“Fine,” said Sums. “It’s probably dark out by now. We get out at the rendezvous point, take Barker. That leaves you, Arkansas, Manivelle, and Campal. That enough?”

“We’re going to ride in this box to the moon,” said Iku with a sense of wonder in his voice. “It will have to be enough. Do you have enough to take on a city full of Merg?”

Sums nodded. “I’ll radio and tell the base to send everyone we can spare.”

Barker raised his hand and then realized he looked ridiculous, “I’m sorry, but does anyone have any questions? I’m happy to troubleshoot your plan for getting the container into the dock.”

“No, Traitor,” said Iku. “We have a plan. Your job now is to keep Sums and Rupture alive. And your payment is each minute of your own life.”

“Sure, okay,” said Barker, feeling strangely like the child of divorcing parents in this moment. “Can I ask what the plan is to get this on an outgoing ship?”

Everyone looked around at each other. “What if he escapes?” asked Manivelle. “We had one hostage escape today?”

“You got something to say?” asked Sums, confusing Barker for a second until he remembered the truck driver, Reedy. Maybe he had escaped, maybe he was safe.

“No need to revisit,” said Manivelle. “Just caution.”

“It’s your mission, your call,” Sums said to Iku.

“Very well, Traitor,” said Iku. “We are going to do something very similar, but this time on the way to the dock. Kill the HSD, unload the truck, reload, keep a gun on the driver.”

Barker was shaking his head. “Same trick twice,” said Barker. “HSD knows what you did the first time, they’re on high alert. The Senator … ” he paused to think of her. This happened in her territory. The Merg didn’t have a “Three strikes and you’re out” policy, they had a “Kill everyone who even mildly upsets us policy.” Had his help doomed The Senator?

“Bro, you got a wire loose or something,” Arkansas said. “Somebody reboot Barker.”

“No, sorry,” said Barker. “You’ve created chaos, and in politics you can be caught up in chaos or take advantage of it.”

“This is not politics,” said Iku.

“Everything is politics,” said Barker, stopping himself there because there was no reason to lecture his captors. “There were procedures and protocols before you stole that truck and there are new procedures and protocols that started the moment the charges blew. No one knows what they are, but everyone knows there are going to be consequences.”

“And?” asked Iku.

Barker did something close to a smile. “I just need to invent those consequences.”

Chapter Nineteen

Hayes’ head hurt. No one sent him to a hospital because hospitals were few and far between and reserved for serious wounds to important people. He was just a normal HSD and he’d live. When the local HSD showed up at the scene, they’d just thrown him in the back of a cruiser and driven him to the closest base. He had no idea where that was. He was still in shock when he’d left the scene.

“His name is Officer Malachi Patterson,” Hayes had said. “Good officer. Died a hero.”

Everyone had nodded at him. “Good officer, yes, sir,” one of them had said.

It was dark outside, he could see that now that he looked up for the first time in a while. He did not have a sense of how long he had been here, sitting in the lounge area of the HSD base, staring straight down at the ground or at an empty vending machine. He had been going through the events in his mind, about what he could have done differently, but that was a fool’s game. He’d made the decision to engage the enemy, and the enemy had surprised him with the depths of their stupidity and depravity. Was he supposed to know they’d steal a truck full of explosives just to blow it up? Just to send a message? “Reconquest has an inhuman disregard for life” was the only message he could decode from it.

He wanted to call his daughter Erin. He wanted to yell at her that this is what would have happened to the Chans. They would have died, but before they did they would commit heinous acts like this that left heroes like Patterson dead. Is that what Erin wanted? To watch her friend or whatever he was to her and his parents become killers and martyrs with no real cause?

The door opened. He expected an officer but it was The Senator. Red pantsuit, shiny leather shoes looking straight out of the box.

“Our hero,” she said.

“Senator,” he replied.

“You’ve been through a lot,” she said, sitting down beside him at the long meeting table. “And I know you’ve lost someone.”

“Yes, Senator,” said Hayes.

“And I don’t want to add more to your list of concerns on such a somber day, but as I said, you are the hero, the one who stopped what could have been a real ugly situation for everyone.”

“Thank you, Senator,” he said, growing impatient with all the BS.

“So, let me cut to it, Sergeant Hayes. You were supposed to kill Ezra Barker, but you screwed up, and I need you to tell me where he is.”

“Senator?” Hayes mumbled dumbly, completely unprepared for this moment.

“I don’t want to come at you like this, believe me. I feel for your loss and I know it wasn’t your choice to go after Barker, but you did, you failed, and I’m real certain it’s not a coincidence we are where we are because of it, with you hundreds of miles outside your jurisdiction. So, tell me what you know and maybe we’ll both make it through the rest of the weekend.”

It was a funny phrase, the weekend. Something that didn’t apply to anyone anymore. She had him, but he had her, so he took a breath. “Reconquest grabbed Barker outside his apartment. We were there, but he ran outside for some reason and they grabbed him. Tried to chase him down, but they got away. Figured it wouldn’t matter since the only person in that office who would know all the codes for getting into, say, a weapons depot, was you.”

“Exactly,” said The Senator, not even flinching. “See, you’re thinking this is a shakedown, and what I’m telling you is that we’re tied together right now and we sink or swim together. We fight, it’s the bottom of the ocean. We try to blackmail each other, we’ll … allow me to be literal, we’ll be sharing the same mass grave in a couple hours.”

Hayes nodded. “The driver, Reedy, before Reconquest shot him, he told me Barker had been with them. But, then they went into the barn and boom.”

“You see him in there? And the others?” The Senator asked.

“I just saw a couple people guarding the outside of it,” said Hayes. “But that’s where the stolen cruisers and the flatbed went.”

“You underestimated them and you underestimated Barker,” said The Senator. “Not picking a fight, but telling you because you’re still doing it.”

“You think they escaped?” Hayes asked. “Even if that’s true, that was their play. All the charges blew.”

The Senator seemed unconvinced. “What would it look like if only four out of five blew? Or three out of five? Would it have been smaller than what you saw?”

“No clue,” said Hayes.

“See, and there’s not going to be an investigation,” said The Senator. “Let’s say they could get one or two of them. Knowing why the Merg wanted Barker dead, where do you think those big ol’ bombs are headed?”

“Zero City,” said Hayes.

“Exactly. And it just so happens that I’m headed there. And you’re headed there. Big hero you are. If we want to survive, if you and your wife and daughter and me and my Cocker Spaniels are going to survive, nothing can go wrong there. We’re going to make sure of that. For all the power I’ve got, and you’ve been busy so you might not have heard that I’m the most powerful human on this planet, we are both one exploding mailbox, or Merg tripping on its own feet and spraining its ankle away from the pits. So, you sit here for a few more minutes and you mourn your partner. And then you get up, and drive me to Zero City. And you take charge of this situation.”

“Yes, Senator.”

“Anything you need, you tell me, I’m Queen of the Humans for at least another day and you’re my knight. Got it?”

“Yes, Senator.”

Most things were harder, but crime was easier, Arkansas thought to herself. She had always been a law-abiding citizen pre-Merg, and so she did not have all that much experience, but she had watched a lot of TV and she remembered the days of DNA and fingerprinting and hidden cameras and wily detectives who stared off into space until they exclaimed “That’s it!”

None of that now. Arkansas had been party to two of the biggest crimes in the Merg era, had been seen doing so by an HSD, and she was merrily on her way to biggest crimes numbers three and four. No photos circulating of her, no APBs. The Merg policies of not trusting video cameras and murdering anyone who admitted even the slightest failures had really bitten them in the ass here, and so Arkansas, in her mind Outlaw Numero Uno (and at the very least Numero Tres o Cuatro) was standing in the parking lot of a mining facility just chatting it up with Ralph, the traffic coordinator.

“How long is this inspection going to take?” Ralph asked.

“As long as it takes,” said Arkansas in her most adult, professional voice. “Listen, Ralph, I hear you, I really do, but The Senator herself called this in. You heard about what happened earlier today?”

Ralph was very uncomfortable. Even in the darkness, she could see a little bit of the color drain out of his face. It was late, and Ralph had said he was at the end of his shift (another thing Barker got right, even knowing the hours of the different shifts at the mines. Barker was without a doubt the greatest gift Reconquest had ever received and possibly the worst person she’d ever met.)

“You’re going to pull all these containers off my trucks,” said Ralph. “Every one of them, and inspect them? Because, I’m not going to tell HSD how to do their job, and we’re all grateful for the work that you do, but I have five trucks going out to the dock tonight, and if they’re late, it’s on me. You hear what I’m saying?”

Arkansas nodded. This was nearly verbatim what Barker had predicted the man would say. She had been nervous about being the face of this operation. It would have been Sums, but she had an obvious gunshot wound to the arm, and so Arkansas was out in her stolen HSD uniform trying to make herself look older.

As per Barker’s instructions, she made a very concerned face, like she was feeling for poor Ralph. Poor Ralph who was a tool of oppression. Poor Ralph who would run screaming if he knew who he was talking to. Poor Ralph who got to work a job directing the trucks into and out of the mining facility while others were dying below.

Arkansas had never been to a mine before, and it was uglier than she’d expected. The air was difficult to breathe, the land had been torn up and left a mess. And unlike the weapons depot, which apparently only had a few hours of work a day, the mines were twenty-four hours. And Barker knew that poor Ralph would be here at the end of a fourteen-hour shift and would not care about how young Arkansas looked or that she’d shown up in a truck and not an HSD vehicle. She knew the codes and the call and response, and she was wearing an HSD badge, and he would just be thinking, “How do I get out of here?”

Manivelle and Rupture stood behind her, looking unhappy to be there as Barker had instructed, but also they were very uncomfortable in this setting, pushing their luck on how many times they could impersonate officers before they screwed it up.

“Tell you what,” said Arkansas. “My guys, we’ll open up some of the trucks, peek around. Maybe pull one or two containers for a quick inspection. And then we’ll get out of here quick.” There was some truth in this. They would open up a container, but she neglected to mention the part where they were going to substitute in their own container with an explosive charge which she, Manivelle, Iku, and Campal would hop in before Rupture shut them in. It was also true that she would get out of there very quickly, but she also omitted the direction she was leaving the dock would be straight up into the air at thousands of miles per second.

“Thank you!” Ralph said, as though Arkansas was saving his life. “That would be great.”

“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes if your forklift guy can help us.”

“He will!” Ralph screamed.

“But,” said Arkansas, “you can’t tell anybody we weren’t here for hours.”

“You were here for hours!” Ralph agreed happily. “Selena comes in after me, she’s the traffic coordinator, and I’ll tell her you’re going to be here for hours, but not to come over here to check.”

“I like you, Ralph,” said Arkansas.

“I like you, too, Officer McCarty.”

Arkansas smiled, knowing they’d probably figure out by morning that the real Officer McCarty was in a ditch, but by then she’d be in outer fucking space.

Chapter Twenty

The Senator had arrived in Zero City and could not wait to get out. No one had mentioned to her that the whole place was crawling with Merg. She’d been a little freaked out when twelve of them arrived the day before, and now they were everywhere.

She stood at the window staring down at the scene below. There were tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. She was on the nineteenth story of what had been a luxury hotel with what had probably been considered an excellent city view before the arrival. She tried to guess how much a night in this room had cost back then. It was hard to estimate because the value instantly dropped due to the view being full of reminders that she might be getting killed later today.

She loved the Merg, this was true. She appreciated what they had done and the trust they had put in her. But, they had high standards and quick triggers.

“I’ve changed all the codes,” said Hayes, sitting in front of a laptop. “All the verbal codes Barker knew are now obsolete.”

“What else?” The Senator asked.

“I’ve given a description of the young woman I saw on the truck yesterday, the one who drove off with Barker. And the bodies of the HSD they killed, God rest their souls, were found, and every HSD here knows to look out for those names on their uniforms.”

“And the bombs,” said The Senator. “If they got off with a couple of those, can we track them down?”

Hayes shook his head. “They had tracers. If you’re right and they got one off, it would have been destroyed in the explosion. It’s possible the Merg have some way of tracking them, some kind of … I don’t know, chemical signature or something, but we’d have to ask. Which neither of us wants, correct?”

“Nope,” said The Senator. “So, Zero City is full of Merg. Are they fighting down there?”

Hayes stepped over to the window. “Looks like some of them, and now it’s over. I forgot to tell you, your man Damian Clay started a—”

“I already know about Lamp Town,” said The Senator. “Your bosses at HSD knew about Lamp Town. Fun way to spend an evening. Clay knew how to throw a party.”

Hayes looked perplexed, hurt, and possibly angry, but he seemed to brush it aside. “Clay’s second-in-command at Lamp Town, she told me and Patterson the Merg had been getting more aggressive lately.”

“That’s true,” said The Senator. “Hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, Lamp Town started having more fights and they seemed to get more heated.”

“Do you think that has anything to do with what’s going on here?” Hayes asked.

The Senator considered the question. “Like they’re mad about something and had to let off some steam?”

“Maybe,” said Hayes. “Don’t know, just trying to get ahead of Reconquest. They’ve been ahead of me a couple times lately, and I don’t intend to let it happen again.”

“Right, well, they got Barker, but all he did was visit here, same as us. He walked the route the visitor is taking, we can do that today, see if there’s any other info we can get from that.”

“I think Barker has reached the end of his usefulness to them then.”

Hayes made a serious face, like he was trying to break something gently to The Senator, but she refused to accept his hint. “Barker’s not dead. You could tie an anchor to that man and sink him to the bottom of the ocean and later you’d find him as an advisor for Poseidon. The man is useful. If nothing else, he is always useful. And that’s what scares me.”

“If he’s still alive, that might make things complicated today. Reconquest is going to make their move, and if Barker is with them, I’ll need to take action.”

“Yes, I understand, Sergeant Hayes. I don’t want you to kill Barker. I love Barker, he’s had my back for so long, I’m still a little lost without him. But, as much as I love Barker, and as much as I don’t want you to kill him, he’s radioactive. Hell, the Merg wanted him dead before he was accomplice to the biggest humiliation they’ve had in years. They catch him, though, they start asking us both a lot of questions. And the thing about a Merg test, is that you can get every answer right and the grade you get will still get a D for Dead. So, we can’t let the Merg get him and we can’t let him run free because Barker always finds a way to be useful. And right now he’s useful to our enemy.”

“Understood.”

“But if you do find him, and you do have to kill him, please let him know how much it pains me.”

Arkansas had been silent for hours. Ever since she got shut into the container, she had been sitting in complete darkness, neither speaking nor moving for fear that some sensor might get activated or some Merg might hear her.

The dock workers had loaded the container with her, Iku, Manivelle, Campal, and a big old bomb in it onto a massive truck which had driven them, she believed, to the space dock, and loaded them in something that she very much hoped was a spaceship. She wanted to cry and throw up at the same time. It had been hours of this and she was losing it. Iku had left his kerosene lamp with Sums. It would be too much temptation in the container. And so they sat in silence. Some of that time Arkansas had used to visualize the mission. A substantial portion had been taken up by doubts about what could go wrong. Arkansas had always prided herself on confidence, but there were so many variables at play and one big one nagged at her.

But finally, after starting to wonder if she even existed anymore, she heard a sound from within the container. It was the “RRIIIPP” of duct tape.

“Iku,” whispered Arkansas.

“Yes,” Iku replied quietly.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to tape everyone to the side of the container,” he said, like this was a totally normal thing to do.

“Why?” Arkansas asked.

“Because we are going to blast off into space at thousands of miles per hour and there are no seat belts,” he answered, and it seemed obvious with his tone, and yet she probably would have hoped for a better solution to the problem of her bashing her skull against something at escape velocity.

“Can I ask you something?” Arkansas asked.

“Of course, if you ask very quietly,” Iku answered.

One question she had was whether they would be able to breathe whatever air got pumped into the ship. They had been operating under the assumption that the Merg breathed the same air as them on Earth, so they likely had human friendly air on their spaceships, but no human had ever been on one, so that answer was a big old “Probably.” Another question was whether, if she could breathe the air, would they pump that into the cargo hold. She and Manivelle had discussed this question briefly, but they could only hope because otherwise they would just die. A third question was whether they would have enough oxygen in this sealed container before they could break out, but Manivelle had done the math in front of her on this one, shown her the calculations and used enough Greek letters and superscript to convince her that they would definitely not die of oxygen deprivation unless there was a slight delay or someone breathed more than expected. These were not questions for Iku, however.

“So, do you trust Barker?” Arkansas asked.

“Traitor is a traitor. I do not trust him, no, I will never trust him if he saves my life a thousand times. What is your real question?”

“So, we’re going up to the moon. And at first the plan was to drop a bomb and run. Now the plan is to run around looking for a giant Merg, get her on a ship somehow, drop the bomb, and then fly off before it explodes. And what if Barker’s wrong? What if he’s tricking us?”

“Then we die,” said Iku plainly. “If he’s telling the truth, our fates are likely the same. You ask if I trust Barker. We have made a decision that his claim is important enough we know we would regret ignoring it. I hate Ezra Barker, he has betrayed his species, but am I to turn my back on this chance because he is who he is?”

“Bad man,” said Arkansas.

“How many have you killed?” Iku asked.

She had not been prepared for this question, and her mind reeled. “Humans or Merg?” she asked.

“Humans first.”

“Man, I could probably figure it out if I thought about it, but I don’t want to. Maybe fifty.”

“I have killed so many more. How many Merg?”

“One,” said Arkansas. “Rammed it head-on with a stolen hovership. Destroyed the ship, but killed the Merg.”

“It is them,” said Iku. “We are killing each other because of them. They turn us against one another, and we are who we are because of the choices they gave us. We have lost so much and they took it from us. Barker is a tool. He was theirs and for now he is ours. I don’t trust him. I hate him. If we succeed today and free our planet, I would gladly put the knife to his throat. But we cannot ignore him. We cannot choose to blind ourselves because of the divisions our oppressors created.”

“Okay,” said Arkansas. “I’m ready.”

She heard the ripping sound again and felt Iku, as gentlemanly as he could, feel around her midsection as he judged where to start securing her to the side. There was an intimacy to it, and Arkansas, confused, scared, and desperate to feel something other than the first two things, felt an urge to say, “No one can see anything and we’ve got a few minutes.” But there was a professionalism to Iku’s touch, like a patdown by security. It was almost as if he anticipated her loneliness and communicated through his touch that thank you, but he had a mission to prepare for and probably his own lovers to mourn in his own way.

Several more rips and she was stuck like a fly in a spider’s web. She felt immovable, but she was going to get shot up to the moon soon so only time would tell.

“You can do this,” said Iku.

“I know,” said Arkansas.

“You have doubt.”

“Well, yeah, man. I told you, whole mission is just a big ‘Whoop, let’s hope for the best’ kind of thing.”

“You have doubt.”

She had the ability to move her arms and she thought she might have to wipe away a tear, but it held. “Just like, every mission before this, I thought I was gonna get it. And then I didn’t. And, okay great, but it felt like it didn’t matter. We were dropping bombs on shit that would get rebuilt next day. Some of these missions, we didn’t even do that much. This is it, Iku. This is the chance.”

“Yes,” said Iku as though he’d been waiting for her to say it.

“So, yeah, I don’t want to be the lady who had a chance to stop the Merg and she turned left when she should have turned right and now we’re doomed for eternity.”

“Yes,” said Iku.

“Why’d you ask me if you just gonna say ‘yes’ over and over again?”

“Because I share those fears,” said Iku. “I fear failure now more than ever before. And I have no answers for you. They sent the best they had for this mission. That is you, me, Campal, and Manivelle. Just understand that if we fail today, it is because we were not the soldier, the pilot, the mechanic, and the mad bomber they thought we were. So, we can blame our superiors for their poor judgment and excessive faith in us.”

Arkansas laughed. “And we’ll be dead, so that’s on them to feel bad about mistaking us for people who could do this.”

“Explosives!” Campal whispered in the darkness. “Not mad bomber! Never mind, actually, I like it.”

“Arkansas,” said Iku. “I wish I could talk away your fears. I cannot. But I will tell you the one thought that is pushing me forward now.”

“What’s that?”

“Today, we are going to make the Merg bleed.”

“Yeah, man.”

“If you see that blood, keep going because there’s plenty more.”

“Yeah, Iku.”

His voice was still a whisper, but he leaned close into her ear. “Can you make them bleed?”

“I can,” she said.

Sums had mostly stopped bleeding, but Barker had trouble looking away. He wanted to say something, wanted to remind her how important she was to him, but she had never enjoyed him saying that. If he told her again, he worried she might just cut off the arm to teach him a lesson.

“What is it, Barker?” Sums asked.

The sun had risen and Sums, Rupture, and Barker were driving, in a general sense, toward Chicago in a stolen garbage truck, taken from the mining facility where they’d left the rest of the group. One could not drive directly to Chicago because, Barker was assuming here that the Merg had followed the recommendations from his report, the main roads were teeming with HSD.

“I didn’t say anything,” Barker replied.

“No, what is it today? The color?”

“Sunday is tan,” said Barker. “So, these khakis I haven’t changed out of in several days are good.”

“So, Barker, have you reached the end of your usefulness or do you have an idea on how we get into Chicago and protect this Queen? Whom we also might need to kill if the other plan fails?”

“Good question,” said Barker, thinking the wrong answer might mean death. “I wrote the report, and I was quite thorough. Increased HSD in the surrounding area. Merg ships probably doing recon.” He paused because he had nothing.

“And what about the lake?” Rupture asked as he turned the truck onto another road that would lead them in the wrong direction, only to turn again and continue kind of driving to Chicago.

“The what?” asked Barker.

“Lake Michigan,” said Rupture.

“I’m familiar with it,” said Barker.

“It’s a really big lake.”

“I don’t disagree with you, Rupture.”

“What did you tell them to do to keep us from coming in from the lake?”

“Nothing,” said Barker, feeling a little defensive now that his work was being questioned. “Does Reconquest have submarines I don’t know about? Do any of you have scuba gear?”

There was an odd pause, like Rupture and Sums were having a conversation with each other in their own minds. They weren’t looking at one another, Rupture straight ahead and the road and Sums out her window, but they were pointedly not looking at each other.

“Is there scuba gear?

“You know how to scuba dive?” Rupture asked.

“Never, more of a snorkeler,” answered Sums.

“I could teach you,” Rupture offered. “I grew up in Florida, love the water.”

“Wait,” said Barker. “Is there a submarine? Does Reconquest have a submarine?”

Sums took a long exhale. “Not a good idea.”

“No,” said Rupture. “But, should discuss it.”

“There has to be a better option,” Sums insisted. “Barker, give me something. Secret tunnels, Merg blind spots, shallow canals.”

“If you have a sub, take the sub,” said Barker. “Sorry, it’s just that there’s no easy way in. Chicago has the Pedway, which includes underground tunnels, but you’d have to get into the city first. And they check those because people hid there in the first days after the arri—invasion. Then there are the canals, but people used those, too, hid in there and then ambushed the Merg. They’ll be checking those. Any underground train tunnels were imploded on day two.”

“You know a lot about Chicago,” said Sums suspiciously. “You help the Merg kill everyone there?”

“No,” said Barker before he quickly changed it to, “Yes, I did. I never contributed very much, just some maps, but yes, I helped them do it. But now I’m telling you how to get past them. They never dealt with anyone coming from the lake. They’re not ready for it. No mines, no chains. You want to get in before they figure out we stole their Queen, take the crappy sub.”

“How many people you kill in Chicago?” Sums asked.

It was like this. Sometimes she would accept his presence: not as a person, but the fact that he was there. There were times he could pretend they were on the same team, and not that he was a hostage who was betraying everyone who had trusted him because of guilt and because he loved Sums. He wanted to tell her that again, and knew this wasn’t the right time, knew she would kill him for it. He stopped himself.

“I don’t know how many people died in Chicago,” said Barker. “No one knows. They don’t know how many stayed, they don’t know how many escaped. Hundreds of thousands, I’m sure. I gave them some maps, probably helped finish off a couple hundred. I thought it would be better if it was done quickly. I saw what the Merg were, and … ”

“Like Iku said, you’re a survivor,” Sums reminded him. “You don’t care about anything in the entire world except drawing breath.”

“I care about you,” Barker said, and it was very uncomfortable for everyone. “Sorry, but I don’t want you to fail.”

“If I tell you fifteen more times that I’m counting the minutes until I get to hurt you, will that take the edge off the crush?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Barker asked.

“If you hadn’t given us the information we need, if you hadn’t helped us get this far, a thousand different pieces of you would be floating down the Mississippi right now and I’d think about your screams to help me sleep at night.”

“But I did help you,” said Barker. “And I’m trying to help you now. Take the sub. They don’t know you have it, they don’t think you could pull something like that off.”

“It’s not really a sub like you’re thinking,” said Rupture. “Some drug smuggler made his own fleet, bringing over prescription drugs from Canada before the invasion. The first plan was we grab the bomb in Milwaukee and get it on the sub, hope they couldn’t track it under water.”

“Bad plan,” said Barker. “They could most definitely track it under water.”

“See, then we got you, and we made a better plan,” said Rupture. “The problem is, it’s not very reliable, the air supply is limited, it smells bad, and the air inside might be toxic. Can’t really spend more than an hour inside it. So, one sub that’s more likely to kill us than deliver us to Chicago.”

“You got plans that involve not getting killed today?” Sums asked.

“Guess we gotta call it in and pick up the sub.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“That’s the countdown,” said Manivelle at the sound of amplified Merg speech.

“Tick, tick, tick,” said Campal.

“They don’t use Earth measurements,” continued Manivelle. “But we’re clear and should take off in, say, forty seconds.”

“Don’t suppose any y’all been to space before?” asked Arkansas. “Got some good advice on how to handle launch.”

“Never an astronaut,” said Iku. “But I do know that anything that comes out of you will just float later, so try to keep everything down.”

There were so many sounds around her. She still had not laid eyes on the ship she’d be piloting shortly, but she could see it all in her mind. Five stories tall, black and white with tipped-back wings and a thick middle to hold cargo. Like a sleek, angry orca. If their container was where she thought it was, Arkansas was staring right at its dorsal fin.

The click beneath her was the release of the magnetic-lock. The scraping above her was the opening of the roof, because Merg didn’t like to keep ships out on the exposed ground for very long, giving Reconquest a chance to take their shots. In the cockpit, the pilot was running through all of their checks. She could all but hear them click through fuel, aux systems, temperature control. Check, check, check.

“Go,” said Manivelle.

And without any further warning, Arkansas was moving hundreds of miles per hour up into the air. Faster and faster, the pressure pushing against her. She felt like she was going to push so hard into the wall of the container that she’d just become part of it.

Campal was laughing and that made Manivelle laugh.

Just beneath the sound of that laughter she could barely hear Iku whisper, “Coming for you” in a voice that almost made her pity the Merg on the ship.

Four Merg, she reminded herself. Four of them, four Merg. All held down in restraints that, even for giant aliens, would take time to loosen. Killing a Merg was hard, so hard that a planet of humans had barely made a dent in their population. Knife to the neck, though. If you could get close and stab or shoot them right there behind the head, they would die like everything else died. They weren’t gods, just armored dickheads.

Behind the neck, she reminded herself.

And most of the killing would be done by Iku, the actual trained soldier, not Arkansas, the nineteen year old who had failed at everything but flying and driving when she first joined Reconquest. The woman who had never hit anything she meant to with a gun and who had been beaten in combat training by a twelve year-old girl. A large twelve year-old girl, but still got whooped.

No one expects you to be Karate Action Quick Shooter or whatever, she told herself.

“Coming for you,” Iku said, louder this time.

The physical pressure was unbearable, she felt like someone had put a safe on her chest and asked her to hold it there for a few minutes. How long had passed, she wondered. Seven minutes until acceleration stopped on a Merg ship. Seven minutes, she reminded herself. Someone had to die to get that info, so remember it.

She breathed. She did her best to breathe at least. No one knew if humans could survive the acceleration on a Merg ship, she realized. There were no tests, no humans on the moonbase that she knew about. She could just pop right now, explode all over her friends.

Seven minutes. Probably three already passed. Or maybe it had been ten seconds. She hurt so bad.

“Coming for you,” said Iku, loudly, no concern for them hearing him now.

She listened to the ship, trying to hear something changing, but it was all the roar of acceleration. They were probably in the upper atmosphere or out in space still trying to escape gravity. Probably.

Seven minutes.

Then they would open the container, float out, kill the crew, hijack the ship, fly to the moon, kidnap the Queen, fly back, kill all the Merg, get medals, and take naps. She pictured the control panel, pictured the landing site on the moon. Pictured the backward landing, activating retro-boosters, mag-locking into place. Check, check, check. Just buttons and knobs, that was all she had to do. Click, switch, tap, tap, flick, boom. Here we go, she thought.

“Coming for you,” said Iku.

Hell yeah, she thought. Hell yeah, finally let’s do this. No more blowing up gas stations and pretending they were avenging all that had been taken from them. No more moral victories, no more silent funerals, no more waking up into a nightmare. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.

Seven minutes.

Practically over by now. Practically go time. They would escape the Earth’s pull and continue along at the same speed, but it would all just stop. It wouldn’t feel like the same speed or slowing down or leveling off, it would be like stopping. She was ready. She thought about the Merg, sitting in their ship, no idea what was coming. No idea.

She’d had no warning before everything was taken from her, so it was their turn. They were going to kill them all, take their ship, and use it to kill everyone they knew. How does that feel, she wanted to ask. How does it feel to have some other species show up and destroy everything?

“Coming for you,” said Iku.

Death, acceleration, fear, pain, pressure, flick, check fuel levels, mag-lock, regret, stabbing, love, screams, revenge, buttons and knobs and loneliness and Merg blood running down her fingers into the deserts and forming new oceans.

And then everything stopped and they were free of Earth’s gravity. The pressure was gone, the acceleration had stopped. She could hear Iku pull out his knives and cut through his duct tape like a man who could not wait another second to fight.

“It is time,” he said.

“The Merg welcome you to Zero City,” said the translator, standing in front of two Merg. Most of the Merg looked the same to Hayes, but there was something about these two that made them seem older.

“Our pleasure,” said The Senator.

“The Merg extend their thanks to you, Mr. Hayes,” said the translator, leaving out his rank, just calling him Mr. Hayes like he ran a pet store or taught at an elementary school.

“I am here to serve,” said Hayes.

“The Merg regret the unfortunate death of your partner. They … they would like me to say that they understand that humans do not have the same emotional depth and intellectual complexity as the Merg, but still they regret any pain and confusion his death may have caused your brain.”

“Right, thank you,” said Hayes, annoyed at the translator for his poor phrasing choices. They had been standing around on a hot day doing pleasantries with various Merg, and Hayes had grown an appreciation for The Senator’s job. Now they were in front of some giant structure in the middle of a park and Hayes mostly did not understand why. It was a shiny metal building that looked, to Hayes, like the world’s largest bed pan. Two layers of Merg guards stood in front. For some reason, they all wore shiny brown bands around their heads.

“The Merg, in appreciation for your efforts, have decided to bestow upon you an honor never granted to any humans previously. You are to meet The Matriarch,” the translator announced.

“The Matriarch!” The Senator exclaimed, as though she had always dreamt of meeting this Merg and didn’t just discover her existence two seconds ago.

“The Merg appreciate your enthusiasm,” said the translator.

“Thank you,” said Hayes. “As a mere human this is a true honor.”

“The Merg invite you to enter,” said the translator.

He gestured at a door in the building, and The Senator entered, Hayes close behind. He had expected to walk into something like an office building, but it was mostly hollow on the inside except for the biggest Merg he had ever seen. Huge, nearly as tall as the building. It was beautiful to him, this magnificent creature. He wished his daughter were here, wished Erin could see the majesty of the Merg.

“My word,” said The Senator. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Matriarch. I am The Senator.”

“Thank you for the opportunity,” said Hayes.

The Matriarch made a noise, not a normal Merg click, but a sort of low coo. The bass of it seemed to shake his skull slightly, and he felt the sensation that there was some power in that noise, something he couldn’t put his finger on.

The Matriarch then began to make more standard Merg sounds, talking with the two older, regular sized Mergs that had accompanied The Senator and Hayes. It felt strangely like an argument. At first they were just normal click and scratch sounds, but the speed of their communication sped up and reached a higher frequency.

The Senator and Hayes turned to the translator, but he was silent, trying to show no signs of understanding. The argument ended abruptly, and The Matriarch released two more low coos, and again Hayes felt like someone was inside his head.

“The Merg wish me to tell you that The Matriarch thanks you for your service.”

“We thank her for making her home in Sector 24518,” said The Senator. This Hayes found amusing, because clearly the Matriarch did not choose to build herself a home that gave her barely any room to move, with a door she would barely be able stick one foot out of. This wasn’t a home. It was a prison.

“The Merg found the climate here on the lake most acceptable. Hot at the right times, cold at the right times,” said the translator. “The Matriarch has served the Merg well on many planets. She has been here since the beginning of the arrival.”

“Oh, well we hope she’s not leaving us to go somewhere else,” said The Senator, and that made The Matriarch lower her head down, way down to right in front of The Senator’s face. She low-cooed, somehow more powerfully than before, and The Senator ran a hand through her own hair. She looked spooked.

“The Merg wish you to know that she is leaving us, yes,” said the Translator. “And as she steps aside for another Matriarch, this is a tremendous moment for the Merg. Today is a celebration which will culminate in the Matriarch’s ascent.”

“Well, sorry you have to leave,” said The Senator, still not quite herself. “Thank you for allowing us to be here for your going-away party.”

Hayes nodded. You couldn’t ask the Merg questions, but he had a lot. The first would have been, “Why are you telling us all this?” The second would have been, “You got, maybe, a majority of all the Merg on the planet here now, and I don’t think it’s for one last bash for the old lady. What gives?”

Matriarch, he thought. The new one was coming and that’s who everybody was waiting for. They were here to do something. Did Hayes just land himself in Merg Mating Season, he wondered.

The Matriarch’s giant head was still right down by The Senator’s and their eyes seemed locked. Just completely locked. One more coo, and then Matriarch lifted its head up and began looking out the narrow slots at the top of the structure where it could see its surroundings.

“The Merg will escort you out now so you may attend to the business of security,” said the translator. “And we will bring you back when it is time for the Matriarch’s dinner.”

“And a dinner invite,” mused The Senator, seemingly recovered from her momentary lack of focus. “Can’t wait to see what’s on the menu.”

Hayes and The Senator were shown out, the door unceremoniously shut behind them. “Did you feel like that big Merg could see inside your head, poke around a bit?”

“Not quite, but something like that,” said Hayes. “She’s something special.”

“That she is,” agreed The Senator.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Iku floated through the opened container with Arkansas close behind him. He had donned a belt with two long sheathed knives and another five short throwing knives sitting in the back, ready for action. The containers were stacked tightly in the cargo hold and space was tight. Knife to the neck, Arkansas reminded herself. She kept moving, assuming Campal and Manivelle were following just behind her.

Iku had pushed himself up to the top, which was at the front of the ship, and had come to a door with a panel beside it. He had to stop and hold onto the panel to avoid flying past it. For a few moments, Arkansas worried they were trapped, but Manivelle reached them and came to a stop directly in front of the display. After a quick thumbs-up, he pulled a kit from his pocket and set to work. He used a tiny flathead screwdriver to force open the panel, then cut a wire with his scissors. He moved with such ease, like he was changing the batteries on his TV remote. Speed and power and skill.

Then the door opened. Just opened. And she wasn’t ready. As much as she’d told herself she was ready, she wasn’t. She thought Iku had already gone, but he she looked up to see him staring right at her.

“They die,” he said. “They die just like we do.”

Then he was gone, shoving himself like a missile into the corridor ahead and Arkansas was quick behind him. Four Merg, she thought.

Iku had unsheathed a long knife and held it in his left hand. He floated ahead, toward the cockpit, and then a Merg turned and was just there, staring at them. It wasn’t supposed to be there, Arkansas thought. Four Merg, all restrained, was the plan.

Arkansas froze, but Iku did not, and his left hand flew back to grab a throwing knife which he pulled forward and released. It sped forward in zero gravity, catching the Merg by surprise, but not enough. It dodged late, but enough to avoid it lodging in his neck. Iku, however, had started moving as soon as he had released his first attack, and was right at the Merg stabbing his blade right into its neck and then pulling it right back out. The Merg shook, red blood erupting from the wound, and it reached two of its spike claws toward the wound, trying desperately to stop the flow. It was thicker than human blood, Arkansas thought before she remembered she was not a passive observer. She came closer, watching as Merg refocused on Iku, too late as the human had come to the other side of his opponent’s neck and jammed the knife right in, more blood shooting up at the ceiling and then just floating there.

The first Merg was dead.

It had never made a noise. It had been so quick.

Iku was moving to the cockpit. He let his momentum carry him to the side of the door and run into it. He locked eyes with Campal and nodded, gesturing for her to take the other side of the door. Campal had a long thin blade ready, both of them just ignoring this dead Merg floating in the space ahead of them. It was amazing, like Arkansas was in a different world than them, not that she was on any world at the moment.

She wondered how they’d get this door open and if Manivelle would have to open it, but then it opened on its own, a Merg stepping out holding something like a tablet, but thick and shaped like a twelve pointed star. Unlike its buddy, this one’s feet held down against the floor, magnetic boots over its foot claws. It was going over something and so it took it a second to register the scene. His comrade dead, Arkansas standing there like a lost child, and then there were two knives in each side of its neck. It bucked like someone was trying to ride it. Iku pushed past into the cockpit while Campal stayed to finish the job.

The job, however, did not want to be finished. Either it was tougher than the first or the wounds weren’t as deep, but either way it had the strength to lash out as it bled. It reached and grabbed Campal with two claws as Manivelle then Arkansas shoved themselves over to help. Manivelle’s knife was drawn, but his angle was bad, headed toward its armored midsection. He rammed it, knife just scraping across. That distracted the Merg enough to give Campal a chance to kick at its wounded neck, freeing herself in the process. It made a sound like dragging a knife against a chalkboard, and fell limp. Manivelle had not let go of it and made sure to plant one more stab into its neck. And there it was, feet secured to the floor, the rest of its dead body floating like a ghost in front of them.

Arkansas held her knife in front of her, waiting for some new villain to present itself. Iku emerged from a wave of fresh blood floating out. He gave thumbs-up followed by a throat slash followed by holding up four fingers. All four dead. Arkansas nodded,

Iku held up his fingers to his eyes and then pointed out, followed by a sweeping motion. Campal and Manivelle made the same motion. They would search the rest of the ship while Arkansas assumed the role of pilot, taking over the cockpit and orienting herself with the controls, pretending two dead bodies that used to be strapped in there weren’t floating dead right behind her.

She pushed herself through, finding a standard Merg seating arrangement. It was like a backless bench, like someone had pulled out the seating part of a cafeteria table and set it in the cockpit. Sitting, she observed the front display. No alerts, no signs anyone had sent out a distress signal. Just normal business on a spaceship beyond anything humans ever created. The controls were to the right and the left and she could use them well enough sitting on her knees on the bench or standing over, one leg on each side. She chose standing, which struck her as an odd way to position oneself on a vessel hurtling through space at tens or hundreds of thousands of miles an hour. How was fast she going? Manivelle could interpret the reading better than she could, but her quick glance and estimate put it around one hundred thousand miles per hour. She thought about her boyfriend who never let her drive his motorcycle.

The rest of the cockpit was neither roomy nor cramped by Merg standards. The ceiling was tall, and there was enough space for the two pilots. And then there was the view out the small front window. What could that fake glass be made of, she wondered. And then she was briefly overwhelmed by the vastness of outer space, and that she was supposed to drive this thing through it.

She went back to her inventory. Behind the benches were closets or cabinets built into the wall, she assumed holding emergency supplies or weapons. To her right, she saw another display, where a third member of the crew, possibly an engineer, could check the readouts if they had to be in the cockpit for some reason. To her left was a door, although based on the specs she’d seen, she wasn’t sure where it would lead to. It was barely open, just the slightest bit, otherwise she might have thought have even been able to notice anything at all, just a solid wall. Having a moment as the autopilot did its work, she went to explore. She grabbed the open edge, and pulled.

A Merg burst out, foot claws stomping as Arkansas flung herself backway, legs catching against one of the benches. She steadied herself by grabbing the control panel. It was huge, she was alone, and it was going to kill her.

“Merrggg!” she yelled, pulling out a knife, no hope anyone would get here in time to save her, but hopeful Iku could kill this thing before it ended their whole mission. It was one thing to get four unprepared Merg, two of whom were strapped down, unable to move. A fully aware Merg fighting for its life was another. She had no time for hope.

The Merg froze for a moment though, staring at her and the knife. Its gaze moved behind her, bodies of his shipmates suspended in zero gravity. Arkansas screamed, an angry defiant scream, a scream that dared it to kill her, and the live Merg sprang up.

But not at her. It went to the cabinet at the back of the cockpit, frantically trying to open it. Arkansas followed, aiming her body at its neck. She landed it against it, the alien feeling like a giant insect, but so warm. Heat radiated from its body, but not so hot that couldn’t grab it as she reared back her knife.

The cabinets were full of laser rifles, she saw. It seemed so strange to her, it made no sense, but she couldn’t stop to comprehend what was happening. She brought down the knife into its neck. There was no giant explosion of blood like when Iku did it, but the Merg clearly felt the impact. Its legs slipped for a moment, but it righted itself. One claw held a laser rifle and it tried to position itself to fire at Arkansas.

Again she stabbed. And again and again and again. There was blood now, floating up, looking like hideous Christmas ornaments. Arkansas was screaming, praying someone was going to come save her, save this mission. She couldn’t fight a human, she had no chance against this monster.

Again and again. The Merg had lost its grip on the rifle and it reached out, bumbling claws unable to grasp it. It tried to reared up on its back legs, to throw Arkansas off, but it slammed its own head against the ceiling of the cockpit. Arkansas threw all her might into another stab and it collapsed. She kept going and now the blood was everywhere.

It was done, it was dead.

“Arkansas,” said Iku. It was the first words anyone had said to her since they’d left the container.

“They bleed,” said Arkansas.

“They bleed.”

“He went for a weapon,” she said. “He could have shoved his claw right through my heart.”

“Yes,” said Iku.

“Why didn’t he?

“He was scared.”

“Of me?”

Iku nodded. She thought about what had happened. It must have been in the cockpit, maybe it was an engineer or a trainee or who-knows-what. Enemies on the ship. It hid. An invader opens his hiding spot and there is a human with a knife, standing in front of the dead bodies of his friends. It hadn’t thought clearly. It had panicked.

“And soon,” said Iku, “they will all be scared of you.”

Barker never felt comfortable, not really, so it was not that much worse being stuck in a cramped, foul-smelling submarine than in the back of a truck or in an office. It was worse, but not exponentially worse like it would be for most people. The sounds upset him, dings and clicks and possibly drips, which either meant business as usual or he was going to die. If the craft did spring a leak, clearly he would be the last of the seven people allowed to vacate. Possibly not though if Otter, the stern-looking old captain of this vessel, decided to take the whole “Captain goes down with the ship” thing seriously.

Oddly, it felt to Barker that he was not, at least at the moment, the person Sums hated most on the sub. That honor fell to Dagger, a man in his early thirties who seemed to be the leader of this bunch, possibly some local Reconquest muckety-muck.

“Four of you,” said Sums, an echo of the complaint since they met up with Otter, Dagger and their two companions, a young woman in her twenties named Destiny and another old guy named Carp. They were all shoved in tight. Otter, given the job of steering the sub, sat at the controls, but it was not a separate compartment. His back rubbed against Barker’s, who was seated in the circular central area. Barker struggled to imagine how they had planned to load the explosive charge onto this ship, which clearly would have sunk if they had actually been able to fit it in.

“Four of us,” Dagger said, sitting across from Sums.

“We’re going to take on a million Merg in Chicago, the fate of the planet on the line, and this is what you got?” Sums asked.

“I have explained it to you,” said Dagger, annoyance in his voice. Barker recognized the tone of someone who held himself in high-esteem unable to understand why others didn’t see him the same way. “The Merg have abandoned multiple cities for this event. There are zero Merg in Detroit and Indianapolis, only a handful in Cleveland, Toronto, and Cincinnati. We have opportunities to attack HSD without their Merg masters.”

“Great,” said Sums. “You sent everyone who could make a difference to go jerk off in Toronto for the afternoon.”

There was a banging sound, but only Barker seemed to care about it, everyone else focused on the disagreement. Barker wanted to ask everyone else how they could think about anything else while riding around in the nautical equivalent of a gas station bathroom.

“You wanted me to ignore this opportunity?” Dagger asked. “To commit everything we have to some cockeyed scheme based on the word of a Merg-loving traitor?”

“I wanted you to use your brain and your spine!” spat Sums. “Because it’s not that you don’t trust the traitor. Because this scumbag delivered us a bomb and a spaceship. He’s a prisoner and he’s already done more for the cause than you ever have.”

“Hey!” yelled Dagger.

“So, it’s not that you don’t believe him!” Sums yelled over Dagger. “It’s that you don’t have the sack to tell the crews in Detroit and Cleveland and Pittsburgh or wherever else not to do whatever they want to do! Everybody wants the glory of freeing their city for a couple hours, but if this fails, all the Merg go back, slaughter whoever they need to slaughter, and we’re right back where we started. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Barker could not help feeling joy at Sums saying nice things about him in her own way, but he was also realizing that Dagger must be in charge of a giant chunk of territory. Was he the Reconquest leader of the Eastern United States? The Midwest?

“You’re wrong,” said Dagger. “I talked to each crew’s leader, and they all feel confident—”

“Confident you blew it,” said Sums, no patience left. “You talked to each one and they told you what they were going to do and you said, ‘Great, but pretend it was my idea.’ That right?”

“You want to be leader?” Dagger asked. “You want to have your picture in every HSD office on the continent?”

“Barker,” said Sums, and he snapped to attention, “you ever seen this guy’s picture in an HSD office?”

“Well,” said Barker, not enjoying the cold, angry stare Dagger was giving him, “no, I do not believe so.”

“You ever seen his face anywhere?” Sums asked. “Maybe there was a big meeting about how to stop the highly competent leader, Dagger?”

“No,” said Barker. “Does not ring a bell, no.”

“Do you get the Merg aren’t looking for you because you have done nothing to them in the months since you named yourself leader?” Sums asked. “I have tried with you, but even this mission, you didn’t want to get a pilot, you didn’t think it was a good use of Rupture to have him connect with Clay, you didn’t think Barker would have useful information, and now you don’t think it’s worth the hassle to get anyone else here. You’ve been dead wrong at every turn, so I’m just gonna go out on a limb that you’re gonna be dead wrong again, Dagger.”

“I have been patient, but I am your superior officer and you will speak to me with respect,” said Dagger.

“Incompetent turd-eating dimwit,” Sums answered by way of response.

“Arrest her,” Dagger said to Destiny and Carp, who shuffled their feet a bit but otherwise did nothing.

“You screwed us,” said Sums.

“I came,” said Dagger.

“Why?” asked Sums. “You going to fight?”

“I am going to assist in getting to Chicago,” he said. “But I will of course exit before we reach the city because I’m needed today. There are several cities with a chance at liberation.”

“Me and Carp are just transporting,” said Otter. “We drive the boats.”

“I’m here,” said Destiny. “I’m sticking with you.”

Barker’s estimations of Reconquest had varied during his time as a prisoner. The crew he had been with seemed highly competent, but he was surprised by how little they knew at times. And if this was their leader, well, like Sums had said, the Merg weren’t losing sleep figuring out how to stop this guy.

“You are a coward, Dagger,” said Sums. Rupture grimaced at this, as though Sums might have finally gone too far.

“You think you’re the only one who lost something on that mission?” Dagger yelled, his patience with her evaporated. “You think you’ve suffered so much more than the rest of us that no one can disagree with you anymore? I didn’t ask to be made leader, I didn’t want it, but the wrong people died and now here we are. You want the truth? Nobody is coming from all those cities, because it’s your mission. They don’t think there’s some Hail Mary about to be answered, so even if I ordered them here and threatened to chop their heads off if they disobeyed, they’d stay where they were so they can have a couple hours as heroes. A couple hours of raiding HSD offices and burning down Merg warehouses. They’d rather do that than trust you not to sabotage another mission. Happy?”

Sums was breathing like a bull about to charge, but she calmed herself enough to say, “They don’t trust either of us, is the truth. Happy to hear you say it. You hop out of the boat then. Have your guy pull us over and you go wherever you need to go. And you get on every radio and you tell them that this is the big one. That if they want to give us a chance, they’ll come to Chicago and fight with us.”

“No one will come,” said Dagger, no longer arguing, just resigned.

“Then we’ll all just die,” said Sums.

The sub chugged along toward Chicago.

The Senator could not shake the feeling that the big Merg had been in her head. It had looked at her—no, it hadn’t looked at her at first, but it felt that way. And when it made that sound, she was sure it was asking, “What do you want?” Not in those words, but it got that through. And The Senator just knew it could tell if she lied. Still, she had said, no not said, she hadn’t said anything, but she felt like she was saying, “I’m just here to help the Merg prosper.” A valid answer for most Mergs, but this one didn’t seem to buy it, seemed upset.

But there were other things upsetting her, specifically that she was going to die. No, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the dying. It was the manner of it. She was a matriarch and deserved a matriarch’s death, which The Senator understood in the moment, but now it felt confusing. She’d brought them all there, all the Merg in Zero City, but she would be replaced and a new matriarch would arrive. She had communicated that to The Senator, and The Senator now understood this was a mating event. Hundreds of thousands of Merg already fighting for positioning would break out into all-out combat for the right to mate with the Matriarch, but not the one in Zero City now, her replacement. And the mating took a lot of energy, and so the new Matriarch would require massive amounts of food, which very much seemed to The Senator to be why prisoners were being bussed into the city. She had wondered to the Matriarch if she, The Senator, would be fed to the new Matriarch, but the big Merg really had no interest in who did or did not get eaten. And again, she didn’t like The Senator’s answer on what she wanted, which really clouded the conversation. Not conversation, more like a transfer of general ideas and emotions.

The Senator realized she hadn’t told Hayes about the buses full of prisoners, which she had assigned before tapping him as her new muscle. It seemed important, but not as important as stopping Barker and his new friends.

“Senator,” Hayes asked, and she realized she’d been silently running through her interaction with the Matriarch for several minutes without speaking.

“What about the water?” The Senator asked. “What if Reconquest comes in boats or something?”

Hayes nodded at this. “Got spotters on the roofs along the lakeshore, but they don’t have a navy. Anybody shows up in a raft, they won’t last long. No, I think Barker gave them a better idea, like he’s been doing.”

The Senator did not enjoy the look Hayes got when talking about Barker, like he was hungry for his blood. And yet, she knew she needed someone with this attitude right now. This was the right man. Dozens of HSD had arrived in Zero City and he had them organized, placed in position, ready to stop the Reconquest threat.

They were working from a tent in a park by the old football stadium, doing their best to plan out their next move, staying proactive. For each HSD in the city there were dozens more checking the roads and canals leading into the city, searching out potential saboteurs and terrorists. Somewhere, she knew, there was a giant stolen Merg bomb, and Reconquest was going to try to drop it right on her head.

“The Matriarch,” she said again, not a question, just still stuck on her.

“What about her?” Hayes asked.

“Nothing,” said The Senator.

A long charter bus pulled into the parking lot near them, and Hayes immediately reached for his sidearm. Four more buses followed, and he advanced cautiously as they parked.

“You know about this?” Hayes asked.

“Yes, sorry,” said The Senator. “Prisoners for … the Merg asked for prisoners.”

“I need to know everything. Did Barker know about this?”

“No,” said The Senator.

“Hmm, still could be a trick. They took a truck, they could take a bus, or several buses.”

Hayes walked with purpose toward the parking lot and The Senator followed. “You should stay back,” the sergeant said, but she just kept walking.

The door to the first bus opened, and an HSD officer exited. Following them began a long line of shackled prisoners.

“Sergeant Connor Hayes!” Hayes shouted to the HSD.

The other HSD motioned him over. “Sorry, can’t leave this group,” he said. “Officer Wiley.” Wiley was local, back in the same base in what used to be St. Louis, but Hayes had only met the man once or twice. Wiley had been working as a floor captain in a Worker Village, got bumped up to HSD for uncovering a high number of collaborators and turning them over, and had only recently made it through training.

“Hello, Officer Wiley.”

“Hey, Sarge. We got orders to pick up everyone involved with yesterday’s event.” Wiley made a face and Hayes made an acknowledging face and The Senator nodded, so everyone could be clear that they were talking about the theft from the weapons depot. “So, we found these 300 perpetrators who helped assist in the planning of the crime. These are all the ring leaders and high ranking lieutenants.”

The Senator nodded again because if HSD had arrested them, they were guilty, but HSD probably had just rounded up 300 random people to make the Merg happy. That was how it went, but again, HSD only arrested guilty people, The Senator knew, so this was acceptable.

“But why are they here?” Hayes asked. “What are we supposed to do with them?”

“My instructions were to bring them here,” said Wiley. “Thought you would know about it. All I know is there’s a special visitor and they’re for the visitor.”

“Still not sure yet, but we’ll figure it out,” said The Senator.

The Senator looked at the buses, and then back at the prisoners. She began to think about the Matriarch again and what it meant when the other Merg told her and Hayes that they were invited for dinner.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The differences between a Merg airship and a Merg spaceship were less interesting to Arkansas than their similarities. Most Merg probably would not have noticed these things, because to them it was comparing a car and a nuclear reactor, but to her it was Merg design. The curves of the controls, the feel of the control panel, the shape of the Merg language on the display. She wondered again about the random fifth Merg on the ship, the one who had hidden in a secret compartment before Arkansas had found it and murdered it.

No, she wanted to think about the ship. There were obvious things. The seating, the materials used, but also a continuity of feel, a satisfying sensation to the controls that felt familiar when flying a hovership at two hundred miles an hour or this transport vessel at fifty times that speed. The handles for acceleration and braking gave a little bit of sensory feedback, like the way a Lego clicked just right, and it was the same across Merg design.

Braking, out in the void of space, was much trickier. Back on Earth, as an object in motion, there were many forces trying to stop you. Out here, you would just keep going and going, so you had to expend force in the opposite direction to slow down. Which, now getting closer and closer to the moon, they had to do.

Manivelle sat on the bench beside her. Iku and Campal had gone somewhere, possibly to dispose of the bodies, and so they were alone. She had found him sharp-edged and gruff, but in the cockpit he was all business. Constant updates, a stream of useful information. The man had done his homework on this ship.

“Engines good,” he said when there was nothing left to update.

They would soon arrive, at a Merg base they knew nothing about, to grab a giant hostage who might not even be there.

“We are nearing the approach to the orbital path,” said Manivelle.

“Right,” said Arkansas.

They wouldn’t land immediately, they knew that much. They would have to enter orbit and wait to be cleared. How long that took was a question.

“Entering communication zone,” said Manivelle.

As soon as he said it, Merg sounds came over the sound system. “Automated message,” said Manivelle.

“Right,” said Arkansas.

They had a plan. Manivelle could understand some Merg, but he couldn’t reproduce the sounds. He told her he tried to make a machine that would do it for him, but he couldn’t get all the parts he needed, so they would have to key in the commands and send a message that their comm system was down which Manivelle would tap out manually.

More Merg sounds clicked and scratched.

“We are being told to enter orbit and wait for further instructions,” said Manivelle.

And then Arkansas saw bad news. The display showed hundreds of ships ahead, all in orbit, likely all waiting to land.

“How long is this going to take?”

“Merde,” said Manivelle. “I do not know.”

More clicks and scratches. “They’re asking for … ” Manivelle started but he paused and did not add any more information.

“For what?” Arkansas prodded.

“No idea, not a familiar sound. Probably something like a number or a password or the name of the captain. I don’t know!” He was screaming by the end.

“I’m entering orbit,” said Arkansas, proceeding forward. “Send them the message that we don’t have voice communications.”

“Yes,” said Manivelle, tapping away at his display.

They had gotten lucky before, with Barker as their insider, but now they were like little kids trying to pretend to be doctors. They didn’t know the protocols, they didn’t know how to fake it, and they wouldn’t last long.

“They messaged back,” said Manivelle. “Said to hold orbit, but they need to send someone.”

“Like space cops?” Arkansas asked.

“Perhaps. I believe they are going to board us.”

“Iku! Campal!” Arkansas yelled behind her.

She could dimly hear one of them call back, “Yes?”

“Strap in!” she screamed as loud as she could.

“You have a plan?” Manivelle asked.

She did not. Her plan was to swerve around a lot and make chaos, but she’d likely get shot down in a few seconds. Then she saw it, the base. It was a small city on the moon, nested in a valley. She started to wonder how she’d possibly find the Queen down there, in that expansive system of buildings and tunnels, but she pushed that thought away.

“Can you dump all the cargo besides the one that’s got our bomb?” she asked.

“I’d have to open the cargo bay while in flight,” he answered. “Deactivate the locks.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Can you do that?”

“Peut être,” he replied.

“Gonna assume that’s yes in French. First, message back that we’re happy to be boarded or whatever Merg say.”

“Yes, very well,” said Manivelle. “Are we happy to be boarded?”

“No. Do you know how to message the word ‘invisible’ over to them?”

“Let me be clear,” said Manivelle. “My Merg language skills are those of a drunken toddler. My understanding of the written language is worse. Like a very smart horse trying to use a typewriter.”

“Invisible,” repeated Arkansas.

“I can say something like it. The shorter the message the better.”

“Okay,” said Arkansas. “Get the cargo bay open and prepare to unload all cargo except for our amigo.”

He worked furiously, fingers tapping against the display like he was angry with it. Warnings popped up in front of both of them and he dismissed the ones he could.

Arkansas used this time to gauge her situation. There were ships in front of and behind her in orbit, probably a ten second gap each way. It was heavy traffic moving about the moon, everyone waiting to get clearance and deliver their load.

“Cargo bay doors open,” said Manivelle.

“Message them ‘Under attack. Invisible ships firing on us, need help.”

He took a moment, not a long moment because they were in trouble and needed to act quickly, but long enough to express to Arkansas that whatever she was thinking was very, very misguided, and she smiled back as if to say, “Yes, I am aware.” Then he typed the message. There was a scratchy sound that she recognized as being like a ding on human computers. Message sent.

“Release the cargo,” she ordered.

As soon as she felt them go loose, she fired retro rockets, the ship cutting its speed dramatically, then swerved wildly to the left, giant containers spilling out into space.

“Message that we’ve been hit,” said Arkansas, pulling the ship further out of orbit.

Warning signs were most of her display now.

“Sent,” said Manivelle as they watched the ship that had been trailing them collide with a shipping container.

“Say ‘emergency’ a bunch of times,” said Arkansas. “You know that word?”

“I think I got the gist of this,” said Manivelle, and Arkansas nodded.

She had been the pilot of this ship for a couple hours, but she hadn’t really flown it until now. Hadn’t grabbed the controls and tested out its limits. She was trying to come back to orbit, other ships breaking out trying to escape the villainous enemy ships she had invented. One ship tried to slow down, seemingly for an emergency landing while another tried to speed up, they both instantly regretted their decisions, apparently, and then were stuck like two people trying to move out of each other’s way on a sidewalk, except at much higher speeds. Boom, they collided into each other instantly, destroying both.

“I count those as yours,” said Manivelle. “First human to notch two kills in space combat against the Merg.”

“Thanks,” she said, not wanting any more credits for any kills at the moment. “Give the base some fake coordinates for where you see the invisible ships.”

He did it, and only when he was done did he say, “How can I see something invisible? And are we assuming other species have invisible ships?”

“Yeah, man, I don’t know. I’ve been in space as long as you and I’m just guessing Star Trek shit.”

Manivelle started laughing as a laser blast appeared in front of them. “They fired at it!” he yelled.

There were Merg fighter ships scrambled out now, she could see them on the display and through the window.

“Gotta land,” she said. “Tell them we’re leaking fuel and need to land immediately.”

“Yes, captain,” he said.

Landing was not her strength. She had completed more successful landings of Merg craft than anyone she knew of but that was because of her volume of flights. The percentage was pretty bad. This one had to be perfect.

“Get the fuck out of the boat,” Sums ordered Dagger.

He was clearly about to do just that. The submarine had surfaced just for this, to drop off the local Reconquest leader so he could avoid actual fighting. “Why don’t you tell him?” Dagger spat. “Your prisoner who you think has done more for the cause for me? The collaborator. Tell him how we all got here.”

“No time,” said Sums. “I have to go to Chicago and you have to go suck yourself off while the world burns around you.”

“Does he trust you?” Dagger asked.

“Hope not for his sake,” said Sums.

“Maybe the hair trick worked and he’s in love with you?” Dagger guessed.

“If you’re going to waste my time when I have a mission, I’m going to throw you off the boat.”

“Like to see you try to lift me.”

Sums took out her knife. “Can’t lift all of you at the same time, no.”

Dagger climbed up the hatch. Barker, with no access to the periscope and no idea where they were, could only hear his splash and wonder if he dived out or if there was a pier he had jumped for and just missed.

“Go,” said Sums. And the old man, Otter, pushed ahead with the … was it a rudder?

“Don’t like that man,” said the young woman, Destiny. “He told me my name was no good, I needed something more serious, that Destiny is a stripper name. Like Dagger isn’t a stripper name?”

“Really good point,” said Rupture.

Sums did not say anything, and she did not even seem to make much of a change in her demeanor, but Rupture took a look at her and said, “Not about him.”

“I’m fine,” said Sums.

“He’s gone. He’s not the mission.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“It’s not about him.”

“Tell me what it’s about, Rupture!” Sums erupted. “Please educate me on how I should feel and what I should be feeling it about.”

“Past doesn’t matter. This matters.”

Sums eyes darted to Barker. “You staring at me?”

He wanted to answer yes, because it was a very small sub and she was the one speaking, but it wouldn’t go well. “Sorry,” he said.

“You think you know me because of a guess of what my job used to be? You have no idea who I am. You don’t know the life I had before this. Before all of this.”

“I don’t.”

“And you sit there, acting like you’ve atoned for something,” Sums continued. “You think you cry a few tears and all your sins are forgiven. It doesn’t work that way. Not for me, not for you.”

Barker felt he could not make himself small enough or apologize enough to make this pass. “How do we get forgiven then?” he asked instead.

Sums laughed. “You want to know how we got here?”

“Yes,” said Barker.

Sums stared at him for several seconds before she put her head down. For several minutes, maybe ten, maybe fifteen, it was silent in the sub save for the sounds of gears grinding, possible leaks, and dirty, lung-poisoning air being pumped through the space.

“I grew up in Sacramento,” said Sums, still staring at the floor of the sub, apparently ready to talk. “I screwed up a lot when I was young. Bad decisions. Lots of fights, small crimes, that kind of stuff. You can just guess the rest. But, the way kids do sometimes, I got through it. Went to college, got a job, got married. Really nice guy. Probably the nicest person I knew.”

She took a break, but looked up, holding eye contact. “I loved him, or at least loved how he took care of me, calmed me. I don’t think I was good to him though, not like he deserved. I have a temper, I tend to self-sabotage. This is none of your business, but I’m telling this story, and I want everyone here to know, I have some issues. We were talking about having a baby someday, me and him. And then—”

“Aliens,” said Barker.

“Wrong,” said Sums. “See, you think you know everything but you don’t. A car accident happened. He drove for work, and crash bang, he’d never walk again. And I was taking care of him. Working a full-time job and taking care of him while he recovered. And then the aliens. Then there was no job, there was servitude. Do you remember in the beginning that people who couldn’t do manual labor were excused and allowed to live in the Worker Villages?”

“Yes,” said Barker.

“Well, that was him. And then the Merg changed their mind, and they had people like you send out notices that everyone, regardless of ability, had to serve. Did you sign one of those?”

“I signed it for The Senator,” said Barker.

“So, we hid him in our room. There were ten of us, and we hid him. We took care of each other. He could do so many things, but he couldn’t carry a sack of coal on his back up a ladder, so the Merg thought he was worthless. But, in our room, he did everything he could. He cleaned, he sang. He had such a beautiful singing voice.”

“Someone sold him out,” said Barker.

“Now you’re getting them right again. Yes, somebody told, but we snuck out. We snuck out and we found Reconquest and we went where they sent us and I made myself so useful. I would kill, I would torture, I would do anything so they wouldn’t think we were a burden. A burden? How awful is that? He was a human being. He was capable in so many ways, but the world didn’t care anymore. He hated it, hated me stepping up for him. He had been so strong, and if none of this had happened he would have been strong again. Not walking, but working and singing and providing. You want to guess again what happened next?”

“B Team,” said Barker.

Sums laughed in a miserable sort of way. “You saw it coming. I didn’t, but you did. We ended up out near St. Louis, and Dagger, he had just taken over, he put together this mission to attack a Merg housing complex.”

“Oh no,” said Barker, aware of this story from a different perspective.

“Yeah, and my husband, he volunteered to act as a distraction. B Team, like you said. To draw their attention on one side of the base so Dagger and our team could attack the other. No one told me about it. I thought he was home. It was a dumb plan anyway. We had so many people there ready to go. And then Dagger told me about B Team.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” said Barker.

“He was my husband!” shouted Sums. “I abandoned my position and I ran to go stop him. I didn’t care who saw me, I ran along the gate, and I ran and I ran, and all these alarms were going off and I just kept running and there were Merg everywhere. I saw him. I saw him when it happened. Everyone on my team had to run for it, some of them escaped. Dagger, a couple others.”

“There was nothing you could do,” Barker repeated. “I don’t mean that in a reassuring, meaningless way. The mission was doomed. Those buildings above ground, the Merg don’t even live in them, I don’t think. They’re underground, and everything above ground is designed for defense. If you’d gotten through the gates, everyone would have died. I was there the next day, I know.”

“Do you remember him?” Sums asked. “Did you see him?”

“Yes,” said Barker, hoping she wouldn’t ask for more detail. He’d seen so much death serving the Merg, but the wheelchair had always stuck out. He had always wondered.

“I screwed up. You might say it doesn’t matter, but no one trusted me. I lost my husband, but fifteen other people died during that mission, people lost friends and family because of me. And because of Dagger, I suppose, but he was the leader and you weren’t there to tell everyone how futile the who thing was. No one would work with me. And so I planned my own missions. My own one-woman Reconquest. Then I found Rupture, and we came up with the idea to kill The Senator.”

Barker held back a gasp. It shouldn’t have surprised him but it did. “Ah.”

“We thought Clay was our opening. We watched him, figured out what kind of person he was, and then Rupture connected with him, muscle for a man who loved the idea of being a tough guy. But he talked so much about you. I met him before we killed him. At Lamp Town, his Merg fighting arena. He talked a lot about you, about how you did all the work. So, you became the mission.”

“You brushed your hair.”

“My husband, he used to love watching me brush my hair, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Easier than you think to break into a Worker Village and just kinda live there. Especially if you bring food, and Rupture and I were stealing rations. Did that for a while. Waited for the right moment to get you. And then we thought, this guy Barker knows so much, he could steal us a bomb, he could get us something bigger. And our goals changed. So, that’s the whole story.”

“You already knew I was the target,” said Barker. “But you tortured and killed Clay.”

“Yeah,” said Sums. “Since I’m being honest, let me keep going. My husband, he centered me, he calmed me, kept me from making bad decisions. Kept me stable. I was a middle school math teacher, a fully functional member of society, but this is who I feel like I am. I have been holding back this person who wants to hurt people, to see them suffer, and now the world has just changed to make me an asset instead of a danger to society. Because my husband, this kind gentle man, he died, and do you know what I thought when it happened? When I lost him?”

“No,” said Barker, not wanting to even think about it.

“I’m free. I can let loose this person inside me who I am tired of hiding. I hurt Clay. I’ve hurt a lot of people. I’m gonna hurt you, Barker.”

“We are what they made us,” said Barker.

“Of course you would say that. Anyway, now you get it. I came up with a plan, Dagger wouldn’t listen, so I asked around. Got Arkansas. Took some work, but I got in touch with Reconquest outside the States, and I found Iku, Campal, Manivelle. They didn’t know me, so they agreed to work with me.”

“Here we are,” said Barker.

“Chicago,” said Otter, the old man steering the ship. “I mean, we’re here.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Everything looked good to Arkansas. She had never landed on the moon before, but it felt like she was doing it right. And this was the important part, beginning the landing process in a way that did not scream “Hijacked ship! Incompetent human pilot!” Once they got close enough, the ship and the landing site would connect digitally, and if they were cleared, it would take over and automatically guide the ship in.

“Cargo bay doors closed,” said Manivelle.

“Cool,” said Arkansas. “Transmit that we have injured Merg.”

“Got it.”

“But don’t say Merg because of course they’re Merg.”

“Yes, understood.”

They had entered a low orbit and were slowing down, and while they had not been cleared for landing, no one had screamed at them not to land. Or maybe they had. There had been a lot of screaming and Manivelle had told her he caught one out of every seven or eight words.

Every second she was reducing speed by about fifty-five hundred miles per hour, and she could feel it hard in her gut. She engaged landing thrusters, shifted their craft to a forty-five degree angle, and thought non-crashing thoughts. She had to do this right, had to do it like all the instructions had said to do. Had to honor all the people who died so she could study, so she could see the specs.

Lower, lower, lower.

“Eight hundred feet,” said Manivelle. “Seven hundred.”

Come on, come on, she thought. You know want this. You know you wanna lock on to my cool signal and begin autodocking maneuvers, Come on, let me land my spaceship up in you.

“Six hundred,” said Manivelle. “Landing site has engaged descent protocol.”

Arkansas smiled. “They’re letting us land,” she said. She clicked a few buttons and the computers took over.

“Hell, man,” said Arkansas. “Too easy.”

“Apologies,” said Manivelle. “I was looking forward to you slamming us down on the pad.”

“We did it,” said Arkansas.

“Yes.”

“Now we just have to do all the even more impossible stuff.”

“Also correct, captain.”

Hayes’ radio cracked to life. “Sergeant Hayes,” said a voice.

The interruption was not appreciated. He had been calling around to verify the arrival of the three hundred prisoners to make sure this wasn’t some brilliant Barker scheme and all of those detainees would pull out automatic weapons and murder everyone. And so far, it had all checked out. The Merg wanted them here and it seemed like a strange decision.

Yes, the Merg often used mass executions to teach humans a lesson, but why here? The only humans were HSD and The Senator. They said it was for the visitor, which had to be the new incoming Matriarch, but why did she need to see an execution?

“This is Sergeant Hayes,” he radioed back.

“Couple of our guys just spotted some swimmers in the lake.”

“Swimmers?” Hayes asked. “Human swimmers?”

“Think so, Sarge. Looks like they’re headed to the Navy Pier. I got a guy on the lakeshore who’s got eyes on them. You want him to take the shot?”

“No,” said Hayes. “No need to upset our hosts. We’ll take care of this quietly. I’m nearby and heading over. Don’t fire on them unless you absolutely have to.”

“Roger that, Sarge.”

And now swimmers? Hayes again had more questions than answers. Where had they been swimming from? He had eyes on the lake for miles and they just pop up by the pier?

The Senator waved him over from her tent and he ran to her, unwilling to yell anything a passing Merg might hear about this situation.

“I have to run over to the Navy Pier,” he said. “We got swimmers in the water.”

“Is that a law enforcement term?” The Senator asked.

“No, there are people swimming to shore.”

The Senator considered that for a second. “Barker is an excellent swimmer.”

Hayes had to walk quickly. He couldn’t run, that would be suspicious. He wished he just had a golf cart, something to move him a little fast over to the pier. And then it would all be fine. It would be Barker or it wouldn’t. God, he was so sick of that man, so sick of him haunting his life. Was there any single person on Earth worse than him? Someone who had been given everything by the Merg only to blab out his secrets so Reconquest wouldn’t hurt his precious little face.

Step, step, step. He had to get to his car. Not his old car, the one with bullet holes in the glass where Patterson died. No, the car he drove here. Step, step, step.

“Sergeant Hayes!” an officer called out. “Excuse me.”

“Have to take care of something,” he said.

“Okay, but you’re in charge of security.”

Hayes stopped. “Yes.”

A young male officer stood there, hands on belt. “We were walking the prisoners over to the building with the big Merg, but then the other Merg said not to bring them there. Those Merg said the prisoners are not for that big Merg but the other big Merg. And then the translator told us to have them ready, but they didn’t say what that means. Where should we keep them? We’re all a little confused. Are they getting eaten?”

“Just put the prisoners back on the buses,” said Hayes, not at all concerned.

“Okay, but those buses do not smell good and the officers who drove here with them say it’s somebody else’s turn to watch them.”

“Just put them on the buses,” said Hayes “The officers can stand outside and keep watch.”

“Okay,” said the officer.

Hayes hurried over to the car. He was losing time. He had to be there first. What was he going to do? He couldn’t just shoot Barker in the face and then tell the Merg that everything was going great. He’d have to take him and his buddies somewhere. This was a busy day, but he could make some time for Barker and Reconquest.

Barker was an excellent swimmer, a skill he had not used in a long time and something he thought he’d never get to demonstrate again, and yet here he was, swimming the quarter mile from where the sub had briefly surfaced to let them plop out into the water. He had been on the swim team in high school and worked as a lifeguard in the summers. A brief stint on his college team ended when it became clear athletics had taken over too much of his time. He was no longer the athlete he had been in his youth, but the technique was there.

He did not know if Sums had been a proficient swimmer before the bullet lodged itself in her arm, but she certainly was not now. He had come over to help her, and to his surprise, she had let him.

“I hate you,” she had said, allowing him to hold her up as he moved them both slowly to the shore. He had learned enough to keep his mouth shut and just keep pushing them both to shore.

They were close, so close. As far as he knew, there was no plan once they got to the pier. They were going to keep the Queen alive somehow. Surrounded by the largest gathering of Merg ever since the invasion, they were going to just not let any of them kill her. Sheer force of will, possibly. And, they of course had to hope that Arkansas and her team had made it to the moon and everything was just ducky up there.

“We’re almost to the pier,” he said. He was carrying her at this point, treating her like a potential drowning victim, something he had never actually had to deal with as a lifeguard.

“I hate you so goddamn much,” she said.

And then they were there. He grabbed hold of the railing at the end of the pier. Sums reached out with her good arm, and he helped shove her up. After she managed to pull herself over the rail and onto the pier, he followed.

And there were twenty HSD with guns drawn.

Sums was frozen, the whole plan finally at an end. He wanted to tell her they’d done more than anyone else had, that the plan still could work, that they were clearly about to die, but there was hope. But Barker wasn’t a hope kind of person. Barker was Barker. Which gave him one last idea.

“I’m Ezra Barker!” he yelled. “I have an urgent message for The Senator!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

It took several minutes after the mag-lock engaged, and they were firmly in place on the moonbase for their ship to be pulled down on the surface into the lower level, one that presumably had breathable air, which gave Iku a chance to organize. First they had to pile bodies in front of the entry hatch at the rear of the ship.

Arkansas did not enjoy this work, not just because the Merg were unwieldy even in low gravity, but also because she wanted to move on from those deaths, to plow forward and not think about stabbing a Merg to death ever again in her lifetime. She would sometimes stop to look out the window at the chaos out there. Moon-based laser cannons were firing out into the darkness, seemingly at random. The other transport ships flew erratically, as though they might get shot out of the sky by Arkansas’s imaginary invisible fighters at any moment.

After the bodies had been moved, they removed their explosive charge from the container. It had, remarkably, stayed in the nest they had created for it, and they were able to slide it onto a rolling cart of sorts they found in a storage locker on the ship.

“When the door opens, we wait for them to clear out the bodies, then we go,” said Iku. “If it’s clear, we go. If there are Merg, we go.”

The big question was where. Where would they go? Iku had sketched out a map of what he’d seen of the base from above, but it was a large complex and nothing had “QUEEN LIVES HERE” written on it. There were several taller structures, but nothing that especially stood out. Iku had expressed hope that she might be right at the launch pad, since, they assumed, she would soon be headed to Earth, but everything looked like a standard cargo ship.

So, they waited in the cockpit, listening for sounds until there were clicks and hisses and the hatch opened. Even from their distance, Arkansas could hear the loud Merg sounds.

“They are upset and confused,” Manivelle whispered.

“I could guess that,” said Arkansas.

“I believe they are taking them to some sort of medical area,” said Manivelle. “Hard to tell.”

“They’re dead,” said Arkansas.

“These are dock workers,” said Iku. “They just need to take them somewhere so they can do their jobs.”

The next sounds were those of the ship opening from the top, something Arkansas did not know it could do. “The cargo containers,” said Arkansas. “They must be opening it up to take out the goods. Only one container now that the others are all floating in space, but still.”

“Five dead bodies and one empty container,” said Iku. “They will be suspicious. Once the bodies are clear, we move. Northeast, I believe I see a holding facility there.”

He was guessing, but he sounded confident and that was the best Arkansas could hope for.

“Hide and seek,” said Campal. “Ha ha! Worst game! I never found anyone.”

It was several minutes before the dragging sounds stopped. Iku pushed forward the cart with the explosive charge and everyone followed. The hatch opened down into a ramp, one now covered in Merg blood.

“We go,” said Iku.

It seemed like madness. All of this planning, all of their success, and now all they could do was run around like lost tourists, knowing that at any moment they could be discovered. How were they going to wander around a Merg base without getting caught?

They moved forward, the ramp leading into a corridor. They bounded ahead, the terror of the mission lost for a second in the fun of running at one-sixth their normal body weights. They moved quickly down until they came to a large warehouse area, filled with thousands of boxes. Merg workers were everywhere, and they had to hide behind a stack of crates. This was the only way forward, but it was impossible.

Arkansas poked her head out to evaluate the scene. There were Merg with laser rifles watching the laborers. Boxes, most of which were as big as midsize cars, were tagged with some sort of spray gun, lifted on the Merg equivalent of a forklift, and carried over to be stacked. Some Merg were opening up boxes for inspection while others were supervisors. There had to be a hundred Merg in the space, and there was no way. They were lucky they hadn’t been caught yet, and if they moved at all, it was over.

“Around their heads,” Iku whispered. “Those little crowns.”

“Look like headbands to me,” said Arkansas, looking around to see that every Merg here was wearing them.

“Have you ever seen those before?” he asked.

Everyone shrugged, because no, but also that did not help them. It was odd, but odd in a useless sort of way.

“We can go back,” said Arkansas. “Maybe there was another way through.”

Then she heard footsteps from the direction they had come from. They were completely exposed, but if they moved, everyone in the warehouse would see them. Seconds away from being caught—and then, there she was.

A giant cage, bars of some beautiful dark metal that looked unearthly to Arkansas. She might have imagined it, but it glowed. Inside there was a giant Merg, a building-sized Merg. The Queen. They were preparing her for transport.

“Luck,” said Iku, but it didn’t feel that way to Arkansas. She was right there, but there was nothing they could do. She couldn’t even see how that thing was going to get loaded.

Scratchy clicks from behind her.

“They are telling us to put our hands up,” said Manivelle.

She turned to see two armed Mergs with rifles pointed at hers and Iku’s heads. The explosive charge sat on the cart, almost within Campal’s reach.

Iku raised his hands and said, “It has been a pleasure serving with you all.”

Coo. Like a pigeon almost. Coooooo. But Arkansas heard something else.

What do you want, it asked Arkansas. Not words, just that sound, and she knew it was the Queen.

I want to take you to Earth, she answered honestly.

It believed her.

Would you keep me in a cage?

Hell no, thought Arkansas. We go, drop you off, you do your thing.

There is the other.

Arkansas understood the idea, the other Queen. None of my business, Arkansas thought.

If I kill her?

None of my business.

Do you know what it is like?

There was a lot contained in the “it.” Arkansas understood it all. A Queen or whatever the Merg thought of them as, ruling over colonies for millions of years, and then technology, and they were made to serve. Their power was harnessed instead of feared.

The headbands.

Yes, the headbands.

Arkansas had no idea how to get the headband off.

You pull it off with your human hands, human. Hard.

Arkansas’s attention went back to the angry Merg with guns pointed at her. There was no time, they would be killed and questions would be asked later.

“The headbands!” she yelled, and she jumped at a Merg, which went poorly. She leaped up at the headband but did not come close at all. Iku went at the other, but it put a claw through one of his shoulders and another punctured his torso. He screamed and all of the warehouse looked at them.

Iku gasped, still held up by the Merg. In his hand was a bronze-colored headband. There was Merg blood on it; clearly it had taken effort, had hurt the Merg.

Coooo.

The Merg holding Iku dropped him and turned its rifle toward its compatriot. Blasts fired, and the headbandless Merg was moving before the other’s body hit the floor.

“Iku,” said Arkansas.

She ran to him, but looked up to see the Merg that had wounded her friend running pulling headbands off a worker.

“Clever,” said Iku weakly.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

There was laser fire now, Merg firing on each other, headbands flying off.

“I’m … ” Iku started to say, not able to finish his sentence. He was trying to stand, but failing.

Arkansas looked up to see more laser blasts. The Merg who had wounded Iku was now dead himself, but the side trying to maintain orders, the side blocking the Queen’s powers with their headbands, was losing. It was overwhelming, like a game of tag where almost everyone was on the same side now.

Time to go, a voice thought into Arkansas’s head.

How.

You fly our ships, it thought to her. Not an order, but a note of respect.

Yeah.

They will load me. You will fly. I will guide you.

More Merg burst in through a door on the far side of the warehouse, but they were taken out quickly. The Queen’s Merg burst out the door.

“We have to go,” said Arkansas.

“To where?” Manivelle asked.

“I need you to trust me.”

“No,” said Manivelle.

“The Queen is talking in my brain. She’s got control of everybody who doesn’t have that blocking device on. Now we need to get in the ship she’s getting in.”

“Very well,” said Manivelle.

“Not me,” said Campal.

“What?” Arkansas asked.

“Do you recall I said you would be mad at me later?” Campal asked. “Yes, now is that time. The charge, I removed the tracker, but I damaged it. Can’t use a timer or a remote or anything to set it off. Must be done manually.”

“We don’t need the bomb anymore!” Arkansas yelled.

“When the Queen is gone, she won’t control them anymore,” said Campal. “And when that happens, they’ll fire on the ship. I saw the guns coming in. And they will send fighters after all of you.”

“Come on, no,” said Arkansas.

“Go,” said Campal. “Let me do this. If I don’t, they’ll shoot you down. This gives you a chance. I’m the only one of us who can do this. We don’t have time to argue.”

“She is right,” Iku managed to breathe out. “Campal is right.”

Manivelle shook Campal’s hand. “A pleasure.”

“As well.”

“No,” said Arkansas.

Campal leaned in and kissed Arkansas. She pressed her lips firmly against the pilot’s. When she pulled away, she said, “That was nice.”

“Yeah,” said Arkansas more confused than anything else.

“Imagine how good I was at kissing before I blew half my face off. Ha ha!”

Campal turned Arkansas around, slapped her on the ass, and said, “Go save the world!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hayes put the car in park. He had reached the end of the Navy Pier. Where the hell was everyone? There were no HSD, no Barker, no anybody. He reached for his radio.

“This is Sergeant Hayes, where is the team with eyes on the swimmers?”

It was silent for a moment and then, “Sarge, we have suspects in custody.”

“Fucking where?”

“Well, sir, turns out, and you’re gonna call me a liar, but I swear it’s him, one of them is Ezra Barker.”

Of course it was Ezra Barker, thought Hayes. He couldn’t say that, because he was supposed to be surprised, so instead he said, “Barker’s dead.” This was time-wasting, but it had to be said once.

“I know sir, but it’s him. He gave a bunch of information only he would know. Anyway, it was him and a woman.”

“Just two people?” Hayes asked.

“Yup,” said the other officer. “He said he had urgent information for The Senator, so we’re taking him over.”

“Ezra Barker, if that is him, is almost definitely compromised,” said Hayes. “He is a danger to everyone, especially The Senator.”

“Yes, sir, we appreciate that, but he is handcuffed and he’s not exactly a tough guy.”

“Where is he?!” Hayes yelled, losing his cool.

“Ehh, we sent him and the lady in a cruiser off to The Senator’s tent.”

“I told you to wait for me!” Hayes yelled. “You screwed it up!”

“You said not to shoot him until you got there,” the officer corrected.

“Stop him!” Hayes yelled. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“We drove past you and waved,” said the officer. “I pointed back at Barker and the lady in the backseat.”

Hayes wanted to kill the man. He had been rushing to get to the pier, to find Barker, to kill Barker with his bare hands, and this officer just drove off with him, waving from the backseat.

“Stop him!” Hayes yelled again. “Do not let him get to The Senator!”

Hayes was peeling around, driving down the other side of the pier. He was moving now. He had to get back, just had to get there before Barker. Had to get there before any Merg saw Barker. Stupid fucking not dead Ezra Barker.

He slammed on his breaks right in front of a Merg. The Merg looked back at him, confused to see the car, possibly considering killing Hayes right then and there.

“Sorry,” said Hayes, even though the Merg couldn’t hear him through the glass. “Sorry about that.”

The Merg walked around the car and Hayes saw several more coming from that direction. There were Merg everywhere and he needed to drive and he needed to kill Barker and everything was falling apart. Why had they come out this way now? It was a big town and he just needed to drive down the damn pier, but now they were headed this way. He got out of the car and he ran.

Barker felt many things seeing The Senator.

The first was surprise, because when he had yelled that he had a message for her, he had assumed she was back in St. Louis, not a mile or two away. The second emotion he did not have a word for, but it was probably how lost puppies felt when returned to their owners. The third was fear. Fourth was guilt.

They let him out of the back of the HSD car, Sums right behind him, and there was The Senator, standing beside a tent. A lot of people underestimated The Senator, but Barker didn’t. He could see in her eyes just how much she understood about what had been going on. Did she ever even believe he was dead?

“Barker,” she said, walking over.

“Hey!” yelled an HSD from his car. “I talked to Hayes, he said keep Barker in the car.”

“That’s fine,” said The Senator. “Bring him to the tent.”

“Hello,” said Barker.

“You smell awful, Barker,” said The Senator.

“Was worse before I swam in Lake Michigan,” Barker noted.

“New friend?” The Senator asked, nodding at Sums.

“Courtney,” said Barker, somehow pulling out the name of his middle school girlfriend.

“A pleasure,” said Sums, who was now also Courtney.

There were Merg everywhere, but they were parting for an especially important set of Merg who were walking over to them. “Mr. Barker,” said a familiar Australian accent. And there was the translator, the one who had set all of this off. She stood before a set of four Merg, he assumed the same four she had been with before. “The Merg are surprised to see you.”

“Hello,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. I was at the gym, working on getting stronger arms.”

The Merg made sounds behind while the translator suppressed a smile. Barker saw the hint of a tear in her eye.

“The Merg do not understand the joke, Mr. Barker. But they are more confused because they thought you were dead.”

There is a rule in politics that is pulled out so often that it seems trite, but it’s still true: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Barker could stand in front of them and begin an elaborate story that anyone listening would probably be able to punch a bunch of holes in. He’d ramble, he’d sound defensive. He’d forget which lies he’d told. Instead, he just said, “Why?”

To Earth, the Queen thought at Arkansas.

Yeah, that’s the plan.

Iku was bleeding to death, Campal was about to blow herself up, and she was counting on a Merg Queen secured in the cargo bay to mind-control the flight crew at the base to let them fly away.

It’s not mind control, the Queen expressed. They want to love and serve me. The mind control is using technology to block that.

There were clicks and scratches over the radio.

“Clear,” said Manivelle.

“You think we were gonna make the return flight?” Arkansas asked.

“Never a doubt,” he said dryly.

Iku was not in the cockpit, he was secured in another room, and Arkansas felt the sting of possibly letting him die alone. She wanted to go speak to him. She wanted to run back for Campal, tell her she was a good enough pilot she didn’t need the bomb, didn’t need the extra help, but there was no time for that now.

Mag-lock released. Thrusters engaged. Merg countdown begun.

“You studied the specs very well,” said Manivelle.

“They were good specs,” said Arkansas.

They were off, not with the jolt of leaving Earth, but simply off, easily escaping the moon’s gravity and accelerating home. It was about ten seconds before she heard the tone of the scratches and clicks change.

“They are now unhappy.”

“Guess we’re out of her range,” said Arkansas.

And then a giant hole blew out of the base, shredding everything near the warehouse and the landing pad. Fire and death and then more explosions set off, maybe fuel tanks that the Merg had thought were protected, never thinking humans would steal a mining explosive and fly it up here. It was chaos.

“Don’t think about it,” said Manivelle. “Just fly.”

They were not clear, not yet. There were Merg ships still in orbit. On her display, she could see fighters breaking out to head her direction.

“Not today,” she said.

Arkansas remembered her rules. One: Don’t try not to die. She was a human flying a space truck and they were Merg aces with lasers and missiles. She was big and slow and they were fast and deadly. If she ran, they would kill her.

She slowed down, and began to arc away from Earth, pulling them out after her. She would, at the very least, confuse them.

Rule Two: Read the manual.

She had read every bit of information about this ship. Well, this was a different ship than the one she came on, but it seemed about the same. She had a couple defenses, but it wasn’t great. She was going to go back to Rule One, try not to try not to die. Right.

Rule Three: Don’t do drugs. She was on drugs right now. So much that she questioned whether or not she really was telepathically communicating with the alien Queen in the trunk.

You are.

Thank you.

Rule Four: Don’t make friends. Well, she was literally crying because the Sri Lankan explosives expert had blown herself up after smashing her lips against Arkansas’s and sneaking in just a little bit of tongue and because Iku was bleeding to death and she couldn’t even be there. So, she’d screwed up the fourth rule, too.

Rule Five: Don’t question orders. Well, they were following the guesses of Barker, the worst traitor she’d ever shared a room with, so she had been carrying doubts the whole time, and yet look at her, flying a Merg transport in a long arc because she was going tens of thousands of miles per hour and her turning radius sucked.

Hey Queen, Arkansas thought, your thing work over the radio? Making other Merg do what you want?

No.

Well, it was a thought.

“Incoming,” said Manivelle.

The ships were firing at her, but they weren’t close enough, just some solid rounds of some sort of ammunition to make her nervous.

She came up with a Rule Six: If there are no good ideas, go with a bad idea.

“I’m gonna do something,” said Arkansas.

“Yes,” said Manivelle.

“We got defensive capabilities, right?”

“Limited. Ship has radar disrupters, but it’s not great. We have something sort of like chaff on a fighter jet, explodes and sends out a cluster of material in multiple directions to confuse missiles and other ships.”

“And they’re targeting us via our heat signal, right?”

“I believe so. Space is big so radar probably not as effective. Infrared is probably their best bet.”

Arkansas nodded, “I’m going to increase speed, you’re going to activate every countermeasure we have, I’m going to change our trajectory toward Earth.”

“And then?”

“I’m going to shut the whole ship down.”

“We will die,” said Manivelle.

“Just for a little bit.”

“We need air.”

“We have some air.”

“We’ll freeze.”

“And insulation,” added Arkansas.

“You want to turn, aim at Earth, and then turn off all the power,” said Manivelle. “If you’re slightly off, we’ll be way off course. If the Merg ships can still track us, we’ll be sitting ducks, unable to power back on to change direction or maneuver.”

“Yeah,” said Arkansas.

“Americans. Very well.”

Manivelle diverted more power to the engines, and Arkansas pushed hard, accelerating rapidly, feeling the pressure.

“Our friends are speeding up as well,” said Manivelle.

“Got it, got it, got it,” said Arkansas. She paused, feeling out the right moment. “Now, fire all countermeasures!”

Manivelle hit a series of buttons, and all around there were bursts of light, like fireworks going off around them. Arkansas turned did a hard turn, trying to match to the correct trajectory but it was like trying to shoot a ball in a basketball hoop while driving past it at a hundred miles an hour. She just had to aim and hope for the best. “Shut it down!” she yelled.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Hayes was sweaty and out of breath when he saw Barker. There were Merg everywhere, but certainly they’d understand if he just shot the man and then explained that he was a turncoat. He watched Barker and a female companion walk over with The Senator to her tent with the four Merg directly behind.

“Excuse me!” he yelled, running over. He felt a little nervous about pulling out his service weapon, but he needed to take control of the situation. He caught up to them finally, breaths coming out hard, exhausted from a run he now regretted. “Ezra Barker! Get down on the ground!”

Everyone looked at him like he was mad. Like he’d lost it. Like they weren’t talking with a dead man.

“Sergeant Hayes!” The Senator said warmly. “Please come sit.”

He did not want to sit. He had been searching for the traitor, he had found the traitor, and he just needed everyone to acknowledge that now.

“I don’t think it’s safe to be near Mr. Barker,” Hayes said.

“The Merg say it is safe,” said a translator with an accent, New Zealand maybe.

“Of course,” said Hayes. “Of course.”

It was a sight. The Senator in her best skirt suit, Hayes, dripping with sweat and seething with rage, Barker, still soaked from swimming in Lake Michigan, and this other woman, holding her left arm like she had recently sustained an injury. They sat under the tent at the folding table set up as The Senator’s workstation, with the Merg standing directly behind The Senator.

“The Merg want to express their joy at the return of Mr. Barker, a loyal servant,” said the translator.

“Thank you, it is an honor to serve,” said Barker, the liar.

“Where have you been?” Hayes asked. “Did you cover that part yet?”

“Hello, Sergeant Hayes,” Barker said coolly. “It’s good to see you again. No, we had only just reconnected.”

“The Merg have a series of questions,” said the translator. “But to catch you up, Sergeant Hayes, you had just missed Mr. Barker’s confusion that we thought he was dead.”

“Oh, he was confused,” said Hayes, no attempt to hide his hatred of the man.

“You were the one who said you saw him die,” said the translator.

Dammit, this was not the important part, Hayes thought. Why were they wasting time talking about this when they could be finding out what deadly intel he had given Reconquest? And the bomb he stole! Why were they wasting time when there was probably a giant explosive sitting somewhere waiting to kill everyone?

“I saw him shoot himself,” said Hayes. “He ran from his apartment, we chased him. And bang. He must have set up some elaborate plan to fake his death.”

They had to believe him, Hayes thought. Had to. He had been loyal. Barker just floated out of the water with some other piece of garbage.

“How would I do that?” Barker asked.

“You set up a body below the bridge,” Hayes explained. “You staged it there and then ran when we came in the building.”

“Set up a body?” Barker repeated in confusion.

“I saw it!” Hayes yelled, almost convincing himself. “This man has been gone for days, and in that time, Reconquest has pulled off its worst act of terrorism ever. They were able to steal from the weapons depot. Is that a coincidence, Mr. Barker?”

“What are you implying?” Barker asked.

“You gave them the information! You told them everything they needed to know!”

“Mr. Barker did not have that information,” The Senator said sternly, and Hayes cursed himself for overstepping. He was stuck now. He stared at the smug bastard, all cool and collected, smelling like a polluted river but acting like he was a bouquet of roses. He hadn’t given one answer yet, he’d made Hayes conjecture and accuse and he’d just sat there.

“Of course,” said Hayes. “Excuse me, I’m ignorant of the inner workings of The Senator’s office. But I do find it very odd that you were gone for three days and now you just show up here.”

“Yes, and I’m happy to explain, but I keep trying to tell everyone that there is a grave threat and it needs to be addressed immediately.”

“And what is that threat?”

“Reconquest is about to attack.”

Barker was lying, and it felt a little good, felt like politics. He was bad at fighting, bad at keeping secrets, bad at loyalty, but he was good at politics.

“About to attack where?” Hayes asked him.

“The moonbase and here,” said Barker. “Reconquest has been working with, I know this sounds ridiculous, but they have somehow gotten in contact with enemies of the Merg, and they are helping them coordinate these attacks. I believe they intend to assassinate some very important Merg.”

Barker was doing the math here, and he was pretty sure Arkansas and her team had either succeeded or failed, so he wasn’t giving anything away. If they had succeeded, of course the Merg would want to believe Reconquest couldn’t have done it on their own. If they’d failed, well, all was lost and humanity was doomed and this was just a nice little chat before his execution.

“Mr. Barker, the Merg wish to know who your companion is,” said the translator.

“This is my wife, Courtney,” said Barker. This was an answer that would prompt questions that were easier to answer than the ones they wanted answered.

“You’re married?” asked The Senator.

“Yes, it is a long story, but as of yesterday, yes, this is my wife. Courtney.”

Sums just nodded politely, and said, in a voice oddly high and sweet, “Nice to meet everyone.”

“Your fucking wife,” said Hayes. “You been on some unannounced honeymoon and whoops, forgot to call in to work. Were you waterskiing in Hawaii and you just washed up here?”

“No,” said Barker. “I’ve been trying to get back, and I want to tell that story, believe me, but first you have to listen to me. The moonbase and here. They are trying to kill, I don’t know the word, but some sort of large Merg. Like physically large.”

“The Matriarch,” said The Senator.

“Bullshit,” said Hayes. “You ran off with Reconquest, you’re working for them now. If anyone is a danger to the Merg, it’s you. Give me five minutes alone with this twerp and I’ll get you all the real info you need.”

“Please believe me,” said Barker. “There is an attack coming on the moonbase. Zero City is next.”

“Where are your friends?”

“Who?” asked Barker.

“I think there’s more of you here,” said Hayes and Barker had to give him points for guessing right on that one. But, while he hoped he knew where Arkansas and her team were, he actually didn’t know a location for Rupture and Destiny. He and Sums had jumped out first, and he never looked back.

“It’s just my wife Courtney and I. Please, you have to believe us.”

“Do you believe any of this crap?” Hayes asked the Merg directly.

But the Merg had backed up a few strides and were conferring with one another vigorously. When they returned, the translator announced, “The Merg have received news. It seems that there was an attack on the moonbase. Aspects of the report seem to suggest Mr. Barker was correct.”

“Then he helped plan it!” yelled Hayes. “Him! He’s the key to all of this! He’s here to hurt the Merg!”

“We were too late,” said Barker, placing his head in his hands. Sums placed a soft, consoling hand on his shoulder, and he just wanted this moment to last forever. He didn’t care that she was a violent killer and she wanted to chop him up, he just wanted to live in a world where she touched him like this and told him everything was going to be okay.

“And where the fuck have you been then?” Hayes asked. “No more dodging, no more lying. No more bullshit wives. Where have you been?”

“The Matriarch,” said Barker. “Please, we were too late here, but I’m telling you, they are going to come here and kill her. I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but you need to act quickly before it’s too late.”

The Merg conferred, and Barker strained his ears to catch the discussion. He caught bits like “what if” and “here” and “kill now.”

It was cold in space when you shut everything down.

“Another problem,” said Manivelle, “is speed.”

“Yes,” said Arkansas.

“Not that we are going too slow, but that we are going too fast.”

“Yeah, was thinking about that,” said Arkansas. “We need to hit the brakes, but we’re just a floating object in space going a hundred thousand miles per hour.”

“Higher maybe,” said Manivelle. “We need to slow down to seventeen five for low orbit and reentry. When are we going to do that?”

“When’s the last possible moment we can do that?” Arkansas asked.

“And survive deceleration?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me check.”

“Hey, Manivelle, you see the Earth getting bigger and bigger?”

“I do, Arkansas.”

“Pretty nice work, right? I aimed right for that sucker!”

“Well done, very nice. But less nice if we fly past it going too high a fraction of the speed of light.”

“This thing’s got a light speed button or something, right?” Arkansas looked around.

“Not sure how it would work, but yes. How else would they have reached us from wherever their home planet is?” Manivelle asked.

“We get through today, let’s take one of these out and test that light-speed button, yeah?”

“You get us home and land this thing, I will go wherever you want,” Manivelle vowed.

The Senator was managing. She was getting through this. Yes, dead Barker had been resurrected at the worst possible time and her only ally Hayes was letting his temper run his brain, risking all their lives, but she was managing.

“Well,” she said. “It sounds like we have a lot to unpack, and I’m sure the Merg have many more questions for Mr. Barker. How can we best serve the Merg right now?”

The Merg were in their own discussions, however, and they did not seem overly concerned with her or Barker or Hayes. The Senator knew a good moment to stop talking and this was definitely it. But she had questions.

“Barker,” she said.

“Senator,” he replied.

“I dealt with hog crap and I dealt with bull crap on the farm, but whatever you’re pitching smells worse.”

He gave her a look, like he wanted to remind her that she’d never actually lived or worked on a farm, but he knew better, even now, than to correct her.

“I’m trying to help,” Barker said. “Believe me, a lot has happened, and I’m trying to help.”

“Help who?” she asked and she saw his eyes flicker about, and she wondered if she had used the ‘who’ when it should have been ‘whom.’ But he was looking at something else. She started to turn but the Merg returned with the translator.

“The Merg appreciate all of you and your loyalty to the Merg. Today was to be a joyous celebration, a changing of the guard, you might say. But there are some security concerns now.”

The Merg were still chattering behind her, and Barker’s eyes danced from them over to the parking lot, and he had a concerned look, like he was making a decision. She wished she could pull him aside and just ask what the hell the Merg were saying, because it seemed like he didn’t like it. And now he was looking back at the parking lot again.

Trying not to appear rude, The Senator turned back to see what the hell was so interesting over there and she only saw the buses that had been there the whole time. She looked back to Barker, who was nodding. Why the hell was he nodding?

She heard one of the bus engines turn over, and when she turned back to check again it was heading straight for them.

The muscle guy. The fake HSD. Hayes could see him behind the wheel of the bus, still wearing his stolen uniform. The Merg were scattering in their own dignified Merg way, but Hayes was going to hold his ground.

He held up his service weapon and aimed at the bus. And then he felt the knife in his side. He turned, slamming his gun into the face of Barker’s fake wife, wiping away the gleeful smile she had from stabbing him. He tried to fire a round into her pretty face, but there was Barker with his little spindly arms grabbing at the gun, pushing it up as he fired. He backhanded the traitor across the face and turned to fire.

But the bus was right there. Instinct forced him to jump, the bus now passing between him and his enemies. He landed hard, contorting his body to not land on the knife.

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed. There was mayhem around him. Merg were fleeing, HSD officers were flying into action, but no one seemed to know what to do. The other buses were emptying, the prisoners escaping. A problem, but not his biggest one.

He yanked out the knife and looked for Barker, but he was gone. He had slipped away like the fucking spineless eel that he was. Officers were surrounding him looking for direction.

“The Matriarch,” he said. “The big metal building in the park. Barker’s going there to kill the Matriarch.”

Barker was breathing hard inside the bus, amazed that he and Sums had managed to leap inside.

“I’ll kill that HSD,” said Sums, blood spewing down her face, her nose not quite at the angle it had been before. “Slow.”

Rupture was driving the bus with many screaming people in handcuffs behind him. “A lot’s been going on,” he said. “Destiny and I saw you get caught, so we just hung around the pier for a while.”

“Hello,” said Destiny.

“And then you stole a bus,” said Sums. “We’re caught up.”

“No,” said Rupture. “First I came out of the water and I told people I’d caught Destiny trying to swim away, they sent me to the buses, and I realized none of those HSD wanted to be inside. They even gave me the keys to the bus.”

A gunshot took out one of the windows of the bus.

“They’re going to kill the Queen!” Barker yelled. “I heard them. We have to stop them!” He was emotional now, he had betrayed The Senator and it felt like it might all amount to nothing.

“Okay, well,” said Rupture. And then several more bullets hit the bus. “It’s a little challenging to drive right now.”

Barker looked around and remarkably the roads were still clear. There were tons of Merg, but they didn’t care at all about them. It was HSD officers who were shooting, and they were too spread out to catch them immediately.

“They’re just here to mate,” said Barker. “The Merg.”

“We knew that,” said Sums.

“But they’re focused on the Queen.”

“But they’re going to kill the Queen,” Sums pointed out.

“They’re not. They’re drawn here by her, by her—”

“Smart smells,” said Rupture.

“Sure, right,” said Barker, another bullet hitting the bus. “But whatever it is she does, it must not work on the ones that are going to kill her.”

“Eunuchs?” Sums asked with a threatening smile.

“I think we are going to die soon,” said Manivelle. “Unless we turn the ship back on.”

It was cold and each breath seemed worse than the last. The Earth seemed close and they needed to hit the brakes

“Hit it, bro,” said Arkansas.

Lights flicked to life, beeps and dings signaled the reawakening ship systems, and Arkansas’s display flashed new warning signs she had not seen yet, and she’d seen a lot of warning signs.

“Hard brake,” said Arkansas, and it felt like a car accident. Her insides went wobbly and her skull wanted to push through her face.

“Our … friends … ” Manivelle struggled to say, and on her display, she saw that they had been behind her and now they were flying past. They had guessed her direction, but they were flying past.

“They … see … us?” Arkansas asked.

“Yes,” said Manivelle pausing to almost vomit. “Slow … ing … down.”

Arkansas centered herself and adjusted her trajectory to enter into a low orbit. The fighters were slowing, but not fast enough, trying to readjust to match with her.

“Come get me!” she spat out in one breath.

It was a race in reverse. Their ships were smaller, less momentum to fight, but she had started earlier and was willing to destroy herself, to leave one brain cell and one working finger as long as she could get this ship back to Earth.

She was going faster than she wanted to, but she was going for it.

“Entering … low orbit,” she said. “Systems … check.”

“System … is … bad,” said Manivelle and she wished she was physically able to laugh. “But … maybe … enough. Missiles!”

“Shit,” said Arkansas. She saw them, it was a race to the surface now. She was slower than a missile, but she was also smarter than a missile and knew, at least in theory, how to enter Earth atmosphere without burning up.

“Going down,” said Arkansas.

“Too much speed!” Manivelle yelled.

She hit the angle, dropping lower, and the missile followed her.

“Come get me,” she dared.

It was the missile that killed her parents. It was the missile that killed her friends and Drywall. It was the missile that made her live in fear every single day. It was all that missile, and she was going to burn its ugly face off against the intense heat of entry Earth’s atmosphere.

“COME GET ME!” she yelled, and then she couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“Sixty-two miles … altitude. Entering atmosphere,” said Manivelle.

She was home, back in Earth’s atmosphere.

“Not your neighborhood anymore,” she said to the missiles. Fire and heat and they exploded harmlessly behind her.

“My neighborhood,” she added.

Rupture took another turn, this one taking them back toward the Queen. He had been evading HSD successfully, but they were losing time. Barker stood beside him, giving directions, his experience advising the Merg on the extermination of the human population now used against them.

“Turn right,” said Barker. “Then it’s a straight shot.”

“What’s the plan when we get there?” Rupture asked, wrestling the wheel.

“Kill the little Merg, save the big Merg,” said Sums.

She turned back to the terrified bus passengers. “When this bus stops, you fight. This is our one chance, so get out there and kill a Merg.”

Barker chanced a look back and could tell this was never going to happen. These were broken, beaten people, learned helplessness too powerful to overcome, and they were all in handcuffs. Sums would call them cowards, he knew, but telling them to fight the Merg was like telling them to punch a mountain. They didn’t believe it would help.

Up ahead, Barker could see the Queen’s facility, clear all the way to the Merg guards, the ones with the headbands.

The headbands. He had a thought about those.

And then two HSD cars flew out into the road, fifty yards ahead of them. They slammed to a stop, blocking the road. Rupture sped up, but more cars came to back them up. They were about to impact, and only at the last second did Barker see Hayes, bleeding, angry Hayes, pointing his gun at the back of the pack of cars.

A bullet pierced the window and lodged in Rupture’s forehead.

Hayes smiled. Rupture killed with a bullet through the glass, just like they did to his boy Patterson. He had, however, only just the briefest moment to enjoy his victory. The bus slammed into the cruisers blocking its way, but it veered left, its dead driver slumped against the wheel.

More HSD were showing up now. It was mop-up time. There were so many options. He could send a team to kill everyone on the bus. He could keep them in there, set the bus on fire and watch it burn.

Watch. It. Burn.

He’d won. Barker had tried so hard to ruin this day, but all he’d done was show the Merg how Connor Hayes solved a problem.

There were sounds behind him. Sounds of pain.

Barker scrambled to his feet. He’d been thrown into the bus door on impact, and now he saw Rupture’s lifeless body resting against the steering wheel.

“No, no, no,” he said.

The bus was moving, running straight into a light post, bringing them to a stop. He went to go take the wheel, but there were HSD everywhere.

“We go out fighting,” Sums said, but quietly.

“Get out of the vehicle!” and HSD yelled at them. Others were yelling similarly. They were stuck. They were done.

Hayes turned back to the Matriarch and nearly screamed. They were killing her. The Merg had turned on their own Matriarch. They had opened the door to the facility and were firing their laser rifles.

“No!” he yelled, running toward them.

It was Barker, he just knew it. He’d done something to these Merg, poisoned their minds and now they were killing their own Matriarch. “Stop!” he ordered, ignoring the inappropriateness of a human telling a Merg what to do. These Mergs were being controlled.

There were so many of them, all heavily armed, but he had to stop them. Had to stop this. Who knew what could happen if the Matriarch was killed?

“You have to listen to me!”

They all had hoops on their heads, these armed Merg. None of the other Merg he had ever seen wore these. It was a trick. Barker had put these on them, that’s how he was doing this.

“Stop!”

No one listened. He was at the back of the pack. The Matriarch would be dead soon, he could hear the screams. Terrible Merg screams. He had to do something.

It was wrong, he knew it was not allowed, a human could never touch a Merg, but he had to do it. Hayes leapt up and grabbed the Merg by the neck. Before it could shake him off and kill him, he pulled at the hoop. It wasn’t loose like he had thought, but stuck to the Merg’s head, almost felt like it was screwed into its skull. The Merg swung around, but Hayes yanked with all his might until it came loose into his hand. And then Hayes fell, and he was on the ground beside it holding the hoop. The Merg he had attacked turned and pointed its weapon at him. Hayes stared at the gun that would kill him.

The Merg fired a shot into another guard in front of it instead. And then he ripped off the hoop from another Merg. It was quickly chaos, Merg fighting amongst each other, but it was the freed Mergs, no longer under Barker’s control, that had the element of surprise, running up on the others to attack and pull off the foul contraptions. A freed Merg fell from rifle fire, but then two more attacked the shooter. They were swarming now.

Hayes lay there and watched as it spread, one Merg losing its hoop and then pulling it off the one in front of it. He laughed. He lay there, still bleeding from his side, laughing.

He’d done it. He’d stopped Barker.

Barker walked out first, his hands up.

He counted fifteen HSD with rifles pointed. He had no tricks left. Everything he’d done had brought him here, about to watch the Queen die when they’d been so close. He heard the screams, and then they stopped. He searched for Hayes, wondering if he could claw the man’s eyes out before the other officers killed him.

Then he saw Hayes. Saw Hayes among the Queen’s guards, the ones who had turned to kill her. They … weren’t killing her. Some lay dead on the ground and the rest were firing on the Queen’s building, the cage.

All the headbands had gone.

“You see that, Barker?” Hayes asked, a cruel smile on his lips as he strode toward the bus. “You thought you could do it. You ungrateful little shit. You came here to kill this beautiful creature, and where did it get you? Your friends are dead, and now I can do anything I want to you. How does it feel?”

The sergeant had his gun out, but Barker’s eyes kept turning to the facility that housed the Queen. The Merg had blasted holes from inside and out. And then other Merg were coming—the hordes that had gathered but kept their distance from this building, waiting for the opportunity to mate with this Queen or the next, were no longer held back.

“You lost, Barker,” said Hayes. “And now I am going to hurt you.”

“You saved her,” said Barker. “You did it.”

In the sky behind Hayes, Barker saw something coming in from over the river.

“You got some last clever words?” Hayes asked.

Barker nodded. “Hello, Arkansas.”

“We should land this thing anywhere else,” said Manivelle.

“Probably too late,” said Arkansas.

“You have done well, but there is no landing site here,” said Manivelle. “We should land it safely. And why would we go where the other Queen is when we’re trying to keep them both alive?”

“Queen said we’re going to the other Queen,” said Arkansas.

“Is she in charge?” Manivelle asked.

We have to see the other, the Queen thought to her. You must do this.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Arkansas. “Might be a little, I can’t think of how not to land in Chicago. She might be in my brain a bit.”

We are friends, Arkansas.

Cool, okay, lady.

The ship had been through a lot and now it was probably going to have an emergency landing that would be, at best, mediocre. The ship was meant to slow until it hovered and then gently back into a mag-lock, but she was just gonna crash this girl right into downtown Chicago.

“Brace yourself,” said Arkansas.

“Young woman, I have done nothing but brace myself since we met,” said Manivelle

“Whooooooooo!” they screamed together in fear and joy.

It was, in a way, beautiful to The Senator.

A spaceship flying straight over Lake Michigan, headed right into the heart of Zero City. She imagined this is what it must have been like for Daedalus to watch Icarus crash into the sea. She was the one who would crash, however, and there was nothing she could do but stop and enjoy the art of it, the perfect aesthetics of her failure.

The Merg would kill her for this. She would never even know if it had been her fault, if she’d missed something. Didn’t matter.

How many people could say they had been ruler of the Earth? Even if only for a day, put that on the tombstone.

Hayes was running, Merg were running, everyone was running. He pulled out his gun and fired a shot, not knowing what else to do, and then he kept running. The ship was slowing down, he thought, but it looked like it was going to slam right into the middle of the road and he was right in the middle of the road. Every time he ran one direction it felt like the ship was following him. He’d lost Barker in the scramble once it became clear the thing was heading straight for him. It no longer mattered, Hayes had won and Barker had lost, but he wanted that last satisfaction of ending the man’s life. Now, however, his priority was not losing his own.

The noise was so loud, and he could feel the heat of it. He looked back to see fire and vapor as reverse thrusters pushed it back up. He ran off the road, and watched it slam belly first into Ida B. Wells Drive. It sparked and scraped and more thrusters fired and then it stopped.

“Check that ship!” Hayes yelled, maybe to himself. No one else was listening to him. “And find Barker! Grab Barker!”

Barker was standing in the median, surrounded by Merg, between the crashed transport ship and the facility that housed the Queen, which was, at this point, a mess of tangled metal. He could see the Queen through the massive holes in its structure.

The Queen screamed out in a terrible voice, and the surrounding Merg joined her. It was horrible, it was deafening. And then she was bashing into the building, slamming into it until the metal gave and she was free.

Barker looked back at the ship, wondering if Arkansas could have possibly succeeded. Could that be her? Why would she have come here?

And then the cargo bay doors parted and out came another Queen. This one was different. The old Queen was larger, but the new one had brighter coloring, a redder tint to her.

The new Queen screamed, a piercing cry that nearly brought Barker to his knees.

It was silent suddenly, but Merg were streaming in from all the streets, trying to get close to the Queens. They were ready to serve.

And then everything was violence. Merg attacked Merg, claws and teeth and feet. Everything moving, everything bloody. Barker just stood there watching Merg inflict pain on one another, sometimes against themselves. Others just stood there screaming, like something had backfired in their brains.

And then the Queens charged each other. Barker could only stand and watch, too terrified, too amazed to move. If one trampled him, he’d just have to take it. He’d just die.

“Iku,” said Arkansas, shaking the man slightly. “Iku.”

He did not move, and she was ready to break.

“Let me die on the ground,” said Iku, not yet opening his eyes.

“We can find a hospital,” she said. “No one’s been here, they’ve got to be fully stocked.”

“Let me die on the Earth,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

She helped him up, and walked him out to the ramp. “You did it,” he said.

There was chaos, their Queen on a collision course with the old one.

“We did it,” she said.

“When I was a boy, my father was a farmer,” said Iku, his feet touching the street. “And I wanted to be a farmer. Then one day, soldiers came and told him the farm no longer belonged to him. He was no longer a farmer. And when I grew, I became a soldier.”

He pointed and they walked. They had Merg all around them, but she was able to get him through and over to a row of trees by the side of the road.

“When it’s done, go be a farmer,” said Iku. He sat, lay against a tree, and closed his eyes forever.

It was death and gore everywhere, but Barker’s eyes were focused on the two Queens. They were trampling other Merg on the way to fight one another.

They collided a stone’s throw from Barker. The old one grabbed at the young one’s neck, but got a leg stab to her midsection for it. Arms grabbed arms, slipped loose, and then the young Queen had her claw in the old Queen’s face, trying to rip out her eyes.

The old Queen fell onto her back and kicked her opponent with three legs, sending her into the air, crushing dozens of Merg as she landed. They were both on their feet again, screaming at one another.

It was so loud and then it fell silent and then loud again, and Barker wondered if it was his hearing, his brain malfunctioning, or if this was real. He could not tell anymore, and watched as both Queens reared on hind legs and grappled with all of their combined six arms. They pushed and pulled and they bit at each other. Barker pulled his eyes away to see a Merg beside him slamming its own head into the concrete road over and over again, and there were others doing the same.

A bullet slammed into a Merg behind him, which didn’t seem to bother the Merg, who was trying to chew through his friend’s neck. When Barker looked at the direction of the shot, he saw Hayes. Officer Connor Hayes, Rupture’s killer.

Hayes was screaming, but Barker couldn’t hear him. It looked like he was saying, “What did you do?” and Barker wanted to tell him, wanted to tell him everything he’d done. The sergeant was practically crying as he approached, walking through the chaos of Merg violence. He reached Barker finally, pressing the gun against his forehead. “You’re destroying everything we’ve built!” Hayes yelled, time close enough for Barker to barely hear him. The officer pulled the trigger, but he had run out of ammo. He dropped the gun like it was useless to him now.

Barker just stood there, could not even think of anything else to do. The two Queens, locked in each other’s arms and legs, rolled into the road between Hayes and Barker. The older headbutted the younger and spit at her, but the younger slipped a leg free and unleashed a vicious kick to her side.

Barker didn’t even know what he wanted to happen anymore. What would happen when one emerged the victor? Or if they both killed each other?

There was so much blood in the streets, and now both Queens were bleeding from their sides and faces and they kept going. Punching and ripping and kicking and spitting and screaming.

He had forgotten about Hayes, and now the man had his hands wrapped around Barker’s throat.

“They gave us everything!” Hayes yelled.

Barker couldn’t breathe, couldn’t answer him, and really didn’t even know what to say.

Hayes was crying large ugly tears as he choked the life out of Barker. “How are we going to fix this? How are we going to make this right with them?”

Hayes’ eyes widened and he yowled. Still screaming, he released Barker and collapsed to one knee, and Barker thought it was out of grief before he saw Sums stand behind the sergeant holding Rupture’s knife, the same knife Barker had used to write his name in blood for Iku. Barker had seen so much violence, it barely fazed him to see how brutally Sums had sliced up the back of Hayes’s left leg, how deeply she’d cut him from ankle to thigh. Quickly, Sums grabbed the officer’s handcuffs, shoved his arms behind his back, and click click.

“Hi,” said Barker.

She did not say anything back, her attention now back to the fighting Queens tumbling about. The younger one spun the older and leapt onto her back, claws now stabbing into her neck. The older fell to the ground, trying to roll over and on top of the younger, but she couldn’t. The younger Queen held her feet, stayed upright, and continued stabbing over and over. Blood pooled where they stood.

The old Queen’s body went limp, but the young Queen kept going for several more seconds before tossing the body aside.

It was over.

Besides the victorious Queen, Barker could not see one living Merg left.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“You can see the General now,” the young man said to Arkansas. He was wearing what had obviously been an HSD uniform, but with an RQ patch sewn on. For a brief moment, she wondered what had happened to its previous owner.

She opened the door to the office. Unlike many cities, Chicago hadn’t been scavenged through, and so Sums’ new office looked fresh and bright. A simple wood desk in front of a rolling chair. It was so normal, so like the old days. Like she was at the bank with her parents when they asked for a loan.

“Arkansas!” Sums yelled.

The new General held out her arms and the two embraced. It was warm, but even in the midst of it Arkansas could tell that Sums had never been the hugging type.

“Congrats, General.”

“Right, that,” said Sums. “We knew we needed leadership, at least for the next few days or weeks while everything gets organized. A lot of questions about what the world is going to be like, what the U.S. is going to be like, if that’s going to exist again. The people here, and more and more people are coming here now that they’re free … They’re free, Arkansas.”

“They’re free,” Arkansas repeated.

There was joy in Sums’ eyes. Real joy. They had done it.

“People here wanted leadership, and I was not inclined to give it, but we were the ones who did it, we’re symbols now. We’re symbols more than people, and so I took the title. I don’t plan on holding it for too long. I don’t want to be president or dictator or—”

“Queen?” Arkansas suggested.

“Definitely not that,” Sums said with a smile. It was a whole new woman. All her burdens removed.

“What are you going to do?” Arkansas asked Sums as much as herself.

“I want to focus on what’s important,” said Sums. “Everybody else can focus on rebuilding society, arguing over borders, fighting for power. I just want to make sure we don’t let them get away with it.”

She was still smiling, but there was violence behind it now. As if she was imagining the deaths of all her enemies, which seemed unnecessary since she’d witnessed the deaths of all her enemies about seventy-two hours earlier. She had seen plenty die in Chicago, but in the minutes the two Queens fought, every Merg on Earth had suffered the same fate. They had attacked each other, and if they didn’t have another Merg to butcher, they bashed their own brains out.

“We won,” said Arkansas.

“We did,” said Sums. “But this world can’t be for the ones who betrayed us, the ones who served the Merg.”

“Yeah, no,” said Arkansas. “What’s happening to all those people?”

“Lots of stuff,” said Sums, almost bubbly, as if Arkansas had hit on her favorite topic. “The ones in custody, and I’m pushing this out around the globe, they are being held, and strongly encouraged to name names, to give us all the others who backstabbed their fellow humans.”

“Encouraged,” Arkansas repeated.

“Yes,” said Sums, smile growing. “I myself have been personally encouraging some of the traitors. It’s been very productive and enjoyable.”

Arkansas did not wish to be in the room anymore. She had questions, most definitely. Where did Sums draw the line with collaborators? Yes, of course, HSD, but what about truck drivers? Floor captains? Their families? Arkansas didn’t ask, because looking at Sums, she could see there was no line.

“And how was your mission? Any trouble?”

“Moonbase was empty,” said Arkansas. “Any fighters were gone, back to one Merg planet or another.”

“They’ll be back someday, but we’ll be ready.” Sums said confidently.

“The base was still somewhat functional, even with Campal’s bomb taking out a big chunk of it. We found a lot of our stuff, warehouses full of what they stole and were going to send back to their home planet. So, I was trying to organize flights to bring those back to Earth. Not my strength, but like you said, people were looking to me. So, I stayed up there a couple days, planning schedules, organizing shifts.”

“You didn’t like it,” said Sums.

“Nah, no way.”

“People know what you did. They love you for what you did.”

This hurt a little, because she had to say, “And what Campal and Iku did. And Rupture.”

“Heroes,” said Sums. “Speaking of which, where is Manivelle? And the Queen?”

Arkansas had been avoiding this subject. “We brought her up to the moon, and she—well, I was a bit nervous because she gets in my head.” Sums nodded at this, not realizing that Arkansas was being literal, Manivelle was the only one she’d told about the Queen’s mental link with her. “But she went willingly, and then she wanted to go somewhere she could be alone, some other planet she knew about, and Manivelle agreed to take her.”

“He needs to bring her back to Earth immediately,” said Sums, the warmth of their friendship gone in a flash. “We allowed the Queen to go because we thought she would be useful, not because she gets to escape. She is one of them. And we can use her, study and dissect her to see how she does what she does, replicate that to use against the Merg when they come back.”

“Okay, well, I think we can send a message out, but he was going to use the FTL, the faster than light speed function on the ship he took, so I don’t know how long it will take to reach him. We’re still figuring out everything these ships do.”

“And you let him?” Sums asked.

“He just went,” said Arkansas. “Left a note.” She was lying, but she felt she couldn’t tell Sums the truth: that Manivelle had asked her to go with him, and she’d said no, that she had obligations here. Definitely she could not tell Sums that she wasn’t sure if she regretted that decision.

“Of course he did,” said Sums. “He knows that he’s backstabbing us so he can fly around space. And help them.”

“What about Barker?” Arkansas asked.

“What about Barker?” Sums shot right back at her.

“Like, he’s a collaborator, but he’s also … you know, we couldn’t have done this without him.”

“Collaborator,” said Sums. “You said it yourself. Rest doesn’t matter, collaborator. And he only helped us because we made him, because we made him fear us.”

“He did it because he was in love with you,” said Arkansas, and Sums clearly did not enjoy that answer, so she added, “But yeah, none of my business.”

“You have lots of other business, I’m sure,” said Sums. “You can leave all the unpleasant stuff to me.”

“Yeah, no doubt,” said Arkansas.

“Death to Merg,” Sums said as she stood.

“Death to collaborators,” said Arkansas, making sure to put as much excitement into the statement as possible.

The Senator continued walking down the highway. At the start of her journey, she’d run and hid whenever she heard a vehicle heading down the road, but over the previous few days the roads had become more crowded, jammed with cars and buses and trucks full of people running from the last two years or searching for their families or just going somewhere that wasn’t where they’d been.

Someone would recognize her eventually. She’d taken steps, yes. Step one, she’d exchanged her clean, expensive clothes for sweatpants and a sweatshirt she’d stolen from a sporting goods store in Chicago. Threw a rock right through the front window, walked in, and picked up some clothes, a Swiss Army knife, some protein bars, and a pair of sneakers. Step two had been rolling those through the dirt for twenty minutes. She’d also taken a pair of scissors from behind a cash register and cut off most of her hair, only gray roots showing now. She was, to all appearances, just another woman in her late middle age, and that was a good thing to be when trying to avoid attention.

No way she’d go on like this forever. Things were disorganized now, but that would only last so long, and the first person anyone in Sector 24518 would want to see swinging from a streetlight was probably her.

Two things were true: The people had loved her, known she worked for them to make the best of the most challenging time in the history of the human race. Also, everyone hated her and saw her as a symbol of the Merg oppression. She believed both things equally. She had done her best, had served humanity, but her signature—well, Barker’s forgery of her signature—was on too many death warrants. There was no place for her in this world except tied to a burning stake.

She regretted.

Nothing.

What else could she have done? Let the Merg kill her? Conspired against them? She’d be dead already. There was no opportunity for reform with the Merg. When Reconquest found her they’d kill her, but they’d probably lecture her on her mistakes first. She hadn’t made a mistake, and if Barker’s friends hadn’t gotten lucky … well, it would be different.

She would go, however, for as long as she could. She’d have to find allies, but not to build power and influence, just to live another day.

A minivan, dusty and obviously only recently back in use, headed toward her. She bent her head down but the vehicle slowed to a stop.

“You headed somewhere?” an older woman asked.

“Just … ” she started, “looking for a fresh start.”

The woman smiled and the side door rolled open. “Same here,” she said. “Want to ride with us for a while?”

There were five other women in the van, all about the same age. They were all in better shape than she was, with fresher clothes, clean and well-maintained hair. They’d probably only just had the chance to get cleaned up. She wondered where they got gas for the car, but probably the Merg-approved stations for official vehicles were just free fill-up spots now.

“Yes, thank you,” said The Senator. Her voice was more upper-crust, more East Coast than the voice she had been using in her professional career, but it wasn’t an act. It was more like what she’d sounded like in her youth, when she thought being elite was a virtue.

“We were in Indianapolis,” said the driver as The Senator sat in the seat directly behind her. The other woman patted her on the shoulder, glad to have another one of them join their group.

“Where were you?” the woman in the seat beside her asked.

“St. Louis,” she said, the truth easier to manage.

“Well, we’re headed north, as you can see. Dana had a little farm near Madison before the invasion. We’re hoping we can get it back in shape. Live off that while everyone else figures how the world works again.”

“That’s wonderful,” said The Senator.

“Yeah,” said the driver. “You’re welcome to join if you’re willing to work.”

“I am,” said The Senator.

“What did you do?” she asked. “During the occupation?”

“I survived,” said The Senator.

The woman beside her nodded, then tilted her head slightly as she asked, “Do you know who you look like?”

If a doctor looked at Hayes’ leg, he suspected they would tell him it needed to be amputated. It was infected, unusable, a mess of slashed tendons and oozing pus. A doctor would give him medicine for the pain. Might have even looked at the stab wound in his side, which fortunately or unfortunately, had not hit any major organs. There were no doctors in Cook County Jail, however, back in service housing Hayes and his fellow political prisoners.

Most of his fellow inmates were former HSD, but also other government officials and high-ranking laborers. Some had begged for mercy, sworn off the Merg, thrown themselves on the mercy of Reconquest. They were fools and cowards, but maybe they were smarter. Not because his jailors would forgive them and reintroduce them into society, but because it drew attention to them and got them interrogated, tortured, and executed more quickly. Some inmates believed there was some trial system for them, some kangaroo court, but Hayes doubted even that existed. They’d bring you into a room, demand you sell out everyone else who had served the Merg in any capacity, and if you pointed enough fingers, they might make it a little quicker.

Hayes had said nothing and he was still waiting, sitting in his cell, watching his leg fail, feeling the fever that had set in with the infection, wondering if he’d die before Reconquest ever got to him. The idea made him laugh.

Some HSD officers (former officers, but he couldn’t tell them that) thought the Merg would come back to save them. Each day he’d been here, there had been another ridiculous story circulating. Day One, there were Merg living underground that would rise and overwhelm the humans. Day Two, the Merg were sending reinforcements, ships were landing any moment and they’d spread the word to the captured HSD to be ready to fight. Day Three, the Merg had underwater bases with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and they were about to rise and restore order. Day Three just sounded like Day One but with water instead of dirt.

No one was coming to save them. And why should they? HSD blew it. Hayes blew it.

He had to admit it now. He had been standing right in front of Barker that night in his apartment. All he’d needed to do was pull the trigger and none of this would have happened. Instead, the twerp took all his illicit information to Reconquest. How did he know what would happen when the two Queens met? Hayes still asked himself that. And then he thought, he didn’t need to ask himself that. He could just ask Barker, because the asshole was in the cell directly across from him.

“Barker!” Hayes yelled.

“Yes, Connor,” said Barker, sounding delighted to not use his title, but Hayes had let go of all of that. Setting down the notebook he had been writing in while sitting in his bed, Barker turned to him.

“How’d you know about the Queens?” Hayes asked.

“Got a hint from a translator.”

Hayes was laughing. Oh, that was good. That was hilarious to him. A translator. He didn’t even get the joke he was laughing at, but he loved it. It might have been the fever baking his brain.

“Why’d you do it?” Hayes asked. “Don’t feed me a line about humanity or justice. Because whatever the reason, you screwed up. You’re in the same place as me, got the same fate coming down on your head. Only difference, far as I see, is they gave you a different colored shirt for every day of the week for some goddamn reason.”

“If you could have done it, wouldn’t you have?” Barker asked, back to politics, answering a question with a question.

“I’m dying,” said Hayes. “I have no clue where my wife and daughter are. Four days ago I had a solid job working for a hyper-intelligent alien race that was going to leave us a utopian paradise. No, Barker, I wouldn’t have taken a giant dump on all that.”

“Connor, did you really believe that?” Barker asked. “That they were going to take all of our resources and leave us better off?”

“Everything they told us was true,” said Hayes. “They never lied to us, not once.”

“Let me put it to you this way,” said Barker. “If they could leave us better than before without any of our natural resources, why did they need those resources?”

Hayes was laughing again. He barely remembered what Barker had said, but it was the best joke he’d ever heard.

“I hate you, Barker. The only thing that’s keeping me alive in this cell is the hope that I might outlive you. That I might just get to hear your screams coming down the hall from the interrogation room. God, that will be the best last day of life I could imagine.”

“I’m not sure how you want me to respond to that, Connor.”

“You think you’re so smart,” said Hayes. “A little baby genius over there, working all your political angles, quoting Shakespeare while you move your chess pieces around. You think I didn’t notice that you never answered my question. Why did you do it? We had two years living under the most advanced race Earth has ever known, and they elevated both of us. They trusted both of us. I repaid that trust and you stabbed them in the back.”

“They killed hundreds of millions of people, maybe billions,” Barker calmly noted.

“Is that why you did it? Because most of the killing was in the first couple days. Did it take you years to decide the Merg were so mean? Because I saw what they were doing. They were making us stronger, they were teaching us the value of hard work.”

“They were definitely not doing those things,” said Barker. “They were enriching themselves and controlling us to make sure we made it easier for them to take from us.”

“You have no balls,” said Hayes. “And you’re still avoiding the question. Two years, and apparently you just hated them for two years, but you sat in your office and you did paperwork and you followed orders, and then Reconquest put you over the barrel and you gave them everything. Not just codes, but I think you helped them plan all of this. No way they knew about the Matriarch and Zero City. You could have helped them steal a box of laser rifles and you would have handed them the biggest win they’d ever had. But you didn’t do that. Why?”

“How could I not?” Barker asked.

“I’m dying,” said Hayes. “Today, tomorrow, they bring me some antibiotics so I can live long enough to be tortured to death, maybe a third day, but it’s coming. I don’t know if they put you next to me to mock me, scare you, or just as a fun little joke to themselves, but the least you can do is tell me why you destroyed everything I love.”

“You loved the Merg?” Barker asked.

“Answer the fucking question!” Hayes growled, and then coughed. He needed water, but they never gave him enough.

“Every night for weeks, I would look across the alley and see this woman, and something about her made me see how awful all this was. She gave me hope. Don’t know why. But then I had the chance to help her. And that was all I wanted to do.”

Hayes was laughing again, and then he was crying, and he didn’t know why, like his body had gotten the joke before his brain did. He couldn’t catch his breath, and he thought it might be the end, but then it all passed. He was silent for a few moments, remembering Patterson, remembering what he’d found outside Barker’s apartment.

“The brush!” Hayes screamed. “You killed us all for that brush!”

And then it all flowed back, all the regrets, all the times he could have stopped Barker and he failed and everyone else paid the price for it. Patterson, Quentin Reedy, Erin. His chief was probably mounted on a cross right now.

“The brush!” Hayes screamed again. And then he was just screaming, mad, incoherent sounds. Even he didn’t know what was happening, but he couldn’t stop. The pain, the hunger, the fever, the anger, it just came out.

It was madness, he knew he was losing his grip, but inside he held the thought that maybe if he just screamed loud enough, the Merg might hear him.

Ezra Barker watched Hayes laugh and cry until it became clear he was done with his interrogation. Barker picked back up the pen and paper and resumed writing. As soon as he had started, he heard cheers coming from down the hall. Not inmates, they never cheered. It was the guards, that enthusiastic group of volunteers who loved their jobs, loved terrorizing the ones who had given support to the Merg. Something had happened, and they were clapping and hooting.

“What is it? Did the Merg die again?” an inmate down the hall asked without affect.

The cause of the excitement made her way down to Barker’s cell and he saw that it was a who, not an it.

“Arkansas,” said Barker.

“Hey, man,” said Arkansas.

Barker brushed his hands over his shirt to minimize wrinkles, tried to fix his hair a bit, trying to give himself some air of professionalism.

“Congratulations,” he said. “I tried to find you after it all happened, but I couldn’t, and then some of the people from the bus grabbed me. You know, the ones they brought in, they recognized me and they thought I’d run for it. I thought Sums would … well, you see, I’m still here.”

He was not sure if by ‘here’ he meant his cell or this mortal coil, but Arkansas just nodded.

“General wants to see you,” said Arkansas.

“Sums? Really?” asked Barker, with too much glee. “I just, that’s great. She had asked me for info before, just not directly, someone always comes by and asks for the locations of other weapons depots, stuff like that, but I haven’t seen her since it happened.”

“Bring your shirts,” said Arkansas.

“Sure, okay,” said Barker.

While he grabbed his things, Arkansas’ attention turned to the cell across from him. “That our buddy?” she asked.

“Connor Hayes, yes,” said Barker.

Hayes, who had looked as if he was starting to pass out, stirred at the mention of his name. “Come to dance on my grave?” Hayes asked.

“Nah, bro,” said Arkansas. “No need for that.”

Hayes was laughing again.

“Guard!” Arkansas yelled, pointing for a young woman in a repurposed HSD uniform to unlock Barker’s cell.

“You’re sure this is okay?” the guard asked.

“Most definitely,” said Arkansas.

The cell swung open, and Barker followed out, and down the hall past the other inmates. They all hated him, but no one made so much as a sound. A few angry glances, but everyone had their own worries now.

“I hear she’s running things now,” said Barker. “Like everything.”

“That’s her,” said Arkansas. “Saw her this morning. Been out flying for a few days.”

They reached an access door, Arkansas pointed to her face and they let her through. The guard on the other side patted her on the shoulder and said, “Can’t say thank you enough for what you did. You’re an inspiration.”

“Just one piece of it,” said Arkansas. “Thank you.”

It took a few more minutes, but eventually they were outside, the sun brighter than it had been in so many years. Not as bright as before the invasion, but after two years of constant air pollution, three days break had made it enough for Barker to squint.

“You want me to accompany you?” a large male guard at the entrance called out to Arkansas.

“Nah,” said Arkansas. “I got Barker, he ain’t going nowhere.”

The guard laughed at this.

They walked out to a black muscle car from the 1970s. “Chrysler Imperial LeBaron,” said Arkansas. “Granddaddy used to have one of these. Anyway, I just took one. Not from somebody, but I’d seen it a while back at this lot, not really practical for what we were up to, but now I just need it this once, and I didn’t want to miss the chance.”

“Sure,” said Barker, getting into the backseat. “Are you going to cuff me or something?”

“You gonna strangle me while I drive?” Arkansas asked.

“No,” said Barker.

“Cool, we’re good then.”

They had been driving for a few minutes when Barker asked, “Are we actually going to see Sums?”

“Change into those clothes back there,” Arkansas ordered.

Beside him were a black HSD shirt and the olive green pants. He saw an RQ patch over the breast. He followed orders and started to change.

“You know, I haven’t told anyone but Manivelle this, but that Queen, the one I brought back here, the winner. She got in my head. I’m the only one I think who gets what happened, but I can’t tell anyone, ’cause no one wants to hear I got a mental connection with the Merg Queen.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She showed me how it used to be. How Queens were served, how the Merg would line up for the honor of mating and then destroy themselves after as a sign of respect. And colonies, I guess colonies is the word, they’d have a few prospective Queens coming up and they’d fight to the death for the right to be the next one in line. And finally the juvenile would challenge the older Queen, and if she won, she was the Queen. Had to wait until the Queen was old enough to lose to a juvenile. Never had two fully grown Queens in the same colony. Having two adult Queens would … well, you saw what it did here.”

“I did,” said Barker.

“But technology and all, the Queen now serves them. males keep her in a cage, everybody lines up to mate, they fight each other for the chance, and she just stands there and stores their junk, lays millions of eggs, slowly over years, but they don’t worship her anymore. She’s got this mental power over them, but they block it. They just use her. And when they’re done with her, there’s no fight, they just kill her and then bring in the new Queen. And then they use her, too.”

“I hear you,” said Barker.

“You ever think about the fact that they didn’t want to be here?” Arkansas asked.

“The Merg?”

“Yeah, Barker. The Merg. I mean, maybe some really hated us and they enjoyed killing us. But, I don’t know. They didn’t want to be here, but they got sent here, a billion light years or whatever from home. They’re fighting in Lamp Town just to feel something. They all line up for their chance to mate and we eradicate them. Don’t think this is pity, it’s not pity. What they did, I don’t feel bad. I don’t.” she paused. “I killed one.”

“We killed a lot of them,” Barker said, zipping up the pants.

“Nah, Barker. I mean on the ship. I stabbed it in the neck and killed it.”

“Impressive.”

“Yeah, I guess, man, but like, I can’t fight. He was just scared. And I had to, I really had to, but he’s some Merg got sent here like the rest. Some Merg back on the home planet pointed at an intergalactic map and two years later everyone they sent is dead, a whole bunch of us are dead, and I’m not going to see anyone I love ever again.”

It was silent for a few minutes in the car, just Arkansas driving down the highway. Barker tried to think of something wise to say, but it was Arkansas who spoke next.

“How you feeling?” she asked. “Since it happened.”

“Better,” said Barker. “Like, I’ve been worried about being killed by Merg or humans for so long, and now it’s all done. And Sums, she’s in charge now.”

“She’s going to kill you.”

“Always said she would.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” said Arkansas. “That’s it right there. I lived through the Merg, and I know everyone else seems to be so happy about what’s to come, but I don’t want to see it. There are all these Merg weapons and Merg ships, and I’m not some history major like you—”

“Political science and linguistics,” Barker corrected.

“But what I do remember from school makes me think people are still going to suffer, it’s just humans on the other side of the gun instead of Merg.”

“Where are we going?” Barker asked.

“I’m going to Kenosha, I’m stealing a Merg ship, and I’m flying wherever it’ll take me. Gonna hit that FTL button and go somewhere far from here.”

“I see,” said Barker.

“You want me to drop you off somewhere, just say it,” said Arkansas.

“Are you asking me to come with you?” Barker asked.

“Yeah, Barker, yeah, obviously.”

“Why me?”

Arkansas tapped on the steering wheel a couple times. “I got nobody else left.”

“I heard about Iku and Campal. I’m sorry, and I’m flattered you would ask, but everyone loves you now. You’re young, and you’ll meet new people.”

“I’m going,” said Arkansas. “I’m nineteen and I’m going to act like it finally. I’m making a bad decision, I’m being selfish. I’m not going to stay here and march in parades and wave whatever flag we’re going to be waving. Do you know why it was me flying that last mission?”

“No one else had flown as many missions as you.”

“Nothing special about me, just random chance kept me alive long enough to be the most experienced pilot. Well, I did my time, I did my twenty missions, I’m out. You got until Kenosha to decide if you’re coming with me.”

They drove in silence for an hour. Barker had one question on his mind, but he didn’t ask it until he caught sight of the launch facility.

“What about Sums?”

“I don’t know,” said Arkansas. “She’ll be mad.”

“I think it’s not right,” said Barker. “It’s not right that I get to escape.”

“You did bad stuff,” said Arkansas. “Also, no Barker, none of this happens. Merg are still doing their thing. You helped me, and I’m helping you. And you seem pretty good at taking directions. You did what The Senator told you to do, you did what Sums told you to do. Now, I’m the Queen and you serve me. Don’t get ideas in your head, I’m not getting pregnant in space.”

“You don’t even know what it’s going to be like.”

“You talking about us hooking up or outer space?” Arkansas asked.

“What? I mean space, it could be just Merg. Or we could get lost and there’s no habitable planets. We could die.”

“Or we could find some cool aliens and have fun. We’ll find out when we get there.”

She stopped at the gate and gave a smooth slap handshake to the guard, who didn’t even look back at Barker. “You going back up?” he said to Arkansas.

“Yeah,” said Arkansas. “Moon stuff, you know.”

“Bring me back something.”

“You know I got you.”

Arkansas parked and hopped out. Still in a haze, Barker sat for a few seconds before following her. He found her at the trunk, pulling out a duffle bag which she tossed to him.

“You like soft, medium or hard bristle toothbrushes? I guessed soft, no offense.”

“None taken,” said Barker, slinging the bag over his shoulder while Arkansas grabbed one of her own.

“Keep your head down, but not too down.”

Arkansas walked into the facility, making idle chatter with each guard, because everyone wanted to be near her, at least for a few seconds. Some would ask about who Barker was and she’d say, “New recruit.”

They had reached the ship, and Barker followed as Arkansas walked up the ramp up to its cockpit.

“I killed people,” said Barker. “I don’t deserve this.”

“Barker, deal with that on your own time. You did something for me, you gave me a chance, you gave the whole planet a chance. You can stay here and wait for Sums to forgive you and to love you, but buddy, ain’t no way.”

“Yeah,” said Barker, strapping into the bench beside Arkansas. It was clear the humans had rigged the straps to fit their own bodies now, but it was still an awkward process. “I have no clue what any of this stuff on this panel means.”

“Got a manual in your bag. Plenty of time to learn.”

The roof above them opened and Arkansas began to hit a series of buttons that meant nothing to Barker, but she seemed very confident in doing so.

“Thank you,” said Barker. “I should just say thank you.”

Arkansas hit one final button, and they were off, soaring high into the air. It was beautiful and terrifying but mostly painful as they shot up in the sky.

For several minutes the only sound was the engine, Arkansas busy flying the ship and Barker unable to make sounds besides a low whine of pain.

“ARKANSAS!” yelled a familiar voice over their sound system.

“Hello, Sums,” said Arkansas.

“I know what you’re doing. Bring him back! Bring that ship back!” Sums demanded.

“Nah, not me,” said Arkansas.

“You are a hero of Reconquest and you are choosing to betray everything we fought for!” Sums declared.

“Not me either,” said Arkansas. “I’m done with all that.”

“I will stop you!” yelled Sums.

Barker wanted to say something, but everything he thought of would make the situation worse, and he felt nauseous from the rapid acceleration. He just had to accept this was the last time he’d hear her voice, the woman who changed everything for him.

“Do you hear me?” Sums asked. “I will send ships and they will shoot you out of the sky.”

Arkansas smiled. “Send them. You got nobody who can catch me.”

They exited the atmosphere, escaped the gravity well, and Barker felt weightless.

“You’re throwing away everything!” Sums yelled.

Arkansas unbuckled from the bench and floated in the air. “I’m not your pilot anymore,” she said. “I’m not your hero and Barker’s not your prisoner.”

“What are you then?” Sums asked. “A traitor?”

Arkansas pushed herself over to the control panel, and it looked to Barker as if she was about to turn off the radio, but held her finger for one second while she thought about the question.

“I’m a farmer.”

About the Author

Alexander C. Kane is the author of six published novels including the best-selling Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection. A native of Central Florida, Alex is a graduate of the University of Florida and holds a Masters in Education from Queens College in New York. He has written sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, The People’s Improv Theater, and the Magnet Theater. A former New York City public school teacher, Alex lives in Queens with his wife and two hyper-creative children.

Website: Alexanderckane.com

Facebook: facebook.com/alexanderkane

Instagram: @alexanderckanebooks

Twitter and Threads: @alexanderckane

About the Publisher

This book is published on behalf of the author by the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency.

https://ethanellenberg.com

Email: agent@ethanellenberg.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EthanEllenbergLiteraryAgency/