Nathan was surprised by how far away they were going from the public government center, where press conferences with the Department were usually held. The commute there, Nathan estimated, would be at least a half hour by train, meaning that anyone involved in a media briefing would be relatively far away from where they did most of their work. Perhaps that was why press conferences only happened during the first 21 weeks of the year.

“So, before you discover the less… savory parts of our department, I think it’s important that you know what this is all for,” Caroline started, after giving her statement quite a bit of thought.

Immediately, Nathan’s mind began to jump to conclusions. They were going to talk about the only public mission the Department of Autonomy had - defending themselves against a potential military invasion.

“I mean, it can’t be that complicated. Nukes, shields, and artillery, right?” Nathan asked. How hard could planetary defense possibly be?

“No, Nathan. It seems simple. But, the fact is, as inefficient as it may be, the Terran Space Force isn’t stagnant. Its weaponry is constantly evolving, and its forces have been surging in number for the past twenty years. It’s an arms race, and it’s exhausting and expensive to keep up.”

“But, aren’t they focused on the insurrection right now?”

“Will the insurrection keep them occupied forever?”

Nathan thought it over. Once the Terran Space Force finished squashing the rebellion, they’d have a gigantic surplus of ships with nothing to do with, and a planet that was previously infeasible to conquer would be, with their new technology and numbers, ripe for the taking.

Despite all the fearmongering, it was obvious to almost everyone on Antares that the insurrection could barely threaten a small corporate militia, let alone the might of the Terran Space Force. No, the naval expansion wasn’t truly about the insurrection; it was about centralization. It was about giving the Terran Republic more power over its colonies, tightening the leashes, and re-establishing the corporations’ hold on the planetary governments. The facade would drop after the rebellion was finally gone.

Caroline continued, confirming his suspicions. “Nathan, the real target of this mobilization is planets like ours. So, it isn’t just nukes and artillery and shields. It’s a huge amount of in-system infrastructure designed to counter every possible one of their weapon designs, and penetrate every possible shield they could strap to their ships. And it has to have enough firepower to hold off a good chunk of the fleet for days on end. Even the artillery has to be constantly updated and revised to penetrate the latest Terran Space Force defenses. This is expensive, complicated, requires a lot of manpower, and must be kept secret.”

“Why open with that? Shouldn’t you bring it out when I’m having doubts about joining? If you’re telling me that this is the best thing you’re doing, shouldn’t I just think you’re doing lots of evil stuff you haven’t told me about?”

“Look, Nathan, it’s not like we do other things on the side. Defense is our primary mission. Everything we do here is to supplement the Defense Branch in various ways. There is nothing we do that doesn’t have that as its ultimate purpose. And you need to know that right from the start.”

“But why?”

“Because that’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

Nathan didn’t know what to think about that. He barely had time to process what Caroline had just hit him with. She was the leader of the entire operation. But it was an operation that he would soon be in charge of. Maybe he could stop the bad parts. Maybe he could -

The train stopped.

“Well, this is us,” Caroline stated, interrupting Nathan’s thoughts on the matter as he followed her out of the train. From there, it was only a few blocks to the building - wherever it was.

The building had a disturbing amount of foot traffic for something that was supposed to be top secret. He wondered how they’d managed that.

“How can you keep the secrets with so many people?” Nathan whispered, his eyes wide.

“You’ll get your answers in due time,” Caroline replied, seeming surprisingly content, “just give it a few hours. Stop being so impatient!”

Regardless, they joined the heavy stream of traffic and headed inside. There was a standard biometric checkpoint. Caroline put her eyes up to the scanner and let the both of them through.

“This is your last chance to turn back,” she stated, just loud enough for him to hear.

He stopped walking for a moment, considering his options one more time - but this was just a formality. He’d already made his decision, and he wasn’t about to go back on it.

He followed her through.

One of the best things about being in a gigantic crowd was the relative anonymity you experienced. However, today, Nathan didn’t get any of it. Tens of pairs of eyes recognized him as somebody new, somebody different, somebody with Caroline. With a few soft murmurs, the stares began to multiply until most of the free eyes were trained on the two of them.

Meeting eyes with a few of them, he could see the same look in everyone. It was like they were looking down on him, or telling him to get out, or pitying him - he wasn’t quite sure which, though it could be some combination of the three.

They all knew exactly what was going to happen to him. But he knew too; there was no point in Caroline deceiving him. He had abandoned his life, his family, and his friends, for a chance to make Antares a better place. Everything was fine. Everything would be fine. He could live with a new body, and he could live with making public appearances and hiding his true self during them. He didn’t need to be pitied, didn’t need to be silently told to turn around, didn’t need to be looked down on.

Seeing the look of resolve on his face, Caroline gave him a tiny smile. “We should probably go somewhere more… private,” she remarked.

----------------------------------------

There were forty-three basement levels, each one with less foot traffic than the last. Caroline had taken him down to the very bottom, into a small conference room that was tucked at the opposite end of the elevator. It was just the two of them, a contrast to all the craziness that was everywhere else.

Caroline let out a sigh of relief. “Finally. I hate going up to the surface so much, Nathan… it’s like walking through a ball pit. You must hate it too! You have to deal with it every day. You know what I mean, right?”

Nathan shrugged, not agreeing with her. In basically every office job, he had to deal with that kind of traffic, or even worse. It wasn’t annoying or hated; it was simply a fact of life.

“Eh, you’ll understand me when you’ve been here for longer,” she added, “Stars, I’m going to tell you ‘I told you so’ so many times.”

“Anyway, answers?”

“Oh, right. That’s how it always is. Straight and to the point.”

“But -”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m going to tell you everything. A deal’s a deal, right?”

She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

“So, what do you think are the existential threats to the Antares Authority right now?” Caroline spoke in a measured tone, a neutral expression on her face.

Nathan gave it quite a bit of thought. Of course, there was the obvious one - the Terran Republic attempting to centralize them. But there were a variety of different ways that they could do that. There wasn’t just the threat of military invasion. They could subvert the Antares Authority by undermining its popular support or sabotaging its infrastructure. They could corrupt the government, they could slowly expand corporate influence until it supplanted the state. Or, they could just wait it out. The Antares Authority was a singular star system; its resources were quite limited.

“It could be invaded, it could be subverted by the Terran Republic, its citizens could be convinced to defect via propaganda…” Nathan mused.

“Your list is incomplete. You considered The Republic, and that’s indeed a big threat, but it’s not the biggest one.”

“What could be a bigger threat than the Terran Republic? Isn’t that our only enemy? Well, the only one with vast numbers and resources?”

“Direct democracies are inherently unstable. This system, where the masses rule, has one vulnerability - the masses themselves. Of course, they don’t always know what’s good for them. They’re vulnerable to propaganda. Cults of personalities will soon follow. This direct democracy, without a framework benefitting the status quo such as the ancient American States’ constitution, is inherently unstable. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Everything he’d read on the philosophy of government said otherwise, but he’d bring that up another time.

“Why not simply implement that framework?” he asked instead.

“That wouldn’t work either - do you know what led to the downfall of the American States? Stability brings stagnation - look at the Republic. Additionally, implementing a system like that has vulnerabilities as well. Legislators who aren’t directly accountable to the public? Imagine what just a few rogues could do to that system. Imagine how little effort the corporations would need to expend wrecking a government like that.”

“If it’s so unstable, how has our government stood for three hundred years?”

She paused for a moment, mainly for effect.

“That’s our job.”

Preposterous. Democracies could stand on their own if their citizens maintained them properly. The Department of Autonomy wasn’t the only thing propping their democracy up. What could they even do?

“And how exactly do you do that?” he asked.

Caroline let out a sigh. “You don’t want to know, Nathan. You really, really don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do. I’ve always wanted answers.”

Caroline sunk her fingernails into her palms. Nathan could catch her brow starting to furrow before she caught it and immediately pulled it back to the neutral expression she was maintaining.

“Look, Nathan. We can talk about this anytime. Nothing about this government is going to change anytime soon. But you are. We’re preparing a mandatory injection for you as we speak. So, personally, I would recommend that you alter the scope of your questions for now.” Her voice was slightly more stern this time.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Nathan’s stature began to waver, the sheer weight of what was about to happen finally beginning to hit him. It hadn’t even been an hour, and they were already doing it.

“What’s it going to do to me?” he asked, his mouth agape.

“I thought that had been made clear, Nathan.”

She paused for a moment.

“It’s going to make you into a nobody.”

----------------------------------------

“We’ve been over this, Maxwell. This time, it’s different. They aren’t going to win. We don’t need to worry about continual preparation for the long term. There is no long-term anymore.”

“But, in the meantime, they’re going to focus on centralization. And if we redirect resources away from the defense, they might see that we’re weak and snatch us up. Then we’ll have a war on our hands, and any hope will be completely out the window. Besides, what if they get the aliens to stop?”

“Right. I understand that. But, at the same time, reverse engineering alien technology is probably our best way forward anyway. There’s not much of a point in developing new things when we have a treasure trove of stuff to reverse engineer, so they won’t be making anything new either. So, why would we spend all our resources going through a middleman?”

“We’re not going through a middleman. This is information discovery. We’d be making the middleman do the work for us, Natasha. It’s probably far easier to breach the Republic’s security than whatever the hell the aliens have.”

“So, maybe we’d do a combination of the two? We’ll figure out what the Republic is focusing on, shift our focus elsewhere, and just pick up whatever they figure out as they deploy it. They aren’t going to waste their experimental ships on us when there’s a gigantic alien menace anyway.”

“But - we could be a good test site for their weapons!”

“Good test sites don’t fight back. Good test sites don’t need to be left mostly unscathed. Good test sites have no economic consequences for failure.”

There were a few moments of silence. Neither of them had anything more to say; the argument had concluded. They hadn’t quite reached an agreement.

“I wish Caroline was still here. She was a good diplomat. Good at finding a nice middle ground, good at getting people to understand each other.”

“You know, I don’t think she ever appreciated that part of herself. She told me that she was too soft, and that’s why she picked me,” Natasha chuckled. “Apparently, she thought this place needed to be led by someone stubborn, with strong convictions.”

Maxwell burst out laughing. Natasha joined in soon after.

“You know, my predecessor said the same exact thing, Natasha. That she was a goddamn softie, and she needed someone who would stand up for themself, and not get trampled by their underlings.”

Once again, they began to laugh their heads off at the sheer absurdity of what had happened. Hundreds of years of traditions, millions of dollars of studies, and yet their predecessors were no better than first-time parents, fumbling around and raising their kids in the way they’d want to be raised.

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Natasha remarked, “We’re fucked. Thirty-five years of progress, and now we’re going to get screwed over by some goddamn aliens. And we’re finally going to get confirmation that I’m a failure.”

“Oh, like I could do any better…”

“Shut up, Maxwell. Caroline chose wrong.”

“Oh, who would you want to replace you?”

“I don't know… There are billions of people in the Antares system. One of them has to be better than me!”

“What about… Phoebe? Or Pheebs?”

“Hey! That’s a low blow!”

“I know how you look at her…”

“Shut up, Maxwell. I’m not in high school. I am a very mature woman.”

“Could’ve fooled me…”

Natasha scoffed, her cheeks a little bit red.

“Look, we’re wasting time, Maxwell. We’re supposed to be drafting a budget for dealing with the alien invasion. And I’m supposed to be giving your reverse engineering funding to the Observation Branch so that they can focus on alien technology.”

“If we’re going by supposed, you’re supposed to be on vacation. And, besides, did you think arguing would be any more productive?”

“Well, I have the final say on what happens. And we can pick up that side conversation once we’ve drafted a plan, alright?”

Maxwell let out a sigh. “Sounds good.”

“So, can any of your weaponry or shielding do anything against the aliens?”

“You saw all the defenses fail yourself, Natasha. No shielding could stop the disintegration ray, and neutralizing our weapons was trivial in terms of the enemy ships’ energy expenditure.”

“Do you have anything that we could use to harm them?”

He shook his head. “Well, I have a few theories, but they’re all predicated on different assumptions. We’d have to figure out how their weapons and shields work to fight them. We could attempt to deflect the disintegration rays. Plus, the projectiles couldn’t have been eliminated with that little power expenditure. I have a theory.”

“But they have to be gone. We couldn’t detect them at all!”

“That’s the thing. There was no explosion - no possible way for them to truly get rid of the projectiles. So, maybe they’re still here somewhere.”

“Sounds intriguing. I’ll pass that along to Phoebe. In the meantime, is it okay if I pull your weapon and defense funding? I think we’re far enough ahead of the Republic to stop for a few years.”

Maxwell nodded. “I can’t stop you. I would like it back when fighting back becomes feasible, though.”

“Of course, Maxwell. I wouldn’t dream of pulling it forever. It’s just… money’s a little tight.”

“Don’t we have thirty percent of the entire system budget?”

“Yeah, but that’s for all thirty blasted departments. Keeping our planet safe from internal threats is quite expensive, too. Ask Wendy if you want. She’s the treasurer, not me.”

----------------------------------------

“Just checking in. Did anything promising in the past few hours turn up?”

“Actually, yes. We finally got metrics of the alien ships, and we’ve been able to extract their power signatures via Quadro-Spectrographic Analysis.”

Natasha tilted her head, obviously confused. “What exactly is that?”

“Natasha, you really should’ve paid more attention last time.”

“I have a lot on my plate, alright? I have thirty branches competing for my attention. I can’t possibly remember every little technique you explain to me!”

“Well, I directly supervise forty-five officers, and I do just fine.”

“Not everyone can be perfect like you.”

“I’m not -”

Phoebe was perfect, at least from Natasha’s point of view. During the fateful first months, the rest of them were barely able to do their jobs, often having trouble speaking without their voices betraying their dissatisfaction. Phoebe, however, had taken to it like a fish to water. While everyone else was struggling with adapting to their new bodies, Phoebe was completely comfortable in hers. She was so comfortable that they were able to skip the last step of her treatment.

“Yes, you are, Pheebs. Now shut up and tell me about Quadra-Spectergraphic Analysis.”

Phoebe cringed.

“Alright. So, I’ll ignore how you butchered that word…”

“By pointing it out, you aren’t actually ignoring it.”

“Anyway, so,”

“Go on…”

“We’ve never really managed to figure out how to get a complete three-dimensional projection of light. However, it’s relatively easy to pinpoint where a power signature is coming from based on latent radiation. When a heavy amount of energy is being produced or consumed, it gives off a telltale emission, which we can detect. Of course, there’s a problem - if we have only one angle…”

“I get it, we don’t know how far inwards it is. So, you need a bunch of different angles?”

“Exactly. So, Quadro-Spectrographic analysis is when we take emission reports from multiple angles. Then, we isolate dots, figure out which is which. Finally, via triangulation, we -”

“Find the actual locations of the emissions on the ships. I get it.”

“Yeah, that’s about right. It usually takes about four angles to correctly isolate and triangulate everything. You can technically do it with three, but that’s only if you’re lucky enough not to have any major collisions.”

“Right, that makes sense. So, what did you find, then?”

“Well, we figured out where their sensor array was. That was pretty trivial. But we were also able to pinpoint the emission that corresponded to their reactor, and the one for the jump drive too!”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“The reactor’s intensity was quite high, it was roughly central, it continuously fluctuated, and it was proportional to the rest of the emissions. Their jump drive lit up just as brightly, but only when the ship was about to jump.”

“And what was their power output?”

“Well, we could only get a rough estimate. Their power output seems to be, at minimum, on the same level of Antares B, and, at maximum, closer to Antares A.”

“The stars?”

“Yes, Natasha. The stars.”

Natasha’s shoulders slumped.

“Well, is there anything that we can do?”

“Well, our QSA yielded a common pattern between the ship’s hyperdrive and whatever mechanism it used to wink the projectiles out of existence. We got the same energy pattern for hyperjumps as we got for its weapon nullification systems. Perhaps the hyperdrive is being repurposed to force objects to jump into hyperspace. That would create the appearance of disappearing objects, after all.”

“Right. But how could that even work? We all know hyperdrives can’t stay still while moving something else.”

“It’s alien technology, Natasha. They might have figured something out and realized something we haven’t. They have captive star reactors or something, so I don’t think that’s too far off.”

“So, what does that mean, then? Let’s say that their hyperdrive is making our projectiles disappear. What’re we even supposed to do about that?”

“It means that they’re making the projectiles jump into hyperspace. And, the thing is, we already know how to latch onto a ship that’s jumping away…”

“Right! The tethering field. I know that.”

The first experimental jump drives were only capable of launching themselves into space, usually leaving the rest of the spaceship behind. It was the tethering field that made these jump drives actually practical. By tethering a jump drive to the rest of the ship, the jump drive would send the entire ship into hyperspace. This could also be used to make a ship equipped with a hyperdrive tow a sub-light ship around.

Of course, this required quite a bit of time in advance, which made it impractical for a tethering field to be enabled for long periods of time. Normally, the tethering field would be established a hundredth of a second before the jump was initiated, and only maintained until a hundredth of a second after it was completed. She doubted a tethering field could be sustained for more than a few seconds.

“Exactly. And we’re going to send in another test drone to test our theory. See if we can fire while tethered and what will happen. Maybe the entire ship will be winked out of existence, but our weapons will remain in one piece, and we could potentially descend and hit them.”

“But how will we get the data?”

“I want manual controls. If the ship gets thrown into hyperspace, a human will pilot it into real space and transmit.”

“You’ve seen what happened to that test plane. We’re not sending a pilot to die to some unknown aliens!”

“They’re labbies. They’re expendable! Plus, we need the data if we ever want to stand a chance!”

“Pheebs, can’t a computer with some branching logic do the exact same thing? And far more reliably?”

“No, it isn’t as reliable as a human, but I guess I could make it work.”

“Pheebs, I can’t believe you thought I would sign off on an unnecessary death. And, besides, even if it were okay, you’d need a civvie.”

“A civvie might defect and try to steal the ship.”

“And labbies know too much. If the aliens capture them, they’d figure out way too much about us. The point is, a human pilot would be far too risky. They’re test drones for a reason.”

“You’re such a buzzkill, Natasha!”

“Look, I know how much you love getting high on reverse engineering, but I’m still putting a stop to this. No humans on the test drones, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“But I’m getting funding, right?”

“Of course. You have Maxwell’s reverse engineering funding until weapons against the aliens become feasible. Then, he gets it back.”

Phoebe cracked a smile. “Thank you, Natasha,” she said, doing her best to hide her excitement, “I’ll put this to good use. I won’t let you down, I promise.”

“You never do, Pheebs. Just… don’t violate too many codes of ethics without my approval, alright?”

“Got it!”

Natasha finally exited the room, letting out a sigh as the door closed behind her. Phoebe was a little intense sometimes - and, as the years had gone by, it only seemed to get worse. That could’ve just been because everybody but her had mellowed out, though. Over the years, it had grown on her, and she had come to look forward to Phoebe’s enthusiasm for her work. That attitude was rare around here, and sorely missed.

Why did her subordinates, the people she was supposed to reign in, have to be so cute?