Commander Harrison Teague was standing where few people ever would, on a metal platform five hundred feet beneath the surface of the Moon.

Filling up the space was a tall, white and black rocket or, more accurately, a missile. A refurbished ICBM from the looks of it.

“Isn’t she a beaut?” Leneski said, gesturing at the implement of destruction. “I told you people couldn’t wait to get up here and start destroying each other. All the science we do, all the good we’ve accomplished up here, and it’s all because the Moon also makes a terrific orbital missile platform. Destruction. It’s what your species does best.”

A shiver went through Teague. “Your?”

Leneski gave him a self-deprecating smile. “Yeah. About that. I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely truthful with you.”

“No shit,” said Teague.

Ignoring the jibe, Leneski said, “I’m not exactly alone in here.” He tapped his left temple, and it took Teague knew immediately what he meant.

“That’s why you don’t need a space suit.”

Leneski grinned. “Exactly. This stuff is super efficient at metabolizing oxygen.” As if to drive home the point, his eyes flickered, covering over with inky silver. “This stuff is amazing. You have no idea what it is. What it can do. It has such great things to show us. It wants to make us better.”

“You experimented on yourself? Jesus, Mike.”

Leneski held up his free hand. “Not exactly. I was the first to come in physical contact with it. It…changed me. Changed all of us. For the better.”

Leneski coughed up a gob of the stuff and spat it onto his palm. It writhed there for a long moment before he puckered his lips over it and sucked it back down his throat. “Beautiful isn’t it?”

“Mike, what the hell is this stuff? What’s it done to you?”

“Opened my eyes, for one.” His eyes were like silver-black mirrors. Teague could see his own reflection in them, like oily rain puddles.

“Engineers found the first hints of it when they were sinking the first shaft for what was going to be an underground lunar base. Cover the whole thing over with regolith and the inhabitants wouldn’t get bombarded with so much cosmic radiation. Well, that all stopped when they found this stuff.”

“We didn’t know what it was at first. How could we? But we soon found out it was alive. Not in the biological sense of course. This stuff plays by a different set of rules.”

“It’s taken over your mind,” Teague said, his mouth gone dry.

Leneski laughed. “Oh, nothing so grandiose. You read too many cheap sci-fi novels as a cadet. No, I am in full control of my faculties. What Proteus does is enhance the body and the mind.”

Leneski shifted his weight, making the gantry rock a little too much for Teague’s comfort. The rocket glowed soft and pale before them.

Leneski’s grin looked like a maniacal rictus in Teague’s helmet lights. “We still don’t know where it came from. We know it’s not from the neighborhood. We know it’s a distributed intelligence. We know it behaves like programmable matter. We know it improves every bit of biomass with which it comes into contact. We know it has numerous applications. Engineering. Medical. Military. The works.”

Here we go. “Why was this kept a secret?”

“Oh come on, Harry. Don’t be so naive. You’ve served the military-industrial complex long enough to know the answer to that one. We couldn’t let a secret this big, this profound, end up in the wrong hands. The Russians? The Chinese? Hell, the Arabs? This stuff changes everything it touches, Harry. Everyone it touches.”

“All of these applications, and let me guess which one you guys focused on,” Teague said, a sardonic tone to his voice.

Leneski gave a noncommital shrug. “Hey. What can you do? Weapons research pays the bills. Anything else we discover while figuring out how to get it to blow shit up is just gravy. You know that.”

Leneski shifted his weight again, causing Teague to tighten his gloved grip on the railing. “Besides, there’s more to it than that. It’s not just the substance itself. It’s how it got here.”

A chill fled up Teague’s spine as he pondered this. Leneski nodded at him in agreement.

“This crap was put here by some intelligence. We don’t know who or what, and we don’t know how long ago. How old is the Moon? Four and a half billion years, give or take? And this stuff’s been up here for almost all of that time, an alien substance hanging right above our heads. Proof of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and we didn’t even have to go two hundred and forty-thousand miles from Earth to find it.”

Leneski moved closer to Teague, clapping him on his heavily padded right shoulder. “So you see the implications of this stuff, what it represents. It could have been anything. It could have been one of those black rectangle thingies from that old movie 2001. Was it left here on purpose? Is it the remains of something else? Did this intelligence spot our little dust mote from afar, with all its promising organic molecules, and predict that there would be life there one day? Was this meant for us to find and use?

“Or is it a weapon sent her to kill us?” Teague added.

Leneski paused, considering, then nodded. “Now do you see why we had to keep a tight circle on this? To guys like you and me, the implications are awe-inspiring. But regular people lose their collective shit. Those flat-Earthers who think the Moon is fake don’t have the headspace to deal with this. Others want to figure out how they can beat us over the head and take it, use it against us.”

Teague gritted his teeth. “But we’ve been friends for twenty years, Mike. Twenty. Fucking. Years. You let me come up here, keeping me in the dark—“

“I had to know who I could trust, and I knew you were too much of a boy scout to bring in right away. I knew you had to be shown. So I’m showing you. This is dirty pool we’re playing up here. Because it has to be.”

“Who else knows?”

Leneski grinned his best villainous grin. “The right people. I’ve seen enough movies to know better than to monologue my entire plan to you, Mr. Bond. The right people know. The best people know. There were maybe a dozen people in this research facility, all of whom have now been enhanced. A couple of bean-counters on Earth. The usual black ops drill.”

“Only one thing you weren’t counting on,” said Teague. “The coronal mass ejection.”

Leneski chuckled, sounding hollow and menacing in Teague’s suit speakers. “Oh, but I was counting on it, old friend. My team and I knew it was coming months ago.” He tapped his temple again. “This stuff enhances intelligence as well as strength.”

Teague scowled. “You could have warned everyone.”

“And explain how an alien substance made us super smart? Besides, we couldn’t have prepared even if we knew it was coming that far in advance. You know Earth. The politicians would use it to score political points while everyone else would pretend it didn’t exist. The United States has been broken into a collection of petty, theocratic fiefdoms, a cultural and scientific backwater. Everyone else is fighting over dwindling resources. No one is talking to each other, and everyone would rather go down fighting than work together.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Why did you raid Luna 1?”

Leneski held up a finger, stabbing it at the sky. “Because that son of a bitch Donovan screwed me over and stole the launch codes for this baby.”

He gestured at the missile, reaching for it. If it had been any closer he would have given it a caress. “He thought he had me, but I showed him.”

“So you engineered the shuttle explosion,” said Teague. “You’re a murderer.”

“Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” said Leneski. “Sure, it was a risk killing a UN shuttle, but I figured with everything else going on back home they’d have their hands too full to send their own people, launch their own investigation. You should thank me for that. They’d have crawled so far up your ass you’d think they had a branch office down there.”

“The launch codes are on that drive,” said Teague.

“Can’t slip much past you,” Leneski said.

“So what’s this missile for? You planning to start a war?”

Leneski’s eyes grew wide. “No. Better. I’m going to stop the next one. And every single one after that. There’s no nuclear bomb in the heart of this missile. Just the building blocks of a better world.”

Teague gasped as a cold chill of realization shook him. “You’re going to fire the Proteus substance at Earth.”

“Ding ding again. You’re getting good at this, Harry. I wish I could have had you on board from the beginning. A good man at the tiller instead of an asshole who sexually harasses everyone.”

“It’ll be shot down. They’ll track it—“

“They can’t track shit,” said Leneski with a shake of his head. Between the CME knocking out the satellites and that monster storm tearing across North America and Europe, they won’t see it until it’s too late. Besides, it’s going straight into the Indian ocean anyway, and all those rich organic molecules. All that biomass just waiting to be changed.”

“You’re insane. You’ll contaminate our entire biosphere.”

Leneski fixed Teague with an icy stare. “Not contaminate. Enhance. Can’t you see we have a wonderful opportunity here? We can rebuild and repair the Earth. Proteus will de-acidify the oceans and clean up our pollution. And we can get it right this time. No more overly convoluted geopolitics. No more borders. No more science deniers. Proteus will make everyone smarter, able to adapt to any environment.”

“You forgot to ask them what they want,” said Teague.

Leneski chuckled. “Who the hell knows what they want, Harry? Screw what they want. Proteus is what they need. Look around down there. The world is in chaos. Suffering from a lot of things that need to get unfucked right now before we all die.”

“You would kill millions?”

Leneski leaned toward him. “To save an entire species? Hell yes.”

He backed away and turned toward the missile. “But enough chitchat. I’ve got a world to save.” Leneski pulled Donovan’s drive from a pouch on his belt and inserted it into his slate.

“You’re crazy, Mike. That stuff in your head. Maybe it’s done more than you think.”

“I’m thinking more clearly than I ever have, Harry,” he said without looking up from his work. “I’ve jumped twenty IQ points. This stuff is amazing. You’ll see. After I send the missile I’ve still got enough Proteus for everyone on Luna.”

“This isn’t you talking. It can’t be.”

Teague felt a steady vibration through his boots as the gantry, the carved-out missile silo, began to shake. Flames from the rocket’s engines blossomed below. “Get off your high horse for one second and think about it.” His voice on the radio was barely loud enough to be carried over the din.

Leneski said, “We can hit the reset button. Start over again. Without the pollution. Without the baggage. A united Earth. And once that’s done, this stuff can take us to the stars. We barely made it out of our own gravity well before all hell broke loose. Proteus is our second chance. Our Get Out of Jail Free card.”

“Second chance at what?”

“Exploration.”

“You mean conquest.”

“Whatever cashes the checks.”

“It’s all about money with you.”

Leneski turned from his work, having finished the launch sequence. “Everything is about money. This whole dog and pony show. Why else put a shopping mall on the goddamn Moon? The only reason we’re up here, the only reason we stayed, is Proteus. Hell, if Neil Armstrong had stepped in a puddle of this stuff back in 1969 we’d have fucking Las Vegas up here by now.”

“This isn’t you, Mike. It can’t be. Shut this candle down. Let’s talk about it. I agree that Proteus needs to be studied. But not in secret by private concerns. This needs UN oversight. And you’re playing with it like a toddler with Silly Putty stuck in his hair.”

“You know,” said Teague, “if you weren’t wearing that helmet I’d punch you in the fucking teeth.”

The missile’s warm-up was building to a crescendo Teague could feel through his suit.

“We could have done this together,” Leneski said again, more forcefully this time. I had everything handled. I finally had that preening prick, Donovan, out of the way. All you had to do was put on a good face for the people back home. Did Steen tell you that I asked for you?”

Teague gritted his teeth. He wanted to punch Leneski in the face. He glared at the old friend he no longer knew. They had been the best man at each other’s weddings, and now Leneski stood before him as a complete stranger. The thought that he only wanted Teague there as a hapless patsy, a feckless figurehead while he wielded the real power behind the scenes, filled him with anger. And he wondered how much of it was the man he thought he knew and how much was the alien substance now sliding around behind his eyes.

“Commander?” another voice, sounding tinny and far away. Over the radio, so Leneski couldn’t hear it. “This is Jasleen. I’m headed your way, and I’m coming in hot. Clear your throat if you read me.”

Teague did so, trying to appear as stunned as he felt a moment ago. Whatever Jasleen was up to, he had to buy her some time, and that meant keeping Leneski talking. Fortunately, the bastard loved to talk.

“Before Steen sent me up here, he told me to not trust anyone,” he said. “He didn’t fully trust you.”

Leneski fixed him with a shit-eating grin. “Is that a fact? And how did that work out for him? He’s probably dead. Last I heard, that storm was damn near flattening DC.”

Teague nodded in agreement. “True, but he sent us a little care package before things went pear-shaped.”

Leneski cocked his head to the left. “Oh?”

“And it’s coming right behind you.”

Leneski laughed. “Nice try, Harry.”

The gantry began to vibrate in sudden, regular bursts as a large, dark shape loomed up behind Leneski, casting a shadow over Teague as it came.

Leneski twisted around to find the suit of prototype combat armor reaching down and plucking him off the gantry.

“Look who’s enhanced now, motherfucker,” Jasleen said, her amplified voice audible over the roar of the missile’s engines.

Leneski lost his grip on his weapon. It spun out of his hand and down into the rocket silo’s shaft. His slate followed it a second later. He struggled to no avail, pounding his fists into Jasleen’s heavily armored gauntlet, his augmented strength barely making a dent in the nanocarbon alloy. Then he opened his mouth, his jaw dislocating as a gob of black and silver goo began to spill from the back of his throat.

Before Leneski could dislodge any of the goo onto her armor, Jasleen tossed over the side of the gantry. He fell in seeming slow motion in the one-sixth gravity, his back striking the missile as he went down and down into the flames of the rocket’s engines below.

“We need to get out of here,” Teague said. “That thing is going to launch.”

“Can we stop it?”

“No.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Jasleen, taking aim with the rail gun.

“No!” Teague snapped. “Don’t. It’s full of that stuff. We need to get to the surface.”

Jasleen grabbed up Teague like a toy doll and carried him across the gantry to safety. The world behind him filled with heat and flames as the missile launched itself toward the lunar surface.

“Where’s it going?” said Jasleen.

“Earth.”

“You’ll have to catch me up, sir. But I’m guessing that’s a bad thing.”

“A very bad thing, Chief.”

They moved up a short flight of steps, Jasleen taking three of them at a time. Teague followed her up and out of the silo chamber, admiring the enormous hole she’d made in the doorway for the armor.

“Casey, where are you?” Jasleen said over the common channel.

“I’m nearing your location now,” said the pilot. “Holy shit? Who ordered the ICBM?”

“Not us,” said Jasleen. “It’s headed for Earth. Can we stop it?”

Teague shook his head.

“No weapons up here,” said Casey. “Unless…”

Teague knew what he was thinking. “No, Rick. Don’t even think about it.”

“The best way to stop a missile is with another missile, and I’m flying the only other missile around.”

“Rick, no! That’s an order.”

Casey ignored him. “I’m sorry, Chief. Sorry, Harry. You guys are going to have to walk home.”

“You don’t have to do this,” said Jasleen. “We’ll find another way.”

“Tell Nat she’s one of a kind.”

“You’ll tell her yourself, you macho bastard. Just come down here and get us. No one else has to die today.”

“No can do, boss. Already plotted to intercept our birdie.”

Teague looked at Jasleen, and the two of them broke into a run, hopping quickly up two flights of steps until they reached a level concourse lined with windows. They saw the rocket arching high over the dead gray lunar landscape, curving toward Earth, Teague squinting at the pillar of flame at its base. And a much smaller flame, the blue torch of an ion engine craft as he hurtled toward the ICBM, striking it in the middle of its length. The explosion was bright, brief, and silent. “No!” Teague screamed, pounding on the thick, leaded glass with his gloved hands. He felt helpless and lost. He’d watched two friends die within the last ten minutes, and he thought he might break. Angry tears filled his eyes and spread over them in the low g.

“Come on, Commander,” said Jasleen, placing a giant armored hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go home.”