SHAD POV

Our portal opened onto a lush, green valley. The alpine mountains were stark against the sky, snow-capped and rocky. The valley was shades of green I hadn't had words for before I'd joined the army and gotten out of Arizona. I took a deep breath, hand resting on the holster of my gun, as Alpha barked ordered to her squad.

The castle was easy to spot. It was in the exact center of the valley, atop a hill. It looked like it came from a Disney movie, with towers topped with little muffin-hat roofs and bright yellow pennants waving, crenellated battlements, and a drawbridge wide enough to ride an entire troop across.

A stream ran down from the castle into a lake to our south. Several armies clashing in the valley between us and the castle. Each of the three factions were aided by various NPCs. The NPCs were all armored orcs, or orcs in peasant gear with pitchforks and spears, or orcs in hoods casting fireballs. They had different colored flags and banners, which made it slightly easier to tell them apart.

The Galactics were like us. Exploit specialists. Most of them had the standard boring classes, warrior and priest, but a few had come through Kronos and been awarded unique classes, the way Mak'gar had. We were keeping alert for any of those, because they'd be our biggest threat.

Kvaltash had only brought two templars this time, and four techs. He had his staff as usual, and a determined expression. I had my Gamers and my Archeologists.

"All right," I said, “we need to get through to the castle, and I don't think we need to break the siege. So, we need to find another way in."

Henry pulled out his whip and cracked it a few times. "Up over the battlements," he suggested.

"That'll make us a target."

"I can handle that," Sam promised. "If we get close enough, I can use clouds and fog to hide us.”

“Then let's get going. Smash and grab mission is on," I said.

We charged across the field of honor, and for a few minutes, I forgot how much I disliked Kvaltash and how much I hated being here. All around us, battle was being waged between different groups of orcs. Miners like Mak'gar’s mercs swooped in to turn the tide of battle. Here, a pale, thin space elf in Proxima's colors jumped in using a flaming jetpack device and laid waste all around him with an energy sword, carving a hole for his faction's NPCs to advance. There, a pair of Talonians in powered battle armor charged across the battlefield, each of their strides eating up several yards of the landscape. One had a flamethrower mounted to his back, the other dual-wielded pale white scimitars, sending blood gushing upward with every slash.

Mak'gar and his crew were in the thick of it, a knot of orcs challenging their rivals to face them. Mak'gar had a banner in one hand and a polearm in the other. He was shouting at the nearby miners to come and face him down like a man.

"Stay close," I told my team. We were in a wedge formation with the Gamer squad and me at the front and the combat archaeologists bringing up the rear, covering Kvaltash's people.

The patriarch once again strode across the battlefield as though none of this meant anything to him, and I realized it didn't. He wasn't the one living and dying down here. I had spent my first year in a reality engine knowing that one slip-up meant my death, fighting every day tooth and nail to survive. To me, what the reality engines made was, well, real. To Kvaltash, this was all hallucinations in a game. He was here to gain a key that would give him control over entire engines. No wonder this one simulation seemed to him like children playing.

I passed orders along to Alpha, who handed assignments out across her squad. The team was responding as fast as they ever had. They missed a little of the flair that Colin had lent them, and without his out-of-combat abilities, they weren't quite as versatile as they had been. But for adjusting on the fly to changes and going head-to-head against any other group, I'd pick them hands down.

We were nearly halfway across the field now when Evie the librarian sent me a message. "We've been putting our skills together, and Henry and I think we spotted another way in. Around the far side of the castle, there's a small gate. It's defended but not as heavily."

"And none of these fighters are making a play for it?" I asked skeptically.

"Their goal is to keep each other busy. They want to claim the whole zone, then take the castle. Remember, Kvaltash has promised us a way out none of them have."

That was true. All the other members had to enter and leave through normal portals. Kvaltash was apparently willing to burn a priceless Progenitor artifact to create us a temporary exit. Once we got in, we could get out much more quickly than any of our enemies.

"Sounds good," I told her, and we raced through the battlefield. I had always liked Mak'gar and his crew. The orcs were some of the easiest for me to understand, and seeing this, I could tell why. We had the same stories and history where we liked to pretend war could be glorious, chivalrous, even honorable. It wasn't true, of course, but we liked to pretend that it was.

Speak of the devil, he was keeping pace with us. "Aren't you just supposed to be letting us do this? Won't you get in trouble with your patrons?" I asked.

He grinned. "They know the risks when they hire Firebrand. Figured I'd cover your rear getting in there. Who knows what nasty traps are waiting. This fragment is devious. It's been fighting for a while. Originally, this was just Proxima versus Antares, but the fragment itself managed to contact Kuala Rdia and bring them in. Wrecked our whole strategy for this place.”

The small postern gate was defended by liveried orc guards wielding halberds. My team made quick work of them. I started to order the Gamers to pull out explosives when Henry stopped me.

"This is a Combat Archaeologist job," he said and gestured Jon, the Friendly Native Guide, forward. Jon knelt and pulled out a set of lockpicks. He began to work at the gate and, in seconds, had it open.

We rushed inside. More guards had heard the commotion and were clattering across the back courtyard toward us. They wore steel armor head to toe, but it was no match for our coordination. I used a Trick Shot to take one right through his open visor, knocking him back and killing him instantly.

"All right, where's the vault?" I asked Kvaltash.

"At the top of the western tower.”

I consulted my map to figure out which was west. There was no entrance to the tower from this courtyard, so we darted inside the fortress, racing down a long stone hallway filled with bright tapestries, then found stairs up. My ears caught a hint of a commotion above us, and I was instantly alert.

"Hold up. Sounds like combat. Gamer squad, forward. Engage anyone you see." We were passing a stream of NPCs, mostly squires and heralds, carrying quivers of arrows and big piles of spears down for the defense of the castle.

"You don't think it's just them?” Pete asked me.

"It sounded like more of a scuffle. Be on guard."

"We always are," he said and bounded upward. I lingered to keep an eye on our protection detail and the Archaeologists. A minute later, Sam shouted back down. "Someone here already robbing the vault."

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I swore. "Let's get up there. You guys catch them. We'll take the loot off their corpses."

I took the steps two at a time. As I reached the top, I caught a glimpse of the Gamers pursuing the enemy down a dark hallway. The raiders were hunched over and moved oddly. I couldn't identify their silhouettes right away. Humans? Orcs?

I hit them with a quick Call ‘em Out. The one at the rear twitched and half turned to face me, then seemed to shrug it off and kept running.

The Gamer squad was in full pursuit until suddenly they hit a patch of oily ground that had appeared in the middle of the hallway from nowhere. It tangled them up and slowed them down.

"We've got this," Pete bellowed back to me. I hesitated. Something here felt wrong. I could still activate my Fastest Gun in the West and cut them off ahead, but Kvaltash's crew were coming up the stairs behind me, and I turned.

"Let's get up there and see what they've left."

The answer was, not much. The upper chamber had been thoroughly looted. Chests stood smashed open with gold coins scattered around the floor that they had left behind. There was one overlooked crate in the corner. I had Jon get it open as the Patriarch approached an image hanging on the wall.

It seemed as though it was made of stained glass, but it glowed with an inner light, shifting and twisting every time I looked at it. I couldn't get my brain to make sense of its pattern.

Kvaltash lifted his staff. The light increased, focusing into a prismatic ray that beamed out from the image and intersected the tip of Kvaltash's spear. It suffused it as the light drained away from the image on the wall, leaving nothing but some bare, twisted wire.

Kvaltash's staff shifted and changed. Now, at the end, was a shining diamond the size of both my fists put together.

"It is done," he said. "Now all that will remain is to tune it properly to the fragments we have already captured, and my key will be complete."

Jon had the crate open. I motioned for Henry and the gunslinger to loot the contents. "That's wonderful. Let's get out of here," I said, and I started back down the stairs.

I found the Gamers not far from where I left them, in the hall, arguing. Sam stood in front of them, his arms outstretched, blocking their way.

"We're not going after them," he said.

"What's gotten into you? Does that spell hit you harder than I thought?" Alpha demanded. "Williams, have we got a healer around? Sam got hit with some sort of coercion spell, and it hasn't worn off all the way."

"No, really, I'm fine," Sam was insisting. His face was intent. He looked at me, his eyes pleading. "Captain Williams, I need you to believe me. I'll explain when we get back to Ad Astra. I don't want to talk about it where it can be overheard."

I hesitated. These thieves seemed to have had a pretty strong compulsion spell if it was taking this long to wear off. Maybe we didn't want to tangle with them. On the other hand, I wanted to know what they'd stolen. "Pete, Rose, restrain him."

"Captain Williams." Sam looked stricken. He took a deep breath. "I want you to pretend that Colin is the one standing here asking you. Would you trust him?"

I blinked, staring. None of them had invoked Colin like this at me. I let my gun drop to my side, then slipped it into the holster. "Yeah, I would. All right, we retreat," I said.

"But, Williams," Alpha said, "we can still catch them. I don't want to leave whoever they are out there if they've got this kind of compulsion, right?"

"We'll debrief back at the ship. Mission's over," I said abruptly. "Kvaltash is supposed to be making us a portal right now. Let's get back up there and take it. I don't fancy having to fight our way out."

The look of relief Sam gave me justified the faith I was putting in him. As he passed me, I grabbed his shoulder. "You better have some good answers for me."

He raised his face to mine. "I don't," he said honestly, "but I have a lot of questions that you're gonna want to hear."

Back on the ship, Sam stopped me in the hall outside the briefing room. He was looking stubborn. "I need to talk to you alone," he said.

"That's not how debriefings work."

He took a deep breath. "I know, but this, you're gonna want to limit who knows about it.”

“Even your own team?"

"I trust them with my life," he said. Then he lowered his voice. "But I don't know if I'd trust someone else's." There was a hesitation before he said "someone else," like he wanted to put a name in there. I was intrigued.

"All right," I gave him a nod. "You stay back at the end." I stepped into the room and started the debriefing.

"First of all, good job. Kvaltash is satisfied with our help and considers that contract resolved, which is good because I'm quite sick of helping out the Progenitor order. We've got some protection details on the schedule for the next few days for you guys," I told the Gamers, "and as for you," I spoke to the combat archaeologists, "you've earned a couple of days off. Then we've got a puzzle that looks right up your alley."

"Can't wait," Henry said.

"Let's go over a little bit of what happened there, especially at the end." I pulled up the video footage from various angles showing the other group getting away from us. The smallest of them—it was hard to make out any kind of details, almost like we were watching with some sort of blur filter on—the smallest of them had been leading the pack, but when my Call ‘em Out hit, they paused, turned, and threw out the oil slick that had slowed everyone down. Then, a moment later, that one lashed out with a dark cord.

It had snared Sam, turning him momentarily hostile. Fortunately, he hadn't attacked. He just sort of stood there, staring at them, and when the charm broke, the enemy sprinted away, and Sam blocked everyone else from pursuing.

"Should have pushed past him, but that stuff was like a tanglefoot field," Rose said in disgust. "I couldn't use my movement abilities, and he was blocking the hall. Anyone got an ID on these?" she asked.

Coyote spoke up. "Several other factions have reported being invaded by a group that has not announced their affiliation. There was an adjudication meeting about this several days ago, and there's going to be an investigation. It's perfectly fine to raid each other, but they are not registering their deeds. It should not take long to track them down and find out who's responsible."

"Okay, well, good to know we weren't the only ones hit," I commented. We went over a couple more points, and then I dismissed everyone, except Sam. He hung back.

"So, what is it you've got to tell me?"

"How secure is this room?" I looked at him. He was almost trembling, clearly afraid of whatever he was about to say.

"Well, Coyote's listening."

"I know, but — “ he raised his voice. "Coyote, if there's something that I don't want the Dominator Network to know can we talk about it here, or do you report everything back to them?"

"In the Ad Astra, my systems are inviolate," Coyote announced. "They cannot see in, nor demand that I turn over my records to show them any conversations that happen here. I have no control over what any person on this ship may choose to reveal."

"That's fine, then." Sam took a deep breath, and he looked me in the eyes. "Those three that we faced today? It was Colin and your sister and an orc. I don't know who he was."

I stared at Sam. My mouth fell open. "What?"

"When she hit me with that spell, it was some sort of Tame spell. It put me on their side briefly, and I could see them right through those disguises. It was Colin. He was standing as close to me as I am to you. And your sister, I haven't met her that many times, but I recognize her. Everyone knows Sage."

I started to sit down hard. I missed the chair but Coyote conjured one from over two feet and I landed hard on it. My face felt numb. My hands were shaking. "You can't have seen what you thought you saw." And yet, and yet, that oil slick ability, so like Sage's Mucking Out the Stalls, the way she'd lashed out with cords of darkness like her lariat, and then Tamed Sam, it fit. But how? How could it be her? "Is it possible the reality engine is faking her somehow, Coyote? That this fragment took a memory of her from one of us and is turning her against us?"

"I don't know," Coyote said. "It's possible.”

“It would be a damn dirty trick, but I’ve dealt with enough fragments to know they would do a lot in order to win." My head was still swimming. My chest felt heavy, like I couldn’t breath. My hands were in fists.

"Sir, I'm certain that's not what it was. It was her. It was really her."

"How could that be? Coyote, I need you to give me an answer."

"It might be possible that they contacted a fragment before their pod crashed," he said. "I know they were not able to make any contact along the Dominator network. I checked very carefully. The call we received was the only one from the pod that the network registered.. But that section of the reality engine had multiple fragments intruding out of their sphere of influence. That's how they were able to attack the ship in the first place. If one of the fragments made contact, it could perhaps have translated them inside the engine."

"Then they're alive."

He hesitated. "All three of them were integrated into one or more reality engines. They had a SoulCoin token. If this fragment we are hypothesizing was able to get hold of that token, it could have reconstructed them inside its matrix. But the only fragments capable of doing that and avoiding notice from the Dominator network are minuscule, very low level."

"Then where is she?" I stood up, my eyes raised to the ceiling. "Where is she, Coyote?"

I caught Sam looking at me and realized how I sounded. I took a long, deep breath. "You're right, Sam. Thank you for telling me. We need to keep this secret until I know what to do. Please don't even tell your team. I know that'll be hard. They're going to want an explanation for today."

He laughed a little nervously. "They think it was a result of the mind control. I told them before it wasn't, but I'm going let on like it was. I will tell them I stayed back now to apologize to you. I'd rather take a little good-natured teasing than risk spilling the secret. I understand what's at stake. Colin said not to let the Dominators know, which is why I waited until you said it was safe."

I nodded. "Good man. I — I owe you.”

He went to the door, then hesitated. "Sir, whatever it takes to get them out, I'm on board. You know that."

"Absolutely," I said. "And believe me, I'm not going to rest until we can do something to help them. Dismissed."