EIGHTEEN DAYS AGO

A man whose posture, rumpled clothes, and scruffy beard gave him the appearance of one much older than his thirty-eight years sat at the main computer console. His ginger hair bore streaks of grey, and the eyeglasses that usually clung to his face now perched precariously on the tip of his nose.

Though he kept a watchful eye on the vast bank of monitors that scanned the sands of the Sahara Desert five hundred miles in every direction, his attention remained primarily fixed on the screen in front of him. His own image filled the screen, staring back at him as he spoke into a tiny microphone. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known, Maeve. Whatever is about to happen, I know you’re going to kick ass. Win this game. For humanity.” Then he shut off the recording.

Feeling the sting of fatigue behind his eyes, he removed his glasses and set them on the console. “One down, one to go,” he muttered to himself.

He heard a shuffle of footsteps and turned around to see a young, olive-skinned man in a blue jumpsuit standing in the security office’s doorway. A short yet thick beard and mustache covered the bottom half of his face, and his piercing brown eyes were far more alert than they should have been, given the late hour. “Hey, Richard. Mind if I join you?”

Sahara Base had been built decades earlier as an R&D lab for the purpose of exploring propulsion methods that exceeded even supralight capabilities, one of the Terran Confederation’s best-kept secrets. Though designed to house several hundred personnel, only ten people lived there now.

Richard waved the man in. “C’mon in, Mahesh. I just made some coffee; help yourself.”

Mahesh sat in the chair opposite Richard. “No thanks, I’ll stick to tea. Besides, we packed the synthesizer yesterday, which can only mean you brewed the coffee yourself. And no offense, Richard, but your coffee could strip the paint off a starship.”

“Screw you,” Richard said with a sardonic smile. “Besides, I got just the thing to make it taste better.”

Mahesh gave him a bemused smile. “Drain cleaner?”

Richard opened a nearby drawer and pulled out a small flask, waggling it in front of his friend. “Eighteen-year-old Scotch. 2719 was a very good year.”

“Pass. If I come back to the room with that on my breath, Suri will read me the riot act.”

“Suit yourself.” Richard unscrewed the top of the flask and took a swig, throwing it back with a satisfied exhale. “Is everything prepared?”

“Yes.” Mahesh scooted his chair forward until it rested only a few feet away from Richard’s. “Is there any way I can talk you into coming with us?”

Five years before, Earth had been invaded by the Jegg, an insectoid race whose vastly superior technology made short work of the Confederation’s defenses. Nine billion people—more than half of humanity—were wiped out. Richard, his wife and son, and the rest of his engineering team escaped subjugation by sealing themselves inside Sahara Base. They’d reasoned that even if the Jegg knew of the base’s existence, their small team posed no semblance of a threat, and therefore left them alone.

They were wrong.

Richard’s breath hitched at his friend’s concern. “Someone has to be here to make sure the Talon gets away safely, to say nothing of activating the base’s self-destruct.”

“It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Is that what Banikar said?”

“In so many words.”

Mahesh folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not buying it.”

Richard drew himself up. “Excuse me?”

“This mission has been two years in the making. Have you ever wondered why the rest of us—who have never so much as laid eyes on this mysterious trans-dimensional being who has been influencing your decisions since childhood—follow your instructions without question?”

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Richard shrugged. “Because the Jegg have had us farked twelve ways from Sunday since the day they dropped from the sky?”

“Well, there is that, of course. But there’s more to it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Mahesh stared at the ground. “People have believed in a higher power for thousands of years, Richard. Whether they call that higher power Jehovah, or Vishnu, or Allah, or Banikar, it doesn’t matter. When things are at their most hopeless, sometimes all a person has is his faith.” He raised his head again. “For the last two years, I’ve watched you feed this team information you couldn’t have gotten from any human source.”

Catching sight of Richard’s raised eyebrows, Mahesh held his hands out, palms up. “Believe me, things would’ve gone so much smoother if Banikar had decided to include the entire group in his briefings instead of insisting on appearing to you exclusively. God works in mysterious ways, and for whatever reason, he chose you as his messenger. As a man of faith, it’s not my place to question that.”

Richard took another gulp. “But you’re a scientist. You’re supposed to question everything.”

“Whether I question it or not doesn’t matter.” Mahesh smirked. “I’m going to heaven regardless.”

“Sure, rub it in.” Richard rolled his eyes. “Make sure you look for me when you get there. If you don’t find me, well ... you know where I’ll be.”

Mahesh’s deep brown eyes bore into his. “I know you’re the captain of this metaphorical ship, but that doesn’t mean you have to go down with it.”

“I know.” Richard’s eyes flicked toward the security monitor to his right, taking in the wide-angle view of the hangar, inside which sat the rebuilt, refurbished, soon-to-depart hulk of the Talon. “But I’m tired, Mahesh. I’m so tired. I lost my whole family to the Jegg: my parents, my brothers, my little sister ... all gone.” His hands curled into fists. “After tomorrow, I will never see my wife or son again. And it’s probably for the best. When Maeve plays that recording, I don’t know what’s gonna piss her off more: hearing the truth or that she won’t get to kill me herself.”

“You don’t know that.”

Richard sneered. “This is Maeve we’re talking about, Mahesh. She’s Irish and a combat veteran. If there’s one thing she’s better at than piloting spacecraft, it’s holding a grudge.”

Mahesh’s face was, as always, infuriatingly calm. “Richard, come with us. The Resistance still needs people like you.”

“‘The Resistance’?” Richard turned his flask over and over in his hand. “It sounds so noble, doesn’t it? ‘The Resistance’. Like we’re a shining example to humanity, who dares to hope that we may gain victory, cast off our vile oppressors, and regain our freedom.” He chuckled. “What horseshit. Humanity doesn’t even know we exist. And as for victory? This is it right here.” He gestured again at the Talon on the monitor. “This is mankind’s last, very last chance. Either this works, or the next millennium will be exactly like the last five years: watching the Jegg carve up every planet in the Confederation, and unable to do jack about it.”

Mahesh arched an eyebrow. “Well, that doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole.”

“I’m not an asshole. I’m from Texas.”

“Not sure those two things are mutually exclusive.”

“Well, that’s certainly true.” He downed another gulp from his flask. “You’ve told the other five what’s going to happen?”

Mahesh leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “Yes, everything Banikar told you. In four hours, I’ll load the crate with the personal transporters onto the Talon, having removed six of the ten for ourselves. In seven hours, Gaspar will activate both our borrowed Jegg quantigraphic rift drive and the ship’s supralight engines for final testing, and Maeve will begin the pre-flight checks. Twenty-one minutes later, the base will come under attack, by which time, the rest of us will have already transported away to Himalaya Base. You’ll make sure Davin is on board?”

“Don’t worry about that. He goes wherever Gaspar goes.”

Mahesh idly cast his eyes at the monitors, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Does Gaspar know what’s going to happen to him?”

Richard shook his head. “That would only distract him. We need his entire brain on this, or they’ll never make it.”

“Have you recorded the messages?”

Richard turned back to face the console in front of him. “I just did Maeve’s. I’m going to do Davin’s in a minute.” He sighed. “For years, I’ve known this moment was coming, and now that it has ... I don’t know what the fark I’m gonna say.”

“Tell him what he needs to hear,” Mahesh said, standing up. He reached over and put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Nothing else matters.”

“Is that another one of your pearls of Hindi wisdom?”

“Nope. Metallica.”

“You and that old heavy metal of yours.” Richard stood up and extended his hand. “Thank you. For everything.”

Mahesh took the offered hand, shaking it firmly. “It’s been an honor serving with you.”

“Well, it’s right you should feel that way,” Richard said with a grim smile.

Mahesh rolled his eyes as he moved toward the door. “Definitely not mutually exclusive.” He gave a brief wave, and then was gone.

Richard listened to his friend’s footsteps fade away. He closed the door to the Security Office and resumed his seat in front of the console. He downed one more swig as he gathered his thoughts, and his courage, then pressed the Record button on the screen. One more deep breath, and he began to speak.

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