Gabriel reaches up and takes the relic.

“What just happened,” he asks. He is still lying on the stairs, looking very frazzled. I guess I have some explaining to do. Hopefully everyone will be more receptive seeing as I just saved their asses, and the reason they were in trouble wasn’t my fault in the first place. I guess we’ll see.

“Well, I haven’t been entirely truthful per se. It’s a long story, but if you know much about what happened to Sequel, it’ll be a little easier,” I say. Most people who are involved in interplanetary affairs have at least a little knowledge of what happened to Sequel.

“I know that The Government cracked down on them for some illegal science, and that they’ve been cut off from the rest of humanity since then,” he says.

“Well, I’m the illegal science. I’ve been on the run for a very long time just trying to live my life, exploring my interests, and finding out who I am, but they have lots of reasons for wanting me gone.”

“I guess what you’re saying is that our accidental slip wasn’t much of an accident,” he says. There it is, the point that’s sure to cause the most problems.

“Well, I didn’t have much of an option but yeah, it was my fault,” I say.

“This isn’t going to go over well with everyone. This means that you’re the reason we’re now on the run, but personally, I have plenty of things to be ashamed of so I can sympathize. Cicero, on the other hand, does not sympathize often,” he says.

“I’m hoping that maybe because I saved your asses that I’ll get a little leniency?” I say, almost as a question.

“Are you the reason they came?” he asks.

“Actually no, from what I can tell, they were here specifically for your relic, so at least there’s that. I feel like I sent them a clear message to leave us alone,” I say.

“That’s one way to put it. I guess we should go get everyone and tell them what happened,” he says.

I reach down and help him up from the stairs. We walk down the stairs slowly; each step is closer to judgement for me, and Gabriel is probably processing the situation. Any hope that I had of traveling undercover with everyone on Star Fury is long gone, my only hope now is that they see value in keeping me with them. This attack, for me, could prove to be a double-edged sword. On one hand, they find out about me tampering with the slip, on the other hand, I singlehandedly defended them from an unrelated threat that very likely would’ve meant the end of them. I ought to emphasize the fact that I'm the reason that they made it out of this alive.

‘The crisis has been mitigated, we’re safe for now. We need to discuss a few things though,’ Gabriel comms to the rest of the group.

“You hear our comms as if we were speaking them in front of you, don’t you,” he says. He's thinking about what he may have said in what he thought were private spaces.

“In a way, yes. I am acutely attuned with all the signals all around us. I hear an analog or digital signal as you hear any regular sound, and I understand them all unconsciously, as you understand the language you speak. Asking me to not intrude on your comms or the information you get from the nets is like me asking you not to hear me as I speak to someone right next to you. However, I do understand how intrusive this feels to people, and so I do not intentionally intrude into anyone’s local systems, unless it is necessary,” I say. This is the easiest way that I can explain the situation.

“Interesting, so you hear what I do if it sends out a signal to a remote host, but you cannot if I am accessing local information or computation?” he asks. He is calm, Gabriel is not a particularly secretive person, and his web activity is relatively constrained to functional and operational information. The same cannot be said for Liam and Cicero.

“Don’t misinterpret my respect for your privacy for inability. It is the difference for you between hearing a sound that is near you and not seeing something because it is behind you. Just because one happens unconsciously and the other doesn’t, does not mean that you are unable to turn around and look,” I say. It is important that people not have a false sense of security, and it’s better that I tell him now and be honest than for him to find out later.

‘What do you mean; what happened?’ Cicero comms.

“Do you think it would be easier to just show them?” I ask. I feel like if the explanation is in front of them, it will be a little easier to take in.

“You have a point,” he says.

‘Go ahead and come up so you can see what happened,’ Gabriel comms.

We stop walking down the stairs and wait for them to come up from whatever floor they were on. When they come into view, Gabriel tells them to follow us and we all walk up to the main floor of the house. The once beautiful mansion now has a gaping hole on one side. The living room is burnt to a crisp and fires are still burning in the other rooms. The upstairs rooms that are now visible from the ground floor are also a mess. Everyone is quiet, Thomas is looking around at everything with a heartbroken look on his face. Everyone is looking around at the damage to the house at first, but shortly after, everyone turns their attention to the crater and the burning fields. The three warships lie on the outskirts of the crater, I have them locked down for the moment, but the crews inside will require our attention eventually.

“None of you saw it, but I did. Evelyn handled this situation by herself. There was a whole militia outside, warships and all, and she took care of them. They would have made quick work of us if it wasn’t for her. They were here for my relic; I believe that Alex was relaying our position to them,” Gabriel says. I'm touched that he's standing up for me, he has every right to be angry with me, but instead he’s trying to spin this in my favor.

“How?” Asks Liam. Gabriel nods at me.

“Well, I didn’t want to have to tell you all like this. In fact, I didn’t want to tell you at all to be honest. I’m running from Sequel because I escaped from a program designed to create an elite operative. The goal was to implement quantum computation within a biological host and to weaponize it. I am the result of that program.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“So you did all this?” Cicero asks, gesturing out into the field, towards the crafter and warships.

“Yes, I did. Speaking of which, the crews of those vessels are still alive, we’re going to have to do something with them. There are about thirty of them, ten on each ship,” I say.

“Well alright then, lets go, we can talk later,” Cicero says. I’m surprised that he's not more concerned with what I said first. “You’re going to show the rest of us what we’re dealing with. I’m going to gear up on Star Fury, and you’re gonna go put some fucking shoes on. The rest of you can either come gear up with me or sit around here I guess,” Cicero continues. I should’ve seen that coming I guess, it’s logical for him to want to assess my abilities for himself before making any decisions about me. I’m not sure how I feel about his request though, it’s one thing for me to kill a fully armed militia that’s actively attacking us, but these crewmembers are essentially helpless, stuck in dead ships.

All the recon drones that I could sense from earlier are gone from Airis, or at least outside my range of perception. So at least Valerie won’t be watching. Hopefully that’s the last we ever hear of Valerie and her company.

Thomas is not paying us much attention, he’s more focused on the destruction of his home. I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Gabriel, Liam, and Juno are just looking at me, while Cicero walks out towards the bunker to Star Fury.

“I’m sorry Thomas, I never thought this would happen here,” I say.

“Don’t be sorry, it looks like you’re the only reason any of us are still here. I just, it’s hard to take in, I’ve lived in this house my whole life, it’s not easy seeing it all burn,” he says.

“I don’t even know what to say, no one seems to care at all that she’s been lying to us. She’s the whole reason we came here in the first place, she’s probably the one who drugged you Gabriel, she’s probably the reason we slipped early, and she is the reason Frontier attacked us,” says Juno. I'm surprised that she’s the one upset about this, I guess she is also suffering in a way similar to Thomas, her eyes are tearing up and her voice is hoarse, I didn’t take into account that this was her home as well as Thomas’s.

“I am not the reason Gabriel was unconscious at the bar, that was not my fault. The owner put something in his drink that was far too strong, I checked. And as for the early slip, you’re right, that was my fault, but I didn’t have any other choice. The man chasing me, his name is Markus, he would have killed every last one of you just for coming into contact with me, he is a brutal, savage man and the less we see of him the better,” I say. Technically it wasn’t my fault that Gabriel was unconscious, though I did drug him in a way. As far as Markus goes, the more afraid of him everyone here is the better in my opinion, we need to stay as far from him as we possibly can.

“I don’t even care! Just get away from me,” Juno says, she’s starting to break down, her knees are shaking and she’s starting to cry. Thomas takes her in his arms and starts trying to calm her down. I should probably put on some shoes and change, so I turn to go downstairs to my room.

When I get out of my room, Gabriel is the only one left upstairs. The fires are nothing but embers now, most of the house is gone, only the metal framing and pieces of glass are left.

“Everyone is on Star Fury, Liam is gearing up, I’m about to do the same. For the time being, we are all going to be staying on Star Fury, as all the bedrooms in the house were on the upper floors. I see you’ve changed into something appropriate for what’s next.” I did change into my combat attire. A custom fitted bodysuit outfitted to tap my fusion reactor to power a shield curtain so I don’t have to worry about plasma fire. There are twin graphene blades built into the legs available for dealing with fully outfitted combatants. The suit automatically matches the color of an environment for camouflage, and the texture is a uniform beaded pattern. This is what I was wearing when I initially escaped from Sequel, this under a modified Atmos suit. It is the apex of combat outfit, I would currently be classified as a class A outfitted combatant, susceptible only to antimatter projectiles and bladed weapons, a goliath in any battlefield situation.

“Yeah, I haven’t been fully equipped in a long time, doesn’t blend with many local cultures,” I say, attempting a line of humor.

“No, it wouldn’t, would it,” he says with a weak smile.

“I guess we have to do something about them sooner or later, I just don’t enjoy taking life when it isn’t necessary,” I say.

“You’ll get over it, there are worse things than death. Come on,” Gabriel says. A cold response for sure, not one I expected. I never got the chance to look into what exactly Frontier hired them to do, I wonder if that has anything to do with it, I’ve figured out obviously that it’s some kind of mercenary work, but for him to have such a bland perspective on taking life in general, it’s a little concerning.

He begins walking towards Star Fury, right as Liam and Cicero walk out of the bunker. When we get closer, he tells them to go ahead and head to the ships and that he’ll be right out. I follow behind Liam and Cicero, walking to the closest ship. Both Liam and Cicero are wearing Atmos suits with standard plasma and live-fire rifles as well as sidearms. I don’t know what they plan on using any of those for if they expect to have me doing the dirty work.

We arrive at one of the closest ship’s auxiliary access points, the ships systems are still responsive to me.

“Go ahead and open it, we’ll take one alive from each ship, feel free to handle this however you like,” says Cicero. So he does plan to just kill most of them, somewhat understandable, but we’ve obviously beaten them at this point.

“Okay, if I must.”

I tap on the sides of my upper calves and the hilts of the graphene blades emerge, I grip them and slide them both out of their substorage sleeves. Each one is slightly shorter than a meter and razor thin, a unique sight as not many have seen blades such as these.

“Gabriel used to carry one of those. He didn’t have a built in substorage sheath for it though,” Liam says.

I open the auxiliary door and walk inside, the ship is about two hundred meters long, there’s no telling where the crew is at. I power the ships systems back on and lock them down, so I can scan for heat signatures using the ships own systems. When I power the ship back on, both Liam and Cicero jump to the defensive.

“It’s alright, that was intentional.”

The crew is holed up in the armory, likely waiting for exactly what’s coming.

“Follow me,” I say, as I walk down the main hall of the ship towards the armory. The floor is slanted due to landing on the slope of the hill, so balancing is a little odd. Before I open the armory door I reverse the polarity of my electromagnetic shield, to pull as opposed to repel, as I can’t very well use an electromagnetic shield inside a metal ship. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pull enough of their live-fire ammunition and guns out of their hands so that I won’t get peppered with bullets when I walk through the door.

“Liam, Cicero, walk back around that corner for a minute,” I say. The last thing I need is anything hitting me. I walk up to the armory door, turn on the shield, and boost the charge. Immediately, I can hear chaos ensuing inside, as every metal object rockets towards the door. I also am stuck to the door for the moment, interesting tactic I’d say. After a few seconds, I turn the shield off and open the door, my regular shield curtain at full power. Everyone inside is scrambling around after half the room just got rearranged. My shield curtain only tanks a few plasma rounds. I try to make it quick, the graphene blades easily cut through their body armor, leaving several of them cut in half at the waist, and with a few precision plasma induction shots, the rest are rendered headless. I would have just shot a wide-angle blast into the room if it wasn’t filled with explosives and munitions.

“What happened to leaving one alive from each ship?” Cicero says.

“The only person that knows anything is Jack Meridal. He’s on the middle ship,” I respond.