Absorbed in paperwork, Halloran Reed heard the tap on his office door as someone entered.

“I got that new kid settled in okay, Cap,” Kyellan Bell’s voice announced. “My personality eval is in your inbox.”

“No ranks.” Reed looked up from the shipping forms on his desk. “We aren’t soldiers anymore, remember?”

“Sorry sir- uh… sorry,” Bell said as he scratched his neck. “Old habits are hard to kick.”

“Adapt for Victory. That was my old regiment’s motto.”

“Yeah.” Bell grabbed a chair and sat down, his eyes wandering aimlessly around the makeshift office.

Reed watched him for a moment. “Is there something troubling you, Bell?”

“Well… uh… I mean, you can go too far with ‘thinking outside the box’ can’t you?”

Reed nodded. “Absolutely. Which is why I like to encourage my men to maintain a healthy skepticism, and express their concerns when necessary.”

“I wouldn’t say I have concerns exactly.”

“So, what’s up?”

Bell sighed. “I joined the Special Forces because I wanted to do whatever it took to win. But playacting as execs? Corporate fraud? Whatever—it’s a whole different game. There’re so many weird rules. I think I nearly lost this new kid when I asked about his ex-girlfriend.”

Reed sat back in his chair. “Plenty of businessmen have a military background. Civilians understand that our world is a little different. These kids are naïve and trusting—they may find us blunt or awkward, but they won’t challenge us.”

Bell tilted his head. “But do you really think we can pull this off? What about when the Army figures out what we’re up to?”

Reed chuckled. “Oh, come on, Bell. That bureaucratic monster would take the better part of a year to commission an investigation. Then they would be stuck in the planning and organization phase for months, all so a bunch of career chasing narcissists could waste time and resources to justify their rank and pay. That’s if they even have the imagination to accept what we’re doing. Alien technology? Secret bases? If I were the investigator presenting a report to the General’s board, I’d expect to be laughed out of the room.”

“Because it’s a crazy-ass plan.”

“Ambitious and imaginative, sure. But Madam Rayker is as brilliant as she is driven. She has the Adjudicate wrapped around her finger. The Cardinals are doing a fine job of covering up what we’re doing, even if they don’t understand it.” Reed smiled and leaned forward. “And don’t forget, we have the best soldiers in the galaxy. The League has an old, frail hand on the reins of power. By the time they see what’s coming for them, it will be too late. Time for new blood.”

Bell raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that part I like. Getting there is the difficult bit.”

“In the long term,” Reed said, “we will need a plan to gather human subjects for the machine. I’m thinking about putting a team into the field, toward Lanstead. I’ll keep you at the top of my list. Once you get out on the ground, away from this miserable dungeon, you’ll start to regain your confidence.”

“I was going to say something about that. With the Rackeye site up, we should be able to talk about more leave for the guys. Trips to the farming towns hardly count.”

“Actually,” Reed said as he sat back in his chair and crossed his hands, “I think that a permanent team in the city would make sense. As time passes, the researchers will gossip, and people might start asking questions. We should be proactive in monitoring the social scene.”

Bell stood up, a gleam in his eye. “Boss, that would be awesome.”

“Can you figure out a schedule to rotate your men through this team?”

“Absolutely,” Bell said with a gleam in his eye. “I’ll get right on it.”

Reed raised an eyebrow. “It’s not an excuse to go bar crawling, Bell.”

“No, s—No. We’ll behave. You have my word.”

A short time later, Reed found Rayker waiting at the teleportation corridor, and he blinked when she glared at him. Though he had found her easier to work with over the years, he was never exactly sure where her temper might take her.

“Late again, Reed,” she said.

“Apologies, Madam. Bell reported to me on the status of the researchers. Fortunately, they’re settling in nicely.”

Rayker turned away while the ‘security guards’ programmed the teleporter with the coordinates for the new site.

“We must watch those young workers carefully,” she said. “They will quickly figure out how we are producing drones, once that phase of the operation is underway. Most of them will revolt, but some might be amenable to our cause.”

Reed crossed his arms. Sometimes she could be too ambitious. “I would caution against trusting any of them, Madam, no matter how idealistic they may appear. Their level of society rewards… dissimulation. Besides, our cover is shaky enough as it is.”

“You are right to be cautious,” Rayker said. “Nevertheless, child-abuse is rampant amongst the League’s elites. There will certainly be a few amongst their youth who reject their upbringing and will be cold-blooded enough to give us their loyalty. Keep an eye out.”

“Yes, Madam.”

The transporter room hummed with energy, while the far end of the corridor shimmered. Reed felt a sense of nausea as the air changed, and the scene was replaced by another poorly lit corridor, darker and colder than the first. He followed Rayker as she strode confidently into the new base, leaving their men to deactivate the portal behind them.

Reed tapped the holster at his side as he stepped into an environment that could never have seen humanity. These installations were so advanced, he had no idea what they might encounter. Perhaps their long-disappeared owners had actually succeeded in producing deadly and obedient creatures from the nanite chambers?

Reed slowed his breathing and turned the volume down on his imagination. The complexes they had discovered were always completely empty, lacking even basic defense systems. Rayker had insisted that the original owners were long departed, though he would have felt better if she had told him how she could be so sure.

She wouldn’t even explain to Reed who this ‘benefactor’ was that had supplied her with the co-ordinates to the hidden doorway, and taught her to read the alien language. If he asked, Rayker would only fix him with that unyielding, reptilian stare that always made him look away.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

She was certainly a killer, and he had worked with many, but she was also something else entirely.

They split up to explore. Reed saw infrastructure for hundreds of individuals: cabins, kitchens and bunkrooms, along with maintenance stores. Though similar to previously explored areas, this site was more claustrophobic than usual. The lighting was meager, and the air had a stale, oppressive feel.

He passed by a large porthole and stopped to look out. The facility was submerged, deep enough underwater that only murky blackness was visible, broken by a few exterior lights. The team knew from the translated computer schematics that the site sat on the seabed. Located near a coastline, on the opposite side of Caldera from human settlers, there was no chance of the place being discovered any time soon.

Everything about the base suggested that the original architects were similar to humans. But how similar? And what had destroyed them? Rayker had assured him that they were not working for an enemy of humanity, though he sometimes wondered if even she could be manipulated.

Suddenly a shrill scraping noise rang out, and Reed stiffened. He took a breath and told himself to relax. She would be amusing herself as she often did, dragging her fingernails along one of the many pipes that ran throughout the complex. She liked to play with his nerves that way.

He obviously interested her—a man and a woman working together in proximity for so long would inevitably be drawn together. Reed had always waved off her advances, insisting there should be no distractions until they completed the project. She did not take rejection well, and responded by interfering with his work in whatever creative and frustrating ways she could find.

But she never inconvenienced his men or subjected them to unnecessary risk. Indeed, she had shown great patience when teaching them the alien language, and let them delve into the lab’s computer files without her supervision. She trusted the soldiers and their intelligence, and Reed admired her for it. But, while she was beautiful enough, he had known more than his fair share of dangerous women, and with Rayker, he knew he was well out of his depth.

His thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of his radio.

“Where are you?” Rayker’s voice demanded.

Reed scanned around for a landmark and took a moment to translate a series of symbols along the wall. “Zone three—Salinization,” he replied.

“I’ve found something in zone five. It appears to be a weapons laboratory.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Zone five consisted of machine assembly halls, and as Reed walked through the shadows between workstations, he caught sight of a stack of oblong boxes. On a workbench, a hand-portable missile had been opened; its warhead, fuel tanks and electronics exposed. He examined it before looking for Rayker, and nearly jumped out of his skin when she appeared noiselessly beside him.

Her eyes glinted, and her lips twisted in a barely suppressed smirk. Reed’s tall frame dwarfed her smaller stature, but somehow, she remained unsettling. She was like a spider that moved sedately, reserving its fury for a victim.

“I see you found a missile launcher of some type,” Reed said as he turned away from her. “Something handheld that our men could use, if we can find a manual.”

“Not that I could find,” she said, opening one of the boxes. Inside was a launch tube and command unit that consisted of a small screen and unhelpfully unmarked buttons. “The students we took in today—one of them was an electronics engineer, wasn’t she?”

“I think so, but do you really think she could—”

“Of course. When the League seeks to infiltrate and demoralize a colony world, they always send some of their best and brightest to build a life there. The scientists and engineers I convinced governor Craddock to hand over have received the best genetic and cultural foundation anywhere in the galaxy.”

“As long as they behave themselves,” Reed said. He lifted the command unit and pretended to inspect it.

“And how is my biologist?”

“Idealistic, eager to please. Attracted to you, Bell noted.”

Rayker nodded. “Good. All the elements he needs to be productive.”

Reed raised an eyebrow, and he carefully put the unit down. “Bell thinks he is likely to have a strong moral compass.”

Rayker waved a hand. “I will be keeping them far too exhausted to start questioning anything, at least for the first year. By which time we should have been reinforced. Your department, Reed?”

“The Forces chiefs are becoming concerned, Madam. They were already made suspicious by my hand-picking officers. But for your influence over the Adjudicate—”

“Yes, such men are inherently paranoid in a society such as this—and why blame them? Everyone is murderously desperate to seize their corner of the empire, after all. Never mind them. Take the men you need, and I shall ensure the Adjudicate provides a cover. The Army won’t like it, but they’ll spend months trying to get answers out of those seasoned old bureaucrats.”

Reed turned and examined the workshop. “How many more installations do you think are left to explore?”

“I don’t know,” said Rayker. “I’ve never seen anything like this place before. It’s more than just a laboratory, it’s also a research complex, and a command-and-control facility. There’s something else too. The power generation we saw in installation four—it’s not just powering lights and computers, or the odd technological marvel.”

“What do you mean?”

“These complexes consume small streams of energy, while that base is producing a vast river. But where does it go? What is it meant for? We have so much more to uncover.”

“Our teleporter experiments are proving successful,” Reed said confidently. “It’s only a matter of time until we unlock all the remaining destinations.”

Rayker sighed. “I think we’ll need hundreds more people before we can hope to do that. Something tells me this entire planet was created as a fortress.”

Reed turned to her. “These… aliens. They were fighting a war, correct? Perhaps this base was part of the frontline.”

Rayker hesitated before answering. “They fled when the war ended.” She looked back at Reed. “The commanders supposedly hid themselves in a handful of locations around the galaxy. There was to be a last stand, but they were never heard from again.”

“Do you think this was one of those locations?” Reed asked. Her secret benefactor aside, Rayker certainly knew more than she let on. Her strength and speed had often surprised him over the years, and she had spoken as though recalling a distant memory.

“I don’t know. There’s no evidence the place was ever inhabited.”

There was a long silence as Rayker caressed the missile unit.

“Madam?”

“Spit it out, Reed.”

“Your… benefactor told you these things?”

“He tells me nothing more than I need to know. I am expected to figure out the rest.”

Reed frowned. “And you understand his motive?”

“Once all this,” Rayker gestured to the room, “becomes known, humanity will find itself in possession of an arsenal the likes of which even your generals could not imagine. My benefactor fears that our corrupt civilization will repeat the mistakes of the past. He and his associates desire a strong hand in the galaxy, to confront the challenges to come.”

Reed took a silent breath. “Are you… one of them?”

She turned to him, a brilliant gleam in her eye. “One of what Reed? An alien?”

He was already regretting the question. She looked thrilled to have found a new weakness in his stoic reserve—curiosity. “You look… human,” he managed.

She moved closer to him, until he could smell the woman-scented sweat in her pores.

“Why don’t you find out?” She ran a finger along his thigh.

Reed shifted uncomfortably, his breathing shallow and ragged. Rayker moved her other hand to his arm, feeling the bulging muscles beneath his jacket.

“You want to, don’t you? I know I’m beautiful—a sore temptation for a military man a long way from home.” She reached up and stroked his jaw. “We could do it right here. Nobody would know.”

Reed didn’t dare to move.

“You said you fought in the Frontier war,” Rayker whispered, stretching up on her toes to brush her lips against his ear. “How many men did you kill—twenty? How many face to face?”

“A d-dozen,” he stammered.

“Didn’t you enjoy it? Didn’t it arouse you?”

As she caressed his jaw, the flesh of her wrist bulged and ripped apart. Reed couldn’t keep his eyes from widening, or his skin from breaking out into goosebumps. A needle-sharp spike of bone pushed towards his eye, covered in smears of blood and mucus.

His soldiers had traded rumors about how the Owen-creature had been killed, but he had never been sure if he believed them. Now Rayker had decided to show him firsthand. She was hungry, and he had no idea what she would do if denied.

She brushed the spike’s tip gently against his cheek. “And when we finished, I could kill you—slowly and carefully. Savoring every moment. They would never know. I’d say it was an accident. And who would dare question me?”

Reed’s head began to spin as she grasped him between his legs.

She groped, but found him unresponsive. Reed held his breath as she snarled.

The bone spike withdrew into her arm, and the flesh sealed over it as she looked away. Reed remained still, convinced that the slightest sign of life would provoke her rage.

Rayker stepped back, a bored expression on her face. “So easy to toy with,” she sneered. Then she turned and stalked away.

“Have some men take these weapons to the main site,” she called back. “Let’s put those kids to work on something useful.”

Her words rang through the lab and were still echoing off the walls as Reed began to shake.