The creature’s voice was deep and machine-like, not harsh but not human. It moved and turned in rapid graceful arcs, as though it was taking in the whole world around it at once, not limited to what it could see with its eyes. ‘If I am being summoned, I must assume you have succeeded.’

Buzz’s face was still gray. He stood ramrod straight, straighter than Neb had even seen him.

‘Sir,’ Anna said to Buzz, taking a step forward. ‘Who is this? What is happening here?’

Buzz looked at her, straight in the eyes, really and truly seeing her.

‘Stand down, lieutenant,’ he said. Then he added: ‘I’m sorry. I know this is tough.’

‘Oh,’ the creature said to Anna, and Neb could see the amusement in its half-human eyes. Or maybe, Neb thought with another jolt of horror, not half-human, but super-human. ‘You don’t know? Any of you? Oh dear.’

Neb was reminded of Favian. But Favian was a buffoon; there was nothing about this creature except focused intelligence. ‘We made a deal, your people and mine,’ it continued. ‘Your commander here is just carrying it out.’

‘Deal?’ Meathead said, looking from the thing to Buzz. ‘Deal? Sir? With this bug?’ The creature snarled in displeasure at that word, and its mandibles snapped. ‘Sir… What the fuck?’ Meathead demanded.

‘Stand easy, everyone,’ Buzz ordered, with something approaching his usual self.

Neb quietly examined the new creature in his overlay, and the description read: Maniton commander, Level 18, male. Circle One-Gamma. The thing was familiar, somehow. Knowledge from Earth, maybe? But Neb didn’t think so. And what the fuck was Circle One-Gamma?

‘Sir,’ Mallory said. ‘What the fuck? What’s happening? Where did you get that device? Why did you summon this goon?’

‘I brought it from home,’ Buzz said.

‘What the fuck?’ Mallory said. ‘I thought it was impossible to bring anything here.’

The maniton laughed again, an unpleasant sound like grinding gears. ‘You humans,’ he said. ‘I have to say, I fucking love you. A lot of my people want to just say fuck the Council, and wipe you out. But I love you. You’re so naive, and yet so knowing, and yet so stupid!’ He laughed again, and Neb had to admit that hideous as the sound was, it was also kind of infectious. The initial shock of the encounter was wearing off, and he was starting to think a bit more clearly.

‘Some of the rules can be circumvented,’ Buzz said to Mallory shortly.

Meathead took an angry step forward. ‘Did you know we wouldn’t have our crate?’ he demanded, producing another hoot of laughter from the maniton.

‘Fuck no, of course not!’ Buzz shot back, and in that moment he was entirely himself. ‘Tricky fucking Main bastards sprung that one on us.’

‘Commander, what is happening here?’ Anna interjected. Her voice was cold, the coldness that was never far beneath the surface. She had already made up her mind about Buzz, Neb saw, despite her question. Just like Buzz himself, she was extremely fast to an irreversible decision.

‘I have orders,’ Buzz said, and Neb saw him deflate again. Back to this new, lesser version of himself. ‘Orders pertaining to chains like these.’ He glanced at them where they lay on the ground, and Neb saw he was barely able to bring himself to look at them.

‘Orders to do what?’ Anna said, her voice very calm.

Buzz sighed. Neb was pretty sure he had never seen him do that before. ‘My orders are that if we find a set of these chains, we are to hand them over to our Maniton allies. The chains are rare. I did not know their purpose until you told me, and I did not expect us to encounter any. But orders are orders.’

‘Allies?’ Meathead half-gasped, and the high-pitched incredulity in his voice did make Neb actually laugh this time.

The maniton looked sharply at Neb. ‘You think this is funny, human?’ he asked, and there was something of his true nature in the harshness of his voice. ‘You’ll be dead soon enough.’

‘You know, I saw one of your kind before,’ Neb said, the memory suddenly coming back to him. ‘I remember now! At the hotel. The thing was pushing a luggage cart. The Game clearly doesn’t think much of your kind. Was it you, by any chance?’

The maniton lunged at him, and where before its four arms had ended in six-fingered hands now they were blades, long and sharp and cruel. The transformation had been instantaneous.

‘STOP!’ Buzz roared, and he stood in between Neb and the creature, holding up his hands. The maniton came to a halt reluctantly, its sword-arms spread wide, Buzz’s face level with its chest.

‘We do this as we planned, like soldiers,’ Buzz snapped. He looked from the maniton to Neb, and Neb saw something in Buzz’s eyes that silenced him. It was not anger or defeat or acceptance: It was pride. Mission focused. Buzz fully believed he was doing the right thing.

‘Then you better keep your fucking minions in line,’ the maniton spat, standing up to his impressive full height, spreading its blades. ‘Or I, Zerfen, will do it.’

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‘Stupid fucking name,’ Meathead muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. Neb and Mallory snorted. Anna smiled.

The maniton seemed to have enough of them. ‘Give me the chains and complete your mission,’ he snapped at Buzz.

Buzz picked them up from where Neb had thrown them on the ground.

‘As your second in command, sir, I strongly protest,’ Anna said formally. ‘We should not hand over these chains.’

‘Your concerns are noted, soldier,’ Buzz said. ‘I’m sorry it ends this way.’

Zerfen almost screamed with laughter. ‘This is the easy Circle, and still you cannot fucking manage it! There are many sets of chains to be found here.’

Neb looked over at the creature. ‘So why don’t you get your own fucking chains, then?’ he said. ‘Show us how it's done, if it’s so easy.’

‘You speak a lot, human,’ Zerfen said. ‘You will be the first to die.’ Its blades had changed to hands again, and it clasped them together as if in memory of what they could be. ‘The chains are rare on this Circle, but there are still many to be found. But on my Circle, things are a little more… challenging.’ It snapped and ruffled its mandibles, but whether it was in fear or memory or delight or something else entirely, it was impossible to say.

But Neb was suddenly staring at the maniton as if seeing him for the first time. He actually gasped. His eyes were wide, mouth agape.

Oh fuck.

Levels of Circles.

He understood the non-gun. Finally.

There were many different Circles. Of course. There had to be. All these teams from dozens of different civilizations, all at different stages of development, and different levels of understanding of the Main. It wouldn’t make sense to put them all in together. In his mind’s eye he saw the non-gun, and its three dials. One dial was for location, and one for number. And for the third, he saw now that the translation had not quite worked, maybe due to some underlying cultural incompatibility. By local maximum, he was now certain that the Game meant other circles, as if each one was a defined point in some abstract Circle space. The artifact was like a teleportation gun, but it teleported its targets into another Circle. Set the location within the circle, set the teleportation energy, and choose which of the circles to send the target to. Then load the round and pull the trigger. It was all clear to him now.

But in the moment he was thinking, Anna acted.

She whipped her pistol from its holster on her hip. One instant the weapon was not in her hand and then it was, before anyone else had time to move a muscle. But she did not aim at the maniton. Instead she pointed the gun at Buzz’s head.

‘You need to stand down, sir,’ she said.

The maniton laughed loudly. ‘Oh this is good!’ it said. ‘Lesser beings can never see the bigger picture.’

Buzz did not move or react. Anna held the pistol rock steady. The tip of the barrel did not bounce or move a millimeter. Neb looked at her face, and for once it was not unreadable. There was pain there.

‘I knew you would have to do this,’ Buzz said to her, then glanced at the others. ‘That one of you would. So did my commanders. That’s why I have this.’ He lifted his hands slowly and unzipped his uniform jacket. Below, fastened across his chest, was a slim broad belt of dark gray. It had a purple glowing circle in the center, like an ugly bruise.

‘You all know what this is,’ Buzz said. ‘An amyrian belt. The link is mental. When I let it go or die, it blows.’

‘Blow it then you fucking bitch,’ Meathead snapped, and there was a rage to his words that made Neb wince. ‘You’re fucking selling us out to these bugs!’

‘Not selling us out,’ Buzz said calmly, and Neb saw that he was back on more familiar ground now, explaining something unwelcome to recalcitrant soldiers. ‘The Cluster status quo is a very fragile thing. Far more fragile than most people understand.’ He glanced at Zerfen. ‘We need allies, and we are a less-developed race. That means we need to make sacrifices.’

‘When was all this agreed?’ Neb asked. His mouth was dry, which he had not noticed until he spoke.

‘Years ago,’ Buzz said. ‘Every commander before me has had the belt and the portal summoner. None survived to use it. Until me. Until us.’ He looked from one to the other of his team. ‘We did incredibly well to get this far,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry it must end this way.’

‘What I’m thinking,’ Anna said with the indication of a glance over her shoulder to the others, but without ever taking her eyes off Buzz or moving her pistol, ‘is that we frag our former commander, the bomb goes off, and no-one gets the fucking chains.’

‘Agreed,’ Mallory and Buzz said as one. Neb just found himself nodding, and thinking: Fuck.

‘That’s the call,’ Buzz said. ‘The right call as you see it. But Zerfen will survive, even though we will die. The blast is not powerful enough to take him out. And the chains will not be destroyed.’

There was silence. Then Anna spoke again: ‘Then why not just kill us and take the chains?’ Her question was directed to the space between Buzz and the maniton.

‘Because,’ Buzz answered, ‘he wants us to test the chains and see if they still work now that the mesomorph is an ultramorph. And if they do, then at least one human still gets through.’

There was silence at this, and then Anna holstered her sidearm in a motion almost as swift as when she had drawn it.

‘You should have told the brass to go fuck themselves,’ she said to Buzz, and there was deep disappointment in her words. Anna trusted no-one completely, Neb knew, but Buzz had come closest. And now that had been betrayed.

‘We’re just pawns, Anna,’ he answered. ‘There’s so much we don’t know. There’s a whole game out there in the Cluster.’

‘There’s a whole fucking game in here,’ she retorted intensely. ‘The fucking Game is here. If we win, everything changes.’

‘We don’t even know what we get if we win,’ Buzz snapped back. ‘Or even if it’s possible to win. And anyway, no-one ever fucking wins! We just come here to die on the Main altar! Everyone knows that. You all know that!’ He was shouting now, a vein bulging on his forehead. ‘So why don’t you fucking grow up, get with the program, and make your fucking deaths mean something!’ He roared this last part and Neb flinched.

There was tense, angry silence.

‘Well,’ said Anna finally. ‘Let’s do this fucking thing. But it’s a long walk to the gate from here.’

‘Humans,’ Zerfen scoffed. ‘So limited.’ He took a set of teleportation tags from his inventory and tossed them to Buzz. ‘Now hurry the fuck up,’ he said.