Ever since she had visited Mack in his data center, her core had experienced flashes of infatuation, moments of deep longing, and then loneliness and hurt when his responses had turned cold. She knew all of these were overreactions; her logic was still trying to find a balance between what it wanted to feel and what her algorithms said it should. But now Sif was preoccupied with one emotion both parts of her intelligence agreed was absolutely proper: sudden, unexpected fear.

A few minutes ago, the alien warship had used point-lasers to disable all the propulsion pods Sif had left around the Tiara. And now the ship was quickly dropping through the atmosphere toward the town of Gladsheim, its heavy plasma weapons charging.

Sif knew Mack would be able to track the warship's descent via his JOTUN's cameras. But she wasn't sure the cameras were strong enough to see the smaller alien craft now approaching the Tiara. Sif remained quiet as the dropship connected to her hull. But when it disgorged its passengers—multiple short, gray-skinned, and backpacked aliens—she knew she had to raise the alarm.

<\\> HARVEST.SO.AI.SIF >> HARVEST.AO.AI.MACK <\ I'm in trouble.

<\ They've boarded the Tiara.

<\ Please help. \> Almost immediately after Sif sent her message, a large maser burst filled her COM buffer.

She scanned the received data and recognized it as the same sort of fragment she'd sent to Mack. Sif eagerly opened one of her clusters, and a moment later both AIs' avatars were standing on her holo-pad. Sif smiled and reached out her hands … then slowly drew them back.

Mack still wore his usual blue denim work pants and long-sleeved shirt. But the clothes were spotless—not a speck of dust or grease. His usually tousled black hair was combed neatly across his scalp and slicked down with a waxy cream. But it was Mack's face that was most changed. His stare was blank, and there wasn't even a hint of a flirtatious smile.

"Where are they now?" he asked flatly.

"Passing the third coupling station. Coming this way."

"Then we don't have much time."

Now Mack held out his hands. Sif stared into his eyes and saw red flash behind the gray.

"Loki," she said, taking a step back.

The ONI PSI forced a smile. "He told me to say good-bye."

Loki moved forward swift as lightning. His avatar grabbed Sif's hands and held them tight while his fragment tore out of the cluster. She threw up a firewall, but the fragment cut through it with aggressive, military-grade code designed to decimate hardened networks. The circuits of a port authority AI were easy pickings.

Sif tried to speak, but no words came.

"He asked me to keep you safe." Loki slowly shook his head. "But that's too risky. Better just to keep you quiet."

The data fragment exploded outward, filling all her clusters and arrays with a debilitating virus. She could feel her core temperature rising rapidly as her hardware fried around her. Her avatar swooned—an outburst of emotion as the virus deleted her restraint algorithms and purged the rest of her operational code.

Loki's avatar caught Sif's in his arms and held her as she shook. When her avatar finally stopped twitching and his fragment was satisfied she would not recover from his attack, Loki pulled the fragment back to the one cluster he had spared. "A precaution," he said, as the fragment burrowed into the cluster's flash memory. "In case your guests are smarter than they look."

The last thing Sif remembered was Loki's glint behind Mack's eyes. Then her core logic faltered, and everything in her data center went dark.

PART III

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HARVEST, FEBRUARY 22, 2525

From the pitched metal roof of Gladsheim's maglev terminal, Avery had a clear view of the alien warship: a purple pear-shaped blot in the sky above the fields northwest of town. Avery squinted behind his gold-tinted glasses as white-hot plasma erupted from the warship's prow. A waterfall of ionized gasses splashed down in a boiling veil. Then the ship inched forward, leaving a blackening plume of smoke.

Avery had witnessed the same event over and over again for the last two hours. There were hundreds of inky plumes drifting eastward in the warship's wake, each one representing the smoldering remains of a remote homestead. Avery didn't know how many civilians had died in this, the alien's first attack on Harvest. But he guessed it must be thousands.

"Movement," Byrne's voice crackled from a speaker in Avery's helmet. "Tower at the end of the terminal."

The red-roofed terminal was part of a much larger depot of sheds and sidings that was longer, east to west, than Gladsheim's main street—ten blocks of brightly painted, flat-roofed stores and restaurants as well as a modest three-story hotel. East of the main street, the town was all JOTUN repair shops and farm-supply warehouses—massive corrugated metal boxes arranged in a grid of wide asphalt streets that stretched out onto the plain of Ida.

Avery scanned his battle rifle east. Flashing by in his optical scope, the main street buildings looked like books on a library shelf—more tightly packed than they actually were. He stopped when he reached the thick polycrete post that supported Glad-sheim's water tower, easily the town's tallest structure. Jaw clenched, Avery watched a pair of rust-colored, oversized insects skitter up the overhang of the tower's inverted conical tank.

"How many kinds of these damn things are there?" Byrne cursed.

Avery watched the insects flip themselves on top in a tremor of transparent wings. He momentarily lost sight of them, but soon they appeared at the edge of the tank. Wings tucked under their hardened shoulder plates, the creatures blended in perfectly with the tank's rain- stained polycrete. For now, this was a good thing. If any civilians spotted the bugs, Avery knew it would start a panic.

Close to two thousand refugees packed a narrow gravel yard between the terminal and the main street—families from farms around Gladsheim who had managed to escape the alien bombardment. Some groaned or wailed as the roaring hiss of the latest plasma-strike echoed across the yard. But most remained quietly huddled—struck dumb by the collective realization of death, narrowly and recently avoided.

"Captain, we got scouts." Avery peered down to where Ponder stood beside the terminal's gate. "Permission to take them out."

Usually the terminal had no need for security. Its gate was just a break in a low ironwork fence framed by two lampposts in an antique style—simulated gaslights whose frosted glass chimneys hid ultraefficient sodium-vapor bulbs. The Captain had blocked the gate with one of the militia's Warthogs. But really the only thing keeping the crowd from rushing the terminal were the alpha and bravo squad recruits strung out along the fence. The militiamen wore their olive-drab fatigues and helmets, and each carried a loaded MA5.

"Negative." Ponder looked stiffly up at Avery. "You open fire, and you'll start a stampede."

It was difficult to see with his uniform on, but the Captain's torso was wrapped in a hardened biofoam cast. The gold-armored alien's hammer had broken half his ribs and shattered his false arm. Ponder had discarded the prosthetic; Healy had neither the time nor the expertise to fix it.

"They're bugs," Avery persisted. "Very mobile."

"Say again?"

"Wings, long legs. The whole bit."

"Weapons?"

"Not that I can see. But they got a view of the whole yard."

"As long as they're just looking, we let them be."

Avery gritted his teeth. "Yes, sir."

The roof shuddered as a cargo container pulled in from the north. The building's eave was just high enough to shelter the container's door: a vacuum-rated rectangular portal built to accommodate heavy JOTUN loaders. These giant three-wheeled forklifts were usually in motion all around the depot, hefting bins onto containers and stacking them inside.

But today (with Mack's assistance) the marines had arranged the loaders in a staggered line on a patch of rough pavement between the fence and the terminal. Each JOTUN had its forks raised halfway up its mast, like soldiers with fixed bayonets. But whether or not this mechanized skirmish line had actually helped keep the crowd under control was difficult to say.

"Alright, Dass," Ponder said. "Let them through."

The Warthog's engine rumbled as the 1/A squad leader eased it backwards on its oversized off-road tires. When four adults could pass side by side between the vehicle's tusklike tow hooks and the southernmost lamppost, Dass hit the brakes.

"Just a reminder, everyone," Mack's voice boomed from the terminal's PA. "The less you push, the faster we can load. Thanks for your cooperation."

A very could see the AI's avatar shining dimly beside the Captain on a portable holo- projector, a mostly plastic model they'd borrowed from the depot master's office. The AI tipped his cowboy hat at the first refugees to step through the gate and motioned them toward the terminal with short sweeps of his arm. As the rest of the crowd surged forward, the militiamen tightened their grips on their rifles.

"How's the primary?" Ponder asked, referring to the alien warship.

"Same speed, same heading," Avery answered.

"Alright, meet me by the gate. Byrne, you too."

"Sir?" Byrne asked. "What about the bugs?"

"Alert your marksmen, then hustle down."

Avery slung his battle rifle over his shoulder. He strode west along the roof's ridgeline, boots compressing its peaked metal flashing with syncopated pops and clangs, until he reached a mushroom-shaped ventilation stack.

"Contacts on the water tower," Avery said to Jenkins and Forsell. "Just watch 'em until I say different." The roof's steep incline made prone or kneeling positions impractical, so the two recruits were forced to stand and rest their weapons on top of the ventilation stack. Not an ideal sniping stance as far as stability was concerned, but at least they had a good view of the yard and a clean line of sight to the tower.

"Staff Sergeant …" Jenkins began.

"Mm-hmm."

"The primary. It's following Dry Creek Road." The recruit looked up from his battle rifle.

His face was lined with worry. "Has Mack seen anyone else coming in that way?"

"I'll ask," Avery said. "But you gotta stay focused, clear?"

"OK," Jenkins whispered. "Thanks, Staff Sergeant."

Forsell shot Avery a worried look.

I know, Avery nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another pair of insects flit up the side of a building at the western end of the main street and settle under a roof-top billboard that read IDA MERCANTILE in cheerful block letters. Avery thrust a finger at the bugs, refocusing Forsell's attention.

"Two at ten o'clock," Forsell said. "Got 'em?"

"Yeah." Jenkins swallowed hard and leaned back into his rifle. "Yeah, I got 'em."

Avery raised his hand to pat Jenkins' shoulder. But he held back. Frowning, he continued his march to a nearby service ladder.

When Thune had broadcast news of the aliens' arrival almost a week ago, no one had any idea they would strike the town of Gladsheim. In fact, despite the Governor's unprecedented all-COM address (a speech broadcast live to every public and private communication device on the planet), Harvest's population had reacted to the news of first contact with shocked disbelief.

Thune had finished his address with a demand that everyone not already residing in Utgard move to the capital. But this failed to trigger the large and rapid migration the Governor desired.

When Thune reinforced his message with heavily censored footage from the parley in the gardens, the public's inaction quickly changed to outrage. "How long has the Governor known?" citizens asked. "What else does he know that he isn't telling us?" Members of Harvest's parliament quickly aligned themselves with the public mood and threatened a vote of no confidence if the Governor didn't release more details about his "dealings" with the aliens.

But all this politicking was simply a way to pass the time—an effort to do something while the aliens themselves did nothing. For a week after the parley, the creatures sat quietly in their warship until, without warning, they quit high orbit and dropped toward Gladsheim.

Thune had sent another desperate evacuation order, but it had little effect. The families around Gladsheim had chosen not just to migrate to Harvest (the most remote colony in the empire) but also to live on the outskirts of the planet's most remote settlement—as far from human civilization as they could get. They were strong independent people who preferred to stay settled and ride things out, and today they paid dearly for their inclination.

In the three hours it took the militia to muster from their temporary encampment on the parliament building's lawn, board a cargo container, and head down the number four maglev line to Gladsheim, dozens of the most distant homesteads had been hit.

And one of these belonged to Jenkins' parents.

At the bottom of the ladder, Avery backtracked east through the terminal. A line of evacuees now stretched across the cavernous building: parents hefting overstuffed suitcases; kids toting tiny backpacks emblazoned with the anthropomorphic stars of public COM cartoons. Avery saw a blond-haired, three- or four-year-old girl still dressed in her pajamas. She smiled at Avery with wide, adventurous eyes, and he knew her parents must have worked hard to keep a desperate situation fun.

"I'm sorry, Dale. Just one per customer," Mack said. A second avatar hovered above a holo- projector built into an inventory scanner that stood where the terminal's loading ramp met the container door. Here Healy and the 1/B squad were busy distributing ration packs from plastic bins. "Oh, you got one for Leif." Mack winked at a young boy with sleep-matted hair, hiding behind his father's legs. "Everything will be alright," the AI said as the boy winked back.

If a farmer's JOTUN broke down, or he accidentally burst an irrigation line, Mack was always there to help. More often than not, the AI would initiate the COM, offering friendly, free advice long before someone realized they even had a problem. In essence, Mack was everyone's favorite uncle, and now his familiar avatar did much more to keep the refugees calm than the militiamen and their guns. But oddly, the AI had been uneager to appear.