Europa Strike. Ian Douglas

Builders have been extinct for half a million years,” she told Hardcore. “The An appear to have been wiped out ten thousand years ago. If the Hunters of the Dawn are still out there, we haven’t seen any sign of them. I can’t see that any of them would mind us going to Europa. And the Marines are going there to protect American interests.” As always. First to fight. Too often, the first to die.

      “But that runs totally null, cybe. Like, they upgraded us, so we have to be jacked in tight and one-worlding it when they return….”

      Kaitlin at last was beginning to take the kid’s measure. An Ancient Astronut.

      There were literally hundreds of new cults and religions about, spawned by the recent discoveries elsewhere in the Solar System that were continuing the ongoing process of displacement for humankind’s place in the universe begun by Copernicus so long before. The Builders had tinkered with human DNA, and a few civilized members of that new species had died on Mars when the facilities there had been attacked by unknown enemies. The An had established bases on the Moon and colonies on Earth, enslaving large numbers of humans to help raise their monumental and still enigmatic structures at Giza, Baalbek, Titicaca, and elsewhere, before infalling asteroids deliberately aimed by another unknown enemy had wiped most of the An centers away in storms of flame and flood. Twice, it appeared, humans had narrowly escaped the fates of more advanced, alien patron races.

      So much was known now, a revelation at least as stunning as the knowledge that humankind predated Bishop Usher’s date of special creation in 4004 BC. But so much was still unknown, and in the mystery, in the undiscovered, there was plenty of room for speculation…and for radical new forms of faith. From the sound of it, Hardcore was a member of one of the new denominations that actually gloried in the knowledge that humanity had once been engineered as slaves. It certainly made the question of existence simple: Humankind was here to serve the Masters. Obviously, the Masters weren’t about right now, but when They returned, they would expect an accounting of their faithful servants for the world they’d left in the servants’ care.

      Kaitlin wondered what Hardcore would do if she posed as a member of one of the other cults and political spin-off groups—a Humanity Firster, say, who’d vowed to venture forth to the stars and eradicate the alien scum who’d once tried to enslave Mankind, and failed.

      She decided that the Senator would probably prefer that she keep a low profile. In any case, members of the U.S. Armed Forces weren’t allowed to express political or religious opinions of any kind while in uniform.

      “I can’t share your view of the aliens,” she told him, blunt, but as diplomatically as possible. “We do know that there might be…people out there we’re going to want to protect ourselves from. Isn’t it reasonable to want to find out all we can about them, as far from Earth as we can manage?”

      “Hey, I can’t ’face with that, cybe. I mean, we can’t run different than our progamming, right? And we were made to serve the Masters.”

      A tiny chirp in her left ear told her that her pinger had just detected one of the people on her tell-me list. “Who?” she subvocalized.

      “Dr. Jack Ramsey,” her earpiece’s voice whispered. “He has just entered the palace of Illusion.”

      “Thank God.”

      “Sorry?” Hardcore said, puzzled. “I don’t ’face ya.”

      “And a good thing it is, too,” she told him. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting a friend.”

      “But, like, we gotta ’face on the issue, cybe. Don’t log me off!”

      “Please. Excuse me.” She turned and started to walk away. “Which way to Jack Ramsey?” she asked her pinger.

      “Five degrees left, now sixteen-point-one meters, closing…”

      “Like, we should clear this.” He was following her, matching her stride for stride.

      “Hardcore!” another voice said. “Hey, you found her!”

      “Found but not downed. She won’t ’face, Slick-Cybe.”

      The newcomer was more conventionally dressed in a two-tone green tunic with a stiff, tight collar, but he sported many of the same technical accouterments Hardcore wore. He stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “Hey, Colonel. My des is Slick. We were hoping you’d give us a few moments of your time.”

      “Who is ‘we’?” she demanded. She was losing patience with this crew.

      “C’mon in,” the newcomer said, grinning…obviously speaking for someone else’s benefit. Kaitlin saw with alarm that several people were detaching themselves from various parts of the crowd around her and walking her way.

      Ambush…

      She couldn’t help but think of it in military terms. They’d pinpointed her location with a scout, called in a blocking force, and now the main body was closing in.

      And, damn it, she couldn’t run in heels. She would have to stand and fight it out.

      Their dress ran from Hardcore’s stylish nudity to an elaborate Elizabethan ball gown that looked heavier than the man wearing it. One woman had her head shaved, wore golden, slit-pupiled contacts, and had dyetooed her entire body in a green scale pattern that gave her a vague resemblance to an oversized and rather too mammalian-looking An.

      The oldest of them was conservatively dressed and appeared to be in his late thirties.

      “Colonel Garroway!” that man said. “I’m Pastor Swenson, of the Unified Church of the Masters. I was hoping to run into you this evening!”

      “You must excuse me,” she told him. “There’s someone I have to meet.” She wished she was wearing a comlink right now, or at least a full-link-capable pinger. It would have been nice to punch in Jack’s ID right now and call for help.

      “This will only take a moment, please! We’re afraid that the U.S. government and the CWS Planning Committee are making a serious mistake, one that could have the most serious repercussions for our entire species!”

      “If they are, there’s not a damned thing I can do about it, Pastor. I’m just a soldier, not a politician or a government planner.”

      “But the young men and women who are going to Jupiter are under your command, after all. You must have some say in how they’re being used. And the news media would listen to your opinions. We believe these are extraordinarily critical and dangerous times, you see, and we—”

      “As I told this gentleman, Pastor,” she said, nodding at Hardcore, “I don’t agree with your opinions about extraterrestrials. I certainly don’t believe that something that happened thousands of years ago to tribes of primitives living thousands of kilometers from here requires us to somehow surrender our minds and integrity and will.’

      “Ah, well, Colonel,” Swenson said with an ingratiating smile, “you must accept that the Bible tells us about these things, that it told us a long time ago! Signs and wonders in the heavens, and blood upon the Moon! You fought a battle on the Moon, Colonel! You know that the prophecy is being fulfilled right here in our lifetimes! Prophecy written down two thousand years ago, telling us that—”

      “Telling us nothing, Pastor, except that some people have either a remarkable imagination or an astonishing will to believe.”

      Slick reached out and took her arm. “You mustn’t say things like that, Colonel! We’ve formed a kind of delegation, if you like, to—”

      Reaching down with her left hand, she grasped his hand, her thumb finding the nerve plexus at the base of his thumb. As she turned his hand back and over, his face went white and he started to sag at the knees.

      “Don’t ever do that,” she told him pleasantly. “And get out of my way, now, or I’ll turn something else numb…permanently.”

      “Are you having any trouble, Colonel?” a familiar voice asked.