"What's in the cube?"
"Two of your Holemaker V2s," Brick replied.
I smiled. They were one of my favorite inventions, a ridiculously useful and powerful demolition charge that had served me extremely well in the fight to reclaim Pax. The V2 was my improved version.
"Nice!"
"Further, I left some of my bots behind and gave them instructions to disable the gate, rather than disassemble it. If the attackers have Union technology they would be able to rebuild the gate with the materials left behind from a disassembly, but if they do not, they will be unable to repair a disabled gate. It seemed the best option."
"That's good work. Speaking of the attackers, who were they?" I asked.
"Come on, Jake," Marty protested. "You saw what I did. Those were the Greys! And those soldiers are their lackeys in the government! Hell, there were even flying saucers! I wonder how long they've been here, living amongst us? Since that's true, I wonder if that means the lizard people are real, too?"
With the loss of the northern outpost we were down to just the microgate installed in my phone. If I ever wanted to set foot on Pax again I'd either have to capture a gate, or build a new one. If some government agency backed up by Grey aliens was squatting on my northern outpost, I was very much hoping the gate on Mercury was still intact. A problem for another day.
Before Marty could get too far down the rabbit hole, I interrupted him. "Regar, Kiril, do you know what species these guys are? They're not part of the Union, I take it?"
"No Seeker has ever survived to bring word of a species like this back to us, Jake. They are not part of the Union. I am examining the corpse to learn what I can and will inform you when I discover more," Kiril replied.
"I'm going over its equipment. It's strange," Metra said.
"How so?" I asked.
"Most of the gear is pretty standard," Metra said. "About what you might expect from a well-armed Earth mercenary, with the exception of the bullets in the magazines. The casings, powder, and primer are all normal. The actual bullets themselves are something else. They're not made of tier 1 material, and they're not Union tech. On impact they release a small plasma charge."
That made a lot of sense. Each one had done a tiny bit of damage, but it had added up, and now my Assault Armor was looking pretty rough, if still functional. The bullets of the soldiers guarding that black site hadn't even scuffed my nonexistent paint job.
"That doesn't make any sense," Marty said. "Why would the Greys be using Earth weapons? They're advanced aliens. You all saw what that saucer's weapon did. They should be using heat beams or disruptors or something. And what about that force field thing?"
"I don't see that here. Maybe it got left behind?" asked Metra.
"Regar, how about you? How are you doing?" I asked.
"The First is meditating in isolation," Kiril responded instead. "Even without his loss of control on the battlefield, the slaying of sentient life would weigh heavily on him."
I understood Regar's shame at going berserk, but the slaying part was confusing.
"Wait a minute, are the Seekers actually pacifists when it comes to non-Ferals?"
Kiril laughed, a light and high sound.
"Stars, no! Regar told you that our goal as Seekers is to preserve sentient life, that is true. As a whole. We are not naive idealists that think all life is good and should be protected. We will not hesitate to protect ourselves, or those around us."
That was a relief. For a moment I'd thought that somehow Regar's debt to me had forced him to betray his deeply held pacifist beliefs. The way he'd fought made it seem unlikely, but still.
"Good. I was worried. Are we ready to fly to Mercury, then?"
We'd made it into orbit, but Brick had said that he had fitted a "minimal" amount of propulsion.
"She's a lot slower than I like, but she'll get us there," Marty said. "We shouldn't get into any fights with her, though."
"Marty is correct, Jake. Connahr installations are well defended. You will need to be careful and never test their defenses. As capable a pilot as you are, Marty, the Redemption is a small and fragile ship."
"Sure, I get it. Don't let them hit me."
"No, Marty. Don't let them see you. It's unlikely you could dodge an anti-ship missile," Kiril said.
Our plan wasn't complicated. We'd go to Mercury and try to make contact with the base there. We expected it to be unmanned, and therefore it wouldn't answer us. Union defense bases like this one never had an AI. That would defeat the point, and was against Union policy anyway.
What they did have were automated defenses. Not smart, but automatic. They would simply fire on anything that came too close. People that were authorized to be there either had ways to deactivate them, or they simply gated in, bypassing the external defenses.
We had no good choices left. Without Brick's ownership of the Internet we'd be unable to find any more materials caches, and we couldn't go back to Pax. We had to get to the Connahr base and stabilize the field.
"All right, let's go to Mercury," I said.
"Come on, you've gotta say it," Marty said.
"Really?" I asked. Marty waited patiently, unyielding.
"Fine. Engage," I replied.
Earth rapidly faded into the distance. I could see it through the hull, using the Interface to make the substance of the ship fade away in whatever direction I looked. It quickly became Sagan's pale blue dot. We passed close by the moon, slowing slightly to take it in. I knew from our initial course plan that we didn't need to go by the
