Edison returned to his seat and adjusted one of the radio dials. The pilot turned to face Anlyn. “We’re going to close the rift from the other side. Even if there wasn’t a massive fleet guarding it over here, there’s just no way to access it in this slop.” He gestured toward the snow. “Honestly, though, this whole thing was thrown together in a few days. You’re best off talking to Ryke about it when he gets here.”

“That’s not the Ryke, is it?” Anlyn asked. Among the whispers of the Underground, his legend, how the first messages sent to Drenard led to the group’s formation, was less hushed talk and more of a canyon’s howl.

“The same,” said Douglas. “He’s gonna be pretty excited to meet a member of the Circle.”

“It isn’t an honor, I assure you. Especially not now. Haven’t you heard of the invasion?”

“This one?” Douglas waved one hand at the windshield, his brows drooping. “Yeah, I’m aware of it.”

“Negative,” Edison said, settling back in his seat. “The one with Drenard as its originating locus.”

“My empire has declared war on the Humans,” Anlyn explained.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Douglas said. “Why would they do that?”

“I have no idea. Why am I defying the Circle’s decree? Why did you join the Underground? Why are any of us doing anything?”

Len ran back into the cockpit. “Ryke’s on his way, sir, but there’s gonna be a delay. Some emergency shipment to group two has the timetables fouled.”

“Emergency equipment? What for?”

“It wasn’t clear. HQ said they were putting something together for a rescue attempt of group one. It sounds like that new guy is jumping down to help them.”

The pilot turned, his eyes wide. “Cole? What do you mean, jumping down?”

“Gravchute, sir, but it’s all rumors from what I can tell. Sounds like the kid wants to bail out of group two’s ship, if you can believe that. If you ask me, there’s way too much chatter about it on the carrier frequency. It’s gonna get us spotted if they keep it up.”

“Well, at least we’ll be through the rift before the fool causes too much trouble and gets the rest exposed.”

Edison grunted. “Uncanny similarity between label and behavior of a Cole I’m acquainted with.” He rose from his seat and moved aside for Len to take his place.

Anlyn laughed.

The pilot jabbed a thumb at Edison. “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Anlyn said. “Just that the guy you’re talking about reminds him of a friend of ours. Same name.”

“Yeah? Yours a troublemaker, too?” The pilot shook his head. “This kid’s been in camp for less than a week and he’s got the brass to chase down infiltrators in a skimmer when he hasn’t even been checked out to pilot the damn machines.”

“Figured it out pretty quick,” Len said as he adjusted something on the dash.

“Yeah?” The pilot turned to him. “Did those two hyperskimmers come back in one piece?”

“No, but neither did those two traitors,” Len rejoined.

Douglas shrugged. “Still, that shouldn’t give him license to dream up a raid like this.” He laughed. “Then again, rumor has it he’s dating the old man’s daughter, and we all know where that’ll get you . . .”

“He’s dating Fyde’s daughter?” Len asked. He reached back and slipped his arms into the flight harness. “Hyperspace, man, I didn’t hear that rumor—”

“Wait,” Anlyn said. She grabbed Len by the shoulder. “Fyde? Mortimor Fyde?”

Len smiled. “Perfect. Nothing can get out of hyperspace, except of course for Mortimor’s reputation.” He turned to Anlyn. “Whatever you’ve heard about the old man—”

“No,” Anlyn said, shaking her head. “Your Cole and our Cole are the same person.” She turned to Edison. “What in the galaxy is he doing here?”

Edison shrugged. A rare, confused look settled across his face. It was a look that gave Anlyn chills.

Further aft, there was a loud pop of air.

The first in an eager line of people and supplies had boarded their ship.

•• 2 ••

Before stepping into the airlock, Cole let Arthur check his gravchute. After going over the straps and readouts, Arthur slapped Cole’s helmet twice. Cole turned and raised his visor.

“Wish me luck!”

“What I wish is that I’d been able to talk you out of this.”

“No way,” Cole said. “I’m looking forward to it. Now get back, I wanna beat them down there.”

Arthur pressed his lips together but nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Good luck.” He scanned Cole’s jumpsuit one more time, his eyes flickering over the combat harness. “Better put those grenades in a pocket before you jump. The pins’ll pop loose if you go down hard.”

Cole nodded and unclipped the two precious grenades—gifts from the normally tight munitions officer. He backed into the lock, leaving Arthur just past the jamb, then slapped the inner hatch shut and turned to the outer door. Spreading his feet wide, he grabbed one of the handles rimming the hatch and memorized the location of the door controls. He slid his black goggles into place and snapped his visor shut. Reaching out in the new and absolute darkness, he felt for the controls, lifted the protective cover, and pressed the red button. The outer door before him irised open, and a flood of hyperspace photons peeled his blindness away, the darkened goggles providing him with normal vision.

There was a little suction from the wind outside, but not much. Cole stuck his head out to see where the wings were on the Bern ship; he spotted them high and behind. He turned and saw Arthur smiling at him through the porthole, his own goggles down over his eyes. Cole gave the old trillionaire the thumbs-up, then jumped out sideways, stiffening his body to plummet faster as he angled down through the curtain of fluttering white snow.

Cole immediately felt the frigid air through the fabric of his flightsuit, but most of the wind’s noise was blocked out by his helmet. Just as in his Academy jump training, there was an odd sensation missing from leaping out of a moving ship. He expected his stomach to rise into his throat, but nothing of the sort took place. All he felt was the friction of a cold breeze as he plummeted like a dropped dart.

Cole checked the altimeter on his wrist to gauge his rate of descent. It was an older Navy model, nearly an antique, but the controls had been easy enough to work out. He held the device in front of his visor and watched it tick down the meters of elevation on the several grids. One showed his falling rate, the other his distance to target—which was locked onto the coordinates of the Luddite camp. Cole altered course by twisting his torso as he switched the grav chute into reverse for maximum speed. If group one was able to slow the descent of their Bern craft enough, he just might be able to beat them to the ground.

Cole looked back to the altimeter on his wrist and wondered what sort of ship had carried the outdated device to hyperspace. What ship had brought the gravchute, for that matter? An older model Firehawk? One of the ancient Sparrows? Definitely something Navy and a few generations back, he thought. He moved his hand aside, satisfied with his rate of descent—just in time to see a Bern ship coalesce out of the snow directly below him.

“Flank!”

Cole threw his arms wide and cupped his gloved hands to catch the air. He slowed and veered to one side, missing the flying craft, but coming close enough to create a wash effect, which sent him tumbling in a confused ball. He threw his arms and legs out again, fighting to stabilize himself, then saw another ship go by in the distance. The tight formation of black shapes hung in the snow all around him, nearly invisible in the flurries until it was too late.

As soon as Cole regained control, he forced himself back into a dive and zipped down through the sideways snow, despite his trepidations. When he glanced at his altimeter again, he did so quickly, resuming his vigilance and hoping his near miss hadn’t shown up on the Bern craft’s SADAR.

He was a few thousand meters up and five hundred off target when he saw the dark mass of the Luddite camp below. The massive black village moved across a white backdrop of packed snow so solid, it made the spotted air seem suddenly gray. Cole angled his body to correct course, relief washing over him as he no longer needed to fear a midair collision. His comfort was brief, however. Orange flashes—naked fires—blazed across the rear portion of the Luddite village. The flames winked through the snow, delineating the outline of a ship-like form sprawled wide across the camp. It was Mortimor’s ship. Cole was late for the party.

When the top of the village’s tall mast zipped by just a few dozen meters away, Cole popped the chute’s controls in the other direction. The grav nullifiers kicked upward, the straps wrenching the air out of Cole’s chest, and still he continued to fall, his incredible velocity too much to quickly overcome. Even through his closed helmet, he could hear the gravchute screaming above the wind. Cole glanced at his altimeter. Fifty meters. Steering with his shoulders, he picked a clear piece of forward decking where Byrne’s ship and a Firehawk had been parked during his last visit. He felt a sickening sensation as he saw how many fur-clad Luddites were running to and fro below him.

The deck swelled closer. Cole braced for impact.

The idea was to hit running, but he came in too fast. His knees buckled, and he went into a roll to dissipate the force. He felt his pack bang violently against the deck, and he ended up in an uncomfortable sprawl. Cole pushed himself up, quickly unbuckled his harness, and let the overworked chute drift to the ground. And then, out of nowhere, a Luddite came at him, screaming. Cole yanked his buckblade free and fumbled for the switch. The man swung at him with a sideways blow.

Cole immediately turned his blade vertical and locked his new arm in place. Pistons and rods stood firm where once muscle and sinew lay. His attacker’s buckblade bounced back before it reached Cole’s, repelled from the like gravitational field so fast, it simply flew out of the figure’s hands. Cole stepped out of the way, allowing the man’s momentum to carry him by, then brought his own blade down on the man’s shoulder and out his opposite hip.

The man’s torso fell a few meters from his legs, his heart visible in its ribcage, still beating. Cole looked up from the two pieces toward the downed ship in the distance, far beyond the mast. All across the deck, dozens of figures moved toward the crash site—more than Cole thought he could fight through. He considered the plan Arthur had come up with and suddenly felt too exposed to pull it off. He was one idiot, alone and ill-prepared, against a legion of hardened maniacs. With the crash of the ship, the element of surprise was gone. Every able-bodied Luddite was now crawling across the camp, looking for trouble. And in his white suit, Cole stood out like an albino on a Mediterranean beach.

He looked off to the side, beyond the village’s railings, at all the snow streaking by. He kept turning and faced the bow, where a massive wall, shaped in a tall vee, parted the sideways flurries.

The plan had been to meet up with Mortimor and the rest of his crew, then wait for Arthur’s special delivery to extract them. But first, Cole thought he should take a bit of a detour and do what he did best:

Improvise.

4 · Luddite Camp

Penny helped Jym up from the ground, the pilot having been thrown out of his seat when their hijacked craft crashed into the Luddite camp. Mortimor clung to the dash nearby; he peered through the busted canopy at the jumbled structures in the village below. It had been Penny’s idea to try and land on the Luddite village, partly to do some damage, but mostly to keep from being buried in the snow and pushed back into the oblivion of hyperspace.

Jym clasped Penny’s wrists and stood up with her assistance.

“Thanks,” he said, gathering himself.

He seemed about to say something else, but Penny raised her hand to quiet him. She leaned toward the cockpit door. Somewhere aft, she could hear the hiss of plasma torches and the clanging of outer hull plating. “They’re already cutting their way inside,” she told the others. “I don’t think they’re happy with our parking job.”

“We’ll make our stand in the cargo bay,” Mortimor told her. He patted Jym on the back, and both men reached for their blades.

Penny nodded her agreement, and the three of them made their way aft, leaning to one side to compensate for the tilt of the deck and the Bern craft’s busted grav panels.

“If anyone gets caught and interrogated, this was the extent of the raid, okay?” Mortimor gave them both a serious look. “It was just us, and our goal was to bring down one of their ships and damage the village. No word of the other crews, no matter what they do to us.”

They nodded, each of them well aware of the Luddite fondness for removing limbs.

Mortimor led them out of the cockpit. “Penny, you stay behind as backup in case one of us goes down. Jym, you cover the port side.”

“Don’t try and protect me,” Penny said. “I’m the best here with a blade.” She stepped ahead of the other two. “I’ll take the starboard—”

“Watch out!” Jym yelled, raising his buckblade.

Penny turned and got hers up as well. Two Luds stormed into the bay, slowing up when they saw they were outnumbered. “Do this fast,” Penny said. “We’ve got to take them in small bites.”

Mortimor ran down the far side of the cargo bay, threatening to flank them. Penny pushed forward, forcing them to think about two dangers at once. One of the men seemed timid, the kind who would throw his sword at a foe, then run. Penny screamed and lunged at him, giving Mortimor time to get behind.