Daniel looked out the window as his ship prepared to land at the spaceport on FOB Granatica. However, calling the place a Forward Operating Base really didn’t do it justice.

  Pioneer FOBs were placed on planets in the process of being colonized. They weren’t fully in the grasp of the Empire yet, but that process was beginning. It would become complete when the planetary Warp Gate was finished. Whatever terraforming was necessary for the planet to support human life had already been completed. The Xenos population that would threaten human settlements had also been diminished, if not extinguished outright. Rudimentary settlements and cities had already popped up, thanks to tourists and adventurous folks eager to try their hand at the complex process of civilization building. These pioneers in the classical sense often cozied up to the Federation Pioneers, meaning that FOB Granatica was surrounded by a small concrete city. The city's hustle was nearly as chaotic as Ankara’s, only interrupted by crowds of people gawking at Daniel’s ship as it closed in to land.

  The FOB itself was massive, though it was more of a spaceport with a base attached to it than anything else. The ship traffic was considerable, and the spaceport needed places large enough to accommodate 20,000 soldier transports like Daniel’s. The other notable structure of the base was a single chrome tower, bedecked in blinking red lights. Daniel spotted the Network Tower and took a deep breath, steeling himself for what came next. What he was about to do was technically a crime, and it could easily backfire, but it was the right thing to do.

  The Network Tower used Warp tech to transport signals across space and through the Warp instantaneously. It was the equivalent of a Warp Gate for electronic messaging and connection, though it was much cheaper and easier to build than the larger transportation machines. It connected the entire settlement to the Imperial public Network. Its presence meant that Daniel could now post the most consequential message of his life.

  He’d been reading both the Archangel System user manual and the Kharnidd bestiary for more than three months now. Daniel was still studying the dense information within both, but he understood that he was sitting on a gold mine of helpful information about the deadly Xenos. He also knew that the Kharnidd were likely strong enough to threaten all mankind. They wouldn’t have shown themselves again if they weren’t prepared to go to war with humanity. The bestiary’s info would be crucial for the upcoming conflict. It needed to get into the right hands as quickly as possible.

  That said, Daniel obviously didn’t want them to know that he was the one with the info. That would prompt difficult questions about where he got it, questions he couldn’t easily answer without turning attention to the System. That would likely go poorly. For him. If the Imperium had some secret way to extract his Codex tech, it would certainly use it. That would almost definitely damage the Codex and Daniel personally. The device was a part of him, and its bonded tech was a part of it. Damage to one of those bonds would damage everything else. It would be worse if they couldn’t take it from him.

  If they couldn’t take it from him, the Empire would almost certainly try to pin him down and use him as a weapon. They’d probably pump him full of resources and dispatch him to the battlefield, shortening his lifespan in the process. Worst came to worst, they could even put him in cryogenic storage, like they did with some of the Omegas. They could take him out of storage, send him on the warpath, then bring him back, extending his use as a tool of war for hundreds or thousands of years into the future.

  Things weren’t guaranteed to be that abysmal, of course. The Imperium usually tried to get Omegas to consent to storage through various personal means and rewards. Trying to bully the most powerful superhumans in the Galaxy with force was very difficult. But Daniel didn’t care about wealth, glory, or anything else they could offer him. He had joined the force as a simple man with simple goals. Have a decent career, pay for Lucy’s college, then move on with the rest of his life. Since his first two missions had been so successful, he could now dream of setting aside some cash for himself. Getting caught up as a vanguard in an intergalactic war would derail his life. He could always try to come up with a lie about where he got the info, but the extra scrutiny would make his life difficult.

  All that said, releasing information about the Xenos was a small thing that he could easily do. It would save lives and help all humanity. He’d decided to compromise. After ensuring the coast was clear, he typed into his Codex dialogue box: “Nuntius: Activate Secondary Hacking Functions.”

  A metallic tendril sprouted from the tip of his finger, attaching to the SmartPad in his hand. The Codex couldn’t connect to non-Meta tech, like the Tower, but the Pad could. He immediately downloaded the Xenos document to the Pad, then sent the information to Deputy Commander Seth Norlow’s public mail address. The Archangel System’s encryption kept the message anonymous, making it harder to trace back to him. He also sent the information to Deputy Intelligence Minister Gornir Kufal, noted Xenos researcher Finlo Toshak, and a few other prominent academics and officials. Hopefully, at least one of them would take it seriously. And hopefully Nuntius’s encryption was good enough to keep him anonymous. This was a risk, but a calculated one.

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  Job done, Daniel and the others disembarked from the transport ship. The first thing they did was to report their Codex data to the central hub on base. Their video, stats, Capacities, Attributes, etc. All of it was transferred to a data center for analysis. The Empire was very interested in how strong its soldiers had become. The process recorded Integrated Technologies, of course, but the System could alter that data.

  His data was submitted, and no staff member ever looked twice at him. Daniel breathed a little easier, then grabbed some lunch with the others from his crew.

  “Man, am I looking forward to going home!” Jordan exclaimed as he leaned back in his chair. While they still had another mission to go before their tour of duty was up, they were allowed some vacation time before their final task. Some chose to rip the bandage off and do three missions in one go, but most took a break after the second. This was especially true because the third was often the most dangerous, involving a trip to an Epsilon class planet. Unless you were tapped to lead an expedition to a Zeta class.

  “Like Gulliman.”, Daniel thought to himself, an image of the Sergeant’s dead body floating to the top of his mind. The man would have been on the cusp of finishing his tour of missions, a comparatively comfy life as a Sergeant in the regular military ahead of him. He’d never been fond of the CO, but the reminder of the man’s death at the final stage was a sobering thought. Daniel wasn’t out of danger yet.

  As the men continued to joke and talk about their upcoming break, Daniel received proof of that exact fact. Red text flashed across his eyes, punctuating his train of thought: “NOTICE: Daniel S. Hardgrave. You have been summoned by the Commander of FOB Granatica. Report to him immediately.”

  …

  Hahkta Kufal had pulled up a model of E2555 up for everyone to see, explaining that a Republic ship had just been shot down there: “It is believed that there were no survivors. It was retrieving a full Division of Pioneers, sent to investigate an abandoned Aeterna facility. They suspected it possessed a specific valuable item. The Aeterna codenamed it ‘Philosopher’.”

  “Philosopher? Were they retrieving an A.I.?” Haeli chimed in. A.I. tech was still rudimentary for humanity. The regular wars and reliance on other technology had stalled its development. They knew that the Aeterna had possessed some relatively advanced A.I. tech, but the enigmatic gray-skinned aliens had given them none of it before the Collapse. So far, searching their ruins had turned up no computer minds, which made sense. A.I. were such valuable assets that both sides of the civil war would have made a special effort to target them. If the Republic had found something like that…

  “I do not believe so. Republic High Command didn’t seem sure of what it was themselves, but they knew it was a valuable consumable resource. Some kind of Serum. We don’t know if the Pioneers found it, but we do know that something shot down the transport ship while it was in the process of leaving.”

  This time, the flaming-haired Minrak was the one to share his reaction: “This is an outrage! That planet is practically Imperial territory! We stay away from it out of courtesy to our enemies, and now they have the audacity to-“

  “Oh please, Minrak, will you stop thinking with your blaster for once! Didn’t we just finish talking about a Xenos threat that threatened all of humanity? Didn’t we say that human infighting was dangerous in the face of that threat?”

  Haeli interrupted Minrak, tossing an irritated glare in the soldier’s direction. The man matched her anger and doubled it, opening his mouth to retort before Chekta interjected: “Haeli, show some courtesy if you please. I’m sure Minrak had no intention of declaring war over a small incursion like this. He was merely suggesting we demand some concessions over the slight.”

  Minrak looked slightly thrown off, but he soon picked up on things and nodded vigorously: “Yes, yes. Concessions were what I was looking for. Since Hahkta brought it up, I’m sure he’s already thought of some.”

  All eyes turned back to Hahkta Kufal, and he inclined his head in affirmation: “Indeed, I have. In exchange for us looking the other way and not announcing the Republic’s faux pas to the galaxy, I have suggested a competitive mission. My counterpart in the Republic has already agreed. In addition, they will send us a tidy sum under the table. 10 billion credits, to be precise.”

  It was a small sum from a national perspective, but not totally insignificant. It was the competitive mission that truly interested the Duceps. For the sake of the development of their younger generation, it wasn’t unheard of for the leaders of the great powers to have competitive missions. Both sides would pick a planet and an objective. Then they’d have fighters on both sides fight to complete said objective. This was usually a clash between younger generations and lower Pioneer classes, meant to give them more combat experience and chances to develop. “Iron sharpened iron” was the philosophy. These semi-structured completions were only possible in peacetime, so an agreement would be seen as an olive branch. A sign of good faith that both sides wanted continued peace. Chekta was the first to ask for more information: “What are the details?”

  “A competition for who can find the downed ship and obtain ‘Philosopher’. They have given us the ‘keys’ to the locks on their dead soldiers’ Codices. Standard 100-day time limit. Squads of 19 E-class fighters led by a D-class. We can use their payment as a reward for our people. Extra incentive to succeed while further financing the development of our future elites.”

  Everyone either nodded or remained silent as these details were being rattled off. No one objected when Chekta closed the book on the subject: “Let it be done.”