Elion kept his attention focused on his datapad, glancing up only occasionally at the map on the hologrid to check their progress. He was a politician, not a soldier, and the utilitarian shuttle they were traveling in didn't have the first-cla.s.s comforts used by elite society. The skinsuit he wore beneath his clothes itched around his joints, but was necessary considering the environment they were heading into.

What the h.e.l.l could have happened up here? Elion thought to himself. This post has never missed a check-in, not once.

Heir to the Athe Syndicate and his father's seat on the World Court, Elion came from a family that prided itself on science over all else and survived the Border Wars because of it. Their contributions to the world that came after were needed, if highly selective. Their forays into s.p.a.ce were key to the World Court's plans, but they would never be as highly regarded as the Serca family.

The Serca Syndicate had helped the government establish SkyFarms Inc. after the Border Wars, using forgotten technology and salvaged seeds pulled from the Svalbard Global Seed and Gene Bank. The Athe Syndicate had lost its bid on that project, and the Sercas got the bulk of the credit for those ventures, second only to the government. Elion's family was still bitter about the issue. Elion wondered if the Sercas would get the bulk of the blame this time around as well.

"How much longer?" he asked the pilot.

"ETA thirty minutes."

Less than an hour before they found answers. The communications officer had been hailing the watch team since they took to the air, and not once had he received a response. The lack of contact was worrisome, and Elion wasn't sure what to expect. He was exceptional when it came to antic.i.p.ating people. He had to be if he was going to succeed his father on the World Court, but he could never have antic.i.p.ated this.

The shuttle landed not in the airfield west of Longyearbyen, but on the outskirts of the small town itself. A dangerous endeavor, as the ground was uneven and untested, but they didn't have time to waste and no Strykers were contracted for this mission. Teleportation wasn't an option. Looking out the shuttle's winds.h.i.+eld through the floodlights, Elion felt as if he were going to be sick.

One of the buildings still used by the government had been blown up, its charred remains an ugly black spot against the steel gray of the rest of the buildings. Bodies were scattered around the area, already bloated from decomposition.

"Let us go first, sir," the most senior quad member told him. Her dark eyes didn't look away from Elion's own green ones. "You should stay here."

"By all means," Elion said around a numb tongue. "I'll remain."

The shuttle's side hatch opened. It was cold outside, the chrono indicating that it was a little after midnight. Elion's sense of time was already thrown off-kilter from being teleported to the World Court out of Sapporo before being flown north. This didn't help.

He'd been hoping it was an electrical problem, a breakdown in the communication system. It was so much worse than that, Elion decided, when the quads returned twenty minutes later, their recon finished.

"Everyone's dead," the woman from before said. "Looks like the attack was quick and brutal. We only saw signs of one shuttle. Security system is a mess. We can't pull anything from it."

Elion stared at the quad blankly before taking in a deep breath. "We're going. Now. Take me to the airfield."

The pilot got the shuttle in the air again a few minutes later and headed for the nearby airfield. They landed and the quads were the first out, doing recon. They found evidence of activity, but no evidence on who might have attacked the outpost. When Elion remotely plugged in the codes to stand down the artillery turrets, he discovered they were already off-line.

Sweat broke out across his face, cold and clammy. He swallowed the taste of bile and led the quads up the winding road to his destination on the mountain. It was a hard slog, but Elion refused to slow his pace, breathing heavily as they climbed.

Getting soft, Elion thought. I figured I could handle this.

If the quads were surprised by the metal wedge sticking out of the mountainside, they didn't show it. The ramp that bridged the road and the doors was newly broken in some places, as if a great weight had been applied after decades of neglect. Elion slid forward on careful feet, testing its stability. The ramp creaked and groaned, sounding as if it were about to break, but it held.

The control panel was dead. A few centimeters' worth of s.p.a.ce separated the doors.

Elion staggered forward, one shaking hand sliding through that s.p.a.ce. "It's unlocked," he whispered. "It's unlocked."

The quads helped him haul the doors open. Lights snapped on, one after the other as they stepped into the tunnel, illuminating a s.p.a.ce recently disturbed. Elion pressed his hand against the wall for support.

"Sir?" one of the soldiers said. "Let us canva.s.s the area for your safety."

"Iie," Elion said, the word ripping out of him.

Breathing harshly, Elion pitched himself forward, long legs eating up the distance between the entrance and the next set of doors. Like the first set, this one was unlocked; all of them were. His chest constricted with panic as they reached the first storage vault.

"Iie," Elion choked out as he stared inside. "Iie! Masaka ... s.h.i.+njirannee!"

Ransacked. Gone.

Boxes and packets were strewn across the floor, whole bays empty of supplies. Someone had broken into the most secret and secure place on earth and stolen half the government's most precious a.s.sets.

Elion felt sick as he shoved his way through the quads and ran to the next vault, finding the same scene. Hurrying down the rows of storage units and shelves, Elion couldn't think. His mind was a white-hot burn of panic at the realization that everything the government had worked for had become meaningless.

Behind him, one of the quads bent down to pick up a silver-foil packet from the mess near his feet. "What the h.e.l.l is an Attalea speciosa?"

The soldier stumbled over the words, his tongue unfamiliar with the name.

"h.e.l.l if I know," a woman said as she kicked at a box.

Elion did. Oh, not the species, but he knew what were in these packets, what had been stored here and stolen, all their careful planning, all their generations' worth of work-gone.

"They're seeds," Elion said, stumbling through the remains. "They're everything."

He couldn't breathe in the face of what they had lost. It didn't matter that some of the inventory remained, that they still had two-thirds of the terraforming machines. It didn't matter because someone outside the government had discovered this place.

Elion didn't know how he was going to explain this to the World Court.

NINETEEN.

SEPTEMBER 2379.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.

Of his ordeal in Buffalo, Gideon Serca remembered screaming wind and acid rain, a street lit by lights, and two men standing in his way. Remembered his twin and I'm sorry and how nothing would be the same again.

When Gideon eventually regained consciousness, he was alone in his mind. Eighteen years of his twin rummaging around in his head, a psi link between them that he thought would never be severed, had skewed his sense of the world. Samantha had carved it out to save some worthless Stryker. Its absence felt like a bottomless pit in his mind and he hated her for that.

Victoria had done what she could to repair his mind. In saving him, she had killed herself through overuse of her telepathy. Gideon's mind continued to build off Victoria's repairs. He needed aftercare, but wouldn't get it. The only person strong enough to halve the recovery time in the Warhound ranks was Nathan, and Nathan wasn't going to coddle him.

Sitting in Nathan's office, Gideon studied his father. Neither of them had spoken while they watched the pirate stream on the vidscreen. The conspiracy-mongers were out in force, downloads cras.h.i.+ng server farms across the planet. The world press was trying to contain the information on the government's orders, but they were failing.

"How did he do it?" Gideon finally asked.

Once, Nathan would have ignored his son. He no longer had that luxury. Gideon was Nathan's sole remaining heir and most powerful subordinate. Sharing every last detail with the eighteen-year-old Cla.s.s II telekinetic who would someday succeed him was now a necessity. He could no longer force Gideon to use his power more than was considered safe to survive. Nathan was going to have to find other Warhounds to take up the slack.

"You remember the Stryker with the natal s.h.i.+elds that Lucas took with him out of the Slums?" Nathan said, his attention still riveted on the pirate stream.

"Jason Garret, yes. I've read his file."

"We're still pulling details from the fight in Buffalo out of everyone's memories. I believe that Stryker is more than just a Cla.s.s V telekinetic."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I fought him in the Slums. He was only a telekinetic, and not a very good one."

It was questionable how Nathan would react to being argued with, but Gideon could no longer remain silent. He'd been third in line to this post, never expecting to hold it, not until Lucas walked away. Samantha, bare minutes older than he was, never seemed to want it, but would have taken the position if offered. If required. It was his now, as the last child Nathan had left, the last Serca that would follow Nathan into s.p.a.ce. An heir to whatever Nathan would build out of Mars Colony and the unsuspecting humans who were seeking refuge there. Gideon was determined not to squander his chance.

"The mental grid buckled, for lack of a better description." Nathan tapped his fingers against the hard s.h.i.+ne of his desk, command windows popping up with each precise pressure against the touch-sensitive controls of the console. "Tracking him became impossible afterwards. Lucas must have shown him how to read as human on the mental grid."

Gideon frowned. "The mental grid doesn't buckle. It can't."

"It did." Nathan coolly met Gideon's gaze. "Whatever secondary power Jason might have, its strength is off the charts. He can't be solely categorized as a Cla.s.s V, or even a Cla.s.s I."

"A Cla.s.s I has been the highest rank handed out to psions for decades. The only Cla.s.s higher is a Cla.s.s 0," Gideon said. "And the only ones ever given that ranking are precognitives. You know how rare those psions are."

"In our entire history, there have only been three precogs. None of them have been dual or triad psions, and all died before the age of five. It's impossible that Jason is a precog."

"Then what do you think he is?"

"What Lucas never was."

Gideon opened his mouth, then closed it. He couldn't hide his surprise, nor the brief spurt of jealousy. Everyone knew Lucas hadn't turned out to be what Nathan needed, no matter the amount of gene splicing that helped form his genetics. Psion DNA was difficult to work with and the results were unpredictable. Lucas was born a triad psion instead of a microtelekinetic, and he'd been living with that failure all his life.

"Can you be certain?" Gideon asked. "How could Lucas have known about this? About any of it?"

"Only Lucas can answer that question. This"-Nathan gestured at the feed, which was repeating itself-"is Lucas's doing. Everything from here on out will be Lucas's doing, and countering it is going to be difficult. Some of the public will believe this information, and there are those who will not. Who cannot. Regardless, preparing for the launch just got more complicated."

"What do you need from me?"

"I want Jason Garret," Nathan said flatly. "I want his power for use on Mars Colony. You will track him down and retrieve him. Which means a visit to the Strykers Syndicate is in order, since Lucas has proven impossible to pin down. They'll have better records than we do on their missing Strykers. Also, I want you to determine whether or not they are dealing under the table with Lucas."

"If I do this for you, will you finally trust me?"

Nathan's gaze cut into Gideon. "That has no bearing on what I require from you right now."

"I think it does."

"Considering the results I've wanted for the past two years, and which neither you nor your sister could provide, you aren't in any position to demand anything from me. If Lucas was dead, things would most certainly be different, and you wouldn't be living in his shadow."

Gideon straightened in his seat. "Then perhaps you should have done it yourself."

"You place a lot of faith in the idea that I won't kill you," Nathan said, sliding behind Gideon's mental s.h.i.+elds with a dexterity that belied his age.

"You need me," Gideon said, flinching against the pain in his head, but he didn't look away from his father's face. "You've got no one else to succeed you. I'm all you have left."

"You are not what I require."

"None of us ever were. Now there's a psion out in the world who is, and it's your choice not to hunt him down directly. You want us to use back channels, and I don't know if that will be enough." Gideon lifted his chin, defiance in every line of his body. "I think you could find him, if you really wanted to. But it would cost you, wouldn't it, Nathan? It would cost you in effort and in power and in years. You're too close to your promised land to risk it, so you risk us instead."

Nathan studied his third child, telepathy sliding through thoughts that Gideon didn't bother to hide. "The arrogance of youth has always been annoying. You can't kill me, Gideon."

"I don't want to."

"Yet." The look that settled on Nathan's face could almost be described as pride. "I think you're worth it after all."

Gideon's smile was all teeth. "Thank you."

"Now show me you deserve it and bring back that Stryker."

The pressure of Nathan in Gideon's mind leveled off. "Will anyone in the Strykers Syndicate be expecting us?"

"No."

"I'll need a telepath," Gideon said, wis.h.i.+ng he didn't. Working with someone who wasn't his twin was going to be strange.

"Warrick is being briefed."

"I need someone stronger than a Cla.s.s IV."

"He'll have others in merge with him if things turn out messy." Nathan glanced at the chrono ticking away on the vidscreen. "I have a meeting in two hours and need to prep for it. Keep me updated. You're dismissed."

Gideon left, teleporting to the private levels of the city tower that housed the Serca Syndicate. A faint twinge of pain blossomed in the back of his head at the use of his power, a reminder that he wasn't completely healed yet. If he could have taken another few days to recuperate, he would have. Except Nathan needed him and that need came before Gideon's health.

Gideon stepped off the arrival platform. He headed for a briefing room down the hall and found Warrick Sinclair finis.h.i.+ng up with an operations officer. The Cla.s.s IV telepath was with two other telepaths, Mercedes Vargas and James Olsen, Cla.s.s VII and Cla.s.s V respectively. Their lower rankings would bolster Warrick's in the merge. When the operations officer left the room and Gideon stepped inside, Warrick and the other two stood.

"Sir," Warrick said. "Good to have you back."

Gideon nodded at the acknowledgment. "You know we're switching targets. Looking for this Stryker is going to be as difficult as looking for Lucas. Maybe worse. Were you ever a.s.signed to track Lucas?"

"Once. Nothing came of it."

"I've got some defensive tricks we were both taught as high-Cla.s.sed psions, and I know how Samantha looked for him during her missions. I'll give them to you. We're a.s.suming Lucas shared them with the Strykers he's allied with."

"This Stryker we're after. Is he the one who f.u.c.ked up the mental grid?"

"That's the working theory. Were you in Buffalo?"

"No, I stayed behind in Toronto until I got called back here. Mercedes was there."

Gideon turned his attention on the slight young woman standing beside Warrick. "Do you have the target's psi signature?"

"No, sir," Mercedes said. "When that power hit the mental grid, it didn't stay static. It changed and kept changing until it was cut off."