Isaac held his girlfriend’s hand, the two of them sitting out of the way of James’ diplomatic efforts on the balcony of their own multi-bedroom suite a day into the not-quite-vacation. Which was by itself quite nice, but it was more than just simple affection or taking in the inside-out landscape of the Deep Kingdoms. Isaac’s power only worked on things he was touching, so to reach Sarah’s metaphysical self he needed to be in contact. Something he hardly minded, under the circumstances.

  Trying to work through exactly what his power was telling him was another issue entirely. It wasn’t like he instantly understood what he was affecting, and how much. He had spent years playing around with materials, weights, and movement to build up an intuition of how much inertia was in an object. When it came to something as esoteric as another person’s talent he really couldn’t tell much of anything.

  But he had to figure it out, and for the most part he was sure his experimentation would be helpful. It wasn’t like he could suppress her power – or un-suppress it – himself. All he could do was alter resistance to change, but figuring out which resistance and which change was not easy. One approach was to make the initial alteration, caused by the depowerment beam, less of an effort to push back. Since the older suppressor wore off right away, he had thought that would be easier, but unfortunately Sarah hadn’t been able to manage more than a trickle of smoke.

  This particular exercise was something different. Instead of aiming his power at the suppressor and its effects, he was just trying to make it easier for Sarah to summon her power. That particular change wasn’t the only problem, or else he could have fixed everything easily, but his efforts did have an effect. It felt a little bit wrong to not simply reverse what had been done, but Isaac had cleaned up enough messes to know that you couldn’t necessarily put something to rights just by working backward.

  “Right, try now,” he said, once he was certain he could invest and divest the same metaphysical thing, and tweak whatever changes he’d made. Sarah lifted her other hand and snapped her fingers, and a hazy, translucent cigarette appeared in them. She lifted it to her lips and took an imaginary drag, exhaling a large plume of smoke. The showmanship wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was a long habit that neither of them felt like breaking. Something which, Isaac hoped, only worked to their advantage, if he gave extra inertia to an action that already had conceptual momentum.

  “Yeah!” Sarah said, the smoke curling back down again to wrap around her. The illusionary changes were subtle, alterations around the eyes and mouth, a slight gloss to her hair, some minor revisions to her clothing.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he told her, and she glanced at him, a moment of confusion melting into a smile.

  “Thank you,” she said, squeezing his hand. “It’s easier to do the subtle stuff, though. Small changes don’t require as much…” She trailed off and waved vaguely. “Oomph, I guess. I’m definitely not all the way back but this is better than before. About where I started out? The difference is this feels really slick. Easier, even if I can’t do as much.”

  “Interesting,” Isaac said, considering the information as he watched Sarah, who in turn was focused on flexing her illusionary powers. “So maybe this will help you regain your power faster? But I’d worry about my power making yours less impactful.”

  “You can reverse what you’ve done, right?” Sarah said, eyes focusing on him again. “So once I’m back to normal you can just set things back like they used to be.”

  “And I suppose no matter how it works out, it’s better than nothing,” Isaac agreed, knowing he’d have to content himself with just doing the best he could. Though the period of being powerless seemed to have actually been good for Sarah; she seemed less lost than she had when she was in the gang.

  “Much better!” Sarah said happily, flicking her fingers and conjuring another illusionary cigarette. It wasn’t quite as convincing as when he’d first met her, but he knew what to look for and suspected it’d still fool a lot of people.

  “If you’re not going to go goth anymore – or even if you are, come to think of it – maybe you should extend that to a long-stemmed cigarette holder,” Isaac suggested. He’d seen enough costumes with them, and they were definitely more classy than the punk look she’d been using before. “It fits the same aesthetic, but it’s more stylish.”

  “A what now?” Sarah asked, and Isaac rose, digging through his bag for a notebook and pulling it out to sketch what he meant. On a whim, he added in a design for an opera dress, wide-brimmed hat, and lace veil to go with the look. It wasn’t his most inspired look, but he’d helped with a couple similar designs before. Theatri-Calli – a purely fictional super – had that kind of aesthetic, though she was in white and red.

  “What do you think?” He made a few more notations on the costume, keeping it mostly based on the stark black of the goth look, but giving it a few splashes of color to accent the aesthetic. “I think you’d look great if you want to go in this kind of pulp direction.”

  “Hmm, I think I like magical girls better,” Sarah said, elbowing him with a grin before narrowing her eyes to focus on the illusions. The cigarette dissolved and reformed at the end of a long, silver stick, white smoke flowing up to form into a hat like the one he’d drawn. Amusingly, for a moment it looked like a scribble rather than actual cloth, before Sarah refined the image. She took a drag on the smoking stick and gave him the sort of haughty, high-class look that went with the accessory, which made him wonder if she had theatre training, too. Given how wealthy her family was, it wouldn’t be surprising.

  “You know,” Isaac said thoughtfully, though he still smiled at her antics. “Those illusions would match real well with my ability to make my personas more real. In fact, I might be able to do the same thing if you adopted one—though, I guess I’d be afraid of how much it’d affect you.”

  “I still am not clear exactly what your power is,” Sarah pointed out, and Isaac nodded. So far, he hadn’t actually confessed everything to anyone, even Cayleb. It still hurt that his brother had lured him into Star Central’s trap. But since he was serious about Sarah, he had to extend some trust—and frankly she’d earned it. Not just with winding up depowered trying to defend him, but the entire trip was a way of shielding him from Star Central — not to mention that she hadn’t spilled any of the secrets he had given her.

  “You’re right, and if anyone deserves to know, it’s you.” He said, and after taking a moment to collect his thoughts he did his best to set out what he could do, how his power seemed to be centered around resistance to change. That it wasn’t merely physical, though he’d thought so for most of his life, but moved beyond it into the metaphysical and even mental. And, for that matter, how he’d learned that it was his power that had been hijacked to turn the suppressor into full depowerment.

  “So I really need to get a handle on this,” Isaac concluded. “I’m in exactly the wrong spot where my power is really useful but not powerful enough to keep myself independent if the wrong person targets me.”

  “Yeah, I can see Blacktime wanting to get ahold of you,” Sarah admitted, rolling her imaginary cigarette stick between her fingers. “But you know, there’s all kinds of neat things you could do that aren’t terrible. Help people get out of bad habits, or reinforce good ones. Or – ’cause your stuff’s permanent – you could actually cure people who are hyperfocused or unable to focus. My cousin was like that for ages, and still has trouble with it. You met him; Columbuzz.”

  “Ah, super senses?” Isaac nodded, thinking about how potentially overwhelming that could be. The guy’s unfortunate mutation certainly didn’t help. Being able to hear any whispered comments about being a fly-man would be demotivating, to say the least. “Yeah, that is something I’d prefer trying to do over super-fighting, though if the past month has taught me anything it’s that super-fights are inevitable.”

  “Hah! That’s what Dad said, too,” Sarah said, pursing her lips to blow a smoke ring, playing with her power as they spoke. “That once you start playing the game, you don’t get any say over the rules.”

  “That sounds about right,” Isaac agreed, a little surprised by Crash’s insight. He probably shouldn’t have been – the guy was obviously not dumb – but the phrase had the feel of an older aphorism, something passed down among the super community perhaps. Not a community he’d been a part of, back when he was just a janitor; if nothing else, powers tended to run in families, and there was a lot of wisdom passed down that way. But the moment he involved himself with supers for real, it had been like the whole weight of super-history swept him along.

  “Well, we can hope for less trouble here,” Isaac concluded after a moment of thought.

  “Don’t say that!” Sarah laughed. Isaac mimed zipping his lips shut, but Sarah was right. Fate and destiny were real things, at least according to the magic types, and someone like him might well be asking for trouble.

  “Right, different topic, then,” Isaac said, waving out at the landscape curving upward in the distance. “Are we allowed to go out at all? Maybe head out on a date in the city? Given the energetic greeting your brother gave that lizardman, I don’t know if it’s safe. Just seems a shame to be just stuck inside the whole time.” While Isaac may not really have been part of the diplomatic entourage or completely subject to its authority, he wasn’t so dumb as to just go wandering around in the Deep Kingdoms without any preparation. He didn’t want to make trouble for other people or for himself, despite feeling so closed in.

  “Yeah! Let’s go ask,” Sarah said, hopping to her feet. She was visibly more cheerful than before their talk, her smoke power cloaking her and turning shirt and skirt into the kind of opera dress he’d sketched. Isaac chuckled and followed, strolling out of the expansive multi-room suite they’d been given. It was larger and better-furnished than any apartment he’d ever had, with full kitchen, multiple bathrooms and bedrooms, and a living room with a balcony. Everything was tinkered cloth and glass, metal and cut coral, meshing together in a way that showed someone had worked hard on the color scheme. He definitely wasn’t used to the luxury on display, which seemed almost garish even if it existed mostly to show the Deep Kingdoms the wealth of the Five Cities Alliance.

  He would have been perfectly happy with a more spartan offering, if only they were in a place that he knew. In Star City he knew how people acted, what the layout was, and where to get the things he needed. The Deep Kingdoms were entirely alien to him, and despite the surrounding luxury he was effectively broke. He very much doubted the Ikiski took creds. But if he was going to be here, he was damned well going to experience what he could.

  If nothing else, the few glimpses he’d gotten of the natives had inspired some scribblings for his costume notebook. It had been entirely too long since he’d had the chance to work on costumes just for the sake of it, roughing out designs and fashioning some outfits. A consequence of getting caught up in super stuff, and letting his power rule him rather than him ruling his power.

  “James!” Sarah called as they walked into the central study, appearing to ignore the rest of the delegation. The moment after she said it though, he saw her stiffen slightly as she realized just how many people were there, and the seriousness of the setting. The diplomatic group were definitely not gangers, and more than a few were understandably frowning at the intrusion. He stepped up next to her, trying to project some degree of steadiness but very consciously not using his power. Not that Isaac thought he could make any difference with inertia, but he had to be very careful not to invest anything by accident now that he knew there were effect beyond just the obvious physical ones.

  “Little sis?” James drawled, glancing at her and taking in the smoke-created clothes with a skeptical eye. Sarah almost pouted.

  “Is it safe to go out there?” She gestured toward the exit door. “Or do we need to bunker up?”

  Isaac stayed silent, even if it went against the grain to act like a little kid, asking Dolores if they could play outside. His actions had wound up cascading into something far out of proportion to what he’d intended or wanted, so perhaps it was better to step back and be more cautious. James’ eyes flicked to him, considering, then he made an equivocal gesture with one hand.

  “You have to be ready for casual violence, as you saw. As I’m understanding it, Isaac, you should be tough enough to deal with it. Since you’re larger, you’ll be the one that gets hit. But if you’re willing, that’d be fantastic.” Isaac raised his eyebrows, a little surprised, and James shrugged.

  “Harder than you think to find a strength super willing to come all the way down here, away from the shield of Star Central, be someone the government can trust away from Star Central, and not be an idiot or spoiling for a fight,” he told them, a little dryly. “So showing flag a bit, letting the Ikiski see some humans that aren’t me or the mercs, would go a long way toward making my job easier. Besides, they’ll have people shadowing you just in case.”

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  Isac nodded; having Ikiski shadows made perfect sense. It would be undiplomatic to force people to hole up in the embassy, but a bad idea to let visitors wander into trouble. It was likely the city wasn’t unsafe, anyway. If it was equivalent to the occasional moonie that could be seen on the streets of Star City, to the citizens of the local settlement the sight of a human would just be novelty.

  “Just take one of the new comms with you,” James said, twisting around to find one of the other staff anticipating him and digging out a set of Cayleb-produced electronics from a box in the corner. They were little white plastic collar pins, rather than the self-propelled drones he’d seen before—though Isaac spotted another case in the box that probably held that very product.

  Isaac and Sarah each took one, Isaac lingering while Sarah went back to the suite to grab her camera and notebook. He snapped his pin into place on his collar and patted himself down to make sure he had the usual items before going out. Wallet, watch—not that he had local currency or even knew the local time. Notepad, pencil, and a shoelace just in case. He wasn’t intending to need or use weapons, but after finding out how useful any cord could be when given enough inertia it seemed stupid not to carry one.

  “No special instructions?” He asked James, still feeling like he was missing some subtlety or nuance, and that it just wasn’t enough to be turned loose on a nonhuman city.

  “Just don’t mess with anyone much bigger than you,” James said. “Like I said, you’ll have shadows, and giving you too much instruction would ruin your natural reactions. Getting the Ikiski used to normal people is about sixty percent of what I’m here for anyway.”

  “Making the way for tourists?” Isaac asked, a little amused. It was a shocking swerve from having to deal with a rogue tinker, but he welcomed the chance to do something constructive.

  “And just general positive propaganda,” James agreed easily, shaking his head at the pile of paperwork he and the other diplomatic staff had in front of them. “They’ve only allowed us to trade for the simplest of crystaltech so far, despite the various kingdoms trying to compete for our surface tech.”

  “Right,” Isaac said, though he wasn’t sure how interested he actually was in the intricacies of the diplomatic dance. It mattered, but he didn’t see himself becoming an interlocuter any time soon.

  Sarah returned before he needed to support any further conversation, and the two of them headed out the front door of the embassy hand in hand. The gate was a solid steel latticework that opened of its own accord, something that Isaac had left unaltered, not wanting to interfere with how it worked. The motors that controlled it would probably just break if he’d given it more inertia, and he had trouble thinking of any non-physical aspect that would be useful.

  “So, are you putting together a book?” He asked Sarah as they exited into the city proper. The streets were stone, tightly fitting slabs carved with figures and patterns, with riotous greenery sprouting along the sides. There were, however, nothing like city blocks, as the streets flowed around and between small clusters of the conical buildings like water through rocks.

  “I’m going to try,” Sarah said with determination, raising her camera and taking a few shots, the shutter clicking as she captured the bright terracotta of the buildings and the equally bright scales of the inhabitants. “Realizing I didn’t have anything outside my power was a deep cut. This is something I can do that doesn’t depend on it.”

  “Yeah.” Isaac agreed, even as he tweaked the inertial investment he had in his clothing—and himself, making sure it was only physical. “I’ve seen a lot of supers that seem to have that problem. How could you be your superhero – or villain – identity all the time?”

  “Mhmm.” Sara hummed, pausing to take a photo of a group of pint-sized Isiski holding up the cloak hem of a larger, fifteen-foot version as it strode along, giving them only the barest glance. “At the same time, I definitely want my powers back to normal.” She stated it with the air of a confession, and Isaac chuckled.

  “I can’t fault you there,” he said, though Sarah’s comments sparked a thought. While he hadn’t been trapped in just being a super, he had gotten stuck with the goal of bringing justice to Blacktime and Glorybeam. The resolution to that hadn’t been what he imagined, but it was done with. Which left him at similar loose ends, especially since he wasn’t sure whether he could even stay in Star City long term.

  Realizing that he was adrift because he didn’t have any particular goals solidified a lot of things in his mind, and it didn’t take much for him to think of something he could do. His only real talent, besides janitorial work, was with costuming. And everyone on the diplomatic staff was dressed in suits or skirts, the kind of thing found in Star City. He was sure they had exceedingly competent tailors but, if he had to guess, nobody would dare to try their hand at native styles without government permission. Which, if hospital bureaucracy was anything to judge by, would probably never happen.

  “Do you think they have stores here?” He asked, nodding his head in the direction of a man-sized Ikiski with robes styled in something vaguely resembling attire from the Isle of Leaves. All intricate folds, like wearable origami with almost painfully bright colors. “I have some ideas for that kind of cloth.”

  “I mean, it’s a city,” Sarah said, taking a picture of the lizard-person in question. “The question is whether they’ll take creds.”

  “We can always barter for it,” Isaac said. It’d been a while since he’d had to do that kind of trading, but it was really common when he was younger, before he’d gotten a proper job. Trading between kids in the foster home, or with the gangers of the nearby slums. He’d known that more than a few kids who had wanted drugs or alcohol, even and especially when they were far too young.

  “What with?” Sarah glanced down at the camera bag that she was using for her own personal effects. “I doubt they’ll be too interested in chapstick or eyeliner.” In reply, Isaac merely waggled his fingers.

  “Since I can’t really be secretive about this anymore, maybe just touch up some product with inertia,” he suggested. “Just a little bit, not to the extent of armor, but enough to be interesting. Or maybe less would be better?” He considered, not having ever bothered wearing a full set of low-inertial clothing.

  “Huh, maybe,” Sarah said thoughtfully, the two of them stopping to let some mounted Ikiski go by. There was a definite difference between footpaths and what could be considered actual roads, where the lizard-people employed beasts of burden to transport themselves around. Smaller slabs of stone, a different style of mural, terminating sharply against the broader, coarser and busier streets.

  Even if nobody used cars, it wasn’t exactly a feudal throwback either. These weren’t horses or cows; the bulk of them were a large, bipedal raptor-like species, of a kind that reminded him of Savage, augmented with crystalline armor, barding, and other things. Some had folded wings of amethyst or topaz floating at rest on either side of them; others had little silk canopies reinforced by some green metal, with inlaid diamond and sapphire glowing as crystaltech cycled and cooled air. He even caught one small, extremely fast dinosaur with a floating holograph display before it dashed out of sight.

  “Hey, look,” Sarah said in a tone of amused glee. “Stoplights.” She pointed over at a not-quite-an-intersection where a series of disks embedded in the ground projected a glowing, translucent wall across one of the roads. Over the course of a few seconds they darkened from gray-white to a purplish black, blocking off traffic.

  One of the riders directed their mount to hop around the barriers into the cross-flow, only for a larger dinosaur coming from the other direction to grab up both mount and rider in its jaws, hurling them off to the side. Isaac winced as the pair smashed against the wall of one of the buildings with a distinct double thump, falling to the ground before staggering to their feet. The rider shakily got up on his mount, both of them bleeding from teeth punctures, and directed it back onto the road without a backward look. The sound of a camera shutter came from behind him as Sarah took pictures, then pulled up her notebook to scribble frantically.

  “Message received, wait for the lights,” Isaac said, thinking that he needed to have some sort of rapid-deploy shield to fend off something like that just in case. Once again he lamented in the privacy of his own head that he didn’t have access to a tinker, with Cayleb being pretty much out of reach and Greg being dead.

  From what he could see, crystaltech was even less likely than tinkertech; it worked on such esoteric principles that he wasn’t sure his power would be useful without some deep study. Once the street was clear, the two of them hurried across, Sarah puffing on her imaginary cigarette and sending smoke pluming into the air.

  “Right, I can’t get it too far but it looks like there’s a kind of a mall in that direction.” She pointed up over the peaks of the nearest buildings, toward a cluster of taller spires. “It’s got signs, and both big and little doors.”

  “See our shadows?” Isaac asked, more out of curiosity than anything. He wouldn’t have given himself good odds of spotting someone tailing him in Star City, and with lizardfolk it’d be even harder to tell if someone was following.

  “No.” Sarah sighed. “I bet I could if I had my powers all the way back. Hard to hide something when I can cover the area with smoke.”

  “We’ll get you there,” Isaac assured her, bumping her hip with his own. “Just going to take some time and effort.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, visibly shaking off the funk. “Okay, let’s see if we can get over there without being eaten.”

  Isaac laughed, the two of them following the pedestrian paths through the buildings in the direction Sarah had seen the commercial area. Surprisingly, at least to him, nobody hassled them on the way. The vast majority of the Ikiski walking around were his size or smaller and definitely focused on their own business, often chattering away in an almost birdlike fashion.

  The sound of a horn made both of them whirl around, but the noise wasn’t coming from the dinosaur traffic. Across the way, one of the lizard people was gesturing in their direction but talking to its companions, mouth open as the sounds of an intersection issued forth. Horns, motors, and distant voices. Then the group giggled and ran off in the other direction.

  “That was adorable!” Sarah said, laughing as she snapped a couple pictures and then took more notes, getting down the essence of the interaction.

  “I think they were making fun of us,” Isaac said, more amused than anything. He wasn’t expecting a parrot-like ability to mimic sounds, though it made him question where the Ikiski in question had heard the sounds to begin with. Maybe some movies or shows had made their way down to the Deep Kingdoms.

  “Kids, I guess,” Sarah said, stopping at another one of the odd multi-way intersections and waiting for it to be clear before they crossed over to the walk by the sort-of-a-mall. Of course they couldn’t read any of the text, the intricate sigils completely meaningless to their eyes, but some of them had icons that were fairly easy to parse out. Food and drink, a crystaltech shop – some equivalent to Component Shack – and a number of other sundries necessary for any town or village.

  Finding a store that sold raw materials took a little bit of looking, and then clambering up a ladder that was far more fit for the clawed lizard-people, but the interior was familiar enough to Isaac. Bolts of cloth, the smell of fabric and leather, a whiff of fixatives and a few other indeterminate, industrial smells along with a riotous display of color. The main difference was the pillars of quartz with intricate etchings and hints of internal structure that dotted the interior. And, of course, the proprietor.

  The Ikiski was nearly ten feet tall, a huge beast in the most intricate clothing Isaac had seen yet, with blue and white scales in a black and gold outfit. It regarded them with surprise apparent on the reptilian face, stepping out from behind the counter with a rumble and a chirp and flinging its arms wide. Isaac remembered that gesture vividly, so before he could overthink it, he stepped forward, pushing inertia into himself and delivering an open-palm strike to the shopkeeper’s gut.

  It wasn’t all that hard or skilled, but it wasn’t meant to be. What it did have, with Isaac’s body behind it, was the same push as a medium size car. The proprietor slid backward a few inches, face comically surprised, before babbling something in what Isaac hoped was a happy tone and promptly punching him in the face.

  Thankfully, with the invested inertia it wasn’t that bad, more like a light slap than something bone-crushing. Probably a pulled punch, too; after getting a touch of combat training he recognized there was no real planting of a stance or follow-through. Which was good, because the fist was the size of Isaac’s entire head.

  “You okay?” Sarah asked in an undertone as the proprietor stepped back, apparently satisfied with the exchange.

  “Yeah,” Isaac replied, rubbing at his nose, which felt oddly out of joint even if the force hadn’t been too bad. “Hope we don’t have to do that every time, though.” He couldn’t imagine every interaction opening with people punching each other in the face.

  “Oh, I dunno,” Sarah said with a grin. “It’s pretty fun to watch you work.”

  Isaac rolled his eyes and stepped up to the counter, which had a series of risers in front of it to accommodate a number of different heights. Stepping up to an appropriate one, and feeling a bit like a child, he tried to convey in pantomime what he was looking to do. Fairly simple, when he just wanted some bolts of cloth to demonstrate his talent, and some other bolts of cloth to purchase. The sound of the camera shutter clicking punctuated the affair, and he had to wonder how much film Sarah had brought with her. Though it was probably an expensive tinker camera, the kind that used microminiature film sheets.

  The test cloth that the proprietor brought over was deep blue spotted with gold, like a poet’s description of the night sky. Isaac just put a finger on it, divesting about half of its inertia before picking it up and waving it around before handing it to the proprietor to do the same. The expression of almost childlike delight the oversized lizard-person had on its face was absolutely endearing.

  It didn’t take much convincing to get several bolts of the not-quite-silk material in exchange for altering several bolts and one finished piece. More than enough for himself, Sarah, and James. Making costumes was certainly fun, but there was no reason not to do it right and actually contribute to the task at hand. He offered the Ikiski a bow and Sarah proffered a wave as they left, Isaac holding the cloth awkwardly in his arms. It required a low-inertia jump to get down, and while he waited for Sarah to catch up he heard the sound of music off in the distance, rising over the general noise of the Deep Kingdom city.

  “Is that…?” Sarah said, sliding down the last few feet of ladder and turning to cock her head toward the sound.

  “The teleporter,” Isaac agreed, since he doubted he would forget the impact of that particular melody for the rest of his life.

  “But it’s only been a day. There shouldn’t be anyone coming or going,” Sarah said, and exchanged a worried look with him. For all they knew it might be nothing, more cargo from the surface or something, but Star City had been a bit of a mess when they left. An early arrival could be very bad news.

  “We’ll get back, then,” he said, suddenly less interested in the purchases he’d just made, his attention and intentions shifting in a new direction. “See what’s up.”

  “I wish I could just go back as smoke,” Sarah said, clearly frustrated, and Isaac realized Star City was far more of a worry for her than for him. The only person he really had to worry about was Cayleb, who was safely ensconced in Star Central, but Sarah had her mom and dad, some other siblings he’d not met, and even a few cousins all involved in things both legal and not.

  “Come on, let’s just try not to get eaten by dinosaurs,” Isaac said, peering over the cloth bundles in his arms to take in the traffic on the streets as they hurried back toward the embassy. They did almost crash into one of the larger dinosaurs, but Isaac had grown up in a city where cars were a constant hazard, and he managed to pull himself and Sarah out of the way and back onto the carved stone of the sidewalk.

  They broke into the open space around the embassy just in time to see the newcomers arriving at the gate. A raptor augmented with human tech, a shadowy blob, a bunch of floating rocks, and a tall, silver-skinned, round-headed lunarian. People he knew from the mercenary company he’d worked for, but should have had no reason to be down here.

  The Brute Squad.

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