Ad Noctum: Chapter 13

“Please tell me,” Volker whispered, “that you didn’t stab an undercover USAF colonel to deliver the message: we need cat food.”

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Violence. Injuries. Torture. Abduction. Anxiety. Panic. Purposefully insensitive discussion of mental health issues. Loss of agency. Thought control. Boundary problems. Manipulation. Gaslighting. References to suicide. Drug use. Death wishes. Indirect references to sexual assault. Blood.

Text iteration: Early.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 13

Seventy-five minutes of heat and sweat had humidified and warmed the cargo bay air. The lights were on high and the deck plates were sticky with the oil and sweat from four bare feet. Volker, guard up, squared with Telford. Driving from the hips, he pivoted on his lead foot and curved his rear-leg around, aiming two inches deep into Telford’s outer calf.

Telford lifted his knee, angled his shin out—

An explosion of agony hit Volker in the mid-shin at the bone-on-bone collision. He went down gasping, hands clamped to his leg, a tiny still-functioning part of his physics-trained mind understanding the relative advantage of a favorably braced shin meeting a shin with momentum, but most of his brain was screaming that he’d broken his own leg.

“You,” Telford dropped into a crouch beside him, “kicked into a check.”

Eyes screwed shut, every muscle in his body trying to spasm around his formerly intact tibia, Volker gasped, “I think it’s broken.”

“Let me see.” Telford sounded sympathetic. Maybe a little amused.

Volker shook his head.

“Yes.” Telford pried Volker’s hands away.

Volker collapsed back against the deck as cool fingers probed the fiery midpoint of his shin.

While he was lying there in a puddle of his own drying sweat, Mendelssohn sauntered over to sniff his hair.

“It’s not broken,” Telford decided, “but you’re gonna have one hell of a bruise. And a tougher shin.”

“Oh.” Volker cracked his eyelids. “Great.”

“Couple points to keep in mind.” Telford crouched beside him. “Your kick was good. If I hadn’t checked you, a kick like that would dead-leg probably fifty percent of opponents.”

“Awesome,” Volker breathed, his eyes watering.

“But a skilled opponent will turn your competencies against you.”

Volker nodded.

“You did one thing wrong,” Telford said. “You know what it was?”

“I stopped,” Volker said.

“You stopped.” The skin around Telford’s eyes crinkled like he was fighting not to smile.

“You’re gonna make me get back up, aren't you?” Volker breathed.

“Yup,” Telford’s grin maybe had a little rind of pride to it. He offered Volker an open hand.

Volker took it, and Telford pulled him to his feet. Volker tested his weight on his leg. His shin burned and there was a stretched feeling in the skin.

Mendelssohn scampered back to watch them from his nest of shirts inside the bulkhead.

Telford circled, guard up. “You’re injured. You’ll need to compensate.”

Daniel LaRusso’s crane kick from Karate Kid flashed through his mind, but, “No kicks,” Volker decided.

Telford angled his head as if to say, “Fair.”

Volker feinted with a punch and tried to follow it with a ridgehand, but Telford interrupted his flow with a roundhouse kick that smacked Volker lightly on the cheek. He had the feeling those light smacks would land as humiliating one day. Right now? He was grateful.

“My reach is better,” Telford counseled. “To end this fight, you need to take me to the ground or catch a kick.”

Volker had about as much chance of catching one of Telford’s cat-quick high kicks as he did powering the hyperdrive with Hope and Optimism, so he steeled himself, bent his knees, and plowed into Telford. His shoulder connected. He wrapped his arms around Telford’s thighs. Volker drove forward, head up—

Telford grunted as he hit the metal deck. He shut his eyes and relaxed back against the deck. “Not bad.”

“You okay?” Volker scrambled off Telford and crouched next to the man. When his shin started to throb in time with his heart, he shifted his weight off his bad leg, extending it out in front of him.

“Next time we do an Earth flyby we gotta rob a gym.” Telford sat, one hand on his ribs.

“We need mats?” Volker guessed.

“We need mats,” Telford agreed.

Volker collapsed out of his crouch. Leather pants didn’t roll up all that easily, but the damage to his shin had to be pretty spectacular. He ran a hand down the front of his leg and felt the convex curve of the injury.

“Stay there,” Telford said. “I’ll get some ice.”

“We have ice?” Volker called after him.

“I’ll get a shake-and-bake endothermic reaction in a bag,” Telford amended, already waving a hand over the door controls. 

Volker grinned. “Now we’re talkin’.”

The cargo bay door swished open and shut.

Volker’s smile slid from his face. 

He and Telford had each spent the better part of a week nurturing a budding bromance that was so mutual it couldn’t be anything other than each of them working up to something.

And it was too bad. Because for whatever reason, they made an incredible duo. Telford had what Volker had always idealized: street smarts, fitness, a great physique, the ability to handle himself in a fight, a masculine beauty that came with 1d6 charisma points in literally every encounter. But Volker had something Telford seemed to recognize and value: a quick and light-hearted wit, a comprehensive knowledge of physics and astrophysics, astronomy and mathematics, an appreciation for art and for culture, the timing to crack a joke.

Volker looked down at his shin, running a hand over the leather.

The cargo bay door opened again.

Telford crossed the floor, a chemical ice pack and duct tape in his hands. “I got it.” He cracked the inner lining of the bag and shook it, then handed it to Volker while he peeled up the edge of the roll of tape.

The bag cooling in his hands, Volker said, “Thanks, man.” Gently, he pressed it to his shin. He hissed as the cold of the bag hit the heat of building inflammation.

“You’re getting good,” Telford said.

“Ha. Tell me another one.”

Telford peeled a strip from the roll and secured the ice pack as Volker held it in place. “In an absolute sense, yeah. You have a long way to go. But the rate of improvement is as good as I’ve seen anywhere.”

Volker wondered if that was true. He liked to think it was at least a little true, but ever since Volker had chosen (and survived) a night with Rush on Rolan, Telford had been working a little harder to befriend Dale of the Sixth House.

And if Volker hadn’t been academically scooped, if he hadn’t lost good ideas to a handful of charismatic charmers over the years, he might have fallen hard into Telford’s trap.

Volker had charm too. It was fundamental rather than flashy. Quark flavored, even.

“Anyone ever tell you,” Volker said, pressing on the ice pack, distracting himself physically, putting some real strain in his voice to disguise a piece of experimental flattery, “that you talk like a scientist?”

Telford ducked his head to hide a smile with real pleasure in it.

Volker was forming competing theories of Telford and workshopping them slowly.

He wanted Telford to be good. An undercover hero from the finest traditions of the United States Air Force, holding the line in an unknown place for an unknown length of time. Volker would turn it over in his mind at night, lying in bed, Mendelssohn asleep on his chest, the A-corder at his hip, rippling through dim undersea hues. The good story went like this:

David Telford was good and brave. Resourceful and smart. After embedding so deeply with the Lucian Alliance he wouldn’t have a prayer of contacting Earth, he’d come across a missing American citizen who’d been abducted by Goa’uld-infected tech billionaires and made one of their own. Telford, the USAF hero, rescued Nick Rush, got him de-symbioted, and had done his best with the resources he had. He’d found Rush a crafty and reliable babysitter while he got the worst of the pyromania out of his system, and then he’d inducted the man into the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance because he lacked other viable options. He was doing right by Rush. He was doing right by Volker, too, as well as he could, without compromising other, larger, more important goals.

And, as Telford conscientiously taped a chemical ice pack to Volker’s injured shin, pretending not to be affected by an offhand science compliment, it was easy to imagine it could be true.

“Can I run some data by you?” Volker asked. “I need a sounding board.”

Telford, finished with the ice pack, looked up. “WMAP data?”

“Nope,” Volker said cheerfully. “I’m still transforming on the whole of the observable sky. That’s running itself at the moment. This is about the dataset we recovered from the naquadria refinery. I’m workshopping. I’ve got a theory, about it—” Volker trailed off.

“What does Rush think?”

“I haven’t told Rush yet,” Volker said. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but he’s been a little testy. I was going to wait until after Lucia. Get your advice first.”

Telford fixed him with a sharp and hungry look.

Volker had pitched hypotheses to enough prospective grad students and skeptical colleagues to know when he’d landed his hook. He smiled. Shrugged. “Could be nothing.”

“Sure,” Telford said with affected casualness. “Let’s take a look.”

“Is Rush in the workroom?” Volker asked.

“Nope,” Telford got to his feet and offered Volker a hand.

Volker took it.

Much as he wanted Telford to be good, he suspected Telford was ambitious. An undercover pragmatist from the more ruthless traditions of the United States Air Force, piloting an alien craft into unknown territory, heading farther away all the time. Volker would come back to this idea night after night, lying in bed, Mendelssohn on his chest, the A-corder clipped to his hip, rippling through dim undersea hues beneath a thin blanket. The pragmatic story went like this:

David Telford was driven and bold. Inventive and passionate. After embedding so deeply with the Lucian Alliance he wouldn’t have a prayer of contacting Earth, he’d come up with the idea of “recruiting” an American Fields Medalist whose work was uniquely applicable to cracking an elaborate system of alien cyphers. Something had gone wrong, and Rush had been infected by a Goa’uld along the way. Not just any Goa’uld, but a powerful death god who’d permanently scrambled the mathematician’s worldview, impulses, and ability to give a sensible account of…anything. Telford had fixed the problem as best he could, but instead of returning Rush to Earth, he’d doubled down and inducted the man into the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance because he lacked other viable options. He didn’t want Rush to be brainwashed. He didn’t want Volker to be brainwashed either. But he was after the larger, more important goal of cracking the nine-chevron address, and it didn’t matter whose side he was on when it happened.

And, as Telford settled himself next to Volker at the workroom table, his eyes on the laptop screen like he shared a true scientist’s hunger for data, it was easy to imagine it could be true.

Sticky with cooling sweat from their workout, Volker pulled up the data from the refinement facility, navigating to a spreadsheet that tracked workers’ arrival and departure dates. He pulled the A-corder from the pocket of his jacket and set it on the table beside the laptop. As he touched it, it shimmered a happy, shallow-sea blue.

“The question Rush posed,” Volker said softly, pitching his voice low, as though worried the mathematician might interrupt them at any moment, “was why the facility was abandoned. Or, better stated: given the use of highly sophisticated psychoactive agents by the Lucian Alliance, agents that ensure compliance, how were brainwashed workers able to successfully abandon a facility?”

Telford nodded. “You have a theory?”

Volker pulled up a spreadsheet in friendly ol’ Earth Excel. “I translated and exported their personnel data.” He pointed to the relevant columns as he spoke. “Name, entry date, exit date.” He tapped a fourth column. “Number of days in the facility. Notice anything?”

Telford scanned down the list. “No one stays for more than—” he paused. “160 days is the highest number I see.”

“And the lowest?” Volker prompted.

Telford scanned again. “79 days. So no one leaves before day 79 and everyone’s gone by 160 days. I’m seeing a lot of people in the 120s.” Then, “Most of them,” he amended.

Volker nodded. “I plotted the data. Just a histogram.” He switched sheets and showed Telford the graph.

“Shit,” Telford said. “That looks like a normal distribution.”

Volker smiled. “Yep. That is a normal distribution. A beautiful one. Mean of 120 days, standard deviation of 15 days.”

“A normal distribution implies what? Something biological?”

Volker made an equivocal expression. “Could be. I favor that, though a normal distribution implies small additive factors at work; they don’t have to be biological.” He paused to gather himself, relieved that he didn’t have to conceal how emotionally loaded his question would be. “What can you tell me about the drug they use for coercive persuasion?”

Telford studied the bell curve on the screen.

Volker waited.

“This is valuable data,” Telford said softly.

“I know,” Volker replied, just as soft. “I’m wondering if you and I can put a few pieces together.”

“Even though the drug ends up in the brain,” Telford said, “the Tau’ri are developing a blood test for it. I’d say there’s at least some chance the blood acts as a reservoir. Also—with transient hypoxia, the drug loses its effect.” Telford grimaced, as though recalling something unpleasant. “That’s always seemed odd to me. Profound hypoxia in the brain would cause brain damage. But you don’t have to go that far. You just need a radical drop in your blood oxygen content.”

“Huh,” Volker said, pulling on years of practice at not getting too excited over preliminary data. “How’d you find out about the hypoxia thing?”

“Stopping someone’s heart is a pretty well known way to reverse coercive persuasion. The LA know. The Tau’ri know. The Jaffa have a tradition centered around it. Cardiac arrest doesn’t have great survival statistics, though.”

“Oh,” Volker said mildly. “Okay.”

“This, though,” Telford said, his eyes on the screen, “this isn’t hypoxia.”

“No,” Volker said. “I don’t think so. But it could be blood-related.”

“You think?”

“Lifespan of a red blood cell is 120 days,” Volker said.

Telford looked at him, eyebrows up. “You know that? Off the top of your head?”

“For a while I thought I might do nuclear physics. Took a radiobiology elective in grad school. Had to memorize allllll the ways radiation kills you. With chronic low-dose exposure, bone marrow depletion is a big one. And if you’re living in a naquadria refinery, drinking the water, breathing the air—” Volker shrugged. “Marrow is sensitive to radiation, and red cells come from marrow. 120 days after you walk into that place, plus or minus a few standard deviations, your starting reservoir of red cells will be gone, replaced by a population produced by damaged marrow. Maybe it doesn’t carry the drug so well.”

“That,” Telford said, “sounds plausible.”

Volker stayed quiet, his eyes on the data, cataloguing what he had to take back to Rush. That profound hypoxia, enough to risk death, would break coercive persuasion—that was a good find. Not only a good find; it was a risky but viable avenue to reversal if it happened to Rush. Or to him.

It seemed unlikely that Telford knew more about the basic biology of the drug, but maybe he knew something about its history; its place within the LA.

“Presumably,” Volker said, gesturing at the data, “the LA don’t understand this. Otherwise, they’d have rotated people in and out. The refinery might still be operating. I don’t understand the state of their science. It seems to be pretty lacking. With the sole exception of psychotropic agents.”

“Human experimentation with chemicals extracted from ground-up symbiotes will take you far,” Telford said. “The other field where they shine is genetics. They’re working on splicing the compounds they study into food. They’re funding an armada with addictive corn.”

“But coercive persuasion has to be blood?”

Telford nodded. “Though, if that’s true, you might be able to snort it like cocaine, which is absorbed through vascular beds in the nose.”

“Does this drug have a name?”

“The Faith,” Telford said, reluctant reverence in his tone. 

“Okay then. I’ll try not to snort any ‘The Faith’,” Volker said, dry as Tiamat’s dead sea.

It wasn’t until Telford had retired for the night that Volker limped over to the engine room, Mendelssohn a warm weight in his arms. He’d taped another chemical ice pack to his shin, but it still ached, fierce and hot. He stood in front of the dull gold door.

“Meow,” he told Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn looked at him.

“C’mon,” Volker looked at the door and gave Mendelssohn a little jostle. “Meow us into the secret lair.”

Mendelssohn looked at him.

Volker set him on the floor in front of the door and made a lets-go-buddy sweep of the hand.

Mendelssohn looked at him.

“Meow,” Volker suggested sternly.

Mendelssohn looked up at him, head cocked back, tail straight up.

The door swished open to reveal Rush, backlit by glowing crystal. The ambient light in the room collected along the lightning bolt of metallic thread holding his Time Lord coat together. “What.”

With a happy little trill, Mendelssohn trotted into Rush’s glowing art installation and got to work batting a flake of orange crystal across the deck.

“Hello to you too,” Volker replied. “You wanna invite me in, or…”

Rush sighed like he’d been told all his grant renewals were due the same week, then turned on his heel and threw himself into the nest of blankets on the floor next to the hyperdrive.

“Thanks, man,” Volker said, polite and cheerful, “I’d love to come in.” He stepped into the room, hit the door controls and sat down on the small stool created by the stack of Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach and Textbook of Medical Physiology. He stretched his ice packed leg out in front of him and studied the artwork in crystal and light. “This place is nice.”

Rush, flat on his back at the base of the drive, glowered at him.

“Seems like you’ve been a little down,” Volker replied, putting a mild gloss on the string of days the mathematician had spent lying on the floor next to the drive.

“Fuck off,” Rush suggested.

“Maybe one day,” Volker said sympathetically. “You miss the Goddess of Love?”

“No,” Rush replied, offended.

“Yeah, me neither,” Volker replied, affable. “Telford thinks you might not actually have that fifth chevron. Either that, or you can’t get an ordinal lock. He can’t figure out how it is you’re sure you’re get an ordinal lock, since you haven’t tried an ordinal dial since the day you got accidentally transported to Altera and came back half dead.”

“Haven’t you two turned t’fast friends,” Rush said, philosophical and bitter.

Volker blew out a breath. Looked down at his injured leg. “There’s a tragedy to it.”

“I’m aware.” Rush’s gaze was sharp, and the soft light gleamed in the frames of his glasses. “What else did you get out of him?”

Volker summarized his conversation, emphasizing the new hypoxia data, Telford’s agreement that a radiation-induced depletion of bone marrow might be playing a role in breaking the coercive persuasion and allowing LA workers to abandon the refinery. As he finished speaking, Rush pushed himself to sit cross-legged in his nest of blankets and clothes.

“It might be enough,” Rush said.

“What we know about the blood?” Volker asked.

Rush nodded. “It’ll require hours of prep. And advanced warning. But we’re likely t’get both. One of the advantages of the vastness of interstellar distances. Transit time.”

“Back up,” Volker said. “What are you thinking?”

Rush smiled faintly. “Y’won’t like it.”

“I find I don’t like much these days,” Volker said. “Other than Goa’uld Opera. That was pretty good.”

For some reason, this earned him a dark look.

Volker raised his hands. “We still have no clue how this drug works.”

“We know hypoxia and a suboptimal erythrocyte population are enough to break the effect,” Rush said.

“Ooh, someone’s been reading Unit 4.” Volker tapped the textbook he’d been working his way through in secret over the past week. “Erythrocytes! Heck yeah!”

Rush gave him a withering look. “We have a synthetic blood substitute.”

“Yeah, and?” Volker asked. 

“You’ll figure it out if y’fucking apply yourself.”

Volker frowned. “You want to get a sample of The Faith and see how it interacts with synthetic versus real blood? Pretty sure we don’t have the tools for that. I mean, we don’t even have a microscope.” He unclipped the A-corder from his hip, and it ran through a shimmer of undersea colors that seemed to get faintly picked up by nearby crystals. “This little guy can work miracles, though.” He hefted it.

“Yes,” Rush said, dry and dull. “You’ve figured out my plan. Congratulations. Well done. Now get the fuck out.”

Volker was pretty sure he hadn’t figured out Rush’s plan.

“Wait,” he began.

“Get out,” Rush snarled.

“No. I pulled all that out of Telford, I get a shot at a few questions.”

Rush collapsed back into his nest of blankets. “Fine.”

“Do you have the ability to get five chevrons to lock? Or did you only say that so you could engineer another encounter with Everett.”

“Watch your bloody logic gates, squire. I need to see Everett, and I can get five chevrons of the address to ordinally lock.”

“Okay, that’s good, because Telford thinks if your demo fails we might get murdered. Or repurposed.”

Rush sighed. “This,” he said, “is probably not the point at which we get murdered. Or coercively persuaded. That’ll be later.”

“You gonna give me a heads up?” Volker asked. “When it’s murder and brainwashing time?”

“I think I’ll know.” Rush brushed his fingertips along a line of crystal at the base of the drive. “Can’t guarantee as much.”

“And how you’ll know is—”

“Answerable.”

Volker perked up. “Oh, really? Awesome. Fire away.”

Rush lifted a hand and languidly circled a finger to encompass the whole of the crystal-covered walls. “This is a sensor array.”

Volker looked at the walls. “For?”

“Quantum crystal resonances.”

Volker was torn between dismissing this as the Nick Rush equivalent of building a tin foil radio array to pick up alien signals and taking it seriously. Taking it seriously won. He looked down at his A-corder and tried to formulate an appropriate question. Sending something the array could pick up, maybe? A message? But how to encode it…quantum crystal resonance wasn’t exactly a topic he was well-versed in—

His A-corder navigated itself through submenus Volker hadn’t discovered. His Ancient was heartcrushingly rudimentary, but he definitely saw the word for Communications flash on the screen before it was gone in a maze of options as the A-corder, maybe, coded from scratch to give him what he wanted.

A beautiful string of aquamarine text shimmered on the screen. He turned the A-corder to Rush. “What does this say?”

Rush propped himself on one elbow, smirked, and said, “‘Press here’.”

Volker tapped the text.

The screen lit up in undersea colors. Blues and greens and golds undulated like sun filtering through a kelp forest. And, in turn, the walls of the room took on the same colors, recreating the display with deep blues near the floor, lightening to gold and ultramarine near the ceiling, with strands of green waving through vertically, like underwater fronds. Shadows in lavender and amber slipped through the patterned stalks, like fish darting through the green.

Mendelssohn pounced at a flicker of color near the floor.

Rush dropped back into his nest of blankets, one hand at an ear as though trying to block a sound. 

“Holy crap,” Volker said, deeply impressed, deeply unsettled. “It is an array. More than that—an array that serves as its own—interface.”

“Shut it off,” Rush said.

“Why?” Volker asked. “Are you seeing this? It’s incredible.”

With a wordless snarl, Rush swiped the A-corder from Volker’s hand. In the heartbeat and a half between when Rush grabbed the device and when the image died, the forest went from undersea to terrestrial—Volker caught the idea of ancient pines, wreathed with mist or smoke.

And then it was gone. The crystals glowed with the usual rainbow of the drive.

Rush slid the A-corder back to Volker with more kinetic energy than really required.

“Sorry?” Volker tried.

“Leave,” Rush said.

“Can we talk about what just happened? Have you noticed we each kind of have, like, a color signature? Or something? I—”

“Leave,” Rush snarled.

“Okay,” Volker said reluctantly, “but we gotta talk about the cat food, Rush. Seriously, we’re getting low. When it comes to cat litter we can probably find some sand or something, but—”

Rush pointed at the door.

Volker got to his feet. “I’ve held up my end of the bargain,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Again, Rush pointed at the door.

“Yeah yeah,” Volker said, and left.

Lucia orbited a K-type star, an orange dwarf with about 80% of the Sun’s mass, by Volker’s best estimate. The world was geologically active, and the sulfur in the atmosphere made the air smell of struck flint. The sky was all cloud cover; a thick olive green overhead faded to amber near the horizon. The textured undersides of clouds took on pastel colors and gave the atmosphere the look of an oil slick.

It was late afternoon. He hoped they could stick around to see a sunset. The sulfur aerosols would be incredible. Chartreuse and copper for sure, maybe even magenta.

“Don’t stare at the sky,” Telford gave Volker a gentle shove in the direction of the ring platform’s edge. “Don’t stare at anything.”

“Right.” Volker stepped down onto the edge of a crowded, pedestrian viaduct heading deeper into the heart of First City. The crowd flowed past him, and Telford edged around him to take the lead. Rush brought up their six.

The pedestrian thoroughfare was made of cracked obsidian, smoothed with a clear, hard resin. A little homage to the volcanic activity he could smell in the air, maybe? About sixty feet above their heads, a motorway for small craft followed the course of the viaduct. Ahead, as the pedestrian path and motorways arced onto a high plateau, the changing angles of the transit lines showed him vehicles between the size of Vala’s speeder and a monster American SUV. They passed one another, jostling for position and going much faster than highway speeds.

Telford set a quick pace, keeping them near the edge of the pedestrian walkway, out of the crush of leather-clad bodies near the center of the walkway. As the viaduct curved toward the central plateau, the view opened. Below, the drop was deep and narrow. Steep, ashy-colored slopes with swaths of mineral deposits in startling colors: orange, bright yellow, pale blue.

Volker had the feeling he was traversing the broken edge of a vast volcanic caldera. The approaching plateau was narrow and curved, like the hard thrust of bedrock that made up part of a rim, where, thousands of years ago, the planet’s molten mantle had melted through the crust. Without being too obvious about it, he scanned from horizon to horizon. On the other side of the viaduct he thought he saw what might be foothills, vanishing up into yellow-green clouds. The press of people made it hard to get a good view.

Lucia was an old name. Ancient. It meant “Light.”

Volker had done a little digging into the history of the planet. Whatever it had been to the Ancients was lost to time, but the Goa’uld hadn’t found much to admire here. With active volcanoes dumping variable amounts of ash and sulfur into the atmosphere, gold wouldn’t hold its shine. Only Anubis had taken an interest in the world, scouring it for Ancient tech and crystal thousands of years back. After Anubis’s defeat (by Tapes Guy!), Lucia had been renamed the First World of the Lucian Alliance. Each House had a city located on First World.

The Sixth House controlled Lucia’s stargate.

As they approached the point where the viaduct met the plateau, Volker’s palms turned damp. His heart beat a little harder. The chill of the air seeped into his skin to meet the chill coming from his bones. In the heart of the city, on the steps of a looted and ruined Ancient temple, Kiva waited.

Volker didn’t want to see her again.

Telford wasn’t looking forward to it either, Volker was pretty sure. Telford’s movements were crisp and careful as they moved toward the bottleneck entry to the city, and he scanned the people coming and going. His hand wasn’t far from the zat at his thigh. Beneath his leather jacket, Volker saw the corners of the laptop Rush was planning to interface with the DHD. Telford had strapped the computer to his back, beneath his jacket. Its corners poked against his shoulder blades like the tips of pinioned wings.

Their lives depended on that computer.

Volker glanced over his shoulder and found Rush strolling along, hands in the pockets of his Time Lord coat, looking at the upslopes of what was probably a distant volcano with a fond expression, like it was his favorite cousin or something.

As they stepped onto the bedrock of the plateau, the viaduct broadened into a wide square lined with the same resined obsidian. A wide, low fountain was located in the center of the square. It was hard to tell what it had initially represented. Volker frowned, studying it. Frolicking symbiotes, maybe? Water sprayed and misted irregularly from smashed stone fonts that had the curves of the back halves of snakes. The mist carried on the brisk, struck-flint wind, and fine droplets landed on Volker’s cheeks and neck.

Beside him, Telford tensed.

With a thrill of alarm, Volker stepped to Telford's shoulder, hands in fists, looking where Telford was looking. Above and behind the fountain was a ruined obsidian statue. It had once been a massive figure, hooded and robed. Now it was sheared into splinters and crags. A cluster of ragged children played a game of dice at its base. Higher up the statue—

Volker saw it.

A black-clad figure, hooded and cloaked, blended with the stone. As though he or she had noticed their attention, the climber began to descend the jagged remains of the statue.

Rush stepped to Volker’s shoulder, his eyes on the lithe climber. “Isn’t this a pleasant surprise?”

“You idiot.” Telford glared at Rush, his eyes glittering.

The climber jumped the last few feet to the ground, then whirled with a feminine grace and slipped behind the statue.

The crowd flowed around them on either side.

Rush started for the statue.

Telford hauled him back by jacket and neck. “No,” he snarled. “Not today.”

“Get your hands off me,” Rush said, his tone packed with Department Chair disdain and naked threat. “Or I’ll put a knife through the CPU strapped to your back.”

Telford hauled Rush in and wrapped him in both arms, like they were a pair of lovers, taking in the ruins of Anubis. “Dale is pretty smart,” he breathed in Rush’s ear. “Should we see if he can take over? Find the right program on your laptop? Hook it up the right way? Crack those cyphers just as wide as you?”

“Um?” Volker lifted a half-hearted hand. “Hi. Nope. I cannot. Definitely cannot. I can’t. Dale of the Sixth House does NOT do high stakes computation in front of a crowd.”

Telford shot him a shut-the-heck-up glare, then returned his attention to Rush. “I say we put him to the test.” Telford’s voice was low. Affectionate. “Worst thing that happens is Kiva executes him messily and slowly while you’re sleeping off whatever I do to you.”

An expression of animal rage that Telford couldn’t see passed across Rush’s face—eyes dark, teeth bared—but it lasted less than a heartbeat before he wrestled it down.

Volker shivered with more than the cold, damp wind.

“David,” Rush said, all polite reason and unhurried diction, leaning back into Telford’s grip like he wanted to be there. “Y’can give me fifteen minutes of leeway before I deliver you five ninths of your heart’s desire on a crystal platter, or we can all die at the feet of Anubis. Quite honestly, I can go either way.”

“Fine.” A buried heat broke through the crust of Telford’s surface calm. “But we stay together. And we are NOT LATE. For Kiva.” 

“Acceptable terms.” Rush stepped elegantly out of Telford’s loosening grip and headed for the statue.

Telford glared at Volker again, hot and fierce.

Volker raised his hands, palms out.

Telford strode after Rush, staying hard on his heels. Volker brought up the rear.

As they approached the statue, the Goddess of Love, clad in black leather and silver buckles, her hair gathered into a low bun, a familiar onyx choker at her throat, stepped from the shadows of the ruined statue and fell into stride beside Rush. Without a word, she took his elbow and lengthened her stride, leading them through the crowd.

“Vala,” Telford said, low and menacing and in danger of treading on her boot heels. “Where are we going?”

Vala twisted to give them a brilliant smile. “Colonel. Squire. You two must have made offerings to the Goddess of Love, because I’m about to make all your dreams come true.”

“Y’got me,” Volker said, delighted in spite of himself.

“My sweet little confection,” Vala threw back over her shoulder, “I’m delighted you’ve survived this past week. Try not to say too much today, hmm?”

“Where are we going,” Telford demanded. “Tell me now.”

“You’re bossier than Daniel.” Vala led the way into a long, irregularly shaped square. Another hacked-up fountain sprayed a cold mist into the air from ruined Canopic jars. The market was crowded with people. “We’re just doing a little shopping.”

“His coat is already dangerously over-decorated.” Telford stepped on the heel of Vala’s boot. “Nothing else gets added.”

Vala’s riposte was cool and queenly. “Don’t crowd me.” She plastered herself up against Rush’s side, one hand wrapped around his elbow, one hand wrapped around his biceps. “Get ready, you gorgeous thing.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“After you leave Lucia,” Rush said, “wear the white coat.”

They stared into each other’s eyes as they walked along the crowded market street, the gaze so full of tenderness that Volker’s heart ached to watch them. Vala slowed her steps and lifted a hand, her fingertips tracing Rush’s cheek. And then, with a smooth savagery, she shoved him hard, sending him through a space between two narrow tables piled with samples of leather and into the darkness of a merchant’s tent beyond. The move barely broke her stride. She continued on, slipping through the crowd.

Volker stopped in his tracks.

Telford stopped as well, seeming to hesitate between the impulse to chase Vala and the impulse to go after Rush. After a beat, Telford shook himself, then dived into the darkness of the tent.

Volker was hard on his heels.

They stopped just inside the entrance. The tent was large enough for six, with a cot in one corner and uncut leather piled on small tables. Daylight filtered from the open flap at Volker’s back. Warm amber light came from two electric lamps, one on a small table, one hanging from a hook affixed to a central tent pole.

Rush sprawled at the feet of a leather merchant built like a stack of bricks.

“Hi.” Everett looked down at Rush with a hint of amusement.

Telford reached behind Volker’s shoulders to close the tent flap. The electric lanterns shone with the warm hues of bottled firelight.

Rush scrambled to his feet, shook his hair out of his eyes, and said, “Hello,” in a breathy mix of anxiety and suavity. The buckles on his coat and the rims of his glasses gleamed with notes of red and amber.

“Nick Rush, I’m guessing?” Everett looked Rush over and snorted. “Nice outfit.”

Rush wielded seductive courtesy like a manipulatable EM field. “Fuck you,” he suggested, familiar and intimate. 

Everett studied him from beneath lowered brows, then turned to Volker. “Please tell me you’re Dale Volker.”

Volker grinned with relief. His hands and feet tingled with it. “Yeah.” He gave the man a small wave. “Present and accounted for.”

With a chill in his tone that suggested coming violence, Telford said, “Someone tipped you.”

Everett switched his focus to Telford. “Yup.” He opened his hands like an impresario of covert operations. “I’m here to get you out.”

“Awesome,” Volker breathed.

No one else said anything.

For a long time.

The jovial openness slid from Everett’s face.

“Guys,” Volker breathed. “C’mon.”

“Not the reception I was expecting,” Everett admitted.

“And I get that,” Telford said, cool and clipped.

“Personally, I’m—” Rush angled his head. “Torn,” he decided.

“Nobody gives a shit whether you’re ‘torn’ or not,” Everett growled. “You don’t get a vote.”

“Hmm,” Rush said with cool-burning disappointment. “Less torn now.”

“David,” Everett said. “You got two civilian scientists neck deep in enemy territory. I reported back on your lunatic friend here, and I find out he’s been classified a Planetary Asset. You don’t get to say no on this one. You’re all coming with me. Now.”

Telford didn’t bend. He gave Young a small, dangerous smile. “Seems like you’re the only one here.”

Everett’s hand floated a little nearer his zat and the electric lanterns cast double shadows over his thigh. “I got SG-3 backing me up. Next tent over.”

Telford’s smile turned rueful. “I doubt that. SG-3 is deployed in Ori territory last I checked. You got tipped. Last minute. By Vala Mal Doran.”

“SG-3 is next door.” Everett doubled down.

The struck-flint smell of the air reminded Volker of ozone. The smell of air split by massive charge. Volker widened his stance and sank a little lower into his hips. His injured shin ached, and he wasn’t at all clear on which side he’d be joining if a fight did break out.

“You think he’s not worth scrambling SG-3 for?” Everett asked, still trying to talk his way clear. He tipped his head in Rush’s direction. “He is.”

Telford dropped his center of gravity, bracing to make a move.

But, with an airy grace, Rush stopped the fight before it started by stepping between Everett and Telford. Identical expressions of deep annoyance flitted across their faces.

“Still think I’m classless, my love?” Rush slid a knife from his sleeve, spun it over the back of his hand, and snapped it back home. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but multiple governments are trying to bring me to heel; not just yours. I’d say that puts me at the apex of any social hierarchy you’d care to name.”

Volker straightened. Tried to relax.

Everett shot Rush an unimpressed look. “You get out your ladies pirate coat and into a pair of USAF fatigues and maybe I’ll reevaluate.”

“I’m concerned about your lack of taste,” the mathematician replied. He ran a disdainful finger along the underside of Everett’s leather jacket lapel, pulling it away from the man’s chest. “I’m beginning to worry we’re not compatible.”

“Rush,” Telford snapped. “Back off.”

With visibly fraying control, Everett shoved Rush back a step. “Out the back of the tent, asshole. Down the alley.”

Rush staggered back a pace, found his footing, and, with one hand bracing his injured shoulder, he offered a charming suggestion of a bow in Everett’s direction. “I’m afraid we must decline.”

“What?” Volker breathed, his heart sinking. “No. Come on.”

“Listen up, princess,” Everett said, his voice hard. “You got two choices. You walk outta here or I zat you and sling you over my shoulder.”

Rush straightened from his bow, arm still braced, and frowned at Everett. “Two points, if I may?”

“No.” Everett growled. “You’re not getting me; this isn’t a debate.”

“Point one: were there to be a princess in this scenario,” Rush dug in with the full confidence of a demonic math professor, “it would most certainly be you. Everyone agrees. But, even after a unanimous poll,” Rush paused to gesture at Volker and Telford with an understated flourish, “point two: you’ve made a category error. I take on risk, you confer stability. That’s the nature of our relationship. Princesses don’t enter into it. Category error.”

“What?” Everett asked, flummoxed.

“I’m giving you information,” Rush said, slowly and loudly, as though he’d become concerned about Everett’s ability to understand English. “Knowledge that you didn’t have before?”

Everett shifted his attention to Telford. “Okay with you if I zat him for the extraction?”

“No,” Telford said, flat and unreadable.

“Zats don’t work on me if I know they’re coming,” Rush said.

Volker looked to Telford and found Telford looking to him. Telford gave him an is-he-serious tip of the chin in Rush’s direction.

Volker replied with a small I’m-guessing-yeah shrug, because it would fit with EM manipulation. Probably something he should have predicted, based on first principles. 

“More information?” Everett unstrapped his zat from his thigh. “Thanks. Let’s put it to the test, shall we?”

“You’ll make Colonel Telford anxious if you’re not careful.” Rush stepped in, as though possessed of new inspiration. Volker saw the tick of his injured shoulder that came with a trick pull from his sleeve. “Let me translate into a language you understand.”

“I—” Everett began, but that was as far as he got.

Lightning quick, Rush landed a punch on Everett’s cheekbone, hard enough to split the skin.

Everett plowed into Rush, tackling him to the floor. 

“God damn it.” Telford exchanged his zat for his sidearm.

“Don’t.” Volker put a hand on Telford’s arm as Everett and Rush grappled on the floor. “Don’t kill Everett.”

Telford gave Volker a cold, assessing look. “Then separate them. Physically.”

Volker turned back to the tussle on the floor. Rush was pinned face down, one hand behind his back. The fight was pretty much over, and if Volker waded in there and shoved Everett, there was gonna be a problem with Rush’s pinned hand. Everett had it in a lock. Rush opened his fingers, and—

Something was there. A flash drive.

Volker took an instinctive step to the side, putting himself between Telford and the grappling match on the floor.

Everett shifted his grip. Closed his fingers around the drive.

And the fight changed. Everett transferred the drive from hand to pocket, already releasing his hold on Rush. As soon as the drive was secured, Volker aimed a low kick at the center of the man’s chest. A bolt of pain ran up his shin, but the kick did its work, knocking Everett off balance and giving Rush the chance to get a knee under himself. Rush scrambled up, pulled another trick knife, turned, and—

Stabbed their rescuer in the thigh.

The knife was small, but embedded in the man’s quad up to the hilt. Volker remembered the blade being short, maybe 2 or 3 inches? It had no handle, just a pale ribbon wrapped around the tang. Faint dark lines were visible on the ribbon’s underside, as though, maybe a message had been written there. 

Everett grimaced, looked down at the knife, and gently closed his fingers over the ribbon, as though holding the blade in place. He didn’t pull it out.

Casually, Telford grabbed the scruff of Rush’s jacket, shoved him at Volker, and stepped in front of Everett. He raised his sidearm, pressing the barrel into the skin of Everett’s forehead.

Volker steadied Rush, then closed a hand around his elbow.

No one moved.

Everett kept one hand around the tang of Rush’s knife, but he lifted the other, palm open. Blood trickled down his cheek, dark in the electric lantern light. The look he gave Telford was searching, solemn. “This went pretty different than what I was expecting.”

“Yeah,” Telford agreed. “And I’m sorry about that.”

“Let him go,” Rush snarled, yanking against Volker’s grip on his arm. “You kill him? I kill you. No delay.”

Volker’s heart hammered, caught between incredulous despair and wild hope.

Why couldn’t they go? Now? If it was really true that Rush didn’t want to be rescued, as he’d told Vala, then why had he wanted to see Everett? What had he given him? His throat ached with all the sulfurous air he was pulling into his lungs, with all the questions he wasn’t able to ask.

Telford released a slow breath through his nose. “If he doesn’t make a move, I won’t kill him.”

“They got to you.” Everett’s skin glittered with sweat in the amber light. The blood running down his cheek was dark, more black than red in the dimness. “They used their drug on you.”

“It’s possible.” Telford fanned his fingers over his sidearm’s grip.

“David,” Everett panted, dropping his raised hand to help brace his injured leg. “Think about what you’re doing. You’re about to take two academics into a public dial that turns to a public execution if it doesn’t go well. And it won’t. The guy you’re depending on to hit this out of the park is dressed like a snakehead and isn’t exactly batting a thousand.”

Rush scoffed, offended.

Everett ignored him and kept his eyes on David, his hands pressed to the widening dark patch over his thigh. “Just come with me. That’s all you have to do. We’ll figure the rest out as we go.”

Telford, unreadable, looked down the barrel of his gun.

“I came to get you out,” Everett said.

“I know,” Telford said softly.

The tent was quiet but for the sound of their ragged breathing.

Rush snapped his elbow from Volker’s grip. He paced over to Everett, measured and princely. When he’d drawn even with Telford, he dropped into a crouch. The edges of his ashy college professor hair brushed the barrel of Telford’s sidearm.

Telford, his expression cold and analytic, watched it happen. 

Everett couldn’t seem to help the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Get outta here,” he breathed. “You complete lunatic.”

“Tell me your full name?” Rush asked.

“Why?” Everett asked.

“I’m interested,” Rush replied. “I want to know everything about you.”

“Oh yeah? Probably should’ve thought of that before you stabbed me in the leg.”

“I didn’t stab you in the leg,” Rush corrected him, reframing like only pure mathematicians knew how. “I gave you a knife.”

Everett's smile escaped a little more. “Thanks for clarifying.”

“Any time.” Rush smiled back, the charisma and charm he’d learned from Goddess of Love shining through him like light through shell. Rush cupped Everett’s injured cheek and looked into his eyes.

Everett’s curls caught and held the dark. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you my full name,” he offered.

“Tempting.” Rush dragged his thumb over the split skin of Young’s cheekbone. “But there’s work to be done. Don’t forget me.”

Young smirked. “I’m gonna forget you in ten seconds. Less. Unless you come with me.”

Rush ducked under Telford’s gun, tangled his hand in the hair at the nape of Everett’s neck and dragged him into a kiss. It began with authority, with a bold and cinematic momentum that seemed to pull Everett in, win him over. After a beat of resistance, Everett reconsidered, his shoulders relaxing as Rush turned more courteous. After a handful of seconds, Rush broke away. He gave Everett a gentle shove to get him to disengage, then lightly smacked his bleeding cheek. “Don’t.” Another smack. “Fuckin’.” Another smack. “Forget.” He smirked, got to his feet, and turned sharply enough that Everett got a face full of his Time Lord coat.

“Yeah, okay,” Everett growled. He looked at Volker. “What about you? You look like you can handle yourself. You coming?”

“I would,” Volker said reluctantly, “but I’ve got a cat back on our tel’tak.”

“A cat,” Everett said.

“Yep,” Volker confirmed. “I love that cat.”

Everett shut his eyes in a long blink. “Can’t wait to write this into a report.”

“Slow play the next extraction attempt,” Telford advised.

“Or consider occupying yourself with something else entirely,” Rush arched a brow and dropped the words like innuendo. He stepped to Telford’s shoulder.

“Dale.” Telford pulled his zat with his off-hand. “Over here. With us.”

Everett looked up at them. “Guys. Be reasonable.”

“Doesn’t describe us at all, I’m afraid,” Rush said sympathetically.

Everett shot Rush a dark look, wrenched the knife out of his thigh, wiped it on his leather pants, and transferred it to an inner pocket of his jacket. He gave Telford a sour look. “All right.”

Telford fired.

Electric blue light crackled over their would-be rescuer, and Everett slumped to the side, unconscious. Telford holstered his weapons, then motioned to Volker. Together, they lifted the man onto the small cot in the back of the tent. With Volker’s help, Telford made quick work of applying a pressure bandage to his thigh. When he was done, he sat perched on the edge of the cot, staring down at Everett’s handsome profile. “For future reference,” he said dully, “if you’d nicked his femoral artery, he’d be dead right now.”

“Yes well,” Rush replied. “Noted.”

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Telford looked up at Rush. “What was that?” he asked, deadly quiet.

“Not sure what you mean,” Rush replied.

With a casual menace, Telford rose to his feet, slung a friendly arm across Rush’s shoulders, then dug a claw of a grip into Rush’s injured shoulder. He ground the tip of his sidearm into Rush’s temple, just above the earpiece of his glasses. “Let me ask again,” he said, eyes glittering. “What. Was that.”

“Oh,” Rush breathed with devastating sympathy, pressing his own injured shoulder into Telford’s punishing grip. “Are we experiencing jealousy? Are we experiencing anxiety? Are we worried that on the grand stage of all creation we might not be as important as we thought we were?”

Telford clamped his jaw shut and tightened his grip.

Volker sighed.

“What if I told you Dale was more important than you?” Rush said. “What if I told you that your only significance to the transdimensional war you claim to care so much about is how much I want to kill you.” Rush bared his teeth.

“Work with me,” Telford said, and there was a note of pleading in his tone. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll get you anything you need.” He pressed his forehead to Rush’s forehead.

Slow and deliberate, Rush slid his fingers over Telford’s, doubling his grip on the gun.

And this, right here, was about as far and as weird as Volker was prepared to let things get. “Hey, man.” He put a hand on Rush’s good shoulder. “Don’t Romeo and Juliet this thing.” He gestured at Everett, who was bleeding sluggishly onto the floor.

“Why not?” Rush asked, lifting out of the intense forehead-to-forehead press he had going with Telford.

“I don’t know; it’s pretty junior high school move, for one?”

Rush paused to give the idea what seemed like real consideration. Then he smirked, shoved Telford’s gun away from his temple, and pointed at the opening of the tent. “You fuckin’ first.”

Telford holstered his gun and walked back under the sulfurous sky.

Volker shook his head at Rush, stepped in, and said, “No, man. No way. I don’t know what he did to you, but this is not the way to deal with it. The coolest woman in the galaxy adores you. She opened a door for you at what was probably huge personal risk.” Volker gestured at Everett, still out cold on the room’s small cot. “She did more than tip off the second house. She sent your cosmic soulmate to your specific rescue, and you told him no? Why? And don’t you dare say ‘unanswerable’.”

Rush took a breath, reseated his glasses, and said, “I need him to come back with a gift.”

Volker blew out a frustrated breath. “What gift?”

Rush met Volker’s gaze, and the dim electric light put amber flecks in the smoky brown of his eyes. “Cat food,” he replied.

Volker stared at him.

Rush stared back, grave and serious.

“Please tell me,” Volker whispered, “that you didn’t stab an undercover USAF colonel to deliver the message: we need cat food.”

Rush smiled tightly, clapped Volker on the shoulder with good-natured masculinity, and left the tent.

“Oh god,” Volker breathed. After a last, longing look at Everett, he followed.

The ambient brightness of the cloudy sky had him blinking as his eyes adjusted. 

Rush looked at Telford. “Lead the fuckin’ way.”

“You go off the rails with Kiva, and I can’t help you,” Telford said.

“Rails it is, then,” Rush replied with nothing but polite grace in his tone.

Volker stood shoulder to shoulder with Telford under an alien sunset that made him wish he were an artist. The underside of the clouds were orange and magenta, smoky amber and poison green. The whole sky was a splash of color. In the gathering dusk, Rush was a dark silhouette, framed by the backlit circle of the stargate, four chevrons glowing in the crepuscular light.

Kiva stood feet away, stern and beautiful in her heeled boots, in the jet black drape of her A-line coat. Varro stood at her shoulder. As though he felt Volker’s gaze, Varro turned, gave Volker a short nod, and looked back at the gate.

Telford and Volker exchanged a glance, but didn’t speak. Telford’s eyes were shadowed by the ridge of his brow, his jaw locked.

“He’s doing well,” Volker said, too low for anyone else to hear.

Telford nodded.

At their backs, on the steps of the ruined Ancient temple, representatives of the Fourth House, the Second House, and the Fifth House stood watching silently. Volker twisted subtly, sending a glance over one shoulder, then the other, making sure no one stood nearby. He kept the sweep of his gaze watchful, subtle.

“I’ve been standing here,” Volker murmured, unable to bear the burn of the question any longer, “wondering if maybe Everett was onto something. When he talked about you. And The Faith. You got any thoughts on that?”

Telford looked down at the top of his boots. “Doesn’t matter,” he said softly.

“I think it matters,” Volker said, looking up at the intensifying splash of color across the underside of the clouds. “I think it matters a lot.”

“Why?” Telford asked, his eyes on the dark arch of the gate. “Because you think the Air Force is better than the Alliance? You think if I’m a good USAF colonel that I can be saved? That I can be redeemed? By whom? By the United States Air Force. The organization that took your tax dollars and gave them to Tapes Guy, who opened a thousand doors, each one closed on a different monster? Started wars that drag more and more people in, year after year? Including Nick? Including you? They’re the same. The Air Force. The LA.”

The sun sank lower. Rush said something to Kiva, too low to hear. She stepped closer to him.

“Are you different?” Volker asked. “Different than Kiva? Different than Tapes Guy and Everett?”

Telford looked over at him. The amber and magenta of the western sky put gold tones in his skin, deepened the black of the leather he wore. “Yes,” he said.

Volker didn’t reply.

He wanted Telford to be good. He wanted Telford to be ambitious. But it was possible Telford was something else. A likable monster, escaped from the worst traditions of the United States Air Force, turned bitter by his own efforts and sacrifices, who’d gotten a hand on the run of a ladder to heaven. Volker would turn the idea over in his mind at night, lying in bed, Mendelssohn asleep on his chest, the A-corder at his hip, rippling through dim undersea hues. The bad story went like this:

David Telford was idealistic and unforgiving. High-minded and pure. After embedding so deeply with the Lucian Alliance he wouldn’t have a prayer of contacting Earth, he’d been given The Faith. Or maybe just pushed too far. The resulting bitterness had turned his love for physical laws and societal order into fundamentalist certainty. He’d abducted Nick Rush. He’d done something that had shattered the mathematician’s mind and life, something connected with Anubis, something Rush rightly wanted to kill him for. He’d foisted Rush on Vala for a month until Rush had enough self control not to constantly attack him, but that control was still tenuous. Telford had inducted the man into the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance and implanted him with a tracker to trap him into solving the nine-chevron address. He wasn’t doing right by Rush. He wasn’t doing right by Volker. He was profoundly compromised. He was threatening larger goals. He was compromising an ongoing transdimensional war. Maybe he was a risk to galactic civilization as a whole.

Dark against the spilled-paint twilight, Rush presented Kiva with his laptop. He held it out like an offering. With a quiet word, he indicated a key, and then waited, the screen angled for her to see. The keys glowed a pale blue.

Solemnly, Kiva pressed a key.

The gate spun. A fifth chevron lit and locked.

Telford released a shuddery breath. “Guess we don’t die tonight.”

“Yay,” Volker whispered.

Telford looked over at him with a faint and friendly smile.

Kiva and Rush stood together, looking up at the gate, at five bright lights glowing red and blue against Lucia’s spectacular sky.