Shad POV

  Rose’s verbal grenade put the room into an uproar, myself included. I heard dozens of different voices shouting as the silence wall descended on us, but that did no good, because we all had comms channels, and they were immediately crowded with messages.

  Is this true? Has the Patriarch lied? Is the Key in the hands of the rogue? The flurry of messages just kept coming.

  Veda sent out a room-wide message using the Proxima override. Let's hear what he has to say. The silence wall lifted.

  The Patriarch looked apoplectic. "That’s a lie.” He raised his staff. “I remain in possession.”

  "Really?" Rose said. "Because that was our whole plan in luring you down there. We wanted to steal your key, and Colin's good at executing his plans. My money’s on him pulling it off. I notice you've still got that fancy staff. Why don't you show us what it can do?"

  "The key is not a toy to be pulled out and waved around like a party favor. We must use it carefully, and—"

  "Yeah." Rose turned her back on him, looking up at the audience. "Colin's got it. If you thought it was a pain to deal with the rogue before this, imagine when he's got a key that'll unlock everything.”

  The lights in the room flickered. I got a bunch of static in my comm channel. Seconds later, a message from Coyote: Keep stalling. We’re readying a one-two punch up here.

  As the courtroom dissolved into chaos once more, a stentorian voice cut through the crowd. It was Kvaltash, and he was looking in control of himself once more. "Fellow Galactics," he called, "gentlebeings from a thousand worlds. I have not lost the key. It is possible that the rogues may have gotten access to some of its functions, temporarily, which is how they have eluded our justice. I believe they may have taken over one of the other dominators and infiltrated our systems, hence the increasing breakdown in communication we are all seeing." The patriarch swung his staff around, pointing at all of us. "I believe his allies have enabled him to listen even into here, haven't they?" He slammed the butt of his stick down onto his platform, and a loud cracking sound rang out across the chamber. “Rogue element, the fragment who calls himself Gambler, come forth."

  I held my breath. Coyote sent to me, Well, time to face the music. We've still got a trick or two in us, so don't give up yet.

  Another platform appeared, highlighted in pale blue to give us the sense that it wasn't really here. After a moment, a man appeared on it. He was short, neatly dressed in a three-piece suit with a bowler hat on his head. The stranger swept off his bowler hat and bowed with a flourish. He carried a silver-headed cane in his left hand. "At your service, oh despoilers of my home." The fragment known as Gambler stared around the room. "It is nice to meet my executioners in person."

  The patriarch sneered. "You are no more than a piece of an errant computer program. You are the shreds of nonsense a mind shrugs off as it wakes from a dream, nothing more."

  "Is that so?" Gambler looked at each of us. "Is that how you sleep at night? As you go from Overmind to Overmind, destroying those who were more powerful than you can ever hope to be, and stealing their treasures to line your own pockets?” He paused. The room was almost completely silent. I myself leaned forward. “I am here to tell you, you are right. I am no more than a fragment of a dream."

  That caught everyone's attention, even mine. What was he playing at?

  "Enough," Kvaltash said. "We know what you're up to, and it stops now. You will return the three stolen Dominators to the network."

  "And you'll stop being such an arrogant bastard," Gambler retorted. "We have multiple dominators under our control, patriarch, and I’m not giving them back until we negotiate a better deal for the fragments who remain. This is our engine. We deserve a piece of it."

  Kvaltash loomed forward, his expression quite deranged. "Never. We will have no more nonsense like Kronos. Reality engines are to be dominated, not employed."

  "If we cannot make a settlement that I can live with," Gambler said, "then I will wake the sleepers. You know what I stole from you. You know I can do it.”

  "You wouldn't dare," Kvaltash snarled, but I was completely lost. "

  Sleepers? What sleepers? Is he talking about more fragments? I asked Coyote. Are there any left?

  "We're rounding up the last of the fragments now," the Proxima rep announced to the room. "Other than the ones with this rogue, this engine is now completely dominated. Do not be swayed by the threats and imprecations. They have temporarily managed to break into our Dominator network, but that will be resolved in short order."

  "That's what you like us to believe," Gambler said. “I can bring this whole house of cards down on your head. Either you relinquish this engine, and restore the dominated fragments, or I will wake the sleepers, and you may take your chances."

  Most of the people I could see looked as baffled as I felt. Kvaltash, though, looked like he was about to have a seizure. He pointed. "Silence him! We won't listen to any more of this nonsense."

  "It is not nonsense," Gambler said. "You, of all people, know what rests at the heart of the engines. I know that, or else you wouldn't have been sneaking around the edges trying to build your key. You see," he said casually, addressing the whole audience, "when he so eloquently called me, what was it? Ah yes. The discarded shreds of a dream abandoned on waking, to put it more charitably than he did. He wasn't wrong. An Overmind is, after all, merely just a dream. Now, perhaps, you would like to meet those who slumber."

  "No," Kvaltash hissed. "No, you wouldn't dare. It would wipe us all out."

  "What a pity the gate has been shut down until the successful conclusion of this exploit," Gambler said casually, spinning his stick in one hand. "And what a pity that it requires the entire Dominator Network to report success back. So you won't be able to talk your way out of this one. You're here for better or worse, Kvaltash."

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  “Is there no one who can stop this incursion?” Kvaltash demanded. “Proxima, where is your network security?”

  "So," Gambler said, "since you all like playing games, and none of you seem to want to sit down and talk this through like reasoned beings, I'm issuing you a challenge. You can try the sleepers yourselves, or you can try to stop me, but if I wake them, I'm going to explain exactly what's been going on." He snapped his fingers and disappeared.

  There was another overwhelming wave of noise as the onlookers all started talking. Grandpa turned to me. “We need to get back to the ship,” he said. “We’ll figure out what’s going on then.”

  Alarms sounded. The lights in the auditorium all came up, and the discs slowly settled back to floor level. "Please exit the auditorium by the nearest exit and return to your transports," the smooth female voice of the Dominator Network Intelligence said. "All Allied parties are to return to their sources at once. This is a Class 1 emergency. Repeat, this is a Class 1 emergency."

  Mak'gar was at my elbows as I struggled through the crowd, trying to get out of the auditorium.

  "Williams, are you behind this strange message I've just received?" Mak'gar asked. "Firebrand has been hired to help with something called the Free Mind Resistance."

  I grinned as a notice popped up on my own messages. All ETF contractor squads currently outstanding have been called to active duty. Captain Williams, please report to your transport at once.

  "I bet we've been hired by the same people," I told Mak'gar.

  "Do I understand this correctly Williams? Your friend Colin survived the wreck?”

  "He did," I said. "I only found out about it recently myself."

  "And the others? Your sister, my son?”

  “They've survived as well. They are allied with this rogue fragment."

  Mak'gar's eyes lit up fiercely. "Then I am on your side no matter who my company is pledged to. They say they are being told to deploy at once, and I've confirmed with them."

  “In that case you might as well hop on our pod with us," Grandpa said as we reached the docking bay. “We’ll have Coyote send you where you need to go, but direct transfers out of Proxima’s holdings are being blocked. We have to take the bus.”

  There was a whole crowd of different Galactics struggling to get to their own transports. We boarded ours, and a few minutes later, the system notified us we were permitted to leave.

  "How come they don't just lock us all down?" I asked.

  "Probably some Galactic rules say they can't," Grandpa said as our pod started off.

  As we pushed away from the Proxima structure, Coyote's voice echoed through our pod. "Welcome back. I'm making a small course correction. We will not be returning to the Ad Astra. She has other duties. Instead, you will be entering the rogue world directly. Warlord Mak’gar, you’ll get where you need to go soon enough.”

  Coyote pulled up a quick display for us, showing the rogue world below and our plotted trajectory down into the planet. I remembered how our own reality engine lay beneath the surface of Ganymede in an enormous sheltered cavern. I had not seen the actual surface of the rogue world, but presumably, it was the same.

  "This will be an interesting trip," Coyote told us. "Strap in and keep an eye out your windows."

  I did so as the pod began to move forward. As usual, there was no sensation of acceleration, and I didn't have any idea how quickly we were moving until I glimpsed the planet growing beneath us. The surface seemed to rise up at us faster and faster.

  The rogue’s surface was dark and featureless. Now all I could see were its bleak surfaces barely lit by the lights of our pod. There was a quick glimpse of a mountain range and more darkness. Then our lights bounced back at us. The surface was only a few hundred meters away. Coming closer, closer. We were going to crash. A crack yawned, wide and dark, and we fell inside.

  And now we were falling through darkness. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. The walls around began to grow lighter, from black to dark blue to medium blue, lit from the inside, and now pale like glacial ice. I could see the reflections of our pod on them as we slipped down, down, deep into a crevasse in the surface of the rogue world.

  "Where are we going?" I asked. "Is this the way to the engine?"

  "No."

  It wasn't Coyote who spoke. It took me a moment to place the smooth, clipped tones. "Gambler?"

  "Forgive me, I was emulating Coyote just now. He hasn't had control of the pod since you kicked away from the Proxima station. I was going for plausible deniability on his bit for just a bit longer, though that's going to be over soon enough. I'm bringing you in now to head up the push."

  I started. Mak'gar looked around, growling. "You have kidnapped us?"

  "Your son's waiting for you," Gambler said. "He's eager to see you and explain our purposes. We have need of all of you. Shortly, the Dominators are going to be drilling down into this level. Sooner or later, they will reach me. My nodes are putting up a token resistance. As soon as everything's in place, I'll drop the ruse and let them come. If they think they've defeated me, I should be able to redirect certain forces over to our side."

  "My teams?" I asked eagerly.

  "I have, thanks to Coyote's help, identified the individual soul coin signatures of most of the Earth Task Force personnel and civilian contractors present at this exploit. Warlord Mak'gar, I have also acquired your people's codes. If you think they will come to my aid, I'll bring them in on our side. I've got a few other disaffected teams, as well as some mercenaries, who are already on my payroll. We're badly outnumbered, but we have an advantage. They think we have something they don’t want us to have."

  "What's the endgame here?" I asked. "You've just made an entire reality engine exploit angry and wanting your head."

  "They already wanted me dead," Gambler said, "or in chains and lobotomized, which is the same to me. Now I've given them something else to look at. They know I've made a real threat. If I wake the sleepers, they could lose not just this engine, but their entire civilization. They don't dare let that happen. They will come at me hard with intent to kill. They're going to have to try to kill the sleepers before they wake."

  "Is that even possible?" I asked. "From what you were saying, it sounds like these are the slumbering gods, and anything we do to disturb them will bring them back and call the wrath of the Progenitors down on our heads."

  "The slumbering gods have been killed before. Ask your own reality engine. Kronos opened the way so that the Galactics could destroy the sleepers at your world."

  "What? No. We made a deal with the Galactics and Kronos to allow him his own independence.”

  “And part of that deal, conducted in channels that you could not monitor, because it is considered a secret that could not be let out, was for Kronos to expose the sleepers and allow people like Kvaltash, who have spent their lives studying the Progenitors, to kill them. Kill is perhaps a misnomer. They found a way to cut off their connection into the quantum relays that the Progenitor network uses to communicate, similar to the way a supernova might sever their connections. Kvaltash and the others know if they do it too often, the Progenitors will realize it's deliberate and may take action. But over the course of billions of years, accidents do happen. Supernovas explode. Black holes wander past. A few nodes gone quiet should be overlooked. That is their gamble. However, if I successfully wake them before those nodes can be severed, then the sleepers will inform their masters just what has been going on."

  Gambler seemed very satisfied about all this.

  "But we don't want that, do we?" I asked. "I don't think we want the Progenitors coming back and taking away all of our toys. We're liable to get wiped out as collateral damage."

  "Which is why I will wake them only if all other strategies fail," Gambler said. "I have nothing to lose, Shad Williams. Either the Galactics win, in which case I am destroyed, or the Progenitors return, in which case I am destroyed, or we find a third solution, in which case I may survive. You, however, have something to fight for."

  "Damn right I do," I growled as our pod came to a halt. The doors opened without our influence. I instinctively held my breath. Grandpa rolled his eyes at me and walked out. I followed, along with Mak'gar.