Stop looking for conflict that isn’t there, Nic scolded himself.

I don’t know how. I was raised for conflict. And on graduation day, I learned why. It’s what the winners of the Final Exam are privileged to do.

This is a recovery operation. Not a Wargame. Definitely not a live fire war. Don’t start anything that could set human civilization back by centuries just because you have an itchy trigger finger.

I won’t fire for no reason. But I won’t be bullied either. Not by some greedy terrorist company who thinks they have the right to a planet they haven’t won fair and square. The minute they—

“Nic, look out!” Jarek shouted.

Nic slammed on the brakes of the Centaur, stopping short of the edge of a wide canyon in the valley between mountains. At the bottom was a rushing river still carving the canyon deeper; it was wide enough that the vehicle would fall straight into the water without ever touching the walls, but there was a sloping rock formation that would allow them to ramp over it and land on the other side.

It would have allowed them to do so, that is, if Nic hadn’t missed it completely.

said RTIFIS. Scarlet 1 felt his face flush.

“Sorry, guys,” Nic sighed, throwing the Centaur into reverse. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Do we need to take another squad break?” Perri asked, her voice half concern and half accusation.

Nic shook his head emphatically. “No. Just daydreaming. Won’t happen again.” He slammed the accelerator hard to make it over the canyon and exhaled with relief when they lightly crash-landed on the other side. “I want everyone to remember, we came out here loaded with our SMGs. Even if there was some kind of threat to us, we’re armed, and then again, we’re not even really here... we’re still in the Corvette.”

“Let’s hope we have no need of them,” Maqsud replied. “I, for one, am enjoying the change of pace of a non-Wargame mission.”

“Enjoy it while you can.” The Squad Leader looked around the landscape warily. “It could change at any minute.”

After the canyon, at the far end of the otherwise featureless valley, they were directed to drive up the side of another gentle slope up the back end of a comparatively shorter mountain. According to the coordinates set by RTIFIS, the next waypoint would be just on the other side of this mountain range. They weren’t far now.

“Would anyone like to resume our earlier game of Twenty Questions?” Maqsud broke the silence pleasantly. “I volunteer to be the answerer.”

“Sure, why not?” Perri replied in the team chat from her Harpy. “Um, let’s see... Is it real?”

“That’s a bit of a loaded question. What constitutes reality? Something verifiable by the human senses?”

“Here we go again,” Jarek sighed.

“Dude,” Perri answered, “is it something fictional, yes or no?”

“No,” Max answered. “In all fairness, that is a completely different question from the one you asked, but continue.”

“Okay. Is it, um... Is it something we’ve encountered today?”

“Impossible to answer. I have no way of knowing the vast and deeply personal calculus of your private mind, Perri—”

“Is it something that’s tangible?” she interrupted. “Something I can touch?”

Maqsud hesitated to answer. “I’m worried you’ll be upset with me.”

“You have to answer truthfully. That’s the game.”

“No, it is not tangible.”

“Come on, man!” Perri sounded fed up but was laughing at the same time. “What did I say earlier? I said no more philosophy stuff! This is not how the game is played—”

“Okay, fine, fine, I’ll pick something tangible! Happy? Good heavens, I really need to make some asynchronous friends in the FTLnet.”

Nic couldn’t help but zone out again as Perri, Maqsud, and Jarek continued their game. His mind wandered through a diverse array of thoughts and memories that all shared a common thread. He reflected on Team Scarlet’s victory on Didumos, their vacation on Baitian, the first day they were grouped up into a squad back on their last day in the habs of Ayrus. He remembered his nightmares about losing to Team Azure again and again every time he closed his eyes in those dark days following their first Wargame match.

Nic remembered that fateful day when he got his scar playing King of the Hill. When he let the memory have its way, he could almost taste the blood again.

It tasted like anger. Like a victory he was denied. A desire to lash out. A desire to shove his competition back down the hill, to hurt them as they hurt him, to scar them as they scarred him.

If such a thing were even possible.

“And that is your twentieth question, I’m afraid,” Maqsud said victoriously. “The answer we were looking for was Astatine.”

“Shoot, that was ‘bout to be my next guess, too,” said Jarek without skipping a beat, and the three players shared a laugh.

RTIFIS chimed in.

Finally, Nic thought. He nodded once. “Go.”

Nic grinned in the privacy of his SimSuit helmet, feeling vindicated. “I was right.”

“I wouldn’t revel in that if I were you,” Max replied. “RTIFIS, if it doesn’t belong to Red Terraforming, then whose is it?”

“Crack the code then, please,” said Nic. “We need to know what’s going on here.”

“That pretty much answers it for us, then,” Perri said with a click of her tongue. “We’ve got company. The question is, who?”

“‘I have a bad feeling about this,’” Maqsud said. “George Lucas. Twentieth century Earth. Technically it was spoken by a character—” Before he could explain, Team Scarlet was ambushed.

Five black proxybots emerged from a cave nearby with their weapons drawn.