COLLATERAL DAMAGE A SHORT STORY BY MATT BURNS A crowd stands outside the safe house on Anselm, the people shifting and jostling and craning their necks for a chance to see blood. Pandora pushes past the onlookers and through the battered safe house door, which had been blasted open by a concussive grenade half an hour ago. Slabs of flesh cling to a wall above an almost unrecognizable corpse. The ex-Dominion weapons engineer. The deserter. The man she had promised to keep safe. His wife and daughter huddle nearby, bloody and trembling. Both of them are alive. Not by accident. The daughter’s arms are gone below the elbows, the raw stumps carefully dressed by the same men who crippled her. The wife’s face has been slashed and disfigured to leave scars that only the most expensive nanite surgery will heal. It’s a message written in blood for Anselm’s populace. This is the price of deserting the Dominion. But to Pandora it’s a stinging taunt from her adversaries. We succeeded: you failed. Although she’d had a chance to pull the deserter and his family out, she’d hesitated. Pandora had let fear take control, and now she sees the grisly result. The wife lifts her head, dried blood caked around her face. “You promised us we’d be safe. When he warned you the Dominion was coming, you did nothing,” she says in a low trembling voice. Pandora doesn’t sense rage in the woman; she senses the overwhelming cold nothingness that comes when you’ve lost everything that matters. She quickly erects a mental barrier to block out the wife’s chilling despair. “You’re no better than they are. You’re a coward,” the wife says, her voice suddenly shrill and crazed. She jerks her arm up, a needle-gun clenched in her quivering hand. Two shots. Two painful reminders of failure and its consequences. The first tears through Pandora’s right hand and takes her thumb off. She’s down on her knees, gritting her teeth, when the next needle grazes her shoulder. The wife adjusts her aim but doesn’t fire again. She just sobs. As Pandora struggles to her feet, all she can think about is how she would have come home to Umoja a hero if the deserter were still alive, if she hadn’t been so afraid to take a risk…. A bump in the road knocks Pandora out of her daydream. She shakes off the memories of Anselm and wonders why now, of all times, she is remembering. Fear dictated her life then, but she is different now. She is fearless. Pandora shifts her hands on the steering wheel of the four-wheeled groundcar as it rumbles through the outskirts of Augustgrad. The surroundings have shifted from the city’s monolithic high rises to a network of factories churning out everything from hoverbikes to packaged food. Grimy sweat clings to her palms, between her fingers, and around the synthetic skin covering the hollowed-out neosteel chamber on her right hand, the weapon carefully made to look like the thumb she lost on Anselm. Her body is baking under the tight-fitting black Dominion liaison uniform. She misses being back home in the Umojan Protectorate, where practicality outweighs carefully manicured appearances. Then again, Pandora’s profession is all about appearance. She has made an art out of fitting in, of masking who she really is. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, her mentor and team leader, Sage, had called her once. But Pandora had corrected him. She’s not one of the wolves. She’s just walking among them. For four months she has taken on dozens of identities in Augustgrad. Two days ago she was a bright-faced bartender, politely catering to customers until a Dominion military liaison named Colton Miersma died of sudden heart failure after a night of heavy drinking. Yesterday she was a hard-working courier braving Augustgrad’s congested streets on a hoverbike until she made a delivery to the apartment of another liaison named Rebecca Schafer. Today Pandora is Rebecca Schafer. She’s so used to taking on different identities that she hardly notices the malleable mask hugging her face. The crucial piece of Umojan tech that channels her psionic energy and makes her appear as someone she is not. The psiweave. The mask has taken on the rough shape and image of Schafer’s face, enough to fool holocams and people from afar. But Pandora also keeps up a relentless mental manipulation of anyone close by to seal the illusion. The lone passenger in the backseat coughs and then wipes spittle from his chin with a meaty hand. Commander Bartlett. An obese man dressed in a charcoal gray uniform with red piping. Although the high-ranking commander hasn’t spoken a word to Pandora the entire trip, she has caught him staring at her on occasion, his mind filled with lustful thoughts that she quickly blocks out. The groundcar continues past the factories and into a small pocket of unterraformed desert outside Augustgrad. Pandora risks a glance in a side mirror and sees a tan delivery van that has been tailing her the entire trip. As her vehicle ascends a steep hill, the van pulls off the road. Its driver, Pandora’s team leader, has come as far as he can. Over the hill, Pandora’s destination comes into view: the Simonson munitions facility. She knows the place well, despite having never been there. She studied old schematics of the facility before it was locked down tighter than New Folsom Prison last year. She knows about the large shipments of battlecruiser-weight neosteel. The powerful seismic shocks and electromagnetic discharges originating from somewhere inside. Most likely a new Dominion weapon to be used to pummel stubborn settlements into submission, though marketed as humanity’s protection from the alien threats lurking in the Koprulu sector. But the intel ends there. The first reinforced plascrete wall surrounding the Simonson facility approaches. Armed marines in blue CMC armor wave the groundcar through the entrance after Bartlett flashes his credentials, as do the marines posted at the second, innermost, barrier. As Pandora had hoped, the guards offer no more than a passing glance at the commander’s lowly driver. But in the back of her mind, she envisions a dozen different ways the guards will make her. The psiweave. The cartridges of poison-laced micro-spikes hidden throughout her uniform. The remote console strapped to her belt, housing a clutch of nanotech micro-spies. She finds an answer for each potential setback, a way to kill the guards and the fat commander and be on a planet-hopper out of Augustgrad before the Dominion is the wiser. Pandora pulls the groundcar into the Simonson facility’s main hangar and parks between rows of vulture hoverbikes. Bartlett exits the vehicle and exchanges greetings with a waiting cadre of officials, suddenly jovial and boisterous in the company of his equals. Before the officials can lead Bartlett into the bowels of the facility, Pandora removes the remote console from her belt and steps out of the groundcar. She feigns taking a note on the console’s screen and angles the tip of a stylus toward Bartlett’s back. She doesn’t see the infrared laser shooting from the pen, locked between Bartlett’s shoulder blades. She doesn’t see the propeller-driven micro-spies exiting the console and flying toward the laser-guided destination. She has practiced this moment enough to know everything is working. A light on the console blinks green, signaling that the micro-spies have reached Bartlett. There the stealthed drones will stay, trailing close to the commander and mapping 3-D holovids of everything he sees. As the officials lead the commander into a building connected to the hangar, a guard approaches Pandora and extends an armored glove toward a nearby door with “REC FACILITIES” stenciled on it in blocky white letters. “Take a load off. We’ll call you when the big man’s finished.” Pandora nods and moves toward the rec area just as the hangar’s massive blast door closes, shutting out the intense sunlight. Suddenly, the reality of the situation hits her. She’s not just a Umojan shadowguard, an enemy covert agent, working in the Dominion’s capital city: she’s an enemy agent inside one of the Dominion’s most secretive experimental weapons facilities in the Koprulu sector. You still have a chance to leave. Just get in the groundcar and drive out, the voice in her head says. It reminds her of her team leader, Sage. He would want her to leave and avoid risk. Pandora shakes her head. She can’t stop. Not after the heinous things she has done to get inside the facility. Not now. The encoded message sent to her fone from Sage had come as a complete surprise. After deciphering the meaning, Pandora rushed to her team leader’s apartment. Sage was there, packing up his belongings. The man who had taught Pandora to be so strong and determined had already given up. “We’ve scrounged up everything we can about the facility. There just isn’t anything more we can do here,” Sage said. He looked undisturbed that after four months of nail-biting covert work, the team was leaving empty-handed. “We’re close. Just a little more time and – ” “It’s too risky. We’ve overstayed our welcome here as it is. We’re lucky that you haven’t been found by a wrangler or a ghost.” As the only telepath on her team, Pandora took pride in working undetected in Augustgrad, right under the noses of any of the Dominion’s psionic ghosts who, although unlikely, might be in the city. While the shadowguards upheld the Umojan Protectorate’s sovereignty through deception and intel gathering, Pandora saw the ghosts as nothing more than mindless weapons used to enforce the Dominion’s oppressive rule through fear tactics and assassination. “I know how to fly under the radar,” Pandora said matter-of-factly. “That’s not the point. If anything happens to us, it could jeopardize other teams in the city and possibly much more. The truth is, we’re no closer to figuring out what’s going on inside that facility than we were four months ago.” “Then we need to take it a step further. We won’t get anywhere without taking a risk.” “We’re not in the business of blind risks. We’re in the business of acting on hard data. Sure things.” “We’ve acted on less intel than this in the past,” Pandora said, irritated. She had always admired Sage’s resolve, but at that moment it was infuriating. “On Anselm we did,” Sage said. Pandora tensed. Sage seemed to regret the comment for a moment, but he continued. “That was a careless risk, but we still moved forward,” Sage said, taking a passing glance at Pandora’s cybernetic thumb. “And we suffered for it.” No longer able to control her anger, Pandora turned to leave. She knew in her heart that she and her team had suffered on Anselm because they’d hesitated. They hadn’t taken the risk when it would have actually mattered. Sage put his hand gently on her shoulder. “Are you willing to risk everything, even your own life, to find out what’s inside that facility?” “If it means saving other lives in the future, yes.” “That’s why my answer is no.” Hours pass. Pandora has walked through the med-bays, crew quarters, and vid rooms of the rec area three times. She has memorized the entrances and exits, all the while avoiding large groups of tech workers that would make it more difficult for her to keep up the appearance of Rebecca Schafer through the psiweave. Just a few hours more, she tells herself. A few hours more, and she will be out of this neosteel prison with the micro-spies and on her way back to Umoja, knowing that she has succeeded where so many others would have failed. Pandora chooses an empty table in a corner of the rec area’s mess hall to pass the time. The scattered facility workers inside lumber about, some disposing of empty food trays and others just sitting down to begin their meals. On a wall-mounted vidscreen a Universal News Network headline scrolls by: Fresh Uprising Quelled on Anselm. Pandora cringes. She can’t get away from it, no matter how hard she tries. The Anselm debacle seems so senseless to her now. Back then, if she had been who she is today… Suddenly, a security alarm blares. Pandora’s eyes dart around the room. The other people in the mess hall groan and continue eating, but they don’t move. Their indifference makes the situation all the more unsettling. A dry voice chimes in over a loudspeaker. “All non-vital personnel, report to the mess hall for your security check.” Tech workers and a handful of guards file into the room. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. More than Pandora had ever seen when she was roaming the rec area. Too many eyes. Too many chances that her telepathic manipulation will falter and someone will see right through the psiweave. She raises her collar tight around her face and pushes through the mass of bodies, out into one of the rec area hallways. You can still leave. Detour to the hangar. Get in the groundcar, the voice says. Pandora shuts it out. She continues down the corridor, slips into a bathroom, and locks herself into a stall. It only takes a few minutes for a guard to come. “Security check. Everybody out,” a gruff female voice says. The guard checks each stall until she comes to Pandora’s and sees the glowing red “occupied” sign on the door. The guard raps hard on the door. “That means you! I’m givin’ you thirty seconds before I disengage the lock and drag your ass out with your pants down.” Fear boils inside Pandora. She closes her eyes and breathes deep, remembering every technique that she learned in training to control her fear. The guard is just an obstacle, she repeats in her head. Pandora pulls a cartridge of poison-laced micro-spikes from a false pocket in her uniform. The tip of her right thumb flips open, and she loads the projectiles into the neosteel chamber inside. “Time’s up!” The guard disengages the lock and slides open the door. She’s dressed in a lightly armored security uniform with a small comm unit strapped to her ear and a C-7 pistol holstered at her side. Pandora stares back, right hand leveled square at the other woman’s face. Before the guard can react, 300 micro-spikes fire out of Pandora’s thumb and penetrate the guard’s skin, releasing a lethal melange of toxins. The guard stumbles back and gasps, the last sound that escapes her mouth before the poison disables her vocal muscles and then spreads to her vital organs. Purged of fear, Pandora steps over the woman’s convulsing body and removes her comm unit and pistol. Just an obstacle. After Sage canceled the mission, Pandora spent the next day creating false intel about the Simonson facility. All the while a voice inside her head poked and prodded her. How far are you willing to go in order to succeed? “I thought I was clear about this. We’re pulling out,” Sage said as Pandora handed him a remote console containing the forged dossiers. The fake data underestimated the number of security personnel at the complex, the unknown that Sage feared most. “You taught me never to pass up good intel. I thought maybe if you saw it, you’d reconsider.” Sage scanned the data, his brow furrowed. How far are you willing to go? Pandora had crossed a line and broken the one rule that the shadowguards held above all others: never use the powers of deception to deceive your own. Pandora knew that she and her comrades were allowed a great deal of freedom, unlike the Dominion’s brain-panned ghosts. In return, the Umojan Protectorate expected its shadowguards to act with integrity. But this was necessary. Pandora knew that when the mission was over, Sage would understand. “Look at those security-payment allocations. They can’t have more than a dozen guards inside.” Sage scratched his face and stared at the dossiers in silence. Pandora suddenly became aware of a slight change in his mind. A crack in his firm resolve to cancel the mission. How far are you willing to go? “It’s good… but I don’t know if it’s good enough.” Almost unconsciously, Pandora focused on the faint whisper of confusion in Sage’s head. It was the opening that she had been trained to look for when preparing to manipulate a target. How far? Sage shook his head and smirked. “When you’ve got something on your mind, you don’t stop, do you?” “I learned from the best,” Pandora said. But her thoughts were elsewhere, completely focused on the second-guessing going on in Sage’s head. She felt herself give in and feed it. A pale light shines through the slits in the ventilation grate in front of Pandora. Before dead-ending at the vent, she had crawled through the facility’s serpentine air ducts from the bathroom for fifteen minutes, repeatedly tapping the controls on her remote console until she came in range of the micro-spies and recalled them. She should have risked the security check. Too late now, Pandora thinks. She recalls schematics and vids of the facility to find another way out and remembers a massive doorway at the back of the complex. A toxic-material dump. Through the dead guard’s comm unit, she listens to security chatter. No word of the missing guard yet. It will take them time to find the body locked in the bathroom stall. Enough time to escape. Pandora removes the grating in front of her and drops down into a cavernous room illuminated by dozens of dim ceiling lights. The floor is coated with a thin layer of dirt. The air is thick with the sulfurous odor of explosives, a smell that reminds her of the safe house on Anselm. From the enormous size, she guesses the room must be the central dome of the complex, which means the waste area is somewhere in a connected building on the other side. As Pandora surveys the room, she makes out what look like the hulls of siege tanks, vultures, and four-wheeled, flame-throwing hellions. Some of them are ripped and torn and scorched; others, only partially damaged. A booming loudspeaker sounds. “Project Odin targeting systems test A-37, beginning in 3… 2… 1.” Pandora whirls, searching. The sounds of vehicles starting up echo across the room. A vulture careens around a nearby siege tank, nearly crashing into Pandora. As the wayward hoverbike passes, she notices that there is no driver. The unmanned vulture zooms to the other side of the room, to her left, and Pandora sees the faint outline of something in the distance. A massive mech silhouette standing on two legs. A monster that Pandora can now put a name to: the Odin. A tiny cockpit nestled in the machine’s upper torso glints in the faint light like an eye. One arm extends from either side of the bulky body, each limb equipped with a double-barreled cannon. Even from this distance, the thing is impossibly large. A crumpled hellion next to the Odin’s legs rises no higher than a third of the way up its neosteel foot. The Odin trains its cannons on the approaching vulture, and the room turns white. Explosions blast the vehicle, and the hoverbike erupts in a shower of shrapnel. Pandora scrambles for cover behind an overturned siege tank. All around her now, other vehicles zigzag from one side of the room to the other. The Odin steps forward with ground-shaking footfalls and rotates to face Pandora. In the weak light, she sees slow, steady movement. From the Odin’s back, four giant guns that look like weapons stripped from a battlecruiser descend over the mech’s shoulders. Pandora darts away from the siege tank and locates a slow-moving vulture. The front of the long, slender hoverbike is charred and mangled, but the rest of it looks intact. She leaps on and fumbles with the controls until she finds a small receiver jacked into the ignition switch that she figures is being used to control the vehicle remotely. Pandora rips the device out and guns the vulture to the other side of the room just as the massive cannons on the Odin’s back ignite. An inferno erupts around the overturned siege tank where Pandora had taken cover. The shockwave from the barrage flips a nearby hellion and presses Pandora forward. She skirts the edge of the room to the Odin’s left and sees the faint outline of a blast door behind the machine. The Odin tracks Pandora with its arm cannons. An explosion behind her lifts the back of the vulture into the air momentarily. She throttles the hoverbike, weaving in between slow-moving siege tanks and hellions, each obstacle subsequently blasted to pieces as the Odin’s volleys get closer and closer to hitting her. Pandora cuts hard toward the Odin, circles at the base of its feet, and then speeds toward the blast door. It won’t turn in time, Pandora tells herself. It won’t. It – A hellion explodes to her left in a fiery flash of white and orange. Shrapnel tears through her face. She feels herself fly back and land hard on her shoulder. When she regains her vision, the Odin is towering over her a meter away like a small building. Pain stabs every nerve in her body. She holds her hand to her cheek and feels wet ribbons of flesh and the shredded remnants of the psiweave dangling between her fingers. With her last bit of energy, Pandora cries out for help with her mind, hoping that someone is inside the tiny cockpit of the machine. The Odin’s arm cannons readjust their aim, but they don’t fire. Pandora pushes her psionic thoughts harder. The machine suddenly lurches forward. Its massive legs bend, and its torso tips down until the glinting cockpit almost touches the ground. The canopy opens in a cloud of pressurized air, and a woman in a sleeveless pilot suit comes out with a medkit at her side. “Oh, fekk. What… what the hell are you doing in here?” Pandora opens her mouth, but she can’t muster any words through the pain. “Just hold on.” The woman digs a pressurized syringe out of the medkit and shoots it into Pandora’s neck. The burning pain subsides. Pandora expects the woman to be filled with rage, an extension of the death machine that she pilots, but she’s not. Concerned and guilty thoughts swirl in the pilot’s mind. “You’re gonna be alright,” the pilot says as she pulls a bottle out of the medkit and moves it across Pandora’s face. An acrid-smelling liquid pours out of the bottle, and Pandora recognizes it as plastiscab. After a few seconds, she feels heat on her face as the liquid hardens into a layer of plastic over her shredded flesh. “This stuff wasn’t made for deep wounds, though it’ll stop the bleeding until I get a medical team out here,” the pilot says and then turns and thumbs a control on her belt. The room’s massive neosteel door creaks open, and Pandora pulls the C-7 tucked inside her uniform and aims it at the other woman’s head. She hesitates long enough for the pilot to turn from the door and face Pandora. Long enough for the woman’s eyes to widen in terror and etch their gaze in Pandora’s memory. She squeezes the trigger in anger, furious at herself for holding back. The C-7 blows an 8mm spike through the pilot’s head, painting a swath of blood and brain across the Odin’s foot. Just an obstacle, Pandora says to herself as the woman’s body slumps to the ground, the terror-stricken look frozen on her face. An obstacle just like Colton Miersma, Rebecca Schafer, and the guard. Just like Sage. It had started small at first, after Pandora had given Sage the forged dossiers and tinkered away at his apprehensive feelings about the mission. Then it grew until finally Sage agreed to let Pandora go through with her plan: neutralize Colton Miersma, a military liaison scheduled to visit the Simonson facility. Then eliminate and assume the identity of Rebecca Schafer, another liaison who per protocol would take Colton’s place in the event he couldn’t fulfill his duties. On the outside Sage still looked normal. But when Pandora looked into his eyes, she could see a faint hollowness that she recognized from what was her strongest psionic trait: manipulating thoughts and decisions. Although the act left Sage slightly confused and scatterbrained, Pandora knew that the effects would pass soon after the mission. Regardless, Pandora still avoided his unsettling eyes as she surveyed a 3-D map hovering between her and Sage, depicting the Simonson facility and surrounding area. A glowing red dot in the network of factories near the complex marked where the other three members of Pandora’s team would be positioned. Another dot, behind a steep hill close to the Simonson buildings, indicated Sage’s location. “You don’t need to be this close,” Pandora said, gesturing to Sage’s dot. “You’re my responsibility. I want to be as close as possible in case anything happens. Besides, from the security reports you’ve scrounged up, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.” Pandora had previously tried to dissuade him from being so close, though part of Sage was still strong and decisive. “If there’s any sign of trouble – any – just get out. I’ll be there,” Sage said. “I know you will,” Pandora said, her eyes still locked on the map. She wondered if Sage suspected that one of his own, the one he trusted most, had deceived him. “When I heard what happened on Anselm… I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. You don’t know how I felt when they told me that. It was my decision to let you go in. If you had died, I – ” “I lived. And I’ll be alive tomorrow night when we’re on a ship out of here,” Pandora said, and she put her hand on Sage’s shoulder. No longer able to avert her gaze, she looked into his eyes, and guilt washed over her. It’s all necessary, Pandora convinced herself. The back of Pandora’s vulture periodically skids on the ground and sends a shower of sparks behind her as she reaches the waste room. It’s filled with neosteel crates plastered with hazardous material labels and piled next to a massive blast door leading out of the facility. The sight of Pandora’s bloody face and the C-7 pistol raised in her hand is enough for a lone worker in a hazmat suit to key open the door. Outside, Pandora guns the hoverbike parallel to the facility, toward the low-lying factories. She hears a whining alarm coming from the Simonson complex that she thinks must have been tripped by the waste room worker. A few moments later, groups of security guards and vultures begin streaming through the front gates of the facility. As Pandora nears the factories, she catches something out of the corner of her eye and brings the hoverbike to an abrupt stop. Sage’s vehicle sits behind the embankment on the road to the Simonson facility in the path of the approaching guards and vultures, right where he said he would be waiting. Move! Pandora waves her arms at the van, but there’s no response. Get the fekk out of there. She throttles the vulture toward Sage’s vehicle but then stops. The guards will make it to him before she can. Maybe, though, she can get close enough to get his attention. Maybe… The remote console hangs heavy on her belt. It seems to pull her away from Sage and toward the factories. He’d want me to get out, Pandora convinces herself. He’d want me to protect the data. As the Simonson security personnel ascend the hill opposite Sage, Pandora forces herself to turn away and speed into the factory area. He’ll make it. Pandora repeats the words in her head even after the first shots ring out from the direction of the hill. Pandora ditches the vulture in an alley between two factories and stumbles through the area on foot, propping herself up against buildings. The unbearable pain returns in full force, but she welcomes it. It drowns out the guilt she feels for leaving Sage behind. She keeps moving until her knees give out. Everything becomes a blur. Shouts from the alleys. The clank of CMC armor. A four-wheeled vehicle pulls up beside her. Three armed figures emerge, moving toward her fast. They grab at her and drag her into the vehicle. Outside she hears gunfire. Pop. Pop. Pop. It’s drawn out like a vid playing back at half speed. The sounds become slower and slower until the last pop stretches out into infinity and she loses consciousness. It takes Pandora’s eyes a few minutes to adjust to the glowing white room. Monitors attached to the walls. Robotic arms with surgical lasers overhead. A med-bay, or a torture chamber. It isn’t until Pandora sees a bearded man she recognizes as Jacob Kang – dressed in the practical gray Umojan Ruling Council uniform and standing at the foot of her bed – that she knows she’s safe. “Ulli,” he says, and he steps forward. She hardly recognizes her real name. It brings her back to reality, to another life that seems so alien after spending months under cover. “Your team was just here. It’s too bad they missed seeing you wake up.” The details of the last few months are a blur. Augustgrad… the Simonson facility… the Odin. She reaches up and touches her face, expecting something hideous. It feels smooth, soft. Kang smiles. “The doctors performed some reconstructive surgery when you came in. If you hadn’t put the plastiscab on, it would’ve been more difficult to repair.” The revelation offers no relief, only a sense of cruel irony for the Odin pilot who had helped her. As Pandora thinks more about the past few months, she remembers deceiving Sage with the forged intel. There’s something else, though, a troubling blank patch in her memory. “The micro-spies… were they damaged?” The words come out of Pandora’s mouth in a whisper. “They’re perfect,” the official says, and he sets a small disc on a tray near Pandora’s bed. A holovid of one of the Odin’s tests captured by the micro-spies winks into existence, a looping image of the machine turning left and right while its arm cannons blast away at unseen targets. “Your team’s timing was impeccable. We received information that the Odin may have been shipped to the Dominion’s Valhalla facility near Sigmaris Prime to undergo final testing. You should see the other Ruling Council members. They’re completely terrified. However, now that we know what it is, we can be prepared if the Dominion ever decides to use it against us.” Kang pulls a small black box from his uniform and sets it at Pandora’s bedside. “The Ruling Council has a formal ceremony planned, but I persuaded them to let you keep this until then. You’ve earned it.” She opens the box. Inside is the Guardian’s Order – a brilliant gold engraving of Umoja set against a featureless black shield. “This award is rare even among our best agents. It’s a great honor, Ulli, and one that you deserve. You’re a hero.” Pandora stares at the medal awarded to shadowguards who have shown bravery and sacrificed for the safety and future of Umojan society. She has overcome all of the obstacles. The difficult decisions on Augustgrad have been worth it. She should be rejoicing, but something she can’t remember still nags at her. She thinks back to leaving the facility, heading out into the desert on the vulture, her body wracked with pain. “Was anyone injured when we escaped?” The official pauses. She senses the man trying to hide something in his mind. Casualties. “The Dominion mobilized after what happened at the facility and combed Augustgrad for any signs of our other agents. Seven of them haven’t reported in since the sweeps.” A chill runs up Pandora’s spine. She remembers Sage’s van behind a hill outside the facility. Guards and vultures approaching it. Gunfire. Pandora driving away, abandoning him. “We’ve been sending out transmissions to link the captured agents and the Simonson incident to the Koprulu Liberation Front instead of us,” the official says. “I think we – ” “Where’s Sage?” Pandora asks, her voice still a whisper. Kang’s face pales. He opens his mouth, stammers, searching for words. Pandora cautiously probes his mind, afraid of what she will find. “Let me get your team. They should be the ones to – ” “Tell me!” she shouts, strong and commanding. The force of it surprises her, and it surprises the official even more. “When you were extracted, Dominion security personnel were in pursuit. Your team managed to get you and the data out safely, but Sage…” The official swallows hard. “He went missing. We followed up on his whereabouts after the mission and believe he was killed near the facility.” Despite Kang’s diplomatic words, Pandora sees the stark truth in the man’s head. A brief flash of a holo-image: Sage’s spike-riddled corpse. His dead eyes stare back at her with a look that reminds Pandora of the hollowness she saw in Sage the last time he was alive. “He was one of our best team leaders. When he made his decisions, he carried out his responsibility to ensure his team’s safety at any cost. He would be… he was… proud of what you accomplished.” Pandora says nothing, thinks nothing. She is numb. “We’re all upset about what happened. But despite the cost, what you’ve found has been worth it,” Kang says as he edges toward the doorway. “I’ll go find your team and let them know you’re awake. They’ll want to see you.” He leaves when Pandora doesn’t acknowledge the words. The Odin repeats its movements in the holovid at her bedside, cannons blasting in an unending cycle of destruction. As Pandora stares blankly at the semi-translucent image, she rubs her fingers over the medal in her hand, the representation of everything she has worked so hard to overcome, and feels only a chilling emptiness inside.