The armored door of a luxurious limo-skimmer sealed with a hushed, expensive , amputating the sound of the grinding turbines and acidic rain. Inside, the world was silent, temperature-controlled, and smelled of conditioned leather and sandalwood oil.

  Teodulo Leir Cade IV sat perfectly still in the plush embrace of his seat, his knuckles white where they gripped the carved ivory head of his cane. The only sign of his fury was a faint, rhythmic twitch beneath his left eye. The opulent cabin, a capsule of 19th-century revivalist elegance hurled into a 25th-century hell, seemed to shrink under the pressure of his silence.

  He stood for a moment, motionless in the center of the luxuriously appointed cabin. Then, a tremor began in his shoulders and culminated in a violent snap of his wrist as he hurled his cane. It clattered against the soundproofed wall, leaving a faint scuff on the polished macassar paneling.

  “A barbarian,” he whispered, the words sizzling in the quiet. “Gilded armor over a thug’s soul. He understands nothing of value.”

  His two cohorts remained by the door, frozen. The larger one, Goran, had a face like weathered stone, his eyes tracking Teodulo with professional detachment. The other, Lin, wearing his own expensive, understated suit and stood with the quiet patience of a decades-long aide, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

  “Sir,” Lin said, his tone measured and low, cutting through the silence without disrupting it. "The operational setback is regrettable. However, a formal grievance to the Syndicate's liaison would be the established protocol. It maintains the appearance of order."

  “A grievance?” Teodulo turned slowly, his eyes, a pale and watery blue, fixed on Lin. The placid mask of the businessman was gone, replaced by a raw, petulant fury. “We do not file grievances. We . That man is a blunt instrument, an asset of force, nothing more. He exists to create the stable environment in which true commerce, commerce, can flourish.”

  He strode to a decanter and poured a measure of amber liquid into a crystal glass. His hand, he noted with disgust, still trembled. The insult of being manhandled by those grunt soldiers, the sheer of it, burned hotter than any strategic loss.

  It was Goran who spoke next, “The asset," he rumbled. "The Florentine broker's report. It came through.”

  Teodulo paused, the glass halfway to his lips. The rage receded, not vanishing, but cooling and compressing into a hard, dense knot of avarice.

  “Finally," he said, his voice dropping from a hysterical pitch to a low, avaricious hum. "I have been waiting for this since landing. Show me.”

  He set the glass down untouched and activated the hololithic display embedded in the table. Text and schematics glowed in the air.

  “The ‘Juno’,” Teodulo said, his voice now a covetous murmur. “A Sp-16ia. Special operations detachment. Last tracked in sector 7-Gamma.” A slow, unpleasant smile stretched his lips. “It seems providence has delivered what the Corp-Major’s primitive sense of honor would not.”

  Lin studied the display, his expression neutral. "A single IFV," he stated, not asked. "Sir, I must note the strategic cost. Antagonizing a Syndicate punitive unit for one vehicle creates friction that could jeopardize our more lucrative, long-term operations. The risk-reward profile is adverse."

  Teodulo's smile didn't falter, but it did stiffen for a fraction of a second, the avaricious gleam in his eyes momentarily eclipsed by a flicker of genuine surprise. He stared at Lin with the assessment of a master who had just discovered a rare gap in his most reliable steward's knowledge.

  “You see a vehicle, Lin. A piece of hardware. You are not looking at the contents. You are not assessing the .” He zoomed in on the file, pulling up a subsidiary data packet tagged with a corporate archival seal. “This is not a military target. This is a recovery operation for lost intellectual property. High-value, legacy IP.”

  He let the hologram shift, displaying the stark, clinical text of a historical product brief.

  “The People’s Republic of New Terra did not evolve. They were ."

  Teodulo began, his voice dropping into a storyteller's cadence, and began recite the facts with the reverence of a collector describing a masterpiece, letting the word hang in the sandalwood-scented air.

  "In the 22nd century, the visionaries at Terran Interstellar Technology asked a question: what is the optimal service-class genotype? The answer was 'Projekt Engel'."

  He recited the name not as a label, but with the reverence of a collector unveiling a masterpiece. "They built them for performance, of course. Enhanced cognition for complex tasks. Physiological resilience for high-stress environments. But the real genius was in the aesthetics—a key market differentiator. The phenotype was calibrated for universal appeal. Delicate features. Harmonious proportions. An androgynous perfection designed to minimize client aggression and maximize perceived value."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Lin absorbed the data, his brow furrowing in strategic calculation. "A live specimen," he clarified, his voice devoid of moral judgment, only operational focus. "The acquisition parameters just became significantly more complex.”

  “Of course they are,” Teodulo snapped, his patience thin. “And the product line was meticulously managed. The birth ratio was skewed to 1:3.57, male to female. Females consistently demonstrated higher client satisfaction scores in premium service roles. Thus, Terrantec believed the female form held higher market value across a broader range of applications. And the market proved them correct. The female models, for the same baseline cost, commanded a staggering premium. The skewed birth ratio wasn't a design choice; it was a profit engine. An impeccable piece of commercial foresight.”

  “Their current adult population is estimated at eighty percent female. They are, for all intents and purposes, a mono-gender species now, and one that has been off the market for the last two centuries. New Terra stopped exporting themselves ever since the founding of their… barbaric and anarchic nation-state in 2314.” His eyes glazed over with a perverse longing. “To acquire a live specimen… a specimen, hardened by their feral little communist rebellion… It’s like finding a mint-condition, pre-collapse Ferrari. A functioning relic. Terrantec has been defunct for one hundred years. New Terra stopped all exports after their little revolution. The only New Terrans on Earth are soldiers, and they are very, very good at making themselves hard to acquire.”

  Goran, ever practical, grunted. “Intel says they never remove their helmets on-planet. Facial recognition is useless.”

  Teodulo let out a short, derisive laugh. “Naturally. Their beauty is their brand, and down here, among the… ,” he said, with a wave towards the window and the Syndicate troopers beyond, “it’s a security nightmare. Every two-credit enforcer with a pulse would recognize a Terrantec product and try to claim it. Their helmets are the packaging. It keeps the merchandise pristine.”

  He finally picked up his glass and took a sip, the whiskey smooth and ancient on his tongue. The plan was already forming, clean and elegant, purging the stink of Vikas Rajan’s sanctimony.

  “Rajan can keep his karma," Teodulo said softly, his gaze fixed on the hologram of the IFV. "We are going shopping.”

  ——————

  The air in the had long since passed stale, becoming a stagnant brew of recycled oxygen, ozone, and the faint, metallic tang of rotten sweat—a smell no filtration system could ever fully erase. The vehicle lurched gently on its suspension, a sickening, rhythmic motion that had long since become the backdrop of their lives. Beneath it all was the constant, sub-audible whine of the anti-gravity drive, a sound that vibrated in the teeth, undercut by the random creak of Adamantine stress and the perpetual of acidic water sliding from the hull. In the dim, red-tinged light of the crew compartment, Chen Feng lay rigid on his acceleration couch, his eyes squeezed shut against it all.

  Sleep was a treacherous country. Each time he neared its border, the ghosts gathered. The holographic smiles of his parents, the hollow gaze of his brother in that final message—these familiar torments were now joined by new specters. The village square. The kneeling figures. The synchronized crack of mass accelerators, and the way one body had jerked forward, as if bowing to an unseen master. The smell of cooked meat. His eyes flew open, staring at the grimy conduit pipes overhead.

  He turned onto his side, facing the cold, impersonal bulkhead, and tried to focus solely on the vibration of the deck plates.

  …

  He forced his breathing into a slow, measured rhythm, a conscious battle against the tightness in his chest. For a moment, it worked. The ghosts receded, their whispers fading, and the black tide of nothingness finally began to pull him under.

  But then, a sharp, solid

  against his helmet broke the spell.

  He jolted upright, a raw, guttural sound tearing from his throat. "What?!"

  Alina Ludwig stood over him, one hand resting on a grab-handle, the other still hovering from where she’d slapped his helmet. Her own face was bare, her features drawn tight, the usual fierce light in her eyes replaced by a smoldering, exhausted anger.

  "We need to talk," she said, her voice low and hoarse. "You don't get to just sleep through this."

  "Through, exactly?" Chen snarled, the last vestiges of potential sleep making him reckless. "The driving? The sitting? It's the most exciting part of the mission, truly. I didn't want to miss it."

  "Don't," she cut him off, her voice a furious whisper. "Don't you dare. Back there. You were a statue. 'It happens.' You said it happens, and 'Earth keeps spinning around Sol.'" She leaned in, her gaze drilling into him. "They were , Chen. Gunned down in the mud. My upbringing taught me to this. What did yours teach you? To take a goddamn nap after?"

  The accusation hung in the air, thick and toxic. Chen just stared back, his own fatigue, a leaden weight behind his eyes. He didn't have the energy for this performance of grief she demanded.

  "I was running your profile," Alina continued, her words clinical, a weapon she was clumsily trying to wield. "The apathy, the detachment... it's textbook. You didn't flinch. That's not strength; that's a malfunction." She searched his face for a flicker of recognition, of shame. "It's sociopathic, but your upbringing should have produced a different man. Are you even well, Chen? "

  Chen held her gaze for a long, silent moment. He saw the genuine confusion and hurt beneath the anger. He knew the term, of course. From a psychology module a lifetime ago. A label for a broken mind. Another box to put people in.

  Chen Feng decided to let his shoulders slump, feigning a confusion he did not feel. His voice was flat, deliberately empty. "I don't even know what that means."

  The cockpit comm crackled, Flora's voice a neutral, synthetic balm over the raw human tension in the crew bay. "Feldwebel, Obergefreiter. Sensors are picking up cleared pathways and residual industrial thermal signatures. We are approaching the Saint Aurora perimeter. Recommending an immediate transition to stealth protocols."

  Alina didn't look back at him, simply pulling her helmet on with a definitive hiss of sealing pressure. Chen met the blank, reflective visor she now presented. The argument was over.