The air within the Aethelstan's war room no longer cooled by its climate systems, but by the ice forming between the ten men there. The holographic table, which was normally a canvas of blueprints of salvation, now displayed a crime scene. The feed was from "Nexus One," the South American test city, their second attempt after New Eden. Or what was left of it.Smoke wafted from the wreckage of the primary power distributor. Not the tidy, controlled smoke of overloading, but the black, oily smoke of flames. The structure, a wonder of Ibrahim's bio-integrated energy conduits, was a twisted, melted work of art.The blast was directed," Voss remarked, his tone level, a dramatic contrast to that being displayed on the screen. He manipulated the hologram, bringing it into focus at the center. "The explosive was not of a military grade. It was a binary chemical agent, stable unless mixed, and was directly deposited at the intersection location of the primary and secondary coolant lines. The r

The vacuum which the missing money and the suspension of Vale had left was a vacuum, and nature, more so political nature, abhors a vacuum. Into the tense silence walked Lucien Drax.He did not ascend quietly, as a tide rising, but with the calculated boom of a media bombshell. He was a footnote in financial circles one day, a wealthy recluse with asteroid mining and research AI interests. Next, he was on the cover of every major newsweekly, his face—wiry, silver-haired, bespectacled with essentially laughably bright eyes—smiling out from monitors on the planet.His interview on the influential news program Global Spotlight was a masterclass in narrative theft."For too long, the story of this so-called 'urban revolution' has been misgiven," asserted Drax, his deep, rich voice warm and soothing, even easing the most skeptical interviewer. He reclined among a library of real, leather-bound books, a respite from the cold futurism of the Scholars' laboratories. "The vision, the first cap

It began with the lights. Not the city-wide spectacle of the cyber-attack, but a soft, sickly flicker. The soft, omnipresent light of the streets faltered for an instant, then returned, but now pulsed with a soft, irregular rhythm, like a dying heart. It was the first, soft cough of a terminal illness.Adrian stood inside the command center, the System's new, foreboding message burned into his eyes.> Integrity Breach Found.> Risk of Project Collapse: 64%> Reason: Induced Cascading Systemic Failure.Sixty-four percent. The percentage was a chill in his heart. It was not a prediction; it was a diagnosis.Then the pressure of the water decreased. The elegant sweeps of water from the public fountains, emblem of their abundance, faltered, becoming a miserly, pitiful trickle. In the homes, the haughty whir of the hydro-sonic shower ceased and failed. A hum of bewilderment, combined with the initial hints of terror, coursed through the city. They had survived attacks before, but this was

The Aethelstan was a ghost ship, its corridors echoing with the silence of defeat. The atmosphere that had once been so full of intent to build something new hung heavy with the embers of what they had lost. Adrian floated through it like a ghost, the eerie sheen of the System's 11% chance of survival leaping at him out of the corner of his eye. Eleven percent. The number was a tombstone.He found Zane, not in the opulent war room, but a smaller secondary com center buried deep in the ship's belly. It was a space of raw utility, walls lined with humming server racks and blinking diagnostic screens, far from the gaudy holograms of the main deck. Zane was surrounded by a pile of used coffee bulbs, bloodshot eyes fixed on a waterfall of code cascading down a primary monitor.We've been doing it all wrong," Zane stated, not looking around, his voice a harsh rasp. "We've been looking for a traitor. A person. We've been comparing keycodes, access logs, and financial records. We've been play

They would not bury Dr. Hiro Tanaka in New Eden's wounded earth. They could not send his corpse plummeting into the bleak, cold void, something too reminiscent of the hollowness within them. Instead, they held his funeral on the one sacred spot: the central observation deck of the Aethelstan. The enormous viewport polarized to a faded, twilight blue, the infinite starfield beyond a somber backdrop for the conclave of broken giants.There wasn't even a coffin. Tanaka's body had been treated with respect in accordance with his own, forgotten wishes, warehoused in a personnel database. His life was only marked by a sparse, unpleasant hologram—a rotating, wireframe copy of his last, unfinished surgical bot, its delicate arms frozen in a gesture of offering.The nine other Titans were in a loose semicircle. They were not dressed formally, but in the practical, faded uniforms of scientists and engineers, the uniform of their deceased brother. The silence was thick with more saying than coul