President Wilson stormed into the Situation Room. “what do you mean they’re gone!” He roared, startling the generals and other officials in the room. “You were supposed to mobilize and capture them for questioning them moment they started that little spectacle of a world announcement! Now I’m being told that they are not only gone, but their entire building and objects from every property they own just up and flew away? The country is in an uproar and I want answers yesterday! Either you bring them to me or you are all fired!”

“Sir, we really can’t, our advanced unit and some civilians that were in the area got it all on film, their entire corporate headquarters launched into space. Radar systems have them leaving the atmosphere and headed roughly towards Mars, which we were able to confirm with satellites and reports from observatories. For all intents and purposes, they’re out of reach, for everyone on the planet.” One of the generals replied firmly.

His Secretary of State spoke up next. “Mr. President, we need to focus on things here at home first, Russia and China both are claiming it’s our fault they got away with stealing secrets from everywhere and are demanding restitution, most of Europe is well on their way to issuing similar demands, but so far are holding themselves to only insisting we give an explanation. We need you to make a statement.”

Wilson growled at him. “Make a statement about what!” He roared. “Tell them how our own citizens lied to us? How they withheld critical information and incredible advancements in technology from us for the sake of making video games? Or perhaps I should come up with an explanation for how someone might accidentally steal data and research from secure servers hardened against precisely this kind of attack? No, the only statement we will make is that we are just as much victims in this as everyone else, and we will not be giving a bent penny to anyone by way of restitution.”

“Mr. President, Archangel’s business dealings fell under the purview of several different departments so I got together with-” His Secretary of Homeland Security started.

“Spit it out, I don’t care who you talked to, get to the point.”

“Yes, Mr. President sir, the point is that removal of Archangel products from the public would be an economic disaster on par with, if not greater than the Great Depression. The hours of labor lost due to the bandwidth siphon preventing others from accessing the affected servers wasn’t as great a blow as we first anticipated it to be on account of the hours in which it occurred. The other side of the world sustained far greater productivity loss. It still did some damage though, and the public is… reluctant to surrender their gaming devices despite the unrest caused by their creators.

“It would seem that the game is still running somehow, despite them removing their assets from the planet. There is no way to collect the helmets without paying an extravagant cost, either through reimbursement programs that would bankrupt us, or we force people to surrender them by mobilizing the National Guard to collect them at gunpoint and spark riots and anti-government protests nationwide.”

“The point! I said get to the point!”

“The point is our only option is to leave things be and accept their request for an embassy when they ask. The things they could offer are too valuable to risk driving them away from us while they provide technology to our rivals. Despite the outcry, they will undoubtedly welcome Archangel with open arms, and not one single nation has tried to remove their gaming devices from their population.”

Wilson grit his teeth in frustration. “So we just let this go? We let these traitors galavant about free and uncontested?”

“Sir, we can’t get to them. The only way we could ever gain an opportunity to get control of the advanced technology they have is to wait for them to come to us.”

“Fine then, make sure you have a plan in place to capture them and their ship the moment we have a chance. Don’t mess it up this time. I’m going to go make a statement. When I return I want to hear the assessment of this threat they spoke of. For all we know they invented some threat to distract us from their thievery.”

* * * * *

Evan stared at the image floating in the middle of the room forlornly for what felt like an eternity. It was something he had dreamt of seeing someday, but after having had to flee from Earth to protect themselves from interrogation, maybe torture, and to protect Lisa from being dismantled took the joy out of the experience. It didn’t help that he had virtually nothing to do at the moment until the construction drones finished building them a habitat all he could do was sit there and think things over while staring at the floating vision of Mar’s horizon.

A hand dropped on his shoulder, which startled him and drew his gaze away from the reddish mountains and the ocean of red sand that were liable to be the only horizon he would see for a while. “We’re done with a big enough section to get off of Lisa. She will be able to work faster without us on board.” Kinzie said quietly. Evan nodded absently. “Hey, we’ll get through this. We’ll be fine. Shake it off and get back to work.”

Evan snorted derisively. “What work? We’re millions of miles from home! All we can do out here is wait for things to get built, wait for a response from Earth, wait for mining drones to gather material for more things to watch being built. Oh, I almost forgot, we also get to wait for an alien superpower to get impatient and show up to enslave us all.”

Kinzie grabbed his shirt and hauled him halfway out of his chair. “No. You are not going to sit here moping right now! We have far too much work to do if we ever want to get a chance to go home. Get off the ship, make yourself useful.” She let go and he fell back into the chair with a thump. “Go help Jason sort through the data Lisa got from her little misadventure. Some of it already looks useful. Rebekkah and I are going to oversee the construction of our colony, and it will be a colony. We already have messages from a slew of scientists Lisa apparently contacted with job offers asking to come here.”

Evan was stunned, partly from the aggression, but a good deal of it was from hearing that people were already contacting them. The governments had released nothing so far, and they hadn’t sent the data to the media or posted it yet. Rebekkah’s idea mostly, give them a test, see if they would notify the public themselves. “I’m sorry, I just…” he trailed off unsure how to finish.

Kinzie sighed. “I know, it’s the same for everyone right now. All we can do is lock it down and get to work on fixing things as best we can.”

“So! Useful data? Where at?” He said, standing up. Kinzie eyed him a bit suspiciously at the sudden reversal. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still… ugh, but you’re right, sitting here moping about it is useless, and we don’t have time or space for useless right now.”

Kinzie nodded at that. “Jason already moved to the hab we built, come on, I’ll show you around.”

Evan followed her to the entry hall, which had seen drastic changes since their hurried escape from Earth. The rows of doors had been replaced with solid bulkheads, and there was no longer a balcony and open space looking down on the first floor. Where the doors had been was a reinforced hatch that opened into an airlock, and Kinzie wasted no time in leading him through it. They emerged into a surprisingly spacious dome that was clearly intended to be a common room of sorts, where they could gather and socialize.

“Our quarters are through there,” Kinzie said, pointing at the hatches around the room in turn, Jason’s are through there, Rebekkah’s through there, and the military folks opted for smaller rooms that are around another common room through there. The last one goes to the hydroponics room and all the other stuff we need to be able to stay alive here. Luckily we were able to get a variety of seeds and plants before we had to leave.

“The first room for Jason and us is a workshop, while Rebekkah’s is an office. The others have smaller offices inside their common room, so it’s easier to collaborate on setting up the military structure they’re trying to build. They also have half of it set up as a gym-slash-obstacle course they said everyone was going to have to use. Including us, which I agree with. Physical exercise is good for your mental state and your health, and with everyone stressed out and depressed about the whole leaving Earth thing anything that can improve our mental state right now is a must.

“Jason should be in his workshop going through the stuff Lisa got for us, go give him a hand while I go help Rebekkah. We’re all getting together for dinner later too, I’ll ping everyone when it’s ready. We’ll probably make that a regular thing, to make sure everyone is still doing alright and just to socialize.”

Evan nodded. “Alright, see you later then, and Kinzie? Thanks for snapping me out of my funk, I should have already been helping.”

Kinzie gave him a hug. “You would have done the same for me, and we’re all struggling with this in our own way. Which reminds me, keep an eye on Jason. He’s always tended to throw himself into his work when he gets stressed and he stops taking care of himself the way he should when he gets too focused.” She gave him a gentle shove towards Jason’s hatch. “I’ll see you at dinner time, have fun!” The cheerfulness in her voice was a bit forced but welcome all the same.

Evan pressed a button next to Jason’s door that resembled a doorbell. His guess proved accurate as a chime rang and he heard Jason tell him to come in through a speaker he hadn’t seen over the door. He walked in to find Jason flipping through files and fiddling with a few blueprints he had open to the side. “Oh hey, Evan, what’s up?” He said absently, having barely glanced at him before returning to his work.

Evan shrugged. “Just coming to help out if you want. The girls are busy planning the construction stuff. What do you have so far?”

“I can’t actually make up my mind about whether this was a good or bad thing after I got a look at what Lisa was able to get.” Jason replied with a note of excitement in his voice. “I mean look at this,” he pulled up a file, “what I was able to find publically in regards to railgun tech and laser tech was years behind some of these secret projects. We should be able to double or triple the capability of the railguns we have in our blueprints with the research from this one.”

He minimized it and pulled up another file. “This one makes laser weaponry an actual possibility when combined with the power outputs of the reactors in Lisa’s database and the throughput of the conduits we plan on using, although she said it’s still far behind Confederation standards. Should be useful for point defense though, which should save us space on ammunition storage for the railguns that would have served that purpose before now. That’s just the tip of the iceberg too, there is a ton of stuff I haven’t even touched yet. Lisa has been splitting her attention between combining things and making the improvements she can and the construction, I’ve been working what she comes up with into the blueprints we have. I could definitely use your help picking through all this though.”

Evan nodded. “Let’s get to work then, shall we?”