Angers gritted his teeth as he twisted the Blue Shrike's controls, barrel-rolling out of a hailstorm of gunfire from the enemy aircraft. The Blue Shrike’s shields protected it much better from the gradual heat of directed-energy weapons or from atmospheric entry than from kinetic weapons, and he couldn't count on them to grant him invulnerability from the enemy aircraft.

The enemies were skilled pilots, and within their domain Angers had to remain vigilant. Yet, while their weapons were powerful and their pilots were skilled, Angers bore weapons far more advanced, and he was used to operating on a battlefield they couldn't even imagine.

He twisted so that two enemy fighters were directly behind him, and flipped a bright red switch on his console.

The Blue Shrike convulsed in the air as a huge, dedicated capacitor drained all its energy into a heat projection directly behind the starfighter. The enemies would see only a shiver of heat in the air and would be incapable of reacting to it.

Sure enough, as the enemy fighters passed through the field of heat, the signatures of their radar pings disappeared as all the circuitry in their crafts fused together. Angers dipped out of their flight vector, and the dead fighters hurtled to the ground, where they exploded on impact.

Angers swirled around and evaded the plasma torpedoes which the helicopter blasted toward him. The chopper was completely inadequate to dodge the torpedoes which Angers hurled back at it, leaving Angers supreme above the ground.

There were now only half a dozen military trucks on the ground, one of them having already exploded when stray debris made a direct hit upon the top of it. It must have been carrying heavy explosives.

And now that Angers was alone in the sky, the other trucks shifted to reveal huge banks of ground-to-air missiles which they fired without hesitation at the Blue Shrike.

Angers engaged planetary cloaking, a set of signal jammers and chemical vapors which would render a Paraceum craft undetectable to nearly every conventional weapon used for planetary defenses by human and alien alike.

Sure enough, the missiles spiraled wildly off their intended trajectories as their microcontrollers could not lock onto the Blue Shrike. They exploded in the air in a chain reaction, and Angers surfed the shock wave as he sped back down toward the ground. After the mission which he had performed before attempting to return home, before this whole mess had begun, he had used up nearly all of his conventional bombs. He had a few left, however, and he dropped these on several of the trucks below.

The vehicles were consumed in super-heated plasma, melting around the men still inside them.

Angers felt something split within his mind. One part laughed in glee at the thought of the men dying horribly around him, and the other part of his mind, the part that was really him, was astounded and horrified at this. The true part of himself listened to words bubbling from his lips, words about how no one would take the terraformer from him, how it belonged to him and he would kill everyone in the universe if they tried to take it.

Then the words spoke of Carrick, how it was plotting against him, how Carrick wanted the terraformer for himself.

Angers focused with every fiber of his being on the fight around him, trying to ignore his own insanity. He didn't know how it was possible that he knew he was crazy. Angers had as good an understanding of psychology and psychiatry as anyone with a standard education. He knew that individuals who suffered mental illnesses practically never understood that this was the case, for they oriented their view of the world around themselves and considered themselves to be normal. They saw any deviation from this to be an aberration, even if they were hearing the voices of God in their head when billions of other people could not.

The trucks below had not fired their entire payloads at once, and a second, much smaller wave of missiles spiraled from the remaining trucks to the Blue Shrike.

The planetary cloak was a one-time thing, requiring replacement of its projector and chemicals before it could be used again. Angers had to rely on his evasive abilities to escape the missiles and to eventually swivel around and spray the salvo with plasma so they exploded harmlessly far away from him. A couple came too close for comfort, but at the short distance, his shields could protect the hull.

Angers turned his plasma cannon upon the remaining ships, lighting up the ground in a line of blue fire that made him laugh with glee.

A pair of figures, tiny as ants, sprinted away from the last truck before it ignited, and Angers spent several seconds winding himself around until he found a vector which allowed him to bathe them in plasma bolts intended to rip through enemy starcraft.

The sane part of Angers felt sick. He imagined the expressions of men melting in agony, and hated himself.

Could this be the work of the ideologue virus? Had the virus awoken and broken out of its temporary housing when he jump-started the Blue Shrike? Was it inside his head now, driving him to cause suffering and destruction wherever he turned?

The enemy was now dead, and Angers realized with a jolt that he still had one bomb left. Why hadn't he used it to take out another of the trucks? Why did he save it?

The insane portion of his mind had hidden it from him. It screamed at him that Carrick wanted to take everything from him. It demanded that they return below and drop the bomb directly upon Carrick, watching him die in the moment he thought he would find salvation.

Angers was losing control of his body. He could not stop himself from turning the controls and slowing his velocity, beginning the process that would lead him to pivot down below and to murder the man who had helped him get his precious craft skyworthy.

With every fiber of his being, Angers ripped his mind free and slammed the emergency accelerator.

The Blue Shrike burst faster than any craft upon this world could manage directly into the ground, punching through at almost the same location it had previously into the cavern below, but now without the benefit of cushioning shields.

***

Before Carrick could respond to the terraformer’s cold, hard demand that he somehow murder Angers, the Blue Shrike burst through the ceiling with the force of an earthquake, flinging icy meteors down around it. One came hurtling toward Carrick, who threw himself to the ground and put a hand before his face, but a sudden flash of light lit up the room and then Carrick was instead surrounded by water vapor.

The terraformer had turned the ice into mist.

An uncertain thought which was not a complete communication moved through Carrick’s head. He turned, breathing hard, adrenaline surging through his body at the shock, and saw the Blue Shrike lying in pieces on the ground.

His heart almost stopped. Why hadn't it been buried as it had the last time?

He had no more time for thoughts. He scrambled across the soft, glowing surface of the floor toward the smoking wreckage of the Blue Shrike, finally reaching the remains of the cockpit.

Stinking, steaming pools of chemicals rose all around as Carrick found Angers’ charred body inside the cockpit. It looked as though a chemical line had caught fire, though it was now doused. Perhaps the terraformer’s doing. Angers’ flight suit was melted to his body in some places, burned all the way off in others, letting Carrick see that beneath the Lieutenant's blue skin, his flesh and blood were the same red as any other human.

Angers’ chest had caved in, and all his limbs were broken.

“The virus,” said Angers. Only one speaker in his helmet worked. A thin trickle of blood dribbled out of the grate on the opposite side. “It’s gotten worse. It's infecting my brain. I need you to finish the process. Encapsulation.”

Carrick felt as though he were not really there, as though he were watching from some far-off place. It was impossible for his brain to register what he was seeing.

Carrick had never had a terribly strong stomach for someone who belonged to a crime family. He adamantly refused to torture rivals from another gang, even the ones who had done horrible things themselves. He refused to even watch it done, did not even like being in the same room as someone receiving a simple beating.

The scene before him was almost impossible to bear. He didn't understand how Angers was even alive. His body had been broken and compressed so much that surely his insides must be liquid by now.

Carrick finally opened his mouth. “No,” he said, “it isn’t the virus, it's the terraformer. It told me. It said its father altered you, and it drove you mad when it touched your brain.”

Angers’ head convulsed. “I don't know,” he said. “There's something in my head, something that wants me to do terrible things. If it's not the virus, that means you still have time. If the thing is talking to you, that might be our only hope. It's a computer. It can complete encapsulation. Use the data bank from the ship, unless it's already destroyed. If it's destroyed, then the virus will die with me and with the Blue Shrike.”

Something approximating a laugh came from the helmet. “I'm not talking, not really,” said Angers. “There's an emergency neural link connecting my brain to the helmet. It's just interpreting... the last electrical impulses of my brain. I'm already dead. Thank you for helping me, Carrick. I'm honored to meet you. Whatever you do from here… I'm glad...”

He went silent, and a single beep emanated from the helmet.

Carrick fell back, breathing heavily, surrounded by vapor and fumes.

The blood ceased dripping from the dead helmet.

A long, silent time passed.

Carrick finally rose on shaky legs, turned, and walked to where the terraformer hung above. “I didn't need to kill him,” Carrick said quietly. “He did it on his own. He thought he was being taken over by the virus, so he killed himself rather than let the rest of the galaxy be in danger. He wasn't exaggerating about that, was he? You said the virus wanted to eat you. He wasn't exaggerating at all.”

Yes, replied the terraformer. I underestimated him. I could not tell the extent of his willpower. As I told you, he was altered beyond my comprehension.

Carrick looked back at the wreck. “I don't know how to get into the center of his computer,” he said. “That tech is too advanced for me. But you can vaporize it, right? Like you did the ice. Like you did the whole Wasteland. If you just vaporize it, we’ll all be safe.”

Not exactly, said the terraformer. I must take a molecule completely into myself, analyze it down to the smallest quanta of its identity, and then rebuild it. The nature of this virus is such that if I were to analyze its housing computer in this way, it could pounce upon and devour me.

“Then what are we going to do?” asked Carrick. “They’ll send more people down here, eventually. If they try to analyze the computer, it'll infect their technology too, right? And then it’ll infect everything until they can finally use it to get back into you.”

We will complete the encapsulation which Angers prepared. I listened to him as he planned. I understand the pattern. It is a pattern which must have been invented by my father.

There was another flash of light and a block of silicon covered in glass appeared on the ground in front of Carrick. Infinitesimal lines of bright metal gleamed underneath the glass, and on the top face, in the center of the cube, was a cradle with hundreds of sockets inside it.

Remove the central computer from the Blue Shrike. Place it here, and the encapsulation process will begin.

***

Carrick heaved the entire computational unit from the wreckage of the Blue Shrike. He dragged it in slow steps across the ground, scraping away the ghostblade beneath him and revealing the ancient stone upon which it had taken root. The ground was pocked with the tiny holes the grass had drilled, giving it the appearance of the skin of petrified giant’s skin.

He finally reached the silicon and glass table which the terraformer had built. A ramp of stone manifested along one side of the cube, and Carrick put all of his weight and strength into the computer—which looks more like an engine block than anything—as he shoved it up and finally locked it into the socket which the terraformer had prepared.

Nothing changed on either the computer or the block. The computer itself had no screens or controls, only a large bank of I/O ports to allow the rest of the Blue Shrike to interface with it.

Carrick stood there, breathing hard, sweat dripping from his face. “What now?” he finally asked.

The preparations are complete, said the terraformer. All that is left is to initiate biometric input. Place your hand upon the print.

A patch of glass peeled away and circuitry wound itself into whorls like fingerprints. Carrick looked up at the terraformer. “What’s going to happen? I don't trust you. You wanted me to kill Angers without a thought when he was a threat to you. Is this going to kill me too, once it's all done? Will it just draw the virus into me so that you can open a chasm underneath my feet and swallow me up, something like that?”

No, said the terraformer. I will not kill you. I promise you that.

“How can I trust you?” Carrick asked.

You can't, it said, and fell silent.

Carrick asked several more questions and even yelled at it to respond, but to no avail.

Finally, Carrick sat down. What choices did he have? The Blue Shrike was useless. Not to mention he didn't know how to fly a plane even if it was intact. He had no truck, and only a handful of power tools. He could do nothing to the terraformer itself, nothing that would cause it anything more than amusement.

At some point, a far larger contingent of the military would arrive, and Carrick had no way to defend himself from them. If he remained, he would be captured and interrogated. At best, he would never see the outside of a cell again. His life in the Wasteland would seem like heaven compared to that.

But neither could he trust the terraformer. If it was true what it said, that it could not contact the computer itself, then it needed Carrick to do this now. It wouldn't kill him while there was still a chance he could help it.

Hours passed. He didn't know what to do. He simply sat and stared at the computer resting on its silicon block.

Eventually, Carrick’s mind turned back to the Family, to the people who had taken him in years ago and given him a home and a way of life. That brought his mind to the ordinary people of the town in which they operated. Most of them were decent or even good people, going about their lives and simply trying to avoid pain and suffering from day to day. That was all anybody wanted.

Carrick had tried his whole life to avoid causing more pain than was necessary. Even as a member of the Family, he was proud of the measure of good they did for their community, for the ordinary people who were not the suckling pigs of the rich and powerful. Granted, there was plenty of evil that the Family also did in their community, but it had always been Carrick’s desire to change that one day.

And, well, it seemed certain to Carrick that if he did nothing, suffering would eventually come to everyone—poor or rich, good or evil—in the world, and then further beyond, as a malevolent virus enslaved every mind to its own will.

Carrick stood. He no longer could redeem or change the Family, but he had the power, even if it immediately resulted in his death, to preserve the free will of every person he had ever loved who still lived.

If that was all he could do, it was enough.

Carrick walked the four paces to the block, slapped his hand down on the print, and evaporated into a fine red mist.