“Nic, I really think you should take your break.”

“I’m fine. Let’s continue.”

“Nic...”

“I said I’m good. I just want to get this over with already. I want to find this damn probe and...” He saw Perri’s proxybot staring at him sternly. “I didn’t mind waiting for you guys to take yours. Really. I just don’t want to take one.”

Team Scarlet had pulled over on their journey to the next waypoint in search of Red Terraforming’s lost probe, the longest leg of the trip so far. At Perri’s and Maqsud’s requests, each one of them was permitted a 10-minute break, each taken two at a time. Nic was the last one who hadn’t yet taken a rest.

“All due respect,” said Jarek, “we been at this for a good few hours now, man. Concentration and exercise for hours—well, minus the time sittin’ in the Centaur. But you know what I mean. PPI SimSuit breaks were 100-minute mandatories, remember? Don’t you think you’ll feel better after you stretch your legs?”

“I’ll feel better once we find what we were sent here to get,” Nic replied. “And whoever is responsible for screwing us, finding them and making them pay.”

“Nic, are you sure you’re okay?” asked Perri, climbing out of her Harpy and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You seem... angry. Is everything all right?” Nic shrugged and nodded. “Then who are you angry at? We don’t even know with 100% certainty that anyone did anything to the probe yet.”

“I’m angry because...” Nic felt the other proxies looking at him, even without eyes to glimpse in his peripheral vision, just by their body language and their silence. He felt their gazes boring through him. “Uh...” He tried to laugh it off. “Guess I’m getting a little too intense about this. Maybe I will take that break after all. Back in 10, Team Scarlet.”

I don’t know why I’m angry. But she’s right. I am. In the bathroom, he splashed two handfuls of water on his face, watching the remainder drip down the drain to be filtered and recycled. Maybe it’s just the stress of being out here alone. Not knowing what’s going to happen next.

On some level, though, he knew it was something more than that. Something deeper.

You’re kidding yourself, Siegfried.

Seven minutes after leaving the Simnasium, Nic was back in it and ready to continue. The others didn’t protest this time. He put his SimSuit back on and was instantly jacked in to his proxybot, which the other four proxybots were guarding steadfastly. “Ready,” he told his squad, and he hopped into the driver’s seat of the four-person Centaur. Perri took off in her aerial Harpy and the land vehicle rumbled ahead to the next waypoint set by RTIFIS.

It would be nearly two and a half hours until they reached their next destination, and Nic found himself relieved for the bathroom break. The relatively uniform rolling hills of gravel and odd rock formations soon gave way to the beginnings of a mountain range. In the distance, Nic could see breathtaking indigo mountains with picturesque, snowcapped peaks, the kind he’d only seen in sims or that one on Planet Baitian.

“That’s something you don’t see every day,” he sighed dreamily. His squadmates oohed and aahed at the exciting new sights scrolling by them at a little over 60 kilometers an hour. Perri once again lamented her lack of a holophone to record evidence of what she was seeing.

It took them a short while to navigate one of the smaller mountains—still nothing compared to jumping from iceberg to iceberg like earlier, though—and once on the other side of the range, Nic and his squad were closing in on Waypoint 3, closer to the location where the probe may have actually made its landing. We can’t be far from the end of the trail now, he thought. Assuming this isn’t the probe up here.

Unfortunately for Nic, their next waypoint was not, in fact, the probe they were sent to recover.

Not all of it, at least.

“That’s not something you see every day, either,” Maqsud observed cautiously. “What is that? Perri, any ideas?”

“Not from this distance,” she answered, hopping out of her cockpit.

They all gathered cautiously around another clue—something metal. It looked familiar to Nic, despite the fact that he was not an avid learner of vehicles like Perri was. Perhaps it was something he remembered from a Space Studies class back at Paradigm Prep.

The edges of the metal part were uneven, with liquid bumps and bubbles like the thing had been melted at some point. This told Nic that there was some serious heat involved. He didn’t see any other weathering or signs of scorching, though. Let’s defer to the expert here, he thought.

“Looks like part of the stabilizer bar, if I had to hazard a guess,” Perri mused, examining the piece delicately. “Or what’s left of it. RTIFIS, do you know the part number for this?”

the AI answered.

“Let me guess,” Nic broke the silence. “The heat damage here is inconsistent with a bad entry.”

Perri clicked her tongue and gave him a thumb up. “You’re exactly right. High heat. But it’s not scorched or warped or melted all over, it’s really just all around the edges here...” She turned the hunk of metal bar so that the others could see it. “See what I mean?”

“It didn’t get burned in atmospheric entry,” said Jarek, “so it must have happened after it landed. How, though?”

“Explosives,” said Nic. He clenched his fists. “It seems obvious to me. This has gone way beyond a prank or even sabotage.”

“Do you reckon that’s what it was?” Maqsud replied, tapping his chin with his forefinger. “Explosives? You’re right, that’s far worse than mere mischief. That’s incredibly dangerous—some might say an act of genuine war. The first real war in centuries... corporation on corporation now, instead of nation against nation or planet against planet.”

“What do you think?” Jarek asked Perri.

She stared at the part for a while longer. “It’s a pretty internal part, so the rest might have survived. At the very least, we know the black box survived—it’s astrosteel for a reason. Ordinarily, I’d say it would have to be some kind of internal explosion or combustion—but I would expect the edges to be warped out, you know? There’s not really any warping, just melting. I’m no forensics expert or whatever, but this feels... off.”

Max nodded. “I’m no expert either—not in this field, at least—but I’d wager that it takes seriously high temperatures not only to melt that thick hunk of metal, but also to break it away from the probe completely. Considerable force involved as well, unless it was pure heat. How does one explain that?”

“Whatever it is,” said Nic, growing more resolute by the minute, “it’s absolutely in violation of the Treaty of 2401. Whoever’s responsible is going to have serious hell to pay when WorldGov hears about this.”

“Let’s not get too hasty,” Max chuckled nervously. “I mean, even if there are enemies in our vocational midst, it’s not as if they’re physically on the planet with us right now.”

“We don’t know that.” For the first time since exiting the proxybot module on the Corvette, Nic checked his HUD to ensure he was, in fact, carrying a fully-loaded SMG and Pistol. “We should be prepared for anything.”

“We don’t know that in the same sense we don’t know that our Devi Drive won’t malfunction and disassemble us at the atomic level in the wormhole to our next destination...” Max shivered visibly. “But that’s the sort of thing one takes for granted lest he go insane, is it not?”

“Guys, I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about in the here and now,” said Perri. “Right, RTIFIS? Are you detecting any pings from any ships other than our Corvette, anywhere on Nereus?”

RTIFIS replied.

“See? This is just major intel to report to Red Terraforming. That’s all.”

Nic was about to say something when a single rock, about the size of a proxybot head, tumbled down the mountain slope next to them, coming to a stop barely a meter from the group. He detached the Pistol from his belt and held it down at his side. Scanning for signs of movement yielded no results.

“Man, do you think that’s needed?” Jarek asked. “Genuinely. ‘Cuz if you do, then I’ll use mine, too.”

Nic shrugged. “I don’t think it’s needed yet... per se. I feel more comfortable with mine out. Everyone else, feel free to draw yours, or not. I’m not issuing any orders or anything... yet.” He kept his eyes locked on the slope where the rock originated. Every few seconds, he could have sworn he saw something, a shadow just behind a boulder, or just up the slope... but nothing was there. He holstered his Pistol. “Just stay on your toes and let’s hit the next waypoint.”

As he shifted the Centaur into drive and followed the path laid out by RTIFIS, Nic stole one last glance back up the side of the small mountain.

Maybe it was just a rock. Maybe Team Scarlet truly was alone on Planet Nereus, and he was starting to look for things he wanted to see, trying to conjure conflict where there was none.

Maybe it really was nothing.

You’re kidding yourself again, Siegfried.