Phantom failed to catch her friend after a chase across half the galaxy.

  Where the trace ended the ping for a mission too lucrative to pass up arrived.

  Jess, you don’t even need the money. Why take the challenge?

  She’d skimped on the quantum tunnel. Opted for cryosleep instead.

  Yawn

  Her jaw stretched, the sleep still in her bones—impossible, given she’d just switched bodies again.

  She cracked and rolled her shoulders.

  Jess damn itchy fingers had agreed to another drop from orbit. Not that they had a mind on their, one reason why she hated cybernetics, hackers.

  She looked through the open hatch.

  Below stretched a giant planet, blue and with suspiciously low gravity for its size.

  Mega Earth

  That is what their database said, a type designation as much as a name.

  Jess eyes shifted direction towards her so-called team.

  A spontaneous rendezvous arranged by corporate AI, the conglomerate’s reward, their mission, their preconditions.

  Her annoyance.

  The objective was a search for an S-rank galactic terrorist, name unknown.

  They were all in their sleek cybernetic bodies, except for her.

  Standard protocol was to do a neural mapping body switch for deployment; they’d left the energy-efficient Elf bodies for cryosleep behind when they passed through the strange rift.

  She’d chosen her familiar female Orc body—antiquated, bio-engineered. But it was stronger, tougher, and it didn’t rely on tech that could fail.

  Jess was playing on hardcore mode.

  “You sure about this, Jess?” Jake asked, his voice calm. “Once you jump, there’s no coming back for gear.”

  She adjusted the composite bow on her back. It was low-tech, a reliable secondary weapon—secondary to the big weapon crate she always dove with, which sat behind her on the platform.

  The rest of her gear was minimal: a regenerating black biosuit, nanon-plate armor, and a multi-tool.

  “I’m sure. I’ve done harder drops for centuries.”

  Roxy snorted. “This isn't one of your low-risk escort missions or some backwater colonist rebellion. This is real. Her reputation is all hype. I bet the files exaggerate.”

  She ignored her.

  “If you don't want a near-human-looking cybernetic body like ours, only fair you jump without gear, Jess.”

  She was braced for the nasty, smiling Xero.

  Not Roxy's boot from behind.

  Her glove shrieked against the hull, missing the safety line as momentum wrenched her into the void.

  “She looks like a goblin in that body! Better specs, so what? I'd claw my face off if I looked like that!” Roxy yelled, her voice cutting through the growing rush of wind.

  “You're hot in that suit, Roxy. Glad you don't have freaky tastes like her.” Xero sending it deliberate through open com right in Jess ear.

  A flash of red hair from the ship's hatch. She’d jumped after her, proper gear and backpack secured.

  “Is that why they call her Phantom? Look how she falls. ‘Never failed a mission,’ my ass.”

  Jake gave a casual salute from the hatch as she tumbled down.

  His voice buzzed via her AI chip, transmitted directly by Miri into her mind: “Let it be. As your commander, I respect your choice to go with the antiquated bio-weapon form. Stay out of our way. We'll see you down planetside. If you survive your fall.”

  "YOU BASTARDS! I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS!"

  I can't afford rage.

  She forced her mind to clear. “Miri, calibrate. Why is my energy so low?”

  “Strange interference, Phantom. The same anomalous energy that caused rising complications after our dimensional rift entry.”

  This is going to hurt my butt.

  She burst through a layer of clouds. The platform was low enough; oxygen content increased in the air. She could breathe even without the small, struggling energy shield on her mouth, protected by her biosuit.

  Green below her now.

  Landing behind the shade of night.

  ...10

  She saw ocean, one giant continent.

  Spreading her arms and legs out for maximum drag.

  She spotted a large island in the deep sea—a titanic, earth-made snake coiled around a mountain, shedding soil that grew land.

  ...9

  The shield flickered as if fighting against something in the air. A cyan film burst.

  She gasped.

  “Huhhh.” Inhale. Don't panic, you've done this many times before.

  ...8

  A huge crater in the jungle, distorted space around it.

  ...6

  A strange settlement with a wall large enough to see from space and a lake inside it, a strange spire.

  ...4

  A giant tree far away from the settlement in the depths of primordial forests.

  “Nyx’s trajectory arced wildly north; his stabilizer suite is blinking erratically. Hit some strange cyan vapor in the air. If one of you can trace… and cover…” Jake on the comms to the entire team channel.

  It was one-way.

  ...3

  She closed her eyes.

  “Too late. He’s gone into the cloud cover near the strange crater. Damn. Emergency Protocol. Pop your parachutes.”

  The comms buzzed, then went dark.

  ...2

  She shielded her head with her arms, drawing in her legs.

  ...1

  Bracing for impact. The ground out of view, approaching.

  The landing was a blur of pain and impact. Her biosuit took the brunt, but her Orc body's resilience was the real savior. She felt bones crack and knit, muscles tear and reform.

  She lay in a crater of her own making, staring up at an alien sky—a moon and a band of cyan energy being sucked into the rift they had crossed.

  “Phantom,” Miri's voice was a flatline in her skull. “Emergency priority alert. Temporal sync from the last rift passage is… corrupted.”

  “Define corrupted.” She spat dirt, tasting copper.

  “The energy blast trapped us in transit. The timestamp on the final data packet from our origin dimension is two hundred and fifty years after our departure. The carrier signal terminated. Quantum link is dark.”

  Two hundred and fifty years.

  The blast didn't just knock them off course—it stretched their crossing into a quarter millennium of lost time back home.

  The mission hadn't changed. The credits were still valid somewhere, in some account, in a civilization that had moved on without them.

  Eighteen years he’d had a head start. She’d chased his ghost across space in cryo. The ship’s AI only woke her because his module was gone, broken off from the generation ship mid-transit after an asteroid impact, never to return.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The 8-billion-credit bounty was the only reason to be here. The only reason to join a team on-site.

  My stupid, depressed in-game friend wasn’t just lost. If his module had entered the rift all those years ago, he was dust or burned on re-entry.

  And I was… what? Desperate to find the last human contact I had from Earth? Just here for the money? I still felt that glimmer of hope—that he’d somehow made it.

  Irrational, Jess. Get your act together. This is not the time to zone out.

  She remembered his female Elf crafter handing her Orc assassin daggers. Said he had to go. Stupid guy, wanting to solve everything alone.

  If he’d made it through before them, he’d been here for centuries. If he hadn’t… well. That was a problem for later.

  The bounty was not a fantasy, not some breadcrumb trail; for all she and the team knew and had to assume, it was still active. Whoever the as-yet-undisclosed target might be.

  “Understood.”

  The word tasted like ashes. All that was left was the ground under her back and the air in her lungs.

  Fine. Mission parameters updated: Survive. Secure the bounty. Jake, the commander, hadn't shared the details of the target yet. Corporate was quiet about it. Learn what you can, then figure out what the hell to do.

  By the time she dragged herself out, the others had already touched down nearby. They were checking their gear, calm and professional, as if they hadn't just attempted murder.

  “If Nyx is alive, he’ll find us. If not, he knew the risks.” Jake logged Nyx as mission-loss with a pen on his handheld mission log. She could see the cross he made next to the name.

  “Jake, are you sure we proceed? The parameters are all wrong. Had to pop the parachutes; the gravity dampeners are out.”

  “We can't get back through the rift without securing the bounty. Look up. It's like a vacuum sucking in that strange cyan energy.”

  “Xero, what do the nano-sensors say?”

  “Nothing. We're blind. The air's… funky. Like the energy stream that hit us. Did corporate even disclose where we are?”

  “No. You know the deal. Just basic risks, ‘you likely won't make it back,’ yada yada. The credits would buy us millennia in luxury instead of subsisting like low-class grubs.”

  “At least ten thousand years of life extension and youth. Would stop me from going all old and gray.”

  “Look who's arriving. The princess. The legend.” Roxy smirked, her visor retracting. “Hey, Phantom. You don't hold a grudge over that little prank, do you?”

  She rushed her and punched her in the face.

  “YOU! YOU UNPROFESSIONAL HARLOT! YOU NEARLY KILLED ME!”

  A strong hand clamped on her shoulder. Jake.

  “Van Arden, stop. You've had your revenge. Get it together. That's why you didn't get the command.”

  She kicked Roxy's upward-facing, biosuit-clad ass once more where she sprawled in the dirt.

  Half her gear was left in orbit. All she had was the stupid composite bow and her regenerating biosuit for fancy stuff. Baseline was only the same gray nanite plate armor around vitals the entire team got, and a small multi-tool in her belt.

  “ARGH! FORGET IT!”

  She slumped down against a tree—an oak.

  “Miri, try to contact the Orbital Platform AI.”

  “Negative. No contact.”

  “Great, so not only are we blind, we can't even get a shuttle back when we need to. Jake?”

  “This… this is unpredicted. We have to secure our surroundings, not that we have any other choice. You are all pros. Xero, try to set up comms with the orbital base from your tech kit. Roxy, you take the clearing, test-fire your energy rifle. Nothing is going according to plan. Vanguard, you keep watch. I need to check protocol for this and see if we got any other surprises in the data package. Phantom, report when you are ready for task.” Jake finished, his voice leaving no room for debate.

  Task. Right.

  She pushed off the oak. “Miri, life sign scan. Fifty-meter radius. Passive only.”

  “Scanning. Atmospheric interference high. Energy signatures… anomalous. Biological signatures detected: six within range. Five human-baseline, one non-terrestrial mammalian analogue. Approximate mass: three kilograms. Profile suggests herbivore.”

  A rabbit. Or the local equivalent. Her stomach clenched, reminding her that adrenaline burns calories and Orc metabolism is no joke.

  “Xero,” Jake called to the tech specialist, a lanky man already unpacking a drone array. “Get me environmental reads. Why are my dampeners coughing static?”

  “Working on it, boss. It's not just dampeners. My energy rifle's output is fluctuating. Like the local EM field is… spongy.”

  Roxy, nursing her jaw, hefted her own rifle. “Let's test that.” She aimed at a distant boulder and fired.

  A bolt of plasma lanced out—then dimmed mid-flight, splashing against the stone with half its expected force.

  “See? It's like the air eats energy or something in it.”

  Vanguard, the team's point man and silent type, just grunted. He’d drawn a monomolecular blade from his thigh sheath. It hummed, then the hum died to a faint whine.

  “Blade's field is unstable. Edge retention unknown.”

  She unslung her bow. The composite felt laughably light. She nocked an arrow, aimed at the scurrying, six-legged “rabbit” Miri had highlighted in her HUD.

  Drew.

  Released.

  The arrow flew true. No energy field to fail, no plasma to dim. It struck the creature cleanly. A low-tech kill.

  “Looks like Phantom's relic is the only thing operating at spec,” Jake muttered, walking over to retrieve the kill. He held it up. Its fur was a shimmering blue, and it had two sets of eyes. “Miri. Scan. Edible?”

  “Scanning. Tissue composition is protein-based. No detected toxins or pathogens within my now-limited analytical range. Probability of safe consumption: 87%. Margin of error high due to database inadequacy.”

  “Good enough,” Jake said. “Vanguard, gather burnable biomass. Low-smoke. Xero, keep trying to raise anything on the comms. Roxy, secure the perimeter. Phantom, you're on butcher duty.”

  He tossed her the creature and a field knife from his kit.

  As she worked, the team's mood shifted. The initial shock was wearing off, replaced by a grim, professional focus. This was their element: a messed-up op with broken gear. They were adapting.

  “Why the hell would corporate send us in blind?” Xero hissed, pacing. “My contract promised a villa on Titan's rings. Not… this.”

  “Ten thousand years of youth,” Roxy chimed in from her comms array, her voice strained. “That was the deal. Fix my aging genes. Get out of debt. This… this glitch wasn't in the brochure.”

  “Your brochure,” Jake said, his voice low as he fed a small twig fire. “My intel said this was a clean grab-and-go. A high-value asset who skipped through a rift. The 8-billion-credit bounty was for the asset, alive. Some terrorist or spy. The fact that they wouldn't disclose the target's name… that stank. But the money didn't. Your personal AI will release the information key to release the details after we spend a night here, not before.”

  She continued field-dressing the six-legged rabbit, her hands moving by rote. The blue fur was soft, the meat underneath a deep violet. Her HUD flickered, Miri's scan overlay glitching with static.

  “Phantom's got the right idea,” Vanguard grunted, sharpening his now-dull monomolecular blade on a stone. “Low tech. Reliable.”

  Roxy snorted, her energy rifle disassembled on a cloth. “Yeah, and we will look like medieval reenactors? My great-great-grandma used a bow. I'm supposed to be the pinnacle of human augmentation.”

  “Pinnacle's looking a little rusty,” Xero muttered, smacking his comms unit. “AI, give me a diagnostic on the energy dampeners. And why is my fabricator reporting a 99% failure rate on basic synthesis?”

  His AI's voice, genderless and calm, echoed from his wrist. “Local energetic interference is disrupting quantum-coherent processes. Fabrication protocols are compromised. Energy weapons are operating at 12% efficiency and declining.”

  Jake tossed another stick on the fire. “So we're stuck with what we have. And what we have is… whatever Phantom can shoot, and whatever we can carry.”

  The creature's meat sizzled as she skewered it on a green stick. The smell was gamey, alien. Her stomach growled.

  "Shuttle back up is unsolved and the time thing? Spooky, keep it as uncomfirmed for now my signals don't say much but seems credible." Xero tapped around on a tree stump he used as seat.

  “Hey, AI,” Roxy said, tapping her own wrist unit. “Make me some salt. I'm not eating that without seasoning.”

  A soft hum, then a click. “Synthesis failed. Available energy insufficient for molecular assembly.”

  “Great. We're going to die of blandness.” Roxy leaned back, her red hair spilling over her armored shoulders. “You know, I had a reservation at the Nebula Lounge on Olympus Mons next month. Ten-course tasting menu. Now I'm eating alien roadkill. Even booked a quantum tunnel instead of cryosleep old-tech. Thought it was worth the galactic credits.”

  Xero laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “I was going to buy a moon. A small one. With a vineyard.”

  “Life extension,” Vanguard said quietly, his eyes on the fire. “That's all I wanted. My body's ninety percent augments, but the brain… the brain still ages. I was going to live long enough to see the stars die.”

  They were all here for a future. A retirement. A dream. She was here because a stupid, depressed gamer had run away from his problems and she'd chased him into the void. And now he was either dust or a legend.

  She focused on the meat, turning it. “Miri, any luck on mineral analysis? We need electrolytes if we are stranded for weeks or month.”

  “Scanning. Sodium chloride deposits detected in a streambed approximately two hundred meters northeast. Purity is suboptimal, but within tolerable limits for human and Orc physiology.”

  She stood, brushing dirt from her legs. “I'll get salt.”

  Jake's hand shot out, grabbing her wrist. His grip was firm, cybernetic. “I didn't give you permission to leave, Phantom.”

  Keep calm, Jess.

  In her mind, she already planned ten ways to ditch the team of amateurs to go off on her own, but things were too weird even for her standards. Twenty ways to use her bow, create chaos, shoot to wound. A side glance at the red-headed cause of her lack of gear. How she would drag them down when she was already out of range between the strange mix of trees and giant fungi. From the shade, she would trail them for days in the dark of night, taking them down one by one, sparing her for last.

  It was a bad fantasy I fought to get out of my mind.

  Preparation was one thing, the right preparation. Salt.

  “We need salt. Our bodies will cramp without it. Your augments might handle it, but my Orc biology is bio-based. It needs what it needs.” She turned to Xero. “Can your fabricator make anything? Even a little?”

  Xero shook his head. “It's barely keeping my internal power cells charged. I'm running on reserves.”

  Vanguard stood, towering over the fire. “I'll go with her. Two of us, close range. We'll be quick.”

  Jake's eyes narrowed, calculating. He knew she was right. “Fine. Ten minutes. And take this.” He tossed her a small scanner. “It's glitching, but it might pick up anything bigger than a rabbit.”

  Vanguard and she moved into the treeline. The forest was dense, the air thick with the smell of wet soil and something sweet, almost floral. Their footfalls were silent, trained.

  “I thought you were mad for going for biological neuro-transfer instead of cybernetics, but now it seems like you are the most secure. Sad that we couldn't keep the cryosleep bodies.”

  “You mean the low-energy life forms?”

  “Yeah, but they don't give out E.L.F. bodies for anything but cryosleep,” Vanguard said, his voice a low rumble.

  She glanced at him. “Because they're reusable and their DNA is not locked. My Orc body is better for combat, can go on deployment. Genetic material impossible to clone. Corporate doesn't hand out immortality for free.”

  “Worse,” he said, pushing aside a branch. “They're programmable. You can wipe them, reload a new consciousness. The high society? They've been doing it for centuries. We space peasants are just… tools. Disposable tools with an expiration date.”

  She didn't answer. She'd known that. Everyone in the black ops circles knew it. The low-energy Eternal Life Form bodies were the ultimate corporate secret—and the ultimate leash. Each had a tiny tracker and detonator.

  The stream was where Miri had said, a trickle of clear water over gray stones. She knelt, scraping a handful of gritty sediment. It tasted of salt and something metallic.

  “Contact,” Vanguard hissed, his blade humming to life, then sputtering. “Three o'clock. Big.”

  “We retreat back to the others. Run!”

  A mass of feathers and a giant beak.

  “SCREEEEEEECH!”

  It hit a rotten log and burst it with a peck. She rolled to the side.

  The bipedal bird, the size of a tree, turned its head and spotted Vanguard, who was already running away. She saw the prey drive rise in its eyes. She was out of sight for the moment.

  “VANGUARD! LATERAL MOVEMENT! DON'T RUN STRAIGHT! IT IS TOO FAST! STRAFE OR ZIG-ZAG!”

  She pulled her bow.

  Playing hero, Jess? That's not what I want. My subconscious again. I just want to beat this thing. Yes, tell it to yourself. Should have gone to therapy for the disconnect between body and mind after so many missions. Silence me.

  “VANGUARD, CAN'T YOU HEAR ME?!”

  She shot.

  The bird looked, but then pecked down, its beak opening wide. With Vanguard twitching like a giant bug, it lifted him up and gulped him down, a bulge lining its long neck.

  Her hand loosened by reflex. The arrow impacted uselessly on its beak.

  It needed to turn to see her. At least one weakness.

  And there it came. It charged at her, beak straight ahead.

  She saw herself reflected in the black of its slit-like eyes.

  “SCREEEEEEEEEAAAARCH!”

  She was close enough to see herself reflected in the black of its eyes.