"Good enough," Icey said, pouring himself three fingers' worth and tossing it back in a gulp. He made a face, examined the empty glass for a moment, then poured himself some more and filled his companions' glasses.

"Heh..." Jehrico said. "This reminds me of the drinking contests my brother and I got into awhile back."

"Yeah?" Tycho said.

"Yeah, Denelian. He used to live on Mercury. Glitches probably got him."

"Probably..." Icey said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Funny thing is, I came to Mercury hoping to find him. But when I saw the numbers that survived in Fantasma against Mercury's population..." He shook his head, grimaced, took a swallow of his drink.

"Half a million," Tycho agreed. "And the Cybrids kidnapped about four thousand that we know of. We managed to save half of them."

"I don't suppose the name Denelian Rider is in your rosters," Jehrico muttered. Tycho touched his pocket computer, but Jehrico shook his head. "No, don't. I don't want to know."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."

"Jehrico isn't your real name is it?" Icey said suddenly.

He hesitated, then: "No. It's Zeanian."

"Right. I need to know who my friends are." Icey clapped him on the shoulder, stood, and left. Jehrico watched him go, then turned back to the bar. "Tycho, what the hell is going on around here?"

Tycho shook his head, shrugged helplessly, took another swig of his noxious beverage. "I don't know. I don't really want to either."

"Yeah," Jehrico agreed, then pushed the bottle away from himself. "This place is just too strange," he said softly. "I don't know what is going on, or what is happening to everyone, or what is going to happen. You know we're cut off from the rest of the solar system? We'll never see Earth or Mars again?"

Tycho nodded slowly. "True enough... most of us, though, have all we need right here."

"Good thing," Jehrico said. "For the rest of you."

He slammed his glass on the bar, stood, and left.

"Altas to Ghosts. Battle stations. Cybrid force crossing the plain two kilometers distant, possible intercept. All Ghosts to vehicle bays."

After several minutes, when no relief showed up, he shrugged. His place was in Ops, anyway. No call came in asking about the force, either, and as that realization came to him, he struck his communicator again. "Altas to all Ghosts. Respond."

Only one response came back, and it wasn't the one he was expecting at all. "Hello, my Cybrid friend," came a soft contralto voice. "Let them rest. I'll handle this."
"Maria..." Altas said cautiously. "What did you have in mind?"

"Oh, just a small diversion. I'm kind of weak right now so I won't be able to do anything too drastic."

His sensor screen lit up. "What a nice, small diversion," Altas said as he examined the massive fireball expanding on his screen. The Cybrid nexus in Petrarch erupted into flame which winked out quickly in the vacuum of space. The Cybrid force he was tracking changed course to intersect the nexus. "I would hate to see what you would consider a large diversion."

"You're right," came the reply. "You would. I hope it helps."

"Maria?"

The response was weak, tired. "Yes...?"

"What were those papers Razorback discovered?"

Maria didn't answer, and the channel closed. He glanced at the screen, and saw it was full of code. It was the same kind of code that the Fantasma system used, but the chunks were arranged strangely within the chains.

He recognized one code: a deciphering algorithm. He activated it, loaded up the data from the papers, and ran them through.

Gibberish turned into semi-organized gibberish with a few coherent sentences among the masses of garbage. Altas read what he could decipher, and raised one eyebrow slowly.

It spoke of a mission to the outer solar system Maria had taken when she was part of the Imperial Navy.

He typed a few commands as he read a pattern among the rest of the data, and more coherent sentences showed themselves. He browsed the text, until he came to a page that made him stop short and reread.

We landed, and the Cybrids did not see us. We picked up the dropship's crew, and still the Cybrids did not see us.
We even took off without being seen.

I had not been able to get away, to do what I needed to do, so I took a shuttle and disappeared. By the time they discovered I was gone, they had cleared Neptune's bow shock and I was already on Triton.

I landed at the south pole, beneath a jet of dirty liquid nitrogen, and slipped into the stream. My coldsuit whined as it fought to absorb all the heat it could from the outside. I was swimming in a pool of liquid nitrogen, and only the faintest sunlight trickled through the glassy surface above me.

I swam, or more accurately, sank, down, down a dozen kilometers to the solid surface beneath the crust. I hit the ice that was like rock and fell, striking the solid surface painfully. I knew then that I had made a mistake.

I felt the cold creeping in and knew my suit had reached its limit. It was less than two seventy Kelvin inside my suit, and falling. I looked up, seeing nothing but blackness, feeling the weight of the world above me, and knew I would die here. My immortal brain would mean nothing. I had erred, and I was going to spend eternity locked in the ice of Triton, never to be found.

I felt my body shutting down, and I felt terror. My muscles were frozen, and I could not move. Whoever said death by cold was peaceful and painless never experienced it; pain ripped through every cell of my body.

What call had lured me to my death here? What madness had taken me that I would throw my life away in such a manner?