"Just west of here, in a grassy plain beyond the woods. It's small and only has a few soldiers. They are the misfits of the Surtu military, assigned to mechanical duty far from the front lines. There are more broken down pieces of equipment than soldiers."

"And your friend Kista is one of them?"

"She goes by Kist. No one knows she's a woman. She disguises it well."

Bellona huffed. "Why disguise you're a woman at all?"

"Surtu women are treated as if they are delicate flowers. Only a few remain, and the men restrict their activities. Joining the military is not permitted."

"But she did join. According to you, it was so she could help the women of Earth," Bellona recalled.

"We are part of her bloodline. Her grandmother is human. She was a colonist on Florentine when it was attacked sixty years ago by the Surtu."

"So her grandmother is a slave? Was she one of the first women forced into a light bond to children?"

"Yes. Her grandmother is a slave, and her grandfather is her captor, though I don't think Kista sees it that way. She admits her grandfather is a heathen, but she doesn't realize that as long as her grandmother remains on Surt, she is still a prisoner."

"I'm interested in meeting this girl," Bellona admitted, "but it'll be hard not to hate her if she looks anything like the rest of the Depraved."

"She does," I told her. "She's much smaller than the Surtu men, but she has the same unique eyes. Surtu traits are dominant when the bloodlines are mixed."

Bellona clenched her fists. "That's why we must find a way to end this."

"If we can, this is the best place to start. Kista is our link to the network and the resistance. But we must tread carefully. You and I will sneak into the camp. We will speak with Kista and take Juventas if she decides to put her clothes back on. Everyone else will stay here with the ship. If the Surtu saw us land, the ship will be their only means of escape. They should not scatter into the woods. They should return to the ship and leave."

"I'll let them know," Bellona said. She was not my second-in-command. As a lone assassin, she ruled herself. But her loyalty was with the women of the Fortuna, and her actions were guided by whatever was in their best interest.

I glanced back at the waterfall, marveling at the power of its current. A drop of water was insignificant, but an entire river was strong enough to carve out a mountainside.

"Good," I replied. "If we're going to survive this, we need to stick together."

We didn't sneak into the camp until nightfall. The moon above us was a symbol of our strength and femininity. It lit the grassy plain around us that stretched beyond the woodlands.

There was moonlight to show us where to walk, but it was dark enough so we could remain cloaked in shadows as our feet padded softly against the grass. I was tense. I had been caught traveling here once before. They were not going to catch me again.

Thankfully, we reached the camp without trouble. While Juventas and I waited near the outer canvas tent, Bellona silently entered the Surtu lair. She was the most skilled of us when it came to staying undetected. When I thought of her, I imagined a deadly force waiting to strike, like a fog creeping across a village, bringing hidden poison with it.

We heard a whisper of conversation from nearby. Without making a sound, I signaled Juventas to crouch down. I pressed my ear to the tent as some men entered. They were chatting.

"There are too many tits to choose from here," a Surtu soldier announced. "I didn't think the harvest would be as abundant as this."

"You fool," the other said with derision. "There are no women here right now."

"Well, I could have had two pairs of tits in my bed last night. Coming here was the best thing to happen to us. I don't mind speaking this shitty language anymore if it gets me between a woman's legs."

I felt sick. The Surtu were not supposed to touch a woman outside of a light bond. Children born from a light bond were more likely to grow healthy and strong, increasing their chances of survival.

Did they even remember why they were on Earth?

Breaking orders was punishable by death, but apparently some of these bastards were willing to risk it. I grew angry on behalf of the women. Their integrity had been taken.

Juventas was next to me and saw my face. She put out an arm to restrain me and shook her head, telling me now was not the time for vengeance.

I knew it, but my rage did not go away.

Luckily, Bellona returned before I surrendered and led us away from the tent to an abandoned Surtu tank mostly destroyed in the war. The tank was beyond repair. Knowing that our soldiers fired on the tank gave me satisfaction. We climbed inside and pulled close the heavy metal hatch above our heads. Here we could talk freely.

"I found Kista," Bellona told us. "It has to be her a scrawny male with short brown hair and soft features. She's near the back next to a campfire with a dozen or so others. They're drunk and filthy."

I had a feeling she meant their language and not their appearance. Since the Surtu on mechanical duty did not fight on the front lines, their uniforms were almost pristine, free of blood and warfare, marred only with grease, oil, and liquor.

"We have to pull her away when she's alone," I said. "We can't risk revealing her. Her work here is helpful. The Surtu military barely acknowledges this place exists, and only the worst soldiers serve here. It leaves Kista free to work on behalf of the network. We can't risk her being discovered."

"When they pass out drunk, I'll bring her here," Bellona decided.

I nodded in agreement. "We'll ask her to arrange for our penetration into the network."

"The resistance," Bellona corrected. "The Surtu run the network in tandem with the resistance, but the resistance is where we need to be."

"The resistance then," I said, not viewing them as two separate entities, the way Bellona did. We were all working towards the same goal unity. But I understood Bellona's point. There was a line, and it was the same line that divided Jidden and me. The Surtu still worked in the interest of the Surtu. And we still worked in the interest of our people.

The tank suddenly rocked, interrupting our plans. Although there was little room to do so, we jumped to our feet as the hatch opened.

A blaster pointed at the tank. A meaty soldier with a drunken red face held it. "What's going on here?" he asked with a smile.

"Nothing you'll live to tell," Bellona hissed.

"I think I will," he said. "Come with me."

The soldier had a weapon and he had us trapped. We had no choice but to follow him. He led us to the back of the camp, using his blaster like a herding stick. I couldn't believe this was happening to me again.

"Remind me to get one of those," Bellona muttered.

We joined his colleagues who were sitting around the fire. Kista was one of them.

"Look who I found while taking a piss," the soldier sang, delighted. "More tits."

Kista frowned when she saw me. She had helped me escape once. I doubted she could assist again this time. "I thought I told you not to get caught again," she whispered.

I said nothing, but I was worried. Was she drunk? Why was she talking about such things in the open in front of other soldiers?

Her whispers were loud, and the soldier with the blaster overheard her. "Do you know her?" he asked.

"She's the Commander of the Fortuna," Kista revealed.

My heart sank, and I was shocked at her betrayal. Kista had saved me earlier. I had thought she was trustworthy and a sister of the cause. I had been wrong. The atmosphere around the fire changed as the soldiers sobered up quickly.

"You're Terra?" the soldier asked, shifting the blaster from generally pointing at us to explicitly aiming at me. "Captain Fore is looking for you. There's a price tag on your head. A hefty price tag."

I tensed my muscles and got ready for action. I could take the blaster from him. However, he wasn't the only armed soldier around. Bellona, Juventas, and I had training in hand-to-hand combat, but we were no match against a camp full of blasters.

"Let my sisters go," I negotiated. "If you let them go, I'll stay freely. You'll be able to collect your bounty."

"To hell with that," Juventas protested, and she smashed her burly hands together. "Let's get this fight started."

Everyone around the campfire broke out into laughter. "We're not handing you over," Kista said. "We're all part of the network now."

I couldn't believe it. "Are you kidding me?"

To show they were serious, the soldier with the blaster stepped back and dropped his weapon to the ground. "I had to make sure you weren't spies," he explained. "Not all humans trust the network. They don't want our help."

"Can you blame them?" Bellona snapped.

He shrugged in reply and took his place back by the fire.

"We'd appreciate an explanation," I said to Kista.

A soldier with a missing hand leaned forward to speak. "Word got back to us about the network. A bunch of Surtu helping humans escape. It meant nothing to us until we heard about all the ass the renegade soldiers got from women throwing themselves at them. Some Earth women go crazy for the big bad Surtu."

I blushed and hoped no one noticed my embarrassment.

"Having groupies drooling after our cocks was a much better deal than waiting to get scraps from our superiors. Best of all, we can mate without a light bond."

He lifted his tin mug, causing the rest around the campfire to holler and cheer in agreement.

"No one likes to taste the same piece of ass twice," he concluded. "Especially not when it's thrown at you for free. So we decided to become renegades before we knew about Kist's defection. We had to kill a few of our men in the process, but we don't miss them."

Kist. So they still didn't know her real gender. Some secrets remained.

Bellona stepped forward and looked skeptical. "How do you operate here?"

"To our people, we're lowlifes," Kista told her. "Especially now that the capitals have fallen, the only time we hear from High Command is when they need a vehicle fixed. No one watches us out here. They have forgotten about us, but we keep up pretenses. We are the ears for the network. When we travel to deliver a fixed hover bike, we listen to what is happening and pass the information on to those who benefit most."

"So no one else in the military knows what you're up to?" I confirmed.

"Only those who are also within the network."

"Have you heard from your High Command today?"

Kista was surprised I had asked. "They did ask about an ambiguous blip on the terrain scanners, but we told them nothing was out there."

"Why did you tell them that?"

"Because we didn't care if there was a ship or not," another soldier answered.

"Well, there is something out there," I began, but Bellona cut me off.

"Terra, don't say anything else," she warned. "We don't know if they're telling the truth."

"It's what we came here for," I argued. "I can't speak for all the men here, but we can trust Kist."

Relenting, Bellona stepped back, staying shoulder-to-shoulder with Juventas. They listened to the conversation quietly, relying on me speak.

I addressed the group. "Almost all the women of the Fortuna are here. Our ship is in the woods. We want to help."

"The notorious Fortuna. I'll drink to that!" a soldier said, raising his mug. "More tits!"

"More warriors," Bellona said, throwing him the look of death. "We're here to fight."

"Can you help us?" I asked Kista.

She didn't smile. It would weaken her reputation as the King of Torture to do so. But she was happy. I could see the way the flecks of light danced in her eyes.

"Gladly," she said.

"This is where I'm going to rebury her," Bellona confided to me after we returned to the river in the woods. "It feels appropriate. Look how happy the women are to be back home. And it's quiet. She'll be at peace here."

I immediately knew she was speaking about Gallia.

"Did you bring Gallia with us?"

"Yes, I did. After we decided I would pilot Jidden's ship, I knew it was her chance to leave as well. I told the women to prepare, and then I took a glider to retrieve the body. She would want an Earth burial."

"We must have missed each other," I mused. "I was visiting her grave when the wildfire broke out."

I hesitated, unsure if I should tell her about the orb that had led me away from Gallia's grave to the cave where a vision of my brother Daniel waited. If what I saw was real, Daniel was still alive. I wasn't sure about the rest of my family, but I had to believe I wasn't the only Lynch to survive the war with the Surtu.

"You saw the orb, didn't you." Bellona finished for me.

"How did you know?"

"I've seen it too, now and again, but I don't think it is Gallia."

"No. I came to the same conclusion. It's not Gallia's ghost, as comforting as that would be. I think it's related to whatever sent the beacon that guided everyone to the planet. A strange and mysterious force is influencing us."

"Whatever it may be, it's not our problem. We're finally home, and I don't think any of us is in a hurry to go back."

"I have to return, at some point," I said, staring up at the stars.

"For Jidden," Bellona said without thinking.

"And for Lucina," I said. "I regret leaving her. She's our sister too. She wanted to come home."

"She wasn't ready. She's still so frail and troubled. You were protecting her."

"Perhaps," I said. "Or maybe I was only selfish."

My argument with Jidden resonated in my mind. One of his reasons for forbidding me to return to Earth was to protect me from facing captivity again. I had judged him for it, but I was guilty of the same crime. I had left Lucina at the refuge to protect her, against her wishes.