Upgraded by Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Elizabeth Bear, Madeline Ashby, E. Lily Yu Read Free Book Online Page A

across an ocean. Taken away when aliens landed and ripped our countries away from us. Claimed our planets. There’s a long, long list of things ripped away from people in history. You are not alone.”
    “Unlike them,” you say, “what was taken from me is just within reach now.”
    “At a price,” John says.
    “Everything has a price,” you say, moving toward him.
    John blinks, surprised. He’s been thinking we were having a dialogue, but you were waiting for the gun to dip slightly. For his attention to waver.
    He’s a good shot. Hits you right in the chest. A killing shot. One that would have stopped anyone else. The round penetrates, explodes. Shrapnel shreds the place a heart usually rests.
    But that is just one small part. One bloodstream.
    That faint hiccup of backup pumps dizzies you slightly as your blood pressure shifts and adapts. You cough blood, and grab John. You break his hand as you disarm him and knock him out.
    For a while you sit next to him, the horrible feeling in your chest filling you with waves of pain.
    Eventually that ebbs. You evaluate the damage, glyphs and messages ghosting across your eyeballs as your body, more alien machine than human, begins to process the damage and heal itself.
    You won’t be facing the Satrap in optimal fighting condition.
    But you’re so close. And if you delay, you invite the risk of the Satrap sending someone for John. That could be messy. And it won’t give you the one thing you really want out of all this: an invitation into the Satrap’s personal cavern, deep past its layers of defenses.
    Hello there you slimy alien shit, you’re thinking. I’ve got a treat for you.
    Just come a little closer, and don’t mind the big teeth behind this smile.
    You snap the ammonia capsule apart under John’s nose and he jerks awake. You’re both in a loading bay near the rim of Hope’s End. Water drips off in a corner, and the industrial grit on the walls is old and faded. A section of the habitat that has fallen into disuse.
    “Don’t do this. You should join us, Pepper. Leave all this behind. Start something fresh.”
    “That’s not what’s happening right now,” you say. “The direction of this journey was set a long time ago.” The door at the far end of the bay creaks open.
    “You can’t kill a Satrap,” he says.
    You lean next to him. “Your ships, they were never going to leave Hope’s End. The Satrap here gave you enough fuel to bring those people here. But right now, you’re being given dribs and drabs of antimatter. Enough to go back and from to Earth. But not enough to make it back where you want to go with a whole fleet, right?”
    John is silent.
    You laugh. “The creature strings you along, until it can get what it wants. And then every single person who came here, well, they’ll truly understand the name the few hundred free humans scraping by here gave it. Won’t they? Hope’s End. Because even if you’re free, you’re not free of the Satrap’s long arm. And you’ll be the one who lured them here with tales of a free world.”
    John lets out a deep breath, and slumps forward.
    “But listen to me. Work with me, and I’ll help you get what you need. Do you understand?”
    “Neither of us will walk away alive from this,” John says. “We are both dead men. We’re talking, but we are dead men.”
    The empty-eyed vassals of the Satrap encircle you, a watchful, coordinated crowd that sighs happily as their eyes confirm that you have indeed delivered John deBrun.
    “I want my memories, now,” you say, holding tight to John.
    “Come with us.”
    Somewhere deep inside, hope stirs. Anticipation builds.
    Caution, you warn.
    You’re both herded deep into Hope’s End by ten humans in thrall to the Satrap. Away from the green commons, below the corridors, below the subways and utility pipes, out of storage, and into the core ballast in the heart of the structure. The shadows are everywhere, and fluids drip slowly in the reduced