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“Harvester five. It’s down.”

Gregor shifted in his chair. “Down? Down how?”

“We’ve lost contact with the driver and guard. It happened during a resource switch.”

“Do the croatoans know?”

“They’re on the way. I contacted a mobile unit to intercept.”

Gregor slammed his fist on the desk. “Send out our croatoan team. If it’s the little wasp, I want him dead. Even if they get a sniff of him, bomb the whole area. I don’t care. The harvesters will just have to work longer and harder.”

He hoped he’d seen the last of the little wasp, someone who had already taken out two of his harvesters in a similar manner: land mines coupled with a direct assault. This might be the third time in five months, denting Gregor’s statistics, making him appear out of control.

The croatoans didn’t seem bothered up to now. They claimed it was mild resistance compared to other planets.

Their patience would only stretch so far before snapping.

“They might not like it. They only came in from patrol an hour ago,” Alex said.

Gregor slammed his fist on the desk again, knocking the plate off. Alex winced as it smashed on the floor. “They’re attached to this facility and will do what I say. Send them. Now.”

“I’ll get right to it,” Alex said.

“Where’s Layla?”

Out of all the humans attached to the operation, Layla had a level of competence that Gregor admired. If something was happening, he wanted her there.

“I think she’s already gone out to investigate.”

“I can always replace you with Layla, Alex. Send you back to the farm?”

Alex backed away from the desk, turned, and stumbled out of the door.

Gregor doubted Alex’s abilities, but with the business with Marek, she’d taken over as Gregor’s second-in-command two days ago. Marek had been Gregor’s friend since childhood, growing up in Yerevan. They’d stolen together, fought together, and graduated into the same gang until they came to run it. Alex was just a junior member when the shit hit the fan in 2014.

Everything was fine, Gregor thought, until Marek went missing for twenty-four hours, then turned up on the edge of camp, semi-conscious, tied to a tree. A plank was hung around his body with ‘Fifth Columnist’ painted across it in bright red letters. Two of his fingers had been snapped backwards, and he’d taken a beating. The little wasp, that fuckstain Charlie Jackson who fancied himself as some kind of vigilante hero, had interrogated and beat Gregor’s lifelong friend for information.

Gregor slipped into a pair of jeans, pulled on a brown, woolly sweater, and fastened his steel toe-capped boots. They were always useful when delivering kicks to the farm animals or his junior staff. He clipped on a hip holster and inserted his pistol.

The door rattled three times again.

“What?” Gregor shouted, not even trying to hide his annoyance.

Alex half-opened the door. “A shuttle’s coming. Just thought I’d—”

Gregor could already hear the humming engines growing increasingly louder as a shuttle descended toward camp. The mother ship had turned up in 2025 near the end of the ice age.

It always held a faint white presence when the sky was clear, hanging up there like a specter or a spiritual portent, but then what did Gregor have with spirits? He knew there was no God the day the Earth was taken from them by the croatoans.

Fuck ‘em, he thought. Just play the game, survive, climb the ladder. That’s all there was left now. No point in fighting them; humanity had already lost too much.

Gregor retrieved a plastic tortoiseshell comb from his back pocket and smoothed his thick, black hair into a side parting. Shoving Alex out of the way, he stepped outside into the bright sunshine bathing the camp.

* * *

Six pink rings appeared over the camp. The humming took on a sharper edge as the shuttle plunged through the troposphere, its cobalt outline becoming visible against the sky’s blue-orange surroundings.

Ever since the croatoans started harvesting the earth for their root, the orange dust floated up into the atmosphere, giving the sky a strange, permanent tan.

Gregor stood by the landing zone at the back of the farm surrounded by trees. Solar-powered markers ran around the edge of the two-hundred-yard square strip. It had already been turned into scorched earth from repeated take-offs and landings, a regular, twice-daily occurrence for the last three months, usually for the transportation of croatoans. But never this early in the morning.

Alex stood by his side. “What do you think they want?”

“It’s obvious. They’re going to complain about the harvester. We’re going to need a sacrificial lamb.”

“Do you want me to dress a human from the paddock?”

He drummed his fingers on his chin. “No, bring me Igor.”

“Igor?”

“You heard me.”

Igor, it had been reported to Gregor, thought he knew better on how the facility should be run. Additionally, Igor had been seen fraternizing with the camp’s allocation of croatoan scouts and engineers.

They weren’t supposed to mix. Gregor suspected the worm was up to something. Igor had been one of the few to survive the ice age along with Gregor and his fellow gang members. Used to run a small protection racket in Moscow, fancied himself as some crime lord.

Gregor had ways of dealing with competition. It was dog-eat-dog these days, after all.

The shuttle steadied a hundred yards above. Its pink circles took on a darker glow for the final descent. The ground rumbled. Gregor pulled the woolly sweater over his nose and mouth and shielded his eyes.

Dust and burnt grass showered him as the shuttle gracefully dropped and bounced softly to a halt.

He was always struck with how bland these craft looked. Nothing as exciting as what he’d seen on TV but a lot more deadly. Two years ago, somebody fired on one from the ground. The response from the pulse cannon mounted on the roof was devastating.

Although violence was rarely the croatoan way.

That was more Gregor’s domain. As the human resource officer on the ground, he had to maintain discipline with the local team and livestock.

A door on the side of the shuttle punched open and slid to one side with an electric groan followed by a graphite-colored ramp extending onto the ground. Through the darkness, a human male strode out in a long, purple robe flanked by two croatoans in their gray armored suits, carrying black rifles.

Mr. Augustus. The human-croatoan chief liaison. The only human to have visited the mother ship, and the only human to have visited and worked directly with the alien hierarchy.

Augustus thought he was some sort of king. Strutting around dressed like a fool, treating everyone with lofty derision. He wore a creepy mask to hide his facial features. Gregor thought it was an attempt to intimidate or for Augustus to make himself appear alien.

Gregor raised his hand and swallowed his hate. “Hello, Mr. Augustus. Nice to see you again.”

Augustus didn’t acknowledge the welcome. He looked into the sky and then approached Gregor, stopping inches from his face. Gentle clicking came from the two croatoans behind him. Their shiny gold visors always had a way of making Gregor feel uneasy. Not that he could read their ugly faces anyway.

“It’s been reported that another harvester has gone offline this morning,” Augustus said. “Are you aware of this?”

“I’ve sent my force to deal with the situation,” Gregor said. “I’m expecting a report back within the hour.”

Augustus shook his head and sucked in his breath before stepping back and taking on a calmer composure.

When the sinkholes happened and the croatoans rose out of the earth in 2014, Gregor’s gang thrived into a position of strength during the decade-long mini ice age, taking advantage of the confusion in the dwindling population. As the aliens approached Armenia, he spied on them and noticed them dealing with another human who wore a mask: Mr. Augustus. He brokered a deal with the pompous old man. They’d provide an interface for the operational arm. Help control things from the ground.