The moon shone green below us. It wasn’t far now. I really ought to have prepared for insertion, but I had difficulty tearing myself away from that powerful vista. There was something captivating about the unending forests. At the same time, I was aware of what awaited us there. I shuddered and switched from panorama to map mode. With a thought, I asked the navigation program to mark our designated landing site. A bright red cross was placed in the southwestern part of the Sea of Tranquility. I enlarged the image until I floated a little above the treetops, and I carefully scanned the site using both infrared and ultraviolet. There was no sign of any known enemy units. Yusef and HQ had made a wise choice. I hoped.

I let go of the navigation module and was at once floating freely among the shuttle’s thousands of subroutines. They flowed slowly around me in distinct colors. Some were afraid or agitated, for sure, but that was no more than could be expected given our mission.

I checked the input module one last time. Sparkling blue, it floated nearby, calmly awaiting the call to action. I nodded respectfully before I disconnected myself. My life would soon be in its hands.

Someone took my hand. I opened my eyes, gently reclining in one of the shuttle’s chairs. Clarissa leaned over and kissed me. Her long hair tickled my chest. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

“I love you, Rickard,” she said, softly pressing herself against my body.

I slid my fingers through her curls.

“Cut that out!” ordered a voice from beyond the insertion tubes. “You’re on duty!”

A synthetic voice reverberated through the room: “Insertion in fifteen minutes.”

“You hear that? Get over here and put on your suits!”

“Hush, Tim,” said Clarissa, smiling. “There’s always time for a kiss.”

“Or two,” I said, pulling her toward me and kissing her again.

There was a clank. Tim had closed the hatch of insertion tube number four. The nuclear bomb, our very own little gift for the cockroaches, was ready to be deployed. Tim stepped out of the shadows. He was already halfway into his suit. Sure-fingered, he tightened buckle after buckle.

“I’m serious,” he said. His tone was harsh. “We won’t get another chance. Get changed! Now!”

Clarissa stood to attention and gave a perfect salute.

“Yes, Corporal. Will do, Corporal.”

“Go to hell, Coquelin.”

“Yes, Corporal. Thank you, Corporal.”

Tim snorted with contempt, turned around, and put on his helmet. It connected with his suit at the neck, and the whole thing trembled for a moment as the biomechanical control system synchronized with Tim’s neural cortex.

I pushed myself out of the chair and gave Clarissa a quick cuddle. “There’s no point in provoking him.”

“He’s a damn killjoy,” she mumbled. “He knows that we would never miss our time window. I can put my suit on in less than two minutes. Stupid jerk.”

Tim gestured at the microphones on the sides of the helmets.

“Hey! I can hear every little thing with this on my head.”

Clarissa smiled. Of course, she was perfectly aware.

The insertion tube was tight. The UEDF insignia was engraved into the metal above its closed door. As always in this situation, I was stricken with mild claustrophobia. Odd, really, given that the suit was far more constraining than the tube. But after so many years of use, I had grown accustomed to the suit. It was more like an extra layer of my own skin. Sometimes, after a mission, I would feel naked and vulnerable without it.

I tried to think of something other than the lingering feeling of being entombed, and I fastened my gaze on the insignia. It depicted a two-headed eagle standing on Earth or holding the Earth in its claws, depending on how you looked at it. It was the last thing a soldier saw before they were cast down toward certain death. It was HQ’s way of reminding you what you were fighting for. It had undoubtedly come as a suggestion from a Department of Morale psychologist. UEDF never did anything by chance.

“Insertion in one minute,” said a voice in my ears. I was thrown against the back wall, and the shuttle commenced its 140-kilometer descent. It plunged like a black hawk toward the lush, green forests.

“Detaching capsule.”

A small black cocoon shot out of the magnetic cannon on the bottom of the shuttle. It pierced the atmosphere, slammed down at our landing site, and broke apart. From the pieces rose a white mist, filled with pheromones and nanobots, which dispersed rapidly into the surrounding trees.

“Insertion in three, two, one.”

The floor opened, and the tube thrust me out. I was free-falling. I had just enough time to notice some tall mountains to my left and the enormous trees below before I landed. The moon’s gravity is merely a sixth of the Earth’s, and the artificial muscles in my suit took the brunt of the impact, but the landing nonetheless knocked the wind out of me. Several seconds passed before I was able to stand up.

Clarissa was already on her feet beside one of the nearest trees. They stood taller than any forest on Earth and swayed slowly, almost like seaweed, in the quiet breeze.

Tim bent over the nuclear bomb and hit it hard in three specific places. It was long, gleaming black, and had hairy spider legs. After the third blow, it juddered. Then it suddenly jumped up onto Tim’s back like a rucksack, wrapped its legs around his torso, and bonded with the suit. Tim scarcely seemed to notice the extra load, and he turned to us and hissed, “Status?!”

Despite him standing only a few meters away, the radio signal was so weak that it could barely be received. We couldn’t risk the enemy picking it up.

A weaver ant crept out of Clarissa’s index finger and vanished into the tree bark. It left behind a nanothread just a few molecules thick.

“Connected,” said Clarissa. “The trees are calm. The pheromones and nanobots have done their job. Our infiltration has not been reported.”

I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in.

“Good,” said Tim. “Rickard, the bumblebees.”

I activated the drone protocol, and from small openings in my helmet, hundreds of tiny surveillance bees left their nest. They immediately disappeared among the trees.

I nervously checked my APG-37, better known to the troops as the “Avenger,” and reached down to make sure that the vibra-knife was in its place at my hip. The Avenger whined soothingly, and I put it back in its holster. Like the suits, the weapons were made of a combination of carbon fiber and biological components. This made them especially difficult for the cockroaches to detect. At least, that’s what HQ claimed.

It began when some Chinese astronomers pointed their spectroscope at the moon. They immediately realized that something was wrong. The readings showed clear signs of carbon dioxide and water. Careful analysis revealed that a previously unknown microorganism was breaking up the oxygen in the lunar rock and, by a chemical process, had created a thin stratum of air.

Then the plants took root in the dust and painted the lunar seas green. The lowlands were clothed in forest within the course of a year. Anyone with a sufficiently powerful telescope could see the treetops sway in the lunar wind.

Humanity observed the transformation with growing horror. The world’s media was at first convinced that it was seeing the result of a secret military project or that some terraforming company, testing its technology, had gone too far. But time passed and no one took responsibility. Every intelligence agency on the planet, and tens of thousands of journalists, followed every lead. But all their investigations were futile.

The United States and Russia sent a joint expedition to the moon. They landed almost two years after the Chinese discovery and were immediately able to confirm that a complete biotope had been established. The lunar landscape had been changed forever. Not only were there trees and plants, but there was also an abundance of wildlife.

Contact was lost in the middle of a broadcast. Despite Earth’s repeated attempts to reestablish communication, no response came. The landing site was exhaustively surveyed by telescope and satellite, but there was no trace of the expedition.

It was humanity’s first contact with Yi.

The bumblebees returned and crept into my helmet. A detailed topographical map, complete with risk analysis and recommended route, was transmitted to my mind. I placed a hand on Tim’s shoulder and shared the data. He closed his eyes and rummaged through the information.

“Okay, we go this way,” he said, pointing east.

“The bumblebees recommend a more northerly course,” I said.

“Hey! Just shut your mouth and obey orders. Understood?”

“Absolutely. I just thought that …”

“Don’t think.”

“Yes, Corporal.”

He snarled something inaudible, gave the signal for complete radio silence, and disappeared into the forest.

Clarissa shrugged, drew her weapon and went with him. I did not dawdle before following them.

The landing site was high up on a ridge. To the southwest, above some dark mountain peaks, loomed the blue and shimmering Earth. Mountains on the moon were not as big as their Earth cousins, but neither had they been exposed to thousands of years of erosion. They arose, prickly and wild, toward the dark blue sky.

We went carefully down the mountainside. The weak gravity sometimes made it difficult to maintain one’s balance. We had to hop along. I watched Clarissa with admiration. She seemed to glide across the ground: gracious, elegant, deadly. For a moment I was back in the shuttle, holding her in my arms. I blinked the image away and focused on my descent.

The forest grew ever denser around us. Large leaves devoured the pale sunlight and plunged our path into darkness. Long, gently moving air roots hung from the tree trunks, glittering metallically. One of them swung alarmingly near. It flicked and then rolled up. I shuddered and quickly moved out of its reach. I knew from personal experience what the trees could do when they got upset. I had no desire to experience it again.

We passed through a dark and narrow gorge. With a thought, I switched to night vision on one eye and activated the infrared sensors. The suits were designed to radiate the exact temperature of the surrounding environment, and Tim and Clarissa were almost invisible in the dark.

Tim stopped every now and then to order Clarissa to connect to the trees. Everything was calm. My bumblebees flew continuously ahead of us and would return with updated information about topography and wildlife. They had so far not seen any signs of the enemy.

The forest opened up, and we stepped out onto the banks of a waterway. It was broad, almost a river, and rushed along at high speed. The surface bubbled and swirled in bizarre patterns in the low gravity. I could hear the sound of a waterfall in the distance.

Tim grabbed our shoulders.

“Our target is on the other side. Don’t forget to dump your excess heat.”

Clarissa and I waded into the torrent while Tim watched over us, weapon at the ready. The water tickled my legs, and I hastily plunged in so that I could feel it caress my whole body. With a thought, I opened a hatch at the bottom of my spine. A soft hissing sound could be heard when water came into contact with the heat sink. The suit’s temperature balance was aligned in moments.

I again caught sight of Earth, hanging just above the horizon. She looked lonely and abandoned, so incredibly far away. I could see with my bare eyes the terrible scars after all these years of war.

The water became deeper and deeper, and we were forced to swim. It was no easy task with the swift current and low gravity. I kept a nanothread attached to Clarissa’s shoulder, so we could talk.

“What is up with Tim?” The question tumbled out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop it. “I must have done twenty missions with him. He’s always been a damn perfectionist. But I can’t remember him ever being so … angry.”

“I don’t know,” said Clarissa. “It could be that his personality matrix has started to degenerate. That kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen, but …”

I nodded.

Rumors abounded about UEDF experimenting with individual personality matrices between revivifications. It was said that there were soldiers with matrices so twisted that they lost all sense and savvy. HQ was forced to archive them for good. The worst thing was that there was no way to check if you had been a victim of this yourself, or whether the whole thing was just an elaborate rumor.

A priority five alarm cut through my brain. A bumblebee, whining intensely, sent back images from several hundred meters upstream. A ten-meter tall, starfish-like creature roamed along the shore. A pentapod, heading straight toward us! It might come into view at any moment.

I immediately transferred the images to Clarissa. Her eyes widened in despair. I turned to Tim, made the sign for a pentapod, and indicated its direction and distance. Tim leapt into the forest and was gone.

Clarissa looked at the shore on the other side. “We’ll never get across in time.”

“No.” I swallowed and tried to gather my thoughts. “We’ve got just one chance. Let’s see if the pentapod can find us at the bottom!”

Together, we dove into the river’s murky depths. The sludge at the bottom was not as thick as I had hoped. Probably because the current was so powerful. I pushed myself down, my back against gravel and stones. My body continually sought to float upward, so I shot a few microhooks out from my hands and feet. With another thought I ordered my heart to beat with a slow, uneven rhythm. Otherwise the rhythmic beats could reveal our presence to the pentapod. Clarissa lay still beside me in the dark. I could feel her body slowing down as well. Now all that was left to do was wait. And hope.

The seconds dragged on. The suit’s chronometer did not appear to move. Time itself seemed to distort, and I began to lose consciousness. Cautiously, I raised my heart rate a little. Not because I thought I would have a chance to survive if we were discovered, but because I wanted to at least be conscious if it was going to kill us. It seemed like a more dignified way to go.

But the pentapod did not come. I suddenly became convinced that it must have gone off in a different direction. I was just about to uncouple myself from the stones and communicate with Clarissa when the sun’s quivering rays vanished and a tentacle, as broad as an elephant’s leg, crashed down into the riverbed about a half meter away from me. The pentapod was standing right above us. The shapeless body hovered among the treetops. Weapon pods hung between its legs. They swung back and forth in time with its slow movements.

After what felt like an eternity, the tentacle was lifted off the river bottom. Sludge and gravel swirled around us, and the pentapod moved on.

Yi had attacked the Earth in three places at once: North America, West Africa, and Central Asia. In North America, the United States’ military pushed back with everything it had. The landing attempt was repelled, but only after horrendous battles and heavy losses. Likewise, a coalition of European Union and African Union forces prevented the cockroaches from gaining a foothold in Africa. In Central Asia, however, there was no army to offer resistance. What was left of Russia’s rusting military machine was too far away, and China, despite its enormous industrial capacity, was completely unprepared.

Hordes of nightmarish creatures thundered across the plains of Asia and slaughtered everyone in their path. It is estimated that over a billion people were eaten in the first month alone. Yi expanded their territory at an alarming pace. Soon Yi trees were swaying in Earth’s winds. The Asian countries tried to fight back, but despite killing thousands of the monstrous beasts, new swarms constantly flooded out of the dark forests.

The nations of the world soon realized that if Yi were not stopped, humanity would face complete and utter annihilation. In desperation, nuclear bombs were used to create a corridor across Asia. An entire continent was set ablaze. The ash cloud filled the atmosphere and blocked out the sunlight. The temperature fell and nuclear winter commenced. Harvests failed, crops died, and hundreds of millions starved to death. But the ash also caused Yi’s forests to wither. The enemy’s progress was halted, and the world’s united military powers could catch their breath. It was time to strike back.

The pentapod’s suffocating shadow was gone. But we did not move. Only when the chronometer indicated that a half hour had passed did we cautiously detach ourselves from the bottom and rise up to the surface. Tim was waiting in the forest on the other side. He gestured “all clear.” He looked angry, of course. I was weary, since I had set my heartbeat to such a low rate for such a long time. I had to drag myself onto the shore.

“What the hell were you doing?” said Tim. “Couldn’t you have warned us earlier? I thought I’d lost you! Don’t you know how important this mission is to HQ?”

Tim’s eyes blazed. I sighed inwardly. I had hoped for a hint of something else, perhaps happiness. A word of relief that we had survived, or a friendly handshake. That’s what the old Tim would have done. Instead, he turned around and said, “Well, can we go and find that damned library now? Hurry up!”

I sent out the bumblebees again. Tim insisted that, from now on, their reports go to him first before returning to me. I objected that his suit was not built for the number of drones needed to deliver adequate situational awareness. In fact, it would create a bottleneck in our surveillance system. But it was useless. Tim did not want to listen.

We continued walking, northward this time. The bumblebees’ information streams were so abysmally disrupted that I silently cursed Tim’s pigheadedness.

Some rabbitlike creatures fled as we passed. It did not matter that they had seen us. Animals of that size were, for some reason, not part of Yi’s network and could not report our presence. They were complementary life-forms, necessary for the moon’s biotope. Nonetheless, UEDF would sometimes send expeditions to capture and study specimens of these species. You could never take anything for granted with Yi.

After an hour of uneventful walking we reached our target. With trunks typically greater than seven meters in diameter, the library trees were among the most powerful life-forms in Yi’s biotope. They curled upward through the forest canopy and farther still, a good distance into the moon’s thin atmosphere, where they observed everything that took place within tens of kilometers. Leaves as big as tabletops swayed gently in the breeze.

A broad smile spread across Clarissa’s face. “Isn’t it amazing?!” She placed a hand on the rough bark and stroked it.

Tim looked anxiously around and, annoyed, grabbed Clarissa by the wrist. “What are you waiting for?”

“Let go of me!” Her voice was cold as ice.

Tim’s eyes narrowed.

Clarissa put her hand to her vibra-knife.

Tim muttered and released her. “Hurry up! We don’t have all day.”

“This isn’t something you can rush,” said Clarissa. “If I go in too aggressively, I’ll frighten the processes and the tree will sound the alarm. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Tim turned his back to her. Clarissa resumed stroking the tree. She moved her palms in caressing circles until she suddenly seemed to find what she was looking for. She closed her eyes, and a weaver ant climbed out of her index finger and found a way into the bark.

“I’m in,” she said. Then she trembled, and a big smile spread across her face once more. “It’s so beautiful.” She laughed softly. “They are welcoming me. I’m one of them. Hold on and I’ll retrieve some information. Look at this …”

Five leaves lowered themselves in front of Tim and me. They lit up, and pictures of our vicinity, as observed by the trees’ network, flashed past.

“So much data,” muttered Clarissa. “It has been standing here for a very long time. It must have been one of the first trees planted.” Then she was quiet for a while before triumphantly exclaiming, “Got it!”

Centipedes as large as freight trains scampered across the leaves in front of us. Their armored bodies shone black in the sunlight, and their countless legs rippled like waves as they moved.

“This is where their routes are.” A topographical map was displayed on one of the leaves, with the centipedes’ travel routes marked in red. “They converge at the lakeshore in Sector A3. They must have hidden the base on the lakebed.”

“Then let’s go for another swim,” I said.

“No,” said Clarissa. “Look at this.” There was more flickering on the leaves. Pictures from the lake. A spiny back cleaved the shimmering surface and a jet of water shot into the sky. A thousand daggers set in an unimaginably vast jaw glinted in the sun before the leviathan submerged and disappeared again into the deep.

“They have a lindworm in the lake!”

“Probably more than one.”

“They would tear us to pieces.”

Tim stared at the images as though entranced. Then he took hold of Clarissa’s shoulder and downloaded all the information into his system.

“We obviously can’t swim down to the base and infiltrate it from the outside,” he said. “But the centipedes must be getting inside somehow. There has to be a tunnel.”

“But what will happen if we go down the tunnel and a centipede comes along?”

“I think we can avoid that problem if we go down as soon as one of them passes,” said Tim. “It will give us a little time … hopefully.”

“But you can’t be sure,” said Clarissa. “They don’t seem to be operating on a regular timetable.”

Tim waved his hand dismissively.

“Even so, we need to risk it. We need to get the job done.”

Tim took point again and walked northeast at high speed. I tried to persuade him to take a more easterly course, where our maps indicated that it would be easier to get down to the lake beyond the waterfall. But Tim did not want to cross the river again.

The trees suddenly thinned, and we stared out into the empty void. At our feet, the mountainside plunged down several hundred meters, and a forest-bedecked valley spread out as far as we could see. A light breeze made the tree leaves dance, and we caught a glimpse of a shimmering lake to the north.

“That’s where we’re going,” said Tim, indicating with his whole hand. “Soon nothing will be left of their damned research base.”

“I still think we should try going further to the east,” I said.

“Your opinion is noted, soldier,” muttered Tim. “Keep going.”

“Look,” said Clarissa. “Down there! It looks like some kind of road.”

I made the suit enlarge the image and could only nod in agreement. A passage like a grassy country road went through the forest.

“Wait a moment,” said Clarissa. She closed her eyes, and I knew that she was comparing our position with the logistical map she had stolen from the library tree. Then she nodded, content. “That’s right. It’s one of the centipedes’ routes. If we follow it, it will take us to the base.” She turned to Tim. “Corporal. We could fly down.”

“And show Yi exactly where we are? Out of the question.”

“I don’t think they would detect us. Not if we are quick enough and stay close to the rock face.”

“Forget it. Now let’s go.”

Clarissa sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Corporal.”

Tim vanished into the trees once more. Clarissa looked at me and I shrugged. Tim walked faster and faster, as if he was itching to get to the base and blow it to pieces. The forest became sparser. There were boulders lying here and there, overgrown with some kind of lichen. We could barely make out the abyss slightly to the east of us. But Tim led us away from the precipice, ever further northwest.

“Corporal,” said Clarissa. “I don’t want to question your orders, but I really think that flying down would be the most effective tactic. There only seem to be a few passes through which we can travel by foot, and they will all most likely be guarded by …”

Tim turned and stared at her. Clarissa lowered her gaze. Satisfied with her silence, he took some steps up a rocky crest. An instant later his head was ripped to pieces by a consuming flash.

The decapitated body rolled down toward us, and for a second we could not move. Then everything happened at once. Ampules of adrenalin were released directly into our bloodstream. My heart raced. I threw myself forward and turned Tim’s body onto its stomach. Blinding flashes surged over our heads, and trees and stones burned around us.

The nuclear bomb, discovering that its bearer was dead, released its grip and took a hobbling step away from the corpse. I grabbed it and hit it three times on its shiny shell. I watched Clarissa raid Tim’s body of its grenades and lob them over the crest. The grenades cheered and laughed when they struck the enemy. At the same time, the bomb seemed to know what I was thinking, jumped up onto my back and integrated itself with my suit.

Then we ran.

The trees were roused from their slumber. Metallic air roots grabbed wildly at us. I glanced back and saw some of them take hold of Tim’s body. It was lifted up into the air and torn to shreds. With a lump in my throat, I remembered how badly it could hurt.

A couple of roots came dangerously close, and Clarissa chopped them with her vibra-knife. They fell helplessly to the ground. We ran, our vibra-knives slashing everything in their way, leaving a trail of mutilated trees behind us. But there were ever more roots, and the trees began to coordinate their movements. It was only a matter of time before we would no longer be able to run.

The bumblebees reported in, and for the first time in hours, with Tim now dead, I was able to gain a good understanding of the local setting.

“There are three pentapods,” I said. “They were standing guard at a pass which leads down to the lake. We’d never have been able to get by them.”

Clarissa said nothing. She dodged under a root and cut off another which was trying to wrap itself around her throat. New images flashed into my mind.

“It looks like you managed to injure one of them with the grenades. But the other two are coming after us. We’ve got about thirty seconds …”

Clarissa screamed and fell to the ground. A root had twisted around her ankle and was pulling her backward through the dirt. I flew at it and chopped it off with a single blow. The trees attacked us from all directions. One root encircled my throat and another wrapped around my arm, but Clarissa cut them off, took hold of me, and together we broke through a gap in the trees. The roots tried to spread over our backs, but we hacked and slashed our way onward.

A low-pitched trumpeting sounded through the forest. It was so loud that it seemed to shake the ground. It was the pentapods’ echolocation pulse. They had us targeted.

“We’ve got just one chance,” said Clarissa.

She pulled me around a boulder, and we were once again at the precipice.

“Look!” she exclaimed, pointing. Far below was a centipede scurrying along the path. “It’s b …”

I never heard what she said because she bounded over the edge, knocked her arms and legs together, and when she opened them, there was glider canopy in between. I jumped as well. Aided by the low gravity, we floated gently out over the abyss. The thin atmosphere strained the canopy fabric, but despite being merely a few molecules thick, it was virtually indestructible.

The centipede moved swiftly below us, and I realized that we had to hasten our speed so as not to miss it. Clarissa must have realized that, too, because she brought her arms and legs together and dived at her prey. We dashed downward, hurtling just an arm’s length from the cliff face. I thought I could hear the nuclear bomb giggle with glee. Then Clarissa spread out her arms and legs to obtain maximum air resistance and landed, catlike, atop the shell of the onrushing centipede. I landed a few meters behind her a second later. The insect’s armor was smoother than I had expected. Had I not instinctively fired microhooks out of my hands and feet, I would have bounced off.

There again came the muffled blare of the pentapods’ trumpeting. But it was all the more distant.

Clarissa crawled over to me. “Do you think we got away?”

“I don’t know.” I cast a glance back. I could see that, at the very least, there were no pentapods looking down at us from the cliff. “The centipede doesn’t seem to have noticed us. But it’s only a matter of time before they realize that we’re no longer on the cliff and broaden their search pattern.”

Clarissa nodded. “And we’ll never get into the base if we stay here in full view on the centipede’s back.”

“What else can we do? Hang underneath?”

“No. We hack it and climb inside.”

I smiled at her. “You’re crazy.”

“I know.”

We crawled along the centipede until we found a chink between the plate segments. Clarissa once again made a little ant come out of her index finger.

“I’ve never tried to hack an enemy this big before,” she said. Her voice trembled.

“Just because it’s big doesn’t mean that it’s clever,” I said, stroking her back. “You can do this, no problem.”

“If I can’t, then you’ll need to dive in after me.”

“But I’m no good at hacking. At least, not compared to you.”

She stared into the distance. “You’re better than you think.”

I shrugged and made my own ant creep out of my index finger. They cheerily greeted one another and then, each dragging its own glittering nanothread, disappeared through the gap in the protective plates. It was dark and tight inside, but the ants soon found a thick nerve fiber which ran along the centipede’s spine. They bit into it, and I felt the centipede’s system opening up. I didn’t dive in, but waited.

Clarissa smiled softly at me, her gaze dreamy. Then she closed her eyes and her body collapsed, her consciousness somewhere else.

I anxiously looked around. The landscape was bewitchingly beautiful. The sun shone in the dark sky and the wind blew in my hair. There remained no signs that we were being pursued.

“Help me!”

The thought came via the ant’s nanothread. It was Clarissa. She sounded panic-stricken. I dived in straight away and my surroundings were replaced by a glowing murkiness. Thousands of processes whispered in the dark. Some shone clear blue, others shimmered purple. I looked around for Clarissa and found her beset by two glittering red security protocols. She tried to finish one of them off, only to be attacked by the other. They prevented her from focusing on the task of decoding. It was just a matter of time before she made a mistake and the centipede learned of our presence.

I immediately grabbed the closest process I could find. It was small and pitiful and wriggled in my hand, but I didn’t have time to calm it down. Instead, without hesitation, I tore it apart and let the program code pour out in front of me. I found what I was looking for right at the end—the system’s identification sequences. I copied the relevant segments and wove them together into a compact hacking module as fast as I could.

“Catch!” I said, and I threw the module to Clarissa. She caught it in mid-flight and smashed it into the nearest security protocol. Their red auras immediately dissipated and, satisfied, they floated away.

I gently stroked the poor process I had just butchered, and sewed it back together. Confused but consoled, it speedily swam away and hid.

Clarissa floated over to me. She sparkled like a thousand stars. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, reaching out to touch her. My hand went right through.

“Don’t be silly,” she laughed. “Go out and keep watch. I can take care of myself now.”

I saluted nonchalantly, which elicited a smile from her, and I disconnected myself.

I opened my eyes and once more found myself clamped on top of the gigantic centipede. The trees we were passing, just meters away, looked like a blurry maelstrom. Clarissa’s body lay limp beside me. For a moment I wanted to close my eyes again and be by her side—the one who shone with silvery light. But instead, I got up to see better.

Still no enemies. We were incredibly lucky. But it wouldn’t last. It never did when you were fighting Yi.

There was a hiss of air, and below us and to the side, an armored plate slid open. Clarissa opened her eyes.

“Come on, let’s go in. Herbie wants to give us a lift.”

“Herbie?”

She tenderly stroked the enormous insect. “Yes, that’s what he’s called now.”

It was cold and quiet inside the centipede. The walls had a metallic glow and the floor was clad with some kind of moss. It was in many ways like a freight car in a regular train, although I missed the rhythmic thumping of the tracks. Instead, the floor heaved along in soft waves in concert with the way that the centipede was traveling over the terrain. UEDF’s xenobiologists claimed that all life-forms belonging to Yi were modified heavily from their original form. At one time, perhaps many ages ago on an alien planet, this centipede’s ancestors had lived wild and free. But now it had been adapted to fit the cockroaches’ needs. It had lost its individuality and become part of Yi.

I lay down on the floor and tried to relax. My muscles ached. I closed my eyes, but all I saw was Tim’s headless body being ripped apart in front of me. I sat up and tried to blink the picture away.

“Tim never had time to transmit, did he?” I asked, despite already knowing the answer.

“No, they’ll need to use an old backup. He’s not going to remember any of this.”

I groaned slightly as I leaned on my elbows.

“Could it be that that was what made him so … degraded?”

“What do you mean?”

“I wonder if he has died too many times without transmitting. I’ve heard that the matrix can lose its integrity if it’s not updated with new memories.”

Clarissa yawned.

“I don’t know. The question sounds a bit academic to me. And who cares? All I want to do is kill cockroaches.”

I stared at her. “Do you really not care about what’s happening to us? What we are becoming?”

“I care about you,” she said, lying down beside me. She leaned over to kiss me, and our helmets bumped against one another. She laughed.

I softly ran my hand over her waist and down her thigh, then stopped myself. A deep sigh worked its way out of my chest.

“What is it?” she said.

I tried to find those small, elusive words that I had tried to pin down for so long. Ones that could perhaps describe how I felt, what I feared. I took a deep breath. “My soul is weary.”

“Your soul?” She smirked. Her straight teeth gleamed white. “It’s cute that you’re using such an old-fashioned word. You know full well that we are nothing more than personality matrices and memories encoded in flesh and blood.”

“I know. But sometimes …” I stopped myself and tried to meet her gaze. “I know that I’ve only been revived thirty-nine times and that my personality shouldn’t have been damaged yet. But this is about more than pure mathematics.”

“It’s about your soul?”

“Yes … I can’t help it. I have such a profound feeling that we are more than what HQ claims. That there are other dimensions to our being that we never talk about.”

She looked at me in amazement. I suddenly felt an immense sense of relief. She had neither laughed at me nor become angry.

“You’ve always been an incurable romantic.” She lay closer and began to fiddle with the buckle that kept her helmet on. “And it is something beautiful, something worth preserving.”

It unfastened with a loud click.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think?”

“But we’re in the middle of a mission!”

“We’re safe here. Herbie says that we won’t reach the base for half an hour.” She removed her helmet and took a shallow breath. She wrinkled her nose, laughed, and got to work with the buckles on her suit. “We may only be memories incarnate. But flesh still has its advantages.”

“You’re insane,” I laughed. I fumbled with my own buckles and soon got rid of my helmet. I tasted the air cautiously. It was dry and a little thin, but clearly breathable. I leaned forward and kissed her neck. “I barely know what to do with you.”

“Is that right? That’s not what you said the last time!” she laughed.

I looked at her, puzzled.

“What last time?”

She froze for a heartbeat, but then smiled, relaxed, and undid her last buckles. They unfastened with loud clicks. The suit opened and exposed soft skin.

“Come here, my little romantic, and help me out of this.”

Her body felt warm and soft as I removed the last of her clothes. She was pale like honey in the dim light. She set upon my suit and it soon lay in pieces on the floor. My body trembled as I disconnected with the biomechanical control system. I reached out my hand and she joined it with hers. Then every thought dissolved, and I vanished into her.

We arrived at the cockroaches’ base in Sector A3 twenty-eight minutes and thirty-six seconds later. Two minutes and twenty-two seconds earlier, Herbie, as Clarissa insisted on calling him, had rushed into a tunnel and we now found ourselves far beneath the glittering surface of the lake. Herbie stopped at a platform. It was empty. The walls and floor, interspersed with veins and roots, pulsated red. We could see through Herbie’s own sensor system that a pair of broad gates were opening. Seven cockroaches came hovering through the opening, each within its own shimmering soap bubble. They were as big as horses, but otherwise reminiscent of their earthly cousins. However, their exoskeletons were so flexible that they could twist their upper bodies, and in addition to six legs, they also had four arms positioned behind their fearsome jaws. Xenobiologists suspected that the arms had, in countless ages past, been used to hold prey still while they ate it, which also explained the razor-sharp claws.

Following the cockroaches was an army of porters, termite-like insects with disproportionally large jaws. They were deathly pale and swarmed over the floor. Herbie juddered and plates opened all along the side of its body. But some plated sections remained closed, including ours, and none of the cockroaches or porters seemed to care.

The termites went into Herbie and then back out in a steady stream, carrying white cocoons several times larger than themselves. The porters soon plundered the centipede of its cargo. They disappeared together with the cockroaches into the depths of the base. The gates closed behind them. The platform, which just moments before had been teeming with life, now lay deserted and empty once again.

“Now,” said Clarissa, and Herbie slid open the plates which had hidden us.

With Avengers drawn, we stepped cautiously onto the platform. I could feel random vibrations through the soles of the suit’s boots, but everything was otherwise quiet.

“We should detonate the bomb on this platform,” I said. “Then we might actually have a chance of getting out again and being able to transmit. I would like to remember this mission …”

Clarissa walked over to one of the gates and moved her hand over it.

“Our mission is to take the bomb deep into the base to inflict maximum damage. Besides, I would really like to take a look at their database.”

I stiffened. “This is a nuclear bomb, damn it! It doesn’t matter where we set it off. All that will be left of this place will be a gigantic, radioactive hole.”

“A radioactive lake, in this case …” said Clarissa, as she continued to feel the door. “Aha!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve found the enzyme lock. Initiating decoding. We’ll soon be through.”

Then one of the nearest gates slid open. I swung around just in time to see a cockroach scurry out. It opened fire and my right arm burnt off. I fell on my back, screaming, while the suit restricted blood flow and pumped me full of painkillers and adrenaline.

Clarissa stepped out from beside the wall, Avenger in hand. A flash of light blinded me and in an instant the cockroach’s stomach exploded, shredded intestines spraying across the platform. A loud chirping noise came from the ceiling and the walls lit up, pulsating violet. Clarissa raced over to the dead insect. Above its cruel jaw, between its compound eyes, was a damp little gland. She pulled her vibra-knife, thrust it into the damp flesh, twisted, and cut it off.

Then she jumped back, pressed the gland against the enzyme lock, and the gate slid aside. She took hold of my left arm and dragged me through the opening at exactly the same moment that two more cockroaches scurried onto the platform. The gate closed behind us and Clarissa put her hand on the lock.

“The enzymes have been recoded using a randomly mutating algorithm. That ought to hold them for a while.”

I was too dazed to understand what she was saying. I looked down at my right arm and saw that there was just a stump left. Clarissa saw me looking.

“It’s nothing that HQ can’t fix,” she assured me.

The cavern we had entered was immersed in darkness, but we could just make out long lines of something resembling capsules. I activated night vision. Clarissa took my hand and we ran together between the rows. Some shone weakly from inside, and I recognized the shape.

“It’s the pentapods,” I said. “This must be where they grow them.”

“Probably clones, every last one of them,” muttered Clarissa. She held her Avenger more firmly and pushed the cockroach’s gland into my remaining hand. “Here, take this. I can’t open doors and shoot at the same time.”

We came to a new gate at the other end of the hall. It opened as soon as I touched it with the gland. Clarissa took a step through the opening, holding her Avenger out in front of her. There was a flash. An entire row of cloning capsules flew into the air. And so, too, did two cockroaches who had been waiting for us.

“We won’t survive another ambush,” said Clarissa, biting her lip. “We’ll arm the bomb here.”

With a thought, the nuclear bomb jumped down to the floor. It seemed to belong in the base with its long, shining black body and crawling spider legs. Clarissa tapped it and a panel slid aside. Using her nimble fingers she began to type in the long code sequences.

Despite all the anesthetic, the pain in my stump was intense, and I stumbled over to the nearest wall to support myself. But I was too frantic to rest, and I cast uneasy glances toward the exit. I noticed that the wall closest to me looked different. Among all the veins was an indentation, almost an alcove. I stepped in and touched the back wall. It was thin. Just a membrane. Without thinking, I brushed the gland against it and the membrane dissolved.

I glanced behind me. Clarissa was still working on the bomb. Her fingers moved over the buttons like she was playing a grand piano. I took a step into the hidden room. I heard behind me the click of Clarissa turning the key. The bomb was armed. Our mission complete.

But then my attention was drawn to the objects in front of me. They looked like cloning capsules, just like the ones we had already passed, but smaller in size. The room was bigger than it appeared on first impression. Rows of capsules disappeared into the darkness. I walked over to the first one and carefully pulled aside the outer membranes and tried to see inside the container. The capsule must have sensed my presence because it lit up from within, illuminating the figure inside. There was no mistaking its form.

I stumbled backwards.

“Humans!” I murmured to myself. “They’re cloning people.”

I heard footsteps behind me, and I spun around just in time to see Clarissa point the Avenger at my head.

“You were never supposed to see this.”

I stared in confusion at the weapon. My brain refused to accept what I was seeing. “What are you doing?”

“What I must.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I stumbled backwards and tried desperately to comprehend what was happening. Then suddenly I could see the answer in Clarissa’s eyes, in her sad smile. An icy cold spread along my spine and my stomach clenched into one big knot. I began to shake as the suit injected yet another cocktail of adrenaline.

Clarissa took a step forward. She placed the muzzle against my forehead and held it steady. Her pupils were wide open. I realized that she was high on survival meds as well.

She was going to shoot my head off.

But HQ needed to know.

My only chance would be for an emergency transmission to penetrate both the base walls and the water above. There wasn’t much hope, but it was better than nothing.

“You are one of them,” I said, as I activated the transmission protocol. My spine tensed as it metallicized and the memory dump was transmitted through the temporarily melded vertebrae.

“Did you have to go and do that?” Clarissa sighed, and pulled the trigger.

I awaken. The surgical table under me is hard and it digs into my shoulders. The neuromask still covers my face.

“Synaptic matrix activated. Cohesion 97.3%,” says a synthetic voice. “Memory object incomplete. Checksum algorithms applied. The margin of error is within acceptable parameters.”

My ears prick up and hear the familiar sounds of the robo-doctors’ servo motors, the cleaning cats’ soft paws, and the eternal hum from the ventilation system. I’m back in the revivification department at HQ. I’m safe.

Someone is moving around in the room. The mask lifts from my head and is instantly replaced by a blinding, flashing light. This is the part of the awakening that I hate most. I squeeze my eyes shut and writhe in pain.

“Take it away.” The words sound strange and my tongue feels swollen in my mouth.

Someone laughs.

“Yusef, is that you?”

A large hand is laid on my shoulder. Its rough calluses make my fresh skin sting.

“Welcome back, soldier! Congratulations on a job well done!”

I force my eyes open. Yusef Deniz smiles at me. He is, as always, impeccably dressed in his UEDF uniform, and his black beard is trimmed and well-groomed.

“Water.”

Yusef passes me a glass that stood waiting on a table beside me. He smiles sternly while I drink.

“You really showed those roaches who’s boss. It’ll be awhile before they recover from this blow.”

I suddenly begin to shake. Something went wrong with the mission. Foggy memories take shape in my mind. There was Clarissa, leaning over the bomb. A door. A new room filled with … The mists flow together and form a figure. Clarissa, with her weapon, pointed at my head.

My Clarissa!

“She shot me.” The words pour out of me like a sob.

“What?”

“Clarissa. She shot me.”

“What are you talking about?”

I shake even harder. My hands cling to the sides of the surgical table.

“She pointed her weapon at my head and pulled the trigger.”

The wrinkles around Yusef’s dark eyes become deeper and deeper.

“Why would she do that?”

Why? I try to formulate an answer. But nothing comes to me. My mind is empty, a void. As if the best part of me had been ripped out of my body. Clarissa! I start to hyperventilate and suddenly I’m on the floor. I don’t remember how I got there. The robo-doctor is on its knees beside me, and together with Yusef, it lifts me up onto the surgical table. The robot presses something against my throat, and I hear the sound of an injection pen. I relax and a sense of wellbeing spreads throughout my body.

Then I see them in front of me. Row after row of cloning capsules filled with people.

“She is one of them.” I take a stifled breath and try to control my sobs. “She’s Yi. She’s with the damn cockroaches! She’s been fooling us this whole time!”

I see in Yusef’s eyes that he does not believe me.

“Just take it easy. Clarissa is one of our very best agents. Do you know that before she transmitted herself, she hacked their database and pulled out the coordinates of another twenty installations? Stealth missiles are on their way there right now. Soon, all that will be left of their precious research stations will be piles of gravel.”

Yusef smiles and leans back.

“But you don’t understand,” I shout. “I saw them. Humans! We’ve been infiltrated!”

Yusef scratches his chin, then grunts something inaudible and a clinic door slides open. Clarissa walks in, escorted by two soldiers.

My heart beats so hard that I think my new blood vessels will burst. She comes over to me, stands right beside me, leans down and presses her lips to my forehead. I jolt and try to push her away, but my arms have no strength.

“Why are you just standing there?” I scream at the guards. “Arrest her!”

“I’m sorry, darling.”

I glare frantically, first at one face and then the next. The soldiers look determined. Yusef’s eyes are tired. Clarissa smiles a melancholy smile. All at once I understand.

“You’re like her. You’re all Yi, the whole lot of you!”

“And so are you,” says Yusef, softly. He stares at the floor.

A sudden rage brings me to my feet. I stagger and support myself against the wall. The metal is cold and hard on my hands.

“No way! I am human!”

“There haven’t been any humans for several generations.”

A chill pierces my naked body and I again begin to shake.

“What are you talking about?”

“Look around you!” says Yusef. “Where do you think we got all of this technology from? To clone new bodies for fallen soldiers, to save memories, hack the enemy’s network, to manipulate their own technology at the molecular level?”

“We stole it!”

“No, we got it. We are not human. We are Yi.”

I shake even harder. Clarissa takes a blanket from an adjacent surgical table and places it over my shoulders. She strokes my cheek tenderly. I pull away, and she takes a step back. I use the blanket to cover my nakedness. Pull it tightly around me.

“I don’t understand.”

Yusef clears his throat, as if something is stuck in it. It echoes hollowly in the little room.

“Yi were in too much of a hurry when they invaded Earth. The war didn’t go as they planned. Humanity started to strike back. The roaches were forced to change tactics. They took genetic material from humans and created something new. Something that was a part of them. The infiltration was very successful. The last of the humans died out in just a few generations.”

My legs refuse to hold me upright. I slump feebly to the floor. “It can’t be true.”

“Believe me,” says Yusef. “Humanity has been extinct for a long time. We are all that’s left now, an imitation, more machine than man.”

“Pff, speak for yourself!” says Clarissa. “I’m definitely no machine!”

“How do you know?” says Yusef. He folds his arms over his chest as though this was an old debate he had heard many times before.

“How could the old humans know that they weren’t machines?” says Clarissa. “Well, through the lives they lived! It’s the same for us. I can know pleasure, I can create, I can choose!” She turns her eyes to me. “I can love!” She throws her arms in the air in front of Yusef. “I think, therefore I fucking am!”

The world spins. It is too much to take in. Too much that I do not understand.

“But if we are Yi,” I say, “then why is the war still raging?”

Yusef scratches his beard again, and for a moment his gaze wanders along the wall’s well-polished panels.

“Yi ordered us to deactivate ourselves. But nothing happened. Perhaps we inherited too much of our original human models. Maybe we inherited something of the human soul. Because we are still here, and the war goes on.”

Clarissa puts her fists against her hips and snorts contemptuously.

“The cockroaches are trying to exterminate us, just like they wiped out the old humans. We’re nothing more than a failed experiment to them. A degenerate life-form to be terminated.”

“They’re right, in a way,” says Yusef. “We are an imitation, a biologically designed replica.”

“No! We are the next stage in humanity’s evolution. We are the best of both worlds! We are the future! We will drive the cockroaches from our world. We’ll kick them off the moon and pursue them from star to star, until they are all dead!”

Clarissa’s voice is filled with passion. Yusef is just shaking his head.

“But … do people know about this?”

“No. We have kept it within UEDF. Even here there are only a few who know the truth.”

I see in front of me the hundreds of millions of people who struggle through life in the shadow of the war. Ordinary people who work hard, raise children, hug their families, and sacrifice everything for the war effort.

I clench my fists.

“So, you mean to say that people don’t have a clue about what they are? They need to know! They have a right to know.”

Yusef shakes his head slowly and gestures to Clarissa.

“It’s not possible, darling,” she says, “not yet.” She gets down on her knees beside me and plays with my hair. “We must first win the war. The human sense of identity is very strong. If they got to know the truth it would lead to chaos. We would risk total collapse. The entire war effort would be jeopardized. It would undermine everything we have fought for. Everything we have died for.”

It isn’t right. I can feel it in the depths of my being. I grit my teeth, push Clarissa away, and drag myself up onto the surgical table again. People need to know. And if UEDF won’t tell then I’ll do it.

“I understand,” I say through closed lips. “I won’t say a thing.”

“Yes, you would,” says Yusef. He grimaces and sighs. Then he draws his Avenger out of its holster and gives it to Clarissa. “You don’t really think that this is the first time, do you?”

I am sent reeling as the enormity of the conspiracy truly dawns on me.

“How many times have I actually been awakened?” My voice is raspy. No one answers. “More than forty, right?”

I cannot hide my bitterness. I feel sick. My body lurches forward, as if to vomit, but no matter how much I retch, nothing comes. With tears in my eyes I look up at Clarissa. Her gaze is full of warmth. She leans forward and kisses me. Her long hair tickles my chest. She smells good. Then she points the muzzle of her weapon at my head.

“I love you,” she says. “We’ll soon be together again.”

“It won’t be me. Not really.”

“Yes, it will. I always recognize your soul.”