"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him."
— Henry L. Stimson
The sky over Detroit glowed amber-orange even though it was one in the morning. Luca watched the city grow larger through the Granite Hawk's cockpit window as Zoe brought them in low over what used to be the suburbs. Darkness stretched for miles in every direction, broken only by the industrial core burning bright in the center. Factories must have been running at full tilt because their smokestacks lit up the night sky.
"Jesus," Danny said from behind him. "How much territory did they lose?"
Luca didn't answer. The answer was obvious. The suburbs were gone, swallowed by portals or abandoned when people couldn't hold them. The city had contracted inward, fortified instead of sprawling. What remained looked more like a fortress than whatever it had been before the system arrived.
Detroit tropolitan Airport ca into view below them. Luca counted the watchtowers along the periter wall, searchlights sweeping in overlapping patterns. Whoever ran this place wasn't ssing around.
"Cleared for landing," Zoe said. "Private section. They're sending us to a vertical landing pad."
Luca sat up straighter. "A landing pad?"
"Finally," Zoe said. "First airport we've hit with them."
Luca spotted the landing pads tucked away from the main runways, lit up bright. Ten of them, maybe. Four already had shuttles, plus a rather large dropship with UER markers.
"Gear down," Zoe said.
Luca hit the switch. "Gear down, three green."
The Granite Hawk descended onto the circular pad, no runway approach, just straight down. The shuttle settled with barely a jolt.
"About ti soone built proper infrastructure," Luca said. Every other airport had forced them to land like an airplane. This was how shuttles were supposed to work.
An armored transport waited near the hangar, its engine idling.
The driver was one of Angelo's guys. He didn't say much, just opened the doors and waited while they climbed in.
The SUV rolled through three checkpoints before they even got into the city proper. Each one had guards in different types of armor, and all with energy weapons, the distinct blue light of the power cells visible in the dark.
Once inside the walls, Detroit looked very much alive despite the hour. People moved on the streets, what must have been groups of adventurers in their armor and weapons heading toward the outskirts, while shift workers headed to or from the factories.
Luca's mind kept circling back to the sa question. If Detroit needed all this just to survive, how the hell did the UER think they could control the entire world?
The vehicle turned off the main road and pulled up to a gate set in another wall. Beyond it, Luca saw sothing out of another century. Warehouses and cranes and rivers of molten tal flowing through open channels, casting everything in amber light. Sparks fountained from welding stations. Workers in protective gear moved between the glow, silhouettes against the orange.
The gate rolled open and they drove through.
---
Angelo Ferraro was waiting for them in front of the largest building. He was shorter than Luca expected, maybe five-eight, but rather stocky with thick arms and hands that were covered with scar tissue and yellowed calluses. Fifty-sothing, probably. A little older than Dad. He had deep furrows that pulled the corners of his lips down toward his squared jaw. Luca noticed the pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, the sweet sll of tobacco mixing with the tal and oil in the air. Sothing about him reminded Luca of Nonno Giuseppe.
"Luca Rossi," he said. His voice had a deeper version of the sa Brooklyn accent Athan had when he was angry, plus the added rasp of decades of pipe smoke. "Son, you've grown since I last saw you. What were you, four? Five? You look like your dad, but taller."
Luca tried to rember eting this guy and ca up empty. "Mr. Ferraro," he said. They shook hands. Angelo's grip was designed to test whether Luca's bones were real.
"Angelo. Just Angelo." He pulled the pipe from his mouth and used it to gesture at the rest of the crew. Sothing shifted behind his eyes, sothing that might have been recognition. "This is your team?"
"Yeah," Luca said.
Angelo studied them for a mont, then nodded slowly. "I was about your age when I built this place. That office over there." He pointed with the pipe stem. "Started with three guys and a welding torch." He looked at Ryan and Chris. "Engineers?"
"Yeah," Ryan said.
"Good. You'll need them." Angelo turned and started walking toward the warehouse. "Co on. I'll show you what we do here."
The interior yard was bigger than it looked from the outside. Multiple warehouses, each one dedicated to different work. Angelo led them through the first one, and Luca felt Ryan and Chris drifting toward the workbenches on their tiptoes, their necks craned forward as if pulled by a magnetic force toward the lathe. Weapon modifications filled the tables, System energy rifles being fitted with custom components. Workers were bent over their stations, sparks flying.
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"We modify everything," Angelo said. "The System gives us the weapons, but they don't always do what we need them to do. We fix that."
The second warehouse was even more impressive. Armor plating, likely for tanks, huge sheets of composite material, hydraulic presses stamping out sections that would eventually bolt onto Abrams or Bradleys. Beyond it, through the open doors, Luca could see the foundry proper. Smokestacks rising against the night sky, cranes hauling crucibles of molten alloy, the whole operation bathed in that sa golden glow.
"How many people work here?" Emily asked.
"About a hundred and forty," Angelo said. "Three shifts, twenty-four hours. We don't stop."
Luca watched the operation, trying to process it. His father had recomnded this guy, but Luca wasn't sure what for yet.
"Can we talk about the order?" Luca asked. "The equipnt we need for the Triumph?"
Angelo stopped walking. He turned and gave Luca a look like he'd just asked to borrow money. "No."
"What?"
"I said no." Angelo's expression hadn't changed. "You think you fly in here at three in the morning, I show you so machines, you hand a credit chit and fly away? That how you think this works?"
Luca felt heat rising in his chest. "My father said you could help us."
"Your father says a lot of things." Angelo started moving again, toward a small office away from the warehouses. "He also said you were smart. We'll see about that. Co on."
Ryan looked pissed as he gave Luca a look that scread what the hell. Luca didn't have an answer. They followed.
Ryan and Luca followed Angelo in, the office was too small to fit the whole team, and everyone else stayed out, watching the craftsn at work.
Angelo, with his back toward them, operated a stainless steel espresso machine, the only machinery in the entire place that was devoid of grease stains and produced three small espresso cups. He poured Ryan and Luca shots of espresso, then pulled out a second bottle and added clear liquid on top.
"Sit."
Luca sat. The espresso was strong and delicious, while the sambuca on top burned going down with that sharp anise bite. Ryan, who didn't understand coffee, made a face but drank it anyway.
Angelo leaned back in his chair and pulled the pipe from his mouth. He scraped at it with a small tool from his pocket, taking his ti, dumping the old tobacco into a tray on the desk. Then he pulled out a leather pouch and started refilling it, pressing the fresh tobacco down with his thumb. He took his sweet ti while he was looking at them. Really looking at them, the way Nonno used to when he thought Luca was being an idiot.
"Your father asked about ship security," Angelo said. "Not weapons. Access control. Who gets in where, who can override what, how to keep your systems locked down when you've got a hundred strangers living on your ship." He took a sip from his cup. "You know what I told him?"
"What?" Luca asked.
"I told him the problem isn't the equipnt."
Luca waited for him to continue.
Angelo struck a match and lit the pipe, puffing until the tobacco caught. Sweet smoke curled up toward the ceiling. He shook out the match.
"Let tell you a story," Angelo said. He settled back in his chair. "Two years ago, the UER contracted to design security for a portal response facility. Forty miles north of Detroit, where the overflow zones start. Level thirty, thirty portals, the kind that spawn the big stuff. They had forty people there, supposed to be checking on portals, you know, making sure they weren't close to overflow. Engineers, security, support staff. They wanted the best interlocks, the best of everything. I gave it to them."
Luca waited while Angelo told his story.
"Facility ran for eight months," Angelo continued. "Then their chief engineer got smart, with System skills in electronics and bypass protocols. He figured out how to tamper with the tower's generator, its system tech, the kind you don't touch. He thought he could boost the output and extend the coverage radius. Give them protection over a wider area."
Luca realized he was holding his breath.
"What happened?" Ryan asked.
Angelo took another sip from his cup. The pipe had gone out. He relit it, taking his ti. "He was right about the boost. He got twenty percent more coverage. Worked great for about six hours."
Luca's stomach tightened.
Angelo puffed on the pipe. "Then the generator failed. The tower collapsed, and the System ca back with a vengeance. Eight level thirty-two portals spawned across a twenty-square-mile area before anyone knew what was happening. Twenty-five people dead in the first hour. The rest barricaded themselves in the command center and called for evacuation."
Angelo set down his cup, and Luca watched him do it, watched the way his hands moved. Steady. Like a man who'd made peace with sothing a long ti ago.
"I built the locks. He bypassed them in ten minutes because he had admin access. It was the best work I've ever done." Angelo's eyes fixed on him. "It didn't matter. Because the problem wasn't the locks. It was trust."
Luca's throat felt dry. He took another sip from his cup and wished it was water. Trust. He thought about the recruitnt lists. Combat specialists. Covert-ops. Infiltrators with System skills that could bypass the best TL8 encryption like it was made of paper. Those were the people he needed to keep everyone alive. Those were also the people who could take his ship apart from the inside if they decided to.
"You're building a crew of a hundred people," Angelo said. "Most of them strangers. System-leveled, which ans they're smart and resourceful and they know how to solve problems. You're going to give them access to your ship because you have to. Engineers need to access engineering. dical needs the d bay. Pilots need the bridge."
Angelo leaned forward, the pipe clenched between his teeth.
"And sooner or later, one of them is going to make a call you wouldn't make. Maybe they're trying to help. Maybe they think they know better. Maybe they're just scared and doing sothing stupid. It doesn't matter. What matters is whether your ship survives when that happens."
"Was there any warning?" Ryan asked. "Before the generator failed?"
Angelo shook his head. "Not until it was too late. Six hours of everything working better than designed, then catastrophic failure. No middle ground."
"So here's my question," Angelo said. "What are you going to do when your engineer bypasses your locks? When your best pilot overrides your navigation? When soone you trust makes the wrong call?"
Luca looked at him. Ryan was sitting right there. Ryan, who tinkered with everything. The lamps in the lounge. The Peregrine's nav systems. The Triumph's power grid. Always had sothing to "improve." And he was usually right, which almost made it worse.
"I don't know," Luca said.
Angelo nodded. "That's the right answer."
His eyes fixed on Luca again.
"So what you're really buying from isn't locks. It's ti. Ti to notice when sothing's wrong. Ti to fix it before it kills everyone. Ti to make the call that your engineer or your pilot can't make because they're too close to the problem."
"That chief engineer," Luca said. "Did you know him?"
"I t him once," Angelo said. "He was a good guy, smart. He was just trying to help his people." He tapped the pipe against his palm. "They tried him afterward. Hung him for it."
Luca looked at Ryan. Ryan looked back, and sothing passed between them. The engineer in Angelo's story had been hung for doing exactly what Ryan did every fucking day. Pushing the limits because he thought he could do better. Ryan's jaw was tight, but he didn't look away.
They were about to take a hundred strangers into deep space for two years. Smart, resourceful people who would trust Luca to make the right calls. But he'd have to trust them too. Trust Ryan to know when good enough was good enough. Trust himself to know when it wasn't.
"Okay," Luca said. "What do we need?"
Angelo pulled the pipe from his mouth and pointed it at Luca. It was the first real smile Luca had seen from him, small but there.
"Now we can talk about equipnt."
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