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  Shareholders started to panic again, and share prices floored. Management had a lot more to answer for. Many still remembered the bad press following the disclosure of the Cyborgs. This, was more than they’d bargained for and started leaving a sinking ship. People were not happy.

  Then other new seeded worlds came to the Empire’s notice. Worlds, Earth Corp had also kept quiet about. And a new mission took hold. Check them out. Make sure they were no risk to the Empire. No one would be allowed to target them ever again. The Empire sent in peaceful emissaries to ensure these were safe worlds and negotiated contracts and trade, increasing the Empires reach. With expansion came knowledge. More data, told of even more worlds. Worlds, that could be more dangerous than what they’d already found. They were out there, and his mission was clear. Find them.

  ***

  They were back. God damn it! Every time, she’d hoped in the back of her mind they’d seen the last of them. Someone had triggered the alarm. That only meant one thing. It was blearing out. She could hear her people reacting as they’d been trained to do beyond her office door. Getting up quickly from her desk, she grabbed her communicator and ran to the door, opening it. She was swamped by people she knew making their way to their posts. People would be frightened and scared. “Keep it together people. You know what to do.” She called out.

  The last time they’d come, they’d lost more people. The attackers were getting more and more aggressive. More determined. More reckless. Part of her relished the wait being over, the other part…… just registered her own fear. She knew it for what it was. Fear for an enemy that had arrived without provocation and started to decimate their world and their people. Reducing them to living underground once more.

  She was scared too. Not that she could tell anyone that or show it. Swallowing down her own despair, she pushed out into the throng and started running. Making her way through the warren of tunnels. Brenna had a feeling, it would never be over until they were either all dead, or they got in. Nether prospect appealed to her. She’d rather be dead than be at their mercy. She’d seen how they’d treated prisoners, captives. She hoped the women had died quickly. Then again,” her mind told her, “this time they were probably all die anyway… She ran on, pushing the thoughts away. They’d done all they could this time. Those thoughts weren’t going to help anyone right now. Grabbing her walkie from her belt she pressed the connect button. “How bad?” she screamed out over the noise of the alarm reverberating along the corridors. Jesus that was loud….

  “They’re attacking in two sections this time.” Paul her communications officer told her.

  Shit. Could they hold two entrances? If one failed…… “Send reinforcements to both where am I needed?”

  “Exit 3. They’re through the first barrier already. The second is holding them. Their using laser cannons and grenades of some kind. Cameras are shaky. Some are gone. It’s a mess out there.” Bren stopped, panting hard.

  Damn it. They’d reinforced all entrances after the last raid and laid out a number of surprises. “Are they breaching the new defences?”

  “No. They’re their not there yet.”

  Bren nodded to no one in particular, her mind racing. “Be ready to pull everyone back, if they get passed the next barriers. I’m heading there now.”

  Bren ran on. “Defensive positions,” she called out as she passed people running in various directions, some carrying arms, others children. “They are hitting us in two sections. Find your team leader and get orders.”

  She knew they all had a role to pay. Every able-bodied person did. As she rounded the next corner the noise grew louder. It broke her heart to see so many of her people taking up arms rather than just living their lives. She stopped as she approached the entrance walkway to exit 3. There were already wounded being dragged back. No one got left behind, not again. Injured they were still a target for these people. She pressed her communicator again. “Medical to Exit 3.”

  This was not what her great great great grandparents had been promised. So much for a utopia, she thought bitterly running on. Having been promised a new life and new opportunities no longer available on Old Earth, they’d jumped at the chance of being one couple of 340 others taking a chance on a new world. All of them handpicked with the skills to start a new life on an unknown world. A lifetime away in stasis, to have something better in the end. A future.

  And for a time, it had seemed just like they’d promised. The planet was different in so many ways to Old Earth and no one had really known what to expect but they’d come with hope. Air samples from the exploratory ships, had told them it had an oxygen atmosphere close to what Old Earth once had, but it was thin and would need terraforming to boost it. It held good soil, plants and animal life and it held water, good water and they’d brought enough seed stock to start planting straight away. The terraforming equipment would improve the air quality. They’d come prepared, not sure if they would find animals that were a danger or another culture already here, but none of that had not shown up on those first scans.

  So they’d brought hardy seeds and stock that could take root in the harshest of conditions and it had been a success. Within six month they had their own fresh corn, wheat, fruits, salads, vegetables had taken and there’d been varying successes and they’d learnt quickly. They animal stock that survived stasis, bounced back and soon grew into adulthood. It brought them a variety of meat and other benefits such as milk, cheese, butter, eggs, boosting their diets.

  They used the seeding ship as it had been designed to do and began to dismantle it on arrival. Reusing the pieces for building materials and equipment to support a community. Large boring machines were used to make tunnels under ground. Safety tunnels that could be used to live in as they took the ship apart and would become storage once they’d moved to building above ground. Her grandparents had retold stories to her, telling of how well it worked. Better than anyone had expected. The ground so suitable for tunnelling that they had created a vast complex, complete with housing and schools, fresh water came in from a boring hole, waste went out the same way. They installed the water and waste recycling but didn’t need it and although underground, it was a good life. They’d been no rush to build topside.

  They’d sealed the tunnels with metal doors from the ship as instructed to do. Creating a barrier that would be wind, air and pollution proof and ran their own air filtration systems. A system that would save their lives if it became needed. And over time, they’d used most of the ship. Kilns were created, the metal melted and remoulded, to help create housing and buildings above ground and slowly people moved out of the tunnels and spread out across the land and the ore tunnelled out, was high in metal ore and perfect for high quality metal work.

  In those first years, Earth Corp came every two years with supplies and materials that had been agreed as part of their contract. The first colonists supplied in return the material from the underground tunnelling that Earth Corp wanted, and it all looked good. The miners in their group, knew quality ore when they saw it, as well as gold, diamonds and other precious stones and metals. Earth Corp hadn’t been stupid. What they’d pulled out of the tunnelling alone, paid for their arrival. And then Earth Corp had failed to turn up on their 6th run. And the next and the next, and suddenly 10 years passed, and no one had seen a ship in all that time. And it became clear, that something must have happened to Earth Corp and no more ships were coming. They were on their own.

  So the colonists had got on with their lives. Raised families, made the planet their home and enjoyed living simple clean healthy lives. Generations were born and died. Their world expanded with life and five generations later, Brenna’s generation came along. She’d been an only ‘late in life’ child to her busy parents. Her mother often spoke to her while growing up, of how much she’d been wanted. Bren never doubted it. They hadn’t given up hope, but it had been hard as the years went on and finally, her mother couldn’t believe how lucky she’d been when she found out she w
as finally pregnant. Brenna had been cherished and loved and wanted nothing more, than to follow in her parents and grandparents footsteps.

  Going straight into medical from an early age, she’d spent years learning by their sides. A whole range of organic medicine working with replicators produced the medicines they needed. She had loved the work and as her grandparents passed and then her parents one after the other in her early 20s, she’d carried on. Finding a likeminded spirit in Robert. The only man she’d wanted to be close to. He’d worked tirelessly for the good of the community. Driving himself hard to save lives and Brenna had been with him every step of the way. It had felt natural to fall in love, get married and have their son. It wasn’t the romantic passion, sweeping off her feet she talked about with her friends as a youth, with wistful hearts and certainly wasn’t all sparks and stars, but she was comfortable with it and loved him very much.

  He naturally stepped into the role of a leader of their community when his father died. He held responsibility for their care and their safety. So when their world had new visitors for the first time, it seemed right that he and the other men, should be the ones to greet them. Only, that hadn’t gone so well ……

  Brenna stumbled trying to stem the memories. It was too painful. She focused on what was ahead of her. Spotting Zhai she ran towards him.

  “How we doing?” she asked him breathlessly, taking in the gun positions and the return of fire. The new blast doors looked in good condition. They were open in the middle as expected, she could see the other two raised barriers at the front of their new surprise and people firing around and over the nearest one. Their attackers looked to be closer than the furthest barrier. That was disappointing. They’d have to do better next time. If there was a next time ….. Brenna shook her head. She needed to focus on the now. Wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to help here.

  Those barriers were good. She knew that. Since that first attack, they’d improved their defences time after time and learnt from it. They’d dug down and put in those sheets of barricade metal. Thinking one, then two would be enough. Added the gun emplacements and put in the raised firing positions to protect their people. The first two barriers now hid what was behind them. Their latest defence. A metal maze obstacle course, that you had to get through to get to the entrance. With lots of dead ends and sharp edges that were deadly. They wouldn’t know they were in it, until they were already in it. Then it was too late, or she hoped it was.

  Brenna looked at the cameras. Their attackers were moving through to the next barrier. They expected to see the first and second barriers but not the gun emplacements. They’d been added to all the exits. “Get me the cameras up in that section,” she told him pointing to the schematic. Zhai pulled them up on screen. “Hows the other exit doing?”

  “Its holding. Not as many as here. A nuisance more than anything.”

  Brenna looked at the large screens. “Umm then why bother. It’s not much of a distraction. Keep an eye on it. They may have something else in mind.”

  She looked back to the blast doors on her exit. They’d once been a set of doors to one of the loading docks of their original seed ship. Melted down, with the new ore added, made it stronger than before and repurposed like everything else.

  Large funnel like sides made for a scoop either side of the entrance. They could only be attacked by entering the funnel. Climbing over it required you to take on yards of razor wire and you’d be dead before you got to the top. Several seemed to have tried it before realising it wasn’t going to work. Brenna smiled. That worked then. And once in the funnel, the gun emplacements could pick them off. Both, had been new additions this time.

  “Tell the guns to open fire.” Within minutes she heard and felt the guns return fire. It might only be ballistic round but they carried one hell of punch.

  Once Earth Corp stopped coming, they’d found a use for all that ore after all. It was rich in iron and once they’d known what they were facing with their visitors, they’d run the foundries day and night to produce all the metal they needed and reinforced all the doors and made improvements each time. They’d quickly moved all the people and animal stock they could back down into the tunnels at the first sign of trouble in this area. They had people in other areas, not so populated and more agricultural. All they could do for them was warn them at the first sign of intruders. They had their own hiding places. But for now, it seemed the aggressors were mainly focused here. So they’d reopened the tunnels and set up the old homes, schools and medical and brought the animals and crops down regularly. Their aggressors weren’t interested in farming, so they didn’t take anything other than portable produce. Clearly, they weren’t interested in cultivating it themselves, Brenna gave a wry smile. Taking it from others, was exactly what they did.

  If they were to survive these attacks they realised quickly, that they had no choice but to look at creating protection for the doorways to those tunnels. After their third visit, Brenna knew they needed something better, bigger, deadlier and had remembered her grandmother talking about the Great Maze in a place called Hampton Court. People got lost in it and could have been very dangerous if it had been made that way. That got her thinking. Digging up the memory of her own grandmother showing it to her.

  The design was made to cause confusion and protect the centre, with lots of dead ends and no clear way of finding the middle. They had played many a game doing it on a datapad. Brenna had thought this could be adapted to meet their needs and got to work. She created several different kinds with their metal work specialists in some detail. It was decided that at every exit/entrance there would be one at the surface. The razor wire mesh over the top of the canopy stopped anyone ‘dropping in’ and should cause confusion to any sensors. She liked it and so did the council.

  And unless you knew exactly how to get to the entrance safely, you were going to get lost and dead quick. Traps were set in various places. Other gun emplacements were also set up. Once it was clear why these people had come, survival was all that had mattered. They’d lost so many people that first visit. Some had hidden once the shooting started, others had gone for their weapons and had fought back. It had helped to see them off and when the dust had settled, and their visitors gone, over a hundred people were dead or missing. Many others were badly wounded, many of the women raped. And the school……. Had had a direct hit. Brenna’s heart clenched remembering it. They’d lost a lot of children that day, including her dear Marus and many others badly injured. Had she not been down in medical working to save lives, it was likely she’d be dead too.

  Brenna pushed the memory away. It had gone against all her doctor’s ethics, but something in her had changed that day. After the funerals and the serious injuries were stabilised, she’d sat down with the other members of the community to decide their fate. And somehow, she’d taken Roberts place and they all knew they had to do something. Without it, they’d be no survival. So they’d planned and worked. Then faced them when they’d come for the second time better prepared and then again and again. They’d held them off losing more and more people and in the end they knew they needed more. The Maze had been decided. One last big stand if it came to it and Brenna had to live with creating a killing ground. The price of survival was way too high.

  The tunnel shook from another round hitting them. Brenna looked around her as the walls shook. She felt confident it would hold. The metal workers had said it would. Brenna looked at the screens. “Have the left flank focus here and here,” she pointed to the screen. “Pull the right from here, make it look like they are being pushed back, leave that area open.”

  Zhai frowned. She guessed what he was thinking. “That will leave that sector of the Maze undefended,” he told her confused.

  Brenna nodded. Who knew working on arteries would make you good at this? She pointed to the picture of the maze on the screen. “Reinforce here and here and wait. If they take the bait and follow them back, both old and new reinforcements are to turn and c
oncentrate on that sector. Hit them hard and push them back. Kill them if you have to.”

  Zhai looked at the screen and then her. She could see the surprise in his face. It was a ruthless move. She hadn’t been this bloodthirsty before. Times changed. She had. He nodded and ran off. Brenna watched the screens as her instructions played out. It gave her pause. They’d never intended this. Her people had done nothing to deserve it. She saw the moment Zhai gave her order and her people move as she’d intended. Brenna took a breath, realising she took more lives than she saved these days. It was a bitter pill.

  ***

  He ran the data across his optic. The latest information on the functionality of the ship and his crew flowed over it. Both were state of the art efficient pieces of equipment. He wasn’t expecting to find any faults. Both the ship and the Cyborgs had their own internal programming to fix anything that was. Diagnostics continually ran in the background of his systems, just as they all did. He hardly knew it was there. Unless he needed to pull on it or something was highlighted. He was constantly updated on everything and everyone. It was his job to ensure everything ran at optimum performance and nothing was left to chance. Man and machine. It was how they were made. Diagnostic’s told them of their systems constant capabilities and set them for 100%. Anything less, and it was seen as a fault. The computer in their brain told them what they needed to do to regain that 100% peak condition. Less than 100% was not logical. Even those with injuries or lost limbs had their functionality reconfigured for their injury and still, they were required to be 100% fit. No matter what that meant. It was simply part of who they were and second nature.