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together for the hover to make it through.
    “We’ll have to go on foot,” Digger said.
    “Right,” Destra frowned. “Of course.” This felt like a trap, but it was too late to turn back. Sythians would be all over by now, flying grid patterns and raining death on human settlements. They’d never escape notice in broad daylight, so for now hiding in a forest was a pretty good idea. Destra drove the transport down to the tree line, as close as she could get it, and then she extended the landing struts and dialed down the grav lifts until the transport settled lightly on a bed of leaves.
    “Wakey wake!” Digger said, turning to Lessie and Dean with a broad grin. “Time to go for a walk.”

Chapter 3
     
    —THE YEAR 10 AE—

    “S o?” Ethan asked, now that they were seated once more in Atton’s office aboard the Defiant . “How is that monster below decks our only hope?”
    Atton smiled. “The Gors are great warriors, as you can imagine. They crew and pilot the Sythian ships and serve as foot soldiers on the ground. They fight all of the Sythians’ battles for them. Having them on our side completely reverses the balance of power in this war.”
    “If the Gors fight all the Sythians’ battles, why have we never seen them before?”
    “Have you ever seen a Sythian without its armor, Ethan?”
    Ethan shook his head. “I thought the armor was a part of them, some sort of exoskeleton.”
    Atton smiled. “I suppose you wouldn’t have had a chance to see them without armor. Those images only surfaced late in the war, and even then they were classified.” Atton directed his gaze to the desk and said, “Holofield on. Show armored Sythian trooper.”
    The air above the desk shimmered, and the lights inside Atton’s office dimmed. A moment later, a tall bipedal creature in shiny black armor appeared rotating above the desk. Ethan studied the image. It looked just as he remembered a Sythian should—tall, broad-shouldered, glowing red compound eyes, chitinous black exoskeleton.
    “Enlarge head,” Atton said, and the image zoomed in on the Sythian’s skull-like head. “Freeze image,” he added, so they could study the face.
    Atton pointed to the image and traced the gleaming, angular black lines of the creature’s head. “When we dissected the first Sythian, we found exactly what you’d expect from a giant bug—beneath the exoskeleton is a spongy yellow layer, but then beneath that is an epidermis, and below that we found another skeleton.”
    Ethan blinked.
    “When you strip away the outer shell and the spongy insulating layer, you have a real Sythian, with eyes, ears, nose, skin, muscle, and bone. Below their exoskeleton armor, the Sythians appear more reptilian than insectile.”
    “Okay . . .” Ethan said, his brow furrowing as he wondered where Atton was going with his biology lesson.
    “Overlay unarmored Sythian trooper,” Atton said, speaking to the holo projector once more.
    Suddenly the gleaming skull-shaped helmet faded to a skull-shaped face with bald blue-gray skin, flat nose, and slitted yellow eyes.
    Ethan almost fell out of his chair. “That’s Tova!”
    Atton smiled. “The few Sythians we did manage to kill and examine looked just like the Gors, but that’s because they were Gors. Besides protecting them in battle, their armor functions as a space suit in the event of decompression, and an environment suit to deal with inhospitable climates. They breathe roughly the same mixture of air that we do, but they use their armor to protect their eyes and skin from solar radiation as well as their bodies from the heat. Being a nocturnal species that evolved to live in caves and underground lairs, the Gors are used to cold, dark, and wet environments.”
    “Wait,” Ethan held up a hand and shook his head. “If the Sythians are actually Gors, then where are the real Sythians?”
    “They are only found aboard their largest warships, sitting safely cloaked behind the lines while they