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been waiting at the Aphrodite Five-Pan route. In order for von Gunther to reach Aphrodite Five, he would have first taken a long journey through the Beyond. That journey had taken at least two months. Maddox had confirmed the route with Brigadier O’Hara. By their ready presence and quick attack, the New Men had logically known a Star Watch battle group was on its way and nearby.
    With his hands behind his head on the pillow, Maddox thought about that. I doubt their sensors are so superior to ours that they can see down tramlines or light years away into a different star system. If their sensors were that good, the New Men would have spotted Noonan in her lifeboat while she hid behind the asteroid. The easier answer is that traitors in the battle group were sending secret messages to the enemy .
    I f the New Men had agents in the Star Watch and the Commonwealth governments, that meant enemy case officers had been here awhile. It took time to set up a good spy ring and to solidify a hold onto traitors who would willingly see their comrades die because of their treachery.
    How long have the New Men been among us? It was a chilling question for more than one reason.
    Maddox swiftly rose to his feet, padding down the hall to the liquor cabinet in his living room. He wore briefs, exposing his lean frame.
    In moments, he held a tumbler with ice and Scotch whiskey. He sipped, closed his eyes and felt the fiery liquid go down.
    He knew himself to be unusual in several ways. Swirling the ice, he poured himself another and slammed it down this time. With a gasp, he clunked the tumbler onto the liquor cabinet.
    He’d never really been drunk before. His body burned up alcohol far too quickly for him to stay intoxicated. He had tested himself, and it turned out he had a fast metabolism. What’s more, his core temperature wasn’t 98.6 but 99.4 on average. Dueling came easier to him than for others because his reflexes were abnormally quick. He was also stronger than he looked, benching fifty percent more than someone his size should have been able to do.
    I’m different—not a lot different, just enough to help me win most of the time .
    As the tumbler sat on the cabinet, Maddox rotated it. A numbing swirl struck his brain, the whiskey doing its damage. The feeling would go away soon.
    Why don’t I swig from the bottle? See how much I can guzzle.
    He’d defeated Caius Nerva while the other wore a Tojo bodysuit with advanced speed settings. The brigadier recognized that he shouldn’t have been able to parry every stroke. Yet he had. Even so, he would have lost the match except that Sergeant Riker understood what had been going on.
    My aide set the stunner to kill . That wasn’t the first time Riker had surprised him.
    Frowning, Maddox began to pace like a caged leopard. Why was he different? He wished he knew.
    The Parker family had raised him. Maddox still remembered the day when his “mom” had told him the horrible truth : “You’re adopted.”
    Four years ago, using the full extent of his skills, Maddox had hunted down his real mother’s identity. There had been precious little to discover. She had arrived on Earth just in time to deliver him. She’d come on a Spacer packet from New Poland. He went there, and after two weeks of detective work, he found she had come from Brisbane. The trail had iced up on the small Windsor League planet. He hadn’t been able to find out anything more there.
    Nancy Halifax, his mother—he believed the name an alias—had taken the interstellar voyage a little over two decades ago. She came to Earth, delivered him and died. From her sparse records, she’d appeared normal enough.
    But I’m not . The first time Maddox had seen the footage of the New Man attacking the Odin marines, it had shocked him. That’s when he had started to wonder.
    That was his terrible secret. He wondered if his mother had met a New Man, an invading rapist perhaps. The implications…
    That would have happened