Their second lives had all been short, with Camilla lasting the longest . . . a little over a week.

Sanjay wanted to become the new Revenant life span record holder. At the moment—less than a week after being born again in the Beehive—he felt terrific, alert, pain free, manic, and productive in a way that was quite familiar from his work at Bangalore and Keanu.

Not only that, but he was eager to see Earth. He felt he had been cheated by the accident. Now he had cheated death—How do you like it?

He wanted to confront the Reivers, too. He had no memory of their earlier presence on Keanu—Zack Stewart and his daughter, Rachel, and Dale Scott were the major players in their expulsion.

But Sanjay had always loathed the whole idea of the creatures, part organic life form, part machine, all-consuming, and totally against everything he valued in life.

He had learned that there was some kind of galactic war between the Reivers and the Architects of Keanu as well as their allies, the Skyphoi and the Sentries. Humans had sided with the Architects; Sanjay had seen no reason to remain neutral. If eradicating the Reivers on Earth would help that effort, he was all for it.

Or so he had believed, right up to the moment of his death. Now, though . . .

“Where are we?”

Sanjay was floating near the rounded nose of the vesicle, a milk-colored egg thirty meters long and twenty wide at its broadest.

Zhao Buoming floated several meters below him, his head inside a silver dispenser that would shortly be spewing deadly material all over Earth. Without turning, a bit of a trick in microgravity, the former spy said, “We are over halfway, and falling fast.”

Then Zhao rotated, showing his bare feet to Sanjay, and pushed himself away, toward the base of the vehicle, which was stuffed with life support and guidance equipment. Sanjay knew there had to be some propulsion gear, too, though not much; the vesicle had been blasted out of Keanu like a shell from a cannon. In addition to basic equipment, it also carried several tons of Substance K in a variety of containers. Some of that was being converted into weapons (most had been assembled on Keanu, but certain substances were so dangerous to humans that Jaidev and Drake and Rachel had deferred their final preparation to postlaunch).

Sanjay had found the launch punishing, which shouldn’t have surprised him; he knew that the vesicle would be fired toward Earth at a high velocity, much like the original Objects that had struck Bangalore and Houston in 2019. A free-fall trip between Earth and Keanu took four days; those had covered the distance in less than one.

But since one of the marvels of Keanu tech was the ability to control gravity, Sanjay had expected the vesicle to be equipped with a field that would mitigate the effects of being blasted off the NEO. No chance; when the countdown (Harley Drake had insisted) reached zero, the vesicle had shot forward with a speed that belied its mass (an egg the size of a small building, weighing as much as a semitruck, should not be capable of such acceleration!), flashing through one of Keanu’s passages before emerging into open space.

Like the others in the crew, led by Zhao, Sanjay had been strapped flat on a squishy mat at the base of the vesicle, a sensation that reminded him of the golden fluid packing his reawakening cell in the Beehive. He had instantly experienced pressure, like a giant sitting on his chest, and suffered narrowing of his vision, a sign he was graying out and likely to black out.

Fortunately, the chest-crushing event had lasted less than five minutes. Now, twelve hours later, he was feeling good . . . just angry at having fallen asleep for six of them.

“When do we land?” He pushed off from the nose of the vesicle and slowly descended to its base.

Seeing him, Zhao looked up, a typically sardonic smile on his face. “You mean hit, don’t you?”

“Stop torturing him,” Makali Pillay said. She had been hidden inside the piles of Substance K containers and processing equipment that filled the vesicle interior. “Not very long ago he was dead.”

“Whatever term you prefer,” Sanjay said to Zhao.

“We land in ten hours,” Zhao said. And floated off, leaving Sanjay with Makali.

“He’s really consistent in being shitty to people,” Makali said. Sanjay had never grown to know her well, since she preferred to spend her time outside the Temple laboratory, working on agro projects (she was the HB’s “flower girl,” assembling and then planting beautiful nonfood items), or taking her own walkabouts. Makali was the closest thing the community had to a Keanu expert and explorer—Dale Scott without the weirdness.

“A mission like this is not going to soften a man,” Sanjay said.

“Still,” Makali said, “it would be helpful if he remembered that the enemy is on Earth, not here. Hungry?”

“Always.”

Food was prepackaged, to the extent anything on Keanu was packaged: dried fruit, nuts, bars.

Basic though it might have been, Sanjay found the food glorious. And engaging in such a mundane activity allowed him to think back on his life prior to Adventure and the frantic moments since.

He was glad he had kept Maren from coming along. She had screamed at him to stay; when that failed, she had turned on Sasha, Harley, and Jaidev, begging them to send her, too.

Sanjay had sided with Jaidev, Harley, and Sasha in refusing. It was bad enough adding a seventh human “passenger” to a vehicle that had been designed to support six. There was some flexibility in the consumables, allowing for a seventh, but not enough to accommodate an eighth human who would be breathing oxygen, drinking water, and requiring food. Maren would just have been baggage.

There was also the Revenant factor. Sanjay hoped that he would live through the completion of the mission.

But what if he didn’t? Poor Maren would be experiencing the death of her lover for a second time. And even in success, he was still dead, and Maren was Zhao’s responsibility.

No.

He asked Makali, “Why did you volunteer for this? Surely you haven’t solved all of Keanu’s mysteries.”

She hooted. “I haven’t solved a single one of them, if you want to be factual. But I sort of fancied seeing Earth again—”

“Even though this is essentially a bombing mission.”

“Well, no other travel options, right? We didn’t build a tourist vesicle. I also figure, this works and Keanu survives. If not . . . I won’t be doing much more exoscience because I’ll be dead.” She seemed embarrassed by the comment. “Sorry.”

“It’s not a problem,” Sanjay said. “Being dead hasn’t made me more sensitive.” But it had changed him in ways he still didn’t understand. Even as he uttered those words to Makali, additional data formed in his head, a process that gave him a brief, quiet, shuddering spasm that was almost sexual.

Momentary pleasure aside, becoming a link between Keanu and humans was proving to be stressful. (Another reason the Revenants didn’t last?) There was no clarity. Trying to interpret the words, sounds, and images in his head—the implanted memories—was like being an English speaker trying to translate a passage in Chinese to a dolphin.

Last night’s data, and this new material . . . it all seemed to deal with the Reiver facility and a vision of a vesicle sitting on a desert landscape not far from it.

“The mission is still dangerous,” he heard himself telling Makali. “Unless you were talking in secret after we took off in Adventure, no one has really dealt with getting back to Keanu.” Even for Adventure’s crew, return was always a desirable option, not a concrete plan.

“No matter how dangerous, and whether or not we get back, it’s still worth it.” Makali snagged the nuts, chomping them in midair. She smiled. “Frankly, I’m tired of the same old faces.”