Collective Ekoes / Chapter 01 (Text)

Lt. Cassandra Cannon was sparring with a training bot when the Eko Incursion Alert sounded. The bot noticed her moment of distraction and threw a vicious jab at her head, looking to punish her for her lapse of attention. She recovered just in time to dodge away, spin on the ball of her foot, and drive it to the mat with a roundhouse kick.

She sprinted from the gym, leaving the bot to put itself away, and pinged her 2nd to spin up the squad and ready the pods for launch. The barracks were two levels away, and the team had a head start on her, but she still intended to be the first one ready to launch. When facing ekoes, every second counted.

Cass opened the alert details on her overlay as she dodged through the busy station corridor. She'd responded to dozens of incursions, and thought she knew what to expect—but when she read the targeted planet's name, she stumbled, and the letters throbbed as blood rushed to her head.

Perseverance.

The ekoes had finally reached Perseverance.

Cass stopped and grabbed a bulkhead, her vision quivering. She took a deep breath, sparing a precious moment to ride out the terror pulsing through her. 

Incursions were on the rise all across the Collective, and Space Command had been anticipating another soon, but no one expected the ekoes would dare strike so deep.

She gave herself two more seconds to recover, then packed the anguish away. She was Strazhi Mira. Entrusted with protecting the Collective from the eko threat. She was prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep her people safe. 

Even if it meant returning home.

Twenty-seven minutes later, Cass and her fast response squad were racing along the emergency skip-lane toward the planet. Armored up, locked in their pods, and across sixty light years in less time than it took to cook and eat breakfast. 

Squad comms were silent. Tension sat in her gut like a stone. For decades the ekoes had focused their strikes on Fusang, Dacha, and Miri, planets closer to the edge of Collective space. Perseverance used to be a long way from Assembly territory. Not anymore. 

She’d been dreading this moment for years, even as she knew it was inevitable. She’d seen firsthand what the enemy was capable of.

Ekoes were relentless. Traitors to their humanity. Artificial copies of the dead who had swapped the sanctity of their eternal souls for existence as mundane machine code—and then still had the gall to expect to be considered people. 

The Supreme Sovereign had outlawed their kind centuries ago, and they'd been harassing the Collective ever since. 

At the rate the incursions were rising, it was only a matter of time before ekoes infested every planet in the Collective. 

General al-Jarrah and the Collective Forces had resisted provocation after provocation, squashing the incursions and limiting retaliation, but the ekoes and the lawless Assembly of Free Worlds were only growing bolder. 

They came in their ramshackle flotillas, scurrying through their illicit skip-gates to launch disposable terrorists to harass Collective military outposts. Or sent digital evangelists on "educate and extract" missions, where gentle ekoes would preach their twisted promise of immortality and transmit the converted straight out of their bodies and into the prison of a memory chip.

And the part that truly stung—considering how hard she and her team fought to stop them—was the insidious understanding that the message was getting through. Somehow, an ever-growing portion of disaffected Collective citizens was eager to accept the ekoes’ twisted bargain.

Cass knew life in some settlements could be hard, especially among the low ranks. Even on Perseverance. But to walk away from everything you were? To choose to become an eko? It was a tragedy. She couldn’t understand it. Nothing could be so desperate that abandoning your humanity could be a solution.

The philosophical mystery was far older than her and was one she never thought she'd ever get a satisfying answer for. It retreated to its usual place in her subconscious, pushed aside by the very real threats that lie ahead.

As if ekoes breaching her homeworld wasn't dire enough, her brother was a major in the Perseverance Militia. There was a very real chance he could be involved.

The Strazhi had trained her for everything–except how to deal with Abel Cannon. And as hard as she tried to ignore it, the uncertainty of what he might do was worrying her more than the ekoes. 

Her pod was flipped and decelerating before the first intel finally arrived.

Field report from Perseverance, 2nd Lt. Ackles subbed over the command channel. Decel crushed their lungs, but they could still communicate thought-to-thought. One of the useful benefits she resented appreciating about the infernal chip in her head.

Ackles was riding last in line, still on the other side of the previous skip-gate. A few thousand meters behind her lead vehicle and hundreds of millions of kilometers away at the same time. 

Incursion confirmed, his simulated voice said straight in her brain. An eko extraction team, positively identified. Local militia is on scene.

Cass skipped the body of the report and jumped straight to the militia leader on site, hoping she wouldn't see what she expected. She read his name and swallowed against the lump that lodged in her throat. 

Wilhelm Abel Cannon III. 

Looked like Abel had finally found some ekoes to fight. 

Give me a summary, she ordered, glad Ackles couldn't see her grimace. Fresh worry burbled in her stomach at the thought of Abel trying to take on a team of eko insurgents. 

Local law enforcement usually fell all over themselves trying to get out of the way when the Strazhi arrived, but Abel wasn’t most people. His anti-eko fervor was legendary. He’d never backed down from a fight in his life. And he'd started more than his share.

Abel had returned home and joined the Perseverance Militia after his Duty Service. And while the Cannon siblings were both proudly serving the Collective in the military, planetary militia dealt mainly with minor local matters. Unruly Viktra Day crowds and inter-family squabbles and the like.   

Even counting for his ego, Abel had to realize planetary militia weren’t equipped to engage ekoes. They were deadly creatures who could jump two stories and lift a few hundred kilos and make precise headshots with their advanced weapons from a klick away. 

Which was why, unlike the militia, the Strazhi were outfitted with the cutting edge Zhūquè Mark 4 neural-integrated armor. She’d logged thousands of hours of intensive combat training. She and her suit, working as one. 

Cass had come to terms with the armor’s invasive neural integration through her biochip. Growing up, she'd hated the shard of tech lodged in her brain, but she'd come to accept its necessity. She needed every possible advantage to combat the enhanced strength and reflexes of the enemy. Up to and including allowing the Ministry of Science technicians to contaminate her thoughts with invasive implants.

Yes, it was a sacrifice, an intrusion, but a necessary one.

And what did Abel know about sacrifice? He'd always put himself first. 

Cass had seen her brother exactly once since her invite to the Strazhi. Last summer, at the party Mama and Father had thrown to celebrate Abel’s promotion to commander of his militia squad. Father had made a bigger deal of his namesake’s advancement than he had when Cass had graduated into the most-prestigious military force in the Collective. Nothing could topple Abel from his perch as shining son. But like the dutiful daughter she was, she hadn’t made an issue of it.

She’d grown used to being overlooked. Used to working twice as hard to earn their father’s praise while Abel coasted on charm and patriotic bluster. But perhaps his time in leadership had matured him out of his bull-headed machismo. Maybe he’d gracefully stand aside when his little sister showed up and took over. 

She wasn't expecting it.

Even worse, he’d know she was coming. The alert confirmation back to Perseverance from Ursa Station would have listed her as commanding officer en route. Knowing she was on the way might goad him into something reckless.

Summary ready, Ackles said after a moment, bringing Cass’ focus back to the mission. *Reported location is Atlasov Base, a decommissioned survey and exploration settlement in the southwest quadrant of the planet.*

She wasn't familiar with that specific pre-settlement base, but she’d visited others like it. Simple pre-fab structures. All basically the same layout.  

Citizens? Cass sent back.

The location is too remote for tagging, but likely. Numbers unknown.

*And the ekoes?* 

Unknown. The report is not what I'd consider… his transmission hesitated, likely as Ackles corrected his word choice …thorough.

She took a moment to scan the report herself, but Ackles had covered everything in it. Abel hadn't provided any useful intel at all. 

*It's thin, but we've seen less,* she said, reflexively defending her brother. A lack of specifics in a field report wasn't exactly unusual. Sometimes they dropped into incursion sites with no intel at all, and all they had to rely on was each other. 

They were her squad, and she was their commanding officer, but she barely knew them. Collective military personnel regularly rotated through postings, serving across the settled worlds. No one stayed in any one spot for long. And that included Strazhi.

The official justification for the policy claimed that constant change forced soldiers to rely on their training and not grow complacent with their team. But to Cass, that had never made much sense. The effortless cohesion of a familiar squad was far more effective than relying on individual excellence alone. 

She'd come to believe this directive was most likely meant to keep the military loyal to the Supreme Sovereign and the Collective itself—rather than an ambitious general.

The longest-serving member of her squad had been with her for less than six months and would be moving on soon. Ackles had only joined a week ago, and this was their first incursion as a command duo. So far, he seemed like your standard true-believer, Collective red running through his veins. She had to be careful. 

Cassandra Cannon believed in the Collective, and the goal of protecting humanity from the eko scourge, but she wasn't blind to the everyday corruption and self-serving decisions of her superiors. This was simply how it worked. How it had always worked. 

Even in the short time they'd spent together, she understood Ackles played the game as hard as anyone. He'd be reporting everything up the chain, direct to General al-Jarrah. She had to get out ahead of what might happen with Abel.

Which made her brother's omission from the summary all the more glaring. It was an obvious ploy she couldn't let go unaddressed.

You didn't add the militia commander to your summary, Cass offered, for the record. *Did you miss it? The name didn't stand out? Wilhelm Abel Cannon?* 

Ackles hadn’t overlooked it, she was sure of that.  

*The third,* Ackles confirmed.

*You didn’t think the mission leader’s relative being involved on the ground warranted an inclusion in the briefing?”

Ackles' response came a beat slow. *I thought best to keep it from the squad. To minimize any appearance of impropriety.* 

*What impropriety?* Cass asked, unsure what he was getting at.

*I couldn't begin to speculate,* Ackles replied, and this was where thought-to-thought comms broke down. She couldn't read his tone, but she knew she didn't like it. 

*Keep it that way,* Cass replied, wishing he was hearing her voice so her disapproval would be coming in clear. 

*Understood,* came the reply, but Cass couldn't tell if it was chastened or sarcastic.

*Append the information about my brother to the briefing package and update the squad,* she ordered. 

Ackles updated the briefing, but she still figured he’d be noting something about their interaction in the mission logs. To use against her if anything went wrong. 

Which it wouldn't. 

As long as Abel behaved himself. 

The rumble of worry in her stomach upgraded to an earthquake as her pod shuddered into the Perseverance atmosphere. Cass flicked to the tactical overlay in her peripheral vision and tracked their path as they descended, ready to eject at the first sign of enemy fire.  

They met no resistance, and a few rattling moments later all thirteen pods were dropping in a wide circle toward the base’s cracked landing pad. 

Fifty-two minutes since alert. They’d got there fast, pushing g's, but fifty-two minutes was long enough for an eko assault team to wipe out a settlement. Anything could have happened. 

Cass triggered the drones, and they shot out in a swarm, scanning from every direction. Infrared. UV. T-ray. Electromagnetic. Acoustic. Spectrographic. Thermal. All came back nominal. 

Three seconds later, her pod opened like a blossoming flower, showing her the bright blue sky above. Her visor clamped down over the brilliant Perseverance morning. The locks disengaged and her armor braced around her, then she and the rest of the squad launched headfirst from their cockpits. 

They arced then burned hard into the air, gun arms raised, a ring of death ready to obliterate any threat that dared challenged them. She scanned her target area as they slowed to a hover, searching for movement as the pods landed below.

The overgrown base sat just off to the east. It had once been a square of civilization carved from virgin jungle, a tentative grasp on a wild planet. Those early explorers had discovered the goldberry and bristlepea and chosen the locations for Shepherd and New Jefferson City. But when they left, nature sealed its wounds. If it weren’t for the four tall, hexagonal sentry towers at each corner, and the non-standard position of the angular Administration Hall built on a raised rocky clearing, you might not know the settlement had ever been there. 

Dense creepvine obscured the shorter buildings. Trees had burst through the concrete roads and shrouded the narrow streets. But other than leaves shushing in the breeze, there was no movement. Nothing larger than a small animal. 

“Clear,” Berthold reported from beside her. 

“Clear,” Haokip said next to him. This continued all the way around the squad, back to Ackles on her left. 

“Clear,” Ackles finished. 

If the ekoes were close, they were well-hidden. Not even the drones could find them. 

“All clear,” she sounded, then she and the others landed in unison with a simultaneous burst from their suit thrusters. 

The squad formed up into their fire teams, evenly spaced around the circle of hissing drop-pods, ready for orders. First team gathered around her, Ackles at her side. 

Their pods had resealed and sat like upside down raindrops perched on spider-web legs. A Perseverance Militia transport was parked on the pad nearby, closer to the overgrown town. Which is where Abel should have been. With the rest of his team. Waiting for reinforcements. 

Cass fought down an uneasy shiver, not sure if she should be mad or worried. 

What had he done this time?

Ackles pulled a schematic of the town into the shared mission intel folder, and she threw it to her visor. Then she looked for her brother.  

All Collective citizens were chipped at birth. Simple ID and biometrics. It was the one minor concession to the constraints on human/tech integration the Collective allowed. 

The planetary network didn’t cover this remote area, so she accessed her pod systems and had the ships send out a blanket ping for Collective ID signals. If anyone was in the vicinity—unless they were underground, or hidden behind thick walls, or had their heads covered by signal-smothering em-caps—she should see them.

Fifteen dots appeared on the map. Three red. Five green. Six blue. Deceased, civilian, and local militia. All clustered together in the former administration hall at the center of town. 

She checked the list of blue names and saw Abel was one of them. He was still alive, though three civilians were dead. None of the survivors were moving.

Even stranger, the red and green dots were arranged on the map in a neat line, with the six blues clumped together at one end. Like an exclamation point. 

Cass had been worried her flat-headed brother might refuse to stand down, or insist on joining them for the extermination, but this was worse. It looked like he'd gone in on his own. 

And gotten himself captured.

She rode out a fresh surge of rage and anger. Most of it directed at the ekos—but not all of it. 

That mudak had let his appetite for violence override his good sense. It wasn’t the first time he’d let himself get swept up in his zeal and done something reckless.

They'd been raised strict Collectivists, but Father had instilled in them a duty to family above all else. "Strength through unity" was the Collective motto, but Father always said, "Unity starts at home."     

Being part of a family with Abel hadn't been easy. She loved her brother, but they'd clashed their entire lives, rivals for Father's approval. She remembered when she was nine, the year she first won the Viktra Day youth shooting competition, beating Abel and the rest of the older kids. Abel had intervened when the other boys had come at her, accusing her of cheating, but he'd also made her life miserable for a month, subtly sabotaging and undermining her as punishment for having the nerve to show him up. 

Their relationship hadn’t gone terminally septic until she’d been invited to the Strazhi. They hadn’t spoken since. But he was still her brother, and she still loved him, despite everything.  

Cass sensed the silence of the squad and pushed away the concern. They were waiting for orders. Whatever Abel had done, he and his team were still alive. She could work with that.  

It seemed like the ekoes were taunting them, dangling live bait for the response team they knew would be coming to the rescue.

She'd expected Ackles would have piped up with an anticipatory question, proving he was one step ahead of her, but he obviously didn’t know what to make of this either.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Whatever the enemy had prepared, they were Strazhi. They could handle it.