Humanity 2.0, Year 146, Day 181

Compared to my sibling, Nina's orgasm was nearly undetectable; I only knew because I could feel it through my cock, even through the thunder of my own pleasure as it subsided. Tiny quivers inside her body told me she, too, had cum, short but hard, travelling right up her center, arching her back. Emily slipped off my face, not quite ready to cum again, but she would have more treatment from Nina and myself before sunrise. After, too.

We collapsed together, the two nestling together next to me. I laid there for a while, catching my breath, letting the taste of the two girls dissolve in my mouth. Thick sweat covered us, gradually carried away by the bumbling air conditioning which had rumbled to life from the rampant sex overtaking the whole structure - the A/C was never the place's strong suit.

After half an hour of simply lazing with the two girls, I felt something like rested. It was still too hot, so I left the two naked girls in the now-humid room to themselves, a blanket tossed next to them if the air started to blast again, and pulled my pants and shirt back on.

It was time for the other reason - the other other reason - I'd come out to Osana. I found the case of beer I'd hidden, now nice and cold, and made my way upstairs, past the orgy on the third floor which was still going strong. The look on Sheldon's face was hilarious - an intense, wide-eyed stare, teeth showing and gritted tight... like he was trying to single-handedly fight off an army of savage Viking sluts by fucking every one of them into submission.

My payload hefted over my shoulder, I climbed the heavy, rusted stairs to the top deck above the Banana Boat. Salty night air greeted me first, mixed with oil and steel, and the faint hints of the various fluids maintaining the bargain-basement superconductors in the intel clusters and Tristan's array up there.

As I stepped out of the door, I saw the bristling assortment of it all bolted onto the aging steel of the cabin's roof, where various radar and communication hardware had once been mounted - back when the ship could do anything more than just float in the bay.

Tall guns, nearly twenty feet long - mostly part of Tristan's quench array, stood proud like flagpoles all around, pointing straight upward and as closely packed as a freshly planted birchwood forest. Sensors were mostly around the sides, and were perhaps even more critical than the guns themselves; they were mostly swaying in the wind on whip-thin antennae, or mounted in clusters around the edge of the top deck.

On the far side, next to a railing on the deck's edge and looking out toward the shore and the city skyline, I saw my two oldest living sons - Tristan and Blake, sitting back with tall glass beer mugs, talking quietly over a cheap card table they'd set up there atop the control sphere for the solenoid array. Good, they were both here.

Two well-known public figures now, each with a story as long as mine to tell - but to me they're my sons, and I'll describe them as I knew them then. Tristan was tall and imposing, with a whip-like narrowness of build but sense of power to him; he radiated assurance and focus, even when he was leaning back and relaxing as right then.

His reddish hair was short, skin nearly as pale as his mother Nadine's though he had none of her freckles. His left arm was an oddly pinkish shade compared to his right, where he'd lost and regrown the whole thing only a few months back from a lucky shot by a drone during a coastal patrol.

Blake is short by hominus male standards - five and a half feet tall, but built like a tank. His wide frame had been stocky in his youth, but as a man he'd filled out to become a genuine heavyweight, thick arms and legs on a barrel chest, every part of him shouting 'strength'.

Despite his apparent bulk, he'd never let his raw size and muscle make him stupid or take shortcuts. His skin was a deep tan, between his mother Nina's and my own, and his blonde hair was kept in a buzz cut. There were only three long scars on his face then, and a somber expression from his blue eyes.

They held their near-empty beer mugs up to me as I stepped out, then returned to talking to each other right away. It's a mistake to think the bad blood between them goes back that far. Yes, they were always rivals - and in the planning room, in politics during the Vault years, even on the battlefield there was no end of heated words between them... but it would be another few centuries before they never spoke again.

It wasn't Jacob's death that did it, not at all; Sana has it all wrong there, sorry. Blake and Tristan actually got along very well in most circumstances outside of war planning and politics, and they worked together fantastically once a decision was reached. They had the same sense of humor, liked different types of girls, cheered for the same soccer teams; hell, they even liked the same drinks. I intended to make use of that last bit tonight.

"I think you took a wrong turn, old man." Tristan spoke first, looking over at his shoulder toward me, then pointing back toward the hatch I'd come through. "The girls are back downstairs."

"The girls are fine with the birthday boy." I shrugged with the other shoulder as I approached them.

"Doesn't mean they don't want to experience the man and the legend tonight, the one night you're here." Blake held a hand out to the door. "We're just being boring up here."

"That so?" I dropped the cooler down on the card table with a thud, finding a nearby folding chair to sat down alongside them both, to the left of Blake - Tristan on the far side. Their eyes went wide as they saw me open it and extract its contents; it was a case of prized Irish stout. The genuine article, fresh from the only remaining brewery... and nearly impossible to get one's hands on outside of the British Isles at the time. I smiled. "Maybe a tad less boring now."

"Ohhh fuck a duck." Blake's eyes widened, and Tristan immediately fell forward, his chair returning to all four legs on the ground.

The attention of both was immediately focused on the case. I hadn't brought it all this way just to fuck around with them, and I immediately rendered one to each of my sons there, and opened one myself. We toasted then took the first drink together.

"Ahhh..." Tristan rested his can against his forehead. "God, how long has it been since I had a good beer? Been stuck in Osana for... feels like years now."

"Oh wow." Blake nodded toward Tristan. I could see the bags under his eyes; he still wasn't sleeping well. He looked at me. "So how's Sasha?"

"Better. Worse some days, and never, you know... much better... but she is better." I shrugged. "Someone stays right there with her, basically all the time now. We think it helps if she links with someone regularly."

"Good." Tristan nodded, interested.

"They're sure now that the brain tissue is regenerating, but the best guess is her body isn't sure how it's the neurons are supposed to be put back together. Linking like that may be... guiding it, I guess." I shrugged. "As always... the link goes both ways though."

Nobody liked taking their turn at her side; it wasn't just sharing the pain with her, it was the... broken, one could say, thoughts that came across. Shattered and incomprehensible, chewing at the edges of sanity even after the link was broken. Despite over a century of research, there were still enormous surprises about ourselves we learned all the time - including being able to survive... in a sense... taking a sniper's shot through the frontal lobe.

"I see..." Tristan leaned back again, sighing. "So it's like Jacinta was thinking. She may wake up, eventually, but... she may not be the Sasha we knew when she does."

"Yeah." I nodded.

"Wait a minute." Tristan held up a finger. "If you all are linking to her, you know, guiding her brain on how to rebuild itself... and you have Mackenzie and Jill there full-time keeping an eye on her..." He glanced back and forth between us. "... what if her brain rebuilds itself to be more like them?" He smiled as Blake rolled his eyes, waiting for it to hit. "What if she comes out talking like a valley girl and wants in on that cheerleader routine thing they used to do?"

I couldn't help it, I laughed out loud, even as Blake was hiding his eyes. I could tell he was slowly beginning to laugh too.

"Oh shit... oh my god..." Blake's shoulders were moving, but he couldn't look up. The image was kind of hilarious, and it would have had Wren cackling for days... for all the wrong reasons. Most of all, I was glad Blake could laugh about something, at least. Nina had sounded so worried in her messages; he had become so withdrawn.

We sound like terrible people, as I read again this entry from centuries ago. I'll let everyone else be the judge. Sasha had been under for the better part of four years by then, and the reality had sunk in some time ago. We all knew her well enough before to know that she'd have been the first one to joke about it if she could.

I tried to take another drink, and failed - almost spilling the precious beer. "She'd kill us. She wouldn't want to wake up, if she knew that was what it would cost."

"I know, I know..." Tristan took another long drink.

I took one myself, then looked back at my two oldest living sons. "So what were you two - oh god... what were you two talking about before?"

"Oh." Blake rolled his eyes. "Genetic politics."

"Ah shit, forget I asked. Maybe I will find someone to fuck downstairs." I pretended to leave, then sat down again. "Ah, whatever. Whose?"

Blake shrugged. "Euro, mostly. Some Turkish, some Brazilian. Hard to tell who's more harsh. Guess there's one thing you can say about the US, though; at least they haven't gotten themselves into that shit. Plenty of other stupidity, just... not that."

"Here's to freedom, democracy, and bombing the shit out of anyone what doesn't have both." I held up my beer and drank.

I'll leave the specifics of genetic politics in the early 23rd century out for now; I could put an entire chapter into ranting about the horrors inflicted by the resurgence of eugenics. I'd also probably piss off too many Jovians, and that's not what I wanted to do... in this chapter, anyway.

Tristan shrugged. "I'd actually like it if they did a bit more bombing out this way. A bit south of here, there's some psychos worshiping an uncaring machine god. Any bombs they can spare would be welcome, really."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll talk to your mother about that." I was scheduled to spend a few days in New York and DC after Geneva, before heading to Uruguay to get another hardsuit measured and fitted, then back to the dreaded Vault. I sat back, remembering. "I'm supposed to head up to Geneva soon - something about that. Genetic politics, I mean."

"Have fun with that." Tristan rolled his eyes. "What you giving away this time?"

I sighed, waving down Blake's scowl at his brother. "No, seriously. Leo and them derived a few more compounds, based on stuff we naturally produce. He thinks one might straight-up cure Alzheimer's. Our bodies can fix mis-folded protein chains on their own, apparently. Nothing points back to us, and the foundation is handling the patents. Don't worry."

"Really? Good, I guess... I mean, really. Good." Tristan shrugged. "Shit. First time anyone's actually cured one of their diseases in what, a hundred years?" He pointed his beer out over the bay, toward Osana.

I shrugged back. "Well, it'll be years before it's ready for human testing, but... yeah."

"That is good. I hadn't been keeping up with the med tech side much, I didn't know we were that far on the prion front." Blake looked at me, nodding. "You should do that. Geneva, I mean. Maybe even spend some time in Leo's lab. I heard you're a doctor now too."

I shook my head, not wanting to get into all that. "Just a bunch of holo training bullshit. I have yet to treat anything other than cuts and bruises. Haven't touched any research-medicine stuff." Don't even ask me about of some of the shit I had to do keep my own body alive and ticking in the field, twenty years ago against the original Naglfar cell in Chile and then Kazakhstan.

"Yeah." Tristan glanced over at me, pursing his lips, putting his beer down and folding his hands together as he leaned back. "You should maybe go sooner, rather than later... actually."

"T..." Blake shook his head. "The fuck, man, he just got here..."

Tristan shook his head back. "Why wait? He shouldn't be here. He knows that better than anyone."

"It's fine, Blake." I turned to Tristan. "I'm heading out tomorrow midday anyhow. Let him say his piece."

"About said it, actually." Tristan shrugged. "You know why you ought to be in the Vault, punching out kids. We all agreed on it. You're the only one who can produce the retrovirus, and we can't store it. You shouldn't be out here."

"And here I am." I looked at him.

He frowned. "The war is going to fire up again, and it'll probably start right here. Naglfar's not creative, but it's not stupid. It won't play with some escalation bullshit. It doesn't have to do politics, with its own people or anyone else's. It knows what we have on the perimeter, and it'll bring ten times that - and it won't let up until it's killed or harvested every living person here."

"And?" I sat back, taking a drink. It wasn't like I didn't know. I thought about it constantly, ran hundreds of simulations, kept some of the intel feeds fresh myself. "What would you do differently?" I waved a hand out to the side slowly. "Say me, the other First Five, we all... I don't know, choke on pretzels and die tomorrow. It's the Tristan Show. What do you do?"

"Pretzels?" I waved a hand as I took a drink; he was too young for the reference, but he got the idea. He paused. "You goofing around... or really asking?"

There was a silence for a moment, and I put down my beer. "T, we know I love Sheldon, but you two know I didn't risk leaving the Vault just for another fuck party." I rolled my eyes. "Practically can't get away from them in the Vault. As soon as the kids are tucked in, it's all there is for the adults to do."

"Yeah..." He paused, looking at Blake then myself. "... We figured you were just coming to see your bro Farhad."

"I was all but pining for my bro Farhad - but I could have seen him in Brussels next week instead, and it'd be safer." I looked at Blake again, then Tristan. "I came here for a little summit with you two. Strategy meeting."

Blake raised an eyebrow. "A strategy meeting... without my mom."

"Yeah, without your mom." I let it sink in briefly. Nina did have kind of a powerful presence when she was in charge of anything, often terrifying everyone under her command - but I wanted a private meeting with these two this time. I had to be sure.

I held my arms out. "I never thought it would be two guys, in a family that's eighty-five percent girls... dumb luck, I guess... but you two run circles around everyone else when it comes to tactics. You have a unique insight when it comes to beating the monster in the field." I put my arms down. "I just sent off another of Rain's daughters to Uruguay for hardsuit training, before I left the Vault, you know." I closed my eyes for a few moments, recalling years-old pain. "I sent a few off like that some years before-"

"-and none of them never came back. You're sensing it too." Blake nodded. "Axum's getting its pieces in place. It's going to hit us again soon, and hard, and this time it's going to hunt us down anywhere it can find us." He took a drink, nodding after. "You want to make sure every option has been considered. That it's not just another bloodbath."

I nodded, looking at the two of them. "I know there might be things neither of you will say when Nina is listening. So here, tonight, I want to hear it. Even if it's something she - or I - would never float."

"You sure she isn't hiding behind the damn door?" Tristan nodded over toward where I'd come out.

I dismissed it with a hand. "If Emily isn't eating her out again, she's asleep."

Blake nodded, looking impressed and then giving a weak smile. "Fuck, but you must be hard up for ideas. The sims have to look terrible." He paused. "You know Mom won't-"

"I know she won't." I waved a hand. Nina would know about this meeting... afterward. I didn't keep it from her for too long. Family drama... you know.

"I'll start." Tristan spoke, after finishing the last of his beer and opening another. "Malta. Proper, I mean." He pointed out in another direction, across the narrow ocean channel separating Osana from the larger island in the pair - visible in the distance, not as massively crowded as Osana and not half as bright. "These days, it's just a pile of idiots over there, thinking nobody can touch them if they buy a shitload of guns with fancy scopes."

"What about them?" I peered at Tristan, letting him begin.

I guess this might be an obscure period and region of history to many, so here's a lesson. The main island of Malta in the Mediterranean had also been repopulated after the same events that had made a charred wreck of both islands... but the other island had been filled up with violent white supremacists seeking a refuge from Western nations only too happy to be rid of their increasingly popular movement.

Now a quarter-million of them were living on the other island in some kind of experimental quasi-anarchist state. Quarrels with them were endless, and a constant source of headache for Farhad - made no better by their apparent inability to decide who was in charge, every leader disregarding all agreements the last one reached.

"Old man, they're going to die when Naglfar comes."

I nodded. Clear as day. "A lot of people will die when it comes. What about them specifically?"

He pointed out over the sea, to the south. "We know how it thinks - always the path of least resistance. It comes for the softest targets first, then the ones with the biggest harvest yield. It only fights if there's something in between it and its harvest, and there's no easier options... but it will never stop trying to harvest."

Tristan leaned forward, looking me in the eyes as he put down his beer. "We've got a lot more civilians here, but they're bunkered down pretty hard. Farhad knows the score and doesn't fuck around - so when the monster comes, it'll send the largest chunk of its forces to Malta first... including most every harvest carrier it's got stationed along the coast."

"I don't like this already." It was a sickening thought, but I'd seen it happen too many times in WW4. Brisbane, Tripoli, most of Sri Lanka...

"My principle is: Win first. Feel good about yourself later." He gestured toward the other island again. "We plant five, maybe six nukes around the-

"We what?" My throat caught.

He paused, looking at Blake, who was scowling at him. "Well we've got twelve, right?" Blake finally nodded, then Tristan looked back at me. "You thought we didn't know."

The hand gripping my beer tightened, the aluminum bending. "I thought only me, Wren, Nina, and your mother Nadine knew. Sasha, if she remembers anything at all. Hell, I did the entire recovery myself." I looked out over the ocean, toward the other island, fuming to myself. Yes, it was stupid to think - but no, we'd all solemnly agreed...

Damn it. Worst fucking idea I ever had, to not get rid of those things.

I looked back at Tristan. "My own fucking sister - your aunt Emily, right downstairs from us - even she doesn't know. None of the others. No... Blake, Tristan, I didn't think you knew about my fucking nuclear arsenal." I took a long drink, slamming the beer down - hearing the little plastic ball inside clang around. Somehow, the burnt taste of the stuff had become so much more apparent now. "Should I even ask who told you?"