I remembered back to that trip ... The sudden Bang as a small explosive took out the ship’s main functions. It took out the ship’s AI, its sensors... and its weapons. We were dead in space. We tried sending a distress message, but the comm link was down as well ... another victim of the saboteurs on our ship.Alex’s mom, Kristina confronted the saboteurs when they first came in, trying to protect the locked stateroom in which my mother and father hid. She was the first one they shot. My mother and. It had shaped her somehow. The same with this memory. His grandfather had somehow programmed her. The thought of disobeying him threw her into turmoil.Jake had to reprogram her so that she would no longer blindly obey Granddad, or other people either. The problem was that it wasn’t a simple thing to do. There would almost certainly be side effects. Whatever he did, he was going to have to be careful.At least, he did not have to act immediately. He could afford to take his time and do it right,. .oh shit, I realized that my apartment, its rent unpaid, would have been rented out by now; I had no home to go back to! Probably no job either. What else...what else...there was something...Dianna.---Detective Dianna Shepherd, now on maternity leave, carried her new baby Seth into her apartment. The boy had been remarkably easy to birth, the time from her water breaking to delivery being only two hours. She hadn't even had to push all that much; it was like Seth had practically slithered out. .. The same flavor of Zanyia’s snatch.But I was so turned on, I hadn’t paid attention. And now something attacked us. Shadows rippled across the ground. My brother charged naked towards the campfire. I was about to call out to him when he stumbled. Blood spurted from his back. A long, slashing wound flayed open his back. Blood poured down his muscles.He collapsed on his knees, snarling in pain.“Sven!” I gasped as he rose, convulsion wracking me.Then I heard laughter. I spotted the flutter of.