“I couldn’t unless it was a priority alert.” Paki’s eyes widened as he read the brief coming across his wrist monitor.

“What is it?”

He looked up at her, his jaw half-ajar while he digested the information. “Our probe monitoring the Orun Gate. It’s gone missing.”

05 FELA BUHARI
Eshu

Fela Buhari closed her eyes and wished she still believed in the orisha for her to pray to as her ship tumbled through the atmosphere in what its pilot optimistically called a trajectory. The Muungano astronomers designated this the Anansi Star System and the nearest habitable planet on the other side of the Orun Gate wormhole, Eshu. The verdant planet spun beneath them. None of this was any consolation to the pit of Fela’s stomach. Closing her eyes, she felt and ignored the curious, judging stares of the much more experienced gbeto she was assigned to lead. As transitions went, her mission was off to a less-than-auspicious start.

The military drop ship Hughes, little more than a heavily armored Saqqara, bucked wildly, careening through the atmosphere at odd angles. Coming from all sectors of the Muungano alliance, the contingent of gbeto huddled closely, knees almost touching the person across from them. Despite the harnesses bracing them, each shudder of the ship jostled them into the person next to them. The HOVA Hellfighters regiment prepared for a low orbital jump. Cursing the R—the civilian head of the Niyabinghi, and his enigmatic and often impractical ways—she had been ordered not to brief the members of her unit on their mission until they were en route. The squad remained under the watchful eye of the unit’s captain, Epyc Ro Morgan. The same woman overlooked for promotion so that Fela could be installed over the squad. The only thing Fela had learned about her squad, outside of her field notes on each of them, was that they bantered to release any premission jitters.