Free Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) by Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant, Realm, Sands

and gate crash one of our barricades. It was unmanned at the time, but as soon as they passed it, the shuttles picked them up and put an end to their joyride. I imagine one of those bikes will get you most of the way to the capital, if it’s fueled or charged. You’ll want to steer it manually. Self-driving bikes rely on GPS, and that’s a protocol I won’t show you how to open. I’ll tell them to let you pass along the way. But once you reach the gates of the capital, you’ll be on your own. Understood?”
    Cameron nodded. He wouldn’t trust a bike to drive itself anyway, and he’d always assumed he’d need to find a way to talk himself into the city. He felt upended and out of sorts. He’d come in here thinking he had the situation under control, had ridden through its middle terrified that he’d misstepped, and was now leaving with the despot’s blessing. How it had happened and what had persuaded Nathan Andreus to — well, not help him, but not hinder him either — was a mystery.
    “So … ” Cameron eyed the door and the soldiers beyond it.
    “Out the way you came. I’ll send word to let you go.”
    Andreus wasn’t going to escort him out. Cameron was on his own. He’d surrendered his information, and now had to trust the man at his word. Soldiers outside the study might knife him in the belly the second he stepped into the foyer, but somehow Cameron doubted it. The Andreus Republic was the main reason few people tried to cross the outlands in this area, and there were still severed heads on pikes near the headquarters. But that was the work of zealous worker bees, not the man himself. And as frightening as the cabal was, everything Cameron had heard said it valued honor above all.
    Not because Nathan himself was sentimental, Cameron thought, but because honor was an excellent way to maintain loyalty and control.
    Something struck Cameron at the door. He turned to Andreus.
    “Don’t blame the rebels,” he said.
    “Blame them for what?”
    “For hiding your wife and daughter. When you go in … keep in mind that they were only trying to keep people safe — ”
    “I’m not going in,” Andreus interrupted.
    “Why not?”
    “They don’t want to see me. They ran away. I won’t break into that camp and drag them back here. They’re always welcome if they choose to come to me on their own, but I won’t force myself on them. For now, it’s enough to know they’re safe.”
    He watched the man’s stern face for a long moment, but apparently their conversation was over.
    Cameron left the room, realizing he’d somehow managed to get what he came for without giving Nathan Andreus anything other than peace of mind.
    Maybe there was hope in the world after all.

C HAPTER 10

    Trevor was out the door before he realized that Christopher seemed to have forgotten all about him, and that Trevor’s summons from Lila’s room had them running in the first place.
    “Christopher!” he shouted.
    Christopher paused long enough to let Trevor catch him, and they both ran toward the estate’s front gates. Trevor wasn’t in uniform, but that was okay; his was more ceremonial than anything, seeing as he was family more than Guard. More like a protégé to his father than Christopher’s boss — though if push came to shove, Trevor was probably both, technically speaking.
    They ran through the gates and into the strangely perfect city streets. Everything was pristine and square without being precisely nice, in contrast to the Apex pyramid’s useless extravagance. The city’s buildings had the look of better-than-average barracks — but barracks nonetheless.
    Trevor had a hard time imagining the place as it had been beneath the footprint of Heaven’s Veil after the ground leveling and slight terraforming, but he thought they might be running near the old location of his father’s Axis Mundi — the home they’d all once thought was just a home. If so, the barrack-like homes and small, almost-businesses