This picks up right after the end of SOL SURVIVORS BOOK ONE: ARES ALCATRAZ
BOOK TWO: RAND – THE CHROME CEILING ©2026 J.S. Wells
Chapter 1
Rand comes back to consciousness the way a man surfaces from deep water, slow and resistant, his body making its objections known before his mind has fully caught up. The bunk beneath him is narrow and hard. The overhead strip light buzzes and flickers with the ship’s power fluctuations. Recycled air moves slow and stale, carrying antiseptic and dried blood and the faint metallic undertone of a vessel that has been neglected for a long time. The engines thrum deep in the hull, a constant low vibration that travels up through the bunk frame and into his bones like a second heartbeat.
He takes inventory slowly. Bandages wrapped tight around his torso, pulling at cracked ribs with every breath and tugging at the burned flesh of his shoulders. A gash on his thigh that throbs with its own separate agenda. Pain sitting steady and insistent, like a sentry who refuses to stand down. He has known worse. He breathes through it and lets it settle into its familiar rhythm.
His fingers find something small and crisp tucked into the edge of the chest bandage. He plucks it free and holds it up to the dim light. An origami wolf, folded from a square of bandage wrapper. Intricate creases give it sharp, pulled back ears, a tail extended for balance, tiny pinched folds make the mouth that howls in defiance. Someone spent real time on the details. Precision in every edge.
Toku has the patience for it. But this feels different. Softer. The girl Lila.
He stares at it for a long moment, turning it in his fingers. The folds catch the dim light and his thumb traces them slowly, and then he is not looking at origami anymore. He is looking at the snarling wolf’s head stitched in gray and black on the shoulder of his old unit uniform, packed away somewhere that no longer exists. Fenris Company. The patch he earned before he knew what earning really cost.
The bulkhead dissolves and becomes a canvas wall sagging in equatorial heat, the hum of the Solvo’s engines becomes the wheeze of an oscillating fan doing nothing useful, and the smell of antiseptic becomes diesel and bad coffee and twelve men in too small a space for too long.
The canvas tent sagged in the wet air. Plywood boards were pinned thick with maps, red lines carving through terrain that had no good exits and several terrible ones. A folding table at the front held a tactical display that flickered every time the generator outside hiccupped, which it did every four minutes with the reliability of a bad habit.
First Lieutenant Randall Andersen stood at the front of the room with a pointer and the expression of a man who had given this particular kind of briefing enough times that the words came out clean and flat without effort. Clean-shaved. Regulation haircut. No gray yet, though the gray was already making its argument in the fine lines around his eyes. Thirty-one years old and already moving like someone older, the careful economy of motion that comes from learning the hard way that wasted energy gets you killed.
His squad filled the folding chairs in varying states of alert. Combat vests hung open. Boots were unlaced. Two men in the back row were sharing a protein bar with the resigned expressions of men who had stopped tasting their food months ago. The faces were young under the dust and the fatigue, most of them, but the eyes were not young. The eyes belonged to men who had already seen the thing behind the curtain and were still deciding to bury what they felt about it.
Second Lieutenant George Eastman sat in the front row to Rand’s left, as always. Long-limbed and angular, a decade of fieldwork worn into every line of his face, the kind of lean that comes from burning more calories than logistics ever manages to replace. He had the quiet, settled posture of a man who had already read the briefing materials, done his own threat assessment, and arrived at his conclusions before the meeting started. A battered coffee mug sat balanced on his knee with the comfortable familiarity of an old friendship. His name tape read EASTMAN in faded block letters.
“Eastman,” one of the younger privates in the third row had said once, early in the deployment. “Like the camera guy?”
Eastman had looked at the kid for a long, flat moment. “What camera.”
The kid blinked. “You know. Kodak. George Eastman.”
Another flat moment. “Son, when is the last time you held a piece of film in your hands.”
The kid opened his mouth and then closed it. Eastman drank his coffee. The matter was settled. The joke had been running ever since, though it only landed with the men who were old enough to remember what film was, which was fewer of them every rotation.
Rand tapped the display with the pointer and the map steadied for a moment. The red lines pulsed faintly in the humid air.
“Listen up. Op is straightforward.” He let that sit for half a second, just long enough for someone to take the bait.
Private First Class Ignacio Moreira, three rows back, twenty-two years old and still carrying the particular brightness of a man who had not yet had it fully knocked out of him, raised his hand halfway. “Sir. I know I’m kinda new but last time you said straightforward it got weird.”
Low laughter moved through the room. Eastman did not laugh but the corner of his mouth moved approximately two millimeters, which for Eastman constituted a standing ovation.
Rand pointed at Moreira without looking at him. “Noted. Night infil on foot. We secure the village, extract the asset, exfil before dawn. Intel says militia presence is light. No heavies.”
“Does that intel account for the part where supply forgot half our fuel again?” Hicks called from the back, the words riding out on a grin that had survived two deployments and a shrapnel wound to the left forearm.
“Murphy’s Law is still SOP, Hicks.” Rand glanced around the room. “Everyone together.”
The response came back low and gravelly, almost liturgical in its cynicism, the prayer of men who had stopped expecting anything from the universe but still showed up anyway. “Murphy’s Law is gonna fuck us raw and we’re gonna thank him for the ride.”
Rand let the moment settle. Then he continued.
“Check the fuel cans. Double-check mags. Triple-check comms. We are not getting lube anytime soon so brace for the burn.” He tapped the map again. “Eastman has the secondary exfil coordinates. If primary goes sideways you go to him, not to me.”
Rand tapped the display one more time and a secondary window opened beside the map. A clean geometric logo. Three interlocked triangles in gray and white. Beneath it, in crisp sans-serif text: INTEGRATED DECISION ARCHITECTURE DIVISION.
“One more item.” His voice carried the particular flatness of a man reading from a script he did not write and did not endorse. “As of this operation IDAD will be integrated into our tactical comms loop. The system has full visibility on our position, our asset status, and our support resources. It will be providing real-time operational guidance throughout the mission.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Not the comfortable quiet of men who had heard everything before. The other kind.
“So DADdy is coming with us,” Hicks said from the back. Not quite a question. “Do we get a say in this?”
“IDAD,” Rand said. “And no, you don’t get a vote.”
“What exactly does that mean, sir?” Moreira asked. “In practical terms.”
“In practical terms it means the system has access to more data than we do and will be making recommendations based on that data in real time.” Rand paused. “It also means that support asset allocation runs through IDAD during the op. Air support, drone coverage, emergency evac. The system manages the board.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
Eastman had not moved. Had not changed expression. But his coffee mug had stopped halfway to his mouth and was sitting there, suspended, while he looked at the IDAD logo on the display with the careful stillness of a man who had already done the math on something he did not like.
“And if DAD’s recommendation conflicts with your call, sir?” Moreira asked.
Rand looked at him. Held it for a beat. “IDAD’s recommendations are to be treated as orders. Those are the parameters we are operating under.” He said it clean and flat and did not editorialize and did not need to. Every man in the room could hear exactly what was sitting underneath the words. “Until they’re not.” Rand looked decisively at each of his men, making sure that they understood that the official line had been spoken, and his unofficial stance had also been stated. “Any other questions get answered in the next ten minutes because after that we are moving.”
Eastman drank his coffee. The mug came down with a quiet, deliberate click on his knee, and he looked at Rand, and Rand looked at him, and the conversation that passed between them without words was the shortest and most complete either of them would have all day.
Moreira’s hand went up again. Fully this time.
Rand looked at him. Waited.
“Sir.” Moreira’s expression was serious now, the brightness dialed back to something more careful. “What is the asset’s extraction priority if we take contact before the village?”
Eastman turned his head slightly to look at the kid. Something registered behind his eyes. Interest, or maybe recognition. The look of a man who remembered being that age and asking that question and knowing it mattered.
Rand held Moreira’s gaze for a moment. “Asset comes out alive or we don’t come back at all. That is the priority.”
Moreira nodded once. Sat back. Tucked the answer away.
Rand looked at Eastman. Eastman looked at Rand. Twenty words of conversation passed between them without either of them opening their mouths. Eastman took a slow drink of his coffee.
“Ten minutes,” Rand said. “Then we move.”
The ten minutes passed the way they always did, in the controlled chaos of men who had done this enough times that the preparation was muscle memory. Mags checked and seated. Comms tested and confirmed. Fuel cans counted twice and coming up short by exactly the amount Murphy’s Law had promised they would be. Eastman noted it without expression and adjusted the exfil math in his head. Moreira taped his secondary mag jungle-style to his primary with the focused concentration of a man who had been told something once and intended never to be told it again.
Then they were moving, and the tent was behind them, and the African dark swallowed them whole.
The rainforest basin at two in the morning smelled like wet earth, rotten vegetation and something underneath both of those things that had no name but that every man in the column recognized in his hindbrain as a warning. The canopy overhead was a solid ceiling of black. No stars. No moon worth mentioning. The kind of dark that made the night vision green feel almost cheerful by comparison. Insects screeched in overlapping waves. Something large moved in the undergrowth thirty meters to the east and then went still. Nobody broke stride.
Rand moved at the head of the column with Eastman one step back and to his left, exactly where he always was.
The village materialized out of the dark in pieces. A rusted tin roof catching green in the night vision. A cookfire burned down to coals. Washing hung between two posts, limp in the dead air. Twelve structures arranged around a central clearing, the kind of settlement that had existed in variations of itself for a thousand years and would probably outlast whatever corporate interest currently considered it an obstacle.
Rand signaled a halt. The column froze. Fourteen men breathing slow and controlled in the wet dark.
He watched the village for three full minutes. Nothing moved. The intel had said light militia presence and for once the intel appeared to be correct, which was the kind of thing that should have felt reassuring and did not.
He signaled Eastman. Two fingers. Split the column.
Eastman peeled left with half the team. Rand took the right. Moreira was two steps behind Rand’s shoulder with two other soldiers. Rand noted that he was moving quiet for a kid his age, the jungle-taped mags on his chest not rattling, boots placed with care. He had been watching how the older men around him moved and was copying it. Learning in real time. Rand noted it without comment.
They entered the village from two sides simultaneously, the way they had done it a hundred times, and the asset was exactly where the briefing said he would be, a thin man in his fifties crouched in the back room of the third structure on the right, clutching a hard case to his chest with the particular desperation of a man who knew what happened to people who held what he held. Local geologist. Eighteen months of lithium survey data covering four hundred square kilometers of basin. Data that three separate corporate entities and two government proxies had already sent men to collect by other means.
Rand crouched in front of him. Kept his voice low and level. “Dr. Okafor. We are your ride. Can you move?”
Okafor nodded. His eyes were steady despite everything. The kind of man who had been afraid for so long that the fear had become background noise.
“Then stay close and stay quiet. We are leaving now.”
Rand got Okafor to his feet and they were moving toward the door when Eastman’s voice cut through on the tactical channel, stripped to pure information. “Contact north. Two shooters confirmed, professional spacing, military hardware.” A pause of maybe two seconds, the sound of controlled fire erupted in the near distance. “Rand. These are not militia. I am looking at Type 95s and body armor with no visible insignia. Someone ordered Chinese.”
Rand stopped. Put Okafor against the wall beside the door and held up a fist. The team froze two steps behind him.
The tactical channel crackled. IDAD’s voice arrived, uninflected and immediate. “Andersen Actual, IDAD is updating mission parameters. Confirmed presence of foreign national contractors elevates geopolitical exposure profile of this operation. Physical extraction of the asset is now a secondary objective. The survey data must be uploaded and secured before this element moves. Locate a defensible position and establish the uplink immediately. Do not move the asset out until transfer is complete. Acknowledge.”
Rand looked at Okafor. Okafor was looking at the hard case in his own hands with an expression that was not quite surprise and not quite resignation. The kind of man who had already considered the possibility that the people coming to help him might value what he carried more than they valued him.
“Moreira,” Rand said quietly. “Uplink.”
Moreira swung his pack off his shoulder without a word.
Rand did a fast scan through the doorway. The structure they were in was too exposed, one thin wall facing north and the door opening onto the central clearing. He looked left. Two structures down, a larger building, mud brick walls thick enough to matter, windows facing north small enough to shoot from, door facing south toward their exfil direction. He checked the firing coming from Eastman’s position to the north and mapped the angle. They could make it if they moved now.
“On me,” he said. “Fast and low.”
They crossed the open ground between the structures in a crouching run, Okafor between Rand and his team, and pushed through the door of the larger structure and pulled it shut behind them. Inside it was dark and smelled like cook smoke and old grain sacks. Rand posted at the north window. Moreira found the low table against the eastern wall and had the uplink open and initializing before his pack hit the floor.
“Set it up,” Rand said.
“Already on it, sir.”
Okafor knelt beside Moreira without being asked and opened the hard case across his knees. Inside, nested in foam cutouts, sat a ruggedized data drive and a slim interface module, purpose-built field hardware that cost more than most of the vehicles that had brought them here. He connected the interface cable to Moreira’s uplink with steady hands. He had done this before, or something enough like it.
“Signal is thin,” Moreira said, watching the uplink display. “Pulling it through the satellite window. It’ll hold but it’s going to be slow.”
The transfer began. A small progress indicator on Moreira’s screen ticked upward with the patience of a thing that did not know it was in a hurry.
Outside, the firefight to the north was intensifying. Then the uplink display stuttered. Moreira frowned at it and tapped the side of the unit like that would help anything.
“Signal is gone,” he said. “Not degraded. Gone. Someone snuffed us on the frequency.”
Rand keyed his comms. “IDAD, our uplink is being jammed and I need drone support on the north tree line. These are professional contractors with military hardware and they are actively engaging my element.”
“Andersen Actual, transfer integrity is the primary objective. Recommend hold position and allow transfer to complete. Please reconnect the data feed.”
“IDAD, I cannot complete a transfer through a jammed signal and I cannot hold a position I cannot defend. I need drone support now.”
“Andersen Actual, hold position. IDAD is assessing.”
Eastman’s voice came through, tighter now, the firefight loud behind him. “Rand. I have got a full contact element on my position, we are pinned down.”
“George, hold what you have. Working on support.” Rand looked at Moreira. Moreira looked at the dead uplink display and said nothing because there was nothing useful to say.
“IDAD.” Rand kept his voice level. “What is the status on that drone support.”
“Andersen Actual, drone asset is engaging its target. Stand by.”
The explosion came a few seconds later, a flat hard crump from the northeast, not close, not in the direction of Eastman’s firefight. A moment after it the uplink display flickered and the progress indicator resumed its slow climb. The jam was gone.
Eastman was still in it. The gunfire from his position had not dropped at all and it was coming from a completely different direction than the explosion. Rand stared at the north window and did the math on that without comment.
“Rand.” Eastman’s voice. “They are splitting. I have got a squad breaking off heading your direction. Six, maybe eight.”
Rand keyed his comms. “IDAD, I have a contractor squad moving on my position. I need that drone on them now.”
“Andersen Actual, transfer is at seventy-seven percent. IDAD requires the transfer to complete before reallocation of support assets. Hold position. Estimated completion, four minutes.”
Rand looked at Moreira. Moreira looked at Rand. Four minutes with a squad of professional contractors closing on a structure they were probably already looking at.
“We are moving,” Rand said. “Moreira, pack it up. Everything. Do not disconnect the drive.”
Moreira had the uplink off the table with the drive still attached and his pack sealed in under thirty seconds. They moved out the south door in a low fast column, Okafor between Rand and Moreira, pushing through the back of the village toward a smaller structure two buildings south, closer to the exit route, a low mud brick building with one door and thick walls.
IDAD’s voice came through immediately. “Andersen Actual, you have broken position. Signal integrity is compromised. The uplink must remain stationary and with limited obstruction for transfer to complete. Return to previous position or transfer will fail.”
“Andersen Actual copies,” Rand said, and kept moving.
They pushed into the smaller structure and Moreira got the uplink back on a flat surface and the signal clawed its way back, weaker than before but present. The progress indicator resumed. Seventy-nine percent.
Rand posted at the door and looked out at the village and then up. That was when he saw them. Four drones, maybe five, moving into position above the village in near silence, spreading out with the slow deliberate spacing of something that had been told exactly where to be. He had seen this pattern before, in a briefing he had sat through twice because he had not believed it the first time. Successive detonation coverage. Every point in a defined area reached within seconds of the first strike. Nothing left standing. Nothing left.
He watched them settle into position and said nothing.
“IDAD,” he said. “What is the extraction plan for my element once transfer is complete.”
“Andersen Actual, drone assets are limited. Extraction planning will be updated upon transfer completion. Hold position.”
Rand looked at the drones overhead, hanging patient and silent in the dark. Looked at Moreira’s uplink display. Eighty-three percent and climbing.
Extraction planning will be updated upon transfer completion. Not extraction is confirmed. Not support assets are standing by. Updated upon completion. As if the extraction was a variable. As if they were a variable.
Something cold moved through Rand’s chest. Not fear. Clarity. The kind that arrived when the last piece of something ugly slid into place and the full shape of it became visible.
He looked at Moreira’s comms unit in his ear, just like his own and every other soldier’s in his unit. IDAD tracking the relay. IDAD tracking their position through it. IDAD that had just moved all their support assets and was now telling them to sit still while it finished what it was doing and decided what to do with the people who had carried it here.
He keyed Eastman’s private channel, the one that he hoped bypassed the IDAD integration if their planning had worked the way it should have. “George. Camera guy. Strip everything and move to the riverbed. Now.”
A half second pause. “Copy that.”
Rand looked at his men. “Comms off. Everything that has a signal, everything that can be tracked, leave it here. Weapons and the asset only. Move.”
Moreira looked at the uplink, the drive still attached and the indicator still climbing. Looked at Rand.
“Leave it,” Rand said. “IDAD said it needed to be stationary, so we leave the fucking thing.”
Okafor looked at Rand with a panic in his eyes. “The… the drive. I cannot leave the drive.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Okafor,” Rand replied, moving Okafor toward the door and pulling Okafor’s cellphone out of his pocket. “They’re getting the data and we’re getting you out of here. We both get to keep our promises.”
“If not actively trying to kill us, it is letting us die.”
“I’m not the system. I promised to get you out of here if it kills me.”
“That is the point!”
“Okafor.”
“Yes.”
“Quiet.”
Okafor was quiet. They stacked their comms units and Okafor’s phone around the uplink and walked out the door and into the dark without looking back. The uplink sat where they had left it, drive attached, indicator blinking patient and green, transmitting to the last.
Behind them, IDAD was talking to an empty room.
Rand moved his team out in a low fast column through the back of the village, Moreira on his left, Okafor between them, the rest of the team in close formation. The sounds of Eastman’s firefight rolled through the dark from the north. He put his hand on Hicks’s shoulder as they cleared the last structure.
“Take the others and get to Eastman. Keep him moving south toward the riverbed.” He looked at Hicks’s wrapped forearm. “You good?”
“Good enough,” Hicks said, and that was the end of that conversation.
Hicks peeled off with five of them and they disappeared into the dark between the structures at a low run and Rand did not watch them go. He turned south and moved.
The three of them pushed through the scrub in silence, no comms, no way to know what was happening behind them, only the sounds of the firefight rising and falling at their backs and the soft thud of their boots in the dry dirt. The drones were still up there somewhere, silent and patient, and Rand did not look at them again because looking at them would not change anything.
