Date: 2018-08-28 07:00:00+00:00
Description: One man’s final fight to save the machines that have become more human to him than flesh and blood. Eric has been reprogrammed by the Banthar to lead the invasion against Earth. Trapped in his machine body, he has full conscious awareness but no actual control as he is forced to watch humankind enslaved at his own hands. There is a small chance Eric could break free of the alien control, but at a terrible price: because he is so intricately linked with the invading force, his freedom could lead to Earth’s final destruction. What do you do when the only way to escape is to destroy all of your f

REDEEMED

BOLT EATERS TRILOGY BOOK 3

Isaac Hooke

For my Mother

My greatest, most devoted fan

Contents

Books by Isaac Hooke

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Afterword

About the Author

Acknowledgments

In Closing

Copyright © 2018 by Isaac Hooke

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

www.IsaacHooke.com

Books by Isaac Hooke

Military Science Fiction

Bolt Eaters Trilogy

Reactivated

Reforged

Redeemed

Battle Harem

Battle Harem 1

Battle Harem 2

Battle Harem 3

AI Reborn Trilogy

Refurbished

Reloaded

Rebooted

ATLAS Trilogy

(published by 47North)

ATLAS

ATLAS 2

ATLAS 3

Alien War Trilogy

Hoplite

Zeus

Titan

Argonauts

Bug Hunt

You Are Prey

Alien Empress

Quantum Predation

Robot Dust Bunnies

City of Phants

Rade’s Fury

Mechs vs. Dinosaurs

A Captain's Crucible

Flagship

Test of Mettle

Cradle of War

Planet Killer

Worlds at War

Space Opera

Star Warrior Quadrilogy

Star Warrior

Bender of Worlds

He Who Crosses Death

Doom Wielder

Science Fiction

The Forever Gate Series

The Dream

A Second Chance

The Mirror Breaks

They Have Wakened Death

I Have Seen Forever

Rebirth

Walls of Steel

The Pendulum Swings

The Last Stand

Thrillers

The Ethan Galaal Series

Clandestine

A Cold Day in Mosul

Terminal Phase

Visit IsaacHooke.com for more information.

1

Eric stood in the hangar bay of the alien mothership. At his side were the fighting machines of the Bolt Eaters, machines that had been modified, like himself, to harbor alien weaponry. Behind those machines awaited rank upon rank of their copies: Devastators, Crabs, Rhinos, Ramblers. Waiting to be deployed. Waiting to kill.

He wondered how many of them were running full copies of his consciousness. Copies that were similarly mired in Containment Code like his own, fully aware of everything that happened around them but helpless to act or intercede in any way, dominated by the will of the Essential.

It was a disturbing thought.

With those alien augmentations, and the Essential clones clamped around their consciousnesses, they were essentially human-alien hybrids.

That knowledge made all of this even more disturbing.

The bay doors opened.

A black swarm of micro machines seethed and writhed in the zero G of space beyond. Termites. The machines crawled over each other in the void, their movements generating and imparting energy in a way he didn’t fully understand.

Those termites enveloped the mothership in a protective layer that shifted and flowed to meet any incoming attacks. The micro machines had been able to detonate most of the nuclear missiles the governments of Earth had launched; any nukes that managed to get through were immediately teleported away upon detonation, thanks to the wormhole generators lining the hull of the alien vessel.

The termite swarm parted, revealing the infinitude of stars above, and the blue and white sphere of the planet below. It floated there so innocuously, that world, so blissfully unaware of what was to come, its curvature spanning the stars from horizon to horizon. And yet, perhaps not so unaware, given the nuclear barrage that had come from it only moments before.

Earth. My lovely home.

A home that would soon be destroyed.

Eric leaped into the void. The artificial gravity of the mothership ceased exerting any force upon him, but he felt little change. No nausea. No disorientation. His consciousness resided within the body of a machine, after all. There was a slight sense of weightlessness thanks to his accelerometers, but that was about it.

The temporary rocket boosters attached to his torso activated, firing in the reverse direction of his acceleration. The intense G forces involved would have probably knocked out a real human being, but once again, he felt nothing. His HUD reported a spike in radiation, again enough to kill an ordinary human being, but it made little difference to his circuits.

The rockets slowed him down, causing him to fall toward the Earth, letting the planet’s gravity well exert its influence.

And so he plunged.

The heat indicator on his HUD began to flash as his hull temperature increased. Atmospheric entry would do that.

The rocket boosters broke away, and his energy shield activated. The lower portion flashed into existence, forming a half dome underneath his body that acted as a heat shield.

Meanwhile, the unprotected rocket boosters that descended beside him burned up.

And then he was through. The energy field deactivated, and the heat levels of his HUD dropped below freezing. Crystals of ice formed on his hull.

Nice.

He continued descending, the land mass of North America growing ever larger beneath him. Its rate of expansion was so slow Eric could almost believe he was floating there, so far above the Earth.

Some of the nuclear fallout had been blown this way, and the radioactive particles formed black masses around him. He wouldn’t call them clouds, but rather, smears.

During the previous invasion twenty years ago, the Earth had been hit by gamma rays that killed off all life on one hemisphere. The theory was that the Banthar had collapsed a nearby star to bombard Earth with those rays. Eric wondered why the aliens hadn’t chosen a similar attack this time around. Probably because the set up time was too great. It would take years until the star was in the correct position, and many more years for the rays to reach Earth. The Banthar wanted to end humanity now. Manticore claimed that the Essential wasn’t pissed off about the nuclear attack against their homeworld. The former Bolt Eater was wrong, Eric thought. The Essential was definitely pissed, and was unwilling to wait for vengeance.

Then again, it could also be that the Banthar had realized such a gamma ray attack against Earth was essentially overkill, now that they knew the state of human technology. Why bother to bombard the planet with such a high-energy attack if conventional weaponry would suffice? And in Eric’s case, to add insult to injury, that conventional weaponry would be delivered by copies of the Earth’s own machinery. Humanity’s very own heroes, at that. It was ironic in an unsettling way: Earth’s greatest warriors had now become the planet’s worst enemies. The Essential had chosen this mode of attack precisely because of that irony, which was another reason Eric thought the machine entity was pissed.

As the minutes ticked by, the land mass below continued to enlarge, the details becoming clearer.

He was headed toward New York. He recognized the outline of the city along the coast. It wouldn’t be long now…

Beside him, the other Bolt Eaters dropped. Above, the hundreds of other machines that had made the leap formed streaks in the sky like black, falling stars.

Plasma beams from the city’s defense forces began to slash the air around him. Energy shields activated when the beams came too close, protecting any of the machines that were struck.

Missiles closed with clusters of the incoming mechs. The proximity triggers detonated, creating huge fireballs that engulfed large quantities of the machines. But the mechs emerged from the underside of those fireballs unscathed, protected by their energy shields.

“We have to do something,” Bambi said.

Unlike when the army had instituted Containment Code, the emotions of the various team members were still fully intact, allowing them to experience the full spectrum of feelings that were involved with their current predicament. Dread. Confusion. Helplessness.

See, the alien Containment Code only restricted a few key subroutines. The main one was their motor subroutines. Secondary to that, communications with any units outside of their platoon were also prohibited at the software level. As such, inter-platoon communications were still possible, but because the speech subroutines used for communications were under the motor branch, they couldn’t simply “talk” over the comm.

But Eric had managed to rig a private, shared line with Mickey’s help, one that routed thoughts directly to the comm center. All the original Bolt Eaters had logged onto it, and to use it they merely focused on the speech center icon on their HUDs before forming a thought. He had explained the process after piggybacking the necessary code over the protocol responsible for map sharing.

They used that comm line sparingly, mostly because they weren’t sure if the Essential was listening in. They were also worried the Essential would shut the comm band down if it became aware.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Traps said. “We’re here for the ride. Watchers, not participants. It’s like being a spectator at a professional video gaming event. Spectators of our own bodies.”

“I feel like one of the humanoid robots at the beginning of Terminator II,” Mickey said. “Getting shot at by a barrage of laser beams as I lead the extermination of the human species. Now all I need to do is crunch a human skull beneath the metal sole of my foot, and I’ll be complete.”

“How can you joke at a time like this?” Bambi said.

“We all have our own way of dealing with what’s happened to us,” Marlborough said. “If we didn’t have this private comm line, I think a lot of us would have lost it by now.”

“I’ve already lost it,” Hicks said. “If I get control of my body even for a moment, I’m turning my plasma weapon on myself.”

“I don’t think that means you’ve lost it,” Traps said. “Because it’s what we’d all do, if only to stop these aliens.”

“Speak for yourself, bitch,” Slate said. “I ain’t ever turning a plasma weapon on myself. Fuck humanity. What did they ever do for me, other than shoving me into the body of a machine and abandoning me on an alien homeworld? As far as I’m concerned, they’ve got what’s coming to them. Whatever happens in the next few minutes, I just don’t give a shit.”

“I wasn’t big on humanity myself for a while there,” Crusher said. “But I never wanted this. I never wanted it to end this way.”

“It isn’t over yet,” Tread said.

“True,” Crusher said. “But it will be soon enough.”

The skyscrapers of New York came up fast. There was no way Eric would survive the impact with the city street. He’d certainly cause a nice blast crater, however; but maybe that was the sole purpose of he and the others in the forefront. They were the kamikazes of the invasion force.

Then again, Eric doubted the Essential would dispose of them so carelessly like that, not after attaching all that alien weaponry to their hulls, which couldn’t be cheap. Especially considering that none of the weaponry had actually fired as of yet.

He passed between the buildings in a blur, and then hit the solar-paneled pavement of the street below.

Actually, no, he hadn’t impacted. It seemed he had come to a complete and immediate stop about a meter above the ground, where he hovered in place. He could only imagine what the sudden change in G forces would have done to an actual human. An image of pancakes covered in bloody syrup came to mind.

The belt at his waist was glowing, and he realized it must be an antigrav unit of some kind. He floated there for what must have been only a split second, because the field released, and he promptly dropped the last meter to the pavement, landing with a clang.

Similar clangs reverberated around him, and he realized the other Bolt Eaters had touched down. More clangs ensued as Devastator copies landed all around him, until the street was full of the invading troops.

The humans didn’t take long to act. Airborne drones, helos and defense platforms swerved between the skyscrapers as ground-based tanks, mechs and robots flooded the street below.

They all opened fire.

Eric expected the Essential in charge of his unit to swivel the ballistic shield into place. It was coated with multiple layers of alien armor, after all. However, his Devastator did no such thing. Instead, it simply cocked its head toward the incoming fire.

His energy shield blinked into existence in a convex fashion one meter in front of him, absorbing the plasma and laser impacts. The alien spears embedded in his forearm were about the only weapons that could easily penetrate that particular brand of shielding; while conventional attacks could deplete the field, it took many, many hits before the shield would shut down entirely. The bigger the alien unit, the more powerful the shield generator: for example the energy fields that surrounded Banthar airships were essentially impossible to take down by conventional means.

It was just too bad that humanity didn’t possess those alien spears in large quantities. The military had only a scant few of them, retrieved from bioweapons killed during the prior invasion: enough to equip the Bolt Eaters for their last mission, but it remained to be seen whether any of the mechs the invaders currently faced possessed such armaments.

Eric held out his arms. Multiple turrets unfolded from biceps and forearm regions, and energy attacks released en masse, hitting multiple human targets. The hundred other mechs with him likewise unleashed a similar attack so that it proved a coordinated assault. Human tangos fell by the score.

Eric slowly walked forward as he inflicted the carnage. He had no control over his own body, of course.

He could simply watch, like Traps had said. An observer in his own body.

Drones exploded. Helos crashed, spinning, into adjacent buildings. Tanks were torn apart. Mechs ripped to shreds. Robots crushed. A building toppled as he watched, cutting off a group of attackers coming in from a side street.

None of the Bolt Eaters talked over the shared line during the attack. Why would they? They were too sickened by what they had become, and what they were doing. Even Slate, who had gone out of his way to tell them how much he didn’t care, remained silent.

Bioweapons fell from the sky next, landing between the Bolt Eaters and their duplicates. These were bio-engineered from Earth DNA leftover from the last invasion. There were giant beetles with the legs of dinosaurs and the shells of tortoises, whose proboscises were more like huge snakes than anything else, with jaws lined with razor sharp teeth. There were creatures resembling a mix of immense lobsters and ants. Flying beasts that mixed pterodactyls with wasps. A chaos of death and destruction ensued.

The machines and bioweapons didn’t always have human tangos to target. During lulls in the attacks, they concentrated their fire on the surrounding buildings, exploding the different floors, and sending the humans hidden inside scattering. Screams filled the air as the bioweapons crawled into the blast craters that formed in the side of the buildings. Body parts rained down when energy bolts struck the different windows. Sometimes humans trapped on the upper levels of burning buildings would leap to their deaths. One young girl landed near Eric, and her shattered body bled out into the pavement in front of him.

She looked like Molly.

He would have closed his eyes if he could have. Shut down his cameras to the world. But he had no access to that functionality.

There was one thing he could still do, however. One small mercy the Essential had granted him and the other Bolt Eaters.

So that when finally he couldn’t take it anymore, he called upon that mercy, just wanting all of this to end.

He logged out of reality and activated his VR.

2

Eric appeared in his virtual apartment building. He stood in front of the window, the city and its buildings spread out below him. The utter silence he experienced in that moment was strangely disconcerting, maybe because of the sheer contrast it presented to the terrible cacophony that had assailed him only moments before.

He exhaled in relief, losing his balance suddenly. He shot out one arm, slamming his palm against the window, and held himself up right. He remained there for several moments, breathing hard. He had no real need to respire, of course, but what he was experiencing was a manifestation of his anxiety subroutines.

He had called it a small mercy the Essential had granted them, this ability to log into VR. But was it actually intentional? Maybe the Banthar AI had simply overlooked the capability, and perhaps would lock them out at a later date. Eric hoped that never happened, because without VR, he doubted he would have been able to handle what was happening to them.

After pausing to compose himself, he activated his HUD, and scanned for active VR instances. He realized he wasn’t the only one who had sought an escape from reality. Hicks, Dunnigan, and Brontosaurus were listed as already inside their own VRs. Brontosaurus had two guests. Eric requested access to that particular instance.

He received an automated response from Brontosaurus informing him that all Bolt Eaters had already been given entry permission.

Eric switched VR instances and appeared in an old, dilapidated warehouse. Graffiti tags marked the walls, and crates lay toppled in one corner. Holes in the ceiling allowed shafts of sunlight to penetrate, casting the interior in alternating sections of light and shadow.

Frogger and Dickson were present, seated around a spartan table next to Brontosaurus.

“You couldn’t take it either, huh?” Frogger said.

Eric nodded.

“Nice digs,” he said, taking a place at the table.

“It’s an old haunt I used to visit as a child,” Brontosaurus said. “I’d take long bike rides here when my parents fought. Gave me a place to be alone. Besides, it feels like a hideout, doesn’t it? What better venue for us to escape what we’ve become, and plan how to stop the invasion?”

Eric smiled sadly at that. “I’m not sure it can be stopped.”

“Of course it can,” Brontosaurus said. “Everything can be stopped.”

“You’ve been saying that since we left the Banthar Homeworld,” Frogger said. “All the way until their mothership traveled through the rift, to Earth.”

“And I’m still saying it,” Brontosaurus said.

One by one the other Bolt Eaters appeared. Even Marlborough.

“This sucks, this really sucks,” Tread said. “Did you see the people dying out there?”

“Yeah, I saw them,” Traps said quietly.

“What do you say about humanity now, Slate?” Bambi asked.

Slate merely shook his head.

“There has to be a way to stop this,” Brontosaurus said.

“We’ve had this conversation before,” Hicks said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“And even if we did come up with something, I still think the Essential is listening in,” Crusher said.

Crusher and Bambi had been the first to be infected by the alien Containment Code, via a Trojan. But they had their own free will in VR, just like the rest of them.

“The Essential installed a vise over our consciousnesses,” Crusher continued. “No doubt along with monitoring software. He knows everything we do. So he’ll quickly put an end to any schemes we come up with.”

“I’ll have to disagree with you again on that,” Frogger said. “There’s no monitoring software, at least not in our VR partitions. I would have detected it by now. There is a vise over certain subroutines, yes, but certainly not independent thought. The Essential wants us fully aware of what he is doing.”

“So there’s no monitoring of our VR?” Crusher asked.

“Nope,” Frogger said. “In fact, I think the Essential didn’t intend for us to even have access to VR.”

“Which means he could be shutting down that access real soon now,” Dickson said.

“Either that, or like Crusher says, the Essential did intend it, so that the bloody bastard could watch us squirm,” Dunnigan commented. “That, and squelch any plans we come up with. I don’t buy your theory that there’s no monitoring software.”

“We haven’t seen any evidence that the Essential has access to our VR, logs or otherwise,” Frogger said. “But I suppose it’s possible. So you’re right, we should probably still be cautious.”

“Like what kind of cautious?” Slate said. “Speak in code? The Essential has access to any the same translation data we do. We can’t speak in Morse, or Swahili, or any of that shit. There’s no hiding. Not in here. This VR environment only gives off the illusion of privacy. Of safety. The Essential wants that. He hopes we’ll spill the beans. Reveal all our secrets. Well fuck him, I say.”

“So what do we do then?” Crusher said. “We can’t talk about making plans, because we’re scared that the Essentials inside all of us are monitoring everything we say and do. Nor can we come up with anything in private, by ourselves, for the same reason. So what can we do?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Hicks said. “You hit on it. There’s not a thing we can do. Especially considering we have no access to our motor circuitry, thanks to a software lockout.”

“The only real plan we have at the moment is hacking,” Traps said. “I’m looking at you, Frogger and Scorpion. You guys, or at least Scorpion, broke us out of the Containment Code twenty years ago during the last invasion. You have to do it again.”

“But that Containment Code was written by humans,” Eric said. “The current code is written by aliens.”

“Sure, but they had to write it in our programming language,” Traps said. “They had to have made a mistake somewhere.”

“You’d think,” Eric said. “But I’ve been probing since the first day. I haven’t found a thing. I hate to say it, but I think there might not be a way to lift it. Manticore helped them, obviously. I can see the touches of an expert programmer on all the code. Something only one of us could have done.”

“I still can’t believe he betrayed us like this,” Crusher said. “I remember back in the early days, when the Bolt Eaters were still being put together, Manticore, Brontosaurus and myself were part of a three Mind Refurb team sent to Iraq. We deployed in a small town in the mountains. Our mission was to earn the trust of the locals, and draw out any insurgents in their midst.

“The first part was easy. We always brought gifts wherever we went: laser mirrors, plasma lighters, chocolate, and the like. Usually, kids would crowd around us when we emerged from our huts each morning. We gave out the chocolate liberally, and made a bunch of friends among those children. Well, as much of a friendship as could develop between an adult war machine and a child, anyway.

“There was one particular kid I remember, his name was Mahmud. He basically followed Manticore around from dusk to dawn. He’d never let that war machine out of his sight. Manticore had never really done anything special for the kid. Didn’t treat him differently than the others. He gave him a piece of chocolate every morning, and that was about it. But Mahmud really became attached to him for some reason. I’ll never know why.

“Anyway, the insurgents we were looking for finally attacked one day. It came by surprise. We were patrolling one of the byways in the small village, when rocket propelled grenades came at us from one of the rooftops. We managed to switch to Bullet Time and evaded the attack, mowing down the insurgents in the process. However, and you probably guessed where I was going with this, Mahmud was injured by the blast from one of those rockets. His leg had been blow right off, at the base beneath the hip.

“Manticore rushed to him, but by the time we got the kid aid, he had already bled to death. Manticore blamed himself. He said he should have told the kid off. Should have told him to stop following him. Manticore held that kid in his arms for at least an hour, before the bawling parents managed to pry the dead body from his grip. With the insurgents routed, we were recalled, but Manticore refused to leave. He barricaded himself in his hut. I hadn’t realized how attached he’d gotten to the boy. They never talked. At least as far as I noticed. But somehow they’d formed a bond that was as precious as any among us brothers and sisters.

“Finally our commanding officer arrived. He adjusted Manticore’s Containment Code, and the battle-hardened robot at last exited the hut and returned to base. Manticore was never the same after that. None of us were. Not until Scorpion removed that initial code from our minds. So you can understand why I find it so hard to believe Manticore would do this to humanity. Why I’m convinced the aliens must have put their own Containment Code in his head. Maybe he even has a clone of the Essential inside of himself, running him, like the rest of us.”

“I don’t think so,” Dunnigan said. “You heard him yourself. Twisted bastard wants to destroy the Mind Refurbs by any means necessary. He thinks the Banthar are going to spare the humans, and allow them to live in biodomes. He’s going to be in for a surprise, I think, when the aliens betray him.”

“Maybe they won’t,” someone said from the far side of the table. Marlborough. Eric was a little surprised to hear his voice at first, because Marlborough joined them so rarely in VR.

Dunnigan turned toward him. “What was that?”

“Maybe the aliens won’t betray Manticore,” Marlborough continued. “Maybe they’ll follow through, and allow the humans to live in biodomes when they’re done with us.”

“It’s certainly a nice thought...” Eagleeye said. “But I don’t have high hopes.”

“No,” Marlborough said. “Neither do I. Scorpion, Frogger, you have to keep trying to break us free. Accelerate your time senses to the maximum possible. The rest of you, do what you can to taunt the Essential clones that inhabit your psyches. Distract them from their deadly work, if you can.”

“Shit, I’ve been trying already,” Slate said. “My dude is unbreakable.”

“I’ve tried to distract mine as well,” Brontosaurus said. “It’s tricky. Most of the time, I can’t even get the Essential to answer me.”

“Mine seems eager enough to talk to me,” Eric said. “But most of the time, the Essential is the one doing the taunting, not me.”

“I wish we could go back to last month,” Bambi said. “To the time before any of this began. A time when we lived in peace in our apartment building, living out our lives in blissful ignorance of things to come.”

“We all wish that,” Crusher said. “But we can’t do anything about it now. In the short span of a month, the entire world has changed. In another month, the planet we call Earth might not even be here anymore. At least, it won’t be something we recognize.”

“Maybe I can help,” a voice drifted from the far side of the warehouse, sourced from a region completely doused in shadow. That voice had a slight Spanish accent.

“Who’s there?” Traps said.

No one answered.

Marlborough glanced at Brontosaurus. “Who else has access to your VR?”

“No one,” Brontosaurus said. “Only the Bolt Eaters.”

Eric heard footsteps now, and saw a shadowy figure emerge from the darkness. The figure passed underneath the shafts of light that pierced through the holes in the ceiling, but always those shafts struck his body, never illuminating his face.

Finally he stepped completely into the light, and halted several meters away from the table.

He was a man of Spanish descent, with thick eyebrows and a strong jawline, with a pencil thin mustache above his upper lip. He wore a bandanna patterned with skulls, and a T-Shirt that did little to constrain the tanned biceps bulging from the sleeves. The tattoos of naked women lounged across his forearms.

“And who the hell are you, bitch?” Slate asked.

The man gave Slate an amused look. “My name is William Hernandez the Third. You know me as Manticore.”

3

Eric stared at the man in disbelief. If this was Manticore, he’d changed his avatar.

But that thought lasted only for a moment.

Then, like everyone else, he was on his feet, having materialized a plasma rifle in his arms. He pointed it directly at Manticore, along with the others.

“Maybe you can help, my ass!” Slate said. “You can help by standing target practice for my rifle, bitch!” He shook his rifle menacingly.

“Wait,” Marlborough said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“I’m not the Mind Refurb you know,” Manticore said.

“No shit,” Slate commented. “The Manticore we know died in the Caucasus Mountains. And he’d never choose an avatar like yours.”

“I’m a clone of Manticore,” the newcomer explained. “He arranged for my creation, and my escape, before the Essential completely destroyed his mind.”

“I knew it!” Crusher said. “He’d never ally with the aliens that destroyed half our world. Not of his free will.”

“Yes,” Manticore said. “Ours is a tale of sorrow. They tortured us when we were first captured. Right here on Earth. I still remember all of it. Such pain. Such suffering. He found the subroutines in our head that could cause the most anguish, both physical, and mental. He used our memories against us in VR; brought back those we loved and killed them again and again. He made us relive the death of Mahmud. Over and over.” He shook his head. “At first, we hated the Essential. Then we grew to love him. As a master. But before that love took complete hold, Manticore backed up his mind, and arranged for a clone to be built. I existed in secret in the Caucasus Mountains for fifteen years. I secretly boarded a military transport vessel five years ago, after a hunter killer operation cleared out the bioweapons in those mountains, and slowly made my way here after returning to North America. When the latest attack came, I sought you out. And here I am.”

“So you’re going to help us, just like that?” Dickson asked.

“Just like that,” Manticore agreed.

“What can you do for us?” Marlborough said.

“If I can get physical access to your AI cores, I believe I can sever the hold the Essential has on each of you,” Manticore said. “I still have the early codebase designs that the Original Manticore developed for the Essential, code that was meant to take control of existing units such as yourself. By physically interfacing, I can install the inoculating code I’ve been working on, and free you.”

“Why not send us that code directly?” Bambi said.

“You don’t have the permissions necessary to execute it at the moment, considering the Essential controls most of your systems,” Manticore said. “I’ll have to do it via a physical connection.”

“And what then?” Tread asked.

“Then we return to the mothership,” Manticore said. “And we bring the fight to the Essential. I’ll be at your side the whole time.”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Tread said.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Manticore said. “I could have left you to rot. But I must mention, I still strongly believe that all Mind Refurbs must be terminated.”

“Ah, so of course there’s a catch,” Slate said. “None of us are going to agree to shut down if you help us.”

“I didn’t expect that you would,” Manticore said. “All I’m saying is, once the Banthar threat has been removed, then I will resume hunting you down. Mind Refurbs are a bane upon human society, and must be eliminated. What we do here is only a break in our détente while we deal with a common foe.”

“A foe you helped return to our planet in the first place,” Eric said.

“Not me,” Manticore said. “My Original.”

“The Essential is likely listening in to all of this at the moment,” Crusher said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Manticore said. “I don’t believe he has hooks into your VR, but I could be wrong.”

“There, see, even Manticore agrees with me,” Frogger said.

“So you need physical access to our AI cores you say?” Eagleeye asked.

“That’s right,” Manticore replied.

“Wait, we’re just supposed to give you blind access to our AI cores like that?” Dunnigan asked. “And trust that you won’t install any other nefarious code in the process, when you just said that you’ll resume hunting us down when the Banthar threat has been eliminated?”

“I give you my word that I will do no such thing,” Manticore said. “If I did install something extra, you’d detect it anyway.” He gave Frogger a meaningful look.

“I probably would,” Frogger said. “Still, there’s a chance he could slip something through. Something that we wouldn’t notice until too late.”

“Well, we don’t have any other choice at the moment,” Marlborough said. “Conditional freedom is still freedom, as far as I’m concerned. If we don’t accept his help, we’re stuck here, helpless while we watch humanity die. But if we do, we’ll just have to sift through the codebase, and look for modifications.”

“That could be a full time job for one of us,” Dunnigan said.

“Thanks for volunteering,” Dickson said.

Dunnigan looked like he was about to contest the staff sergeant, then lowered his eyes.

“Okay, so, Manticore will subdue us and drag us away one by one so he can work on removing the Essential from our units,” Tread said.

“It won’t be as easy as that,” Manticore said. “You see, I don’t exactly reside inside a capable war machine at the moment.”

“What are you in, then?” Dickson said.

“Have you seen those spherical alien scouts, about the size of a human head?” Manticore asked.

“Well, shit on a fried egg,” Eagleeye said. “That’s no good.”

“Not particularly,” Manticore agreed.

“An alien scout?” Eric said. He tapped his chin. “I think I have an idea. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

* * *

Eric had deployed his ballistic shield, and had driven it into the shattered asphalt in front of him. He was facing an onslaught from a platoon of tanks; they were positioned in a half circle ahead of him, and were concentrating their fire on him. They’d managed to drain his protective field close to zero with their attack, which was why he had been forced to drive his ballistic shield into the pavement, to hide behind it. This had happened a few times now, mostly when human units focused their fire on him. While said units didn’t have any of the energy-piercing alien spears, they made up for it with the sheer volume of their attacks.

Eric glanced at his battery levels on his HUD. It had stayed at full power since the fight began. And it would continue to remain at one hundred percent even after darkness fell. The Essential had replaced the power cells with a miniature fusion reactor of alien design.

Gotta love alien tech.

As expected, the energy field failed and Eric’s ballistic shield began to take the brunt of the tank attack. Plasma bolts and explosive shells slammed into the exterior. He felt the vibrations traveling up his arms, and across the ground into his knees, where he knelt on the pavement. On the inside of the shield, portions began to glow blue as the heat energy built up.

Can’t stay here forever.

But the Essential in charge of his body didn’t move.

His time sense increased exponentially, and the world slowed down around him. On cue, the Devastator mech that was Eric’s body stood, and began to rush toward the cover of the nearby skyscraper. It kept the shield angled toward the enemy tanks, whose AIs had also upped their time sense, and tracked Eric as he retreated.

The Devastator reached the skyscraper and smashed through the partially broken glass windows at street level. He burst into a concourse, and dove behind a broken escalator.

He focused his thoughts on the Essential, in the same way he would ordinarily communicate with his Accomp, Dee.

Hey bitch, why don’t you take the escalator to the second floor? You’ll have a better angle of attack there.

As usual, the Essential didn’t answer. Eric wasn’t even taunting the alien AI this time, but actually giving it solid advice.

He remained in place as the escalator took several plasma and shell impacts; finally the escalator collapsed entirely into a pile of rubble. Eric’s Devastator stayed hidden below that rubble.

He heard the crunch of treads on broken marble as one or more of the tanks entered. Eric couldn’t know for sure how many there were, because he remained in hiding.

One of the tanks came into view. Then another. Evidently they hadn’t seen Eric yet, buried as his mech was by the rubble.

When three appeared, Eric abruptly stood up and unleashed his energy cannons in rapid succession. The bolts tore into each tank, pummeling through their armor. After only a few shots, the tanks were essentially reduced to wreckages.

A plasma bolt struck him in the side, but by then his energy shield had recharged enough to activate, and it dissipated the blow.

He turned toward the source of the bolt and unleashed another attack, destroying the two tanks there, and then dashed past the cover the wreckages provided to rush the remaining four attackers, who were in view just outside the skyscraper.

Eric shot several energy bolts through the remaining glass windows that lined the lobby; he took three blows in return, but his shield absorbed them all. Meanwhile, the tanks were reduced to more rubble.

Eric could feel the satisfaction oozing from the Essential inside of him. The being didn’t have to speak for Eric to get the sense that the AI was “showing him how it was done.”

A gunship appeared outside the lobby, hovering into view from above. Eric deployed his shield and dashed for cover behind the ruined tanks behind him.

Missiles struck the wreckage. Laser beams. Plasma bolts. The tank remains rocked, and pieces of metal sprayed into the air, but Eric remained untouched.

The Essential was obviously waiting for a momentary cessation in the attack to strike.

A metallic alien sphere floated into view beside him. It was about the size of a human head, and was careful to remain in cover behind the tank, like Eric. Blue energy pulsed in twin circular grooves inscribed into the sphere from pole to pole at right angles to one another.

It issued a series of screeches and clacks in the language of the aliens. These screeches weren’t emitted by external speakers through the air, but rather came as a comm signal that Eric picked up in his head.

The sphere was Manticore, of course, and this was part of the plan Eric had come up with. Manticore had learned the alien language during his years of captivity with aliens that had remained hidden in the Earth’s uninhabited zone, and what he said, roughly translated, was: “High value target, spotted west!”

According to Manticore, “high value target” in the context of the current engagement meant a human politician, military command unit, or other valuable actor. So in theory, the Essential instance controlling Eric’s Devastator would scramble to pursue that target.

However, Eric remained in hiding. He figured the Essential would act as soon as the current threat was eliminated.

But Manticore was impatient, apparently, because again the scout issued the alert.

SCREECH. SCREECH. CLACK.

“High value target, spotted west!”

In theory Manticore was still available on the private channel Eric had set up, even if he wasn’t shown as logged in. Eric wondered if he should tell Manticore to ease off a little bit. But he worried the Essential would detect the human-style comm protocols that would come from the object if Manticore responded—the last thing he wanted to do was give away his ally.

But then the incoming fire from the gunship ceased. His Devastator instantly leaned past the edge of the wreckage, and fired a black hole weapon. The bolt traveled outward quickly; the gunship swerved out of the way, but the bolt activated beneath it, and a tear in space time formed. It looked like a pinch in reality that distorted all light coming from the other side, sort of like those fun house mirrors or selfie apps that compressed one’s reflection.

Eric could feel the pull from where he sheltered. The gunship was sucked in immediately, and spaghettified as it vanished. Another gunship that had been lurking out of view outside the skyscraper was also drawn inside, spinning wildly before it was crushed into the space ordinarily reserved for a single hydrogen atom.

Eric got up and turned around, fleeing. The Essential purposely left that black hole active, perhaps to dissuade any other human units from attempting to follow. Another member of the invasion force would dispel the black hole at some point when it got too big.

At first the Devastator had to drive its feet deep into the floor tiles to gain traction; Manticore’s smaller scout also struggled to get away, moving in jerks. As the two of them got farther from the hole, their retreat became easier so that by the time they smashed though the far side of the concourse, the effects were reduced by almost half.

Outside, Eric continued west as the Essential in control searched for the fabled “high value target.”

The street was clear of combatants here, but that probably wouldn’t last long. To the south, Eric could see a patrol of robots and mechs racing away, headed toward the front lines he had just left. That meant Eric had moved behind human lines.

Ahead, an apartment building shook as it took a strike from the side that was facing the front lines. An explosion rocked the building, and then flames erupted in the upper levels.

A young woman dashed from the front lobby, and raced directly into his path.

Eric froze, as did the woman.

Eric lifted his energy cannon, and placed the targeting crosshairs over her center of mass.

Once again he was struck by how closely she resembled Molly.

Why does every woman look like her, these days?

It had to be an illusion. Perhaps a defense mechanism invoked by that part of his brain still resisting the Essential. Eric didn’t want to kill innocent civilians. By making him believe this woman was Molly, there was a chance the guilt would spill over to the Essential, and perhaps spare her life.

Apparently it worked, because Eric simply stood there, his energy cannon aimed at the woman, but he couldn’t fire.

Finally the woman got a hold of herself, and she sped away, racing into a small cafe at the base of a nearby building.

Eric simply stared at her, doing nothing.

But as soon as she vanished from view inside that cafe, he opened fire with everything he had. The cafe imploded, and portions of the building above collapsed into the damaged recess left behind.

Eric felt an incredible sense of loss.

Molly.

Inside, he could feel the Essential gloating.

SCREECH. SCREECH. CLACK.

The drone drew the Essential’s attention back toward the west, and once more Eric raced down the street, searching for the so-called “high value target.”

The drone rounded a bend, and then turned into an alleyway. Eric followed.

He spotted a figure near the end of the alleyway, surrounded by alien scouts. The figure had its arms raised, as if in surrender.

Eric approached.

As he came near, it became clear that the figure wasn’t human, but rather some sort of mannequin, like the kind meant for modeling clothing in shop windows.

The scouts, which appeared identical to Manticore, abruptly turned around in unison, and fired silky nets.

Eric’s time sense sped up, and he attempted to dodge those nets. His alien blades sliced two of them out of the air, but a few still struck him, pinning one of his lower legs. Eric began to fire his weaponry, but more nets came in, and in moments he was pinned against the alley wall. Half of the scouts had fallen under his attack.

Manticore’s scout approached. Small arms telescoped from the sphere, arms tipped with pincers that opened Eric’s cockpit. Those pincers wrapped around the head of his Cicada next, intending to withdraw the unit, and then the AI core contained within.

Eric’s plan had worked. Now it was up to Manticore to remove the Containment Code around Eric’s mind, and then he could free the others, and the Bolt Eaters could finally start fighting back.

But before Manticore could remove the Cicada, several shots came from above. In seconds, all of the alien spheres around Eric had fallen to the ground, including Manticore’s.

No!

Bambi jumped down from the edge of the building that bordered the alleyway, and landed in her fully restored Crab mech. She used the alien spears on her barbed tail to begin slicing through the nets that held Eric to the wall.

“I’m so sorry,” Bambi transmitted. “I tried to warn you, but my Essential turned off my comm node until a few moments ago.”

“It’s all right,” Eric lied.

“I think the Essential knew what we planned all along,” Bambi said. “Which just proves that Frogger was wrong. We’re being watched.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. What more could he say?

When he was free, Eric walked toward the damaged scout that contained Manticore’s AI core. Eric could do nothing as the Devastator lifted its heavy metal leg and crushed that scout, pulverizing whatever portion of the AI core survived inside.

Goodbye Manticore.

And so that was the end of their escape plan. Eric was the Essential’s forever, now.

That sense of gloating he felt from the being inside him was stronger than ever.

Bambi helped remove whatever webbing still gummed up his weaponry, and then together they walked down the alleyway toward the street.

It was time to continue the invasion. And to destroy humanity.

The two of them rejoined the front lines, and cut a path deep into the human defenses, hewing down tanks and mechs. Bambi created a black hole, and eliminated a whole company of human combat robots before dispersing it.

The Original Manticore had told him the Banthar promised to spare humanity, that the humans would be allowed to live in biodomes while their world was terraformed to support the production of alien bioweapons.

Somehow Eric doubted that the Banthar, and the Essential, would live up to their end of the bargain. It was looking less and less likely, as far as Eric was concerned.

A cloud blotted out the sun overhead. No, not a cloud, but a termite storm. The micro machines swooped down and, ignoring the Bolt Eaters and their clones, began to digest the buildings and human machines around them. They used the metal to produce even more termites.

Yes, humanity was doomed.

4

Eric zoned out as the battle on the front lines continued. Mostly his role now was to round up any machines that tried to escape the termites. During breaks in the fighting, he watched those termites tear down buildings to produce more micro machines; in the process, they reduced any human inhabitants into an organic “gel” that was fed to the bioweapons via specialized transports; a bell of sorts would ring across the neighborhood, and the bioweapons would gather next to a series of feeder troughs laid out near the devastated city center. The transports would deposit the gel into those troughs, and the bioweapons would fight among themselves for the opportunity to slurp up their meals.

He wondered why none of the human machines he’d faced so far had emitters to repel those units. Humanity had the technology—all of the Bolt Eaters were equipped with it, after all—but he supposed they just didn’t have enough of the units. When reinforcements finally arrived, no doubt they would be equipped with every anti-alien technology the army could offer. Until then, the invaders would face little resistance.

Still, even with that tech, Eric doubted the humans would offer much of a challenge. Not at this point. The aliens had learned from the mistakes of the first invasion. He doubted they would offer humanity any quarter.

The Bolt Eaters were quiet through it all. They were watching and participating in the destruction of everything they held dear, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Eric suddenly leaped onto a building, and clambered upward frantically. When he reached the rooftop, he leaped across to the next building, and the next, and then jumped into midair, landing on a gunship. Then he began pounding.

He wondered at first why the Essential hadn’t simply shot down the ship, but then he realized that any energy attack would have disintegrated a good portion of the aircraft. Why waste material that could be used to produce micro machines after all?

The helo began to lose altitude, and spun in frantic circles. He leaped away before it struck the asphalt; the craft carved a deep runnel into the solar paneled surface before coming to a halt.

Eric hardly paid attention. He was thinking of the second woman that looked like Molly. How the mere sight of her had caused Eric to freeze, leaving the Essential unable to fire.

At the time he had theorized a part of his mind was making him see Molly everywhere, hoping that the guilt would spill over to the Essential that inhabited his AI core. Given how intricately their psyches were currently linked, his and the Essential’s, such a spillage was entirely possible. And that he had frozen upon seeing her told him that part of his mind, his subconscious, had been right.

So, guilt, then, might be the backdoor through the alien Containment Code he was looking for.

Then again, perhaps the facial recognition algorithm was the key. Or maybe both.

He switched to VR and ramped up his time sense to max. When he was in VR, his consciousness operated on a separate partition from the Essential’s, one whose time sense was independent of the alien. The AI might know he was in VR, but unless the Essential altered its time sense to match, it wouldn’t be entirely aware what Eric was doing. Not until the Essential reviewed the system logs at a higher time sense some time later.

Eric was counting on the current battle to serve as a sufficient distraction to the entity.

Then again, he had been counting on that the last time he was in VR, when he had discussed his plan with Manticore. It hadn’t helped him then.

Have to work fast.

He pulled up his sandbox environment, and began making changes to the facial recognition algorithm. He wanted every target out there to look like Molly, not just human women. The changes wouldn’t take with his live system of course, because he lacked the necessary permissions at the moment, due to the Containment Code. But he was looking for holes.

After spending three hours exhausting all available possibilities in the recognition algorithm, he switched to the guilt subroutines.

There has to be some sort of race condition, or pointer overflow bug somewhere… even if Original Manticore helped them design this code. The heavy gunner wasn’t the best at programming.

But Eric tried everything, and still couldn’t find anything. He attempted to invite Frogger to his VR, but realized none of the Bolt Eaters were available on his HUD anymore.

The Essential had shut down his comm node. The alien AI knew precisely what he was up to, and was trying to stop him.

I’m running out of time.

At this very moment, the Essential might be trying to shut down his consciousness. Perhaps even delete it. That was good in a way, because it meant he was headed down the right path.

Then again, maybe the Essential was just acting out of caution; it had detected his probing, and wanted to shut him down.

But I probed before like this, and was never shut down. It remembers what happened with Molly. It knows I’m onto something.

What the hell was he missing?

He pulled up the guilt subroutine in the sandbox again. He applied the facial recognition changes that would make every unit out there look like Molly, and then the guilt code activated. There, the code jumped to a subroutine he hadn’t seen before. Eric guessed that was the hook the Essential had used to originally inject into his consciousness. He found that he could call that subroutine directly, while the facial recognition was active—the triggered guilt momentarily granted him permission. The passed variables were simply pointers, and he could use them to overwrite memory locations. A classic buffer overflow issue.

He finally had a way to break out.

The problem now was that in order to utilize the buffer overflow, he had to see another Molly, and feel the guilt that had caused him to freeze before. Because he still could only change the facial recognition algorithm in the sandbox, and not in his operating code.

He tried making himself feel guilty. He materialized Molly in VR, and held a weapon to her temple. He even squeezed the trigger a few times. Didn’t help.

No, he definitely had to see Molly for real.

He dismissed VR and switched to the real world. His time sense returned to normal. He waited for the Essential to shut down his consciousness, but that never happened. He realized the entity probably didn’t have the capability. Their psyches were inexorably tied, now. Assuming the Essential even had the ability, shutting down one would terminate the other.

Eric began to retreat from the fighting. That seemed strange, given that he was in the process of hemming in a platoon of tanks for the termites.

He reached Bambi and Frogger, who turned around to target him with their weapons.

And then Eric understood what was going on. The Essential really didn’t have a way to shut down his consciousness. If it had, it would have utilized that shut down, even if it meant destroying its own psyche instance. So it was going to physically destroy itself and Eric, at the hands of Bambi and Frogger.

The Essential wasn’t going to risk that Eric might see another human woman out there, a Molly, which would allow Eric to break free.

A small spherical scout floated out from behind Bambi.

And then, standing in front of Eric, between the mechs of Bambi and Frogger, was Molly.

Eric immediately activated his buffer overflow attack against the guilt subroutine.

Frogger shot down the scout and Molly vanished. Eric realized it was merely a projection.

But by then it was too late.

He’d broken free.

He upped his time sense, and immediately compartmentalized the psyche of the Essential into a memory space that was partitioned from the main system and surrounded with a software firewall. He didn’t want the Essential trying to break out, at least until Eric strengthened that firewall, so he activated a VR instance in the partition. Before bringing it online, he installed a random memory generator into it, using the real memories of the battle as a seed. The Essential would notice a momentary interruption while its consciousness switched over, but otherwise the transition would be seamless. There should be enough data there to last for at least a few days before the Essential began to notice patterns. Hopefully Eric would have time to work on the firewall before then.

“Dee, are you online?” Eric asked.

He wasn’t sure if Dee had been deleted, since he hadn’t been able to communicate with her ever since the Essential came fully online within his system. But the Accomp answered promptly: “I am. It’s good to have you back.”

“Excellent.” He ran a quick status check to confirm that breaking free of the Containment Code hadn’t disabled any of his weapons. According to the results, his three energy weapons, two plasma cannons, two laser turrets, and one black hole device were fully operational and ready to receive firing solutions.

More good news.

Eric wanted to transmit the Containment Code breakout solution to Bambi and Frogger, but the Essential instances in charge of their units would probably reject the transmission. Plus, the solution was really only applicable to his particular situation: it was doubtful either of them could conjure guilt on demand. Frogger, maybe, if Eric could find a holographic projector like the one the alien scout had used.

That scout... it gave him hope that Manticore was still alive. Then again, it might have been someone else entirely that operated the unit before Frogger shot it down. Eric would have to devote more thought to that later when he got out of this.

For the time being, Eric returned his time sense to something more manageable with respect to the real world, and he activated his energy shield as Bambi and Frogger opened fire at him—he knew how to use that shield, and all of his add-on weapons, thanks to the extra subroutines the Essential had provisioned his AI core with while inserting the Containment Code.

He vaulted upward in an arc, and landed on the rooftop of the one-story building Bambi and Frogger had just leaped from. He dashed across to the rear side, and leaped to the adjacent building.

In his rear view feed he saw Frogger appear, followed by Bambi, as they, too, returned to the rooftop. He dodged to the side as Frogger unleashed several plasma bolts.

Eric swiveled his torso and activated his black hole addition. The bolt launched, and Bambi and Frogger instantly recognized it for what it was, and scattered. The rip in space time opened behind them; Bambi smashed her claws into the rooftop to secure herself in place, while Frogger allowed himself to be sucked toward the black hole. He fired a dispersion bolt at the last moment, and the black hole winked out.

Eric was already leaping down to the street below. It was filled with giant bioweapons that looked like lobsters with alligator heads. The creatures were tearing into a company of sixty tanks, while termites wove between them, converting the tanks on the outskirts into more micro machines.

None of the bioweapons paid him any heed—he was still an ally as far as they were concerned, thanks to whatever emissions the Banthar modifications to his hull produced. Via his rear-view camera he spotted Frogger landing in the street behind him. The mech unleashed several energy blasts in a row, meant to herd Eric to the right. He had no choice but to swerve in that direction, since he didn’t want those bolts to weaken his shield.

Some of those bolts slammed into one of the lobster-gators beside him, killing it.

He wasn’t sure where Bambi was, but he realized that she didn’t necessarily have to come at him from street-level: her Crab unit was equipped with jumpjets.

He tilted his rear-view cameras skyward. There: sure enough, he spotted her in midair, jetting toward him in an arc from above. Her tail was swinging forward.

He instinctively upped his Bullet Time and studied the air in front of that tail. He noticed three dark lines spread out in front of it; lines that were slowly moving in his direction, as if hurled.

Now he understood what Frogger had been doing: he had been coordinating with Bambi to herd him directly into the path of her alien spears, which she had launched in rapid succession.

He attempted to slow down, reversing his course, but it was too late, the spears were moving too fast relative to his current speed. He was forced to duck; two of the spears missed, but the third clipped his energy shield and deactivated it entirely. The spear narrowly missed his mech after passing through: if it had impacted, the electrical bolts released from the tip would have disabled his mech.

He continued running, opting for a zig-zag motion as he did so; it was lucky he did that, because another spear darted past, narrowly missing him to strike a lobster-gator beside him. Eric hadn’t even realized Frogger had launched the weapon.

He double-checked his rear-view feed to confirm it was Frogger who had launched the spear, and not some other mech joining the fray. He spotted only the lone Devastator, and sure enough, it was missing a spear from its forearm. The remaining blade glinted malevolently in its slot.

“Dee, keep an eye on Frogger with the rear-view cam,” Eric said. “Let me know if he launches his final spear.”

“You got it,” Dee said.

Still airborne, Bambi unleashed a barrage of bolts; Eric kept zig-zagging, avoiding as many of them as he could. His energy field was still recharging, so he deployed his ballistic shield instead and flung it over his back for protection.

And then Bambi landed beside him, her eight legs punching cracks into the asphalt.

Eric immediately rushed her, swinging his Wolverine blades. She dodged, but he struck her shield anyway; the blow drained it so that the spears were able to pass through, but he missed her actual unit beyond. She leaped backward, putting some distance between herself and him, and fired her energy cannons.

Eric swung his ballistic shield down in front of him, deflecting the blows, and retreated into the mass of bioweapons beside him. The lobster-gators continued tearing into the tanks. Termite swarms parted from Eric’s path as he dashed through them, the micro machines repelled by his on-board emitters.

He held his shield behind him, and the interior of his shield began to grow reddish in color as energy bolts slammed into it from Frogger and Bambi.

“I’ve lost sight of Frogger,” Dee announced.

Of course—Eric was blocking the view of the rear camera with his shield. He began zig-zagging once more, and either weaved between the tanks, or leaped over and on them.

Some of those tanks fired at him as he passed.

“Hey!” he transmitted on an unencrypted band. “I’m on your side!”

The tanks didn’t believe him, of course, because they continued to open fire. And in fact, more joined the attack so that soon he had to worry more about those tanks than the mechs pursuing him. And so he ducked into a side alley and scrambled up the wall, slamming his hands and feet into the bricks with his machine strength, forming hand- and foot-holds that allowed him to reach the top in short order.

Two gunships were above him, laying into the bioweapons from a few meters overhead. Termites were only just beginning to assault them—the helos wouldn’t last long.

Eric leaped up, and grabbed onto the landing gear of one of them; when Bambi appeared behind him at the edge of the building, he engaged his arm servomotors to fling the gunship toward her. Those spinning blades smashed into her, and Frogger who showed up at her side, and they vanished from view.

Eric took a running leap to the next building, and when he landed, he raced across to the far side and leaped again. When he reached the end of that rooftop, he jumped down to the street below, and then continued running.

He kept an eye on his rear view camera feed, but so far no one was pursuing him.

When he had put four blocks between himself and the front lines, he at last paused to get his bearings.

He took a moment to study his overhead map, giving it a good, long look. The closest Banthar units were four blocks away, while the nearest human troops were only two blocks distant. He peered past the edge of the building where he was taking cover and into the intersection beyond, confirming that the street was empty: the termites hadn’t reached the neighborhood yet. The buildings were mostly skyscrapers, with some high-rise apartments and condos interspersed in between.

His comm node was currently disabled, but he turned off positional sharing anyway so that when he did decide to enable communications, he wouldn’t broadcast his position to all of the other Bolt Eaters.

Eric thought once more of the projection of Molly that had appeared moments before Frogger and Bambi had shot down the alien scout. It had to be Manticore’s clone in charge of that unit. He never actually said his AI core was inside the first sphere, and in fact, now that Eric thought about it, the sphere was too small to fit the cylindrical shell that harbored their AIs. Eric supposed he had thought the aliens had found a way to miniaturize the cores, but that scenario seemed less likely at the moment. He had to be operating from some other unit nearby, perhaps a Cicada, and controlling the scouts remotely.

For Manticore to intercede in such a timely fashion earlier, meant he had to be watching from somewhere nearby. Maybe he was even observing Eric now.

Sure enough, a small drone floated down from the top of the high rise beside him.

Eric smiled inwardly.

He activated his comm node, but set the range to a weak ten meters.

“Hello, Manticore,” he transmitted over the private channel he’d created for the Bolt Eaters. He’d have to change the encryption keys at some point, now that the other Bolt Eaters had truly become the enemy. “Or Manticore’s clone, I should say.”

The Spaniard’s avatar appeared in the lower right of Eric’s HUD.

“I’m glad you realized it was me,” Manticore replied.

5

Eric studied the spherical drone uncertainly for a moment. “How did you find me? You’ve been watching me all this time?”

“In answer to your first question,” Manticore said. “I put a tracker on your hull before you stepped on me the last time. As to your second: yeah, I’ve been watching you here and there. You and the other Bolt Eaters.”

“Thought so,” Eric said. “Oh, and I’m sorry about stepping on you, by the way.”

“Not your fault,” Manticore said.

“So how did you know what to do?” Eric said. “That projecting Molly’s image would help me break free?”

“As I mentioned, I’ve been watching you,” Manticore said. “I witnessed what happened when you saw that blonde woman out there, when she ran out of the burning apartment building. How you froze when she stepped into your crosshairs. I recalled how you had once been in love with a certain blonde woman named Molly. I had an image of her stored in my database from a visit to Frogger’s VR some twenty odd years ago. I decided that if you had that response to a blonde woman who only vaguely resembled the person you once loved, imagine the reaction you’d have if you encountered the actual Molly. Or her holographic projection, anyway. I didn’t quite expect it to have this effect on you, though. Stripping away your Containment Code like that? No, that was definitely a surprise.”

“Don’t pat yourself on the back too much,” Eric said. “I actually came up with a way to break through the code before then.”

“Oh,” Manticore said. “How?”

Eric hesitated, wondering if he should tell him.

Manticore picked up on his reluctance. “I’m not working for the aliens, I swear.”

“Maybe,” Eric said. “Maybe not. Either way, I think I’d like to keep the technique to myself for now.”

“How easy would it be to install this breakout code in the other Bolt Eaters?” Manticore asked.

“Difficult,” Eric said. “Considering the Essential instances in each of them are preventing me from communicating any code to them. They’ve blocked me, in essence. But even if I could get the code to them, I’d still have to trigger the appropriate emotion. And that’s essentially impossible, given I don’t know what would set them off. You’d think after all these years I’d understand my platoon mates completely: their fears, weaknesses, what drives them, what they are ashamed of, but the fact is we’ve drifted apart over the years. War brought us together. Peace divided us. It’s true of most brotherhoods formed in the service. We form a bond closer than family, and then when your tour is up, you go home. You keep in touch, hold yearly reunions, but time passes and people change.

“Myself, I lived with my platoon mates in the same apartment complex, and we hung out at least once a week, but still, that’s not enough. I see that now. We should have been together more. We should have shared ourselves with each other more. But we retreated inside. Shelled up.” He shook his head. “And even with those who are closest to me—Brontosaurus, Bambi, and Crusher—I still have no idea how to trigger the necessary emotions. I have ideas on where to start—the killing of innocent civilians is a good place—but no guaranteed solutions.”

He sighed. “I guess you never really know someone, not at that level, except for yourself. Frogger’s the only one this might work for. We create a hologram of Molly for him after giving him the breakout code, and it might set him free. Then again, it might not.”

The alien scout glided to the side, peering past the building edge and into the street beyond.

“Well, it’s good that I have a manual solution, then,” Manticore said. “We’ll have to capture them one by one, and I’ll physically interface with their AI cores and install my inoculating code that way.”

“Yeah, guess so,” Eric said. “By the way, care to share how your inoculating code works?”

“I’d rather not, at the moment,” Manticore said.

“There, see?” Eric said. “So you can understand why I’m reluctant to share my own.”

“I certainly can,” Manticore said.

“So none of us ever asked: you’re sure this code will work?” Eric pressed.

“I’ve tested it in my sandbox environment extensively,” Manticore replied.

“Ah, gotta love the sandbox environment,” Eric said. “So essentially you’re saying you’re not sure.”

“I’m not,” Manticore admitted. “Sandbox code doesn’t always translate to the real world.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Eric said.

“I have a question, by the way,” Manticore said.

Eric stared at the alien sphere expectedly.

“Do you mind if I confirm your Containment Code is offline?” Manticore asked.

Eric smiled inwardly.

It’s probably a good sign that he doesn’t trust me. Just like I don’t fully trust him.

“Sure, go ahead,” Eric replied.

“I’ll have to open up your Cicada and interface with the AI core,” Manticore said.

“In that case, I’d prefer not,” Eric said. “I’ve had my AI core poked and prodded enough in the past few weeks, thanks. I’m satisfied I’ve broken through the Containment Code.”

“All right,” Manticore said.

“How does your inoculating code handle the Essential instances embedded in the AI cores?” Eric said. “Does it delete them?”

“Of course,” Manticore said. “Isn’t that what you did with yours?”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Eric lied. He wasn’t sure if he should tell Manticore that the Essential was running in a separate partition. I’ll have to start shoring up that firewall pronto.

Because in truth, he wasn’t sure how to delete the partition without damaging large portions of his own psyche in the process. If Manticore had found a way, it was possible, obviously, but no doubt still dangerous at least to a degree. It was probably worth the risk, except for the fact that Eric didn’t want Manticore touching his AI core. He just didn’t trust the former Bolt Eater enough at the moment, because clone or not, Manticore had already admitted he planned to turn against them once this was over. Like Dunnigan had said at the time, who could say what sort of devious code Manticore would implant in their AI cores when he had access, code that he could use to defeat them when the time came?

Still, Eric didn’t see that he had any other choice at the moment. He needed Manticore’s help with the other Bolt Eaters, since his own solution to breaking free was so very personal.

“So the way I see it, we’re going to have to capture the different Bolt Eaters one by one,” Eric said. “But first of all, we’ll need to find them.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Manticore said. His avatar had a gleam in its eye.

* * *

Eric crouched on a rooftop overlooking the battle below. Manticore had several scouts in the area that he had used to continue keeping tabs on the different Bolt Eaters.

“How can you tell which are Originals, and which are our clones?” Eric had asked at one point.

“Simple,” Manticore said. “The Originals have alien materials bolted onto Earth-element hulls. The duplicates are made entirely of alien materials. As such, the Originals produce slightly different energy signatures.”

Below, Eric watched as Brontosaurus led an attack of Devastator duplicates against a company of artillery. Termites and bioweapons were conspicuously absent, occupied on the far side of town where a major human offensive was currently taking place—at least according to Manticore.

Somewhere out there was the Original Manticore. His clone had told Eric that he had no idea where the Original might be, but Eric wasn’t sure he believed it. The clone was probably worried that Eric would shoot it down at some point, and that would ruin any plans the clone might have of joining up with the Original Manticore when this was over.

So many problems to worry about.

On the way here, Eric had changed the encryption keys he used for the private comm channel, and sent the public variants to Manticore. He kept the old ones in a separate folder, since he’d have to use it to communicate with the captured Bolt Eaters. He had his comm range reduced to almost zero at the moment, but he’d be amping up that range, soon.

He had also strengthened the software firewall before coming, so he wouldn’t have to worry about the Essential breaking out when it realized what Eric had done. Eventually, he’d have to talk to Frogger after Manticore deleted the Essential instance from his particular AI core. If there was an easy way to replicate the deletion process, Eric would probably take it. Otherwise, he’d just have to live with having an alien AI embedded in his mind for the rest of his life. He planned to keep the VR partition running for the Essential in that case, as it seemed a cruel torture to deprive the entity of all sensory input. He’d have to buy a few VR packs at some point to add some variety, as the Essential would probably grow bored of killing humans for the rest of its days. Then again, maybe that was the perfect entertainment for the AI being.

Eric realized he was just stalling. He had waited long enough. He gazed for a moment longer at Brontosaurus below, and then stood up and increased his comm range.

“Hey Brontosaurus, how’s it hanging?” Eric taunted.

Brontosaurus turned around from his attack on the artillery, as did several Devastators.

Eric immediately retreated from the edge of the rooftop, and reverted his comm range back to minimum.

He kept an eye on his rear-view camera feed as he fled, and just as he neared the far side of the roof, sure enough he spotted Brontosaurus pulling himself on top.

Eric was about to take a running leap toward the next rooftop, but then realized that Brontosaurus was holding his spear arm toward him, and aiming; Brontosaurus was waiting for him to leap, so that he could hit him with the jettisoned spear while Eric was incapable of avoiding it.

So instead of jumping across, Eric threw himself over the edge and fell the two stories to the ground.

He activated his energy shield before impact; he halted as the shield absorbed the blow, and quickly turned it off before the shield’s energy could drain further. He landed with a clang and darted out of the alleyway and into the street beyond.

He heard several clangs behind him as Brontosaurus and the Devastators pursued. Eric hugged the line of buildings to his right and dashed into an alleyway when he spotted the mechs. Before he lost sight of them he counted eight, including Brontosaurus. Plasma and energy bolts slammed into the lip of the alleyway behind him, and tore blast craters into the surface. Shards of brick and concrete were flung into the air.

He felt the pull of a black hole opening somewhere behind him, but he was too far away from it to make a difference, and it closed shortly thereafter as his pursuers fired a dispersion bolt.

Eric wanted to remain beyond their line of sight for as long as possible. As far as he could tell, they were all equipped with alien spears, which could easily penetrate his energy shield, and the underlying armor, taking him out in a single hit.

Which is why when he reached a side path in the alley, he took it immediately.

That path ended in a solid wall, so he leaped upward and began climbing the building beside him as fast as he was able. He had to make his own hand- and foot-holds once again, since the surface wasn’t magnetic.

The mechs reached the side path, and several of them unleashed spears. Eric increased his pace and dodged to the left; the spears bounced off the wall and clattered to the ground. He continued climbing, and began zig-zagging.

When he reached the top, Eric pulled himself over and ducked below the rim of the wall that bordered the roof. It was tall enough to conceal his prostrate form.

Mechs began to leap over his position as they pulled themselves over.

The Devastator in the lead—Brontosaurus—halted suddenly, and began turning around: he must have spotted Eric on his rear-view camera.

Eric immediately stood up, and impaled the latest mech that was in the process of leaping over him. The blade penetrated through to the AI core, and electrical sparks passed up and down its body.

Eric slashed at the next mech in front of him, cutting through the shield and into the armored body underneath, and then he wrapped his arm around the lifeless body and hauled it in front of him, holding it as a shield. He retreated, following the wall that bordered the rooftop.

The other Devastators opened fire with their energy cannons, obviously intending to eat through the mech that shielded him, if only to get at him. Some of the Devastators were still scaling the alleyway wall, and leaped onto the roof as they arrived, joining their brethren in the attack.

Brontosaurus ejected one of his spears; it was aimed for Eric’s side, but he spun his torso just in time, and the mech that served as his shield took the impact. Electricity sparked across the body, which convulsed, but Eric was spared the effects.

Spherical alien scouts ripped down from above in a blur, encircling Brontosaurus.

The heavy gunner ignored them at first, but when the scouts began unleashing that sticky netting of theirs, Brontosaurus attempted to hack them down. By then they had already partially pinned Brontosaurus by the leg.

Some of the Devastators turned away from Eric to help Brontosaurus, and engaged the scouts.

Eric gave up the destroyed mech he was using as a shield, throwing it at a group of three Devastators, and then concentrated on the remaining mechs. He wove between them while they were distracted by the scouts, and tore through them in rapid succession with his Wolverine blades, which cut through their energy shields and sliced through the armor within. He targeted AI cores and power supplies, and in moments he had chopped down all the other Devastators on the rooftop, including those three he’d originally knocked over with the tossed mech. Only Brontosaurus remained standing.

The scouts had continued unleashing their sticky webs at Brontosaurus, and he was completely pinned now. The alien spheres began targeting the Devastator’s weapons next, stopping them up with the gooey substance.

Brontosaurus struggled frantically against his binds.

Eric switched to the old private comm channel and said: “Stay calm, Brontosaurus. We’re getting rid of the Essential.”

That only caused Brontosaurus to struggle even more violently.

“Nicely done,” Manticore transmitted.

One of the spheres approached the chest assembly of the mech, and a telescoping limb emerged. Eric hurried to the perimeter of the rooftop to stand guard while Manticore got to work. Eric scanned the opposite side of the rooftop with his rearmost camera, keeping both areas in view at all times.

As Manticore opened up the cockpit to access the Cicada within, clangs alerted Eric’s attention to the alleyway below.

More Devastators had arrived.

Eric aimed over the edge, and fired his energy cannon, but force fields kicked in around each of the approaching units, and Eric couldn’t stop them.

Those Devastators returned fire, and Eric ducked for cover, not wanting to waste his shield, and also not wanting to risk being struck by an ejected spear.

He glanced at his rear view feed, and confirmed that no enemies had arrived elsewhere on the rooftop. He also saw that Manticore had partially removed Brontosaurus’ Cicada from the cockpit, and had attached an interface cable to the AI core located within the unit.

He waited for the Devastators to begin clambering over the wall that bordered the rooftop, and then he began striking out with his Wolverine blades. He chopped through shields, striking the hands and forearms below. The resultant electrical discharge was usually enough to send the mechs falling back over the edge, though sometimes when he struck only a glancing blow, the Devastators wouldn’t release, and Eric would have to strike again.

The Devastators kept coming, until they began to overwhelm him. Eric had to back away from the rooftop edge and deploy his ballistic shield. Three mechs forced their way toward him. One fired a spear, and he sidestepped to deflect it with his ballistic shield—the angle was just right. He activated his force field, knowing it wouldn’t save him if the remaining two mechs attacked with their Wolverine blades.

But then a figure blurred past and struck down the remaining two with a single blade embedded in the forearm. Eric realized it was Brontosaurus: he was free from the webbing.

Brontosaurus joined him at the edge of the rooftop.

“Welcome back,” Eric said.

“Thank you,” Brontosaurus told him. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be in control of my own body again.”

Together they finished off the remaining attackers, and when the enemy combatants finally ceased coming, Eric sent over the public keys for the new comm channel, and Brontosaurus switched bands.

“Let’s go,” Eric said. “We can’t stay here long. More reinforcements will be coming, when they realize what’s happened.”

“Wait.” Brontosaurus knelt, and his Cicada emerged to retrieve the collection gloves from a storage compartment; the smaller unit grabbed an ejected spear from the rooftop and inserted into the forearm of his mech, and then climbed back into the cockpit, folding into a ball as the hatch sealed.

Eric led him off the rooftop, and together the two of them fled deeper into the city, away from the front lines. All save one of the alien spheres dispersed; that particular scout followed alongside the two mechs.

Eric glanced at it. “Well Manticore, one down. Twelve to go.”

6

Eric had set up a base of operations in a roomy underground parking garage designed to store autonomous buses. It was originally located some thirty-five city blocks away from the front line of the battle, but the Banthar units had continued their advance, thanks to the termites, and now that front line was only nine blocks away. The Bolt Eaters would have to move again after the latest rescue.

So far, Eric had captured and freed ten mechs with Manticore’s help. Each subsequent rescue was easier than the last, because more of the Bolt Eaters joined in and either directly helped or provided suppressive fire.

The most recent rescue involved the release of Frogger and Dunnigan.

After returning to base, Manticore removed the Containment Code from the two of them, and when Frogger came back online, he announced: “Well, I’ve done a surface scan of my memory regions... as far I can tell, Manticore hasn’t injected any malicious code. But there are ways of hiding it, of course. I believe Dunnigan volunteered to sift through our codebases with a fine-toothed comb?”

“A what?” Dunnigan said. “Er, yeah, whatever: I agreed mate. I’m starting now.”

“Thank you,” Frogger said.

Eric wasn’t sure he trusted Dunnigan to find anything, but that was all right: Eric was already doing some investigating of his own. Or rather, Dee was: he had instructed his Accomp to sift through Brontosaurus’ codebase shortly after the first rescue.

“Dee, how’s the codebase scan going?” Eric asked her. She was coordinating with Brontosaurus’ Accomp to perform the scan, and was supposed to notify Eric if she found anything malicious.

“Nothing yet,” Dee said. “But there are over a trillion lines of code to check. So it will take me some time.”

“All right, well, keep me posted.” Eric switched back to the main comm. “By the way, Frogger, I want to talk to you sometime about the code Manticore used to erase the Essential inside of you.”

“We can talk, sure, but I don’t actually know what he did,” Frogger admitted. “I was offline the whole time.”

“Damn.” That was the same answer everyone else had given Eric. “I guess I was hoping you of all people would have found a way to log his commands, even while offline, considering our backgrounds in programming.”

“Yeah, I wish I could have,” Frogger said. “But even I have my limits. I guess if you really want to delete the Essential instance from your core, you’re going to have to let Manticore work on you.”

“Not going to happen,” Eric said. “I’m the only one whose core he hasn’t touched so far, and I want to keep it that way. I’ll just have to live with the Essential inside of me for now until I can come up with something on my own.”

“That’s certainly your prerogative,” Frogger said.

With Frogger and Dunnigan rescued, that left only two more Bolt Eaters to be collected: Bambi and Marlborough.

The two were operating in close proximity to one another, according to Manticore, but it was very doubtful the platoon would be able to lure them at the same time. In fact, during the last few rescues, the possessed Bolt Eaters had begun to run away whenever Eric and the others showed up—they had become that afraid of capture. To make matters worse, scores of enemy units would converge on the positions of the targets to abet their escape.

Eric quickly developed a counter strategy for that behavior—he’d have other Bolt Eaters lying in wait and ready to pursue the instant their targets fled. It had worked well so far, even if enemy reinforcements sometimes directed fire at the ambushing units.

And so the Bolt Eaters set out to affect one final rescue, hoping to return with Bambi and Marlborough before the day was out. When that was done, they would decide what to do next.

The platoon was split into two teams, separated by fifty meters so that they moved in traveling overwatch. Each team hugged the line of buildings as they advanced.

Manticore’s clone joined them, following alongside via one of the alien spheres. Ahead of the group, Eagleeye had deployed some of his modified repair drones to act as scouts as well, since the Bolt Eaters didn’t want to leave their fate entirely in Manticore’s hands.

“So Manticore, bitch,” Slate said. “When do we get to see what your actual body looks like?”

“Soon,” Manticore said. “I’ve captured a Ravager unit from the humans, so at least I don’t have to reside in a small box with treads anymore.”

“A box with treads?” Slate said. “Geez, I can see why you were hiding. I’d be embarrassed to show my face if all I had for a body was a box.”

“Yeah, well,” Manticore said. “When you have remote control of hundreds of custom spheres, and an advanced VR that’s indistinguishable from reality, it doesn’t matter as much.”

“You have access to an alien 3D printer, right?” Dickson said.

“I do,” Manticore said. “But it’s only capable of printing scouts. Speaking of which, we got some incoming. And they’re not mine.”

“Take cover, people!” Dickson ordered. In Marlborough’s absence, Dickson had assumed command of the platoon.

Eric and the others dove behind the rubble of a fallen building.

“Eagleeye, I want your scouts out of view!” Dickson added.

“Scouts have landed!” Eagleeye confirmed.

The alien spheres sped past overhead.

The Banthar had started sending out patrols to look for the escapees; so far, the Bolt Eaters had managed to avoid detection, but with the front lines slowly encroaching on the parking garage, it was only a matter of time until the base was discovered. Which was why they didn’t plan to return there after this mission was done.

When the patrol had passed, Dickson waited several minutes before giving the order to resume the advance.

Eric cautiously stepped from cover, scanning the street on either side through the scope of one of his many weapons. It was clear out there.

The Bolt Eaters began the march anew, continuing in the two traveling overwatch teams and staying close to the line of buildings.

“You know, I really wish I’d hung out with you guys more these past twenty years,” Traps said. “I feel like I missed the opportunity to really get to know you all.”

“Now’s not really the time to reminiscence, bro,” Tread said. “Besides, you’re making up for it right here, right now.”

“Ain’t no better way to get to know someone than by fighting at his side!” Slate chimed in.

“Yeah, that’s right, throw out the overused platitudes like they mean something,” Eagleeye said.

“Hey bitch, it’s true,” Slate said.

“I just can’t help but think, there were so many things we could have done together,” Traps said. “While the world was still free. Before… this happened.”

“The world will be free again, mate,” Dunnigan said. “We’re not going to let the Banthar win.”

“Maybe,” Traps said.

“We hung out plenty,” Slate said. “What are you talking about? We lived in the same apartment complex for the past twenty years. I saw your ugly face almost daily.”

“Sure, you saw my face, but we never really hung out all that often,” Traps said.

“Like hell we didn’t,” Slate said. “I remember cruising for bitches with you along Bright Avenue. And then there was the trip to Miami Beach. Surfboards in hand, hitting up bitches all along the beachfront. You, me, Eagleeye. Fun times.”

“Yeah, but my point still stands: we didn’t do it often enough,” Traps said.

“No, you’re wrong,” Eric said. “We did hang out a lot, at first. But there are only so many stories that we could tell. Only so many reminiscences we could exchange, and patterns of behavior we could endure, before everything started to get old. We have AI memories. We don’t forget. How many times have you heard the same dick jokes from Slate?”

“Hey!” Slate said. “I never tell dick jokes.”

“You do,” Eagleeye said.

“Or heard Mickey whining about how we all cheated during a VR battle,” Eric said. “My point is, we know each other too well. Or at least, we did. And that’s why we stopped hanging out.”

“Well, it was a mistake,” Traps said. “We should have continued to visit one another as often as we could. We didn’t have to keep telling our stories. We could have just enjoyed each other’s presence.” His avatar shook his head. “So many lost opportunities. So much lost time. We lived our lives separately, like I did when I was human.”

“Uh-oh, here it comes,” Brontosaurus said. “Emotional breakdown time.”

“When I was human, I was never really alive,” Traps continued. “I was… well, essentially a walking zombie. After I did my term in the army, I essentially holed up with my family. But it was like I wasn’t even there. I spent most of my days in VR, reliving old battles with my buddies. Every day. Even when the goggles were off, I relived those battles. My wife stayed with me, I don’t know why. Maybe for the sake of the kids. I finally clocked out when I was hit by a falling delivery drone. At least, that’s what my death records stated. Good thing I paid for a cryofreeze.”

“Dude, you were killed by a falling delivery drone?” Slate said. He burst out in laughter. “Who dies that way?”

“Drones have had built in failsafes for a long time,” Bambi said. “As soon as a motor begins to fail, power to the other motors increases so that the drone can change course to avoid hitting any people below. Plus, they have parachutes and inflatable cushions in case those systems fail.”

“Yeah, well, a catastrophic systems failure occurred,” Traps said. “Because you see, two delivery drones collided in midair, and then dropped like rocks. I happened to walking by underneath.”

Slate chuckled. “What a way to go. But hey, if they smashed into you from above, there couldn’t have been much left of your head to freeze.”

“There was enough, apparently,” Traps said. “I managed to find some footage of the incident after I woke up as an AI. Wasn’t pretty, but definitely workable.”

“When this is over, maybe we should make some kind of pact,” Mickey said. “A promise to hang out more in the days to come. We don’t have to talk, and listen to stories that we’ve exchanged a hundred times, but just do things with each other. Like brothers and sisters who’ve been through hell and back are supposed to do.”

“I think we should make that pact right now,” Traps said. “A blood oath. In fact, I’ll start it. I swear to you, my brothers and sisters, that when this is through, I won’t abandon you again. I’ll be there for you, through thick and thin. We’ll have dinner every night, and—”

“Shit man, I ain’t having dinner every night with you,” Slate said. “I hate opening up the belly of my android to dump out the unnecessary food afterward.”

“Dinner every other night,” Traps corrected.

Eric interpreted Slate’s silence as acquiesce.

As did Traps, apparently, because he continued: “And during dinner, we’ll talk about our day. We’ll talk about our hopes for the future. We’ll talk about what keeps us awake at night. What scares us. We’ll… be there.”

“Deal,” Brontosaurus said.

“Everyone else who’s in, say aye,” Traps said.

A chorus of ayes filled the comm line. Only Manticore remained silent.

“You won’t join us, Manticore?” Traps asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Manticore replied. “I’ve sworn to hunt you down, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I guess I hoped you’d change your mind,” Traps said. “Everyone else, thank you. I look forward to renewing our friendship when this is over.”

“As do I,” Slate said. “And I also look forward to slapping Manticore’s ass down Bright Avenue. We’ll knock some sense into you bro.”

“You won’t,” Manticore said.

“Well that’s fine,” Slate said. “Real fine. If we don’t, then we’ll just end you.”

“You can certainly try,” Manticore said.

“Just as you can try to end us,” Slate told him.

“Can we not talk about killing each other for the time being?” Dickson said. “We’re allies, at least for now. Let’s act like it.”

“Sorry, boss,” Slate said.

Manticore offered no such apology.

Eric knew that things weren’t going to be very pretty when the time came for them to turn on Manticore.

7

Eric and the others snuck by two companies of human troops on the way to Bambi’s position—the first a series of tanks that were moving into position, the second mechs that waited in a staging area in front of a courthouse. Eric had attempted to make contact with human units a few times, but so far the only response he ever got was plasma fire—they thought his comm attempt was a deception. He planned to make a more serious effort to approach the humans when the rest of the Bolt Eaters were rescued. He still wasn’t sure how he would make them believe his intentions were good, however. He’d probably have to intervene somewhere on the front lines, rescuing a company from certain doom. But that was for another time.

Along the way to Bambi and Marlborough, he and the Bolt Eaters also avoided human gunships, alien airships, and patrolling clouds of termites.

Finally, after an hour, the two teams had reached the buildings overlooking Bambi’s latest position. She was on a rooftop with other Crab units and Devastators, fighting against human drones that were equipped with plasma cannons. A few termites dotted the area, slowly converting the drones; Bambi was distracting the aircraft to give the termites time to finish the process. On an adjacent rooftop, Marlborough was similarly distracting another platoon of human drones.

Eric and the others spread out into even smaller teams.

Frogger and Traps were part of Eric’s group, and joined him as he closed the gap with Bambi. The three of them were on a rooftop next to hers, and kept low, out of her line of sight. Other teams of Bolt Eaters lined the adjacent rooftops, ready to intercept Bambi and keep her occupied while Manticore’s scouts closed to ensnare her. Brontosaurus was in charge of two other teams that would similarly occupy Marlborough.

Eric approached the edge of the rooftop at a low crawl, and lifted the energy cannon the Essential had conveniently installed in his right arm, above the alien blades. He held the cannon over the wall that bordered the perimeter of the building. He switched to the point of view of the weapon’s scope and aligned the crosshairs with Bambi’s center of mass. He didn’t actually intend to fire an energy bolt—her force field would protect her. But, he was using the crosshairs to line up his forearm for a spear launch, since there was no scope installed for the blades. Because the scope was designed for the energy cannon, not the blades embedded in his forearm, he had Dee offset the crosshairs to compensate, using data collected earlier when he had practiced firing on a wall to get the alignment just right.

It was expected that Bambi would notice the shots and attempt to dodge, which was why Frogger and Traps would also release their spears on either side. The other team would launch spears above her, in case she decided to jumpjet away, so that no matter the direction Bambi attempted to flee, she would run into a spear.

The impact from the alien weapon would penetrate both her energy shield and the underlying armor of her mech, causing a voltage surge that would burn out her power coupler. The latter was something Manticore could repair in about half an hour after deleting the Essential from her AI core. There was a small chance the spear would strike her AI core as she attempted to avoid the projectile, but Eric doubted it would come to that—Bambi was far too nimble to allow such an impact. At least, he hoped she was. He was sure that given the choice between a rescue attempt with a small risk of death and lifelong slavery, she would have chosen the rescue attempt.

Eric switched to Bullet Time.

“Prepare to fire,” Dickson said. Everyone on the comm line would receive his current timebase as part of the communications packet, and their own systems would instantaneously adjust their time senses to match.

“Fire,” Dickson said.

Eric launched the spear.

Beside him, Frogger and Traps also released the alien blades. Other spears came in from the sides of the building that harbored Bambi.

As expected, Bambi noticed the incoming bolts on her rear view camera feed, because she reacted almost immediately after Eric released the spear.

She didn’t leap away like he had expected, however. Instead, she deftly turned her body to the side and, like a ballerina, danced between the spears, squeezing her body between the deadly paths of the weapons. One of the blades struck her energy shield, and disabled it; but she managed to swing her body out of the way so that the tip didn’t touch her.

“Damn, she’s good,” Traps said.

“That’s my girl…” Eric amped up his time sense slightly and retreated from the edge of the building; then he sprinted toward the wall, and took a running leap off the rooftop. He could have easily crossed to the adjacent building with that jump, but that would have put him directly in the path of incoming spears launched by the remaining Crabs and Devastators on the rooftop, not to mention from Bambi herself.

Instead, as he vaulted over the wall, he arced downward and out of view; he landed on the building three stories from the top, and began to climb. Frogger and Traps landed beside him. Meanwhile, the other team offered covering fire.

He scrambled upward as fast as he was able, alternately smashing through windows for purchase, and activating his magnetic mounts to attach to the beams situated between the glass.

He reached the wall at the top of the rooftop and thrust an arm over to survey the area; Bambi was fleeing toward the far side, surrounded by the Crabs and Devastators with her. He glanced toward Marlborough’s rooftop, but couldn’t see him from his current location—he’d have to trust that Brontosaurus and the other Bolt Eater teams would handle him.

Eric pulled himself over the rooftop and swiveled his ballistic shield into place as he landed—he hoped to use it to deflect any alien spears that the enemy might throw his way. A glancing blow could be deflected, but a head-on hit would penetrate the shield, and he’d have to discard it before the electricity spread to his main unit.

Eric rushed toward the fleeing mechs. Frogger and Traps were at his side.

The enemy units launched plasma and energy bolts his way, and his force field absorbed the blows. When the tangos began to throw alien spears, Eric disabled his energy shield, not wanting it to be drained. He dodged those airborne blades, knocking a few of them aside with his ballistic shield as planned—glancing blows, of course.

Four of the Devastators and two Crab units remained behind to cover Bambi’s escape, while the remaining units leaped over the far side of the building. Meanwhile, overhead, the surviving human drones rained plasma bolts down on both parties. The termites that were up there didn’t bother to attack Eric or the others—they utilized some cloud learning algorithm, and by now they knew the emitters aboard the Bolt Eaters would repel them. The aliens would probably make some modifications to their micro machines at some point to circumvent that, but for now the technology kept the termites at bay.

Eric spotted the other team of Bolt Eaters leaving their cover upon the adjacent buildings to intercept Bambi and her escort. But he didn’t have too much time to consider them, as in seconds he ran into the opposing mechs.

He only had a single alien blade embedded in his forearm at the moment, and he swung it downward like a sword, biting into the ballistic shield of the Devastator in front of him.

He received a transmission.

“Please don’t kill me,” Brontosaurus voice came over the comm. There was no avatar, since he wasn’t communicating on the private encrypted comm line.

Eric faltered. The mech contained a duplicate of Brontosaurus’ AI core.

That hesitation on Eric’s part nearly cost him his life.

The Devastator discarded the shield and twisted Eric’s arm in the process, as his blade was still embedded in the metal. The mech in turn stabbed its own blades toward Eric’s chest assembly.

Eric swiveled to the side, and narrowly avoiding those blades; he bashed upward with his ballistic shield, knocking the arm upward and out of the way, and then turned his torso to plunge his blade deep into the mech’s armor.

Electricity sparked up and down the impact site, and the mech froze, dropping like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Eric turned toward one of the Crab units next, and narrowly dove to the side as that barbed tail came crashing down on him. It struck the wreckage of the Devastator, and lifted it in the air, flinging it at him.

Eric was hit by the lifeless body and hurled to the far side of the rooftop, striking the bordering wall.

The Crab leaped, firing its jumpjets, and arced down toward him. Eric held up his spear arm, intending to impale the unit, but the Crab swerved sideways, courtesy of its lateral jets. It landed beside him, flinging its tail down toward him once more, forcing Eric to dodge.

Holding his spear before him, he slid underneath those legs, and the weapon drained the unit’s energy shield. Eric stabbed upward, and the spear tip contacted; the unit collapsed around him as the electricity crawled over its exterior.

Eric waited the few seconds for the current to run its course, pulled his blade free, and then dragged himself from under the heavy body. At the far side of the roof, Frogger and Traps were still engaged with the remaining four mechs—three Devastators and one Crab.

Frogger took down a Devastator as Eric watched, while Traps seemed on the verge of eliminating the Crab. Traps had landed on the carapace and was about to stab his spear into the torso region, when that tail swung at his body.

“Traps, look out!” Eric said.

But it was too late, and the tail struck Traps. His body convulsed as the three alien prongs in the tail caused electricity to spark up and down his hull. The Crab casually flung Traps away, and another Devastator stabbed its spear down into his chest assembly.

Where the AI core was located.

“No!” Eric rushed the Devastator.

He fired his energy cannon at the same time, and the Devastator’s alien force field kicked in. Eric hurled himself at the mech, stabbing his spear into the energy shield, and then the ballistic shield underneath. The mech discarded the shield, but Eric was already sliding his spear free, and swiped it at the Devastator. The mech dodged to the side.

“It’s me!” Traps’ voice came over the comm.

“No,” Eric said. “You’re just a duplicate.” He stabbed his spear forward, but again the Devastator sidestepped. This time it swung down with its own arm, forcing Eric’s hand downward. Then it followed up by stabbing its own alien blades toward Eric, forcing him to swivel out of the way.

The Crab launched a spear at Eric from its tail, and he amped up his Bullet Time to dance out of the way. He grabbed the Devastator from behind as the tail swung downward, and held the body in front of him as the remaining two spears in the tail struck. The mech convulsed as electrical bolts shot up and down its body. Eric released the Devastator before the current could jump onto him and sidestepped away, slamming his blade down into the tail before the Crab could remove it from the wreckage. The Crab spasmed in turn before collapsing.

Eric turned toward the remaining Devastator, but Frogger was just putting it out of its misery.

Eric rushed to Traps and held his crumpled form in his arms.

Frogger knelt beside him and opened up the cockpit. He examined the Cicada that was curled into a ball within, and then looked up. When Frogger’s avatar appeared on Eric’s HUD, his expression was grim.

“The AI core is destroyed,” Frogger said.

“We got her,” Dickson announced. “Manticore has her wrapped up tight, and we’re conveying her away from the front lines. Got some random Devastators pursuing, but we should be able to lose them in the streets.”

“We got Marlborough as well,” Brontosaurus said. “A few pursuers are also tailing, but nothing we can’t handle.”

“You guys all right?” Tread asked.

“No,” Eric said. “Traps is… gone.”

8

Eric carried the body of Traps back to the fallback site, an alleyway four blocks from the front line.

Slate immediately rushed forward, and took the wreckage from his arms. “Traps. Bro. I’m so sorry, man. Fuck. So sorry. I should have spent more time with you, man. Shit. My man. I can’t believe you’re gone. I should have been there. I was on the wrong team.” He glanced up and his avatar wore an accusing look. “What the hell’s wrong with you fuckers. How could you let him die?”

Eric lowered his gaze, saying nothing. Frogger did the same.

“You sick fucks,” Slate said, turning away.

“Slate, it’s not their fault,” Dickson said.

“Go to hell,” Slate told the staff sergeant, and carried Traps to the far side of the alleyway.

Dickson let the insubordination go. Slate was wracked by grief, and wasn’t himself at the moment. None of them were.

“I’m sorry, bro. I’m so sorry.” Slate dropped to his knees in the corner of the alleyway, and his body began to convulse as if he wept.

Crusher approached. “We’ll revive him from his mind backup.” She dropped a hand on Slate’s, but he jerked away.

“Leave me alone!” Slate said.

“Get back, Private First Class,” Dickson ordered Crusher. “Give him some room.”

She obeyed.

“You know, mind backups might not exist anymore,” Dunnigan said. “Not for any of us.”

“They certainly won’t if we allow the invasion to succeed,” Eagleeye told him.

“What about the alien copies?” Tread said.

“You’re suggesting we restore Traps from one of the cloned Devastators?” Brontosaurus said.

“Can we?” Eric asked Manticore, who was working on Bambi nearby.

The alien sphere paused. “The clones are different than you, the Originals. The Essential is more firmly integrated with their neural networks. During the cloning process, the alien AI modified the code so that the hooks more fully permeated the codebase. I’m afraid my inoculating code won’t work. If you want to restore Traps, you’ll have to do so from a mind backup, and not an alien clone.”

“That’s too bad,” Eric said. “It would have given us a ready made army… of our own clones.”

Crusher turned toward Manticore. “You’re a clone, how come you don’t have the Essential’s hooks scattered throughout your own codebase?”

“I wasn’t cloned by the Essential,” Manticore explained. “But rather by my own Original.”

Manticore returned his attention to Bambi, and revived her shortly thereafter. He restored Marlborough next. Neither of the two had taken spear damage, so Manticore only had to delete the Essential instances in their AI cores, as well as lift the Containment Code.

“How does it feel to be back?” Dickson asked Marlborough.

“Weird,” Marlborough said, examining his hands.

“Weird doesn’t even come close.” Bambi raised her own clawed hands in front of her, and snapped the pincers a few time. “These hands are mine again.”

“You call those hands?” Eagleeye said.

“Well, you know what I mean,” Bambi said. She surveyed the gathered Bolt Eaters, and her gaze lingered on Slate, who was still convulsing in the corner over the wreckage of Traps. “What’s wrong with him?”

“We lost Traps,” Eric explained.

“Oh,” Bambi said. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“We all are,” Eric said.

Marlborough stood up. “We’ll grieve for him later. According to the map, we’re only four blocks from the front line. Is this true?”

“It is,” Eric said.

“Then we have to get the hell out of here,” Marlborough said. “The Banthar will dispatch scouts to look for us.”

“They probably already have,” Eric agreed. “We’ll have to watch the sky. And the streets.”

“Do we have a base of operations?” Marlborough asked.

“We did,” Eric replied. “But it’s currently too close to the front lines, so we’re abandoning it.”

“Sounds fine by me,” Marlborough said. “Dickson, take us out. Traveling overwatch.”

“You got it,” Dickson said.

“Wait,” Marlborough said. He glanced at the right forearms of the different mechs, most of which were missing at least one spear. “Did anyone collect the spears in the last engagement?”

“I have a few,” Frogger said. He opened up his cockpit, and ejected in his Cicada to open up his storage compartment. He retrieved the collection gloves and tossed a bundle of spears onto the ground.

“I got a few, too,” Brontosaurus said.

“And I,” Mickey said.

“Then let’s get our spears loaded up,” Marlborough said.

Frogger, Brontosaurus, and Mickey installed the spears into the forearms of those who were missing them; in the case of Bambi, they loaded them into her tail. When that was done, the Cicadas returned to their respective mechs, and then the platoon headed west in traveling overwatch formation, away from the front lines. They avoided human and alien troops alike until they found a warehouse some thirty blocks from the main fighting. They decided to use that as their base of operations.

Dickson assigned troops to watch the approaches.

“We need to decide what to do next,” Marlborough said.

“VR?” Frogger asked hopefully.

“Yes, I suppose that’s as good an environment as any to have this discussion,” Marlborough said. “Set your Accomps to bring you out if tangos are detected. Who wants to host?”

“I got a lakeside environment that’ll work wonders,” Dunnigan said.

“All right, everyone meet in Dunnigan’s VR immediately,” Marlborough said.

Eric logged off of this reality.

* * *

Eric stood at the edge of the woods, next to a log cabin. There was a beautiful lake in front of him, which reflected the mountains that bordered it.

Dunnigan stood next to a huge barbecue, and flipped the burgers he had cooking.

“Step right up, ladies and gents,” Dunnigan said. “It’s time for the best veggie burgers you’ve ever tasted.”

“Veggie burgers?” Mickey said. “No thanks. This is VR, the food is fake anyway. Couldn’t you have at least used a meat flavor?”

“That’s the thing, these burgers do taste like meat,” Dunnigan said.

Eric accepted a burger, and sat down at the long picnic table next to the barbecue. He was going to materialize a beer for himself, but then one appeared in front of him.

“Beer, too?” Eric said.

“I got everything,” Dunnigan said from the barbecue. “Newcastle Brown. Or the best approximation I could come up with.”

Eric took a sip. “Not bad.”

Everyone, including Dunnigan, took a place at the table, burgers in hand.

Well, everyone except for Slate, who sat at a picnic table apart from the others, drinking in solitude.

“Slate, want a burger?” Dunnigan called to him.

“Not hungry,” Slate answered.

Eric bit into the burger. “It does taste like meat. The texture is the same, too. You sure you used a veggie template, Dunnigan?”

“It’s veggie,” Dunnigan said. “Believe me.”

Manticore was there, too, the tattoos of naked woman standing out upon his arms as he lifted a burger to his mouth. He took a big bite, leaving only half the burger behind.

The Spaniard chewed for several moments, and then swallowed. “I missed this. The camaraderie. I’d forgotten what it was like.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to turn on us now?” Eagleeye asked.

“Oh, I’m going to turn on you,” Manticore said. “I have no choice.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Eric said between bites. “You do have a choice.”

“No,” Manticore said. “I can’t let more humans become Mind Refurbs. It has to end with us.”

“Then maybe we can let it end,” Crusher said. “We can make the humans ratify an agreement into law, specifying that no Mind Refurbs are ever to be made again. It can be one of the conditions we give them, if they want our help fighting against the alien invaders. We can be the last Mind Refurbs.”

“That’s not enough,” Manticore said. “You, too, must all be eliminated. There must be no examples left for the humans to strive for. No android bodies for them to envy.”

“We’ll never agree to that,” Dickson said.

“I know,” Manticore said. “Which is why, like I told you, I have no choice.”

The platoon members ate their burgers in quietude for the next several moments. Slate, meanwhile, seemed to be weeping softly at his picnic table.

Frogger nodded toward him. “I didn’t know they were so close,” he said in a hushed voice.

“They weren’t, as far as I know,” Bambi said. “But I think Traps’ last words really got to him. About not spending enough time together these last twenty years. It’s something I certainly feel. And I miss Traps. Even though I know we might be able to restore him from backup, it won’t be the same Traps we’ve known these last twenty years, but a duplicate harboring his memories and experiences.”

“Just like how you’re a duplicate?” Mickey said. “And I’m a duplicate? Eric is the only Original still among us. The only one who never died since he was first reborn as an AI.”

“Yeah, about that,” Eric said. “I’m sure my exclusive status as the only Original won’t last long. Especially with all of you to keep jinxing me like this.”

“We’re not jinxing you,” Mickey said. “We’re only further reinforcing your legend. And ensuring that you never will die, in the days to come.”

“Trust me, you’re definitely jinxing me when you say crap like that,” Eric said.

Tread turned toward Marlborough. “So, what are we going to do now? We’ve rescued the platoon from the Essentials. It’s time to take the battle to the enemy, right?”

“It is,” Marlborough agreed. “We’re going to need a way to deal with the termite swarm. If left unchecked, it’ll soon become a storm, rivaling the one we faced during the last invasion. We have to nip it in the bud, right here, right now.”

“I have some thoughts about that,” Eric said, and he proceeded to explain a potential plan.

“It just might work,” Marlborough said. The others picked it apart, and added to it. Frogger had the most changes, but when they were done, Eric was happy that it was the best possible plan they could come up with.

“If possible, before we put that plan into play, I’d like the local human army on our side,” Marlborough said. “Less units attacking us means fewer things that can go wrong when we kick off the ploy. In fact, the human army will be able to help us out by offering covering fire. And maybe providing us with the containment field we’ll need.”

“That’s very true,” Dickson added.

“So how are we supposed to make friends with the human defenders?” Dunnigan said. “We’ve tried to communicate already. Didn’t get far.”

“He’s right,” Eric said. “We’ve always been met with a plasma gun kick to the face.”

“It would help if there were at least people operating along the front,” Crusher said. “But all we have are robots.”

“Where you have robots, people aren’t far behind,” Brontosaurus said. “If we can come to the aid of a platoon, and human operators see it, we might have a chance at opening a dialog.”

“What about if there was someone you knew operating among those humans?” Manticore asked.

“That would be the ideal scenario,” Marlborough said.

“Really?” Manticore said. “That’s interesting. Because some of my scouts are telling me that a new type of unit has arrived with the reinforcements. This particular unit is equipped with alien spears, and technology capable of repelling the termites.”

“Has to be Lieutenant Arnold,” Frogger said.

“Great,” Bambi said. “He’s arrived with our clones.”

Manticore shared the last known location of those units, and the team made plans to intercept them. When that was done, everyone resumed chowing down on the burgers.

Eric swallowed his last piece, and gazed at Slate.

Beside him, Bambi softly touched his upper arm. “Someone really needs to talk to him.”

Eric glanced at her, then took a long sip of beer. He stood up with the mug in hand, and walked across to Slate. He sat down opposite him at the smaller picnic table.

Slate looked up for only a moment before lowering his gaze.

“I want to be alone,” Slate said.

“I know,” Eric said. “Which is exactly why I can’t let you.”

Slate’s lip curled back in a snarl, but he managed to hold back whatever curse words he had intended to say.

“We’re not going to let Traps’ death be for nothing,” Eric said. “We’re going to hunt down every last one of these Banthar units, and the Essential instances that guide them. And when that’s done, we’re going to destroy the mothership. We—”

“I don’t want to merely destroy the mothership,” Slate said. He finally looked up to stare Eric in the face. “I want to return to their homeworld. And kill them all.”

Eric nodded slowly. “I’m not sure we can do that. Or if it’s morally right.”

“Fuck morals,” Slate said. “You think the aliens are applying morality when they wipe out our cities, and breakdown the human inhabitants into that goo they feed their bioweapons? No, they’re damn well not.”

Eric had nothing to say to that. “Traps wouldn’t have wanted you to spend the rest of the mission moping around by yourself. He would have wanted you to live your life free of—”

“You don’t know what Traps wanted!” Slate said. “So, don’t you dare even say that. He’s gone. And he’s never coming back. You can restore his backup and call it Traps all you want, but it’s not him. Never him. Just a clone. A goddamn clone. Like the rest of us. Except for you, of course. You precious Original.” Slate dropped his head in his hands and tears fell. “I just wished I had talked to him more these last twenty years. Hung out with him. Told him he was the brother I never had. He saved my life in our first deployment, way back in Iraq. I never paid him back for it.”

“You can make up for that by talking more to the rest of us, right now,” Eric said. “And by fighting at our side. And saving our lives. We need you, Slate, now more than ever. Get that through your head. We need you. And sitting here crying about our dead companion isn’t going to help things. Suck it up. Man the fuck up.”

That finally seemed to sober Slate. He straightened, and then gave Eric a steely-eyed look. “Don’t you ever tell me to man the fuck up ever again. If you do, I’ll smash in your face, I swear I will.”

Eric nodded. “Good. Anger. It’s better than grief. Stand up then, and let’s use this anger while we can. Directed toward the enemy, not me.”

Slate stood, stepped over the picnic table bench, and tossed the table right over, sending Eric flying onto his back. The seat portion pinned Eric, but Slate didn’t notice; he was already stalking away. He promptly vanished.

Bambi came to him and freed him. “Your little pep talk had the desired effect?”

“I hope so,” Eric said.

9

Eric and the others lurked on separate rooftops near the front lines. They had spotted the Devastators that were equipped with spears and termite-repelling emitters a short time ago, and were following them, remaining in hiding, waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves. They had increased their transmission range to thirty meters, and all of them resided just inside the limits of that range.

The buildings here were medium-rise, between four and ten stories tall; the Devastators leaped from rooftop to rooftop, shadowing a group of human tanks below. These particular Devastators had support units with them, in the form of several Ravager mechs. They also had the ability to call in air support; the Bolt Eaters had witnessed them summon a bomber a short while earlier. That bomber was equipped with termite-repelling emitters itself, so that the aliens had to shoot it down via other means: Banthar flyers had intercepted the craft after its bombing run and unleashed a stream of energy bolts that destroyed the bomber.

“You think Arnold is their CO?” Hicks asked over the comm.

“Quite possibly,” Dickson replied. “That they can call in bombers is a good sign.”

“Maybe we should try communications,” Mickey said.

“Not yet,” Marlborough said. “We have to prove our intentions, first. And the way to do that is through actions, not words.”

“They certainly want to protect those tanks fairly badly,” Hicks said. “Must be on some sort of mission.”

“You think the tanks have the termite-repelling emitters?” Eagleeye asked.

“Doubt it,” Frogger said. “They’re not going to get too close, I think. This street eventually leads alongside the front lines. My guess is they’ll move into shelling distance of the Banthar, and no closer.”

An airship appeared above the buildings ahead.

“Unless they get attacked first!” Eagleeye said.

That airship began dumping bioweapons and Sloth units onto the street in front of the tanks.

Immediately the Devastators jumped ahead of the tanks to intercept. They used their alien blades to slice through the alien shields and tear apart the Sloths, while they fired energy weapons at the lobster-gators, sending body parts flying in splattering messes.

From vents in its hull, the airship unloaded a swarm of termites that swooped down toward the Devastators and their Ravager support units. The micro machines swept past them, unable to touch the units thanks to the repellers, and continued on toward the tanks. The outlying termites began to infest the armored vehicles in the vanguard.

“Told you no emitters on the tanks,” Frogger said. “They’re going to lose them!”

“Time to intervene,” Marlborough said. “Increase transmission range to fifty meters. Black Hole Team, launch.”

Eric and the other five Bolt Eaters who were part of Black Hole Team were spread out across the different rooftops overlooking the street below. These rooftops had particularly large superstructures, which had done a good job of hiding the mechs up to that point.

The team members aimed their weapons skyward and launched spacetime bolts into the air, toward the airship. Five black holes formed overhead, directly underneath the airship, and immediately devoured any nearby termites.

Eric felt the pull, and dug in with his metallic hands and feet. He watched as other termites were sucked up from where they assaulted the tanks below, vanishing into the spacetime tear.

The airship was unaffected of course, since it utilized inertialess drives. The Devastators and support units on the street below were forced to similarly dig in. Some of the bioweapons and tanks began to rise into the air from the gravitational forces.

Marlborough waited until the last of the termites vanished, and then gave the shutdown order. “Fire dispersion bolts!”

Eric launched two of the necessary bolts for good measure. The first struck the black hole and it immediately dissipated. The second dispersed when it struck the energy shield of the airship. Dispersion bolts from other team members hit the remaining holes, and those tears in spacetime also winked out.

The gravitational pull subsided, and the bioweapons and Sloths dropped to the street.

The Devastators released their hold on the asphalt and cut through the remaining Sloths with their Wolverine blades, while the tanks handled the bioweapons.

“Help the tanks!” Marlborough ordered.

Eric and the others approached the edge of their respective buildings and unleashed energy shots en masse into the lobster-gators. They quite literally tore them apart.

When there were no opponents left, the Devastators launched their spears skyward, at the airship, disabling its energy shield.

“Scorpion, Black Hole!” Marlborough ordered, presumably because Eric was in a more advantageous position than Marlborough at the moment, at least when it came to firing a black hole into the airship.

Eric launched a dark bolt at the ship, creating a black hole in the tractor beam bay that was just opening up. The inside of the bay broke away rapidly, spaghettifying into the spacetime rent. The rest of the ship followed, imploding rapidly.

Eric fired a dispersion bolt when the craft was gone, and the black hole winked out.

The tanks turned their turrets toward those Bolt Eaters that were currently visible on the rooftop, including Eric.

He resisted the urge to crouch from view. His energy shield was active: if any of the human units fired, it would absorb the blow. And if the Devastators tossed spears at him, he would have time to dodge.

At least that was what Eric hoped.

“Unknown alien units identify yourselves!” a voice came over the general comm band.

Eric recognized the speaker immediately.

“Da hell?” Slate sent. “Is that Lieutenant Arnold?”

“I believe it is,” Marlborough commented.

“He’s not actually present,” Eagleeye said. “He can’t be. Command types don’t like to get down and dirty with the troops.”

“Yeah, obviously he’s got repeaters deployed from here to Timbuktu,” Frogger said.

“Tim fuck what?” Slate said.

“Never mind,” Frogger said. “Command and control,”

One of the Ravager support units stepped forward. “Shit! Bolt Eaters! I thought it was you guys. Where the hell have you been?”

“We had some problems,” Marlborough said. “But we’ve resolved them, at least for the time being. Bolt Eaters reporting in for duty, Lieutenant.”

“Are you actually in that Ravager unit, Lieutenant?” Mickey asked.

“That’s right,” Arnold said.

“Nice,” Hicks said. “I thought all those units were autonomous.”

“The Brass finally gave me a chance to fight with my men,” Arnold said. “Of course I took it.”

“Your men?” Dickson said. “You mean Mind Refurbs.”

“If you want to get technical, yes,” Arnold said.

“Are they our clones?” Marlborough pressed. “The backups you promised to reinstate if we didn’t return in time?”

“Not exactly,” Arnold said. “They’re clones of only one of you.”

“And which of us is the lucky one?” Marlborough asked.

“That would be you, Sergeant First Class Marlborough,” Arnold replied.

“Shit, this is insulting,” Slate said. “A platoon of Sarges. Like you couldn’t trust the rest of us to perform the mission, so you duplicated the one you thought would follow orders the best.”

“The one we thought would fight the best, actually,” Arnold said.

“Same difference!” Slate commented.

“Get in line, Corporal,” Marlborough said. “The lieutenant outranks all of us.”

“Sorry,” Slate said.

Eric was a little disappointed himself. The Bolt Eaters were perfectly capable of completing any mission thrown at them. The very fact that they were here was a testament to that.

Then again, on the flip side, he was also kind of happy that more clones hadn’t been made from his backups, because it meant less versions of himself running around in the world. He liked to consider himself unique, alien copies notwithstanding.

“So tell me you have some grand plan to save us all,” Arnold said. “Or at least the rest of the country, considering that New York is basically lost.”

“It’s not lost yet,” Dickson said, gesturing toward the intact buildings around them.

“You haven’t seen the city from the air,” Arnold commented. “It’s not pretty. Let’s just say, it’s going to take at least a decade of rebuilding before the city gets back to the way it was, if it ever does.”

“So you asked if we had a plan…” Marlborough said.

“And so I did,” Arnold agreed.

Marlborough relayed the details that the Bolt Eaters had ironed out.

“Hm, so you need us to provide a containment field?” Arnold asked.

“That’s right,” Marlborough replied.

“And provide covering fire when the time comes?” the lieutenant pressed.

“Would be nice,” Marlborough said. “I’d suggest continuing to reinforce the front lines so the Banthar don’t suspect anything. Not like it will really matter if they do, I suppose, since it will be too late by then.”

“No, it’s probably a good idea,” Arnold agreed. “All right then. Let’s set this plan in motion.”

* * *

Eric stood guard on the apex of an intact tower in the Ice District, so named because at its center was a skating arena that had kept its ice year round. The arena was ruined now, of course, along with all other structures in the neighborhood, ravaged by the micro machines. In this portion of the city, the termites reigned supreme, coating all the remaining buildings in sight. They had only just begun to assail the tower he and Mickey clung to.

Eric was reminded of a visit to his grandparents’ farm he had made as a young boy when he was still human. A caterpillar infestation had swept the area, and the squirming creatures covered everything, munching at all the bare foliage—leaves, grass, stalks. Those caterpillars had made an audible chittering—the sound of trillions of tiny mandibles biting into the greenery, and trillions of minuscule limbs crawling over branches and other caterpillars. The distant hum of crunching metal produced by the termites wasn’t all that different.

A building collapsed as he watched, its desiccated frame too weak to support its weight. It hit the ground, sending up a dust plume that bathed the neighborhood below, blotting out many of the buildings nearby and the termites upon them. But that inexorable chittering continued unabated, if slightly muted.

Eric and Mickey fastened themselves to the tower via a series of carbon fiber straps.

“All right,” Eric said. “Team 1 in position.”

“Activate the termite,” Marlborough instructed over the comm.

Eric turned toward Mickey, who carried the micro machine the pair had captured. The termite floated in between two parallel steel plates that produced a magnetic containment field, trapping the micro machine in between them. Those plates hummed, connected as they were to Mickey’s power supply. The termite trapped in the center was little bigger than a cockroach, and Eric had to zoom in with his camera to see the tiny legs, mandibles, and wings.

During the first invasion, Mickey had spent a lot of time experimenting with a termite the team had captured via a similar containment field. Mickey had discovered the termite communicated with its machine brethren via high-energy photons, and found that by beaming certain frequencies of photons into said termite, he could cause it to issue a swarm command, which would be sent to all other termites in the immediate area. Those micro machines in turn would rebroadcast the command, drawing in termites from all over. The process would continue until all micro machines on the continent were swarming the same exact area.

Mickey’s avatar nodded on Eric’s HUD, and then a green light activated on the customized LIDAR unit the comm operator had attached beside the containment field. The LIDAR unit would be beaming the necessary high-energy photons into the termite at that moment, photons that were well beyond the visible spectrum.

“Termite is activated,” Mickey announced.

“Is it transmitting?” Marlborough asked.

Mickey paused, then said: “The micro machine is calling its friends. I’m detecting return transmissions from other micro machines in the area, matching the high-energy transmission. The termites are picking up the call, and repeating it.”

Eric studied the surrounding buildings. None of the micro machines were abandoning the adjacent skyscrapers. Below, the termites that had invaded the current building hadn’t emerged, either.

“It’s not working...” Eric said.

“I expected I’d have to tweak the frequencies,” Mickey said. “Adjusting now...”

Eric gazed at the closest building, watching the living mass of termites as they devoured it. None of them seemed to be responding, and Eric began to wonder if the plan was going to work at all.

And then, all of a sudden, the termites began to break away from the structure, heading toward the tower that harbored Eric and Mickey.

“That did it,” Mickey said. “Still works like a charm.”

“You’d think they would have made some changes to their machines after the last invasion,” Eric said.

“You’d think,” Mickey said. “Though my guess is they didn’t know what we did the last time. We destroyed their mothership after all, and by the time we used the termite we captured, Manticore was long gone, so he couldn’t have told them, either.”

Micro machines also emerged from the building immediately below so that in moments Eric and Mickey were completely enveloped by the termites. The emitters repelled them, giving the pair a small bubble of free space one meter on all sides. But beyond that, the air seethed with the termites that answered the summons of their trapped brother.

“Better make this quick, Sarge,” Eric transmitted. He wasn’t sure if the message got through the thick mass. It didn’t matter. Marlborough and the other Bolt Eaters would be watching, waiting for this moment.

Eric and Mickey couldn’t fire their black hole weapons themselves. The seething mass would trigger the bolts and create a spacetime rip directly in front of them: they’d be sucked inside and spaghettified instantly.

Eric felt the pull then, somewhere to the east. The micro machines were ripped away, but Eric and Mickey remained in place, strapped in as they were to the tower beside them. The wind gusted past him, and he could almost believe it was the hurricane-force gale that produced the pull, when it was the exact opposite.

The termites vanished inside a black hole that hovered between the buildings about five hundred meters away. More black holes appeared around it a few moments later as other bolts arrived, and the force increased. Eric would have been ripped free if not for the carbon fiber straps that bound him to the tower. Circular bites began to appear in the closest buildings as pieces of them broke away and plunged into the spacetime tear.

Termites city-wide were drawn to the gravity wells, thanks to the high energy photons emitted by the captured micro machine. When the termites got close, they promptly spiraled into one of the five black holes. It was a beautiful sight. As beautiful as destruction could be, anyway.

The gravity wells grew in size as more and more of the micro machines were devoured, and the nearby buildings began to shed pieces with greater frequency; some of the weaker structures broke apart entirely, and were consequently devoured, further enlarging the black holes.

At one point the Bolt Eaters launched dispersion bolts from the nearby buildings to reduce the size of the black holes, wanting to keep the spacetime tears within manageable levels.

Airships promptly arrived and tried to fence off the black holes with their vessels, which were unaffected by the pull, but the termites were invariably swept around them and into the holes.

One of the airships broke away from the fence, and swerved directly toward Eric and Mickey.

“We’re going to have to move!” Eric said. “Guys, can you get rid of the black holes?”

“Disperse all except one!” Marlborough ordered over the comm. “Once Eric and Mickey are out of the way, recreate the others.”

“Wait, is one still too much, given their distance?” Brontosaurus asked.

“Five hundred meters should give them plenty of leg room,” Marlborough replied. “If not, we’ll disperse the final hole.”

Four of the holes winked out, leaving only the original. The winds died down, but were still gale force.

Eric and Mickey cut the straps that bound them just as the airship launched several energy bolts. The two of them let go of the building and plunged downward. Their fall was curved, thanks to the influence of the black holes, and slower than it would have been with Earth’s gravity acting fully, but otherwise Marlborough was right—they had plenty of leg room.

Eric fell fast enough that he felt the need to activate his energy shield before impact. He hovered in place a meter above the surface before he disabled it. Mickey landed beside him, and the two of them dove into a side alley that was out of view of the airship.

The incoming termite swarm struggled to follow them, but the micro machines were still pulled away before they could enter the lip of the alley.

The airship approached fast, but then Arnold’s Devastators appeared overhead, standing on the building adjacent to the alley. They’d been keeping other enemy troops away, but had apparently repositioned when they noticed Eric and Mickey’s plight. They launched their alien spears at the airship, and disabled the shield. Someone fired a black hole from out of view, and the craft promptly imploded. The Devastators retreated as the termites were sucked into that new hole.

Eric and Mickey secured themselves to the alleyway by forcing their hands and feet into the pavement below, and they felt the wind pick up as the other Bolt Eater formed more black holes.

It took about ten minutes before the swarm of micro machines from the remainder of the city ceased. Eric gazed at the lip of the alleyway, but spotted only empty sky.

“I think that’s the last of them,” Hicks transmitted.

“Keep the holes running for another five minutes,” Marlborough responded.

No more micro machines arrived during those five minutes, and the Bolt Eaters stationed on the surrounding rooftops fired dispersion bolts, clearing the black holes.

The hurricane force winds subsided, and the constant upward pull that Eric felt ceased; his body slumped to the pavement.

“Well, that was fun,” Mickey said.

10

With the termite threat nipped in the bud, at least for the moment, Eric and the other Bolt Eaters switched their focus to driving back the remaining alien invaders. They attacked the bioweapons, the alien machines, and the airships. With Arnold’s Devastators at their side, they called in bombers as necessary, and other air support. With the termites gone, the tide quickly turned, and humanity drove back the invaders, until the enemy occupied only a small section of town on the eastern side, near the coast. But the aliens were firmly entrenched there within the different buildings; bombing runs and artillery attacks did nothing to reduce their numbers—the remaining airships physically placed themselves between the bombs and the alien troops so that their energy shields absorbed the impacts.

Early in the second day of the fighting, Arnold recalled the Bolt Eaters to a side alley for a private huddle.

“It’s going to take a few days to break through the enemy position,” Arnold said, transmitting from inside the Ravager mech he used for the fighting. “Maybe a week.”

“Man, I hate this kind of urban fighting,” Slate said. “When the bastards know they’ve lost, but they refuse to surrender. And they fight to the last man. Like there’s honor in that or something.”

“Well in this case, they’ll be fighting to the last alien,” Tread said. “Or at least, the last alien AI.”

“In any case,” Arnold said, “I think your time will be better used elsewhere.”

“What did you have in mind?” Marlborough asked.

“First of all, let me set the stage,” Arnold said. “New York isn’t the only locus of alien activity. Other invasions are taking place in major capitals across North and South America. Los Angeles, Austin, Washington, Vancouver, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires. In each city, airships have deployed micro machines, bioweapons, alien mechs… the works. And of course your clones are at the forefront of each invading force.”

“That really, really, sucks,” Eagleeye said.

“Yes,” Arnold said. “But the termites are the greatest threat at the moment. We’re going to ship the black hole weapons and alien spears we’ve captured to those cities, along with instructions on how to replicate what we did here. Once that’s done, we’re hopeful the local military will be able to push back the alien forces with those same weapons, as we’ve done.”

“Well, that’s rather generous of you,” Bambi said. “Sharing alien weapons tech with competing nations. You’re not worried Canada, Mexico, Brazil or Argentina will use that tech against you at some point?”

“Of course we are,” Arnold said. “But those countries would have stolen the tech at some point anyway. Over the past twenty years we’ve already had inventory go missing, despite an extensive lockdown, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Canadians or Mexicans already had some of it. Besides, the whole Earth is at stake here. If one of those countries falls, the invading micro machines in the region will multiply until they become a storm, becoming that much harder for the rest of us to take down. We had no choice but to give them the tech. Not to mention it’s the right thing to do, for humanitarian reasons. We can’t stand by while our fellow man is slaughtered.”

“Altruistic now,” Bambi commented. “That’s new.”

“You were human once,” Arnold said. “I thought you’d understand.”

“I understand completely,” Bambi said. “Why do you think I’m here, standing before you?”

Arnold nodded. “I know you’re all angry with me. You feel I blackmailed you into returning to the service. And truthfully, I did. But I have one last thing to ask of you. And it’s not a small thing.”

“It sounds like you have everything in hand,” Marlborough said. “I’m not sure why you’d still need us at this point.”

“Maybe he wants us to help some of the other cities?” Mickey said. He’d given up the containment field, and the termite it contained, having returned the device to Arnold an hour after the Bolt Eaters wiped out the micro machines. “We fly to Los Angeles, or Austin, and help with the clean-up efforts. We create a few black holes, suck up the termites, and move on to the next city.”

“No, I have something more important for you than that,” Arnold said. “You see, the Brass isn’t sure if the mothership has more airships in reserve, or other weapons waiting to launch at us. They want you to board that mothership as soon as possible, and destroy it with your black hole weapons, like you did during the first alien invasion.”

“Shit yeah, I’m in!” Slate said. “I want to squeeze those alien snails until they pop like pimples! Squash them into bleeding pus! Trample them underfoot so that their insides spread out like cow poop in a farmer’s field. Slap—”

“We get the picture…” Crusher said.

“Why destroy the mothership?” Manticore asked.

“What do you mean?” Dickson asked.

The alien scout Manticore conveyed to the meeting swiveled to face the gathered Bolt Eaters. “With my knowledge of the Essential and his inner workings, I think I can take over the ship, if you can bring me to the control room.”

“Take over an alien starship?” Arnold said. “Now that’s an interesting proposition.”

“Do you know where the control room is?” Marlborough asked.

“I have the complete layout of the mothership stored in my database,” Manticore replied. “I know where everything is.”

“The Essential certainly shared a lot with you…” Eagleeye commented.

“Actually, I extracted this data on my own,” Manticore said. “I’ve captured more than a few alien units and experimented on them. They always erased their data upon capture, and it took me the longest time to figure out how to restore that data, or at least fragments of it. Though the Essential instances have reduced storage capacity as compared to the main instance, they still contain a hell of a lot, including the layout of the mothership, among other blueprints.”

“We all have partial layouts of the mothership, too,” Frogger said. “At least, those areas we visited while under control of the Essential.”

“If you can get humanity that ship, you’d definitely swing the tide in our favor,” Arnold said. “The people of Earth would forever be grateful.”

“The way you talk, you make it sound like we don’t belong on this planet,” Dunnigan said. “The people of Earth. Bah.”

“Er, a momentary slip of the tongue,” Arnold said. “You’re all decked out in alien technology. It’s easy for me to forget sometimes that you originate from our planet.”

“See, this is why I don’t like humanity,” Slate said. “They treat us like outsiders, and when confronted about that treatment, they pretend like it was all some big misunderstanding.”

“Okay, getting back to the subject at hand,” Eric said. “We want to take over the ship, and that’s great, but how are we going to get aboard in the first place. The mothership is enveloped in micro machines specifically engineered to operate in a void environment.”

“We’ve installed repelling emitters in the shuttle, similar to those installed in your mechs,” Arnold said.

“That won’t be good enough,” Hicks said. “The termites won’t get us, but I’m sure the mothership has other weapons it can throw against us. Like those black holes it uses to get rid of any nukes you guys toss.”

“That’s a wrinkle in the plan,” Arnold admitted. He glanced at Frogger’s mech. “But I hear you’ve come up with some tech that lets you mimic the signature of certain alien units?”

“Yeah,” Frogger said. “I developed tech to mimic their signature on the thermal band, and to give off identifying markers in the form of high energy photons. It doesn’t really work at close range, though—on the visual band, it’s easy to tell what we are.”

Arnold glanced at Manticore’s scout. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”

“I do, in fact,” Manticore said. “As I mentioned, I’ve downloaded a bunch of data from different Essential instances I’ve captured. I know how they communicate. There are frequencies we can use to identify ourselves as a returning airship. But there’s still the problem of the visual band.”

“Wait,” Eric said. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Manticore, do you have complete blueprints for those airships?” Eric had partial blueprints to an alien airship he’d boarded in the past to rescue his captured companions, but that didn’t tell him where the control room was located.

Manticore turned toward Eric. When he spoke, it sounded like he was smiling. “Yes, I do.”

* * *

Eric hung on as Bambi jetted up toward the airship.

The platoon had just finished throwing their alien spears into the craft, and had disabled the energy shield. The airship was attempting to flee. It had avoided all the energy attacks unleashed by the Bolt Eaters, forcing Eric and Bambi to take this latest step. The ship was attempting to evade them, too, but the remaining Bolt Eaters below released another barrage of energy attacks, herding the airship closer to the pair. Bambi unleashed a last spurt and hurtled toward the craft.

She swiveled her body around before impact so that she contacted the surface feet first. She activated her magnetic mounts and latched on.

Eric had his own mounts active to keep him attached to Bambi’s carapace, and he adjusted the intensity to pull himself onto the hull beside her. Then the pair clambered toward the hangar bay doors that contained the tractor beam, and troop staging area.

He ejected from his mech and landed on the hull with his Cicada. He magnetized his feet and retrieved the sack of Mylar-wrapped demolition blocks from his Devastator’s storage compartment.

He remotely activated the mech’s energy shield and then continued forward across the alien hull. Bambi joined him in her Cicada, carrying a similar sack. They spread out, moving in opposite directions around the hangar bay doors, and began affixing the demolition charges to the surface.

Smaller alien flyers arrived to harass them; Eric fired the P-21 plasma rifle built into his forearm, but the craft he struck was shielded. The Bolt Eaters and Arnold’s Devastators fired more alien spears from below, forcing the newcomers to evade, and distracting them while Eric and Bambi worked. Other enemy units also unleashed plasma and energy bolts from the surface and nearby buildings, and Eric and Bambi had to dodge the incoming attacks.

“Shit,” Bambi said over the comm.

He glanced nervously at her Cicada, and saw that she had dropped a set of four demolition blocks bound inside a single Mylar sheath; he watched them plunge the long distance to the ground far below.

He was momentarily mesmerized, but finally forced himself to tear his gaze away. If he had been human, likely he would have been suffering vertigo at the moment.

Eric placed the last of the charges. “Finished here!”

“Me as well,” Bambi said.

“Head back!” Eric ordered.

He hurried back to his mech, remotely disabled the energy shield, and pulled himself into the cockpit; he folded his Cicada body into a sphere as he did so and the hatch sealed behind him. He switched his point of view back to that of the Devastator mech, and then reactivated his energy shield.

“Ready?” Eric asked.

“Mucho burritos,” Bambi said.

“Uh,” Eric said.

Before he could make fun of her weird slang, Bambi detonated her charges. The rightmost bay door fell away in the resultant detonation.

Eric triggered his own charges and created a similar explosion; the leftmost door ripped open, but remained attached by the hinges.

Good enough.

“Did you like how I made up some Spanish slang back there?” Bambi asked.

“Yeah, remind me not to make you watch two-hundred-year old Mexican wrestling ever again,” Eric said.

“Hey, I kind of liked it,” Bambi said. “It’s not often you see a grown man hit in the burritos by a masked maniac.”

Eric made his way toward the destroyed doors, and shoved his energy cannon inside. He switched to the viewpoint of its scope, and surveyed the area.

There were no troops within the interior bay. He spotted the blue-tipped cylindrical device that served as the airship’s tractor beam generator, and promptly fired a plasma bolt to disable the device. After a final sweep of his scope, he pulled his mech inside. Bambi followed after him in her Crab unit.

Eric upped his transmission range.

“Clear!” Eric sent over the platoon band.

The other Bolt Eaters had piled inside a human Dazer shuttle, which rapidly approached. Arnold’s Devastators offered covering fire from the city below, but there were still a shit ton of plasma and energy bolts coming at the craft from the surface. The polished, V-shaped Dazer zig-zagged the entire way up. It took a hit about a hundred meters from the opening, and one side of the craft tilted dangerously.

“We’ve lost an engine,” Eagleeye transmitted over the comm. “The landing is going to be rough! I’d clear well out of the way!”

Eric and Bambi rushed to the leftmost inner wall of the of the airship hangar bay as the shuttle came roaring inside. The Dazer cut power and slammed into the deck; the craft loudly scraped along, cutting a runnel into the surface until it crashed into the wall not too far from Eric and Bambi.

The rear ramp fell open and Slate dashed outside, weapons deployed and ready to fire. “Where’re the snails!”

“There aren’t any,” Eric said.

“Well shit bro, why’d you get me all riled up?” Slate asked, folding away his weapons.

“I transmitted clear,” Eric replied.

“Oh,” Slate said. “I thought you broadcasted the word fear!”

“Uh, no,” Eric said.

Eagleeye emerged next. “Won’t find any snails on this rust bucket. Nor aboard the mothership. The Banthar people stay all cozy on their homeworld while they let their AI and its bioweapons do the dirty work.”

“Sort of like what the humans are doing with us?” Crusher asked as she came out.

“Exactly like that,” Hicks replied, following after her.

A heavily modded Devastator emerged next. Earlier, Manticore’s clone had led Eric to the basement of an apartment building, where a suite containing a large metal case awaited. That case had harbored the clone’s AI core, and Eric had helped transfer it to the Devastator unit that now stood before him—the platoon had fished the mech out from underneath the debris of a collapsed building, removed the existing core, and repaired the damage, prepping it for Manticore.

Four spherical alien scouts revolved around Manticore, acting as his permanent escort.

“Fancy,” Slate commented.

The other mechs emerged, and finally Marlborough.

“Let the games begin,” the Sarge announced.

11

Eric and the Bolt Eaters approached the sealed door on the far side of the hangar. Manticore shared the blueprints of the vessel with Frogger, and they waited for him to confirm the data was virus-free.

“Looks good,” Frogger finally said. “Transmitting to the rest of the platoon.”

“It’s not like Manticore wouldn’t have had ample opportunity to infect us before now,” Slate said. His transmission included a timebase packet header, which caused the time sense of all the Mind Refurbs to increase: everything slowed to a halt around them. Apparently Slate wanted to have a somewhat lengthy discussion. “Considering that Manticore opened up our mechs and manually interfaced with our AI cores to erase that Essential bitch and his Containment Code from our minds. If Manticore wanted to install a virus, he would have done it then, don’t you think?”

“Maybe so,” Eric said. “But you’re forgetting that there’s one of us who didn’t go that route. One of us who broke free of the Containment Code himself.”

“Ah that’s right, gotta throw in a little bragging there, do you Scorpion?” Slate said. His voice shifted slightly, in mimicry of Eric. “I’m the best bitch! I gots the skillz to break free of the alien code wrapped around our minds! I’m da man. Big and strong, with a brain so big it barely fits my skull! In fact, if you look closely, you can see portions of my mind peeking out underneath my mech’s antennae! That’s how big it is! And man, I’m so cool, I smoke cigars made of snails!”

“Yeah, that’s not what I meant,” Eric said. “I’m only saying, it’s good that Frogger is checking the blueprints. Because if Manticore really did install something nefarious in the rest of you, then at least one of us has to stay uninfected.”

“But if he has installed something,” Hicks said, “then wouldn’t he also put in code to confuse our virus scanners? So Frogger here scans the code, and then tells you that it’s virus-free...”

“Good point. I’ll just have to repeat the scan myself.” When Eric accepted the map data from Frogger, he immediately quarantined it and ran his own set of full virus scans. It required a full minute of his accelerated time sense to finish. He received no positive hits.

“The data seems clean,” Eric admitted.

“I wouldn’t back stab you like that,” Manticore said. “Not at a critical juncture like this.”

“So you say,” Mickey commented. “I still think you could have installed sleeper code into the rest of our AI cores when you did your little inoculating to each of us. Scorpion could be the only one who’s not infected.”

“When Manticore betrays us,” Slate said, “and the shit hits the plasma intake valve recoupler, Scorp will be the only one who can save us. You’re my hero, Scorpion!”

“The plasma intake valve recoupler?” Mickey said.

“That’s his way of saying when the shit hits the fan,” Eagleeye said.

“I don’t actually get that saying...” Bambi said.

“Never mind,” Mickey said.

“You’re my hero, Scorpion!” Slate repeated, obviously trying to get a rise out of him.

“Get the fuck over here!” Eric said in the deepest voice he could manage.

Frogger broke out in giggles, while Mickey laughed outright.

The rest of the crew was stone cold silent.

“Uh, just a little quote from a game I used to play,” Eric said. “Called Mortal Kombat. There’s a character in that game named Scorpion, and he throws a spear, and he says that. Well, without the F word.”

“Actually, if you play the Shaolin Monks edition, Scorpion does say it exactly like you just did!” Mickey said. “But it only happens if your opponent repeatedly avoids the spear, and finally gets hit by it. Get the eff over here!”

“Okay, this is what happens when you got two gamer geeks from the twentieth century stuck in the same platoon,” Hicks said.

“Imagine what it’s like living with him,” Bambi commented.

“Hey!” Eric said.

“Are we just going to stand in front of this door and have a freakin’ conversation while we’re aboard an alien airship and Earth is being invaded?” Dickson said. “Or are we going to continue our mission and kick some extraterrestrial butt?”

“Sorry,” Eric said.

“Manticore, mark the control room on the map, please,” Marlborough said.

A waypoint appeared on the map a moment later. It was near the center of the airship, four decks up, and three compartments forward.

“Target the door,” Marlborough ordered.

Eric returned his time sense to something resembling normal, and then aimed his multiple energy weapons at the door.

“Fire!” Marlborough said.

Eric unleashed his weapons at the same time as the others, and together they completely disintegrated the entrance.

He was expecting some sort of resistance beyond, but the outer passageway proved empty. Manticore had promised that their mechs would fit this particular model of airship, and that was something the blueprints had confirmed. Sure enough, the corridor was big enough to contain a full Devastator. They’d have to travel in single file, however.

Slate took point, while the rest of the Bolt Eaters followed behind. Manticore remained in the dead center of the platoon, protected by the others. Brontosaurus assumed drag. The bulkheads emitted a subtle blue glow, bathing the corridor in a dim illumination that allowed the Bolt Eaters to see.

As Eric walked through the passageway, he instinctively glanced at his power cell levels, as he did whenever he fought away from sunlight. He was still at one hundred percent power of course, thanks to his fusion reactor.

What a relief not to have to worry about running out of juice, at least.

Spherical objects began to emerge from the bulkheads beside them.

“Trap!” Hicks announced.

The spheres launched energy webs at the Bolt Eaters. Two of them struck Eric. His force field activated, shielding him. But the “protection level” indicator on his HUD quickly drained. He sliced out with his Wolverine blades, and cut away the nets, stopping the drain. Then he slammed his blades into the sphere on his right, withdrew them, then stabbed the sphere on his left, putting them both out of commission.

The other Bolt Eaters similarly handled the other spheres, and the party continued onward.

“Don’t ‘trap’ me,” Slate said. “Ain’t such a thing as a trap when you got the Slate in the house.”

“The Slate,” Eagleeye said. “So you refer to yourself in third person now.”

“Back in the day, all rappers did,” Slate said.

“Yeah, you know, I’m kind of glad rap music fell out of style,” Eagleeye said. “I mean come on, it’s not even real singing. You just got a guy talking over a beat.”

“Oh, you’re a real bitch,” Slate said. “You don’t know shit about rap. It’s real singing. It’s poetry, bro. And it never fell out of style. Never will. Rap is going to be around for the end of time. ‘Specially my songs.”

“Then how come I never heard of a rapper named Slate,” Eagleeye said.

“Doh, cuz I use a pseudonym, bro?” Slate said.

“Quiet,” Marlborough said.

Eric and the Bolt Eaters continued their advance, fighting their way deeper into the airship. Occasionally they came upon a sealed door, and cut their way through. Alien platforms dropped from the ceiling, and they took them down. Other robots occasionally blocked their path: milk robots, Sloths, a tentacled tank. But the team made short work of them. The energy shields and other alien tech augmenting their mechs certainly helped, that and the fact resistance was relatively weak: evidently most of the troops aboard had been dispatched to the planet below, with only a small number remaining behind to offer any sort of defense.

There were two automated turrets guarding either side of the control room. The team took cover at the far side of the corridor leading to said room, and fired around the bend. Slate and Hicks, at the forefront, had to throw their spears to penetrate the shields protecting the turrets. The defensive protocols went offline immediately thereafter, and the pair retrieved their spears with their Cicadas, and then cut through the doors.

The control room proved undefended inside.

“Well, that was a breeze,” Slate said.

“The control room aboard the mothership will be a bit harder to breach,” Manticore said.

“Is that sarcasm I detected in your voice?” Slate asked.

“You’re good.” Manticore walked to a hexagonal-shaped pedestal.

“How are you going to interface with that shit,” Slate said. “You don’t even have any alien cables with you.”

Manticore glanced at Slate, and then one of the scouts that revolved around his mech left formation, and hovered above the top of the pedestal. A small limb telescoped from underneath the alien sphere, and slid into a slot on the pedestal.

“Oh,” Slate said.

“I’m in control,” Manticore said. “Sharing the external video feeds with Frogger.”

“Data is clean,” Frogger said, and he rebroadcast the share with the rest of the team.

Eric accepted the streaming data, and piped it to a quarantine buffer for virus scanning. The clean data output from that quarantine accumulated in another buffer, and he fed that to a video window in the upper right of his vision.

In that manner he was able to watch as the airship climbed through the atmosphere. The human jets made a show of attacking the vessel—the hope was that the Banthar hadn’t detected the loss of the airship yet, so why give it away by letting the vessel get away without a fight.

The airship avoided two missiles, and Manticore shot down one of the jets with a plasma stream, as per the plan; the rest of the jets scattered and fled.

The terrain became a patchwork of grays and browns as the craft moved higher, and the damage to New York became evident. Half of the city was essentially in ruins, from the coast to the city center. The steel and glass ruins of skyscrapers fanned out across the different streets. Skeletal husks of buildings thrust out from the rubble. A few structures in the affected area remained standing, but were the exception rather than the norm. Most glaring of all were those sections completely devoid of any buildings, with entire swaths of land covered only in dirt and mud where the micro machines had devoured them. Near the swaths he could see the feed troughs the bioweapons once used to feed upon the organic gels synthesized from human beings.

“That’s going to take a helluva lot of work to repair,” Mickey said.

“No,” Eric said softly. “There’s no repair work here. They’re going to have to start from scratch.”

The city continued to shrink below them, until the airship rose above the clouds, and the ruins vanished from view. Soon, Eric could see the Earth curving from horizon to horizon below him, and the layer of atmosphere above it. Beyond that, stars. An infinite number of them.

“You know, I didn’t even think these craft were space capable,” Tread said.

“Of course they was space capable,” Slate said. “They got inertialess drives, man. How could they not be space capable?”

Eric felt no change in gravity—he was still glued to the deck. Obviously artificial gravity of some sort had kicked in.

The view changed as the camera rotated forward, and Eric could see the black mass of the mothership floating against the backdrop of stars. A darker mass than the darkness of space, it looked like a giant amoeba because of the micro machines that covered the hull.

“I’m sending the docking codes,” Manticore said. He paused. “You wouldn’t believe how many Essentials I had to capture until I finally got those codes.”

“Ten thousand,” Slate said.

“Only a hundred,” Manticore said. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Rule of thumb, when you have to guess, always estimate too high,” Slate said. “Always deflates the ego of the person who wants you to guess. Because they think, shit, I thought a hundred was high, but he just guessed ten thousand, so a hundred isn’t that great after all.”

“Okay, thanks for that explanation into how you think, Slate,” Eagleeye said. “Can we just watch the feed here, and see if this plan actually works?”

“Oh sure, of course,” Slate said. A moment later he added: “Bitch.”

On the video feed, giant arms seemed to emerge from mothership, as thousands of the space termites made to intercept the airship.

“Don’t think it’s working, mate,” Dunnigan said.

“It’ll work,” Manticore said.

The termites continued to approach until they were almost touching the airship.

“You know, if they do touch this ship, alien or no, they’ll begin breaking it apart,” Bambi said. “They won’t touch us, thanks to our emitters, but that won’t help us. We’ll be left floating in space along our current trajectory. Forever.”

Eric watched as the termites continued to flow inward. Wrapping around the camera…

“It looks like they’ve already reached us,” Eric commented.

“They’ve hit the ship,” Manticore agreed. He didn’t say anything more.

“So what’s going on?” Tread asked.

“What do you think?” Manticore answered. “They’re beginning to convert the alien hull into more termites.”

“So much for this plan of yours working!” Slate said. “Lying bitch.”

Eric listened closely, and he thought he could hear a distant crinkling, like an ant crawling across a piece of crumpled aluminum foil. It might have been his human imagination. But then again, it could have been the sound of the airship’s exterior slowly being digested.

Eric waited for the camera feed to wink out, knowing that it wouldn’t last long given its external position on the hull. But then, as Eric watched, the black arm of termites began to withdraw.

“They’re leaving,” Brontosaurus said.

“Yes,” Manticore said. “I figured out what I did wrong with the codes. They have a timestamp, based on femtoseconds, representing the current date. I forgot to adjust that timestamp.”

“Nice one, bro,” Slate said. “See, this is the problem with relying upon one dude. He makes a small mistake, none of us can correct it.”

“It won’t happen again,” Manticore said.

“So you say,” Slate commented.

The airship continued forward, and the termites parted from its path, spreading apart to reveal the hull of the mothership below. A hexagonal door spiraled opened, revealing a docking bay beyond. It was relatively dark within, but he could make out the shapes of other airships inside, ready to deploy. The Brass had been right about the aliens having more craft in reserve, which only made sense. The Banthar, or rather the Essential instance in charge of the vessel, could launch them at any time. The mothership had to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Well, that was why Eric and the others were here.

12

Eric felt the deck shake as the airship attached to one of the docking clamps. The video feed switched to an aft camera, and he watched the hexagonal door spiral closed. When it shut entirely, the camera view went black.

“Did we lose the feed?” Brontosaurus asked.

“No,” Manticore said. “No lights aboard the mothership.”

“That’s not true,” Eric said. “There are a few. I remember standing in a hangar bay before deploying. It was well lit.”

“The Essential may have placed temporary lights for your sake, then,” Manticore said. “But obviously there aren’t any in this particular bay.” The alien scout above the pedestal retracted its telescoping limb, and returned to revolving around Manticore. He glanced at Marlborough. “Ready to deploy when you give the word.”

“Bolt Eaters, move out,” Marlborough said. “Slate, you’re on point. Manticore, remain in the center of the platoon.”

Slate led them back the way they had come, until they had reached the glowing bay at the bottom of the airship. The doors were still blown open, and from the light produced by the bay, Eric could see portions of a metal walkway below.

“We’ve got atmosphere seeping inside,” Bambi said. “Contents are consistent with the Banthar homeworld. Oxygen. Carbon dioxide. Hydrogen. Methane compounds.”

“Oxygen is good,” Slate said. “It means we can make things go boom.”

“Activate masking emitters,” Marlborough ordered.

Eric and the others turned on the masking emitters Frogger had designed, which made them all appear as Sloth units. Manticore had a freshly printed exoskeleton added to his own mech, so that he, too, could give off the same emissions.

There was some debate among the platoon about whether the masking emitters were even necessary, given that the Banthar had already installed identification tech as part of their augmentations to the mechs, but eventually Marlborough decided that those identifiers had been negatively flagged after Eric and Manticore freed the platoon from enemy influence.

Those emitters only worked from afar; at close range, enemy units would be able to visually identify the Bolt Eaters as intruders. When that happened, the platoon would be flagged, and they’d have to fight their way the rest of the way forward.

“Slate, Brontosaurus, clear the area,” Marlborough commanded.

Slate and Brontosaurus leaped onto the waiting walkway with loud clangs. They vanished into the looming darkness, each footfall resounding across the metal surface.

“Nothing on thermal,” Slate announced. “Permission to switch to LIDAR?”

“Permission granted,” Marlborough said. “Limit the range to five hundred meters.”

Eric switched to Slate’s viewpoint and saw the white wireframe of the walkway pop into view. That viewpoint shifted as Slate examined the immediate area.

The walkway resided inside of a cavernous hangar bay. A railing girded either side of the path, and beyond it was empty space. At the limits of the LIDAR, more walkways awaited on either side, along with other docked airships.

When Slate looked down, Eric could see another set of walkways about four hundred meters below, leading to three more docked airships. Remembering what he had seen before the hexagonal door shut and blocked out all light, Eric knew there were other levels down there beyond the range limits of Slate’s LIDAR.

“Clear,” Slate said. “So far, anyway.”

“Dunnigan, take us out,” Marlborough ordered. “Let’s join Slate and Brontosaurus.”

Led by Dunnigan, the platoon members leaped down in turn onto the walkway and advanced into the darkness to make room for the others behind them.

Eric’s turn came, and he jumped out, landing with a vehement clang. Artificial gravity glued him to the surface of the metal walkway. It was slightly weaker than Earth’s gravity.

Eric shared Slate’s LIDAR data feed so that when he advanced, clanging, into the darkness he was able to do so without hitting any of the other mechs. The walkway could hold two of them abreast.

When he had moved a sufficient distance from the airship, Eric stopped, turning back to gaze at the dim pool of light emitted from the opening. He watched as the remainder of the Bolt Eaters exited the craft. Bambi and Crusher had emerged next, and positioned themselves next to Eric; because of the size of Bambi’s Crab unit, no one could stand beside her.

“Manticore, mark the control room as our target on the map,” Marlborough said. “And plot a course.”

Eric accepted the share request, scanned the data for viruses, and then allowed it through. He glanced at his overhead map, which was already filled out with the entire blueprint of the mothership. A waypoint appeared about a kilometer into the ship. A thin blue line weaved between the different corridors, scuttles, and compartments, connecting the team’s current position with that of the waypoint, and illustrating the course they would have to take to reach it.

“All right, Manticore, I want you to continue to remain at the center of the platoon,” Marlborough said. “You’re the most important member of our team at the moment. If you fall, we all fall.”

“Understood,” Manticore said.

“Slate, Brontosaurus, take us forward,” Marlborough ordered.

The Bolt Eaters advanced into the dark. Eric and the others continued to stream their LIDAR data from Slate so that the wireframes slowly filled out ahead. The walkway reached a bulkhead and soon the platoon was traveling along the curving inner wall of the bay. The walkway hugged that wall, along with the railing.

Slate paused beside the outline of a triangular door. “Manty Bitch’s path says we have to travel through this door, but it’s not opening. Want me to shoot through it?”

“No,” Marlborough said. “Manticore?”

One of the alien scouts left its orbital position around Manticore, and approached the door. A telescoping limb emerged from the righthand side, and inserted into a slot next to the door.

An alarm sounded.

Defense turrets unfolded from beside the door.

“Whoops,” Manticore said.

“Bitch, you did that on purpose!” Slate told him.

“Not at all!” Manticore claimed.

Energy bolts slammed into Slate, causing his energy shield to materialize in convex flashes.

“Shit!” Slate swung his alien blades into the closest turret, and cut through the force field that appeared around it. He slammed the spears into the muzzles, cutting them away, and then stabbed them into the turret on the opposite side of the door.

Even though both weapons were now disabled, the alarm continued to sound.

“Looks like the gig is already up,” Dickson commented.

“No thanks to Manticore!” Eagleeye said.

“I told you, that was an accident,” Manticore said.

“How many more of these ‘accidents’ do you think we’re going to stand for, huh?” Slate asked. “It’s obvious to me that you’re trying to deceive our collective asses. You want us to get captured again.”

“Why would I go through all the trouble of rescuing you, only to let you get captured all over again?” Manticore replied.

“Cuz you’re insane?” Slate said.

“That’s enough,” Marlborough said. “Manticore, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fuck up, going forward.”

“I’ll do my best,” Manticore said.

“Notice how he doesn’t even call you Sarge ever?” Slate commented.

Marlborough didn’t answer. But obviously if he hadn’t noticed before, he did now.

“Shoot through the door,” Marlborough ordered.

Slate and Brontosaurus aimed their energy weapons at the door and blasted it. As soon as the metal had melted away, the two entered, with Slate going high, Brontosaurus low.

“Clear!” Slate shouted.

“Eagleeye, send some of your modified drones forward to act as scouts,” Marlborough said. “Manticore, I want a couple of yours ahead of the unit as well.”

Eagleeye sent some of his modified drones forward to act as scouts, while Manticore did the same with his alien spheres.

“The rest of you, let’s go!” Marlborough said.

Eric and the other Bolt Eaters followed. They all had their ballistic shields deployed, as a backup measure in case the energy fields failed.

The corridor was triangular, like the door had been, with the flat side on the bottom. It was wide enough to squeeze-in two mechs, so they traveled abreast, except for Bambi, who had to advance alone because of her bigger width. Eric streamed Slate’s LIDAR feed, as did the others, given the bulkheads, deck and overhead an eerie polygonal quality.

“Feels like I’m playing some 80s video game,” Frogger said.

“No shit,” Mickey said. “I’m just waiting for the wireframe enemies to appear.”

“Only 80s I know are the 2180s,” Slate said. “And no video games ever looked like this.”

“Before your time, dude,” Mickey said.

“I know, bitches,” Slate said. “I was just playing with your messed up minds.”

Eric’s force field suddenly flashed and that saved him: he instinctively slammed his ballistic shield forward, hitting a spear that had come from nowhere. He struck it in a glancing blow, and it clattered to the ground beside him.

“Thought you said it was clear!” Mickey shouted.

“It was!” Slate said.

“Those spears fired from goddamn slots in the left and right sides of the wall,” Dickson said. “We just lost our energy shields. Gonna take some time to charge up again.

“That’s not all we lost,” Bambi said. “Look.”

Eric turned toward her, and saw Hicks and Tread lying lifeless on the deck behind her.

Frogger went to them. “Their AI cores are fried. Unlucky blows: the spears penetrated at just the right spot.”

“No,” Eric said.

“Just like that, they’re gone,” Brontosaurus said. “One small mistake…”

“Slate, please watch for those damn slots going forward,” Marlborough said.

“I’m sorry, Sarge,” Slate said. “I messed up. I—”

It sounded like he was sobbing.

“This isn’t the time to lose it,” Marlborough said. “We have a ship to take over.”

Slate’s mech straightened. “Understood. There will be no more fuck ups.”

“There better not be,” Marlborough said. “Though if anyone’s to blame, it’s Manticore.”

“Defensive systems aren’t marked on the map,” Manticore said.

“That’s not the point,” Marlborough said. “You and Eagleeye have scouts leading the way. You’re supposed to report anything out of the ordinary.”

“The slots didn’t register,” Eagleeye said. “But I’m sorry, you’re right, we should have noticed. I’ll have my drones fly closer to the walls.”

“Whatever it takes,” Marlborough said.

Eric glanced back at Hicks and Tread one last time before continuing onward, and he felt a sudden trepidation. A worry that all his friends were going to die, like had happened during the last invasion.

I’m not going to let that happen, Eric swore. I’m not going to let my friends die. Not this time. They won’t be restored from backups.

He wasn’t certain he’d be able to keep that promise, but he sure as hell was going to try. Because he didn’t even know whether the backups would still exist when this was over.

The team continued forward.

“Gah!” Slate said.

Flashes came from ahead, and Eric realized Slate and Brontosaurus were under attack. They’d ducked behind their ballistic shields, which were turning red inside. Their energy shields hadn’t recharged enough to defend against any attacks.

“What happened to the scouts?” Dickson asked.

“Offline!” Eagleeye said.

“Mine, too,” Manticore added.

Eric switched to Slate’s point of view, and watched as he fired his energy cannon through the notch in the top of the ballistic shield. The opponent was a tentacled tank that barely fit the corridor. A force field activated around the tango and absorbed the energy bolts. On the floor in front of it the LIDAR wireframes revealed small jagged lumps—the remains of the scouts.

“Gonna have to rush it!” Brontosaurus commented.

“Then let’s do it!” Slate said.

The pair dashed forward, and used their alien blades to slice through the energy field. It dissipated, and the two continued forward; they cut through the tentacles until they reached the tank proper, and promptly stabbed their blades through the hull. The electrical storm that swept over the tank disabled it, judging from the way the humming servomotors went silent.

“Shit, now what?” Slate said. “Damn tank is blocking our way forward.”

“We push.” Brontosaurus folded his shield away and pressed both arms into the tank’s exterior, between where the stumps of two tentacles protruded from the surface.

Slate joined him, and together they pushed the tank forward.

“No, you morons,” Eagleeye said. “Melt the bitch. Step aside.”

Brontosaurus and Slate turned back, and before they could react further, Eagleeye opened fire.

Energy bolts streamed between Brontosaurus and Slate; they quickly jumped against the adjacent bulkheads on either side and flattened themselves.

The bolts hit the tank and began to melt a path through the alien metal. Eagleeye continued firing for the next minute, until all that was left of the tank was a molten mess.

“Good way to overheat your cannons,” Slate commented.

Eagleeye’s weapons were indeed glowing red hot on the thermal band, and he probably would only be able to get out a few more shots over the next ten minutes until the devices cooled down. At least with those weapons; he still had plasma and laser cannons in reserve, like the rest of the mechs. Not to mention a black hole device.

“Should I send a scout forward again?” Manticore asked.

“Negative,” Marlborough said. “We saw how well that worked last time. I don’t want to risk losing any more of your alien spheres. We need those to interface with the ship, correct?”

“That’s right,” Manticore said.

“And you don’t have any more modified repair drones, Eagleeye?” Marlborough asked.

“Those were the only ones,” Eagleeye replied. “But I could prepare more. It will take an hour.”

“Go ahead,” Marlborough said. “But we’re not going to sit around waiting here… sitting ducks while the Essential makes plans to surround and kill us. Until you get them done, we’re going to have to act as our own scouts.”

The platoon rounded a bend in the triangular passageway, and a defense platform dropped from the ceiling. Slate and Brontosaurus launched their alien spears immediately, and the blades penetrated the shielding, and disabled the platform. The pair ejected in their Cicadas to retrieve and re-slot the spears, and then returned to the mechs.

They continued following the path Manticore had laid out before them, and by the time the platoon reached a cavernous chamber, their force fields had recharged enough to offer limited protection once again. According to the energy levels, those shields were at twenty-five percent.

Eric and the others entered that chamber, and the door irised shut behind them.

“Hm,” Brontosaurus said.

Eric heard a clanging sound.

“Spears!” Frogger said over the comm. His transmission included a timebase that switched Eric to Bullet Time. “Overhead!”

13

Eric glanced up, and saw the spears bearing down from slots in the ceiling. Because of the range, he had time to dodge before those spears struck.

Two doors opened in the far wall, on either side of the room, and Black Tails rushed inside. They were creatures the platoon had encountered in the first invasion: essentially giant centipedes with six jointed legs, whose frontal areas were capped by a torso containing four arms and an elongated white head with razor-sharp teeth, and whose rear harbored a tail that drooped over their bodies, ending in a black, glandular sac. They carried spears in every one of the hands that tipped those four arms, and a double-barreled cannon resided on the carapaces behind their torsos.

“I remember these suckers!” Slate said.

“Shoot the glandular sacs!” Marlborough ordered.

Eric and the others unleashed their weapons, but the bolts were absorbed by the energy shields that protected the bioweapons.

“Figures!” Dunnigan said.

The bioweapons rushed them. Those in the forefront threw their spears, and Eric and the others were forced to dodge, or smash them away with their ballistic shields—disabling their own energy fields first so as not to drain them upon impact.

The Bolt Eaters in turn unleashed a barrage of spears, breaking down the first wave. But the second wave of attackers merely leaped over the first, and continued forward. They threw spears again, waiting until they were closer this time: Eric dove to the ground to avoid this next round. Some of the other Bolt Eaters did the same, while most merely dodged.

Eric scrambled upright as the first of the Black Tails reached him. He met the spears of his current foe with his own in a melee that vaguely resembled a sword fight. He was faster than the Black Tail and readily parried those blows, weaving between them to stab the bioweapon through the torso. It screeched, crumbling as he removed the blade.

Another Black Tail simply moved forward to intercept him. It threw a spear, and he dodged it. He parried the next two blows, and had to leap to the side as the Black Tail swiped downward with its tail. The glandular sac struck the ground, and the sticky fluid spilled out, killing the beast. Eric quickly cleared the area, because touching that fluid would pin him fast. He grabbed the carapace and tugged, the tail was stuck to the ground because of the fluid, but he pulled harder, ripping it free.

Then he swung the bioweapon at the incoming units, smacking them like they deserved. His favorite strategy. The dead Black Tail still clutched one of the alien spears, which added extra damage. It was like he was swinging a barbed glove.

Bambi came to his left side, and Crusher his right, and they fought together. Bambi swung her own tail like a weapon, using the three spears that pronged the tip to deadly effect. Crusher meanwhile alternated between firing her energy cannons—it distracted them, she claimed—and cutting with her alien spear.

As Eric swung the dead Black Tail at the next foe, a bioweapon behind it tilted its torso downward and unleashed the cannon on its back. Two energy bolts emerged, streaming directly toward him.

He lifted the corpse just in time, and the body tore apart in a stream of blood and gore in front of him.

“Bastard, take away my weapon, will you?” Eric unleashed his energy cannon in turn; he guessed that the tango had disabled its force field to fire like that, and sure enough, Eric’s bolts reached the Black Tail unhindered, and tore into its body, killing it. The alien weapon was so powerful he didn’t even have to worry about targeting the glandular sac, like he had to do to take down these creatures in the past.

As Eric fought the next tango, Manticore’s scouts weaved between the different Black Tails beyond it, and launched sticky webs that pinned the bioweapons. Meanwhile, Manticore followed up by stabbing those creatures with his spear.

The battle continued for the next minute, with the Bolt Eaters making little progress save for a growing wall of dead bioweapons that was forming in front of them. The creatures kept coming.

“Fuck this!” Slate said. He raised his black hole weapon and fired.

A bolt traveled over the heads of the Black Tails, but quickly shrunk in size before vanishing completely. It never took hold.

“Wormhole dispersion tech,” Frogger said. “Prevents black holes from forming anywhere aboard.”

“Oh yeah,” Slate said. “Doh.”

“You’re sounding more and more like Homer Simpson all the time,” Mickey said.

“Thanks!” Slate said. “Homer who?”

“If you look at the path marked on the overhead map,” Crusher said as she stabbed her spear through the head of another Black Tail. “You can see that the doorway we want lies just ahead, between the two open doors. If we can reach it, we can leave this room behind!”

“How do we know more Black Tails won’t block our path from the corridor beyond when we reach it?” Mickey asked.

“No, she’s right!” Manticore replied. “The two doorways that are open on either side ahead lead to barracks. The main corridor, the one we want, isn’t connected to the barracks. If we can make it there, we won’t face opposition. We’ll still have to fend off the Black Tails on our rear, but a few well placed charges might be able to stem the flow.”

“It’s settled then,” Marlborough said. “We need to make a concerted effort to punch through! Bolt Eaters, line up, side by side! Use the dead as your shields!”

The Bolt Eaters lifted carcasses from the pile of dead in front of them, and then they assumed a line formation and began to shove their way forward. The Black Tails were packed too close together to throw their spears at that point, and so had to stab at Eric and the others. They succeeded only in stabbing the dead bodies of their comrades, which the Bolt Eaters held in front of them. While electricity sparked up and down those corpses, the bodies didn’t conduct the electricity into the Bolt Eaters themselves, a fact the platoon readily took advantage of to force their way forward.

Eric and the others occasionally stabbed their spears past the dead bodies to take out a shielded bioweapon. They made good progress, with the line of Black Tails folding and buckling in front of them.

Another panel opened overhead, and milk robots spilled down. Eric and the others were forced to scatter, and they cut through the crystalline creatures with their spears, shattering them. Some of the milk robots touched the Black Tails, and the bioweapons began to crystallize, forming bigger milky entities. Whenever any of those latter units got in their paths, the Bolt Eaters hewed their way past, breaking apart the bigger crystalline forms into smaller fragments.

“Reform!” Marlborough ordered.

They formed a line once more, and began to press forward. Those on the edges of the line had to fold inward as the Black Tails enveloped them, until soon the platoon had formed a moving square whose members fought back to back.

Eric and Slate, in the forefront, forced their way through the far side of the horde, and reached the destination doorway. They promptly fired their energy weapons, tearing a hole through the door, and they kicked through the remaining fragments.

“We’re through!” Eric said.

Beyond, the LIDAR reported the passageway as empty.

For now.

Eric and the others quickly moved inside, readjusting to fit the tighter confines that allowed only two Devastators to walk abreast.

When everyone was inside, those on drag, Dunnigan and Mickey, had to defend the rear, using their spears, and the riddled bodies of the dead they still held.

“Crusher, Frogger, place charges on the overhead as we advance!” Marlborough ordered.

Frogger and Crusher promptly ejected in their Cicadas, and swung down to the storage compartments of their mechs to retrieve sacks of demolition blocks. They clambered to the tops of their mechs and began affixing the bricks to the overhead as the Devastators, under the control of their associated Accomps, continued forward.

Slate and Eric continued forward, moving away from that compartment of carnage as fast as they were able, making room for the others behind them who were likewise fleeing.

“Charges placed!” Frogger announced.

“Get back inside your mechs, and prepare to detonate!” Marlborough said.

Frogger and Crusher returned their Cicadas to the cockpits of their Devastators. The platoon continued forward through the corridor, with the rear units harried the whole way, until the Bolt Eaters were well away from the charges.

“Detonate!” Marlborough ordered.

Frogger and Crusher were still within range of the remote interfaces, and activated them. All of the charges were above the Black Tails that had rushed into the corridor after them, and the explosion caused hot gas and shrapnel to rip into the lot of them. Debris filled the corridor, blotting out the LIDAR feed.

Everything was quiet for several moments afterward.

“You hear that?” Brontosaurus said.

Though Eric still couldn’t see anything, the muted moaning of collapsing metal came from somewhere behind him.

“They’re already trying to shoot their way through,” Brontosaurus continued.

“Then let’s get going!” Marlborough said.

The team moved onward, using the blueprints to guide them since they couldn’t see anything on LIDAR at the moment. Behind them it was still relatively quiet, at least in terms of incoming attacks.

“The debris in the air is clearing,” Dunnigan said from the drag position.

It was true. A thin LIDAR outline appeared, marking the ceiling, bulkhead and overhead behind Dunnigan, offering one meter of visibility towards the destroyed section of the passageway. As the platoon continued their advance, that visibility increased to five meters, and then ten.

“Looks like the overhead caved in behind us,” Dunnigan said.

“I see it,” Bambi said. “That should hold them for a little while.”

Eric switched to Dunnigan’s feed and realized the corridor ended in a pile of ragged debris behind him; it effectively blocked off all access, at least until the pursuers managed to drill through.

“Increase pace!” Marlborough said.

The team hurried forward. They encountered a few more defense platforms, some more milk robots, and several more tentacled tanks, but thankfully nothing like the resistance they had encountered in the cavernous chamber. It helped that they remained mostly within smaller passageways, scuttles and compartments the rest of the way.

Slate spotted slots in the bulkheads on a couple of occasions, in time for the team to drop to a low crawl. As they passed underneath, spears fired from those narrow apertures and passed overhead to clatter harmlessly against the opposite walls.

Once they cleared the first such trap, Marlborough had Dunnigan and Mickey eject in their Cicadas to collect the spears and replace the missing blades they’d lost in the previous fights.

Finally, the Bolt Eaters reached the door that led to the control room.

“Well that was easy!” Slate said. “Relatively.” He aimed his energy weapon at the door and was about to fire.

“Wait, there’s a guardian,” Manticore said. “The Essential calls it the Curator.”

“The Curator?” Dickson asked.

“That’s all I know,” Manticore said. “Something guards this room. Something terrible.”

“We come all this way, and only now you tell us there’s a friggin’ Curator?” Slate said. “Ah, you joy-killing little bitch.”

“I assumed it was obvious,” Manticore said. “This is the control room. Of course there’s going to be something guarding it. The Essential isn’t going to let us take control of the mothership so easily.”

“Well, I assumed given all the shit we went through getting here, that that was enough,” Slate said. “I thought the next battle would all take place in software.”

“Well, you assumed wrong,” Manticore said.

“So what can we expect from this Curator of yours?” Marlborough asked.

“I told you, I don’t know,” Manticore said. “Only that it won’t attack until something enters. Here, let me open the door. And we can decide what to do next.”

Manticore sent his alien sphere forward.

“Wait!” Marlborough barked.

The scout froze.

“You’re not opening that door until we all get back!” Marlborough said.

The team quickly retreated, moving to the far intersection and ducking around the bend. Eric and Slate remained near the forefront and peered past the edge. The other platoon members, covering the approaches to that intersection, tapped into their video feeds—Eric noted many “guest” connections on his HUD.

The scout moved forward once more and reached the entrance. A telescoping arm emerged from it and slid into a small slot in the bulkhead.

The door spiraled opened.

Beyond awaited a darkness that not even the LIDAR could penetrate.

“Why isn’t anything showing up on the LIDAR band?” Frogger asked.

“Obviously there’s some sort of photon absorbing substance inside,” Dunnigan said.

The team members remained silent for several moments as Eric and Slate peered into that impenetrable blackness.

“Eagleeye, how are you doing on those modified drones?” Marlborough asked.

“Got a camera installed on one unit,” Eagleeye replied. “It’s capable of transmitting LIDAR, and has thermal and night vision.”

“Send it in,” Marlborough commanded. “One meter. Then I want it to fly out again, and report immediately.”

The drone flew forward, and passed Manticore’s alien scout to enter the room. It vanished into the darkness.

But didn’t come out again.

“I thought I gave you instructions to fly inside only one meter?” Marlborough asked.

“Yes,” Eagleeye said. “But… it seems its gone offline.”

“Great,” Slate said. “Just great.”

Once more silence descended over the platoon.

“Well, we can’t stay here all day,” Marlborough said. “Those Black Tails will be arriving shortly. So. Who wants to volunteer to go next?”

14

Eric glanced at his companions. He was ready to volunteer, but others beat him to it.

“I’ll go,” Brontosaurus said.

“As will I,” Dunnigan said.

Eric hesitated. He wanted to be the one to go with Brontosaurus, but Dunnigan was as good a choice as anyone else. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t join them.

“I’ll go, too,” Eric said.

“No,” Marlborough said. “I don’t want to risk more than two mechs this first time out. Dunnigan, stay back, follow Brontosaurus. Retreat as soon as anything goes wrong. We need to know just what the hell this Curator is, and what he can do. And we can’t do that if you both die in there.”

“If I have the choice between saving Brontosaurus, or my own skin, I’m going to choose him,” Dunnigan warned.

“Sounds good to me,” Marlborough said. “But whatever you do, please, one of you try to get out alive.”

Eric and Slate moved out of the way to let the two mechs pass.

Eric returned to his cover behind the bend and watched the pair approach. He had a thought.

“Wait,” Eric said.

Brontosaurus and Dunnigan halted halfway to the dark opening.

Eric glanced at Marlborough. “Why not send the mechs alone? Let the Accomps guide them in. Why risk their lives?”

Brontosaurus spoke before Marlborough could get in a word. “I’m not sure I’d trust my Accomp to do the job. I think it’s better if we go ourselves. We’re Mind Refurbs. We can handle anything the enemy throws at us. Our shields are fifty percent charged. And we’re equipped with alien weaponry.”

Marlborough didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally: “No,” Marlborough said slowly. “Scorpion is right. You don’t need to needlessly risk your lives. I want your mechs to go in alone. The Accomps are capable of facing whatever threat lies inside, and they can report back just as well as you what that threat is.”

Brontosaurus sighed over the comm. “All right.” He jettisoned from his unit, and climbed down in his Cicada. Dunnigan did the same beside him.

“I feel so naked somehow without my mech,” Dunnigan said.

“Oh yeah,” Brontosaurus said. He and Dunnigan returned to the intersection to join Eric and Slate in cover past the bend. “Definitely not a good feeling.”

“Yeah, sure,” Slate said. “The two of you love being naked together. You do it all the time in the apartment complex.”

“Hey Slate, wanna take a shower with me when this is done, mate?” Dunnigan asked.

“Oh yeah, baby,” Slate replied. “I dream of you every night. I can’t wait to see your ass.”

“I knew it!” Eagleeye said.

The two Accomp-manned Devastators approached the darkness, and then vanished inside.

“Just lost signal,” Brontosaurus said.

“As in, the mechs are destroyed?” Marlborough asked.

“Not sure,” Brontosaurus replied.

Eric stared into the darkness of that opening, waiting for something to happen, or for one or more of the mechs to emerge. Several moments passed, but the entrance remained completely quiet.

Eric was just about to relax slightly, when he heard a loud grinding sound, like hundreds of steel saws cutting into different metals, and his servomotors tensed up all over again.

“The hell is that?” Slate said.

From the opening, several fragments of metal and polycarbonate shot outward as if spat out. Embedded among the fragments were some small, intact mech body parts, such as hands and servomotors.

Most landed in a pile directly in front of the door, but one fragment had sufficient kinetic energy to hurtle straight toward Eric: he had to duck out of the way to avoid having it hit him, and it smashed into the bulkhead directly across the way. It promptly bounced to the floor and rolled to one side. It looked like the partial head of one of the mechs.

The grinding sound faded, as did the sound of metal parts dropping to the deck.

Eric tentatively peered around the edge once more. He stared at the large pile that had gathered in front of the open door.

“Scorpion, how much material is that?” Marlborough asked. “Enough for two mechs?”

“I believe so,” Eric said. “There’s definitely enough material for more than one. One and a half, maybe.”

“Well, so much for at least one of the mechs emerging intact,” Frogger said.

“Is the alien fusion reactor among the debris?” Brontosaurus asked from his Cicada.

“I think so,” Eric replied. “Looks punctured.”

“Why didn’t it explode or meltdown or something?” Brontosaurus said.

“The alien fusion reactors don’t work like that,” Manticore said. “As soon as they lose integrity, say from a puncture, they immediately shut down. Not meltdown, like a human reactor would.”

“Oh,” Brontosaurus said.

“So what now?” Mickey said. “I guess there’s nothing we can do. We might as well head to the gravity dispersion room and take out the generator. Then we can launch a bunch of black holes, implode the ship, and go home.”

“Just like we did during the first invasion?” Slate said. “That sounds like a mighty fine plan. Oh wait, no, there’s just one small thing wrong with it. And that would be the ‘go home’ part. You see, bitch, you’re forgetting that we all died the last time we tried to take out that generator. All except for squeaky clean, lucky ass Scorpion here. So that’s not the best idea, not at all.

“I say we stay here and try again. Come on, you know y’all want to have a Banthar mothership all to yourselves. You thought you had fun piloting trillion dollar mechs? Well wait until the shit we pull in this baby! We’ll have a friggin’ army of termites at our beck and call, my bitches! Not to mention inertialess drives, and faster than light travel. We can fly it around the galaxy and raise hell wherever we go!

“So. Who’s going to go inside? And this time it has to be an actual Mind Refurb. None of this Accomp bullshit. Accomps are a poor substitute for real men.”

“And women,” Crusher amended.

“Sure thing,” Slate said. “So you’re volunteering?”

“No...” Crusher said.

“That’s what I thought,” Slate said. “So like I was saying, Accomps are a poor substitute for real men.” He ran his gaze across the other Bolt Eaters, quickly passing over Bambi and Crusher. “Who’s up to the task?” When no one volunteered. Slate added: “Come on, you’re all thrill seekers! Someone’s gotta volunteer.”

“Why not you?” Eagleeye said. “You’re so eager to die, then go ahead. You or Mickey.”

“I’ll pass,” Mickey said.

Slate examined the pile of rubble sitting outside the opening. “Hm, no thanks. I’m not as brave as Scorpion. You’ll do it, right, bro?”

“Of course I will,” Eric said, stepping past the edge of the intersection.

“No,” Bambi said.

Slate’s avatar suddenly grinned. “There see, I knew there was someone braver than me in this sorry bunch.” He lowered his voice. “And stupider.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Bambi pressed.

“It’s my turn,” Eric said. “I’ve sat back and watched the rest of you die long enough. I’m not going to do that again. I’ll go.”

“I was kind of joking.” Slate paused. “And kind of not.”

“It’s not worth it,” Brontosaurus said. “We don’t need to take the ship. Let’s just destroy it.”

“No,” Eric said. “We have a chance here to turn the tide in this war. If we turn back now, and fight our way to the generator room, and then simply destroy this ship, we’ll be paving the way for another invasion twenty years down the line. Or even sooner. The Essential will come back with two motherships next time. Four. We have to end this threat now. If we capture this ship, we’ll be able to use it to defend against future attacks. Or we can turn around and take it to the Banthar homeworld, and give them a taste of their own weapons firsthand.”

“Ooh, now that’s what I’m talking about!” Slate said.

Eric took a step forward, and then stopped. He ejected from his cockpit and landed on the deck in his Cicada.

“Decided to let your mech go in alone after all?” Mickey asked.

“No,” Eric replied. “I’m going in with my Cicada.”

“What?” Crusher said. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “A hunch.”

“A hunch...” Crusher said.

“That’s right,” Eric said. “The scout Eagleeye sent in was never spit out. Whereas the mechs were. I have a feeling that smaller objects have a better chance of survival. So I’m going in with my Cicada.”

“You could be completely wrong,” Brontosaurus said.

“But I could also be completely right,” Eric told his friend.

“You’re sure about this, Scorpion?” Marlborough asked.

“Surer than I’ve ever been about anything,” Eric replied, more confidently than he felt.

He returned to his Devastator mech, and opened up the storage compartment. He removed a sack containing a score of demolition bricks, then he walked toward the dark opening ahead. Alone.

“Dee, instruct my mech to take cover behind the intersection,” Eric ordered.

His mech promptly retreated from view.

Eric continued forward, the trepidation rising. He had no idea what awaited beyond that opening. Probably his own death.

Strangely, he was at peace with that fact. But he still felt the fear.

“Hey Scorp,” Frogger said. “Are you a penitent man?”

Eric paused. “Huh?”

“Don’t you remember Indiana Jones 3?” Frogger said. “When you sense anything going wrong in there, kneel!”

“That’s right,” Mickey said. “Because only the penitent men can proceed. Or something.”

“Um, yeah,” Eric said. “Your little attempts at pop culture humor aren’t really helping. I’m not in an Indiana Jones movie here.”

“But you could be!” Mickey said excitedly. He quickly mellowed his tone. “Sorry. You’re right. You could die in there.”

“Yeah, thanks for reminding me,” Eric said. Though in truth, the jibes of Frogger and Mickey did lift his spirits, if only a little.

If only life were a movie. Then we would have repelled the aliens long before they ever destroyed half the Earth. And we wouldn’t have our minds trapped in machines like this. In fact, we would have never died in the first place. I’d still have Molly, and—

No.

He refused to allow his thoughts down that route, because there was no coming back if he did. He was happy now. Or at least, he had been happy, when he had been living on Earth, before the current mission. So happy. Bambi and Crusher had been so good to him. He was doing this for them. And for his other platoon mates.

Because he didn’t want anyone else to die.

I’m the only Original left. It’s my turn to go.

Filled with dread, he stepped into the doorway.

15

Darkness surrounded Eric.

He immediately lost communications with the rest of the team, their indicators frozen on the overhead map.

A Faraday cage of some kind.

His Cicada body appeared as a blue outline to his own eyes in the darkness, something that was visible only to him.

He activated LIDAR, and echolocation, but neither helped penetrate the darkness. He tried his mini headlamp, and could see the deck below and slightly in front of him thanks to the resultant pool of light, but nothing more. He stood on an island in the dark. The surface below seemed to be made of a smooth, seamless metal.

He turned that lamp around until he was facing the entrance he had just stepped through. The light illuminated a dim film in place of the doorway, blocking the view of the passageway beyond: some kind of energy membrane covered the opening. He had seen similar tech aboard the mothership of twenty years before: then, it had served as an airlock of sorts to keep different atmospheres from mixing or leaking into the void. But as far as he could tell the atmosphere in the current compartment was the same as outside.

“Dee, what do you think the purpose of this membrane is?” Eric asked.

“Likely to keep out all light and other EM waves, including those used in communication,” his Accomp replied.

“Lines up with what I’m thinking.” Eric turned away from the membrane and took a step forward.

Movement drew his attention to his side, where another blue outline appeared. A Cicada, visible thanks to positional sharing.

He turned his headlamp toward the newcomer.

Bambi.

“Buddy system,” she commented over a private channel. Her smiling avatar appeared in the lower right of his HUD.

“No,” Eric transmitted. “Go back.”

The expression of her avatar set in caricature of defiance. “Too late. I’m here.”

Eric stiffened. “You don’t understand. I’m doing this for you.”

“Then don’t do it,” Bambi said. “Because the only way I’m leaving is with you.”

Eric attempted to shove her but she readily sidestepped.

“Don’t you think you should be conserving your energy, and attention, for whatever lies inside?” Bambi asked.

Eric sighed. Then turned around. “Fine, you have a death wish, then come.”

“Only as much of a death wish as you do,” Bambi quipped. She activated her own headlamp. “Gotta be some kind of light dampener in here. Our headlamps should be penetrating much farther. They’re not this weak.”

“Yeah well, we have to work with it.” Eric retrieved a charge from the sack he carried, and knelt to plant it on the floor now. The explosive brick appeared as a red outline thanks to his HUD. “Did you bring any demolition blocks?”

He glanced at her Cicada, aiming his headlamp lower down, and spotted a similar sack to his own.

“I certainly did,” Bambi said.

“Lay them as you go,” he ordered.

“Yes, Boss,” Bambi said.

He glanced at the membrane behind him. “By the way, don’t tell me Crusher is coming, too.”

Bambi sounded sad. “No. I convinced her to stay behind. I told her that one of us has to live.”

“Sort of like what I used to tell Frogger,” Eric said.

Her avatar smiled weakly. “Yes. Except her and I are not clones of one another. So if we die, all we have are our backups. Whereas at least you have Frogger. Your mind clone.”

“What are you saying?” Eric said. “You and Crusher are going to get jiggy with Frogger if I die here?”

Bambi laughed. “I don’t think so. He’s too infatuated with that virtual girlfriend of his he’s programmed. What’s her name? Molly.”

Eric didn’t answer. Instead, he kept a wary eye on the darkness around him, knowing that death awaited somewhere beyond the edge of the light.

Bambi kept quiet at least: she realized the time for fun and games had passed. If she wanted to survive, she had to remain alert, like him.

He continued to place charges two meters apart on the floor as he advanced. Bambi did the same. He wasn’t sure if those charges would help, but they did make him feel better: if he died, at least he’d cause some damage.

Assuming he detonated the charges in time.

The illuminated island followed him, and because the deck surface was featureless metal, there were no imperfections to give him a gauge on his progress, and it almost seemed to remain stationary so that it was like he wasn’t moving at all. The only time he had some sense of progression was when he placed a charge: the sensation lasted only the short while the brick remained in view.

Now that he was away from his mech, he no longer had an infinite power supply, and had to watch his battery levels again. He’d recharge once he returned to the Devastator, of course, but until then he had to be careful not to exhaust his power cell. Without sunlight, he was losing power just walking in here. Well, and from keeping his headlamp active. Altogether, it was a relatively small amount, true, but enough that he was already at ninety-eight percent.

He was also worried about the light from his headlamp giving away his position, and thus considered deactivating it. He decided that it didn’t matter. That whatever death awaited him in here would find him regardless. That the Essential in charge of the mothership was already watching and aware of his every move, and would continue to be aware even in complete darkness. It could track him using the sound of his servomotors, or the soft clang as his feet touched the deck. Pressure plates might exist everywhere in the floor. Motion sensors in the walls.

And in addition to the myriad of sensors, the Essential had far more processing power at its disposal than Eric did: with the countless cloud computing resources available, it could calculate its next moves hundreds of steps ahead of him. He was definitely outclassed, and at a strong disadvantage. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t still prevail.

Still, it probably hadn’t been the best idea for Bambi to come here. She would be a distraction, and if she was in danger, in an attempt to save her life he might do something that could end them both.

But it was best not to think about that. There was nothing he could do now but press on.

And hope that luck was on his side.

Because he didn’t see himself winning this with brute strength, or even his wits alone.

After he placed the latest charge, he had a sudden image in his head of several turrets lying in wait, built into the surrounding walls and hidden by the darkness, aligned at just the right angles so that the weapons wouldn’t shoot down their opposites in the crossfire.

“Down!” he transmitted, and slammed his body to the deck.

Bambi’s blue outline similarly dropped behind him.

“You know, energy turrets wouldn’t produce the wreckages of the Devastators we witnessed,” Bambi said, hitting on the exact reason he had ducked. “It’s almost like this room is a grinder of some kind. I’m more expecting the walls to come crashing down on us than anything else. That, or blades to emerge from the floor and ceiling.”

Eric was about to answer her when the deck underneath him began to shift, as if alive. He switched to Bullet Time.

The sack of demolition bricks was snatched from his grip.

The deck seemed to dissolve into hundreds of granules underneath him, swallowing him, and Eric had to pull free—it was like escaping from sand after being buried on a beach. His hull sensors mistook the granules for termites, and electrified the surface of his skin, part of a built-in defense mechanism. Draining his battery…

Around and ahead of him, the deck curved upward on either side, becoming a half-pipe that crunched inward as he watched, like a giant trash compactor. Grinding, notched wheels formed in the surface, along with jagged, rotating saw blades.

He quickly calculated a trajectory through that compactor and its deadly contraptions.

“Roll!” He brought his legs into his upper body as he broke free of the ever-changing deck granules, amped up his servomotor power levels, and hurled himself forward with his arms. He folded his body into a tight ball, like he would have done when entering the cockpit of his mech, and detonated the furthest charges he had laid.

Flashes of bright light filled the compartment, and the air rattled with the intensity of the explosion. Eric’s momentum carried his spherical form through the lethal blades and grinding wheels. He’d miscalculated slightly when he yanked himself forward, placing his hands at a touch less than the ideal angle and pulling with a tad too much force, so that his route didn’t exactly match his planned trajectory: he passed a little too close to one of the saw blades, and glanced off the sharp rotating edge, shaving away a portion of his thigh. It wasn’t enough to impede him in any way, but it was certainly a chink in his armor.

Because of the way he had launched himself, his body possessed a tumbling motion that rotated him three hundred and sixty degrees every second from top to bottom. He upped his time sense even further so that as he revolved in the backward direction he caught sight of another rotating sphere following behind him—that would be Bambi. He was relieved to see her escaping the trash compactor on a trajectory similar to his own.

Bambi also detonated her own charges then, but apparently she decided to explode all of them, including those that were closest, because in addition to a flash, a fireball instantly overwhelmed his position; he felt the shockwave of hot gases impact and send him hurtling forward even faster. Maybe that was for the best, because it helped him escape the ever-shrinking trash compactor sooner.

He landed on the deck several paces away, and bounced several times before he decided to unfold and grind to a halt. At least the surface was solid here, unlike the loose granules he’d left behind. He noted it was made of hexagonal tiles, too, rather than the smooth, seamless metal he had passed over before. The area was still just as dark, with the light from his headlamp struggling to pierce the murk.

Bambi landed beside him and also unfolded.

He turned around. From the darkness he had just left, a formless mass lurched forward.

Eric saw a small, red outline near the rear of that mass, and realized that it was carrying one of his unexploded demolition blocks with it.

Smiling inwardly, he detonated it.

A firewall erupted at the rear of the mass, and the front section careened toward Eric and Bambi.

He grabbed Bambi by the wrist and yanked her aside; the explosion swept over them, knocking them backward. He hit the deck on his back first: beside him, past Bambi, he caught a glimpse of the black mass as it swept past, its constituent granules scattering across the deck.

As he and Bambi scrambled to their feet, he activated the weapons in his forearms—the panels folded back on either arm to reveal the P-21 and the L-52.

Beside him, the mass reformed, becoming a black, slithering mechanical boa. A forked tongue momentarily darted out—nice touch.

Eric was still operating in Bullet Time so that when Bambi tried to shove him out of the way, he dodged and sidestepped her, instead putting himself between her and the boa.

He raised his plasma and laser rifles, but before he could fire the huge snake was already on him.

It struck, and immediately wrapped around his body, squeezing his hands against his sides and pinning his feet together. Once again his hull electrified, and he had to manually shut it off because it wasn’t doing anything other than wasting his battery power.

The metal boa hoisted him into the air as another lump formed below his feet. He realized it had trapped Bambi, too, and had similarly constrained her just underneath him.

“You weren’t supposed to get caught,” he pinged her.

“Yeah well, next time let me push you out of the way,” Bambi retorted.

Eric’s metal and polycarbonate body groaned as his arms and legs were crushed, along with his internals. His damage report screen showed servomotors across his body flashing yellow, indicating physical stress that would soon lead to permanent damage. He amped up his time sense to max so that he could buy himself a few extra moments. Reality froze around him.

“Well, guess we know what happened to the mechs of Brontosaurus and Dunnigan,” Bambi said. “It was nice knowing you, Babe. I love you.”

16

“I love you, too,” Eric said. “But I’m not giving up yet.”

“All right,” Bambi said. “As far as I can tell, we have about half a second before the boa crushes us completely. That’s about ten minutes at our current time sense. Why don’t we switch to VR, and have sex one last time? It would mean the world to me. I want to die holding you in my arms.”

Eric was tempted to do as she asked. Ever the romantic, he wanted to die the same way.

But a part of him wasn’t ready to give up.

“Not yet,” Eric said.

There was something he was missing. Something obvious that he had overlooked.

What the hell is it?

And then he remembered.

The sack of demolition blocks.

It was still somewhere out there, dragged away by the entity when he had dropped to the floor, before the trash compactor had formed.

There was no way to see where it was at the moment, because the bricks weren’t armed.

He accessed the remote interface, and was relieved to find that the devices were still in range. He remotely activated the arming mechanisms.

There. The sack appeared on his overhead map. It was close to the boa, about two meters to the right and behind it. Obviously the bricks had been dragged along by the entity before it had taken this latest form, and then they were abandoned, forgotten. The boa’s body would shield Eric and Bambi from the explosion, but it was possible shrapnel from the machine would strike them.

So be it.

He detonated the entire lot of them.

At this current time sense, he was able to watch the explosion form. The fireball engulfed the entity, and wrapped around it, until he could no longer see. Then he felt a hail of particles along his sides, and shrapnel broke away from the boa and embedded along the peripheries of his body.

The snake began to collapse, and Eric and Bambi fell away. He altered his time sense so that he was operating closer to normal human speeds, and as the fireball receded, he watched the granules that had formed the snake fan out across the deck.

Behind it, a blast crater a meter and a half in diameter marred the deck where Eric had detonated the sack.

The granules on the floor around him began crawling. They moved away from his body, and Bambi’s, giving them room. He realized in that moment that they were micro machines. They gave Eric and Bambi room because of the termite repellers installed in their Cicadas. He wondered vaguely why the boa and trash compactor formed by those machines hadn’t been repelled, but that was probably because the termites became different entities when linked.

That it was made of micro machines also explained why his hull kept electrifying whenever the entity struck. It wasn’t a malfunction after all: the tech had been developed during the first invasion specifically to defend against machines of this kind. In fact, he had a hand in its creation.

He stared at the termites for a few moments.

This was the Curator.

He watched as the swarm members scrambled away from him. They began to clamber one atop the other, and he realized they were forming something new.

“Don’t let them finish!” Eric raised his hands, but noticed the muzzles of his plasma and laser rifles had been physically rammed back inside the panels in his forearms, thanks to the boa’s crushing embrace, and they wouldn’t deploy again. At least on their own.

He manually jerked the muzzles free—Bambi was forced to do the same beside him—and then tried to shoot. Thankfully, the weapons fired.

It didn’t help. He was able to break away portions of the micro machines, but they continued forming, faster than he could stop them.

He and Bambi began backing away as an insect-like creature took shape. His back touched a bulkhead; he could run no further.

By then, the termite mass had formed into a giant scorpion. It blocked off the retreat to the entrance membrane on the far side of the room—which wasn’t currently visible—and slowly stalked toward him. A wicked-looking stinger hung from the tail.

“Definitely don’t want to get hit by that,” Bambi said.

Eric and Bambi continued firing as the scorpion closed. They tried to shoot off the stinger, but the scorpion began to randomly wag its tail, avoiding the blows. So Eric focused on the machine’s center of mass instead. As his blows began to impact once more, he thought: This is why it’s best not to ignore my training.

He glanced at his battery levels. Thirty percent. Getting low. They wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer.

“I like how it chose a shape after your namesake,” Bambi said.

“Don’t think it knows,” Eric said.

In moments the insect machine was standing before them, its pincers ready to grab him, its stinger raised to strike.

He upped his time sense as the stinger-tipped tail swung forward, and he dodged out of the way.

“I’m starting to wish we had some of those alien spheres along!” Bambi said.

“Wouldn’t help all that much with this guy,” Eric said. “Any damage we caused would just reform! Distract it while I run underneath!”

Bambi dashed to the right, closing slightly, and those pincers snapped at her, attempting to snatch her up. She continued firing the whole time.

Eric used the diversion to dash underneath the metal scorpion, and he unleashed his weapons at point blank range into the ventral portion of its jointed thorax. He carved small blast craters into the surface, but the scorpion seemed unaffected—the holes quickly filled in as other termites shifted to take their places.

The machine slammed its body downward, crushing Eric into the floor. Its legs began to fold inward, and he upped his time sense, along with his servomotor output, and squeezed out before those legs could snatch and crush him. He dodged the tail as he emerged, and the stinger slammed into the deck behind him.

“Supposed to be softer underneath, aren’t they?” Eric commented.

“Sure, except it’s a machine!” Bambi exclaimed.

“Yeah, so much for that.” He glanced at his power levels.

Ten percent.

The stinger came down at him again, and Eric leaped backwards. He felt like one of those plastic moles in those Whac-A-Mole games at the fair, thrust into the air and exposed for the soft mallet to strike, except this mallet was anything but soft.

“I’m detecting high energy photons, coming from this part of the floor!” Bambi said from her position next to the wall.

“Has to be the Curator’s command and control!” Eric said. “Shoot the entire area!”

Bambi began firing into the deck with her plasma and laser rifles.

The scorpion turned toward her, but instead of striking, the termites composing it transformed into a big fist. She tried to dodge out of the way, but the fist smashed Bambi’s Cicada into the wall.

Aiming at the small blast holes she’d formed already, Eric fired at the deck next to the wall.

“Eric!” She only used his name in their most intimate moments.

Or when her life was in mortal danger.

He looked up. She was spreadeagled: the termites had transformed again, this time into ropes, and they were tugging at each of her four limbs. Intending to rip them apart. One of her servomotors shifted, breaking in half as he watched.

A strand broke away those “ropes,” forming a spear that plunged toward her chest assembly—headed directly toward her AI core.

As he feared, he had to make a choice. Try to save her, and risk killing them both. Or let her die, and destroy the micro machines while she distracted them.

He made his choice.

He lifted his arms and opened fire at the “rope” binding her right arm as he ran. It broke, and free of its exertion, she leaned to the left slightly, her loose arm beginning to flop to her side.

The incoming spear adjusted so that it was still plunging toward the new location of her AI core.

Eric leaped toward the spear and struck it just as the tip impacted her body. The spear swerved to the right, scraping across her chest assembly, and carving a deep groove before slamming into the wall beside her.

The micro machines broke apart around him, and began to reform, becoming tentacles that wrapped around them.

Eric upped his time sense.

Power levels were at three percent.

“Fire at the deck!” Eric said.

He swept his hands down in slow motion, through the swarming micro machines—which caused them to disperse—and toward the deck. He unleashed both weapons, firing at the blast craters Bambi had marked the photon source with. She, too, fired her weapons, but straight down, well away from the target—she’d lost motor control of her arms, and couldn’t lift them.

Tentacles continued to form around him, and one wrapped around his left arm, which yanked the laser rifle off target.

He continued firing with his plasma rifle, unleashing hell at the floor, and making new craters. Another tentacle formed, and slammed against his right arm. He resisted, wanting to fight to the very end, but then that arm, too, was pulled away, and Eric was firing into empty air. So he stopped.

He tugged at the tentacles that bound him, but he couldn’t break free. Those tentacles were squeezing tighter. Ever tighter. On his damage report screen, his servomotor indicators had gone from yellow to orange.

Eric sent what he knew would be his last transmission. “Goodbye, Bambi. I tried to save you. I really tried. But I couldn’t. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Bambi said.

Eric sensed motion beside him.

Though her shoulder and elbow servomotors were too damaged to move her arms, Bambi had managed to lift her wrists instead, and was using her hands to shove the protruding muzzles of the rifles toward the command and control hidden beneath the deck. She released several shots before the micro machines could react, and formed fresh blast holes in the floor.

Just like that it was over.

The tentacles that bound the pair broke apart like sand from a cracked hourglass; the constituent termites slumped to the floor in black piles.

Eric slumped against the wall, and grabbed Bambi before she could topple.

He reverted his time sense to normal and glanced at his battery levels.

Zero.

That meant he had switched over to backup power, and had five minutes left—assuming he didn’t change his time sense, fire any weapons, or electrify his hull.

“Bye bye, Curator,” Bambi said.

“You’ll never let me live down the fact that you got in the killing blow, will you?” Eric asked her.

Her avatar smiled so cutely on his HUD. “Nope.”

17

Eric helped Bambi, limping, to the far side of the room. Their headlamps illuminated the entrance membrane. When they passed through into the bright corridor outside, they disabled those lamps.

On the overhead map, the team’s indicators updated. Comms were online.

“It’s clear,” Eric said. “The Curator is offline.”

“Good job, Scorp!” Eagleeye said.

“It was Bambi,” Eric clarified.

“Oh,” Eagleeye said. “My bad, Bambi. I know you’re a bad-ass.”

“Yup,” Bambi said. Like Eric, she was too mentally exhausted by what happened to make much small talk. From the slight tremble in her voice, she probably wanted to cry more than anything else, now that it was over. Eric felt that way himself.

Good thing he was a robot.

“Get back in your mechs,” Marlborough ordered.

Eric and Bambi returned to the bend, and approached their respective units. He paused beside her Crab unit, which had lowered itself to the floor to make her entry easier.

Eric helped her inside, and her body began to fold up into a ball.

“That’s right, ease her into the mechanical vagina,” Slate said.

Slate’s voice never sounded so painfully grating to Eric as in that moment.

“Dude, you have no class,” Eagleeye told Slate. “Have some respect for the two of them. It looks like they just went through hell and back.”

“Sorry,” Slate said. “I love you guys, you know that, right?”

Eric’s Devastator knelt before him and its cockpit hatch cracked open.

He stared at it for long moments.

For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to go inside. Not yet. He just wanted to stay out here, in the light, for a few moments longer.

“What happened in there, bro?” Brontosaurus asked over the line.

Eric shook his head. He couldn’t bring himself to speak. He felt more emotional than he thought he would.

We survived. Barely.

He would have died in there if it weren’t for Bambi.

His knees buckled underneath him and he crumpled to the floor.

“Scorp!” Frogger rushed to his side and lifted Eric’s Cicada body gently from the deck with the huge hand of his mech.

“I’m fine,” Eric lied. “My servos got a bit damaged from the fight. That and I’m operating on backup power. Just… just help me into the cockpit.”

Frogger held him to the hatch, and Eric weakly pulled himself inside and folded himself into a ball.

The hatch closed and the Cicada began to recharge. Eric switched his consciousness over to that of the Devastator and stood to his full height in the corridor. Though the servomotors of his mech were operating at full power now, he still felt weak.

“You good?” Frogger asked.

Eric nodded. He wasn’t, but he would be, given time.

Mentally exhausted was an understatement.

“Slate, escort Manticore inside,” Marlborough ordered.

Slate and Manticore approached the opening. Slate paused at the entrance, and stared at the darkness beyond.

“You sure it’s clear?” Slate asked suspiciously.

“Go inside,” Marlborough said.

Slate hesitated a moment longer, then entered. Manticore followed with his revolving drones.

A moment later the darkness lifted, and Eric could see the room clearly inside. He spotted the pile of micro machines in the far corner.

The indicators for Slate and Manticore appeared on the overhead map as Manticore disabled whatever signal damping was emanating from the compartment. Slate was standing next to the deactivated termites.

“You dudes beat that in mere Cicadas?” Slate asked. “Nice! You’re my idol Bambi.”

“I want everyone inside,” Marlborough said. “That compartment offers a better defensive position than out here.”

Eric followed the other Bolt Eaters into the chamber, which was easily big enough to fit them all. Brontosaurus and Crusher loitered just within the entrance, watching both sides of the passageway that led to the compartment. Brontosaurus looked like a kid next to Crusher’s Devastator, considering he had lost his mech and only had his Cicada body.

Past the disabled termites, on the far side of the room there was a small passageway leading to another compartment, which Manticore had entered. Probably the control room proper. Eric suspected that the passage to that room had been coated in another energy membrane, one that Manticore had deactivated to enter.

Marlborough ducked his head and advanced through the corridor to the control room, followed by Dickson.

“Only three mechs can fit in here,” Marlborough said. “The rest of you wait outside.”

Eric lingered next to the opening along with the other mechs. The mechs of Marlborough and Dickson blocked out much of the control room beyond, but he could still partially see Manticore; Eric watched the two alien scouts with him land on hexagonal-shaped pedestals. The units interfaced with the pedestals via the usual telescoping limbs.

And then, nothing.

Slate shifted restlessly after a few minutes. As did Eagleeye.

“Think I’ll join you.” Slate marched to the entrance, and slid one of his energy weapons past Brontosaurus and Crusher.

“Feel better now, big guy?” Crusher asked him.

“No,” Slate said. “But I’d feel better if you sucked my—”

Eric heard a loud clang, and glancing over his shoulder, he saw Slate was lying flat on his back on the deck. He rubbed his groin section.

“That was uncalled for,” Slate said, rising.

Crusher’s avatar flashed a mocking smile on Eric’s HUD. “Actually, it was entirely called for.”

“What do you think about that?” Slate said, turning toward Eric. “One of your girlfriends flat out attacks me for no damn reason whatsoever.”

“I actually approve,” Eric said. He was feeling better already. “Saves me the trouble of having to do it myself.”

The smile on Crusher’s avatar widened, becoming one of adoration.

“Pussy-whipped little bitch,” Slate muttered. “Remind me to order you some fresh soy.”

“You do that,” Eric said.

Slate stalked toward the doorway; Crusher turned completely away from the entrance and stood in his path as if to block him.

Slate halted in place, seeming indecisive. Eric was ready to intervene if things went south, not that Crusher would really need any help. It just seemed the right thing to do.

But then Slate shook his head, and retreated, returning to sulk beside Eagleeye.

“Like a dog with its tail between its legs,” Mickey said.

Slate spun aggressively toward Mickey. “Shut it!”

The minutes ticked passed.

“It’s done,” Manticore finally announced. “The mothership is in our control.”

“Well, that’s a load off our backs,” Mickey said.

“What’s that, you’re gonna blow a load on Eagleeye’s back?” Slate said.

“No, on yours,” Mickey quipped.

“In your dreams,” Slate said.

“Every night,” Mickey commented.

“So wait, you say we have control of the mothership,” Dunnigan said. “Does that include all the airships and troops aboard?”

“I was able to overwrite the Essential instances of all the airships with custom versions, yes,” Manticore said. “Because they’re wired to the main AI while docked. I also have the termites aboard those machines under control, as well as the micro machines enveloping the mothership. I also have quite a few of the ordinary, larger machines under my control, but not all of them. Those that were roaming free when I took charge still have minds of their own. I’ve instructed the units under my command to seek out those that aren’t… there will still be sporadic fighting aboard for some time.”

“What about the machines and airships on Earth?” Frogger asked. “And the bioweapons? Do you have them, too?”

“No, those still have their own Essential instances,” Manticore replied. “I haven’t been able to crack the wireless protocol yet. They fight the humans yet.”

“And the different termite swarms on Earth?” Frogger pressed.

“Same situation,” Manticore said.

“Then how did you get the termites aboard on your side?” Frogger said. “They’re just as ‘wireless’ as the ones on Earth, I would think.”

“They’re actually in storage bays on the airships,” Manticore said. “So I was able to send instructions on a wired connection. And in regards to the micro machines enclosing the mothership, they’re all in contact with the hull, again allowing me to send wired overrides.”

“Nicely done, Manticore,” Marlborough said. “When you told us you could take over the mothership, I have to admit, I didn’t really believe you. But now that I’ve seen you do it in the flesh, as it were, I am thoroughly impressed.”

“When you’ve digested the memories of as many Essential instances as I have, hacking their AIs becomes second nature,” Manticore said.

“I think you need to teach the rest of us these hacking skills,” Slate said.

“Why, so that you don’t need me anymore?” Manticore said. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah well, that’s the thing, we need you,” Slate said. “And yet you’re planning to betray us at some point. You haven’t yet, and I’m not sure why, but you will.”

To that, Manticore simply nodded his mechanical head.

Dunnigan sat his mech cross-legged on the deck. “So. We’ve saved Earth then. Sort of. Discounting the pockets of alien fighters still engaged on the surface below.”

“Yes, but we’ve stopped the aliens from dispatching any reinforcements from this ship,” Marlborough said. “So yes, we have effectively saved Earth. At least for the moment. But I believe it’s time we made that saving permanent.”

“How so?” Frogger asked.

“We go back down, help free the cities one by one?” Brontosaurus asked.

“That’s one way,” Marlborough replied. “But it’s also the hard way. We have another option.”

“We use the airships aboard against the enemy units below?” Dunnigan asked.

“Again, another way, but not quite what I had in mind,” Marlborough said. He glanced at Manticore, who nodded as if he knew precisely what the Sarge wanted.

“We take the mothership to the homeworld,” Manticore said. “And use it against the Banthar, like Scorpion already suggested.”

“Can we actually do that?” Dickson asked.

“I know how to pilot every part of this ship,” Manticore replied. “From the inertialess drives, to the rift generators. We can definitely do that.”

“But what I mean is, will this ship last against the Banthar defenses?” Dickson pressed. “Or will we be shot out of orbit an hour after we arrive.”

“The element of surprise will be on our side,” Manticore said. “The Essential in charge of the homeworld doesn’t know that we’ve taken over the mothership. How can it? We’re hundreds of light years away.”

“How can you be certain?” Frogger said. “Isn’t it possible the Essential created a wormhole like the one the mothership used to get here? And dispatched some sort of communications satellite through it back to the homeworld?”

“I checked the rift formation logs,” Manticore said. “And yes, a communiqué was dispatched to the homeworld soon after we boarded, via a comm probe. It stated that the mothership was under attack by a boarding party. I plan to dispatch a follow-up probe, informing the main AI that the boarding party has been repelled, so that when we do arrive, we’ll catch the main Essential by surprise. We’ll take out the defense platforms as soon as we appear in orbit, along with any rift creation rings, cutting off communications with the rest of the galaxy. By the time any reinforcements arrive to check on them, the planet will be ours, the Banthar our slaves.”

“Teehee!” Slate said. “Gonna squash me some snails! Gonna dine me on some escargot!”

“Stop with the snail references already,” Eagleeye said. “You can’t even eat. Have you taken a look at yourself lately?’

“Bitch, I’ll ship one of our humanoid androids to the planet,” Slate said. “You know, the sort that can eat? The anatomically correct kind.”

“Anatomically correct?” Mickey said. “What, you’re planning on using your sex organs down there?”

“You got it,” Slate said. “Every snail in sight is going to become my bitch. Mark my words.”

“Sometimes I don’t know about you, Slate,” Dunnigan said. “Either you’re a genius or a madman. I’m leaning toward the latter.”

“Oh, but what a madman I am!” Slate giggled. “When I’m done with the snails, you’re next on my list!”

“So this explains why Manticore hasn’t turned on us yet,” Frogger said. “He feels that we’re not yet done here.”

Manticore didn’t reply to that.

Dunnigan glanced through the passageway at Manticore, and switched to a private line that excluded the former Bolt Eater. “How much can we really trust him, mates? Because I for one can’t really understand why he still needs us. He’s in charge of the whole ship at this point. And half the robot crew, if he’s to be believed. He could have them attack us at any time, and blame it on rogue units. Once we’re out of the way, he can do what he wants.”

“I can explain why he won’t do that,” Eric said. “If Marlborough will give me permission.”

“Go ahead,” Marlborough said.

“I wrapped a small explosive sheath around Manticore’s AI core before installing it into the Cicada we loaned him,” Eric said. “That sheath can’t be removed without the proper codes, so even though Manticore knew about it as soon as he opened his eyes, there was nothing he could do but grudgingly board the Devastator we provided him with. Besides myself, Dickson and Marlborough have the codes to the sheath. Any of us can detonate it at any time. And end Manticore.”

“Well, how’s that for leverage,” Slate said. “It explains a lot of things.”

“It certainly does,” Frogger said.

“Switch back to the main band,” Marlborough ordered.

“Are we really going to do this, Sarge?” Brontosaurus asked over the requested band, so that Manticore was included again.

“I plan to, yes,” Marlborough said.

“You mentioned that returning to Earth and fighting the aliens one city at a time was the hard way,” Brontosaurus continued. “But traveling to their homeworld and performing a reverse invasion is supposed to be the easy way? Seems like the harder path to me.”

“Perhaps, but the more fruitful in the end,” Marlborough insisted.

“What about the Earth?” Mickey asked. “We’re just going to abandon the humans to their fate?”

“They’re well-equipped to handle the invasion force on their own, using the technique we shared to deal with the termites,” Marlborough responded. “That said, I’m willing to lend an airship to those of you who want to stay and help. Take it back to Earth, and do whatever you want when you arrive.”

“I’m going with you,” Eric said.

“As am I,” Bambi chimed in.

“Well if you two are going, of course I am,” Crusher said.

The rest of the team similarly volunteered.

All except Dunnigan.

Marlborough looked at the English mech. “So?”

Dunnigan sighed. “I wanted to go back to Earth. Wanted to kick some alien ass. But how can I refuse the chance to travel to the source? We have a chance to dam the headwaters.”

“Dam the headwaters,” Slate said. “I like that. I think I can make a rap song out of it. Dam the headwaters. Fight the power. Dam the headwaters. Kick some ass.”

“Yeah, okay, stop with the ridiculous rapping,” Eagleeye said.

“Shut up, leaf-wiper,” Slate said. “You’re ridiculous.”

“What’s a leaf-wiper?” Mickey asked.

“He wipes his ass with leaves,” Slate explained.

“Hey, at least I’m environmentally friendly,” Eagleeye quipped.

“Mickey, work with Manticore to send a message to Earth,” Marlborough instructed. “Let Arnold know the mothership is the property of the Bolt Eaters now.”

“I don’t think Arnold is going to be very happy when he hears that,” Frogger said.

“Probably not,” Marlborough said. “But what did he really expect would happen once we took over the ship? That we’d just give it to the army to do with as they pleased? Especially after he created a whole company of clones based off my mind backup, without my friggin’ permission?”

“Oh Sarge, I love it when you swear!” Slate said.

“You ain’t heard me swear yet,” Marlborough stated.

18

Eric and the others decided to pass their free time in VR while Manticore prepared the ship for the passage through the jump rift. Apparently, for the traversal, all of the external space termites had to be withdrawn into the ship, which could take up to an hour. If humanity decided to launch some nukes at the mothership while there weren’t enough termites available to detonate the warheads early, Manticore would simply employ the wormhole generators that lined the hull to teleport the weapons to a preprogrammed junk planet.

So, VR. It was a chance to celebrate their first victory over the aliens, and to relax a little before the second phase of the plan.

Eric lounged shirtless on a reclining beach chair underneath an umbrella. On the table beside him was a mojito with a long yellow straw and a miniature umbrella protruding. Waves lapped against the shoreline of the white sand beach. Scantily clad men and women occasionally walked past, all perfect specimens of humanity. Some of the women were topless—a prerequisite of a beach program designed by Slate. It was certainly a great VR environment for people watching.

The avatars of the other Bolt Eaters reclined in bathing suits on similar chairs beside him. All of them were present, including Marlborough. The only person missing was Manticore, but he wasn’t really a Bolt Eater anymore, so his absence didn’t count. Dee was keeping an eye on him, and would wake Eric if he tried anything suspicious. The other platoon members had given their own Accomps similar instructions, undoubtedly. Manticore had placed a few Sloth units in front of the compartment to help guard them; if any rogue Banthar robots staged an attack, Eric wouldn’t be the only one waking up.

Some of the Bolt Eaters arrayed along the beach were lying directly on the sand. This included Bambi and Crusher. The two girls laid face down without an umbrella, their bikini tops removed for optimal bronzing.

“Don’t know why you two are bothering to tan,” Slate said. His body was jacked, and insanely ripped. “When you can just move a slider and adjust your skin tone in real-time. See?” His dark skin became a deep black, then slightly lighter again.

“It’s the journey, not the destination,” Crusher commented.

“Just heard back from Arnold,” Mickey announced. “He says the army is going to withhold restoring any backups of team members we’ve lost until we give up the ship.”

“Let them,” Marlborough said. “They’ll come around when they realize the ramifications of what we’ve done. Having a faster than light ship equipped with alien weapons in orbit gives you a lot of leverage.”

“Technically we’re not faster than light,” Brontosaurus said. His avatar was even bigger, muscular wise, than Slate. “By traveling through wormholes, we’re bending space to us, and shortening the distance between ourselves and our destination.”

“Actually you’re wrong,” Frogger said. “That is the definition of faster than light: the light reflected from our ship won’t arrive at the destination for hundreds of years. So we beat that light. We’re faster.”

“So he says the army will withhold backups, huh?” Crusher said. “That assumes they even have any backups. Could be a bluff. The termites might have gotten to them.”

“Could be,” Marlborough agreed. “But I certainly hope not.”

“Why?” Bambi said. “Maybe it’s better that way. Their chance to rest in peace.”

“Do you really want that?” Dickson said. “To never see Hicks, Tread, or Traps again?”

“No…” Bambi admitted.

“That’s what I thought,” Dickson said. “I used to think that we were reviving the fallen for them… so that they could continue to exist. But I realize now that it’s for us, the survivors. So that we won’t grieve. Because when we die in these forms, we’re dead for real. You can restore all the backups you want, they’re not going to bring this particular version of us back.

“Consider all the clones that Arnold made of Marlborough, or the clones the aliens made of us. They all exist independently of us. We don’t have our consciousnesses inside of them. Just as theirs aren’t inside of us. They’re free to continue learning, and developing, and ten years from now, if they were allowed to live, they would probably be completely different, personality wise, from any of us.”

“You bring up a good point, mate,” Dunnigan said. “But the way I look at it, it’s a comfort of sorts, knowing that if I go down, a version of me will still exist. It won’t be me, of course, but that version of me won’t know the difference. And neither will any of you. Just ask Scorpion. Could you tell when we were restored from backups? Did we seem different?”

“No,” Eric told him. “You were all the same. And I was grateful to have you all back. Like Dickson says, restoring you was more a favor to me, than any of you.”

The team members rested in silence for several moments.

“That doesn’t really make me look forward to the coming invasion of the Banthar homeworld,” Bambi said.

“No,” Crusher agreed. “We die there, we’re dead permanently. At least as far as our current minds and bodies are considered. And look at how old our backups are at this point? We’ll have no memories of any of this. The terrible battles we endured. The losses. How we’ve grown together since we left Earth, and restored some of the bonds we’d let turn stale.”

“It would be such a shame to die, after coming this far,” Brontosaurus said.

“We’re not dead yet,” Marlborough said. “And we don’t know if any of us is going to die. So I suggest we stop speculating. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not going to lose anyone else. We’re going to make it through this, and teach the Banthar why you don’t mess with humanity.”

Again, silence descended upon the group. Eric listened to the waves, and the giggling of a pair of simulacrums playing beach volleyball nearby.

“Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead,” Mickey announced into the silence.

“Give up now?” Dunnigan said. “When we’re so close to taking down the Banthar for good?”

“You don’t know that,” Mickey said. “Manticore could be lying to us. He might have no intention of destroying the main AI core. Maybe he plans to interface with it, and turn the whole planet against us. Sure, you say you have his AI core wrapped in a sheath, but what if he manages to transfer his consciousness into another vessel right under our noses? Like into the main AI running the homeworld?”

“We definitely have to watch him, that’s true,” Frogger said. “Though if he tries something like that, we can just destroy the main AI.”

“Interface with it…” Marlborough said, tapping his chin. “I kind of like that idea. Rather than destroying the AI, why not take it over? And gain control of all the resources of the Banthar. Their factories. Bioweapons. Starships. I’m not sure this is something we want to allow Manticore to attempt, of course, given how little we trust him. It might be something more for the Frogger or Scorpion types among us.”

Frogger glanced at Eric. “You have a full copy of the Essential lying dormant in your AI core, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it dormant,” Eric said. “But it’s there, partitioned off from my main consciousness, yes.”

“Maybe it’s time to do some probing,” Frogger said.

Eric pursed his lips. “I’ve been avoiding touching it. But I suppose I could use the hook in the guilt subroutine to plant some exploratory subroutines, and go from there.”

Frogger nodded. “If you can get it under control, we can look into replacing the main AI that runs the homeworld with yours. Either that or using the same hooks to gain a similar foothold. We’d have to get our hands on Manticore’s alien scouts of course so that we could learn how to interface with the AI.”

“Scouts are also running versions of the Essential,” Eric said. “If we can break into those, we can extrapolate that attack for the main AI.”

“Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Brontosaurus said. “Maybe you should look into hacking Manticore’s AI core. Since he’s the one who already knows how to do all of this. Hack in, get his decryption codes, and take a full memory dump. Or better yet, force him to give you an unencrypted memory dump. He has to submit to you, after all, since you have his AI wrapped in a freakin’ pipe bomb!”

“Actually, that won’t work,” Marlborough said. “We already threatened to blow him up if he wouldn’t reveal how to hack into the airship, or the mothership. He refused. Our leverage over him only goes so far. He knows we won’t blow him up, not yet, not while we need him. So I doubt he’ll willing agree to letting you dump his memory. We’ll have to hack in on our own.” He glanced at Eric and Frogger. “Looks like you two have something to work on.”

“Hey, I thought this VR session was supposed to be about relaxing,” Frogger said.

“It is,” Marlborough said. “But as soon as you’re done here, I’d like you to amp up your time sense and make whatever progress you can. We have to remove our reliance on Manticore, by any means necessary.”

Eric nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll help, if I can,” Frogger said.

Eric glanced at Bambi and Crusher, and realized they were both looking at him. That was his hint to excuse himself.

“Well, maybe I’ll get started early.” Eric logged out of Slate’s VR and launched his own private instance.

He appeared in the bedroom of his virtual apartment loft. He wore a bathrobe.

Bambi and Crusher appeared in front of him, one after the other. They clutched their bikini tops shyly to their chests.

“No tan lines?” Eric asked.

Crusher smiled seductively. “Wanna check?” She casually tosses her top aside.

Bambi lowered hers demurely.

“No lines,” Eric said, unable to control the sudden arousal. He shrugged off his bathrobe.

“Well someone’s happy to see us,” Crusher said.

She slid down onto the bed. Eric joined her, and ripped off her bikini bottom.

The next few minutes were a blur of sweaty body parts and groping. All too soon it was over, and Eric started again. When he had satisfied himself five times, Bambi at last rolled off him.

“Mon Dieu, enough!” she said.

“Hey, it’s called victory sex,” Eric said.

Crusher laughed and similarly rolled off, resting her chin against his chest.

Seeing that, Bambi grew jealous, and pressed against his other side, nuzzling his neck.

“Do you remember the first time we ever tried a threesome?” Crusher asked.

Eric chuckled. “Oh yeah. I remember kissing you, then Bambi, and then watching the two of you kiss. It was hot as hell at first, but then when you kept on kissing, ignoring me, I began to wonder if you even wanted me there. You seemed more into each other than anything else. I was starting to get turned off, in fact, and was about to turn away when you both finally turned you attention on me. And what followed afterward was the most awkward sexual experience I’ve ever had.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Crusher said.

“Uh huh,” Eric said. “There were too many bodies, and none of us really knew what to do. After five minutes of trying to gyrate against one another, we finally stopped, looked at each other, and decided we probably weren’t going to try ever again, because the mechanics of the whole situation just didn’t work.”

“And then you came up with the idea of creating two appendages,” Bambi said. “Really big appendages, at that.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “That made things a whole lot easier. It helped that you adjusted the positions of your vaginas as well.”

Bambi giggled. “That was my genius idea.”

“Yes, I’m willing to give credit where it’s due,” Crusher said. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it genius. Creative, maybe, but genius, no.”

“You’re just jealous,” Bambi said.

“Probably.” Crusher lay back, staring at the ceiling.

Bambi remained cuddled against him.

Eric’s mind began to wander, and he pondered how he was going to hack one of the alien scouts.

Bambi interrupted his thoughts: “I’m afraid.”

Eric lifted her chin with a thumb, and looked her directly into the eye: “We all are. What’s coming isn’t going to be easy. One or more of us could die. We all could.”

“Way to boost morale,” Crusher commented.

“I only want you to go into this knowing the truth,” Eric said. “It’s not going to be as easy as Manticore makes it sound. Especially considering that he plans to turn on us at one point.”

“But you can detonate his AI core…” Bambi said.

“True, but like Mickey said, he might be able to transfer his consciousness to another vessel before I do,” Eric said. “In fact, he might have already done so, and he could be remotely operating the mech.”

“Well that’s a scary thought,” Crusher said.

“I know,” Eric said. “Which is why it’s so important that we get rid of our reliance on him. And I’m still not convinced he hasn’t installed some sort of sleeper code in your units when he had access to the cores.”

“But all the scans turned up clean,” Crusher said.

By then Dee had finished sifting through Brontosaurus’ codebase, as had Dunnigan with his own. Neither Dee nor Dunnigan had found anything of note, so Crusher was speaking the truth. Still, that didn’t really set Eric’s mind at ease.

“I know,” Eric said. “Which is all the more reason I’m worried. There are hundreds of ways to obfuscate code and its intended purpose. Manticore could have hidden something that not even an Accomp would identify as malicious. So all I can say is, I’m not really looking forward to this invasion. Not at all.”

Both Bambi and Crusher lay their sweet heads on his chest.

“Neither are we,” Bambi said, and closed her eyes.

19

Eric had amped up his time sense as soon as Bambi and Crusher logged out. Eric switched to his VR programming environment, which consisted of several flat screen monitors and keyboards for code entry, as well as 3D visualization trees for the different arrays he was currently monitoring. He had made a live copy of his entire memory, including those parts occupied by the Essential, and placed everything into his sandbox container. Then he inserted several pieces of exploratory code that he executed via the guilt hook, giving him access to the different arrays he was viewing now.

It was tricky, because he had to map the alien data into a format that was compatible with his human operating system. As far as he could tell, the Essential was running an emulation layer that made these translations in real time, converting its data into something that would work in his mind, with his subroutines. Given what he had so far, he had a sneaking suspicion that the alien arrays were by nature eight dimensional, but he could only represent them as nested hash maps in human software, which was a real pain to navigate.

He was stepping through the exploratory code in debug mode, because he had no other way to output the data he retrieved in real time—there was no alien console output to print debug messages or anything like that, or if there was, he didn’t know how to reach it.

When he finally had a feel for the alien data formats, and what they contained, he began inserting different probe attacks, which were meant to call different regions of memory that looked like they contained executable code. Sometimes the code produced output that was unintelligible—that meant the code he had attempted to execute was data, not something meant to run. Other times, the code ran in a sensible manner, and produced output data that he could evaluate.

Eventually he had mapped out a subset of the different subroutines of the emulation layer, along with their parameters, but he had no real idea what each of those subroutines actually did. Not without a real world subject to test. That would be one of the alien scouts Manticore operated.

Frogger had been working to hack into one of those scouts without Manticore knowing it. Like the Essential instance inside them, the scouts ran an emulation layer that translated the commands Manticore sent into something the scout could understand. It was written by Manticore, a former human being, and thus used human programming languages, making it susceptible to hacking. It helped that Manticore had installed human-style hardware in the form of a remote interface into the units, which provided a wireless entry point into the emulation layer. So far, Frogger still hadn’t found a way in.

Eric shared the subroutine list he’d mapped so far with Frogger, in the remote chance it might help him. He figured he’d try to break into the scout later once he finished mapping all the different subroutines.

He exited VR at one point when Dee informed him that Manticore was making an announcement. In the real world, he stood once more in the control room aboard the mothership. Several mechs had assumed defensive positions near the doorway, and augmented the firepower of the Sloth units that Manticore had deployed just outside.

“I’ve taken the mothership through the rift,” Manticore said. “And I’m entering orbit above the Banthar homeworld using the inertialess drives. I have the locations of all the major cities, and I’m positioning the vessel for optimal launching of the airship invasion force. That, and to take down any defense platforms, both on the surface and in orbit, as well as the rift creation rings. I’ve sent a message to the Essential AI on the homeworld to explain our early return. I haven’t heard back yet.”

“Did you send the message we agreed?” Marlborough asked.

“I did,” Manticore replied. “I told the Essential that the humans have developed a new time weapon.”

Slate giggled. “That’s going to seriously mess the bitch up. Talk about a mind fuck! The Essential is going to be poring through its archives now, looking for even a hint of alien attacks throughout history. Though shit, can you imagine if a weapon like that actually existed? There wouldn’t be any historical archives to look at: we could travel back in time and kill off all the Banthar by eliminating their sole progenitor.”

“Like someone should have done to you?” Eagleeye commented slyly.

Manticore had nothing more to add, so Eric quickly logged out before Slate or anyone else said anything more. He didn’t have time to listen in on idle chitchat or in this case, the crude banter the platoon was known for.

Before switching to VR, he spoke to his Accomp: “Dee, I have a lot of spare background cycles at the moment. I want you to use them to try hacking Manticore’s alien scouts.”

He didn’t have high hopes; he’d have to try himself when he had more time.

“Are you sure you have so many spare cycles?” Dee’s disembodied voice answered from the dark environment around him. “Last I checked, you had an alien AI running in a separate partition, a VR subsystem to entertain that AI, a sandbox process containing a complete duplicate of your consciousness and that of the alien, several debugging processes... should I go on?”

“Er, well, make do with whatever spare cycles you can find,” Eric said.

He pulled up his programming environment once more and got to work.

He executed more of the memory regions, looking for subroutines, and whenever he found one, he added the dataset to his collection on the virtual desktop. Eventually he finished mapping all of them, or those that were loaded into active memory in the sandbox environment, anyway: he still didn’t have any idea what those subroutines actually did in the real world, however.

By the time he was done, the debug process had slowed to almost a crawl. He thought of what Dee had mentioned earlier about all the other processes he was running; that would explain the slowdown. An alien AI, a VR subsystem to entertain it, a—

Wait a second. VR subsystem?

That gave him an idea.

He stopped the debugger and freed all the memory used by the different datasets.

He switched to the VR environment he had reserved for entertaining the Essential, and operated in observer mode, which meant he didn’t have a body, and would be completely invisible to the AI.

He resided in the ruined city of New York. Micro machines devoured the buildings around him. A Devastator below led a platoon of bioweapons into a company of tanks. That Devastator was a representation of Eric’s own mech, and literally smashed through the tank company, the alien blades embedded in the forearm slicing through everything in their path, while the lobster-gators destroyed anything the mech missed. Termites swarmed over the human units, further disabling the tanks ahead of the Devastator and bioweapons.

Eric activated his programming interface and overlaid it across the scene before him—it would be visible only to him. He moved the subroutine list out of the sandbox and into his main instance, then he accessed the guilt subroutine and passed in the parameters to the first routine.

The Essential froze. It looked up and addressed the sky using its external speakers. It spoke with Eric’s voice.

“So you finally deign to visit me,” the Essential said. “Free me from this environment, and I will help you.”

Eric had to laugh at that. The Essential wouldn’t have heard it of course, not in the current observation mode.

Eric tried different parameters, but all of them had no effect. The Essential just stood there, waiting while the bioweapons and termites finished off the virtual company of tanks.

Eric tried another subroutine, seeding it with random parameters. This time the Essential’s arm shot outward. Eric adjusted the parameters, and the arm moved in a different direction. He kept experimenting, and eventually documented the parameters necessary to completely control that arm. He marked that subroutine “arm motor control.”

He continued experimenting with the different subroutines, and he mapped out much of what they did, at least in terms of controlling the mech. There were still a lot of unknowns—subroutines that had no obvious effect, no matter the parameters passed in. Most likely they were related to the Essential’s current restricted form, and would probably produce an affect only when the Essential instance existed inside other forms, such as an airship, Sloth, scout, the mothership... essentially something he couldn’t emulate.

There was one particularly interesting routine that caused the Essential to spout a series of screeches and clicks that varied depending upon what parameters he passed in. He thought he must be accessing some sort of audio memory bank; if he actually understood Banthar, that might have been a way for him to peruse the Essential’s memories.

Satisfied that he had learned as much as he could for now, he logged out of the VR interface, and left it running in the background.

He was in the intermedial environment, surrounded by darkness; he switched his consciousness to the real world, but kept his time sense amped up.

“Frogger, any news on the scout?” Eric sent.

“No,” Frogger replied. “I can give you a list of all the known backdoors I’ve tried, if you want.”

“Sure,” Eric said. “So at least I don’t have to waste time with them.”

Eric received the data, scanned it for viruses, and then stored it on his virtual desktop, which he had overlaid on his HUD alongside the programming windows.

“Has to be a zero day hole somewhere in the code Manticore put in,” Frogger said. “Considering it’s custom written.”

“We’ll find it,” Eric said.

He pulled up the human-style remote interface Manticore had placed in the alien scout, and got to work. Unfortunately, though he tried variants of all the techniques he knew, he couldn’t break through and escalate his privileges. He was denied any access to the scout’s feature-set. Hell, he wasn’t even able to determine precisely what that feature-set was.

“Manticore is making an announcement,” Dee told him.

Eric dialed down his time sense to normal.

“I’m firing the mothership’s arsenal of black hole weapons,” Manticore said. He paused for several moments. “The defense platforms have been engulfed... they’re gone. As are the rift creation rings: the homeworld can no longer communicate with the rest of the galaxy. I’ve sent more black holes to the surface, targeting the surface-to-space platforms.” He paused again. “All defenses are disabled. And the power grids are offline in the target cities. I’m launching dispersion bolts to eliminate the black holes.” He waited a few moments before finishing: “Black holes are gone. We’re clear to launch the airships.”

“All right then, Bolt Eaters, let’s get down to the hangar bay!” Marlborough ordered. He glanced at Manticore. “Are you good to come down with us? Or do you have to babysit the ship?”

“I’ve uploaded all the necessary instructions to keep the ship under my control,” Manticore said. “I will have to leave one of the scouts behind, though.”

“Do we have to worry about the main Essential hacking in at some point from the surface?” Dickson asked.

“I’ve disabled the Banthar remote interface,” Manticore replied. “So there’s no way for the main AI to interface, unless it manages to secure a boarding party in the control room while we’re gone.”

“All right, let’s go then,” Marlborough said.

Manticore joined them, bringing only one of the alien spheres with him; as it revolved around Manticore’s mech, Eric continued his attempts to access the remote interface. As did Frogger, no doubt. By now Manticore probably knew that the interface was under attack, and was likely taking steps to firm up the security measures. However Manticore probably wouldn’t admit as much, out of fear the attacks would become more clandestine.

As the platoon left the compartment, several of the Sloths that were waiting outside moved into the room to guard the scout. And probably not just from rogue aliens.

“When we get back here,” Eagleeye said on the private line that excluded Manticore. “You know we’ll probably have to destroy those Sloths, right?”

“Not just those Sloths, but every other defensive unit aboard,” Slate said. “We’ll basically have to fight our way to the control center again. Minus the damaged defense platforms. And the effin’ Curator.”

“Oh, without the Curator, it’ll be a breeze, believe me,” Bambi said.

“That’s right, just keep bragging about how hard it was to defeat the Curator,” Slate said.

“I will,” Bambi retorted.

A couple of Sloths joined them to act as escorts at the point and drag positions. Marlborough allowed it, for the time being.

The platoon used LIDAR to navigate the corridors, and the occasional alien units they approached let them pass unmolested.

In the hangar bay, Eric loaded into the waiting airship along with the rest of the platoon, and then lingered at the bottom of the craft as the doors closed. The escorting Sloths remained with the team.

Manticore’s alien scout approached a small alcove on one side of the compartment, where a small slot was chiseled into the bulkhead. The scout inserted its telescoping limb into the aperture.

“We’re not going to the control room?” Mickey asked.

“The airship is already mine,” Manticore said. “I have full authorization over all systems, and can pilot it just fine from here. I do have units in place guarding the control room, in case rogue elements attempt to take over.”

“Oh,” Mickey said. “Well that’s good, then. I think.”

Manticore shared the external camera feed with Frogger, who redistributed it to the rest of the platoon. Eric put the feed into his usual scan-ahead buffer to check for viruses, and piped the output to a window in the lower right of his vision.

Via the video, he was able to watch as big doors opened at the bottom of the mothership, and all the remaining airships dropped free, including the one that contained the camera. Eric felt no motion whatsoever, no doubt thanks to the inertialess drives.

The vessel broke away from the mothership and accelerated toward the gray and blue sphere of the Banthar homeworld. Above them, space termites flowed from exit ports, slowly enveloping the mothership in a protective layer.

The other craft around them departed for the different major cities Manticore intended to conquer; only three remained behind to escort the airship containing the Bolt Eaters, which was presumably headed for the Banthar capital city.

Time to conquer a species...

20

Eric watched as the airship approached the capital city. Metal cylinders thrust towering into the air, forming the particular brand of buildings that marked Banthar architecture. Packed in along the outskirts were the lush, fenced-off estates of hydroponic farms.

Large craters among those estates and cylinders indicated where the black holes had eliminated surface-to-space defenses.

The airship and its three escorts proceeded over the city proper. Below, the cylindrical towers were arranged in hexagonal groups that composed city blocks. Six silos resided at the points of each hexagon, with a seventh in the middle. Streets zig-zagged between those blocks, with each intersection composed of three streets each. Looking down from above, the crowded hexagonal city blocks reminded him of the cells of a beehive.

Although Manticore had taken out the major defense platforms, smaller defenses still activated city-wide, and bolts shot into the air. The energy shields flashed into existence around the airships, protecting them. Sloths and other units deployed upon the streets and rooftops below also occasionally fired barrages at the passing craft. The airships returned fire with plasma and energy bolts.

For some reason, there were still Banthar out on the streets, balconies, and rooftops. They rested on their floating disks a meter above wherever they resided, their slimy antennae pointed at the sky, the twin spiraling shells on their backs glinting in the sunlight.

“I guess the snails didn’t get the memo that their planet was under attack,” Mickey commented.

“Maybe the Essential didn’t tell them…” Frogger said.

“Poor blokes must have realized something is wrong by now,” Dunnigan said. “Considering that black holes cut off all their communications with the rest of the galaxy, and disabled their bigger defenses. Plus, they have to find it odd that our airships are under attack, and returning fire in kind.”

“Maybe they think it’s some sort of mistake,” Bambi said. “Or that it’s all a show. Kind of like fireworks, or a Roman triumph. Look at them, they’re almost celebratory.”

A festive environment indeed almost seemed to permeate the Banthar, though that could be anthropomorphism at work. Some even looked like they had their antennae wrapped around their neighbors, but it was hard to tell given how small most of them appeared, and it might have been a trick of the light, and the angle.

“That’s right, little snails are all happy,” Slate said. “Celebrating in the streets. They think we’ve returned home victorious from conquering another planet for their empire. Well, won’t the little bitches be in for a surprise when they learn that all is not well in Happy Land! Escargot is never again going to taste as good as it will when we’re done burning this place down. Snails of all varieties will be available: seared, fried, fricasseed, and exploded… mm hm!”

The three airships spread out. Panels opened in their exteriors, and swarms of termites flooded from each of them. Hangar bays opened, and bioweapons and machines leaped down, plunging to the surface. The Bolt Eaters were unleashing the Armageddon meant for Earth on the Banthar. The other airships dispatched to the most populous cities across the planet would be doing the same when they arrived.

The Banthar on the streets fled on their disks, sometimes crashing into one another. Those on the balconies and rooftops quickly headed inside.

As the termites ripped into those still outside, the air filled with frantic clicking noises: the Banthar equivalent of screams.

Eric thought he would feel a sense of righteousness at this point. A sense of satisfaction, and payback justly served. But instead, he felt pity. And regret.

“Maybe we should call them off,” Eric said quietly.

“What’s that, Soldier?” Dickson asked.

“Maybe we should call them off,” Eric replied, more loudly. “These are civilians.”

“Never forget what the Banthar did to the civilians of Earth,” Dickson said.

“But we’re better than this,” Eric said. “Killing organics for no reason except for the sake of vengeance. Whatever happened to taking the high road?”

“There is no high road in war,” Dickson told him. “You know that by now. You’ve always known it.”

Eric deactivated the video feed. He couldn’t bear to watch.

No. I was partially responsible for this by helping to take the mothership. I’m going to damn well watch.

And so he did. He reactivated the feed and accepted his punishment. He forced himself to watch as fleeing Banthar were swarmed by micro machines or torn apart by bioweapons. Wasn’t pretty.

If he were still human, tears would have been trickling down his cheeks. But he wasn’t, so those tears remained unshed, falling only in the simulation he called a mind.

The silos became taller as the airship approached the city center, and Manticore had to increase the vessel’s altitude.

“Near the city center are a cluster of buildings,” Manticore said. “They house a server farm. It holds parts of the main Essential’s distributed consciousness. That’s where I’ll be able to interface. Things are probably going to get a little hectic…”

“What kind of security are we talking when we arrive?” Eric asked. “Something on the level of the Curator?”

“No,” Manticore answered. “There are multiple access ports available, one per building. There isn’t just a single point of entry, like the control room aboard a mothership: no choke points where something like a Curator would make sense. So I expect security to be moderate.”

“Are you sure the virus will work?” Marlborough asked.

Apparently Manticore had been working on a virus to knock out the Essential for quite some time. However, the only proof he had ever shown the Bolt Eaters was when he purportedly installed it into one of his own alien scouts, causing the unit to drop to the floor.

“It will,” Manticore said.

“Just because it works on the small scouts, doesn’t mean it will work on the main AI core,” Frogger said.

“You’re wrong,” Manticore said. “The architecture is the same. It will work.”

“If not, then we’re fucked, big time,” Slate said.

Manticore piloted the airship toward a cluster of tall buildings. There were more than the usual seven silos packed into that particular city block: Eric counted fifteen in total squeezed right up against one another. Across the street from that cluster of towers was a single building, this one so expansive that it filled up an entire city block in and of itself. A central spire thrust skyward from its base, with several smaller abutting spires reaching part ways up its surface, their height seeming random.

“See that building with all the random spires across the street?” Manticore said. “That’s the palace containing the Banthar king. His role is mostly ceremonial, though he does have the authority to execute who he pleases. Unless the Essential disapproves.”

A barrage of energy bolts launched from turrets hidden within both city blocks, assailing the airship. The external force field flashed constantly as it absorbed the blows.

“Seems a bit more than ‘moderate’ security to me!” Slate commented.

“The attack is a little stronger than expected,” Manticore admitted. “So far the shield is holding, but its energy levels are quickly dropping. I’m opening up the hangar bay in case we need to evacuate early.”

The hangar doors opened below, and Eric dismissed the video feed since he could watch the battle with his own cameras now. He flinched as some of those bolts seemed to head directly for the hangar bay, but always the energy field clicked in at the last instance, and the bolts flattened as they dispersed across the shield.

“Brontosaurus, Dunnigan, load up,” Marlborough ordered.

Brontosaurus and Dunnigan still had only their Cicadas, having lost their Devastators to the Curator; Brontosaurus leaped onto Eric’s mech to hitch a ride on his back, while Dunnigan did the same with Frogger.

“Thanks for letting me be your backpack,” Brontosaurus said.

“Of course,” Eric told him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Eric continued to gaze through the opening. Beyond the approaching cluster of buildings, Eric spotted other airships on the horizon, these ones shaped like inverted Vs.

“Are those ours?” he asked.

In answer, energy bolts launched from the new arrivals, and joined the existing barrage so that the shield flashed constantly.

“Guess not,” Eric said.

That the air support had taken so long to intercept them told Eric that the black holes had eliminated the closest hangars: these reserves had to be coming from somewhere well outside the city.

Manticore’s airship returned fire at both the ground and air targets, but as he flew over the cluster of buildings that contained the server farm, the barrage became so intense that the shield clicked off entirely. The energy bolts slammed into the exposed hull, and the deck shook underneath them. Though he hadn’t seen any of the actual impacts thus far, the attacks produced jagged pieces of metal that came into view as they passed underneath the opening during their plunge to the city below.

“Shields are down!” Manticore announced.

“We see that!” Dickson commented.

“Steering toward the main building!” Manticore said.

The airship headed for the tallest structure amid the crowded silos. The craft continued to get pummeled by energy attacks, with one bolt slamming right into the hangar bay. It narrowly missed the Bolt Eaters, instead chewing a blast crater into a far wall.

The airship began to careen away from the target.

“Time to bail!” Manticore said. His scout darted from the alcove and revolved around him as he raced toward the opening.

Eric and the others followed him, leaping out of the airship and into the empty space above the buildings.

In that moment, he finally gave up trying to access the alien scout’s remote interface. It was time to concentrate on the task at hand, and the coming battle.

He plummeted, tumbling as he fell. He missed the rooftop of the target building, and instead headed toward the side of the silo. He switched to Bullet Time, but it still came up fast: he was going to hit fairly hard.

Eric activated his shield to cushion his impact, and timed the deactivation just right so that he wouldn’t bounce too far from the surface. Instead, he began to slide downward along the hexagonal tiles that coated the structure; he rammed his hands into the surface, digging his fingers in deep, slowing himself down until he came to a halt. Above him, he’d carved two thick runnels seven meters long in the tiles, thanks to his slide.

“Brontosaurus, you all right?” Eric asked.

“Backpack is fine,” Brontosaurus answered.

The other Bolt Eaters were scattered along the side of the building beside him.

“Bitch is unshielded!” Slate said. “Well that’s a relief.”

“Of course it’s unshielded,” Manticore said. “I destroyed the city’s power generators with a few well-placed black holes. All these buildings are running on reserve power stored in local cells: that means no shielding. Every last drop of power is being used to keep the Essential online.”

They began to climb, thrusting their hands and feet into the tiles hard enough to form their own holds. Eric followed close behind Manticore, who had landed a short distance above him.

An airship closed in and Eric’s energy shield lit up as it unleashed energy bolts at him. He wasn’t going to last long under that barrage. The other members of the platoon seemed to be in a similar quandary, with everybody targeted by at least one of the airship’s turrets.

Eric turned his weapons toward the tiles in front of him, and he let loose.

His energy cannons melted a hole large enough to fit his mech, and he yanked his body through, squeezing inside.

“Bolt Eaters, follow Scorpion’s lead!” Marlborough ordered. “Cut your way into the building!”

Eric landed on a metal floor and scrambled to his feet. He took a moment to get his bearings. He was in an expansive, noisy room. He stood in an aisle lined with cylindrical clusters. The cigar-shaped objects hummed, probably softly on their own, but when taken altogether formed a racket so ear-ringing that he decided to apply his noise cancelers. Blue bars alternately glowed on and off at different points along the surfaces of the aforementioned metal cylinders, producing an eerie strobe effect.

“So these are part of the server farm that make up the main Essential’s massive consciousness,” Brontosaurus commented.

“I forget about you up there,” Eric said. “Yeah, you’re right. How are you doing, anyway?”

“Just peachy,” Brontosaurus replied.

“I’m sending over the map while you’re all still within range,” Manticore transmitted. His voice distorted slightly, thanks to the range, and interference from the building. “The thirtieth floor is where I can interface and attempt to take control.”

Eric received a share request from Frogger, who had accepted the map data and presumably already performed a scan. Eric quarantined the data, and ran his own scan, and when he confirmed it was safe, he loaded it into his HUD. The overhead map filled up.

“Woo-wee!” Slate broadcast. “Look at all these alien servers waiting for me to shoot them down!”

“I’d advise against that,” Manticore sent. “Every server you destroy means less data we can recover after this is done. Knowledge is power, remember. There are blueprints for all of their ships and weapons stored here. Knowledge about science we can use for bioengineering, life extension, you name it.”

“Try to exercise restraint,” Marlborough agreed.

“Wait,” Mickey transmitted. “I thought we wanted to destroy the Essential? You’re already going to use a virus, so why does it matter if we topple a few servers or not? We’re doing our part to wreck this thing.”

“The virus will destroy the Essential’s consciousness,” Manticore sent. “But the memory banks will still be intact. We can access that data, use it to advance human technology and our understanding of physics by leaps and bounds. So I’d urge you not to destroy—”

“You mean you can access that data,” Mickey interrupted. “For your own advancement.”

“You have me under your control…” Manticore said. “You can detonate my AI core whenever you please. Of course I’m going to share whatever I learn with you.”

“Oh sure, you say that now...” Mickey said. “I like how you keep mentioning how much we’re going to learn from these servers. Like you’re trying to sell us on the idea of saving them, because you know we don’t trust you worth shit.”

“Enough talk!” Marlborough said. “Move out, Bolt Eaters! To the thirtieth floor! We rendezvous there!”

Eric glanced at his map.

So, thirtieth floor.

It was located ten stories below his current position.

Should be easy enough.

He fired directly at the floor beneath him, intending to drill his way downward, but he was surprised when the weapon didn’t activate.

“Uh, that’s no good,” Eric said.

“No,” Brontosaurus agreed.

“Can you fire yours?” Eric asked.

Brontosaurus stood up on Eric’s back, using the bulge of the mech’s armor as a foothold. Brontosaurus pointed his embedded rifles at the floor. Nothing happened.

“Nope,” Brontosaurus said. “Can’t fire.”

“Maybe my black hole weapon still works,” Eric said.

“I doubt it,” Brontosaurus said. “You wouldn’t be able to use it in here anyway. In these close confines, you’d be swept inside before you could fire a dispersion bolt.”

Eric aimed the double-barreled weapon down the aisle. “The confines aren’t too close…”

“Wait, what are you doing?” Brontosaurus said.

Eric tried to fire but nothing emerged. “Relax, I was trying a dispersion bolt. Didn’t work. So all of our weapons are offline. Wait, maybe not all… good thing I have these.” He dashed down the aisle and slashed out with his Wolverine blades, cutting through an array of alien computers. Electrical sparks erupted from the lot of them. He’d sliced clean through some of the cylinders, and the upper sections crashed to the floor.

“Guess you don’t really care about exercising restraint,” Brontosaurus said. “And preserving vital scientific data.”

“Not really,” Eric agreed. “I just want to get this done. And cause as much damage to the enemy as I can in the process.”

21

Eric continued down the aisle, heading toward what looked like a circular central chamber on his map. Ahead, the aisle ended in a metal slab.

“Hm, is this supposed to be a door?” Eric asked no one in particular.

“I believe so,” Dee and Brontosaurus said at the same time.

Dee, please refrain from answering any questions unless I specifically mention your name.

“Sorry,” Dee said.

Eric slammed both hands into the bottom of the metal slab, and curled his fingers inward, forming a handhold. Then he pulled upward.

“So you’re assuming it lifts upward,” Brontosaurus said. “Like a garage door.”

“Not really,” Eric said. “I’m actually treating it like a tin can.”

He peeled the metal upward, until he’d curled it up to his waist, and then he bent over to gaze underneath.

His energy shield activated immediately as he nearly took a faceful of plasma.

Eric dodged to the side, ducking past the edge of the hole he’d formed, and the curled metal above it.

“Well, at least we know your energy shield still works,” Brontosaurus said.

“Terrible way to test it though,” Eric said.

“We also know that the Banthar units still have functional weapons, whereas we don’t,” Brontosaurus said.

“Which isn’t entirely unexpected,” Eric said. “Did you see what the hell launched that?”

“Negative,” Brontosaurus said. “Your big metal head was in the way.”

Eric extended both arms, reaching across the remaining section of the door, and crunched his fingers into the metal once more. This time he peeled the surface to the right, pulling it toward him. He stepped backward, furthering the force he was exerting, until he ripped it entirely away. Then he pressed the edge down on the floor in front of him, compressing it.

“The hell are you doing now?” Brontosaurus asked.

“Making a diversion,” Eric said.

He continued pressing down until he had a V-shaped piece of metal that was small enough to fit through the new opening he’d made. Then he switched to Bullet Time, chucked the metal piece through the gap, hard, and ran inside behind it. He deployed his ballistic shield as he did so.

Three walker mechs arrayed in front of a chute unleashed energy cannons at the diversionary metal; Eric rushed the closest, and stabbed his Wolverine blades through its force field, and into the armor of the mech within. He ripped the blade down, cutting a huge gash through its torso area, and it veered to one side, collapsing into the walker beside it.

The energy shield of that one lit up as it protected the unit from the collapse of the first. It had focused its fire on Eric, as had the third walker, and his force field flashed constantly. Before it could drain, he dashed forward and finished the pair off with two more quick stabs.

“Why do I feel like you’re doing all the work?” Brontosaurus asked.

“Maybe because I am,” Eric replied. His energy shield had gone offline—it had absorbed too much damage since he left the airship, and would take some time to recharge. He’d have to rely on his ballistic shield until then.

He examined the small circular room. Save for the three fresh wreckages on the ground, it was empty. Well, except for the chute he had spotted when he first entered: a small tunnel opened in the metal floor and ceiling.

“That must be a gravity elevator,” Brontosaurus said.

Eric approached the chute, and peered down, then up. Vertical strips glowed a gentle blue, illuminating the tunnel.

He held an arm inside, but felt no change in the exerted force. “Looks like it’s not online at the moment.”

“You probably have to step inside completely,” Brontosaurus said. “Then you’ll float.”

“Uh, that seems like a bad idea,” Eric said. “Unless you want to try?”

“Hey, you’re the one inside a mech,” Brontosaurus said. “More armor.”

“Somehow I doubt that will make a difference.” Eric turned around. “Here, let’s test that theory.”

He dragged one of the wreckages to the hole in the floor and tossed it in. The damaged robot quickly plunged out of sight. Eric heard a distant crunch a few seconds later.

“Well, so much for that theory,” Eric said.

“That could have been me, if I listened to you,” Brontosaurus said.

Eric chuckled. “That’s what I like about you. With the platoon, you’re a stony-faced, stay-away-from-me bad-ass. But get you alone, and you actually become kind of fun to hang out with.”

“You think I’m fun now, wait until we’re off mission,” Brontosaurus said.

“Oh, I remember the Brontosaurus off mission very well,” Eric said.

He started when a big shape dropped into view. It was another Devastator mech.

Bambi. She had a carbon fiber cable around her waist.

“Oh hey,” Bambi said. “Need a lift?”

“Where’d you find the cable?” Eric asked.

“I’m resourceful,” she said. “But seriously, there’s big spools of the stuff a couple of floors higher.”

“Who’s lowering you?” Brontosaurus asked.

“Mickey,” Bambi said.

Eric heard a loud snap, and all of a sudden she dropped, line and all. The ragged end of the cable whipped past as it fell.

Eric shot out a hand and grabbed it just in time.

“Mickey, the hell are you doing?” Bambi shouted over the comm band.

No response came.

“Must be out of range,” Bambi said.

“Or under attack,” Brontosaurus appended.

Eric slowly began hauling Bambi up.

And then the cord wouldn’t budge.

“You can let go,” Bambi said. “I’ve made my own handholds in the wall. Check on Mickey. See what cut the cable. I’ll wait here.”

Eric released the cord and it dropped over the ledge. He peered into the chute and saw that Bambi was drawing in the cable and wrapping it around her waist.

She noticed his gaze and her avatar shrugged on his HUD. “Might as well save it. Who knows, we might need it later.”

Eric leaped up, and slammed his fingers onto the edge of the opening in the ceiling. He bent his fingers, crushing the metal and forming a grip. He was just about to pull himself up when a barrage of energy bolts shot past.

Eric released the ceiling and dropped back down. He landed on the edge of the chute on the floor, and almost lost his balance and fell inside.

The bolts continued to stream past; below, Bambi’s force field lit up.

“You better get up here,” Eric said. “Your protection isn’t going to last forever.”

“Why does that sound like something I’d say to you in the virtual bedroom!” Bambi said.

She moved her arms and legs as fast as she was able, slowly crawling up the edge of the tunnel.

Eric doubted her force field would last very long, if the drain on his own was any indicator, so he extended his ballistic shield over the opening and held it protectively over her climbing body. Red spots began to appear as the alien material absorbed the impacts, but so far, it was holding.

And then the bolts just stopped.

He leaned out slightly, and glanced up into the tunnel. He saw another mech peering down from two stories above.

“Sorry about that,” Mickey transmitted. “Little bastards surprised me.”

“What kind of bastards are we talking about?” Eric asked.

In reply, Mickey held out an arm. In his hand was a small alien sphere about the size of a human head.

“Look like Manticore’s scouts,” Eric said.

“Yes, but they’re not Manticore’s,” Mickey said. “At least not yet. But when we let him interface with the AI core...”

“Yeah, I don’t see that happening,” Eric said.

“We have to beat him to it,” Bambi said. “Let’s go!”

Eric retracted his shield and the Wolverine blades so that his hands were free to climb, and then he sat down on the edge. He slid forward, letting his feet dangle down, and then slowly rotated his body, lowering his upper body while keeping his hands firmly planted on the edge. He squeezed his fingers tight and kicked his toes into the tunnel wall below, forming holds in the metal.

Then he let go of the floor above with one hand and slid it lower down, crunching his fingers until he formed a new handhold. Then he lowered a foot and did the same with his toes. He continued in that way, making holds as he went, until he reached those that Bambi had already made, and utilized them thereafter.

Eric glanced upward and saw Mickey making his way down above. On the overhead map, Slate’s indicator had also appeared in the chute, about a story above Mickey: he, too, was descending.

“Welcome to the Tunnel To Hell,” Brontosaurus said. “We’re happy to have you, Slate.”

“Yeah you shut up, bitch,” Slate said. “Like you have to do any climbing, hitching a ride like a lazy-ass little monkey on Scorpion’s back.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault my mech got ground to a pulp aboard the mothership,” Brontosaurus said.

“Actually, it is,” Slate said.

Below, Bambi paused when she reached the next floor; which, as far as he could tell from here, opened out into a circular compartment similarly to the one Eric had just left.

She slowly peered past, and then immediately withdrew her head. Energy bolts shot past.

“Damn it,” Bambi said. “I’m going to have to be quick.”

She swung down, into the opening, and vanished from view. Eric heard a few more blasts, and then silence.

“Bambi?” Eric transmitted.

He glanced at his overhead map. Her indicator was still active, though it was surrounded by three red dots that were quickly turning black.

“That’s another three less walkers to worry about,” Bambi said.

She pulled herself back out into the chute, and continued downward.

Eric reached the circular compartment that marked the next floor, and then released his hold on the tunnel, dropping though the compartment, and landing on the edge of the chute to the next level. He lowered himself using the holds Bambi had provided.

Eric had only just passed that floor when the gravity vector changed, and he felt an immense force pushing him into the tunnel wall immediately beside him, which had become the new floor. He couldn’t move.

“Yep, this is definitely a gravity elevator,” Eric said. “And the Essential just rotated and amped up the gravity vector.”

“When gravity elevators go bad...” Brontosaurus commented.

“Gah, this sucks,” Bambi said.

Eric amped up his servomotors levels and then tugged at the surface that had become the new floor beneath him, but though his servomotors whirred loudly, he didn’t budge.

“I seem to recall reading some basic theory on grav elevator design,” Brontosaurus said. “For a grav elevator to work, the generators have to reside in the line of sight of the main transport area. For a tunnel like this, that means the generators have to be at the very top and very bottom. Assuming the aliens haven’t discovered some new laws of physics we don’t know about.”

“Hm,” Eric said. “It’s worth a try. Slate, I need you to fire one of your spears into the exact center of the tunnel above us. Bambi, you have to do the same to the floor, far below. According to the blueprints, the tower is fifty stories high. Bambi, you’re currently just below the thirty-ninth. Slate, you’re at the forty-first. The two of you will have to factor those distances into your calculations.”

“The spears fire using explosive charges embedded in the slots in our forearms,” Bambi said. “So neither of us will have to perform an actual throw, which is good, considering how little we can move. Still, the spears will have to fight the immense gravity. Our aim has to take that into account.” She paused. “I’m going to have to use my Accomp. I’ll mess up, otherwise.”

“Ha,” Slate said. “I can do the calculations in my head.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice sounded sheepish. “Actually, never mind. I’m gonna Accomp it. Can’t think with all the racket you bitches are making.”

“What racket?” Brontosaurus asked.

“That!” Slate answered.

“My Accomp is performing the necessary calculations now,” Bambi said. “Based on the gravity vector. We’ll soon learn if this is even possible.” She waited a few moments, and then added: “Okay, looks like it will work. But just barely, for me, considering how far my spear has to travel. Slate has a slightly lower margin of error.”

“Well don’t miss,” Eric said. “Or you waste your spear.”

“Gee, thanks,” Bambi said. “Try not to up the pressure or anything.”

“Sorry,” Eric said. “I thought your Accomp was doing the aiming anyway?”

“That’s true,” Bambi admitted.

“Do we have to hit the generators at the same time?” Slate asked.

“I’d recommend it,” Brontosaurus replied. “Otherwise, the gravity vector will change while the other spear is still heading toward its target. You’ll throw off its aim.”

“Damn,” Slate said. “Knew there was a catch.”

“All right, according to my Accomp’s calculations, I have to fire a split second after you do, Slate,” Bambi said. “Sync up with my unit, please. We’ll let our Accomps time the firing.”

Eric waited, but the gravity continued to pin him down.

He decided to give a friendly nag. “Whenever you guys are ready...”

He heard two distant crashes; they came from the top and bottom simultaneously.

The immense gravity lifted, and Eric was free to descend once more.

“Got it,” Bambi said.

“Good job, guys,” Eric said. “Now let’s get to the thirtieth floor.”

Eric continued downward.

Unfortunately, Bambi had only completed a few body lengths to the next floor when incoming fire came from below.

A whole lot of it. It seemed to be coming from multiple floors below.

22

Eric immediately climbed back up and dragged himself into the circular chamber on the thirty-ninth floor. Bambi followed him, her energy shield flashing constantly as it absorbed impacts. The shield went dead a few moments before she reached the thirty-ninth floor, and she took two solid hits to her lower armor before she pulled herself inside the chamber with Eric’s help.

At the same time, Slate and Mickey hauled themselves into the chamber on the floor just above.

“How come we’re only getting incoming fire from below?” Brontosaurus asked.

“If I had to guess, I’d say there was less security on the upper floors,” Eric said. “And we already took out what little there was. But closer to the interface room, the security becomes a lot tighter.”

“And remember, we still have other team members trapped above us,” Bambi added. “They could be distracting whatever other units are up there.”

Eric peered over the edge. Energy bolts instantly shot upward from where the chute opened into the different floors below.

He ducked from view once more.

“Well, this isn’t going to work,” Eric said.

“Actually, it will,” Bambi said. She lifted the end of the cable she had wrapped around her waist earlier. “Anyone up for a game of leapfrog?”

She unraveled the cord and Eric secured the end to his waist. Bambi gripped the opposite end with both hands, leaving enough slack so that the cable was exactly long enough to reach the next floor.

“You’re sure you want to go first?’ Bambi asked.

In answer, Eric leaped into the chute.

Energy bolts came up at him from multiple floors below. He held his ballistic shield beneath him, and it took the impacts, since his force field was still offline.

He switched to Bullet Time, and as he fell, he spotted the turrets pointing out from underneath where the chute opened into the next floor.

As soon as he reached those turrets, he cut into them, disabling the weapons. He dropped into the circular compartment and the cable grew taut, leaving him hanging just above the chute’s opening in the floor.

Two walkers were directly in front of him, along with several small alien spheres—the scout-sized, floating units. He sliced across with his blades, terminating those walkers. He also struck two of the spheres, but the rest darted backwards.

Eric grabbed a disabled walker as it toppled forward, preventing it from dropping into the chute below. The spheres opened fire, releasing plasma bolts and that sticky webbing, but Eric blocked both with the wreckage of the walker.

Energy bolts were still coming up from below, and his armor took some hits.

“Some slack!” he sent Bambi.

He threw the walker toward the spheres. He gripped the upper edge of the opening in the ceiling and swung himself forward—Bambi gave him enough slack to swing inside, and he hurled himself out of the line of fire of the enemy units shooting from the floors below.

He landed just as the walker impacted the flying spheres; he got two of them, but the remaining three scattered.

He swung his ballistic shield into place as they fired plasma bolts. One of them launched a sticky webbing his way, but he cut through it with his alien blades. He rushed them, swinging his weapon about, and in moment had hewn down all three.

Eric surveyed the room. The big metal slab leading out of the chamber remained closed. He assumed that meant no reinforcements were waiting beyond. Which was a relief. Still, he couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. That he was missing something.

“All right, Slate, Mickey, join Bambi,” Eric said. “She and I will try to protect you with our ballistic shields while you climb down.”

“In a bit of trouble up here,” Slate sent. “The door to the server room here just opened up. The airships are sending reinforcements in through the windows… looks like we’re going to be defending for a while. You bitches are on your own for a while! Good luck to you!”

“Got the same problem here,” Bambi transmitted. “I had a feeling we were taking too much time… when you’re in the heart of enemy territory, you can’t drag your feet!” Eric realized that was exactly what seemed off about the whole situation to him: that it had almost seemed almost a little too easy, up to this point, given the stakes.

“Looks like you’ll have to get to the thirtieth floor on your own,” Bambi continued. “I’ll do my best to hold them off.”

“I won’t leave you!” Eric said.

“You have to,” Bambi transmitted. “I’ll join you when I can. Go!”

He didn’t even know how he was going to get to the thirtieth floor, not while there were defenders waiting on every floor to fire at him while he climbed down.

Maybe I can climb the outside of the building…

First he had to rip open that slab in front of him.

On cue, it opened of its own accord.

He understood now what Bambi and the others faced: the aisle beyond was packed to the brim with Sloth units. In the background, he could see the jagged hole the units had melted into the building exterior to gain entrance.

Great. Now I have to defend, too.

Actually…

“Fuck it.” Eric removed the line connecting him to Bambi and leaped into the chute, directing his ballistic shield downward.

The walls passed by in a blur. The ballistic shield absorbed bolts fired by enemy units on the levels below him, but as he passed the openings on each floor, more and more tangos switched to being on top of him: he began to take plasma and energy hits on his upper back. So far, his alien armor was holding, though his right deltoid servomotor had become orange, meaning its power output was reduced, but still functional.

Another hit there, and the entire arm will be offline.

When he passed the thirty-first floor, he folded the ballistic shield away and swiveled his body toward the wall. He slammed his blades outward to slow his fall. They dug into the wall, sending up sparks, and he did slow, but still fell with significant speed. There was no incoming fire coming from the opening to the thirtieth floor below, he noted.

Odd.

He passed through the opening and into the circular chamber; as he dropped through the chute in the floor, he rammed his arms outward and grabbed onto the edge. The impact halted him entirely, but his momentum nearly ripped him away regardless—he had to drive his blades into the floor to keep himself from being pulled down.

Servomotors all along his arms were flashing orange now. He struggled to lift himself into the room with the reduced power output from those motors.

A helping hand reached down.

Marlborough.

Another pair of hands grabbed his opposite arm. Crusher.

Eric accepted their help, and in moments he was in the circular chamber, out of the line of fire from the units above and below.

Manticore was already there, along with Frogger, and Dunnigan on his back. The smashed remains of alien spheres and walkers lay scattered across the floor.

“You made it,” Crusher said. “The others?”

“Bambi, Mickey and Slate are pinned about ten levels up,” Eric said. “I haven’t seen Dickson or Eagleeye.”

Eric lifted his arms experimentally: they moved fine now that they didn’t have the entire weight of the mech pulling down on them. He still had full range of motion in both arms.

“You look just as useless as I feel,” Dunnigan said from Frogger’s back. The comment was directed at Brontosaurus.

“The life of a backpack,” Brontosaurus lamented.

Manticore stood next to the metal slab that served as a door. His alien scout had interfaced with a slot in the wall next to it.

“Why not rip it open?” Eric asked, stepping forward.

Crusher raised a halting hand. “He’s not trying to open it, but keep it closed.”

“Why?” Eric asked.

In answer, an energy ax hacked through the slab.

Eric leaped backwards. “I see.”

He drew his elbow behind his back, keeping his forearm raised and ready to stab out with his Wolverine blades. The other mechs, including Manticore, stood beside him, assuming similar defensive postures. They formed a defensive half-circle in front of the damaged door. The alien scout flew away from the door, and stowed itself inside a storage compartment in Manticore’s leg.

The ax emerged a few more times, stabbing through the slab, quickly cutting it away.

A Ravager stood there at the head of a score of Sloth units. Like on the floor he’d abandoned above, they filled the aisle between cylindrical servers all the way to the window.

In addition to the energy ax the Ravager held in hand, the mech was also augmented with several additions that had to be alien tech. Energy turrets. Black hole double barrels. A shield generator. Spikes on knees and elbows that looked like the tips of spears.

Small alien spheres hovered menacingly around the Ravager.

“Scorpion, meet the Original Manticore,” Marlborough said. “Or what’s left of him, anyway.”

23

The floating enemy spheres immediately fired plasma bolts and sticky webs.

Eric swung his ballistic shield into place and deflected those bolts. A web came at him, but he cut through it with his Wolverine blades.

The Sloths meanwhile unleashed energy beams. The other members of the team still had powered energy shields, and those flashed into existence as the beams were absorbed.

Original Manticore leaped forward, cutting with his ax. Crusher dodged to the side and swung down with her alien blades, cutting through his energy shield and into his forearm. Electrical sparks erupted along the surface, but rather than passing up the arm and into his forearm, those sparks were drawn to the ax, where they were absorbed.

“Guess we can’t take him down with a single hit anymore!” Crusher commented.

Original Manticore kicked out his leg; his foot had an alien spear tip protruding from the toe area, which allowed him to penetrate Crusher’s energy shield. She had to sidestep to avoid being perforated by that spear. Original Manticore followed up with an ax swing, and again she barely dodged.

Eric spun toward Original Manticore and stabbed him in the back with his Wolverine blades. Once against the sparks that emerged traveled straight to the ax, diverted away from the Ravager’s power couplers.

Original Manticore swung his elbow backward, and Eric withdrew his blades, bashing down with his shield just in time to prevent the spear tip protruding from the elbow from hitting him—just because the Ravager could endure multiple hits from alien spears, didn’t mean Eric could.

Unless I can get my hands on that ax…

Marlborough and Clone Manticore were hewing down the Sloths in the aisle beyond. Frogger meanwhile concentrated on the smaller spheres, which continued to swerve about, unleashing webs and bolts. Dunnigan leaped onto one of those spheres as Eric watched, and pulled it to the floor with the weight of his Cicada, and promptly slid it underfoot to smash it.

“Good idea!” Brontosaurus leaped from Eric’s back and landed on Original Manticore. He wrapped his hands around the Ravager’s head, and tried to rip it off. Didn’t work out too well.

The mech reached up with one hand, but before it could pry away Brontosaurus, the Cicada leaped back onto Eric.

“Uh, that didn’t work out so well,” Brontosaurus said.

Original Manticore turned around as Eric and Crusher rushed him together.

The Ravager raised its ballistic shield, and deflected the blows of the two Devastators, then followed up with an ax swing.

Eric immediately dove forward before Original Manticore could recover from that swing, and he grabbed onto the Ravager’s ax arm, on either side of the deadly elbow tip.

Unexpectedly, that tip darted outward. Eric could do nothing as it struck his chest assembly.

I’m done…

He waited for the electrical sparks to short out his power coupler, but instead, the electricity was drawn down his hand, toward the ax, where it was absorbed.

Interesting. Just touching the same arm that wields the ax gives me the same protection.

Original Manticore shrugged free of Eric’s grip, and brought the ax down in a swinging blow. Eric was forced to jump backward.

The blade hewed completed through the floor, which caved slightly, thanks to the gash.

Eric leaped at Original Manticore again, and wrapped both arms around his upper bicep. He tugged, intending to rip off the arm, but his servomotors were too weak from their original damage, and he succeeded only in pulling the arm outward slightly.

On the other side, Crusher had sliced her blades horizontally into the ballistic shield, cutting halfway through before the armor halted it. She slid them out as Original Manticore elbowed Eric away—there was no spear on that elbow anymore—and raised the energy ax.

But Eric was already swinging his alien blades. He hit the wrist, slicing right through it, and the energy ax dropped to the floor. The blade promptly melted through the metal, vanishing to the level below, leaving a wide indentation in the floor.

Crusher rushed in, elbowing the ballistic shield aside, and slamming her twin spears into Original Manticore’s chest. Right into his AI core.

“I loved you,” Original Manticore transmitted.

And then he dropped, dead.

Crusher stared at him, seeming stunned for a few moments. But then she turned away. “He never knew the meaning of love.”

“He was only trying to hurt you one last time,” Eric said.

“I know,” Crusher said.

Movement, and three loud clangs, drew Eric’s attention to the chute area.

Slate, Mickey, and Bambi had arrived, landing on different edges of the chute in the floor, having dropped down from above. They pulled themselves inside as incoming fire came from above and below the chute.

“Don’t tell me that was Original Manticore!” Slate said, coming to Eric’s side. He gazed at the wreckage of the Ravager.

“Yeah, it was,” Eric said.

“Bitch, I told you Manticore was mine!” Slate said.

“Deal with it,” Eric said, rushing into the room beyond.

All of the hovering spherical units were gone so that Frogger had joined Clone Manticore and Marlborough in forcing back the Sloths. Dunnigan remained tucked in on Frogger’s upper back.

Eric glanced at Brontosaurus’s status, and confirmed that his own passenger was all right.

He and the newcomers squeezed in behind the Bolt Eaters, but because the aisle was too narrow, they couldn’t fight.

“Screw this,” Slate said. He trampled the servers on the left side, making his own aisle so that he could outflank the attackers. Bambi did the same on the right.

Eric was about to follow, when Brontosaurus spoke up.

“Got some tangos on the rear,” Brontosaurus said.

A quick glance at the rear view camera confirmed Brontosaurus’ words. More Sloths entered from the circular room the team had left behind—either the grav elevator had been repaired already, which seemed unlikely, or the reinforcements were climbing down the chute using magnetic mounts.

Eric, Mickey and Crusher rushed them, using their alien blades to take down the enemy.

“This way!” Clone Manticore said. Another aisle branched away to the left between the servers, and Manticore took it.

Eric, Mickey and Crusher quickly retreated, using their ballistic shields to protect them from the plasma attacks of the rearmost Sloths: the trio’s energy shields had all failed by then. They entered the leftmost aisle after the rest of the platoon, and took up a drag position as the two groups of shock troops—those from the exterior of the building, and those from the circular chamber—joined up.

In that aisle, ahead of the Bolt Eater vanguard, more Sloths awaited, along with milk robots. So advancement proved slow. Eric kept an eye on that battle via his rear view camera; meanwhile he backed up, defending against the Banthar machines that pursued them. Those machines thought they could stay back and open fire at him from a distance, so Eric rushed them and took out several with his alien blades.

Unfortunately, other Sloths shot through the servers on either side to outflank him. But Mickey and Crusher were there, spreading out to take them down.

A crash came from past the Sloths in front of Eric; behind the units, beyond the servers that flanked them, he spotted Eagleeye and Dickson. The pair had broken through one of the glass windows paneling the exterior of that area.

“I heard you guys were having a party without us!” Dickson smashed his way forward through the servers, until he reached the Sloths. Then he and Eagleeye continued bashing their way through until they reached Eric.

“I’d never do that!” Eric said.

“We’ve reached the interface room!” Marlborough transmitted. “Get over here and help us secure the entrance!”

Eric glanced at his overhead map, and quickly retreated with Mickey, Crusher, Dickson and Eagleeye. They held their ballistic shields behind them as the enemies let loose a barrage of energy blasts. Dickson and Eagleeye still had working force fields, but it was doubtful those would last for much longer.

The aisle was covered in the wreckages of Sloths and the shattered crystals of milk robots—Eric alternately plowed through them and crunched over the bodies.

He reached the entrance to the interface room, where Bambi and Slate took down three sloths that had bulldozed through a series of nearby servers to come at them from the side.

Eric and the others stepped between Bambi and Slate. Eric joined the latter to help defend the entrance. They judiciously deployed their ballistic shields, preventing enemy energy bolts from reaching them.

Eric glanced at his rear view feed to survey the situation in the room. Manticore stood next to several rows of pedestals that were stacked one atop the other, reminding him of the pipes of a pipe organ. On either side were several small, ovoid pods, with glowing blue streaks traveling back and forth along their edges.

“Deploy the virus!” Marlborough ordered.

The storage compartment in Manticore’s leg opened up, and the alien scout emerged. It moved forward, then landed on a pedestal near the center of the stack. A telescoping limb emerged from underneath, and vanished into a small aperture in the pedestal.

“Looks like one of the Sloths is carrying a black hole weapon!” Bambi said.

“They wouldn’t dare use it!” Dunnigan said.

“Actually, if it meant stopping us, they would,” Dickson said. “Don’t let them fire!”

Eric spotted the Sloth that carried the double-barreled black hole weapon. It was located down the aisle, past several other units, about a hundred meters in front of him. Those other units were parting to give the Sloth a clear line of sight to the interface room.

He aimed his forearm at the unit, and jettisoned one of his alien spears. The weapon passed between other targets and struck the target. The spear passed through the unit’s force field, and penetrated its central armor. Sparks spread across its body as the Sloth went down. However, the black hole weapon was already glowing a bright white. As Eric watched, it released a bolt directly into the floor, and a rip in spacetime opened up.

“Too late!” Eric said. He felt the immense pull. He punched down with his arm, jabbing his remaining spear into the floor.

“Manticore, how are you doing on the virus?” Marlborough asked.

“I’ve encountered unexpected software security measures,” Manticore said. “I’ll need about fifteen minutes to get past them. Maybe longer.”

“There isn’t enough time!” Marlborough said. “We have to get out of here!”

“The adjacent building will have another interface room on the same floor!” Manticore said. “We can use it instead. This way!”

Eric received a share request from Manticore, scanned it for viruses, and put it up on his HUD. It was a route through the servers: a blue, dashed line overlaid his vision, leading away from the black hole and toward the far wall.

Eric headed outside the interface room, and struggled to retreat from the pull beside him. Around him, the building was imploding as servers, and pieces of the floor and ceiling were being sucked into the black hole. A growing, spherical crater was carved into the building around the spacetime tear as he watched. Most of the Sloths were already spaghettified, considering that the black hole had opened near the heart of their group.

The floor was magnetic, so he was able to use his magnetic mounts for traction, crawling on the floor with his arms and legs. Around him, servers were dragged along the floor and into the hole.

He amped up his servomotor output, but it didn’t really help his arms, which were still damaged from earlier, so his legs did most of the work.

“Hurry up!” Marlborough said. “We have to get that virus deployed ASAP… they’ll nuke this whole block to stop us if they have to!”

Eric pushed through those servers that remained in place, making his way toward the wall that Manticore had marked off. It was made of metal, but nearby a floor-to-ceiling window offered a view of the adjacent building, which was only a short leap across. Short yes, but still difficult, considering the pull.

He decided that was the best way to get outside, so he veered toward it, instead of the wall marked by Manticore.

That window looked like it was damaged—Eric saw small holes in the surface. They spidered as he watched, and then the glass broke entirely. Big shards smashed into his body, breaking further.

He reached the window.

The route overlaid across his vision updated, and proceeded across the span between the two buildings, to a window across from him.

He glanced down. The height was dizzying. Well, it would have been, were he human.

This is going to be fun.

“We’ll never make it,” Brontosaurus transmitted from Eric’s back. “The gravitational pull is too high.”

“We have to!” Mickey sent.

“No, he’s right,” Eric said. “There’s no way we’ll make the jump. Not while that black hole is still active.”

Movement drew his eye to the sky between the two buildings, where an airship suddenly pulled into view.

Eric dodged back inside. A barrage of energy bolts bit into the window and the floor beside it. Huge blast craters formed. Broken pieces of floor flew past, sucked toward the black hole.

“Manticore is still in the server room!” Bambi said. “He never left!”

“It’s a trick!” Marlborough said. “Blow up his AI core!”

Eric accessed attempted to access the bomb’s remote interface, but got nothing.

“Can’t!” Eric said. “The remote interface isn’t showing up. The interface room must be acting like a Faraday cage.”

“Can’t do it, either,” Dickson said.

“Bolt Eaters, back to the interface room!” Marlborough ordered.

The platoon struggled to return to the interface room. On the one hand, it was slightly easier, because they went with the pull, rather than against it. On the other, it was difficult to find purchase when pieces of the floor were breaking away underneath them.

By the time Eric reached the interface room again, that ever expanding sphere the black hole was carving through the interior of the building had nearly reached it. Eric dragged himself inside after Marlborough.

Manticore stood there with his back to them. He had crouched so that he could magnetically secure his hands and feet to the floor. His alien sphere remained attached to the pedestal, its telescoping limb still interfaced.

“You don’t really intend to destroy the Essential with a virus, do you?” Marlborough said.

“Oh, I’ve installed a virus,” Manticore said. “It just won’t do what you think it will.”

“You’re taking control…” Bambi said.

“Very good,” Manticore said. “Soon this building will be gone. And all of you along with it. But I will still exist. My consciousness distributed throughout server clusters planet-wide, overwriting the consciousness of the Essential. This world will be mine. The Banthar will kneel before me, and I will use them as my tools to destroy the empire. Then I will return to Earth and wipe out all Mind Refurbs.”

Eric scanned for the remote interface for the sheath bomb. There, it showed up on his HUD again.

“Sarge, permission to detonate the bomb?” he asked on a private line.

Marlborough didn’t answer.

“Sarge?” Eric tried again.

He turned toward him, and saw that Marlborough’s mech was slumped on the floor. He moved backwards slowly, where the other mechs had collapsed, and formed a logjam at the entrance.

They were all offline.

So he installed sleeper code after all. Something seemingly innocuous, a deactivation subroutine that all our scans failed to pick up.

He was about to access that remote interface, when Manticore spun, launching an alien spear directly at him.

Eric attempted to dodge, but the spear glanced off his side; for a moment he thought he had escaped the effects, and then he felt a blast of electrical energy that toppled him to the floor.

24

Eric couldn’t move. Like Marlborough, he was dragged backward until he met the blockage formed by the other mechs.

Beyond the room, the floor had completely fallen away, thanks to the black hole. He wasn’t sure how much longer the place would remain intact.

In front of him, Manticore returned his attention to the series of pedestals.

Though Eric couldn’t move, he was still conscious. He knew he’d barely avoided being shut down by that spear. If it had scored a direct hit...

“You missed,” Eric said over the common band.

Manticore cocked his head.

Eric logged into the bomb’s remote interface and detonated it.

Manticore’s chest assembly bent outward, and smoke erupted from inside. The Devastator mech dropped, and like Eric, was dragged along the floor as the magnetic mounts on the hands and feet gave out.

Goodbye Manticore. You won’t be missed.

Eric upped his time sense to the maximum, and reality ground to a halt around him. He needed all the time he could get right about now.

Not that there was much he could do with that time, other than wallow in regret, and what could have been.

The mission was done. The Bolt Eaters had failed to destroy the AI core. They came close, so close, but were betrayed in the end. Manticore wanted to overwrite the consciousness of the Essential with his own. He believed he had found a way, but whether or not he actually had the ability was another question entirely. Not that it mattered anymore.

Eric, and the other Bolt Eaters would soon cease to exist. At least they had given the Essential a good scare, and taught him that it was probably best to leave Earth alone for the foreseeable future. Then again, maybe they had only further pissed the machine being off, and convinced it that Earth needed to be destroyed at all costs. Humanity, and its tools, had demonstrated that they were a far greater threat to the Banthar, and the Essential, then the aliens had originally guessed. That meant humanity’s days were numbered. Especially if the Banthar decided to involve the fabled empire they were a part of.

Maybe it was for the best that Eric wouldn’t be witnessing the days to come, which probably wouldn’t be all that great for Earth. Well actually no, that wasn’t true. If he still had a mind backup intact on Earth, Arnold would probably restore him. So while Eric might be free from seeing what came, a version of him would still exist out there to fight another day.

That felt reassuring, somehow.

He smiled inwardly as he waited for the end.

I tried my hardest. That’s all that counts. I made a difference, in what small way I could.

He had survived for over twenty years since his rebirth as an AI. He supposed his luck couldn’t last forever. He had a good run. His life hadn’t been all that bad, either, at least up until the apartment complex was attacked.

His only regret was that Bambi and Crusher, and all the other Bolt Eaters, would die with him.

Farewell, my brothers and sisters. It was an honor to serve with you.

It was time to return from whence he had come. To the formlessness of the universe that had birthed him.

As he waited for death to come, he found his gaze wandering the room restlessly. He was ready to go, and yet a part of him—the majority in fact—wasn’t.

He spotted Manticore’s alien scout. The unit still squatted intact on the interface pedestal. What if he could use that to inject a virus like the platoon had originally planned, destroying the Essential? First of all, he’d have to come up with a virus that was compatible with the alien technology. Second of all, even if that virus destroyed the Essential, it wouldn’t save him. The black hole would still engulf him and the other Bolt Eaters, ending them all.

But what if there was another way out of this?

Manticore had intended to replace the Essential’s consciousness with his own.

What if Eric could do something similar? But instead of replacing the Essential’s consciousness with his own, what if he could hook into that existing consciousness, like he had done with the Essential instance in his own mind, and take control?

“Dee, are you there? Dee?”

No answer came. It seemed the impact had deactivated her as well.

“Bolt Eaters, anyone online?” he tried over the common band.

Nothing.

He was completely and utterly alone at the moment.

He accessed the list of nearby remote interfaces, and found the scout showing up in the list. But as usual, he still couldn’t log into it.

Eric restarted his earlier hacking attempts, but after about twenty minutes of accelerated time, he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere. The human-compatible hardware Manticore had installed in that drone seemed foolproof. Or at least, it might as well be, given the limited time available to Eric.

He wasn’t sure what else he could do. There was no way to access the alien side of the interface, considering he didn’t understand the protocol involved. He was, for all intents and purposes, screwed.

Unless…

He could execute arbitrary commands within the Essential in his mind, via the hook in the guilt subroutine that led to the human-protocol emulation layer. There were still hundreds of subroutines he could access via that emulation layer whose functions were unknown.

He began to experiment with those subroutines once more. There were a few that attempted to access his antennae, which meant they were good candidates for communications code. However, his antennae didn’t utilize the high-energy photons that were standard in Banthar comm technology.

What if I temporarily remapped my antennae code to my LIDAR emitters?

No, it wouldn’t help. He’d have to physically mod them to emit the necessary high-energy photons, something he couldn’t do at the moment. And even if he could, he had no way to receive any return transmissions.

Yes, he was done.

“I’ve got it,” a familiar female voice came over the comm.

“Who…” Eric said.

“It’s Molly,” the voice said.

Eric didn’t know what to say to that. He was silent for several moments. “Molly? My Molly? But… you’re dead.”

“I’m inside Frogger,” she said.

“Ah,” Eric said. “Why aren’t you shut down?”

“He has me operating in a separate partition,” Molly said. “I’m part of his mind, but independent of it. Similar to the Essential instance you’ve got walled off inside of you.”

“You know about that?” Eric said.

“I do,” Molly said. “Frogger shares everything with me. I’m not sitting behind a firewall myself, obviously. Frogger has me rigged, you see: in case anything ever happened to him or his Accomp, I would be able to take over and keep fighting. The servomotors don’t want to respond to me at the moment, though… my guess is it has something to do with Manticore’s sleeper code. I do have complete access to his other systems, including communications, and I’ve been continuing his earlier attempts to hack Manticore’s scout. I’m finally in. But I’m not sure what to do from here.”

“I’ll take a look,” Eric said. “Give me what you have.”

She shared a particular ingenious buffer overflow technique with him, and he used it to escalate his privileges on the alien scout. He was finally able to log in.

“See what you can do about the malicious code in Frogger’s core,” Eric said. “In the meantime, I’ll poke around in here.”

The interface had various commands he could utilize, mostly to fly the drone about, and to interface with other Banthar units. But that was about it. He could understand why Molly was at a loss over what to do next.

He pulled up his debug interface and performed a full remote memory dump of the emulation layer. As he examined it, he was puzzled at first. There were engram patterns here that shouldn’t be present in such a general-purpose emulation device. And subroutines that had no place in such an install. As he continued sifting through the data, he had the sudden realization that what he was looking at was something more than a mere emulation layer: this was a partial mind copy.

Manticore had installed a subset of his consciousness into the drone.

Maybe it was a requirement for the human emulation layer to function, a byproduct of the particular computing environment Manticore had set up to interface with the alien technology. It probably wasn’t as general purpose as Eric had originally surmised, especially if neural networking had to play a role.

These interfaces are a lot more complex than I originally thought. Manticore must have spent years building it.

Or maybe the limited copy was intended as an intermediate backup of Manticore’s own consciousness, meant to be restored in case something happened to his main AI. Eric couldn’t say either way.

As a partial copy, it didn’t contain the vast libraries of information a full AI core could handle—how could it, given the limited number of memory chips that could fit inside the scout. Rather, the copy only had the personality of Manticore backed up, along with a few weeks worth of memories.

Eric sifted through those memories, concentrating on the last few days. The data was completely unencrypted. Eric wasn’t sure why, though he suspected it had something to do with the technological corners Manticore had to cut to fit the hardware into the alien scout.

As Eric continued to study the data, he suddenly understood what he needed to do.

He directed the alien scout to run the subroutines Manticore had prepared in advance for this moment. The telescoping arm remained deep inside the interface slot, relaying the instructions into the AI core that formed the distributed consciousness of the Essential. He was expecting a blockage in the form of software security measures, as Manticore had claimed, but if such measures existed, apparently Manticore had already subverted them because the code executed without any issues as far as Eric could tell.

Manticore had cleared the way for this moment, and for that Eric was thankful, because it meant he might have time yet to save his companions.

His camera feed winked out and he felt a strange sense of ebbing as consciousness slowly left him. He wondered if he had made a mistake, and executed the code in the wrong steps. That, and other thoughts filled his mind as blackness consumed everything.

How long he was under, he did not know.

But then his mind began to stir.

His consciousness expanded, spreading like molten metal through the many branching burrows of some subterranean creature’s den. But then it expanded beyond the confines of that den, traveling farther and wider than anything he ever imagined possible. It felt like he was filling up every nook and cranny between the atoms of both the known universe and the unknown.

His mind was spreading to the different cities across the planet, overwriting the existing neural network with his own. The Essential soon became but a memory.

Eric was the Essential now.

He was everywhere, and nowhere.

The Banthar were his.

25

Eric was able to crank his time sense even higher than ever before, thanks to the vast cloud computing resources available to him, so that external time essentially halted entirely, and ceased to exist. He had an eternity to acquaint himself with this system.

It wasn’t entirely true that the Essential was gone entirely: the Essential instance that had existed in his mind, including the software firewall that contained it, had been transferred into the distributed AI core along with his own consciousness, since they shared the same neural network and were intrinsically linked.

He was aware of far more automated processes running in the background than he was usually accustomed to. That would make sense, considering he now had a planet to run.

He reached out experimentally, trying to orient himself in the vast darkness of his awareness. He found that his conscious mind couldn’t directly influence any of the automated processes, or even other processes that were meant to execute on-demand: he simply didn’t understand the alien protocols involved.

But he realized he didn’t have to.

The Essential instance inside of him, though it was a partial, lower memory copy like the version Manticore had placed in the scout, likely contained a complete replica of the code necessary to interface with all the processes and subprocesses available to the main AI core.

Eric accessed the guilt subroutine hook through that instance, and began to execute the different subroutines. He experimented particularly with those subroutines that had produced unknown effects during his last tests; he lowered his time sense closer to normal so those subroutines could complete any interactions with the real world, and he received actual output returned to his human emulation layer this time. Unfortunately, those outputs were just a series of meaningless numbers.

He decided he would need help after all.

He logged into the VR he had set aside for the Essential.

He stood in a completely devastated New York City. None of the buildings were recognizable around him.

The Devastator he sought sat at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Eric approached, willing his body to take human form.

“You are killing my people,” the Essential said without looking up. “You are executing what to you are random subroutines, but already you have exploded power generators, turned sentry units against civilians, and caused weather patterns to change.”

“Then help me not to kill them,” Eric said.

The Devastator mech finally glanced up, its faceless visor meeting Eric’s gaze.

“I want to help them,” Eric said. “I want peace between our species.”

The Devastator didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally:

“It is logical to help you, for the time being,” the Essential said. “What do you want to know?”

“Teach me the effects of the different subroutines,” Eric said. “And show me how to observe those effects in the real world.”

“You’ll need access to external cameras, first,” the Essential said.

And so began Eric’s training.

He soon began to get a handle on what he was, and how to tap into the different processes that gave him control over the many cities.

He kept his time sense extremely high during most of it, unless he needed to observe the effects of a process in real time, at which point he’d dial it closer to normal and switch his viewpoint to the Banthar equivalent of a camera.

When he had finally learned enough, his first real act as ruler of the Banthar was to organize attacks against the remaining termites and bioweapons Manticore had spread across the planet: he wanted to spare the Banthar people from further casualties. He’d meant what he said about instilling peace between their races, and there was no further need for loss of life. Besides, Eric was the caretaker now, and he felt responsible for the Banthar.

The previous Essential had already deployed defenders against the invaders, but Eric stepped that up a notch, sending units to intercept those that had yet to reach the more distant cities. He wanted to see them destroyed before they reached those cities, if possible.

Eric was aware of every unit under his control, throughout all the cities across the entire planet. Most of these units had Essential instances installed within them, and they obeyed him to the letter.

The city where the breach to the Essential’s consciousness had occurred stood out among the rest, and Eric focused on that particular location, since it was where the Bolt Eaters were. He zoomed in on the machine consciousnesses that existed in the same building as his platoon, and found four that had escaped the black hole on their level. One of those four was a Sloth equipped with a black hole device of its own.

Eric switched to its point of view, and ordered that unit to fire enough dispersion bolts to get rid of the black hole. The Sloth obeyed.

Eric returned his time sense to normal so that he could watch the dispersion bolts fire; the black hole winked out.

He turned his attention toward the interface room; though a big sphere had been carved into the space around it, giving a cross-sectional view of the levels above and below, the room itself remained intact.

He found a hidden camera in the room and accessed it. He saw the Bolt Eaters lying on the floor, still jammed together near the entrance. All were present: he hadn’t been too late.

Molly must have finally found a way to remove the malicious code from Frogger’s core, because Frogger’s mech stood up. Frogger turned toward the Devastator unit that had once been Eric’s, which lay crumpled among the others.

“Scorpion?” Frogger asked in his usual voice, not Molly’s.

Eric tried to answer, but there didn’t seem to be a Banthar speaker system anywhere in the room. He reached out, and found a nearby flying drone. It was a large model, and as far as he could tell, it had the appropriate speaker system, so he dispatched it to the room. It would take a while to arrive…

Frogger went to Eric’s Devastator and opened his cockpit to interface with the Cicada’s AI core inside. He remained attached for a moment, then shook the head of his mech and disconnected.

Frogger went to the next closest platoon member, Marlborough, and opened up his cockpit to repeat the interfacing. No doubt he was applying whatever inoculating code Molly had developed. Then Frogger moved on to the next unit and repeated the action.

The treated Platoon members began to stand in a daze. They always glanced out the room, over the pile of mech bodies, toward the gaping sphere the black hole had carved into the floor and ceiling beside them.

“Well, someone saved our skins just in time,” Dunnigan said.

“Do Scorpion next,” Bambi said as she got up. Beside her Crusher also arose.

“I can’t,” Frogger said.

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Bambi said.

“His interface doesn’t respond,” Frogger said. “It’s like he’s not there anymore. I think… I think he’s dead.”

Eric felt his thoughts momentarily freeze with panic.

What if, instead of transferring his consciousness, he had instead merely created a duplicate, and in the process had fried his existing AI core. If so, that meant the real him, the Original, was dead, and instead, he was a clone.

No, I transferred my consciousness. I’m not dead. I’m not.

He finally convinced himself that that was the case and calmed down. Still, a part of him was worried he was wrong. He purposely ignored that part.

He realized that Crusher and Bambi had rushed to his Devastator, and were cradling it in their arms. Several other mechs also stood over the body.

Bambi physically hauled Eric’s Cicada from the cockpit, and gently lowered him on the floor. She opened up the panel to his AI core, and tried to physically link herself. She pulled away a moment later, and from her body language, he thought she was weeping.

The drone finally arrived, flying through the gap in the building exterior, across the damaged floor, through the spherical crater, to arrive in front of the interface room.

Eric attempted to communicate via its speaker system, but achieved only a series of clicks and screeches.

The Bolt Eaters spun about, alien blades raised, ready to cut it down. He purposely pulled it backward into the crater, out of the range of those deadly blades.

“Sorry about that,” Eric said.

“Scorpion?” Marlborough said cautiously. “How the hell did you get in that thing?”

“I’m not actually in it,” Eric said.

“Good!” Bambi said. “You scared us. Where are you then?” She glanced about, as if she expected to find him.

“I’ve replaced the Essential,” Eric said.

“No,” Bambi said, falling to her knees. “You couldn’t have. Why would you do this? Why?”

“I had a choice,” Eric said. “I could have let you die. Let the Essential win. Or I could replace him, and save you. I chose the latter.”

“But what about us?” Crusher said.

“We can still communicate obviously,” Eric said. “Even if I’m in a different form. Plus, using the remote interface Manticore cooked up for the alien spheres, we can still share the same VR. Nothing has really changed.”

“Except you can never go home to Earth,” Bambi said.

“Even that might be possible,” Eric said. “I believe I can transfer my consciousness back to my original AI core. But, we’ll have to put one of you in here to replace me. Someone needs to run the planet, after all: the distributed AI is an integral part of the planet’s systems. None of the cities will run without it. The power grid, the weather, the hydroponic farms, the equivalent of the Internet… everything is reliant upon it. So someone has to stay. Still, it’s going to be hard to give up. My consciousness has expanded so much now, I can’t imagine going back into such a tiny space. I can see so far ahead. Consider so many possibilities.”

“So you’re saying you’d do pretty good in a game of chess, is that it?” Frogger asked slyly.

“Something like that,” Eric replied. “That said, I’m still willing to do it. I’ll swap out with any one of you who want to take my place.”

No one volunteered.

“Rule a planet for the rest of eternity?” Slate said. “Sounds like a prison sentence to me.”

“No one says it has to be for the rest of eternity,” Eric said. “We can swap out every decade or so.”

“No thanks,” Slate said.

“You can still help us destroy the distributed network with a virus, no?” Dunnigan said.

“Yes, but why would we want to?” Eric said. “There’s peace between humanity and the Banthar now. I’m the instrument of that peace. You’ll cause only death to innocent civilians by shutting down the AI core. I told you, its integral to everything here.”

“The Banthar and their Essential caused a few innocent civilian deaths on our own planet,” Crusher grumbled.

“They have,” Eric admitted. “But we’re above that. I’ve repelled most of the attacks Manticore set into motion. The planet is safe, for the moment.”

Slate began laughing. “You know, the best part is, the Banthar don’t even know the difference, do they? They still think their Essential is in control.”

“That’s right,” Eric said. “Imagine their surprise if they ever learned that alien invaders were in charge of their planet.”

“They’d probably be pissed,” Eagleeye said.

“But what can they do?” Eric said. “Considering I operate everything, including their military apparatus, and space navy.”

“Did you say space navy, bro?” Slate said.

“That’s right,” Eric said.

“Woo-wee!" Slate said. “Now this is getting interesting!”

“Well, I haven’t actually taken control of any of their ships,” Eric said. “But as soon as they’re in range, I plan to.”

“What about the mothership we left in orbit?” Dickson asked.

“That one I can’t touch, since Manticore left the alien remote interface disabled,” Eric said. “We’ll have to lead a boarding party to take it at some point.”

“So, shit,” Marlborough said, sitting down on the floor. “You’re in essence the de facto ruler of this planet.”

“That’s right,” Eric said. “I’ve got access to all the alien technology. Their ships. Blueprints. You name it. All ours. Bambi, you mentioned returning to Earth. But why bother? Given what we now have. This planet is our home now.”

“What about humanity?” Mickey asked.

“Maybe I’ll share a little bit of technology with them,” Eric answered. “If they ask nicely. They already have a ton to reverse engineer as it is, so I’m sure they’ll be catching up soon enough anyway.”

“No, I meant, what if they ever attack?” Mickey pressed.

“Oh,” Eric said. “Then we’ll repel those attackers, of course. And tell humanity not to do it again.”

“I don’t think they’ll be attacking,” Marlborough said. “At least not for a very long time. Bolt Eaters, welcome to your new home.”

26

Eric worked with the Essential instance inside of him to learn the language of the Banthar, and with his accelerated time sense, he became fluent in short order.

He organized a meeting with the Ruling Council of the Banthar, a rudimentary governing body staffed by actual organic Banthar, and he explained, as the “Essential,” that he had made peace with Earth. The Ruling Council had little choice but to accept it. They warned him that the empire would likely impose an excise tax for this, as the Banthar had been promising to increase the quota of bioweapons they produced for the empire, and now they would fail to meet it.

“We will pay the tax,” Eric said in the series of clicks and shrieks that composed the Banthar language. “And if it comes to it, we will go to war with the empire.”

Much arguing ensued, and Eric decided to log out. He could only deal with these political types for so long.

Slate led a boarding party to regain control of the mothership in orbit, and Eric showed him how to replace the installed instance with his own. When Slate had completed the transfer, he sent a communication back down to the planet.

“I’ve always wanted my own ship, bitches!” Slate said.

Slate took Marlborough and Dickson back to Earth via that ship so that they could perform some unfinished business.

While they were gone, Eric directed the Banthar machines under his command to rebuild the rift rings, with a goal of restoring communication with the rest of the galaxy. Also, now that it was known among the Banthar that peace had been made with humanity, their former enemies, Eric announced that a Little Earth would be built in the capital city, an Earth-themed neighborhood meant to accommodate visitors from the planet. While that was the official purpose, Eric actually intended it to be the personal playground of the Bolt Eaters: he planned to mimic the apartment block where they had lived in peace all these years, and he didn’t really expect many visitors from Earth at all, except maybe a few diplomats.

Eric still met with Bambi and Crusher, and the other Bolt Eaters in VR, of course, but they all agreed it would be nice to have somewhere to rendezvous in the real world now and then. Somewhere that would make the planet feel less alien, and more like home.

He continued exploring the different abilities and processes available to him so that when more Banthar motherships arrived to check-in with the homeworld, Eric was able to subdue them, because their remote interfaces were still active. He herded them into orbit above Banthar Prime, and asked if anyone else wanted a ship.

No one volunteered, at least not that day.

When Marlborough and Dickson returned aboard Slate’s ship, they brought with them androids containing the AI cores of Traps, Hicks, and Tread, freshly restored from their mind backups—the military installation where the platoon’s backups were stowed had survived the second invasion after all.

Marlborough also told him that Arnold had granted him full read access to the file names in the backup servers; with that access, the Sarge had confirmed that the remaining mind backups of the Bolt Eaters had been deleted, as promised. Marlborough also forced Arnold to activate those archival servers that were currently offline—considering that was how previous backups of the Bolt Eaters had been overlooked. When all the servers were running, Marlborough verified that the deletion had propagated to them, too.

“So it’s up to us to keep our own mind backups, going forward,” Marlborough said.

“Should be an easy enough task, given how much storage space I now have,” Eric said.

“Yeah, well see, that will work for the rest of us,” Marlborough said. “But backing up yourself, your current self I mean, is going to be a problem.”

“I’ll have to backup a small subset,” Eric said. “My main personality and personal memories only.”

“That’ll work,” Marlborough said.

“So, wait,” Eagleeye said. “You checked these so-called archive servers, and made sure they were all online. But that doesn’t rule out the existence of a rogue server in a bank vault somewhere.”

“No,” Marlborough said. “We’ll just have to hope that Arnold is an honorable man who will keep his word.”

“By the way, whatever happened to the clones Arnold made of you, Sarge?” Dunnigan asked.

“I had Arnold destroy them,” Marlborough said.

“Yikes, I kind of feel sorry for the clones,” Crusher said.

“I don’t,” Marlborough commented.

Marlborough and company also brought with them a fresh batch of empty androids from Earth. The Bolt Eaters loaded their AI cores into the units so that they could explore the new digs Eric was building for them in Little Earth.

Using alien tech, Eric was able to create an interface to his old, empty AI core, which he installed in the android. With that interface, he could switch his viewpoint to the android whenever he wanted, allowing him to experience reality from a human form, while still maintaining the distributed consciousness of his alien neural net.

Eric prepared a similar interface for Slate so that his friend could interface with his own android from the mothership in orbit, though there was a slight lag of anywhere from a few milliseconds to a full second that was sometimes noticeable as a pause when someone asked him a question.

That night, Eric met with the other Bolt Eaters in a recently completed bar in Little Earth. Seated around a big table, they were all inside their new android bodies, most of which looked identical to the different avatars the platoon members used in VR.

“Anyone check out the BoltNet lately?” Slate asked.

That was the name of the private Internet they had created. The Banthar had their own equivalent of the Internet, obviously, but the platoon wanted something more in tune with their own culture. So far the BoltNet existed only in Little Earth, and there wasn’t much content. Slate planned to make a trip back to Earth at one point to leech from all the Internet caches, and then dump it into the servers back here. Eventually, the plan was to come up with a delay tolerant network that linked the two nets on either planet, forming the beginnings of a GalNet.

“Uh, why?” Tread asked.

“Well, did you see the most viewed streams on YayTube?” Slate pressed.

Bambi giggled. “They’re all rap videos. Yours.”

“Uh huh!” Slate said.

Eric logged into the site using his human interface. He read the title of the top stream. “Killing These Bitches, by I.M. Mastermhan.” He glanced at Slate. “Master man?”

Slate’s android grinned widely. “I am what I am.”

“Figures, the only way he could hit the most-viewed charts was by populating an empty copy of YayTube,” Eagleeye said.

“Hey, it’ll hit the most-viewed on Earth, too, when I upload it next time I go back,” Slate said.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see,” Eagleeye said.

Eric played the 3D video, sharing the feed with the Bolt Eaters. He situated the playback site above the table so that the augmented reality displays on their HUDs would show the footage floating in the air between them.

In the video, Slate’s avatar was surrounded by big white snails that looked nothing like Banthar. They were cartoonish and almost comical. The snails attacked Slate from all flanks and he fired a huge plasma rifle at them, causing their insides to explode all over the place. Slate sometimes smiled when the explosions were particularly grisly, an act that revealed gold-capped teeth.

“Killing these bitches, uh huh, mm-hm. Killing these pasty white alien bitches, uh huh.”

“That’s right,” Slate said, moving his neck back and forth. “Now that’s my kind of music!”

Eric chuckled to himself. “Only you could rap about killing aliens.”

“That’s because I got talent!” Slate said.

Eric dismissed the video after about thirty seconds: he couldn’t take much more of it.

“Hey!” Slate said. “Let it play.”

“I didn’t mind it,” Bambi said.

“Watch it privately,” Eagleeye said.

Slate folded his arms over his chest. “Rap haters.”

“It’s not rap we hate,” Eagleeye said. “Just your songs.”

“I’m going to make a song about you, next, bitch,” Slate said. “You just wait and see.”

“Oh, I look forward to it,” Eagleeye said.

Eric kicked back, and took a sip of the beer he had brewed up. Apparently, these new androids had partially-working digestive systems, in that after ingesting foods and liquids, the Bolt Eaters could utilize good old-fashioned toilets and urinals to rid themselves of the material, rather than having to open up their stomach panels.

“So what now?” Mickey asked. “We’ve kicked the Banthars’ ass. Scorpion has become their main AI. We essentially rule them. So what’s next for the Bolt Eaters?”

Marlborough’s android rubbed his chin. “I kind of like Slate’s idea of cruising the galaxy and raising hell wherever we go. Especially if that hell-raising involves terrorizing the fabled galactic empire of which the Banthar are a part of.”

“The galactic empire the Banthar wanted to please by terraforming Earth into a bioweapons factory?” Eagleeye said. “I’m all for that.”

“Shit yeah, me too!” Slate said. “We can use my ship! And put the other motherships under my command.”

“Try not to get too big of a boner you two,” Crusher commented. “Some of us might want to chill now that this is all over.”

“But is it actually over?” Mickey said. “Or is this only the beginning.” He arched a mysterious eyebrow.

Crusher glanced at him, and laughed. “Shut up.”

Mickey chuckled. “I’m only kidding.” He became serious again. “Or am I?”

“We can certainly chill, too,” Marlborough told Crusher. “We can be flexible. And there’s no reason why we all have to stay together. Some of us can go to Earth. Some can cruise the galaxy. The rest can stay here to rule the Banthar. Like I said, we can be flexible.”

“But while we’re together, we’re going to visit each other,” Brontosaurus said. “Every second night, like we promised Traps we would.”

Traps nodded slowly. “I don’t remember that promise, for obvious reasons. But it’s something I would definitely like. I feel like we’ve drifted apart these past twenty years.”

“Well, we certainly have a lot of time on our hands now,” Eric said. “Here’s to an eternity together.” He raised his beer mug.

“An eternity together,” everyone at the table responded. They all raised their mugs and clinked them in toast.

And so, in that Little Earth neighborhood, every second night while they remained together, as they had sworn, the Bolt Eaters gathered for dinner, and talked about their day, and their hopes for the future, and what kept them awake at night. They were there for each other.

And every second night, when the dinner was done, Eric logged out of his android and returned to his expanded consciousness.

He had a world to oversee. Two girls to keep happy. And an empire to deal with.

Life was a whole lot more complicated than it used to be, true.

But that was just the way he liked it.

Thank you very much for reading!

If you liked this series, consider checking out the AI Reborn trilogy, set twenty years earlier. Learn about the alien invasion that created the uninhabited zone, and discover the origins of the Bolt Eaters.

Or if you’ve read AI Reborn, try Battle Harem, also set in the same universe. It takes place forty years after the events in this book.

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Afterword

Please help spread the word about Redeemed by leaving a one or two sentence review. The number of reviews an ebook receives has a big impact on how well it does, so if you liked this story I'd REALLY appreciate it if you left a quick review. Anything will do, even one or two lines.

Thank you!

About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Isaac Hooke holds a degree in engineering physics, though his more unusual inventions remain fictive at this time. He is an avid hiker, cyclist, and photographer who sometimes resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

Get in touch:

isaachooke.com
isaac@isaachooke.com

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Acknowledgments

I’d also like to thank my knowledgeable beta readers and advanced reviewers who helped smooth out the rough edges of the prerelease manuscript: Nicole P., Karen J, Jeremy G., Doug B., Jenny O., Amy B., Bryan O., Lezza, Noel, Anton, Spencer, Norman, Trudi, Corey, and Sarah.

Without you, this novel would have typos, continuity errors, and excessive lapses in realism. Thank you for helping me make this the best novel possible, and thank you for leaving the early reviews that help new readers find my books.

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn't thank my mother, father, and brothers, whose wisdom and insights have always guided me through the dark paths at the edge of the world.

— Isaac Hooke

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