Wayward Galaxy 5
Author: Jason Anspach
Date: 2022-08-07 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Military Fiction; Military Science Fiction; SF; Military; Space Opera
Description: N-number Five is Alive! Peace and a secure future are within the grasp of the Rangers and Osay colonists… if they can withstand the coming Reclamation Fleet. But first they must deal with old enemies and the mysterious RUPAC research stations that will finally allow Reach, Brody, and company understand just where all of Amir’s various factions truly stand. Warm up the VCR, pop in a mixtape in your Walkman and get ready to jump back into the action-heavy rollicking fifth adventure in the international hit series Wayward Galaxy from USA Today best-selling authors J.N. Chaney and Jason Anspach, p
Publisher: Variant Publications

Copyrighted Material

Wayward Galaxy 5 Copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney and Jason Anspach

Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from JN Chaney.

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1st Edition

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CONTENTS

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

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Epilogue

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About The Creators

1

“Feels like standin’ on the edge without a parachute, doesn’t it, Lieutenant Harmon?”

Harmon watched the moon’s surface slowly rotating several miles below his feet. Craters, mountain ranges, and eerie caves swept by as he drifted through the empty void of space. “That’s one way to describe it.”

He was testing an augmented reality—AR—feature that removed his ship, the USS Osay, entirely from view, as though he were suspended above Amir’s moon. It was the strangest sensation to be orbiting such a large rock while still feeling something solid beneath his boots. As exciting as it was to be over Amir's Moon, the lackluster feeling of being on a snoop and loop just to give the brass a warm and fuzzy was… a little daunting.

“LT, we’re nearing one full rotation over the moon with no signs of disturbance. We’ll need one more for a full scan,” came a voice through the ether.

Harmon willed away the augmented reality, replacing his surroundings with the bridge of the starship they'd claimed as their own when the Rangers first came to Amir. Pilot's and co-pilot's positions lay ahead of him with a pedestal set off to one side. The shined decking was like something out of Brody's old sci-fi movies; Harmon could visualize the spot where some long-dead actor would be running through the ship to ratchet the tension as he shouted orders to his walking carpet monster co-pilot to get on the guns. The lieutenant looked to the sensor and nav stations, and checked the faces on their screens for signs of interest or concern. He found none and his eyes drifted back to the deck. The AR display of the moon was gone, but he still longed to be back on the planet.

At the pilot’s station in front of the tactical command console, Chief Warrant Officer Christie Strahler looked over her shoulder. “LT Harmon. You still with us?”

Harmon gave a fractional shake of his head to clear his thoughts. “Sorry about that, Chief. Yeah, let’s take another run over the rock. Or did Ivan pick up something on the last pass?”

The holographic head of a statuesque Russian male, complete with a spikey tabletop haircut, high and tight, appeared. “Nyet, Comrade Commander. I did not observe any notable details on the surface to suggest a friendly landing force on Amir’s moon.”

“Ivan, we’ve gone over this,” Harmon started, working to control any annoyance in his voice. “This RUPAC force is not friendly. They’re trying to ruin everything the Regime’s building on Amir.”

“As you’ve said,” Ivan grumbled more than stated. “But if we are dealing with a Reclamation Fleet set to adjust the planet for the Glory of RUPAC, should we not make our presence and willingness to help known?”

All eyes on the bridge turned to Harmon, who acted as the senior-most officer on the ship. Normally, a first lieutenant wouldn’t be running a starship of this size or complexity, but the Rangers and the Space Force that came with them on the Boone had suffered massive losses. You had to make do.

Harmon held out his hand plaintively to the irritating but indispensable AI that kept the Osay running as well as it did. “What you’re implying, Ivan, is that we should make contact with those who would betray the Regime, possibly tipping our hand, just because they call themselves RUPAC.”

The statement caused a flutter in Ivan’s hologram as the artificial construct worked through the permutations. “This is a fair assessment, Lieutenant. Our recent dealings with certain… elements on Amir have directed us to the notion that a unified RUPAC is no longer as it once was. In that light, I will report that we have no potential traitors leaving signs of their passing on the lunar surface below.”

“See, how hard was tha—” Harmon’s words were cut short as a massive shock wave struck the ship, nearly throwing him over the command station. The titanic shudder vibrating through the hull was sudden and almost gone completely when a much smaller impact sounded with a hollow bang. It radiated vibrations through the lieutenant’s boots as he clung to his perch, the unidentified object tapping along the hull until it vanished completely.

“Status!” Harmon barked.

“Impact from ship’s debris, LT!” Warrant Officer Ross shouted back. “Widespread and mostly small pieces, but we're caught in a field of it.”

Metallic tapping on the ship's exterior sent shivers through the crew. It sounded much like the heavy rains that hit the Osay compound they'd visited before moving Amir's original colonists to their base of operations, except the consequences of a leak up here were much more dire. The debris clacking across the hull settled itself in a final strike against some unknown part of the ship before the metal storm faded into silence.

“Comrade Commander Harmon,” Ivan said, “we have lost the long-range antenna. If we do not navigate away from the debris field, it will break us.”

“Ya think?” Harmon scoffed at the ship's sometimes maddening AI. “Strahler! Find us a way clear!”

“Trying, sir! But it's everywhere,” she said while adjusting her flight track. “Every time I find a hole to crawl through, I hit something else!”

Ross swiped across his data station, flashing a flight track overlay to Harmon's station. “Sir, will that work?”

A hard thud drew Harmon's attention again. He glared at the console to watch the external cams to get a sense of the debris field, cursing himself for having to look at anything but their flight path. The near invisible quagmire of ship debris had started as a dusting until they'd flown deeper into it, where it became a typhoon of bulkheads, struts, and wiring. His jaw dropped at the scope of what he saw outside.

Something outside the canopy flashed by, too fast to make out what it was. Something else screamed in from the inky dark of space, barely highlighted by the pinpricks of starlight beyond their current predicament. Avoiding the ship, it zoomed by the cockpit cams close enough for the Lieutenant to make out what it was.

“Bodies?” he whispered to himself. “Strahler! Put us on Ross's projected flight path to the moon's surface! Do it now!”

“On it!” Strahler shouted back. “Sean! Sound general quarters.”

More bodies rained across and into Harmon’s console view screen until the lieutenant slammed his hand on it to seal the larger bridge display windows with blast shutters. They were nosing into the storm to make their landing on the moon, and any impact too heavy might cause a breach. Flying in space was cool and all, but doing it with the windows open was often ill-advised.

The ship groaned as thrusters vented along the hull, putting everyone deep into their seats and forcing the LT into his. Rampant maneuvering applied crushing doses of gravity to the crew, while knocks from the frame announced the ship adjusting to the new pressure.

“Anyone else feel like they need a spotter on the weight rack?” Ross joked through gritted teeth.

“Haven’t seen you work out since you got here!” Strahler said back in a strained voice.

Harmon shifted his implant to give him another AR view, superimposing the outside on the closed cockpit and making the bridge feel more like flying in a convertible spaceship with the top down. As the moon's horizon filled his view, a spinning deck plate easily half the size of the USS Osay loomed ahead of them. “Christie…”

“I see it!” his pilot hollered.

“So get us beneath it!” Harmon yelled back.

The ship banked hard. Ever increasing g-forces went from crush to smother on a crew already struggling with the effect. The intense pressure on their chests transformed mundane autonomic habits as simple as taking a breath into a desperate fight for any scrap of oxygen they could steal.

Strahler adjusted the ship's flight track, leveling them toward the surface and bringing them just out of line of the deck-plated projectile flashing past them. A series of rapid-fire adjustments followed, and the ship course corrected to return gravity to levels that didn't bring out every double chin the crew was capable of displaying as they sunk into their seats.

Low over the moon and sailing past canyons and dusty mountains, Strahler piloted the Osay to avoid potential surface strikes from the errant debris. A colossal girder struck the top of a lunar mountain just ahead of the ship, dislodging the small peak and a plume of dust and rock diving into the gorge below.

“A little close,” Harmon announced.

“Hey! I don't tell you how to LT. Don't tell me how to fly!” Strahler called back.

“Strahler,” Ross interjected, his voice hurried, “I just floated something to you…”

“Yup…” Strahler turned back around to catch Harmon’s eyes. “Sir, we’ve got a track on that signal. Park next to it?”

Harmon cast her display over onto his own and scowled; the signal they'd been circling had just gone active. “Negative, put us in one of these canyons with some cover so we can assess the damage first. You have the bridge, Chief.”

“You look like you’re up to no good, boss,” Ross called over his shoulder after turning back to his station.

The lieutenant was already racing toward the door. “Not gonna lie, Sean. This whole space captain thing kinda sucks.”

The USS Osay commander sped through the passage leading away from the flight deck. Space Force personnel, both American and Osay, were either in a state of shocked disbelief, or like the lieutenant, in an all-out run to lock down something they were responsible for. The crew hugged the bulkheads at the sight of an officer sprinting through the ship’s corridors. Not wanting to wait for a lift, Harmon slid down the ladder to the next level and slapped onto the floor with the metallic thunk from boots striking the grated metal deck. The hatch to one of the Osay’s briefing rooms slid open at his approach to the waiting stares of the DAGRE teams working over security details.

Sergeant Carmody Hassen looked up at the lieutenant’s arrival. “What is going on out there, LT?”

“I need you to suit up, Sergeant. We ran into some space junk in lunar orbit, and there’s a good chance that you and the DAGREs are going extracurricular on this one to help fix a tire.”

Hassen gave a slight frown. “We're a deployed ground element, LT. We're not really rated to check the ship's oil, sir.”

Harmon flared his hands in apology. “Understood, and we can send an android under Ivan's control out with you to help with the handiwork, but since you and your team are the only ones that have even remotely been practicing this kind of thing, I need you to suit up.”

Hassen swiped away the holos hovering over the table at the room's center. “We're on it. Side note, though. How come every time you throw Rangers out an airlock, it’s jock up, but when we go, it’s suit up?”

“Sarn’t H. Do you have a jockstrap under that uniform?” Harmon asked.

“Maybe I do, but I’d expect dinner at least before you try to find out!”

The squad room burst into laughter, prompting Harmon to throw his hands up in surrender. “Well then jock up, Sarn’t. Ivan is sending you a FRAGO with the details.”

“Thanks, LT.”

2

Below, on the planet Amir and as of yet unaware of the events taking place aboard the USS Osay, Colonel Bosa shouldered the recoil from the rifle, keeping a steady shooting platform all the way to the target. His rounds impacted with a satisfying ping against metal, a hybrid of twang and mini explosive popping. He ejected the magazine while thumbing the stripping lever on the side of the weapon.

Beside him, Liana Craiswell, the senior leader of the Osay people, placed her own weapon on safe and set it on the table in front of them. Bosa turned his attention to her target. Liana had chosen the pulse fire mode of the weapon to deliver a devastating hole in the center of the target.

Bosa turned from the target to Liana. “Madame Osay, looks like you have an affinity for that thing’s more aggressive function. Can’t throw any shade on you.”

Liana laughed at the compliment. “It’s all Roman’s fault. He made me a killer in that cryo-pod. I used to be such a nice girl, too.”

“Uh-huh. That’s not how I heard it from Tran or Reach after they first brought you in. You’ve been a killer for a long time, Madame Osay. You just got a weapons upgrade is all.” Bosa placed his own rifle on the table to free himself for the ever-popular soldier's task of loading magazines. They'd printed speed loaders to move the process along, but it didn't take away from the banality of the task. “Growing up on this rock is bound to give anyone a pretty big head start.”

Liana raised her eyebrows knowingly and then snatched a thermos of coffee. She brushed away boxes of shells and straightened a paper cup on the range table. It said Liana in the scribbled font of either a doctor or a child. “I don’t know why Brody insists on writing our names on the cups. You and I are the only ones out here who can even drink this stuff. Unless the androids got an upgrade.”

Bosa examined his own paper cup. “Mine says ‘Captain B-O.’ Not sure if Brody is trying to insult me or not. Either way, I’ll take a warmup.” He held out his cup.

Liana obliged, filling the man's cup before topping off her own. “Oh, that’s not an insult. Brody is likening you to Captain E-O. The great Earth general.”

Bosa froze with the cup steaming just beneath his lips. He looked at Liana for some clue, and seeing that she was earnest about it, decided to let it go. “That was… before my time.” He took a sip and grit his teeth against the heat going down. “How did you put up with Brody for all those years?”

Liana shrugged. “You have to remember a few things. One, he usually kept himself shut down to conserve power—we weren’t living with the expectation of a bunch of Rangers coming to our rescue. So, we usually only saw him when something important was happening. A fight or a celebration.”

“The fights I can understand, but why the celebrations?”

Liana smiled. “Brody has been protecting us since the beginning. We are thankful. The things that sometimes annoy all of you… they endear us. And, we pretty much believed everything he said, so that helped, too.”

Bosa chuckled at the thought. One of the things he most wanted to do when things settled down, if that could ever even happen, was sit down with some of the Osay old-timers and hear in detail how they managed to survive on such a planet as Amir.

A stomping form emerged from the side of the tree, opposite where Bosa was leaning. At first, the colonel thought it was Brody himself, but it ended up being Murphy, the autonomous armor clone to the Android Brody. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. The sentient BULWARK suit was never far from Liana.

The android battle suit, designed to be a mix of Brody and Alexa out of a hope that such a programming splice would maintain Brody’s lethality while suppressing his oddities, sauntered up to the table. The sassy-voiced bodyguard to Liana managed to somehow annoy people even more than the original. “I hate to rain on everyone’s fun out here, but we need to get those fine backsides of yours moving if you’re going to finish the course.”

Sergeant Major Nash emerged from the newly built range shed carrying an opened wooden ammo crate bearing a cargo of freshly loaded magazines just in time to hear the remark. “What’s the rush, Murphy? The weather is cooperating, Colonel’s bottle o’ coffee ain’t close to runnin’ low, and we have plenty of ammo for the test.”

“That being the case, Sergeant Major, Captain Sherman just signaled me from Oscar Bravo. They've lost contact with the USS Osay as they ventured to the far side of the moon. Captain Sherman thought you fine looking folks might want to be in the TOC in case something went down.”

“That’s called burying the lede,” Bosa said flatly.

Nash huffed. “When they said back on Earth that I’d get to work with androids on this trip, I was thinking it would be more like that old Buck Rogers show or something out of the Battle Star remake. Either a hard bod analyst or hot bod killer terminator. I didn’t think I was going to get an upside-down mixture of both.”

“Don’t hate me because I’m a big-boned girl, Sergeant Major. I know how much you like it. Healthy at any weight.”

“Enough of that, Murphy,” Bosa said. He began giving the newly loaded magazines new homes on his battle armor. “Lost contacts on lunar dark are expected, but I need to know if you’ve got some indication of anything more serious.”

“Negative, Colonel,” Murphy answered. “Just reportin’ the facts as I pick ’em up off the net.”

Bosa frowned, feeling like this entire exchange was unnecessary… because it was. “Murph, if something more immediate comes up, Sherman knows how to tag us in the link. Let him know that we’ll be along after the test run is finished.”

“Consider it done, Colonel.”

“Anything else?” Bosa asked.

“You want some help acing this course?” Murphy asked.

“Let’s hope not. That would defeat the purpose.” Bosa whistled to the Model 33a Combat Security Mechs waiting on the other side of the range. The stolen, upgraded RUPAC robots appeared as armored skeletons with a visor split by a glowing red sensor stripe. Four of the machines broke from the security formation to join Bosa at the table.

The colonel nodded. “Let’s do it. Dennis, you got me?”

The sergeant major put down his own cup of coffee amid the variety of tools, spent shell boxes, and full rounds. He tossed a fist-sized micro drone into the air, releasing a mini-copter supported camera high over the trees. Three successive tosses more and the air above them hummed with the sound of rotors sending the machines to hover over their assigned stations in the newly minted Sergeant Darrow Close Engagement Training Course.

Liana took up her spot on Bosa’s flank, bringing her body into a patrol-ready stance. “Thank you for letting me do this with you, Colonel. Since taking over as Elder Osay and the craziness that is my new medical treatments, no one will let me do anything anymore.”

“You mean other than foiling a plot by the RUPAC to plant spies in our midst followed by riding along during a structure assault via VR,” Nash said from behind them. “I seem to remember somethin’ like that takin’ place.”

Liana’s glare over her shoulder preceded her helmet plate snapping into place. “NOA ready.”

“Hatchet ready!”

Nash broadcast through the links. “Three. Two. One. Execute Assault Course Alpha One.”

Bosa crept across the point target range and slithered into the opening for the CQB area. Three interconnected shoot houses dominated the landscape. Their modular construction made for multi-level, multipurpose training where those going through the course could create different structures readily able to accept live fire from a wide variety of weapons. At the tail end of the course, the androids had spent considerable time crafting a mockup of Amir’s various RUPAC science stations. A cave near the assault course was likewise set up so soldiers guarding or assaulting the RUPAC facilities could see firsthand what it was like to fight underground.

“Moving to building one,” Bosa announced.

“Covering,” Liana confirmed. She aimed her rifle at the shoot house opposite the one Bosa approached to cover potential threats from the structure and keep him from her line of fire.

Bosa crested to the main door with a Model 33 on his hip. The machine flared a sensor wire from its finger, then maneuvered around Bosa in a crouch to get to the seam in the door. While the android did its work, the colonel covered the last of the buildings in the row. A HUD window opened in his display, showing the fruit of the android's work. Two target silhouettes made to look like the USS Osay's AI, Ivan, floated at opposite ends of the room.

The colonel almost protested when the android took first place in the stack but swallowed his pride. This was his life now; being the force commander for an entire population meant your time was better spent maneuvering the rifles than using them. The android went first because that was its job.

“Two men entering structure one,” Bosa called through the link.

“Take it,” Liana said.

Stifling a laugh because the leader of the free world sounded more like a Ranger every day, Bosa kicked the door and moved clear from the line of fire. The bot entered and swept left along the wall, putting a burst into the enemy Ivan standing by a window. Bosa followed, dosing the remaining Ivan before a red beam shot from the static target over the colonel's left shoulder.

The commander held his hands up to his eyes, then pointed to a wall locker set beside the ventilated target. Bosa took two steps toward the fixture when the doors flew open. He jumped to the side where the laser just grazed his arm. Flashing pain radiated across his triceps, indicating an impact without breaking the plate there. The Model 33 sent a wave of ten-millimeter caseless rounds punching into the locker and tearing the Ivan to pieces.

“Liana, it's Bosa. Room one secure. Moving to room two. As a side note, mind the laser engagement system. If it hits you, your neural implant will make you feel a portion of the pain accordingly.”

Liana laughed into the comms. “I bet that's not in the brochure, as Sergeant Baldino might say.”

Bosa twisted a snap drone from his belt and tossed it into the adjoining room. The dumb camera bot flew into the target space, pulsing a signal read by Bosa's armor, into a 3D representation of their next target. Three enemy Ivans were set up with interlocking fields of fire on the entrance. Cycling a grenade from his pouch, he waited for the Thirty-Three to get behind him on the wall, and he threw in the flash bang. The training grenade pulsed a wave of light into the room, which would delay any shooting from the targets for ten seconds.

The duo poured into the space. Bosa shot up one of the targets, and the Thirty-Three moved around the newly printed table to take the ones that remained. Before the colonel could call 'structure secure,' the android pulled him away from his intended path close to the table. It shifted the furniture across the room and pointed to what appeared to be a seam in the floor.

Bosa toed his boot on the dusty planking, tracing a command wire deftly connected to the door. He nodded to his android wingman and clipped the wire, leaving enough remaining to secure it with the same amount of tension through the eye loop running it along the floor.

When the wire was set, the android vented the trap door in ticking movements so as to not set off any more trips. The machine pulled a black box from the floor and set it aside. It worked on the IED training box and then stacked at the edge of the final doorframe.

“Liana, this is Bosa. Second room not secure. Improvised explosive device found. Contact EOD androids. Hold position until secure.”

Sergeant Major Nash was playing the role of exercise observer-controller; he came into the link. “EOD is called and device rendered. You're good.”

“Roger that,” Bosa responded to Nash. He switched his link to Liana. “You are free to proceed to building two. Bosa covering.”

“Moving,” Liana acknowledged.

She and her Thirty-Three poured from their cover at the side of the course entrance, moving past Bosa and up to the second building. They repeated the colonel's entry procedure, taking out a target on the structure's long wall. “First room secure. Moving to secondary.” Liana froze several feet before the doorway as a voice shouted from the next room.

“I have a hostage! Do not come in here!” The voice had a heavy Chinese accent. More accurately, it was a recording of Brody faking a bad Chinese accent. Despite the construction crew trying to keep the long-time Osay defender out of the loop during the facility construction, he'd still managed to wrangle himself in.

Liana reached down to the floor and picked up a stone. She tested its weight and judged it to be the right size for what she needed. In her off hand, she flung the rock into the room toward the short wall. With rubberized coatings to keep ricochets to a minimum for soldier safety, the stone, rocketed by Liana's enhanced strength, bounced off several walls in a pattern that nearly saw it strike the target.

The Model 33 machine with her intuited the tactic and pried the corner of the doorframe to get in the room just enough to put its weapon to use. A single pulse from the M4D1-Alpha rifle sent a fusillade of rounds through the Ivan, leaving the hostage, a blank silhouette that just happened to have a smiling photograph of Jared Reach over its face, completely unharmed.

Liana and the android swept into the room, clearing corners and checking for false spaces just as Bosa and his bot had done in the first house.

“Two coming out,” Liana said.

“You sure that’s safe?” Bosa asked.

“Roger that. Hostiles eliminated. Oh. We need a contact team to deal with our hostage.” When Nash gave her the all-clear, she stripped the picture of her favorite US Marine, who also happened to be her intended, and stuffed the folded page into her armor. “Two coming out.”

“Come out,” Bosa said.

The android opened the door and immediately froze in place. Before Liana could speak, a wave of pain and nausea overcame her, forcing her to her knees. She gritted her teeth and shook her head, trying to clear a ringing in her ears as though she'd been in a blast.

“The door was trapped, ma'am,” Nash said. “Android took the blast, but you still felt some of the effects. Remain in place until Team one comes for you to assess mission status.”

“One coming in,” Bosa said. “You good?”

“Yes. I think so. My head hurts and I have a funny taste in my mouth,” Liana admitted. “I will give Doctor Roman and Alexa all the credit. They did a great job of linking our neural implants to make damage feel real.”

“It is pretty impressive, although I would have rather you checked for the traps than getting blown up,” Bosa said. “Also not crazy about the thought of those things being manipulated to induce that kind of pain if I’m being honest. Suppose RUPAC figures out how to get ahold of that feature.”

“Alexa says it can’t happen,” Nash interrupted via their link. “ENDEX, folks. That's all for today. We'll have the androids clean up and reset. If you don't mind, Captain Sherman sent a second note for you folks to head for the TOC.”

“How about stopping the ringing in my ears first,” Liana suggested.

Nash was apologetic. “Ma'am, I'm a simple man. That star wars stuff is way above my head. Maybe try and turn your implant off and back on again?”

* * *

Bosa walked into the TOC, drops of mud trailing from his Ranger Battle Armor boots. He set his helmet on a table and went back to the outer door to kick more of the muck from his boots.

“What did you think of the course, sir?” Captain Mario Sherman asked from his position at the center of the TOC.

“That run you did last week really cleaned up the place. The course presents difficulties and problems that we didn’t have to face clearing structures back home. This is going to be much better than glass house drills or clearing empty cabins outside the perimeter.”

Liana joined Bosa at the table, shelving some of her equally dirt-encrusted gear. “That was extremely difficult. Having a space where we can use live ammunition for more than just shooting down lanes makes things very intense. Sorry about dragging all the dirt into the TOC, Captain Sherman.”

“Not even a thing, ma’am. You can clean it up later.” Movement around the TOC ceased for a moment as everyone tried to fathom a captain telling the leader of the free world to grab a broom and get to work. “I’m joking, people,” Sherman announced to the room.

Liana smiled. “Well, seeing as how I’ve seen you sweeping the place at the end of your shifts…”

Sergeant major Nash scowled at this information. He asked with more than a bit of volume in his tone, “Why is a captain performing that function, sir?”

Sherman gave Liana a now-you’ve-done-it look. “Sergeant Major, it’s something I can do to ground me and remind me to notice the small details that might get overlooked. A dirty floor means more dust when the mud dries. That used to fry our laptops in Afghanistan and Australia. Stray coffee cup might get knocked over and ruin something we were working on. Any number of things. If I take a minute out of my day to straighten the place out, maybe someone will get motivated to follow my lead.”

“Alright. That’s pretty solid, sir,” Nash commented. “But have you seen it bear fruit?”

“On Earth, yes. And here, the last few weeks, someone’s been straightening the place out themselves. Don’t know who yet, but when I find out, I’m going to send ’em a mighty big thank you.”

“Probably the night shift,” Nash said.

“Don’t think so, Sarn’t Major. Night shift keeps thanking me for it. To business, though. The last few hours we’ve had Lieutenant Harmon passing over the moon in the USS Osay to sweep for a possible retrans station or maybe even a lunar CP. They’re trying some Crazy Ivan stuff to see if someone is sending a signal.”

Just then, Brody entered the room.

“What’s a Crazy Ivan?” Liana asked.

“I’m g-glad you asked that very special question, Elder Osay Citizen!” Brody sat down and patted his knee. Brody’s stomping throughout the base had become so commonplace around Camp Craiswell that no one gave any thought to him entering the TOC. “Come, sit on pappa Brody’s nuh-nuh-knee, and I w-will tell you the ways of the Mother Russia.”

Sherman frowned. “It’s like he has a sixth sense about when we’re talking about this stuff, somehow.”

Brody went on undeterred. “Russian captains sometimes turn suddenly to see if anyone’s behind them. We c-call it Cah-Razy Ivan. The only thing you can do is go dead, shut everything down, and make like a hole in the water.”

“Thank you, Brody—” Sherman began.

“You’re welcome, Citizen.”

“In fact, that was Harmon’s plan,” Sherman stated. “They were using a high elliptical orbit to sneak across the moon and take some candid shots when things went dead. A few minutes after they went radio down, we got these.”

The central monitor in the TOC flared into slow motion capture shots of a spaceship's worth of debris flashing by the camera. Sherman halted the image of a man in a RUPAC spacer uniform tumbling by in the rest of the junk. Further enhancing the image showed additional bodies splayed throughout the scene, numbering in the dozens from this particular shot.

“Oh,” exclaimed Brody. “S-siberian space popsicles. You l-love to see it!”

Liana gasped and covered her mouth at the sight of corpses frozen in space, moving like a meteor shower across the screen. The woman had seen bodies before. You couldn't live on Amir without the planet, or any of its facets, doing its level best to constantly shuffle who was in any part of the food chain. Dead bodies were just a thing in this part of the world. Seeing them in their ruptured repose as extreme lack of pressure burst their insides outside, before the icy void froze them there forever, was a new kind of horror she didn't expect.

“Yeah. You never really get over seeing something like that,” Sherman offered in a rare moment of outward compassion. It was never in dispute that he was supportive of everyone associated with his command, but he usually didn't demonstrate that by way of empathy. “It just goes to show you how man stepping out of his element can come back to bite him.”

“Thank you for that, Captain,” Liana said.

“I don’t understand,” Bosa said. “Did the Osay shoot something down?”

Sherman shook his head. “I can't be sure of anything at the moment since they were only checking in every few hours. But I imagine they’d have called that in if it happened. Still, it's sneakier if they kept the periscope down. We were in the middle of a scheduled signal track on their position when everything went dead.”

Bosa nodded, satisfied. “Keep me apprised of the situation, Captain. We'll get out of your hair and let you get back to it. Oh, and we'll take the biggun with us.”

Bosa motioned for Brody to leave.

“Una momento por-fa-c-colonel, sir,” Brody said as he slide stepped to Sherman. He gave a bow. “I b-believe you mentioned a reward. Ammunition will do fine.”

Sherman folded his arms over his chest. “For what?”

“Trying to w-weasel out of it, eh, Texas Ranger?” Brody produced a small notebook he’d labeled chore list. Inside was an account of all the cleanup he’d done inside the TOC. “This was supposed to be my tick-ticket back inside if you ever had the g-guts to throw me out for good like you always threaten. I’ve b-been cleaning up f-for weeks. But since you said you wanted to reward whoever was cleaning up after you, well, y-your move, Bobby Fischer. L-let’s see how grateful you really are.”

“Alright. Bow down again.”

Brody giggled in anticipation and bent his head forward. Sherman patted the war machine on the top of his helmet. “Thanks. Now get lost.”

The captain moved off to monitor his stations.

“N-no hug?” Brody called after him.

“I said I’d thank whoever did it. Don’t push it or I really will banish you, you giant lug nut.”

“F-fine!” Brody ripped up his notebook and let the confetti fall at his feet. “Let’s see how easily this gets c-cleaned up without old Brody around to do it. D-don't mess with the bull, young man. You'll get the horns.”

“Clean that up right now, Brody!” Sherman commanded. “Do it or you’re out of here.”

Brody paused and looked from Sherman to the paper scraps he’d left on the floor. “F-fine.” He hurriedly swept the scraps up into his massive hands and then pointed to Sherman and a surprised tech who stood nearby the captain. “Before I go, I just want you two to know s-something, alright? The supercop story… was working. Okay? It was working, and you guys just messed it up.”

The war machine stomped out the door in as dramatic an exit as possible.

“That will never get old,” Sherman said, chuckling softly to himself.

3

Jared Reach wiped the sweat away from his brow on his way out of the tunnel. The light breeze from outside hadn’t found its way deep into the rock to cool them from their endeavors, forcing those humans not wearing environmental armor to take frequent breaks for water and cool air. Back inside the shaft, only a few had access to the work-prolonging armor that allowed them to keep pace working side by side with automated machines to aid in the construction.

“Reach!”

The displaced civil affairs officer shielded his eyes from the sun in order to find the source of the familiar voice, Elizabeth Yuen. A member of his Military Contact Team, she beckoned for him to come over. Still dripping sweat, he arrived and was fussily deposited down onto a camp stool that sat amid equipment cases and field tables set up outside the shaft.

“What’s up?” Reach asked.

Yuen continued to fuss over the man. She draped a towel over his head. “Too much sun. Now… how goes the dig?”

“Thank you.” Reach sopped up as much sweat as he could before dropping the towel into his lap. “So this is the second one of these we’ve built. To be honest, I think it’s moving a lot faster this time; we worked out a lot of the bugs from before.” He looked around. “Where’s Bolton?”

Yuen searched beyond the covered pavilion they’d built as a refuge from the sun and dust of the dig site. The spot was set beside a Predator Hauler heavy shuttle and amid a myriad of heavy machinery stretched along the work area, ready to do their part in the project. Their team had widened a gaping chasm in the rock to use as an entry point to start the shaft. Yeun searched past the worksite where a few workers were cooling off in the shade, further down the hill toward the jungle’s ever creeping edge. “He’s off on another gathering mission. It’s funny, all these former RUPAC treat him as one of their own. Probably because he perpetually has a burr up his butt. Like them.”

Reach cut short the long drink from his bottle he’d been anticipating. “C’mon, he hasn’t been that bad.”

Yuen was about to make a case for her assessment when Reach’s head snapped toward the hillside. “Reach. Reach? Reach, what is it?” After several attempts to get his attention, she walked around the table to obstruct his view. “Jared?”

“Gunfire over the hill,” Reach answered, as though noticing her for the first time.

“How can you hear anything with the generators and machinery going inside the shaft?” Yuen asked.

Reach tapped the side of his head. “Upgrades. Someone’s coming.”

Katya Federova sprinted out from the shaft like a platier through a thicket. “Jared!” she shouted through the link, “this way!” The former RUPAC commander didn’t wait for them on her sprint over the hill. Each stride carried her on a bounding pace at ever increasing speed toward her objective.

Reach vaulted past Yuen and easily caught up with the sprinting RUPAC leader. The duo raced down the hill into the trees, then stopped to find a squad of men facing off against a pack of zaskonek. A single soldier had been dragged onto the ground where a lone lion dog pressed a taloned paw into the man’s chest. Its maw was open and growling as three prehensile tongues darted back and forth, tipped with their own independent mouths, like something out of Brody’s old space alien horror movies.

A few meters further, a dead zaskonek lay with scores of bullet holes littering the body. Apparently, the RUPAC soldiers had sprayed and prayed. Not quite the quality targeting Amir had seen since the Rangers arrived. That kind of accuracy also wouldn’t do their trapped friend any favors, and the RUPAC allies seemed to know it. The man lay there, too afraid to struggle beneath the surviving zaskonek as it growled at the others.

“I can hear four more in the trees just beyond that tangle,” Reach pushed to Katya through the link. “More in their warrens beneath us.”

“First this one,” she said. “You, or should I?”

“I’ve got it…”

Reach jumped past her. In response to his rush, the lion dog slammed its paw onto the downed man and sunk low like a hungry dog back home guarding its food. Some things seemed to be constant in the universe. Reach jerked to an abrupt stop as the creature darted all three tongues and the remaining front-facing paw in a swipe at him. The former Marine effortlessly dodged the lashing mouth tendrils and hopped over the creature’s swinging talons. The force put into the zakonek’s swing spun it to the side when it missed the evasive morsel.

Reach, enhanced by Doctor Roman’s technology to bring a human to his peak physical potential, finished his charge by tackling the lion dog about the neck. His strength and momentum carried the animal off its would-be meal and into the bushes beyond the clearing. Rapid fire snaps and gnashing of teeth accompanied the protesting growl of the nearly hundred kilo beast. Reach allowed their tumble to roll the predator over him until his feet caught fresh undergrowth. Like a track and field star throwing a shot put, he tossed the animal in a high arc past the tangle, into the forest beyond their line of sight.

Reach turned to sprint back to the others and jumped from his position over a log. Another zaskonek collided with the fallen trunk, shattering the rotted wood to chunky splinters. It slid to a halt just to his flank, shaking its head but forcing Reach to run deeper into the forest and away from his friends. Katya reported over implant that she was moving up the hill with the rest of the patrol, carrying the injured soldier. Seeing that they were heading for the safety of the camp, Reach sprinted along the line of the base of the hill, hoping to further draw the zaskonek away from the others. He threaded his way through the intense tangle of trees that lined the base of the terrain, jumping with the chaotic grace of a fildeema.

Two of the pack had taken to jumping from branch to branch in pursuit, while others stayed on the ground. Darting between vines, branches, and back to ground again, Reach kept his momentum forward while the pack tried to keep pace along the erratic track. The animals were fast, but Reach could stay ahead of them if he wanted to. The point, however, wasn’t to lead them several kilometers away from the others—the point was to eliminate the threat once and for all.

Reach slowed his pace just enough so that the pursuing beasts could claim some ground, then he grabbed an overhanging branch and used it to reverse his momentum and swing himself around to land right between the two closest pursuing monsters. The lead animal couldn’t stop in time to react to its prey turning predator. Reach heaved the zaskonek off its feet and swung the animal’s shoulder into the nearest tree. A yelp escaped the monster’s throat but was almost immediately cut off when Reach tossed it back the other direction and into its trailing pack mates.

Ready to take off again, Reach was caught off guard by the sudden screech of pain he heard from the other animals. Surely he hadn’t thrown the one that hard into them. But they were scattering with throbbing howls and yelps that echoed in the forest as the monsters darted away. One dove into a burrow at the base of a tree—Reach saw on the thing’s leg a searing burn wound.

Katya had joined the pursuit, along with four of the troopers she had angled to intercept Reach’s pursuit. They brandished weapons that looked like heavy combat assault shotguns with a giant lens where the muzzle should be. Every time a zaskonek tried to escape from the line of the barrel, which was causing the burn wherever it hit flesh, the troopers leveling the faintly humming weapons followed along the new track.

“Enough,” Katya announced, and the weapons went silent.

Delivered from their pain, the animals bounded away into the darkening forest.

Reach put his hands on his hips, softly panting from what was little more than the beginning of a light workout given his enhancements. “Thanks for the assist. I was trying to lead them away so you could get buttoned up.”

Katya nodded, then approached, looking him over. “You are well?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

She nodded again. With her helmet off, her breath smelled of stale coffee and cigarettes. “This is good. The rest of the workforce would probably kill me in my sleep if you weren’t here.”

Reach grimaced. “No. I’m sure they… appreciate you. Enough to follow you into combat after a pack of those things, right?”

Katya’s face was impassive. “Twice I called for help. Nothing—until I clarified it was you who needed the help, and then I had more volunteers than were useful. You have made quite the impression, apparently.”

“Well, I only missed Prom King by this much.” Reach pinched the air.

“I do not at all understand at all what that means but perceive it as a joke. I’m sure it is quite humorous. Now come. We would do best to leave in case the pack contains numbers that are too great for our disruptors.”

They crested the hill to the sound of light clapping from the work crew come to see them home. The workers swept over Reach, patting him on the back and cheering for his actions. He gave a shy wave and then took note of a lone RUPAC woman walking to Katya. The rough hands of the workers jostled Reach and slapped his shoulders as he watched this woman politely advance, say a few words he couldn’t make out, and shake the former Director’s hand.

“I appreciate it,” Reach said in address to the crowd, “but it’s getting dark. Thirty-Threes on perimeter. Everyone else to your ships to cover down for the night.” After waving the rest off, Reach returned to Katya. “What was that little powwow about?”

“You are not jealous that someone thanked me instead of heaping all the adulation on yourself, are you, Mr. Reach?”

“Yes, but only a little.”

Katya scoffed. “The man I pulled out was her friend. Apparently, they’ve been such since basic training as conscripts. They were both hired back as NCOs after their year was up. This is standard in our military.” She watched the woman hurry into one of the Predator Haulers in the trees at the top of the hill. “It must be a treasure to have such a friend.”

Reach tucked that last bit away. Mother RUPAC sounded melancholy, almost lamenting what was obviously a total lack of friends. He didn’t press her on it. The faraway sound of her voice while she watched the Predator Hauler’s back ramp close left little in the way of connective tissue for the conversation to continue. Reach moved from her side, making way for his teammates waiting for him along with their gear.

Katya called after him. “Reach. Thank you for helping me save that man.”

“We did it together. Thanks for not letting those lion dogs have me for a snack,” Jared returned. “I’m going to get a washcloth and a meal, and I’ll call you in about an hour.”

“Why not two? We’ve earned the break.”

* * *

Reach shoved the MRE spoon back into the bag and folded the plastic outer bag into itself to keep the trash closed. After rubbing the grime from his neck, he pulled over an equipment box to use as a table. From his seat in the cargo netting, he propped his feet up with a groan and let the rest of his newly cleaned and fed frame settle back.

Bolton had been watching him eat out of the corner of his eye, and with that task finished, immediately took to business. “Are we meeting with Katya?”

“Soon enough. I see you’re making progress with that,” Reach said, pointing to the drone in the man’s hands.

Bolton fiddled with the quad-copter aerial drone on the table. Something bent the drone’s struts and several of its propellers had been torn off. The former Osay district governor turned MCT member straightened the leg and was in the middle of the flight assembly to replace the rotor blades when he said, “We lost this thing just beyond the ridge. We found that pride of zaskonek. They’re going to have to be relocated if we want to keep sending out drones. They see them moving through the trees and snatch them out of the air.”

“Zaskonenk in the trees?” Reach asked. “That’s fun.”

“They can climb, Mr. Reach. Climb and jump. Usually just in pursuit of a fildeema or some similar snack.”

“Yeah, I knew. Just making conversation,” Reach said, starting on his second bottle of water. “Can you fix that thing?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Bolton declared. “My men from the patrol are finishing up the last part of the sweep before they roll back in for the night. Trading out the chips in the trap cams before we shut down. If we missed the zaskonek pride over the last few nights, I want to go over the footage on those chips to make sure we didn’t miss anything else.”

“Good plan,” Reach said. “You need help with anything?”

“Installing a personality in Bolton would be nice,” Yuen joked, entering the back of the hauler. “I just finished talking to our friends in the other shuttle. They’re extracting the injured man to Camp Craiswell shortly.”

“Today could have been a lot worse,” Reach noted. “We’re lucky our crew is mostly made up of former RUPAC soldiers used to dealing with the wildlife.”

“Unfortunately, it also means they’re used to dealing with our project director,” Bolton sneered. “Mother RUPAC. She was every bit the Regime director. Success meant you got to eat that day. Failure was met with scorn and abuse.”

Reach held up his hands at what was turning into another of Bolton’s frequent protests over his placing the former RUPAC director as the head of the security bunker project. “And since this project began, she does her inspections and lets the crew run themselves according to our way of doing things. Not RUPAC’s. Katya Federova knows she’s not liked, and she’s doing what she can to work through a messy situation.”

Yuen put her hand to her mouth to cover the awkward smile forming there. “Mother RUPAC. Who came up with such a name?”

The first strikes of Katya’s boots on the back of the ramp stopped the conversation cold. Her flight suit was drawn down and tied around her waist, showing off well-toned arms carrying a cargo box. She plodded to the Osay gathering, each footfall signaling that the weight in the box was burdening her. She stepped into the center of their gathering, dropping the cargo box beside the ones Reach and Bolton already had on the deck. “When I was a high value target for the Rangers, it was their name for me. It would seem it has stuck.”

Katya pried off the tough box’s top and sifted around her set of battle armor and weapons stored there. A moment later, she produced an unmarked bottle containing a clear liquid. With one hand firmly about the neck, she rummaged for something extra until she came free with a metallic tube. She twisted off the top and gave the cylinder a little shake to judge the contents. She counted out what looked to be shot glasses, made from a clear polymer. She dropped a glass in front of each of the Osay and poured the contents of the bottle to fill every cup while deftly lighting a cigarette.

Reach hadn’t expected any hospitality from the woman. Each of their interactions up to that point had been curt and businesslike. This was a welcomed change, although the alcohol might be a bit much seeing as they were all a little dehydrated. Reach hoped things would remain cordial despite Bolton’s naked suspicions and hostilities when it came to Mother RUPAC. “Thank you for this. We were hoping to see where we are on the project, Katya.”

Katya downed the contents of the cup before flipping the thimble over onto her finger to let the wet syrupy liquid run the length of her hand. She produced a tablet from the box, which she closed and turned lengthwise to produce a place to sit and as a spot for the device so everyone could see. Tapping the tablet’s screen, Katya displayed a schematic of a multi-level bunker system settled into the hill. Roughly seventy-five percent of the structure was filled in a solid color with the other twenty-five percent being just an outline. “With the coring machines and the android support, we should be mission complete on the latest bunker within the next two days. Tension tests as well as seismic shock variance readings conclude the site can sustain a direct impact from any number of high-orbit RUPAC weaponry, such as missiles or bunker busters. That includes nuclear. Alexa’s modification of our design on the subterranean fallout shelters far exceeds those designed by Werner’s people and is generations ahead of known GSSR designs.”

Reach nodded approvingly. “This gives us a fallback for our people in the event the Reclamation Fleet decides to shoot first or drop the hammer in person, second.” He let the contents of the cup slip past his teeth, immediately making a face as the potent liquor did its job.

The remainder of the team mimicked the action, with Yuen fanning her mouth after suffering the full effect. “What is this?”

“Vodka,” Katya said, flicking the ashes of her cigarette into her own cup. She winked at the former governor and added a sinister smile. “Turns little girls into powerful women and makes men hungry for our attention.”

“Be that as it may, why share it with us?” Bolton asked, not hiding his contempt.

Katya shrugged at the question. “Where before we just existed, now I am enjoying our shared purpose. And we were almost eaten today but avoided it. Victory should be celebrated, no matter how small.”

While his hard stare didn’t diminish, Bolton extended his cup to her. She topped it off and gestured to do the same for the rest of the team.

“I think from the look she’s giving you, Yuen prefers the native drink to Vodka. I’m good, too,” Reach said, returning the glasses to her.

She replaced her own and Yuen’s into the tube, while using Reach’s for another go at the bottle. “I am still not sure why Bosa and Roman wanted to go through with this. This fleet is coming, and by all accounts, they are going to wipe everything that isn’t them off the map. Why stay when the big ship you have gives you the ability to go anywhere?”

“A better question might be why you decided to stay to help when you’ve pointed out that this is a fool’s errand?” Yuen countered.

The former RUPAC leader eyed the woman up and down. “Ms. Yuen, if not for your Bosa and his doctor, my remains would have long been stripped clean by zaskonek. I owe your people. But more than that, if the leader of the advanced echelon making moves for the Reclaimers doesn’t bring his commanders my head, the Regime will just send more people after it. The only way to be free of them is to hurt them so badly they won’t return. Who better to make that happen than the Rangers?”

4

The pain of skin being folded against the hard bark of an overhead branch raced into Koen’s fingers with each successive pull-up. The former GSSR Ghost Guard Captain pulled himself up for another repetition, despite the sweat on his palms threatening to break his grip. The trembling was back. It had started with the rope pulls and was now making the current set of exercises more difficult than they should’ve been. True, Koen was no longer a young man, but he’d kept himself in the best shape he could under the circumstances. These tremors… they were complicating a workout that age had made hard enough. But with everything he was aiming for, he had no choice but to do what a Ghost does and work through it.

He continued his workout until an unexpected voice declared, “Damn. Even I don’t add the plates anymore.”

Koen dropped from the branch and swung around to face whoever had crept up on him in the underbrush. He saw a Ranger standing in composite plate armor, leg lifted up on a log to serve as a shelf for his helmet to rest on his thigh. The Ghost captain must have been working through things in his own head so much that he lost his grip on the outside world. How else could this man have snuck upon him?

“Who are you supposed to be?” Koen asked, still short of breath from his punishing routine.

“How about a little respect? Don’t tell me your mama taught you to greet somebody like that,” the Ranger barked.

The former Ghost unhitched the cargo strap that supported the twenty-five kilos of hull plating from his waist. “Sorry. I’ve been in my head for so long these last few weeks that I haven’t had the opportunity to deal with many people. I’m Aleksander Koen.”

“That I knew.” The armored Ranger stepped forward and took up Koen’s offered handshake. “Joel Soto. Nice to meet you.” He examined the tree branch Koen had been using as a pull-up bar. “Mind if I give it a try?”

Koen gestured to the strap. “Be my guest.”

Soto slipped into the strap and took a step up courtesy of a notch cut into the bark in order to reach the branch without jumping. Three pull-ups in, he took a moment to hang. “So you just come out here all by your lonesome and blow out reps? You ever go down there and be with your people?”

“Down there” was the fishing village the Ghosts had built before their operations to take over the various RUPAC research stations began. Before Koen’s people made contact with Camp Craiswell. In the distance, the various family members the Ghosts had brought with them moved about the beach front town, playing or working as was their wont.

The whole scene brightened Koen’s expression. “They gave me a cabin. I go there to avoid people at night when things wind down in the camp.”

“Why’s that?” Soto said through gritted teeth; he’d resumed his pull-ups.

“You know, that would be much easier if you stripped out of the armor and shed all of your gear first. Or does that armor assist your muscles?”

Soto laughed. “If I wanted easy, I would have stuck a syringe full of painkillers into my arm to end it all.”

Koen scowled at the man invading his privacy and his humble gym. There was fire and intensity in his eyes, the look of a killer ready to do what a killer does. “How dare you.”

Soto swung from the branch, plates and all, and landed feet from Koen with the heavy crash of metal slamming into the beach sand that had drifted to mix with the soil of the tree line. He stepped from the strap as though the thing knew to throw itself from his hips. Standing nose to nose like an old playground showdown, Soto glared back at the man. “Easy part was pulling the trigger on Federova, bro. You didn’t stick around to see that the job was done and now that bruja is working her way into my people. That’s noise we gotta quiet, now, you feel me? Then we get word that after your daughter’s funeral, you didn’t want to associate with nobody, and you went all loco in the hills. I’m here to eyeball you and make sure you ain’t lost your shit.”

For a minute that felt like it stretched on far longer than its sixty seconds, the two stared at each other. Twelve pull-ups under the weight of armor, ammunition, and weapons added to the hull plates, and Soto wasn’t even sweating. He was barely even flushed. Koen was the one to turn away first. He raised his chin, allowing the space between his sweat-soaked shirt and his nose to take in the fresh ocean breeze. Unlike Earth, the ocean here was more lime colored and made for an interesting contrast against the yellow sky.

“They all look at me with a combination of pity and disgust.” Koen dropped onto a fallen log that lay in the midst of his forest gym. He took a few drinks from a water bottle, poured the remains over his head, and then toweled off.

Soto stood silently as Koen examined the moist cloth in his hands, as if searching its folds to find directions on what to say next. Then…

“They all know I failed them. And that I failed my daughter. Kier knew I was close to the end. Had Federova already been dead, I might have been focused enough to have seen what was really going on. The GSSR had infected my team, and I couldn’t see it because I was too busy looking for my target.”

“You know what happened,” Soto said. “So don’t make the same mistake twice. From what Reach told me, you built a new family while trying to get revenge for your first one. Your second wife and daughter are dead now. You’re partially to blame for that.”

Koen growled in anger and moved aggressively into Soto’s personal space. The Ranger NCO caught the man and steadied them both against the momentum that sought to imbalance the pair and topple them over. Being held solidly in place in such a manner seemed to calm the Ghost. Koen scanned the forest, panting, still searching for answers.

“Don’t think I’m accusing you of anything.” Soto set Koen up straight and pushed him a step back. “I’m saying that the blame being held over your head is staying there because you’re keeping it there.”

Koen snarled. “Does this classroom psyche stuff work on your men? I can’t imagine it would…”

“Nah. If they ever get mopey like this, it only lasts until the next opportunity to send bullets downrange or bring a woman in close.”

Koen grunted.

“Look,” Soto continued. “I’m here to make sure you’re getting back into your lane because things are ramping up. We’re going to be putting you into play before too long. You feel me?”

“Surely the Reclamation Fleet is not yet here?” Koen asked.

“Nah, man. Ain’t even a blip on the screen yet. And we’ve been looking. One of ours got an itch in his panties to even go looking on the moon.” Soto watched as Koen looked away with narrowed eyes. “You know something about that?”

Koen shrugged. “I never had a hard list of all the research stations on Amir. But I heard rumors of a lunar station. We never received any feedback from scanning on the way in. With RUPAC, always so secretive, who truly knows?”

Soto motioned for the man to follow him. “Walk and talk, amigo. My boys and I want to discuss some things.”

“You’re using our camouflage. You have people with you?”

Soto laughed. “Nah, man. I don’t need your little light trick for my people to do what they do. We still old school on my block.” Soto opened his palm, showing both front and back to Koen. He gestured to someone unseen in the forest and a singular glowing red dot appeared in the center of Soto’s glove.

“Old school,” Koen whispered.

Soto led the Ghost away from his makeshift gym. The Ranger squad waited at the bottom of the trail leading to the beach. Beside them, a row of metallic rods, like a fence with no chain link between them, stood in a clearly defined perimeter around the fishing village.

“Friends of yours,” Koen stated flatly.

“What gave it away?”

“The haircuts.”

A fire team of Rangers waited on the beach with a squad of android Model-33a’s spread about them. They weren’t taking any measures to hide themselves; the people in the village went about their business as though they were just another facet of life on Amir. At certain points on the trail, Rangers coalesced out of the wood line to fall in behind Soto and Koen on their walk down to the beach. When they reached the pain-inducing perimeter fence, they had half a squad in front and one behind.

Soto walked to the front of the procession, leading the affair through the camp with the practiced ease of a combat zone savvy diplomat. He made his presence known without disrupting the village. The sound of crashing waves and clomp of boots on the surface of the wooden boardwalk over the sand echoed between the driftwood and printed shacks that dotted the beach. Soto’s Ranger detachment bypassed two village guards who smiled and ushered them into their target structure. The bulk of the plussed up squad then moved off into the bunker while Soto and another Ranger led Koen toward the ops center.

Unlike the last time they were here, several people now worked the various stations set up to run the camp and maintain communications with Der Freiheitsstein, which was what the locals called the bunker they’d set up to weather future attacks by the Reclamation Fleet. Kristopher Warner, the senior elder for the camp, looked up at the intrusion into his operations center. The annoyance quickly faded when he took note of the intruders.

He clapped arms with Soto, who nodded his approval and said, “Sorry about butting in again, but I had to get our guy.”

Kristopher was an immense man. Being near him in the TOC was to feel an inescapable crowding and a desire to step out of doors. “Here you are.” He slapped Koen on the shoulder before engulfing the man into a smothering bear hug. “You should be spending your time with us. It’s no good keeping all that grief to yourself.”

The old operator’s face creased with legitimate shame. “Good to see you, Kris.”

Kristopher whistled to a gray-haired woman on the other side of the center. “Join us in the other room. Mark? I need you to work the room for a bit.”

“Nah sicher,” the other man called out as the procession left the room.

The group wound through the halls until they came to an open room with a smattering of Rangers already seated about the place. A field table dominated the center of the room, with maps and tablets opened and running, and there was another table with pitchers of tea and coffee. The commotion of getting drinks and settling in worked its way through under threat of harassment from First Sergeant Soto.

“Alright, you mutts, settle down. The table is yours, Lieutenant Kinkade.”

“Thank you, First Sergeant. Captain Koen, I’m Travis Kinkade. I asked First Sergeant Soto to accompany us here because he has firsthand knowledge of the various active and inactive Research Stations on Amir.”

“That is quite the intelligence source,” Koen complimented, but it sounded wooden and stiff. Something to say for a man just going through the motions of life.

Kincade gave a curt nod. “Be that as it may, we have some things we’d like to show you to get your opinion on them.”

“My opinion?” Koen asked, searching Kristopher’s face and not bothering to hide his own perplexity. “I have been in the village since they released me from cryo. Day in and day out I waste away here thinking about the man who shot my daughter as a result of my actions. My understanding was that Bosa would turn me loose so I could deal with the Ghost team once and for all.”

Just as Soto looked to be rising with the purpose of adjusting their captive Ghost with a hot boot injection to someplace uncomfortable, Kinkade seized the initiative. “Captain Koen, I understand you were the senior leader for the original Ghost team on Amir and that you led all the people from Camp Werner out of the RUPAC. If our sources are correct, we are dealing with a well-documented strategy that the GSSR has used to great effect in the past to cleanse wayward colonies.

“No disrespect to the abilities of you and the teams you led, sir, but I have guns in the hands of able-bodied men that are just as skilled at violence and deception as you are. Therefore, I don’t need your trigger finger, but I do need your experience. We’ve given you some space in order to get your head right. But now is the time for you to either stay on the rails and help us get what we need, or to keep up the emo routine, in which case we’ll let you go back to your serene life of endless pull-ups and self-loathing and figure it out on our own.”

Koen contemplated the lieutenant’s word on the matter. The scolded soldier’s head bobbing up and down once was the only agreement Kinkade needed. He went onto his next question immediately, shifting his tone to business and forgetting entirely the dressing down he’d just delivered. “As commander to a Ghost Guard unit, you were privy to the protocols for the various research stations, correct?”

“I knew the basics,” Koen offered, “as well as the most active stations in the area after a month of reconnaissance. My primary goal was to find Station Five because it had the gear we needed to make things work.”

“And do you think the Ghost team working against us has updated that knowledge?”

Koen folded his arms. “What are you asking me, exactly, Lieutenant?”

Kinkade flipped open the cover on a tablet and set it in the center of the table. A hard set of eyes stared through the screen. A video feed of the tactical operations cell inside Camp Craiswell sprang to life on the screen, but Colonel Bosa took up most of the real estate on the camera. There was no doubt that the rest of the command staff was close by, if not listening in on the exchange.

“Good evening, Captain Koen,” Bosa said.

“Colonel. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Koen asked.

Bosa leaned over a table on his side of the screen. “I have it on good authority you’re going a bit stir crazy in your current accommodations. While I have more than a few people who think I should have you testing airlock seals on a faulty ship, I also have reason to believe you’re still valuable to us. With that being said, I have questions.”

“Colonel, whatever information I might have is months out of date by now.”

Bosa ignored the statement. “How many stations did you survey in your bid to find Station Five?”

Koen sighed. This was not getting him any closer to dealing with the man responsible for his daughter’s death, but neither did all his exercise and solitude. Upon waking up from cryogenic suspension, the Ghost captain learned the Osay used their powerful medical pods to put his cancer into remission. They’d also hit him with the news his daughter had been shot and killed during a gunfight to secure an escape for the colonists Koen had brought to Amir. In a single day, he’d regained his life but lost his reason to live it. His mind drifted across all the things he could have done differently as he searched for the answer to Bosa’s question.

“We surveyed four stations,” he said softly. “Three were active, and the last had suffered some sort of catastrophic failure.”

“At the failed facility, were there any signs of recent activity when you came upon it?”

“Colonel,” Koen interjected, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

Bosa shifted in the display, leaning into the camera to eclipse everything behind him. “Did it look as though someone had been there before you?”

“No. If there were any tracks or signs of life, they were long gone due to weather and animal activity. We had the run of the place. Not that we stayed there very long. Once we’d built the village near the sea, we pulled everyone out.”

Bosa nodded. He shifted his point of aim in the camera to look at Kinkade and Soto. “Spin him up.”

The Ranger company first sergeant raised a hand at Bosa. “Sir, we leaving that on him?” All eyes in the room drifted down as Soto pointed to an ankle bracelet fitted to the man’s leg.

“Yes. Why run a leash when you have an electric fence? See you back at Oscar Bravo. Bosa out.”

The Rangers immediately policed the room for trash and all the intel sources they’d brought with them. Soto worked his way around the organized chaos back to Koen. “We’re bringing you with us.”

Koen seemed unsure of what had happened and what was going on now. “What is happening? What are you looking for?”

“After your daughter put you into cryo, we snatched up a truck load of RUPAC in order to dominate the battle space you tricked us into. With that came intel. The GSSR set up Amir to be one giant Research facility where they scattered labs around the globe to keep them safe from each other. Some creature feature mutant gets free from Station Four? No problem, Station Two is kilometers away and has time to evacuate or rig a response. Reactor leak at Station Five? Easy. Give the word to Station Six for everyone to stay submerged.

“But not all the stations were active at the same time. The GSSR kept the personnel demands low by alternating the up-times for the stations. The science these pendejos were working could take years to develop, with additional years in travel time. They flipped the stations on- and off-line based on personnel rotations and supply runs. Everyone had cryo to make the whole system work.”

So far, Koen was following what Soto was laying out. It was his turn to add to the building staple of information. “We capitalized on the Regime not sending a supply ship with goods or a crew rotation for decades. They were content to let Amir fade away as their most expensive failure.”

“What do you mean?”

“The distance from Amir is significant to the rest of RUPAC space. A decade or more depending on how we line up with the rest of the star maps or whatever the pilots and AIs call it. With its remote location and threat of the Bangora, Amir was a no-fly zone for decades. We used that to our advantage in dealing with other units here. Seeing a Ghost Guard unit meant either we’d been sent to kill something or prep the place for Reclamation.”

“That makes sense,” Soto said.

The flurry of activity around them began to dissipate as the people in the room filed out. Kinkade signaled to Soto. “I’ll meet you outside, Top.”

The first sergeant continued his brief to the captured Ghost. “Our snitches tell us that the Ghost team kicking off the Reclamation is most likely using assets from the underwater Station Six to move around the planet undetected but are hanging their hats in the arctic at a germ research station where they plan on killing us by coughing on us. This is all stuff we have locked in as far as what we know. What we don’t have is a clear picture on what the fleet is, how they plan to deploy, and when we can expect them. If we take a straight run on the hit team, we could lose all that info and just have to blunder our way through it. Follow me.”

At Soto’s insistence, Koen followed the First Sergeant out of the room. They exited the bunker, making for the Ghost agent’s hut on the beach. “So in all of this, you risk potential injury for your people on the off chance the Ghost team might know something of value.”

“It’s all we got,” Soto said flatly.

“I disagree, First Sergeant. What ‘you got,’ is a RUPAC space capable warship with enough firepower to level a hemisphere. And don’t think that fact has escaped the Regime’s notice. So… why not just decimate the bases and be done with it?”

Soto turned on the man as they traversed the wooden planks across the sand. “Do you know what a hornet is?”

“Of course,” Koen said.

“When you take down a hornet’s nest, you have to get the whole thing.” Soto knife handed toward the man to hammer home the analogy. After a moment, he continued his trek to the cabin. “Leave any part of it, and that little bit will attract more hornets to rebuild what they lost. My dad did landscaping to pay his way through school back in the day. He’d had to clear a bunch of hives, and there was a process. Right time of day, kill the queens, scoop out all the comb, burn out the husk. That’s what our thing with the Ghosts is, man. They’re pests, and we got to get all of ’em.”

The group arrived at Koen’s bungalow. “Will I be allowed to return here when this is through?”

“That depends on you,” Soto said, opening the door for him. “If you’re helpful and don’t piss in the punch bowl, Bosa might clip that leash on your ankle. That’s if Nash doesn’t get to you first. He’s still a little dolorido after the guy from Kier’s crew tried to dust him.”

“I’ll hold to my part if it gets me within knife range of the man responsible for Johanna’s death.” Koen’s eyes burned with intensity. “It’s the only thing left that matters to me.”

“Don’t worry, slim, we’ll get you there. Meet us over by that side of the beach when you’re done.” Soto motioned for Kristopher, who’d been following them at a distance.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Kristopher said in his halting English. Switching to German, the new custodian of Werner Village closed the gap between himself and the fallen Ghost commander. “We’ve been putting off talking for some time.”

“We have,” Koen agreed. “I guess I could have been better at handling my own pain.”

“You could have been better at a lot of things. Johanna was my sister, and I wasn’t there for her because she made me stay with you.”

I never asked for that, Koen nearly said, but he shoved the urge away. While Kristopher was a man well into his prime, the voice accusing him of Johanna's death was that of a boy he’d known in another life. Standing before the man his stepson had become, Keon felt he had no right to ask for absolution.

“I wish I could have made better choices, Kristopher. I was blinded by pain, and loss. I can’t fix what I’ve done.”

“No. You can’t,” Kristopher said, his voice low and nearly drowned out by the sounds of the beach.

Koen flinched, as though he wanted to put his hand on his stepson’s shoulder but thought better of it. “What I can do is make this place safe for you. I’m a terrible father. That’s my debt to pay. At least let me try to settle it with what I’m best at.”

“And will you return when it’s done?”

Koen nodded, keeping Kristopher out of the corner of his eye. “When it’s all done. If I have a place to come back to.”

Kristopher started to speak but kept his tongue in check for something more reserved. “I never understood why you left all those years ago. But I do now. Make it back, and we’ll see if there’s anything left of our family.”

Kristopher dragged the man into a bone crushing hug. They separated, then Koen gave a nod and turned onto the beach to join the Rangers, unable to acknowledge in words the open door to the place that had been his home, his sanctuary, and his prison.

5

Reach stepped off the side hatch on the Predator Hauler and onto an airfield filled with the sound of many more engines.

“Toss that next piece here,” he said to the loadmaster and then caught the incoming C-Bag from inside the craft, set it up it as the leadoff to a cargo stack, and proceeded to catch the next item in the work chain continuing from inside the ship. Just as things got going, a message prompt snapped to the side of his HUD.

Reach kept receiving the cargo as he answered Liana’s implant communication. A picture of Liana’s face transformed from an icon into a live video feed from her office. “Why, Madame Osay, I am honored to be the recipient of a call from your resplendent self. How may I assist you today?”

“Why, Mr. Reach, if I didn’t know you better, I would say that due to your peculiar manner of speech, you might have been bitten by a saraka bug.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Reach used his best zombie voice, which always seemed to make Liana laugh. Distracted by her smile, he nearly took one of the thrown duffel bags to the face. “You in session all morning?”

“Yesterday, the colonel and I tested the new Close Engagement Training Course,” Liana said. “It was amazing. When the system links to your implant, it feels nearly as bad to be shot as real life.”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Reach said, keeping careful not to grunt as another bag slammed into his solar plexus.

“The standard mode includes pop-up targets that can be tailored to simulations. It was very much fun, except now I have to pay the stripper.”

That time Reach did take a bag to the face. Yuen, who stood nearby to help stacking the equipment, covered her mouth and laughed.

“Hilarious,” Reach said to her.

To Liana, he said, “I think you mean, time to pay the piper.”

Liana shrugged. “I thought that’s what it was, but after to speaking with PFC Lawler, I wasn’t so sure. He went on and on about how single mothers on Earth were just trying to make a living, and the expression just clicked. And Murphy didn’t correct me.”

“Don’t… don’t ever listen to Lawler. Okay. We’re going to have to talk to Doctor Roman and see if we can get Murphy an update. Tell me what today’s session is about.”

“There is a great dissension about the security shelters.”

Reach put his hand up toward the hatch, halting the loadmaster from tossing more bags. Despite his best efforts at working and talking to Liana, he and Yuen were falling behind. The problem turned short-lived as Brody stepped up to the craft.

“Liana, hold on. Brody just showed up.”

“L-look at this mess. D-don’t worry, though. Because Brody is here. I’ll get these bags stacked.”

The war machine didn’t wait for approval but quickly started reorganizing the bags in a whir of arms and mechanical body parts that warned both Reach and Yuen that they’d best stand back a few steps and watch from a safe distance.

“W-wait a minute? I s-someone transmitting?”

“I’m speaking to Liana over the link, Brody.”

“I still got it!” The android flashed Reach a thumbs-up. “Now move or you’ll bust up my stack-acking.”

Brody was stacking… something. But it didn’t look like the standard pyramids set up on the carts for easy transport across the tarmac. In fact, the bags and crates seemed to be balancing on the edge of the carts for some reason.

“Where are all the bags?” Brody called. “I n-need more bags!”

Reach had barely made it out of the way before his artificial buddy launched himself into the Predator Hauler, causing the ship to rock slightly from side to side. And then the remaining seabags began to shoot out of the bay with the speed of a machine gun. The former Marine tried using his enhanced reflexes to catch the high velocity sacks but finally had to step aside and let them fall.

That seemed to suit Brody who jumped down from the Hauler with a thud and bean to hurriedly stack the bags and crates.

“Brody,” Reach said, “What are you doing… exactly?”

“If you build it, they will c-come,” Brody whispered.

“Liana, are you seeing this?” Reach cast the image to her via his implant.

“It looks like a… castle?”

“It’s a f-fort,” Brody said proudly. “I thought maybe you and I could, uh, hang out in it for a while, Reach.”

Reach paused, dumbstruck. “Uh…”

“Go the distance,” Brody whispered. “Ease his p-pain.”

“Brody, pal, I mean… yeah. That would be great. It’s just… I got orders. Stuff that can’t wait. Another time, okay?

Brody straightened up. “Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say, too. Tell you what, Maverick, you’ll g-get your RIO when you get to your ship. And if you d-don’t, give me a call. I’ll fly with you.”

Brody nodded to his friend and walked off the flight line.

“Um, what was that all about?” Reach asked Liana.

Liana rested her chin into her palms. “Since you left to establish the security shelters, he’s been a little lost. You’re one of the few people he gets along with both on and off mission. He spends time with Lawler, but he and other members of Team Prowler are still recovering after their ordeal with the RUPAC. Plus Doctor Roman still isn’t quite the same as he was before. I think he just wants to spend some time with you, Reach.”

Reach looked over to the makeshift fort of duffel bags and equipment. Yuen was already downstacking it, amused the way she always seemed to be. “That’s… oddly endearing.”

Liana shrugged. “If you can squeeze in some quality time, I think it would go a long way with him. But not at the expense of seeing me mind you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Liana.”

“Good. You better not. Now, back to the matter at hand. The governors think we’re going to need more than three shelters if we get into another fight with the RUPAC. They want at least one for each district.”

“Makes sense, but we can only build them so fast,” Reach said. His shoulders slumped, as though his successes in building the shelters over the last few weeks were all for naught. It didn’t matter how far you went in the galaxy. Get enough people together, and you’ll find they’re hard to satisfy. “At the same time, we’ve crunched the numbers on this. Three shelters is more than we need. The point isn’t for everyone to have their own room, it’s for everyone to be safe when the bombs start dropping.”

Liana winked at him through the implant feed. “There’s an elders’ meeting this morning. I’d love to see you, and I could use your help in convincing them.”

Reach went back to his zombie impression and held his arms stiffly in front of him. “Yes, Mistress.”

The feed ended with Liana giggling. However, Bolton, who emerged from the Predator Hauler carrying the last of the equipment boxes, let it show on his face that he didn’t find Reach’s impression much more than odd. “Your android friend missed a few pieces in his mad rush. And you seem to have lost something as well in that head of yours, Mr. Reach.”

“Sorry,” Reach said, his face flushing. “I was talking with Liana. That’s… a thing we do… you know what? Not important. Let’s get these stacked up properly so we can get under some shade.”

“I suppose that makes more sense,” Bolton said after examining Reach a moment longer. “How is Elder Craiswell?”

“Flustered,” Reach answered. “The people are having a tough time with the shelters.”

Bolton scowled and shook his head. “They’ve all seen RUPAC use bombs against us in the past. Now we have a way to stay safe. Why fight against that?”

Reach hitched his thumb toward the center of the camp. “Because there are three of them.”

“And there are four districts,” Yuen noted, picking up the problem adeptly.

“Ancestors be merciful, really?” Bolton’s exasperated tone came complete with a full set of hand gestures to match. “Are you going to the session?”

“Liana asked me to, so yes.”

“Do you want us to come with you?” asked Luen.

Bolton nodded emphatically.

“I think that’s a great idea.” Reach agreed.

* * *

Reach slipped into the side entrance and held the door open for Yuen and Bolton to sneak in with him. The hall was packed with the elders sitting in a semi-circle facing the various district governors who sat across a long table to address the gallery. The conversation seemed genteel enough to suggest that maybe the order of business had already concluded until Reach saw Osay militiamen moving to the various exits to secure them.

The young soldier had started to rush forward when he saw the three of them standing just inside of the doorway. Reach motioned him forward and was glad the kid did so cautiously with his hand on his pistol grip. He stood in a ready posture, well out of reach from the trio. Maybe this was overkill, but the kid was doing his job.

“State your business,” the soldier said just loud enough to hear but not loud enough to disrupt the meeting behind him. From the look in his eyes, Reach could see that the kid recognized them and was maybe a little worried he was getting himself into trouble by being so formal.

Reach went along without insisting on any special privileges his local celebrity status might garner. “Jared Reach, and this is former Governors Yuen and Bolton. We’re here to watch the proceedings at Elder Craiswell’s request. She already knows we’re here.”

The skeptical guard took a step back and angled himself to give as much room as possible should he need to draw his weapon. Okay. Maybe that was a bit much. “How is it that you haven’t been announced if she knows that you’re here?”

Reach tapped the side of his head. “We have the Ranger link. I’ve asked Elder Craiswell to tap her head just like I did now when you turn around.”

The soldier put his back against the wall and turned to face the seated elders. Without looking, Liana tapped her temple, just as Reach had done. Recovering himself to a less aggressive bearing, the soldier motioned the trio away from the door so he could secure it. After a quick check on the portal, he called into the sergeant of the guard over the radio.

“Maybe just one cup of coffee next time you have duty,” Yuen said as she passed the soldier by.

“Yes, that was a bit severe,” Bolton noted.

“It was good training.” Reach countered. “Maybe a little too by the book, but the kid did it how he was trained to do it.”

Bolton scoffed. “Almost everyone knows who we are. They definitely know who you are. You were almost married to the Elder Osay.”

“He almost became the Elder Osay,” Yuen jokingly corrected.

Bolton huffed. “Exactly. Why be so aggressive?”

The truth was, Reach was wondering the same thing. Training was all fine and well, and Reach wasn’t about to throw the kid under the bus, but he seemed way too wound up for a simple council meeting. He looked ahead to the elders and saw grim looks on their faces as well, despite the consistent tone of respectful side conversations happening in the void of any official business.

“I think we’re about to find out,” Reach said.

“Elders, I now conclude our recess in order to bring our attention to the matters concerning the Reclamation fleet.” In lieu of standing at the podium centered between the seated elders, Liana strode to the middle of the semi-circle to speak on everyone’s level. “Per our last gathering, we had agreed that having a plan to protect our citizens in case of RUPAC attack was a prudent thing to do. We suffered greatly when they used mortars and ground assaults to attack us in our home. While we rebuilt and created a stronger camp, we cannot continue to take the safety of our citizens for granted.”

Murmurs of agreement drifted across the meeting hall. Small gestures of approval went hand in hand with side conversations flaring up before dying away completely.

“We stayed here because this is our home. Not because the Boone brought modern technology to help us to conquer Amir, but because before the Rangers and before the RUPAC… this was our home. We fought the land to survive when all of our technology except Brody failed, and we fought the RUPAC when they tried to conquer us for daring to exist. Through all of this, we remained Osay.”

This next pause was met without chatter. The people were eager to hear where Liana was going.

“A crew of capable workers are completing the final security shelter as we speak. The plan’s initial conception is nearly complete. However, your governors had some concerns that the elders brought to me. Therefore, we are opening to the floor to facilitate questions and discussion on the matter. Begin.”

Chairs creaked as people turned this way or that to see who had matters to bring before the elders. Whispered conversations struck up in earnest as groups guessed which among them would first stand in front of the elders to air their interests.

A man dressed in the field gear of the farmers on base stood to take position across from Liana. She gestured for him to come closer. “Thank you, Governor Havesh. Please.”

“Thank you, Elder Craiswell. Thank you, Elders. My understanding is that these bunkers were built for us to hide from RUPAC weapons that could destroy our camp in a single volley. If that’s the case, why are we only using these as shelters and not a permanent home?”

Liana gestured to the other elders. “Elder Sorrano?”

Back in the recess of the hall away from the gathering, Reach leaned in and whispered to Bolton. “I don’t recognize that guy.”

“Sorrano is the Builder of Stones. His job was to ensure the protection of the old camps. Keep the walls sound and the hatches secure. That way when the sun went down, we needn’t worry about creatures dragging us from our beds.”

Sorrano, a wild haired man, cleared his throat. “Governor Havesh, this is a good question you ask. For it should be known the why of what we ask of you. I present to you, our man of the militia. Yes. You, boy. Come here.”

The soldier who had verified Reach’s right to be in the meeting was standing behind the trio. The kid nervously pointed to himself hard enough for them to hear him tap his body armor.

Sorrano smiled. “Yes, you come here.”

Cupping his hands so his voice was heard across the room, the militiaman shouted, “I apologize that I cannot, Elder. I am supposed to guard the door.”

Approving nods joined curt laughter as governors took note of the boy. He was wiry, built like the average Osay teenager of sixteen, but bricked in size due to wearing a helmet and armor, and carrying a weapon and combat load fitting for an infantryman. The Osay respected strength and those that mind their elders, with the young man demonstrating both as he declined an offer to move forward.

“Bah!” Sorrano shouted, his voice still playful. “I see Governor Bolton hiding in the back. He can secure your door.”

Bolton nodded to the guard, who sheepishly walked through the hall to stand beside the Governor Havesh, a tall man who appeared built for hard labor. While many in the hall showed up in the nicest clothing they could muster, Havesh looked as though he’d walked straight in from the field to talk about the various matters of the day. The soldier’s trim, clean figure stood in contrast to the governor’s swarthy frame.

Sorrano waved a finger at the trooper. “Remove your armor and helmet. Put them just there near the governor. Now take your pistol belt and thread it over the pile. Good. Good. Now take the rifle and place it through the straps of your armor. Take a step back to give the governor room. Good man.” Sorrano’s voice was raspy and sonorous, easily drifting through the room with the grace of a showman putting on a performance for the crowd. “If you would be so kind, Governor Havesh? Please, lift the bundle.”

Havesh easily hefted the equipment, but his face betrayed surprise. It was clearly heavier than he thought, for the man examined the scrawny guard’s frame with newfound admiration.

“Governor, our men wear this protection when on duty to keep them safe from the weapons of the enemy. In much the same fashion, we built these bunkers to protect those who would not actively be engaged in the fighting. We would not expect our soldiers to live in this armor day in and out with no hope of coming free from its weight. Would you ask differently of our people?”

“You make a good point, Elder,” Havesh agreed. “I believe I see the analogy.”

“Do you, Governor?” Sorrano waved his hand for the soldier to recover his gear and his post before continuing. “Because I believe there are others among your people who put you up to this line of questioning. Are there not more in your district with hopes that you’d open the door for those who wish to return to our initial plan to shelter in the various RUPAC observation bunkers should we be attacked?”

Liana nodded and addressed this issue directly. “Because the bunkers were considerably smaller, we would be much more spread out, which would make the logistics of food, medicine, and other basic supplies for all of our people difficult under combat conditions.”

Reach accepted a message from Liana through the link and then motioned for Bolton and Yuen to follow him. “Guys, let’s walk up. The boss wants us at the front of the class for show and tell.”

Bolton cleared his throat. “These analogies of yours are strange. Between show and tell, and your dog and pony shows, it would be much better if you and the Rangers just said what you meant. Besides, I have guard duty.”

“C’mon, you two,” Yuen said, taking the arms of both men to lead them to the front. “The kid is already hurrying back half-dressed. He didn’t want to be up there another second.”

Liana beamed at Reach as he led the small procession. She gestured to them and said, “Governor Havesh, may I present to you Mr. Jared Reach, and Governors Yuen and Bolton.”

The announcement induced waves of applause through the room. News of their successes on the other side of the planet had spread quickly, making Yuen and Bolton hometown heroes to those in the know. Reach had fought a Bangora hand to hand as well as saved many Osay militia lives during the raids on RUPAC compounds. Having them in the room lent clout to whatever it was they were going to speak on. The only way they could have drawn a bigger ovation was if Brody was with them, too.

Havesh took each of their hands and dipped his head in a show of respect. Bolton and Yuen were well acquainted with the dusty governor from their own time running districts, but Reach was surprised when he took the man’s grip. Havesh nearly crumbled his hand in a vice-like shake, his palm covered in calluses from a life lived hard on Amir. Whoever this man was, Reach felt he’d taken the hard path through all of it.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Mr. Reach.”

“You as well, Governor.”

Sorrano cleared his throat to seize the room’s attention. “Mr. Bolton, it was originally your idea to decentralize the districts into the forest bunkers for safety, was it not?” When the former governor nodded, the elder continued. “Can you explain for us now why you think these new shelters are a better option and what your current line of thinking is?”

Bolton nodded, hesitated for a moment, and then flashed an apologetic look at Havesh. “While working as a governor, I had many soldiers living in my district. I would listen to their exploits and ask questions as to why something was done a certain way. After our exchanges, I figured that in the event of a major attack, we split our community into groups to weather out the fighting in the safety of the stone bunkers. Breaking into small groups kept our communities mobile in the event we had to move while giving us the opportunity to use the outposts left by the RUPAC.”

Sorrano held up a finger. “I’d like to interject something briefly. During Bolton’s planning, he spoke with many of us who informed him of the dark raids from forty years ago. We used a similar tactic to evade the RUPAC that took over our camp, taking shelter in the hills and caves cresting the valley. After a time, the RUPAC left because the saraka poisoned those Brody hadn’t destroyed. They didn’t know how to protect against their venom and suffered great losses as a result.”

Bolton continued from where Sorrano left off. “That’s correct. And in speaking with our elders who lived those days and learned their lessons, we gathered that breaking into those groups presented a problem with supplies. Many of our own starved or got sick because they couldn’t get word or goods fast enough to the communities. Seeing the bunker built by the Ghosts presented us with a better option.”

“So what is the answer to the original question then?” Havesh asked. It didn’t have the fervor that he’d asked his original question with. Reach sensed that they were getting through, at least to the governor.

Bolton nodded readily. “The smaller bunkers would have to be supplied frequently, which increases the risk of the RUPAC finding and destroying them. We’ve built the shelters into the environment with elements of the other research stations. Once inside, we could last for months before having to leave for resupply. But the eventual goal is to return to Camp Craiswell because we shouldn’t have to hide in the ground. We shouldn’t be denied fresh air or clear, clean water. The shelters give us the time to catch our breath and bring the fight to the enemy knowing our families are safe.”

Havesh half turned away from Bolton. “What do you think, Mr. Reach? Since the new bunkers are safer, shouldn’t we build four so that every district has their own?”

Reach gave a slight cough into his fist, buying himself some time after being put on the spot. He looked to Liana, who gave such an imperceptible nod that he wasn’t sure she’d done it at all. After a few heartbeats, he said, “Governor, much like the smaller compounds, building more shelters increases their exposure and makes defending them more difficult. Three shelters is sufficient for our current numbers, plus an additional generation. Should our population grow, a fourth shelter would be prudent, but there are other things that need our resources and attention now.”

After a silent moment hung between them, a woman stood from the governors. “I have something to say.”

Liana called her forward to speak. “Governor Beltran would like to address us. Is this a separate matter, or are you speaking in line with Governor Havesh?”

“In line, Osay.” Governor Beltran was middle aged but fit. Her sun-bleached hair was wrapped in a long braid down the center of her back that was threaded with ribbons throughout. She wore what passed for a fine cloak that ended over well-worn work boots where a polish had been applied to try and hide the daily abuse they most likely received.

“I have nothing more to say at the moment,” Havesh said and then stepped aside.

Reach observed the woman’s posture and her bearing. She didn’t appear nervous or anxious like a lot of speakers might be during a meeting like this. Probably part of why she was chosen as a governor to begin with. Her demeanor struck him as one who knew what hard times looked like because she’d weathered them before. Her hands folded in front of her weren’t smooth and dainty like more than a few techs—male and female alike—that worked at the computer stations monitoring drones or camp security.

“Governors, Elders, citizens. I’m sure I am not alone when I say our lives are better for the Boone arriving. Where before I was fixing camp stoves and hammering out new pots for our community, this morning I helped Osay put new rigging cables in a spaceship. Our people are fixing ships instead of living inside their decaying hulks. I am proud of what we have accomplished, but I leave the people from my district to work on a thruster array in order to speak on matters of district rivalry.”

Governor Beltran moved to better address the gallery, and in so doing stood near Reach. “The districts exist to make our home easier to manage. The shelters now exist to protect our home. If we break into three versus four, then so be it. There is a district pride that needs to be squelched, for I know many of the governors—and their supporters—want to see an unchallenged command. Command implies leading a group to fight. Governor Havesh, how much time do you have fighting against the RUPAC?”

Shocked by the question from a fellow governor, Havesh took a moment to respond. “Much like many of our governors, I worked the walls before the Rangers came.”

“So you shot at men drunk on saraka poison, and when the real RUPAC would show, withdrew with the others to let Brody handle it. The same as the rest of us did.”

A ripple of laughter went through the crowd.

Liana held up her hand to interject, “Governor Beltran, please refrain from insults.”

“I did not insult him, Elder Craiswell. I didn’t say anything that was untrue, and I said we all let Brody handle it, not just him. All who remember those times know that this is how it was. It does not diminish the governor’s work, my work, or your father’s work, Osay.”

Liana nodded curtly. “Please proceed.”

“We have soldiers trained to fight the RUPAC. But like those in my district learning from the Boone mechanics, I want to learn to do it myself. We need to listen and learn before we can lead in such areas. That means putting our egos aside so we can learn the work of a soldier and then do the work of commanding a district.” The demure woman nodded in thanks for her time on the floor and took her seat.

Havesh looked to Bolton. The slight heft to Havesh’s brow told anyone close enough to read his face that he’d just been given a punch to the gut. “Thank you for answering my questions,” he said to the elders and then took his seat after a reverent nod to Governor Beltran.

“Are there further questions or matters to discuss?” Liana asked. When no one answered, she circled the backs of the elder’s chairs and hovered her hand over the shoulder of each before she passed onto the next. When no more business seemed forthcoming, Liana clapped twice and made an upward sweeping motion with both hands.

The council was adjourned.

Remaining in their seats, the elders held all conversation until the room was clear. Reach and his team were about to depart when Elder Rubenking stopped them.

“Why so quick to escape when you were so quick to intrude, eh?” the aged elder rasped and then laughed at his own joke. He was soon joined by the other collected elders.

Reach was willing to laugh along with them, but Liana saw the jab as something needing her intervention. “I thought it prudent to have them here in the event the discussion got… heated.”

“I meant no disrespect to your beloved, Osay,” Rubenking said with a wink. “Forgive a man for poking a little fun at the Osay’s favorite Walker Texas Ranger. Who, by the way, seems to be doing quite well speaking our language now.”

Reach stepped forward to take the Elder’s hand by the wrist. “Like Governor Beltran said, you have to listen before you can lead.”

6

“How’d you sleep, handsome?”

Reach frowned and gave Murph the side-eye. The android armor system was leaning against one of the trees marking the entrance to the Sergeant Darrow Close Engagement Training Center. Evidently, Liana had posted the android to wait for her.

“I slept just fine, thank you, Murph. You?”

“I can’t sleep with all the tension between us. Don’t try to deny, honey. I just can’t quit you, even if you are a kept man.”

An exasperated sigh accompanied the eye roll that nearly sheared off his eyebrows. “Do I look like a kept man to you?”

“Mmmm…,” Murphy replied. “I’ve got a mental image that says yes, if you wanna see it.”

Reach pushed past the ornery android. “Not on your life, you synthetic home-wrecker.”

“Wish that one upon a star and it might come true… if you’re lucky.”

“I hate that thing,” Reach mumbled and then walked into Staff Sergeant Mike Tran. Seeing the leader of Team Junkyard was a welcomed relief. “Hey, Sergeant Tran. Are your boys running the squad through the course?”

“Lieutenant. No, sir. Vance and the rest of the team are here to pick up the Wolverines while I set up our special guests.”

Reach reflexively winced at being called Lieutenant. Prior to the Amir mission, Reach had left behind a life with Marine Corps Civil Affairs to take the Amir mission, once his expertise in the field brought him to Doctor Roman’s attention. As a way to engender him to the extremely tribal Rangers, Roman had used their time in cryo to program them to be familiar with Reach. Finding out he wasn’t a Ranger officer meant little to them when they saw him lead troops at the business end of a trigger.

“Hey, you know this guy?” Reach asked Tran.

The normally stoic team sergeant cracked a smile, clasped his Ranger brother Masau by the wrist, and drew him into a hug. “How you doing, Sarn’t T?”

“Wondering how I let my best sniper get nabbed into a life of cookies and ice cream.”

“Don’t forget the cake,” Masau said, winking to his former boss.

It was then that Liana appeared. “It’s rare to see Rangers smile when they’re not trying to blow something up.”

“Guilty, Madame Osay,” Masau admitted. He held out a massive fist.

Liana obliged with a fist-bump, her already smaller hands seeming tiny by comparison. “Thank you for coming. I’m glad we could coordinate this with the training event. Sergeant Dawson believes that the center will become an integral part in training those Osay looking to become Rangers. Even if some of them fail and go back to the rifle platoons in the militia, my hope is that they bring some of the skills and work ethic back with them.”

After interrupting the gathering with a whistle, Reach motioned across the firing range at the arriving platoon. A section of ten men broke away from the platoon, leading four androids from where the rest of the unit assembled. They ran past the range shed toward the waiting Predator Hauler set just off the course. A single trooper jogged, then stopped to launch a crisp salute at Reach.

Reach returned the gesture and stretched out to take the woman’s arm by the wrist. “Sergeant Gan. Good to see you. Thank you for taking this mission.”

“It has to be done, and we are the most believable for the part,” the woman growled. “Give us a minute to load up, and we’ll be out of your way.”

Reach let the former RUPAC NCO walk past while standing clear for the rest of the Wolverine platoon to load the shuttle. It was going to be a full bird for the ride out until the pilot started their touch and goes, a series of landings to drop personnel and equipment.

Liana looked longingly at the departing flight. She wanted to go, but knew that the responsibilities she’d accepted prevented such a thing from happening. She thought back to her father, who held the mantle of Elder Osay before her. Toward the end of his life, he’d used subordinates in the field acting on his behalf so he could stay in the camp. He was an older man and a hard life on Amir had taken its toll. In his prime, he’d been through his adventures and done all one could do to survive the harsh conditions on the planet. She wanted very much to be like him. She wanted more than just waving her hand over some argument concerning where to plant the next penu crop.

Reach noticed the look. “You thinkin’ of coming along?”

“Thinking, yes. But doing… afraid not.”

“Hey. You’re the leader of the free world. Who’s gonna order you otherwise?”

Liana smiled, but shook her head. “I am. The Osay don’t need me getting shot down in a Predator Hauler just because I miss going out beyond the camp and getting mixed up in things.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want you getting shot out of the sky,” Reach agreed. “Can’t risk that with you. Unlike me.”

“I don’t want you getting shot out of the sky, either.”

Reach leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, then gestured for the remainder of his team to board the shuttle. “I’ll ask the pilot to fly low, just in case.”

Liana waved and headed back to the world she had chosen.

Holding onto the ramp, Reach stayed in place to watch his girl disappear as the pulsing engines drove the Predator Hauler over the trees. He was happy for the rush of air in the opened cargo bay of the Predator Hauler. The sweet smells of sailing over the forest and mountains of Amir mixed with the intense scent of thrusters burning white hot on the outside of the craft. Heat plumes raced away from the engines making the tableau just outside the ramp a blurry affair.

After walking to the nose of the cargo bay, Reach knelt down to the table surrounded by his team. Sergeant Tran, Bolton, Yuen, and Masau worked over a laminated map. Reach switched to heads-up display in the neural link to provide an altered reality overlay to the space. Glowing holographic indicators and terrain features danced across the physical map. His teammates were able to manipulate them at will.

“How’s Osay Craiswell?” Yuen asked almost sheepishly.

“Not easy for a hunter to stop hunting like she did,” Reach admitted.

“At least she doesn’t have to worry about being shot at,” Bolton quipped. “I’d gladly trade places with her if I could. She could even keep the enhancements for all I care.”

Reach gave a half-smile and shook his head. “Yeah, well, careful what you wish for, Bolton. I, for one, would rather get shot than deal with all the political junk she has to deal with every day.”

Reach took his attention from the map to address the incoming comms indicators floating at the edge of his vision. He pushed his thoughts into the link, the miracle device translating into speech as clear as if he had been standing in a quiet room. “Colonel Bosa. Good to see you again, sir. I see you have the gang with you.”

Holographic representations of the command staff, minus Liana, took up positions around the improvised maps station. Dr. Roman, Sherman, and Alexa all stood in rapt attention.

“Don’t let us interrupt, Sergeant Tran,” Sherman said. “We’re here to observe, although Doctor Roman and Alexa will be on hand after the briefing to assist in the mission and run the new drones through their paces.”

Tran turned his back on the holographic riders. “Solid copy, sir. Based on information taken from Mother RUPAC and confirmed through other sources, we’ve determined the research facilities work along an up/down cycle. Whenever a station goes online, it sends an operations ping through the RUPAC network. It bounces back with the ID-tags of all operational stations as well as which station has the highest-ranking leader. Just to avoid any petty power struggles, something we know from experience RUPAC suffers from.”

“Make it abundantly clear who has the final say on matters,” Bolton observed. “I can think of a few governors who could benefit from that. To the matter: do we have a clear picture of what stations are online?”

“We had access to the RUPAC network for all of seven minutes before Station Six went offline,” Doctor Roman said. He reached to his face for his phantom glasses and thrust his hands back into his pockets as he finished answering Bolton’s question. “In my book, Mr. Bolton, that is as good as a giant flag that says ‘here we are.’ Of course, he already had good hunches that was where they were staying as we didn’t see hide nor hair of them after our last little encounter, but that network blackout seemed to confirm it.”

Bolton frowned. “So they know that we know they are there. But what other stations are transmitting?”

“Well now, I have a variety of algorithms addressing that question, most of which are fed input from—”

Alexa’s hologram stepped forward toward the cargo box being used as a tabletop for the map. She stopped Roman from going into a science-laden tirade about the network architecture of such things and gave a straightforward answer. “Mr. Bolton, we currently have active pings on stations Two, Four, and Five, all of which we control. Stations One and Six are operational as well, however they are currently working through Ghost network architecture after we used our system to link to theirs.”

“Explain to me what a Ghost network is,” Bolton requested.

Alexa nodded, then produced another hologram in between her hands. The outline of a building formed in the air, showing a foyer and five other rooms. “You notice an intruder trying to come into your home and decide to give them an easy way in.” The door leading to the foyer opened in the spectral image. The three doors leading out of the room all turned red. Doors leading away from outside rooms turned green and showed small figures moving about the structure, while jumping figures remained trapped in the entrance. “You grant the main entry control point so the intruder has free access to it while securing the rest of the house. The entry point is devised such that the intruders think they’re in the main structure, when in fact they are just in a partition secluded away from all the important rooms.”

“Thank you, Alexa. That is very helpful,” Bolton said.

Tran pointed to a section on the map and tapped his finger nearby. “As I was saying, our asset indicates Station Twelve has not come up for air in over a decade. That is highly unusual. The AI should have at least sent a data burst to the active stations once per year on the state of the cryo pods, energy sources… stuff like that.”

Tran manipulated the augmented reality display to bring up a hologram of what the outside of Station Twelve should look like. A house sitting atop a mountain gave the impression of a fortified structure. Satellite images flared to the side of the floating depiction, showing a dirt road leading up to the building. Small ramparts to the side of the road showed a partially opened gate between the two security towers.

“Well,” Reach said, “it definitely looks like a supervillain’s lair.”

Tran didn’t so much as crack a smile. “We’re going to slip into this compound and ascertain what sent it offline. With the assets we have, we’ll clean the place up and then use it to lure Rykov’s Ghosts in to take a look.”

Roman tapped his finger on his chin. “This facility is somewhat away from our holdings. It is also non-operational, I believe? I’m not seeing where your confidence that the Ghosts would be lured in is coming from.”

“Then let me help you.” Tran pointed down to the revolving image. “The primary reason is because Station One is bio-medical research. That means chem warfare stuff. They already have the ability to manufacture the antivirals needed to protect themselves from any doomsday germ they cook, but not in an endless supply. They need this place. Station Twelve was minted for pharmaceutical research. If it goes online, the Ghosts could have access to all sorts of gear, supplies, and ingredients that would let them ramp up their ability to manufacture either cause or cure. Then there’s the people. Until the fleet shows up, Rykov has a few Ghosts and about fifty lunkheads he managed to make off with. He’s going to want to fold more boots into his group to aid in the operations against us.”

Reach saw at once what Tran was going for. “We’re going to flip the house.”

Tran pointed to his nose and then to Reach. “Alright, folks. We have ten minutes before we’re in the street. Doctor Roman, Alexa, we have your Direct Action Mechs ready for you to assume control. And as a side note, you should have named them anything but that.”

Alexa’s hologram took on a perplexed look. “Whatever do you mean, Sergeant Tran?”

“I’m sure the current new model android name is fine, Alexa,” Reach said through a chuckle. “Just get in the DAM drone. Where are those DAM things anyway? Does anyone know why I can’t load into the DAM thing?”

Bosa shook his head in disapproval. “I’m sorry, Doctor. We work with twelve-year-olds.”

“No problem, Alan. I’m changing the designation as we speak,” Roman said. “From now on, the new designation will be JS and then the unit identification number.”

“DAM shame,” said Reach.

Being the guy who wanted everything for his after-action report, Tran asked, “What does it stand for, Doc?”

“Jared Sucks,” Roman said, his face stoic but his voice egging on the punch line like he was delivering a dad joke.

The laughter drifted through the command group as Sergeant Tran motioned for everyone to get their gear together. Alexa and Roman disappeared into the JS model androids. Those at the TOC retreated to their screens so as not to distract troopers ready to jump from the hauler's ramp into the forest below. The soldiers and MCT not stuffing their consciousness into an automaton worked contently to remove tie downs and webbing from gear in anticipation of slipping the leash once again as dogs of war on the OC's behalf.

The Predator Hauler made its first touchdown ten klicks out from Station Twelve. The craft set down just long enough for the landing struts to press into their shock absorbers, then the entire Wolverine Platoon, minus the special contingent, offloaded at a near run. With the shout of “last man,” from… the last man, the Predator jumped into the air and raced toward its next drop off point against the objective.

On board, Sergeant Gan waved to the pilot for a short circle of the second drop point. The Predator Hauler didn’t need to be any more of a target than its bulky frame already was. This time the struts never even hit the ground. Gan’s ten-man team tossed out their rucks and in short order followed the gear on a two meter drop to the ground, looking deceptively like a RUPAC force as they landed amid the pine needle encrusted wood line. The crew rolled into their landings, recovered their gear, and vanished into the forest.

With the last man out, the hauler scratched the hull against the trees as it took to the sky again toward their final objective. It was Reach’s turn next, and the former Marine and his company were lined up at the back ramp, ready to jump at the closest insertion point to the derelict station.

“Best thing about being the last one out,” Reach started over the link, “is that if we land like a sack of wet garbage, we're the only ones to see it.”

“Unless they recover our implant recordings,” Masau joked. “Then everyone can share.”

7

The Predator Hauler had dropped Reach and Tran’s team five clicks south of the mountain, with the Rangers and MCT operators riding two by two on enhanced ATVs. Reach and the four Jared Sucks robots ran beside the vehicle as they wound their way into the elevation. After ditching the bikes, Tran ran an impromptu class on how to move in the terrain so as not to leave a trail for any potential enemy to follow.

Before setting off on the trek, the crew had stowed ATVs at their base of the mountain beneath camouflaged shelters built from netting and local plant life. Anyone could walk up and take one for a ride, but the team was less concerned with the vehicles being stolen than they were of having them give away their position.

The trees before them shifted, groaning and creaking as they swayed in the light, cool breeze on this side of the mountain. While the dark purplish pine needles on the trees covered the mountain, those that had fallen from them blanketed the ground in a deep auburn carpet, indicating the life cycle of Amir’s coniferous trees covering the ridge. Closer to the road, a collection of tan stalks bearing tufts of white spiky petals waved in time with the larger trunks.

“Stay away from those flowers,” Tran said through the link. “They’ll give away your position if you walk through them.”

Tran’s recon team moved through the Amir’s pine forest on their stalk up the escarpment. They kept free of the road to avoid leaving tracks along the clay-like muddy path.

Nearly to the RUPAC Research station, the leader’s recon team spread out into a security halt to watch the path.

“Quick heads-up,” Masau said through the link. “No zaskonek at this elevation, but they do have a native type of wild cat. It’s called a shovast.”

“Some of our great grandparents spoke of them,” Yuen offered. “Much bigger than a zaskonek. But less of a threat because of how remote they are. And because they are solitary. My great grandfather came to this area to look for saraka bugs and saw a shovast. It captured a dogabo and dragged it up the mountain for a meal.”

“Saraka? Why would you come looking for those?” Masau asked. “Stay out too late and you’ll find ‘em easy enough.”

“They were RUPAC,” Yuen said. “Their superiors used to distill the venom and give it to the soldiers. It made them both aggressive and fearless. And it needed to. No one would mess with a shovast otherwise.”

Reach thought about the scene that Yuen had described. A dogabo was a type of Amiri ram-headed sheep that wandered the outskirts of where the Rangers had originally encountered the Osay. Skittish and fleet-footed, the dogabo also contained a paralytic enzyme that secreted into its fur. While the Osay had assured the animals were edible to any who’d asked them, and somewhat of a delicacy at that, they had to be handled carefully or the enzyme would lace into the meat and make anyone who consumed it violently ill.

Just another bit of fun that came with living on Amir, the Australia of planets.

If the shovast was capable of ignoring the paralytic and could just haul an animal that usually topped the scales at over 300 pounds away, then there was a legitimate chance it could also shrug away the pain-inducing effect of the sonic disruptors they carried to keep the wildlife at bay without giving away their position with weapons fire.

“Standard Columbus Safety brief,” Tran said.

“I’m not familiar with that one,” Yuen said.

“The long and short of it is, if the animals don’t mess with you, don’t mess with them,” Reach confirmed.

“Why would it be any other way?” Bolton asked.

The question hung unanswered. Ahead of them, Tran removed several drones from his pack. They were roughly the length of his hand, like tiny dragonflies made of composites with IR LED indicators. He arranged four of the minuscule machines with their tails between the fingers on one hand. “Alexa, are you fully loaded into JS-1 yet?”

“Yes, Sergeant Tran. I am here and ready to take the drones on your go.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Tran rocked back onto his rear foot and brought up his lead in a swept back crouch. He pitched forward and threw the drones toward the trail where they’d have the room to deploy their rotors and take flight.

The devices tumbled away at a height of twenty feet off the ground when the gyroscopic sensors filtered the wash of information from being thrown through their CPU. The auto-stabilizer linked to the gyros flared to life, igniting the tiny rotors and righting the copters to hover ten feet from the mud. The spinning blades keeping the tiny drones aloft were nearly silent, barely a hum over the creaking branches and the sway of the white frocked grasses ahead of them. They sped off in four directions on a chaotic course through the alien pine forest.

“Drones are away, Sergeant Tran,” declared Alexa. “Transmitting feed to the team net. View triggers are on the lower left side of the HUD.”

“Thank you, Alexa. Doctor Roman, what’s your status?”

“The doctor is not yet with us, Sergeant Tran. His JS model is still on auto-function,” Alexa said. “He is working with Liana to ready her for a loading test in the new drones.”

“Okay. I want him on board for when we go into the building in case we run into any weird tech. Is there a problem with NOA in regard to the remote?”

Alexa spoke assuredly at a normal volume, which was in contrast to the humans when speaking through the link; they still affected hushed voices through the link, even though they didn’t have to. “While the Model-33 security mech we confiscated from Station Five resemble any other remote piloted drone, VR or otherwise, our enhanced Model 35 contains special sensor packages that might be disorienting to a biologic. She is adapting well and should load any minute.”

Tran grunted. “Okay. While we wait, gimme the lowdown on our terrain. What does your AI brain see?”

Alexa reported on what the drones spied. “At our current elevation, most of the lower land animals commonly found around Camp Craiswell will not be present. Heat blooms coming from drone three suggests something is using a crevasse at point-seven-eight kilometers from here as a lair. I am viewing a consistent disruption in the plant matter covering the forest floor to suggest much more in the way of predatory animal activity.”

Reach slid against a tree, surveying the mountainous climb ahead of them. “So, are you saying that you can only detect whatever is sleeping off its full belly in the cave, but the evidence in the woods says there’s more than what you see?”

“That is correct, Jared,” Alexa answered.

Masau grunted through the comms. “How's about something more than a hint? Because right now I’m stressin’ that it’s a Bangora.”

The video in the HUD snatched one of the drone feeds, pushing it out to the team. The machine buzzed over one treetop clearing, directing its camera to the pine strewn covered floor below. The pine needles had been swept into clumps at the end of drag marks, moving first in straight lines, then erratic diagonal slashes, followed by returning to a more direct course.

“Strange tracks. Wounded animal maybe?” Reach asked.

Masau highlighted the steps in the HUD. “No, sir. The gait pattern is wrong. Whatever made these is bipedal.”

“Too small for fildeema.”

Masau magnified the drone image in his own HUD. “Yeah. Those drag patterns are too long, too. What concerns me are these patterns right here.”

Incandescent circles formed over portions of the terrain in everyone’s display. Bolton was first to remark on the screen grabs. “I don’t see what you are pointing to, Sergeant.”

“They’re impact depressions. See the way the pine needles in this area clump together and then there’s a drag pattern? That suggests something dropping from the trees and then jumping back up. Which would put the drop point here, and if they jump in the directions of the drag marks, they should have landed in this clump of trees right here. But there’s no sign of disturbance in either.”

The team was considering Masau’s observations when another possibility was presented in the link. “Diane, the d-determination as to whether your home is haunted is not very easy.”

“Okay, who let the toaster out of the kitchen?” Tran growled.

“I am sorry, Sergeant Tran,” Alexa commented. “Brody must have gone to the lab where Doctor Roman has the interface open for Liana. Would you like me to remove him?”

“Belay that order, Alexa. I... What I m-meant to say was it might very well be a p-poltergeist intrusion instead of a classic haunting.”

Yuen and Bolton’s faces brightened; the Osay never tired of Brody. Sergeant Tran, however, was less pleased with the interruption. “Kick him from the unit, Alexa.”

“N-no! This is serious. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... M-mass hysteria—"

“Uplink secure,” Alexa reported, winking out Brody’s exclamations. “Sergeant Tran, Doctor Roman is uploading now, with Liana right behind him.”

“Roger. How about Sherman?”

“His skin is being rendered.”

“His what?” Tran barked.

“A demonstration might be quicker than an explanation. Please observe. I’m putting a glowing ball above my head in the augmented reality display being projected over your real vision by your implants.” The ball appeared, slightly bobbing in time with a glowing light pulse to help the team to see Alexa’s drone in the security halt. “Applying AR-Skin-01.”

The JS robot Alexa piloted shimmered in their vision and was then replaced by a very real representation of the android’s normal physical body. She was dressed in a flight-suit with a set of light body armor. A halo around her head with a set of HUD adapted glasses and a microphone descending to her mouth completed the ensemble.

“What’s with the headset?” Reach asked.

“Psychologically, seeing us in operations gear will lessen the time between questions and answers because your mind will accept we are physically with you versus the alternative. The same for Sherman who will be wearing their armor in the augmented display.”

Roman’s avatar materialized next. The doctor wore gear similar to Alexa. He brightened at his surroundings when he reached up and felt his avatar had glasses. “Standard security halt. I can see everyone, and this sensor suite is magnificent if I do say so, myself. Very well done, Alexa.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Sergeant Tran, we can continue if we are ready.”

Tran surveyed the members of the recon team to watch for any signs in Alexa and Roman’s remote control bodies that could give away their position.

Tran motioned for them to move forward, crawling toward the summit where the RUPAC built the station. “Alexa, keep an eye out for more of those tracks. Until we have a clear view of what made them, everyone should be tight slings until we’re someplace more secure.”

“Of course, Sergeant Tran.”

The team wound their way through the terrain, careful to disturb as little of the underbrush as possible on their movement to the building. For a time, the mountain folded in on itself, creating a shelf that brought them relief from the climb. As is typical of Amir, the mountain requested payment for the respite in the form of several steep inclines that led away from the flat ground to the much higher elevations they were trying to reach. It was either work the climb before them or descend back down and find a less treacherous one.

Reach wasn’t worried about the Rangers making their way. Their particular flavor of soldier had a knack for climbing ingrained from day one due to some method of training, if not the sheer number of pull-ups they were required to do on day zero. He was more concerned with Bolton and Yuen. While they both had been expert foragers back before the Boone made contact with the Osay proper, they were typically not laden down with the types of body armor, weapons, and ammunition they carried now.

The group rolled through the forest toward a stovepipe in the terrain, a split in the rock where a climber could press against both sides to shimmy his way up to the top. Bolton slipped during his press near the top and slid away from the crack to tumble into the expanse toward the ground. JS-4 caught him by his pack, holding him until he stopped reaching out for handholds that weren’t there.

“Thank you, whoever is piloting this unit,” Bolton said before grimacing at the rocky landing he’d been saved from.

The bot’s exterior wavered until it was replaced by Liana smiling down at the recovered climber. “Mr. Bolton. Glad to catch you after just dropping by.”

Bolton smiled. “How very Brody of you, Osay.”

Liana shifted her position, maneuvering to the rock so Bolton could get a grip on the handholds above her. Clamoring back to the point where he’d fallen, he managed to get a much better grip on the handhold he needed to advance. Reach stretched down to him and hoisted the former governor out of the terrain feature with no more effort than lifting a backpack off the ground.

“Thank you, Mr. Reach. I overestimated my ability on that last stretch. Perhaps Doctor Roman will allow me to get in on the upgrade you so frequently take advantage of.”

Roman gleefully chimed into the comms. “I’d gladly put you in the front of the line, Mr. Bolton, but I wonder if you would be willing to give up your new position for the time it would take?”

“Keep that chatter on the back channel,” Tran said. “Team channel is for working the team.”

“Yes, yes of course,” said Roman.

The last of the bots broke from the stovepipe, hauling its bulk from the shaft. Its robotic voice was pleasant but insistent when it made its report. “Sergeant Tran, all elements are free of the obstacle with no injuries and all equipment accounted for.”

Tran set the team to move, winding from the road again to put them on the back side of the mountain away from the easiest approach to the structure. He called for another halt, switching to a private direct message to both Yuen and Bolton. “Quick check in: How are you holding up?”

“Is there a problem with our performance, Sergeant Tran?” Bolton asked between panting breaths. His gruff response left little doubt he wasn’t happy with what the recon leader’s question suggested.

“It’s not a dig, Bolton. You don’t have our training and you’re not remote piloting a drone running a power plant. I’m just checking on my people because that’s what we do.”

Bolton thought about the man’s response. He looked toward the stovepipe for a moment. “I don’t mean to snap, Sergeant. It’s sometimes difficult for me to take being at the bottom of the ladder when normally, I am the one to pull others along the last few rungs.”

“No worries. You’re both here because you're good at what you do. No one disputes that. But out here, this is my house and since you’re under my roof, it falls to me to make sure you’re good.”

“Good here,” Bolton said sheepishly.

“Ready to move, Sergeant. Thank you.” Yuen agreed.

Tran took his lead at the center of the patrol column, watching as the last of the Model 35s transformed into Captain Sherman. “You’re late, sir.”

“Traffic. What did I miss?” Sherman asked.

Tran tapped his armored gauntlet against that of the drone. It seemed no different as if he’d done it to the man himself, as the hologram depicted the Ranger company commander in his armor. “Last leg of the climb, sir. We’re going to move into an overwatch position and camp out to observe.”

“Solid copy, Sarn’t T. Make it happen.”

The patrol group maneuvered through row after row of thick trunks along the majestic purple shrouded trees. The color was off shade from what the Earthlings were used to, but not enough that the Boone’s Rangers didn’t feel a sense of home in the quiet creaking of the pine tree forest. Cresting the lip of a hill, the Rangers crawled close to the edge to overlook the RUPAC station.

Masau removed a fiber-optic cable from his pack and attached it to the battle board linked to the center of the plate armor on his chest. The end of the cable flexed and swiveled in response to the Ranger marksmen taking control from his board. He pressed the cable into a fallen tree branch, slowly advancing the wire along the dead wood until it looked like nothing more than a vine.

“Alexa, can we recall the drones and situate them at these points?” Masau marked four grid locations along the terrain for the flying cameras to occupy.”

“Moving them now, Sergeant,” she acknowledged.

Hearing the drones were set, Tran broadcast into the link. “Okay, everyone hunker down and camo up. We’re going to be here until morning on overwatch. We’re eyes on target until sundown and then we’ll be fifty percent security in two hours shifts to wait out the dark. Questions? Concerns?”

“Only that personnel remote piloting the Model-35s via their implants should periodically eject from the interface to take a break,” Alexa said. “The sensory input by the new drones is extensive.”

Roman waved his hand as though he were pointing to a blackboard in a classroom. “She is correct, Sergeant. If my calculations are correct, small exposures to the interface should be the rule while getting acclimated to the drones due to the machines operating through hyper-intuitive sensory nodes. Two to four hours on, two off until the pilot has roughly one hundred hours under their belt should be sufficient to acclimate the pilots. Myself included.”

“Good to know,” Tran acknowledged. “We can use that to swap in more pilots so that we have the drones manned at all times. If you don’t mind me asking, what’s so different about these sensory nodes that they require more time to get accustomed?”

“In essence, Michael,” Roman said in his best professor’s voice, “this particular model of drone has a sensor package that displays its environment in 360 degrees which the link translates to the pilot. Unlike the Model-33s, which see the same way but the link filters so you view things like you would normally, along with warnings of things it senses behind, around, and above you, in this model you see as the drone sees. Imagine suddenly having eyes like a common housefly—the effect would take some getting used to!”

“It’s a little jarring,” Liana agreed. “But the weird part is the feedback from the machine. I can feel the ground under me while I stand here. The air around you is cold, and I feel it as if I was there. It’s strange because the system is also making it so it doesn’t distract me. It’s really hard to explain.”

“First patrol brief I felt was written in science fiction,” Tran admitted. “And that’s saying something.”

During their questions and answers session over the link, Masau crawled away to a point several meters below them. He stalked through the forest taking cautious steps through the underbrush while scanning trees up and down. “Not picking up any sensor signals on this side of the hill, Sarn’t T. No trip wires or hidden cameras either. Still, we should restrict our movements to this area of the hill just to be safe.”

“You going to plant our own cams where the drones are?” Tran asked.

“Yes, Sarn’t. Doing it now. Wire cams with the battery backups will run a lot longer than those copter drones. If I move slick and slow, I should have it rigged before sundown.”

Tran looked over the recon team concealing themselves into the side of the mountain. He was glad for the environmental controls in Doctor Roman’s upgraded Ranger armor. On a mountainside at 3400 meters in elevation, it was bound to get cold during the night, and the Rangers had packed light. The only ones he had to worry about were the two civvies, Yuen and Bolton. They wore plate carriers with light packs on their backs. Before leaving, Reach had assured the NCO they were wearing under-suits designed by Roman beneath their flight-style pullovers. The rubbery, lightly armored second skin regulated body temperature and water regulation to keep the wearer comfortable in the most rigorous terrain. They should be fine, but Tran worried.

That meant he’d continue to mother hen them, though. They weren’t his people, and that came with an expectation that at some point, they were prone to failure.

8

Reach flipped through the direct message icons in his HUD, sending his thoughts via the link. “So, is this really what we have to do to spend any time together now?”

Liana laughed. “I mean, we can talk whenever we want through the link… but you’re right. We both get distracted working our separate tasks. It’s better to be here on a mountain beside you, where all I have to do is watch this security feed and gab with my bestie.”

“’Bestie?’ Where did you hear that word?” Jared asked. “Seriously, what Ranger was going around using that word? I wanna know.”

He laughed at his own joke, his laughter mixing with Liana’s own chuckling.

“I’m pretty sure I heard it from you, macho man.”

Reach smiled. Even through a cybernetic interface that linked them through a complicated network, her laughter was like magic to him.

“But if you must know, it wasn’t a Ranger at all who got me saying it. It was Sergeant Hassen. I mean, she’s pretty much my adopted sister now.”

“And she called the leader of the free world her bestie?” Reach asked. “Bold. When are you gonna break the bad news to her that I’m your bestie, though?”

“Wait. Can’t you have more than one bestie?” Liana searched the pine needle strewn ground for an answer to her own question. “I thought there could be degrees, or it doesn’t even make sense. Bestie who is a woman. Bestie who is a robot—that’s Brody of course. And then you. My…”

Reach waited for her to finish the sentence. Liana seemed torn over how to classify him. He felt the same way. Before the pause could get awkward, he changed the subject. “You know, the reason we never get a chance to have those balcony chats is because of all the Osay stuff you keep doing. How long until the Elders pick up their fair share?”

“They’re doing a lot, Jared. And the real reason we don’t get time together is because Bosa keeps sending you on missions while I’m stuck at Camp Craiswell.”

“You’re not stuck there now,” Reach said, trying to assure her.

“But I am,” Liana huffed. “I spend a little time here, testing out the drone, before I have to eject and walk straight into a late-night meeting with the elders.”

Reach held his tongue. Before Liana had been named as her father’s successor to lead her people, she’d been a scout, hunter, and protector for their camp. She’d ranged well outside their colony’s protection and made contact with the Boone’s crew, eventually bringing them back to her people. She’d been on more than one mission with the Rangers, and in doing so had cemented herself as a competent fighter in their eyes. It was times like this when the weight of her office felt like a burden to her rather than the amazing opportunity she never expected.

And there was another underlying truth that neither of them was quick to bring up. Reach and Liana were the two most capable fighters in the colony, with Brody and Alexa being obvious exceptions. Yes, they were performing important tasks, but there was a part of Reach that wondered whether he’d be better leaving off the civil affairs items he’d initially come to Amir to facilitate and just go full… Commando, as Brody would say.

He made sure Liana heard his sigh. “Our fight with the RUPAC can’t last forever. We’ll make it through this and then we can spend all the time we want together.”

Liana was silent. At first Reach thought she was thinking, but her appearance soon made it clear she was listening; her head was cocked to one side as though straining for something she could barely hear. “Wait.”

Jared closed his eyes. Although his enhanced senses were not as powerful as the Model-35s, they were astounding by human standards. He soon heard it, too. “There’s something moving against the sound of the trees. Too rhythmic. Like someone walking a few paces and stopping.”

“I hear it, too,” Liana confirmed. She sent an alert message to Sergeant Tran through the link.

“I’m on the other side of the hill, and my ears aren’t as good as either of yours,” Tran said.

“I have been monitoring the sound as well,” Alexa said. “Whatever it is, it’s predatory.”

“How do you know?” Reach asked. “Besides this is Amir, so of course it’s a predator.”

“It is stalking toward us a few paces at a time, then remaining still to listen for our response to its movement. Something evading a predator runs a long distance before it stops. Whatever this animal is, it is getting into position to strike.”

Tran orbited a warning through their link, shaking the team’s attention from planting and watching video feeds to readying themselves for a fight. When he had confirmation that his crew was ready, he shifted to Alexa. “Hey, do we have any more mini drones? Mine are all charging.”

“Yes, Sergeant. Give me a moment to deploy.”

Tran continued to run his unit. “Everyone else, heads on a swivel. Whatever this thing is, we’re on its home turf. Blend in with the terrain and don’t move.”

Yuen and Bolton applied a face mask to their helmets, originally intended to keep them sealed against harsh atmospheric conditions or provide protection in the event of a chemical attack. It would also protect them from any claws, teeth, or bullets sent face-first. Maybe it would disguise their scent from whatever was hunting them.

“What do you think it is?” Reach asked. “Mountain cat?”

Masau crawled out from a cut in the hill to rejoin the group. “I saw something moving in the tall grasses over there, but it caught wind of me and moved away. Might be that big heat bloom we saw earlier.”

Captain Sherman, encased in the body of a drone, slid over to where Yuen and Bolton were lying. “Stay still. If something comes out of the trees, don’t move. Let it hit me.”

Liana dropped in beside him. “Same here. They can damage the JS unit, but they can’t hurt us.”

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Alexa countered. “One of the benefits of the Model-35s is the tactile feedback allowing for sensation of touch in the platform. Make sure to shift the piloting mode to combat operations so as not to suffer from the tangible response of a large predator taking hold of an arm or leg.”

“English, Alexa?” Sherman asked.

“Shifting to combat operations mode alters the drone’s touch response from active to passive. The passive tactile response lets you know when a large predator bites down on your arm versus the active response letting you feel it happening,” Alexa instructed.

“Like the pain response on the shooting course,” Liana said, taking the next step to Alexa's explanation. “Next upgrade probably needs a governor on that.”

“Yes, good point,” Alexa conceded.

“Well, that wasn’t in the manual,” Sherman noted. “These Jared Sucks models really live up to their names.”

Raising his rifle, Reach coughed a response to Liana. “Okay. That was kind of funny. I’m hearing more of the movement ahead of us. Are you picking up anything else?”

Jared rolled to face Liana and froze in place. Above her, a massive head built for murder crested the hill. It was low to the ground, almost slithering through the trees on its approach so that it could use a combination of long grass, branches, and the swaying trees to hide its movement. Saber-like teeth crested up from its jaw like the tusks of an Earth boar, with shorter fangs above it interlocking the massive lower teeth. Its head reminded Reach of a backward saber-toothed tiger.

Even with her advanced optics, Liana couldn’t see it from her line of sight, which was blocked by the grasses and trees. But before Reach could react, her orbital sensors picked up the predator’s movement. She hopped to her feet and snatched Bolton by the drag handle on his plate carrier, then hoisted him from his position with a robotic strength even more powerful than what she’d been enhanced with.

In a single bound, the shovast launched its body from above, landing its considerable bulk in the place where Bolton had just been lying. The thing must weigh nearly a ton or more and it used that mass to work with gravity and speed its way down the hill, mouth open and aimed at its escaping meal.

Alexa was first to break the radio silence. “There’s another one moving in the grass below. Smaller. It’s readying to rush since this one has our attention.”

“I’m on it,” Reach called out. He jumped from his position and flew past Masau to land in the cut he’d just come from. He followed the creature’s lead and let gravity do the work of sliding him down the terrain feature like a kid on a playground slide. He bounded from side to side, using years of fallen pine needles to lubricate his way to the end of the rocky break. After activating the Bangora mimicking camouflage in his armor, Reach vaulted from the split in the rocks to an almost dead run at the white frocked grasses.

In an unexpected turn of events, the creature hiding in the swaying thistles jumped from its concealment with a scream that sounded like one part howl and two parts terror. Considerably smaller than the first, this shovast swayed its head back and forth trying to get a bead on the undulating shadow defying all its senses. The beast’s eyes were long and catlike, and the slits in the center of the pupil stuttered as it tried to focus on what it saw. Each new head bob brought with it a moan unlike anything Reach had ever heard. Within those high-pitched cries, he recognized a terrified animal looking for a way out.

The much larger shovast abandoned its hunt and stalked toward the Ghostly presence threatening to swallow its partner. It bounded once, nearly crossing the distance from where it started and Reach’s frantic slide to the bottom of their ambush. The animal opened its mouth and hissed in warning for Reach to stay away. The animal lowered its protruding tusks so that they aimed right at the shadow. An inner jaw within the first dropped open, exposing teeth not unlike that of a predatory feline. It snapped its jaw closed, continuing to aim its bottom saber tusks when it snarled in a sound that was a mixture of throaty growl blended into a barbed rattlesnake tail.

The shovast circled Reach’s shimmering silhouette until the monster touched its shoulder against that of its not-yet-adult offspring. Another hiss, and the duo bounded off down the hill and into the underbrush.

“That was… fascinating,” Roman whispered into the net.

“Shoulda killed it,” Masau said. “Not gonna get a wink of sleep knowing that thing is nearby.”

“Everyone report,” Tran barked into the net. “I want to know if we’re all good.”

One by one, the patrol members reported that nothing had made it through their defenses to chew on them.

“It is interesting to note the creature’s reaction to Jared’s particular form of camouflage,” Alexa said.

“Must’ve run into a Bangora before,” Liana guessed.

“And lived to remember it,” Reach said. “Impressive.”

Roman couldn’t resist expounding into the comms. “The Bangora—at least the ones we believe to occupy Amir—have only been gone for a matter of months. Evidently they once ranged farther than we imagined. Did anyone else notice their pattern of retreat? It’s quite fascinating when considering what we know about the—”

Tran cut the nerd talk short. “Alexa, is there any sign that what just happened triggered any movement in the base?”

“Negative, Sergeant Tran. All appears quiet on that side of the hill. Our commotion and the animal’s cries would be a common occurrence in an area where such a creature exists. A more optimistic interpretation might be that this signals the site is inactive as we predicted.”

“How so?” Bolton asked.

“Animals that would be a common part of a shovast’s diet wouldn’t come this close to an active base,” Liana answered for the android, her hunter’s knowledge showing.

Satisfied, Tran set forth his next piece of business. “Alright. We’re almost out of light. We’ll go to fifty percent security and make a run at this place at first light. Captain Sherman, can you secure the rest of my team and put them on us just after dawn?”

“On it, Sarn’t T. I’m going to bounce out of this bot to prep.”

Tran gave the man a thumbs-up, and a second later, the overlay in the augmented reality overlay disappeared so that the remote action mech, JS Zero-Three stood in place. It resumed Sherman’s position on the hill next to Yuen, its body holding perfectly still once its active sensor package was engaged.

“I am going to leave as well,” Roman said. “But I will be back in the morning to make entry into the structure with you, Michael.”

“Good to go, Doctor. If you’re going to do like you said earlier and rotate people through the bots to get some field time in the system, just remind them that we’re on mission,” Tran said.

“I understand completely. No foolishness allowed,” Doctor Roman acquiesced. “Which is to say… I’ll keep Brody from interfacing.” He brusquely departed, leaving the bot to resume to its normal shape in the overlay, taking up a position near the cut.

“What about you two?” Tran asked Alexa and Liana.

“I will be on station for the evening, Sergeant Tran,” Alexa said. “If the Doctor sends others to pilot the mechs, I want to be on hand to record their interactions within the interface.”

“I’d like to stay for a little while longer,” said Liana.

“You're the boss, ma’am. You get to do as you like.”

“Tell that to the districts intent on fighting my every move, Sergeant.”

With the rounds of musical androids leaving two of the drones unoccupied, their onboard AIs needed no coaxing into what had to happen next. The machines strode into the far sides of the recon team’s security halt, using the extremely sensitive sensors to wash across the area. Anything that came within a hundred meters would be picked up, identified, and reported by the highly efficient security mechs. There was also the added bonus where they only spoke when spoken to, which Sergeant Tran enjoyed.

“Hey, Masau. What are you looking at?” Tran asked.

“Getting some screen grabs on our boxing ring from the last few minutes, Sarn’t T.” Masau waved his hand over the spot where the larger of the two predators had pounced. “I don’t think this is what we saw when we tracked the drag marks from before.”

“I believe you are correct, Sergeant Masau,” Alexa agreed. “The impacts we see here have a significant difference in weight dispersion from its landing. Our new animal friend struck with force when it hit the ground. The marks we detected earlier were more subtle.”

Tran frowned. “Everyone keep eyes up as well as out. Fifty percent security until we go guns up in a few hours. We’ll rotate through a work rest plan until the rest of team Junkyard gets here.”

Liana positioned herself next to Reach. “I have to leave in a few minutes to get ready for my meeting with the elders, but I didn’t want to leave quite yet.”

Reach gave a bittersweet smile. “After this is all said and done, I’m finding us a nice, out of the way spot to be alone with our links turned off.”

The two chatted for a few more minutes and then Liana signaled through the link that she was getting ready to depart. She waited for Tran to respond with a thumbs-up before circling around to the discussion on tin foil hats. “The reason it wouldn’t work is because someone would inevitably send Brody to come looking for us.”

“Right,” Reach said, disappointed. “Are you coming back out in the morning?”

“That depends on what the evening brings. Promise me you won’t wrestle any more shovast while I’m gone, Jared.”

“I didn’t get to wrestle the first one.”

9

Reach woke with a start, freeing his pistol from the leg holster to point down the hill.

“You mind aiming that heater in a safe direction, LT? My main man here nearly wet himself at the sight of that beastly weapon ready to spit lead in his direction.”

“Unga?” Reach asked through the link, still confused.

Sifting through the forest, the muscle-bound Ranger, Losefa Unga, made carrying the MGX-5 Ranger Automatic Weapon look like it was the latest bling that just went with his armor. He used the ammo drum to push aside a branch as he crossed by the cut Reach had slid down earlier.

“Hey!” Corporal Jason Day called to interrupt. “I did not nearly wet myself.”

“Just tryin’ to cover for you, bro. It’s fine, dude. We’ve all done it,” Unga shot back. “Apparently Day actually wet himself. Nothing near about it.”

“Oh, shut up, Tonga.”

Approaching Reach, Unga thrust out a hand to help him from the ground. “Good to see you, LT. We linked to Sarn’t T on the way in. He knew we were coming.”

“We’re not on jump time are we?” Reach said, pulling off his helmet to let the cool night air wake him up.

Corporal Nick Vance materialized beside Unga and Day with the deactivation of the Ghost Tech camouflage built into their armor. When Captain Koen’s Ghost unit co-opted the Rangers for the mission to take Station Five, they fitted the Ranger armor with transmitters that allowed them to mimic the light bending abilities of the advanced RUPAC armor. With a bit of lab time on Alexa’s worktable, the light dispersion camouflage units were adapted to the Ranger body armor, making more than a few of the units into spectral killers drifting through Amir.

“No, sir,” Vance confirmed, wrapping his forearm guard against Reach’s. “Zero four local time, LT. You have a little bit before we kick up for the next phase.”

Reach noticed the icon floating in his HUD’s augmented reality display. Vance had been promoted to sergeant. It felt like yesterday the young man had been assisting in a team leader position because anyone close to taking the slot was dead. Vance had taken the newly assigned Osay Rangers under his wing. He’d given them the guidance and the swift boot in the pants that he had received as part of his upbringing in the regiment.

“If you’re awake, I need to be too, Sarn’t Vance,” Reach said.

“That’s on you, sir. We’ve already been talking to Sarn’t T, so he knows we’re here. We’re going to load ourselves into the hill and get set up.”

Rangers, and really soldiers in general, were taught from day one to cherish any sleep they got. Some were even bred to handle a set of closed eyelids standing up. Throughout the military were tales of guys who couldn’t remember entire chunks of time because they’d marched while sleeping, sometimes to their own detriment. Reach remembered a time a sleepwalker went and zombie-marched himself off an embankment and into the infirmary.

“Good copy, Sergeant.” Reach brought his neural link across the litany of direct message icons that were at his virtual fingertips at the speed of thought. He tapped Alexa’s icon, hoping the android had kept to her word and was still on site. “Hey, Alexa, are you still here?”

“As always, Jared. Good morning.”

It was nice to hear Alexa’s greetings, especially in the morning. She was always pleasant when engaging a person seeking her attention, and if busy she would appear genuinely apologetic at not being able to just sit and chat. Reach enjoyed watching her interact with others and he enjoyed speaking to her himself… unlike Murphy. While Doctor Roman had built one of the greatest artificial intelligences in recorded human history, it was the small, everyday interactions that seemed to fascinate her to the point of joy, if a machine could feel such a thing. Roman had mentioned emotions were a part of her programming, but Reach had to wonder how much of it was real and how much was part of a script. Regardless, he was happy to be speaking to her.

“No, I meant are you still piloting the robot body, or are you back in your own… robot… body?”

Alexa laughed, and the sound was natural. Much improved from her earliest attempts at it. “I am still in the body of the JS Unit, Jared.”

Reach stooped to gather his pack and rummaged in it until he produced a thermos of coffee. He poured the first cup into the thermos’s diminutive cap and took a sip that felt volcanically hot against the cold of the pre-dawn mountain. He checked his armor’s power levels—seventy-five percent battery remaining after last night’s tussle with the kitty cat. Roman had built in kinetic power cycling into the suits so that a person in motion could keep the armor’s power battery running indefinitely. Throughout the night, the battery powered the cycler for the internal temperature, warding off the intense mountain chill that threatened to strip all the heat of anything not covered in fur or wool.

“You know, Alexa,” Reach said after another sip of coffee, “we could call the new Model 35s, RAMs. That sounds much better than JS and then a number.”

“Does the unofficial nickname really bother you that much?”

“Well… no.” Reach paused a moment. “Yes. I hate it.”

Alexa laughed again. “You know how these things go. Once word gets out that it bothers you, it will never change.”

Before Reach could walk his admission back, Tran broke into the net. “Hey, sir. If you’re awake, I could use you on the next steps to this.”

“On my way,” Reach said. He duck-walked through the soft pine needle strewn forest floor, careful not to rattle any underbrush or slide on terrain that was too steep. The last thing they needed this morning was to give away their position should Alexa’s supposition that the research station was deserted prove wrong.

Kneeling just beyond a group of soldiers, Reach and Tran examined a map overlay showing the area just above them. Tran pointed to the map. “We have a squad of Wolverines roughly a klick from here in a Badger waiting on word from us to advance. So far, no activity anywhere on the structure. So either they’re a very quiet bunch or no one’s home.”

From the group of soldiers, PFC Natasha Collins asked, “Sergeant Tran. Is it possible that the people inside are in cryo?”

“Won’t be sure until we get in, but I doubt it. The entire station is off-line. We’re getting no power readings on it, so until we juice the place back up, we go in expecting the worst.” Tran enlarged the digital map through his link, bringing the mountainside into view. “Alexa, who do we have on station with us today?”

“Doctor Roman will be joining us soon,” Alexa said. “The rest of the command staff has other matters demanding their attention.”

Tran nodded. “That leaves one empty JS unit. Is it going to run on AI? I don’t want anyone sliding in at the last minute while we’re trying to take control of the structure.”

“Well…” Alexa began.

Tran swore. “It’s Brody, isn’t it? He’s going to run the remaining drone. Roman promised me that wouldn’t happen.”

“I’m sorry, Staff Sergeant Tran,” Alexa said. “The decision was mine. While observing several members of the Rangers attempting to pilot the drones last night, I felt their inexperience with the platform might bleed over into the mission, making for a potential undue risk due to their unfamiliarity with the system. Brody’s combat matrix is like my own and will complement us should we need to dominate the environment.”

Reach put a hand on Tran’s shoulder. “I know he’s a little much, but in a fight…”

Tran looked at Reach, expressionless as he considered this in his mind. “Alright. I’m sold. Load him up, Alexa.”

The moment he gave the okay, an unmanned JS unit on watch above them shimmered in the link and was replaced with the image of Doctor Roman. He looked out at the research station out beyond the trees. “I’m going to have to work on that so it isn’t so jarring when you arrive. I used to love playing Halo when I was younger. You’d get shot up and the computer would let you watch the ongoing game play to give you context for when you spawned in game. Maybe something similar would...”

“Doc?” Tran asked.

“Oh. Sorry, Michael. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Just, uh, wanted to wait until it was safe to return what with the news about my son joining the team. Please continue the mission brief. I’ll stay on the hill for overwatch.” Roman snickered into the link. “I’ve always wanted to say something like that.”

“Back to the mission,” Tran said, wrangling the conversation on topic. “LT, make sure your people are up in the next few and ready to move within thirty minutes. We’re over the hill after that.”

“Copy,” Reach said.

Tran went to Vance next. “Who’s running the Wolverine QRF and our infiltration unit in the truck?”

“Sergeant Willllcox” Vance said, elongating the name. “Seems like they’ll promote anybody on Amir.”

Tran ignored the joke. “You be the point of contact with him. Once we’re inside and we’ve established a beachhead, we’ll bring the rest of the squad forward. Movement in thirty.”

Reach departed the other leaders for a straight line to his people. Masau was already up. Through his helmet’s night vision, Reach could see the Ranger sniper hovering next to Doctor Roman. The two were most likely talking over the link where the Doctor could absorb all the knowledge he could get. Speaking to a Ranger sniper was often a treasure trove of information.

Reach then gave a short tug on Bolton’s foot. The man rolled onto his knees with a quickness, the sleep departing at once. His time on long patrols away from the camp was evident in the way he woke up alert from a dead sleep. Reach steadied the former governor by the shoulder as the man raced toward lucidity.

“Are we on the move?” Bolton asked.

“Soon. Twenty-eight minutes from now.”

“I’m moving. Will you wake Yuen?” Bolton asked.

“On my way now. Let me know if you need anything else from the front desk.”

“I don’t know what that means, but the sarcasm isn’t lost on me.”

Following an equally brief conversation with Yuen, Reach collected his own gear and joined Masau and Roman. “Any changes since I fell over?”

“I’ve been up for a few hours,” Masau said. “Worked with some of the guys rotating through the bots. Other than people getting a splitting headache from using those new drones, there’s been nothing going on over the hill. We did get some curiosity on that other rise, but it didn’t amount to anything.”

“What did you see?” Reach asked.

Masau played back the footage, showing the incline across from their position. The footage changed from hazy starlight to the crisp grays and blacks of military grade night vision. Hiding in a patch of the fluffy topped swaying grass, a pair of eyes drank in the ambient light, reflecting it back toward the Ranger’s view like twin spotlights. The view was offset, the eyes in the grasses nowhere near the center of the screen, or even close to it. That’s when Reach saw what his teammate was really looking at. Set against the rock was the immense predator they’d tangled with earlier. It was stock still, its coarse mottled fur blending perfectly into the shadows and highlights of the rocky crag. Masau sped up the video, watching the beast display physical tics that would have gone unseen when viewed normally. After twenty-two minutes, the twin predators loped off for higher elevation, chasing some need.

“We didn’t see them again after that,” the sniper remarked.

“I still think it’s strange that a predator like this would even come around a big station,” Reach said.

Masau shrugged. “I read an article once about this abandoned weather station in Russia. Polar bears took over the place, and some photographer back in the day used a drone to film them just hanging out.”

Roman seemed especially interested in this but passed over any questions of zoology and asked, “So you believe Station Twelve to be abandoned.”

Masau gave a fractional nod. “I think this place is a Ghost town.”

“Could be,” Reach said. “Only one way to find out. You all packed and ready to go?”

Masau said he was and then rotated his foot to coil around his pack’s back strap, then pulled it free from the homemade camouflage of branches and pine needles. Much like the shovast in the video hiding in plain sight, the sniper’s kit was already packed and stacked.

The twin teams, both Ranger reconnaissance and military contact, broke into two groups as they hovered under the lip of the hill leading to the research station. .

“Sergeant Tran, this is Alexa. Drones are deployed. I have zero movement on all feeds, and no emissions detected.”

Reach motioned to Bolton and Yuen to move apart from each other, readying them for the rush to the lip of the hill. Their job was to take up covering positions while Tran’s team crossed the dirt road to the center. Bunching up would limit their line of sight on and around the team, making for a less effective support by fire element. Reach whirled on the Model-35 behind him, thinking he saw some stray piece of movement near the machine. It was a statue, all but motionless until it was ready to fulfill its task. “Guys, all eyes on the hill. Sergeant Tran is crossing to the structure now.”

The MCT did as they were asked, taking up positions where the landscape met the road above them. They lay against the hill, their heads and rifles just barely detectable by anyone possibly wandering the road this early in the morning.

Not waiting to see how good their pick of concealed fighting position was, Reach activated the camouflage system on his armor. His team did likewise, fading into the underbrush using technology that bent light around them, painting them as mere wet spots in thin air.

“Reach, it’s Tran. We’re on the outside of the structure. We got a stone wall leading to a double metallic door. Intel on the map pegs this as a main entrance that could accommodate vehicles, but this part of the road is washed out. There hasn’t been a vic through here in a hot minute.”

“Roger that. We have you covered. Can you make entry?”

“Stand by.”

As Alexa moved to Sergeant Tran at the door, Reach whirled around to see the remaining JS Model making Bullwinkle horns at him behind his back. Staring in the face of the mech, it slowly worked toward recovering the rifle it magnetically locked to its torso.

“I am s-sorry, Citizen. I was attempting to use my hands as an antenna to increase range,” Brody offered in his best imitation of the android's regular voice.

“Knock it off, Brody. I know it’s you.” Reach smiled inside in the solitude of his helmet. As goofy as the android could be, Reach was glad to have him here as a combat multiplier in the event things went pear shaped. There were those who thought they were ready for a fight until an action-movie-spouting robot commando with the accumulated combat experience of a century fighting off insurgents and the speed and aggression of a cyborg honey badger got you in his crosshairs. Let the enemy have their asymmetric warfare. Give him Brody any day of the week.

“N-no it’s not. I am Jared Sucks Zero-Three,” Brody announced, still attempting his impression of a default JS voice.

Reach pointed up toward the hill's crest. “Just help us watch the road, JS-oh-three.”

Outside the facility, beside the heavy metal doors, Alexa opened a security shutter built into the wall. She threaded in wires and worked over the space while the Rangers secured the perimeter around her. When asymmetric android infiltration didn't work against the structure, Alexa motioned to the Rangers she was coming away from the doors.

In the distance, the Ranger patrol stacked outside the door abandoned their position to move in teams around the structure. They slithered through the tangle of pines and fought for balance as they slipped on the cast-off blanket of loose needles littering the forest floor. The Military Contact Team acting in support switched to the drone feed hovering over that side of the building. The tiny spy projected a perfect bird’s-eye view of the team as they twisted themselves through the forested tangle outside the building.

Tran stopped and held his fist up in the military sign for an immediate halt. He spread the fingers on his upturned hand, then patted the air. The Rangers took the sign and dropped to a knee after fanning out to scan the terrain for threats. The shimmering effect of their optical camouflage made them nearly invisible to anyone but the MCT holding the road who had the benefit of an overlay in the link that showed them each operator’s position.

“All units hold position,” Tran said over the net.

Alexa dominated the feeds, pushing the point of view from the drone forward of their position as the primary display. The hovering tech buzzed to the back side of the structure toward the sloping side. The facility looked like a blocky stone pyramid with the top sheared off. Security towers topped all four sides with the major entrance set perpendicular to the road. Toward one of the hillsides, a giant observation deck nearly twenty-five meters wide hovered on massive support struts made of stone. All the windows on the facility were encased by metallic security shutters, making it impossible for the team to see inside.

During the crawl to the underside of the ziggurat, Tran noticed a blemish in the normally secure stonework the Rangers had come to expect from the RUPAC structures. Say what you want about their culture, tech, or fighting, the RUPAC knew how to build a stronghold that could take a beating. The pylon Tran observed in his feed had been brutalized by something. The stone was blackened on one side, with enough of the construction sheared off to expose the thick metallic support girder underneath.

Station Twelve was built like a tank.

10

“Sweet Mother Unga!” Vance said.

Day was quick to rebuke. “Hey. Don’t take the name of Mother Unga in vain.”

Unga fist-bumped the defender of his mother’s honor. “That’s what’s up.”

“Hey,” Tran called out to get them back on task. It was the only word he’d have to say; they’d all worked with the man long enough to know when he wanted them one hundred percent focused on task, like now. Tran forced his helmet’s video into the link. “You guys seeing this?”

The bottom of the ziggurat set into the mountainside had large sections of the rock pounded flat and poured with concrete to make another terrace. The view was spectacular. White peaked mountains topped with trademark purple pines dotting along the landscape like sentinels over the forest between them. The sun was painting the first brushes of light along the range in the distance. Tran imagined the Station Twelve workers running from the door at the base of the facility to risk a minute away from their duties whether to pollute the air with their stale RUPAC cigarettes or just take in the view.

Except… there was no door. Where a security entrance for personnel should have been set into the rock where the makings for a door were evident, there was a gaping hole in the wall roughly two men wide. Fringe wiring, long exposed to the elements and tattered with age, hung out of the wall from thick steel support girders set into the stone.

“Looks like something tore off the door and dug at the walls to make the entrance wider,” Masau said into the link.

“Anyone have a less terrifying explanation?” Vance asked as he stepped forward to run his hand over the surface. “These wires are super faded. Whatever caused this happened a long time ago.”

“Best guess,” Tran demanded.

Vance studied the wire for another moment. “The casing for the wire is similar to that heavy gauge synthetic stuff we use in everything. Based on the color fade and the shape of the exterior, I’d say this has been sitting around like this for ten years, give or take a minute.”

“I would concur with that assessment,” Alexa agreed.

“Reach, it’s Tran. Keep an eye on the road while we pry open this door.”

“I thought the door was gone,” Reach said.

“Main door is, but it looks like the big hole leads to a mudroom. It’s possible they used this as a type of security feature against whatever did this to the wall.”

“Or a decontamination room,” Reach added. “So… watch your readings.”

“Yup.”

“Could it have been the shovast?” Yuen asked into the link.

“Negative,” Vance answered. “See how the stone is jagged and roughed up? That’s evidence of the stone being ripped away versus dug away. That thing we saw in the video from your encounter yesterday had claws for catching and killing meat.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Yuen said.

Tran shifted his spot in the team net. “Lieutenant Reach, I’m gonna need you to bring Oscar Bravo on the line, too.”

* * *

The link connected flawlessly to the TOC via the burst antennas set into the androids. “Reach, it’s Bosa. I have Sherman and Liana here with me. What does this mean for us taking the station?”

“Nothing negative. In fact, it might benefit us in what we’re trying to do,” Reach offered.

“In what way?” the colonel asked.

“The big outer doors at the front of the building are sealed. We can’t even open them under power. Sergeant Vance thinks they’re welded from the inside. If we’re trying to push a group of RUPAC looking to get back on the home team and used the facility to make contact with Rykov, the damage might help sell the story.”

“If and maybe are not on my playlist, Mr. Reach,” Bosa reminded his lieutenant.

“I understand that, sir. This plan was always a matter of skating on thin ice. If we can add some assurance, I’m good to proceed.”

Bosa didn't immediately return to the net, giving Reach time to see that his people were in place for whatever came next. From his position at the hill's crest, he was ready to bound over the road or slide beneath it, depending on how the decision fell. The important thing to consider here was the team exposed themselves to potential threats the second they went for the first set of doors. Any camera system had them on screen the second Alexa crossed the road. If they had to boogie, his team had to be ready for that.

“Send them in,” Bosa said.

“Oscar Mike, sir,” Reach answered from his spot across the road from the team. Switching to the team link, he said, “Sergeant Tran. You’re a go.”

Tran repeated the order to Vance, who moved with a quickness through the tumbled ruin of the outer wall. The newly minted sergeant swept the smooth stone space measuring the size of a two-car garage back home. He found it empty except for old rock that had fallen in from the walls and a scattering of windblown pine needles. Vance scanned the various bits of debris inside the space. If he had to guess, no one but them had been here for a long time. “The room is a roughly twenty-by-twenty-foot space with one door in the far wall. There are two opposing globe cameras on the top intersecting corners of the room. Both smashed.”

Unga went in next and stood a few scant feet inside the structure to aim toward the door just in case their guess about the facility being dead was wrong. If anything popped the locks to advance on them, they’d have to do it through a hurricane of machine gun fire.

Vance gingerly approached the control plate built next to the portal, each foot sliding into place before taking his weight. Pressure plates, motion sensors, and trip wires weren't one hundred percent foolproof. After years of fighting against insurgent and occupying forces, sometimes the best advice was simply to tread carefully. He swept his camera across the plate to show it as a ten-digit number pad with an ancient looking key lock set into one face. Vance angled his helmet to look deeper. “No biometrics that I can tell. Alexa, wanna help a brother out?”

Remotely operating the JS android, she stepped through the gaping crater in the wall to the room beyond. She hovered over the control plate, tracking her eyes across the surface multiple times before announcing her conclusion. “As long as we can power the door and it is not sealed from the inside like before, we should be able to effect entry.”

The holographic facade of the real Alexa shimmered as she produced a cable from the remote-control chassis—the android digging inside of itself for something interrupted the illusion. She plugged it into the auxiliary power port. After a light hum, the number pad flashed to life for a moment and then died. A second hum brought a light glow around the outside edges of the keys. They flickered several times before remaining steady. Alexa punched her fingers across the display, inputting a master code into the system that she’d gotten from Katya. A harsh, grating tone sounded from the control panel, accompanied by a static-filled message in Russian, declaring that there were only two attempts to enter the correct code left.

The Ranger’s implants quickly translated the message, finally upgraded to interpret the language, though they couldn’t speak it.

“Try 1-2-3-4-5,” Unga said.

“Probably telling Alexa her RUPAC social score isn’t high enough,” Vance offered.

Alexa typed a new sequence into the ancient keyboard. The system barked another warning into the space and Alexa stepped back. “It would appear that the research station has been offline longer than Katya has been active on Amir. The first code we tried was her security override. The next was the one she received from her predecessor. I have one attempt left before we are locked out of the system.”

“What happens then?” Unga asked.

Alexa’s hand hovered over the keypad. “This particular entrance will be locked until released from inside the facility.”

Unga shook his head. “Which means we’d have to cut it.”

“Hold on a minute,” Vance interrupted. “Alexa, is the system and maintenance logs for the door stored locally or are they recorded by the primary system?”

“To find out, I would have to disassemble the plate and get to the maintenance port. If the panel is decades old, the act of removing it could cause considerable damage.”

Unga grinned. “Which puts us back to cutting it anyway. What’s the harm?”

“Understood. Working now.” The altered reality skin pulled back, revealing the drone’s mechanical arm from the elbow down. A miniature blade ejected from the tip of the thumb, which she wedged into the space between the control plate and the housing.

“Fill me in on what we’re doing here,” Unga said to Vance.

Vance rolled his hand as if the action would prime his mouth to catch up with his mind. “Most doors like this have the access code stored locally in the event the door has power but the main system doesn’t. Instead of trying another code from the keypad, she’s going to read the code stored in the buffer so she can punch in the one the computer wants.”

“So, like reaching under the doormat for that key you leave yourself for when you get locked out?”

“Something like that,” Vance said reflexively. “Except it’s in one of those hide-a-key things, and the plate is stuck—you didn’t actually do that did you?”

“The mat? Oh yeah. So obvious no one even thought to look.”

A metallic pop echoed throughout the entrance chamber when Alexa pried the plate from the steel surrounding it. She threaded another cable from under her virtual skin to the maintenance port beneath the tangle of wires and boards, receiving an antique beep for her efforts.

“Good or bad?” Vance asked.

“Neither. Merely a prompt from the board recognizing the device plugged in. We knew we might be dealing with old RUPAC tech, so we came loaded with every connector we knew about from our time on Earth to the stations we’ve taken.”

“I learn something new about you everyday, Alexa,” Unga said. “Good to know you’ve planned for every possible RUPAC dongle.”

Vance nodded patiently. “Can we open it?”

Alexa nodded, but her face was still full of concentration. “Yes, but it will severely deplete the power cells on the JS unit I’m in. If we find an active power source inside, I recommend plugging me in to gain a full charge.”

Unga opened his mouth and quickly closed it as Vance’s hand went up.

“Noted,” Vance agreed. “Pop it.”

The door rattled in its housing. The thing’s shaking sounded like a loose exterior shutter in a windstorm. A violent jerk of motion throttled the door six inches from the jamb with a scraping sound that was more shriek than grate. Alexa tripped forward, but her stumble was arrested with a hand that shot up to the wall to steady herself.

“Whoa. Alexa, what’s up?” Vance demanded.

“The power drain was more considerable than I anticipated. Once I cycled the rest of the system, the magnetic locks engaged and siphoned a large portion of the drone’s battery before I turned them off. I can open the door now, but doing so will put the drone in such a low power state that I’ll have to eject.”

Vance turned away from the door. “You get that, Sarn’t T?”

“Got it,” Tran answered. “Hers was the only one with that big battery pack. The other bots can’t handle the load. Doc Roman will have to work the science until she recharges. Go ahead, Alexa.”

The Alexa overlay hologram shimmered in the same way a heat mirage does before fading away. The door flashed open.

“Nice job, Alexa. You still here?” Vance sifted through the various screens and interfaces to see the status on Alexa’s drone when she popped into his ear through the link.

“I’m here, Sergeant Vance.”

Vance flinched from the sudden ethereal voice seemingly riding his shoulder. He held up his hand to Unga, signaling that he was good despite nearly being scared out of his armor. “Sheesh! Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Vance,” Alexa said, her voice cheerful as ever. “That wasn’t my intent. Opening the security door sapped the entire battery pack, and I was ejected from the system. Any power left in the drone was just enough to save its data core and put it into a low power state.”

“You almost put me in a low power state,” Vance barked.

“That is a very good robotics joke, Sergeant.”

“Thanks.” Vance motioned for Unga to switch position, putting him off-line with the door but able to fire through it if need be. “Sarn’t T. The lid’s off. We can make entry.”

Tran stepped up to the hole. Setting his back against the wall, he motioned the rest of Team Junkyard forward. The crew filed through with Unga changing spots with the Junkyard team boss.

“Reach, it’s Tran. Bring your people up.”

“Moving,” came the lieutenant’s thought response through the link.

Tran pushed signal indicators in the HUD, doling out orders to the reconnaissance team and splitting them into an advanced party and security element. Unga peeled off from his position and dragged Sergeant Vance with him. Morse followed on his heels into the open portal and the darkness beyond.

They entered a wide hallway, allowing them to move two by two comfortably if they so chose. Piping and wired conduits above them ran for nearly ten meters before the entire affair opened to their right. Each footfall clanked against the metal grating over the floor as they tracked toward the opening ahead. Eventually, the clanging on the grates brought Vance’s attention below them, where more conduit entwined pipes ran until they disappeared under the far wall.

“Cut the corner,” Tran called over the link.

Morse sped ahead of the other two, making ticking advances along his flank to see around the corner but not fully expose himself to it in the event he had to jump back the way he came. “It’s an open bay. We have one door in the far wall and one door on the opposing, although that one looks like a hatch for an elevator. I have grating torn from the surface and piled on the ground. If I had to guess, it was a ladder up to the next level they ripped out. The hole in the ceiling is closed.”

“So this hallway forms an ‘L’ leading off that room?” Tran asked.

“Yes. I have various stacks of crates, racking, and what looks like some long-dead Broskis,” Morse confirmed.

“Take the strong wall,” Tran said to the team. He waited for Morse to move toward the far wall before pushing Unga after him. When Unga took position at the center, Tran stepped past the end of the hall and turned to aim his weapon down the length of the room. “Lieutenant Reach, if you remember your CQC from back in the day, link up once you've crossed the street.”

“Moving,” Lieutenant Reach confirmed. He slithered from the hallway and took the spot from Sergeant Tran as the fourth man in their walking wall. “My guys are on security until we control the room.”

The fire team rank moved toward the opposite end of the space, their weapons held at the ready should anything jump out at them. Morse was first to call attention to something in the bay. “I’ve got that piece of wall where the ladder was torn out. The maintenance hatch looks like it’s welded shut.”

Tran held up the team. “You sure it’s sealed?”

“Solid.”

Tran aimed ahead of him. “Pile of crates ahead. Lieutenant?”

Reach tracked to the side, using his helmet’s enhanced sensor suite to map and track around the mound. “We’ve got stacked hard cases with a few fallen over. Clear to the racks.”

The crew moved a few more paces, halting just shy of the twisted and tangled racking at the center of the room. The overturned rigging was rusted in some places, especially along spots where the struts bent. Threaded into the steel were several bodies, twisted, broken, and ravaged by time.

“Looks like they used these for weapons and armor storage in the short term. Maybe this space was a staging area?” Reach asked.

“Probably,” Tran grunted. “If you would be so kind, sir, let's move up the Doc Roman Bot to check those bodies in case of pathogen or other hazards.”

“Riiight,” Reach said, elongating the word as though he were wary of the request. “Send the curious science guy to poke it. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

“Amir is like the gift that keeps on giving,” Unga said

Reach laughed and moved forward to cover. Leading with the business end of his rifle, the lieutenant stalked toward the bodies. Seven desiccated corpses that seemed to have died in either fight or flight lay tangled just ahead of the rusted shelving.

“I have old shell casings spread around. Mostly around this guy,” Reach said, pointing to the man trapped under part of the fallen racks. The mummy corpse was on his stomach with one hand outstretched, holding a rifle the MCT leader recognized. “Hey, Sarn’t T. Remember those crazy Gauss rifles we went up against when we first got here?”

“I do, sir. But we wouldn’t have shell casings from one of those,” Tran pointed out.

“Maybe we’re looking at two separate incidents,” Reach noted. “Judging by the mummified appearance, I’d say these folks have been here for a long while. I don’t see any other damage and those hatches leading off this room have the same construction as the one we just came through. The place is seriously cold, which could have left the bodies in this kind of state.”

“Oh my goodness! It is cold in here. How disappointing that I can't see my breath,” the Doctor Roman loaded android said as he entered the facility. “Perhaps I can add something like that to the holographic overlay to aid in acclimatization of the pilot to the drone.”

“Doc, can you come over here and take a look at this?” Reach asked. “I have them covered as close as I dare to come but we could use someone who won't get the sniffles if something is off about this.”

Roman made his way to the first of the corpses and examined them as he would anything else on his scientific table. Of course, he was having to make do, remote piloting a highly advanced drone body while working off a stone floor, but much like a good fight, you take what's given. He orbited the entire tangle of structural debris and long-dead corpses, working the details through sensor nodes hundreds of times more observant than any human. He brushed a dead man’s shoulder, hovering in the act for a moment as though the JS android had frozen.

“While I am certain the fate that befell these men isn't airborne, I would like to restrict contact for anyone not moving about inside an android shell,” Doctor Roman cautioned, limiting the up-close inspection to himself and Reach, with Brody staying back with the security team.

“Bullets are airborne, Doc,” Unga observed.

The doctor looked up toward the muscular Ranger with a look of solid amusement. “Losefa, I believe this is a case of science standing corrected. Yes, while the bullets that killed these men here were most definitely airborne, any pathogens affecting them, to set Sergeant Tran's suspicions to rest, are not airborne. Now let's see here…”

Doctor Roman stepped around the tangle of metal struts and slid the Gauss rifle away from the last man’s hand. In doing so, he’d adjusted his perspective on the other bodies, the drone sensors plugged into his consciousness fed more data about what they could see. He held up a hand, signaling the team to remain in place as he vaulted over to the last body in the stack. “Sergeant Tran, I’m pushing my feed to you so you can see this. It appears these people fell in place as they ran away from this man.”

Scanning the new perspective, the team observed the corpses were mostly on their sides or bellies, facing the direction they’d just come from. Highlighted indicators formed over the bodies as Reach’s sensors flagged the multitude of gunshots riddling the backs of the once fleeing crowd. He stretched out to the last of the group, the one he’d said was chasing the others. He took hold of the man’s arms and rolled him onto his back.

“Oh dear!” Roman shouted. Despite remote piloting a drone from the safety of the camp miles away, he still jumped back.

The team all shared the feed, seeing something that used to be human. The upper portion of the man’s skull protruded, much in the way a Cro-Magnon man was often depicted in the history books. Cheekbones pointed away from the face in a sort of restructuring that resembled chitinous armor.

The man had two sets of teeth. One had the good old calcium rich nuggets that populated a mouth the way they should. In parts around the jaw, new sets began forming, pushing the original teeth from the mouth. On the side of the corpse’s jaw, a dental implant resisted being pushed out of its place, forcing the new teeth to grow around it. The incoming fangs were almost needle-like, with a gray exterior that was more porous than teeth in a man were supposed to be.

Reach stood over the corpse and wondered if that was due to the mummification of the body or if that was the natural state. He couldn’t help but stare at the abnormal spread of the man’s jaw. Whether he was screaming or just opening his mouth full of pearly grey incisors to take a bite when he died, it appeared that the end of his chin was open all the way to the top of his chest.

“Michael. Sergeant Tran?” Roman asked, attempting to gain the man's attention.

“No, sir. Never seen anything like that.”

“Alexa, can you see this?”

“Yes, Doctor. I can see it,” Alexa said through the link. “I would advise that whatever metamorphosis took hold of his DNA should be studied under careful scrutiny. We wouldn’t want this happening to any of us.”

“I think you’re safe at least, Alexa,” Reach said. “Should I bag him as a specimen for you or just kick him outside, down the hill?”

“No, Jared,” Roman said, apparently missing the joke completely. “That would cause more problems than it solved. Look at this charring—it appears as if someone tried to burn these corpses, most likely to kill whatever caused this, but the fire didn’t take, and they evidently didn’t wish to stay around long enough to try again. I’ll examine it, and if we can move it safely without contaminating everything around us, we’ll do that.”

“Doctor, are we at risk?” Tran asked.

“For now, it would be best to stay in your armor,” Roman suggested. “It is sealed against environmental contaminants. As long as you’re in the shell, you should be fine. What concerns me most is that we might be seeing some middling stage of mutagenic research.”

“Meaning what, Doc?” Reach asked.

“Meaning… you should prepare yourselves for more horrors to come.”

11

“The room appears clear,” Doctor Roman said. “I can find no trace of pathogen or other means to replicate what we see here. That being the case, I’m still not willing to give the okay for you men to get out of your armor.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Reach said, motioning for Bolton and Yuen to enter. “We’ll stay in the lids for now. According to my friends here, the uniforms on those bodies resemble one of the many groups of non-regime RUPAC the colony has been facing on the planet for a while now.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Yuen confirmed. “They were most often the ones reluctant to fight so their superiors would poison them with saraka venom to make them more aggressive. Or imprison and starve them to a point where fighting on their feet was preferable to dying in a cell.”

Tran drew his mouth into a tight-lipped frown. “Sounds like the ones we fought back when we first dropped into this party. Let’s get back on target. Room over there, most likely storage or something similar. Let’s clear it, but be careful. Mr. Bolton, I take it you’re on tap to get my elevator back on target?”

Bolton hiked his pack over his shoulder as confirmation of the mission. “I could use a hand, Staff Sergeant.”

“Vance. Take Unga and the doctor. Get that elevator running. I’ll stay here with Collins and set up for the incoming platoon while our favorite LT pries open that door for a sweep. Morse, get the rest of our people to the LT.”

The various groups broke into their assigned tasks, moving with a purpose as was their way. Reach collected his crew on the move and stacked outside the door. “Door here is sealed, just like the rest of the base. If I had to guess, based on the architecture, I’d say we’re looking at a supply room for people rushing out the door we rushed into. We’re going to crack it, stack it, then clear the room. Questions?”

Brody, of course, had one. “Anybody seen Fuchs? Somebody b-blew out a fuse in the lab. Lights were out in there for an hour, any one of us c-could have gotten to him.”

“Anybody else?” Reach asked. When no one answered, he said, “Alright, let’s go through the door and find out what’s on the other side.”

Encased in the JS model robot, Brody sidled up to his friend. “Model JS-Zero… uh, Three does not wish to be rude, b-but that’s not the next line. Do you need a script?”

“I know it’s you, Brody,” Reach said. “And all those movies came out when my grandparents were younger than I am now.”

“But I don’t have an overlay. How d-do you know?”

“Call it a sixth sense for when my buddy is around. Lead the way, Brody.”

“On it, Citizen!” Brody shouted with the enthusiasm of a kid about to play with fireworks.

The group stacked beside the door, their faces turned toward the center of the room for Brody to get to work. The android still looked like a default JS model, but Brody had somehow programmed an AR red bandana, John Rambo style. The war machine made a fist, ejecting a long ceramic rod from between his knuckles. “Are you going to pick d-door number one, door number two, or door n-number three?”

The rod popped to life, dripping sparking cinders from the fiery tip of the stick. The snapping hiss of the torch went from a steady stream to a sizzling growl where it came into contact with the steel. Molten rivulets crawled down the door’s exterior as Brody continued his work against the heavy portal. Loud snaps occasionally threw the torch’s sparks deep into the room, casting strange flickering shadows over the surfaces.

The pulsating light cutting into the door illuminated the fallen RUPAC crew, slinking along their bodies to give them the appearance of movement. Yuen couldn’t help but stare at them. “Why is Sergeant Tran leaving them here?”

Morse shrugged. “It’s not like we have to worry about them bothering us.”

“They’re terrifying. Especially the deformed one.” She grimaced.

“Don’t think about it,” Marlin said. “Focus on the door.”

Yuen nodded at the recommendation from the normally quiet Osay sharpshooter. The man had spent the majority of his life hunting and scouting for their colony, taking the opportunity to join the first Osay militia when the Rangers formed it. As one of the first to try out for the Rangers when offers and challenges were extended, Marlin's skill and tenacity won out in the grueling process. His selection elevated him to a certain level of notoriety within the Osay for passing the test. When he talked, the Osay listened.

“Get ready,” Marlin said.

Brody finished slicing through the vault door. He ejected the sizzling rod away from them, where it clattered and bounced across the stone floor on a slide under the grating. “Fires g-got the temperature up all over the camp. Won’t last long, though.”

“Here we go,” Reach said.

Brody heaved against the portal, which jerked from its space with a titanic clang. The bottom retaining pin that he’d cut through with the torch hadn’t been sliced all the way through but was compromised enough to snap when he’d given it a good tug. Bits of metal clanked against the floor as the door gave way, shooting the remnants of the locking rods under their boots.

Reach went in first, driving hard through the opening. Another tangle of metallic racking, similar to the toppled mess outside, presented an obstacle just past the door. Using his enhanced strength, he smashed through one of the corners where the two racks rested against each other and effortlessly pushed through the top shelf. The structure came down, giving Reach a clear path to the center of the room.

Inside, a generous desk and chair with another mummified corpse leaning against the top dominated the space. A couch with well-worn leather cushions was placed off to the side, still looking comfortable despite them being inside the grim backdrop of another man’s tomb. A gossamer flag against the wall resisted decay even as it proudly depicted some unit logo with scrawled Cyrillic in the corners of the fabric. Set on the same side as the entry, an additional vault door behind a counter-top lay partially open, almost inviting Reach for a peek.

Brody filed into the room behind his friend, moving off the man’s firing arm until he met with the interior vault door. He spun on his heel, aiming his rifle to the heavy plate steel that stood open a crack in its housing. “Got a vault here. I'm l-looking to make a withdrawal. Can I speak to the m-manager?” When no one appeared, Brody snapped another welding rod into place.

“I don’t think we’ll need that, Brody. The vault's open,” Reach noted.

“Well then, let me just exchange this b-burner for a heater!” Brody slipped the rod back into the arm housing, and with a quick snap, he snatched the rifle magnetically connected to his chest. The android knelt across from the open crack and aimed down the length of the weapon. “Ready when you are, Haulk.”

Reach wrapped his fingers onto the handle, brought up a snap window in his HUD, and tapped into the android's. The feed was awash in sensory data filling out targeting chains for the most likely layout in the room. The enclosure had the feel of an arms room, and if that’s what it was, Brody would be advancing into a mostly open space with little cover. The best they could hope for was a layout similar to that of the rooms used by the Rangers, where racks covered the walls and there was the occasional odd rack bolted to the floor.

While Brody had all that data on his HUD as well, he also had a strange display, like an ancient 8-bit flight simulator complete with dark jade building outlines and wording in aquamarine colors.

“What are you doing?” Reach asked.

“Playing with myself,” Brody growled. “I’m going in.”

He rushed through the gaping door.

Reach throttled the door open, careful to pull it wide enough to give Brody a clear shot at the room, while leaving it closed enough to shield himself from any stray rounds coming out.

Brody made it two steps into the room before he halted and stood up from a shooting posture to stare at whatever he was viewing. “Well, that’s j-just great.”

Reach knocked on his side of the door, although the immense construction transferred little of the action into a sound that could be heard on the other side of the steel. “What is it?”

“More corpses. I mean, what’s the point of me even b-being here? I c-came to kill commies and they’re already all dead!” Brody slapped his weapon against his chest, activating the magnetic rigging that attached the rifle to the plate as though it had a sling. With his hands free, he threw them up and to the side in mock frustration. “Alright, get your machine ready. I’m coming out. The President’s dead. Someone’s had him for dinner.”

Brody cleared the space, walking out and talking up something about him only having twenty-two hours when it should have been a full twenty-four. Whatever he was talking about probably had to do with some movie that applied to the situation, which meant it was something Reach didn’t have to focus on just yet. With his android buddy out of the way, Reach stepped into a fully stocked armory that turned the room’s layout from an “L” to an “N.”

Laying on the floor in the center of the room were the remains of several bodies. Reach’s eyes tracked away from bones and ruined gear, cracked and splayed open about the space littered intact bundles of RUPAC weaponry, and toward a horrific tapestry on the wall.

A giant cocoon hung on the ceiling, at the junction of two walls like some gargoyle watching over the room. If he had to describe it, it reminded him of a spider’s egg sac. Except this was gargantuan. Whatever had been trapped in here with the pile of bones of no less than four people had probably treated them like lunch. When it couldn’t get out of the room, it entombed itself into the wall after exhausting its food supply. Reach slid his foot backward, keeping his eye on the wispy strands of webbing coming off the enormous egg sac affixed to the ceiling.

“What the hell is that?” Tran asked over the link.

Reach whispered as if anything could hear him outside of his helmet. “I don’t know. I’m backing out of the room now.”

Brody’s hand slapped onto Reach’s drag handle and guided him from the space. “If th-that thing opens, it’s important for you to close your mouth really tight. They’re egg-egg layers.”

The android shut the door, pushing it past the unlocked ajar position it had been and closing it completely. A large clunk sounded; the vault door had locked itself.

“Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-oh.”

“You mentioned the bodies,” Reach scolded through the link. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a cocoon in there the size of a garage?”

“Look, d-do you know how long it takes for corpses to mummify like this? Well, neither do I!”

Reach stared at the war machine in utter confusion.

“You really th-think whatever stuck that super loogie to the wall is still going to be alive in there after all this t-time? I can’t keep a p-pet spider alive for more than f-four days!”

“Reach, it’s Tran. Pull everyone out of the room and have Brody secure the door until we can get Doc Roman to take a look.”

“On it.” Reach gestured to Brody, looking at the door as though it could swing open at any moment. “You got this?”

“Oh yeah. I ain't 'fraid of n-no Ghost.”

Doctor Roman entered the room and moved directly toward the mummified occupant at the desk. Swimming in sensor feeds from the modified drone, the doctor swept along the space less haphazardly than he normally would. If Roman was a dog, science was usually his squirrel.

“The Vault door was open a crack,” Reach huffed. “Something opened the inner door but left the outer one. Makes no sense.”

“Oh, we are awash in strange, my boy. Take a look at this.” Roman led Reach around the desk behind the slumped mummy. Under wispy hair that lay on gray arms were a collection of papers haphazardly scattered across the tabletop. Some of them were almost reduced to dust. “That file says something about trying chloroquine phosphates and artemisinin-based combination therapies. I can’t read the rest because his face is in the way.”

“CP is used for treating malaria, right?” Reach asked.

Roman nodded his agreement. “Very good, Jared. I’m debating whether it’s worth the risk of moving the body in order to take a gander at that stuff he has under his nose.”

Reach pointed toward the exterior door. “Alright. But first let’s seal the inner door just to be safe. Then we can move about this room however we like.”

“Do you have the combination to the vault?” Roman asked.

“Don’t need one,” Reach said, motioning for them to move to the vault door. “We have a Brody. But let’s get more of the team in position before we tackle that.”

* * *

Reach couldn’t help but be amazed at watching Roman move through the chamber, rifle in hand. When he’d arrived on Amir, Roman had been a frail old man who’d ignored the orders of those appointed above him and stayed conscious for a good part of the trip. Now, he moved fluidly, like a real infantryman. Chalk up a win for science in the form of androids and programmable skills.

While the doctor worked, Reach had brought up the rest of his team into the initial chamber. Now Morse's chat window flared into his link. “Doc looks like he’s runnin’ one of those proton packs? Ima start callin’ him Ghostbuster.”

“One of Brody’s favorites,” Reach said. “I’m sure he’d love to talk about it. He likes the sequel, too.”

“Dude. I didn’t see the old ones. I’m talking about the 2040 remake.”

“I managed to miss that one, too,” Reach admitted. “Let’s see if they need a hand.”

The duo entered the supply room first, confirming that the space was still clear. Brody and Doctor Roman entered next, with the AI shielding his maker from that side of the room. A sharp gasp, both through the drone’s speakers and pushed through the neural link, startled everyone.

“What?” Morse barked.

“The vault d-door must have opened by itself,” Brody whispered. He pointed a few feet away from the heavy portal where a rubberized doorstop rested on its side. Brody thrust his hand to a nonexistent mouth, as if covering some emotion washing over a face he didn’t have. His other gripped Roman by the shoulder. “Would your family w-welcome a serious investigation into these disturbances by someone who can make firsthand ob-observations?”

“Oh, Brody, concentrate on the room, my dear boy. Our friends say they’ve discovered something potentially dangerous and we should be alert,” Roman instructed.

“Um, Dad, with your m-mental state being what it is, shouldn’t we be more worried about the haunting?”

“Brody, we’re not being haunted,” Roman said with more than a twinge of frustration in his voice.

“Okay, but h-hear me out. What if we’re being haunted by your own Ghost? A-angry at being stuck in l-limbo after dying from terminal herpes because you up-load-loaded yourself into a robot body instead of g-going into the light. Now the g-Ghost of my father will stop at nothing to—”

“You check out what was under these papers yet?” Reach asked, cutting short the war machine’s eccentric ramblings.

Roman rolled his shoulder to free himself from Brody’s grip and moved over to the desk to examine the mummified occupant. He used a pen he’d wrested from the smattering across the desk to move the corpse’s hand to the side so he could see the rest of the page. “I’d gotten so distracted with the room that I’d forgotten. Ah. These are formulae for curing parasitic infections.”

Morse peered over Roman’s shoulder and attempted to sound scientific. “I can see that, Doctor. Could they have stumbled onto alien malaria?”

“I don’t think so,” Roman countered. “At least not like we know it, Geoffrey.”

Roman used the pen to entwine a few strands of hair stubbornly clinging to the man’s skull. He carefully hoisted it, giving him the room he needed to see the man’s face. Even though it appeared as if Roman was staring at the floor, the robotic sensors loaded into the drone encompassed much more than how normal people interacted with the world. Beneath the augmented reality overlay, a visual sensor stripe flooded the doctor with a tidal wave of information. “How terrible. It appears he ended his own life. There’s a pill bottle on the floor between his feet. I’d wager it’s some sort of narcotic he used to put himself out of his misery.”

“That’s tough, Dad,” Brody said. “Maybe it was his Ghost that moved the d-doorstop.”

Roman turned to the bandanna wrapped drone shaking its head solemnly at the thought. “No more Ghost stories, my boy. Those movies of yours are negatively impacting your ability to properly evaluate the facts. I have half a mind to restrict you to nothing except G-rated films.”

“Y-you wouldn’t dare!”

Roman motioned for Reach. “Jared, if you would be so kind as to show me this cocoon?”

“Wilco, Doc. When we shut the vault, it locked itself. We don’t have the key. Brody’s going to have to torch his way through for us.”

Roman patted the underside of the desk, then switched to the other, working around the corpse so as not to move it. He opened a drawer and pawed inside until he came away with a leather-bound journal. He tossed it across the room to Reach, who almost dropped it. “Check that if you don’t mind. Ah, wait. Here we are.”

Roman came away from the desk with what looked like an old-school index card. The laminated stock had frayed edges that curled at the corners as he held it up for a better inspection. “All the technology at their disposal, and this is what they resorted to.”

“Probably better than writing it on their palms seeing what they were up against,” Morse pointed out.

“Indeed, Geoffrey,” Roman agreed.

Reach took the card from him, amused by the myriad inky smudge marks splattered across the card’s surface. He stifled a laugh as he knew right away what the blotches were. Staedtler military marking pens. Leave it to the RUPAC to steal anything they could lay claim to.

“I’ll pull the door. Brody, we’re going to need you to go in and make sure nothing in there’s changed,” Reach said.

A whimper pulsed out of the drone’s speakers along with heavily animated gestures pointing at the doorstop.

“Brody, we shut the door after you left. The doorstop didn’t move,” Reach argued

A heavy sigh came from the JS android. “TV people.”

Cycling the combination lock on the outside of the door, Reach was rewarded with a series of clicks. “Why go old-school on this type of lock when they had mag-locks and fancy security on other entrances beside this one?”

“No way to find out until we go through some of this,” Morse said, pointing to the desk.

A thick metallic snap sounded from inside the door. Reach put himself behind the heavy plate steel and yanked the handle. Brody charged into the room and stopped just short of the bone pile that had been there before. “Carol Anne? C’mon, baby, talk to D-daddy!”

As Brody went in to inspect the room, Roman followed. The doctor stood side by side with his creation. Reach could vaguely hear the doctor say, “Give me a hand with this, my boy.”

The sounds of tearing and gnashing of fabric drifted from the room like something out of a horror flick where the director tried to skirt a hard ‘R’ rating by showing much of the mayhem off screen.

Brody and his red bandanna walked backward from the room, sharing a load of something curled up in the silky mesh vaguely resembling a heavy blanket of cobwebs. Roman trailed from the other side of the bundle, taking great pains to tread carefully with his portion of the weight. The two waited while the rest of the team made room between the vault and the desk for the haul.

“Dear God, that looks rancid!” Morse said.

Roman peeled away layers of silk webbing and finally stepped away when he had enough of the stuff clear. “Jared, Geoffrey, I can honestly say that I’m stumped.”

Curled up on the floor in something akin to the fetal position was a human-sized creature. The initial form resembled a powerfully built person covered by chitinous plates. Hands and feet ending in long talons appeared delicate in contrast to its hulking appearance. Its head left no doubt to the insect part where articulate mandibles thrust from a densely plated face.

Brody hovered around the corpse, his rifle inadvertently coming up. “You are one ugly m-mother—”

“Not now, Brody,” Doctor Roman said. “I advise everyone not piloting a drone to have as little contact with this as possible until we can ascertain its nature.”

“I don’t think we’ll have a problem sticking to that, Doc,” Morse said. “Is this another type of Bangora or something?”

Roman sucked in breath through his teeth, an affectation coming out over the speakers beneath the AR skin. “I don’t think so, Geoffrey. I think it’s an Amir original. Much like the shovast, this is a creature that is likely only found in certain environments. What concerns me are these.”

The doctor motioned for the team to step away from the creature’s back. He brushed the gossamer shroud away from the husk, exposing round entry holes in the chitin.

“Are those bullet holes?” Reach asked.

“No. They are a type of relief in the exoskeleton.”

Reach’s mind tracked along all the possibilities from Doctor Roman’s statement. Since coming to Amir, they’d encountered bugs that turned people into zombies, multi-mouthed lion dogs that acted like trap door spiders, and a giant lizard thing named David Hasselhoff. As Reach stumbled through the many animals he’d seen so far, all he could think to ask was, “Relief from what?”

12

Liana poured the tea into her cup, taking note of how her hand shook. That was happening more and more as things progressed. During the missions to make contact with the Grey Faction, Liana had learned the physical advancement Roman had used to heal her from a RUPAC gunshot was failing. If left untreated, her physical condition would deteriorate to the point where her dying from the very treatment that had saved her life was a real possibility.

She answered the flashing link indicator floating just inside of her peripheral vision. “Alan, what can I do for you?”

“Sorry to interrupt, Madame Osay,” Bosa said through his AR display. “Just thought you’d want to know that Jared and his team have made entry into Station Twelve. There’s no sign of life so far in the station, and at first blush, we think that something the RUPAC were trying to treat got away from them.”

“Is the team okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. But they found something that I wanted to run by you. Elona’s never seen anything like it, and Masau has his creature catalog for all the animals we’ve encountered, including the ones the Osay saw before our arrival. Even Marlin is coming up empty. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

An image flared to life in Liana’s HUD, nearly robbing the breath from her chest. Judging by its size next to the team's boots in the picture, whatever it was had to be immense once it unfolded from its fetal position. “Is it another type of Bangora?”

Bosa allowed himself a brief laugh. When he saw her brighten a bit, he added, “Jared said the same thing, ma’am. You both are like two of a kind.”

“Stubborn?” Liana asked playfully.

Bosa flared his hand in apology. “Not the word I would use. Still, we knew that you had extensive experience ranging outside the colony as a scout for your people, so we thought we’d ask.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. It looks like a big insect. Does it walk upright?” she inquired.

“We’re not sure, ma’am. It’s all curled up like that and Doctor Roman says the carapace is little more than a shell. Whatever creature was inside had long since dried up. They’re going to take it apart once they can get it to a more secure location.”

“I’ll leave that up to them,” Liana said. Her face scrunched at the thought of another animal autopsy after what they went through with the Bangora. “Thank you for the update, Alan. As soon as I’m done with some camp matters, I’ll rejoin you in the TOC.”

“No worries, ma’am. We’re here if you need us.” The colonel disappeared from the room, taking the gruesome visage of the unknown creature in the HUD with him.

She returned to her tea, savoring the warm liquid passing her teeth, momentarily grateful for Bosa’s call to give the steaming cup a moment to cool. She let herself rest against the desk to provide balance. It was going to hit any minute now. The auto-injector Roman had installed on the back of her arm infused steady doses of pharmaceuticals into her blood to keep the stabilization process he’d devised from tearing her apart. At the start of the treatment, Liana had felt fine. Now it was almost a month in and she’d been noticing a sag in energy and sore muscles the closer she got to a new dose coming on. It had been going on long enough so that she knew when the injector was going to do its work. This was going to be her life for the next year until her body worked through the process. The injector and bi-weekly trips to cryo were non-negotiable if she wanted to make it through this.

The injector pushed its payload into her arm, sending an annoyingly predictable wave of nausea flashing through her. She held the teacup in both hands to feel the warmth on her skin as the medicine snaked through her veins. The sickness and dizziness were lasting a shorter and shorter time with each passing week, but it was still better to find a quiet place where she could brace herself to ride out the dose. While trying to stand during a vertigo induced injection wasn’t the smartest play, she’d found the effect lasted longer if she sat or lay down. The cup in her hands had been a new tactic, something for her to focus on and keep from dropping until the symptoms died away.

A knock at the door dragged her away from her personal struggles. “Come in.”

Sergeant First Class Smith and Lieutenant Cobey strode into the room past Murphy, Liana’s guardian android that kept watch outside. The two senior leaders for the militia’s Wolverine Platoon took hold of Liana’s wrist in greeting, each man leveling his strength into the grip for a moment before stepping back.

“What do you have for me?” Liana asked in the native Osay language.

“Ranks are growing, ma’am. Sergeant Dawson says that with the next few classes, each platoon, Cobra, Wolverine, and Desperado should be at company strength within the month.”

“That’s great news. That also means promotion for you both. Colonel Bosa said he was putting together classes for you in the event our forces grew.” She held up her hands to forestall any push back against the suggestion. “What I’ve learned from working so closely with them is that there are a lot of parts to a modern military, and if taking a class or two will make it so that you avoid some of the mistakes, then I think it’s something you both should consider.”

“We don’t disagree, Elder Craiswell,” Cobey said. “We just think that we should have a bigger stake in the operations than just doing patrols, guard duty, and chasing shadows.”

Liana took a sip from her cup and offered some to the two men before her, who declined. “Well, that was something I didn’t expect. What was that line that Sergeant Stewart always says?”

“Unexpected but not unwelcome,” Smith growled, finishing their leader’s thoughts for her.

“That’s it. While I’m not going to second guess Colonel Bosa and how he moves our troops to defend us, I can make recommendations. What if I told you that the colonel is staging for a big mission coming up and has already asked for help. Before you try to jump into it, you should know it is going to involve skills we aren’t accustomed to. Everyone would have to train. That would mean both of you.”

“Who was the colonel going to send if not for us?” Smith asked.

“He was going to send the Rangers, along with a large load of 33s and 39s,” Liana said.

Smith scoffed. “I won’t knock how effective Alexa and Murphy are, but those other robots are good for security or an extra gun. They don’t think like we do. They aren’t the monsters we can be.”

With the nausea of her medication rapidly fading, she was free to enjoy the fire in Smith’s bravado. This was what she’d hoped would happen to the men and women they’d put forward to become militia. She’d hoped they’d rise to the level the Rangers operated at. While the men of the Seventy Fifth Regiment seemed to work on a tier far above anyone sane, their tactics and hyper aggressive way to tackle their problems with speed, violence, and surprising intelligence had a way of seeping into the people they interacted with. Today was never good enough for them. They had to do it better tomorrow. She was seeing that in the two men standing in front of her.

Cobey had been part of the security that had guarded her father. He was agile, both physically and mentally, and applied his version of strict and strong to whatever he was assigned. Standing here and asking for such things meant he’d taken the next step in what Bosa had mentioned as the trinity of leadership. The three facets he constantly hammered to anyone that would listen—prove that you were capable, seek opportunity, and endeavor to build for what comes next. Cobey had proven that he was capable ever since taking the lead spot in the platoon. Now it seemed he was moving onto the second tier in leadership, seeking opportunity.

Smith… was just Smith. He’d been a savage all of his life. Hunting, fighting, farming, whatever had been the task, the man sought to own it like it was a birthright. Legends about him had reached the Rangers, which led to him becoming one of the first Osay platoon sergeants. With his longtime friend, Sergeant First Class Casey, the duo had been atop of a very short list.

Liana remembered the day by the river when Smith had attacked a zaskonek trying to make off with a child. The man had wrestled the monster until it let go and then proceeded to beat it to death. He was not a man anyone wanted as an enemy, but to those he saw as part of the tribe, he was an invaluable asset.

“I’ll talk to the colonel,” Liana acquiesced. “But be ready to get in for training.” When the duo didn’t move to make their exit, she asked, “What else do you have for me?”

Cobey produced a small tablet the militia leaders had taken to wearing clipped to the top of their armor in the same way the Rangers wore their battle boards. Images flashed across the screen showing a RUPAC military unit in the middle of an operation. Liana linked to the battle board and brought the images into a first-person view. Seeing and hearing through whatever camera and sound system was being used as though she were standing there herself, the surrounding noise flooded her senses as the AR software written into the link processed the feed from another neural implant.

“But I don’t understand. When are we going to leave Amir so I can go to a real city?”

Liana’s blood froze. She knew that voice. She’d grown up hating that voice, and the woman it belonged to. Emileeya Tucker. The woman whose family had been branded traitors by Liana’s father. They had been a thorn in the community’s side since she was a girl. Several weeks ago, Smith discovered Emileeya working as a RUPAC spy. In a twisted bit of theater devised by Smith, Liana and trusted members of the community allowed her to escape in order to lead them to Rykov, the Reclamation Fleet's scout commander.

Dubbed as High Value Target Coffee Cup, Rykov had taken the bait but had dropped off the radar before they could track Emileeya to their target. Doctor Roman and his technology had played a pivotal role in planting the seeds for a successful catch and release plan. He’d given Smith miniature robots to toss into the woman’s hair before they allowed her escape. The woman would be none the wiser that they were there, and they remained inert until such time as the target, namely Emileeya, was still for longer than five minutes. At that point, the mini bots would upload a virus into the woman’s link. The hidden code lay dormant until Emileeya was allowed to link with any RUPAC devices.

It didn’t have to be much. A tablet, a smart watch, even a link enabled video screen would be enough for the system corrupting worm to slither into the network and begin corrupting their systems to work for the Osay.

“Who have you shown this to?”

“No one but you, Osay Craiswell,” Cobey said. “It went active a few hours ago, and Smith had an alert programmed to notify him when it did.”

Liana looked impressed. “You coded a signal alarm?”

“Nah. Brody.”

“I am both scared and impressed,” Liana huffed.

* * *

“Madame Osay, can you tie up all the camp business and come for the coffee?” Bosa asked.

“I wish that were the case. I have something for you to look at that could change things,” Liana said.

Bosa half turned to regard the Osay leader. “Things as in life on the camp?”

“No, Colonel. Current operations.”

“You have the floor Madame Osay. Take it away.” Bosa kept his attention fixed to displays at the front of the TOC.

She shifted to Bosa's side to keep her focus more on the colonel and less on the screens showing Jared's current mission. “Lieutenant Cobey and Sergeant First Class Smith came to me with news the wounded bird we let loose has infected the other birds she’s been flying with.”

Bosa kept an ear toward the operation going on at Station Twelve until Liana made her reference to Emileeya Tucker. Her mention of the traitor pulled his focus sharply to their conversation. He motioned for Sherman to join them. “Sherman, come over here for a sec. Continue, please, Liana.”

The three hovered next to one of the planning tables, where Liana attached them to a virtual viewing room for Cobey's video. The clip continued to play until Sherman stopped it.

“Do we know where this was taken?” Sherman asked over a particular part of the clip.

Bosa spun the display in the augmented reality, looking for some hint at what his officer saw. “You got something?”

“I know this section of beach. Where did you get this?” Sherman asked.

“While I don’t know the specifics on everything Alexa did, we knew the RUPAC would check Emileeya for machines that could track her when she escaped. Alexa gave Sergeant Smith mini machines to put into Emileeya’s hair. Once they had her clear, they uploaded a virus into Em’s link. Any system with an open channel would be infected. This is the first feed we’ve gotten from it,” Liana said.

“How old is it?” Sherman was getting agitated.

“According to Sergeant Smith, a few hours. What’s wrong?” Liana asked.

“This is down the beach from the Werner Village,” Sherman said. “I’ve ridden by here on security sweeps when we set off on the little adventure with the Ghosts. Damn horse nearly tossed me into the surf.”

“So they could be riding here now,” Bosa said.

Sherman wagged his finger at the AR display. “Does Sergeant Smith have access to the live video?”

“Smith only had an alert set up to notify him when it went active. This is on our system right now,” Liana confirmed.

Bosa called into the link. “Alexa, are you there?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

The trio whirled about at the sound of the android behind them. She stepped back, careful not to bump into anyone startled by her sudden arrival.

“That was fast.”

“Sorry, Colonel. When I saw the feeds being read and displayed over the link, I finished up my work in the lab and came over in case you wanted my assistance in this matter.”

“You knew this was happening?” Sherman asked.

“I knew the feed had been accessed, but as I was knee deep in a project for Doctor Roman, I thought it best to let those actively working on it take the lead until my help was requested. Seeing the access logs for the three of you sharing the clip prompted me to come over.”

“Makes me want to go to the bathroom with the lights off,” Sherman commented.

“I wouldn’t use my connection to the neural link network for anything crass, Captain Sherman. Seeing how you dispose of your meals isn’t exactly my style.”

Bosa’s face brightened, despite the severity of watching a traitor’s pirated video feed. “You trying to work in the slang from all the kids?”

“Damn skippy.” Alexa pivoted on the topic, forcing the conversation back on track. “Thus was my surprise when the feed came online after having no contact for so long. My only guess is that they were under such considerable cover that the satellites we have in orbit now couldn’t pick up the signals.”

“Explain please, Alexa?” Bosa requested.

“The neural implant has a limited range, based on broadcast points within its reach. Think of it like a mobile phone on Earth. The antenna on a mobile device was typically sufficient to reach fifty miles when we left. That would allow it to connect to multiple broadcast towers to push the signals into orbit for transfer across the globe. Our implants are considerably less than that. Without the burst transmitters in our vehicles and androids, they can broadcast for approximately five miles.

“Emileeya’s link transmitter was either under considerable layers of stone or had been deeply submerged. We are now just reading the signals because she’s come up from where she was and had access to our network.”

“We built a burst antenna at Werner’s,” Sherman noted.

“Precisely the reason for my visit, Captain. I would like to know if you want a drone dispatched to shadow the signal so we have access to it?”

“It’s a great intel source, Alexa. I would say it’s the smart call. What do you say, Madame Osay?” Sherman asked.

Liana was studying the video when the mention of her title brought her back into the conversation. While she was the de facto ruler of the colony and ultimately the one to make decisions for all of them, she’d seen Bosa as a mentor. He was firm but kept an open mind in order to adapt to the constantly changing dynamics presented by their new home. To have his Rangers repeatedly ask for her permission to enact military protocols felt like the greatest compliment she would ever get. “Do it.”

“Sir, if we dispatch a model-39, it has increased range and can carry a heavier weapons package in the event it needs to engage,” Sherman said.

The model 39s were a RUPAC rip-off of Doctor Roman’s design for the Bulwark combat armor system. After he left Earth, the RUPAC had raided several facilities with clumsily secured servers that had access to a handful of the ancient files that were code named, The Arlington Archive. The archive was the code name given to Doctor Roman’s unfinished projects, collected in a single source document until such time as he had the resources to finish them. While the RUPAC only managed to get fragments of the files before they were pulled offline, the pieces were enough to begin construction of the semi-autonomous drones that were common in the RUPAC military.

“That sounds like a good plan, Mario. Just make sure that if you try to stuff someone in the suit, it’s not you,” Bosa chided.

“I never get to have any fun,” Sherman commented sarcastically.

“Welcome to my world,” the colonel agreed. He watched Sherman walk away, then dove into the link to get the process of deploying a Thirty-Nine on station to keep the signal active. “Alexa, tell me we’ve been monitoring the signal since it went live.”

“We have, Colonel. Sending now.”

A HUD window popped into the link, showing a static-filled broadcast of bouncing points of view flashing by tree limbs. The sound of a quieted engine was just audible enough over the displaced branches and snapping vines that Liana and Bosa both noticed it as the whine of the quad-wheeled ATVs the RUPAC favored for quick ground movement. After taking Station-Five, the crew had picked up a significant amount of them for use on and off base.

The video broke up, nearly severing the feed, but came back a moment later.

“They must be taking an erratic track toward us based on how the signal is bouncing in and out,” Alexa said. “Unless we’re not their intended target.”

“Captain Sherman?” Bosa called back to the room.

“Time on target for deployment of Model-39, two minutes,” Sherman said.

“Where do you think they’re heading?” Liana asked.

Bosa pointed to a workstation where the screen showed a map of Camp Craiswell and the surrounding area. “Hopefully, this is our effort at Station Twelve bearing fruit.”

13

The dual feed on the monitors was going to get more than a few people sick if they stared at the screens for too long. Bosa and Sherman were used to the kind of jerky motion they saw in the display. After riding on the skids of a Little Bird, the jumpy display of someone on the Dragonfly assault VTOL craft was more nostalgic for the two men than it was disorienting.

“Oscar Bravo, this is Dragonfly Delta. Deploying asset.”

“Oscar Bravo, Roger Out,” Bosa replied into the comms.

The feeds in the TOC changed from the twin rotor ship and the rider’s perspective to just the rider. A small bouncing red light in the man’s HUD bobbed twice, turned yellow for two pongs, and then turned green, pitching the point of view into freefall. The fall brushed past branches and the crackle of rending bark as the person plummeted toward the ground. The feed stabilized in a stunning stop that stared down a path through the trees.

“Oscar Bravo, this is Sergeant Baldino. I am in the mud and am moving along track with the target signal.”

The feed immediately jumped into motion, bounding over fallen logs, sifting through vines, and vaulting over breaks in the terrain. A signal strength indicator appeared in the HUD, showing distance and direction to the target signal along with its frequency strength.

Elona, the senior technician in the TOC, waved for the Colonel. “Sir, we have a twenty-five percent increase in the feed lock with Sergeant Baldino on the ground in that drone. It’ll get stronger the closer he gets.”

“Not too close, though,” Bosa said, both for her Benefit and Baldino’s. “Can we get a read on what they’re doing?”

Baldino’s drone window drifted to the side of the feeds and was replaced by the hectic motion of ATVs cautiously picking their way through the terrain. The lead bike in the convoy stopped frequently to gauge the terrain before the operator wearing the familiar Ghost Unit armor turned his ride along a new bearing.

“What are they doing?” Elona asked.

“If I had to guess, I’d say they’re sticking to the thick canopy so they stay off our radar,” Sherman said.

“Loop in Doctor Gruber on this,” Bosa said.

A ping sounded over the speakers in the TOC. “I’m here, Colonel. I have the feeling you have need of my expertise?”

“Yes, please. Do you have any assets in the area we’re pinging on the map?”

“The specific area, no. But I do have some close by that I can send on an intercept.”

“Works for me, Doctor. Make it happen.”

Doctor Gruber had been a RUPAC scientist working on slave units for local wildlife when his station had been attacked by the Bangora. The horrific chimera had cast Gruber’s front steps as its lair, leading to over a decade of isolation in the secluded research station. One by one, his lab partners tried to skirt the creature in attempts to escape to other RUPAC facilities. He never found out if they succeeded or not. In all cases, he never heard from them again. During his creature induced confinement, the man had spent his time developing technology that transformed a local breed of simian into a research and reconnaissance tool, capable of seeking out targets and casting back video for observation. While the RUPAC proper meant to weaponize the animals of Amir, Gruber had been more content to see how far he could push the boundaries of his relationships to the animals for less aggressive pursuits.

“You should be getting the feeds from them now, Colonel,” Gruber said over the intercom.

The feed populated onto the screens with brachiating movements and startling jumps across considerable distances into trees along the creature’s path.

“Does everything on this planet have to shake the camera?” Elona joked.

“Everything that doesn’t is in a zaskonek’s belly,” Sherman said.

“Nice one, sir,” the native technician called back.

“Thanks. Sarn’t B, we have you at five klicks from the target. Keep that distance between you and we should be good.”

The main screen continued with the swinging monkeys forcing their way into the operations area. Hovering at a height of several branches off the ground, the fildeema watched intently as the incoming motorbikes picked their way across the tangled forest. Three bikes, the second bearing two riders, bobbed along a path of vines and the low hanging branches stretching into the underbrush with their purplish leaves. The bikes were there one minute, then gone as they dropped into some cut or depression, before finding their way to solid ground again. As they neared the gaggle of fildeema watching the procession, the monkeys screamed.

The creatures launched themselves higher into the trees while shrieking angry, raspy cries through the forest. The little platoon of espionage apes dispersed, leaving only a single disciplined beast to watch from a vantage point high and away from the advancing intruders.

“Doctor Gruber. Do you have any idea what just happened?” Bosa asked.

“Their heart rates spiked when the patrol passed beneath them. If I had to guess, the lead motor bikes are using a sonic disruptor to keep the animals at bay. The fildeema will continue to monitor from a distance, but they won’t approach so close, again.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Bosa said into the ether of the TOC.

Sherman used a freeze frame of the trio, enhancing the image into hyper-grainy detail like the old Earth photos capturing Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. “Why aren’t they being affected?”

“Most likely the beams are directional,” Alexa said, breaking her silence behind the command crew. “It also appears most likely that the incursion is aimed at a grouping of homesteads outside the perimeter of the camp. Colonel, if you no longer have need of me, I should return to my project.”

“Thank you for the help, Alexa. Can we call you if we run into something technical?”

“Always,” the android said cheerfully.

As Alexa vanished through the commotion of the TOC, Bosa scanned across the incoming streams to check on the other ongoing operations. After all, there wasn’t just one mission going right now. There were several. “Elona, connect me to Reach on the ground at Station-Twelve.”

* * *

Reach finished rigging a set of cables from the wall to the android Alexa had drained of power, when the call came in. “Go for Reach.”

“It’s Bosa. Give us an update on the station.”

“We have control of the entry point at the back of the facility, sir.” He passed his helmet cam’s field of view about the expansive entry room, whose smooth walls and slate floor spoke of military grade construction for supporting considerable weight while allowing the station’s lower enlisted to keep it clean. Rooms like this were typical for loading up troops to go out the door. “Elevator is working, and we’re just waiting for Doctor Roman to finish with his science fair project to take a ride up.”

The feed followed Reach into another room where Brody and Doctor Roman hovered over a hulking mass on the floor.

“Doctor Roman, it’s Bosa. Have you been able to make any headway with the specimen?”

The doctor sat on his haunches, rubbing his chin until he realized it wasn’t actually his chin he was rubbing in the remotely piloted drone. “The animal defies characterization as it has the ability to move bipedal, but its carapace, facial architecture, and general design speaks to something insectile.”

“So, the general consensus is that it’s a giant bug?” Bosa asked.

“Insomuch as we can classify any of the animals we’ve encountered on Amir to strictly defined orders within an Earthly classification,” Roman said. “Its most fascinating feature leads me to believe why the station here went offline.”

The doctor and Brody moved away from the creature, allowing Reach to see what the two were working on. Behind them, the curled-up monstrosity lay on the floor with its perforated chitinous plating removed. Row upon row of dried beaded husks lay across its back, attached to desiccated muscle fiber, long since mummified.

Sherman leaned into the comms. “Are those little bugs, Doctor?”

“Those, my dear Mario, are saraka.”

Row after row of the thumb-sized insects lay connected to the desiccated tissue under the creature's armored plate. Hundreds of the zombie inducing bugs attached to a rigid muscle structure beneath the plate, where the host’s death had turned them into little more than beaded husks on its corpse. As Brody held up the animal's back plate, he poked a finger through one of the openings.

“Doctor, would it be fair to say the bugs lived under its shell and came and went by the holes?” Sherman asked.

“More than a fair assessment, my good man,” the doctor agreed. “We came to the same hypothesis.”

“Do you think they were experimenting with a way to deploy them as weapons, Doctor?” Bosa asked.

“I don’t think so, Alan,” Roman said as he took the exo-skeletal plate from Brody. Holding up the chitinous armor in front of Reach, he fed the image to those watching in the command post. “Just at a cursory glance, the two organisms seem symbiotic in a way that would have taken science hundreds of thousands of generations to develop. I mean, this back armor has holes that mimic the entrance on a wasp nest. Why go through all that trouble when they can do what we did with Mr. Reach during his assault on the science station. If you want to weaponize the insects, simply stuff them into a bottle and deploy by drone.”

“Is this something we need to worry about, Doctor?” Bosa said in the way that he spoke when he wanted a straight answer.

“If I may,” Reach interrupted. “I don’t think this site poses a threat, sir. We’ve seen the RUPAC set up science stations all over Amir to research the planet because it was too far to export it all to their colonies. This particular facility housed their pharma R&D. From the notes we found under our dead friend here, best guess was they were trying antiparasitic drugs as a starting point to mitigate the effects of the saraka bugs.”

Reach maneuvered around the table, pointing to the mummified suicide that lay hunched over the mountainous research on the desk. He produced a cinched leather journal and held it up to Bolton’s point of view so the people in the TOC could see. “We found what looked like a journal but is actually a tablet with a leather cover. If we can get it powered up, we might find some clues as to what happened. But I already have enough to base a pretty good guess. I think the RUPAC followed the zombies back to the nest and found this thing, so they brought it here to study it and it got away from them.”

“What are the chances that restoring the elevator releases more of these things?” Bosa asked.

“The facility above was locked, sir. They even disconnected the power to the elevator and sealed the maintenance hatch so nothing could crawl back and forth,” Reach said. “We were about to go up, unless you think it’s too much of a risk.”

Reach already had a sense of what the colonel was wrestling with on his side of the comms. If they maintained the base’s lockdown, they wouldn’t be able to signal any RUPAC forces in the area to track them to the station. The flip side to the argument was possibly exposing the vicinity to the saraka and more of these creatures, if any of them lived.

Reach almost laughed out loud when Roman snatched the animal’s back plate from Brody. The android had made a game of placing a bullet onto the plate and seeing if he could guide its tumble from one side of it to the other, without losing the round through a hole. This didn’t sit well with Papa Roman, who removed the source of Brody’s amusement as if he were an annoyed parent.

While the interaction between created and creator was amusing, especially when it was those two, Reach couldn’t help but stare at the creature between them. If it was alive, it would most likely dwarf a human being. It wouldn’t be Bangora big, but it would be up there. Each dried-out bean on its back was a dead saraka bug. Thinking back to Bosa’s earlier remark, how easy would it be to capture one of these and let it loose on a city somewhere to decimate a population.

“Send the drones up into the station. Rangers in EBA’s are okay, too. Have the flesh and blood personnel maintain control of the outflow center. Move the people we have on standby up to you and get them ready. We don’t know how long it’s going to be between when you activate the beacon and the enemy knocking on the door.”

“On it, sir. Reach out.”

“Alright, Doc. I’m going to need you and Brody to pause the science experiment and come with me upstairs. We’ll have the remaining android bag your leftovers.”

Roman turned to regard the reluctant lieutenant for his comment. “Of course. Although I must say, your joke has ruined takeout food for me from here on out.”

Jared knocked on the side of the doorframe and motioned for them to follow. “Yeah, I bet, Doc. I mean, after this I was going to make a KFC run and get some of that secret recipe.”

After stepping out from the room, the crew hurried to the elevator where Sergeant Tran assembled a fire team. The NCO wasted no time in putting them to work. “Just got word from Oscar Bravo. We’re T-minus yesterday on this. If you’re metal and you know it, hop the lift.”

Brody clapped twice from his spot near the room. “S-sorry about that, Extreme Citizen Ranger T-Tran. Babysitting duty over nine hundred and ninety-nine years. I have a p-problem.”

“No problems as far as I can tell if you’re on the lift. Toe the line, hero,” Tran said, gesturing toward the open elevator plate.

Brody hopped to and slid by Unga, who traded the tools he’d used to help repair the lift for his MGX-5 Ranger Automatic Weapon. The combination of the light machine gun on the oversized Ranger in full kit made for an awkward entry onto the platform.

“Get after it, Brother B,” Unga said, offering up the knuckleduster side of his combat gloves.

The eccentric combat mech snapped his robotic knuckles back at the man. “W-with the kung fu grip.”

The newly charged JS model drone surged to its feet and tested out its mobility and sensors before walking to the lift. Like Brody, this model wasn’t wearing an ID skin over its frame to delineate a pilot. Reach stopped Doctor Roman as he made his way to join the other drones. “Hey, sir. Is the drone going up there with its AI, or is Alexa jumping back in?”

“Alexa is currently occupied on another project,” Roman said. “I am sure I can handle all the sci-fi that goes along with this.”

“Sci-fi, huh?” Reach asked, throwing a wink toward the doctor. “Someone trying to walk the walk?”

“I must admit. I have mostly been around the command element since we’ve landed on Amir. Working beside the Ranger teams proper has been very exciting. Reminds me of my rough and tumble days in college.”

“Lots of testosterone fueled alpha male types in the MIT science wings back then, Doc?” Reach asked.

Roman laughed. “Lots of trash talking in the department over nightly games of Halo. It was very exciting.”

Reach checked the action on his weapon before moving onto the lift. “You sure you don’t want to wait this out until we clear the structure?”

“Nonsense. I just need my trusty battle rifle and some plasma grenades, and I’m ready to tea bag some newbs.”

Reach nearly tripped over his own feet, sparking a laughing fit in the doctor. “Careful, Doc. You keep talking like that and Brody’s going to build one of those rifles for you.”

“Who s-says I didn’t already?” Brody said, pushing past the MCT leader. “… it b-blew up, though.”

“Hey LT,” Tran said, catching Reach’s attention. Tran worked over his battle board while he waited for the officer to approach, delineating several factors of the operation all happening at once. The intruder element, consisting of former RUPAC soldiers, were making their way to the station now. Specially recruited by Tran and Reach to lure out, if not possibly infiltrate the enemy encampment, they possessed the history and connections with the group to potentially make the ruse work. Tran watched the trackers steadily advancing up the hill when Reach made his way. “You want one of my guys to jump into the spare?”

“These new drones are heavy on the sensors, Sarn’t T. It can be a bit disorienting if they haven’t rigged one before. Did they try them out last night while we were waiting to come in?”

“No, sir. All my guys were holding things down last night.”

“You ever roll one?” Reach asked.

“Not my style, sir. I had to ride in Brody’s armor last time. That was enough to sour me on the experience.”

Reach tried not to laugh. For all of Tran’s advertised dislike for the android’s antics, he had a gut feeling the NCO held a begrudging respect for the bot and all he’d been through. They’d recently learned that Brody had been purging his memory every few years to retain little moments from people he genuinely cared for so that they wouldn’t be forgotten. The android had smartly used the action movies he’d preserved for so long as a type of shared mythology for the Osay to bond over, and to endear him to newer generations who couldn’t help but fall in love with the protective yet affable guardian. Some of the conversations on the topic among the Rangers were campfire fuel over coffee and Penu Lapu.

Reach had to wonder. Would you give up the memories of who you were yesterday just to hold onto a single memory with your battle buddy? While there were certain Rangers who’d taken to hanging out with Brody to take in his topsy-turvy stories, mostly for intel, after hearing he was actively preserving his chosen family in clips and vignettes, many of them started hosting family movie night with the hulking android.

Brody would sit in silent attention—the only time that could really be said unless he was powered down—absorbing every detail of the movie. Reach sat in on one of the sessions. Not so much for the movie, but to watch Brody. Every one-liner, every explosion, every incident of fun and calamity a good movie could offer, gripped his attention like a vice. But once in a while, Reach noticed Brody shift his attention to the people with him. He would watch as the adopted family he didn’t know he needed shared a quiet minute in the struggle between surviving the RUPAC and Amir.

Maybe Brody had a lot to still teach us, Reach thought. And what does that mean for the human race when a machine can learn to cherish humanity and we can’t?

Sergeant Tran snapped his fingers to get everyone’s attention. “Listen up. The job is to flip the switch on the commo gear, send a RUPAC friendly SOS, and then boogie back for phase two. Unga, Morse, cover down on Lieutenant Reach. I ain’t explaining to the Number One Osay why her boy toy bought the farm.”

“That’s a good point, Sarn’t T, but we should be good. The doc said there’s nothing to worry about,” Reach assured him.

“I’ll write that on the tombstone, sir,” Tran said.

Constructed of multi-tiered, high tensile strength metal and marked with warning markers in both Russian and Chinese, the lift resembled the heavy equipment lifts found in the other science stations. This one had seen extreme use, judging by the scuffing and wear on the warning signs painted across the surface. Reach wasn’t worried about the mechanisms failing or the lift giving out mid floor. The gouges and scarring across galvanized steel concerned him. With no evidence of anything mechanical creating the damage, Reach’s mind wandered around the possibility the saraka creatures could inflict that kind of punishment. Doctor Roman speaking to the team brought his focus to task.

“Losefa, Geoffrey, thank you for filling out our little fire team,” Doctor Roman said.

“Of course, Doc. Can’t let Fire Team Gadget loose without a full roster,” Unga replied.

“Nope. No, no, no. Th-that’s a terrible name,” Brody said with his usual flare.

“What would you suggest, Brody?” Reach said, hitting the button on the wall to start the lift.

Brody’s robotic body shimmered, mimicking the overlay function inherent in the rest of the remotely operated team. When the effect sorted itself out, Brody’s drone appeared as an extremely well-muscled man with a square jaw, flat top haircut, no shirt under his flack jacket, and an assortment of grenades and magazines he didn’t have weapons for. Grease painted stripes covered the man’s face and bulging arms devoid of a combat shirt under the simulated armor. “Your loyalty is v-very touching. But it is not the most important thing in y-your life right now.”

“John Matrix?” Reach asked. “You’ve finally found a way to be the action hero you’ve always been inside.”

Matrix Brody shrugged. “Sometimes you have to g-go with the classics. Did you press the button so Fire Team Commando can get moving?”

“I did. See? It’s lit. Give it a minute. If you’re going to be like this the entire trip, I’m going to turn this lift right around,” Reach said, bumping his armored glove against the Android.

The doors to the lift slowly closed to seal off the elevator car. As far as mechanisms went, Reach was certain this was probably rated to carry vehicles due to its size and configuration. While they wouldn’t be able to get a badger in here, something smaller, perhaps even armored, would fit with no problem. The room below made a bit more sense as a storage or staging area for big equipment. But if that was the case, where was it all?

Morse waved his hand to get everyone’s attention. “Keep it tight when we’re up. The former tenants didn’t pay the electric bill, so we’ll have to rely on sensors. No one goes off alone.”

“While that may be t-true for your posers,” Brody said. “I have a history of flying solo.”

“No one goes alone, Brody. That includes you,” Harmon countered.

“Roger, Citizen! I’ll stay back and cover your b-backsides while you do science.”

The lift came to a bouncing stop, bobbing several times before the doors engaged in their epileptic opening. Switching to the bot’s very generous sensor suites, the fire team stacked up on either side of the wall with the androids at their front. An overturned armored utility truck lay directly ahead, tipped on its side. Morse motioned to Reach.

He nodded his understanding of the hand signal and pushed instructions through the link. “Doctor, line up on the windshield. See if there’s anything inside. Wait until we call you forward.” He took the lead, with Brody behind and Unga in trail. They skirted around the edge of the truck into an expansive staging area that seemed to be the mirror of the one below. Off to their flank, the titanic blast doors remained closed, shuttered against the outside with thick, corded weld points throughout the seam showing up on the sensors. Someone had spent considerable time not only soldering the doors closed, but welding girders and plating into place so that if the doors did open, it would be nearly impossible for anything man sized to get through.

As they passed what looked like an old Jersey barrier just dropped onto the floor near the edge of the truck, the sensor systems began outlining the myriad bodies strewn across the space. RUPAC technicians in their green jumpsuits were beside soldiers in their fatigues, completely armored in what the Rangers had come to expect for security teams working the stations. Spent brass was everywhere, as was the accumulation of discarded weapons and mags; it must have been an incredible fight. Bloody drag marks led away from the soldiers and technicians toward the entrance in the back of the room, the stains long since dried black with age.

“What were they fighting?” Unga asked.

“Beats me, bro. Doctor, you can come forward now,” Reach said into the link.

“Thank you, Jared. The truck was empty,” Roman observed. “It looks like they overturned it for cover. The other side of the vehicle has torn hoses and struts, as well as claw and slash marks in more than a few tires.”

“Those poor tires never stood a chance,” Brody said. “Anyone else think it’s w-weird the impaled guy is naked?”

“What impaled guy?” Unga asked.

Brody shared a HUD marker in his view. The fire team advanced, careful not to slip on any of the shell casings or enormous volume of litter in the space. Broken pipes and grating, random barriers, and stacks of equipment cases, some emptied and left open in the middle of the room, were everywhere in the voluminous chamber. A jersey barrier had been stacked in front of another exit. The wall sign in Russian read “Observation Deck.” Littered over the concrete barriers were sharpened rebar, pipes, and a smattering of deck grates that had been removed from somewhere in the facility, judging by the ragged burn marks in the steel.

A withered corpse impaled on the assortment of spikes lay with its arm resting over the barrier. Despite the passage of time for the mummified body, its fingers curled as though it had just missed grabbing for something. The man still wore his fatigue pants but was devoid of clothing everywhere else.

“Look here,” Roman said, pointing to the back of the man’s head. “The skull is bulging on these points, and there is a considerable misshaping of the spine at the C7 vertebrae.”

“Let’s move,” Reach said.

Remote access androids spread throughout the room with high gain sensors slicing across the space while Rangers slithered forward toward the door. Reach passed a tangle of bodies, one in a green jumpsuit, the other in RUPAC fatigues. The technician had died from bullet wounds pushed through his ribs, punching out from his shoulder on the other side. The soldier finished the technician’s job for him, putting his last round into his own skull. The scene repeated itself across the formation hall turned graveyard as the wraith-like Rangers made entry to the station proper.

The group moved to the far door, which, if the majority of the RUPAC stations were formulaic, would lead them to the command and control center for the facility. Reach stretched his hand to the crease on the portal and easily slid it to one side. “They broke the gears?”

“Looks like,” Morse agreed.

They sifted into the hallway, once again greeted with barriers and hastily constructed fighting positions. Reach passed by one of the firing points and stopped to examine the object’s orientation. “Anyone else notice that all the fighting positions face away from the staging area?”

“Probably fighting a holding action so they could seal themselves in, or buy just enough time to get someone out,” Harmon added.

“If the saraka bugs were the start of this calamity, I’d say that the science personnel in the station convinced the soldiers to seal the facility to keep whatever they were doing here from getting out,” Roman said.

Echoing footfalls on the stone floor reverberated across the debris strewn hall as they passed one ruined section after the next. Impact strikes and bullet burns on the walls were all directed one way, indicating that the entire fight here was a withdrawal to the floor they’d just left. Spaces where the team would expect to find the bodies of the fallen were marked by aged bloodstains devoid of their owners.

“Command and control up ahead,” Unga said into the link. A highlighted prompt in his HUD hovered over the sliding hatch door ahead of them. Beside him, a door marked “Danger! Do not open!” in Russian was packed with deck plating welded into the frame of the door to keep it from opening. “Bathroom?”

Reach tested the frame. “Eye on the prize, Ranger. Door is sealed. No power.”

“Hudson, run a bypass,” Morse said into the link.

The gasp that escaped Brody to echo into the link was as much horror as it was disappointment. “What did you j-just say, buddy?”

“Remember? We watched it with Lawler last week. It was a line from…”

“I know what it was from!” Brody growled into the comms.

“Am I missing something?” Roman asked.

Reach smiled. “Our friend Morse just out-Brody’d our Brody.”

“Oh,” Roman said, amused. “I’m glad to see he’s making friends.”

A preprogrammed overlay from Alexa in their HUDs showed the power connection plate for the door system. Once inside, Reach fed in connection cables from the uninhabited drone, fitted with a power pack to run depowered doors and systems. After a moment, he had the connections seated and the doors slowly drifted into the wall housing. He aimed into the room, waiting for the sensor sweep to tell him what was there. “I could use a hand here, Brody.”

The AI snapped to and shoved the barrel of his weapon into the door. “Let’s g-go to the mattresses.”

“Brody and me entering,” Reach said, ignoring the android’s ramblings.

Morse took up real estate facing away from Roman so both men could cover the hall. “Take it.”

“There are four terminals with a main command console in the center. The room is empty. No bodies. No nothing.”

“Th-this sucks. I wanna shoo-shoot something!”

“Me and the doc coming in.”

“Come in.”

Roman entered the space first, his weapon’s handling and movement on point for what they were doing. Reach almost forgot it was him piloting the drone. Button hooking around the frame, Reach plugged the cables into this side of the wall, powering the door just long enough to close it.

“Once you have that set, Jared, I’ll need the JS-Unit over here to power the command console.”

“Almost there, Doc,” Reach said.

Transitioning to the center of the room, Reach continued to follow procedural prompts left by Alexa. While it was planned that she would take part in the operation, she had taken steps for mission success in the event of her absence. He tapped in the drone’s power cable, watching the screens transition between system status to power draw as they attempted to bring the command console to life.

“Now, Jared. Make sure to feed power to the backup battery and not the main drive core. We don’t want a repeat of Alexa powering down because of an unknown drain on the system,” Roman instructed.

“I see that, Doc. Alexa left a pretty good recipe for me to follow.”

“I s-still can’t believe someone dropped an Aliens quote on me,” Brody lamented. “I’m off-off my game. Maybe this body has my core functions twisted ’cause it’s loaded with other stuff. Is this how Reach feels every time he blows the g-game with Liana? I mean, c-c-c’mon, play through or get off the course!”

Reach snapped above his head to reorient the android’s attention. “Focus front. Brody, I need you to be less you, right now.”

“Aye-firmative,” the android said.

The main console system screen flared to life and ran through its powering cycle with a series of system information prompts that named companies that might not even exist anymore. If what Reach had been told by various RUPAC elements he’d dealt with was true, the Regime wasn’t exactly the best place to do business unless you had connections to the right people.

The display changed to a formatted screen with system control features built into the interface. Doctor Roman hovered over the console, typing furiously across the keyboard with more than a few taps across the back key. “This might take a minute. Jared, how do the power levels look?”

“We’re only juicing the main board, Doc. We can run that for a while. Powering up the broadcast unit is going to take the most power.”

“Of course. I’m querying the station AI as to the situation here, but it might take a moment. It’s pretty basic in terms of its architecture. It’s no Brody,” Roman said.

“Th-that’s because I am a real American that fights for the rights of ev-every man.”

While near the door, the android quietly shifted the overlay to a man wearing dark colored military fatigues with hard armor over the torso and shins. His helmet was vaguely pot shaped with overlapping plates covering the neck. A camera rig sat over the left shoulder with a lamp attached just behind. The whole affair had a somewhat dated look while being vaguely futuristic. A quick brush of the shoulder plate produced a bullet hole with the words “Born Again” wrapped around it and a heart with a lock over it where a man’s ticker would be. When the overlay stabilized, Brody rocked his head from person to person to see if anyone had noticed the transformation.

“Well, this is interesting,” Roman said.

“Is it a town meeting?” Brody asked.

“No, the station AI is confirming what happened. The research director put in an order to recover saraka for testing. The sting imparts a parasite that enters the blood and replicates at incredible speeds over the course of a few hours. We knew all of this from the specimens we collected and the research done by Station Four. What we didn’t know is that there are types of saraka that can transmit certain receptors that interact with latent parts of our genetic makeup.”

“That’s very scary and all, Doc, but I just got word from Sergeant Tran,” Reach interrupted. “They have the insertion team loaded into the staging area downstairs. They’re just waiting on us to make the broadcast.”

“Ah,” Roman said. “I am attempting to circumnavigate the safety protocols for the command node to isolate itself when running on emergency power. Once I push this code, the station will read as online and will send out an ops-ping. Hopefully that will draw our prey into the net, as it were.”

Moments went by in silence as the team waited for Roman to alter inlaid protocols keeping the AI from linking into the greater grid while running from a backup power source.

Morse nudged Brody while they waited. “Was that Hudson?”

“Nah. Hicks.”

Leaning into his rifle while kneeling beside the hatch, Morse shrugged. “I never saw them before you showed me. Well, except part of AVP one time on the armed forces network.”

Brody’s face took on a curious look. “What is AVP?”

“Aliens versus Predator?” Morse stated more than asked.

The android held his hand to his chest, acting as though he were short of breath and was going to pass out. “That… that s-sounds like the most amazing movie ever made!”

“Hate to break it to you buddy, but…”

Reach shook his head. “Doc, while those two have their moment and we’re waiting on confirmation ping from the AI what else did it tell you about the saraka?”

“Well, we should take anything it says with a grain of salt, my dear boy, as the AI has become quite corrupt in its grasp on sanity, if such a thing exists in an artificial intellect. The science team managed to track infected workers back to a saraka queen in hopes of studying it to find retro agents to cure the venom’s effects. An infected Amiri ram is three times its normal size. They found the creatures communicate with a type of bio-electrical broadcasts, much like an improved version of how a shark senses prey. Shortly after taking the queen, the station was overrun.”

“So when they took the queen, all the outstanding zombies and saraka made a beeline to this place,” Reach said, finishing the thought.

Morse stopped his movie mash-up chat with Brody to focus his full attention to the doctor’s explanation. “Is that what we saw in the mutated human downstairs? He was turning into a queen?”

“No,” Roman said decisively. “It can’t affect our genetics that way because, unlike everything else on this planet, we’re an invasive species and they haven’t been able to adapt to us. They may never be able to change us like that. The man we saw down there volunteered for a horrific experiment. They dosed him full of anti-parasitics and combat drugs. With the station in control of his link, they used him like a drone to kill all the infected.”

“My god,” Reach whispered.

“The story of this station is very tragic,” Roman agreed. He finished his part of the protocols, placing his hands in his lap as though he’d just finished a meal. “Jared, please tell Sergeant Tran the ping has been sent. Our mission is a success.”

“On it.” Reach sent out the signal and began the arduous process of disconnecting the power pack android from the console.

Rangers filed into the hall, securing both directions in their bid to return to the lift. Unga swept past Morse with his MGX-5 leading the way to the corner. With nothing in the hall, he motioned Morse and Brody to him as the team trailed behind.

The playful android dressed as a fictional colonial Marine, knocked against the hatch frame on one side and then the other. “It is absolutely k-killing me not to open this puppy up. It’s like when someone tells you n-not to press the red button. Am I right?”

The team crept toward the final leg of the passage leading back to the formation area and the lift. As Roman came even with the marked hatch, a violent impact against the frame rattled the entire hallway, shaking the grating beneath their feet and sending a shower of cobweb infected dust across their shoulders. The second impact was just as severe, with its echo permeated by heavy scratching against the metal plate.

“Time to motor,” Morse yelled into the link.

Reach changed position with the power pack android and trained his rifle into the space. “Sergeant Tran, this is Reach. Seems the pest control is a little lacking. Something heard us stomping around up here and isn’t taking a locked door as a hint.”

Another impact against the door was enough to rattle the overhead rigging. The doorframe had been welded shut and reinforced with hundreds of pounds of deck grating to secure the hatch, but Reach felt somewhere in his gut that it wouldn’t be enough. The scratching into the hatch echoed through the passage, chasing Reach into the assembly area.

Brody, Roman, and Unga used their considerable strength to push the overturned truck into the passage just as Reach cleared it. The front of the frame slammed into the stone, crushing its armored grill into the passage.

“Oh! Oh! Almost g-got it!” Brody shouted as he lifted a Jersey barrier onto his borrowed shoulder. The drone had nowhere near the strength of the Bulwark armor, meaning the normally cocky AI had to work for it. He slammed the stone against the back half of the truck and began kicking the rebar laced obstacle into the floor. “C’mon, D-Dad! Put your struts into it!”

A titanic crash sounded from beyond the hastily constructed barrier, followed by a relentless stomping and clacking beyond the hatch. The noise hastened the three androids in their furious stomp jamming the stone barrier doorstop into place.

“Reach, this is Tran. I have the rest of Team Junkyard ready on your go,” Tran said into the link.

“Roger that. Pull everyone from the room. If you don’t get a signal from me that we’re coming down the lift, use the welding rig on the last android to seal the lift like we found it,” Reach said.

“Sir, we’re not leaving you in there,” Tran said.

“I’m not asking you to. I just want to keep the glory of the Saraka Chalet to myself for a while,” Reach joked. “Stand by.”

The truck body shook with an impact radiating from the buried hatch. Body directed his best knife hand at the portal. “I’ve got movement!”

Another impact throttled the truck hard enough to crush some of the armor against the Jersey barrier. The stone floor crumbled from the slam, sending rocky debris skittering across a floor covered with expended brass and the dead.

“Man, you’d think whoever that is on the other side is trying to reach us about our car’s extended warranty,” Unga said.

“Really?” Morse shouted at his comrade.

“Doc? You good?” Reach asked when he noticed the hologram skinned drone looking toward the hatch.

“I’m in the station records I downloaded. They were onto something, but the math was off,” Roman said.

“Doc, we’re gonna need you to go own some newbs, Halo style, and ditch the science if things get weird in here,” Morse shouted.

“Geoffrey, my friend. Never ditch the science.” Roman pointed to the bodies strewn about the floor.

Certain corpses, both scientist and soldier, rattled along the floor as though being electrocuted. The rapid-fire muscular twitches ended with one body bursting its dry cadaver flesh in a spray of dust and newly awakened saraka bugs. The rest of the bodies followed suit, with the insects taking flight in a horrendous tornado of buzzing that filled the chamber.

“Do not shoot or move!” Roman shouted in an uncharacteristic display, demanding his orders be followed by everyone inside.

At the hatch, an arm broke through the metal frame and slapped down into the armored quarter panel, looking for purchase to pull itself through. Unlike the husk downstairs, the arm here was powerful and moist with some secretion that made it shine in their optics. Grey, near translucent claws screeched against the metal like a badger digging its way to some prize it wouldn’t be denied.

Roman took a step away from the overturned truck and did so hard enough that his feet clicked on the floor. The bugs were on him in an instant. Instead of attacking with a series of stings meant to deliver their venom, they circled him as though he were some hive or roost they were familiar with. Some landed on his frame, took a second or two to brush off their scintillating wings, and then took to the air again. With a slight turn of Roman’s head, the swarm returned to the tornado, flashing down in an apocalypse of violent buzzing as the creatures attacked whatever was on the other side of the barrier.

Multiple stings tore into the arm as iridescent green ichor trickled out from the wounds. A trumpeting howl echoed in the hall beyond the truck and the animal withdrew its arm. As though someone had pulled the plug from a drain, the saraka bugs flooded into the hole in a buzzing, writhing rush. More howls accompanied heavy slams as the swarm finished its rush beyond.

“That’s only going to work for a minute,” Roman said, hurriedly. “Brody!”

The android joined the doctor to remove the pylon holding the truck against the hatch. They pulled the vehicle a few inches from the frame and the uninhabited android leapt through. In an instant, father and son slammed the vehicle into place before resetting the barrier to act as a brace keeping the hatch secure.

“Unga, Reach, help us,” Roman motioned. “Morse, cover and secure.”

“I got you, Doc!” the Ranger offered.

Twin teams worked to hoist metal grating off the floor so the androids could slam it into the walls and then weld it to the truck body, reinforcing the barrier while preventing anything digging through the stone from getting through as easily. Androids armed with sparking rods burned securing welds between the two parts, strengthening both and hopefully holding back whatever had been on the other side of the door. Rods ejecting from the androids and clattering on the floor was all the sign anyone needed to go.

“Time to leave?” Morse asked.

“I say we t-take off, nuke the site from orbit. Only way to be sure,” Brody added.

Roman’s eyes seemed to twinkle. “Why do you think I sent the power pack android through, my dear boy?”

14

“Are we almost there?” Emileeya asked in halting Russian.

“Keep practicing,” the RUPAC non-commissioned officer said, keeping his cadence slow enough for the woman to understand him.

“You don’t care that I ask?” Emileeya prodded. She was grateful for the microphone and earpiece to hear the man broadcast from his helmet. With the rev of their ATV engine and its constant crunch over vegetation as they rode forward, it would have been impossible to have a conversation on the move.

“Psst. If you want to be a citizen of the true colonies, you need to speak like a proper citizen,” he said. “Besides, you’ve never been on a vessel between stations, locked into a jump seat having to listen to useless people with their useless rambling for hours. You’re practicing. This is a good thing. Keep talking.”

“I’m beginning to recognize the forest where we are,” Em admitted.

The ashen white trunks of the Amiri trees shrouded their branches with the purple leaves common to this section of Amir. Vine encrusted pathways between the trees made going somewhat slow on the ATV, but it was better than walking. The riders negotiated the terrain until the trees thinned enough to let spears of dust encrusted sunlight pierce the dense canopy. Tucked in among the shadow draped trees were tiny cabins offset from each other, the remnants of those who wanted life away from the camp but not so far as to be totally devoid of its protection.

“That’s it over there, isn’t it?” the NCO asked.

Emileeya jerked around the saddle for a better look. “That’s one of the cabins, yes. Are you sure your people could pull this off?”

“Trust us. We know how to do this sort of thing.”

The ATV’s rambling motion came to a stop just shy of the cabin. The soldiers dismounted first and casually walked through the underbrush to find interlocking fields of fire in case they had to shoot up the cabin. A Ghost trooper motioned the two of them forward and inserted a rod in the ground behind them.

“Remember, if anything happens, do not run straight at the ATVs. That rod will keep our bikes free from the animals. But if you get too close, it will hurt more than anything. We will be out among the trees until you are done. Conclude your business quickly so we may go,” the NCO said.

“I understand,” Emileeya agreed.

The door to the cabin opened to a tall slender woman with lengthy blond hair tied into a ponytail filling the frame. She looked one way, then the other, and eventually retreated into the shadows of the cabin beyond.

“Alissa!” Emileeya called out.

Back in the doorway, the tall woman scanned the wood line for any sign of the voice. When she saw her friend trouncing through the bush, she darted out of the cabin with arms akimbo. The two women caught each other in a fierce hug as they bounced up and down.

“Come inside,” Alissa said.

The cabin was sparse inside, a single couch along one wall and a table set before a fireplace. There was a pot over a middling fire, steaming into the chimney along with the ashy grey wood smoke that came from burning the local fauna. Alissa pulled out a stool from behind the couch, giving the bigger seat to her guest.

“I was so worried when I heard you’d escaped. I was hoping that you’d made it.” Alissa poured a bowl of stew and offered it to her friend.

But Emileeya waved off the meal. “Oh no, I’ve had your cooking before. You’re more dangerous with spices than my friends out there with their guns. Why are you all the way out here?”

Alissa passed the bowl over to the table and shrugged as if her current situation was just no big deal. “They don’t trust me, Em. After what happened, I was lucky that they didn’t kill me.”

“After you shot Smith and wounded Liana, the council held me responsible, so I get to live out here for a year. I can request an escort into the camp, or I can go on my own. When I come in, I have to have a guard follow me in order to get what I need. I trade the fish I catch in my nets for food and supplies. For the most part, I am out here alone.”

Emileeya reached across to her friend to comfort her. “I am so sorry this happened to you. If you can do one thing, I can come back and take you with us.”

“Is it good where you are?” Alissa asked, her voice tinged with hope. “Em, is there any way you can take me now?”

“We weren’t originally here for you. We came as part of a drop we had to make for a contact we still have in camp.”

“I shouldn’t say too much. They could be listening to you right now through your link.” Em grimaced.

“I wish that were true, because then I could talk to someone.” Alissa pulled her hair out of the ponytail and brushed it to one side to show the scar in her hairline just behind her ear. “Like I said, I was lucky they didn’t kill me.”

“I’m so sorry this happened to you, Alissa,” Emileeya said. “One more thing and we can take you with us. We have two troopers outside delivering another package. The person it’s for will want to be extracted once they’re done in the camp. Can they hide with you until we come for them?”

“All I have to do is hide him?”

“I never said, him. Here, keep this,” Emileeya said. She handed the woman a bundle. “When our contact is ready to leave, they’ll come here. Give them that and we’ll come for you both.”

The two women stood, embracing each other again. “Thank you. You said you didn’t plan to come for me. Did you even know I was in this cabin?”

“We still have friends in the walls,” Em offered. “We won’t leave our friends behind.”

“Did they get off the drone?” Emileeya asked.

“They did. Now we see what we’ll see,” the NCO said.

The Osay traitor and her handlers recovered their ATVs. While Emileeya waited for the Ghosts to finish recovering their gear, the NCO moved his head ever so slightly to her with an accompanying call through the net. “Drone just picked up something watching us in the forest. It’s using Ghost tech to hide some two hundred meters away.”

“How long has it been there,” Emileeya asked.

“Good. You are learning to ask the right questions,” he cooed. The NCO flashed a series of commands through their comms, then handed his pistol to Emileeya. “We’re going to ride along this trail. Just after we move, you shoot when and where I tell you.”

“Understood,” she agreed.

The ATVs meandered for roughly one hundred meters along their track, bobbing and jerking through the tangled forest floor. They left the lighter forest for thicker wilderness.

* * *

Sergeant Baldino ran across the dried stream bed to avoid the thicker part of the forest. It wouldn’t have been a problem to surmount the terrain in his Ranger assault armor, but the RUPAC Bulwark knockoff was like driving a tow truck in a terrarium. It had none of the intricate control systems like Brody or Murphy, favoring a blunt force approach to everything. Wearing a set of powered armor shouldn’t have you feeling like you’re getting more of a workout inside of it.

He slid to stop when the RUPAC patrol rustled their ATVs over the ridge. Even at one hundred meters out, he was worried he was too close and they’d spot him, even though there was enough wildlife out here making noise to hide his presence. He changed his track, putting more distance in between the locator tag he had for Emileeya in his HUD. Liana’s plan to hack her link the last time they’d captured the Osay defector, was now paying off in the form of close surveillance. They could hear and see everything where she was, and they were none the wiser. At least, Baldino hoped they were none the wiser.

“Oscar Bravo, this is Baldino. HVT is slipping over the hill for a deep track away from your POS. How copy? Over.”

“Good copy,” Sherman responded. “Maintain track and see how long they stay inside our perimeter. Over.”

Bosa appeared on the net. “Baldino, it’s Bosa. Ident has a voice print match from the last time we encountered these tangos. He’s HVT Canteen Cup. We don’t have a name for him yet, but we believe he’s Captain Rykov’s second in command.”

“Canteen Cup?” Baldino asked.

“My fault,” Sherman admitted. “Since Rykov was labeled Coffee Cup, I thought Canteen Cup wasn’t that much of a stretch.”

Baldino was about to say something clever into the net when a bullet struck the tree next to his head, decimating part of the trunk. The round splattered the embattled sergeant with vine encrusted wood chips as he ducked away from the round buzzing past him. “Oscar Bravo, I’m taking fire!”

He dove for a copse of trees nearby, looking to use the overgrown vegetation and cluster of thick tree trunks to keep him out of the line of fire. Several rounds ricocheted off rocks and lumber and sped off into the trees. Moving along in a high crawl, he gained the low side of the ridge for cover while assessing the surrounding forest for avenues of escape.

“Attention, comrade pilot. You are currently taking small arms fire. Adjust course and cover and engage for the glory of RUPAC,” the authoritarian voice of the onboard AI said.

“No kidding. You sound just like my ex-wife,” he joked. “Oscar Bravo, I’m taking fire from a single shooter. Looks like I’m being flanked. I’m making a run for the deep trees.”

“Roger that, Baldino,” Sherman said. “QRF is on the wing to you. ETA two mikes. How copy? Over.”

Baldino signaled that he understood, then bolted for a meager drop-off where water ran out from a stream higher up and cascaded into a pool basin at the bottom. Outcroppings of rock and heavy tree growth would make for good cover if he could reach the terrain feature before they punched him full of holes. While the armor was supposedly rated against small arms, Baldino didn’t trust the RUPAC created gear.

Rounds chased him through the leap to the new position. He smashed through trees and cut down branches as he bounded from high crawl to run and back again. The bullets zinging off the stone he’d dove behind were the last sounds of combat before things went quiet.

“Oh crap. They know they got me pinned and are gonna box me in,” Baldino said to himself.

“The likelihood of such a tactic is high, comrade pilot. You should take immediate action to kill them first,” the android AI said.

“Good plan. Thank you for your valuable insight,” Baldino said. He disengaged a drone from his armor and launched it into the trees. After a moment, the sensor package came online, pulling in sensor data from the forest beyond the waterfall drop.

“You are welcome, Comrade pilot,” the AI answered.

As he was about to give the machine a profanity laced tirade about when and why to answer anything he said, the roar of a twin set of rotors came thumping over the trees. The treetops swayed and bounced from the intense engine wash coming off the Dragonfly VTOL scout ship’s angling rotor props. It flared its ventral mounted gun to the direction of the incoming attack before burping out a high cycle burst of twenty millimeter APDP rounds. Entire tree trunks were blasted from their hold on Amir, shattered into kindling as the wet wood fell into the underbrush. Huge plumes of mud and vegetation erupted from the impact points, miring the terrain in mud and flack.

Six Model-33 Alphas dropped from the hovering death dealer and bounded from trees and branches to land close by Sergeant Baldino’s position. Four of the machines formed a fire team and chased off into the brush with their rifles leading the way. Twin machines broke off from the group to recover the embattled sergeant.

“Sergeant Baldino. QRF Zero Four on station as requested. Captain Sherman would like you to contact him. He is in the tactical operations center, Sergeant,” the mech announced.

“Thanks for the assist,” Baldino said. He took a knee to catch his breath and dialed in the TOC. “You send all the best stuff, sir.”

“Catch your breath, Ranger, and then I need you back on track with them. I’m pinging their position in your HUD,” Sherman said.

The Ranger NCO picked up the trail in his display window, taking a minute to sip on the straw inside of the AI’s helmet. “I’m good, sir. Just needed a quick minute. Any idea what they were on about?”

“They have Emileeya Tucker with them. The one that defected. She made contact with her old gal pal while the Ghosts launched a drone,” Sherman confirmed.

“Comrade Pilot,” the AI interjected. “I have analyzed the traitorous attack against this unit and surmised that they fired on you as a disengaging tactic. You should pursue as soon as possible.”

Baldino stood from his crouch, sighting along the path of destruction leveled by the hovering ship above them. “Sherman, this is Baldino. I’m Oscar Mike so the suit stops telling me how to do my job.”

15

“This is the hard part,” Bolton said. “You say this is standard practice for the Rangers back on Earth?”

Reach leaned into the hide set into the mountainside overlooking the smoking ruin that was Station Twelve. Hidden beneath his poncho, covered in downed branches and pine needles, he pointed to the former governor as if the action confirmed the statement. “It is. They’ll sit for days in a scouted location and just watch things happen.”

“Is that true, Sergeant Tran?”

The Ranger was scanning across his battle board. Despite the neural link providing access to anything he might do on the cell phone shaped device clipped to his armor, the man preferred the screen to seeing it in his head. “Depends on the mission. Sometimes you got to watch things happen to make things happen.”

“It’s funny,” Yuen said, carefully arranging the camouflage netting above her to pull the loose strands of fabric away from her face. “Whenever we hear Rangers talk about their professions, you all have those little sayings that make it sound more like religious observance more than military doctrine.”

Tran gave a fractional nod to the statement before going back to his board. “Yep.”

Reclining against the side of the rock reminded Reach of riding a gunwale on the side of a boat when he was in the Marine Corps. The longer he lived under an amber sky, the less he thought about his old life, instead choosing to focus on what was in front of him, which was all the mayhem they’d encountered since landing on Amir.

Part of that focus included Liana speaking to him through a HUD window. “I know that look.”

Reach smiled as he watched Liana’s overlay. She was in her trademark jumpsuit, and he wished he could pull her over and feel her warmth against him. But there was the little matter of her only projecting into the display and him being in armor, anyway. Still, it was a relief to hear her voice after the nightmares he’d watched down below.

“And what does this look tell you?” Jared asked.

“It says I am sick of MREs and would love for Liana to cook me something yummy.”

Even in the link, laughing felt good as the silent act was genuine enough to rock his shoulders. “That would be the best thing ever,” Reach said.

Thoughts of a home-cooked meal and alone time with the beautiful leader of the free world evaporated as Masau, signaled through the link. “Got ’em at half a klick making their way up the back side of the mountain.”

Reach groaned at the revelation. He was happy to get this mission fully underway, but he also didn’t want to cut short his time speaking to Liana. “Well, pretty lady, they just hit the bell for us to go back to work. Time to earn all that big Marine Corps pay.”

“You do realize I have no idea what that means,” Liana hinted.

“It means, if there’s any hope of us having a wedding in the near future, I have to go right now,” Reach admitted.

“Best get to stepping then, sir!” Liana said with her most serious Sergeant Dawson impression.

Reach beamed as he said, “I love you. Be safe.”

“You first,” Liana said, cutting the call.

Reach shifted his attention back to the Rangers and linked into Masau’s spotter’s scope, which was currently being shared with Yuen. The former governor turned military contact liaison had taken to working with Masau on his craft and was becoming adept at scouting long range through the lens.

“How are you able to see the camouflage?” Bolton asked.

“They have a poncho on Emileeya that does the same thing as their armor. You’d think as one of us she’d have some sense of how to move through the terrain,” Yuen remarked.

“That would mean she’d have to go out in the terrain,” Bolton scoffed.

“That explains a lot,” Masau said.

The MCT watched the Osay defector stumble through the underbrush, tripping her way toward the smoking ruin of an entrance at the base of the station. “Sergeant Tran, it’s Reach. We have sighting on the non-com moving up the hill at one-zero-five heading right for you.”

“I see her. Pit bull in a porcelain shop,” Tran said. The team could almost hear the scowl in the man’s voice.

“Any sign of the Ghosts themselves?” Reach asked.

“Nah. They’re probably using the girl as bait,” Masau said.

“Got one,” Vance said through the link. “High and outside. Moving through the brush at two hundred and fifty meters, forty-seven degrees in a straight line from the back door.”

Overlays swam into everyone’s HUD, the video tracking a person carefully picking their way through the terrain. Two more operators using optic prism body armor to bend light, creating the effect they were mere smudges in someone’s perception, were approaching at a cross angle, sifting through the tangle of pine as though it weren’t even there.

“Now that we have them, kill the sensors,” Tran barked. “No need to tip them off in case they can see them.”

The team shut down active scanners placed throughout the mountain in favor of combat controller systems in their implants to extrapolate distance, direction, and manner of movement for the shadowy Ghosts making their way to the ruined door at the back of the station. The only downfall in doing so meant that unless they saw a Ghost disturb the environment or de-cloak, there was no way to detect additional units moving in.

“Hello? Hello? If you’re in there, we want you to come out!” Emileeya called up the side of the embankment. She tripped, nearly stumbling over a log that had caught her boot, but she righted herself at the last moment. She took a minute to straighten out her attire before continuing her trek up the slope.

Two troopers in green fatigues wearing plate carriers and helmets advanced from the smoking hole of the back entrance. The smaller of the two motioned for Emileeya to advance. The woman did so with her hands raised, not sure what to expect.

In Reach’s HUD, they switched to a pirated video from her link being broadcast to them from the TOC back at Oscar Bravo. Reach saw the two former RUPAC sergeants he’d taken prisoner some months before while taking down Major Laskin’s light armored cavalry unit. Both had started their RUPAC military career as conscripts, eventually scoring high enough on testing to rate promotions to sergeant. Now they were in a most dangerous game. They were playing the part of spies in the midst of men for whom such a thing was common practice.

One wrong move and this whole thing was for nothing.

“Who are you?” Gantomor called out in Russian. Her high-pitched voice seemed almost out of place on a desolate mountain wrapped in military gear.

“I’m Emileeya Tucker. I’m with Sergeant Kutznetzov of the Ghost Guard. We got your ping. They want to know what you’re doing here.”

“Sergeant Khaliun Gantomor, formerly serving under Major Markos Laskin. We managed to get free of the camp and were hoping someone would come to retrieve us.”

“Can I put my hands down now?” When Emileeya didn’t get a response, she did it anyway and switched to a line of questioning being fed to her through her link. “They want to know how many you have with you.”

Gantomor skipped forward, careful to keep the new woman to her side so she remained firmly in her partner’s line of fire. “Ten, plus Sergeant Kahn and me. It’s all we could get out without being missed.”

“How did you know to call us, using an ops ping to get our attention?”

“We escaped a week ago. We managed to take a couple of ATVs and a model-33 android to get up here. It took us a few days to get the broadcast unit going again. Using RUPAC Lost Trace protocols, we figured an ops ping was the best way to get your attention.”

One of the Ghosts materialized from the tree line, his weapon aimed at Sergeant Gantomor. “They can track you by the droid,” he barked.

“No. We removed the antenna,” Gantomor countered. “Without the high gain antenna affixed to the Krodon Model-33 drone, the broadcast range for the unit is fifty meters.”

The Ghost agent lowered his weapon. He advanced while talking the whole time. “Good thinking. But why steal a drone at all, and risk capture?”

“It’s a good thing we did. This place was sealed shut. We had the bot cut our way into some places to send the signal. Bad news, boss. There are saraka in there.”

“Show me,” the Ghost agent said through his speaker array.

Reach pulled from the video feed, linking with Sergeant Tran on the other side of the structure. “Any sign they know we’re here?”

“Negative. We have the one agent moving inside the building with the woman and another Ghost set up just off to the side, beneath the overlook, so he could get a bead on the entrance and Sergeant Kahn giving our girl cover. He’s still there. We have the third agent running a perimeter sweep. We fired a short pulse of the density scanner to find him and now we’re tracking his movements across the road. If you stay up there in that hide, he should walk right below you.”

“Roger out.” Reach switched channels and pushed his next orders to the rest of his team. “Everyone, stay still and quiet. Ghost agent passing below us.”

The shimmering halo of a person moved over the road across from the facility. It hovered in the mud just before the road gave way to the backslide covered in pine needles and twisted branches. Like a gargoyle on some forlorn rooftop, the spectral outline remained perched on the spot for a matter of minutes.

“He got a lock?” Masau asked.

“No,” Reach answered. “The feed we have from Emileeya has her listening to that sergeant. He’s asking Sergeant Gan if something went on in the station. She’s feeding him a line about the saraka.”

“Smart,” Masau agreed. “Got a feed from Vance. That Ghost is working around the welded front doors before making his way to the back again.”

“Is there a reason we’re not hitting them hard?” Brody asked. “Alright. We have seven c-canisters of CN-20. I say w-we roll them in there and nerve gas the whole ef-ef-effing nest.”

Reach tracked his AR display across the ridge to see Brody’s drone buried in the landscape behind some fallen rocks and scrub. He was in an over watch position behind the farthest point of the structure away from the doors. “Brody, are you forgetting that the RUPAC defector squad down there isn’t really a defector squad, they’re our people pretending?”

“Pfft. It’s worth a try but we don’t even know if it’s g-going to affect them,” Brody said, working to make up for not quoting a pivotal line from the movie Aliens before a Ranger beat him to it.

“Let it go, buddy,” Reach said.

“Got to show that Ranger tab belongs w-where it is. Can’t forget nothing.”

“Well, just don’t forget to cover that ridge in the event that roaming Ghost gets freaky with us.”

“I ain’t afraid of no g-Ghost,” Brody declared. “B-bustin’ makes me feel good.”

“Good to know.” Reach swiped across the multiple feeds, returning to Emileeya’s. She was pacing on the outside of the arms room as Sergeants Gan and Kahn talked through the events of the last few days as if they had been the ones to go through it. The benefits of the link in action.

The trio exited the office into the waiting group of defectors, who stood at their approach. Sergeant Kutznetzov removed his helmet, verifying to the team watching through the link, that this man and the HVT designated as Canteen Cup were one in the same. “There are a couple of problems I have with this whole arrangement. Are any of you chipped?”

“No, they haven’t had the chance yet,” Sergeant Kahn said in his high, raspy voice.

“Even still, you didn’t think they might track you? Maybe wait for you to lead them to us?”

“We didn’t know who would come,” Sergeant Gan countered. “All of us were conscripts with the GSSR. But it was better than being on some rock off world with no food or shelter. And some of us worked hard for what we had. I was good at being a soldier and a leader. But those Americans wanted to make us farmers and bakers. They already had their soldiers. Better to work toward a world where we have trust than to one where we are looked at every day as though we broke into the house. Like that suka there.”

Emileeya took the reference and stormed toward the woman with her best “you listen here” face on. Gantomor slapped her hard enough to almost knock her down. It spun the haughty Osay defector to face the other way, where Gan raced forward to grab the back of her hair.

“Don’t think we forgot you cursing us, little Osay bitch. Don’t think we forgot you hiding bombs in our gardens. Now go back to your master, little dog.” Gantomor shoved her into Kutznetzov’s waiting arms.

The man set aside the heaving Emileeya and scanned across the group with an appraising eye. “One moment, Sergeant.” The Ghost NCO walked back and forth across the slate floor. He hovered over the mutated corpse of the man who’d been responsible for closing off the facility against the saraka, until succumbing to overwhelming bites from the creatures. He lifted the corpse’s jaw, scowling when he saw its extreme distention.

He returned to the expectant faces around the group. Reach could almost feel every person on his team glued to the feed. As annoying as it was, it was being piped in by the hijacked signal from Emileeya, which the woman was partially obstructing by hiding her shame behind her hair. But even through strands of dark black locks, he could see the hope on the faces of the RUPAC team. If nothing else, they could work with Brody to get the next Hollywood up and moving on Amir.

“Look, we can use all the help we can get. That being said, you can come with us, but the drone has to stay. Also, for a little while, you’re going to have to be isolated until we can make sure there’s nothing strange going on here. Bosa is a smart man, as is Sherman and the mediator. They could dream up a team like yours just to gain access to us.”

“But what they wouldn’t do is send us here with one of these,” Gantomor said, indicating the drone. “Even if you want to leave it here.”

“It’s a drone. We have plenty.”

“But do you have an upgraded drone with the firmware to talk to the American satellites?”

Suddenly, Kutznetzov posture changed to that of a man searching for all the exits. “We don’t have one of those. The question is, how do you?”

The link chimed in Reach’s ear. He clicked into a voice message from Masau. “Boss, that high side Ghost Observer is closing in.”

“Hold a sec,” Reach said. “Let it play out.”

Gantomor shrugged, either oblivious to the Ghost Sergeant’s change in demeanor or acting like she was. “I used to have to set up the thirty-threes for patrol. I know how to change an ID plate.”

“And what did you change it to?” Kutznetzov asked.

Sergeant Gan knocked on the side of the drone’s head. “One that got busted up in the last raid on Camp Craiswell. But if you don’t want the drone, take the core CPU and use it as a Command Access Module to get access to the satellites. Or don’t. It’s just an offer. But either way, we very much want to get out of here and back to duty on something real.”

“Yeah. It will still take some time to earn our trust, but you can come with,” Sergeant Kutznetzov said. “Load everyone up and get ready to move in the next twenty minutes. We’ll pull the drive from the bot so we can get out of here. You don’t have our armor so you’ll move ahead of us to our extraction.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Kutznetzov,” Gantomor said. “For a minute, we didn’t think we would be going with you. What changed?”

“I was able to make a call,” Kutznetzov said. “Laskin vouched for you. He said you nearly got shot defending the unit during the American raid. He also said they had to hood and tie you to keep you from fighting.”

“It’s not about the flag, Sergeant, but the guys on your left and right.”

“You’re right about that,” Kutznetzov agreed.

Reach closed down the link. “Looks like they’re buying it, albeit cautiously. Sarn’t T, keep them in your sights as they make their way off the mountain. The second they’re clear, Masau takes the MCT and holds the facility for the QRF to come up slope. Sweep for as much intel as you can safely and then close the place off. Tran, myself, and Junkyard will climb over the hill to an LZ and hopefully hitch a ride to follow our new friends.”

“Going to be cutting it close, LT,” Tran said.

“Would you want it any other way?”

16

Bosa watched the screen as the feed from the dragonfly showed the wind coming off the aircraft’s rotors, buffeting the loose branches and detritus of pine needles blanketing the forest. The whine of the rotors spinning to full power dipped the copter’s nose and bounced it from the side of the mountain. The feed effected a vertigo inducing drop that made more than one of the technicians look away to avoid spewing their last meal across the desk.

“So,” Reach asked, “do you remember when we had our little talk about duty assignments and moving our focus to making alliances and building our presence?”

“Yes, Mr. Reach. I seem to recall that meeting,” Bosa answered.

“Um, sir? I’m covered in armor and guns again.”

“I can see that, Mr. Reach. But until you can produce another superhuman who can wear blackout camouflage and operate in all the ways you do, I’d appreciate your efforts in support of ongoing colonial operations.”

“Wait for it,” Sherman said, pointing to the screen.

“Does that come with a plaque?” Reach asked.

Bosa didn’t wait for the snickering to die down around the TOC. “I’ll put in the request. While you’re up there contemplating your career, I have two full squads of wolverines loaded up and waiting to join you when you give the word. Our track on Emileeya puts our target at making the coast within the hour.”

“How are our people holding up?” Reach asked.

“They’re easily keeping pace with the Ghosts. The vehicles they brought are doing well through the pines, but once they get into the forest, it’s actually faster to walk than it is to ride, so things will slow considerably. We’ll contact you with any changes. Bosa out.”

He pointed to Sherman, indicating that Reach was his responsibility while he turned his attention elsewhere. Screens and contact details streamed through his link, settling on his next target.

“Good afternoon, Colonel Bosa. How may I help?” Alexa asked.

“Alexa, any progress detecting whatever drone the Ghosts might have launched toward us?”

“We haven’t been able to find one. It didn’t enter the Camp Craiswell security perimeter, and it didn’t set off any of the trap cameras seeded throughout the forest nearest the homesteader cabins. Whatever its destination, we haven’t seen it yet, sir.”

Bosa snapped his fingers as if to prime his own thoughts. “Any chance they landed it and used the wildlife to get it close?”

“I hadn’t considered that the RUPAC forces on Amir could still access chipped animals,” Alexa admitted. “They did steal the primary data core from the Station Four AI, so I suppose it’s possible.”

“Find me that drone if you can, Alexa. Bosa out.”

* * *

Doctor Roman paced through his lab, thumbing an object on a piece of cord serving as a necklace. He nearly tore it free when Alexa tapped him on the shoulder. Spinning around, he said, “Oh! Sorry, Alexa. I didn’t see you there.”

“Doctor Roman, the Colonel would like me to focus on finding the drone deployed earlier by the Ghost team prior to leaving the AO. I have a new angle to try with Doctor Gruber. I have some distortion models running on the particle. Can you check them for results in thirty-seven minutes and apply the results to our latest test batches?”

“Of course,” Roman said, stuffing the item back into his shirt.

Alexa half turned to leave, then resumed their conversation. “Doctor, if I may, I’ve noticed that you’ve been remarkably upbeat since you came out of the drone.”

Roman clapped his hands together, an enthusiastic tic she hadn’t seen since they were on the Boone together. “I must say, being in the field was remarkable. Really stoked my fire.”

“I wasn’t aware your fire needed stoking, Doctor,” Alexa admitted.

Roman threaded his thumb back into his necklace, running the seam of the digit through the cord back and forth had become a habit he couldn’t quite quantify. “Every once in a while, it’s good to refuel the tank, as it were. While I prefer the lab to traipsing about the woods, being out there with the Rangers gave me some perspective.”

“They are good for that,” Alexa agreed.

“Yes they are. Lots to think about now that we’re back, well, some of us anyway. I’ll watch the models while you confer with the good doctor,” Roman said, wagging his finger toward the door to note that she was free to leave her project in his hands.

As she left, despite having a cybernetically projected clock in his HUD, Roman checked the time on one of the monitors. Another habit from his days of working in countless labs where gloves going on and off would be hampered by wearing a watch, he’d religiously check the time at the corner of every terminal screen he passed.

While staring at the screen, Roman’s mind drifted to the minute he’d shared with Jared about his love of video games after hours at the college labs. Before that conversation, the doctor had been worried that he’d lost himself. The fear that the real Doctor Roman had died those months ago and he was just a copy crammed into a cloned body was like a Ghost haunting him at the edge of his consciousness. But that memory of controllers and laughter over dropping a plasma ’nade on the new kid from the physics lab was so real as he told it to Jared. He could feel the gritty potato chip dusting that his lab partners demanded they wipe from their hands before grabbing a fistful of controller for the next game. He could taste the acid reflux that was downing half a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips as roughage to help break up the pizza they shoved down before.

Those memories were his. If he were just a machine, he wouldn’t remember that taste. A run of the mill robot wouldn’t focus on the feeling of sticky Doctor Pepper nearly turning the edges of his young man’s beard to plastic when it dried.

He turned to the screen again.

Twenty-four minutes before he had to collate the data for Alexa.

He could write a script to do it. Some simple bit of code to amass and then assemble everything she was pouring into the project she had going for Bosa. But if her work bore fruit, it would bring them one step closer to pushing out the RUPAC and making Amir a home instead of a battlefield. Better to handle it himself.

He flicked a flashing window in his HUD, bringing up a picture of a young man with a hunted look and strange military gear Doctor Roman didn’t recognize. Written diagonally across the HUD window was Brody’s name. The character’s mouth moved, but only the mouth, like one of those weird talking memes that used to pop up regularly on social media before they left Earth, where somebody would superimpose their mouth onto a celebrity’s head and pretend like a cool guy was talking.

“Dad, I don’t know if you know th-this or not, but it’s Brody.”

“Yes, Brody, I can see that by the clever application of your name,” Roman said, complimenting his creation. “Aren’t you supposed to be on mission with Jared?”

“I am with him. He’s right across from me in the seat of this sweet heli-bird. We’re basically reenacting the scene when J-John Matrix was Dutch on a helo out to the jungle. He even spit on my boot.”

“That’s great, Brody,” Doctor Roman said hesitantly as he watched the time at the edge of the screen. Twenty-two minutes.

“So here’s the thing, Dad. N-now that you know it’s me, you know that I would totally not play a practical joke on PFC Lawler. I was j-just a typical AI going for a download and a stroll. Totally innocent.”

“Brody, what did you do?” Roman asked in his best imitation of a dad voice.

The mouth in the doctored image stretched past the edges of the man’s jaw, turning what was probably a picture of John Matrix into the Cheshire Cat. “So, if an AI like me was going to misbehave after downloading back into my real body to board the dragonfly with Reach, I would have had Foster, the guy that d-does our 3D printing, make me a t-torn up hockey mask and a fake machete that squirts b-blood when you hit something with it. Not that I would ever do such a…”

“Brody. What happened?” Roman demanded this time.

“Let’s just say, I’ve still got it. And was someone transmitting?”

The good vibes Roman had been riding high on turned to ice water in veins he feared were artificial only moments ago. His very real fear snaked up his back to come out as an order. “Brody, establish a direct link with me and display.”

“Roger, Citizen!” Brody shouted.

As the scene played out, Roman analyzed what he was seeing versus the complex data streams Brody had picked up while on the ground. “Colonel Bosa!”

* * *

Murphy bounded from the open doors of the Quonset Hut at the end of the runway. In three short rocket propelled leaps, the Bulwark armor system slammed against the tarmac a few scant feet from the back ramp of a Predator Hauler. Two of the air crew dropped the black cargo box they carried between them, holding their hands up at the sight of the gun wielding android.

“Come away from the ramp and move to me. Do it now,” Liana echoed across the landing pad from the speakers in Murphy’s helmet.

The two spacers did as they were told, leaving the diminutive female crewman at the top of the ramp by herself. She was leaning heavy on one leg, flaring her other hip, which put her hand dangerously close to the pistol on its thigh rig. The woman’s hands spread slightly apart, turning her down ramp so she could see Bosa, Sherman, and Harmon running at top speed with a platoon of Osay militia running behind them.

“I said, come off that ramp, now!” Liana roared over the speakers.

The woman on the ramp, Lieutenant Bautista, slightly adjusted her weight to her opposite foot, squaring herself off on the ramp so she could move either way. “What’s going on, Madame Osay? What’s with all the firepower, ma’am?”

The crowd parted, letting Alexa walk through with Doctor Gruber beside her. While she appeared calm and precise in every movement, the doctor was panting heavily, as though he’d struggled to keep up with her for the short distance it took them to run here from the labs. The android moved away from the crowd at an angle so that Liana and Murphy could continue to train their shared weapon on the target.

While remaining still, Lieutenant Bautista’s head tracked Alexa moving obliquely to her, more concerned with the unarmed android than she was the armed horde forming at the end of the ramp. “What gave it away, if I may ask?”

“We have a nosy android on staff who likes his people. He has a tendency to notice when things aren’t right.”

“Brody,” Bautista said in as much an accusation as it was a statement. In a flash of motion, the woman produced a pistol and pressed it against her own temple. “I’ve never had to shoot myself while doing this before. While I’ve seen the method used, I hear it’s extremely unpleasant and I’d hoped to get through this little war without shooting myself in the head.”

Alexa flashed a message through the command link. “Doctor Gruber. How close?”

“A few more seconds!” the doctor responded.

“We don’t have a few seconds!” Liana shouted.

Blood trickled from the flight officer’s nose as she struggled to breathe. Bautista fought whatever influence had possessed her link and the strain punished her. “She is so strong. Rare to have someone fight a fully configured combat controller AI. I am so sorry she’s not going to make it through this. She’d have made one hell of a repatriated soldier once we’d won.”

“Got it!” Gruber shouted through the link. As an expert in control architecture for the native animals of Amir, the doctor was perfectly suited to identify, isolate, and purge such a signal being threaded into a link.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Alexa said. “Seizing architecture. Neural implant isolated.”

Bautista screamed as the gun slowly came away from her skull in twitching fits. Several sprinting steps and a jump put Alexa on board the ramp to catch the woman as she fell. She removed the weapon from her hand, applying the safety before sliding it down the ramp as the crowd on the tarmac rushed in.

“Signal connection cut,” Alexa announced. After retrieving Bautista from the deck, the android hoisted the woman as though she were no heavier than a bag of groceries.

Liana jumped out of her armor, freeing the space to accept the injured woman. Within seconds of enclosing her, Murphy had assessed vitals, run several scans, and was already broadcasting to the labs at a dead sprint. The crowd didn’t have time to part as Murphy half bounded, half dodged her way about them in a mad dash to save the young pilot’s life.

In a voice of control amid the chaos of the situation, Alexa asked, “Doctor Gruber, do you have it?”

“Yes,” the haggard doctor said, still breathing heavy after his rush to keep up with the android on her way here. “Sending to you now.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Deploying security countermeasures,” Alexa said.

Two arrow-shaped V-21 aerial combat drones soared overhead. The high-pitched whine of the engines echoed off the hull for only a moment as the twin combat vehicles flashed by the walls. Two T-774s, hulking robot torsos stuck onto massive tank treads, flashed through the closest gate along the dirt road leading through the cleared expanse between the walls of the OC and the forest. Rooster tails of mud shot from the backs of the robotic armored vehicles as they sped off with a throaty growl while their aerial counterparts screamed overhead.

Within seconds, the V-21s took control of an orbit around a homestead cabin less than a kilometer from the start of the security clearing, the no man’s land before the camp wall. The aerial engines screaming through the forest sent the chittering fildeema from their perches in the trees on the outside of the fenced off cabin. They bounded from branches and vines in a bid to escape the noisy affair of the drones, only to run headlong into the approaching AI driven tanks moving in to support by ground. In a move that was pure feral animal, the fildeema scattered, each animal seeking its own route to safety away from the roaring and screeching of man-made monsters.

Minutes passed as the rest of the jungle remained silent at the hovering violence of the drones on patrol around the cabin. Pain resonators on the cabin fence posts kept the animals away but did nothing against hardened steel monstrosities that lingered just outside. One of the tank drones, a T-774, rotated its torso to take sight of a quartet of ATVs motoring down the freshly rain slick path. Mud splashes and broken branches heralded the security team advancing to the mechanized guardians securing the homestead.

Liana and Alexa dismounted from their quads, taking up rifles from the rack behind the saddle. Alexa nodded to the Osay leader. “How would you like to proceed, Madame Osay?”

“I think we can do away with the polite approach,” Liana said.

Sherman walked from behind trailing two of his Rangers and the four Model-33 security detail drafted to watch over Night Owl Actual. “Madame Osay. Please allow me and my crew to go first. Let us clear the space and secure the scene before you make entry.”

“Understood, Captain,” Liana agreed.

Sherman gestured to the first cabin. Two of the security mechs broke off from their formation. The door was promptly kicked open by one bot, while the other swept inside. As the small procession moved past the structure, the two drones inside the cabin came out.

“Captain Sherman. Broadcast transmitter disabled,” the lead unit reported.

“Thank you, Zero-Three. Resume formation,” Sherman said to the bots. “Alpha One Four, track right and take position offset of lazed door. One five, track opposite of One Four.”

“Roger, Citizen,” announced the two drone tanks crushing their way through the underbrush beyond the trail. The twin tanks took up offset shooting positions aimed at the door on the next cabin some fifty meters from the first.

Thinking into the link, Sherman broadcast through Alpha One Four’s external speakers. “This is Captain Mario Sherman of the USO Ranger detachment.” His voice echoed through the trees for a half second before it was repeated in Osay, Russian, and finally Chinese. “I am ordering you out of your structure. If you come out peacefully, you will not be harmed. You have thirty seconds to comply, or we will open fire.”

Heartbeats passed in the silence of the forest except for the hum of the power cores on the tanks just away from the trail. The door to the cabin opened, spilling wood smoke and a smattering of light from the interior. Alissa stepped from the cabin, her hands held high and her chin low. She moved forward a few steps, careful not to make any sudden movements the drones would interpret as hostile. Even with the heavy Gatling cannons aimed at her, Alissa risked a minute head movement to indicate a “no” for some reason.

A scant second after she knelt in the grass outside the door, that reason became painfully apparent. A young girl, no more than fourteen years old, came out of the cabin with her hands raised above her head. Although she had terror firmly stitched into her expression, Liana could tell there was still plenty of room in this girl for hate.

Alexa moved ahead, threading two zip-fasteners from the ATV’s pioneer kit together to create a set of flex cuffs for the angry little girl. “Move only when I tell you or these men will kill you for what you did to Lieutenant Bautista.”

“Who?” she asked in unapologetic Osay.

Alexa whirled the girl around, snatching her hands behind and swallowing them into the flex cuffs.

“Ow! You’re hurting me!” the kid shouted.

“Who is she?” Sherman asked through the link.

“Tamika Sorrenson. She’s one of the kids Emileeya and Alissa used to babysit before we found out about their little plot,” Liana said. “How did the Ghosts get their hooks into her? She’s just a kid.”

“That’s something we’re going to have to find out,” Sherman said. “Although speaking from experience, beating on children to get information does more harm than good.”

Liana watched as Alexa marched the young woman past them and onto the back of an ATV. “How do you mean, Captain?”

Sherman watched Alexa and, for a moment, envied the android’s dispassion toward her prisoner. While one part of him wanted to play a scared straight moment with the kid in hopes of saving her, another part of him couldn’t shake the image of Lieutenant Bautista bleeding and convulsing on the deck of the USS Osay. In that moment, he was ashamed of what his experience fighting the RUPAC all these years had cost his soul. “Going hard on kids when they’ve clearly been taken advantage of has a tendency to breed tomorrow’s batch of insurgents. Think of it like this. Someone adept at poisoning young minds sets them about a task for some perceived wrong done to them, although the kid might not even have a sense of what that wrong is or why it should matter. The kid gets caught and put in prison or interrogated for the crime. The punishment becomes a wrong done against them for doing something they were told was the right thing, causing that kid’s hate to grow until they lash out again, pushing more violence.”

The android positioned herself by Tamaika’s side so the tiny insurgent couldn’t run off. She waited patiently beside the vehicle, minute intonations of her head a signal to Sherman that Alexa was probably on the horn with a bunch of somebodies delivering a report on what they’d found.

The security detail stepped forward to allow Liana to talk to their pretend exile. They flanked to each side, checking for traps or a sign of anyone else in or around the property. Getting the nod from Sherman, the Osay leader came forward.

“Are you okay?” Liana asked.

Alissa swallowed hard. “I have never been so scared as when Tamika came through my door.”

Liana held a set of flex cuffs in her hand that she slipped over Alissa’s wrists. The woman readily offered her hands, allowing the plastic restraints to fall into place. Liana didn’t tighten them, content to leave them in place for show. “I know that you were close. Did she tell you who put her up to this?”

“No. Only that it was a boy. You have to make her a deal like you did for me,” Alissa begged.

Liana turned her over to Sherman, who pushed her along with his hand on her shoulder. She remained by the woman’s side so the two of them could continue. “That will be up to the council.”

“Oh no. How bad is it?”

Liana set her on the back of her ATV. “It looks like she stole a broadcast unit from the supply shed and set it up in the cabin near yours. If I dig, I can probably wager a flask of penu lapu that she’s been at the hangars learning about ships from Beltran’s fixers. She used that and whatever the drone dropped off to get close enough to a pilot with a link. With the antenna active, they were able to take control of the pilot through the implant. Since she was originally a RUPAC soldier, her link was like theirs, which they knew how to break, hack or whatever. That pilot had escaped them to come work for a better life here with us and one of ours used her as a puppet.”

“For what?” Alissa asked.

Liana sighed as she got on the ATV in front of her informant. “That Predator Hauler was loading up for a search and Rescue mission for the USS Osay. Once the possessed officer was on board, she could reset the Ivan AI and take control of the ship. They could use its long range cannons to kill everyone on Camp Craiswell.”

“If the rest of the elders find out, they’ll kill her!” Alissa gasped.

Liana said nothing as she fired up the engine on the quad and progressed down the road flanked by the equivalent firepower of a heavy weapons platoon.

17

“Reach, it’s Bosa. Quick update. You’re probably going to notice your insert team moving like a bat out of hell toward the coast.”

“Baldino called us from the ground, sir. He said they’re trucking it. What gives?”

“Ghost scout team made a play for the USS Osay.”

“Have you found Sherman yet?” Reach asked.

“Negative. We were prepping a hauler to go look when the RUPAC snuck a drone past our security. They got a local to upload a combat controller AI into Bautista,” the colonel confirmed.

“Oh my God! Is she hurt?”

“We have her in a medical pod. The AI took advantage of an exploit in the RUPAC link firmware the lieutenant still had in her head. We thought rekeying the chip to our system would close any holes, but it looks like there were built-in redundancies we didn’t account for. Doctor Roman said we need to be hopeful, but Reach, there’s a lot of damage. I’m sorry. I knew you two flew together on that last hop to the Grey Faction.”

“That about sums up our stay on this rock,” Reach noted.

“Roger that,” Bosa harrumphed. “Baldino is still tracking things and the RUPAC infiltrators are running dark. The Ghosts had them deactivate their links so we couldn’t track them, but we have Baldino and Doctor Gruber’s little experiments keeping an eye on their movement. They should be reaching their extraction point any minute.”

“Roger that. We’re ready to deploy, sir. We just need it to kick off.”

“Check back in a hot tick. Bosa out.”

Reach flashed a quick text message to the team riding the open doors in the MH-1A Dragonfly Enhanced Heli-Transport. Both Day and Unga rode on opposite sides of the troop compartment where they could sit behind the elongated MGX-7, a heavier variant of the new MGX-5 Ranger assault weapon. High gain optics spilled into their HUDs, bestowing godlike targeting data the likes of which the old video gamers would have sold portions of their souls to attain. Just beyond the tail of the aircraft, two more birds flew in an offset column formation as the entire flight made another orbit as close to the coast as they dared without their engines tipping off their quarry.

“Hey Tran, can you keep our friends in the other birds in the loop?” When the Ranger staff sergeant waved a shaka sign, Reach switched the net. “Jared Reach to Kataya Federova.”

A metallic beep chirped into the link. “I am here, Mr. Reach. Checking on my status?”

“Yes and no. How is the project?” Jared asked.

“We are seventy-four percent complete on the final bunker. We should be ahead of schedule and mission complete by the time the colonel decides to launch his offensive.”

“That’s good to hear. Listen, we just got hit by Rykov’s team again.”

Even though all of this communication was taking place over neural linked mind mapping software, Reach could swear he heard Katya gasp in frustration. “What did they hit?”

Jared detailed his knowledge of events. When he’d completed his thoughts, he asked, “Has anyone in the crew been acting irregularly?”

“No. But we also do not have to worry about hijacked chips with the people on our crew. Everyone working for us is unchipped. We made sure of this.”

“And your chip is secure?” Jared prodded.

“Yes. I am sure you heard the phrase ‘Not all RUPAC is RUPAC?’ Well, for those of us who were directors, we had elite level neural broadcast hardware. Our links weren’t meant to operate in the same way, and to force them to do so would mean someone would have to hard wire into mine. Mr. Reach, your colonel and your Chief Osay, or whatever she is, doesn’t trust me. Why are you telling me all of this?”

“You were the Chief Director for Science operations on Amir and Rykov’s Ghosts were sent here to kill you. I think you have a pretty clear motivation for helping us. Based on your opinion, with the attempted theft of the major air power weapon in the system, is this a sign the ADVON team abandoned their attempt to fabricate a bioweapon against us? Or are they trying to deny us any ability to hit them before they hit us?”

Katya sighed, as if the act itself could scare all her thoughts on the matter into one spot for easy access. “The Ghost Guard units were originally fabricated to take down the Elites, genetically modified military commanders who’d become psychotic and ruined a large portion of RUPAC controlled space. To do that job, they had to become guerrilla fighters capable of shaping events without the geniuses they were sent to kill, finding out. When they’d killed all the Elites, they were put to work as advanced party for the Reclamation Fleet to whittle populations down by getting them to fight each other. If they attacked your prized spaceship, there’s also a good bet there’s at least two other things they’re doing they don’t want you to see.”

“That helps. Need anything before I switch out?” Reach asked.

“Don’t die, Mr. Reach. While you are annoyingly optimistic, you’re the only one who doesn’t seem to be plotting to shoot me in the face when this is over” Katya said.

“Roger out.” Reach laughed to himself. While all the reports and firsthand accounts had pegged Katya Federova as a vicious taskmaster who punished those who stepped out of line, he had to wonder how much of it was her and how much was programming. She was like him. An early RUPAC model of what Doctor Roman had accomplished. Much like the medical-cryo-chambers could be used to program familiarity in the troops Reach was able to command when they landed, maybe the RUPAC had a version that could turn a person into a stone-cold bitch who excelled at command. On some level, he pitied her.

The dragonfly banked, centripetal force keeping the Ranger team in their seats as they watched the world turn underneath them. Unga was on the down side of the bank, looking over the MGX-7 like it was a taller dude sitting in front of him at the movies obscuring his view. Reach didn’t think Unga had ever been behind that guy because Unga was that guy. A tall, powerfully built man of Tongan heritage, Losefa Unga was a bear who enjoyed the company of panthers. His fellow Rangers never minded as they saw him as the guy to hoist anything they couldn’t dig their claws into.

As the ship reoriented to fly level, Reach chimed into the TOC before the designated check in.

“Reach, it’s Mario. Colonel Bosa is on another call. Wassup?”

“I think Rykov is hitting other targets. We should notify all of our assets outside the walls to double up.”

“Explain,” Sherman barked.

That was the thing with Sherman. If you had something interesting to say, you only had a short time to convince him it was worth listening to before he turned his attention to something else. Sherman was always playing for the mission objective, and whether that meant playing a long or short game didn’t matter to him, as long as he was playing the game he was in his element. When he was forced to listen to a litany of explanations that didn’t drive him toward the objective, he abandoned that person for something that could. But if you piqued his interest, he threw everything he had into helping you make your move.

“I spoke with Federova and asked her experience with Ghost style units,” Reach said. “She said if you see them doing one action, there are at least two things we’re missing. We just took down a research station that was offline and all personnel were dead. What if while we’re doing this, they have other crews waking up stations for the personnel without us knowing.”

“Wouldn’t that send up an ops-ping?” Sherman asked.

“Unless it didn’t,” Reach countered.

“I’ll push it up. Bosa is on for you,” Sherman said, tapping a ping in the link to add the colonel to the call.

“Jared. We have a problem,” Bosa barked into the net. “Through Emileeya’s link, we heard Canteen Cup tell our crew that they’re going to stay in this inlet and hold the beach for them while setting up an LPOP on the Werner fishing village.”

“Crap!” Jared responded.

“They’re leaving our people on the beach as a test. I need you there, yesterday, Mr. Reach.”

Reach brought up the area map, highlighting the cove just south of Werner Village. The ocean offshore from the inlet was just deep enough to support the water displacement of a medium submarine if that was what they were piloting.

“Dragonfly Alpha, this is Reach—get me down to the treetops.”

“Aye, sir!” the pilot shouted back.

“Brody!” Reach shouted to his frequent partner, now clad in his original armor.

“It’s gravity!” Brody shouted excitedly.

“Hold on, you two!” Tran shouted. “What’s up?”

“Boat’s up, but they’re going to leave Sergeants Kahn and Gan on the beach,” Reach shouted.

“Shit!”

“We’re going to improvise,” Reach admitted. “We’ll give you the signal when it’s cool to advance.”

Reach kicked his feet and threw himself from the helicopter. The wind rushed past as he slapped through the throng of wide fronds, all vying to ignore his weight for an unobstructed path to the ground. Superhuman reflexes programmed by the best mind in genetic enhancement triggered to right him amid the fall. He bounded off branches, used vines to adjust his trajectory, and went slender to pass through tangles of branches that would have hemmed him up if he were more spread out. A few meters before the ground, he flared his arms and legs and landed on the balls of his feet before collapsing to his side in a roll that brought him to a kneeling position.

Brody struck the ground a meter to his left in a titanic splash of mud and plant matter. His own epic landing like something out of a video game trailer where the hero in the set of cyborg armor landed to absorb the shock of the fall.

“You remember that run we did stalking the Bangora?” Reach asked his partner.

“Are you ready to get it on?” Brody shouted, the excitement in his voice was almost volcanic.

Reach bounded like an Olympic sprinter out of the blocks. His armor drank in the light as the specialized photo absorbing properties mimicking the Bangora, the shadowy creature that had laid siege to the Osay people for decades, turned him into a living hole in the landscape. There was black, and then there was Bangora black, a deep absence of color so intense it hurt to look at it.

In Reach’s HUD, his overlay mapped out the most direct route to the cove. While he would have liked to take the submarine with Tran and his crew supporting the RUPAC insertion team they fielded, dropping in via helo would have just scared the boat underwater, and they’d be right back to where they were. He watched the side of his display, still amazed that as a human he could run this fast. The numbers were flicking like the digital readout on the skee-ball machines he used to play as a kid. A whir of numbers followed by a readout of thirty KPH. Another blur, and forty-five KPH. Sixty.

The branches and terrain melted away as complex adaptive algorithms operating from in the link translated modes of movement and evasion to make the best possible speed through the terrain. At one point, he catapulted from a rock, waving his arms in the air as he fell nearly twelve meters into the lowlands beneath him. He landed into another roll, the parkour style movement mitigating the stress on his joints while still propelling him forward.

The world slowed around him as Brody landed just ahead. Complex synthetic muscle strands wrapping powered reflex struts easily swallowed the shock of the landing and pushed the android into a nearly effortless run straight through the downed tree that was just ahead of them. The massive tree trunk detonated as he made contact with it, shattering it into two halves and spraying the path ahead with bark and splinters.

Reach ran in the android’s wake, his armor keeping him protected from the wooden fragmentation that followed his friend. They bounded around two more fallen tree obstructions. They landed at full speed, topping out for both of them at nearly seventy-five KPH. Reach’s muscles screamed for the first time in a long time, begging for him to stop this torture of pushing them to limits they hadn’t seen in weeks. Terrain warnings flared into their HUD, warning of an impending drop from an incoming cliff. At this speed, they had no choice but to divert or jump.

They rocketed from the cliff and sailed into the expanse nearly twenty meters before gravity got greedy and took hold of them both. They flapped their arms in the air, keeping their heels angled toward the surf below. The wind-tossed plummet threatened to over rotate them several times if not for ingrained senses of balance keeping their arms flapping and legs kicking to maintain their attitude. Just before the pair hit, they became slender, adopting a slight bend to their bodies as they crossed their arms in front of their chest.

The surf barely noticed the two of them getting swallowed by the ocean as the waves continued to pound against the beach.

* * *

Kutznetzov shook Sergeant Gantomor’s hand and repeated the process to Sergeant Kahn. “While we very much want to bring you with us, we have to be cautious and take advantage of situations as they arise. The timing of you contacting us, especially with this,” the sergeant said, holding up the access module for the satellite, “was much too advantageous to be a coincidence, but like they said in the homeland, never chase away the wolves while they keep the coyotes away.”

“We understand, Sergeant,” Gantomor said. “But what assurance do we have that you’ll come back for us?”

“We came for you the first time with a promise of nothing. Now, you’ve given us this and will have intel from the village when we return. You are valuable, Sergeant. We will come back,” Kutznetzov assured him. “These long boxes have tents, provisions, and a resupply of ammo for you should you need to protect yourself. There’s also a sonic disruptor to keep the animals away. Stay strong and wait for us.”

“Thank you, Comrade Sergeant,” Gantomor said. She directed her team to collect the items as the Ghost team departed the beach toward the hard bottomed boat.

“Are we leaving our ATVs with them?” Emileeya asked.

“Yes. It will help sell the lie that we’re coming back,” Kutznetzov said.

“We’re just going to leave them here?” she said, stepping in the way.

“While we were on our way back, we got word our operation to reclaim the Heavy Assault Star Craft failed. They knew we were coming, which means your friend in the cabin probably sold us out.”

“She would never!” Emileeya hissed.

Kutznetzov held out his hand to stabilize her as she climbed into the boat. “Something went wrong, because we lost contact with the controller AI. That also means our little spy…”

Emileeya’s eyes misted over as she slowly shook her head. “They wouldn’t.”

“You know them best, little bird. You tell me whether they would or not?” Kutznetzov cooed into her ear while stroking her hair. When she turned away from him, he motioned to the RUPAC boat driver clad in a grey jumpsuit and body armor to take them back to their ship.

Even though mostly submerged, the submarine that surfaced in the cove was titanic. The sail rising on the dorsal side of the craft cast a shadow that was meters long, like someone had built a hotel on a metal sand bar just floating in the middle of the inlet. A side hatch ratcheted open as the deployment craft brought itself up alongside the submarine. Two crewmen inside wearing the same grey RUPAC jumpsuits threw over bow lines that Kutznetzov and one of his counterparts tied onto their craft so they could be hauled in. Locking arms and securing struts supported the boat as the outer door sealed them in, bathing the entire scene in greenish light. Heavy clangs sounded against the bulkheads as the submarine secured the compartment against the pressure that was sure to assail it once they descended below the water. Excess water drained from below the boat through grating on the deck, leaving the space nearly dry after being exposed to the sea.

“The timing of the ops-ping was way too convenient when considering we were enacting operations out there on Captain Rykov’s behalf,” Kutznetzov noted. “Their presence, combined with the failed mission to secure the Attack Craft, made too much of a coincidence to allow them into our affairs just yet. Who knows, they may be there when we come back. Hopefully by then your Ranger friends will be dust under our boots and we can enjoy the fruits of our labors without them.”

Emileeya nodded, still coming to terms with what may or may not have happened to the young lady she’d helped to raise, recruited as an agent for the Regime, and then possibly gotten killed. They exited the compartment. The hatch sealed with the large securing dog rotating in place until the heavy steel locking bars locked tight.

* * *

“Tell me you upgraded your sensor array since riding in the advanced drones we used this week,” Reach said.

“You mean the J-Jared Sucks Robots?” Brody asked.

“One and the same. I need to know if we have motion sensors in here.”

Brody shared his vision with Reach. Everything was painted in shades of grey with footsteps highlighted in orange leading away from the deployment craft and through the hatch. The vision wiped away to the right, replaced by stark blues, oranges, and reds with occasional tinges of greens and yellows. There was an intense clicking noise that filtered into audio, like when Reach was a kid and he used to tape playing cards to his wheel spokes to make them clack like an engine. But these were rhythmic, almost like a signal. There was a pop in the audio, as though Brody were doing his classic trick of deciphering a transmission trying to hide itself. Like he’d done to save LT Bautista.

Eventually the sound rendered into almost similar speech that the doctor had used when they had just been testing out the new drones. “I think… I think we’ll… we’ll… think, think, think. I think we’ll call them.” The voice rendered in full clarity, eventually becoming Doctor Roman’s actual voice. “Jared Sucks.”

“Jerk. Come on!” The Bangora’s shadow passed from below the boat like some nightmare that had slithered out of the ocean while clinging to the boat, because that was exactly how they’d gotten on board.

Brody jumped up onto the decking and unrolled his Ghost camo poncho that he kept for just such an occasion. “I am going to have to get Dad to install some B-Bangora camo in my chassis. That way we can match when we go out like this.”

Reach slipped into the hall as a deathly shadow merging into the murky hallway lit by dull spotlights overhead. “If only, buddy. You’re one in nine hundred and ninety-nine.”

18

Emileeya’s best pout was firmly stitched into her face as they entered the engineering compartment of the submarine. A gantry walkway split the area so that someone walking through could observe what was going on in the compartment while giving them access to ladders into potential problem areas and access panels.

“What has you twisted about, Comrade Emileeya?” Sergeant Kutznetzov asked.

“I was just enjoying being out in the air versus being back on the boat.”

“How funny that you call this a boat,” Kutznetzov cooed. “This is an Akula T-1500 class submarine updated to the latest specifications for what could have been the greatest Navy in the GSSR, if we had need of such a thing. But this vehicle has given us the ability to move about unknown to our enemy. With this, they can’t track us with all their technology and androids. They are left to wonder what we’re doing as we drift under the waves with the rest of the monsters.”

“I understand the need,” Emileeya said, her Russian becoming more confident as she spoke. “I was hoping to see the snow like you promised. Be around more of the Regime and not just soldiers.”

Kutznetzov patted the safety railing on the top of the gantry. “Soon, Comrade. Soon. But first we must make Amir free from all the violence that is the Americans. As long as they’re free to stomp around in their little camp, we will never be rid of their need to control everything. We have to stop them from turning the majority of your people feral like them. This is our duty as members of the GSSR. If you want to be a member of the Regime, it is your duty as well.”

“I can’t wait to travel to the other colonies. Leave all of this behind and make new friends and go to the shops you told me about. I want to dance and have tea and cakes. I want to visit a place where I don’t have to worry about a bug biting me and stealing my soul.”

“There’s a saying on one of the colonies,” Kutznetzov observed. “Don’t envy a man’s castle until you see beneath it. While places like that sound wonderful to you, remember that they always come with their own problems.”

A man in a grey jumpsuit with yellow striping on the sleeves and legs to help him stand out against the dark interior of the compartment waited patiently for the two to finish. “Sorry to interrupt, Comrade Sergeant Kutznetzov. We are running at seventy-five percent capacity with no issues detected.”

“That is great news, Zavorin,” Kutznetzov said. “The reason I came down here is that I am feeling a bit paranoid. The Americans might have tried to hunt the wolves ahead of the dogs, as it were, and I want to conduct a thorough vetting of the ship before we get back to Station Six.”

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

“Have Ivan run a security check on all hatches and locks. The Americans are similar to us in terms of training and technology. They could be on the boat right now, and we’d never know it until it was too late.”

“Boize moi!” the chief technician gasped. “I’ll have Ivan run a full sweep. Should I send that report straight to you, only?”

“That’s fine. Let me know as soon as it’s done. And Zavorin, until we know it’s just us on the ship, treat every shadow like it’s a monster from under the bed.”

“Will do, Comrade,” Zavorin said, flicking the ashes of his cigarette onto the gantry.

Kutznetzov led Emileeya out, their conversation passing back and forth about life in the Regime out among the stars.

Zavorin waited until they were out of earshot to call up the ship’s AI. “Ivan, this is Zavorin.”

“Yes, Comrade Chief Technician Zavorin. How may I assist you for the Glory of RUPAC?”

“Did you follow Sergeant Kutznetzov’s line of instructions about matching unsecured compartments with troop movements aboard the ship?”

“Y-yes, Comrade. I am ready to execute the protocol on your order.”

Zavorin field stripped the cigarette into wisps of paper, and placed the remnants into a plastic bag in his breast pocket. He pulled a case from a pocket on his sleeve and removed a notebook rubber banded to the outside. He passed over pages with hand scrawled notes about the operation of the craft and tapped one of the pages with a newly recovered cigarette from the case. “Are you okay, Ivan?”

“Yes, Comrade. I am r-ready to perform for the glory of RUPAC.”

“What was that flutter in your speech matrix?” Zavorin asked. Placing the new cigarette in his mouth, it bobbed in time with each syllable as he spoke, almost acting like a metronome for the man’s question.

“Performing multiple functions at once, Comrade. Setting up the detection protocol is no j-joke. It is putting a considerable strain on my processing cycles. But have no fear, I will be able to perform my duties to RUPAC standards, momentarily.”

Zavorin’s face remained fixed on the holographic representation of the ideal RUPAC man with a square jaw, iron clad flat top haircut, and crystal blue eyes. As he skeptically gawked at the hologram floating above the control station, the cigarette went limp as though he had forgotten it was there and it was his responsibility to keep it between his lips. The man plugged his own control board into the system interface and tapped along the screen to enact a diagnostic protocol. “Stand down from function and wait for diagnostic, Ivan.”

“Of course,” the hologram said, dissipating into nothingness above the board.

Tense minutes went by as the Chief Technician waited for some sign that their onboard AI hadn’t been corrupted. If Ivan had been compromised, then the entire ship and the crew was at risk. They could take the android architecture offline, but then they wouldn’t have the personnel needed to adequately pilot the ship. Rykov had promised them more Model 33s to help with the crewing duties but such a crew could be prone to the same dangers as Ivan. Working through the multiple screens needed to assess the control AI for the ship, the diagnostic showed several irregularities dating back months to when Station Six had come back online. He cursed himself for not noting the glitches and potentially putting the crew and the mission at risk.

The diagnostic finally finished, showing the AI had been far too burdened with control of the ship and that extra crew or a dueling AI architecture would solve a majority of the problems. “Good. Good. Good.” Zavorin said. “Ivan, keep us running at seventy five percent and once the protocol is complete, run it and send the results to my board.”

“For the glory of RUPAC,” Ivan announced.

“Thank you, Ivan.” Zavorin waved at the AI architecture as he walked deeper into the engine compartment and turned his course into an access hatch off the main passage.

* * *

Reach slapped Brody’s boots, sticking out from an access panel. They’d crawled into the bowels of the ship normally reserved for technicians maintaining systems, and had found several areas as observation points and hides among the ship. “Setting up the detection protocol was no joke?” Reach asked.

“What? He b-bought it,” Brody countered.

“He didn’t buy it. He ran a diagnostic on the AI!” Reach snarled at his friend.

“Look, Lieutenant Strangle Shorts, you’ve g-got your panties cutting off circulation for nothing. It’s not like the buffer circuit had been t-torn out.”

“What buffer circuit?” Reach said, aiming his best Marine Corps knife hand at the android.

“Hey! W-watch where you’re pointing that. It could go off and hurt someone.”

“You were supposed to pose as the AI until Alexa’s updated Ivan was loaded into the system. Where was there a circuit?”

“I believe it was with the c-cook.” Brody said from his position inside the access hatch for the AI interface circuitry on this level. “Still, Comrade Zavorin bought my performance. The new Ivan-Dvah is forty three percent loaded. The hard part is going to be deciding how we’re going to smoke all the filthy commies on this b-boat while he’s doing a rewrite of the system!”

Reach sighed. “We’re not smoking commies right now. We stay in place and wait for the takeover. Once it’s complete, we’ll have control of the ship and we can force them to surrender.”

“Since you’re going in solo, you’ll have to rely on more equipment th-than you’ve ever used before. And use it. What I’m saying is don’t try the blood and guts routine. Let technology do m-most of the work.”

Reach tapped the side of his helmet. “Exactly, buddy. We tap the trigger as little as possible so we don’t blow big holes in the boat while we’re on it.”

“You’re in armor that can w-withstand the water. I am armor that can withstand the water. Would it really be so bad if we went after some of these filthy c-commies and de-commie-nate them?” Brody asked with more than a little hope in his voice.

“Then what will our guys ride in once Ivan-Dvah has the wheel, but the boat is full of holes?”

“The trunk?” Brody asked.

“Not what you think it is on a submarine, buddy.” Reach confirmed. “We still have to worry about the chief technician. It looks like he went into that service access hatch down below, but he could come up here at any time. If he comes this way before Ivan Two is finished uploading, we have to distract him.”

Brody tapped his forehead in much the same fashion as Reach did earlier. “And by distract, you mean snap his n-neck so he doesn’t mess with the box and so we don’t put holes in the b-boat.”

There were some days that Reach truly sympathized with Sergeant Tran. The job was simple. Sneak aboard the boat. Load the malware Ivan. Take control and rise back to surface to take prisoners off, load assault element on, and take it to the enemy on Station Six. The hardest part so far had been getting onto the boat. Alexa’s transfer of the American-ized Ivan couldn’t be more easy with how she’d prepped the transfer module. However, doing this with Brody meant his operational attitude had to be massaged in the right direction from time to time.

“How about we go all horror movie like a haunted house so the Tech has to investigate anything other than us hacking into the AI interface and uploading a Pirate Ivan?” Reach asked.

“Good idea, Texas Ranger.”

“I’m not a Ranger, Brody,” Reach said. He hoped that his friend wouldn’t hear his eyes hitting the top of his skull, or at least the annoyance in his voice.

“H-hush, Citizen. I need to concentrate on not killing the commie c-coming up the ladder.”

At the comment from his friend, Reach made sure that both of their camouflage systems were active before scrambling down toward the bottom of the maintenance ducts. Moving hand over hand, he shimmied through the tight vertical shaft clogged with wire bundle harnesses and carbonized and metallic piping that was just wide enough for an armored human to fit through. Building a submarine was just as dangerous as working in one and the service ducts were often constructed to be wide enough to maneuver through while wearing protection against temperature or radiation. Even a government as uncaring as the RUPAC had safety protocols in place in the event of a workplace accident. As Reach’s armor wasn’t as wide as the old school encounter suits, he could shimmy through the duct without too much worry about getting stuck or making too much noise.

With hearing topped out at the highest levels of human performance thanks to Doctor Roman’s treatments, Reach could hear the tapping outside the bulkhead of the technician climbing a few rungs and halting to check some schematic or another. He had to time his horror show routine perfectly in order to draw the man away.

“Brody, stay as still and quiet as you can,” Reach called through the link.

“Um… have we met?” Brody shot back.

Reach cursed the android’s devil-may-care attitude at times. This was not just running and gunning outside of a broken starship bulkhead to protect a tribe of colonial descendants from bug-drunk RUPAC conscripts. They were aboard a nuclear-powered submarine where Brody was jacked into the AI port to slave the ship while the new AI loaded into the system. If he unplugged or pulled his attention from his current duty to shoot chief technicians, there was no telling what kind of damage could be caused by the sudden disappearance of the artificial construct helping to pilot the ship.

Reach slid open the maintenance hatch as loud as he could and catapulted from the duct work into the grating at the center of the room. Moving noisily through support pylons and cooling systems, he found a section of device racking at the center to make a good hiding spot. While they were ahead of the reactor, this compartment seemed to be a hub for maintenance for the mechanical systems driving the sub. After switching to multiple versions of low-light vision, Reach watched as Zavorin scanned the engine compartment below him like an epileptic jackrabbit.

The man was half hanging from the rigging leading to the high side hatch where Brody was. After climbing two more rungs, he could slide open the portal and come face to face with what looked to be a dematerialized hulk fitted in between the maintenance duct and the bulkhead. Instead of advancing, he hung on the ladder, held out his data tablet with the other hand, and used the hyper LED to shine a beam toward the gantry where something moved below him.

“Oh no. Please don’t let it be one of those squid things again. Please, please, please,” Zavorin said out loud. Using one hand on the ladder in order to keep the LED toward the shadowy expanse below him, the chief tech worked his way back down to the grating. He traversed the main walkway back to the control console where Ivan could be summoned like a genie from the lamp. “Ivan, can you halt current search protocol and run a new scan? Search for biologics in this compartment?”

The Ivan head floated above the station, his stern features resolute as he nodded in agreement to the tech. “Of course, Comrade Chief Technician Zavorin. As you are n-no doubt aware, stopping the current protocol will interrupt time sequencing models and thus require the search to begin again from the start of re-requested time inference.”

“I was not aware of that, Ivan, but it has to be run anyway. Hopefully we can complete both scans before we dock at Station Six,” Zavorin said, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Do you think this flutter of yours is caused by some sea beast getting into the AI interface behind the service duct?”

“My AI is decentralized across thirty-two systems spaced throughout the ship so that catastrophic l-loss of key server nodes can shift my priorities to other batch computers for minimal operations failure,” Brody-Ivan lied.

“Of course. I should know that, but I so rarely deal with your part of the system, it’s easy to forget. Is there a way we could flush it out?” Zavorin asked.

“We could do what your predecessor did and use the fire suppression system to kill it. If you vacate the compartment for seventeen minutes, I sh-should be able to prepare a targeted response and poison the offending creature.”

“Excellent idea, Ivan. I’ll leave you to it,” Zavorin said. He shook his head as he exited the compartment, taking time in the passage to seal the pressure door.

Reach broadcast through the link toward the still hidden android, “Dude! Academy. Award winning. Performance.”

“You think so?” Brody asked. “Zavorin did play a nice haggard technician counterpart to m-my stern robot overlord. Why didn’t we j-just kill him?”

“Need time for upload. Gotta stay undetected until Ivan Two point Duh is installed. No holes in boat,” Reach said, ticking off the reasons on his fingers despite Brody still being in the service duct and unable to see him counting.

“Oh, right. All the b-boring story plot BS,” Brody surmised. “Hey, just so you know, Pirate Ivan is installed and re-rewriting the AI. It’ll be roughly twenty minutes until I can unplug and start shooting p-people.”

“Good to know. Are you going to have to fake the fire system going off?” Reach asked.

“No. I was going to do it for real. Your suit sh-should protect you, although I don’t read Russian so there could be all sorts of nasty chemicals in those sprayers. It could eat right through your armor.”

“Now you tell me,” Reach huffed. “Go ahead and run it anyway. I doubt they have anything that will burn through Doctor Roman’s masterpiece.”

“What about your specialized Bangora-flage?” Brody noted.

That was something Reach hadn’t considered. Having his armor transform him into a living shadow so black it gave people brain freeze had been a tactical boon on these many missions for the reluctant combatant. Not being able to rely on it to sift through situations through stealth rather than brute force would mean he’d have to rely more on his trigger than his tactical advantage.

Reach scanned the compartment for available spaces or lockers that might be airtight. The amount of legitimately necessary systems in this area of the ship was staggering. “Ya know, there’s a lot of tech in here that a fire suppression system would try to save that is far more susceptible to caustic agents than my armor. Wouldn’t they use a system that kills the fire but saves the gear?”

“Don’t know,” Brody said. Reach could almost hear the shrug in his voice. “I don’t read Russian.”

Reach grimaced inside his helmet when the android’s last statement caught up with him. “Brody, if you can’t read Russian, how are you helping to pilot the sub? Didn’t Alexa write a whole subroutine for that?”

“I really wish I could see your f-face right now. Big, strong, confident Jared Reach just got punked hiding under the floor, pretending to be a j-jellyfish.”

Reach’s growl managed to get translated through the link. “Hit the fire system and get Pirate Ivan online so I can crawl up there and choke you.”

“Say it l-like you mean it, Citizen! Show me your war face!”

19

Hard clangs sounded from the squawk box set onto the bulkhead to get the attention of the engineer. “Zavorin, it’s Kutznetzov! Ivan is reporting a power plant failure!”

The Chief Technician raced to the box and slammed his hand into the broadcast key. “I’m here! I’m getting temperature spikes from the plant, but I don’t think we have a breach.”

“Cause of the spikes?” Kutznetzov demanded.

“Ivan! Get us to surface and switch to auxiliary power. Once the plant is offline, I need a detailed analysis for those temperature fluctuations.”

“I will comply, Comrade Chief Technician Zavorin. For the glory of Rupac,” the android called into the ship's comms.

“Sergeant, as soon as we get to the top, I’ll pull the plant offline and diagnose. With Ivan’s help, it should be no time at all to figure out the problem.”

“Best guess, Chief?” Kutznetzov asked.

Zavorin furiously tapped his data board. “From what I’m seeing in these spikes, they seem to coincide with major draws in power. Increased speed, ballast control, and atmosphere are all contributing to a disproportionate draw on the system. I’d say we have a problem with one of the system controllers managing the cryogenics. Probably a faulty board or something.”

“Something we can fix at sea?”

“Definitely. These systems have built in redundancies for such problems, Sergeant. Once Ivan and I identify the source, we’ll put it right,” Zavorin assured him.

“And no leaks,” the Ghost stated more than asked.

The Chief Technician lit another cigarette and put the field stripped carcass of the last one into his pocket. “Negative. No leaks. Reactor containment is intact.”

The comms chirped, signaling to the staff that Ivan wanted to add something to the discourse. “Comrades, I highly recommend that the crew move to one of the escape chambers. In the event of radiation leakage, the vehicle can detach and keep the crew at safe distance until Station Six can dispatch a recovery vehicle.”

“Zavorin, didn’t you say this could easily be fixed?” Kutznetzov asked skeptically.

“Yes, but first things first. We have to get to the surface and switch to the auxiliary,” Zavorin said, this time adding his own insistence to the call. “Putting all nonessential personnel into the escape chamber will protect them in the event I’m wrong and we have a breach.”

“Very well. Make it happen,” Kutznetzov barked into the comms.

* * *

“They’re not going for it,” Reach said.

“L-lighten up, F-francis. Ever since we got on this b-boat, you’ve been so negative. ‘They’re not going for it, Brody. We can’t flood the ship and d-drown them all, Brody.’” Switching to his acclaimed Scottish actor voice, he continued, “Things in here don’t react well to bullets, Ryan.”

“Comrade Reach, we will be on the surface in eight minutes. Also, I am detecting the twenty-two members of the technical and piloting crew making for the starboard crew escape chamber,” Pirate Ivan said into the link.

“Good news,” Reach said. “Any bad news?”

“The three members assigned as Ghost Guard and fourteen members of the amphibious security team are spacing throughout the ship. They are splitting into fire teams and taking up positions at key points,” Ivan said.

“Show off,” Brody mocked.

“Brody, you and I will move to the sail and secure it for our guys.”

“About time we get to b-blow something up,” Brody muttered.

“Ivan, once we get to the surface,” Reach continued, “open the dive trunks here and here. With people on both sides of the ship deploying all at once, we have a better shot at taking these teams.”

“Alright. You’re a team and there’s n-nothing to worry about. We come here, and we’re gonna conquer, and we’re gonna kick some, understood?” Brody asked, flashing his knife hand at Reach.

“Watch where you point that thing!” Reach deadpanned. He flashed from the maintenance duct into the engine room, his armor wavering into its shadowy nightmare configuration. “Ivan, secure normal lighting and go to emergency spots.”

“Yes, Comrade.”

The lights in the passage cut, immediately drenching the space in darkness for the twin heartbeats it took for emergency spotlights to wink on at certain points along the deck. As the Bangora shadow that was Reach drifted down the passage, Brody, covered in an optical distortion poncho, appeared as his own trick of the light sliding along the opposite bulkhead. Despite the height and weight of both combatants, they tread softly, barely slapping the metallic grating of the deck. They sifted through the passage and came to an area where a three-man fire team guarded the ladder.

“Amphibious Security ahead,” Reach noted.

“What makes them a-amphibious?” Brody asked.

“They demonstrated the ability to tread water while wearing gear,” Ivan confirmed.

“That’s it? I can do that while carrying p-people! Does this mean I get my amphibious tab, too?”

“No amphibious tab, bro,” Reach said. Instead of telling the android to knock off the chatter, which would most likely elicit the opposite response, he addressed the other android in his life. “Ivan, do they have a support element nearby?”

“At the end of the deck. There is another fire team acting as security for Chief Technician Zavorin, who is currently switching to auxiliary power.”

Reach marked the three-man fire team. One was set against the ladder, while the other two were facing opposite directions from inside hatches along the way. Highlight markers flared above their heads in the augmented reality display for the duo advancing down the hall. “Go suppressed. I’ll take the lead trooper and the one on the ladder. You take the guy leaning out of that far hatch.”

“Roger, Citizen!”

Both combatants pulled the M4D1B rifle into tension against their slings and aimed down the expanse toward their unaware targets. The Bravo models of the Brody designed rifles had no under-slung grenade launcher, making it a little shorter and prime for weapon enhancements like suppressors.

“Three, two, one—” Reach sent a ten-millimeter explosive tipped round straight through the young man’s head, splattering the contents of his skull onto the trooper behind him on the ladder. “Execute.”

Both men fired, each weapon only reporting with a metallic snap. The single rounds found their targets, transforming the formerly alert guards into headless mannequins wearing the latest in RUPAC trooper fashion. Reach grasped the drag handle on the former amphibious soldier hanging from the ladder. He hoisted the corpse into the passage and laid him beside the other man.

“I’ll move to the far compartment and pull the guard from the hatch. You sweep in behind and clear the compartment. Take the chief alive if you can get him,” Reach directed. He stepped off to lead the next assault when Brody stopped him.

Pointing toward a wire harness cover, the shimmering android indicated a compact box with a blackened lens at the front of its frame. The device was crammed into the very bottom of the cover against the bulkhead so as not to be noticeable to the casual observer. Brody switched the shared augmented reality display to a wash out with varying degrees of grey. When nothing of interest seemed to appear in their vision, Brody’s feed shifted through various spectra, coupled with annoying digital signals differentiating each mode. The sensor roulette halted in a kaleidoscope display showing a light beam tracing from the box to the far wall.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Reach said, nodding to his friend the message had been received despite the colorful presentation. “This guy, Kutznetzov, is no dummy. He suspects we’re here.”

“For every team you eliminate, I am continuing to loop their communication check-ins. It will be a moment or two until you are directly suspected, Comrade Lieutenant,” Pirate Ivan offered through the link.

“Good deal. Thank you, Ivan.”

Reach signaled for them to continue, and his shadow armor took the lead, sweeping the hallway with Brody-Vision so as not to be caught unaware by errant lasers that were tied to who-knows-what. Brody continued to stalk forward, making rhythmic clicking noises into the link reminiscent of certain infamous cinematic alien hunters.

Seeing that the hatch leading into the reactor compartment was open, Reach bounded into an all-out sprint. He struck the deck three times before he was on top of the guard watching the space. To the RUPAC soldier’s credit, he brought his rifle up to his shoulder by the second footfall. Unluckily for him, he was staring straight into a scintillating shadow that in the dull gleam of the emergency lighting seemed to be everywhere and nowhere in the passage all at once. He managed to thumb off the safety just as Reach’s shadow caught up to him. A savagely executed clothesline toppled the guard, snapping his neck and killing him outright before his body had even hit the ground.

Brody button hooked into the hatch and fired, with the muffled snap of a suppressed round leaving the barrel. Hectic foot stomps from the massive Bulwark armor’s boots clogging on the deck grating in the next room made little sense to Reach until Brody’s entire bulk flew from the open portal. He slammed against the bulkhead and collapsed in a heap of tangled Ghost camo poncho and twisted up android.

Reach’s senses were further assaulted as waves of searing pain traced along his spine to bury heaping doses of agony straight between his temples. He dropped to his knees, the fire in the all too familiar RUPAC sonic disruptor tearing through his nervous system. “Ivan!”

“I am sorry, Comrade Lieutenant. The pain you are feeling is not tied to any system I can affect. I have no way to shut it down.”

A Ghostly figure wrapped in the light bending armor walked to the edge of the hatch, careful not to cross the threshold lest he be subject to the same condition Reach was now suffering. He placed two rounds into the shimmering poncho ahead of him in the most likely spots to shut off the pumps and pipes on a man. A third shot struck the near invisible helmet, slamming it into the decking. The RUPAC Ghost deactivated his own armor while he flicked buttons on a control unit in his off hand.

“I assume the shadow writhing on the floor is Mr. Reach. I’d offer greetings from my superior, Sergeant Kutznetzov, but it seems our intraship communications are jammed. How annoying. No matter. You’re not going to be around long enough to be introduced.” The Ghost soldier bent over the heap of broken armor lying against the bulkhead. “But first, let’s see what you look like under the hood.”

An armored gauntlet flashed out from the heap and snapped around the Ghost’s neck. Creaking armor splintered in the titanic grip, lacerating the man’s collar. Firing into the torso until the mag went dry did nothing to the hulking armor as he rose from its heap on the floor. His other hand wrapped around the control fob, shattering it inside the man’s broken fingers as Brody’s near hydraulic strength turned the contents of the combat glove into powder.

Gurgling sounds strangled from the Ghost’s external speakers as he shouted, “Wh-what?!”

Brody slowly hoisted the man nearly two feet off the ground in one hand before yanking him close, helmet to helmet. “I’m Batman!”

The android whirled the Ghost into the harness cover on the bulkhead, breaking the man’s neck and back in a single motion. He discarded the corpse to help Reach to his feet.

“I really hate those pain guns,” Reach groaned.

“Where does he get all those wonderful toys?” Brody asked, gesturing to the broken man against the bulkhead.

Reach dashed into the hatch to where Chief Technician Zavorin was hiding behind a command console. The man was kneeling with a pistol in his hand held with the barrel pointed toward the ceiling, close by his ear.

“Do you know if that thing goes off right now, you’ll be deaf for life?” Reach asked.

“I won’t die without a…” Zavorin’s words choked in his mouth as he looked into the faceless shadow of a Bangora. He fell backward, dropping the gun so he could scurry away, cutting his palms to bloody chunks on the grated decking. A loud thunk behind him stopped him as he turned to find a shimmering giant wrapped in Ghost tech camouflage blocking the rest of the gantry.

Reach deactivated his camo and removed his helmet. “We don’t want to hurt you if we don’t have to. But if you’re going to be a problem, I’ll let my big friend here have his way with you. He’s been dying to find out if you can fire a man out of a torpedo tube.”

“No I wasn’t. But I am now t-that you’ve said it!” Brody said enthusiastically.

“Does Kutznetzov have the sub trapped in the event of a boarding party?”

“He has control of the con, which means he controls access to the ship. Is the Bangora camouflage really built into the armor like the Ghost suits?” Zavorin asked, astounded.

“Sorry, Chief. No time for tech lessons. We’re going to secure you in one of these rooms, and you’re going to stay there until we call you. If you attempt to leave or cause trouble in any way, the men we have boarding the ship will know and they will do something about it. Do you understand?”

“No,” Zavorin admitted. “I don’t know how you’re going to get men on board with Kutznetzov in possession of the Control Room. The only way you’d have access is if—” The man’s train of thought stopped abruptly as it crashed headlong into the conclusion he hadn’t first considered.

Reach decided to confirm it for him. “Ivan, it’s Reach. Where are we?”

Despite the lieutenant speaking out loud so the RUPAC officer would behave, Ivan continued the conversation through the link. “Both squads of our assault element are loading into the dive trunks as we speak. The Dragonfly is dropping Team Junkyard onto the deck of the ship now.”

“Good. Can you connect us?” Reach asked. A picture of Sergeant Tran appeared in Reach’s HUD in a gold frame. After a moment, the outline pulsed into a brilliant green indicating the feed was live. “Sarn’t T. It’s Reach.”

“Did you hear us pull up in the driveway?”

“Yeah, Ivan clued us in. Ghost team has their hands on the control room and the fin. If you try to breach that top hatch, they’ll be waiting for you. Plus, if they see daylight, they could blow the controls on the ship.”

“You got a work-around?” Tran asked.

Reach knocked his hand against the armor on his thigh. He really didn’t. There were only a few ways into the control room for the ship. The Ghosts would have those guarded against assault. Even if it were just the two remaining RUPAC special operators, with the right countermeasures and time to set up against an attack, they could hold off an impending enemy long enough to wreck the ship. Reach would have to find a way to breach and clear in seconds.

“If we meet the r-right sort, this will work,” Brody said. “But if we get some Buckaroo?”

“Tran. Hold tight. I think I have a way in.” Reach motioned for the technician to approach. When he hesitated, Brody assisted him to his feet and pushed him into his friend’s orbit. “Chief, those laser trips in the passageway. What are they attached to?”

Zavorin looked hesitantly to the hulking android behind him. The beast pulled off his hood, deactivating the cloaking field on the poncho. For some reason, this twisted machine was wearing a red bandanna tied onto his helmet. Whatever that meant, the Ghosts had told all the technicians on Station Six about the homicidal android and his tactical nightmare of a handler. The man who’d killed a Bangora bare handed and stole its ability to become a shadow. Sandwiched between these two, there was nowhere to run. “How do I know you won’t just kill me if I tell you?”

“You mean instead of us b-beating on you like an information piñata? Check me out. I even have the bandanna for over my eyes. It probably w-won’t even blind me, what with all the sensors and stuff. There’s not a lot to hang him f-from in here, though.”

“We could have killed you any time we wanted, Chief,” Reach offered. “But instead, we told you to go into a safe area and remain there until we have the ship. How about instead of complaining and making things difficult, you help us?”

“Um, excuse me, Jared. The actual l-line is, ‘maybe instead of complaining, you should help.’ Dylan said that to Dutch Matrix. Sheesh, it’s l-like you don’t even listen to me.”

Reach ignored the comment. “What’s it going to be, Chief? Make my day by telling us what’s rigged to those beams or make me waste time to find out on my own? If I have to figure it out, Brody here can give you his full attention.”

There was a large gulp before the man started speaking. “Sonic disruptors that we deploy while utilizing the dive trunks. Since they’re primed for the water, they are rigged to be more powerful than a standard unit.”

“Now see? That wasn’t so bad,” Reach said. He switched to the link as he helped Zavorin to his feet. “Brody, secure our new friend in a room. Use lots of duct tape. Ivan, is there any indication the Ghost team is aware of our presence?”

“Negative, Comrade Lieutenant. It appears they are holding in a security formation waiting for comrade chief technician Zavorin to complete the repair.”

As Ivan spoke, Reach jogged the length of the passage to the points where the laser trips were still active. Brody had crushed the remote trigger for the systems, but the pain resonators themselves were most likely still functional. He traced along the bulkhead and eventually found a wire bundle that seemed out of place for the section of wall it was attached to. Magnetically adhered to the surface, the emitter looked like an old intercom speaker that schools use to squawk through to move students from one period to another. Having its own power supply and transmitter, the aquatic deterrent turned IED was remote connected to the laser trips. Reach removed both the system and the sensor, which luckily had a simple on-off switch.

He tracked to the other side of the passage to recover the disruptor on this end when Brody entered the passage. “Our guy good?”

“Obscene levels of tape,” Brody answered.

“Help me find a service duct that gets us close to the con.”

Brody excitedly jogged back to the panels they’d just crawled from in the other compartment. The massive robotic armor slipped easily into the hatch behind the bulkhead, despite his size being one and a half times that of a normal man. Reach handed him a transmitter and a trip for his ascent into the ductwork. When the android’s feet disappeared, he darted to the far side duct to repeat the process.

He maneuvered through the shaft amid massive wire bundles, piping, and an assortment of metallic information plates that gave the technicians working the boat a sort of street sign telling them where they were and what they had access to. While many of the systems working from the control station to the systems throughout the ship ran through the shaft Reach was using, it wasn’t exactly a straight shot. With Brody and Ivan’s help—which involved a tremendous amount of arguing over Ivan’s questionable status as a former commie—Reach managed to shimmy his way from one duct to another in order to reach a bulkhead adjoining the area they targeted. The access panel connected to the con between two massive station terminals.

Reach aimed the emitter toward what he hoped would be the center of the room. Based on how easily it had taken him down and where he’d found them, he guessed they broadcast their pain waves in a cone to give the widest possible dispersion and protection to the person behind it. Reach stifled a laugh as he thought the only thing missing on this particular piece of kit was a sign in raised letters that read “front toward enemy.”

“Hey, Reach, it’s Brody. Pain producer placed. Should I press the p-plunger?”

“Not yet, bud. Hey, what’s with all the alliteration?”

“What? Th-that’s not a real word.”

Reach rolled his eyes. He’d been doing that a lot lately as the android continued its unintentional quest to be as annoying as possible. “Crawl back to the deck we just left and make way to the ladder closest to the con on your side. Let me know when you’re there.”

“Roger, Citizen!” Brody shouted into the link.

Reach reversed direction, making his way through the labyrinthine ductwork to get back to his starting point. As he crawled along the cramped shaft, he wondered if Brody had such a hard time moving, especially with his size. He tapped the link to launch a signal to Sergeant Tran.

“Go for Tran.”

“Sarn’t T. You have the layout of the con?” Reach asked.

“Roger that, sir.”

Reach thought about the tactical nightmare they were about to walk into. Seizing a room was no easy feat, even on land when there was more than a good chance that the unknown force behind the door most likely had more people and paid off someone to field reports on everything the entry team was doing. Even low-tech bad guys didn’t need fancy surveillance gear when they had hungry people willing to trade info for food. That being the case, the safest route to taking on a room was to work from one wall and keep all weapons aimed in a single direction.

In the sub they were about to raid, the entry team needed to break in via three points. Tran’s team was going to drop in from the bridge, which was the topmost control section of the sail, what sailors called the castle-like structure that stuck up from the body of the sub. Then Brody and Reach would enter via opposing ladders to help with the takedown. It was the opposing ladders that were giving the former Marine lieutenant a fit.

While Sergeant Tran and his guys had been spending considerable amounts of time shooting, moving, and communicating, even to the point of using the new Sergeant Darrow Shoot House, Reach and Brody hadn’t been doing such dynamic training. Granted, the android shot a lot, but it wasn’t as if he devoted a whole lot of time practicing coordinated fire engagement with friendly forces. He usually ran into an area, drew fire by shouting movie lines, and then dumped armloads of fifty-caliber rounds into the enemy, who were hopefully not in line with friendly troops, namely the Rangers.

“Sarn’t T. You ready?”

“Send it, sir.”

Reach synced up his link with Brody’s. “We arm the laser and then move into the doors. That will trigger the disruptors and put everyone on the deck. Remember, Tran is going to be coming right at us so make your shots count.”

“Reach, we’ve been doing this buddy cop thing for a long time—F-forty-eight Hours and Another Forty-Eight Hours—and despite me always having your back on every Stakeout, I find it k-kind of tough that you still doubt me. Listen, when Rush Hour comes and we jam those lasers, we’re gonna hit that room like Blue Thunder, and they’ll b-be Running Scared. Lone Wolf McQuaid himself wouldn’t be able to field a Lethal Weapon like us. Not even all the R-Red Heat in the room is gonna be enough to stop the Magnum Force from dumping all of them into the Dead Pool. All you have to do is trust this L-last Boy Scout to work the Striking Distance so you stay Untouchable.”

“Those are all buddy cop movies?”

“Damn right, Citizen!”

Reach didn’t allow himself a laugh as he broadcast through the net. “All Junkyard elements. Execute! Execute! Execute!”

20

“Zavorin, how much longer to switch everything over?” Kutznetzov asked. He released the call button on the intercom, but let his fist linger on the bulkhead where he tapped it against the steel. As a sergeant in the Ghost Guard for the GSSR, he’d developed a level of patience when running recon, tracking targets, or enduring the dreadfully long space flights involved in doing his job. An enemy on a Regime world set to be eliminated at the start of the flight had the very real possibility of becoming something else by the time they landed, thus prompting a change in mission priorities for the good of the people.

But something about this whole affair had been bugging him since Rykov had assigned him the mission. He’d warned their commander that going after the USS Osay at this stage in the game exposed them to unnecessary risk, especially when they had Station Six to retreat to in the event that something went wrong. The Americans couldn’t follow them there due to the extreme nature of the wildlife.

The sea creatures operating at these depths were a mixture of indifferent gliding monsters that wanted to be left alone and predatory nightmares that hunted anything with a pulse. And much like sharks back on Earth, many of them had senses so acute they could detect simple electrical fields in the water up to two kilometers away. Those electrical fields being the ones attached to swimmers in the water.

With all the dangers that lurked under the shimmering waves, Kutznetzov still felt the Americans were biding their time. They were waiting for the one chance the Ghosts broke through the waves so they could track them back to Station Six. If they lost their hold on the underwater facility, they’d be forced to retreat to one of the few bastions where the Americans would have difficulty operating. Still, it was only a matter of time until they were pushed to enact the plan. They just needed a little more time to either recover a vector module from the criminal Grey Faction or produce one of their own in order to fabricate the toxin that would rid Amir of that particularly stupid ideology once and for all.

Kutznetzov stood close by the ladder to the con, his counterpart on the far side ready to trigger a micro explosive to detonate the piloting station. Two additional personnel from the amphibious troopers were placed around the compartment, waiting for either a signal that all was clear or one to let them off the leash to do what they were trained for.

“Comrade Sergeant, I have the faulty control terminal isolated,” Zavorin called into the comm. “Ivan and I are almost finished reconfiguring the system and will move on to getting the power plant back online. Things are progressing much faster than I anticipated, so we should be in good shape.”

Kutznetzov’s hand hovered over the call button to answer his technician. Something didn’t seem right about the man’s reply. Zavorin wasn’t a soldier. That much was evident in speaking with him for any length of time. He had that engineer’s confidence in his craft in the way that he spoke. You either listened to him and reaped the rewards of his experience or ignored him and watched the boat burn down around you. Either way was fine by him as long as he was allowed to do his job his way.

And that was the part bothering Kutznetzov. Zavorin consistently had a cigarette in his mouth. Even if he wasn’t smoking it, having one pressed between his lips was like a nervous tic. It was something to focus on absently while his brain continued to direct itself to whatever task he was assigned. The man probably used it as a coping mechanism for some attention disorder the RUPAC would treat with a slap in the mouth as a child and copious amounts of vodka as an adult. Having that cigarette in his mouth was a clear signal the man was working on something. He smoked as he worked, even if it wasn’t the smartest idea with the amount of caustic chemicals he had to deal with every minute of the day.

But in his answer over the intercom, his words were less garbled and more pronounced, as if there were no hand-rolled, meticulously crafted, aromatic tobacco stick pressed between his teeth.

Something was wrong.

But before he could act on this supposition, a flash of molten pain struck.

* * *

Sunlight and water burst from the top of the fin, highlighting the decking at the bottom of the ladder. Specialist Unga slammed against the grating below, running through the passage into the control room. He shouldered into a RUPAC soldier, cracking the man’s plate carrier with a titanic impact just as he was recovering from the pain wave that swept through the cabin. The soldier plowed into a control console going backward, flipped over it, and rebounded off a chair into a heap of broken trooper on the deck.

As Unga veered to take on the security soldier, he vacated the space for oncoming forces to enter and control the room in a bout of surprise violence that was escalating with every second. In direct line of the passage, Sergeant Kutznetzov’s Ghost Trooper was just gaining his feet to clack the plunger for the destruction of the pilot’s control station. His armor rippled with electrical micro-explosions as hexagonal light refractors spread their light absorbing effect across his armor. His invisible outstretched hand never made it to target as Sergeant Tran dumped a pulse from his rifle into what would have been the man’s helmet. Those same rippling arcs played over where the Ghost’s head had just been as the light dispersion field across his shoulders struggled to compensate for the rapidly spraying blood gushing over the mimetic armored plates.

As Tran sprinted for the command detonation module, Vance entered behind him. Two quick, three-round pulses dumped into the last amphibious assaulter on the deck. The first few rounds cracked the plate in her carrier, compromising the integrity of the soft composite armor to let the hornet’s nest comprised of the rest of the burst find their way into her chest. She splattered across one of the sensor stations, twitching as she struggled for breath through ruined lungs. Vance was on her in a moment to finish the kill so as not to let the woman drown in a sea of her own blood.

“Boss!” Unga shouted from across the compartment.

Tran spun and leapt at the ladder where Kutznetzov was diving headfirst into the shaft. “Damn it! Reach! Squirter coming to you.”

* * *

Kutznetzov got halfway down the ladder before spinning himself upright again. He dropped to the decking and turned into the dead ruined faces for three of the amphibious security team. There was no getting through on this deck.

They probably already control it, he thought. Damn Rykov and his ambition.

He ran around the security bars for the ladder to the next set of rungs on the back side. If he could get to the next deck and into one of the dive trunks, he should be able to get into the water before they caught him.

The translucent Ghost stretched out for the next ladder and was violently halted in place. Gravity betrayed the man as he flew backward through the air. He tumbled end over end until landing in a one-armed shoulder roll that kept him from breaking anything but left him clumsily exposed on the deck. Kicking his feet over his head, he brought them violently toward the ground to have momentum drag him into a kneeling position. The barrel on his A-991 carbine was ruined, so he drew his P-500 pistol. The hybrid core ammunition worked well against both hard and soft targets, and Kutznetzov had a feeling he was going to need to damage both if he was going to make it out.

He held his crouch for a few seconds. The briefings from Kier and Rykov suggested that Reach, if that was who he was dealing with, had body modifications that made him the equal to any of the old GSSR Elites. If that was true, he was facing someone with heightened strength, agility, and senses that were more than a match for a RUPAC android, much less a cyber enhanced Ghost Agent. If this was anything like hunting down the elites, he had to deny them their advantages before bringing the fight down on their heads.

“Ivan, can you read me?”

“Yes, Comrade Sergeant.”

“You might not be aware, but your central processing core is being hacked right now.”

“Yes, Comrade, Sergeant. The intruders have secured hatch control for the top two levels.”

Which meant there was still a chance. Kutznetzov moved to the side of the bulkhead, pressing the back plate on his armor against the hull’s heavy metal surface. “I need you to flood this level with fire suppression while raising the temperature. Make it as misty as possible.”

The AI was in his ear immediately which was a good sign. “Yes, Comrade Sergeant. Configuring now. Dispersion in thirty seconds.”

Kutznetzov scanned the passage ahead of him. Nothing stood out in any of the pre-programmed vision modes in his helmet. Built-in algorithms designed to filter for the light dispersion fields of their own armor was picking up nothing. So if the little American Elite was in here, he was probably wearing that Bangora armor they’d managed to fabricate. In the shadowy conditions of the passage, something that advanced was going to be near impossible for him to pick out. He’d never had the chance to go up against the actual monster, but he’d read scientific papers and survivor reports on the thing, and he was glad it was just a man in a monkey suit rather than the real thing.

The fire suppression system vented into the hall as a pregnant spray of voluminous gas that belched from the venting in thick clouds of near sticky white smoke. Particulates embedded into the mist played havoc with his helmet sensors, making the video feed in his HUD next to useless in picking out targets. He rolled backward, changing locations slightly to throw off any shooters who may have sighted him in before the passage turned into a mist shrouded tunnel. Stepping around the corpses of his men, he moved along the wall toward the upper compartment for the power plant. The men in that position were most likely dead as well, but if he could make it there inside the improvised camouflage he was sifting through, he might be able to make it to the next level and off the ship.

“Ivan, status on data corruption?” Kutznetzov asked.

“Most of my core functions are still my own; however, the Americans have control of all hatches and portals on the ship, Comrade Sergeant Kutznetzov.”

Heavy, plodding steps sounded from further down the passage as something big moved toward the escaping sergeant. He tried to activate the camouflage on his armor and cursed the heavy volume of mist in the passage for doing more to short out the dispersion field than to help it. He deactivated the field and sat near the ruined corpses of his men. A quick smearing of blood on his chest plate, and he was just another corpse in the hall.

“Duh duh duh dah dah. Got my keys in my right p-pocket. Duh duh duh dah dah. Got my g-gun on the right side,” Brody sang as he stomped down the grated deck. “Dayum, son! That’s a hallway full of dead commies. If only we could have gotten to them b-before they drove the hammer and sickle into their souls. And can someone please fill me in on all this smoke?”

The android moved down the passage, singing to himself on his way to accomplish whatever errand he’d been assigned. The fact that Brody walked by and he still hadn’t seen what had thrown him across the passage meant that it was most definitely Reach in here with him and the Elite wanted the fight to be between them. If he could get the man to follow him to the dive trunk, he could get him into the water and eliminate the pesky American’s advantage for good.

He bear-crawled along the deck, keeping his profile below the smoke and staying as quiet as possible. After what seemed like an endless torture of the spiked grating against his gloves, he bumped into more of his men’s bodies laid out on the deck. With his vision adjusting to the lights playing off the dense fog hanging in the compartment, Kutznetzov came face to face with a corpse he didn’t expect to find.

Kirianov. A fellow sergeant and Ghost he’d assigned to protect the Chief Technician. He knew the man might be compromised, but that wouldn’t hamper his plans; Reach and his pet robot could kill a Ghost easily. With Zavorin obeying orders under duress, there was also a good chance that he’d forestalled their total takeover of Ivan. The no cigarette voice was probably a signal to anyone listening. Anyone who knew the Chief knew that things had gone bad. Unfortunately, it was a signal Kutznetzov had heard too little, too late. Before he could act on his instincts, the Americans had turned his own sonic disruptor IEDs against him.

He glanced to the ladder just past the hatch leading to the power plant control. All he had to do was evade Reach and his little vendetta for a few more seconds and he could escape down to the next deck and slip the trap he’d found himself in. If he could swim back to the beach, he could link up with the team he’d left there and establish comms with Rykov. Maybe even warn Station Six that the Americans were coming.

But if he could scuttle the ship or cause the reactor to fail for real, there was a very good chance that they’d keep the Americans from gaining access to the station while also potentially killing two of the biggest threats to RUPAC domination of the colony. With a few well-placed shots, Jared Reach and his android buddy Brody could be dealt with once and for all.

Kutznetzov slithered into the Reactor compartment, walking to the gantry for the control station where Ivan typically displayed his floating head. The AI appeared with his holographic visage above the console, looking every bit the epitome of RUPAC strength and loyalty to the Regime. “How may I assist you, comrade Sergeant Kutznetzov?”

“Seal me into this compartment. Lock out the controls on the pressure door so that no one can get through. Do you still have control over the reactor?” Kutznetzov asked.

“They are locking me out one system at a time, Comrade. But I have some control over the power plant,” Ivan admitted.

“Why wouldn’t they have locked you out of that first?” Kutznetzov mused.

Ivan almost sounded depressed as he delivered a report on what was happening. “Pilot controls first, then hatches, then reactor. They are currently writing me out of communications and systems controls.”

“What part of the reactor can you control?”

“Temperature sensor control. If I understand your line of questioning, Comrade Sergeant, I could alter the sensor data and cause the plant to run hot,” Ivan admitted.

“Do it. But be quick before they find out what you’re doing and lock you out.” Kutznetzov walked through the gantry on his way to the cooling system controls for the reactor. Disabling one or more of the flow valves bringing in water to cool the radioactive rods to produce steam could cause the type of short-term failure that could turn into a long-term problem for the Americans. He just needed to buy everyone time.

A massive impact struck against Kutznetzov’s shin, flipping him nearly in place. He shoulder rolled again to mitigate the impact of the drop, putting him on his back. He drew his pistol to aim past his head, except he couldn’t see anything on the video feed for the different vision modes in his helmet.

“I know you’re in here, Mr. Reach.” The RUPAC Sergeant gritted his teeth as a prelude to driving down the fire racing up his shinbone. His armor had protected his leg from the impact of whatever hit him, but there was most likely a stress fracture or some other minor injury that was about to make his job that much harder. “If you want me off the boat, that was my plan. I will leave and not give you any trouble. Don’t make me kill you.”

Seeing nothing in his display, he rolled onto his feet, testing the stability of the leg just enough to gauge that he could jog. But running was out of the question. Looking to the darkened spaces beneath the gantry, Kutznetzov reasoned that Reach was using his Bangora shadow cloak to hide below him, waiting to strike at his legs as he tried to negotiate the gantry.

The Ghost sergeant activated his own camouflage and jumped straight up, grabbing the support grating above his head. Streams of wires and cables rested on top of the steel support, running overhead of the gantry and spanning the length of the room. He crawled up and onto the support and rolled onto his back to catch his breath. Cybernetic internal repair systems went to work on the leg, shunting the pain with micro-doses of pain medications while nanites active in his blood went to work knitting the micro-fractures in the bone back together. While this miracle of modern cyber-medicine would get him through the rest of the encounter, it was a very temporary fix. He needed to move on his objective. It was now or never with that monster prowling around below him.

The Ghost Sergeant scurried along the upper systems support, changing from one support beam to another before finally finding his way back down to the grating. He vaulted over the safety railing, landing on the lower floor below the gantry. He activated the high intensity flood light on the top of his helmet, flooding the darkened space with a beam of intense light.

Just past one of the gantry support pylons was a shadow that didn’t retreat from the light. Kutznetzov fired a trio of shots at the specter as he ran toward the back of the compartment. With Reach inside with him, he wouldn’t have time to subtly disable the cooling system. He would have to make sure that any shots he took in here were done in such a way that missing Reach would mean he’d score a hit on some of the delicate cooling systems.

The helmet beam landed on another shadow that seemed to persist inside the light, prompting three more shots. He heard two of the rounds ricochet inside the compartment, but one found a home in something less sturdy as steam vented into the space from some pipe or fixture struck by the hybrid core rounds. He slid across the slick floor to the ladder at the back of the room.

After shutting off the light on his helmet, Sergeant Kutznetzov returned to his spectral appearance. He grabbed for both sides of the ladder and grunted at the pain when he pressed his boots against the rails to slide down to the next deck. He dropped halfway down toward the deck when he growled at applying even more pressure to arrest his slide. Stepping onto the rung so that he hovered just above the part of the ladder where he could see into the next deck, he poked his head into the expanse to check for enemy combatants that might be waiting to catch him off guard.

“Look at h-how smart you are, you little commie!” Brody bellowed as he reached for the man’s leg. “Gonna be a shame to pound the stupid into you.”

Kutznetzov jumped for the android, landing on his shoulders with his arms wrapped around the war machine’s head. He wrapped his legs around Brody’s other arm, arresting the M4D1B held in that hand. Rolling off the machine’s back, the Ghost Sergeant pulled with all his might to try to drop the machine onto its back.

“Aw, man! Not again!” Brody cried as his helmet came off.

After slamming awkwardly onto the hard grated floor, Kutznetzov put the rest of the magazine into the android’s back. The slide on the weapon clacked open, prompting him to flip the pistol to the side to clear the magazine well and deposit another into the hungry breach.

“Foreign Citizen! No! This was my second favorite poncho-flage. How you gonna do me like that?”

Kutznetzov jumped forward and slammed his shoulder into the back of the headless mech. They collided with the ladder, denting several rungs in a ruinous crash that nearly tore it from the wall. He grabbed around Brody’s waist, then hoisted him up and over his shoulders in a classical display of sambo taught to the RUPAC special forces. The android crashed hard, spilling several ammunition belts from the inside of the armor.

“Hu-Houston, we have a problem,” Brody called out in the hallway.

Kutznetzov rose from his battered position behind Brody. He commandeered the AI’s rifle and checked it over to see if the operation was different from any other type of weapon. Satisfied a trigger was a trigger, he limped down the passage, once again descending into the safety of the optical camouflage inherent in his armor. Reach and the AI must have been tracking him by his footsteps or using some form of enhanced detection methods. They may even have programmed their helmets to look for the particular distortion formed by the Ghost Tech camouflage. Either way, he was going to have to inform central command when the Reclamation fleet arrived.

Splitting off the main passage, he approached the dive trunk. A quick check saw that water and some bits of plant matter were all about the pressure door leading to the chamber beyond the hatch. The Americans had used the dive trunks to get in. Reach and Brody must have compromised the trunks when they’d boarded, making it easy for a raiding force to gain entry to the ship via multiple points. Rykov was going to give him hell for this if he managed to make it out of here in one piece.

Kutznetzov yanked open the door and was greeted with the rifle barrels of four men in green fatigues with plated body armor from the waist up, shin guards, and a visored helmet with plates that covered over the back of their necks. The lead trooper pressed something in his hand, causing liquid tendrils of fire to race along his legs, before crawling into his spine on their way through his skull. The dull ache that was his leg injury being tended by an internal cyber medical kit turned into a point of delirious agony, as though some demonic fisherman from the pits of every hell had jammed an infernal claw into the bone and tissue so he could turn it like a barbed hook in a fish’s mouth. Searing spikes burned their way across his flesh, dropping him to his knees and curling him into as small a ball as he could get himself into.

The pain stopped momentarily, and he felt his arms being roughly yanked beside him. Real steel handcuffs clamped down onto the Ghost Sergeant’s wrist.

The shadow materialized beside Kutznetzov and stepped around the downed RUPAC senior NCO to check on the men inside the trunk. When he got thumbs-up all around, he pulled himself from the hatch and removed his helmet.

He didn’t look like Kutznetzov expected. From the descriptions, Jared Reach was some pretty boy who’d wormed his way into one of the most famous expeditions of all time. While he looked young, his face was tanned and scarred. The man’s eyes were intense, but his expression was flat. As though shaking your hand or ripping it off would be all the same to him.

“Sergeant Kutznetzov, my name is Jared Reach, and you are our prisoner. We have a medic who is going to check out that leg and then ask you about any injuries you may have suffered during our raid. Once you check out, you will be placed in custody until we can negotiate terms for your transfer off the ship. If you treat my doc well, we won’t have any issues. You will be well cared for. If you give her any grief, she will hurt you, fix you, and then shoot you, and maybe not necessarily in that order. Do you understand?”

Kutznetzov nodded, glaring at Reach for being outsmarted. “How did I not see four armed men in the dive trunk?”

Reach waved down the passage, bringing the stomping android with his newly reattached helmet clanging down the grating. He scooped up his stolen rifle and magnetically attached it to his chest plate. The android wrapped his hand to the inside of the trunk hatch and pulled away something with an adhesive rip. Brody stomped across the deck and stopped just close enough to stand on the toe of Kutznetzov’s injured foot. The man jerked his foot away but to his credit didn’t yelp in pain.

Brody held up a wide tablet brimming with duct tape on the back side, broadcasting the image of an empty dive trunk. “I m-may be synthetic, but I’m not stupid.”

“I was fooled by a child’s trick?” the RUPAC sergeant asked. He watched the armored medic drop in front of him to a knee and lay out some gear from her aid bag. “You are the medic. Do you have something in there to put me down? Like a dog too sick to go on? If I am returned to my people, there is no hope for me after such a failure.”

“I’ve g-got something in nine-millimeter I can prescribe…”

“Stow it, Brody.” The medic began running her hands over his armor, pulling on plates and checking securing straps.

“What are you doing?” Kutznetzov asked.

“Making sure you don’t have anything on you that can hurt you or me,” the woman said in halting Russian. “And unlike Brody, I will not put you down like a sick animal. My job is to fix you so later you can fix yourself.”

Kutznetzov’s brow furrowed as he tried to decipher whether her statement was legitimate or if she wasn’t getting the words just right. “What do you mean?”

Collins huffed and opened her face mask. She was beautiful and hardy in all the ways a man like him thought the perfect woman should be. Those eyes were like that of her commander.

She’s seen war and loss, and she’s probably suffered greatly to get to the position she holds now, he thought. But what would cause something so lovely to become a soldier like the Rangers?

As she unclipped his shin guard, she said, “Maybe after you’re healed, you’ll see that we could have been working together this whole time. We could have built something amazing, but your people wanted to control everything. You wanted to enslave us. You gave your people poison to turn them into monsters to shoot us. You starved your own people because ‘not all RUPAC are RUPAC.’ Only someone truly sick would do that. So let me fix that leg so maybe you can do something worthy with it. And maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to hunt you down and kill you because you took my work on your leg and turned it into something that hurts someone I care about.”

Kutznetzov stared at her as she cut up his pant leg to observe the injury site. He searched every part of his experience for something that would make sense of this for him.

How do you tell an angel she’s wrong for calling you a monster?

21

Bosa knuckle tapped Sherman, sending the man out of the TOC to work with his platoon leaders on their next batch of missions. It seemed like yesterday that they’d closed the lids on their cryogenic suspension pods and dropped into what should have been a forty-year slumber on their way to a new planet, brimming with new experiences in becoming their permanent home.

The original goal was to deploy the Rangers on Amir, protect the colony until it was set up, and then hold command over whatever Rangers stayed in service when the Marines and regular army units dropped planet side. Of course that went to hell in a handbasket the second they landed on Amir two hundred years later than their supposed original landing. Now he was standing behind a score of technicians in the tactical operation’s center who were working their stations to coordinate combat operations occurring over multiple areas of control.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“So formal, Elona,” Bosa replied. “What’s up?”

“My boys are outside the TOC. They wanted to bring in lunches for everyone. I know I can’t bring them in here, but is it alright if I go outside for a moment?”

Bosa’s face broke open with a smile that warmed his cheeks. They’d had so little time to just enjoy life in the last few months, he could barely remember when he’d been able to just enjoy a minute with the Osay. “Want a hand?”

“That would be great, thank you,” Elona said. Her bouncy head of curls led the combat commander down the hall toward the exit where two lanky boys had boxes of meals stacked in, what was in essence, a wagon.

Seeing the colonel walk out, the Space Force guards at the door snapped to attention and shouted, “Sir!”

“As you were,” Bosa replied.

Elona’s boys mimicked the guards, snapping to attention in respect for the senior commander. Bosa laughed and looked to Elona for clarification.

“Sometimes they go down to the training area and hang out with Sergeant Dawson. He works out in that outdoor gym they built, and he lets the boys work out with him,” Elona explained. “I swear I’m going to put a stop to it as they’re eating me out of hut and home with the amount of calories these two have been packing.”

The boys groaned at the idea of having their fun with the mythic Rangers cut short. They were quickly brought to heel as their mother snapped her fingers at them.

Bosa tried to recapture the lightness of the mood by extending a hand. “My name is Allan Bosa. It’s nice to meet you both.”

Elona nodded for her two boys to return the gesture as she made the introduction. “This is Braedon and my oldest, Micah.”

After shakes were exchanged Bosa stretched past Elona to scoop up the majority of the food boxes. Eager to help, the boys looked as though they were going to carry in the rest when their mother stopped them.

“Why can’t we come in?” Micah asked.

Bosa turned from his spot in the doorway so he could see around the stack of meal boxes to address the young man. “Your mom is a trusted member of my staff, and we’re lucky to have her, but everything inside that room has to go through a sort of checkup before it can leave. You gentlemen haven’t been through the checkup yet.”

“What do we need to do to be checked?” Braedon asked.

“You’ve got to be a bit older for one. How about this? When my shift in there is over, I’ll help you set up your own command center and you can keep an eye on things for me from that side of the camp. Anything goes wrong, you let me know.”

Micah nodded at the idea. “We could get some of the other guys our age and set up an apprentice guard like we used to do before the Rangers showed up.”

“The only thing I want you setting up for the time being is getting that wagon back to Mr. Sorrano and then working your chores until I get home. Understand?” Elona asked. When they nodded, she playfully swung her boot toward Micah’s backside, who dodged it like they’d played this game hundreds of times before.

Bosa and his tech made their way back into the TOC and arranged the meal boxes onto the table for everyone to take. “They seem like good boys.”

“They are. They very much want to be Rangers like Dawson someday. He shows them respect and demands it in return.”

“Do they not get along with Masau?” Bosa asked, noting her relationship to the devilish sniper turned contact team member.

“They do, but he’s been gone on and off for weeks, helping Jared. Not a lot to get attached to when you’re not there,” Elona said.

“You two having problems?”

Elona shook her head, bouncing her curls back and forth. “No, sir. We’re more than good. He has his thing, and I have mine. I was just stating the obvious. I’m hoping that he wants to make things official before long.”

Bosa nodded and took his own meal box once he’d seen all the technicians rotate to the table to take theirs. “Seems like there’s a lot of that going around. Some of our people finally seeing this as home and wanting to put down roots.”

Elona looked at her own meal as she got to her seat, grateful that she could continue their conversation through the link in private. “When my husband died, I didn’t think I would ever be with someone again. Then Ian showed up and I was just drawn to how strong and attentive he was without being needy.”

Bosa choked on his drink at her observation, nearly forgetting how rough and tumble a majority of the Osay women were. “I hope it works out for you four.”

Elona looked over her shoulder in confusion at the man’s statement until she realized he was adding her boys into the equation. Ian Masau hadn’t just signed on to be a couple. He’d accepted that she’d had another life before this one. The thought made her smile as she dialed in transmissions coming off of her station. “Sir, incoming from Reach.”

Bosa grimaced at the thought of another meal he’d probably have to eat cold. “Jared, how’re we looking?”

An overlay of Reach standing in the submarine’s control center flashed into Bosa’s HUD. Bright light was distorting the image being broadcast from Brody as sunlight coming off the hatch leading from the ship’s bridge threw off the projection. “We have control of the ship and are cross loading personnel now. All RUPAC technicians along with any remaining soldiers are being loaded onto a Predator Hauler as we speak.”

“Good,” Bosa said. “Once you dive, how long until you reach the facility?”

Reach motioned to something off screen. “Ivan says it will be ninety minutes or more until we dock at the facility as long as they don’t try to blow us out of the water.”

Bosa folded his arms, resting his chin into one of his hands as was his habit when nursing some thought or another. “Alexa was pretty confident this Ivan has sampled enough of the RUPAC Ghost in command over there that he can pull off a pretty satisfying impersonation.”

“That’s scary,” Reach admitted. “Hey, any word on Bautista?”

“Still in cryo. Doctor Roman was going to dig out that RUPAC chip in her head and replace it with one of ours. He’s got high hopes for the transplant, but we won’t know the extent of the damage she suffered until after he’s done with the surgery.”

“All of this tech is amazing until it isn’t.”

“Roger that. Has Ivan confirmed the nature of the personnel on Six?” the colonel asked.

“He just got done giving us the breakdown,” Reach said. “Twelve technicians slash science personnel with a thirty-two-man Amphib Security detachment.”

“Ghosts?”

“They had three assigned to the station. Two are down and the third is in custody being transferred to the Predator. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t slot something weird for us in the event we showed up.”

“Head on a swivel, Mr. Reach.”

“Will do, sir. Reach out.”

Bosa recovered the box meal, placing his hand underneath to gauge the temperature of the contents. It was a good sign that the bottom was still warm. The dining facility, run by spacers and staffed with Osay only too happy to share their culinary knowledge, had been turning out much better meals than Bosa used to expect from military chow halls.

“Sir, I can notify you of any changes if you want to sit to eat,” Elona offered.

Bosa dragged an errant folding chair over to her station where he set his meal on the edge of her workstation. “No need. I can hover right here if you don’t mind the company.”

“I don’t, but wouldn’t you be more comfortable over there where there’s more room?” Elona asked.

Bosa took several heaping bites of his stew. Platier by the taste of it, but the cooks had added a bit of something to make the overall concoction less salty and sweeter. He smiled while chewing his way through nearly the entire bowl in a matter of moments. “We used to crowd around screens like this when I was a kid, so we watched Brody Shows while we ate. After going to school and then the military, I think I’ve eaten most things sitting like this. I appreciate the offer, but right here I can watch the screens and huff down a quick meal.”

Elona giggled at the man’s industrial ability to eat. “Ian eats the same way. Do you Rangers even taste what you’re shoveling in?”

“Sure. Tastes like victory.”

* * *

“Alright, Lieberman. You sure you got this?”

“Hell no, sir. When I joined the Space Force, no one said nothin’ about me drivin’ no boats, much less underwater. We’re all up in this business, like major first timers.”

“But Alexa did have you and the other crew in cryo for some sort of programming, right?” Reach asked.

“Cryo-intialized learning potential or some such junk, sir. I basically have the basics, ya know? Then Pirate Ivan can come in and handle all the fiddly bits I ain’t too clear on,” Lieberman said.

“But can you pilot the sub?” Reach asked, hoping for the best in the spacer.

“I spent a month in Cryo for this, sir. I woke up and all I could think about was up and down angles, degrees of rudder, and ballast. How I gotta know about ballast? If Brody had dropped the lid on the chamber, I’d say this was all just nonsense from his movies.”

“Hey! It’s not nonsense! Th-there’s a lot that can be learned from a cinematic experience, I’ll have you know.”

“Oh yeah, Tin Man? Name one thing you learned in a movie that worked for you in real life,” Lieberman demanded as he took to the pilot’s station.

“I have h-hours of footage of RUPAC k-kills that look like alternate takes from Comm-man-mando. But here’s one example…” Brody’s external speakers hummed, producing a whine that sounded like a large power core coming online. He took several steps toward the spacer, every one more in tune with recoil compensation on the DED-90 security mechs guarding the camp perimeter than a streamlined armor system like Brody. “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.”

Lieberman took note of the flechette submachine gun the statuesque android held more like a pistol. “Yeah, hard to argue that one. Aside from that, I’m ready to run this boat if you are, sir.”

Reach patted the young man on his shoulder. “Let’s get this thing moving, Tech Sergeant.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieberman said. “Like they say in all the submarine flicks—Pirate Ivan, let’s hit the gas.”

“Of course, Comrade Technical Sergeant Lieberman,” the holographic head said with his chin raised to indicate the superiority of the RUPAC AI. “Making depth seventy-five meters. Course laid in for Research Station Six. Speed at twenty knots. Time to destination is eighty-one minutes. For the glory of RUPAC.”

Lieberman shook his head at the last part. “We can stuff a complex artificial intelligence into the body of an underwear model, but we can’t figure out how to yank out that RUPAC glory stuff?”

“Let’s just be glad he’s on our side and leave it at that,” Reach said. He motioned for Brody to fall in behind him as he swept through the control station on his way to the NCO’s mess. Twists, turns, and a ladder between decks put the duo into a room where Sergeant Tran and Team Junkyard were surrounded by an entire platoon of Wolverines.

The militia platoon were clad in combat shirts, fatigue pants and chest plates, with combat shoes below the shin guards that reminded Reach of the Danner duck-boots the army guys wore in Afghanistan. Everything was breathable with mesh fabrics that were meant to get wet and dry in a hurry. This was a very clear sign everyone was going in the drink.

“Hey there, Lieutenant,” Tran said, acknowledging him walking in. “You want us to start over?”

“No thanks, Sarn’t T,” Reach countered. “I caught your briefing to the colonel earlier. Please continue.”

“Thanks, sir. So like I was saying. Ivan is going to bring us on approach to this side of the sea shelf, where the observation decks protrude from the rock. The docking bays are here, and here, according to the intel we have from Ivan.”

“We call him Pirate Ivan, Sergeant Tran,” Brody offered. “Because he’s on a b-boat, and we stole him.”

Tran sighed, leaning on the table over the tablet he was using as a virtual sand table. “Wouldn’t that make him ‘Shanghai Ivan’ since we kidnapped him and not the other way around?”

Brody looked from the Ranger NCO to Reach and back again. “You Texas Rangers are good at the nickn-n-name thing.”

Without taking his eyes from the Bulwark encased Brody, Tran tapped his board to indicate the room should be more focused on the briefing than instigating more antics from the android. “According to current intel, the other T-Fifteen-Hundred class submarine is currently deployed and serving as a mobile base of operations for Rykov and his people. That leaves these two deep sea reconnaissance subs as the only methods of moving back and forth from the station to the surface. Shanghai Ivan has no record of sub deployment around the time of our return, but our sensor station should give us a heads-up if they’re roving. Team Junkyard loads into the dive trunk, and once we clear the shelf, we ditch into the ocean and swim into the wet docks they have here.” Tran pointed to a position situated just beneath the overhang of the observation deck. The main docking port for the submarine highlighted on the tablet. “Wolverines, you’ll disembark from the sub dock with Lieutenant Cobey. Get into the dock, disable the DSRVs, and wait for us to drive the personnel toward you.”

Head nods all around accompanied the tail end of Sergeant Tran’s briefing, with Lieutenant Cobey raising his hand for a question. “Sergeant Tran, you said earlier that you’ll be flooding the station to drive the RUPAC to the sub docks. Won’t this destroy the station?”

Tran slid the tablet over to Vance, who tapped through screens to get to displays he wanted. “The station is meant to take on flooding as a way to mitigate pressure should the structure be compromised. If something on the base gets damaged, they flood it until they can repair it, to keep the pressure from destroying the hull in sections not built into the rock shelf. Then the water gets pumped out and, blammo—good as new, only slightly wet. We’re going to log into the system and tell it to flood the station starting with the lowest levels. That will drive the personnel to the sub docks where we’ll be waiting to roll them up.”

“Solid copy,” Cobey replied.

Tran caught the tablet from Vance, folding it back up to slip into his assault pack. “Junkyard, you got ten minutes for final checks. Vance, give me the go and get everyone into the tank.”

“On it, Sarn’t,” Vance called back.

While the Wolverines stayed put, Tran walked out with Reach and Brody. He tapped a few commands into his board, rigging it to the chest mount on his armor. “You got us on this tub, sir. If you want to hang back and let the dogs do the rest of the barking, we got this.”

“You want to stay back?” Reach asked Brody.

“AAAAAAAAGH! Sorry, Hans, wr-wrong guess. Would you like to go for double jeopardy where the scores can really change?”

“Sorry, Sarn’t T. If you’ve got room, we’d like to go,” Reach said.

Tran nodded. “Eight minutes and into the dive trunk right below that ladder. You miss the hatch, you miss your window.”

Vance followed in his boss’s footsteps and stopped in front of Brody to slap the android’s broad chest. “While Sarn’t T is normally just a batch of sunshine and faerie sprinkles, what he doesn’t say is he respects both of you for your professionalism and your ability to lay the hate.”

“A one-man war,” Brody said.

“Exactly. You kept that whole tribe of people safe for over two hundred years, dude. And when they started dying, you dumped huge pieces of your memory core just to preserve a little piece of them. That’s Ranger rule numero uno, bro.”

“Wait, are you talking about the r-rules for ranging?”

“You know it, my dude. Rule one. Don’t forget nothin’,” Vance said. He patted Brody on the shoulder and moved by him in the passage on his way down the ladder.

“They like me,” the android said, as if he were whispering a secret. “It’s because my CPU is a neuro-net processor, a learning computer.”

“Just don’t rub it in Tran’s face, or he’ll find a way to drown you out there,” Reach said.

“You can’t sink a shark, Citizen! L-let’s get in the tank and show Sergeant Tran how it’s done!”

Reach laughed at his friend prancing toward the ladder. “Alright there, Jabber Jaws. Lead the way.”

22

“Sarn’t Tran? Did you want to hop inside the Brody ex-express for old times’ sake?” the android asked the Ranger NCO seated across from him in the trunk.

Team Junkyard along with Brody and Reach sat facing one another in the submarine’s dive trunk, a special chamber allowing personnel to exit the craft while submerged. The dive trunks regulated pressure and water to submerge potential dive teams for extravehicular operations outside the sub. Sensors and dials littered the bulkheads along strings of pipes punctuating the compartment.

Tran brought his eyes up from his battle board to stare into the faceless mask on Brody’s helmet. On another outing together, the pair had swum to a boat launch under control of the RUPAC after they’d taken Lieutenant Johanna Werner’s people hostage. The RUPAC Ghosts were using the facility as rigging to load long range ballistic missiles onto the Type Fifteen-Hundred submarine they’d taken from Station Six. Tran had ridden in the Bulwark armor system Brody used as his body, as the original design of the kit was as a heavy combat rescue system for downed pilots. The experience hadn’t been fun for either of them.

“Wouldn’t you rather have space inside for all the ammo?” Tran asked.

The sergeant’s reasoning on the matter of ammo versus rider caught the war machine off guard. “P-probably. But having a tactical attack Ranger to come out and b-bite ankles would let me conserve bullets.”

Beside Brody, Reach watched the countdown in his HUD as they neared their insertion point as the rest of the team chuckled. The plan was fairly straightforward, if there was such a thing for the squad that had become Bosa’s go-to special mission force. Get in the water, infiltrate the base, and force the workers into a trap they’d set by sneaking in on the RUPAC’s own vehicles. It was the getting in the water part that posed the biggest problem. Unlike on Earth, taking a leisurely swim in the oceans of Amir was not something one took lightly. The hyper aggressive animals they’d seen in the fishing village had been monstrous enough to attempt to eat Brody when he stood at the waterline on the beach. There was no telling what they’d find in the waters close to the undersea facility.

Across from him, Unga sat with something that looked like a mini jet engine. The drone was standard kit on the RUPAC subs for divers entering the ocean, so Tran had insisted they’d follow the enemy protocol and rig them for use. Another variation of the sonic disruptor, this mobile version produced a broad-spectrum beam that traveled away from the swimmers to discourage the local wildlife from taking a bite. Tran had also found hand versions to carry on their armor in the event something happened to the larger drone. The battery pack for the handhelds were good for two pulses before they needed to be switched out. It wouldn’t fend off an entire school of piranha turtles or whatever they had on this planet, but it could make a hole to get to someplace safe.

“One minute,” Tran said through the link. In time with the NCO, everyone put their index finger above their heads.

Water billowed from the grates in the deck in a rush to fill the compartment. At the far end of the trunk in front of the pressure door, PFC Collins struggled to hold onto her own disruptor drone as the rushing torrent nearly toppled it over. Brody caught it and reset it upright so it didn’t fall on any of the team.

Reach slid dive fins over his boots. “Been a hot minute since I’ve hit the water like this.”

“You SCUBA qualled, LT?” Unga asked.

“Yeah. My unit worked a lot with guys like Fleet Recon and MARSOC so a bunch of us had to go through the whole program. You?”

“Nah. We just fake it till we make it!” Unga laughed.

When Reach stared at Tran for confirmation, the NCO bounced him into a private chat through the link, “He’s playing. The only ones not fully school qualified on this are Collins and Marlin. We had to OJT their training. We got this locked, sir.”

“I hope so, because we’re bubbles up right now.”

The trunk fully submerged, encapsulating the Ranger team in their own private fishbowl. Vance pushed readings through the team link to show pressure equalization and time to departure. Not that they needed to worry about the pressure as their armor could regulate atmosphere and pressurization as part of the kit’s normal function. As the timer clicked down, the team skinned on their swim fins, with Collins and Unga taking hold of the disruptor drones to push them through the hatch.

“Green to gills in three, two, one, mark. Deploy,” Vance called through the link.

Collins swam through the portal first, pushing the drone ahead of her. She turned her wrist toward her helmet, tapping the glassy surface of the device as she swam. The drone motor flared to life, rocketing the machine out of the compartment with the whine of a high-pitched fan. She followed behind it, hovering just outside the hatch to watch the drone.

Reach came out next, floating just above the skin of the submarine. The thing was massive. Bigger than any sub he’d ever visited when he was with the Marines. At least forty or fifty feet from the bottom of the hull to the top, the expansive nose of the machine past the sail was coated in hatches leading toward the bow of the ship. From speaking with the command staff in preparation for this mission, those hatches were where the RUPAC would launch their poisoned missiles from to kill anything that wasn’t them. Kill Camp Ohio Craiswell and any chance of Liberty taking hold on Amir.

Despite the depth, the water was a clear aquamarine where Reach could see a long way off. Schools of fish scattered from the submarine passing over the seafloor, making their way toward reefs and rocky outcroppings dotting the landscape beneath the waves.

Unga surfaced from the hatch, pushing his own drone from the compartment to send it into the expanse. The machine raced past Reach to take up position behind the rapidly forming squad already positioned in their spots in the water. Unga broadcast a warning into the net as he swam clear. “Uh, guys? I guess we’re going to see if taking these things along was worth it.”

Hovering nearly twenty meters above them was a massive fish. Broad and flat, the thing had the body of a giant shark but the head of a prehistoric nightmare. Its prestigious tail lazily pushed back and forth, casting a shadow through the crystalline waters above them.

“What in the holy hell is that?” Corporal Day asked.

“Why, my good man, that would be a Drachenschwanz. N-now don’t you worry. This one and I have a relationship. I fed it the last time I was on the beach at Werner’s village,” Brody assured the team. “We’re basically on a f-first name basis.”

“How do you know it was that exact fish?” Reach asked.

“Well, you can see by that one tooth, and y-ya know, the fin on the back was waving at me like he knew me.”

“Unga?” Tran called into the link.

“The drone is already on it, Sarn’t T. Pulse now.”

There wasn’t any sort of beam, highlighting, or sound to indicate that the drone had done its job. What was apparent was that the nearly twenty-five-meter monster didn’t like whatever the drone had to say about its visit as it swam off with a quickness and disappeared into the far-off shadows of the ocean.

“I guess they work,” Unga said. “From what I can gather, these things are programmed with recognition software to detect the most likely problems while we’re in the water.”

“Right on,” Tran confirmed. “Junkyard, on mission and move to target location.”

The squad gathered into a tight formation, moving in pairs of two toward the end of the seabed. Swimming to the edge of the cliff, Team Junkyard hovered against the cliff face as they stared toward the drop off. Ahead of them, the submarine was pivoting to place itself alongside the observation deck of the station.

Massive struts dug into the ocean floor some hundred or so meters below them to support the expansive dome shining against the gloom of the water too deep for the sun to penetrate. Lights from the immense glass-like enclosure gleamed through the water like some oasis of dry land in the middle of the sea. People walked through the top deck, apparently accustomed to the jaw-dropping beauty of what was around them. The football stadium–sized dome ended with a connection to the sea cliff where the rest of the facility had been built into the rock.

Outside the dome, tremendously twisted coral spires rose up around the facility and acted as a sort of high rise for swarming schools of fish to dart through. The colors and brilliance of the wildlife reflecting the lights coming from the dome turned the shadowy depths beyond the structure into a kaleidoscope of scintillating reflections. Periodically, the fish would dart this way or that, exposing fissures through the columns to act as highways or escape routes for the myriad creatures calling the oceanic oasis home. On the seafloor, tendrils of kelp reached up from the sandy bottom in a waving dance of vegetation at the very bottom of the terrain.

“Getting some data from the drones,” Vance called. “Stay out of the wave plant salad at the bottom. Some eel fish call that home, and while they’re not aggressive, they are territorial if you go into the grass. We’re also getting a visitor and the drone is expressly telling us not to shoot it.”

“Can you forward that to the link?” Reach asked.

“I think so,” Vance said. “Here we go.”

A window hovered in the link, showing the drone informing the operator on the specifics of the neighborhood. Fish types would hover just at the corner of the display for just a moment, long enough to display name and base characteristics before moving onto the next creature. One animal type flooded the screen. The front half had the bullet-shaped head of a whale while the back appeared eel-like, except for the tail was actually a grouping of tentacles.

“Does that look big to anyone else? Cause, I’m g-getting the feeling that’s a big fish. You know, not like David Hasselhoff big, but still seriously in the large c-category. You feel me?” Brody said.

“It’s seventy-five feet from nose to tail, but the ID system is saying not to mess with it. They have it chipped,” Vance noted.

“They can control that?” Tran asked.

Vance nodded, even though no one was looking at him. “Yeah. It won’t approach us as it is also trained to recognize the drones. Basically, if we have those, we’re good to go.”

The massive schools of fish parted roughly twenty meters up from the seafloor. In the absence of a cloud of animals crowding around the coral spires, the first of the Amir squid whales drifted lazily through the now empty ocean, gliding toward the dome. Their gargantuan heads were mostly a dark grey with white striping drifting down the beak toward the back end of the creature. It made them hard to see as their patterns perfectly matched the coral and the drifting sea cabbage below.

Reach watched as a second animal slithered from the school of fish, making its way toward the opposite side of the dome from its partner. Raising their heads toward the top of the cliff, they rose toward the surface, in no particular hurry and content to drift along a lazy course to bring them out of the valley. The first of the leviathans nearly barrel-rolled to avoid the incoming submarine, using its propellers to reverse course and bring it backward toward the rock face.

As the animals made the top of the ridge, they began singing. It was similar to Earth whale songs although the pitches and the way they crooned their music into the water was slightly off. To Reach, it was still hauntingly beautiful, and he couldn’t help but stare at the creatures rising to meet them.

“More data from the drone,”Unga said. “Whatever we do, don’t move when they pass.”

“I still got it,” Brody said into the link. “Who’s transmitting?”

“It’s the animals, bud,” Reach said to his friend. “Do not engage. I say again, do not engage!”

The lead monstrosity filled their fields of view as it blocked out everything past it. It rose above the cliff face with heavy clicking and low rumbling replacing the Ghostly whistling that it had been singing a moment before. Green-blue eyes searched the top of the cliff as it continued to drift toward the surface. The clicking only lasted a moment when the whistling serenade began again in earnest. A barely imperceptible twist to its rubbery torso pushed it through the water, allowing it to pick up a modicum of speed as it drifted by the team. The animal’s tail separated into its tentacles, dragging the appendages along the members of Team Junkyard as it swam past. Akin to petting a dog, whatever the animal was trying to determine by brushing its tendrils along the men had satisfied it. The tail reassembled itself and carried the creature off toward the surface.

“I must ride one!” Brody said in his excited child voice.

“No you don’t!” Tran called into the link. “Follow me, and no action hero stuff. Understand?”

“I ain’t promising nothing extra. I’m giving you life, and y-you’re giving me life,” Brody said.

“Reach?” Tran asked in the command link.

“He’s good.”

Trusting Reach’s word, Tran pushed off from the cliff and drifted toward the seafloor down the side of the rock face. The rest of the team followed suit, crawling past the edge of the escarpment to fall feet first toward the ocean valley below. On Tran’s order, Unga and Collins shut down their drones, leaving them at the top of the cliff so their bright red color didn’t give them away against the dark-colored rock in the event someone was looking their way from the dome.

“Sub docking procedures will run another ten minutes,” Vance said over comms.

“Right. We have to get in place and work the magic before they figure out Kutznetzov isn’t going to wipe his feet on the welcome mat,” Reach said. “That whale watching moment put us behind the curve.”

“Look, there’s one thing you got to remember. We g-got to get some speed, gotta get some flexibility, gotta get some quickness. Understand? Quickness and endurance. That’s the only thing we gotta concern ourselves with, Rock,” Brody countered.

“You telling me you can get my tech monkey down there?” Tran asked.

“Yeah! F-faster. Movin’ and Jabbin’!”

“Get to it, Ranger,” Tran ordered.

A ping sounded through the ocean as jets fired from ports opening in Brody’s back plate. Kinetic streams of water pushed from the android’s back, moving him through the ocean in much the same manner as the drones. He nabbed Sergeant Vance, who was hugging the cliff wall, on his way toward the back side of the facility.

“I did not agree to this!” Vance called over the comm.

“How many combat drops is th-this for you, Lieutenant?”

Reach used the zoom function on his combat helmet to zoom in on the dome. Several technicians were lounging around the upper section of the observation deck, with others walking this way or that on some errand only they could identify. The beauty and majesty of this alien undersea world was apparently lost on them as they found more interest in their clipboards and data tablets than they found looking out of the dome. It seemed as if no one was paying attention to the back of the rock face where two members of an eight man team just rocketed away from the cliff to dive below the station.

“Did you just seriously unleash Brody on your guy?” Reach asked.

Tran pointed at the officer. “Gotta keep my people frosty; otherwise, they start playing patty-cake with octo-whales and missing the point. Besides, what’s the use of having a half-crazy android if you’re not going to let the crazy out of the bag every once in a while?”

The team descended near the waving blanket of sea grass below the station and hovered a few meters above per the warning they’d received on the way down. Slithering through the stalks were dark snakes the size of a fire hose, periodically poking their heads up to survey if anything had disturbed the kelp. One particular fish got too close, and the arrow-headed eel snapped its jaws around it hard and fast enough to register the sound of the kill through the water.

The team swam through the pylons under the dome where the sand beneath was devoid of the sea grass. Reach dipped to the sand and ran his fingers through it to let the currents around them carry it away. It had the same grit and grain as the stuff they’d ridden through on their way to Werner Village those few months ago when they’d agreed to team up with the German Ghosts. Reach wondered if the kelp just naturally avoided the bottom of the construction or if the RUPAC had cleared it out with some sort of process or pesticide. He hoped it was the former and not the latter.

Ahead of them, Vance was patched into a port from a junction box welded onto the side of a pylon. Brody stood guard in a boxer’s pose in the event something tried to sneak up on the busy sergeant.

“Why would there be a junction box out here?” Reach asked.

“They run deep sea power armor. Very similar to Brody, only much bigger to account for more intense pressure should they have to go deep. This allows them to jack into the station and receive data uploads at a much faster rate than ELF, SLF, or VLF transmitters. They have transmission nodes all over the seabed floor according to what I’m seeing here, but a straight jack direct to their network is much faster to promote the research they do here,” Vance explained.

“Anyone else catch that in English?” Unga asked as he swam up beside them.

“Ugh. Philistines,” Vance said. “They have base stations all over the valley so people in armor or working the smaller subs can communicate with each other using low frequency and electromag communication. Okay. I’m into the main network and inserting Alexa’s worm now.”

“You might not want to let certain people hear y-you talking about Alexa’s worm like that. People get mighty protective, especially w-when she’s running their favorite playlist,” Brody mocked.

“Can the cross talk,” Tran said. “Focus front.”

The team waited as Vance co-opted the system to mimic an AI failure to drive the staff to the docking bay. Marlin, the Osay scout who’d impressed a whole lot of people to be put on Team Junkyard as their new sniper, swam past the squad and hugged the bottom of the observation deck. After prowling from the underside, he swam free of the structure to the point where the dome connected to the rock wall on his side.

“I have eyes on the first level,” the scout informed the team.

Within moments, the glaring lights from inside the dome cut to a brilliant red from the ceiling while fluorescent track lighting on the decking sprang to life, bathing the entire level in an eerie mix of gloom and glare. Members of the science teams, clad in their trademarked grey jumpsuits, ran from their positions to points outside of Marlin’s view.

“They’re running. Abandoning the level,” Marlin advised. He swam to the next level up, careful not to expose himself to prying eyes since the Ghost camouflage set in their armor didn’t work underwater. The standard coloration of the plates was enough to keep them hidden in the terrain, but if someone took a serious look outside the glass, they’d most likely be spotted and, in turn, looking at a serious fight for control of the station. After a last peek into the level, Marlin crawled up the outside of the rock face to the next level in the dome. “The first level is flooding. I see no people on there. Moving to the next. People are clearing out. I can see a lab on this side. The greys are locking the pressure door on it and leaving.”

Reach tapped Vance. “Are they buying it?”

“Their station AI reported it as an emergency protocol against the earthquake,” Vance answered.

“But there wasn’t an earthquake,” Corporal Day stated.

“That’s why they’re trying to take the main AI offline, so it won’t keep flooding the levels,” Vance said. “According to the protocols, the science team is being evacuated to the sub dock. The AI is closing the emergency shutters to protect the dome. That should happen any second to sell the lie. From what I’m seeing here, the Amphibious security team is pulling back to what they call the hard base, I assume deep into the cliff, and closing off the observation decks.”

“Will you be able to flood those levels?” Tran asked.

“I don’t know. It seems like they have someone working through the system like they know what they’re doing. If you give me a nasty slice of code, I can get it into most systems and let it do its thing. But I’m not good enough to counter hack some code slinger that knows a thing or two because he’s seen a thing or two.”

“Great,” Tran said. “Are we going to have to fight this out?”

“Depends on if the worm can beat him to the punch and start flooding the Hard Base,” Vance said.

“Changes nothing. We’re going in as soon as this water balloon fills.”

Above them, the entire observation bubble spanned multiple floors of the science station. The giant, clear domed enclosure rattled as massive blast shutters ran along tracks on the glass to close over the structure. Each level had its own armored tracking to cover in the event of a breach, to seal out any water so the station could take emergency measures to protect the base, the research, and finally, the people.

“Last level is flooding, shutter closing,” Marlin confirmed.

“Vance, once you’re done, have Rocket Man spin you over to the DSRV moon pool on the other side of the deck. The rest of you, we’re going wreck diving,” Tran said, motioning to the far side of the pylons as he swam forward.

“On your nine, Sergeant,” Collins called through the link.

Tran spun to his side, pulling the pain pistol from his rig behind his back. The weapon made no noise or sign of discharge, but the manta-ray-looking creature advancing on him halted its frenetic swim. Its wings broke apart into separate tentacles, all flailing to search for handholds or crevices to slide into for grip so it could launch away from whatever this man-fish-thing was firing its way.

The squad advanced along the bottom of the deck, gliding with more attention to detail now that it seemed the locals were sure they were on the menu. They worked their way to the moon pool along the opposite underside of the deck with no greeting of a shimmering layer or air just beyond the oblong entrance. When the level flooded, the pressure keeping the atmosphere inside the chamber collapsed, filling it with seawater.

“Up and in, Junkyard,” Tran ordered. “Vance, where are we?”

“The worm managed to fill the station up to the last two levels. Their tech monkey took the AI offline and is looking for a work-around to vent the water.”

“How long do we have?” Tran asked.

“Judging by this guy’s skill, I’d say no more than half an hour before they can vent this place.”

Reach accepted a ping from Tran through the command channel. “What’s up, Sarn’t T?”

“It seems like this security team is on the level. They pushed all the science team to the docks with a small combat element just in case, but the amphibs are taking up positions in the last two levels. Their technician is working through our hack. I think we swim the submerged part of the station into a movement to contact. Once we set some rounds down, we have the Wolverines come in from the other side and hem them up. Thoughts, sir?”

“While your camo doesn’t work in the water, it will work once we drip dry, Sarn’t T. And mine? Mine works no matter what. So what say instead of movement to contact, we do movement to a horror movie. Make these Broskis want to evac the station we turn into a haunted house.”

“Haunted house it is.”

23

“Moving into DSRV bay,” Reach said. He’d asked Sergeant Tran to be first in the stack because, unlike the rest of the squad, his camouflage worked when submerged. Between the light refraction principles of the water and the circulating shadows coming off the emergency lighting, the darkness properties of his armor seemed to be more intense here.

“Dude, that is like migraine fuel,” Day said into the squad link. “It’s like a…”

“Like a hole in the water,” Brody said, cutting the man off. “Ranger bro citizen, now you know I love you like Staff Sergeant Tran loves scowling at small children, but ain’t no man, be he Ranger or otherwise, is gonna steal lines from me!”

“What are you even talking about? I have no idea what half your old ass movies are, Brody.”

“Y-yeah. Right. This is our heritage as Americans!”

Reach ignored the android bantering on about his self-proclaimed role as movie historian for his people, instead choosing to focus on what the advanced sensors in his combat helmet was picking up. “Pressure door on the far wall, most likely leading into the facility. I have three of those enormous suits of the oceanic Model Thirty-Nines.”

“You might want to ch-check those for occupants, Citizen,” Brody insisted.

“If I check them and someone is inside, they’re going to see me.”

Brody swam past the Ranger squad, depositing Sergeant Vance just in time for him to catch a pylon to slow him down. The android hovered just inside the opening for the moon pool. “Good point, Citizen. I’ll come up and check. There is a clause in the contract that specifically states any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated.”

Reach removed the disruptor pistol from his hip. “If we fire these at someone in armor, will these tiny little water versions do anything?”

“They’re calibrated to penetrate up to twenty-five meters of water and then punch a hole through the dense armor and blubber on big oceanic animals to drive right into the CNS. They should work against a dude in armor,” Vance said.

“That’s most likely central nervous system for those of y-you who don’t habla,” Brody retorted. The hulking armor slipped the rest of the way into the compartment, shining twin lights from the sides of his helmet. Quick kicks against the long fins attached to his armored boots sailed him across the room to the most distant set of armor. “Are you even still in here, buddy?”

“I’m tucked into the cables about two feet to your right, so don’t shine the light on me.”

Brody hovered over the front of the armor, wiggling its helmet back and forth as he shined his light into the large dome-shaped viewport. “Roger, Citizen. Sadly, the first armor is devoid of commies or underwear models. Moving to number two.”

The AI piloted Bulwark pushed off from the armor mount and descended onto the next set suspended from a rigging platform attached to the wall. Brody locked his hand on the front of the armor to suspend himself over it, shining his spots into the face shield. Dust motes and plankton floating through the brine glinted as his lights reflected off the plate. He knocked twice on the plate with his armored glove, but his third knock was interrupted by a hand snatching his gauntlet by the wrist.

A dull clang resounded through the chamber as the aquatic combat armor punched Brody in the chest, knocking him back through the hole and into the sand. Power and atmosphere cables popped from the back of the mechanized suit as it jumped free from its rigging. Floodlights sitting beside the attaching points for the helmet dome flashed around the DSRV launch room, searching for any sign of another intruder. The scream of a water jet propulsion system going online preceded the machine lurching from its spot in the rigging to descend straight at Brody lying in the silt below.

Brody pulled the sonic disruptor pistol from the magnetic lock on his thigh to aim at the rapidly descending aqua-mech. “Alright, you primitive screw heads. Listen up. See this? This is my Boom Stick!”

The machine barely made it out of the compartment when it tilted sideways after passing through Brody’s pain wave and sputtered along a crooked flight path through the bay. The mech landed several meters away from slamming on top of Brody, kicking up torrents of sand as it careened into the support pylon. The crash decimated huge chunks of armor and cracked the exterior plate on the mecha-suit. The engines on the back flared, sending terrific gouts of water in a furious push to send the armor away from its point of impact.

“Firing!” Vance said into the comms. He took aim and sent the pain-inducing beam into the target.

In its mad scramble to escape, the armor arched its back to evade Vance’s shot. The Ranger still managed to hit the mark, searing the pilot’s nervous system and driving the armor in an uncontrolled climb into the bottom of the observation deck. The mech slammed and rebounded several times against the heavy stone construction before he turned to take a new flight path through the water and away from his attackers.

“Firing!” Unga shouted.

The armor dodged around several pylons until it ran straight into the path of the Tongan Ranger’s beam weapon. Fire raced along the pilot’s body and once again crashed him into a pylon he was trying to use for cover. The man disengaged the drive motor for the armor to land in the silt at the edge of the wavering kelp bed below the facility overhang.

The pilot took a step from behind the pylon, only to reverse direction a second later and come from the structure with a gauntlet held up. The Ranger squad, now in full view of the armor, hit the sand as they were treated to a heaping dose of pain receptors firing to tell their bodies they were burning, even if they weren’t. Despite the massive searing agony violating their nervous systems, Sergeant Tran managed to crawl from behind the pylon to raise a pistol toward his attacker.

As the Ranger NCO aimed to fire his weapon, a shifting current of dark water rose up behind the armor from the kelp bed. Taking hold of the back plate, Reach heaved the titanic undersea mech into a suplex that brought the armor and its pilot into a slam amid the waving, shifting bed of oceanic grass.

In defiance, the mech shot to its feet with its palm outstretched. Aiming lasers tracked along the silt and particles in the water in a bid to find his assailant in order to fire micro torpedoes. The visor of the battered armor flickered from opaque to translucent and cracked as the man beneath searched the water for a little payback. Reach’s Bangora shrouded armor shoved the apish armor back a step, driving it under the observation deck toward the recovering Ranger squad.

The water mech pilot whirled around and hovered to decipher what he was looking at. A few meters into the kelp bed, the water and drifting plant matter hid a shadow that was more real than imagined. It robbed all available light around it, dragging it into a pit of darkness that made that spot in the water painful to look at for any length of time. As his mind fought for an explanation for what he was seeing, two of the eel-like creatures that inhabited the kelp bed slithered to within striking distance of the mech. They struck from their hides among the weeds, clamping down on the weapon-clad exoskeleton.

From his spot in the kelp bed, Reach listened to every struggling gasp the pilot endured as ferocious, armored eels the size of anacondas struck him again and again. Wrenching yanks against the armor kept the pilot from taking off with a jet-assisted leap from the bed as the combatants vied for traction against one another. In his Bangora shadow camouflage, Reach drifted to the side as a third monstrosity snapped past him from the waving carpet, latching onto the RUPAC pilot’s leg. With almost two thousand pounds of pissed-off wildlife dragging the man into the killing field, he finally lost his grip on the seafloor. The animals dragged him into the kelp as one of their number shifted from holding an arm to driving its beak into the view screen on his helmet.

A heavy pop flashed through the kelp as the weight of the water shattered the man’s dome and punched through his pressurized suit. Then he was dragged away into the waving bed of vegetation.

When Reach felt confident that he wouldn’t get snatched by another hungry eel, he drifted out of the bed and swam back to the Ranger squad.

“You and the boys okay?” he asked.

“That thing had an industrial pain cannon on it,” Tran said. “Makes sense being down here with all of that,” he said, gesturing to the undulating seafloor.

“Anyone hurt? Where’s Brody?”

“I’m in the flooded moon room checking the last armor, Citizen. Just out of curiosity, how did you get by all of us, and why didn’t the s-salad eels eat you?”

“I saw you get punched back through the hole, and I followed the mech out. Unfortunately, I also got caught in your disruptor beam, so I needed a minute to catch my breath. As for the salad-eels, animals seem to instinctively move away when I power up the camo field. I figured they’d do the same thing here. They wanted no part of me because the field messes with their senses.”

“Oh snap, Citizen! My bad.”

“We’re good, Brody. Sarn’t T, is everyone good to move?” Reach asked.

“Haunted house on the go, sir. Flooded levels first,” Tran confirmed.

Team Junkyard passed into the sub launch through the waterlogged moon pool. They took up defensive positions around the room to cover Brody opening the hatch. With all the levels leading through the observation deck flooded, the door swung easily at the hands of the combat exoskeleton.

Reach swam ahead, working the shadowy camouflage to his advantage as he traversed the passage into the observation deck. The red emergency lighting from the ceiling served to highlight the iridescent hue of bright yellow track lighting along the floor. Differing from the other RUPAC stations that featured labs and science stations at their center with an outer ring of corridors connecting the various rooms, the observation deck on Station Six supported labs with multiple transparent enclosures set against the dome with passages in the center linking the various stations. With the shutters closed, the dome had become an inky dark seascape of strange lighting and twisting shadows.

“LT, it’s Vance. Just got word from Ivan. The Amphibs are still holding those two levels on Hard Base. All communication outside the station is controlled by him, so we don’t have to worry about them calling for help just yet. Whoever they have running tech is working their way through our hack, so if we don’t roll this up soon, they could regain control of the station.”

“What are we looking at for trouble?” Reach asked.

“They could scuttle the station, if they’re not trying already.”

“Keep me posted. Reach out.” Ahead of the squad, the former Marine swam to the top of the passage and nestled himself into some cabling. “Tran, this is Reach. Got a squad of amphibs in plate carriers and varied weapons moving down the passage.”

Tran pinged the location of Team Junkyard in Reach’s HUD to confirm their position against what the lieutenant was seeing. “What kind of weapons?”

“Looks like we have the lead two with pain disruptor pistols. The others are carrying rifles. But the weird thing is they’re swimming with them at the ready. As though they’re going to use them in the drink.”

“I think this is the part where we get haunted,” Tran said.

“Wilco, Sarn’t T.”

* * *

Private Zhou swam deeper into the passage with the sonic pulse pistol held out in front of him. His family had urged him to become a Marine as they got the best of everything in the GSSR. Better units, better assignments, and better food, the life of a GSSR Marine guaranteed that he wouldn’t be treated like those regular army hacks.

In the beginning, things had been great. He got well trained, and after taking his aptitude test, he was rated to go through several schools that put him toward the top of the list for promotions. If it wasn’t for getting assigned to that stupid Elite, Zhou would have never ended up here. Never ended up on Amir, even if there were some benefits to being assigned to the test planet. Everyone from his old life was dead, and he was very much alive after spending nearly thirty years in cryogenic stasis. His entire unit had been held over multiple times as the Central Command of the GSSR made excuse after excuse as to why they couldn’t be rotated out. It didn’t matter. For those times he was awake, working at this glorious station under the waves had been a blessing. Beneath the waves, no one worried about the monsters or the zombie bugs, or worse, the rumors of that Bangora Hybrid thing tearing up stations on land.

Down here, they had the enclosed environment of the dome to keep them safe and the Medusa Whales, as those stupid Russian Science Directors called them. Zhou had thought they should be named after the Chinese name for the Orca. After all, that’s what they were when you came right down to it. Killer Whales. Nì jǐ jīng in his language. Everything sounded better in his language.

Zhou watched his wingman, Liu, swim beside him. The kid was about as smart as a bag of hammers but must have done something right as you didn’t get assigned to Six if you were a screw up. The two drifted to the first hatch, checking to see that the stabilization protocols had been followed. Word around the top deck was that the station AI had screwed the pooch, and that meant the Marines had to run station checks until this was completed. Adding to the rising tide of bad luck were the briefings earlier in the week from the director suggesting the Americans were going to make a dedicated effort to take the station. That meant the checks for the labs being intact had to be done promptly. Zhou maneuvered out of the way for his teammate to place his foot on the bulkhead and give the pressure door handle a good tug. Good, everything seemed to be in order, which meant the lab behind that door had atmosphere, and the experiments were unharmed by the seawater.

Signaling for the next hatch, Zhou shined his headlamp toward the direction he needed Liu to go. Particles floating in the hallway got caught in the glare from the intense white beam, making looking along the path of the helmet beam difficult, but it was better than drifting through the passage using just these stupid RUPAC red lights. While the darkened illumination made the runner lights all the more visible to lead people trying to escape the level to safety, it did nothing for the amphibious security teams trying to sweep the place for faulty hatches or worse, breaches of security.

Somewhere behind them, a loud pop muffled the water.

“Zhou, this is Sergeant Cheng. Did that pop come from you?”

The radio crackled as he broadcast in return. Once again, equipment section giving him the faulty gear.

“Negative, Sergeant. It felt like it came from behind.”

The private pinged his wingman to get him to stop, holding position until Sergeant Cheng gave the order to move again. The kid had a tendency to fidget when they were on a security stop. That was what happened when you took a twenty-year-old chain smoker and put him in a pressurized environmental suit where he couldn’t take a drag.

“What do you think it is, Zhou?” Liu asked over a direct message channel.

“Don’t know. Just watch your lane until Cheng gives us the all-clear. It won’t do any good to watch what’s going on behind us and have someone sneak up when we’re not looking.”

“Could that happen?” Liu prodded.

It had happened. Zhou had been a sergeant on one of the triad colonies. He’d been competent, hardworking, and driven. He’d been the youngest recruit to make sergeant in years and, as such, was assigned to the One Ninety-First Interior Guard commanded by one of the GSSR Elites. As part of that unit, Zhou’s star was on the rise until it wasn’t.

He was watching over a guard tower when an invisible man snatched him from behind with a knife to his throat.

Tell me where the security entrance is and you live, the Ghost had said.

So Zhou told him, right before the stars filled his vision and his head hit the floor in a puddle of unconsciousness. The sergeant on the rise was sent to a re-education camp where his skills were promptly recognized for colony work. Off to Amir he went as a newly scrubbed private.

Thirty years ago thanks to cryo, for Zhou, it had only been a few months. All the people that wronged him were most likely dead or infirm. All he had to do now was exceed and excel. He could do that here in his gilded prison with this stupid private riding his coattails. It was only a matter of time until he could get promoted or transfer out.

The kid was fidgeting again when Zhou got the call.

“This is Sergeant Cheng. Rolling withdrawal back to my position. Cheng out.”

That wasn’t good. That meant Cheng was setting security on whatever he’d found, and they were pulling back for safety.

Something was in here with them.

“Did you catch that?”

“Yeah,” Liu acknowledged. “What’s a rolling withdraw again?”

Zhou rolled his eyes. “Rolling withdrawal. I’ll move back while you cover the hall, and then we switch.”

“Right. Got it. Moving.”

Zhou watched the length of the hallway before them as his partner swam close to the floor, out of the way of the disruptor’s line of fire. If it was some type of wildlife that had gotten in, the sonic pulse pistols would do the job to get them moving the other way. If this was the Americans and they had androids, the pistols would do nothing, and Zhou would have to swim for his life back to the rest of the squad.

“Set,” Liu said into the net.

“Moving,” Zhou responded. He swam to the other side of the corridor and dropped close to the floor, giving the kid the best possible firing line he could. He slipped past the young private using the hatch as cover, noting that the tip of his fin had gotten caught in the grating. While it was hard to trip underwater, flailing into a pipe or some metal protrusion to catch one of your rebreather lines was a recipe for ending your career, along with your life. He reached out and freed the kid’s flipper from the decking to stave off any potential accident the kid might have by not paying attention or suffering from an extreme nicotine deficit.

Cheng pulled both Marines into the passage intersection. The squad had two heavies with them. Novikov Model Fifty-Four, deep sea combat armors. Wei was piloting one of them. She was at the back part of the intersection leading toward where they’d started from. The other was resting against the bulkhead with its armored dome smashed into so much broken glass.

Out of habit, Zhou floated closer to the armor, taking in the details of the shattered helmet. The point of impact seemed to be behind the pilot’s head. Xiao. His name was Xiao. The impact that compromised the helmet was behind Xiao’s head. But that wasn’t the only thing bothering him.

“Private First Class Zhou. Is there something over here that is more important to you than your assigned sector?” Sergeant Cheng asked.

“No, Sergeant. My apologies.”

Zhou could almost hear the man huffing into the comms when he responded. “Before you get back to that assignment, what are your thoughts on this?”

“Sergeant?”

“I’ve read the file. You have experience, and since you’re ignoring your duty anyway…” Cheng let just enough mirth find its way through the channel to lighten the mood. While the Marine NCO was a stickler for GSSR regulations and protocols, he knew a good thing when he saw it. Knowing Zhou’s past meant the man would tap him for information if he could.

Zhou pointed to the damage. “The screen was broken in a single strike, most likely from here. But this is what really concerns me. Most of the wildlife that can make strikes like this have beaks. They would either crack the glass and rebound off of it or be strong enough to break in one go but be trapped by the remaining part of the screen. Look at Xiao’s neck. Something punched through hard enough to wreck the screen, and then his neck.”

And there it was. The man’s head, held in place by the helmet rigging inside the armor to keep things like whiplash from happening during maneuvers, had a bulging deformation at the base of his skull.

“Gyro-Pack rifle?” Cheng asked.

“No. The glass break is too uniform. The projectile would have detonated on contact. There’d be damage all around the upper housing.”

Cheng nodded. “Thanks, Zhou. Head on back to your sector and cover down on that kid you have with you. He’s not the sharpest knife in the kitchen.”

Zhou let his helmet beam tell the story of a respectfully quick bow before he headed back to his position. The radio call came a moment later, requesting a call by roster number for the entire squad. “Roster one one seven seven three one, confirm,” Zhou responded.

One by one, the numbers crackled through the low-frequency band on the radio until they had silence across the net. “One one three six four two and one one seven two one eight, report in, over,” Sergeant Cheng called into the net. When there was no response, he swam past the remaining combat armor to look down the cross passage leading to the other side of the observation deck.

“What’s happening, Zhou?” Liu asked.

“We’re being picked off. Stay shoulder to shoulder with me. Cheng is going to give the order off the deck.”

Within seconds, a crackle sparked across the radio. “Second squad. Fall back in pairs to the entrance for this level. Zhou, you have rear security.”

“Roger, Sergeant.” Zhou swam ahead of the squad, dragging his teammate with him. “Set up here with your back against the door.”

“Cheng, this is Wei,” came the call over the squad net.

If Wei was calling Cheng, that meant either her power armor systems had detected something they could shoot, or they were about to get some bad news.

“Send it,” Cheng responded.

“Lost contact with Shen and Hung, too. I don’t have them on the tracker mod either,” Wei reported.

“Second squad, pull in tight. Stay tight and move as a single unit,” Cheng ordered. “Wei, once you have the squad past you, pull rear security for us.”

“Roger sergeant,” Wei said, her high-pitched voice crackling through the net.

“Lieutenant Fei, this is Cheng,” came the crackle through the radio. “We are being engaged by forces unknown, and we have four missing personnel, plus one KIA. Please send QRF. How copy? Over.”

Zhou’s blood ran cold at the silence coming off the radio. If he had been the squad leader, he would most likely be on a private channel with Wei to have her use the Model- Fifty-Four’s burst antenna to establish commo with the higher command element. Now would be the time an enemy unit would most likely strike at them, when the leader was trying desperately to establish comms and had his attention divided.

Zhou allowed himself to drift to the ceiling, where wire harnesses and pipe bundles were tied to support rigging to keep all of it out of the passage but still accessible to repair. He kept Liu on the other side of the catwalk like rigging so he could watch the kid and make sure he wasn’t being snuck up on. Below them, the five remaining members of the squad swam ahead of Wei and her Marine Combat Armor.

Passing below a hatch, Zhou looked toward his teammate and felt suddenly and violently ill. Where he should have been looking at a young Private Liu, a shadow so intense it hurt his head lingered among the wiring and duct work at the top of the passage. If there was a way to describe what he was seeing, it was violent darkness. His eyes struggled to cope with whatever was robbing the light from this part of the passage, and as he swam by it, Liu once again came into full view on the other side of the rigging.

Zhou stopped and hovered in the passage to look back to where he’d seen the shadow. Whatever had caused the migraine-level eye strain from his mind trying to focus through what he saw was now gone. He immediately clicked over in the radio. “Sergeant Chen, it’s Zhou. Just saw something I can’t explain at the top of the passage. Some shadow or something. It’s gone now. But I just wanted to report it.”

“You don’t see it, now?” Cheng asked. “Wei, anything on sensors?”

“Negative, Sergeant. Sensors are clear,” she confirmed.

Cheng turned over in the water-filled passage to address the private when the man froze. Something below him had his attention, and that something pulled Zhou’s along with it. Just outside the hatch to the latrine was a man-sized shadow. Trying to find a word to describe the inky blackness of what they were seeing seemed impossible as their minds struggled to cope with what was, in essence, a black hole where there should be colors of reds and fluorescent yellows passing through the murky water.

Something snapped in the passage, and the shadow darted away quicker than any of them could bring up their rifles. The hatch broke open, spilling a tidal wave of water into the latrine beyond. In a fraction of a second, the water in the passage blasted into the room beyond in a torrent of ocean and bubbles. The massive influx of seawater dragged everyone in the passage toward the now open hatch. Tumbling and contorting, Marines flailed helplessly as the undertow slammed them through the waterlogged walkway. Face shields cracked, weapons shot away, and any sense of military bearing in the face of the enemy was abandoned as the squad tried to find their way to right side up.

Troops in combat armor sailed into the passage just ahead of the flailing remainder of the amphibious security team. Rapidly fired Gyro-Pack rifles snapped out their mini-torpedo rounds into the first four Marines. Micro explosions rocked the RUPAC troopers, shattering their plate carriers and filling the passage with the syrupy red glare of them bleeding out.

Wei raised the weapon mount on her Model Fifty-Four’s armored gauntlet when the shadow appeared in front of her and shouldered her backward. Gears and gyro-stabilizers fought to keep her upright as something took hold of her from behind.

“Knock, knock!” came a call through the speakers in Austrian accented English.

The Marine armor slammed into the wall, bending the bulkhead and cracking the reinforced barrier glass to the lab. Another jerk and the mech careened into the support grating for the wires above the passage. The exoskeleton chimed through the water, a sign that some system was drawing power from the main drive battery. An energy wave flashed from the mech, dispersing a sonic disruptor pulse through the passage. Whatever it was that had a hold of Pilot Wei didn’t seem to care. It slammed her into the deck grating hard enough to bend it with a terrible crash and embed the armor in twisted, broken barbs of metal.

A very American-looking Model Thirty-Nine hovered over her. He shoved a Gyro-Pack rifle onto her helmet dome with the tink sound of metal on glass. “D-don’t get up.”

Wei relaxed, letting the whining servo-motors go quiet after straining to free the mech-armor the deck plating. The inky shadow dropped beside her to place a beaten Zhou onto the deck. On the other side of his cracked face plate, he looked unconscious. Blood seeped from his nose to drip into the bottom of the screen, tinging the bit of seawater that had found its way into his mask.

The shadow evaporated as a sizable trooper in the same combat armor as the others swam in to take its place. “Do you speak Mandarin or Russian?”

“Both,” Wei answered in Mandarin.

“I’m running a patch between his re-breather and your atmosphere system, little sister. That will keep him breathing until we have the station, and we’ll come back for you. Your rear leg actuators are caught on the deck. You could try to force your way out, but you’ll probably rip through to the environmental seals and implode yourself into a watery grave. Stay here and live? Try to cause trouble, and you’ll most likely die.”

“Why have you come? Why are you doing this?” Zhou groaned through the net.

No answer was given.

The economy-sized soldier in the fully enclosed armor finished his patch of the atmosphere systems between the two RUPAC troopers. “Stay here, and we’ll recover you. Cause trouble, and we’ll bury you. Do you understand?”

Wei nodded.

The mechanized combatant motored through a slew of floating bodies on his way through the passage. The American android flashed a thumbs-up sign to the downed Marines as he passed by. “I’ll be back.”

24

An overlay flashed into Reach’s HUD: Connection established. Initiating direct link.

“Go for Reach.”

“Good to hear your voice,” Sherman said through the link. “Ivan just put us through on Station Six’s communication system, which, if I understand correctly, might not be a thing if you kids don’t hustle.”

“Yeah, they have a crazy hacker on their end that is pushing us out of the system. It won’t be long before they vent all the water, keeping everyone top side—or worse, blow up the station.”

“Which wouldn’t be good for them as you have control of the docks.”

“That’s the rumor.” Reach maneuvered to the end of the passage and allowed the Bangora shadow camouflage to hide him enough to look around the corner. The passage was clear all the way to the hatch they were targeting. Time to hop out of the pool and hit the field. “Now that we’re all connected like, you got anything that can give us a hand?”

“Alexa has offered to help combat the hacker, but she’d need to be on site for that. That leaves us two options, neither of which are you going to like.”

Reach motioned the rest of the squad forward to the hatch at the far end of the hall. “Let me guess, she wants to swap out with Brody. He gets uploaded to one of the Model Thirty-Threes or the Thirty-Fives, and she jumps into his overalls.”

“Something like that. She can also upload to the sub and then into the station, but there’s a danger there, too. If this tech is seriously on the level and manages to purge the system and restart the AI, bye-bye, Alexa.”

“As in dead?”

“As in, we’ll have to recover her from the latest backup,” Sherman acknowledged. “Which was a week ago. While losing a week isn’t as bad as what Doc Roman lost, it would still suck to lose her as she is. The RUPAC tech could find her tangled in the system and isolate her to a system they can get to later. That would not be good.”

The idea caught up with Reach as he made his way to the hatch at the end of the hall. “They’d have our Alexa caught in a cage to modify as they see fit.”

“Bingo. So how do you want to play this?”

“Wait one.” Reach punched a sequence of commands into a control plate in the wall. Two safety lights were set in stone above the pressure hatch. One green and the other red. The dull red gleam had been lit, a clear sign that the pressure door was not to be opened. After several taps along the display, the light jumped from red to green, filtering the emergency lighting in the passage to a heavy mustard color.

Tran swam to the hatch and motioned for the team inside. The squad followed to the end of the passage before depositing their stolen Gyro-Pack rifles on the gantry.

Reach stripped a series of zip ties from his pouch to secure the discarded weapons to a place where they could be easily recovered should they need them while they were easily overlooked by their enemies. “Sherman, is Alexa on the call?”

“I’m here, Jared,” she responded.

“Great to talk to you, my friend.” Reach finished his chore of securing the rifles and drifted into the hatch.

Brody fist bumped him as he took his place next to him on another gantry. They were in a massive silo that went down to the very bottom of the station. The platform had a hole in the center so that operators could descend through multiple flooded levels while the access way was fully submerged. Pressure controls on the wall allowed staff to fill or vent water in the silo as an airlock between the various levels. Seats with H-Harness retention belts were positioned around the gantry so an entire squad could enter the silo and vent the water leaving them to move into drier portions of the station.

“We climb the ladder to the next gantry and enter the level,” Tran said.

“Won’t they be expecting that if they know we’re here?” Day asked.

Tran hinted toward the ladder. “We’re going to give them something else to worry about.”

While members of Team Junkyard made their way up the ladder, Reach continued his conversation with Alexa. “So I had this idea. After hearing what happened on the OC while we were away, what with the young girl and then to Lieutenant Bautista, it made me think about how the RUPAC Ghosts infiltrated our camps some weeks ago. All those cyborg implants allowed them to carry a full combat AI in their heads. And then I thought about our first day on Amir. It was like you were riding in my head the whole time, giving me advice based on tactical studies you had access to on real Earth battles. You were in my head the whole time, and I thought, maybe we could do it again.”

“You want me to create a virtual interface in your neural chip so we can work together?” Alexa asked. “We talked about this before, Jared. We all agreed it was a bad idea after the last time I took combat control of the Rangers. While we drove off the RUPAC and ultimately saved the camp, looking back on it leads me to believe that repeated uses of our tech in this fashion could lead us down a slippery slope. Especially if we become accustomed to it.”

Reach tapped twice on the side of his helmet where the implant was, reminding Alexa about long-ago protocols she’d put in place to help him on his first missions with the new tech. “Not everyone, just me and you. Just when there’s no other choice. We have Brody’s Bulwark armor, but based on what we’re seeing of this Marine unit, we could be in for a tough fight. We’re going to need Brody and his ability to get it on should the rounds start flying. They don’t really need me for that. Tran and his junkyard dogs have enough trigger tappers to cover it. And I don’t want to risk you entering the system and getting deleted by some keyboard barbarian who turns out to be better than we thought. It crushed me to lose Doc Roman when we thought he was gone. I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to you.”

“It makes me happy that someone worries about my well-being rather than just what I can do for them,” Alexa noted.

“Of course. You’re my friend, Alexa. And just like seeing a buddy break a leg even though you know it would heal, you don’t want them to have to go through something like that. No one wants to risk you getting deleted, even if we had a backup. So if it means Brody stays with us to lay down the firepower and you stay back there safe and sound, so be it. But if you could ride shotgun with me, we could pull this off.”

Reach climbed the ladder to the gantry above them, accepting Unga’s hand to pull him the rest of the way. “Sheesh, you been working out, Tonga?”

“Yeah. I am pretty swole,” the specialist agreed. “It’s what happens when you pack so much goodness into a terrifying package and unleash it unto the world.”

“S-stealin’ that one,” Brody said.

“Load it, love it, live it, baby.”

Alexa returned to the conversation after watching the team interact with Brody through Reach’s point of view. “Alright, let’s do it, Jared. Can you get close to a console with network access to the communications hub?

“Once we’re dry side of this dock, yeah.” Reach swung his swim fins up and strapped them behind his calves to keep them in place. Through the team feed, he watched Tran call up to the sub dock to deploy a squad of Wolverines into the levels. “Sarn’t T. I got something to buy us time against that hacker. You got this?”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Brody asked with his best disappointed voice. “You were the back b-bone, the nerve center of a great rhythm and blues band. You can m-make that live, breathe, and jump again.”

“I’m not going far. I just need to get to a terminal to pull off some tech madness, bud,” Reach assured him.

“Take it to ’em, LT,” Tran said.

As he shook Sergeant Tran’s hand, Alexa was already in his head. “Sergeant Tran is deploying Wolverines into the levels to draw any security away from the maintenance silo. According to the layout we received from Shanghai Ivan, there is an assistant director’s office twenty-five feet on your left when you exit the hatch.”

“How close do I have to get?” Reach asked.

“Close enough that we can get a stable connection over the wireless signals running through the base. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“No, but way back when, I signed a paper over to Roman saying I was good for whatever. This definitely defaults to the whatever category.”

Reach peeled the waterproofing from his rifle. The thin film developed by Doctor Roman was an advanced version of the type used during the last few years of the RUPAC campaigns by special forces and Marines. Simply spray and let set for fifteen seconds. Reach groped through his gun belt and pulled the suppressor for his M4D1B rifle. He screwed on the attachment and broke out the sling rather than trust the magnetic attachment system. Something about pressing into the tension of the sling felt old-school Marine Corps, which Reach enjoyed.

“Three, two, one,” Tran said through the link.

The hatch flew open, with Brody leading the way. He held out the flechette submachine pistol in one hand with the variable output Gatling cannon mounted to his other arm. Now inside a reinforced metal facility drilled within the shafts of an underwater rock formation, the android felt comfortable rolling out the heavy munitions spitting gun. “Time to let old painless out of the bag.”

Reach broke left from the door, his feet following the muzzle of the rifle leading him down the hall. He passed a door and tapped on the handle to make sure it was locked and not likely to have someone spilling into the hall. Coming to the door marked on his overlay, Reach was more than perturbed as this one was a pressure door instead of the standard. A regular door, even a sliding one that wasn’t reinforced, could be opened quickly with a bit of knowledge and the right amount of applied explosives. Pressure doors either had a hand wheel or a heavy latch that drove weighty pins in place to keep the door secured against a breach. The doors were extremely heavy and not easy to throw open and run into.

“Here goes nothin’,” Reach said.

He rotated the hand wheel with enough force that it spun until the retaining hasp stopped it. A quick drag and the dense hatch came away from the frame with a metallic creak that would have driven any of the COs crazy on the boats he’d shipped on as a Marine. Driving the barrel of his rifle into the room, Reach minded the raised portion of the threshold that mated with the door. Often referred to by many names by sailors across the fleet, these knee knockers were sure to trip up anyone not paying attention, even if they were wearing shin armor.

The room was sparse, containing only a desk and a screen resting on top. Schedule charts and maps were scattered around the walls by obscene amounts of cellophane tape. Reach reverently stretched his hand toward what looked like sticky notes with copious little amounts of Russian scrawled across them. Whoever this assistant director was, he’d had to post constant reminders to himself to stay on time and on target.

“Jared. Are you at the terminal?”

“Yeah. I’m in the office now. The guy who runs his business from here has tons of spreadsheets talking about up and down times as well as something called the back page?”

“May I see?” When Reach switched the feed to allow Alexa to see through his eyes, she almost instantaneously processed the contents of the room. “It’s not back page. It’s back channel. This is very important, Jared. This lines up with the mission I’ve been on.”

“You have been awfully absent of late. What have you been up to?” Reach asked.

“You’ll see once we’ve made the link. Are you ready?”

“Let’s do this,” Reach confirmed.

“Hold onto the sides of the desk during the transfer in case you have a seizure. Wouldn’t want you to fall and hit your head.”

“Funny,” Reach huffed.

“I wasn’t joking,” Alexa countered.

Before he could respond, Reach felt an intense pressure in his skull, not unlike diving too quickly into deep water. The pressure started uncomfortably, moving into abject pain like a knife going through his sinus. A quick nod of his head slid his face plate from the helmet, allowing the copious amount of spit and phlegm to pour from his face. He was at the point where the ringing in his ears timed with the hot poker running through his brain to force him unconscious when the sensation abruptly stopped.

Relief in the form of a soothing frost radiating down his skull made it feel like the times he was training for military schools back on Earth, and he would go from a hot shower to an ice bath to soothe complaining muscles. “Are you here?”

“Yes, Jared. I am riding shotgun, as you put it. The bulk of my consciousness is inside your implant, sharing your brain to help mitigate the extraordinarily tight fit.”

“So only part of you is here?” Reach asked.

“The parts you need. The RUPAC cyber soldiers use a less complex AI to load as a combat controller. They aren’t nearly as intricate, so they are easier to load into the cerebral chip matrix. I, on the other hand, am a big girl,” Alexa said in a chuckle-tinged voice.

“Damn near tore my skull in half,” Reach offered.

“More to do with doing the transfer over wireless connections than a hard link. Shall we get to it?” Alexa asked.

“Do we need to go to a more advanced terminal?”

“No. But you should clean what I would take to be your snot all over the desk. This thing uses a holographic keyboard, and if I have to tap your fingers through that goo for very long, we’re going to have our first fight as a couple.”

“Um,” Reach stammered, not knowing how to take the comment.

“The couple thing was a joke, Jared. The snot was not.”

Reach searched the desk for napkins, paper towels, or any assortment of cleaning cloths most people on Earth would have had in an office desk. He found an old shirt that he used to mop up the small puddle of facial fluid that had spilled during the upload.

“Basic training?” Alexa asked.

“Hey, that’s like hanging out in someone’s apartment and looking through the medicine cabinet.”

“Sorry, Jared,” Alexa said, amused. “That was a lot of snot coming out of your nose during the gas chamber training event in boot camp.”

“Gee, I wonder where that memory came from,” Reach said sarcastically.

“May I drive?” Alexa asked.

“Get after it, Miss Daisy.”

Driven by Alexa, Reach swiped his hand over the newly cleaned desk, drawing out a holographic keyboard on the surface. The screen came to life, displaying an operating system with a desktop background of a woman with enormous assets wrapped in a tied-up button-up shirt and a schoolgirl skirt that was more belt than anything else.

“I guess that would keep me coming back to work,” Reach noted. “Also, this is weird that my hands are typing but it’s not me.”

“We’re past the basic encryption for the system, linked through Shanghai Ivan,” Alexa said.

Reach laughed but didn’t feel the rise and fall of any of the muscles usually involved. “Can’t believe you’re calling him that.”

“Sergeant Tran rarely makes a joke. I figured, why not run with it? This technician is good. He’s using our own methods against us. We used Shanghai Ivan to infiltrate the system and reconfigure the base AI to work for us, which is much simpler than reprogramming the Ivans they use for their complex vehicles. When the base intelligence was under our control, we mimicked a core logic problem that allowed us to flood the base and close everything off.”

“By making it seem the AI wet the bed, we caused problems which the staff bought into,” Reach said, following Alexa’s logic.

“Exactly. By now, they might suspect something more is going on, but the technician is treating the problem the same. He’s pulling the Base AI offline, one system at a time, to replace it with a purpose-driven one.”

“Kind of like moving staff around at a job site when someone calls out sick,” Reach supposed.

“Only now, I’m going in behind him and re-configuring those AI scripts so they also work for us,” Alexa noted.

“Is there a chance that he’ll notice what’s going on?” Jared asked while watching Alexa pilot his hands across the control surface.

Alexa moved Jared’s face as though running through the subroutine that worked her emotional cues. “There is a chance. But as I am mimicking my presence in the system as maintenance scripts written by the technician himself, he has no reason to suspect what I’m doing.”

“Any chance we could get that in English?”

“You hire a cleaning crew to clean your building after you’re gone, but you don’t necessarily suspect them of wrongdoing. They’re the only ones supposed to be in the building and are easy to trace if they get caught. That’s why in Brody’s movies, everyone trying to gain access to something comes in dressed as the cleaning crew. No one ever suspects them.”

“That’s devious,” Reach said.

“Thank you.” Alexa closed down the command consoles and windows on the screen and was about to put the system into standby when Reach fought her for control. “Jared, this is supposed to be a partnership.”

“Okay, this is weird because they’re my hands. It takes me back to when I was a kid and had to ask for permission to get out of the corner when I did something wrong. Seriously, I need you to go into the desk drawer to get the shirt.”

“The one covered in your facial secretions?” Alexa asked.

“Whoa, I will never be able to sneeze and not think of that ever again! Thank you for that. Now, the shirt?”

Alexa transferred control of his body back to him. He dove into the drawer like a person late for work and desperate to find a lost set of keys. As he pried out the sopping shirt from the desk, he could feel Alexa in the back of his mind prodding for information.

“Here it is. I think this is more than just a fascination with some video game background,” Reach said. He unfurled the shirt and held the design over the breast next to the screen displaying the voluptuous bit of real estate on the assistant director’s screen image. On the corner of her skirt, angled sideways so she could sit to show off more thigh, was a logo of a crescent superimposed over a moon with a dot or some other round feature at the center of the design. Running on one side were three stylized Cyrillic letters. “The words are too fancy. I can’t read them, but I feel like I should know that logo.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jared could feel Alexa’s hesitation as she worked through what he’d found. “This is the logo for the Special Projects Branch. Think of them like RUPAC’s version of DARPA. Special Projects sent multiple iterations of spies and saboteurs after Doctor Roman when we were on Earth. It only makes sense that some of them would have left for the colonies. But if Amir had become the research depot no one wanted to be on due to the length of space flights and the hostility of the planet, why is this person here?”

“Maybe we should ask them?” Reach posited.

“Go right ahead,” Alexa joked.

“So you said before everything here could potentially tie into the special mission you’ve been working. Care to elaborate?”

Alexa flashed a series of images to Reach through his HUD. In a fraction of a second, he knew where she was trying to direct him and how to get there. That’s when he realized that his link was helping him to process their conversations in seconds versus the normal time it took for people to hash things out.

“This interface is amazing,” Reach said, shooting up from the desk and running from the room. It felt good to push the strain of a run through his muscles the normal way versus all the swimming. With his enhanced physiology, the strain of swimming most of the day was minimal, and he was plowing through the corridors with the enthusiasm of an Olympic sprinter. “So about that special project?”

“When we thought we were going to try to contact Earth, we had Staff Sergeant Stewart’s crew recover an entangled particle as part of the comms array from Station Four. Once we’d learned that Earth was in shambles and we were in the middle of an impending RUPAC invasion force toward Amir, we’d put the particle array on the back burner so that we could focus on more pressing matters.”

“Sounds like proper time management to me, Alexa,” Jared said.

“It was, until we captured Katya and Koen. Until you made contact with the Grey Faction. Koen and Katya had been away from the RUPAC colonies for over a decade, due to travel times and cryo. Residing Amir research teams had been forced into a comms blackout due to the impending Reclamation Fleet. Sidorov and his brothers had just returned from a ‘sales trip’ to the colonies, which was five years one-way. And they use a hacked together communications device that is only accessible once or twice a year, based on galactic positioning.”

“You’re fact-finding,” Reach guessed.

“It all came down to the particle array we’ve been constantly adapting during those precious few hours a day we aren’t working to survive. What if we could adapt the particle to be more stable? What if we could use it to contact more than Earth. I’m here because we’ve found a way to talk, and more importantly, a way to listen. But before anything can happen, we need to know how to contact anyone still out there. That information is right here.”

25

Reach dropped in behind Tran amid a hail of gunfire. Rounds impacted off the walls and whistled as they careened in all directions.

“Did it work?” Tran asked.

“We have control of the system for now, but their tech can still do some damage. We have to find him and shut him down,” Reach called back through the link. “How did this kick off?”

“It has not been a nice d-day,” Brody called from across the passage. “Two m-motors pull over a truck and stumble right in the middle of NARC stakeout. You know, ten Colombians, El Scorpios, armed to Eff-eff all.”

“Oh yeah. I can see that happening. Where are the Wolverines?” Reach asked sarcastically.

“They’re still tied up in that shoot-out in S-San Pedro, getting their asses kicked by the Jamaicans. They sh-shot down one of our choppers.”

“Real answers only, Brody,” Reach demanded.

Vance volunteered to fill in the gaps to Brody’s report. “A single Wolverine squad was setting up on the back side of the level when a RUPAC Marine sweeper team went through and kicked it off. The Broskis were only two deep, so they tagged in some friends. The wolverines were trapped on the back side by Marines converging on them from the level above while the two got some help from the rest of their crew on this level. We tried to separate them so our guys could beat feet back to friendlies, but the bad guys just applied more bullets in all directions.”

“This is why we can’t have nice things.” Reach offered. Level schematics flashed through his mind along with hacked radio signals pinning enemy troop movements onto the display. The whole thing happened in a fraction of a second and gave Reach a clear picture of a way through. “Damn, Alexa. That is solid.”

“Happy to help,” she responded.

Reach opened a command channel to the Ranger squad leader. “Sarn’t T. I’m going to go after that tech but I can give you a break along the way.”

“How’s that, sir?” Tran asked.

“They’re staging in this area here, which is the barracks for this level. It’s dorm-style rooms with a common room at the end. If I get in there and cause a ton of trouble, they’ll either fight their way in to get the rest of their people out, or they’ll collapse on it as a defensible position to try to pry me loose or kill me. Either way, they only have twelve people on this level, so it’s doable.”

“Only twelve?” Unga asked. “Where’s all this gunfire coming from?”

Reach pushed all the data Alexa was pirating from the station to Team Junkyard, as well as to Sergeant Smith and Lieutenant Cobey running the capture operation on the submarine launch. While this level was engaged in heavy fighting, another two squads were on the level above, sweeping for enemy and prepping to assault the submarine dock to rescue their people.

“According to what I’m seeing here,” Reach said, “they have two pilots in those Marine Combat Armors, and the squad above is supported by six amphibious Model Thirty-Threes.”

“Does Cobey know that?” Tran shouted into the link as he ducked into a bulkhead to dodge incoming fire.

“He does now. Can you cover me while I cross the gap?” Reach asked.

Tran Barked into the link. “Get set!”

Brody dropped in beside Reach, crowding the space as bullets snapped around them. “Ain’t no room for sh-showboats, anyone looking to prove himself. The t-team comes first. You live by that, and you’ll be okay. And we’ll all be there for you.”

“Hit it!” Tran shouted, ignoring whatever Brody was on about.

A fusillade of gunfire from the Rangers poured down the passage, momentarily halting the attack coming from the RUPAC Marines. Reach’s armor went from slate to stealth as the Bangora camouflage field enveloped him. The living shadow bolted through the intersection in an all-out sprint down the hall. Brody was hot on his heels, barking his flechette pistol like a dog off the leash. The weapon rent one of the pipes above the Marines, showering the passage on their side in a particle-soaked white foam that obscured everything from view.

Rounds flashed around Reach as he rushed toward the door leading into the barracks. The rounds were aimed at Brody, whose Ghost infused poncho was shorting out more than it was covering him due to the holes he’d acquired on this trip. Reach sprinted to the hatch just in time to see a Marine with a fully loaded Gyro-Pack rifle lean out to take aim at the rushing android. Slowing to a shooter’s walking posture, he dumped two suppressed rounds into the man’s plate. When the Marine doubled over, Reach placed another beside his neck. The bullet punched through the soft fabric of his uniform where the plate didn’t cover, shredding its way into the lung before exploding.

The Marine’s battle buddy stretched across the hatch to pull his downed comrade back into the room. Reach lashed out, grabbing the RUPAC trooper by his helmet and using his momentum to swing the man into the hallway. He struck the wall with a crack as gear and uncovered bone slammed against the stone surface. The kid’s body crumpled at Reach’s feet with his rifle sliding onto the top of his boot. A quick kick upward, and he had the weapon in hand, priming the first shot.

Unlike the rounds they’d used in the water, the projectiles fired from the grey, two-by-four looking weapon like old-timey rockets in science class. The long contrail dissipated as a secondary drive motor catapulted the round through the space into the next Marine readying an RP-260 machine gun. The micro-missile blasted through the man’s armored plate, his chest, and completely through the back plate in a focused explosion. His body didn’t even have time to react to the impact as the crater in his chest simply caused him to switch off and drop in place.

“That is a Gyrojet rifle with variable ammunition types. One for wet and one for dry,” Alexa noted. “They probably use it for submarine-based combat and boarding in conjunction with the Marine Combat Armor. Which would explain why we have not seen the weapon before.”

Brody gasped as Reach offered him the weapon. “I've still got it! Is someone transmitting? Citizen Dude! Is m-my sister in there with you? What about the bro code, bro?”

“She’s helping me take down the hacker,” Reach barked.

“Wh-when this is over, I’m telling Dad!”

Reach’s shadow armor melded him with the rest of the emergency-lit darkness as he entered the hatch. Sliding against the wall, he positioned himself out of the fatal funnel and made room for his teammates to enter and dominate the space.

A single trooper in the corner of the room held out an A-Nine-Ninety-One carbine aimed at the portal. The Marine’s mind didn’t register the shadow passing in front of him as a target to shoot, much less something real. His eyes struggled to adjust after the brilliant explosion ruined his machine gunner and left him alone as the only defender to secure the barracks. But the hulking android walking in with a fritzing optical dispersion poncho was very much something he could pour holes into.

A snap echoed through the chamber. Reach’s rifle shot entered the Marine’s neck, exploding through the spine and drilling the kid into the floor.

“Oooh! Nasty! Good l-looking out, Citizen!” Brody barked as they walked through the miniature apartment complex. “In the More Bad News category, my sensors are picking up four Marines in the common room at the end, stacking furniture and a m-machine gun. It probably has armor-piercing rounds that will put big holes in us if we don’t do something about it.”

“I bet that furniture would look great on fire, should my good buddy lay the hate with his brand-new rocket rifle.”

“Was that you or m-my sister saying those nice things to me? This is all so confusing. I just really want to know w-where to send the thank-you cards.”

“Down range, amigo. Send them down range,” Reach said. He watched the extrapolation from Alexa as she continued to monitor stolen feeds from the facility AI. As he scanned through the flurry of information rushing by his mind, he wondered if this was how Alexa saw things all the time. No gaps to take time and analyze, no ability to dive deep into a matter to fully investigate, just relentless, unending speed. The feeds displayed Team Junkyard repositioning themselves throughout the level, drawing or dropping fire in coordinated efforts to corral and control the enemy force. The Marine combat armor was laying serious hate toward Unga and Morse, who until it showed up was using the MGX-5 squad automatic weapon to suppress that end of the hall. They’d moved their fighting position twice to get away from the lethal armor system. Reach and Brody needed to draw off those defenders, or the Rangers would be stuck here in a stalemate while the defending Wolverine squad at the end of the level were put through a meat grinder.

Brody snuck out of the room, using the outside hatch for cover against the machine gun rounds that were sure to come their way. Reach followed him back out, acting as security so the android could rain violence on the far side room.

“Citizen! Did you know this weapon is starburst capable? I didn’t until just now, but boy d-does it crisp my bacon.”

“Brody, it’s Alexa,” came the call through the link.

“I still got it. Is someone transmitting?”

“Yes, Brody. I am transmitting. You literally just heard me announce myself.”

“F-force of habit.”

Alexa pushed on with weapons instructions. “Set range on air-burst for fifty-two meters, and fire at a height of two meters.”

“I mean… duh! Weapon ready, Citizens!”

“Let it loose!” Reach shouted.

The first round barked out of the weapon in much the same way as a rifled grenade launcher. A quiet poot lobbed the round out of the barrel. In a flash, the round dumped half its jacket, engaged a drive motor, and turned into a rocket. The projectile screamed into the makeshift barriers constructed by the RUPAC Marines, decimating them in an explosion that sent the Marines tumbling away. Brody dropped three more rounds in rapid succession into the center of the room above the obstruction. When they flew to their assigned ranges, the rounds detonated in a shock wave of fire and flack.

Something in the room ruptured and caused a secondary explosion, catching the occupants on fire. Men hopped up from their positions, looking for anything that would quench the flames baking their non-fire-retardant uniforms into their skin. One of the Marines smartly dropped behind the ruined barriers in a chaotic flail across the floor in hopes the flames would smother out.

“Two rounds l-left in the mag. Up until now, it’s been fun and games, cops and robbers, dunkin’ donuts, but you’re in the shit now.” Brody fired the first shot low through the barrier. The round sailed through the decimated couches and tables to strike one of the flailing men trying to come free of armor melting itself into his skin. The impact from the projectile toppled his burning corpse from the hatch on the far side. The last round sailed through the hall, exploding just outside the door and ripping huge chunks of stone free from the wall and detonating in a tremendous burst of dust and sparks.

“Signal fire?” Reach asked.

“Signal fire. I guess all the screaming and b-burning wasn’t enough to draw attention,” Brody confirmed.

“It seems you have drawn the required attention you were looking for, Jared,” Alexa said.

“Is she still here? Ya know, I could have jumped into your head, and we could have had the ultimate buddy c-cop movie.”

“That would be something,” Reach mumbled. “What do you got, Alexa?”

“A Marine Combat Armor is making for the door supported by four Marines.”

“Did that pull some of the heat from our Wolverines?”

“Yes. The militia has pulled back to the maintenance dive silo on their side of the facility, and they’re climbing out to the submarine dock to regroup with the rest of the platoon,” Alexa confirmed.

“Um, Sis? Y-ya missed one,” Brody said while groping the dead Marine against the wall for another magazine full of missiles.

“Three coming up!” shouted Corporal Day. Vance and Collins followed the hulking battle frame as it stomped down the passage.

“What do you think of this?” the Ranger corporal asked. “I mean, this thing has it all!”

Brody opened his hands in game show super model mode, then ran his gauntlets up and down his own armor. “Th-this ain’t no ham on rye, pal.”

“We saw the other armor and the support team heading for you. We’re going to pull them into a shoot house,” Vance offered. “We’ve got this, LT. Go get your guy.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Brody said, adding a poke into Day’s combat suit. “I w-would have been here sooner, but I had to think up that ham on rye line.”

“Thanks, Sergeant Vance. Be safe,” Reach offered.

“I don’t think that word applies to anything on Amir, sir.”

Reach bounded off down the hall with Brody in tow. The android had salvaged four more magazines for the Gyro-Pack rifle and had magnetically attached it to his back for that added bit of firepower should the need arise.

“Down twenty-five meters and then turn right. That will put you in the Engineering Room for the station.” Alexa noted.

“Roger that. These doors, there’s no one inside that we have to worry about, right?” Reach asked.

“No one’s transmitting, and the system is showing all doors are sealed. The bulk of the personnel are topside under Cobey’s control.”

Reach ran to the end of the passage, stopping before turning the corner. “The bulk of the personnel?”

“Yes. This station also has active cryogenic suspension chambers,” Alexa said.

“Of course they do,” Reach harrumphed.

“Come on, Jared. Would you expect anything less from the RUPAC at this point?”

Reach pressed a button on the side of his rifle. A display in his HUD indicated that he’d only dumped a few shots, and he wasn’t ready for another mag yet. “I guess not. Hey, Alexa, what am I looking at around this corner?”

“We are next to the engineering room. I am detecting some sort of infrared displays traversing the halls. Booby traps if I had to guess, Jared.”

“Yeah. Th-the last thing we’d want is to make a wrong turn and end up with a face full of boobies,” Brody said. When he noticed Reach staring at him, he added, “What? That line kills with the Rangers. But I’ve heard… things about Marines.”

Reach shook his head. “Alexa and I will move forward and disable the traps. Cover us while we move.”

“Gotcha covered, Citizen!” Brody said with a thumbs-up on his scarred and blackened gauntlet.

Reach’s camouflage blended him into the emergency lighting still prevalent in the station. His vision mode altered to detect the beam traversing the hallway at just about shin height. He was about to step over it when Alexa stopped him.

“Jared, I’m switching your vision mode to another wavelength,” she said.

The view in his HUD altered to an all-grey display, like watching an old black-and-white clip on the various streaming services back on Earth. What was truly surprising was the glaring conical beam radiating down the hallway.

“Is that an IR spotlight?”

“Motion detection, most likely,” Alexa said. “They have it on a slightly different wavelength, so we look at the beams on the floor and do not adjust for the other radiation.”

“But can any of these beams see me in this camouflage?” Reach asked. “We had the Bangora outside of a Badger, which has some of the best detection systems devised by you and the doc, and we still couldn’t see it.”

“Your call,” Alexa agreed.

Jared knelt to see beyond the grating where the laser traversed. Inside the duct was a small square box with a beaded exterior. After changing his vision mode again, he took in the Cyrillic writing on the outside and a Picatinny Rail on top with a sensor node attached.

“Miniature munitions landmine. Anti-personnel type ripped off from the good old US-of-A during the PAC wars in Australia,” Reach noted. “Still, they have everything rigged to IR trips on various wavelengths.”

“As I said, Jared, it’s your call, but we’ve never tested your armor against targeted detection methods like this.”

“I’ll avoid the trips and brave the motion sensor,” Reach said. “What other choice do we have?”

“I c-could run through the hall and set everything off,” Brody offered. “Look, we have to get in th-there and shut this Broski down before he goes nuclear on us. My armor may have a few dents and dings, but it’s tough. And anyway, chicks d-dig scars.”

“Setting off the bomb might trigger the technician into a panic, and he could set the reactor to overload,” Alexa countered.

“Unless you still control the reactor, B-big Sis,” Brody said, waving his finger in the air.

Reach’s mind raced along a video feed playing back through his link. He was watching it at twenty times speed, thanks to the processing power Alexa was loaning him. The link between the two was incredible, and it seemed the more time they spent working together, the less communication the two required to push toward a particular outcome. The video feed stopped just ahead of Reach and Brody darting away to take on the Marines at the barracks. The video ticked by a few frames at a time in stark clarity, thanks to Alexa’s processing power.

Brody’s arm swept across his chest as he brought the flechette pistol to bear. Lancing bursts of arrow-shaped darts belched from the gun like a beehive disgorging the swarm. At the end of the passage, several RUPAC Marines dove for cover as the lancets perforated armor to spray minute flashes of blood onto the walls. Another few frames and the flechette burst slapped into a pipe along the ceiling, spraying a thick fog into the hall.

“It was the fire suppression feeder pipe that you hit,” Reach said.

“Oh no,” Brody gasped. “Alexa, did you break Reach’s brain? D-dad is going to be mad if you broke his favorite human. Not to mention Liana. First, you c-crawl all up in his unmentionables, and n-now this.”

“Cut it out, bro,” Reach said. “You hit the fire-suppression pipe when we ran for the barracks. The station AI must have detected the gunfire and primed the pump. Alexa, can you tick the system for this hall and push the retardant into the pipes? Can we flood the hallway and the engineering room?”

“Working now,” Alexa offered.

“We’re not supposed to use that word,” Brody said. “Surprised you didn’t know that.”

“Not retarded, retardant,” Reach corrected. “The fire suppression system here uses a particulate fog to extinguish fires. But when I looked through the feed, the only one who could see through it was you. I was watching your feed playback.”

“Hey—th-that’s like hanging out in someone’s apartment and looking through the m-medicine cabinet!” Brody protested.

“Yeah, sorry not sorry. Can we set off the system in here?”

The lights must have come on somewhere in Brody’s CPU as he shot a eureka finger into the air. “I get it. So what he’s doing, Sergeant, is spraying this thing with liquid nitrogen. Th-that should give you a good second or two b-before detonation.”

“Something like that. Or it could jam up all the sensors so the motion detectors don’t read us.”

“Man, this little trio w-we’ve got going is really firing on all cylinders,” Brody said. “We should start our own club.”

“On you, Alexa,” Reach called.

“Activating fire system!”

A support window flew into Reach’s HUD, showing the system as going active and then disgorging a cloud of particulate matter into the hallway. The fog quickly filled the passage so that the group couldn’t see anything more than a foot in front of them. After switching to their onboard enhanced imaging, the duo plus one watched as the beams were flooded with haze making it almost impossible to register past a foot or two beyond the emitter.

“On the move,” Reach said. “Brody, wreck any demo you find.”

“Roger, Citizen!”

Passing through the hall, Brody shot out the multiple anti-personnel mines littering the nooks and crannies in the walls before blowing out the motion sensor rigged to the ceiling.

“How long until the gas dissipates?” Reach asked.

“D-depends on the burrito.”

“Two minutes. Maybe less,” Alexa answered through the link.

“Engineering Room door is right there. Radio chatter indicates two Marines and the engineer.”

Reach swept into the compartment with his rifle at the ready. Auditory sensors tuned to max with decibel compensators in the event of gunshots worked in time with the imaging in his helmet as he drifted through the milky haze permeating the room. Alexa, processing the influx of information, turned it into a type of sonar that ignored visual cues, instead focusing on the layout of the room from the blueprints combined with minute movements of the people inside to indicate their position.

Augmented by Alexa, Reach dumped two shots low, rupturing the belly of a Marine and sending him sprawling against a wall. A third shot behind the man’s ear switched him from pain to prone as his life left with the snap of the muzzle. Brody swept to the other side of the room, savaging the other Marine in a hail of rocket-propelled razor blades that tore through clothing, armor, and flesh to paste the man into the floor.

“Technician ahead,” Alexa signaled.

Brody and Reach emptied their magazine into the man, dumping him into the chair at the desk. He rolled backward from the force of the impacts to collide with the glass partition allowing those working in this room to see into the power plant below.

“Changing mags,” Reach announced.

“Got you covered,” Brody confirmed as the barrels on his arm-mounted Gatling cannon spun in fits and starts to prime them for dumping kinetic swarms of violence from the business end.

“Jared?” Alexa called.

“I see it,” Reach said. “Brody, back out of the room.”

“Do we go on three? Or like one, two, three, and then go?” Brody asked.

Reach slipped around the door, leaving just enough of him and his rifle aimed into the room to cover his wingman. As the mist dissipated, the Model Thirty-Three in the chair became readily apparent as the target which had taken the brunt of the blast from both weapons. The armor was scarred up and savaged, perforated to the point where Reach wasn’t sure that they’d destroyed it. Say what you will about RUPAC and their policies. They did build solid weapons and gear.

Brody backed out of the room and was just about to step through the hatch when the mech’s eye slit went from grey to glowing red. The AI froze as he stared at the mech coming back online.

“Brody, we presume. That would probably mean that Jared Reach is close by and using that trick he does of hiding like a Bangora. Nicely done.”

“So who are you supposed to be, w-want-to-be John Matrix?” Brody said, mocking the man’s German accent.

“Alexa, I need to know where the technician is. Or is this the technician?” Reach asked.

“Definitely not,” She answered. “He’s still working to undo what we did to the system and the Station AI is showing him as connected via terminal, but it won’t show me which one. I think he linked to the Model Thirty-Three android as a way to work two stations at once. Interesting tactic.”

More of the smoke dissipated, showing the office as a massive server room with rows of computer modules stacked into racking. Flickering lights snapped on and off through the center, despite the entire affair now being coated in a fire retardant foam. Beyond, enough of the fog had sloughed off the glass behind the broken mech that Brody could see into the power plant below. A large cylindrical structure was built into the wall with two immense metal tubes being fed by heavy cables about the room situated on either side. Alexa marked the central hub as the reactor and the two other devices as capacitors being fed from tidal energy generators outside the station.

“With advanced artificial intelligence and a slew of incredible minds all working toward a world under a unified banner, we are very sad to see that you used such pedestrian methods to try for the station. Today has been a real disappointment,” the robot mocked.

“Why? Because you didn’t get to k-kill everyone?” Brody mocked back. “Actually, I know the feeling.”

“He is close by. I am almost through the filters he is using to hide himself,” Alexa said.

The light strip on the Model-33’s face plate flickered. Its head lolled for a moment before returning to its position to stare at Brody backing from the room.

“No. A disappointment as we won’t be able to re-educate you into the Regime. What glory we could have had if we’d had you and your androids by our side. Pity.”

The mech in the chair detonated, blowing out the observation window and decimating the computer stations throughout the room. Brody was thrown into the wall by the force of the blast. He cracked the stone wall and fell to the floor in a heap of broken armor and debris. The shock wave tore through the room in a frenzied gale that swept the rest of the fire suppressant from the hall.

Reach took hold of the drag handle on the back of Brody’s armor to pull him from the rubble to a seated position beside him. The front of the armor was blackened by the explosion with multiple puncture points from fragmentation. A long spidery crack traced its way across his helmet visor, making the robot look more like the storied Master Chief from his father’s favorite video game franchise. “Hey, bro! You still with us?”

“Multiple failure points, Citizen. Mobility c-compromised. Structural integrity, structural integrity, I am a meat popsicle.”

“Alexa,” Reach whispered.

“Found him. He’s inside the maintenance dive silo just down the hall, but he’s submerged.”

“Go!” Brody screamed to his friend. “Get to the choppah!”

Reach bounded up, rotating the lugs of his friend’s helmet out of position to remove it from the torso.

“Hey! When that nice commie lady ran from the P-Predator, she didn’t take Dutch Matrix’s head with her, pal!”

“Got an idea, bro. All of you in the helmet?”

“All the parts you really need, baby,” Brody said in his best sultry blues singer voice.

“Aha. Alexa, I need a four one one on what that tool is doing at the bottom of the shaft.”

“Heh.” Brody chuckled. “He said sh-shaft.”

Alexa pushed an information burst into Reach, nearly causing him to stumble as his brain struggled to make sense of the immense upload on the run. “The short version is that he’s trying to circumnavigate the controls we have in place to keep him from overloading the reactor. He’s also trying to spin up the DSRV on the sub-level to dock in the moon pool. But the most worrisome thing is he’s trying to gain access to the communications array.”

“He looking to call Rykov for help?” Reach asked.

“Negative. He’s putting in a command directive for the Medusa Whales.”

“Now that just sounds like it w-would suck,” Brody said.

“Sergeant Tran, it’s Reach. We got sandbagged by the technician. He blew up a Model Thirty-Three and blew Brody to hell. I’m moving through the station back toward you on my way to the dive silo. Can you clear me a path through?”

“You have a straight path, LT! I’ll also deploy two of my guys to give you a hand. I just need to know where you want him.”

“Negative. I only need one. Info to you on the bounce. Reach out.”

His body accelerated, boots slamming the deck plating so fast it sounded more like an engine than a man running on metal grating. He dodged through twists and turns in the passage, toward the sound of gunfire where the Rangers were mopping up resistance on this level. Curiosity caught him, and he sifted through the feeds to see that Cobey’s Wolverines had secured the sub dock as well as all the technicians escaping the lower levels. Several RUPAC Marines had also been taken prisoner when the Osay assault force decided they’d had enough of their antics and went into the levels after them. There were several injuries among the Osay, but as long as this psychopath didn’t blow up the station, they’d all make it out.

Bullets whizzed past his head as he passed the intersection beyond the barracks. The Rangers were in an all-out beat down of the remaining Model Fifty-Four pilot and his security element. Three Marines against a squad of Rangers. Unless they were clever beyond measure, they were about to get their clocks cleaned.

Control protocols blazed through Reach’s mind as he left the combat behind. Ahead of him, the doors to the dive silo shunted open, exposing a shaft that was submerged below this level. Reach launched himself from several meters away, his mind rapidly calculating the math that told him where and how much push to throw into the jump. The enhanced human with a head full of AI and carrying a football full of his friend launched into the shaft and fell through the opening in the catwalk to the water below.

26

“Wasn’t the shaft you were s-supposed to jump into, like, back that way?” Brody’s football of a helmet asked.

“It is, but all the good stuff is this way,” Reach said. Hitting the water from high up for a Marine like him was second nature. Deploying from the gunwale of a boat, dropping from a helocast, or parachuting into the ocean were all situations he’d been in as part of a unit consistently assigned to work beside Marine Corps Special Operations. As the water brought him into a tumble with his back facing the bottom of the silo, he unclipped the restraints keeping his swim fins wrapped around his calves to slip his feet into.

Furious kicks brought him to speed as he rocketed toward the bottom of the silo. With each level he passed, he could feel the pressure trying to exert itself on his frame while his armor fought back, using the onboard environmental systems to argue against the ocean. He reached the bottom of the silo and ratcheted open the hatch. Powerful strokes with his fins sailed him through the opening and toward the ceiling to recover the stolen rocket rifles he’d secured to the pipe rigging before they’d climbed out of the water.

Quick snaps with his knife, and he had the weapons free of the restraints he’d used to tie them in place. He collected all four rifles and wrapped them together with another cable tie.

“Well, I guess that was a b-bit of forethought on your part, Citizen! Who’d have guessed we’d be back here so soon?”

“The technician had the same thought I had. If we had to ditch back into the water, we’d have weapons already configured while our enemy would have to rig troops to adapt to the pressure. That’s why he was using the bot protected by those two Marines upstairs while he ran a terminal downstairs. We could definitely smash one, but we’d have to pressurize troops to go after him in the water. What he didn’t see coming is that we have you, and we have armor that lets us deal with the deep to a certain extent.”

“We did drop awfully deep, awfully fast,” Brody noted.

Reach darted into the sub launch, making his way to the remaining Model Fifty Fours hanging from the rigging on the wall. “Yeah, if it weren’t for what Doc Roman did to me on the Boone, I’d probably have the bends right now.”

“That doesn’t sound so b-bad.”

“It is,” Reach said flatly. He disconnected the latching lugs on the armor’s helmet and held on tight as the pop of atmosphere escaped from inside the suit. With the helmet removed, he set aside the dome and placed Brody’s helmet inside. With Alexa guiding his hands, Reach pulled an attaching plate from the back of the armor, separating a spinal junction from the struts and inserting it into Brody’s helmet along the programming pins set under the foam insert.

“Hey, just connect me. But don’t get any c-commie juice on anything officially Brody,” the android complained. “Last time, I had to have dad d-dig all of that RUPAC glory garbage out by hand!”

“We’re being careful,” Reach assured him.

“Hey, now you sound just like the technician engineer g-guy,” Brody noted.

“Oh crap!” Reach said as Alexa replayed the conversation between Brody and the technician back through their shared link. Having access to processor speeds bordering on science fiction while Alexa shared his link, allowed the former Marine to play back the interactions with the engineer in fractions of a second. There was never any mention of “I” doing something when the man spoke. It was always “we.”

Alexa and Reach said it at the same time—“He’s rigged with a combat controller!”

“Oh! What’s with all the people lately sharing space in th-their brain case?”

Reach finished the attachment and then rigged the helmet onto the rearmost strut in the armor so it would stay in place. “Hey, bud. This system runs a sensor suite like the Model-Thirty-Fives, so you’re going to have a perimeter-style view of things versus a focused one.”

“I c-can make the dream a reality, Citizen,” Brody answered.

“Alright. Here we go. Purging armor and booting up control systems,” Reach said.

The armored arms flexed and rotated in their housings as the internal compartment purged the seawater. Servo motors echoed in the muffled liquid-filled space of the DSRV launch as Brody pushed himself free of the rigging.

“Hey, who has two thumbs and loves rocket rifles?” Brody asked. “This guy!” The war machine flashed his newly acquired thumbs and pointed to his chest plate.

Reach placed a rifle in each hand and magnetically clipped extra magazines to the armor’s rigging belt. “How do you feel, buddy? Everything operational?”

“Crush your enemies, s-see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the commies!”

“He’s good,” Reach confirmed. “Alexa, is our guy in the drink?”

“He is. Corporal Day and his acquired power armor will emerge through the moon entrance in twenty seconds.”

“Th-that is awfully specific, sis,” Brody commented. “Oh, and there he is.”

The sound of the water jet propulsion pack on the back of the armor squealed into the chamber a half second before Corporal Day rose into the DSRV bay. He reversed the thrust on the suit to keep himself from crashing into Reach and dousing the man in a rush of bubbles from angling thrusters.

“Sorry about that, LT. First time with my new fins,” Day said.

Reach held up a Gyro-Pack rifle. “Did Alexa explain everything to you on the bounce?”

“Sure did, LT. That for me?”

With a nod, Reach handed the man the weapon and spare magazines, before darting off back through the hatch. Furious kicks against his fins rocketed the former Marine through the level at a pace normally reserved for things that had permanent fins. He clamored to the maintenance silo, whirling on the door to secure the hatch. Explosive motions pushed him upward through the water to the level where he slapped open the next hatch to the observation deck.

“Alexa, how’re we looking?” Reach asked.

“According to the system, the technician, whose name is Zaitsev, has already launched the submarine to the DSRV dock on his side of the facility and is priming the last bits of the reactor to go critical. At least that’s what he thinks is happening.”

In his HUD, Reach tried to focus on the swim ahead of him instead of the overlay off to the side showing his location in relation to the hatch. “Are the scripts you keyed in earlier duping him?”

“They are so far. I just linked to Lieutenant Cobey, who confirms both recon subs are still floating at the dock,” Alexa said.

“Any chance there’s more of them?” Reach inquired.

Alexa traced schematics along the edge of Jared’s consciousness. “The station logs list two recon subs and two Type Fifteen-Hundred submarines as the only submersibles built for the station.”

While pulling along rigging on the walls to increase his speed as he pushed himself to swim faster, Reach nearly collided with the wall while making a turn through an intersection. He rebounded off the surface to race toward the dive silo where Zaitzev was working his craft.

“Alexa, cycle me through all the vision modes we have in my head and let me know if you see anything,” Reach asked.

“Nothing ahead,” she confirmed.

Reach took hold of the hand wheel for the hatch. “So far, he’s rigged mines and worked through androids that blow up. I know he’s going to have some way of trapping the hatches to either warn him that we’re coming or do us harm.”

“Or both,” Alexa added. “The conductive properties of the water inside a confined space like the silo would make it too dangerous for him to use explosives inside.”

“Sonic disruptors maybe? But depending on the type and range to the hatch, he could get caught in it, too.”

“Unless the combat controller AI learned a trick or two from us.”

Reach tapped the side of his helmet as a callback to some of his first interactions with Alexa. “He’s going to shut off his pain receptors like you did for me when we fought the first T-774 that ever shot at us.”

“We could task our forces above to check the silo for IEDs,” Alexa suggested.

“No time. He’s going to break through those codes and blow the station. Shut me off, and let’s get in there.”

* * *

Reach flung open the hatch to the maintenance silo and swam inside. Sonic weapons pulsed through the water, curling him into the fetal position from the pain. Caught in the digital trigger, three fixed position projectors broadcast microwaves through the water to intersect right where he had entered at the level above his target.

On the silo floor, Zaitsev plugged away at a workstation console, using a holographic interface inside the Model Fifty-Four’s HUD. Orbiting around him were two of Brody’s Salad Eels. The grotesquely large creatures were roiling around his feet as if some law of nature kept them in a perpetual motion like a lava lamp or one of those old-time Slinky’s that would continually tumble down the stairs as long as there were stairs to tumble down.

Reach floated through the pain-inducing field like a fish caught in a net.

“As we said earlier, Mr. Reach,” Zaitsev began, “we were very disappointed in today’s events. We expected more from you. At least show up with an armada or something fun. Instead, you stole our boat, swam in, and flooded the bathroom. You get points for swimming out there with all the monsters and tricking me with the base AI. But, earthquake flooding?”

“You’re only saying that because you just now figured it out, dickhead,” Reach half said, half screeched through the pain.

“Well, that’s most annoying.” Without looking in Reach’s direction, the gangly engineer waved a hand toward him and wiggled his fingers as though he were typing. The sonic disruptors powered down, leaving the Osay’s favorite adopted son to float in the center of the silo. “Of course, if you try anything, I’ll have my pets tear you apart.”

“What are you doing?” Reach asked through the technician’s radio band while trying to catch his breath.

“We can’t drive you out of the station, and we can’t leave you to control it, so up it goes,” the technician said with a flourish. “We have been the Director of Operations here for Station Six anytime we were up from cryo. Then along comes that Federova bitch, and suddenly I’m taking orders from her. We went down periscope to avoid her until something finally decided to eat her.”

A warning klaxon sounded loud enough to be heard from the water as blaring rotating yellow lights flashed along the surface of the silo.

“And there’s our cue. Time for us to leave, Mr. Reach. We’d offer for you to come with, but you’d try some American cowboy nonsense once we were clear from the station, and that just doesn’t work for us. Rykov has positioned us to be lead science director for relocation operations stemming from Amir, so we can’t afford to take chances. Speaking of which, since we can’t fully trust the base AI, how many of your friends are beyond that door?”

Reach answered like Brody would have. “Yippee kai yay, bitch.”

Zaitsev turned his mouth down in sour dissatisfaction. “Of course. Before we go, Mr. Reach, one last question. Why did you not enter the silo with that annoying camouflage you use so much?”

Reach’s answer was full of menace. “Because we came in hopes that you could be reasoned with. You don’t sneak up on someone to reason with them. But then you used your cattle prod on me, so now you get what you get.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Reach. We won’t be meeting again,” Zaitsev said. The projectors fired up again, sending their pain-lancing waves into Reach as he floated. As the RUPAC technician was about to leave, something about his hovering prisoner caught his attention. Reach wasn’t writhing in agony as was the usual response to low-grade microwaves activating the central nervous system to simulate being caught in fire. He was floating and facing Zaitsev as though he could rush him at any moment.

The speakers in Zaitsev’s helmet cracked with the static of the radio being broadcast and filtered through millions of gallons of liquid. Reach’s form shifted from his white and grey tiger-striped armor to a deep shadow that ripped all the light into it like a vampire savaging a neck. The flashing warning lights cascaded in waves of intense brilliance followed by darkness as they spun, making Reach’s Bangora shadow all the more terrifying to look at. “This is the part where you run, little rabbit.”

Overconfidence borne of being a chief intellect among soldiers dissipated as he was no longer protected by his men. He was the zookeeper on the wrong side of the fence, and the animals he’d been poking just decided to teach him a lesson about the natural order, or lack thereof.

Reach’s shadow disappeared from its spot in the silo, and the creatures coiled around Zaitsev shot into the expanse at the threat. In the heartbeat between Reach vanishing and the savage eels lashing out, all the lights in the silo shut down.

Zaitsev flared his water jets to push him closer to the door. He disconnected the tripwire on the hatch and worked the hand wheel. He rigged the doors in the silo with sonic disruptors and kept the eels close at hand in the event they tried to field androids against him.

The Americans had become incredibly adept at working with the machines in a stunningly short period of time, and the fact that they’d captured Station Five and its legion of robots was another reason they needed to wipe that group off the map. There would be no peace on Amir with the Americans and their constant rabble on about freedom and liberty. Only through strict control could the peace be kept. Generations of RUPAC out in space had proven this, and Zaitsev would sit as proof of the concept as lead scientist on Amir.

But first he had to get out of the silo and away from the enhanced American. If the rumors were true, even in Amphibious Combat Armor and aided by chipped Amiri eels, there was every chance that he was outmatched against this particular foe.

A bundle of something struck his shoulder as the armor’s helmet dome changed optics to see in the silo now devoid of any light. Viscous wisps of tattered flesh coalesced all around him as he searched for the shadow. He pulled off whatever stringy bits of tissue surrounded him to find it was segments of his eel torn from wherever the rest of it was. He batted it away to place himself against the silo bulkhead so that Reach couldn’t sneak up behind him. Complex search algorithms in the combat controller AI worked across the watery dive tower until it found the shadow struggling with an eel on the dry catwalk more than four levels above them.

Reach had dragged the creature completely out of the water and was holding it through its gills, watching it suffocate in the cool, dry air of the station. He let his camouflage drop long enough to aim his helmet at the man at the bottom of the silo to let him see. To let him know. Zaitsev was a fish swimming beside sharks who paid him no mind as long as he stayed away from the teeth.

Reach dropped the eel and brought the shifting darkness of the Bangora camouflage back online. He struck the pool a half second after the fish, where the water deepened the darkness and made him harder to locate. The fish instantly swam to its master as the controller AI continued to feed it commands to protect Zaitsev. The combat armor turned back to the door, the metal creaking as the technical director playing soldier in a Marine exoskeleton tried forcing the hatch open. Either they’d welded it at some point, or something massive was holding the portal closed.

Zaitsev swam to the next hatch up and nearly gasped for joy when the door came free. He slipped into the level and left the door open just long enough for his remaining bodyguard to pass through. They’d pioneered their animal harness technology after the breakthrough from the lab doing independent study under Station Four. He’d tried to steal their head researcher, Gruber, but the man wouldn’t leave his monkeys.

Zaitsev closed and sealed the hatch as the eel orbited around him. He was one level up from where he needed to be, and as long as he stayed moving and erratic to dodge Reach, there was a chance he could make it outside. Make it to the DSRV hatch.

The controller AI flashed a warning indicator across the armored screen in his vision. The reconnaissance submarine was signaling that it had made it to the DSRV launch, but the grapnel indicators were saying that it hadn't locked onto anything.

“Damn it!” Zaitsev shouted to his AI. “Check to see if it’s a faulty reading. If it reads correctly, back trace the fixes we did to the AI and let me know if everything is still in place.”

He activated the jets on his armor to sail through the passage on the way to the next maintenance silo. Low light vision and sonar tracing of his environment helped him to dodge the errant pieces of trash along with scattered bits of furniture or debris littering the way. Something caught along the seam of his helmet, nearly wrenching him in a wire-guided smash into the ceiling. The controller AI worked quickly to direct the animal to guide him back on course so he could right himself. A stray hanging wire from a bundle harness along the top of the passage had been the culprit to trip him up, although Zaitsev couldn’t recall seeing it.

“I’m getting sloppy because I’m not concentrating, and because we’ve taken our little AI hack on the road. Back traces?” Zaitsev asked.

“While I’ve continued to destabilize the reactor, I investigated the back trace on the scripts we wrote to fix AI deficiencies. They seem to be operating normally. However, I would suggest that if the AI wasn’t faulty and only made to seem that way, what we patched was merely a virtual machine installed to make us think we were dealing with a malfunctioning system.”

“We would have spotted a VM as such.”

“Not if they took the entire system offline and supplanted it with their own. Our system was allowed to continue to run within theirs. We only saw what was in the box and never outside of it.”

Growling at the thought that some infantry monkey had fooled him, he turned to resume his course when he couldn’t find the eel. The animal was nearly nine meters long and well over two hundred and twenty kilos. How did something that big disappear so quickly? After whirling about and looking into the passages he’d come through, the eel slithered up behind him, looking no worse for wear.

“Where did it go?” Zaitsev asked the controller AI implanted in his neural chip.

“Indications suggest the enemy combatant covered its eyes and wrestled it away. This conclusion is based on our previous encounter and the video feed over the last few minutes is blank.”

“How?” Zaitsev demanded. “We were right next to it.”

The controller brought up a series of screens showing the animal’s vitals. “The eel has elevated heart rate and respiration. It is snapping its head back and forth looking for something. These are clear signs of fight-or-flight response. Something caused this, and I would once again suggest that it was the enemy combatant.”

The director powered up the armor’s water jets. “Either we move and live or remain and die.”

They sped through the passage, coming through the maintenance hatch opposite the one that wouldn’t open for him. He applied all the augmented strength from the combat controller AI flooding him with adrenaline and the suit savaging its power supply to push more strength into the struts. The hand wheel wouldn’t budge.

“We have to cut through the shield and go out through one of the observation windows,” Zaitsev said.

“Negative, Comrade. While the armored shutter would be incredibly difficult to cut with tools we have in the suit, the glass is nearly half a meter thick. It would take you hours to cut a hole big enough,” the AI argued. “Even if we recovered the mines, we would need all of them to break through. If they’ve welded the hatches on the dive towers, move to the stairwells. Those will be flooded as well but would be less likely as a target because it is not in proximity to the launches.”

“I have the feeling we’re being corralled.”

“This is also a possibility. Our best strategy at that point is to seed them the station and hide in one of the lesser used compartments. In order to keep control of the station, they’ll need to transfer personnel. You can make your escape during one of the shift changes.”

Zaitsev considered the AI’s advice. It was a smart plan. Let the situation diffuse itself and then sneak away in the confusion of the enemy taking command of the station. But in doing so, he’d allow the Americans control of a ballistic missile submarine, two strategic reconnaissance subs, and the work conducted over decades of oceanic research and development. With everything the Americans had taken thus far, leaving them in possession of Station-Six was not an option.

He swam to the stairwell, keeping the eel beside him and in full view, lest he get kidnapped again. Zaitsev was normally in control of every aspect of the station, and he couldn’t come to terms with the idea that since the Americans had stolen the ship, he’d been misled, subverted, and terrorized by some genetically altered man-ape.

He tapped along the control plate that ran the interlocking blast doors that shut down the stairs in the event of a hull breach. Designed to work under water, the link responded immediately, sending a cascade of bubbles into the passage as the doors vented and equalized to the watery passage he found himself in. The massive double doors slid apart to a wide entrance to a stairway leading up and down.

“I’m detecting no trip wires and no beam trips for the stairs, Comrade,” the AI signaled.

Zaitsev activated the thrusters in his armor to sail into the stairwell when he noticed another Model Fifty-Four on the landing below him. As reverse thrusters engaged to halt his momentum, a second armored trooper appeared on the landing above him. He spun to power out of the stairs when warning indicators blared through his helmet at the appearance of Jared Reach in the hall barring his way.

Staticky comms traffic burst the speakers in his helmet.

“Distance detonation settings locked. Firing,” Reach said.

The controller AI attempted to flood the water with a sonic disruptor burst while the armor unfurled its shoulder-mounted micro torpedoes. Trapped like a fish on a hook, Zaitsev frantically shuffled through control screens to keep his torpedoes from blasting back at him in the confined space, but the only thing he found was darkness.

27

“We got a heartbeat on this chum?” Reach asked as Collins worked on the technician.

“Yes, sir,” the Ranger medic said. “He’s pretty beat up though. You might not get much out of him after you guys dropped all those torpedoes in underwater close quarters. You’re lucky his brain isn’t leaking from his nose.” Collins pulled a black box from her aid bag. She attached several leads to the device and taped them around the skin where the RUPAC implant should be.

“What will be doing this box wire to his skull?” Sergeant First Class Smith asked.

“He’s got an AI in his implant. We’re going to copy it and then delete the one in the chip,” Reach said to the Osay platoon sergeant.

“Why for do this?” Smith continued.

Reach switched to the native Osay language, which Smith more readily responded to. The man had an implant and could understand English well enough but preferred to speak the language he grew up with. “Think of the AI like a cheap Alexa. If we pull it from him, we can find out what it knows and use that to gain more control over the station and what he was doing here.”

“Makes sense,” Smith snarled. “Makes more sense to just shoot him and feed him to the eels.”

“We’re not there yet,” Reach said. Looking around the sub dock, things seemed to be in order with Cobey and his guard dog, Sergeant Smith running the show. They’d worked hard and fast to correct their mistakes during their fight with the RUPAC Marines. The only option the Wolverines allowed themselves was to turn the tide for the protection of the RUPAC science staff while killing or capturing any hostiles that came their way.

Several meters off, the gargantuan Type 1500 Submarine remained moored to the dock with the smaller two scout subs secured to the other slips. As the water lapped against the sides of the bay, Reach wondered about the technical ability and the manpower required to build something like this straight into the ocean floor. The roof over their head was massive, with the entire dock being longer than a couple of football fields.

“Jared, sorry to interrupt your musings on American sports arenas, but we should get to the Controller AI,” Alexa said.

“Got it.” He walked away from the edge of the dock to kneel next to PFC Collins. “I have Alexa ready to transfer. You got that thing all hooked up?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Leads are in place and ready to copy the AI to the box.”

Reach took control of the black box from Collins, sliding the selector lever to ‘on’ as the box powered up its front-facing screen and control indicators. The display danced through a series of scrolling numbers until it all vacated to make room for a Roman Industries logo. Reach laughed as they were years from home on their fastest starcraft and the good doctor was still concerned with branding. Better to claim something as yours now than have to fight to prove it later.

“This is the part where the TPM will map the AI before the transfer,” Alexa said.

The device reminded Reach of an old power brick for a laptop, except stippled, with a screen on one side. He rolled it over in his hands to see if there was anything else special about it, or if it was just a long black box with a screen. “TPM?”

Inside Jared’s head, Alexa worked the device to ensure the AI wasn’t damaged in some way after suffering the onslaught of a CQB underwater explosion. “TPM stands for Transfer Protocol Module. Doctor Roman created these as a way to safely rescue AI architecture from damaged systems that couldn’t broadcast. It also helped us to pirate the copy of Master Sergeant Keir we have on hand as well as sample the other controller AIs from the RUPAC Ghosts that assaulted Camp Ohio Craiswell.”

“Oh yeah, those guys,” Reach commented. “One of them messed me up pretty good. I assumed they were regular soldiers in Ghost gear. Broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder I suffered were a big red flag that I might have been wrong.”

Brody’s Herculean power armor walked to Reach, carrying his more recognizable frame over his shoulder. “Man, was that some sort of s-somethin? I mean, we had the g-guy dead to rights, and he goes all attack-mode on us. Who does th-that?”

“Someone with nothing left to lose,” Jared said.

“Yeah, I suppose when you’re a commie on the l-losing side, you eventually figure out what's up. Next time learn to work the safety with your punk ass!” Brody shouted at the unconscious man while pointing at him.

The black box pinged to indicate the controller AI was intact and operational inside the heavily concussed skull of one Science Director Zaitsev. Luckily for him, the injuries he sustained were minor in comparison to what could have happened if he weren’t in the deep-sea armor. Automatic impact detection along gyro-sensors that registered anything faster than a certain level of acceleration braced the pilot’s head and neck to suspend it from the type of injuries one might get in a torpedo-powered garbage disposal.

Brody was just about to walk away from the little gathering over the pulverized technician when he reversed direction. Pressing his gauntlet-clad thumb straight into his chest plate, he followed the move with an open hand to where an ear would be. “Is someone transmitting?”

“What did we miss?” Reach asked.

Alexa took control from Reach, tearing through screens and mountains of data faster than he could follow. She ripped the leads free from the TPM and slid it back behind them as she forced Jared to his feet. Using his body like a marionette, she nabbed PFC Collins by the drag handle hard enough to send her sprawling away from her patient. In response to the lieutenant jumping backward, the Wolverines snapped their weapons to the ready, taking care not to flag their allies as they looked for whatever threat had spooked the normally rock-steady lieutenant.

“You want to clue us into what’s doing, Lieutenant, or are you going to have us pointing guns at each other?” Lieutenant Cobey asked.

Instead of Reach answering, Zaitsev snapped into a seated position as though launched into it by a springboard. He tore through buckles and strapping on the field expedient litter brought out from the submarine as though they were no more than a blanket he was throwing off to get out of bed. As he freed himself from the restraints, he took notice of Collins kneeling close by with her sidearm aimed in such a way as to permanently cure him of his concussion.

“Impressive, Private First Class Collins.” Zaitsev sat up. “I don’t have long before this man’s injuries force me to lie back down, so I’ll be brief. There is enough space in one of the reconnaissance submarines for your little band to leave the station and return to the mainland. I will provide you a pilot and let you off at the beach if you will leave the station now.”

“And if we decide your ass is worthy of n-nuthin short of a beat down?” Brody said. He shrugged off his old shell to the floor, slapping a closed fist into his other hand. “Oh, man. My b-bad, other Brody.”

“Then I will do the same thing I did to that traitorous pilot, Lieutenant Bautista. I’ll activate the copies of myself I just loaded into the sovereign Regime citizens you’re placing aboard the submarine. They’re not broken like this body is. With a single ping, they’ll rip this dock to shreds with you on it. You have ten seconds to form your answer.”

“He steals our shit. Kidnaps J-Julie. He shoots at my wife. We beatin’ him down. We beatin’ him down!”

“Tell me, does the machine speak for…” Zaitsev dropped to the deck like a puppet with its strings cut. The formerly chatty AI running a mouth that didn’t belong to him had been terminated without so much as a battle.

“That AI was very full of himself, and I hope no one disagrees with my decision to shut him down?” Alexa asked through Reach.

“As long as we follow it up w-with some good ol’ Kentucky-fried commie beat down.”

Cobey whistled to get Reach’s attention. “Wolverines were loading the last of the prisoners into the escape vehicle on the big sub. Four RUPAC Marines became hostile. My boys shot two of them, but the other two got away. Ivan is working with the platoon to isolate them now.”

“What is that AI going to pull?” Reach echoed into the link to Alexa.

“First thing’s first. Brody, onto the Type Fifteen Hundred for security,” Alexa directed. “We may be in need of your new Marine abilities.”

“Does this m-mean I get a Marine tab?”

“Did we not just talk about this?” Reach asked as he bounded away. Bouncing a signal through the link to Cobey, he said, “I’m going into the sub. Let your squads know I’m coming in!”

Devouring the space between the security element and the boat, Alexa drove Reach’s body onto the deck. Brody landed beside him with a Gyro-Pack rifle at the patrol ready while another was magnetically locked to his back. With one armed with the aquatic projectiles while the other had atmospheric weapons loaded into the mag, Brody was hedging his bets against all comers.

“You look swole, Brody,” Reach said through the link.

“Do I l-look cool now?” Motors in motion sounded as Brody positioned the Marine combat armor into the very picture of a statuesque defender.

“Brody, we need you to secure the deck in case one of the AI-assisted Marines assaults from the divers’ hatch,” Alexa said. She didn’t wait for his response as she throttled Reach onto the ladder for the fin. He chewed through the rungs until he was up and over the top onto the bridge. When they reached the top, she ceded control back to her body’s original owner.

“Wolverines. Friendly up top, one coming in!” Reach shouted.

“Bring it, sir!”

With hands and the insteps of his boots pressed against the outsides of the ladder, Reach slid down into the passage just outside the control room. “This passing control of my body back and forth is getting easier. It’s like we know when the other wants to take control.”

“Taking some cues from how the cybernetically enhanced RUPAC used their Controller AIs,” Alexa began, “I was able to write new routines to map how your decision tree functions to better work within the framework of our partnership dynamic.”

“Alexa, are you telling me you wrote an OODA Loop friendship script?” Reach asked.

“As any of the Rangers would say at a moment like this, c’mon, bro.’”

Armored boots struck the bottom of the decking as Reach held onto the ladder for support. “Just don’t tell Liana we were having this much fun.”

“Your secret is safe with me, Jared.”

At the top was a Wolverine NCO. “Lieutenant Reach. Sergeant Hassum, 1st squad, Wolverines.”

Reach patted the man on his shoulder as they walked to a briefing table at the back of the compartment. Shanghai Ivan appeared on his pedestal beside the fixture, his display near as it was the last time Reach had been on board, that of a square-jawed Russian male with ice blue eyes and a near-permanent sneer across his mouth. As they watched the hologram solidify, some striking differences appeared on the projection. He was now wearing an eyepatch, and instead of the trademarked Ivan crew cut, the AI sported a bandanna tied tightly around his head.

“Brody,” Reach huffed to himself.

“At least he is persistent,” Alexa affirmed. “My brother has a definite sense of style.”

Switching to the Osay language, Reach addressed the Wolverine squad leader. “Tell me what you got.”

“Thank the ancestors you speak Osay. The Craiswells chose you well, sir.” While Reach continued to focus on the giant screen that was the information table, Hassum continued, “Sir, we had four of the Marines go from compliant to defiant and try to fight for our weapons. One is KIA, and the other is being treated by our medic. The other two managed to wrestle away pistols and make their way into the ship. Ivan has the sub locked down, but they keep slipping past us somehow.”

“Maintenance ducts,” Reach said.

Shanghai Ivan anticipated the man’s request and brought up a schematic. Pages of blueprints for the submarine flashed by until it halted on a section of the ship one deck below them. “There, we have a security intrusion on this deck. All of the interface terminals are active, Comrades. Someone enters a line of code, and then the systems shut down again. I cannot find the specific system they are accessing. Then the intrusion jumps to the deck we are on and enters more lines of code.”

Inside Reach’s head, Alexa poured streams of information into the link, bonding them together. He was bombarded with computer interface protocols, systems architecture, and coding procedures. Soon Reach’s mind was awash in the hows and whys networked systems operate the way they do.

“I’ll be damned,” Reach said out loud. “They’re using their own links as a mini-network. Slipping back and forth between operators, and then decks, they’re embedding lines of information into the system as junk code. But when they have it all in there, it will auto assemble and attempt to self-extract.”

Hassum turned his face up, confused. “I… don’t understand any of what you just said.”

Reach calmly explained. “When they’re done with the computers, they’ll force a missile launch inside the submarine dock to deny us the base. Everyone could escape into the facility and be safe, but the submarine we’re on and the ability to dock more would be scrubbed until we could find a way to rebuild it.”

“They want to cause a cave in,” Hassum said, taking the next step.

Reach focused as he sensed more than saw the information pouring from Alexa’s side of the link to give him all the information he needed to work with the Wolverines. “Alright, Alexa is working with Ivan right now to close down the power in the ship to a maintenance state and shut down all the computers talking to each other so they can’t launch the missiles. They’re going to lock up the sub so that the maintenance hatches are the only way through the decks. With how they are now, these RUPAC Marines are dangerous. Do you want to go up top while I try and flush them toward you or…”

“Let me stop you right there,” LT Hassum said. “The time for the Rangers doing everything and us waiting is over. We’re going.”

“Is that any way to address an officer, Sergeant?” Reach asked with a smile on his face, which was about to be covered in his helmet.

“Hard to tell the rank on that thing with the Bangora all over it, sir,” Hassum replied.

“Straight up the middle it is, then. Imaging on at all times, Wolverines. I want you to be able to see me so you don’t send bullets my way. You move in teams of two. Once they know we’re shutting it all down, they’re going to try something else. They don’t get off this boat.”

“Second squad is below securing the last of the RUPAC prisoners into the escape pod. I’ll relay everything to them, so as we move in, they move up.”

“Pincer,” Reach said to the Osay sergeant. “Good idea, but dangerous. Make sure that everyone checks their line of fire before swatting the trigger. It won’t do anyone any good to capture these broskis only to have the day end by us killing one of our own, you feel me?”

“They know their jobs, sir,” came the raspy voice at the end of a drop along the ladder. Sergeant Smith lowered the visor on his helmet to engage the imaging allowing him to see in low light and have a head’s up display that let him track Reach at all times.

“Good to have you, Top,” Reach said, taking the man’s hand.

“Too much talking, not enough shooting. Brody will teach you, eventually. At least you’re speaking like a proper Osay.”

Reach pried the maintenance hatch open in the passage just beyond the control room. “Going in. Brody, this could kick off any minute so keep those eyes peeled for any monkey business in the water.”

“J-just as long as you don’t start the killin’ without me.”

Reach rolled his eyes as he shut the hatch behind him. He powered the Bangora effect on his armor to become a creeping shadow along the wiring and bundles enclosed in the ducts. Location markers filled his HUD, displaying the positions of the Wolverines on multiple decks. The two-man teams were fanning out to create a virtual net of people. While the ship was too immense to cover by only a pair of squads plus a Smith and a Copiloted Reach, Alexa had mapped the most probable locations for the cypher team to make their movements out of the ship when away from the ducts.

“Coming out of the hatch on deck two,” Reach called into the comms. “Pinging my location now.”

The door swung open by only a sliver, allowing Reach just enough room to slide his armor through. He carefully shut the hatch with his audio sensors turned to max to make sure the latch closing didn’t give away his position to their targets. Exiting behind a ladder, he remained still as the lighting on the deck snapped off like a brownout in a city working its way block to block.

“Ivan is shutting down the last of the systems now. The Controller AI will lose power to the terminals any moment,” Alexa said through the link.

“Alexa, something is bothering me. Why tell us what he was going to do?”

If there was a digital equivalent to a sigh, Alexa made it through the link. “This AI has been around in one form or another for almost fifty years. It has worked through multiple hosts in the form of an onboard combat controller to their troops so they can do near to what we did during our first major encounter with the RUPAC. It is programmed with a bit of hubris so that instead of admitting defeat, it will chew through its soldiers until it can get some measure of the outcome it was commanded to achieve.”

Assisted by Alexa’s processing power and raw knowledge coursing through their link, Jared saw connections she was putting together as she continued to analyze the encounters from Reach’s memory. “He thought he could force our hand. But that Russian bravado programmed in didn’t factor that we would shut down the entire system. And if it did, it would ruin a backup plan to the backup plan if we came hunting.”

Images and memories flashed through his mind as Alexa worked the events of the last few hours through filters and algorithms Doctor Roman had hard coded to look for patterns as well as moments of insight and recognition.

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Reach asked.

“Yes. You’re going to need a bigger boat,” Alexa answered. “Let’s go.”

While they pondered the back channel schemes of insane androids stuffed into people’s heads against their will, those same pattern recognition algos framed a section of piping along the stretch of passage behind them. A shadow struggling to remain small against the titanic framework of the Type Fifteen Hundred crawled along the bulkhead until it nestled into some rigging just before the entrance to the engineering section.

“Sergeant Hassum, this is Reach. We have sighting of our first target. Pinging to you now.”

“Roger, LT. Pushing the info to the teams on this floor.”

“They’ll most likely head to the engineering room and attempt to get into the ducts there,” Alexa said. “That would give them a straight shot to the next deck.”

Reach broadcast Alexa’s insights to the squads, then curled up to keep an eye on the shadow for the approaching team.

“We have you spotted and surrounded,” came the voice that was gravelly and high-pitched enough to lead Reach to wonder how a kid barely into puberty had passed Dawson’s grueling basic training. Then he spotted the kid advancing up the passage. He was lanky but carried his armor and weapon well. The wingman on his off-handed side advanced just a bit back and on the opposite side of the passage to give the kid plenty of room to operate.

They got to the section where the shadow was nestled, aiming their rifles at the spot. The other member of the Osay team had a voice that sounded like it was used to yelling. He was raspy, but his tone carried all the way down the passage to where Reach, and by extension Alexa, was hiding. “Come out of there! Do it now!”

The shadow obeyed, moving to the center of the passage with her hands held above her head. The slender RUPAC Marine had an uncoiled ponytail that traced down her spine and came just past the center of her back. She had shucked her armor, probably to skin her way through the narrow confines of the duct work and was covered in a neoprene suit, not unlike a wetsuit. Each curve and highlight of a fit and trim body was on display in the tight-fitting uniform as she flared a hip just enough to make men their age think twice about bringing harm to such beautiful curves.

With the lighting to a minimum and looking through the low-light imaging in their helmets, there really wasn’t a good way to tell how she looked other than giving away their position by shining one of the flashlights pinned to the end of their weapons.

“We know you have a weapon. Take it out slowly. Thumb and forefinger, only. Place it on the deck over there,” The raspy Osay said. As he spoke, an app on a battle board he carried translated the speech into Russian.

The RUPAC Marine complied, pulling the weapon from where she’d stuffed it in the tight-fitting confines of her waistband. She turned to the side and bent over to set the weapon down, making sure the two boys had an ample view of the real estate as she did.

“Team Three, this is Reach. If you fall for this nonsense, getting shot by this woman is going to be the least of your problems. Stay where you are and do not approach her. Wait for the second team to back you up.”

As if coming out of a daze, the two Osay militiamen set their rifle stocks into the pocket of their shoulders. The lanky one knelt as he trained his weapon on the woman while the raspy one repositioned himself so he could get a better line of fire on their target.

The RUPAC Marine, and most likely the controller AI, picked up on the change in posture for the two soldiers. She changed her own by setting her feet wider apart, and while her hands were still above her head, from Reach’s vantage point, he could see that her fingers were resting on top of each other instead of being interlaced.

He set his rifle into the pit of his shoulder, switching from safe to single shot. He trained the weapon on the back of the woman’s skull in the event she tried to bring harm to either one of these boys before the Wolverine team could collapse on the position and use a two-team engagement method for securing a dangerous prisoner.

The attack didn’t come from the woman.

Stomping boots clacked along the decking behind Reach, whom his HUD identified as Team Two. The fire team had been positioned at the other end of the passage and were waiting in the event the Marine had gotten by Team three. As they closed on their target and radio chatter advised Team one to stay inside the engineering room, A pistol shot rang out behind the lanky and raspy troopers. The round struck lanky in the back of the helmet, spraying chunks of helmet and head onto the bulkhead. The kid stumbled forward, trying to keep his weapon trained on the prisoner despite being shot in the skull.

The Osay breed them tough.

Recognizing the threat, the raspy soldier dropped to his back. Now facing the direction of the shot, he fired three single rounds toward the trajectory where he thought the attack to his wingman might have come from. Rounds pinged and whistled through the passage as the soldier barked shots from the MCX Spear rifle.

The female Marine was already groping for the pistol she set down when Reach shot her. The suppressor barely snapped as the deadly caseless round punched through her shoulder and plastered her into the deck. Beyond the prone Wolverine, Reach caught sight of the other Marine the Controller AI had managed to load a clone into before Alexa had pulled the leads from the TPM module. The clever AI had siphoned power from the connection to power an upload of its digital spores into the waiting links of the captured RUPAC Marines. Alexa had sensed the power drain from the module and yanked the leads before it could infect any more than it already had. By playing possum, no one had been the wiser as the controller AI spread like a virus. The remaining RUPAC ducked from the rounds being sent his way and fired a few of his own before running back into the passage toward the maintenance duct that he’d come from.

“Team Eight, this is Reach. Enemy combatant heading your way. Closing on your position!”

Reach’s Bangora shadow raced down the hall, becoming solid so the Wolverine Trooper on the floor could see him. He knelt to take lanky’s pulse. The boy was alive, but his scalp was pouring blood through the grating like it was there to strain it all.

“Hey, bud. Your friend needs you to cover down on this wound.” Reach helped up the downed militiaman, pushing him over to his friend.

Without further instruction, he went to work on the side of the man’s head, pulling medical kits and dressings from their sterile packs to keep the red on the right side of his skin. In a rush that would have made Sergeant Dawson proud, the incoming team split the duties between them. One of the soldiers, a powerfully built woman that looked more like a ranch hand than a trooper, knelt down in the passage to aim her rifle to where the assailant had gone. Her partner, another young man who looked like he too enjoyed tossing around hay and livestock for fun, dropped beside raspy to splay out his medical kit in a bid to save the kid’s life.

“I’m moving down the passage, Trooper,” Reach told the formidable-looking woman.

“Got you covered,” she barked.

Reach ran down the hall, igniting the camouflage to blend into the shadows and creases of a ship drenched in the darkness of emergency power. After opening the hatch, he descended into the duct work and vanished toward the deck below. As the cover shut behind him, a set of eyes peered from behind a portal to survey both sides of the passage before slithering into the next batch of shadows.

28

Two Marines ran down the passage on their way to the ladder for the next deck. The screeching of their leather gloves and boots sliding down the rigging announced their trip down the hole until their boots did the same for making contact with the grating. The shadow stayed low along the deck, moving from hatch to hatch until it was in sight of the control room. After slipping through the portal into the space beyond, the specter crouched behind a workstation that dealt with atmosphere monitoring and control.

“I am sorry that my Rupick is not so much good. You have to for me settle on speak the Brody. You like for to come out of there. I see you,” Sergeant Smith said. The heavy stomp of his boots on the ladder from the deck below played out like a requiem bell. With each stomp, the imposing Osay climbed into the compartment between the shadow and escaped through the bridge.

The shadow behind the workstation coalesced into a lithe, athletic man in the neoprene dive suit of a RUPAC amphibious security trooper. “We think that our English is good enough that we can deal with one another. Do you plan to stop us?”

“Bautista is good people. She want no part of you because you force and no ask. I figure, Marine boy same same. I figure, I dig you pull from boy head and throw stomp you with my boot.”

“Just you? Do you even know what you’re up against?”

Smith huffed. “Ghost sergeant said same same. He go made crawl away. I took his scalp.”

“The Osay hunter that bested Master Sergeant Keir? Impressive even though he was injured,” the AI said. “Too bad for you. We’re not him.”

The Marine jumped the station, dumping rounds from his stolen pistol toward the Osay platoon sergeant. Smith dove to the deck, pulled his own pistol, and sent hot lead sailing across the deck grating. One of the bullets tore through the young man’s calf, pounding the leg backward and spilling him into the grating eye to eye with his adversary. Smith rolled away behind the console as the kid, undeterred by the wound, continued to fire paced shots into the space where the Osay had been a moment before.

A metal thunk sounded behind the kid. He turned in time for a flash bang grenade to go off several feet from where he was lying. The noise and blinding flash of the Osay sergeant’s unexpected munition violated the AI-enhanced Marine into a tortured shout.

Whether the scream was from the kid or the AI, Smith didn’t care. He rose from his spot on the deck and made a show of pulling the wicked knife from its spot on his kit. The gleaming blade, a relic of the original settlers that had come aboard the ship that crash landed on Amir, was more machete than knife and more than wicked in the hands of the Osay soldier.

As the controller AI stabilized both the Marine’s equilibrium and senses, he also shot up from his position on the deck to see the savage weapon in the barbarian’s hand. He dumped another two rounds toward the sergeant, sending him flying back below the console. Measured, targeted gunfire toward Smith’s position barked from the Marine’s weapon along a limping, blood-soaked path toward the ladder leading to the bridge at the top of the submarine’s fin. Each ejection of brass was another bullet fired to keep the savage behind cover while also a sign of the impending depletion of the Marine’s ammunition.

He scrambled up each rung of the ladder, stopping halfway up to fire another shot toward his attacker. The pistol’s slide locked back to the rear and he flung it away, choosing to put everything this body had left to give to get outside. All he had to do was open the hatch at the top, and the Americans were done for. A few more rungs and they would be broken at the bottom of the ocean.

He swung the hand wheel open to the first barrier, using the strength of a fit Marine’s upper body to push himself completely through the hatch. Below him, Smith jumped on the ladder with a resounding clang that reverberated in the hatch above him. He slammed the portal closed, sealing the pressure door before climbing to the next ladder up.

A submarine fin, the sail-like portion on top of the boat, was a complex mechanism that served many functions aboard craft of this type. While very small submarines contained a single pressure hatch to promote entry and exit of the vehicle, the towering nature of an attack submarine sail meant that it would need multiple measures to seal the space in the event of a torpedo strike. Built with a series of compartments leading to the bridge at the top of the structure meant that even damaged, the ship could still submerge to protect itself.

Sailing through the next few hatches was much easier as the Americans and their little band of primitives let their overconfidence show. The Controller AI puppeteering a Marine climbed toward the last few rungs while broadcasting a series of micro-burst transmissions. He reached the top, carefully looking through the space to make sure they hadn’t posted a guard in the event of his escape. Below him, the hatches he’d sealed were sounding the mechanisms to let the savage up and after him. It was only a matter of time before he had no choice but to fight the man if he remained.

Pressed against the top of the sail to minimize his profile, the controller AI slithered the Marine over the edge of the fin. He swiveled so that he was hanging with his feet toward the water. A push from the hull of the craft, and he’d be able to jump far enough away to land in the water below. Now that the signal had been sent, he had precious little time to get into one of the recon submarines to make his escape.

A massive gauntlet stretched out of nowhere to snap onto the man’s wrist, arresting his leap into the ocean.

“T-taking a dip?” Brody held the soldier as if he were a rag doll. “Y-you know, you guys took for-ev-ah to make the climb out of that sub. I r-ran out of fish to shoot.”

The Marine twisted in Brody’s grip and smacked at the air, knocking off Brody’s Ghost camouflage. The poncho fell away toward the side of the sub, landing on the top of the water to float on the gently lapping waves as they beat against the slip.

“C-commie scum! That is my f-formal poncho!”

The aqua-tank Model Fifty-Four Brody swung back toward the hatch and released the grip on the man’s hands so he’d sail back through the fin. The Marine latched onto the sides of the portal, arresting the fall that would most certainly have ruined him.

“W-well that’s no fun.” Brody jumped down to the bridge, nearly crushing the young Marine’s fingers on the side of the ladder. The force sent the Marine falling into the compartment below, where he was easily caught by a waiting Sergeant Smith.

Still, the Marine would not yield. Rapid fire strikes sailed in and around Smith’s plate carrier, plastering him on the side of the hull. Holding up his arms to protect his head and weather the storm like a boxer, Smith rocketed a boot straight into the man’s calf where he’d punched a bullet through earlier.

The Marine roared in pain as he lost his balance, falling away from the Osay fighter. With his back to the hull, Smith used all the leverage he had at his disposal combined with his considerable height and strength to shove the kid. The RUPAC trooper rebounded off the bulkhead and fell through the open hatch.

Halfway into the fall, he managed to sling an arm and some fingers into the rungs to stop him from crashing on the unforgiving structure of the fin. Pain wracked his body as he struggled to find some way, will, or method for making his escape. Rykov had to know what happened here. The man had to be told how the Americans had stolen the facility. Unlike the Regime, they favored stealth and vile, cowardly tactics over those of the might of a sovereign RUPAC fighting force. They would lose the facility, but in this, there was still a lesson for the Rykov to use against them.

Stabbing, searing pain washed through the Marine’s leg until the point where the controller AI shunted it away. Connected to his leg was the primal shadow that was most likely Jared Reach. The thing yanked him from the ladder to slam onto the decking before the last hatch to the submarine proper below. The shadow materialized to stand between the RUPAC soldier and any avenue of escape he thought he might have. The shadow stretched out his hand, and before the Controller AI could fathom what he was doing, he caught the wire-clad black AI transfer box they’d attached to him earlier.

Digital grit coughed from external speakers in Reach’s helmet. “I believe the words you used were, ‘they will rip this dock to shreds with you on it. I give you ten seconds to form your answer.’ Well, I’ll give you the same amount of time to call off the signal you just sent, and I won’t rip you from that kid’s skull.”

The Marine jumped straight up and kicked Reach directly into his chest plate. The force of the blow knocked the man back against the metal plating on the interior of the compartment. Reach recovered quickly, activating his Bangora camouflage to confound the man’s senses and soak up the AI’s computing power as it struggled to find what to hit amid the attacking shadows.

Reach pounded on the kid, finally taking a fistful of hair and launching the Marine off his feet. To his credit, the combat-controlled trooper latched onto the ladder to keep him from plummeting back to the deck. Reach spun in a tight arc with his arm held bent and high. He slammed into the ladder, bending it toward the hull while clipping the kid’s arm and snapping it in multiple places. Thundering waves of searing agony raced across the Marine’s nervous system faster than the AI could cope with it.

Reach ripped the trooper from the ladder and slammed him onto his back. He knelt on the man’s chest to hold him in place, his shin armor very close to the shattered arm that had suffered the brunt of a strike by an enhanced human. As the RUPAC trooper screamed and the AI seethed, Reach plastered the wire leads to the side of his head. Activating the box, the former Marine turned colonist turned military leader occasionally punched and kicked parts of his damaged adversary so the download could take effect. Within minutes, the controller AI had been isolated, ripped from the amphibious soldier’s chip, and scrubbed so that no trace of it remained.

“Alexa, while all that was going on, did you manage to talk Vance through setting up the encrypted comms now that we don’t have to worry about killer head hopping programs?”

“Yes, Jared. We should have a secure signal to Oscar Bravo in a matter of moments now that we don’t have to worry about the Controller AI’s interference.”

Before Reach could broach the subject any further, Liana barged onto the line. “My guy goes on deployment, and all I get is this crappy T-shirt.”

Jared let the relief of talking to her flood through him. It had felt like forever since he’d heard her voice, when it had been just yesterday. The stress of taking control of the station in such an alien environment, when one wrong move could kill them all, had been taking its toll, even with Alexa on board.

“Just make sure to keep the discussion fit for company, Madame Osay. You’re also on with Alexa.”

“Hello, Liana, it’s nice to hear your voice,” the AI said cheerfully.

“You, too. From the spot reports we’ve been getting from Tran, we were worried there for a minute.”

“Not out of the woods yet,” Reach said. “Is Doctor Gruber on?”

“He’s in the TOC with me and the command staff,” Liana noted.

“I can hear you, Mr. Reach,” Gruber said.

“Doctor, were you able to isolate and analyze the signal we sent you?”

“Yes. It is a variation on my research, but the code signatures are all wrong.”

Reach lowered the broken, unconscious Marine down through the hatch to the waiting hands of the Wolverines down below. The group bound his hands and then shuffled him off through the decking to get to the medical bay aboard the ship.

Climbing back through the bridge, he and Sergeant Smith clambered to the top where Brody waited. The titanically reskinned Brody helped—more like hoisted—them from the hatch.

“S-sorry guys. I tried killing that commie with some panache, but he-he-he has a dairy man’s grip. N-next time I’ll just shoot him a few hundred times.”

Reach gave a curt nod and then continued on the link, looping his two battle buddies into the call. “So, Doc, based on the data burst the Controller AI just sent, we think they activated some wildlife outside the facility that they might have chipped. Probably asking them to come beat us up. Are you saying that these things, these Medusa Whales, are like the Slonkrams used by the Grey Faction? They’re not only intelligent but also trained instead of chipped?”

The doctor sounded moderately exasperated when he answered. “I don’t think they’re trained. More like they’re too sophisticated to be chipped so the scientists here did something… awful.”

“Okay, Doc, but are we about to have an uncomfortable encounter with the neighbors or not?”

“Their chips are not like those in the fildeema, Mr. Reach. The ones implanted in these Medusa Whales act more like a HUD feeding them target and work instructions because, as a species, they are too sophisticated to be controlled with our standard chipware. The units in these animals are equipped with a pain emitter that shocks them if it defies orders from the chip.”

“Shock collars,” Reach whispered.

“In essence, yes,” Doctor Gruber agreed. “I’m working with the signals now, Mr. Reach. I have the outgoing frequency structure, but I don’t have access to the animals’ link receiver. If you can get a transmitter close to one of them and then have Alexa helping me, I can reverse what the Controller AI’s set in motion.”

Reach stared down at the swirling water. “So do we go for another swim or wait until they come to us?”

Brody placed his hand on Reach’s shoulder. “It has to be m-me. You have to stay up here with my sister in your shorts so you can help the d-doctor.”

“Um, she’s not in my shorts, buddy,” Reach said. “And we have Corporal Day cruising around in one of those suits. With the propulsion systems and that heavy armor, we can get it done as a team.”

Brody shrugged. “Well, they’re coming. So get whoever it is you need to g-get into the drink, man, ’cus this is happenin’. We have to be in the middle of the action because we the warriors. Without some challenge, without some damn war to fight, then the warrior may as well be dead, Stallion.”

“Get to it,” Reach said, watching his friend hurtle into the waters below the sub. “Sergeant Tran, Brody is in the drink and needs a wingman with more speed than I can push right now. Can you send in Day?”

Tran was on the link immediately. “Yes. Where is Brody, and what’s he doing?”

“He’s going to play tag with those killer whales on their way to destroy the station.”

“Oh, is that all? I got his ping and deploying Day now. Sending Vance and Unga with those torpedo rifles in case things go full Brody.”

“Roger out.” Reach switched the link back to the command staff back on Oscar Bravo. “Doctor, give me a minute to link Alexa up with a functioning terminal. Everything on the submarine is dead.”

“How did that happen?” Bosa asked, inserting himself into the call.

Reach gave a one-sentence explanation. “We had Shanghai Ivan scram the power systems and knock off everything that could send a signal.”

He ran across the deck of the sub, jumped to the slip, and ran to the control facility leading back to the station. The center’s AI brought up a terminal upon detecting them walking into the center. The black mirrored desk surface pinged to life, displaying a command interface and a touchscreen keyboard. Across the office to where the window screen overlooked the submarine dock, an overlay filtered over the glass so that anyone in the center could see what they were doing.

“Reach, it’s that time,” Alexa said. “You might want to hold onto the sides of the desk.”

Smith caught the man as his legs nearly gave out, and he bowed his head toward the desk. “What is this you do?”

“Alexa leaving my head for the system,” Reach growled. “Hard line push from my implant. Hurts like hell.”

Several moments passed as he struggled to maintain his footing and consciousness. Smith’s grip on his bicep and under his other arm was like iron, as if he were hanging off the ladder like the young RUPAC Marine was only moments before. The blazing hot knife of the transfer abated, leaving Reach panting and sweating into his helmet. “A little warning next time?”

“I’m sorry, Jared,” Alexa apologized. “If my read on the data burst was correct, then these whales are the two blips we’re seeing on the map approaching at a speed that might be faster than anything the Type Fifteen Hundred is capable of. Brody doesn’t have a lot of time.”

“She should have given you some warning,” Smith said in Osay.

“She did,” Reach said. “Oscar Bravo, this is Reach. We deployed Brody and several Rangers in support. Time to intercept of hostile species is two minutes. Alexa is in the station’s systems core. She’s working the signals with you from here, Doctor Gruber.”

“Thank you, Jared,” the doctor said haltingly, most likely because his hands were flying across a keyboard and working a track ball.

“I gotta go help them,” Reach said to Smith. “Thanks for the help earlier.”

“I’m getting good at this trickery thing. Where are you going?”

Reach pointed past the observation glass where the system was frenetically passing through screens courtesy of Alexa. “To help Brody. I may not be able to keep up, but if he gets in trouble, I can still catch up.”

Smith took Reach’s wrist in a soldier’s handshake. “I’d offer to go with, but I can only hold my breath so long.”

“Rain check,” Reach said.

The neural implant pushed an Osay equivalent of the expression through the link. Smith nodded as he released the man’s arm. “Next time. Definitely, next time.”

Reach darted from the room to the docks past concerned-looking Osay militia who were on security but not necessarily in the loop. Linking Sergeant Tran into the open comms with the command staff, Reach said, “Tran, it’s Reach. I’m going outside to give the guys a hand. I need you to run a sweep of any potential intrusion points in the station that might let more of these chipped animals in, in case the RUPAC brought down mermaids or something.”

Tran’s response was all business and all pro. “On it, sir. Coordinating topside security sweep with Cobey. Tran out.”

From the center of the slip, Reach jumped. The Wolverines along the deck were astounded as the man they’d come to know as the link between the two peoples giving a colony on Amir a go launched into the air unlike anything humanly possible. Streamlining his body, he struck the water with barely a splash as he dove deep into the waves beneath the sub launch. A rapidly constructed instruction window hovered at the side of his HUD, detailing a series of operations commands for the underwater jet propulsion sleds the team had left at the top of the cliff.

Liana chimed into the link. “Watching through your view, Reach. I can’t help but notice that you’re in the water again.”

Bosa added his concern to the call. “Mr. Reach, Liana’s right—let the Rangers and the militia handle it. Your work there is done. You should either be monitoring this from the facility or working the RUPAC science team like you did last time to find who are the die-hards and who are the conscripts.”

Reach was glad that everyone on the link couldn’t see the smile creeping across his face. He very much wanted to be the facilitator, but he couldn’t ignore what everything up until this point had forged him into. “We have to be in the middle of the action because we’re the warriors.”

Reach could almost imagine Sherman standing in the TOC and smiling at the answer. Although he knew Liana would understand, she didn’t sound enthused as her implant translated her thoughts back into the link. “Bring our people back safe. All our people.”

“Will do, Madame Osay,” Reach said, taking the hint. The red water rocket flared to life, jetting from the edge of the sea cliff in a downward race to Reach. “I’m coming, buddy.”

29

“Whole platoon, thirty-two men ch-chopped into meat. We walk out, j-just you and me. Nobody else. Right on top of ’em. Not a scratch, not an eff-effin scratch. You know, bro, whoever got you, he gon’ come back again, and when he does, I’m going to cut your name into him. I’m gonna cut your n-name into him.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Brody?” Day asked through the link.

“Oh, hello, Citizen! I forgot you were there. I was j-just commenting on the state of affairs I find myself in. Swimming toward certain doom at the hands of a pod of tentacle-flailing m-murder whales, all by myself. As my guy Reach, my go-to doom’s-day-guy is running the numbers in an office while yours truly risks life and limb for the good of the citizens.”

“I’m literally a hundred feet behind you,” Day said.

“Trailing s-safety and sending thoughts and prayers. Which I appreciate, Texas Ranger.”

“Dude. I’m literally on your six, riding to our mutual destruction. But unlike you, I don’t get a respawn!”

Brody grunted several times as he tried to turn his head for emphasis, despite it being pinned in place inside the helmet dome. He gave up and continued his speech. “Every fighter knows that hurt, and w-we get sick inside trying to live with it. Don’t back off now. Make it right for yourself, or you’ll be sorry y-you didn’t.”

“I can literally see those Kraken whales coming straight at us, bro. Now’s not the time for crazy talk!”

“C-crazy like a fox!” Brody’s sensor suite detected the whales above them, denoting distance and speed to target as well as the mass and potential destructive powers of the animal. The bestial torpedoes rocketed through the water at near ballistic speeds toward the facility, bringing with it the potential ferocity an animal that’s been abused can muster.

Day looked at the animals in disbelief. “Those are some big fish. What kind of damage you think you can do to them from the water?”

“We’re about to find out, Texas Ranger!” Brody said. “Bravo Awesome to Junkyard One and J-Junkyard Two. I am one man against overwhelming odds of the monster m-mashers heading straight for us. If it’s the one mission no man can survive, he’s the man for the j-job!”

Vance and Unga, on receiving Brody’s transmission, floated from under the facility’s observation deck. Free from the confined space, they swam into the open water toward the top of the cliff.

“Brody, we’re piloting the sea-jet drones to you now,” Vance said. “Those high intensity disruptors will probably jam them away from you.”

He searched through the interface in his link to find that only two of the drones were on standby. He tried a few times to slave off the third, but it didn’t seem to be responding to his commands. “What the hell is going on?” he mumbled to himself, still on the link.

“That’s my ride, Sergeant,” Reach said through the link.

“LT? You out here with us?” Vance asked.

“Just like old times.” Soaring along the cliff wall, Reach crossed paths with Brody to fall in line with Day as the android sped by overhead. “Day, make sure the disruptor on that armor is powered up in case you get charged.”

“Good copy,” the Ranger said with a far more serious demeanor than when he was working just with Brody.

“Vance, if they make a run at the station, we’ll try to lure them toward you. You and Unga make a beeline for those coral formations throughout the valley. They’ll be less maneuverable in there, and you guys can use that for cover.”

“Moving, LT,” Vance responded.

“We got everybody except Matt Guitar Murphy and Blue Lou, and we’re g-getting them next,” Brody expounded. “Alright, citizens, I think it’s time to show these Calamari-sauruses who the head chef is.”

The whales sped past the trio advancing on them. In a show of rocket-powered bravado, Brody raced straight toward the bullet-shaped nose of the creatures. Not to be deterred by something the size of a snack, the Medusa Whale flared its tentacles, taking it from the shape of a singular tail into the tangle of tendrils that made up its back. The tangle slammed back together, catapulting the animal through the water even faster than before on a trajectory that brought it toward the surface.

“Holy shit! Did you see that thing just change course?” Day called into the net.

“Remember, we have to get either you or Brody close enough to their neuroware so Gruber can get in and scrub it,” Reach said. “Those armors have the heaviest antennas to carry the doc’s voodoo from the facility.”

“Why don’t we just shoot ’em?” Day asked.

“Not counting it out!” Reach said. “The fast one is diving on the sub launch while the other one is running a wide arc through the big coral trees to hit the station. If these things can do what we think they can, we’re looking at a whole lot of mess.”

Brody’s power armor swung in a tight arc, finding its speed and trajectory in the wake of the diving killer whale. “I got ’em, but I ain’t fast e-enough to catch up to him at that speed, citizens.”

“Brody, on your six!” Vance yelled into the comms.

The twin water-jet rocket drones sped past the android to race ahead of him by a couple of feet. Brody poured all the power the suit would allow into the jet engine driving it, giving him enough boost to catch the first machine. A quick bank to his empty hand, and he snagged the handle of the second drone so he had one in each hand.

“Brody! Punch it, man! Punch it!” Unga cheered into the net.

With the added boost of two aqua rockets, the whine of Brody’s back-mounted jets screamed in time with the heavier motor on the drones. He blasted away from Reach and Day, nearly doubling in speed toward the descending leviathan.

Reach called to Day in the link, “Day! I need you to run the ridge after that whale making a loop through the valley. Chase him right to me through that hard rock forest. I’ll hem him up, and you jam on top of him to give the doc what he needs.”

Day veered off at Reach’s order and plummeted into the valley.

Reach veered his own water rocket scooter downward toward the observation deck completely sealed by the damage shutters. He sailed past the cyclopean dome to rush over the kelp bed at the base of the station.

The descending torpedo whale raced into the water between them, deploying its tentacles like flaps to slow its advance. As it pivoted to rush toward the submarine bay, the animal screeched and vented a ticking bark that sounded like the creaking of mammoth trees fighting against the wind. It slapped the tentacles together with a cavitation of its enormous body to propel across the observation deck and head for the opposite side of the valley reef.

“Why ain’t this c-car faster?” Brody yelled into the link. He screamed into the animals’ wake, executing a tight turn along with three roaring engines following its trail through the seabed. The whale must have figured the rapidly advancing Marine armor was a predator seeking to make a meal out of the much bigger prey. Whatever its reasons, Brody’s Calamari-saurus abandoned its turn toward the sea station and instead listened to eons of biological response to fight-or-flight encounters.

Almost immediately into its deviated flight path, the whale screamed as though it had been harpooned by every nightmare a thing its size fears. It listed sideways through the water until it recovered its bearing and swept into the coral forest.

“Guys, it’s Vance. I’m with Unga waiting to bury Moby Dickhead with our rocket rifles. That thing just suffered an aneurysm or something.”

“Pain emitters in their implants,” Reach said into the link. “It’s not responding to its orders fast enough and the implant is sending jolts into it.”

Brody juked into a new trajectory like he was on rails, propelled by three thunderous water-jet engines propelling him through the ocean. He slammed into the animal’s head behind its eye, abandoning the water-jets to take hold of the gigantic armored plates encasing the creature. The whale halted its momentum to flare its tendrils, slapping at the armor encased android as it attempted to beat and tear him from his hide. The crushing power of the armored exoskeleton sunk Brody’s fingers deep into the creature’s armor, making him near impossible to dislodge. In response, the Medusa Whale darted away again to smash its side into one of the towering, twisted stone pillars that populated the kelp forest in the valley. The animal’s impact against the stone cracked the structure, nearly shaving Brody from its skin.

“They say it's not when you get hurt b-bull ridin', it's how bad,” Brody shouted. He relentlessly refused to be removed, instead preferring to be dug in like an Alabama tick.

“Brody! It’s Gruber. I have that animal’s signature. Let go, let go!”

“Doc! M-make it do a trick like in Sea World!”

Brody let go with the next smash as the whale turned the coral tower into a withering pile of rubble and dust floating through the canyon and came to rest at the seafloor in a drunken float through the canyons along the tides. The eels inside the kelp bed frantically slithered into their holes, hides, and havens as the larger predator drifted to the sand as though knocked unconscious. Moaning shrill whale calls permeated deep thrumming clicks while the tentacles slapped and groped according to some design known only to them.

* * *

“You got this, Day! You got this!” Reach yelled into the link.

Day raced to keep up with the whale running the perimeter of the valley to give it a swimming start as it lined up with the submarine bay. The animal increased his speed with barely a flutter of its tentacle tail, nearly leaving him behind. The Ranger corporal caught up when the beast threaded itself in between the twisted towers that dotted the seafloor.

“Almost there!” Day said into the link.

“Corporal Day, this is Alexa. Brody has achieved disconnect with his target, but you have to get closer to yours. We need a proximity read from the sensors in your suit to get the signature for its link. When we have that, we can turn it away.”

“Easy for you to say. I feel like I’m chasing an F1 driver on a moped.”

“We still need you to get closer,” Alexa said.

“Working it!” The Ranger changed course from the surprisingly agile and evasive creature to working his way through the stone forest. “I know you don’t want me to shoot the fish, but you said nothing about the fish tank.”

Torpedo rounds left the launcher on a kinetically fired rush from the barrel in a shower of sparks and bubbles. The first stage casing broke apart on the first projectile to reveal the torpedo within. It raced away in a tiny streak of bubbles as the miniature explosive drone tracked its marker to the target. Two more fired from Day’s weapon, lancing out on their own path of destruction toward the towering coral in the field ahead. The detonation on the first round cracked the pillar but did little beyond that. The two fired at the other spire decimated it at the base. Bits of stone flared away from the structure as silt and kelp shot up at the pressure wave caused by the charges. The spire came down in a slow-moving fury of shattering stone and scattering fish.

The whale drove upward along a path away from the falling tower when Day fired another torpedo. The round sailed into the target, cracking the remainder of the first tower he shot to bring the rocky spire down toward the creature. It was too little, too late when the whale rolled and evaded the slow-moving avalanche on its way to the sub bay.

Reach came in from above the creature on his water jet. He fired the sonic disruptor from the nose of the vehicle straight into the tangle of tendrils that served as the animal’s sometimes tail. In response to the waves of pain burning into nerve endings and wreaking havoc with the monster’s central nervous system, it whirled on the diminutive pain-inducing creature, flaring its nest of tentacles as it opened its massive mouth. While the armored head and body might be used for ramming as a self-defense mechanism, there was nothing defensive inside that maw.

Pointed interlocking teeth measuring the size of a twenty-millimeter round permeated the lower part of its jaw. Clicking barks and low whistles intended as a warning had the desired effect from the animal. Its undulating tendrils pulled the animal backward while facing Reach, hovering a few scant meters in front of those life-ending jaws. Its mouth snapped shut, sending a small current through the water, buffeting Reach. If the intent was to scare him away, it would have worked if he was just here for himself.

“What’s that thing that Brody says all the time? Time to let old painless out of the bag,” Reach said. The water around him sizzled as the Bangora effect on his armor went active. The animal screeched as its probably gargantuan brain tried to factor what was in front of it. The drowning darkness surrounding the armor shifted in place along with the shimmering shadows that lived down here in the valley beyond the drop off of the seafloor. Reach let the drone go and gave hard pushes against his fins.

“Smooth move, LT!” Day said as he collided with the whale’s head.

The monster snapped into a barrel roll in an attempt to pry off the new threat while staying above the kelp bed. In a surprise move, the animal swam past Reach and smashed through the pile of debris that had fallen as part of Corporal Day’s plan to block the creature. Whirlwinds of silt and plant matter scattered into the currents like some maelstrom thundering up from the depths. The Medusa Whale grinding through the collapsed towers was enough to batter the Ranger corporal from its hide and leave him crumpled in the wake of destruction left in its path.

“Day!” Reach shouted.

“I’m good, but the armor is slagged, and I might need a tow!”

“Mr. Reach, this is Gruber!” the doctor called frantically through the link. “I have it! I’m shutting down the implant on the second animal!”

Reach panned his view overhead as a shadow passed over him. The streaking beast, now undeterred by its attackers, swam overhead in a direct line to the submarine bay.

“LT! It’s Vance. That thing is still coming. If we’re going to shoot, it needs to be now.”

“Doc?”

“Have them hold their fire, Mr. Reach,” Gruber instructed. “The implant is shutting down now.”

The Medusa Whale called into the ocean with a song that was long and sorrowful. It stopped its rampant pace toward the facility, instead allowing itself to just drift on the current in a haunting dance about the valley.

“Oh my…” Gruber whispered into the link.

“Doc, you better have some good news, or I’m quitting!” Day said.

“There are entire subroutines in the neural implant for talking to them,” Gruber said, fascinated.

“Come again now, Doc?” Reach asked.

“Not full conversations, mind you, but ideas. Emotions,” the doctor clarified. “Threat, safe, food, mate, sleep. The implant can read its songs and translate them.”

Reach switched back to the command channel to link back to Oscar Bravo. “Hey, Doc. How long are these whales going to sit on the bottom like this, all stunned?”

“It could be a while, Mr. Reach. But don’t worry, if they’re physiology is anything like that of an Earth whale, they won’t need to take a breath for some time.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Extremely,” Gruber said in answer to Reach’s question. “But the RUPAC found them to be disinterested in humans as food but appreciative if the humans acted as a food source.”

“Come again?”

“That’s how they got them close enough to initially tranq and implant the chips. They led them into the submarine launch, and they were feeding them huge amounts of fish.”

As he listened to the doctor’s fascination with his new subjects, Reach rigged tow cables built into Corporal Day’s armor to the water-jet drone hovering nearby. He tested the tension on the lines before activating the engine so the heavily knocked around Ranger wouldn’t add whiplash to the list of injuries they were likely to find when they poured him out of the suit. Of course, since the suit had whiplash protective measures, he was more worried about a bent or cracked piece of armor poking something than he was about giving the kid a crick in the neck.

He slowly drifted past the sedate murder whale enjoying its ride in the current so as not to disturb it. On his way by the animal, he felt comfortable enough in Doctor Gruber’s assessment to accept a private link from Liana. “Baby, you would not believe the day I’ve had.”

“Please tell me you aren’t calling me from inside the big fish.”

“Big whale,” Reach corrected. “And no. I must not have looked tasty enough.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Liana said softly. “And that you kept your word.”

“About bringing everyone home? We have a few of the Wolverines banged up. Corporal Day just got roughed up by the sea fildeema, and I have a splitting headache.”

“From Alexa being in your shorts?” Liana joked.

Reach would’ve loved to laugh along with her, but he was running on fumes after everything over the last few days. He knew the Rangers would be equally as tired after living through the same stuff, but they lived for being exhausted and angry. Give them some beef jerky, a hit of coffee, and a fresh target, and life was good for them. Even with his enhanced physiology, he was spent.

“She was in my brain, thank you very much,” Reach said.

“That’s worse.” The leader of the free peoples of Amir sighed and resigned herself to just let Reach concentrate on what he was doing all those miles away and hundreds of feet deep underwater. “I’ll just be glad when you get home. We could really use you here.”

“Something the matter?” Reach asked.

“There are some decisions to be made when you get back, and the council appreciates when you sit in on important matters like this. They’ve come to trust you, Jared Reach of the Walker Texas Rangers… but I need you here, too. Just for me.”

“Swimming as fast as I can. The feeling is mutual. Reach out.”

He drifted into the moon pool on the underside of the station, glad to see that someone had worked the atmosphere back into the room. In doing so, the compartment now had the required balance of pressure in the room to offset the ocean outside. The result was like coming out of any pool onto the deck, except Reach was glad that this one had equipment support rigs to pull Day and his damaged suit out of the water.

Reach surfaced to the crossed arms of Sergeant Tran. The man stretched out his hand and both he and Collins pulled him from the water. He sat on the edge of the pool, hauling the length of cable to bring the mangled armor and Corporal Day inside to the room.

“I loan you a corporal, and you break him. Nice going, sir,” Tran said, taking hold of the lines from the embattled Lieutenant.

Reach rigged the line on the other side so they could hoist their soldier out of the water. “In my defense, Day was already damaged goods.”

Tran operated the crane controls using the wired command wand attached to the rig. Water pouring off the deep sea armor as it rose from its position in the moon pool was fairly loud in the room after Reach had been submerged in the muted soundscape of the ocean again.

Collins pushed through the Lieutenant, threading a wire into the RUPAC armor system so she could read whatever the results told her on her battle board.

“What do we got?” Tran asked.

“He most likely passed out from the pain or the armor tranq’d him,” Collins said. “Broken clavicle, two broken ribs, and micro-fractures in one of the legs. The suit has him buttoned up according to the pre-programmed medical protocols, but once we pull him out of there, we’ll have to get him to the med bay fast.”

“Alexa said the station AI should have the lift cleared for use by the time we got him in the rig, so he’s good to go any time. Although we should wait for those two jokers to get out of the pool.” Tran motioned for Vance and Unga to climb out. “C’mon. I got a guy that needs a hospital bed, and you two look perfect to carry him.”

“You still there?” Reach asked Liana through the link.

“I am. I was half listening while Bosa and Sherman talked about the last wave of prisoners coming into the camp. They’re part of the submarine crew that you pulled off the ship when you took over. Emileeya is with them.”

“Oh good,” Reach said sarcastically. “I’m sure that’s going to end well for everyone.”

30

Reach jumped from his seat on the floor of the Dragonfly aircraft, putting his hand in front of his helmet even though the enclosed system kept his face free of the grass and dust being kicked up by the rotors. Tran and Team Junkyard kicked off right beside him, disgorging the squad from the aircraft.

“I’m going to stow gear and put these guys on the back burner unless you got something else?” Tran asked.

“I got tons,” Reach said, pointing at Sherman approaching. “But you’re good. Go get some real food and a bit of rest. I’m sure we got something coming.” He shook the NCO’s hand before greeting Sherman.

“Wow, that smile seems almost sincere,” Sherman said. “Somehow I doubt I’m the one you wanted to meet you on the flight line.”

“I can think of worse options. At least you don’t stink like fish.”

Sherman smiled. “You get anything resembling sleep?”

“Some on the sub. I thought we were going to have a longer ride but the pilots found a sliver of land they called an island just south of the underwater lab. We were able to surface and offload there. One of the Wolverine squads is rec-ing the island for anything hostile. We can set up a transfer station there or something similar.”

“You can’t fool me, Marine,” Sherman remarked. “I know your game. You were looking for an island getaway for you and your girl once you make things all official.”

“Yeah, like we’d have time for that,” Reach said somberly.

“Listen. Lots of us are thinking about what comes next once we put the screws to the RUPAC.”

“Us? As in you, too?” Reach gave a half-smile. He couldn’t quite believe Sherman’s mind would be anywhere near that line of thinking.

“Sure. I’m gunning for Bosa’s job when he goes off all mountain man style in one of those cabins in the woods.”

The two men shared a laugh, lifting the load both carried on shoulders that were straining under the weight of their jobs. They moved off the tarmac to where a ground mobility vehicle waited for them.

“This us?” Reach asked.

“Yep. While you got to go on missions and be the hero of the hour, Me and Soto have been tearing it up over at Station 5. This is our new upgraded GMV. We were going to let Brody name it once the Doc puts him back together.”

“Why wait, Citizen!” came the call from behind them. “I feel up to the t-task if you don’t mind the mask!”

The officers turned in their seats to find one of the Model-Thirty-Five enhanced androids waiting beside the truck. A pulsing signal window in both their HUDs announced a pending overlay to be applied to the machine in augmented reality. When they accepted, the normally intimidating figure of John Matrix was clad in a cream-colored suit with a loud button-up shirt underneath.

“Who are you supposed to be? And I hope you don’t plan on getting in the vehicle,” Sherman growled.

“My dear Captain,” Brody started. “You are overlooking the f-first rule in a crisis situation.”

“And what is that?” Sherman said to the eccentric android.

“The first r-rule in a crisis sit-too-ay-shun is you negotiate first, and you attack last. You never negotiated. You don’t know what kind of enemy I am.”

Sherman pressed his mouth together and motioned for the android to join them. Noticing Reach’s smile, Sherman said, “He grows on you.”

The vehicle spun to life, coughing out its throaty engine sounds under the hood. “I’d offer to let you go change,” Sherman said to Reach, “but the top dog wanted you in on this when you landed.”

“This must really be salty if Bosa wanted me from skids to shouts.”

“Not Bosa, Liana. Her exact words were, ‘as soon as that plane touches down, bring him here.’ I didn’t want to risk you’d talk some spacer into letting you get a hot shower and a nap.”

“Yeah, I’m known for stuff like that.” Reach watched as they drove through the Quonset Hut style hangar, where a group of Osay mechanics toiled away on assembling another of the Dragonflies. The wind against his face was refreshing as both bay doors on the hut were open, allowing the breeze to pass on through. The mechanics were using a cherry picker to hoist one of the wing rotors into place as another few hung from a scaffold to secure it and attach the rods and struts that allowed it to tilt in different directions for sustained flight. It was roughly a year ago that this spot was nothing but uncleared jungle and the very real threat of RUPAC soldiers addicted to distilled saraka venom were attacking the fence line as though they were going to zombie through.

Two steps forward, one step back, he thought.

“The Mercury!” Brody shouted.

“Huh?” Sherman muttered.

“Thinkin’ of a n-name. That’s the car that Cobretti drove in C-Cobra. A 1950 Mercury Custom.”

“Sounds like we’re shilling for Nasa,” Sherman said. He turned out of the shed and onto the street leading to the Meeting House where the Elder Council held all their important sessions. People moving about the camp on various chores or simply out for a walk waved as the vehicle passed by. Unlike the ATVs, this one had size and armor covering its frame. While there was no windscreen or side windows, there were controls where someone had comically covered up the Russian commands on the control console with English equivalents via a label gun, even though most soldiers driving one of these would have a link that could translate it, or if the soldier wanted, just gave them the ability to speak and read Russian. The pressed-in letters on adhesive were applied haphazardly, not even bothering to make sure they were on straight.

“What’s the screen button do?” Reach asked.

“Snaps blast-resistent semi-transparent coverings where the windows and windscreen should be,” Sherman answered. “Ten of these at Station- Five with the ability to make more.”

“Huh,” Reach said. He’d been out building the refugee shelters and been underwater for so long he’d mostly forgotten the spacers and the Osay had been continuously working at the other stations. “We producing a lot of stuff out of there?”

“Out of all the stations, in order to give your gal pal a good send-off.”

“Liana?”

“Federova. After she and her loyalists are done helping us beat up the RUPAC, she still intends to blast off for Earth. By cranking out food, vehicles, and supplies, we can get her outfitted. Goodbye, good riddance. Besides, it allows all of our people to train up on the tech and how to fix it. Win-win.”

“The Honey Badger!” Brody shouted.

“We already have a Badger,” Sherman said.

“Y-yeah, but not a honey badger. Just one of those d-dumb English badgers.”

“Try again.” Sherman turned into a section of the base where the residents were building a pond. A freed RUPAC, now an Osay, waved to Sherman as he tried to hustle a team of kageir across the road. The Amiri horses were gigantic, notably the size of draft horses, but with alien muzzles and the strange, almost claw-like hooves.

Reach tapped the dashboard to get Sherman’s attention. “When did those get on base?”

Sherman waved to the man casually walking by with the animals. “While you were playing habitat for humanity with Federova. Seems they have a liking for those tubers the Osay grow and we thought we could use them as draft animals. They’ve been helping us with all sorts of things on base and in the cabins. They show up every morning, and Arban feeds them and takes them around for any odd jobs we have going. That pond they put in, they used the horses to clear the land and then dredge out all the rocks and stuff.”

They pulled up to the outside of the meeting hall, throttling the engine down on the war wagon. “At least we don’t have to look for parking.”

“Yet,” Reach said.

“Hey, how about Mustang?” Brody suggested. “1968. Bullit. Steve McQueen.”

Sherman climbed out of the seat and brushed a stray bit of road debris off his fatigues. “You sell whatever you want, but don’t sell it here tonight. I like it. Mustangs, they is.”

“Hey!” Brody held his hand up for a high-five. “Y-you’ve seen it.”

Sherman slapped the android’s hand as he moved into the building. “Grandpops had one of those old VCRs in the garage while he worked on his cars. Always liked to watch his old movies while getting my hands dirty.”

Reach nodded approvingly after dismounting from the Mustang GMV. He returned the militiaman’s salute as he passed the guard covering the door. They entered into a maelstrom of shouts and gavel pounds as the Osay elders sat in their usual elevated positions above a packed house of Osay, looking to be heard on whatever this was about. Seated in front of the leadership crescent were two bound women facing the elders.

An ear-piercing whale cry sounded through the space, followed by a siren. Elder Sorrano held up an electronic bullhorn. “Enough!”

As the elders vied for some level of control over the crowd, Bolton and Yuen worked their way to Jared as they spotted him walking in. They didn’t require much in the way of forcing themselves through the packed room. The Osay in attendance knew who they were and what they’d been doing since they’d left the office of governor. Among their people, respect was as good as currency.

“Saw you walk in. Did you get the video I sent you?” Bolton asked.

“I did, thank you. That was a great idea.”

“I figured you didn’t have much in the way of experience dealing with how we adjudicate crime and punishment, so I figured I’d give you the highlight reel,” Bolton said.

Reach clapped the man on his shoulder. “I appreciate that.”

Bolton winked. “My star is on the rise here, pal. I just don’t want you and, by extension, me to look stupid.”

Sherman arrived to shake Yuen’s hand before moving to do the same with Bolton. “Now that’s one I can’t wait to discuss over dinner later with everyone, and I do mean everyone. Ms Yuen. Nice to see you again.”

She nodded. There was no sense trying to speak over the level of chatter around them. The entire room was in an uproar.

“Is this always how these town meetings go?” Sherman asked.

“Not typically, no,” Yuen said over the link so she didn’t have to shout. “But there is a lot of emotion tied up on this one, so many people are trying to get their voices heard.”

“I said enough!” Sorrano billowed through the bullhorn. “I see Jared Reach has joined us. Would Mr. Reach come forward please?”

The room erupted again, but this time in unified praise for a man mutually adopted by the Osay. Whether people liked him or hated him, he had gone out numerous times to risk life and limb for a people who’d just invited them into their tent as a stranger during the middle of the night. Since that night, they’d seen him go out again and again to protect them. Both their tribe and their home.

They parted easily as he walked through the crowd, men and woman patting him on the armored plates or reaching out to shake his hand. He tried to address as many as he could and move forward as he finally joined the two women at the center of the circle. Emileeya Tucker sat restrained by zip ties to a metal folding chair probably borrowed from the TOC. Beside her was the young girl Liana had told him about. Tamika. The child was probably fourteen or fifteen and was seething with anger at being restrained in a chair like some common criminal. The truth was, she wasn’t common. She’d acted as a spy for a subversive enemy to harm as many of her own people as possible.

And standing beside the seated elders, refusing to sit, was Liana. She was radiant in a set of workers jeans, trade-style boots, and a simple button-up shirt. Her hair had been woven in a tight bun the same way the female Marines used to do it back on Earth. He wondered if Sergeant Hassen had shown her the sock trick to making her hair look that way.

“We see you, Jared Reach of the Walker Texas Rangers,” said Elder Rubenking as their inside joke.

“And I see you elders and people of the Osay.”

For some reason, that sparked another round of applause from the crowd. And somewhere in the back, Reach caught sight of a man dressed in blue police body armor with black BDU pants on and a tight fade haircut. He was swinging his hand over his head and cheering.

Reach shook his head. “Brody.”

“We are happy that you are here, Jared Reach,” Liana began in Osay. “We have come to benefit from your instincts and insight, and although we know you are just coming from a mission to ensure our safety, we hoped we might impose on you for those instincts now.”

“You welcomed us into your homes in the middle of the night with no warning and nothing but,” Reach searched for the right word, “hospitality. Our debts to each other work in equal measure. If you call me, I’ll come.”

More subdued this time, the room applauded the statement. Their reserved enthusiasm wasn’t so much for the statement as it was for seeing what they’d ask of him and how he would answer.

Elder Sorrano stood from his seat to take a few steps forward. “Jared Reach, these two have committed high crimes against the Osay, and by extension, the Rangers, whom I must do a better job of remembering are also Osay now.

“In our recent past, we have had only one execution. Our man Smith executed this woman’s father for his attempt to sell us to the Rupick. Before that, we would leave our condemned outside our homes to survive Amir. They were banished from our camp.”

“And these two women have already been found guilty?” Reach asked.

“Yes. The evidence is overwhelming,” Rubenking answered. “We presented it to them, allowed them to have their say before a jersey of their peers, who then declined to advocate to the Elders on their behalf. Therefore, we have found them to be guilty of high crimes against the Osay.”

Somewhere in the crowd, Sergeant Baldino, a team leader in Robbie Stewart’s Prowler Squad, sent Reach a link. “Hey, sir, I had to sit in on that jury. I tried to tell them it wasn't a jersey, but they did make us wear special shirts, so…”

“You got jury duty on an alien planet?” Reach asked.

“I’m from the Bronx. Nothin’ s’prises me, sir.”

Reach redirected his focus over the crowd; everyone was watching him intently. A curt nod from Bosa, who was standing in the back of the room, was all the encouragement he needed to continue. “So now you have to sentence them, and you don’t want to be too lenient, even though one of them is a child.”

“That is correct, Jared,” Sorrano said expectantly.

The weariness was catching up to Reach. “May I sit?” he asked.

Several of the elders rushed to offer their own seats, ignoring creaking bones and stretching behind their own chairs for canes when Reach waved them away. He crossed his shins and sat down Indian-style in front of the two women. He removed his rifle from his rig and placed it on his helmet so the barrel wasn’t pointed at anyone, even though he’d unloaded it after leaving the flight line. He stared at the two women. While Emileeya looked downtrodden and betrayed, the young girl, Tamika, was defiant.

Reach looked through the crowd before beginning. In some faces, there was stern resolution. They wanted the Ranger’s hammer to come down on these two. While a few faces in the crowd held hope for a young girl who might not yet be lost.

“The thing I have come to respect most about your people is your integrity. It’s in everything. Liana throwing her entire being into leadership so she doesn’t let you down. The elders working through resolutions long after everyone in the camp has been fed and bedded down for the night, even if those things are still far off for them. Entire communities coming together to defend each other, or take the time to huddle around a lonely robot and make him feel like he belongs. In each of these choices, you demonstrate that we are one people so we may survive. That builds a trust that is needed when your home is trying to kill you.”

Murmurs of agreement went through the crowd as Reach took a swig of water. His stomach was ready to stage a coup if he didn’t get some real food soon. He waited for a moment for the murmurs and the rumbling to die down before continuing.

“The RUPAC has already taken so much from all of us. We wouldn’t have come to Amir in the first place were it not so, us aboard the Boone and your forefathers on the Muir and Longmire. But like people where I came from, the next generations don’t always believe our stories of what came before. They don’t believe the treachery we’ve seen with our own eyes. ‘How can they be that evil?’ they ask. Or they think that we’re making it up because we have worked very hard to make things better than for them so they didn’t have to go through what we did. And if we’re being honest, which is what the Osay really are at their core, we let them have it easier than we did. We let things relax a little. Enjoy our victories a little. Why shouldn’t we?”

Reach saw Governor Belkin, hiding in the crowd but not seeking the front row. While calling someone out wasn’t really his style, he felt it was necessary for the explanation. “Governor Belkin. Those were people from your district putting together that Dragonfly I saw when I left the flight line, wasn’t it?”

“It was, Mr. Reach,” she said as the crowd parted to watch her.

“And why were they? Would your district provide for them if they decided not to work?”

“They could have the scraps of what’s left,” she said flatly. “Being injured and unable to work is one thing. But working to add to our community has always been our way. It’s how we survived as a colony this long after everything brought here was destroyed.”

Reach nodded to her, affirming her survival statement. “And you did survive. Despite all the odds. But things still needed to be done, and in your honest attempt to not hold this woman, Emileeya, guilty for the sins of her father, you let her care for the camp’s children so that their parents could work to provide for the colony.”

“This is true,” Sorrano agreed.

“So in caring for this girl, is it a fair statement to make that Emileeya fed some of her father’s beliefs to her?”

“Liar!” Tamika shouted. “She gave me nothing! I hate all of you for letting these thugs into our lives. You know nothing! We should be letting the Rupick take care of us, not these filthy Americans. All they bring is war and death! I hate you!”

The gallery buzzed angrily; Reach watched Emileeya. The woman’s head dipped.

The crowd smoldered into a fiery tantrum to shout down the girl and her outburst as Elder Sorrano tried to add his bullhorn to Elder Rubenking’s gavel to bring the crowd to order. Reach held up his hand, and things seemed to simmer as they were more intent on what Reach would do next than silencing the kid.

“You can’t do anything to me,” she seethed. “You’re just Liana’s dog.”

“How do you know?” Reach’s question stopped her tirade cold.

“How do I know what?” Tamika hissed.

“Have you ever seen a dog?”

“That’s just an expression,” Tamika countered.

Reach stood, taking out his battle board. He flashed through a series of pictures until he found the one he wanted. Tamika took on a haunted look as she stared into the screen. She was captivated by what she was looking at. So the crowd could see, he shared the image on the large screen the Osay had at the side of the chamber.

“This was Spivey. She was the military working dog assigned to my unit when we first fought the RUPAC. She was awesome. A dog is kind of like a zaskonek without all the tongues. She would play with us off duty and let us pet her belly in return for treats. On patrol, she protected us against those that wanted to hurt us because she could sense things we, and even our machines, couldn’t. Spivey was injured alerting us to a roadside bomb. The RUPAC sympathizer, much like you and Emileeya, planted a bomb to kill us because we were bringing medical supplies to a village they didn’t like. No fighters in the village, no soldiers. Just people sick and injured from war.

The dog lived. We got her help in time, but she couldn’t work with us anymore. So a Marine who was going home away from the war adopted her and let her live out the rest of her life as a respected war hero. But the Marines who stayed behind really loved that dog. They tracked down the bomber. And in typical US Marine Corps fashion, they laid waste to him and his entire village. The reason I bring this up is it has been over two hundred years since that happened. Those RUPAC and those Marines, hell, even that dog, are dust on a world far from here. Long dead. But you know what hasn’t changed in all that time?”

Reach put away the battle board, instead using his own link to broadcast to the monitor. “This is a Medusa Whale. We came across them on our last mission. This one in the picture is larger than this building. And it couldn’t care less that we were sharing its ocean. There was just one problem.” Reach took the measure of the room. Everyone, including the elders, was captivated at the thought of a giant fish thing, bigger than a building, that didn’t want to kill them. “The RUPAC put a chip in its head like it used to control the fildeema and the kagier. But these, these are very smart creatures, and they fought the control. So the RUPAC put one of these in their head.”

Reach removed the pain pistol from his thigh rig. “They put pain chips in their heads so that when they disobeyed, it was like setting their bodies on fire. A bunch of RUPAC spent considerable time and effort tricking this animal into coming close so they could make it a slave. That is probably the only thing in that ocean that didn’t want us dead, and the RUPAC weaponized it.”

Reach knelt in front of Tamika, pointing at Emileeya beside her. “In two hundred years, that’s what hasn’t changed. The RUPAC still treat people like things. They left her behind at the first sign of trouble. They didn’t fight for her. And she didn’t fight for them. They didn’t fight for you or try to rescue you when you got caught. What do you think they would have done to you once they had you close? You were a tool to be used, and when you were all used up, they threw you away.”

The former Marine stood in front of the sobbing teen, watching the weight of her choices crash into the life she’d destroyed. The crowd beyond the chairs, even the elders behind him, were flinching at the pain-wracked sobs leaving Tamika’s face. Reach took a step to his left, standing tall and proud in front of Emileeya, whose eyes still hadn’t come up from the floor.

“In the old world, we had criminals that couldn’t be trusted in normal society. They were too violent or thought too much of themselves to live with regular people. So we gave them a choice. Either serve in the military or go to jail. If you want my opinion, that’s what I’d say. They did terrible things and got a lot of people hurt. I say let them work hard to prove they belong or take a walk outside with a day’s rations and a tool of their choosing.”

Governor Havesh stepped out of the crowd, still rubbing the spot on his hand where Reach had touched it with the disruptor. “I stand with Mr. Reach.”

The crowd parted to give free rein to Governor Belkin in her grease-stained overalls. She took Governor Havesh’s hand in hers. “I stand with Mr. Reach.”

One by one, governors walked from the crowd to stand with the adopted Osay and his decision inside a room as silent as the grave. In the glaring quiet as governors cast their votes, a man and woman walked from the crowd and waited patiently to be addressed. The woman sobbed inconsolably as the man helped to guide her past the two tied women.

31

Reach waited with Liana as the crowd filed out. Bolton and Yuen hung close by along with the AR John Matrix Brody that only those with linked neural implants could see.

“So,” Bolt said, clapping his hands together. “Do we have another mission coming up?”

Reach nodded at the two primaries of his Military Contact Team. “Soon. But I have a chat with the command staff today. I should know more once we all sit down and compare notes.”

“While you were in the ocean, we remained behind to catalog as much as we could at Station Twelve,” Yuen said. “What a nightmare.”

“But in the long run, ultimately fruitful for us,” Bolton noted. “And while the place looked like a bomb went off inside, there is much of it we can salvage. I spoke to Doctor Roman briefly, and he’s in agreement that having that facility up and running would benefit us in the long run. Imagine all the lives we could save just pumping out basic medications with the tech they had inside.”

“You want to lead a contact team to handle that?” Reach asked.

Bolton seemed unsure what to say; he was touched by the suggestion. “You want to put… me in charge of an operation?”

“Why not? That skill set is in your wheelhouse. You ran salvage for the colony for years. Put together a list of what you might need, and we’ll work the military side of it.

Yuen can work on cataloging all the drugs they worked up. Especially the stuff that neutralizes the saraka bites.”

Yuen rubbed her chin. “Do you think Doctor Roman would be interested in helping me get up to speed with learning what to look for concerning the drugs?”

Reach smiled. “Oh, definitely.”

The hall was nearly empty now, save for the Elders. Bolton turned to leave, hesitated, and then asked, “Up until now, it’s always been some facet of the Rangers leading the operation. What’s changed?”

Reach rested a hand on the former governor’s shoulder. “You have. You’re trained and confident in your abilities because of it. On the mission to take Twelve, former RUPAC soldiers were going to lead the assault on the sub until Kutznetzov got squirrely. The Wolverine Platoon oversaw controlling the sub dock during our bid for Six. Cobra and Desperado platoons run their own security and reconnaissance teams for the stations they control. You led the project to dig our safety shelters for the Osay. The only things the Rangers did was fill in the blanks where you needed some tools or training.”

“I suppose that’s right,” Bolton said, his face brightening at the revelation.

Yuen took the man by the arm and walked him from the meeting hall. Reach watched until he noticed the militiaman guard walk out as well to seal the room.

“That was an impressive presentation, Mr. Reach,” Elder Rubenking said.

“Thank you, Elder,” Reach said and then pinged Liana over a private link. “I take it we’re not going to have a quiet dinner together yet.”

Liana chuckled softly over the link. “Late dinner again. Don’t worry. It’ll be worth the wait.”

“We asked your opinion, and that is what you gave us,” Elder Sorrano added. “But… do you think this experiment will work?”

Reach shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. “I don’t know. If anyone can motivate them, it’s Sergeant Dawson.”

Liana stepped around the elders to take Reach’s hand. Her smile brightened the room for him, which was all that mattered at that moment. The rest of Amir’s cares were far away. Scanning the room, he noticed a twinkle in Sorrano’s eye that wasn’t there before. At the same time, some of the other elders didn’t appear as happy.

“Jared,” Liana said, “the standards of our punishments have been long established. The real reason we wanted your opinion was because there was a child involved in such serious charges.” She raised his hand to rub some bit of grime off the hand plate on his armored glove. Then she just rubbed it because she wanted to, wanted to feel the strength of his hand against hers, even if there was a glove between them. “With you giving your opinion…”

Reach’s eyebrows went up. “You could be shielded from blame for pushing those punishments through because, technically, you were following the lead of the popular, and I should add stunningly handsome, outsider military guy.”

Across the room, Sorrano’s barely imperceptible nod spoke volumes.

“And will you be the one to observe their training?” Rubenking asked. “Will you be the one to walk them out of their camp when they fail?”

Reach’s answer was cryptic. “Elder Rubenking, after what they did, I am more inclined to follow some of the Ranger’s suggestions for them than my own.”

“Care to share?” Sorrano asked.

Reach sighed. “You have to understand that these men were considered some of the most proficient combatants in the world before leaving Earth. Now they are the best bar none because their enemies don’t have the training to match. That being said, they wanted to confine the two of them inside the new bunkers with guns. The Rangers would go in by squads and see how long it would take to hunt them down and shoot them with simunitions or the sonic disruptors. They would do this through rotating squads to discover tactical vulnerabilities in the bunkers.”

One of the elders at the corner of the dais tapped his cane. “How would that not be fun for a couple of young kids? We used to play war when I was young.”

“What I’m talking about is a bit different than what you might be thinking of,” Reach said. He activated a monitor across the room and cast a pre-recorded video through his implant.

The monitor across the room came on, showing the still image of someone’s gun barrel around a corner as seen through night vision. The image went into motion as the video displayed a massive white out of the stream, followed by the occupants in the room being knocked down by a flash bang. A towering Ranger, differentiated by his armor, rushed into the room and grabbed a uniformed soldier in a plate carrier by the straps, flinging him into his buddy to trip up the entire fire team. Multiple shots rang out as they punched paint splotches in all of the people in the room.

“ENDEX!” Unga shouted, calling out the universal Army tag for end of exercise. “Get up, cherries! You ain’t done. We running it again until you don’t get your ass kicked by two dudes. And I think one of us was asleep.”

The video went all shaky cam as Unga pushed the viewer before the video feed cut off.

“That was a single fire team in Dawson’s basic training. They ran that one iteration before being sent back to practice at a much slower pace for the rest of the training cycle. They got to run it again the next day. Imagine being hit like that every ten to fifteen minutes for weeks,” Reach said, not hiding the malice in his voice.

“I retract my previous statement,” The elder with the cane said. “That doesn’t seem fun at all.”

“In any event, Mr. Reach,” Sorrano continued, “your saying what you did, how you did, saved this council a lot of trouble and worry. You did right by us, again. That is appreciated by some and respected by all of us. Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir. And thanks to the council for allowing me to help.”

Liana stepped forward and announced, “And with that, ladies and gentlemen, after a rough few days, I am taking my man for a meal and posting actual guards over him so he can get some sleep.”

“As long as one of the guards isn’t Murphy,” Reach said, “I’m sold.”

The pair walked from the meeting hall into the night air. Masau waited outside, tossing around what looked like a baseball with a couple of boys. The sniper came right up to Reach on seeing him exist.

“Good to see that the whales didn’t eat you, LT.”

“Thanks Masau.” Reach looked suspiciously at the kids and then the door he came from. “You weren’t waiting for me out here, were you?”

Masau shrugged. “Just playin’ a little catch. If you happened to come out during it so I could make sure you were alright… well, that’s just a coincidence, sir.” The big sniper motioned for the boys to come closer. They kids seemed in awe of Reach and Liana both. “This is Braedon and Micah. I’m getting them ready for the eventual first-ever, district-wide baseball league going.”

Reach shook the two boys’ hands, smiling at the sight of a man he only had known as a severe sniper having what seemed to be normal family fun. “You Elona’s boys?”

“Yes, sir,” Micah said, his voice just deepening at his age.

Masau smiled. “Good kids, too. Also, sir, I figured I’d hang out and catch up with my guys here, and then return that rifle and pain pistol to the arms room for you. Get you home with your lady that much quicker.”

Reach relinquished the weapons, handing both to his team sergeant. “Thanks, Ian.”

“Trade ya,” Masau said, handing a still warm box to the lieutenant. “Real meal to go with some rest I hope, sir. If anyone pings you for something before you finish that, send ’em to me.”

“Will do, Sergeant. Thank you,” Reach said.

Without so much as a you’re welcome, Masau nodded his head in the direction he wanted his burgeoning family to go, and off they went. They tossed the ball between them. Masau quizzed them about the rules of the game on their way through the street toward the barracks where the arms room was housed.

“Nothing left for us to do now but have some alone time,” Liana said, taking him by the hand.

Reach resisted Liana’s light tug on his palm as he fished through the box sitting on the steps of the building. “This can’t be an actual cheeseburger?”

Liana winked. “Our cooks have been trading recipes back and forth with the Rangers and spacers. One of yours told one of ours about a hamburger, and they’ve been Doctor Roman-izing the kitchen to make an Osay burger.”

Reach took a bite of it, rolling his eyes back as the juicy chuck ran behind teeth and tongue to make a run for his stomach. “This is amazing! Have you tried this?”

Liana flashed Reach her guilty look. “They unveiled it this morning. I might’ve eaten one… or four of them today. Eating that many makes you hot.”

“S’called meat sweats,” Reach said through a mouthful. “Oh man, if we’ve got burgers now, we are going to be unstoppable.”

Liana laughed as he tried to feed her a bite of his meal. “No, I can’t. Seriously, I will throw up all over you.”

“Meh. Your loss.” Reach dug deeper into the box, pulling aside the paper wrapping. Wait, are these French Fries?”

Liana took out a napkin from the meal box and dabbed some of the burger juice running from Reach’s chin. “I haven’t seen you in this much ecstasy since I first cooked for you. If you remember that night.”

“How could I forget it?” Reach said, finishing his bite. “Feels like it was the last time we weren’t chaperoned. Wait, where’s your security detail?”

“Murphy is watching us from the broadcast tower. She’s giving us some space.”

Reach took another ravenous bite. “Burgers, fries, and privacy? What planet are we on?”

“Home.”

* * *

“I know you’re probably sick of having me in your head, Jared, but I need you to get up now,” Alexa said through the link.

“Ugh, what time is it?”

“Six a.m. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable hour to call except for the fact that Liana called me at just after midnight and requested a four a.m. wake up.”

“Four a—why? Has Doctor Roman turned her into an android?”

“That is an interesting hypothesis,” Alexa stated, treating it as a legitimate question. “I wonder if we could mitigate some of the slumbering aspects of cryo to allow Liana to remote pilot a Model-Thirty-Three-A so she could receive her medical treatments and lead the colony?”

“Not on your life, sister. That break she gets in the tube is the only reason she’s probably not mental by now,” Reach surmised. “Which brings us back to why are you waking me up at six a.m. after I’ve been on mission?”

“Science Briefing to the command staff. As you are the leader of the Military Contact Team and liaison between the Osay and the Boone staff, as well as Liana’s intended, your presence at the briefing is important.”

“Man. I hate that you’re right so much.”

“It is a curse, I know.”

“Okay,” Reach said through a yawn. “Can you ring up Bolton, Yuen, and Masau on this? I want them there with us.”

“Of course. I was hoping to have as many people annoyed with me as possible this morning.”

“Look who’s cracking jokes like her brother,” Reach said. He paused and considered the events of yesterday. “Hey, thanks again for riding shotgun with me to help us take Six. That was something.”

“Of course, Jared. I just hope we don’t have to do it again. The temptation to work soldiers like the RUPAC does with their Controller AI is a slippery slope I don’t want to fully explore.”

“That’s why we love you, Alexa. Always looking out for us.” Reach swung his feet on the floor, grateful for the cold on his bare feet. It was nice to be out of the armor and just allowed to let his skin breathe for a minute. Climbing from bed, he suited up in a reasonable uniform and jogged from his room.

A man approached him once he was outside. Reach’s HUD highlighted the man by flashing a halo around him to indicate that Reach still had the AR filters on in his display. The individual looked like John Matrix except for jeans and a leather jacket with slicked-back hair instead of the trademarked flat top.

“Good morning, Brody,” Reach said.

“Good Morning, Citizen. I was j-just out for a stroll. Say! Are you going to the c-command briefing? I’ll go with you!”

“Sure thing, buddy. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

They entered the science building, making their way to the back lab, one of the most secure places on the camp. Brody and Reach entered to find the usual suspects, with his three of Bolton, Yuen, and Masau coming in sleepy-eyed behind them. Friendly banter circulated the room as the coffee and tea was poured for everyone.

“Look who decided to show up!” Sherman said.

“Apparently I was allowed to sleep in later than I thought,” Reach answered. He winked to Liana, who pulled out a seat next to her and patted it in invitation. Reach sat down and then got back up when he noticed a meeting participant he hadn’t expected.

“Harmon!” Reach shouted. “I heard you got lost?”

“I was a sergeant before an LT—I don’t get lost,” Harmon said with a smile. He motioned his head slightly. “But… things are about to get interesting.”

Reach followed the USS Osay commander’s gesture and was surprised again. Hovering in one corner, savoring tea in a steaming cup, was Katya Federova. The woman wasn’t making conversation or even eye contact with anyone as she stirred the contents of her cup.

“Katya’s here?” Reach asked Liana through the link.

“Bosa’s idea. He has something up his sleeve.”

“Since we have everyone here, there’s no need to wait further,” Colonel Bosa said. “Our first order of business: Director Federova, thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for the invitation, Colonel. But as I don’t really command anything anymore, I wonder at your motives, sir?”

Bosa nodded, validating her question. “Some time ago, we sent the USS Osay on a mission around the moon to investigate some signals being picked up by the satellites we put in orbit.”

Katya’s expression never changed but Reach’s enhanced vision caught a micro-expression to go with a slight temperature change at the base of her neck near the artery. Bosa had just sprung a trap, and she’d walked into it.

Rather than wait for the colonel to lead her to an admonition, she jumped in with both feet. “Allow me to finish this for you, Colonel. Your ship probably only detected bits of transmissions and nothing it could put together into anything coherent. That’s because the station was sending me an ops ping.”

“So you knew that there was another station built around this crater on the moon?” Bosa asked, keeping his face flat and avoiding the frown that formed on Sherman and Harmon’s faces.

“Of course. I built it. Arriving to take command of the science stations across Amir, I had my deployment craft engineered to sleeper configuration and put in storage at Station Nine. This station’s purpose is for lunar re-deployment of carrier craft to make the journey back to RUPAC space should the command be given to fold up operations on the planet.”

“Why is the station sending ops pings?” Bosa asked.

“Rykov. He’s pinging the stations to get a location on the lunar base. The other craft like the Osay is there, and since he can’t have yours, he wanted mine.”

The room went from quiet side discussions to total silence. Harmon, the current USS Osay commander, set down his coffee cup to address her. “Any chance you were going to use that against us?”

The micro-expression again. Reach saw it flash across her skin. If he could see it, no doubt Brody, Alexa, Liana, and even Roman could too.

“Neither, for you or against you, Lieutenant,” she said calmly. “I meant what I said. I’m done with all of this. I want to nail Rykov to the wall and go to Earth. I want blue sky and green trees and nothing with multiple tongues jumping out of the ground to eat me. Most of all, I want a place where there is no USA and no RUPAC. That ship will be vital to operations to heal the planet. I won’t waste it. As for the ping, Rykov and his team came after us, and I buried the coordinates for that station.”

“And the broken ships in orbit that almost killed us?” Harmon asked.

“Ties into some of Mr. Reach’s adventures of late,” Katya answered. “The researchers at Station Twelve got it into their heads the scientific applications of the saraka were too dangerous to study on planet but too valuable to the Regime not to export. They called in a science vessel and security ships to extract a queen, a warrior, and several infected humans. We didn’t let them leave.”

Liana’s eyes widened in surprise. “You destroyed your own ships?”

Katya took a sip of tea as a stall to gather her thoughts. “They remained in orbit over Amir to gather resources and rotate personnel for the trip back. The animals got loose and infected half the crew in less than a day. Under those circumstances, I used my ships to smash theirs into pieces.”

Liana pinged Reach privately. “How many lives did she save in the RUPAC by killing her own people. How could she live with the weight of that?”

“Weight of command,” Reach answered and found himself hoping that Liana would never have to face such a decision herself. To Federova, he asked, “How did you know they were infected?”

“The Lunar station has great potential to keep tabs on what is in orbit around Amir,” she said.

“Son-of-a bitch,” Reach mumbled to himself.

“Something more to add, Jared?” Bosa asked.

“Um, sir?” Brody intruded. “The correct line is, ‘Something to add, Doctor Ryan?’”

Reach waved his friend off. “I’ve got this, Brody, thanks. Captain Bosa, a lot of things suddenly started to make sense to me, now. Koen used the ploy of an advance echelon team targeting Amir for the Reclaimers because they didn’t have a full map of the research stations. The prize in all their searching was Station Nine and its complement of ships and the other USS Osay-style craft.” Reach pointed to Federova. “That’s part of the reason Kier was trying to break into your office. He wanted to call the other ship. All the attempts on your life. The Camp. Gruber’s Station. It’s all about your implant. They needed your link because all the Station Nine info is secured in your skull. Even Koen. He shot you in the head to keep Rykov from getting your chip.”

Katya raised her teacup to Reach. “He missed. Cancer hands. But to answer your supposition, the ops ping on Nine doesn’t go to the other stations. It only comes to me.”

“There’s also this, Director Federova.” Bosa clicked on the monitor at the end of the room. Pictures of a cavernous expanse of rigging and catwalks filled the screen, along with three titanic ships.

Katya’s chin dipped toward the floor upon seeing the image, as though she’d just been beaten at the ultimate game of chess. “Lieutenant Harmon found this by deploying a DAGRE team on the moon’s surface and tracing back burst transmissions to the station. We haven’t entered it, and we don’t know what’s there except a small fleet of ships. This begs the question, what ships did the Ghosts come in?”

Katya quickly said, “It’s called a stealth launch module. Cryo tubes for each team are loaded onto, essentially, a giant engine. The outside is fitted with the Garin stealth shuttles, and it is shot into space. There is just enough room on the rocket for one team at a time to be active. When they get to their destination, they all board the Garins and deploy them for flight to the planet. The rocket breaks up in the atmosphere, and armored caches with their equipment crash to the planet below. It is not a comfortable way to travel in the least, but to the Ghost Guard, it is standard for travel between systems.”

She folded her arms. “Back to the point. You have people ready to break into my house. Where do we go from here?”

“Are you still planning to take the terraformers we’re building at Station Five off-world?” Bosa asked.

“I am, and I will once Rykov is dead,” Katya confirmed.

“Thank you, Katya. That leaves us to get to the heart of the briefing and why I asked everyone here,” Bosa said calmly. He pushed his coffee cup away, giving himself room to fold his hands on the table. “Director Federova, how much do you know about the current situation in RUPAC space?”

“Not much. We stopped getting transmissions from them years ago, which isn’t uncommon when they plan to send the Reclamation Fleet. Why?”

“It was something in Jared’s reports,” Alexa said, entering the conversation. “He had traveled to the other side of Amir to deal with the Grey Faction. But some of their timelines didn’t add up. Something began to bother us about how fast they were moving between systems. While Reach and Team Junkyard were trapping their way to Station Six, we deployed First Platoon, Seventy-Fifth Rangers to Grey Faction territory to locate the ship they use for exo-system travel. The ship we have on the screen is a smaller-scale version of the USS Osay. It is also twenty times faster than any ship any of us possesses due to a new drive system.”

Doctor Roman stood from his chair to highlight several more screens around the room to give the occupants a clear view of what they were talking about. “With this system, the Grey Faction can move between Amir and RUPAC space in two to three years.”

“That’s not possible,” Katya said. “That technology is…”

“Roughly thirty-four years away from when you left Regime space,” Alexa interrupted. “It went into wide scale production for military use shortly after, and has seen some civilian use since.”

“So the Grey Faction lied to us?” Reach said.

“Well, duh! Th-they’re criminals,” Brody said. “Th-they want you dead. They want your family dead. They want your house burned to the gr-ground! They wanna go out in the middle o’ the night and p-p-piss on your ashes!”

Katya set down her cup, hard. She folded her hands across her chest and took several cleansing breaths before asking her next question. “How do you know what kind of spaceships they have in Regime space?”

Reach felt like he was watching a tennis match as all of the bits of his life on Amir began to stitch together in his mind. As he watched the different people around the room insert different pieces of the puzzle together, more began to click. “Our conversation at Station Six. After the transfer. We found that shirt and the station director, Zaitsev.”

“Maro Zaitsev is here?” Doctor Gruber asked. “He was a popular up-and-comer before I was sent to Amir. Cybernetic augmentation to control anti-government sentiment in a population. Certain thought triggers could be mapped and harnessed so that anytime you had a thought against the regime, the implant would zap you.”

“We found evidence he was special projects branch when we found him on the station,” Reach confirmed. “When we first encountered you, Director Federova, it was to steal the entangled particle array from one of your stations because at the time, we thought you had burned ours. That array had led us to much in the way of quantum entangled communication and how we could use it. But rather than a long, drawn-out explanation that will put the Rangers in the room to sleep, allow us to show you a condensed version of what we’ve found.”

32

Rykov walked into the squad room, surprised at the spartan nature of the space. There was a counter with the usual coffee maker, hot water kettle, and the refrigerator with the usual passive-aggressive notes between co-workers. In every workplace, there was the one guy with the marked meals who wouldn’t clean out the bowl he’d put in there years ago. Squad rooms like this used to be on regular army bases all over the Triad. Before his augmentation. Before the testing.

Jared Reach walked in behind him, dressed in a simple fatigue uniform and carrying a steaming cup of coffee. Tucked under his other arm was a tablet that he set down before taking a seat. He motioned to the chair opposite him, waiting for his counterpart to follow suit.

Rykov’s face twisted at the gesture. “Is this really necessary?”

“No, but it does set a more relaxing tone,” Reach said before taking a sip of his coffee. “Would you like some?”

“What purpose would it serve?” the RUPAC commander asked.

Reach went to the counter and prepared another cup. He set the drink in front of the unused chair as in invitation for his adversary to sample both.

Rykov breathed in the steam. “I can smell, I mean, I can really smell the coffee.”

Reach held up his cup almost as if in toast. “This simulation is very good considering the bandwidth capacity of the quantum systems and the entangled particles sampling our neural links. Meeting this way is a safe, no-hack version where we don’t have to worry about dumping rounds into each other.”

“Why, because you have them programmed not to kill?” Rykov asked.

“No, because they’re not programmed at all,” Reach countered.

Rykov pulled the seat from the table and looked at his hand after he did so. The sensation of the chair, as if he pressed fingers and palm into the thing to move it, was there. He plunged himself into the seat and sipped the coffee. His eyes rolled back in his head as he savored the liquid running down his throat.

“This is quite remarkable. How are you doing this?”

“We’ve made some advances to virtual and augmented reality. Mostly for medical purposes, but every once in a while, we get to play around with it for other means. We figured this was as good a use as any.”

Rykov, aka Coffee Cup, sampled his coffee again. “This is very good. Do you have the same as mine?”

“No,” Reach answered. “Mine is a dark roast. French, I think. Saltier and smokier than the one you have. Would you like to try?”

“I can taste from your cup? You don’t care?” Rykov asked.

“It’s a simulation, although I prefer you still don’t backwash, just in case.”

After his sip, the RUPAC officer slapped the table. “This is fun, Mr. Reach. And that is good, this French Roast. I like this.” He slid the coffee back across the table to an adversary he’d otherwise sooner stab than share with.

Reach gave a slight smile. “I know it might seem strange to get together like this when our two groups have been trying to smash each other, but I wanted to take a step back and just talk for a minute.”

Rykov slid from his chair, up and over to the coffee pot where he refilled the cup.

Reach finished off his cup, setting it beside him to make room for the tablet. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the coffee. How do you like the furnishings? Better to be comfortable and talk than worry about distractions.”

“Ah, which is why the room is so bare. That way, we focus on each other.”

Reach pointed at the man, after which he sat idle to watch his enemy sip his drink.

Rykov decided then was the time to get down to business. “Mr. Reach. I receive this strange message request with a code string on it. My tech assures me it’s just a network address and an access port for the neural link. Easily monitored, he tells me. I find you here waiting for me. To what purpose, beyond the drinks?”

“Your tech is right. This meeting can be monitored by both sides. Your technician is following along?”

Rkyov nodded.

Reach tapped on the tablet. “We went looking for some things because there was a lot that didn’t make sense to us over the last few months. You, the Grey Faction, some other things.”

“Grey Faction,” Rykov said with more than a little admonition in his tone. “You certainly did pick some friends there. After you left, they went to ground. The only ones there now are the villagers and the host of combat security mechs you left to defend them. One of my men died as a result.”

“Call it karma for when you sent the Ghost team after us in the jungle. Sidorov is still trying to figure the best way to feed you your own intestines.”

“Sidorov is a gangster. Not dangerous.”

“That’s what tipped us off. The whole arms dealer thing. So tell me, Captain. Do you know?”

Rykov’s calm demeanor fell from his face as he put the simulated coffee cup on the table. “And what is it that you think you know?”

Reach set up the tablet. Immediately, broadcast news media began to play on the screen detailing a host of events. Maps, star charts, troops marching across borders, and common people storming buildings that didn’t belong to them all played out on the table between the two men.

“It happened a little shy of a decade ago. Just after you were dispatched. You see, your Guard Group wasn’t seen as a priority to go clear out a bunch of scientists from a backwater planet where the Regime screwed up. Not when the colonies were tearing themselves apart. They tried to depopulate Amir using their Chimera monster, but the thing had a taste for more than the people they programmed it to kill. Plus, their little science experiment didn’t factor in the protein it needed to consume from people to survive. They didn’t think it could be found in other sources on Amir. In spite of the best laid science division plans, the Bangora lived on, making the planet unsuitable for population due to extreme and deadly environmental conditions. When creatures didn’t die, the regime finally sent you.”

The display froze on a colonial guerrilla troop catching a GSSR unit in an ambush. The blood from the man on screen being shot sprayed toward the camera. Reach could feel the hate seething from Rykov as he watched the news feed.

“All over colonial space, people were deciding that your Regime policies were too heavy to carry every day, and the kicker came when Zaitsev started installing pain emitters in people’s brains to keep them from revolting. And if they refused the implant, the Regime refused them food. That only made them angrier, so they fought harder. The GSSR sent the founder of that bright idea here, and he did the same thing to the wildlife as an experiment. He wanted to see if he could improve the process. To see if he could work it here when it had failed so completely before. He even ordered the people at Station Twelve to recover an infected person to see if his little mental pain palace could control them, too. His arrogance caused the death of that entire station.”

Rykov’s eyes drifted from the screen. The feed continued to play while Reach made his case, condemning him as a military commander to the eyes of the world. The eyes of the Osay.

“Your people are watching this, aren’t they?” Rykov asked.

Reach turned the tablet to see what part of the presentation it was on. When it got to the Conscript Revolt on one of the colonies, he turned it back. “Some. Everyone’s seen the news feed we put together. We even had a big town meeting for the show, but some of our citizens who used to be conscripts wanted to watch us talk in real time. They wanted to see if you would get mad enough to admit the lie.”

“What lie?” Rykov sneered, swiping his hand across the table and sending the coffee cups over the edge in a controlled tantrum. He’d meant to dislodge the tablet, but it remained fixed. He rose to kick the table itself over, only to have the program reset, putting him back in his chair.

“According to the People’s Colonial Union during this very broadcast, the Russo Chinese Pacific Alliance was dissolved during the Chang Revolts eight years ago. The people rose up and slaughtered those in power, forming an elected governing body to manage collective colonial affairs. Of the four worlds still actively colonized, each governs themselves, and they come together once a year to discuss colonial matters. No more Regime. No more GSSR. The only RUPAC left in the galaxy is on the other side of your screen.”

Rykov took several heaving breaths and finally folded his hands on the table.

“So,” Reach started. “Do they know?”

“No. Just the technician, Kier, and me,” Rykov admitted.

Reach mimicked his opponent’s posture without the salivating and huffing. “It seems that after you were dispatched, the Reclamation Fleet, the only one they had left, was sent to deal with the revolts leading to the collapse of the Regime. They were wiped out by saboteurs. No fleet is coming. There’s no support for you. All you have is the forces you’ve managed to collect on Station One, where you’re trying to formulate a poison to kill everyone that isn’t you.”

With his bearing somewhat recovered, Rykov said, “That’s because the thought of your smug American values invading this planet and turning everything and everyone into soft little victims sickens me. People, all people, will eventually grow tired of the very thing keeping them safe and rise up against it unless you chain it to them. You give them something to fight and hate. Look at what happened in your camp. We got your own people to turn against you.”

“You did. And we caught them. And they’ve been dealt with.”

Rykov looked up from his hands to the tablet. Images continued to play broadcasts talking of a new and stable union, a way forward to the stars for man under no banner or boot. A mass celebration caught the officer’s eye as he recognized some city that he must have visited or lived in when he wasn’t out among the stars, killing. “What do you want?”

“A cheeseburger. Ever had one?”

When Rykov shook his head, bewildered. “What?”

Reach continued. “They are amazing. I just had my first one since leaving Earth. I want another one. And the week after that I want to have two. The point I’m making is that if I’m not fighting, I can do something else, and so can you. This planet is big enough that we don’t have to ever see each other. You’ve killed mine, and we’ve killed yours. We can leave that behind because right now, on this planet, there are no governments telling us what to do or who to hate.”

“Leave it behind and go on like nothing ever happened? My entire mission in coming here was to ready the planet so that decent people could move in and build a world of order and discipline.”

Reach scrolled back the broadcast Alexa had strung together to a point where colonists were fighting clearly uniformed GSSR forces. “Does that look like order and discipline? It looks like a few years ago, your own people slaughtered your leaders as a glaring message to the galaxy that tyrants can take their Regime and stick it up their ass.”

“Until they’ve had their fill of ‘freedom,’” Rykov sneered. “Then they grow soft, and their people will sour. Another Regime will rise. They always do.”

Reach returned the tablet to his side of the table. “We’ll continue to make the same mistakes because that’s what people do. The best we can do is work through it. The ball is in your court. The only way this war continues now is if you want it to. But if it does—I’m going to walk in the front door and drag you out. Then I’m going to beat you to death in front of all your people.”

Reach and everything he brought with him vanished.

Rykov sat at the table for a moment before getting up and pouring another cup of coffee to take with a newly acquired folded pancake, set beside a small dish of cream filling. He pressed the spongy food to his tongue and was pleasantly surprised that he could taste the blini like he used to have as a kid. “Bravo, Mr. Reach. Bravo.”

The room wavered as he returned to the command room high atop Station One. Outside the observation window, there was nothing but snow as far as the eye could see. Snow and the occasional movement of a vehicle or troop on some assignment by his people. And that’s what they were. They were his people now. Because of his position in the Ghost Guard, he was the closest thing they had to a leader.

His technician rushed into his view, shaking him by the arm as though he were trying to wake him from a concussion. “Damn it, man! Why weren’t you answering any of my calls?”

“What, Stephan? What are you going on about?” Rykov demanded.

“I was calling you in the link, but you didn’t answer. I tried to pull you out, but I couldn’t force it without frying your brain. The meeting, the information, it went station-wide.”

“What?” Rykov shot from his chair. “How? Tell me!”

“It was nothing they were doing. It came from our side. Something in our system wouldn’t let me shut it off or shut it down. I tried everything. Everyone on the station has seen it, and if they haven’t, they soon will.”

Rykov growled as he pounded his hand against the thick glass of the observation screen.

Another Ghost entered the room to stand just inside the door, waiting to be acknowledged. Rykov didn’t turn, so he said, “I just pulled the technicians from the mech control grid.”

“Thoughts?” Rykov asked.

“You better spin this so we still have heads come tomorrow. There are a lot of conscripts down there, sir.”

“Call it a cyber-attack?” Rykov suggested.

“Would be similar to what the people would know from the colonies. I say it is good. Some of the techs say it came from inside the base.”

“Run it down, Sergeant,” Rykov growled.

“Yes, sir.”

Stepan checked the action on his sidearm. “What now?”

Rykov ignored the man’s question in favor for a commotion outside approaching them. The Ghost Sergeant stepped fully in the room to watch a combat team bringing in a man in strange plate armor. He was lithe but strong looking, and they had his weapons. All RUPAC issue.

“What is this?” Rykov asked the team sergeant.

“We thought he was one of you, sir. A Ghost, I mean. He walked into the middle of the vehicle bay and surrendered to my team as we were readying for patrol,” the sergeant responded.

Rykov reached past the man’s helmet to flip the latches. Steam vented into the frigid room as the plate pushed forward from his face. The helmet slipped away, exposing a face Rykov found frightening enough to back him away. Quickly remembering himself in front of his men, he stepped to within fighting distance, despite this particularly dangerous man being only restrained by zip cuffs. “Are you here to kill me because of your daughter, Captain Koen?”

“No, sir. I am here for the show.”

“What show?” Rykov asked.

“The one where the people don’t believe whatever spin you’ll place on that broadcast and where they force you out for having them fight a war for a government that doesn’t exist,” Koen said calmly. “I want to watch your downfall.”

EPILOGUE

“Are you sure you’re up t-to this, Citizen Ranger?” Brody asked from around the corner of the building.

“I don’t see we have a choice, Brody,” Reach answered. “We either assault through, or we run for the rest of our lives.”

“Hey, there’s s-something I want you to do for me.” Brody pulled his friend close and pressed his gloves onto both sides of the man’s head. “C’mere. Win. Win.”

“That’s from one of the boxing movies, right?” Reach asked.

“R-rocky 2. 1979. You’ll get it. Just n-need to spend more time with the Big B and less time with the L-liana.”

Music broadcast into Reach’s link. A training montage played through the implant, and to Reach, it sounded better than anything played at any wedding anywhere he’d ever been to.

“What are we w-waiting for?” Brody shouted.

The two passed beyond the building into the gardens for the district. The streets were packed with people cheering as he stepped into the avenue. At the end, Elder Sorrano waited for the group with Doctor Roman and several Rangers on one side, Bosa and Alexa on the other. The cheering exploded as Liana came around the next corner, flanked by Murphy and a security detail. The mechs allowed her to pass through on her own as she made her way to the diminutive arch Elona’s kids had built to be helpful.

“Liana,” Reach said.

“Jared,” she returned with a wink.

In the AR filters of the HUD, Brody was once again in his John Matrix cream-colored suit, standing beside Reach with a sweeping smile on his face. He waved to the crowd as if they were here only to see him and this was a parade in his honor. Using his loudspeakers, he addressed the crowd.

“Mawidge. Mawidge is whaa bwings us togevvor today.”

“That’s okay, Brody,” Elder Sorrano said. “But thank you for getting their attention.”

“Of course, Elder Citizen! I think that sealed the d-deal, buddy. Go make some babies!”

Liana’s laughter through the link was infectious. “There’s more to it than that, Brody. Lots of ceremony left.”

“But that is going to be a part of it, right,” Reach asked.

“Oh yeah. A whole lot of it.”

Reach beamed as he looked across the crowd. Osay and Rangers, Spacers and former RUPAC conscripts, were mixed together to watch two people from two separate cultures see if they could make a go of it on a savage colony world.

“No cold feet, Marine,” Liana said. “Here comes the big part!”

Reach changed his focus to Sorrano, who spoke about love and commitment. He faced Jared, making the man the center of his attention as he asked if he would take Liana as his wife.

A loud, digital honking of a nose sounded as Brody began crying tears of joy.

Reach stretched out to his almost wife and hugged her tightly. He stepped back and affirmed that this was the woman he wanted. This was the life he was choosing, and this wayward galaxy would just have to deal with it.

CONNECT WITH JASON ANSPACH

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ABOUT THE CREATORS

Jason Anspach is an Associated Press bestselling author best known for the Galaxy’s Edge military sci-fi series. He lives in the Pacific Northwest and is regularly the MVP of all driveway basketball games—at least until his sons grow a couple of inches taller.

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J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author, has a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

Chaney is best known for his Renegade Star series, the Variant Saga, the Messenger series, and Ruins of the Galaxy. For more on his releases, go to www.jnchaney.com