“They ripped out some girl’s tapper?” Carlos asked. “That is sick.”

  “A human captive, here?” I asked. “Can you verify this, Natasha?”

  She was working her equipment. Her lips were curled back, but she didn’t shy away. She took samples, ran them into tiny compartments in the tech computer in her ruck—and started nodding.

  “The remains are human,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her wrist. I wasn’t sure if she was pushing off tears or sweat, and I didn’t have the heart to ask. “Female—not too badly decayed. She must have recorded this, and when her tapper tried to connect with ours, it broadcast the message.”

  “A lot of good it will do us,” Carlos complained. “Sobbing? No words? That’s her last message?”

  I cuffed him. Sometimes, I react physically, and this was one of those times.

  “Have some respect for the dead, Ortiz,” I said. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll put your ass behind these bars and rip your tapper off with some pliers. Then we’ll see what your last will and testament sounds like.”

  Grumbling, he sidled away.

  Natasha was running more tests on the remains. “I think she is dead—but this is disturbing. I’m not getting a clear ID from this tapper.”

  Suddenly, she turned to frown up at me. “James, I think this person—whoever she was—wasn’t from Earth. She doesn’t have a valid tapper ID.”

  “Huh… no way to revive her, then. No way to find out who she was. A strange thing…”

  “With all due respect, Adjunct,” Carlos said from a safe distance. “I think we should get the flying fuck out of here.”

  I looked at him. “You’re probably right. But I’m not done looking around yet.”

  We found a hatch that led below this level—and I marched down it.

  “James,” Natasha called from behind me. “We’re getting pretty far from the rest of the unit.”

  I looked back. Natasha and Carlos were still at the circular entrance of this latest, smaller passageway. They didn’t want to follow. They didn’t want to go any deeper, I could tell.

  “Spooked, huh?” I asked. “All right. I’ll just trot down this way and see where this tunnel goes. After that, we’ll go back up. You two can hold onto your panties and sit at the entrance.”

  They were annoyed, but not annoyed enough to follow me.

  The passage was narrow. It was only about a meter and a half in diameter, and I had to hunch forward in order not to scrape my helmet on the ceiling.

  At last, I reached a big pressure hatch, and I forced it open.

  There, inside the chamber at the end of that long, weird tube, was a junction. A larger chamber that led off in several directions to other passages. Some of the other passages were much larger than the one I’d used to access this chamber.

  In the center of the chamber was the power generator. It was a very alien-looking device. It spun constantly inside of a metal cage—but without actually moving physically. Instead, a ball of light whirled around on a spindle that looked like a shaft of diamond. The energy ball shot out bolts of power every second or so, like a storm caught inside a cage.

  “Natasha, are you getting this?” I asked, talking into my tapper.

  “I see—” Natasha said, then cut out with static, “—possibly dangerous.”

  “Yep. Looks deadly to me.”

  “That’s definitely a power generator,” Natasha said in my ear. She was reading my vid feed and watching my every move from a safe distance. “I can’t fathom how it works from here—but I’d love to run tests on it.”

  “You’re welcome to come on down here and investigate.”

  “Hold on a second,” Carlos interjected. “I’ve got a message from Graves. It says we’re all to report back to the main decks. We’ve got incoming hostiles.”

  “What?” I complained. “Did you just phone up Graves and tattle on me, Ortiz?”

  “I’m sorry sir, I’m not reading you clearly. Should I forward a shot of your middle finger to the primus? I’ve got one on file, here…”

  “You chicken-shit,” I complained. “Natasha, is Carlos full of crap or what?”

  “Specialist Ortiz is indeed exploding with excrement, sir,” she said. “But in this case, he’s right. Graves is recalling all scouting parties. We’ve got assault ships inbound from the planet below.”

  “Dammit,” I said, and I rushed out of the chamber. “You guys return to the unit back the way we came. I’ll meet up with you soon enough—I’m taking a different route back.”

  “You’re just not going to be happy until you die down here, are you, McGill?” Carlos asked.

  “That’s right,” I admitted, and I closed the channel.

  Finding a much larger passage, I was able to move faster. Bounding along in low-G, I raced back to the upper decks. Taking a different route allowed me to do more scouting, too. I took photos of strange rooms and once I even found remains of a dead Vulbite.

  Taking a quick snap of that, I relayed it up my chain of command. I got a call back from Primus Graves—but it wasn’t a personal chat line. It was a message broadcast to everyone in the cohort who was able to access command chat. Apparently, I’d gotten close enough to the legion routers to pick up messages like this again.

  “Listen up, officers,” Graves said. “We’ve got inbound hostiles. ETA six minutes. They’re coming up from the planet, and their ships are moving too fast for Nostrum’s broadsides to lock onto. Turov has opted not to fire as the fusion shells would likely miss and hit either the factory or the planet itself.”

  That made sense to me. Nostrum’s weaponry was built to either knock out an enemy capital ship or destroy a planet. We didn’t have much in the way of armament designed to surgically take out small ships at range.

  Moving as fast as I could, I bounced along the passages back to my unit. Each flying leap caused my helmet to scrape and squeak on the ceiling, slowing me down. I cursed and tried to time it all perfectly, but it was hard. I wasn’t used to the low-G environment yet.

  -18-

  When I made it back to my unit, I motioned wildly to Veteran Moller.

  She approached, and I shared the feed from Graves with her. As Graves talked, her eyes widened in alarm.

  “We can only assume,” he said, “that these assault ships are part of a counter-invasion force sent to repel us. Reports are the ships are full of Vulbites. That’s not confirmed yet, but several sightings support the idea.”

  I wanted to speak up and ask questions, but there were too many people listening in, so I kept my mouth shut for now. Let him finish, I told myself.

  What I did do was motion to Moller again.

  “Gather up everyone,” I ordered her. “Pull in all our scouts. We’re changing plans.”

  Nodding, she rushed off and began bellowing orders at her startled recruits.

  “The third cohort,” Graves continued, “is hereby ordered to shelve our previous search-and-secure mission. We’re moving out onto the outer hull, to the superstructure in open space. We’ve got the space-docks covered by another cohort, so don’t worry about them slipping in that way. The enemy forces will have to land and crawl into any available hatch—but to do that they’ll have to get past us first.”

  My lower jaw jutted out in thought. The plan seemed like a good one. It looked like the aliens had evacuated the complex when they saw us coming, and we’d snatched the entire orbital structure by surprise.

  But now the enemy was finally in the game. They’d mobilized their troops and began staging a counterattack. There was going to be resistance after all.

  “This is what we get paid for,” Graves said. “Don’t let a single enemy trooper sneak aboard our prize. You now have fifteen minutes left to deploy on the roof. Graves out.”

  My helmet had lit up inside with new mapping information and waypoints for my team to reach. It was pretty general, and the map was blank in a lot of places, but we definitely had to backtrack several decks upward.

  Natasha grabbed my arm at that moment. Her eyes showed amazement.

  “James, I can’t believe you made it back here before we did.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it sometime. For now, we’re going up onto the roof. Check your HUD.”

  Natasha did, and she cursed aloud. That wasn’t the norm for her, but I understood. I’d relayed the predicted enemy landing points and our defensive line graphics to her.

  “We don’t have time to get up there and set up an effective defense.”

  “Not if we keep standing around here jawing,” I agreed.

  Moller and I got people moving, but our redeployment wasn’t going as fast as I’d have liked. Many exploratory teams hadn’t returned yet.

  Harris rushed up to me a few minutes later. “McGill,” he said, “I’ve got all my people back here.”

  He did, too. A dozen or so hulking giants were wandering in to stand behind him, and armored men clustered behind that.

  “Where’s the squid?” I asked him.

  “Silt? He’s somewhere…”

  “Sub-Veteran Silt!” I called out over unit chat. “Show yourself, or I’ll have to call you AWOL!”

  Silt drifted into the chamber. In the low artificial gravity fields, it was easy for him to glide around almost like he was swimming.

  “What are your orders, Adjunct?” he said.

  “You’re staying with me. Sargon, you’re staying with me too—three steps behind Silt, here.”

  Sargon had survived Leeson’s deadly fall into the crucible and had joined our platoon. He had a belcher and a sour attitude to go with it.

  I caught his eye, and I nodded toward the squid.

  “Sure thing, sir,” he said, and he moved behind Silt.

  Sargon had been at my side for so many years, I barely had to give him specifics. Sometimes, just a look and a nod was good enough for us to communicate. In this case, I didn’t trust Silt, and he knew it.

  That was just fine with Sargon. There was no way he’d ever trust any squid—unless that squid was already dead, and maybe not even then.

  Silt’s eyes slid to track Sargon then came back to me.

  “What is it I can do for you, Adjunct?” he said.

  “You can guide me and the remains of my unit. Get us up onto the roof of this structure as fast as possible. Check your data stream for details.”

  I relayed Grant’s mapping data to him.

  “The exterior? I see…” he said. “We’ll be on the side facing the planet surface. That will leave us vulnerable to enemy cannons.”

  “Whatever,” Harris said, losing patience. “Can you get us there in… four minutes?”

  “Yes,” Silt said.

  Then, bunching his thick tentacles, he sprang away. He shot off, gliding vertically to the ceiling of the chamber we were in.

  “Now, Adjunct?” Moller demanded.

  “Now!” I ordered.

  “Magnetics off!” Moller shouted.

  In unison, we turned off our magnetic boots and sprang after the squid. Legion Varus troops like Harris and I were experienced spacers. We weren’t as smooth with null-G maneuvers as a squid—but we were pretty damned good.

  But the same couldn’t be said for our fresh recruits or our heavy troopers. They all preferred the feel of something solid—like a ship’s deck—under their boots.

  All of the experienced Varus officers and noncoms flew like birds. We didn’t hesitate, or tumble.

  In a surprised rush, the recruits and heavy troopers tried to follow. Some of them did pretty well. Cooper, for example, managed a controlled swan dive, with his hands stretched out on either side of him.

  The heavy troopers were the worst. They moved like falling boulders. They didn’t flail, but instead sort of hunkered into a ball, often spinning slowly. When they hit the upper part of the chamber, they landed on their heads, sides or feet at random.

  Sad it was for the light trooper who didn’t skitter out of the way fast enough when they came sailing in. A few cries of pain were heard, and none of the heavies apologized for crushing my lights.

  There wasn’t time for recriminations. Silt was still on the move. He’d levered open a hatch and vanished into it.

  I was right on his tail, along with Sargon and Harris.

  Turning to Harris and Moller, I nodded to the clown-posse of noobs on our tail. “Ride herd on them. Don’t let them straggle.”

  Then, with a nod to Sargon, I launched myself into the hatchway. We were hard on Silt’s tail—or rather, his aft tentacles.

  Once, after taking two or three more rapid turns, Silt glanced back.

  Sargon and I were right there. He paused, as if surprised.

  “Do you wish me to slow down?” he asked.

  “If I do, I’ll give you the order.”

  One of those trailing tentacles twitched. Was that annoyance? Some latent desire to reach out and slap this irritating human? I wasn’t sure, but Silt turned away again and swam higher, heading toward the outer decks.

  After a bewildering series of hatches, passages, and wide open chambers, we finally reached a large airlock.

  “Open space lies beyond,” Silt said. “Should I open it?”

  “It’s pressurized in here,” I said. “We’ll be sucked outside.”

  The squid rippled his dangling limbs. I’d learned this was a sign of unconcern on his part, a Cephalopod shrug.

  “Boss?” Sargon said. “When the unit comes in here, we’ll have to cycle through that airlock. We’ve only got about a minute left. I don’t think we’ll have the defensive line organized before the enemy shuttles get here.”

  “Yeah…” I said. “All right, hang on. Silt, blow both doors.”

  Looking mildly surprised, the squid tapped a sequence of buttons.

  Right then, I realized something. Silt had been here before. Either that or he knew how to operate this equipment because the interface was familiar. It hadn’t occurred to me to mine him for information as he’d been part of Harris’ command.

  I made a mental note to ask him about the colored cubes and a half dozen other things later on—when we weren’t about to go into a pitched battle.

  The door shunted open with shocking speed, and the released air sucked at our bodies hard—but the effect was brief.

  One recruit was caught by surprise, however. Our first light trooper came up into the chamber just as the doors opened.

  Taken by surprise, Cooper was propelled by an explosive gust of air. He went flailing by.

  “Snag him, somebody!” I shouted.

  We all reached, but only one of us had the length of limb to do the job. Silt caught one ankle, and Cooper slammed into the steel bulkhead with bone-cracking force.

  The pressure had equalized by now, and I gestured to Silt, who tossed Cooper toward me carelessly.

  I caught the kid and checked him out, frowning. His helmet had a star-like crack, but it was intact. His face—he wore a comically shocked expression.

  “Ha,” I laughed. “You still with us, Cooper?”

  “Uh… yessir. I think so. I might have cracked a rib—but I’m alive.”’

  “Good to hear. I like your spunk. You’re going to scout the exterior hull for me—right now.”

  He moved painfully at first, but soon he was crawling over the metal hatch like a spider. He was back in the game.

  Mean, but tough… Part of me liked the kid. Sure, he was the biggest asshole I’d met since Carlos, but he had spirit.

  While he scrambled outside in the blue-gray light of the planet, the chamber behind us filled with troops. The heavies came in last, squeezing their bulk past the hatchways, looking like grown men negotiating tunnels made for children.

  I saw a flash outside.

  “Cooper!” I shouted. “Report!”

  Silence returned to me. I remembered his broken antennae—maybe the kid was having trouble with his com system through the thick hull.

  “Silt, can you see him?”

  The squid gave me an unpleasant stare. “Not without exposing myself.”

  “Expose yourself, then. Briefly.”

  Squids are big and bulky aliens, but in space or water, they’re pretty fast-moving and even graceful. They only seemed to move with lumbering slowness when they were on dry land under the solid tug of gravity.

  Silt lunged past us into the open air lock. After about two seconds, he returned again. He trailed Cooper’s broken body behind him.

  Cooper no longer had to worry about his broken antenna, his starred faceplate—or much of anything else. His head had been burned clean off.

  His neck was a charred-black stump. That’s all he had left of his most important appendage.

  -19-

  My light troopers were scared. I couldn’t blame them, what with Cooper’s beheaded corpse drifting around in the middle of the chamber we were hiding in.

  “Looks like we have company,” I announced. “Natasha, relay the contact report to Graves.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask him what to do next?” she asked. “We’re pinned in here.”

  I looked at her, startled. “Nope. I know what he’ll say: ‘get yourself unpinned’ or something equally helpful.”

  “What are we going to do, then?” Harris asked.

  For two quick seconds, I thought about it.

  I’ve never claimed to be a smart man, but even an average man often has natural areas of expertise. One of my specialties, developed over many years, was a good feel for small unit tactics.

  “Light troops, gather up!” I shouted.

  Moller herded her charges forward, and they were soon clustered all around the open airlock like rabbits hunkered down in a hole.

  “You’re just going to send them up there in a surge?” Harris asked, sounding doubtful.

  The light troopers were all fresh recruits, and they looked like they were shitting in their pressure suits.

  “Nope,” I said. “Not exactly. Get your heavy troopers to gather farther back. They’re wave two.”

  “Wave two?” Harris asked, spitting the words. “You’re gonna lose them all at once in a single flash of glory? Is that it?”