With that, he stormed out of the chamber. His warbots trundled closely behind. The big doors slammed shut, and Red Company members hooted and laughed. But I knew the battle for control of the alien base was far from over.

  I watched from a distance as Blackwood and Captain Hansen huddled together, their voices low and urgent. Captain Hansen broke away from Blackwood eventually and approached me.

  “Sergeant Starn,” she began. “You’ve had more experience with this alien technology than any of us. We need to strengthen our claim on this place. I believe that if we can activate that portal underneath this mountain, and learn more about the technology here, it’ll make our case stronger.”

  I hesitated, keenly aware of the hazards involved in what she was suggesting. I’d tangled with this alien tech before, and I knew firsthand just how dangerous it could be.

  “I can try, Captain,” I said slowly. “But I can’t make any guarantees. This technology is far from well understood. Not even Dr. Sharaf has a handle on it.”

  Captain Hansen nodded, her eyes meeting mine with a determined glint. “I know, Starn. But we have to try. If we don’t push the boundaries of our understanding, Earth-Gov will never take us seriously. And this base... this could be the key to everything.”

  An hour or so passed. I found myself down deep under the mountain, rather than near the top of it. The pyramid-shaped alien portal was there. It squatted at the lowest level of the underground complex. Its surface shimmered invitingly.

  The future of Borag and her crew rested on our ability to navigate the unknown, and it seemed as if that burden had fallen squarely on my broad, unevenly muscled back.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s see what we can do with this alien tech.”

  As we approached the entrance of the alien pyramid-shaped temple, I noticed Dr. Sharaf and Ana hurrying toward us. Dr. Sharaf, the old and fussy scientist, had been responsible for keeping our mutations in check with the Lot Six medication. Ledbetter, Quinn, and I relied on her expertise to keep our ever-changing genes under control.

  Ana, on the other hand, was my wild-child pirate. Seeing her made me smile. I wondered how she’d gone from being a prisoner aboard Borag to somehow working her way into my heart.

  “Devin,” she said, coming close to me and pushing herself into my arms. “You’ve been gone for so long…” She looked around, noticing the alien pyramid and the rest of my smirking squad. “That bitch Freya isn’t here, is she?”

  I rolled my eyes. Was that really the first thought that had come into her head upon seeing me? Her jealousy of Ensign Freya Carter was no secret, but for now, we had more pressing matters to attend to.

  “No, Freya isn’t here,” I said, “and you shouldn’t be, either.”

  “False!” Dr. Sharaf said. “She knows this kind of antiquity better than anyone other than myself. As my assistant, I require her to aid me.”

  “Aid you doing what?”

  Dr. Sharaf adjusted her glasses and huffed. “Don’t be obtuse, Sergeant. You’re uneducated, but I know you’re not completely stupid. Let me spell it out: We’re coming with you.”

  “Oh… Hold on. This is a military matter. My marines—”

  “—Your marines have absolutely no idea what they’re doing! You’re the muscle on this safari, Starn—not the brains. Get used to it.”

  I bared my teeth, but she brushed by me with a total lack of concern. New orders soon buzzed in my helmet, letting me know that she was going to be part of this trip—like it or not.

  “Captain Hansen has informed you of our intentions to explore the temple, yes?” she asked. “Judging by your expression, I see that she has. Step aside.”

  Ledbetter’s mouth hung open for a second, and mine did the same, but then we did as she demanded and stepped aside.

  “Welcome aboard, ladies,” Ledbetter said.

  Our firebug, Welks, had been busy checking his thermite flamethrower. He stumbled when Ana walked by, and he nearly dropped the thing. He had that problem when girls came near.

  The temple was so old, yet it had been preserved by being buried here on this frozen rock for countless years. Structures like this, which we’d encountered in other places, had always turned out to be portals. Sometimes to transport you across a gulf of space—and on other occasions, across gulfs of time.

  The interior of the temple was covered in runes and alien symbols. These seemed to pulse with energy. Dr. Sharaf and Ana exchanged excited glances as they studied the inscriptions. Their fingers hovered over the intricate patterns carved into the stone.

  “Dr. Sharaf, do you think the same sequence might activate this waystation?” Ana asked. “The sequence we used at Proxima Centauri?”

  Waystation? I thought to myself. Had they come up with that name since we’d first discovered them? Dr. Sharaf’s work had always seemed odd… she knew a lot, but she rarely shared that knowledge with anyone else. Perhaps Ana, working as her assistant, had learned more than was obvious about these high-tech alien leftovers.

  The scientist squinted at the symbols. Her lips pursed in thought. “Perhaps, Ana. Let’s try it.”

  They touched the runes in a precise order. The temple soon hummed with energy. A colorful vortex appeared in the center of the room, swirling and making sudden explosive lunges. Everyone instinctively retreated from it—except for Ana.

  Her eyes wide, she took a step toward the vortex. It looked like she was going to walk right into it.

  “Are you crazy?” I demanded. I reached out to grab hold of her. She frowned at me, but she didn’t struggle. “Let me go first,” I told her. “I need to make sure it’s safe.”

  Ana pouted a bit, but she nodded reluctantly. With a deep breath, I stepped into the vortex, feeling a rush of energy and an indescribable sensation course through my body. As I emerged on the other side, the others began to follow. That wasn’t according to plan—but no one had been listening to me.

  One by one, Ledbetter, Welks, Dr. Sharaf, and finally, Ana stepped into the spinning vortex.

  Chapter 33: The Alien Armada

  Crossing into never-never land, my reality dissolved. It was replaced by the chaotic whirl of a wormhole. My physical form was pulled, squashed, and contorted in a series of insane configurations.

  Time lost its meaning until, abruptly, I was expelled from the anomaly. My body thudded onto an icy stone floor. A wave of numbness washed over me as I grappled to recover my senses. I tried to speak but only released a grunt.

  Summoning a stubborn sense of duty, I pushed against the cold floor. Slowly, I climbed to my feet and staggered. Gradually, my auditory senses adjusted to the surroundings.

  My squad, Ana, and Dr. Sharaf were around me. We stood in the same pyramid, the same terrain—yet everything looked different. Rather than being ancient and decrepit, this new version of the alien temple was untouched, even pristine.

  “The gravity, the structure… everything’s the same,” Ledbetter said. “My ears aren’t picking up anything weird.”

  “Indeed, yes,” Dr. Sharaf nodded, her eyes wide behind her thick glasses. “This is Ganymede, but… nothing else is the same.”

  “How so?” Welks asked, his grip tightening on his flamethrower.

  “Look around,” Ana pointed to the structure. “It’s new. No signs of age, no wear and tear.”

  A sick feeling of realization dawned. We were standing on the same ground, in the same base—but in a time long past. It was Ganymede, sure, but it was Ganymede as it must have been thousands of years ago. Fresh, untouched by time or conflict.

  “But that means...” Private Jones started, his voice trailing off as he tried to process the implications.

  “Yeah,” I said, finishing his thought for him. “We’ve stepped into the past. Probably thousands of years into the past.” I paused, taking a breath. “Okay, we made it through, doc. Now, let’s figure out how to get back home.”

  “Not so fast, Starn,” she protested. “There’s too much to—”

  She cut off. There was a sound—a weird sound. We all heard it, and it stopped all conversation dead in its tracks.

  At first, it was a flurry of metal and chittering.

  “Bugs, Sergeant,” Corporal Ledbetter told me with wide eyes. “Lots of them. They’re on the way here.”

  Welks and Jones put their backs together and lifted their weapons in unison. Moments later, alien figures dashed toward us from the single entrance. They were the praying mantis-looking things we’d seen before—but we’d rarely seen them alive.

  Their exoskeletons clicked against the hard stone floor. Their silvery eyes never blinked or deviated from their targets—which meant us.

  “Fire!” Welks shouted, his fingers hovering over the trigger of his flamethrower.

  “No, hold!” I shouted. My voice echoed off the walls of the ancient chamber. I’d said it just in time—because the cyborgs had stopped.

  They’d seen us. That much was undeniable—but they’d halted their headlong charge. Was that out of fear? Of recognition? I wasn’t sure, but I was sure this was the very first time any alien hadn’t worked with all their might to destroy us on sight.

  These two, instead, slowly turned away. They soon retreated and rushed off to someplace else.

  “But…” Welks said. “Why didn’t they attack us?”

  “Maybe because they’re not blood-thirsty savages like you, Private!” Dr. Sharaf berated him.

  I lifted a hand. “Whatever the case, they’re gone.”

  “I can still hear them,” Ledbetter said, gazing at the floor with the attitude of a man listening to a distant freight train. “They’re running from something. Not us.”

  “But Starn,” Jones hissed, “what if he’s wrong?”

  I looked at them all, and I saw fear in their faces. I didn’t blame them. We were in uncharted territory, surrounded by the unknown. But one thing I knew for sure, we didn’t need to start up a fresh fight with these aliens. Just the thought of it made me remember Redgrave and his final words. He would have said we needed to join forces with the praying mantises—for safety. That we should unite with these other aliens for mutual projection.

  “For now, we keep our cool,” I said. “We’re not here to start any new wars. We’re here to investigate and get home.”

  Dr. Sharaf was suddenly in my face. Her eyes blazed with indignation. “You don’t have the slightest clue what we’re looking for, Starn!”

  I looked down at the old woman. “I’m not trying to decipher some kind of alien code, doc. I’m just looking for a way back to our neck of the woods.”

  “Nonsensical colloquialisms,” she muttered, jabbing a finger into my chest. “This isn’t some pirate den you can pillage. We’re in the realm of advanced science. I’m calling the shots, here.”

  I crossed my arms. “My job is to ensure the safety of this team. Do what you want—until I pull the plug.”

  Ana stood to the side, her eyes darting between us. She looked like she was about to step in, but a look from me stopped her. I was handling this.

  “Well, then,” Dr. Sharaf’s voice was tight with barely controlled anger. “Go ahead on your own. I could use a good laugh. We’ll see how far you get.”

  I nodded. “All right. Ana, you’re with me.”

  She looked at Dr. Sharaf, who was now fuming, then at me. “Okay, Devin. Touch the rune that looks like this one—on the far side of the pyramid over there.”

  We walked away, but I could still hear the doctor muttering under her breath. I didn’t care. I was in charge here, not her. If she didn’t like that, she could take it up with Captain Hansen when we got back—if we got back.

  “Wait!” Dr. Sharaf called.

  I looked, and I saw she’d stepped outside the pyramid. She was standing at the entrance, looking around. “Something is happening—do you feel that?”

  I did feel it—a tremor in the stones under my boots.

  “Is it an earthquake?” Ana asked.

  “All the more reason to work those buttons, girl,” Ledbetter suggested, but she ignored him.

  To my chagrin, she followed Dr. Sharaf outside the pyramid. I bared my teeth in frustration.

  “Don’t worry, Sergeant,” Ledbetter said. “I’ll push on any squiggle or box you want me to. You just say the word.”

  I ignored him and followed the women out of the pyramid. Without at least one of them, I had no idea what to do.

  The whole place was a hive of chaos. Aliens moved by with frantic haste. Their robotic limbs clicked and whirred as they rushed to and fro. Every so often, a deep tremor would shake the ground, making us stumble. It was like we were ants scurrying about inside a colony that was under siege.

  “Something’s definitely wrong,” Ana said. I could barely hear her over the din.

  “Ya think?” I asked. “Let’s get out of here and figure out the details later.”

  She ignored me and exited the pyramid. I followed her, cursing steadily. We made our way to the entrance of the mountain base, stepping out into the open. Now and then, one of the mantis cyborgs scrabbled past, but they basically ignored us. As long as we didn’t bother them, they weren’t interested in us.

  We stepped outside the mountain, closing our helmets first. Our eyes were immediately drawn to the sky.

  Hovering above the moon’s surface were several alien craft. They were all bulbous and glowed with a strange light. They were unlike anything I’d ever seen, even in the wildest of sci-fi flicks.

  “This mountain is under attack,” Ana breathed, her eyes wide with fear. “Just like it was back in our time.”

  “Looks like it,” I said. I was deeply unhappy. The only thing worse than one conflict was two. “Let’s hope whoever’s doing the attacking doesn’t notice us.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked, turning to me.

  I gazed up at the alien craft. There’s something uniquely unsettling about spaceships built by nonhumans. You could just tell that no engineer from Earth could ever imagine anything like what I was seeing right now.

  The strange craft hung overhead. There they were, those behemoths of the cosmos, drifting like predators in the star-studded sky. They were like monstrous, metallic sharks. Jupiter’s colorful swirls provided a background to surround all three of them.

  From where Ana and I stood, craning our necks to look up from Ganymede’s icy surface, the sleek vessels were plain to see.

  The alien vessels were unlike anything I’d ever seen or could imagine. They were an unholy marriage of biological and mechanical. Their surfaces gleamed with a metallic sheen, but yet they pulsed and undulated like living organisms. They had an organic asymmetry about them, their forms twisting and contorting into impossible shapes, defying all known laws of aerodynamics.

  Their grotesque beauty was illuminated by an ethereal glow, a ghostly radiance that seemed to emanate from within them. It gave them an otherworldly appearance, as though they were entities born out of the stuff of nightmares. It was a sight that filled me with awe and fear in equal measure.

  Beside me, Ana stood in silent apprehension. Her breath hitched and turned into ragged gasps of fear as she stared at the alien armada. There had been three, but now there were seven.

  Her hand found mine, gripping it tightly. It was as if she was trying to anchor herself in the face of the unknown.

  Dwarfed by the alien spectacle above, I was certain of one thing: Humanity was far from alone in this universe.

  Chapter 34: The Way Home

  Whoever these beings were, they had brought the war to Earth’s doorstep again. It didn’t matter that my distant relatives were right now squatting around fires in some dark cave on a distant planet. I still felt these alien ships were the true invaders, the true danger to everyone we’d ever met before in space.

  The alien ships loomed ominously. More had appeared—how many were there now? Eleven? Something like that. The ships that weren’t directly between my eyes and Jupiter were hard to see.

  I noticed a sudden flurry of activity amongst the mantis-cyborgs. They seemed to have a new sense of purpose, a plan to their chaos.

  Ana nudged me. “Look,” she said. She gestured toward the cyborgs.

  They were streaming by us, scuttling up to the mouth of the mountain fortress and wriggling in and out of it. They made me think of nothing more than panicked ants back home, startled by the footsteps of a nearby giant.

  “What are they up to?” she asked me.

  “I don’t know, but they’re doing something.”

  Sure enough, a large structure began to hum and vibrate. The freezing, unbreathable air around us began distorting with energy. It reminded me of the warp cannon back in our time, but it seemed more precise and refined—as if it were new.

  Suddenly, a blinding beam of energy burst from the top of the mountain behind us. The beam pierced the very sky and struck one of the alien warships. The impact was shocking. It caused a massive explosion that lit up the night sky. The warship had been obliterated, turned into cosmic dust in an instant.

  “Holy shit…” I breathed, unable to tear my gaze away from the spectacle.

  Ana’s hand tightened in mine. Her eyes were wide with awe and fear. “That’s... that had to be the warp cannon. Our warp cannon.”

  “But ours is a relic. It’s rusty and barely functional,” I said. “This... this is something larger, more powerful.”

  “The original model, perhaps?” she suggested. “We’ve stepped into the past, Starn. This is what this base looked like in its prime.”

  “We’ve seen enough. Let’s get back home.”

  Ana nodded. All of her attitude had vanished along with that alien ship up there. We raced back through the intricate maze of tunnels. Ana clung to my hand, and I tried not to rip her arm out of its socket as I dragged her behind me.

  Minutes later, we burst back into the alien portal chamber. The scene that met our eyes was far from welcoming. One of the praying mantis cyborgs lay on the floor. A pool of strange metallic liquids was slowly spreading out around it.

  Dr. Sharaf, her eyes blazing with anger, stormed up to me. “Your men are bloodthirsty maniacs, Starn!” she wailed, her hands gesturing wildly toward the fallen cyborg.