“Thanks,” he said.

  “How do you know how to do any of this?”

  He smiled but continued working. “My dad… he is… was an engineer. Something called autocrat or autonomouse.”

  Xero chuckled. “Automation engineer.”

  Lux nodded.

  A sound at the door made both look up.

  “Xero, might I have a word?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Riggs.”

  “You can come back and help me later if you want,” Lux yelled as the two adults left.

  Bayou ushered Xero into an empty workspace. The engineering deck on this ship seemed massive and was festooned with cubbyholes and unnecessary, long neglected, assembly rooms.

  “Thank you, again,” Xero said. “I’m not sure we would have made it much longer down there.”

  Bayou nodded. “That’s why I need to ask for your help.”

  Xero’s head cocked slightly as she listened.

  “Fleet Command has put a lock on the ship’s AI and removed several layers of its command functions. They are trying to forcibly recall the ship to Luna.”

  “And if they get the ship,” Xero began, “all Terran operations will cease, including any additional rescues.”

  “Among other things, yes,” Bayou stated flatly. “I read your file; what parts they didn’t redact at least. I feel confident in guessing that you are more versed in AI protocols than anyone else on this ship. Possibly more than anyone else left alive.”

  “My work was in a different field of machine learning, but I get your point, Commander. The onboard AI, is she receptive or hostile?”

  Damn, Bayou thought. She thinks of these things in human terms, like Joe and Ada. “It… she,” she amended, “seems friendly to us. Kovach’s AI could interface with it and got the initial command authorization we needed to bring the ship into orbit.”

  “That’s good,” Xero said thoughtfully. “I’m assuming Admiral Reese is the one trying to override the ship’s command?”

  “You’ve heard of him?” Bayou asked, the surprise clear in her tone. “He’s declared himself Supreme War Commander.”

  Xero gave a snort laugh. “That sounds like him. I thought you Space Force types always followed orders, though.”

  Bayou almost laughed out loud. The number of times Kovach and the rest of Banshee had gotten in trouble for disobeying, or more commonly, putting their own interpretation on orders, was massive. This was uncharted territory for all of them, though.

  “This is a war… was a war. We lost. Now we’re trying to help save the survivors… maybe we can find out who’s responsible, but mainly I view this as a humanitarian mission now, Xero. Some stuffed shirt, flag officer who probably never saw any actual combat starts making demands to simply satisfy his own agenda, well…we aren’t on the same page of the playbook.”

  Xero looked back down the corridor toward where Lux was still playing with his box of parts.

  Riggs followed the woman’s gaze. “His mom’s onboard,” she said. “He was down there on his own for a while, though. He’s a tough kid. Who knows how many more just like him are down there fighting to stay alive? Somebody must be up here to give them a chance.”

  Quietly, in that corner of a darkened workspace, Xero made up her mind. Whatever these soldiers were up to, their hearts seemed to be in the right place. “Get me logged in, Riggs, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  Damiana allowed herself the luxury of relaxing but only slightly. She’d been back in the red zone for less than an hour, and already she’d narrowly escaped thunder vines and something truly evil-looking and freaky acting. The thing slightly resembled a miniature version of the Furies, the giant reptilian- looking beasts that she and Kovach had seen back at the DARPA lab. But these, were all teeth and muscle; they also stood on two feet but had long tails and were less than a meter tall. The worst thing was how silent and how fast they were.

  The Sisterhood had briefed her on what she might face, but even they were unsure of which experiments were loosed and what additional genetic alterations might have taken place since the war began. Aberrations, that was what they had called them. Unexpected results of tinkering too much with a creature’s biological code.

  “Unexpected my ass,” she snorted quietly while watching another creature through the enhanced optics.

  “Well, hello,” she whispered as she zoomed in on the head. Long, dark hair swept to one side as the girl walked calmly along the banks of the small river. Maybe late teens. The girl’s body not yet mature but just on the verge of adulthood. Despite the danger, she walked as if she had no cares in the world. Damiana slowly swept the rifle to each side, the scope picking up several predators close to the girl. None made any move to attack. In fact, they seemed to ignore her as much as she was them.

  Voss stowed the weapon and began cautiously making her way down the slight rise. In the distance was a town, not one she’d bothered to remember the name of. It was simply a waypoint on her way to Nevis’s last known location. A shadow passed over her just before a loud screeching sound tore its way across the valley. Voss’s eyes were locked on the scene below; the girl turned just as the massive raptor overhead dove. Voss flattened herself to the dirt as the claws hit her shoulders. The jacket had leather and Kevlar protection at several points, including the shoulders, so the claws didn’t penetrate, but the full weight of the bird still drove the air from her lungs.

  She rolled to her left, flexing her wrist in the process. The compact Silka C3 was instantly in her palm and firing in the same motion. The now headless bird toppled over just as it was readying for another lunge.

  “Shit!”

  Looking down the hill, there was no sign of the girl, but a veritable pack of other creatures was now heading this way. The compact pistol retracted back into its hidden receiver underneath her forearm. Voss considered going back to the rifle, but this was a case of retreat clearly being the smarter option.

  Voss knew her mission was to observe and report. The stakes were too high to risk failure, but this girl could be the key to everyone’s future. Smoothly, she grasped the hilts of the curved knives. Voss was known for many things, but choosing the safe route was not one of them. “Mom is going to be pissed.”

  She began running directly at the lead creature, another of the wickedly fast mini-Furies. A flicker of color briefly passed on her right. She smiled. Her protector, or as the soldier called it, the Wraith. Voss was unsure what help it might offer against these monsters, but it offered her comfort and strength. She caught site of the girl again, far in the distance heading directly toward the ruined city. That girl had a way of passing right by these things. That was something she needed to know more about. Only one way to find out—get to the girl.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  Her feet moved in deliberate strides, unwavering in their path. A path which she, herself, knew little of. In truth, the girl had no idea where she was, or perhaps more apt—who she was. Things like that had simply ceased to matter to her since the… since the… the flicker of thought was gone, evaporated into the wind like someone blowing out a candle.

  Thoughts had become elusive to her, memories all but nonexistent, but she did have purpose. It wasn’t something she could articulate. More of a natural imperative to ‘go,’ to ‘do.’

  She’d seen the commotion on the hill, the giant bird attacking something, a person, but it hadn’t really registered. The creatures were dangerous, but for whatever reason, they didn’t bother her… not anymore. Back in the before, they did. Back then, she’d also had a name—what was it?

  The sound of the wind and the trees and the constant plodding of her bare feet on the dry soil were the only sounds. From a distance, you might mistake her for being in a trance or even a zombie. That wasn’t the case. She was simply driven. By what, though? That was the real question.

  The scream came from behind her; she didn’t bother turning. She understood the cycle of life, hunter, and prey. Not in a way that mattered, but somewhere in the seldom-used part of her conscious brain, she knew another life was ending. Probably the person from the hill. Then that thought, too, was swept away.

  Voss rushed through the first wave of attackers, her knives glistening with the now familiar purplish blood. Several of the smaller creatures lay in pieces behind her. She hadn’t intended to scream, but it had come out like a war cry. Something she remembered doing in the earliest years of her training before her Sisters had taught her the way of enlightenment and all the control and discipline that went with that acceptance.

  More creatures were moving in the scrub brush just out of sight. Occasionally, she would detect a spike, a scaly appendage, or one of the oversized eyes. She had yet to see the whole creature those things belonged to, but the eyes alone were grotesque. All the various creations working together were baffling. Few pairings in the natural world were truly symbiotic. Animals, including man, were opportunistic. But these things attacked as if humans were a common enemy. A threat to their own existence.

  Knowing that people like Doctor Reichert had created them made that all the more puzzling. The off-the-books DARPA facilities had been attempting to make biological weapons. Not bacterium or viruses, but actual fighters they could use on battlefields. Why would they now have such a drive to kill, to consume, to eradicate?

  The attack came from Voss’s flank; she felt the psionic pulse from the Wraith, and the attacker gave a withering cry before she turned and pierced the thing through its eye. So, they could sense, could be affected by the manipulation her friend could deliver. That was helpful, but would it save her life?

  The Wraith itself was likely also a product of some similar research, even Voss did not know its full provenance. The full story of its origination was a mystery. She had been its rescuer, or at least that was how she now recalled it. Either way, the thing had bonded to her many years earlier on another mission and resisted all attempts to be separated from her. On missions where it just wasn’t feasible to have a nearly invisible flying stingray, it stayed in its custom-built habitat next to her quarters.

  Even then, it sometimes got free and would often disappear for long periods, but eventually it returned or would find her, even if she had traveled great distances. She reluctantly sheathed the blade and flexed both of her wrists, bringing her matching handguns to bear on separate targets, dropping both.

  Voss’s attackers seemed to be communicating strategy with each other. Apparently, the Wraith was sensed this as well because the shimmering image of it began pulsing a faint red. It was an aggressive mental countermeasure that she knew would leave it exhausted quickly. She had to end this now before more of the things showed up.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  RED ZONE - TEXAS

  I awoke in a cold sweat, unsure of whatever nightmare was taking up residence in my head tonight. The newly upgraded, augmented, reality sensors showed my surroundings, the other members of my team, and Red-7. The IFF transponders all showed green. I felt Sumo’s chin resting on my leg, his normal place to sleep since our first encounters with the freakish monstrosities in the Ranier facility. I scratched behind his ears gently, and his body pressed into my leg even more. We both have issues and scars to remind us that our enemies are real.

  So many battles, so many AOs, but this…. all this felt so totally alien. I’d been kicking myself all day, first for not making sure Bayou knew how sorry I was about Darko and her sister. Jack Smith, call sign Darko, had died in another battle against a monster, but Rigg’s sister was a total innocent. A young woman just on her way to work, or to meet her boyfriend, or some other totally normal, totally random thing most normal people do day in and day out. Only that day, it was not normal. It was instead, the end. The end for her and billions of others around the globe.

  I lay there in the darkness and replayed some of the skirmishes we’d been having with the creatures I’d been calling Furies, as well as the more recent HappyBear. Ada had also been analyzing to see if there was anything tactical in their actions, or if it was just instinctual. Someone had manufactured these things for war, for conquest. They had a genetic mandate to win. Someone had to give them a baseline of operational guidelines, and if we could get a grip on that, perhaps we could have the edge in the next encounter.

  Billions dead… and those might just be the lucky ones.

  A message alert popped into my visual overlay. Simple text, that was unusual, but seeing who it was from brought me wide awake. Damiana Voss. Now what was she up to?

  “Hello, Cowboy.”

  I ignored the obvious implication that she knew my location was still in Texas.

  “What’s going on, Voss?”

  This woman had shot me the last time I saw her, but if others could be believed, she had likely saved my life in doing so.

  “When you are done with your beach vacation, I think I could use your help,” she answered.

  “Not a vaca…what have you gotten yourself into?”

  I wasn’t used to text typing, so I engaged Ada to translate my subvocalized words into text.

  Voss’s response was slow in coming. “A lead, a possible lead, Nevis Carlson. He may know who is behind all this.”

  Now she had my attention. “Tell me more.”

  “I can’t, not yet. I’ve been battling the bloody little monsters for days, and I may finally have a location.”

  Little monsters? I wondered.

  The text continued, “Can you get transport to these coordinates?”

  Ada automatically converted the data to a visual map in my ocular overlay. Northeast U.S.… maybe even Canada. I considered it for several seconds and interfaced with Ada to make sure it was even possible. Many things were easier when hovercars were everywhere, and a hyperjet could take you from the West Coast to the East Side in just over an hour.

  “Yes, I can do it.” Sumo looked up at me. The dog seemed to know when I was about to do something stupid. “Just me or the whole team?” There was a delay in her response. Perhaps she knew I didn’t much fucking trust her. Getting shot by a person could have that effect.

  “Just you, Joe, unless you need your support animal.”

  “Ha! You’re one to talk. How is your little flying freak doing?” I think the genuine sense of sarcasm was lost in the text-based messaging. Sometimes you just need to be looking face to face, so they get the full effect, you know?

  “It’s part of why you need to be here. I think we’ve discovered a few things that might be helpful in whatever this little crusade you seem to be on.”

  So, she did know what I was doing. She’d hacked Ada or left a backdoor or something in my skull. I knew the woman couldn’t be trusted.

  After several seconds, the text updated. “Calm down.”

  Okay, I really didn’t like that. Even if she was spying, she couldn’t really know how I was feeling, nor my unsaid thoughts. Could she? I reeled in my ego and tried to offer a more adult response.

  This woman was perplexing, as were my own feelings toward her. She had lied to me, used me to get what she wanted, and ultimately nearly killed me, but somehow, I found myself thinking of her as a friend… maybe even more. “I’m listening.”

  And I did, or more accurately, ‘I’m reading’. The woman might not be on our side, but she had some damn nifty skills, not the least of which was a sharp mind. Something I was increasingly agreeing with the late doctor about. She detailed several things which hadn’t occurred to me despite my recent upgrades. Things that in retrospect seemed rather obvious.

  “Why me, why not call on someone from your own organization?”

  I knew nothing about whom she worked for, but I knew she wasn’t just out here on her own. That would be suicide. Voss didn’t even miss a beat. She knew I was fishing for intel, and she was equally quick to let me know she wasn’t sharing.

  “I don’t think you realize how important or how capable you are, Kovach. I would be an idiot to not try to use an asset like you. Plus, you have a vested interest. You are motivated to find the truth and maybe end this before it’s too late for all of us.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Right now, we were simply throwing bodies at these things hoping we could outlast them long enough to get away. We weren’t fighting to win; we were simply stretching out our defeat as long as possible

  Jordan Hauk was punctual as ever, my system clock hit 0430 as he strode through the door.

  “Good to go?”

  I simply nodded; my body didn’t seem to need the same levels of sleep that it used to, but that didn’t mean I was eager to grace the day. I recalled what Dr. Reichert had told me after my first round of enhancements. For every gain, there is a cost. A price to pay. I wasn’t sure what that might mean for me in the future, but I felt sure it was going to be steep.

  “What’s the plan, Captain?”

  Hauk looked at me with a totally unreadable face. “I want my people somewhere safe or somewhere we can make an actual difference.”

  “You have somewhere in mind?”

  He hesitated before looking skyward. “Not up there. Not long term, at least.”

  I nodded in understanding. Ada gave me the insertion times from the Stone Mountain, and I could see the dropship was scheduled to arrive in just a few hours, but its time on the ground would be extremely limited.

  “We need to go inland a few klicks. The dropship will barely be on station long enough for the pickup. The farther west we can go, the more time it will have,” I explained.

  He was familiar with the problems the orbital battleship was having overhead but had less data on the limited maneuverability of the mysterious TriCraft. Most people who were aware that the damned things even existed just assumed they could go anywhere.