The thing’s head was about twice the size of a human. Its body was covered in a layer of small, iridescent scales broken up by tufts of fine, pale hair. The color reflected seemed usually to be an emerald green, maybe a teal, but he’d seen some of them that blended in perfectly with their surroundings. Perfectly camouflaged, like a chameleon or octopus.

  The mouth seemed almost like an afterthought. It was rudimentary with thick, rubbery lips, and when it opened, you could see rows of quavering tentacles and concentric circles of needle-like fangs that looked like they belonged to an eel or maybe something ancient and reptilian. Jordan shuddered at the sight.

  This one seemed to have been stunned, Hauk saw a bloody gash along the side of its head. One of his men had gotten a lucky shot, the thing was down but not out. Jordan pushed past it and struggled up onto the beach. The Senior Chief and several others helped him back to his feet.

  The wounded creature flopped out of the next wave almost at their feet. As he stared at one of the monsters that had been trying to kill his team, the first thing Hauk thought was that he regretted that he had ever taken this assignment. Removing a glove, he ran a hand over the creature’s scaly surface. He should go get the scientist; he needed an opinion from someone smarter than himself. Unfortunately, she was a computer genius, not a biologist.

  Realistically, all he needed to know about the thing was how to kill it. Feeling the neck for any signs of life, he realized they already knew how. They’d already brought down dozens of the things, but the bastards were hard to kill… too damn hard. This was the first one they’d been able to examine up close. He slid his tactical knife out of its sheath.

  Jordan Hauk brought the knife down sharply, but the blade skittered off the thing’s scaly hide. Without warning, another of the things leapt from the water over the boat and was on top of the Army captain in seconds, pinning the knife hand to the ground.

  “What in the fuck?”

  The thing’s jaws opened, and that mouth full of needle-sharp teeth and tentacles lunged toward his neck. Hauk released the knife and just got his arm under the thing’s head, keeping the beast’s deadly mouth away from his by just inches. The thing was so close that Hauk could smell its foul breath. An odor of death, blood, and rot. This was not anything natural. It was clearly not of this world, unless he’d slipped from that beach into a hidden doorway to hell.

  It was unbelievably strong. Hauk was a finely tuned, elite soldier, yet he felt like a toddler trying to fight off a raging bull. He assumed some of his men would be fighting it as well. Surely, someone had put a few rounds into it by now, but Jordan Hauk’s entire world had shrunk down to these few feet of Texas coastline and the monster at the end of his arm.

  The creature flung him down like a rag doll, then jumped on him again in an attempt to crush the man. Hauk’s light body armor prevented that, but the enormous weight of the beast hurt like hell just the same. Then, Jordan felt the thing pulling him into the water. In horror, he realized that, like a gator, it was going to hold its prey beneath the waves and drown him. That wasn’t something the lightweight, Recon battle suit could protect him from.

  The sounds of battle worked their way back into Hauk’s consciousness. He was confident in Red-7’s abilities, but they had lost so many men and picked up strays along the way, men he wasn’t sure of yet. Now, like him, they were all fighting their own battles. He wanted to help, needed to help, but he had no capacity to think of anything but his own enemy. He needed to get to his weapons. The knife was gone… somewhere, and his rifle was pinned between his back and the ground. He felt the unnatural ridge crushing up against his spine.

  He drove upward with a vicious knee strike, putting every ounce of his weight behind the blow, then drove a powerful fist right into the middle of the thing’s gruesome face. The armor-assisted blows would have turned a normal man’s insides to jelly, but it didn’t even faze this fucking monster. It puffed out another foul breath and growled at Hauk. It came in as if to bite the captain, then jumped back slicing sideways with that damn deadly claw. Hauk felt the bladed appendage cutting through flesh and armor. The pain was a hot jolt to his system, one that probably saved his life. Looking down, he saw the opening to grab the gun still locked into his hip lock holster.

  Jordan’s bare hands were bloody, and the gun felt awkward in his grip. Something was wrong. But he didn’t have time to think about it, just fire. The first two shots bounced off the creature’s hide just like his knife had. Even from point-blank, the thing was fucking bullet proof. Jordan sagged to the ground in exhaustion or desperation, he wasn’t sure which. The monster struck out with its other arm and connected against the man’s chest sending him sprawling across the beach.

  It hissed as it approached, and standing over the man, it drew back its oversized claw for the killing strike. Hauk fired in desperation at every part of the thing’s body. His Silka pistol was on full auto. The ammo count displaying inside his face shield was dropping fast. None of the shots did anything. Nothing, until one stray round passed through the meaty part of its upper thigh. The creature’s claw buried itself in the sand by Jordan’s neck as the ugly thing dropped to all fours. It howled in pain and arched backward. Jordan put more rounds into the thing’s thigh, then reached up and shoved the pistol into the gaping maw of a mouth and ran his magazine dry.

  Holding the creature’s massive head by a clump of hair, he kept on firing until the monster’s head exploded in a shower of blood and gore. The rotten stench immediately multiplied tenfold. Hauk thought he was going to be sick, but snapping out of his rage, he let the thing slide off his arm and into the water. He turned to the closest sounds of battle and moved to help the next man.

  Hauk’s team had the numbers and slowly fought the damn things back. They didn’t have all the fun toys like the RDTs or Seal Teams 12, but Red-7 got shit done. Most of the squad carried traditional 5.56 Silka 88 tactical assault rifles. Hell of a stopping power, and you could drop the damn thing in the mud for a week and still come up putting rounds on target from 150 yards. Try that with one of those fancy Glissons. Still, Jordan Hauk desperately wanted more guns, bigger guns, and he wanted that fucking French bastard who’d left them stranded here. Goddamn Alliance Navy…what a joke.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  I watched the lines of incomprehensible code scrolling up. My brain was remarkably clear, yet the last memory I had was dying. I knew for certain I had died, and now I was what? Something else. My insides ached; my bones ached. The constant agony of…of, hell, I don’t know. Growing pains maybe. But so much deeper and somehow worse. You don’t hurt when you die…right? Shit, who could I ask? No one, moron, you are the only one you know who has died and come back. I was really fucked. My internal monologue was now mirroring the voice of my pops.

  Upgrade complete, compiling new boot sequence.

  I read the text window before closing. When I was wounded in battle over a year ago, I had allowed them to augment my body, and part of that had been installing a sophisticated battle AI chip in my head. Ada, the AI personality, had been my constant inner voice since that day, and in all this time, I had never seen her display code. In fact, I rarely even thought of her as a computer. I knew the chip and integrated systems ran mostly off my body’s electrical energy, so when I died, she died. So, if that was true…what was going on with her now?

  “Kovach!”

  I heard the voice; it seemed to come from a great distance. I tried to open my eyes. I tried again… nothing. I then attempted to do a mental inventory, arms, legs, fingers. Yeah, that wasn’t working either. So, maybe I am a computer now. Ada figured out how to back me up to a storage drive somewhere. Joe Kovach, the Luddite who preferred no tech, now was all tech. I almost laughed. That’s when I realized the constant ache of the last few minutes was gone. I felt no pain, no sensation at all, just a feeling of fuzzy blankness. And yes, that is a terribly unhelpful description, but fuck it, I’m dead. Maybe… likely… but fuck… who knows?

  Honestly, I have lived with pain most of my adult life. Some minor, like my old sports injury where I tweaked my left knee sliding into second base. Some much more persistent, like the part of my spine that metal alloy replaced after an enemy pulse rifle blew it out. Pain is one way you know you’re human. I was clearly no longer human. Strangely, I was not alarmed by this, nor even surprised. The blank feeling also filled me with calm. I was okay being a computer.

  Except…

  “Oh, my God!”

  That was another voice, one that evoked some very happy memories.

  “Jesus!”

  I couldn’t tell if it was expressions of shock or admiration. Maybe something in the middle. Maybe I was simply stoned; was that better than being dead?

  “Joseph, can you hear me?”

  I knew that voice. “Yes, Ada. Are you dead, too?” I asked internally.

  “We are not dead, Joe… not anymore.”

  “Someone, cover that up.”

  I also knew that voice; it was… it was, Bayou. What is she covering up? Can I see? Nope, eyes still aren’t working. But I apparently was not dead. Unless Ada was fucking with me.

  “I am not fucking with you, Joe.”

  So, she can read my thoughts now. She used to have some of that ability, I could subvocalize commands, but now she can do more, apparently.

  “So, you were the one who was upgraded,” I said.

  Ada didn’t respond immediately, which concerned me.

  “I believe we both were,” my AI eventually answered. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel… I feel nothing. No sensation, well, except….”

  Let’s just skip over what I was feeling. It doesn’t fit into the hero narrative I am desperately trying to build here. It would simply illustrate that 1. I am a guy, and 2. All guys are pigs with only one thing on their mind. Maybe heaven had sexy angels or something… I couldn’t explain it. My body was happy to be alive and decided to have inappropriate reactions.

  “Yeah, let’s not discuss that one,” Ada responded quickly. “Joe, I have several new subroutines. Don’t ask me why, but they are here in my options menu. I can now adjust your sensitivity to your surroundings, like turning up the gain on a microphone.”

  “Okay,” I said, the increasing levels of uncertainty clear in my voice. Well, the voice in my head at least.

  “Touch first.”

  I felt a breeze, then cold, first across what might have been my chest, then my arms. I could feel the individual hairs moving in the micro-breeze. Suddenly, my brain began computing vectors and angles, and I had the rough dimensions of the room as well as the airflow from the overhead ducts. I was on a ship.

  “Was that you?”

  Ada answered slowly, “I believe it was ‘us.’ We calculated the room’s dimensions from a slight air current on your arm hair. That was at the lowest sensitivity setting. Shall I try higher?”

  “Absolutely!” I said. Then, I felt pressure on my back. Gravity, artificial, .72 Earth normal. A spaceship in high Earth orbit. In additional settings, I could sense the heat signatures of three bodies in the room. I learned I could speed up my heart rate or slow it to a stop apparently with no ill effects. My normal body temp now seemed to be about 102, but I could lower it at will to below eighty.

  A hand rested on my leg and gave a light caress. I knew whose hand it was even though I still could not see or speak. My hearing and vision had been augmented in the initial treatments with Doctor Reichert, and now I suspected they were both significantly improved over even that. As Ada brought more of my systems back online, my eyes snapped open apparently surprising the two women and one man in the room. They were saying something, but even though I heard the words, my brain was struggling to process all the incoming data. The guy I knew, his name was Bishop, call sign Priest; he was on my squad. His face held a wry grin, and his eyes flicked to my waist. That was where both women kept looming as well.

  “Ada, do I have an erection?’

  “Umm… yes, Joseph. Its unnaturally large, and I don’t seem to be able to do anything to cancel it. So, yes…we are still ignoring it.”

  Okay, the comfortable blankness was evaporating fast. The two women were my second-in-command, Lieutenant Riggs, call sign Bayou, and Carol Reynolds. I come back to life, and the first thing they see is my boner. I made Ada give me enough muscle control to look down. The crisp white sheet was tent-poling. I’m not sure, but that seemed to have been enhanced as well. Before the thought fully formed, a series of equations and measurements filled out the space informing me that indeed it had and by exactly how much. Too much information.

  What in the ever-loving fuck was going on? Wake me up, Ada, enough of this shit.

  The remnants of foggy bliss were yanked away as an immediate onrush of all sensation rushed in to fill the void. I could hear myself screaming, then I was sitting up on a surgical bed, the robotic arms above my bed jerking back and forth unsure as to what to do.

  “None of you goddamn say, ‘Welcome to the Matrix.’”

  “That’s a wicked looking piece of manhood you got there, Kovach. Did you bring that back from the other side?”

  “Fuck you, Priest.”

  “Yep, it’s still him,” the man said coming up and giving me an awkward hug. “Welcome back.”

  The two women fell on him, Carol’s tears mixed with Bayou’s relieved laughter.

  “How is this possible?” Bayou asked, finally catching her breath.

  “He’s immortal,” Priest offered. “Probably made a deal with Satan or some shit.”

  “But your organ rejection, that was real. You went into that damn place but never found the meds to stop it.”

  Ada had been busy trying to unravel the same mystery and now thought she had the answer.

  I relayed it to the others.

  “The meds were apparently not anti-rejection drugs.”

  They all looked confused, I totally got that.

  “More likely they were suppressors. Ada feels like they were keeping my body below a threshold, one they could control. Beyond that, they weren’t sure they could handle me, or maybe the good doctor didn’t want someone to know my full capabilities.”

  “What does that mean, are you superhuman or something?” Bayou asked.

  “No idea, but I’m different, and I’m healed.”

  Riggs drew blood into the scanner and reviewed the display. “Your blood chemistry has completely changed. It is full of respirosites and ummm… other nanoparticles, most of which the system can’t even identify. Your blood O2 levels are off the chart, I’m not even sure you need your heart and lungs to function as the cells themselves seem capable of generating their own oxygen. Also, your body core temperature is several degrees higher than normal.”

  I had already known that. “Is that dangerous?”

  Riggs looked over the data before shaking her head. “I don’t think so. Probably a change in metabolism. I believe this is just your new normal.”

  “Kovach the Invincible!”

  “Priest, shut the fuck up and help me off this table.”

  I swung my legs over the side and saw Sumo grinning back up at me from beneath the bed.

  “He hasn’t moved,” Carol said.

  “He also doesn’t seem surprised,” Priest said, giving me support as I tried to stand.

  “Hey, big guy, miss me?”

  The beautiful dog licked my hand and gave a gentle chuff, then lay back and rested his head on his paws.

  “Why can’t you guys be like that? I may be resurrected, but already old news to him.”

  “Prowler, please get some clothes on. You have to cover that thing up. We have work to do if you’re mission capable,” Riggs said.

  “I’m good,” I answered, taking the dark blue deck suit Carol was holding out. Then, seeing my um, issues, I opted for looser fitting pants and a pullover.

  The other two left the med bay with instructions for me to meet them on the bridge. Carol helped me get dressed, which was welcome but unnecessary. She very much wanted to help me with my problem, but that had to wait. “How’s your boy?”

  “He’s wonderful. Thank you again!” she said. The grin was genuine.

  I nodded, knowing I had played little in his rescue.

  “Your friend, Voss, shot me,” I said.

  “Damiana did that?” Carol seemed genuinely surprised.

  I nodded, and together we headed down the hall. I didn’t need the help, in fact, I felt fantastic, but I accepted it just the same. Carol wanted to be close, maybe she needed me to be here. I don’t know, but it felt good.

  “I hate to ask this, but how long was I…”

  “Gone?”

  I nodded.

  “Three days.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said without thinking.

  “Close, but no,” she said squeezing my still raging cock. “We are going to have to handle that before it gets hung on something,” she whispered in a devilish tone.

  “It’s already…”

  “Oh, my God, will you two stow it.”

  “Sorry, Ada.”

  “That was your Combat AI?” Carol asked.

  “Yeah, you heard her?” Normally Ada had to have a comms connection to speak with others.

  “I did, but I’m not sure how. Her voice just seemed to be in my head, my ear.”

  “Ada got some upgrades, too,” I said, entering the bridge wing.

  “Holy shit, this is a monolith class carrier,” I said easing up to Bayou. “Who’s in command?”

  Bayou looked at an imaginary watch on her wrist and said, “As of now—you.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  “You boosted a damn nice spaceship, Riggs.”

  The former ROK soldier, G-force, and Halo turned at the sound of my voice. The look of shock was clear on both.

  “Jesus H. Christ! I thought you were dead, mate,” Halo said, eyeing me like I just materialized out of the vacuum of space.