“This area is off limits to everyone other than the drop troops. But… I suppose you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Chelsea’s heart raced, her mind tried to offer an excuse, anything that might keep her from being thrown into the brig herself. That would make that witch’s day, to have her locked up beside her. “I needed to get something from Koog’s locker.”

  “He gave you his access code?”

  No, she’d guessed it was the same as the entry code he used for his living quarters. “Yes.”

  The uniformed man shook his head. “I don’t think so. You’re in big trouble… I mean really deep shit.” He rubbed at his crotch ominously, then offered a crooked grin. “But maybe we can work something out.”

  He walked away, motioning for her to follow. Her whole body trembled, but she followed.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, managing to hide her nervousness better now. Just keep him talking.

  “I’m Corporal Howell, ma’am,” he said without turning. “My friends call me Rob.”

  “Can I call you Rob?” she asked with only a trace of seductiveness in her voice. She knew men, she knew soldiers. They all ran on hormones, and that was something she could use.

  He leaned against a sturdy-looking hatch and held out his hand. “That depends, honey. That all depends on you.” His words had taken on a sing-song tone now.

  She looked questioningly at the outstretched hand, unsure of what he wanted. Then he pointed to the ID card she still clutched in her fist. She passed it over reluctantly, sighing in frustration. He swiped that card, then asked her for the access code. She told him the six numbers. The door slid inward noiselessly, and he pocketed the card.

  “Follow me, honey.”

  She trailed him into the darkened space. Blood raced through her veins, and she felt her heart beating out of her chest. Then her eyes adjusted to the darkness. They were in a large space, one of the hangars. Howell was much closer now, suddenly his lips were on hers. She pulled back a little in surprise, and the man stiffened. “Sorry, Rob,” she whispered as she pulled him close. Their lips met again.

  The sex was rough, lacking passion, tenderness, or anything other than the physical act itself. He’d slammed her up against a metal bulkhead when he first took her. The cold metal of the hull biting into her bare flesh. Then they’d made it to a stack of plastic pallets where he continued his sexual assault. She allowed herself to go through the motions as long as it served her needs. Yes, it was rape, but she filed that away to the corner of her soul where the dark things lived.

  The man climaxed, then soon began again. Shit, he was obviously using some of the newer performance enhancers. She knew he would be able to go several times, which he did. Why on earth would a soldier be taking those things up here with so few women aboard? She knew…guys were all alike, soldiers were all alike. Her eyes were filled with tears, her muscles ached, and her vagina was sore as he came the last time and finally rolled off her and almost instantly fell asleep.

  Chelsea listened to him breathing, he was snoring deeply within minutes. She stood and pulled her clothes back on, retrieving the ID card from the man’s uniform before moving deeper into the darkness.

  Her first instinct was to leave. Now, her thought was to find a weapon to club Howell to death with, but she’d dealt with him. No way would he be a problem for her now. Besides, she was curious as to what other secrets the military was hiding here. She stumbled through a crowded storage room, then through an open hatch and into a hangar bay. She’d been here before. This was where the odd-looking ship had landed after picking them up in Texas.

  Something was different, though. The standby lighting in the hangar deck was much better than the darkened storage room. She walked around two of the black triangle-shaped ships. They were so alien. That thought faded as she saw what they had placed against the far wall.

  She cocked her head trying to take it in. It was too large to be a loading machine. No, they built this thing for war. She could see the weapon attachments. The whole thing just looked menacing and evil. She ran her hands over the smooth, black surface in a gesture that the man back there might have enjoyed more. The sheer power of this thing thrilled her on a level she could hardly express. This was a Warbot. She’d heard about them, mainly from the soldiers around her hometown and the ones that found her at the coast. Those guys seemed to fear them and also desire the machines. She now understood that kind of emotional turmoil.

  This was a weapon. Was it one she could find a way to use? Thoughts of the WitchWalker faded as greater possibilities took hold of her fractured mind. She searched every inch of the mechanical marvel; she wanted to see it powered up. She wanted to know it’s potential.

  Her fingers traced a seam along a joint, running vertically along the inner thigh. Nothing physically happened, but her thoughts became muddied as if she’d walked into an area of low oxygen. The sensation was alarming, but she pushed the fear aside. She ran her fingers back several millimeters until the pulse of nothingness took her again. Through trial and error, she discovered the zone was incredibly small, maybe less than a half inch on a machine the size of a dump truck.

  She decided to see if that was the only one. Undoubtedly, the soldiers and code-slashers had already gone over the thing looking at its programming and capabilities, but her way was more pragmatic. She wanted to know what they might have missed. It took her nearly fifteen minutes to find a second spot, a neutral zone where the same feeling of emptiness filled her. This one was up on the main chassis, just beneath the left upper appendage. The thing looked less like an arm and more like something for cutting down fields of grain or something.

  She searched another half hour but got worried the soldier might wake up soon, and she suspected he wouldn’t be pleased with her wanderings. Finding none other of the neutral spots, she began trying to press both spots at the same time, but the distance was too great by several feet. Then, she touched the lower, then the upper. Something happened, but she couldn’t describe what it was. A connection of sorts. She then touched the lower spot once more and clearly heard a comms signal inside her own head.

  Chelsea had a nonfunctional internal comms device. It was a cheap knock-off that had quit a few years after she and her husband, Carson both splurged on a pair. She had never been able to upgrade or have it removed. Those things were far beyond the modest income she and her husband had. Now, though, it seemed to be working once more. Then she heard it. Not the war machine, but a man’s voice. She turned, looking back into the darkness, although she knew it wasn’t Rob.

  “Hello,” she whispered.

  She heard a chuckle, “Hello, my dear.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  The calls from my dad were getting more frequent, and I swear he was angrier every time we talked.

  “Build a fortress. That’s your plan?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s not a plan, it’s the problem. It’s what got you here in the first place, dumbass.”

  “How’s that?” I asked, totally confused.

  “Your generation insulated yourselves from the real world. You drove cars that are so engineered, so refined, they do all the hard work for you. You live in ivory towers, cut off from the dirt and grime and harshness. You’ve engineered the joy of living out of life.”

  “So, we made things too comfortable? That’s why humans are going extinct? I don’t think so, Pops.”

  “Your life was never comfortable, Joe. I made damn sure it wasn’t, not because I’m an asshole… well, not totally because I am one, but because being human, being a man is about overcoming, learning from the mistakes you made, adapting to the unpredictable. There was nothing unpredictable in the world before Last Day, was there? Maybe what streaming channel to watch or who had the better sales on Black Friday for more shit you really didn’t need.”

  Okay, I have to admit. I couldn’t really argue with that. The world of 2075 was beautiful but had an inherit sameness, something was missing, even if we didn’t exactly know what it was.

  “Life was never meant to be boring, Son. Civilization beat the big threats back a century ago. They conquered starvation, predation, and most other obvious dangers, then moved onto the more banal like making soap that you couldn’t slip on in the shower. We bred generations of kids that don’t know how to do shit and spend half their lives whining about it and the other half trying to figure out what other boring piece of shit they should be angry about.”

  “It sounds like you are a fan of the apocalypse, Pops.”

  “A fan? No. But was it needed, was it inevitable… oh, hell yes.”

  “So, building a fortress isn’t the way to keep the survivors alive, then what is?”

  “Shit, Joe, that one is easy. In fact, you must know it already. Teach them how to fucking fight back. No…teach them how to win. Don’t adapt to the world as it is, make it the world you want to be in.”

  What the old guy was saying made a lot of sense. Way more than I wanted to admit.

  “Won’t that just put us right back where we were?”

  “Yeah, maybe in a few thousand years. It’s a cycle, Joe, get on—enjoy the ride. Somewhere in the middle, if mankind makes it, there will be a bit of happy equilibrium. Plenty to eat, houseplants that aren’t trying to kill them. Medical advances to keep us from killing ourselves off too fast. Life should be dangerous. Every kid should have a fucking diving board to jump into a pool that’s too fucking deep to stand up in and still breathe air.”

  “Not everyone will survive,” I said.

  “I think that’s the point, kid, and I believe that ship has sailed. Not everyone needs to survive for mankind to win. We get better, we get farther down the road, if we get lucky, a few will make a goddamn difference. That only matters if we make it to tomorrow. You’re a fucking war machine, Joe. Share what you know, share what you are. Fight back but make goddamn sure the rest of humanity is fighting beside you. Ideals are peaceful, our history is violent.”

  I heard him sigh; something was different about this call. “Make it count, Son.”

  Dad actually said goodbye for once. His words were having an effect on me, even if I didn’t want to admit it. Something inside of Joseph Kovach had also changed, and I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff. I was starting to care; I was feeling the need to be better, to be more than just a soldier. I didn’t think I was ready for that, but I had a feeling I was going to find out soon.

  The big Marine was being run through his paces by Gi, who seemed none the worse for wear after battling the pregnant monster.

  Bishop leaned against the Wulf transport watching the sergeant run the kid through the drills. “How in the hell are we going to turn him into a drop trooper?”

  It had been three days since we’d agreed to give Koog a shot. The team was down too many men to use effectively. As I’d expected, Hauk did make a play for him as well, but Koog had already said yes to me by then. Now, I was pretty sure he was regretting it. The onboard training was supplemented by a ruthless VR training sim. It was the same system we used to stay sharp and train for new missions. He would get a hell of a workout and a boatload of new techniques in a very short amount of time.

  “He successfully completed the Combo two years ago,” I offered in response. The Combo, or Alliance Combined Special Forces Skills and Ability Assessment, was legendary and brutal. None of us had ever been through it, other than the few elite teams of Alliance regulars. You had to be invited to try out, and Banshee… well, we hadn’t been. The Combo was like SEAL team hell week times ten. They pulled instructors and training techniques from the toughest military programs in the Allied nations. Then, molded it into a ten-month gut-spewing torture that had a ninety-two percent failure rate. Legend was that more soldiers committed suicide in most rotations than completed the grueling trial. If you took just the U.S. SEAL, Delta Force, Ranger, and dropped in the Marine Raiders and Force Recon training programs, you would have about forty percent of the hell they included in the COMBO.

  “That’s some boss-level shit there, man,” Bishop said, his respect for the kid climbing noticeably. “What about actual drop training, though?”

  “Yeah, that’s going to be a problem,” I admitted. New RDT recruits typically did training drops in a special tandem pod from high altitude, then eventually low orbit. Supposedly, you should have a minimum of thirty training drops before your first actual combat drop.

  “OJT,” I said, walking away. On-the-job training.

  Jordan Hauk caught me on the way to the bridge. “You have a moment?”

  I knew what he wanted. He’d presented his mission plan several days earlier. I’d given a provisional okay, and he’d used the time to assemble and outfit his rescue and recovery team. Ada had given him complete access to the intel on the site. It was going to be a meat grinder, no way I could justify risking more lives to save one. Still, the captain was determined to go, and I had no right to keep him here, or the men of his fire team. I assumed his decision to go had been made. “Yes, Captain, follow me.” I subvocalized Ada to have Damiana join us.

  After checking that the ship’s status was nominal, I ushered Jordan into the ready room. Voss joined us minutes later.

  Jordan was clearly confused. “I don’t think I need a doctor. Not just yet anyway.”

  Voss had been working on new intel from the Sisters of Light that some of the acolytes, or whatever the junior Sisters were called, had been taken by the same group holding Jordan’s brother.

  “Damiana isn’t just a doctor, she has other skills,” I offered lamely, then blushed looking over at her and realized what I had said.

  “It seems we may have a common enemy and a mutual need to avenge those we care about,” Voss said.

  “No offense, Doc, but this is going to be challenging as hell. Our intel is spotty, we… I really have no idea what I’m going to be up against,” Hauk said.

  “Jordan, trust me on this. She can help.”

  “I can help you already, show me what you have on the holding camp.”

  Hauk looked at me in confusion. I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking.

  “Just like that, you want me using second-hand intel from a civilian.”

  If Voss was offended, she didn’t show it, but then again, she never showed much of anything personal. “Take it, leave it, Captain. What you do is up to you. My friends are planning an attack. If you aren’t going to join us, I suggest you stay out of the way.”

  “Your friends? Care to let me in on who we would be fighting with?”

  “No.”

  One of the bridge crew rapped lightly on the hatch, then opened it hurriedly. “We need you, sir. We have a situation developing.”

  I smiled at the other two and moved for the entryway.

  “I think you two have it well in hand. Let me see what other species I might be able to piss off today.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY-SIX

  “What we got, Ensign?

  “A ship, sir, coming in fast on convergent vector.”

  I calculated the likelihood of it being friendly at less than twenty percent. Basically, everybody hated us and our presence aboard this ship.

  “Ready weapons, point defense systems online.”

  That was about all I knew about ship-to-ship fighting, but we did have an outstanding weapons officer. Another Marine from the recovered fragment. Like Bayou, I had full faith in the woman’s ability to keep us in the fight.

  “Helm, bring us about for maximum firing solutions.”

  It wasn’t like we would be firing canon broadsides at each other. With orbital velocity, you shot for where something would be seconds or microseconds later, and for us that might be several hundred miles ahead. Slight variations in our orbit might cause an enemy to miss us by miles. I was more concerned with presenting as small a radar target as possible to the approaching craft.

  “We are being lit up by side scanning radar, sir. They want to make sure we know they are here.”

  “Intentions?”

  “Unknown, no communications on any channel.”

  I paged the ready room. “Hauk, you and Voss work your shit out on the way. I want you off this boat now.”

  I heard an undertone of mumbled complaints, but they both seemed to grasp the situation.

  “Hard copy, Kovach.”

  I gave the order for Packer to ready the dropship. Hauk’s team couldn’t drop like Banshee, they needed the bus.

  Minutes later, I saw the unknown craft enter our proximity field; alerts began going off all over the bridge.

  “Jesus Christ, she’s nearly as big as us.”

  “IFF?” I asked, wanting to know if the ship identified as friend or foe.

  Specialist Otero was working the tactical station. “Neither, sir, signal is present but shows a neutral party.”

  Neutral party? I had to think about that one. It’s a civilian ship? My mind and Ada’s began running through the possibilities but quickly came down to only one likely candidate. A civilian ship that large…

  “It’s the Sao Paulo,” I said out loud.

  The tactical officer nodded in agreement. “I can confirm, configuration is a match.”

  What would an unarmed passenger ship want with us? Last I heard it was in a lunar parking orbit being outfitted for a Mars settlement run.

  “We’re being hailed.”

  “Put it through to the ready room.” I wondered if this was a repeat of what Bayou had gone through.

  Hauk and Voss were rushing out as I went in. Hauk shook my hand, and I wished him luck. He asked me to watch after the rest of his men while he was away. Voss hung back momentarily, then gave me a quick hug, then a much longer kiss.

  “You got this?” she whispered.

  I nodded. “Maybe. Go take care of business.” We both knew we might not be meeting again. I found myself in an unusual, conflicted place. I had no time for feeling anything like this at this moment.