‘Hangar depressurization imminent,’ appeared in his HUD.

  Carol had no suit, no protection from the vacuum of space. He reached for her just as he saw the cold of absolute zero hit her skin. Her face froze inches from her son, and her body was sucked out of the open airlock along with scores of enemy corpses and several of the Marines who’d been working to clear the deck.

  Lux freed his boots and raced for the opening determined to save his mom. I knew that was impossible, but the kid launched himself fearlessly into the void of space.

  The hangar resealed itself just as fast. The stasis field shimmered back into place, leaving nothing but blood stains where the brutal fight had taken place.

  “No!!!” I screamed as I raced toward the black wall of stars. Suddenly, I felt the emotional side of my brain shutting down. I knew it was my battle augmentation cutting in. The trauma of what was going on was being shunted aside for the purely logical. I hated it, and…I welcomed it at the same time.

  “Ada, I need a plan. What can I do to save the kid?”

  My suit had a built-in air supply, and I could track him, but how long would that last?

  “The other TriCraft,” she responded. It was all we had on this deck, but no one was even sure it would fly. Packer was still dirt-side dropping Voss and Hauk.

  “Who can fly it?”

  “You can, Joe, give me a minute to synch with your cerebral cortex.”

  I raced to the machine, pushing various people out of my way to get there. It seemed all the Marines and Army personnel had flowed into the bay after the shield wall went up. “Koog, with me!” He knew space better than any of the others, and I thought that might be handy. The hangar bay was in bedlam. If the enemy wanted a distraction, they damn sure had one now.

  Sumo raced up the ramp ahead of me eager to help any way he could.

  “Keep the track on the kid,” I told my AI. I knew his mom was gone, I couldn’t lose him, too. Shit, this was all my fault.

  I punched the controls as if I had done it a hundred times. The launch sequence was simple, but as I keyed the undocking command, it came up red. “Fuck!” Why hadn’t I tested this thing?

  “The unlocking mechanism in the docking cradle is jammed,” Ada said. “We cannot launch.”

  There is a difference between an AI and a human brain. We care, we make shit work, we improvise. My mind locked onto a plan. A batshit crazy plan, but it was better than nothing. I told Ada what to do.

  Via the external displays, I watched as the Decimator undocked and had Ada remotely guide it to the docking cradle. The thing grasped two of the hard points on the ship as well as the cradle and began pushing the entire assembly through the open bay doors. I felt things being torn away as the point of the craft cleared the bay, then suddenly, we were free of the ship. The repulser engines all went green.

  We pushed as hard as possible to get the ship following Lux’s beacon. Panic filled me, Sumo kept barking, and Koog was readying a recovery line.

  “Enemy ship closing fast.” The comms broadcast surprised me. I’d all but forgotten we were still in a space battle.

  “Prowler, do you require assistance?”

  That was Captain Orric’s voice. God, I hoped I could trust him.

  “Keep these bastards off of us, we are on a recovery mission for one of our own.”

  I said the words but didn’t actually hear them. My entire focus was on the blinking green dot. The speed, angle, spin, everything centered on getting that kid on board this ship.

  “Hard copy on that, Prowler. We are moving away from you at speed, though. Our guns will only be in range for seven minutes. God speed, we will pick you up on the next pass.”

  I saw a flash on the display up to our left and knew the Stone Mountain had scored a hit. Seconds later, several missiles flared and headed back along that same line.

  “Closing on target, three kilometers, begin slowing.”

  I’d already done the calculations and started the braking maneuver. Packer was right, these things handled like crap laterally. Still, it felt like I’d been piloting one for years. Just as that thought occurred to me, the ship lurched to one side. I saw the reason. One of the repulser was out of alignment, and its field was interfering with the other two. It likely sustained damage when the original ship broke up around it. I worked to counter the effect but needed Ada’s help to keep us moving in the right direction.

  “Closing, 800 meters,” Ada said.

  I couldn’t see anything but black on the displays but trusted her to guide us in. “Koog, are we ready?”

  “Maybe—I think so.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “No airlock on these ships, Boss. Remember?”

  “Oh, right, so what’s the plan?”

  “Main hatch, it’ll blow all the atmo, but we all have suits and can regenerate once we are buttoned up.”

  I glanced down at Sumo to make sure his was sealed. Looking around the deck, I saw something that made my blood run cold. A pair of bare legs hung below a tarp on a side bench.

  “Venting now!” the Marine yelled.

  “Belay that!” I jerked the tarp off and stared open mouthed at the WitchWalker sitting calmly. Blood covered her face and mouth. She wouldn’t survive the venting. Still, it was her or Lux, I had no options.

  Looking up, I saw Koog staring in disbelief at the girl. How had she gotten here? She’d obviously used the confusion in the bay to slip in unnoticed, but how?

  “There—use that.” Koog was pointing at a storage compartment beneath the bench. “Is it airtight?”

  “No idea, but it’s something. I’ll get an emergency air bottle.” I wrapped the woman in the tarp, going around her body numerous times as tightly as possible.

  “We’re here, Joe,” Ada said. “Lux is just outside.”

  “Hurry, Koog!”

  He strapped the oxygen mask on her face. The only part of her not covered by the tarp. She seemed to watch everything we did but didn’t help or fight us. I closed the lid, and Koog produced a roll of sealing tape from somewhere and ran a line around the lid. It wasn’t much, but fuck it, she’d been nothing but trouble so far.

  “Lock us down, Ada.”

  I kept a hand on Sumo as the hatch opened. The air in the ship turned instantly to fog, then ice, as it raced out the open hatch. This had to be a first in the operation of the top-secret TriCraft. As Koog clipped me in, I saw the fear. I felt it, too. I relied on Ada to give me a path to the kid. A green arrow appeared in my HUD, and I leapt softly in that direction. He was tumbling about thirty meters off our port side. My suit lights picked up his own suit in seconds.

  Reaching him, I saw he was conscious. In fact, he appeared fine other than the tears streaming down his face. I clipped into his suit and pulled him close. “I’m sorry, Lux.” I heard and felt the racking sobs, and as Koog began pulling us back in, I realized we weren’t alone. The stiff form of a body was following us. Lux had reached his mom and tied her off with his own suit cord. I, too, couldn’t stop the tears.

  We were back inside the ship in under a minute, but I felt sure that was too much for the prisoner. Ada repressurized the ship, and I lay Carol’s body as gently as possible down on the rear bench. She looked beautiful, almost like a Greek statue. Her skin had frozen solid, but her eyes hadn’t ruptured. They looked like they could come back to life. Despite our onboard medical capabilities, there was no coming back from this, though.

  Lux unsealed his suit, then dropped it to the floor. He rushed to his mom and lay his head on her chest. I moved away and gave them the space they deserved. He was an orphan now, and it was my fault. It was all my fault.

  I dried my own tears and turned to see Koog pulling the limp body of the girl from the locker. She wasn’t dead. I saw her legs taking steps on her own, but she wasn’t fully conscious either. Koog walked her over to the opposite seats and strapped her in.

  “We have multiple problems, Joe,” Ada said as I sat back down in the pilot’s seat.

  Scanning the displays, I understood at once. This ship was in worse shape than I thought. “We aren’t going to stay in orbit long enough for the Stone Mountain to reach us, are we?”

  “No, at the rate our orbit is degrading, we will enter upper atmosphere twelve minutes before they arrive. Also, the Stone Mountain has suffered a massive explosion. I am not sure of their status.”

  “Shit.” One thing at a time. “Everyone strap in, it’s going to get bumpy. Koog, the girl okay?”

  “Seems to be, Prowler, but hell, how would we know?”

  She’s still breathing, that in itself was a miracle. My mind and my heart kept going to the loss of Carol, but I had to compartmentalize that I was in a busted-ass ship, no supplies, heading down to a planet that was intent on killing us, with a kid, a dog, and WitchWalker. Even with the big Marine, I didn’t like our odds of survival down there. That’s the trouble with this game, fate doesn’t give a shit about the hand you are dealt. Play it or fold, those are your only choices.

  A controlled descent is better than an uncontrolled one. I pushed the cyclic forward; the craft immediately nosed down and canted to the left side. The pain, which all of us usually felt inside a TriCraft, was always worse on the drop. It hit us instantly, but not just the usual low-level joint pain; it was magnified many fold. It was agonizing, and I could hear Lux cry out. My head felt like it was going to collapse. Even blocking out most of the pain, I was still barely hanging on to consciousness. The misaligned repulser engines were having trouble compensating. Since no one seemed to understand how the damn things worked, who knew if this was going to be fatal or not. Either way, gravity would get a vote, and seeing our altitude numbers plummeting, I felt like it would win the argument of who gets to end our lives.

  “Ada,” I struggled to get the thought out. “Notify the Stone Mountain we are going down.”

  She paused longer than was necessary to make the call. “I’m sorry, Joe. They are no longer in contact with us.”

  The ground was rushing up at us, and I could feel the strange sensations begin to decrease slightly. One of the others, Koog I guessed cried out in pain and then the sound of retching. I hope they removed their helmet. The map on the holodisplay was flashing red, and I had no lateral control. We were headed for the biggest red zone in North America. The wastelands.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Acrid smoke began filling the cockpit, and alarms blared. I tried desperately to regain control, but it was no use. The craft was trapped by the gravitational pull of the planet. Displays blinked on and off; I heard one of the others give a cry of pain. This ship hadn’t been ready to fly, I should have left it with the rest of the space junk.

  My hands worked methodically resetting the engines, changing nav points. The augmented part of my brain knew what to do. The meat part just accepted that I was a failure and was about to die…again. I hadn’t asked for this, but still, much of it was my fault. I deserved to pay the price, but these others didn’t, especially the boy. The ground was rushing up at us now, only seconds remained.

  The ship shook violently as it plummeted toward the ground. I tried to steer it away from the mountains in the distance, but it was no use. We were going down way too fast, and there was nothing I could do about it. Something was burning, more smoke poured into the main cabin

  Impact was abrupt and violent. I had just yelled, “Brace” when we hit. The sensation of full gravity returned, and the realization that movement had ceased came on in a rush. The ship crashed into the rocky terrain with a deafening roar. The impact sent me flying forward, slamming into my restraints. The ship groaned and creaked as it skidded across the uneven ground, kicking up dust and debris.

  It was obvious the TriCraft was never meant to actually land. No part of the craft could be considered structurally sound. Now, I felt cold air and knew the hull had been breached, but the air was clearing and, hey…I wasn’t dead.

  The readout in my HUD was black. I was in one piece, I think, but checking on my passengers revealed the first of many problems. Lux was unconscious; I removed his helmet but could see no apparent injuries. Koog appeared to be in the same shape, and I knew the reason. While the how of the dropship’s operation was mostly a mystery, some things about it were obvious. One was the intense pain we usually got on the ascent or descent. One pilot had told me it was because of the way the repulsers interact with the fabric of space. The repulser engines on this craft were out of alignment, so the squishy, meatsack humans bore the full brunt of all the forces at play.

  All but two, myself and the witch. Even though she had escaped a prison cell, somehow managed to sneak through an ongoing battle, only to then be partially exposed to the vacuum of space, and now aboard a crashed dropship. She seemed fine. Her eyes watched me, with a bored expression.

  “Can you help?” Her look never changed.

  “Ada, are you up?”

  There was no sound from my internal AI. I could almost feel the disconnect with her. Ada had been implanted into my own neural pathways last year, and as strange as that seemed, she had become a constant presence in my life. Now…I felt nothing. Just a void, an emptiness in my skull where she should have been. I felt, more than saw, my dog curled beneath my feet. I worried he was injured as well but felt his rhythmic breathing. Like the rest of us, he wasn’t well, but the loyal husky was still with us. I moved his battle suit back on his neck and stroked his fur, thankful for small blessings.

  The dropship was canted up at an angle, part of the left point was crumpled in. We’d landed badly, that was obvious. I scrambled across the slanted deck to check the kid again. Lux was unconscious but breathing. He had a nasty bruise across his forehead, and one eye was partially open and looked blood red. I paired my suit’s computer to his and reviewed his condition. I had his suit administer the recommended treatment and moved over to the big Marine whose condition seemed much worse. His pulse was shallow; the suit had done multiple sessions of CPR in the last ten minutes and even done a defibrillator charge when his heart stopped. I removed my gloves, unlatched his helmet, and raked it back into its receiver.

  Checking his armor, I saw a huge dent in his right side just above the waist. That could mean internal injuries as well. He’d hit something, or maybe he picked that up in the battle. I had no idea, and honestly, I needed Ada to guide me on what to do. TriCraft only have the basics, no real medical bay. His suit already had him sedated. I leaned back, and my hand brushed against something cold and hard. I knew what it was before I even looked.

  Carol’s body lay there cold, dead, but still beautiful. Her son’s gloved hand still rested atop hers. He’d been determined to save her, not realizing she was gone as soon as she hit the vacuum of space. A wave of incredible sadness washed over me. The guilt, regret, and shame of my decisions where she was involved. It was inexcusable, and I had to face the fact that I had caused her death just as much as anything. Tears flooded my eyes, and nothing I could do would hold them back.

  I sat there next to the woman I’d cared more for than anyone else in my life, and next to her was her son. One was gone, and the other was suddenly my responsibility. I pushed his helmet up and rubbed his hair out of his eyes. Such a bright kid, a survivor, and he would need to be because I had brought us down in the worst place imaginable.

  The ship’s lights flickered and went out. The dim blue emergency lighting kicked on and gave the interior a surreal glow. Sumo crawled up the slanted floor and laid his head in my lap. The WitchWalker still just stared blankly. The cold emptiness in those eyes chilled me. It was reflective of the planet now. Apathy, no hatred, no love…just nothing. Almost like I didn’t matter, humans…didn’t matter.

  A fragment of memory flashed though my bruised brain. Hinge and me sitting in on a debriefing on advanced AIs. The expert told us that the worst would not be AIs upgrading their own code and eventually taking over and wanting to wipe us out. It would be that we simply no longer mattered to them. We would be as inconsequential as ants are to humans. Bayou’s strange warning also bubbled up to the surface. That one I had to bury; I just was in no position to unpack it right now.

  Turning back toward the boy, I heard his mom’s voice telling me to protect him. It was something I hadn’t managed to do for her.

  “We have to take care of him, Sumo.”

  The dog turned to look at Lux and seemed to agree; he lowered his head, resting it lightly on the child’s chest.

  My dad’s words from our last call came back to me. Teach them how to fucking fight back. Teach them how to win. Don’t adapt to the world as it is, make it the world you want to be in. That’s what it was going to take to survive out there. I didn’t think we would get back into our fortress high above anytime soon. If what Deb had told me was true, that might be for the best. In either case, that was not the most pressing issue. We were going to have to go out there in the waste, find a way to survive and get back in the fight.

  Something large hit the outside hull. Off in the distance, I heard a bloodcurdling howl. The WitchWalker’s eyes darted up at the sound. One thing was certain, this might be the wastelands, but we would not be alone down here.

  EPILOGUE

  Valyn studied the charts and frowned. “Where are they?” he whispered to himself.

  No debris field, no transponder, but if what the bridge crew was saying was true, the TriCraft wasn’t even on the manifest for this ship.

  “They’re gone, sir.”

  He nodded, “And the enemy ship?” They’d exchanged several more volleys with the mystery craft but still were having trouble detecting it clearly on sensors.

  “Who are you?”

  The voice surprised him, and looking up, his shock only increased. The woman looked like death. She was wearing a hospital gown, and blood stained one edge of a large bandage. He did recognize the face, though. “Riggs?”