She’d thought… maybe hoped, that was the worst of it. God, how wrong she had been. The power grid quickly became unreliable. Food became scarce after the government confiscated the larger synthesizers and most of the raw organic material the smaller ones could have used. Then, with little warning, she’d been roused from sleep by black-suited feds, hustled onto a military hyperjet, and flown down to Texas. They called it a rescue, but her word for it was rendition. Rescue from what?

  Now she knew. The Space Force base south of San Antonio had lasted nineteen days. Nineteen days while all hell fell apart around them. Xero shuddered to think about it now, but no way in hell she would have remained there much longer. Then, on day twenty-three, Jordan Hauk rode in with orders to take her to another safe zone. Someone up the chain had apparently read one of her reports and wanted to know more. Why did she think most of the attacks of Last Day were just cover?

  Then came the fucking creatures. The evil horde had pursued them relentlessly, turning a day trip back to the coast into a weeklong nightmare. A nightmare that was still unfolding. Still, her analytical brain couldn’t get all the pieces to fit. Why the hacks on the financial markets, deep fakes, and attempts to take down several bands of the internet at once? Why cause such chaos and confusion if you are just going to kill everyone on Last Day anyway? Possibly to slow any reaction or make sure people were distracted by other issues. Every magician knows the best illusions keep the audience focused on what they think is going on instead of what is really happening.

  Maybe aliens had decided to invade and saw the unprecedented level of social disorder as the perfect opportunity. Nah, Xero liked to think she believed in aliens but not the brainless killing monsters that the soldiers outside were fighting. Those things didn’t appear smart at all, they just kept attacking and dying. More likely, she figured, it was more than one force that had pulled off the global attacks. One who handled the parts she was familiar with, the computer hacks that caused the financial meltdown, paired with enough media misinformation to dismantle all public trust. Then, the other group, the ones who had the military might to pull off synchronized attacks on all those countries.

  Different factions with opposing strategies but a coordinated attack? The pieces just weren’t fitting together.

  So…which side made the monsters? she asked herself. Or were those just released in response to the attack? If so—why? Few people knew that a computer algorithm largely handled the nation’s overall security and defensive strategy. After the massive security and intelligence missteps in the early part of the century, leaders had finally come to grips with the issue. No agency, nor hundreds of separate agencies, could adequately monitor ongoing threats much less have countermeasures in place in time to do any good. Over the course of a decade, the little fiefdoms of intelligence D.C. had created were exposed as being incompetent or downright contributing to the nation’s issues. One by one, they were quietly stripped of authority, budgets, and manpower.

  Due to her former role and her ongoing consulting with the federal government, Xero was intimately familiar with both the U.S. and the Alliance algorithmic structure. Both were very good and had proven themselves countless times thwarting would-be attackers from doing any significant harm. Still, the sheer randomness of the Last Day attacks had such a chaotic level of unpredictability that to her, it suggested they were all designed by a computer program. One designed to keep everyone off-balance. If that was the case, it was one with a devastating and very cold outcome as the goal. None of this made sense to her. Who stood to gain in the overall equation? It was a puzzle, and clearly one she needed to figure out.

  Now she sat in this Army tent, drinking a stranger’s liquor, listening to the unrelenting gunfire and almost as frequent nearby screams. She bowed her head considering the cost of failure. Her research so far had produced little that was actionable and revealed entire gulfs of data she was unaware of. With her skills and her background, neither seemed plausible. Through it all, she’d always had one person she could count on when times got tough. One person who’s mind was almost as sharp, but more, a person even she respected. Right now, though, he was out of touch, and she did not know if her friend was even still alive. “Where are you, Orric?”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  “These coordinates are for an area of empty space.” Bayou looked at me hard. The lack of understanding matched my own.

  “I get that, Riggs, but we need to check it out just the same.”

  My second in command and I had been together long enough for her trust to overrule her logic, especially when I said something stupid. But because of my recent departure from the living, she might give me some additional scrutiny. Her face was a mask of exhaustion and something else…

  “What about the drop?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

  “Hopefully, this detour doesn’t delay us much, but I think it’s important.”

  She turned to the crew and ordered Packer and the ship’s AI to plot the course. Up here, time was a better measure than distance. The Stone Mountain was traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Any decrease in speed automatically decreased altitude, which we had been doing for several hours. Now I was asking for a course change to a fixed point in space. No way to stop an orbital mass weighing close to 30,000 metric tons. Chances are, anything out there we would fly by too fast to even spot.

  “It’s doable,” Packer said. He threw the course corrections up on the large holoscreen. I had the calculations in my head before the AI even finished updating the grid.

  “Nominal effect on the Red-7 mission, make it happen.” I turned to go talk to the rest of the team. Bayou’s hand reached out, then pulled back slightly. My bare feet slid to a stop on the deck plating.

  “Joe.”

  I heard the uncertainty in my friend’s voice. “Spit it out, Riggs, what’s on your mind?”

  She uncharacteristically looked away before answering. “Are you…”

  “Am I okay?” I answered. “Am I still me?” I think what she really needed to know was could she trust me. With all that had happened and the strangeness of my resurrection and ‘new’ upgrades, I probably had the same concerns. Her head nodded once.

  “I’m me, Deb. But hang onto your concerns just in case. We’re in uncharted territory here.”

  “Really glad you’re back, Kovach.”

  We bumped fists just like the good old days.

  “Me too, me too.”

  I hadn’t been on a Monolith class carrier in years and made several wrong turns before Ada updated the layout in my head for me and gave me a visual line to follow. I knew where the ready room should be, but the green glowing line took a hard right a hundred feet before the aft hatch. I followed it into a break area where Sumo and a smaller dog were playing tug-o-war with an old stuffed animal. Their growls and barks were sounds of delight.

  Carol was there, as well as a smaller male version of her that had to be her son. I knelt down, patting both of the dogs. And looking at the child, he didn’t look like a survivor, but I knew he was. He was all Carol had talked about. “You must be Lux,” I said, holding out a hand.

  The boy ignored my outstretched hand and instead moved in and hugged me. My hand fell naturally on his back, and I felt his body shaking slightly. I looked up at Carol, and she just smiled. This boy had lost his father when Atlanta was destroyed; much of his world was gone, yet he was thankful to me, a guy who wasn’t even able to save himself. After a full minute, he moved back and looked at me. His eyes were clear and fearless. I knew this little dude needed no bullshitting. He’d already faced off against the very worst of what was down there and survived; he was the kind of fighter this new world would require.

  “How does it feel to be living in space?”

  He grinned. “It’s awesome! Wish my friends could see me.”

  His face shadowed, and I knew what he was thinking.

  “So, who is this?” I asked.

  “Junie,” he responded eagerly.

  “I see you know Sumo already. Did you take care of him when I…” I almost said died.

  “When you were dead?” he said with no hesitation.

  “Um…yeah.”

  “I did, but Sumo wouldn’t leave his spot under your hospital bed, not until the medbots made him go at least. He likes Junie, though, they get along. Junie is a great dog.” His little eyes looked away, and for the first time I saw them tearing up.

  “There was another dog,” Carol offered.

  Lux raked a sleeve across, drying his eyes. “Timber.”

  “The other dog was named Timber?” I asked. “What can you tell me about him?”

  The boy’s chin quivered ever so slightly before he got it under control. “He saved my life. You know, after the car stopped and Marcie died.”

  I looked up at Carol who mouthed, “NannyBot.”

  It took several minutes for Lux to tell me some of the story, and I had to admit it was incredible. Someone his age with no supplies, no training, literally on his own in a war zone.

  “You have good instincts, Lux, trust them…always. Maybe Timber got away, he seems like a smart dog, too, but at least you managed to save this ball of fur.” I had Junie pinned on her back rolling her from side to side as she tried in vain to bite at my hand. “I need to go brief my team, you wanna come?”

  “Banshee?” The kid’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Hell, yeah, they’re prepping for a drop. Scary as hell, but pretty damn awesome.” Belatedly, I looked at Carol who nodded her permission with a smile.

  “So, kid,” I began as we walked down the long metal corridor, “I know being on your own was bad and all, but what do you remember most?” I knew it was shitty to be bringing up trauma to a kid and all, but shit, it’s what my pops would have done.

  “Bacon.”

  Fuck, I had to laugh. “Bacon?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You ever heard of it?”

  I nodded. “I’ve had it before, used to be a lot more common than now. When I was a kid, real meats were mostly what we ate.”

  “That must have been awesome.”

  I liked this one. All the crap and fear his mom and I had been through, all the dangers he himself faced, yet this was what he remembered.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asked.

  “It’s just…well, you remind me of a soldier.”

  His eyes lit up at that remark. “How so?”

  “Yeah, well…see, we go through crap, really tough days, even just in training. You learn to push your body through things you never would have thought possible. Even on missions that sometimes go tits up…er, I mean, you know, badly, like off the rails. You just have to learn to move on, put the bad stuff behind you. They call it resilience.”

  “And a lot of you focus on bacon?”

  I chuckled. “Some,” I admitted. “The main thing that works for us is to find something good about every day to remember. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Sometimes it’s the little things that matter the most.”

  “Yeah…” he said with an air of authority that no child that old should possess. “The bad stuff just gives me bad dreams. I don’t want to remember that anymore.”

  “Smart, Lux… very smart.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  LUNA BASE

  “It’s Valyn, sir.”

  The older man gave a nod but remained silent. Looking out the porthole toward something… or maybe nothing.

  The younger officer remained at attention long after the ensign had left. The admiral had a reputation, and forgetfulness was at the top of the list. Finally, the older man turned and eyed him up and down.

  It surprised Valyn how tired and weak the man looked. He was gaunt, and his skin was nearly as gray as the lunar landscape outside.

  “Any word from them?”

  The admiral’s new assistant knew who he meant. Valyn shook his head. “No, sir. They are not responding to our hails and have disappeared behind the planet.”

  “But we are sure it was under power?”

  “Yes, Admiral, uh. Sorry, sir.” He kept forgetting his boss had elevated his own rank earlier in the day. “Yes, War Commander, the propulsion system leaves a very identifiable signature our sensors can easily detect.”

  “I don’t need a damn lesion in space drives or sensor dynamics. I want to know who is operating my spacecraft and what we have to do to bring it down. We cannot allow the enemy to be using our own ships against us.”

  Valyn was still unsure why the man thought the enemy would be aboard the nearly obsolete ship, especially after they had apparently blown three others out of orbit, but Reese seemed convinced.

  “We have limited assets, sir, space tugs, a few shuttles, no real military assets.”

  Luna was part of an old NASA base called Gateway and more geared toward exploration than defense. It and the orbital platform high overhead were originally designed to refine fuel and water to get the precious deep-space vessels ready for the trek to Mars or the asteroid belt beyond.

  The admiral smiled, then his face seemed to take on an entirely new demeanor. “Next shipment up, let’s get some more of those chocolate mint things. You remember, we had them at that birthday party.”

  Holy shit, this man was gone, why had he not been retired by now? “No, sir, I just arrived before the attack.” He wasn’t sure which salient fact he was trying harder to convey, that he wasn’t here at the last party or that they probably weren’t getting anything else from Earth. At least not anytime soon.

  “Ah, yes,” the admiral said with a sigh. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

  The flag officer’s aide tried hard to keep that one eyebrow from raising questioningly. It was an annoying habit, at least according to his friends.

  “Follow me, Captain Orric.”

  “Sir.”

  Orric was impressed the man had remembered his name. He’d been on Luna for less than two weeks when the missiles started flying back home. He could now find his way around the sprawling base mostly, and the low gravity was less impactful on his stomach than it had originally been. Still, getting used to the quirks of his new boss had been the biggest challenge of all. The man seemed almost completely clueless as to the severity of what their home planet had just been through. If Xero’s intel could be trusted, and he had no reason to doubt it, then something even more deadly was now at work down there.

  He needed to be back; he knew he’d lost friends, family, maybe everyone on that day, but instead, he was on assignment here. An assignment that might be permanent if he couldn’t find someone still alive in his command chain to reassign him.,

  Gateway and Luna were one in the same as far as being a single base, but Gateway was nominally under IAS command, and Luna was U.S. military. In reality, there was so much overlap, little of the bureaucracy made any sense. The lone ship up in lunar orbit was clearly IAS, a research vessel—the IAS Sao Paulo; built to be the ‘Mars and Beyond’ colony ship. Now, it could well be their only lifeline back to Earth. Luna base was only 64% self-sufficient. The organic growth medium could produce enough organic matter for food. The water extractors provided way more than the colony needed, but this was a harsh environment. Technology was just as important in this environment as food and water. Every person here needed medicines to keep radiation sickness at bay, bone density treatments, and countless other items. Hell, even the simple CO2 scrubber filters that had to be changed weekly couldn’t be produced here. Without resupply, Gateway would fail. Valyn felt sure the old man knew this clearly. He was quickly realizing the man simply played dumb. The man was not. Yes, he was an ass, he was lazy, he was a coward, but no, he was no one’s dummy. On top of that, he was ambitious. Dangerously so.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  The man sat by the window overlooking the dark cliffs. Deep blue waves crisscrossed the Atlantic out to where it met the sky twenty miles out. The sky, he thought, had never been clearer. He sipped the wine, trying to decide frankly if he loved it or hated it. Some things are just that complex. Sometimes there is not a clear answer, a winner, a loser.

  His feeling for the man standing several yards behind was much easier to categorize. He had failed him; he was a liability and now, he was making excuses. Nevis turned to face him once more. The haunted look of fear was there but still a touch of defiance, a bit of the old fire still burned deep within.

  “Please, Señor Carlson, I…”

  Nevis held up a single finger to silence the man while he took another sip. He had made up his mind; he walked past, deliberately ignoring the man and looked at the label on the half-full bottle, then made a note on a pad. It was good, very good in fact. It, he would keep. Diego, well, sadly… not so much.

  He signaled to his men standing just outside the open door as he poured another of the delicious burgundy. He swirled it around as the two guards carried the screaming man out of the study. Carlson continued to sip as he watched them drag him across the immaculately manicured lawn and throw him over the cliff. The terrain was unforgiving here. Millennia of bitter winter storms had been eating away at Maine’s coast like a hungry bear. What it left behind was a jagged coast of rock and cliff side. This had been his parents’ home once; he would not do unsavory business within its walls. Out there, though… meh.

  Diego had been a key asset in the Liberty Strikes. His mission was to coordinate several of the missile launches from the converted cargo ships. He’d done well, all things considered, but the Order demanded perfection. They also hated loose ends, not that anyone would be investigating. His little failure had caused an inconvenience, one Nevis would deal with later. Today he had more pressing matters, much more pressing.