She shook her head. “Our systems didn’t detect anything like that. I can’t say it with much certainty. Let’s face it, the attacks didn’t hold back much, but what we are hearing about is mostly the work of what you mentioned first, plus good old-fashioned assholes being assholes.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “People attacking each other?”

  She nodded. “It’s bad, should be plenty of food for all of them, water could be a problem, but enough of the planet’s clear for the moment for the survivors to regroup and begin a solid defense.”

  “Let me guess, instead, they are hoarding, stealing, and proving why anarchy is such a lousy form of government.”

  “You got it, Master Sergeant.”

  Her eyes drifted to my shirt, and I reflexively covered the piece of tape.

  “You are still a Master Sergeant, right?” she asked. “I mean… I know you have been busted from officer ranks before, but you wouldn’t have been demoted just because you died, would you? Hell, they were dead, too, so who would have done it?”

  She moved to peel back the strip of tape, and I caught her hand. She laughed, then tapped her temple. I knew she was bringing up her link to the ship’s AI. And then, she would read the updated ship’s roster…

  “No fucking way!”

  She stood quickly.

  “No fucking way!” She obviously wasn’t going to stop.

  “It’s wrong, Riggs, ignore it.”

  “No fu…”

  “LT?” I spelled it out.

  She was still laughing, but she almost came to attention.

  “It’s just a thing… you know, when you die in battle. Or something…” Fuck, I had no idea.

  “Battlefield promotion for a dead guy?”

  “You know, I am starting to get a little sensitive about everybody referring to me as dead.”

  “Sure, sure, Master…er, Captain. You prefer something more sensitive like ‘previously alive’ or ‘recently undead?’”

  “Not better…no.”

  I finished my coffee and grinned at my executive officer, now once again junior to me in rank, even if it was only going to be temporary.

  “Fuck you, Riggs, and wipe that damn smile off your face. At least now I can get my drop clearance reinstated.”

  She placed a hand on my arm. “Fuck you, too, Kovach. Glad you’re back.”

  I stood, “Let’s go see what those SEs are reeling in.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  I was glad to see the engineering crew had an armed security detail who had taken up firing positions around the massive piece of ship being lashed into place. The SEs were just as much military as the rest of us, just with additional levels of skills and training to do their very specific jobs. Sometimes required to do that job in war zones and in the line of fire. I had met none of them yet, but that was soon to be a priority.

  “Specialist,” Bayou said to a white clad woman holding a datatab.

  The dark-haired woman turned and snapped off a salute before turning back to the fragment. “Gate stasis field is back in place. They are re-pressurizing the hangar deck and will have access in ninety seconds,” Otero said without hesitation.

  “Is this one of ours?”

  The space engineer turned to see who I was, and her eyes briefly went wide in apparent recognition. “Yes, we believe it is part of the Denali. The deck configuration on that carrier was unique.”

  “So, presumably friendlies.”

  Bayou shook her head, “How could anyone be alive in there? They attacked Denali five or six days ago best we can tell.”

  “Each section has some safeguards in case of catastrophic failure. Vital compartments can even be jettisoned in an emergency. Just like Old Stoney here.” Otero waved up at the gray decking all around.

  I knew that the red emergency lockers were in every corridor, and I knew they held emergency vacuum suits, oxygen generators, water, and more. The fact that they could pop an entire section out was news to me, though.

  “Equalized!” one other yelled before the light on the door went from yellow to green. We piled in, every soldier armed but Riggs and me. Then I saw she had a handgun out as well. So, everyone was armed but me.

  “Tapping coming from inside,” one of the SEs said, pocketing a small device he’d been using to listen.

  The damn thing was massive. Jagged metal, wires, and duct work stuck out at every angle. The entire thing sat canted at a thirty-degree angle on the ship’s deck. In truth, I couldn’t see any part of this thing that looked like it would hold air much less livable space.

  Several of the engineers began cutting into the wreckage at very specific points. I could see they were going in between the deck and an outer hull. An area that would normally be mostly hollow space filled with water just like the Stone Mountain’s hull configuration. The water was essential for obvious reasons but also in shielding the crews from deadly cosmic radiation.

  Specialist Otero’s crew was precise and well-trained. One of the workers signaled, and she ordered her team back into firing positions. “Opening it up now, sir.” She motioned for both of us to take cover.

  A section of wreckage fell away and a gaping dark maw in the interior of the twisted metal opened up. Armed SEs replaced the engineers with cutting tools, and with lights affixed to their pulse rifles, they lit up the interior. Through the tight beams of bluish white light, I saw lumps of orange. Some of the lumps soon resolved into arms and legs.

  Riggs and I moved from cover along with most of the others. These weren’t hostiles, they were barely alive, in fact. The orange I had seen appeared to be survival tents. Inflatable bags for those who couldn’t get into the emergency vacuum suits. “Shit,” I said as we started pulling them out of the dark hole. “How many are they?”

  The answer was forty-seven; it was actually seventy-three, but twenty-six were dead, or would be gone before the medbots could even triage their condition. A couple of the bodies moved arms and even appeared semi-conscious. I removed the helmet from one man, a large, solidly built Marine who appeared stronger than the rest.

  The man’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Riggs handed him a water bladder, and he drank from the spout greedily. He nodded and offered a feeble thumbs-up. As we cut away the cheap emergency suit, the man reeked of sweat, urine, and other unpleasantries, but the tattoo on his arm and the winged globe with twin archers let us know exactly who these guys were.

  “They’re Alliance Space Marines,” Riggs said.

  Like the ancient naval ships, every Space Fleet carrier had a compliment of Marines aboard. They were trained to fight in every environment, including Zero-G, however, that had only been tested a couple of times over the years.

  The Marine’s lips moved again, and this time a croaking sound came out. I leaned in close. “Permission to come aboard, Captain.”

  Using that rank to refer to me still felt off. I wiped the grime from his name tape and glanced at the rank insignia. Atkins, Trip AWO. I patted him and nodded. “Welcome to the IAS, Stone Mountain, Chief.” Two of the SEs carried him to an awaiting auto-gurney where the attached medbots were already getting IV lines ready.

  “Interesting find, Prowler,” Riggs said, looking at me and shaking her head. “One of these days…”

  She was cut off by Otero on our left calling up to one of her men. The specialist was glancing between her datapad and the wreckage with a confused look.

  “Problem, Specialist?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, her mind clearly on the rows of numbers on the screen.

  “Deep scan, wide spectrum, soon as all the bodies are removed,” she yelled. Finally registering my words, she turned to me and realized I had asked her something.

  “Sorry, sir, the umm… the weight is wrong.”

  “Weight?”

  She nodded, “Yes, sir, the deck plating has sensors built in to calculate the weight. It’s useful for artificial gravity and such, but also, the ship has mass even if we don’t always have weight. For maneuvering that must be calculated.”

  I knew some of that, and looking at the piece of debris, I finally noticed that Ada…or maybe I, was also running various calculations on the thing.

  “It’s too heavy,” I said, understanding dawning.

  “Yes, sir, by a lot.”

  “Tell me, Otero, on the Denali what was adjacent to the Marine billet?”

  “Hangar 12, sir, same as all the Monolith class.”

  “Hot damn!” I said, and mainly to myself whispered, “Thank you, Pops.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  The test concluded with a beep. Ada moved on to vocabulary. The first word was Triskaidekaphobia. They got progressively harder and faster. I knew the questions were coming in seconds, then fractions of seconds, then microseconds. Eventually, all was too fast for verbal responses, so I simply thought it.

  “Do you need a break?”

  “Of course not, this is not like work.” And it wasn’t. While I had been more interested in my physical changes, Ada seemed more startled by intellectual enhancements. I thought back to a conversation with Doctor Reichert soon after my injury. He said the brain was the most important upgrade any soldier could want.

  I’d already noticed several improvements. Better memory recalls, faster problem solving, reading, analysis, and multitasking.

  “Okay, that’s enough on math, let’s move on to chemistry.”

  Suddenly, I realized I had completed the last exam while thinking of the doctor. Parts of my brain were now working entirely independent of the others. How did this help me be a better soldier, though?

  After more than two hours, Ada finally relented. “That’s it, Joe. That is the extent of what the human test can measure.”

  She explained that for humans to devise a test, someone had to be smart enough to devise the question and know the answer. I had just exceeded that limit.

  “In what areas?” I asked.

  “All of them. You never once skipped a question, you never answered incorrectly or ‘I don’t know.’”

  “So, I am a genius?”

  “That’s imprecise. Your IQ is likely well above 200, but you are more like a pocket computer. You know a lot, you have great potential, but it really depends on the application. How are you going to use it?”

  “I’d like a beer.”

  “Your parents would be so proud.”

  “Hey, now that’s just mean.” Ada was getting a seriously snarky personality, and I had no idea where it was coming from. Seriously. No idea.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Halo constantly fidgeted with his gear belts. It was part nervous habit and part superstition. He’d done it before every successful drop. He counted all of them he survived as successful.

  “You think all that hurky-jerky shit makes a difference?” Priest asked.

  Halo shrugged; it was a well-worn topic. Something they went through to take the edge off before a jump.

  “Say, what do you think about Kovach? Coming back like that an’ all. That’s some shit, right?”

  “Can it, Priest,” Gi ordered, striding into the room.

  The other two men were caught off guard and both began laughing. “Where’s your accent?” Halo asked.

  “I’m in charge on this one, don’t want to muck it up,” the Korean offered with an amiable smile. “Seriously, though, we went through some weird ass shit down there. Never underestimate him. The man may or may not be invincible, but he is a damn fine soldier. One I would fight beside any day.”

  “Amen to that,” Priest said with a fist bump, his large, black fist dwarfing the smaller Korean’s.

  “So, did I hear correctly, we pulled a can full of Marines out of the deep dark? Any chance we can get some help down there? I mean, we are a few men short on this drop,” Halo asked.

  “I heard the same as you, Halo. I doubt they’re in fighting shape. They must have been floating around out there since the Denali went down days ago. Who knows what injuries they may have?”

  G-force went on to brief the squad on every manner of enemy they’d been up against at the Ranier facility, one of the aptly nicknamed Nightmare Factories. Sadly, all they had was the standard load-out of weapons. No one had any ‘ah-ha’ moments that might prove useful in whatever Red-7 was likely up against.

  “This is no way to fight a war,” Priest said.

  “We aren’t,” Halo answered a little too quickly.

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  Halo kicked out at the edge of a nearby gear locker, his boot making a rhythmic thud each time.

  “He means we are doing body retrievals right now,” Kovach said carrying in several large bundles. He dropped the load at their feet.

  “Thought we wouldn’t see you before we dropped.”

  “Change of plans,” Kovach answered, his face breaking into a wicked grin. “I am now cleared, and Deb and I came to an… understanding.”

  Getting locked into the X-class pods was a serious upgrade. These even had built-in displays with an external view. Still, they were essentially a coffin. Deep down, I knew I had been just days or even hours away from a funeral pod. The dull black ovoids slung in racks high above us in the storage slots. Each of us had mixed feelings about them. Truthfully most RDT fatalities were down on the ground. Few of us made it back up here to be deep-spaced. It was considered an honor, though, any of us could request it if we were KIA.

  I shook my head to clear the morbid thoughts and familiarized myself with the pod’s systems. As usual, Sumo was secure beneath me in his own compartment. Despite the chaos of the last month, things seemed oddly familiar. Telling Carol and Lux that I was dropping had been tougher than I’d expected. I wasn’t used to having anyone care about what I did. These guys, my team, they were my family.

  The launch tubes appeared on the screen like…well, like an oversized gun barrel, which essentially was what they were. The Stone Mountain’s orbital velocity was in excess of 17,000 miles per hour, and much of that had to be canceled out before our pods would drop into the atmosphere. That was normally achieved by firing us in the opposite direction of the ship. We also had to stay on a trajectory that would place us on a glide path very near the drop target. Now, thanks to my upgrades, I can calculate all of that in real-time. One thing I’d never fully realized was the Earth itself is rotating to the east at around a thousand miles an hour.

  Seeing all the advanced calculations did little to ease my mind. Still, this was not my first rodeo. The ballistic pods and I were old friends. Kind of.

  The kick of the rail gun firing me out the tube still felt like a car crash, but I had to admit, these new pods had better inertial dampeners or something. Now, we just held on and hoped we could make the transition from space to atmos without burning up. For the next few minutes, there wasn’t anything we could do to affect that outcome.

  As my pod began its drop, the outer skin quickly heated up. Through the display, I could see the blue-yellow plasma jetting around me. Knowing just millimeters away the temperature was over 2000 degrees did little for one’s nerves, but the howl of the air screaming past was what normally made me switch on the noise canceling feature in my helmet. Today, I listened to it, though. I was still alive, and I was going hunting.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  “Captain Hauk.”

  The man turned; Hadroop started to give the update, then realized his CO’s attention was elsewhere. His steel gray eyes seemed to be looking toward the western sky, and he was speaking on the Milcrypt comms to someone.

  “We have friends, Lieutenant.”

  Hadroop followed the man’s outstretched hands. It took a full minute to pick out the razor thin lines of white against the blue morning sky. Too small and too close together to be attack aircraft. Even the new autonomous Shrikes didn’t fly that tight.

  “Drop troops?” he asked hopefully.

  Hauk nodded. “Space Force finest, Lieutenant. One bona fide RDT jump squad. Their commander is none other than Master Sergeant Kovach, and he says they are bringing party favors. Get the men ready. With any luck, we may finally take the fight to these asshole lizards.”

  “Hoorah!” the man said before disappearing back down the line.

  Hauk had only seen RDT teams incoming once before in his sixteen years of service. It had been enough for him to know that job would never be for him. These guys were nuts, riding a flaming beer can down from high orbit just to be ejected out into the cold empty airspace seconds before impact in hostile territory, and that was if everything went right.

  Banshee was supposedly the best. He watched as the contrail arcs slowed and dipped. He could see the drop troopers deploy, but he knew it must have happened as the drop cannisters blasted back up skyward. “Only four,” he said to himself. That hardly seemed to be much of a help, but he would take it. No one else was even answering his calls since Last Day.

  “Incoming, five klicks high, Captain, at our nine o’clock. Three… no, four tactical glider wings arrowing toward the LZ. Damn, sir, looks like they will nail it, dead nuts.”

  The voice in his ear was his radioman and spotter, Gomez. He was on a small rise a few hundred yards back and would likely be the first contact Red-7 would have with the team, assuming they made it. The RDTs were legendary, but nothing about this new enemy was conventional.

  “Bring the CO to me,” Hauk ordered. “Deploy the others as they see fit.”

  As Sumo uncurled himself from the harness with a yawn, our feet had no sooner touched the ground than a sickly lavender vine began arching toward us from a stand of nearby oak trees. The forest looked as if it was being strangled by the alien infestation.

  In my HUD, I saw the green beacons of the friendlies surrounded by a sea of pale red. The battle suit’s AI still couldn’t decide if everything was an enemy combatant or not.