Hauk charged the creature firing his pistol with his right hand and a long knife gripped firmly in his left. This man wasn’t going down without a fight. The Furie was taking lots of hits, some of them had to be scoring damage, but it didn’t slow. Hauk’s approach appeared almost in slow motion, then I saw the captain’s expression suddenly change from anger to fear.

  “No! Senior!”

  Red-7’s Senior Chief Grayson hit the captain knocking him aside just as the Furie struck with an open claw. The appendage snapped closed cleaving the old man’s body cleanly in two. Hauk had rolled into a perfect firing position and stayed crouched as he lay rounds into the meaty part of the thing’s thigh. The Furie crashed down with a sudden force that brought us all back to the present moment. I turned back to see dozens more of the things breaching the front wall.

  Jordan Hauk knelt over Grayson’s body; losing the man was hitting him hard, as it would all the men once they realized he was gone. Hauk knew he had to get up, get back in the fight, but the senior chief’s sacrifice pushed him right up to and then over the line.

  Even more of the Furies were charging up the church steps. We could hear the raspy wheezing howls and a clicking the things made with their rubbery mouths. It was unnerving, and I ordered Ada to filter it out of all our people’s battle suit speakers. Then, the first of Red-7 men started running out of ammo.

  A man beside Halo shot an obvious female creature that was leaping through the window frame, and his Silka went dry, the firing arm locking open on an empty ammo pack. The man checked his belt, then his chest rig before fully realizing he was completely out. Halo was dealing with his own issues but somehow realized the drama playing out to his right. He pushed the man out of the way of a downward strike by the female before slicing her in two with a carnage round fired point blank into her abdomen.

  Others were clicking on empty mags as well. “Priest, get a bird up and find us something safer than this.” Bishop ‘Priest’ Taggert moved back from the front line and reached into his suit’s storage for one of the mini drones.

  Our attackers were relentless; they never paused, never hesitated. Whatever genetic programming that was driving them must have been exceedingly precise because they just kept coming despite the pain we were delivering. I began to get a sense of what Red-7 had been going through for the past few days. It wasn’t just the brutality of the fight; it was the fact that it never ended. They just moved from one bloody skirmish to the next. We had to break that pattern… somehow.

  Priest moved in beside me and pointed to the screen. “May have an exit, Boss. It’s ugly but could work.”

  Yeah, shit…it was ugly. If we’d been up against a conventional enemy, it would never work. In fact, half of the journey would be through a nearly perfect shooting trap. Lucky for us, the Furies didn’t have guns… not yet at least.

  Something on the screen caught my eye. I tapped to zoom in without knowing why. The reptilian part of my brain had spotted something it thought was important.

  “What is it, Prowler?” Bishop asked.

  I zoomed in and out several more times before it hit me. I was looking at a building that was on fire. The K8’s had taken most of it out along with several abandoned autocars nearby.

  “That fire…” I said. “Look how the creatures are avoiding it.”

  “Well, yeah, Boss. They’re ugly, not stupid.”

  “No, they’re hanging way back, giving the entire area a wide margin. Some look like they don’t even want to approach it.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a pretty energetic fire when those battery stacks cook off.”

  “Those lithium batteries give off a lot of heat and…” I checked with Ada. “Shit… tons of noxious gasses.”

  I gave an all-channel call to switch to incendiary rounds and target the cars on the street. Our Rattlers couldn’t do that, but I knew the Army guns could. To his credit, Captain Hauk was back in the game and quickly buzzed my comms. I filled him in with what I was thinking and our next escape plan. “It’s time to get out of here, Captain.”

  “I am fucking tired of retreating, Kovach. Let Banshee take point, my lead fire team will take rear guard. Just protect the HVA. Her name is Xero, she is all that matters.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with him, and if my plan worked, we should soon have a wall of intense flame between us and the attackers.

  “By the way,” he continued, “I think we will fit on your damn dropship now.”

  The number of dead and injured continued to add up. It wasn’t my job to keep track of his men, but he obviously was. He’d hoped for the calvary, instead he’d gotten me.

  I slapped Priest and yelled–“Move, move, move!”

  Simon began corralling the civilians into a bunch. We pushed the mass down a series of corridors putting distance and walls between us and the enemy.

  “Hard stop, coming up,” Halo said.

  Indeed, I’d seen the solid wall blocking our improvised exit plan. One great thing about having the best battle armor in service, we get to show off sometimes. “Take it down.”

  Halo and Priest charged the wall, both using sensor feeds to target weak spots between the reinforcing spars inside the polycrete wall. They hit with the mass of a truck and laid out a six-foot section of wall right into the alley we wanted to use for our exit. “Sumo, up front.”

  “Hauk, we are out, follow close.”

  The group we were with included Xero and a half dozen other civilians and several medics carrying litters. I told them to follow Priest. Gi and I guarded the intersection between the alley and cross streets. So far, none of the Furies had spotted us back here, but I wasn’t counting on that lasting. I took a moment to glance at the drone feed still streaming in. Hauk had done a good job building a wall of fire. The Furies were not crossing it, but they were racing to get around it at each end. I could warn Red-7 that their flanks were vulnerable, but if they hadn’t moved by now, they were just being stupid.

  As if in response, I saw the first of his primary force exiting behind us. A corporal and a lieutenant took up guard positions opposite me and nodded me to go forward. I did like how these guys operated. Even under intense pressure, I had yet to see any of them falter.

  We raced in the fading daylight, the sounds of pissed-off mutant monsters never far behind. But for the first time that day, it seemed we had won a round. Seeing Hauk’s face as he exited the church last let me know he did not feel the same way.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  We took refuge in an abandoned welcome center just off Beach Road. I knew Hauk was pissed, hell, I would be, too. Nothing I said would bring the man into a useable headspace… not yet. He’d just lost a third of his men, and that was during a retreat.

  “He’s a good man,” Xero said moving up beside me and speaking low.

  I eyed the person talking. She, they, were looking at Jordan, too.

  “I know he is. He’s just in an impossible situation right now. We all have missions that go sideways, Xero. Some… just worse than others.”

  She gave a grim smile. “You ever lose to monsters?”

  “They are all monsters, the human kind maybe worst of all.”

  I walked over, pushed a few of the dust-laden pillows off a chair and sat heavily, loosening the magnetic clasps on my body armor. “We don’t fight civilized people. When an enemy will take your life or give up his, there’s no real difference between them and those abominations back there.”

  Xero nodded. “So, Master Sergeant, who do you report to now? CenCom is gone, right?”

  I shrugged. “Good question.” Sumo came over, and I handed him one of our protein bars from my pack. I tossed another to Xero. “I’m just trying to help out. Gather enough warfighters to maybe make a difference when we find who’s behind this.” My dog looked at me, obviously displeased with my limiting his rations. He’d worked damned hard, too. I handed him another.

  “I had a contact,” Xero offered as a way of introduction.

  I waited for more. Honestly, I was exhausted and just wanted sleep. Even with my upgrades, or maybe because of them, I seemed to need even more rest. “You are the HVA,” I said, biting into a protein bar of my own. Besides rest, my new body also demanded food… constantly.

  Xero gave a sad nod. “Apparently.”

  “I’m listening.” I watched as Captain Hauk finished the rounds with his men and headed in our direction. “You think the attack was an inside job?” I asked before biting off most of the chewy cardboard brick that passed for ration bars.

  The woman… yeah, I was going to call her that, she’d already made it abundantly clear she couldn't care less how I referred to her. Xero’s face confirmed I had scored a hit.

  “What do you know?” she asked.

  “Oh, no… you first. You’re the HVA.”

  She blew a sigh of disgust. “It was highly coordinated. I was tracking a data breach, a massive Zero Day hack. Biggest one I’d ever seen. I’d been warning…”

  Her voice faded off. Her work was obviously classified, as was who or what she reported to.

  “An enemy doesn’t need weapons of mass destruction as long as they can use yours… right?” I said, offering a guess.

  The slight smile flashed again before nodding.

  “Do you have a name? A location?”

  She shook her head, her short, dark hair rushing down in front of her eyes before she raked it back. “I am getting close, was getting close,” she amended.

  “Arleen Hammer, Magnus Reichert,” I offered.

  She looked genuinely surprised. Then something like recognition blossomed behind her eyes. She reached a hand up and turned my face. Her finger traced the ridge of scarring behind my left ear. “It was you.” Her next words ended abruptly as Hauk stepped up nearly between us.

  “Can I borrow you …Captain?”

  He said the last like my newfound rank was something that dropped out of a dog’s ass. Couldn’t really blame him for that. I stood and slowly followed the man out.

  “Look,” he said in a tone that probably didn’t get challenged very often. “You need to stay away from the asset.”

  I couldn’t quite place the look he was giving me. Was he jealous?

  “He saw her touching your face, Joe,” Ada said internally. “So, yes, read his body signs. Flared nostrils, elevated heart rate and blood pressure. The man has developed an emotional connection to the asset.”

  “Or wants one,” I subvocalised to my AI. “Captain, I’m just here to help, but make no mistake. Do not get in my way. I’m going to find out who was behind these attacks and how to stop this alien fucking duckhunt.”

  My right hand pointed at the remnants of his troops. “They need a win, Hauk. Shit, we all do.” My guys were just as worn out as Red-7. The Korean sergeant was sprawled out on the floor fast asleep. Halo was helping Bishop clean the mud out of his suit, but I could see they were both exhausted, too. Seventeen hours of near constant fighting, and we were all feeling like Monday morning after a weekend bender.

  “Kovach, I lost good men today. Shit, we lost plenty just getting this damn far. I have to finish the mission. We must make these losses mean something.”

  “Where was she supposed to go?”

  He shrugged. “Not my part of the op. Red-7 was to deliver her back to the Arago. From there, who knows?” He’d been protecting Xero, trying to justify to himself and his men that the mission was worth it. After everything happened, that had to be a tough sell, even if it was just to convince yourself you were doing the right thing.

  “It’s going to be worth it,” I offered.

  “You and Banshee are drop troops, you don’t see the shit like we do.”

  I arched my eyebrows, ready to challenge him on that, but Ada suggested I let him go on.

  “Down here, its personal. We see the loss, the love, the regret. We learn names and faces, then see them on toe-tags attached to corpses.”

  “War is always personal, Captain. Just like any disaster is.”

  His gaze was again looking out over what was left of his men. “We’ve never fought for home before, Joe. Not like this.”

  I could challenge that we always fought for home, but I knew what he meant. Not many recent skirmishes had been on U.S. soil.

  “Little town about twenty miles inland, I think it was called La Carisa or something. Not a living soul there. Supposed to be over 6000 residents, and we didn’t find one living thing. No people, no pets, not even a damn ant farm. Just those vines, blood everywhere, and tiny tracks all over. Not the prints your lizard hybrids make…something else.”

  I picked up a stick and drew a few marks on the ground. A short line on the left, longer one on the right and a double dot between them.

  He sucked in air and looked at me, nodding. “What are they?”

  “I called them murder-crabs… small battle droids with straight razors for claws.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Yeah and no, those aren’t the worst either, but they are freaky as hell. They do a synchronized little death-dance before they try to dismember you. Like a horde of whirling surgical knives looking for anything to slice to pieces.”

  The fatigue washed over Jordan as well. I could see it in his eyes. A bone-tired weariness that only other soldiers seem to fully understand. I pulled a bottle and two cups from my pack, pouring some whisky into each.

  “You remember hell week?”

  He smiled and nodded. “We thought that was the worst it could ever be, didn’t we? It sucked, but nothing prepares us for the shit we just saw.”

  “No one is prepared, Captain, no one could be.”

  He looked at me strangely. “You were. You handled those creatures like they were nothing.”

  I had a cracked rib that suggested otherwise, but I let his words have the space they deserved.

  “We’ve met before,” I said.

  “The Furies.”

  I nodded, “And the crabs and… worse.”

  He didn’t press, and I left it alone for now. I’d give the man a full briefing but not tonight. Tonight, we just needed to rest and recover… wait for Bayou to send Packer down for exfil.

  “I’ve heard rumors about you,” he said. “And your dad.”

  Here it comes, I thought. Just like so many times before. Someone who viewed me through the distorted lens of my father’s exaggerated reputation.

  “You’re better than I expected. You are…capable.”

  Wow! Coming from an Army man, that was indeed high praise.

  “I heard about you, too.”

  He looked at me side-eyed while he sipped, poised to spring if I said the wrong thing. “Bayou told me about the op to go get your brother. You killed a shit-load of tangos, brother. Solid bit of soldiering.” We clinked cups, bourbon sloshing out of mine.

  He nodded his acknowledgement; I took it as a signal for peace. We sat there drinking and listening to the sounds of the surf and frogs.

  “We need to end this,” Hauk said.

  “Agreed.” I just had no clue how to make that happen. We were on the edge of a coastal campground. In happier times, campers and RVs would have lined the auto-charge stations. We could hear the waves crashing on the beach a hundred yards away. In the fading daylight, I could see the silhouettes of soldiers patrolling the water’s edge. Would life ever return to what it was? Was this the new normal?

  “Hauk, I’m not a very likable guy. In fact, feel free to hate me…lots of smart people do. I am a damn good soldier, though. I’m not here to have some pissing contest with you. You need me, I need you. Let’s work together to do some good… deal?” I held out a hand.

  He stood there staring at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, then reached out and pressed his calloused palm into mine.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  We were up before dawn. Jordan Hauk and I both knew this place wasn’t defensible. I still didn’t know what was going on with Bayou up there but felt sure she had her hands full. I’d assigned Ada the task of finding us a good bolthole to use for cover until the drop ship could reach us. The only good thing about Red-7 being at half strength was we didn’t need as much space.

  “Show me.”

  It was a National Guard Armory. Unlike most, this one was old and still contained a fortified fallout bunker. Just over eighteen kilometers.

  “Take us most of the day to get there.” Still, it was a good spot. I sent the feed over to Captain Hauk’s combat AI.

  “I know why the Stone Mountain has been unresponsive,” Ada said. “Someone is actively jamming her signals. Incoming and outgoing.”

  “Who?”

  “Unknown.”

  Shit, that was perfect. “We need an exfil, half these guys need emergency medical treatment, we won’t last long on this coastline.” I checked my suit’s radiation monitor. Something I had been avoiding until now. It was in the amber range of numbers but beginning to dip toward the red.

  “Try my dad, see if he can get us some answers.”

  “You want me to call your dad?”

  “Yeah, I’m not loving the thought either, but he always has good intel.”

  Hauk sent me an affirmative response on the new target location. I could hear his lieutenant getting the men up and moving already.

  We broke camp and were on the move before sunrise. Seventy-eight men and women and one dog. I’d worried about the HVA, but Xero proved herself more than capable. She had an athletic build, and although her pack was lighter than the military loads we carried, she handled herself well. I assigned Halo to shadow her. Hauk had Private Gomez doing the same.

  “Hi, Joe?”

  The voice on my comms was not at all whom I had expected, The feminine tone was definitely not my dad’s.

  “Voss?”

  The last time I had heard that voice she had just kissed me, and then she shot me. Both actions were inappropriate and deeply disturbing to my shaky mental health. Somehow, now all I could think about was the damn kiss, though.

  “Yep, so how you doing?”