He ran back the way he had come, crossing within a hundred meters of the armory before hitting an emergency stairwell leading down to the hangar deck below. The sounds of the fighting faded in as he descended, and when he pushed the exit door open he was greeted by a scene of carnage.

  There were pockets of Marines across the hangar deck, most of them behind the cover of the different vehicles loaded onto the Deliverance. They were concentrating their fire on the main entry to the deck, where a huge lift was locked into place but the blast doors that kept space out were jammed in a half-open position, leaving ten meters of space for the trife to climb in and up.

  They congregated around the top and bottom and sides by the dozens, crawling along the surface of the Deliverance and dropping to the deck before charging into the gunfire. Most of them were heading straight for whichever fire team they caught sight of first, but Caleb noticed a group had broken off and was charging to the left of the blast doors. He tracked them, finding a team of engineers in bright orange jumpsuits working on the controls for the doors with two squads of Marines trying to keep the trife away.

  “Sergeant Card, head over to the door controls to help out,” Captain Lyle said.

  “Roger, sir,” Caleb replied, moving from the stairwell toward the group in the corner. He would have to cross the hangar to get there, threading his way through the incoming trife and friendly fire. Fortunately, the Marines’ ATCS would freeze their weapons if they were in danger of accidentally shooting him.

  He raised his rifle and fired as a trife rounded the side of one of the massive loading trucks that had helped bring the prefabricated apartment buildings to the ship. The round caught the demon in the chest, knocking it down. Four more immediately took his place, hissing and rushing him.

  Caleb stayed calm, firing a single round into each of them and then dancing away, continuing toward the doors. He heard a hiss beside him and whirled to shoot, his eyes crossing the loader but finding nothing there. He hesitated a moment, aware Captain Lyle would be monitoring him on the tactical if not through his helmet feed. He didn’t have orders to chase down all of the wayward creatures.

  He saw an opening ahead and sprinted forward, ducking behind one of the half-dozen or so armored personnel carriers in the hangar. He stopped there, whirling out from the corner and finding a pair of targets that had tried to flank the engineers. He fired two quick rounds, taking both of the creatures out.

  “Thanks for the save, Sergeant,” Corporal Hafizi said over his comm.

  “Anytime,” Caleb replied.

  He slid along the back side of the APC and broke from the corner, crossing fifty meters of open space toward the group. The trife assault intensified as the seconds passed, each wave making it deeper into the hangar. The metal floor was already covered in demon corpses, and it was only going to get worse.

  A mass of them saw him crossing the open floor and broke away, redirecting their attention to Caleb. He saw them coming and shifted the carbine to his hip, using the connection to the ATCS and the reticle in his helmet to aim to the right while running straight. It took more rounds to knock down the trife – he had help from Corporal Hafizi and the other Marines near the engineers – but the creatures were killed before they caught up to him.

  “Thanks for the save, Corporal,” Caleb said.

  “Anytime,” Hafizi replied.

  Caleb joined the group, watching the engineers for a moment. They had pulled a circuit board out of the wall and were busy running some kind of diagnostics on it. He turned away, looking out into the cavern.

  There were trife everywhere. Hundreds of them, crawling along the floor of the cavern like an inky black spill, storming over everything they encountered. He could see the blast doors to the base from his position, and he noted that they were sealed. If anyone were still inside the base, they wouldn’t be making the trip to the stars with the Deliverance.

  “This is crazy,” he heard one of the privates say behind him.

  “Shut it, Gaines,” Hafizi replied.

  “Yes, Corporal. Sorry about interjecting my personal opinion.”

  Caleb aimed his rifle and fired, dropping the trife like flies. Five. Ten. Twenty. It didn’t seem to matter how many he killed, how many his new team killed, they still kept coming. He risked a glance over at the techs, who had disconnected their diagnostic tablet and were in the process of soldering part of the board. They must have figured out what was wrong.

  “Sergeant Card,” Captain Lyle said. “The left flank is failing. I’m linking a squad to your command. Take them across the hangar and shore up the leak.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caleb replied, watching the Vultures vanish from his HUD, replaced with five new Marines he barely knew, including Hafizi. Was he seeing things right? Had Rodriguez’s monitor gone red? He hoped not. “Okay, echelon left, stay focused on the trife moving to the flank. Trust your fellow Marines.”

  “ You got it, Sarge,” one of the squad replied.

  They started across the hangar, focusing their fire on the dozens of trife turning for the left flank. He could see how the defenses on that side of the hangar were failing, finding dead Marines on the ground near their cover, blood spilling from deep cuts and bites. The trife knew where their SOS was weak, and they went right for it.

  “Sergeant, we can’t afford to let them get deeper into the ship,” Captain Lyle said. “If we lose them inside the ship, we might never find them again.”

  Caleb swallowed hard. That was a terrifying thought. They all knew how one trife could quickly turn into hundreds given enough food, and the multiple reactors on board the Deliverance could probably fuel thousands.

  “Fire at will,” he said. “Focus on the flank.”

  His squad started firing, rounds cutting across the hangar and wiping out lines of trife from the side. The demons shifted direction in response to the assault, most turning directly toward Caleb while a few continued. It was like they were trying to infiltrate the defenses and sneak in.

  “Take care of the group, I’m going after the breakaways,” Caleb said. “Private Gaines, with me.”

  “I’m with you, Sarge.”

  Caleb and the private moved laterally to the incoming trife, sinking deeper into the hangar and chasing after the separated few. Caleb shot two of them in the back, but the third ducked beneath another loader to the other side.

  “Shit, I lost one,” Caleb said.

  “We’ve got you covered, Sarge,” Sho said. He heard the rifle fire, and the red mark he was chasing vanished from tactical.

  Caleb’s lips split into a wide grin. “Perfect timing, Private. Is Washington with you?”

  “Affirmative, Sergeant.”

  “Captain Lyle, requesting privates – ”

  “Already done, Sergeant,” Lyle replied, Sho and Washington’s vitals returning to Caleb’s HUD. “Now hold the damn line, or we’re all going to have a very bad week.”

  Chapter 20

  David’s lungs were almost back to normal by the time he neared the end of the shaft, the climb down the ladder so much easier than running up and down the rocky terrain outside. The fact that he was free of the trife made it even easier, allowing him to calm his nerves somewhat while he descended.

  Of course, unless he was planning on living in the small shaft, he would have to come out of it eventually. He was pretty confident of what he would find when he did. A scene of chaos and death and destruction that made what had happened outside look tame by comparison. According to Corporal Carlyle, the military wasn’t all that interested in keeping the trife out, only in slowing them so they could get away.

  Get away how?

  That was the question that burned at him. The one he needed to answer. Even as he closed on the bottom of the shaft, even as the sounds of gunfire and shouting and hissing faded into earshot, he remained determined to make it to wherever the rest of the people were headed. If they were going to escape, he was going to escape with them.

  He reached the bottom of the shaft, which emptied out into a small room, just large enough for two or three Marines in combat armor to stand in at one time. It was empty right now, a sealed blast door between David and whatever was happening in the spaces beyond the room.

  Something was happening out there. Shouting and shooting, and all he had was a six-shot revolver. It was suicide to go out there. It was suicide to stay in here.

  He walked over to the door. It didn’t have a window, so if he opened it he was going out blind. Damn it. He should have helped Corporal Carlyle outside. The Marine would have known what to expect.

  David reached for the control panel. He couldn’t stay here, no matter what was going to happen. He tapped the panel to activate the door, and it slid aside, revealing the small cross-section of hallway.

  A dead trife was on the floor across from him, along with a dead Marine. They were both torn and bloody, their plasma mingling on the corridor’s metal surface. The Marine had a large knife still in his grip.

  Opening the door let the full sound of the battle through to David’s ears. It was horrifying and deafening, a constant barrage of gunfire echoing through the nearby hallways. He dove out of the room, sliding across the bloody floor on his knees and reaching for the Marine’s knife. He pried it out of the man’s still-warm hand, looking both ways down the corridor.

  He was clear for the moment. But how long would the moment last?

  He jumped up, unsure of which direction to go. His instinct was to run away from the fighting, but in this case he needed to go toward it. He turned left and ran to the end of the hallway, stopping and peering out at the adjacent passages. He saw a trife to the right writhe and fall, hit with a stream of bullets that seemed like a waste of ammunition. He looked left when he heard a sharp hiss and stumbled back as a trife lunged at him. He slashed the knife without thinking, landing a lucky blow that cut through the demon’s neck and brought it to the floor beside him.

  He needed to go to the right, without getting killed from behind.

  He started in that direction, walking sideways and keeping his revolver pointed the other way. More trife started clearing the corner, one at first, and then four more. They spotted him and increased their pace.

  He didn’t shoot. He ran, charging toward the next intersection and hoping the Marines were sharp enough not to shoot him as soon as he appeared ahead of them. He tried to cut the corner when he reached it, managing only to trip over a dead demon and bouncing off the wall.

  Bullets zipped past him for an instant before stopping. Someone had shot at him.

  “Get down!” a Marine barked. David was already on his way down, and the bullets were a rhythmic cracking over his head, most of them hitting flesh instead of pinging against the wall. “Move! This way!”

  David followed the order, rushing toward the Marine. He was one of a half-dozen positioned twenty meters away, ahead of a closed door. David reached the Marines and threw himself past them and onto the floor, at the same time they started shooting again. Trife screamed behind him – too close behind him. He dropped to his knees and looked back. The slick had reached the Marines.

  They kept shooting, the demons pouring into them in an unstoppable flood of claws and teeth. David ran again, staying ahead of the creatures while the Marines died behind him. He raced for the closed door and what he hoped would be his freedom.

  When he reached the door, he glanced back in time to see two trife coming straight for him. They had bypassed the Marines to chase after the weakest of the group.

  He aimed the revolver and fired, his first three rounds missing completely. His next two hit the trife on the right, and his last grazed the trife on the left.

  “Shit,” he cursed, holding the knife in front of him and turning around, continuing to back toward the door.

  The trife hissed at him, but then one of the others jumped on it, slashing it with its claws. The two demons fell together, fighting one another. David had seen them do this before when one was injured. They would always cull the weak from their midst.

  His back hit the door; he leaned over and slammed his hand against the control panel. It lit up, and he slid the bar to the open position. The door slid out of his way, and he backed through, quickly activating the controls on the other side as the stronger trife finished off the weaker and started his way.

  He hit the slider, the door coming down right in front of the demon’s face, stopping it by inches.

  “Too close,” David said. He could hear more gunfire on this side of the door. A lot more gunfire, echoing all around him. Espinoza had started a full-scale war.

  He spun around, to get a look at his new situation.

  His heart both lifted and sank in rapid succession, cycling through the two emotions so quickly it made him dizzy.

  He was standing in a massive cavern. Directly ahead of him, he could see a small metal building positioned beside a long, narrow bridge. On the other side of the bridge was the last thing he had ever expected to see.

  A starship. It was a damn starship! And it was enormous.

  Now he understood what Corporal Carlyle meant when he said they were going to escape. The Marines were leaving the planet. They were getting away from the trife the best way possible.

  If only he could convince the hundreds of trife in this part of the cavern – all the way across the bridge to the sealed door on the other side – to let him through unharmed.

  He stood in the shadow of the door, scanning the mass of trife, looking for some way to pass through them. There were at least four hundred of the creatures near the bridge, hissing and waiting for the ones at the front to continue scraping at the hatch of the closed airlock. Their claws were sharp, but there was no way they were going to get through the thick alloy.

  A few of them had started climbing the outside of the starship, scaling the hull and searching for an alternate entry. Others were redirecting to an apparent lift shaft about twenty meters from where David was standing. He pressed himself into the corner to keep them from noticing him.

  Unable to find a path to the vessel, he was getting increasingly desperate. Even if he got to the door, then what? He couldn’t get inside.

  He shook his head in frustration. He had come this far. There had to be some way to reach the ship. There had to be some way to get on board.

  His eyes shifted to the small building near the bridge. The windows were broken, and he could see a bloody body through them, slumped over a row of controls. What did those controls operate? He shifted his gaze to the trife and back to the building. If he was quick, he could make it past them.

  He tried to calm his nerves as he reloaded his revolver. He had spent the last two years avoiding the trife. Hiding from them, sneaking past them, doing everything he could not to be discovered. He could do this.

  He broke from his cover, sprinting across the area between the door and the building, a twenty-meter break between him and the demons. He kept his eyes on them as he charged ahead, his revolver clutched tight in one hand, the knife in the other. His could swear at least one of them saw him, but it didn’t give chase, remaining focused on the ship. Did the creatures know their quarry was trying to escape? Did they know they were looking at a starship?

  David made it to the building. The door on the back side of it was hanging open, and there was a Marine on the floor, a deep cut in his neck. David felt nauseous at the sight, but he forced himself to go to the control panel. He pushed the corpse from it and then made a face as he wiped the blood off the panel with his sleeve.

  He looked down at the controls. One was to operate the bridge, to disconnect it from the ship. Another was to remotely control the two lifts, which David could see more clearly from his new position. There was also a comm interface, currently disconnected. That was it.

  David sighed in frustration, reaching for the comm interface and hitting the button to connect it. Immediately, dozens of voices started speaking over one another, adding to the din of gunfire.

  “Right flank. They’re headed for the thrusters.”

  “Keep them contained.”

  “Help! Man down! Man down!”

  “Take that you son of a bitch!”

  “Echo squad is offline.”

  “Already done, Sergeant. Now hold the damn line, or we’re all going to have a very bad week.”

  David looked out to the trife. They heard the voices, and their heads started turning his way. He ducked behind the controls, reaching up and turning off the comm.

  “Stupid,” he whispered to himself. Still, he had no way to get from here to the ship, and certainly no way to get on it. “Think.”

  He closed his eyes for a second and then retreated from the building. The structure was on the edge of the platform, and he went to the corner and looked down. His heart found a new pace when he saw the chaos below, where hundreds of trife and dozens of Marines were still facing off. It only took him a few seconds to realize the demons were winning the fight and the ship would have to leave soon.

  His thought coincided almost perfectly with a sudden change in the vessel. A soft hum reverberated through the cavern, and then a bright light appeared at the rear and bottom of the ship as multiple thrusters began to ignite.

  Not yet. He wasn’t inside yet.

  He looked back to the bridge. The trife reacted to the pre-burn, hissing loudly. They started reversing course, moving away from the crossing to the lift shaft and vanishing inside. David watched them go, one after another, at the same time the light in the cavern increased and the thrusters gained more power.

  It was time for him to go too.

  He ducked back into the building, grabbing the downed Marine’s rifle and putting his revolver away. Then he waited for what felt like an eternity until only a few trife were still near the bridge. He moved out from the building toward them at a run. They saw him and spread their claws, taking a more aggressive posture.