Whoever ran the farm had advanced technology. Did that mean they had a connection to Proxima?

  He was static for a few more seconds as the armor continued to pummel the trife. He was forced to make a decision when it started reaching for its rifle. If it were a robot, it would shoot him the same as it would shoot the trife. Without hesitation. Without question.

  He didn’t want to be here when it finished with them.

  He turned and ran, sprinting back toward the trees where he had originally emerged. It wasn’t enough to find cover behind them. He needed to get clear of the area, at least far enough away that the aircraft wouldn’t be able to track him. He had passed a small abandoned town a few klicks back. He could wait there while the smoke cleared and then continue north to the settlement.

  He heard the gunfire behind him, the armor’s weapon piercing the night sky with crackling thumps as it poured out its ordnance. The Skin’s HUD showed the trife dying behind him, the entire mass attacking the armor dead in a matter of seconds. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see it turning toward him.

  Run faster.

  He almost laughed at Ishek’s suggestion as he leaped into the trees and dove behind the nearest trunk. Large caliber slugs pounded the wood, chipping out the sides and digging through it, the rounds punching through and over his head. He crawled laterally away from the tree, getting up and sprinting away again as the large oak began to drop behind him, crashing at his back and offering a little more screen for his escape.

  He didn’t slow until he reached the town ten minutes later. The Skin showed the area was clear—it surprised him the armor hadn’t given chase—and it stayed that way for the next ten minutes.

  Caleb ducked into an old pharmacy and sat on the floor behind the counter. “That was too close,” he said, his heart pounding though his breathing had remained steady the entire time, thanks to Ishek.

  It means some of you humans have some capacity to fight back. That can’t be a bad thing.

  “No, it can’t. I just need them to stop fighting me.”

  Despite the dropship’s efforts, there was still a massive group of trife ready to descend on the human city. Assuming the same scene that had played out at the farm was being duplicated across all of the assembled slicks, he needed to get there to help.

  But could he even get close without being shot at again?

  He had to try.

  24

  Nathan

  General Nathan Stacker, eased off on the trigger, ending the onslaught of shells that had torn the old oak tree apart at the trunk and sent it toppling into the tree line. The Other was gone, having escaped capture thanks to the trife attack.

  They were working together—the trife and the Other—weren’t they? He hadn’t expected to find one of the artificially intelligent humanoids amidst the trife when he ordered Pyro to fire the clusters into the slick, but when he’d seen it he’d wanted to catch the bastard.

  That mission was a failure. The AI was a better hand-to-hand fighter than he imagined. Hell, it had dropped into a Marine defensive stance while it waited for him to come. But it made sense that the alien would be loaded with human fighting styles to use when fighting humans. It had been designed to appear as a human for the same reason.

  Nathan scanned the field. A few scattered trife had survived the combination of cluster rockets, sniper fire and fire support from the Marines stationed inside the bunker.. They were wandering back and forth in an odd display of confusion. Nathan didn’t blame them; the attack had come hard and fast and had likely left them trying to resist their queen’s orders to continue the attack. A handful of trife against the group that had cut them to nearly nothing in a matter of minutes? The creatures weren’t known for their self-preservation instinct, but that was pushing the limits of sanity.

  “General,” Pyro said, her voice tight through the comm. “We’re getting reports from the outer markers. There are more trife moving toward the city.”

  “Roger,” Nathan replied. “From what direction?”

  “Uh. Every direction, sir.”

  Nathan’s chest tightened in response. What the hell was going on out here? “I need pickup.”

  “Already on my way.”

  Nathan turned, leaning back to look up through the large helmet. It was an updated version of the powered combat armor his late father had invented for his also late brother John, based on the original design but improved with stronger synthetic musculature and a mixture of titanium and alien alloy Pyro’s team had concocted.

  Some of his officers thought it was a bad idea to risk his best engineer as a pilot, but among everyone he had tested, she’d had the strongest aptitude at the controls of a Centurion dropship.

  He found the ship descending quickly toward the surface, the rear ramp already open to collect him. He moved into position as it continued its sharp drop, landing thrusters roaring for the last few seconds to stop the high-velocity pickup. The landers flexed as the craft landed. Nathan climbed back inside.

  He hit the controls to close the rear ramp at the same time the ship began to rise again, holding tight as g-forces tried to pull him into the bulkhead.

  “Get us over the action,” Nathan said, moving across the ship’s hold.

  “Roger that, General,” Pyro replied. “How are your levels?”

  Nathan checked the suit’s HUD. “Eighty percent.”

  “Not terrible, but I feel like there’s still something off with the superconductors. You weren’t out there that long.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Nathan stopped near the middle of the hold. Pulling his rifle from his back, he rested it beside a stack of ammunition boxes and pulled the ammo box from his back, disconnecting the feeder from it. He put it in a new stack of boxes and opened a fresh box of the large rounds. He snapped the end of the new feed into the side of the rifle. Finished with the reloading, he walked over to a sizable contraption against the side of the cargo area and backed into it.

  Mechanical arms descended on the armor, unscrewing the bolts holding him inside, lifting the helmet from his head and cracking the protective shell open. The activity revealed his large, powerful cyborg body, the result of battle-inflicted wounds that had left most of the right side of his body ravaged and replaced.

  He stepped out of the armor, rubbing the sweat from his bald head as he crossed the hold in his underwear.

  Heading up the steps to the main deck, he continued to the bridge door at the midpoint of the craft, the door opening as he approached.

  The bridge was small and round, equipped with a central pilot station flanked by two other control stations and a central command chair near the back. Control surfaces rested in front of each station, while displays covered the overhead, providing a full view of the outside world through a selection of externally mounted cameras.

  “General,” Pyro said, flicking her head around to greet him from the pilot’s station. Her red hair was cut to her shoulders, framing her round, porcelain face, which was slightly flushed at the cheeks. “Where the hell did that Other come from?” she asked, her green eyes burning into him, waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It got away.”

  “You don’t want to chase it?” she asked, returning her attention to the displays.

  “Not if Edenrise is about to come under attack. This was supposed to be an isolated slick.”

  “They won’t get through the shields.”

  “That may be true, but I should be there when they try.”

  “You might not get another chance at it, General.”

  Nathan dropped into the command seat. He was slightly annoyed by Pyro’s pushing, but he knew why she was so persistent. An Other had nearly killed her. She wanted a chance for vengeance.

  “Understood,” he replied. “Just follow the order.”

  “Yes, General.”

  The ship continued to climb, gaining velocity as it shot north back toward Edenrise.

  “General Stacker,” a voice said through the comm. “This is Lieutenant Burke.”

  “Burke,” Nathan replied. “I’ve heard we’re going to have guests for breakfast. What’s our status?”

  “Sir, I’m collecting sensor reports from the outer markers. Estimates put the enemy forces at close to sixty-thousand.”

  Nathan’s mouth opened, but he didn’t speak right away.

  “Sir?” Burke said.

  “Did you say sixty-thousand?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes, General.”

  Edenrise had been standing for over a hundred years. He had never seen or heard of a force of trife that large attacking the city before. Not since the shield tower had been erected and activated.

  “Send out the alert. I want all available units both active and reserve to report for immediate deployment to the outer walls.”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Try to contact the scout teams as well. Tell them to stay clear of the incoming slicks and keep hidden.”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Stacker out.” He closed the comm link. “Pyro, I want a flyby of the outer markers. I need to see them for myself.”

  “Roger, General.”

  The dropship banked as Pyro updated the vector. Nathan looked up at the ground-facing displays, vacant for the moment.

  “If they try to attack, the shields will hold,” Pyro said.

  Was she trying to convince him or soothe her own fear and worry?

  Sixty-thousand. It was a staggering number.

  Why Edenrise?

  Why today?

  “Let’s hope so,” he replied.

  25

  Nathan

  Nathan watched the displays as the dropship swung across the first of the outer markers— large, scaffold-like radio towers covered in custom-made sensors extending from the metal like branches.

  A small cement outbuilding sat near the tower, but right now it was impossible to locate beneath the thousands of trife moving through the area. A large group of them had stopped at the tower and were eagerly attacking its four legs, slashing at the metal with their hard, sharp claws. It would take time for them to cut their way through, but they would get there eventually. Not that there was any benefit to the destruction. The markers were an early warning system, and the warning had already been sent.

  “I was hoping the reports were wrong,” Pyro said.

  “They weren’t,” Nathan said flatly in reply. His jaw was tight, his chest tighter. There had to be close to ten-thousand trife below, a line of them like an oil slick spreading back to the west. Where had they all come from? He had done his best to keep the nests away from Edenrise. There were no reactors, no strong radiation sources anywhere near the city to attract them.

  How far had these creatures traveled?

  It was possible they had covered hundreds of kilometers. Maybe even thousands. It was possible the groups were working together in perfect unison. They knew the queens could communicate with one another, and each trife from the same nest formed a network of sorts, able to silently receive orders and react. But the ability for different groups to work together wasn’t the same as the practice of one group working together. In his experience, nests of trife often attacked one another when they came in contact, even if there were humans to kill. They were territorial creatures.

  This was so far out of the ordinary, he had no ability to guess at what was causing it. Humans had come to rely on that territorial nature to survive. If something had changed, if the trife decided to all work as one…

  Humankind would be extinct on Earth within weeks.

  “Stay on course for the next marker,” Nathan said.

  “Roger, General,” Pyro replied, banking the craft to head to the next marker.

  Nathan tapped on the control surface near his metal right hand, activating the comm. “Lieutenant Burke.”

  “General Stacker,” Burke replied. “All units are activated and preparing for deployment to the wall.”

  “ETA?”

  “Fifteen minutes, sir.”

  Nathan looked at the display again. The head of the slick was a kilometer away, within ten klicks of the city. The edge of Edenrise was visible near the horizon, the shields tinting the air a slight blue.

  “Tell them they have ten,” he replied. “No excuses.”

  “Yes, General,” Burke said.

  Nathan was silent for a moment. His next order sat at the edge of his lips, but he was hesitant to give it. Capitulation to anything wasn’t his strong suit.

  “Raise the alert level,” he said at last. “And begin evacuating the city. Get them on the vessels.” The words were sour through his mouth, but they had to be said.

  “General?” Burke replied. Pyro whipped her head to look at him in surprise.

  “There are sixty-thousand trife bearing down on the city. We have historical records of the shields holding against ten-thousand, but this is significantly more. I’m not willing to risk thousands of innocent lives on an outcome we can’t be assured of. Put them on the ships and keep them ready to sail. If everything goes well, we’ll neutralize the threat and everyone can go home.”

  “Yes, General,” Burke said. “Understood. It will be done.”

  “Stacker out.”

  Nathan cut the comm link. Pyro was still looking at him. “What?”

  “Be careful, Nathan,” she replied.

  “I’m not going to let innocent people die to keep a secret,” he said. “Besides, where the hell is the Trust when we really need them? Or Centurion Space Force, for that matter? We should have the firepower to turn back an assault like this, but we don’t. We’re on our own out here. Just like we’ve always been.”

  Pyro offered a reassuring smile. “We’ll get through it.” She turned her head back around. “Approaching outer marker Epsilon.”

  Nathan’s eyes were fixed on the displays. The scene at the second marker was almost identical to the first. A massive number of trife were marching on Edenrise, some of them stopping to attack the radio tower.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Nathan said. “Head back to the city. We’ll load up on all the clusters we have and head back out. We can thin the ranks by a few thousand at least.”

  “Roger, General.”

  The ship banked again, streaking toward the city.

  Edenrise had existed under another name long before the shield had gone up, one of many population centers spread across the former United States of America. It was composed of a collection of buildings of different shapes and sizes and densities, some untouched by the ravages of the first trife war, others broken, crumbling and long abandoned, and the majority in one phase of reconstruction or another that would take another century or more to complete.

  The sea abutted the east end of the city, the north side an inlet that had once provided a home to the warships of the United States Navy. A few of the ships still rested there, floating calmly against reinforced piers, acting as both supply storage, housing, and in this moment an emergency escape plan for the many residents.

  And there were a lot of residents. Nearly fifty-thousand. Edenrise was the largest city on the planet. It was also the safest city, thanks to the energy shield that radiated out from the spire in the center, offering a level of protection that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Not even Proxima had a shield like it, because they didn’t have a power source like it.

  The shields meant the residents of Edenrise had lived in relative safety for nearly fifty years now, save for a single incident where the shield had failed and some trife had made it inside. They had little concept of the world before the invasion, little concept of the lives of other humans outside the shields. They didn’t know the constant danger. They didn’t know the constant fear. They went about their daily business without concern for the outside world, able to walk the streets at all hours, spend their free time at the beaches or parks, and otherwise live a somewhat normal life.

  It was as much a paradise as its new name suggested. A paradise the enemy was on the verge of shattering, for reasons still unknown to Nathan.

  Pyro guided the dropship over the top of the city, vectoring toward the towering, needle-like spire that stood sentry over the settlement. It was one of the few structures that wasn’t already in place when the trife invasion began, and it dwarfed everything around it.

  “Edenrise Control, this is General Stacker,” Nathan said. “Set a five-second break for oh-three-forty-five and synchronize.”

  “Copy that, General,” one of the controllers in the room at the base of the spire replied. “Standby for entry.”

  A signal was passed to synchronize the countdown. Pyro set the ship to circle above the spire while they waited. The shields would shut down for five seconds, offering a brief window for them to slip below.

  Nathan’s eyes fixed on the down-facing camera. The external sound feed was currently shut off, but he didn’t need it to imagine the blare of the emergency alert system and a calm voice from Control urging the residents to make for the old naval ships. Most of them were following instructions, acting calm while they retreated to their homes to grab a few meager belongings and head for the ships. Most, but not all. Some of the civilians didn’t understand the need to be ready. They might even refuse to leave their homes. It was the price of security when that security became threatened.

  Nathan knew the countdown had completed when the dropship banked and dropped more rapidly than before, the inertia pulling him back into his seat. They swooped in beside the spire, circling it on the descent. Five seconds later, the shields went back on, casting the city in a web of protection once more.

  They continued to drop, reaching a hundred meters before leveling off and easing over to the airfield near the ships. Ranks of soldiers were already organized on the grounds beside the airfield, uniformed, armed, and ready to head for the western wall just inside the energy barrier. The walls had been built long before the shields, the geography of the city and the surrounding water leaving only one side vulnerable to the trife. Twenty meters high and composed mostly of crushed vehicles, it had seen its share of fighting over the years and had remained intact throughout.