They just had to survive long enough to get the chance.

  The drone was ten klicks out, moving south in the direction of the mountain range and the thunderstorms hovering around it. It was the direction Hal was most interested in. It was the route back to where the Axon had once lived.

  It made the canopy look less like a utopia and more like the lid on Pandora’s box with every passing kilometer. If something had come and killed the Axons, like the Relyeh, that something was most likely moving somewhere beneath the greenery, invisible to their flyovers and the drone’s cameras and sensors, which also couldn’t penetrate the brush. It meant they would have little warning of an attack. It meant they had to roll directly into the storm.

  “Wash, what about you?”

  Caleb switched his attention to the second drone’s feed. They had sent it west along the river, flying low over the water. It had already picked up signs of life beneath the surface that Caleb would have found much more exciting if not for his overarching sense of doom. Maybe he was excessively cynical, but everything related to the trife had taught him that being suspicious made him more accurate, and that accuracy was what helped keep he and his teammates alive.

  Not all of them. His mind flashed back to Habib, Banks, Sho, and the others. Habib and Banks had been dead for centuries. It was so easy to forget that simple truth when it had felt like days to him. What did Earth look like now? Had the Relyeh arrived to supplant humankind? Was there still a scattering of survivors eking out an existence among their invaders?

  Fish. That’s what they were. Just fish. They didn’t completely resemble Earth fish, not the way he remembered them, but he was labeling them that way anyway. The colony’s biologists, if they still had any, could classify them however they wanted to. But looking down on them through the clear water, Caleb could see gills and scales and large, long bodies. Closer to an eel, but not quite an eel either. The drone had already passed over dozens of them, and he still expected one to leap out of the water and grab the machine in oversized teeth at any moment, even though there was no evidence the creature would ever consider it.

  There were other things in the water too. The most interesting was a small, round creature that floated innocently along with the current until something the drone couldn’t see passed over it. Then it would jump out of the water on a jet of pressurized liquid, open a large mouth, and swallow whatever it was chasing. The activity had caused all three of the Guardians to laugh the first few times they had seen it.

  There was nothing on the land. Caleb had thought ten klicks would be far enough to catch up to some of the fleeing life. Either he was wrong, or there was no fleeing life to overtake. The river banks were clear, the display empty, the drone’s sensors clean. It only added to Caleb’s mistrust of the situation.

  “Sarge, the signal’s getting pretty weak,” Flores said. “I think I should start hugging the perimeter.”

  Caleb returned to her display. The link strength between the ADC and the drone was at twenty percent at twelve kilometers, even though the system was designed for nearly two hundred kilometers of range. Something was interfering with the signal. Was it a natural side-effect of this world’s atmosphere, or was there another reason?

  “Confirmed,” Caleb replied. “Drone Two is headed west, so break east. Don’t go beyond twenty percent.”

  “Roger,” Flores said.

  Caleb went back to Washington’s drone and checked its signal strength. It was thirteen kilometers out and hovering close to sixty percent. Still less than expected, but not nearly as bad as to the south. Maybe there was a simpler explanation. They couldn’t rule out a faulty receiver on Drone One.

  “Flores, I’ve got another idea,” Caleb said, shifting to her. “Let’s bring that bird back in and send out Drone Three. That way we can verify it isn’t a mechanical failure.”

  “Roger,” Flores replied. “I’m… Shit!”

  Caleb’s eyes snapped to her display. It was blank. “What happened?”

  “I lost contact.”

  “Okay,” Caleb said. “It’s not a big deal. The drone’s programmed to return to base when it loses the link. Give it a minute, and we’ll see if it comes back online.”

  “Roger.”

  Caleb kept his attention on the blank display, waiting for the link and the feed to return. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty.

  “I don’t think it’s coming back, Sarge,” Flores said.

  Caleb stood and moved to the front of the ADC, checking the carrier’s sensors. Only one drone was visible on the grid. Had the vehicle malfunctioned and suffered a power loss? Had it crashed?

  Or had something else happened to it?

  He started turning back toward the rear of the ADC when a second target appeared on the sensors, coming at them from the south. It had to be the drone. He smiled. “Flores, I’ve got Drone One on the board. Did the link come back up?”

  “Negative, Sarge,” Flores replied. “Still dark.”

  “We’ll figure it out when she lands. Let’s get Drone Three airborne. By the way, how are you feeling?”

  “I feel better now. I think the stims are worn off.”

  “No pain?”

  “Negative. Why do you ask?”

  Caleb had seen the discoloration on her chest, but Flores hadn’t discovered it, and probably wouldn’t for a while unless it became a larger problem. There was no cause for her to take her SOS or her shirt off out here. “Just checking. We did pull you out of the hospital.”

  “Roger that.”

  Caleb glanced back at the ADC’s sensor. He froze in place when he saw there weren’t two marks on the grid anymore.

  There were close to two hundred.

  “Sarge!” Hal shouted from the top of the ADC. “I am detecting a potential threat coming from the south.”

  “Thanks for the early warning,” Caleb mumbled back.

  Chapter 28

  Whatever was coming wasn’t large, but it was airborne and moving fast.

  Caleb ran from the front of the ADC to the open hatch, barking orders as he scaled the ladder to join Hal outside.

  “Flores, prep Drone Three but keep it docked. Wash, set Drone Two to standby and prep Drone Four.”

  The two Marines got in motion, switching seats and tapping on controls to ready the other drones attached to the carrier. If the incoming targets were a threat, they were the best weapon to counter it.

  Caleb climbed onto the top of the ADC, looking south. They were too close to the edge of the jungle to see whatever was flying over it, but he could make out a distinctive buzz in the air. He grabbed the MK-12 from his back, aiming it up toward the break in the canopy.

  “Do you know what it is?” he asked the Axon AI.

  “Negative. I have never been to this planet before.”

  “What? I thought you were sent to Earth from here?”

  “Negative. My craft departed from the Axon homeworld one thousand light years away.”

  “A thousand light years? Is your ship faster-than-light?”

  “Negative. We have developed advanced algorithms that allow us to fold spacetime.”

  “Do the Relyeh have the same algorithms.”

  “Negative. They require such things not.”

  “So they aren’t in a hurry to consume the universe,“ Caleb said. “How many years will it take for them to reach your homeworld?”

  “At their current pace? Approximately fifteen-thousand.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Not to us.”

  Two of the remaining four drones on top of the vehicle began to hum, their launchers slowly raising from the surface until they were perpendicular with the roof. Caleb watched his HUD, the incoming targets appearing on it a moment later, closing in fast.

  “Here they come,” he said. Whatever they were.

  He stared up at the edge of the treeline, waiting for the targets to appear. There was no way to confirm they were a threat until they started doing something actively aggressive. Maybe destroying the drone was aggressive, but they could have simply been defending their territory.

  They appeared in the middle of the thought, dark streaks that reached the edge of the trees and then dove almost straight down as though they were tracing the planet’s surface. Caleb tried to get a good look at them, but their speed made them little more than dark blurs, which shifted directions again before they crashed into the ground, rising slightly and zipping toward the side of the ADC.

  Caleb dropped instinctively, falling to his stomach while keeping his rifle out and ready to fire. Hal remained fixed in place, unconcerned by the swarm or flock or whatever it was. The creatures reached the ADC and turned, following it up and over.

  Caleb rolled onto his back to watch them pass. A group of them whipped across the ADC, flying only centimeters above his face. He got a better look at them up close. Dark bodies, with serrated wings spreading from what appeared to be metallic frames. The material reminded him of his arm, and of the Cerebus armor.

  The wings didn’t flap. Something else was propelling the things forward like small jet fighters. They swept over the ADC, angling around Hal and making their way across the fresh clearing toward the Deliverance.

  Caleb pushed himself up to watch them go. He paused when he noticed Hal was gone.

  “Hal?” he said. He moved to the edge of the ADC, finding the Axon AI motionless on the ground beside it. What the hell? “Flores, get Drone Three airborne. I want to follow them. Flores!”

  There was no response. Caleb glanced at his HUD.

  Only there was no HUD. His ATCS was offline. Dead. Just like Drone One.

  He pulled off his helmet. “Flores!” he shouted, turning back to the open hatch.

  “Sarge, everything’s dead. The whole carrier is offline.”

  He looked back out at the flying swarm. It was closing on the Deliverance. Would it enter the ship? They seemed to be emitting some kind of EMP pulse or outputting a blocking signal or something. Were they intentionally taking all of their systems offline?

  “Sarge, what should we do?” Flores added.

  They couldn’t catch up to the swarm if they wanted to. Not without power and a link to the drones. They were as helpless as the AI next to the ADC.

  There was nothing they could do.

  “Grab your Marks and hop onto the ADC,” Caleb replied. “If this is just the start of something, I don’t want to get caught with our pants down.”

  “Roger.”

  Caleb continued to watch the swarm as it reached the grounded starship. Like before, the creatures altered direction with the shape of the obstacle, splitting apart to follow its lines. The creatures were little more than dark spots at the distance, and he couldn’t tell if some of them were entering the ship or not. The greater number of them definitely weren’t, which was probably a good sign.

  Washington climbed up through the hatch first, helmet off and eyes sharp as he scanned the area. Flores was right behind him.

  The big Marine saw Hal on the ground, and then pointed and shrugged.

  “It’s still a machine,” Caleb replied. “I think whatever took us offline knocked it down too.”

  Washington did his best to smirk, his damaged lips curling at the effort.

  “Other than acting like mini-EMPS, they seem relatively harmless,” Flores said. “Do you think they’re alive?”

  “I don’t know. They went past so quickly. They looked like machines to me, like they were made from the same alloy as the Cerebus and Hal’s ship. But I don’t think they were attacking us. They didn’t even slow down.”

  Washington turned his palm over, tracing a pattern in it with his other hand, and then drawing an ‘X’ with his finger.

  “You think they’re mapping the area?” Caleb asked.

  Washington nodded.

  “They could be scouting us and testing our resistance to their weapons,” Flores said.

  “Or both,” Caleb replied. “Or neither. For all we know they’re blind birds that navigate by emitting an electromagnetic pulse. We might just be in their way. We don’t know anything about this planet or the things that live here.”

  “We know Riley thought the trife came from here,” Flores said. “And if Hal is telling us the truth, we know she was completely wrong.” She shook her head. “We shouldn’t even be here.”

  “We are here,” Caleb said. “There’s no point in complaining about it. The next question is, can we get our ATCS and the ADC online, or are we humping south on foot unprotected?”

  “Uh, no, Sarge,” Flores said, pointing north. “I think the next question is, why are they coming back?”

  Chapter 29

  Caleb’s eyes traced the outline of the Deliverance. Flores was right. The bird-like creatures had paused in their survey of the starship and were inexplicably coming back south. The swarm shifted position around itself, forming a tight ball of darkness before spreading apart into two long, narrow lines, and then merging into another ball. They weaved and spun in the air, changing direction in tight synchronization, one entity composed of a hundred smaller forms.

  “Stay low,” Caleb said. “Be ready.”

  He sank to his knee, keeping his rifle up. The display on the side of the weapon told him how many rounds were left was dark. So was the electronic zoom on the sight and the interface with his ATCS. Fortunately, the weapon was designed to remain effective even in the event of a rare but not impossible complete power loss.

  Flores and Washington followed his lead, keeping a low profile and using the raised and empty drone launch mechanisms for cover. The alien creatures were getting closer, their whorls and vortexes straightening into a solid mass. It dipped low as it neared, seeming to speed up in a direct line toward them.

  “Hitchcock, anyone?” Flores said though Caleb didn’t understand the reference.

  “Steady,” Caleb said. “Hold your fire.”

  The creatures closed on them, clearly targeting the ADC as the volume of their buzzing increased.

  “Hold your fire,” Caleb repeated.

  The swarm split apart at the last second, breaking away from the ADC right before it would have crashed into it. He expected they would go up and over like the last time, but instead they broke apart and began to spin, quickly forming into a new vortex that circled the drone carrier. The buzz of their propulsion through the air was deafening as they spun, continually shifting their location in the cylinder but always maintaining the shape.

  “What are they doing?” Flores asked, her head turning to watch them rotate. They weren’t attacking, but they also weren’t leaving either.

  “I don’t know,” Caleb replied. It was the strangest display he had ever seen.

  The creatures continued to circle. A minute passed. Then another. Caleb gave up on trying to focus on them, instead lowering his head. It was as if they were trapped inside a prison unable to break through without using their guns. He wasn’t willing to turn to violence unless the things gave him a reason. It seemed crazy, but how did they know they weren’t the dominant life form on the planet? How did they know these weren’t what Hal had called the Relyeh’s uluth? This world’s version of the trife. The only thing that gave him hope was the fact that they hadn’t attacked.

  He wasn’t going to be the one to break that truce.

  Suddenly, nearly half of them split away from the rotation, creating spaces in the still-circulating group, making the prison less like a wall and more like a chain-link fence. Caleb could see the second part of the swarm through the fence. It began touching down beside the ADC, each creature landing on top of the one before it, dozens of quarter-meter winged shapes locking together and quickly forming a pattern that was impossible not to recognize.

  It was building a humanoid, one piece at a time.

  “This is the most horrifying Lego I’ve ever seen,” Flores said, watching it. Within seconds the group had formed a pair of legs and torso, and now the abdomen and chest were quickly attaching itself. “I don’t want to know what happens when it’s done.”

  Neither did Caleb, especially because the first group suddenly stopped spinning, darting away as one and circling behind the humanoid as its head snapped into place.

  It was a patchwork creation of matte black and now clearly metal shapes, not only resembling the Cerebus armor and Caleb’s hand but made of the same material. The bird-shapes were still visible in the form, with sharp, serrated wings jutting out at dozens of points along the body, offering a terrifyingly lethal frame. The thing had no eyes, and at the same time had hundreds of eyes, each of them glowing red and shifting to take in its surroundings.

  It stepped toward the ADC, kneeling beside Hal. It reached out, and one of the pieces shifted on its finger, digging through Sho’s flesh to the gel machine beneath.

  The hundreds of eyes started flashing for a moment. Then they all seemed to rotate to look up at the Marines.

  “I don’t like that look,” Flores said.

  Caleb didn’t like it either. It had downed the Axon AI, but it seemed like it was blaming them. His finger shifted to the trigger of his rifle, and he wished he had pulled the P-50 instead.

  The alien’s humanoid head rotated like it was looking up at them. It stood and backed away from Hal. Caleb watched it closely, searching for any clue of what it might do next.

  The second group of creatures started forward, tucking their wings and launching toward the ADC like large, pointed bullets and giving the Marines almost no time to react.

  “Fire!” Caleb shouted, squeezing the trigger.

  The noise of his reports was almost drowned out by the buzzing, his rounds and the rounds from the other two Marines tearing into the mass. He saw sparks rise where the slugs hit the creatures, a few of them dropping to the ground.