What the hell had just happened?

  He didn’t know what to think of it, or how to process it. Aliens, but not trife. Worse than trife. And yet not any more intelligent. At least, they didn’t seem to be.

  “Guardians, this is Captain Grant.” The captain’s voice poured into his ears through his helmet comms. “We’ll meet in the conference room in forty-five minutes for debriefing. Nice work out there. My condolences on your loss. Grant out.”

  The captain left the comm as quickly as he had gained it, the message short and in Joseph’s opinion more than a little callous. He was still angry with Grant for refusing to conscript the pilots in Metro. They really could have used a Bayonet or two out there, and what the hell were the craft for if not this?

  “Sergeant,” West said, accustomed enough to calling him that it was hard to stop. “Are you okay?”

  “A little banged up, but otherwise fine,” Joseph replied. “You?”

  “We lost Chun.”

  “I know,” he said softly.

  “How’s Nori?”

  “Okoye says he’ll be okay. Got stabbed pretty good, but it missed his organs. The thing left a tooth or something in him though. Okoye took him to sickbay to pull it out.”

  “It’s a relief to hear he’s not too badly hurt.”

  “I don’t feel relieved,” Joseph replied.

  “Me either,” West admitted. “We left Earth to get away from shit like this.”

  “It’s almost like it was out here waiting for us,” Morales said, breaking onto the comm. “A freaking trap. You think a tentacle monster was flying whatever chased the ship?”

  “Did we find anything attached to the hull?” Joseph asked.

  “Negative,” Morales replied, followed by the rest of the teams. “I don’t think we’ve covered the whole ship. That would take days.”

  “So maybe we aren’t clear,” Joseph said.

  “Clear for now, Prime,” West said, correcting her earlier address. “We need to reload before we can go back out there.”

  “What if there are more of them?” Alesso asked.

  “Then we kill them too,” Morales replied. “For Niko.”

  “For Niko,” West agreed. “And Chun.”

  “We’ve got forty-five minutes, Guardians,” Joseph said. “I’m a good thirty minute hump from the forward hangar, unless someone can get me a ride.”

  “Prime, this is Actual,” Commander Siraj said. “I can arrange a pickup for you.”

  Joseph smiled. He wasn’t sure if she had been listening in on them or not. Their comms were anything but private through the ship’s network.

  “I’d appreciate that, Commander,” he replied.

  “Lieutenant Wall will come for you once he recovers West and Hoffman.”

  “Copy that. Forty-five minutes, Guardians,” Joseph said. “I want you reloaded and ready to go back out there after the debriefing.”

  “Prime?” West said.

  “I know, Second. You’re tired. We’re all tired. But the trife multiplied in a hurry, and we don’t know these things can’t do the same. Plus they can survive in a vacuum. We need to be sure they didn’t plant a hive or something anywhere on the hull.”

  “Copy that,,” West replied.

  “Prime out.”

  Joseph disconnected his comms, and then reached up to pull open the clasps on his helmet. He disconnected the wires leading to the powerpack on his back before lifting the bucket off his head. He turned the face of it toward him, running his fingers along the marks the creature’s tentacle mouth had left on the transparency.

  Too close.

  He breathed in the fresh air, looking around the hangar. Between the squadron of sixteen Bayonets and the four smaller orbital transports, the floor of the hangar had very little extra breathing room, save for at the very front near the doors. Joseph had never seen a Bayonet up close before, and he walked a few meters over to the closest one, reaching up and running his thickly padded hand against the smooth, matte grey alloy of the craft’s delta wing. The ship was short and wide, more like a flying wing than a fighter jet, with a single heavy machine gun mounted below the cockpit, a rack of small missiles tucked into concealed racks beneath the wings, and two lines of omnidirectional thrusters that allowed for serious maneuvering both in and out of atmosphere. The fighters were originally designed and manufactured as a response to China’s latest space war technology. Who knows how useful they might have been today?

  Might have been.

  That was the burning issue in Joseph’s mind. The one thing he needed to hear from Captain Grant. None of his team should have been out there. None of them should have gotten injured or killed.

  He looked at the sleek glass transparency of the cockpit. At least Command had seen fit to provide the Guardians with simulators. He was going to learn to fly these things the second he had the chance. If Grant wouldn’t get him help, then he would have to help himself.

  He went back to Nori’s space suit, beginning to collect it to load onto the transport when it arrived. He was folding the arms and legs over the torso when he noticed the patch he had stuck onto the suit. There were marks above it, similar to marks left on combat armor by trife claws. Teeth, in this case. It had to be. But if the teeth hadn’t gotten through the suit, then what had? Did the creature have some sort of spiked tongue?

  The door to the hangar opened, and Wall drove the pallet transporter in, stopping next to him.

  “Need a ride, Marine?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Joseph replied. He dropped Nori’s suit, boots, and helmet into the back and then climbed on after them, his eyes catching the tooth marks again as Wall drove them away.

  If the shrapnel inside Nori wasn’t a broken tooth, then what was it?

  26

  Grant

  Pioneer. Conference Room. 11.11.2052. 2030 hours.

  Tyson ran his hand over his short hair and then tugged on his jacket, straightening himself as he neared the conference room. Commander Siraj walked beside him, still perfectly poised and impeccably neat. It both amazed and bothered him that she had stayed so calm and clean during the Guardian’s sweep of the exterior, while his emotions bounced around like a ping pong ball, from the thrill of watching Joseph and his people leave the airlock to the dismay of spotting intruders on the outside of Pioneer.

  The mixed fear and excitement of seeing a new alien creature led to the dismay of losing one of his Guardians so soon. But it could have been worse. Joseph had gone to extraordinary lengths to save Guardian Nori. The speed at which he had adjusted to the weightlessness of space and the way he used it to his favor was more than a little impressive. The man was a tremendous athlete and a quick thinker.

  The creatures they had confronted were terrifying. The whole episode had left him rattled in a way that embarrassed him. He needed to do better if he was going to hold up his end of the mission and be the leader Command had believed him to be.

  Siraj moved ahead of him to open the door to the conference room, stepping in first. The Guardians rose to their feet as she did, all of them coming to stiff attention.

  “Please, sit,” Tyson said as he entered. He was surprised to see the Guardians were still in their space suits, the bulky padded suits not exactly easy to get around in under gravity. Their helmets rested at their places on the conference room table, while their rifles rested against the wall. His eyes shifted to Joseph as the Guardians sat down. “Prime, how is Guardian Nori?”

  “I don’t have a recent update from sickbay, Captain. I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”

  “Commander?” Tyson said. “Have you heard from Okoye?”

  “Yes, sir. Doctor Okoye reports the operation to remove the shrapnel from Guardian Nori is a complete success. He’s currently in recovery. He should be able to see visitors by the time you get back.”

  “Get back?” Tyson said.

  “We’re going back out there,” Joseph explained. “As soon as we’re done here.”

  “I didn’t authorize that.”

  Joseph smiled. “No, sir. Not yet. You will. We have to be sure the threat is completely eliminated. We can’t even think about hibernation until it is.”

  Tyson nodded. “I trust your judgement, Prime. I do worry about your stamina. I was monitoring your vitals out there. Your body is on the verge of exhaustion. Most of you are at a similar level of fatigue.”

  “We’re all Marines,” Joseph said. “We’ll manage. I’m not leaving Pioneer under threat because I’m tired.”

  “Very well. Maybe we can learn something here you can take back out there, to make things easier.”

  “Permission to speak freely, Captain?” Joseph asked.

  Tyson hesitated a moment before nodding. He knew what this was going to be about. He had spent the last hour considering his response. “Go ahead.”

  “You could have made things easier by getting a few Bayonets out there, sir. I know we can’t go back in time, but we have another chance. It’d certainly make our lives easier.”

  “I told you before, that isn’t an option.”

  “Yes, sir. But you didn’t explain why. It makes no sense to waste what few assets we have.”

  “I’m not required to explain myself.”

  “No, sir. But I was hoping since one Guardian died and another was injured because of your decision, you might be willing to offer us some insight.”

  Tyson moved to the head of the table. “Very well,” he said. “For one, the chasms the aliens were hiding in are too small for a Bayonet to spot from their nearest viable distance. The ships aren’t equipped with lights, and their sensors can’t determine an external target against the direct backdrop of the hull. In other words, their usefulness is more limited than your accounting for.

  “Second, there are flight simulators inside the city, to teach the new generations how to fly the transports and work the loaders and builders, or else they’ll have a new home they can’t settle. The pilots inside will be instructors, as well as parents to the pilots that will come after them.

  “Third, it’s the role of the Guardians to defend the ship from any and all threats. That’s you and your team, Prime. Ultimately, you need to be able to handle anything that comes your way. It’s unfortunate that we’ve already been put to the test, but you passed that test with flying colors. You proved your team is more effective at sussing out the effects of the alien intervention than the Bayonets would be.”

  Joseph met his gaze, locking eyes with him. Tyson got the feeling the Guardian had something more on his mind or perhaps the man was wondering what he, as Captain, might be keeping to himself. Then again, that might just be his own conscience talking. It didn’t matter. He had already given more of a reason than he needed to. A lot more.

  “Understood, Captain,” Joseph said at last. “We appreciate your explanation.”

  “Of course. Commander Siraj, do you want to bring up the feeds?”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Siraj replied. She went to the back of the table, activating a control surface embedded in the plastic. A projector beam emerged from the back wall, casting a screen against the opposite wall. “Captain Grant and I went through the feeds from your helmets. We cut out some video we thought would be worth reviewing.” She tapped on the controls. The blank screen was suddenly replaced with a relatively close-up view of the alien creature taken from Nori’s helmet. It’s circular mouth of sharp, grinding teeth and its dozens of large eyes filled the screen.

  “Disgusting,” Morales said. “So much uglier up close.”

  “I took the liberty of checking the limited military datastore included as part of Pioneer’s mainframe,” Siraj said. “There are no reports of a creature matching this description on Earth.”

  “That’s a good thing,” West said.

  “It is. But then the question becomes, what is it, where did it come from and what does it have to do with the trife—if anything?”

  “Excuse me, Commander,” Joseph said. “I’m as interested in the answers to those questions as you are. But I also don’t see how any of that is important just now. Those things are here; they attacked us. They killed Chun and nearly killed Nori. I’m happy to answer any questions you have about what we experienced out there, but I think the feeds pretty much speak for themselves, if you were able to record all of them. Otherwise, our best course of action is to get back out there and finish the job. The trife were able to reproduce in days. Who’s to say these things can’t do the same or better?”

  Siraj looked back at Tyson, her eyes asking for guidance.

  “You make a good point, Prime,” Tyson said. “I agree, the details of their potential origins are something we can likely debate later. With that in mind, let’s fast-forward to what we know about their biology and composition. Commander?”

  “Yes, sir,” Siraj said. She worked the controls for a moment before bringing up a clip of West firing on one of the creatures. She was going for the thing’s main rows of eyes, and that it reacted violently in an effort to defend them.

  “Guardian Second correctly identified a weakness in their eyes,” Tyson said. “They don’t like getting hit there, and it seems to cause them quite a lot of pain.”

  “They also try really hard not to let us shoot them,” West added. “But they can’t protect their eyes and see us at the same time. Hoffman and I were successful against them by getting into a flanking position and targeting the central mass from two sides. Essentially splitting their defenses. As we added Bravo and Echo and increased our firepower and angle of attack, we were able to significantly increase our overall effectiveness and efficiency. It’s how we managed to take them down so quickly once we regrouped. They’re tougher than trife, but not exponentially so.”

  “Some of them are bigger than others,” Tran said. “The larger ones are harder to kill. Their skin doesn’t look armored, but it holds up well to rifle fire.”

  “We should try plasma,” Hoffman said. “It might be more effective.”

  “I don’t think so,” Joseph replied. “We’d need to get closer to blast them effectively, and whatever we gained in overall stopping power we’d lose in precision, plus we’ll leave ourselves open to counterattack.”

  “That’s true,” Hoffman said.

  “Prime,” Tyson said. “Do you have anything else that might be effective against these creatures, based on that observation?”

  “That depends, sir,” Joseph replied. “How well can the hull handle frag grenades?”

  “Pioneer’s skin is pretty thick. But I think it’s practical to damage it as little as possible.”

  “I think we should account for their movement too,” Morales said. “I don’t know if you have a shot of that, but those things kind of whirl across the hull, and they have some sticky shit on their arms that keeps them from floating away.”

  Siraj tapped on a few more controls, and then the screen showed the monster coming toward Joseph. She slowed it down so they could get a better look at its movement.

  “It only has one tentacle on the ground at any time,” Sykes said. “I bet if we can get a charge under it, we can blow the tentacle and knock it out into space.”

  “Or just shoot the damn arm off and watch it float away,” Morales replied. “Works for me.”

  “I don’t know which method would be more effective,” Joseph said. “But one thing is clear. We’re better together. It’s going to take longer to cover the ship that way, but if the Bayonets are out of the question, I think it’s our only other option.”

  “They are, Prime,” Tyson said.

  “We’ll do two teams then. I’ll take Alpha. Queen, you’ve got Bravo. We work one side at a time, closing from opposite ends and meeting in the middle. That way if we’re engaged we can hopefully get the aliens in a crossfire.”

  “I’m kind of hoping we already killed them all, sir,” Morales said.

  “Me too,” Joseph said. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

  “Prime,” Alesso said. “If we do encounter them again, I’m sure my brother would be happy to get a sample.”

  “Your brother, Guardian?” Tyson asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied. “He’s one of the scientists working in the research module.”

  Tyson glanced at Siraj. Nobody had told him they had a research module on board. An oversight? Or was the omission intentional?

  Siraj’s return glance told him she hadn’t known either. Between this and the containers below Metro, Tyson couldn’t help thinking it was intentional.

  But why?

  “I see,” Tyson replied. “In that case, it might be worth getting a sample if you can, Prime.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” Tyson said. “Thank you all. Godspeed. Dismissed.”

  27

  Grant

  Pioneer. Bridge. 11.11.2052. 2100 hours.

  Tyson hadn’t expected to find himself back on the bridge watching the Guardians make a second recon of Pioneer’s outer hull. He and Siraj should have been somewhere in one of the ship’s empty corridors, picking their way through the maze of compartments and passageways. While they all served a purpose, the purpose wasn’t always immediately clear. The generation ships had been designed in a hurry, computer modeled and constructed with massive constraints. They were certainly imperfect inside and out, there was no denying it. But the ship had gotten them out here, away from the trife.

  Toward something else?

  Tyson stood in front of the holotable, watching the Guardians’ feeds against the primary display. The two teams were on opposite ends of the ship’s surface, walking toward one another, aiming to meet at the center. Once they did, they would head back to the starting point, go around to the next side of the craft and repeat the process until every centimeter of the hull was examined. It was an effort that would take hours to complete, keeping the Guardians awake and active for nearly a full day with little rest, and Tyson knew how tired Joseph and his team already were.