“Negation. After I learned that the Axon and Relyeh had taken their war into the stack, I set about devising a means to stop them. By traversing the stack, I became an anomaly. An entity unique across the entire stack, able to affect any layer I travel to. But my existence in one layer is by nature duplicated in all the others where the timeline is still less than the timeline of the current layer. By coming here, you have all become anomalies too.”

  “I’m pretty sure you lost me,” Gills said. “Can we try the food metaphor again?”

  “So we can travel to any layer in the stack?” Nicholas asked.

  “Affirmation.”

  “And we enter that layer wherever it is in its timeline?”

  “Affirmation.”

  “And we can do whatever we want there and it will alter any other layer that hasn’t reached the same part of the timeline.”

  “Consideration. The alteration will echo out from the layer across the stack. Any layer that is further behind in the timeline and within the range of the echo will also be altered. The weaker the echo, the lesser the effect of the alteration.”

  “Okay. That makes sense. I guess. So how do we go back to an earlier point in a layer’s timeline?”

  “We can’t,” Yasmin said, her voice hollow. “Isn’t that right, Max?”

  “Confirmation,” Max replied. “Time travel within the same layer is impossible. Hahaha. Hahaha. Haha.”

  Nicholas’ heart felt like it stopped beating, his head beginning to spin from the gravity of the Intellect’s reply. He turned to Yasmin. Her eyes welled with tears, her body slumping as the strength to hold it up fled from her. She landed on her knees and dropped her head into her hands, sobbing out her broken heart.

  “Shit,” Briar said, tearing up as well.

  Harsh tension fell over the group, leaving them all in a stunned silence. Nicholas wanted to kneel beside Yasmin and offer her comfort, but his sudden anger overrode everything else. He whirled on Max, stepping up to the Intellect and screaming. “You told me we could fix it!”

  Max lowered his head. “Correction. You misunderstood the nature of the statement. What that version of me told you is not a lie. We can fix Luke’s death. We must prevent Luke’s death. It is essential.”

  “But we can’t bring back our Luke.” Yasmin hiccuped and lifted her head. “We can’t bring our son back. We can only help Luke in a different layer. A different Luke who still has his parents, who are us, but aren’t us.”

  “Affirmation. By killing Luke in one layer, Koth has killed Luke in every layer whose timeline is behind your origin layer. But by saving Luke in the closest layer to the origin, we can fix this. Admission. These alterations are not new to me. This is the war Koth the Unspeakable wages on all existences. A war the Axon could have fought and perhaps already ended, but they chose to use their knowledge of the stack on preservation. Their homeworld is in ruin, but the Axon survive out there, somewhere.”

  “I don’t want to save another Luke,” Nicholas hissed. “Damn it, I want to save my Luke. I want my son back!”

  “So do I,” Yasmin said behind him, finally getting to her feet. “But that’s not going to happen, Nick. I don’t have to like it. In fact, I hate it with every fiber of my being, but we have to accept it. Our Luke is gone. But we can stop him from dying over and over again. We can save his life across multiple layers and spare the other versions of us the pain of his death. As a mother, all I want to do is protect my son, even if he has no idea I’m out here fighting for him. We need to do this.”

  Nicholas turned to her, their eyes meeting. Her strength gave him strength, and he felt his fight returning even as his anger fled, leaving a dark pit in his gut. The agony of the truth that his son had died and it was as permanent as ever. Still, Yasmin was right. They could undo Luke’s death in the other layers and thwart Koth’s plan.

  “Max?” he said, turning back to the Intellect. “Why did Koth want to kill Luke? Why is he so important?”

  “Consideration. Knowing the outcome of a future that has not yet occurred may alter your own perception and action within the present. For now, it is better that you accept just that he must be saved.”

  “I can accept that,” Yasmin said, wiping away the last of her tears. “I don’t need to know why he’s important, or if he’s even still important at all. I just need him to be safe.”

  Nicholas nodded. “I agree,” Nicholas said. “But you didn’t expect him to die, Max. You arranged for Foresight to be built. You arranged for me to come here. Which means I’m not here to save Luke, I’m here for something else.”

  “Affirmation. You are here because we must stop Koth. While the Relyeh wage near infinite wars on near infinite layers, he seeks to undermine the fight from the shadows, By weakening the foundations, he hopes to guarantee victory for the Hunger.”

  “But why me, of all the people in all of the universes?”

  “Explanation. Because you are the one I trust.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do. Hahaha. Haha. Ha.”

  Nicholas realized Max had no intention of giving him a viable reason. It mattered about as much as why Luke was so important to the Intellect, which wasn’t much at all. He was here, and he was ready to do whatever needed to be done to see this through.

  “Importance. We must not remain here for too long. If Koth was in your layer, then he will be able to isolate the disturbance in the shift and trace it here.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Gills asked. “You just said we need to stop him. We can get this done in short order and then find a nice ladyfinger layer to retire in.”

  “We can’t beat Koth in our current condition,” Nicholas replied. “And if we try and fail, then Luke stays lost too. Max is right. We need to go.”

  “Oy, but we just got here,” Macey said sardonically. “And it’s such a nice place. Like summer on the coast.”

  “We’re going back to Foresight. Caleb, let Jennifer know we’re on our way.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caleb said.

  “Let’s move out.”

  Chapter 27

  “Jennifer, this is Card. Do you copy?”

  Jennifer leaned forward in Foresight’s pilot seat, her heart racing. She had listened in on the entire sequence of events leading up to Caleb’s contact, anticipating his communication.

  “I copy, Sergeant,” she replied. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Copy that. ETA, thirty minutes. Max says there may be trouble on the way. Keep a close eye on the sensors.”

  Jennifer glanced at the threat display. Everything looked good so far. “Yes, sir. Can you tell Nicholas I’m sorry I knocked the tree over on him?”

  Caleb laughed softly. “I’m sure he knows, but I’ll tell him.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jennifer turned her attention to Foresight’s controls, going over the different sequences in her head. She understood the basic flight controls and firing system and how Frank helped facilitate the ship’s smooth operation. That was one thing. Using the command touchpad, thumbstick, and trigger buttons in sync hadn’t as yet become part of her muscle memory, like it was with Nicholas. She had watched him, mesmerized by how effortlessly his hands glided across both control surfaces. He synced them so effortlessly it was like watching Picasso paint a masterpiece. She hoped she would be half that good someday.

  She made phantom movements with both hands without actually touching any of the controls, letting her fingers drift over the surfaces as she conceptualized using both the thrusters and the anti-gravity to maneuver the spaceship, and then using the command pad to deftly switch back and forth between the two selections. From there, she practiced activating the spines and targeting with both her eyes and the touchpad at the same time executing a dogfight taking place in her mind.

  The struggle was real, and she had to stop and restart multiple times as she flubbed one of the control switches or overcorrected the vectoring inputs. Even so, she remained determined to get it right. If even half of what Max had said was true, Nicholas and the others needed her to provide a solid backup in the days to come.

  It was all so much to take in. She hadn’t managed to completely come to terms with everything she had experienced in the last sixteen hours, let alone process everything she had just heard through the comms. Not that anything had been easy since the trife arrived on Earth and started laying waste to humankind, but she had found a tentative home at Fort Hood, as well as a group of friends to get into innocent mischief with. Life inside the compound had been far from what the first fifteen years of her life had been, but it was the closest thing she had encountered since fleeing her home with her father, escaping through a National Guard checkpoint only an hour before it was overrun.

  The memory of that escape sent a shiver down her spine. Her mind locked, causing her to pantomime hitting the wrong button on the flight controls. She cursed herself for losing focus, resetting her hand positions over the controls.

  She just couldn’t believe Luke was gone. His smiling face remained etched in her memory, burning a hole through her heart. Her mother had been a Marine and had taught her to be strong and self-reliant. Having so many people she cared about die around her had taught her to do her best to keep her emotions in check. As a result, she had never risked telling Luke how she really felt about him. How much she admired him. How handsome she thought he was. That she was falling in love with him.

  “Damn it,” she said out loud, messing up her practice sequence again. She needed to get out of her head, quit thinking about Luke’s death and concentrate on the lives depending on her now. Still, she wished she could have it back to do over again, She’d tell Luke she wanted to be more than friends. She didn’t know if he had felt the same way. Now, she’d never know.

  It seemed wrong to indulge in grieving her personal loss, considering where she had wound up. Not only in another place in the universe, but in another universe altogether, fighting the aliens that had sent the trife to Earth. The Relyeh, Max had called them. And some guy named Koth the Unspeakable. She had already seen too many people die at the hands of these aliens. Luke, of course. Toast. Caleb’s Marines, the other Shepherd and others. She didn’t want the same thing to happen to Scott and Briar, or to Nicholas and his wife. They were her family now. She would do anything she could to protect them.

  She forced her mind clear and ran her practice sequence a few more times, finally nailing it on the tenth try.

  “Yes!” she cheered out loud, pumping her fist. One success wasn’t much, but it was something to build on.

  “Jen, this is Card,” Caleb said. “We’re exiting the compound into the open now. Headed for the LZ. Stay ready to provide backup if the Swarm spots anything.”

  “Copy, Sergeant,” Jennifer replied. “I’ve got my eyes peeled.”

  “Copy.”

  She returned her full attention to the threat display. The Swarm would pass additional information to Frank that would show up on the display, widening the range of ground sensors. An assortment of nine marks appeared at the edge of the reach, circles for the seven humans, triangles for Dag and Max.

  Jennifer turned her attention to the forward display, where the Swarm’s feeds showed the area around the group. There was no sign of anything moving through the overgrowth, and no immediate indication of more of the tentacled aliens rising out of the tunnels. For the moment at least, they had an easy, straight shot to the safety of the hold.

  A sudden tone from Frank negated that thought in a hurry. An icon Jennifer didn’t recognize appeared on the threat display.

  “Sergeant, Frank just played a tone like a warning sound, and I’ve got an icon on the grid that looks like a star.”

  “Copy, standby,” Caleb replied. She heard him ask Nicholas about the display.

  “There are two grids,” Nicholas said. “Tap the icon to split the projection. It means long range sensors picked something up. Maybe entering orbit.”

  “Affirmation. Koth has found us. Hahahaha. Haha.”

  “Jennifer, did you get that?” Caleb said.

  “I got it,” she replied, tapping the icon. The projection split into two screens, one showing the short-range area around Foresight, the other offering a longer-range view. The asteroid-like ship they had barely escaped from hours earlier floated at the top of the sensors’ reach. “Confirmed, Sergeant. It’s Koth’s ship. He’s here.”

  “Captain, Jennifer confirms it’s Koth,” Caleb said, passing her message along.

  “Recommendation,” Max said. “Run.”

  Additional marks began spilling from the Relyeh starship, appearing as a mixture of the starfighters that had attacked them before and another object Frank didn’t recognize. All of the contacts descended toward the planet.

  “Sergeant, we have more ships incoming,” Jennifer said nervously. “A lot of them.”

  “Question,” Max said. “What do they look like?”

  “Starfighters, and something else. Frank hasn’t identified it yet.”

  “Identification. A transport. Ground troops. Nicholas, we must hurry.”

  “Jennifer, you need to try to take some of them out,” Nicholas said. “Buy us some time to get to the LZ.”

  “What if I can’t get back to pick you up?”

  “You will,” Caleb said, answering for Nicholas. “Go.”

  “Swarm, I need an offensive air-to-air counterstrike formation,” Nicholas said. “Follow Foresight’s lead.”

  The camera views on the forward surround shifted as the fragments of the Swarm left their positions. Jennifer got a brief glimpse of the others on the ground before the Swarm converged, the feed joining to a single wide-angle view of the path ahead of the newly formed fightercraft. It rocketed upward over the trees before turning sharply toward Foresight, still hovering over the landing zone.

  Jennifer took a deep breath, fighting to keep her nerves under control. She didn’t have time to be afraid. Her family needed her.

  She put her hands on the controls, for real this time. Vectoring Foresight’s nose skyward, she activated the spines and punched the throttle. Instantly, she was shoved back in her seat as Foresight shot toward the incoming enemy fighters.

  Chapter 28

  Foresight climbed rapidly, breaking through the cloud cover over the ruined Axon city in under a minute, continuing toward the Relyeh starfighters. A look at the grid showed Jennifer the Swarm had altered its vector to intercept her, which didn’t take them long. A glance at the starship’s portside view screen showed them flying beside Foresight as a scaled-down F-35 jet fighter.

  Switching her attention to the forward view, she spotted the enemy craft ahead, at the moment little more than specks of dust against a dark blue sky, but growing fast. The threat display updated its representation of what Max had called transports, revealing simple, spike-shaped vessels angling for the ground below.

  “I’ve got eyes on the targets,” she said before realizing she had gone out of range of their basic comms. “Swarm, keep the starfighters busy while I go after the transports.”

  The Swarm altered vectors again, its single thruster belching green plasma as it picked up speed, propelling itself ahead of Foresight.

  “Here they come,” Jennifer said, surprised to find her nerves had settled into a cold, focused mix of fear and anger. “Let’s do this.”

  She marked the first transport, adjusting vectors to line it up. Her finger rested on the trigger button, ready to depress it when the first of the plasma bolts hit her on the starboard side, the shield absorbing some of the energy, dispersing the rest.

  “I’ve got you, you bastard,” she said, making a tight turn to escape the incoming fighters and still stay on the transport. The G-forces tore at her, and she nearly passed out before remembering to tighten her stomach.

  More plasma bolts whipped past Foresight as Jennifer maintained a bead on the transport, and she quickly fired the spines. The combined energy beam swept through the vessel, splitting it apart and spilling out dozens of armored personnel. The ship exploded, showering debris down with the doomed troops. They flailed their arms as they fell, their shapes resembling people.

  A sick knot formed in Jennifer’s stomach. What if they were people? Humans?

  Had she just shot down a transport full of humans? Stunned, she pulled her hands from Foresight’s controls. It was one thing to kill aliens, another to kill her own kind. Where had they come from? Certainly not Earth. Not if they were fighting for the Relyeh. They might look human, but they weren’t. Couldn’t be.

  A string of hits against the shields from the enemy starfighters jolted her out of her paralytic state. Even if they were human, they were fighting for the other side. And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her friends on the ground if she let them land.

  She gritted her teeth as she again changed vectors, sweeping around to the next transport. The Swarm went by her like a blur, green energy discs flying from its wings and slamming into the enemy fighter’s tail. She smiled at the bright explosion in her rear view at the same time she again triggered the spines, slicing through the next transport.

  The enemy starfighters swirled around her, amending their formation for a more concentrated attack on both her and the Swarm. The drone stuck to them like glue, returning fire to keep them off her while she angled in to take down her next victim. The planet’s surface quickly grew bigger in Foresight’s front surround, the remaining transports continuing their steady descent. She counted eight still on the grid. She wasn’t sure if she could stop them all.

  She had to try.

  The enemy starfighters gathered at her back, an entire squadron hunting her through the sky. They fired bolt after bolt at her, their shots smacking the shields or missing entirely as she jerked Foresight from side to side. The Swarm swept in from the flank, loosing a barrage of discs that took out three of the fighters in one pass. Jennifer remained focused on the transports, lining up another shot and firing an ion beam, hitting the vessel amidships and blowing it apart in a cloud of debris.