“Yes, Governor,” Ortega said.

  “Stone out.” Jackson tapped his badge, still looking at Nan. “I’m doing the best I can. I’m sure you can see that.”

  The Inahri stared back at him. He didn’t speak English. What the hell was the point in talking to him at all? He didn’t need to speak English to know things weren’t going well. They didn’t have Joe King or the modulator. That was easy enough for the soldier to figure out on his own.

  “Governor?” Deputy Bashir said. “Are you okay? No offense to your wife, but I don’t think whether or not we’re trying hard enough is her decision. ”

  Jackson spun on the deputy. The Law with him didn’t know Nan wasn’t Beth. He and his entourage had been searching for Joe for nearly four hours, going through every cube in the man’s block. Bashir and the others had to think it was strange Beth hadn’t said a word or showed little expression the entire time. It was hardly the Beth any of them knew, yet they seemed to accept his explanation that this whole situation was putting a lot of stress on her. It was enough conciliation to keep Jackson from taking out his frustration on the deputy.

  The lies didn’t matter now anyway.

  Deputy Bashir and the other deputies with him shared an expression of surprise as the Inahri soldier dropped the projection. Nan raised his right arm and tapped on his wrist with his left hand. A new projection appeared. Sergeant Harai.

  “Governor?” Bashir said, his voice shaky. “What in the hell—?”

  “Not now,” Jackson hissed back when Harai’s voice came over the comm.

  “Governor Stone, it has been half a cycle since you entered your city in search of my quantum dimensional modulator. Why are you still in there, instead of out here with my device?”

  “Sergeant. We’re doing our best. All of us. Joe is the ship’s Chief Engineer. He’s highly intelligent. He’s evaded us so far, but he won’t evade us forever.”

  “That’s good because you don’t have forever. Arluthu is regaining control of our ship as we speak. He expects that I will deliver the modulator to it the moment it is prepared to receive it. Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes Sergeant. We’re trying. I have all of my people on it.”

  “Maybe you and your people need a little more motivation. Nan...” Harai spoke in Inahri after that.

  “Chi Za,” Nan snapped back. In one smooth motion, he grabbed something from his belt and whipped his arm forward. Deputy Shane gurgled and fell backward, a dark blade sprouting from his throat.

  “I can kill them all, if I need to,” Harai said. “I can enter your city and find the modulator myself. Your engineer will be quite easy to find on our sensors once all of the other life forms are removed. Do you understand?”

  Jackson could hardly breathe. He looked back at the other deputies. Their faces were pale. They were terrified. He was, too.

  “Nan,” Harai said.

  Nan stepped forward, grabbing one of the frightened deputies. His neck broke with a sharp crack, and the Inahri let him drop to the ground.

  “I expect fast responses,” Harai said. “I expect results. My patience is running thin, Governor.”

  Jackson felt the tears welling in his eyes. This was a disaster. A total disaster. And it was all his fault. If Sergeant Card and the Guardians were here, he knew they would have been able to stand up to these assholes.

  But Sergeant Card wasn’t here. Jackson was on his own, and it was his own damn fault. All because of his pride. His arrogance. His stupidity.

  “Governor, I’m waiting for an answer,” Harai said. “Should I kill another?”

  “No,” Jackson said. “Wait. No, damn it. Stop. Please. Just give me a moment to think.”

  “You’ve had half a cycle to think.”

  “Wait. I. I think I may know where he is. There is one place we haven’t looked.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s.” He lowered his head, shaking it. He had tried to keep the armory a secret. They would need the weapons if they got out of this. But if they didn’t get out of this. All of those years. All of this way. And they were all going to die in the blink of an eye if he didn’t make the right decision now. “There’s a deck beneath the city. S-supplies and storage. He shouldn’t have access, but maybe—”

  A flash came from the split to his left, his eyes drawn to the brightness. He turned his head toward it, eyes widening in shock as the bolt rushed toward him.

  Nan hit him in the side, knocking him out of the way just in time to avoid the full force of the blast. Even so, it scraped across the side of his chest, burning its way past. Jackson fell to the ground, rolling onto his stomach and clutching at the wound.

  “Ahhh,” he moaned, raising his head as Nan ripped the handgun off what appeared to be a nonexistent belt and began firing back. Raising his other hand, he blocked further assaults against the governor with an invisible shield.

  Jackson looked toward the split, finding a pair of figures crouched at the corner. They were wearing ragged clothes and hoodies. Nothing more than a couple of kids from the upper blocks. Where the hell had they gotten guns like that?

  He watched as one of them held up a hand, and a matching shield blocked Nan’s return fire. A third person appeared from behind the first two, grabbing one by the shoulder and pulling him back. All three fled back down the split.

  What the hell was going on?

  The shooting stopped, the exchange of fire over in the space of a few pained breaths. Jackson rolled onto his back, lifting his head to look down at his side.

  Nan holstered his weapon and kneeled beside him, withdrawing something from the belt around his armor and placing it against the wound. The pain subsided instantly.

  “Governor,” Harai said.

  Jackson looked at Nan’s wrist. Harai’s projection was still there, moving with the motion of the soldier. He had witnessed the attack “Say again,” Jackson asked.

  “That deck beneath the city,” Harai said. “Where is the entrance?”

  “Law,” Jackson replied. “The entrance is in Law.”

  “Good. Get up and take Nan to it. I will meet you there.”

  “What? No. Please let me take care of it.”

  “You had your time to take care of it,” Harai said. “The enemy is upon us. No doubt they’re searching for the modulator too. You’re lucky you’re still alive. You don’t need to be.”

  “Enemy? What enemy?”

  “It’s not your concern. Your concern is getting to Law before they do. If they capture the modulator ahead of us, I will make my previous threats seem like sweet promises.”

  Chapter 33

  Joe didn’t expect to wake up.

  When the demon found him, he’d been sure it was the end of him. That he was going to join his beloved Carol in the next place, his responsibility for the energy unit and the Deliverance, along with its citizens, finished.

  He was wrong.

  He came to almost as quickly as he had passed out, a lapse of time missing from his memories. He didn’t even recall passing out. He only remembered the scraping noises and the shadows, the sounds of something approaching in the dim light of the armory. The fear and exhaustion.

  He didn’t remember the faces of the demons. The sound of their hissing or the stink of their breath. Not until he opened his eyes. Not until he wiped them free of debris and blinked away the dryness to bring them back into focus.

  It was almost enough to send him out again.

  They were directly in front of him—a wall of black, leathery flesh pressed together and covered in some kind of ichor that connected them to one another like adhesive snot. They hissed softly in a rhythmic pattern his engineer mind picked up on almost immediately—a rise-fall-fall-rise cadence that joined the humming of surrounding machinery.

  Joe didn’t move. He was too scared to move. He shifted his eyes left and right, trying to figure out where he was. He looked down. To his arms and legs and his lap, which was empty. Where was the energy unit?

  The room was glowing with the unit’s blue light. The light was spilling out from among the demons. They had it.

  His left side was resting on a tall black column. It was warm. He leaned over a little more, putting his ear to it. He could hear the soft hum of energy coursing through it. He could feel the warmth. He glanced up at the blinking green light. Another column rested ahead of it, between him and the monsters. Its light was blinking red.

  Servers. They were servers. This had to be the ship’s mainframe. Its primary datastores. He had always wondered where they were hiding. The Engineering mainframe was networked into them and had limited access, but only the bridge would have complete control over these dozens of machines and petabytes of information. Maybe not even the bridge.

  He turned his head, looking at the columns, forgetting the demons in his curiosity. More of the servers had flashing red lights. Damaged. His instinct was to get up and see if he could fix them.

  Then he remembered Carol.

  He squeezed his eyes shut as they instantly teared up again. Damn it. What the hell was happening here? Everything was falling apart so fast.

  Focus. He had to focus. He was still alive. Governor Stone was still after the energy unit. There were more than enough guns in the armory to get through the creatures that had taken him, whatever they were. The unit wasn’t safe. He wasn’t safe. Neither were these things. He didn’t want Stone to kill them. They clearly weren’t dangerous. They could have killed him, but they didn’t. They just wanted the energy unit. It seemed everyone wanted the energy unit.

  But what for?

  He gathered himself, forcing himself to concentrate. He had to try to talk to them, to tell them they were in trouble. To see if they would help him.

  He almost laughed out loud. How was he going to communicate with these things? How was he going to express that he needed help? It seemed useless.

  Too damn bad. He had to do it anyway. Trying and failing was better than not trying at all.

  He cleared his throat as loudly as he could.

  The demons didn’t react.

  “Uh, hello?” he shouted.

  Nothing.

  “Hello?”

  Again, nothing.

  He approached the back of the group. He froze as they began to split apart, hissing more loudly, the pattern of the noise shifting. He moved back to where he had started, suddenly afraid again.

  A ridged back appeared at the center of the group. It was larger than the others, nearly twice the size at least. A body rose and unfolded itself. Thicker, larger, more muscled. It spread massive claws and unfurled a large head, its face pointed directly on Joe.

  “Don’t pass out,” he said to himself, his lips barely moving, his heart racing. He clutched the edge of the server, holding himself steady. He could see the energy unit now, its power crackling from the floor into the demons. They seemed energized by it.

  The central demon continued to straighten, forced to crouch beneath the ten-foot ceiling of the deck. It was massive and terrifying. Had the other demons saved him so it could eat him?

  It stared at him with small black eyes. There was no hint of aggression in them. It was more of a curiosity. It regarded him from a distance at first, and then slowly began to lean toward him. The other demons moved out of its way, pulling themselves apart, the sticky goop spreading in thin tendrils across them before snapping and trailing to the floor.

  Joe put his hands up. “I come in peace.” He winced. What the hell did he just say?

  The demon’s head neared him. It was as large as his torso, its dozens of teeth the length of one of his hands. It took all of Joe’s will to stand there as it drew near. To stay calm, to keep his bowels from emptying.

  It kept coming, closing within inches. One quick snap and it could remove his head. At least it would be over quickly.

  Instead, it ducked its head slightly, pressing the top of its skull gently into his chest. Then it backed up slightly…and bowed?

  At least, that’s what it seemed like. It kept lowering its head to the floor before raising it again and looking at him. Joe looked past it to the other demons. They were all facing him now, and all of them were copying the same movement.

  What the hell? Were they pledging their allegiance to him?

  What were these things?

  Joe reached out tentatively. The largest demon watched him but didn’t move. He put his hand on its head, pressing down slightly in a similar show of… what? Affection? The demon hissed softly as he pulled his hand away.

  “I guess that makes us...friends?” Joe said.

  The demon stepped back. The rest of the group turned away. Joe stared at them, noticing the large one was expelling something from between its legs. Were those larvae? His eyes shifted back to the energy unit, resting in the open on the floor. The containment box was beside it. That was why these creatures had paid homage to him; they were thankful to him for bringing it.

  Did they know he wasn’t actually delivering it to them? Did they care? It didn’t seem like it. They hovered around it protectively. Especially the large one.

  She was their queen.

  Like an ant queen, or a queen bee. It was creating new demons and using the energy unit as fuel. His engineering mind did some basic math. How many could it produce using the unlimited power of the unit?

  These things could take over the whole planet.

  He couldn’t let that happen. No matter what these things were. No matter where they came from. No matter if they were peaceful or not. This was humankind’s world. Metro’s world. They hadn’t come all this way to give it to these things, just like he wasn’t about to let Governor Stone turn it over to some invading enemy. They had to fight for what was theirs.

  He moved forward, into the group of demons. They watched him, their hisses changing slightly, but they didn’t stop him. He positioned himself beneath the queen. She looked down on him with curiosity. He picked up the containment box beside the energy unit. It was intact enough to put the power source back in. He didn’t want to touch it. He held it up to the queen.

  “I need it back in the box,” he said. Then he motioned to the unit and to the box. He put the box beside the unit, pointing to one and then the other. “Inside.”

  Would the creature listen? Did it have enough intelligence to begin to comprehend what he was asking? Would it kill him for even suggesting it? He had no idea. He knew nothing about these things except they weren’t human. They weren’t from Earth. Had they gotten into the ship somehow? But how was that possible? There was only one way to get down here.

  Which meant they had been on the Deliverance the entire time.

  Which meant…

  He froze again, the realization hitting him hard. He looked up at the queen with new fear, though she continued to look down on him with common interest, not violent intent.

  These were xenotrife. The aliens that had destroyed Earth. The creatures that had killed billions.

  Joe’s engineer mind stopped everything. His fear, his panic, his output of emotion. None of this added up. None of this computed. These things weren’t killers. They had shown him reverence instead of tearing him to pieces. Either these weren’t xenotrife, or something had happened to them. Something had changed them.

  Was that why they were down here?

  He shook his head slightly to clear it. It didn’t matter. He had to focus on the now, not on all the questions that were suddenly darting through his mind. He returned to the task at hand, pointing at the energy unit and then the containment box.

  The queen turned her head slightly, looking from one to the other and maybe beginning to understand. She looked at him again, hissing tersely, as if to say she didn’t want to put the unit away.

  He pointed more forcefully. Would she comply? Or would she kill him?

  She hissed back woefully.

  “Do it,” he snapped like he would snap at one of his junior engineers when they balked at a unique solution to a critical problem.

  The demons around him hissed in response, the sound an obvious warning. The queen lifted her head and hissed back at them in admonition. Then she lowered her head to Joe and slowly reached down to the energy unit. Blue arcs of power snapped against her flesh without harm as she picked the glowing sphere up and dropped it into the waiting box.

  “Thank you,” Joe said, smiling. “You’re a good girl.” he reached up and pressed his hand against the queen’s head. He couldn’t believe any of this.

  The queen’s head turned suddenly, whipping away from him toward the door. She hissed sharply, and four of the trife broke from the group, the hatch opening ahead of them. They moved out into the corridor and disappeared.

  Joe looked at the queen, and then at the box. “I hope you’ll help me keep this safe.”

  Someone was coming.

  Chapter 34

  Private John Washington looked up from the table when the door to the barracks opened. He smiled as Kiaan entered, matching the smile on the kid’s face.

  “How was it?” he asked, not that he needed Kiaan to answer. The Inahri had taken him out to teach him how to fly one of their transports. His joy was obvious.

  “I thought the sims were fun, sir,” Kiaan replied. “It was like that, only a thousand times better.”

  Paige and Dante both laughed at the response. They were sitting at the table with John, trying to pass the time as they nervously waited for Kiaan to come back and the real fun to begin.

  John wasn’t nervous. He had been through too much to ever be afraid of much of anything. Maybe there had been a time a long time ago. At least, it felt like a long time ago. Multiple lifetimes, though it had only been a little over two years.

  Two years since Marla’s death. Two years since the better part of him had died with her. The event had turned him into a killer. It had made him something he never wanted to be. And at the same time, becoming what he was today had saved so many lives. Had helped so many people. He didn’t talk to others about God’s plan, but time had taught him to believe in it.