Were they all going to die?

  He didn’t know what he was doing now. He had left the storage area to get away from the fighting. To find another place to hide that wasn’t so active. He had wandered the halls, climbed the stairwells and searched for somewhere to go.

  But the trife were everywhere. No matter what deck he came out on, no matter where he tried to go. They seemed to be ever-present. He didn’t think he had let that many in. A hundred maybe. The ship was so big, how come they were all grouping in the same area where he was?

  He wanted to find a place where the trife weren’t. There had to be one. Not enough of them had come through to overrun a ship this size completely. But once he found somewhere, then what? He had traded an entire planet where he could hide for a much smaller space. He hadn’t improved his situation. He had made it worse. And not just for himself. He didn’t know how many people were on the ship, but every one of them who died would be his fault. His cross to bear.

  “So stupid,” he said to himself. He was still clutching the revolver in one hand and a knife in the other. He hadn’t needed either so far, though the last pair of trife had gotten almost too close for comfort. He was lucky the Marines had taken them out. He was lucky he had escaped.

  To where?

  He didn’t know where he was going or where he would end up. Joining Espinoza was the worst decision he had ever made. A part of him had known that getting involved with a group of survivors was a mistake, that he was better off on his own. Staying alone was hard. Humans were social animals, and isolation didn’t work well for him.

  So of course, now he was isolated again. Cut off from home. Trapped in a metal maze with the demons he was trying to escape. Running from the only people who might be able to help him.

  The whole thing was a nightmare.

  He slowed as he neared the end of the corridor. A door on his right had a label next to it. “Crew Mess.” He tapped the control panel, and the hatch slid open, revealing a large room with metal tables and chairs spread around it, all of them bolted into fixed positions on the floor. At the back of the room was a long steel counter with cutouts for food.

  Mess. That’s what the military called cafeterias. He had forgotten. This one was big enough to seat a hundred people at a time. It was strange. He didn’t think there were even a hundred people on the ship. Had the trife killed them all before they had gotten on board?

  But someone had launched the starship. Someone had gotten them into space. At least, he assumed they were in space. He had felt the shuddering. He thought he had heard the roar of thrusters. But there were no windows on the ship. There was no way to see outside. For all he knew, they were still on the ground.

  Was that why the ship was so quiet? Had they evacuated the starship when they discovered the trife had gotten in?

  He should have gone back to the airlock to try to open it, to confirm they weren’t still on the ground. At least there weren’t any trife in there.

  The hatch slid closed behind him. He passed the tables to the counter and then went past the counter to a swinging door in the rear. He pushed it open, revealing another storage space, filled with more boxes of MREs. There were so many. It was as if they had been planning to feed an army for a long, long time.

  How long was the starship supposed to take to get wherever it was going, anyway?

  And where exactly were they going?

  David opened one of the boxes, looking at the labels on the MREs. He picked one out. Thanksgiving Dinner. He tore it open, looking down at the brown block. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. It did remind him of Thanksgiving. He could smell the cranberries, the turkey, the gravy and the pumpkin pie. He was reminded of how his mother used to spend the whole day cooking for their family. He remembered his sister. His father. His grandma and grandpa.

  His eyes welled with tears.

  Gone. They were all gone. Killed by the virus, the trife, the damned military. It didn’t matter how they died, only that they were all dead.

  Except for him.

  Caleb took a bite of the MRE. It was dry, and it didn’t taste anywhere near as much like Thanksgiving as it smelled. He forced the bite down and threw the rest on the floor.

  He slumped down beside it and began to cry.

  Chapter 32

  The first thing Caleb noticed was how much his head hurt. He felt it before he even opened his eyes. The throbbing in his temple and at the base of his spine. Normally, he might have felt the pain and lamented it.

  In this case, pain meant he was still alive.

  He was glad to be alive.

  His eyes slid open slowly, his vision already sharp. The Marine module had a small sick bay in it. Four racks aligned in a circle around a central monitoring station. Hawk Three, Private Yasuka, was on the rack beside him, sitting up, a patch on his shoulder.

  “Alpha,” Yasuka said, noticing he was awake. He smiled. “How do you feel?”

  Caleb shifted his tongue in his mouth, trying to clear the dryness. He didn’t know which of the Guardians was the medic. He didn’t even know if they had a medic. Considering he had survived a trife claw to his neck, he assumed they did.

  “Head’s pounding,” he replied softly. He wiggled his fingers and toes, testing them. They both worked. “I can move.”

  “You were lucky,” Sho said, standing up in the center of the monitoring station. “One centimeter deeper and you would be paraplegic. Three centimeters and you would be dead.” She circled the desk to stand beside him. “You’re also lucky you had Washington with you. He killed four more of the bastards getting you back here, and he carried you fast enough you didn’t bleed out on the way. Oh, and you’re lucky Private Shiro decided not to hold a grudge at the chewing out you gave him, because he happens to be our medic.”

  “I can barely keep up with everything you just said,” Caleb said. His eyes were working fine, but his brain still felt a little sluggish.

  “That’s the painkillers.”

  “Painkillers? They aren’t working for the pain.”

  The hatch to the sickbay opened, and Private Shiro walked in. “I didn’t want to give you too much, Alpha,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t want to sleep too long.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “Six hours.”

  “Six?” Caleb tried to sit up. A wave of dizziness forced him back down. “Damn it. We don’t have time to waste.”

  “Relax, Sarge,” Sho said. “Pratt finished up his work for the Research team and took over for you here. We already knew the plan, so it was no big deal. I went out with the Raptors, back to the first pocket of trife. We killed about thirty of them, and Valentine’s guy got the sensors back online over there.”

  “All that in six hours?”

  “Damn right, Sarge. You aren’t the only one who knows how to get stuff done around here.”

  Caleb smiled. “What about the other conduit? The one that knocked out the area around the bridge, and where I was hit?”

  “Still offline. According to Craft, its a general malfunction of the breaker, and it’ll take hours to pull the board and replace it with a new one, plus we’d have to bring the whole sensor grid offline to do it.”

  “I assume Craft is Valentine’s tech?”

  Sho nodded. “You assume correctly. Smart son of a bitch. And cute too.” She smiled.

  “But,” Caleb prompted.

  “Like you were already thinking, Sarge. There’s more than meets the eye with those scientists.”

  “Including Valentine?”

  “Especially Valentine. Pratt said whatever they’re working on in Research, they seemed to be doing their best to keep him from getting even a whiff of it while he was down there. The whole module was clean, as in there was still plastic wrap on the expensive science equipment. And he said they were really specific about which vents they wanted help with.”

  “Their little project is classified,” Caleb said. “Nothing we can do about that.”

  “Except this isn’t a military vessel anymore, right? So technically there’s no such thing as classified.”

  “Do you think we should storm down there and demand to know what they’re working on?”

  “Valentine claims it might help with the trife. It would be nice to know.”

  “Private Shiro, how long until my head calms down enough I can get out of this bed?”

  Shiro walked over to the monitoring station. He tapped on the control surface. “Tell me if this feels better.”

  Caleb felt something cold race into his veins through his IV. A moment later, his headache was gone.

  “What did you just give me?”

  “A different painkiller. It’ll weaken your muscles, though. No combat activities for you for at least another six hours.” Shiro glanced at the display. “The patch is healing the wound nicely.”

  “You’d think R&D could have come up with a stormtrooper suit that had better neck protection,” Caleb said.

  “They probably could, but you wouldn’t be able to turn your head,” Sho replied. “It would have been nice if they could have produced more of the Butchers too, but there was only so much capacity to go around.”

  Caleb pushed himself to a seated position. “Private Yasuka, how is your wound?”

  “I’ll live, Alpha,” Yasuka replied. “The tendon was severed. Shiro put it back together, but it’s going to take a few more hours for the patch to finish me up.”

  “I don’t want him using it for days,” Shiro said. “But I know that probably isn’t an option.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Yasuka said. “I want to get back out there and kill me some bugs.”

  “They’re not bugs,” Sho said.

  Yasuka laughed.

  “Private Shiro, you should have told me before that you’re a medic. What if I had sent you into the field?”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you, Alpha. I want to be in the field. I did two years of medic training before the trife showed up, and then I transferred to infantry.”

  Caleb was annoyed by the answer, but he swallowed it. “You’re here until either the trife are all dead, or we’re really desperate.”

  “Understood. Also, I recognize I should have spoken up sooner. I can do more pushups if you’d like.”

  “Forget it. Taking responsibility is enough for now. We have bigger problems to solve.” He slid off the rack to his feet, only then realizing he was naked. “Can someone get me some clothes?”

  “I was waiting to see how long it would take you to realize,” Sho said. “It would have been amusing to watch you traipse out into the CIC in your birthday suit.”

  “It’s nothing anyone in here hasn’t seen before.”

  “In the shower maybe, not in the CIC.”

  Shiro picked up a black t-shirt, underwear, and dark cargo pants and tossed them on the bed next to Caleb. “Here you go, Alpha.”

  “Thank you,” Caleb said, grabbing the clothes and quickly putting them on. He tried to do it quickly, anyway. He could feel the weakness in his muscles as he tried to move.

  “Would you like some help with that, Sarge?” Sho asked.

  “I’ve got it,” he replied. He sat back on the bed and managed to maneuver the underwear and pants onto his legs, getting them halfway up and then standing again to pull them the rest of the distance. The activity made him frustratingly tired. “I’ll take a little help now,” he said, reaching out and putting his hand on Sho’s shoulder before he collapsed.

  She caught him, helping him stay upright. “I’ve got you, Sarge. Where are we headed?”

  “To Wash, I want to thank him for saving my ass. Then to the CIC. I want the trife off our ship.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Private Shiro, thank you for putting me back together.”

  “It’s my duty and my pleasure, Alpha.”

  Caleb started for the exit, with Sho helping to keep him from falling. They went through the hatch together, turning left toward the small barracks.

  “I’m glad you didn’t die, Sarge,” Sho said.

  “Me too.”

  Chapter 33

  Washington wasn’t sleeping. He was sitting on his rack, a tablet in hand and a big smile on his face. The smile got even larger when Caleb entered the room. The big Marine put down the table and came to attention.

  “As you were,” Caleb said.

  Washington approached Caleb and Sho, holding his arms out wide and wrapping both of them in a tight hug. Then he let go and motioned to the back of his neck.

  “It was close,” Caleb said. “Three centimeters from death, one centimeter from paralyzation.”

  Washington made a hissing sound, the best he could do to emulate a whistle. He held his thumb and forefinger close together.

  “That’s right. That close. I’m okay now. Getting better. Shiro gave me some meds for a headache, and it made my muscles feel like jelly. Anyway, I wanted to come by to thank you for getting me out of there.”

  Washington flipped his thumb up.

  “What were you up to, Wash?” Sho asked.

  Washington went back to his rack and grabbed the tablet. He rotated it so they could see.

  It was the beginning of a picture the big man was drawing on the touch display. A portrait of a woman. It was only half-finished, but Caleb already recognized her from a photo Washington used to have.

  “Your wife?” he said.

  Washington nodded, tapped his head and shook it.

  “You don’t want to forget her?”

  He nodded again.

  “Like you ever could?”

  He smiled.

  “She was beautiful Wash,” Sho said.

  “He used to have a photograph,” Caleb explained. “It got burned during a mission, probably fifteen months ago. A few months before you joined the Vultures.”

  Washington made a face indicating he was still upset at the loss.

  “What happened to her?” Sho asked. “Virus?”

  Washington shook his head.

  “Trife?”

  He shook it again. His eyes began to moisten at the memory. He didn’t like to talk about Charlene. As far as Caleb knew, he was the only one who knew Washington ever had a wife in the first place.

  “Looters,” Caleb said. “Of all things. We should have been taking care of one another, but some people just didn’t get it. They thought because the world was burning, they should grab what they could.”

  Sho’s face paled. “I’m sorry, Wash. You never told me.”

  He shrugged. She put her arms around him, and he put a large hand on her back to hold her close for a second.

  “It’s a great drawing,” Caleb repeated. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  Washington nodded. He turned the tablet around, tapped a few screens, and then his fingers started moving. He flipped it back.

  I prefer pencil and paper, but we don’t have that here. I miss her.

  “I know you do,” Caleb said. “She’d be proud of you. You’re helping a lot of people.”

  He nodded and pointed at Caleb.

  “I’m headed to the CIC to check in with Sergeant Pratt. I heard we cleared one of the groups of trife. Two more and we can all relax for the rest of the trip.”

  Washington thumbs-upped again, and then signaled that he was coming with him.

  Sho slid under Caleb’s arm again, helping him keep his balance while he headed out of the barracks and back down the short corridor to the CIC.

  The command center was quiet but active. Master Sergeant Gold and Sergeant Pratt were positioned near the main terminal, the large display providing sensor data that quickly showed Caleb that the Hawks were closing on the second forward group of xenotrife. A pair of smaller windows in the corner showed the camera feeds from a couple of the Dragonfly drones, one in what appeared to be a ventilation shaft and the other in a secondary access passage.

  “Hawk One, no sign of trife outside the main passageways,” Sergeant Pratt said. He was wearing a full SOS to run the sortie.

  “Roger that, Sergeant,” Johansen replied. “We’re continuing ahead, fifty meters to contact.”

  Pratt’s ATCS must have registered the people behind him, because he glanced back over his shoulder, turning all the way around when he saw Caleb.

  “Guardian Alpha,” he said. “I see you’re back on your feet.”

  “I am, Sergeant,” Caleb said, his eyes narrowing slightly at Pratt’s tone. He didn’t sound happy to see him. “You sent the Hawks after the second group?”

  “We did,” Master Sergeant Gold said. “We couldn’t wait for you to come to, Alpha.”

  “I’m not complaining. I’m glad we’re making progress.”

  “Quick progress,” Pratt said, turning back to the display. “The first group went down easy with my guidance. I even got Craft out there to fix the damage to the conduit and restore the sensors. No problem.”

  Caleb continued staring at Pratt’s back. “I heard. It’s great work. The trife haven’t caused any other damage?”

  “Not so far, and we’ve got the Dragonflies in the walls watching the service areas. They won’t be able to surprise us like that again. I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think we’re going to win this one.”

  “Don’t jinx it,” Sho said. “We’ve thought that before. Remember New Zealand?”

  They had been close to getting the trife off the island. Some counts had put them at less than ten thousand. The military was confident they would have their area cleared within a week.

  A year later, the trife were still there and most if not all of the humans were gone. The takeaway was never to assume anything.

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I had been in charge,” Pratt replied. “Hawk One, ATCS just picked up the targets.”

  “We aren’t out of ATCS range?” Caleb asked.

  “Nope,” Gold said, looking pleased with himself. “A little human ingenuity. The Hawks brought extra armor out with them, powered up and placed along their route to pass the network signal.”