This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will…

  It was getting harder to mentally recite it. The words harder to recall. He was in a downward spiral, and when he hit the bottom, the combined weight of his predicament would crush him and Morales both.

  This is my rifle. There are many like it, but...this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must...master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless…

  The suit’s computer finished rebooting, the comms coming back online. Joseph winced in preparation for the noise to return. The assault to continue.

  Silence.

  He glanced around at the darkness, confused. The screaming was gone. After thirty minutes of repetition, the sudden absence made him more uncomfortable than its continuation. A chill ran down his spine and across his arms.

  The sound hadn’t vanished without a reason.

  The fear began trickling back in at the edge of his mind.

  This is my rifle. There are many...like it, but...this one is mine. My rifle...is my best friend. It is my...life. I must...master it as I must master...my life. Without…

  He hit the corner of the object. Not a hard corner, but rather a tight curve that allowed his body to wedge slightly into the turn. He put his hand down on the new wall, pulling it back quickly when it began sinking into the darkness, meeting a gel-like resistance.

  What the hell?

  He reached forward again, more gently this time, using his other hand to hold himself in place. His helmet lights shone on the new surface, which looked like thick, swirling oil. He touched the oil, watching how veins of rainbow color spread from the touch, curling and spinning in an intricate web. He kept pushing, making sure he could get a grip in the material to continue along this side of the object.

  He dug in, pulling himself along the new wall. The oily material shimmered slightly when the light hit it, giving him more of a point of reference than before. It helped him regain at least some of his visual sense, which in turn allowed him to stay slightly more focused. The absence of the screaming and the return to normal breathing helped even more.

  This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me.

  He smiled when he managed to get the beginning out without tripping up or forgetting. Had he survived the worst of it?

  “Joseph.”

  His name through the comm took him by surprise. “Queen, is that you?”

  “Joseph.”

  It wasn’t her voice. It wasn’t Commander Siraj or Captain Grant either. He didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Remember what you did?”

  He flinched when the oily slick shimmered in his peripheral vision and then began to spill out from the wall a couple of meters ahead. He reached back, searching for his rifle as the oil stretched away from the wall, taking shape as if there was something trying to emerge from the gel.

  “Do you remember your sister?”

  The protruding gel continued to change shape, until it resembled an infant in a high chair.

  Joseph stared at the image in terror. Not only because of what he knew it was becoming, but because whatever the thing in here was it knew about the event in the first place.

  Somehow, it had reached into his mind.

  Somehow, it had pulled out one of his worst memories.

  “Do you remember?” the voice said. It changed as it spoke, becoming a voice he did recognize. His mother’s voice. “You were supposed to keep an eye on her.”

  Joseph remembered. He didn’t want to. He grabbed his rifle and started shooting at the shape, the rounds blasting through the oil, distorting it only while they passed through. He stopped shooting a moment later. He couldn’t afford to lose his nerve, no matter what this thing did to him.

  And what was it doing? Upsetting him. Angering him. Scaring him. Why?

  “You had one mission, Marine,” his mother said. “Watch your sister!”

  Joseph watched as the oily infant tried to get out of the highchair by sliding down through the bottom. As it did, it’s neck got caught on the safety strap. It slipped from there, suddenly hanging from the belt.

  “It’s your fault, Joseph!” his mother screamed. “You killed her!”

  Joseph couldn’t stop the tightness in his chest or the tears in his eyes. The alien wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. It was his fault. His dereliction of duty. He had left his sister alone for two minutes, just long enough to go upstairs and grab his iPad from the floor of his room.

  By the time he came back down, she was dead.

  They said it was a freak accident. One in a million. And how many times had she been alone in the high chair before, if only while their mom finished making her food or went to get the laundry? But it had happened on his watch. He had abandoned his post. And he had decided two things soon after.

  He was going to be a Marine.

  And he was never going to let anything like that happen again. To anyone.

  Joseph exhaled sharply, his fear shifting to resolve. Whatever this thing was trying to do, however it wanted to mess with his head, he wasn’t going to let it.

  He stared at the image of the oil infant dangling by its neck, hands and legs waving and convulsing, not much differently than Morales had done thirty minutes earlier. He began to calm down.

  The infant stopped struggling. It slowly slid up, back into the chair, and then to its feet. The oil spread to its hand, forming into a spike which suddenly launched toward him. He barely had time to hit his vectoring jets to avoid the strike. The quick maneuver sent him into a spin. He activated the auto-level, trying to get turned back around.

  His helmet lights shined on the infant, and then onto the surface behind it. The oil was undulating now, rippling and shifting and spreading outward into an entire wall of spikes.

  The spikes launched from the wall, hundreds of them rushing toward Joseph and Morales.

  He grabbed his rifle with both hands and started shooting, the force pushing him backward while hitting the oncoming spikes, breaking the solid material into tiny shards that began spreading around the interior. He aimed at the ones closer to his face before shifting to the rest, his building velocity buying him precious seconds.

  This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless.

  He continued shooting, doing his best to stop the spikes. He hit plenty of them.

  He missed plenty of them too.

  The spikes reached Morales first. They didn’t puncture his suit, but rather hit it and detonated, sending oily goo spreading across his suit, the multiple impacts quickly creating enough material to form an imprisoning cocoon. Joseph tried to shoot the spikes coming at his legs, but then his rifle clicked, the magazine dry. The spikes hit him a moment later, the matter stretching around him, climbing up him toward his arms and head. The oil continued to spread, wrapping around his arms and pulling. He tried to fight it. He was too weak. The goop pinned his arms to his sides, holding him captive.

  A group of tendrils stretched out through the darkness, wriggling and writhing as they made it to Joseph, wrapping around him and joining with the material on his suit. Then the tendrils dragged him forward, toward the black goop on the wall, which spread apart into a horrible maw filled with dark teeth.

  The trife were one thing. The squids something else. This was something from a different nightmare. A creature out of his worst vision of hell. He couldn’t begin to imagine how something like this had come into existence, or how it had found its way inside the alien object.

  Unless it was the alien object.

  There was nothing Joseph could do. His hands and feet were bound by the goop, held fast by the tendrils. Even if they were free, his gun was out of ammo and he didn’t think it was hurting the creature anyway.

  The tendrils continued to reel Morales and him in, drawing them within a few meters of the mouth.

  “Prime, this is Queen.” The voice in his helmet sounded like West. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? He found the network status on his helmet. Back online. How? “Prime, do you copy?”

  “Queen,” Joseph replied. “It’s got us. I can’t get loose.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The mouth grew closer, a new tendril appearing from the center of it and reaching out toward Morales. The other tendrils released him as it connected with the rest of the oily material, beginning to tug him in.

  “Queen, split the Guardians, each jetting in a different direction. I’m near one of the walls, probably right in the center.”

  “Copy that. Hold tight.”

  Joseph hoped the creature’s mouth was in the center, or there was no chance his team would ever find him.

  The tongue dragged Morales forward, the teeth within centimeters of the Guardian’s feet. It stopped there. The tether between Morales and Joseph pulled taut, holding Morales momentarily in place. Joseph struggled against the thing holding him, desperately trying to get free, to do something before the alien figured out why Morales was stuck.

  A small, silver round the size of a golf ball appeared from over his shoulder, zipping toward the wall. A second followed, a little higher. A third, a bit lower. They hit the black goop in succession, absorbed by the gel.

  Then they detonated.

  The explosions rocked the wall, the silent detonations throwing black goop out from the wall, a quick burst of fire and energy rippling across the surface like a tidal wave, washing into the mouth and bursting it apart, severing the tongue before it could finish dragging Morales in.

  The tendrils released Joseph, the cocoon melting away. The comms died again when the awful scream returned, the alien crying out in pain.

  Three more silver balls flew past Joseph, followed by nearly a dozen more. He grabbed the tether, yanking Morales hard and pulling him away.

  Morales eyes were open, lips moving as he floated past Joseph. There was no way to hear him over the horrific sound. Joseph wanted to reset his suit again to rid himself of it, but he didn’t want to lose a moment of contact with West and the others.

  The next group of explosives triggered, more gel exploding from the wall and forming into droplets that spread across the darkness. Joseph let Morales float past, the tether going tight and then dragging him behind.

  The screaming faded to a moment of dead silence before West’s voice returned.

  “Prime, I repeat, I’ve got eyes on you. Hold on.”

  Joseph used his jets to turn around, just as West appeared out of the darkness, floating toward him. A spool of wire was hooked to her suit, the line going up and behind her into the black, likely tethered to the rest of the Guardians.

  They met in the middle, West catching him and letting his momentum change her direction. Their helmets touched, her relieved face greeting his exhausted one.

  “I’ve got you,” she said with a smile.

  33

  Grant

  Pioneer. Sick Bay. 11.12.2052. 0400 hours.

  Tyson and Siraj squeezed through the parting doors into sickbay. The front of the module bore a strong resemblance to the others. Workstations in the front, command station in the back. Except the sickbay command station was a flat, circular control surface with only a small gap for someone to slide through into the seat mounted in the center. The seat rotated to enable the user to observe all of the displays. The nurse seated at the station rose as soon as she saw them.

  “Attention. Captain on deck,” she said, snapping to attention.

  “At ease,” Tyson said, walking over to her. He glanced down at the displays when he arrived. Each one showed the interior of a different sickbay room. Three of the twelve rooms were currently occupied by the injured Guardians. “How are the patients?”

  “All are doing well, sir,” the nurse replied. “I believe Guardians Cross and Morales are ready for release.”

  “But not Guardian Nori?”

  “No, sir. Not as far as I’m aware. I’m sure Doctor Okoye can tell you more. He’s with Prime Cross and Second West right now.”

  Tyson nodded. He could see the Doctor in the room with the two Guardians. “Which door leads to the rooms?” he asked, noticing there were three leading from the command center.

  “The one right behind me, Captain,” the nurse replied.

  “Thank you.”

  Tyson and Siraj headed through the door, into a corridor lined by twelve more doors, six to a side, each one marked with a large white stenciled number beneath a small window. Joseph was in the first door on the left, and Tyson stopped in front of it, looking in before entering.

  Doctor Okoye stood in front of a terminal next to the bed where Joseph was resting, eyes half open, the exhaustion clear on his face. Second West lounged in a chair on the other side of the bed, already asleep. Tyson hated disturbing them, but he needed to hear from Joseph before his tired mind and body could wash away the finer details of his encounter with the alien object.

  He grabbed the door handle, turning it down and pushing through the door. West woke up instantly at the sound of the opening door while Okoye glanced back over his shoulder, turning fully when he saw who had come in.

  “Captain Grant,” West said, putting her feet down so she could stand. Joseph struggled to move as if he intended to stand at attention too.

  Tyson put up his hand. “At ease. No need for either of you to move. I know how tired you are. How tired all of the Guardians are.”

  “Yes, sir,” West said, reclining back into the chair.

  “Prime Cross, how are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Probably better than I look, sir,” Joseph replied. “A few hours of shut-eye, I’ll be good as new.”

  “You would be sleeping already,” Okoye said, “if the Captain hadn’t ordered otherwise.”

  “An unfortunate necessity,” Tyson replied. “And I do apologize for the interruption.”

  “No apology needed, sir,” Joseph said. “I’d rather go back to my bunk in the Guardian module than get put under with meds here.”

  “Completely understandable. How is Guardian Morales?”

  “Sleeping soundly,” Joseph said.

  “All of the tests came back normal, Captain,” Okoye said. “For both Guardian Morales and Guardian Prime Cross.”

  “That’s excellent news, Doctor. By the way, your nurse at the front told me you don’t intend to release Guardian Nori?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Might I ask why not?”

  “It may be better to discuss that in private, Captain.”

  “No. Prime Cross is Nori’s superior. He has every right to know how his man is doing.”

  Okoye paused, glancing over at Joseph. “Guardian Prime is in no condition to—”

  “I’m fine,” Joseph said. “If you have more news about Nori than you already told me, I want to hear it.”

  “Very well,” Okoye replied. “The operation to remove the shard from Nori was a success. However, the wound he sustained isn’t fully repairable. He’ll live, but I believe his time as a Guardian is over.”

  “Over?” Joseph said. “You mean...”

  “I can’t in good conscience clear him for a return to active duty. My recommendation is to allow him to enter Metro when we drop off the extraneous crew.”

  “Doctor, I need every qualified body I can get,” Tyson said. “Are you sure he can’t be rehabilitated?”

  “We can fix or replace arms and legs. We can do wonders with muscle and bone. But there’s residual damage to his heart, Captain. We found another piece of shrapnel during the operation. It’s too small and too precariously placed to be removed. His heart is no longer at full function, and any increased workload or stress will only exacerbate the problem. Of course, the decision is ultimately yours.” Okoye looked at Joseph again. “I’m sorry to deliver the news to you this way.”

  Tyson looked at Joseph too. The Guardian’s leader looked stricken, his jaw tight in frustration. “It’s my fault,” Joseph said. “I should have stopped that thing before it reached him.”

  “I’ve watched the recordings multiple times, Prime,” Siraj said. “Don’t do that to yourself. It was impressive that you got to him as fast as you did. There was nothing more you could have done.”

  “There’s always something more I could’ve done,” Joseph insisted.

  “Doctor, I’d like the full medical report sent to my datastore as soon as it’s completed,” Tyson said.

  “It’s already there, Captain.”

  Tyson nodded, suddenly weary. There hadn’t been a minute to spare. “Thank you. Let’s delay any final decision on Guardian Nori until I’ve had a chance to read it.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “What about the alien object, sir?” Joseph asked.

  “What about it, Prime?” Tyson replied.

  “We can’t just leave it hitching a ride on Pioneer. It’s dangerous.”

  “Is it?” a new voice said from the doorway. Everyone in the room turned their attention to the newcomer.

  “Doctor Rose,” Tyson said. “Thank you for coming up. Guardian Prime, this is Doctor Victoria Rose. She’s the lead scientist for the UN research team on board.”

  She moved to the side of the bed and put out her hand. “I’m grateful to meet you, Prime.”

  “Grateful?” Joseph asked as they shook.

  “For your efforts to protect Pioneer,” she explained. “Captain Grant told me about the creatures you encountered earlier. And I’m sure you have a story to tell about your recent experience.”