Locked. He found the biometric security panel to the left of the door.

  “Lieutenant, please tell me Valentine gave you a bypass for the security lock?”

  “Confirmed. Triple tap to enter the diagnostic menu, navigate to manual entry, and tell me when you’re there. I’ll read out the hash.”

  “You have to be kidding me.” He checked the map. Time was running out. “She couldn’t have met us up here?”

  “I gave you the option to leave her behind, Sergeant,” Jones replied. “Don’t ...”

  Caleb didn’t catch the last part. A trife came flying through the doors to the loading dock, coming right at him.

  He turned as quickly as he could, getting his forearm up in time for the creature’s claws to scrape across the thicker ballistic armor. He kept turning as it barreled into him, using the carbine as a club. Hitting it in the back of the head, he smashed it into the wall and pivoted again, putting the end of the weapon against it. Firing a single round into its skull, its head exploded while the rest of it slumped to the ground.

  “Banks, cover me,” Caleb said, standing over the demon and tapping on the panel. The menu came up and he quickly moved to the manual entry. “Lieutenant, I’m ready.”

  “4...F...G..6…” Jones started reciting the code, taking way too long between alphanumerics.

  “A little faster, Lieutenant?” Caleb asked. The gunshot was going to alert the trife, and if the loading dock were open they would be on their way.

  “9, 7, E, J, 1, 4, 3,” Jones said quickly. Caleb kept up, the door clicking open as soon as he tapped on the three.

  His helmet beeped, warning him of the trife Banks’ ATCS had just identified, coming fast toward the loading dock doors. He spun around and brought up the carbine, motioning Banks to wait until the demons were on them. They couldn’t afford to waste ammunition.

  Three trife burst through the doors in a manner similar to the first. Banks and Caleb both opened fire, using six rounds to cut them down at their feet. The noise was still a problem, especially as the horde closed in.

  Caleb and Banks moved into the stairwell. Caleb slammed the door closed behind them, and they started to descend.

  Chapter 3

  Caleb and Banks took the steps two at a time, quickly negotiating the narrow stairwell. The stairs were surrounded by thick stone walls, the depth and shape of the stairwell itself intended to protect the underground lab from the attacks occurring above. Not trife attacks. The trife didn’t have weapons. This part of the lab had been added after the war started, hastily constructed by conscripted crews to provide a safe space for the scientists inside to live and work while the planet crumbled around them. Caleb knew from scuttlebutt that there were thousands of scientists around the globe who had been sequestered in similar spaces to work on both the virus and a means to kill the trife. After all, chemical warfare was only illegal when it came to killing other people.

  It may have seemed like a bad idea to keep the scientists in the middle of a war zone, but the truth was the entire damn planet was a war zone. There were few places the trife hadn’t breached, and if they hadn’t, it wasn’t because of a lack of trying. The demons were everywhere, literally everywhere, and numbered in the billions. The virus they carried had initially wiped out over half the human population, and now, after two years, the creatures themselves had taken a huge-ass bite out of the remaining half of the population. Some estimates put the surviving human numbers at one hundred million, give or take. Based on his own experience, Caleb thought it was less than ten million.

  Bottom line, hidden in underground bunkers built directly on the original work-site was just as effective and a hell of a lot more efficient.

  At least until the people in the bunkers needed to get out of the bunkers.

  Caleb checked his HUD continually on the way down, tracking the progress of the horde above and watching Washington, Sho, and Habib work at fending them off when they came too close.

  The deeper Caleb and Banks got, the worse the stone walls started interfering with the comm network. Messages were flashing in the corner of Caleb’s visor, warning him of disconnection.

  It didn’t surprise him when the link to the rest of the Vultures went offline by the time they reached the bottom, the network reduced to just he and Banks. They hurried across a short corridor to a steel blast door, secured with the same biometric panel they had encountered above. Caleb glowered at it as he reached for the door’s handle. If Valentine had left this door locked, he was going to give serious consideration to bugging out and leaving her there.

  He turned the handle and pulled. The door slid open. Banks ducked into the space, carbine up.

  Caleb joined him a moment later, finding himself face-to-face with Doctor Valentine. He spent a moment giving her a critical once-over. She was petite, with sharp eyes, brown hair tied back in a ponytail and worry lines etched deep into her small face. She was in good shape and dressed smartly in a pair of yoga pants, sneakers, and a fitted top under her white lab coat.

  “Doctor Valentine,” he said, recognizing her from the photo Lieutenant Jones had shared during their mission briefing. “It looks like you’re ready to go.”

  “We’re ready, Sergeant,” she replied.

  He glanced past her to the rest of her team, nearly a dozen scientists in all. They were a mix of men and women – both young and old – in various states of exhaustion, anxiety written plainly on their faces. They were also dressed in exercise gear. It was easier to run in, and that little bit of extra mobility might be what saved their lives.

  “So why are you down here instead of up there?” he asked, returning his attention to her.

  “We had to finish packing.”

  “Packing? We’re not taking any more than what you have in your hands right now. The xenotrife are coming on hard. A lot of them.”

  “Wrong, Sergeant. Why do you think Command sent you jarheads in on the ground instead of airlifting us out?”

  “I don’t ask questions about the mission parameters, ma’am.”

  “Because the delivery won’t fit on a chopper. Anyway, you’ll take what I tell you to take. Unless you want to stand here and argue?”

  Caleb glanced at Banks. What the hell was this? He was already pissed at Valentine for making them come to get her and her people. Now she was making demands?

  “All right, look…” He couldn’t stand here and argue her point. There was just no time. “...if it won’t fit on the chopper, how do you expect a pair of jarheads to move it out?”

  “It’s already loaded onto a truck upstairs. We brought it up through the secured service elevator right after the bombing run when we were sure it was clear. The bugs don’t care about science. If it isn’t alive, if it isn’t human, they aren’t interested.”

  “Right,” Caleb replied. “But there’s nothing insect about them. No antenna, no thorax.”

  “Don’t be a smart ass, Sergeant.”

  “If the package is already loaded, what the hell are we doing down here?”

  “It’s safer down here. We loaded the package into the truck, but the west wall of the loading dock didn’t make it through the fighting. No offense, Sergeant, but we’re scared shitless of the trife.”

  “So are we,” Banks said.

  “You wasted almost two minutes of our time getting down here,” Caleb said. “If we die two minutes before we make it, I’m blaming you.”

  Doctor Valentine’s face flushed, and she looked like she wanted to tear his head off. Caleb glared at her. He didn’t care. If his team members died because of her stupid arrogant demands...

  “Banks, take the rear. Let’s see if we can make up some time.”

  “Roger that.”

  Caleb turned back to the doorway, rechecking his HUD. He needed to ascend faster than the rest of the group, to get in contact with the rest of the squad.

  “Banks, I’ll meet you at the top. Keep the civilians moving.”

  “Roger.”

  Caleb started up the stairs, rounded the first corner and threw himself backward, barely avoiding the claw that slashed at his face. He didn’t avoid it altogether. The needle-sharp tips slid against the edge of his visor, leaving light scratches in the laminated glass.

  His back hit the wall of the landing, keeping him from falling over completely. The trife came around the corner, mouth opening wide and revealing its multiple rows of sharp teeth. Caleb didn’t panic. He had been through too much of this kind of thing to panic. He brought the carbine up and fired a single round into the demon’s head.

  “Banks, the trife are in the stairwell. Move up to the front and back me up.”

  “How’d they get in the stairwell? Didn’t you close the door, Sarge?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. They’re here. Just do it.”

  Caleb went up a little slower, continually checking the HUD, waiting for the ATCS network to reconnect to any of the Vultures on the surface. He could hear the trife on the stairs now, their claws scraping the metal risers as they made their way down. He should have sent Washington and Sho to the loading dock to cover that entrance.

  Banks caught up to him at the base of the second platform, moving beside him with his carbine up and ready. The scientists were still further back, moving too damn slow.

  “Maybe we should let one past,” Banks said. “That might hurry them up.”

  “Tempting,” Caleb replied with a smile, just as a pair of trife moved into view ahead.

  They each fired on the one closest to their side, two rounds to kill two trife. Caleb would never argue that the minigun Washington carried wasn’t inefficient overall since its bullet-to-kill ratio was so much higher than the carbine’s standard one-to-one or at worst three-to-one, but sometimes that quick stopping power made a life or death difference.

  He rose another few steps, a quick moment of elation triggering when the ATCS showed the rest of Vulture suddenly reconnecting. Once the mesh network had one of them, it had all of them, and from them it was able to stretch out back to the transport, and from the transport back to Command.

  The elation only lasted as long as it took for his map to update. In the two minutes they had been underground a new trife mass had moved in from the south.

  And it was already on top of them.

  Chapter 4

  “Sho, sitrep!” Caleb snapped into the comm, immediately quickening his pace up the stairs. Banks didn’t miss a beat, staying shoulder-to-shoulder as they rose.

  The first corner revealed three more trife, and they didn’t spare their ammo this time, each firing a burst that knocked the demons down.

  “Sarge!” Sho said. “Bastards came up fast from the south at a full run. The lieutenant barely had a chance to send the warning before they were up on the grid. We had to fall back into the building. We used a charge to seal the corridor leading back toward the door you marked on the ATCS, but there’s a massive hole in the loading dock wall, too big to seal.”

  Caleb found the Vultures on the grid, inside the building near the twin doors leading out to the loading dock. He checked Sho’s ammunition status, noticing she was at fifty percent already. He squinted over to Washington. The minigun wasn’t using rounds. The big man had switched to his sidearm for now.

  “We’re two floors down,” Caleb said. “A few of the trife got through.”

  “Before we got here,” Sho replied. “You should be clear now?”

  Caleb’s tactical showed they were, at least until they reached the top of the stairs. “Do you see a truck inside the loading dock?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes,” Sho replied. There are four of them in here.”

  “Any of them clearly packed with something?”

  “One has a heavy canvas tarp over the bed, why?”

  “Rodriguez,” Caleb said. “Find your way to that truck and get her started. Vultures, your new directive is to defend that truck.”

  “The truck, Sarge?” Sho asked.

  “That’s the reason we’re here, Marine. It also might be our best chance of getting out of this shit alive. Lieutenant Jones, do you copy?”

  “I copy, Sergeant. I’ve got my eyes on the feed. You need to hurry.”

  “Yes, sir. Working on that. Can you spare any support?”

  “Negative. All other teams are pulled back to the transport, waiting to cover you if you make it inside the safe zone... I’m sorry, Caleb, we just can’t risk them out there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caleb replied. “Understood. We’ll make it to you.”

  “I know you will.”

  “You heard the lieutenant,” Caleb said. “We’re on our own.”

  “What else is new?” Habib said. “Typical Space Force bullshit. Go clean up our mess, will you?”

  “Cool it, Anaya,” Caleb said. “Stay focused.”

  He and Banks climbed the last two flights of stairs, bursting out into the corridor. The rest of the vultures had already abandoned the hallway, moving out into the loading dock and doing their best to keep the trife out of the area.

  He heard Washington’s minigun open up again, at the same time he heard the roar of the truck’s engine. He checked the HUD. The red mass was all around the building, and the eastern group was only a couple of minutes away.

  “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, let them be from competing nests,” Caleb said.

  If the trife were bound to two different queens, they would just as soon fight one another. It might be their only chance to escape.

  Caleb stood at the entrance to the underground bunker, waiting for the scientists to arrive. Doctor Valentine was the first one out, and she barely flicked her eyes over to Caleb before running straight to the doors ahead and through.

  “Banks, make sure she doesn’t get herself killed, I guess,” Caleb said.

  “You got it,” Banks said, his grin almost visible through his visor. He chased after her, and a moment later Caleb heard Banks’ carbine start firing.

  “We can’t hold them much longer,” Sho said.

  The rest of the scientists were moving out, and Caleb windmilled his arm, trying to hurry them through the doors and to the truck. The engine was rumbling steadily, ready to go.

  Caleb counted the scientists coming through, following the last one out through the doors and into the loading dock.

  It was like stepping through the gates of hell.

  Four trucks were spread across seven loading bays, each with their backs against the raised platform leading to the doors. Ahead of each bay was a metal roll-up door, all of which were surprisingly still intact. The hole in the wall was on the right side, eighty feet away and large enough for a dozen trife to fit through at one time, while their target was on the left side, furthest away from the damage.

  At least Valentine had made one smart decision.

  Washington was standing at the edge of the platform on the right side, a near constant flame pouring from the minigun, empty shell cases falling to his right like rain. There were already nearly a hundred trife carcasses piled at the hole, the heavy weapon in its element when a single round could cut through three or four of the enemy.

  But more of them were still coming in, and some had taken to the top of the hole, climbing in and up the side of the wall, crawling along the ceiling. Some dropped to the floor. Some landed on the other trucks and tried to leap the gaps from there.

  They swarmed into the space, more dense that Caleb had ever experienced.

  Habib was standing halfway down the platform, trying to keep up with the incoming demons, her rifle sweeping across the room, firing single rounds whenever the targeting reticle on her HUD turned red, the rounds punching into shoulders and legs and heads and chests, knocking the demons down but not always out. Banks and Sho were standing on the hood of the running truck, a large open-bed hauler normally used to transport dirt or debris. They shot at the trife who came too close, managing to keep the immediate area clear.

  The scientists were climbing onto the truck too, careful where they positioned themselves near the green canvas tarp covering whatever it was they had loaded into the vehicle.

  “Washington, pull back,” Caleb ordered, raising his carbine and firing a pair of rounds that cut down a demon approaching the Marine. He pivoted and fired again, taking out another one. He paused a moment to check Washington’s ammo levels. The minigun was at ten percent. “Now!”

  Washington stopped firing and started charging back down the platform. His assault was keeping the trife honest, and now that it had stopped they crashed through the hole like water breaking through a dam.

  “Vultures, fall back to the truck, now!” Caleb shouted into the comm. “Rodriguez put it in gear.”

  “Roger,” Rodriguez said.

  Caleb heard the truck shift gears. It hissed and whined, the engine roared, and it started rolling forward.

  “Habib, let’s go,” Caleb said. Habib was lingering, trying to stave off the entire horde herself. “Habib!”

  She turned to retreat. At the same time, a trife dropped from the rafters over her head, coming down toward her. Caleb shifted his carbine, firing into the creature. The rounds hit it, but momentum still carried it to Habib. Its claws slashed at her, finding the weakest spot on the armor, the small gap between the helmet and the body.

  Time seemed to slow as Caleb watched the claws rake across Habib’s neck, one of them finding purchase and digging in deep, ripping through the edge of the spider-steel bodysuit, blood spraying out behind its fingertip. Habib’s head twisted awkwardly, and then the trife landed on her, its weight not enough to knock her down. It hissed once and fell off, dead.

  It didn’t matter. The damage was already done. Habib dropped her carbine, reaching up to staunch the flow of blood from her neck. It only took Caleb two seconds to reach her, but the blood was already running past her hand and down her armor when he did.