“Any of your friends make it on board?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t think so.”

  “How’d you get through the trife?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “Bullshit. Do they attack you?”

  “Some of them. A lot of them ignore me. I guess because like you said, I’m skinny and weak.”

  “You have health problems?”

  “I was born with a defective lung. They took it out when I was a baby. The doctors said it would grow to fill the space, and I wouldn’t have that much trouble, but they were wrong. It’s hard to breathe with too much exertion.”

  “That’s why they don’t all attack you. Xenotrife are hunters. A lot of people don’t know that. They kill people because they were made to kill people, but at least some part of it is a sport to them. The stronger ones won’t bother with you. The weaker ones might.”

  “Aren’t they all the same?”

  “Are you and me the same?”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Good question. I didn’t come out here for you. I heard noise in here and thought you were a trife. I’m going to kill them all.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Damn right by myself. Guardian Alpha, he’s too weak to get it done. The rest of the crew? They’ll die.”

  “You won’t die?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have super powers.”

  “Like Spiderman?”

  “Do I look like a spider to you, Stringer? I’m like Wolverine. But don’t tell anybody.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a secret. I’m not even supposed to know. That bitch Valentine thinks I was too out of it to know what she was doing to me. She thinks I’m an idiot. She thinks all us Marines are idiots. Maybe Caleb and his lap-dogs. I’m Pratt by the way, Sergeant Sean Pratt.”

  “Nice to meet you, Sergeant Pratt,” David said. “What did they do to you?”

  “Injected something into me. Me and Private Ning. I don’t know what or why. Anyway, I have to find some trife. You’re welcome to come along. Or you can stay here.”

  “Isn’t there somewhere safe I can go?”

  “Metro is locked down. You can head to Deck Twenty-nine and see if the Marines will let you in. Or Deck Eighteen. That’s where Valentine is. She’s liable to stick you with something too.”

  “What’s Metro?”

  “That’s where the civilians are. A city in a starship, if you can imagine that. You can’t get in there. The only people who have a key are already inside, and they aren’t about to risk opening up for you.”

  “So Deck Twenty-nine is my best chance to survive?”

  “Could be. Or your best chance might be staying put here. You don’t have to go in the sink though. There’s a head three doors down. You…” Pratt trailed off, turning around. “Stay behind me, Stringer.”

  David started to calm after talking to Sergeant Pratt, but now his heart began to race again. He reached absently for the revolver that wasn’t there. He could see it closer to the front of the mess. Why did the sergeant have to kick it away?

  “Here they come,” Pratt said. He sounded happy about it.

  The hatch slid open. David could barely see around Pratt’s armored shoulder, but he noticed the inky black flesh of the trife. It hissed as it rushed Pratt.

  The weapon the sergeant carried fired silently, a red bolt snapping from the end of it, and hitting the creature in the chest. It fell to the floor at the Marine’s feet.

  “Come on!” Pratt shouted. “I know you’re coming! Let’s do this!”

  There was a crash to David’s left. His head snapped around to watch the vent cover hit the ground and bounce away. A dark form came in behind it, climbing from the vent along the ceiling toward Pratt.

  The sergeant spun and fired, hitting the demon in the chest. It collapsed to the floor, but more trife were coming out of the vent and through the hatch.

  “That’s right,” Pratt shouted. “Come get some!” He turned back to the hatch and did something with his weapon. When he fired again, a ball of blue and red fire lashed out, hitting the trife in the doorway and melting them to ash almost instantly. “Ha-ha!”

  The trife at the vent used the redirection to dive toward the sergeant. It hit him in the side, claws raking along his arm. David saw them cut through the black part of the armor and into the man’s flesh, blood spraying from the wound. Pratt rocked to the side, taking a step to regain his balance. The trife bit his arm, claws continuing to slash at him. Another demon came out of the vent, and three more charged in from the passageway.

  Pratt growled and turned his body, grabbing the trife on his arm and hurling it at the others. It howled and crashed into one of them, slowing it down. The other two both leaped at Pratt, while the one from the vent climbed overhead.

  The sergeant punched the first one in the head, breaking its neck with a sharp crack. He took the second one on the side, its claws angling for the less-protected space on the side, connecting and cutting through. Pratt held his gun awkwardly and fired into the creature, the blast of superhot gas cutting into his armor too. He gritted his teeth against the heat, looking up as the third demon dropped toward him.

  He caught its head in his hand, turning and throwing it into the wall with a strength David couldn’t believe. The maneuver sent the sergeant off-balance, and Pratt found himself with two trife on his back with more still coming.

  “Get off!” he howled, spinning harshly and then throwing himself back into the long counter. The trife were crushed between him and the metal, and he bounced back in time to fire his rifle again, shooting three more of the creatures in rapid succession. Then he stood fixed and still. Waiting.

  No more trife appeared. The fight was over. Pratt ten, trife zero.

  “That’s right,” the sergeant said, turning back to David. “I told you, Stringer. They can’t hurt me. I’m like Wolverine.” He turned sideways, feeling at the slice in his armor. He ran his finger along it. He should have been bleeding out. Instead, his finger came back clean.

  “I don’t believe it,” David said. People didn’t heal that fast. It was impossible.

  “You can’t see past the visor, but I’m smiling right now.” He walked over to where David’s revolver lay and picked it up. “This is yours. You’re going to need it.” He tossed it to David, who fumbled the catch. It hit the floor near his feet.

  “Civilians,” Pratt said. “Good luck, kid.” Sergeant Pratt turned around.

  A loud, hard crack sounded, followed by a second and then a third. David froze, watching as Pratt’s head snapped back, fragments of bullet, helmet, bone, and brain exploding out from the back of it. The same thing happened to his chest and stomach, three rounds tearing straight through the combat armor and continuing through his body. His arms flailed out as he tumbled backward, coming to rest on top of one of the dead trife.

  David stared at the sergeant for a few seconds, half-expecting him to get back up. The blood continued to flow, the wounds too massive to recover from. David looked up at the woman standing in the doorway. She was wearing armor that made her look like a robot had swallowed her. Hundreds of interlocking alloy strands and bands wrapped around a fitted black bodysuit similar to the ones the Marines wore, though her version didn’t leave as many exposed areas for the trife to cut through. It was sleeker and more fitted, giving him a good look at her athletic frame. She didn’t have a helmet on, and he stared at her heart-shaped face, forgetting himself when he looked into her blue eyes. She was beautiful.

  And she had also just murdered Sergeant Pratt.

  She stared at David, her face hard and cold. Then she laughed to herself, as though his existence was a joke to her. Maybe it was. She was a goddess. He was a peasant.

  “Uh. I’m David Nash,” he said.

  She lowered the gun she had used on Sergeant Pratt. It was relatively compact and mostly rectangular. She snapped it to the side of her armor, replacing it with a pistol. She started walking toward him.

  “You’re the one who turned the water on?” she asked.

  “That was me.”

  “I thought Pratt was here alone.”

  “You killed him.”

  “I had to. The sample didn’t take.”

  “Sample?”

  She had almost reached him. He never considered pointing his gun at her. Maybe he should have?

  “I thought I would have more time to work on it, but this is war. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “If I hadn’t killed him, he would have gone after the rest of the Guardians. The acceleration can cause mental instability.”

  “I still don’t know what you mean.”

  She came to a stop in front of him. “You aren’t supposed to.” She put her free hand up, reaching out and touching the side of his face. It had been so long since anyone had touched him in any way, he leaned into the momentary comfort.

  He heard a small thunk and felt a sudden warmth on the other side of his neck. He looked over as the woman pulled the pistol away from him.

  “Goodnight, David.”

  David tried to say something, but he collapsed before he could finish opening his mouth.

  Riley caught him before he hit the floor, lifting him easily with the added strength of the exosuit. She switched her grip and draped him over her shoulder.

  “Craft, do you copy?”

  “I hear you, Doctor Valentine.”

  “Send Mackie to my position for escort back to Research. I’ve got a new test subject, and we didn’t even have to go into Metro to get him.”

  Chapter 37

  The Guardians reassembled in the CIC. The preparations for Caleb’s plan were gathered near the hatch leading out of the module in the form of a dozen containers, each of them containing various amounts of urine donated by the members of the team.

  If the trife were drawn to human smell, he was going to give them a smell.

  He was also going to give them sound, or rather a lack of it. While he was still too weak to walk around without his combat armor, Washington and Show were both strong and agile enough to manage it. They had removed the armor-plated, rubbery black armor in exchange for simpler and less protective bodysuits – essentially the same spider-steel garment that made the base of the SOS. Caleb had heard from other Marines that the bodysuits hadn’t always been so easily sliced by xenotrife claws. They had evolved and adapted to the protection, their nails growing harder and sharper over generations until they could slice through the material a little too easily.

  “Craft, are you there?” Caleb said through his comm, checking his link with Research. He still wasn’t sure how Hacker Harry — as the Marines had taken to calling the scientist — had managed to connect Research to their ATCS, but he had.

  “Roger, Alpha,” Doctor Craft replied.

  Valentine had been gracious enough to loan them the engineer to help operate the mission and keep them appraised of trife movements through the live zones of the Deliverance. Of course, she had promised Caleb he owed her one for the loan. He couldn’t imagine how she was going to ask him to pay her back.

  “Guardians, comm check,” Caleb said. “Name and designation. Sergeant Caleb Card, Guardian Alpha, check.”

  “Private Yen Sho, Vulture Two, check.” She said it out loud, her lack of SOS meaning she wasn’t wearing an ATCS. It was an obvious drawback to the idea, just like losing the extra protection of the heavier armor. Caleb had to believe the sacrifice would be worth it; otherwise he had already signed off on her death and Washington’s as well.

  “Corporal Gilab Hafizi, Vulture Three, check.”

  Washington waved to the group and then raised his thumb.

  “Private Jonas Washington, Vulture Four, check,” Caleb said for him.

  “Corporal Herman Wagner, Raptor One, check.” Caleb nodded. He had sent Ning to replace Wagner, helping Master Sergeant Gold with the modifications to the pipes, preferring to keep the sick Marine out of the action as much as possible. He expected Gold and Ning to join their teams once the module work was done, but he imagined they would have completed the first approach by that point. With any luck, it would turn out they wouldn’t need the two extra hands.

  Then again, luck hadn’t been on their side yet today.

  “Private Toshi Yasuka, Raptor Two, check.”

  “Private Karl Shiro, Raptor Three, check.”

  “Private Mariana Flores, Raptor Four, check.”

  “Guardians online,” Caleb said. “ATCS is fully networked, save for our two ninjas.”

  “I never thought I would be a ninja,” Sho said.

  Caleb reached over and tapped on the primary terminal’s control surface, bringing the sensor grid up on the main display. He tapped an area near the stern, pinching his fingers and spreading them to zoom in on it until it showed the schematic of a large room surrounded by secondary compartments and corridors. The area was in the dead zone, leaving the life form readings blank.

  “This is the interchange,” he said. “Where the power from the reactors is converted to energy for the ion thrusters. Three percent of that power leaks out into this space, which according to Valentine and her team is enough to fuel about ten-thousand trife.”

  He heard the gasps from the Marines who hadn’t been present when Valentine elaborated on her earlier statements about the interchange.

  “Ten-thousand?” Flores said. “How the hell do we stop that?”

  “There aren’t ten-thousand right now,” Caleb said. “We’re estimating the remaining trife at around six hundred.”

  “Alpha, you do realize there are ten of us?” Flores added. “Eight without Master Sergeant Gold and Private Ning.”

  “I’m aware of that, Private. We’re all aware of that. But we’re still out here, and we’re preparing to go to war. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No, Alpha. I just like to point out the obvious.” Flores laughed, drawing a few smiles from the other Guardians.

  “Six hundred,” Caleb repeated. “The biggest problem is that we don’t know where all of them are. Scratch that. We don’t know where most of them are. Only about fifty are still in a live zone. We’re pretty sure the trife can sense the sensors, which is how they know to avoid them.”

  “We didn’t know that before this?” Private Shiro asked.

  “There’s a lot about the trife we still don’t know,” Corporal Hafizi said. “We’ve been too busy dying to do any real in-depth studies.”

  “Not today, mi amigo,” Flores said. “Not today.”

  “Amen to that,” Wagner said. “Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in a prayer before the coming battle?”

  “Right now, I’ll take all the help I can get,” Yasuka said.

  “I was a Chaplain before the war started,” Wagner said. “Bow your heads.”

  The Guardians all lowered their heads. Caleb was lukewarm about religion, but like Yasuka he wasn’t going to deny any potential edge, no matter how unlikely it might seem.

  “Dear Lord, grant us strength and wisdom as we gird our loins for battle against Satan’s minions. Give us the courage to stand firm in the face of adversity, and allow us to be instruments to Your mighty power as we seek to protect the lives of thousands of innocents. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the Guardians said.

  “And please don’t let us die,” Flores added.

  “Amen,” the Guardians said.

  “As I was saying,” Caleb said, picking up where he left off. “Our first move will be here.” He pointed to the edge of the dead zone on Deck Fourteen, two decks up and fifty meters distant from the interchange. “Vultures will take point, with Raptors on bounding overwatch. Hafizi and I will place the first piss-trap here.” He zoomed in on the space, a Y-junction with a good line of fire to the center. “We’ll back off and see what they do. If we can’t bring any of the bastards out, Hafizi and I will go back in and make some noise, while Raptors fall back to here.” He pointed to another section of the corridor a fair distance from the trap. “We’ll hold position to draw them in, and then Washington and Sho will cut them down.”

  “Alpha, one question?” Sho said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Won’t the trife wise up to the move after we use it? They won’t fall for the trick again.”

  “That’s a definite possibility,” Caleb agreed. “We know the trife on Earth can communicate with one another across distances, though we still have no idea how they do it. Some scientists believe they pass a pheromone through the air. Others have suggested ground vibrations, and a few think the queens can communicate telepathically. The important thing is, if we bring them in we have to kill them all. We can’t give them a chance to carry what they’ve learned back to the others.”

  “Kill them all,” Flores said. “Got it, Alpha.”

  “Once we’ve established that we can pull the trife away from the nest, we’ll start a secondary run here, with the goal of drawing at least twenty percent of them away. We’ll also start placing Dragonflies in the access passageways and vents near the interchange to start mapping and monitoring the secondary transport paths. If that goes well, we’ll head here, only fifty meters from the interchange. It’s the engineering module. The doors are wide. The terminals offer good cover, and it’s the closest point to the nest where we can shoot freely without risking critical damage to the ship. The trick to this is that we have to get all of the remaining trife chasing us here, including the queen, and we have to get them massed densely enough they won’t be able to back away or run from the barrage.”

  “How do you presume we do that, Alpha?” Hafizi asked.

  “Two contact points. Engineering has the same drainage as Marine and Research. That’s where we put whatever piss-traps we have left. We won’t have backup from the operator in there, so we need to be alert and pay attention to the ATCS.”

  “What if they run?”

  “We chase them. But if we wind up in the interchange, it’s knives only, no matter what happens. One bad shot hits the exchangers, and this whole ship and everyone on it is gone faster than I can snap my fingers.”