He kept the idea that they were heading for an ambush in the back of his head. Better to be prepared and be wrong than to walk right into a trap.

  “I don’t like this,” Dante said as if reading his mind. “Where are they?”

  “Good question,” John replied. “I’m getting a little antsy too.”

  “You think maybe Caleb got the energy unit?” Paige asked. “It could be they lost interest in getting the ship ready.”

  “I hope that’s true. I’m not counting on it.”

  “Betting against your friend?” Dante asked.

  “Only because Riley Valentine is involved. She’s going to pull some shit. I hope Cal cuts her down before she can.”

  “Roger that.”

  The passage continued across the center of the city-ship, but Earther squad didn’t need to go nearly that far. They hooked left at the next adjacent passage, which led them a short distance to the teleporter. John and Paige entered the room first, scanning both sides before calling it clear.

  “Paige, Dante, cover the door,” John said. “Hori, I assume you know how to work this thing?” He pointed at the teleporter’s control terminal.

  “Chi Za,” Hori replied, walking over to it. He activated the projection and tapped on a few of the symbols. Then he pointed at the platform.

  “Ready?” John asked.

  “Chi Za,” Hori replied.

  “I hate these things,” Paige said, climbing onto the platform.

  “How can you hate them?” Dante asked. “You can’t even feel—“

  The teleporter activated in a flash of white light. When it dimmed, they were somewhere else.

  The room they landed in was pitch black, so dark it took John’s battle armor a few seconds to begin to compensate, and even then it left the room in a black haze. A glance at the schematic told him they hadn’t gone where they were supposed to go.

  “Hori?” John said, turning to the Inahri soldier. Hori raised his hands. A confused expression shadowed through his faceplate.

  “This isn’t the modulator housing,” Dante said.

  “We need to try again,” John decided, stepping off the teleporter platform and looking for the terminal.

  He didn’t see one.

  “Uh…” He looked around the room, thinking he had missed it. The others did the same.

  “What the hell is this?” Paige said. “There’s no terminal. Does that mean we’re trapped here?”

  “Stay calm,” John said. “This has to be why the Relyeh didn’t attack. They guessed where we were headed and they altered the teleporter controls instead. They sent us somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere with no escape,” Paige said.

  “No. There’s no reason to think they Inahri would put a teleporter in a room with no exit and without a way to use the teleporter again. The Relyeh didn’t have time to install one in some random place either. But we did go where they wanted us to go, wherever that is.” He rechecked the schematic. However the system worked, it was struggling to position them in the city-ship.

  “Which means if there is a door, whatever is on the other side is going to suck,” Dante said.

  “I think we can count on that,” John replied. “But you’re honorary Marines now. You don’t get scared. You get prepared.”

  “Roger, Sarge” Dante replied. “How?”

  “Check your guns, check your nerves, remember who and what you are, and why you’re here.”

  “Roger that,” Paige said.

  “Good. Let’s find our way out.”

  John walked over to the wall in front of the teleporter platform. He looked down at the floor, having learned the easiest way to spot the otherwise invisible passages was to pay attention to the pattern in the metal. The grain of the brushed alloy always seemed to change direction near portals.

  “It’s here,” he said, finding the pattern on the floor. “See. No reason to worry.” He put his hand on it. All it took to open the hatches was to get close to them.

  Nothing happened.

  “You were saying?” Paige said.

  John leaned forward, pressing on the sealed metal. It didn’t liquify and shift out of the way. It remained solid and immovable.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter 45

  “I was right,” Paige said. “We’re trapped.”

  “No,” John countered. “Temporarily contained. I don’t get trapped.”

  “Call it whatever you want, Sarge. Our people are out there dying and we’re contained, temporary or otherwise.”

  “Less bitching, more fixing. Help me think of something.” John turned back to the teleporter. “That thing must get some decent juice to it. Maybe we can use it to power the hatch.”

  “You’re assuming it’s not moving because it’s dead,” Dante said.

  “Unless you have a better assumption?”

  “Not at the moment, Sergeant.”

  “Kiaan, do you copy?” John said, trying to raise the pilot on the comm. “Kiaan, do you copy?” Nothing. “We must be out of range. Down too deep.”

  “According to the schematic Jax passed us, we’re almost as low as we can go,” Dante said, her eyes twitching as she followed the map on her HUD. “This looks like waste control.”

  “Waste control?” Paige said. “We’re in the garbage dump?”

  “I doubt the Axon dump any of their garbage,” John said. “It’s probably all recycled. Reused. It’s good to know, but how do we get out?”

  “Through that door,” Dante deadpanned.

  John looked at the hatch again. “It won’t—”

  He was cut off when it moved aside, creating a rounded portal through the wall.

  “I don’t know if that’s better or worse,” Paige said.

  “The Relyeh sent us here,” Dante said. “They opened the gates. What’s going to come through?”

  John heard an all too familiar hissing echo through the newly opened hatch. “Trife.” He raised his rifle. The demons began to appear on his HUD, the armor’s sensors registering their movements. “A lot of them.”

  “I thought the Intellect shut down all the trife on the ship?” Paige said.

  “The ones within range of the signal,” Dante replied. “And the ones who had the embedded systems. I bet these are the descendants of the originals.”

  “And the Relyeh sent us down here to deal with them,” John said. “Either we clear out what’s left of the trife or we die. They win whichever way it goes. Smart.”

  “Then I guess there’s only one thing to do,” Paige said. “Clear out the trife, and then clear out the Relyeh.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dante said.

  “Knuckle up and let’s do this, Earthers,” John said.

  “Roger that,” Paige and Dante replied. Hori didn’t understand the words, but he seemed to understand the sentiment. He pumped his fist and smiled.

  The squad moved through the open passage, into a short corridor attached to a connecting doorway. John could hear motion on the other side, the trife moving into position, likely planning to ambush them the moment they stepped through.

  “I’ll go out first,” John said. “Draw their interest. You pick them off from back here.”

  “Sergeant, you don’t always have to be the diversion,” Dante said.

  “I’m in charge, which means I do,” John countered. “I’ve watched Caleb do it too many times not to follow his lead. I’m going to haul ass to the middle of the room. They’ll jump me from all around. You shoot as many as you can as fast as you can, understood?”

  “Yes, Sarge.”

  John started ahead. He had dozens of trife already painting his HUD, which was struggling to light them up individually. He assumed they were normal trife, Earth trife, though he doubted that was the case. They were more likely the semi-armored version the Axon had created and used to test the Inahri. They were probably bigger and stronger, and able to punch through the heavy battle armor he was about to rely on to save his life.

  “Here goes,” he said into the comm.

  Then he broke down the corridor, charging to full speed and heading for the open passage. His feet shook the metal floor, the sound of his advance echoing loudly, alerting the trife to his approach.

  He burst into the room, still running, heading for the center and...

  He came to a quick stop, heart rate jumping. This wasn’t waste control.

  It looked like a damned obstacle course.

  There were platforms and false walls, inclines and ropes, blockades, barriers, tunnels, chasms, and other complex terrains and challenges, all of which appeared to have been constructed to pit Inahri against trife. Worse, there were bodies. Heavily decomposed bodies spread across the site, the remains of prisoners the Inahri had sent to this place to do battle. They were in various states of brokenness and decomposition, some splayed out on the floor, others impaled on almost randomly placed sharp objects, and a few piled in the corner as if someone had tried to clean up the mess before dying themselves.

  It was shocking and chilling, and it threw John off his guard.

  It was the opening the trife waited for—the moment of shock that so often brought their targets to a halt. They hissed and rushed him, launching their ambush from everywhere at once.

  John recovered quickly, tracking the abundance of targets as they poured over him. He chose the path of least resistance, raising his rifle directly ahead and opening fire. He hit three trife in the first two seconds before he even had a chance to observe them. They were larger than Earth trife, but not as big as the trife they had encountered in the jungle. They didn’t appear to have the alloy plates fused into them, which was a good sign.

  But there were hundreds of them, and that was bad.

  Four of them hit John almost at the same time, claws slashing down and scraping along his alloy battle armor. John turned as they hit, trying to keep them off balance and managing to toss two of them away. He held his rifle one-handed, using the other to grab a third and throw it from his body.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” John said.

  Paige, Dante, and Hori started firing into the scrum, blue and red flashes striking the trife and bringing them down. John grabbed another and crushed its neck, tossing it to the floor. Another trife came at him from behind, scraping at his back before Dante brought it down.

  John fired on the trife ahead of him. He was beginning to feel invincible in the battle armor. Their claws scraped against it, trying to get through and failing, barely managing to leave light scratches. Was the battle armor what the Inahri had come up with to challenge the trife? Looking at the corpses around him, he didn’t see any of the bulky exosuits. Had everyone who entered this place with one survived?

  He might have been impressed, but he already knew the perils of relying on powered armor. Eventually, the power would run out, and then the wearer would be at the mercy of the demons as though they had never worn armor at all. He had seen it happen to good Marines trapped in bad situations. He didn’t want to wind up like them.

  He shifted and fired, adjusted and fired, turned and fired. He took down trife after trife, throwing off all comers as Earther squad decimated the enemy ranks. He also continued wading through the scrum toward the center, keeping the demons distracted and away from the shooters at his back.

  It seemed too good to be true. It seemed too easy. But then, every trife he shot left him with one less round in his rifle. Every demon he killed was one less the Relyeh Inahri had to worry about. And every second his team spent down here was a second they weren’t topside, seeking out the engineers prepping the modulator housing and slowing down the Seeker’s reactivation and launch. The Inahri outside were dying to give him time to complete the mission.

  He needed to hurry up and complete it.

  He shoved aside another trife, kicked a second, and punched a third. He kept moving for the center of the room, where a short wall led to a small bit of higher ground. He waded through the attacking demons to reach it, scaling the wall while the trife scratched at his feet. He used the height to scan the large chamber. He saw more dead Inahri nearby, surprised to see they were wearing battle armor like his, only it was torn as though they had run into a buzzsaw.

  Something here was able to break through the thick armor. But what?

  It didn’t matter. He spotted an open archway at the far side of the room, the control terminal for a teleporter visible through it. The end of the challenge came when the Inahri made it from one side of the course to the other. There were a few barriers in the way, not to mention dozens of trife, but damn it, the Earthers were going to make it.

  “Dante, Paige, Hori, I’ve got eyes on the exit. Form up on me, and we’ll make a break for it. Watch your tails.”

  “Roger, Sergeant,” Dante said.

  John refocused on the exit. It seemed clear and open. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Despite the number of trife in the room, the whole thing hadn’t been that difficult to manage. Was it simply because they were better equipped than the Inahri slaves who were forced down here to fight?

  He wanted to believe that was the reason, but it didn’t add up. Neither did the armored dead in the corner, closest to the exit. There was a trick to this—something he was missing.

  The other Earthers fought their way to the platform, easily overpowering the trife in their battle armor and killing nearly fifty more on the way. John quickly scanned the room, checking all of the platforms, checking the shadows, and looking at his HUD. They had thinned the ranks considerably in less than a few minutes.

  “Easy peasy,” Paige said, climbing up beside him.

  “Too easy peasy,” John replied. He didn’t trust it. Not with his experience. It suddenly occurred to him that there was one direction the battle armor wasn’t well-designed to look in.

  Up.

  Chapter 46

  John could move his head to look up, but the helmet didn’t move with it. The armor used the sensors and the HUD to help target anything that was directly in front. If the armor couldn’t see it, then he couldn’t see it either.

  He remembered the jungle. The trife that appeared out of nowhere. They didn’t register on any of their sensors. They were invisible until they chose not to be. He grabbed at his helmet, pulling it off his head.

  “Sarge, what are you doing?” Paige asked.

  He didn’t respond, arching his head back to look directly up over the platform.

  The trife queen was suspended nearly twenty meters up, dangling from a mess of tendrils, using them as support for herself and her brood. She had secreted some kind of hard material across them, creating a surface she and her dozens of mates could grip and use in their reproductive process.

  Only the queen wasn’t in the middle of reproduction. The area had been maxed out on the number of trife it could support before the Earthers had entered. Instead, she was looking down at them. Watching them.

  Preparing to strike.

  “Shit,” John said. “Get down!” Dante was the closest to him. He got his arm around her as he dove from the platform, losing his helmet in the process. The queen and her consorts dropped from the sky, plunging toward them.

  John hit the ground with a hard clank, Dante beside him. He didn’t hesitate, rolling to his feet and getting his fist in the face of the first trife that tried to bite his unprotected neck. He heard a scream and looked back in time to see the queen catch Paige in the back as she tried to leap away, a claw the size of the smaller woman’s torso tearing through the metal of the armor and then through flesh and bone.

  She crumpled to the floor.

  “No!” Dante shouted, bringing her rifle to bear on the queen. She started firing, sending a heavy stream of energy into the trife.

  John turned, bounding two steps to Dante’s back and slamming one of the trife with his shoulder, spinning and punching another. Three of them jumped at him, and he cried out in a fury, knocking them all to the ground. He grabbed Dante’s xix from the back of her armor, activating them.

  “I’ve got your back, keep shooting that bitch!” he shouted.

  Dante fired round after round at the queen. She cried out in pain and leaped down from the platform, landing in front of Dante. Her consorts joined her.

  “Need a little help up front,” Dante asked.

  Hori began shooting from the left flank, sending blasts of energy into the trife. Two of the consorts went down in a hurry. The queen made a quick snapping noise, and a group of consorts broke for the Inahri soldier.

  John swung around to Dante’s side as the other consorts closed in. He sidestepped a slash from dark claws, driving his xix under the demon’s arm, energy arcing through it and leaving it a steaming corpse. He tapped them together and then flung the energy at a second creature. It shuddered in place as it died.

  The queen rushed Dante, who cried out in fear, backing up but still shooting. A trife jumped on her back. Then another and another. They couldn’t pierce her armor, but if enough got to her, they could drive her down and suffocate her.

  Hori saw them and started shooting. The consorts were approaching him from behind, taking the long way around, but he didn’t see them coming. Or maybe he did. He focused his firepower on the queen, and on the trife trying to reach Dante, leaving her clear to fire. John watched as two of the consorts jumped Hori, one grabbing at his helmet with a powerful claw, the other taking him from behind. They knew exactly what they were doing. One dislodged the helmet while the other cut his head almost entirely away from his body.

  “We can’t win this,” John said. “We have to run.”

  “What about Paige?”

  “She’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  “No. My HUD says she isn’t.”