“Wait!” Caleb said. “You can’t shoot in there. If you put more holes in the tanks, we won’t be able to recover.”

  Wagner glared at him. “Are you kidding, Alpha? How the hell are we supposed to fight them?”

  They needed to figure it out quick because the trife were organizing, a group of them breaking away and charging toward them.

  “Plasma, stream only,” Caleb said. “Short bursts. Don’t melt the tanks.”

  “Confirmed,” Wagner said, flipping modes on his rifle. He hit the leading demons with plasma, dropping them.

  Caleb dropped his MK-12, retrieving his plasma rifle and switching its mode.

  “Spread out, watch your fire. Don’t hit your fellow Marines!”

  They charged into the filtration room. There were close to sixty trife inside, and as they entered Caleb could hear the vents behind them crashing to the ground.

  “Washington, cover our asses,” he shouted.

  Washington stopped and turned, holding his P-5o with his right hand and pulling his service knife from its sheath on his hip with the other.

  Caleb charged ahead, breaking to the left. There was a larger machine resting on the floor, with a small raised metal platform beside it, offering access to a control station connected to it. A trife vaulted the platform, headed for the controls.

  Caleb fired, his plasma rifle still in bolt mode. The blast hit the demon in the back and knocked it forward. It slumped over the controls and tumbled to the ground.

  He charged the position, eager to defend the system from the demons, who clearly knew how they could hurt the humans without attacking them individually. He saw Sho out of the corner of his eye as she let loose a stream of gas that killed three of the trife on the leftmost tank. That got the attention of more of the demons, and they abandoned the tanks to attack.

  Caleb reached the steps to the platform, scaling it and turning toward the rest of the room. The water was coming from the tank closest to him, which had enough of a gash in it that it was losing water in a hurry.

  He turned to the control panel, quickly wiping the trife blood away and tapping on the surface. Could he shut down individual tanks?

  A hiss got his attention, and he sidestepped as a trife landed on the platform beside him, claws slashing toward his face. They missed him and slammed into the railing, the trife backhanding with them and nearly tearing into Caleb’s unprotected chest. He managed to jump back, switching the plasma rifle to stream and squeezing the trigger. The stream lasted for only a moment but it was long enough to melt the front of the trife. It screamed and fell away.

  Caleb heard a scream from the other side of the room. He looked in time to see a trio of trife tackle Wagner, dragging him to the ground and tearing into him.

  He winced and looked back at the control surface. The controls were simple, and he hit the emergency cutoff on the closest tank, stopping the flow of filtered water to it.

  Someone started shooting, the sound of bullets echoing in the room.

  “Who the hell is firing?” Caleb screamed, vaulting the platform to the floor. He looked back toward the entrance, where a woman in the oddest combat armor he had ever seen was quickly emptying their rifle into the trife, one perfectly-aimed round at a time.

  He only watched for a second, and then he returned his attention to the remaining trife. A pair were rushing him, and he blasted them with a short stream of plasma. He heard a hiss over his head and looked up in time to see the armored Guardian shoot the trife over him. Caleb stepped aside as it tumbled to the floor.

  The intensity of the fighting began to subside; the trife were suddenly overwhelmed despite their superior numbers. They stopped trying to attack and began making for the nearby vents, eager to get away from the carnage.

  “Don’t let them get away,” Caleb said. “Stay on them!” Now that the trife were away from the tanks, he switched the plasma back to bolt mode, firing individual rounds at the retreating trife. The other Guardians followed his lead, cutting them down before they could make it to the relative safety of the tunnels.

  They were all dead within minutes.

  Chapter 43

  Caleb made his way to their interloper. He knew she was female by the way the strange armor wrapped around her body, sitting tight against her breasts and hips. Her helmet was equally sleek, fitted against her head, the visor black over her eyes and the mouth covered by what appeared to be an air filter.

  “Lily?” he offered when he reached her, wondering if she had broken protocol and left the city to help them defend it. This woman was about the right size and shape to be Sheriff Aveline.

  She reached up with her free hand, gripping the helmet and sliding it away from her head. She took a moment to shake her hair loose before smiling at him.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Alpha,” Doctor Valentine replied.

  “What the hell?” Sho said, approaching the pair. “Where did you come from?”

  “Research, obviously,” Valentine replied. “You did ask for our help, didn’t you, Sergeant Card?”

  “I did. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting any. You could have punctured the tanks shooting in here like that.”

  “Please. The guidance systems on the Cerebus wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “Cerebus?” Sho said.

  Doctor Valentine shook her arm. “The armor. It’s a prototype. A product of my work, but not the work itself.”

  “Whatever that means.”

  “You’re lucky this part of the ship is on Metro’s internal network. Sheriff Aveline – Lily – saw you go in here and she begged us to do something. Contrary to what you might think, I don’t want any of you to die.”

  “Then you should have been here sooner,” Flores said, coming over to them with Shiro. Washington approached from the rear.

  “You stripped to your skivvies for a reason, Private,” Valentine replied. “It was good thinking. I hadn’t considered the transmission potential of our radio signals in here. We were bringing the damn things right to us. You figured it out, Alpha. I’m impressed.”

  Caleb glanced at Washington, who raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  “It wasn’t me,” Caleb admitted. “Washington had the idea.”

  Doctor Valentine turned to Washington. “Nice job, Private.”

  Washington flashed his thumb.

  “This area’s clear, Alpha,” Valentine said. “But there’s still the elephant in the room. Or rather, on the ship.”

  “The queen,” Caleb said.

  “She won’t have had time to produce offspring yet, but unless you want to start over we don’t have a lot of time to waste. We need to hit her now.”

  “Do we look like we’re in any shape to launch an offensive?” Caleb asked. Besides Sho’s wounded face, Flores had a gash on her arm, and Shiro looked like he was ready to collapse. Only Washington seemed unfazed by the effort they’d all just expended.

  “The trife don’t care if you’re tired,” Valentine replied.

  “Maybe you can go back there and take care of it for us?” Sho suggested. “ You’re the one with superhero armor.”

  “Which the trife will know is coming from a mile away. Fortunately, I didn’t need to sneak over here.”

  “So take it off and come with.”

  “You asked for help, and I gave you help. That’s the best I can offer.”

  “Are you kidding?” Sho said, obviously frustrated. “Do you see how many of us are left here, Doctor? We need every able-bodied fighter we can get, and it’s clear you’re both able-bodied and a fighter. You’ve seen combat before, and I don’t mean some mop-up drop into a relatively safe zone. Why don’t you admit you’re special forces and quit the charade?”

  “It’s not a charade, Private Sho,” Valentine replied, remaining calm. “I’m a geneticist. You can look it up on the manifest. Yes, I used to be a Marine. And yes, I spent some time in MARSOC. You’re astute enough to have picked up on it, though I have no idea how. That was before the trife. Things changed.”

  Her voice cracked when she said the last two words, showing a sudden vulnerability Caleb would never have expected from her. Everyone had their own trife apocalypse story to motivate them, from the murder of Washington’s wife to the loss of his own parents. He could only imagine what was motivating her.

  Her expression stiffened back to stone. “I’m sorry, Alpha, I can’t go after the queen with you. I have orders from Command, a vital mission of my own to accomplish. I can’t risk my life.”

  “But you can risk ours?” Flores said.

  “Command considers you more expendable than I am. That’s a fact. I would have been well within rights to let you die out here. The water tanks would be more important if we were making the full trip.”

  “But Proxima’s a lot closer,” Caleb said. “Does that have anything to do with your work, Doctor?”

  “Yes, in part. That’s all I’m going to say about it. Caleb, take your team back to the Marine module and reload. Don’t waste any more time. A queen can produce as many as three hundred trife per day given enough consorts and enough energy, and the interchange is producing plenty of energy.”

  Caleb sighed. He knew she was right, but damn he was tired, and he knew his team was tired too. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to close the hatch and let Sheriff Aveline know its safe to move in and reseal it.”

  “What about the vents?”

  “These vents are isolated from the outside.”

  “Then how do you know more of the trife didn’t get into the city?”

  “Because you killed them all before they escaped.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The Law Office has the tools they need to monitor the situation. As long as the stragglers are cut off from the nest and a strong power source, the best the trife could hope for would be to kill a few more civilians.”

  “You make that sound so acceptable,” Sho said.

  “What’s done is done. We stopped them causing complete mayhem in the city. Now you need to stop them outside the city.”

  Caleb nodded. “We’re wasting time. Guardians, let’s go. Washington, take point.”

  Washington nodded and started toward the door, the other Guardians following him. Caleb stayed behind with Valentine.

  “Are you sure you’re on our side, Doctor?” he asked once they were gone.

  “I’m on humanity’s side,” she replied.

  Her wording wasn’t lost on him, even if he didn’t know exactly what it meant right now.

  “Thanks for the save,” he said.

  She gathered her hair with one hand and slid the helmet back over her head with the other.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, her voice muffled by the helmet’s filter. “Good hunting, Alpha.”

  Caleb stared at her black visor as she passed him by on her way to safety. He sighed heavily and rejoined what was left of his Guardians.

  Once more into the breach.

  Chapter 44

  “This is going to hurt a little,” Private Shiro said, leaning over Sho.

  “I can take it,” she replied.

  “I’m sure you can.”

  Shiro took the edge of the patch and slowly peeled it away from Sho’s face. Caleb winced as he saw the damage underneath. That patch had stopped the bleeding, pulling the extra blood to the edges, and started knitting the wound closed. It was long and deep, a pair of scars that would remain long after the damage was fully healed, running from her forehead, across her eye, and down her cheek.

  “How ugly am I?” Sho asked, looking over at him.

  “I don’t think you’re ugly at all,” Shiro said. “I think you’re a brave Marine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It isn’t that bad,” Caleb said. “Maybe when we get to Proxima they’ll be able to get you a replacement eye and do some work on the scarring to make it less noticeable. If you want that.”

  “The eye? Maybe. The scars? We all have scars, don’t we?”

  Caleb turned around and bent his head. Shiro had already patched up Yen and then removed the patch on his own neck, revealing a long, pink scar from his most recent wound. He had others on his body, especially on his hands and arms. It was the price to pay for fighting the trife.

  “I’m going to replace your eye patch,” Shiro told Sho. “You’ll be as good as new soon.”

  Sho laughed. “Yeah, right. As good as new, my ass,” she scoffed, playfully punching him in the arm. “Put the damn patch on and be done with it. We’ve got work to do.”

  Shiro smiled and smoothed the patch over the healing wound before turning to Caleb. “That’s it, Alpha. We’re as healthy as we’re going to get.”

  “Roger that,” Caleb said, glancing over at the other rack in the sickbay. Private Ning was there, asleep. Whatever had happened to him, his fever had gotten bad enough Shiro had recommended sedation. “We’ll worry about Ning when we’re done with the queen. “Let’s head for the CIC. We don’t have any more time to waste.”

  “Affirmative, Alpha,” Shiro said, following Caleb from sickbay, crossing back to the CIC. Caleb had already traded his t-shirt and boxer briefs for a fresh pair and layered a bodysuit over it, offering at least a little more protection than the zero he’d had without his armor.

  Flores was already in CIC, along with Master Sergeant Gold. While Flores had her own combat armor, the Module didn’t have a bodysuit sized to fit the private, who was mostly small and petite except across the chest. It wasn’t a point of attraction for Caleb, but rather a technical challenge he had set Gold to solving. The Master Sergeant’s solution had been to cut two of the bodysuits in half and carefully melt them back together. The top half was intended for a larger man and hung away from her arms and lower torso while still flattening her breasts. The bottom fit pretty well.

  “It’s still better than wandering around out there in a bra and panties,” she said, noticing Caleb’s survey of the solution. She had taken a deep cut across her arm because of the earlier lack of armor.

  “Roger that,” Caleb replied. “It’s good work for such short notice. Where’s your knife?”

  Flores turned around. She had strapped two sheathes across her back, each one containing the long blade that had become standard issue for fighting the trife close in.

  “Gold, patch me into Research.” Caleb watched Master Sergeant Gold tap on the terminal controls and then give Caleb a nod to go ahead. “Craft, is Valentine back yet?”

  “Not yet, Alpha. She’s on her way.”

  He wanted to ask Craft if the good doctor was the only trained special forces in their group, but he had a feeling he knew the answer already. He was grateful Valentine had decided to help them rather than let them die, but the fact she was wearing some kind of advanced armor while they were getting chewed up didn’t sit well with him. How much was she hiding that could have helped him keep his people alive?

  “We’re moving out as soon as my last two Marines are ready,” Caleb said. “Ning’s condition is getting worse. Are you sure you don’t know what happened to him?”

  “If he’s sick, he was sick before we left Earth,” Craft insisted.

  Caleb didn’t respond. It was the same answer – or lie – he’d gotten before, word for word.

  Washington entered the CIC, nodding to Caleb as he joined Flores near the exit.

  “Shiro and Sho will be along in a minute,” Caleb said. “Gold, can you bring up the grid for me?”

  “Of course, Alpha,” Master Sergeant Gold replied. A moment later, the ship’s grid appeared on the primary display.

  “Zoom into the target area again.” As Gold zoomed them into the interchange Caleb waited a minute until Shiro and Sho came into the room, joining Flores and Washington before walking over to them. “Guardians. A-TEHN-SHUN!”

  They came to attention, still and straight. Caleb walked across the line, checking their armor and weapons, making sure each of them had at least one knife. They couldn’t shoot inside the interchange, and it was better for all of them to die than for the whole ship to be destroyed. He had reluctantly banned ranged weapons for the mission, save for a single P-50 that Washington would carry to finish whatever the queen had produced in the last hour, whether they were eggs, embryos, larvae, or any other type of disgusting baby trife.

  “At ease,” he said, satisfied with their preparations. They relaxed slightly, and he pointed to the grid. “I know we looked at the interchange before, but things have changed a little over the last two hours. For one, we lost Hafizi, Wagner, and Yasuka. Three more fine Marines, dead to the trife. I’ve got their names written on my heart with the rest, and I’ll be trading those names for the lives of some of the demons.”

  “Oorah!” the Guardians shouted in reply.

  “I know things look bleak. I know we aren’t where we were hoping we would be right now. But take a look at yourselves. Take a look at one another. You’re all warriors. You’re all Guardians. You’re all survivors. We stick together. The queen is already as good as dead. The nest is already destroyed.”

  “Oorah!”

  He retreated to the terminal, taking over at the controls. “Based on our prior recon, we expect the enemy to have placed sentries along a perimeter outside the nest.” He set markers around the interchange. “These are the most likely locations. Since the whole area is outside the visibility of the sensors, we’re assuming the trife will be in the corridors, rather than tucked into the ventilation shafts or the maintenance passages. We’re going to use their playbook against them. There’s an access area here.” He marked it on the grid. “Flores, you’re small enough you should be able to get inside, and make your way across to here, behind the interchange.” He marked the endpoint. “Scout the space and make your way back to us.”

  “Roger that, Alpha,” Flores replied.

  “Once Flores comes back, we’ll split into pairs, and take a wide approach around the main corridors to these secondary passages here.” He marked the three locations on the map. “They’re essentially service shortcuts to get from the interchange to the thrust units.”