“Roger. Standby.” She froze a moment. “I’m in. Sounds like…” She smiled. “Sounds like your girlfriend’s here, Sarge.”

  “Dante?” Caleb replied. What was she doing here? He had asked her to stay behind to keep an eye on the Governor.

  “You answered that pretty fast,” Flores said. “Not denying the girlfriend part?”

  “Not now, Flores,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.” He looked at the drone’s view of the field again. “Interrupt their chatter and get them flanking the position there and there.” He pointed to two large trees near the bank. “When they’re in position, have two soldiers defend the position, and the others laying cover fire against the ADC. We’ll bust out of here and add support.”

  “Roger.” She passed the instructions over, pausing a couple of times. Then she looked at Caleb. “We have a small problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know. Dante sounds tense as anything though.”

  “Is she moving into position?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many soldiers?”

  “Four. They had eight, but the trife.”

  “Understood. Let’s make it worth their sacrifice then.”

  “Sarge, we can’t be confident she won’t shoot at us as soon as we come out.”

  “Dante? She’s on our side.”

  “She has other considerations, and the rest of her people might not be on our side. Have you ever seen Mission Impossible?”

  “No.”

  “Cross, double-cross, triple-cross. It’s crazy. This might be that.”

  “So what do we do, hide in here until they all get killed? We’re done hiding, right Mariana?” Caleb could see the question hit her hard. It was supposed to. “Humans help humans above trife, that’s the way it needs to be. No matter what.”

  Her face reddened, and she nodded. “Roger.”

  Caleb reached for the hatch again. “Give me the mark as soon as they’re in position.”

  Flores was silent, waiting for the word from Dante. The inside of the ADC was calm, but they could all hear the gunfire outside. Caleb’s hand tensed when bullets started pinging off the side of the carrier.

  “Go!” Flores snapped.

  Caleb turned the lock and shoved the hatch open with his replacement arm, hard enough to throw any trife on it into the water. Washington and Flores pointed their rifles through the hole, ready to shoot.

  Two trife were directly above them, but they were hit by fire from the shore and fell away, leaving a clear path out.

  “Let’s go,” Caleb said, grabbing the ladder and climbing.

  Chapter 46

  Sam kept her reticle on the ADC as the hatch flipped open, taking a trife off the top with it. She adjusted her aim and squeezed the trigger, the ATCS helping direct the weapon and allowing her to knock two trife away in rapid succession.

  “Come on,” she said, watching for the Guardians to emerge from the ADC. Paige continued firing beside her, knocking down the trife trudging through the water toward their position.

  They had lost three of the Marshals getting here. Steven, Smith, and Jack, all taken by the mass of trife that had charged them on their way into the jungle. She could hardly believe any of them had made it this far alive. She credited the Marine’s combat armor and ATCS for their survival. The targeting computers made using the rifles almost too easy, and the protection had saved her from multiple hits already.

  She also couldn’t believe humankind had spent two years fighting these things. She was amazed their species had lasted this long. The trife were big, strong, fast and armored. It took nearly a dozen rounds to drop one of them, and there were dozens. Getting to the creek had taken nearly all of their ammunition.

  She had no idea if or how they would get back.

  She saw Caleb’s metal hand breach the hatch. She focused her aim. Ready. “Liam, remember what I told you,” she said. Was it fate that had left half her remaining fighters loyal to the Governor? She had warned the two former guards about shooting the wrong targets multiple times, but there was no way to have confidence they would follow her. In part, she was starting to feel as though Stone had sent them to intentionally counter her orders.

  But both men had ample opportunity to cause trouble during their first interaction with the enemy. They had carried themselves like professionals, responding to her directions without question or hesitation, and doing their best to protect the other Marshals. She had to believe that counted for something.

  Caleb’s face appeared. A trife leaped onto the ADC beside it, right foot stretching out toward it. He turned and tried to catch it, and then a loud report signaled the end of the trife as a single well-aimed round hit it in the head and knocked it down.

  “Got it,” Liam said.

  “Nice shooting,” Sam replied. She squeezed the trigger as two more trife started climbing the side of the ADC, her magazine going empty. “Damn.”

  She reached to the pocket of the SOS, pulling out her last magazine. She dropped the empty one and kissed the fresh one. “Do me proud,” she said, snapping it into the rifle and re-aiming toward the carrier.

  Caleb was fully emerged, standing on top of the carrier and staring right toward her. He was dressed in a dark t-shirt and pants, hardly combat-ready gear. He didn’t seem fazed by it. He ran to the edge of the ADC, firing down at a trife still in the water.

  “Watch your fire,” Flores said over the comm. Her head appeared next as she quickly scurried out of the ADC.

  “Colonel, what the hell?” Paige said beside her.

  Sam wasn’t sure what she meant until she looked at her tactical. There had been a number of red marks a moment earlier. Now they were gone.

  “Shit,” she said. “Marshals, it looks like the enemy has gone dark. Keep your eyes open.”

  “Roger.”

  She looked back at the ADC. Flores must have been passing the information to Caleb, because his face tensed, and his eyes shifted immediately skyward. That caused her to do the same, and she spotted the group of trife right before they left the branches.

  “Look up!” she shouted to the others, redirecting her aim and firing. Her rounds hit the falling demons, tearing into them. Corpses smacked the ground beside her, and she had to back away as another crashed where she had been standing.

  Marks appeared behind her a dozen strong. A trap?

  “Behind us!” she said, spinning. There was nothing.

  Gunfire cracked behind her, and she heard the bullets sink into something close by, near the shore of the river. A screaming hiss followed, and then silence.

  “Watch your six!” Flores snapped.

  “They’re everywhere,” Dante replied.

  “Damn it, Colonel,” Liam said. “We’re going to get eaten alive.”

  “The tactical is broken,” Paige said.

  Sam checked hers again. Red marks flashed in and out in a chaotic pattern. The ATCS had suddenly become completely unreliable.

  “It’s the trife,” Flores said. “They’re doing it.”

  Dante’s heart stopped. What?

  She found the ADC. The Guardians were out, firing at trife on three sides.

  “Marshals, form up,” she said. “Prepare to retreat. Meet at my mark.”

  She marked the tactical. Paige stood up, and they began moving toward it, back to back to watch both sides of the action.

  “I’ve got the mark,” Flores said. “Keep us covered.” Sam watched the Guardians jump off the ADC and into the water.

  “Marshal Eight, we need to cover them. Marshal Six and Five, keep us safe.”

  “Roger,” Liam said.

  He and Aziz were moving in their direction, firing at the closest trife. Sam and Paige focused on the Guardians, keeping them safe while they swam to shore.

  Liam and Aziz converged on their position, the four Marshals creating a natural wedge to protect themselves. Caleb and the other Guardians pulled themselves from the water, breaking toward them at a run. Dante saw the big Marine, Washington, go down as a trife caught him from the side. They flailed in a tangle for a moment, and then the Marine got on top of the demon and fired down into its face. He bounced up, regaining momentum as if the creature was a minor inconvenience.

  “Dante,” Caleb said, reaching them. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  She figured he was going to say something stupid like that. “It’s not by choice, Sergeant. But I appreciate your concern.”

  Caleb’s eyes quickly passed over the other Marshals. “You got ahead of us. Tell me you have a ride.”

  “We have a ride.”

  He paused to shoot at another trife, one round hitting it in an unprotected part of its chest. It collapsed and vanished behind the brush.

  “We’re ready when you are, Sheriff.”

  “It’s Colonel now,” Dante replied.

  Caleb raised an eyebrow.

  “Long story. Come on.”

  The group began to retreat, all heads continually searching the foliage for the demons. Sam’s ATCS continued to give strange readings, with red marks appearing and vanishing almost at random.

  The demons came for them, emerging from the trees, approaching and then backing away. The group hit some of them, leaving a few corpses on the route of their escape. Most of the demons made the maneuvers without being hit, flashing in and out of sight too quickly to target accurately.

  “They’re draining our ammo,” Caleb said after a few rounds of the false attacks. “Wearing us down.”

  “How did you deal with this on Earth?” Paige asked.

  “The trife didn’t do this on Earth,” he replied. “Or on the Deliverance. These trife are different. More advanced.”

  “You have to be kidding,” Liam said. “We’re all going to die.”

  “Check your attitude, Marine,” Caleb snapped. “We stay together; we’ll make it back to the hopper.”

  “The what?” Aziz said.

  Sam sighted another trife. She didn’t fire, not right away. The demon backed off, vanishing again.

  “He’s right,” she said. “Hold your fire. Be ready.”

  The next group of demons came and went. The third group came in.

  “Here they come,” Caleb said. “Fire.”

  Flores and Washington didn’t hesitate. The trife charged forward, stopped, took a step away, and then redirected again. The first few were cut down instantly. How did he know?

  The Marshals rejoined the party as the trife closed in. One rushed out from behind the trees toward Aziz. She pivoted, aimed, and fired.

  Three rounds hit the demon, digging deep but not getting critical hits. Then her rifle clicked empty again. She was out of ammo.

  “Aziz!” she shouted.

  The Marshal heard the demon coming. He turned to shoot it, only to have his gun ripped out of his hands, claws cutting deep through his less-protected fingers and taking two of them off. A round blasted through the trife’s head a moment later, cutting it down.

  “Ahhhh!” Aziz screamed, clutching at his bleeding hand. The reaction left him distracted, and two more trife rushed in for the kill.

  Then Caleb was there, jumping in front of the wounded man and slamming his replacement hand into the trife. The blow threw the demon on its back, and it writhed, trying to get up. Flores shot it, keeping it down.

  The other trife made it to Aziz, using one hand to grab the lip of his helmet and lift it, and the other to slash across the top of his suddenly unprotected neck. Aziz screamed again, his neck blossoming red, at the same time bullets tore into the trife.

  They both collapsed.

  “No!” Liam shouted. “Son of a bitch!”

  He didn’t look outward toward the trife.

  He looked directly at Dante.

  “This is your fault!” he shouted. “This is all your damned fault. We don’t deserve to die. He deserves to die. You’re helping the damned enemy.” He turned his rifle on her. “But I can take care of that.”

  Ali’s eyes widened. She was unarmed. Unprepared.

  Something hit her, shoving her away at the same time Liam fired. She heard the bullet crack on something hard, and she saw Caleb tackle Liam as she hit the ground.

  “Nice friends you’ve got there,” Flores said, staying on top of her. “Sarge wouldn’t forgive me if I let anyone kill his girlfriend.”

  Girlfriend? What?

  “Keep moving!” Caleb shouted. He had Liam in his arms, slung over his shoulders in a carry.

  “Time to go,” Flores said, rolling back to her feet and holding her hand out. Sam took it and got up.

  Then they ran.

  Chapter 47

  Caleb held the idiot over his shoulders, still wondering why he had picked him up in the first place. The man had turned on them, had tried to shoot Dante, and had only failed because Flores got in the way. He was tempted to dump him on the ground and leave him behind for the trife.

  But he didn’t. He carried the man over his back, a heavy, unconscious weight dragging on his unaugmented muscles and his still-sore ankle. He couldn’t go against his beliefs just because it was convenient, and he didn’t believe anyone deserved to be killed by a trife.

  “I’m out!” one of Dante’s people shouted. She was the smallest of the group, though she handled her rifle with natural efficiency. Only now that rifle was empty.

  “Here,” Flores said, tossing her MK-12 to the woman and shifting to plasma. She immediately used the weapon, a pair of bolts lashing out at a trife. Washington had already done the same, passing his MK-12 to Dante and switching to plasma.

  “How far to the hopper?” Caleb asked, shouting back at Dante.

  “Two klicks,” Dante replied.

  “Roger,” Caleb said. That wasn’t close. He started questioning his decision again.

  The group ran through the jungle, trying to conserve what was left of their firepower and at the same time keep the trife honest. Caleb could hardly believe how the jungle had exploded with the creatures, and he couldn’t help but worry the same thing was happening closer to the Deliverance. Was the ship about to come under the same kind of attack? If they didn’t make it through this, there would be no one left to warn them.

  And what was Dante doing here? He didn’t mind the save. It was probably the only reason they were alive. But she was the only one he trusted to do what was right for the city. If there was a trife horde on its way there, the colony was in serious, serious trouble.

  Unfortunately, there was no time to speak with her. Caleb was breathing so hard he wouldn’t have had the breath anyway. He stayed focused on putting one foot ahead of the other, keeping in motion and ignoring the burning in his limbs. He held his MK-12 in one hand, trying not to use it. His aim would be garbage anyway. He expected to give the weapon up to the next person to run out of rounds.

  He scanned the area ahead, looking for any hint of disruption. The trife had shown an ability to mess with their combat systems, or at the very least hide from the ATCS’ sensors. It made them more dangerous. More deadly. They had left Earth for this? He would have felt safer back home. At least he knew that enemy. There was no point worrying about it. He was here, and there was no leaving. There was nothing to do now but fight to survive.

  He was good at that.

  The jungle began to fade away as they reached the beginning of the mountain’s foothills and began to pass through increasingly rocky terrain. The trees were less dense here and the ground vegetation started to vanish. Already-dead trife lay ahead of them, gunned down by Dante and her team on the way in. They passed almost a dozen of them before encountering the first dead soldier, a woman judging by the size and shape of the SOS. She had died to save him, and he wasn’t going to forget it.

  “We’re getting close,” Dante said.

  “Out!” her other soldier said again, voice full of frustration.

  “Here!” Caleb shouted, tossing her his rifle. She caught it and immediately started shooting again, single rounds that seemed to always hit their mark.

  Washington and Flores remained active with her, the more powerful P-50s just enough to keep the tide from turning too sharply against them. Even so, Caleb could tell his Guardians were wearing out and the demons were gaining both ground and numbers. They began succeeding in their efforts to tire out their prey, making Caleb wonder if they would make it to the transport before their defenses collapsed completely.

  And what had happened to Hal?

  The man on his shoulder groaned, starting to come to. “Keep your ass still and quiet, or I’ll leave you here,” Caleb hissed.

  “Huh? Where am I?” the man whispered.

  “I said shut up.”

  The man didn’t speak again. He didn’t try to move. Caleb wasn’t about to put him down. It would take him a few seconds to find his footing, and those were seconds none of them had.

  He caught the sound of a soft whine further ahead. The sound of an engine starting up. They were closer than he thought. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to pick up the pace. The Guardians noticed and followed suit.

  “We’re going to make it,” Flores said.

  Caleb looked back over Flores’ shoulder. There were so many trife behind them. More than they had rounds left to kill.

  Three more demons died, bolts lashing into them. The other trife climbed over them, gaining another step.

  A shape rose from the treeline to his right, a long cylinder on a pair of pods. It wasn’t a hopper, but some kind of odd-looking transport he had never seen before. It rotated as it climbed, and then awkwardly swept toward the path ahead of them. It was too uneven for the thing to land. Was the pilot skilled enough to keep it low and under control?

  They were going to find out.

  A group of trife appeared ahead, climbing out from behind a pair of rocky outcroppings. “Wash, Flores, front and center!” Caleb shouted.

  The two Guardians spun around. Washington pushed forward, getting ahead of the group. The transport was incoming, ready to drop between the trife and them. If it did, the demons would swarm it and try to bring it down.