“You should know,” Craft said, listening into the briefing. “That area is going to be pretty hot and hard to breathe in. Engineering uses special suits to work in that area.”

  “Good to know,” Caleb replied. “Prepare to sweat. And don’t linger back there. It’s vital that we coordinate our attack, and we’ll synchronize after Flores’ report.”

  “Alpha, why don’t we send a Dragonfly in?” Flores asked. “Do you think the trife will know what’s up?”

  “We have no way to be sure, and that makes it too risky.”

  “What if the bastards know I’m in the access passage? What if they come after me? We can’t use comms down there.”

  “You’ll have ten minutes to get in and get out. If you don’t come back, we’ll have to assume you didn’t make it.”

  Flores’ face paled slightly. “Roger that.”

  “Are there any questions?” Caleb asked.

  Sho raised her hand. “Sarge, do you think we’ll be heroes if we pull this off?”

  “You’re already a hero to me, Yen. All of you are.”

  “Oorah!” they replied.

  Chapter 45

  David woke up.

  That alone was a minor miracle. He definitely hadn’t expected he would. Not after the woman in the strange armor had knocked him cold, injecting him with who knew what. She had said she hit the other guy, Pratt, with some sort of sample or something.

  Had she done the same to him?

  His heart began racing at the idea. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want her to hunt him down and shoot him half to pieces.

  He wanted to open his eyes, but he wasn’t sure if he should. As long as he kept them closed, he could deny he was in trouble. He could deny everything. Ignorance was bliss after all, right?

  “I’m telling you, John, the sample was close. The healing factor was working the way we had hoped. I put half a dozen rounds in him to keep him out.”

  “You shouldn’t sound so excited about killing a man, Riley. Especially an innocent Marine. It’s a little frightening.”

  “This is war. You don’t win a war by being afraid to do the hard thing. You heard Pratt on the comm. He would have hit Sergeant Card the first chance he got.”

  “I’m not convinced of that.”

  “I don’t care. It’s not your job to question my job. We have a responsibility to all of humankind. If that means we kill a few Marines, you know what? They were going to die anyway.”

  David kept his eyes closed. He recognized the voice of the woman. She was the one in the armor. Obviously, she wasn’t here alone.

  He heard the hiss of a door. He was tempted to open his eyes, but he thought better of it.

  “You wanted to see me, boss?”

  “Harry, yes,” Riley said. “I want to know what the hell went wrong with our seal? The only thing that was supposed to be able to get into that part of the ship was us.”

  “I don’t know. Did you get a look at the hatch?”

  “Yes. The trife were digging under it like they thought they were moles.”

  “They might have damaged the blocker that kept the seal from fully engaging. That would explain it.”

  Riley sighed. “It’s like they knew there was a space under the door, even if it was only three millimeters.”

  “Smart bastards,” John said.

  “Please,” Riley replied. “You know better than that. They’re acting on feel. Instinct.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that anymore.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I helped the Guardians fix the problem, and I reset the blocker. Once Sergeant Card finishes clearing out the bugs it won’t be a problem anymore.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to do it?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  David swallowed hard. He wasn’t completely sure what Riley was talking about, but it didn’t sound legal. What had he gotten himself into now?

  “What about him?” John asked.

  David shook in response to the words. He tried to get himself under control, hoping they hadn’t noticed his lack of control.

  “He’ll buy us some time before we have to start plumbing the city. If we get lucky, he may even turn out to be the one.”

  “This whole thing is crazy, Rye,” Harry said. “We barely escaped Earth in one piece, and now we’re using the people we swore to help as science experiments.”

  “Not you too. For the greater good, Harry. You do know what that means, right? You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it. That’s the job. Speaking of which, have you taken care of your other job?”

  “It’s done. I still think it’s a bad, bad, bad idea.”

  “That isn’t for us to say. The orders came straight from Command.”

  “We should just go to Earth-6. We can settle down with the colony. We can have a semi-normal life, maybe have a few babies.”

  “With you? Not in a million years.”

  All three of them laughed.

  “Seriously, we have our orders; we follow our orders. It’s that simple. Now, I’m going to get out of this thing, and then we’ll start processing the next sample. I want to make a few tweaks to the genome based on the success we had with Pratt.”

  “What about Ning?” John asked.

  “Apparently the sample made him sick, and that was it. It was a dud.”

  “At least it didn’t kill him,” Harry said.

  “You two are dismissed,” Riley said. “John, start prepping the lab. Harry, get back to work on the translations.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Harry and John said.

  David heard their feet moving to the hatch, and then the hatch sliding open and closed again. He remained still, keeping his eyes closed and doing his best not to move.

  “You can open your eyes, David,” Riley said. “I know you’re awake.”

  David’s heart nearly burst. How did she know? He opened his eyes. He was disoriented at first because he thought he had been lying down. Instead, he was strapped into a chair in a large room. A few different machines were resting against a nearby wall, along with a terminal and display, and what appeared to be a refrigerator. Riley was standing in front of the fridge, an amused expression on her face.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Doctor Riley Valentine,” she replied. “I’m a scientist.”

  “You’re doing experiments on people.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To make better people. People who can survive the trife.”

  “Super soldiers?”

  “It’s a tired term, but essentially, yes. We lost our home world. All of us, including you. But maybe you can help us get it back.”

  “I’m not a soldier.”

  “No, but you’re a living human. That’s all we need right now.”

  “Because you have orders.”

  “You heard that? Good. Yes, because I have orders. Because I don’t accept that some alien race is going to take our Earth from us. I’m not going to lie to you David. I’m going to give you something, and you may not survive it. Not because I want to. Because I have to.”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Who told you that, your mother?”

  David’s face flushed with embarrassment.

  “For argument’s sake, let’s say I want to,” Riley said. “In the sense that I want to save our planet, I do want to. I’ll do anything I have to. Do you think that makes me a bad person?”

  David hesitated for a few seconds before shaking his head. “No.”

  Riley smiled. “Not the answer I was expecting. You’re smarter than half my team.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  Riley walked behind him and he heard her doing something he couldn’t see. She reappeared a moment later, holding a needle in her hand.

  “You said you needed to make some tweaks,” David complained.

  Riley laughed. “This? It’s just another sedative. You weren’t supposed to have woken up already. Sweet dreams, David.”

  She stuck the needle into him.

  He opened his mouth to object.

  He was unconscious before he could make a sound.

  Chapter 46

  Caleb shifted and reached for the knife on his thigh as the small hatch to the access corridor slid open. Eleven minutes had passed since Flores had entered the area, and he was within seconds of accepting she hadn’t survived the recon. Then she emerged from the darkness, sweating but intact, though her expression told him she didn’t have great news.

  “Alpha,” she said. “Mission accomplished.”

  “What did you see?” Caleb asked, the other Guardians filling in around the two of them.

  “I saw the queen. I’ve never seen one before. She was bigger than the others, height and girth, like she lifts weights. Muscled. She had some kind of stuff running down from between her legs, a thick gel.”

  “Did it look like ejaculate?” Caleb asked.

  “Sort of, but thicker, and it was black, not white.”

  “Gross,” Sho said.

  There were trife all around her. At least three hundred of them. They were pressed tight against her and one another. They had sticky stuff on them too, that looked more like ejaculate.”

  “Serumen,” Caleb said. “That’s what Doctor Craft called it. Reproductive secretions. I bet the black stuff contains the eggs.”

  “Probably. I couldn’t see to the floor where the black ichor was running, but I think they may be making new trife already. The whole thing was just like a twisted alien orgy.”

  “And you said three hundred of them?” Gold said.

  “At least.”

  “Alpha, we can’t stab that many before they kill us.”

  “The upshot is they don’t seem very aware of their surroundings,” Flores said. “They just want to reproduce.”

  “They aren’t so different from us after all,” Shiro joked.

  “So we go in, hit them with the P-50, and call it a day,” Sho said. “Does that sound about right?”

  “We can’t keep the plasma active for more than a few seconds inside the interchange,” Caleb said. “If we melt any of the transfer circuits, the whole ship will either explode or lose power. Either of those things would be catastrophic.”

  “So what are we going to do, Sarge?”

  “The queen is the primary target. We have to take her out, and we can’t do that with that many– what did Valentine call them – consorts in there. We need to lure them away.”

  “That’s a good idea, but how do we do it?”

  Caleb closed his eyes, recalling the part of the grid he had committed to memory and then opening them again. “The main hatch to the interchange is about two hundred meters down that corridor. There are going to be sentries stationed there. We take them out, and we go in.”

  “Through the front door?”

  “Not all of us. Sho, you and Shiro will take the main entrance. Kill the sentries, go inside, and blast the nest to get their attention.”

  “That sounds like fun, Sarge,” Sho said sarcastically. “And then what?”

  “If they chase you, run.”

  “That’s your plan? Run?”

  “If they chase you.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “Keep shooting them, but be careful – extra careful – until they come after you, because they will...eventually. If we can get them far enough away from the interchange, you can blast them without worry. Washington and Gold, you’ll go in through the entrance I marked earlier, past the thrust units. You need to be in position when Sho and Shiro launch their assault. Monitor the reaction from the consorts and then hit the trife who refuse to leave. See if you can get them to focus on you.”

  “What if the queen focuses on us?” Gold asked.

  “Even better. Flores, head back through the access passage and wait on the other end. If the queen goes after Wash and Gold, you’ll come out and try to stab her in the back.”

  “Roger that, Alpha,” Flores said. “What if she doesn’t?”

  “I’ll come in through the second passage. If Washington and Gold don’t get her attention, then it’ll be on me to distract her.”

  “The sentries will move in when we attack,” Sho said.

  “If they get in your way, you need to fight through them,” Caleb replied. He paused a moment. “Let’s be honest. There are a million things that can go wrong. There may be another hundred sentries guarding the nest, and just too many of the demons overall for us to overcome. I don’t know where they’re all coming from. It seems like there are more of the things than I saw in the hangar before we launched. But we have to deal with where we are. We volunteered for this because we care what happens to the people in Metro. We give it our best shot, and if we die, we die knowing we tried.”

  “Roger that, Sarge,” Sho said. “I’m ready.”

  “Me too,” Shiro said.

  Washington gave his thumb up, and Gold did the same.

  “Let’s kick their ass,” Flores said.

  “Start counting ticks on my mark,” Caleb said. “Don’t hit the nest until you reach three hundred.”

  “Affirmative,” Sho said.

  “It’s been an honor serving with all of you.”

  “You too, Alpha,” they replied in turn.

  “Here we go. Mark!”

  Caleb started counting the seconds in his head, the same as the rest of the Guardians would. He broke from the group with Washington and Gold, heading down the corridor leading to the thrust units. Flores moved back toward the access passage, while Sho and Shiro moved slowly down the corridor toward the main hatch leading to the interchange.

  When they came together again – if they came together again – the Deliverance would finally be free of its demons.

  Chapter 47

  Washington and Gold split from Caleb at the corridor leading into the thrust units. They were as far aft as they could get, half a kilometer from the large external ion thrusters that were pushing the Deliverance to an ever-increasing velocity, one that would top out at close to seven-tenths the speed of light in a couple of years. The corridor was placed over the top of the thrust units, with hatches leading into the back of the massive, modular engines on one side, and to narrow corridors allowing access to critical parts of the design on the other.

  Like Craft had warned, it was hot. Hotter than Caleb was even expecting. He started sweating the moment the hatch to the rearmost passage opened. By the time he entered the engineering space and descended the metal stairs to the base of the unit, he was wiping perspiration out of his eyes.

  He approached the quick access hatch leading to the interchange, still counting the seconds in his head. He was at two hundred eighty, leaving him twenty seconds to wait for Sho and Shiro to make their move.

  He tapped the control panel to the hatch. It slid open, revealing the nest to him for the first time. It was positioned slightly off-center within the interchange equipment, which were a series of two-dozen large, dark columns arranged in a grid that filled the room. Each circuit had a heavy conduit running into it from above, and another hidden line running out of it below the floor, where they merged and fed back into the thrust units. The cabling was nearly two meters in diameter, rising out of the floor behind Caleb and plugging into the unit. He could feel the electrical field generated by the sheer volume of power being fed into the units, and it would have made the hairs on his arms stand up if they had any room to move beneath his bodysuit.

  The queen was only partially in sight from his position, rising out of the scrum of consorts as a bigger, more powerful version of the aliens he had come to know and despise. She was barely moving, her mouth open, her eyes closed. The other trife writhed and pressed against her and one another, soft hisses escaping them as their thick serumen was passed forward. Caleb didn’t understand the full trife reproductive process, and he didn’t care to understand it. He was more concerned about the way the demons were wrapping around the interchange. Would Sho be able to hit them hard enough to get their attention and not destroy the ship in the process?

  His count reached two hundred ninety-five. It was about time to find out.

  He put his hand on the handle of his knife. The trife hadn’t yet noticed the hatch open. Between his lack of electronics and their distraction, they had no idea he was standing there.

  He reached three hundred at the same time he noticed the shadows change in the room, the main hatch sliding open out of his sightline. There was no reaction from the trife for the first few seconds, and then Caleb heard the rise in pitch of their hissing on the other side of the room and saw flashes of fire reflected on the metal walls.

  Sho hadn’t put the P-50 into stream mode, smartly realizing she might do irreparable damage to one of the columns. She fired bolts into the trife, one of them hitting the trife right beside the queen.

  Her eyes opened as her mouth snapped closed. The consorts around her began to shift, trying to untangle themselves from one another. Sho kept shooting, sending four more bolts into the group. The rounds seared through one trife into another, some of them probably striking the floor. She had to be careful she didn’t hit the conduits beneath the columns, or she might disable the connected thrust unit. Proxima would take twenty years at full burn. Losing one thruster could double the length of the journey.

  The queen stayed where she was, but the consorts began to move, the front lines rushing for the door and the two Guardians standing in it.

  “Here we go,” Caleb said softly. He had chosen Sho because he knew she was a fast runner. Hopefully Shiro could keep up.

  The consorts filtered from the room, hissing loudly as they trailed Sho and Shiro. Caleb continued watching, at least half of the demons abandoning the nest to give chase. One of his plans had finally borne some fruit. He moved from the doorway, carefully crossing to the first column and pressing himself against it. He looked over to his left, finding Gold moving in. He looked the other way, searching for Flores. He had to assume she was there somewhere.