Plasma spewed from Washington’s rifle, bolt after bolt digging into the trife and nearby rock. The transport made it over the big Marine’s head and then lilted back, angled badly as it sank toward the ground. Caleb winced, waiting for it to crash. It straightened at the last moment, coming to a stop a meter off the ground with Washington on the other side.

  That wasn’t where Caleb wanted him. “Wash, damn it!”

  The hatch opened, ready to receive the group. Flores slowed and turned, switching her P-50 to stream mode. She loosed a flare of superheated gas at the oncoming trife, making them slow their approach.

  Dante reached the transport and jumped inside. She turned back, firing at the trife as Caleb heaved Liam off his shoulder and into the craft.

  “Tell Flores and Washington it’s time to go,” Caleb said to her. Then he hopped into the craft, with Dante’s other squadmate right behind him.

  Flores backed toward the craft, her stream keeping the trife at bay. Caleb could see them trying to figure out how to get around it, and he noticed the group further back breaking off to the flanks.

  “Flores, let’s go!” he shouted.

  Her P-50 ran out of charge, stopping suddenly. She dropped the empty cartridge and reached for a fresh one, realizing she had no time.

  The transport bucked slightly, rising and falling as if it hit a bump. Washington rolled beneath the carrier, absorbing the pressure from the pods and appearing in front of the open hatch. He brought his plasma rifle up and fired. Two trife dropped on either side of Flores, and she spun, sprinting for the transport.

  She wasn’t going to make it. The trife had recovered and were already at speed. One of them lunged toward her, claws outstretched to grab her from behind.

  A second trife caught it from the side, tackling it and slamming its claws into its chest. It rolled up, turning on the others and attacking, a quick flash of sharp fingers quickly killing another.

  Flores jumped into the transport, caught by Washington.

  “We’re in,” Dante said. “Kiaan, get us out of here!”

  “Wait,” Caleb said, trying to delay the order. He found the new trife in the group. It had stopped its attack and was looking back at him. Hal.

  It was too late. The transport started to rise, the whine of the pods gaining pitch, the thrusters firing at the back of the craft. A trife leaped toward it, managing to get a grip on one of the pods. Washington leaned out and shot it point-blank in the face, knocking it off.

  “Kiaan, take us home,” Dante said.

  Chapter 48

  “No!” Caleb replied. “We can’t go back to the ship. Not yet.”

  “What do you mean not yet?” Dante asked.

  “We didn’t come out this way for our health,” Flores said. “Obviously.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Over the mountains,” Caleb said. “If we’re going to have any chance of helping the colony, we need to stay the course.”

  Dante’s head shifted. She looked over at her smaller squadmate, who was breathing heavy but otherwise unharmed. Then she looked at the idiot. He was sitting against the side of the transport, his face pale. Then she looked back at Caleb.

  “Governor Stone sent me out here to kill you.” She shook her head. “More like, he sent me out here to die. That piece of shit is proof.” She pointed at the idiot. “Anyway, I have proof Stone lied about the Guardians. I can clear your names.”

  Caleb nodded. “We still need to go over the mountains.”

  “What about the alien? The one who killed the guards back in Metro?”

  “We didn’t have anything to do with that,” Flores said.

  “We left with it,” Caleb said. “It said it needed our help.”

  The idiot laughed. “Bullshit.”

  “Nobody asked you, Liam,” Dante’s other squadmate said. “You’re a damned murderer.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Only because you screwed it up.”

  The man, Liam, lifted his head. His eyes blazed with anger, and he thrust his finger toward Dante. “She got Aziz killed. She got Jack killed. She got Steven killed. And she helped a damned group of fugitives escape the trife. Marshals? Bullshit. We’re a damned escort service.”

  “It said it needed our help,” Caleb repeated, sharply enough to cut off any other statements. “We learned more about this planet in twenty minutes with it than you probably have in days. Especially when it comes to threats to the colony.”

  “So it was a strategic decision then?” Liam asked. “Is that the excuse you’re going with? You helped it bring us here, didn’t you? You brought the colony here to become their slaves.”

  “That’s just stupid,” Flores said.

  Caleb put up his hand. “Flores, I’ve got this.”

  “Roger. Sorry, Sarge.”

  Caleb crouched in front of Liam. “I think you should have a little more respect for the man who just saved your life.”

  “Please,” Liam mocked. “With all due respect, Sarge...we’re all screwed. You only delayed the inevitable.”

  “That might be true,” Caleb admitted. “Maybe Riley Valentine killed us all the moment she changed the Deliverance’s course. But I’d rather die fighting to survive than survive waiting to die. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I would,” Dante said.

  “Me too,” her companion said.

  “Thirded.”

  Washington put up his hand. Liam sank back, defeated by the vote.

  “Better,” Caleb said. He stood and turned to Dante. “The thing we left with, we called it Hal. It said it was an advanced artificial intelligence, created by a race it called the Axon.”

  “The Axon sent those monsters to Earth?” Dante asked.

  “No. According to Hal, Earth is positioned between the Relyeh, who are the enemy, and the Axon. They sent Hal to Earth as an early warning system. When the Relyeh attacked our homeworld, it was supposed to come back here and tell them. It didn’t come back the way it was planning, but it made it.”

  “And?”

  “The Axon are gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Liam asked.

  “They didn’t respond to Hal’s communications. It believes they either fled the planet or were killed. The presence of the trife suggests the Relyeh were here.”

  “Except it doesn’t,” Flores said. “Because Hal swore they wouldn’t circumvent Earth to attack Essex, and two hundred years is nowhere near quick enough for them to move on.”

  “But the trife are here,” Caleb countered. “We all saw them. Anyway, it said the Axon cities are on the other side of the mountains and that we’d learn the truth there. So that’s where we’re going.”

  “I see,” Dante said. “But where is the Axon artificial intelligence?”

  “It was attacking the trife. We left without it.”

  “I didn’t see anyone out there.”

  “It doesn’t look like a person. It looks like a trife.”

  “How—”

  “It’s a topic for another time,” Caleb said, cutting her question off. “The important thing is that we know where to find the answers. But we can’t do that back at the Deliverance. We have to go over the mountains.”

  “You have no idea what you’re going to find,” Liam protested.

  “Exactly,” Caleb countered. “I know none of this is as simple as anyone was hoping, but this is where we are now. We can’t change it, so we should try to adjust. I believe that whatever is on the other side of the mountains is vital to the survival of the colony. Sam, I’m asking you to believe in that too. And in me.”

  “I do,” Dante said. “Believe in you, I mean. So I hope you aren’t lying to me.”

  “He is,” Liam said.

  “Will you shut up?” Flores said.

  “I’m not lying to you,” Caleb said. “We need to go over the mountains. We need to find the Axon city and learn what happened to them. Maybe we can discover something that will either help us survive here or help us take the colony somewhere else.”

  Dante stared at him, considering. “Kiaan set a new course,” she said. “We’re going over the mountains.” She reached up and pulled off her helmet. Her dark eyes burned into Caleb. “If you’re double-crossing us, even death won’t help you.”

  Caleb smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter 49

  “Kiaan,” Dante said, getting the attention of the transport’s pilot. “I want you to meet Sergeant Caleb Card.”

  The pilot smiled, holding out his left hand while maintaining control of the craft with the right. He was keeping it steady at five hundred meters—too high for any trife to reach them and too low to be seen from the other side. Not that any part of Caleb believed that whatever was out there couldn’t already see them. Not considering the technology he had already witnessed.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Sergeant,” Kiaan said.

  “Thanks for the pickup,” Caleb replied, quickly shaking his hand and releasing it. “You saved our lives.”

  Kiaan’s face flushed, and he turned back to the viewport, refocusing on his flying. “I’m just glad I didn’t crash. I’m pretty new at this.”

  “Most of us are,” Caleb said, putting his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You did great.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Kiaan told me you knew one of his relatives back on Earth,” Dante said.

  “Really?” Caleb asked. “What was the name?”

  “Habib,” Kiaan said.

  Caleb felt a chill run down his spine and a wave of sadness wash over him. “You’re a Habib?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled. “I’m glad to hear the family name continued all these years. Whatever she was to you, she was a brave and valuable member of my team to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m not sure what we’re going to see when we crest the peak. Stay as tight to the mountains as you can, and be ready to make evasive maneuvers.”

  “In this thing? I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “That’s all I ever ask.”

  “Kiaan, bring her up,” Dante said.

  He nodded, and the transport started moving again, shifting forward slightly and rising with the slope of the mountains. They were closing in on the snow-capped peaks, and Caleb could see movement below. An animal about the size and shape of a bear but with oddly iridescent fur that rippled and flashed as it moved, the shifting somehow enabling it to vanish from sight every few seconds.

  “Amazing,” Dante said, apparently having noticed it too.

  Caleb turned his head, looking to the rear of the transport. The rest of the group was seated, with Washington and Flores sitting behind a bound Liam, and Dante’s other soldier, Paisley, opposite them. Liam, stripped of his combat armor, had been left sitting in a t-shirt and pants. It was his bad luck that he was only a couple of inches shorter than Caleb, with a similar build of lean muscle. While he had complained about the loss of the SOS and the fact that he was out of action and almost literally chained to his seat, he couldn’t argue the fact that he tried to shoot the sheriff, and that made him an untrustworthy liability in the field.

  In any case, whatever trouble they ran into, they weren’t going to overcome it with numbers. There wasn’t much difference between a group of four or five.

  Washington noticed him looking and flashed his thumb. He had taken a beating already, stitched and patched and bruised beneath his armor, but he was ready for more. So was Flores. It seemed Hal had successfully removed the cancerous cells in her body, leaving her quickly and efficiently cured in a way humankind’s best doctors had never figured out how to achieve. It was impressive and terrifying at the same time.

  If they could rid a body of cancer so easily, what else could they do? He had seen some of it. The hallucinations. The alterations. The infinite power of the energy unit. And yet the Axon were afraid of the Relyeh. Afraid of their demon armies and galaxy conquering power.

  What the hell kind of chance did any Earther have against either one of them? He felt like an ant standing in the middle of a stampede or an atom in the center of a fusion reactor. He had no idea what they were flying toward. He felt like everything about this scenario was out of his control.

  He refused to let that happen. He refused to concede his strength and hope, and he knew the other Guardians wouldn’t either. Neither would Dante. She had been thrown into a worse situation than him, and she had fought her way through it. He glanced at her. He could see the tension and fear in her eyes, but she was standing firm against it.

  She would have made a great Marine.

  She noticed him looking, and she turned her head. “Something wrong, Sergeant?”

  “No,” he replied. “I appreciate that you came to get us. Especially considering what that means for you back at the ship.”

  “I’m a Sheriff. I took an oath to uphold the law. To see justice done in all things. This is justice. You know it. I know it. And Governor Stone knows it. He just doesn’t want it.” She smiled. “Seeing the look on his face when I bring you back to Metro and produce the evidence that he blamed you for something you didn’t do? That’s all the motivation I need to survive this.”

  Caleb smiled back at her. “Roger that, Sheriff.”

  The transport continued to climb, scaling the side of the mountain. They neared the top, the grey and brown rock giving way to snow and ice. Even at this altitude, Caleb caught glimpses of birds and small animals moving in the crevices and folds, surviving at the extreme. This planet was so full of life. It was like Earth had been before the trife. He wanted to live to explore it. He wanted the people of Metro to live to enjoy it.

  That was all the motivation he needed.

  “Knuckle-up back there,” he shouted to the group in the rear. “Shields up.” He took the helmet from the back of the SOS and dropped it onto his head, hearing the ATCS connectors click together. He glanced at the HUD, watching as each of the warriors came online.

  “Here we go,” Kiaan announced as the transport neared the peak of the mountain. Caleb held his breath subconsciously, eyes fixed on the forward viewport and waiting for the big reveal.

  The transport swept over the cap, the ground beginning to fall away from it on the other side.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait a little longer,” Dante said, disappointed.

  The landscape ahead was coated in thick rain clouds, leaving whatever was beneath them completely obscured.

  “Not as dramatic as I was expecting,” Caleb admitted, breathing out. “Let’s hope we’re equally shielded by the clouds.”

  “Colonel, look,” Kiaan said, pointing to the display on his right. The rear camera showed the other side of the mountains from the back of the transport. The white and grey of the snow-covered cap was broken up with what appeared to be debris.

  “It looks like something crashed there,” Dante said.

  Caleb stared at the display. “Or was shot down.” He pointed. “Those look like bullet holes.”

  Kiaan pinched his fingers on the screen, zooming in on one of the larger pieces of debris, confirming his observation.

  “Those are definitely bullet holes,” Dante said. “How?”

  There was only one way.

  “Valentine,” Caleb said.

  Chapter 50

  It was the only thing that made sense. Valentine had gone to the underground armory to gather some gear. Then she went back to the upper hangar and took one of the Daggers. She had made it over the mountains. Something had confronted her, and she shot it down.

  And then?

  There was no sign of a crashed starfighter as Caleb and the others in the transport descended along the side of the mountain, though there were two more debris fields from whatever had attacked her. But that didn’t mean much. All it would take to bring her down was a transmission of the quantum waveform that had taken Hal offline and disabled the ADC and their combat systems, and there was still a lot of area they couldn’t see.

  But even if Riley had crashed, even if she died, she wouldn’t stay that way for long. Was she alive now? Did she know about the Axon and the Relyeh? Was she in the process of collecting data to send back to Proxima? How was she going to do it? The Dagger likely had the means to get back into space. As long as its nav computers were powerful enough, she could program it to go back to the human settlement. It might take a few hundred years, but it would get there.

  Would there be anyone left to recover it and receive the data?

  When Riley had confronted him and Dante in the armory, he had thought her idea was crazy. Now that he was out here? Now that he had learned a little bit about what was happening in the universe? Her original motives were selfish, short-sighted, and cruel. But they were here, and nothing was going to change that.

  Maybe scouting the enemy really was the next best thing to do.

  The transport continued to lose altitude as it approached the clouds. The ship’s sensors were clean. Even the ones that could reach through the weather weren’t turning up anything of interest. If something had attacked Riley, she had either destroyed it or left its operators wary of trying again. They were enjoying a peaceful descent.

  Then again, maybe it was too peaceful.

  The AI had confronted them and fled when they had fought back. What had it learned from the encounter? What decisions had it or its master made? Who was controlling it? Hal insisted the Axon were gone, but it was an Axon machine. Was it making its own decisions? Or were the Relyeh pulling its cords?

  Too many questions. No answers. Caleb sighed silently, wrestling with sudden impatience. He needed to stay focused.

  “We’re at four hundred meters, Colonel,” Kiaan announced. “Assuming the altimeter is working. These clouds might go all the way to the ground.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that,” Dante replied. “Stay low and slow. We don’t want to die by stupidity.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The transport lost a little more velocity, the pitch of the whine from the pods gaining a half-octave.