A tone from the transport’s collision warning system caught all of them by surprise. Caleb immediately looked down at the displays in search of the immediate threat, while Kiaan reacted almost instinctively, throwing the transport hard to the left, the instant change in direction sending Dante into Caleb, and both of them into the wall.

  “Shit!” Kiaan cursed.

  Caleb looked over Dane’s head and out the viewport as a metal wedge rocketed past, missing the transport by less than a meter. He recognized the size and shape of the ship immediately.

  “Kiann, get us to the ground!” he snapped. “You can outmaneuver that thing.”

  “Sergeant?” Dante said.

  “It’s a Dagger,” Kiaan replied. “He’s right, Colonel. We have to get out of the air before that thing takes us out of it.”

  “A Dagger? Valentine again? Are you kidding?”

  Caleb’s eyes fell on the ship’s sensors. The clouds must be doing something to them to keep the Dagger invisible. It was above the cover now, and it was slowing and circling back. “See if you can open a channel,” he said. “Full band.”

  “Roger,” Kiaan said, tapping the control surface. “All channels open.”

  “Valentine,” Caleb said. “Valentine, can you hear me? It’s Caleb. We came to help you. Stand down.”

  The Dagger slowed, still changing vectors until it was right behind them. The transport was still a hundred meters from the top of the clouds, and the pods weren’t made for rapid descent.

  “Riley, are you there?” Caleb said. “It’s Card. Stand down.”

  A different tone sounded in the transport.

  “She’s got a lock on us,” Kiaan said.

  “Valentine, damn it!” Caleb shouted.

  The tone continued, the lock set. It changed into a scream, and the transport shuddered. The left pod stopped whining, the sudden return of full gravity pulling the whole thing over. Caleb and Dante tumbled to the other side of the ship, while Kiaan’s body pulled at the restraints holding him in place.

  “Somebody let me off this ride!” Flores shouted from the back.

  Different warning tones sounded, filling the entire transport with noise. Kiaan kept his grip on the controls, operating calmly as they began to plummet. They hit the clouds without fanfare, sinking a hundred meters into them before driving rain, buffeting winds, and flashes of lightning increased the chaos.

  They were going to crash.

  “Brace!” Caleb shouted. The transport continued to sink, falling faster. They weren’t that high to start with. High enough to die.

  At three hundred meters, the clouds vanished and the ground became visible through heavy rain. There was hardly any time to notice it. Large, black shapes all around them, massive pillars of alien construction rising toward the clouds.

  It was dark. Everything was dark. Lifeless. Empty.

  At two hundred meters, Kiaan let out a cry of desperation, pushing the remaining pod to full power and adding max thrust from the propulsion. The transport complained, shaking violently but starting to roll back over.

  At a hundred meters, the transport managed to roll over enough that Caleb could stand. They were still going to crash, but they had a few seconds to try to jump. The SOS might be enough to save them.

  He leaned over Kiaan instead, grabbing the stick with his replacement hand and helping him pull it back. The automatic systems didn’t have the programmed parameters to force it, but he did.

  The transport’s superstructure cracked, the side of the craft tearing open. Wind and rain poured in, but they began to slow. Not much, but enough. Forward thrust provided lift and drove them at a better angle toward the ground.

  “Hold on!” Caleb shouted again.

  Twenty meters. Ten. Five. The transport hit the ground, the damaged pod throwing it sideways into a skid, the wet ground soft enough for the ship to dig in and spin, throwing mud in a rooster tail away from the impact point. The whole thing bumped and rocked as it slid and spun, coming to a jarring rest a few seconds later.

  A few seconds of grateful silence were pierced by Kiaan’s scream. “Whoooooooooo!” he shouted. “Just like the sim!”

  Caleb grabbed his restraint, unbuckling him and yanking him from the seat.

  “Guardians, let’s move,” he said. “Dante, now. Wash, get the door.”

  Washington popped up and pointed. They didn’t need a door. The other side of the craft was wide open. The big Marine pointed at Liam.

  “Him too, hurry!”

  Washington broke the restraints easily before grabbing Liam and throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The other man didn’t protest too much after what he had just been through.

  Washington, Flores, and Paige jumped out of the transport. “Sarge, hurry!” Flores said immediately after.

  Her ATCS picked up the incoming Dagger before Caleb could see it, but he had already guessed it was on its way. It started shooting a second later, bullets lashing into the downed transport as Caleb pulled Kiaan away, with Dante right behind him.

  The entire group ran from the crashed ship. The Dagger’s angle of attack was way too steep. It fired almost straight down at the transport, gaining speed as it descended.

  It hit the craft a few seconds after that in an echoing collision that detonated its reactor, causing a small explosion that shook the ground and picked Caleb up, throwing him forward. He kept Kiaan in front of him, protecting him from the resulting debris and shrapnel that rained down on them. Something hot sliced through his new SOS, burning his arm. He heard Washington grunt in pain, and Paige scream.

  And then it was over. Silence and calm returned.

  “Guardians, report,” Caleb said, getting to his feet and letting go of Kiaan. He could see the pilot was unharmed.

  Washington pinged back that he was okay.

  “A couple of small lacerations,” Flores said. “Nothing major.”

  “I’m okay,” Dante said.

  “My arm,” Paige reported.

  Caleb found the smaller Marshal and rushed over to her. A piece of shrapnel was stuck in her arm through the SOS, blood running around it.

  “Flores, tell me you grabbed the med kit,” Caleb said.

  “I have one patch left, Sarge,” Flores replied.

  “Lucky us.” Caleb reached out, putting his replacement hand on the metal sticking out of Paisley’s arm. “This is going to hurt some.”

  “I’m ready,” Paige said.

  “Good. On three. One…” He pulled the shrapnel out, causing Paige to scream.

  “Shhh,” Liam said. “Do you want every alien within a hundred kilometers coming down on us?”

  “You said three,” she complained.

  “Half the pain is in the anticipation,” Caleb replied.

  Flores knelt beside her. “Help me keep the SOS out of the way.”

  Caleb held the torn halves of the combat armor away from the wound. It was deep, but Paige was lucky it hadn’t hit anything too vital. Flores pressed the patch against it, shoving hard to keep it in place. Caleb could see the pain on Paisley’s face, but she stayed quiet this time.

  It took twenty seconds for the patch to cure. Once it did, it was like having a second, tougher skin over the wound. Paige looked down at it, flexing a few times.

  “Good as new,” she announced.

  Caleb stood and looked back at the transport. It was impossible to tell where the wreck of the carrier ended and the remains of the Dagger began. Smoke was still billowing into the sky, and there were small smoldering fires around them.

  “That wasn’t Valentine, was it?” Dante asked, looking at the destruction with him.

  “I doubt it,” he replied. “But if you told me the Axon AI had remote control over the Dagger or hacked the CUTS system to think for itself, I might be inclined to believe you.”

  It was a frightening thought.

  “Just great,” Liam said. “Now what? We have to walk back?”

  “We might,” Dante said.

  “What is this place?” Flores said.

  Caleb looked around for the first time. They were standing in a muddy wasteland, with a series of alien monoliths ahead of them, rising high toward the clouds. There were four separate towers visible from their position, surrounded by smaller towers that arced away, shrinking as the distance from the center increased. The layout made each of the small cities appear like four individual masses, each one separate from the others. All of the structures were dark. If anything had ever lived in them, they seemed to be gone too.

  “This is where the Axon lived,” Caleb said. “And apparently where they died.”

  He continued scanning the area. Water ran down from the stubble on his head into his eyes. The rain was coming down heavy, leaving them drenched. “We came here to see what we could discover.” He pointed to the closest tower. “We might as well start there.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Liam asked. “We hardly have any food left, never mind ammunition. We should be heading that way.” He pointed toward the mountains.

  “If you want to go walking back into the trife, be our guest,” Flores said. “We’ll take our chances that way. I don’t see any bloodthirsty demons there.”

  Liam scowled but didn’t speak.

  “Come on,” Caleb said. “At the very least, we can get out of the rain.”

  “Sergeant,” Kiaan said, standing beside him and looking more toward the west. “Maybe we should go that way.” He pointed at the center of one of the cities.

  “Why that way?” Dante asked.

  “You can correct me if I’m wrong, ma’am. But doesn’t that flickering remind you of a light?”

  Chapter 51

  The tower Kiaan pointed out was the third farthest from the crash site. But the flickering he saw did turn out to be a light. It was shining from halfway up the central tower, just above a curve in the base where multiple other spires seemed to grow out of the Axon’s too-familiar black alloy. Caleb got the feeling that there was something about the design and layout of the city, but he couldn’t quite put his head around it. That feeling only increased as they got closer and the tall towers and gentle slopes between them seemed to take on an almost organic property. It didn’t feel like the city was as much built as grown.

  It was a three-hour hike through the mud before the group reached the outer edge of the city, where the black alloy began to rise from the muck like sand on a seashore. Other than the Dagger, there was no indication that there was anything else out here, AI controlled or otherwise. There was nothing on sensors. There was no movement. There was just...nothing.

  Except the light.

  It was getting brighter the closer they got to it, but that didn’t make it bright. It was more like somebody had forgotten to turn off a light in their apartment before they left and now it stood out as a beacon of…something.

  For Caleb, it was questions. Too many questions. Was the Axon AI up there, waiting for them? Had it sent the Dagger to attack them? If it could see them crossing the planet to reach it, why wasn’t it doing anything to stop them now? Did it even want to stop them? The Dagger suggested it did. Had that been a test of some kind? Had surviving given it some valuable data to plug into an advanced equation? The Axon communicated in algorithm and concept. Was this version of humankind simply a new one that needed to be explored?

  In hurt Caleb’s head trying to figure out all of the possibilities. The only thing he knew for sure was that everything about this place was alien, and it was reckless to assign human logic to any of it. He had to focus on the mission.

  Get to the light.

  Once that mission was accomplished, then he could worry about whatever came next. Learn what had happened here, and then use it to help the colony. Take one step at a time. That seemed reasonable.

  Everything was made of the dark alloy, and it didn’t take long for the group to realize it was constructed of one single, seamless piece. Shapes rose from it like molded clay, sloping upward not only into towers and spires, but into smaller structures that looked like individual rounded homes, businesses, and other shapes that were decidedly pedestrian. There were channels running between them, valleys that served as streets and passageways across the city. Some of them rose at gentle slopes to match the buildings. Others dipped deeper into the metal to create channels, which strangely enough weren’t holding standing water from the deluge of rain.

  It surprised Caleb that there were no windows on any of the rising forms. There also weren’t any doors. The city had no obvious entry points and no view to the outside. At least, it seemed that way. But he knew it couldn’t be true. He could see the light ahead of them. There had to be some way for it to penetrate the metal. There had to be some way to get in and reach it.

  “Is it just me, or is this creepy as hell?” Flores asked through the comm, keeping her voice low.

  “Definitely creepy,” Paige replied. “Where is everybody?”

  They hadn’t found any bodies or any indication there had ever been bodies. Caleb had never asked Hal how many Axon had gone missing. Did thousands live in the city? Millions? For as much as he disliked the AI, they could have used its knowledge.

  “Hey, look at this,” Liam said. He had wandered off slightly from the group, approaching the side of one of the structures. He reached out and touched the metal, running his hands along it.

  “What is it?” Dante asked, joining him.

  The group had stayed in a reasonably organized echelon formation on the way to the city, but time and aloneness had made the remaining Marshals a little less cautious. Caleb didn’t mind Liam moving away from the group. Unarmed and unarmored, the loudmouth was the least of his concerns.

  “It’s rough here,” Liam said. “It’s hard to tell because of the color and the darkness, but you can feel it.”

  Dante stood beside him. She reached out, running her hand along the alloy. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Not there,” Liam said, taking her hand and shifting it. “Here.”

  She almost pulled away from him, but then she felt something. “He’s right,” she said, looking back at Caleb. “There are scores in the metal.”

  Caleb walked over to them. “Where?”

  “Here,” Dante said, grabbing his human hand and pressing it to the alloy.

  Caleb could feel the marks. They weren't scratched as he would expect from trife claws. They felt more like…

  Bullets?

  “Something hit it hard and fast,” he said. “Something dense.” He kept running his hand along the metal, tracking the marks. “The pattern is pretty consistent with tracking fire from an automatic rifle.”

  “How can that be possible?” Dante asked. “We just got here, and we haven’t shot anything yet.”

  “That’s a great question,” Caleb replied. “ I suppose we shouldn’t assume it’s gunfire just because it appears that way to us. It could be anything.”

  He reached the end of the marks, his hand sliding back over smooth alloy. He was startled when the metal moved beneath his hand, seeming to pull back like a liquid curtain, an oblong hole forming in front of him.

  “Oh, shit,” Liam said, backing up behind Dante.

  Caleb was armored, but he was still unarmed. There weren’t enough loaded weapons to go around, and his replacement arm and training gave him a better fighting chance in a fistfight than most. He stood his ground behind the newly opened space, while Washington and Flores moved in on his flanks, rifles aimed into it.

  “That does not look friendly,” Flores said.

  There wasn’t much light filtering into the area, but the outline of a secondary structure was clear enough. A large, rounded mass fed into a short tube that Caleb was ninety-percent sure was a turret of some kind.

  There was space around the turret. Just enough for someone to walk. “Wash, you’re with me,” he said. “The rest of you, stay alert. We might have tripped a security alarm by opening this can.”

  “Roger,” Dante said. She turned back with Flores and Paisley, taking a defensive position at the doorway.

  Caleb moved in, his helmet’s night vision giving him a better look at the room. The outer shell was pure alloy with silver veins running through the inside of it like the veins of a leaf. The silver seemed to glow in the filtered vision, giving it an ethereal look that he couldn’t help but marvel at. He forced himself to look away, following the rounded shape of the structure to the other side of the turret.

  There was something on the wall in the back, covering the veins. It was dark and thick and looked like it had been liquid at one point. Caleb reached out, scraping it with his finger and bringing it to his face.

  “Wash, is it just me, or does this look like blood?”

  Washington leaned in and nodded.

  But whose blood? And what had happened to the body?

  Caleb looked back at the stain. There were ridges in it, similar to the marks outside. He had said not to assume a projectile weapon caused them. He was starting to believe it was a safe assumption to make.

  What had happened here?

  It couldn’t be the trife. The trife were weapons. They didn’t use them.

  If not the Relyeh, then who?

  Caleb and Washington finished circling the turret, returning to the open space. Caleb checked his HUD. They were still clear. No signs of impending doom. Whatever had happened, it had been over for a long, long time.

  “At least we know how to open the doors,” Kiaan said.

  “It’s a start,” Caleb replied.

  The young pilot was carrying himself well through all of this, especially considering he was soaked to the bone and probably freezing. He was tempted to leave the pilot and Liam behind, someplace dry and safe. He didn’t want to split the group up. If there were any chance to get back to the Deliverance, they needed to take the chance together. He looked back at the light and pointed.

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  Chapter 52

  It took them another hour to reach the base of the central tower, and twenty minutes more to find a means to get inside. It was likely the creators of the city knew exactly how to find the parts of the alloy that were capable of opening, but for Caleb and the others it was a matter of trial and error, running their hands along the walls near the street-like channels and hoping for the best.