Hayden’s eyes narrowed. “Another Forgotten Marine?”

  “Another?” Caleb said.

  “Sergeant Isaac Pine,” Hayden said. “He was in stasis since the trife invasion, up until a few months back. He helped me deal with a problem. He’s on Proxima right now, getting cured of a brain tumor. What’s your story?”

  “I was on the generation ship Deliverance. Went to sleep near Mars, woke up almost fifty light years away. Came back through an Axon portal.”

  “I assume that’s the abridged version?”

  Caleb laughed. “We only have time for brief introductions. I’ll be happy to give you all the details later. Nathan tells me it was your wife I sensed reaching out through the Collective.”

  “Apparently,” Hayden said. “I’m away from home because I was looking for an ick to harvest so we could find you.”

  “An ick?”

  “That’s what we call the organ the Relyeh use to communicate through the Collective. Natalia and our Doctor figured out how to wire it up so we could use it. But one use kills the organ.”

  Caleb was silent, his eyes glazing over slightly.

  “Caleb?” Hayden said.

  His eyes came back into focus. “Sorry. You need pheromones to feed the ick, as you call it.”

  “You mean fear.”

  “You’re familiar with the Hunger?”

  “Too familiar. That problem I mentioned? Its name was Shurrath.”

  Caleb’s eyes widened. “You killed Shurrath?”

  “No. I sent him to the Axon homeworld as barter.”

  Caleb stared at him, dumbfounded. “Sheriff…I admired you before I heard any of this. What you’ve done is bordering on miraculous.”

  “Tell that to the thousands of people Shurrath killed before I neutralized him. There’s nothing miraculous about it, Colonel.”

  “You killed Shurrath?” Sergeant Walt asked as she came down the steps.

  “Uh, sort of,” Hayden said.

  “How do you know this Shurrath, Sarge?” one of the other soldiers asked.

  “Nevermind,” Nathan told the soldier. “Sheriff, I think we should continue this discussion on the bridge. Caleb, can you show him up while I get out of this tin can? Walt, you too.”

  “Yes, General.” Caleb motioned to the stairs. “This way, Sheriff.” Walt followed on their heels.

  “Hicks, wait here?” Hayden said.

  “Roger, Sheriff. I’ll get to know the rest of our new friends.”

  Hayden had been on the craft before and was already familiar with the layout. The hatch opened as he and Caleb neared it. The two men entered.

  “Sheriff Duke!” Pyro said, looking back at him with a big smile. Hayden walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it.

  “Chandra, you look better than you sound. I take it Nathan’s treating you well?”

  “No complaints, Sheriff. What happened to Gus’ augment?”

  “I knew you’d finally notice,” Hayden said. “It got ruined saving my life.”

  “Just the way he would have wanted it.”

  “Pozz.”

  Hayden glanced up at the displays around the bridge. They were headed south toward Sanisco, hanging relatively low to the deck.

  “I’m sorry about Edenrise,” Hayden said.

  “Me too,” Pyro replied. “But we’ll avenge them, won’t we, Sheriff?”

  “We will.”

  “Sheriff, I know why General Stacker wanted us to speak in private,” Caleb said. “He wanted me to introduce you to Ishek.”

  “Ishek?”

  “The reason I was able to almost communicate with your wife on the Collective. And the reason those Reapers stopped short of killing you and your people.”

  “And Bryant?”

  “Yes, though I’m not sure you still need him now that you have us.”

  “Ishek’s a Relyeh,” Hayden stated.

  “Yes.” Caleb unclasped his combat armor, shrugging his arm out of it. Hayden noticed the moist, black band around it immediately, but he didn’t react. Like it or not, it wasn’t the strangest thing he had seen lately. “I was captured by a Relyeh. He tried to control me with Ishek, a creature like the khoron called an Advocate. I turned the tables.”

  “How?”

  “That’s a story for another time. It’s important that you understand I’m in control, and I’m loyal to Earth. I went through a lot to get back here.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “To deliver a message to Proxima. But Nathan tells me I need to be careful who I deliver it to.”

  “He’s right. But I might be able to help you with that. My relationship with Proxima is less illegal than Nathan’s.”

  “I would appreciate that, but we have a much bigger problem to handle first.”

  “The tentacle monsters.”

  “They’re called xaxkluth. They’re Nyarlath’s favorite creation.”

  “Nyarlath. I’ve heard that name before.”

  “One of the original Relyeh. One of the most powerful. She’s on her way here, to finish what her brother failed to finish.”

  “She’s been trying to recruit me to the cause,” Hayden said.

  “Really? Interesting.”

  The door to the bridge slid open, and Nathan stepped in. “I see you showed him your little friend. Good.”

  Hayden looked at Ishek, and then Sergeant Walt. “The other soldiers in the hold don’t know about him. But you do?” He took a step toward her. “You’re also sporting a tattoo I’ve seen before.”

  “Shurrath’s mark,” Walt replied. “I was a follower until he was taken from this world.”

  “You’re khoron-infected.”

  “Yes.”

  “All of Shurrath’s khoron are supposed to be dead.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Natalia had told him that, but he couldn’t rule out that she had made a mistake. He looked back at Caleb. “Why is she still alive? She’s probably sending everything we’re saying back through the Collective.”

  “She isn’t,” Caleb said. “Ishek is keeping an eye on her.”

  “I hate to say this, Caleb, but how do I know I can trust you? Between the khoron and the Axon, it’s hard to know if anyone is who they say they are.”

  “You can trust him,” Nathan said. “He saved thousands of lives in Edenrise.”

  “I did my job,” Caleb said. “Like you’re trying to do yours, Sheriff. We aren’t enemies. I want us to be allies. We’re all going to need as many of those as we can get. The xaxkluth are emerging.”

  “I can’t argue that logic,” Hayden said. “If Edenrise fell to the xaxkluth, Sanisco will too. We need to start the evacuation before it’s too late.”

  “General,” Pyro said before anyone else could speak. Her tone drew Hayden’s attention to the primary display.

  “Oh no,” he said.

  “What the hell is that?” Caleb asked.

  “Pyro, get us down there,” both Hayden and Nathan said at the same time.

  56

  Caleb

  “Attention all hands,” Pyro said into the comm. “Prepare for emergency maneuvers. I repeat. Prepare for emergency maneuvers.” She looked back at Hayden. “You might want to sit

  Sergeant Walt left the bridge, hurrying to the seats at the front. The General took his seat at the command console.

  “I’ve got it,” Hayden replied, wrapping his augmented hands around the back of her seat.

  Caleb stared at the dropship’s primary display even as he hurried to the second pilot station and strapped himself in.

  I’m not familiar with that humanoid creature.

  Caleb had never seen anything like it before either. Not even on Essex, the planet where he had taken the portal back to Earth. It was nearly sixty meters tall, with long, lean limbs and mottled, patchy skin, thinner in places to reveal the cordlike muscle beneath. Oversized arms and hands led to a narrow torso, which went up to a twisted nightmare of a head.

  Small eyes peered out from a deformed face, above a mouth that was too large, the jaw hanging toward the base of the neck. The mouth was open, revealing row upon row of grinding teeth, all of them covered in dark stains of flesh and blood from whatever the thing liked to eat. It was naked and sexless, a giant of a thing.

  It was also under attack.

  Six xaxkluth surrounded it. Two more were on its body, their tentacles wrapping around its limbs, the teeth at the end of edge taking bites out of it. The creature looked like it was groaning, its blood spilling down its legs as it kicked out, catching one of the xaxkluth and sending it rolling away. The alien recovered, bunching itself and then charging forward.

  “Goliath,” Hayden said beside him. “It looks like it already killed a few of them.”

  Caleb shifted his attention further out. There were three xaxkluth nearby, their central masses crushed and motionless. “Is that one of the Hunger’s monstrosities?” he asked.

  “No. One of Proxima’s. They made the goliaths to fight the trife. It looks like it’s doing okay against the xaxkluth, but it could use some help. Nate, do you have any extra guns?”

  “Rifles,” Nathan replied. “No revolvers. Sorry, Sheriff.”

  “I’ll make do,” Hayden said. “Pyro, take a run at the group on the ground, and then give us twenty seconds at slow speed to disembark.”

  “Slow speed?” Caleb asked.

  “I can take it,” Hayden replied. “Can you?”

  I think he just challenged us.

  Caleb smiled. He liked Sheriff Duke already. “Affirmative.”

  “Nathan, you with me?” Hayden asked.

  “I don’t know, Hayden. Maybe we should get back to Sanisco? The xaxkluth are getting closer.”

  “We can’t just leave it,” Pyro said. “The poor thing needs help.”

  Hayden didn’t respond right away. He was worried about Sanisco and his family, and he wanted to get back to them as soon as possible. At the same time, Pyro was right. They couldn’t just leave it to be killed.

  “If we help the goliath now, it’ll help us later,” he said. “They aren’t that smart, but they do remember. But if you can get Sanisco on the comm, I’d be much obliged.”

  “I’ll try,” Pyro replied.

  “Fine,” Nathan said. “Pyro, go ahead and make that run on the aliens and then give us enough time to get down there.”

  “Roger, General. Hold on.”

  The dropship shuddered slightly as Pyro guided it into a hard turn, running parallel to the fight for a few seconds to get a better angle of attack. The xaxkluth below weren’t as large as the two they had struggled against in Edenrise, most of them only four meters high. They clearly hadn’t found as much to feed on as the others coming down from the north.

  Thanks to the goliaths, it seems.

  The dropship dipped, plasma cannons unleashing fury as they swept down toward the field. The rounds dug into the dirt around the xaxkluth before finding their moist flesh, burning deep into limbs. One of the shots scored a direct hit on the creature’s main mass, and it writhed violently in response before becoming still.

  Caleb put his hand over the buckle to his restraints, ready to jump up the moment the g-forces eased.

  They passed over the xaxkluth at a hundred meters, rushing past the goliath’s head as its eyes shifted to watch them. It swung a huge arm downward at the xaxkluth, who managed to crawl away before the goliath’s hand smashed into the ground.

  “Go!” Pyro said, signaling them to make their move.

  Hayden was already headed for the door, almost faster than the hatch could open for him. Caleb hit the release for his belt and jumped up, taking the rear behind Nathan.

  The trio raced past the Liberators and Hicks, who hardly knew what was happening. They reacted instantly, getting up and following the group into the hold.

  “Sheriff, get the ramp,” Nathan said, rushing to his armor and stepping into the machine. “Caleb, guns.”

  Caleb went over to the crates they had brought on board from the Bush, lifting open the top of one and grabbing the MR-12s inside. He passed one to Hayden as the Sheriff returned from the ramp control, adding three bullet magazines and a grenade magazine.

  “What’s going on?” Corporal Hotch asked.

  “Rescue mission,” Hayden replied. “Wait here.”

  “I want to help.”

  “We aren’t touching down,” Caleb said. “You can’t make the drop.”

  “But he can?”

  “I’ve got a pair of cyborg arms and a high pain tolerance,” Hayden said.

  “I’m coming,” Sergeant Walt said.

  “Sergeant,” Caleb replied.

  “You need all the help you can get, Colonel.”

  “Fine. You’re in. Grab a rifle.”

  “She can make the drop, but I can’t?” Hotch said.

  “I appreciate your desire, Corporal, but I want you here,” Caleb replied. “That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Hotch wasn’t happy. Caleb appreciated that too.

  “General, better hurry,” Pyro said. “There’s a xaxkluth headed our way. And it’s a big one.”

  “Let’s go,” Nathan said, stepping out of the machine.

  Caleb loaded the grenade magazine and the first of the bullet mags into his rifle. Hayden and Walt did the same, while Nathan grabbed his larger gun. Then all four of them ran to the ramp.

  Caleb looked down as he reached it. They were only five meters above the grass, but still moving at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour. He could hear the vectoring thrusters firing on either side of the craft, helping to keep it in the air at that speed.

  He didn’t stop moving, jumping right before he reached the edge. The xaxkluth was right there in front of him, about a hundred meters away. The goliath was to his right, still under siege from the other aliens.

  He tucked his shoulder as he hit the ground, rolling with the momentum. He hit hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, bouncing a couple of times before sliding to a stop.

  Caleb didn’t waste any time on the ground, jumping up and spinning around. Hayden was on the ground nearby, slowly pulling himself back to his feet. Walt was close too, already up and ready.

  Nathan was the only one spared the crash landing. He floated to the ground on his armor’s jets, landing closest to the xaxkluth and already unleashing hell on it. His railgun made a whining sound as it unleashed its ammunition. It raised its tentacles to protect its central mass, trying to close on the General before it was reduced to jelly.

  Walt’s fire joined Nathan’s, and then Caleb added his. Hayden sat back on his knees, mouth open and trying to get his breath as he aimed his rifle and fired a single silver ball from the grenade launcher.

  It arced high in the air. Too high, it seemed to Caleb. But it came down a few seconds later, evading the xaxkluth’s tentacles and sticking to its center.

  Then it detonated.

  The xaxkluth’s central mass blew out in a mess of gore, the remaining limbs immediately falling still.

  Who is this man?

  Caleb didn’t know much about Hayden yet, but from what he did know, he was glad Sheriff Duke was on their side.

  57

  Isaac

  Isaac entered the bridge of the Capricorn right behind Rico, grabbing the navigator’s seat as Spot rose from the pilot’s station to let Rico replace her. Able was in her familiar place at the command station overseeing the activity.

  Isaac noticed the older woman had changed into a fitted formal uniform, though it wasn’t a style he had seen before. A black jacket, black pants and a dark gray shirt—all of it pressed and perfect. No hardware, no name tag, no decorations of any kind—save a single small ring embroidered over the chest in white thread.

  She wasn’t about to meet with Sheriff Duke without looking like she carried some level of authority, even if it was loosely limited to the people on board.

  “Sergeant Pine,” Able said. “Have you seen Earth from this angle before?”

  Isaac looked up at the displays. The planet was dead ahead—white, blue and green.

  Beautiful.

  And deadly.

  “I got a quick look on the way out,” Isaac replied, sitting and strapping in. “This is better.”

  “It’s my first time,” Able said. “I’ve never been outside the Proxima system before. A few trips to the mining rigs, but otherwise I’ve stuck to Praeton.”

  “And you volunteered for this mission?”

  Able laughed. “Who says I volunteered? But yeah, somebody had to do it.”

  Rico started tapping on the controls. “Why’d you ask me to bring us in?”

  “I thought it was fitting. Plus long-range sensors are freaking out, and I don’t know if that’s because they’re old and broken or because there’s something seriously messy going on down there.”

  Isaac looked at the display on the station in front of him. It was showing the same sensor data as the other two stations. Small red marks covered the planet as if it had measles.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “The marks are unidentified masses,” Rico replied. “Based on prior topographical scans of the surface.”

  “Unidentified masses? Like large groups of trife?”

  “No. The system’s algorithms adjust for life forms. They filter out anything that falls within a reasonable variance. It can’t be anything living. It would have to be huge to show up on the scan.”

  “From what I’ve experienced, I don’t think we should rule anything out.”

  Rico looked over at him. “Let’s really hope it’s nothing alive. It isn’t localized to the Pacific Northwest. Hell, it isn’t even localized to the United States. There are marks across the entire planet.”

  “It can’t be anything alive,” Able said. “The Relyeh ship isn’t here. Where would it have come from?”

  “Good point,” Isaac replied. “But if it isn’t alive, then what is it?”

  “We’re going to find out,” Rico said. “There’s a mark almost directly on top of our target.”