The patch over the vent thudded again, a small dent appearing in the metal.

  “Madani,” Tyson said.

  “I’m ready, Captain,” she replied.

  Tyson’s heart thudded, his fear trying to get the best of him. He looked around the room at the spacemen seated at their stations, the same frightened looks on their faces he figured he was wearing too. The thudding increased at both vents, the aliens still trying to get through.

  “Let them come,” Siraj said. “I’m ready.”

  Her face was focused and intense over her fear. Her rifle quivered slightly as she pointed it at the vent, waiting.

  “Captain,” Oslo said. “We’ve got another one at the far vent.”

  “One more, Chief!” one of the engineers shouted in the background.

  “Sir, there are four of them here.”

  “Prime, forget the trife, you need to get to engineering. Chief has four at the vents.”

  “Copy that,” Joseph replied. “Pietro, stand down, we’re headed for engineering. Let’s move!”

  “The containment is failing!” Pietro cried. “I can’t stop the—”

  Pietro’s voice vanished from the comm. Tyson could hear his muffled screams through Joseph’s interface.

  “Pietro!” Alesso screamed. “Noooo!”

  “Rose, open the lab door!” Joseph shouted. “Alesso, not now. I need you! West, Bourne, get ready.”

  “Here they come!” Rose shouted from behind one of the stations.

  Tyson’s eyes whipped over to Joseph’s feed. He watched the inner door open, the trife rushing toward it. The lead alien had Pietro’s blood on its claws and dripping from its mouth, and it seemed eager to make another kill. The Dragonflies buzzed in the air nearby, all four of them static until their handlers marked the trife and put them into the lead.

  They only had a few seconds to do it. The trife charged the drones, immediately able to pick up the trail.

  Joseph’s drone moved first, spinning away from the others and zipping toward the outer door. Rose opened it, allowing the Dragonflies and their targets a route for an exodus.

  Tyson’s breath caught as the trife rushed the Guardians, paying them no mind while the drones zipped out the door and away in two separate directions. A loud clatter stole his attention. He snapped his head back toward the vent to see it had finally come loose. Madani fired a split-second later, a bolt of plasma blasting into the vent. Nothing came out.

  “Did I get it?” Madani asked.

  Tyson saw the tentacles emerge from the corner of the vent. “There!” he shouted, pointing.

  Madani fired again, the bolt blasting the tentacles. The alien fell out, a smoking blob of oily goop that thumped wetly on the floor, only to be blasted by a stream of plasma like a flamethrower from Madani’s rifle, leaving it a stain on the deck.

  “Scratch one tango,” Madani announced.

  Tyson wanted to celebrate the small victory, but sudden screaming from PAP stole his attention. He looked for the feed to the location, finding only a black screen.

  “Oslo, what’s your status?” he said, but there was no reply. “Somebody get me visual on PAP. Now!”

  “Sir,” Kaminski said. “The video feed to PAP is offline.”

  Another scream sounded through the PAP control center’s comm, and then it too went offline.

  “Prime, PAP is gone.”

  “Gone?” Joseph replied. “Sykes? Fatcat? Sitrep!”

  “Prime, I’m still en route,” Morales said. “I hear gunfire.”

  “Standby, Fatcat,” Joseph said. “Sykes, are you there? Sykes?” No answer. “Sykes is still green, but his feed is down. There’s some kind of interference with the signal. Fatcat, we have to act as if the entity took him out. We have to assume everyone else in engineering is dead.”

  Tyson heard the words like a rocket punch to the gut. He stumbled forward, catching himself on the side of the holotable, suddenly nauseous. He was struggling to keep up with the chaos. Too many pieces were moving at the same time. Too many aliens had infiltrated the ship. How the hell did this happen?

  “Captain,” Madani said. “I’m close. I should back Morales up. Captain?”

  Tyson looked at her. He couldn’t think straight. His people needed him, and he was panicking. He had to pull himself together.

  A second clatter sounded, the other vent cover giving way. The alien didn’t try to hide or wait in the darkness. It fell from the vent with the aluminum patch, a fist-sized ball of tentacles that landed on one of the forward workstations, right in front of a terrified spaceman.

  Madani and Siraj both fired, their plasma ripping through the station’s display as the alien lunged at the seaman. Tyson watched in horror as the creature grabbed onto the crewman’s face. She screamed, but there was nothing anyone could do but watch it vanish into her open mouth.

  She stood and turned toward the others. “I hunger,” she said ominously.

  “Eat this,” Siraj replied, firing a single round. The bolt of superheated plasma tore through her forehead, leaving a large hole. She dropped like a stone, the alien squeezing out from the wound. Madani fried it before it went any further.

  “Prime, we need backup at PAP,” Tyson said. “I can’t spare Madani.”

  “We’ve got four Guardians and four trife,” Joseph replied.

  “There might be someone alive in there. You need to get in ASAP, and Morales can’t do it alone.”

  Three rapid heartbeats passed before Joseph answered. “Yes, sir. West, I’m cutting mine loose and heading for engineering.”

  “Copy that, Prime. We can do it with three.”

  Tyson found Joseph’s feed, watching as he put three plasma bolts into the back of the trife running ahead of him. The creature collapsed, the drone staying a few meters ahead of its suddenly prone form while Joseph jumped over it, running for the stairwell that would bring him to PAP control.

  “Scratch one trife,” Joseph said. “Fatcat, I’m on my way. Keep an eye on the exit but do not engage unless fired upon.”

  “Copy that, Prime,” Morales replied.

  Tyson saw a dark shape out of the corner of his eye, jumping back as a third alien came out of the closer vent and landed on the holotable. He stared it down as it raised its tentacles toward him. It had no eyes, no mouth, no visible sensory organs at all. But it knew he was there, and it threw itself at him while he remained paralyzed.

  A plasma bolt caught it halfway between the holotable and his face, burning it at the same time it pushed it into the front side of the command station. Madani jumped onto the holotable, pointing her rifle down and firing again, taking it out.

  She looked back at Tyson. “Captain, we can’t stay here.”

  Tyson nodded. They were too vulnerable with the vents. “Everybody off the bridge. There’s a storage compartment next to the conference room. Rollins, lead them in.”

  “Aye aye sir,” Rollins replied. “Let’s go spacers. Move it.”

  “Commander, we need to put the ship on auto.”

  “It’s too soon,” Siraj replied.

  “If we don’t do it now, it may be too late. The contingencies are there for a reason.”

  “Yes, sir.” She ran past him to the command station, falling into the seat and beginning to tap on the control board. “We need to update the navigation calculations. And as soon as I put the ship on auto, it’ll see we’re too slow and force acceleration.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Tyson said. “Can you do anything to keep it beneath the limits of the counter-inertial generators?”

  “Let me see,” Siraj said, still tapping on the control board. “Not completely. I can get it down to point two gs. Anything more and it’ll force the autonav to disengage.”

  “What about adding more power to the generators?”

  “We might blow them out. If you want Pioneer to stand any chance of reaching Avalon, we can’t let that happen, especially if our engineers are dead.”

  Tyson winced at the statement. At least the g-force would affect everything in the ship equally. It was probably going to scare the hell out of the civilians in Metro, and maybe cause some dishes to fall over or drinks to spill, but it needed to be done. If they didn’t survive this, the ship still needed to carry its cargo to its new home.

  He could only hope the aliens would all be dead or gone by then.

  If not? He couldn’t bear to think about it. “Do what you can. Quickly.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Siraj said. “Just a few more seconds. The calculations are almost done.”

  Tyson saw Madani move, pivoting on top of the holotable and opening fire toward the front of the bridge, sending plasma bolts through another workstation. The station sparked and smoked, the alien emerging from the cover, flying through the air toward the Guardian. It landed on her helmet, tentacles reaching nimbly for the clasps to tear it away from her head.

  Siraj’s rifle rested against the side of the command station. Tyson grabbed it, bringing it up and sighting down the barrel. The alien yanked Madani’s helmet off as she reached up to grab it, her hand blocking Tyson’s shot.

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. Another tentacle stretched out, going for her ear. He squeezed the trigger, sending a pair of bolts through her gloved hand, burning both the hand and the alien.

  She cried out in pain as the alien dropped to the floor. “Bastard!” she shouted, stomping one of the tentacles with her boot, pointing her rifle at it, and burning it to nothing. Then she cried out again.

  “I’m sorry,” Tyson said, hurrying over to her.

  She waved him off. “Just help me keep her covered.”

  Tyson held onto the rifle. The last time he had fired a gun, he was hunting deer with his brother in Montana. That was nearly twenty years ago. Madani was right. The muscle memory remained.

  “Done,” Siraj announced. “I set the lockout and autonav to sixty seconds. Burn will begin after that.”

  “Good work, Commander,” Tyson said. He tapped on his comm badge. “We need to get to the storage compartment with the others. Guardian Madani, we’ll get you to sick bay once this is over. The module is locked down.”

  “Yes, sir,” Madani said. “The good thing about plasma is that it cauterizes the impact area.” She forced a smile through the pain. “The bad news is that it burned off all of my fingers.” She motioned to her helmet, which had come to rest on the other side of the deck. “I could use my bucket.”

  “I’m sure Okoye has an augment he can install when this is over,” Tyson replied, eying the helmet. “Forget the headgear. We stick together, and stay close.”

  “Aye aye sir.”

  “Prime, we can’t hold the bridge,” Siraj said into the comm. “Pioneer’s autonav sequence is active, with a point-two-g burn to follow in t-minus fifty seconds. All personnel are moving to a nearby unventilated compartment.” She paused a moment, the weight of the situation causing her to lower her head. “It’s up to you now. Good hunting, Prime.”

  She disconnected the comm and they hurried from the bridge. Tyson sealed the blast door behind them, watching it slam shut just as another alien came around the station, cut off before it could reach them.

  58

  Cross

  Pioneer. Engineering. 11.13.2052. 0220 hours.

  The door to the PAP module was like all of the others—reinforced steel—thick, bulletproof and lockable from the inside. Joseph found Morales hunkered down in the passageway junction closest to it, using the sight on his plasma rifle to view the area from around the corner without exposing himself. Joseph hadn’t been too far from engineering, climbing ten decks worth of stairs and running a few hundred meters to get to Morales’ position, Commander Siraj’s last transmission still echoing in his head.

  It’s up to you now. Good hunting.

  Up to him and to his Guardians. He barely had any idea what he was fighting, how many of them there were and how effective the trife would be at coaxing them out of the ventilation shafts and vents.

  “Prime,” Morales said as Joseph knelt next to him, connecting to the rifle feed to join him in monitoring the door. “No motion at all. What do you think is going on in there?”

  “Probably nothing good. Sykes health monitor is still in the green. He’s in there, alive and unharmed. His body, anyway. If one of those things got into his head...” He shrugged.

  “What if the interference is blocking his comms like it is his feed? It could be that he fought off the little bastards and he’s still keeping guard.”

  “What are the odds of that?” Joseph asked. “We need to assume the worst and hope for the best. Be ready. I’ll swipe the door. Keep me covered. Anything comes out at me, don’t miss.”

  “Copy that, Sarge.”

  Joseph pulled out the control pad for the Dragonfly, setting it to follow. Then he moved out from cover, rifle up and ready as he headed for the door. He could feel the pull from the ship’s acceleration making it easier to move toward the thrusters than it would be when he had to go back in the other direction. At least the ship was adding velocity again, speeding them along toward their new home.

  He froze in place when the door to the engineering module slid open ahead of him. He ducked against the bulkhead as Sykes emerged, leading with his rifle. He swept it to the right before pivoting left, toward Joseph.

  Joseph’s finger moved to the trigger, beginning to depress it, hesitant to commit. Sykes’ eyes fell on him, the two men staring at one another in a moment of tense silence.

  “Prime, I’ve got a clean shot,” Morales said. “Give me the word.”

  Joseph knew he should, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t know Sykes that well, but he was one of them. First a Marine and now a Guardian. A brother in arms.

  The silence was broken when the Guardian’s feed suddenly came back online, his voice audible through the comm. “Don’t shoot!” Sykes said, lowering his rifle and raising his free hand. “Prime, it’s me.”

  “Don’t move,” Joseph said. “Drop your weapon.”

  “Prime?” Sykes said.

  “Do it!”

  Sykes let go of the rifle. It clattered on the deck as Joseph hurried over to the Guardian, kicking the gun back toward Morales.

  “What’s going on?” Sykes asked. “You told me to protect the engineers. I kept them safe.” He turned his head and shouted. “It’s okay. You can come out now!”

  Joseph glanced into the room. The entire space was dark, the terminals dead, the power out. A half dozen engineers stood up from their hiding places behind the workstations, clearly afraid.

  “What the hell happened in there?” Joseph asked.

  “The aliens killed the power,” Sykes replied. “Right before they got into the room. But I got them.”

  “All of them? By yourself?” Joseph kept his rifle trained on Sykes. He wasn’t ready to believe the man had taken out four of the aliens all on his own.

  Sykes nodded. “Nobody messes with me, Prime. I burned those suckers good.”

  Joseph glanced at the engineers. Oslo wasn’t with them. “Where’s the Chief?”

  Sykes also looked back at the engineers. “He was here before. Did any of you see him?”

  “No,” one of them replied.

  “I didn’t,” a second said.

  “He might have gone deeper in the module to hide,” a third offered.

  “I’ll find him,” Joseph said. “Sykes, I need you to find a compartment without ventilation to leave the engineers. Drop them in it and then head back to the CIC to wait for orders.”

  “Wilco, Prime,” Sykes said. “I’ll bring them someplace safe. There’s just one thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “There is nowhere—” Sykes was cut off as a plasma bolt punched through his faceplate and eye, dropping him where he stood.

  “—safe,” the engineers finished for him, all six of them lunging at Joseph as the alien began to emerge from the man’s mouth.

  “Shit!” Joseph cried, taken off-guard by Morales’ action. He had warned the Guardian to be ready, and there was no doubt his man had noticed something about Sykes wasn’t right. He backpedaled quickly, bringing his rifle back up and opening fire against the onrushing engineers.

  Bolts tore through them, dropping two before the others could get close. Morales picked up the slack, firing from cover and taking out two more. That still left a pair who made it to Joseph. The first grabbed his rifle, ripping it out of his hands with unbelievable strength and throwing it aside. The second grappled with him, driving him backward to the deck and straddling him. The engineer reached for his helmet, trying to get it unclasped.

  Morales shot that one too, the impacts shaking the engineer’s body before he fell sideways off Joseph. The remaining engineer tried to replace him, still eager to remove Joseph’s helmet, but Joseph got to his sidearm first, shoving it under the woman’s jaw and firing up through her head. He shoved her back, scurrying to his feet. His plasma rifle was too far away to reach.

  But Sykes’ rifle wasn’t.

  He fell back two steps, dropping to his knees to grab the weapon and pivoting in one smooth motion. The alien was coming out of the female engineer’s mouth, tentacles stretching her jaw so the body could squeeze through. Joseph fired, the bolt blasting it dead-on and melting it from the center. The rest of the aliens were emerging too, and they darted under the corpses as both he and Morales tried to take them out.

  Joseph was ready to press the attack, the reticle of his rifle passing over the bodies, searching for any hint of the aliens hiding beneath the bodies like spiders tucked beneath bedsheets. Then the aliens emerged, scurrying out from under their hosts and darting away in the opposite direction, surprising him again.

  Where were they going?

  “That’s right,” Morales said. “You better run.”

  Joseph stood up, confused by the activity. He didn’t think the aliens were running. Something else had stolen their attention.