“I don’t know if I should feel better or worse,” Dante said, cradling the rifle in her arms. Caleb could barely see her eyes through the glass of her helmet, noticing they were wide with a measure of fear and excitement. “We had all of this to work with, and we still lost.”

  Caleb pointed at the dead trife. “Imagine a million of those things charging a position occupied by a thousand soldiers. It didn’t matter what equipment we had. It didn’t matter how many we killed for each one of us that died. Eventually, we ran out of bullets, cell charges, battery power, you name it.”

  He shuddered at the thought. He had been in the middle of one of those assaults. He had watched dozens of Marines die around him. The Vultures had made it out because they were lucky, not because they were good.

  “But we were supposed to fight them here with the same equipment?”

  “No. I think this was plan B, in case Valentine and her team couldn’t get the science right. Either way, this was always going to be a one-way trip. A suicide mission. Maybe they figured that if they couldn’t win the fight, they could at least learn something and send it back to Proxima before they died. I don’t know. I never got a chance to ask her for the rest of the details. We use what we have, and we hope it’s enough. That’s all we can do.”

  “Roger that, Sergeant. I’m ready to roll.”

  Caleb checked the HUD of his ATCS. There were no threats in their immediate vicinity. If there were any living trife down here, they either didn’t know Caleb and Dante were there or they were steering clear of them.

  They headed for the smaller hatch at the end of the cavernous armory, bypassing the ADCs and circling past a series of armored personnel vehicles and a set of larger drones. Neither of them had any idea how large this deck-between-decks was, but Caleb imagined it was probably close to the size of Metro proper.

  What else would they find down here? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  The hatch opened as they approached it, and Caleb led Dante out into a corridor that seemed to go on forever, running out of sight to their right, and ending at around the same position as the blast doors on their left. There were more doors along the side of the passageway.

  “We’ll never be able to search them all,” Dante said.

  Caleb used his eyes to navigate the ATCS, setting a timer and syncing it to Dante’s SOS. “One hour,” he said. “You head left. I’ll go right.”

  “You want to split up?”

  “Not ideal, but we’ll cover more ground.”

  “Roger that. What if I see a trife?”

  “It’ll register as a threat in my HUD, and I’ll come running. Engage as needed, and make sure you keep an eye on the network strength and the ammo counter for your rifle. You don’t want to run out of either.”

  “Got it.”

  “Also, the easiest way to kill a trife is to shoot it here or here.” Caleb pointed to a similar spot in the center of his chest, and right above the bridge of his nose.

  “Okay.”

  “Good hunting, Sheriff.”

  “You too, Sergeant.”

  Caleb turned right, while Dante went left. He walked quickly to the nearest hatch, which slid open at his approach, revealing an empty storage area. It was small compared to the armory, dark and barren. He moved on, hurrying to the next door. That one led to another long corridor that traveled the width of Metro.

  He considered it for a moment before retreating to the original passage, continuing along it for the next few minutes, opening a few of the doors. Each of the rooms he checked was empty, leading him to reconsider the branching passage. He adjusted his visor, zooming in on the passage ahead until he could see the bulkhead in the distance. There was still no sign of more trife.

  He decided to go back to the first passage, slipping through the hatch and closing it behind him. “Dante, sitrep,” he said.

  “Nothing to report, Sergeant,” she replied. “Just a few empty rooms and what looked like a library.”

  “A library?”

  “Yeah, a whole bunch of printed operations manuals, I think for the ship? Maybe in case the mainframe went offline? I don’t know. I figured there wasn’t any time to browse.”

  “Good thought.”

  Caleb made his way down the new corridor, checking his HUD in between searches of the doors lining the passageway. His ATCS sensors were as dead as the trife he had found. Were they wasting their time down here? The trife had to come from somewhere. Then again, if there wasn’t enough sustenance to keep it alive, how could there be any live ones left?

  He glanced at the timer. Twenty minutes had passed, and there was still no hint of anything alive beside him and Sheriff Dante. He stopped moving, turning to the hatch on his left. He might as well check one more before he called off the hunt. There was nothing down here. He was as sure of it as he could be.

  “Dante, pick one more door and then meet me back at the armory.”

  “Are you sure, Sergeant?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think there’s anything down here. That trife starved. If there were more, they probably starved too. We have more important priorities.”

  “Roger. I’m at one last door now. Also, it looks like there’s another exit seal down the passageway here. It’s marked like the one you came in through.”

  Caleb used the ATCS to bring up a feed from her helmet camera. He could see the hatch ahead of her. They had no way of opening it yet, but that was probably a good thing. It kept the city easier to defend. “It may lead into the airlock. I don’t know. This place is more of a maze than I pictured.”

  “You should try walking the splits sometime if you want to see a maze.”

  “Maybe you can give me a tour once things settle down.”

  “Copy that, Sergeant. I’d be glad to.”

  Caleb reached for the control panel to the hatch, splitting his attention to watch Dante do the same. Both doors slid open nearly simultaneously.

  A black form came into view through the feed. Caleb was about to shout a warning when something equally dark slammed into him.

  Chapter 8

  The impact was barely powerful enough to shift him, but the claws that slashed across his helmet made him take the threat seriously. He jumped back, grabbing his MK-12 and swinging it across his body, slapping it into the trife. The demon’s hollow bones broke beneath the blow. It rolled away from him and didn’t move again.

  Caleb glared into the room. It wasn’t an empty storage area like most of the others. Instead, he noticed metal crates that had been torn open, an assortment of tools scattered recklessly across the floor. Near the center, a pile of batteries for the devices and a small group of trife huddled around it, clutching the power source to their flesh to keep themselves alive.

  The group rose and turned his way, hissing in fear and warning. Caleb shifted his attention to Dante’s feed, breath catching when he saw a trife head closing on her, teeth bared. He flicked his eyes to the threat display, marking nearly a dozen trife around her. Damn it.

  He lifted his rifle, aiming at the trife. They were standing between him and the pile of batteries, but other than the one near the door, none of them were attacking. They stared at him as if confused, their surprised hisses growing softer. Then they did something he never thought he would see a trife do.

  All at once, they sank back to the floor, turning their heads to expose their necks. Submitting.

  Caleb’s finger rested on the trigger. It would be easy to kill them, and probably the right thing to do. But even two years of watching these creatures destroy everyone and everything around him wasn’t enough to convince him to kill them in cold blood. He hit the control panel for the door, closing it. He took a step back, waiting a few seconds for the demons to emerge. They didn’t.

  What the hell?

  He didn’t have time to think about it. He broke back the way he had come. Dante was on the retreat, moving away from the room where she had found the trife. There were already three dead demons on the floor ahead of her, and the rest of the group was on the move, preparing to attack.

  “Dante, I’m on my way,” Caleb said.

  “Hurry,” she replied.

  She was trained well enough to notice the trife were preparing to rush her, offering too many targets for her to handle at once. He had to get there to even the odds.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked. He could see Dante's vitals in his HUD, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t twisted an ankle or something.

  “Negative,” she replied. “They scared the shit out of me, but...“

  She stopped talking when the trife made their move, pouring from the room, a few of them leaping across to the opposite wall, a pair jumping and grabbing the top of the corridor, the rest emerging and rushing across the floor. The MK-12s had the secondary ordnance launcher, but he hadn’t found any in his quick search of the ammo boxes.

  Dante was smart enough not to stand her ground. She broke into a run, firing wildly over her shoulder. Caleb cursed again, pushing himself a little harder. He reached the end of the adjacent corridor, sliding beneath the opening hatch and hitting the wall. He bounced to his feet, getting moving again in the direction Dante had gone.

  He checked his HUD. The trife were gaining on her, the larger group as eager to attack humans as ever, making the second group even more strange. He would worry about that later. He was closing the distance, nearing the turn in the passageway.

  He came to a stop, dropping to a knee and leveling his rifle. “Dante, I’m right around the corner. Run right past me.”

  “Roger,” she replied, breathing hard.

  Caleb watched the marks on his HUD, the trife getting too close to Dante. She was almost at the turn, coming hard.

  She appeared around the bend, slowing to make it around the corner. A trife appeared right behind her, diving forward and catching her ankle. It tripped her up, sending her barreling into the wall, hitting hard.

  Caleb pulled the trigger, firing a single round that caught the trife in the head. He stood as Dante stumbled, forgetting his first plan and charging the struggling sheriff.

  She hit the ground and rolled over, keeping her wits and bringing her rifle up. Caleb fired over her head, taking out three more trife. One of the demons on the ceiling dropped toward her, its head vanishing as she released a burst of rounds at it. Another leaped on top of her, thrown off by Caleb’s follow-up volley.

  He made it to the corner, grabbing a trife in his replacement hand and bashing it against the wall. He spun and fired into two more, creating a barrier that allowed Dante to stand. She joined the defense, shooting at the remaining trife and quickly cutting them down.

  “Clear!” Caleb shouted as the last mark on his HUD changed color. Instinct caused him to check his ammo levels first, his vitals second, Dante’s vitals third, and her ammo level fourth before he physically turned to face her. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Barely.” She was still breathing hard, her chest heaving beneath the SOS. “I think I like being a sheriff better than being a soldier.”

  “You did great,” Caleb said.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Caleb looked down at the dead trife. A small group. No queen. He hadn’t noticed any efforts at reproduction, but he had barely gotten more than a glimpse.

  “I’m not sure yet. I encountered a smaller group back that way. They submitted to me. They seemed afraid.”

  “You sound unsure.”

  “I’ve never seen a scared trife before. Even when we had the drop on them, they always attacked. It’s like there’s something wrong with that group.”

  “Maybe they were hiding from this bunch?”

  “I can’t rule it out. Come on. We have to make sure your area is clear.”

  “You want to go back?”

  “It’s not a question of want. We need to go back. If these things were to find their way into Metro...” He shook his head. “David told me Riley had a stash of trife somewhere. Maybe this was them.”

  “What was she using them for?”

  “Making monsters. I didn’t think she had access to this area though, especially from outside Metro.”

  He was starting to hate how every new experience led to a new mystery. Why couldn’t anything ever be simple?

  “Okay. I’m ready to go back,” Dante said.

  Caleb put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly, putting his helmet against hers so their eyes met. “You did a great job. I’ve seen experienced Marines wet themselves the first time they encountered a trife.”

  “Who says I didn’t wet myself?”

  “You stayed calm.”

  “Mostly.”

  “You didn’t get killed.”

  “Luckily.”

  “Then you handled it as well as any of us.”

  Caleb pulled away from her, walking back toward the source of the attack. Dante stayed right behind him, keeping an eye on the rear.

  “Did you get a look at the room?” Caleb asked while they walked.

  “Not really. I can tell you it was warm in there.”

  “Did you see a nest?”

  “I don’t know what a nest looks like.”

  “Right.” Caleb had forgotten Dante wasn’t accustomed to the trife. She had done especially well against them, all things considered. “It looks like a mound of trife, covered in a sticky substance. If there were a queen in there, you probably would have known it.”

  “A queen?”

  “The trife use the substance to pass around genetic material. If there’s enough fuel to build a large enough nest, they’ll make a queen to rule over it.” He held up his replacement arm. “That’s how I lost the real one.”

  “It bit your arm off?”

  He nodded. “Not completely off, but damaged it enough to make it useless. Marines don’t do repairs like that. We do replacements. It was the one thing Riley did that was actually helpful.”

  “She gave it to you?”

  “Yes. The shell is made from the alien’s starship. Lightweight and strong as anything. Better than the real thing in this environment.”

  She smiled. “Do you miss the original?”

  “I haven’t had much time to miss anything.”

  They reached the source of the trife assault. Caleb put up his hand, slowing on the approach. He watched his HUD, letting the sensors on the ATCS do their job. He took point as he came around the corner into the room.

  It was filled with small black columns that reminded him of the ship’s reactor, at least fifty of them arranged neatly across the room. There was flashing LEDs on all of them, most of them red, a few green. A terminal was positioned ahead of them, its screen dark.

  There were no trife in the room. Not anymore. No sign of a nest. No queen. To Caleb, it was as curious as the submissive group. He could feel the heat expelled by the columns. There should have been enough radiation output here to start a small colony at least.

  “What do you think?” Sheriff Dante asked.

  “It’s strange,” Caleb replied.

  He walked over to the terminal, tapping the control surface to activate the display. He expected it to open to a security screen. He thought it would ask him for his id and passcode. It didn’t. The terminal was already unlocked.

  Someone had been using it.

  “Strange how?” Dante said.

  “Even stranger now,” Caleb replied. “How much do you know about navigating the ship’s operating systems?”

  “Less than Klahanie, probably more than you?”

  “Probably,” Caleb agreed. “Why don’t you see if you can figure out what this terminal is for, and maybe how it was being used?”

  “Roger that, Sergeant.”

  They switched positions. Caleb decided to search between the monoliths while Dante worked.

  “So, what’s strange about it?” she repeated.

  “For one, the trife shouldn’t have been able to get down here. That’s strange. Two, the group I found was submissive. Very strange. Three, this group had enough juice to make a nest but didn’t. Even stranger. Four, someone was using that terminal and didn’t bother to lock it. In fact, they seem to have disabled the automatic security lock, as if they didn’t think they would remember their passcode. That’s so strange I’m wondering if our enemy is masquerading as one of us instead of operating from the shadows.”

  He swept through the columns, turning the rifle left and right. He didn’t expect to find anything. If there were trife still in here, they should have jumped him by now. But it never paid to be lazy about ensuring an area was safe. Not when he had the time.

  He reached the back of the room, swinging to the left. He froze when his HUD outlined a form in the darkness of the corner. A corpse, long dead. The flesh and muscle were gone, only bone and cloth remaining. Cloth stained dark around half a dozen bullet entry points. Caleb moved to stand over it.

  “Five, there’s a corpse back here.” It was unidentified, but judging by the size he assumed it was male. He stared down at it. He had a guess as to who it was. There was one person on Deliverance they hadn’t accounted for. Harry, the computer engineer.

  Maybe the whole thing wasn’t as strange as he thought.

  This had Riley Valentine written all over it.

  Chapter 9

  Caleb backed away from Harry’s corpse, returning to Sheriff Dante and the terminal. “Anything?” he asked.

  “This terminal is a direct link to the ship’s mainframe,” she replied. “We have full access to the complete datastore from here.” She paused. “Or we would if half of it wasn’t broken.”

  “I assume that’s what the red lights mean?”

  “Affirmative. What about the corpse?”

  “One of Riley’s Reapers. A computer engineer named Harry. He may be the reason for the red lights.”

  “Or Riley may have caused the red lights because of something Harry did?”

  “Possibly. In either case, I think this confirms Riley was down here, and whatever is going on with these trife, she had something to do with it.”

  “How did she get down here?”