“Echo Two Two, watch your fire!” Joseph snapped, reminding his squad. “Check your reticle. No yellows. I’ve got you on the board. Trophy to the winner.”

  His Marines didn’t respond, but he knew the competition would embolden them. The ATCS kept track of every round and every kill. It would know how many yellows they wasted bullets on and how many yellows they created. It would give him a final ratio of rounds to kills, and whoever did the best would get an old baseball trophy someone had brought into their barracks once upon a time. The thing was faded and cracked, but the symbolism was real.

  It was in Corporal West’s possession at the moment, on her bunk in the topside barracks. She was the all-time leader for his fire squad with Private Nori close behind. A quick glance at their numbers told him they were neck-and-neck again, each of them remaining cool under pressure, taking the extra second to make the shot before moving on.

  The other Marines were skilled and disciplined, but not at that level. And by the time the trife had covered half the kill box, they were all running dry.

  They had three extra magazines each, nearly thirty-thousand rounds in total. More than enough against five thousand or so trife at one to one. Not enough at their current rate. Mother saw the calculations from the CIC and she was on the comms a moment later. “Bastards, you’re shooting hot, except for Echo Two Two. Watch your yellows. Stay frosty.”

  It was easy to say, harder to do, especially because the trife were closing in, only a hundred meters away. Especially because only half the guns were firing, the rate of kills cut more than in half. The trife would be on them in another twenty seconds, and there was still a seemingly endless line pouring out of the trees.

  The Marines continued shooting, the trife dropping like flies. The landscape ahead of Joseph was ugly and cold, filled with bared teeth and claws, bullets and blood, stone and flesh. He joined the fight, lining up his shots and taking them. One. Another. Another. His reticle flashed yellow each time he put it on the head of a demon and squeezed off a round, the creature snapping back like it got hit in the face with a frying pan before collapsing to the dirt. He killed a dozen trife in three seconds.

  It didn’t matter. There were too many coming too fast, and the closer they came the more desperate the Marines became. Mother’s voice filled the comms, stern but calm, reminding them not to use up their bullets, ordering them to different positions, and keeping the entire fight orchestrated as best she could from the CIC.

  It felt like the firefight had been going on for hours. In truth, only a few minutes had passed. Nearly two thousand trife were dead on the ground in front of them. Less than half. The rest were only a couple dozen meters away, each surge bringing them a little closer. Some of the Marines were on their last magazine. A couple had already run out and were shooting at the aliens with their sidearms.

  “Echo Two, Echo Two, break, break,” Mother said, her voice rising in volume to lift the priority of her next orders. “We’ve got xenos coming up the west slope. Fall back and come around ASAP. Over.”

  “Wilco,” Joseph said, his heart rate doubling at the order. The west slope? They were already struggling to keep the east under control, and there were more of them? “Echo Two Two, we’re on the move. Stay tight, keep formation. Let’s move.”

  Joseph watched the other two squads in his platoon breaking away from the fight. They were positioned further to the east and would reach the western slope after his squad. It was up to him to hit the trife head-on and slow them long enough the other thirty Marines could offer backup.

  He sprinted across the side of the slope with his squad. When they crossed in front of other Marines, the ATCS stopped their rifles from firing, saving those Marines the need to hold fire on their own. He watched his tactical, but even the orange marks from earlier had faded in the west.

  Where were all of these trife coming from? And why now?

  Two years, and they still knew so little about the aliens. What they had learned they had always learned too late. The military had tried nuking them early in the war. It was the worst mistake they could have made. Not only did the demons like radiation, they thrived on it. The fallout had increased their numbers dramatically. And the trife themselves changed and evolved. In the beginning, their claws couldn’t get through the Marines’ spidersteel body armor, and the military had started producing blades by the millions only to discover a month later that the claws had gotten harder and sharper and were now able to scrape through anything light enough for a Marine to wear. The blades were still useful, but more of a last resort than a first line of attack.

  And those were only two examples. They were currently in the midst of another. The diversion was a diversion, a trick to get the Marines massed on the wrong side of the mountain using a tactic the aliens had already deployed, observed and learned from.

  But what was their goal?

  That was the question that kept racing through Joseph’s mind as he raced across the ridge trying to get to the west slope in time to turn back the main trife force...or at least slow them down.

  The trife were up to something. They hadn’t created such a massive diversion just to sneak up from the rear. There was more to it than that.

  He looked to the right. The Combat Information Center rested ten meters up-slope on the flattened area of the mountain. Were the trife after the CIC?

  The first group of trife appeared ahead on his tactical. He marked them as soon as they got into line of sight, passing the positions to the rest of his squad. “Echo Two Two, fire on my marks,” he said.

  A quick burst of gunfire launched across the slope, a dozen trife dying in an instant. More continued to come up out of the treeline, the slick parting as a group broke off to confront the Marines.

  “Two Two, Stay on them,” Joseph said, tracking the first bunch that were still hauling ass up the slope toward the base. “Team One, with me. On my marks.” He tagged the escaping trife as targets.

  Team One broke formation with him, cutting across the slope. The gunfire continued behind Joseph, and he watched his tactical with one eye while monitoring his squad. They wouldn’t have time to make it to cover before the trife caught up to them. And once they did, good men and women were going to die.

  There was nothing he could do about it. He had to hope the rest of Echo Two made it to the west in time to reinforce his Marines and that his team was enough to manage the top of the slope. The trife’s secondary assault force was smaller than the first, only a few hundred instead of a few thousand. Somehow, he had to take them out of the picture.

  He aimed and fired, cutting down a trife at the edge of the slick and prompting the rest of his team to do the same. Pops sounded around him, demons dropping fifty meters away. The first group of aliens redirected their efforts, rushing at his team from the side. The rest of the squad tried to compensate, cutting into the creatures.

  The battle was still raging on the eastern slope too. Joseph sneaked a quick look at his tactical, noting the number of red marks still on it, and how those marks were about to intermingle with the green pockets of Marines.

  “Pick up the pace, Marines!” he snapped into the comm, sprinting ahead. He only left Corporal West behind for a moment before her prosthetics vaulted her forward, sending her out ahead of the pack.

  The distances between the Marines and the trife were closing fast, the two sides about to crash headlong into one another just like on the eastern slope. Joseph would have preferred a more tactical approach, but there was just no time. The second group of trife was nearly ahead of them, the demons’ long limbs and light weight allowing them to race across the landscape faster than the Marines could keep up.

  Most of the Marines, anyway.

  West charged across the ridge, prosthetic legs pumping harder and faster than any of the organic limbs could match. She fired almost recklessly as she advanced, cut down one trife after another, gaining on them in a hurry. As she closed within ten meters of the aliens she let go of her rifle with her subordinate right hand and pulled a long blade from the sheath on her hip. She had managed to get out in front of the trife, aiming to slow their charge until the rest of her team could catch up.

  “Zen, keep her covered!” Joseph shouted.

  Private Nori adjusted his fire, two quick rounds taking out two trife on either side of West. At the same time Joseph pivoted to the left, releasing a barrage at the trife coming up the slope, trying to keep them back. A few of the demons dropped from the assault, but nowhere near enough. Joseph spared one last glance at West. They were too late. The first group was going to intercept them, leaving her as their only shot at stopping the trife from reaching the CIC.

  She wouldn’t last long by herself.

  Sudden gunfire erupted behind them, the other squads in Echo Two catching up and joining the fight. The front line of trife went down in a wave, buying them a little more time.

  Joseph’s legs worked as fast as he could move them, carrying him across the terrain and up the slope toward the rear of the enemy. Ahead of him, West made it to the front, sliding to a stop only a few meters ahead of the creatures and emptying her rifle into them. When the ammo count hit zero she dropped the gun, still clutching her blade. Two more trife collapsed, hit by Nori’s attack from behind Joseph.

  The trife converged on West. She swung her blade at the first, her strong arms providing enough force to send the edge through the creature’s brittle bones, splitting its head in half. She spun on one leg, kicking the next with her augment, crushing its skull and sending it rolling backward. Nori shot the third in the back of the head. Joseph caught the fourth and fifth with two well-placed rounds. West stabbed another before spinning around, lashing out with her augmented leg and smashing the next one. She was slowing them down enough for the rest of the team to gain ground.

  Morales caught up to the others, adding his gun to the fight. The trife continued to fall, unable to break past the whirling Corporal West, fighting with a ferocity few Marines could match. The remainder of Echo Two brought up the rear, tearing into the second half of the ambush slick and cutting them down.

  A few of the trife turned toward Joseph as he approached, hissing at him as they charged, arms held out at their sides, ready to cut him to ribbons. A lot of Marines might have wildly sprayed bullets at the demons. Not Joseph. He remained calm, firing single shots at each the moment his reticle turned yellow. The last one collapsed at his feet, claws reaching out to rest on his boot.

  He turned away from it, looking for another target. For as quickly as the ambush had come, it was just as quickly falling apart. The arrival of the full platoon had cut the trife advance off at the knees, and West’s ability to get out in front of them had bought the rest of the Marines the time they needed to break the enemy line. There were still nearly a hundred trife on this part of the slope, but there were thirty Marines here with them, turning the odds in their favor.

  Joseph checked his tactical, glancing first at the diminished red marks on his slope and then looking to the east, his breath catching in his throat.

  The pockets of green were gone, swallowed up by the sea of red, which was still flowing impossibly from the trees.

  There were more than five thousand trife out there. A lot more.

  The entire base was about to be overrun.

  7

  Grant

  Pioneer. Bridge. 11.11.2052. 1230 hours.

  “Attention on deck,” Rollins said as Tyson hurried through the too-slow-to-open doors of the bridge. “Captain on the bridge.”

  “As you were,” Tyson snapped, before the crew had a chance to come to their feet. “Siraj, what’s our status?”

  He stopped at the side of the command station, looking up at the primary display, his face twisting in horror. The feeds had all been shifted from Pioneer’s cameras to the remotes at the top of the ridge where the Marine camp rested. The eight views were all generated from a single one-eighty degree camera—a large ball mounted halfway up the two hundred-foot radio tower in the center of the camp—that allowed them to communicate with the other launch sites, as well as what remained of the United States government. The part of it that wasn’t leaving Earth anyway.

  “Son of a bitch,” Tyson whispered, his worst fear realized.

  Everywhere he looked, there were trife. Left, right and center. They were still about two hundred meters from the camp, but not for much longer. Tyson saw the Marines lined up along the ridge, doing their best to use the terrain as cover while they fired into the three converging groups of aliens, whose black flesh and dense formation made them look like slicks of spilled oil. Only a few of the Marines were still firing their assault rifles. Most were taking single shots with their sidearms, which would run out of bullets soon enough. Tyson had seen this scene play out before.

  He was at Naval Base Kitsap when the trife attacked, and they had two entire companies of Marines stationed there at the time. The site had only a single battalion to defend it, and that battalion was already down an entire company.

  From the looks of things here, they were down to their last platoon.

  The trife had sensed the power flowing from the reactor the moment it turned on. The depth didn’t matter. The tons of rock between them didn’t matter. They could smell energy like a bloodhound smelled game. And they wanted it.

  “Get me Hale,” Tyson said, his gaze still locked on the scene. There were hundreds of trife on the ground already, but it wasn’t close to enough.

  “Comm’s already open, sir,” Siraj replied.

  “This is Mother,” Hale said. “Don’t worry, Captain. We’ll hold the line.”

  “Bullshit,” Tyson replied. “Colonel, you’ve got twenty-five Marines at best, against ten thousand or more trife.”

  “I’ve got two Butchers held in reserve. When the time is right, we’ll retreat to the tunnel entrance. We can get them in a chokepoint there and hold them back for a long time. Don’t worry about us, Captain. We’ll do our job. You do yours.”

  Tyson stared at the screens. He watched a trife grab one of the Marines, ready to tear him apart with its razor-sharp teeth. The Marine managed to shoot it in the head, and it dropped him, but then he was taken by three more. They all clawed and bit at his limbs, and his mouth opened in a silent scream.

  He whirled around to face Siraj, sliding his finger across his neck. She muted the comm in response.

  “They’re going to die out there,” he said.

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?” Siraj replied.

  “Always. Talk to me, Saira.”

  “Colonel Hale and her Marines will give two hundred percent to keep the trife away from us, sir.”

  “Yes, I know. I don’t doubt her will. But she can’t bend reality with it. Do you see how many of those demons are out there?”

  “It would be impossible not to, sir.”

  “She’ll be lucky if she holds an hour, Butchers or no.” The combat robots were powerful assets, especially in a melee like this one. But they had their limitations. The machines would run out of battery power long before this was over.

  “The Marines aren’t under our command. Not until we’ve launched.”

  “I watched hundreds of good people die at Bremerton,” Tyson said. “They defended the shore while I captained the John F. Kennedy out to sea with five thousand survivors on board. They could have fallen back. Some of them might still be alive today if they had.” His thoughts flashed back to his conversation with Nash, only fifteen minutes earlier. “Besides, I need Guardians watching out for Pioneer. I don’t trust Governor Nash. That means some of those Marines need to survive.”

  “Understood, sir. What do you suggest?”

  “Get me Oslo.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Siraj tapped on the controls of the command station and then nodded to him.

  “Chief,” Tyson said. “We have a situation.”

  “Captain Grant, sir,” Oslo replied. “Does this situation involve getting Pioneer off the ground ahead of schedule?”

  “How did you know?”

  Oslo’s voice darkened. “I can’t think of any other situation that would involve power and propulsion, sir.”

  “And?”

  “All three reactors are online. Batteries are at thirty percent capacity. The launch time was calculated based on charging the reserves to full in the event of a reactor failure, to ensure we have enough power to get out of orbit. It’s a safety measure, sir.”

  “Meaning we can launch yet?” Tyson asked.

  “Not immediately, sir. No. We need to switch on the launch sled and power up its reactor and associated systems.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “At least thirty minutes, sir. But sir, even then, all it will take is a single reactor malfunction, less than one hundred percent output, and we won’t make it out of here. We’ll climb real high and crash real hard.”

  Tyson bit his lip, looking at the view of the ridge again. The Marines were falling back, shooting over their shoulders, trying to escape the coming horde. The armored vehicle that served as the portable CIC was in motion, aiming to cut in front of the retreating Marines and block the path of the aliens. A pair of automated machine guns on top of the vehicle spun on their turrets and began firing, heavy rounds tearing through multiple trife, cutting them to ribbons.

  Even if those guns killed five thousand of the creatures, it wouldn’t be enough.

  “Captain,” Siraj said. “I don’t want to sound cold. But twenty Marines aren’t worth risking the lives of the thousands of civilians on board.”

  “No,” Tyson agreed. “They aren’t.” He hated saying it, but it was true. The battalion’s job was to die to get Pioneer off the ground. Colonel Hale knew it, and she was ready to fulfill that duty. “They aren’t going to hold. Not for three hours. Not against that many. We either launch now or we’ll never launch at all. Oslo, get the sled powered up and prepped ASAP.”