“That leaves us plenty of time to prepare. Kwon, you’re with me.”

  “Captain, wait,” Ham said suddenly, drawing Caleb’s attention to the forward surround. A new mark appeared on the composite view, nearly adjacent to the estimated source of the signal. “Something just hit us with a sensor lock.”

  Caleb stared at the second contact while Kwon voiced what they were all thinking.

  “Someone’s alive down there.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Caleb and Kwon went from the flight deck to the armory at the ship’s bow, headed for their respective lockers. Caleb didn’t open his right away. He quickly stripped down to his underwear, neatly folding and laying his pants and shirt on the bench behind him, and then he tucked his boots beneath the seat. Kwon was hardly as neat about his discarded utilities, tossing them into the bottom of his locker. It gave him a head start changing into his Self-contained Advanced Combat Suit, SCACS for short.

  Designed to be a one-suit-fits-all approach to outfitting a Centurion Marine, it had evolved over the years from the same Advanced Tactical Combat Armor, or a-tac, that Caleb had worn as a U.S. Marine Ranger on pre-Relyeh Earth. Like a diver’s wetsuit, it still featured the same skin tight underlay beneath a thicker, more protective overlay. Together, the two layers were designed to provide moderate protection with maximum comfort. The underlay worked to regulate body temperature while offering a twenty percent strength increase. It absorbed both sweat and urine, wicking it to the suit’s exterior where it evaporated, allowing the base layer to be worn for days at a time.

  While the underlay barely changed over the years, the outer layer had been vastly improved. Long gone were the hard composite plates that covered the most important bits and left the joints and neck too exposed. Today, the overlay was made of a more flexible reactive material that acted like a third layer of skin. It preserved agility and range of motion while also offering another twenty percent in strength enhancement by means of a passive musculature printed to the inside of the overlay. Being self-contained, the armor was rated for land, sea, air, and space, and was versatile enough to cover any need the Centurion Space Force might have.

  It was also ridiculously expensive to produce. So much so that only a few dozen had been made. Caleb had successfully managed to snag three of them. It was more a signal of how important this mission was than to any kind of special favor.

  While the powers-that-be had tried to keep a lid on news of the signal and the possibility that Pathfinder had been found, it had only taken one pair of loose lips to spread the news across Proxima. The whole thing had taken on a life of its own since then, the streams and feeds stuffed with rumor, gossip, and general interest in the story. Spirit’s departure had been met with inordinate notice and fanfare, drawing a crowd of thousands to the CSF launch dome to see them off. It reminded Caleb of videos he had seen of the early days of space exploration on Earth, when the Space Shuttle launches captured the public interest.

  The CSF had pulled out all the stops to give them the best chance of success. Then again, they would have done the same if the story hadn’t gone viral.

  No, they wouldn’t.

  Ishek’s response to the thought snapped Caleb out of it. “You don’t know that.”

  One thing I have learned since bonding to you is that the higher the position of power you climb among humans, the more you begin to resemble a Relyeh of a similar status.

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  I would.

  Caleb finally stood and opened his locker, reaching to a lower shelf to retrieve his impeccably folded underlay. Opening it, he pressed it flat against his open locker so that the arms and legs were secured by magnets in the locker doors. Using a fingernail, he turned the sealing clasps in the front to open the gear before turning around and backing into the base layer. He slipped his feet in first and then his arms. He had to tug at the material to get it to stretch enough to contain his warrior’s body, taking his time to ensure the attached gloves were snug against his fingers and everything was properly aligned. Once he and Ishek were in, he latched the front closed with small hooks that flattened when he turned the sealing clasps, closing up the base before sitting to put on his boots.

  It’s a good thing I don’t need to breathe.

  “Forty-five minutes, Cap!” Ham shouted from the flight deck.

  “Copy that,” Caleb replied. Ignoring Ishek’s comment, he stood back up and reached to the rear of his locker to grab the outer layer of the SCACS. The process for putting it on was identical to the underlay, and he repeated the steps a second time, finishing off by locking the armor’s larger clasps closed.

  He pulled his helmet off the top shelf. A matte gray to match the SCACS, the helmet was small and sleek, with a tinted gold faceplate and a pair of sensor arrays rising from the forehead area like short horns. The small drawing of a buzzard perched on a branch was painted on the left side, the CSF Eagle logo above his name on the right. In many cases, he would have put the helmet on and finished suiting up there. Instead, he put his helmet on the bench and went to the opposite bulkhead to back into his combined primary battery and air pack, magnetically locking it to the rear of his armor.

  Kwon was nearly a minute ahead of him, and had already donned his battery and air pack and returned to his locker to retrieve his helmet, reaching back to drop it on the bench. Still facing his open locker, he eyed the weapons mounted on the inside of the doors. “Ordnance?” he asked.

  “Thirty minutes, Cap!” Ham shouted.

  “Copy,” Caleb shot back before turning his attention to Kwon. “Standard configuration. Ballistic.”

  “You aren’t worried we’ll spook whoever’s down there?”

  “They’ve been waiting years for help to arrive. I don’t think humans with guns will spook them, and given we’ve already encountered Relyeh and can’t see well into the deep canyons, we have no idea what might be waiting for us.” He pulled a standard issue projectile sidearm from its receptacle on the right hand door and magnetically stuck it to his thigh. He turned and grabbed a coilgun from the lineup on the other door, swinging the squarish, medium-sized rifle around to magnetically attach it to the back of his pack.

  Kwon did the same before leaning over to look into Caleb’s locker. “I half-expected you to have ninja swords in there.”

  “I grabbed the wrong spacebag,” Caleb replied. “Bucket on and power up. I want full diagnostics.”

  “Copy that,” Kwon replied, picking his helmet up off the bench.

  Caleb did the same. Custom-made for his head, the fit was perfect, the bucket lighter than it appeared as he pulled it on. A pair of loud clicks indicated the connectors had secured it to the locking ring. Immediately, the visor gained an augmented reality HUD similar to the neurally injected HUD of the ship’s interface. The only difference…the ATCS wasn’t neurally connected, so he had to use blinking patterns and eye movements to use the system. He quickly navigated to the diagnostic screen and began running a systems analysis, searching for any potential problems that would indicate the suit wasn’t space worthy.

  “Fifteen minutes!” Ham announced just before the diagnostic completed. Caleb hadn’t expected any problems, and none were indicated.

  “Comms check,” he said, activating the channel on the network the two suits created during the diagnostic. Kwon’s name appeared in the upper left of his HUD, along with a small humanoid outline that was currently all green. He had the same for Caleb on his HUD. If either of them were in trouble, the system would let the other know.

  “Check, check,” Kwon replied. “Do you copy?”

  “I copy. Comms online. Opening relay channel. Ham, do you copy?”

  “Papa Buzzard has you loud and clear, Cap,” Ham rumbled through the helmet’s internal speakers.

  “Signed and sealed,” Kwon said. “Now we just need to be delivered.”

  “Ten minutes,” Ham replied. “Better head below.”

  “How do the skies look?” Caleb asked.

  “Clear. As long as it stays this way, we’re go for drop on your order, Cap.”

  “Copy. We’re ducking under.” Rather than leave the armory through the hatch, Caleb stepped to the port side and tapped a button beside the row of three lockers. A part of the deck moved aside, revealing steps beneath. As he and Kwon descended into the belly of the ship, the deck piece slid back into place behind them.

  Barely able to stand upright in the tight confines, Caleb and Kwon made their way into the caution-painted rectangle surrounding the drop doors in the hull’s belly. He and Kwon stood facing one another, neither man nervous about the imminent drop. Kwon seemed as placid as the calm after a storm, but as anxious as Caleb was to solve the mystery behind Pathfinder’s fate, he was practically vibrating with excitement. “We’re in position, Ham.”

  “Copy that. Six minutes to ingress.”

  With the lack of atmosphere, Spirit’s descent toward the surface remained smooth as silk. The only indication they were moving at all was the changing inertia, which shifted forward while they descended and decelerated.

  “Two minutes,” Ham said, inertia now beginning to build beneath Caleb’s feet. “One minute.” The G-forces lessened gradually, itself a silent countdown. “Thirty seconds…twenty…ten…”

  “Here we go,” Caleb said as the doors beneath them slid open, inertia all that held them in place.

  “I don’t see a spot to land,” Kwon mentioned. “Neither does the computer.”

  “Four…three…”

  “We’ll find it on the way down.”

  “Two…one…”

  “Cap—” Kwon started to object.

  Ham reached zero, and the inertia holding them up disappeared. They fell toward the rough terrain below.

  CHAPTER 7

  Trappist-E, with less gravity than Earth, kept Caleb and Kwon from accelerating too quickly as they dropped vertically from Spirit. Since Ham had positioned Spirit in an optimal spot, they could freefall for another fifteen seconds, skimming marginally past the largest spire of rock spearing up from the planet’s surface. Their only danger was if their compressed air systems failed and they smashed into the sharp terrain below.

  Confident their systems would successfully maneuver them around obstacles to the safest landing zone near the target, Caleb’s heart rate remained calm as he set his destination mark on the source of the distress beacon. He blinked rapidly four times, triggering the vectoring jets built into his pack. They spat out the expected compressed air, making sure he remained stable and upright while panels slid away from the bottom of the pack and a pair of ion thrusters fired, pulling energy from the battery to slow his descent.

  Normally, with the target marked, the ride down didn’t require any real skill, but in this case, the system wasn’t finding a safe landing spot within its rapidly shrinking field of view. The terrain below was so rough and uneven it believed there was nowhere to land.

  “I’m going manual,” Caleb said, remaining calm. “Putting you on mirror.”

  “What?” Kwon hissed, clearly unnerved.

  I bet he wet his suit already.

  Rather than attempt to navigate the drop by looking down, Caleb activated the computer generated view in his HUD, shifting his view of the terrain ninety degrees so that it was like running around the obstacles rather than falling toward them. Closing his hands into fists, he used touch-sensitive pads in his gloves at the base of his palms to control the descent. Spotting an opening on the left, he squeezed the pad with his left middle finger, the wall passing to his right. Needing to shift forward, he pressed down with his index finger, and it appeared as if he had jumped onto one of the rocks. He went left again, and then a slight right, before quickly pushing down hard with his ring finger. It slowed this descent just before he hit another rise in the terrain.

  Slipping to the left again, he noticed he had gone nearly three klicks off from the target. At least he was almost to the surface. Still falling, he guided the suit around the cliffs and crags as if he were playing a video game, finally getting a green mark from the computer when it spotted a long, narrow patch of ground below. Flipping the system back to auto, he rode the last ten seconds to the surface, splashing down relatively gently in ankle-deep water. Kwon’s suit brought him down less than a meter away. He didn’t land as smoothly, and wound up face down in the water.

  Now he definitely wet his suit, Caleb quipped silently for Ishek, drawing a soft hissing laugh from the khoron. “Buzzard, we’re here,” Caleb announced through the comms.

  “You didn’t see that,” Kwon said, jumping to his feet, water shedding off the front of his helmet like the back of a duck.

  “See what?” Caleb responded.

  “Copy,” Ham replied. “I’ve got you on the grid. Visual is out of the question.”

  Caleb looked up, unable to find Spirit past the high peaks. “Same here. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Copy that.”

  “The beacon’s that way.” Caleb motioned eastward, in the same direction as the flow of the stream, which went around a rock formation and disappeared from sight. He grabbed his coilgun from his back and flipped a switch on the side to turn it on. Kwon did the same. The weapons immediately linked to their ATCS, and a targeting reticle appeared on their HUDs.

  “I hope we don’t need to use these,” Kwon said, shouldering his weapon.

  “Me, too.”

  Caleb barely noticed the difference in gravity between Trappist-E and Earth as he started jogging, following the stream through the steep, narrow canyon. While neither sensors nor visual observation had turned up evidence of Relyeh, the fact that the enemy had obviously visited this sector in space left him unconvinced that they weren’t present in force on the ground. Until he could prove otherwise, he refused to discount the possibility that this might be a trap. He knew from experience how insidious the Relyeh could be.

  He ran with his rifle at ready, splitting his attention between the view through his visor and the sensor grid displayed by his HUD. It remained clear as they covered the first two kilometers between the landing zone and the target, able to remain with the stream two-thirds of the way.

  For a moment, he thought maybe they could follow the water right to the source, but it disappeared beneath a huge rock formation that blocked their advance. Pausing, Caleb didn’t see an easy way around. The cliffs on both sides of the canyon were over a hundred meters high, and the open gaps on the edges beneath the boulder were too small for even Kwon to fit through.

  “I guess we’re going over,” he said, turning to Kwon.

  “Do we have power for that?” Kwon replied.

  Caleb checked his battery level for his HUD. They had burned nearly thirty percent of their air coming down, and would need at least twice that to get back up to a level where Spirit could reach them for pickup. That left ten percent to navigate the terrain and power them over obstacles. “We’re only one klick out. Unless the path ahead turns into an obstacle course or we need to jet away from something in a hurry, we should be good. Besides, it’s not like we have a choice. The beacon is that way.” He pointed ahead.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Caleb backed up, taking a running start toward the boulder. Activating the ion thrusters, he launched off the ground, arcing up over the edge of the rock and coming down cleanly on top. He turned in time to watch Kwon mimic the maneuver. This time, he landed on his feet next to Caleb, though he hit hard enough to reach down and rub his left knee.

  “We only used two percent on that one,” Kwon said, checking his battery.

  “Less gravity helps,” Caleb added, picking the easiest path across the irregular top of the broad boulder. Looking down over the backside, he saw that the canyon continued some ten meters down, minus the stream. “Save your jets. It won’t feel great, but the SCACS can handle the height.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Kwon said.

  Caleb jumped off the side of the boulder, dropping to the canyon floor. The impact rattled up his legs, the augmented muscles of the combat armor absorbing enough of the blow to prevent injury. He immediately shouldered his rifle, scanning down range through the optical sights as Kwon hit the ground behind him.

  “Damn,” the corporal complained, hissing painfully. “I like my real knees. I really don’t want replacements.”

  Caleb cast a quick look back over his shoulder. “You have to bend your knees to land, numbnuts.” He looked forward again, at his grid. “The beacon should be just up ahead, around that turn in the canyon.”

  “It seems conveniently placed,” Kwon replied.

  “You mean the beacon?” Caleb asked, confused.

  “No, the boulder. It clearly fell from somewhere up there.” He jerked his chin upwards, indicating the jagged cliff wall to his right. “Like it was maybe pushed.”

  “You’re thinking someone’s trying to keep us away from the beacon?”

  Both Marines froze as a deep, loud wail echoed from around the bend, coming directly from the vicinity of the beacon. Kwon’s health monitor on Caleb’s HUD moved from green to yellow, indicating a jump in his heart rate and rising levels of adrenaline and cortisol.

  “Or trying to keep something in,” Kwon replied.

  CHAPTER 8

  Caleb recovered from his initial shock, keeping his rifle trained forward, ready for something—anything—freakish to come barreling around the canyon’s bend. The idea that someone had trapped a monster in the canyon seemed ridiculous. Except most Relyeh didn’t need an atmosphere to survive. They didn’t even need water. What if Pathfinder had been overrun by the enemy and managed to banish them here? What if the distress call wasn’t a signal, but a warning?

  “We aren’t leaving without finding the satellite,” Caleb growled, resuming his advance. Kwon moved up beside him, both Marines prepared to open fire when the danger ahead presented itself. Nearing the turn in the canyon, the wail sounded a second time, the sound carrying poorly in the limited atmosphere but loud enough to incite caution. They stopped., putting their backs flat to the canyon wall..