More of the smaller aliens swarmed onto the other end of the structure, teeth gnashing, tentacles thrashing as they closed on the squad from behind.

  “There’s too many of them!” Habib shouted.

  “Over the side!” Caleb shouted, breaking toward the edge of the bridge still open to escape. He flicked the switch on his plasma rifle and the bolts turned into a stream of hot gas, forcing the aliens in back of them to either back up or be roasted alive.

  The others followed suit as they moved toward the side of the bridge still free of trife. All except Wash. He stood his ground and continued firing on the armored trife, holding them back so the others could escape ahead of him, retreating one step at a time.

  “Wash, come on!,” Caleb cried.

  One of the armored trife broke away from the gunfire. It took two steps and lunged at the Marines. Habib turned on it, firing a stream of plasma into it that immediately began burning its armored chest. Tentacles reached around from its sides, circumventing the heat. One slapped the rifle from his hands. The other wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground.

  “Habib!” Card shouted, pausing at the edge of the bridge to turn his gun on the armored trife. He didn’t get the chance. The trife drove its claws through a break in Habib’s armor, slipping them deep into his abdomen and tearing them viciously back out.

  Nicholas clenched his jaw, his death so reminiscent of Luke’s death it tore into him like a knife. His initial shock turned immediately to anger, and he had to resist the urge to push Foresight harder to get to the Marines before they were all killed. He could handle higher G-forces than they were burning now, but the others couldn’t.

  “Shepherd, get the hell out of here!” Caleb shouted, continuing to bathe the armored trife in plasma.

  Shepherd raised his rifle to add his fire to Card’s, but before he could pull the trigger, Caleb shoved him off the railing and into the stream below. Caleb knew he’d catch hell for it later, if any of them survived this, but it would be worth it to keep their only pilot alive. “Sho, get Shepherd out of here,” he snapped, holding off the aliens on their heels.

  Caleb screamed out his rage and finished off the alien as the others vanished over the side of the bridge with Shepherd, the smaller aliens on their heels. Wash backpedaled, moving toward Caleb, still firing his minigun at the pursuing trife. Halfway there, the gun went dry.

  Four of the armored trife had gone down, but six remained.

  “Wash, go!” Caleb shouted as the armored trife moved toward them.

  The big Marine looked sadly at him and slowly shook his head. Dropping his gun, he went to Calab, grabbed the front of his armor in one powerful hand and the sergeant’s belt in the other.

  “Noooo!” Caleb cried, struggling in vain to break free of Wash’s hold even as the big man lifted him and threw him over the side of the bridge.

  Legs and arms windmilling, Caleb straightened out enough in midair to land on his feet in the shallows, knees bent to absorb the force of his weight. The rest of his squad were spaced out—two were standing in the stream, one was halfway up the embankment, and the other was up top on level ground—all busy unleashing hell on the small creatures converging on them. Shepherd joined in, defending the sergeant as he splashed through the water to get to them.

  Nicholas momentarily switched his attention to Wash on the bridge. Ignoring the small trife behind him as they poured over the side after his squadmates, he unhooked the harness for the minigun and let it drop to the deck. When he pulled his hunting knife from the sheath on his hip and took a step toward them, squaring off, the armored trife paused their approach. Nicholas didn’t know if they were curious as to why he hadn’t fled or if they were wary of the big man’s knife.

  “Wash, come on!” Caleb shouted through the comms.

  The big man raised his free hand and flashed a thumbs-down, refusing the order before motioning in the direction of the arrow, waiting downstream, his signal telling Caleb to go on without him.

  He started backing up, hoping they’d come after him.

  They did. All of them.

  Wash was backing closer and closer to the smaller creatures, still pouring onto the bridge and down over the other side into the creek. He was so close one latched onto his boot heel and began to gnaw at it. Caleb switched his rifle back to bolts and shot the squid off Wash’s heel. More replaced it, beginning to crawl up his leg

  “Goddamn it, Wash!” Caleb shouted.

  “What’s that Wash guy doing?” Briar asked. “Why didn’t he run?”

  “He’s making the greatest sacrifice,” Gills replied. “Much respect to you, brother.”

  A tentacle lashed out at Wash, trying to smack his knife away. Wash pivoted and slashed back, severing the limb. The armored trife howled and drew back, trying to staunch the flow of its viscous blood as it spewed from its injured appendage. A second trife moved around the injured creature and came at Wash. One of its tentacles reached for Wash’s neck. He went low, ducking beneath the writhing appendage, putting his weight and muscle to work, lifting the trife up and over his back. Its claws raked his armor, failing to penetrate as it flew over him and landed hard on the bridge.

  Another one came at him. The big man yelled over the comm as he powered into it, leaping to drive his knife deep into its mouth. The armored trife stopped living then, the blade piercing its brain. Wash grabbed its mouth with his other hand to pry it open, removing his bloody arm. Tentacles from two more of the armored trife wrapped around him, and the others piled on.

  “Son of a bitch,” Nicholas cursed. It had hurt to watch the big Marine go down. Hurt that he could do little to help them.

  “There’s too many!” Rodriquez shouted. “We need to fall back, Sarge!”

  The squad was already backing up, even as they kept pouring plasma on the tiny creatures about to overtake them. As many as they vaporized, more kept coming.

  “Hold your fire and run!” Caleb ordered. “Conserve your charges.”

  They picked up speed, running hard along the stream bed, hundreds of the tiny tentacled creatures scrambling along the ground after them. The smaller ones matched their speed but struggled to gain on them. The larger ones, unlike the trife on Earth, were too heavy to move quickly, lumbering along behind the small ones.

  Nicholas directed half the Swarm to fly on ahead, leading Shepherd and the Marines to where he hoped they would find safety. The other half followed along behind the trife, keeping track of them.

  The Swarm suddenly changed direction, flying up the embankment, leading them toward the city proper. The climb once again slowed them, allowing the aliens to make up ground, but it gave Caleb the opportunity he needed to both slow the creatures down and thin their numbers.

  He reached into the pocket on the leg of his armor as he fell back, climbing up the steep embankment last. Pulling out a charge they simply called a puck because of its size and shape, he dropped it on the ground at the top of the embankment. A blinking red light told him it had successfully armed itself upon impact. And then he took off again, quickly catching up to the rest of his squad, the Marines having to slow down to match Shepherd’s slower gait.

  On level ground now, they still began to pull away.

  Caleb remained in the rear position, glancing back every few seconds to watch the aliens’ advance. They didn’t slow as they came over the top of the embankment, stampeding over the puck as if it weren’t there, the armored trife pounding along a ways behind them.

  As Foresight barreled through space, approaching the planet’s atmosphere, Nicholas glanced over his shoulder, checking on Jennifer. He was glad to find her face set and alert, fully focused on responding to any orders he might provide.

  “Is everyone okay back there?” he asked over the comm.

  “For now,” Yasmin said. “It’s not getting any easier.”

  “I know. We can cut the burn once we hit the atmosphere. Only a few more minutes.”

  Nicholas returned his attention to the Swarm feeds, watching Caleb Card most intently out of everyone in the group. The leader of the Vultures had been nothing but cool under pressure until the loss of the big man they called Wash. The two of them had obviously been good friends, but even so, Card had quickly regained control of his squad, seemingly without another stray thought given to his lost friend. Nicholas was certain the Marine would grieve later, when they weren’t in the middle of a nightmare.

  As the large creatures reached the top of the embankment, Caleb paused, staring back at them through his tinted visor as he pulled the puck’s detonator from its pocket. Eager to exact retribution for Wash, his emotions exposed themselves again for the briefest of moments as he stopped to watch.

  The blast was more powerful than Nicholas expected. It dug deep into the stream bed and into the soft earth of the embankment, sending a spray of dirt and water a good hundred feet into the air. Not only were all but one of the armored aliens blown apart, hundreds of the smaller ones were vaporized.

  And then the shockwave picked Caleb up and threw him.

  The others stopped and whirled around to look when they heard the blast. None of them seemed particularly amazed when Caleb hit the ground, rolling on his shoulder and bouncing back to his feet.

  “Did he really just use the explosion for a boost?” Gills said excitedly, though he was unable to laugh with the amount of pressure on his lungs from the burn.

  “Let’s move,” Caleb said, urging the others into a sprint through some low vegetation into the edge of the city, the first large structure looming overhead.

  “Swarm, scout the area for signs of life,” Nicholas said, as amazed as Gills at Caleb’s actions.

  As several smaller packs split off the main Swarm, Shepherd and the Marines followed the main group as it flew straight ahead, continuing deeper into the abandoned metropolis.

  “I’ve still got signatures behind us, Sarge,” Sho said, bringing up the rear. “At least one of those armored bastards is still coming.”

  “More movement from the bridge, too,” Carter said.

  “They aren’t giving up,” Caleb replied. “We’ve got seven minutes until the cavalry arrives. We need a defensible position.”

  “What about in there?” Shepherd asked, pointing to the front of one of the supertall structures. A break in the vines revealed an entrance to the structure where part of the wall had crumbled. Dark rubble spilled out of the hole, the only obvious sign of debris at ground level.

  “Negative,” Caleb replied. “The aliens will follow us inside, and we’ll have to deal with them ourselves. We need to keep them out in the open so air support can thin them out. Carter, drop your puck there, but don’t trigger it until I say so.”

  “You got it, Sarge,” Carter said, pulling out his explosive device. He dropped the ED, without arming it, where Card had indicated. Crouching, he pulled out the detonator and keyed it into that particular puck by its registration number and set it to blow when he pressed the button.

  “This way,” Caleb said, leading the group down a street intermittently overgrown with vines as thick as man’s wrist.

  Despite the vegetation covering the buildings, it was clear to Nicholas they had all been uniquely designed and built using the same dark mortar as the bridge. Some of the buildings rose straight up like monoliths, others twisted as they ascended, and still others took on a more angled form as though they were made of crystal. There was no outward indication of windows or glass, but every so often the light would catch the side of a building and reveal a translucent glimpse of the interior as if the outer wall at that point was thin enough to see through.

  “Captain, we’re about to hit the atmosphere,” Jennifer said, tearing his attention away from the Swarm feeds.

  “Thank you, Jennifer,” he said. “Frank, I’ve got the stick.”

  “Confirmed, Captain.”

  Nicholas laid his other hand on the ship’s controls, immediately shutting off the main thrusters and canceling the burn. The pressure lifted from his chest and he gulped in deep breaths of air, certain the others on board were doing the same. He adjusted the approach vector slightly, allowing existing momentum and the planet’s strengthening gravity to pull them toward the surface.

  Glancing back at the Swarm’s feed, he suddenly felt as though he had missed minutes of action rather than seconds.

  Shepherd and the Vultures were on the run again as a fresh round of the small tentacled aliens poured from the hole Shepherd had suggested as a hiding place.

  All around them, the rest of the city sprang to life.

  Chapter 10

  “Damn it, Shepherd,” Caleb snapped. “I told you that wasn’t your wife. Whoever they are, they led us straight from the frying pan into the fire.”

  “I didn’t know,” Yasmin countered. “I swear. There was nothing on my sensors until just now. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Shepherd said. “Card, we should make a break for the source of the broadcast.”

  “What good will it do for us to reach it?” Caleb replied. “We put way too much faith in Grimmel, and he led us into this shit.”

  “They came out of nowhere, Nick,” Yasmin said. “I don’t understand how we couldn’t see them.”

  “I don’t understand either,” Shepherd said, “but like I said, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to be knee deep in the little bastards any second now.”

  Caleb led Shepherd and the squad down the least overrun street as more of the smaller tentacled aliens poured out of all the other nearby buildings. Caleb swapped out his rifle’s cell as he ran, slapping in a new one and keeping it shouldered without firing. The other Vultures followed his lead, even as the aliens closed in on them.

  “Carter! Now!” Caleb yelled into the comm.

  Nicholas lost track of the fight momentarily as he focused on bringing Foresight down through the atmosphere. He glanced back at the Swarm feed when he heard an explosion, one of the feeds blocked by dirt, debris, smoke, and mangled alien flesh blown up by Carter’s explosive device.

  “The aliens must have come from underground,” Jennifer said. “ The sensors can’t penetrate whatever that construction material is.”

  “Shit, I bet they have a whole series of tunnels down there,” Scott agreed. “They came out of a hole beneath the bridge too.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Nicholas cursed. “You’re probably right. Which means there’s nowhere for Shepherd and the others to hide.”

  “Which means there won’t be anywhere for us to hide either,” Gills said.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Nicholas replied.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idiom to use right now,” Briar said as Foresight passed through the atmosphere, screaming toward the surface.

  Nicholas gritted his teeth, using both the anti-gravity and the vectoring thrusters to turn the ship on its axis so the thrusters slowly came around to face the ground. Pushing the throttle as hard as he dared, the G-forces returned, once more shoving everyone hard into their seats. A quick glance at the feeds from the Swarm showed the Vultures spewing superheated plasma at the aliens and killing them by the dozens.

  It wouldn’t be nearly enough to save them.

  Thousands of creatures spilled out of every building, completely surrounding Shepherd and the Marines. They ran headlong into the plasma streams, melting away in an instant but the squad was using up their charges in a hurry.

  “Two more minutes,” Nicholas hissed between his teeth. “We’re almost there.”

  “We’re not going to make it in time,” Gills ground out past his gritted teeth.

  “We’ll make it.” Nicholas insisted, decelerating hard.

  Foresight shuddered against the air resistance as Nicholas guided the ship toward Shepherd and the marines, using tiny adjustments with his thumb to keep them on course.

  Glancing at the Swarm feed one more time, he nearly choked on his expletives when he saw the armored trife entering the city and rushing the brave Marines. Card saw them too, and he broke away from the group, going forward to face them alone the same way Wash had.

  “Sarge! No!” Sho shouted through the comms, no doubt desperate to break free of the incoming tentacled aliens to help him against the trife.

  Card didn’t listen. He stormed toward the armored trife, triggering his plasma stream and spewing fire at them.

  A rumble filled the air, so loud through the Swarm feed that Nicholas initially thought something on Foresight had malfunctioned. Then the ground beneath the Vultures split open, huge tentacles reaching up through the widening crevice. One of the arms grabbed Sho, wrapping her up and crushing her until her body went limp in its grip. Another swatted Shepherd, throwing him across the street and into the side of one of the buildings.

  “Nick!” Yasmin shouted, forgetting in the moment that he wasn’t her Nicholas.

  More tentacles pierced the ground, snapping out and planting themselves into the solid pavement, cracking it where they dug in and flexed, to pull the central mass of the huge monster out of the dirt. Rodriguez didn’t hesitate to blast the creature with her plasma stream, burning its face. The creature screamed its wrath, its huge maw lunging forward and swallowing her whole.

  “Card, run!” Yasmin screamed.

  But Card had nowhere to run. Caught between the huge tentacled alien and the armored trife, he stood his ground, refusing to give an inch.

  “Swarm, do something! Save Card,” Nicholas growled as he activated Foresight’s spines.

  The Swarm fragments dove from their position over the action, swooping down toward the sergeant. The armored trife ceased their approach, standing their ground and leaving the kill to the larger alien, its tentacles snapping out to grab the lone remaining Marine.

  They caught nothing but air.

  The microbots had combined into two larger drones, their skids turning into claws. They latched onto Card’s shoulders, lifting him up and away from the strike. Enraged, the huge alien screamed shrilly in defiance and launched three tentacles toward the drones as another one snatched up Carter. The Marine continued to spray plasma in the creature’s face until it tossed him in its open maw and swallowed. Two of the tentacles after Card and the drones slammed into them, the third one missing its grab for Card as he tumbled away, the Swarm barely able to recover. One fragment dodged the side of a building, the other regained control before crashing into the street with just feet to spare.