“I have to be honest,” he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re coming on pretty strong.”

  “Am I?” She smiled mischievously. “The truth is, Sergeant, the old ways are done. Dead with the planet. We need to look at everything in a new light, including relationships. We’re all in the same boat together. Literally. I see a man who’s strong and sensitive and has a face I could stare at all night, and I’m not going to beat around the bush. It’s too bad you’re a Guardian. That’s all I have to say.”

  Caleb’s heart was racing, reacting to Sheriff Aveline. If he joined Metro, if his future could potentially include her, maybe there was something to surrendering his spot as a Guardian. There was nothing shameful about saving cats from trees.

  “It’s not my job to convince you,” she continued. “But I think you should make an educated decision. Why don’t I show you the rest of the station, and then give you a tour of the city? We can grab a bite at Oscar’s, and then I’ll give you a tour of my place.”

  “Your place?”

  “Don’t get any ideas. So you can see what the cubes are like for Sheriffs. We’re considered high-value, which means we get nicer apartments. One of the perks of the job. As far as I’m concerned, if the Vice-Governor wants you to be a sheriff he has a good reason, and that’s good enough for me. I’ve known Adam for a long time. He’s one of the good ones. If he likes you so much, it’s because you’re special too.”

  “I appreciate that, Sheriff.”

  “Please Caleb Card, call me Lily.”

  “Okay, Lily. I can’t think of a much better way to spend the afternoon than having you show me around Metro.”

  “Great minds think alike. Come on.”

  Chapter 14

  Lieutenant Adam Jones made his way from the aft entrance to Metro, back to the lifts on Deck Seven and up to Deck Three, making the long walk toward the bow. The bridge was located on the third deck, about four hundred meters from the massive cargo hold that was home to the city, buried ten meters deep beneath the super-light alloy that composed the hull.

  He had been there a few times before, and had returned more often as their days on Earth were coming to an end. As the commander of the Sixth Company, it had been his job to coordinate the search and rescue missions that had seen the Deliverance collect nearly one hundred target individuals who Command considered VIPs. It was a group made up of eighty-percent scientists and their families – people they had determined would be a real benefit to have on board. Not because they were expected to survive the two hundred year journey to the stars, but because they would bring their knowledge and intellect with them and pass it on to their expected descendants. They had a protocol for everything. A plan for any eventuality. Two years of trife occupation had given think-tanks plenty of time to prepare for the worst.

  It was still hard to believe the worst had come to pass.

  Adam didn’t regret his part. He was already a Lieutenant when the trife arrived. He had watched his friends and family and fellow officers and Marines succumb to the virus. He had witnessed the combat deaths of hundreds of Marines ever since. He always hoped it would get easier to take. It hadn’t. He’d never had a wife or children. He’d never even had a dog. He hadn’t been kidding when he told Caleb he thought of him like a son. He thought of all the people serving under him as his children. He wished he could protect them all.

  The ones who had made it though all the fighting were going to go up in the Deliverance with him, starting a journey very few of them would ever finish. He would never see the planet they were leaving Earth to settle. He would never witness its blue sky, its vast oceans, its abundant green landscapes. At least, that’s what the scientists claimed it was like and what the artists had rendered. It would never be more than a dream for him. Never more than a computer-generated recreation.

  He was okay with that, as long as humankind survived.

  No one would have ever predicted or expected the trife. How could anyone prepare for what had happened? It was a one-in-a-million occurrence. A nearly impossible reality. But it was reality. The trife were Earth’s new owners, and the Deliverance was being evicted.

  Adam reached the door to the bridge. A Marine was standing at attention to the left of it, guarding the hatch. He stiffened a little more when Adam approached, and Adam nodded to him as the hatch slid open and he walked past.

  The bridge of the Deliverance was deep and wide, with a number of workstations positioned at the front, a large holotable located behind them, and a command station located behind that. There were no windows and no direct view of the world outside. Instead, high-resolution cameras were installed across the hull of the Deliverance, providing near-real quality feeds to a large, semi-circular display positioned in the very front of the bridge. From there, it wrapped all the way around to the back of the workstation. There was nothing on the screen right now because there wasn't much to see. Adam could hardly wait to get out of the cavernous hangar and into space to see how the view changed then.

  A dozen men and women were positioned around the holo-table. Adam identified General Watkins at the head, his beard freshly shaven away and leaving him to look ten years younger. At seventy years old that didn’t mean a whole lot, but he did appear more serious without the crumb-catcher.

  He identified the other people in the assembly. Most were officers of the United States Space Force, the people he would be joining in Metro’s new government. He had met most of them within the last few months, when the Sixth Company had been transferred to the at-the-time nearly completed starship and to the Space Force from the Marines.

  Most of the people were fellow officers, but not all.

  Riley Valentine was standing with the group, along with another of the scientists the Vultures had rescued earlier.

  He tried not to moan audibly, pained to see the doctor had already gotten to General Watkins before he did. Still, she didn’t appear angry. More like shocked.

  What was going on?

  He had thought his meeting with General Watkins was private. He was expecting his superior to go over the transition procedures again, both for himself and for his Marines. One hundred of them would become Guardians. The rest were going back to civilian life, albeit a civilian life unlike any they had known.

  “General, he’s here,” Major Jackson said to Watkins, noticing Adam’s approach.

  General Watkins didn’t turn his head, but his eyes slid to the side to catch a glimpse. Adam stopped in front of the general, standing at attention.

  “Lieutenant Adam Jones reporting, sir,” he said.

  “As you were,” Watkins replied. “Adam, grab a spot around the table. Anywhere is fine.”

  Adam slid into place on the other end of the table, next to Doctor Valentine. She glanced over at him, keeping her emotions to herself. Good. He didn’t need her glaring at him during the whole meeting.

  “Let me cut right to the chase,” Watkins said, reaching down to activate the holotable controls. An image was projected in the middle of the table. Earth. “My apologies to Lieutenant Jones, because I had originally intended for this to be a private meeting between us. Sorry, Adam. You know how things are.”

  “Of course, sir,” Adam replied.

  “As you know, the Deliverance is scheduled to launch tomorrow morning, oh eight-hundred. That leaves us less than twenty-four hours to finish our preparations, which I believe are well underway?”

  “Sir, supply loading will be completed by sixteen-hundred today,” a small woman with short dark hair said. Lieutenant Ng. “We’re ahead of schedule.”

  “So, with less than twenty-four hours remaining before launch, Command decided to throw us a major curveball.”

  General Watkins moved his hand along the table’s control surface, and the Earth zoomed out until it was the size of a golf ball. Another planet appeared on the opposite side of the table, nearly identical to their homeworld. A line animated from Earth to the planet, showing a counter of years as it traveled across the galaxy.

  “That’s our original course,” Watkins said. “We called the planet Earth-6 because its the sixth E-type planet our teams located. As you know, all of the ships were originally slated to be sent to different planets to maximize our chances of seeding and growing a successful colony.”

  Watkin’s hand moved across the surface. A new planet appeared, smaller than Earth and nowhere near as lush.

  “This is Proxima B, in the Proxima Centauri system forty light years away. We’ve received word from Command that all ships are to be reprogrammed to rendezvous at that location.”

  He tapped the surface and a new animated line appeared, showing the trip would only take twenty years. The group was respectfully silent, but Adam felt his own sense of worry and tension at the last-minute change, and he was sure the others felt it too.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Ng said, unable to stay quiet. “Excuse my bluntness, but what?”

  “Sir,” Major Duvall said. “I think what the lieutenant means is, why the sudden alteration in course? What’s changed to make Command suddenly think we’re safer gathered on one planet versus two dozen?”

  General Watkins put up his hand to settle them. “Command has come to believe the composition of the Proxima system may be more suitable for remaining hidden from the unknown hostile force that brought the trife to Earth.”

  “Sir, if a hostile force sent the trife,” Major Jackson said without finishing as Doctor Valentine interrupted the Major.

  “Proxima B is considered a harsh but habitable environment,” she said. “There’s a wealth of groundwater, and while the surface is barren and rocky, it is stable. The atmosphere is too thin to be breathable, which means we’ll have to repurpose some of our materials to build habitable domes. It also means the trife can’t breathe there, and there isn’t much by way of resources for the enemy to be interested in claiming.”

  Adam looked sideways at her. “Did you have something to do with Command’s updated decision, Doctor?”

  “It wasn’t a decision made in isolation,” Valentine said. “We were in communication with all of the remaining governments who are sending ships. We formulated a new path forward by consensus.”

  “And assumptions,” Lieutenant Ng said. “There’s a theory the trife were meant to stop us from reaching the stars. Now you’re suggesting they want our natural resources? So what, we leave the planet and then they show up and start enjoying our beaches?”

  “Lieutenant,” General Watkins cautioned quite sternly.

  “Sir, the Lieutenant is right,” Major Duvall said. “Less than twenty-four hours, and now we’ve decided to settle on a single theory about the trife? Last time I heard, it was fifty-fifty that they had been sent at all, and weren’t some parasitic life form riding the rubble of their destroyed home planet across the universe.”

  “Understood, Major,” Watkins said. “Allow Doctor Valentine to continue.”

  As the officers fell silent, Doctor Valentine took control of the table from her end, changing the view of space to one of a rocky surface with a river running across it. “We sent a probe to Proxima before the trife ever arrived. It was going to be one of the first places we delivered a human settlement due to its proximity to Earth. A temporary testing ground, to prepare for a longer colonization cycle. Assuming we had gotten the funding.” She smiled slightly, expecting her comment to gather a few chuckles. She continued when it didn’t. “There are two issues at play here. One, we have theories of how and why the trife came to Earth, but that’s all they are. Theories. We listed each one and tested them against Proxima. The planet can defend us against all but one.”

  “Which one, Doctor?” Adam asked.

  “Direct attack. If another alien race delivered the trife, and that race has advanced combat potential, and they decide to hunt for us close to our home planet, there’s nothing we can do. But that’s just one scenario. Our original scenario of Earth-6 would allow four scenarios.”

  “What’re the other scenarios?” Adam asked.

  “First of all, we have no idea how the human psyche will hold up to an extended period on the Deliverance. If we set out for Earth-6, people are going to spend their entire lives on the ship, from birth to death without ever seeing the real sun or sky, without ever breathing non-recycled air, without – ”

  “The protocols for all that are in place,” Major Jackson said, interrupting.

  “We have no idea if the protocols will be successful. We’re making educated guesses.”

  “Instead of last minute, rash assumptions.”

  “None of us want to die on the Deliverance,” Lieutenant Ng said. “But we don’t want to spend the rest of our existence living in a bubble either. How is that so much better than being in Metro?”

  The statement got the rest of the officers to start talking again, making their comments about the situation. Adam remained silent. He had never been reactive. He liked to consider everything fully before he formed an opinion.

  “Attention!” General Watkins barked, his voice booming over the multiple conversations. “You will reign yourselves in, immediately.” The Marines fell silent, coming to attention. “Everyone here except Doctors Valentine and Omar are Marines. What do Marines do? They follow orders. Redirecting the Deliverance from Earth-6 to Proxima B is not a request. It’s an order. It’s the path Command has chosen for us. Not only United States Command, but the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians. Everybody. Four scenarios versus one scenario. We’re unified on this. We get to Proxima, and then we start working on how to defend ourselves from a potential attack. Those are steps one and two. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir!” the officers barked.

  “Sir, if I may?” Adam asked. Watkins nodded. Of course he had noticed Adam had stayed the most calm and asked the most reasonable questions. “Doctor Valentine, what kinds of procedures will be put into place considering the time differential between the trips? By that I mean, twenty years is a lot shorter than two-hundred. How do we plan to alter our approach to the civilians on board, and to Metro, considering everyone on the Deliverance should survive the journey and arrival?”

  “We don’t have time to alter procedure, Lieutenant,” she replied. “We aren’t planning on informing the rest of the population.”

  More than a few of the gathered officers blurted out their questioning of the statement in unison, drawing sharp glares from Watkins.

  “We spent over a year putting the protocols in place. Changing them now would be disastrous.”

  “Isn’t that the point the others are trying to make?” Adam asked. “Switching tactics last minute could have unintended negative consequences.”

  “When the Deliverance arrives ahead of schedule, the people of Metro will be overjoyed to have a new home in their lifetime. I know I will. Things will be hard in the beginning, but I believe in the strength of humankind to overcome. Don’t you?”

  Adam smiled. She had him there, and they both knew it. “Point made, Doctor.”

  “Each of you here was told because from a higher level of governance, it is going to mean a change in how we prepare for arrival,” General Watkins said. “You’re each going to have a role to play on Proxima, though it might be a slightly different role than you might think. The unification of global resources is going to affect everyone in ways we have yet to process completely, and as leaders it’s your responsibility to manage those changes from the top down. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” the assembly said.

  “Sir, I have one more question,” Lieutenant Ng said.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Watkins replied.

  She turned to Doctor Valentine. “It is my understanding that you’re a geneticist, Doctor Valentine?”

  “That’s right,” she replied.

  “What makes you qualified to have even been part of the conversation regarding the viability of Proxima B?”

  Adam glanced at Watkins, waiting for him to stomp out the question and dismiss them all. Watkins surprised him by looking curiously at Doctor Valentine. It seemed he had the same question.

  “Well,” Valentine said, her face flushing. “I...I don’t think I’m at liberty to say in this company. My directives came straight from Command, as a result of my ongoing research.”

  “What kind of research?” Ng pressed.

  “I really – ”

  “What?” General Watkins said, cutting her off. All eyes turned to him. He had turned his head away, talking to someone through his comm. “You’re sure? Now? Of all the damned luck. Get Eighth company up and ready asap. Pull three of the butchers from the hold and get them headed to the surface, and trigger the red alert.”

  Adam’s heart jumped at the last few words. What the hell was going on?

  “Sir?” he said.

  Watkins turned to them, his face stone. “Get back to the barracks and assemble your troops. We’re under attack.”

  Chapter 15

  “There it is,” Espinoza said, lowering his binoculars.

  “Are you sure?” David asked. “All I see from here is the side of a mountain.”

  “The side of a mountain. Are you loco, kid? Here. Take a look for yourself.”

  Espinoza handed him the binoculars. He put them to his eyes and leaned over the rock they were hiding behind. He quickly scanned the mountainside, pausing when he reached the small building halfway up the hill. Worn tracks led into the rusted aluminum structure, but so what? They could be months old.

  Not according to Espinoza. The scavengers’ leader was insistent that the military had a base inside, an underground complex safe from the aliens that roamed the surface of the planet. He said he had seen more than one of the large ships they called hoppers cross over the landscape and come down nearby, though there was no sign of any vehicles from here, not even with the extra zoom.