Billie was beyond fear by now, her adrenaline surge no more than a trickle, just enough to keep her alert. It was odd to think that you could get used to something like this, but it seemed to be happening. Or maybe she was finally losing her mind. She was too tired to care which it was.

  Next to her, Wilks said, “Well?”

  He was talking to Powell, who frowned at the control unit he held. Powell tapped in a series of numbers on the small device, then looked at the ship the three of them stood in front of.

  “The hatch isn’t opening,” Powell said.

  “I can see that. Why not?”

  Powell shook his head. “I don’t know. This is the Command Override, it’s supposed to open every lock in the base, right down to the beer coolers in the kitchen. It’s the one Spears carries when he’s here, it stays with whoever is the CO in the station. It has worked so far. It should work here.”

  “Are you sure you entered the correct code?” Billie said.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  Wilks sighed. “Spears. He’s fucked us again. We should have guessed it. As paranoid as he is, he wouldn’t trust anybody with the ships if he wasn’t around. We’ll have to run a bypass.”

  “That’ll take time,” Powell said. “The access panel is armored.”

  “I don’t see we have much of a choice,” Wilks said.

  Spears and his troops reached the outer hangar via the emergency escape tunnel he’d had built.

  The two transports in the huge room stood silent. He had half his platoon fan out and take up guard positions, but there was no need. They were alone. He almost felt sorry for the enemy. So outclassed. Powell never really had a chance.

  “Okay, the rest of you with me to the inner hangar.”

  They moved down the interlink.

  “I think that’s got it,” Wilks said.

  The access panel for the hatch control had to be burned open, but once that was done, the circuits were fairly easy to reroute. Wilks bypassed the electronics entirely, shut off the power to the hatch, and used the manual crank to begin winding the hatch up. He had a fifteen-centimeter gap opened at the bottom when he heard the voice:

  “Freeze frame it!”

  Wilks turned to look, saw half a dozen marines in climate suits and full battle gear pointing then-weapons at them. He spared a quick glance for Billie, and understanding passed between them.

  Better to go down shooting than to be fed to the aliens. “Good-bye, Billie,” Wilks whispered.

  “Sorry.”

  He leapt for his carbine where it leaned against the ship, saw Billie swing her weapon up to firing position. Wilks waited for the impacts of the bullets that would kill him, knowing there was no way he could get to his own piece before the marines cut him to pieces but going to go out trying.

  Fuck it—! A blinding white light smashed into Wilks and took him away. Odd, he hadn’t expected it to be like that…

  When Wilks came to, he was lying on his back next to Powell, Billie sprawled on the other side of the major. Wilks blinked, not understanding.

  “Nice try, Sergeant,” Spears said.

  Wilks rolled onto his side, found himself facing Spears. Half a dozen troops backed him, each of them holding stockstiks, essentially riot batons wired to stun a victim into unconsciousness at a touch.

  “Concussion charges,” Spears said, answering Wilks’s unspoken question. “Mounted in the locks of all the ships. You’d gotten that hatch up another five or six centimeters, they’d have gone off without me having to use this.” He waved a small electronic device.

  Wilks looked at Spears, his mind still fuzzy. There was something he was going to do.

  What—?

  “No point in doing anything heroic, Sergeant,” the general continued. “I’ll just have you stunned. You don’t get to die, yet.”

  Spears looked at Powell, who had yet to awaken. “I might have known dickless there wouldn’t have the balls to try something like this on his own. Was that you in the crawler shooting at my decoy?”

  Wilks managed a nod.

  Spears returned the gesture. “Thought so. You get credit for trying, but you picked the wrong side. Too bad. I admire a man with guts, even if he’s an enemy.”

  Billie moaned in her sleep.

  “Win some, lose some,” Spears said. He turned away. “All right, men. You know the drill. Get the cargo loaded, collect your gear. Sort out the prisoners and free the loyalists, I’ll give you a list.”

  “What are you going to do?” Wilks said. His head hurt and he felt as if he were going to vomit, but he maintained, taking slow and deep breaths.

  “Well, it doesn’t really concern you anymore, now does it? But because you gave me a decent fight, I’ll tell you. I’m going home, to Earth. I’ll be taking a small corps of the aliens and we’ll have ourselves a little sortie. Once I demonstrate how effective my troops are, we’ll get support to build a full-scale army of trained aliens. We’re going to kick ass, son, and when I show the recordings of how we did it to the powers-that-be, we’ll get what we need to win this war.”

  Jesus. He really believed it. The guy was a few kilograms short of fission mass, crazy as a stepped-on roach.

  “What about us?” That from Powell, who had managed to sit up.

  “You and your allies are up for court-martial, Major. I don’t have time to fool with such piddly shit now, so you’ll stay here until I can send the appropriate legal teams back to handle it.”

  “You can’t leave us here! There are aliens loose in the base! We’ll be slaughtered, eaten!”

  “You should have thought about that before you played at sedition, Major.” He turned away and moved off.

  Wilks made as if to stand, but two of the troopers stepped toward him, stun wands held ready.

  Wilks settled back. Jumping them would only get him another headache when he woke up in half an hour. If he woke up at all. Right now, it seemed a lot more important to stay awake. Whatever happened to them, he wanted to see it coming.

  21

  Mitch was on top of Billie, moving slowly and with great power, thrusting, filling her. Sweat beaded on his face and he held himself up with his arms, muscles corded in his triceps, connected to her only at the groin, the juncture of their sexes.

  Naked, connected, they danced.

  Billie had never felt so fulfilled, so complete, as a woman, as a human being. This was what she had always hoped for but never expected to have, someone who loved her, someone she could love in return, giving and receiving totally, becoming not less, but more than two—

  Becoming one.

  He moved faster, nearing his peak, and she moved with him. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes!

  He screamed.

  Billie stared at his open mouth, saw the claw tear past his lips. But it did not reach for her, the taloned hand, it extended in a half circle on an arm too thick and long to have possibly come from Mitch’s mouth, extended to his belly and tore into the skin and muscle, ripping him in two and hurling his top half away, leaving his hips and legs on her. White fluid spurted from the torn body, android blood the color of milk splashed over her in an obscene bath, hot, salty, even as he began to throb within her…

  “No!”

  Billie felt the pressure on her legs; she struggled to move from under the weight—

  “Billie. It’s me, Wilks. Wake up.”

  She blinked her way into consciousness. Her head ached, nausea filled her throat with a sour burning. Soldiers stood nearby, staring down at them from behind sealed faceplates, long rods held in their hands.

  “Wilks?”

  “Spears. We were hit with concussion grenades.”

  Billie didn’t know what he was talking about. Where were they? The last thing she remembered, they were running. It seemed as if they had always been running.

  “Billie.”

  “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  Pieces of it came back to her. The aliens in the corridor. The ship door that wouldn’t open.

  Men with guns pointed at them, the unspoken decision she and Wilks made together to fight.

  “Yeah. I guess. What is going on?”

  Powell, seated with his back to the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, said, “Spears is going to load his tame monsters onto the largest transport ship and lift. He says he’s going to Earth. We get left here, along with all the other marines and scientists.”

  “Hey, fuck that noise,” one of the troopers standing next to them said. “You get left here with the other traitors. Those of us who stuck by the general are going with him.”

  Powell laughed, a sound on the edge of hysteria. “Are you really that stupid, marine? He doesn’t need you anymore, you’re excess baggage. You get dumped.”

  “No way, Major,” a second guard said. “Spears takes care of his own.”

  “His own? Christ, he thinks he is fucking God, you moron! You’re nothing more than used toilet tissue to Spears. You’ve served your purpose; you’re going to be flushed and compacted with the rest of us.”

  The guards looked at each other. The leader, an older sergeant Billie had talked to once, shook his head. “Bottle it, boys. The major here is just trying to divide and conquer. The general has taken care of you so far, ain’t he? Don’t let this fubbie rattle you. Didn’t you hear the man tell you to pack your gear soon as we get the traitors stocked away?”

  The other five guards murmured. Billie thought they still sounded unconvinced but it didn’t seem to matter. They weren’t about to let the three of them go.

  “Okay,” the leader said. “Now that sleeping beauty is awake, let’s move it, people.”

  Wilks got to his feet, helped Billie up. Two of the marines jerked Powell upright.

  Billie saw Wilks gather himself. He was going to try to fight his way out. She didn’t think he would make it, but she would follow his lead.

  The lights went out.

  “What the fuck—?” somebody yelled.

  There was a zapping sound, like an electrical spark, and somebody moaned.

  “Spookeyes,” the sergeant in charge hollered. “Turn on your spookeyes!”

  A long moment hung there, time suspended like a spider on a strand of glistening silk…

  “Eyes on? Everybody see? Report!”

  A chorus of assents.

  “Nobody moves,” the guard in charge said. “We’re spookeyed and can see you like it was noon on the Equator.”

  The lights went back on, three times brighter than they had been before.

  The soldiers screamed, almost with one voice. Their hands went up to slap against the closed faceplates. One trooper tore open the clear plate and dug at his eyes.

  “What—?”

  “Bueller!” Wilks yelled. He kicked one man in the belly, caught the baton he dropped before it hit the deck, whipped the stick against another man’s throat. Even through the suit that must have hurt.

  “Go, go! This way!”

  Billie followed Wilks, Powell right behind her.

  “What happened?!”

  Wilks said, “They’re blind. They got the hangar lights all of a sudden amplified a couple of million times by the spookeyes. Ordinary C-suits don’t have blast shields in the faceplates; the military is too cheap to spend the money. It must have been like looking right at an atomic flash. Go!”

  Once again, they ran.

  Spears was personally overseeing the loading of the alien modules onto the transport truck from the vault when the frantic call came over the com.

  “General, Powell and the other two have escaped!”

  Spears felt a stab of irritation. He held it in check. “It doesn’t matter. Penned up or running free, they are still going to be left here when we depart. Maintain watch, shoot them if you see them, but otherwise, let them hide.”

  After he discommed, Spears watched one of the modules picked up by the big hoop lifted and carefully stacked on the other modules on the truck. He was the only one who knew the access codes to the starships. Two of the vessels would be making the voyage in tandem, one with cargo, the second with but a single passenger—himself. The other starships would remain here. Terrible waste of materiel, but he couldn’t worry about that. Sacrifices had to be made in war, be it flying stock or troops. A man who couldn’t do the hot work didn’t deserve to command. The engines of the ships that remained behind would be slag thirty seconds after Spears departed. Whoever was left behind was going to stay behind, unless somebody came to take them off. And, given the unreasoning hunger the drone aliens had, it wasn’t likely there’d be anybody left if anybody ever did show up here again.

  He’d be taking the queen, of course, she was necessary to his plan. Control her and he controlled the drones. Some of the techbrains thought that a new queen could develop from a drone if there weren’t any other queens around, but that wasn’t likely here. The food supply on this mostly airless lump was pretty limited. The marines and scientists still alive wouldn’t go a long way, unless the aliens had their own version of Jesus to do the loaves and fishes routine.

  Spears smiled at that thought. The idea of the aliens with a messiah was funny. Then again, come to it, this group of creatures, of soldiers, might well consider him their messiah. It was true enough. He was going to lead them to a better world, to a kingdom of power and glory. Why wouldn’t they think of him like that? Not that they did much thinking anyway, but then again, neither did human marines.

  “Easy with that cargo,” Spears said. “Don’t want to hatch it before its time.”

  Not much longer. Too bad about the others at the air station, but that was how it went sometimes. The old adage about the best of battle plans not surviving the first engagement could apply here; still, it was a minor setback. Nothing a decent commander couldn’t take in stride.

  Spears grinned again. Soon as he lifted, he decided, he was going to smoke one of the special cigars. Hell, he deserved it. He’d just won his first battle in the war against the aliens. He’d still have plenty to toke up once he won his first encounter on Earth itself. Yes, by God, he would.

  “Now what?” Powell asked.

  “Seems like I’ve been here before,” Wilks said.

  They were in an unused cargo area, empty cartons stacked in neat rows, forming a maze in which they could stay lost for a little while, at least.

  “We can run, but we can’t hide,” Wilks said. “We’ve got to get off this planetoid or we’re dead.”

  “How?”

  “Spears will be taking the largest ship, my guess. Maybe another one locked to it. We’ve got to find a way to get onto one of the ships before he buttons them up.”

  “How?” Powell said again.

  “Do you know where the aliens he’ll be taking are stored?”

  “A special vault, yes.”

  “Let’s get to it.”

  “If anybody sees us—” Powell began.

  “They’ll shoot us?” Wilks finished. “Big fucking deal, Major. Let’s do it.”

  Spears rode with the first truckload of his precious cargo while his men continued to load the next transporter. Nothing could go wrong at this stage, he had to see to it personally. He had recaptured the queen easily enough, all he’d had to do was find the place she was trying to hide her eggs and wave a flamethrower at them. Once she was caged, the wild aliens running around the base would calm down—at least until they realized she was gone. He had the walls of the queen’s cage opaque so she wouldn’t know where he was taking her until it was too late. Everything was under control.

  The vault was heavily guarded, the men loading the truck parked in front of the vault were heavily guarded, but the next empty truck fifty meters up the corridor had only the driver and two troopers sitting on it, doing nothing but waiting.

  “That’s it,” Wilks said.

  “That’s what?” Powell said.

  “Our ride. We can hide on that transporter, it’ll take us straight to the ship Spears is using.”

  “You’re crazy. We’ll never make it.”

  “I’m open to a better idea.”

  Powell stared at him, then looked at Billie. She shook her head. “Wilks is pretty good at this stuff,” she said. “He’s saved us before. Whatever he says.”

  Wilks nodded at her.

  “Okay. This is how I see it…”

  Spears watched the containers being loaded onto the ship. All his plans were about to come to fruition. It was a glorious day for the Corps.

  Billie, naked, stepped around the corner where the three men on the empty truck could see her.

  “Jesus Christ,” one of the men said. “Check this out.”

  Billie smiled, wet her fingertip with her tongue, and touched her left nipple so it pebbled up and grew hard. Then she stepped back out of sight.

  “Hey,” one of the three troopers said, “wait up, honey!”

  “You crazy?” the second marine said. “Spears will chew you a new asshole if he catches you gone!”

  “It’ll only take a minute,” the first marine said.

  “Spears—” the driver began.

  “Fuck Spears,” the first marine said.

  “Nah,” the second marine said, “I’m with you, I’d rather fuck her. Come on.”

  The two marines jogged toward where Billie had disappeared.

  When they rounded the corner, they saw her standing there, legs spread wide, arms open, a big smile.

  How could men be so stupid? she wondered. Did they really believe that a woman who’d never even met them would be so overcome with lust at the sight of them she’d strip to the skin and beckon to them, all wet and ready?

  Apparently so. The two marines moved toward her, already dropping gear and untabbing their coveralls.

  Wilks stepped out behind them and bopped each on the head with the wand he’d taken from the other guards. Both men fell, out before they hit the floor.