Clad In Steel

Kevin McLaughlin

Exclusive free story for fans of Kevin McLaughlin’s science fiction! Learn the story of how John found the alien ship on the moon, launching the adventure which spans the stars and saves all of humanity!

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One

The day when Earth’s people first became aware of life outside our solar system was a rude awakening to every soul living on the planet.

Fires flashed through the sky. It felt like the entire world was coming to an end, and that might well be true. One of humanity’s worst fears was realized. Not alone in the universe after all, and what we’d encountered was hostile. Three massive Naga ships came against Earth, and the power of human militaries was insufficient to stop them. The aliens sent missiles tearing through the atmosphere, burning entire cities to the ground in fiery explosions. Ash darkened the sky.

For the most part, Miami, Florida was spared.

None of the missiles struck near enough to damage the city. But even as TVs were sending the first reports that somehow, humans had hit back and badly hurt one Naga ship, that ship was tilting out of orbit. It drifted at first and then fell, more rapidly each second, toward the bottom of the gravity well it was helpless to resist.

Fighters streamed down alongside their doomed mothership. Shuttles and escape pods launched clear while the Naga who remained aboard struggled to save their vessel. They managed to restore enough power to prevent a catastrophic impact. Instead of striking the ocean with enough force to completely shatter the ship, the Naga battle-cruiser slowed its descent enough to survive.

A wave of water displaced by the ship’s crash washed into Miami with the force of a small tsunami. But the city was built to survive hurricanes. The water struck and then receded, leaving the buildings mostly intact.

Cadet Owen McInness was with his family when it all went down. He was just about at the end of his leave. Before long he’d be back at school, getting ready for a career in the Air Force. Or ideally, in space. That had been his dream since he’d been a small child: somehow, to voyage into space and see humanity make a place for itself out there.

“The water is running back out to sea,” Owen said, peering out a window.

“Thank god,” his mother replied.

“Must have missed us. Whatever it was hit the ocean instead,” his father added. Then a sharp whining noise rose. Owen’s dad jumped up, alarmed. “Get away from the window!”

Owen didn’t hesitate. When his father used that tone, there was danger coming. He dove clear, hitting the deck just as a small plane shot past their apartment building, close enough to rattle the windows.

No, that wasn’t a plane. He caught a glimpse of plumes of fire burning from behind it and saw the strange lines of its structure. That was an alien spacecraft. A small one, some sort of fighter-plane. Owen low-crawled back to the window in time to see two more alien craft join the first. They strafed buildings near the beach, blasting them apart.

Building a beach-head, a place where more of them could come ashore safely. They were systematically destroying whole blocks. How long until they reached his apartment? Owen did some math in his head. They had a few minutes at most.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Owen cried.

His father nodded and went into the bedroom, returning with a heavy pistol. “Time to go. We’ve got to move.”

Sonic booms rattled the building again. Owen spared a moment to check what was going on. This time the fighter craft flying overhead were familiar F-32 fighters. Air Force machines of war. They fell on the alien ships, firing missiles and guns into the enemy. One alien fighter exploded completely. The rest tore skyward to face the new threat.

“Son, come on!” Owen’s father called.

He dashed from the window, glancing back as he joined his family. Owen wanted to see the fight play out, but they weren’t safe in this place. Their best chance was to get clear of the battle zone while they still could. Power was out, so they had to race down the stairs. They weren’t the only people with that idea, either. A flood of human beings fled down the steps in a wave, pouring out onto the street. Every building nearby was the same, people shouting and screaming as they fled their homes, running inland away from the invaders.

Someone shoved into Owen from behind. He stumbled and almost went down. His father’s steady hand on his shoulder kept him upright.

“You all right?” his father asked.

Owen just nodded a reply, his lips tight. They had to move fast!

Then the battle in the sky above them seemed to reach a crescendo. Explosions went off almost directly overhead. Debris rained down on the street. Small, hot shards of metal tore into fleeing refugees. Larger chunks rained down as well. Owen recognized one. It was the fuselage of an F-32, or most of one, anyway. Were the defenders losing the fight? He looked skyward, hoping to see something of the battle.

A quick glance was all he needed. One of the alien ships had lined up on their position. It was coming in toward them all, getting ready to strafe or bomb them. Owen grabbed his parents and hauled them off into the shadow of a nearby building. “This way!”

They saw the danger and ran with him. Blasts of energy tore up the concrete behind them as the fighter shot into the crowd of terrified humans. Then an explosion ripped through the air with enough force that it threw Owen and his parents to the ground. He glanced up, saw the alien fighter in flames, falling. It tore into the pavement where his family stood moments before, ripping up a gouge in the street. Finally, it stopped moving.

Until the cockpit of the craft popped open, spilling a nightmare out.

The Naga was taller than a man. It had a head like that of a dinosaur and clawed hands. This one’s scales had a greenish tinge to them, although it covered most of its body with silvery armor. It carried a huge rifle in its arms. The alien staggered as it stumbled down from its wrecked ship. Then it crouched, bringing its weapon up at the ready. One of the F-32s flew by overhead. The Naga’s rifle spat bolts of energy at the fighter. One punched through its wing, sending the plane spiraling out of control to crash into a nearby building.

The Naga snarled at its fallen foe, rising to take in its whereabouts. Before it could advance on the helpless humans around it, though, a booming sound went off next to Owen. The alien staggered back, almost falling over. Owen’s father stood there, pistol in a firm grip. He aimed and fired again. This time, the lizard-like alien went down.

“Not so terrible that old Ruger can’t take care of them,” the elder McInness muttered. He advanced on the alien. Owen followed a few steps behind.

But it wasn’t dead, just wounded. The Naga rolled sideways, bringing its rifle up. Before Owen’s father could react, it shot him square in the chest. He flew backward, the pistol rattling loose from his hands and skittering across the broken ground. Evan McInness was dead before he hit the ground.

Owen dove for cover. He knew his father was gone. There was no way he’d lived through that much damage. He had to survive, had to keep his mother alive. He turned to face her and shouted, “Run for it!”

But she didn’t. She screamed her husband’s name and ran to his side. The Naga just saw another human running toward it and fired again. Owen’s mother fell just short of reaching his father’s body.

Tears streamed down his face. They were both still and dead, just a few feet away from him. Nothing he could do would save them. A furious rage built up in his chest. It felt like he would explode from the sensation like it was too much anger for his skin to hold it all in. Nothing he could do. He’d been helpless.

But his father’s pistol had fallen only a few feet away.

Owen’s rage found a new direction. He wouldn’t be helpless, not then or ever again. He reached for the pistol. Grabbing the smooth metal of the weapon in his hand, he whirled and rose. Owen’s hands came together with grace from long hours of practice. He dropped the sights over the alien’s upper body and fired.

It jolted back from the shot, but Owen knew better than to stop. Even as the alien tried to bring its rifle to bear against him, Owen fired twice more. The round slammed into the alien, blasting it backward. Somehow the thing managed to stay on its feet.

Owen screamed an inarticulate cry of rage at the Naga, pouring all his hate and fury into the roar. He fired again and again, blasting the reptilian body over and over until he heard the pistol click empty in his hands.

The Naga staggered and fell face-first into the street.

It wasn’t enough. The entire world had receded around him. The only thing that mattered to Owen was the damned alien. He walked up to it and snatched up its rifle. It took him only a few seconds to figure out the firing mechanism. Then he fired the weapon three times into the Naga’s head. He didn’t stop until he was absolutely sure his parents’ killer was dead.

Emptiness overtook him. Still carrying the alien weapon, he made his way back to where his parents had fallen. They were both there, arms outstretched like they were reaching for each other but never able to touch. That wouldn’t do. Tears blurring his vision, Owen moved his mother’s body so that she lay next to his father. They’d loved each other so much in life. At least this way, they could be together in death.

It was six hours before emergency services were able to go through the damaged Miami waterfront. The battle was over. In orbit the forces of humanity, led by the starship Satori, had managed the impossible, defeating all three Naga warships. On Earth, human militaries had killed or forced the surrender of those Naga which had managed to get to the surface. The battle was over.

But not for Owen. He wondered if it ever would be, for him, because the rage hadn’t faded away with the death of the invader. It lingered in his heart, and he didn’t know if he could ever kill enough alien enemies to make it go away.

Two

He’d always wanted to go into space more than anything, but after that day it wasn’t about adventure anymore. Not for Owen. In all the months since the attack, he’d been driven to do whatever he could to get out there, so that he could stop the aliens from hurting anyone else the way his family had been slaughtered. It wasn’t a dream anymore. It was a vendetta.

The Air Force Academy was his ticket, a tool to arrive at the destination he wanted. No, not everyone who graduated was getting into the newly formed Space Force. But enough were that he had a shot. All he had to do was excel, so he’d driven his nose to the grindstone, pushing himself to become the best he possibly could.

But all that was undone, now.

He knew it even before he was called in front of the Commandant for sentencing. After what he’d done, he figured he might as well have taken the folder full of three and a half years of accolades and struck a match to it. There was no way he’d be at the head of the class when it came time to pick assignments.

Maybe in time, he could find another way. If he worked hard, he could win back such a positive service record that they’d let him transfer between branches. It wasn’t unheard of, but the thought of more time wasted was galling. Worse still that it was his own fault.

The collar of Owen’s dress uniform was scratchy at his throat. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead, slowly sliding down. He didn’t make a move to alleviate either discomfort, keeping his body still as a statue in the position of attention while he waited for the three men seated behind the table to pronounce their verdict and the penalty he would pay.

They each wore a dress uniform as well. Courts-martial were formal affairs. Their faces were stoic masks, none of them giving away a hint of what they had in store for him. It went without saying that he would be punished. Owen tried to brace himself, unsure just how bad it would be.

“Cadet McInness, you were accused of causing serious bodily injury to another cadet. You have pled guilty to this charge,” Commandant Nielsen said. He was seated in the center of the board, directing the proceedings. “Do you have anything else you wish to add to your case at this time?”

Owen replied, his throat dry with stress. “No, sir.”

He’d already had a chance to explain the mitigating circumstances. All three men on the board had read the entire report from the investigation into the incident. There wasn’t much else he could add that they didn’t already know.

“While we applaud your defense of a fellow cadet, your methods were extreme. We cannot condone the level of violence you committed,” Nielsen said.

Owen winced. “I understand, sir.”

“Do you, cadet? I don’t think you’ve heard the latest news,” Nielsen said. “Cadet Durham remains in critical condition. The surgery failed. Assuming he recovers at all, it’s unlikely he will ever walk again.”

Owen’s jaw dropped. He hadn’t heard any news about Durham at all. He’d been sequestered during the entire proceeding. No one would tell him anything. Owen knew he’d hurt the other cadet. He’d been trying to hurt him. But he figured a little time in the hospital and Durham would be fine. He was paralyzed?

He felt cold horror slip down his spine. This was way worse than he’d had any idea it could be. “I didn’t know, sir. I hadn’t meant to hurt him that badly.”

“But you did,” Nielsen’s words were iced steel. “I’ve seen the video, McInness. You lost your temper. You’ve been warned about controlling your anger before.”

More than once. Owen felt that rage boil inside him at Nielsen’s words. It was always there, waiting to pour out of him at a moment’s notice. It made him strong, fast, dedicated… But when he lost control, it was never pretty.

Nielsen picked up a folder full of papers. “I have the stack of incident reports to prove it. But son, you went way past all that, this time. Do you understand that this board could order you imprisoned on a felony charge?”

Owen swallowed hard. Leavenworth wasn’t supposed to be a fun place. “Yes, sir.”

What else could he say? Sure, Durham was asking for it. He’d picked on Cadet Evans incessantly for months, always keeping it just quiet enough that he never got punished. Evans was a good kid and refused to rat on him. He was always just ‘falling down the stairs.’

Owen warned Durham off, more than once. He was ignored. Worse, he waited until Owen was the only other person around and then gave Evans a good, hard shove down the stairs. His cry of pain cut like a knife, and Owen lost control. The rage spilled out like he was back there in Miami all over again. He laid into Durham with everything he had. A couple of punches to his face, two jabs into his ribs, and the other cadet was on the ropes.

The fight was over at that point. Owen had already taught the necessary lesson, and he knew he should have ended it there. But he was still furious. The rage was too big to control, too much to hold back. He landed more blows. Durham rocked back on his heels. Owen could still see it clear as day in his memory, and he’d seen the replay of the tape from a watching video camera during the investigation. The look of hot rage the video showed on his face shook him to the core. That hadn’t been the face of the person he thought he was or the man he wanted to be.

More blows landed. Durham begged Owen to stop, but he didn’t. Then Durham slipped back and fell down the stairs, tumbling down the same route he’d pushed Evans. Even that might have been seen as poetic justice, but his fall was faster and harder. It ended abruptly at the landing, his head cracking against the wall with a meaty thud. Owen followed him down, expecting him to get back to his feet, ready to beat some more sense into him.

But he didn’t get back up.

“You called for medical services. That probably saved his life,” Nielsen went on. “Because of that, the board has elected to not issue a criminal penalty against you.”

Owen sagged a little in relief. No prison. Thank god. Guilt wracked him a moment later. Maybe he deserved jail time.

“But this was not a case of self-defense, nor even a case of defending another cadet. This was revenge that got out of hand,” Nielsen said. “You have exhibited behavior unbecoming of an Air Force officer.”

Those were very precise words. He might not be going to prison, but he wasn’t going to get a slap on the wrist either. Owen braced himself as best he could. Whatever was coming next, he’d earned it. Nielsen was right. His anger had gotten the better of him, and a man had paid the price. Now, it was his turn.

“Cadet McInness, it is the decision of this court that you be administratively discharged from the Air Force, effective immediately.”

There were more words after that, but he didn’t remember them. Owen wasn’t sure if he’d even heard them over the roaring in his ears. This was it; the end of his military career. Probably the end of all his dreams, at that. Any background check would show he’d been dumped from the Academy. No one was going to let him work in space after that.

Owen managed to keep it together until the proceeding was completed and he was dismissed. Even after, he walked slowly from the hall back toward his room — for the last time — without falling apart. It wasn’t until Owen had the door shut behind him that he let the full enormity of what he’d done, and the price he was paying for it, sink in. He pressed his back against the door and slid slowly to the floor, cradling his head in his hands.

Not meaning to hurt Durham so severely wasn’t a defense. He might never recover. His life was forever altered, maybe ruined. Owen had done that. His damned temper had gotten the better of him one too many times, and now he’d almost killed someone because of it.

It was only fair that the court had torn apart his life in return. That was justice, of a sort. He’d done it to Durham. They’d returned the favor to him. If anything, Owen thought he was getting off lightly. They could have tossed him in Leavenworth to break rocks for a few years.

That didn’t make him feel any better. Nothing did.

Owen looked around the room, wondering what he should do next. Pack, he supposed. Where would he go? Back home to Miami? He winced as he slowly got back to his feet. That didn’t sound like a great plan. His old home had too many bitter and horrible memories waiting for him.

Or maybe that was the right thing to do. Perhaps that was the punishment he deserved, to face those old demons day after day. He pulled out a duffel bag, opened it up, and looked around the room.

He wasn’t going to need his school books. Nor the uniforms. Damn, there wasn’t much in this room Owen felt he needed at this point. He packed the civilian clothes he had into the bag and added a few other knick-knacks he’d collected over the years. It wasn’t a lot.

No, he wasn’t going back to Miami. There was nothing left for him in that place. Owen had fifty dollars and an empty credit card in his wallet. It wouldn’t take him far, but it would get him somewhere. What he’d do after the money ran out, he had no idea. Get a job somewhere? No college degree meant he’d be stuck working something crappy, but it would give him a little freedom, anyway.

He glanced around the room, checking to see if there was anything else he needed. There wasn’t. He left the rest of it there. The Academy would come to clean it all up, toss away everything he’d left behind and prep the room for someone else.

No one was in the hall when Owen stepped outside. That was good, because he didn’t want to face anyone else. He didn’t know if the other cadets would greet him with anger or pity, but he wanted to avoid either.

He needn’t have worried. When he got outside he saw a few other cadets — he hadn’t gotten used to thinking of himself as not a cadet, yet. They spared Owen only the quickest glance and then walked in the other direction. No one got near him as Owen marched his way toward the gate. He was anathema, gone from top in his class to the man everyone avoided contact with in an instant. No one wanted to chance his fortunes somehow rubbing off on them.

Fine by him. He didn’t want to talk with them, either. He pulled out his phone and dialed up a cab as he neared the gate. It pulled up about the same time he arrived, sliding slowly to a stop with the gravel crunching under its wheels.

He stepped up and opened the door.

“Where to, kid?” At least the driver’s voice showed no sign of judging him. His shame wasn’t branded on his forehead. It only felt like it was.

Where should he go? Owen looked back at the Academy as he tossed his bag into the car. Something broke inside him a little bit as he took in the pines and squared-off buildings he’d called home for the past few years. He would never be back. This chapter in his life was closing. But there was one more thing Owen needed to do before he could find any closure.

“Penrose Hospital,” Owen said. He slid into the back seat and closed the door behind him.

That’s where Durham had been taken, where he was being treated. Owen wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to him, or even if he’d be able to hear the words. But it felt like the right thing to do.

Three

Durham was still in the ICU, which wasn’t difficult to find. Owen went to the door of the waiting area and peered inside. There was a glass wall where he could look into the unit itself, but it didn’t seem like people were allowed to wander about near the beds. Which made sense. Intensive care looked complicated, not the sort of thing for bedside visitors. They had a ton of staff around the four patients being treated in the unit. Four nurses, a doctor, and what looked like a pair of techs or something.

Only two people were inside the waiting area. One of them was a steely-eyed man with graying hair. He spared Owen a quick glance and then looked away. Something about the man’s appearance set Owen on edge, but he wasn’t sure what it might be. It wasn’t that he recognized him. He’d never seen the old man before.

The other person was a middle-aged woman, staring through the glass at one of the patients like she could will him back to his feet.

Owen swallowed hard. The patient who had her attention was Durham. Owen could just barely see Durham’s still form from where he stood. Was that his mother? He suddenly wanted to be somewhere else — anywhere else would do! Owen took a step back from the doorway and prepared to quietly make his escape. He could come to pay his respects later.

Then the old man coughed, loud enough to get the woman’s attention. When she turned to look at him, she saw Owen standing there as well. A small, sad smile broke out over a face tracked with tear stains.

“You’re a cadet, aren’t you? One of Billy’s friends? The haircut gives you away, dear,” she said. “Come in, please. He’s not awake, but the doctor said to just give it time.”

Owen wanted nothing to do with walking into that room, but something inside told him that he had to. This was the right thing to do, to face this woman and tell her the truth. If anyone was justified in judging him for what he’d done, it would be Durham’s mother.

One step brought Owen across the threshold. Three more brought him to her side. He glanced at the old man, but he was studiously ignoring both of them. It was effectively just Owen and the mother of the guy he’d beaten half to death. Owen swallowed hard.

Seeing the impact of his rage up close like this made it a lot harder to swallow. He’d managed to channel that anger in the past. He’d killed the Naga bastard who’d slaughtered his parents, after all. The same fury propelled him to the top of his class in virtually everything. In academics, field work, athletics, and just about every other relevant metric, Owen was the top student. Had been, anyway.

Then he’d let the anger get loose. The boy laying in the bed clinging to life was his victim every bit as much as his parents had been the Naga warrior’s. This time his anger had made him the bully instead of the hero. Owen couldn’t remember ever feeling lower.

“The doctors hope he’ll wake up soon,” Mrs. Durham repeated.

“I hope he does, too,” Owen replied. The words sounded lame, coming from his lips.

She didn’t talk about his prognosis, which meant it probably hadn’t changed. Sure, they were working wonders with miracle science these days. Medical nanites, alien tech that could knit together serious wounds, even physical augmentation with robotic prosthetics. Would any of that work for Durham? Would he even be considered for such treatments? They were expensive, and the waiting list was often long. How much time would the guy spend in a wheelchair before he could be fully repaired, if that was possible at all?

“I should probably be going,” Owen said. His guilt rode him like a demon. Coming there had been a terrible idea. It had only made everything worse.

“All right, dear,” Mrs. Durham said. “I’ll tell him you stopped by when he wakes. What did you say your name was?”

Owen froze. She might not have recognized his face, but she’d surely know who he was if he said his name. All thoughts of spilling his guts to her vanished in a fog of panic. He had to get out of there! But he had to say something. He decided to take a small chance, revealing his first name but not his last. “I’m Owen.”

Her brows knitted together like she was trying to place the name, like it was familiar, but she couldn’t quite recall why. The lapse was understandable. How much sleep had she been able to get over the past few days while her son was hurt? Judging by the lines on her face and deep bruises under her eyes, not that much.

Owen turned to leave. It was past time to go.

“Leaving so soon, Cadet McInness?”

Owen froze in his tracks at the words. He half-turned, peeking over his shoulder at the old man. Steel eyes, short-cropped salt and pepper hair, and a hard visage. He should have recognized the look of a military man from the start, even if he hadn’t known the man himself. An officer, by the look of him. Owen had known plenty of senior non-coms and officers alike, and this man had the look of the latter.

Worse, he knew precisely who Owen was, and now he’d blurted it out.

“McInness?” Mrs. Durham said. “But it’s that… Are you the boy who hurt my Billy?”

Owen turned to face her again. Flight was no longer an option. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Why did you come here?” Confusion warred with anger on her face.

“To tell him I was sorry. That I didn’t mean for him to be hurt,” Owen said. He cast his eyes down at his feet.

That meant he never saw the blow coming. The woman’s hand smacked into the right side of his face with enough force to stagger him. He blinked, dazed and surprised. A second blow landed on the left side of his face, almost knocking him over.

Owen looked up and saw Mrs. Durham’s face. The confusion was gone. All that remained was her fury. He knew that look perfectly. It had been on his face more than once. She came in with two more blows, raining them down on him in rapid succession.

Owen’s anger uncoiled somewhere deep inside him, writhing upward and yearning to break free. He felt his pulse pound. His hands balled into fists of their own accord. This woman dared strike him? He’d show her what…

No, he damned well would not. Owen clamped down on his anger with every ounce of control he had. He’d hurt Billy Durham. He wouldn’t strike the man’s mother.

She hit him again and again. Finally, one blow took him from his feet. Owen let his legs fly out from underneath him, curled his shoulder to take some of the impact out of the fall. It still knocked his wind out, and he brought his knees up protectively to guard his belly, in case she continued the attack. But she’d stopped.

Owen looked up. Mrs. Durham was looking at her hands, sobbing. She’d bloodied her knuckles on his face. Now she looked down at the blood with horror instead of satisfaction. Owen got slowly to his feet, careful to back away from her as he did.

With a loud, gasping sob, she turned and fled from the waiting room.

Someone behind Owen clapped several times. He turned to face the old man, who was still sitting with a grin across his smug face, giving a little ‘golf clap.’

“So you can keep it under control when you want to,” the man said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Owen said. Then he recalled the series of events. The cough that had made Mrs. Durham notice him. The old man giving away his name. “You set this up?”

“And you’re as bright as they said,” the old man replied. “Bright but damaged? Maybe, but maybe not beyond repair.”

“Who are you?” Owen asked.

“My name is General Hereford,” the old man said, rising from the seat to his full height.

Hereford — that was a name Owen knew by heart. It was impossible to forget. The general in charge of the entire Space Force? Here? Why would he be here? “Why, sir?”

“Why did I set you up? Because I wanted to see if you’d cut loose again given half a chance,” Hereford said. “You almost did, too. I saw the balled fists. Ready to punch her lights out, weren’t you?”

Owen looked down, his face flushing red with shame.

“But you didn’t, which means you can keep it under wraps. I might have an opening for a talented young man like you,” Hereford said.

“They’ve kicked me out, sir,” Owen replied.

“And for a good reason. You pull anything like that shit again, you won’t get kicked out. I’ll personally make sure you regret it for whatever short span of life you’ll have left. I’ve got no time for bullshit in my units,” Hereford said. “But I do need all the best people I can find, even if they are diamonds in the rough.”

Owen couldn’t believe his ears. Here was the head of Space Force, offering him what sounded like a job. It seemed almost too good to be true. “I’m in, sir.”

“You haven’t even heard my offer. I might be grabbing you to clean latrines on the moon base,” Hereford said.

It didn’t matter. Whatever the general wanted, Owen felt sure he could do the job. Prove himself there, and maybe he could move on to other things. Get his foot in the door and then who knew where he might end up?

“Doesn’t matter, sir. I’m in.” Owen felt confident in his answer.

Hereford scratched his chin. The gleam in his eye implied that Owen had just walked into a trap, but he didn’t care. Not if it meant getting into space after all. He’d do anything for a second chance.

“Good,” Hereford said. “I’ve got a slot opened up in the next Armor training cycle. I want you in it.”

Armor - the big, two-legged walking tanks that had just become a crucial part of humanity’s space military. Those suits let humans go toe-to-toe with Naga and Bugs alike. “I’m your man, sir!”

“You’ll also be attending therapy three times a week,” Hereford finished.

The rage swelled up more quickly than Owen could contain it. This again? “I’m fine! I don’t need therapy!” Then, he belatedly added in, “Sir.”

“That’s what you told the folks at the Academy, too, after your parents died. They wanted to help you, boy. You spat in their face, and look where it got you?” Hereford growled. “They kicked you out, for a good reason. Out there on your own, I give you a year or less before you’re dead or in prison.”

Owen scoffed at the idea. “You’re crazy. Sir. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you? What happens next time someone makes you mad, and you put them in the hospital? Or maybe next time you pick a fight you can’t win,” Hereford said. “My terms aren’t negotiable. You want the second chance? You get therapy along with your training.”

Rage boiled inside Owen, struggling to get out through his iron control. He seethed, wanting to wipe that smug look off Hereford’s face… And then he realized what he was thinking. The man was right. Totally right. Owen sagged back against the wall and looked down at his hands.

“I’m not broken,” Owen said.

“I never said you were,” Hereford replied. “You don’t get to be in the service as long as I have without seeing some things you wish you could unsee, son. But I never had to watch my parents murdered in front of my eyes. That would fuck up the hardest people I know. You’re not broken. But you do need help. That’s what I plan to get for you.”

“Why bother with me?” Owen asked. He was crying, he realized. Tears leaked down his face.

“Because your father was a good man who I was supposed to protect. I failed. In a way, maybe I hope that I can make it up to him through you,” Hereford said.

His blunt honesty disarmed Owen, who just nodded blankly. “I’ll do it, sir.”

“Good. I had faith you would,” Hereford said with a wink. “Follow me.”

Owen glanced back at Durham’s sleeping form. He felt like he understood the General a little better now. Like him, Owen couldn’t undo the wrong he’d done. But maybe he could find a way to make up for it.

Four

Owen blinked in the bright California sunshine. He looked around. There wasn’t much out there to see. He looked back at the bus driver. “You sure this is the right place?”

“McClellan induction center, right kid?” the driver replied.

“Yeah?” Owen replied, looking around. Dry scrub dominated the landscape. In the distance, he could see rows of buildings littering the skyline, but they were a long distance away. The only nearby structures were a handful of decrepit barracks-type buildings. The place looked deserted.

“Then you’re in the right place. Good luck, kid!” the driver chortled. He closed the bus door and pulled away, leaving Owen alone in the afternoon heat.

Sweat streamed from his forehead in moments. After the comfortable air-conditioned bus, the heat felt unbearable. It never got this hot at the Academy! He was used to some heat from growing up in Miami, but out of practice. It was going to take a little while to get acclimated to the environment.

Owen picked up his duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder, then started toward the nearest building. Maybe there would be someone inside who could fill him in on what he was supposed to do next. He opened the door.

It shot open as soon as he turned the knob, slamming into the wall beside it. The force knocked Owen’s hand away and almost tossed him to the ground. But it was what flowed out through the open doorway that froze the blood in his veins.

Owen had learned all about the Kkiktchikut at the Academy. He knew what they looked like — massive centipede-like bugs, each leg bladed like a scimitar. Smaller limbs near the mouth allowed it to manipulate tools with fine motor skills. They had powered armor, starships, and technology far beyond humans and Naga alike. But even without all that, they were deadly. Incredibly fast, festooned with killer blades, and utterly ruthless. They were the universe’s answer to a perfect predator.

He’d never seen one in person, but he’d viewed enough pictures to know what he was looking at now. How one had gotten to Earth was a question he’d have to answer later, assuming he survived.

First, he had to deal with this one. Escape wasn’t possible. It would outrun him and tear him apart. But the Bug would surely expect him to flee. It was rearing up so that it could give chase when he did. Owen had no intention of doing what it expected.

Instead, he tossed his duffel at the thing’s face. It caught on one of the claws. The Kkiktchikut seemed slowed by the strange ‘attack’, like it wasn’t sure what to make of having his bag tossed at its nose. Owen didn’t stop there. The best chance of surviving was to take immediate action. He dove forward toward the insect, sliding along the ground between its razor-sharp legs and pulled his knife from a boot. He stabbed up, cutting and slashing at the Bug’s belly. Owen knew he only had seconds to hit something vital before the Kkiktchikut turned on him and tore him apart.

Wires spilled down from the Bug’s body, draping themselves across Owen’s face. All at once, the Bug stopped moving. What the hell? He tugged on the wires. They were still connected to the insect’s body, but it wasn’t wearing power armor. Why did it have wires inside its guts?

“Whoa, man! You don’t need to kill Cindy!”

Owen looked around for the speaker. The Kkiktchikut was still where it had been, frozen in place like a statue. As the battle-fever faded, Owen realized it hadn’t moved much if at all after those first few seconds of rushing motion. “Animatronics?”

“You got it.” A burly man walked in under the legs and reached out a hand to him. “Holy shit, dude. You cut her up bad.”

“Her?” Owen asked. He took the offered hand and got slowly back to his feet. His heart was still going a mile a minute, and he felt a little foolish for over-reacting to what was clearly an elaborate practical joke.

“Sure. Cindy the Centipede! Hey, I’m Casiano. Mateo Casiano. I run a lot of the tech here, you see. Cindy’s sort of my baby.”

Owen nodded, sort of getting it. “Weeding out the folks who aren’t sure they want to be here?”

“Something like that, I guess. They just have me scare the shit out of the new recruits when they first arrive,” Mateo said. “Most of ‘em run screaming. A few just freeze in place. Like a mouse in front of a cobra.”

The big man waved an arm in front of his face like it was a snake. Owen chuckled. He doubted Mateo had ever seen a live cobra, but it was as good an illustration as any. He was wearing Air Force camouflage, field boots, and a cap. The whole outfit was greasy enough that it took Owen a few moments to figure out his rank.

“Staff Sergeant,” Owen said, impressed. “Owen McInness, reporting for duty.”

“Yeah, yeah. So why’d you attack it?” Mateo asked him, cocking his head sideways. “Nobody is dumb enough to attack Cindy. You know if that were a real Bug she’d have torn you into little bits and eaten you, right?”

“Sure, probably. If I’d run, would I have had a better chance of living?” Owen challenged him. He already knew the answer before he asked the question.

“Nope. No way. She’d have run you down, cut you to ribbons, and eaten you… Oh, I get it. You’re a tough guy. Wanted to go down fighting?” Mateo asked.

Owen shrugged. “I didn’t want to die. My best chance of not dying seemed to be making Cindy there dead, instead.”

Mateo gave him an odd look, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. That was fair enough. Owen still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure why he’d gone in on the attack anyway. It wasn’t like he’d made a conscious decision to fight instead of running. He’d just reacted. Fighting was his first response to trouble.

That reminded him of something Hereford had said the day before, about his odds of surviving outside the military. ‘Dead or in jail within a year,’ the general had told him. Maybe he was right, if Owen’s first response to any sort of trouble or danger was to hit or stab it. It was food for thought.

“Come with me, got a jeep behind the building,” Mateo said.

“So this isn’t the training camp?” Owen asked.

“This dump? Hell, no. This is just the welcome mat. A welcome mat I have to come out here and run all kinds of repairs on, thanks to you,” Mateo replied.

“Sorry about that,” Owen said, not really all that sorry. He picked up his duffel bag from where it had finally slid to the ground. His fingers found a three-inch tear in the side. The Bug was pretty realistic, for a toy!

“No worries. It was pretty cool to watch you go all James Bond on Cindy. But come on. They’re expecting you at the camp, and you don’t wanna be late,” Mateo said.

He led Owen around the back side of the building. Now that he could see through the windows, it was easy to spot the mechanisms allowing ‘Cindy’ to move. She was rooted in place by massive machines, huge wires connecting her to power sources and computers. It was quite the job. Mateo would probably be making a lot more working for a film company than he was for the military. The man had talent.

On the back side of the structure was a battered old jeep. Mateo climbed into the driver’s seat and patted the passenger’s spot beside him. Owen tossed his duffel into the back and climbed aboard, wondering what was coming at him next. He’d barely been on McClellan for thirty minutes and already had to win a battle. Or had he lost, by fighting? It was hard to gauge what metrics they would use to evaluate him, and that made Owen feel uncomfortable. He was used to knowing what was expected of him. That allowed him to deliver.

Here, he was more or less in the dark. Did they want him to be aggressive and attack? Was his anger why Hereford grabbed him for this training? Somehow, Owen didn’t think so. But that left him unsure precisely what the man did want.

He’d find out soon enough. The jeep started rolling toward the main base, those buildings he’d spotted in the distance. Owen grabbed the jeep’s railing and hung on for the rough, off-road trek.

Five

Hereford tapped the screen, pausing the video. “You see what I mean?”

“That he was willing to commit suicide by alien? Sure, I saw that.” Colonel Foster tapped her fingers on the edge of the console. “General, I don’t like this.”

Hereford nodded to her. He’d been expecting some resistance. Hell, it was a bit of stretch even for him. But then, so were a lot of the choices he’d made over the past year. He’d made them all for the good of Earth, for the future of humanity. If there was going to be any sort of tomorrow, it required making maximal use of every resource humans had.

“I know that. But it wouldn’t be the first time we made a diamond in the rough sparkle, here in Space Force,” Hereford said. He looked pointedly at the rank she wore on her collar.

Foster flushed crimson. “I’m all for taking chances where they’ll have a good return on investment. You know that. Hell, I just about invented ‘radical creativity’ around here.”

Which was true. It was Charline Foster’s idea to arm loading ‘bots and turn them into the battle-robots Armor had become. Each version of their Armor was better than the last. Mark 3 was the best so far, but Hereford knew there was already work underway on at least version four. Knowing Charline, probably version five as well.

The Armor brigade was her command. He had to respect that if he wanted to keep Foster running this show. She was one of the best. Humanity needed her right where she was. “It’s your call, Colonel. If you think he’s a no-go, we’ll ship him out on the next bus.”

Charline leaned back in her seat and sighed. “What do you see in him?”

“Potential. He was the very best in his class. He’s brilliant and driven,” Hereford replied without hesitation.

“And then he was kicked out of the Academy for almost killing a classmate,” Charline reminded him. “Do we need that sort of person here? Discipline matters, out there in the mud.”

Hereford ducked his head, acknowledging her comment. “He’s screwed up. In the head. Pretty badly, from what I can tell.”

She blinked. “Come again?”

“He was in Miami when the Naga ship went down,” Hereford said.

“Shit,” Charline replied.

Everyone knew how bad the fighting had been, there. Enough Naga fighters had made it to the ground that they made a mess of things.

“It’s worse than that,” Hereford said. “A Naga fighter went down. The pilot survived. McInness saw his parents both killed by the Naga.”

“Double shit,” Charline breathed. She looked away.

“Then he killed the Naga with his father’s pistol,” Hereford finished.

“And they let him back in the Academy after that sort of trauma?” Charline’s temper flared, her words sharp. “There’s nothing in his dossier about getting counseling. Why the hell did they do that?”

“They tried. He refused. Then he passed all their psych tests with flying colors,” Hereford said.

Charline rolled her eyes. “Any bright person can pass those tests. He’s probably facing major trauma issues by now. PTSD. Maybe worse. That stuff can be brutal.”

She would know, Hereford mused. Charline had been through the wringer herself. But when she got back, she’d been able to take advantage of some of the best therapy the military could provide. McInness never had that chance. He’d been taken at his word by the idiots in the Academy, and almost lost everything because of it.

“You want to help this kid for some reason in particular. Spill it,” Charline said.

Hereford hesitated. He didn’t really want to come out with the full truth, but anything less would be dangerous here. Charline was one of the best hackers he’d ever heard of. There was no way to keep anything secret from her forever. Telling her a lie was a surefire way to win her distrust and enmity. He respected the woman too much to do that. The truth would have to do.

“I served with his father, a long time ago. He retired, and we hadn’t seen each other since. But I can’t help feeling like I failed him. Like there should have been more I could do to stop Miami from happening,” Hereford said. There, the words were out. He’d never admitted that guilt before. His chest felt a little lighter for doing so now.

Charline blinked, then nodded. “Yes, because it’s all your fault we had dead there. Oh, and London, Chicago, Madrid, Hong Kong? Those were all your fault as well?”

“Yes,” Hereford said, his voice deadpan. “You know it was.”

The Naga attacks had devastated a dozen cities around the globe, the targets picked apparently at random from major infrastructure and population bases. Humanity’s missile defenses had been all-but-useless against the strike. Millions of people died.

And yes, Hereford felt like his head carried some of the blame. He’d ordered the raid on Carraway’s moon base. He’d been the man who directed his techs to learn all they could about the captured Naga fighter, the activation of which led a Naga fleet to Earth’s doorstep. In a very real way, Hereford knew he was personally responsible for every single death that had occurred.

Sure, he hadn’t meant for it to happen, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions. He had intended to help preserve humanity, but instead, he’d almost caused the death of everyone on Earth. Hereford would have to carry those deaths with him to his own grave.

But it was too big. Billions of people were something he couldn’t hold inside his head. One man, though? That sort of consequence he could feel with its full force. Colonel McInness’s death weighed on him, and his interest in the boy certainly had something to do with that. If he was to make amends, he felt like he had to do it not only in the significant ways but also in the small ones. Helping one person could be as important as helping a million.

“Jesus, you need therapy as badly as the kid does,” Charline said.

Hereford grinned at her. “Probably. So, will you take him?”

“Hell. I will. You knew I would after you asked like that. You’re playing dirty pool, sir,” Charline said.

“I play to win,” Hereford corrected her. “Always have.”

The boy had promise. His reactions to the fake Bug had been right on target. Running would have doomed him if it had been a real alien. Freezing, too. But by fighting at least he had a chance, no matter how slim. Most people would flee or freeze when faced with certain death. Not many would fight.

That, coupled with his obvious intelligence, and Owen McInness represented an asset that humanity couldn’t afford to waste. They needed all their best out there on the fighting edge. Now, more than ever. Hereford told himself that was why he was spending so much time on this one person, but in reality, he knew better. Maybe Foster was right, and he needed therapy as much as McInness did.

There would be time for that later, once the war was won and humanity’s survival assured. Assuming that could be done at all. Of course, if they failed, he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing a counselor. They’d all be dead.

“All right. I’ll look in on him personally. He screws up, he’s gone,” Charline says. “His therapist thinks he’s a danger to other recruits, he’s gone. Fair?”

“More than fair,” Hereford agreed.

He could give the kid a shot. What McInness did with it was up to him. Hereford hoped he’d grab on with both hands and do something with the second chance he’d been offered, but that was up to him.

Six

The jeep pulled up to what Owen had to assume was the training camp. It had that vibe; run-down buildings and hard-packed dusty earth practically screamed ‘military’ to the trained eye.

But it didn’t look imposing. A few barracks, what seemed like an admin building, and in the middle of it all some sort of crude statue. Where was the technology? Owen knew enough about the Armor unit to understand it was a highly technical branch, but there seemed to be no sign of it in this place.

Something of his reaction must have shown on Owen’s face. Mateo put the jeep in park and flashed him a grin. “The main base is still a ways off. We repurposed the old airfield. It’s a baby starport now. Most of the cool stuff is over there. But this place is pretty much the beating heart of Armor.”

Owen climbed out of the jeep, his boots crunching in the sandy soil. The sun still baked everything from overhead. He pulled his bag onto his shoulder. This would be his home for the next while? He wondered if he’d made a mistake accepting General Herefords’ offer. But it was the only way he could see to make it into space. Surely it was worth a little discomfort to reach the stars?

“Thanks for the ride,” Owen said.

“Don’t mention it. Just part of the job,” Mateo said. He pointed at the building Owen figured was used for administration. “Head over there, and they’ll sort you out.”

Before Owen could start toward the building, a woman stepped out and marched toward him. She was average height, with shoulder-length blonde hair, and didn’t look much older than he was. That said, the emblem on her collar belonged to an officer. Owen couldn’t tell her rank at this distance, but the confidence in her stride spoke of someone experienced.

“Who is that?” Owen asked.

“Dude! That the colonel,” Mateo hissed. When he saw Owen’s blank look, he went on. “Colonel Foster. Head of the whole Armor brigade, hero of Earth?”

“Oh, that colonel,” Owen replied, deadpan. Of course, he’d heard of her! Who hadn’t? But he’d expected her to be taller, or older, or..something.

Mateo popped out of the jeep before she arrived and pulled himself to a position of attention, firing off a sharp salute. Owen followed his lead. Colonel Foster arched an eyebrow like she found something amusing, but she returned the salute.

“At ease,” she said. “Recruit McInness. I’ve heard a fair amount about you.”

Owen winced. “Not all of it good, I’ll bet.”

“You’d be right. You’re here on a probationary basis, recruit. If you screw up, you’re gone. Get in a fight? Gone. I won’t hesitate to dump you back to wherever you came from,” Foster told him. She pointed up at the sky, but Owen knew she was actually pointing past it, toward space. “Lives are at stake out there. We can’t have screwups on our combat teams.”

“I understand, ma’am,” Owen replied.

“Good,” Foster said. She smiled at him, but it was more predatory than friendly. “You’re gonna have your work cut out for you if you want to stay here. But if you make it, you’ll have reason to be proud.”

Proud of being a ground-pounder? Owen had hoped to maybe become a fighter pilot, flying one of the fancy new spacecraft. Or maybe work his way up in the larger ships of the line and someday have his own command. Still, this was better than nothing. He was acutely aware that Hereford had stuck his neck out to get him this shot.

Owen had mixed feelings about that. Sure, he was grateful for the chance. But at the same time, he felt resentment. What business did Hereford have poking around in his life? Why was he going to all this trouble? He didn’t buy that it was all about ‘getting the best of the best.’ Sure, Owen knew he was good. Smart, athletic, and capable, and he’d worked hard to get there. He also knew there were a lot of other good people out there. It didn’t make sense to pour so much time and effort into him.

“Come with me. I’ll introduce you to your cohort,” Foster said. Without any more words, she started off toward the nearest barracks building.

So that was how things were going to be? Brusque and aloof, that was how she felt. Well, he could live with that. It wasn’t like he’d needed anyone else to be his buddy back at the Academy. He’d won his place at the top of that pile all by himself. He could do the same thing again here.

The barracks building was a cinderblock special, a big rectangle of the blocks with a roof that already looked too hot to touch. He wasn’t wrong — a blast of warm air exited the building when Colonel Foster opened the door. The place within was sweltering. A few fans set in the ceiling did little to relieve the heat. He wiped sweat from his forehead after just a few moments inside.

“Hot? Don’t worry, you won’t spend too much time in here during the day, anyway,” Foster said. She pointed at one bare mattress on a cot frame. “That one is yours. Dump your stuff and follow me.”

Owen dropped off his duffel and hastened after her. The heat of the sun felt almost cool after the sweltering barracks. She led him through a round of fairly standard in processing. He was seen by a doctor, who basically went over his Academy physical and pronounced it good enough. There was some paperwork to sign; Owen paid it less attention than he might otherwise have, since the whole pace felt very rushed. Then it was off to a supply building where he was issued uniforms, a rucksack, and other essential equipment. The load filled two more duffel bags in all.

He eyed the gear warily. Rucksacks meant they intended to do long marches, most likely with full gear. He’d done a few. It wasn’t fun, but he could handle it, provided they didn’t ask him to carry every single item they’d issued. All told, it weighed about as much as he did.

“All right. Drop your gear back at the barracks, change into a uniform, and meet me back here,” Foster said. She stood near the door to the administration building and glanced at her watch.

Owen got the message. This was another test. Everything was a test, in the military. One long series of tests, one after another. He jogged back to the still stifling barracks and opened the locker next to his bed. There wasn’t time to stow all the stuff away correctly. He’d have to worry about that later. But he could at least put it away. He snatched a uniform out of a bag and tossed it on the bed. Then he put the other containers into the locker. His old duffel with his personal items he crammed in atop the other two. It was a tight fit, but he got it in and closed the doors again.

Two minutes later he was changed. The uniform they’d given him wasn’t the jet black Space Force outfit the colonel was wearing. Instead, he had a standard Air Force field uniform, in drab tan and olive digital camouflage. The only change was that the Air Force tab on the breast pocket had been replaced by one which read Space Force.

The uniform already had his last name sewn on the other pocket. They’d been expecting him. Owen shook his head again. Did they want him here or not? It felt like there was a difference in opinion on the subject.

He raced back out to Colonel Foster. She wasn’t in front of the building anymore, though. She sat in a Humvee, pointedly looking at her watch again. “You’re back. Get in.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Owen replied. He jogged to the vehicle and got aboard. Without another word, she revved the engine, and they roared off into the dusty plain.

Seven

Colonel Foster drove the vehicle only a few miles. Their destination was another drab concrete building, this one much larger than the others. There was a helipad next to the building, and what looked like a firing range behind it. This was closer to what Owen had pictured. It still looked run down and repurposed, but the whole idea of wearing robotic armor into combat was just a couple of months old. It stood to reason that the training grounds might be a little rough.

This was the ground floor of something new. Owen felt his heartbeat increase at the thought. Armor might be more interesting and exciting than he’d thought.

“This is where we train recruits during the day,” Foster said as she shut the Jeep off. “We have actual Armor units for breakdown and familiarization inside, as well as some simulation units.”

That explained the vast building. Owen’s interest went up another notch. He was about to see one of those things? That was beyond cool!

“There isn’t a lot of time to train, so everything is in crash course mode right now,” Foster went on. She ran a hand through her hair. “Eventually we’ll have a more regimented system for training, but right now we have more Armor units than people able to use them effectively. We need pilots, fast. You still think you’re up for this?”

She was offering him an out? No way. He wanted this, more than ever. “Yes, ma’am. I won’t let you down.”

“It’s not me you have to worry about. You screw up, Hereford will getcha,” Foster said, smiling a little. “Just don’t screw up. People die when we do, and we’ve lost too many good men and women already.”

“I understand, ma’am,” Owen said.

“You think you do, but you don’t. Not yet,” Foster replied. “But you will if you make it through. Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

She led him inside the building. Near the entrance were a small waiting lounge and an attached office. A single man sat inside the office, working at a computer terminal.

“Captain Pahwel. Got another one for you,” Foster said.

“Ma’am? We’re two days into the class already. With so little time, every day counts. Might be better he wait for the next rotation,” the man replied. He swung his chair around to face her.

“Hereford’s orders,” Foster said, shrugging.

“Ah, it’s that one,” Pahwel replied. He looked like he’d bitten into a lemon and found out it was rotten. “I’ve heard.”

“Give him a fair shot. That’s what Hereford wants, so that’s what we’re doing. If he screws up, send him packing,” Foster said.

“Ma’am, I’ll give him the same chance of every other recruit. But I won’t let even General Hereford compromise the quality of our graduates,” Pahwel said.

Colonel Foster flashed him a smile. “That’s precisely why you have this job. Keep up the outstanding work. This one’s all yours; his inprocessing is finished.”

“I’ll see to him, Colonel,” Pahwel said.

Owen observed the exchange. Pahwel was properly respectful of the colonel. She, in turn, seemed to trust him and his judgment. But Pahwel didn’t seem to like Owen at all. That was bad news. Having a commanding officer who had it in for you was trouble at best, suicide at worst. He’d just have to show Pahwel that he could be trusted to do the job.

Foster left. Owen stood at attention, waiting for Pahwel to give him orders to do otherwise, while outside he heard the engine start and the Jeep drive off. He continued to stand another minute while Pahwel regarded him intently.

“At ease, Recruit McInness,” Pahwel said. His tone was brusque but not unkind. “You have a lot of catching up to do. Your platoon-mates are already two days ahead of you.”

Pahwel hauled three large books out of a shelf and dropped them onto his desk with a loud thunk. “These are the starter guides. They contain everything you need to know about the Armor Mark 3. How to repair it, maintain it, manage the controls, and so forth.”

He seemed about ready to hand the books over to Owen but then thought better of it. Pahwel stood, paced back and forth, then turned back to his newest recruit.

“McInness, I think the general is making a terrible mistake with you. This is madness. People are clamoring to get into this program, lining up to compete for positions. And then he sends us you? A disgraced cadet who couldn’t hold his temper and then almost killed a fellow cadet?” Pahwel said. “Oh yes, I’ve heard all about you. Well, you won’t find me as sympathetic as General Hereford. You step one foot out of line, and I’ll make sure you’re gone. You get me?”

“I understand, sir,” Owen said. It was clear as crystal. Pahwel didn’t want him there, didn’t think he belonged. But would he give Owen a fair shake, like he’d told Colonel Foster? Or would Captain Pahwel manufacture the first problem he could find into something worth dumping Owen to the curb? He couldn’t know which until he’d been around the captain a little longer, but it felt like the safest bet was to keep his head down and avoid Pahwel as much as possible.

“Good. Get on in there. Drill Instructor Graham is expecting you.” With that, Pahwel went back to whatever he’d been doing on the computer before.

Owen took it as a dismissal and left the office, moving through a set of double doors into an enormous room that took up most of the remainder of the building. It was at least twenty feet tall, and the size of a few basketball courts placed side by side.

The place was bustling with activity, too. On one end were a dozen boxy devices. Those had to be the simulators Colonel Foster mentioned. On the other…?

They were pretty awesome, he had to admit it. Not as big as he’d thought at first. The Armor units had to be maybe eight feet tall. If they ducked, they could probably make it through a regular human dwelling. That was part of the point, though. They were the right size to go hunting for humanity’s adversaries. Not too big, not too small.

The six standing there were impressive enough, each bristling with weapons. Well, the intact ones were, anyone. Three of them were in various stages of being stripped down and disassembled. A half dozen young men and women toiled around those, pulling parts off and laying them carefully on the deck around the Armor. Owen didn’t realize he’d stopped in place and was staring until someone called his name.

“McInness! Quit gawking and get over here!” The call came from a grizzled middle-aged man wearing staff sergeant stripes.

That had to be the drill instructor he’d been told to report to. Owen hurried over and came to the position of attention. Now, should he call the DI ‘sir,’ as a new recruit, or by his proper rank, because he’d been a cadet? He hesitated a moment too long before speaking.

“Damn, not only a dropout but dumb, too? Speak, boy!” the DI roared.

Owen found his voice. “Sir, Recruit Owen McInness reporting as ordered!”

“There, was that so hard? I’m DI Graham. I’ll be supervising you lot for as long as you last with us, which may not be long for some of you,” Graham said, the last bit while glaring at a few of the nearby recruits who’d stopped working to watch the exchange. “I’ll put you under Recruit Roberts here. His squad is tearing down Armor 2.”

“Yes, sir,” Owen said.

“Go! You’re already two days behind and more minutes are ticking by! You’d better be sharper than you’re showing me right now, or you’re gonna be gone by lights out!” Graham said.

Owen got. He hurried over to the recruit Graham had pointed at and reached out his hand. “Owen McInness.”

“Roberts,” the other man said, declining to shake his hand. He turned away. “We know who you are. Overheard Pahwel ranting about you this morning.”

Owen felt anger rising and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he was calmer, but still pissed at the frigid response. First the colonel, then Captain Pahwel, and now even the other recruits were dissing him? Fine. He’d prove to them all what he could do.

“Come on. Help me with this gun mount,” Roberts said.

Owen looked over at where he stood expectantly waiting for assistance. “Me?”

“You’re in my squad, so you’re my responsibility,” Roberts said. “I don’t have to like you to put you to use, right?”

Owen went to his side and helped lift the housing free from the Armor’s arm mount. It was a damned big gun, and it took both of them to lower it safely to the ground. Even then, they were panting when they got it down. Roberts flashed him a grin, and Owen smiled in return.

“At least you’re willing to work hard,” Roberts said. “Come on, let’s get the other one.”

Eight

Owen knocked on the door as softly as he was able. Maybe there would be no answer, and he could just go back to the merely unpleasant training. Just about anything would be better than this.

But no, the door opened. He’d been expecting some younger girl, probably a social worker, most likely a bleeding heart who wanted him to cry on her shoulder. He was surprised by the man waiting on the other side of the door. He wore an Air Force uniform and had major rank on his collar. Short cropped salt-and-pepper hair was a stark contrast to Owen’s expectations.

“Sir?” Owen asked, unsure if he was in the right place.

“Ah, Recruit McInness. You’re right on time,” the man answered.

Well, so much for this being the wrong place, or getting lucky enough to have his therapist be a no-show. Owen sighed. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“This isn’t the end of the world, recruit. It might just be the beginning. Come in,” the Major said. He opened the door wide and ushered Owen inside.

The room was small, perhaps ten by ten feet. A single window let light in, shaded a soft yellow by curtains. The space was furnished in a way that made the room feel full but spartan at the same time. A bookcase and desk sat on opposite walls from one another, and two comfortable chairs rested in the center of the room.

“Please, take a chair,” the Major told him.

Owen picked the chair furthest from the door. Sure, it meant there was a man between him and the exit, but it also put his back against a corner. That made him feel more comfortable. The officer nodded and took a seat in the other chair facing him.

“My name is Major Bristol. Outside this room, that’s the name and title you should use, as I’ll call you Recruit McInness. But here, you can call me James. And I’d like to call you Owen, if that’s all right with you?” Bristol asked.

Owen shrugged. Not like it mattered to him one way or the other. He was only in the room at all because he’d been ordered to show up. “Whatever, James.”

Bristol frowned, but let it go. “Why do you think you’re here, Owen?”

“Because I have to be?” Owen quipped.

“Well, honesty is a good start. I get that you don’t want to see me. But if you’ll work with me, I might be able to help you,” James said.

Owen seethed inside, struggling not to let it show on his face. From Bristol’s expression, he was only partly successful. He wanted to punch that sympathetic face in the nose, but striking an officer wasn’t going to win him any favors. Lashing out felt right. But it wasn’t. Owen restrained himself, digging his fingernails into his palms.

“I don’t need your help,” Owen grated out. “I’m fine.”

“Clearly,” James replied, his tone saying it was anything but clear. “Why do you think you’re so angry at just the thought of someone helping you?”

Owen didn’t have an answer to the question. If anything, that made him more frustrated and raised his fury another notch. He took a deep breath and yanked his emotions back under control. He wouldn’t be led around by the nose like this. He was smarter than that. Owen glanced around the room.

“No diplomas?” Owen asked. “Don’t head-shrinkers usually like to hang their certificates of bullshit?”

“Seen some therapists before, have you?” James asked.

Answering a question with a question? Owen knew this game. “What makes you think I have?”

“Well, your medical records, for starters,” James replied, patting a stack of paperwork on his desk. “But what did you think of those therapists?”

“They were busybodies who had no business trying to mess with my head,” Owen replied. “Just like you.”

“Oh, I’m not here to mess with your head,” James said. “If you don’t want to talk, I’ve got a lot of work I can do over there?”

Owen stared at him, confused. “Wait, really?”

It couldn’t be that easy, could it? All he had to do was sit in the room, and the guy would mark him as ‘present,’ which would tick the box Hereford insisted on? That sounded too good to be true.

“Absolutely,” James said. He slid the chair over to his desk and opened a laptop. He glanced over at Owen. “If you decide you want to talk, I’m right here for you.”

“Fat chance of that,” Owen replied.

James made a little noise and went back to his work. Well, that had gone far better than he’d had any reason to expect! Owen fished in his pocket for his smartphone before remembering he didn’t have it anymore. It was with the rest of his personal effects, locked up. Crap. He was used to always having something to do. Sitting still and just thinking was a crappy way to spend an hour.

He counted all the stones on the wall across from him, then started on a second wall. Once that one was done too, Owen glanced at the clock. Shit, was he really only twenty minutes into the session? What was he supposed to do for another forty minutes? His eyes went to the bookcase.

The titles there were boring. ‘Anger Management’ was an obvious no. Owen mentally added the titles ‘Teen Fury’, ‘Feeling Better,’ and ‘Things That Suck’ to the same pile as too hokey. One book caught his eye, though. It was titled ‘Emotional Intelligence.’ Intelligence sounded like it might be something worth looking into. Owen knew he was smart, but getting smarter wasn’t a bad idea. Even if it was about emotions. Besides, it would pass the time while he was stuck there.

“Mind if I read one of your books?” Owen asked.

“Please do,” James replied. He glanced over to see which one Owen picked up, nodded, and went back to being busy on his computer.

It seemed like he really meant it. James was going to just let Owen be for the whole session. That wasn’t what he’d expected at all. He figured the meetings would be more like the first few minutes had been: a struggle, a battle. Owen was used to fighting. That was familiar territory. This James Bristol was playing new games on new ground, and it left Owen feeling unsteady.

The book was enough to keep him occupied for a bit, anyway. It wasn’t about intelligence at all, not really. It seemed to be about rational thought and irrational emotional flare-ups. The fact that it was talking about something he experienced himself wasn’t lost on Owen. He had a feeling none of the books on the shelf were there by accident, and gave Bristol a look. He had to admit to a little respect for the therapist. He’d played this one well.

But the book was interesting enough to hold his attention. It gave stories of people in crisis situations and how they had overcome them by merging rational and emotional thinking. That resonated for Owen. His mind drifted back to touch the memory of that day in Miami and then recoiled at once. The pain was all still right there. Every raw nerve and impossible emotion he’d felt that day was still wrapped up in the memory, waiting to come out any time he allowed it to. That was why he bundled the stuff up so well. It hadn’t gotten any better. Owen figured it probably never would.

The therapist they’d tried to foist on him at the Academy had attempted to get into his head. That’s when he’d learned how much that memory still hurt. Since then Owen did everything he could to keep those feelings at bay. It was easier to handle the rage he felt toward all Naga for the death of his parents than it was to cope with the other morass of feelings left over from that day.

“Time’s up,” James said.

His words broke Owen out of his thoughts. A glance at the clock told him that the session was indeed over. He felt confused as he replaced the book on the shelf. “Are you meeting with me again?”

“Same time, day after tomorrow,” James said. “Three times a week, I was told.”

Owen winced. He’d been hoping maybe that word hadn’t come through with the rest. “Yeah, me too.”

But it hadn’t been terrible. Just sitting there was boring, but the book wasn’t. Owen had always loved reading. He rose and made his way to the door, opened it, turned back to face Major Bristol. The man glanced up from his work toward Owen, an expectant look on his face.

“Thanks, James,” Owen said.

“I’ll see you soon, Owen,” James replied.

Owen closed the door behind him, his thoughts tumbling over each other as he tried to straighten them all out. James Bristol was a strange, strange man. But Owen couldn’t help feeling like he was the one person at this entire base who might actually be an ally.

Nine

The first week flew by, each day slipping away in a whirl of activity. Owen didn’t remain behind the others in his cohort for long. He managed to catch up and, at least in his own estimation, pass most of the rest without too much difficulty. He’d been competing against some of the best at the Academy and excelled there, so he expected nothing less from himself at Armor training.

“All right, you’ve done a good job here,” Graham said, inspecting their work. They’d just completed a strip down, diagnosis, repair, and reconstruction of an Armor unit in what had to be record time. It was certainly their personal best, anyway. “I suppose you all want to move on to Phase 2?”

That got Owen’s attention quickly. It was all he could do to keep his eyes facing straight ahead instead of drifting across the building toward where the simulator units rested. So far, his platoon hadn’t been allowed near the things. The only people using the sims were those who’d already graduated from their Armor training cohort.

Yes, he was excited! The simulators still wouldn’t be the same thing as actually walking around with an Armor unit strapped around him, but it was something a lot closer than cleaning and putting them together.

“Yes, sir!” The chorus was unanimous. Yeah, his platoon was as hot to go do this as Owen was.

“All right. We’ll start you on something light. Roberts, take your squad in first. The rest of you get to watch them screw up on the big screen,” Graham said, pointing at a display mounted on the wall. “But no laughing, because you’ll get your chance, too.”

The next few minutes were spent strapping themselves into unfamiliar harnesses. Sure, they’d stripped them down, but that wasn’t the same as getting buckled in. The Armor units had a complex system of straps and harnesses designed to keep the pilot from getting shaken to death in combat.

Owen put the last buckle into place. He checked his display. It read all green, which meant he’d done the sequence correctly. In real combat he’d have a tech on hand double-checking his work, but not that day. The simulators wouldn’t actually tip their pilots on their heads the way a real Armor could, so there wasn’t much risk of injury.

The display in front of Owen lit up, showing a nicely rendered 3D image of open terrain with rolling hills and the occasional tree. He looked to his right and left. Screens on either side of him showed him the side-facing views as well. His controls flashed, then glowed a steady green. The simulator was live.

Owen took an experimental step forward. The whole simulator lurched as the machine struggled to use internal gyroscopes to compensate for his movement. His foot came down a little too solidly, but it was a step.

“McInness, work with the machine, don’t fight it. Roberts, you’re not dancing; step out with a little more authority. The Armor won’t bite you,” Graham said. He kept on rattling off advice for each of Owen’s squad as they slowly grew more confident walking around in the machines.

“Uh oh. Looks like we have incoming,” Graham said. “Enemy targets spotted at three o’clock.”

Owen looked out his right screen and saw them — four Bugs bearing down on their position. They looked something like giant centipedes the size of trucks, but with the first third of their body lifted free from the ground. All four of them wore battle armor, the silvery sheen reflecting sunlight. They were also armed, and they were firing!

“Move, people!” Roberts said. “I’ve got point. Kowal and Hernandez, with me. McInness, bring up the rear.”

As the team maneuvered to take up the positions Roberts ordered, Owen glanced over his weapon loadout. He had no missiles, which sucked. Each arm had a heavy machine gun mounted on it, and both of those had massive blades hanging beneath them. He could shoot or slash, but not both. A button press gave him the weapon systems for his team-mates.

Owen saw instantly where Roberts had made a mistake. His Armor had shoulder missiles and Naga-style energy rifles mounted in the arms. Heavy damage but a slow rate of fire. His Armor should have stayed in the rear where the others could cover him and keep the Bugs away while he pounded them. Kowal was armed like Owen, and Hernandez was a mixture of machine gun and a railgun; a weapon even more potent than the Naga cannon, but with an even slower loading time!

Roberts had put two Armor loadouts on the front line that were going to be cut to pieces. Owen opened up a private channel to him. “Roberts, swap positions with me. I’ve got a better weapons array for point. Fall back.”

“You’re not giving orders here, ex-cadet,” Roberts retorted. “Follow the ones you’re given.”

He cut the channel. Owen growled under his breath, anger rising in his chest. Damn the man! They were going to get creamed out there because he was using his forces wrong. Owen watched the bugs come running in, helpless to do much about it. Roberts and Hernandez each got off a single volley before the Bugs closed in on them. At close range, they were going to get ripped up.

That was enough. Owen’s fury mounted until he couldn’t contain it anymore. He rushed forward, driving his simulated Armor unit at a breakneck pace. It somehow remained upright, although the box he sat in lurched side to side heavily. Owen reached Roberts a moment before the Bug slashed his suit open with its scimitar-like legs. He shoved Roberts aside and took the brunt of the assault on his Armor instead.

Claws ripped into steel with a screeching noise that drowned everything else out. But Owen wasn’t defenseless at this range. He had his arm-mounted knives and used them to slash at the Bug’s belly armor. It reared back in surprise and pain, which gave him the space he needed to open fire with both machine guns. The rounds found spots already weakened on the Bug’s armor and pounded it apart, killing it.

Before Owen could celebrate another Bug slammed into him from his left. It took him completely by surprise. Hadn’t Roberts been on that side of him? How had the Bug gotten past him? The alien’s claws slashed through his Armor. Red flashes mounted on Owen’s screens as the damage readouts flashed with alarm. He struggled to get any of his weapons to bear without success. Seconds later, it was over. His screens went blank. The Bug had ‘killed’ him.

“Bang, you’re dead, McInness,” Graham said.

Owen slid free from his harness and looked over at the main screen, where Kowal was still fighting a spirited battle against two Bugs. But she was losing. He could already see how they were slowly splitting up so they could come at her from two directions at once. When they did, the sudden attack overwhelmed her. She still managed to hurt one of the attackers badly, but the last one took her out.

As she came climbing out of her simulator, Graham called out to her. “Not bad fighting, Kowal. That two-on-one was tough. You did the best you could with it under the circumstances. Remember that it’s usually better to take one down fast in that case, so they can’t split up and take you out like that.”

“Got it, sir. Won’t happen again,” Kowal replied.

“I bet it won’t,” Graham said. Then he turned to the other three members of the squad and shook his head. “You lot. I’ve seen some sorry first runs, but this? You take the cake.”

He turned back to the rest of the platoon. “Where did they screw it up?”

“When McInness knocked over his squad leader, maybe?” Owen tried to identify the speaker, but he wasn’t sure who it was. Knock over Roberts? He’d only wanted to shoulder him out of the way a little. Owen looked over at him and was met with grim silence and angry glare. Shit.

Graham aimed a controller at the screen and clicked a button. The video rewound right to the start of the battle. Owen got a birds-eye view of everything. The Bugs rushed in. Roberts deployed his team. Then out of the blue, Owen’s Armor rushed forward and shouldered his squad leader out of the way. He saved Roberts, sure. But the blow was enough to knock the inexperienced pilot off his feet. Roberts tumbled sideways down the hill.

One of the other Bugs saw an easy target and made for him. The video displayed it tearing his suit to bits in seconds. Then the Bug dashed forward a second time and attacked Owen from the side. His attempts at defense were futile, and he went down as well.

Hernandez had ‘died’ about the same time Owen did, leaving Kowal by herself. Graham was right, in Owen’s assessment. Of all of them, she’d done the best job. He slumped, going back over his actions. What could he have done differently out there?

“And…you’re all dead,” Graham said. He paused the video as it showed a bug tearing Kowal’s Armor in half. “You get me? You’re dead!”

He let the silence reign a little bit and stalked back and forth in front of them before going on. “This isn’t a video game. Those Bugs are real. Hell, there may be shit out there worse than them. Space is full of things that want to eat you, people! When you go out there — which seems unlikely for some of you! — every decision you make will be life or death.”

Graham turned to Roberts. “Squad leader. Where did you go wrong?”

Roberts had clearly had time to think about things. “I misplaced my team members. I should have organized them based on their weapons loads. I didn’t look to see how we were all armed or consider what that meant for deployment.”

“Good,” Graham said. “And?”

Roberts chewed his lip and shot Owen a glare. “I ignored good advice from a team member,” he grated out.

“Who then compounded that error how?” Graham said, looking over at Owen.

That was easy enough. Owen knew precisely where he’d screwed up. “I didn’t follow my squad leader’s commands and took the initiative to engage the enemy in close quarters combat.”

Graham stalked over in front of him. “You didn’t follow your leader’s commands. Think about that, because those words are really what killed all four of you. Bad orders are better than no order. Remember that. If you’re all screwed up and doing your own thing, then you’re fighting as individuals. You want to win, you have to operate as a team.”

The DI turned away from Owen and back to the rest of the platoon. “All right. Second Squad, get in there. Let’s see if you can do any better than First.”

Ten

Hereford glanced from one officer to another, bemused. He wanted to hear from both of them, even though he’d already made up his mind on the matter. For the moment he allowed Captain Pahwel to have his say.

“He disobeyed direct orders and got his squad killed,” Pahwel protested. “McInness isn’t fit for this sort of work. He should be removed from the program before he gets someone actually killed, rather than just in simulation.”

Charline Foster sat there as well, listening in. She glanced Hereford’s way, and he gave her a small shake of his head. He wanted Pahwel to get it all out. Hereford knew the captain had taken an instant dislike of his latest recruit, but Pahwel was also a professional. He’d served under Hereford for years. He was a good man, and the general wouldn’t brush away his opinions without hearing them out.

“He’s bright, I’ll give him that,” Pahwel admitted. “His aptitude scores are higher than anyone else in his platoon. But his emotional responses to any stressful situation are throwing him off every time. He’s seeing a therapist, right?”

“Yes, a good one. James Bristol,” Hereford said.

Pahwel’s eyebrows rose. “Well, he’s in good hands, then. Maybe we should consider allowing the therapy to run its course, and then re-admit him once he’s doing better? I think the boy has promise, damn it, but he’s going to get someone killed.”

Hereford rubbed his chin. It wasn’t the worst plan in the world. Get McInness some of the help he clearly needed to get over the way his parents were killed, and then once he was stronger, place him back in the saddle. Except Hereford was confident it wouldn’t work out that way. Confidence was the problem, in a nutshell. If he yanked McInness out of training at this point, the boy would lose faith. In Space Force, in Hereford, and most importantly he’d lose confidence in himself.

Hereford looked over at Charline. “What’s your take?”

“He screwed up,” Charline replied, considering her words carefully. “But then again, if we got rid of every trainee who ever messed up in training, we’d never graduate anyone. My feeling is that this doesn’t warrant removal. Not yet, anyway. I’m definitely in favor of continuing to keep an eye on him.”

“You’re shoving the problem back at me,” Pahwel said. His wry smile took the sting out of his words.

“That’s why you get paid the big bucks!” Charline replied, beaming at him.

“What big bucks?” Pahwel laughed. “All right, we’ll leave him in. I just hope he has time to get it together before we need him in combat.”

Hereford couldn’t agree more. But things were continuing to push ahead, out there in space. He had a feeling they needed more people trained as quickly as possible. They were going to need every single one. Especially given light of their recent orders. He turned back to Charline. “Your people ready to roll?”

“Yes,” Charline replied. “Are you sure you want my entire platoon to go, though? I could leave a squad behind. I hate to leave Earth without any Armor, in case you need us.”

They were headed off-world. Charline, the Wynns, two of their best ships, and a lot of their best people. All on their way out of the system to the furthest point any human had ever traveled. It was a desperate gambit, but Hereford planned the crews well for the mission.

If the worst came to worst and they somehow ended up stranded millions of light-years away, they would have everything they needed to ensure the survival of humanity.

“One squad won’t make much difference if we get hit,” Hereford said. “Besides, we have Pahwel here, and his training sergeants. They will serve if we have some sort of emergency.”

“The recruits will graduate soon, too,” Pahwel added. “Won’t be long before we have a second Armor platoon.”

“Good, that’s settled, then,” Hereford said. “I need to get back to base ASAP. If you’ll excuse me?”

“Of course, sir,” Charline replied. She and Pahwel both stood while he left the room, then sat down and got back to work. While she was away, Pahwel would be in charge of the remaining Armor troops. It was a lot of responsibility to hand to a captain, but Hereford was sure he could handle it.

He stepped outside the administration building into the fresh evening air. Much as the heat of the day bothered him, the cool of this arid semi-desert always made him feel at home. Hereford inhaled, taking in all the scents on the breeze.

Movement caught his eye. He looked over and spotted a recruit walking back toward the barracks. It wasn’t hard to pick McInness out of the crowd. He still had the stiff walk an Academy cadet carried with them. Hereford went toward him.

“McInness. We should talk,” Hereford said.

“Sir! I didn’t expect to see you here,” McInness replied.

“I often turn up where least expected,” Hereford said, a twinkle in his eye. “How are you doing?”

McInness sighed. “Not as well as I’d like. I screwed up today, sir.”

“I heard,” Hereford replied.

McInness winced visibly. “I’m sorry, sir. I won’t let it happen again.”

“I know you won’t. But why are you having a hard time following orders from your squad leader? You must have gotten used to the idea, back at the Acadamy,” Hereford said.

“Yes, sir. But he was wrong, sir. He cut me off, ignored my advice. I got angry. I wanted to prove to him I was right,” McInness admitted.

Well, copping to the problem was a start, at least. If McInness was aware of where he was wrong, that was something. He still needed some help to get the rest of the way through it all. Hereford had an idea that might help. “Come with me.”

Wordlessly, Hereford began striding toward the center of the small camp. McInness followed in his wake. He led the recruit to the precise center and stood there staring up at the ugly hunk of metal towering over him. He remained silent, letting McInness make the first move.

“Sir, why is that thing here? I can see it’s supposed to be Armor, but it doesn’t look like our suits. It’s bigger, the plating looks wrong, and it’s all slagged,” McInness said.

“Good observations. Why do you suppose it might be there?” Hereford asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” McInness replied. “It seems like a strange statue.”

“That’s because it’s not a statue, it’s a tomb,” Hereford said. He reached down and tapped a plaque set into the stone on which the ‘statue’ stood, then read it aloud. It was too dark to see the words, but Hereford knew them by heart.

“Here stands Sergeant Roger Halcomb. He served gallantly and with great courage, laying down his own life willingly so that others could survive. His heroism stands as a shining example for all of us to follow,” Hereford said.

“My god,” McInness whispered. “That’s him?”

Halcomb was something of a legend, even though it had only been a couple of months since his passing. The Space Force public relations department had taken Charline’s idea and rolled with it, making Halcomb into the sort of larger-than-life hero humanity needed. There was even talk about a motion picture about him. Hereford wasn’t surprised McInness knew the name.”

“That’s him. He died in his Armor. Fried himself so that the rest of his team could jump through a wormhole to get home,” Hereford said. “Colonel Foster was going to do it, but Halcomb there, he shoved her out of the way and stepped in to take the hit himself.”

McInness was sharp. He got the comparison right away. “But unlike me, he actually saved his commander, instead of getting him killed.”

“Got it in one,” Hereford said. “Son, there are times we have to do what’s right even when ordered to do something else. Those times are damned rare. Most of the time, our commanders know more about the situation than we do. Even when they don’t, failing to follow an order still puts people at risk.”

He paused, looking down at the recruit. “Yeah, sometimes we need a Halcomb, willing to sacrifice himself so others can live. But most of the time we need you in one piece so that you can fight another day.”

McInness nodded. He reached out with one hand to trace his fingers along the foot of Halcomb’s armor. Hereford wondered what he was thinking. Had he said the right things to set the boy straight? He hoped so. He wasn’t a psych guy. That was Bristol’s job. But he knew people well enough that he could see McInness was still hurting. A little encouragement couldn’t help.

“Go back to your platoon, recruit. Do better next time,” Hereford said.

“I will, sir,” McInness replied.

Eleven

Another day, another drill. Owen was exhausted from the constant marching to get from one part of the base to the other, but that was the least of the efforts the recruits were forced to handle. On top of the physical exertion, they were also expected to devour tomes on mechanical engineering, electronics, tactics, and more. Oh, and also learn how to expertly control a brand new type of machine that only a few dozen people in the world knew how to use well...

Saying it was hectic was an understatement. Owen never felt like there was enough time in a given day. After the conversation with General Hereford the night before, he was more determined than ever to do a better job this time.

Graham was changing things up, though. This time the squads wouldn’t be going into the sims one at a time. They’d had a chance to learn from each other’s mistakes, but now they were going to get to make their own. One instructor would watch each squad, rating them.

Owen’s heart sank when he saw Captain Pahwel coming over toward his squad. He was pretty sure the captain still disliked him, and that wasn’t going to make this any easier. Sure enough, Pahwel was to be their instructor for the day. He’d rate their progress.

“Into your Armor, recruits! I’ll be booting up your exercise shortly,” Pahwel said.

Owen went with the others to get strapped into the simulators. He’d just about finished when he looked up and saw Pahwel standing beside him, staring down.

“Sir? Did you need something?” Owen asked.

“I saw the way you handled the last simulation,” Pahwel replied. “You need to rein it in. Get yourself under control out there, or you’re useless to us. You can still be trimmed from the program.”

Owen kept his mouth shut as tight as he could to avoid saying something he was going to regret. Finally, he unclenched his jaw enough to reply. “Yes, sir.”

Pahwel nodded to him and walked away. Owen slammed shut his canopy a lot harder than he had to and went about booting his simulated suit to life. Damn the man! Yes, he’d screwed up. That didn’t mean he was going to do it again.

Roberts’ voice came to him over a private channel. “Hey, I heard that. Let it go, man. Don’t let him get to you. Let’s just get this done.”

Owen felt a flash of gratitude. “Thanks, Roberts. I’ve got your back.”

“Good,” Roberts replied. Then he laughed. “Literally, it looks like. See our loadouts?”

Owen checked his boards. They were armed with entirely different sets of gear this time. Owen’s Armor had no close range weapons at all; he had four racks of long-range missiles instead. Last time he’d wished for some missiles, and this time... Well, something to deal with a Bug that got in too close would have been nice.

The rest of his team were all armed with shorter-range gear. They had machine guns and blades. Interesting. That could actually work if they deployed right. Owen hoped Roberts would see it as well.

“What are you thinking?” Roberts asked him.

Owen was surprised that he’d ask. “Um. Well, I’m our damage dealer, but if they get in close, I’m toast. If the three of you can screen me for long enough, we can win this.”

“I was thinking the same,” Roberts replied. He opened the channel up to the entire squad. “All right. Kowal, Hernandez, with me. We run interference for McInness while he dishes out some death to the Bugs. We good?”

“Ready up,” Kowal said.

“Good to go here,” Hernandez replied.

They all dropped into the simulation, their screens lighting up with images. This wasn’t a grassy meadow. Instead, they were inside the ruins of a city. It had been trashed. There wasn’t a single intact building to be seen anywhere. The jagged remnants reached toward the sky like skeletal fingers. Overhead, the sky was dark, roiling grey clouds blocking the stars from view. Here and there in the distance Owen saw the flash of explosions light up the night.

“Damned realistic,” Hernandez said. He sounded nervous.

Roberts broke in. “Let’s keep it together. Move out. We’re in MOUT here, so let’s change things up a bit. Kowal, take point with Rodriguez. McInness in the middle, I’ll bring up the rear.”

MOUT — Military Operations in Urban Terrain — was always risky even at the best of times. It was damned hard to engage an enemy when you couldn’t see them coming, and in a place like this there could be bugs around any corner. Owen checked his gear over and saw he’d missed one item on his first pass.

“Hey, I’ve got a drone,” Owen said. “You want me to get us some aerial recon?”

“Do it,” Roberts said.

Owen launched the drone, allowing it to soar overhead. It was computer controlled, so he didn’t have to worry about steering the thing. Once the Bugs spotted it, they’d take it out, but in the meantime it would allow his team to get a birds-eye view of the battlefield.

He almost immediately wished he hadn’t been able to see what was coming. “We’ve got Bugs. Lots and lots of Bugs.”

Roberts saw them, too. “We can’t take that many in a straight up fight. Suggestions?”

“Find cover,” Kowal said. “At ten o’clock, there’s a building we can use as a defensive position.”

“I see it. Make for it, top speed,” Roberts replied.

They made the dash over to the spot Kowal pointed out as quickly as they were able. The terrain was broken and littered with rubble, but that was the sort of thing their Armor was designed to handle well. They could maintain a good speed even over the roughest surfaces. The squad made it inside the building before the Bugs arrived.

Owen looked around. On the west and north sides, the walls were still mostly intact. They had good cover there. But although the opposite corner was still more or less in one piece, the east and south walls had massive holes torn in them. The Bugs could climb, so nowhere was really safe. But they’d be most likely to try the easiest routes first.

“Kowal, take up a position near the southeast corner where you can assist either breach. I’ve got the south end, Hernandez east. Mac, blast them to bits as they come.”

They barely had time to maneuver into position before the drone footage showed the Bugs swarming toward them. There had to be dozens of them. Owen sat there in awe of the wave of terror headed there way. He snapped out of it when Hernandez opened up on the nearest with his machine guns. His people were counting on him!

The drone gave him an excellent view of the enemy formation, such as it was. It also let him precisely place the first volley of missiles for maximum effect. He fired all four launchers, the rockets blazing into the air. They soared skyward before turning around and descending toward the ground with even more speed.

The night turned into day as four massive explosions lit up everything. Bits of Bug armor pinged off buildings. The stone walls, crumbling already, fell apart still further. The enemy force stalled its charge. Two injured Bugs managed to survive the carnage and rush Hernandez, but with Kowal’s help, he dispatched them both.

Owen glanced at his screen again. The drone said the Bugs were splitting up. Some of them prepared to rush the gaps once more, but another group was coming around the north end. “I think they’re going to try to climb over.”

“Noted. Hold your ground and keep firing,” Roberts said.

Owen gritted his teeth together. He didn’t want to be under those things when they came over the wall, but he also knew his firepower was the team’s only chance. He remembered what Hereford had talked about the night before. This was just a simulation, and he didn’t want to ‘die’ even there. What had Halcomb gone through when he’d literally laid down his life for his friends?

He pressed the firing stud again, launching four more missiles. They blasted more Bugs apart. All of the Armor units were shooting now, guns blazing as they ripped into the attacking horde.

A bug tumbled off the wall above him, knocking Owen to the ground. He rolled and struggled back to his feet. The attacker rushed him, and he saw a second drop down nearby. But before they could close with him, blasts of machine gun fire tore into them.

“Didn’t think I’d let them take out our fire support, did you?” Kowal asked.

“Thanks!” Owen replied.

“Thank me by getting back to shooting them,” she said.

Owen tried to trigger his weapons, but an alarm chirped from his computer instead. The shoulder mounted launchers had both been damaged when the Bug attacked him. He disengaged them from fire control so that he could use the arm launchers. Both were down to just two missiles each.

“I’m low on ammo,” Owen said.

“Use what you’ve got!” Roberts said.

He and Hernandez were both blazing away at more Bugs as they tried to get through the breaches in the walls. Owen triggered another launch, sending two missiles rocketing into the middle of the oncoming Bugs. They exploded, stalling the rush. He fired again. Those last missiles took out most of the remaining attackers. Withering machine-gun fire did for even more of them. The final few ran off into the ruins.

Owen’s screen went black. He popped his canopy. “What happened?”

“We won, that’s what happened!” Roberts said. He was already jumping down from his simulator. “Way to go, team!”

Pahwel stood nearby, a tablet in his hands and a scowl on his face. Owen wondered if he’d wanted them to fail. Certainly, he expected them to screw it up, or rather — Pahwel expected Owen to screw it up. His anger boiled up to the surface for a moment at that thought, but he shoved it aside. The best way to deal with that was to show Pahwel that he was wrong.

“All right, that’s enough. Well done. All of you,” Pahwel said, surprising Owen by giving even him a nod. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, after all. “Get back in your sims. Next mission starts in five.”

Owen was tired from the intensity of the last run. He could tell the others were too. But Roberts flashed them all a winning smile and tilted his head.

“Let’s do it again, folks. Second verse, same as the first,” Roberts said. His quip lightened the mood, and the entire squad was grinning again as they clambered back into their simulators for round two.

Twelve

The rest of the day went so well that Owen didn’t even mind having to go see James during the brief period after supper where the recruits were allowed downtime to study. He was caught up on the texts they had to read, ahead of most of the pack. Roberts was doing an admirable job of leading the team, and they’d gone on to win three out of four scenarios. Even Pahwel gave them a congratulatory nod after they were through.

James waited inside his office with the door open. Owen knocked anyway, as he had each time he’d visited. The major gave him a nod, then Owen went to his usual seat and plucked up the book he’d been reading from its shelf.

The two of them had fallen into this routine over the past few visits. It was an agreeable form of therapy, although Owen was left wondering just what sort of treatment James thought he was getting from the sessions. At least the literature was interesting. He skimmed the next chapter, which was discussing ‘mindfulness.’ Some of what it said made sense, but some didn’t. Owen opened his mouth to ask James, then closed it again.

Did he want to open that door? These sessions were full of comfortable silence. If he started asking questions, James might feel able to ask some of his own in return. Owen wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. On the other hand, the major had been nothing but gracious, and this was his field. He probably wouldn’t mind answering a few questions. He might even see it as Owen becoming interested in the therapy sessions — although that was the furthest thing from his mind!

Owen decided he’d risk asking. “James, the book I’m reading is talking about mindfulness. I get that it means being observant of what your mind is thinking, but the author keeps talking about the connection between body and mind. What does he mean? This sounds like new-age gunk to me.”

James turned to face him. “It’s not. The mind is part of the body, right? That is, your brain is one organ of many. You follow me?”

Owen nodded. “Sure.”

“Well, the parts of the body are each separate but interactive. A change to one impacts most if not all of the others. Our brains are the most complex organ in the human body. What we think, even how we think, registers elsewhere. For example, when we think of certain things, our pulse might race, which in turn elevates our blood pressure,” James said.

“That makes sense, I suppose,” Owen said.

“Take you as an example. You’ve felt angry before, right?” James asked.

Owen nodded. Of course he had, and James knew that. He sensed a trap somewhere in the therapist’s words, but he hadn’t seen it yet.

“When you get mad, where in your body do you feel the anger?” James asked.

The question took Owen entirely off-guard. It sounded like a non-sequitur to him. “In my head, of course. In my brain, I guess.”

“Mmm. And where else do you feel it?” James asked.

Owen found himself frustrated by the question. “It’s a feeling. It’s in my head.”

James nodded. “Sure, emotions come from our brains. But they exist elsewhere in our bodies as well. We might feel a warm sensation in our belly when we feel loved, for example. Or a tingling at the back of our neck when we’re alarmed. These sorts of sensations are normal.”

Owen blinked. Of course, they were. There were tons of expressions about it: “butterflies in your stomach,” “flushed with anger,” and many more. But the more he drilled into his head, the less he felt at home with the idea. “It doesn’t feel like my feelings register anywhere except my head. Why would that be?”

“Probably they are, and you’re just not realizing it. That’s where mindfulness comes in, to bring the answer back full circle to your original question,” James said. “Mindfulness is about a lot of things, but one important element is knowing what body sensations mean which emotions.”

Owen shrugged. “I wouldn’t even know where to start trying to do that.”

“Would you like too?” James asked.

Ah, there was the trap. James had answered his question and gotten him talking, and now he was about to go into therapist mode. For a moment Owen was tempted to refuse. But he’d had a good day, so he was in a great mood. On top of that, he really was curious to see what James was talking about.

“Sure,” Owen said. “But I reserve the right to call a stop anytime I want.”

“Deal,” James said. “All right, the obvious one to pick with you is anger. You’ve got a lot of it, bottled up. Yes, we both know that.”

Owen didn’t bother nodding or shaking his head. Sure, he had anger. He felt like it was justified. James hadn’t seen his parents killed in front of his eyes. How could he know what that sort of anger was like? “I don’t really want to talk about that.”

“No, we’re not going to talk about Miami, if that’s what you mean,” James said. “But we can look at anger from other times. Can you recall a moment recently where you’ve felt an intense flash of anger?”

“Sure. Just now, when you told me I had anger issues,” Owen said.

“I didn’t say you had anger ‘issues’,” James answered. “I said you have a lot of bottled up anger. Frankly, I think that’s justified, given your experiences.”

Owen couldn’t keep the shock from his face this time. James agreed with him that his anger was OK? That wasn’t what he expected to hear. “Um. Yeah. Me, too.”

“Right. But what if you could figure out when you’re starting to get really mad, so that you can pick and choose the right times for it?” James asked.

Owen thought back to the incident at the Academy. To when he’d lashed out at Durham. “Yeah. I can see how that could be helpful.”

“OK. Can you remember a time when you got outright furious?” James asked.

“Yeah,” Owen replied. No problems there.

“Try to remember everything you can about the moment. How it felt. Not in your head, but in your body,” James said. “If it helps, I know you were mad at me a minute ago. How did that feel?”

Owen tried to think back. It was difficult. He wasn’t used to sensing how his body was reacting to things. What James was talking about sounded like hokey nonsense to him. He felt the tension rising in his belly and jaw as he grew more frustrated.

Oh — that was the sort of thing James was asking him to spot! Once he knew what he was looking for it became easier for Owen to find them. “Tension. In my chest, belly really. In my jaw.”

“Do you think it feels that way every time you get mad?” James asked.

“I don’t know,” Owen replied.

“Well, it’s a start. Watch for those sensations. If you feel them coming on, it might be that your anger is coming into play,” James said. “Make a note of anything you feel. We’ll meet again in two days, and you can let me know.”

Owen glanced up at the clock. He was five minutes over on the session! That had never happened before. Usually, he was out of there as soon as the required hour was over. He turned back at the doorway, wanting to say something. “Thanks, James.”

It sounded like a weak statement to Owen, especially after the hard time he’d given the man who was clearly doing his best to help him.

But James seemed to sense his sincerity. He nodded and said simply, “You’re welcome.”

Thirteen

Owen knew before he even set out on the field exercise that it was going to be the worst one he’d ever experienced. All the signs were there. For one, the forecast was calling for rain and thunderstorms, which meant the clay ground was going to get churned into red mud. Never a good time.

Then there was Thompson. Owen was still trying to get him to take training seriously. Hell, the whole squad was about ready to give him a blanket party, and probably already would have if they thought it would have knocked some sense into him.

Thompson was one of those guys whose proverbial mental lightbulb was stuck on dim. He could follow directions well enough and outlast almost anyone in PT, but just try to get him to use a little initiative to figure something out. Or stay focused on whatever it was he was supposed to be doing. Still, he always had a smile on his face, even at the crappiest times, and lent a hand to anyone who needed one. If you were about ready to fall out from exhaustion, without fail Thompson would show up like a big Saint Bernard dog, ready to help.

It’s hard not to like a guy like that, and Owen still smiled whenever he saw the man.

If it had just been the weather and one rock-headed recruit they had to worry about, it would have been OK. But the latest arrivals had all but ensured this next mission would be a train wreck.

Cadets were always stuck up snobs whose self-importance was only beaten out by their incompetence. Owen would know; he’d been one, after all. But no cadet wanted to be shipped off to a training camp for their OJT. Only the worst cadets from each class pulled that duty. The enlisted trainees got stuck with the least capable of an already dubious lot.

The drill instructors were still in charge, of course. The drill cadets worked under their supervision, in theory. But even DIs couldn’t be everywhere. There was always time for a random drill cadet to catch someone alone and inflict a little of the pain they were feeling for being stuck in this job.

One of the drill instructors spotted Owen packing up a little slower than he wanted. “Mac! Get your butt moving!”

“Yes, sir!” Owen shouted back. There wasn’t any other acceptable response.

Owen spared a quick glance back over at the nearest drill cadet, then looked down again quickly. None of them had recognized him yet. Why would they? It wasn’t like they expected to see a disgraced former classmate out there. Owen knew them, though. Worse, he was pretty sure it was only a matter of time until one of them did realize who he was. He dreaded the idea.

Everything he was supposed to be carrying out into the woods with him was finally packed inside his rucksack or strapped to his combat vest. Owen shook his head as he hefted the heavy load onto his shoulders. It wasn’t like anyone in the Armor unit was going to see combat on foot, anyway. They were called Armor for a reason: they’d be fighting inside the robot armor suits that Space Force had developed. All of this carrying crap and movement to contact drills with personal weapons felt a waste of time.

Owen knew the theory behind it. Train as infantry first, with basic gear and rifles. Then upgrade to the more complex warfare Armor was capable of engaging in. Crawl, walk, run, they called it. His platoon was in the crawl phase. That was a slower pace than he’d have preferred. Owen had always favored jumping straight in and figuring it out as he went along.

“Move out, recruits!” That was Drill Cadet Harper. He wasn’t the biggest asshole of the bunch, more of a follower. He’d be quick to pile on if given half a chance, but Owen didn’t read him as an instigator. “Long road to the bivouac site.”

Watching Harper heft his own pack made Owen grin, although he looked down so no one would see. Yeah, these field packs were a bit heavier than the ones at the Academy, weren’t they? Harper would get used to it just fine in a few days. But this first long march was going to be a killer for all the drill cadets.

Owen turned his feet toward the road and took a place in the middle of the line, where he’d be less likely to be noticed. Training would be over soon. Better to just get through it so he could kick Earth’s dust off his feet for good. The sooner he could leave his past behind him, the better. Keeping his head down seemed the surest route to success.

The hike took the rest of the afternoon, taking the platoon off to another corner of the base Owen hadn’t seen before. It was almost dark before they finally stopped. By that time the rain had already been pounding the ground for several hours. He was sore, wet, and ready to get some rest. The next day would come early, and they’d all be asked to do even more.

They broke up into squads and set up camp. Roberts was doing a good job keeping the team in order. He checked in on Owen, briefly, but with the sort of you-already-know-what-you’re-doing attitude that Owen appreciated. Not everyone treated him well. They all knew his past, thanks to Captain Pahwel. But Roberts was turning into an exception.

Owen pulled out stakes and a tarp to make a small tent for himself. It wasn’t much of a shelter, but it would keep the rain off and trap a little body heat. Once he was set up, he nestled down inside the tent and pulled ration packets from his rucksack. It had gotten so Owen barely noticed how bad the food was. He was too hungry to complain.

Roberts went around letting everyone know their spot in the guard roster. There wasn’t much to guard against out there except for the drill instructors themselves, who might pop in with a drill at any time. Owen didn’t think that would happen that night. Just looking at the cadre told him they were as tired and wet as he was. They moved with the resolute steadiness of men who’d done things that sucked more, but we’re still feeling the suck. One could never tell for sure, but he thought they’d be more focused on getting some rest than running surprise drills.

Which was just as well. He was utterly spent. Finishing off his meal, Owen gave Roberts a nod. He nodded back. That was all the communication they needed. He knew Owen was squared away, and Owen knew Roberts would make sure whoever was supposed to wake him for his guard shift did so.

Owen slid inside his tent, unrolled his sleeping bag, and rolled up some spare clothing as a pillow. Despite the ongoing patter of rain against the plastic overhead, he was asleep almost as soon as he set his head down.

A light touch on Owen’s arm roused him to instant alertness. He’d been sleeping with one arm tangled in his rifle sling. One quick motion later and the weapon was cradled against his chest, aimed toward whatever had disturbed him. The gun was unloaded, but the action felt natural and right, anyway.

“Shh. It’s just me!” The soft words came from a shadowed silhouette crouched at the door of his lean-to. It took Owen a few moments to place the voice.

“Roberts?” Owen asked, pitching his voice low. “Is it my guard shift?”

It felt too early, but that wasn’t strange. Their short sleep periods were often more like naps. Enough to keep all the recruits functional, but never enough to feel fully rested.

“No. There’s trouble. Come with me,” Roberts said.

Well, shit. So much for a nice, quiet night. Owen rolled to his feet and slid out of the tent. Roberts wouldn’t have woke him if it wasn’t serious. That still didn’t explain why he’d come to Owen about it instead of grabbing a drill instructor, but he was curious.

He’d slept with his boots on. Owen was pretty sure the whole platoon had taken up that practice. Since they never knew when someone would wake them all up, it was a smart move. He glanced over at the pile of gear in his tent, then decided he probably wouldn’t need it. The rifle went with him, though. They were under orders to carry the weapons everywhere. No recruit wanted to be the asshole caught leaving their weapon unguarded.

The rain had stopped while he slept. It was still cool, but not uncomfortable. The croaking of tree frogs from the woods nearby was the only sound Owen heard at first as he followed Roberts along the row of tents. He was still left wondering what the hell was so important he had to wake someone up for it but didn’t warrant a drill instructor, but he hadn’t had time to ask.

Then Owen heard voices from up ahead.

The site they’d camped at had a hard shelter nearby. It had a concrete floor and a regular roof, but all four sides of the rectangle were open to the air. No walls. Inside were a bunch of tables and benches, all bolted to the floor. The space was in theory supposed to be used for classes or eating chow when inclement weather hit. This run, the drill cadets laid claim to the shelter right away. None of the recruits bothered trying to enter.

A single light shone from the ceiling in the middle of the building. Even from this distance, Owen could hear voices and saw a few people milling around. Was it the drill cadets? What were they doing up at this hour?

Roberts crouched down and beckoned Owen to do the same. Once they were both out of view, he finally had a chance to ask the question that had been burning away in him ever since Roberts woke him. “Mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

“It’s Thompson. They’ve got him,” Roberts whispered back.

Great, he should have figured whatever was going on involved the platoon screwball. What had he done this time? “Who has him?”

“The drill cadets,” Roberts answered.

Fourteen

Owen waited for Roberts to elaborate, but that statement had already sent a chill down his spine. He knew the cadets were trouble. He just wasn’t sure how much of a problem they were going to be. Owen nodded for Roberts to go on.

“He and I were on guard duty together. Opposite ends of the camp,” Roberts said. “I put him on the same shift as me so I could keep an eye on him. Make sure he didn’t fuck things up.”

That was a good, even generous thing to do. Which is why Roberts was a good squad leader, and why Owen was glad he had the thankless job. Better Roberts than him. “I take it things didn’t work out that way?”

Roberts shook his head. “No. I was checking on him every ten minutes, but I guess one patch was just too long for him. He fell asleep. They found him before I did.”

Owen glanced back at the shelter. That explained what was happening pretty well. Thompson was in the wrong, and there wasn’t much any of us could do for him. The cadets would PT him until he was even more exhausted, but they’d get bored eventually. Maybe a little midnight PT and the loss of some sleep would shake sense into the man. Owen doubted it, but anything was possible.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Owen asked, feeling cross at being woken for something so irrelevant.

“We need to get him out of there,” Roberts insisted.

“Why? What are they doing?” Owen asked. His eyes tracked back to the shelter. He could see movement, but couldn’t make out what they were up to. The voices he heard sounded stern, but there were no agonized screams, so whatever they were doing couldn’t be too bad. Could it?

“It’s bad,” Roberts said. His voice was flat. Owen glanced over at him in time to catch the haunted look in his eyes. He wasn’t a man to spook easily. “I didn’t want to wake the DIs. What would they say? I figured maybe you could talk to the cadets? Since you were…you know.”

There it was. The real reason he’d come to Owen rather than someone else. He’d been one of them, so maybe Roberts figured maybe Owen could get through to them in a way he couldn’t. The trouble was, his past at the Academy wasn’t a bonus when it came to these cadets. Once they knew who he was, it would be easy for them to come up with endless reasons to torment him. In their eyes, Owen was a failure, even a disgrace. He couldn’t even say they were entirely wrong.

None of the cadets had recognized him yet. If they did, it might be the end of his second chance. Owen wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep his temper in check if they started ripping into him like he was sure they would. Hell, he could already feel his anger stirring up over Thompson. The poor guy was a lunkhead, but there wasn’t a bad bone in his body. He didn’t deserve what they were dishing out.

“Show me,” Owen said.

Roberts nodded and started off again. He went off at an angle, keeping first a row of tents and then a copse of trees between him and the shelter, but drifting ever closer. Owen tried to place himself. Where were the drill instructors camped? If he needed to go get them, he was pretty sure they were just over the crest of the hill. Far enough away that they could do their own thing overnight and not have recruit eyes prying at their business and close enough that they could get back to the platoon quickly in the case of any real problems. Did this count as a real problem?

The voices from the shelter were becoming more clear as they drew closer. Owen could easily pick out Cadets Merrick and Harper. Both of them were speaking loud enough that he could even make out a few words. That hulking form off on the side had to be Cadet Adams. He would be the ringleader of this crew. He looked the type to enjoy casual cruelty.

Where was Thompson, though? Owen didn’t hear his voice. He had to be in there somewhere, right? Roberts kept leading the way closer. They slipped between some trees and stopped short just outside the range of the light. Still cloaked in shadow, they were nevertheless near enough that Owen could better see what was going on. Roberts was right. It wasn’t good.

Thompson wasn’t visible at first because he was seated. More to the point, he was tied to a chair, his arms and legs strapped down with rope. He had a gag in his mouth and was mumbling something incoherent. Tears streaked his face, streaming from his eyes. He had a bruise on his left cheek but otherwise seemed more or less unharmed.

Owen felt the anger that had been kindling before rising up into a full-fledged fury. This went way beyond anything he could consider acceptable. Trainees got the crap kicked out of them by physical training and other similar activities. That was expected. But the cadre of drill instructors and drill cadets were supposed to keep their trainees safe. That was their job, their mission, their role. To train and improve, but also to monitor safety. He’d never even heard of a trainee being tied to a chair before.

“Still won’t say you’re sorry, Thompson?” Merrick said. He leaned the chair back, tipping it almost far enough that it fell over. He made motions like he would drop it a few times, each eliciting a frightened squeak from Thompson, but he never actually let go of the chair.

“Guess he doesn’t think he needs to talk,” Adams said with a low growl. He stalked closer, hauling something along with him. “Luckily, we have training in making people talk, don’t we, boys? And we’ve got all night.”

Adams tossed a pillowcase over Thompson’s head. The recruit thrashed against his bonds, but he wasn’t going anywhere. They’d done too good a job tying him down. Adams let him struggle a few moments and then lifted a fist. With careful aim, he fired off a left uppercut into Thompson’s abdomen, just under the ribs.

This wasn’t discipline. This was torture.

Owen felt the fury build inside him like an old friend returning. He even smiled, thinking about landing his fists on Adams’ face. The cadet was bigger than him, but Owen was confident he could take him down. He half-rose to rush in and do just that.

Then he remembered what James had said. Something about being mindful of that anger. That it might feel like a friend, but it had gotten him into trouble more than once already. That thought reminded Owen what was on the line if he was caught fighting again. He froze in place, then sank slowly back to the ground.

What had he been thinking? If he rushed in there and beat Adams up, he might get a little short-term satisfaction, but he’d lose his place in the Armor training. That was way too high a price to pay. Owen started shaking, realizing how close he’d come to throwing everything he wanted away for the sake of a moment’s release from holding back his rage.

He had to get the DIs right away. They’d put a stop to this in half a heartbeat. Those cadets would never see graduation, either. They’d end up out on their asses, same as Owen had. The thought gave him some satisfaction.

“Ready for another?” Adams asked. He pulled back his arm to strike again, but Harper laid a hand on it to block him.

Owen raised his eyebrows. That had taken balls he didn’t know Harper had.

“Hey, man. I think he’s had enough. This was all a game before, but it’s getting real here,” Harper said.

“You want to take his place in the chair?” Adams growled.

Harper shook his head, backing away. “No.”

“Then mind your own business. If you can’t stomach what being an officer requires, go find someplace else to hang out. I don’t want to see you,” Adams said.

Harper didn’t budge. He couldn’t stop Adams, but he wasn’t leaving the scene, either. So much for Harper’s sudden attack of conscience. If he’d really cared, he would have gone for help. Owen shifted his weight, getting ready to sneak back into the shadows when he realized he couldn’t up and leave Thompson alone. It would take time for him to get to where the DIs were camped, time to wake them up and get them down to the shelter. Time that Adams could use to do whatever he wanted to his captive.

Owen realized with a start that was why Harper was standing there. The grim look on the cadet’s face told him that his guess was correct. He stayed to make sure Adams didn’t actually kill the guy.

With Harper making sure things didn’t get too bad, Owen figured he could probably slip away and be back with the drill instructors in time to help Thompson. But that wouldn’t help Harper. He was standing there with the other two cadets. He’d be expelled from the Academy right along with them if he was caught. All Owen had to do was wake up his cadre, and he’d demolish the careers of all three of them.

Except he wasn’t so sure all three deserved to lose their careers over this, not anymore. Harper wasn’t participating in the abuse. He was there to stop it, near as Owen could tell. Or at least keep it from getting too bad.

No, he didn’t deserve to be tarred and feathered with the other two. But he’d be expelled with the rest.

There had to be a way to stop what was going on without putting Harper in harm’s way. But how? Owen glanced over at Roberts, but he wasn’t going to be much help. The other recruit was watching Owen expectantly like he thought somehow he’d resolve this whole mess. Owen looked down, not wanting to meet his eyes. He was no hero, and he didn’t know where Roberts had gotten the idea he might have it in him to be one. After all, he’d been expelled for beating someone up. Was he really that different from Adams?

The question bothered Owen more than he wanted to admit.

With a flash of inspiration, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to solve this alone. Sure, he could wade in with his fists and deal with Adams hand to hand. But that way had caused him too much trouble already. No, he wasn’t some sort of action hero who could ride in and dispense justice, vigilante-style. Owen needed help.

“I’m going to go put a stop to this,” Owen told Roberts.

“By yourself?” He sounded incredulous, and Owen couldn’t blame him.

“Not entirely,” Owen replied. “Here’s what I need you to do…”

Fifteen

The two recruits split up, each of them vanishing into the night to run their separate errands. Owen moved with as much speed as he dared. Sure, Harper might keep the abuse to a minimum for a while, but Thompson needed help as quickly as possible.

He was still torn with indecision. Was this the right call? If he’d just waded in swinging, things would have reached a resolution faster. Instead, he’d left Thompson to the tender mercies of the drill cadets.

Owen came to the first tent in his row. He went inside the doorway and tapped the recruit on the leg. The sleeping man woke quickly. Owen held a finger to his lips and hissed, “Shhh. Come.”

He wasn’t sure if the other recruits would follow him or not, but they did. Each of them rose, grabbed their weapon, and came out into the night without question. Owen blinked as he saw the growing row of people trailing behind him. They were all coming.

“What’s going on?” Kowal asked. She’d slipped in close to Owen’s side so she could talk without raising her voice.

“Trouble with the drill cadets. Come on,” Owen whispered back.

She nodded and beckoned the rest of the recruits forward. They linked up with the squad Roberts had woke near the same spot they’d used to observe the cadets before. Owen turned back and looked at the other recruits, questions in all their eyes. Time to answer that.

“Thompson is in trouble. The drill cadets have him tied to a chair, and they’re beating him,” Owen said. Keep it simple. “Adams is the real problem. Harper is in there trying to keep Thompson safe, but Adams is going to try to get us to back down.”

“Which we won’t do,” Kowal said, her voice making it not a question at all.

Owen flashed her a smile. “Damned right. Let’s go.”

Stepping out of the safety of the hiding place was a relief. At last, Owen felt like he was taking real action. None of the drill cadets noticed him at first. All their attention was on Adams and Thompson. Harper stood next to the pair, telling Adams in a wheedling voice that their captive had had enough, to let him up.

But Adams was flat out ignoring his fellow cadet. He placed a palm on Harper’s chest and shoved him away. Then someone behind Owen coughed. Adams whirled and saw him approaching the shelter.

“Little punk. You should have stayed in your rack, recruit,” Adams said. He hadn’t seen the others behind Owen, yet. But he would in a minute.

“No, you looked like you could use a dancing partner,” Owen replied.

He darted in, faster than a guy his size should be. Owen took the first blow on his guard. The second landed on his elbow, sending sparks of pain up and down his arm. He ignored it as best he could. With his good arm, Owen slipped in a shot of my own, landing near his sternum with enough force that the air whooshed out of his lungs.

Adams staggered back from the blow. His eyes got wide as he saw the other recruits stepping out of the shadows, marching up behind Owen into the light. Owen had a moment to spare a glance for Thompson. Harper knelt beside him. It looked like the cadet was getting him untied. That made him feel better about his decision. It looked like maybe Harper was someone whose career really was worth saving.

“You think I’m afraid of a bunch of stupid recruits?” Adams said. But Owen could hear the fear in his voice.

“Yes, I think you are,” Owen said.

Adams came in with a front kick. Owen fired off a kick of his own, faster, which connected with Adams’ leg before he could fully extend the attack. The impact shifted his momentum wildly, and he struggled to maintain his balance. Again, the big cadet staggered back

He seemed to have grown more wary. “Who are you? Where did you learn to fight like that?”

Owen pursed his lips together. Anything he gave him right now would only lead Adams to figure out his name, and he didn’t need that information. But it was pointless. Owen saw the moment recognition dawned in Adams’ eyes.

“I’ve figured it out,” Adams said, chuckling. “I know where I’ve seen your face.”

“You’re McInness. You are, aren’t you?” Adams asked. When I didn’t reply, he went on. “Merrick, you remember this guy? Kicked out of the Academy. And here he is. Assigned to a platoon under us.”

“That’s my name,” Owen said. He prepared himself in case Adams attacked again. Behind him, the recruits fanned out.

“You maggots know who it is you’re following there? You might want to consider whose side you want to be on. If you knew what this asshole has done…” Adams said.

“We do know,” Roberts replied, stepping up alongside Owen.

“We also know an even bigger asshole when we see one,” Kowal added, joining Roberts. The other recruits grunted their assent.

Adams backed off. “OK, enough of this. Calm down, and you can have your guy back. It was just a little fun.”

“How much fun was Thompson having?” Owen spat out, advancing another step. His fury was rising again. He wanted to fight, to wipe the floor with this guy. Teach him to never prey on anyone ever again. It would feel so good…

But it would be a mistake. With a massive effort of will, Owen reined in his anger. He stared Adams dead in the eye. “This can end one of two ways. You can go back to your beds, and never again so much as cast an angry glare at anyone from our platoon, or…” He let my voice trail off.

“Or what?” Of course, Adams had to ask.

“Or we all beat the living shit out of you, and you wake up in the base hospital sometime next week,” Roberts replied.

That would do. Owen might have put it a little more poetically, but it would do. “Your call.”

Adams glared at them all, but he backed away. He beckoned to Merrick, who went to his side. Then he turned to Harper. “You’d better not sleep tonight, shithead. I won’t forget.”

Without another word, Adams and Merrick fled the light of the shelter into the night, toward their tents.

“You can camp with us,” Owen told Harper. Then he realized he should probably have asked Roberts about it first. Owen glanced his way.

Roberts rolled his eyes but nodded. “Of course you can. I’ll send Alpha Team with you to get your gear, then we’ll bed you down with the platoon. Double shifts on the guard duty tonight, I think.”

There were a few groans, but not many. No one thought it sounded like a bad idea.

As Owen stepped from the shelter to make his way back to his sleeping bag, he heard a faint buzzing sound. He saw the flash of something small shining briefly in the shelter light as it flitted past through the air. Then it was gone, buzzing off into the night.

But Owen knew what he’d seen. That was a micro-drone, a remotely piloted flying robot that would have fit his palm. Someone had been watching everything go down. Was it the drill instructors? If it was, why hadn’t they intervened? Whoever it was, what did they intend to do with the information?

He’d been kicked out of the Academy for fighting. Maybe he’d thought there was a good reason at the time, but it wasn’t worth the cost. He’d lost everything that day and was only just starting to scrape together a life again. Owen couldn’t bear the thought of losing this chance, too.

But damned if he regretted stepping in to help Thompson. It felt like the right thing to do. He only hoped the powers-that-be agreed with him.

Owen’s sleep for the remainder of the night was anything but restful.

Sixteen

The next day dawned too damned early. Between the action the night before and the extra guard duty, Owen was already wiped out and the sun was only just coming up. But it had been worth it. Everyone pitched in on the extra shifts. Nobody complained. The whole platoon was working together to make sure nothing like that night happened again.

Maybe the drill cadets decided discretion was the better part of valor, or perhaps they’d seen the extra guards and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to come after them again. They left the platoon alone for the rest of the night.

Owen rolled up his bedding and took down the shelter, carefully bagging everything back up into his rucksack. There would be more marching and then training ahead. Tired as he was, Owen couldn’t help but look forward to the day. This was a hard life, sometimes a shitty life, but it was the life he’d chosen.

Besides, having the entire platoon show they had his back the night before warmed Owen’s heart. Maybe there was something to all that stuff about working together with others. He’d been a loner ever since that hellish day in Miami. He’d pushed everyone away, tossed aside all offers of help. If he didn’t rely on anyone else, then he wouldn’t be hurt if they suddenly weren’t there anymore. But maybe he’d been wrong. Being alone might not be enough after all.

Owen started over toward the road to take his place in line, but Sergeant Graham called out to him. He was standing alone, about fifty feet off to one side of the road. Near the shelter. That made Owen wonder just what he wanted. Had the drone the night before been his? There was no way to know for sure, but you didn’t keep a drill instructor waiting, not if you knew what was good for you. Owen hit a double-time over to him.

“Yes, sir?” Owen asked.

“Anything you want to tell me, recruit?” Graham asked.

Owen pursed his lips, wondering what he already knew and what the right answer might be. Probably saying nothing was safest. “No, sir.”

“Nothing at all? Looks like something happened over here last night. Must have been quite the party,” Graham said.

Owen blinked toward the shelter, using his peripheral vision, and tried not to wince. The drill cadets hadn’t cleaned things up after the recruits left. Bits of rope and a couple of overturned chairs shouted that something had happened there louder than words.

“No, sir,” Owen repeated.

He cocked a little half-smile at Owen, pausing to look deep into his eyes. Owen tried to tell himself the DI was just trying to make him sweat, but it was working anyway. Then Graham took a swift step away and pulled something out of his pocket. Owen knew what it was instantly: the drone.

Well, shit.

“Seems like you ought to know something about all this, based on the footage I saw,” Graham said. Then he held up a hand before Owen could open his mouth. “But maybe we ought to consider this little matter already settled. I’ve already shipped Cadet Adams and Cadet Merrick back to the Academy with a negative rating.”

“Did you say why?” Owen blurted out before he could stop himself. Graham frowned in response, but Owen managed to keep his eyes locked straight ahead. If he sent that video, it would damn Harper along with the others. He didn’t deserve that. “Sir.”

Graham continued to look down his nose toward Owen like he was a dog that had decided to suddenly start speaking, so he slammed his mouth shut again. Graham shook his head. “No. I don’t need to. Their scores sucked to begin with, or they’d never have had this duty. My negative rating, plus sending them back only days after they got here? They’re sunk. If they’re lucky, they might still graduate and be placed into some harmless administrative posting, but nobody is going to let them lead people into combat.”

Owen heaved a quiet sigh of relief. If he wasn’t saying why, then he wasn’t sending the video. Harper was safe. Owen wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, since Harper should have stepped in to actually stop what Adams was doing. He should have stood up to him from the start. He hadn’t, which made Owen question just how good an officer he was going to wind up being.

But then again, wasn’t that why they were all doing this training? To learn, to grow, to get better? Owen screwed up and got a second chance. He figured Harper deserved that shot, too.

Graham dropped the drone to the ground and stomped on it, surprising Owen. “Damn, looks like we lost another of those things to a training accident. Happens all the time, though. No worries.”

Owen heaved a silent sigh of relief. His biggest fear was that Graham would see the events of the night before as an excuse to eject him from the training program. This really was his last shot. If he screwed this one up, Even General Hereford would be done with him. He needed this.

“Thank you, sir. I was worried I’d screwed things up,” Owen said.

“Screwed it up?” Graham’s face crinkled up, and I heard a rare sound from him: laughter. “Kid, you’ve got balls of steel, going in there. You did it for the right reasons, too. You stood up for your buddy. Your platoon-mate.”

That knot of tension started slowly unwinding in Owen’s gut.

“I want soldiers who will have each other’s back, damn it. On the battlefield, in a bar, wherever,” Graham said. He looked Owen up and down, then nodded. “You’ll do. Dismissed.”

Owen turned to leave, fighting to keep the smile from his face. Relief warred with pride. When was the last time he’d heard Graham praise anyone? He couldn’t recall a time.

Before he’d gone two steps, Graham called out to Owen one last time. “Oh, recruit?”

Owen froze, then turned back.

“You showed hella leadership out there, too. Not just any man can get all his buddies to show up and put themselves at risk for him,” Graham said. “There are more kinds of leaders than just officers. Remember that once you’re out there.”

He gestured toward the sky. Then he nodded for Owen to be on his way. Owen turned back toward the road, toward his platoon. His buddies? After last night, sure. Even Thompson, damn it, who he was going to get through this training cycle even if it killed both of them.

And then? The stars. Owen couldn’t help but smile at that. Before he was going to be ready for that, though, he needed to get that anger under control. Sure, he’d done OK against the drill cadets. He hadn’t lost it and rushed in swinging. Owen was proud of how much control he’d managed to show.

But it had been hard, way harder than it should have been. Owen thought back to before Miami. He never used to pick fights with people. It wasn’t his style. He’d finish fights, but not start them. This wasn’t him, at least not the person he wanted to be. But if the events of the night before had taught Owen anything, it was that sometimes he needed help.

This time, he knew where to go to find some.

Seventeen

The field expedition had ended with an exciting bang: the trainees were allowed to pilot actual Armor for the first time! The simulation was good, but it wasn’t the same thing, not by a mile. Owen still felt the rush even after they were marched back to the barracks area at the end of the day. Yes, this he could see himself doing.

With the suit around him, he felt strong, impregnable, invincible even. Oh, he knew that wasn’t really the case. Armor could be shattered, the people inside crushed. But that knowledge didn’t diminish the sensation of raw power piloting one of the suits gave him.

Even the thought of having another session with James couldn’t dim the day. Actually, Owen was surprised that he felt comfortable about the idea of coming to see the therapist. Maybe for the first time, he was interested in talking with him. His experiences with the drill cadets had shown him that his anger remained a genuine threat to his future. If he couldn’t find a way to control it, then it would control him instead.

That wouldn’t do. He’d been able to tell when he was growing furious, which let him do something about it in the moment. But he wanted more than that. Owen had a growing sense that the way his anger sometimes ruled him wasn’t good for him or anyone else around him. He didn’t know how to resolve that. But James might.

“Hi!” Owen said as soon as he reached the open office door. He didn’t bother knocking this time, just walked in and plopped down on his usual chair.

“Hi back,” James said. “Good mood today?”

“Yup. They had us driving the real thing,” Owen replied.

“Quite the rush, hmm?” James said, smiling.

Owen cocked his head to one side. “Were you an Armor pilot, sir?”

“Me? No. But I’ve flown other things. I wasn’t always a — how did you put it? — ‘head-shrinker,’ you know,” James said.

Owen frowned, feeling a bit embarrassed by his earlier words. James had never done anything to hurt him. Quite the opposite, in fact. He could have shown a little more respect. “I’m sorry for that.”

James seemed surprised but hid it quickly. “So, how was the exercise?”

“Complicated,” Owen said. He filled James in on the events with the drill cadets and watched as the man’s face clouded over. He hurried to finish. “But DI Graham said he was dealing with it. The cadets involved won’t be hurting anyone else.”

“He did? Good. If Graham said he’s fixing things, then I’ll consider them fixed,” James said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “But I’ll tell you, I wasn’t expecting to have you deal with such a big challenge so soon after our talk. You did well, keeping your cool like that.”

“Thanks. I could feel when I was getting angry, this time. I reined it in,” Owen said. “But is there something I can do to stop it? I mean, anger is sometimes OK, right? But I felt like I wanted to rage out and go in swinging. Which would have ended badly.”

James sat there thoughtfully and drummed his fingers on the table. For a moment Owen thought he’d asked a bad question. When the man opened his mouth to speak, it wasn’t what Owen thought he was going to hear.

“There is. But you may not like it. I’m not sure you’re ready for it yet,” James said.

“Try me. I can handle it,” Owen said. He was still pumped up from the drills earlier and felt like he could accomplish anything he wanted.

“OK. I want you to think back to Miami. To the attack,” James said.

Owen’s mind recoiled from the idea. He didn’t want to think about that day. In fact, he felt himself growing angry at the request. How dare he bring that up! Then he remembered that James had just said it would be hard, and he’d told the man he was ready. Either he was, or he wasn’t.

“OK,” Owen said. That one word was harder than anything he’d done in training.

The memories felt jumbled together at first. Fear, panic even, as they were fleeing the attack. Then he remembered how he’d felt as his father died, and then his mother. No, it wasn’t a memory. He was right there again, on the street. He felt every moment of that ragged event as if it were happening for the first time. The raw emotions tore through him. Owen wanted to scream, to cry out, to lash out at something or someone. The way he’d done that day by picking up his father’s weapon...

“Owen! Come back,” James said.

Owen opened his eyes. James’ face was right in front of his, the man’s hands on his shoulders, shaking him gently. Owen gasped, sucking in a long breath. He wasn’t on the street. This was the office, at the Space Force base. He wasn’t in danger. But it had all felt so real!

“Slow your breathing. Deep breath in,” James said. “Now let it out slowly. Another breath in, then slowly ease it out.”

It took a few more breaths before Owen’s pulse returned to anything close to normal. When it did, James backed away from him and sat down again.

“What the hell was that?” Owen asked. “It was like I was back there again! What did you do?”

James shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. That memory is still right there on the surface for you. It’s stuck, like it can’t jar loose so that the rest of your brain can process it properly. This is trauma, Owen. Bad trauma. Not shocking, given the nature of the experience.”

Trauma? Owen wasn’t sure he could accept that. “You’re saying I’m broken?”

“No! Not at all. But you were hurt,” James said. “Think about trauma as a wound, OK? Usually, the wound just heals with time. We get past the traumatic event and move on. But sometimes we get stuck, and the healing never happens. Like a wound that gets infected, it never really heals. It just goes on hurting.”

That sounded remarkably right to Owen, given what he’d just experienced. “But is there a way to get rid of the infection? To unstick things?”

James took a deep breath of his own and let it out slowly. “There are, yes. We have a few tools we might use to help. But given the nature of the reaction you just had, I’m not sure that sort of deep work would be helpful to you yet. This sort of thing takes time, Owen.”

More time. He’d already had enough go by. This wasn’t like a cancer in his brain that they could surgically remove. In some ways it felt worse, like there was a monster lurking inside him, ready to burst free any time. “Can we try?”

“All right, we can try something,” James said. “That memory you just felt, how bad was it on a scale from zero to ten?”

“Ten,” Owen replied, not even having to think about it. “Easily ten.”

James nodded. “I figured as much. All right, I want you to follow my finger with your eyes. Just your eyes, not your head.”

He started moving his finger back and forth in front of Owen’s face. At first, it was hard to remember not to move his head around to track the finger, but then Owen got the hang of it.

Once he was tracking well, James nodded. “Good. Now, this is where it gets hard. I want you to go back into that memory of your parents’ death. This time, keep your eyes open as you think of it, and track my finger.”

Owen started tracking the moving finger again as it drifted back and forth like a pendulum. He sank back into the memory as he did. This time, part of his brain felt focused on the finger, so it was like splitting his concentration in half. The intensity was still strong, but bearable. They kept that up for a short while, then the finger stopped moving.

“All right, what were you thinking and feeling?” James asked.

“Grief. Pain for my lost parents,” Owen replied.

“Good. Go with that,” James said. Then the finger began moving again, and Owen refocused on the dual job of tracking the finger and remembering his pain.

They stopped and started another half dozen times. Maybe more than that; it was hard for Owen to keep track, after a while. Each time James stopped moving his finger he asked Owen what his most recent thoughts had been., and each time he used that as the next prompt to explore the memories from another angle. It was excruciating and exhausting work.

The finger stopped again. “What were you just feeling?” James asked.

“Rage,” Owen said, astonished at how angry he felt at the question. “Rage, fury, I wanted to hurt someone like I’d been hurt.”

“Good, go with that thought,” James said. The finger started moving again.

Then at last, he stopped. James put his hand down and looked at the clock. Owen followed his gaze and was astonished to see that they’d gone over their time limit by half an hour. How had so much time passed without him noticing?

“Good work today, Owen,” James said. “Now, without tracking my finger, think back to Miami. How intense does the emotion feel now? How disruptive is it for you to think about it?”

Owen steeled himself, ready for the same experience he’d had the first time. But the emotion was nowhere near as strong. It still wasn’t pleasant to think about it. He still felt some of the anger and pain. But it wasn’t as bad this time.

“Um. Maybe a six?” Owen said. He held both palms up, questioning. “How? What did you just do?”

“It’s called eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR,” James said. “It’s often a good treatment for post-trauma healing. But in your case, I wasn’t sure you were ready. It seems you were right, and you are.”

“Is that it, then? Is the stuck memory gone?” Owen asked. It didn’t feel gone, just less, somehow.

James shook his head. “No, not yet. The goal is to get the distress down to zero. Or as close as we can to zero. That will take time. But you’ve done a good job with this today. It’s an excellent start. See you next time?”

Owen rose. “Definitely. And — thanks, James. I’m sorry I was such an asshole to you at first.”

“You had plenty of reasons to treat me like you did,” James replied. “It wasn’t going to do any good for me to push you before you were ready. Now you are, and I’m glad to see it.”

Owen thanked him again and left the office, feeling somehow lighter than he had been when he entered, like he’d cast off at least a portion of a burden he’d been hauling around with him.

Eighteen

Hereford’s jet couldn’t land fast enough for his taste. Time mattered, and that damned Pahwel was a stick in the mud. He needed functional Armor units now, not a week or two away. There wasn’t time to waste on screwing around. Ready or not, training was over. It was time for the real world.

Pahwel met him on the pavement. “Sir. Good to see you.”

“I got your reply,” Hereford said. “It’s unacceptable.”

Pahwel frowned. “Sir, I’m sorry. They just aren’t ready yet. All of them need at least another week of training to get up to speed. You’re sending them into a combat situation without proper preparation. It’s asking for trouble.”

“You know damned well I wouldn’t be doing it if there were any other way,” Hereford snapped.

Which was true. He didn’t want to waste the lives of men and women under his command. But circumstances had forced his hand. The mayday had arrived by quantum communication on the Constitution just an hour before. She’d left orbit on his orders almost immediately, but even at top speed it would take time for the ship to respond. What he needed was a quick reaction force on the scene right away.

He had a ship handy. One of the captured Bug cruisers was fully repaired and ready to go, complete with the wormhole drive the Constitution lacked. The Lynx — how the humans had renamed the ship — was more of a large shuttle than an actual starship. But it was fast and could carry a squad of Armor just about anywhere almost instantly.

The damned thing was that the Naga had almost made it to Earth. They’d been attacked by Bugs while in hyperspace on their way for a diplomatic meeting. The Bugs broke into their ship, boarding and slaughtering Naga, from the sounds of the communication.

The Naga were tough. Even with the attack, they had almost made it to Earth. But the Bugs finally captured their engine room and dropped the ship out of hyperspace while it was still in the outer reaches of Sol’s Kuiper Belt.

Too far for the Constitution to reach quickly, but near enough that if the Bugs took over the Naga ship completely, they’d be able to figure out where they were quick enough. The one secret which had been humanity’s saving grace against the Bugs was that they’d managed to maintain secrecy around Earth’s location. If they didn’t know where the planet was, they couldn’t bomb it or blow it up.

But if they beat the last of the Naga defending their ship, the Bugs would have that information. Earth would be a logical next target for their fleet, and humanity didn’t have enough defenses to stand even a chance of beating them off.

No, the only way was to make sure the Bugs never took that ship, even if it meant blowing it to bits before they could.

“I do know, sir,” Pahwel said. “I also know how obstinate you are, which is why if you send them up, I’m going with them.”

“You? Why you?” Hereford asked. He frowned. Pahwel had the command and combat experience, but he was also a good teacher. If they lost him out there, it would be a blow to future training programs.

“Graham can handle things down here. I’ll take Casiano with me to fly the ship, and a squad of the recruits. Assuming we have a squad actually graduate intact, I’ll send that unit. Better to maintain squad unity if we can,” Pahwel said. “They’ve been training in teams. They’ll fight better that way.”

Hereford still didn’t like the idea of losing Pahwel, but he was right. Sending raw recruits into battle meant they needed expert leadership on the ground. Otherwise, they’d be chewed up for nothing. But that meant Pahwel needed to understand the desperate nature of this mission.

“This might be a one-way trip, Captain,” Hereford said. “Those Bugs have to be stopped, whether that means taking back the ship or blowing it up.”

“I figured as much, sir. Won’t be the first time I’ve been on a do-or-die agenda,” Pahwel replied.

“All right. Wait — what’s that about graduating?” Hereford asked.

“As soon as I got your message, I figured things would come to this,” Pahwel said. “I’ve got them in their final exams right now. Graham and Casiano are supervising. Sir, I have to say, I wish we had Colonel Foster and her people here instead.”

“As do I,” Hereford replied. But Charline had taken the entire complement of trained Armor pilots with her on her mission. They weren’t expected back for days, maybe a week or more. He could call them back, but again it became a matter of timing. They simply weren’t going to arrive in time to make any difference in the final outcome.

“All right, let’s go see this graduation,” Hereford said. “The Lynx is on her way here to pick you all up. Soon as she lands, you go.”

“Understood, sir. They’re already in their Armor units. It’ll just be a matter of walking into the Lynx and taking off,” Pahwel replied. “This exercise isn’t in the sims. It’s live Armor units, with simulated munitions and enemies.”

“Let’s take a look, then,” Hereford said.

Pahwel held up a large tablet. He tapped the screen to wake it, and it immediately displayed a birds-eye view of the battlefield. Four squads of Armor marched across an open field in a diamond formation. That looks good, at least so far. He saw names over the head of each Armor. McInness was on the far left flank. Would he be in the squad Hereford was sending on this potentially suicidal mission? Did he want him to be?

“It’s a movement to contact. Pretty basic, although I made a few changes,” Pahwel said. “And now they have contact.”

The battlefield lit up with new contacts, flagged in red. Bug attackers, a wave of them coming in from their platoon’s direction of travel. Hereford watched the recruits’ reactions as they saw the Bugs approach. Some of them were quicker to respond than others. The right flank was a little sluggish in particular. The computer-controlled Bugs noticed this as well and surged forward toward the weak side.

“That could cause them some problems,” Hereford said.

“Give them time. I’m pretty pleased with this batch of recruits, overall,” Pahwel said.

“All of them?” Hereford asked.

“Most of them,” Pahwel amended.

Hereford shook his head, a thin smile on his mouth. Maybe he and Pahwel were never going to see eye to eye when it came to McInness. He admitted that there was probably more than a little personal bias when it came to the attention he paid the boy, but that didn’t mean he was wrong about his potential. Even as he watched, Owen McInness and another member of his team were moving to support the right flank until the rear guard could move up into position. It was a well-timed maneuver expertly performed, and Hereford found himself nodding.

Maybe these raw recruits would have a chance out there after all. He hoped so. The idea of sending out half-trained cannon fodder didn’t sit well with him. If there’d been any other way..! But there wasn’t.

More dots appeared on the screen from the left flank. That they were icons instead of real images meant they were computer-controlled virtual characters. But unlike the Bug icons, they were painted green. Hereford wasn’t sure who they were. He tapped the tablet screen. “Who’s that?”

“Reinforcements for the good guys,” Pahwel said.

He sounded to Hereford like the cat who ate the canary, which couldn’t be right. “Friendly forces?”

“Yes, sir,” Pahwel said. “I have a troop of Naga moving to reinforce our people and help them hold the position.”

Hereford saw the trap then. Those virtual Naga troops would look like actual Naga on the recruits’ screens. As far as McInness would be able to see, they would be real Naga. They were moving to reinforce the same flank he was on, so he’d be close to them. If there were ever a time when he’d snap, this would be it.

“It’d be a shame if we had friendly fire casualties, general. But better to know now, don’t you think?” Pahwel asked.

Hereford nodded slowly. He didn’t like the method being used. But Pahwel wasn’t wrong. If McInness was going to have a reaction to Naga, better to see it now than out there in space.

Nineteen

Owen was sweating in his cockpit, trying to maneuver the big hulking steel chassis around him as quickly as possible. Just the day before, it felt so damned powerful to be cruising around in the thing! Now they were in a VR exercise, trying not to get ‘killed.’ It didn’t matter that the enemies were virtual and no one was going to actually die, not if the rumor mill was accurate.

Scuttlebutt said that something big was going down. Hereford was back on base, and the instructors were all pissed off about whatever it was. The stories ranged from the plausible —some sort of surprise inspection — to the outlandish, like the rumor saying this exercise was the last test before they were tossed out into combat.

That couldn’t be true, could it? Owen felt a combination of fear and excitement at the idea. Yeah, nobody wanted to get blown up. But getting out to space was his childhood goal. With the feelings around his parents’ death now a bit more manageable, he began wondering if he might be able to return to that sense of wonder, instead of a desire for vengeance.

“Hey, Mac! Head out of the clouds,” Kowal said.

Owen jerked his controls to the left. He’d almost bumped into her suit as she retreated from a pair of Bugs. He turned and joined his machine gun fire to hers. Their collective fire burned the enemy to bits.

“Sorry,” Owen replied.

“Don’t be sorry, be good. Head in the game,” Kowal said. Then she was moving again, heading forward to support Roberts.

She was impressive. One hell of a fighter, maybe the best on their team. Fast, steady, and brave, she was always scoring the best of the lot of them. Owen was impressed. He’d have been even more impressed if she wasn’t still busting their balls about working harder, but in a way that was good, too.

“Contact left,” Thompson said. “No eyes on, but it’s showing on my radar.”

Owen turned his Armor to face the incoming signals. He spotted them at once and froze in place.

They were Naga.

There must have been a dozen of them, bounding over the field toward him. Each one carried a rifle raised to shoot. In seconds they’d hit the exposed flank of the Armor unit and tear them to shreds.

The memory of the Naga he’d killed flashed through Owen’s mind again, rage pulsing like a furnace blast through him. “Naga on our flank, wheeling to engage.”

It would feel good to take some of them down. The Bugs were fine. It was the Naga he hated.

“Negative, McInness! Naga are green for this exercise,” Roberts said. “Mac! You hear me?”

The message reached Owen’s radio, but he wasn’t listening. He dropped targeting crosshairs on the nearest Naga and prepared to send a burst of lead into it. This would be like mowing the lawn.

Something slammed into him from the right, knocking his weapons out of alignment. His aim was screwed up. The burst of bullets slammed into the soil a few feet in front of him. Turning to face whatever this new threat was, Owen was stunned to see another Armor unit in front of him. It was Roberts.

A ping on a private channel came in. “Mac. What the absolute hell? You almost got a green on green there. Friendly fire would fail us on this mission,” Roberts said.

The words snapped Owen back. He flushed, embarrassed. “Shit. Sorry. I forgot they were green. I’m good.”

“Get it together,” Roberts said. “We need you out there.”

“I’m with you,” Owen said.

He strode forward, staying right at Roberts’ side as they marched. The Naga joined their line, and together they forced back the enemy. The Bugs tried to breach the line more than once, but every time withering fire blasted them back.

Roberts almost went down. Owen stepped gently behind him to prevent the fall, supporting his Armor’s weight with his own. Off to their right, Kowal and Thompson burned down their own share of the enemy.

Then it was over. There were no more red dots to eliminate. Owen shut down his guns, the whine as their rotating cylinder slowly came to a stop the only sound he could hear at first. But then came the cheering.

“We did it!” Kowal said.

“Take that, suckers!” Thompson replied.

Roberts broke into the channel. “Good work, all. Let’s check the other squads, see if they need assistance.”

Owen glanced over at the rest of their platoon. The line held against the Bugs, but where his team had support from VR Naga, the other squads had not. More than a few Armor units were on their ground, the VR system showing smoke rising from their ruined forms.

Was his squad the only one that had zero casualties? Owen checked the board. It was. They’d done it — not only beaten the mission but from the looks of it they had the best score, too. He glanced over at the virtual Naga a moment before they winked out. His stupidity had almost cost them that win. If he’d fired on the Naga that would have dumped them to the bottom of the list. Roberts stopped him just in time.

James was right. It was better, but he had a lot of work left to do. He popped open his canopy and spotted General Hereford and Captain Pahwel coming over.

“Well done, all of you,” Hereford said. “Especially First Squad.”

Pahwel looked like he’d eaten raw eggs mixed with his lemons this time, but he nodded. “First scored best, followed by second and third. Fourth, you have some work to do. Not only did you fail to react quickly enough, but you also lost half your units during the fight.”

“Sorry, sir.” That was Jefferson, the big black guy in charge of Fourth. “We’re working on it. Won’t happen again.”

Pahwel’s face softened. “I know it won’t. You’re frankly all doing well. This level of training should have been reserved for another week or more. However...”

He glanced over at General Hereford and coughed. The general stepped forward.

“We’ve had an emergency. A Naga ship was attacked by Bugs while trying to reach this system. They almost made it, but now they’re in deep shit. The Bugs have boarded and taken the engine room. If they win the bridge, too, the Bugs can take the ship anywhere they want. If they leave the Sol system, they’ll be able to tell the rest of the Bugs where Earth is.”

Owen swallowed hard. He’d seen vids of the battle over the Naga homeworld. A massive Bug fleet had battled against everything the Naga could throw at it, plus Earth’s finest ships. They’d defeated the Bugs, but only just. If that force came to Earth?

“I am sure you all understand why this must be prevented at all costs. A squad of you trainees will be dispatched aboard the Lynx to rendezvous with the Naga vessel and support her crew until the Constitution arrives with more reinforcements,” Hereford said. “And it looks like Second Squad had the best score. Any objections, Captain Pahwel?”

Pahwel stared directly at Owen, his face blank. The close call in the exercise hadn’t been missed, then. They’d seen it. But Hereford wanted to send him anyway? Why? Owen understood Pahwel’s reluctance. He’d almost screwed up once. How could the captain be sure he wouldn’t do it again?

But he wouldn’t. Owen promised himself that. He had this thing under control now. When he saw real Naga, live ones, he’d be ready for it.

Just keep saying that, he thought to himself, and maybe that will make it come true. Part of him wasn’t at all sure he could handle this mission. That frightened piece wanted him to beg off. Owen knew that if he raised his hand and asked to be taken off the team that Pahwel would do so gladly.

But he didn’t know if he could live with himself if he let his teammates go into battle while he stayed safe at home.

“No objections, sir,” Pahwel said, looking away from Owen at last. “We want the best for this.”

“Good. Lynx is landing right now,” Hereford said. “Armaments with live ammo are waiting on board. Move out.”

Twenty

There was a blast of light that felt like it was coming from behind his retinas as the Lynx burst back into real space on the other side of the wormhole. Owen had heard about wormhole drive travel. He knew something about how it worked. But it was one thing to read about it and entirely another to live it!

“Whoa,” Owen said. He felt dizzy and a little sick. Was every transition like that? He had nothing to compare the experience against.

“McInness, you up?” Captain Pahwel growled over the radio.

“Yes, sir,” Owen replied. He checked his status board. All green. His Armor was fully ready for combat. “I’m good to go.”

The rest of the squad sounded off their own readiness. Casiano replied last, but soon he too had made his way down from the cockpit and powered up his Armor.

All the recruits sounded nervous to Owen. Hell if he was going to admit it to anyone, but he felt tense himself. They had precisely two combat-experienced operators in the squad. The rest of the team were brand new to using their mechs. So much could go wrong on this op that it was scary to even contemplate it.

“All right. Casiano and I are on point. The rest of you, follow us out. Mind your lanes of fire. We don’t want no green on green here, you get me?” Pahwel said.

He was answered with a chorus of ‘yes, sir,’ which he responded to with a grunt. Then the rear hatch of the Lynx lowered, and Owen got his first look at where they were.

The ship had actually jumped inside the Naga battle-cruiser. That was a hell of a feat. How they’d calculated the jump so precisely, he had no idea. Nor did Owen want to contemplate what would have happened if they’d screwed it up. The Lynx was settling down to the deck of a massive hangar. Squadrons of Naga fighters formed a pair of lines along the deck. The Lynx settled down right between them.

Owen swallowed hard. He knew those fighters well. Memories of the assault on Miami came back unbidden, but they lacked some of the sting they once had. He silently thanked James for the help.

Casiano and Pahwel were moving. Then Nichols rolled down the ramp, followed by Thompson. After that, it was his turn. Owen activated the leg motors just as he’d been trained, letting the practice on Earth take over. He strolled down the ramp and pivoted his guns outward to track on a hallway to the left.

That was when he saw them. A cluster of Naga stood there. No, four stood while two more lay on the deck, wounded. Owen reacted without thinking. He twisted his Armor, bringing both main guns to bear on the Naga. “Contact!”

Owen moved his hand toward the fire control. He armed his weapons. One flick of a finger and he would pour hot death into these Naga. The idea felt so right that he could taste it. The only thing which stayed his hand was that the Naga weren’t moving. They didn’t raise their own weapons at him. Why not?

“McInness, stand the hell down!” Pahwel’s voice finally broke through the fog of anger clouding his hearing.

Owen shook his head, trying to clear it. Shit, these Naga weren’t enemy combatants. This was part of the crew they were coming to rescue. It was the Bugs they had to stop. He reached up and shut down his guns then began to pivot away from the Naga. “Sorry-”

Before he could finish either the pivot or the statement, his Armor shut down entirely.

There was nothing but darkness around him. Owen couldn’t see or hear anything at all except his own breath. What happened? Was there an attack? Some sort of weapon had shut down all his systems? He spent a panicked moment searching for the emergency release handle before he found it and pulled. The canopy popped open, lifting away from him.

Pahwel’s angry face stared back at him. The captain’s canopy was also open, and he looked ready to tear Owen a new one. “Damn it, McInness. I said to stand down. I told them it was a bad idea to bring you on this mission. Can’t be trusted for shit.”

“Sir, I’m sorry. I was standing down,” Owen said. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

“Damned right it won’t. I’ve activated the command override on your Armor,” Pahwel said. The lights in Owen’s cockpit came on again, but his controls were still dead. His Armor backed its way into the rear bay of the Lynx again.

“Sir?” Owen asked, confused.

“You’re grounded. And when we get back to Earth, I’m making sure you never wear a uniform again, at least not for anything better than ‘janitor.’ You’ve screwed up for the last time, McInness,” Pahwel said. “Stay with the Lynx. You’ll have three Naga with you as well, the wounded and one to tend to them.”

The lighting inside Owen’s Armor shut down again once he was inside the Lynx. His radio was active, but nothing else worked. “You’re leaving me alone with three Naga in a ship full of Bugs, with an inactive Armor?”

That was crazy. He had no way to defend himself! If the Bugs attacked, or the Naga tried anything, he’d be helpless. Owen fiddled with the controls, trying to get the Armor to come back to life, but nothing worked.

“Can’t trust you with an active one, clearly. Stay off coms unless you have an emergency. The real soldiers have work to do,” Pahwel said.

“Sir, are you sure we want to go out there without every fighter we have?” Casiano said.

Good old Mateo! Owen held back a smile. At least someone was supporting him.

Then Thompson added, “McInness is a bit of an ass, but he’s good, sir.”

“This isn’t a debate team,” Pahwel said. His voice was stone cold and brooked no argument. Owen’s hopes crashed. “I expect my orders to be followed.”

Both men replied with a rapid “Yes, sir.”

Then Pahwel turned and led the rest of the squad away from the Lynx. Three of the Naga went with them. The Lynx’s loading ramp slowly raised back up against the ship, cutting off his view of the rest of the team.

The other three Naga were already in the Lynx’s rear compartment alongside his Armor. Owen swallowed hard. Shut the canopy and live with the darkness, or risk dealing with several Naga? He reached for the canopy lid to shut it, then withdrew his hand. He’d leave it open, for now at least.

He eyed the Naga carefully. One of the wounded was sitting up, a claw pressed to his side. The other was unconscious. The third was tending to the unconscious one, injecting something into his neck.

They were everything his memory had told him. All three had reptilian scales covering them, at least the parts their body armor revealed. Their fingers were tipped with wicked claws, and each mouth was filled with razor-sharp teeth. That face and form had haunted his nightmares for most of a year. Somehow Owen knew he would find a way to confront the Naga again, but he’d never imagined it would be like this.

Fear tightened his belly. They were ruthless killers, the scourge of whole star systems. Why Earth was bothering to allow them to pretend some sort of alliance, Owen had no idea. They’d simply turn on humans again the first chance they got. The Bugs were an enemy, but the Naga were, too.

“How many more ships are coming?” asked the wounded Naga who was sitting up.

Owen was surprised to hear the words in English coming from its snout. The accent was terrible, each syllable ground out painfully, but he could understand it well enough. They had translation software which would turn the Naga tongue into English and vice verse, but this Naga could speak his language. When had it learned English? How?

“Just this one,” Owen replied, startled into answering.

The Naga shook his head. “Is not good. Should be more. Charline? Dan? Satori?”

Was he asking after Colonel Foster? Her first name was Charline. The last word, Owen knew. The starship Satori was famous. He figured everyone on Earth had heard of it by then. Owen shook his head. “No, the Satori is away on another mission. We’re what Earth had handy to send.”

The Naga closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, hissing out a slow breath. “Hope is enough.”

“It’s just a few Bugs, right?” Owen asked.

“Bugs, as you say. Is ‘Kkiktchikut’ in our tongue,” the Naga said. “Means ‘death,’ because they are death in bodies.”

Owen went cold. “How many are there on board your ship?”

“Too many,” the Naga replied.

Twenty-One

Owen listened to the radio chatter as his unit went on without him. Pahwel managed to link up with another group of Naga. Reinforced, they made their way toward the aft of the ship, where the engine rooms were. Owen went over his memories of Naga battlecruisers. He couldn’t recall every detail, and with his computer down he couldn’t look it up. But he knew there were two key places to control: the bridge and the engines. They were placed at opposite ends of the ship.

That made Naga vessels hard to capture, which was working in their favor. From what he heard over the radio, the Naga had held on to the bridge so far, but there was no communication from the engines. That was bad news. If the Bugs were in there, they could sabotage the ship, even blow it up. Pahwel brought his entire force down the main corridor which ran through the battlecruiser like a spine.

The wounded Naga he’d spoken to was standing again and had taken to pacing. The other conscious Naga said something to him, and he growled a harsh response. Probably he was being told to rest and replied with whatever the Naga version of ‘go to hell’ was. Owen grinned at the thought.

“How did you learn English?” Owen asked.

The Naga looked up at him. “From Dan. Was my prisoner once. Now is friend. He and I have fought alongside each other. I am Garul.”

“I’m Owen.”

“Is famous human warrior?” Garul asked.

Owen thought he must be starting to get a little of the Naga body language, because he was certain Garul was messing with him. “No, not really.”

The thought of himself as a warrior brought his mind back to the first time he’d had to use a weapon. The emotions around that brief firefight in Miami were still a swirl. Less intense than they’d once been, but still enough to throw him off balance. Owen took a breath and waited for the feelings to subside some.

“Must have courage to come out here, anyway,” Garul said. He stared at Owen. “Why your commander leave you behind?”

Owen blushed scarlet. “Because I aimed my weapons at you.”

Garul cocked his head sideways. “But you didn’t fire them. I am not upset by this.”

Owen thought about how close he’d come to shooting Garul and the other Naga. He felt ashamed of his actions. Pahwel was right; he had no place on this mission. He dropped his gaze away from Garul. If the Naga knew the truth, he wouldn’t trust him, either.

“I almost did, though. When I saw you, I wanted to shoot,” Owen admitted.

“But you didn’t,” Garul said. He stepped closer, seeming more interested by the moment. “I want to understand humans better. Why did you want to shoot? You were here to help us, yes?”

“Because you killed my parents!” Owen shouted.

“Me?” Garul asked.

Owen blinked. “No, not you personally. A Naga did.”

“Ah.” Garul blinked back at him. He looked deep into Owen’s eyes. “I think I see. You were there and could not save them.”

“Yes,” Owen replied, looking away. He reached up to press the button which would close his canopy. Better darkness than this complete baring of his soul to an utter stranger.

“How did you live?” Garul asked.

His words cut through Owen’s intentions like a knife. His hand dropped away from the control, and he stared back at the Naga. This time it wasn’t anger filling him, but instead a sense of resolve. If Garul wanted to get angry over what he said, so be it. “I killed the Naga who shot them.”

Garul seemed surprised but not angry. “You did, yourself?”

“Yes. I wounded him with my father’s weapon, then finished him with his own,” Owen said. The memories came pouring back again, but this time they felt less intense than before. He was able to ride them until they settled down again.

“Impressive for a hatchling without training,” Garul said.

“I have training!” Owen replied.

“You do now. Did you then?” Garul asked. When Owen didn’t answer, he went on. “I thought not. So, impressive.”

Owen was confused. He expected Garul to be angry at him for killing another Naga, but instead it sounded like he’d won some sort of weird respect. He knew the Naga had a warrior culture where fighting well was crucial to success, but the idea that extended beyond their own species hadn’t occurred to him.

“You’re not mad?” Owen asked.

“Why be mad? Was war. We were foes,” Garul said. “Now we are allies, which is better for all, I think. War is war, young one. Humans killed Naga. Naga killed humans. Now we fight side by side, so we all survive.”

At first, Owen wanted to protest what Garul was saying. The old anger flared up. His parents hadn’t been combatants. They’d been helpless civilians, gunned down. His vengeance for their death was justice. That was what he’d told himself ever since, anyway.

But then he thought back to the day. His father, holding the pistol in both hands while the Naga slowly rose from his crumpled cockpit. Evan McInness had fired the first shot, knocking the alien down. The Naga survived and returned fire. That wasn’t slaughter. Garul was right: it was war.

He felt confused. If that was the case, then much of what he’d felt and thought since then didn’t make sense anymore. “I need to think about this some more.”

“Do. Thinking is good,” Garul said. He leaned against a wall and slowly slid down it onto his haunches.

“Are you OK?” Owen asked. He was surprised how much concern he felt for someone he’d always considered an enemy.

“Yes,” the Naga said. He patted his side, where a bandage was stained red with his blood. “Is healing. Humans are not the only ones who have medical nanites. I will be well again soon. But the healing saps strength.”

Chatter over the radio yanked Owen’s attention away from the Naga. Was that weapons fire? He turned up the volume so he could hear better. The communication was scratchy, passing over more distance than earlier. That meant Pahwel had reached the engines, or come close. Owen heard orders being shouted, gunfire, and then screaming.

The screams chilled him. That wasn’t a scream of fear or even terror. That was the cry of someone in extreme pain. The rest of his unit was engaged out there, and the enemy was giving at least as good as they got. Owen tried to listen in more carefully, to pick out individual words.

Finally, he heard Mateo’s voice clear as a bell. “Pahwel is down. Everyone with me! Pull back into…”

After that, the signal broke up into static again. Owen fiddled with his controls, wishing they would come back to life. He’d stripped this Armor down to its bare bones, but the ones they’d had back in training didn’t have whatever shutdown trigger Captain Pahwel had used on his suit. Or if they did, it was buried in their code rather than being a specific device. He didn’t know how to wake the Armor back up.

Even if he could, he was one person. They had the full force of his squad out there, reinforced by a bunch of Naga. How much difference would one more person make?

“This is going badly?” Garul asked.

How did he know? Had he heard the radio messages somehow? “Yes. I can’t make out everything, but our guys are retreating somewhere.”

Garul growled something under his breath in Naga. He pulled a device from his side and tapped it a few times. It didn’t want to cooperate at first, but after a few hard shakes it lit up. A display appeared in the air above the device. It was schematics of the ship.

“There!” Garul said. He pointed at a set of dots that were aft of the main engine room. “That’s your people. They are not in a good place.”

“How can you be sure that’s them?” Owen asked.

“They are all giving off radio signals. Naga do not. ‘Bugs’ do not. Has to be Humans,” Garul said. He shook his head. “They should not be there.”

“Why not?” Owen asked.

Garul took a few steps toward him so that he could better see the display. The dots all seemed to be in some kind of tube laying right between the main drives. That must be where they’d retreated to. The Bugs must have cut them off from returning to the ship.

“This is plasma vent,” Garul said, pointing at the spot with all the dots. “Allows excess heat from the engines to bleed out into heat transfer vanes. But all Bugs have to do is turn on engines…”

“And they’ll cook everyone in there,” Owen said. The Armor wouldn’t protect them against something like that! “Can they turn the engines on from there?”

Garul shook his head. “Only from the bridge.”

That was a relief. The bridge was still secure. The Naga had managed to hold that point against all attacks. If they could keep it up, then his people were safe. At least for the moment. But that didn’t solve the problem; it just delayed things.

Garul pulled the bandage from his side and examined the wound beneath. He nodded, seeming satisfied, and yanked it the rest of the way off. The other Naga barked something at him, but Garul silenced him with a stare. Then he picked up a rifle and went to the ramp. He tapped the controls on the side and it lowered, opening the Lynx back up.

“What are you doing?” Owen asked.

Garul turned back to him. “They have engines. Now they will swarm the bridge, then your people will die. Best chance is they have left few guards on engines. If I kill them, free your people, might still save my ship.”

He was going to go take on an unknown number of Bugs in the engine room — by himself? That wasn’t courage, it was suicide! Owen opened his mouth to tell him so but instead found himself saying something else. “Not alone, you aren’t.”

“Your Armor does not work, does it?” Garul asked.

“No,” Owen said. He climbed free from the harness holding him in place and jumped clear of his Armor, landing on the deck. “But that doesn’t mean I’m useless.”

Garul narrowed his eyes. “Is not a game, young one.”

“I know,” Owen replied.

The Naga hesitated, and Owen wondered if Garul was going to allow him to come or not. His palms were slick with sweat, and he wiped them on his uniform to dry them off. This was crazy. It was utter insanity. But he couldn’t let this damned fool Naga go off and try this all by himself.

Garul tossed him the rifle. Owen caught it.

“You know how to use?” Garul asked.

Owen slid the butt end of the weapon against his shoulder and readied it, just as he had that day in Miami. It was the same weapon he’d used to kill a Naga. Now he was going to use one to help a Naga. Could this day get any stranger?

“Yup,” Owen said.

Garul chuckled. “Good. Use this setting.”

He stepped closer to Owen, who tensed. He’d never been so close to an alien before. Garul’s teeth and claws looked much more threatening at this range, but he held firm. Garul twisted a knob on the top of the rifle, dialing it all the way to the right.

“Was idea from Beth. Smart Human. Incorporated it into all Naga weapons. Will now fire tiny ball, very hard, very fast. Punch through even Bug armor,” Garul said.

“Thanks,” Owen replied. He wondered what setting it had been on before.

“Thank me after,” Garul said, picking up another weapon. “Now we go into battle.”

Twenty-Two

The pair all but raced down the corridor, Owen following as close behind Garul as he could. The Naga knew these halls like the back of his hand, but Owen would be lost immediately without him. They’d avoided the central passage that Pahwel had used, instead taking a ribbon of back routes. Owen assumed that was to avoid running into a horde of Bugs busy making their way up toward the bridge. He swallowed hard at the idea of running into one of them in the close confines of the smaller passageways.

It wasn’t precisely dark, but the halls weren’t well-lit by human standards. Instead this part of the Naga ship was in a sort of half-gloom, with light cast from sources Owen couldn’t see. The decks all looked the same to him. He wasn’t sure how Garul was navigating and assumed he had to have simply memorized the entire layout of the place.

They remained silent as they jogged through the ship. Somewhere along the line, Garul had picked up Human hand signals. He would raise a clawed fist to tell Owen to freeze in place from time to time, then they would move on again. Just how much did the Naga know about humanity, anyway? Garul seemed to have a lot more information about him than Owen did about the Naga.

Garul made the motion to freeze, again. Then he leaned in close to Owen’s ear. Fear and anger tried to surge back up. Having those teeth so close to his face left Owen torn between flight and fight, and he struggled to remain calm.

The Naga appeared to take no notice of his discomfort. “We are close. The engine room is over there.”

Owen looked where he pointed, to a large set of double-doors. They were closed. There was no way to see what waited for them on the other side, and as soon as they opened the doors, they’d be seen. “Now what?”

“Now we go sneaky way,” Garul said, showing all his teeth.

Instead of heading toward the doors, Garul led Owen down a side passage. It terminated at a vent. Garul stopped there and reached out toward the vent with his claws.

“Wait. We’re seriously going to sneak in through the ducts?” Owen asked.

“Ducks?” Garul replied. “Is bird, yes?”

“No, ducts. Vents. Passage for air,” Owen replied.

“Yes, air tube. All through ship. Not first time they have been used like this. Your people did it, too,” Garul said. “Now we do.”

The Naga yanked hard, and the vent came away with the sound of squealing metal. Owen whirled in place, aiming his rifle down in the direction they’d come from. If any of the Bugs had heard that noise, they were about to be in trouble.

But no swarm of space-centipedes came storming down after them. The closed door was working for them in this, he realized. They couldn’t see into the engine room, but it also made it difficult for the Bugs to hear what happened outside them.

“Come,” Garul said. The Naga had already lifted himself into the tube. He slid forward a bit to give Owen room to climb in.

Owen slipped inside, almost cracking his head on the entry point. Once he was in, the Naga gently guided him to one side while he pulled the vent back into place. It was still loose in its housing, so they could kick it back out quickly in a pinch. Owen made a note of that, just in case they had to come running back out the same way they’d gone in.

“Ready?” Garul asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Owen replied.

The Naga chuckled, a sound Owen was finally growing accustomed to hearing. It wasn’t like a human laugh. The Naga sound was more guttural, like it was coming from the back of the throat. But the very fact that Naga, like Humans, had laughter implied they had so much more in common than Owen would have believed possible. They were from different star systems, but they were not so very different.

Garul pushed on, placing his feet carefully on the duct floor so as not to sound echoes. But he moved swiftly at the same time, working his way toward the engines. After traveling about thirty meters, Owen figured they had to be over the engine room. They hadn’t run into enemies, but that didn’t mean much. The ducts were even gloomier than the hallways. It would be easy for a Bug to hide out, waiting for them. The thought made him shiver.

He bumped into Garul; the Naga had stopped in place. Garul held a finger to his lips for quiet. Then he went to another vent and tested it. Whatever he’d hoped for, he hadn’t gotten it, because the Naga shook his head with frustration. Then he took two steps back, twisted a dial on his rifle, and fired it straight into the vent.

The rifle fired with a sharp crack of sound. A ball of energy shot from its muzzle and smashed the vent open. It dropped to the floor outside with a clang. Garul was already moving ahead before the echoes stopped. He was out of the hole where the vent had been and moving, rifle up and at the ready. Owen followed, desperate not to be left behind. He wasn’t as quick as the Naga, but he managed to keep up.

They were in the corner of a large room, but it wasn’t open space. Instead the whole place was filled with a variety of machinery. Owen couldn’t tell what most of it did, but he figured this had to be the engine room Garul had talked about. He stalked forward, the Naga rifle at his shoulder. Nothing moved.

Then he saw them.

At first, Owen thought they were just more Naga machines, but soon he was able to spot the two large lumps as what they really were — Armor units. Or they had been, anyway. One lay on its back, unmoving. He couldn’t tell what was wrong with that one. The other was much more obvious, having been shredded apart, steel plates pried back like someone had opened the suit like a can. Judging by the amount of blood, the pilot hadn’t survived.

That was two of the Armor units from his squad, but where were the others? Owen looked around but couldn’t see them.

Garul stepped away from him, crossing the room to the far side. “Naga dead here. Also a Kkiktchikut. They at least took down one of the hated enemies with them.”

“One Kkiktchikut over here, too,” Owen said. He understood the satisfaction Garul felt in his peoples’ death not being in vain. But it looked like the Bugs had gotten the better end of this fight.

A glint of light as something moved near the corner caught Owen’s eye. He turned, the rifle already on his shoulder, and fired as soon as he saw what was coming his way. It was a Bug — a Kkiktchikut — but seeing one face to face was nothing like the simulations. It was enormous, its silver armor glistening as it slipped past lights on its rush toward him. Those deadly legs gleamed and seemed to almost sparkle. Any one of those legs could cut him in half in under a second. Without his Armor, Owen had no real protection against this foe.

His round slammed into the Bug, slowing it down. Owen dove off to one side, ducking behind a large machine to avoid its attack. It simply reared up over the obstacle. He looked up and saw its jaws open wide, mandibles snapping. Then one of those terrible jaws snapped off. Blood sprayed from the Bug’s mouth, spattering down around him. It turned toward the new threat. Garul’s weapon whined and snapped a second time, slamming into the Bug. It chittered and rushed toward him.

He fired a third time. This shot took it down.

But there was no time to rest. Owen saw more movement behind Garul. Another Bug had been waiting among the steel bars on the ceiling. It dropped almost silently, then dashed forward to impale the Naga from behind. Owen raised his rifle and aimed it directly at Garul. The Naga’s eyes widened. Owen wasn’t sure if Garul realized what he was doing or thought he’d lost it and was going to kill him, but there wasn’t time to explain.

“Duck!” Owen shouted.

Garul hit the deck. Owen fired a split-second later. The Naga rifle bucked in his hands as it spat a tiny pellet of energy downrange toward his target. The projectile slammed into the Bug’s head, blasting it backward. It chittered distress. Owen advanced on it and fired as soon as his weapon had charge again. Garul’s shot joined his. Together, their guns took it down.

Owen sagged to the floor, panting. The whole fight took just seconds, but he felt like he’d run a marathon. He kept the rifle up and aimed outward, unsure if more attackers waited for them. “Was that all of them?”

“I think so,” Garul replied. “But no way to be sure. Stay on your guard. We need to get your people out of the plasma tube.”

The others! With the Bugs trying to break into the bridge, his teammates might be fried at any moment. “Where are they?”

“Follow me,” Garul said. He led the way to a huge hatch in the rear wall of the room. He tapped a control console beside it, then hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” Owen asked.

“I’m just hoping they don’t shoot us as soon as the door opens,” Garul said.

“Oh! Yeah. Hang on,” Owen said. He still had a portable radio. He tapped it on. “This is McInness, can anyone hear me?”

“Mac? Where are you? We’re pinned down,” Mateo replied.

He’d survived! Owen was glad the plucky tech had managed to stay alive. “Actually, you’re not. I’m just outside the door. You can come out now.”

“What?” Mateo asked. “You’d better not be screwing with us.”

“I’m not,” Owen said. He nodded to Garul, who entered the final commands to open the hatch. It slid up into the wall.

Inside were six very nervous looking Naga, and four Armor units. They were all packed into a space far too small for the lot of them. But every single one had their guns trained outward toward the door.

“Holy shit, it really is you,” Mateo said over their radio link. “How did you deal with all the Bugs?”

“I didn’t,” Owen replied. “They only left two behind. The rest went to take the bridge. We need to stop them. Where’s Captain Pahwel?”

Mateo didn’t respond at first. Owen waited, then asked again. “Captain Pahwel? Where is he?”

“Over there,” Mateo said. “He died in the first strike. A Bug punched right through the chest of his Armor and killed him instantly. I’m in charge of the squad, now.”

“God help us all,” Kowal added.

“Hey, we’re still alive!” Mateo replied defensively.

Kowal laughed. “Hiding in the ship’s exhaust pipe, but sure. No, you did fine, Sergeant. Good as anyone could have.”

Owen counted the survivors. “Thompson?”

“Didn’t make it,” Roberts replied, his voice quiet.

Damn it, after everything they’d been through trying to get Thompson up to speed, he’d gone down in his first fight. Owen had made a point of trying to help him out. If he hadn’t pushed so hard, maybe the man would have given up or failed out of the training program. Owen felt the weight of that responsibility drop heavily across his shoulders. Was he to blame for Thompson’s death?

No, it wasn’t his fault. He’d liked the man and tried to help him, but it was the Bugs who’d killed him.

Mateo popped his canopy and looked down at Owen. “How many were out there?”

“Just two,” Garul replied.

“At least eight more, then,” Mateo said. “That’s a tough fight.”

“So we need to even the odds a bit more,” Owen said. “There might be something we can do about that.”

He left the doorway and walked over to Pahwel’s fallen Armor, hoping he could find a way to restore power to his own suit back on the Lynx. Another combat-effective Armor unit wouldn’t be enough to make the odds even, but it would sure as hell help.

Twenty-Three

Owen hesitated before coming up on Pahwel’s downed rig. It wasn’t moving. Now that he was closer, he could see the stab wound right in the middle of its torso. A Bug claw must have punched directly through the armor plating. That spot was right about where Pahwel’s chest should have been.

He gritted his teeth, knowing the scene wasn’t going to be pretty, but he had to get into the cockpit anyway. Owen tapped in an override command on the canopy, which opened to his code. It hissed as it raised, revealing Captain Pahwel’s body.

The man’s face was pale, his mouth open in a wide O shape. He looked surprised more than pained, so maybe death had come quickly for him. He was definitely dead. The Bug had stabbed him in the upper chest, probably shredded his heart. There was blood splashed all over the inside of the cockpit.

Owen blanched and turned away, sick to his stomach. He hadn’t liked Pahwel, but he’d never wanted anything like this for the man! It was too much. But still, he needed to see if there was a way to undo whatever the captain had done to his Armor, which meant he needed to get the body out. He turned back and made a face at the thought.

“I’ll help,” Roberts said from beside him.

Owen looked over, surprised. He hadn’t heard the man leave his Armor and come over. Then again, he’d been more focused on what was in front of him. “Thanks.”

Together the two of them gently levered Pahwel free from the wreck. They laid his body out on the engine room deck plates. Roberts reached over and closed Pahwel’s eyes. Owen nodded; that felt like the right thing to do.

He felt a flash of anger at the aliens who’d done this but was able to spot it rising and take a few calming breaths. Being mad wasn’t going to help. A calm, rational mind was needed to get them through this.

Owen went to the cockpit and peered inside. The whole thing was a mess with blood, but it didn’t look like any systems were severely damaged. “I might be able to reboot her.”

“Really? I figured it was toast,” Roberts replied.

“Maybe. Hang on,” Owen said. He flicked a set of switches in the order they’d all memorized. Lights flashed on the console, coming to life. Power hummed through the robot limbs of the Armor, and the screens lit up. “Got it!”

“Good. Now we need to get the hell out of here, right?” Roberts said. “I mean, this mission is a bust. The captain is dead.”

“That leaves Mateo in charge, I think. I mean Sergeant Casiano,” Owen said. He fiddled with the computer controls, trying to figure out how Pahwel had locked him out of his armor. There! He saw the application. Their Armor units all had command overrides. It made sense; they’d literally just walked in from a training exercise. But when Owen tried to reactivate his Armor, the computer asked for a password he didn’t know.

“Damn it, the thing is password protected, and the man who knows the password is dead,” Owen said. He felt the old anger rising again, coupled with fear. He was worried for all of them, but facing off against the Bugs without a suit of Armor around him was a nightmare he didn’t want to repeat. “I can’t get my suit working again.”

But there might be another answer. Pahwel’s suit was working fine. It was gory, sure, but it was functional. Owen winced as he slipped in a patch of blood. This whole thing was gonna leave him with nightmares. He slid his legs down into the suit.

“What are you doing?” Roberts said. When Owen looked over at him, the man’s face was pale.

“Making use of a functional set of Armor,” Owen said. He buckled the straps into place around himself, trying to ignore that they were all wet with a dead man’s blood. If he could just avoid thinking about it, maybe he could get through this.

“That’s gross, man,” Roberts said.

Owen stopped what he was doing and looked over at Roberts. “You think I don’t know that? I’m doing what needs to be done.”

Garul came over to stand beside Owen. “Is good plan. Your skin too thin to fight Bugs other way. Have courage, young one. We fight soon enough.”

Owen nodded to the Naga and finished his straps. Then he brought the Armor into a sit-up position and maneuvered its legs back under it, using the arms for support. It was a complex series of movements that he hadn’t practiced before, but he knew the principles behind it from their training manuals. After a little experimentation, the Armor was back on its feet.

“All right. I’m up and more or less ready for action. Mateo! What’s the plan?” Owen asked.

The sergeant’s voice came back to him over the radio. “I don’t have one. But McInness, you need to know: we were directed to retake the ship if we could, but to blow it if we couldn’t.”

Owen thought over what he’d just said. “Blow it up? With Naga still on board?”

“With Humans still on board if it came to it,” Mateo replied. “If the Bugs take the bridge, we won’t have a lot of choice.”

“They have won the bridge,” Garul said. “No response there to my calls. If they could reply, they would, which means they are dead.”

Owen thought quickly. They’d won back one of the critical spots only to lose the other one. The enemy had to hold both to win, but so did they. Which meant either they needed to attack or the Bugs did. Whoever was defending would probably have the advantage, and looking around his team Owen figured their side could use every edge it could get. But that left the question of how to lure the Bugs into attacking.

“Mateo, how was Pahwel going to blow the ship?” Owen asked.

“Mini-nuke. Embedded in the back of his Armor,” Mateo said.

“You mean the Armor that I am piloting?” Owen replied.

Shit and double shit — he had a nuke strapped to his back? He almost started undoing the straps holding him in so he could put some distance between himself and the bomb, but stopped. It wasn’t going to do any good anyway. If the weapon was designed to destroy the entire ship, it would kill him whether he was in the Armor when it went off or not.

That was one way they could force the Bugs’ hand. If they threatened to blow the ship up, it would get them to come running. They’d die too, if the ship went up. But how to let them know the Humans were dumb enough to come aboard carrying a bomb? Owen didn’t see a way.

“Garul, can the ship be blown up from down here in the engines? Without the bomb, I mean. Is there a way to overload the engines so they’ll blow?” Owen asked.

“Yes, is a way. Involves same tube your friends hid inside. Seal off, so no heat shunts out, and drives overheat. Big boom,” Garul said. “Are safeties to prevent that, but captain can override them.”

“So we need the Naga captain?” Owen asked. “Where would he be?”

“Here. Is me,” Garul said, pointing to himself.

Owen blinked, surprised. All the talking with Garul and the Naga had never revealed that this ship was his command. Sure, he’d known the vessel well, but any crew member might have learned the back corridors over time. It hadn’t occurred to him that Garul might be the one in charge of the ship. That meant he should have some say in what they did with it.

“What do you think?” Owen asked. “If we set the ship’s drives to overload, the Bugs would detect that, right?”

“Yes, if they hold the bridge the alerts would sound there,” Garul said. “But they would have to come here to stop the explosion. Ah, I see. Crafty, young one! It might work.”

Mateo walked over, his Armor’s feet thudding against the deck. “What might work?”

“I want to lure the Bugs down here by rigging the ship to blow. They’ll have to respond, or they’ll be blown up along with the ship,” Owen said.

“This is a great plan, except for one thing. There’s another way off this ship, and you’ve left it mostly unguarded,” Mateo said. “We captured the Lynx from the bugs, originally. I’m betting they can figure out how to pilot her if they want. They know our Armor unit got here somehow. They’ll be looking for the ship.”

Shit, he was right. Owen tried to figure out a way around the problem, but there didn’t seem to be one. That left driving through it as the best option. “We’ll bounce Lynx out into space. She can fly along at a safe distance, maybe lend some support if there ends up being a way. Mateo, are you the only one with us who can fly Lynx?”

Mateo nodded. “Yup. Which is gonna leave one of you guys in command here. Roberts, this is your squad, right?”

“Shit and double shit. Yes, it is, but I’m no officer,” Roberts said. “Give it to McInness. I’ll follow him.”

“Done,” Mateo said. “Get me safe to the ship, and then good luck with the rest of it. I have a feeling you’ll need it.”

Twenty-Four

The Armor squad moved out, what was left of it. McInness wanted to lead the way, but Kowal wasn’t having it.

“You put your best on point. I’m our best pilot, unless anyone wants to argue with me about that?” Kowal said.

No one did. She took the lead. Roberts and Hernandez followed, then Sergeant Casiano in the middle and McInness at the rear. Owen hadn’t wanted to stay back so far, but Mateo said that until he was airborne he was still in charge. Owen held his tongue and took the place in line he’d been ordered to.

They were moving fast but staying alert. While the Kkiktchikut might all be in the bridge, they might not. Surely by now they knew that the ones they’d left behind in the engine room were dead. They’d send someone to check things out. A scout, maybe, or a scouting party even. If they rounded the corner and smacked into a few Bugs, none of the Armor units might survive.

But they made it to the Lynx without any contact. Mateo used his Armor to command the door to drop and strode aboard while the rest of the team covered him. Then Mateo turned back to the others.

“You can come, too. We can just set the bomb in Pahwel’s Armor on a timer and jet. It’ll take out the Bugs,” Mateo said.

It was a good idea. Owen could see the appeal. The thought of facing down an unknown number of vicious enemies in close quarters combat was terrifying. But there was one flaw with Mateo’s plan.

“How many Naga are still on this ship, fighting in small pockets here and there?” Owen asked quietly. The crew complement of a Naga battlecruiser was large. There should be a hundred or more Naga on board, but they hadn’t seen that many bodies. Not even close. There still might be more alive out there.

Mateo climbed out of his Armor and looked up at Owen like he was crazy. “Of everyone here, you were the last one I thought would object to putting Human lives over Naga ones. It’s not like we’re doing anything Pahwel wouldn’t have done anyway.”

“The bomb was meant as a last resort. Otherwise, we’d have just jumped in, dropped the bomb, and jumped out,” Owen said. “Our mission priorities haven’t changed. But it’s a fair point. I’m staying, but I won’t force anyone else to stick around. You guys can leave with Sergeant Casiano if you want.”

“And miss all the fun? No way,” Kowal drawled. “Besides, I need to add a few more Bugs to my Armor. Gonna draw a bug for each one I kill.”

“You’re going to look like a Dalmatian in no time,” Owen said. “Thanks.”

“I’m in,” Hernandez said. “Team above all.”

“Me too, of course. The team above all,” Roberts said.

Mateo looked from one of them to the next and hung his head. “I wish I could stay with you all. But…”

“You can’t. Go, Mateo. Get the ship out of here. You’re the only one who can. We’ve got this,” Owen said.

The sergeant nodded. “Good luck.”

Then he closed the hatch. A minute later there was a whining noise as the engines spun up and the Lynx lifted gently from the deck.

“We probably want to back up a lot,” Roberts pointed out.

“Yeah. Let’s move, folks,” Owen said.

They backtracked to the doorway they’d come in through and waited there. A brilliant beam of light shot from the nose of the ship, stabbing into the fabric of the universe and ripping it apart. From that point, a swirling nebula of light appeared. The Lynx shot forward into the wormhole and vanished. Mateo was gone, taking with him the only way Owen and his team could escape the Naga ship. But on the plus side, it was also the only way the Bugs could get away, too.

“OK folks. Win or lose, the worst case scenario we blow the ship and all die, taking the Bugs with them. Earth will be safe no matter what happens now,” Owen said. “That means this next fight is going to be about something very near and dear to all of our hearts: survival.”

Nobody spoke much during the trip back to the engine room. Between watching for potential attackers and wondering whether they would survive the next few hours, they all had a lot on their place. Even Kowal wasn’t giving her usual stream of sarcastic remarks. Owen checked out the bomb controls while they walked. They were simple enough, and there hadn’t been time for Pahwel to set a password protecting them. Or maybe there was no password precisely so that if he went down, someone else could still get the job done.

Either way, it meant system access was available for him. He checked it over. The bomb was big enough that if it went off near the engines, he was confident it would blow the entire ship to atoms. Owen hesitated, thinking, and then set the bomb to go off in two hours. That would be enough time to know one way or the other how this was going to go down. If they all died in the fight, there was still a chance the Bugs wouldn’t think to check their bodies for explosives.

A grim thought, but the Kkiktchikut had to be stopped, no matter the cost.

Owen thought too about what Mateo had said, that he was surprised Owen of all people would value Naga life. It had come to a shock for him as well, to be fair, but the words still stung. When had he started thinking of Naga as people, not monsters? He wasn’t sure precisely when he changed. It was probably sometime during his interactions with Garul. The Naga captain was honest, brave, and smart. He was everything Owen thought a warrior should aspire toward. It was an honor fighting alongside him.

How could such a person still be a monster? He couldn’t be. Seeing the Naga as they truly were dispelled his prejudice more rapidly than anything else Owen could have imagined.

They made it back to the engine room without incident. Garul and the other Naga were there. From the looks of it, they were preparing to defend the place with tooth and nail, probably literally so if they had to. They’d cut up chunks of the deck and welded them into fortifications, blocking all the easy avenues of approach and barring ventilation shafts. There’d be no sneaking in the same way Owen and Garul had. The Kkiktchikut would have to come straight at them or not at all.

“Engines are set into overload,” Garul said as Owen and his team entered the engine room. More Naga slid mounds of debris to block the path they’d just come through. Others were busy welding spikes to the floor, ceiling, and walls. The Bugs could crawl along almost any surface, so they prepared every surface.

“How long do we have?” Owen asked.

“I am not good with Earth time,” Garul said. “Less than one of your hours. More than half that.”

“They’ll be coming soon, then, if they want to stop the ship from going up,” Owen said.

Garul chuckled, showing all his teeth in a predator’s smile. “Oh, I expect they are already on their way.”

Twenty-Five

One of the Naga banged on Owen’s chest plate, hissing something unintelligible at him. It turned out the Naga were awesome at construction. Already, they’d fortified the engine room and the area around it better than he would have imagined possible in the short time they had. On top of that, one of them had taken it upon himself to weld a new plate onto Owen’s Armor to cover up the gaping hole where a Bug claw had stabbed in and killed Captain Pahwel.

It wasn’t a perfect patch, and if the original plating hadn’t survived a direct strike Owen doubted this makeshift thing would fare any better. But he felt more secure without a gaping hole right in front of his midsection. It might be purely psychological, but it made him breathe easier anyway.

If he could have swapped Armor with Mateo, he would have. The bomb was implanted in Pahwel’s Armor. It wasn’t going to do them any good to send the weapon away with Lynx. He was stuck with the damaged suit.

To make matters worse, it was starting to stink inside the Armor. Owen managed to wipe off some of the blood, but he wondered if the Armor would ever get truly clean again. It was rank inside the now-closed compartment and growing worse.

Well, soon he’d have bigger things to worry about than the smell. The Bugs should be on their way, Garul said. He seemed confident they’d detect the engine overload and come down in force to prevent it. Owen could only hope the Naga was right.

Without warning, laser fire tore through the air near the doorway. They’d left the main entrance to the engine room open and blocked off all the other portals, hoping to funnel their opponents through one approach. It seemed like it was working. Blasts of energy poured through the door, stabbing and then vanishing again. The Naga still working on defenses dove for cover.

“Contact!” Owen said over the radio. Not that he thought it was truly necessary. There was no way to miss the frenzied attack.

He crept up to the edge of the doorway and peeked out. Laser fire shot past his face, narrowly missing. Owen ducked back. That had been close, but they weren’t aiming for combatants. He’d spotted the Bugs. They were a good distance down the hall, and they were all firing weapons from their own armored suits. But they were targeting the fortifications.

One of the spikes welded to the wall above Owen snapped off under the barrage, tumbling to the floor. More shattered or melted. Right in front of the doorway itself, the Naga had piled up deck plates and other debris to use for cover. Those were holding under the assault, but they were beginning to glow with heat. Soon they’d start melting, and their protection would be gone entirely.

“With me!” Owen said. He reached his right arm out into the hall. It was a small target. With luck, he could get off a few shots and not lose the limb.

Using the camera mounted in the arm, Owen sighted in on a Bug with the railgun mounted there. He squeezed off a single round. It blasted down the hall and tore the Bug in half. Then he pulled his arm back before they could target it. He wouldn’t be able to pull that trick off too many times. They’d be watching for his gun, next time. The railgun was a formidable weapon, but it took too damned long to charge for his taste.

A small volley of short-range missiles tore down the hall. The shock wave from their detonation reverberated through the plates beneath Owen’s feet. He glanced at the person firing. It was Kowal. She’d darted out into the line of fire, lit off her rocket launcher, and then dropped behind the cover blocking the doorway. It was a bold move. Owen thought he saw at least one Bug laser score a hit on her Armor. But it looked like her gamble had paid off. The enemy laser fire dropped to a patter, then stopped altogether.

As the barrier cooled off, Naga rushed forward with their rifles to take positions behind the cover it provided. They stood there, guns facing out, but nothing came at them.

“They took out half our defenses without even breathing hard,” Roberts said. “What are they waiting for?”

“I nailed one. Maybe they’re nervous,” Owen said.

“My missiles had to have stung some, too,” Kowal said. “But they don’t seem like the type to back down from a fight.”

She was right. All at once the Bugs opened up fire again, pulsing blasts of laser fire down the hall again. This time was different. Instead of aiming at the fortifications, they were trying to hit the Naga hiding behind them. The Naga returned fire, shooting as rapidly as their weapons were able.

Owen stepped out into the line of fire. A laser sliced into the armor near his left shoulder, gouging at the steel there. Droplets of hot metal poured away, but the armor held. He returned fire, blazing away with the machine gun mounted in his left arm and saving the railgun shot. He needed to make those rounds count.

The Bugs were no longer trying for a stand-off battle. This time they rushed forward while they fired. Naga rounds had taken down two of them, but the rest continued on. Owen targeted one with the railgun, shot, and missed. The round blasted a gaping hole in the passage wall instead, and the Bug kept coming.

His machine gun fire raked them as they ran forward, coming along the floor, both walls, and the ceiling as well. The few spikes still mounted on the walls slowed them a little. That gave the defenders some time to land effective fire on the otherwise fast-moving targets. Then the Bugs were through the defenses and in among them.

“There are a lot more than eight!” Owen said, blazing away with his gun. The Bugs were too close now for the railgun, but he had a blade mounted on that arm as well and used it to slash wildly at the attackers.

They slashed back, each of their many legs a swordlike weapon capable of punching through a steel plate. Two of them surrounded Roberts’ Armor and sliced both his arms off, then the legs. He toppled helplessly to the floor. The Bugs both darted in for the kill.

Owen rushed at them and impaled one with his blade. He brought his machine gun arm in close to the hole he’d just punched in its armor and fired a long burst into it. The Bug thrashed and died. Hernandez had grabbed the other and was wrestling with it. It looked like a scene out of manga — giant robot warrior in hand to hand combat with bug monster.

Hernandez struggled to keep the Bug’s claws away from him, but there were just so many! He could defend effectively against a few, but the others sliced at his Armor, cutting chunks of it away. Hernandez toppled sideways, the Bug coming down on top of him.

Then Owen was there. He stabbed his blade into the alien’s back. Then, using the knife like a handle, he ripped it off his friend. Owen torqued his Armor around with such force that the Bug sailed sideways and smacked into the nearest wall. Two Naga aimed their rifles at it and finished it with well-placed shots.

“Hernandez, you OK?” Owen asked.

There wasn’t any answer, and he didn’t have time to check on either of the fallen teammates. More Bugs poured through the gap into the engine room, threatening to overwhelm the defenders entirely. Owen found himself back to back with Kowal. She was screaming something incoherent, blasting away at the enemy.

In contrast, Owen found himself strangely calm. In the past when he’d gotten into fights, it had been inspired by rage. The fury had governed his actions. But this wasn’t about his anger, so he felt strangely relaxed in comparison. He pivoted and fired, taking down one Bug, then swatted another back with his arm. Its claws dug into his railgun, and red lights on his control panel warned Owen that it was no longer operational.

But he still had the machine gun, for the moment. His ammunition was running low. If the gun went dry, he would be left with just the blade to defend himself.

Somehow that felt right. Owen wondered if this was how medieval knights felt, encased in armor and wielding swords against likewise armed foes. He was surrounded by a seething mass of Bugs. At least a dozen of them were in the engine room now, and the defense had broken up into a bunch of individual fights for survival.

Owen spotted Garul, standing alone by the control panel for the engines. Bugs were closing in on the Naga warrior. “We need to help Garul. If they take him down, they can undo the overload!”

“It’s too late. We can’t win,” Kowal said. “Blow the bomb, Mac.”

Maybe she was right. The fight looked hopeless. If they couldn’t stop the Bugs one way, then the nuke he carried was the other. Owen’s hand went to the bomb’s control system, then he pulled it away.

“Not giving up just yet,” Owen growled. He started off toward Garul, machine gun blazing away with the last of his ammunition, trying to force the Bugs back.

“Dammit!” Kowal replied. But she followed him in.

Twenty-Six

Owen wasn’t quite sure how Garul had survived in the thick of things so long, but there he was. The Naga’s battle armor was scraped and scored, but he seemed to be enjoying the fight if the wicked, toothy smile he displayed was any indication. He stood with one foot planted on top of a dead Bug, blasting another with his rifle and still flashed a smile as Owen came up alongside him. “Good to see you!”

“Might be better under other circumstances,” Owen replied. His machine gun spun to a stop, the cannister of ammunition empty. Owen raised the useless arm like it was a shield. It would stop a few attacks, anyway. His blade was his final weapon.

“No, this is best,” Garul roared. “Warrior’s fate. Is fitting.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Owen replied. He thought it was a strange form of fate, though. He’d spent so long hating the Naga, yet there he was fighting alongside them, defending them. It wasn’t how he expected to go out, that was for sure!

Owen readied himself for the next attack. There were few other defenders left alive. Kowal found a spot next to Owen and Garul. A handful of other Naga had struggled over to make a stand with their captain as well. Against them were arrayed about twice their number of alien insects.

The Bugs didn’t attack right away. Instead, they fanned out, encircling the last defenders. One tried to scuttle in at them along the ceiling, but Kowal blasted it down.

“I’m low on ammo, not out, asshole,” Kowal said.

Owen smiled. She’d probably keep on with the insults and sarcasm right up until she was killed. “Good fighting with you, Kowal.”

“Ditto, now look sharp! Here they come,” she replied.

The Bugs rushed them from all sides. Owen battered one away. Two Naga shot it as it sailed through the air. Another Bug sliced at him, but he blocked the attack with his right arm. The alien’s blade-legs cut the machine gun apart, sending chunks of it in all directions.

Owen pivoted and stabbed it with his blade. It backed away, chittering with what he hoped was intense pain.

Behind him, Kowal went down under a pile of three Bugs that swarmed her all at once. Owen whirled and stabbed one, while Garul shot another. Then they both had to back away. If Kowal was alive she was still trapped beneath the weight of the aliens, two of them still writhing.

It was time. Owen didn’t want to give up, but there was no hope of winning this fight. He tapped the console and changed the countdown on his bomb, dropping it to two minutes and locking it with a six-digit code. Even if he died in the next few seconds, there was no way the Bugs would be able to disarm the nuke in time. He and the other defenders were all going to die, but they would take their enemies with them.

That meant in theory that Owen could rest now, but something inside him didn’t want to give up. He would keep fighting until his last breath.

“It’s set. Two minutes,” Owen said over his Armor’s speakers. Mostly for Garul’s benefit. The Naga captain still battled beside him.

“I understand. You fight on?” Garul replied.

“Damned right,” Owen said. He pushed forward, slashing into the Bugs. It didn’t matter if the enemy took the console, now. They could turn off the engine overload. It wouldn’t matter.

Half the remaining Bugs gathered around the console, working on it. They were trying to shut down the overload. They had plenty of time, and Owen figured they’d probably succeed. But that meant he could get out of their circle and into more open space.

There were still too damned many of them. The Bugs came in, a crushing mass, and his right arm finally gave way. It crashed to the deck, sliced clean off his body. Owen was still secure inside his cockpit, but that wouldn’t last. Another blow toppled his suit to the ground.

Smoke filled his nose. Something was burning. He coughed and slapped the quick release for the harness holding him in place. Then Owen grabbed the Naga rifle Garul had handed him from where he’d racked it behind him in the Armor. Still coughing, he pressed the button to pop his canopy.

A Bug was waiting just outside. It stabbed down, impaling his Armor. If Owen had still been inside, he would have died instantly. Instead, he was out of the Armor, almost directly under the Bug. He fired upward with the rifle. The shot tore through armored plates, blasting a hole in the Bug. It tottered and began falling.

Owen dove sideways, turning the dive into a roll that almost but not quite brought him back to his feet. The alien crashed down onto his Armor behind him. He’d narrowly avoided being crushed.

How much time left on the bomb? A minute, maybe? Not long.

Bursts of light slammed through the air, the concussion knocking Owen back against the side of his Armor. The blasts struck one Bug after another, blowing them to pieces. Shrapnel flew, pinging against the walls. A shard struck Owen, slicing his shoulder open.

At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but then a familiar voice came over the radio. “Second Squad, move in and sweep up the mess. Let’s finish them. First Squad, anyone left?”

It was Mateo! Owen tried to speak, his voice a croaking sound. “Yes. Here. You came back?”

“With reinforcements!” Mateo replied. He and Second Squad marched through the doorway into the engine room, mopping up the last Bugs.

The bomb! Owen tried to clear his head enough to think straight. How much time was there left? It would blow any second!

He scrabbled back toward his armor. The way in was blocked by a mass of Bug. Owen squirmed to get past it. It’s sharp legs sliced into him as he wriggled through, cutting long gashes along his skin, but he couldn’t stop. They were all counting on him. If he didn’t stop the explosion, everyone who’d just risked their lives to save him would die.

The console was just there, so close he could almost touch it. Owen reached out. His fingers brushed it. He slid in further and cried out as the blades blocking his way bit deeper into his skin. But he could reach the datapad. He tapped in the code to disarm the bomb.

They were safe. It was over.

With that thought, Owen drifted away into unconsciousness.

Twenty-Seven

When he came to, Owen was surrounded by light. His vision blurred, forcing him to close his eyes again as a wave of dizziness swept over him. “Ow.”

“You’re awake. Good. I get the others now.” The voice was familiar, but Owen’s head was too fuzzy to place it at first. Then he recognized the speaker. It was Garul.

“Wait,” Owen said, opening his eyes the tiniest bit. “What happened?”

Garul looked down at him. “You almost died. I use Naga tech to save you, but not made for Humans. Is imperfect. Was not sure would work.”

“Ow,” Owen said again. Everything hurt. He felt pain from all over, especially his left leg. He looked down at the offending limb. It was wrapped with a clear plastic-looking dressing, but at least it was still there. The way it hurt, he hadn’t been sure for a moment.

“The others?” Owen asked.

“He’s awake!” Kowal cried, dashing in and thumping Owen on the shoulder.

Owen gasped with pain and winced. “Hurting here!”

“Aw, big baby. Next time don’t try to get so up close and personal with a dead Bug,” Kowal said. “Bug necrophilia? Really? Ew.”

“It wasn’t...” Owen started to protest.

“Uh huh. Sure. Keep telling yourself that,” Kowal replied.

“She knows better. Close call on that bomb, there. The timer was down to twelve seconds,” Mateo said from the doorway. “You almost made me regret jumping the Lynx back to Earth and bringing you reinforcements.”

So that’s what had happened. Mateo had jumped home, grabbed another squad of Armor, and brought them back. He’d gotten there just in time. It was Second Squad’s withering fire that had demolished the last Bugs and won the day.

Roberts and Mateo came in, walking side by side. Mateo looked fine, but Roberts had his left arm in a sling. Owen was glad to see him alive, but looked around and didn’t see their other teammate.

“Hernandez?” Owen asked.

Roberts shook his head.

Damn, so many good people had died out there. Owen wondered if there was more he could have done. Some way he could have prevented some of those deaths.

“Stop. Don’t do that,” Garul said.

“Do what?” Owen asked.

“I know the look you have. You wonder about past, second-guess self. Don’t. Commander always makes best decisions he can at the time. Learn from mistakes, don’t dwell on them,” Garul said.

“He’s right, Mac,” Mateo said. “It’s hard, but it’s true. You did all you could out there.”

“He certainly did,” General Hereford said.

Owen looked up, surprised. He hadn’t seen the general enter the room. When had he arrived on the Naga ship? He assumed they were all still on the Naga ship. The place looked alien, not like a Human hospital. Owen tried to rise and failed. Gasping, he lay back down.

“At ease, man. You don’t need to come to attention when you’re wounded, damn it,” Hereford said.

“Sorry, sir,” Owen replied.

“For what?” Hereford said. He flashed a wolf’s grin. “You did damned well out there, son. That was a mess, and you all did outstanding for recruits. Armor is proving its value over and over, it seems.”

Owen closed his eyes, seeing the faces of the dead again. But they hadn’t died without reason, at least. Their sacrifice hadn’t been for nothing. In the end, maybe that was the best thing a warrior could ask for.

“Patient needs rest. All out,” Garul said.

That was the last thing Owen remembered for a while.

When Owen woke again, it was to the sound of two voices speaking with one another. They kept to a whisper, making it difficult for him to pick up what they were saying. He opened his eyes. The room lighting was dimmed. Hereford and Garul were both near his bedside, facing one another.

Hereford looked over at Owen. “He’s awake, Garul. Ask him yourself. I’m not honestly sure what is best for him.”

“Sir? What’s going on?” Owen asked.

“Garul has something he’d like to ask you. I’ve already provisionally said yes, but the final call is up to you,” Hereford said. He took a step back and let Garul approach Owen’s bedside.

“You fought well,” Garul told him. “A true warrior.”

“Thanks,” Owen replied. “I don’t see how I could have done any differently, though.”

The Naga made a sound in his throat that Owen realized was laughter. “Even among Naga, a true warrior spirit is something we value highly. To see such in mammals? Well, some of your people have already surprised us. They are legends now, the mammals-that-kill.”

“On Earth, many mammals are predators,” Owen said.

“On our world, the mammals are small prey,” Garul replied, holding his hands up to about the size of a mouse. “We never expected to see mammal warriors.”

“I never expected to fight alongside a Naga,” Owen said.

“But you did. And you saved his life, not once but several times,” Garul said. “Saved my crew, too. Thirty Naga still live because of you. They all owe honor debt now.”

Owen didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure what a Naga honor debt looked like, and he certainly hadn’t ever wanted to acquire one! His head felt confused, full of conflicting emotions. “I hated the Naga, you know.”

Garul nodded. “I once hated humans, too. Then I learned to understand them instead.”

That made sense to Owen. “It’s hard to hate what you understand.”

Garul nodded again. He took a deep breath, let it out. “What I ask, it has never been done before, understand? Some will not like it. But I am Naga! I do as I feel honor demands.”

Owen wasn’t sure what to make of that. What was Garul planning to do? Whatever it was, Hereford already knew about it and had said yes, so it couldn’t be too bad. “What do you want me to do?”

“Naga have tradition. Older warriors who find young one with true warrior spirit take youngling on as Haklek,” Garul said.

“A warrior apprentice,” Hereford supplied.

“Yes, is so,” Garul said. “You lost parents to Naga in war. If you still hate Naga, I understand and will still be your friend. But if you would have parent-figure again, I will take the role and help you become the warrior you might be.”

Owen sucked in a lungful of air. He wasn’t sure what he’d thought Garul was asking him about, but that hadn’t been anywhere on his radar! This was…unexpected was too weak a word. What did it mean, to be a ‘Haklek’ to a Naga?

But a deep part of him told Owen to trust this being, this person who’d fought alongside him. He might have saved Garul’s life, but the Naga had saved him as well. They were bonded in a way that only close quarters battle could bring people together.

“Is all right if you say no,” Garul said into the silence in the room. But he looked disappointed.

Owen felt like he stood on a precipice. Did he have the courage to take a leap of faith? He thought of his parents. What would they want of him?

His father, a warrior in his own time, and a man of honor. He would want Owen to follow whatever path he needed to, provided he did it with passion and purpose. Owen’s mother, though? She was always full of light and love. He smiled just thinking about her, the first time her memory had brought a smile to his lips in a long time. She never held a grudge and always judged everyone on their actions. Owen knew what his mother would say about the hatred he’d harbored for so long. She’d hate it — and then she would forgive him anyway.

Something clicked inside his head at that moment, and Owen decided to take a leap of faith. “I’d be honored.”

Garul snapped his head around and looked at him. “Truly?”

“Yes. It’s…it is what my parents would have wanted,” Owen said.

“Is good, then. Honoring parents is something both Naga and Humans have in common,” Garul replied.

“But will I have to go with you? Live among Naga?” Owen asked. He tried to imagine what his life would be like surrounded by aliens instead of humans. He’d have to learn the Naga language, he supposed. Well, Garul had learned English. Owen could probably learn his tongue, too.

“Actually, no,” Hereford said, coming over to the bedside. “Garul and his Naga, plus his ship, will be part of a special new mission. A joint Human-Naga task force that will seek out the Kkiktchikut and destroy them. We’re done waiting for them to hit us. It’s time they learned to fear us, instead.”

Garul nodded. “This ship will be your home, with human and Naga alike. With me. Together we go bring battle to our enemies.”

Owen felt a sense of history in the making. Humans and Naga had begun at odds with one another. The Naga had almost wiped out all life on Earth. But now they had a common foe, and both species were coming to realize they had more in common than they’d thought.

Something inside him had changed, too. Owen felt different inside. He still felt anger, but the hatred which used to be a constant companion just didn’t make sense anymore. Not after what he’d seen.

He reached out his hand to Garul, who took it in his claw. “Then I’ll be your Haklek. And the Kkiktchikut had better watch out, because they have no idea what they’ve unleashed by bringing us all together.”

The End

To be continued in Book 11!

Other Books by Kevin McLaughlin

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Lost Planet Warriors (Military SF with light romance)

Book 1 - Desperate Times

Book 2 - Desperate Measures

Dire Straits - Free short story for email list fans!

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

Exclusive free story for fans of Kevin McLaughlin’s science fiction! Learn the story of how John found the alien ship on the moon, launching the adventure which spans the stars and saves all of humanity!

https://www.instafreebie.com/free/Uor9d

About the Author

When not practicing hobbies which include sailing, constructing medieval armor, and swinging swords at his friends, Kevin McLaughlin can usually be found in his Boston home. Kevin’s award-winning short fiction is now available in digital form at all major ebook retailers. His urban fantasies “By Darkness Revealed” and “Ashes Ascendant” are available in ebook and print. His latest stories, the “STARSHIP” series and “King of the Dead” serial, are ongoing.

I love hearing from readers!

www.kevinomclaughlin.com

kevins.studio@gmail.com