Dust & Iron

Adventures of the Starship Satori: 9

Kevin McLaughlin

Role of the Hero Publishing Company

Copyright © 2018 by Kevin O. McLaughlin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

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One

An alarm was blaring somewhere near Charline’s head. She tried to reach out an arm to swat the thing and get an extra ten minutes of snooze time, but her arm was caught. Shifting around didn’t help. The arm was well and truly trapped. Panic started to settle in, and her eyes snapped open. For a moment all she could see was the bright red light of an alarm notification directly ahead in her line of vision. What the hell?

She was laying down. No, she was suspended upside-down, strapped into a harness. Memories came flooding back in a rush. The straps were holding her position in an exo-skeleton.

She’d been carrying equipment and supplies from the ship to the cave. It wasn’t an ideal location. The place was infested with giant, man-eating centipedes. Charline was pretty sure they’d cleared the place out, but on an alien world, ‘pretty sure’ didn’t cut it. They’d have to scour the entire cavern from one end to the other before she’d be certain it was safe for her people.

Her people. Charline was the official governor of the first extra-solar colony humans had ever attempted. The whole point of the venture was to develop a bolt-hole, a self-sustaining group of humans who might keep the species alive if Earth was wiped out. The Naga had come dangerously close to doing that just half a year before. They might succeed next time, and if they did, this colony would be all that remained.

It was a responsibility Charline hadn’t asked for or wanted.

There was a small quake, and part of the cave collapsed. Charline happened to be right under the mess when it came down. The suit shielded her, but the cave-in had knocked her over. That had to be debris from the collapse, blocking her view out and pinning her in place.

She put her hands on the control sticks and tried to shift herself upright. Rubble clattered around her. Engines whirred, then whined, as the suit tried to shift the stuff piled on top of it. But it wasn’t enough. There had to be too much rock pinning her down.

The enclosure around her that had felt so comforting and secure just a few moments before seemed a lot more like a coffin all of a sudden. Charline found herself breathing faster. She jerked hard at the controls a few more times, trying to bust loose. A handful more rocks tumbled free, but that was all.

“Shit!” she shouted.

“Ms. Foster? Is that you in there?” A man’s voice. One she didn’t know.

Someone was out there! She wasn’t alone. Thank god. “Yes! What can you see?”

“Big pile of rock, ma’am. Your suit is about half in, half out. But it’s the top half that got buried.”

That was why she couldn’t break free. The weight was on top of the suit’s main body. It was going to be a bear getting out until some of that rock was moved. Charline looked across the display in front of her. The good news was that most of her systems were still online. As soon as she could get the suit upright, she could get out of this thing. It couldn’t be too soon.

Charline forced herself to slow her breathing. Hyperventilating wasn’t going to do her any favors. She needed a cool head, right now more than ever.

“OK, listen, can you go back to the ship? Get some help?” Charline asked.

“The cave-in blocked the tunnel entrance. We’re both stuck in here until they can get us out.”

“Terrific. Guess I’ll just hang out here. No place else to go, anyway,” Charline said. She tried to put some levity into her voice but wasn’t sure she managed.

“You’re not alone, ma’am.”

Charline’s attempt at a chuckle came out sounding dry and unconvincing to her ears. “All in this together, hmm? One big, happy family trapped together by a rock slide?”

“Sure, ma’am. Something like that, anyway,” the voice replied in a deadpan tone that made Charline crack a true smile at last.

“Glad someone is keeping a level head around here,” Charline said. “Who am I speaking with, anyway? I don’t recognize your voice.”

“Arjun. Arjun Varna,” he replied. “I’m an electrician for the colony. Or I was, anyway. I don’t suppose there’s going to be one now, is there?”

“Do you want to have killer bugs as neighbors?” Charlie asked. The caverns below had been crawling with monstrous centipedes with armor that would resist all but their most powerful weapons. Not to mention scimitar-like claws and jaws that could cut a person in half with a single blow. They’d won the battle, sure, but no one had any idea how many more of the monsters might be hiding in the warren of caves.

Charline didn’t want to find out, either. They were dusting off this planet and returning to Earth. If the higher-ups back home waited a colony here, they could send back a bigger team. Ideally one with tanks and Marines. Lots of Marines.

A low rumble shook the stones, sending a few clattering down from the pole pinning her exo-suit. The shaking increased in intensity.

“What is going on out there?” Charline asked.

“I think...it’s the ship. I can hear the engines whine,” Arjun said. “I think they’re taking off!”

“What?” Charlie felt her earlier panic returning. Why would they leave?

She’d been counting on help arriving from the ship to free her from the rubble. Something really bad was going on out there. Beth would never just abandon her friends.

“They’ll come back for us as soon as they can,” Charline said, as much to reassure her own fears as Arjun’s.

“I do hope they hurry,” Arjun said. His voice cracked, and Charline heard real fear from him for the first time.

“What is it? What is wrong?” she asked.

“I hear noises. Sounds of movement. From down below,” Arjun replied.

They’d already evacuated everyone out of the lower chambers. If he heard something moving around down there, it wasn’t human. Charline had a bad feeling she knew precisely what it was.

“It’s coming closer,” Arjun said. “Up the passage. What are we going to do?”

A very good question. Charline wished she had an answer, but her rifle was in the rack beside her. If she couldn’t get out of the suit to defend them, they were both in a lot of trouble.

Two

The same rock keeping Charlie pinned down might protect her from the alien bug – at least for a while. She’d seen the creatures’ strength and had no doubts they could dig their way down to her, given enough time.

Arjun was another story. He was out there entirely exposed. Once the alien reached the top of the tunnel and saw him, his life expectancy would be measured in seconds.

Of course, her own might not be much longer. They had to do something!

“I can’t see what the mess on top of me looks like. Can you shift some of it? Maybe you can move enough of the junk that I can break loose,” Charline said. “I have a rifle in here that I can use to defend us.”

“I can try,” Arjun replied. He followed that with a grunt and some clattering as he set about shifting rocks.

Charline wanted to grab her controls and try again to break loose, but she held off. If she moved while Arjun was close rocks shifting could injure him. Besides, the more rubble he moved, the better her odds of getting herself free. But wait too long and she wouldn’t have time to save him.

“How fast is it coming up?” Charline asked. She couldn’t hear the creature at all. That left her reliant on Arjun to let her know how close it was. The insects were lightning-fast. She knew it could close with them in a flash if it wanted.

“It sounds like it’s taking its time. So far, at least,” Arjun said.

Charline couldn’t help but feel impressed by his courage. He knew what was coming their way, but Arjun never allowed panic to overcome him. He kept working on the rocks as quickly as he could.

“All right, back up,” Charlie said. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer. “I’m going to try busting myself loose.”

“I’m clear. Go for it!”

Charline twisted the steering controls, desperate to get free. She felt the engines struggle against the weight of rock on top of her, heard them whine in protest. Rocks rattled against the suit’s plating as they clattered loose and fell to the cave floor. But it wasn’t enough. The motors didn’t have enough strength to overcome the weight still pruning down on her.

The exo-suits were marvels of technology. Wearing one, a person could lift about a ton. But they weren’t easy to get back on their feet if they fell over, even under the best of conditions. Which these were not!

“OK, I think I see the rock pinning you down. There’s one specific slab you’re hung up on,” Arjun said. “If I can shift that even a little, you ought to be able to get yourself free.”

Charline felt damned fortunate to end up trapped with someone who could keep a cool head in a crisis. “You’ve got nerves of steel.”

Charline let go of her control sticks, hoping Arjun could do something in time.

“Not really,” he replied. “I may need a change of pants when we get out of this mess.”

“Being scared doesn’t matter,” Charline said. She couldn’t count how many times she’d been terrified that she was about to die. “Getting the job done anyway is what counts.”

“Then I’m your man,” Arjun said, grunting with strain. “The rock is moving, but not enough. Let me try again.”

“Hurry!” Charline said.

“You really don’t need to remind me.”

Charline could hear his gasping breaths as Arjun struggled to remove the rock. It had to be massive. Would he be able to shift it in time? More rocks tumbled free.

“Whatever you’re doing, keep it up!” Charline said.

“Just about got you loose, I think. Then–”

Arjun cut off in mid-sentence. Charline heard him scream – whether in fear or pain, she couldn’t tell. She knew what that meant. The bug had reached the top of the cave. There was no more time. She had to break out now, or Arjun would die.

“Now or never! Give me everything you’ve got, you bucket of bolts!” Charline hollered as she jerked her hand controls hard. The suit twitched, then shifted. Slowly, it rose back to its feet, internal gyros helping Charline stabilize the machine as it stood. Rocks and debris tumbled away in all directions. She hoped Arjun hadn’t been hurt by a flying stone. There had been no time to warn him. Stopping the bug was the only thing Charline could focus on for the moment.

It must have just reached the upper chamber at the cave entrance. The alien insect was near the passageway down to the caves below. It stood on its rear legs, the front half of its body rearing back. The limbs it waved at her might look like those of a centipede, but Charline knew better.

Aside from their enormous size, each of those legs was a deadly weapon in its own right. The inside curve of each was sharp and strong. She’d seen them cut through metal before. The exo-suit would offer her some protection, but she was still vulnerable.

Arjun lay on the cave floor a short distance away from Charline, roughly halfway between her and the insect. There would not be time to exit the suit and use her rifle. The bug would carve them both to bits long before she could. But maybe she didn’t have to.

The insect wore its own armor, but so did Charline. The hardened steel of her suit protected its wearer against industrial accidents, but it ought to give at least some defense against alien claws, too.

And while her adversary was armed with dozens of razor-sharp claws, Charline wasn’t helpless. Her suit stood ten feet tall. The strength in its limbs came from powerful motors capable of lifting an enormous weight. Each arm ended in a gripper-hand that worked like a monkey wrench, capable of closing with enough force to bend steel.

Charline took an experimental step forward. She still wasn’t too used to wearing the suit. Nothing about walking around in the thing felt natural to her, and there wasn’t a manual on using an exo-suit for a boxing match with an alien bug! She didn’t know if a combat application was under development or had just been set aside as impractical. Either way, she was breaking new ground today.

Charline took another step forward, growing more confident.

The bug hesitated. Its body twitched, swaying back and forth like it was trying to figure her out. There was a theory that these insects were far more intelligent than their smaller cousins on Earth. Charline had seen them lay traps and demonstrate cunning firsthand. Now this one was showing caution. She was something new, outside the creature’s experience, so it paused to assess her. Maybe she could just frighten the thing away?

Charline moved her arms. Sensors embedded in the exo-suit read those motions and amplified them. The suit’s powerful arms rose in what she hoped was a threatening manner. The massive claw-hands ground shut, then opened again as she clenched and relaxed her own hands.

The alien bug reacted to her display, but not as she’d hoped. Instead of fleeing, the monstrous creature rushed forward, its deadly claws slashing the air as it came.

Three

Charline instinctively flinched away from the sudden attack. The suit sensors detected her movement and responded by activating motors to raise the powerful upper limbs. The move came just in time. Heavily armored arms collided with half a ton of angry insect. Razor-sharp claws squealed against hardened steel, trying to find purchase.

She screamed and staggered backward. The armor took one step back, then a second, and a third. for terrible moment Charline thought that the armor would collapse backward, baring her beneath those terrible claws and teeth. Instead, the suit’s back came to rest against the cave wall. The impact threw Charline hard against the harness, pinning her in place. She felt all the wind leave her lungs in a rush. Stars danced in front of her eyes, and it was all she could do to keep her arms raised.

Half out of instinct, she pushed hard with her right arm. Then she slammed her left arm forward, smashing it into the insect is hard as she could. It gave a squealing cry as the steel impacted the side of its head with a crunching sound. The insect hissed and backed away.

Breathing room. That was what she needed more than anything else right now. A little bit of space between them gave Charline a few seconds to collect herself. The creature eyed her warily, circling but not closing again. The armored plates were cracked and leaking fluid where she’d struck the thing.

She could hurt it. Both of them knew it. Now she was facing an adversary that would bring every bit of cunning it had to the battle.

It came in low, on her right side. Charline stepped back with her right leg and swung her right arm down hard. The steel crashed into the insect again, and this time the impact sent it sprawling across the cave. it was up again in a flash, but she could tell that she’d injured it. It backed away, making more hissing sounds.

“That’s right. You should run for it while you still can,” Charline said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

But she hadn’t broken its resolve yet. The insect backed away, spiking its claws into the wall and running sideways across the cave to escape her. It didn’t retreat back into the passage. She wasn’t sure where it was headed at first. Then she saw where it was going.

A body lay against the rocks on the far side of the room. That had to be Arjun. He was unconscious and helpless. In another few seconds, the bug would be on top of him. Charline didn’t know if it was going after Arjun out of spite or if it intended to use him as a hostage, but she couldn’t give it the chance to do either. Much as she wanted to stay as far away from the insect as possible, she had to stop it. Arjun had given them both a fighting chance. It was up to her to make the most of it.

Charline bounded forward, closing the gap with long strides.

“Oh no you don’t!” Charline yelled as she dashed forward. The insect didn’t stop, so she kept barreling on. Her suit smacked into the bug’s flank and crushed it against the cave wall. Its shriek was like tearing steel.

“Bet that got your attention,” Charline said.

Maybe a little too much, even. It wasn’t chasing Arjun anymore. No, she had all of its focus now.

Both ends of its centipede body wrapped themselves around her suit. Claws squealed against Charline’s steel shell as it tightened its embrace.

“Shit. Oh, shit,” Charline said. The plates shielding her belly bent inward under the pressure. Two claws punched through near her head, narrowly missing her face.

It wrapped around her like a boa constrictor. Mandibles and claws worked against the armor shielding Charline’s body. The insect probed for a weak spot. Sooner or later it would find one, or make one.

There had to be something she could do!

Charline felt her breaths come faster. Her pulse was racing. Her weapon of choice was a gun, damn it! Andy was the one for hand-to-hand fighting. But he wasn’t there. She was. And if she wanted to live through the next few minutes, she had to stop thinking and act.

One of her suit’s arms was still free. She raised the limb and then smashed it down on the insect as hard as she could. The alien didn’t release her, but it noticed the blow. Charline could feel it shifting its weight as it attempted to move further from the attack.

It was hurting. She felt sure of that. With new confidence, Charline reached out with that free arm and delivered three more hammerlike blows.

The last hit did the trick.

The bug reared back, lifting its upper body away from her. It rose then, jaws and mandibles closing on her head. The suit’s armor groaned under the stress. It began to bend. To buckle. Charline reached up. Both of her hands were free, and she locked them onto the bugs carapace. It kept trying to chew though her helmet, ignoring her attack.

“Fine,” Charline said. “Ignore this!”

The bug was probably the apex predator on this world. Maybe there was nothing here strong enough to crush its shell. But it hadn’t experienced the power of motor driven hydraulics before.

The suit gave a sharp whining noise as Charline depressed the studs to close both clawed hands. They ground slowly toward each other like the sides of a vice. As soon as they met carapace they stopped, and the whine intensified. It was a battle to the finish – human technology against alien biology.

“Come on, come on!” Charline said. A mandible punched through the armor over her head. She ducked to avoid it, but the tip traced a line of fire along her cheek. She was running out of time!

There was a loud cracking noise. She risked a glance outside her suit. The bug’s armored shell had finally given way. One side buckled in, then the other. The insect shrieked and writhed as it tried to escape her grasp, but it was helpless. Charline’s lips made a thin, determined line as she held down the buttons until the suit hands closed as far as they would go and the insect stopped moving.

She took a deep, gasping breath. It was over. The damned thing was dead at last. She pressed the studs again to open the suit hands, and what remained of the insect dropped to the cave floor with a sickening splat. Charline didn’t even want to think about what cleaning up this suit was going to entail. She couldn’t see, but imagined there had to be bug guts all over the front.

There was a handle set above her which released the upper hatch. Reaching up, she disengaged the bolts holding the lid down, and it popped open. There was a faint hiss as it slid up enough to let in some air. Charline recoiled from the smell. The bugs didn’t smell bad on the outside – that she had noticed, anyway. But they smelled terrible on the inside.

Charline reached a shaking hand up to the ladder behind her. She’d climb out, go check on Arjun, and maybe try to figure out a way out of this mess before another of the bugs came calling. Just because she’d figured out a way to kill them with the suit didn’t mean she was looking forward to repeating the process anytime soon!

Before she could lift the hatch all the way, a flicker of movement caught her eye. She dropped back into her harness, eyes alert. Was it another insect? Or was the damned thing not quite dead yet?

She watched for several long moments. Finally, she saw it again. The front legs were still attached to the head section of the bug. It had broken away when she squeezed. Now those limbs were slowly moving, like they were trying to drive the insect’s head back down the passage into the deeper levels of the caverns.

Charline had no idea if the thing could heal from such terrible wounds, and she wasn’t in the mood to find out. “Time to finish this.”

She strapped herself back into the harness, then lifted a leg. With firm deliberation, she lowered the leg onto the bug’s skull, pressing down with all the force the suit could manage. Charline didn’t stop until she heard the crunching sounds under her foot stop.

Four

Fresh air had never felt so good. Charline took in great, gasping lungfuls of the stuff as she descended the ladder on trembling limbs. She’d been in the suit too long. Her arms and especially her legs felt cramped and weak. The few steps over to Andy’s side were more like a limping stagger, but she made it and gave him a tight hug.

“I was starting to think we were never going to get out of there,” Charline said.

“We got to you as quickly as we could,” Andy replied. He sounded both hurt and worried. One of those things she couldn’t do much about. There was good cause for concern. They were in a lot of trouble, and she didn’t have any good ideas for getting them back out of it. Worse luck, it was her job to do so.

This wasn’t Charline’s thing. She wondered for the hundredth time how she’d managed to get talked into leading this team. People were not her specialty; computers were so much more reliable than human beings. The mission had seemed difficult enough back on Earth when she’d been assigned scores of specialized personnel and all the supplies they could load into a starship. Now the Satori was gone, off to who knew where along with most of her people and gear. They’d been preparing to evacuate the planet. Most people had already boarded the ship, and the lion’s share of the equipment had never been unloaded in the first place.

“I know you did,” Charline told Andy. She didn’t want him feeling badly. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t scary as hell in there.”

“It looks to me like you were the scary one. Congrats on being the first person to beat one of those bugs in hand-to-hand combat, I guess?”

Charline chuckled. “It would have been a very different story without the exo-suit.” She shuddered at that thought. If she hadn’t been wearing the suit when the cave ceiling collapsed, both she and Arjun would have been cut to pieces by that creature. Which reminded her.

“How’s Arjun doing?” Charline asked.

“He is with medical. What we have for medical, anyway,” Andy said. “We’re short-staffed. Most of our people boarded the Satori before it took off.”

“What happened? Why did they leave?” Charline asked. The starship’s captain was a good friend. there was no way Beth would have taken off without cause.

“I didn’t have time to get the full story,” Andy said. “I was worried about you.”

He ducked his head with a sheepish movement that Charline would have found adorable just about any other time. This won’t the time or place, though. She cocked an eyebrow, and his boyish smile vanished.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Charline asked. It had to be, if Andy was cracking jokes instead of giving her a straight answer.

“Yeah. It’s bad. They’d detected a ship entering orbit,” Andy said. It was clear he wasn’t talking about a human ship.

“Naga?”

“No. It arrived by wormhole,” Andy replied.

“Shit.”

They knew there was a third player out there, somewhere. The Naga were fighting someone. The prevailing theory had been some sort of civil war inside their society. But Naga didn’t have wormhole technology. The only ship Charline knew about that could project an artificial wormhole was Earth’s starship, the Satori. The same ship that had just taken off and left her people behind. Another ship arriving by wormhole meant they had a second alien race out there. That was probably who the Naga were fighting. From the sounds of it they were losing against this mysterious new force, which was good and bad news.

The Naga were so distracted it seemed unlikely they would send a second attack at Earth anytime soon. But if the Naga lost? That meant this third race was even stronger. If they were as hostile as the Naga, it could prove the end of humanity.

Beth hadn’t come right back, either. Digging out the entrance to the cave had taken hours. She should have returned. Would have returned, unless something had gone wrong. Charline felt helpless, stuck down on this planet while her friend was somewhere above, possibly fighting for her life.

She took a deep breath. Beth could take care of herself, and she had an excellent crew on the Satori to back her up. Charline’s job was to take care of her people until the ship could return. She wasn’t even sure she could manage that much. This world was barren, dry, and had multiple life-forms which seemed more than happy to have human on the menu. She looked around, feeling lost. Where to start?

“Andy, what do you think we should do?” Charline asked.

“Me? This is your mission. I mean … I don’t want to just barge in. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

That was true. He’d snuck about the Satori to tag along and help her out. Beth and Majel caught him quickly enough, but they agreed to let him stay on anyway. Charline hadn’t been thrilled at first, but she was more than glad he’d come along now.

“Andy, I don’t know how to do this,” Charline confessed. She sagged as she said the words, feeling more defeated than she ever had. “I don’t even know where to start.”

She could feel her cheeks heating. He wasn’t wrong. This was supposed to be her job, not his. But she couldn’t see a way through.

“All right. I’ve already got two guys out keeping watch. We don’t want anything sneaking up on us. We need to assess what we have in terms of supplies, but we also need to find some cover,” Andy said.

“You aren’t thinking about moving into the cave?” Charline asked.

“I’d rather not. We don’t know how many more of those things might be down there,” he replied. “But we can’t stay here, either.”

Charline thought as she took a few steps away from Andy. She ran a hand through her dirty hair, wishing for a shower. Water might become a real problem unless they could access a good source. The cave had water. The sea was tantalizingly close, but it was heavily salted. There was a desalination filter in the equipment they’d brought. Had it been left behind? Too few supply crates lay scattered about. They were going to have to make do with what they had until Beth could return for them, or Earth sent another ship.

“Let’s get everyone who isn’t on guard duty helping with inventory. The sooner we know what we have, the sooner we can start figuring out which needs are most critical,” Charline said.

“Makes sense. I’ll round up everyone except Karl and Arjun,” Andy said.

“Karl?”

“Our medic. Big guy over there,” Andy said, pointing. “He’s patching Arjun up. I figure leave him to it.”

“Of course. Let’s get everyone else moving, though. Less time to sit around will mean less time to worry about what we’re going to do. A little activity will help everyone,” Charline said.

Herself included. Charline felt like her nerves were shot. She’d known this mission would be hard and dangerous, but to have it go so completely sideways within hours of landing was beyond anything she’d anticipated. She felt woefully unprepared for everything they were up against, and figured the rest of her team probably felt the same.

Except maybe Andy. He remained as cool as always. His face was impassive, his eyes scanning the horizon for threats. These sorts of dangers had always come easily to him. Even though Charline had been in enough firefights to consider herself a veteran, she doubted she would ever obtain the same cool detachment Andy was able to display in a crisis.

As she was watching him, she saw his eyes dart off to the left.

“What...?” Charline started to ask what was going on. But the sound of multiple gunshots cut her off.

Five

The gunshots made Charline jump with surprise. She whirled toward Andy to ask him what was going on, but he was already moving away from here. Toward the fight, predictably enough. He had a sidearm at his hip and he was drawing the weapon as he ran.

She had a gun, too. It was probably still strapped inside her suit, where it had been earlier. That would have been useful against the bug. It would surely help against whatever new threat they faced. She turned toward the exo-suit, standing nearby like a forlorn suit of armor. Darting toward it, she hoped she could get to the weapon in time to be of help. More gunfire rattled through the air. Whatever was happening, there were several guns shooting at once.

The suit had ladder-like projections built into the side for the wearer to climb up into the cockpit. The entire contraption stood about twice as tall as Charline. She’d never have managed the climb without the hand and foot holds, but spurred by adrenaline as she was, it only took her a few moments to clamber up.

She slid into the small pilot’s area, feeling a little claustrophobic. A quick effort of will shoved those feelings away. Yes, she’d been stuck in the suit a long time, but it had protected her, too. The numerous tears in the suit’s metal plating were evidence enough what would have happened if she hadn’t been wearing the thing when the insect attacked.

There was her rifle! It was longer than her arm, smooth metal with an almost white sheen to the polish. Rather than the rough, blocky shapes of most weapons her team had, this one gun was smooth, all rounded curves. It was a Naga weapon, capable of firing variable strength energy pellets. The little balls of force could hit with enough strength to knock someone out or punch through steel, depending on the gun’s setting. It was a flexible weapon that allowed Charline to face a variety of threats.

They were rare. This was the only one they had, and Charline was keeping it for herself. Not only was she probably the best shot of the group, but she loved the rifle. Rank had its privileges.

Charline grabbed the rifle and turned to exit the small space. She jerked to a stop as sharp jaws snapped closed right where she was about to put her head.

“Holy shit!” she yelled, all but flying backward into the pilot’s mesh seat. A snarling face peered in at her through the cockpit opening. A row of deadly, knife-like teeth gnashed together. The thing scrabbled for solid purchase, looking like it was about to fall for a moment. No such luck. It clung on, recovered its balance, and started to creep toward her.

Ratzards. She’d named the things on their first trip to this planet. The creatures were the size of large dogs and looked like a mutant crossbreed of rats and lizards, which was how they’d gotten their name. They were a Naga bio-weapon and the reason for the planet being as desolate as it was. Their blood could infect waterways, turning them into sludge and ruining a biosphere.

The blood wasn’t what Charline was worried about just then. The ratzard’s claws and teeth were a more pressing issue. It reached toward her with a swiping paw. She leaned back, barely avoiding the strike.

Only a few feet separated them. Desperate, Charline slammed her hand down on the button which would close the suit’s hatch. Gears squealed as the cockpit lid ground downward. The ratzard hissed and leaped back. She could hear it crash to the ground outside. She was safe, at least for the moment. But from the sounds of the shooting outside, the attack involved a full pack of the creatures. Her people needed help.

She powered on the suit. It had proven useful against the alien bug. It would squish ratzards just as easily. Screens lit up, giving her a display of the area around her. The alien creature was on the ground nearby, hissing and growling up at her.

“You’ve just attacked the wrong damned person,” Charline said. Loudspeakers sent her voice booming outside, and the creature jumped back in alarm. She took a step forward. It lunged, trying to bite her ankle. Charline hear the clang sound as it impacted the steel armor encasing her leg. The ratzard darted back, hissing again.

“I don’t taste so good after all, huh?” she asked it.

Then she walked in toward the thing again, trying to stomp it into the ground like she had the bug. It darted sideways, avoiding her easily. The ratzards were fast, and she was too slow in this armor. Charline looked over at her rifle, wondering if she should just get out and blow the thing away. But if she cracked the hatch, it would be on her in seconds again. There might not be time to take a shot. Safer to stay inside her protective shell.

She tried to kick the ratzard and missed, but each movement was feeling more fluid to her. It was struggling to move fast enough to avoid her blows. Confidence growing, Charline leaned forward in her suit to take a swipe at the predator with one of the suit’s powerful claw hands.

The ratzard held position until the very last moment before dodging away, almost like it was taunting her. That was infuriating. Charline took another swing, her body bent sharply forward as she reached out to hit the creature.

A loud clang sounded in her ears. Something had hit her from behind! Charline felt her balance shift and tried to lean back. But the ratzard that had landed on her weighed too much. The force of its impact was too powerful. She kept the suit upright for only another second before it slowly toppled face-first into the dirt.

She flew forward against the harness. There hadn’t been time to completely strap herself in, so the webbing couldn’t absorb enough shock. Charline’s neck snapped forward when the suit smashed into the ground. Her head cracked on the panel in front of her, and stars flashed in front of her eyes.

Charline managed not to pass out, but her head felt fuzzy. Her whole body hurt from the fall. The display in front of her showed only the dirt below her, which wasn’t much use. Snarls and scraping noises told her that the ratzards hasn’t left. They were outside, trying to claw their way in. She didn’t think they could get to her, but if she just stayed put and waited for someone to rescue her, what sort of mission leader was she?

“Time to do this right, then,” Charline said. She grimaced as she carefully did up each strap. That would have been smart to do the first time. Now she was hurting when she didn’t have to be. “Lesson learned. Do the whole pre-flight check.”

That done, Charline took a deep breath. She forced one of her arms out, pushing her torso up. Then she braced herself with the other arm and slowly brought the exo-suit back to its feet.

There weren’t two ratzards arrayed against her. There were three. Charline didn’t know where the rest of her people were, but she had plenty of trouble to handle on her own.

“A gun would be really useful right about now,” she said. Casting her eyes about, she didn’t see a handy firearm for the suit to pick up. But she did see the gleam of metal on the ground. A crowbar lay there, left over from the effort to dig out the cave-in.

“That’ll do,” she said. She reached down to pick the tool up and took a few experimental swings, wielding the bar like it was a sword.

One of the ratzards leaped through the air toward her. Charline let out a yelp as it grew large in her screen. She moved more out of instinct than experience and brought the bar into the space between them. It connected solidly with the ratzard with a wet thwack. The creature flew ten feet off to the side before falling to the ground. It didn’t get up again.

“Now that’s more like it!”

The other two creatures were more cautious now. They spread out, flanking her from both sides. Charline turned toward one and raised her weapon, sending it crashing down. The ratzard dodged. It had forced her to lean forward again in order to try to hit it, and Charline knew what was coming next.

The other creature landed on her back again. These things learned fast! They’d figured out a trick which could work against her, so they were trying it again. But Charline was ready for them this time. She braced one of her legs against the ground to absorb the force of the impact and then flipped herself backward.

There was a short howl of surprise from behind her as the startled ratzard fell to the ground right before a ton of steel landed on top of it. Then there was a crunching sound, but no more movement from the creature. She brought the armor back to its feet again.

“Two down. One to go,” Charline said. “Come on then – let’s dance!”

But the third ratzard looked back and forth at the bodies of its fallen pack-mates and seemed to think better of continuing the altercation. It gave a long howl that chilled Charline’s blood. Then it darted past her, running off and vanishing into the ruins nearby. She saw several other doglike shapes scatter as well, disappearing as quickly as hers had.

Charline let them go. There was no catching them in this armor. The things were too fast for her. Besides, her people might need her. She had no way to know how bad the attack had been for the rest of their party. She started in the direction Andy had gone, hoping that he was all right.

Six

By the time Charline came stomping over ready for action, Andy had already blunted the rest of the attack. On woman was bitten, but Karl was already seeing to her by the time Charline came stomping over. The bodies of three dead ratzards lay on the ground near Andy. He was dirty but otherwise unharmed.

“Can’t leave that suit alone, can you?” he asked with a grin.

“It worked. Two dead ratzards back there to show for it,” she replied.

“Really?” Andy’s eyebrows shot up. “Good work, then. I’d never have figured that suit for a weapon, but you’ve done amazing things with it. Maybe we need to reconsider that.”

Charline wondered why no one had been using them for combat on Earth. A smaller version of the suit was worn by some infantry like a thin exo-skeleton. It gave them the ability to move a little faster and carry more weight. But it didn’t have an armored shell like her suit. It wouldn’t have protected nearly as well. She decided to look into it more later.

Her hands were shaking as she undid the straps holding her into the suit and powered it down. Too many life-threatening situations in too short a time. But that was probably going to be the way of things for the duration. If they could count on nothing else, it was that the planet Dust would throw surprises at them every chance it got. Charline knew that it wasn’t the planet’s fault they ended up in deep trouble every time they came there. Even so, she couldn’t help feel like the place was plain bad luck.

She popped the hatch and grabbed her rifle. She wasn’t letting the weapon leave her side again for as long as it took to get off this planet. Then she pushed herself out of her cocoon. Hauling her body over the side and finding footholds to climb down took all her concentration. It wasn’t until she reached the ground that Charline felt she could relax. Then she sagged against the rocky soil.

“Just one injured, then?” Charline asked, scanning the assembled faces.

“Two if you count Arjun,” a large man said. He had a bushy salt and pepper beard and long hair, with a build that reminded Charline of a bear more than a man. That had to be Karl. Andy said he was their medic? Charline tried to imagine his bedside manner and decided that she didn’t want to find out personally.

“Well, that was lucky, then,” Charline said. “But they could come back at any time. We need to work quickly. Set up a defensible camp to hold them off next time.”

“You sure there’s going to be a next time?” a woman asked. “We took out a good few of them.”

“What’s your name?” Charline asked. She needed to get to know these people fast.

“Tessa. I’m – I was supposed to be security,” the woman replied.

“You good with that gun?” Charline asked, nodding at the pistol the woman had holstered at her side.

“Yup. And just about any other small arms you need me to shoot.”

“Good. I have a hunch we’re going to need all the security we can get before this is over,” Charline said.

There was no telling how long it might take for the Satori to return. If the ship had been damaged, they might be out there making repairs even now. That could take hours or even days.

And if the worst had happened? If the Satori had been destroyed by the unknown alien ship? Earth might not be able to send another ship to check on them for weeks. There were only a few space-worthy vessels available. More would be built in the months ahead, but for the time being Earth’s space navy was frighteningly small.

“They’ll be back. There’s not a lot to eat out there in the desert,” Charline said. “I’m betting they come at us again. They’ll wait until they have more numbers, but we need to be ready.”

“Makes sense,” Tessa replied. “What’s our next move?”

It was a good question. Defenses had just become a major priority. Probably more important than supplies. Or maybe they could do both at the same time?

“Andy, take Tessa and one other person. Go check the surrounding ruins. See if you can find a building sturdy enough that it’s not going to drop on our heads. Something we can defend,” Charline said.

“On it. Tessa and … Ralph. You’re with me,” he said.

A tall, slim man stood and joined Andy. Charline noted that Ralph didn’t seem thrilled about being called on for the search team, but he went anyway. She might have to watch him, but for the next while she would let him be Andy’s problem.

“The rest of you, come with me. We’re going to check the supplies and see what we’ve got,” Charline said. “Once we know what we have to work with, we can plan out our next move. Karl, please stay with the wounded and keep an eye on them? I don’t want anything attracted by the smell of blood to take advantage of our injured.”

He nodded. “Can do. I know which end of a gun you point at the bad guy. Or bad whatever those things were.”

There was something about Karl’s manner that told Charline he knew a lot more than that. The smooth way he picked up a rifle and ran a safety check without missing a beat told her that he was no stranger to weapons. The man was intriguing. There was certainly more to him than met the eye.

She needed to learn about all of these people. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses was of vital importance. Charline had assumed she’d have time to do that while they set up a base of operations, but there was no margin for safety anymore. They were living on a razor’s edge. Any advantage she could win for them might make the difference. Getting familiar with her team had to be a priority.

“OK, we’ve got our jobs. Let’s get to it. The sooner we have some security, the better we’re all going to feel,” Charline said.

There were nods and even thin smiles from the people around her. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. She had to keep them busy enough that they didn’t have time to worry over how desperate their situation really was. Charline would let that be her job. If she could appear confident to the others, that was one burden at least that she could lift from their shoulders onto her own.

Seven

Charline’s eyes lit up when she opened the third crate. The first two had contained some spare parts and machinery. While those things would have been important for the colony, they were far from essential given the current circumstances. This container was something different entirely.

“Guess what I found!” Charline called out.

“Food?” replied the man standing next to her. “Because we’re going to be hungry soon if we don’t find some in one of these things. Unless those lizard things are edible?”

Charline shuddered. The idea of eating ratzard was enough to upset her stomach. “No. Their blood does bad things when combined with water. I can only imagine what would happen if it got loose inside a person.”

She could well imagine it, much as she didn’t want to. The black stuff the ratzards used as blood was the weapon part of their bio-weapon nature. Aside from carrying oxygen and nutrients around inside the creatures, it was a bacterial life form in its own right, living in symbiosis with the ratzards. But expose some of the blood to water and sunlight, and it reproduced itself at an alarming rate. The Naga had used it to coat every waterway on this planet, effectively turning what might once have been a vibrant world into a dry husk. All of the planet’s water had been trapped in the oceans under thick mats of the stuff.

They’d undone that, using a counter-bacteria they’d developed that fed upon the black stuff. The oceans here on Dust were healing as their bacterium spread. In time, maybe the world would see rain again. They’d already found a few small plants trying to grow in the dry soil. Dust might someday be full of life again, but that would be a long time in the future.

“Not food, unfortunately. But I found the fabricator,” Charline said. She fished through the crate, trying to see if all the parts were there. It looked like they had the entire machine, which would be incredibly useful. The colony mission had been sent along with a large, industrial-grade fabrication machine. It worked something like an extremely advanced 3D printer. But instead of printing only simple objects, the fabricator was able to produce a number of more complex machines as well. Things like gears, motors, and basic circuit boards would have been programmed into the computer which drove the thing. If they could input the correct materials, this machine could give them a number of advantages that might spell the difference between survival and death.

“I still wish it had been food,” the man grumbled. But he came to stand beside her and look into the container. “It looks like the whole machine is in there.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Charline said. She tried and failed to remember the man’s name, and opted to just go for the introduction. She reached out her hand for him to shake. “I’m Charline.”

“I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m not dumb,” he replied.

Charline left her hand extended. She flashed him a broad grin and cocked her head a bit to the side.

“And ... you have no idea who I am, do you?” he asked. He looked down at the ground, shook his head, and laughed.

“Nope, not a clue,” Charlie replied with a chuckle.

He stood up straight, looking her in the eye and clasped her hand. “Halcomb. Roger Halcomb, at your service.”

“And what’s your specialty, Halcomb?”

He laughed again and gestured toward the crate beside them. “This, actually. I’m a mechanic by trade, but I love these things the most. Give me time and materials, and I can make you pretty much anything you might need.”

“I promise to keep you all kinds of busy,” Charline said.

Her mind was already abuzz with ideas. Having the fabricator at all was a boon. But if Halcomb was as good as he said, his expertise might be just as valuable. Making stuff was good. Having someone who knew how to create more complex machines from the parts the fabricator printed was even better.

“Not like I can build you a starship, now,” Halcomb said. “I’m good, but I’m not a miracle worker.”

“They’ll be back for us.”

“You think?” He sounded dubious.

Charlie wished that she could be certain herself. What if the Satori had been destroyed? Help might be very long in coming. If it ever did.

One step at a time. Something she did know: her people needed to feel like she believed rescue would arrive soon. Hope was important, if they were going to fight off the fear that had to be gnawing at each of them.

“Yes. Beth will be back. She’s been in much worse situations than this. An alien ship isn’t a new thing for her, you know,” Charline said. She worked at keeping the tension she was feeling out of her tone.

“If you say so,” Halcomb said.

Charline let the conversation drop and went on to the next crate. It opened to reveal a heavy machine gun and canisters of ammunition. Her eyebrows shot up. If the ratzards came back, that might come in really handy. It was heavy enough that they would have to place it someplace fixed. That would limit its usefulness.

An idea came to mind. “Halcomb, you think we could rig a gun onto the exo-suit?” she asked.

He stopped and rubbed his chin. “I don’t see why not. It’s just a matter of sending a fire signal to the firing mechanism and bolting it on. You thinking to do a little robot-fighting? I’m not sure that’s going to work better than just sitting the gun on the ground the way its supposed to be fired.”

He could be right. It might be utterly useless to configure the suit in that manner. It could make it ungainly or hurt its ability to haul things around. There were a zillion reasons why it could go very wrong. But the memory of how she’d felt inside the suit during the fighting wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d been scared, sure. But she had also felt powerful. Stronger than she ever had without the armor. Armor – that’s what it felt like. Wearing the suit, she felt like a medieval knight, festooned in heavy plate armor. She’d even been swinging a big stick at the ratzards to complete the effect.

“And the ratzards could come at us from any direction. Unless we find more of these guns in other crates, I think we’d be better off mounting it to a mobile platform. We might need to move quickly, too,” Charline said. “Better to be prepared for anything.”

“No arguing with that. I’ll see about it after we’re done reviewing the supplies,” Halcomb said.

“I’d appreciate that. Sooner is better.”

“You think those lizards will be back soon?” he asked. His eyes darted from side to side, scanning the shadows left by rocky outcrops like a ratzard was going to leap out at him.

“We look like food. They were hurt when they attacked us, but I don’t think it will be long before their hunger overcomes their fear. We need to be prepared before then,” she said.

Charline went on to the next container. This one looked like it might hold some sort of foodstuff, which would be as good news as the gun had been. They had no idea how long it would take for help to arrive. Food and water were going to be a major problem soon if they didn’t find some rations. She leaned in and clicked open the latches.

“Oh! Uh, don’t need to open that one…” Halcomb started to say.

But he was just a little too slow noticing. Charline already had the clasps undone and was flipping open the lid. She looked inside the crate, eyes wide. This wasn’t what she expected to find at all. Although it was food-stuff, after a fashion. Charline looked up at Halcomb, who flushed a furious red.

“I hope you have a very good explanation for this,” she said, pointing at the crate.

“Well, ma’am, it was gonna be a long trip, right?

“Mhmm.”

Her flat stare made him drop his gaze to avoid it; impossibly, he turned even brighter crimson. Charline was trying not to laugh out loud. She knew she was barely keeping the grin from her face, but Halcomb was too embarrassed to notice.

“I just thought, you know, we might want a little something to keep everyone happy. Keep morale up,” Halcomb finished.

“Ah. So this was something you brought along to share with everyone?” Charline was pretty damned sure it wasn’t. He hadn’t meant for anyone else to discover the stash. If the landing had gone as planned, he probably would have gotten away with it, too. Pretty slick.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a sheepish grin. He knew he wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Excellent. You’re officially our new morale and wellness officer,” Charline said.

“I’m … what?”

“Morale and wellness. Since you took the initiative and started working on a project of that nature, I thought you were the logical candidate for the job,” Charline said. She chuckled. “Of course, there isn’t too much for you to do in that post – but sharing out some of your loot here if it becomes appropriate might be nice.”

She reached into the bin and pulled out a bottle of aged whiskey. It wasn’t the most expensive looking thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t recognize the brand label at all: “White Lion”? But that didn’t mean it was bad stuff. Lots of little shops were selling their own small-label brands. It might be really good, for all she knew.

Or it might be complete shit. Either way, it would be good to have the team able to kick back and celebrate a bit, once they actually had something to celebrate.

“Come on, let’s finish the rounds of these supplies and get over to the others,” Charline said. She peered in the direction Andy had taken his scouting team. They hadn’t gone far, and judging by the way he was still poking around the same mound of rubble it looked like he’d already found them a nest. Now they just had to dig in and hold it.

Eight

The spot Andy found was better than it had looked from a distance. It was the ruined shell of a building, ceiling long since collapsed and ground into chunks of rubble. The walls were broken, as well. Gaps showed here and there between tall teeth of stone rising from the ground. The spaces between allowed her people cover from which to fire out at anything that attacked them. The space in the middle wasn’t very well sheltered, but Halcomb found a tarp and some cord from somewhere and strung them up as an overhead cover. There wasn’t any rain to keep off, but it would shelter them from the broiling heat of the sun.

They’d hauled most of the supplies inside. Charline wanted to use the suit to help, but Halcomb had been as good as his word. As soon as he was able, he started work on the machine. She wanted to watch as he modified it, but he shooed her away. She wandered about the camp, looking for something to do, but the others seemed to be taking good care. Andy was setting up watch schedules and telling people where they would stand guard. Karl supervised the move of the wounded into the shelter of the tarp and tended them once they were there. Charline went over to say hello to Arjun and thank him for his help, but a scowl from Karl made her think twice about the idea. The medic had been clear he didn’t want his patients bothered for anything short of an emergency. Visiting a hurt friend probably didn’t constitute one, and Charline was loathe to use her rank on anything she didn’t have to.

Instead she went back outside the camp and helped drag the last few crates inside. They had at least found some food, but there wasn’t much of it. If the Satori was longer than a couple of days they were going to start getting very hungry. Charline couldn’t imagine being hungry enough to eat a ratzard, but it could actually come to that if they were stuck here too long. Although the insects might be safer to eat. Neither proposition sounded much fun.

“Charline! Come see!” Halcomb called out.

She jogged over, excited. “So soon?”

“I told you it wouldn’t take too long. Not much to do,” Halcomb said. He turned sideways and let her pass him to look at her machine. He’d done more than a few changes.

The heavy machine gun was mounted on the suit’s left arm. Why he’d chosen left, she didn’t know. Maybe to allow her to use a crowbar in the other hand? Charline grinned at the idea. Hey, if it worked, she’d use it.

Then her eyes took in the shoulders, which had also been altered. This time she wasn’t as happy.

“Is that my rifle bolted in up there?” Charline asked. It had better not be, she thought. But she was pretty certain that was precisely what she was looking at.

“Yup. Got it hooked into the controls. Shoulder mount for optimal targeting and recoil absorption. I added a few controls inside to toggle the shot intensity from the Naga gun. And to fire both weapons, of course,” Halcomb said. “Fixed those holes in your suit, too. No sense going into battle looking like swiss cheese.”

Charline walked over to the suit. The legs looked wrong, or at least different. She ran a hand over them, noting the rough texture where it had been smooth before. He’d added something there. More thickness? Yes, that had to be it.

“You’ve increased the thickness of the armor plating as well,” Charline said.

“Was wondering if you would notice. Yes, I did. Cut up one of the steel containers and welded the slices on as plates. I don’t know how much still it will take to stop those insect claws, but this will do better than what you had before,” Halcomb said.

“Thanks. It’s gorgeous,” Charline said. She hopped up the stepping stone holds built into the suit’s side and peered into the cockpit area. It looked almost the same. Only a small console had been added. That had to be what controlled the weapon systems.

“I think so, too. You know, we could probably make more of these,” he said.

“What? How?”

“We’ve got a fair number of parts and plenty of spare steel. Only the one Naga rifle, of course, but we have other weapons. If we went with one heavy gun per suit, I’m sure I could build at least one more. Maybe two or three if we’re lucky on the spare parts,” he said.

“Sounds like a plan. Why don’t you see what we have? No using anything essential, but if it’s spare parts for something that’s still on the Satori, it’s fair game. Once you know what’s possible, come tell me,” Charline said. “No starting until I gave the OK, though.”

“Yes, ma’am. You got it.”

A commotion from the west side of the enclosure caught Charline’s attention. Someone was yelling over there.

She tried to see what was going on. That side of their camp faced toward the ruined alien city. If the ratzards were going to come at them from anywhere, that was the most likely direction of travel. She started toward the shouts.

“More over here!” came a call from the north side.

“Here too!” someone shouted from the south. Gunshots rang out there, as well.

Charline hung suspended between three fights for what felt like forever. She wanted to help all her people, but she could only go in one direction. And in this case, the best direction might not be toward the fighting at all. Whirling on her heel, Charline darted back toward the suit.

She hit the side with speed and used her momentum to ascend the first few rungs. It was enough for her to grasp the lip of the pilot’s compartment so that she could haul herself inside.

“Time to see if this actually works,” she muttered.

She flicked the switches to power on the systems. The suit responded with a series of loud humming noises as it came online and did self-checks. This time she took the few seconds to carefully buckle herself into the harness. No sense taking herself out of the action with a fall. The webbing was there for a reason.

By the time she was belted in safely, the suit was online. Charline took a step forward. She could hear gunfire from every direction except the east now. It was hard to tell which way was a feint and which the real attack. Logic said that the west was probably the largest force of ratzards. Worst case, she could easily move from there to either north or south, if she had to.

“Clear a path! Coming through!” she called out over the loudspeakers. She had to be certain that her words were heard even over the din of combat.

Charline took a lumbering step forward, and then a second. The feeling she remembered returned in a rush, that sense of being locked inside an invulnerable suit of armor. She grinned. If the suit worked as advertised, it was more than just armor now. It was a weapon as well.

She reached the inside edge of the low wall of rubble and took a step up, easing her way onto the pile. It wouldn’t do to tip over in front of everyone! But she made the top without too much trouble. The screen in front of her gave her a good view of what was coming at them. She’d never seen so many ratzards! There had to be two dozen or more on this side alone. She’d assumed they lived in small packs, but it looked like they were capable of cooperation on a much grander level. They might not be able to hurt Charline within her protective armor, but if they got past her they would tear her people to shreds.

It was up to her to make sure that didn’t happen.

Nine

There was no targeting system for her heavy machine gun. That was the first thing Charline noticed as she raised her right arm and clicked the button to fire. Rounds sparked off the rocks just past the ratzards. She was shooting with Kentucky windage: aiming, firing, and then adjusting to fire again. The second burst she squeezed off almost clipped a ratzard.

Almost wasn’t good enough! They were closing fast. On either side of her, Charline could hear guns open up. Two of the creatures dropped. Her people were fighting back, but it wasn’t going to be enough. There were too many ratzards coming at them too rapidly.

“I’ve got this. I can do this,” she whispered to herself.

Charline’s thoughts drifted back to her days of competition shooting. The cool calm that she’d learned to cloak herself in during matches came back like a reflex. She was her weapon now. It was part of her. An extension of her arm. That there was a shell of steel in the way didn’t matter.

The sound of her weapon firing was thunderous. Rounds ripped free from the barrel in a series of short bursts as Charline dragged her arm slowly from right to left. She hit target after target in the raking pass of fire.

Some of them were still alive, yelping as they tried to limp away. Those she let go. They weren’t a threat anymore. Half their number hadn’t gotten the message yet, though. They were still rushing the camp.

She took another step forward and kicked at the first as it came near. Her armored foot connected, sending the animal soaring through the air. It didn’t get back up again. Another ratzard tried to gnaw at her other leg. She aimed her left arm gun down at it and fired a short burst that tore her attacker apart.

If she could keep all their attention on her, it would keep the rest of her people free from danger. The ratzards would have a hard time hurting her. Charline had to make sure they couldn’t figure that out, keep them thinking that she was the biggest, tastiest target they’d ever seen. Making herself more tempting ought to do the trick. She took several more long strides out into the middle of the pack, guns blazing. Several more ratzards went down. The rest gathered around her from all sides. They were cautious though, not willing to close in right away.

Time to give them a weakness they could exploit. Charline intentionally made her suit stagger, then topple forward onto one knee. She reached down with her right arm to stabilize herself before the entire suit fell face-first into the dirt, but that was about as clear-cut a “look, I’m hurt!” signal as she could think of offering the creatures.

They took the bait. In a coordinated surge the lizard-like things rushed her armor. Several of them leaped up onto the suit’s back, snarling behind her. Others nipped at her legs and arm. The sound of teeth meeting steel was like nails on a chalkboard, but Charline was sure they couldn’t get through her armor. Well, she was hoping they couldn’t, anyway. There’d never been time to adequately study the ratzards, so nobody but the Naga knew their full capabilities, and…

She shoved those thoughts away. Everything they did out here carried risk. That was fine. Keeping her people safe was worth it. Besides, the rest of the team seemed to have gotten the idea. They were blazing away with their weapons, picking off distracted ratzards. Charline felt the weight vanish from her back as the two snarling animals were shot off. Time to pick back up where she’d been before.

Charline rose, standing with a sudden movement that startled the ratzards. They jumped away. One wasn’t fast enough, and she slammed her foot down on it. She turned the machine gun on the others, raking them with fire. The shoulder rifle was more difficult to aim, but she kept up a steady barrage with both weapons. More of the creatures went down.

All at once, they broke. Again, it seemed like there was some unspoken signal that triggered the activity. One moment they were snarling and snapping at her; the next they all turned in unison and bolted away toward the ruined city. This fight was over, but Charline needed to make sure that they won all of the next fights, too. She needed to teach these animals fear, to show them that the price of attacking humans was terrible death.

She gave chase, breaking the suit into a run. The ratzards were fast. The augmented limbs of her suit were almost keeping pace with them, though. They were getting ahead and would eventually escape. But Charline wasn’t planning on chasing them forever.

Bullets from her arm-gun blew one ratzard apart. She shifted her aim and injured another one. The bullets screamed through the air, raking the creatures as they fled. Another one went down, then another.

There were precious few ratzards left when she finally gave up the chase. The ammunition canister for her machine gun was low, and she didn’t want to be led into a trap. It was hard thinking that these animals might be smart enough to try trapping her. But they’d assumed the insects were simple creatures and learned otherwise. Charline wasn’t taking anything for granted when it came to this planet.

A crackling in her ear broke into her concentration. It was Andy, calling over her radio. “Charline, you OK?”

“Yeah. I’ve stopped pursuit. How’s the camp?”

“Nobody hurt, thank god. That could have been bad. Nice work out there!” Andy said. She could feel his infectious good humor fill his voice, even over the radio.

“Thanks! Seems like the armor is working like a dream so far,” Charline said.

“Armor? I suppose that’s what it is,” Andy said. “I hadn’t thought about it like that before.”

It wasn’t the first time Charline had invented something that changed the game. She’d made a career of such things. But something about this concept felt even more important than those others. It was one thing to program a new algorithm for blocking computer viruses or track visual recognition of objects. It was quite another to invent a new weapons platform that saved peoples’ lives. It was a good feeling.

As she was turning around to return to camp, Charline caught a glimpse of something glowing in the sky. She stopped to examine the bright light. It only took her a moment to realize the light was a ship coming down from space. Atmosphere heating up against its hull created the bright aurora she was seeing. Her heart jumped, thinking they were being rescued already.

But that wasn’t the Satori coming down from the stars. The ship was too small. The rebuilt Satori was about twice as big as this craft. Charline had never seen a ship like this before, which meant it was probably the ship Beth had taken off to deal with. It had either chased the Satori off or destroyed her. Either way, it was coming back to check on the planet, which was bad news. They had to get out of sight, fast!

The only way to manage that might be as dangerous as the ship. There was only one place they might be able to remain undetected by a ship’s sensors, and that was underground. Where the monsters that made ratzards look like cute puppies lived.

Charline tapped her microphone to send a quick alert. “Radio silence. Incoming ship. Get ready to move.”

Ten

By the time Charline reached the camp, Andy already had everyone up and moving. The tarp was down. People were grabbing what supplies the could while they made ready to leave. Even so, she could see far too many signs of their presence scattered about the area. The stones piled as defensive positions, cleared space where the injured had lain, and the footprints scattered all about would be dead giveaways even if they managed to carry away all their gear. That part she could help with, at least. The suit might be armed and armored now, but its original purpose was to haul cargo around. It could still perform that duty as well as it ever had.

“Load as much stuff as you can onto the fabricator crate and strap it down. I’ll carry it with us,” Charline said.

It was lucky they hadn’t unpacked the machine yet. Moving it after assembly would have been impossible. They would have had to take it apart and carefully repack the pieces. No time for a task that complex.

Charline didn’t know how long they had before the ship was in range to spot them, but it couldn’t be long. That was assuming it hadn’t already detected them. If it had, running wasn’t going to do them any good.

“Where are we going?” Andy called up to her as he loaded mere supplies onto the growing pile.

“The only place we might not be spotted.”

“Shit. I was afraid that’s what you had in mind,” he replied.

“Unless you have a better idea, I figure we take the devil we know over the one we don’t,” Charline said. When he didn’t reply right away, she went on. “I don’t like it, either. But if that ship is coming for us instead of the Satori...”

“It means they probably fought Beth and won,” Andy said. He cinched down the straps holding the pile of gear together. Neither of them wanted to say what they both had to be thinking. Beth would never willingly abandon her friends, but battles in space were brutal. The losing side was usually destroyed, not vanquished. Charline hoped her friend was alive out there, but the evidence against it was mounting.

“We’re headed for the cave. Carry everything you can,” Charline said. “Assume anything we leave behind is gone for good.”

“We’re going back down there with the killer bugs?” Halcomb asked. “Ma’am, I’d be happier taking my chances with whatever’s coming in that ship.”

Charline heard a few murmurs of assent from the others. She needed to nip that in the bud quickly. They needed a clear chain of command. She couldn’t afford to have people questioning her decisions. Right or wrong, having someone in charge was essential in a crisis. Not making a decision fast enough was often worse than making the wrong decision.

“You think so? Will you still feel that way when they rake our position from a thousand feet up? Blow us all to bits first, come down and check us out later?” Charline asked. When Halcomb hung his head instead of meeting her gaze, she knew she was on the right track. “That ship is probably the same one the Satori took off to deal with. If it came back and our ship didn’t, I think we can assume they’re hostile. Let’s move.”

“Yes ma’am. Right on it,” Halcomb said. “You heard the lady! Let’s grab our gear and get the hell out of here!”

Charline shook her head inside the armor, where no one could see her bemused smile. Halcomb was the first one to question authority. But both times he’d done so, he folded in a heartbeat. She suspected he wasn’t nearly as rebellious as he wanted everyone to think. He voiced the fears and concerns all of them had to be harboring, just loud enough that Charline was forced to deal with him. When the ‘rebellious man’ capitulated to her decision, it became that much easier for the others to follow along as well.

Cunning, that. If she was right about his motives, then Halcomb was smarter than she’d given him credit for.

She leaned in next to the pile of gear and set her claw-like hands to the grips in the big crate it all rested on. This was a heavy load. Charline watched as the stress gauges went into the yellow when she lifted the crate. By itself the fabricator was pushing the limits for the suit. With the rest of the gear she was well past the margin for safety. There was no other way to get even most of their equipment to safety, though. She had to do the best she could.

“Move out, everyone!” Charline called. She followed her own order, stepping forward with the load. One foot, then another, she made her way across the dusty field to the cave entrance. Remnants of the cave-in were still piled there. If they could get everyone inside in time then the rubble ought to help conceal their presence. But their footprints were everywhere. It wouldn’t be hard to tell where they’d gone to ground.

She’d deal with that when she could. At least they would have to come down to the ground and face them in the tunnel. That might even the odds a little. They just had to hope there were no more insects waiting below, or they could end up facing enemies from both sides at the same time. It was a dangerous position to be in. Charline learned long ago that hope was not a very strong strategy, but there she was hoping that it would somehow work out. She didn’t have any better ideas.

She crossed the threshold into the cave, only a few of her people ahead of her. She would have to lead the way down. If there were more insects below, her armor was best suited to fighting them. Now that she had weapons mounted, she was pretty sure she could make short work of one or two stragglers if she had to.

“Move fast, folks! Head on down the tunnel around the first corner,” Andy said.

Charline looked back over her should and saw him doing something at the cave entrance. “What’re you up to, Andy?”

“That cave-in was a good idea. If they see a cave entrance when they land, they might come downstairs to take a look around. That would be bad for us,” he said. “If they see a pile of rubble, though? It might throw them off.”

Charline moved on, rounding the corner. She had to be careful not to tread on any of the people. They were all fragile compared to her armor. If she stepped the wrong way or leaned in a bad direction, someone could be badly hurt. It was much harder to steer the suit safely inside the tight confines of the tunnel.

Any came running around the corner and shouted, “Fire in the hole!”

A moment later there was a booming sound, followed by the grinding of rubble smashing against itself. A plume of dust came around the corner, making Halcomb cough. Andy went back up the tunnel to investigate and returned quickly with a thumbs up.

“It’s blocked again. Here’s hoping that works,” he said.

“You have any more of those explosives?” Charline asked.

“That was all of them,” Andy replied.

“Getting out again is going to take a while, then,” Charline said. “Let’s hope there isn’t anyone waiting for us downstairs.”

Eleven

Too close to the surface, they might still be picked up by sensors aboard the alien ship. It wasn’t enough to merely be underground. They had to go deep if they wanted to be certain of avoiding detection. Which meant facing that room full of pools at the bottom and whatever life was still there waiting for them.

“I’ll lead out down the passage. As soon as we reach the bottom, I’ll drop the load. It’ll give you at least some cover if they try to rush you,” Charline said. She figured it would block at least part of the tunnel opening. That might not save them if a large number of the insects attacked, but it was better than no protection at all.

“And what are you going to do?” Andy asked.

“Scout ahead and see if we have company.”

“Not alone, you’re not,” Andy replied.

“I’m best equipped to survive one of those things if it jumps out. You lead a team to cover me from the tunnel mouth,” Charline said.

“You could swap out. I can go in with the suit.”

This was hard enough without Andy trying to be a hero. When had he gotten so overprotective? It’d snuck up on her. They hadn’t been on a mission together since they started seriously dating. Maybe that was it? Guys just lost all their brains after the first date?

“You’ve never piloted this suit with the mods, and I’ve logged a lot more hours in the basic suits than you have. That’s why I was doing the loading earlier, remember?” Charline snapped. “This isn’t a debate, Andy.”

He didn’t reply. Charline kept walking.

She didn’t have time to deal with this, right now. Later they’d need to have words. He meant well, but he wasn’t helping. The truth was, she’d have given just about anything to not have to go into that cavern. Letting someone else be the bait while she waited behind cover to use her marksmanship skills to best effect was an appealing alternative. But she was the person most likely to survive the experience. None of the others had has much practice with the suit as she’d have. Certainly not under combat conditions.

Charline set her burden down just inside the tunnel entrance. It settled with a loud thud that made her wince, but her armor was already making enough noise. Every footfall landed with a resounding clang of metal against stone.

Anything waiting for her in the chamber beyond would have long since heard her coming. It wasn’t a comforting thought. She looked out into the massive cavern and flicked on the armor’s spotlights. The light reflected off scattered pools of water, sending reflections against walls and ceiling that were very far away.

The cavern was immense. They had only begun to explore its depths on their last foray when the insects attacked. The bugs had set a neat ambush. Only Beth catching a glimpse of them in their hiding place had saved her people from being wiped out.

Charline scanned the open space, watching for movement. But there was nothing, not even the smallest ripple in a pool of water.

“It’s still as a grave in there,” Charline said. Then she winced, hearing her words. It was a grave, after all. Many soldiers had died in there during the fight with the bugs. If she wasn’t careful, she could end up joining them.

The armor was good, but it wasn’t impervious to the insects’ clawed legs. Charline glanced to her left, where Halcomb had soldered up the tear one strike had made near her head. Not even close to invulnerable.

“OK, folks. I’m going in. Cover me from the barricade,” Charline said. The gear piled up made an impressive fighting position for something so hastily put together. The crates wouldn’t stop the bugs completely, but might slow them down enough. Enough for what, she wasn’t quite sure. There were damned few weapons that could punch through the insects’ carapace armor, and two of the ones they had were mounted on her suit. If she fell, the others were going to be in a lot of trouble.

She took a few steps out into the open. Each footfall echoed through the cave, the clanking sound coming back to the suit’s auditory receptors. There were no other sounds.

Charline scanned the distance as she walked, watching for even the smallest movement. Nothing stirred. Not even the young, which were usually found lurking in and around the pools of water. What she wouldn’t give for a proper sensor suite right then! The suit had only basic sensory capacity – enough to hear and see what was going on around it. Infrared cameras would have been useful. Maybe then she could spot the next ambush before they jumped out at her.

The caves were beautiful, in an unearthly way. Her lights reflected off the water and sent shimmering shards of blue-white light scattering across the ceiling and walls. The stone was rough, but it sparkled. There was something reflective in the stone, catching the light and winking it back at her.

The scientist and explorer in her wanted to go check everything out. There were so many mysteries in this place. Of all the structures the ancient civilization had built, the only one they’d found which was mostly intact was this place. What would they learn if they were able to examine it properly?

It was believed this race had been the one which invented the Satori’s wormhole drive. A civilization with that level of tech might have other equally amazing creations just waiting to be discovered.

A rock clattered off to Charline’s left. She brought all her focus back to the present, scolding herself mentally for letting her attention wander at all. Explorations later. Survival now. Her light beams stabbed through the darkness toward where she’d heard the sound, but the only movement she saw was a small set of ripples in a pool about twenty feet away.

“What are you seeing?” Andy asked over her radio.

“Not much. I heard a noise, but no positive contact. Might have been a rock shifting,” Charline said. She leaned back, aiming the lights at the ceiling above the pool in question. No mass of monsters lay there waiting for her.

“Be careful. I’ve got myself, Tessa, and Halcomb here with high-powered rifles. We’ll nail anything that comes after you,” Andy said.

“Just be careful not to nail me,” Charline said. Anything that could punch through those armored shells was a threat to her, too.

“We’ll watch our aim,” Andy said with a chuckle. “Not our first rodeo.”

“Not mine, either. All right – I’m pushing ahead a bit more. Tell me if I get too far for you to see me well.”

“Will do. Be careful,” Andy said.

If she was being careful, she wouldn’t be out there in this armor looking for trouble. Careful would have meant staying home on Earth instead of taking missions into space and exploring new worlds. Of course, Earth was no guarantee of safety either, these days. It wasn’t humans who were the biggest threat anymore. It was dangers from space. Careful didn’t matter much when the Naga were trying to drop a world-killing asteroid onto your home planet.

“I’m nearing the far wall. Looks like another passage over there. A solid path leading to them, but deep pools on either side,” Charline said.

“You’re at the edge of our range, and I don’t like the sound of that spot. Why don’t you pull back? We can work out a plan for tackling that together,” Andy said.

“Will do,” Charline said. The way ahead was almost entirely blocked by pools of water so deep that her light couldn’t stab to the bottom. The only way through was a narrow path about five feet wide. The more she looked at the place, the more it felt like a trap. It was a choke point with easy ambush positions on either side. If she were an amphibious creature looking to surprise someone, that’s where she would have waited.

“Coming back now,” Charline said. She turned the armor around, snapping on the rear facing cameras so she could keep an eye on those pools.

Which was why she saw them explode into a frenzy of motion the moment she turned away.

Twelve

The water went from tranquil to a foaming mess in less than a second. The insects were moving so fast that it was hard for Charline to track their movements at first. She was still turning back to face them when the first one slammed into her. She tumbled forward, the suit’s arms stopping her drop. A second and then a third bug attacked, all of them lancing out with deadly limbs against her steel shell.

Her suit couldn’t take much of this abuse. They were going to punch through before long. Without the reinforcements Halcomb added, they probably already would have. Charline brought her left arm up toward one of the creatures. It lunged in at her robotic fist, mouth closing around her forearm.

“Right where I wanted you,” Charline said. She pulled the trigger for the machine gun mounted in her arm, and it spat several hundred rounds into open maw locked around her hand. The centipede thrashed about as the rounds tore into the delicate tissue in and around its throat. It was still twitching when it relaxed its grip on her arm and dropped to the ground.

“One down,” Charline said.

“Can’t get a clear shot! They’re too close to you,” Andy said over the radio.

Crap, that was why she didn’t have any covering fire yet. Two of the things slammed into her, one from either side. It was like they’d learned their claws couldn’t easily shred her, so they were trying to pummel her to death instead.

The idea might work, too. The webbing holding her in place was superbly designed, but even it had limits.

“I’ll try to get clear,” she replied. She took a step, trying to move off to one side.

That was when the fourth bug lunged out of the water and latched claws and teeth around her leg. Charline had time to give a yelp before her armored suit toppled forward. It hit the surface of the water with a splash - then sank like a rock. Her lights were still working, so Charline had periodic glimpses of the pool’s wall. It was a smooth cliff there. That had to be manufactured. Nothing formed so smoothly in nature. That surface would be hard for her to climb out, too.

The machine gun wouldn’t work well underwater. She wasn’t sure it would fire at all, but she didn’t want to risk damaging it further. That still left her shoulder-mounted Naga rifle. It ought to work just fine down there.

Charline dialed the focus on the rifle to maximum. It would fire a pellet of energy about the size of a pea – that would punch through a foot of steel. It was one of the most effective weapons they had against these bugs.

The twisting body of one of the insects swept past her field of vision. She fired reflexively but missed, and it glided away. They weren’t going to stop coming after her. They would keep biting and clawing until she died. Which wouldn’t take long if they managed to punch through the armor. Her armor would fill up, and she’d have to choose between drowning and opening the hatch to swim for it. Neither option sounded like a great plan.

“Charline! Are you OK?” Andy sounded desperate.

“More or less,” she replied. She backed the armor into a corner at the bottom of the pool. The bugs would have to come at her from the front, where she could use her weapons. It was the best she could do.

“Thank god. We’re on our way. Nailed one of them, but the other two are in the water with you,” Andy said.

On his way? What did he think he was going to be able to do to one of these creatures when they were submerged and deep under water? The best he could hope for was that one of them might get distracted by the easy prey walking around outside the water. Charline wasn’t about to buy herself a few more seconds at the cost of someone’s life.

“Negative. You’ll get cut to ribbons,” she said. “Go back. If one of them pops out, nail it. Otherwise … wish me luck?”

“There has to be something we can do!” he cried.

One of the insects swooped in from her right side and slammed into her shoulder armor. They were fast, even in the water! Slower than they’d been on land, maybe. But so was she. They still seemed incredibly fast to her. One lucky shot was all they needed to break through her shell and drown her.

“Little busy right now!” Charline called into her radio.

She swung her right hand at the one trying to chew her shoulder off and managed to hook one of its legs in her hand. The clawlike robot hand clamped down. Her grip was literally like steel in this thing. Her muscles were motors powerful enough to lift half a ton or more in cargo. Charline yanked down hard with the arm and the bug came off her shoulder with a swishing sound as it slid through the water. She didn’t let go, though. It would just swim away and come back for another pass. Now that she had it in hand, she dragged the bug in front of her, where her shoulder cannon could hit it.

She depressed the firing button once and waited anxiously for it to recharge. At this power setting every shot took a few precious seconds to bring up enough energy to fire. The insect shook as the first shot hit it dead center. Dark blood spread through the water from the wound. It was hurt, but it didn’t look like she’d hit anything vital.

The capacitors on the rifle read a full charge. She fired again, this time aiming for the thing’s thrashing head. The shot impacted dead center. The insect gave a convulsive twitch of its entire body and then went still.

“Playing possum on me?” she asked aloud.

There was one way to find out for sure. Charline reached over with her other hand and closed it on the bug’s head. Then she squeezed. The carapace resisted for only a moment before cracking under the pressure. She let go of the creature after that. It wasn’t coming back from so serious an injury.

“Only one left, Andy,” she called into the radio. “But I don’t see it anywhere.”

“It hasn’t surfaced yet. If it does, I’ll put a few rounds into it and finish this. But it’s still down there with you.”

“This is a big pool. It might have decided swimming away is the best option,” Charline said. There she went again, playing with hope as a strategy, but it couldn’t be helped. The nightmare of fighting these things in close quarters combat was finally fading and her adrenaline along with it.

She needed to get out of this pool. Out of the armor. What had felt like a protective shell that kept her safe from harm felt for a moment like a coffin again. She had to get out of there.

The suit couldn’t swim. But could it use the powerful claws to climb?

She turned toward a wall and drove her hand into it, testing to see if she could make a handhold. The stuff resisted her at first, but then crumbled away as she intensified the pressure.

That was her ticket out. She reached up as high as she could with the other hand and dug a new hole, then lifted her suit up. One handhold at a time was the ticket. She punched two more holes into the wall, claws of the robot hands digging in to cling to the rock. Halfway to the surface, by her best guess.

Something slammed into her back. The impact threw Charline painfully forward against her controls. Around her, the entire world felt like it was spinning. Water and light streaked by her vision on the screen. The world wasn’t spinning – she was! The blow had knocked her loose from the rock and now she was sinking again, swirling downward into inky darkness, unable to slow her descent or even know how she would land.

Thirteen

The impact with the pool’s bottom was hard enough to rattle Charline’s teeth together. The harness only barely kept her from cracking her head against the display panel in front of her, which was spitting out a series of warnings. She’d taken some damage in the fall. How bad was it?

The screen was showing only concrete. She must have landed face-first. That left her back exposed, and the insect would be coming down after her. She’d been exposed and vulnerable, trying to crawl up the side. It had taken advantage of that. She shook her head.

“That was stupid. Stupid!” She couldn’t afford to be careless or to let fear overcome her again. The controls still seemed to be responding. She pushed up with the suit’s arms, and her body lifted away from the stone floor. But before she could get back to her feet, another impact came in from behind, smashing her back into the ground.

“Shit!”

She flipped the controls hard, and the suit rolled. It was just in time. The insect came hurtling past her and smacked into the stone where she’d been laying a moment before. It shook its head like the blow had dazed it but came quickly after her again.

“No, you don’t,” Charline said. She depressed the firing button for her shoulder rifle. The insect veered off sharply and the shot missed – but at least it was swimming away from her.

Using her hands and legs, she brought the suit back to a standing position. One of her lights was out, but the other was working. It stabbed out into the black water as she swung it back and forth, trying vainly to spot her attacker before it came after her again.

That was when Charline realized her right foot was cold. She glanced down, but she couldn’t see the limb. Too much machinery and harness in the way. The suit conformed tightly around her lower body. There wasn’t much wiggle room. But she managed to twitch her foot just a bit from side to side. She heard a sloshing sound.

There was water flowing into her suit. Some seal had burst under the repeated strains. If water was leaking in that meant air was headed out.

Her suit would try to compensate as best it could. The air tanks would maintain positive pressure as long as possible. But this deep in the water, she wasn’t sure how long the suit could maintain that pace. Water would continue trickling in. Eventually, the entire suit would fill up with water, and she’d drown – assuming she hadn’t run out of air long before then.

The gauge tracking how much air was left in the tank was dropping at an alarming rate. The pressure required to keep water from pouring in through the leak must be expending her air more rapidly than normal.

“Shit!” she shouted a second time.

Charline backed the suit against the wall. She was breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, and she knew it. But there nothing she could do to control her rising panic. This was it. She had managed any number of narrow escapes and near misses on missions in the past. But eventually, your number came up. Just like it had for John. At least he went down saving the planet. Her end would be ignominious, her memorial a pile of slowly rusting metal at the bottom of an alien pool of water.

The creature rushed in at her, from the left this time. The impact smashed into her suit’s center torso, almost knocking her over again. She barely managed to stay upright. Charline tried to take a swing at the insect like she would swat a fly, but it swam away too rapidly. She was too slow. Her adversary struck like lightning, leaving her no time to respond to its attacks.

“Hey, are you doing all right down there?” Andy asked over the radio.

The creature hammered home another blow before she could respond. Charline wasn’t sure how much more of this abuse her suit could take before it came apart at the seams. She took one step back, and then another, and found herself backed into the corner once more. At least there, it couldn’t sneak up on her. She could see it coming.

“Only one left, but I’m in a bad way. My suit is leaking water. Not sure how much air I have left. I’m sorry, Andy,” Charlene said.

There was a pause, like he was considering how to reply. She understood. Last goodbyes sucked, and she wasn’t any better at them than anyone else. She didn’t know what to say, either. But what he said when he finally spoke surprised her.

“You’re the smartest person I know. If it was anyone else down there but you, I figure they were toast,” Andy said. “But you’re also the finest marksman I know. If anyone can get out of this mess, you can, Charline. But you’ve got to fight!”

“I can’t even see it coming! It’s too fast. I don’t have time to react.”

“Then don’t react. Make it respond to you. You have to become the hunter now.”

He was right. She’d been thinking of herself as prey, and that had made the insects the predator, she the quarry. If she was going to have even the smallest prayer of surviving this mess, she needed to reverse those roles. It was time to go hunting.

She was on the clock. Charline didn’t know if the alien insect was aware of that or not. They had shown uncanny intellect in the past, so it wouldn’t have surprised her. The thing might know that all it needed to do was wear her down. Wait her out, keep her pinned in place, and eventually she would die. Then it would be free to slaughter the rest of her team on the surface.

“That’s not going to happen,” Charline said aloud.

She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Using the same rigorous discipline that had won her medals at the shooting range, she slowed her heartbeat and brought her mind into focus. Charline knew she needed to be present in the now, not worrying about the future or wishing she had done something different in the past. All of her attention was required. It took every ounce of will she had to bring her roiling emotions back under rein. She took stock of her situation, checking the air gauge only once. Then Charline stepped away from the protective wall, out of the corner, and went looking for the thing that was trying to kill her.

Fourteen

The water was utterly dark. Charline felt like it was pressing in on her from all sides. She couldn’t feel her leg up to her knee anymore, which meant the water was continuing to trickle in despite her armor’s best attempts to keep it out. There wasn’t much time left. She had to find the alien centipede from hell quickly.

She split her view-screen into four quadrants, one giving her the feed from a camera in each direction. If the thing came at her she would only have the barest fraction of a second to react before it hit her, but it was better than not seeing it at all. She walked out into the darkness, pivoting from left to right as she walked. One good shot from her shoulder cannon could finish this fight and save all of them. All she had to do was make one truly awesome shot under the worst conditions she could have imagined.

It was nowhere to be seen. The thing had come at her over and over when she’d been near the wall and off-balance. It was still out there. She was sure of that. Andy would have radioed her if the creature had surfaced. His people were watching for it. Which meant it was out there somewhere, stalking her even as she hunted for it.

She swung her left arm at a shifting shadow that she thought was another attack. The arm moved through empty water, but the movement made Charline remember the gun mounted there. The bullets would lose much of their penetrating power traveling through water, so she hadn’t bothered using the gun. The rounds wouldn’t be able to punch through the insect’s carapace underwater.

But it might not know that.

Charline checked the weapon. It still looked operational, and she had most of a full can of ammunition. While she hated wasting ammo on anything that wasn’t a viable target, if there was ever a time to be less thrifty, this was it. She aimed the gun arm out into the dark and then fired. The bullets streaked out into the water, visible only by the bubbles they burned as they passed. She pivoted in place, slowly turning around in a full circle, firing off bursts in every direction.

How smart was the insect? It was no simple bug. That much was certain. They had enough intellect to grasp ambush and seemed to understand which weapons could hurt them and which could not – or at least they learned very rapidly from experience. Was it smart enough to know she was shooting blind? Or would it feel the rounds stream past it, even plink off its shell, and think she knew where it was?

There was a rush of movement from behind her. Charline whirled, twisting her torso in an effort to get the shoulder rifle around in time. The insect impacted her before she could get a good aim.

The burning question seemed to be answered: they were smart, but they could be fooled. Her bullets couldn’t hurt the insect, but they’d stirred it from its hiding place anyway. Now she had to deal with half a ton of angry centipede trying to bite through her midsection.

The armor groaned. Charline checked her panel – the insect wasn’t hitting her quickly and running away this time. It had coiled itself around her. Now it was slowly working its claws and mandibles into the armored plates protecting her. If she wasn’t watching it happen, she’d never have believed an insect was capable of ripping into welded steel. But this one was.

It was going to take the armor apart one chunk at a time. The water. Charline felt her heart pound. The freezing cold liquid outside would pour into the shell around her, and it would be a race to see which killed her first, the bug or the water.

But she wasn’t defenseless. She wasn’t just prey. Andy told her to be the hunter, and she had more than just one rifle in her arsenal. Before they’d equipped the suit with weapons, she’d killed one of these things with just the mechanical hands on the ends of her robot arms.

She reached in toward herself. The bug might think it was smart, trying to constrict her and claw its way into her shell. But that made it easy for her to find it, too. Her hands closed on the bug’s carapace. She felt it shudder as her clawed hands closed and began to squeeze. The movement shook her entire body. It felt her steel fingers close around it like a pair of vices. The insect redoubled its efforts to break through to her as she started to squeeze.

Steel and motor groaned as they tried to overcome the most remarkable biologic protection Charline had ever seen. The insect scrabbled furiously at her armor. There was a screeching noise as one of the claws penetrated the armor and raked across the suit’s inner layer. The claw scratched a shallow cut into the suit just above her head. Water spattered her face as the claw withdrew, and she screamed.

The cold shock made Charline relax her grip on the controls. The robot hands released their hold. The insect took the chance to run for it. It uncoiled itself from around her in a sinuous motion. Almost too fast for her eye to follow, it swam upward and away. She’d hurt the thing badly. It was trailing some sort of bodily fluid in the water behind it.

“Not badly enough, though. You’ve still got some fight in you,” Charline said, more to take her mind off the trickle of water dribbling onto her hair and face. The pool was incredibly cold. The icy touch of each drop made her want to gasp for her next breath.

Instead, she calmed her breathing. She turned the suit, facing it straight toward the fleeing bug. There wasn’t going to be time for a second shot. Charline gave herself as long as she could to aim the Naga rifle. Her finger pulled ever so slightly at the firing button, stroking it like she would have a rifle trigger.

Naga capacitors snapped and snarled underwater as they discharged the energy pellet. It spat upward and away, sizzling through the water. The shot slammed home just behind the insect’s head, shattering the carapace and all but exploding through the exit site. The alien bug gave one massive convulsion and then was still. It floated toward the surface. Charline watched it rise, waiting to make sure it was dead.

“Oh, why take chances?” she said. She took careful aim a second time and fired off another round. This one took the insect in the head and shattered it.

Charline’s nightmare was over. Her hands were trembling as she toggled on the radio microphone. Whether it was from cold, shock, or both, she couldn’t tell.

“Andy? I got it,” she said. “Going to need a little help getting out of here, though.”

“We can see your lights from the surface. There’s a shallow area about ten meters to your right. You should be able to wade out there,” he replied. “We’re standing by to help.”

She set off in the direction he’d told her. It seemed to take forever to break the surface. When she finally did, Charline couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face.

Fifteen

Charline heard water stream off the armor as she stepped clear of the pool. Dry land at last. She wanted nothing more than to pop the lid on the suit and get back to being herself for a while, but she couldn’t afford the luxury. There was no way to tell if the creatures she’d killed were the last ones left in these caves. If there were more, she was their best line of defense.

“You’ve mucked up that suit pretty well, haven’t you?” Halcomb said.

She looked down. He was in front of her, glaring up, hands on hips. But the smile he wore belied the words coming from his mouth.

“I did nothing of the sort,” Charline retorted. “Now, those alien insects might have banged it up a little, mind you…”

Halcomb barked a laugh. “Yes, but you mucked them right back.” He pointed at the water and she followed the gesture.

The insects floated after they were killed, and the surface of the pool was decorated with the corpses of her slain enemies. Charline shivered. It had almost been her death down there instead.

But she hadn’t died. She’d managed to go on, just like she had on every other misadventure since her first voyage into space. If space was a deadly place, well, she would just continue to face those troubles head-on. It was the only way. Sticking her head in the sand back on Earth wasn’t any better. Life there was just as jeopardized. At least out here, maybe she could make a difference.

“We need to finish sweeping the cave. Make sure there are no more of them. I’ll lead the patrol. Andy, you and the others follow close behind,” Charline said.

“Will do. What about the gear?” Andy said.

“Leave it for now. I won’t split the team in a potentially hostile environment,” Charline said. “Everyone armed? Good. Eyes out, keep your heads in the game.”

That last was as much for herself as anyone else. Charline felt wiped out. Between being knocked out by the cave-in, multiple battles, and the near-death experience in the pool, she knew she was pushing herself. For a moment, she considered stepping out of the armor and letting someone else run it for a while. Give someone else the hot seat. But she looked at the people following her. They were as worn down as she was. Two of them were walking wounded, staggering along only with assistance.

“How are you doing up there?” Andy asked. Charline checked the radio. He was sending to her on a private channel.

“I could use a coffee,” she replied, trying to keep how exhausted she was from her voice.

“We all could. Let’s clear this place and then set up a camp for some rest,” Andy said.

“Sounds good to me.”

The ground was uneven enough that one of the armor’s feet caught briefly on a stone. It ordinarily wouldn’t have been enough to set the suit off balance, but coupled with Charline’s exhaustion it was just enough. She stumbled and caught herself by reflexively reaching out with one arm toward the wall. The hand’s impact shattered the rock as it skid across the rough surface.

“Damn. Stupid rock!” Charline said. “Never where it’s supposed to be.”

The others behind her chuckled, as she’d hoped. Andy might get an idea how tired she was from the slip, but the rest of these people would write it off – at least for now. She needed their trust if she was going to keep them safe.

“Hey, look at that rock wall,” Arjun said. He limped over, a crutch under one arm to help support his weight after his left ankle was injured in the first fight.

“What about it?” Charline asked. She turned toward the wall and dialed up the resolution on the armor’s camera system. There was something odd about the wall. Where she’d hit the stone, it cracked away, revealing … something else.

“It looks like metal,” Arjun said. He aimed his flashlight directly at the spot her stumble had revealed. The beam reflected almost like it would off steel.

But it wasn’t steel. The metal had a pale tone to it, more like aluminum or platinum, maybe. More importantly, it was polished and perfectly smooth. That wasn’t a naturally occurring outcrop of metal. What they were seeing had been made.

“Beth said she thought this entire cavern had been constructed by someone. Remember, Charline?” Andy asked. “When we were here the first time, she said the tunnel down was too smooth to be natural. We assumed it was some sort of underground complex left over from whoever used to live on this dead world.”

“Not so dead as we thought,” Charline said. “But yeah, it looks like Beth was right, as usual. Stand back, everyone.”

She had an idea. It might not help them at all to know more about this place they were stuck inside. Or it might make all the difference in the world. Either way, she was curious. An accidental brush against the wall had been enough to knock the stone loose. What about clearing some of the debris away on purpose?

Her first thought was to slam her fist into the wall, but there was no telling how hard the stuff under the rock might be. Damaging the suit could prove fatal if they ran into more trouble. Instead Charline reached toward the rock with one hand and scraped away the rock. It crumbled apart easily, dropping to the ground. More of the silvery metal revealed itself. Was the entire wall made of the stuff?

She shifted her excavations a little to the left. This time, when the weak rock crumbled away, her hand scraped against something rough instead of smooth. It took a little work to clear more of the surface rock without doing damage to the layer behind it, but when she was done Charline could see that the wall was constructed from large blocks of stone. The metal was a bar running between sections of the wall. She stepped back to let the others take a look.

“That’s a support strut,” Halcomb said. “We’ll probably find a bunch more of them evenly spaced around the walls. Dunno what the stuff you’ve scraped off is, though.”

“Limestone,” Arjun said. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged. “I used to go spelunking for fun. This whole place is a limestone cave. The floor, the ceiling, all of it is calcium carbonate deposits. Water trickled in from somewhere, seeped through cracks, and brought minerals which were left behind as … all of this.”

“How deep under sea level are we here?” Andy asked.

“The cave entrance is about sea level, maybe a little above. So fifty meters down, give or take? It’s hard to be sure with that spiraling tunnel,” Arjun replied.

“The water leeched in from the body of water just east of here. The water was still there underneath the bioweapon shell. It must have leaked into this place,” Charline said. “And made all of this.”

“That would have taken a really long time,” Arjun said.

“About a thousand Earth years?” Charline asked. “That’s our best guess for how long it’s been since this place was wiped out.”

Arjun chuckled. “That would probably do it.”

Charline turned, facing her headlight into the gloomy back of the cavern. There had to be more to this place than just a big open space, right? It must have been used for something. Artifacts of this ancient race were incredibly long lived. They’d found the Satori buried on the moon for the same thousand years this place had been abandoned and managed to repair the damage. Rebuild the ship. Maybe there was something lost down here they could use to rescue themselves from their predicament.

“Come on, let’s finish this sweep and find someplace secure to rest,” Charline said.

Sixteen

They had to walk around several large pools of water as the team proceeded deeper into the cavern. Or complex, as it seemed might be a better description! A ruined artifact from some long lost civilization. Even the idea lit a fire to Charline’s nerves. They’d recovered lost tech before. The knowledge they’d gleaned from even the barest finds had been instrumental in humanity’s recent strides into space. She hoped there might be some similar stash buried in this place.

But then her lights shone on a wall. The cavern ended. There was nothing past this point. Her heart sank. No other exits meant no secret treasure trove and no other way out, as well. If the aliens aboard that ship were still cruising around outside, they couldn’t afford to leave by the route they’d come in.

“Looks like this is the end of the road,” Andy said. “We can check the left wall. We walked along the right side; maybe there are tunnels on the other end. Those bugs had to be getting in and out of here somehow.”

Charline looked into the deep pool of water not far from where they stood. She had a hunch there were tunnels, but they might be under the water. There could be a honeycomb of passages down there, invisible to their eyes. It was out of reach, though. Her suit might be able to handle water for a little longer, but it was already leaking like a sieve. Repairing it was going to take some time without materials, and they had little enough to spare.

“Wait. Look over there,” Arjun said. He took a few steps past where Charline stopped. Approaching the wall, he reached out a hand to trace the pattern of the flowing rock.

“What do you see?” Charline asked.

“See how the rock flows in, here? It wouldn’t do that if this were a flat wall. It means there is a depression here. Maybe just a small alcove. But it could also mean there is empty space on the other side,” Arjun said.

Hope kindled inside Charline again. “Step back, and we’ll see.”

Once everyone was clear, she reached out toward the rock. Her robotic hands tore into the soft limestone, tearing chunks of it away. As she ripped into it Charline could see how the stone had been deposited slowly, in layers. How long had the liquid been pouring into this place to so completely hide everything that had once been here? She kept digging, and then all at once her hand reached through the stone – into open space behind it.

Charline’s heart pounded more rapidly. Excitement budding, she tore into the wall as fast as she could, ripping chunks of the rock away until she’d cleared a large enough hole to see what lay beyond.

“There’s a space back there, all right. Doesn’t look like the water leak was as bad past this point, too. Lot of limestone on the floor, but not on the walls or ceiling. Like it dribbled across the floor from the stuff I just tore out,” Charline said.

“Can you open it up?” Andy asked.

“Sure can.” Charline tore into the stuff again. It was slow going to make a hole large enough for not only humans to walk through, but her armor as well. She wasn’t going to leave it behind while they still might have hostile creatures around, though. Patience was a virtue, and as impatient as she felt to see what was back there, Charline forced herself to continue working methodically on the limestone blocking their way. Finally she judged that she’d cleared enough away for the armor to pass.

“I’m going to take a look inside,” Charline said. “Hang tight a moment.”

Before anyone could protest – like Andy – she walked through the hole she’d made into the space beyond.

It was a round tube barely high enough for her to walk upright. The feel of the place was disorienting. What looked to her eyes like deck plates were set into the ceiling and walls, as well as visible on the floor in spots the stone hadn’t buried it. The construction looked like something one might see in a zero-gravity environment, where there was no up or down. The effect the visual was having on her eyes was similar. Why had someone built a hall this way on a planet? Unless this was part of a spaceship? But she didn’t think that was the case. The tube she stood in was all metal, but there was no airlock to enter it.

There was what appeared to be a door at the far side of the tube, though. Charline wasn’t certain how it worked, but there was a panel set into the center. She walked closer to get a look. Definitely some sort of technology at work there. She’d helped design the adaptive software that allowed integration of the alien systems aboard the Satori with human tech. If this door really was built by the same people, maybe the software would work here, too?

“Got something interesting, folks. Come on in. I’m going to need to pop out of the armor to get a closer look,” Charline said. She popped the hatch. The air hit her, cool and tasting like water and dirt. It smelled a lot better than the inside of the suit after a few hours inside it. She wrinkled her nose as she stepped clear of the cockpit. Was that the armor smelling bad, or her?

“Is it a door?” Andy asked. He ran fingers over the round wall blocking their path.

“I think so,” Charline replied. She fished her multi-tool out of her pocket. Carefully, she pulled back the edge of the panel, prying it away from the door. It released with a popping sound.

“Oh, wow,” Andy said as he looked in over her shoulder.

“Indeed,” Charline replied.

Inside the panel was a complex array of small cubes. They didn’t seem to be connected to one another. Charline knew from experience they didn’t need to be. Simply having the cubes in proximity with one another was enough to enable them to operate. All she had to do was power them up and insert her own control crystal.

“Halcomb, run a power lead off the armor for me, would you? I need to plug some juice into this thing.” Charline fished her tablet out of her pocket, along with the only cube she had with her. They’d discovered a small cache of the things on their first visit to the planet and recovered as many as they could. This one would allow Charline to connect to the alien machinery using her tablet and the software she’d written to allow the connection.

The same sort of hack was behind the Satori’s use of alien tech. Luckily the cubes weren’t difficult to operate. You just had to be able to access their data streams and issue commands.

Halcomb came over with a wire, wordless for once. Charline took it from him and applied it to the side of the cubes’ housing. The cubes immediately lit up. A good sign. These things were built to last, but there was always a chance the mechanism had been damaged. Then she slipped her own cube in next to the others. It flashed dimly for a few seconds as it tried to make a connection. Then it lit up, glowing from within in the same way as the other cubes.

“I’m in!” Charline said. She tapped a few lines on her tablet, sorting through the command structure. It wasn’t difficult to find the control to open the door. That’s what the panel was designed to do, after all.

Another line of code, and there was a rumbling sound. Charline took a quick step back. As she did, the door broke into four slices which spun apart and recessed into the walls. They were in.

“Wow,” Charline said. She took a hesitant step toward the doorway.

“Better bring the armor. To be sure,” Andy said.

“I think we’re OK here,” Charline said. She turned on the flashlight on her tablet and walked past Andy into the room beyond. A thick layer of dust coated every flat surface. No water had penetrated this space, and the bugs had never been inside here, either. Their tracks would have been easy to spot.

Then her beam shone on metal, a long row of constructs made from the same silvery stuff they’d found earlier. But these were no wall struts. It was a row of what looked like metal statues of the centipede creatures. Why would anyone have made statues of the creatures? Were they pets? Was this a zoo?

Charline stepped cautiously toward one of the things, realization dawning. They were jointed, articulated. She rapped a hand on one and listened to the echo. Hollow as well.

“What the hell are those things? They look like the big bad bugs!” Halcomb said.

“Even the right size,” Arjun added.

Charline found a series of deep holes in the back of the metal construct. They were too deep for fingers and too small for human hands. But they looked to be just about right for centipede legs. There was a seam running down the back of the thing. Not a welded seam, but something that looked like it could split open.

“It’s armor,” Charline breathed. “Armor for the bugs.”

Seventeen

Andy set off in the armor to go retrieve the rest of their gear. Charline didn’t protest. She was growing attached to the suit, in a strange sort of love and hate way, but the idea of exploring something completely new was enthralling. Besides, she was the only person there with the technical knowhow to get the things running.

The room would be their base of operations. Andy was going to set a motion sensor in the tunnel to the surface, just in case someone cleared away the rubble and came looking for them. That alien ship was still out there. Who knew when they might decide to come down and take a look at the cave?

There was plenty of water all around them, but food supplies were limited. Charline did a little mental math. With rationing, they could survive another week or so. Much past that and they would be in trouble. Eating ratzard was out of the question. The insects they’d killed might be edible, but there was no equipment to test, and she wasn’t going to order someone to be a guinea pig for the experiment. They were just going to have to find something else edible before their supplies ran out.

“I think there’s a mechanical latch down inside this hole,” Halcomb said. He was peering at the back of one of the metal insects.

“Think this will reach?” Charline asked, handing him her multitool with the screwdriver extended.

“It might, just,” Halcomb said. He took the tool and fished around inside the armor.

Charline looked around. There were six of the suits, all stashed away. That wasn’t all that the place contained, though. A wall rack was filled with what looked like weapons. She wasn’t sure how they were supposed to be used. Maybe they could be mounted on the armor? There was more, a strange variety of what might be furnishings or filing cabinets, for all she knew. Most of it didn’t make sense to her. Why was there a weapons locker down there? It was a supply cache, and the armored suits were clearly intended for fighting, as were the weapons on the walls.

What sort of place had this been? A military compound? A police precinct? Something else, so alien that she didn’t even begin to understand it?

The revelation that the armor was made for the giant centipedes was even more startling. Were they the sentient beings who’d built the city? Was it their civilization that lay in ruins on this world? Or were they some sort of servant race to another group that was long gone?

Charline looked out toward the entrance of their room. If they’d killed the last of those creatures during the fight, she might have inadvertently wiped out the final remnants of a species that had once wandered the stars. The thought was disturbing. Would humanity someday suffer the same fate? A few apelike remnants barely eking out an existence on a ruined world?

“Got it!” Halcomb said.

There was a click followed by a hissing noise. He stepped back rapidly as the armor split down the middle of its back, opening up to reveal what was inside. The interior was a complex web of what looked like sensor pads and electronics. The insect would pop open the shell, slip inside, then close it up again. The stuff seemed more like an armored space suit than a powered exo-skeleton. Charline couldn’t see any signs of motors that would enhance the wearer’s strength, for example. Not that these bugs needed more strength. They had plenty just with what nature had given them.

“It’s interesting, but I don’t know what we can do with it,” Arjun said. He fished inside the armor, poking with his fingers at some of the pads.

The armor hummed, giving off a distinct buzzing feel. Lights sprang up around the interior. The space where the eyes would be in the face area began to glow.

“Holy shit. It’s still got power!” Halcomb breathed.

“So did the Satori, remember,” Charline said. “It had been buried about as long as this stuff. They built to last, whoever constructed all this.”

“Was it really the insects, you think? Or someone else?” Arjun asked.

“I don’t know. We may never know. But there should be a power cube somewhere in this armor. That could be very useful, if we can extract it and get it running with our equipment,” Charline said.

“Not to mention the suits themselves are good metal,” Halcomb said. “With this stuff I can print damned near whatever you want to make.”

Charline’s eyes widened. He was right. The fabricator could manage a lot, given the right materials. Here were all the pieces they could ask for. There were cables and wires, metal plating, and more stuff that she could barely identify. But the fabricator would take in all those things, break them into constituent parts, and use the materials to build whatever they programmed.

“Circuit boards?” Charline asked.

“Looks like all the parts are there, yes,” Halcomb said. “I can’t make you a supercomputer, but I can do something simple.”

“What about motors? Gears?” Charline asked.

“Sure, those are easy enough. What are you thinking to build?”

Charline tapped her chin with a finger. It was a crazy idea, but it was also an awesome idea. “I want to build more armored suits.”

“What! Why?” Halcomb asked.

“Because that enemy up topside isn’t going to stay there forever. Sooner or later, they’re going to come down here after us,” Charline said.

She didn’t know that for certain, but it felt right. They could even now be clearing away the rubble, preparing to search the caves. Their tracks had been a dead giveaway. There hadn’t been any way to conceal the fact that humans had been walking all around the cave, or that their tracks had led into the cave mouth.

“How quickly can you get another suit up and running?” Charline asked Halcomb.

“The printing pieces is the easy part. The fabricator’s database is full of all kinds of shit. Just about anything and everything. Putting it all together is gonna take a lot of work,” he replied.

“How long?”

“Couple of hours to print the parts, once the fabricator has broken down some of the stuff enough to begin work. A lot longer to get the parts together. Not like we have a crane to move things around in here,” Halcomb said.

“I’ll help,” Tessa said.

“We’ll all help,” Charline said. “This is about survival. We need everyone on board working together to make this happen.”

There were so many steps to what she had in mind. The main obstacle was time. If the enemy came at them too soon, they’d have a hard fight. Maybe an impossible one. The more hours of work they had, the better off they’d all be.

“You plan to fight them,” Arjun said. “Count me in, then.”

“Oh, we’re going to do more than fight them,” Charline said. “We’re going to beat them, steal their ship, and get us all off this dustball.”

Eighteen

They took two full days of working at a breakneck pace to get six new suits of shining armor made. Each used one of the power cells taken from the alien armor. The original suit stood off to one side. Halcomb said it was easier to build one from scratch than to update the one they already had with new tech.

Mixing alloys was part of the problem. The alien metal was both stronger and lighter than steel, which made it easier to build with but problematic for the printer. The bottleneck turned out to be the fabricator, not the human labor. It required running the machine at all hours to get the work done.

Charline looked at the completed armor suits. They gleamed in a way her dusty old suit hadn’t. The sparkling alloy the aliens had used for their insect armor was tough stuff. According to Halcomb, it was a mixture of aluminum, titanium, and a few other things. However they’d manufactured it, the stuff was hard to break once it was molded into place.

“Guns all mounted?” Charline asked.

“Yes. We had enough for two per suit,” Tessa replied. She’d been the natural person to put in charge of the rack of things they’d discovered were powerful plasma weapons. Arjun did most of the actual installation, but Tessa helped.

The suits had one mounted on each arm. Charline had fretted over the decision on where to place the things. Arm mounted weapons might be more vulnerable to damage than something mounted in the more heavily armored torso section, but they were also easier to aim. The act of pointing your arm at something was fluid and natural. Besides, as she’d learned fighting the bugs, sometimes you can aim an arm, but you can’t turn your body. After debating the pros and cons, they went all-in with arm mounted guns.

“We need to do a couple of dry runs before we take the suits topside. We’re going to want to get some practice in,” Charline said. “Andy, still nothing from the sensors you placed?”

“I’d have told you if there was,” he replied. “All quiet up top.”

That bothered Charline more than she wanted to admit. Why hadn’t the aliens come down after them? If they knew her team was there, she would expect them to come hunting. If they had no idea her people were buried beneath the ground, then the footprints should have at least aroused curiosity.

Maybe they’d moved on, left the world behind them and gone on. That would be both good and bad. Good, because it meant they didn’t have a highly advanced race of aliens waiting outside to blow them all to bits. But on the downside, they were all going to starve if help didn’t arrive soon. The only alternative was to rescue themselves, which was why they’d raced the clock to get these suits done. If the ship left before they were ready, it was all for nothing. They’d remain trapped on Dust until Earth managed to send a rescue party – or they all died. It was hard to predict which would happen first.

“OK, let’s suit up. I’m in One. Andy, you’ve got Two. Tessa in Three. Arjun, you’ve got Four. Jonas, take Five. Isabella, you’ve got Six,” Charline said.

“What about me? I all but built those things!” Holcomb asked.

“Yes, you did. Which is why I need you in one piece, to repair them if they get damaged. Same for Karl, in case one of us gets hurt. You two are irreplaceable. The rest of us aren’t,” Charline said.

Andy cast her a glance which told her he disagreed with that statement. She gave him a small shake of her head. Now wasn’t the time. There never seemed to be a right time to have the conversation she felt like they needed so badly. It had been one emergency after another since they’d been stranded.

“Well, when you put it that way,” Halcomb said. He shot her a grin. “I’ll just keep at the building, shall I?”

“Please. We’ll probably burn out some parts over the practice runs. We’re not going to use live ammo, but let’s be ready in case there’s some damage.”

She didn’t add that they were going out in untested designs. These new suits of armor were based heavily on the old suits. That part was old, reliable tech. But they hadn’t enough steel to make even a second suit, so they’d used the alien components, fed through the fabricator to generate the parts. There was no telling how well they’d work together.

Charline pushed aside her worries. “Let’s move.”

How the hell had things fallen apart so rapidly? Her carefully orchestrated maneuver was collapsing in front of Charline’s eyes, and nothing she said seemed to make a bit of difference.

“No! Arjun, you’re crossing Tessa’s line of fire,” she called out.

She watched as he walked blithely through the space where she was theoretically firing her guns to pin down the imaginary enemy. He’d cut across directly in front of her. In a real fight she would have had to either hold her fire and risk the enemy popping out at them, or continue the covering fire but cut Arjun to bits. Assuming she saw him in time to react at all.

The other flank wasn’t faring much better. Andy and Isabella were paired off there. It had been Charline’s idea to partner each experienced warrior with a novice, to help keep an eye on the team members who hadn’t experienced much combat yet. But Andy had his hands full babysitting Isabella as she slowly marched her armor forward, trying to stumble her way into position. Try as she might, the young botanist didn’t seem capable of managing the armor’s controls. She was fighting them instead of working with them.

“Let’s move,” Charline said to her own partner. He grunted an affirmative over the radio and stepped off with her. They both moved to support Tessa, who was arguably in the worst position. With Arjun most likely dead or disabled, she’d quickly be surrounded and picked off without support.

Charline stopped behind a stalagmite to assess the situation. Andy and Isabella had reached cover. At least that was something. Arjun was cutting back across Tessa’s field of fire for a second time.

Charline grunted with frustration. She tapped a command on her tablet and sent a message to his suit to shut down. Immediately the suit lost power and toppled to the ground.

“Ow!” Arjun’s cry went out over the radio. “What the hell?”

“It’ll hurt a lot more when you’re cut to ribbons by enemy and friendly fire,” Charline barked. “Stay aware of your surroundings.”

She stepped out away from her cover to move toward Tessa. Before she could take three steps, her armor’s leg caught on something. She tried to recover her balance but couldn’t catch herself in time. Her armor toppled to the ground with a crashing sound that rang in her ears.

“Ow!” If it hadn’t hurt to much, Charline might have seen more humor in saying the same thing Arjun had. “What the hell was that?”

“Sorry,” Jonas said. “That was me.”

Charline hoisted herself back up by an arm so she could see his suit. He’d toppled to the ground as well, crashing to the floor a few feet away from her. Jonas had stayed close, just like she’d told him. He’d been too literal, though. His armor must have been practically on top of her heels for them to get tangled like that.

Charline heaved a sigh and hauled herself back to her feet. “All right, folks. Reset. Let’s do this again.”

“No. I’m done,” Arjun said. “That last fall hurt. We’ve been at this for hours. It’s time for a break.”

“The enemy could attack at any moment,” Charline said.

“Yes, or they might have already left. We need to take a breather and get out of these suits,” Arjun said.

She was about to protest again, but heard murmurs of assent from one or more of the others. Why couldn’t they understand? Unless they drilled long enough to get good at this, they’d die in a real battle. They needed as much training as they could manage in whatever hours remained to them.

But this wasn’t Earth. If she pushed too hard, she might find people deciding to follow someone else. Her authority as leader was based on a command structure dozens of light years away.

“All right. We’ll take fifteen, then get back to it?” Charline asked. She bit her lip. That should have been an order, not a question. She was screwing this up. No wonder the team was a mess.

Nineteen

Charline’s knees sagged as she stepped off the ladder. Her legs were shaking. Maybe the break was a good idea after all. If she was this worn down, the others must be about as bad. It wasn’t going to do them any good if the team wore itself to a nub in training and was too exhausted to deal with a threat when it appeared.

She pulled out her computer tablet and opened the clock app, setting it up for a timer. They’d do a session, then take a break, and after the break go again. That way no one would get burned out by the training.

“Can we talk?” Andy said, walking over.

Charline ran her fingers through her hair. She glanced down at the time. “Sure. We’ve got another eleven minutes.”

He frowned, like that was going to be enough time. It had better be. Charline agreed she’d been running everyone a little too hard, and that breaks were going to help. But that didn’t mean she would let the break extend for too long. They still had work to do.

“What’s up?” Charline asked.

“Not here. Step away a bit with me?”

This time it was her turn to frown, but she followed Andy as he walked them both out of earshot of the others. The cavern was darker, away from their suits. The shadows were long and deep. They’d swept the caverns looking for more bugs and hadn’t found any. That didn’t mean there were no more, hiding someplace they couldn’t see. Charline kept her eyes open and her body on high alert.

“What is so important it couldn’t wait, and so secret that it had to be said in private?” Charline snapped. She was annoyed that Andy would put them both at risk like this. They shouldn’t be so far from their armor. If anything came at them, they’d never make it back in time.

“Wow,” Andy said. “I haven’t even said anything yet and I’ve already had my head bitten off.”

“If I wanted to bite your head off, I would. As it stands, I’m too tired to bite much of anything. Tell me what you wanted to say,” Charline said, waving a hand across her face in fatigue.

“You’re driving them too hard,” he replied. “They’re making mistakes because they are just repeating the same things. We need to broaden the range of exercises to give them some variations, but they need to rest, too.”

“We’ve got limited time to do a lot of training,” Charline said. It was one thing to agree in her head that breaks were a good idea. But her hackles went up at someone else calling her out over it. Even Andy. Maybe especially Andy. Shouldn’t he be supporting her?

“Yes, but have you ever trained people to fight before?”

“I’ve run shooting classes lots of times,” Charline temporized.

“That’s not the same as combat training. You’ve seen enough fighting to know that. Remember how you and I drilled for room clearing?” Andy asked.

She did. That training saved her life more than once, and it was what she’d used as a model for the sessions she was running for this team. But it sounded like she was doing it wrong. Or at least Andy thought she was. For a moment she considered handing all the training over to him. He had the experience, after all. She could be the mission leader while he ran the tactical squad. It could work.

“Honestly, I’m not happy with you being out there in armor at all,” Andy said. “I liked what you told Halcomb about some people not being expendable. But in my opinion, you’re one of them.”

His words put the brakes on Charline’s thoughts. She couldn’t believe her ears. “You want me out of the fighting?”

“I want you safe,” he said. “If you die, who is going to get into the alien computer system to get their ship under our control?”

He had a point, but she wasn’t going to admit it. She wanted in on this, damn it. The armor had been her brainchild. She’d bled in that suit of hers. Charline felt like it was a part of her now.

“Am I really going to be safer out of armor than in it?” Charline asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. We can clear the area and then move in our unarmored people once it’s safe. Everyone who isn’t expendable.”

Charline wanted to tell Andy that none of them were expendable, but she knew he wasn’t going to buy it. He considered himself that way, at least. It pissed her off whenever she thought about it.

“Like you, you mean?” Charline snapped. “You’ve considered yourself expendable ever since John died. That’s why you’re here, right? To take a bullet for someone just one more time, the way you couldn’t take that last one for him?”

Charline regretted the words as soon as they’d left her mouth. Andy’s face went white. His lips grew pinched, and his eyes were shining. Those were unshed tears she was seeing. Damn it, she knew the two of them had been close, almost as close as a father and child. Reminding Andy of John’s death was the last thing she should have done. She’d hurt him, and immediately felt guilty.

“Andy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”

“If that’s why you think I risked everything to get on this mission with you, why I left a perfectly good spaceship because I heard you were trapped on the other side of a cave-in...” Andy said. Charline gasped. She hadn’t heard that part of the story from him. “Then I don’t think you know me anywhere near as well as I thought you did.”

“Andy … I’m worried about doing the right thing for everyone here. I want to keep them all alive. You most of all,” Charline said. She ran both hands through her hair and turned away from him. “I just don’t know how to do that. There’s so much working against us here.”

His palms dropped gently to her shoulders, and she leaned into one of them. His anger and hurt had already cooled. That was one thing she loved about Andy. He was slow to anger and quick to cool off. Charline reached up and stroked one of his hands gently.

“You’re doing damned well, given the circumstances,” Andy said. “Keeping everyone alive through what we’ve seen so far is a testimony to your leadership.”

“And my fighting skills,” Charline said. She turned back around to face him.

“Yes, that too. Although I still think you should be right up there with Halcomb when it comes to people being indispensable. Maybe even more than he is. We might be able to capture an alien ship without him. We definitely can’t do it without you,” Andy said. “If you die in a firefight to take the ship, we’re all stranded.”

“It’s not just about you being overprotective?” Charline asked. The corner of her mouth quirked up in a small smile. She knew damned well that was part of his motivation, but she wanted to hear him admit it.

“It’s not. Oh, I’d rather you weren’t in danger. Don’t get me wrong!” Andy said. “But I usually think the best way I can help ensure you stay safe is if you’re with me. This time I’m not sure that’s the best move. Not for you. Not for the team.”

Charline looked down. There was merit to his argument. She hated admitting that, but he might be right. No other human had as much experience as she did writing code to enable human tech to talk to alien tech. What had become easy and natural for her over the past year of work was beyond the conception of most programmers. There was no one on the team with even the root skills required to learn how to do what she’d accomplished in the field. Andy was right. She was the irreplaceable one.

“Damn. I don’t want you to be right. I want to be out there leading the fight from the front,” Charline said.

“But you know I am, anyway,” Andy said.

“Yes. I just … I don’t know. Something about this type of fighting felt right to me. It blends so many things I’ve already done. Computers, marksmanship, quick thinking…”

“Playing Halo,” Andy quipped back.

“Hey, I beat you every time we played,” Charline said, giving him a light slap in the arm for emphasis. “But you’re right. I shouldn’t be in the front. I’ll go get one of the others to drive this suit.”

“Mark might be good. He’s young, but his reflexes look solid and he really wanted to be out there on the team,” Andy said. “Charline, I really am sorry. But there will be other times you can fight. This time, you have to do something even harder. You have to lead. Sometimes that means leading from the front. Most of the time, it means sending other people into danger instead of yourself.”

She turned away and walked back to her armor. Starting up the ladder, she turned back to look at him one more time. “That doesn’t make it suck any less. Train them well, Andy. They’re going to need it.”

Charline climbed into the suit as quickly as she could. She didn’t want Andy to see that she’d started crying. Whether the tears were frustration at being benched or worry for him, she wasn’t sure. She clicked off her radio and marched back to their base camp. The last thing Charline wanted to hear right now was the radio traffic from the others’ practice once they started back up again.

Twenty

Charline slid down the ladder from her suit, her boots slamming hard against the floor. She ripped the helmet from her head and stalked toward the team gathered around the fabricator. Halcomb turned and flashed her a smile.

“How’s the training going?” Halcomb asked.

She tossed the helmet. A young man with sandy hair caught it just before it smacked him in the head. “Mark, right? You wanted a shot at piloting armor?” Charline asked him.

“Yeah?” he replied, sounding unsure of himself.

“Armor One is yours. Go join the others. Andrew is training them in the main cavern.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he replied, smiling.

He was filled with all the excitement of someone who’d never been shot at before. Charline shook her head. It was exhausting just looking at him.

He’d learn, though. Assuming he survived, he would learn.

“Just go,” she said, waving a hand absently at him. He dashed off without another word as fast as his legs could carry him. Charline sighed and hid a sad smile. She understood the kid’s desire to help, to join in the fight. She was feeling the same thing herself. What she couldn’t mimic was his youthful enthusiasm for the coming battle.

If she could magically transport herself and her team to someplace safe, she would do it in a heartbeat. Charline didn’t want a life of fighting. She’d prefer to be safe, to not worry about starving on an alien planet or dying in a firefight. But that wasn’t the world she lived in anymore. Two years ago no one would have even considered the possibility of an alien fleet showing up to attack Earth, either. But it had happened.

If her skills could help stave off another such attack or stop the attackers when they came, then she had an obligation to do that. Sometimes duty was easy, like when she picked up a rifle to go rescue friends in trouble. Other times it was hard as hell. Like when she had to order other people into battle while she remained behind.

“It’s going that well, is it?” Halcomb asked.

“It’ll be OK. They’re new. Andy will whip them into shape. He’s rightly pointed out that I’m the least dispensable person we’ve got. He’s not wrong, much as I hate to say it. So I benched myself,” Charline said.

“Sorry,” Halcomb replied. He actually sounded contrite. He wanted to get out there himself, and he’d been refused for the same reason.

“Yeah, well. What’s done is done. I’d like to be useful in some way, though. Anything I can do to help get more parts set for the armor units?”

“Well, about that … we’ve just started running the first parts, so it’ll be a while before any of them are ready to set up for assembly,” Halcomb said.

“What? Why?” Charline asked. The armor teams had been gone for hours. She’d expected at least some progress on spare parts for the armor. They might not need any of it, but if they did she wanted to be prepared. If Halcomb had been goofing off the whole time she was gone…

“Easier to show you than tell you. Come with me?”

Not sure if she should be more worried or intrigued, Charline nodded and followed him away from the fabricator. Halcomb led her over to where her original suit stood. They’d left it standing in place, a backup in case the base camp came under attack while the others were away. It wasn’t up to fighting in the main event, but it was better than nothing for a last ditch defense.

The suit didn’t look the same at all. The tears were welded. The dents banged back out. The most noticeable changes were far more dramatic, though. The suit itself was a dull steel color. But now its body and limbs shone brilliantly in reflected light. Patches of armor plating were welded over vulnerable spots on the suit. Not just any metal – this was the special alien alloy.

“I thought rebuilding it was going to take more time than it was worth?” Charline asked.

“It would. Figuring out how to mesh steel parts with that new alloy is an engineering feat I can’t accomplish out here in the middle of nowhere,” Halcomb said. “That’s why I didn’t rebuild it. I just added a little armor here and there. Oh, and made a couple of other small adjustments.”

Charline spotted those almost at once. The shoulder mounted gun was still there, but Halcomb had dredged up a second arm cannon for the other arm. The suit now had better protection and a lot more firepower.

“I mounted a blade inside the right arm, too. Triggers out like a switchblade if you press the button inside the cockpit,” Halcomb said. He sounded especially proud of that bit, which made Charline smile.

“Very cool. I like the added plating, too. But won’t the additional armor weigh it down too much?” Charline asked.

“Nah. The stuff is really light, and the suit was meant to haul a lot of weight around. I’ve got a hunch that the alloy backed by steel might actually be stronger than the alloy alone. The steel will soak some impact and heat behind the armor plates,” Halcomb said.

“You’re saying the steel is padding,” Charline said with a laugh.

“Compared to that other stuff, it might as well be. Anyway, I figured we could use one more suit out there, when it’s time to go. I was hoping it might be for me,” Halcomb said.

“Andy’s not going to take anyone out who hasn’t been through training. Too much risk. I think we’re both sitting this one out,” Charline told him. “Maybe next time. For both of us.”

“Yeah, maybe. So what do you want to do with it? Take it apart?” Halcomb asked.

It was worth considering the idea. They had precious little of the alloy to work with. If they needed more spare parts than they had metal and components to create, they could be in trouble. The plating Halcomb put on the old suit wasn’t using too much, but even a little might matter.

On the other hand, they could always strip the stuff off later on if they needed it that badly. It would be a shame to waste his efforts. Charline smiled up at the armor and patted its leg. The smooth sheets of alloy plating sparkled like they were winking at her, telling her not to worry.

“I think it’s worth leaving it be. Might be useful if it comes down to it,” Charline said.

She felt a shudder, like the ground was vibrating. Dust dropped from the ceiling, showering down around them all. The shaking came again with even more intensity. Charline raced to grab a radio. If it was another cave-in, the armor team might be in serious trouble out there! She called out.

“Andy! We’re feeling some shaking here, like an earthquake. You all right?” she asked.

“We feel it too. No rocks falling yet. I’ve spread the team out to avoid losing more than one suit if there’s a major rockfall,” he replied.

“Be careful out there!” Charline said. The vibration returned, this time with enough force to make her grip the wall firmly. It didn’t subside this time, either.

“Always am,” Andy replied.

A sharp beeping noise caught Charline’s attention. She cast about, trying to determine what was making the noise. Maybe their gear was monitoring something about the earthquake, which continued to groan on at the same intensity. She spotted a light flashing in time with the sound and went to look.

It was the remote sensor system giving an alarm. That was the device they’d put at the top of the tunnel, the one supposed to be watching for anything coming through the cave-in toward them.

Charline tried to pull up the video feed on her tablet, but either there was too much rock in the way – or something had happened to the camera. She couldn’t see what was going on up there, but the sensor had definitely picked up something.

Someone was coming through the rubble. But were they friend or foe? It could be the Satori, returned to rescue them all. Or it might be the alien ship, finished at last with their survey of the surface and coming to examine the tunnel. There was no way to know until whatever it was came down the tunnel toward them. She had to warn the armor teams.

“Andy! The sensors are going off,” Charline said over the radio. “The tremors – I think someone is breaking through the cave-in, and that’s what’s causing them.”

“Someone? Any idea if friend or foe?” he asked.

It could be either, but there was only one safe course of action. “Assume foes until we know otherwise.”

Twenty-One

Charline swore repeatedly. It was one thing to bench herself during training. It was another thing entirely to stand idly by while her people were potentially going into battle. The new kid, Mark, had barely any practice at all wearing the armor. He was going to be a serious liability if it came to fighting. She glanced over at the old suit, newly remade. She could pop into that and be out there in a minute or two, tops.

No, Andy had been right. It was essential she remain safe, as much as she hated it. She needed to trust him and his ability to lead the others. He was good at his job. Give him the space to get things done, and he’d lead them all safely through whatever was coming their way.

She tapped a few commands on her keyboard, routing all of the armor cameras to her display. The small screen broke into six different images, one for each suit. The effect made her feel something like an insect, with a faceted view of the world. But these views were all from different angles. Andy had kept them spread out, but now they were all facing toward the tunnel entrance. Whatever came out of there was going to get a real shock.

“Hold your fire until I say to shoot, folks. That could be our people coming down, and we don’t want friendly fire,” Andy said over the radio.

It seemed less and less likely as time went on. When they were still on the surface, Charline could make excuses for the lack of radio contact. Maybe the stone was blocking transmissions. But the tremors had stopped. Whoever was digging through the rubble at the top of the tunnel was finished. They ought to be on their way down by now, which meant if it was a rescue team they would have signaled in some way.

No signal meant it was probably unfriendlies on their way.

Charline was about to open the radio link to warn Andy of her guess when something moved in the tunnel. The armor had all shut off their lights, but a few glowsticks remained scattered about the cave, casting a dim green illumination. That light had glanced off something. It was only there for a moment, but she was certain she’d seen it.

“Andy, the tunnel entrance,” she said.

“I saw it.” His voice sounded grim. “Hold your fire, everyone.”

Long moments passed without anything happening. Then the views in Charline’s tablet all flared white at the same time. She almost dropped the thing in surprise. What could have happened? Had there been an explosion?

The flare faded almost as quickly as it appeared, revealing a steady stream of plasma fire arcing across the room toward the tunnel entrance. The brightness of the plasma had briefly overwhelmed the armors’ cameras. Charline still couldn’t see what they were shooting at, or who was doing the firing. She longed to be out there, so she could make a difference. Risky, sure, but it was better than being left behind and only able to watch.

“Mark, cease fire! I ordered you to hold your fire until I said otherwise,” Andy’s voice cracked over the radio net.

The gunfire stopped immediately. “Sorry.”

Sorry wasn’t going to save the kid from getting killed if he wasn’t able to follow orders. Maybe someone else would have been a better pick for the extra unit. Not herself or Halcomb maybe, but there were still four more people in their refuge who could have gone. Like Mark, they weren’t combat trained. They hadn’t wanted to learn, either.

“All right, the enemy is either just inside the tunnel or beginning to withdraw,” Andy said. “We can’t let them retreat and bomb this place from the air. Tessa and I will advance. The rest of you cover the entrance. Fire at anything that moves. And don’t hit me.”

He added the last line in a joking tone, but it was a real risk with the pilots having so little practice using their machines. He was taking the two most experienced people forward to rush the tunnel, hoping their skill would allow them to overcome whatever they ran into.

Charline crossed her fingers. He had to be right. He usually was, when it really counted.

She flicked her screen to focus on Andy’s cameras as he closed with the opening. There was no movement, but she could see bits of cooling metal scattered on the tunnel floor. Mark might have fired without orders, but at least he’d hit something! Andy didn’t stop at the base of the tunnel. Tessa’s armor at his side, he started to climb.

“They’re withdrawing. So much for our ambush,” Andy said.

“Sorry!” Mark yelped. He did sound contrite.

“Sorry doesn’t get the job done. Fall in behind us. We’re moving fast. Keep up,” Andy replied.

They made their way up the twisting tunnel. Charline watched the floor and walls for some sign of the enemy’s passage. There was no blood on the ground, so whatever they’d hit wasn’t bleeding out. Were these aliens armored, too? Developments like body armor seemed to be universal. It wouldn’t shock her to see another species had thoughts along similar lines to her own and the Naga.

The tunnel was growing brighter as they approached the surface. All at once Andy’s view showed the outside. He was still moving as fast as the armor’s legs could sprint. He didn’t slow down at the tunnel entrance, just pushed on as rapidly as he could. Plasma fire zipped past him, splashing against the cave wall as he exited.

The way ahead was blocked by a small ship. More of a large shuttle than a real starship, the thing had smooth lines, looking sleek compared to the boxy ships her people had built. Even the Naga vessels didn’t come close to this level of complex construction. How had the thing been shaped?

She didn’t have time to worry about it more. There were four enemy combatants closing on the ship. They raced toward the lowered ramp, firing back at Andy’s team periodically as they fled.

On many, many legs. She’d seen that armor before, or something very close to it anyway.

“Charline, do you see them?” Andy asked.

“Yes,” she replied. It was unmistakable. The aliens were indeed wearing armor. It was almost the same stuff as they’d discovered in the sealed chamber. The centipede-like suits they’d converted over to their own use. This had to be the same race.

This was the species which had built the wormhole drive. The race the Naga had gone to war with a thousand years ago and believed they had wiped out. But the Naga hadn’t finished the job, it seemed. Now they were back, and that meant Andy’s people were in a lot of trouble. Hell, all of them were in for a world of hurt if those things were as powerful as Charline guessed they had to be.

“Fan out!” Andy said. “Tess and Mark left of me. Arjun and Jonas right. Isabella with me. Light them up!”

Fire blazed from all six armor units as they maneuvered into a better position to fire. They focused on the rearmost centipede. Metal spat and blew away from its shell as the plasma melted its way into it. It kept moving as long as it could, dodging to avoid some of their shots. But then Tessa and Andy both landed direct hits on the thing’s head. It shuddered and went down in a heap.

“One down!” Jonas whooped.

“Stay focused. Keep firing!” Andy replied.

It was working! The aliens were on the run. One more hard push and Andy’s unit would have the ship under their control.

Twenty-Two

Charline watched the aliens beat their retreat, her heart thrilling. The armor worked! Worked well enough to send the enemy into disarray and withdrawal. If Andy could press the advantage and board their ship, they would capture it and win the day.

But then she realized only one of the three aliens had boarded. The other two remained at the bottom of the ramp. They used their ship as cover, protecting them from most of the incoming fire. Meanwhile, their own guns had the armor pinned down. Andy couldn’t advance without one or more of his people taking withering fire.

Charline wanted to direct the fight via radio, but she knew better. The boots on the ground needed to be in charge, making the hard calls in real-time. Her orders would only be interference and disruption. She’d cause more harm than good.

“Tessa and Mark, push forward on their right flank. We’ll cover you,” Andy said.

She held her breath, hoping the ploy would work. The other armor units unleashed everything they had, pouring plasma into the spot where the two aliens hid. They huddled back further, and almost all their fire stopped.

“Now! Move!” Andy all but shouted.

The two armor units rushed forward to take up a flanking position. Caught in a pincer between Andy’s four units and the pair flanking, the aliens would be unable to remain under cover. This was it. They’d all but won!

Something odd flashed across Charline’s screen. Her tablet gave her a steady diagnostic readout on each of the armor units. They were running a little hot, nothing to worry about. But all six of them had a small spike in transmissions from and to their alien power cores. It wasn’t much, just enough to notice, but for a hacker like Charline the extra traffic rang every alarm bell.

“Andy, get out of there!” Charline shouted into the radio. “Pull them all out, now!”

“What?” He sounded confused, but then he brought his voice back to certainty again. “Abort the flanking maneuver. All units, pull back to the tunnel. I say again, pull back!”

Her heart warmed that he trusted her enough to act without asking for a more detailed explanation. She only hoped that her warning arrived in time to save them.

The alien tech was still fairly black box. They understood so little about how it worked, where the power it generated came from, and what else those cubes could do. That little spike in traffic was classic hacking, though. Someone was trying to break into their power cubes. Not even Charline had the tech to manage that without a direct physical connection.

But the aliens might.

All at once the cameras giving her a feed from the armor went dead. All her diagnostics went out. She was blind.

“Andy! What’s going on?” Charline asked, hoping the radios would still work. Their batteries were separate from the power cubes.

“We’ve lost all power! The armor just shut down. We’re getting out and making a run for it,” he said. “Oh, god. They just blew up Mark’s armor before he could get out. Char, we’re not gonna make it.”

The kid she’d sent out there to replace her was gone. If she hadn’t handed the armor over to him, that would have been her. Charline didn’t know how to feel about that – relief, that she was still alive. Grief, that he had died instead of her.

She pushed those feelings from her mind. There would be time to deal with it later. Andy and the others needed her mind if they were going to live through the next few minutes.

Or her marksmanship. That might do the trick, too.

“Andy, hang in there,” she said.

“What–”

Charline didn’t wait for the rest of his response. She raced toward the old suit, souped up by Halcomb to be something more than what it had been. Would the thing work? There’d been no time to run tests. She darted up the ladder as quickly as her legs could take her and had the machine booting up before she’d even strapped in. There wasn’t time for a proper inspection checklist, not if she was going to get there in time to save Andy.

“What are you doing?” Halcomb roared, running toward her.

“Saving the day, as usual,” Charline quipped. There wasn’t time for a detailed explanation. She’d fill Halcomb in later, if she lived through this.

Her armor came alive as she finished clicking the last strap into place. Readouts gave her a view from all directions. Halcomb had the guns fully loaded, which was fortunate. She wasn’t going to be a lot of good up there without weapons. Time to see how fast this thing could move.

The armor took a lumbering step forward as it responded to the movements of her legs. Sensors around her lower body read her own muscle movements and translated them into motion. Charline willed her legs to pump faster, and the armor picked up the pace. It was barreling forward at a light jog. Then she managed to get it up to something that more closely resembled a run.

It was risky, running like this. The gyros weren’t calibrated for precision at this speed. She was counting on her internal sense of balance to make any necessary corrections if the armor started to spill over. There wasn’t time for a safe, plodding pace.

“Andy, strep,” Charline called over her radio as she reached the tunnel to the surface. She needed to know what she was getting into up there.

“They’re ignoring us. Targeting the armor. The rest of us managed to get out, but they’ve already blown three more suits. We had to run for the ruins,” Andy said. “They shot Jonas when he tried to make it back into the tunnel.”

Damn them. Two of her people were already dead, and the rest were in deep trouble. They’d been sneaky as hell, letting the armor units think they were winning, then pulling out their ace in the hole. Hacking the power units was brilliant, just the sort of thing Charline herself might have done. Thin-lipped, she gave the aliens a nod of appreciation anyway. They were no pushovers.

“Andy, I’ll be topside to distract them in a few moments. Get everyone down into the base. See if you can seal it and maybe defend it if this doesn’t work.”

“Distract them? With what? Charline, don’t do anything stupid,” Andy said.

Charline shut down her radio. “Sorry, Andy. I don’t need the distraction right now.”

Then she burst from the tunnel entrance into daylight, both of her arms already aiming the guns at the startled alien centipedes. Charline roared inside her armor as she opened up on her enemy.

Twenty-Three

The first centipede didn’t even see her coming. Charline’s attack blindsided it while it was tearing into one of the disabled suits. She opened fire with both guns, barrels blazing as bullets streamed at her target. The shoulder cannon triggered as fast as it could charge, adding to the cacophony of violence.

Rounds tore into alien armor. The first few pinged off, leaving only dents. But those guns were pouring out dozens of bullets per second. The dents turned into holes. The holes became great rents in the outer shell. Any material could only take so much abuse, no matter how strong or well-engineered it might be. The alien armor was built better than anything humanity had ever developed. But humans had been learning to kill things for a long time, too – and the weapons Charline brought to bear were among the best ever invented on Earth.

The centipede came apart in a flurry of secondary explosions. Showers of half-molten metal fountained in all directions. Charline heard bits of it rattle and hiss against her suit. That was only one threat down though. The other centipede wasn’t going to be taken by surprise like the first. Charline twisted her torso toward it, trying to pin it under her guns, but it sped up and dashed outside her range.

It returned fire, plasma bolts spattering against her right flank. Charline heard the hiss of metal vaporizing. She couldn’t afford too many hits like that, but at least her reinforced armor was holding out so far. The steel alone might have already burned through. She was doubly indebted to Halcomb, although she didn’t know if she wanted to tell him that. The man was already insufferable enough.

Charline pivoted hard on her left leg, sweeping the right back so she could turn more swiftly. Then she dashed forward directly at the creature.

It fired as she bore down on it. Plasma scorched the heavy armor guarding her armor’s chest. She returned fire with all her guns, blasting away at the centipede. It rushed toward her, front claw arms outstretched to tear into her, plasma bolts flashing.

They were like two knights charging toward each other, she thought. Two crazy knights in armor no medieval knight could ever have envisioned. Then she wondered if it was more like the story of Saint George and the dragon. Or Sigurd and Fafnir, although she was hoping for a better end than dying under the creature she’d just slain.

The centipede collided with her suit, the impact almost knocking her over. Jaws snapped closed in front of her face. She held it off with both hands, fighting to keep the alien’s thrashing body from tearing holes in her armor. Human engineering fought against alien armor, working as hard as it could to keep the powerful jaws away. But she was losing, and Charline knew it.

She didn’t need to win, though. She just needed to make the bug put everything it had into the effort.

All at once Charline stopped pushing the insect away. Instead she pulled, dragging it closer. Surprised, the centipede had no way to stop her as she brought its head up higher, raising it until it was directly in line with her shoulder cannon.

“Eat this,” she snarled, and fired.

The Naga weapon discharged its energy ball, which blasted deep into the alien armor. Charline dropped it and took a step back. It was still moving, but it was badly damaged. Was the creature inside injured? Dying? Or was it only the armor which had been disabled? Even without armor, these things were deadly. She couldn’t afford to take any chances.

Charline took another step back. Then she opened up with both arm guns. She continued firing until the centipede was a smoking ruin.

A whining noise caught her attention. The ship! One of the four bugs they’d seen remained, and it was on board. The ramp was rising and lights were coming on around the engines. In another few seconds it would take off. They’d lose their chance to grab a ship. Without that ship, the enemy could just come back whenever they wanted, with overwhelming force.

“Not happening,” Charline said. She dashed forward again, jumping to land on the ramp just before it raised itself too high. It continued closing with her on top of it, lifting her the rest of the way into the alien ship.

Inside was a place both strange and familiar at the same time. She knew this tech. She’d seen traces in the Satori, that rescued fragment of ancient technology that had allowed humanity to begin exploring the stars. The curves and lines were like the ones she’d found exploring the ruins of this planet, and very close indeed to what she’d discovered in the sealed off room.

It was different, too. Charline couldn’t quite put her finger on what had changed. It wasn’t surprising to her that a species would adapt over the course of a thousand years. If anything, it was more unusual that these bugs had changed so little. Humanity certainly adapted more rapidly than that. The suits she’d been fighting against, for example – more advanced than the ones she’d discovered, but not significantly so. They were an improvement on a design, not something truly new.

This race changed slowly, then. They didn’t innovate rapidly. Charline filed the information away. That might make a difference down the road.

She turned and spotted the last alien. It was near the nose of the ship, curled around what had to be some sort of control device. It saw her and gave a series of clicking noises she hoped were distress. Charline flicked on her external speakers so it could hear her.

“That’s right. I’m here. You’re not going anywhere,” she said.

It hissed at her. She didn’t think it understood a word she said, but the tone was probably getting through. The bug rushed at her.

Charline didn’t want to blow the shuttle to bits. They needed this thing if they were going to make good their escape. Everything they’d done would be for nothing if the ship was rendered useless and the enemy simply came back with even more firepower. They’d been lucky to only face four of the things. If the aliens had sent twice that number her people never would have survived the attack.

Not destroying the ship meant no guns. Luckily the bug didn’t want to shoot, either. It was going to come down to claws and teeth. But Charline had one more trick up her sleeve that the bug hadn’t seen yet. She tapped a button on her console, and Halcomb’s pretty gadget engaged. A three foot length of sharpened alien metal slid free from a housing in her right forearm.

Charline swung the sword in a silvery arc, severing one of the alien’s limbs before it could bring itself to a stop. It darted to her left, dodging and weaving. She turned, blocking a series of attacks with her left arm while trying to bring the sword to bear again. A quick twist put the sword out in front of her, between her and the creature.

It hissed again. She stabbed out. It dodged to the right, slapping at the sword with a claw. The blow sent Charline’s arm off to the side.

The alien took the moment to lunge in, biting deep into the armor of her right arm with its armored mandibles. That was her sword arm! The weapon was useless if she couldn’t bring it to bear.

The alien’s bite pressure was increasing. Charline could hear her armor squeal and scream as it buckled under the strain. She swung her arm hard against the shuttle wall. The centipede cracked into the wall once, twice, and then a third time, but it still clung to her. There had to be some way to get it off her!

While she was distracted with trying to dislodge it, the bug swung its lower body toward her legs, wrapping them in a metal coil. Charline’s armor went down hard. The impact rang in her ears. There was a snapping noise as her lower right arm came completely off, the insect’s armored bite tearing completely through. The thing reared back, then lunged in again toward her head.

She lashed out with her remaining arm, smacking the centipede in the head. Her blow sent it flying backward against the wall again.

Charline staggered back to her feet. Her armor was a smoking mess. But her adversary looked dazed and hurt, too. Half of its legs were snapped or damaged, and there were several big dents in its head armor. The bug inside couldn’t be feeling too good.

One of the plasma guns mounted on the insect’s armor had broken off during the fighting. But the other glowed, aiming at her and preparing to fire. It must have decided that its odds were better with her dead even if it ruined the shuttle in the process.

There was nowhere to run. The blast splashed across her torso. The heat poured in through the hole in her right arm. Charline screamed as the temperature inside her armor rose dangerously high. The suit tried to compensate, but she could feel her skin blister and burn.

She would not survive much of that. Now or never. She ran in, stooping to pick up the severed forearm with her left hand. The insect fired again and again as she closed the distance between them. One swing cut the offending plasma weapon in half.

The second severed the thing’s head.

Charline sank to her knees. It was over.

She hurt everywhere. Her entire body felt like one big burn. She flicked her radio back on.

“Andy?” she croaked.

“Oh, thank god. I thought I’d lost you,” he said. His voice was soft, gentle. “Are you all right?”

“I will be. Can you get Karl in here?”

“The medic? Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Yeah. All that stuff you said about not risking myself…”

“Forget about it. You did great. I’m radioing for Karl now. Just hang in there,” he said.

It could have gone very differently. She’d been good, but she was lucky, too. Charline shrugged before she recalled how much that would hurt with her scorched skin and groaned. Sometimes you had to be both. Someday she might end up not being lucky enough or good enough to survive. But this was where she intended to be, from here on out – at the sharp point of the spear.

“Yeah,” she replied. She didn’t need to explain herself anymore. This was still her command, her decisions, and her future.

Twenty-Four

Charline’s first sensation on waking was pain. She hurt all over. Her body felt raw, especially her right side. She tried to shift, and agony flashed up her right arm and leg. She gave a soft moan and stopped trying to move.

“You’re awake. Good. How’s the pain?”

Charline just winced. Talking hurt too much.

“Hang on. I’ll add some more pain medication to your drip. You did a number on yourself,” the voice said. She recognized the man speaking, but she couldn’t place his voice.

He fiddled with something beside her. A few moments later, the pain receded enough for her thoughts to clear. She remembered the battle. The plasma blast that washed over her armor…

Some of the heat had flowed through a hole in her suit. It had hurt badly at the time, but not like this! She must have been more injured than she’d thought.

“Everyone else?” Charline managed to croak out. Her mouth and throat felt dry as dust.

“Alive, except Max. You saved everyone else. That was damned brave. Stupidly so. You almost killed yourself.”

Charline gave him a smile that faded immediately. Even smiling hurt. At least she recalled the medic’s name again. “Did what needed to be done, Karl.”

“Well, it worked. This time,” Karl said. “You’re lucky we had some medical nanites in my meditation, or you might not still be here.”

“She’s awake? Thank god. I was so worried,” Andy said.

His face drifted into view, then he knelt down on the floor next to her. Charline realized she had to be laying on the ground, but there was a curved ceiling overhead.

“Where are we?” Charline asked.

“In the alien shuttle,” Andy said. When she looked alarmed, he waved a hand in dismissal. “I know it’s a risk, but you couldn’t be moved. Karl said we’d risked you enough just getting you out of your armor. They haven’t come looking for their shuttle, anyway. It’s been six hours. I’m starting to think they aren’t going to.”

That was strange. Why would the aliens abandon the shuttle? It had to have come from a larger ship, right? It was hard to imagine that this one shuttle was the only Bug ship in the system. So why hadn’t anyone else come to help, or at least come looking for it?

“Ship’s log?” Charline asked.

Andy shook his head. “We can’t make heads or tails of it. The shuttle’s systems are mostly still functioning. But there don’t seem to be anything that resembles flight controls, and while we found the computer and managed to link up with it, we can’t decipher what it says.”

Charline grinned. “Tablet.”

Andy raised an eyebrow and looked at Karl.

“If she’s well enough to ask, she’d well enough to play with a tablet,” Karl said. “But she still needs plenty of rest while the nanites do their work.”

Andy motioned to someone else just out of Charline’s line of sight. They handed him a computer tablet, which he passed over to her. She activated the device with her left hand – her right still didn’t want to work. It was swathed in bandages and burned like mad if she moved it. Pulling up the link they’d made to the alien systems was easy. Understanding what she was seeing was going to take a little longer.

Nobody knew more about the alien language and computer code than she did. It was Charline’s primary area of study ever since she’d been brought on board the Satori. The Satori’s alien systems were the same technology as the devices they’d discovered buried under Dust, and those were likewise roughly the same tech as what she had seen on the alien shuttle. They’d all been built by the same people. Or bugs, in this case.

But the tech examples she’d worked from were about a thousand years old. Charline recognized some of the code syntax she was seeing, but she couldn’t make sense of the specific words. It made sense. There was bound to be some drift over that long a period of time.

If anything, she was lucky that there was so little change. Humans changed their tech base rapidly. That the Bugs were still using the same quantum cubes as the basis for their infrastructure was a stroke of luck. It was going to take some work, but she’d puzzle the problem out.

Charline set up some code to begin the process of deciphering the mess in front of her and set it running. By the time she was done, her eyes were trying to close of their own accord.

Dimly, Charline was aware the exhaustion was a result of the nanites using her resources to rebuild her damaged body. The little robots burned her body’s resources to do their work. The IV drip in her arm probably carried key nutrients into her blood along with water and pain medicine.

Her friend Beth had hated having nanites inside her. She’d said that she could feel the things wriggling around. At the time, Charline told her that she was imagining it. There was no way the body could feel something that small.

Now she was feeling the same creeping sensation. It was unnerving. She was gonna have to apologize to Beth when she saw her again.

The good news was that in less than twenty-four hours, the nanites would be done and her body would begin flushing out their inert bodies. In the meantime, Charline needed sleep more than just about anything else. She set aside the tablet and closed her eyes. Just a little rest, and she’d be back at it again.

When she opened her eyes again, the light had changed. The air smelled different, too. She’d been moved. The ceiling over her head wasn’t metal anymore. It was dusty dun-colored rock.

“What’s going on?” Charline asked. She felt much better. The pain was still there in her right arm and leg, but it was bearable. She tried to sit up and stopped as a wave of dizziness assailed her.

“Hang on,” Karl said, rushing over. “I’ll help you sit up, but you need to take it slow. You stand up right now and you’ll just drop to the ground.”

“Gotcha,” Charline replied.

He helped her lever herself into a sitting position. Charline recognized the new spot at once. She was back in the cave – at the very top, the area they’d caved in to protect themselves from ratzards or other threats on the surface.

“Where’s the shuttle?” Charline asked.

“Still outside. But we started receiving transmissions from another Bug ship a few hours ago. We moved everyone out of the shuttle and back into the tunnel,” Karl said. “Better safe than sorry.”

That was more than fair. “What are they asking?”

“We don’t know. Can’t understand them.”

Charline fished next to her. The tablet was gone.

“Looking for this?” Karl said, holding it out for her.

“Thanks! How long was I out, anyway?”

“This time? About six hours,” Karl said.

Charline booted the tablet with hope, even as she cursed herself under her breath for being asleep so long. She knew her body needed the rest, but that didn’t make her feel any better about losing so much time. Now they had an enemy ship out there, probably headed their way. They’d send more than one shuttle to investigate. Of that, Charline felt sure.

The program she’d written had done a lot of the legwork for her. It had a log of possible meaning shifts. This was good. With that information she ought to be able to translate the messages sent their way. Whether she could respond with anything more than a few basic words was another question, but it was a start.

It didn’t take Charline as long as she thought to run the transmissions that had been sent to the shuttle through her program. She was surprised how fast it went. There ought to be more drift over a thousand years! But the dialect was almost the same as the bits of language she’d recovered from thousand-year-old data cubes.

That implied a stagnant culture. Hell, that was so static she needed to invent a new word for it. These bugs barely changed at all over the course of hundreds of years. Charline was willing to bet their technology hadn’t adapted much, either. That explained how they were able to so quickly interface with the power cells on the armor Andy’s team was wearing. It wasn’t a matter of trying to interface with long-forgotten tech. The stuff they’d discovered in the cave was almost the same design as the equipment the aliens still used.

Wild and unexpected. In the battle it had worked against the humans, but now it would be a boon. Those transmissions were easy enough to crack. The rest of the ship’s systems should be doable as well. She listened to the first message.

“Get Andy,” Charline said before the message was even complete. Karl took one look at her face and dashed off without argument. He came back a few minutes later with Andy in tow. She’d had a chance to listen to the first several messages by that time.

“What’s up?” Andy asked.

“I cracked the language. Those messages? They’re transmitting to us that they’ve come back for pickup,” Charline said. “They were called away. Something about a battle. Sounds like a big fight. But they came back for the crew. They’re starting to sound a little uptight. I don’t think we have long before they come for a visit.”

Based on the message contents, she was surprised they hadn’t already arrived. Something else must be keeping them preoccupied or they’d surely have already sent down another shuttle to investigate. She didn’t know what caused the delay, but it was a stroke of luck for them.

“What do you want to do? I can get everyone inside the cave, button the place up again,” Andy said.

Charline shook her head. She let her feet drop to the ground and gingerly shifted her weight to her legs. Karl was there by her side in an instant, steadying her as she tried to stand.

“You’re going to be tired for a while yet,” Karl warned.

“Understood. But there’s work I need to do,” Charline replied. “No, we’re not going back into hiding. We’re almost out of food, and there’s no guarantee they won’t just come in after us again. We won last time, but we might not be as lucky next time.”

“What did you have in mind?” Andy asked. “I thought we were waiting here for the Satori?”

That was the plan, and it might still be the safest course. Charline wasn’t so sure, though. Hiding in a hole might keep them alive a little longer, but they’d eventually starve to death unless someone came to save them.

“The Satori might well have been destroyed. Maybe that was the battle they were talking about. If that’s the case, then we’ve got no rescue coming anytime soon,” Charline said. “We’re going to have to rescue ourselves.”

“How?” Karl asked, looking from Charline to Andy, who was grinning. He’d figured out what she had in mind, at least. Better still, he wasn’t telling her that it was too dangerous. The boy could be taught!

“We’re going up in that shuttle and we’re taking their ship,” Charline said. “Then we’re getting out of this Dust-ball system and heading for home.”

Twenty-Five

Charline barely looked up from her tablet keyboard for the next few hours. There was too much work that no one else could do. She wrapped some new code around the quantum cubes powering the armor. It was a hack job. She’d need weeks to ensure they were truly protected, and even then a sufficient effort would probably crack her encryption.

It wasn’t as simple as just removing wireless connectivity. The alien cubes all communicated with each other on a quantum level. Somehow any cube was capable of being tuned to talk to any other one. It was probably possible to completely block a cube off from being hacked and shut off, but she had no idea how it might be accomplished.

The short-term fix was easier. She simply wrapped some code in place to deny any signal that attempted to access the power generation. They weren’t using the cube’s more complex processing properties anyway. It was simply a power core that happened to have a supercomputer riding along. It wouldn’t stop a dedicated hacker from breaking through, given enough time. But it would slow the hacker down. Hopefully, that would be enough.

By the time she was done with the code, Charline was shaking with exhaustion. Her pain levels had crept back up. The nanites were healing her, but it took time. That healing was pulling energy and materials from her body, too. She eased back against a wall of the shuttle cockpit area, settling in for the rest of the tasks ahead.

“You keep pushing too hard, you’ll damage yourself,” Karl said. “Those nanites work wonders, but they need time to do a good job.”

“No time to rest right now. If I don’t get this done, we’re all dead anyway,” Charline said.

“And no one else can do it?”

“Can you create a code interface on the fly that will let us take this ship up into space, dock with an another ship, and not blow ourselves to bits?” she asked.

He grinned and shook his head. “Not hardly.”

“Then best leave me to it,” she replied.

“OK. But I’m gonna hit you with another IV. You’re looking more worn out than I like. I’m guessing you plan on being back in the front lines when we get up there, right?” he said.

“The thought had crossed my mind.” More than that, she’d already ordered the repairs on her armor. Halcomb was itching to get out there himself, but she’d pulled rank. Nobody knew the armor better than she, and they didn’t have time to train someone new. It was going to be all hands on deck, anyway. There wouldn’t be any bystanders.

“Then I’ll run two bags one after another. Better safe than sorry,” he replied.

Charline just nodded her assent and got back to work. She’d had to do something similar once before. The Satori’s human control system had been damaged by an explosion and it had been up to her to jerry-rig a software solution that allowed them to fly the ship. This was even harder. Before, Charline at least had a few weeks to gain familiarity with the Satori. This shuttle was partly familiar, but partly a mystery too. There was damned little time.

But she’d also grown a lot since that early challenge. The things she’d done since…! The old Charline would never have imagined half of them. She applied her sharp mind to the problem, delving into the code to find the elements she hoped they’d have. There! That looked like what she needed: a return-to-base protocol. It made sense, if you thought about it. The shuttle was deployed from a larger ship. Having a simple command which told it to return to the ship it had come from was logical.

“I’ve got it,” Charline said.

“Already?” Andy replied. “We’ve barely finished loading everyone on board.”

“Well, it’s not full flight control. I don’t think we have enough time for that. I can get us docked with the other ship, though. After that…”

“After that we take the battle to them. If we can capture their ship, then you can figure out how to get us home, right?” Andy asked.

“It might take a little while, but yes. I can,” Charline said.

Of course, they had no idea how big the ship they were docking with might be. Did it have dozens more bugs on board? Hundreds? Thousands? Was it alone up there, or part of a flotilla? So many questions, and no way to answer them from the ground. This was a serious roll of the dice.

But Charline’s gut said they were looking at one relatively small ship. If there were many ships, surely they would have already sent another shuttle before now? The same would be true if it was a very large ship. But if it was one ship, they might be using the delay to figure out what was going on.

“Tell everyone to buckle in. Armor combatants to their suits. I’m going to send them a message that we were attacked by local wildlife and took damage,” Charline said. Well, she’d prepped a few words that she understood and would have the quantum cubes transmit them. It should be enough to convey the intent while also hopefully fooling the bigger ship into thinking they were more heavily damaged than they really were.

It helped that there really was damage visible from outside the ship. The large cargo area had a gaping hole in the side from the fighting, and the shuttle’s armor was pocked from scores of shots. As soon as the mothership got a look at their shuttle on cameras, the visual would support the story she was telling them.

“All right. We don’t have space suits for half these people, though,” Andy said. “I figured we’d set them up in the cockpit area. We can maintain a breathable seal here.”

“Sounds good. Oh, that means I need to get back into my suit too, right?” Charline said.

“Yeah, there’s no airlock,” Andy replied.

Charline nodded and slid slowly to her feet. The IV bag was almost done dumping its contents into her. She turned the knob to stop the liquid’s flow, then applied pressure to the insertion site and pulled the needle out. It had helped. She’d need to remember to thank Karl for the thought. Exhaustion still settled in on her like a heavy weight, but she’d dealt with worse. Just keep going a little longer. Take the ship, then she could rest.

Andy walked with her back to the armor suits. They stood in rows and columns, filling the shuttle’s entire cargo area. The armor would give them a huge advantage in the assault. With any luck the aliens only wore their armored suits for attacks, not for daily attire. Either way, the die was cast.

Charline stepped up the short ladder and climbed into her armor. The suit powered on at a touch from her palm. Lights and screens lit up. Fresh welds met her fingertips where the holes used to be. It looked as solid as ever.

“You did a great job fixing her up, Halcomb,” Charline said over the radio.

“Yeah, well, try not messing it up so bad this time,” he replied.

“No promises,” Charline said.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Charline slipped out her tablet. Two buttons appeared on the screen. The first would send her transmission. The second would engage the shuttle’s engines and hopefully send them back to the ship waiting in orbit. Assuming this worked.

“All right, everyone. Here we go!” Charline said. She pressed the first button and then the second. The tablet told her the message had been successfully delivered, but at first Charline thought the engines weren’t going to respond. About fifteen seconds after she engaged the program, a trembling started under her feet. That turned into a roar as the thrusters strained against the planet’s gravity.

They were aloft, gaining speed as they climbed. Charline checked over the code. They were on their way toward the waiting mothership. She didn’t think she could shut the shuttle’s autopilot off and get them safely back to the surface even if she tried. Now there really was no way to turn back.

Twenty-Six

The roar of the shuttle’s engines died away almost entirely as they left the planet’s atmosphere behind. They were back in space, but microgravity wasn’t showing up.

Charline nodded. She’d half expected as much. The Satori’s drive had a gravity field as well. It remained as much a mystery as the wormhole drive and some of the advanced sensor systems that had also been a part of the original alien ship they’d discovered. This shuttle had similar tech. It was more evidence that the same race had built both ships.

“How do we know they’re going to bring us on board instead of just blowing us up?” Arjun asked over their radio net.

“I’m counting on their being sure of their own superiority. This race is careful around their own people. Remember how the aliens have defended their young in the past?” Charline asked.

“Sure, but there weren’t any baby bugs on this ship,” Arjun replied.

“It implies a general respect for life – at least, for life of their species,” Charline said. “Even if they think something is up, they’ll still bring the shuttle in. That’s what we would do.”

And they were not that much different from the aliens. That was becoming more clear with every contact they had. Sure, the aliens looked wildly different from humans. Frighteningly so. But at their core they were similar in so many ways! Their code was something she could recognize from the math basis of its structure. They’d exhibited cunning and curiosity. They cared about their young.

Being a lot like humans wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The Naga were much like humans, too, and those similarities had resulted in the two races entering conflict with one another the moment they knew of each others’ existence. The same could be true here.

Humanity could also be scared of anything that looked different, isolationist, and xenophobic. It was a failing that could get them wiped out if they kept ending up at war with every alien race they met. How many other species were out there flying between the stars? It was a big universe. Sooner or later they’d end up running into someone with a much bigger stick.

“I hope you’re right,” Andy said.

“Me too. We’ll find out soon. The shuttle is doing breaking maneuvers,” Charline said.

Her tablet showed their progress through her connection with the shuttle’s computer system. The other ship was near. They were still closing the distance, but the alien ship was slowing down as it drew nearer. Charline worked through the system to get a sensor view of the other ship.

It wasn’t huge, thank goodness. A bit bigger than the Satori. It couldn’t have more than one or two shuttles. They wouldn’t be able to fit more than that. Which explained why they hadn’t sent down another craft. That and – her eyebrows went up as she saw what had to be combat damage all over the larger ship.

It had been pummeled. A tear ran down one side of the hull, showing on her scan despite the rough patch they’d put in place. In fact, repairs were still underway. She could see several aliens flitting about outside the ship working to heal its wounds.

The vessel was a strange looking ship. Where human vessels tended toward the streamlined, these aliens took that a step further. She’d never seen a metal object so large constructed with such convoluted lines. Smooth curves and twisted arcs made up the frame of the main hull. It was beautiful and uncanny at the same time.

Very close now. Charline took a deep breath, having forgotten to inhale for a bit there. It looked like she’d been correct. They weren’t going to blow up the shuttle. It was an educated guess, but it had been a gamble. She’d only been hoping she was right. Now a large bay door opened in the bottom of the larger ship. They were slowly being eased back aboard.

“They took the bait. All armor units, sound off ready to go,” Charline said.

“Ready here,” Andy replied.

“I’m good,” Tessa said.

“Up and running,” Arjun said.

“Good here,” Jonas said.

“Let’s rock and roll,” Isabella said.

This was it. The shuttle slid into some sort of docking cradle with a clanging noise and shuddered to a stop. The steady thrum of the engine shut off.

There was no telling what they would be facing when they exited the shuttle. The assumption was they’d be up against armed combatants right away. Best chance was therefore to come out guns blazing. Halcomb set explosive charges on the shuttle’s big doors. One push of a button and Charline could blow the doors outward. The armor would follow.

“On three,” she said. “One. Two…”

The third word was drowned out by the roaring sound of the explosives going off. The doors all but flew off their hinges as they were hurled outward. They slammed into the sides of the shuttle with a bang that would have been ear-shattering if it wasn’t mostly buried by the booming echoes from the blast. Smoke obscured their view of whatever lay beyond, but they didn’t have time for the haze to clear. The element of surprise was theirs. It wouldn’t last.

“Move, armor! Forward!” Charline yelled. She followed her own order, rushing toward the open hatch as quickly as her legs could take her.

As she ran, she opened fire. The other armor was behind her, so she could blaze away with impunity. She unleashed both guns, burning fire through the smoke with abandon. That rate of fire was going to expend her ammunition far too fast, but they had to get a beach-head on the ship or they were toast.

An armored bug reared up from Charline’s right side as she jumped from the shuttle onto the deck. She screamed and half-turned toward it, still shooting. Her shots stitched a line across its belly armor, and then a blast of plasma exploded against its head, sending it flying backward.

“Got you covered,” Andy said.

“Thanks,” Charline replied. Now that they were past the smoke she could see more of the bugs closing in. All of them were armored. “Looks like they were in a mood to ‘trust but verify,’ folks. Light them up!”

All six armor units fired on the enemy. The bugs were obviously expecting trouble, but they were taken aback by the raw ferocity of the human attack. They fell back, each trying to cover the others as they retreated toward an open hatch.

One of the bugs went down. Another reached over to drag the fallen one back. Again, Charline was struck with how human that action seemed.

“Don’t let them reach the doors and close them!” Andy said.

Charline saw the danger. If they made the doorway, they could shut it off. Not only would that keep her people off the rest of the ship, but this was a hangar bay. Theirs was the only shuttle in place, but the floor beneath her feet was actually a pair of massive doors. Once the bugs cleared the bay, they’d be free to open those doors and dump all their troubles out into space.

Twenty-Seven

Afull assault was the only way they were going to breach into the rest of the ship before those doors closed. Charline started her armor lumbering forward. Plasma fire from the enemy weapons splashed down around her. She was moving fast enough that most of the shots missed, but she was still reading multiple impacts on her display. The armor was tough, taking the fire and continuing on despite it.

“Halcomb is going to kill me,” Charline muttered, imagining the havoc the enemy shots were wreaking on her suit. But she’d only be alive for him to bitch at if she kept moving. Right then, nothing mattered more than getting to that doorway.

She was aware of the rest of the squad falling in behind her, adding their shots to her own. Fire blazed toward the portal. One alien after another fell under the withering force of their collective gunfire. But the last few kept pushing on. They were going to make it to the doorway first. Damn it! There had to be something she could do!

The armor reacted to her body motions. It wasn’t like steering her own body, though. She didn’t have nearly as much dexterity in the suit as she had outside it. But she’d been practicing. Long hours of work with the armor had honed her ability to know how it moved. Even so, she’d never have attempted a complicated movement unless the situation was truly dire. This qualified.

She sent the armor into a jump, pushing off against the deck with all the strength her leg motors could give her. The suit arced higher into the air than any human could have leaped, sailing toward the doors. She didn’t try to keep her feet under her for the landing. That probably wouldn’t have been possible with such an uncontrolled leap, anyway. Instead, Charline twisted in midair so that she’d land on her back.

The impact drove all the air from her lungs, even inside the padded cockpit area. Sirens went off around her as the suit registered damages from the fall. There was a screeching sound as Charline’s suit skidded along the deck another several yards after crashing down. Momentum carried her precisely where she wanted to be – in the middle of the doorway.

The doors started to close. Charline stuck both her arms out and jammed them open. A whining noise filled her ears. She wasn’t sure if it was the door motors, the ones in her arms, or both as the two systems strained against one another. Something was going to break soon. If it was her suit, she’d be cut in half by the doors when they slammed shut.

“Hang on!” Andy said. Then he was standing over her, blasting fire into the space beyond the doorway.

Two more armored suits came up on either side, yanking the doorway open. Charline felt the pressure on her suit let up as the whining intensified. She rolled her suit over, coming back to her feet more slowly than she would have liked. The armor wasn’t responding the way it should have. She’d knocked it around something fierce in the fall.

“Andy, report. What are you seeing inside?” Charline asked. He’d stepped out of the hangar into the hall beyond.

“Two bugs. Both retreated when I went past you. Not sure where they’re going.”

“Understood. We’re coming in,” she said.

The doors gave a final sharp cry as their motors died out. The two armor units holding them back let go and followed Charline as she went in after Andy. A quick tally said they were missing two people. Charline checked her squad network. Arjun and XXX were both back in the hangar bay.

“You two all right?” she radioed to them.

“Isabella took a bad hit. Her armor is frozen. I stayed back to cover her until you had the zone cleared. I’m moving to follow you now,” Arjun said.

Charline pursed her lips, saving the comments she wanted to tell him for later. If there was a later, they could discuss proper procedures at length. Arjun should have kept on going. The best way to save a downed squad member was to finish the fight as quickly as possible. But there was no point going into it now. It would just distract Arjun. Still, a good reminder that most of her squad were novices to combat. They had much to learn if they wanted to stay alive.

“Andy, situation?” Charline asked.

“Covering the hall. No movement.”

“Form up on Andy. All units advance as soon as Arjun is with us. Let’s go,” Charline said.

She stepped up beside Andy. The halls were large, but there was only room for three of them to stand abreast. Tessa took the place to Andy’s left. The others fell in behind.

“If we take fire, front row go to a knee so the rear row can shoot,” Charline said.

The front row were their most experienced fighters. They’d have the best chance of dipping down and still being able to fire effectively. It also put them into harm’s way, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. They were all at risk out there. Which reminded her…

“Shuttle, what’s your situation?” Charline asked.

“We’re seeing to XXX. He’s fine, just a little shook up. Armor is out until it gets repairs,” Halcomb said. “Want us to grab some rifles and join you?”

Charline considered it for a moment. Having the extra firepower might help, but in a battle with so much plasma flying around it was more likely they’d get burned to a toast before they could do any real good. She was willing to risk her peoples’ lives, but not to throw them away.

“Negative. It’s too hot out here for unarmored combatants. Maintain the bay as a safe spot. We’ll rally back there if we run into anything we can’t handle,” Charline said.

“Understood,” Halcomb replied.

Charline returned her full focus to the hall ahead. They were moving toward the nose of the ship. That was the direction the bugs had retreated. She could tell by the blood trail dotting the deck. At least one of the aliens was wounded. The enemy had to be planning some sort of counterattack or setting up a defensive station. She’d taken them by surprise with the attack, but that was sure to be wearing off by now. They’d be coming up with something to rid themselves of the sudden infestation of humans aboard their ship. But what?

They came to a pair of massive doors that slid open at their approach and found the answer. A squad of bugs waited at the far end of the hallway. They stood on the ceiling, walls, and floor, like a circle of clawed heads all aimed at them.

This was the defense they’d been preparing. All six of the bugs could fire freely without hitting each other. Their claws allowed them to move on the ceiling and walls as easily as the floor, too. She wondered why they used artificial gravity at all.

“Knee!” Charline called out. She willed her armor to drop to one knee and raised both arms. Bullets rained from her guns down the hall, cutting through deck and alien bug alike. The other armors all fired, but so did the bugs. The hall became a hell of plasma and bullet fire. Deck plates began glowing from the shed heat discharged in the exchange. Charline’s armor took multiple hits. Behind her she heard a scream and a crashing noise as one of her people went down.

This wasn’t working. Several of the bugs were wounded or dead as well, but the human armor couldn’t keep this up. She was almost out of bullets, overheating, and damage was showing all over the armored plating. They needed to do something else. Should they withdraw? It might save their lives for a while, but it would hand initiative over to the enemy.

Charline remembered something she’d once read about ambushes, how the best way to survive one was usually to push through it. She gritted her teeth together. It took every ounce of her courage to issue the order to charge into the face of those guns.

“Rush them! All together – charge!” Charline said. She rose from the kneeling position and drove forward. Blasts of plasma splashed off her armor, tearing at the metal plates. The heat rose inside her cockpit, making the burns that were just beginning to heal feel painful all over again.

She ignored the injuries and the sizzling sounds of steel melting that was audible through the armor. Her guns had only a little ammunition left. Spending all of it with wild abandon, she sprinted directly toward the enemy line, extending the blade from her arm as she rushed them.

Twenty-Eight

Aquick slash cut down the first armored bug to rise against her. Charline wasn’t sure if it was out of the fight for good or not, but she didn’t have time for another blow.

Two more bugs came at her. The quarters were too close for gunfire. It was down to claws and blade. She swung at the nearest, but it caught the blow on a pair of forelimbs. The limbs snapped off but absorbed too much of the impact. Her sword skittered off the bug’s armor rather than cutting through.

The other one flanked her. It grabbed hold of her left arm with the metal jaws protruding from its head and began pulling. Wildly off balance, it was all Charline could do to keep herself upright. She leaned forward, struggling to recover. The arm motors screamed with the effort of fighting the bug pulling at her.

Her sword arm was fouled when the other bug wrapped itself around her arm, twisting like a constrictor snake. It sank six-inch fangs into her torso armor. Charline gasped, half-expecting to see the tips of those enormous teeth protruding into her cockpit. But Halcomb designed his protection well. The fangs chewed on metal but couldn’t quite reach her.

It still left both Charline’s arms pinned. A third bug – the one she’d knocked down at the beginning of her rush – rose up in front of her. It said something. She could hear it talking, even though she didn’t understand a word it was saying. Rearing like a cobra about to strike, it hissed unintelligible phrases at her.

Charline struggled against the two bugs holding her. She had to get loose!

“Drop!” Andy called over the radio.

She knew him well enough to do as he said without question. Charline’s armor was still bent forward at the waist as she struggled to stay upright. She reversed the motion, throwing all the power the suit could provide into flipping backward. The insects had been trying to pull her that way all along. Her sudden shift from struggling against them to moving in the same direction they were pulling sent her armor and both of the bugs attached to her down to the deck plates. The impact rattled her teeth.

Directly overhead, gunfire blazed from the rest of her squad. The bug about to finish her off blew to shrapnel under the combined assault.

Hands arrived on either side of her, grabbing the insects and smashing at their head armor. It didn’t take many blows to finish them off. They writhed against the human armor, but it was four against two, even with Charline out of commission. They didn’t have a chance.

“You OK in there?” Andy asked.

“Yes. That was close,” Charline replied.

“Good call on the rush. But damn, that could have gone badly,” Andy said.

He was too right. The attack had been reckless. But it had also worked! Charline felt a need to hurry pressing at her. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Something was wrong. Then she realized what it had to be.

“Andy, these bugs were placed here to delay us. They were out in the open when they could have set up a better defense someplace else. They’re stalling us,” Charline said.

“Why?” Tessa asked.

“I don’t know, but I think we need to hurry,” Charline replied. She hauled herself back to her feet and took stock of the armor. A fang stuck out of her right side. Her main guns were both empty, but she still had the Naga rifle handy. The sword was a great weapon in its own right, too. She just needed to get better at using the thing.

The armor’s damage readout was showing stressed and weak plating all over. The thing had taken a ton of abuse. That it was still moving around was a minor miracle. The exoskeleton they’d built the armor around was designed for industrial use. It was supposed to handle rough situations, but Charline doubted the designers had ever considered hand-to-hand combat with armored aliens when they’d written the specs for the thing!

“Let’s get through that door,” Charline said. She took a step forward before recalling that she had no ammunition left to burn. The other armor units still had their plasma cannon, though. That should do the trick. “Tessa, Andy – burn through that thing!”

The pair stepped forward, training their guns on the sealed door. Both unloaded on it at the same time. The blasts splashed over their target. It heated to a cherry red, then began glowing orange as they continued their barrage. Finally the door came apart, melting into slag that poured down and ran in rivulets across the deck.

“Cease fire,” Charline said. The hole was big enough for one armor to get through. She’d have preferred to get them into the next area two at a time, but the longer they were stuck in this hall, the more Charline felt like they were running out of time. This sort of entry wasn’t her thing, though. It was outside her expertise. “Andy, suggestions?”

“Stack on the door. Everyone behind me. Once I start moving, follow close behind. Fan out as we get in and shoot anything moving,” Andy said.

The others all piled into a short row behind him. There was no question any enemy waiting on the other side knew they were coming. Andy was going through the door first. He’d be the primary target. Hopefully he could move fast enough to avoid whatever nasty surprises were waiting for them in there. Charline wanted to tell him to be careful, or wish him good luck. It didn’t seem professional to do it over an open radio channel, though. She kept her mouth shut and prepared for the next fight.

Andy moved. He dashed forward as fast as his armor could take him. The hole in the door was still hot. Charline watched a few drips of molten metal drop onto Andy’s suit as he ran by. Their armor would keep them safe from the temperature. Tessa all but flew through the door right behind Andy. Then it was Charline’s turn.

She dove forward, legs pumping to accelerate as quickly as she was able. Plasma fire lashed over her. She stumbled and almost fell over something on the floor just past the door. Someone was down. Bug or human? Charline couldn’t tell for certain and couldn’t spare a moment to check. There were more of the armored bugs in the room, moving in fast. She turned to her left and saw one directly ahead of her. Without slowing a step, she closed with the thing.

One quick shot with the Naga rifle was all she had time for before they were too near. The shot went wide, smashing into some sort of machinery directly behind the bug.

She swung her sword, trying to cleave the bug’s head from the rest of its body. It dodged sideways and then came in at her low. Charline had put too much force into the swing. She was overextended and off balance. The bug took advantage of the few seconds during her recovery to lash out with its claws. They raked over her chest armor with a sharp squealing noise.

Then she had her balance back again. She swore loud enough she was sure the bugs could hear her outside the armor and backhanded the bug with her left hand.

The swing connected with an echoing clang. Using the momentum of the swing to pivot, Charline lashed out with her sword. This time, the blow connected solidly. It didn’t cut through the bug’s armor, but it left a massive dent in the side.

It fell to the floor, thrashing hard enough that its churning body tripped Charline’s legs. She tumbled forward on top of the alien.

Twenty-Nine

Alarms blared around her head. All Charline could see in her view-screens were flashes of claw and writhing bug. It was stuck beneath her, trapped under the weight of her armor. She didn’t know if the wounds she’d delivered were mortal or not, but it was still alive and dangerous. Any of those claws might drive through a vulnerable spot on her suit and stab her.

She shoved off with her left arm as hard as she could. The move rolled her over onto her back. From there she was able to sit back up and take in the scene around her.

The room was roughly round. Instrumentation and machinery lined the walls everywhere except the entrance they’d burned through to get in. Two more bugs were struggling with three of her armored squad at close quarters. Unlike her suit, the other armor didn’t have blades mounted. That was something she needed to change if they were going to keep fighting melees.

This had to be the ship’s control room! Forward toward the nose of the ship, one way in and out, lots of machinery…

She couldn’t say for certain, of course. But if this was a human ship that would be her first guess. She glanced past the ongoing struggle and spotted another alien in armor, working at the control panels at the farthest point of the room from the door. That couldn’t be good. Whatever it was doing that it considered more important than fighting the armored soldiers invading its ship had to be bad news for the humans.

“Andy! One enemy disengaged. I’m out of ammo. Can you take it out?” Charline asked.

There wasn’t any reply. She could hear Tessa and Arjun talking back and forth as they struggled against the bugs. Charline looked down at the alien she’d been fighting. Its thrashes had dropped to the barest of twitches. If it wasn’t dead, it was at least out of action for the time being. Should she help her people or take the fight to that last alien?

She rolled to her feet and was taking long strides forward before she was even conscious she’d made the decision. There was no doubt in her mind that bug was up to no good. Its movements were frantic as it touched the controls with a variety of its legs. Whatever it was doing had to be important, which meant it had to be stopped.

Charline let her momentum flow into the sword swing. It smashed into the alien’s body just below the head. It never had time to react to her presence or defend itself. The alien dropped to the ground, dead before its body fell.

The console lights were still flashing. A video display was showing a set of images which flickered rapidly from one to the other. Charline thought there was a pattern in that display, but she couldn’t figure it out without more study.

Now wasn’t the time for that. She turned back toward her people, who were slowly being pushed out of the room. One armor unit had been torn up, with a hanging arm and limping leg. The other armor was covering the wounded one’s retreat. Where was Andy? She didn’t see his armor anywhere. Was he one of the ones on the floor? Had he been hit?

The bugs were too engaged with her team-mates to see her coming. Charline swung her sword at one. It connected, but she didn’t have enough force to drive the sword through its armor this time. It was weaving in a way that made it hard for her to connect with her blow. Vibrations from the impact went up the arm, making her teeth rattle. She pulled back the sword for another swing at the dazed alien.

This time her sword drove through the armor. A splash of goo spattered from the wound, and more flowed down the alien’s armor. She’d hurt the creature inside. It crashed to the floor and scuttled away from her, but the damaged armor unit fired its plasma guns at the fleeing bug. The plasma splashed over the alien’s armor, melting metal and pouring through the hole Charline’s sword had cut. The creature curled up on itself like a crisped spider as it died.

Only one alien left. It slashed at Charline with furious energy. She dodged backward, trying vainly to stay away from its deadly claws. The bug tore long gouges in both her arms. She took another step back, using the damaged arms to shield her torso from the ferocious attack. If she could keep it focused on her for long enough...

The other two armor units used the distraction to fire their guns. Both unloaded plasma all over the bug. Charline dropped backward and to her left, diving out of the line of fire. The plasma fire struck the alien with enough force to throw it to the ground before burning through its shell and killing the insect inside.

It was over. Charline’s armor hissed and crackled from damage. She tried to get it upright again, but the arms wouldn’t respond to her commands. The damage was too severe.

She checked the gauge for air outside her cockpit. It registered as breathable. When she popped open her cockpit, the smell that hit her nose made her want to shut the thing again.

“Ugh, that stinks,” Charline said.

“You all right down there?” Tessa asked over the radio.

“Yeah, but my armor isn’t getting up until Halcomb fixes it again,” Charline said.

She heard Tessa chuckle. “He’s going to get tired of you breaking his toys, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll hear about it,” Charline said.

She stepped carefully from her cockpit. The floor was spattered with gobs of green goo. Bug guts. Yuck. Charline didn’t want to put her boots down inside any of those puddles. That seemed to be where the bad smell was coming from, and if she stepped in them the stink might never come out.

“That bug was working on something over on the front console. I’m going to go check it out,” Charline said.

“Sounds good. I’ll make sure none of them are playing possum,” Tessa said. “Arjun, check on the rest of the team.”

“Will do,” Arjun replied.

Charline felt a pang of fear for Andy and the others. They weren’t responding to radio messages. That could mean their suits had lost power – or that they were hurt. Or dead. The fighting had been furious in the close space of the room. How many people had she lost in the fighting to take this ship?

“Tessa, as soon as you’re done checking the bodies, pull security on the door. We don’t want any surprises,” Charline said. “And contact the shuttle. Make sure they’re OK. I’m going to see what that one was up to.”

The console was set up for a tall being. The aliens could rear up to twice the height of a human. Many of the controls and screens in front of her were too high for Charline to reach. But the flashing symbols were just above her eye level. She could watch them flicker, one after another.

There was something familiar about the pattern. That feeling had been her first impression on seeing the symbols, and it hadn’t left her. What could it be?

Another screen sat directly above that one, with another set of symbols, this one static. Each of the symbols was colored differently – red symbol, white symbol, green symbol, green symbol, blue symbol, white symbol. Charline’s eyes widened as she realized what those controls must do.

She’d seen that sort of color-coded symbol system before. It was the destination chart for the Satori’s wormhole drive. Which they’d discovered was originally built by the ancestors of these bugs. Why had their tech remained the same for so long? Nothing humans did was so stagnant.

No time to worry about that now. The six symbols were a set of destination coordinates for the wormhole drive. That meant the other symbols below them were probably a countdown. The alien ship was getting ready to make a wormhole jump – and it was going to take her people with it.

Thirty

She had to stop the wormhole drive. Charline didn’t know what destination the alien had set up, but she was confident it wasn’t going to be in her best interest to find out. That the ship had a wormhole drive was excellent news. If she could get it back under control, they could plot in the coordinates for Earth’s solar system and get back home again. The six colored symbols for Earth were burned into her brain.

But first she had to shut the thing off. Her tablet! There might be a way to hack the alien computers from there. Charline raced back to her armor where she’d left the thing. She scrambled back into the cockpit and snatched the device from the pouch where she’d left it, then ran back to the control panel.

The flashing symbols were still changing. No telling how long they had left before the ship made a jump. It could be an hour or more away, or it might happen any second. The timer was likely counting down until the engines had built up enough power to make the jump. The Satori had a similar system in place.

“We’ve got a problem back here,” Arjun said.

“I’ve got a problem up here. I’ll swap you,” Charline replied, distracted.

“What? No – I mean, it’s Andy. He’s unconscious and looks hurt, but I can’t get his armor open,” Arjun said.

Charline paused in her work. She wanted to race over and help. But if she did that, they might all be doomed. The others would have to help Andy.

“I have to stop this countdown, or we’re headed to god-knows-where,” Charline said. “Tessa, give him a hand. Get Karl up from the shuttle to help him if he’s hurt. How are Jonas and Isabella?”

“Isabella is OK, but her armor was badly damaged and shut down. Jonas took a set of talons to the midsection. He’s gone,” Arjun reported.

Damn it, she’d lost another one. Charline wanted to scream her frustration. It was her job to bring these people home and instead she was losing them, one after another. They should have picked someone else for this job. Plenty of people could have handled leading this mission without screwing it up so badly.

“Understood,” she said, keeping her tone even. “I’m continuing work on interfacing with the bugs’ computer. Keep me updated.”

All her attention went back into her work. Charline dropped herself into her code, trying to work out the interface between human and alien tech. It would have been utterly impossible if she hadn’t already done this once with the Satori, and the job would have been easy if the bugs’ code hadn’t changed in a thousand years.

But it had changed. Just enough that it was screwing up her code, and so little that it was maddeningly similar to the code base she was used to working with.

She wiped away sweat from her forehead and glanced up at the screen. The countdown was still going on. How long did she have left? Tapping the tablet, she tried to engage a link between the two computers.

The tablet spat back out another failure message. Charline went back into the code, cleaning up the newest set of bugs. This was taking too long. But there wasn’t any shortcut she could see.

“Karl’s on his way with a medkit and a crowbar. We’ll get him out and taken care of,” Arjun said.

“He’s still unconscious?” Charline asked. That wasn’t good. How long had he been out? A long period might indicate a serious injury.

“Yeah, but he’s alive. We’re getting vital signs from him. Heartbeat is steady, breathing shallow but present,” Arjun said.

That was something, at least. “Do what you can for him.”

“We will,” Tessa said. Charline heard the sympathy in her voice and wasn’t certain how to take it.

Sure, she and Andy were dating. But he wasn’t supposed to be along on this mission in the first place. He’d tagged along to protect her. Every risk, injury, and problem he faced while out there was because he’d wanted to help her out. It might have been easier if he’d simply stayed behind on Earth. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about having his death on her conscience, and she wouldn’t wonder what the other people on the team thought about the team leader and one of the other members being an item.

The tablet beeped and almost made Charline jump. She’d been expecting another failure. But that sound meant she’d made a basic connection between the devices!

“Progress,” she said. Now all she needed to do was figure out the alien controls enough to shut off the wormhole without killing them all in the process. No mean feat, but she approached the task with more confidence. The hard part was over. The rest of the job would be tedious, but she could handle it.

“All right, almost there, folks. I think we’re going to be OK,” Charline said.

A vibration started shivering through the ship. Charline glanced up at the screen again. The shifting symbols – they’d stopped!

“Oh, shit,” Charline said. “Hang on to something, everyone!”

There was nothing else she could do. That vibration was the wormhole drive activating. If she was back on the Satori, maybe she could have turned the ship away from the opening portal somehow or stopped the thing from opening.

With the limited control she had on this ship, there was no way in hell.

A white beam of light shot from the nose of the vessel, stabbing out into space ahead of them. It stopped dead a few dozen meters from the ship in a blazing ball of light like a small star. Then that ball of light exploded outward into a swirling cacophony of color. The vortex was large enough for their ship to pass through. Charline had a few seconds to stare at the beauty of the rip in space-time, still as amazing as the first time she’d seen it.

Then the ship’s orbit carried them directly into the wormhole. One moment they were floating high above Dust; the next they were someplace else very far away. Behind them, the wormhole vanished, leaving no trace it had ever been there at all.

Thirty-One

The ship rocked as it flew out of the wormhole, back into regular space. Charline grabbed hold of the console panel in front of her to avoid being spattered all over it. There was a moment of panic where she was afraid they were going to be blown to bits before they had a chance to do anything, but then she got her fears back under control.

They were in an alien ship. The other bugs had no idea the ship was compromised, right? That should work in their favor. If they didn’t know humans were on board, they’d be more inclined to ask questions before shooting.

Then they’d blow the ship and the annoying humans aboard into atoms, but it ought to at least buy her a little time.

Her tablet beeped again, informing Charline that it had renewed the interface upon exit from the wormhole. She scrolled through the features available, trying to figure out which each was from context. That wasn’t working too well. There wasn’t much context to glean. The alien language was incredibly different from anything on Earth. Even her knowledge of the archaic form of the tongue was only getting her so far.

“How’s Andy doing?” Charline asked.

“He’s breathing. Karl will be here in a minute. Was that a wormhole jump?” Tessa asked.

“Yup. I don’t know where we’ve landed. Still trying to get sensors online,” Charline said.

“But no place good, I’d wager,” Tessa said.

“No, not anyplace we want to hang out. I’m pretty sure of that one,” Charline replied.

There, was that the icon for scanners? Charline tapped the symbol to test it, hoping she didn’t accidentally stumble across the self-destruct button.

The screen in front of her changed. Now it showed an old red star in the middle of a system of planets.

Nearer to the star were three rocky planets that were baked to a crisp. The red giant had to be expanding, or maybe it was in a contraction period and had been even bigger before. Either way, the star had left those three worlds charred husks. The fourth planet looked almost as bad, but it couldn’t be completely desolate.

As the scan continued to resolve, Charline was picking up a lot of ship activity from that region. A hotbed for commerce, maybe? She couldn’t see the appeal of the environment otherwise. Most of the world lay covered in desert.

Out beyond that were several gas planets. In fact, the whole setup looked a lot like Earth’s system – in a few billion years, maybe. Had the bugs once lived on more worlds than just the fourth one? They had space stations around various planets and moons, inner and outer alike. They’d lived in this place for a long time.

It was definitely the bugs. As the scans improved and brought in more data, Charline was able to spot ships with roughly the same configuration as her own. There were also a great many smaller vessels, and even a few which dwarfed the ship she’d stolen. They’d entered toward the outer edge of the system, which was a plus. The nearest alien ships were over ten light-minutes away. It would take that long for the light from their arrival to reach anyone in the system.

Of course, it meant the information Charline saw was ten minutes old as well. But that was more than worth it for the time it bought them. The longer they had before bad guys came knocking, the better.

Those symbols were counting down again, showing the charge slowly build up in the engines. Charline ran it through a translation program. The answer was iffy, but it sounded like “a really long time.” They were stuck until the wormhole drive recharged, but the enemy was going to be right on top of them long before then.

Charline set a worm program to run through the alien computer, turning up anything it could find related to controlling the ship. They wouldn’t be able to fly it like pros, probably. But if they could get even some control of the ship back, it might be enough to spell a difference. They weren’t going to fight their way out of this one, that was for sure. Three of those ships out there looked like whales next to her little ship. If they had the firepower to match, then nothing was going to save her people in a straight-up fight.

“How’s Andy?” Charline asked again, turning away from the tablet. She left it leaning against the console and walked back toward the other armor pilots.

“Still out,” Kyle said.

Damn, she needed him back on his feet again badly! Andy might have ideas for how to get out of this. She could at least bounce thoughts off him, maybe get some fresh ideas or places where her own thinking was flawed.

But with or without him, she had decisions to make. She could see the question written on Isabella and Arjun’s faces. Tessa probably wore the same look up in her armor. All three of them wanted to know what they were going to do to survive, and she didn’t have a good answer.

Right. Well, if you can’t make it, fake it, Charline thought. It was going to be hard enough keeping these people alive. If they didn’t trust her, she’d never manage it.

“We’re going to get the 3D printer up here,” Charline said. “I want Halcomb fixing the armor and making more of it for us.”

“More?” Tessa asked. “We’re short on pilots.”

“This is an all-hands-on-deck deal,” Charline said. “Everyone fights, or we’re in deeper trouble than we already are.”

She wished there was time to get more people trained up. Those without training were going to be easy pickings for the aliens. But they had a right to defend themselves and face the enemy, same as she did. Every gun might count if the enemy came over trying to board the ship and retake it.

Sirens blared, and a blue light began flashing in time with the alarm. Charline all but leaped up from where she’d been sitting and sprinted back to where she’d left her tablet. Snatching the thing up, she flipped to the sensor readings. Three large alien craft were floating outside her ship. Had it been ten minutes already? Charline glanced down at her watch and saw it was more like eleven. The tablet beeped again and sent her a message. It looked like voice commands, maybe orders?

Odds were good the other ships were telling her to respond to them. Maybe to open their hatches, slow to a stop, and prepare to be boarded. Well, that was too bad. She didn’t have any intention of doing that.

The timer had ticked back up a little bit. It wasn’t a lot of juice, but it should be enough for a small jump. Charline ran the controls of the ship through another diagnostic. She was pretty sure she knew where the wormhole drive controls were, but once again she couldn’t be completely certain until she tried it.

Dealing with the symbols wasn’t as hard as she thought. The final digit controlled location within the solar system. All she needed to do was change the icon in that spot, and they’d be off to the races. Sure, they wouldn’t exactly be getting away from the enemy solar system – but it might buy them enough time to get more charge into the wormhole drive.

Buying time was the best plan she could think of just then. She tapped the wormhole icon and altered the final symbol, setting it to take them someplace else. Just about anyplace else would do.

“Here we go again,” Charline warned the others. Then she activated the drive.

The big ships noticed right away. All three of them opened fire on her ship, blazing away with plasma cannon fire. Two of the shots went wide. The third hit her ship.

Charline froze, hoping the damage would not be too severe, but the ship only shook a little from the impact. The shields protecting their smaller vessel were still holding. They couldn’t take a lot of that abuse, though.

“Time to fly,” Charline said. She tapped the icon on her tablet to engage the wormhole drive, and in a flash they were gone.

Thirty-Two

The ship exited a few light-hours up from the solar system’s ecliptic. By leaving the plane where the planets orbited behind, Charline hoped to avoid detection for a little more time. They were less likely to run into random alien vessels so far out from their primary world. The more time they had, the better. Maybe the other aliens would think she’d fled the system entirely, although she thought that might be too much to hope for.

She turned away from the console. All the data coming from their sensors was hours old, anyway. Just about useless. Charline brought her tablet with her this time, though. Just in case they needed to react quickly again.

Karl and Halcomb had already joined the others. Andy lay on the deck, his feet propped up. Karl was putting an IV into his arm. Charline rubbed her own arm, the memory of that sting still fresh. At least Andy would be sleeping through it. She tried to frame that as lucky in her head, and failed. It simply wasn’t possible for her to think of Andy injured as a good thing.

Halcomb had already wandered over to her armor. He was running both hands through his hair as he surveyed the damages. Charline smiled. She couldn’t help herself. He was so damned protective of his machines! She wiped the smile off her face before going to Halcomb’s side.

“You tore her up pretty good this time,” he said.

“Had to. The fighting in here was rough,” Charline said.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Halcomb replied, looking around at the mess made of the room. “It would be nice if just once you could survive a fight without needing a bucketload of repairs, though!”

“I’ll pass along your complaint to the next bug I see,” Charline shot back.

Halcomb laughed, taking the tension out of the air. “You do that! All right, the arm guns are shot, but I can’t imagine you have much ammo left for them, anyway.”

Charline shook her head. “Tapped out. I used the last of it in that fight. Had to resort to my sword for a bit there.”

“How’d it work?” Halcomb asked.

“Not as well as it might have, but good enough. See the tears in that one?” Charline asked, pointing at one of the fallen aliens.

Halcomb nodded. “We can work on getting better blades another time. For now I think we need to get your suit fixed up, the arm guns replaced with plasma cannons from these bugs, and swords put on some of the rest of these walking tanks.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Charline said. It would give him something to do, even if they didn’t end up needing the armor. She still hoped they might get away from the system before any more aliens discovered their position. How long would the engines take to spin up to full power? The Satori required an hour or two, depending on how far they wanted to jump.

She walked over to Andy’s side. Kyle already had the IV in place and was dripping a steady stream of clear fluid into her friend’s arm. Andy looked too pale. Dried blood streaked his face, dribbling down from a nasty cut on his forehead. That might have been the impact that knocked him out.

“How is he?” Charline asked.

“Not good,” Kyle said. His voice was much more grim than she’d expected. “He’s got internal injuries, on top of the obvious cuts and bruises. Something is bleeding inside. I can see the pressure building up in his abdomen, but I don’t know where the bleed is.”

“Can’t you just give him more of the nanites you put in me?” Charline asked.

“We used the only dose we had bringing you back. I’m stuck using more mundane medicine to keep him alive,” Kyle replied.

Charline cursed under her breath. “I’d never have authorized the only dose we had for anything short of life-threatening injuries! Who did that – Andy? When he wakes up, I may kill him myself.”

“Whoa, cool down a bit,” Kyle said, holding his palms up toward her. “Your injuries were bad enough to warrant the treatment. If those burns had gotten infected you’d have been on death’s door, too. He did the smart thing. Look around you.”

Charline did. The room still stank, but she’d gotten more used to the smell. The décor was, if anything, even worse. Bits of alien were mingled with scraps of metal, both splattered and scattered all about the walls and floor.

“We made a bit of a mess,” she observed.

“You kept most of your people alive against a serious enemy. It’s good work. Don’t knock your accomplishments,” Kyle said.

“Thanks,” Charline replied.

Her tablet buzzed, then gave an audible alarm. Something was nearby. Charline pulled the device up to eye level to check the sensors.

One of the big ships had found them. It was launching a group of smaller ships, all moving directly toward them. Before she could wonder how long it would be until they were in range, the big ship unloaded its main guns.

The lights in the control room dimmed as the blasts of plasma struck them, then came back to full strength.

The shields must be drawing power from the same energy core as the wormhole drive and everything else! The more power they used on other things, the longer it would take for the ship to store enough energy to get them home.

Charline tapped a few commands and executed another short wormhole jump. She’d play tag with these assholes all day if that’s what they wanted, but keeping them from firing on her shields was crucial.

She stalked back over to the main console, wondering how long they had until they were discovered again. It should have taken longer than it did. How had they been spotted?

Going over the sensor logs gave her the answer. The system was heavily seeded with small sensor drones. They picked up her exit and transmitted her location back to the alien ships. It looked like the aliens were using some sort of quantum entanglement for communication, because based on the time it took for the light of their arrival to reach the nearest sensor, the alien ship had jumped in after them less than a minute after they’d been detected.

Charline spotted something else unusual on the sensor logs. The inner system used to be full of ships. Now it looked almost empty. A few ships were jetting back and forth between the various worlds, and there was that one massive ship that followed them, but the others weren’t showing on her scans anymore. Were they hiding somehow? Cloaked? Or had they all gone someplace else?

Charline felt a chill at that thought. If they ever found out where Earth was, it would be a very bad day for the planet. Humanity had nothing that could even slow down a fleet like that. They’d wipe out every human on the planet without breaking a sweat.

The sensors reached out, looking for the nearest drones. The things were small and hard to spot, but she managed to detect the locations of three nearby where she’d had the wormhole drop them. Scan lag was working in her favor this time. Because the drones didn’t move, she was seeing their positions fifteen minutes before they would first see the light of her exit wormhole. It let her know how much time they had in advance, which was helpful.

But it wouldn’t be long before that big ship was back on top of them again. Even if she jumped before it arrived to avoid its guns draining away her shield, each jump was eating into their power supply just the same. If they had to do short jumps several times an hour, they were never going to build up enough power to do the massive jump home. There had to be another way.

Charline jumped the ship a few minutes before the alien battleship was due to arrive. They popped out and she assessed the power drain, grimacing. She still didn’t understand how to convert the bugs’ timer to Earth units, but she was close enough to get a feel for it.

Between the jumps and the hits on their shield, they weren’t gaining any ground toward a jump home. They couldn’t keep this up forever! All it would take was coming out unluckily close to one of the drones, and they’d have an enemy ship on top of them before they could react.

This time, they had only eight minutes to burn. Charline shook her head in disgust.

“How’s it going?” Isabella asked.

“It’s not. We’re jumping around to stay away from them, but I can’t keep this up. Something’s going to give.”

“Hmm. We can’t run?” Isabella asked.

“Not enough power, and they’re not letting the drive recharge,” Charline replied.

“That sucks. You’ll figure it out, though. You always do,” Isabella said. “Let me know if you need anything from me.”

Then Isabella walked away, leaving a stunned Charline to stare at her back. How could the woman have such confidence in her? She’d almost gotten all of them killed more than once. Some of their party had died. She wasn’t figuring anything out. They were going from one danger into another.

How am I supposed to live up to that sort of expectation? It wasn’t fair to throw all of this on her shoulders. She hadn’t asked for this job. It had been tossed in her lap. Forced on her, practically.

Well, no, they hadn’t actually held a gun to her head and told her to ‘take the job or else!’ But the guilt trip had been heavy enough to almost count, hadn’t it? Charline still didn’t understand why they’d wanted her in command of the mission, any more than she understood why Isabella had such faith in her ability to get them out of this mess.

She wished she had that much confidence in herself. It would feel good to know what the next move should be, to intuitively react in just the right manner every time. Other people she knew were like that. Herself? not so much.

Time to plot out new jump coordinates again. She started setting up for a new exit even farther from the red star. Maybe if she kept jumping out, the ship would eventually leave the zone patrolled by the sensor drones? She couldn’t jump in anything like a straight line, of course. They’d figure that out and be on her in a flash. But if she ran a random zig-zag out away from the center of the system?

It was worth a shot. She plugged in the new coordinates and started to prep the jump.

Before the wormhole appeared, two ships came into view on her sensors. Alarmed, Charline almost aborted the wormhole jump by accident. The ships were reading as small vessels – smaller even than the one she was on. They had just exited wormholes a good distance away from her. It would be some time before they spotted her ship, and by the time they did she would be long gone.

But it bothered her just the same. They were early. Which meant they weren’t just relying on the sensor drones to find her team anymore. Either they had a faster-than-light means of detecting her ship, which she doubted – the enemy would have jumped right in on her location if that was the case – or they had a lot of those small ships out in the system, sweeping the area and looking for her.

That was going to be a problem. These bugs had been using wormhole drives for a long, long time. If anyone knew how hard it was to track down a fleeing ship with that tech, it would be these bugs. But if anyone had figured out a way to snare such a ship using a web of smaller ships to slowly close a net around it, this would be the race to have mastered the technique.

Their ship jumped into another wormhole. They were clear of the enemy for the moment. But Charline had a feeling they were fast running out of time.

Well, fine. They’d continue trying to run as best they could. But if the enemy wasn’t going to allow them to flee, she’d damn well give them a fight they’d never forget!

Thirty-Three

Charline gathered most of her team in the hall outside the ship’s bridge. She would have preferred to meet in the bridge itself, but the smell of dead bug had only grown worse. It was hard to remain in the place long unless you were in a space suit or armor. Since she had the command and control mostly wired to her tablet, they didn’t need the bridge every minute.

She glanced down at the tablet. Four minutes until they had to jump again. They’d managed to get far enough away to have twelve minutes, but since then they’d been losing a minute or two each time.

The bugs were closing their net. Before too long, the enemy ships would be on top of them before they had enough time to charge the wormhole drive and escape.

Then they’d summon all their ships to that spot. The fight would last about six seconds, tops.

She’d called everyone together again. Well, almost everyone. Karl was tending to Andy and two other wounded men back on the shuttle. Halcomb was off disassembling bug armor and feeding it into the fabricator as fast as he could. In a few minutes he was going to have a bunch of spare hands helping him assemble the stuff.

She glanced around the crowd. Tessa, Arjun, and Isabella, she knew well. They’d fought alongside her more than once. You got a feel for a person after that sort of ordeal. Most of the others were more of a mystery, despite having spent the last few days together.

Roger was another security person. He and Tessa where the only ones they had. He was a sure bet for getting into armor as soon as they could manage it. Juanita was a computer geek like Charline. Unlike Charline, she had neither the background in this tech to work with it nor the experience with firearms to know how to shoot well. Still, every fighter might count for what she planned.

Gerald, Toni, and Sing rounded out their crew. All three were engineers of the roughneck variety. They’d been chosen for the mission more for their ability to make things work even in nasty environments than for their science. Charline was glad to have them along. Without all three, they wouldn’t have accomplished nearly as much work on the first set of armor suits. Halcomb was brilliant, no doubt about it. But he was only one person. Having more skilled hands to share the work was the difference between two suits and six.

“All right, folks. We’re in a tough spot,” Charline said. It was still hard to believe that was all she had left. She thought about all those who’d died so far. No more. She didn’t want to lose any more of these people. If that meant she died to keep them alive, so be it. Her crew was getting home safely.

She owed them that. Them, and the ghosts of the people who’d died already under her watch.

“Where are we?” Sing asked.

“Good question. I have no idea,” Charline replied.

That caused some confused conversation.

Charline raised both hands in a calming motion to quiet them all. “Please! We don’t have a lot of time left before we need to jump again. We were dragged to what I think is a – maybe the – home system of these alien bugs. They’re hunting us, slowly penning us into a net of ships. No matter how we run, they’re tracking our movement and slowly cutting off escape options.”

“Then how are we going to get away?” Juanita asked.

“We’re not. At least, not right away,” Charline said. “They’re going to nail us before too long. We can keep running a bit longer, but before too long we’re going to run out of juice.”

“At which point they just come and blow us away?” Tessa asked.

“Pretty much.” Charline nodded.

“That’s a crappy plan,” Tessa said.

“Which is why we’re not going to do that. We’re going to do what they least expect from us,” Charline said.

She could almost feel their ears perk up at that. All their attention was focused on her again, and on getting out of this mess. Better that than sitting around afraid. Better to take action than to just accept doom.

“I’ve been watching our scan footage of the system while we’ve run. It looks like their entire combat fleet has split, except for this one big ship,” Charline said. “Now, this one is a whopper. It’s enormous. Makes an aircraft carrier look like a damned bath toy.”

“What about the other ones, the ones making that net you were talking about?” Juanita asked.

Charline flashed her a smile. The woman was quick! Good; they were going to need smart people for this to work, not just fighters.

“Glad you asked. They’re both our biggest problem, and the potential solution. I’ve been watching them, you see. Every so often, some of them dock with the big-ass ship-of-doom down there,” Charline said. “Then they fly back out again.”

“That’s how they’re managing to jump over and over. We’re running out of power. They’re not. They’re using that big ship like a refueling tanker,” Sing said.

“Bingo. In fact, I think that’s precisely what it is. It’s designed for smaller ships to recharge rapidly so that they can make multiple jumps more quickly. Think about it,” Charline said. “That thing could charge up an entire fleet in no time. They can travel faster, hit and run, do a lot of things.”

“It’s not a warship. It’s a logistics platform,” Charline finished.

She’d gone over the scan data over and again. The big ship had some teeth, no doubt about that. It had blasted them with its main guns. Even then, she’d been surprised that a small ship like the one they’d captured could so easily withstand the weapons of a massive ship like that. It should have had the weaponry to blow them to shards.

But it hadn’t. Also, it had only fired a pair of weapons. Why not more?

Charline was gambling it was because that was all the guns they had available in that firing arc. It was a behemoth, sure. But most of its surface was covered with docking ports for ships to attach themselves and recharge. Most of the interior had to be some sort of power generation.

“So what’s the plan, then?” Isabella asked. She was beaming. She was confident Charline would find a solution, and there she was, about to present one.

“There are at least a few of those little ships attached to the big one at any given time. We’re going to make a big distraction happen, and then we’re going to board the big ship and capture one of those fully-charged little ones,” Charline said.

“Oh. Is that all?” Tessa asked. She won a few chuckles from the others. Good. If they were laughing, that was a positive sign. “Then what?”

“Then we get the hell out of this system and go home,” Charline said. Her face was a mask of determination. “You saw that fleet. With their tech? And all those ships? They’re hostile. If they ever find out where Earth is, we’re all toast. We need to bring a warning back home. Not just for our sakes, but for everyone we left back there, too.”

No chuckles this time, just grim nods. Everyone was on board. They were good. They’d be ready to fight and knew what was on the line.

“Halcomb is printing new armor parts. I need everyone to help him assemble armor units,” Charline said. “I’ll give him as long as I can, keep running the little ships around. When it looks like they’re about to trap us, that’s when we will turn around and trap them instead. I don’t have to tell you that the more armor we have by then, the more likely we are to survive. Dismissed. Let’s get this done.”

Thirty-Four

“What’ve you got for me, Halcomb?” Charline asked.

The words came out a little more clipped than she had intended, and Halcomb shot up an eyebrow. Charline shook her head to clear it out. They were all exhausted, not just her. She’d managed to keep one step ahead of the enemy ships for six damned hours. If Halcomb had managed to pull off some sort of miracle in that time, they might actually have a chance.

If not? Well, they’d have to do what they could with what they had. That last jump had barely been in time to escape the alien ships. The net was about shut on them. They either stood their ground to fight or died when the enemy ships all came at them together.

“I think you mean to say ‘thank you, Halcomb,’ right?” he replied.

Charline laughed. The man had to be at least as exhausted as she, but he kept that same easy manner. How, she had no idea. It was infectious and good for her, though, so she’d take it.

“Let me thank you after I see what you’ve got,” Charline said.

“If you like it, you’re gonna owe me,” Halcomb said, giving her a wink.

She shook her head in mock exasperation. “You impress me, you can have damned near whatever you want.”

He laughed and cracked his palms together in a manner that made Charline wonder what she’d just agreed to. Well, no worries – they had to survive the next few hours. She could handle anything else after that.

“All right. First, we’ve got the six armor we built from scratch. They’re all fixed up, with new arm swords,” Halcomb said. “Ready to roll. Your suit, too - I replaced the arm cannons with alien-built plasma guns, but otherwise she’s just as you left her. Just less dinged up.”

That was something, all right. Seven suits of armor was going to give them a lot of firepower. But Halcomb had a couple of large objects hidden under tarps down on one side of the hangar. Charline suspected there was more to the show yet to come.

“What else have you got over there?” Charline asked.

“That’s not enough for you? Fine, then.” He yanked one tarp, revealing two more suits of armor hidden beneath. “That’s all we could do, with the time constraints. I wish I coulda done more for you, but…”

“Halcomb, it’s awesome. It’s more than anyone should have been able to do. I don’t know how you’ve managed all the things you have, anyway,” Charline said.

“Impressed, then?”

“Yes, definitely,” she agreed.

“Oh, good. Remember your promise, then,” he said with an ear-to-ear grin.

Charline was tired enough that she didn’t recall what he was talking about for a moment. Then she did, and the worry started creeping in. She’d written him something of a blank check, hadn’t she? What did he have in mind, the damned rascal?

She couldn’t read much from his face except delight at having won. Charline shook her head and sighed.

“Yeah, I remember. What did you want?” she asked.

“Well. You remember some of our conversations before, about key personnel?” Halcomb asked.

Sure, she did. She’d told him he was too vital to be out on the front lines. After which she’d promptly gone out herself, even though she was arguably more mission-critical than he was. It was a bit of hypocrisy which had bothered her ever since. It had even crossed her mind to offer him one of the new sets of armor. Maybe that was what he was after? She nodded.

“Well,” he said again. “I’ve decided you’re right. I’m too important to be out in one of those walking hunks of junk as target practice for the bad guys.”

“Really?” That surprised Charline. She’d thought he was dead set on going into battle alongside the others. What did he want?

“Which is why I made this baby,” Halcomb went on, yanking back the second tarp to reveal what lay beneath.

It was another suit of armor, but as different from the others as night and day. Where the original sets had straight legs and body structures built for lifting and load bearing – the original purpose of the suits, after all – this armor had legs which bent backward like those of a bird. Charline could immediately see how valuable that would be for absorbing impacts and improving balance.

It was bigger and bulkier than the other armor. The thing was covered with thick plates, attached at sharp angles that were designed to deflect incoming shots as much as absorb them. The old armor could take some serious hits, but this thing was a tank compared to them.

Then there were the armaments. Each arm had dual plasma guns mounted, with a massive bayonet beneath. Another pair of plasma cannons was mounted on each shoulder. That shouldn’t have been possible! They’d discovered early on that the reason the bugs only had two plasma guns on each of their sets of combat armor was because that was all that one power cube could run.

“Wow,” Charline said, stepping closer to observe the design more carefully. It was crude construction, like all their armor. She could see the rough lines of the 3D printing that had created it, but it looked like a damned good design. “How long have you been working on this?”

“Since I first saw you take yours into a fight. I’ve been tinkering with the concept, but we didn’t have the parts. After we took this ship, spare parts became the least of our worries, so I started in on the actual work,” Halcomb said. “My guess was we were gonna need all the firepower we could get. Looks like I was right on the money.”

“You were. How did you get so many guns working? I thought two was a hard limit?” she asked.

“It is – for one power cube. This thing has four working in tandem,” Halcomb said.

In the back of her head, Charline wondered why the bugs hadn’t done that, if it was so simple. There was probably something about the tech they were missing. Did the cubes become unstable if you stacked them? There was no way to know. This tech was all black box. Maybe the things were just expensive to build, or perhaps they thought more than two guns was overkill. Looking up at Halcomb’s monstrosity, that seemed like a fitting description for the thing.

“Overkill,” Charline said.

“Hmm? Well, I suppose it is, but I figured go big or go home. Or in this case, go big so we can go home,” Halcomb said.

“No, I mean I think that’s what we’ll call it. The Overkill Mark 2 armor. It’s good work, Halcomb. You and your monster are on the team. Just try not to shoot any of us, OK?” she said, giving him a poke in the ribs.

“Will do.” The face-splitting grin was back, but there was a note of the predator in it that hadn’t been there before. “We’ll make them regret giving us so much shit. They should have just let us go home.”

Charline wished she had his confidence. They were about to assault a massive ship with a handful of people. No matter what she did, some of them probably weren’t going to make it home. The whole mission was complicated by the two unconscious, wounded team members. One of whom was Andy. She wasn’t going to leave either of them behind, but carrying them into a firefight in their condition was out of the question, too.

But she couldn’t let Halcomb in on how unsure she felt about their odds. He knew the risks as well as the rest of them. If he chose to approach the coming fight with confidence, who was she to tell him no?

“That we will,” she said at last. “This will be a fight they won’t forget anytime soon.”

That much, at least, she felt sure she could promise.

Thirty-Five

The power reading on her tablet screen was stark and unforgiving. They had enough juice left for one more short-range jump, and the aliens were finding them too soon to recharge. This was the end of the chase, one way or another. As soon as the enemy ships found them, they’d be able to make one last hop, and then they’d have to stand their ground.

“All right, hang on, everyone. I’m pushing the drives to maximum,” Charline said. They’d already been pushing the ship hard. Now she red-lined the engines, and the ship sprinted forward at even greater acceleration. It wasn’t going to be enough. No speed they could attain would allow them to evade wormhole-capable ships forever.

They’d retreated into the shuttle. Everyone who could be in armor was. Only Juanita, Karl, Andy, and Ian – the other wounded man that Karl hadn’t been able to clear for duty – were without steel second skins. They’d have to rely on the shuttle’s hull for protection and hope for the best. It wasn’t enough, but it was all she could do. Karl needed to stay behind to care for the wounded, and Juanita was the second-best pick for running the shuttle’s computer systems. Charline was the best, but she wasn’t sitting this one out on the bench.

She tapped a button on her tablet and the drives of the bigger ship they were still docked inside pushed their output to the limit. Next to the tablet sat a hacked command cube – the device which allowed her to transmit commands from her tablet to the ship. They were accelerating away from the star at the center of this solar system as fast as their ship could manage. It felt weird to be piloting a ship from inside her armor, but the remote control was still functional. She couldn’t do any fancy maneuvers, but if all went well she wouldn’t need to.

“Got incoming, five thousand kilometers to the stern,” Juanita said.

“Damn, that close already?” Charline said.

“That close?” Halcomb asked. “That’s far enough, isn’t it?”

“We’re in space. That’s practically point-blank range. Adjusting course,” Charline said.

“They’re falling behind. Looks like they exited on the wrong vector,” Juanita said. “Nope, they just jumped. Now they’re on the correct vector and closing.”

“Wonder if they’ll try to take us on themselves, or bring friends?” Charline said. She could see the chase projected on her tablet from the ship’s scans. The single ship was cruising in behind them, slowly gaining distance. Either it was out of charge for jumps, or it wasn’t too keen on trying a one on one fight. Either way, it wasn’t rushing them, which was perfect. They didn’t have the guns tied into her tablet. Charline still hadn’t figured out a way to make that work, and she didn’t need them for her plan.

“More bogeys. Multiple contacts,” Juanita warned.

“How many?” Charline asked. Her scan was lagging just a little bit behind the more advanced shuttle console Juanita was using.

“Um. Oh, shit. Looks like all of them,” Juanita replied. “Jumping in from all angles. They’re trying to englobe us. At least two dozen of them.”

Two dozen ships. Was that all the smaller vessels the enemy had access to at the moment? Their main fleet was much larger, but she’d seen it warp out. By Charline’s rough estimate, most of those ships had to be very low on power reserves at the moment. They’d been jumping around chasing her long enough to deplete their reserves. Some of them would be fresh from recharging, but more than half should be low.

Which meant those ones wouldn’t be able to follow her when she jumped. Not right away, anyway. That would give them the little time they needed.

If everything worked perfectly. If nothing went wrong.

She sighed. If things went sideways, she’d figure out a way to adjust to circumstances and try something different. If they had to take out every bug in this solar system to get her people home, she would find a damn way to do it!

The ship shuddered, and then shook a second time.

“Taking fire,” Juanita said. “Armor is holding. So far.”

They’d shut off the shields. Every bit of the power they had was needed for this next jump. No shields meant only the hull armor was keeping enemy plasma cannons from burning them to a crisp. It didn’t have to hold together long. Just a little bit longer…

“More ships arriving. My god, there are a lot of them out there!” Juanita said.

“Engaging wormhole drive,” Charline said. That was the signal she was waiting for. That must be their entire force, all gathered in one spot. It was time to go.

“Roger. Opening shuttle bay doors and taking manual control of the shuttle,” Juanita said.

Charline felt the bump as the bay doors beneath the shuttle slid apart. There was a heavy thrum as the smaller ship’s engines engaged to push them out of the bay. They were slipping free, just under the ship. It would serve as cover against most of the weapon fire coming their way.

Ahead of them the wormhole flared, a bright light against the dark backdrop of space. Ship and shuttle alike shot through the wormhole at an incredible speed, driven past the event horizon in the blink of an eye. There was a brief flash of light across her eyes and then they were out again.

“Full thrust, Juanita! Get us clear!” Charline shouted.

There was no reply, but Charline could feel the shuttle as it rolled so that Juanita could apply all the thrust she had available to changing their direction of travel. The math said it should be enough, but it would be touch and go. If they were off by even a few seconds or a handful of degrees, they were going to be way closer to the enemy ship than they wanted to be.

Charline’s tablet finally gave them a solid image of local space. The ship she’d been controlling was already out of range for her remote, but that didn’t matter anymore. It was still firing its thrusters as hard as it could, building even more velocity. The shuttle was veering off on a new vector that would carry it away from the ship it had left behind.

Directly ahead of the ship they’d captured was the enemy tanker vessel. The calculations had been perfect, bringing their ship out of the wormhole on a high-speed collision course directly toward the massive enemy ship.

It saw her ship-turned-torpedo and knew what she was trying to accomplish. The tanker ship began firing its own wormhole drive. But it was too late – there simply weren’t enough seconds between their arrival and the impact that followed. The tanker’s wormhole was only half-formed when her ship smashed directly into its nose.

The image on her tablet fuzzed out as the scanners struggled to register what had occurred. The tanker wasn’t destroyed. There wasn’t enough kinetic energy in the impact to blast through the tanker’s shields and still tear the ship itself apart. Her ship was gone, but she’d expected that, too. It was scattered dust and debris now.

“Can we get an image on the tanker?” Charline asked.

“On it,” Karl said.

“Bringing us around and heading their way,” Juanita added.

The camera image popped up on Charline’s tablet a few seconds later. The front third of the tanker vessel was a wreck. Shattered hull plates floated in space. Support struts twisted in crazy lines every which way. Air and liquid drifted into space, floating in freezing clouds as they left the ship behind. It had to be chaos in the rest of the ship, but for those at the front the end had come instantly.

“Any energy readings over there?” Charline asked.

“Yes, but sporadic. Looks like their engines shut down,” Karl said. “I’m seeing strong power from two nodes on the sides, though.”

“Those will be the docked ships, fueled up and ready to go. Make for the closest one. We don’t have long until their other ships realize where we went,” Charline said.

They’d had to blow up their captured ship to disable the tanker. Time to get a new, fully-charged one instead. With a full charge, they could get the hell out of there and jump for home.

Thirty-Six

The shuttle skimmed by over the surface of the massive vessel, passing several docking ports. They were easy to spot: massive circular blotches on the hull with mechanical works that allowed ships to connect and recharge. What they weren’t seeing was any place the shuttle could gain entry. The two docked ships weren’t going to just open up for them, and there didn’t seem to be any other ways to enter.

“Another set of doors ahead, but they’re not responding to our computer system either,” Juanita reported.

That was three in a row. Either the enemy ship was blocking them from opening shuttle bay doors, which was entirely possible, or it was so badly damaged that the systems to control their shuttle bays were malfunctioning. Whichever the case, it meant they were stuck outside the tanker without any way to get into it or either of the docked ships.

“We’re lucky they’re not sending ships out of those doors,” Karl said.

“I don’t think it’s luck so much as trauma. Power levels are down all over the ship. That impact hit them harder than I’d figured,” Charline said. “We’re probably lucky they’re still in one piece at all. But we’d better move fast if we want to get in there before those two charged ships depart.”

“What about the nose?” Halcomb asked. “The collision tore it up pretty badly. Maybe we can just walk in through there?”

“It’s over two kilometers from the nose to the docked ships. That’s a long march through enemy territory,” Charline said. They had limited time before the other alien ships realized what had happened and returned to assist the tanker.

“You have any better ideas?” Halcomb retorted.

She didn’t. “Make for the nose. See if we can find someplace to land in there. Be careful on approach, though!”

“No kidding,” Juanita replied. The forest of tangled metal and shredded hull plating was coming into view. It wasn’t going to be simple to slip through that mess!

The impact must have been incredible. Charline wondered if anything was still alive inside the massive vessel. The aliens had systems which compensated for some inertia, but the force of their ship driving into the nose of the tanker must have strained even their technology to the breaking point, and maybe beyond.

Charline couldn’t help but compare the tanker’s nose to what was left after a hollow-point bullet hit something. Bits of the ship spread out in a cone-like shape away from the point of impact. But there was a relatively clear area in the center of the damage. Juanita took the shuttle down into that hole, weaving between larger chunks of damaged structure.

Metal pinged off the shuttle’s hull in a steady stream that sounded like rain. The larger chunks made a louder bang each time one of them connected. Charline flinched as one particularly loud noise shuddered through the ship.

“Sorry!” Juanita said. “There’s so much scrap out here floating around, hard to avoid it all.”

“Keep doing your best,” Charline replied. Everyone was in either armor or a space suit except their two critically wounded people. Karl had rigged up some sort of oxygen bags for them. They wouldn’t die if the shuttle decompressed – not right away, anyway. It was all they could do without more supplies.

Then the shuttle swerved, shifting so rapidly that the movement could be felt even through the inertial dampening. Charline pulled up the shuttle’s scans on her tablet. Ahead of them was a relatively flat space of deck. It was only half covered with debris, which made it a better spot to try for a landing than the rest of the mess around them. No place was clear enough for a safe landing area, but the one Juanita steered toward was the best of a bad lot.

Charline held her breath as the shuttle dropped toward the spot, easing into place with tiny jets of the thrusters. It wobbled heavily on approach. An experienced pilot, Juanita was not – and this was an alien craft with an interface built out of twine and duct tape. But she was doing a decent job. No spears of broken metal came stabbing through the deck at them as they settled into place. That was good enough.

“We’re down,” Juanita said. “Pulling the air out of the cargo hold.”

All their armor was strapped into the cargo space at the back of the shuttle. Charline waited until her suit said the air was completely evacuated before undoing the clamp holding her armor in place. She activated magnets on the armor’s feet. They clamped down on the metal deck just like they would on a human ship, which was a hell of a blessing. If the alien metal had been something non-magnetic, she wasn’t sure what they would have done.

“Air’s out. Opening the cargo doors,” Juanita said. “Not sure the way ahead is clear. It looks like a real mess out there, but this is the closest I could get you.”

“We’ll blast our way through anything we need to,” Halcomb said. “Including bugs.”

“Good hunting, then,” Karl said. “We’ll stay here until we hear from you, then dock once you capture one of the ships.”

“Sounds good,” Charline said. “All right, the Overkill unit will lead out. You’ve got the firepower to blast through any debris blockage we run into. Tessa, follow him with your team. Arjun, your team has rear guard. Let’s move fast, everyone. We’re on a clock. But stay alert. The bad guys might not know we’re here, but once they do we’re bound to meet serious resistance.”

“Stay alert, but move fast. Nothing like setting the bar high,” Sing said.

“If you don’t mind getting a few holes blown through you, then just move fast and don’t worry about watching for enemies,” Tessa barked at him.

“No, ma’am. I’ll do both,” Sing replied with a chuckle. “Just want to get the hell off this frozen piece of shit.”

“We all do. Let’s get to it,” Charline said. “Move out.”

Thirty-Seven

Putting Halcomb’s armor up front turned out to be an excellent idea. Their path deeper into the ship was quickly blocked by broken and half-melted chunks of hull. Twisted structural supports twined around each other into a forest of half-seen limbs flickering in the beams of light emitted from their headlamps.

Halcomb strode forward in his heavy armor until he was squarely in front of the mess. “This might take a few minutes, even for me,” he said. “We tore her up pretty good.”

“Cut us a path as fast as you can,” Charline said. “Everyone else, eyes out.”

Holcomb fired four beams of plasma into the web of metal penning them all in. One strut fell away, then another. He was making progress, but it was painfully slow.

Charline glanced at her watch again. She couldn’t help it. She was painfully aware of twine slipping away from them. How long did they have until the alien crew realized they’d been boarded? How long before the small scout ships were able to return and help their mother ship?

“Almost through,” Halcomb said.

“Good,” Charline replied. She was about to say more when movement off to one side caught her eye.

“We’ve got company!” Arjun said.

A swarm of pod-shaped objects streamed out from deeper inside the ship. They used small spurts of their thrusters to maneuver in the zero-g environment.

Holy shit, there were a lot of them! Charline raised her guns as the leading edge of pods swept toward them. Halcomb had already turned from his efforts to bring all his weapons to bear as well. But against these sorts of numbers, their odds sucked. God, there had to be hundreds of the things!

“Wait, don’t shoot!” Sing said, breaking into her concentration.

“What the hell, Sing?” Charline snapped back. They didn’t have time for this! Those pods were closing fast.

“No, look over there, on the left,” Sing replied.

She turned toward where he was pointing. Some of the pods had stopped to gather around a particularly dense pile of debris. As Charline watched, some of the pods cut away chunks of damaged hull. Others then ferried the loose pieces into an opening on a very large pod, which in turn was slowly extruding a brand-new piece of hull!

“They’re here to do repairs, not for us,” Charline said.

But they might be dangerous if provoked. Their torches could cut through the ship’s thick hull plating, so they’d probably be able to do the same to her peoples’ armor.

“Keep an eye on them, but don’t interfere with their work,” Charline said. “We don’t want to be seen as a threat.”

“Yeah, I’d rather not become one with this ship,” Arjun said. His tone was light, but the thought was chilling.

A dozen pods jetted toward them. No, not toward them. They were headed for the wreckage in front of Halcomb.

“Step back,” Charline said. “Don’t act threatening.”

“I’m the one feeling threatened, ma’am,” Sing replied as one of the drones buzzed past him.

She could sense the tension building in her team. If one of them snapped and fried off a shot...

She eyed the torches blazing away on the cutting pods. There were enough of the things flitting around that they could tear her people apart in seconds if they wanted to. Halcomb took a slow step back, then a second and a third. Charline heaved out a sigh as the pods drifted right past his armor, ignoring him entirely.

“I’ll be damned,” Halcomb said. “Look at them go!”

They were tearing through the ruined section of hull even faster than Halcomb’s guns had managed. Even more remarkable, they were using the broken parts of the ship to repair it! As a pod cut loose each chunk of twisted metal, another carried the bits away to one of the fabrication pods.

There it was transformed into new parts more rapidly than Charline could have dreamed possible. Human 3D printing had advanced a lot over the years. Complex parts could be printed in a relatively short time. But these pods were converting raw scrap into new hull in a fraction of the time the best human printers could manage. As the rubble was cleared from an area, other pods came in carrying the replacement parts and welded them into place. The whole process was done so quickly that it seemed almost miraculous.

“Look over there, at the center. What are they building?” Halcomb asked.

Charline looked inward toward the spine of the ship. A huge swarm of pods were there, swirling around. She dialed up the resolution on her video to see what they were doing. The thing they all spun around was long and narrow, like a needle. Charline saw the flash of bright crystal there for a moment before she lost sight of it in the twirling mass of drones.

That was a familiar device. She’d seen it before, when the Satori was stripped down and rebuilt.

“That’s their wormhole drive. I don’t know how it works, but it looks just like the drive shaft on the Satori,” Charline said.

“It’s huge, though!” Arjun said.

“Big ship, big drive shaft,” Charline replied. “Damn. At the rate they’re rebuilding it, that wormhole drive might be operational again within the hour.”

“Won’t be too long before you’ll barely be able to see we smashed her up at all,” Halcomb said. “All the more reason to get moving. They’ve cleared the way ahead for us.”

He was right. The blockage he’d been trying to burn through was already gone. Pods were replacing deck plates along the path ahead. Charline took one hesitant step forward, and then another. The drones ignored her. She walked forward more, so close that the pods swirled around her like buzzing flies. There was a moment when she thought they would swarm over her and cut her to pieces. But they went on ignoring her.

“All right, looks like as long as we don’t bother them, they won’t bug us,” Charline said.

She didn’t wait for Halcomb and the others to catch up. Better to lead by doing. They still had a long way to go and not nearly enough time. A short distance ahead a brilliant blue film barred her way. She stepped closer. It appeared to be some sort of field.

“Ideas, folks?” Charline asked.

“Looks like it’s designed to hold atmosphere in. We know they have shields on their ships. Maybe this is the same sort of thing?” Arjun asked.

“That’s what I was afraid of. Any ideas on how we can get through?” Charline asked.

Before anyone could reply, a repair pod flitted past them, darting through the field and down the hall. It rounded a corner and vanished. The field didn’t seem to slow it down at all.

“Well, that’s settled, then,” Halcomb said. He strode forward into the field. There was a slight shimmering where the effect met his armor, but then he was through.

“You OK?” Charline asked.

“Yup. My guess is it’s tuned to keep gas in. I’ve got atmosphere on this side of the field,” Halcomb said.

It was a nice tool. The ability to seal breaches in the hull like that had probably kept much of the ship’s crew from dying of decompression. But that didn’t make her less angry at Halcomb.

“That was a damned fool thing to do,” she said.

“The drone made it through,” Halcomb protested.

“What if the drone had a tag or device that allowed it entry? You could have fried yourself,” Charline replied.

She stepped through the field to follow him in. He was right – there was a sense of having to push through something, like she was moving her armor through a membrane. But there was no pain, and her suit didn’t flash any alarms at her.

“My armor was the one most likely to survive if there was a problem,” Halcomb said.

He wasn’t wrong, there. But... “Your armor is also the one we’re most likely to count on in a fight,” Charline said. “I need you in one piece. Be more careful.”

“Noted,” Halcomb said. She could almost hear the grin on his face over the radio. Infuriating man.

Thirty-Eight

The ship stretched out in front of them, mostly dark and eerily silent. Charline had expected to meet quick opposition on their march to the docks where the best shot at getting home lay.

But the place was empty. Everywhere they looked, there was nothing but empty halls stretching as far as they could see. It would be easy to get lost in the place, wandering around aimlessly until they did happen across some group of aliens.

That wouldn’t do. She spotted a computer terminal mounted on the wall. She stopped at the device and looked down at the cube next to her. Could she hack her way into their computer network with the cube? It ought to be received as a transmission request from a friendly machine. So long as she didn’t ask for anything too crazy, it might work.

“Cover me. I’m getting out of armor for a minute,” Charline said.

“Here? You sure we can breathe this stuff? There’s atmosphere, but…” Halcomb sounded dubious.

“We were breathing the air on Dust. If that’s really where these bugs came from, we ought to be able to breathe here, too,” Charline said.

She tried to push from her mind thoughts of alien pathogens. In theory, an alien biology ought to be so different that any micro-organisms they had living with them wouldn’t be able to infect humans. They hadn’t run across any problems yet, anyway – but that didn’t mean the theory was universal. She decided to keep her time out of armor to a minimum.

Popping her hatch, she slid down from the armor’s cockpit. Her boots rang with a hollow echo when she hit the deck. Even outside the armor, the stillness felt ominous and oppressive. She shivered and went to the terminal. Sooner done, sooner back in the armor, where she at least felt a little more secure.

Hooking up her cube to the terminal turned out to be child’s play. The lid popped off with only a little prying from her pocket knife. Inside were a half dozen cubes, each one humming away and glowing with a soft blue light from within. She gingerly reached out to touch one.

Nothing happened. It felt cool to her fingers. She grasped it firmly and slid it free from its housing, then glanced around. No alarms rang, and the dim lighting in the hall didn’t go out. That had to be a good sign, right?

She slid her cube into the empty spot. It took on the same dim blue glow as the other cubes. The terminal had accepted her addition.

“Need to hurry up. I don’t think sitting in one place is such a good idea,” Halcomb said.

“Noted. I’m going as fast as I can, but we need schematics of the place,” Charline said.

Her tablet was still interfaced with the hacked cube. She entered a series of commands. It was hard work, especially since she didn’t understand the language. Or most of it, anyway. Charline was already picking up a few written words based on syntax she’d seen in their code. The more she looked at their programming, the more familiar it felt. It turned out that coders really were a lot alike the galaxy over, not just on Earth!

There! That had to be the right directory. Charline entered a few last commands, and a diagram of the ship popped up on her tablet screen.

“Got it!” she said. She tapped a command out to download the entire thing to her tablet.

“Incoming!” Tessa said. She tried to add something else, but Charline couldn’t make out the words over the roaring sound of plasma fire slashing into the wall above her head.

She dove sideways, hugging the tablet to her chest as she hit the deck. Droplets of melted deck spattered everywhere. One small drop landed on her arm and burned its way through her sleeve before it stopped sizzling on her skin. Charline bit her cheek to hold back a scream. She was a small target next to the armored people, but she was also a squishy one. Making noise would only draw attention to her that she couldn’t afford.

Plasma beams flashed back and forth above her head. The armor was moving. She sidestepped quickly to get clear of one unit so it didn’t crush her in its passage. A glance down at her tablet said the download was complete.

Charline looked over at her armor. She wanted nothing more than to be back inside there, but she couldn’t go. Not yet. If they lost her cube, she wasn’t sure she had time to hack another one. Without it, they couldn’t seize a ship, and there wouldn’t be any chance of getting home. She darted back toward the terminal.

“Char, get back in your armor!” Halcomb called out over his speakers. “Damn it!”

She felt the bulk of his armor nudge her aside. The impact sent her flying into the wall next to the terminal. He’d been just in time. When she looked up, she saw multiple alien shots slam home against his armor. Halcomb staggered backward. For a moment Charline was afraid he would fall on her, but he steadied himself and returned fire.

The cube was just in her reach. She snatched the thing up from the terminal and dashed back to her armor. Another blast of enemy fire blazed past her as she climbed. It was close enough that her face felt sunburned from the heated air it left in its path. Then she was into her armor, sliding into the seat and slapping the command to drop her canopy back into place. It locked down, sealing her safely inside her metal shell again.

“I’m back in armor. What’s our status?” Charline asked. There was a sudden lack of gunfire in the hall.

“Took them all down. There were only three,” Isabella said.

“Halcomb, you OK?” Charline asked.

He turned toward her, and she could see a pair of smoking divots in his armor. “Yeah. Took some heat, but they didn’t punch through. Good thing I added the extra armor on this thing,” Halcomb said.

“I wish we had twenty more just like it, right now,” Charline said.

“You get what you needed?” Arjun asked.

“I did. We’ve got full schematics of their ship, now. We know how to get exactly where we need to go. Sending them to you now,” Charline said.

For the first time in a while she felt a surge of confidence. The ship was damned near empty, and they knew precisely how to get where they wanted to go. Now they could make good time on the most direct route. Once they arrived they still had to capture the ship and get away, but all that suddenly seemed much more possible than it had before. Their ‘Hail Mary’ long shot pass might just work after all.

Thirty-Nine

“Looks like only two of them by the hatch,” Tessa said. “I’m not seeing any others.”

They’d made it to the docking berth without running into any more aliens, which was a stroke of luck Charline didn’t feel like questioning. But to only have two of them outside the ship? It felt like too much of a good thing.

Of course, it could simply be that all the remaining crew was elsewhere around the ship fighting fires, literal and figurative. But the docked ship looked just like the one they’d captured earlier, and that one had more than two crew.

If she was working on a docked ship in a crisis, Charline thought she’d want to be on it or damned close by, just in case the shit hit the fan in a big way. There were probably more of them someplace close at hand. Maybe on board the ship, maybe not. But they’d respond to an attack rapidly enough.

There wasn’t any help for it, though. They needed to press forward. Every minute they delayed just helped the enemy.

“Get ready to advance, but be careful. There should be more of them somewhere,” Charline said.

Gerald and Toni stacked up directly behind Tessa. Halcomb would follow close behind them. Charline and the other team of armor would watch for any bugs coming at them from other directions, or reinforce the team taking the ship if necessary. The plan wasn’t flawless, but she felt confident her people could pull this off.

“Move now,” Charline said.

Tessa’s team started forward in a lumbering run. They came around a corner as quickly as they could. That put them in view of the enemy, who responded immediately. Charline could see them through Tessa’s camera system. One went sideways, falling back to take cover behind a pile of large crates. The other ducked back into the ship.

“Move fast. One went for reinforcements,” Charline said.

The lead squad opened up on the crates, blasting them to shreds with gunfire. The bug returned fire as best it could, but it was heavily outgunned. Halcomb stepped up and added his own weapons to the mix. It was nimble and dodged some of their beams, but there was just too much fire coming its way. First one shot struck it, then another, and a third. The fourth impact stopped it entirely.

“Keep moving! Gerald, take up a position near the door,” Charline said. He was the closest armor.

He bounded toward the hatch into the ship, which was still open. Thank god! If they had to cut their way in, it would take forever. Gerald had almost made it to the doorway when he stopped suddenly.

“I see movement – oh, shit!” he said.

Then a spray of plasma beams sliced into his armor, cutting it clean in half.

There wasn’t any question whether the man inside had survived. The damage cut right through where his lower torso would have been. He was gone.

For a frozen moment, Charline couldn’t believe that one of her people had been snuffed out so quickly and without warning. Then the certainty that they were all going to follow him if she didn’t step up set in.

“Halcomb, fry whatever shot him. Tessa, Toni, flanking positions to support him,” Charline said. “Arjun, have your squad on overwatch. Make sure we don’t get flanked ourselves.”

Her people started moving. Charline took long strides forward to join the assault team. They were down a man and needed support. The three armor units remaining were all lighting up the hatch area, blazing away.

Spotty fire flashed out at them, slapping into Halcomb’s armor more than once. She winced as he staggered backwards from one shot. He was in the line of fire a lot. That armor could take more punishment than theirs, but it had limits. She didn’t want to order him to his death.

“Got three of them in there. Took one out, but the other two are under cover. Moving forward is going to be tricky,” Halcomb said.

Charline got close enough to see through the open hatch. Tricky wasn’t the right word. Inside the hatch, a straight hallway stretched for about ten yards before coming to a T. Both aliens were using the corners for cover. From that position they could fry anyone coming at them. Ten yards might not seem like much, but in this case it was a death sentence for anyone they sent in.

How the hell they were supposed to get past this? Charline wracked her brain for any idea that didn’t involve Halcomb having to die to get the rest of them off this boat. He was the logical pick. His armor would take at least a few shots, and it would give them enough cover to return fire and maybe kill the bugs. That would be cold consolation if he was killed in the process, though. There had to be a way to get down there without losing people in the process! If they had some sort of bomb, or grenade that they could chuck down the hall, that would work.

But they didn’t, and there was no point wishing for what they couldn’t get. Charline snapped off a shot at a bug that leaned out from cover for a moment. It ducked back too quickly, and her beam missed. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. They were at an impasse, with the bugs too pinned down to fire back but able to kill them if they advanced.

She reached a decision. If anyone was going down, it would be her.

“Moving in. Cover me!” Charline said.

She walked toward the hall. Both bugs saw her moving and tried to shoot at her. Their first beams went wide, and then return fire from her friends made them duck back under cover. That luck wouldn’t last forever, but she’d take what she could get! Charline kept up a steady rate of fire as she advanced toward the hatch. Another few seconds and she’d be inside that hall. They’d both open up on her, then. But the others could use whatever remained of her armor as cover to finish the advance.

There was a grinding sound and a vibration that Charline could feel even through her armor. She froze, wondering what the hell was going on. Then she realized where the sound was coming from. It was the hatch. The massive doors on either side were grinding closed.

She rushed forward as fast as her legs could carry her, but the hatch closed most of the way before she could get her body through. Her arms stopped the doors’ advance for a second, but she couldn’t hold them open. She yanked them back before the hatch snapped them off at the elbows. It slammed closed a moment later.

A heavier rumbling shook the deck beneath her feet. She knew precisely what that was. The ship outside, their ticket out of this deathtrap, was igniting its engines and taking off. They’d missed their chance.

Forty

The vibration from the ship’s thrusters was strong enough to be felt even through their armor. After all of that, to be too late! Darkness spun in around the edges of Charline’s vision. She felt faint. They’d been so damned close.

“Well, that sucks. What’s the plan now, fearless leader?” Halcomb asked.

She wanted to scream at him that there was no plan. There were no new ideas coming. The end of the road was right there in this hallway. Everything that could be done had been.

But the rest of the team was silent, waiting to hear what she'd say. No one stepped forward with any sort of plan or even a suggestion. They were counting on her to come up with something, but exhausted and dispirited as she was Charline wasn’t sure she could.

“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to get on it,” Tessa said. “I’ve got four more armored bugs coming our way!”

“Just four?” Charline asked, surprised.

“That's more than enough! Halcomb, get your ass up here and ‘overkill’ them,” Tessa said.

But it wasn’t enough. Not by half. They had more than enough firepower to handle a quartet of bugs, as they’d demonstrated more than once already. Come to think of it, they hadn’t seen more than four enemies at a time since arriving on the tanker. With such a big ship, Charline had expected to meet heavy resistance every step of the way. Instead, the defense had been scattered, disorganized, and light in numbers.

Was it possible there were so few defenders because the ship didn’t have a large crew? A human ship this large would house hundreds of people, maybe even a thousand or more. But most of the systems on board were automated. She recalled the swarm of repair bots hard at work on the damaged bow. That would have been done by crew, on a human ship.

If she was right and there weren’t many aliens on board, then they might just have a chance after all. The ships which had just blasted off weren’t the only wormhole-capable vessels around. There was one last option.

“We make for the bridge and take the ship,” Charline said.

“Go big or go home. I like it!” Halcomb said. He’d just stepped into the hall beside Tessa and unleashed a fury of plasma fire on the approaching enemy. Overkill, indeed!

“There’s seven of us,” Sing said. “Against how many bugs?”

“Less than you might think,” Charline replied.

Whether she was correct or not, taking the ship really was their only option. lf they rounded the next corner and ran into two hundred armed and angry aliens, nobody was going to live long enough to say ‘I told you so,’ anyway. Better that they were able to remain hopeful as long as possible, in that case.

But she didn’t think she was wrong. The numbers didn’t lie. If the ship had a large crew, the aliens would already have sent a bigger force against them. They weren’t seeing a cohesive defense at all, just little groups that felt more like security details.

“What’s the status on that patrol?” Charline asked.

“Got ‘em pinned down, but they’re still alive,” Halcomb replied.

“Keep them pinned. Tessa and Arjun, with me,” Charline said.

Decision made, she sprang into action. A few short steps brought her out into the hallway beside Halcomb. Shots from his plasma weapons streamed down the corridor, mostly aimed toward a side passage fifty meters ahead on the right. That had to be where the aliens were hiding. Charline kept to the left wall and pushed forward. If Halcomb could keep them tucked behind cover for just a little longer, she’d be in position to get a clean shot off.

Then the aliens spotted her.

The time for being subtle was over. Charline dashed forward as quickly as her armor would allow and opened fire. She ran at an angle to where the bugs were hiding, so that they had to track her movement with their guns. Plasma fire splashed against the wall directly behind her. They’d missed their first shots.

“Shit. I’m coming!” Halcomb called out over the radio.

“Got one!” Tessa said. The others were right behind her. Good.

Charline lined a bug up in her crosshairs and pressed down hard on the firing studs. Her armor blasted the alien with twin plasma beams that nearly cut it in half. That was two down! The others weren’t holding still, though. One of them raced toward her along the ceiling while the other stood its ground and unleashed its own hell of plasma.

The beams slammed into Charline’s armor, melting metal and raising the internal temperature dozens of degrees in seconds. Red lights and alarms flashed on.

For a moment she thought the attack had punched through her suit, but the seals were holding. She pulsed her beams again. One missed as the alien dodged aside, but the other struck home, weakening its armor. She switched to the Naga rifle mounted on her shoulder and fired a shot. It slammed home in the same spot she’d hit with the plasma beam and punched through what was left of the armor there. The bug rocked back like it had been slapped by an enormous hand and then fell to the ground. It was still twitching, but she didn’t think it was going to be a threat anymore.

She took a step back and raised her arms defensively. Focusing on the ranged attacker had left her incredibly vulnerable to the one trying to close in on her. Charline reflexively extended the blade from her arm and readied herself to deal with another bout of close combat.

But there was no need. It lay on the deck, holed in four places by well-placed shots.

Charline let out a shaky breath. It was over. This fight was over, anyway, she corrected herself. The bigger battle was yet to come.

“Your work, Halcomb?” Charline asked, eying the four holes.

“I aim to please,” Halcomb said.

“Just so long as you do aim,” she replied. “All right, everyone back into travel formation. This time I want Tessa front, Arjun rear. Halcomb in the middle with me so he can move whichever direction needs firepower the most. Stay frosty, people.”

“Where are we going?” Tessa asked.

“Midships and up. Top deck or near to it. There will be a major corridor running down the spine of the ship that leads right to the control room,” Charline replied. “We should be able to control the entire ship from there.”

“What? How can you be sure of that?” Sing asked.

Charline turned to face him. Frankly, she was getting tired of his frequent complaints. “Because that’s how Naga ships are built, Mr. Sing.”

“But these aren’t Naga!” he protested.

She looked around, examining the construction of the hallway. She could see the way the circuits and ducts were placed within the walls through holes burned by gunfire. All of it was familiar. It had felt that way earlier, and she hadn’t known why.

Now she was sure. Everything about this ship felt like Naga tech. Oh, there were differences. But the similarities in design were too great to put off to chance. There was no way two distinct alien races would happen to arrive at such near-identical designs.

“I don’t know the full story yet, but the Naga got their tech from these guys. A long time ago, but the ships are built in the same style. We’ll find what we’re looking for that way,” Charline said, pointing. “Unless you have any other objections?”

“No, ma’am,” Sing replied. He fell into formation without another word, but he didn’t sound mollified.

She’d need to keep an eye on him, but it was good enough for now, at least. It wasn’t like most of this rag-tag group had a military background. She couldn’t expect them to follow orders without questions. Making do with what she had was becoming a specialty.

“Tessa, lead out,” Charline said.

Forty-One

Twice they ran into more aliens as they approached the bridge of the ship. Both times the enemy fled as soon as they opened fire. They didn’t pause to exchange shots with her armor, instead turning tail to run. Charline had a sense that they were being carefully tracked as they progressed. The enemy was making sure they knew exactly where her people were. What they had in mind, she couldn’t say. But they were surely preparing some sort of surprise ahead.

They’d made it out into a massive hallway running down the length of the ship’s spine. From the maps she’d downloaded it looked like the passage terminated at the engine room at one end, down at the rear of the ship, and the bridge at the other about three-fourths of the way to the bow.

“Halcomb, you and Tessa’s team lead out. Arjun’s team in rear guard. Make sure you have someone watching the hall behind us at all times,” Charline said. They were very exposed out in this wide passage. It was the perfect place to lay a trap. But there were no other routes to the bridge without cutting through deck walls and potentially damaging the ship they were trying to capture.

Massive blast doors came into view about a hundred meters ahead. Those would be the doors to the bridge. She wasn’t surprised to see them sealed shut. It would take time to cut through, but they could do it.

There were no guards outside the doors, though. The bugs had to be watching them on camera at this point. They had to know the humans were all but knocking on their doorstep. It was stop her armor here, now, or lose control of their ship. Where was the trap?

Even the bugs down on Dust had been capable of setting up ambushes. These ones were even more advanced. They ought to have the same traits, maybe with even greater intensity. The empty hall didn’t feel right.

“Everyone hold up,” Charline said.

The team froze. Halcomb was still leading the way. He half turned back toward her, keeping his guns trained ahead. “What’s up?”

“It’s too quiet,” Charline said.

“We haven’t met much resistance. Maybe they’ve thrown everyone at us that they had?” Tessa asked.

“No, we’ve seen a few of them. They fled. The bridge should be through those doors. So where are they?” Charline asked.

It was a rhetorical question. The rest of the team wouldn’t have any more idea than she did. Frustrating as hell. She knew there was a trap ahead. It was there, right in front of her, but she couldn’t see it! They had no choice but to advance, though. Time wasn’t on their side. Reinforcements would arrive soon, if they hadn’t already.

“Move in, Halcomb. Tessa, have your team follow ten yards back and cover him,” Charline said. “Arjun, keep your squad watching our back. Be ready for anything.”

Would the bugs come bursting out of the floor? The deck plates looked the same as she’d seen everywhere else on the ship. If they were any different, Charline couldn’t see it. Ceiling plates and wall plates looked the same as the floor.

Wait – wall plates? Charline looked to her right and then her left. The walls were smooth and unbroken. It was like they’d been made of a single seamless piece of metal. But up ahead the walls were made in joined square sections, just like the floor and ceiling. That was where they had to be.

“Halcomb, they’re in the walls!” Charline shouted. She dashed up alongside him with three fast bounds.

Halcomb didn’t hesitate or ask stupid questions, thank god. He turned to face the right wall while she aimed her guns at the left. As one, they opened up with their weapons. Plasma beams blazed free, slashing into the panels. They sliced holes in the walls, which came apart in gouts of liquid metal. They were thin things, perhaps half an inch thick. Nowhere near as sound as the rest of the ship’s hull. Gunfire tore through them like they were paper.

Squeals of pain and rage echoed across the hall as those beams ripped into the bugs hiding behind the thin shields. They burst out. Now that they’d been detected there was no reason to keep quiet.

All of the bugs were armored. They had their own guns, and a few beams stabbed out as they rushed forward. One slapped Charline’s left arm with enough force to slam her backwards into Halcomb. His bulk kept her from pinwheeling to the ground. The flash of heat inside her cockpit told her that her armor was breached.

Another beam stabbed into one of Tessa’s people. It slashed deep into the armor’s torso, boring a deep hole. The armor fell over forward. Charline saw smoke rising from a second hole in the armor’s back. She wasn’t sure who it was, but that was almost certainly a mortal hit.

She screamed in rage and slashed sideways with her beams, firing as rapidly as she could. They’d overheat and burn themselves out if she wasn’t careful. But if they didn’t stem this tide, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Two bugs jumped her, one grabbing hold of each arm. They slashed in with sharp talons, slicing into the armor shielding her. Their bulk dragged Charline down to her knees. She couldn’t aim the arm weapons. The bugs’ weight was so much that she couldn’t even lift her arms. Meanwhile, they were hacking their way through.

“Shoulder gun!” Charline said. She hadn’t been using the weapon much, since it had such a low rate of fire. But all she needed was one good shot...

The turret mount aimed with her vision. She looked the bug hanging from her left arm dead in the eyes. The pellet took it square in the center of its forehead.

Charline didn’t see an exit wound. For all she knew, the energy ball bounced around inside the bug’s armor rather than punch back out. The effect was precisely what she’d hoped for, though. The bug’s head snapped back with the initial impact. Then it went limp and crashed to the deck. Her arm was free.

A loud tearing sound heralded the victory of the other bug over Charline’s armor. The sharp blades finally sliced through, sheering her right arm clean off. Cool air washed across her shoulder and face through the new hole. Charline shuddered, thinking about what would have happened if her real arm had actually been inside that limb when it was severed.

Luckily her attacker fell away along with the arm. It crashed to the deck, but it wasn’t slowed by the fall. The bug rolled sideways and started toward her legs. If it wrapped itself around her lower limbs, it could take her to the ground and tear her to bits from there!

Charline pivoted on her left foot and stepped back with her right. She brought the left arm forward at the same time, aiming the plasma cannon directly at the bug. It saw the danger and tried to scramble away, but it had too much momentum to overcome quickly. Charline fired the cannon. It holed the insect’s armor, but it was still moving. She kept firing until it was still again.

The hallway was full of smoke. Enough drifted in through the holes in Charline’s armor to make her cough. She whirled, looking for more enemies, but found none.

“Are we clear?” she asked over the radio.

“Looks like,” Halcomb said.

Bodies were heaped everywhere. If the bugs had managed to catch them all in the hall, unaware, it probably would have been the humans left steaming on the deck plates.

“We got lucky this time. Let’s end this before our luck runs out,” Charline said.

“Looked more like it was our commander spotting an ambush before we walked into it,” Sing said.

Charline was surprised at the respectful tone of voice he used. She’d expected him to be snide and rebellious. But there he was, giving her credit for the victory they’d all won.

“Team effort, let’s say,” Charline said. She strode up to the massive doors blocking them from the bridge. “I’m down a gun. Halcomb, care to do the honors?”

“With pleasure,” he replied. “Step back.”

Once she was clear, he unleashed all his weapons. Two other armor units stood beside him, blazing away as well. The door was built to withstand enormous strains, but the designer had apparently not considered eight massive plasma cannons a likely threat. They melted through the door in under a minute.

Forty-Two

They rushed through the doors three abreast, guns raised and ready to blast apart anything that moved. Another row of three more armored troops came in directly behind the first wave. They were expecting heavy resistance. If the hall had been bad, what was the control center of the ship going to be like?

It was empty.

Stations were set into the walls around a room which was more or less oval, with one side sliced flat where the doors opened. Charline didn’t see any other exits from the room. She didn’t see any aliens, either.

“Clear left!” Halcomb said.

“Clear right!” Tessa said.

“Where the hell are they?” Charline said. She strode into the center of the room, still wary. This seemed like an unfit place for an ambush, but they’d almost caught her people in the hall outside. She wouldn’t put it past the enemy to hit them again when their guard was down.

“Check the walls, ceiling, and floors. Let’s make sure we don’t have any surprises waiting for us in here,” Charline said. “I want two armor units watching that hall at all times, though.”

She popped the seal on her armor and stood. Smoke still curled from wires in her broken right arm. Damn, Halcomb was going to get on her case about that. She had to stop breaking her armor! Charline grinned, despite the dark odds against them. At least it was the armor breaking and not her.

The thought made her smile vanish instantly. Two of her people lay dead in the hall outside. Isabella and Toni hadn’t survived the ambush. Charline’s own armor was badly damaged, as was Arjun’s. Halcomb’s “overkill” suit was covered with pock marks from all the times it had been peppered with plasma, but it was still running fine. They were running light on people and gear, and they were still nowhere close to home yet.

She watched as Arjun and Sing hauled the two broken armor units out of the hall. They laid both across the doorway. It was good thinking. The armor would serve as cover if the bugs tried to rush them.

But not with people still inside. Charline walked over to the first armor and keyed open the seal. Inside was Isabella, staring up at her with wide, dead eyes. Charline had to blink back tears. There wasn’t much blood, because the huge hole in the center of her chest had been cauterized by the blast that tore through her.

Charline undid the harness holding her dead friend in place and took hold of her by the shoulders. It was difficult work, prying a body free from the constraints of the suit. Then a second pair of hands joined hers, making the work lighter.

“We’ll see them safe home with us,” Halcomb said as he helped pull Isabella free from the suit. “They deserve that, and more.”

“Thank you,” Charline replied. “We need to get Toni as well.”

“I’ll see to it. You worry about getting this ship underway, eh?”

“Right.” Charline snapped him a nod, confident he’d take care of their fallen with proper honor. He was correct. Her job was to get them all back home safely.

She raced to her armor with renewed purpose and grabbed the control cube.

Hooking it up was easy. She’d done this enough times that it was child’s play for her. But these computers were locked down much more tightly than the console in the hall. It was like hacking the small ship they’d captured, but even more complex. Charline’s brow crinkled in thought as she tapped commands into her tablet, trying different avenues to gain access.

If she’d been attempting this hack from anywhere else in the ship, she didn’t think it would have been possible at all. These bugs had coded some intense safeguards! But gradually, she was able to work her way around them.

The ship shuddered, tremors sounding beneath her feet.

“What was that?” Tessa asked. “It sounded like something hit the ship!”

Charline tapped a command and an area in the middle of the command room lit up, showing a projection of space with the alien vessel in the middle. All around the ship was a swarm of yellow dots like buzzing bees. One of them was marked purple. That one was firing on the mothership! Two more went purple as well as they joined the first in the attack.

“Someone on the ship must have gotten out a distress call,” Charline said.

“They’re willing to blow their own ship up?” Tessa asked.

“Rather than let it fall into our hands? Yeah, it looks so,” Charline replied.

She tapped another series of commands. The ship’s computer knew it was under attack and immediately allowed her command to raise the shields. On the projection, a white field shimmered into place around their ship. The hammering continued, but the impacts were much less intense.

“The shields work. I don’t know how long they can hold out against all those ships, though,” Charline said.

“What about the wormhole drive?” Halcomb asked.

“I’m working on it!”

The ship was still resisting her directives. It wasn’t an AI like Majel, but it was a more than competent machine. Charline didn’t have time to brute force her way through the system. Luckily, she didn’t have to. The programs she’d written to create the interface for the smaller ship helped gain access to this one as well. It still wasn’t simple, but...

“There!” Charline said. On their display a beam of light shot forth from the nose of the ship. The whole vessel shook, and a high-pitched whining sound built up. “Everyone hang on!”

The lights flickered, and the whining noise stopped abruptly. It hadn’t worked?

Charline ran a system check of the wormhole drive with her tablet, trying to track down the source of the problem. It wasn’t the device itself. The drones had already managed to rebuild it. Where was the malfunction?

“I take it that wasn’t what was supposed to happen?” Sing asked. There was a shuffle of large metal feet followed by a loud bang. Then Sing added, “Ow!”

“Serves you right for mouthing off,” Halcomb muttered.

“You didn’t have to smack my head!” Sing said.

“Yes. Yes, I did,” Halcomb replied.

Charline grinned, keeping her face buried in her tablet. Of all the people who could have been stuck on that dead planet with her, she was glad Halcomb had been there. They’d never have made it this far without him.

The shuttle crew was up near the nose of the ship. Maybe they’d seen something that could help. It was past time to reach out to them and let them know what was going on, anyway.

Charline tried her radio but couldn’t get a connection. There was just too much ship between them and the shuttle. Her people there were on their own.

A beep brought her attention back to the tablet.

“Got it!” Charline said.

“What have we got?” Tessa replied.

“Figured out why the drive shut off. It lost all power. There was a break in the conduit. Looks like they just shut it down near their power source in the engineering section,” Charline said. “We go down there, bust them up, turn the power back on, and we should be good to go.”

She looked around the room, realizing some of them would need to stay put. They’d have to jump immediately after the power was restored. Every second counted, and the ship shaking from blasts striking its shields were a constant reminder of that.

“Arjun, your armor is damaged, and you’re also the best person besides me to control this ship. You’ve got the con,” Charline said, grinning as she handed him the tablet. She’d always wanted to say that. “Tessa, stay in armor and cover him. Halcomb, you and Sing are with me. We’re going to take the fight to engineering.”

She hopped back into her armor and closed the canopy, then set off confidently down the hall. Finding the bad guys wasn’t going to be hard, this time. Engineering was a straight shot down this long hallway that connected the bridge and engine room like a spinal cord. Storm the room, flip a switch, and they’d be home!

Forty-Three

Plasma fire streaked by overhead. Charline ducked, narrowly avoiding the blast.

“You OK?” Sing asked from beside her. He fired a beam at the offending bug but missed.

“Just about singed my hair that time!” she said. “But I’m still here.”

They’d gotten bogged down in the doorway of the engine room. Charline was pretty sure there were only three, maybe four aliens inside. But they all had a clear field of fire toward the one entranceway and Charline couldn’t see precisely where they were hiding. The room was a mess of twisted pipes and machines. That made things even worse, since they had to watch where they were shooting. If a plasma beam shattered the wrong conduit, they might not be able to get home at all.

Where the hell was Halcomb? He’d taken off, saying he had an idea. That was … Charline checked the time and found it had only been two minutes. It felt like so much longer. Time stretched out when you were exchanging gunfire.

The ship shook hard enough to throw her against a wall. That was gunfire from outside, but the intensity had ramped up a lot all of a sudden. It almost felt like...

“Char, the shields are down,” Tessa told her over the radio. “They blew airlocks on the port side. Three ships are maneuvering to dock with us.”

The rest would follow soon after. Each of those ships had a crew of armored bugs. The few humans left would be overwhelmed in no time. If they didn’t jump now, it was all over.

“Halcomb! Do whatever you’re going to do now! We’re out of time,” Charline said, hoping the radio message reached him.

“Never fear. The cavalry is here!”

Charline looked around, trying to see where he was. It took her a second because it hadn’t occurred to her to look inside the engine room. There it was – a patch of ceiling glowing cherry red. As she watched, the red area turned to liquid and poured away, leaving a large hole in the ceiling. Halcomb’s armor jumped down through the hole, guns blazing.

Three alien bugs popped up from hiding, all firing at the new attacker. Charline didn’t hesitate. She rushed forward, firing as she ran. Sing followed close behind her. With their attention on Halcomb, the bugs were exposed. Her first set of beams took one of them down. Halcomb managed a second. Sing took the third out.

Panting, Charline stopped her armor in the middle of the engine room. They’d done it! Now, how could they get the power turned back on for the wormhole drive?

“Look for a large conduit, folks. The wormhole drive uses enormous power. It’ll be a big pipe. Just have to find it and we can trace the line to wherever they stopped up the flow,” Charline said.

“Boss? A big pipe like this?” Sing asked. “If so, we’ve got trouble.”

She looked over at the pipe in front of him, elated at first. Then she saw the rest of the line.

It wasn’t shut off. The foot-thick energy conduit was demolished. A section of it almost ten feet long had been burned away with plasma beams. It wasn’t accidental fire from the fight, either. That they might have been able to fix rapidly. But this mess? Charline shook her head. There was no way.

“Charline, they’re docking. Fifteen seconds before the first ones make contact,” Tessa said.

They were out of time. There might be one way to still make the jump, though. She didn’t have time to replace the conduit, but she could rig up a temporary fix that might just be able to carry enough current for one wormhole jump.

“Halcomb, Sing – head toward the bridge. They’re going to need backup. Be ready to repel boarders in case any of them get on before we jump,” Charline said.

“Jump? In case you missed it, there’s a massive slice missing out of the power line,” Halcomb said. “What are you thinking to do, patch it yourself?”

“Something like that,” Charline said. “Just go!”

Halcomb paused, his armor stock still like he was trying to see her through her suit. For a moment Charline thought he was on to her plan. He’d never go along with what she had in mind. The gap torn in the conduit was long, too long for much of anything to patch. But it was just about the distance of an armored suit’s arm reach.

She could be the conduit. If her suit could just survive the energy discharge long enough for the wormhole to form before it turned into slag around her, then her people would get home. Charline wished there was time to tie the suit’s arms into place, or weld them there. But they didn’t have the tools or the time. A series of bangs echoed through the hull as the first set of alien vessels began docking.

“Go. I’ve got this,” Charline said. “If the bridge is overrun, it’s game over.”

“All right. Sing, move out! I’ll follow you and cover our withdrawal to the bridge. Follow us as fast as you can, Charline,” Halcomb said.

Then they were both gone, leaving her alone to face the enormity of what she was about to do.

Charline reached out both arms of her suit. They easily spanned the gap between the two torn bits of conduit. Maybe she could get out of the suit and leave it there? But no - as soon as she released the suit controls, the hands relaxed and slid from their places to fall limply back down at the armor’s sides. She could only have the armor hold position while she was actively engaging it. That was a costly design flaw! She supposed there was some reason for it in the original suits, but it wasn’t helpful for combat situations.

Her mind was racing, babbling nonsense, and she knew it. There wasn’t much help for it, though. She took hold of the conduit again. They were out of time. Stalling would only hurt her people more. Charline gripped the conduit tightly and activated her radio.

“Tessa, fire up the wormhole. You should be able to get one jump. Make it count!” Charline said.

“Roger. We’re activating it now,” Tessa replied.

Charline closed her eyes. Everything in her life had brought her to this moment. She wanted to say goodbye to Andy more than anything else. He’d lost a surrogate father when John had died to save them all. Now he was losing her the same way. Their relationship had been bumpy, but it was real.

Charline hoped he would understand why she was doing this, why she had to do this. But whether he understood or not, it was out of her hands now. Any second, power would course through her suit, killing her and sending the rest of her team home.

Before she knew what was happening, Charline was flying back through the air. She slammed against a nearby wall hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. Then she crashed into the floor with bruising force.

What the hell had happened? She was still alive – had she been thrown clear by the force of the energy channeled into the conduit? No, if that had happened she’d still have been scorched, if not killed. She came back to her feet, preparing to rush back to the conduit and save her people.

But there was someone else already there. Halcomb’s armor stood facing her, one hand on each end of the pipe.

“Not your time, commander. Get them home,” he told her.

“Halcomb, no! This is my job. My responsibility,” Charline said. It was her duty to pay for all those who’d died. Even as she had the thought, she knew that wasn’t true. That didn’t make her feel it any less.

“Your responsibility is to live. You’ve started something with this armor. Take it to the next level,” Halcomb said. “I know something important, vital, when I see it. This matters. Make it count. Godspeed, commander.”

A whining noise almost drowned out his last words. The armor of his hands heated up, turning bright red in seconds and then blindingly white. Charline dove to the ground, taking cover behind a pile of machinery as a small nova erupted in the room. Excess energy poured away from Halcomb’s armor, arcing in sharp bursts light lightning darting to one wall after another.

There was that oh-so-familiar sensation of suddenly being nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It had worked. They’d entered a wormhole. The coordinates were already set. They’d arrive back home, near Earth. Near help that they so desperately needed.

But the cost. As the ship entered real-space again, Charline was able to recover to her feet and get a look at what was left of Halcomb.

The armor looked like a melted candle in the rough shape of a man. Metal had slagged off in droplets, melted to liquid under the intense flow of energy. It was over now. Part of the suit’s arm had melted away, breaking the connection, but it had lasted long enough for them to get through the wormhole.

Had it been quick? Charline hoped so, that Halcomb had died instantly. Another of her people who died so that she could live. She wanted to drop to her knees and cry for him, for herself, for all their losses.

There wasn’t time yet. At least one of those alien ships had docked before they were able to jump. The danger wasn’t past. They had more to do before she could put her ghosts to rest.

“Tessa, Sing, Arjun, meet me in the hall outside the bridge. We’ve got some cleanup of our ship to take care of,” Charline said.

Forty-Four

Cots beckoned to an exhausted Charline as she took the long hike from the ship’s bridge down to engineering. The battle to capture the ship had gone on for three days. Even then, the fight was a near thing. The bugs managed to board the bigger ship and holed up near the aft sections. Three battalions of Marines rooted them all out of their hiding holes, though. Then to make sure, they’d opened the entire vessel to vacuum for a week. It was possible the bugs could have survived even that, but she was pretty sure any still hiding on board would have died.

Now the massive vessel was in orbit over Earth. People were tearing into the ship, trying to figure out how everything worked.

It wasn’t going to be disassembled, though. Humanity only had one wormhole-capable ship, before. The Satori had been unique. Now they had four more – the mothership and three smaller ships which had managed to dock. Understanding the technology behind the drive was still years away. Maybe even decades. For now, they had to make do with what they had. The captured ships would become part of Earth’s fleet.

Charline had a feeling they were going to need every ship they could muster. How many vessels could these bugs bring to bear? Scores, at least, but maybe the number was a hundred or more. There was no way to know precisely what they were facing.

Her time on board was almost done. She’d been reassigned. Taking Halcomb’s words to heart, she’d gone to General Hereford with the data gleaned from their fights in hand. She’d been ready to put up a fight for her idea, the thing Halcomb had given his life for, but it turned out Hereford had already seen the armored bugs in action. They’d boarded Dan’s ship and only barely been beaten back by his Marines.

Armor wasn’t just a possible concept to work on. It was precisely the solution Hereford had been looking for, and he grabbed on with both hands as soon as she presented her plans.

Halcomb had left her with all the schematics for the Overkill armor unit. They might not be able to build it precisely the same way he had; the alien alloy wasn’t available in abundance, and neither were plasma cannons. But they could rig up some Earth-made weapons to mount instead. With a little human ingenuity, Charline was confident the fighting force would be even more effective than her fledgling group of survivors.

She was surprised Hereford caved so quickly to her request that she be given command. He’d grinned like an old fox with a mouthful of feathers. Charline smiled at the memory. Of course he’d been glad. He had her right where he’d wanted her, volunteering to take a leadership role in humanity’s survival.

She brushed her fingers over her collar, where a brand new silver oak leaf rested. It felt strange to her, to be officially part of the military. A few years ago, she would have scoffed at the notion. But now it felt like the only place she could possibly make up for all those people who’d died saving her.

They’d begin with a battalion of armored troops, but Hereford had bigger plans for the unit. Eventually he hoped to have a lot more armor ready. He agreed with Charline. Earth was going to need every advantage it could possibly get in the months and years ahead.

Charline had hoped to tell Andy about her new job, but he’d vanished shortly after being released from the hospital. He wasn’t answering calls or messages, and she had no idea where he was.

Well, the hell with him. If he felt like riding in as a white knight again, she’d tell him where to shove his chivalry. When she actually needed him, he was nowhere to be found.

It hurt more than she wanted to admit to herself, but pouring all her energy into the work ahead helped. Some.

Now there was just one last thing to take care of before she returned to the planet below to begin building the new unit. Charline leaned on the wall outside the engine room and closed her eyes for a moment before stepping across the threshold. She hadn’t returned to this room, not since Halcomb had died there.

Steeling herself, she opened her eyes again and strode forward with all the confidence she could muster. He was still there, the armor a living tomb around whatever was left of Halcomb inside. They couldn’t even carve him out for a proper burial. The casket had been closed, with nothing inside. Based on the damage, the engineers working on the ship said there probably wasn’t much left of the man inside the melted armor, anyway. What remains might be there were fused with the metal. Halcomb had become one with his armor, in the end.

“What do you want us to do with this, ma’am?” one of the techs working in the room asked when he saw her enter.

They’d cut Halcomb’s armor loose from where it had still been attached to the wall. New conduit was going in to permanently repair the damaged link. The melted armor now stood in the middle of the room. Scuttlebutt said they wanted to melt it down for the precious alien alloy it contained, but Charline interceded. There was still a body in there, a fallen member of her team. She’d be damned if he was going to be treated with anything but respect.

“Get a hauler to load it in the shuttle at Bay Five. I’ll be taking it ground side,” Charline said.

“Pardon me asking, ma’am – but what’s the plan for it – for him?” the tech asked.

Charline nodded at the correction. That felt right. The armor wasn’t just a thing. It was a person as well. What was left of one, anyway. Her idea for how to make his sacrifice mean something more was simple, elegant, and had been a quick sell to Hereford.

“We’re bringing him down to McClellan,” Charline said. That was where the new Armor Battalion was forming up. “He’ll reside there as a reminder to all of us of the importance of duty, and the sacrifices we might all make in service to humanity.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see he’s transported with the same honor we would any of our fallen.”

“I appreciate that,” Charline said.

She crossed the short distance to the melted statue that had been her friend. Charline reached out to touch the smooth metal. It was cool to the touch, now. She missed the easy chuckle Halcomb always had at the ready, and his smooth, calm nature. Damn the man, he was going to be difficult to replace.

But she wouldn’t need to, Charline realized. He’d still serve. Halcomb would be a beacon to all those joining the unit he helped her start.

“You old goat. How d’you like that? You’re not just going to be a part of the unit,” Charline said softly, the whisper so faint that no one else would hear her words. “I’ll turn you into a god-damned legend. One that will spawn so many more heroes like you that we’ll save ourselves from this mess yet.”

Kevin’s Notes

It seems forever ago that the last Satori novel was released, but we’re back and there are plenty more adventures to come in the books ahead. Look forward to Book 10 next month, and probably around one a month for a little while after that.

How long will the Satori’s saga go? That’s hard to say. This current sequence of books will be six long (through Book 12), and there is at least one more sequence of books to write after that. I have a lot of other stories I want to tell, but this world keeps calling me back, and you folks seem to love the ship and her crew. Keep reading, and I’ll keep writing them!

I seem to have started a trend with the last book. It was the longest Satori novel to date. This one is about 13% longer than Embers of War. I don’t know why; I just write until the story has been told well. But I doubt anyone is going to complain about the books being a little longer.

This book is a departure from the other books in the series. It’s the first Satori novel where the starship Satori doesn’t actually appear. Because I left a big hook at the end of Embers of War - what happened to Andy and Charline? - I needed to spend some time answering that question.

Charline had also never had a book really focus on her before. We’ve had the spotlight on a number of other major characters, but she hadn’t had her chance to shine until now.

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to handle her story. Should it be a sub-set of the main series, a little trilogy of novellas? Could I tell the tale as a side-line for the ongoing main story?

Eventually I decided that I needed to give her tale its own book. What you have here is the result, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. Charline has certainly come a long way. She’s no longer the young hacker she was in the first book. Now she leads squads of powered armor into battle against alien bugs. She’s taken a stand, rising to the increasing challenges humanity is facing in space.

It will be interesting to see where that path leads her in the books to come.

Thanks for reading both the book AND these notes! Remember that I’m always glad to hear from readers, so drop me a line any time.

Kevin

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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

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