Darren Wearmouth

Colin F. Barnes

THE CRITICAL TRILOGY

CRITICAL DAWN

BOOK 1

Chapter 1

CHARLIE JACKSON FELT like they were on the edge of a great discovery. Pippa had emailed him earlier to say that she’d ‘found the find of the century’ in an archeological dig to uncover what happened to the missing colonists of Roanoke Island.

Typical, Pippa, he thought. Keeping the huge news to herself and making him wait. It didn’t help that she’d told him to start work on the report. It was the worst part of his job. He preferred to be out in the field being the one to make the finds.

He looked up at his screen and grudgingly continued to work on the report, all the while trying not to be distracted by her excited email.

4:00pm, April 2014, Manhattan

ON AUGUST 18, 1590, a privateering expedition on its way back to England from the Caribbean stopped off at Roanoke Island. John White, the governor of the colony and passionate advocate of the new world, took his men ashore. They found the settlement completely deserted. Infrastructure had been dismantled, no trace existed of the hundred-and-eight residents, and they couldn’t find any signs of struggle. The colonists were never found.

The only clue was the word ‘CROATOAN’ carved on a fort post, and ‘CRO’ carved on a tree. Events surrounding the disappearance remain a mystery to this day.

The aim of the Quaternary Productions dig is to try and establish the fate of the colonists with firm evidence. After geophysical surveys following the investigation of aerial photography in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, the initial findings are as follows…

CHARLIE PUSHED the keyboard away after those few hundred words, unable to concentrate. All he could think about was that email. What had they found? More than just bones, that’s for sure. His mind raced with ancient artifacts, caches of treasure. Unable to stand it, he got up and decided to go chat with the temps.

He poked his head around the door leading to the next office and cafeteria and, listened for chatter around the coffee machine.

“They’re not in today,” Mike Strauss, his colleague in their open plan office, said.

“Want me to get you a brew?” Charlie asked, welcoming the distraction.

“Sure.”

Things had changed since Quaternary Productions agreed to a deal with National Geographic to make a documentary about finding the lost colony at Roanoke. The place had become louder and more congested with contractors, but not today. Mike and Charlie were pulling overtime. It seemed the others weren’t so keen.

The small coffee room was deserted. Charlie got the pot boiling and prepared two mugs as he pondered the current project. His main job had been site identification for potential pitches to places like the History Channel and National Geographic. His team traveled the country, surveying and digging. After winning the contract, the focus shifted to how quickly information could be cobbled together, rather than how thoroughly because of the production targets. It was always that way when they landed these kinds of deals.

He wasn’t about to get pretentious over projects that paid the bills. Charlie felt lucky to have a reasonably paid job to do what he loved. Most of his friends from college had to find work in other industries.

Finishing up the coffee duties, he headed back into the office.

“Here you go, Mike. Black, no sugar,” Charlie said. “What’s with the plain purple sweater? A little dull for your usual tastes.”

“It’s casual Friday. Thanks.”

Mike regularly freelanced with Quaternary Productions during the last six years. Charlie got to know him well since joining the company three years ago. He was renowned for his tasteless and bright woolly sweaters, usually stretched over his bulky torso, and his long greying hair made it look like somebody had placed a mop on his head. A few of the production crew called him ‘the mad scientist’. He liked the nickname.

“One more hour and I’m out of here,” Charlie said.

“Hey, Pippa says she’s got some really exciting news about the Roanoke dig. From the areas you identified.”

Two weeks ago, Charlie carried out a ground-penetrating radar survey in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. The uniform sandy soils made it an ideal method, and the results were encouraging.

Due to budget limitations he’d returned to the office, while a small team of archaeologists used his tomographic images to guide their excavations.

The team was restricted to certain areas because of the nature of the land and had sought special permission to dig. He was confident they’d find something with the results. Whether or not that had anything to do with the lost colony was another matter.

Charlie checked his watch. “She emailed me yesterday. Said it would blow my mind. Didn’t reply when I asked for details.”

Mike laughed. “A broken piece of pottery or the stem of a clay pipe blows her mind. I wouldn’t get too excited.”

Mike’s skill was in the identification of finds. He loved the big-ticket items recovered from digs. A four hundred year old Scottish pistol found in a well at Jamestown was the kind of thing that got his juices flowing.

Charlie could always see a look of disappointment on his face when he was presented with a clear plastic bag of buttons and buckles to sort though.

“She’d better hurry up,” Charlie said, “otherwise, she’ll have to wait a couple of days.”

“You’ll wait. I can tell by the way you look at her.”

“Whatever. I’m not the one that calls her a younger version of Halle Berry.”

Mike shrugged. “It’s the hairstyle. You going climbing again this weekend?”

“Yeah. Heading to Keene Valley. Should be a blast.”

“If you say so.”

Charlie shook his head and continued with the interim report. The aim was to complete it by the end of the day, using the information provided by Pippa, if she showed. He disliked leaving work unfinished.

Three sites were targeted with Ground Penetrating Radar to identify anomalous signals that might correspond with subsurface archaeological features. The inland locations were selected in the hope of shedding new light on the fate of the colonists.

The Roanoke site two contained hyperbolic reflections indicating the presence of reflectors buried beneath the surface possibly associated with human burials. Priority was given to this location due to time and financial constraints.

Pippa Quinn breezed through the door. She placed her laptop bag on the desk between Charlie and Mike and ripped open the Velcro fastening. “Afternoon guys. I hope you’re sitting comfortably.

“Comfortable as any other Friday afternoon,” Mike said.

She fired up her laptop, connected it to a docking station, and smiled at Charlie.

He loved working with Pippa. She exuded infectious energy and always had a healthy appetite for their projects. When he studied Geology at Stanford, he found the subject dry. The lecturers seemed to beat the life out of it, and he doubted he’d ever find a satisfying job upon graduating.

Pippa helped change all that.

At twenty-eight, she was two years older than Charlie. He had vague memories of her from college when he turned up for his interview. The enthusiasm and sparkle she showed for the role made him desperate for the job, and he wasn’t disappointed in the three years since.

“This could be potentially ground-breaking. I’m serious,” Pippa said.

“Don’t tell me. You’ve found animal bones with signs of butchery and a nineteenth century comb?” Mike said.

“Come on. You think I’d come all the way back here for that?”

“Uh huh.”

Typical Mike. He often helped provide some balance with his healthy skepticism, although occasionally fell into cynicism. He amused Charlie, probably without realizing it.

“Seriously. Come see this,” Pippa said.

Charlie wheeled his chair across and looked at the monitor. It displayed a high-resolution photograph of site two from the Wildlife Refuge. A deep, square trench had been cut into the ground, surrounded by a taped safety cordon and a selection of digging tools.

“You were right, Charlie. We found burials at the second site. A little deeper than expected,” Pippa said.

“How many?”

She clicked to the next picture, saved as ‘Eight skeletons’.

Three sets of bones were fully exposed on the right hand side. The rest poked through the dirt like pieces of nut in a large chocolate brownie.

“These were all laid out next to each other, arms by their sides. We couldn’t find any traces of coffin nails…”

“Christian burials?” Charlie said.

“They aren’t aligned east-west. But that doesn’t mean they’re not Christian.”

“Is it some sort of mass grave?” Mike said. “If they were just placed like that?”

“Of those three,” Pippa said, pointed her pen at the monitor, “we couldn’t find any immediate signs of injury on the bones, or arrowheads or musket balls. They’re going to be taken away for analysis.”

“Are they sixteenth century?” Charlie said.

“We found ceramic pieces and a decorative ring in the layer above, possibly from the sixteenth century. We’re carbon dating skeleton number one and should know in a couple of days.”

“Makes sense they’re below the finds. Being buried,” Mike said.

“Nothing with the bodies? No buckles? Leather…” Charlie said.

Pippa shook her head. “Nope. This is the part where it started to get weird.”

She clicked on the next photo, showing a close-up of a scapula bone. Below it, a dirty blue bead rested on the dirt. “We found one of these around the shoulder area of each of the three fully excavated skeletons.”

Mike frowned. “Grave goods? Do you think they’re from the Chowanoke tribe?”

“We’ll probably have a clearer picture after the tooth isotope analysis. Our hunch is that they’re European. Carbon dating will be the key,” Pippa said.

The next picture showed a cleaned blue bead, broken in two, sitting in a finds tray. It had a smooth shiny quality.

“We x-rayed the bead to try and see the elemental composition, in order to establish the production process and origin—”

“I thought you said you’d blow Charlie’s mind?” Mike said.

“I’m just building the picture. Here’s the first x-ray. Can you see the small rust marks running through the internal lattice toward that space in the middle?”

“That’s pretty intricate,” Mike said. “The local tribe didn’t use any metals that rusted. Must be European.”

“We couldn’t identify the row or trace elements of the glass to anything we’ve seen before.”

“Seriously? Have you sent it away for further analysis?” Mike said.

“Not yet. Just wait a minute.”

Pippa clicked to the next picture. “The next skeleton’s bead was intact.”

She sat back. Charlie and Mike leaned forward.

The intricate internal lattice had dark lines running through the channels like circuitry. In the center of the bead was what appeared to be a rectangular microchip.

Charlie scratched his head. “What the hell is that?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mike said.

“Trust me, I’m not. These things were found in situ, below undisturbed earth.”

“Oh Christ, we haven’t stumbled on a modern murderer’s—” Charlie said.

“Didn’t you just hear me? The ground above was undisturbed, with finds from the sixteenth century above. If we carbon date the skeletons to that time…”

“This has to be hoax,” Mike said. “It’s the only explanation.”

“I’ve been racking my brains all the way here. I thought about one of the team planting it, but I was there when these things were uncovered.”

Charlie sat back and puffed his cheeks. “Beats me. Where’s the bead now?”

Pippa reached into the front pouch of her laptop case and pulled out a small plastic bag. She produced a bead and passed it to Mike. “Be careful with it.”

He held it toward the strip light on the ceiling, rolling it between his fingers. “Holy… we need to get to work on this.”

Mike passed the bead to Charlie and wheeled away to his laptop.

Charlie’s first impression was the weight: a lot heavier than he expected. He switched on his desk lamp and held the bead underneath in the palm of his hand, ducking to get a side profile of the object.

Dark formal lines with an angled shape in the middle. Unbelievable.

“Seen anything like this before?” Charlie said.

“I called a few of my contacts. Janet from England reckons she’s seen something similar to our broken one,” Pippa said.

“Really? Like this thing?” Mike said.

“Where did they find it?” Charlie asked.

“Cheddar Gorge. In two pieces. No body. They bagged it up as unidentified.”

She flipped to her emails and opened one from a team member at the Roanoke dig site. Charlie sat back in his chair trying to think of a logical explanation. The problem was, one didn’t exist based on the evidence. He looked over to Mike who was furiously typing.

“Blue beads found near the shoulders of skeletons four and five,” Pippa said.

She spun her seat toward Charlie. “I think we need to start thinking outside the box on this one. Preferably in the bar. You two coming for a couple of cold ones? It’s been a long day and I need something to take the edge off”

“I’m calling my techy guy, see if he’s ever seen anything like it,” Mike said from behind her. “This could change the whole way we view history. I’ll stick around here for a few more hours, but you two go ahead.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting this is…” Charlie said.

“You’ve seen the Vijayanagara Empire carvings in India, the Nazca lines in Peru, Puma Punka and the strange ancient cave paintings all over the world…” Pippa said. “This is potential compelling evidence, but we say nothing until we get all evidence in place.”

Charlie didn’t want to believe it. Yet deep inside he was left to wonder. Could this be extraterrestrial technology?

“So? Pippa asked, “You wanna come buy your boss a drink and posit some theories?”

Ordinarily he’d jump at the chance to spend some social time with her. Despite working closely and despite renting a room in her apartment, they rarely got to see much of each other, with Pippa whisking off around the country, doing deals with media execs and the like, while Charlie kept Mike and the other crew company in the office.

And of course, there was the climbing weekend.

He’d been planning it for months with three of his old college pals. Every few months, they’d take off on some adventure, whether it was caving, scuba diving, mountain climbing, or his favorite activity: finding a big old forest to explore and surviving for a few days off the land and exploring.

Before he could even say it, Pippa gave him ‘the look.’ A special pout she had developed that would hit at Charlie’s heart. “You’ve got other plans, G.I Joe? What are you doing this weekend then? Paragliding with endangered falcons into the caldera of a live volcano?”

“Hah, not quite, Pip, but that does sound epic. Let’s do that in the summer. I’ve got a climb planned with the guys. I’m designated driver so I can’t really let them down. I need to take off tonight.”

“Well, you’re loss, G.I. But you know where to find me if you change your mind.” She gave him a quick smile and returned to her desk, packing up her files for an evening of analysis in their favorite haunt: a small old-timey bar called The Rusted Shovel. The coincidence of which was never lost on Charlie.

If he didn’t know any better, he would have guessed that Pippa had agreed to the lease on the office space purely because it was less than a block away from the bar.

He grabbed his bag and keys and headed for the door. “Don’t you two work too hard. The mega discovery will still be here on Monday morning.”

“And don’t fall down a mountain,” Pippa said over her shoulder. “I need you to develop a presentation for an extended features set on the Nat-Geo product line by Wednesday.”

“Gee, thanks, boss.”

“Anytime, action man, now get out of my office and go get your adrenaline rush.”

“Take it easy,” Mike said, mumbling as he frantically searched the web for anything that could explain the bead.

Charlie exited the building and headed for the elevator, all the while thinking about that little blue sphere. It must be site contamination, he thought. Had to be. Couldn’t be anything else.

Chapter 2

GENERATION SHIP 5A

BEN MURRAY SAT in the enclosed Operations Room wondering if he would be remembered by future generations. The lucky ones who would reach their destination—still nearly a hundred years away. His life would be spent rumbling through space.

All eight measurements of visual status display fluctuated green between the bottom three bars. Everything at a safe level. Then again, it always was. He must have had the most boring job on the ship, although he couldn’t show it today.

Sitting next to him at the console was a new replacement. Jimmy was retiring and it was Ben’s responsibility as the new senior team member to bring new operator, Ethan Reeves up to speed.

Ethan was clean-shaven with neatly combed mousy hair and wore a crisp dark blue uniform with red piping along the arms and legs. Ben had shaved that morning, his first in a month. There was nothing he could do about his frayed jumpsuit. Best to try and keep up appearances, at least initially.

“The four on the right are the critical measurements. You escalate immediately if one touches the red.” Ben said.

“I do it by pressing here?” Ethan said, pointing to a square on the console screen.

“Yep, one of the engineering team will fix it. The backup systems automatically kick in. If they don’t, you have to switch to manual override. You do that here.”

Ben patted a group of four safety-locked switches.

“How will I know if it’s worked?” Ethan said.

“You’ll be sitting in the dark with somebody from master control shouting at you through the speaker if it doesn’t.”

“Does it happen a lot?”

“Do you remember any service outages?”

Ethan looked to his left, frowned and paused. “No. Anything else I need to know?”

“Our job is to monitor and control the ship’s internal power source for stability, that’s about as technical as gets.”

Ben figured they didn’t fully automate the systems as it gave people on the vessel something to do. It also helped with compartmentalizing the crew.

“Can we go through it again?” Ethan said.

“One of us will sit with you for your first few shifts. You’ll be okay.”

Ethan sighed as he gazed around at the sparse metal paneled walls.

“Not what you were expecting?” Ben said.

“Have you ever seen outside? I mean, space?”

“Nope.”

“My teacher told me that the fleet had been built in a hurry, functionality over comfort. I just thought… once I was up here…”

Ben shrugged. “Listen kid, it’s six hours a day in front of the display. The rest of the time you can watch as many old movies and shows as you can handle. The food’s no different up here. We’re all in the same boat—”

Since a flu virus spread early into the two hundred year voyage, all sections of the ship were isolated. He’d been in two. A child section containing five orphans, where he was fed and educated by a single adult who avoided any kind of relationship with the children. He’d only ever met orphans and often wondered if they were being singled out for the Operations compartment.

“I get that. Survival of the species, we’ll be honored as the forefathers…” Ethan said.

“My advice is to make the most of your time here. Get a bit of mental stimulation, study the old books; it’ll keep you sane. I’ve got two years left and reading kept me going.”

Six hundred and seventy days to be exact. It was close enough for Ben to start counting toward the promise of better things. He wasn’t surprised about the retirement age of thirty. Anybody who suffered more than fifteen years of this kind of confinement would surely go mad. His rewards waited in the retirement village. A new life. A chance to see the stars.

Maria Flores appeared by the door. “Jimmy’s leaving in five minutes, you better go. I’ll take care of Ethan.”

“Thanks, appreciated,” Ben said. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

Maria smiled. “Get out of here.”

She was his idea of a perfect colleague in the Operations compartment. She’d been part of the team for five years, was always polite, punctual and never complained. Jimmy was the opposite: loud, usually late, but he was still likeable.

“Don’t forget, I’ll be testing you later on pseudopodia. Make sure you bring your A-game,” Maria said.

“I will.”

Ben enjoyed the gentle pushes she gave him. They studied Microbiology together. It was the most interesting material they found on the hard-drive in the common room. When his motivation waned, Maria was always there. She made his life in the compartment feel like more than just watching the visual display and eating slop on his bunk. Before she came he felt like a ghost.

He clanked along the dimly lit, grated corridor, squinting against a pink glow emanating from the airlock door timer. It had started its five minute countdown in bold red digits.

A burst of loud laughter came from the common room. Ben passed the sleeping quarters and supply hatch before entering. Erika Kosma and Jimmy sat on two of the three chairs. Ben leaned against the kitchen unit. Having three in the room always made it feel cramped.

Today was different though. His colleague of over thirteen years was leaving.

“Thought you were never going to show, buddy,” Jimmy said.

“The timer’s running. You all set?” Ben said.

“I’ve never been more ready. Fifteen years in this place… I can’t believe it’s over.”

“We’ve been talking about what he’s going to do on the other side,” Erika said.

“Damn, I missed it,” Ben laughed. This was a regular and worn conversation, especially from Erika. It was all she talked about in the two years since arriving. “Are you still expecting a welcome party?”

“That’s the million dollar question,” Jimmy said.

His idea of money was probably as abstract as Ben’s, but Jimmy loved to use lines he’d seen in movies from their MP4 collection. Every day for the last thirteen years Ben would find him in the communal area watching something. It lost its sparkle for him years ago, after he’d been through his favorites for the fifth time. Would the crew on the other side think Jimmy sounded strange? Like an actor he thought.

“You better wait by the airlock,” Erika said. “Time’s ticking, you don’t want to miss it.”

The group of three walked back along the corridor and stood facing the countdown timer.

Jimmy sighed as he looked up and down the short corridor. “You know, a small part of me will miss this place.”

“A very small part I’d imagine,” Erika said.

“We know which part that is,” Ben said.

Jimmy playfully punched his arm. “You know what I mean. We’ve been together for years. We’re almost like family.”

It was strange for Ben to hear Jimmy being poignant. He probably was the closest thing Ben had to family. He was also usually the life and soul of the place. He was going to be missed.

“Say hello to Billy and Tracey from me,” Ben said.

“I’ll let them know things haven’t changed. Same food, same clothes, same movies, same old Ben.”

“If you can send us a message, through the supply hatch, let us know what it’s like?” Erika said.

“You know I can’t do that,” Jimmy said. “I asked the same thing before seeing my first retirement. Why take a risk once you’re out of here?”

“I wouldn’t,” Ben said.

Jimmy was the third retirement since Ben started in the Operations compartment. He tried to push the jealous feelings to the back of his mind. They’d done their time and he was next.

“Have you said goodbye to Maria?” Ben said.

“Five minutes ago. She didn’t want to watch me leave. Thought she’d give you the pleasure,” Jimmy said.

A faint whooshing noise came from behind airlock door. A white light winked above it.

“Thought this day would never come,” Jimmy said.

“I haven’t seen that door open for two years,” Erika said. “Not from this side.”

“Any final words, Jimmy?” Ben said.

“I’ll see you soon. Don’t work too hard.”

The airlock door smoothly slid open with a hiss. Jimmy stepped into a bright silver space and turned to face Ben and Erika.

A neutral female voice came from a speaker next to Jimmy, “Door closing.”

“Good luck,” Erika said.

“See you soon,” Ben said.

Jimmy raised his hand and smiled. The door slid shut.

THE CORRIDOR RETURNED to its usually gloomy state after the airlock timer blinked off with a low click. Ben leaned against the chilly wall.

“That’s it?” Erika said.

“Yep, that’s it. I’m going back on shift.”

“What do you think he’ll—”

“Not now, Erika. Not now.”

The whooshing started again, Jimmy was on his way. Watching the door close brought his departure firmly into reality. Ben had to keep his emotions in check. If not for himself, for the other three. They had ten years plus left in the compartment. As the senior member he wanted to keep up morale.

“We’ve got to complete our weekly aptitude tests by tonight. You done it yet?” Ben said.

“I’ll get it out of the way now,” she said, and headed back toward the common room.

Ben returned to the Operations room, finding Ethan and Maria hunched over the console in conversation.

“Going through the procedures again?” Ben said.

“Repetition, repetition, repetition. That’s what you told me when I first arrived,” Maria said.

“I’ll be quickly up to speed,” Ethan said.

Ben resisted the urge to crack a cynical time related joke. He sat next to them on the spare plastic swivel chair. After decades of shifts, cream foam was visible through the worn blue threads of the cushioned seat.

“How’d it go? Any tears?” Maria said.

“It was all bit abrupt. I’d prepared myself, but…”

“I get what you mean. You’ve been together years, it’s impossible to prepare for something like that.”

“Where’s Erika?” Ethan said.

“She’s doing the weekly test.” Ben said. “We all need to complete it today.”

“Weekly test?”

“Forgot to tell you about that,” Maria said. “We get a set of twenty multiple-choice questions on a weekly basis. Most are around the Ops compartment, pretty basic stuff. There’s a couple about our mission statement that never change.”

Ben stiffly saluted. “We gave today, so they could have tomorrow.”

“Where do we take it?”

“You take it on your own in the common room,” Ben said. He glanced at the two small cameras in opposite corners of the Ops Room. They were positioned all around the compartment. Did other crew members really monitor their mundane lives? He hated the thought of it.

“What if I fail? Know anyone who has?”

“There’s a rumor that one guy did, thirty years ago. Apparently, a pair of huge men in protective clothing grabbed him—”

“Stop teasing him,” Maria said.

“You’ll be fine, trust me, a chimp could pass it.”

“Is that rumor true? What if someone refuses to do their job or screws up?” Ethan said.

“You need to drop the paranoia. Seriously, give it a couple of weeks and you’ll wonder what you were worrying about.”

Ben heard stories of people refusing to comply, going crazy in the isolated environment. Just as he’s heard the rumor about the test failure. It was always large men in protective clothing, appearing out of the lift and dragging the crew member away.

The clear embellishment was the offenders being fired out of the waste disposal hatch into space. How could any of the shift know? Besides, it seemed these stories were passed down through the decades. He’d never met anyone who had physically witnessed it or knew a person who had.

“There’s a comments section at the end of the test. You’re supposed to report any strange behavior from other crew members,” Maria said.

Ethan frowned. “Like what?”

“We’ve got an agreement to leave it blank,” Ben said. “It’s sort of a tradition—”

A loud scream echoed along the corridor. Erika.

Chapter 3

CHARLIE STOPPED a few doors away from the Rusted Shovel, and waited for Greg, whose voice was cutting in and out through Charlie’s cell speaker, to stop moaning about the cancellation of the trip.

Eventually, his old friend from Charlie’s time in the National Guard stopped for a breath.

“I know it’s super last minute, but something’s come up at work and I’ve got to stay over the weekend.”

“You know we’re psyched about this one. We won’t have another chance until next year. This was the last weekend they’d keep the place open to visitors,” Greg said, the disappointment all too clear, even over the crappy line. For the last few days, Charlie had noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to make a solid call. There was something on the news about increased electromagnetic interference in the atmosphere these days.

“I’ll make it up to everyone,” Charlie said. “Next trip is all on me. With this work we’re doing at the moment, I should be in line for a big fucking bonus, and I’ll share the wealth, bro.”

“It’s not the money, Chuck, it’s the time. But fine, I get it, I know it must be important for you to grovel like a whiney bitch.”

“Yup, that’s me. Okay, I gotta run, the boss is giving me daggers. I’ll be in touch next week when I know my schedule better and we’ll arrange something else. Say sorry to Manny and Bill for me.”

“Will do. Laters.” Greg hung up just before his words were cut off from a blast of static. Charlie pulled the cell away from his ear, before dropping into the front pocket of his cargo pants.

The truth was, as eager as he was to make the climb and meet up with his buddies, the discovery just wouldn’t leave his imagination. He only got two stations away when he knew he couldn’t concentrate without digging further into it. And then there was of course the opportunity to share a beer with Pip; something he hadn’t had a chance to do in months.

Since they took on the Nat-Geo contract, it had been 15-hour days for everyone. Not that he thought he really had a chance. She was his boss for one, out of his league for another. Her parents were some big shots in DC. He doubted she’d be the model daughter if she showed up at their mansion with a dirt botherer in hand. Charlie didn’t even own a suit: just cargos, chinos and jeans.

He mentally shrugged away the issues and walked into the Shovel, savoring the sound and smell as he stepped inside. A home away from home, he felt more comfortable there than he did in the room he rented from Pip.

Being in her place was like borrowing someone else’s life and being scared that his lackadaisical ways would break it indefinitely. Even her cat, Timbo, looked down at him as though he were nothing but a wild peasant, but then that was cats for you.

The barwoman, Patty, gave him a nod, a smile, and a saucy wave with her fingers. Nope. Not his type. Lovely girl, friendly, but the face tattoos weren’t his thing, nor the biker gang she rode with. Two of their larger and hairier members were sitting at the bar, their back to the door, supping on a pitcher of budget beer.

The two bikers turned round, froth caught in their beards. Together, like coordinated dummies, they said, “Evening, Charles,” doing their best-worst posh accents. It was the same every night.

“Jace, Geoff,” Charlie said back.

“She’s over there, stud,” Jace said, nodding his head toward the booths at the back.

He was the one with the slightly larger beard, that’s the only way Charlie had learned to tell them apart.

Charlie gave him a ‘Keep your voice down, fool,’ face, which elicited a laugh from the pair and a disappointed scowl from Patty. Looks like he’d have to leave a bigger tip later to keep her sweet.

Charlie weaved in an out of the narrow path between booths and stools. An elbow came out from the left, nudging him in the ribs. A bottle of beer was in the elbower’s hand; his favorite imported ale.

“What the… how did you know?”

Pippa grinned up at him from within the booth. “Like you could go climbing with a discovery like this rattling around in that empty head of yours. I thought you’d at least reach the apartment before you changed your mind.”

The bottle was cold in his hand.

He took a deep swig and slid opposite his boss, putting the half-drained bottle on the table, avoiding the carpet of paper and files she had spread out on its surface. She reminded him of one of those off-duty detectives who couldn’t leave a case alone and took it with them everywhere, looking for that crucial loose end, that missed, but vital, piece of information.

“It’s in here somewhere,” he said, using his best Columbo accent, realizing he was both terrible at it and completely out of time. All the cool kids were doing Horatio Caine one-liners these days, apparently.

Pippa groaned. Shook her head. “Don’t you watch anything newer than the early 80s?”

“Don’t watch TV. Don’t have time. Except for our productions of course.”

“Liar. Who did we get to present the Rogue Pharaohs of Egypt production?”

“Umm… it was that woman, you know, the one with the hair… she was in that thing with that other woman…”

“You mean Zahi Hawass, the superstar Egyptologist… a guy.”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Charlie flashed her a smile.

“Zahi is a megastar in the field. You really ought to brush up on this kind of stuff. You never know who might drop into the office.” She took a sip from her beer and avoided eye contact.

That was her way of putting him in his place.

He’d come to recognize it over the years.

The ‘not-looking at you while I’m being the boss’ effect started out with her getting tired of him leaving ropes and karabiners laying around on her sofa, or his various outdoors pursuits magazines piled up in the bathroom.

It crept in at the office too. There was no problem when she was giving someone else a piece of her mind.

Her forthrightness was one of the many things he liked about her—her ability to communicate her thoughts and ideas helped get her to her current position in life.

With Charlie though, she was different. Tempered, almost coy.

Charlie took the advice on-board and finished his beer. He felt a bit stupid now. Although he was technically excellent at his job, he had to admit that it wasn’t his true love or focus in life.

That would be the outdoors. He’d much rather be climbing down into caves to look at the rocks, feel them with his own bare hands, than survey them from above with GPR. Even during his time in the National Guard, he would prefer the weekends away on training out in the wilds than back at the barracks doing endless drills.

Again, technically he was excellent. He wondered if that wasn’t actually part of his problem; things came too easy to him at times and he lost focus.

Nature wasn’t easy. Nature wasn’t something you could conquer like stripping and cleaning a rifle, or running acres of radar surveys. It required respect and a humility to know you’re not top dog.

Being in the wild outdoors taught him that.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I sometimes don’t focus on the everyday details as much as I should.”

“No, it’s fine, forget about it,” Pippa said. “Besides, this stuff with the bead is more important than any of that. Though I’d totally recommend watching Rogue Pharaohs; that was a great production. It’s what nailed this job with the Geographic. One of the production workers over there knew a guy who knew a guy… sorry, I’m rambling.”

“Must be exciting,” Charlie said, pointing to the files over the table. “To have stumbled across something like this. It could be huge if it checks out.”

Pippa leaned forward. Rested her elbows on the table, a single piece of paper in hands. “I’m still trying to work out if we’re being scammed. I know the guys and gals on the dig. The site manager and I were present. The beads were definitely within the skeletal remains. If someone had put them there after the fact, they’d have had to have somehow dug beneath the old soil on top without disturbing it.”

“And that there,” Charlie said, lowering the paper, “is the crux of the issue. It’s not possible. We’re talking basic physics here. Unless David Blaine does have magic abilities and is for hire for archeological pranks, I think we have to realize that this bead, whatever it is, was with the bodies at the time.”

Leaning back against the booth, Pippa sighed and let the piece of paper fall to the table. It was a printed photo of the dig site as the skeletons were first exposed. She had ringed a blue bead with a red pen.

“I don’t know about you, but I need another beer.” Pippa got up, waited for his answer. “Hey, dufus, the boss is offering to get you a beer. Yay or nay?”

“Nay, boss, I’m good. Just a coke will be fine if you’re buying though.”

Charlie sighed with relief inwardly as Pippa approached the bar. Patty hadn’t stopped giving him an awkward look since he arrived, and he didn’t really want to address that issue.

While he waited, he rifled through Pippa’s reports and printouts. One of them was the close-up shot of the bead, showing the intricate almost circuit-like patterns. One thing that struck him was the uniformity.

If they were manmade, and from the 16th Century, then whoever had made them, had developed technology way beyond anything previously discovered. The straight lines, and complicated pattern wasn’t possible by hand.

There was a painter, Giotto di Bondone who was famed for painting a perfect freehand circle, but even with that level of excellence, Charlie had a hard time imagining someone carving these circuits so accurately.

He sat back and looked up at the old TV hanging down from behind the bar on a wall mount that always looked entirely inadequate for holding up such an old, ancient device. The TV had those wood panels on the front and a thick bulbous glass screen. Despite that, the speaker still worked and as the bar hadn’t yet filled up, Charlie could make out the sound.

CNN was covering an extreme weather report. From the pictures he guessed it was somewhere in the Far East—China or the Philippines perhaps. The graphic showed a satellite image of a massive hurricane building its power over the… wait, that’s not the Indian Ocean, he thought.

Charlie got up and approached the bar to get a closer look. Pippa joined him, passing him a coke. “What are you watching? I thought you didn’t watch TV?”

“I don’t but it caught my eye. Listen.”

The reporter squared in the corner of the screen brought a mic to her mouth. Her hair was blowing wildly and she had to shout over the noise.

“As I was saying,” the reporter said, “I’m on Ocean beach, California, and already the wind is reaching in excess of eighty miles per hour. The satellite imagery is showing hurricane Mel gaining power. The reports from the weather office are suggesting it’s a Category 3 storm with potential to hit Category 4 by the time it reaches land.” The reporter leaned into the wind. Behind her, trees were bending and snapping.

A branch flew past her, hitting against the camera.

“Back to the studio, I have to go, I can see it from here… I’ve never …”

The report cut off. The anchors took over. “Thank you, Hilary, that’s looking terrible out there for Californians. Just to confirm, a state of emergency has been called as citizens find safe places to wait out the storm. In other news…”

“Holy shit,” Pippa said. “A C4? What the hell’s going on these days?”

“What do you mean? It’s one storm.”

“You must have missed the broadcast. India’s been hit with a tsunami and there’s two more storms gathering in the Atlantic.”

“Man, the Earth must be pissed at us for something.”

“Yeah, hardly surprising though. It’s cyclical. Mini ice ages, mega storms, all that jazz. Glad I don’t live on the west coast. You got any friends or family out there?”

“Nah, you?”

“All east-coasters.”

Charlie and Pippa sat back in their booth.

“So what are we gonna do?” Charlie said. “About the bead. Publish our findings?”

Pippa took a long drag on her beer. Placed the bottle to one side and sighed. “You know. I’ve been doing this job for a while now, and never have I been so stumped. It’s just beyond explanation. But we’re scientists, we don’t do non-explanations. We do rational, logic. I have to admit, it’s freaking me out a little. I mean, just look at this damn thing; it doesn’t even look like it’s made from a terrestrial material.”

Pippa took the small baggy containing the bead from the inside pocket of her favorite biker’s jacket, its elbows and collars worn with use. She opened the bag and let the bead drop into the stack of papers before picking it up between thumb and forefinger.

They both leaned in to look closer at it.

“The light doesn’t fall on it right either,” Charlie said. “Unless I’m being stupid.”

“No, you’re right.” Pippa held it up at an angle beneath a low hanging lamp. As she turned it, the light didn’t seem to shine on all surfaces.

“That’s fucking weird. It didn’t do that earlier when I checked in the office.”

“Maybe it’s just an effect of the type of light in here,” Pippa added, still twisting the curious blue bead in the light. “But look, on the sections where it’s not glossy you can kind of see a texture. Almost like a finger print, but much finer.”

“I think we should wait until Mike’s done his digging. You just never know what he might find. It could be the rational explanation we’re—”

“Jesus fuck!” Pippa jerked back in her chair, shook her hands. A small spark burned her fingers. The bead fell from her hand and bounced off the tabletop.

Charlie launched forward to try and catch it, but he was too slow and it hit the floor… and stayed there, in place as though it were a magnet attracted to another magnet. It didn’t shake or roll away. Nothing.

“Are you okay?” Charlie said as he bent down reach for it.

Pippa grabbed his arm. “No,” she said, showing her fingers. A burn blister had come up on the skin. “The damn thing electrocuted me. Here.” She handed him the plastic bag.

Turning it inside out, Charlie covered the bead and lifted it off the ground. There wasn’t any magnetic resistance as he was expecting. Patty and the bikers stared at him. He just smiled and leaned back into the booth.

“There’s only one thing we can possibly do,” Charlie said, sealing the bag and placing it on top of the files.

“What’s that?”

“We go to the dig site and do some more research first hand. Just you and I.”

Charlie checked his watch. “If we set off now, we can get there in the morning. I’ll drive.”

“It’s 8 hours away,” Pippa said.

“So? I was going to drive about that with the guys anyway. Don’t worry, I won’t play any cheesy 80s rock. Let’s grab some supplies and head off. Think of it as an adventure.”

“I’m thinking of my bed and the need to sleep,” Pippa said.

Charlie gathered up the files. Placed the bead in his wallet. “Come on, you can sleep in the truck. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Fine, fine, but let’s stop off at the apartment first. Let me feed the cat and get a change of clothes.”

“Excellent!”

Charlie escorted Pippa out of the bar, his heart racing with the excitement of everything. With the electrocution and odd behavior, he knew humans couldn’t have made the bead, and now he was going to go to its source and find out what the hell was going on himself… with Pippa by his side. Things didn’t get much better than that in Charlie’s world.

Chapter 4

BEN LEAPT from his seat and raced out of the Operations Room. He was thrown against the corridor wall after the ship jolted.

Space turbulence or a meteor shower he thought. This happened occasionally. Deep space wasn’t quite the smooth cruise depicted on twenty-first century movies. It was an incessant rumble with the occasional bumps and rattles.

He skidded around the entrance of the common room. Erika sat hugging herself, shaking.

“Are you okay?”

“What was that, Ben?”

“There’s all kinds of debris out there. Relax, it’s nothing we haven’t been through before.”

She pointed to the internal wall. “Didn’t you feel it? Before the bump, I heard a bang below, the wall vibrated.”

“Probably the same thing, don’t worry about it.”

“No. I was sitting with my back against—”

Ben was lifted off his feet and slammed against the wall. Erika screamed, grasping her chair. Plates and cups fell from the kitchenette drainer and smashed on the floor. The whole place seemed to shudder.

An electronic alarm started to loudly pulse, drowning out Erika’s cries. Ceiling lights flickered. The common room door started to steadily slide shut. It was probably an isolation procedure in case of a fire. Ben hadn’t seen it before.

He didn’t want to get trapped inside. Maria might need his help in the Operations Room.

Ben dived to the door and held it open with the sole of his boot, using the opposite side of the frame for support. He strained against the power, but was slowly losing the battle.

“Quick, jump under my legs,” Ben said.

“What’s happening? Where we going?”

The force increased as the door mechanism’s pitch grew louder.

“Just do it, Erika. I can’t hold on for much longer.”

“Shouldn’t we stay–”

“Do you want to get trapped in here?”

Ben’s words seemed to propel her into action. She dropped to the floor and slid underneath his quivering right leg. He immediately jumped to the side and rolled away. The door sprang across and hammered closed with a thump.

He pulled Erika to her feet. “All hands on deck. Come on.”

The Operations Room door was closed. Ben peered through the thick plastic window, which had frosted through age. He could just make out the blurred figures of Maria sitting at the console and Ethan standing over her. He thumped his fist against the plastic. The two inside both turned. Maria ran to the window and shouted something. He couldn’t hear a word above the alarm blasts, shook his head and gestured to his ear. She pointed to the console, he couldn’t see clearly past a few feet.

“Is there a way to open it? An emergency switch or something?” Erika said.

“No, they’re controlled externally. We might have a fire on the ship. Wait here.”

He opened a cupboard next to the supply hatch and rummaged through the tools. Ben grabbed a wrecking bar and returned to the door. Erika was trying to communicate something through the window.

“Stand back. Give me some room,” Ben said.

He’d got used to the squashed confines, but now it felt like the walls were closing in. Ben faced his first real situation. The bellowing alarm and blinking lights had made the place come alive in a way he hadn’t witnessed before. The prospect of having more excitement in his life suddenly became a lot less appealing.

After managing to jam the toe of the bar into a groove, he placed his foot against the wall for leverage and heaved. The door opened a couple inches, then snapped elastically shut.

“Give me a hand, grab the end of the bar,” he said.

The door squeezed open a few more inches. Ben felt sweat running down his back. He was about to let go when a chair leg shot through the opened space. The door banged against it and settled, leaving a small gap.

Maria stood on the other side.

“We need you in here. There’s a serious problem,” she said.

“Get Ethan over here. It’ll take the four of us to get this open,” Ben said. He turned to Erika. “Find something solid to wedge in the gap.”

“Like what?”

“Grab the toolbox. That should do it.”

He gazed into the Operations Room. Three of the critical measurements were red, the fourth was green, stable. An electric crackle came from the console, followed by a wisp of smoke.

Four hands appeared, gripping around the door.

Ben positioned the bar. Erika returned, leaned under him with the toolbox by her feet.

“After three,” Ben shouted. He tried to count down between the rhythmic pulses of the alarm. “One…Two…Three.”

They managed to create a two foot gap. All seemed to be shouting through exertion in unison. Erika grunted next to his ear.

“Now. Do it,” Ben said.

She ducked down. The door closed a few inches against their pull. Erika slid the box in place.

Ben couldn’t hold any longer. He let go and bent over double, resting his hands on his knees, gulping for air. The door crunched against the toolbox, but it held firm and did its job.

He straightened and edged through the gap. A burning smell hit him as he approached the console. Not like the type when he over-cooked food, this odor had a bitter edge. The crew converged around him.

“We’ve escalated the problem. No response,” Maria said.

Ben looked at the switches on the console. “You tried the manual override?”

“Same thing. What can we do?”

He was struggling to hear a thing. “Take the bar and stop that fucking noise.”

Erika grabbed the tool from the floor. Ethan dragged a chair to the corner of the Ops room. In each area of the compartment was a circular plastic speaker on the ceiling.

Ben flicked the override switches. Nothing. He pressed the console screen to escalate. No response.

He pressed again several times. “Come on.”

The fourth critical measurement shot from green to red.

Sparks fizzed from behind the console. Spitting across the room. Maria jumped back.

Thumping came from behind him as Ethan and Erika attacked the speaker.

Ben depressed the call button. “Master Control. This is the Operations Room. Do you copy?” He waited for a response. “Master Control. Are you there?”

Maria shook his shoulder. “All eight are red. All eight are red.”

He glanced at the status bars.

The alarm took on a high pitched whistle. Ben turned to see that they’d broken off the protective plastic cover. Maria cupped her ears from the piercing sound. Ethan winced as he thrust the bar against a concave black internal structure.

After what seemed to be minutes, but was probably seconds, the shrill stopped. The jarring pulse continued in other areas of the compartment.

“You want us to do the rest?” Erika said.

“Okay. You two do that. We’ll deal with the fallout later,” Ben said.

Ethan and Erika left the room.

He tried the console screen again. Pressing harder against the glass. Trying to get any kind of response from the icons.

He thumbed the call button again. “Master Control. Are you there? Master Control…”

“It’s no use. I was trying before…” Maria said.

“Well, we keep trying—”

The light flickered off, leaving the Operations Room dimly illuminated by the red status bars and green console screen.

“Master control. Can you hear me?” Ben said.

The speaker buzzed and crackled. “This is control.”

He bolted toward the speaker. “Thank God. Can you update us?”

“Activate stasis preservation in two minutes.”

“Roger that. What’s happening?”

Maria yelped after a loud electric snap from the below console. Sparks shot across the floor. The screen faded to black leaving only the red status bars to give off any kind of ambience.

“Control, are you there? … Control?” Ben said. He turned to Maria. “I think it’s died.”

“What did they mean?”

“Stay here, I’ll tell you when I get back,” Ben said.

“Ben, wait…”

“We’ve got an option. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Ben squeezed through the gap in the door. The toolbox was reinforced with a metal table from the sleeping quarters. The door mechanism unsuccessfully shunted against the obstacles.

At the end of the corridor, Ethan hacked away at another speaker, and Erika held the chair steady in support.

“Meet me in the Ops room,” Ben shouted. Neither acknowledged. They probably couldn’t hear him from their position next to the alarm. He’d grab them on his way back.

Ben entered the sleeping quarters. A small room with two bunks on either side, four lockers at the end and a door to the bathroom. The lights had cut and the alarm boomed overhead. Ben opened his locker and swiped his spare clothing to one side. He fumbled in the dark, grabbed a metal card from the back shelf and stuffed it in his pocket.

He flinched as a hand grasped his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Erika said.

Ethan appeared in the gloom, holding the wrecking bar. “Just this one to go. We can’t get in the common room.”

“Come with me. Now. We’re getting out of here,” Ben said.

“Leaving?” Erika said.

“I’ll explain when we’re all together.”

“Okay, lead the way.”

He felt his way along a bunk and headed back toward the red glow of the Operations room. Maria sat away from the console, which was starting to smoke.

“Come out here. It’s not safe in there,” Ben said.

She stepped over the toolbox and table. They stood in a huddle next to the supply hatch.

Ben pulled the metal card out of his pocket and held it up. Six numbers were stamped across the middle. The crew leant toward him for a closer inspection.

“Listen up. A week before Jimmy left he gave me this,” Ben said.

“What is it?” Maria said.

“It’s a code to use only in emergency situations. While you two were smashing the corridor alarm, we had an instruction to activate stasis preservation.”

“You heard from Master Control?” Erika said.

“Briefly, we managed to get instructions.”

“What’s stasis preservation?” Ethan said.

“If we take a big hit, come under attack, lose power or whatever. All operational resources are to concentrate on restoring or maintaining essential services, the main engines and stasis units. We’re earmarked for the stasis wing. There’s a lot of important people down there.”

“Why didn’t we know about this?” Maria said.

“It falls to the senior member to take responsibility, which is me since Jimmy left. Priority-wise, we’re a second tier service.”

“Is it a code for the airlock?” Erika said.

“It’s exactly that,” Ben said. “We’re going down to help the stasis team. My guess is that engineering will sort this place out later.”

“Do you think they’ll let us stay? Send others here?” Ethan said.

“It’s not even worth thinking about—”

The compartment rattled after a loud external boom. They skidded sideways, Ben grabbed the handle of the supply hatch to maintain balance. Erika screamed. Ethan grabbed Ben’s shoulder. His face contorted with terror.

“Keep your cool. We’ll get through this,” Ben said.

The crew pressed themselves against the metallic wall for support.

Maria clutched Ben’s wrist. “Two minutes, they said.”

He nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ben traversed the corridor to the airlock. Held the card next to the silver keypad and started punching in the numbers.

The three joined Ben, crouching around him in anticipation for another jolt.

A green LED to the side of the buttons lit up after he keyed in the last digit. A white light winked above the airlock and the countdown timer started at fifty-nine seconds.

“Bet you didn’t expect this on your first day?” Maria said.

“It’s going to be okay, right?” Ethan said.

“We’ll be fine. Trust me,” Ben said.

The truth was, he didn’t know what the hell was happening. For the past thirteen years he’d robotically carried out his shifts, eaten, slept and studied. This was as new to him as it was to the new arrival.

Whooshing from behind the airlock grew louder. The timer neared zero.

“Ready guys?” Ben said.

The airlock slid open with reassuring hiss. Light filled the corridor.

Ben stepped into the bright silver space. The others joined him. He looked over to Maria who returned his gaze.

A neutral female voice came from the internal speaker. “Door closing.”

Chapter 5

CHARLIE YAWNED and reached over the dashboard of his truck to get his wayfarer shades. The sun’s glared reflected off his rear-view mirror. The clock on the dashboard indicated it had just turned 8am.

Some overly loud radio presenter was just finishing up the morning show. He mistook himself for Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam, only he didn’t have the talent and this wasn’t the 60s, but still, the next track on was James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good.’

Despite himself, Charlie sang along as he cruised across the deserted Virginia Dare Memorial bridge that connected Roanoke Island with the North Virginia mainland. They’d be at the dig site in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in less than thirty minutes.

“Jesus,” Pippa said, sitting up from her slouched position in the passenger chair, wiping at her eyes. “How can anyone be so damned perky at this time of morning? Especially after that journey.”

“It’s only been nine hours. We’ve made good time. Come one, Pip, sing with me. I feel nice! Sugar and spice.”

Pippa turned the radio down. “I don’t know what’s worse: your singing or your chirpy mood. Have you taken something while I was asleep?”

Charlie grinned. He hadn’t taken anything, but the thrill of the road trip and the discovery was enough to keep him buzzing all day. He loved these kinds of trips, driving across the state, watching dawn approach. It had a sense of change to it, the colors in the sky brightening, bringing with them a new sense of momentum, a promise of new adventures and truths waiting to be uncovered.

“Don’t be a grouch, Pip. We could be making massive news by the end of the day. Think of the opportunities. You’ll be more famous than Zavi Rammas.”

“Zahi Hawass,” Pip corrected.

“Yeah, that dude.”

Charlie continued on taking Highway 64 through Manns Harbor, leaving the glistening Croatoan Sound behind. A few gulls were busy fishing as he continued toward the mainland.

A few more cars appeared on the road, but being an early Saturday morning, the place still felt like it was deserted. Charlie always liked this part of the world. Lots of greenery. It felt natural. The Wildlife Refuge itself was one of the first places he had visited here once he was approached to survey the place.

“If we have time, you fancy hiring some kayaks for a trip down Mill Tail Creek? I hear it’s a real nice trip heading up to Alligator River.”

“I don’t do boat trips,” Pippa said. “I prefer a nice quiet diner and some food. I’m starving.”

“There’s still some donuts in the back.”

“Want one?” Pippa asked.

“Nah, I’m good. I’ll get some eggs in town after we’ve finished at the dig. So tell me, if we check it out and prove the beads were definitely there at the time, and by now we know for definite the freaky little bastards aren’t human made, at least from that period, what’s your guess? Or let me rephrase: what do you want them to be?”

Pippa pulled the small brown bag into the front. The bottom was darkened by grease. She took out a chocolate covered donut and bit into it, her cheeks puffing like a hamster as she talked. “Well. It’s got to be aliens, right?” She swallowed the donut and washed it down with a bottle of water. “I mean it needs to be something that was technologically advanced beyond anything we’ve seen before. Even now, they would be a technological marvel. So other than extraterrestrial origins, and that could either be aliens or perhaps they came down on a meteorite or something, the only other explanation would be time-travel and that’s just as mental.”

Charlie slowed as a tractor pulled out on the road from a farm to his left. He waited for a clear space and throttled his Ram truck, speeding past the farmer. He held his hand up as he passed and got a wave back from the farmer.

“Friendly people,” Charlie said. “I wonder how they’ll react when this place becomes home to a million news reporters. You realize that if this is what it seems, and it gets out, it’ll be the biggest news story in human history.”

“That’s what scares me the most. It’s so … out there. What if we’re discredited? You know what the media is like. We could have our careers ruined.”

“Or it could make our careers. Why be pessimistic about it?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t trust the media. How many times have we seen a historical program butchered for accuracy to sensationalize something, or to make it more entertaining? The media don’t do truth. They’ll have us as crazy scientists with a crackpot theory.”

“Fuck them,” Charlie said. “We’ll do this right. We’ll figure it out based on evidence. No one will be able to accuse us of not doing our due diligence.”

A police cruiser with its light flashing shot past Charlie’s truck, its siren blaring. Behind a fire truck followed.

In the distance, Charlie saw a dust cloud rise. “Is that… from the dig site?”

Pippa leaned forward and squinted. “I don’t know for sure. It’s in the same direction.”

Charlie floored the accelerator and followed the fire truck and police cruiser. With each mile the anxiety built inside. It seemed they were going the same way. As they approached a turning, he muttered to himself, “Please don’t turn.”

But they did.

“This don’t seem good,” Pippa said.

Charlie followed, but hung back from the emergency vehicles. They took the exact route he had planned to get to the site. When he turned out of Cedar Drive he saw the cruiser and the fire truck pulled up at the dig.

By the time Charlie had negotiated the rough dirt track and pulled up to the gate, police tape was already being dragged across and around a section of the clearing. Charlie leaned out of the window. “What’s going?”

An officer came to him, “Please turn around, sir, this area is closed to the public for now.”

“I work here,” Charlie said. “I’m with Quaternary Productions. This is our dig site.”

“Not anymore, son.”

The anxiety was turning to ice inside his guts as he turned off the ignition and approached the officer. “What exactly do you mean?” He showed him his ID to prove that he was who he said he was. Pippa got out of the passenger side and joined Charlie at the gate.

“What’s happening?” she said.

The officer held the tape up, satisfied they were who they said they were. “It’s probably best if you come and see for yourselves.”

They followed him under the tape and into the clearing. Dust and dirt clung to the air obscuring the trees. It felt like they were entering the eye of a twister. The fire truck’s lights were flashing, giving the place a surreal feel. They reflected off the flapping, white fabric of their finds tent that they had set up. Its poles were snapped and it covered the ground. The fire truck obscured the actual trench. The police officer led them through and then stood with his arm out. “Don’t go any further,” he said.

“Holy crap!” Pippa put her hand to her mouth as her eyes widened with surprise. Charlie followed her gaze and his jaw dropped.

The trench was gone.

In its place was a thirty-foot-wide hole. A sinkhole.

Stephanie Marks, one of the senior archeologists was standing at the perimeter, her face against the police officer’s chest. She was crying and talking, the words coming out in a frantic jumble.

Charlie and Pippa rushed to her.

“Steph, what’s wrong?” Pippa asked.

The brunette woman turned to face them. Her eyes were rimmed with red as tears streaked down her craggy face.

“Take your time,” Charlie said.

Stephanie took a few deep breaths and wiped her face, getting control of herself. Behind her, the rest of the tent slipped into the hole, the wind pushing it over the edge.

“Oh my god… I came over early to double check the site as you suggested in your email, Luke was supposed to meet me here but I can’t find him anywhere. He’s not answering his phone… I think he might have gone…” she broke away as tears came again. She turned to look at the sinkhole.

A group of firemen were preparing a camera on a rope to send down the sinkhole. “Are you sure he was here?” Charlie asked. “Mine and Pip’s phones haven’t had a signal all night. The cell reception’s all screwed up. He might not have fallen in. Have you tried his home number?”

Steph nodded. “No answer. It just keeps ringing.”

That was odd, Charlie thought. He knew Luke, one of the local college kids helping out on the dig, had an answering machine. If he weren’t there, surely the machine would pick up.

“You have to get somewhere down there,” Steph said to the officer. “He could be down there now waiting to be rescued. What if he’s badly hurt?”

The officer turned out to be Sherriff Mackelson. He’d come from the local town. “We’re doing all we can, Ma’am; we’re low on resources right now.”

“Why?” Pippa asked. “Surely you could spare more than one fire crew and yourself. There might be a kid stuck down there.”

“This isn’t the only sinkhole,” Mackelson said. “Another one opened up in Franklin’s Farm a few hours ago. Lost a cattle shed and two farmhands. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but in all my years, nothing like this has happened before. We’re dealing with it all as best we can.”

“Where are the finds, the skeleton?” Pippa asked, her voice sounding distracted.

“At the college’s archeological department,” Stephanie said. “They were all transferred over last night. The kids and Professor Marsh are doing the cataloguing.”

“Okay, good. At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. What else has gone down there?”

Stephanie looked around for a moment as if taking an inventory of things that were no longer there. “Just the tent and some digging equipment, and a few trays. Nothing valuable. But I’m worried about Luke. I said I’d meet him here… this is all my fault. I should have left well alone. He wasn’t even supposed to be working with me this weekend.”

“Nonsense,” Pippa said, clutching the woman’s shoulder. “It was me that asked you here. If anyone is to be blamed it’s me.”

The officer excused himself and approached the lead fireman. They had hooked up the camera to a rope and a cable. A small laptop had been set up on a temporary table about twenty feet away from the hole. Ignoring the safety tape, Charlie marched forward and joined the firemen.

“Don’t mind me,” Charlie said. “I work here… or what used to be here.”

“Sir, please, stand back, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

“It’s fine, I’ll sign a damned form if I have to, but I’m going nowhere. Now let’s see what’s down there. I don’t know about you, but I kind of want this to get a move on if there’s a kid down there. Do we even know how deep it’s sunk?”

A grizzled, grey-haired man gave him a stern look and gave up trying to be authoritative. Charlie had the demeanor that he wouldn’t be fucked with. “Well, on casual inspection at least sixty feet. Possibly deeper. We’ll find out shortly.”

The image of the screen started to change as the camera slipped over the edge and was fed by one of the firemen down into the sinkhole. At first the image was too blurred and dark to make out, but then the light came on creating a glow around the center of the camera. The focus worked for a few seconds before sharpening the image. In the upper right corner of the screen a digital readout of the depth increased in foot increments.

“Slower,” the fire chief said.

Charlie leaned in to get a look at the rock. “Looks smooth,” he said. “Is that normal for a sinkhole?”

The chief shrugged. “First one I’ve experienced.”

During his college course, Charlie briefly covered the massive sinkhole network in Florida. Most of those were caused by clay covering a limestone cave system. When the weight on the clay cap got too much, from building works or excessive rain, it’d crack and the material above the clay layer would fall down into the weak limestone. He knew that wasn’t the case here. The soil wasn’t rich with clay and there was no known network of limestone erosion beneath.

The camera reached just over one hundred feet when something glinted under the light of the camera. “What’s that?” Pippa pointed out excitedly as she and Steph joined the others huddled around the screen.

“Zooming in,” the chief said. “Shit… it… it looks like the glass screen of a smart phone.”

Steph shrieked and clapped her hand to her mouth before mumbling, “Oh my god, it’s Luke’s. He must be down there. Oh my god.” Pippa took her away from the scene.

The sheriff returned after finally finishing his call. “What are we looking at?”

“A cell phone,” the chief said. “And… wait… I can see a jacket among the debris.”

Steph’s face when white as she looked at the screen. “That’s Luke’s.”

Charlie rushed away to his truck. Pippa followed him. “What are you doing?”

He moved to the rear of the truck, opened the door and pulled out a rucksack filled with ropes and climbing gear. “I’m going down there.”

Chapter 6

BEN HAD vague memories of being in the elevator as a frightened teenager. More like Déjà Vu than a physical recollection. The slight rock before perceiving motion. A strip of blue lights attached to a wall panel, changing tone as the cab moved between floors.

He felt a slight sense of weightlessness as they started to descend.

Ethan crouched in the corner, rubbing his palms on his forehead.

“Hey, you just might be the first member of the Ops Compartment to use this thing twice in a day,” Ben said.

“Or maybe the first in a century,” Maria said.

Ethan lowered his hands. “You’ve never been to stasis before?”

“First time for all of us. I doubt they’re expecting technical experts,” Ben said.

“Who’s in there? I mean, who got lucky enough to sleep their way through this?” Erika said.

Ben heard rumors of rich celebrities, politicians and corporations buying or imposing their way in. It was always that way on the ship. He wasn’t sure he believed it. What use would an ageing rock-star be when trying to build a new civilization from the ground up, compared to a talented tradesman?

“Who cares?” he said. “It’s just our job to make sure they get there alive, isn’t it? We won’t be around to see the results of their work. This is our work.”

“Did Jimmy tell you anything else about this procedure?” Erika said.

“I’ve told you all I know. That’s all he knew. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to happen.”

“What about the segregation? The flu…”

“All that’s probably out of the window when the shit hits the—” Maria said.

The elevator juddered to a halt.

Maria took a sharp intake of breath as it jerked up. A cherry red, thimble shaped light above the door flicked on and gave off a waspish electric buzz. The door swished open.

Ben shuffled his way to the front of the group. “Follow me.”

He stepped out of the cab into a dimly lit metallic corridor, leading to another airlock with a glowing keypad next to it. Ben’s breath froze in the air. Goose bumps formed on his limbs. He tried to remember Jimmy’s directions.

Ethan hugged himself, put his hands under his arms. “I’ve never felt cold like this.”

“I doubt any of us have,” Erika said.

Ben shook his head. “Me neither, but it has to be this way.”

He’d always been in a regulated temperature, although his recollections of childhood were limited to a few flashbacks, all of the same thing: controlled atmospheres, comfortable, unremarkable.

They could have at least given them proper suits to wear in these emergency situations. He doubted he could work for long in the Stasis segment when his fingers became too cold to even feel.

Another thought came to him as he remembered Jimmy’s procedure for entering the airlock. As a disobedient child, he had been dragged away, kicking and screaming, never to return to his classroom.

The children were told by the teacher every day that any misbehavior would lead them to being fed to the ship’s monster. Those kinds of myths are hard to remove.

Looking back now, Ben hoped that one day he’d get chance to meet the teacher again, and give him some lessons in attitude realignment.

He retrieved the stamped code from his pocket and started to punch in the numbers. It wasn’t like the warm loose mechanism in the Operations Compartment. Each button required extra force to snap inwards.

“I bet Jimmy’s pissed. Imagine, on the day you retire, all this happens. All those years on the job and nothing interesting happens,” Erika said.

“Jimmy won’t be the only one. Remember, I said this only happens in an emergency. Let’s make sure we do a good job. Don’t want them thinking we’re a bunch of clowns.”

The group collectively murmured approval.

After depressing the last button, the countdown timer started at five seconds.

The airlock door hissed open.

Ben stepped into a small room, facing another larger door.

“Door closing,” a computerized female voice said.

“Come on, get moving,” Ben said, urging the others inside.

Erika was the last through. She screamed and dropped to the ground as the door slammed against her trailing leg. It opened a few inches, crunched against her ankle.

Ben forced his shoulder into the gap and shoved the door with both hands. “Pull her through.”

Ethan and Maria hooked their arms underneath her shoulders and dragged Erika back. Ben jumped to the side and the door thudded shut.

“Goddamn, that’s a bit vicious,” Ben said, testing the door.

The room was twice the size of the cab, and was lit by a single red light on the ceiling. Through the gloom, he could see Erika squeezing her eyes tight, gritting her teeth, breathing in sharply.

“Are you okay?” Maria said.

“Does it… does it… look like?” Erika said.

“How bad is it?” Ben said. “Can you stand?”

“I don’t know. Give me a minute.”

He checked the larger door. Felt around its edges. No keypad. The other side was the same. No internal way to get out of the room.

“What the hell? This isn’t like what Jimmy told me. Something’s wrong here” Ben said.

“Maybe it’s controlled from the other side,” Ethan said. “They might get a notification or something that we’re here?”

“Perhaps it’s the wrong door?” Maria said. “Could it have been possible to have come into the wrong one? I mean, it’s all our first time down here.”

“No,” Ben said. “I don’t screw up like that. I remember his exact words. This is definitely the airlock to the stasis chamber.”

Maria had her arm around Erika. She glanced up at Ben and shrugged.

“Looks like we don’t have a choice,” Ben said. “Hopefully they’ll be here soon.”

“You know what?” Maria said. “The Ops Compartment seems comfortable compared to here. And I thought we pulled the short straw.”

Erika groaned, rubbing her ankle. “Tell me about it.”

Ben hoped the first person they encountered would be sympathetic, and take Erika away for treatment. The last thing he wanted was for word to get around that their team wasn’t capable of making it through a couple of airlocks.

Especially on his command. He’d worked hard throughout his time and didn’t want any blemish on his record. Or worse: have to go visit the superiors. He remembered one guy, Brad, who screwed up. No one ever saw him again. Must have been transferred, but no one knew for certain.

Just another of the many mysteries of life on the ship.

However, this was a chance for the team to prove themselves outside their enclosed domain. Maybe they’d land better job roles. Go up the levels, remove some of the restrictions of working in Ops.

He also wanted to find out if they were really being watched. There were so many stories that they were always monitored.

He considered it might just be a case of a rumor to keep the workforce from slacking off, which he could understand. When you were relying on people to maintain a generation ship over the centuries, you didn’t want a group of ill-disciplined people putting everything in jeopardy.

“Hey, what’s this?” Ethan said.

He leant down and picked up a thin piece of metal.

Ben instantly recognized it by its shape. It was in a letter ‘J’ cut from a foil tray that their food came served in. Jimmy’s bookmark.

“That’s Jimmy’s. He’s been here too,” Maria said.

“Must have dropped it on his way out,” Ben said.

“Don’t blame him. He’ll have a real bookmark,” Erika said. “Can you help me up?”

Ben began to crouch, but bolted up after a siren started to blast. It sounded similar to the ones he’d heard watching clips of twentieth century car chases. It was different to the usual warnings alarms.

A cold shiver of dread crawled down his back. Something wasn’t right here. He could just sense it.

The light on the ceiling began to spin, accompanying his previous thought.

Behind the large door he heard a rattling sound, like somebody dropping a chain. The bottom edged shuddered and lifted up a couple of inches, sending bright light streaming into the small room.

“Hello?” Ben said, “We’re from Ops. Come to run protocol checks on the stasis chamber as per the—”

The solid door jerked up a few inches at a time. No one responded. He could see shadows beneath the door. He held his arm toward Erika. “Come on. Let’s get you on your feet.”

He looked down and saw a pair of dark gray, smooth leather boots on the other side. They looked huge, much larger than usual. Just who was that on that on the other side? Ben took a step back as the door continued to rise.

Chapter 7

CHARLIE IGNORED Pippa’s protests and headed for the sinkhole.

The sheriff stood in front of him, his arm pressing against Charlie’s chest.

“I’m sorry, son, I can’t let you get any closer. It’s not safe.”

“I’ve done this kind of thing before. If that’s one of our kids down there, I want to get down there ASAP. Your guys don’t seem in much of a rush.”

The fire chief joined the sheriff. “We have to use procedure to make sure no one else gets hurt. We’re doing all we can. We’ll be mounting a rescue shortly.”

“How?” Charlie said. “You’re busy watching the monitor. You should be having people down there with ropes and climbing gear. But you don’t have any of that stuff do you? Where are the resources for this kind of rescue?”

The sheriff looked sheepish. “We’re stretched at the moment is all. We’re managing with what we’ve got.”

Pippa joined Charlie. “He’s right, Charlie, let’s not do anything drastic here.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not waiting. I know what I’m doing.”

With that, Charlie turned away and tied the end of his 200ft rope to the grill bars on the fire truck. He followed his usual climbing prep procedure, fit his harness, checked his knots, put on his head mounted flashlight and headed for the hole.

The place smelled of fresh dirt. It reminded him of days spent in the summer working on farms picking strawberries.

The fire crew remonstrated with the sheriff but ultimately realized like Charlie that it was quicker if he went down there.

The chief came over to him. “Son, don’t do anything stupid okay? Take the camera with you. Pull it up and show us what you’re seeing as you go. We’ll be right here if anything happens. We’ve got resources on the way, but with the sinkhole on the farm and one opening up in the town we’re really pushed at the moment.”

“Don’t worry about me, chief. I’ve done this a thousand times. Is there audio on the camera?”

“No, but take this radio. It’s already tuned to our frequency.” The chief handed him a small but rugged 2-way which Charlie clipped to his harness around his chest.

“Are you sure you want to do this,” Pippa said, reaching out for him. “I mean, it’s dangerous, what if… I couldn’t…” she broke her eye contact then, looked off into the distance.

Charlie gave her a hug and while close, whispered in her ear, “I’ll be right up, you’ll see. No worries, no stress.” He gave her a reassuring smile but she didn’t look convinced and held onto him a few moments longer than would be considered usual for just friends.

He had a brief thought of holding on, staying on the surface, but seeing Steph’s pale face as she stood by the fire truck gave him the motivation to carry on and break away. “I’ll be back,” he said with a wink.

The chief and another fire officer explained the controls of the camera and discussed a few rote safety procedures, but Charlie had heard it all before. “Okay, I got it. I’m going in.”

He had hooked a second climbing harness over his shoulders. If Luke was down there, the others would be able to lift him, or use the winch on the truck.

A tug on the pair of ropes ensured the knots were solid.

Charlie stepped backwards until he found the edge of the sinkhole. He leaned his weight back until he reached nearly ninety-degrees, dug his heels into the topsoil, and walked his way down into the darkness.

His light shined against the dirt. As he continued to abseil down, he noticed there was little clay and the walls were smooth. He reached out and touched the edge, feeling it with his hands. He didn’t recognize the sensation.

It was too smooth. Unnatural.

The further he descended the more he recognized a degree of uniformity on the surface. There were striations, spiraled like the inside of a gun barrel. Even the various layers of rocks, halfway down, were smooth, almost to the point of polished. Charlie thought that perhaps it was more of a burnishing, done with great heat. And yet, the smell was of cold, damp, earth.

He shivered slightly, thinking of the temperature.

The entrance hole was shrinking away, the angular morning light dissipating, unable to penetrate the gloom. His head-mounted flashlight cast a single, weak beam into the void.

The 2-way radio crackled to life.

“Charlie, this is Pippa. Are you okay? Over.”

He stopped his descent, ensured he was secure, bent his head to the radio and responded. “I’m fine, Pip. Just over halfway by my reckoning. The surface of the hole is strange, smooth. It’s like I’m going down a steel tube or something. Over.”

“We’re not getting the video, Charlie, can you check the camera. Over.”

“Shit, sorry, I forgot… I was distracted. Let me sort that out now and I’ll head lower. Talk soon. Over.”

The camera was attached to his harness. Its umbilical cord twisted up to the surface alongside his own rope, the last two things to connect him to the real world.

His movements didn’t echo.

Any sound was hungrily consumed by the hole, snatched from the air as soon as the sound waves birthed. Even his heartbeat that pulsed through his ears seemed muted as if shrouded and stolen by the darkness.

Filming with one hand, Charlie slowly panned the camera round and down, giving those on the surface a chance to see what he saw. His hand shook as a vibrations ran up through the hole.

Fragments of dirt fell away from the sides as the noise of moving earth roared louder, gas and air and debris shot up, making him cough. He swung forward, hooking the camera to his harness but pointing down. He dug his feet in firmly and clung to a half-inch-wide groove.

The shuddering vibrated through his hands. It felt like an earthquake.

He’d experienced a number of them during his time in California, but there was something about this that just didn’t sit right with him.

One particular time he was half a mile underground, exploring a cave system when a quake struck. That was more violent than this one, but the roar of moving earth and air beneath made it seem like the hole was alive and devouring anything within its gullet.

He wondered then that if Luke were indeed down there, he’d likely have gone lower as the hole continued to sink.

“Charlie, what’s happening down there? Are you okay? Over.” Pippa said over the radio. He looked up to see her face poking over the edge.

Taking one hand away from the groove to depress the radio he replied, “I’m fine, the hole has sunk further I think. I’m going lower. And stand back. I don’t want you falling in. It’s hard to tell how safe the ground is around here. Over.”

“The camera showed the basin of the hole fall away,” Pippa added. “There’s a shelf of some kind not far below, I think Luke’s there. We can see a coat among the dirt. Over.”

“I’m heading down right away. Over.”

It took a few minutes of descending down into the darkness until he found the shelf. The material was solid rock, jutting incongruously out of the sides of the hole. The edges were smooth, rounded, almost as if something had shaped them that way for some unknown purpose.

Letting the ropes dangle a further twenty feet below the shelf, Charlie crouched down and looked over the side, shining his flashlight into the gloom and pointing the camera down.

Something shined beneath the light.

A piece of fabric.

It moved.

“Luke? Is that you? Can you hear me?” Charlie shouted. He cupped his ear, waited for a response, but could only hear a low subterranean rumble and his own pulse.

“I think I’ve found him. Over.”

“Is he alive? Over,” Pippa said.

“There was movement; I’m going closer. Hold on. Over.”

Charlie turned his back to the hole and repeated the abseiling procedure and back off the ledge, letting the rope rest with a notch on the edge of the ledge. He zipped down the rope and stalled his progress a foot above the mound of dirt and debris.

The rumble continued from below.

He tried to ignore the idea that it sounded like some great beast, its maw open just waiting to swallow him whole. Tentatively, Charlie placed his feet on patch of soil and tested his weight.

It seemed solid enough.

Luke’s blue windbreaker stuck out of the soil, his arm and hand held up, the fingers moving. Charlie reached down and grabbed his hand, traced his body until he found his head cocked to one side, half-buried in debris. Charlie cleared some of the soil and turf away from the kid’s face. His eyes were open and glinted with recognition beneath the flashlight.

“I’m here, buddy,” Charlie said. “We’re gonna get you out. Can you move? Is anything broken?”

“I… don’t know,” Luke said, his voice barely a whisper, the weight of the soil on his chest making his breath in shallow breaths. “I thought I was going to die…”

“It’s okay, buddy, don’t talk, conserve your strength. I’m going to help get you out and put this harness on. You’ll be lifted out of here. You’re going to make it. Just squeeze my hand if I hurt you, okay?”

Luke nodded gently and squeezed his hand.

Before Charlie started excavating him from the debris, Charlie informed the others. He could feel the relief over the radio.

“Okay, I’ll go slow,” Charlie said as he lowered himself until he straddled the boy. With his free hand he started to shift the clods of earth from around the boy’s arms and legs. He made quick progress. But Luke hadn’t moved a muscle.

Paralysis, Charlie thought. He could have broken his back.

For a brief moment he wondered if it was such a good idea getting the harness on him, but with the rumbles getting louder beneath him he didn’t think he’d have enough time to get an EMT down here to assess him properly.

Charlie made a judgment call: he’d get the kid out and worry about the rest later. It was better he took him out alive and injured than leave him to die.

“I’m just going to let go of your hand for a moment, buddy. I need to get this harness on you. Just nod or make a noise if I’m hurting you.”

Luke did just that, nodding and making a breathy squeaking noise that sounded like, “Do it.”

Each moment felt like a lifetime as Charlie worked on freeing the boy. He could feel the vibrations of the rumble below travel up his legs.

Five minutes later, or what felt like five years, Charlie had managed to clear enough debris from him that he could slip the harness over Luke’s legs and waist. He attached the ropes and various safety gear and applied tension to test the connections. It was solid.

Luke didn’t budge or make a noise.

“Can you grip the rope,” Charlie said, handing it to him.

The boy’s grip was weak, but he’d only need it to stop himself from falling backwards as they hoisted him up.

“Good lad. This might hurt, but it’ll only be for a short while and you’ll be back on the surface. Try and keep hold of the rope as they lift you up, okay?”

“Okay,” Luke said. “Thank you.”

Charlie stood back and reached for the 2-way radio, readying to call up to the others. But the surface beneath him rocked and shook, making him drop the radio.

He lost his balance and fell backwards, cracking the back of his head against the rocky surface. He slumped forward as pain bloomed in his skull, making him see white flashes.

Before he knew it, the dirt below dropped away in a roar that made his ears pop. The pressure changed, and below him, watching in horror, the remaining debris fell away into a dark void.

The harness gripped around his legs and waist as he swung out, his weight making the rope twang with the sudden tension.

Luke yelped as he too tensioned against his rope. His grip failed him, and he fell backwards, his limbs flailing. The harness held him to the rope, but his eyes flashed wide with sudden terror.

“Oh shit,” Charlie said, “Hold on Luke, I’m coming.”

A twist of his body, and pushing off against the hole, Charlie sent himself swinging out to the center of the hole, reaching out for Luke. He grabbed him by the arm and helped lifted him upright.

“Grab the rope,” Charlie said as he helped direct the kid’s hands. “Are you hurt?”

“I can’t feel my back or my legs,” Luke said, his eyes closing tight.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here.”

Charlie looked up to the hole and was about to shout up when he heard another roar from beneath him.

This time it was different. It wasn’t the sound of earth falling, but rather something mechanical. When he looked down he saw a belch of smoke bubble up. It made him choke and cough. The white smoke continued to fill the hole, tightening his throat so he couldn’t yell out.

And in the smoke, gaining on them, a large, metallic object the same diameter as the hole rose up.

An eerie yellow light came from the front of it as it kept on climbing.

Luke screamed when he saw it.

Charlie’s spine went cold when he saw electricity flicker on the shape’s surface. He tried to lift his legs as the machine within the smoke came closer, but he wasn’t quick enough and a bolt of electricity shot out, striking against his leg.

His vision closed to tiny specks, consciousness dancing on the edge, the darkness consuming him, taking him away until he could no longer feel anything. His last image was the light at the top of the sinkhole, the small silhouette of Pippa looking down at him.

He wanted to scream a warning, but it was too late.

Chapter 8

THE DOOR RAISED to waist height, revealing stocky legs covered in dark gray rubber trousers with a meshed appearance. Shiny, black gloved fingers, curled around the bottom edge and pulled upward.

Ben decided to help. He gripped the bottom left of the door and heaved. It quickly rumbled upwards and banged fully open.

Blinding light filled the room, surrounding the silhouette of a person outside.

Ben squinted away, eyes in pain. “We’re from the Operations Compartment. We’ve been ordered down for stasis preservation duties.”

A single pair of footsteps entered.

Erika’s nails dug into Ben’s arm. Her grip sprang free. She screamed, dropping to the ground, head slamming against the dirty metal floor.

Ben looked down; two arms ripped the prone Erika out of the room by her legs.

He cupped his eyes, trying to get used to the light. Images started to become clearer.

Maria screamed next. “Oh my god. Ben.”

Outside, a large platform came into focus. A vehicle stood on the right side. It looked like a futuristic motorcycle apart from the lack of wheels. In the middle, a large man in a gray suit, adorned with various pieces of body armor around the chest, shoulders, upper arms and thighs. He pulled Erika to her feet by her hair.

Ben could see blue sky, trees in the background on one side, the edge of a forest stretching as far as the eye could see.

Ethan shook his shoulder. “Have we crash landed? Ben, what’s happening?”

Ben brushed off his hand and stepped toward the exit. “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted.

The man on the platform ignored him and grabbed a handle protruding from a long thin pocket on his thigh with his spare hand, and slid out a glinting blade with a serrated edge on one side. Circular holes ran along the middle.

“Help me. For God’s sake, help…” Erika flailed her arms, thumping against his unmoving sturdy frame.

Ben rushed out.

The man’s head twisted around toward him, his reflective helmet visor shone with a blue sheen and glinted in the light. Ben froze a few yards short. Two tubes ran from his helmet to a square backpack. Metal spikes ran along the back of his boots.

He thrust Erika into the air by her ponytail, as if lifting a trophy. She frantically kicked her legs to little effect.

“Get off her,” Ben said as he stepped forward. “Now.”

Erika’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth. The man plunged the blade into her chest three times in rapid succession before Ben could act.

“No,” Ethan said.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Maria said from behind him.

The man threw Erika off the side of the platform without ceremony. He continued to face Ben, wiping the blade clean with his gloved hand.

“Holy shit,” Ben said. For a moment he seemed glued to the spot. “Quick. Round the side of that vehicle. To the edge of the platform.”

“Where are we?” Ethan said.

“Save the questions,” Ben said. “We need to find something, anything.”

He darted behind the vehicle, skidding to a halt at the right ledge. The drop below appeared at least sixty feet. He frantically tried to process events.

Maria crouched next to him, quivering. Ethan panted behind. The man circled the blade above his head, stalking around them in a wide arc.

The area to the right looked like plowed farmland. Uniformed brown lines reached into the horizon. To his left, forest. Behind the ship, a deep gouge furrowed through the earth, running from the back of the ship into the far distance.

He wondered if they had crash-landed… but how could he breathe?

Black smoke belched from the ship into the clear blue sky. He heard the noise of an engine straining and stopping, straining and stopping. The platform was around thirty feet long and twenty wide.

He scanned the platform for a makeshift weapon. The surface was clear apart from the bike, a pool of blood, and the man approaching with a raised blade. As the man closed in around one end of the bike, the three of them all scuttled to the other. They faced off, nine feet apart, separated by machinery.

“Why are you doing this? We’re part of the crew,” Maria said.

Ben detected a low clicking sound coming from helmet. “Who are you?”

The man sprang up onto the seat, landing into a hunch, then raising to a towering position above them. He raised the blade over his head and then pointed it at them.

Ethan gasped. “We’re gonna die.”

Ben ducked to one side as the blade swung down. It whistled past his ear and clanked against the metal chassis. He staggered back, dropping to the platform to avoid momentum taking him over the side.

The man’s focus seemed to zero in on Ben. He leapt off the seat and advanced toward him, sheathing the blade and reaching for a hip holster. He pulled a black angular looking weapon out and aimed with a straight arm, head tilting to one side.

Ben closed his eyes, thinking his time was up.

Two loud cracks, seconds apart, split the air.

Maria screamed.

“Ben,” Ethan shouted.

Something hit the platform, two items clattering with a thud. Ben opened his eyes.

The man was on both knees, clutching his throat, weapon on the platform beside him. Another crack rang out.

The man sprawled back, his blue visor splintered with a small hole in the middle. He slumped against the vehicle, motionless.

Ben jumped to his feet and grabbed the black pistol-like weapon. It was smooth and black with just a trigger and a button on the side. No insignia.

He held his finger on the trigger and trained it on the armored man. Hopefully the threat would be enough—if the man was even still alive.

Ben had never seen a real weapon. The closest he got was a wooden toy in the orphan compartment. It felt heavy and solid in his hand. Deadly.

“Get behind me,” Ben said. Maria cautiously approached the body. “Stay away. He might get up.”

She ignored him and reached out. Fumbling with the handle on the thigh, sliding out the long blade, still smeared with blood. “If another comes along.”

“Who the hell was that?” Ethan said. “Where are we?”

“I’ve no idea… we’ll figure it out eventually, let’s just get safe first,” Ben said.

Ben glanced over the edge of the platform. Something moved in the trees below. A threat perhaps? More of these armored people?

“Down there, movement. Do you see it?” Ben said.

Three dark shapes cut through the trees, alongside the ship.

Maria pointed. “Oh my God, Ben, look, someone’s coming.”

He followed Maria’s direction to the gouge behind the ship. Erika lay directly below, face down in the mud. Thirty feet along, another man lay flat on his back, dressed in the same uniform.

Jimmy.

From what Ben could see, his former colleague suffered a similar fate. Jimmy’s twisted figure was deathly still, mouth open, face reddened with blood. His friend of over thirteen years, butchered at the moment of retirement. He took a deep breath, trying to remain focused on immediate events.

Ethan sunk to his knees and started to sob. “It’s over. We’ve failed.”

“Pull yourself together. We need to find a way back into the ship. Get somewhere safe, warn the crew,” Ben said.

He searched between the trees for signs of movement.

“How do we get back?” Maria said.

Two figures covered in foliage, along with a dog, broke from underneath the canopy cover. Two weapons aimed upwards toward them.

“Shit! Back to the airlock,” Ben said.

He grabbed Ethan by the epaulette and dragged him back. Ethan stumbled to his feet and quickly overtook Ben. To the immediate right of the door was a circular charred indent; the ship appeared to have taken a considerable blast from something.

They all crashed against the internal wall after staggering back in.

“Jesus, Ben. Erika, Jimmy…” Maria said.

“I know it’s hard, but try to forget about them for a moment. We’ll get some back-up soon. They won’t just leave us here.”

“Who was that?” Ethan said.

“No idea, but stay out of sight. They can’t see here.”

Ben checked around the room, now assisted by light. What he originally mistook for grime had a dark purple color, spattered and speckled across the walls. He shoved against the internal door with his shoulder to no effect. Ethan slammed the bottom of his foot against it, grunting with every blow. Maria felt around the room, patting the stained surfaces, running her fingers down the corners.

“What are you doing?” Ben said.

“I don’t know. There might be a hidden button or something.”

Ben crouched and peered over the back of the ship into the distance. Nothing looked familiar. A group of black specks circled in the air, the trees had a white tinge and the outline of buildings jagged against the skyline, reminding him of the broken fence posts on the toy wooden farm in the orphan compartment.

“Did you hear that?” Ethan said.

“Hear what?” Ben said.

“Shouting. Listen.”

The engines continued to strain and lull below. Ben heard a voice drifting up on the breeze, between the mechanical screams.

“I’m going to check it out. Give me a minute,” he said.

“Stay here. We’ll be safer,” Maria said.

“It might be the people that saved our ass. I’ll crawl to the edge and have a look.”

“They might not be people. How are you going to communicate?” Ethan said.

“He’s right, Ben. You’ve seen the trench behind the ship. Doesn’t take a genius to work out we’ve crashed.”

Ben peered back at the fresh brown trail, chewed out of the ground. “We need to do something. I’m not waiting here for another psycho to show up.”

He slid onto his stomach. Maria grasped his ankle. “Don’t do anything stupid. We need you.”

Ben held up his thumb. He leopard-crawled across the platform, shooting glances at the body by the bike. A star shone brightly in the sky directly above him, warming his neck. The small dimples in the metal gave him a decent grip and he quickly progressed.

He reached the edge, took a deep breath, and looked over.

A single figure stood below, looking directly at him, the bearded face of a man. Ben thrust himself back with his elbows.

“Hello. Hello,” a male voice called out. “Do you understand me?”

He spoke in English. Another member of the crew? It made sense. That’s why they shot the attacker on the platform.

Ben leaned over the edge. “What the hell’s happening? Where are we?”

“I’ll explain when you come down. You’ve only got a few minutes.”

“What happened to the ship? Did we detach?”

The man appeared to start laughing, his shoulders rocked as he looked down, shaking his head.

“I’m glad you find this funny,” Ben said.

He gazed back up with a stern expression. “Far from it. If you and your buddies want to live, you’ll do as I say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not going to stand here debating. You’ll get us all killed. Come down in the next minute or I’ll leave you to join your friend,” the man said, pointing toward Jimmy.

“We can’t get off this platform, can’t see a way down,” Ben said.

“Look around the edge. There’s a ladder that runs up the side.”

Ben edged around the corner and looked along the side of the ship. It was a few feet away, rigid, and running from top to bottom. Easy enough to navigate. The view enabled him to get a handle on the size of their craft. Roughly two hundred feet long and seventy high. Colored a dull black but with something painted on the side he couldn’t quite see because of the angle.

“Get moving, boy,” the man shouted, all humor gone from his voice.

Ben weighed up his options. They couldn’t get back into the ship and needed some form of protection. This man and whoever he was with, provided it. They could have shot him, Maria or Ethan on the platform. It seemed like the Ops team only had one choice.

He ran back to the internal space. “Did you hear all of that?”

“Not quite, but we did hear some English,” Maria said. “What did he say?”

“We need to leave, now.”

“Where are we going?” Maria said.

“Who is it?” Ethan said.

“Possibly a member of the crew. He says we need to leave or we’ll die. Do you want to try and prove him wrong?”

“No. Where are we?” Ethan said.

“He’s going to explain when we get down. We’ve got a minute. There’s a ladder on the side. Ready?”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Maria said. “I don’t like it but…”

Ethan returned a vacant look. Ben shook his shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah… yes. I’m with you.”

Ben jogged back to the edge of the platform. “We’re coming down. There’s three of us.”

The man nodded and took a couple of steps back. He crouched on the dirt, surveying the area through the sights of his rifle.

“It’s just around this edge. I’ll go first,” Ben said.

He reached out and gripped the cold square ladder rail. Composing himself, he took a deep breath and swung his left leg around onto a rung, grabbing the opposite rail with his left hand.

The sixty-foot drop had a dizzying effect. He hugged against the ladder, squeezing the rails hard.

“Don’t look down,” Ben said.

He descended the ladder, concentrating on his deliberate movements while glancing up at the other two. After Ben climbed down twenty feet, Ethan swayed out onto the ladder with a youthful fearlessness. Maria followed shortly after and all three clanked toward the ground.

Ben flinched after the man shouted, “Denver, deal with that driver!”

He felt the man’s presence as he neared the dirt. With only four feet to go, Ben jumped off the ladder, twisting as he landed.

The man stood only four feet away. He wore a camouflage jacket and trousers with pieces of greenery attached, giving his clothing a strange organic appearance. The jacket hood had three ferns attached. They twitched as the breeze caught the edges.

A pink scar running down the center of his forehead wrinkled as he smiled through a thick dark blond beard. His striking blue eyes were rimmed with weather-beaten wrinkles giving him a hard look. He looked at least ten years older than Ben.

He held out his hand and with a low, rough voice, said, “Charlie Jackson. Your only hope for survival.”

Chapter 9

CHARLIE WAITED for the uniformed man to take his hand but he stood there, staring at Charlie with wide-eyed confusion. There was a degree of terror in there too. Charlie had seen that expression hundreds of times before. Usually when people realized their planet was no longer theirs, or in the final moments of their life.

“What’s your name?” Charlie asked as the other eventually took his hand. The man’s grip was weak, the shake clumsy. He’d obviously never shaken someone’s hand before. Wasn’t surprising.

The croatoans wouldn’t have bothered to go to that level of education for their ruse. They only needed people within the harvesters to believe they were on a generational ship and give them some bullshit procedures to follow in order to keep the harvesters on track for their yield of root.

“I’m Ben,” he said, releasing his grip. Two others joined him. Ben pointed to the younger male, “He’s Ethan,” and to the woman, “that’s Maria. What the fuck’s going on? Who are you? Where are we?”

“We crashed, didn’t we?” Ethan said.

The three of them turned to look at their ‘ship’. Charlie noticed Ben angling his head to take in the giant tracks—the same tracks that were now jammed and splintered apart by Charlie’s land mines.

Ben looked back at Charlie, a sudden realization making his face muscles tighten and his eyes narrow with fear. “It was all a lie,” he said to the others. “None of it was real.”

“Damn right it wasn’t,” Charlie said, pointing to the two bodies of their former colleagues and brainwashed lab rats. “The croatoans use you as tools, nothing more. Well, that’s not strictly true, they use you… us, for lots of things.”

Maria shook her head. “I don’t get it, what’s a croatoan? Where are we?”

“Let me spell it out real quick. We’ve got about five minutes before these bastards return. We need to get you lot into cover ASAP. That,” he pointed to the great harvester, “is no goddamned ship. You’re not engineers or pilots or any other bullshit role they’ve brainwashed you into believing. That’s an alien harvester. You’re on Earth, your home. You’ve never left the planet.”

“So we’re not going to Kepler B?” Ethan said. “Is it still 2451?”

“No,” Charlie said. “2044. The shit hit the fan in 2014.”

Ben stepped down the gouge in the earth and knelt. He pulled up a bright orange root; its tip sheared off from the harvester. All down the gouge, more roots with the same sheered tips lined the dirt like a carpet, and in amongst them were the bodies of his two colleagues.

Ben placed his hands on the dead male’s back and bowed his head for a moment. After a few quiet seconds, he stood up and returned to the others, his eyes glossy with tears. “What do we do?”

“I don’t believe this,” Ethan said.

“Me neither,” Maria added, both of them on the verge of hysteria, the cold truth making it hard for them to comprehend.

Denver’s dog barked twice and ran up to Charlie, licking at his hand. The grey-haired gun dog excited about its find. Denver followed close behind, dragging a small croatoan by the alien’s scrawny, leathery neck. Denver’s wiry, strong frame loped forward and deposited the four-foot tall alien between Charlie and Ben’s group.

It collapsed into a huddle. It’s weak, spindly arms, sufficient only to press buttons and type commands huddled around its naked body. It shivered and its widely spaced eyes narrowed. At one time, Charlie had pity for them; they were at the bottom of the croatoan hierarchy, but the slit for its mouth sneered, betraying its feelings for humans.

“Good job, Den,” Charlie said, patting his son on the shoulder. Denver stood nearly a foot taller than Charlie and bowed to the others. “Meet your captor,” he said.

Ben and the others leaned in, but remained cautious.

“Holy fuck,” Ethan said as the croatoan let out a gurgled hissing noise and spat at the floor, choking up phlegm and blood, the earth’s oxygen already at work poisoning its lungs without the breathing apparatus needed to enrich the oxygen with root compound.

Denver kicked it forward into the dirt. “Shut up, scum.”

“Easy, son,” Charlie said. Denver nodded and stepped back, running a nervous hand through his red beard. He looked up into the sky, anticipating a croatoan scout group to arrive any second. Charlie had to fight the urge to dive into the forest this very second, but this group needed to see for themselves before they’d go willingly.

The last thing he needed was for a reluctant group of lambs to slow him down.

Ben looked from the alien to Charlie. “Where did you get him… it, that, whatever it is.”

“It’s your ship’s driver. Younger version of that fucker up there that killed your friends. It’s what’s taken over this planet. Well, I say take over, they were here long before we were, waiting deep inside the earth for when conditions were right.”

“My god,” Maria said, “It’s all true.”

“Evidence enough for you, Ethan?” Charlie said.

The younger man said nothing, his face pale.

“This is crazy,” Ben said. “I can’t get my head around it.”

“No,” Charlie added. “I suppose you won’t. But we really have no more time. They’ll know their harvester is damaged and send out a patrol. The one on the platform is one such member. The next patrol won’t be long. They have quotas and some such shit when it comes to harvesting the root. That orange stuff you see there. Here’s the thing kids, that there is your enemy. Everything you knew was a lie. You’re nothing but meat and resources to them. You can stay and deal with them yourself, or you come right this second and earn a chance at living a true life.”

Charlie turned to his son. “Den, want the honors?”

Denver looked at Charlie with a grim expression before pulling his machete from the leather scabbard around his waist. He approached the mewling alien and cut him once across the throat, letting the creature bleed out into the dirt.

It’s tan-colored leather skin hardened and crinkled to a grey paper-like texture.

“Christ,” Ben said as the others gasped.

Turning his back to them, and lifting his rifle to his chest, Charlie headed to the forest. Denver and his dog followed. “We’re leaving,” Charlie shouted over his shoulder. “Your decision on whether you follow or stay.”

DENVER SCOUTED ahead twenty feet of the group, hacking through the dense forest with the machete. His ever-faithful dog scurried along by his side, forever within a few feet of him. They were like siblings attached at the hip.

When Denver was just fifteen years old, he found the pup along with a dying mother in an old crumbled apartment building. They couldn’t save the bitch, but the pup had survived after close attention by Denver.

Charlie thought it was a dangerous waste of time and energy. They needed to be able to move quickly, from one safe shelter to another if they were to remain alive, and looking after a yapping dog didn’t aid general survivability.

But, with Denver losing both of his parents when he was still a toddler back in the mini ice age times, Charlie saw a parallel there. He had taken Denver, looked after him, made sure the croatoans didn’t find him.

Denver did the same thing for the dog.

“What’s he called?” Ben said joining Charlie, helping to make their way through the thick foliage. Ethan and Maria had taken the flanks.

“Pip,” Charlie said. “The dog’s a she.”

“Nice name.”

“It has… sentimental value.” Charlie thought back to his Pip. Pippa. Even after all that time, it still hurt as fresh as the day she passed. He unconsciously reached up and fondled the blue bead wrapped in croatoan graphene thread that hung from a leather thong around his neck.

The day in the bar still shone his memory. The look of Pippa’s beautiful face as she held up the bead in wonder and awe. How excited they both were at the discovery, how they didn’t realize it was an omen.

Charlie continued to trek in silence for the next fifteen minutes, occasionally stopping to check through a break in the tree cover, expecting to see those hover-bikes flying above, searching for them. With the GPS chips buried within Ben, Ethan and Maria, every minute out in the open was another minute the scouts had to zero in on their location.

If they were found, he’d make their death’s quick to spare them the scout’s torture. They seemed like good people.

Clueless and frightened, but good people.

Ben had adapted the quickest, focusing on tasks rather than worrying too much about the situation. Charlie recognized some of himself within Ben. Whether that was a good sign or not, he couldn’t say, but at least it’d keep the kid alive for a while.

As for Maria and Ethan—he gave them a couple of days, tops.

Denver took a knee and held his hand up. Pip sat by his side, her tail still.

“Wait,” Charlie said, pulling Ben to the ground. He looked to his side and indicated for Ethan and to Maria to hit the deck. He pressed his finger against his lips to gesture to be quiet. He hoped they understood. It was difficult to tell what they had picked up or didn’t within the harvester.

They at least managed to read his body language and sat still. Charlie crawled forward to Denver, whispered, “What is it, Den?”

“Two surveyors, thirty feet up ahead.”

“Shit, that’s near the shelter’s entrance. Any others around?”

“None that I can see.”

Charlie crawled a further few feet and pressed himself against the trunk of a giant redwood that wasn’t there a decade ago. Since the mini ice age burned off, the growth of trees and plants had increased at an explosive rate, fuelled by the croatoan’s introduced farming which seemed to cultivate the atmosphere.

Looking through a thick bush, parting the leaves a few inches, Charlie saw them. Den was right; there were just two of them. They were small like the harvester’s pilots, but these wore the helmets and backpacks that recycled oxygen, enriching it with their chemicals. He heard their clicking, percussive language as they took a series of soil samples. They were identifying new routes for harvesting.

The only problem was that they were right above one of Charlie and Den’s shelters.

Within the trees and bushes, the remnants of a town showed through in places: old apartment buildings that had collapsed, sending concrete and steel to the ground, now reclaimed by nature.

His shelter was actually the basement of what used to be a three-story commercial building. From his position he could just make out the southern wall. It collapsed years ago, leaving only a crumbled reminder of its previous use.

If one of the surveyor’s found his shelter, that traitor bastard, Gregor would have the place carpet-bombed, especially now that Charlie had taken out another of his harvesters. His quotas would be way down and he’d face increasing pressure from the administrators.

Charlie heard movement from behind. He spun round to find Ben crouching beside him. “What’s happening,” Ben said.

“Get down, you fool,” Charlie whispered between gritted teeth. He grabbed the idiot and pulled him away from the bush. Leaning close to his ear, Charlie added, “Give me the pistol you took. Do it quietly.”

Ben handed Charlie the croatoan pistol with a shaking hand. Charlie handed it to Denver who took it with saying a word. “Now be quiet and don’t move,” Charlie said.

To Denver: “Take the one on the right after three. Headshot preferable.”

“Okay, Dad.” Denver buried his foot into the dirt, pressed his shoulder against a tree for support and aimed the pistol through a gap in the bush.

The surveyor on the left hand side used a small control panel that resembled a TV remote made from glass to raise a five-foot-tall metal tube used to analyze the soil. The tube extended out of the ground, held up by a tripod of thin croatoan metal.

Charlie grinned, that would make a fine weapon. With a little heat, their metal could be shaped and sharpened to a razor’s edge, like Den’s machete. That used to be one of the alien scum’s backpacks.

When the two surveyors faced each other to discuss their findings, Charlie extended his rifle through the foliage of the bush and brought the scope up to his eye. With his quarry in sight, Charlie whispered, “one… two… three…” Two shots fired simultaneously, his shot muffled by a suppressor, the alien pistol making an ear-popping low hum.

Checking with his scope, Charlie saw both aliens lying on the floor, the shells of their helmets shattered.

Pip growled low.

“Shit, we’ve got company,” Den said, pointing upwards.

Charlie looked up and saw the shadow of a hover-bike fly overhead. Damn it, they were quicker this time. They had to get to the shelter before the scouts landed; they wouldn’t survive a full assault on their own. Perhaps if it were just Charlie and Den, but not with these lambs holding them back.

Leaping to his feet, Charlie turned to Ben and the others. He shouted, “Follow me, now, sprint!” He dashed through the bush and sprinted forward, leaving everyone but Den behind. He leapt over fallen trees and thick roots until he came to the surveyors. He and Den took one each, lifting them on their shoulders.

“Grab the gear and follow me,” Charlie shouted to Ben and the others.

The whine of hover-bikes came from a hundred feet or so away. The GPS chips within the lambs would give their general position away, but below a hundred-foot-radius, Charlie’s scramblers within the shelter would make it difficult for them to pin-point them.

At the very least it’d buy them time to get set for a fight.

The crumbled wall lay just a few feet away. Charlie dashed forward, and dumped the body at its base. Den followed. When the others caught up, Charlie pushed them along the wall until they came to an old tree. He rolled it away to reveal a hole in the ground. “Get down there,” he said, pushing them in. Ethan and Maria had brought the tubes and tripods and handed them to Charlie and Den as they descended underground.

“In you go, son,” Charlie said, waiting for Den and Pip to following inside.

“They’ll be more this time,” Denver said before he went inside.

“I know… we’ll figure something out.”

Den nodded and smiled, “You always do.” He scrambled inside the hole with the agility of a weasel.

Charlie laid the equipment at the base of the wall and along with the bodies covered them with foliage. He heard the guttural clicks and grunts of the croatoan scouts. Looking through a gap in the wall where a tree’s branch had penetrated he saw a squad of three armed with rifles scan the area. The lead grunt wore a gold-sheened-visor—one of Gregor’s personal crew—and referred to a wrist-mounted locator.

They wouldn’t be able to stay in the shelter long, they’d update their location and others would arrive. They would soon be found. Charlie slowly backed away from the wall and made his way to the hole that led into the old building’s basement.

Crawling into the darkness, he reached up and rolled the trunk back over, just as the sound of yet more hover-bikes landed to the south of their position.

This was not going well.

Chapter 10

GREGOR MIRALOS THREW a blanket to one side, splashed his face with stagnant water from the bedroom sink and sprayed his armpits with a rusty can of deodorant—his typical morning routine.

Dressed in only a towel, he fried a breakfast of fresh salmon, left on his kitchen counter by one of his team. Despite a few hiccups, for the last two months the North American operation was going well.

The salmon started to blacken. He scraped pieces onto a plate with a spatula and took the dish to his office, placing it on his desk.

He sat in a brown leather chair and caressed the mahogany arms, enjoying the squeaking friction against his back.

Scanning three croatoan installed screens on his desk while tossing chunks of salmon into his mouth, Gregor checked the productivity statistics against operational harvesters in the field. The results were at least on par with other continents, if not slightly better.

He looked around the office, the main room in a sparse one-bedroom house on the edge of the croatoan camp. Whitewashed walls and furniture he looted from local derelict buildings. The aliens supplied power and water from their centralized source.

This place was better than the trailer at the last location, but he thought it was time for an upgrade. He wanted the top job of global director, currently taken by Mr. Augustus. Gregor knew that asshole lived in luxury.

The front door rattled against the jam three times.

“Enter,” Gregor shouted.

Alex, his temporary second-in-command, opened the door and entered the room, stopping short of the desk. She fidgeted with a drawstring at the bottom of her yellow waterproof jacket, and wiped a thin covering of sweat off her brow.

“Good morning, Gregor—”

“Cut the shit. What have you come to tell me?” Gregor half closed his eyes, looking Alex up and down. Thirty years ago, Alex could light up a room with her rich dark brown wavy hair and glamorous features. Today she looked old, concerned, her graying hair in a tight ponytail. “Spit it out.”

“Harvester five. It’s down.”

Gregor shifted in his chair. “Down? Down how?”

“We’ve lost contact with the driver and guard. It happened during a resource switch.”

“Do the croatoans know?”

“They’re on the way. I contacted a mobile unit to intercept.”

Gregor slammed his fist on the desk. “Send out our croatoan team. If it’s the little wasp, I want him dead. Even if they get a sniff of him, bomb the whole area. I don’t care. The harvesters will just have to work longer and harder.”

He hoped he’d seen the last of the little wasp. Someone who had already taken out two of his harvesters in a similar manner: Land mines, coupled with a direct assault. This might be the third time in five months, denting Gregor’s statistics, making him appear out of control.

The croatoans didn’t seem bothered up to now. They claimed it was mild resistance compared to other planets.

Their patience would only stretch so far before snapping.

“They might not like it. They only came in from patrol an hour ago.” Alex said.

Gregor slammed his fist on the desk again, knocking the plate off. Alex winced as it smashed on the floor. “They’re attached to this facility and will do what I say. Send them. Now.”

“I’ll get right to it,” Alex said.

“Where’s Layla?”

Out of all the humans attached to the operation, Layla had a level of competence that Gregor admired. If something was happening, he wanted her there.

“I think she’s already gone out to investigate.”

“I can always replace you with Layla, Alex. Send you back to the farm?”

Alex backed away from the desk, turned, and stumbled out of the door.

Gregor doubted Alex’s abilities, but with the business with Marek, she’d taken over as Gregor’s second-in-command two days ago. Marek had been Gregor’s friend since childhood, growing up in Yerevan. They stole together, fought together, graduated into the same gang until they came to run it. Alex was just a junior member when the shit hit the fan in 2014.

Everything was fine, Gregor thought, until Marek went missing for twenty-four hours, then turned up on the edge of camp, semi-conscious, tied to a tree. A plank was hung around his body, with ‘Fifth Columnist’ painted across it in bright red letters. Two of his fingers had been snapped backwards, and he’d taken a beating. The little wasp, that fuckstain Charlie Jackson who fancied himself as some kind of vigilante hero, he had interrogated and beat Gregor’s lifelong friend for information.

Gregor slipped into a pair of jeans, pulled on a brown woolly sweater and fastened his steel toe-capped boots. They were always useful when delivering kicks to the farm animals or his junior staff. He clipped on a hip holster and inserted his pistol.

The door rattled three times again.

“What?” Gregor shouted, not even trying to hide his annoyance.

Alex half opened the door. “A shuttle’s coming. Just thought I’d—”

Gregor could already hear the humming engines growing increasingly louder as a shuttle descended toward camp. The mother ship turned up in 2025, near the end of the ice age.

It always held a faint white presence when the sky was clear, hanging up there like a specter or a spiritual portent, but then what did Gregor have with spirits? He knew there was no god the day the earth was taken from them by the croatoans.

Fuck ‘em, he thought. Just play the game, survive, climb the ladder. That’s all there was left now. No point in fighting them, humanity had already lost too much.

Gregor retrieved a plastic tortoise shell comb from his back pocket and smoothed his thick black hair into a side parting. Shoving Alex out of the way, he stepped outside into the bright sunshine, bathing the camp.

SIX PINK RINGS appeared over the camp. The humming took on a sharper edge as the shuttle plunged through the troposphere, its cobalt outline becoming visible against the sky’s blue-orange surroundings.

Ever since the croatoans started harvesting the earth for their root, the orange dust floated up into the atmosphere, gave the sky a strange permanent tan.

Gregor stood by the landing zone at the back of the farm surrounded by trees. Solar powered markers ran around the edge of the two hundred yard square strip. It had already been turned into scorched earth from repeated take-offs and landings: a regular twice-daily occurrence for the last three months, usually for the transportation of croatoans. But never this early in the morning.

Alex stood by his side. “What do you think they want?”

“It’s obvious. They’re going to complain about the harvester. We’re going to need a sacrificial lamb.”

“Do you want me to dress a human from the paddock?”

He drummed his fingers on his chin. “No, bring me Igor.”

“Igor?”

“You heard me.”

Igor, it had been reported to Gregor, thought he knew better on how the facility should be run. Additionally, Igor had been seen fraternizing with the camp’s allocation of croatoan scouts and engineers.

They weren’t supposed to mix. Gregor suspected the worm was up to something. Igor had been one of the few to survive the ice age along with Gregor and his fellow gang members. Used to run a small protection racket in Moscow, fancied himself as some crime lord.

Gregor had ways of dealing with competition. It was dog-eat-dog these days, after all.

The shuttle steadied a hundred yards above. Its pink circles took on a darker glow for the final descent. The ground rumbled. Gregor pulled the woolly sweater over his nose and mouth and shielded his eyes.

Dust and burnt grass showered him as the shuttle gracefully dropped and bounced softly to a halt.

He was always struck with how bland these craft looked. Nothing as exciting as what he’d seen on TV, but a lot more deadly. Two years ago somebody fired on one from the ground. The response from the pulse cannon mounted on the roof was devastating.

Although, violence was rarely the croatoan way.

That was more Gregor’s domain. As the human resource officer on the ground, he had to maintain discipline with the local team and livestock.

A door on the side of the shuttle punched open and slid to one side with an electric groan, followed by a graphite-colored ramp extending onto the ground. Through the darkness, a human male strode out in a long purple robe, flanked by two croatoans in their gray armored suits, carrying black rifles.

Mr. Augustus. The human-croatoan chief liaison. The only human to have visited the mother ship, and the only human to have visited with, and worked directly with, the alien hierarchy.

Augustus thought he was some sort of king. Strutting around dressed like a fool, treating everyone with lofty derision. He wore a creepy mask to hide his facial features. Gregor thought it was an attempt to intimidate or for Augustus to make himself appear alien.

Gregor raised his hand and swallowed his hate. “Hello, Mr. Augustus. Nice to see you again.”

Augustus didn’t acknowledge the welcome. He looked into the sky, and then approached Gregor, stopping inches from his face. Gentle clicking came from the two croatoans behind him. Their shiny gold visors always had a way of making Gregor feel uneasy. Not that he could read their ugly faces anyway.

“It’s been reported that another harvester has gone offline this morning,” Augustus said. “Are you aware of this?”

“I’ve sent my force to deal with the situation,” Gregor said. “I’m expecting a report back within the hour.”

Augustus shook his head and sucked in his breath before stepping back and taking on a calmer composure.

When the sinkholes happened and the croatoans rose out of the earth in 2014, Gregor’s gang thrived into a position of strength during the decade long mini ice age, taking advantage of the confusion in the dwindling population. As the aliens approached Armenia, he spied on them, and noticed them dealing with another human wore a mask: Mr. Augustus. He brokered a deal with the pompous old man. They’d provide an interface for the operational arm. Help control things from the ground.

“This is the third in five months. We’re not having these problems in South America or Africa,” Augustus said.

“Come back to my office. I’ll show you the results from the last two months. I think you’ll find—”

Augustus wafted his hand and sniffed. “I’m not going to your filthy den. Take me to the farm’s command center.”

Gregor closed his eyes and counted to five. If only he’d met Augustus before the aliens arrived. He’d be using his skull as an ashtray.

“Jump to it,” Augustus said. “We haven’t got all day.”

“Yes, Mr. Augustus.”

He led the way through a small group of trees into a wide expanse of open ground. Yet more orange tones blanketed the distant landscape as a sea of root crop grew from the soil. A healthy view—from an alien perspective at least.

Gregor headed right to the croatoan quarter—an area consisting of twelve metallic warehouse-shaped buildings with lightly tinted windows, thrown up in matter of days. Three on each side completed a large square.

In the middle, forty hover-bikes were parked in a uniform row.

The three buildings on the right provided barrack accommodation for the aliens. They were pressurized to allow the aliens to remove their breathing apparatus, the barracks having their own internal atmosphere. Through the window of one, three croatoans lounged in front of a large screen.

The three warehouses on the left were workshops. Croatoan engineers constructed and repaired vehicles and equipment either brought by the shuttles or from the field after malfunction or damage.

The three nearest were for surveying, training and breeding.

Gregor nicknamed the closest building the chocolate factory. Smaller aliens, that he thought looked like Oompa-Loompas, used it to chart the land and test soil samples. He would assist them occasionally when selecting the next slice of land to farm as they worked their way up North America.

The command center took up one corner. One of Gregor’s team always sat at the monitors, tracking the harvesters and areas covered.

The two warehouses next to it were a breeding lab and rarely used training rooms: The training rooms were used to school humans from the farm to bring up others on a harvester, in the belief that they were on a generation ship. It was all Gregor’s idea, and he was proud of it. What is a human without hope? He’d often say. The breeding lab contained pregnant livestock.

The three buildings at the end carried out food production. One was a slaughterhouse and butchery while the middle one carried out meat processing.

The final building packaged the food for consumption.

Nearly everybody ate the product delivered in silver trays. The croatoans, human livestock, harvester crews, and of course: the bastard hierarchy in the ships who would have those on the ground send up large containers of supplies on a daily basis.

The only people who didn’t eat the cream colored slop were Gregor and his team. He liked to keep some sort of personal standards.

This seemed to be the standard camp set-up wherever they went.

He held his door open at the entrance to the chocolate factory. “This way, please, Mr. Augustus.”

Alex came around the side of the building and whispered, “He’s waiting by the paddocks.”

“Thanks. Come with me,” Gregor said.

Augustus walked past a large table surrounded by the helmeted surveyors and acknowledged them with a raised hand. A couple nodded their helmets, clicking excitedly.

The small delegation arrived at the bank of monitors. Vlad swiveled in his chair.

After good results in Russia, Gregor was promoted to North America as the Operation switched during a seasonal change. He took key members of his former gang, or at least, the most subservient. Marek, Alex, Igor and Vlad had all joined him on the shuttle over the Atlantic.

“Vlad, take Mr. Augustus though events as you saw them.”

The small, greasy haired man pushed his glasses toward his face with his index finger. “During the removal of a resource, due to reaching the age of mental deterioration, the harvester took some external damage. The onboard team couldn’t manage to switch to back-up or control the situation, so I ordered them to the rear, for our guard to deal with. After this, we lost all contact. A report is due from the patrol at any moment.”

Augustus leaned forward. “Is this the same as the other two times?”

Vlad glanced at Gregor.

“Look at me, not him. I’m the one asking the question,” Augustus said.

“Very similar, apart from the resource switch, but—”

Augustus turned to Gregor. “It seems you haven’t managed to get a grip of the local situation. Are you capable of handling it?”

“I was going to report to you today, Mr. Augustus,” Gregor said. “We suspect one of our team with collusion. I’m going to personally deal with it.”

“Is this true, Alex?” Augustus said.

“Ye…Ye…” Alex said.

“Stop stuttering, woman. Is this true?”

Alex nodded.

“I’m not sure I believe you. But execute him anyway. Put his body to good use.”

“We’ve got him waiting by the paddocks. Would you like to see it?” Gregor said.

“That’s your business. I’m going to spend the day talking to the croatoans. I want to get a good feel about local progress. You better get focused on sorting things out. If another harvester goes offline, you go offline. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Mr. Augustus,” Gregor said, as he imagined strangling him.

“Meet me back here in three hours. We’ll talk once we know more.”

Gregor left the building with Alex. They cut between the two warehouses and headed toward the farm. Igor waved as they approached. He stood by the eight-foot electric fence that surrounded eight separate paddocks, each forty square acres.

Humans clustered together in the paddocks, like flocks of sheep, dressed in dirty white sheets. Most under the makeshift shelters, some sitting around, eating from silver trays.

“You wanted to see me, Gregor?” Igor said.

Gregor approached and held his arms out. “Brother Igor, we’ve had another harvester sabotaged. Can you believe it?”

“It’s the little wasp, I know it. That piece of shit,” Igor said and spat on the ground.

“Augustus’s pissed. He came down straight away,” Alex said.

“I saw the shuttle. What did he say?”

“That we need to sort things out,” Gregor said. “Have you been speaking to anyone about the harvesters?”

Igor shook his head. “They’re not part of my job. Are you suggesting I’ve been giving their intended paths away? I’m not the one who got caught with my pants down. You need to speak with Marek.”

“Are you telling me what to do?” Gregor said. Igor stood motionless, mouth hanging open. “Do I have to ask you twice?”

“No. You can trust me implicitly to do what’s best for the team.”

That was Gregor’s main concern. What Igor thought was best for the team probably involved him being boss. The individual problems were mounting, but at least he had license to execute the Russian if needed.

Chapter 11

BEN SQUINTED at the sudden flash of light.

The place smelled fresh and unfamiliar, a scent rooted in nature and in stark opposition to the sterile smell of the harvester. He breathed it in deeply, the damp atmosphere moistening his throat and lungs. The underground room accommodated the five of them plus Denver’s dog. Shadows gathered in the corners, cast there by a small battery-powered lamp of sorts hanging from an overhead wooden beam, rough-hewn from a trunk.

Ben remembered watching a video of humans of old cutting trees and planking the logs with simple machinery. Agricultural, Jimmy used to say, when denoting something wasn’t hi-tech.

It seemed to Ben that this world, his home that he never had chance to know, was now a mix, but humanity weren’t the ones with the tech anymore.

“Sit down and be quiet,” Charlie growled, indicating a log that had been placed on the dirt floor. Maria and Ethan did as they were told and huddled together. They were used to receiving orders, Ben however refused and remained standing.

Denver pulled back at a tatty curtain to reveal a screen. A grainy image of armored figures like the one that had killed Erika played out a curious film. There were four of them, in a diamond pattern. Each one carried a pistol like the one Denver had fired at one of the smaller creatures.

“What’s happening,” Ben said, approaching Charlie.

“We’re being hunted. They’re trying to locate your GPS signal.”

“Our what?”

“You really don’t know anything, do you, kid?” Charlie shook his head as he looked at Ben and his colleagues. He turned his attentions to Denver at the screen, joining his son with an arm over his shoulder.

Denver whispered something to Charlie and looked back at Ben.

Infuriated at being left in the dark, Ben stepped forward only to walk into the barrel of the alien pistol. “Hey now, this isn’t on—”

Denver turned round. “Get back, sit down, and shut up. We’re trying to save your asses here.” Denver’s red beard hid the scowl, but Ben could see it in his eyes. Even though he was young, there was severe degree of hardness there.

If what they had said was true, and this was how they lived, Ben couldn’t blame him. Being constantly on the move, hunted, stalked, that must take its toll.

“How?” Ben said. “If they can track us…”

“Jammers,” Charlie said, lowering Denver’s arm. “It’ll scramble the signal, but won’t hold up to a close inspection. GPS means Global Positioning System. You have a chip embedded near your collarbone that transmits a signal. These fuckers pick it up and use it to trace you.”

Ben opened his mouth to ask a question but Charlie’s face told him it wasn’t a good option. He turned and sat with Maria and Ethan as Charlie said, “Look, I know this is all a lot to take in right now. Once we’re safe for a moment, I’ll explain everything in finer detail, but right now we need to be quiet and calm.”

Even though Ben was eager for answers and determined to get to the bottom of this, even if it was just to pay tribute to Jimmy and Erika, he knew not to push it. He sat down with his colleagues and waited.

“Have you seen that,” Ethan said, pointing to the end of the room into a dark nook that had been dug out of the dirt.

“I don’t like it here,” Maria said, keeping her voice low so Denver and Charlie couldn’t hear. “They’re going to get us killed—or worse.”

Ben narrowed his eyes to see what Ethan was pointing at. His vision eventually adjusted to the low light and it came into focus. One of the small aliens, like the one Denver killed back at the harvester, was pinned up against a wooden board.

It was cut open from sternum to groin, the pale-grey skin pinned back to reveal its inner biology. A number of wires, and what looked like probes or electrodes, were stuck into its organs. Its wide-set eyes were rolled back to reveal black orbs.

On the either side of the room was another nook, this time holding a series of shelves, on which, collected together, were a number of foil-packed rations.

A number of square gray boxes that he guessed were batteries were on the next shelf. Wires travelled up the dirt walls and across the boarded ceiling like the alien’s exposed arteries.

“I don’t trust them,” Ethan whispered. “We need to find a way to get loose.”

“I agree,” Maria said. “I think we should give ourselves up, go back with the aliens. Perhaps they’ll understand.”

Ben scowled and shook his head. With a harsh whisper, he berated his colleagues, unable to understand their reasoning. “Are you forgetting what they,” he pointed to the aliens still patrolling through the forest as shown on the screen, “did to Jimmy and Erika?”

Maria leaned in closer. “What if they attacked us because of Charlie and Denver?”

Denver’s dog stood up from her bed: an old box with a blanket hanging over the edges. Pip growled and pointed her nose to the entrance hole.

“What is it girl?” Denver said, kneeling to the hound and running his hand across the dog’s neck. The dog continued to growl.

Fragments of dirt fell from the ceiling and the boards that supported it shook.

“Fuck, they’re here, must be a second squad out of view,” Denver said in a hushed voice.

“How are you even seeing all this?” Ben said, also keeping his voice low.

“We’ve got a number of cameras rigged up outside,” Denver said. “Got to have eyes all over the place in order to stay alive in this world.”

“Have you always lived like this?” Ethan asked.

“Shhh,” Charlie said as he apparently moved the cameras to cover different angles.

Ben counted six of the aliens now. Four wore the gray-mesh armor like the harvester guard, while two looked like the smaller ones, wearing thinner material and gold-tinted visors.

“Shit,” Charlie said, “They’re running radar.”

Ben saw the two smaller ones put a pair of poles into the ground and then refer to a clear tablet-like device. It resembled the control tablets they had used back in the harvester.

The idea that it wasn’t actually a generation ship would take some getting used to, Ben thought. All his life he thought of it as a ship in space—such an elaborate ruse just to use him as nothing more than a worker drone. And now here was Charlie and Denver… although clearly human, he felt as alien to them as he did the croatoans.

“It’s time,” Charlie said to Denver. “They’ll find us within minutes if we don’t.”

“It’s a one-shot deal, Dad. Are you sure?”

Charlie looked to Ben and the others. “We don’t have any choice.”

Maria stood and stretched her arms. She looked scared, on edge. “Can you tell us what you’re talking about? I’m scared and just want to return to the ship.” Her eyes welled with tears.

Ethan got up from the tree trunk and hugged her. “There is no ship, Maria, that was all a lie. We have to stick together, okay?”

Charlie ignored them and moved through the shelter until he reached the shelf of batteries. He pulled out a metal box, its surface mottled and worn. Old green paint was chipped away to reveal a dull grey beneath. On top of the box was a red dome the size of his palm. It shined glossily in the low light; the crown of the dome polished through what Ben presumed was lots of use.

A wire trailed from the box to the battery and up into the dirt ceiling.

“Everyone sit down and place your hands over your ears,” Charlie said.

Denver ushered Ben, Maria and Ethan to the far end of the room. “Seriously, do as he says, for your own sake.”

Placing his hands over his ears, Ben nodded to Maria and Ethan to follow. Denver crouched beside his dog, covering her ears and holding her close into his body. She licked his face before facing Charlie.

Everyone was looking at him now.

Charlie watched the monitor with the metal box in his hands.

Ben also watched.

The two smaller aliens were now just outside of the crumbled wall. Ben could see its edge, rounded with time, and covered in green foliage. Beyond, into the thicker greenery of the forest, the two aliens drove their metal poles into the ground.

Three heavier armed croatoans stood in front and behind them, their weapons raised to their wide chests. Their heads hidden within helmets, turned in wide sweeping angles. It was then that Ben managed to get a good look at them.

Their knees seem to work the other way compared to humans and their legs were twice as thick.

They didn’t just look powerful: they looked agile too. Given the way the one back at the harvester had so easily dispatched Erika and stalked the others, Ben was relieved he didn’t have to run away from one. He imagined being caught would be a trivial matter for the croatoans.

“Now,” Denver said.

Charlie hit the dome with his palm. The metal on metal made a short clapping sound. At first Ben didn’t think anything had happened. And then a sound like the harvester crashing erupted, sending dirt falling down from the ceiling.

The rumble vibrated through the walls and floor and up into his spine.

On the monitor, the two surveyors flew up into the air. The heavier aliens fell backwards as a cloud of dirt and debris blasted up, followed by a large flame.

Two further blasts came from further away.

Charlie wore a discrete, but satisfied smile as he placed the metal box on the shelf and strode across the room to stand in front of the monitor. Everyone waited for a few minutes. Denver joined his father and nodded with satisfaction.

“I think it got them all,” Denver said.

“Looks that way, but we’re compromised nonetheless. Our cover is blown, literally.”

“My god,” Ethan said. “You killed them all? How?”

Charlie turned to face Ben and the others. He pulled a knife from his belt scabbard. “Explosives,” Charlie said. “We don’t have long. I’m sorry I don’t have anything for the pain. We’re going to have to do this the old fashion way.” He walked forward until he was standing in front of Ben, Maria and Ethan.

Denver joined him.

“You,” Charlie pointed to Ben. “You’re first. Open your shirt and bite down on this.” Charlie handed him a piece of wood from his pocket.

“Why?” Ben said, unable to take his eye of the wicked-looking knife. Its blade was at least ten inches long and the tip curved backwards. “What do you think you’re doing? What the hell is this about?”

Charlie leaned in, grasping Ben by the shoulder. With his knife he pointed to the blue bead around his neck. “You’ve got one of these inside you. It’s how they track you. I’m sorry, but there’s no way out of it. It has to come out. I’ll be as quick and painless as I can. I’m not new to this.”

Ben swallowed his fear. Turned to the others. Maria and Ethan stared at him wide-eyed like scared rabbits. Not wanting to let his crew down and show weakness he turned to face Charlie.

“Is this the only way?”

“No,” Denver added. “There’s one other option.”

Maria looked up. Hopeful. “What the other option?”

Without emoting, Denver replied, “Death.”

Maria’s hope vanished as she slumped on the log.

“If you take these beads out,” Ethan said. “What then? Where do we go? Are there others?”

“You survive,” Denver added. “Fight back. Or you don’t and you die. Those are your choices. I wish it were different, but that’s how it is now.”

“He’s right,” Charlie said. “And we’re running out of time. We need to get this done now and get on the move. Get to a town. They’ll send another scout group. We can’t be here when that happens. Your choice, kid.”

“Do it,” Ben said, unbuttoning his grey overall top and exposing his collarbone. He took the piece of wood from Charlie, placing it in his mouth, wondering how many other people were in this same situation.

Denver took a box, metal and painted green with a white triangular icon on its front. It looked like an older version of the ship’s first aid kit. At least they were going to see to his wound.

“This will hurt,” Charlie said as he pressed his thumb into Ben’s collarbone, locating the bead. “A lot.”

Instinctively he bit down into the wood as he nodded and closed his eyes when he felt the cold tip of the knife touch his skin.

As Charlie increased the pressure and the knife’s edge split through his skin, Ben gripped the loose material around his legs and let out a long, pain-filled scream, all the while driving his teeth into the soft wood.

Sweat poured from him and his eyes filled with tears.

Charlie dug his fingers into his shoulder, holding him into place, as he twisted the knife slowly, seeking that damned alien bead. Ben fought the urge to vomit and breathed heavily though his nose.

“I’ve got it,” Charlie said.

Warm blood flowed down Ben’s chest, pooling into the grey cloth of his uniform. Denver stepped to the side and placed a wadded cloth against his chest to soak up the rest.

“Hold on, kid, we’re nearly done here,” Charlie said, prizing the tip of the knife against the bead.

Ben could feel the resistance. Feel the hard, stubborn alien tech press into his bone. And then there was the sensation of something popping, coming lose, and the knife blade retreating.

Denver moved the wadding to the wound and pressed it down.

When Ben looked down he saw that the material was coated in an orange substance. A tingling sensation occurred within his wound, deep into the tissue, and then it burned. He shut his eyes and held his breath. It felt like someone had lit a match and pressed it into his flesh, but as he thought he would never stop, the burning reversed, tuning cold.

He fell forward and breathed in a deep breath.

When he sat back up, Denver removed the material, and to Ben’s astonishment the blood had already clotted around the wound. The orange substance formed a sticky patch over the cut. The pain was still there, but it was manageable, no worse than a headache.

Removing the wood from his mouth, Ben looked up.

Charlie stood beneath the overhead lamp, holding the now-cleaned bead up to the light. It was light blue and shimmered. “Here, catch,” Charlie said, dropping it into Ben’s hands.

The bead zapped him with a bolt of electricity, making Ben instantly let go. “Crap, what’s it doing?”

“Phoning home,” Charlie said. “It’s what they do when they’re removed. They alert the croatoans. Okay, Maria, Ethan, which of you are next?”

Before anyone could speak, the tree trunk that sat above the entry hole to the shelter lifted up and was thrown away.

Light streaked through the hole for a brief second and then they were in shadow again as an armored croatoan looked down inside, holding a rifle version of those strange, angular pistols.

Denver and Charlie both dived into the shadows.

The alien fired once, sending up a clod of dirt inches from Charlie’s diving legs. It readjusted the aim and was about to fire one more when its head snapped back with a sharp blast. Ben looked to his left, fully expecting to see Denver with his rifle in hand, but what he saw was Maria, her arms shaking, barely able to hold on to the black alien pistol. Vapor lazily drifted from the end of its barrel. The smell of ozone filled the room.

Maria dropped the weapon, collapsing back to the trunk. Her shoulders shuddered as she sobbed, placing her face in her hands.

“Good shot,” Denver said. “You might survive for longer than we expected, after all.”

Ethan stood and bore down on Denver. “Can’t you see she’s scared, damn it? God, we all are, and all you can do is make smart comments.”

“Calm down,” Denver said, standing over Ethan, his wiry but powerful frame intimidating Ethan. “We don’t have much time. We need to get those beads out of you and get going.”

Denver turned his attention to Maria, kneeling in front of her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said, his tone softer now, which surprised Ben. So far, he’d only see a cold side to the kid, the only affection shown was for his dog. “Listen, you did good okay.”

“I killed someone,” Maria said. “I can’t believe I actually killed someone.”

“And you might have to kill many someones if you’re to have any kind of life out here.”

“I want to go back,” Maria said, turning to Ben, reaching out for him. “Please, can we go back? We can explain things, tell them it wasn’t our fault. We can have our jobs back, the safety,” she trailed off and slumped back against the dirt wall.

Ben so wanted to do what she suggested. Although life wasn’t brilliant in the ship, at least it was safe, predictable. They were in the right place there, the right time. Out here? It was too chaotic.

But regardless, Ben knew Charlie and Denver were right. This was their home now. They owed it to all the people who were killed by the croatoans as the aliens terraformed the planet for their own will. They owed them resistance.

“No,” Ben said, standing. “We go on. We learn and adapt, we can’t give in now.” He turned to Charlie who had stood up and joined the group. “Do it, take their beads and let’s get out of here before any more come back.”

Chapter 12

GREGOR PEERED out of his office window at two passing croatoans. The light blue triangular insignia flashes on their shoulders told him they were from the mother ship.

They carried a rigid stretcher with a large electronic device on it. The device was encased in a solid sea-green transparent material, about the size of a coffin with circuitry and wires inside and five circular holes on the side.

He pushed the window open. “What have you got there?”

One at the front of the stretcher glanced at him, clicked a few times in what Gregor thought was a hostile tone.

They carried on toward the warehouses, ignoring him.

He thought the croatoans from the ship were always a lot more dismissive of humans, unlike the ones who had regular ground duties. They grounded ones probably had some mutual respect. Especially the ones from Europe where he’d shown them what he could do. If they wanted to farm humans, fine, but they still needed to know how to treat them to get the best results.

Gregor played the role of sheepdog well; admittedly it was better than being in the flock, or an alien stomach.

A handheld radio crackled on the desk. “Gregor, are you there?”

He swiped it up and depressed the transmit button. “Layla, what did you find?”

“Another attack. Looks like land mines placed in the path. There’s extensive damage to the right hand side of the harvester. It’s worse than before. Mr. Jackson seems to be learning.”

Gregor screwed his face and clenched his fist.

Charlie fucking Jackson—the little wasp, again.

Gregor sat down and let out a long breath. “How bad? Will it be another three week job?”

“It’s croatoan tech, who knows? We need to send over an engineer for a proper evaluation.”

“What about the crew?”

“Two dead—by croatoans hands— and three missing. We’re trying to find them. I’ve lost contact with our patrol. They were tracking a weak signal.”

“Have your squad sweep the area. They’re new, confused. They can’t be far away.”

“Okay. I’ll let them know. Out.”

He grabbed a pair of binoculars from his desk, stormed outside, and headed to an ivy covered brick garage, attached to the exterior left wall. The rusty door’s mechanism screamed as he wrenched it up. It shuddered open. Flecks of loose dark red paint dropped around his boots.

Daylight filled the space inside. On the right, stood a table supporting a bottle of water and a bowl of slop.

In the middle of the room, Marek squinted. He’d fallen over sideways, along with the chair he was secured to with rope. He tried to speak, but only managed to cough.

Gregor gripped Marek’s shirt and the chair, hauling them both upright. “There you go. What have you been doing in here, old friend?”

Marek gulped hard. “Why are you doing this?”

The decision to put Marek in an improvised prison cell wasn’t taken lightly. Gregor feared the croatoans might demand his friend be turned into dinner. He’d been captured by wild humans—no real surprises by whom, Gregor thought. Marek had shown weakness. Gregor was sure the aliens were watching how he handled the situation. He’d tell Marek when the time was right. For now it had to remain as realistic as possible, not even a wink.

It was for their own protection, especially with Augustus sniffing around. That bastard seemed to know everything.

“You look terrible. Can I get you some food? Water?” Gregor asked.

“Why, Gregor?”

Gregor picked up a bottle of water and a tray of the croatoan’s slop, still sealed up tight. “I need to know I can trust you again. You were missing for two days.”

“I’ve told you—”

“I don’t believe in coincidences. We’ve suffered another outage today. Now, open wide.”

Marek spluttered as he tried to drink. Gregor emptied the bottle over Marek’s mouth and face. “Are you hungry?” He peeled off the lid and dug a plastic spoon into the cream colored contents. He pushed the spoon against Marek’s mouth.

Marek twisted away, spitting away the food around his lips. “I’m not eating that shit. Gregor, please.”

He threw the tray to one side. “I want to hear again about your supposed captors. Did they say anything about attacking harvesters?”

“We’ve been through this. They only asked me questions. One was blond haired, late forties or so, the other much younger, perhaps mid-twenties, red head, both had beards and looked like they’ve been living in the forests.”

“They didn’t mention the harvesters? Not once?”

“They wanted to know about the warehouses and the shuttles. What was coming down, what was going up, that kind of thing.”

Gregor walked to the entrance and reached for the door. “I’ll give you another day to think about.”

Marek tried to shout. The screeching hinges drowned out his words. Gregor slammed the door shut and wiped his hands on his jeans. A rumble of thunder rolled in the distance. He looked up at the gathering clouds, wondering if the weather was starting to match his situation.

RAIN FELL STEADILY over the camp. Gregor squelched through mud toward the chocolate factory.

Two croatoan hover-bikes shot over the trees from the distance, coming toward the main square. Layla was on the back of one, ducked behind the croatoan rider, shielding herself. The droning grew louder as they hovered for a moment before descending, joining the other parked bikes in a smart line.

The square was busy with aliens. They seemed to be fascinated with the rain. Whenever it started to fall, they’d leave the barracks and stand in it, looking up, taking off their gloves and waggling their spindly olive fingers.

It was times like this that Gregor thought they were almost child-like. A quick look at the pulse cannon on a shuttle, or the meat processing warehouses would quickly push the idea from his mind.

Layla dismounted and headed toward the chocolate factory, looking uncomfortable in her soaked black trousers and jacket.

Gregor met her by the entrance.

He glanced at the riders who joined the others, marveling at the grim weather.

“They never get bored of it,” he said.

“I do. Let’s get inside,” Layla said with a scowl.

The chocolate factory was deserted apart from Gregor’s man at the monitors, lit up by their glare. Charts, pens and the croatoan’s shoebox-shaped computer devices lay around the large table. The little surveyor bastards were probably out enjoying the rain too.

“What’s that?” Layla said. She pointed to a number of objects in the corner. The odd plastic thing he saw earlier. It’d been hooked into the power source and glowed light green, highlighting an electronic system inside.

Three transparent boxes were stacked next to it.

“I saw them carrying it here. Probably came down with Augustus. His shuttle’s still here.”

“What does he want?”

He let out a grunt. “You’re the anthropologist, you tell me?”

She crouched in front of the glowing object and ran her hand along its exterior. “I’ve got no idea what this is, but I’ll find out. They brought some large crates down the other day and stored them in the barracks. Something’s going on. Seems like they’re preparing for something. The sneaky fuckers are always up to something.”

She flashed him a smile, her hazel eyes picking up the green glow from the device. She pulled her blonde hair back into a ponytail. Her face was smudged with grease and orange root. For a scientist, she didn’t have any problems with getting stuck into the physical side of things.

Gregor had warmed to Layla over the last couple of months. When he had first arrived in North America, she was introduced as part of this operation.

They picked her up in England. She was a social scientist, whatever that entailed. Gregor never really knew. Her job at the facility was to look for efficiencies in the way they ran operations—improve the human resources and the harvesting root yield. He was sure she hated him, it was her aloof style, but he felt protective of her.

She’d introduced a number of improvements on the farm that increased their food and reproduction output. In Europe, he ran the paddocks like his parents ran their pig farm. She suggested changes in human livestock management like providing shelter to limit exposure. Another key improvement was feeding livestock produce from the food processing warehouses, instead of swill. He was impressed with the pragmatic circular nature of the coldly delivered suggestion. Its effectiveness after deployment was tangible.

He wondered though, how far her coldness truly extended.

Though from one perspective, what they were doing here, treating humans like cattle was barbaric, it was the world now, and now people like Layla knew it. She had the smarts to exploit a situation, something Gregor had decided to keep a close eye on. He had no doubt she’d step on him if it furthered her agenda, whatever that might be.

“Did you figure out the details of what happened at the harvester?” Gregor said.

“They shot the guard on the platform and suffocated the driver. You need to get a grip of this. We might all go down.”

“They seem okay at the moment,” Gregor said, nodding his head toward the main square where the aliens were doing their weird rain dance nonsense. “It’s Augustus I’m concerned about. He came down straight away, asking questions.”

Layla smiled. “Let me work on him. I’ve got a few questions of my own—”

Alex burst through the metal swing door entrance. “We’ve got signals again.”

She held a croatoan tablet out, a detachable one from a hover-bike they used to track humans with. Gregor remembered the rage he felt when his bead was inserted. The advantages became clearer when he was assigned human resource manager and tracked missing stock.

“Where? How many?” Gregor said.

“We’ve got a cluster of signals, maybe three. Not far away from the harvester. They could be underground, keeps fading in and out.”

Gregor grabbed the tablet, and orientated the red dots to a map on the wall. “I’ve picked up something there before. Couldn’t find anything.”

“Fifteen minute rule?” Alex said.

Gregor nodded. The croatoans didn’t place huge value on individual wild humans. When they took him or his team out hunting for new livestock, they’d only be allowed to pursue a target for fifteen minutes.

The logic behind their rule was the aliens didn’t want to waste their time in a game of cat and mouse with one of the more slippery and resourceful humans. He thought they viewed it as the same as catching a rabbit in a garden. It was slightly annoying, but wouldn’t hurt them; they could crush it if they really wanted. Alternatively, the signal could be from a corpse, buried in a shallow grave.

“Three croatoans are scrambling, I need to take the tablet back,” Alex said.

“The crew might be with the little wasp,” Layla said.

“That’s what I’m hoping. Can you go with them?” Gregor said. “Try to convince them that this is the shit who’s been attacking the harvesters?”

Layla puffed her cheeks. “They won’t go on a wild goose chase. I don’t see what use I’ll be.”

“At what point will they start caring about the bastard who’s screwing our production statistics?” Gregor said. “I don’t want him slipping through our fingers.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Alex said.

The door flung open and a group of surveyors entered, visors covered in droplets. They surrounded the large wooden table and started working on their computers, studying charts and busily clicking to each other.

Gregor leaned toward Layla. “You’re the one they trust, and I trust. Please, go with them, we need some human intelligence on the ground.”

“Okay. I’ll get them to bring him in alive, if I can.”

“Thanks. Alive or dead, I’m easy with either option.”

They left the chocolate factory. Layla and Alex headed for the central area, where three croatoans sat on hover-bikes, watching their approach.

Gregor walked between two warehouses and scanned the paddocks. His men were distributing food. One drove a large tractor around the grassed areas, while two stood on the trailer it towed, throwing out silver trays to outstretched hands.

Some humans sat and ate at the spot they received their food, others protectively took their trays to an individual spot, cautiously looking around while scooping the contents into their mouths with their hands.

One shot from a croatoan weapon was all it took to turn them into brainless cattle during capture. Yet, after a few months in captivity, some started to display more advanced kinds of behavior, a broken attempt at language, an attempt to climb the paddock fence or an assault on a guard.

This made the meat processing selection easier. The guards would splash paint across any human showing danger signs. They would be the first in the back of the truck for the weekly meat processing run. The rest would be picked at random.

Three hover-bikes roared overhead, accelerating away.

Gregor instinctively ducked even though they were fifty feet overhead, their pink circles opaquely shimmering. Layla waved downwards from the rear bike.

Within a few minutes they were little black specks in the distance, their vapor trails quickly vanishing in the breeze.

Gregor turned to look at the camp. Augustus walked toward him, flanked by two croatoan guards from the shuttle, his usual escort. He raised his robe clear of the muddy ground, exposing his skinny white ankles as he crossed the more muddy thoroughfares.

He shook his head and cursed as he approached.

“Have you come to see the paddocks, Mr. Augustus?” Gregor said.

Augustus straightened his mask. “It’s time you and I had a little chat.”

Gregor held out his arms. “I trust you’ve found that everything is in order?”

“We’re shifting the focus of the farm. I’ve got some new targets for you.”

“New targets?”

Augustus flashed his yellow teeth through a gap in the mask, hiding some inner delight. Gregor imagined his skinny body fed into the meat processing machines, but instead smiled back and waited for the bad news.

Chapter 13

CHARLIE HALTED BEN AND ETHAN, brought them behind a large tree. Its trunk was at least twenty feet in diameter. Up ahead, Denver and Maria, with Pip following close behind, had stopped and gestured to the others.

They were heading east out of the forest. Charlie knew it as Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania. During his exploration of the area in previous years, he and Denver had come across an old hunting lodge.

Within the derelict shack he’d found some brochures extolling the beauty of the forest. Back then, he was sure it was a national beauty, full of wildlife and a wide variety of flora, but now, with the root in the atmosphere, and the croatoan terraforming after the frozen years, a new arrival had appeared: a croatoan tree that looked like a redwood, but grew like a weed.

The brackens and hawthorns had a weird look to them too and excreted a waxy residue. He discovered it was a very useful waterproofing agent. Although the aliens were slowly terraforming the planet, there were some benefits to the things that they were growing.

The root had plenty of uses, healing being one of them. Charlie doubted he’d be as physically fit and strong as he was without learning how to distill the oil from the root. Still, those gifts paled into a pathetic joke compared to what was lost.

“How you kids doing,” Charlie asked as he waited for Denver to return to him.

“Good, I think,” Ethan said rubbing his collar. “It’s healing fast.”

“I can barely feel it now,” Ben said.

“Yup. The root is handy like that.”

“Is that why the aliens are harvesting it?” Ethan asked, seemingly over his frustration and getting into the spirit of learning how to survive.

“Among other reasons,” Charlie said. “It’s difficult to really know. I just don’t have the information. But there’s a…” how could he put it without freaking them out again. Human farming was not a subject that he had any easy way into, and he didn’t want to get into it now with the sun setting and the croatoans probably not far behind them.

The beads felt heavy in his pocket. They seemed to gain mass when they were transmitting, but he knew it was just gravity. It still wasn’t natural, he thought.

“You were saying?” Ben said.

“There’s a facility to the east of here. A center of operations if you will. There’s a number of the aliens there, along with human… sympathizers who work on their behalf. They’ve been shipping the root harvest up to a mother ship via shuttles for the past few years. But this year is different.”

“Different how?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know exactly. The crop is different, more potent. They’ve upped their harvesting, and the air… it’s not right.”

Charlie ended it there as Denver and the others joined them. Pip nestled into Charlie’s leg and licked at his hand as he stroked the dog’s neck. Despite himself, he thought of his Pippa back before the uprising.

Ironically she wasn’t a dog person, preferring the company of cats.

His thoughts were probably due to Maria. She had a fragile strength to her like Pippa. Although she looked soft on the outside, he could tell she possessed a desire to survive. She wasn’t afraid of her emotions like the others.

“There’s one patrol,” Denver said. “They’re already on the other side of the river. We’re good to go.”

“Okay,” Charlie said, gathering everyone in. “Listen carefully. What comes next is particularly dangerous. Don’t speak, even when prompted. Let me and Denver deal with them.”

Ethan opened his mouth to ask a question, but Charlie carried on, wanting to get on with things. “I want you all to follow Denver as soon as we’ve broken cover. I’ll take the beads.”

“What are you going to do?” Ben asked.

“Let’s say that our galactic friends will have a little surprise waiting for them. I’ll rejoin you once I’m done. Den, you know what to do?”

Denver nodded. “I’ll keep to the north side, don’t worry.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Charlie said, looking at the others.

“What?” Maria said, stepping forward. “Have we not shown you trust? We’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

“I’m not talking about you lot. Just stick with Denver, and keep those weapons at the ready. Okay, Den, these are all yours. I’ll catch up with you in ten minutes tops.”

With that, Charlie left the others behind and darted into the darkening forest.

A few minutes later and he reached what used to be the edge, but the alien-influenced flora didn’t stop on the threshold anymore. It now carried right on into the town once known as Ridgway.

The trees and bushes plagued the town like a slow swarm of locusts. Branches and ferns and ivy covered almost all available surfaces. The old blacktop on Main Street had broken up. Mosses and other lichens had colonized the surface, making it slick under foot.

Charlie oriented himself by the layout of the ruins.

To his right, he could just about see the tops of a series of warehouses.

The Clarion River flowed parallel to the street. The water was thick and brackish and like the air, under certain light, had taken on an orange cast.

To his left, the small, low buildings of dwellings were just visible through the trees and vines. Small pockets of lights, drum fires and candles, glittered behind grimy windows deep in the foliage.

He and Denver had seen a group of survivors in the town the last time they were here. It gave him a little sense of hope that they appeared to still be here, still surviving. Which made him feel guilty about bringing the beads here.

The croatoans would come. Hopefully the human survivors would have the sense to hide and put out their fires when they heard that dread-whine of the hover-bikes.

Further along Main Street, Charlie came into the center of town. The river had changed course and headed north, going under a bridge. Charlie crossed it until he came to an area where the vegetation wasn’t as thick.

Rows of houses stood like rotten teeth, their roofs had long collapsed, and the ice damage had crumbled most of the walls, but among the damage there were one or two that remained—or at least had been rebuilt, patched up, and saved.

Finding an ideal spot—a large warehouse unit with an alley leading down to the side—Charlie removed the beads from his pocket and a cube of C4 from his backpack.

He had salvaged the explosives from his old army base where he spent a few years in the National Guard. Although he was running low, he could spare some for this.

He found an old, rusted dumpster, its insides now home to a range of flora. He placed the beads on top of the C4 and covered it with a series of fern leaves behind the dumpster. He inserted a blasting cap into the plastic explosive and wired up a trigger to a trip wire, which he ran across the narrow alley. In the gloom, no one would detect it.

The only worry he had was that some idiot survivor might wander in and set it off before the croatoans tracked the bead’s signal.

On his way back out, Charlie heard a series of raised voices in argument and the barking of a dog—Pip.

Seemed Denver had found the survivors.

Charlie put his backpack on and took the knife from his belt and headed further into the town toward the voices. Whatever it was about, they needed to shut the hell up before the damned aliens turned up.

Further into the town, the foliage gave way a little to brick and concrete. Some of the old multistory brick buildings had survived, mostly on account of being solidly attached to each other, providing mutual shelter from the encroaching trees.

Denver and the others were surrounded by a ragtag group of post-thaw survivors. Their torches flickered in the dark sky, illuminating the red and cream brick of a substantial building. An old iron canon, its black paintwork now peeling with rust, kept guard out on the grass in front.

For a moment, the building distracted Charlie.

It looked almost completely intact.

Ornate cream arches over tall windows contrasted with the deep red brick. As he looked up, he could just make out the spire and the clock tower in the gloom.

A tatty US flag fluttered gently on a breeze from a flagpole that was bent over at the top and yet it still hung on, still flew that flag with defiance to what had happened.

“Stop!” Charlie shouted, silencing the bickering, his word echoing off the building like a gunshot. The group turned to him as he approached.

When he got nearer he lowered his voice. “You lot are gonna get us all killed. Keep your damned voices down. What’s the problem?”

The group consisted of three women and two men. All of them had the gaunt look of desperation about them. One of the them, a dark-haired hard-faced woman, wearing clothes that looked like she had made them herself out of a mix of plaid and chino material, stepped forward and sneered.

Turning to the rest of her group she let out a laugh. “Look who it is, the man and the myth. Charlie Jackson, the survivor, the savior of humankind. You’re not wanted round here, Charlie, you’ll bring those damned aliens after you. We saw what you did with the harvester. Why do you have to keep poking them, eh? Why do you always have to antagonize them?”

“Yeah,” one of the men said, stepped forward into the torchlight, the flames showing his ruddy face behind his unkempt beard. He stood considerably shorter than Charlie, barrel chested, and wore a patch over one eye. “We’ve made a life for ourselves here, we had a peace, they didn’t bother us, we didn’t bother them. Now you’re meddling’s gonna change all that. When are you ever gonna let it go, Charlie? It’s over, man, they’ve won. It’s done, finished, over.”

Charlie leaned in and grabbed the man by the lapels of his filthy jacket. “It’s not done all the time I’ve breath in my lungs. You lot can skitter about like cockroaches in the night, but I won’t stand by while those fuckers slowly kill us all off. I will not go extinct. God damnit, I was there! I lost everyone I loved, but I kept going, for us, for humanity. And you just want to give up? To hide? No, I will not go down like that.”

He pushed the man back and he stumbled. The other man in the group stopped him from falling completely. They glared at Charlie and he could see hatred in their eyes.

How had it come to this? Survivors he often met, mocked him as a myth, a useless old man with nothing to offer while they hid in the shadows like scared ghosts.

“Now you lot have a decision to make,” Charlie said, pointing the group.

Ben, Maria, and Ethan watched on in a tense silence. Denver as ever, cast a quiet determination, backing up Charlie with Pip at his side.

“What are you talking about?” the woman said. The rest of her group stepped forward. Enemy lines were drawn between the two groups now.

“You either do the right thing and let us shelter with you for the night, or you choose to do the wrong thing and refuse. But if you choose the latter, let me tell you now, I will not consider you my allies. I will not consider your lives worth saving. Like I said, your choice. Live and die by it.”

The woman backed off and turned to her group. They muttered for a moment before she turned back to Charlie and the others. He saw she held a pistol in her left hand. “Keep on going, Myth, you’re not welcome here.”

“So be it,” Charlie said, gripping the knife in his right hand to try and channel his anger somewhere the others wouldn’t see.

The woman stepped back and her group parted, leaving a way through the old road. She pointed eastward out of town. “Go, before things get difficult.”

“Wait,” Ben said, “take us in with you, we can help you. We’ve only just met Charlie and Denver, we’re not like them, we just want to stay out of the way.”

The woman laughed and shook her head.

“On your way,” she said again, waving the pistol.

Charlie and Denver, along with Pip, moved on, all the time, Charlie kept an eye on the woman’s trigger finger. Denver had his rifle across his chest. Charlie knew his son would be quicker on the draw even with the larger weapon; it was like an extension of his body.

When he was twenty foot clear of the other group, he turned back and saw Ben, Maria and Ethan pleading their case with the other group. It stung him that they’d be so quick to jump ship, even after he and Denver had liberated them and saved their asses.

Without the beads, they wouldn’t be tracked. They had a chance of life now, and at the first opportunity they’d betrayed his trust and loyalty.

As if reading his mind, Denver patted Charlie on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Dad, it’s their damned choice. We can’t make them follow us. Some people just have to see the world for what it is themselves first. Some people were born to die.”

“Not us,” Charlie said. “You and I, son, we’ll keep going. We’ll endure. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Where do you wanna go?” Denver asked. “Mohan Run?”

“Yeah, the shelter there should still have some supplies unless these scumbags have looted it.” The Mohan Run shelter was in a thick part of the woods on the outskirts of the town. It was one of the first Charlie and Denver had set up when they travelled west from New York when Denver was just thirteen.

It was easier back then. Fewer harvesters and the croatoans were still building the infrastructure after the thaw. Like their previous shelter, it was just a hole in the ground, but it was better than nothing.

With his personal reputation not worth a damn these days, he didn’t like the idea of staying in Ridgway with the other group running around. People like those had built up a myth around Charlie and had distorted who he was, casting him as some kind of villain.

But that was often the case with post-thaw survivors.

They didn’t have the perspective of what the world was like before. They had no way of understanding that the earth wasn’t a giant farm for the croatoans, that it was humanity’s home. They looked at towns and cities and couldn’t picture how people lived and loved, how a society worked.

It was every man and woman for themselves now, despite his attempts at uniting them against the invaders. Ben and the other’s actions were no surprise to him. He had hoped that unlike the others, these would be different; they would show more willingness to fight back.

He’d set them free, but what they did with that freedom was now their choice.

Charlie turned his attentions back to the east road, what used to be Highway 219. A twisting vine that looked like a serpent choked the white sign on the side of the road. The numbers were fading, but remained.

Five minutes on their journey out of the town and he heard footsteps racing up behind him. Pip growled by Denver’s side, but they didn’t stop. Just kept on walking. Eventually, it was Maria who spoke first, as Charlie expected. Ben wasn’t the type to admit his mistakes. He and Ethan were still trying to find where they fit into the world.

Maria already knew. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About back there. It’s all so confusing.”

“Forget about it,” Charlie said. “No need to say anything else.” He spared her the humiliation of asking to rejoin them. They had nowhere else to go. This would be a good lesson for them. They’d now discovered an important lesson in trust.

Trust no one.

Chapter 14

LAYLA GRIPPED the silver handles on either side of the hover-bike, turning her head against the wind chill. The feeling of weightlessness contrasted the aching in her fingers as they shot through the air over the densely vegetated land. Each trip helped her get a better idea of how the machines operated.

The controls were quite simple. Moving the handlebars forwards raised the bike. A twist grip on the right handle increased speed. The alien rider would twist the left grip when they wanted to hover. All gentle movements. It was like being on a huge hair dryer, and sounded a little like one too.

She looked over her shoulder at the disappearing camp, and farmed area beyond. From this height it looked like the world had been split in two. One side, a brown cloak with an orange tinge, the other a sea of green with occasional smashed ruins peeping above the canopy. The derelict remnants of her former world.

Layla wondered if Gregor and his gang were nearing their expiry date. Manual labor and resource management was good, but it was nothing the croatoans couldn’t do themselves once they picked up on the implemented systems. She felt a little safer, as long as the improvements and tweaks kept yielding results, based on her scientific knowledge of the species.

She’d actually found it easier than she originally thought. It was pointless fighting a superior force, so improving conditions of the captured survivors provided a justification in her own mind.

Augustus appreciated Layla and told her she was the brains of the outfit, although he’d disparagingly called her Doctor Mengele, when he was in one of his melancholic moods, and cackled at her reaction from behind his weird mask.

Layla peered over the croatoan’s shoulder at the tablet. The green ‘v’ indicated the bike’s position neared the group of red dots. The alien twisted the left grip to hover. The bike pulled around above a small clearing.

Surrounding branches and leaves rocked and rustled in the downdraft created by the three descending vehicles. A rabbit ran from the clearing, followed by loose twigs, blown away by the force of the hover-bike’s thrust.

The croatoans dismounted after the bikes settled, and drew their brain pistols. That was Gregor’s nickname for them. He could always be relied upon for his subtlety.

They each keyed in something on their wrist devices. They weren’t checking the time; croatoans had no concept of the human way of measuring it. The wrist devices controlled appearance. All three suits and helmets took on a disruptive camouflage pattern of brown, green and cream.

An alien clicked free a tablet from the front of a bike and held it toward Layla. She took it, holding the screen away from the sunlight, now poking through the clouds, giving the mossy clearing a slight luminous feel.

A blue arrow marked their position, and as she turned, it did the same, like a spinning compass, pointing in the direction of the dim red spots.

“Right guys, follow me.”

She led the way into the dark forest, picking her way through the damp undergrowth. After a hundred yards, the gap on the tablet closed to half. At least they hadn’t landed right next to their intended targets, although the hover-bikes would’ve been spotted or heard by anyone above ground.

Layla glanced ahead for any clues, a fresh broken twig, footprints on the wet, soft forest surface, a scrap of clothing on a thorn bush, anything to indicate a recent presence. The unfarmed landscape was increasingly turning into rainforest associated with the southern hemisphere. She wondered what conditions would be like in the Amazon.

A group of noisy birds fled from close proximity with a chorus of exotic squawks. Layla crouched and turned. The three croatoans ducked behind individual trees. Hover-bikes hummed overhead, she caught a glimpse of two between a gap in the trees, powering through the air high above, alongside each other.

She waved the croatoans alongside, and pointed at the tablet, then toward a lighter area in the distance. “Over there. Might be the remains of a small town, highway or something like that.”

One of the aliens nodded and gently pushed her forwards.

Proceeding with caution, with croatoans either side, Layla picked up a beaten track, worn into the ground, running toward the target area. It wasn’t surprising that humans would be taking similar routes. Land, or at least cover, was becoming less and less available as the continent transformed into a vast area of alien agriculture.

The places left alone were the concrete jungles. The last she saw was Nashville, now transformed into a slimy green outcrop. Layla felt like Juan Crisóstomo Nieto discovering the lost city of Kuelap. The conducive climate of thick moist air had made conditions perfect for a quick colonization of plants and trees. Whatever the harvesters didn’t chew up and spit out, nature took advantage, regaining its stronghold.

At the edge of the tree line, Layla paused. The forest floor gradually turned into slippery concrete. Ahead was a main street of a small town. Thick vines climbed the buildings, ivy sprawled over the walls. Most shop front windows were smashed, probably during the mini ice age. Wooden doors had rotted from the top and bottom, a couple creaking in the breeze. PVC ones were covered in black and green speckled mold, their windows dulled and dirty. Several vehicles dotted along the street, all at various stages of decay, rusting away to become dark red shells.

The road was still visible through the weeds and ferns that popped and spread through the fractured surface. It led a hundred yards back into a forested area.

Layla checked the tablet. The signals came from dead ahead. At the far end of the street, by one of the larger buildings, a dumpster, which resembled a large plant-pot stuffed with weeds marked the likely signal source.

“Okay. It’s right along there. How do you want to play this?” She said.

One of the croatoans pointed to himself and another, then slowly started advancing. Layla and the other alien waited.

They moved from rusted vehicle, to doorway, to plant. Moving a few yards at a time, covering each other as they headed along the street. When they reached half way, the alien next to Layla clicked a few times and followed the others.

As she wasn’t armed, Layla followed behind, using the alien’s body as cover. She let out a small yelp after falling to one knee, her foot slid on a clump of loose moss. The croatoan span around, aimed at her, its helmet almost blinding as a ray of sun reflected toward her. After a short moment, it held out an arm and Layla pulled herself up. They continued forwards.

It wasn’t quite as bad as her college field trips. Layla was always treated like the ugly duckling. Teased for being a geek and marginalized by her peers because her theories went against the conventional wisdom of the lecturers. The more she studied human behavior and became a victim of their spite, the more she hated humanity and realized it was on the wrong path. Her parents were an exception but the ice age took them quickly. At least the croatoans didn’t judge, tease or bully her.

The two aliens ahead stood behind a truck, yards away from the dumpster. They sprang out from their position and behind the dumpster in their strange bouncy style. Layla edged to one side for a better view. They headed for a side alley.

She heard a twanging noise. Something flicked into the street.

The two croatoans froze, looked at each other.

A huge eruption followed a blinding flash of light.

Layla flew backwards, skidding across the road surface. Small chunks of debris hit her body and face. The sound of masonry dropping, glass breaking and a booming echo through the buildings deafened her.

The alien pulled her up. She found it difficult to balance, tried to focus and patted herself down. They were surrounded in a veil of light brown dust, rays of sun tried to break through it.

Her ears rang with a high pitched tone. The croatoan clicked in an urgent tone and pulled her toward the dumpster, pointing its weapon from side to side.

Layla squinted and blinked, the dust stung her eyes. She coughed and swallowed, trying to clear her dry throat.

They came across the bottom half of a croatoan leg, boot still attached. Close by, half a broken visor rested in the weeds. An arm protruded from a pile of rubble.

The street became clearer as the dust settled. One of the lead scouts was still intact, slumped against a brick wall in a mangled shape. Its suit had returned to its former gray color, ripped in various places around the armor plates. The helmet visor was splintered, punctured in two places.

She felt the grip release on her shoulder. The alien dropped to one knee, bowed its head and clicked more slowly. It appeared to be grieving, Layla hadn’t seen this kind of emotion before, although she’d never witnessed one being killed in front of another.

Her opinion of croatoans since being recruited by Augustus had gradually grown to a solid appreciation. They were pragmatic. Working in small teams to achieve their objectives, never being led astray to carry out petty injustices or wasting time debating their moves. The aliens had a clear focus on the big picture.

An old human saying was look after the little things and the big things will take care of themselves. The croatoans tackled things in the opposite direction, so far it was working out.

Layla sighed and put her hand on the alien’s shoulder. The rhythm of its sounds increased. Going from something similar to the tick of a Grandfather clock to a fast dripping tap. It stood up, holstered its weapon and grabber Layla’s ponytail, forcing her head down to the side of its hip.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said.

“Hu-man,” it croaked.

“Get off me. I’m on your side.”

It ignored Layla and started dragging her toward the forest. She stumbled over plants and debris, trying to maintain its pace while keeping balance.

They crashed through the undergrowth, back in the direction of the hover-bikes. Her legs caught on weeds, the croatoan curled an arm around her chest and ripped her free.

“Please. Why are you doing this?”

The top of her head ached from the constant yanking. She staggered alongside, and they reached the clearing. The croatoan wrestled her onto the back of his hover-bike and raised a finger.

She nodded. “I’m won’t do a thing. I’ll help you report it. None of this was your fault… our fault.”

The engine started with a roar and the alien thrust the bars forward. They shot up to an unusually high altitude, faster than she’d ever seen the bikes move, they were usually graceful and steady. The croatoan twisted the right grip fully back and they surged forward, increasing to a dizzying speed, the trees below merging into a green blur.

Layla clung on for her life. Wind blasted against her face. The seat vibrated below her, and she yelped as they occasionally bounced like a jet-ski.

The warehouses quickly came into view.

They dipped like a shooting arrow near the end of its arc, heading straight for the square. The buildings grew in size by every second. She felt herself pressing against the alien because of the angle of descent.

At the last moment, as Layla feared some kind of mad emergency landing, the croatoan twisted the left grip and the bike shuddered to a hovering halt. It calmly pulled back the handlebars and the bike smoothly descended to the end of the line in the square.

The croatoan ignored Layla, dismounted and quickly walked to a barrack warehouse. She stood up and took a few deep breaths and rubbed her hands together to stop them shaking.

Alex raised her hand from the chocolate factory entrance. She walked across to the parked bikes. “Is everything okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Layla put her arm around her, leaned on her as they walked back toward Gregor’s office. “They’re changing Alex. Is Gregor about?”

“He’s chatting to Mr. Augustus, something about new targets.”

Chapter 15

GREGOR GRABBED a forty-year-old bottle of whiskey from his kitchen cupboard. He’d intended to open it when celebrating something. Appeasing Augustus would have to do, something to take the edge off him.

Single malt wasn’t going out of date any time soon, unlike most other pre-alien produce. It was a shame Augustus hadn’t rotted away like an unwanted microwave meal in a derelict supermarket. He sat at Gregor’s desk, caressing his stupid robe, with an armed croatoan behind each shoulder.

Gregor placed the green bottle down with a reassuring thump, and turned the tartan label in Augustus’s direction. “Would you like a drink, Mr. Augustus?”

“Don’t you offer all of your guests a drink?”

Gregor frowned. “I didn’t think that—”

“No, I don’t want a drink. We’ve got serious business to discuss.”

The croatoans clicked in unison. Augustus sat forward, placed his elbows on the desk and clasped his fingers together. His sunken eyes fixed on Gregor.

Gregor told himself to keep calm, not to betray a flicker of emotion. He wanted to gut Augustus like a fish, just like his former boss during Gregor’s successful putsch in 2009. Augustus and his old boss shared a lot of the same qualities. They made the men feel uneasy, behaved like kings and ultimately acted for themselves instead of for the wider gang benefit.

“It’s been raining a lot this month,” Gregor said. Augustus dismissively wafted his hand. “You said something about new targets, Mr. Augustus?”

“A global change of plan is required for all camps and farms. I’m here to tell you about the new directive and to set your targets for the next month.”

Gregor shifted uneasily in his chair. “Change of plan?”

“You’re required to double the land conversion statistics. We’re not going fast enough. I need a major push in the next few days.”

“That’s impossible. The six harvesters are working twenty four—”

“Five harvesters at the moment. You’ve let another one get sabotaged today.”

“I’m going to take care of that. It’s the same person,” Gregor said. He tried to think of a way to articulate the implausibility of the new expectations. The ground team were already fully maximized meeting the current requirements. “Will you be providing me with more equipment and resources?”

Augustus drummed his fingers on the table and slowly nodded. “It’s time to be frank with you, Gregor.”

He turned sideways, slipped his bony fingers around robe’s hood and pulled it back. The mask encased the front half of his head, and was held on with an elastic strap. Blotches of pink scarring covered the back half, surrounded by wispy brown hair. Augustus reached behind his crusty misshapen left ear and clicked the fastening loose. The mask sprang away and hung to one side. He turned back to Gregor.

Gregor clenched his teeth, trying to keep a neutral exterior. Augustus looked like he’d been attacked with a knife, and had the wounds cauterized with a blowtorch. Scarring covered at least fifty percent of his face, his left cheek folded inwards, as if sewn to his tongue. Small islands of dark stubble spread around his chin and jawline.

“What are you doing?” Gregor said.

“I’m showing you the price of failure. I’ll be checking how you’re getting on in a couple of days. My face should serve as a reminder of what will happen if we’re not on schedule. I’m sure you can figure out the punishment for repeated failures?”

“How do you expect—”

“I don’t expect. The croatoans expect. You’re not a special case. It’s the same the world over.”

The door flung open and a croatoan bounced in. The two guards initially turned their weapons before relaxing. It started communicating with Augustus using staccato alien noises, Gregor tried to discern Augustus’s reaction, but his mangled face was impossible to read.

“I need a moment outside,” Augustus said.

He left with the new arrival. The two guards remained inside, helmets angled down at Gregor. He reached for the whiskey bottle. The guard on the right flinched, nudging its weapon up.

“Steady, my friend. I’m just having a drink,” Gregor said.

He filled a shot glass and swallowed the whiskey in a single gulp, refilling immediately and drinking again. Gregor clenched his fist to keep his hand steady.

Augustus was setting him up for failure. Without doubling the harvesters, they had no chance. Even if the croatoans provided the machines, the ground team didn’t have enough trained humans to work in the Operations Compartments. The key to running the harvesters around the clock was the ability to carry out isolation procedures from the local control room, to allow continuing functionality. The croatoans couldn’t or wouldn’t resource it, which was part of the reason he thought his team were still alive. They needed humans for work as well as food.

The door opened. Augustus returned, mask in hand. “I take it you’ve heard the latest news?”

Gregor raised his eyebrows. “Latest news?”

After sitting back at the desk, Augustus dabbed a white folded handkerchief against a dribble of saliva, running from the corner of his mouth. “Ten croatoans dead. Ten. The harvester. You’re bringing a lot of heat down on this operation.”

“Ten dead?”

Augustus repeatedly jabbed his finger against the desk. “Two at the harvester. Two surveyors. Four searching for their killers. Two blown up, killed in a trap, following signals. Ten. T. E. N.”

The left corner of Augustus’s mouth twitched.

“It’s Jackson and his bastard son,” Gregor said. “We’ll get them. They can’t keep hiding forever.”

Augustus sighed. “You said that last year after they crashed a bulldozer through the paddock fences. Are you sure it’s them?”

“I’m positive. The harvester attacks have all followed the same pattern. Whenever we’ve interrogated survivors, they always blame him. Trust me, most of them want to keep out of our way, and hate him as much as me.”

Augustus stood and cupped the mask around his face, clipping it back in place behind his ear. “You’re incapable of sorting this out. So I will.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gregor said.

“I’ll see to Mister Charles Jackson. We’ve got a limited resource available for such situations.”

“A limited resource? I can do this, just give me time.”

“Your time will be occupied with the quotas. We had a similar situation in North Africa. A pain in the ass that wouldn’t go away. I’m sending down a croatoan hunter.”

Gregor remembered a larger, more aggressive alien during the battle of Eastern Europe. He hadn’t seen one for twenty years. No nonsense and formidable. If it crushed the little wasp, he’d shake its hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Augustus. With him out of the way, we’ll have a better chance of meeting your targets.”

Augustus held the door open and the two guards left. He turned to Gregor. “They’re not my targets, I’ve already told you. Oh, one more thing…”

“Yes, Mr. Augustus?”

“Wash your clothes. You smell like horse manure.”

GREGOR FOLLOWED Augustus and his two guards back toward to shuttle. Augustus had an annoying strut, like a peacock. He hadn’t spoken a word since his aroma barb. It was all right for Augustus, he probably had croatoans scrubbing his velvet robe and running him luxurious bubble baths on the mother ship.

The cobalt shuttle’s primed engines blasted hot air in Gregor’s face. He stopped by the edge of the clearing, as the entourage headed for the graphite ramp.

Augustus glanced back; Gregor raised his hand. The robed cretin didn’t acknowledge him and shuffled into the craft, followed by the two guards. The ramp slid into the main body, and the door hissed across and shut.

The ground rumbled as the engine noise increased, blowing dust in all directions.

The shuttle raised a few feet, paused, and zipped away in a smooth diagonal line above the trees. Gregor shielded his eyes from the lowering sun, and watched the craft bank to its left before shooting through the clouds, toward the distant vague outline of the mother ship in the spring green sky. The shuttle’s pink rings quickly disappearing into orbit.

Dust settled and surrounding trees gently rocked to a halt. Leaves brightly glistening with a greasy sheen.

A hand rested on Gregor’s shoulder. He flinched and turned, feeling for his gun.

Alex and Layla stood behind him.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he said.

“We need to talk, Gregor. Things are happening, strange things,” Layla said. “One of the croatoans grabbed me by the hair after the booby trap. I haven’t seen them behave like that before.”

Gregor shrugged. “You should have told me about that. I had to learn about it from Augustus.”

“You were already in with him when she got back,” Alex said. “We were waiting till he left.”

“If you want to know about strange things, you should have been in my office when Augustus took off his mask.”

“What did he look like?” Layla said.

Gregor ran his fingers down his cheeks. “Like he’d been bobbing for apples in acid.”

He started walking back to his office. Layla tugged at his sweater. “I meant what I said. Something’s going down, we need to talk.”

“Talk in my office. I’ve also had some news.” Gregor glanced through the trees toward the chocolate factory as he led the two women away. Three croatoans were testing a large anti-gravity trailer at the back of the warehouse. It hovered three feet in the air. One alien balanced on top of it, the other two stood at either end, moving it around in a circle.

Gregor led the way through his front door, closing it behind Alex and Layla, twisting the key and securing the bolt. He peered through the window blinds before pulling them shut.

“Augustus wants us to double our land conversion stats. We’ve got a few days to do it,” he said.

“How are we supposed to that?” Alex said.

Gregor sat in his chair and poured a whiskey. “I don’t see a way. We bent over backward to meet the current targets. The new goal came attached with a threat.”

“Jesus. What?”

“You don’t want to know. Layla, any bright ideas?”

Layla looked down, rubbing her chin. She moved across to a chart on the office wall and placed her finger on an area north east of their current location. “This is all former farmland. We concentrate here for the next few weeks. Progress will be quicker as the woodland is less dense. I’m not saying it’ll double the conversion, but if we focus on these type of areas …”

“It’ll catch up with us,” Alex said. “At some stage we’ll be left with thick forest and cities. Then what?”

“I’m just providing a short-term solution. Last week I mapped the individual harvester statistics to the old charts. If we want to meet Augustus’s short-term targets, this is how we do it. When we get the damaged one from today repaired, we send it to start on the forest. Okay?”

Short-term, long term, it didn’t matter to Gregor. As long as he could keep the plates spinning. He downed his whisky and slammed the glass on the table. “Makes sense. Can you work on this together, and send the new coordinates to the harvester drivers?”

“Leave it with us,” Alex said. “I’ll have the instructions sent out tonight.”

The thought of Alex and Layla working together pleased Gregor. Both seemed to have a mutual dislike for each other since meeting ten years ago. The time hadn’t managed to bring about a thaw, unlike the croatoans weather control.

Alex was long serving and loyal. Friends from the pre-alien days were at a premium. Layla had provided him with yet another solution to keep the wolf from the door. Without her, he could have been hanging on a butchers hook.

His thoughts turned to Marek. With Augustus out of the way, and the new directive in place, it was all hands on deck. A safe and justifiable time to release his old friend.

“Alex. You’re in charge of the ground team again. Marek’s back as my number two,” Gregor said. He brushed the blind to one side, and unlocked the door. “I’ll leave you two to it. Let me know if you have any problems. I don’t like looking clueless in front of that masked bastard.”

“Gregor, wait, they’re up to something,” Layla said.

“Who? The croatoans? They’re always up to something.”

“Not just the quotas. Have you noticed there’s more of them in the warehouses? Numbers have doubled in the chocolate factory. The equipment they’re bringing down too. I’m telling you, this is more than usual operations.”

“They come and go. So what if they have a new floating platform or funny device?”

Alex stepped toward him and said with a genuine look of sincerity, “She’s got a point. It’s not just because of today; it’s been going on the past two weeks. They’re not communicating with us either.”

Gregor paused for a moment. He couldn’t deny that things were changing, but for the sake of survival, they had to concentrate on what would work for them. Worrying over alien experiments or motives wouldn’t help. Meeting the targets and keeping the livestock healthy and fit for consumption would.

“Do some digging. See what you can find out,” he said.

As he left the office, Gregor gazed at sky. It started to turn a gentle orange during the hours of dusk and dawn over a year ago, perhaps two. It became more accentuated as they covered larger swathes of the continent with the initial planting of croatoan crops.

Gregor heaved up the metal garage door, wincing as it screeched on its rusty mechanism, like giant nails running along a chalkboard.

Marek peered through the dim light, twisting his shoulders against the bound rope around his upper torso. “Gregor, you’ve come to see me.”

“It’s over my friend. You’re back as my number two.”

“Why did you do it? You know you can trust me.”

Gregor picked up a knife from the table on the right hand side of the garage and jabbed it toward Marek. “It was an act, to keep you alive. Do you think Augustus liked the fact that you’d been captured and interrogated by the little wasp?”

“You could have told me,” Marek said.

“And let Augustus’s aliens beat that information out of you? We’d both be dead. I’m sorry, you have to understand.”

“We need to put a stop to Jackson once and for all. He’s going to get us killed.”

“They’re sending down a resource called a hunter to end him.”

“A hunter?”

“Probably one of those croatoans they used in battle.”

Gregor slipped the blade underneath the rope, and used the serrated edge to saw through it, making quick work of the frayed braid. He passed Marek the knife to release his ankles from the legs of the chair.

“I heard Igor talking to Augustus outside the garage a few hour ago. Couldn’t quite tell what they were saying,” Marek said.

“Igor’s slyer than a fox,” Gregor said. He resisted the urge to kick the table and pulled Marek to his feet. “If he’s colluding with Augustus, I need to know what they’re discussing. We’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning. Tonight you get a whiskey and a comfortable bed.”

Marek unsteadily shuffled toward the door. He flung his arm around Gregor to stop himself falling. Gregor wrapped his arm around Marek’s back and started leading him to his office.

A faint roar echoed overhead. Gregor glanced up into the darkening sky. A bright light shot across it like a shooting star, although the trajectory was more deliberate. It was arcing down from the mother ship toward earth. He tried to recall the last time he saw a croatoan fighter.

Chapter 16

THE SCREECHING SOUND of a bird startled Ben.

A cold sweat had soaked his clothes, making him shiver in the dark. Sleep had evaded him, coming in shallow brief moments, lulling his subconscious into a semi-awake state. Daydreams lingered like memories lost to time, their residue remaining, pointing to something substantial but ultimately out of reach.

Ben turned over, reached out his hand to switch off the phantom alarm clock. His arm moved on instinct. A behavior burrowed into his muscles from years on the ship. And there, the phantasm of truth glared bright in his mind.

He wasn’t on the ship.

The place was dark, cold, and the sounds of others snoring reminded him that he lay ten feet under the ground in a tomb, dug out by Charlie and Denver. The dampness of the blanket beneath him transferred the coolness of the soil.

Worms, insects, beetles, and things far worse that his imagination could conjure no doubt crawled beneath him, waiting to devour him, bring his energy to the soil.

Sitting up with a startled breath, he clawed his way forward in the dark, desperate to escape. The cold, pressing confines of the shelter making him gasp for air. Fresh air.

Ethan and Maria were pressed tightly together to his right, their bodies warm to his touch as their chests moved rhythmically with their quiet breath.

Charlie lay to his left. He snored, loud and long, the slumber of someone who had grown up with this, someone who had chosen this over acquiescence with the croatoans. The sleep of the confident.

Ben wondered if he would ever have that inner peace again in a world where it was he that felt alien.

Dirt compacted beneath his fingers. He continued to crawl forward until eventually, with out-stretching hands, he found the wooden ladder.

Above him would be his escape, his freedom.

It was only as he climbed the ladder, leading to steps cut in the earth and pushed the cover of leaves away that he realized Denver was missing from the shelter. Pip too.

Cool air wicked away the sweat on his brow and his lungs felt the chill of pre-dawn air. The scene before him was a de-saturated landscape; the monochromatic touch of the moon delineated the outline of the leaves and trunks.

An excited yip from beyond the tree line of the copse caught his attention. Through the foliage he could see the slick, oily surface of a river, the silver light creating specular reflections as the breeze manipulated the water.

But the breeze was not the only instigator.

Moving closer, treading carefully across the loamy, damp ground, Ben pushed through between two wide trees until he stood on the threshold. A dark shape sat at the river’s edge.

Ben watched as the figure lifted what looked like a medieval crossbow, pointed into the darkness beyond the river, and fired a near-silent bolt. Only the twang of the wire and the thunk of the bolt hitting its target made any noise.

A rustling came then. Pip’s tail wagged within the tall grass, the white tip catching the half-light. The dog disappeared for a moment and returned with a small creature in its mouth. She crossed a tree trunk that had fallen across the river and dropped the prize at the shape’s feet.

Ben stepped forward.

“Can’t sleep?” the voice from the dark shape said and confirmed to Ben that it was Denver. The young man didn’t turn around as he pulled a small hunting knife from his jacket and made a series of straight cuts across his catch. “Don’t just hang around there behind me. You make a man suspicious.”

“Sorry.” Wrapping his arms around his body to retain the heat, Ben stepped forward until he saw what Denver was working on: field dressing a rabbit. In front of him, a rack made from twigs held half a dozen fish and three skinned and gutted rabbits.

“Breakfast,” Denver said, his voice like a cold growl. “I don’t sleep much either. Sit down; you’re making me nervous, hanging over me like that.”

“Sorry.”

“And stop apologizing. You don’t have anything to apologize for. I get it,” Denver said as he placed the skinned rabbit on the rack. “This is quite the change of lifestyle for you and the others. I’d be freaked out too.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Ben said. “I just want to go back, work on the ship. I was safe there.”

Denver turned to face him. His pale skin seemed entirely without color beneath the pre-dawn starlight. “Really? What do you think happened to those that came before you? You think they’re enjoying retirement? That’s what you were told wasn’t it? All those tuition videos you had to watch, telling you how you were heading for a new planet, how you’d do your job and you’d get to retire in a life of comfort.”

Unable to stand his glare any longer, Ben turned his head, trying not to think of Jimmy and Erika. Deep down he knew that’s what retirement meant.

“They recycle you. Did you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“They use us as food source, a labor force, lab rats. They see us as nothing more than animals designed to further their cause. We are rabbits.”

“Food source?” Ben said, “What do you mean exactly?”

“They farm us. We’re just protein and nutrients after all. Stick us in a meat processor and we’re no different to beef or chicken. On the harvesters, when your shift is done and they retire you, you go to the meat processing unit. Those silver trays of food they give to you…”

“No,” Ben said, standing up, shaking his head. “They wouldn’t do that… that’s…. I can’t believe it.”

“That’s you’re problem,” Denver said. “Believe or don’t believe, it doesn’t change the situation, does it? They’re still here, they’re still changing the planet, it’s just a matter of time now.”

“Changing how?” Ben asked.

“You’ve seen the air, the water, the land. That orange root compound is getting into everything. It’s what’s in the aliens’ backpack and respiratory system: a gas made from the compound. They can’t breathe our air unaided. Well, for now anyway. The atmosphere will soon be right for them.”

“And then what?”

Denver didn’t say anything as he stood up and stretched his arms.

“Denver, what’s going to happen?”

“What do you care, Ben? You’re not really with us, are you? I can tell you don’t want to be out here, surviving. You want to go back, don’t you?”

A flush of shame and truth warmed Ben’s cheeks even as he turned away. “I don’t know what I want. It’s all… just so much to take in.”

Denver put a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I know it’s difficult. What if I could give you a third option? You can’t go back to the harvesters, and you’re clearly not cut out to stay here. I won’t lie; it’s a tough life in the wild. I’ve seen dozens of people just give up, give in, unable to adapt. But there’s one other course for someone like you.”

“What do you have in mind?” A mix of fear and hope swirled in Ben’s guts, but there was something in Denver’s eyes that told him it wasn’t going to be an easy option, but then he believed nothing was going to be easy again.

“Work for us. On the inside. Help us get these fuckers off our planet for good.”

“It sounds dangerous,” Ben said, slumping his shoulders as the hope died before it even had time to blossom. “What do you mean work for you?”

“Sit down, have a drink, I’ll explain everything.”

Denver indicated to a log. He had a tin can of water that was steaming from an earlier boiling. The glowing remnants of a fire sparkled within a mound of leaves and twigs.

Ben sat down and received the warm cup from Denver. “Thanks.” He took a sip and screwed up his face at the bitter taste, but he still drunk, thirsty after spending the night in the underground shelter. “What is it?”

“Root compound. We learned how to extract the active ingredient. It’ll make you feel better,” Denver said.

“Is this why your father is still in such good shape? How old is he anyway?”

Pip came over to Ben and laid down on the warm ground in front of the log, resting her head on Ben’s foot. Denver patted the dog and looked up at Ben.

“Dad’s fifty-eight this year and is probably fitter than I am. He had to be. He’s one of the very few to have survived the ice age and the thaw. He saw it all. Even fought in the people’s militia during the initial struggles when the croatoans came up from the earth. Later they came from space, overwhelmed the population and Dad had to go in hiding with the other survivors.”

“How long was the ice age for? What brought it on?”

“Twenty years. We believe it was the first part of the croatoan’s terraforming process. They had this huge mother ship that altered the atmosphere, changed the world’s temperature. Dad reckons it was preparing the lands to grow the root they so desperately need. When the thaw came, the trees and vegetation grew rapidly as did the root, which is why they’re now harvesting it.”

“So about this other option,” Ben said. “What is it you want me to do?”

Denver pointed to the west back toward the forest. “There’s a farm back there, a few miles from your harvester. You can go there. They’ll take you in.”

“Is it run by the aliens?”

Denver shook his head. “No, someone far worse. A betrayer of humankind. A jumped-up gangster from pre-ice age days. He got in with the croatoans early, selling out his own kind. Gregor runs the farm on their behalf, and manages the harvesters.”

“That’s why you attacked it? Revenge?”

“Vengeance? No, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. Gregor and Dad go way back. They’ve been fighting since the start. The more pressure we can put on Gregor with his harvesting quotas, the more pressure the croatoans will put on him to meet his targets. If he can’t, then… well, he’ll become livestock for all those poor bastards in the farm.”

Ben was starting to get the picture now. The thought of a human farming others of his kind as livestock turned his stomach. How could he work for something like that? How was that any better than being out in the wild?

Ben’s hope was well and truly gone now.

“I don’t see how this is a good option,” Ben said. “How do you even know they’ll just take me in and not throw me in with the livestock?”

“That’s a good question,” Denver said as he took a piece of root from his camo jacket’s pocket and chewed on the end. “At least you’re thinking now. You’ll have one thing that Gregor wants almost as badly as his career trajectory.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll go to him with information on my dad. That’ll buy you almost anything you want. You can have a comfortable life there. There’s others with Gregor. You’ll likely make friends, find a purpose, and do some good along the way.”

“Farming our species is not my idea of good.”

“But you see,” Denver said, leaning in, his face shining in the moonlight, smiling conspiratorial beneath his straggly beard. “Once you’re in, you can feed information—both ways. You could bargain for things in return for what you’ve learned about us: where our shelters are, how many people we have on our side, what our plans are. And in return, you’ll gain their trust and feed us information. If we can take out Gregor and free the people he’s using as livestock, we can start to take down other farms, freeing those people, until we… you get the picture.”

“So you want me to be a double agent of sorts?” Ben said, remembering a James Bond film he’d watched.

“Something like that.”

Ben looked down at Pip. The dog was snoozing now, her breath making a quiet rumbling on his foot. It was the first time he’d ever really understood man’s fascination with animals.

During his orientation training, they were shown a number of films produced to show them what they would be doing when they got to Kepler B, their so-called colony planet. They were told that along with humans in stasis, there was a Noah’s ark of animals too. Dogs were among the most prized for their loyalty and their uses in colonization.

“Man’s best friend,” Ben said, reciting one of the lines from the film’s narrator.

“Pardon?”

“Oh, nothing, just something I heard once about dogs.”

“Pip’s the best friend I’ll ever have aside from my old man,” Denver said.

“I can see why.”

Ben sighed and leaned forward onto his knees, clutching his head in his palms. He felt stuck, unable to truly make a decision between a life on the run, living in the dirt, or go back to some kind of civilization, although brutal and unfamiliar.

There was a risk too that this Gregor might not even accept him into the fold. What if his information wasn’t good enough? Ben turned to Denver who just stared out across the river, a stern expression on his face. It wasn’t right that a man so young should be so jaded. Ethan would likely be the same too.

Of course, that was another consideration. Could he really leave Maria and Ethan behind? Would they go with him? If they did, he’d be responsible for them like he was supposed to be responsible for them on the harvester. And that didn’t end well for anyone.

If only I didn’t go to the stasis, he thought. If only we just stayed where we were and waited it out. We’d have been fine. They would have fixed the harvester and they would have never been exposed to the truth.

“If I did go,” Ben said, “what information exactly can you give me that will guarantee my life? It seems to me, I’m the one taking all the risk here.”

“We’ll give you a map to one of our main shelters. We’ve got dozens between here and New York, but one in particular not ten miles from here will be of interest to Gregor. We’ve got weapons and supplies stashed there. If he were to find that and take it, he’d think he would be impacting our ability to survive a great deal. And there’s one other thing that’ll seal it completely.”

“What’s that?”

A hand grabbed Ben’s shoulder making him yelp with surprise. Pip woofed as she moved away from his sudden movement to lie at Denver’s feet.

“This,” Charlie said looking down at Ben from behind him.

Ben held out his hand as Charlie dropped his blue-bead necklace into his palm.

“Consider it a trophy. Gregor knows what it is, what it means, what it represents. Behind Den, it’s my most precious thing.”

It was warm in Ben’s palm where it had been around Charlie’s neck just moments ago. The bead was just like the one that Charlie had cut out of Ben’s collar. Only this was wrapped in a cocoon of semi-transparent material.

“It’s what started all this in motion,” Charlie said. “The very first find, and the item that was the catalyst for the invasion. It was also the item that I kept to remind me of my beloved, Pippa.”

“I can’t,” Ben said. “It means so much to you.”

“Which is why it’s perfect. Gregor knows this. If you turn up with it, he’ll know you stole it, as he’d never believe I’d give it away. It’s your way in, and your ticket to safety. I’ll be honest with you, Ben. You seem like a good lad, but you’re not cut out for this life out here. What you’ve experienced so far is easy street. It only gets harder from here on out. You won’t survive. I know that, you know that.”

Ben closed his hand around the bead and looked up at Charlie and Denver. They were right. He wasn’t cut out for their life. He needed security, a job, someone to guide him. And if going to the farm meant he could help these people then at least he’d be doing something good.

“Okay, you’re right. I’ll go. But how will I get information out to you?”

“By radio of sorts. Here.” Charlie handed him a metallic object resembling a coin. The surface was dark grey and rough to the touch. “I took this from a croatoan helmet, it’s what they use to communicate. They’ve been paired so they share a frequency. Don’t worry, they’re secure. Den and I have been using them for a while. As long as we keep things short, you’ll be okay. To work them you just activate the transceiver by pressing those two notches on the side there.”

Ben did as he instructed and spoke into the transceiver. He heard his voice come out via the other one. “Okay, I got it.”

“Keep it to a minimum though, and make sure you don’t let it out of your sight,” Denver said. “If it’s found, just plead ignorance. It’s unlikely they’d suspect you of being able to take it from a croatoan.”

“One week from now,” Charlie said, “you’ll contact us, tell us what you’ve learned about the shipments to and from the mother ship. We want to know if there’s a schedule, how it’s handled, who oversees the packing.”

“So what exactly is your plan?”

“Better you don’t know, son,” Charlie said. “If you don’t know, they can’t extract that from you. But it won’t come to that. Just do as you’re told, be a good worker and you’ll have no problem. When the time comes, we’ll get you out of here as there’ll be no more croatoans left.”

Chapter 17

THE HOWL of a croatoan fighter craft flying a low circuit over the camp kept Layla awake for most of the night. She punched her pillow and checked her watch after being awoken from the latest pass, probably an hour’s sleep if that, not much chance of any more.

At first the sound evoked memories of the battle of Britain. Flashbacks to shortly after the vessels appeared from the sinkholes, stuffed with ground troops who spread from the freezing smoke like locusts. The fighters appeared almost immediately in support, taking everything out of the sky in short order, firing powerful weapons at targets on the ground. They left almost as quickly as they appeared after annihilating the global population. That’s when she first met Augustus, after the overhead howling stopped, before the mini ice age took hold.

Layla thought about his threat to Gregor, and wondered if he’d seen the same side of Augustus that she had.

A group of croatoan foot soldiers rounded up survivors, including Layla, taking refuge in a supermarket. He appeared, in his mask and robe, and announced that everyone was to be interviewed in the warehouse.

Layla was fifth in line out of the twenty-five-strong group.

When she entered the warehouse, Augustus was sitting behind a desk, holding a pen. A pile of four bodies lay to her right hand side. He told her he was carrying out a skills assessment for future operations, and it was her chance to shape a new world. She was the only survivor to leave the building alive, and witnessed Augustus sliding his pen across his neck after each person that confronted him revealed their skills, and was apparently found unsuitable. They were executed on the spot by a croatoan soldier.

Light was already starting to seep through the drapes, illuminating the tatty trailer’s brown and cream interior. She commandeered it after the team arrived in Pennsylvania. The usual process was to grab the closest available accommodation to Gregor’s choice of office.

She peeled a large carrot in the kitchen sink and took a bite. A sour, metallic taste burst around her mouth as she crunched. Layla gagged, spat it out, and took a drink from a plastic water bottle, swilling the fluid, attempting to wash away the taste. For years she’d always tried to keep a vegetable patch on the edge of camp. The yield was gradually becoming worse; this year’s crop was almost entirely inedible.

The alien root was having a larger combined effect, on the ground and atmosphere. Layla decided that now would be a good time to check out the chocolate factory. Dawn was breaking and the croatoans didn’t usually start work for another hour. She could slip inside the warehouse and have a good look around their equipment, check their latest charts and maybe even try and make sense of their computers. It wasn’t worth risking before, but things were moving and she wanted to know the direction.

She slipped on a black sweater and carefully opened the door, trying not to make a sound.

Thunder rumbled in the distance as she neared the chocolate factory. The last thing she needed. It was like an alarm for the aliens to go outside, and revere the adverse weather. Layla tried to appear as casual as possible as she walked around the side of the building toward the front entrance.

Thin light shone out of the barrack buildings into the quiet main square, reflecting off the hover-bikes parked in the middle. Some aliens were busy. Layla could hear faint sounds of clanking and humming, nothing really unusual.

She reached for the chocolate factory door. It flew open, striking her hand as she attempted to pull it away.

A croatoan surveyor stood in the entrance and looked up. It carried a shoebox-sized device under its right arm, not one of croatoan computers; this had a luminous green display and several circular blue buttons. A transparent pipe curled around the box, like a vacuum cleaner hose.

The croatoan clicked a few times and held its free arm to one side in a gesturing motion.

“Good morning. You’re starting early today,” Layla said.

The alien shuffled past her, followed by four of its colleagues, each carrying the same thing.

Layla stood on her tiptoes and peered into the gloom behind the outgoing procession. The place was a hive of activity. Nothing like she’d ever seen before.

Two more aliens filed past, carrying the large object on a stretcher. It was the first time she’d observed the back of the glowing sea-green piece of equipment. Five circular holes ran along the side, funneling into the internal machinery.

She stepped inside and walked past the croatoan worktable. A group of eight surveyors stood around it, busily communicating with each other, holding up their tablets, pointing. They stopped and turned as she passed. Layla pointed toward the back of the room, where Vlad sat gazing at the screens, dutifully monitoring the harvesters.

Vlad remained transfixed on the screens as Layla approached. She said, “People are going to start to think you’re a chocolate factory ornament.”

Vlad twisted in his chair. “I’m not the only one who works here.”

“You are for at least sixteen hours a day.”

He grunted and span back to face the screens. Layla remembered him close to breakdown when he worked with the livestock, turning up increasingly drunk for work, losing his temper before sobbing in open view. Vlad was the one member of the gang that didn’t seem to be able to simply brush things under the carpet for the sake of survival; he had little choice but to go along so carved out a niche in the most bearable work. Layla got it, Gregor didn’t. He called Vlad the wet lettuce.

“How’s the conversion rate since the change last night?” Layla said.

Vlad twisted his chair around. “Seems to be doing the trick. I’ll have a better idea in a few hours but the early signs are good.”

Layla glanced back to the croatoans. “How long have they been here?”

“About three hours. Came in the middle of the night. I’ve never seen as many of the little freaks buzzing around. One of them brought over a tray of food,” Vlad said, twisting his face into a grimace.

“You’ll let me know if you see anything strange?”

“Look around you,” he replied, and started writing something on a notepad.

LAYLA DECIDED to follow the croatoans as they left the chocolate factory in a busy gaggle. She shadowed them left, into the eight-foot gap between the factory and training building, toward the paddocks.

A loud, short electric buzz echoed ahead. The warning sound before the paddock gates were opened. She reached the other side and saw red lights spinning on either side of the entrance.

Two surveyors pulled the tall mesh gates open.

Humans remained at the opposite end of the paddock, huddled under the shelter, staring over with blank faces at the croatoan activity.

To Layla’s right, the gravity trailer drifted past across open ground.

Four croatoans kept it on course at each corner. A large transparent structure, about the size of a single decker bus and split into five sections, balanced on top. Each section had a small circular hole at one side and a door on the other. It must have been assembled in one of the warehouses. To her knowledge, nothing that size had come off a shuttle. That’s the way croatoans did things, assembling their equipment like hi-tech flat-packed furniture.

The croatoans pushed the trailer through the gate and brought it down in a clear grassed area. They slid the structure off the trailer and moved it to one side. Other aliens joined them, carrying over their pieces of electronic equipment.

Layla crouched by the electric fence and observed their movements. Another roll of thunder boomed in the distance, the aliens collectively looked up for a moment before carrying on.

Each of the five devices was twisted in place around the holes of the large structure, one for every compartment. Two croatoans attached the hoses from the devices to the larger one that was carried over on a stretcher. It took on the appearance of a control panel now the whole thing was interconnected. Most croatoans gathered around the glowing coffin-sized device, fifteen of them.

The remaining five made their way toward the far end of the paddock. Each pulled a single human out of the flock and led them at gunpoint back toward the main group, and lined them up outside each individual compartment, all dressed in dirty sheets, tied around their bodies.

A croatoan approached the back of the first compartment and knelt by the attached device. A series of lights started winking on it. A whirring noise drifted over to Layla.

As the alien moved along each compartment, the noise became gradually louder. It sounded like being next to a bank of servers with multiple running fans. All five shoeboxes collectively winked and hummed.

The left hand compartment started to fill with dark orange smoke. Its neighbor took on a lighter tone. The middle compartment was slightly more transparent, the one after that was only tinged with orange. The left hand compartment remained clear.

Croatoans moved all around the structure, investigating it, checking the shoeboxes, probably for readings, and pressing their gloved hands against the plastic looking shell.

It looked to Layla that they were creating different types of atmosphere, pressurized in individual compartments.

The aliens stood in a circle for a few moments, before one broke from the group and opened the individual doors to each compartment. Puffs of orange smoke drifted into the cloudy sky after the last three doors were released.

Layla edged behind a tree stump and peered over. She started to feel that this was an experiment she needed to see, and didn’t want chaperoning away by a paranoid alien.

A croatoan guarding the man outside the left hand compartment, opened its door by raising a lever, and cajoled the confused looking man inside at gunpoint. It slammed the door behind him, and secured the lever downwards.

The same thing happened in turn to all four humans outside the other compartments, until all five sections were occupied. It looked like a strange zoo as the croatoans stood around the structure, checking the smaller devices and crowding around the larger console. The humans looked around, pressed against the interior, one sat cross-legged on the floor. A croatoan approached and ushered him up with a gun.

Through a gap between the aliens, Layla could see they were peering down to a light blue square on the larger device. Probably giving them data or readings from individual sections.

Dense orange Smoke billowed into the left hand compartment, quickly filling it from top to bottom. Its black haired inhabitant clutched at her throat, sinking to her knees. Layla momentarily lost sight of the human in the smoke, until the top of her head pressed against the bottom edge.

After observing for a few minutes, looking between the console and the compartment, a croatoan released the door and pulled the lifeless body out by the hair.

Smoke pumped into the next compartment, having the same effect on the human. Because it was less thick, Layla could see a visible outline thrashing around inside. The man dropped to his backside and tried to kicking at the door with his feet, eventually stopping and rolling to one side. He was dragged out shortly afterwards.

Fists thumped against the transparent middle section, the woman inside had seen what was coming. She tried shouting toward the croatoans, the structure must have been sound proof. One walked up and stood directly in front of the struggling woman, as if mocking her, matching her actions as she slowly perished. Aliens clicked loudly from the console.

She was unceremoniously dumped on the increasing pile of bodies after five minutes.

The humans in the final two compartments were facing each other. Hands placed on the internal separating wall, against each other.

Layla cupped her hand over her mouth and breathed, “Oh my God.”

A light orange tinge surrounded the man in the second to last section. He looked around, squinting, and wiped his eyes. He remained standing for two minutes, before doubling over and dry retching several times. He leaned against the side with his eyes tightly shut, nursing his stomach. The woman in the final compartment watched on, her head gently rocked as she clasped her hands on her cheeks.

After a few more minutes, two croatoans opened the final compartment doors. The man staggered out and fell, gasping for clean air. A croatoan pulled him up by his filthy white toga and pushed him back toward the flock. The woman was also encouraged at gunpoint toward the shelter. She didn’t need a second invitation and sprinted, tripping and tumbling, before glancing back and hurrying away.

All doors on the five compartments were left open. Croatoans crowded the console and seemed to be communicating the results of whatever they were testing. Some were more animated than others, raising their arms and pointing at individual sections of the structure.

A croatoan with a red-rimmed visor stood on top of the console and raised its arms. The group fell silent. A minute later, five aliens walked to the front of the structure and stood in the individual sections; one secured each door behind them.

The whirring started and each compartment filled with various shades of smoke, like before, going from thick to thin, from one end to another. The aliens inside pressed their gloves against the walls, moving them round in a circular motion. More visible from right to left.

Layla edged back and observed from the trees. The croatoan with the red-rimmed visor checked the small devices attached to each individual compartment, signaled back to the aliens at the console, and then thumped its glove against the middle section.

The croatoan inside removed its helmet, revealing its ugly tortoise-like head. Aliens surrounded the section, clicking loudly; others from the left and right of the structure were released and joined the mob. All excitedly went back and crowded around the console.

Their objectives started to make a little sense, although Layla didn’t know the true motivation behind it. Were they testing an atmosphere where they could survive and a human would die, or was it a test to just try and find an atmosphere that they could survive in on earth, with enough of the root extract mixed into the atmosphere. Regardless of which one it was, Layla knew either way was bad news for humans.

Increasing the land conversion statistics now started to make a little more sense. The urgency of the request baffled her at first, but after seeing this it seemed a full colonization and extinction event was planned.

Chapter 18

CHARLIE STOKED the fire with a stick, inhaling the succulent scent of roasting rabbit.

“The boy done good, eh?” Charlie said as he used his hunting knife to cut a piece from the spit. Waiting for it too cool before he took a bite and delighted in the tenderness of the meat. He nodded. “Yup, you caught a good one there, son.”

Charlie wiped his knife on a rag tucked into his belt and slapped his son on the shoulder. Ben and Ethan picked at the rabbit with a set of old forks as though it were some alien creature ready to reanimate at any moment. Maria tentatively took a bite, analyzed it, realized the taste suited her, and returned for a second serving.

“You two are too used to eating processed grey slop, right?” Denver said, pointing his knife to the two men. “The stuff they fed you from the trays?” Grease dripped from his lips and soaked into his beard. He dabbed at it with the back of his hand.

“It wasn’t so bad there,” Ben said.

“You won’t have to put up with this much longer,” Denver added before he cast eyes back to Maria as she chewed on a rabbit leg.

For a very brief moment, Charlie had a flashback to sitting with Pippa by a fire in their ice cave, cooking up a fox they caught. Maria’s mannerisms and easy nature were so similar. Either that, or the distance of time had compressed Pippa into a half-remembered mimic, whose real personality was but a ghost.

Charlie had noticed that since Maria and Ethan had joined by the riverside, sitting on logs surrounding a fire, that Denver had barely taken his eyes off Maria. And he didn’t blame him.

Aside her physical attraction, Charlie could see what Denver saw in her: a good healthy balance of emotions that she wasn’t afraid to show or act upon. Some people, like his old National Guard officer, thought that those who were best equipped for survival were the ones who throttled their emotions.

In the years since the old officer died, during the ice age, Charlie had learned that he was wrong. Those that could survive weren’t repressed. They were in tune with their emotions and in a good position to act upon them.

He’d seen too many good people die because they repressed their fear.

As far as Charlie was concerned there were no such things as negative emotions. Each one served an important role and the individual who had those in harmony were the ones that outlasted those who were devoid.

Maria was one of those people who had that harmony.

Even now, after all the stress and fear of the day before, she was delighting in the simple pleasures of spit-roasted rabbit and fish, caught naturally.

Ethan sat back, crossing his arms, parallel lines etched into his forehead. “I know something’s going on,” he said, looking up at Denver.

At first, Charlie thought he meant Denver’s not too subtle glances at Maria. But then the boy continued and looked to Charlie as he spoke, uncrossing his arms and pointing his finger.

“You’re in on it too. In fact, I think I must be the only one you haven’t told. You’re planning something. I know it.”

“What are you talking about?” Maria said, shaking her head with annoyance.

“The atmosphere’s changed. Hasn’t it Ben?” Ethan said.

After sitting there silent for the best part of an hour, his right fist shut around the bead, Ben looked up at Ethan and then Maria. His face tightened as though he was in pain.

Internally he probably was, Charlie thought. Ben had clearly made up his mind to leave for the farm, but the thought of leaving his friends behind weighed on him heavily. Even his shoulders were hunched as though his concern was real and solid.

“I’m not staying,” Ben finally said.

“What?” Ethan replied, his eyebrows twitching upward.

“Staying here? None of us are, Ben. We’re moving on later today,” Maria said, not really getting what Ben was saying.

He stood up, brushed the dirt from his now-tatty-looking uniform and took a breath. “I’m leaving you, I mean here with Charlie and Denver. I can’t do this, I’m just not cut out for it.”

“I don’t understand,” Ethan said.

“What is it you’re saying?”

“Explain Ben. You’re not making much sense,” Maria added.

“Like I said. I’m not cut out for this. I can’t survive out here. Not like you two. I don’t belong here. I’m going to do a job for Charlie. I’m returning to the croatoans, in a farm run by a human called Gregor. Charlie and Denver have explained everything, and it’s the right choice for everyone concerned. I’m doing this for me but also for you two. You’ll stand a better chance if I do this. We all will.”

For the next ten minutes, Charlie and Denver briefly explained the plan to Ethan and Maria, leaving out certain important pieces that could get them into trouble if they were to be captured, such as the bead and the location of the decoy shelter.

“And there’s no changing your mind?” Maria said.

“None.”

“Well, that’s that then,” Maria said. “I understand and respect your decision. But I hope we’ll get to see you again soon. I’ll miss you.”

“And I’ll miss you too,” Ben said, moving to her, leaning down and hugging her. He broke away and hugged Ethan. “And you too, Ethan. But you’re young enough that you’ll soon adapt out here and thrive. I’m not so adaptable.”

“This might be what a funeral felt like,” Ethan said. “Like the ones on the video recording. I never knew it’d feel so bad. It’s worse than losing Jimmy.”

A hush descended on the camp as people processed that thought in their own way.

For Charlie it was the picture of hundreds of graves he had personally dug in order that those who had perished would at least get some kind of sendoff.

Even if almost all of them were strangers, given the state of the world, having to bury anyone, even someone with no personal connection still felt like a loss. Every human counted for so much more now when there were so few.

“Denver, be a lad and get Ben’s pack ready.”

“Sure thing.” Denver stood up and moved to the shelter, Pip following right behind him like she was his shadow.

“Before I go,” Ben said, “Can you tell us what it was like before all this? How did it happen? The knowledge might help me on the farm.”

Charlie looked at the three of them starting back at him with the rapt attention of children at story time. With the fire burning to embers and the morning’s chill burning off he thought it as good a time as any. Once Ben was gone, it’d be one less thing to go through for the others, and Ben was right. The more he knew, the stronger position he would be in.

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning.” He leaned back and crossed his legs and began his tale. He filled them in about how society was back then, how he worked for a production company and that fateful day when he went down into the sinkhole.

“How did you survive that?” Maria said, her mouth gaping with surprise.

“Pippa was on the surface looking down. She saw the alien craft before I did. She got the firemen and the police to haul me and the boy up, but he perished as the great metal orb climbed out of the hole and crushed him into the sides. I managed to land on the front of it and use its momentum to ride up and out.

“When I got to the surface everyone ran. Once I was clear of the ropes and harnesses, Pippa and I managed to get into my truck before the croatoan orb dispensed the gas.

“That’s what killed most people on their first surfacing. We don’t know what it was exactly, but later, talking with some guys from the army who had tried to fight back initially, it seemed it was some kind of neurotoxin.”

“What did it do?” Ethan said, not understanding the term.

“It paralyzed people. But it didn’t stop them from feeling pain. Most of the afflicted died through starvation and thirst, while others died from heart attacks and other blood-pressure based illnesses.”

“That’s terrible,” Maria said. “I can’t imagine how scary that must have been to be paralyzed and know you’re going to die but not being able to do anything about it.”

Charlie shook his head at the memories. “If only you know half of it. It was a terrible time. Numbing. No one could truly comprehend what was happening. The croatoan’s orbs came up at the same time and continued to surface for a week all over the world. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them.

“Pippa and I estimated they were in the ground for thousands of years. Before even humans fully evolved. We should have known it sooner. The signs were there. Over the ages, many societies and cultures had experienced them in some way or another.

“We discovered cave paintings that in hindsight were obviously early croatoans. When you go back through human history and look at some of the strange reported events, its clear the aliens were involved. I can show you in more detail when we reach our destination. Pippa and I researched a lot of this once that initial phase was over.”

“Initial phase?” Ethan asked. “What else happened?”

Lighting a root cigar, Charlie took a long drag and exhaled the orange smoke. The root made his brain tingle and a warm sensation crawled over his body, clearing away the tiredness, making him feel alert and a little high—an energetic high, one that he had come to rely on to keep him vital and healthy.

“When the military initially resisted, they busted open one of the orbs. It had one of those smaller aliens inside. Shriveled up and aged but still alive. We carbon dated one. They’re essentially immortal as long as they maintain their chemical composition. Within the pod were a number of tanks filled with this root compound.

“Additionally, there were other tanks filled with the toxin. That initial attack crippled humanity. They destroyed our satellites and jammed our radio signals. Our computers stopped working as each orb acted like an electro-magnetic pulse station. Together, they networked, increasing their capability and reducing us to using flags to communicate.

“The second phase was when the mother ship arrived. It altered our atmosphere and brought on the ice age. Along with the gas the orbs emitted, they did something to drastically shift the temperature of the planet.

“Those that weren’t killed by the gas were killed by the extreme weather. It took six months for the ice to take hold. During that time, the mother ship sent down thousands of raiders—ships that bundled humans together and took them up there, for whatever reason. Testing, experiments, food. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was hiding, staying live.

“That’s when you met Gregor?” Ben asked.

“A few years later, yeah. I stayed in North America, joining up with some military friends I knew from my days in the National Guard. We retreated to their army base with Pippa and formed a group of survivors.

“We were forced south where we found a cave system that we used as our new base of operations. We would go out and search for survivors, bringing them back and helping those that we could. One day, Gregor and half a dozen of his Armenian brethren turned up. Somehow, they’d travelled all the way from Europe.

“They brought tales of the thawing and the harvesters. Within a few years the thaw came to America, but Gregor was long gone before then. Gregor and I didn’t mix well. He had certain ideas I didn’t agree with. He wanted to join with the croatoans, co-exist with them.”

Maria shook her head with a look of disbelief. At least one of them was finally getting it. Ben however had remained impassive, listening, taking in as much as he could.

“I refused to be a part of that. Some of our group went with him while a few others stayed with me.”

“What happened to them?” Ethan said.

“Most of them died,” Charlie replied. “A few survived but left the group to seek shelter elsewhere. Many people headed for their hometowns, wanting to be some place familiar. There’s pockets of people all over the place, but over the years, most have come to distrust each other. You saw an example of that back in Ridgway.”

“So they’re doing all this just for the root?” Ethan said.

“No, not just the root. They also benefit from human resources. We’re cattle to them, remember? Where beasts of burden, a food source, even amusement. I don’t know what’s special about our planet, but they’ve always known, for thousands of years that it would come to this. I suppose, this is more their home than it is ours.”

“But we can’t just give it up to them,” Maria said.

Charlie smiled, liking this woman more and more. “Exactly. We won’t. Not without a fight. Co-existing is not an option. They know it; we know it. They just think they’ve already won.”

Pip gave a little bark as she dashed over and sat by Maria. The women stroked the dog as it panted excitedly. Denver followed behind with an army backpack. He placed it at Ben’s feet.

“Okay, Ben,” Denver said, “I’ve packed everything you need for a few days journey, though it’ll only take you a day to get to the farm, but I packed extra just in case there’s any problems and it takes a little longer. There’s also one of the alien pistols in case you need to defend yourself.”

Ben’s face lost its ruddy complexion and became pale as the reality seemed to set in. But he nodded his thanks. Standing up, he hauled the pack on this back.

“You sure you want to do this?” Ethan said.

“I’m sure,” Ben said. “Charlie’s tale is even more convincing. That they think they’ve already won means this is an opportunity I must take if I’m to play a role in our fight. I can’t stay out there, but from within, I can hopefully do my duty.”

“We’ll take you south around Ridgway,” Charlie said, “to avoid any confrontation there. From the edge of the forest it’s about half a day’s walk. Den, did you pack him the map and compass?”

“Yeah, it’s in the pack side pocket. Do you know how to use a compass?” Den asked Ben. The other nodded.

“We were trained in basic navigation and we had them installed on the harvester. We thought we were…. well, it doesn’t matter now. I should go now before I run out of time.”

Ethan and Maria took their turns in saying their goodbyes. Charlie was expecting a more emotional affair, but both of them were quite stoic and practical and weren’t as upset as he imagined them to be. Adapting already. He liked that. Gave him hope that they would become good allies and assets. Ben still gave him doubts, but the information he gave him about the shelter was a good test.

If Gregor’s people or the croatoans went there instead of coming back here, he would know Ben had stuck to the plan. Regardless, Charlie was prepared for either eventuality.

It took an hour to cut south around Ridgway. They came to the edge of the forest, through which they could make out the rising smoke of a distant burner. The farm.

“This is it, Ben. Be confident; stick with the plan and you’ll be fine,” Denver said.

Ben stepped into the forest before looking back. “I’ll miss all of you. Hopefully it won’t be long before we’ll meet again. And thanks, Charlie, Denver, for everything. I may not have shown my gratitude, but I can see now that setting us free from that lie was the right thing to do.”

He waved as he turned and disappeared into the forest.

“I can’t believe he’s actually gone,” Ethan said.

Maria stared ahead, quiet.

Charlie gave them a few minutes of respect and reflection before putting his hands on their shoulders. “We should go, we’ve got a plan to enact.”

“Where exactly are we going?” Maria said. “I get that you didn’t want to say in front of Ben, but if we’re to come with you, I’d like to know where it is we are going and why.”

“We’re going to Manhattan,” Charlie said. “As for why… this is the start of the fight back. Today marks the day we bring a war to the croatoans.”

Chapter 19

A LOW LEVEL mist hung around the damp forest floor outside camp. Gregor flinched after dew dripped from the canopy above, and splashed against the back of his neck. He peered down, searching the shrouded ground for one of his first rabbit traps, placed along a prominent run two weeks ago. Nothing.

He hoped for a sunny day, and a rabbit in a noose. Anything but to eat a silver tray of slop. Supplies were running out, a few cans of out of date spam, some cake mix and Layla’s revolting vegetables. It was time for a trip to an urban area, a town or city where survivors could be robbed.

Footsteps thudded across the wet ground in close proximity. Gregor darted behind a tree, crouched on one knee, peered around the trunk toward camp. Layla stumbled through a clearing with her hands on her head, around the back of his house to her trailer, slamming the door shut after entering. She’d have some explaining to do later.

Too many people seemed to be acting unilaterally nowadays. Igor would be the first to answer questions today.

As he approached his office, a croatoan fighter shot through the distant sky, blazing a light pink vapor trail. From this distance it looked like the outline of a cruising swallow. The hunter was searching the immediate area for a sighting of Jackson, his bastard and the traitors from the harvester.

Marek groaned, turning on the couch as Gregor entered his office.

“What time is it?” Marek said.

“Early in the morning. Get washed, we’ve got work to do.”

Marek stood in his filthy white vest and jeans, pulled his fingers along his mousy beard and stretched his back. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to hitch a ride with the croatoans. Two were killed in a booby trap yesterday in a former town nearby. Let’s see if we can find any evidence or survivors, information to crush the little wasp.”

“I thought they were sending a hunter to deal with Jackson?”

Gregor snorted. “We’ll get him first. This time I’m serious.”

“You’ve said that a hundred—” Marked paused after Gregor raised his hand. “And Igor?”

“He’s coming with us,” Gregor said. He smiled, picked up one of Layla’s cucumbers off his desk and snapped it in two. “After we rob any survivors, he’s going to talk.”

He threw both pieces at Marek, who took a bite, chewed and spat vegetable sludge onto the floor. “Is this her latest crop? It’s worse than the last.”

“Which is why we’re going out. Just like the good old days, brother.”

Marek nodded, yawned and headed for the bathroom.

Gregor thought back to them both as young men in Armenia, terrorizing local villages. The villagers, young and old, had no reason to pay protection money, but they wanted to stay on the right side of the gang. Fresh food and the best wine was the price for being left alone. Gregor prided himself on providing the best for his team, as a reward for their work. It was becoming harder during the last few years. The croatoans were the main gang, he had to live off the dwindling scraps of humanity.

Marek called from the bathroom, “Who’s going to feed the livestock this morning?”

“Take Igor after we get back. If he comes back.”

The big operation Gregor took control of was starting to feel smaller, too many other things were starting to happen locally, things he didn’t know about. It was time to get a grip of the situation. He was doing the right thing. Jackson was the trouble causer, and the one putting the remnants of the species at risk.

Marek returned to the office. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“I’m going to wake up Igor. You grab three of the croatoan attachment and make sure they prepare their hover-bikes,” Gregor handed Marek a small folded map, and pointed toward Ridgway. “We’re going here, but not so close that the sound of the bikes puts any inhabitants on alert.”

“Okay, I’ll have them ready in five minutes.”

“They might be a little pissed. Ten of them were killed yesterday.”

IGOR HAD TAKEN a large wooden shed as his place of residence. The whole thing looked on the verge of collapse. Its moldy pine timbers rotted, and the roof wrap was torn and curled away from the structure on both sides.

Gregor carefully trod across the wet grass to its filthy cobwebbed window, and glanced around the edge of it. Igor lay on a mattress, half under a duvet, snoring. He pulled out his gun, and moved to the front entrance.

It creaked as Gregor slowly opened it. Igor flinched in bed, rolled to one side and carried on snoring. He dropped to his knees and placed the barrel of his gun into the two-faced Russian’s mouth.

Igor’s upper teeth clanked against it. He opened his eyes, blinked, jerked backwards, stared up at Gregor and held his hands to one side.

“What are you doing?” Igor said.

Gregor smiled. “Come on. We’re going scavenging.”

He placed the pistol back in his hip holster and looked around the shed. Faded pictures of topless women had been pinned around the walls. A bottle of vodka sat on a workbench, next to Igor’s revolver. His clothes were folded in a scruffy ball by the end of the mattress. Nothing on view smelt of Augustus.

“Why do you need me? I’m on feeding duty in an hour,” Igor said.

“You’ll be back in time, don’t worry. We’re going to a town where two croatoans were killed yesterday. It’s too dangerous for just Marek and me to go, we need someone else.”

Igor grabbed his sweater and shook it, before placing it over his head. “Marek’s free? Why not take Alex?”

“Questions, questions. We need some short-term supplies until we get near a big city again. Are you coming or not?”

“Do I have an option?” Igor said while pulling on his jeans. He slipped on his boots and glanced up at Gregor with his sneaky eyes.

“I’ll throw this one back. Do I have to ask you or tell you?”

He let Igor take the lead past the chocolate factory. The small-time Muscovite was handy with a gun; Gregor had witnessed it early in the ice age when they came together. It took Igor five seconds to kill four armed survivors in a barn, during the early battle for the remaining territory and resources around Vladikavkaz. Gregor’s gang were forced north and regrouped in the southern Russian city. Igor was pushed south, that’s where they met.

Gregor’s guessed he was a petty jewel thief or a lone wolf for hire in his previous life. The more the years went by, the more his claims of running a Moscow operation became exaggerated. Fat lot of good his bullshit did him in their situation. It’s not like the croatoans would give a flying fuck.

To his left, he noticed an anti-gravity platform, being pushed from the paddocks with three humans slumped on top of it. Their orange skin looked like they were coated in fake tan, like the ladies who used to hang around his hideout in Yerevan.

Igor turned. “What the hell is going on over there?”

“No idea. I’ve got Layla on the case. Speaking to her when we get back.”

Gregor liked to delegate and deal with things in bite-sized chunks. Supplies and Igor were his immediate focus. Delegation brought a sense of responsibility and loyalty, people felt involved. That was something else the Russian could have learned, instead of obsessively grooming his ridiculous moustache.

Marek waved across from the hover-bikes, and walked across to meet Gregor. The square was a hive of activity. Three croatoan riders were in position, the engines were already quietly humming. Clusters of aliens milled around the entrances of every building. The whole place crackled with croatoan speak.

“They seem in high spirits this morning,” Marek said. “Is it national croatoan day or something?”

“What’s up with them?” Igor said.

“Who cares? If they’re happy, I’m happy,” Gregor said. “Do they know where we’re going?”

“Yep, all sorted,” Marek said.

Gregor swung his leg over the closest hover-bike, gripped the side handle with one hand, and tapped the rider on the shoulder.

The bike raised above the height of the buildings and thrust forward.

It tore over the paddocks at low level. Gregor looked behind to see the other two bikes following in line. Below, a strange transparent object sat by the gates, a couple of surveyors around it.

As they reached the far end of the paddock, humans scattered away in all directions from the flight path, running for the shelter or bushes that had sprang up since the area had been cleared. It was one of those moments where the feeling of power was magnified.

In the distance, an orange haze covered the vast farmland. A feeling of pride swelled up in Gregor, he hadn’t been up on a bike in months to get a high level view, there’d been too much to sort out on the ground level. The scale of the project came back to him.

He gripped the other supporting handle as speed increased. They roared over the forest for five minutes before the bike gradually reduced to a slow cruise as the alien’s tracking tablet reached the coordinates that Marek supplied. The engine softly purred as they slowly approached a rocky area below. The rider brought the bike around above it and hovered, waiting for the other two bikes to arrive.

Igor waved as he arrived. Gregor nodded.

All three bikes lowered simultaneously, Gregor’s came to rest at a slight angle. He hopped off. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

The alien didn’t acknowledge him. It sat silently, looking straight forward.

Marek pulled a map from inside his jacket. “It’s a five minute walk from here. Follow me.”

Gregor checked his gun, and held it up. He followed Marek and Igor into the forest. Occasionally pointing his gun at the back of Igor’s head and pulling away. The wet night chill had already left the woodland and humidity was building. Gregor wiped a thin layer of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

Sporadic rays of sun seeped through gaps in the trees, highlighting thousands of midges, busily hovering in clusters. Gregor felt an itch and slapped his neck. Igor spun around and faced him.

“Paranoid about something?” Gregor said.

Igor frowned. “Anything could happen out here. I’m staying alert.”

Leading the way, Marek crunched along the forest floor. He crouched by a fallen rotting tree and checked his laminated map.

“Are we here?” Gregor said.

He pointed his gun over the dark brown, lice infested trunk. “It’s just over there, we’re two hundred yards away.”

Two people moved in the distant clearing. Gregor gripped Igor’s shoulder. “Get down.”

They observed the area for five minutes. Creeping closer from tree to tree, until the three were fifty yards away. Two people stood on a former street, heating a large metal pot on a fire.

Rubble was spread around the road, probably from yesterday’s explosion. Not that it mattered, the place was slowly dying. The fifth harvester, once repaired, would put it out of its misery. Gregor remembered watching in awe when he first saw one plow through a small town. Chewing up buildings, gouging out foundations and spitting them behind in minute pieces, mixed with surrounding soils.

“We’ll take them head on. Don’t do anything unless I say,” Gregor said.

Igor spun the wheel of his revolver and clicked it back in place. Marek held his gun in both hands.

Gregor moved from behind the tree and quickly broke from the forest. A man and woman turned, wide eyed. She dropped a ladle, he attempted to say something, then turned to run.

“Stop right there,” Gregor shouted. “We mean you no harm.”

Both put their hands up. The man shuffled round to face him, his bottom lip quivered on his dirt-smeared face. They were in filthy clothes, stained with years of grime. If Augustus had a problem with Gregor’s sweater, he can’t have met many of the population. These two were throwbacks from a bygone era, peasant looking types he’d only seen on period dramas before the shit hit the fan.

Marek moved around the right hand side, covering the flank. “Are there any others we need to know about?”

“It’s only us. Please, we’ve got nothing,” the woman said.

Igor moved ahead of Gregor, looked into the pot and pointed down. “Nothing you say? What’s bubbling away here?”

Gregor clenched his teeth and felt his left eye twitch. He bit his lip, to keep the appearance of a team.

“It’s just a simple stew. You can have some,” the woman said.

“Mallard and root, we call it duck a l’orange,” the man said. He nervously laughed, abruptly stopping when it was clear that Gregor didn’t find it remotely amusing.

“Give us your supplies and we’ll go,” Gregor said. “You have time to loot some more. I don’t.”

Igor wrapped his sweater around his hand and grabbed a handle on the side of the pot. “We’ll start by taking this.”

“No,” the woman said. She reached for the other handle. The pot flipped over, and the contents splashed over Igor’s ankles and feet. He jumped back and yelped.

Gregor tried to stifle his laugh. The woman edged backwards.

Igor thrust out his revolver and fired twice into her chest. She collapsed backwards, her right hand flopped onto her chest over the wounds.

The man held out his arms and momentarily froze before kneeling by her side. He clutched her left hand and shook it. “Ellie … Ellie…”

The shots echoed in the distance. Igor picked up a piece of boiled duck by his feet and tossed it into his mouth. Gregor glanced at Marek and nodded.

The man looked up with tears in his eyes. “What have you done? What have you done? This is all we have. You’ve … you’ve killed her.”

Igor stepped forward and fired again. The blood sprayed from the back of the man’s head as the round exited. Igor turned to Gregor. “Whiney pieces of—”

Gregor aimed his weapon at Igor’s face. “Drop it, now.”

Marek quickly moved to Igor’s side and took aim. “He said drop it.”

The revolver twitched in Igor’s hand, he ducked slightly, before holding his left palm toward Gregor, crouching and placing his revolver on the ground. “Steady old friend. They meant nothing to us.”

Gregor wanted to shoot him. But the years they spent together since the invasion had a freezing effect on his trigger finger. “I said don’t do anything unless I said so.”

“She was just a hag,” Igor shrugged. He spat out a piece of duck. “The food tasted like shit anyway.”

“We’ll never know if they had supplies,” Marek said. “We can’t search this whole town. You’ve made this a wasted trip.”

“And you’ve fucked our chances of getting info on Jackson. You’re an idiot,” Gregor said.

Igor smoothed his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. He stared at Gregor with his piercing light blue eyes. “What’s this really about? She was just a hag, an old witch with a cauldron.”

“What’s going on between you and Augustus?” Gregor said.

“Me and Augustus?” Igor said. He shrugged and pursed his lips.

“I heard you talking to him while I was in the garage,” Marek said.

Igor’s eyes half closed as he shot a glance at Marek. “He’s the one you shouldn’t trust. I wasn’t captured by the little wasp.”

“Forget about Marek. I’m the one asking the questions. What were you and Augustus talking about? Don’t even bother denying it.” Gregor said.

“He asked me how things were going. I told him we’re in good shape. What am I supposed to do? Ignore the skinny old bastard?”

“Is that all he said?”

He held his hands toward Gregor, as if they were in invisible cuffs. “Would I lie to you old friend. The things we’ve been through to get here. Seriously?”

Gregor grunted. “If I didn’t need you, Igor… Lead the way back to the bikes. I’ll take your revolver.”

“Have it your way,” he said and started walking away.

Marek picked up his revolver and handed it to Gregor. He whispered, “Are you just going to let him go? He’s up to something, I know it.”

“We need him for the moment, with the new targets. I can’t afford to be a man down on the farm.”

“You’re the boss. But don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Marek said.

Gregor smiled and patted his shoulder. “Trust me, he won’t live to see next winter. Until then he can work with the livestock and meat processing.”

Igor turned and waited by forest edge. Gregor longed for the good old days when things were less complicated.

Chapter 20

BEN CURSED THE OTHERS, and then the aliens and then whole damned world.

A twig snapped against his face as he passed through the dense forest. He pressed his fingers against his cheek and felt the dampness of a stinging cut.

Every sound had him on edge. He held the alien pistol in front of him, aiming at any movement or hint of shadow. The compass kept him on track and occasionally he’d come to old trails, buildings, and even some automobiles.

There were a number of them, rusted hulks, their windows and doors sans glass and consumed by weeds and vines and other creeping green foliage. One thing that struck him was just how quiet it was walking out here on his own. Very few birds or other animals. Certainly, nothing that screeched like the animal that had kept him awake all night.

Tiredness mired his progress and weighed down his legs, the pistol felt heavy in his arms, and the backpack filled with supplies was like an anchor, its hard edge wearing a sore groove into his lower back.

Fuck this, he thought, slumping down on a log. Hefting the pack off, he rubbed his back and looked out ahead of him. There was a clearing maybe only thirty feet away, a few streams of golden light cut through the green gloom, highlighting the dust particles and small buzzing insects as they looked for their next meal.

Splitting the light every few minutes, the solid shadows of the shuttles descended from the mother ship, whose shadow bled through the dark clouds above. He realized he wasn’t very far off at that point. The weird pink lights of the shuttles bathed the tops of the trees and then disappeared beyond the cover.

A sound of a voice came to him then. Different accent to the others. Harsher. Foreign for this land. Not wanting to be caught flat-footed and in the open, Ben slipped behind the trunk, pulling the pack with him.

The voices died off but he could still hear the snapping of twigs getting louder, closer. Perhaps a single person given the regularity of the noise. The trunk made a good rest for the pistol. Ben braced his shoulder against the tree as he looked down the grooved channel that made up the sights.

Dull black, heavy, but accurate and deadly, Ben remembered how lethal the pistol was in Denver’s hands. There’s no way Ben’s aim would be that good, but he knew if this threat came close enough he’d have more than a good chance of hitting it.

His pulse quickened, his breath became shallow.

Twigs continued to snap, getting closer to the edge of the clearing that Ben focused on through a pair of tree trunks. He could see right across the clearing to where the tree line started again.

A figure stepped out.

Ben, although expecting, still found it startling in his heightened state and pulled the trigger too quickly sending his shot firing high above the figure’s head. The person ducked and rolled. At the end of the roll, the person rose to a knee and held out a gun sighting across the tree line, tracing where the shot had come from.

What is he doing, Ben thought, as the figure seemed to sniff the air and then smile before rising to his feet.

“It’s just me, Igor. That you out there, our little croatoan friends? Firing on your allies now? I’m not sure Augustus would be so happy with that.”

The man spun around, his weapon by his side. “Come on then, show yourself, I’ll get you back to the farm.”

The farm! Igor… Ben pulled his pistol away and took his finger off the trigger. He remembered Denver and Charlie talking about an Igor, along with a Marek, Alex and of course, Gregor. All the people who worked on the farm.

Grabbing his pack, Ben vaulted the trunk and ran out to the tree line, making sure he kept the pistol in hand, but pointing down to the ground. He didn’t want to accidentally threaten Igor and get shot himself for the effort.

Excitement and relief built within him as he rushed forward into the clearing, holding his free hand up. “Igor? Please, can you help me?” He didn’t really know how else to start it.

Igor, with his shaved head, droopy moustache and deep scowl aimed his pistol with both arms out in front of him. “Stop where you are and drop that damned weapon,” he said. “Who the fuck are you? And more importantly, what the hell are you doing shooting at me?”

Making a wet thud noise, the alien pistol struck the loamy soil as Ben did as he was told. He held both arms up, having seen people do it in Western films. “I’m Ben, I’m from the ship…. I mean harvester. I escaped from Charlie. I was trying to find my way back.”

“Oh really?” Igor said cocking his head to one side. He looked over Ben, watching the edge of the forest, probably suspecting some kind of trap. “And is he chasing you?”

Ben shook his head. “No, I slipped in the night, no one knows I’m here. He killed the rest of my crew shortly after he damaged the harvester. Please, you’ve got to help me, I can’t stay out here.”

“Why’d you fire on me?” Igor asked, stalking closer, his pistol solid and unwavering, the barrel pointing right at Ben’s head.

“I was just scared. I thought Charlie and his psycho son were stalking me. I panicked. I’m not used to it out here. I’ve only ever known my ship, my cabin, but all that’s gone now, and my crew…” Ben dropped his head to really sell the ruse. Although not exactly experienced in body language, he gathered this Igor wasn’t the prize wrench in the toolbox.

“Stand up,” Igor said, “and turn around.”

For a moment, Ben hesitated, thinking he was going to be executed. But Igor’s bark made him jump and follow the orders. Then the man’s hands were on his arms, pulling them behind his back. Something plastic locked his wrists in place. Igor’s breath was on his neck as he threatened him.

“You’re coming back to the farm with me, Ben, but if you so much as move or breathe out of place, I’ll put you down like a pig and feed you to the cattle. You understand?”

Ben nodded furiously, wondering what the hell he had got himself into and if Denver and Charlie had set him up and all the nonsense about the plan was just a way of getting rid of him, get him killed by these other people.

Not that he could do anything about it now. He thought of showing Igor the bead that he kept in his shirt pocket beneath his zipped jacket, but didn’t want to waste his best gambit and decided to wait until he met this Gregor character.

Still, while Igor placed the alien pistol into the pack and hauled the latter on to his back, Ben said, “I’ve got information, about Charlie and Denver. I know things, I can trade.”

Igor kicked him in the lower back, forcing him toward the edge of the clearing. They were moving back from where Igor had come. “I don’t doubt that, son, but you’re mistaking me for someone more generous if you think I’m going to trade anything with you. I’ll get that information in my own special way, don’t you worry about that. Now get moving, and don’t make as much as a squeak unless I tell you; otherwise I’ll put a bullet in your head. Is that clear enough for you?”

Ben was about to speak but chose not to. Instead he nodded.

“Good little pig, good.”

BEN STIFLED a scream as the gaffer tape, as Igor called it, was ripped suddenly away from his mouth, the adhesive tearing away small patches of skin on his lips and cheeks. His eyes filled with tears. Igor placed his clammy hand over Ben’s face. Leaning in, he whispered, “Make a noise, little pig, and you’ll join those.”

The former gangster pointed to a rack of meat hooks, upon which hung half a dozen men and women, their hands and feet pointing downwards, their chins resting on their chests, the hook embedded deep into their backs.

Below them, flowing in a channel to somewhere further off in the slaughterhouse was a tiny river of blood. It dripped from a series of cuts among the people’s bodies, now stained dark brown with dried blood, forming external arteries like dried rivers.

The smell made Ben gag: a heady mix of coppery blood and lung-scorching bleach. Every breath brought with it a stinging sensation, making his guts turn. He fought to keep the bile down as it rose into his throat.

Igor backed away. Beneath the bright white glare of the overhead strip-light, a piece of dark leather material wrapped around Igor’s waist, presumably for protection, shone glossily. Red stains covered the white ankle-length jacket he wore beneath.

Trying to move, Ben realized his wrists and ankles were shackled to the legs of a steel chair, bolted to the floor. A steel desk stood in front of him, pieces of meat that were once limbs filled a series of containers.

A yellow glow surrounded the edge of a door beyond the hanging bodies.

“No-no,” Igor said, standing in front of him, blocking his view. “There’s no way out unless I say there is. Now, let’s get this party started, shall we? I’m on a schedule.”

Before Ben could say anything, Igor placed his left over Ben’s mouth and with his right bought out a small blade from a front pocket. The blade glinted beneath the strip light as Igor brought it close to Ben’s face. His eyes hurt as they tried to focus close up, but the image just blurred as he screamed and thrashed against the chair.

Aggravating the wound on his face caused by a twig, Igor’s blade dug deeper into the flesh, widening the wound. The blade scraped across his cheekbone, making him yell out, but Igor’s hand was too tightly clasped over his mouth for it to escape the slaughterhouse and raise an alarm.

Ben sobbed with the agony as Igor cut him three times more on the cheek and once across his forehead. The blood dripped down into his eyes making him blink as the world became dark and blurred.

“Now we’ve got the introduction out of the way,” Igor said, “I trust you’ll do as I suggest. Nod if you understand me.”

Of course Ben nodded, unable to do anything else as his face felt alive with pain, burning and unyielding.

Through his darkened vision, he saw Igor’s face come closer. He wore a sick smile. Ben realized then that he’d done this kind of work many times before. Just what the hell had Denver and Charlie got him into?

“First of all, tell me everything. If you lie, I will know, and I will continue to cut you. No one knows you’re here. I have the only key to this facility. We could be here for days if need be. I’m sure you understand that the truth is the only way out of this for you now?”

“Anything,” Ben said, spitting the blood from his lips. “I’ll tell you anything.”

“That’s good, Ben, you’re learning. I like that. Okay, let’s start from the beginning. If you miss anything out, or if you lie, I will start with your eyes and work my way down to your testicles. Trust me, there’s no easy to way to do this. It will hurt. A great deal. And what really gets people is that they sometimes think I’m bluffing. They don’t think that for very long.

With the threat of the blade just inches from his face, Ben answered every question Igor gave him. On it went, for what seemed like hours, until finally, his voice hoarse and his will truly shattered, Igor left for a smoke.

He returned two minutes later with a small silver tray containing a needle and thread and a clear bottle of orange liquid.

“You did well Ben,” Igor said, setting the tray on the table. “Let’s get you fixed up and then we’ll introduce you to Gregor. You will remember what to say when he questions you, won’t you? I won’t have to visit you in the night and continue where I left off, will I?”

“No,” Ben said firmly. The pain had started to dissipate. The first injection of root compound acting quickly. Any desire to sob and beg had long gone. His will had been broken, his fear had run out. All he felt now was a savage desire to end Igor’s life. And that of anyone else who would use him.

Throughout the hours of pain and threats, Ben came to realize the futility of it all. Life to these people meant nothing. It was bad enough what the croatoans were doing to the people, but so far, he’d learned that humans were far worse to their own kind.

He eyeballed Igor as the torturer wiped Ben’s face clean and stitched the wounds. Just a few hours ago those skilled fingers brought pain, but now they sutured his wounds with delicate skill.

That Igor wanted Ben to lie to Gregor told him more than he had told Igor. Despite the pain, he hadn’t given up his friends. For all Igor would ever know is that Maria and Ethan were dead and Charlie and Denver had disappeared into the forest, leaving him behind. Ben would continue with the plan, give Gregor the bead and the location of the decoy shelter and make sure he dealt with Igor before the bastard had a chance to act on his threat.

There was a clear division here in the farm between Igor and Gregor. Ben thought about it as Igor continued treating his wounds. It seemed that Igor wasn’t happy with his status and planned some kind of coup against Gregor.

This gave Ben something to work with. An angle he could exploit. Although Igor was highly skilled in pain, he wasn’t very smart when it came to language and intent. His motivations became obvious during the interrogation. He hadn’t even realized he had shown his hand early.

Even on the ship, Ben was the best poker player, figuring out the other crew member’s plays before they did themselves.

“There,” Igor said, “that’s the last of them. You’ll tell Gregor that Charlie did these. You will tell him about a decoy shelter to get him out of the way and play along, and tomorrow, I’ll go visit the real one. Have Gregor take you at dawn. And if the weapons you promised aren’t there… well,” Igor turned and indicated with a sweeping gesture his future fate among the meat hooks.

“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I understand clearly. You will get everything you deserve. Now, shall we go see Gregor? I’m eager to get this over with.”

“Good little pig,” Igor said, smiling, showing his yellow decaying teeth.

Yes, Ben thought, you will get everything you deserve.

Chapter 21

CHARLIE PULLED BACK the camouflaged tarp, revealing a rusted Ford F-150. The once-red paintwork had given way to a colonization of orange rust. Among the conquering march of time and decay, small islands of defiant paint remained.

Leaves and twigs covered the hood, clinging to the surface.

Charlie swept them off and cleared the debris from the cracked windshield.

The noon sun streaked through the surrounding trees and gleamed off the glass, the cracks refracting a rainbow of light in thin slivers.

A solid metal lockbox took up a quarter of the rear bed. It contained a few days’ supplies, water, ammo, a pair of shotguns and an old army tent.

Pip jumped up into the extended cab as soon as Denver opened the passenger door, curling up in an old grey blanket between the two front seats.

Ethan stood by the river’s edge with his mouth open as he stared on. They’d hidden the truck in a tight copse of trees and shrubs the week before as they scouted the harvester’s route.

Charlie waved him and Maria forward from their temporary camp.

“Does it run?” Ethan said, running his hand along the fender as though it were an ancient relic. To Ethan, it probably was, Charlie thought. He’d have only seen them on whatever brainwashing videos the aliens had given to them to watch.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Of course it runs.”

“How did you keep it working all through the invasion and the ice age?” Maria asked as she joined them.

“My old army friend was a mechanical genius,” Charlie said. “Between him and a colleague of mine, we sourced spare parts and kept it running. With so many people dead and so many vehicles abandoned, it’s not difficult to source fuel and parts. Back in New York there’s a number of Ford dealers and warehouses that we got replacement parts from.”

“So where are we going?” Maria said as Denver loaded up more supplies and the weapons taken from the croatoans.

“Going to take a trip to the East Coast. The Big Apple. Come on, get in; we need to set off if we’re to get there in good time. It’s going to be a long journey. The roads aren’t exactly easy these days,” Charlie said. He held the rear passenger door open and waited for Ethan and Maria to settle in.

Denver jumped into the front passenger seat.

Once inside, Charlie turned the key and after a few splutters, the old diesel power plant roared to life, belching out a little black smoke before purring like a wild cat. He put it into drive and slowly pulled away from the hiding place, keeping the wheels on the harder parts of the forest floor.

From their shelter in Mohan Run, a small clearing within the forest, Charlie drove the truck out through the trees, only once scraping against a branch, and joined the hard surface of interstate 219. The plan was to head south to I-80, which would take them all the way into New York.

Fragments of blacktop had long peeled off the road. Multiple croatoan engineered environmental changes, especially the ice had conspired to ruin the surface. But as long as he stayed vigilant they could make good time.

“I would have expected more cars and trucks,” Ethan said, leaning forward from the rear.

“That’s the kind of thing you see in the films,” Denver said.

“He’s right,” Charlie added, steering around a ten-foot-wide pothole and accelerating onto a clear patch. “When the invasion happened, it took many by surprise, but the war waged for a number of years. Plenty of time for people to get off the roads and go somewhere safe. You’ll see most of the cars still parked near people’s homes or service stations and car lots. The roads were deserted during the war, to allow military traffic to get into position without worrying about the public.”

“Where are all the bodies?” Ethan asked. “I’d have expected to see more.”

Charlie looked at the young man through the rearview mirror. He didn’t really know what he was asking. The idea that billions of people were butchered had to be entirely alien to him. There just wasn’t a way for someone like him, so detached from his own species, to fully comprehend what had happened.

But he’d soon get the idea.

“Most were buried,” Charlie eventually said as he found a clear patch of road. Even without the blacktop in place, the hard concrete provided a brief section of smooth ride. “Despite the situation, many families, neighborhoods, and government organizations did their best to give everyone a proper burial, but sometimes that wasn’t always possible.”

“So what happened then?”

Charlie wanted to tell Ethan to drop it, to focus on survival rather than the dead, but as painful as it was to bring back those memories, it could just be what he and Maria needed to bring some perspective.

“I’ll show you,” Charlie said. “For now, try and get some rest; we’ll be travelling for at least nine, maybe ten hours. If we’re lucky.”

He thought about the croatoans. They wouldn’t be happy with the previous day’s losses. That’s as many of the aliens as Charlie and Denver had killed since the war. Up until now, he and Denver were probably just a minor thorn in their sides, but now… if he were on the other side, he wouldn’t take those losses without some form of vengeance.

Charlie stared out of the windshield and thought that it didn’t look too bad. The trees, bushes and vines that had built up beside the road, and some that had sent roots through the concrete and gravel to break it up into large fragments. It looked quite beautiful.

But the cost of attaining this natural beauty wasn’t worth the blood in the soil.

At one point, the braches that stretched across the road were so thick, they had to get out and chop their way through with machetes and blades Charlie had fashioned from the alien metal. An hour later and they were back on the road, finding clearer spots, making good ground.

When they approached towns or cities, Charlie always took the outer route, preferring to avoid going into the center where there were likely to be pockets of survivors. At one point, a distant sniper fired upon them, a warning shot, hissing over the hood.

“I don’t understand why they would fire on us,” Ethan said. “Surely with so few of us left, they’d leave us be.”

“They’re just frightened,” Denver said. “Not many with working vehicles. Probably think we’re scouting for the farms.”

Charlie noted the change in Ethan’s thinking by the use of us. Good, he thought. The kid was starting to think the right way. If his plans to take down the croatoans was to work, he’d need people like Ethan and Maria to see that humanity was not at war with each other for resources or survival. They had to be united in their struggles.

A FURTHER FOUR hours passed without incident; they’d crossed into New Jersey and were only a few hours from their destination of Newark. Charlie drove the truck up a hill; the road had crumbled away to dirt and gravel, but the F-150’s 4-wheel drive dug in deep and pulled them up to the summit. Putting it into park and engaging the emergency brake, Charlie got out, leaving the engine running.

He opened the door and gestured for Ethan and Maria to get out. They looked at him suspiciously. “I just want to show you two something,” Charlie said, turning his back and approaching the edge of the hill.

Ethan and Maria joined him and both took a sharp intake of breath.

Down in the green valley beyond, a two-hundred-foot-wide sinkhole scarred the earth like a huge wound. Around its crumbling edge, houses and other buildings were left in ruin, half of their walls had collapsed long ago, their open sides now providing shelter for shade-loving plants or trees.

But it wasn’t the ruined homes that caused the surprise; neither was it the huge CAT diggers rusting away on the perimeter. It was what was in the sinkhole that caused the reaction.

The very thing Ethan had expected to see.

Bodies.

Or more accurately—skeletons.

“When things got really bad, after the gas and the initial attack, it became impossible for the authorities, what were left, to handle so many bodies,” Charlie said. “Hospitals were overrun. Funeral homes and cemeteries were full to bursting. Families, those that survived the initial stage, buried their dead in their gardens or in makeshift graves in the woods or other common areas.

“But when the numbers got too huge, the remaining militia, in an effort to prevent the spread of disease, used the same sinkholes the croatoans created to come to the surface to bury the dead.

“All over the country, you’ll find huge ones like this with thousands and thousands of bodies in them.”

Charlie stared away into the distance. The evening sun silhouetted a dozen birds as they glided above the sinkhole. But there was no meat on the bones anymore. They were picked clean by scavengers and the elements years ago.

“That’s terrible,” Maria said, her voice barely a whisper. Ethan remained silent, taking in the scene, realizing what he was looking at.

Charlie didn’t want to have to show them this, but he needed them to understand what was at stake, what had happened to humanity. They had no sense of the numbers or what life was like before. But this would help bring the necessary perspective.

They all got back into the truck, silent, haunted by what they had seen. Charlie didn’t say anything, just let it sink in, let the enormity of what happened finally get through to them.

He turned around on the summit and headed back down the hill, rejoining I-80 and moving toward Newark Bridge. He gunned the engine, taking advantage of a rare section of clear road. He wanted to get to the bridge before sun up. They’d have to complete the rest of the journey throughout the night, swapping driving duties.

Over the sound of the engine, he heard a throaty roar streak by them overhead. An icy chill crept up his spine. The last time he heard a sound like that was when the croatoan fighter craft first descended upon the earth.

Chapter 22

LAYLA HUDDLED under her duvet with a flashlight, pouring through personal notes from the last few years. She needed irrefutable evidence before going to Gregor with her findings. Something to join up the dots.

She cursed under her breath as she read her last two diaries. Self-indulgent, whiny and lacking solid information. With the benefit of hindsight and clear focus, it felt like she was reading extracts from her college days. The Layla that thought the world was against her, living like a hermit in her student apartment, studying the very thing she purposely avoided.

Her notebooks weren’t much better. A lot of hurried scrawls about the livestock condition, available food and observed human-human and human-croatoan interactions. Clouds surrounding the notes, filled with written ideas about how to improve things. Nothing about the noticeable rise in humidity, increasingly amber skies or the greasy film that was starting to coat the region’s foliage. She kicked herself for not paying attention to the bigger picture.

Layla checked her watch. Three in the morning. The only thing for it was a clandestine trip to the chocolate factory. She slid open a window next to her bed and listened.

Distant clanking came from the meat processing warehouses. Nothing unusual, the automated machines ran around the clock. Layla had only been inside those buildings on a single occasion. That was enough. She narrowly avoided throwing up.

An owl hooted.

She gently rattled open the flimsy trailer door and crept past Gregor’s office. Light streamed through gaps in the blinds. She heard raised voices coming from inside. Probably the talk of the good old days with Marek after a few drinks.

Layla glanced into the clear navy starred sky. The mother ship was more revealing during the hours of darkness. It must’ve been hundreds of miles away, but still appeared large, vivid. A bright strip ran across its center.

Pouring in and out of the strip, minute specks of light headed to and from earth, shuttles on their supply runs. Hundreds of them like worker bees, probably landing at different farms around the world in other time-zones.

The moon looked like a scarred apricot; as it had done for a while. She’d seen it that color before when on vacation in Sydney. A bushfire took hold in the Blue Mountains, smoke scattering the rays of light from Earth’s natural satellite.

Layla knew the croatoans were terraforming, but avoided the inconvenient truth. The requests to update land conversion and the experiment on the paddock brought it into sharper focus. Survival instincts that motivated her to work on the farm were now pushing her in the opposite direction.

Monitors faintly glowed through the frosted glass of the chocolate factory door. Vlad was probably watching them at the far end of the building. Nothing in the immediate vicinity suggested the presence of surveyors.

The square was quiet. No signs of any outdoor alien activity.

She slowly twisted the handle. Slipped through the gap and closed the door behind her. Vlad slumped over the desk in front of the bank of monitors. Probably getting a snatch of sleep. It wasn’t a huge issue to doze on shift. The harvester alerts sounded like the grating buzz of an old electronic alarm clock.

Ambient light was sufficient enough for Layla not to use her flashlight. She crept around the empty surveyors’ table to a walled off area on the left hand side.

Croatoans usually carried their equipment and charts there before leaving. The space was used by the alien with the red rimmed helmet visor. It usually sat, surrounded by three of their little computers. Layla watched the alien enter the chocolate factory two weeks ago. The devices sprang into life when the croatoan touched them. She hoped it would be that simple. Just like their tablet devices.

All three trapezium shaped computers were folded open. Layla took a deep breath and touched a central pad with a silver outline on the first.

The screen filled with bright electric blue background. A black square in the middle streamed unrecognizable light green digits. Layla swished her finger across the pad. Nothing happened.

She touched the middle computer. The screen burst into life and split into four sections. Each showing a different graphic. Top right was a bizarre picture of planet earth, the bottom three quarters of the globe was orange tinted. It span around, showing hundreds of black dots across the continents, probably farms. Top left was a graph, some kind of measurement, impossible to read.

The bottom two pictures showed North America. One she recognized as the land they’d farmed, colored in red. It wasn’t a surprise that the croatoans were also tracking progress, she expected that. The final picture had a shaded in area of previously untouched land, to the north of their location. She guessed it covered a hundred square miles.

Layla focused on the last image, and wondered if she was looking at the tipping point for the required atmospheric change. It looked too small.

She touched the last computer. It flashed awake.

The display looked like a timeline. Thirty tasks in alien language. Twenty-eight struck through. Whatever they were doing, it looked close to completion.

None of the information was as compelling as the experiment. Collectively, it all led to the same logical conclusion.

Something gripped Layla’s shoulder.

She flinched. Turned.

Igor smiled, his face bathed in a blue glow from the computers. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Layla put her hand to chest and felt her rapidly drumming heart. She let out a deep breath. “Jesus. I thought you were…”

His right arm was behind his back. He never failed to look shifty and dangerous.

“Thought I was an alien?” Igor said. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” She glanced to his side. “What have you got there?”

Igor stepped toward her. “Things are going to change around here. You need to make sure your colors are nailed to the right mast.”

GREGOR POURED a whiskey into a shot glass, slammed it onto the table, and pushed it across to Ben. The dog from the harvester had earned it.

“Drink. It’ll put hairs on your chest,” Gregor said.

Ben frowned and twisted the glass. “What is it?”

“The water of life. Now drink. Do not insult me.”

Ben the dog held the contents of the glass in his cheeks, and swallowed with a single exaggerated gulp. He screwed up his face, squeezed his neck, and coughed.

Marek, who stood beside Ben, roared with laughter. “Looks like he enjoyed it.”

“You do realize what’s going to happen if I find out you’re lying?” Gregor said. He swiped a finger across his own throat.

“Why would I lie? It’s been a nightmare since he attacked our harvester.”

Gregor held up the necklace and gazed at the bead. “Jackson pretended to be my friend when I first arrived. It was all an act. He was gathering information for his assaults. He risks all our lives.”

Marek pointed at the dog. “What are we going to do with him?”

“I’m with you guys. You can trust me,” Ben said.

Gregor stared at the dog, mulling over three options. Ben quickly broke eye contact, and looked down at his empty glass.

They couldn’t return him to the Operations Compartment of the repaired harvester. This dog had seen the outside world. He could easily open his mouth during a moment of weakness and compromise the whole crew. The second option was to turn him into silver trays of slop. It seemed like a waste.

“I’m going to reward you,” Gregor said. “Because of the information you provided, you can have a job on the farm. Be under no illusion; what I give, I can take away with a bullet. Do you understand?”

It wasn’t much different from the speech Gregor used to give to new recruits in Yerevan. Before anyone became fully integrated, they had to prove themselves. Ben the dog had already done this to some extent, but Gregor was wary. Jackson had shown to be a sly operator in the past. Leopards didn’t change their spots.

Gregor smiled as the frightened dog nodded.

“Yes. Thank you, sir,” Ben said.

Gregor winced. “Don’t call me—”

Two knocks boomed against the door.

“Who the hell is that at this time?” Marek said.

Before anyone could respond, Layla flung the door open. She looked immediately at the dog.

“Strange time for a visit,” Gregor said.

“I’ve been carrying out a little bit of the investigation work you asked me to do. Who’s he?”

“Let me introduce you to Ben,” Gregor said. He held up the necklace. “He’s given me the location of a hideout used by the little wasp. Jackson tried to use him as his new bitch. Recognize this?”

“Is that?” Layla said.

“Jackson’s necklace. Yes. I’m going in a few hours,” he turned to Ben. “He’ll show me the way. And you’re coming with him.”

“Me?”

“If you’re bullshitting, I’ll leave you in the forest.”

Layla sat on the couch. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

“Bigger things than Charlie Jackson?” Marek said. “We’ve wanted that bastard for years. What could be bigger?”

“Yesterday, I watched the croatoans carrying out a test. Did you see a large transparent structure in the paddocks?”

Gregor nodded. “We passed over it. Why?”

“It was some sort of atmosphere box. They tested five different levels on humans and aliens. Let’s just say we wouldn’t survive in an environment where they can take their helmets off.”

“It doesn’t take a genius to work that out. They wouldn’t wear them in the first place if they didn’t need them,” Marek said.

“You’re missing the point,” Layla said. “Look around you. The sky during dusk and dawn. Go out and look at the moon. The increase in land conversion. It’s all building.”

“They want more root. So what?” Gregor said.

“They’re terraforming the planet. The root is how they’re doing it.”

“Even a fool can see they’re changing the place. What are we supposed to do about it?” Gregor said.

“Why would we run away to live in ruined city?” Marek said. “Somebody else would just step in. The croatoans needs us, we’ve proven that.”

“I’ve just come back from the chocolate factory. There was information on the computers that collectively pointed to something happening very soon.”

“Very soon? Collectively?” Gregor said.

“Graphics and a timeline,” Layla said. “They looked close to concluding whatever they are trying to achieve. I think the experiment backs it up.”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” Gregor said. “We provide them with food. Manage the farms around the world. Why would they choke us to death?”

Layla rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. To live on our planet in conducive conditions?”

“No need to get sarcastic. I can’t risk everyone’s lives, based on your theory. You might be completely wrong.”

“And if I’m not?”

Ben cleared his throat.

“Do you have something to say?” Marek said.

“Charlie thinks the same,” Ben said. “That’s why he’s been trying to stop it.”

“Who gives a fuck what he thinks?” Gregor said. Ben looked back at his boots. “I can see things changing. We can all see things are changing. It’s a question of to what level, the timing and our personal survival. Layla, I’m not going through this in the middle of the night.”

“We might not have time to wait,” Layla said. “I told you the other day they’re acting differently. It’s happening soon, I know it.”

Gregor twirled the necklace around on his finger. He sat back in his chair, stroking his chin. “First I deal with the hideout. Layla, try to find out more. We’ll get together this evening and decide our next steps. If we act, we have to be one hundred percent sure. I’m not risking everything on a hunch.”

She nodded.

“It’s crazy,” Marek said. “We’ve been doing this for ten years. Why now?”

“We’ll discuss it tonight. I need a couple of hours sleep before heading out,” Gregor said.

“There’s something else,” Layla said. “Igor came into the chocolate factory. I think he knows what’s going on. He threatened me and said things were changing.”

“Don’t worry about that Russian scumbag. I’ve got him just where I want him,” Gregor said.

“Have you?” Layla said. “Or does Augustus?”

“Screw that freak,” Gregor said, resisting the urge to insult Layla. He jumped from his chair and grabbed the back of Ben’s neck. “I’ve got my eye on a different prize at the moment.”

Chapter 23

MORNING BROKE with a rich purple stain across the sky. An hour later and the color burned away to be replaced by a thick, tobacco-orange.

Denver parked the truck at the edge of the broken road, what used to be the New Jersey Turnpike, where it met the Newark Bay Bridge. The structure lay half in the bay. The thick, sludge-like water rolled slowly back and forth across the debris.

From their position, they could see across to Manhattan. The broken shards of hundreds of towers, piercing the orange sky like shattered grey teeth. They spoke of the initial devastation during the first invasion.

Charlie got out of the truck and helped the others. Ethan and Maria had slept for the entire over-night journey. Charlie got a couple of hours when Denver took over driving, but his body could have done with a few more. He needed another intake of root to really feel awake again, but now they were in the city, root wasn’t so easy to come by.

His current supply would have to last. If things went well, they’d be heading back out by noon anyway. Just a few hours here to get the device and they’d be done.

“Wow,” Maria said, stretching her arms above her head as she stared on toward the city. “That’s incredible. This is the old world?”

“Yeah. Used to be one of the greatest cities on Earth,” Charlie replied.

“This is the place where you worked?” Ethan asked, impressing Charlie that he remembered. “Must be heard to deal with the memories of your colleagues when you come back.”

Charlie shrugged. He’d lost so many of the years it was difficult to still grieve for individuals. Occasionally he would think back to the young lad he tried to save in the sinkhole, Luke, and his supervisor, Steph. That fateful day will always remain with him. How he and Pippa and a single fireman were the only survivors from that day.

“Right. It’s where we’re header,” Charlie said to break himself from his memories and cut anymore inquiry into his grief.

“How are we going to get across?” Maria asked. “It’s not like we were taught to swim.”

“Follow me,” Charlie said.

Leading them across the deserted bridge until they came to the point in the middle of the bay, where the concrete road split apart, Charlie leaned over the side and ran his hand along the side until his arm was submerged up to his elbow.

It took a moment, but he found it. A rope. He pulled on it and from within the murk of the water, he pulled up a plastic container with weights on the side. “I need some help over here,” Charlie said.

Ethan and Denver grabbed the rope and the three of them hauled up the eight-foot by four-foot plastic container and dumped it onto the concrete road.

“What is it?” Maria said.

“Transport,” Charlie said. They unclipped the plastic ties of the container, leaving the lid on the broken road. Inside was a rubber dinghy with a small outboard motor. A compressed-air tank would self-inflate it. They lifted it out and depressed a button on the canister and watched as it took form over the course of a few short minutes.

“Come on,” Charlie said, “Let’s get this in the water.”

The dinghy hit the surface with a wet slap. Charlie sat in the back, manning the outboard. The others sat on the hull, with Denver at the front, facing the mainland, his sniper rifle shouldered, scope to his eye. He scanned in slow, sweeping arcs, keeping them protected.

Progress was slow across the bay as the prop struggled to propel the boat through the thick water. They had to stop a number of times to get around dense weeds that had grown up from the bay’s bed. They looked like vines, alien and entirely out of place for the water. But then that’s what those bastards wanted: to turn Earth into their world.

They eventually reached the mainland and pulled the boat up into a wooded area. The weather was getting cooler. Charlie zipped his camouflaged combat jacket. He’d have to get Ethan and Maria some better clothes; their uniforms from the harvester were getting badly torn and damaged, and being blue and orange were standing out too easily for his liking.

“Where now?” Maria said as Pip pointed her nose toward the foliage-strangled city. Her head tipped up as she picked up a scent. Charlie could smell it too. Roasting meat.

Charlie held up his hand. “Okay, listen to me. The city will have pockets of survivors. Some will be friendly, others won’t; don’t do anything stupid. Just follow Denver’s lead and mine. By the smell of it, there’s a group not far from here, and the wind direction is telling me they’re just beyond this copse of trees.”

“So why don’t we just go round and avoid them?” Ethan asked.

“Too far,” Denver replied. “Most of the city was totally leveled during the war. Entire buildings and towers were toppled, roads destroyed. It won’t be easy and the longer we’re out in the open the longer we’re a target for anyone who doesn’t want us around, or wants our supplies.” Denver pointed to the three backpacks of gear, food and water they had brought with them.

Charlie hefted one onto his back, Maria and Ethan took the other two, leaving Denver free to carry and aim his rifle. As the best shot in the group and with vision that would rival an eagle, it was better to have him free to move.

“Let’s go. Lead the way, Den,” Charlie said.

His son nodded once and turned his back. With two long strides he moved into the forest, Pip dutifully staying by his side.

It was cooler inside the forest with the thick tree cover blocking out the morning sun. The smell remained though, carried on a breeze. It didn’t take long for them to hear the sound of voices. Thankfully human.

Although the problem with that was that it wasn’t always clear what their motivations were. Just because they were human, didn’t mean they had the same outlook as Charlie.

All this time under the new alien paradigm had really shifted people’s perception of what it meant to be human and what society should and shouldn’t be. Sure, he had to be selfish at times to ensure his survival, but wherever possible he sought ways to be inclusive.

It’s why he sent Ben to the farm. There was certainly no love lost between them and Gregor, but Charlie knew that Ben would find a way into their support and would be taken care of. There was no way he’d be able to cope on his own in this kind of environment. He needed a more clear-cut structure and someone strong to lead him.

Despite what Charlie thought of Gregor and his methods, he was certainly a strong leader and would take care of Ben, at least long enough that they could get the inside info from him and free those poor bastards trapped in the farm.

Pip stopped and wagged her tail. Denver took a knee and held his hand up. The rest of the group stopped as Charlie walked slowly to kneel beside his son. “What’s up, Den?”

“A group of three, about forty feet away around a fire. One’s armed with a pistol. They’re just eating, chatting. They seem to have set up camp. There’s no obvious way around.”

Denver pointed to the artificial valley caused by two collapsed buildings to either side of the camp. The large concrete mounds with sheer sides where the towers had fallen directly down meant they had no easy way around.

Going too far around would lead into the busy area of west Manhattan, putting them far out of their way and exposing them too much. Charlie took his monocular from the webbing on his backpack and took a closer look.

He hoped to recognize some of them. Since his time going back and forward to his old office, he had come to know some of the survivors. Most of them were with him in the caverns where many had lived out the ice age, but not this group. Two of them were young, post-ice age, Charlie didn’t recognize the older man.

Weighing up the odds, Charlie thought about going in with firearms and dealing with it quickly, but the two young ones, two girls, looked like they were suffering from malnutrition. The roasting meat smell came from a tiny charred squirrel over a poorly made spit. These people weren’t surviving particularly well. That catch wouldn’t feed one person let alone three.

“What’s going on?” Ethan said as he clumsily sat by Charlie, knocking a pan from the side of his backpack. The metal vessel struck a rock, ringing out. The three survivors moved with unexpected swiftness to the source of the sound.

The older man raised his pistol and fired twice into the trees, directly at Charlie and the others. They ducked, but the bullets were already going high and wide striking the thick trunks of the alien redwoods.

“You damned fool,” Charlie said, pushing Ethan away. Charlie shrugged the pack off his shoulders and grabbed his own firearm from the holster around his belt. “Stay down.”

Another two shots whipped through the trees, striking branches and leaves. He was getting closer. Denver raised the rifle and chambered a round. The three survivors were now just a few feet away from the tree line. They’d be instantly killed from that range.

“Wait,” Charlie said, this time speaking loudly so that he could address everyone including these other three. “We’re human, friends, don’t shoot.” He touched Denver on the shoulder and whispered, “Hold your fire, son.”

“Show yourself,” the older man said, still aiming his pistol into the trees.

Charlie placed his pistol back into the holster, covering it with his jacket. He could still draw it quickly if he needed, having modified the holster so nothing obstructed the gun.

Maria gave him a concerned look. Ethan looked scared but in control. This was progress. They were getting used to life out of the harvester. “Wait here,” Charlie said, “and watch. Keep me covered if the shit hits the fan.”

With that, Charlie tapped Denver twice on the shoulder and stepped out with his arms up. The three survivors stepped back to give him room. The older man, his face craggy and white hair tied back in a ponytail, kept the weapon trained on him. He squinted his eyes, scrutinizing Charlie. “Who are you? What do you want?” he said, a noticeable shake making his weapon judder within his grip.

“We mean you no harm,” Charlie said. “We’re just passing through. If you let us, we’ll be gone right away. We don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“Who are you?” He asked again.

“My name’s Charlie Jackson; I’m like you, a survivor.”

“They all say they’re like us, but then they always say something.” The old man looked to the young girls. Up close, Charlie could see the resemblance now; they were clearly his daughters and he could just imagine what some of the other people would want with them. They both looked to the ground unable to hold Charlie’s eye.

“How many of you are there?” The man asked.

“Three others beside me,” Charlie said. “I suggest you put that weapon down. There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt, is there? Listen, you don’t look well. Why don’t you let us go about our business and I’ll leave you something to help.”

One of the young girls looked up then, her dirty face hiding a pretty personality. Her blonde hair was matted and covered with twigs and debris. They looked as though they’d been living in the ground. Which made no real sense given the number of dwellings and buildings they could choose, but then he’d known people like this before, people who would refuse to go back into the cities and preferred to stay outside with nature. There was something comforting about being around trees, animals and bugs.

It reminded people they were still on earth. Day by day things were getting more and more removed from the earth they used to know, but it was slow enough that most people didn’t really notice, like a slow growing cancer tumor.

“What’s your name?” Charlie asked the man, making sure he didn’t look at the girls for too long. He didn’t want to give the old guy any reason to shoot.

“Jan,” he said. “I used to work here before… well, before everything. They’ve left us to die out, they don’t care.”

“Who?”

“The croatoans. For a while we thought they’d help us, take us to their colonies.”

“They’re not colonies,” Charlie said. “They’re farms. You don’t want to go there, unless you have something you can offer them.”

Jan looked to his girls and back to Charlie. “I know. It’s why we stay out here. You said you could help?”

“We can if you put the weapon down.”

Jan hesitated for a moment before eventually lowering his gun. Charlie thought it was more likely through exhaustion than anything else. The old guy slumped to an old wooden crate he was using as a seat.

Charlie turned to the trees and beckoned the others out. Denver kept his rifle pointing to the ground so as not to spook them. Ethan and Maria came through carrying Charlie’s pack between them. From that pack Charlie took three days’ worth of dried ration packs—foil wrapped, just-add-water, soups that he had recovered from the army base. They’d last a century apparently.

In addition to the rations he took out his supply of root, contained within an old tin and cut off a third.

“Here, for your daughters.” Charlie handed him the root and the ration packs. “It’s not a lot, but they look like they need it. It’ll give them something to get them by for a while until you can find something more substantial.”

Tears welled up in Jan’s eyes as he took them. He bowed. “Thank you so much, I don’t know what to say… I…”

“Don’t say anything,” Charlie said. “Just have yourselves a meal and share the root. It’ll give you enough energy to move. Go north, upstate, away from the trouble.”

“What trouble?” Jan asked.

“The trouble I’m going to be giving to the alien scum. Trust me, go north.”

With that, Charlie motioned goodbye to them. The two girls coyly smiled and thanked him with quiet, whispering voices. They headed through the camp and came out onto a road that hadn’t quite succumbed to the encroaching forest.

Here, humanity, in the form of concrete and steel and glass remained defiantly. Charlie navigated his way through the ghost town of Manhattan until he came to the Quaternary headquarters. Though the building was charred on the outside and pitted from various munitions, it remained standing.

But it wasn’t the upper floors he wanted.

He led his group through a pile of debris, a maze of corrugated metal doors, and wooden obstructions until a dark hole greeted him. At the end of the tunnel was a metal door with a heavy lock. He took a key from his pocket and opened it.

Bright white light flooded out.

“Go on, inside,” Charlie said, pushing the others inside while he watched behind him to make sure no one else was watching him. Once Ethan had gone through, Charlie followed inside, closing and locking the door behind him.

A basement room greeted him. Lights strung across the ceiling with looping wires illuminated the room. All around the wide-open space were desks, parts littering every surface. Wires and batteries, mechanical parts, anything and everything that could be salvaged.

Ethan and Maria turned around taking it all in, their eyes wide with wonder.

A shadow came from behind a screen, then a bright red and blue sweater around a thickset man with a beard that reached to his chest.

“Charlie, Denver, strange new people! You made it. So great to see you.” The man opened his arms wide as he approached Charlie, embracing him with a bear hug. Releasing him, but gripping his arms, the man smiled.

“Mike,” Charlie said.

“Charlie.”

“How’s the weapon coming along?”

“Huh! All business as usual. That can wait. Come the fuck in and grab some coffee first eh? You’re not a damned savage and you have shiny new people to introduce to me.”

Charlie smiled, enjoying his old colleague’s unflappable personality. But behind the joviality was a keen mind, the very mind that Charlie needed to bring down the croatoans. But before they got to that, he would do as he suggested. A cup of coffee was always welcomed before the destruction of an invading force.

Chapter 24

TEN YEARS of cat and mouse would finally be ended in the next few hours. The thought of it made Gregor smile. He checked the working parts of his gun. There would be no mistake with Charlie Jackson, if he were close to the shelter.

Ben told him that Charlie planned to move to another location. He might still be there. So could his supplies.

Marek loaded six grenades into a small backpack and slung it over his shoulder. “Ready to do this?”

“Get three hover-bikes ready,” Gregor said. “I’m going to pay Igor a visit.”

Marek left the office. Ben shuffled after him.

Gregor slid a magazine into his pistol grip, put a round in the chamber and followed. He left the other two heading for the square, turning by the side of his office and striding over to the moldy shed.

The moody morning sky would no doubt soon give the croatoans a treat. A shuttle approached, its noise grew louder.

He looked through the cobwebbed window. Empty.

The shed gently shook as warm air blasted downwards.

Layla’s trailer door rattled open. Her head appeared around it. “What are you—?”

The descending shuttle, arriving for a morning supply collection, quickly drowned her out. It smoothly dropped toward the landing area, obscured by trees. Gregor pointed toward his ear, shrugged and headed off to the square.

Marek and Ben were already waiting on two bikes. Igor stood next to them. He licked the edge of a cigarette paper and rolled it in his fingers.

“Still smoking that shit?” Gregor said.

“Morning, Gregor. How are you?”

Gregor grunted. “Shouldn’t you be helping Alex feed the livestock?”

Igor rubbed his hands together. “Just come to wave goodbye. I hear you’re hunting a wasp.”

Wave goodbye. Like Igor ever did that. His time was coming. Not here though. Too many croatoans around. He was priority number two today.

Gregor swung his leg over the hover-bike and tapped the alien on the shoulder. He turned to Igor. “Have a good day, my friend.”

“You too, my friend.”

Igor smiled and raised his hand as Gregor’s vehicle ascended. A horrible false smile. The type he’d seen Igor use when interrogating people with his knife. Igor’s modus operandi was strapping somebody to a chair and playing tic-tac-toe on their face. He’d gone lightly on Ben, but left his unmistakable fingerprint.

As the bike lifted above the warehouses, hugging the farmed land, Gregor gazed at the distant orange haze. Thoughts of Layla’s revelations spun through his mind.

He had too many moving parts to consider. Jackson, Igor, Augustus, the croatoans. Removing two of them would bring more clarity.

They zipped away from the farm. Alex stood by a tractor in the paddock, throwing food to the livestock. She looked up and they passed. Gregor saluted.

The plan was to land half a mile away from the shelter and move quickly along the riverbank. Zero tolerance against anything that shifted. The same policy applied to Ben if he was found to be lying.

Gregor glanced across to the two bikes, flying next to his in formation. Marek looked across and returned a nod. Ben’s eyes were shut tight, he hunched behind the croatoan rider, turning his face against the rush of wind.

Ahead, the river came into view, like a large brown snake, winding through the overgrown land into the distance.

Rain started to fall, tinkling against the bike’s metal as it powered through the sky. A minute later they reached the river, momentarily hovering above it, before lowering onto a thick grass bank. A couple of birds took flight from the undergrowth.

Ben jumped off the back of his bike and unsteadily walked to a tree. He leant against in and doubled over. A long trail of saliva hung from his mouth as he dry retched a couple of times.

A dead spotted redshank caught Gregor’s eye after he dismounted. He walked closer to inspect it. Its feathers were coated by a stringy paste. The river slowly flowed past like a large foamy beer. He rubbed a greasy fern between his fingers. The change was becoming more rapid. Gregor just hadn’t been noticing the little things. Now they had his full attention.

The croatoans stood in a circle, tick-tocking away.

Marek patted him on the shoulder. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

IGOR WATCHED until all three specks disappeared into the distance. This was his chance to cement a place as number one in Augustus’s eyes. To raid Jackson’s den and bring back information, or better still, kill him. He’d do what the boss had failed to manage.

Gregor was past it. Ten years was long enough being in the tin-pot Armenian’s gang. It was time for Igor to run the show. Augustus had already verbally promised him the job; there’d been too many mistakes. Harvester damage, livestock escapes, and dead croatoans: it all added up and it was time to pay.

Augustus informed him yesterday that Gregor would be taken on a one-way trip to the forest. Left for animals to nibble on his stinking corpse. These things were best done in private.

Layla, Vlad and Alex were still required and would all have to fall in line. The croatoans wouldn’t give a shit.

Igor waved toward the barracks. His croatoan rider exited the door and took its position on the hover-bike. He held a map forwards and pointed to a location. The alien punched in coordinates on its tablet, before clicking it into place above the handlebars.

The bike drifted over the warehouses for a couple of minutes. They had to wait for the shuttle to take off. The brilliant blue craft shot into the sky. Its six pink rings glowing against the gray clouds, before slipping through them, out of sight.

Below, the little surveyors left their barracks and headed to the chocolate factory. That would be the first thing Igor renamed. Gregor and his stupid nicknames. He should have had more respect for his masters.

They cruised over Gregor’s office. Much better than a shed. Soon the whole place would be Igor’s. He hadn’t decided on whether to take Alex or Layla first.

He tapped the croatoan’s shoulder.

The alien jabbed its head to one side. He rolled his finger around, trying to signal an increase in pace. “Faster, faster.”

No response.

Sedately traveling over trees gave Igor a better view of their immediate surroundings. If he was going to be boss, it was a good chance to see potential looting spots. Overgrown buildings with trails leading from them or signs of smoke drifting out of the forest. Both signs of habitation.

After spotting two thin streams of smoke curling out of the trees, he looked back to the farm to orientate their positions. Only a few miles away. He’d treat survivors like the hag near the ambush site, they had no value unless young enough to process.

The bike lowered in a clearing, not quite at the specified location, but close enough. Igor recognized the vague broken lines of a tennis court. Shrubs and weeds filled the cracks brought on from age and ice. Remains of a rotting net stretched across the middle, raised by bush. A rusty chain link fence surrounded the court, half smothered in ivy. The bottom of it had mostly broken away, and curled upwards. Only two sections remained in place.

Igor slipped a compass out of his pocket and checked his map against the tablet location. Just under a mile north.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” Igor said.

The croatoan ignored him.

“Whatever,” he whispered to himself as he checked his watch.

He pulled up a section of the fence and ducked underneath. The forest was dark ahead. It suited his approach. Stealthily moving from tree to tree, keeping a close eye on his bearing, Igor made quick progress.

After ten minutes, he sensed he was getting close and slowed to a deliberate creep. Placing his feet away from any twigs or branches. Revolver to the front.

Igor crouched behind a large rock and searched the woodland. Ben directed him to this spot. If this was a wild goose chase, he vowed to beat the little shit’s brains out.

Through the gloom Igor saw it. A dark slit, slightly raised off the forest floor. A man-made entrance. Charlie Jackson wasn’t as clever as he thought. A couple of obvious trails led to the opening.

He waited five minutes. Observing, searching for signs of movement. The place appeared to be deserted. If Jackson or his bastard weren’t around, some of his supplies or any available clues to his whereabouts would have to do.

Igor moved around the side of the shelter, and edged forward, aiming at entrance.

From a distance it looked like a small hump, blending in with the surrounding forest floor. Up close, steep dirt steps were cut into the ground, leading into what was probably a bunker. Igor thought about shouting a threat, but decided against it. If anyone was here, he’d take them by surprise.

He crouched, listened by the entrance. Not a sound from the inside. Trees rustled above in the gentle breeze.

Igor leaned around the corner, peered down. Holding his revolver through the entrance, he started to climb down.

A loud bang filled his ears. He felt searing pain in his right knee. Igor instantly buckled to the ground, dropping his revolver, and sliding down the steps.

He desperately fumbled in the dark. A boot stamped on his wrist.

A shotgun barrel pushed against his cheek.

Through the gloom, Gregor’s face appeared. “Say goodnight, you Russian fuck-rat.”

Igor groaned. “Wait. I wasn’t here to kill you. I followed and came to warn you.”

Gregor forced the barrel harder against his check. “Stop lying. It’s over. Your only mistake was thinking you were smarter than me.”

Igor had seen Gregor in this kind of mood a hundred times. There would be no stay of execution. “Get it over with. You’re a dead man anyway. A ship’s coming to complete the process. Augustus told me—”

GREGOR’S EARS rang with a high-pitched tone after his two deafening shots reverberated around the bunker. The effort of dragging Igor’s body up the steps helped his anger subside. Ben was right; Igor was playing a dangerous game. The two-faced bastard was trying to get one over on him. He searched the Russian’s pockets, then tossed the revolver to Ben.

Ben caught it and wiped mud from a groove in the cylinder. “Is this mine?”

“Look after me and I’ll look after you. It’s that simple,” Gregor said.

“You’ve done well,” Marek said. “He was a bad apple.”

“Tell me about it,” Ben said pointing to his face.

Gregor lifted Igor’s legs and nodded toward the bank. “Grab an arm each. We’ll throw him in the river. Don’t want to leave a calling card for Jackson.”

The other two gripped the corpse under each shoulder, and they staggered and crashed through thick ferns, thirty yards across to the bank.

“What was Igor saying about another ship?” Marek said.

“Something about completing the process. I’ll pass it on to Layla. He was probably bullshitting to try and save his own pathetic life.”

They dropped Igor by the edge, and Marek rolled in him into the water. The body rolled onto its front and slowly floated away.

All three stood amongst the foliage, catching their breath.

“Remind me to thank Jackson for the use of his shotgun. When I kill him,” Gregor said.

Marek smiled. He’d found an AR-15 wrapped in plastic, complete with three full magazines. He tapped the stock. “Not if I get to him first.”

Ben frowned. “He’s not that bad. A bit of a dick, but…”

“A bit of a dick?” Gregor shook his head. “Do you think you’re the first crew that met him?”

“I don’t know,” Ben shrugged.

“I’ll tell you a little story about the hero, Charlie Jackson. Our farm was based near Jefferson City a few years ago. He blew up a harvester and kidnapped two of the crew. One was sent back to place a bomb in the chocolate factory. It detonated, killing several croatoans, and my cousin. At the same time, he and his bastard son flattened a paddock fence with a log strapped to the roof of a small truck.”

“They used it like a battering ram,” Marek said. “Livestock fled through the gap.”

“Wasn’t he just trying to help other humans?” Ben said.

Gregor scoffed. “A few croatoan soldiers were still around back then. They hunted down every human they could find. Livestock, survivors, whoever. They purged the area clean.”

“How did Charlie and Denver get away?”

“It’s the same every time,” Marek said. “They just vanish like ghosts. Probably into a network of hideouts like the one over there.”

Gregor looked over the ferns. Something caught his eye: a flash. He whispered, “Get down.”

Marek shouldered his rifled, aiming it toward the shelter. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. Someone’s out there, close.”

A twig snapped. Gregor peered through the ferns.

Three figures moved through the trees, forty yards to their left. Unmistakable croatoan movement. Bouncing along as if taking individual one-legged jumps, short pauses between each one. An alien passed through rays of sunlight that streamed through the trees in two thick beams. Its visor glinted in the sunlight.

“Looks like our riders,” Gregor said.

“What the fuck are they doing here?” Marek said.

Gregor put his finger to his lips. The aliens stopped short of the shelter and stood behind three individual trees. After several seconds, they sprang out and rapidly moved to entrance. All had weapons drawn.

“Holy shit. They’re attacking,” Gregor said.

“Attacking who?” Ben said.

“Exactly.”

One pulled a tennis-shaped silver object from its belt and threw it into the shelter. An alien grenade. The croatoans stood to one side.

Gregor had seem them plenty of times before. But usually carried by the croatoan soldiers, not the smaller patrollers that looked after farm security and local transport. They wouldn’t carry out an action like this unless under orders.

Smoke drifted from the entrance following a dull blast.

“Get your grenades ready,” Gregor said.

“What?” Marek said.

“We’re taking them out. Give me the rifle; get a couple of grenades ready to go. Now.”

“What do you want me to do?” Ben said.

“Two croatoans disappeared down the stairs. I’ll shoot the one above. We sprint straight to the entrance. You drop the grenades and I’ll provide covering fire. Got it?”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Marek said.

Easy from this range, Gregor thought. His shot smashed through the side of the alien’s helmet.

Marek immediately jumped up and ran with a grenade in each hand. Gregor followed, aiming at the alien who sank to its knees and keeled over backwards. Ben appeared by his side, holding his revolver forward. Not what Gregor had anticipated. But a welcomed bonus. He thought Ben would be a useless coward.

Diving to the ground next to the entrance, Marek reached around it and threw down both grenades in quick succession. A shot fired out of the opening. The metallic snaps of a croatoan gun.

Gregor knelt by the side with rifle shouldered. Ready to take out anything that appeared. Ben trained his weapon from the opposite side, aiming at an angle.

Both grenades erupted in quick succession, like a thunderous double-tap.

Mud and smoke spewed out of the shelter.

Smoke cleared. An alien hand shakily reached out of the entrance before flopping to the ground.

Marek sprinted to the downed alien outside and grabbed the weapon by its side. Gregor edged around the entrance, aiming into the hazy gap. One alien lay against the dirt wall. Its uniform was ripped around its body armor and its helmet was smashed. The other slumped at the top of the stairs, the bottom half of its right leg missing.

Gregor gritted his teeth and stamped on the croatoan’s visor, smashing it like an eggshell. The alien let out a light wheeze as its skin crackled.

“What the fuck?” Marek said.

“We need to warn the others.” Gregor said. “The croatoans are turning. Layla was right. It’s happening now.”

He glanced at the three dead aliens and scowled.

Augustus. It had to be him.

Chapter 25

LAYLA SAT in the chocolate factory, peering at monitors. Results increased by fifty-five percent since they designated harvesters to the land she helped pinpoint. It wasn’t what she wanted anymore. It wouldn’t be what any human wanted.

She’d arrived at the monitors as Igor was taking off in the square, the same time as the surveyors. They buzzed around in a usual fashion, business as usual stuff. Mixing soil samples in glass tubes, pouring over charts, and generally appearing fussy. To avoid looking too suspicious, Layla moved to the back of the building.

Vlad slumped against the desk, oblivious to it all. He yawned and twiddled a pen. “Do you want a coffee? I’ve still got some of that freeze-dried crap left. A bit gravelly but…”

“No thanks. Have you seen anything different around here in the last couple of weeks?” Layla said.

“What do you mean? Like croatoan stuff? It’s all alien to me.”

Vlad seemed to have thrown up the mental shutters long ago. He didn’t care about anything, at least not when she tried to strike up a conversation. Layla couldn’t decide whether to feel jealous or sorry for him.

Her planned task for today was to check the occupants of the breeding lab. Events of the last two days had a horrible effect of pushing reality to the surface. Survival was no longer an excuse. The thin self-justification for her actions had vanished, and she knew it.

She got up and sighed. “I’ll leave you to it. Speak later.”

The job still had to be done. It wasn’t all about her personal feelings. Twenty women, humans, needed their welfare checking.

Croatoans streamed out of the door ahead of Layla. Outside it was raining.

They circled around, taking off their gloves and jiggling their fingers. She hugged the side of the building to keep dry, and headed for the breeding lab.

Livestock still had sex. One of the remaining human instincts or urges that hadn’t been stripped away by the croatoan regime. It was a daily occurrence in the paddock, embarrassing at first, but she’d got used to it.

At least the croatoans had stopped finding human intercourse a source of interest. They’d often gather around the paddock and watch, pointing at the male’s penis and clicking loudly.

The novelty wore off after a few months. Layla thought it was childish, like her former student colleagues who’d giggle at clips of animals having sex.

A tractor rumbled across the square. Alex, wearing her bright yellow waterproof, drove it from the meat factory toward the paddocks. She stopped when she saw Layla and called, “I took one in yesterday. Give me a shout if they need any more food.”

“Will do, thanks,” Layla said, holding her thumb up.

The tractor rumbled away, cutting a dirty track across the damp ground.

Any female exhibiting a bump would be identified, usually by Alex, during feeding time, and they’d be sent to the breeding lab. They were fed slop, kept inside and monitored until they gave birth. Alex played midwife, Layla would assist if she were around. She hadn’t been required lately, although a couple of women were only a matter of days away.

Layla took a deep breath and opened the door.

Inside, the roof echoed with the sound of a single woman’s quiet sobbing.

Symptoms of stress were common. Women would bite their nails, refuse to eat and often shake. The paddock was their natural environment, unlike the enclosed walls, a single bed, and waste bucket. Layla had given up trying to offer comfort. It had a scaring effect. And when one started crying, others in adjoining rooms would often join them.

She walked along, glancing through small square windows on individual doors.

The layout inside was quite simple. A long corridor running along the middle of the warehouse, with brightly lit, sparse cells on either side. Forty in all. At the moment they had a fifty percent occupancy rate.

The inhabitants were identified by room numbers, which Layla had painted on the doors.

One woman sat hugging her knees, rocking backwards and forwards. Another pressed her hand against the plastic pane as Layla passed. The majority of the twenty placidly lay on their black plastic mattresses.

In the second to last room near the end of the corridor, on the floor, a woman lay spread on her front. Layla took a sharp intake of breath. She knocked on the window and received no response.

She twisted the circular locking mechanism. It opened with a clank. Layla pushed the door, forcing it the last couple of inches with her shoulder, to move rigid legs out of the way. Creating enough space to enter through a narrow gap.

When she reached down and grabbed an arm, it was pale and stiff. Too late. Rigor mortis had set in.

Next to the woman’s outstretched hand was a small humanlike figure, crafted from twisted dry grass. A charm or keepsake. The first she’d seen created by livestock.

“Oh my God,” she breathed.

Layla hadn’t witnessed a death in the building before, she’s only heard about it occurring. The procedure was to hit the green call button by the entrance. Layla hurried along the corridor with her head in her hands.

She depressed the saucer-sized button. It flashed and let out two soft electronic beeps.

A minute later, two croatoans walked across the main square carrying a gray metal slab, heading straight for the breeding lab. They didn’t move with any great urgency, and stopped to talk to a group of aliens by the hover-bikes, before finally reaching the building.

The first one bumped through the swing doors and looked at Layla. She led them along the corridor, and pointed into the cell. The croatoans briefly paused. One clicked and they both jerked forward.

They placed the slab on the floor, grabbed the body by its hair and robe, and rolled it on. The front area of the woman’s clothing was stained dark purple. Layla closed her eyes tightly and put her hand against the corridor wall for support.

The patter of alien feet passed her. She opened her eyes and watched them bounce along the corridor.

Faces started to appear through the little windows. One woman wailed. Then another. As the croatoans carried the body to the entrance, the whole place echoed with crying and moaning.

Layla followed the aliens, watched them bump back through the doors. They crossed the main square, around the hover-bikes, and straight into the meat-processing warehouse.

She leaned with her back against the wall. The wailing continued, penetrating deep inside her. She wanted to run, but didn’t know where. She clasped her hands around the back of her head, bringing her elbows together in front of her face. Her back slid down the wall until she ended up in a crouching position.

A woman peered through the closest window, sobbing. Layla shuffled sideways toward the door, out of view, gulped and took a deep breath.

She couldn’t hold it in any longer, and joined the cacophony of weeping.

LAYLA COMPOSED herself in an empty cell. Took a few deep breaths and wiped tears from her face with her sweater sleeve. Something had to change. It was impossible to carry on at the farm now.

Perhaps it was time to find Charlie Jackson.

The breeding lab’s door banged open. Footsteps ran along the corridor. Vlad flashed past the open cell door. She heard him skid to a stop. He hurried into the cell.

“Layla, you’re wanted at the monitors. You need to come with me.” He fidgeted with a pencil, scraping his thumbnail against the sharpened end. “Layla. You have to—”

She sniffed and looked up. “Wanted by who?”

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine. What’s happening?”

Vlad held his hand toward her. “Augustus. He wants to speak to you. Says it’s a matter of great urgency.”

Augustus never spoke to Layla on an individual basis. She’d talked to him at meetings with Gregor, and he’d made the odd passing comment to her around camp. This was first time he’d directly requested her presence.

“Why me? Did he say anything else? Was he angry?”

She grabbed Vlad’s hand and hauled herself off the bed.

“He specifically asked for you. As for angry, who knows?” Vlad shrugged. “He wears a mask and I struggle to understand his accent.”

Augustus’s accent was a mystery. He spoke with the fluency of a native English speaker, but didn’t sound like any Layla had previously heard or met. Gregor asked him where he was from a few years ago. Augustus replied, Earth.

The rain had abated outside and surveyors crowded around the chocolate factory table. They ignored Vlad and Layla’s entrance, more interested in a tablet that was being passed around like a hot potato.

She could see the outline of Augustus’s head on the main monitor, surrounded by color, waiting for her.

“Do you know where he’s transmitting from?” Layla said.

Vlad pointed upwards.

When she reached the desk, Augustus leaned forward. He stroked his mask. The wall behind him was decorated with a series of bright rings. The largest outer circle was light pink, the inner ones different shades of blue.

This was her first glimpse inside the mother ship. It looked like Augustus was in a psychedelic brothel.

“Please take a seat, Layla,” Augustus said. She slid a stool from under the desk. Vlad flopped in his customary position. “I didn’t tell you to sit down, Vlad. Leave the building. Return in five minutes.”

“I’ll grab a bite to eat,” Vlad said and moved out of view of the monitors. He raised his eyebrows and repeatedly circled his ear with his finger, before walking away.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Augustus?” Layla said.

“Where were you at three o’clock this morning?”

Layla felt her stomach knot. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a straight forward question.”

“I was sleeping. Why do you ask?”

She clenched her hands tightly underneath the desk.

“We had a security breach. Somebody, a human, came in here last night and looked through secure croatoan data.”

“It wasn’t me. Have you checked with the others?”

The only person who saw Layla last night was Igor. If he was in Augustus’s pocket, he’d probably spill the beans. Another reason for her to run. Her only option left.

“We’re carrying out some print analysis on one of the devices. You’ll all be required here tonight. The guilty party will receive swift justice.”

Layla would be gone by then. She wasn’t hanging around for Augustus to pass his sentence. “What’s so important about the data?”

Augustus tutted. “It’s the principle. We still need farm workers, especially for the breeding lab. If somebody doesn’t want to play the game, I’ll be the one to blow the final whistle.”

“No problem, Mr. Augustus. See you back here tonight.”

He waved his bony finger. “I haven’t finished yet. There’s some news you need to be aware of. Gregor’s gone.”

She leaned back on the stool. “Gone?”

“As we speak, he’s having his employment terminated. I need you to step up. Are you with me?”

“He’s being terminated?”

“Why do you insist on repeating me? The details are a trivial technicality, none of your concern. I’ll assume that you are still part of our team. Which reminds me, is Igor around? I need to speak with him.”

Layla’s mouth felt dry, she gulped. “He left this morning. Haven’t seen him since.”

“Send him here as soon as you do. I can’t get in touch.”

“Is that it, Mr. Augustus?”

“For now.”

The screen flashed back to monitoring the two most northern harvesters. Little red trails across the map, expanding the root coverage. All critical measurements showing green.

They’d murdered Gregor.

Augustus had all but confirmed Igor was in cahoots with him. Igor knew about her clandestine trip to the chocolate factory. It was only a matter of time. Layla focused on short-term survival. There was nothing for it but to grab some personal items from her trailer, and get as far away as possible.

Chapter 26

MIKE WAS STILL SMILING at Charlie when he handed him a chipped mug of steaming tea. Charlie took a deep swig and enjoyed the burning sensation. They sat around a dirty desk only slightly less cramped with stuff than Mike’s former desk, above them in the Quaternary building.

“Since the invasion,” Charlie said to the others as they were sat around the table, “Mike’s been in his element. Look at this place. It’s a tinker’s paradise. Every imaginable device is here, though most are in various stages of actual usefulness.”

Ethan had taken to Mike right away as Charlie’s old colleague gave the lad the tour. When they came back, it was obvious where Ethan’s future would lie. Right here with Mike building weapons and devices.

There was one problem however. Mai—Mike’s kinda-wife, and fellow engineer. They’d setup a cozy existence together. Mai, a Chinese-American nuclear physicist was one of the survivors within their cavern during the ice age. She and Mike hit it off right away.

“So,” Charlie said, placing the mug on the table. “Now we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, what’s the status on the device?”

Mai entered the screened off area carrying a silver Samsonite case. She cleared a space on the table and laid it flat, opening the lid and displaying for all to see the device that they’d been working on for the last five years.

It was all Mike’s idea. And it’d taken Charlie those five years to source the parts needed.

Maria looked over Charlie’s shoulder and Ethan over Mike’s. Denver was paying no attention, preferring to make a fuss of Pip, making sure she didn’t go sniffing into something dangerous. There was no telling what Mike and Mai had stashed around.

“What is it?” Maria said.

The device was the size of a laptop and was in fact built on the chassis of an old Lenovo Thinkpad. They were built with longevity in mind and they certainly achieved that. In the early days of the design Mike ironically wanted to use an Alienware machine.

“It’s a bomb,” Mai said, her accent now completely neutral. In the early days she still had a lilt of Chinese to her, but with all the time spent with Mike, she’d come to sound just like him.

“Well, not exactly a traditional bomb,” Mike added with a smile. He pulled his long gray hair back, revealing a thinning pate. Not surprising considering his age. He was in his late seventies, but like Charlie, regular imbibing of the root kept him young and able.

At least that was one thing to thank the alien bastards for.

“So, what does it do if it’s not really a bomb,” Ethan said, leaning in further for a closer look.

Where the laptop screen used to be was now a rounded metal shell. The track pad had been swapped out for a small OLED screen from a smartphone. The thing looked like a designer 70’s toaster with some modern tech cobbled onto it, but beneath that shell was one of the most potent weapons ever devised… assuming it’d work.

“Well,” Mike said, putting his arm around Ethan’s shoulder. “What do you know of EMP devices?”

“Erm, nothing? Yet.”

Mike smiled, seemingly to like the kid. “It stands for Electro-Magnetic Pulse.”

“Or Extreme Magnetic Pain,” Mai said with a wicked grin. Her leathery face and its many folds hid her intelligent eyes. She was younger than Mike by twenty years, but they could well have been twins on personality. Both wore wacky sweaters, and both had a brain that Charlie could only wish he had.

“So what does it do?” Maria said. “And how will this save us all, as Charlie said?”

“It’ll tear the aliens a new asshole and send them packing back to the ass-end of the galaxy,” Mike said. “Once detonated, those turtle-looking fuckers won’t know what hit ‘em. Inside this unassuming shell is a nuclear bomb that makes Hiroshima look like a bee-sting. When it goes, it won’t just blow anything up, it’ll destroy anything electrical for hundreds and thousands of miles around.”

Maria seemed to understand as she turned to Charlie. “So for this to be effective, it’ll need to be set off within the croatoan ship? That means someone has to—.”

Charlie stopped her with a hand, “We’ll come to that later. Mike, what’s the situation; it’s not ready to go is it, and I can tell something’s up.”

“No,” Mike said. “We need one more part.”

Mai leaned against the table, regarding Charlie with her wise eyes. “Someone will need to make a trip to the Ford warehouse north of here. There’s a special kind of magnet they used in their last models. It’ll help regulate and deliver the pulse. We found an old one, but it wasn’t efficient enough. We need a new, unused one from the parts warehouse—if there’s any there of course.”

“Fuck it,” Charlie said, turning his back. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be an ass, I just thought…” He took a deep breath as Denver entered the room and stood in front of him.

“It’s not a problem, dad. We’ll go get it. It’s only an hour’s walk. We’ll get the part and be out of here. The plan can still go ahead.”

“You’re right, son. I just wanted… I’m just getting impatient in my old age.”

“Here,” Mike said, handing Charlie a small black disc the size of an old dollar coin. “That’s the burnt-out one we found. We need something like that; two if you can find them would be even better. Always good to have a backup.”

“You got it. We’ll go now. Quicker we get it the quicker we can carry out the rest of the plan,” Charlie said. “How long will it take you to fit?”

“A few minutes,” Mai said.

“Come on, son, let’s go for a midday stroll into town.”

“We’re coming with you,” Maria said. “If it’s this important, we can be of help. Be spotters or something, some extra backup.”

“No,” Charlie said. “It’s too dangerous. Anything and anyone can be out there. They’re not all gonna be like the last lot. The city dwellers are more hardcore. We need to move quickly and without fuss. It’s better if it’s just Den and me.”

“Fuck that,” Ethan said, surprising everyone. He slapped his hand on the table. “We’ve been through all kinds of crap to get here. I appreciate you looking out for us, but Ben’s been sent off to who knows what fate, and now you want us to just sit back. What if you get into trouble and we’re just sitting round waiting for you? No, we’re going.”

Mike grinned at Charlie as he patted the kid on the shoulder. “Looks like they’ve made their own mind’s up, Chuck. Let ‘em go with you. You can’t protect everyone. At some point everyone has to call their own shots and stand on their own two feet.”

“Exactly,” Maria said. “It’s our choice, not yours.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Charlie turned his back and headed for the exit tunnel. “Grab your guns and follow me. On your own heads be it.”

THE MIDDAY SUN was just passing noon, creating thin stubby shadows on the broken sidewalks and roads where the blacktop had long splintered off to expose the concrete beneath.

Few trees had managed to settle within the city, but there were still overgrown areas of bushes and shrubs, contrasting their natural hues with the monochromatic palette of human endeavor. Charlie and Denver stuck to the main streets where possible. If there were any survivors in the area, they’d likely be in the houses; many had set up homes there or the low rise apartment buildings almost as if nothing had happened.

There were some who still thought it meant something to live in Manhattan. But the place was a ghost town now with little to offer anyone apart from the most basic of shelters. Unlike Mike and Mai’s basement that had power from the building’s rebuilt diesel generators, almost none of the makeshift domiciles had any power. Years before, Charlie had been part of a fuel group whose task was to extract fuel from other generators, cars and trucks.

The yield was low, but given the sheer number of sources, they’d managed to gather enough to keep the Quaternary basement running with power for decades to come. Most of that was due to Mai’s genius in mixing the diesel generators with solar and wind power.

They’d made their way about half way to the warehouse, weaving in and out of streets, making sure they were covered at all times by shadows or dilapidated buildings. Denver, as ever took point, using his scope to observe their intended route.

Maria and Ethan took up the rear and watched the flanks.

Charlie kept his attention on the sky. He didn’t want to worry the others, but ever since they arrived he’d seen the shadow out of the corner of his eye and the glint of something in the clouds. It was flying in stealth mode now, but after hearing the roar earlier, he knew it was here.

Which of course was one of the reasons he didn’t want the others to come with him, but like Mike said, they had to make the choice; he couldn’t protect them at all times.

They crossed a street, rounding a pair of rusted limousines. Most of the road signs had lost all their lettering to the elements. Given the destruction, he couldn’t tell exactly where they were, but knew they’d walked for thirty minutes, always heading north. The Ford warehouse wouldn’t be much further.

As the turned left out of a tight avenue they came to a wide road that led straight forward. Before Charlie could warn the others, having just seen the shadow the instant he walked out on to the road, an alien fighter craft, triangular, flat and deadly black landed at the end of the street no more than a hundred feet away.

“Get into cover,” Charlie shouted as he dived behind a pile of rubble on the left side of the street. Denver joined him, Maria split to the right, and Ethan remained in the middle of the street looking confused, his attention on the alien craft.

It looked nothing like the regular croatoan shuttles and was more advanced than the first fighters that came down after the invasion. This was something new.

A door opened, blue light surrounded an alien creature with an almost neon glow. This was no ordinary alien. It was twice as tall as any croatoan soldier and featured a form-fitting matte-black suit. Its head was flat and pointed, resembling the triangular hull of its craft.

Before anyone had time to do anything, a blast of blue energy shot out down the road. Charlie screamed for Ethan to move, but the kid was too slow, too scared. The bolt of energy coalesced into what looked like ball lightning.

It struck Ethan with a crackling explosion.

The boy’s body seemed to be ripped apart at a cellular level as he screamed. A few seconds later and all that remained was a charred black stain on the street’s surface. He’d been completely vaporized.

Another bolt, smaller this time fired down the street, crashing into the debris. Charlie and Denver jumped back just in time. The shot destroyed half of the concrete before it ran of energy. The air crackled with electricity. Maria screamed from the others side.

“Get down! Stay down,” Charlie screamed over to her. He pulled the pistol from his hip and aimed at the alien. It was on the move now, walking purposefully down the street, reaching behind its back.

“Mother fucker,” Denver said as he raised rifle, using a part of the partially melted rubble to steady his aim. He adjusted the scope and took a deep breath.

Charlie fired of three controlled shots, aiming for the giant alien’s legs and torso. His aim was off. Something about the way the alien moved made it hard to focus. “Shoot the fucker,” Charlie said, urging his son.

Denver obliged. The crack of the rifle echoed around the buildings. The shot was true, but the alien seemed to shift physically in a blur. Charlie fired off two more shots. They went right through the weird-phasing movement of the alien, striking the craft with a spark behind him.

Maria, screaming, shot out from her position, lifting her shotgun.

“No!” Charlie screamed. “Get back. Now.”

It was too late.

Maria stood in the street now, directly opposite the alien. Charlie could tell now with Maria as reference that the damned thing must be at least seven and a half foot tall. Its limbs were twice as thick and muscular as any soldier croatoan.

When the phasing stopped, it came into full focus. The black form-fitting armor seemed to harden. Maria fired off two shots. The buckshot bounced of its armor.

It lifted the rifle-like weapon, its barrel square and at least a meter and a half long, and aimed it Maria. Its long talon-like fingers curled around a trigger.

Chapter 27

CRASHING THROUGH THE FERNS, Gregor led Marek and Ben along the riverbank. Speed was of the essence. They had to get to the bikes before any more patrols arrived. The aliens had clearly been ordered to kill them and leave them out in the forest.

Ten years of loyal service down the drain.

Gregor wanted Augustus’s mangled face under his boot.

Igor approached the shelter from the opposite direction. His croatoan rider wouldn’t be too far away, but would wait until it received further orders.

He reached the bikes and rested on the closest one to the river. Marek and Ben stood in front of him, both with hands on their knees.

“You’re serious about using these?” Marek said.

“I’m not leaving Layla, Alex and Vlad to the mercy of those bastards,” Gregor said. “Three of us, three of them. We take the bikes.”

Ben mopped sweat from his brow and looked over the controls. “They look familiar to what I used in the harvester. Have you ridden one before?”

“It’s easy. We used to have a bike for our team,” Marek said. “Until Igor crashed it. After that we had to request a ride. They’ve been pretty good about it up until now.”

Gregor grunted. “Sit. I’ll show you.”

Ben jumped on the bike and pointed down. “I know that button switches on the engine.”

“That’s right,” Gregor said. He patted each part explaining, “You push the handlebars forward to rise, back to lower. Twist the right handle to speed up, let go to slow down. The left to hover. Don’t turn them at the same time. Nice and easy.”

“You do know left from right?” Marek said.

Ben frowned. “Of course I do. What about landing?”

“Twist the left and pull the handlebars back. Not too fast.”

Croatoans loved tracking everything. The blue beads in humans, harvester locations, land conversion. Gregor rubbed his chin and looked at the bikes. He leaned over Ben’s controls and ripped the tablet from its fastening, and passed it to Marek.

“Good idea,” Marek said and unclipped the other two from the bikes. He the spread the tablets around a bush, a few yards apart.

Ben’s engine hummed into life. “Where are we going first?”

“Follow me,” Gregor said. “We’ll set down at the landing strip; it’s got partial cover. We’ll round up the others, deal with the threat, and get the hell out of here.”

“To where?” Marek said.

Gregor mounted his bike and slung the AR-15 over his shoulder. “I’ll think about it on the way. Maybe to a city. They tend to avoid those places.”

“It’s dangerous. They’ll see us turn up without the riders. For all we know, the others are already dead.”

“The next shuttle run isn’t for a few hours. Without the pulse cannon, we’re dealing with the surveyors, which a child could kill, and a few jumped up security guards. If we faced a squad of croatoan soldiers, I’d agree with you.”

“I’ve known you for too long, Gregor. You’re going kill the aliens.”

Gregor smiled and started his engine. “Every fucking last one of them. Augustus’s going to regret the day he ordered our execution.”

Ben looked back. “What if the shit hits the fan as soon as we arrive?”

“We split and come up with something else.”

Marek mounted the final bike and started the engine. He shouted above the humming engines, “If we take out the farm, they’ll come after us.”

“There’s thousands of these farms around the world. They won’t care about one.”

THE BIKE MAINTAINED A STEADY PACE, smoothly powering toward the distant farm buildings. Gregor stood at the handlebars once comfortable. Wind rushed through his greasy brown hair.

He guessed they were traveling at half the bike’s maximum speed. A sensible pace considering Ben nearly fell off his after a shaky take-off, and both he and Marek were out of practice. Although the controls came back easily, like riding a bicycle.

Gregor didn’t feel an urge to punch someone or something. Instead, he felt butterflies of excitement in his stomach, and as if a weight had been taken off his shoulders. Back to gangster Gregor, answering to man, liberated.

A mile from the farm, he slowed down and descended to a few feet above the canopy. Marek and Ben joined him on either side. The bikes slapped occasional branches, but it took a lot more than that to down one.

The lack of a patrol in the air was a good sign.

Perhaps the alarm hadn’t been raised just yet.

Gregor hovered momentarily over the landing strip, ensuring the vehicle was steady, before lowering down, bumping against the ground with a little less grace than a croatoan rider. Marek and Ben quickly followed.

Nothing moved in the immediate area, apart from trees rustling in the breeze.

Gregor raised the AR-15 and nodded toward his office. He had a few weapons stashed in his bedroom. Nothing as good as the rifle, but ammo was limited. Anything they could get their hands on would do.

He dashed across the strip in a crouching run. Straight for the tree line. Marek and Ben had their guns drawn, covering each flank.

Pausing behind a thick old oak, Gregor dropped to one knee and observed his office through the last line of trees.

Marek ducked by his side. “What are you waiting for?”

“We don’t want to run straight into a trap. They’re not the toughest croatoans, but they’re not stupid.”

Something moved in Gregor’s peripheral vision.

He swung his rifle left.

Layla stepped out of her trailer with a small pack on her left shoulder.

Gregor whistled, trying to sound like a bird, hoping to attract her attention. She crept toward the forest, in the opposite direction.

To sound more distinctive, but not to croatoans, he decided to whistle a tune. For some reason ‘Happy Birthday’ was the first thing that came into his head.

Layla paused. Turned. She squinted in their direction. Marek waved his arms above his head. Layla took a few steps closer.

“Layla, Layla. It’s us,” Marek said.

His words seemed to give her focus. She leapt into the trees and ran for their location. Her panic stricken face quickly appearing through the gloom.

She knelt between Marek and Gregor. “Jesus. I thought you guys were dead.”

“Why would you think that?” Gregor said.

“Augustus summoned me for a chat. He said you were being terminated.”

“He was here?”

“No. It was on-screen. He wanted to know who was in the chocolate factory this morning. Said they’re going to receive his justice. Igor saw me. He’s with Augustus. I need to—”

Gregor put his hand on her shoulder. “Calm down. You don’t need to worry about Igor. He’s the one that’s been terminated.”

“You killed him?”

“He used Ben to try and double-cross us. I did what I had to do.”

Ben began to speak. Gregor held up his hand.

“And then our riders tried to kill us,” Marek said. He pointed back through the woods. “We came back on their hover-bikes. Set them down on the shuttle landing strip.”

Layla rubbed her hand though her hair and puffed her cheeks.

Gregor saw clothing stuffed into her backpack. He nodded toward it, “You were making a run for it?”

She sighed. “What did you expect? We’re not surviving on the farm. We’re creating our own deaths. Mine was just around the corner, as soon as Augustus worked out it was me who messed with their computers. I thought you were already dead.”

“So we’re all officially unemployed,” Marek said. “Did you get any info on your theory?”

“It’s not a theory. It’s happening. I just can’t work out how they’ll achieve it in the short-term.”

“So we’ve got time?” Gregor said.

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Igor mentioned something about another ship coming to complete the process,” Marek said.

Layla’s eyes widened. “Oh my god. That has to be it. Did he say anything else?”

Gregor looked away, sweeping the immediate area through the rifle sights. Still quiet. Igor’s driver hadn’t returned. They would’ve seen the bike. “Let’s get to more immediate business and talk about this later. We’re getting Vlad and Alex out and leaving. We’ll find a quiet area to regroup, somewhere inconspicuous.”

“What’s the plan?” Ben said.

He tapped the AR-15. “This is the plan.”

“Seriously?”

Gregor cleared leaves and weeds away from the ground with his boot. He picked up a small stick and drew a rough layout of the farm. “Gather round and listen up. This is how we’re going to do this.”

“Seriously, Gregor. Igor’s info, it’s…,” Layla said.

Gregor pointed the stick down. “Marek will go through the back window of my office, retrieve guns and ammo from my drawers. I’ll provide cover and keep watch. While you’re in there, Marek, check through the front blind to see if the coast is clear to the chocolate factory.”

Marek nodded. “No problem.”

“We’ll head to the main square. Shoot the barracks windows through; choke the bastards who haven’t got a helmet on. Any alien that comes out is a dead alien.”

“What about us?” Ben said.

“You and Layla move around the other side of the chocolate factory in a right flanking maneuver to provide covering fire. The surveyors, mechanics and meat processing ones are armed. Shoot any that leave their buildings.”

“This sounds like a kamikaze mission. There must be an easier way,” Layla said.

Gregor shook his head. “I thought about it on the way over. If we give them a chance to get armed and organized, we’re done. We take them while they’re not expecting it. There’s not that many croatoans here.”

“Three from today. Igor’s rider and the ones Jackson killed yesterday must leave around six of the bigger croatoans. Unless the shuttle brought replacements this morning?” Marek said.

“Not that I saw,” Layla said.

“The little croatoans are cowards,” Gregor said. “They’ll hide until more of their big boys show up. We do it now or leave Alex and Vlad. Show of hands for who wants to leave them.”

Gregor looked around the group. Nobody moved or said a word.

Three metallic snaps pierced the air in quick succession. Dirt burst from the ground, just in front of Gregor.

Gregor dived for cover. Placed his back against a tree. Glanced around it.

Six croatoans were advancing around his office. Three on each side.

Layla’s trailer exploded into flames.

Three croatoans on the right of the office fired again. An alien projectile whistled past Gregor and slammed into a tree behind.

The odds were stacked against them. The croatoans must have worked out what happened at the shelter. Without the extra weapons and element of surprise, they only had one option. He didn’t like it, but they might just live to fight another day.

“Run for the bikes,” Gregor shouted.

GREGOR LET off four rounds in the aliens’ direction. They scattered for cover.

Layla dropped her backpack and sprinted away.

“Get moving. Now,” Gregor said.

Ben seemed to freeze. He crouched behind a tree, breathing heavily, holding the revolver up in both hands. Marek grabbed him by the collar and yanked him away.

They stumbled to the clearing, weaving between trees. Gregor followed, occasionally turning and firing in the direction of the office.

Branches snapped and dirt and leaves flew from the ground as the croatoans fired through the woodland.

In open ground the group would have been cut to pieces. Gregor doubted the aliens intended to stun them and use them for livestock.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing next to the others, turned, and shouldered his rifle. “Get the bikes started. We’re going north. I’ll cover.”

Shots ricocheted around the trees, but there was no sign of an alien advance. Gregor returned fire until he emptied the magazine. He replaced it with one that Marek gave him earlier.

Behind him, three hover-bike engines started to collectively hum.

Gregor turned to see two already raising. Marek and Ben. Layla looked back at him, frantically gesturing him over.

He fired twice more, spun around and sprinted.

Layla clutched the handlebars. “Come on. Get on.”

“I’ll fly it—”

“Just get the fuck on, Gregor. We haven’t got time to debate it.”

Without thinking further, he grabbed the rear handle and swung himself onto the back seat, keeping his rifle in his right hand. “Go, go, go.”

They thrust vertically into the sky, faster than he’d ever experienced. Gregor clung on tightly with his left hand and squeezed his legs against the seat, as if riding a wild horse. He jerked into Layla as she twisted the right handle grip.

The bike quickly progressed to a rapid speed, moaning loudly, bouncing slightly, like taking a powerboat over a lake. Something Gregor used to do in the good old days when entertaining overseas clients, organizing drug deals.

He was impressed with how Layla controlled the beast. They passed the other two bikes in a matter of seconds and cut north through the headwind.

Looking back toward camp. Four small dots rose above the main square. Gregor leaned forward. “They’re coming after us.”

Layla reinforced her hands against the bars. There was no detectable speed increase.

Marek and Ben had upped their pace after Layla passed. Gregor signaled to both. Pointing to the camp and raising four fingers.

Shuffling around on the seat like a clumsy pommel horse gymnast, he faced backwards. The croatoans closed in, flying in an extended line formation, at least a mile behind.

Gregor bent back until his head brushed Layla. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

She turned momentarily. “What? I can’t hear you.”

“They’re catching up. Can you get more out it?”

“Hang on,” she said.

Gregor slung the rifle and grabbed both handles. The bike banked left and swooped down to a few feet above the trees.

The tactic was safe at a cruise. At this speed it was dangerous. The reaction time to avoid less obvious things like old overhead power lines or stray lampposts was minimal. He understood her thinking. At least two aliens had crashed at low levels when they were based in Florida.

Ben and Marek followed. Plunging down behind them.

Gregor didn’t hear the sound of the alien weapons first. Tiny projectiles hissed past the bike.

One clanked against the rear housing.

He reached over Layla’s shoulder and pointed down. The aliens were faster, and their only protection was his rifle. They were sitting ducks in the sky for the advancing pursuers.

Two more projectiles whizzed past, between the bikes.

Gregor returned fire, trying to take aimed shots. The bump of the bike made it impossible. Something flashed to his immediate left, followed by a metallic rattling sound. He glanced across.

Marek’s bike must have taken a hit in a key area. A jet of red gas sprayed from the side. It began to arc downward. Gregor’s life-long friend slumped against the handlebars, right arm limply hanging by his side.

He looked up at Gregor with a forlorn expression, and opened his mouth.

A second later the bike smashed into the trees at high speed. Marek had no chance.

“Take us down. Now,” Gregor shouted.

Layla swung the bike left and right. She must’ve been searching for a clearing. Anything to get them out of the sky.

The croatoan riders hovered over Marek’s crash site, giving them a moment’s respite.

A reservoir appeared below. Layla dropped altitude. Ben followed suit. Flying yards above water, they blasted two white trails along its glistening dark brown surface.

Ben looked across; his face full of panic. He pointed to the side of his own bike. Through the roaring wind, Gregor detected an inconsistent tone. Ben headed for the edge, toward a building at the head of the dam.

Gregor carefully watched behind. Searching for the arrival of the croatoans over the trees. He grabbed Layla’s shoulder. “They’re not here yet. Do it now.”

Layla decreased their speed to a cruise and reached a grassy area to the right of the building. The bike reared slightly as she twisted the left grip, bringing it to a hover. She pulled back the handlebars. The bike dropped five yards and thumped against the ground.

Ben gently approached, his engine spluttering. Before he reached dry land, the bike nose dipped and entered the reservoir, spraying a thick sheet of water. He was thrown over the handlebars and splashed in, head first.

Ben quickly surfaced and flapped his arms around. “I can’t swim. Help.”

He was ten yards away.

“Hold this a minute,” Gregor said. He passed Layla the rifle, pulled off his jumper, and waded in, pushing off to a swim after a few yards. He grabbed Ben under one arm and started dragging him to the side.

“They’re here,” Layla said. “Hurry up.”

Gregor looked into the distance. Three bikes roared over the trees, advancing along the reservoir, heading directly for them. He staggered out of the water, dragging Ben by his side. “Head for the building.”

Layla ran for a faded red wooden door of an industrial looking building, Ben and Gregor followed. She jumped over a partially collapsed metal fence and walked through a patch of waist-high weeds. She reached out and rattled the handle. “It’s locked.”

“Out of the way,” Gregor said.

He carried on his forward momentum, roared, and slammed the bottom of his boot against the door’s midsection. It crashed open, revealing dark space inside.

A croatoan hummed into view, stopping at a hover fifty feet away, thirty feet in the air.

Gregor aimed and fired. His round sparked against the side of the bike.

A return shot thumped against the building yards away. Dust puffed from the stone wall.

“In. Now,” Gregor said. He quickly backed away, keeping the bike in his sights, slamming the door closed.

“All three of you. Stay exactly where you are,” an unrecognizable voice said through the shadows.

Layla held up her hands. “We’re being attacked. Haven’t you seen what’s just happened?”

A tall thin man, wearing a hunting jacket, stepped out of the shadows holding a crossbow. He aimed at Gregor’s face. “I saw you three arrive on alien machines. You’ve brought them to us.”

Chapter 28

DENVER FIRED HIS RIFLE, hitting the alien’s hand, knocking its own weapon to the floor. The alien leant down reached for the gun but Denver chambered another round and fired. This time the bullet struck its torso, but like before it seemed to activate some kind of temporal shifting ability.

While the alien phased in and out of vision, seemingly making it invulnerable to Denver’s rifle, Charlie dashed out into the road and grabbed Maria who stood there shell-shocked, her eyes already haunted by seeing Ethan vaporized.

“You go,” Denver said. “I’ll keep this fucker locked down while you get Maria somewhere safe. I’ll meet you back at Quaternary.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Charlie said from across the street. “We don’t know what the hell this thing is or can do. You understand me, boy? Get your ass to safety ASAP.”

“I got it, now go.”

The alien’s form flickered, phasing through the visual spectrum. While it was doing this it moved back to the craft. Denver reloaded his rifle and fired again. As he thought, the bullet went right through the alien and struck the metal surface of the craft.

Blue light continued to spill out of the doorway that acted as a ramp from the central triangular section of the craft. Denver looked over to see his dad and Maria head for the shadows of a half-collapsed hotel. They just hit the side when the alien spun to face them. It brought out a long tube, placing it on its shoulder. A rocket with more of that blue energy firing behind it shot out, striking the side of the decrepit hotel.

With a blast that made Denver’s ears pop, the remaining rubble of the structure collapsed in a huge cloud of smoke and debris. The single shot leveled the entire building. Denver’s heart seemed to stop as he waited for movement.

Come on, where are you?

He considered going over there, but the alien had dropped the tube and regained its square-barreled rifle. It walked down the street, firing at Denver’s position, each round booming like a cannon as the sound reverberated around the remaining buildings.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Maria wave at him. His dad dragged her away. “Go,” his dad shouted. “Get out of there, Den, don’t fight it, just run; go back through the forest’s edge.”

Denver nodded and waved his hand to urge them to get out of there before the alien saw them. Another round flew just over his head, the heat scorching his crown. That got his heart pumping again, and the adrenaline flowing.

He fired back at the alien making the beast stop in the street and take a knee behind a burnt out taxi, its chassis now mostly rust. Through the windows, Denver saw the alien attend to its gun, probably reloading. It was no more than twenty feet away now. Looking to his left, Denver spotted a narrow alley with a low wall at the end.

Taking the opportunity he dashed out of cover and dived into the alley. The expected explosion of the alien’s gun didn’t come. This didn’t make him feel any better. It made him feel like prey to an advanced and highly capable hunter.

He sprinted down the alley, holding the rifle close to his chest. He clambered over the wall, slipping where the smooth vines had broken through. Hitting the ground hard on his side, he gritted his teeth until the initial pain in his side dissipated. He stood and continued to sprint, taking just a quick glance behind him. As he reached the end of the alley and made to turn right out into a street that looked like the carbon copy of the one he just came from, he caught sight of the alien’s long agile legs come into view.

Holding the rifle with one hand now and using it like a relay baton he sprinted down the length of the street, dodging in and out of cars, piles of rubble and fallen buildings. Each time he passed an alley he looked down it to assess his position. When he came to the fourth one he ducked inside and made his way to the end, heading back to the first street, doubling back on himself.

If the alien was tracking him at least he’d be getting some distance and putting obstacles between them. When he came to the end of the alley he saw the alien craft a few feet back down the street.

Waiting for a moment with his back against what used to be a bank with its expensive marble wall covering, half of which was now charred with signs of war, Denver poked his head around the corner to look back down the alley. When he saw no signs of movement he stepped out behind the alien’s ship, kneeling in its shadow. He looked out beneath its cone-shaped nose that was a few foot off the ground.

The alien was still sitting in the shadow of the car. It appeared to be communicating with someone. Its sharp turtle-like snout moved up and down in erratic movements. It was definitely croatoan, but looked like some kind of genetically enhanced version. Way bigger, stronger, faster. And certainly better equipped.

While the alien’s attention was elsewhere, Denver crept around the front of the craft and walking up the ramp, stepping inside. The atmosphere made him choke as though it was filled with a noxious dry ice. He pulled his shirt over his mouth to help filter the air.

The walls inside were white. To the left was the cockpit section with a single seat in front of a curved glass touch-surface. There was a discernible hum coming from the center of the craft. The whole thing was no more than about thirty feet long and ten wide.

What caught Denver’s attention though was the cabin to the right. On two surfaces of the walls were racks holding what clearly looked like munitions. He reached out and touched a set of three disc-shaped items. They looked like mines. He lifted them off the rack and placed them in his backpack. Not wanting to spend any longer than necessary he turned to leave but something on the lower rack caught his attention: A rifle like the one the alien wielded.

He looked at his own rifle, then the alien one. It was a tough choice. He’d owned his for years, but it was starting to show signs of wear and tear and he was running out of ammo. He’d have to make some more, but right now he needed something to fight this hunter.

The alien rifle was longer by far, but the tubular barrel was vented and made of some extremely lightweight material. He placed his rifle on the rack and lifted the alien weapon. It felt good in his hands and weighed less than half of the old Remington.

“Fuck yes,” Denver whispered. “You’re coming with me.”

He took the alien rifle and the three black boxes next to it, which he assumed to be ammo. They too were extremely light and fit snuggly into the webbing around his pack.

Design wise the gun wasn’t a million miles away from human weaponry, but then he guessed that firing a projectile through a barrel only had so many designs. The stock was large, designed for the hunter’s torso, but it still fit snug in the crook of Denver’s shoulder. The sights were electronic. A slider on the side adjusted the magnification.

The gun had a button above the trigger. When Denver pressed it, the gun hummed and a blue light flashed on the two-inch-square sight window, which now seemed to be like the weapon’s general feedback mechanism.

Something within the rifle whirred and the trigger moved forward a hair. A metallic click coming from the main body of the gun told him that it was loaded. The blue light faded away and a green dot appeared in the middle of the screen.

He ducked his head outside for a moment, confirmed the alien still had its back to the craft. Heading back inside he had an idea.

He followed the vibrations of the humming through the ship, going past the weapon’s rack into what he guessed was the engine compartment. A four-foot high cylinder stood within a vat of blue gel-like substance. A pink tinge came from the perimeter, reminding him of the pink circles on the underside of the shuttles.

It must be the engine; there was nothing else in the ship. Not wanting this fuck-bag to have the luxury of transport, Denver took one of the mine-like devices from his pack and inspected it.

Like all croatoan tech he’d come into contact with over the years, it was the pinnacle of simple, efficient design. If they were to design computers, they would have invented Apple machines, he thought, having seen them back at Mike’s basement.

The mine had just a single mechanism. The same small screen as the rifle’s sights, upon which was a single icon. Denver placed the disc onto top of the cylinder. One had to experiment with these kinds of things if they were to understand what the damned aliens were capable of.

His lungs were starting to protest about the poor air quality and from outside he heard the alien shooting his rifle again. When the rounds didn’t hit near the craft, he realized it must have spotted Maria and his dad.

“Fuck it,” Denver said, pressing the icon on the mine. It flashed blue, then pink, then started to pulse. He turned and dashed down through the corridor of the ship, carrying the alien rifle with him.

He stumbled out and rolled down the ramp before scrambling to his feet and sprinting for the alley. As he did, he shouted at the alien who was leaning against the hood of the old car, his rifle supported out in front of him. “Hey, fucker, over here!”

The alien turned his head and they locked eyes. Denver stopped just inside the alley and held out the alien’s own weapon. “Look what I found. You want it? Come get it?”

As soon as Denver ducked back inside the dark coolness of the alley the air took on a strange feel, as though it suddenly filled with static. Then the explosion came, cutting short as the craft’s hull muffled the sound, but blue and black smoke billowed out of the open door.

The alien roared, grabbed its weapon and sprinted down the street toward Denver. But then it stopped half way as Denver’s dad stepped out from behind a building and fired two shots at the back of the alien hunter. Both missed narrowly, striking the ground at its feet. It spun round and it seemed to be undecided on what to do. It decided Charlie was more of a threat and instead of firing his rifle, raced after him.

“Dad, go!” Denver screamed.

“Get to the warehouse,” his dad shouted back. “You have to get the part, you understand? Forget about us, the part is all that’s important.”

And then he was off, darting into the shadows, his root-infused muscles not making it easy for the alien hunter. Denver was left there on his own, the alien craft destroyed, or at least temporarily broken, and the hunter on his dad’s trail. And of course there was Maria. Could he leave them… what if the hunter caught them? Despite his feelings, he knew his dad was right.

The part would mean the bomb could be completed. It meant they could take out the croatoan mother ship for good. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool concrete of the old bank.

Sacrificing yourself for the greater good was one thing, but having to sacrifice those you loved weighed much more heavily. But what could he do? Deciding that his dad had always proven himself to be right, and knowing the hunter wouldn’t have it all his own way, Denver decided to go for the warehouse. He just hoped his dad and Maria had a plan.

He aimed the alien rifle into the sky and pulled the trigger. The gun barely kick backed as it fired with a loud but short crack, making his ears whistle. The motors inside whirred again. At least he knew how it worked. He’d come back for the hunter after he got the part. He just hoped he’d be back in time.

Chapter 29

TWO MORE FIGURES stepped out of the gloom: a man with a shotgun and a woman with a large rusty knife. As Layla’s eyes became accustomed to the light, she could see they’d been using this place as a home.

A camping stove sat in the corner of the filthy dank room. Next to it, a jumble of metal pans and plates. Supplies were moderately stacked against the wall. Some old cans, probably out of date, pitiful looking vegetables, even more so than hers, and several large bottles of cloudy water. Clothing hung on a line near the ceiling. A drip of water fell from a frayed pair of cargo pants.

Croatoan bikes distantly hummed outside.

“They’re landing,” a voice called from above.

“Who are you? Why did you come here?” the man in the hunting jacket said.

Layla touched Gregor’s arm. She said, “We’re running from the creatures outside. These two were attacked this morning in the forest and killed three aliens.”

“Seems a bit strange,” the woman said. “They don’t usually go after survivors. You’re from that farm, aren’t you?”

“Fuck this,” Gregor said. “Do you want to stand around here chatting while they come in and blow our brains out? If your man upstairs can see them, let me join him. Give me a clear shot.”

He held his rifle forward.

“Listen to his accent. He’s from the farm,” the woman said.

The man with the crossbow edged back, lowering it. “He’s right though. We’ll deal with this first. Then we talk. Are you armed?”

Before Layla could answer, Gregor said, “Yes. They’re coming upstairs with me.”

“This is the only way in,” the man with the shotgun said. “It’s a side building. Only one entrance to protect.”

Gregor grunted. He grabbed Ben and pushed him forward.

As much as she thought he was a cold bastard throughout the years, Layla couldn’t help admiring Gregor’s leadership qualities when the shit hit the fan. He was decisive, and made decisions based on what was best for the team, rather than himself.

For the first time since she could remember, she felt part of something. Gregor risked himself to come back and save her. And now he didn’t want to leave her downstairs with strangers.

Layla felt integrated like never before, following Gregor as he thumped up the dusty concrete staircase in his heavy boots.

Upstairs, a man crouched on the right hand side of the room, holding a pistol. He peered through a small sliding hatch, the size of a small pizza box, created half way up a boarded window. He squinted against the sunlight streaming through the gap, lighting up his face.

“I saw you arrive,” he said. “Where did you learn to ride those things?”

“I used to work in a harvest—” Ben said.

“Shut up, Ben,” Gregor said. He joined the man by the hatch. “Can you see the aliens?”

“They’ve landed and taken to the trees. Must be planning something.”

“Let me look,” Gregor said and stooped down.

The room above was the same size as the one below, about thirty square feet. Its three windows were covered by wooden boards, painted black. Light streamed in through cracks around the edges. Four single mattresses were spaced around. Blankets scruffily drawn over each one.

The floor was spattered with various colored dry blobs of candle wax. It reminded Layla of a Jackson Pollock painting she’d seen at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A can of spam held more value in today’s world.

“Use the other window,” the man said, nodding to his left.

Layla gripped the edge of the other hatch, and eased it open along its squeaking rails. A ray of sunlight burst through the gap.

Across the grassy area, seventy yards away, three hover-bikes sat by the edge of the forest. She briefly saw the edge of a croatoan behind a tree before it quickly vanished.

Gregor nudged her out of the way. He dropped to one knee and aimed his rifle. “Get behind me. If I’m hit, take the rifle and carry on the fight.”

Layla stood to one side. Ben peered over the man’s shoulder, revolver in his right hand.

“What are the aliens packing?” the man said.

“Similar to our conventional weapons. Guns, grenades, that sort of the stuff,” Gregor said.

“No cannons or those guns that flatten small houses?”

“Those soldiers aren’t around here,” Layla said.

“Are you sure?” the man said. “I saw one of their fighters yesterday. First time in years. If the aliens get in touch with that thing…”

“If it was coming for us, we’d know about it,” Gregor said.

Layla wasn’t so sure. If the hunter was under Augustus’s command, he could give it a new mission. There was nothing stopping the croatoans outside identifying their location.

Gregor’s grip tensed around his rifle. Layla looked over his shoulder.

An alien scuttled from behind a tree toward the hover-bike she’d previously parked. It stopped a few yards short, took a silver ball from its belt and threw it.

Gregor fired.

The croatoan clutched its torso and slouched to one side. Its grenade exploded with a hollow pop, creating a cloud of white smoke.

Gregor aimed at the shroud as it slowly cleared, drifting away on the gentle breeze. The blast shunted the bike onto its side. The alien lay flat on its back, helmet blown clear by the force of the explosion.

“Nice shot. One down,” Layla said.

She never expected to hear herself utter those words.

“Two to go. And I can’t see them,” Gregor said. “Anyone else?”

A loud thud shook the building. Layla instinctively ducked. Flecks of paint dropped from the ceiling.

“What the hell was that?” Ben said.

“Sounds like they’re next door,” the man said.

“Joe. Get down here,” a voice called up the stairs.

“Sorry guys. They want me downstairs,” the man said.

He shrugged and hurried away.

“We could make a run for the bikes?” Ben said.

“It’d be a turkey shoot,” Gregor said. “We stay. Our hosts have offered to be the first line of defense.”

The building shuddered again after another internal boom. Layla pressed herself against the wall. “What if the croatoans kill them? Use grenades in here?

Gregor rubbed his chin and looked around the room. “Stack the mattresses in the corner. Do it.”

Layla grabbed the edge of the closest and dragged it to the end of the room. Its filthy gray blanket slithered off, she kicked it away.

Ben had already placed one in the corner at an angle. Layla stacked hers against it. He slid a third mattress across the floor and said, “This won’t protect us. You saw what—”

“Do you have any better suggestions?” Gregor said.

After Layla completed the barricade, she returned to the gap in the left window. Ben paced around the room, mumbling to himself.

The three hover-bikes still sat in position by the trees. Another cut through the sky; it must’ve been the fourth one, circling their position.

Something moved outside, close to the building. Flicking in and out of Layla’s line of vision.

She sprang on her toes, tried to get a better angle. The position of the hatch wouldn’t allow it. “I think they’re outside the door.”

A shotgun blast and two pistol cracks came from directly below.

Croatoan weapons started snapping.

“Fuck this,” Gregor said. He slammed his shoulder against the boarded up window. It crunched into the plywood, splitting it horizontally across the middle. Gregor kicked the bottom section away and leaned his rifle out.

Ben jumped behind the barricade, holding his revolver over the top of the mattresses.

An alien grenade exploded. Gregor skidded on his backside, clutching one side of his face. Smoke coiled through the window.

Screams of pain came up the stairs, punctuated by the firing of croatoan weapons until both abruptly stopped.

Layla ran over to the makeshift barricade and slide behind it, next to Ben.

Gregor moved to the side of the stairway entrance and crouched with his rifle shouldered.

He put his finger to his lips.

The slap of boots on concrete started to echo up the stairs.

Gregor nodded with every slow deliberate step, as if mentally counting. Blood trickled down the side of his face.

Ben’s hands shook as he held the pistol forward.

A croatoan boot appeared through the entrance.

Gregor dropped to his back and fired five times. He rolled away and covered his ears. Layla ducked behind the mattress. She grabbed Ben’s shoulder and pulled him down.

The building vibrated after a thumping boom. Smoke gushed into the room, leaving a sour taste as the back of Layla’s throat.

Silence followed.

She climbed over the barricade and approached Gregor. He sat up and dusted himself down. Layla went to touch his wound, he jerked his head away.

“Are you okay?” Layla said.

“Fine. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“What happened?” Ben said. “Did you get them?”

“Shot them both. The front one had a grenade ready to go.”

Layla squinted. The smoke stung her eyes. She pulled her sweater over her nose and mouth and followed Gregor downstairs.

Near the bottom, she stepped over the twisted figures of two dead croatoans into a room bathed in light. The entrance door had been blown off its hinges, a body lay underneath.

Gregor grasped Layla by the shoulder. “Don’t look to your left. You don’t need to see this.”

She focused outside. Gregor pointed his rifle upwards and dashed out, turning amongst the weeds, looking up through his sights. Ben joined him and searched the sky.

Layla tentatively joined them. There was no sign of the previously circling croatoan. She approached the alien by the overturned bike. Its weapon lay few feet away in the knee length grass.

She picked it up, pointed it toward the forest and pulled the trigger. It easily depressed like she was squeezing a tube of toothpaste. The alien rifle kicked against her chest as a projectile whistled out and thumped against tree.

Gregor ducked. “Be careful with that.”

“I’m not going through another situation unarmed,” Layla said.

He appreciatively grunted and started heading for the forest.

“Where are we going?” Ben said.

“Away from here. Who knows what might turn up next. I’m not waiting to find out,” Gregor said.

“We could take the hover-bikes?” Ben said, gesturing to the three parked by the forest’s edge.

Gregor spun and grabbed Ben by the scruff of his neck. “Do you want to end up like Marek? Do you?”

He pushed Ben away. Ben stumbled after him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I just…”

For the next hour, they picked their way through dense, slimy undergrowth. Gregor probably chose the route to provide cover. Layla breathed hard, swiping away branches and kicking away weeds that knotted around her feet.

They eventually hit a former road. Gregor leaned against a rusting SUV and wiped sweat from his brow. He gazed into the distant sky at the thin outline of the mother ship. This was probably the first time he had to stop and think about Marek. Layla decided to leave him to his own thoughts.

She shuddered at the thought of a new alien hulk in the sky. An instrument of death that would shortly bring about their demise. They had to do something.

Ben stretched out on a rock twenty yards away. Layla went over to him. “Are you okay?”

“A few scratches, nothing major.”

“Do you have any idea where Jackson went? Think. We need to put our differences aside. Fight this thing together.”

He shrugged. “Charlie and Gregor? You’re joking, right?”

“I’m being serious. Unless we come up with something soon, well, you know what’ll happen.” Ben flashed a glance at Gregor, who still stared into the clear blue sky. He sheepishly looked back at Layla. She lowered her voice, “If you know something, now is the time to say.”

“Charlie’s got a plan. I don’t know what exactly, but he’s been working on it for some time. I know where he’ll be,” Ben trailed off.

She resisted the strong urge to punch him in the face. “I swear, if you don’t start talking—”

Ben failed to spot Gregor moving around behind him. He wrapped his arm under Ben’s chin and squeezed tightly.

“I’m giving you a minute before I snap your neck,” Gregor said.

Ben’s face reddened, he gasped. “I’ll tell you. Please. Let go.”

Gregor loosened his grip and grabbed the back of Ben’s hair. Layla leaned toward him. “This is no time for games. Where will he be?”

“Ridgway. The clock tower. Noon tomorrow. I’m supposed to meet him. Give him information about the shuttle runs.”

“Did he say why?” Layla said.

“That’s all I know. I wasn’t going to meet him. I’m with you guys. Honestly.”

Gregor released his hold, and slapped the palm of his hand against the side of Ben’s head. “You treacherous little shit.”

“What are you going to do?” Layla asked Gregor.

He threw Ben to one side. “What do you think I’m going to do? Tomorrow I’ll be in Ridgway, waiting for Jackson to show his face.”

Chapter 30

CHARLIE WIPED the debris from his face. The grenade explosion still made his hearing ring. Using the cloud of smoke and concrete to hide their position, they’d managed to outmaneuver the hunter, using Charlie’s knowledge of the alleys and side streets to get some distance and return to Quaternary HQ

“What about Denver?” Maria asked as they cleared the sheet metal out of the way and headed into the basement.

“He’ll be okay,” Charlie locked the door behind and took a breath. Even though the root kept him fit and strong, his age meant that he still felt the fatigue once the adrenaline and the root’s effect wore off. “Come on, we need to go up a few levels.”

Before they entered the basement area, Charlie stopped at a small room previously used by janitors. Mike had converted it to a gun rack. Charlie took Barrett .50 caliber rifle. If anything would stop that damned croatoan bastard, it’d be that.

Taking the stairs two at a time and wincing with the effort, Charlie led Maria into the third floor where his old office used to be. His, Mike’s and of course Pippa’s. It was like a mausoleum.

Desks and computers were still in the same place since the day he left it. Papers and books littered the floor, disturbed by the vibrations of war. He made to reach up to the bead necklace and remembered he’d given it to Ben.

It didn’t matter. Pippa’s face was still clear in his mind. She smiled at him with that quirky look of hers. He pictured her wafting into the office, dirt smudged on her face as she excitedly talked about their next project or some surprising find.

“Are you okay?” Maria said, touching his arm.

“What? Yes, sorry, I just… it doesn’t matter. Okay, stand back from the window, but from somewhere you can use this to spot for me.” He handed her the monocular sight.

“What is it you want me to do exactly?” Maria asked.

Charlie opened the boarded-up window and balanced the Barrett’s barrel across the sill. He rested the rest of the gun on the edge of a desk that he pulled closer.

“That bastard alien is going to have to approach from that street down there. Everywhere else is too dilapidated. It’ll know we had to come this way too. I want you to be a second of pair of eyes to help me focus on it.”

“Okay,” Maria said, pulling a wheeled office chair closer so that she could rest and still get a good view out of the window.

Charlie got himself comfortable, brought the scope to his eye and checked his distances. All seemed good. He just had to wait. Even if the hunter came at them from the shadows, there was still a ten-foot section of open space it’d have to cross. Hopefully, they’d spot it before it got to that section and gave him time to aim.

They sat in silence for five minutes. Sweat beaded on Charlie’s forehead. He knew Denver would have the part by now and be on his way back. And as though conjuring him with his very mind, Maria excitedly said, “Den’s there, look.”

With an alien weapon in his hands he came out of a side street, looking either side, always on alert. “You keep watching him,” Charlie said, not loving this at all.

His fears were born of good instinct. As Denver stepped further out into the open, forty feet behind him, the shadows shifted and the hunter slid out of his position. The bastard was probably there all the time. Charlie couldn’t quite get a good aim on him. A fallen wall obscured his vision, but he could see the shadows moving now that the noon sun had dipped lower to the west, lengthening the shadows across the sidewalk.

“Oh god, he’s going to see him,” Maria said, tracking Denver’s movements.

“Just wait,” Charlie said.

“We have to warn him.” She placed the monocular down on the desk and approached the window. Charlie pushed her out of the way and took the Barrett to the next window across to get a better angle. That did the trick. He could see the hunter edge out from behind a half-meter thick fallen wall.

Maria moaned as she got to her feet. “What the hell do you think you’re—”

“Shut up,” Charlie said, glaring at her. She took a step back but kept her eyes on Denver as he came further down the street.

On its knees, the alien raised the rifle, brought its scope to its eye, the glow of the screen illuminated its transparent visor, revealing the tough leathery skin of its face and a glowing amber eye. This was definitely not a run-of-the-mill croatoan. But even with its fancy tech, Charlie doubted it could withstand a .50 cal round.

“Denver, run!” Maria said from the window, shouting at the top of her voice. Den looked up, then behind him, and dashed to the side. Charlie was about to yell at her, but when he looked back the alien had come further out of the shadows and had heard Maria. It pointed the rifle up at Charlie. They locked eyes and Charlie pulled the trigger before launching himself to the side.

Both rifles exploded. The alien’s shot rocked the walled of the Quaternary building. A chunk of masonry flew away from the window frame, narrowly missing Charlie’s face.

“You’ve hit him,” Maria said, now standing further back, but still watching through the monocular sight.

Charlie took a risk and lifted his rifle to peer through the scope. He saw the hunter crawl away, clutching its right leg. He was surprised that the leg wasn’t severed, but the alien armor was damaged and its suit took on a lighter color. Yellow blood stained the floor.

“It’s wounded,” Charlie said. “But I don’t know how long we’ll have. We need to leave. Now.”

He grabbed the rifle and Maria’s arm and headed back down the stairs.

Mike and Mai pulled Denver into the basement and locked the door behind him. They all rushed into the workshop area. Breathless and sweat pouring from him, Denver shrugged off his backpack. They all looked at him expectantly.

“Well?” Charlie said, “Did you get it?”

“What do you think, old man?” Den said between panted breaths. Pip joined him by his side. He knelt down and made a fuss of the dog. “I ain’t just a pretty face, am I girl?”

“No,” Maria said, before realizing he was talking to the dog. She turned away to hide her embarrassment.

“Oh,” Mai said, lifting out a disc-shaped object from Den’s pack. “What’s this? Looks alien, of course.”

“Bomb,” Denver said. “I used it to take out the anti-grav engine of that bastard’s ship. You just press…” Denver reached out and grabbed Mai’s wrist to stop her from touching the small screen. “Jesus, Mai. That’s what activates it.”

Mike lifted the second one. “I’ll have to make some safeties for you. Wouldn’t want it going off by mistake. But as nice as these are, what about the magnet?”

Denver fished out a box with a Ford label stamped on it and handed it over. “These?”

“Holy crap, Den, there’s half a dozen here.”

“I think there might be more there,” Den said. “I saw boxes everywhere and grabbed the first one I saw. I wanted to get back before… well, before we all got killed by that thing out there.”

“What is it?” Mai asked. “A soldier?”

“Worse,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what it is. One of the croatoans’ experiments perhaps, some other alien imported from God knows where. But it took a .50 cal to the leg and was still alive, still moving. We’ve got to clear out right now, before the bastard tracks the way in.”

“On it,” Mike said heading to one of his over-filled desks. Mai joined him. Together they opened the case of the bomb and started to install the part.

Maria sat down on a plastic chair and wiped tears from her eyes. “I can’t believe what happened to Ethan. One minute he was right there by me, the next…”

Denver knelt down by her, held her hands within his. “I know it’s hard,” he said. “It’s a shock. It’s difficult and brutal and it hurts. But right now, we have to remember him and everyone else that have died at the alien hands. We have to remember them and go on, because what we intend to do will honor them. We can’t lose focus of that. We can grieve later. Take the pain, but don’t let it consume you, okay. You’re with us; you’re one of us. We’ll stick together.”

Maria looked down at Denver, her face blemished with dirt, the tears tracking the stains down her cheeks. “You were so brave,” she said, “to go off like that. How can I be that brave? I’m so scared. It feels like danger waits in every shadow. I’m not sure I can go on.”

“It’s understandable,” Denver said. “This is all new to you, but believe me, as dangerous as this seems, it’s like a vacation to how it was. We have to put all this into perspective and carry on. If not, then what else is there?”

“Waiting to die,” Maria said.

“And I’m not one for waiting,” Denver said, flashing her a smile. “So what say you come with us, and let be what will be? Let’s do this, bring down that mother ship, strike back at these bastards and show them that they’ve underestimated us.”

Maria wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “I guess we have no real option. Count me in.”

She stood and hugged Denver.

Charlie smiled and turned away to prepare their exit. On the other side of the basement was a fire exit that led across the street. Mike and a few others who had sadly passed on had dug a tunnel further through until they came out into the subway system. Although flooded, the water level wasn’t so high that they couldn’t get an inflatable raft in there.

In emergencies, they’d used it a few times before. If they followed the right route, they could get through enough of the train system to get clear of Manhattan. They kept a smaller raft stored in the basement. The other dinghy was too large.

Now their load was lighter, they could squeeze onto the raft and get out. It’d be tight, but it was better than risking going over ground. All the shooting would have stirred up other survivors lurking in the city.

“Hey, Chuck, it’s ready,” Mike said, calling out from the other end of the tunnel.

Charlie walked back to find them standing around the device.

Mai had a satisfied look on her face. “Your boy done good,” she said, winking at Denver. “It works perfectly. But here’s the thing. You’ll have one shot at this. Once activated by using the touchscreen here there’s no going back. If it malfunctions for whatever reason, the regulating magnet will be fried, and no offense, you won’t have the expertise to wire in another in time and figure out what’s wrong.”

“Understood,” Charlie said.

Denver’s forehead wrinkled. “It doesn’t sound very… solid. I mean, it’s a huge risk going up there. If it doesn’t go off, it’ll be for nothing.”

“That’s my worry, son. We’ve talked about this already. It’s my time. I’m going up there. I trust that it’ll work. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Wait,” Maria said. “So what you’re saying is this is a complete suicide mission? There’s absolutely no way you’re coming back if it works or not?”

“We all have to make a sacrifice,” Charlie said, “And this is mine. Okay, that’s enough of the philosophy. Let’s have less chat and more action. Mike, prep the bomb and make it safe for travel. We’ve got to go. I suggest you get Mai out of here too.”

“Will do, Chuck,” Mike said. “And don’t worry about us. We’ve got transport waiting for us.”

Mike placed the bomb inside a plastic flight case and made sure it was clipped tightly shut. He handed it too Charlie with his left hand and extended his right. Charlie took it and shook it firmly. “I’ll miss you, you crazy old bastard,” Charlie said, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

“And you too, you reckless fool. One of these days, you’ll get yourself killed.”

“One of these days. But not today.”

Chapter 31

AUGUSTUS PULLED the cannula from his body after the last of the root compound had flowed into his blood stream. With a sigh of satisfaction, he sat back on his human-leather recliner.

The cool white-blue lights of the mother ship made his skin look pale and diseased, but he knew he was never in better health. Every nerve tingled and every hair stood on end as the root compound did its magic in repairing any aging cells.

He took this shot a few days early having caught a bug from one of the cattle-scum down on the surface. Probably from Gregor, he thought. That reckless fool mixed with people without any concern for his health. Gregor was a walking, talking disease factory. Like they all were.

After all this time, human beings were still barely better than pigs and cows. Even the livestock had the same herding instinct as cows. Still, they made for a good nutritious food supply while the root took hold. And for now, the second crop appeared to be perfect. More perfect than many of the planets the croatoans had terraformed.

Though he had been in and out of stasis since his last day as Roman Emperor Valens. He wasn’t one to dwell much on the past. Especially given it was so long ago. But stasis within a croatoan pod had the effect of compressing time. That fateful day during the Battle of Adrianople, the ninth of August, 378 AD, was still clear. The Goths, led by the maggot, Fritigern, defeated his Roman army and set about the destruction of the Roman Empire as it was known. He, Emperor Valens would remove his habit and disappear into a village and escape as nothing more than a battle-wounded peasant.

For five long days he wandered through the woods of Thracia until he managed to seek voyage across to Greece.

Augustus closed his eyes, the fatigue of post-root injection making him tired. Though it was nothing like the fatigue of his escape; this was more of a spaced-out bliss. His body rejuvenating, growing young and vital again.

His senses sharpened during this state. The soft, cyclical vibrations of the mother ship’s engines synchronized with his heart beats so that he was one with the ship, a part of the larger system, a part of the Croatoan Empire.

An empire that made his Roman Empire look like a backwater village.

That revelation came to him within days of settling in Greece. The croatoans never did explain how they knew who he was, but one night, while he was working alone on a fishing jangada, hauling in the evening’s nets, he was approached on the beach. At first he thought he was sick, hallucinating.

The first impression he got of the croatoan was that of a large helmeted turtle, standing on two reverse-joined legs in a strange suit. The eyes were large and held intelligence within them, but the overriding feeling he got was that it was ancient.

For two weeks, the croatoan would visit him during the night, talking to him in broken Greek, but enough for Augustus, or Valens as he was then, to understand. The promises seemed unreal to begin with: eternity, a life without pain, which appealed greatly due to the wounds he suffered at the hands of the Goths.

Even back then, he required the wearing of a leather mask or a deep-brimmed hat to hide the disfigurement. When he saw the creature’s pod he knew the promises were real, that they had substance. He thought the Romans were advanced in their use of materials and technology, but the stasis pod, half-buried within a deep cave, told him that humanity hadn’t even started yet.

And then came the first taste of the root. Within the pod, a system of root compound within a slow-feed drip ensured that the aliens could live indefinitely once in a stasis mode. It was like a voluntary coma, but one that with some thought could be come out of at will, or at specified times.

For the first time in decades, he felt young and powerful again. The compound stitched his wounds, made him stronger. Even his thoughts sped up. It brought him out of the self-imposed prison where he’d placed himself and now he could see the world of opportunity in front of him. He had a chance to build a new empire, to rule again, but this time without the limits of humanity and politics.

Hagellen, the croatoan that approached Augustus, explained many historical incidents of how the aliens had intervened or taken candidates to work with them when the Earth’s conditions were right.

When Hagellen said that he’d be in stasis for more than fifteen hundred years, the period of time needed to make the Earth’s ecological balance suitable for growing the root, Augustus laughed, but Hagellen had shown him relics from the Egyptians and further back still.

It’d be like waking from a dream, Hagellen said. Within the stasis pod, the compound would keep him alive, compress time, so that when he woke and the croatoans rose from deep within the Earth, it would feel like no time at all.

And he was right.

Augustus sat up as the tingling sensation began to wear off. The compound was almost finished with him for this month. He shook his head. The memories of being Valens dissipated. It was always strange how this procedure would send him back to his former life. But despite the time-compression, it was a long a time ago. He wasn’t that cowardly emperor any longer.

He was Lord Augustus. Earth’s first post-alien leader. Or at least he soon would be.

“On screen,” he said, leaning his elbows against the glass desk in his office. They’d decorated it to look like a Roman court. This part of the ship, one of the lowest levels, was designed to support him as a human, but soon he wouldn’t need a special atmosphere to suit him. Soon, he’d have the procedure that would make him more croatoan than human, and he would take his rightful place at the top of Earth’s new hierarchy.

The wide screen, embedded into the curved white walls of his office, switched on, and glowed the familiar blue briefly before it patched into the communications network. Thousands of smaller squares in a grid showed him all the channels to the farms down on the surface.

“Message to all farms,” he said, and waited for each square to gain a white border to indicate the communication connection established. The screen beeped after a few moments, confirming the connection.

Within each square, he saw the faces of the farm workers looking at him expectantly, the requisite level of fear in their eyes. It made him smile beneath his mask. As Valens and now Augustus, he could always draw that level of fear from his fellow humans. Though he wasn’t so conceited to believe it was him directly.

No, it was his position. He always knew that. It was why he ducked out of the battle of Adrianople. It was clear the Goths would win. He’d seen the winds of change and knew the Roman’s time was up. He would no longer have the position to instill that fear so he left to cast fear upon the fish in Greece.

Some men would feel they took a step down, but not Augustus. Even back then, he knew the order of the things. Dominion over fish was no different than dominion over man.

“Farmhands, this is Lord Augustus; we’re coming to a new stage of our development and you are placed at the forefront of this transformation. Your actions next will determine not only your individual fate, but also the fate of humankind. Fear not, your action is a simple one. I want you all to activate the pressurization protocols on all breeding facilities. The time has come to seal those precious breeding units from the harm of the atmosphere.”

As though perfectly orchestrated, he saw three thousand pairs of eyes widen in fear and realization. By pressurizing the breeding facilities, it was clear that all those outside of the buildings would perish when the atmosphere changed. But they knew better than to question him.

“Atmospheric metrics are being downloaded to your systems now,” Augustus added, “Once complete, activate the protocols. As for yourselves, I want to thank you personally for your work and tireless dedication. Without you, humanity would not be able to continue. Your sacrifice has ensured the continuing survival of our noble race.

“Each and every one of you will be remembered in the records. I will see to it personally. In its current state, Earth has but a few more days left. Say your goodbyes and perform any last rituals you need. The end has come. Thank you, and good luck in the journey of your afterlife.”

One by one, the individual video links to the farms glowed yellow as the data packs downloaded. The ones that turned green indicated they had activated the pressurization process, sealing off the breeding facilities and, so doing, sealing their own fates.

Augustus took a great deal of joy from watching his orders being executed, as the large screen became a sea of green squares. Hundreds activated at once and within a few seconds the entire farm network had activated the protocol… although… he leaned forward and noticed that there was one that was still yellow.

Of course. It had to be that one. He expected as much.

“Engage Farm 1038.”

The sickly image of Vlad, one of Gregor’s old gang members came up on screen. The revolting man’s face was grey and puffy. His eyes were rimmed with red sores and his brown hair lay lank and greasy against his scalp. He reminded Augustus of the street peasants back in Rome. Even then, they never looked after themselves. Some things never change. Some humans are just not as worthy as others.

“Mr. Augustus, sir, I…” Vlad began to say. A girl appeared behind him, the one he remembered as Alex. She was barely more capable than Vlad.

“Why haven’t you activated the pressurization protocol?”

Vlad looked to Alex. Her face tightened. It was clear they were hiding something. The tension of their bodies said it all.

“What’s going on there?” Augustus asked. “Do I need to send a squad down there to take over?”

“No, sir, it’s erm, fine, really, just a few minor issues with the livestock, we’ve got it in hand.”

“Then activate the procedure.”

Augustus kept the channel open and waited. Vlad fussed at the console and looked up through his lank hair. But he wasn’t fooling anyone.

“There’s a problem with our mainframe, sir, I’ll get it fixed right away.”

Augustus brought up a second console window on his desktop screen, patched into Farm 1038’s system and ran a diagnostic. In hindsight, the croatoan hierarchy should have made everything automated from the mother ship. It was too risky to have left any procedure in the hands of the humans, but the aliens were hot on trust. They said many times over the centuries since being on the Earth that trust was always the first way to cooperation. Force should only come if that trust was proven to be less than optimal, and that force could fix anything that trust broke.

Looking down at the diagnostic report, he felt the bounds of trust just retreat from the breaking point. It appeared that Vlad was indeed telling the truth. The mainframe was reporting an error in one of its processor cores.

“I’ll give you an hour to fix it before I send help,” Augustus said, emphasizing that last word.

“Thank you, sir, we’ll send a report right away when it’s done. Sorry to delay things.”

“I’ll expect a report within the hour.” With that, Augustus closed the connection and shut down both screens. Immediately a new session started, this time, the screen filled with the image of his old friend.

Hagellen smiled on screen, stretching his wide turtle-like mouth, his ancient face shown in super-high definition. Augustus didn’t know how old he was, but from his stories, calculated he must be at least five hundred thousand in Earth years. The compound had made his leathery skin look almost like bark.

The alien was one of the hierarchy members. Although Augustus would never fully understand their cultural organization, the mother ship had a clear organization structure. There was Hagellen and three others that made up a command module; they decided what happened here on Earth and set the schedules.

Beneath them was a council of five others who oversaw various aspects of planetary colonization. Augustus was an honorary member of that council with his role earmarked as taking over the planet once the terraforming was complete.

The idea was that once things were running well, they would move a population of croatoan citizens to live on Earth while the mother ship and its hierarchy would head off to their next project, which could be thousands of years in the making, with Hagellen and the others going back into their stasis pods until whatever planet they had found would be ready for the same procedure.

“Hagellen, old friend, to what I do owe this pleasure?”

“Valens, my friend.” the alien said in his clicking language. Augustus had picked it up over the years. Although he would never fully understand the nuance, he knew enough to be able to translate on the fly. “The terraforming ship is one of your days’ away. We’ll soon dock and initiate the final procedure. Is all well with your systems?”

“All working as expected. There’s a small delay on one of the farms but nothing that will prevent the plan from going ahead.”

“I noticed that you ordered Baliska to the surface. That seems a drastic action at this time. Is there something I and the council should be aware of?”

Baliska was the hunter Augustus had ordered down to deal with that meddling little bastard, Charlie Jackson. Seeing as Gregor couldn’t cope with him, he needed to do something. Though in the grand scheme of things, Jackson wasn’t a huge problem. “There’s a tiny resistance on the surface. Baliska hasn’t been hunting in three decades. After he arrived here from his sojourn on your jungle planet, he wanted a new challenge, so I decided to take advantage of his desire to find and eliminate this resistant human before he had the opportunity to become a bigger issue later.”

“That’s understandable,” Hagellen said, shaking his head side-to-side slowly which was the croatoan way of agreeing. The aliens had a complicated set of body language that Augustus had never quite got the hang of. It seemed to change on so many different nuances, and with him not understanding the language at a fundamental level, he was never exposed to those nuances. With a race as ancient as the croatoans, he didn’t expect to learn all that in just a few decades of waking time.

“Was there anything else, old friend?” Augustus said.

“Not far now. Inform me when the final farm has initiated the pressurization. I’ll inform you when the terraforming ship has successfully docked with us.”

“Will it take long, the atmospheric change?”

“Everything is but a blink of our eyes, Valens. You know this.” Hagellen squinted his large, black eyes slightly, which meant that it was a lighthearted phrase. The croatoans never laughed as such, rather via their eyelid movements, they indicated acceptance or rejection of the attempt at humor.

Augustus never bothered to figure out what made them ‘laugh’, there was too much risk of insulting them. He’d lasted this long by usually only speaking when spoken too and keeping his interactions with them strictly about business. To get personal with a croatoan was to go into a battle with a multi-headed hydra with the ability to kill you faster than you could blink.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Hagellen said before the channel on the screen closed.

Augustus leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes; he let the hum of the ship enter his body. He pictured Earth, a bright blue marble in the dense black of space. “Soon, you’ll be mine.”

Chapter 32

GREGOR WATCHED the front of the clock tower from inside the remains of a crumbling brick building. The cover from here was perfect. He was obscured by thick ivy that almost completely wrapped the building. Poking his rifle through the plant gave him a perfect shot.

Ben lay snoozing next to him. They’d spent all night walking by the side of roads and fighting their way through woodland, trying to find the former town in time to set up an ambush.

Charlie Jackson would not catch him loitering by the clock tower. This meeting was going to be on Gregor’s terms.

His stomach growled but food could wait. All he’d eaten in the last twelve hours were two unripe apples from a nearby tree. Gregor kicked himself for not grabbing some supplies from the building by the reservoir. By the time he realized his error, they were heading to Ridgway. At least it wasn’t raining. The sun beat down on them through a large hole in the collapsed roof.

Layla knelt beside him and swiped some leaves to one side. “Still no sign of them?”

“Nothing,” Gregor said. He looked at Ben. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

She checked her watch. “If he was, Jackson’s nearly an hour late.”

“Or he’s got his own vantage point. I’m not moving first,” Gregor shook Ben’s leg. He twitched awake and looked back, bleary eyed. “Are you sure he said noon?”

“Positive. I’ve told you several times already. Why would I lie?”

Ben’s question was exactly what had started playing on Gregor’s mind. He could lie to lead them into an ambush. Jackson might’ve been in the process of surrounding the area.

The instruction was given in the belief that Gregor was still running the camp. Maybe it was to draw him away so Charlie could attack.

He wondered if Alex and Vlad were still alive. The croatoans didn’t seem to recognize feelings or attachments between humans. With a bit of luck, they’d still be feeding the livestock and monitoring inside the chocolate factory. Gregor had to get them free before Augustus got his claws into them.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Layla said.

“Where you going?” Gregor said.

“Do you really want to know?” she said rolling her eyes.

“Oh. Fine. I want to have a little chat with Ben anyway,” Gregor said.

Layla hopped over a partially collapsed internal wall, its chipped plaster surface covered with dark green mold spores, and disappeared to another part of the building.

Gregor grabbed Ben’s shoulder and squeezed with enough force to make it unfriendly. Ben returned his stare with a nervous smile. “Gregor?”

Back in Yerevan, they used Marek’s basement for extracting information from unreliable people. A thumbscrew was usually the best way to make people talk, usually after the first crunch of bone. Sometimes even the mere fitting of the medieval looking torture instrument was enough to prize out information. It depended on the backbone of the person and what they had to lose. It was certainly a cleaner approach than Igor’s amateurish knife related strategy.

A verbal thumbscrew would be enough for Ben.

“Treachery will always come home to the traitor,” Gregor said.

Ben tried to edge away and winced as Gregor tightened his grip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gregor drew his rifle from between the ivy and jabbed the muzzle under Ben’s chin. “It’s an old proverb meaning if you betray me, bad things will happen to you.”

“I’m not. I swear. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Do you want to know my own proverb? I’ve made it up especially for you.” Ben didn’t reply. “If you’ve betrayed me, I’ll rip off your arm and beat you to death with the soggy end. Have I made myself clear?”

Ben rapidly nodded. “Crystal.”

A foot crunched over broken glass in an adjacent room. Layla coming back. Gregor let go of Ben and aimed his rifle back between the ivy.

“Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to find you here,” a voice said.

A voice that Gregor hadn’t heard for years. That he’d dreamed of hearing scream with agony while strapped to his garage chair, as Gregor slowly pulled out his individual fingernails with snipe nose pliers. Reminding him about his cousin.

He tensed. Didn’t want to turn. Didn’t want to give Jackson a moment’s satisfaction before the bastard pulled the trigger.

Ten years of his shit. Ten years of survival. He’d been led into a trap. It was all so simple. It made his life seem trivial. Too much effort for such a stupid end.

“Get it over with, Jackson,” Gregor said.

Ben scrambled to his feet.

“Stay right where you are,” another voice called out.

Footsteps approached. Gregor glanced to his side.

A red haired, rangy looking man strode through the rubble, peering down his sights. Denver Jackson. Last time he’d seen him, he was Charlie’s feral pet, learning tricks from his master. A dog scampered behind his legs and barked.

Gregor snorted. “Look at you, all grown up.”

“Shut the fuck up. I don’t remember giving you permission to speak,” Denver said. “Hold out your weapon. Nice and slow.”

He held out the AR-15 by its grip and placed it on the ground.

“Did you get the information I asked for?” Charlie said.

Ben thrust up his hands and took a couple of steps away from Gregor. “I didn’t have time. Gregor knows. We’re not with the croatoans.”

Charlie chuckled in his distinctive sarcastic way. Gregor hated it. To Jackson, everything was black or white. He should have guessed that Ben wouldn’t have been allowed to just stroll back into the farm. Jackson’s necklace, and the opportunity to get him had a blinding effect.

Gregor looked up at Ben and scowled. The turncoat backed away another couple of steps.

“We’ve tried to get information from them before. They won’t help—” Charlie said.

“Drop your weapon,” Layla shouted.

Keeping his hands spread above his shoulders, Gregor rolled onto his back. Layla must’ve heard the Jacksons. She’d rounded the building and stood behind Charlie, pointing the croatoan rifle at the back of his head.

Charlie’s hands were raised. He didn’t look much different from ten years ago. Gregor had caught glimpses of him through the last decade, but never close up like now. Bearded, piercing blue eyes, miserable.

A woman stood next to Charlie, wearing a harvester uniform. Another lie from Ben about the fate of their crew. Gregor reached across for his rifle.

“Pick that up and I put a bullet through your forehead,” Denver said.

Gregor withdrew his hand. “If you shoot me. Your plastic father gets it in the head.”

Denver hadn’t even glanced back to Charlie. He focused down on Gregor with an intense expression and twitched his head to his left. “Then I kill your helper.”

A distant overhead noise, like an ongoing extended roll of thunder echoed from the clear blue sky.

“Leave us with Gregor,” Charlie said. “You go back to the farm. We won’t hurt you.”

“We want the same thing as you. To bring down the croatoans,” Layla said.

Charlie shook his head and groaned. “You’ve sure got a funny way of showing it.”

The rumble grew into a roar. Everyone looked up. A large white cloud formed in sky. Eight huge bright rings appeared through it. A blast of lukewarm air rushed down, spreading dust around the building. Pieces of plaster dropped from the decaying internal wall as the ground shook. Denver’s dog repeatedly barked.

A massive object, in the shape of a key moved in front of the sun, casting a shadow over the area. The mother ship had lowered, but something larger was attached. A rectangular vessel with four large funnels protruding from its side. The circular mother ship appeared to be connected to the bottom of it.

“What the hell?” Ben said.

“This is it,” Layla said. “The data, behavior, experiment and Igor. It was leading to this. They needed more than the root to terraform.”

“What are you saying?” Charlie said.

“I’m saying we haven’t got time for disagreements,” Layla said. “You and Gregor sort out your differences later. We’ve all got bigger things to worry about.”

CHARLIE LOOKED at Gregor and slowly shook his head. Gregor glared back. The woman in front of Layla turned and said, “What do you know?”

She seemed non-aggressive, unlike Charlie and Denver. Layla only ever knew Charlie as a vague acquaintance during her first year in North America. She found him a little abrupt. It all changed after they moved to the farm. Gregor and Charlie became equally as obsessed over one another. Sabotaging anything around each of their respective operations, employed in a dangerous game of one-upmanship.

Layla jabbed the alien rifle into the back of Charlie’s head. He shuffled forward a few inches. “You need to listen to me. I’ve observed what they’re planning to do. Croatoans testing with an atmosphere box. A timeline near completion. Igor mentioning a ship to complete the process. You only need to look around you to see the place is primed for it. The ship up there is the final part. We need to figure out a way to stop this. Together.”

Charlie shrugged. “I’ve already got a plan. Been working on it for years while you’ve been sucking up to the croatoans and butchering the population.”

“And you can hatch it in a day?” Layla said. “Because I reckon that’s all we’ve have. Maximum.”

“What’s your plan, Jackson?” Gregor said.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“He wants to put a bomb on the mother ship,” the woman said. “Blow it out of the sky. Ben was supposed to get information about the shuttle runs.”

“Shut up, Maria,” Charlie said.

Layla moved around to Charlie’s side, in order to get eye contact. “Trust me. It’s do or die for all of us.”

“Charlie,” Gregor said. “Call off your two pet dogs, and I’ll give you the information you need. We’ll do this together. After that, you and I will sort our differences the traditional way. Do we have a deal?”

Gregor stood up and dusted himself down. Charlie nodded toward Denver. He lowered his rifle.

Layla lowered hers. “Good. Now we can talk live civilized people. Do we have a deal?”

“There’s nothing civilized about you,” Charlie said. “But you have a deal. The overall requirements for the planet are bigger than Gregor’s ego. Then again, they always have been.”

“Replace my name with yours and the statement still makes perfect sense,” Gregor said.

“For God’s sake. Will you two knock it off?” Layla said.

She looked skywards again at the joined vessels. They’d maintained a position high above a few puffy light orange clouds that drifted lazily past.

“How can you get me on a shuttle to the mother ship?” Charlie said.

“Easiest way is to put you in a food container,” Gregor said. “If we still have people left at the farm, it’ll work.”

“You mean processed humans?” Denver said.

“Does it matter now?” Layla said.

The last thing they needed was to keep raking up their individual choices for survival. Layla noticed Gregor’s eyes kept flicking toward Ben. He nervously edged further away, until he flinched as his back hit the semi-collapsed interior wall.

“We arrange oxygen to be left behind the stacked trays,” Gregor said. “You get in before the container’s loaded onto a shuttle. Alex or Vlad can divert the croatoans elsewhere. We launch a diversionary attack on the farm. The shuttle will make an emergency take off.”

“And we get shot with the cannon on the roof of the shuttle?” Denver said.

“The croatoans are pragmatists. They don’t fire cannons toward their own buildings.”

“You sure that’ll work?” Charlie said.

“I can’t think of another way. You sure the bomb will work?” Gregor said.

Charlie walked over and stood a couple of yards in front of Gregor. “It’ll work. But don’t bet on me not coming back, my friend.”

Gregor’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t test me, Charlie. I could—”

Masonry exploded inwards.

Layla jumped back, covering her face.

A light blue beam shot through the room, passing between Ben and Charlie. It punctured a basketball-sized hole in the opposite wall.

Bricks clacked to the ground. Dust filled the air.

Gregor picked up the rifle, spun, and pointed it through the ivy. “There’s a big ugly alien outside.”

“Is everyone all right?” Charlie said.

Gregor fired two shots; both went clean through with no damage. “What the fuck? It turned into a blur.”

Charlie crouched over Gregor and pulled leaves to one side. “We met that thing in New York.”

“Augustus sent a hunter after you.”

Layla ran across the room and knelt next to the gap that had been blasted out of the wall. She leaned around saw a large croatoan prowling outside. It threw its weapon to one side and drew a sword from its thigh, chrome with circular holes running down the middle. Larger than the ones carried by the security guards at the farm.

She squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against her shoulder. The croatoan shifted to its left at an unbelievable speed. Denver joined her by the hole and fired his rifle. The alien dodged again in a blur.

“It’s impossible to hit the thing if it’s facing you,” Denver said. “We need to split up.”

The alien raised its sword and moved toward the building.

“Take the bomb to the edge of camp,” Charlie said. “Get everything prepared. Gregor says this thing’s after me. I’m going to create a diversion.”

Denver nodded and ran to the back of the building. Ben stayed against the wall, shuddering. Layla decided not to argue and followed.

“Get moving now,” Charlie said.

She stopped and looked back. “Take the croatoan rifle.”

Layla threw it to Charlie. He caught it in his left hand.

Ben scrambled past her. Charlie jumped through the ivy and stood in front of the building. The alien pointed at him with its graphite gauntlet, and swung its sword in a circular motion above its head. Charlie rushed to his right, back toward the forest in the opposite direction to the farm. The alien hopped after him.

Chapter 33

DENVER WIPED the sweat and dirt from his eyes. The journey back from Manhattan was long and tedious. He’d only caught a few hours sleep as they drove back over night. The weight of the bomb, the mines and the other supplies in his backpack seemed heavier than his usual load. Luckily his new rifle helped balance things out.

Pip trotted by his side, staying close. Even she didn’t like Gregor that much and Denver had come to learn his dog’s intuition was often worth paying attention to.

He’d noticed Gregor glancing at him and the weapon. An expression of jealousy, but then he had an automatic weapon so he had nothing to concern himself in terms of who had the biggest penis replacement.

They walked in a tense silence through the forest, heading for the farm. Gregor and Layla led the way. Maria hung back with Denver, and Ben floated between them. Denver pitied him really. A man needed a family or at least a close circle. Ben didn’t seem to fit particularly well anywhere, but at least he followed the plan and hadn’t sold Charlie and him out.

And having Gregor and the others armed now seemed like great foresight considering the croatoan’s change of behavior. Denver wondered if Charlie had already foreseen that. It wouldn’t be too surprising.

One doesn’t survive for as long as Charlie Jackson without noticing small changes and having the smarts to plan ahead. Though the plan hadn’t gone down as expected, the result was the same: using the farm as a way into the ship.

He thought about Charlie going up there with the bomb and not coming back. Up until now it felt like something that would happen in a future that wouldn’t have real consequences. A part of him perhaps thought it wouldn’t work out like this, that he’d come up with another plan. Of course, he had that bastard hunter on his tail, but Denver had full belief in his dad. Charlie knew these woods better than anyone.

By following them here overnight, the hunter had made a big mistake. He’d given himself a massive disadvantage. This was Charlie’s playground. Advanced alien species or not, he was fighting Charlie Jackson in his backyard. And this backyard was loaded with surprises.

“He’ll be okay, won’t he?” Maria said as Denver held back a thick branch to let her step through the trees into a clearing with a path worn into the compacted grass.

“Yeah,” Denver said. “He’s like a ghost in this place. Don’t worry about him. Just keep your eyes open for anything waiting for us. We don’t know if the bastards up there have sent reinforcements yet, or if they even know what’s going on.”

“They won’t,” Gregor said, looking back over his shoulders. “I dealt with the guards. There’s none left to get word back. They’ll know when they don’t report in for the evening’s update, but we’ll be in position by then. Besides, Augustus thinks I’m dead.”

“How can we be so sure,” Ben said, speaking for the first time since they left the clock tower. “Wouldn’t their bike’s movements send an alarm?”

Gregor stopped and glared at Ben, clearly not liking someone questioning him. Ben flinched away when the gangster stepped closer. Denver put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and, towering over them, glared back at Gregor. “Drop this macho bullshit. We need to work together now. Just answer the question. Is there any way the ones that chased you or the ones in the farm compound could have raise an alarm?”

Looking up at Denver, a smile of derision stretched across Gregor’s face. “A chip off the old block, eh? Just like your own old man, though he ain’t really your old man, is he? You were just something he stole from another family like a magpie.”

Pip growled low in her throat but she became quiet when Denver reached down and scratched behind her ears. “It’s okay, girl.”

The bait attempt was obvious. Denver let the jibe wash over him. He didn’t care for word games. It was the sign of the inferior man. Denver didn’t need words to back up what he was capable of. “Time’s getting on,” Denver said. “We can stand around all day behaving like kids, or you can just cooperate and work as a team. What is it? You want to take out your frustrations with my dad on me? Fancy your chances do you, Gregor?”

The older man seemed to size Denver up but hesitated. He smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, just like your old man. And for the last time, no, there is no alarm raised. And how do I know?” He pointed to the sky. “There’s no fucking craft or shuttles coming down from the mother ship. If the croatoans from the farm raised an alarm we wouldn’t be standing here right now. For all they know, the ones that chased us had dealt with us. The orders were to kill me. Without any other update, there’s no reason to suspect anything else has happened. So let’s just shut the hell up and get to the farm while we still have the element of surprise.”

Layla shrugged her shoulders in a silent apology to Denver and the others. How Gregor could have retained the loyalty of a woman like her, smart, capable, and beautiful, Denver would never know.

But strange times called for strange alliances—even with someone as low Gregor, the killer of Charlie’s true love, Pippa.

“I wanted to thank you,” Ben said to Denver as they headed across the clearing.

“Why’s that?”

“For making things clear for me before I came here. I know it’s not how it was supposed to go down, but it was the right decision. With poor Ethan gone, I know I would have been useless in that kind of situation. I’m not cut out for this kind of thing.”

“We just have to keep going,” Maria said. “Make sure Charlie gets the bomb up there and we can have our revenge for Jimmy, Erika and Ethan. Just focus, Ben. It’ll be over soon.”

A hush descended as they made their way through the next section of forest. Fifteen minutes later and Gregor stopped everyone. “Just beyond here is my office and the rest of the compound. We need to get to Vlad and Alex.”

“And secure the breeding rooms,” Layla said.

“So how are we playing this? We can’t go in all guns blazing,” Denver said. “We need that shuttle to complete its routine pickup and wait for Charlie to get back.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Maria said. She instantly held up her palms. “I know, I know, I’m just thinking of contingencies. In the unlikely event he doesn’t meet up with us.”

“I’ll go,” Denver said. “I had Mike show me how the bomb works. If my dad’s not back in time for the shuttle, I’ll take his place.”

Maria squeezed his arm, and a pained expression distorted her lips where unspoken words formed. He knew she cared, but he knew his duty. This was always his plan. And if he had the choice, he’d go instead of his dad anyway, regardless. He even considered somehow getting onto the shuttle before his dad so he didn’t have the option, but he knew it would hurt him too much. So he accepted that this was Charlie Jackson’s call, and as his son, he’d do as he was told.

“We wait here,” Gregor said. “Give your old man a chance to show up. The shuttle isn’t due for another two hours.”

“And in the meantime,” Layla said, “I’ll go and prep Vlad and Alex.”

“Are you mad?” Gregor said.

“Not at all. Think about it. There’s no more of the larger croatoans left, only a handful of engineers and surveyors. They won’t have orders to kill me; that was for you. As far as they’re concerned, I’m no problem.”

Gregor paused for a moment, probably assessing options, figuring out the various issues. Finally he nodded. “If there’s any sign of problem, shout, scream, do whatever, but get our attention and we’ll come in to help.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Layla said. “We’ll only get one chance at getting that bomb on the shuttle. When it goes back, they’ll know what’s happened.”

“While you’re in there,” Gregor said, his face lighting up with an idea, “sabotage their communication rig. That way, if things get fucked up down here, those up there won’t have a clue.”

Layla took a breath and checked herself over, smartening herself up. “I’ll tell them I just went out for a scout and got attacked by a survivor,” she said. “If there are any questions.”

“The way Vlad is, I doubt he’ll even notice,” Gregor added. “Go now, and Layla? Take care, won’t you.”

She gave him a wink and disappeared beyond the trees. Denver just hoped there wasn’t a welcome party waiting for her. But she seemed strong and intelligent. He had confidence she’d figure something out.

And he hoped his dad would get here soon. He’d been listening out for sounds of gunfire and landmines, but the forest took on a heavy silence. He didn’t like that one bit. It always seemed to be a precursor to something unnatural, something dangerous, like the insects and birds and the few remaining mammals knew before any human. Even the trees seemed too still.

But there was nothing left to do now other than wait.

CHARLIE VAULTED a log and sidestepped the rusted remnants of a water tower stanchion. Serpentine braches had woven through the crisscross metal supports, creating a solid green barrier. Skidding like a kid playing baseball, he dug his foot into the dirt and swung around behind the natural cover.

Sweat clung to his camo shirt, sticking it to his back. His lungs ached with the exertion. Having taken the last of the root compound before the drive back, he was feeling the effects of his old muscles.

Despite that, he’d still managed to outfox the alien hunter. He looked through a gap in the branches and saw birds flutter high above the tree line, indicating something moving below.

The snap of a twig ahead of him confirmed it. He raised the alien rifle and sighted down its aiming groove. He didn’t understand fully how the damn thing’s armor worked, but having shot it in the leg before it seemed that it could be caught off guard.

A rustle of leaves twenty feet away and a darting squirrel made him tense, ready and waiting. But then nothing.

The forest became still, almost as if the hunter had placed a blanket over the place.

It was a trap.

The hair on the back of Charlie’s neck stood on end and his pulse spiked.

He spun round to see the dark shadow dart out from behind a huge redwood. The hunter focused on Charlie, raising its sword.

Even with the injured leg, it sprinted across the ground, eating up the distance.

Charlie tried to spin out of the way but his elbow got caught against a branch, unbalancing him and making him stumble over a root.

The rifle slipped from his hand. He hit the ground on his ribs, winding himself. But with the adrenaline making his reactions faster, and the remnants of the compound still active, he managed to twist in time to avoid the slash of the sword as it struck the ground inches from his head.

The alien’s thick legs, knotted with muscles beneath the form-fitting armor, planted either side of him, pinning him in place.

Looking closely he noticed the amour was actually a mesh. He could see a jagged hole just above its reversed knee. The fabric had torn away to reveal a thick coating of orange gel: the root as a healing agent.

The alien lifted its sword from the ground.

Its face, visible through a clear visor seemed to smile at him. Its solid black eyes grew small.

It struck out, but Charlie had anticipated the head strike and leaned forward. The sword swung freely over his head, the creature’s arm crashing into Charlie’s right shoulder.

He took the hit with a grunt and reached over with his left hand to pin the alien’s arm. Charlie kicked forward into its left knee, collapsing it to the ground.

Charlie knew he’d never be able to out-power it, but he could outsmart it.

Grabbing a fist full of dirt with his free hand, he smeared it across the visor, and, letting go off its trapped arm, rolled away, coming up on his knees.

From his flanking position he noticed two pipes that connected its breathing apparatus to a slim tank on its bank.

Before the alien had chance to re-orientate, Charlie launched himself on to its back, grabbing the pipes and pulling on them.

They resisted at first and the hunter tried to fling him from his back, but Charlie clung on and screamed with a deep roar as he put everything he had left into breaking those pipes.

He felt the right one give so he let go of the left and with both hands yanked on the right pipe. The alien dropped his sword and reached up and over with his hands, grabbing Charlie by the head.

The damn thing’s strength was incredible.

Charlie thought it’d crush his skull, but as it continued to thrash and buck, it pulled Charlie over its head and flung him away. The pipe came away with a loud hiss as Charlie collapsed into the ground with a thud; his head banged against a rock, making his vision swim.

Through the dizziness he watched as the hunter frantically tried to rejoin the connection to his breathing tank, but Charlie had the broken part in his hand. He dropped it and reached out for the alien rifle in front of him.

Squinting to help combat his fuzzy vision, he pulled the trigger.

The blast hit the alien square in the chest, throwing it back against the ground with a thud. Its arms collapsed by its side. Charlie heaved himself up and approached, holding the rifle in front of him.

The alien was still. Yellow blood dripped from its chest, the wound raw and ugly, exposing its weird biology. Even its face, previously black behind the visor had turned a sickly yellow color, its mouth held open in silent snarl of final anguish.

“You ugly fucker,” Charlie said, kicking at it to make it sure it was dead.

No movement.

“You’re the best they’ve got, eh? Welcome to my world, motherfucker.”

Charlie spat blood from his mouth and turned, leaving the dead alien behind in the dirt for the animals and bugs to feed on. If it wanted Earth so much, it’d have it.

Chapter 34

GREGOR SCANNED THROUGH THE TREES, past his office toward the chocolate factory. Layla had been gone for just over an hour. A hover-bike breezed overhead and lowered into the square. Nothing out of the ordinary. The massive shape in the sky was, and it started to move again, rumbling along, creating a sound like a continuous blast from a distant foghorn. The croatoans on the ground, he observed, seemed oblivious to the new arrival.

In the near vicinity, Layla’s trailer was reduced to a black charred skeleton. Gregor wondered if the croatoans would kill her on sight. Although it was him they were after, and only acted on direct orders or procedures. Alex and Vlad’s caravans were still in place without any noticeable damage. As was Igor’s rotting shed.

Maria shuffled alongside him on her elbows. “They told me you were responsible for the set-up inside the harvester.”

Gregor shrugged. “I didn’t build them. Just passed the idea along to Augustus. He’s the real boss. Besides, you were safe in there. Had hope.”

“Until my retirement,” She slapped him across the face and shuffled out of arm’s reach. “Now I can work with you.”

“You can have that one for free,” Gregor said. “But only that one.”

“Can’t say you didn’t deserve that,” Denver said.

The slap momentarily stung, but it was worth taking if it meant having Maria fully onboard. He needed trust when leading the diversionary assault on the farm. Not a former harvester worker with a grudge, taking him down before they achieved their goal.

Gregor turned to Denver. “There’s a lot of things you and your fake dad deserve too. All good things come to he who waits.”

“Do you know what he once said about you?”

“Fuck this,” Gregor said. “I’m going to sweep the forest. Make sure they’re not sneaking up. You should know all about that.”

Ben was propped against a tree. He’d sat and agreed with everyone for the last hour. Gregor resisted the temptation to kick him in the face as he passed.

“How long you gonna be?” Denver said.

“Not long. Layla should be back soon.”

Gregor needed time to think away from the group. Every few minutes, Denver chipped away at his nerves. Maria was like a parrot on his shoulder.

He wanted to think of a disaster recovery plan. If Charlie couldn’t get on the shuttle, they needed another play. Something effective. His mind blanked. It seemed like they had a one shot deal.

Cutting through the trees, scrambling over obstacles and surveying the damp ground for fresh croatoan boot marks helped release some of the tension he felt building inside.

Above, he heard the increasing hum of the shuttle descending toward farm. The others would see it shortly. They positioned themselves in woodland between the landing area and warehouses. A trail was cut through the woodland to allow the containers to be transported for loading. As soon as the croatoans appeared on the trail, the plan was to attack the warehouses. Starting with the barracks.

Something moved in the trees ahead.

Gregor ducked behind a moss-covered rock and peered over it.

A figured darted between two redwoods, heading toward him.

Human.

Charlie Jackson.

Gregor looked down the sights of the AR-15. Aimed at Charlie. Followed his movements as he closed in. Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty.

His finger itched on the trigger. Gregor waited years for this opportunity. Denver would take the bomb if his father didn’t show.

He couldn’t fire. Yesterday, Jackson would’ve been worm food. But not today.

Charlie hadn’t spotted him. He was twenty yards away. Gregor kept the rifle shouldered and stood. “Managed to deal with the alien?”

Charlie abruptly stopped. His hand twitched against the alien rifle. He darted behind a tree. “Waiting to ambush me, Gregor?”

Gregor knelt back behind the rock. “I wasn’t going to shoot. I could’ve easily killed you if I wanted.”

He peered over the moss. Charlie’s head shot back behind the tree.

“We need to finish this, Gregor. Lower your rifle.”

“Both of us come out after I count to three. Leave our rifles on the ground.”

“Why should I trust you? You don’t have to pretend to care. Nobody else can see you out here.”

“You need to get that bomb onto the ship. It’s in all of our interests. I’m arranging a place for you on the shuttle and leading the attack on the farm. Why would I jeopardize the plan?”

“Because you’re a dick, who has no respect for life.”

Gregor scowled and bit his fist. “The shuttle’s arrived. There won’t be another run until tomorrow morning. If there is another run. You heard what Layla said.”

A sickly looking rabbit with greasy fur shuffled between the rock and tree. Time was against all native species. The shuttle would be gone in less than an hour.

Gregor stood, placed his rifle on the rock and held his arms out.

Charlie looked around the tree. He placed his rifle on the ground and stepped out.

They stood twenty yards apart. Charlie walked to his side. Gregor moved to keep an equal distance until they were ten yards away from their weapons.

Charlie rolled up the sleeves of his camouflage shirt. Gregor took off his watch. They started circling a large rock, staring at each other.

“Why did you kill Pippa?” Charlie said.

“It wasn’t me. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“Your mother was a whore. Stop lying. Why did you do it?”

Gregor winced. He’d slit throats for lesser comments. “I killed the man who did it, yesterday morning. You on the other hand, killed my cousin.”

“He was collateral damage. I blew up a croatoan building. If you lot didn’t have your tongues stuck up the croatoans shit pipes unlike us survivors—”

“Stop right there. You won’t get a rise out of me. I did what I needed to keep my team alive. Those humans, livestock, they’re bred for food. They didn’t have a previous life like you or me. I only went after people who attacked my operation.”

Charlie shook his head, maintaining his cold stare. “You think it’s acceptable? Do you? I mean, deep down in your commie soul?”

“I’m not commie, and the ice age froze my soul. We’re never going to agree, so let’s get this plan out of the way and meet back here.”

“You know I’m not coming back, Gregor. Whenever I think about Pippa, I can’t help seeing your ugly face. Do you think that’s the last thing I want to see up there?” Charlie pointed to the sky.

Gregor stopped and reached for his pocket. Charlie stopped opposite and narrowed his eyes.

They walked toward each other. Gregor produced the blue bead necklace and held it toward Charlie. “Here. I think you’ll want this for your journey.”

Charlie paused. Looked down. He snatched the necklace from Gregor’s hand and briefly closed his eyes. “If you lay a finger on Denver after I’ve gone…”

“We’ll go our separate ways. You have my word on it. From now on, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. “

Charlie started walking back toward his rifle. “Let’s do this.”

MAKING their way back to the group. Gregor kept a healthy distance between himself and Charlie. A suspension in hostilities was all they needed. They were never going to be friends. There was too much water under the bridge.

Four people squatted against trees when he approached. Layla frantically gestured him over when she saw Gregor coming. He quickened his pace and crouched next to her. Charlie stooped on her other side. They briefly glanced at each other, then Layla.

“How’d it go?” Gregor said.

“They’re starting work right away. Alex is going to stall the croatoans,” Layla said. She looked at Charlie. “Vlad will help you in the meat processing warehouse. He’s going to put some equipment in a container for you. An alien rifle and some oxygen equipment.”

“What about the farm? Any step-up in security since yesterday?” Gregor said.

“Some reinforcements came down on a shuttle last night. Just the usual ones, nothing like that thing we saw in Ridgway. Besides Augustus asking them to pressurize the breeding lab, it’s been business as usual.”

“Breeding lab. You fucking people,” Charlie said. “Can we rely on them?”

“Augustus’s message put a rocket up their asses. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why he wants to do it.”

Gregor raised his eyebrows. “Because they’re changing Earth into the middle box?”

“What’s he babbling about?” Charlie said. He looked at Gregor and slowly said, “They’re doing it because that ship is gonna complete the terraforming process.”

“I know that,” Gregor said. “I was referring to a scientific experiment. Something that’s probably way above your head.”

“Look above my head,” Charlie said. “There’s two ships that want to kill us.”

Layla grabbed Gregor’s sweater arm and twisted. She did the same with Charlie’s shirt. “Knock it off. The pair of you. Charlie, there isn’t much time; move to the back of the meat processing building.”

“We’re both committed, don’t worry about that,” Charlie said. “How will I know the difference between Alex and Vlad?”

“Alex is a woman,” Gregor said. “You might’ve met Vlad before, I’m not sure.”

Denver moved over and joined the huddle. “Well? Are we ready to go?”

“We?” Charlie said. “There is no we. I’m doing this on my own. You’ve always known it.”

“I’m coming to make sure you get into that container. Once Gregor attacks, I’ll come in from the other side. Add to the confusion,” Denver glanced at Gregor. “Are you okay with that?”

Gregor raised his left shoulder and pursed his lips. “Fine with me. I’ll bring other three in.” He looked at Ben and Maria. Both held their respective weapons and peered through the trees. Hardly special forces but it’d do.

Charlie walked over to Maria and said something in her ear. She watched him walk away with a genuine look of sorrow, holding out an arm toward him, before letting it drop.

As Charlie passed him, Gregor held out his hand. “Good luck.”

Charlie stopped. Looked into Gregor’s eyes, firmly shook his hand and slowly nodded.

Chapter 35

CHARLIE AND DENVER sprinted around the farm facility’s perimeter, keeping to the shadows. Through the trees, they saw the one called Alex stalling a couple of croatoans by the shuttle. They were expecting the next load of meat and root and weren’t happy about the delay.

“It’s coming,” Alex said, raising her voice and talking slowly as though that would get through to the increasingly agitated croatoan. It raised it hand to the shuttle and nodded its head indicating that it needed loading.

Charlie clutched the bomb case to his chest and duck walked to the edge of what Gregor had told him was the meat processing building. For a moment, Charlie doubted himself, wondered if this wasn’t some sick, elaborate plan on Gregor’s part, but even if it was, it still represented an opportunity to get on that shuttle. Even if he had to kill every last alien and fly the damned thing up there himself.

Denver took a quick glance around the edge of the building. “We’re clear,” he said, his body pressed against the building, the alien rifle in his hands across his chest. “They’ve gone back to the shuttle. Alex is making her way to the other side of the unit. Are you really sure this is the only way?” Denver asked, looking directly into Charlie’s eyes.

“You know it is.” It really wasn’t the time to get into another discussion. He understood his son’s hesitance, but this was personal. He wanted to do this. Needed to do this. So much had happened since the day the aliens rose out of the ground, so many people close to him were cruelly killed as nothing more than inconvenient insects.

A shadow passed overhead, sucking the light away from the farm compound, bringing with it a chill and a stirring of wind. The new alien craft made the mother ship look like a spec in comparison.

He shook his head and mumbled, “What if it’s not enough?”

“What do you mean?”

“The bomb. I trust Mike and Mai implicitly. They’re great at what they do, but looking at the size of that thing. With the mother ship conjoined to its underside like that, even with the bomb and the EMP, will it even scratch the surface of this new thing?”

“Maybe it doesn’t even have to. Maybe by taking out the mother ship and its anti-grav engines, gravity will do the rest and pull that damned thing down.”

Charlie pressed himself closer to the wall of the meat-processing unit as the massive terraforming ship stopped. It had turned so that the long straight section pointed west. Following the line of the ship brought Charlie’s vision to the shuttle.

There wasn’t really any longer to delay things. Through the open mud-covered square, Charlie saw Gregor and the others spread around like small dark lumps on the perimeter of the farm. The ‘livestock’ no longer wandered the fields, having been brought in by Alex earlier.

The thought of those poor souls steeled Charlie’s resolve. How could he let the enslavement of his race like that go unpunished? Though it did occur to him that his actions would be like a bull assaulting humanity for farming cows.

He didn’t think the aliens were evil—certainly no more evil than humans—they just thought humanity were nothing more than tools, cheap labor, and a source of food.

Charlie waited for a count of twenty.

When no croatoans appeared in the square from any of the units or the shuttle, he took one last look up at the terraform ship as though it were watching his every moment. Then he slid past his son and around the side of the building. He could see Vlad and Alex standing outside by the ramp.

Inside would be the empty container—if Gregor and Layla had stuck to what was agreed. That they were waiting in hiding, preparing for the distraction, gave him some confidence, but the icy energy of anxiety still prickled at his nerves.

Denver followed behind, his steps deliberate and quiet. The rear of the shuttle was open and pointed thirty or so degrees away from the ramp that led into the unit. As agreed, when he was within a few feet of Alex and Vlad, he whistled quietly and then ducked onto his haunches, close to the front wall.

For a moment neither of Gregor’s colleagues moved. But then, Vlad mumbled something, nodded and headed inside. Alex took off and moved toward the shuttle. The distraction he needed to go inside. When she was completely obscured from sight, he heard her voice rise as she set about arguing with the aliens.

A quick sprint later and Charlie, with Denver right behind him, found himself inside. The smell made him want to gag. Even in the darkness he could see the terrible machines that made food from people. Large metallic boxes where the people were ground up, their bones crushed and liquidized.

He was instantly reminded of the movie Soylent Green and his stomach turned.

Wide conveyor belts, now still, told him of their levels of production. People ground down to their constituent parts, nothing more than fat, protein and carbs, all mixed together into a paste.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Denver whispered to Vlad. “You fucking traitor. How could you work here of all places, treating your fellow man and woman like nothing more than meat.”

“I’m beyond your outrage,” Vlad said, pulling them further into the building. “So you might as well just shut up and stick to the plan. There’s a breathing mask and oxygen tank inside. Along with the supplies of meat and root. I had to guess your weight, including the bomb, to load this properly.” Vlad looked Charlie up and down. “You’re smaller than the myth that precedes you. We might be a few kilos off.”

“I don’t care, as long as that shuttle gets into the mother ship.”

Vlad shrugged, appearing as disinterested in this as though it were just another day at the human-meat factory. Charlie didn’t hide his disdain as he looked into the container. There was a small space provided between the silver, foil-wrapped, containers.

The mask lay to one side, a pipe connecting to a tank hidden beneath the packages. Vlad looked up, “Get in now, they’re coming. You hide,” he said pointing to Denver.

Glancing back, Charlie saw Alex remonstrating with the aliens as she walked back toward the building. Charlie dove into the container, hurriedly placing the mask on his face and placing the bomb across his stomach.

Denver leaned over and extended his right hand. Charlie grabbed it and squeezed. He noticed his son blink away a tear. “You go,” Charlie said. “Remember I love you, always. Never give in. Remember what I taught you, and save as many as you can. Now go!”

He wouldn’t let go, just stared down at Charlie shaking his head. Vlad displayed a surprising strength as he wrapped his scrawny arms around Denver’s shoulders, pulling him away into the shadow.

“I love you,” Denver said as hunched down in the shadows beyond the unit’s opening. Charlie nodded and smiled, doing all he could to stop himself from jumping out of the container, but the world was bigger than him. The stakes were greater than his own personal losses.

The time was now.

He slumped into the hole, fixing the oxygen mask over his face. As soon as they were in the shuttle, it’d pressurize to the croatoan atmosphere. It would take about fifteen minutes to get to the mother ship. He hoped that the oxygen tank Vlad had arranged contained enough air.

With a solid metallic clang, Vlad slammed the lid down on the container and locked the latches down on either side. It felt like the underground shelters he first used after the initial invasion. Too tight, too dark, but he was used to it. He just had to relax, control his breathing to avoid using up all the air and wait until the shuttle was in place within the ship.

Simple really. A quick journey, a press of a button and it would all be over.

Vibrations rumbled through the metal box, knocking him against the packages inside, packages containing his fellow humans.

Through the lid he heard the croatoans clicking their displeasure at the delay.

The container stopped.

Charlie’s chest tightened and his pulse raced. He tried to keep his breathing short and shallow. The latch on the right side pinged open, the lid buckling, a spray of light bled in. He’d surely be spotted. He thought about Gregor again, thought that this was a set up, and rued the lack of foresight to bring in a hand-weapon with him.

The croatoan’s were getting angry, their clicks turning into barks. The container rocked violently to one side, the lid opening further, exposing him to anyone or anything that decided to look inside.

Gregor! Come on, he thought. Where the hell are—

Crack, crack, crack.

The sound of gunfire erupted, making the croatoans panic, their barks now high-pitched sounds of alarm. The lid was slammed shut and the latch closed. Feet shuffled away, something pneumatically hissed and thumped, and then the whir and whine of anti-grav engines.

The ruse worked.

Gregor came through.

This was it.

He clutched the bomb close to his body like a precious newborn. In a way, he thought, if all went well, it would give humanity a rebirth.

If it went well.

Chapter 36

FIFTEEN MINUTES HAD PASSED since the Jacksons’ departure. A distant buzz grew louder. The strange croatoan version of a forklift truck swept between trees up the trail.

The vehicle buzzed along, a few feet off the ground, containers stacked at the front, balanced on two large metallic prongs. A little croatoan controlled it, like the aliens who navigated the harvesters. It sat in a transparent box and shifted levers around.

Layla hoped Charlie was in one of the containers, clutching his bomb. Their survival depended on it. Everyone’s did.

Four aliens stood next to the shuttle’s open hatch at the rear, roughly the size of a garage door.

The forklift reached the shuttle and slowly dropped to the ground. Its prongs started to extend, moving the containers into the back of the craft. They slowly disappeared from view. The forklift pulled back the empty prongs and reversed before turning. It started to head back to the meat processing warehouse.

“Is that it?” Maria said, “Or do they have multiple loads.”

“Just one,” Gregor said. “On my signal. We turn and attack the farm.”

Ben raised his head from a patch of long grass he was lying in. “I thought it was a diversion? You shoot and the shuttle takes off.”

Gregor grimaced. “The fight-back has begun. Charlie isn’t sacrificing himself for us to act like chickens. We kill every leather faced bastard we find.”

“So he’s your hero now?” Maria said.

“Be careful, little lamb. I’m not the enemy. You don’t want me as one.”

Layla listened but watched the croatoans. One appeared from the side of the shuttle carrying a scanner. The tennis racket shaped object gave off X-ray like images on the clear circular part. If Charlie was in a container, they’d identify him. The weight must’ve been slightly off, triggering suspicion amongst the aliens.

Another croatoan joined the one carrying the scanner and they disappeared into the back of the shuttle.

“We need to do it now, Gregor,” Layla said.

“Just seen it,” Gregor said. “We watch them take off, move straight through the trees to the main square. Make your shots count. Barracks first. Get their weapons. Okay?”

Layla nodded. “Now or never.”

“Ready,” Maria said holding up her pistol.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Ben said.

Gregor aimed through the trees toward the forklift that was still moving slowly along the trial.

He fired three times.

The forklift picked up speed and disappeared from view.

Croatoans at the back of the shuttle started to move with urgency. The two outside hopped straight into the side entrance. The two inside the back compartment sprang out and followed. The rear door smoothly closed with a pneumatic hiss. The graphite ramp slide into the body of the vehicle and the side door slammed shut.

Engines roared into life. Dirt blew across the landing strip.

On the shuttle roof, the pulse cannon’s turret started to turn toward the forest.

“Run,” Gregor said.

Layla followed Gregor as he crashed through undergrowth like a wild boar. She glanced back. The shuttle was above the trees. Its cannon built toward a high pitched crescendo.

Gregor dived down and covered his ears. Layla did the same, landing with a squelch in a brown stagnant puddle.

The cannon boomed. A flash of brilliant light flooded the forest.

Debris flew over her head. Branches landed on top of her.

The shuttles engines whirred. Their noise started to drift away.

Layla glanced up. The six pink rings were getting smaller, like a colorful domino in the sky, heading toward the mother ship, carrying its deadly payload.

“Is everyone okay?” Gregor said.

He stood and helped Layla up by her arm. A section of forest to their left, the size of a basketball court, was obliterated by the cannon blast. Trees were smashed to the ground, their jagged black stumps smoking from the heat of the shot.

Ben rustled through the leaves of a thick branch that had blown off a tree. Maria crouched next to Layla. “Do they have those things on the farm?”

“No. Stick with Gregor. Do what he says. You’ll be fine.”

Gregor moved off at pace again. He broke the tree line and raced past his office. Layla kept focused on the ground ahead, trying to keep up, searching for any croatoans who would have heard the shuttle fire.

Single rifle shots came from the far end of the camp. Denver, carrying out his assault.

Croatoan rifles started to snap closer to them, coming from the square.

They moved along the side of the chocolate factory. Gregor paused at the end. Layla looked over his shoulder. Three aliens were mounting hover-bikes. Three fired toward the meat processing warehouse. Layla thought her heart was about to burst out of her chest as she struggled to control her breathing. This wasn’t her environment and she wondered if Gregor really was the one to get them out of this. But with Denver back toward the square, she had no other choice but to trust and follow.

Adopting a prone position, Gregor fired at three alien engineers standing in the square. One dropped forward, clutching its helmet. Denver must’ve hit another as it fell back between Gregor’s shots. The third croatoan started hopping away. Gregor cut it down before it could reach its barracks.

“Maria, Ben, you take the chocolate factory. They’re unarmed. Layla, come with me,” Gregor said.

They rushed across the square. Three hover-bikes thrust into the air and turned to face Layla. She ducked behind a parked hover-bike, tumbling down in a heap next to Gregor. She breathed deeply, steadied her hands, aimed and fired.

Shots echoed from behind, coming from inside the chocolate factory. Denver came running into the square, before he knelt and started firing into the sky.

An alien fell sideways off the closest, hovering bike. It remained in its position, slowly spinning around. The two remaining bikes zipped away, over the buildings in a southerly direction.

“Where are they going?” Layla said.

“Who knows?” Gregor replied. “Maybe to another farm. It’s two less we don’t have to worry about. Let’s get those alien rifles. I’m nearly out of ammo.”

Denver met them at the bodies as they each picked up a weapon.

“Did your dad make it?” Layla said.

“Yeah. He’s in a container.” Denver said. “Where to from here? I’ve dealt with the lizards in the meat processing place.”

“Shoot out the windows of the barracks,” Gregor pointed to the buildings. “Drop anything that comes out of the doors.”

They turned and collectively fired at the barracks windows. Thin orange gas seeped from the bullet holes after the alien projectiles punctured through. A small croatoan, one of the surveyors, came running out without his protective visor and breathing equipment, his eyes wide with panic and terror. It was instantly felled by multiple shots.

Nothing else came out of the buildings for the next minute as all three stood in the middle of the square, aiming at different points, covering a 360 degree arc.

“If it’s this easy. Why didn’t you do it before?” Denver asked.

“There used to be soldiers. We’d be dead if they were still here,” Gregor said. “When they figure out what’s happened, and if your old man doesn’t manage to let off that bomb of his, you better be ready for their retaliation.”

“This place has been ramping down for a while,” Layla said. She peered up at the two hulks crawling across the sky. “I bet it’s the same for all the farms. I thought they were moving to a management mode. It’s probably due to the atmosphere ship.”

“Gregor. Denver. Help,” Maria called out. She staggered across from the chocolate factory.

“What’s wrong?” Gregor said.

“Ben’s dead. I’m out of bullets. The little ones ran to the end of the room and hid in a huddle. We fired from door. Thought we’d got them all. Ben went to confirm and two attacked him with small swords. Hacked him to death.”

Gregor grunted and shook his head. “It was obvious he wouldn’t survive.”

“Come on, Gregor,” Layla said. “He’s played his part.”

“Is this how you think of your team?” Denver said.

Gregor twisted around to face him. “Did you see where Alex and Vlad went?”

Denver looked into the distance. “Dead. Aliens must have got them early.”

“If I find their bodies with wounds inflicted by your rifle, I’ll rip off your arm, ram it through your head and ride you around like a croatoan hover-bike. Do you understand?”

The thought of Denver enacting swift revenge on Gregor’s team as soon as he had the opportunity sent a shiver down Layla’s spine. Although not completely implausible, his story for Alex and Vlad’s end didn’t seem to fit with how the aliens on the farm operated. They would’ve assumed that both were still part of the team.

“Cut the empty threats,” Denver said. “We still need to clear these buildings”

“I’ll take the chocolate factory with Maria. You take the breeding lab with Layla.”

“Can’t I go with Denver?” Maria said.

“No. This isn’t a family game,” Gregor said, asserting his control. “You don’t get to pick your favorite player. You’re coming with me. Now.”

Layla understood Gregor’s logic. She’d grown more appreciative since seeing him more up close, how he reacted in dangerous situations. If they were going to be part of a team, start to forge bonds, this was a way to achieve it. The main issue was it left her with Denver.

“Which one’s the breeding lab?” Denver said.

“Over there,” Layla pointed. “You lead the way. Aliens don’t go in there that often.”

She didn’t want to lead the way herself, in case Denver took her out as soon as she got through the door. If he raised his weapon in her direction, Layla was going to fire first.

He moved quickly to the entrance in a crouching run while Layla remained a few yards behind with her finger on the trigger. Just in case.

Green lights blinked on a panel outside the door. The first time she’d seem them activated. The building had been pressurized to a conducive environment to keep human livestock, post change.

Denver kicked open the door. A flood of cool air rushed out. He glanced back as the control panel started to beep, lights turning red after five seconds. “You know the layout. I’ll cover you.”

Rifle fire crackled from inside the chocolate factory. Layla was confident that Gregor would sweep the place clean. They were on the brink of securing the farm and she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to finish the remaining aliens. He was like a pit-bull once he got something into his head.

While Denver was looking ahead, his attention away from, she raised the rifle to the back of his head. “Did you kill Alex and Vlad?”

Denver looked round slowly, staring at the barrel of the rifle. He frowned and shook his head. “You really think that? How little you think of people outside of this place. From where I come from we don’t kill other humans. You ought to look closer to home for that behavior. Besides, this is our chance. My dad isn’t sacrificing himself so we can squabble like petty criminals. So no, I didn’t fucking kill Vlad or Alex. You got it?”

Layla felt the sincerity in his voice, the conviction, but Gregor would take some convincing. She could tell from Gregor’s earlier reaction that he didn’t believe Denver in the slightest and would carry out his own style of crime scene investigation to establish events. That was one situation she’d really like to avoid.

“It’s one long corridor,” she said, pointing into the lab. “You take the doors on the right, I’ll take the left. We’ll do it together,” Layla said.

Denver nodded and spun through the door, pointing his rifle at the first window. He took a couple of steps back and breathed, “Holy shit.” He glanced back at her, his eyes wide with surprise. “How are we going to get all of those women out safely?”

Layla checked the first room on the left. “We’ll free them once the farm’s secured. I’ve got it worked out, don’t worry, they’ll be safe.”

While moving from door to door, Layla kept Denver in her peripheral vision. They glanced into each cell before moving along.

She flinched as a croatoan rifle snapped. The glass on a cell door shattered next to her head, spraying fragments into the corridor.

She crouched and felt a sting on her cheek and a warm dribble down her neck.

Denver ducked next to her, holding his rifle to his chest. “It’s only a nick. Do any of these rooms have external windows?”

Layla took a deep breath. Tried to compose herself. “No. One must’ve been hiding.”

Another alien projectile whistled above them, slamming into the opposite door.

The weapons shook in her hands. She glanced at Denver.

He firmly nodded, stood and fired twice.

Two quiet clicks came from the cell.

“Clear,” Denver said. “Let’s finish this and get out of here.”

They proceeded to check the rest of the cells with more caution, creeping along the corridor, peering in with weapons pointed, until reaching the end of the building. Layla immediately turned and headed for the entrance.

Denver walking alongside her. “You must have a sick or strong mind to have put up with this.”

“I did what I needed to survive. I don’t expect you to understand my choice.”

A hollow pop sounded outside. An alien grenade.

Layla sprinted to the door and pushed it open. She knelt in the gap and scanned across the square with her rifle. Denver ran past her and took up a firing position a couple of yards away.

Gregor had a small pile of alien grenades next to him. He tossed one into a shattered window of a barrack building and ducked. Smoke belched out after an explosion. Maria huddled behind a hover-bike, her hands over her head. She looked pale, scared—the opposite of Gregor who seemed to be enjoying this far too much.

“He’s a fast mover,” Denver said.

“You should consider that. If we want to take the fight further. Destroy more farms. Start wiping out their crops. We need effective people.”

“Whoa. You think I want team up with that piece of shit?”

Gregor tossed another grenade into a barrack building as Denver jogged across to Maria. Layla looked around the square, taking in the devastation and the pile of dead croatoans. It’d been quite easy. A coordinated effort around the world could wipe out the farms. The problem was communications. The aliens effectively cut all long-range comms when they screwed the ionosphere. Humans were sparse. Spread far and wide as individuals and small groups, avoiding rather than confronting the croatoans after their initial show of strength.

If Charlie managed to take out the mother ship, they might just have a window of opportunity to destroy the remaining colonists, but they needed to pull in the same direction. A level of organization was required.

Denver swung his rifle in the direction of Gregor.

A barrack building door slowly opened and an alien crawled out. Gregor kicked the croatoan in the chest. It collapsed to the ground. He stamped on its helmet visor, crushing it with the sole of his boot.

Layla looked up. The shuttle had disappeared from view.

Chapter 37

CHARLIE TOOK in a deep breath as the shuttle finished its docking procedure with the mother ship. The whole thing rattled violently, crushing him against the liquidized human food and root compound packages.

Sweat poured from his face and his leg muscles were starting to cramp. The container smelled of blood, but he knew it was just the foil on the silver trays.

Even that knowledge wouldn’t get the terrible images of the meat processing unit out of his mind. How terrified those people must have felt, standing in line, and one-by-one going into the machine to come out the other end a convenient meal.

Despite his temporary reconciliation with Gregor, he hoped Denver would make the bastard pay for overseeing that kind of treatment.

A low hum vibrated through the container’s sides, making his teeth rattle.

It must be close now.

The sounds of whirring motors from somewhere behind him indicated that the mother ship had closed its docking hatch.

On clear days and nights, Charlie had watched the underside of the ship through his scopes. When the hatch opened he’d often get a brief glimpse of the inside. It featured the usual croatoan pragmatic style: off-white smooth surfaces, light blue and pink accents, much like their anti-grav projectors.

He wondered why they hadn’t invaded during the 80s. They’d have got a kick out of the neon colors. That aside, he knew that shuttles were held in corridors just wide enough to accommodate the shuttle and someone to get into the cockpit on either side.

The sound of metal on metal came to him and the shuttle rocked. He could feel movement. The aliens were coming into the storage area from the cockpit. His heart remained steady as he thought about this mission.

Once the container was taken out and delivered to the main distribution area, he’d have to find a way back toward the edge of the ship. He needed the bomb to rip a hole in the structure of the ship, and preferably take out the anti-grav projectors.

The ship had eight of them in pairs at each corner.

Mike was sure that if they were to take out one corner, the ship would be destabilized enough to succumb to gravity. But with it now docked and a part of the terraform ship, that plan needed some modification.

The container rattled and moved, gaining speed down the ramp until it leveled out with a bump. The voices of the croatoans seemed more relaxed, their clicking and grunts less high-pitched. They continued to push the container further into the ship. After a couple of minutes they came to a stop. Charlie felt the sensation of rising in an elevator. Up and up they went, and that’s when he had the idea.

Throughout, he had only heard two distinct voices. And with this perpetual rising they were probably in a confined space. He reached behind him and grabbed the small bottle of oxygen, making sure he didn’t make any noise. Not yet anyway.

Once he had that tucked into his belt, he pulled his hunting knife free of its belt holster, keeping it low and hidden by his side. He’d pushed the bomb free of himself and hid it under a number of foil-packed trays.

That’s when he kicked out and banged his elbows against the container. He carried on until they had stopped rising.

The latches sprung open, the lid twanging with the freed tension.

Two black barrels of croatoan pistols pushed into the gap before the lid was removed fully. The aliens looked down at him. Their faces didn’t change, show surprise, or show any emotion. They simply observed before then breaking their attention and looking at each other, no doubt trying to figure out if there was a protocol for this.

The one on the left, turned away, revealing that they were indeed in a kind of elevator. Circular with white walls it must have about twenty feet in diameter.

Ideal.

When the one on the right leaned further in, Charlie kicked up with his legs, scattering trays and foil packs over the edge, knocking the pistol away. He thrust up his arm, driving the knife underneath the alien’s visor and the blade into its tough skin, but the knife was made from their own metal and honed over the years.

It broke through the hide with a pop and sliced easily into the alien’s brain.

Its arms and hands twitched. Reaching up, Charlie grabbed the pistol and let the alien fall to the ground.

The other one spun round from behind the container, clicking and grunting in urgent tones. It mustn’t have seen Charlie grab the pistol for when the croatoan leaned over to point his own weapon, Charlie was already aiming and pulling the trigger.

With a loud reverberation, both pistols fired. White-hot blasts of pain burned into Charlie’s chest. His oxygen tank hissed. Air started to escape from the valve before it popped completely, draining the precious air.

Yellow blood dripped onto his shoulder.

The croatoan slumped over the edge, his visor in pieces with a hole burned through it and through the creature’s skull.

Charlie placed his hand over the valve to try and stop the flow of air as he stood up and got out of the container, stepping over the body of the still-twitching alien.

He checked his chest; the fabric of his camo shirt was frayed at the edges where the alien round had grazed by. The skin had risen into a bright red welt across his pectoral muscle. Kneeling, Charlie opened one of the root packs, grabbed a handful of milled root powder and rubbed it in until the skin started to tingle, healing the cells.

While that continued to do its magic, he controlled his breathing, reducing his heart rate, and assessed the situation. He couldn’t tell how sound proof the elevator car was, but the fact it stopped meant that someone would likely have noticed. Perhaps they were waiting for the delivery of the container.

Looking at the alien control panel, there was no way to guess of its destination or how it might work. A clear glass square, maybe eight by eleven, featured a series of symbols that he wasn’t familiar with.

In all the time he had fought with the croatoans, they’d been careful about leaving their tech or communications behind.

Even the ones he had killed rarely had anything with their writing on it.

The valve continued to release the pressurized oxygen and he began to feel light headed. Not just from the shallow breaths, but the alien atmosphere within the ship.

Ripping off a foil cover, and spitting into the remnants of the root powder, he made a paste and used the rippled foil to press and hold the paste around the broken valve. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d buy him time.

A flash of light came from the glass control panel on the circular wall. A light blue ring spun around, reminding him of the waiting icon on PCs back in the day. And then the car jolted and started to lift.

It appeared that someone had realized there was a problem. Charlie knew he didn’t have long now. Even with the oxygen mask, the atmosphere burned against his skin. With the alien pistol in his left hand, he reached over with his right to grab the bomb from the container, throwing it over his shoulder and putting his arm through the strap so he could wear it like a backpack.

He kneeled behind the container so he would be obscured when the doors opened. He knew he would unlikely get another chance of this.

One way or another, he’d let the bomb off.

For sixty long seconds the elevator continued to climb until finally it stopped and the doors opened. Charlie saw the darkness reflect against the back wall. He gripped the pistol tight and strained his hearing, all the while trying to suppress the urge to cough.

The oxygen ran out. Each inhalation brought nothing. He cast the mask and the small tank to the side. He felt drunk, his vision spinning. Pain pinched at his nerves and muscles as they knotted with cramp.

And still he gripped the pistol and waited.

A voice called out to him. It sounded from somewhere far away and dulled as though his ears were full of water. Louder now, closer, the words became distinguishable.

“Oh Mr. Jackson, what have you done? The scourge of my employers fancied a tour of the ship, did he?” A shadow loomed over Charlie and he knew this to be the one named Augustus. “Come out, little wasp, unless you wish to choke to a slow painful death. I’m not concerned either way. Come see what you want to see. It’s too late for everyone else now. Maybe you’ll prove worth keeping around? Your choice.”

The shadow retreated.

Charlie moved his aching body to the side and peered round the container into the dark corridor and thought he was hallucinating. Outside of the elevator, beyond the short corridor was a room styled like a Roman court.

A colonnade of columns stretched into the distance like disciplined soldiers. The fluting was a perfect replica or Roman composite design. They’d even got the ornate, floral capital correct.

Marble surfaces adorned the floors, supporting lush terracotta-colored rugs. A mist of pale air billowed out of the elevator; the alien atmosphere leaking into an artificial human one.

Even with the mask, Charlie knew he was human on the inside.

Augustus was wearing a red toga with a large golden broach. He reached the end of the colonnade and turned. He waved at Charlie, beckoned him in. His mask glinted in the candlelight as he turned and disappeared into the gloom. Hallucination or not, Charlie couldn’t wait any longer. He crawled out of the elevator and pulled his legs free in time for the door to shut behind and the car to descend.

Fresh sustaining air flooded his lungs when he inhaled. His eyes watered, clearing the stinging alien atmosphere. Everything told him to just lie where he was and breathe, give into the pain and wait it out. But no, he couldn’t afford to do that; this was bigger than him.

The bomb weighed heavily on his back despite its small and potent stature.

He got to his feet, and walked after Augustus, small grenades of pain exploding in his muscles, but with every movement he felt looser, stronger. The root compound continued to tingle on his chest, the soreness of which had reduced to barely a mild irritant.

With knife in one hand and pistol in the other, Charlie continued down between the columns until he came to the end. To his right he saw more firelight flickering in the darkness.

He squinted, trying to make out more details, but the darkness and shadows were too encompassing. He had no choice but to go further into the space. His boots echoed on the marble surface. He stayed to the left hand wall, using the torches in the sconces to navigate his way forward.

Unable to stand the quiet, he called out. “So what now, Augustus? You change Earth for good. Where does that leave you? Trapped up here in your little ode to a dead empire? You must know what happened to the Romans when the Visigoths came to town.”

A flash of brilliant white light made him stumble to a stop and bring his arm up to his eyes. He heard the shuffle of feet too late. Something metallic struck out of the whiteness against his forearm, making him drop the pistol.

Charlie dashed back and hunched into a defensive stance, holding his knife out in front of him, ready to strike back. Through squinted eyes he saw a sandaled foot kick the pistol away further into the wide white expanse.

“You’re no Goth,” Augustus said, the voice coming from behind Charlie. “At least they put up a real fight.”

He spun round and slashed out with his knife, but no one was there. He realized his mistake too late.

A foot crunched into his back, sending him flying forward. He hit the marble floor; the side of his head cracked against the unforgiving surface, making his vision bleed with blotches of color.

Weight pressed down him, pushing the hard case of the bomb into his lower back. A blade cut the straps and the bomb was taken away. Charlie spun on to his back, bringing his fists up ready to protect himself, but Augustus casually tossed the bomb away, clearly thinking it was nothing more than a backpack of supplies.

Returning to Charlie, Augustus held a broadsword by his side. The man’s silhouette blocked some of the glaring light. Charlie could now make out that they were in a large open office-like space. A desk sat centrally and a large screen wall separated the space to its right. But more importantly, to the far right, thirty or so feet away, Charlie saw a porthole, through which he saw the underside of the terraform ship just a few feet above.

He was near the top, and crucially, near the edge.

Charlie smiled and began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Augustus said, bringing the point of the sword forward until it touched Charlie’s throat.

“Just funny how things turn out. You spend so much energy worrying about something, worrying about how to achieve something, and yet if you just let go, life will often put you in the right place.”

“Huh, who thought you would be so philosophically minded? That you survived the confrontation with Baliska made me think you were just a savage. You see, I’ve seen lots like you in my time.”

Augustus arranged the mask on his face where it had slipped slightly, exposing the knotted scar tissue beneath.

“Time’s another funny thing, isn’t it?” Charlie said, inching back away from the sword’s point. He got a good look at it now, and the hilt, recognized it as Roman design. “Funny how you’re here in this advanced space craft, and yet you’ve had your quarters decorated in such an old style. Have a thing for the Roman Empire do you? Fancy yourself as an emperor?”

Augustus laughed now, throaty and genuine. He lowered to his haunches, staring at Charlie with his one good eye. It was then that Charlie noticed how old he looked. Though his visible skin appeared in good condition, that eye was something else. It contained the years of someone who had seen so much more than they should have.

“Fancy myself? You fool, Jackson. I am one. Was one. Will be one again. But you’re right about time. There was a time when I thought my time was over. Time, however, isn’t linear like we think. Oh no, Mr. Jackson, it’s pliable, if you’re willing to wait.”

“And what exactly have you been waiting for?” Charlie said, wondering whether he was pushing things too quickly, the tip of the blade still within striking distance of his throat. The bomb lay just ten feet away. All he needed to do was open the flap on the bag and press his finger to the touchscreen.

Ten seconds later and it’d all be over.

A tiny flicker in time is all it would take.

“I’ve waited for this moment, Mr. Jackson. This point in time when I slay the rebellion and make amends for the collapse of one empire and start another.”

Augustus turned his face to regard something on the display wall, exposing his side profile. Charlie’s mind itched with recognition. There was something familiar about him. Someone he had seen or read about… “Just who are you?” Charlie asked as Augustus looked back at him with a smile.

“If I told you, you would think me a mad man.”

“I already do.”

Augustus inclined his head and brought the sword back to his side, unable to keep the weighty weapon in place. “I am Flavius Julius Valens Augustus, eastern Roman Emperor, Last True Roman.”

Charlie let it sink in for a moment as he scrambled away, putting his back against the wall and bringing his knees up to his chest. Augustus, or Valens, stepped forward, blocking off his routes. Looking around the exacting detail of the place, the sword, and that recognizable face, Charlie wondered if the croatoans had perhaps cloned him or brainwashed him into thinking this, but for what reason? What purpose would that serve?

But beneath all that was the history. Charlie had studied the Roman Empire and knew full well who Emperor Valens was: the brother of his co-emperor Valentinian—the pair who signaled the collapse of the empire. His body was never recovered at the battle of Adrianople. Many scholars assumed he had died in battle after removing his imperial robe and running headlong into combat, while others suggested he was burned by the Barbarians at the behest of their leader Fritigern.

Charlie had his own theory.

“I don’t understand,” Charlie said. “How is that even possible?”

“They were always here, watching us, waiting,” Augustus said. “I’m sure you read about what happened in Adrianople.”

“It was a crushing loss for the Romans,” Charlie said. “Humiliating in fact. Valens was rumored to have left the field of battle, unable to face the catastrophic consequences of losing to the Goths. Others said Valens was a traitor, a coward.”

The smile on Augustus’s face twitched at the edges and his hand gripped the hilt of the sword tighter. He leaned down until his face was inches from Charlie’s. “I survived, Mr. Jackson. Something you know a great deal about. Doesn’t matter how you do it, you survive, breathe another day.”

“So tell me then, how did you stand the test of time? Was it cryogenics? Cloning?”

“Neither. You remember the pods that rose up from within the Earth? I’m sure you realize now how ancient they were. Put two and two together, Mr. Jackson, it can’t be that difficult to understand. Now, before I run you through, tell me, why come here now? Look out there, you see it, don’t you? The ship that will change the world, remove the human disease from its surface, it’s too late for you now. Your time has come to an end.”

Augustus brought the sword back to his throat, pushing the tip in until it broke the skin, pressing against his windpipe, cutting off his air. “I came for one reason only,” Charlie said with a whisper as he squeezed the words out.

He reached up and grabbed the sword, but instead of pushing it away like Augustus was expecting, Charlie pulled it in, driving the sword further into his neck, but at the same moment, unbalancing the old emperor.

Charlie capitalized by grabbing his toga and yanking him toward him while simultaneously striking out with his legs, catching Augustus in the calves. The emperor toppled forward as Charlie slid to the side.

Augustus hit the wall with a heavy thud. His mask fell off and clattered to the floor. Charlie held his breath as he pulled the sword free, dropping it to the floor. On hands and knees crawled frantically like a cockroach to the backpack.

He reached out and grabbed one of the cut handles, pulling it close to him. Undoing the flap, he reached inside and pulled out the bomb. He spun it over, exposing the touchscreen. He brought his hand down and pressed his finger to the glass screen.

It beeped once for confirmation.

Charlie rolled onto his back as Augustus rose to his feet.

“What have you done?” Augustus said, looking down at Charlie not understanding what he was smiling about. The emperor’s face was gnarled and twisted, and Charlie realized the truth to him being burned.

A part of Charlie took great pleasure in knowing that he’d destroyed an emperor.

“They all crumble,” Charlie wheezed, coughing out blood between each word.

“Crumble? What?”

“Empires. They all eventually run out of time.”

Charlie coughed once and passed out, the last image he had was of Augustus reaching for his neck with his hands. But like before, he was too late.

The time was now.

Chapter 38

SITTING on the steps to Gregor’s office, Denver held Maria’s hand. Together they watched the skies. A tense, quiet had descended since the last of the croatoans were put down. The only noise came from the groaning and shuffling of the now-free humans, led by the now conscious Alex, into one of their shelters. She’d only took a glancing blow from a croatoan rifle, Vlad wasn’t so lucky.

Denver blinked, waited and watched the mother ship’s pink circles, like alien eyes stare down at the Earth. They remained bright, still working. He pictured Charlie stuffed inside the container, the bomb tightly held as he waited for his time.

“What if he was caught before he had chance?” he said.

Maria squeezed his hand and leaned in. “He’ll make it, I’m sure. I might have been only outside of the harvester for a few days, but one thing I’ve learned is that if your dad wants to do something, there’s no one who could stop him.”

Denver glanced in Gregor’s direction.

The old gangster, Charlie’s nemesis, stood with Layla by the alien hover-bikes. They seemed eager to leave, but Denver didn’t know where they expected to go. Nothing was settled yet. The people on the farm still needed to be cared for.

“Thinking of skipping out on us?” Denver said, raising his voice so they could hear him. He kept the alien rifle close by his side, one hand on the stock, ready to lift it into place within a fraction of a second.

Gregor tutted and looked away, not even trying to hide the disdain on his face.

Layla, however, stepped away and approached him. Her eyes were glossy and red. Dirt stained her otherwise unblemished face. Wiping a rogue hair from her forehead she stood over him, casting a shadow.

Unlike Gregor, she wore no expression of disdain, but rather sympathy, pity even. “I’m sorry for everything,” she said, regarding them both. “I’m sorry about your dad, Charlie, and you, Maria, I’m sorry that you’re the only one left from the harvester crew. I don’t know how much they taught you about grief and death during your education, but I just wanted you to know that I understand what it feels like. I lost everything and everyone I knew during the invasion.”

Maria brought her hands to face as she sobbed, the pent-up emotion over the last few days finally coming out. “I can’t believe they’re gone,” she said between ragged breaths. “We’ve only just got free, and now Ethan and Ben are gone, leaving me behind. Why me?”

“It has to be someone,” Denver said. “We need the strong to survive, and as far as I could tell in all this, you were the strongest of that group. I’m sorry your friends and colleagues didn’t make it, but we’ve all had to make sacrifices. It’s how the world is now.”

“Holy shi—” Gregor turned to face the ship in the distant sky. Denver and the two women looked up.

The mother ship’s underlights faltered, flickered and became dull. A fraction of a second later they heard the boom rip through the sky. The sound pressure hit Denver in his chest, rattling his organs inside.

Debris and hull wreckage blew out of the right hand side of the round ship, near the top where it had docked with the gargantuan new addition. The explosion continued to roar as the cloud of metal and smoke and flame continued to billow out.

All the lights on the various buildings of the farm went out. Maria squeezed Denver’s hand as they both stood to watch the devastation above them.

“Mother fucker’s done it… God damn,” Gregor shouted over the noise. Almost half of the ship had blown away, leaving a ragged wound stretching front to the back, bisecting the craft and exposing its innards through the flames.

The whole thing tilted now that its anti-grav projectors were useless. The weight of the terraform ship docked to its top pitched almost ninety degrees up.

“It’s coming down, oh my god, it’s really coming down,” Layla said.

Throughout all this, Denver had remained quiet, his breath caught in his throat, a single tear fell down his cheek in both joy and an unending sadness at the loss of his courageous father. The one person whom he truly loved had done it: traded his life for a chance of freedom for all.

“He’s done it,” Maria said hugging Denver around his neck. “He’s really done it.”

The sky turned black with the smoke. Thick rolling clouds of alien technology melted by the nuke. Tinges of orange compound tainted the atmosphere as it burned up in the fire that had taken hold of both ships. The blast had torn away a huge section across the underside of the terraform ship.

It seemed to take an eternity, but eventually a second explosion roared out as both ships crashed into the earth. Although they fell beyond the horizon, they could still see the cloud rise into the sky from the impact. Denver felt it too in the ground, the ripples feeling much like an earthquake. It reminded him of the stories Charlie had told him about what it felt like when one of their infernal machines created a sinkhole.

“Payback, you bastards,” Denver whispered as he picked his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He walked off, leaving the other three behind.

“Hey, wait,” Maria said. “Where you going?”

Without turning back, Denver said, “To the next farm. Freedom starts here.”

THE SMELL of fire was thick in the air even hours after the initial impact. Denver approached his truck and slid into the driver’s seat. Pip appeared out of nowhere having scarpered to safety hours earlier. She curled up in the middle space between the front seats and placed her head on his leg. She whined mournfully.

“I know girl. I know.”

Denver patted her on the head, smoothing her fur, all the while trying not to let his emotion get the better of him. He couldn’t break down now. His dad would want him to go on, finish what he started and that was just what he was going to do. Even if he had to do it on his own.

The engine fired and he reversed the truck out from its hidden position within a tight group of bushes, backing it onto a dirt track that would lead out of the forest. He slammed on the breaks as he saw a silhouette appear in his rearview mirror.

Reaching for the pistol he kept in the door tray, Denver wound down the window and looked out. The shape moved toward him in the evening gloom. He opened the door with his free hand, while keeping the pistol low, ready to fire.

The person crunched twigs and leaves as they approached the driver’s side. Denver raised the gun and was about to shoot when a voice called out to him.

“Denver, it’s me, Maria, don’t shoot!”

He lowered the gun immediately as she stepped closed enough for him to see that it was her. “You followed me? I thought you’d stay with the others at the farm.”

“There was a change of plan,” Maria said, smiling.

More movement came from behind him as two more people stepped out of the shadows. “Layla, Gregor?”

Gregor grinned when he stepped forward, placing his arm over Maria’s shoulders. “You’re lady here seems to think we ought to stick together. Now don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like you, but you don’t seem too much like your old man, and I like the way you shoot. What say we pool our resources?”

“What about all the people on the farm? The pregnant women?”

“Taken care off,” Layla said. “Alex was okay, just got knocked out. She’s staying behind to look after them. No point moving them if they’re comfortable there. The plan is to join up with Eastern Farm Twenty, a hundred kilometers from here. They’ve got reinforcements. We just need to get word and start the fight back.”

Denver saw an excited look in Layla’s eyes. Not at the death of yet more aliens, but the thought of freeing more people. Gregor’s expression just seemed bloodthirsty, as usual, but every resistance needed its psychopaths to do the jobs ordinary people with morals wouldn’t be comfortable doing.

He thought about it for a moment. The three of them stared at him expectantly, waiting for his decision.

That’s when it dawned on him.

It was his resistance now. He was the one to lead this.

Instead of that prospect frightening him, it gave him a new shot of energy. After all, it was what his dad, Charlie Jackson, the Last True American, had spent all his time teaching Denver: how to be him. How to be the survivor. How to never give up and never stop until humankind was once again free from tyranny.

“Get in,” Denver said. “We leave now.”

Maria walked around and got into the front passenger seat. Gregor and Layla jumped into the rear after stashing a bunch of weapons in the truck bed.

Denver looked at Maria and smiled. “I’m glad you followed me,” he said.

“Me too.”

He held her gaze for a few seconds before turning to the others in the back. Talking to everyone now he said with a grim tone. “Did everyone see what I saw before the initial explosion?”

They stared back at him in silence. Eventually, Maria asked, “What? What did you see?”

“At first I thought they were bits of debris, perhaps from the initial explosion, but their trajectory was all wrong. I only realized after, once the shock wore off. There were six of them. Pods, crafts, whatever you want to call them. Either way, some of the bastards up there escaped and came to earth. Probably digging into the ground as we speak to recuperate. Well, we’re not going to let them this time.”

Denver turned back to face the front and engaged first gear. “This time, we’re going to hunt them down and murder the bastards in the dirt before they think about rising again.”

With that he floored the accelerator and headed out into the night, promising to himself he’d do his dad proud.

One way or another, the aliens would regret ever coming to Earth.

CRITICAL PATH

BOOK 2

Chapter 1

SACRIFICE ISN’T the end of something; it’s the beginning. Denver knew this before his father, Charlie, gave up his life to bring down the two alien ships. But Denver wasn’t so naïve to believe that the work was done.

On the contrary, the real challenge was still ahead of them.

He wiped sweat from his brow. The salty liquid made his tanned forearm shine in the morning sun. It was no more than 0800. Charlie had taught him how to tell the time from the sun’s position when he was just a child. Over the years, he’d built up an almost unnatural ability to know it instinctively, analyzing the length and direction of shadows.

He stood in a dappled clearing five kilometers north of their new base—Freetown, a repurposed croatoan farm that remained inactivated due to it being farther north than their terraforming operation. The shadows from the crumbled remnants of a wooden hunting shack covered the damp, loamy ground.

Mildew glistened like a silver mist across the tips of the long grass. The place had a fresh scent to it. Since they destroyed most of the root growth, the orange tint to the atmosphere became less visible.

Earth seemed to be healing itself, returning to normal.

Wildlife grew in number—rabbits, squirrels, deer, and varied birds were now more visible and less sickly than before. Despite that, Denver knew it would take years for the damage of the root to the ecosystem to be fully repaired.

The cold dampness seeped into the fabric toes of his boots where the gaffer tape covering had come away during the trek. Thorns had snagged at his boots and jeans as he, Layla, and their new friend, Khan, parked their appropriated hover-bikes and descended on foot further into the woods in search of a downed escape pod.

Layla stood five yards in front of him.

She wore the now-familiar farm outfit: a form-fitting gray and blue cotton one-piece with a zip running at an angle from her right shoulder to her left hip. Her shadow stretched westward, covering a dark, scorched section of earth.

A cool breeze made her ponytail sway and the small hairs on the back of her slender neck shimmer. Despite her real age being somewhere in the fifties, she looked no older than mid-thirties, the root consumption keeping her young, as it did Gregor and Charlie.

Layla lowered to her haunches and inspected the scar in the earth, created by a fallen escape pod.

The scar cut a ridge into the ground some three meters wide and over a dozen long. The interesting feature, however, wasn’t the scar; it was the complete lack of pod. Someone, or something, had taken it away.

While they waited on Khan, a young tracker who had made his home in Freetown before they had re-established it as a base, Denver couldn’t help but think about Layla.

Being at a crash site of one of the pods wasn’t enough to distract his thoughts away from her completely as she made notes on a tablet device—a leftover piece of equipment they had learned to work and reprogram for their own uses.

The aliens on the various farms abandoned their duties and their influence over the human population shortly after the ships crashed to Earth. Denver suspected that when the pods landed they must have sent out a signal across the croatoans’ network.

Within days the aliens left the farms in a great migration to the north.

Since that time, Layla had led a diplomatic program of integration, bringing dozens of farms together, working towards one goal: reuniting humanity into a force that could not only defend themselves and live freely, but also thrive.

From the south, the croatoans still held a great number of farms, and the humans from the northern facilities would often have to defend against them.

The aliens were losing, however, their attacks coming less frequently.

The ‘cattle’ were educated and trained. The men and women subjugated by Augustus and the croatoan council to run the farms were now setting up communications and developing real farms, growing vegetables and more importantly—destroying the vast tracks of root so that the ground wouldn’t be poisoned any longer.

Where Gregor tried to use aggression and intimidation to reunite the various workers, Layla’s use of empathy and understanding brought quicker results.

She’d become their de facto leader almost by accident. Something that didn’t sit well with Gregor, but then he always was an instigator.

“It can’t be far,” Layla said, turning to face him. The golden light of morning reflected off her face, making her eyes glint.

Denver caught himself staring and looked away before casually glancing back as though he too was inspecting the crash site. “Khan’s a good tracker. I’m sure we’ll find it.”

“The implication of it being moved probably suggests that who or whatever was inside is now out in the open.”

“Or already dead,” Denver added, although a part of him hoped that wasn’t the case. He wanted to do that personally. He wouldn’t be happy until every last turtle-looking alien no longer set foot on Earth.

“Perhaps. Though I’m not so sure. One thing I’ve learned is that those at the top of their hierarchy have an uncanny skill in surviving. They’ve been here on this planet for so many thousands of years, waiting, in the ground… I won’t rest until I see them dead with my own eyes.”

Denver readjusted his backpack and shuffled the alien hunter rifle to his left shoulder. “You’re starting to sound like me.” His cheeks warmed with a blush, which made him feel even more ridiculous.

Although out in the wild, he was afraid of nothing and could comfortably survive in almost any conditions, conquering his feelings towards women was something Charlie had never taught him.

“I don’t think that’s such a bad thing,” Layla said with a smile. “Could be worse. I could end up sounding like Gregor.”

“And we can definitely do without that.”

“One’s bad enough, eh?”

“Something like that.”

“You look better like that, by the way,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The beard, or lack of it.”

One of the men from Eastern Farm Twenty, now renamed to Freetown, had given Denver a cutthroat razor and showed him how to use it.

It was the first time in his adulthood that he was clean-shaven. All the time he ran around with his dad, he’d kept a beard and only trimmed it with a knife when it got too long.

“Thanks,” Denver said, giving her an awkward smile.

He broke eye contact, unsure how to react with the way she was looking at him as though he were one of her subjects of study. He brought his thoughts back to this clearing, noticing how the trees to the south of it were damaged, their branches snapped and their trunks leaning over, wrenched from the ground.

On a tip-off from Khan they had learned of this crash site.

Gregor, being his belligerent self, refused to come, preferring to stay back at one of the facilities with Maria, whose new role was to help reorientate the men and women whom the aliens used for cattle and… food.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Gregor’s motivations were.

Beyond the clearing, a shadow shifted.

A pair of rabbits dashed through the long grass, their khaki-coloured ears flattening against their heads. They hopped over thick redwood roots and disappeared into burrows at the edge of the dilapidated shack.

The wooden posts that made up the stanchions were rotten and jagged, the surface colonized by an empire of white and gray fungus.

For a brief few seconds, Denver shifted his weight to his toes with anticipation. He pursed his lips, readying to whistle for Pip, his dog, but he rocked back on his heels as the realization dawned on him that no, this wasn’t Pip.

She had run off shortly after Charlie had sacrificed himself, and Denver had never forgiven himself for not being able to find her.

The shadow and movement, he knew, was something bigger than a dog.

He crouched to a knee and brought up the rifle, placing the butt into the crook of his shoulder and bringing the sights to his left eye.

Layla had already dashed to the side behind a broken trunk and shot him a glance.

With the movement of a shrub and the twang of a broken branch, a figure moved into the clearing, with another closely following behind.

HE WAS THERE—again. This was the third day Maria had felt the bed sink and her body rock inwards to the new weight. The weight created by Gregor.

She clutched the edge of the sheet and tried to pull it up to her chin, but it wouldn’t budge.

Gregor’s hot breath warmed her back, making her whole body shiver with repulsion. She closed her eyes and stifled a scream. She didn’t want to antagonize him. She’d seen and heard a lot of stories about what he’d done to people who got in his way. Despite that, she couldn’t just give in.

Although growing up on the harvester and not knowing a great deal about human reproduction, she was aware of how it worked. They were forbidden to sleep with one another on the ‘generation ship,’ and since she came out into the wider world, she had kept herself away from the increasingly hungry gaze of Gregor.

It didn’t help that Denver had started to spend more time with Layla. With him around, Gregor stayed away. She suspected the latter had a certain fear, or at the very least, trepidation, of the former.

Denver cut an imposing figure with his height, and since the croatoans left to go north and they all started to settle into a decent lifestyle, his previously wiry, skinny frame had bulked out.

Something Gregor clearly envied.

Realizing that he wouldn’t go away, Maria turned around to face him. The bastard was leering at her with a predatory look in his eyes. The bile rose in her stomach at the thought of him touching her.

She kept the sheet tight against her body.

Luckily, the temperature during the night had dropped and she’d put on her uniform for extra warmth, not wanting to waste the energy of firing up the heating generators.

“You’re in my room,” Maria said, trying to make a point without instigating an outburst. “I’d prefer it if you knocked first.”

“We’re all friends here, aren’t we?” Gregor said, leaning his head on an elbow as he stretched out on her bed as though it were his. “Denver and Layla are off on a jolly jaunt. I thought you and I could… well, start the day off in traditional fashion.”

Backing away as much as she could given the tautness of the sheet, she had no other option but to play into his quite obvious trap.

Even though she was new to the world at large, she’d spent the last month at Freetown conversing with other men and women from the other farms who had come here to help get the place up and running. She had learned quickly and picked up a lot of information of how society was before the alien uprising.

She also learned just what kind of man Gregor was.

“And what exactly is this traditional fashion?” she asked, already knowing the likely answer.

Gregor leaned in, grinning, exposing his rotten teeth. His gums had started to recede and turn black at the edges ever since he started to chew the root as though it were a gourmet food. “Back in our day, the elder male—that would be me—was charged with making an adult of the younger women, especially if they were from out of town. It was a popular mating ritual. Since you’re effectively from out of town, being stuck in the harvester all your life, and given you’re younger than me, it’s kind of up to me to bring you into adulthood.”

“No,” she said, tensing. “I’m sure the tradition means a lot to you and your people, but I don’t observe that. I don’t think it would be appropriate to—”

Gregor sat up and grabbed her by the arms. He flung his leg over her waist and sat down on her, pressing her into the bed, pinning her arms to her side. “Now, now,” he said. “No need to be polite around me. We’re all friends here, and friends stay close.”

“You’ve been chewing too much root again. Get off me!” She struggled, but the frenzy in his eyes extended to his determination to dominate her. She tried to kick out and unbalance him, but he just rode her like one of the men she’d seen on a video daring to ride a bull.

Going limp, she turned her head and clenched her jaw, “Okay,” she said with a whisper, waiting.

Through her side vision she saw him grin with satisfaction. He let go of her arms and started to unbutton his gray farm-issue shirt.

Taking the opportunity, she twisted her body to the side and pushed him away with her freed arms.

He fell back onto the bed in a heap.

Thrashing, she kicked out to get loose from the sheets, but he was already on her, laughing, enjoying her struggles.

Just as he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back to the bed, a knock came from the door.

A young man burst in and shouted, “They’re dead! They’re all dead!”

Chapter 2

THE MIDDAY SUN beat down on Gregor, warming his head and shoulders amid the breeze generated by the momentum of the hover-bike.

Luckily for him, when the croatoans abandoned the farm and headed north, they did so in such a rush they left a number of their vehicles behind within the human-controlled warehouses.

For the first time in a few weeks, the sky was clear of clouds. Even the familiar orange hue gave way to bright blue skies. A quicksilver flash of memory bubbled up, providing him with a picture of his homeland. He was a child then, standing atop an old crane. He had climbed it in order to gain membership to the gang he would later go on to lead and turn into the biggest crime syndicate in Armenian history.

When he arrived home, his father belted him across the back of the legs. One of the dockers who knew his father—everyone in that old town knew Vladimir Miralos, an infamous drunk and washed-up street thug—tipped him off to his son’s stupid display of bravery and daring.

Vladimir needn’t have required an excuse.

Gregor’s very presence was enough to incur his father’s wrath.

But the fucker was dead and buried now, by Gregor’s own hands. Only so much belting a child will take before he cuts his father’s throat in his sleep.

The whine of the hover-bike’s engine and the touch of Maria’s hands on his hips pulled him back to the current day, and he found himself cheered by the exhilaration of the ride and the prospect of some interesting news from Denver and Layla.

Even after the two-and-a-half-hour journey from Freetown, he felt refreshed. They’d apparently found something that would give everyone renewed focus.

A new threat.

Good. They needed a threat. Everyone had got too lazy, too organized.

They thought they could make a quick change of things, but Gregor knew better. Like any conflict, attrition often won the war.

Besides, he couldn’t stand all the fucking politics and nicey-nicey bullshit.

For too long he found himself bored.

Especially since Layla had taken over proceedings.

But then what did he care anyway? The bitch could do what she wanted; he had someone else to occupy his attentions now. A fitter, younger, more naïve model who wasn’t some damned anthropological expert.

This one didn’t have an answer for everything and would be easier to bring on side. He just needed a little more time with her.

With Denver realizing he had a pair of balls and taking a fancy to Layla, poor little Maria was left abandoned and in need of a friend—a special friend.

Gregor pushed the throttle to three-quarters. The engines whined with power, blasting the hover-bike northwards over the trees. Below him, giant snakes of charred earth cut an east-west trajectory where once harvesters roamed. They had dug it up, burned it all.

A pair of lonely, empty harvesters sat in the middle of a track of blackened ground. One of them had its tracks missing. The people from Freetown and other farms stripped the vehicle for parts.

Charlie’s old friend Mike paid particular attention to this task as he passed on his engineering knowledge to some of the younger farmhands.

God knows what the old fossil was planning to build now. In his seventies, Mike still acted like a fool. He was one of the few who never really took the root. His fault. The old bastard would be dead soon.

Gregor was in his mid-fifties, but with the root, he felt and looked like he was in his early forties. Other drives and motivations, however, were from a much younger man, and he needed those attended to at some point.

With that thought in mind, he nudged the hover-bike so that it pitched violently a few degrees. Maria’s hands grabbed tighter around his waist. Her thighs press against his legs and her body against his back.

A good start.

“Hold steady,” Maria shouted into the wind. “I nearly fell. Are you trying to kill me?”

Looking over his shoulder, he gave her a grin. “I would never try that with you, my darling girl. You just hold tight in case we hit a little turbulence, eh?”

“There’s no turbulence this low, asshole.”

Gregor laughed as he turned back to the controls and pushed the throttle all the way while also bringing the bike lower so that the underside skimmed the branches and leaves of the tallest redwoods.

“How about now?” he said, wobbling the bike side to side, making Maria scream and squeeze him tighter. “That’s the spirit,” he said before raising the bike clear of the trees.

“You’ll kill us both with stunts like that,” Maria screamed.

Chuckling to himself, he looked down as something caught his attention.

He noticed three groups of approximately a dozen ex-cattle. Men and women bred to feed the croatoans.

Layla had created an education program to turn them back into ‘valued members of society.’ Gregor doubted its effectiveness.

Many of them were born simple. Even without the learned cattle-like behavior, he didn’t think they had the brainpower to comprehend language and appropriate behavior, but then this was right up Layla’s street.

The bitch got wet thinking about all the good she could do with these poor stupid creatures, but he knew it was all crap. She wasn’t doing this for their welfare; she was doing it for her own ego and guilty conscience.

Working with Augustus, she was one of humanity’s betrayers. She helped set up the organization for the farms, including the usage of human cattle, not to mention the breeding programs she oversaw and all the ‘efficiencies’ she delivered.

At least Gregor was honest in his views. He didn’t much care for the cattle people and thought they were probably better off dead. They weren’t going to have much of a life.

A Freetown scientist working under Layla’s direction tried to encourage them to forage. He held up a number of berries and edible plants and showed them how to pick them, but most stared back slack-jawed, unable to comprehend him.

Gregor banked the bike to the left as he saw the first farm tower. The main facility lay further on, hidden by the trees. He used the series of observation towers on each corner of the facility to navitage his way in.

“Hold on,” he said over his shoulder, winking at Maria. “It’s going to get a little… rough.”

“Take it easy. No need to be reckless.”

“No need, but it’s more fun!”

Maria screamed something, but her words were snatched away by the rush of the wind in his ears as he dove the bike, pointing its nose through a narrow gap in the treetops.

Branches scratched against the fenders on the side of the bike, but he powered on through, digging his feet into the cups. Maria’s weight slid against him, pushing him further into the bike’s controls.

With a heavy pull, he raised the nose as they flew down between two blocky, flat-roofed buildings. He piloted the bike beneath a gantry, ducking even though he had plenty of space.

A couple of women in the alley dove to the floor, making him laugh out loud.

“Slow down!” Maria screamed, her words barely audible.

Exiting the alley, he took the bike across a paved courtyard.

Someone had planted trees and flowers in various containers and built a set of benches that lined the outside. The placed looked like a damned Zen garden.

Not caring for that, he braked hard and turned the controls, sliding out the back of the bike until it came to a stop while knocking over some of the flower containers.

He took a slap to the back. “You arrogant bastard,” Maria said. “Jenny planted those.”

Maria got off and wobbled on unsteady legs. Gregor just smiled up at her. “Oh, first name terms with the cattle idiots now, eh? How very… Layla of you.”

“That may be so, but at least I’m not an uncaring douche bag.”

With that, she turned on her heel and headed for the double glass doors set into the front of a two-level-high building—the main compartment of the farm complex. Stepping off the bike and ignoring the smashed wooden container and the dead flower crushed underfoot, he strode forward after Maria, admiring the view of her ass as he went.

He liked that she had a spark within her.

In his experience, those girls performed the best.

Perhaps once he had dealt with whatever this news was, he’d get her high on his new root-mix and see if he couldn’t bring out some of that fire in her belly.

INSIDE, the complex was bright and clean with that croatoan off-white color on the walls. The plastic-coated wooden floor made Gregor’s shoes clack and squeak as he followed Maria through a wide, deserted reception.

Two uniformed women came out from a door to the left.

“Ladies,” Gregor said, tipping his head in greeting.

They mumbled something and dropped their heads as they took a wide berth around him and out the front doors. Stuck-up bitches. Yet more of Layla’s anthropology team.

It seemed like she was breeding a whole generation of humorless men and women. Soon, the damned planet wouldn’t be worth saving.

Bright sunshine shone through the clear ceiling panels of the passage that led to the main conference room—the location he had been summoned to.

Sitting crossed-legged, Layla leaned into Denver beside her on the beige couch and whispered something. The two conniving swines looked up at him with a distasteful expression—not that that bothered Gregor; he was proud of being distasteful to stuck-up people like them.

If being honest meant he had to be the bad guy, so be it.

When he crossed the threshold, he noticed Maria sitting on a stool by a wooden bar, her back pressed against its edge. She looked to the other side of the room where a large screen hung from the white wall.

There was something else more important standing there, looking on from by the side of that young kid Khan.

A damned alien.

But this one was different. It didn’t wear the helmet and visor that provided them with enriched air, but instead wore a smaller apparatus that fit around its neck, feeding tubes from a small tank into its throat, presumably providing a supply of the root-based gas they mixed with oxygen in order to breathe.

Gregor crouched to one knee and, in a single flowing movement, pulled the pistol from his hip holster and raised it toward the croatoan.

He noted, in a blink of an eye, that it appeared wounded: one of its eyes swelled like a tennis ball, and dark charring burns covered the chest plate of his armor.

Denver launched himself off the couch, screaming, “No!”

Bracing for impact, Gregor squeezed off a shot before Denver landed a stiff right jab to Gregor’s jaw, knocking him to the ground.

The shot went wide, just missing Khan’s right ear.

The boy screamed in shock.

The impact against the floor winded Gregor. He dropped the pistol from his hand and tried to punch Denver in the ribs, but the taller, heavier man had already straddled him and grabbed his throat, squeezing his windpipe.

Denver lifted his right fist high, ready to bring it down.

Gregor didn’t resist. He just smiled at the kid, waiting for him to prove that he had balls like his old man. “Go on, then,” he mocked as he waggled his jaw from side to side. The kid had a decent jab on him; he’d give him that.

“Stop,” came a voice from the edge of the room.

It wasn’t human.

“Stop… fighting.”

Raspy, heavy with bass, and punctuated with weird clicking could mean only one thing. Twisting his head and looking over, Gregor saw the damned alien move closer and place his gnarled hand on Denver’s shoulder.

“No,” it said, shaking its head.

“The damn things speak English now?” Gregor said as Denver reluctantly removed himself and stood back.

The alien loomed over Gregor and extended its hand. “No harm,” it wheezed.

Gregor slapped it away and rolled over onto his front. He got to his feet and rubbed his jaw as he swayed on unsteady feet. Looking at the overly amused Layla, he asked, “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Please, Gregor, take a seat. We’ve something to show you,” Khan said, running a hand through his dark, short hair. He scratched at his black scruff on his cheeks and stared at Gregor with those strangely intense and wild dark eyes of his. Although of a similar age to Denver, being born during the ice age, Gregor noticed an old soul in him.

A tracker and a bit of a wild man, he appealed to Gregor’s sense of self-sufficiency. He even liked how awkward he appeared in this setup.

Whereas Layla and now Maria and Denver were happy writing reports and organizing projects, Khan looked like the kind of guy who was happier stalking prey in the woods.

Tipping his head to the young man, Gregor turned and walked up to the bar, pulled out a stool, and sat down next to Maria. She didn’t look at him—no one did. All eyes, including his, were on the alien.

“So what do we call it?” Gregor said.

“Her,” Khan replied. “She’s called Venrick, and she was head of croatoan operations in Eastern Farm Twenty. She joined the group when they headed north.”

Venrick nodded her large turtle-like head and blinked her good eye.

Although a croatoan speaking English was new to Gregor, he’d quickly got over the initial shock. It wasn’t entirely surprising. Before the shit hit the fan, Augustus had instigated a new language-learning system. The plan was to teach both croatoans and humans a new combined language based on English.

“Venrick and the others left to follow a distress signal a week after the escape pods landed,” Khan added. “I saw various groups of them firsthand as they headed across the border into Ontario. But when they passed Lake Simcoe, they only got a few kilometers before… well, perhaps you’d like to show your video, Venrick?”

The alien chattered an affirmation and shuffled over to the media screen. She took a data card from a pocket within her armor and placed it in the port of the screen. Turning to face the others, she added, “One pod found, we take, but others… too far. We travelled toward pods, but we met…” She struggled to find the words, her leather lips unable to form the correct shape for the sounds.

Khan filled in. “They met resistance.”

Gregor leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees; this was starting to sound very interesting indeed.

“Via her helmet cam, Venrick caught the… well, let’s just play it.” Khan and Venrick walked away and sat on a couch next to Denver and Layla’s. Everyone stared up at the screen, waiting for the video to play.

It switched on; the sound of gunfire and excited clicking burst from the hidden wall speakers. Gregor reflexively startled as a gun fired from behind him.

It took him a few split seconds to realize it was just the audio on the film. The images shook and it took a while to work out what he was looking at.

In a field wider than the camera’s angle, hundreds of crotoans wearing the familiar farm-issue armor ran panicked in all directions.

Bodies were falling to the ground by the dozens.

Two pods lay haphazardly in the center of the battle, and it appeared they were the prize for the winners.

To Gregor’s surprise, the opposition were also croatoans. But these ones were entirely different. And not just their dress, which appeared to be adapted human clothes.

Bizarrely, one, a particularly large commander of some type, led the charge while wearing a double-breasted suit. Different colored fabrics were sewn in the elbows, legs and knees in order for it to fit the alien physiology.

Mixed in with these strangely dressed aliens were a ragtag band of humans. Wild-eyed and wearing rags and tatty jeans, they mobbed the farm aliens and cut them down with a mix of crudely made melee weapons and alien rifles.

The sheer numbers of them overran the field.

Venrick must have panicked at that point because the film became wild as she turned and fled into the woods.

“Back up a few seconds,” Gregor said, having spotted something in the battlefield.

Khan did as requested.

“Freeze it.”

There on the screen, in the shadows of the fight, an alien pulled a human from a pod. Venrick zoomed in. It was…

“Charlie goddamned Jackson!”

Chapter 3

CHARLIE TRIED to crouch and catch his breath. For the first time in years his limbs felt weak. Sweat coated his clothes and the breeze tickled at the hair on his neck. He squinted against the sun and reached down to grab some root.

The metal cable noose tightened around his neck. He scrambled backwards trying to maintain balance as a croatoan yanked him with the pole he was attached to like some errant dog. The alien dragged him through the sunbaked field of flourishing orange crops.

Charlie tried to reposition his hands underneath the restraint to protect his neck wound. He licked his lips and swallowed hard. “If you want to keep me alive, you’ve a funny way of showing it.”

The croatoan ignored his words and pulled again, crushing Charlie’s blistered fingers.

He couldn’t accept his final act would be screaming as they fed him into a meat-processing machine and turned into silver trays of slop. Not that… anything but that.

For the last five minutes, faint sounds drifted across the breeze. He glanced over his shoulder. The trail of croatoans headed into a massive basin. Half of the ten aliens had already disappeared down it.

The sweet odor of the root field quickly changed to a nostril-invading stench. A mixture of cooking meat and dung wafted up from the basin.

Distant noises became clearer: the repeated clank of metal being struck, a dog barking, a rapid rhythmic sound of sawing wood. And then raised human voices, one laughing. Nothing like any farm he’d previously stalked and attacked.

The croatoan slowed as the ground changed from harvested land to a dirt road on a steep incline. Another alien stalked close with its strange bouncing gait and stopped to have a staccato conversation with Charlie’s captor.

Both of their uniforms were old and tatty. The body armor was faded and stained, their visors lacking their usual trademark sheen.

Charlie reached out and gripped the pole, twisting himself around to try to get a better view of his intended destination.

He fully expected a meat-processing warehouse. But the sight surprised him.

Smoke curled into the sky from at least fifty different places from a small town within the basin at least forty meters deep and a couple of kilometers wide.

Croatoans trudged down the dirt road in procession. It cut to the bottom of the basin in a series of shallow switchbacks and ran through the center of the settlement.

Either side of it, a mixture of two hundred or so small buildings with wooden and canvas roofs formed a cluttered surrounding, some with animal pens attached. A scattering of people moved between the individual places.

In the center, a larger building, perched high on a piece of raised ground, glinted in the sun. Charlie shielded his eyes and gasped. Constructed out of debris stone, it reached three stories high and featured a number of glistening metal turrets, completed by solid-looking wooden doors protecting its arched entrance.

Around the perimeter of the basin, a series of five giant steps were cut into the side. Like a stadium for giants. On the left-hand side, twenty or so buildings with more of a modern look nestled on each level, constructed with a mixture of materials.

Some looked like mini warehouses, others like log cabins or adapted trailers. Nothing seemed quite right with each one. The closest mini warehouse had a brick constructed dwarf wall running around the bottom; a cabin had silver window shutters. Several had washing lines out front. The clothing on them flapped in the breeze.

On the steps running around the right-hand side, root spread across the bottom three levels as far as the eye could see. Wheat and barley gently rippled on the upper sections.

A gaping sinkhole lay between the main settlement area and the basin’s left edge. Bigger than any Charlie had previously seen, a dull silver cone protruded out of the left-hand side. He recognized it as one of the initial invasion vessels.

Beyond the chasm, a high stone wall surrounded an area the size of a football field. Visually sweeping the landscape again, he attempted to assimilate the strange configuration. No frame of reference for the mash-up came to mind.

Whatever it was, it had been for some time.

A bearded man dressed in a filthy white apron walked around the side of the nearest building. After throwing the contents of a bucket into a pigpen, he turned and gazed upwards. Charlie raised his hand. The man shook his head, wiped his hands on his apron-front, and returned inside.

The croatoan tugged at the control pole, pulling Charlie to the ground. His heels slipped against the dusty surface as he tried to gain traction.

The alien increased its speed of descent. Charlie’s legs no longer had the strength to maintain a crab-like walk. He grabbed the pole with both hands, lifting his back off the ground, and scraped to the bottom of the incline on the balls of his feet.

A golden retriever bounded up, tail wagging. It panted in Charlie’s face and walked alongside. The croatoan loudly clicked, waving its dusty black glove at the dog until it scampered away. The alien hauled Charlie to his feet and pushed him forward, jabbing the pole into the back of his neck, encouraging him to walk along the two-hundred-yard road through the settlement and toward the main building.

Charlie shuffled forward, stumbling every time he received a thrust from behind. He glanced into the first building on the right. Different cuts of meat hung from hooks on the ceiling. Behind a wooden table, spattered in blood, the man in the filthy apron glared back at him before slamming a cleaver into a pig’s severed leg.

His guts rumbled. Since these people—and aliens—took him out of stasis from within the pod, he’d barely had anything to eat. Days passed and he grew weaker. The sight of those meats taunted him as he thought he could smell barbecued ribs and sausages.

The next place was little more than a glorified tent. Faded red canvas stretched over a circular wooden frame. Inside, a young woman in a basic blue dress worked a loom. A small boy with a dirty face fed her threads.

They both stopped work as Charlie passed. The boy said something, and the woman put her arm around him and tucked his head against her chest. She turned away. Charlie’s head snapped forward after yet another prod from the pole.

Two men sat under a red plastic awning on stools outside a garden shed, drinking from porcelain mugs. Both wore grimy blue jeans, brown woolen shirts and sturdy black boots. One looked at Charlie while casually chatting. He seemed to be acting as if this was an everyday occurrence.

“What the hell is this place?” Charlie said, his sore throat making his words scratchy and barely audible.

The man picked up a small stone and threw at it Charlie. He winced and twisted his head after the stone bounced off his ear. Both men cackled.

“What the hell?” Charlie said, coming to a stop and glaring at the two old geezers. This brought another push from the alien. Charlie thought about trying to twist out of the noose and ramming the pole down the bastard’s throat, but he was just far too weak. Grudgingly, he carried on moving forward.

Loud clanking came from a large open-fronted shack constructed of thick wooden trunks with a pitched slate roof. When Charlie drew level, two croatoans were busily working inside. Sparks fizzed from pieces of glowing metal as the aliens repeatedly hammered them into shape. Neither wore a helmet or uniform. Both dressed in cream-colored, crumpled linen shirts and trousers. Two tubes ran from their backpacks into each nostril of their disgusting tortoiselike heads.

Humans and croatoans working together like this… all this infrastructure. There was no way this had come about since the mother ship came down a month ago. The established settlement had a much older feel. Charlie knew he’d been taken north, but had no idea of his location.

A large lake, he thought. Given the basin and size of this place, it had to have been one of the many lakes that drained during the uprising. This could put him anywhere from north New York, Chicago or even into Canada, Ottawa perhaps.

One of the aliens raised a hammer in acknowledgement to the croatoan who pushed Charlie along before returning to his work. It interested Charlie to see how they had adapted their breathing apparatus. No more bulky visors and backpacks, the ones these wore were smaller and less prohibitive in their movement.

Root vapor still scented the air, though, so that hadn’t changed—they still relied on it in gaseous form.

Ahead, the main building doors started to slowly open with a low creak.

During his previous career, Charlie often dreamed about traveling back in time to observe a functioning medieval town, as a silent witness. But not like this, not in the future.

He thought about Denver and hoped his son believed him dead. Killed in the explosion that downed the mother ship. If Denver knew he was alive, he’d come, all guns blazing, and run into Charlie’s second worst fear after terraforming—integration.

TWO CROATOAN GUARDS aimed their rifles at Charlie as he was pushed into a large courtyard. He glanced up. Twenty aliens patrolled the ramparts, weapons pointing out. All of them had tubes up their nostrils, just like the blacksmiths. About half dressed in the standard uniform. One wore a hide jacket with body armor stitched in similar places.

The noose loosened around Charlie’s neck and slipped over his head. A hand firmly grasped his shoulder and shoved him across a cobbled surface toward a large pair of wooden doors.

Charlie rubbed his neck and considered his options. Running or fighting would lead to a swift gunning down. But he wondered why he remained alive.

The croatoans were pragmatic, but they must have known he had a hand in the destruction of both the mother ship and the terraforming ship. His last memory before being taken on a long death-march north was diving into a chamber with Augustus and hurtling to Earth.

Perhaps Augustus didn’t survive the landing… That would mean no one would know who Charlie was or what he did. He decided to play stupid during any interrogation.

If they wanted him dead, he’d have been shitted out by an alien a week ago.

A chill ran down his spine after leaving the warmth of the sun into a gloomy stone building. The alien hustled him along a narrow torchlit corridor into a square room illuminated by chunky candles attached to the wall. Charlie dropped to one knee after being kicked in the back of his leg.

He knelt in front of a raised platform. A polished wooden Glastonbury chair sat in the middle, with a purple cushion on the seat.

A young woman with flowing brown hair breezed in from a side entrance. She lifted her elaborate green dress before sitting on the chair. A brute of a croatoan followed and stood behind her. Stocky, mean looking, it had one of their large, angular rifles slung over its shoulder and a sickle in its left clawed hand.

She tilted her head to one side and sat forward, staring at Charlie. “He’s an old one.”

The stocky croatoan clicked.

“What’s your name?”

Charlie detected a mix of French and perhaps Turkish in her accent. He replied, “Joe Nobody. And you are?”

“My name is Aimee Rivery. Welcome to Unity, this is my town.” She paused for a moment and looked him up and down. “I’m going to give you a choice, old man. Your fate rests on your own decision. Do you understand?”

Charlie frowned. “A choice of what?”

She whispered something to the alien, who left the room. Returning her focus back on Charlie, she said, “We need to increase our crop production, due to our current expansion rate. You can have a place in my town if you’re prepared to work hard. You’ll be fed, have a roof over your head, and no trouble will come your way. What do you say?”

“You want me to farm root?” Charlie said.

“Amongst other things, yes. Is that not clear?”

Charlie squeezed his eyes tight and bit his lip. It didn’t help; he couldn’t hold it in any longer. The hopelessness of the situation coupled with the suggestion made him burst out in laughter, which echoed around the room.

Aimee gave him a stern look. The large croatoan returned and stood by her side. She dismissively waved her hand in Charlie’s direction. “Very well. Have it your way. I was prepared to give you a chance, against advice…”

“Whose advice? Why did you bring me here?”

“You were recovered from a pod. That makes you a person of interest. I know more about you than you think.”

“Like what? Who around here knows me?”

“Somebody you’ve been annoying for years.”

Footsteps slapped across the stone floor behind him.

Charlie’s face straightened.

An instantly recognizable voice said, “The little wasp. Did you really think you would get the better of me?”

Augustus walked in front of Charlie. He stopped and removed his right sandal.

“You will fight my champion in the arena,” Aimee said. “Then we shall see who is the one laughing once the festivities are over.”

“May I?” Augustus said, pointing at Charlie.

Aimee nodded. “Do what you will.”

“Hold him steady,” Augustus said to the croatoan restraining Charlie.

He raised his sandal above his head and swept it down, striking it against Charlie’s cheek. Charlie winced with the strike, but refused to give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing he had hurt him.

The blow stung, but that was the least of Charlie’s worries.

THE MAN who knew what Charlie had done now had control of him. And by the sounds of it, Charlie was set for a public fight.

Augustus knelt down and fastened it back around his foot before straightening his mask and rearranging his robes. At least this answered the question of what happened to him. The pod clearly had protected them both.

But what kind of deal did Augustus strike to have attained such a lofty position so soon?

Aimee stood and pointed down. “I want him alive tomorrow, Augustus. Don’t disappoint me.”

She left by the same side entrance, followed by her burly guard.

Augustus brought his masked face right in front of Charlie’s, close enough that Charlie could feel the Roman’s hot breath. “Did you see that monster with Aimee? He’s your opponent.”

“You saved me so you could watch me fight an alien?”

Augustus grunted. “I didn’t save you. I simply prolonged your miserable life for a few weeks. There’s no way in the world I would allow you an easy death.”

“And if I win?”

“I’ll have you flogged every day you aren’t fighting in the arena. History will not remember you. I won’t allow it.”

“You don’t get to write history. If you did, your own wouldn’t be so abysmal.”

“I beg to differ. Future generations will be in awe of me. You… you’re a flea.”

Charlie looked Augustus in the eye. “What does it feel like to lose two empires?”

Augustus stepped back and raised a clenched fist. He slowly lowered his hand by his side and turned to the croatoan. “He’s not worth my effort. Take him to the ludus. Throw him in with our other new arrival.”

Charlie’s camo shirt scrunched around his neck as the alien gripped the back of his collar and dragged him up and shunted him to the door. Charlie glanced back. Augustus licked his fingers and extinguished a candle.

Chapter 4

A YOUNG GIRL, dressed in a fresh white robe, carried a metal platter piled with pig’s trotters to the dining room table. She carefully placed them in front of Augustus. He pointed at his hammered metal goblet and cleared his throat. She scurried to a side table, grabbed a clay jug and returned, filling the vessel to the brim.

“I remembered from last time,” Aimee said.

She sat at the opposite end of the table, wearing an extravagant blue dress and a pearl necklace. Soft light, radiating from the candles at the center of the table, gave her face a gentle glow. The muscle-bound croatoan behind her provided a stark contrast to her beauty. He hovered close like a bird of prey.

“Thank you for inviting me this evening,” Augustus said. “You don’t mind if I—”

Aimee smiled. “Take off your mask? Please do.”

Augustus unclipped the strap from behind his ear. He placed it on the table and wrapped his fingers around the goblet’s stem. The days of feeling self-conscious were over. The burned, twisted flesh was a reminder to everyone that he was a survivor. He took a large mouthful of sour wine, trying not to show signs of disgust when swallowing.

“Delicious. Did you make this here?”

Aimee sniffed her wine and pushed it to one side. “If you think this is fine wine, then you are less cultured than I previously thought.”

Augustus bowed his head and picked up a trotter. “We don’t need to get into an argument about culture. I know all about yours. While you were in stasis, I read about you and your little cultural diversion. Quite the adventure you had.”

Aimee scoffed. “What do you know of me?”

He detected irritation in her voice. An attitude Aimee never displayed before the downing of the mother ship. The price for Augustus’ silence about the cut-off group in Canada was a ludus, where he could spend leisure time away from the watchful eyes of the croatoan council. Now she knew he couldn’t crush her like a pea, she seemed to be changing, taking advantage.

Augustus swallowed more wine to wash down the overcooked meat. “In history books you have two names. Aimee du Buc de Rivery, a French heiress, and Naksidil Sultan, a reforming queen mother of the Ottoman Empire. I made it my business to know about all stowaways.”

She screwed up her face and hunched forward. “A stowaway? Are you trying to be funny?”

“I’m sorry. It must have been hard with the pirates.”

“Pirates?”

“Your transition from Aimee to Naksidil. I’m sympathizing. The kidnapping must have been tough. I’ve also had my hardships. I understand—”

Aimee let out a short, sharp laugh. “I thought you meant on the croatoan ship. I went to the empire out of choice. Your book is wrong.”

“It seems the sands of time have wronged both of us.” Augustus sighed. “History is written by the winners. Lies carved in stone that become facts after a few generations. But we can purge that history. Right the wrongs scrawled by the manipulators, who projected their contemporary views onto historical matters that they knew very little about.”

“And what exactly are your wrongs?” An amused smile crept onto her lips.

She wouldn’t be smiling if she knew Augustus’ plans. He knew how to run a real empire, not just a collective of savages, cutthroats and thieves like she had presided over. His would be a place way above the level of a lying harem concubine like her.

Augustus’ hands shook with barely controlled anger as he recalled the lies he’d read in the history books. He clenched his fists. The left corner of his mouth twitched as he tried to smile. “They say I marked the beginning of the Roman Empire’s collapse. How can one man be responsible for that? How? You tell me.”

Aimee raised her goblet. “How does one go from pirate slave to queen? Let us toast to forgotten history and our future making of it.”

“Indeed.” Augustus raised his goblet. He’d asked himself the same question when gazing at her stasis pod back up on the mother ship with the others. She clearly had some talent, otherwise the town wouldn’t exist, and the croatoans only chose a dozen figures from history, including those they had experimented on at Roanoke, so there was something about her they valued.

The overall terraforming plan earmarked the upper areas of North America as nonessential due to terrain and climate. He’d cut off the northern attachment’s communications and left them to survive or die, and only visited out of curiosity four years later. And there Aimee was, forming a town with everyone in the area, human and croatoan. She could not be underestimated. Or tolerated.

“So tell me. Why were you so eager to keep your little wasp Charlie Jackson alive?” Aimee said.

Augustus chewed on a tough trotter and swallowed with a grimace. “He’s not important, but we do have some unfinished business. He’ll be facing off against your champion tomorrow.”

Jackson would pay for what he had done to the croatoan ships, and ultimately Augustus’ plans, but Augustus wanted to see him suffer rather than a quick easy kill.

Aimee leaned back, touched the croatoan’s muscly left arm, and pompously snorted. “You’re lining up that old man against Halkstan? We want to put on a show, not a slaughter.”

“He’s surprisingly capable. But not enough to avoid what he deserves.” Augustus dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin and lowered it over the platter. He raised his hand and clicked his fingers.

The young servant girl didn’t move. She looked at Aimee, who returned a nod.

The girl scurried over, took the platter, and reached for Augustus’ goblet. He held his hand flat over the top of it. “Bring me some root wine.”

Augustus yawned. He needed a fix—another reason why he had to take control of Unity. With the destruction and revolt of the farms and the harvesters, the town provided the only protected source of root he knew of.

Aimee stood. “Join me by the fire. We still have things to discuss.”

She sauntered over to a pair of wooden chairs positioned in front of a stone hearth that was already crackling with flames. Augustus followed and sat down. The croatoan picked up a section of sawn log and clumsily tossed it onto the fire. Red embers shot across the floor around Augustus’ sandals.

“Careful, you stupid…” he trailed off.

The alien let out four raspy clicks. Aimee rubbed its arm again. “You can leave us to it. I’ll join you shortly.”

The thought of her having sex with the creature turned Augustus’ stomach—if that’s what was happening, the rumors were that she had yet to have intercourse with anyone or anything, but she seemed overly fond of this one. Integration had its limits, and fornication crossed his personal line. Besides that, the croatoans were relegated to a minority in his mind, susceptible to a coordinated human attack if the remaining population managed to organize themselves. She was nailing her colors to the wrong mast. Augustus shook his head.

“Is there something wrong?” Aimee said.

“No. I was just thinking about how I could be of best use to your town. I have impeccable administrational and leadership skills. The ludus is… fun, as you would say, but I can offer so much more.”

It felt so low having to sell himself to her, but the hand that wields the knife never wears the crown. Others could do the dirty work; he had to remain clean in the eyes of her supporters.

“You’re planning on staying around after all?” Aimee said.

“This seems to be the best place to start rebuilding our world now the alien council is no more. Together we can regain the glory of our former empires.”

The servant brought two goblets of root wine. Augustus felt a noticeable lift almost immediately after two large gulps. Aimee drank greedily; wine dribbled from the side of her vessel, down her chin, and onto the front of her dress.

Although centuries younger than he, he reckoned she also feared a rapid ageing process without a regular supply of the croatoan root.

“Because of your previous rank, I’m prepared to give you a senior position on the local council—this is something I’ve been considering since you came back to Earth in such a spectacular way last month. You can keep your ludus if you can ensure a regular supply for the arena. We’ll review your status after a couple of months.”

She gave him a condescending smile.

Augustus resisted throwing the contents of his goblet in her face. He couldn’t take much more of her arrogance. He smiled. “Very well. Entertainment is a key part of keeping up morale. Tomorrow, Jackson will be a retiarius. A step up in sophistication from the usual sword-swinging butchery you’ve served up here.”

Aimee shrugged. “What’s a retiarius?”

“It’s normal when facing a heavy opponent like your champion.” Augustus swung his arm around his head. “Jackson will have a weighted net and a three-pointed trident. It’s designed to make him more agile to make up for the lack of armor. We want to at least make it appear like a fair fight.”

Augustus viewed it as a no-lose situation. He knew Jackson bettered the hunter Baliska and heard all of the whining stories from that useless lump of excrement Gregor. If Jackson proved triumphant, he’d get rid of one problem—Aimee’s lethal bodyguard. If he lost, it would still be pleasurable, especially if Jackson remained alive and Augustus could don the robe and mask of Charon and inflict the deathblow with a large sledgehammer to the temple.

Having missed his opportunity on the mother ship, Augustus was eager for another.

“You’re daydreaming, Augustus,” Aimee said. “What do you see in your dreams?”

“A crushed insect,” Augustus said. He clapped his hands together and smiled at the thought of Charlie Jackson being squashed under the foot of his superiors.

“Just remember,” Aimee said. “If you help me, I can make your life in this town comfortable. Our strength is teamwork, living together and sharing resources.”

Augustus slowly nodded and held his goblet toward Aimee. She clinked her vessel against his and smiled. Most of what she said was meaningless to him. Soon, she would find out exactly how efficient he could be.

The last true Roman yielded to no man, or woman.

Chapter 5

LAYLA SMILED at Venrick as they looked at each other through the window.

Although the croatoans didn’t really have the musculature to smile, there was a kind of eye movement that indicated a show of friendship. Layla picked this up from a number of the smaller engineer-types in the farms.

Venrick was of the combative type, she appeared different to the others, almost as if she worked on a different level of sophistication.

Despite the croaotoans’ ancient life spans, their hierarchy purposely kept those beneath them in distinct castes and responsibilities. They all had a drone-like quality to them in that they only really ever seemed to exist for their jobs.

Layla had seen very few working on their own agency or have interests outside of their roles, but this Venrick had not only taken it upon herself to learn rudimentary English, but had the smarts to know when she faced certain death if she stayed in the battle.

Gregor and Denver would see that as a sign of weakness. She’d seen that when they looked at her, but for Layla, it told her that the aliens had more to them than even she first realized.

Other castes besides the council members had within them the ability to be individuals and work things out independently.

The way Venrick paced the small room while she waited for the others to prepare for their trek north told Layla that she was eager to help—perhaps a willingness to integrate. She’d obviously worked out that everyone, croatoan and human alike, would perhaps be better off if they helped each other.

Writing these notes down, Layla came to the conclusion she would keep this to herself for a while.

She knew she would meet resistance from the others, and with humanity starting to get organized and find a new way of living, she didn’t want to risk throwing a spanner in the works.

Least of all with Denver, who was desperate to find Charlie.

A tap on the door disturbed her from writing her final notes. She looked up as Maria opened the door and walked in.

“Hey, girl,” Layla said, pleased to see her friend.

“Hey,” Maria replied while casting an uneasy eye to Venrick. “Is she okay? She’s got a bit of an intense stare going on. Kind of creeps me out.”

“I think she’s fine. Adjusting to the situation and probably eager to get back out there. What’s up, the prep going okay?”

“Yeah, we’re nearly done. Denver’s doing a final ammo and comms check. Poor guy must be a mess of emotions after finding out his dad’s alive.”

“Pretty much. You look a bit nervous. Are you sure you want to come with us? You could stay back with Mike and the others.”

Maria came and sat down on the stool, her back to the alien, who had lost interest and returned to her pacing in the room.

“I want to come. I want to see more of the world, you know, see how it was before…” Maria shrugged. “Well, before I was born, or created by—them. Is it true the others and I are clones? That all the workers within the stasis units inside the harvesters were the same?”

Layla reached out for her, gripped her arm, and resisted the urge to pull her into a hug. Her face was so innocent and full of confusion. “It’s true, but that doesn’t change that you are you. Even if you are biologically similar to others, none of them are you; none of them are Maria.”

“I suppose so, but how much of me is really me? I mean, am I just a product of the croatoans’ biological experiments? Is my mind really mine or one they designed to be a good, unquestioning worker?”

Although Layla did suspect the alien biologists to have altered the minds of the clones in much the same way they did for their workers, she had learned enough about Maria and now Venrick to know that any cellular manipulation wasn’t finite.

It could be changed through free will.

“No, your mind is all yours,” Layla said despite not being completely sure just how much. Either way it didn’t matter. Layla and the heads of the other farms had agreed to not let any clones still within stasis mix with one another. It just wouldn’t be worth the confusion and fear it would generate.

So each farm now had a bizarre situation in that each one with a recovered harvester had their own Erika, Ben, Ethan, and Maria, amongst the others.

“Do you trust her?” Maria asked, nodding to Venrick. “What if she’s leading us into a trap? What if that video was faked like the ones they showed on the harvester to make us believe we were on a generation ship? What if Charlie really is dead?”

“There’s only one way to find out. Come on, we should get going. Denver’s already tense. I want to keep him focused and on the job.”

“That might be easier said than done,” Maria added with a sigh. “Gregor’s already throwing his weight around with Den and Khan about who should lead the expedition. I’d be more comfortable if he stayed behind.”

“We all would, but sometimes we need people like him.”

“Maybe,” Maria said, standing up and turning away. Her shoulders tensed.

“What is it?” Layla said, recognizing she had something to get off her chest. She joined Maria and placed her arm around her shoulders. “Has something happened?”

“Not yet,” Maria said, turning to face Layla. “But this morning, I woke with him in my bed. He said that back before the uprising that people like him were responsible for bringing adulthood to people like me.”

A surge of anger flowed through Layla. That bastard! “No,” she said forcibly, making Maria step back a few inches. “Don’t you ever let him touch you if you don’t want him to. That goes for anyone, in fact. He’s a damned liar. Trust nothing he says, you hear me?”

With wide eyes, Maria nodded. “I do… thanks, Layla. Don’t leave me with him, will you?”

Hugging her close, Layla forced away the images she had conjured of what she would do to Gregor if ever… “No, girl, I won’t. But keep this on you at all times, even when you’re sleeping.”

Layla handed her a small Taser she and Mike had developed from the high-capacity battery cells from the harvesters. “One blast of that in the right place will do the job.”

Maria pocketed the palm-sized black device and smiled, no doubt the thought of zapping Gregor bringing her happy thoughts. “Come on, let’s go meet the others. It’s time to find out if Venrick is telling the truth.”

Chapter 6

CHARLIE GRITTED his teeth and yanked down on the chain attached to his rusty manacles. Specks of mortar dropped in his eyes as the links pulled rigid. It wasn’t coming loose. He decided instead to conserve his energy for the arena and leaned against the cold stone wall and thought about what Augustus had in store for him.

The Roman had mentioned something about a special surprise.

It certainly wasn’t going to be anything good, that’s for sure.

His cellmate, a small croatoan wearing a standard alien dark gray uniform, hung from manacles on the opposite wall. Its legs were too short to reach the dirt floor. It had desperately grunted, clicked and kicked its skinny legs for the past two hours, but now it had given up and dangled limply, letting out a quiet, desperate keening noise.

A key rattled in the cell door’s lock. A bolt screeched across its latch outside. The croatoan raised its helmet. Charlie tensed.

The thick wooden door creaked open and Augustus strode in, flanked by two men dressed in faded blue jeans and brown leather jackets. Both held rifles. Augustus pointed to the alien. “This one’s first. Take it down and get it ready.”

One of the men slung his rifle and pulled out a wrench while the other provided cover, aiming his weapon at the alien. The guard unscrewed the croatoan’s left manacle. It aimed a weak kick. The man punched it in the stomach.

“Save it for outside. You’re going to need everything you’ve got,” the other guard said with a sneer.

The alien wheezed and shook. It dropped to its feet and scampered into a corner after its right wrist was freed. Both men grabbed an arm each and dragged it out of the cell.

Augustus turned to Charlie and placed his hand in a flap down the side of his purple robe, briefly fumbled and produced a dried piece of root. “This might help you. Your only way out of here is to keep winning.”

Charlie turned his head and looked away. “Fuck you. Like I’m going to accept your help after all this. You take me for a fool? Have you learned nothing about humanity in your time?”

Augustus just shrugged as a faint buzz echoed along the corridor: the noise of a crowd, hundreds of chanting voices. Charlie only saw the outside of the arena when being led at gunpoint from Augustus’ ludus to the attached cells. A four-yard-high stone wall surrounded the fighting area with staircases cut in at regular intervals.

An escape plan would have to be winged—if it were at all possible.

Augustus reached forward and pressed the root into Charlie’s hand. “Hate me all you want; the feeling is mutual. But you need to make the crowd love you. They don’t possess the logic of you or me. Most were born in Unity, and this is a normal state of affairs.”

Charlie refused to give Augustus the satisfaction of conversation and gazed at a cockroach scuttling across the floor. He expected the decrepit old fool to strike him, but no blows came.

“Have it your way,” Augustus said. Outside, the crowd roared. “I’m guessing the croatoan didn’t last long. They’ll be coming for you in a minute. Time to show what you’re capable of, little wasp.”

Augustus disappeared from Charlie’s peripheral vision. The cell door slammed shut.

Shifting his manacles up, he stuffed the piece of root into his mouth and chewed. It had the texture of beef jerky, but the effects were as immediate as eating it fresh, like the sudden adrenaline rush of white-water rafting or that moment when you go over the edge while abseiling.

The cell door opened again. A blond-haired man crouched in the corridor and aimed his rifle at Charlie. The other entered and started unscrewing his right manacle. “You try any bullshit and your brains will be decorating the wall. Got it?”

Charlie ignored him, just stared right into his eyes, trying to get the measure of the man, but the other wouldn’t hold his gaze and unfastened the left manacle. He stepped back and gestured toward the corridor. “Move, grandpa. Unless you want to be dragged out like that freak?”

Charlie rubbed his wrists and eyed both men. Emotionless faces. Born and raised as traitors—perfect underlings for the likes of Augustus. He didn’t want anyone around who would think for themselves. It made his stomach turn. “One day I’ll come back for both of you,” he said, pointing at the two men. “You’re a disgrace to humanity.”

The man crouching outside laughed. He jerked his rifle to the left, gesturing along the corridor. “You won’t even see the night. Get moving, fuck-face.”

Charlie shook his head and left his cell, heading toward the light streaming through a low-barred one-meter-tall gate at the end. He felt nimble on his feet. The full invigorating effect of the root had taken hold.

The footsteps behind didn’t get too close.

No chance to take them by surprise. They knew what they were doing.

The noise of the crowd grew louder. Men and women catcalled, croatoans clicked and many spoke in English too. Five meters from the gate, the sandy surface of the fighting arena stretched out, parts of it stained with blood.

He passed a stack of four crudely assembled plywood coffins. One of the men said, “That’s going to be your bed… forever, old man.”

Just before the gate, a number of weapons hung on a wooden rack: short swords, a mace, three battered metal shields. Charlie stooped and looked through the gate’s bars. A shirtless man stood over the little croatoan. He looked upwards for a moment before smashing his mace through the alien’s visor.

The crowd roared with approval and delight. Two more croatoans appeared shortly after with a stretcher and carried the dead remains of the little one away. It didn’t stand a chance. Were Charlie’s odds going to be as short?

“These are your weapons,” the closest man said.

He threw a trident and net at Charlie’s feet.

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” Charlie said.

The man snorted. “Does it look like I am? You don’t get to choose.”

Charlie picked up the trident. It had a wooden pole, three barbed prongs, and felt lighter than it looked. The net had weights around its edge. He remembered seeing films of gladiators waving it around their head, and dismissed trying the technique. Without experience, the thing might prove cumbersome. Charlie wanted to be quick on his feet if he faced the brute he’d seen behind Aimee.

A disheveled woman ducked in front of the gate, twisted a key in the lock, and pulled it open. “Out you come. Just walk to the center and turn to face the dignitaries. Try anything and the armed guards will take you down before you can take a breath.”

“Nice setup you have here.” Charlie didn’t move. The situation seemed bizarre. A foot thrust into the small of his back, and he stumbled into a running crouch and stood in bright sunshine at the edge of the arena.

The gate locked behind him, trapping him inside.

A couple of coughs punctuated the silence inside the arena.

The acre-sized surface was soft under his boots. Dark yellow and purple stains of battle were all over the sand. He wondered how many fights had taken place. Human and croatoan blood spattered the high concrete wall that enclosed the fighting area. On top of the wall, spectators stood on four steps that ran around the full perimeter. The two species mixed together. Although the aliens outnumbered the humans by a ratio of around four to one.

There were only two entrances: his and a larger gate at the opposite end. Winning would be his only way out, he realized. He walked to the middle of the arena and turned to face Aimee. She sat beneath a veranda, probably salvaged from an old house in the local area. She wore a blue dress and wafted a fan in front of her face. Augustus perched to her left; he adjusted his mask and leaned forward. Two other people he didn’t recognize sat either side of them.

Augustus stood and raised an arm. “People of Unity. This is today’s main event. The man standing before you brought down the two croatoan ships, single-handedly. He might look like a pathetic old man, but don’t let his appearance deceive you.”

Raised chatter and clicking filled the arena. A half-eaten apple bounced past Charlie’s feet. Augustus held his finger to his lips and waited for silence. He pointed down. “This man is a threat to Unity. Our Unity. His judgment will come today. I introduce to you, the doom bringer!”

A few people shouted insults, drowning each other out.

Aimee sat expressionless through the Roman’s speech. After Augustus sat down, she leaned over and whispered something to him. He stood again and said, “Please welcome Halkstan. The champion of Unity.”

Charlie heard the gate behind him creak open. He spun to see a large croatoan, dressed in a faded uniform repaired in places with thick stitches, duck out of the gap. Its sword glinted in the sun. At least a meter and a half long, serrated on one side and featuring hollow circles running down the middle. A standard-issue croatoan hunter weapon.

The crowd cheered as Halkstan strode toward Charlie, sword raised.

Charlie dropped the net, knowing he’d be useless with it, and held the trident forward with both hands, focusing on his opponent. He blocked out the shouting above him and the fear of death, and thought about previous croatoan attack patterns. They usually went for a quick kill, wide swings—arrogant and impatient.

Halkstan sprang forward, bouncing in Charlie’s direction at pace. It jumped in the air and swept the sword downwards, its great bulk moving slowly—or perhaps the root’s effects were given Charlie faster reactions. He jumped to his right.

The blade whistled past his ear and thumped into the sand. Charlie backed away, keeping the alien out of sword’s reach by jabbing the trident toward its ugly, snarling face. He kicked sand at the alien, trying to gain an advantage. It shook its head, growled, and leapt in the air again.

Charlie smiled as he staggered back. This was his chance. He planted his feet and thrust the trident at the alien’s torso, using the beast’s weight and momentum against it. But it ignored the wound and arced the sword down, chopping the wooden pole in two.

Frenzied voices rose around the arena. People got to their feet, sensing the battle was reaching a climax point.

Charlie was left with little more than a half-meter-long sharp stick. The beast roared and stalked forward, pushing Charlie until he backed into the wall.

Halkstan chopped down directly at his head. Charlie dived to his left and skidded across the sand. The sword clanked against the concrete wall. Small stone chips sprayed against his back.

Dashing back to the center of the arena, Charlie knew he needed to finish this quickly. Simply trying to avoid Halkstan’s attacks would eventually lead to defeat, the other having much greater stamina.

The alien advanced in typical fashion, building into a bouncing run. It sprang at him and pulled the sword behind its head. An opportunity presented itself.

Charlie waited until the last moment, his muscles tensed.

Halkstan grunted and slashed the sword forward. Charlie dived feet first and slid between the alien’s legs, immediately jumping up behind its back. Using both hands, Charlie rammed the sharp end of the pole into Halkstan’s exposed neck and drove it deep into the alien’s body.

Yellow blood squirted around the pole. Halkstan let out a strange buzzing noise, dropped the sword, and sank to one knee. Charlie grabbed the sword, pressed the point against the back of Halkstan’s head, and looked up to the veranda.

The crowd fell silent.

Aimee remained expressionless and handed her fan to Augustus. She held her thumb out sideways. Charlie knew she probably wanted her champion to fight another day, but he didn’t care and wasn’t waiting for her decision.

He reached around the front of Halkstan and ripped the two tubes away from its face. Hearing a collective gasp gave Charlie a sense of satisfaction. The alien wheezed and toppled onto its side. The only good croatoan was a dead one, and he refused to show mercy.

The two armed men rushed through the gate and positioned themselves either side of Charlie.

“Drop the sword. Now,” the blond one said.

Charlie turned and stared at him. With a shrug, he tossed the sword on the corpse, smiled, and looked up to the veranda.

Aimee and Augustus were in conversation. They both kept glancing over. Eventually she held her thumb out, paused and turned it up. A light ripple of applause quickly died out. Augustus rose from his seat. “Take him back to the ludus. Put him in with our wounded prisoner.”

The crowd filed down the external staircases, and the whole place emptied within a minute—this wasn’t what they had come for or expected. Charlie estimated around two thousand spectators had packed into the arena. He felt satisfaction that he had disappointed them. He wouldn’t be their entertainment, not like this. Of the crowd, he estimated there were perhaps four hundred humans. Most of a younger appearance. The two aiming rifles at him couldn’t have been more than eighteen years of age.

“I take it my bed plans have changed for this evening?” Charlie said to the one aiming his rifle at him.

“Don’t count your chickens just yet,” the blond man said. “Get back through the gate.”

Two croatoans appeared from Halkstan’s entrance, carrying a stretcher made from canvas and poles. They hopped over to their fallen comrade and rolled it onto the stretcher and quickly returned to the gate.

“They don’t seem too bothered,” Charlie said.

“Halkstan was a bully,” the guard said. “He went around kicking their asses. I doubt they give a shit. You probably did them a favor.”

“He? You mean it.”

“Whatever,” the blond man said. “Put your hands on your head and start walking, or you’ll be joining him as crop fertilizer.”

Charlie rolled his eyes and clasped his hands behind his neck. He wished he’d found Unity before he took down the mother ship. The cheeky fucker with the blond hair was crying out to be taught a lesson. They all were here. How could they live alongside the species that all but wiped out the human race? He couldn’t understand that thinking at all. It felt like a betrayal by his own people he fought for. He didn’t go to the lengths he did to rid the world of the croatoan menace to end up living with the damned things.

THE MEN DIRECTED Charlie around the edge of Unity to the ludus. Nearly all the buildings in the central area looked scruffy and medieval, not like the more modern hybrid ones on the steps around the edge of the basin. Despite setting up a new integrated society, it didn’t take them long to build a class system. Some things never change.

The first group that noticed him pass by sat around a barrel, drinking from metal cups. They stared over and whispered to each other.

Just before they came to the ludus, Charlie glanced into what looked like a makeshift bar. The raised chatter stopped as he passed. A man and a woman at a table next to the open entrance glared at him before continuing their drinks.

None of these people appreciated the fact that he saved their lives—they probably didn’t even realize the extent of the threat with hiding up here out of the way. All would have perished without him doing what he did, leaving the croatoans as the sole owners of Earth. And this was how he was thanked.

He passed through the ludus gate into its small courtyard. One of his guards swung it closed behind him. The cells covered three sides of the courtyard, fifteen in all. He stood facing the main building: a two-story structure made from wood.

Augustus walked out of the main entrance. “It’s time we got you reacquainted with an old friend.”

Charlie’s heart raced. He hoped it wasn’t Denver or Maria. Gregor and Layla flipped sides, but they’d spent enough time with the aliens to make their capture more acceptable in his eyes.

Augustus gestured left with his bony index finger. “Put him in number two.”

A rifle muzzle jabbed into Charlie’s back. One of the guards opened the cell door.

He stepped inside and heard chains rattle to his left. A huge familiar-looking croatoan in battle dress thrust toward him but abruptly stopped short, held by its restraints. It had a stomach wound and dried yellow blood on its left leg. The hunter he fought in the forest! He could have sworn he killed the beast.

The cell door slammed behind him. Augustus’ mask appeared in the small window. “This is Baliska. I believe you have history? You’re cellmates now; isn’t that just a wonderful twist of fate? The gods couldn’t have planned it any better.”

Charlie turned to look at the alien. Dust puffed from the wall as it tried to bust out of the chains again, pure hate burned in its eyes.

The feeling was mutual.

Chapter 7

THE EARLY AFTERNOON sunshine cut through the orange-tinged clouds, bathing the courtyard in a warm glow.

The heat warmed Gregor’s face as he pulled the last rope over the hover-bike’s seat and tied it off, ensuring the pack of ammo and supplies were secure. The movement made his shoulder sore, tweaking the muscle in a way that he hadn’t experienced for years.

Sleeping at Freetown overnight on their hard beds had taken its toll. His back felt every day of his fifty-six years.

Age crept up on him in the night like a thief, stealing his vitality. He needed another shot of root before they left.

The stuff Alex was harvesting back at his original farm wasn’t as good as it was when the croatoans were working with it—the effects just weren’t as long lasting as before, requiring larger, more frequent doses.

The aliens knew its secrets far better than either he or Alex. When they were refining it, the effects were far greater.

But still, with Layla and the other self-appointed assholes deciding to eradicate it and its use, he couldn’t exactly be choosy about it. Besides, even with the inferior human-made product, it put him in a strong position.

He who could control the flow of root would have a lot of power in this new human order. He did it once to build up his crime empire; he could do it again.

One thing he had learned from those days was that there were always customers for the hard-to-get and the addictive.

With a lack of general medical supplies beyond the basics at the farms, when people got sick, or tired, or just wanted to improve themselves, it would be Gregor Miralos they’d come to.

Beside his bike were two others. Each one took two passengers and had space for luggage. He considered sabotaging Denver’s.

Both he and Layla would be travelling together, and it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for him if both of them were to crash into the forest at full speed.

The thought brought a smile to his face.

They were like bloody twins these days—joined at the hip and speaking for one another. In a way, Gregor was disappointed with Denver. After Charlie did his thing with the bomb, it looked like the kid would find his own mind, but no, instead of playing copycat to Charlie, he now did that with Layla.

It didn’t suit him.

Pain still throbbed in Gregor’s jaw from the kid’s jab. The bruise looked ugly in the mirror—a mix of purple and green that hinted at Gregor’s age and inability to fight as well as he could.

A few years ago, he’d never be beaten to the punch like that.

Still, that aside, Denver rarely showed what he was capable of anymore, preferring to wander Freetown after Layla like a lovesick puppy. Ironic considering his own dog had decided to abandon him and run off to the wild.

Sabotage would certainly be an option—if he could only figure out how to do it. The bike’s internals were well sealed off and the tech so advanced compared to the motorcycles Gregor had worked on in the past that he hadn’t the first clue as to how to go about it. Even the throttle mechanism used digital software controls, and hacking into alien computers wasn’t exactly his forte.

As he thought about what to do, double doors swished open from the complex behind him. He turned. Denver approached in his lanky, loping gait of his. With a few strides, he ate up the ground and joined Gregor by the bikes.

He wore his bug-out kit: camo combat trousers and waist jacket with a dozen pockets containing various tools he and his dear old pa had made, walking boots that looked to have been repaired a dozen times with the hides of various animals, and a near-bald shaved head.

Without his beard he looked like the prototypical American US soldier.

“You’re looking shifty,” Denver said as he placed his backpack on the rear end of the bike. “What are you up to now?”

“You’re a suspicious little shit, aren’t you? Just like your old man. Do you even have your own personality?” Gregor leaned back against his bike and folded his arms across his chest.

Brushing his taunt off with a shrug, Denver quickly and efficiently tied his pack down with a length of rope, using a knot system Gregor hadn’t seen before— probably another one of his old man’s little survival tricks he’d learned out of a National Guard manual.

“What are you even doing here?” Denver asked when he had finished securing his supplies. “You can’t stand the sight of me or my dad, let alone the aliens. Why bother coming with us?”

“You know me, Den, I like a bit of an adventure. Besides, your little happy group needs me. You’re getting soft.”

“Your face says otherwise.”

Smiling made Gregor’s face hurt, but he grinned anyway. He always did enjoy a bit of banter, especially when it made Denver angry. “Fancy going another round, kid? It was kind of a cheap shot yesterday. At least your old pa would fight like a real man. Learning how to fight from Layla now, eh? Or perhaps Mike taught you a few things? His wife perhaps? I heard she’s pretty lethal with that tai chi of hers.”

The fist flew half an inch high as Gregor ducked.

Denver’s long reach caught him off guard, but the boy was definitely slower this morning. Gregor shifted his weight on to his right foot and bobbed under a straight left jab.

Noticing Denver had unbalanced, Gregor launched forward and rammed his shoulder into Denver’s ribs, forcing him back against the edge of the bike.

Denver twisted as he fell away and grabbed hold of Gregor’s denim jacket’s lapels, pulling him to the ground.

The two men hit the hard surface with a thud.

Gregor leaned up and slid his legs over Denver’s beneath him, pinning him to the ground. He grabbed his throat and squeezed, making the younger man choke for breath.

Denver’s long arms pushed up against Gregor’s face, but the Armenian knocked them away with his other hand before slapping Denver hard across the side of the head as his face started to turn purple with the lack of air.

“You’re weak,” Gregor taunted. “Don’t you see what Layla’s done to you? You’re pathetic. Where’s your strength now, eh? You need the root, boy, you know it, and I know it. You want to grow old and infirm like Mike?”

Denver kicked out and twisted beneath Gregor, but the older man continued to squeeze his neck until he stopped struggling.

“You’re right,” Denver gurgled as he became limp, giving up. “I’m weak.”

Gregor had him where he wanted him, and despite not feeling great himself, it appeared that Denver had gone quite some time without the root and was far weaker than even he realized.

Standing up and helping Denver to his feet, Gregor pulled from his jacket pocket a leather wallet with a couple of steel cigar tubes inside. He unscrewed the lid on one and pulled out a syringe full of refined root oil.

Gregor looked over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t being watched and, satisfied, turned to face Denver, whose attention was now squarely on the syringe.

The kid’s hands trembled, and Gregor knew it wasn’t just through anger. He’d seen those trembles before in his own hands—the tremble of anticipation.

“You want this, don’t you?” Gregor said, holding the syringe toward Denver, but not giving it up completely.

Denver looked away, rubbing his neck. His eyes flickered to gaze upon the complex over Gregor’s shoulder before focusing back on the root.

“What do you want from me?” Denver asked, his voice raspy, but with the edge of desperation that Gregor had heard so many times before from junkies.

“I want you to remember who you are and what you do. You’re a killer, Denver. The aliens’ worst nightmare. You promised to kill every single one in your path, remember? And here you are letting one lead us into God knows what. Listen to me. I’ll give you all the root you need to be who you are again, but first you’ve got to work with me to take out Venrick. Once we know the location of the battle and your old man’s pod, you and I will… dispose of her services.”

Denver reached for the root, but Gregor pulled it away. “Are you clear on what you have to do for this?”

He wanted the kid to say it.

After a moment of thought, the trembles now more visible in his hands, Denver nodded once. “I got it. Give me the root and I’ll kill the damned alien myself.”

He only had to sow the seed and offer the promise of the drug, and junkies would do almost anything. For Denver, this was just the start; he didn’t have a clue as to what Gregor would lead him to do for more root.

Smiling a satisfied grin, Gregor handed Denver the syringe and leaned back, watching him shoot the root into a vein in his wrist.

You’re mine now, son.

“Look smart,” Gregor said as he hid the leather wallet in his jacket. Khan, along with Maria, Layla, and the soon-to-be-dead Venrick, approached with their gear, ready to head north into Canada.

Denver’s eyelids drooped for a few moments as the root took effect.

When the others turned up, he was back to his old self, helping out with the packs, being the go-to guy, but Gregor noticed the way he looked at Venrick as the alien approached on her back-to-front legs.

Her greenish-brown scales shimmered in the sun, and her tubes made a sucking sound as she breathed in the root-enriched air from the tanks on her back.

Gregor noticed that Denver eyed them, no doubt wondering how to get to the root inside.

But the kid wouldn’t have a chance.

Not if Gregor could help it.

Chapter 8

AUGUSTUS PEERED into the gloomy cell, checking on his two most valuable inmates. Jackson sat cross-legged opposite Baliska, who quietly clicked.

They would meet in the arena. The Doombringer versus the hunter.

Another fight to boost Augustus’ personal popularity. He would be observing as Unity’s sole ruler. No stupid council, no lying prostitute, just him on a single chair.

A new Earth-uniting emperor.

Augustus clinked a dagger across the window’s thin iron bars.

“Shame about your champion. Is that the best you’ve got?” Jackson said.

“You did me a favor. But you won’t last forever. I’ll certainly not be awarding you a rudis.”

“A what?”

“A wooden freedom sword. My Doctore owns one. They’re given to a gladiator who wins his freedom. Didn’t you learn anything from your studies?”

“I specialized in American history. Unlike you, we were not a group of barbarians before the invasion.”

Augustus jabbed his dagger between the bars, in Charlie’s direction. “The Roman Empire had great buildings, baths and villas with heated rooms and tiled floors while people on this continent lived in tipis. Don’t you dare lecture me about history. Save your venom for your next fight.”

He gestured to the guard to open the gates and headed out, concealing his dagger under his robe. An essential weapon for nighttime excursions around Unity.

Moonlight radiated through the wispy clouds, illuminating with streaks of silver the rooftops of the tatty buildings that lined the twisting dirt roads.

Weak light from lanterns and candles shone from windows and doorframes.

Raised voices came from the tavern at the end of the road. The destination for his meeting. Augustus hated mixing with these low-ranking people. Although he knew he required the respect of the bottom-feeders in order to manipulate them.

A small price to pay to satisfy his ambitions. A crucifixion or two would bring them in line later.

A painted white plank with black lettering hung above the door, saying No Croatoans. The perfect attitude for him to exploit. Divide and conquer. Augustus checked the straightness of his mask and pushed open the door.

Conversations immediately stopped as patrons turned to identify the new arrival. Augustus glanced at the ten tables spread around the plain rectangular room.

“Good evening,” he said.

He received a murmured response. The patrons resumed their conversations. The place stank with a mixture of stale, beer-soaked floorboards and root smoke—the latter clouding the room. Augustus headed to the bar at the far end of the tavern.

A man and woman ascended a set of wooden stairs halfway along the room. She slapped his backside. He could be trading intercourse for food or vice versa. They might have just had a drink and decided to rut.

A young woman behind the bar, one of Augustus’ spies, placed a porcelain cup filled with root wine in front of him.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Anytime, darling,” the spy said with a smile before she rushed off to continue serving other patrons.

Most things were free for him in Unity. His payment came in the form of providing entertainment. A steady stream of fighters, usually human strays, but more recently, croatoans from harvesters or farms in a state of confusion after the ship crashed.

Three preinvasion men sat around a table in the corner of the room. Augustus had had them under observation for weeks. Pragmatic survivors, never mixing with croatoans, probably living in Unity for the safety and food it provided. He walked over and placed his cup on the table. “Mind if I join you?”

One of them men, sporting a wiry gray beard, glanced around the tavern. He nodded and shuffled along the bench, creating room for Augustus. “Quite a show at the arena today. Is it true what you said about him?”

Augustus sat down. The two on the other side of the table glared at him. Their weather-beaten faces from working the land, scruffy shirts and unkempt beards gave them a thuggish quality.

“It’s all true,” Augustus said. “But he’s in desperate need of some attitude realignment.”

“He should be given a medal. From what I hear, this could be the end for the croatoans,” Gray-beard said.

“Given half a chance, Jackson would destroy our town. But you’re right about the croatoans. Which is why I’m here.” He lowered his voice. “I have a proposition.”

One of the men sitting opposite, with a scar running along the side of his face, regarded Augustus. “Why should we trust you? We know you’ve been in bed with them. You used to come here in a shuttle.”

Augustus shrugged and sipped his wine. “I protected this place. What do you think would have happened if the croatoan council knew about Unity? I worked from the inside to cut the best deal possible for humanity.”

Gray-beard grunted. “Some deal. I’ve been south and seen the farms. We’re nothing but animals to them.”

“Keep your voice down,” Augustus said. “That bitch has spies everywhere. You’ll end up with a wooden jacket if she hears about our conversation. And the correct phrase is: were nothing but animals. That’s all over now.”

“Bitch? You mean Aimee? She’s okay. There can’t be many other places running like this around the world. As strange as Unity is, it works,” Gray-beard said.

“Without the mother ship, we can reclaim the planet, using Unity as a new base for an empire,” Augustus said. “There’s around seventy thousand croatoans on Earth, probably a lot less after people realized what Jackson did. Millions of humans are still alive on farms or living rough. The problem is coordination. Getting people together to successfully and easily wipe out the aliens.”

Gray-beard lit a root cigarette and took a deep drag. He leaned further in. “You want us to join your rebellion? Why should we risk our lives? We’re in no danger here.”

“Coordination will eventually happen. History teaches us that. When an army sweeps through this town, do you think they’ll show you or your family mercy? You’ll be seen as croatoan collaborators. I’m saying we take the lead. Free our planet. We start by taking out the biggest local problem. Aimee.”

Scar-face signaled to the barwoman to bring over more drinks. He turned to Augustus. “Aimee commands loyalty. The fallout could be messy.”

“Why don’t you do your own dirty work?” Gray-beard said.

“I need to appear clean. After she’s been dispatched, as the most senior person in Unity, I’ll call a parade in the arena to brief the croatoans on our next moves. We’ll arrange a force to massacre them once and for all.”

“Not a chance. It’s way too risky,” Gray-beard said. “You won’t be able to convince them to leave their weapons outside.”

Augustus tried to avoid irritation creeping into his voice. Gone were the days when he could just issue orders, and people would obey. He needed to offer an incentive. “I want to make you three my senators. You’ll hold senior positions and have access to the finest things in our new human-only society. But to get there, I need you to be my prefects first.”

The youngest-looking of the three, staring intensely at Augustus, spoke for the first time. “You talk big, but we’re the ones with the most to lose. I don’t even know what you mean by prefects…”

“Senior officers in my new army. Once in control of Unity, we build a force that will sweep the country. We won’t struggle for volunteers once people realize that momentum is on our side.”

“We’re simple farmers. Why don’t you get your people at the ludus to kill Aimee?”

The barwoman brought over a ceramic jug and topped up all of their cups. Augustus pretended to drink before saying, “My staff already have jobs. I keep my ear to the ground and know about your extracurricular black market activities. You know what Aimee will do if she finds out?”

Gray-beard scowled. “Are you trying to blackmail us?”

“No. To me it’s a normal state of affairs. But I’m easygoing compared to the alien-loving, deceitful whore.” Augustus paused, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. These three had already sealed their own fates, whether they decided to help or not. “We all know what the world was like before the invasion. Wouldn’t you like a slice of that back? You’ll be remembered by future generations as heroes. The men who took a stand and liberated Earth from tyranny.”

All three looked at each other. Scar-face nodded to the others and returned his attention to Augustus. “Give us a few minutes to discuss it.”

Augustus sighed. “Very well. I’ll be at the bar. Let me know when you’ve made your decision.”

He swiped his cup off the table and returned to the bar. People shot glances at him as he passed. Under his robe, he slipped his dagger out of its sheath and gripped the handle, ready to stab any potential attacker. People often went missing in Unity, usually after a night at the tavern. His spy, the barwoman, told him that men or women who spent time socializing with croatoans would usually be the target.

Augustus leaned over the bar, keeping his voice low. “Make sure those three are watched like a hawk. I want to know who they talk to and where they go. If they head for Aimee’s building, inform me immediately.”

“I’ll put one of my girls on them. We can trust her,” she said.

“Very good. There’s a leg of ham waiting for you at my ludus. Collect it at your leisure.”

Augustus observed the three men still in discussion. If they successfully managed to carry out their job, all would be charged with murder and have a public bastinado, a foot whipping, before being marched to the arena to be stoned to death. It would be an excellent way of showing Unity’s population that they could rely on him for swift justice.

Gray-beard looked over at him. Augustus returned a nod, held up his cup, and said to the barwoman, “Send them some more drinks, with my compliments.”

She headed over to the men, but Gray-beard gestured her away. He trudged over to the bar like a Neanderthal.

“Have you come to a decision?”

The old man cupped a hand around his mouth. “We’ll kill Aimee. Then we talk again. I’m not convinced you’ll get the response you’re looking for. There’s plenty in the town who like her. God knows how the croatoans will react.”

Augustus grinned. “Things will fall into place. You can trust me that you’ll get everything you deserve. When can you do it?”

“Tomorrow. We’ve noticed that she’s been going down the sinkhole every day for the last couple of weeks. We’ll ambush her when she’s coming back through town.”

“Interesting. This activity within the sinkhole hasn’t been reported to me.”

Augustus knew a strange and small alien-worshipping cult lived in the tunnels and caverns constructed below the sinkhole, the previous barracks of the croatoans before they sprang the invasion. But the harmless fools were generally left alone. They didn’t bother Unity citizens and kept to themselves, only appearing to trade items. Aimee was up to something, and he wanted to know what.

“She dresses in one of their brown cloaks and avoids the main track through town,” Gray-beard said.

“Useful information, thanks. Report to my ludus after you’ve ended her—bring proof, and we’ll discuss our next moves and your remuneration.”

Gray-beard nodded and returned to his allies.

Not wanting to spend a minute longer than necessary in the shithole tavern, Augustus pushed open the rickety door and walked along a dirt road toward the edge of town. As the buildings thinned out, he enjoyed the fresh air while thinking about his future.

The root wine made him feel strong. He powered away from Unity, back and forth up the switchbacks until he reached the upper edge of the basin. He rested his hands on hips and surveyed the town. Twinkling lights came from the main cluster of buildings and from the houses built on the five large steps around the east edge.

Glowing pink rings of a hover-bike shot over his head, going in the direction of Aimee’s residence.

Soon, this would all be his. And that would just be the start.

Chapter 9

DENVER ADJUSTED the pack’s straps on his shoulders and lifted the rifle to his chest as he led the way through the dense forest with Venrick and Gregor by his side. Khan, Maria and Layla were close behind.

Even though it was real early, approximately 0600 hours if his instincts were correct, he felt wired and alert like his old self again.

They had travelled through the night, following Venrick’s map coordinates on the hover-bike’s computers for over seventeen hours, only stopping twice for short breaks.

The others wanted a longer rest, but Denver pressed on, wanting to get to Charlie as soon as possible.

If Venrick’s version of events were to be believed, Denver didn’t want to wait around. There was no telling what would happen to Charlie if another group of aliens had taken him.

Especially after what he did.

The root in his system helped him blaze forward with no lack of energy.

Even Venrick with her three-toed feet and long limbs had trouble keeping up. The forest this far north, into Canada in what used to be Ontario, had grown dense and thick. They had left their bikes back at an old ruin town, safely hidden in a tumbled-down factory.

Venrick assured them they were just a few kilometers away from the site of the battle.

After an hour of relentless trekking, Layla spoke up. “We need a break, guys. We can’t keep this up; we’ll be exhausted.”

She stopped and leaned on her knees. Sweat dripped from her forehead onto her beige cargo pants. They had torn on thorns, and blood beaded in long scratches.

Maria pulled up next her and sat on the ground while she stretched out her calf muscle. Khan extended her leg, bending her foot forward to relieve the cramp. He didn’t look as tired, being used to long extended forays into the woods, but without the root he certainly wasn’t as fresh as Denver and Gregor.

“Okay,” Denver conceded. “You guys take a rest. I’ll scout ahead with Venrick and Gregor. We’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

“Update over comms every few minutes,” Khan added, reminding Denver of the alien comm units Mike had given to them.

Before Layla could protest, Denver looked at the alien and nodded before heading off further into the trees.

They passed through a thick canopy of pines.

The sap littered the ground, making their steps sticky and scented as they disturbed the dirt beneath their feet. More than once Denver reached his right arm down to pet his dog only to find his hand dangling in the air.

On excursions like these, Pip made the perfect companion, unlike Gregor and Venrick.

He couldn’t think of a worse pair of travelling partners. What would his dad think? His son allied with a damned alien and Gregor.

These thoughts ran through his head as they came out of a clearing and crested a small grassy hill. Overgrown bushes lined the edge of the trees, making the hill almost perfectly spherical. At the top he looked down and saw it.

Venrick pointed. “Battle there. See pod mark in ground?”

Gregor whistled and put his hands on his hips—clearly his root wasn’t doing as much for him as it was Denver.

Bringing the riflescope to his eye, Denver surveyed the ground below.

A wide expanse of field stretched east to west at least five hundred meters and double that north to south.

Along the sides the tall pines leaned in, their green needles bleeding into the grass and shrubs of the field.

Littered all over the ground were bodies of croatoans and humans—far more of the former than the latter.

The alien bodies were dressed in two distinct styles: those that wore the gray-blue uniforms of the farm-based aliens like Venrick, and then those that wore adapted human dress. Some wore denim while others had suits and track pants and all manner of strangely crafted clothes.

He’d never seen the croatoans fight among themselves like this, and it was clear from the bodies and the video that this other sect was fighting alongside the humans as one group.

“I can see the pod landing spot,” Denver said. “In fact, I see two. With the one Khan found, that makes three. That still leaves another three unaccounted for. Venrick, did you see who or what was in the second pod here?”

With her strange clicking version of English, she said, “No see other pod open.”

“Where were they taken?” Gregor asked as he looked down onto the scene with his hand over his eyes to shield from the low-raking sun on the east side. “The pods are gone too… they must have taken them as well as Charlie and who or whatever was in the other one.”

“I… don’t know,” Venrick clicked and warbled, but then she stepped forward and leaned her turtle-like head forward. Squinting her almost-black eyes, large as crab apples, she stretched out her scaled hand and pointed one of her thick fingers. “There… in sky.”

“What’s that?” Gregor snapped at the alien. “I can’t see anything. What are you playing at?”

“There!” Venrick clicked again.

Denver followed the direction of her arm and finger with his riflescope and zoomed in with the dial on the side, compressing the distance and bringing the background closer.

Above the dark pine green of the tree canopy on the other side of the battleground, he saw faint wisps of smoke curling up into the dawn sky.

It grew thin as it rose up and mixed with the salmon and orange tones of dawn.

These days, without the heavy harvesting, the tint was becoming less pronounced as the weeks went by. Although that was clearly a good thing, it also meant less root for Denver… which also meant he needed Gregor, and that sickened him more than anything.

But perhaps this other group would have stocks if they had a large alien population. The more Denver searched the sky and panned his scopes, the more narrow, swirling columns of smoke he spotted.

The enemy, the pods… Dad! There must be a settlement of some kind over there.

“I see it,” Denver said to Gregor. “Smoke columns. About twenty of them. We should be able to get there within the hour if we move now… shit, wait, what’s that?”

“Hunter,” Venrick said as she stepped back away from the ridge and crouched low to the ground. Gregor and Denver instinctively followed.

Denver recognized this type: it looked similar to the one that had hunted them in Manhattan and followed them to the town hall.

For a brief moment he thought it was the same one, but this one wasn’t wounded and was visibly smaller and wearing an adapted set of army fatigues.

It stepped out of the trees on the far side of the battleground and made its way through the hundreds of bodies, always looking, searching through its visor. It carried a large black rifle very similar to the one Denver carried.

“How many of them patrol this area?” Denver asked Venrick in hushed tones from his prone position.

The alien clicked nonsense in return and blinked a look of confusion.

Holding up his hands and indicating to one finger and then the hunter, he asked again. “More than one?”

“Don’t know. I… stayed not long.”

“Great, so we could be surrounded and we wouldn’t even know until it’s too late. What did I say about trusting these damned things?” Gregor said, getting an intense look from Venrick in response.

“Keep your damned voice down,” Denver whispered. “Here’s the plan. I’ll take out this one; you two flank round through the trees, see if you can spot any other movement. They don’t look like they’re expecting anything by being so out in the open; you’ll likely get the drop on them.”

“Why me?” Gregor said. “You love these aliens so much, you go with it.”

“Her,” Denver said and realized how ridiculous it was that he was defending an alien to Gregor. Clearly the ex-crime lord’s brain wasn’t particularly sharp today.

Denver offered him the perfect opportunity to deal with Venrick.

“Just go with her and deal with the situation in your usual way,” Denver said, giving the other man an obvious wink, knowing the alien wouldn’t likely pick up on it.

Feigning comprehension, Gregor gave Denver a mock salute as he sneered with understanding. “Right you are. I’ll meet you back with the others once we’ve swept round and taken a look. Don’t do anything stupid with that one down there… or do, I don’t really care.”

“I hope you fall into a trap,” Denver said as Gregor and Venrik, still crouching, made their way down the other side of the hill and headed off into the eastern side of the trees.

Gregor flipped him the bird before he disappeared into the forest.

A part of Denver hoped that both of them would kill each other and save him the trouble.

He took out the adapted communicator from his jacket pocket. Mike had done a great job of altering the encryption on these devices.

They had to be careful using the alien tech, as they didn’t want to give away their communications to any croatoans who might be listening in, especially with those from the south posing a threat still.

Although the northern territory farms were devoid of aliens, most of them now dead on the field, the southern farms and those on other continents were still just getting the news of everything that had happened over the last month and were fighting with the aliens in their own way.

Layla helped forward messages to those farms that came online using the interfacility messaging system that Augustus used from the mother ship. Without the central server, it had taken weeks to hack the system to work on a peer-to-peer basis, but every day they reached more and more facilities, and day by day the humans turned on the aliens, reclaiming the planet once more.

Switching the communicator on with a small thumb button inset into the alien polymer, he brought it up to his ear. “Layla, this is Den. You hear me?”

A few seconds passed, and with zero static, Layla’s voice came to him. “I hear you loud and clear, Den. What’s going on? You find anything?”

Denver filled her in on the situation.

“I’ll bring back a gift. Hold tight, I’ll be there shortly.”

He didn’t expand on it as he clicked the communicator off. Edging forward on his elbows and sighting through the scope, he watched the alien continue to stalk through the field. Occasionally it got distracted by something on a body and stopped to investigate.

This was not the behavior of a trained and lethal hunter.

Bracing the rifle against his shoulder and using a molehill to support the barrel, he waited for the alien to stop and stoop once more before pulling the trigger.

The shot caught the alien in the knee, bending its leg backwards and making it sprawl forward.

It dropped its rifle and clutched its bleeding leg.

The shot, silenced and suppressed with alien technology, made almost no noise. The downed alien looked around in all directions to see where the attack had come from, while letting out a clipped screech.

Definitely not a trained hunter, Denver thought as he crested the hill and in a crouching run, keeping to the side where the trees cast their shadows, headed toward his quarry, rifle up ready to fire if needed.

But he wanted this one alive.

GREGOR LET Venrick take the lead.

She’d been easy to convince to take point as they slowly made their way through the trees on the eastern side of the field. He really wanted to stop for another shot of root.

The long journey had meant the last dose was already wearing off. He would have preferred to be freshly rooted for this, but he had learned you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and you don’t trust Greeks bearing gifts.

Neither do you let a croatoan walk behind you.

That was Venrick’s mistake. She loped forward, peering into the darkness with her superior eyesight, looking out for more scouts or guards. She had a soft throaty click that at times sounded almost musical.

He supposed it was their version of whistling.

Gregor stepped over a downed log and surprised himself by almost standing on a snake. It was nothing more than a glorified grass snake. Its green head looked up at him, its tongue briefly tasting the air, and deciding it didn’t like the taste of him or the alien, it slithered off into the shadows of the rotting log.

Birds tweeted up in the canopy, warning others about Gregor and the alien as they continued to stalk through the woods.

They eventually came to a bank with a fast-flowing brook. Large boulders provided a way across, but when Venrick stopped and turned to say something to Gregor, he was already lunging forward, knife in hand.

He collided with the alien, sending her collapsing to the bank’s edge.

With a heavy cut he severed her breathing tubes and rolled off while she struggled and gasped for air. Her large hands struggled to deal with the intricate task of rejoining the cut air tubes.

She rolled onto her front so that she could reach to the tanks behind.

Gregor lunged again, driving his knee into the hard scaly area of her lower back. He knew from his ‘experiments’ on the farm that this area protected an important organ of theirs. One he didn’t fully understand the function of, but knew that if it were struck, it would send them into a brief paralysis as some nerve was trapped or overloaded.

Stuck on her front and screeching and clicking, Gregor drove the knife into the back of her neck.

It took three attempts to fully pierce the tough hide, but the last thrust did the job. Severing the brain stem, her body twitched twice before becoming completely still.

Gregor unhooked the two tanks of root-enriched air and strapped them to his back. He pushed her heavy body into the brook and watched as she floated away, banging into rocks and eventually floating out of sight, leaving a trail of blood to dissolve into the water.

“One down,” Gregor said as he cleaned his knife and prepared another shot of root before he headed back.

Chapter 10

CHARLIE CARESSED HIS ACHING WRISTS. The effects of the root had worn off, his only dose in a month. His knees creaked as he crouched, and he winced after stretching his left arm, feeling a twinge in his elbow. Payback time for his body after all those active years, and cheating his age, assisted by the alien plant.

The heavy ludus gate creaked open. Raised voices echoed down the passage. Charlie moved gingerly to the cell door and looked through its small barred window out into the sunlit courtyard. Aimee and an armed, helmetless croatoan dressed in blue cotton trousers and shirt stood in the center, facing one of Augustus’ guards.

She prodded her finger into the guard’s chest. “You will take me to them, immediately. I give the orders in Unity.”

“But Augustus said I wasn’t to let—”

Aimee gestured to her croatoan sidekick. It raised its rifle. The guard fumbled on his belt and produced a ring of keys. He turned toward Charlie’s cell.

Charlie dove down and rubbed his hand across the dirt surface, erasing markings that he and Baliska had been using as a way of communication. He glanced at the large alien, who turned away. Both prisoners had come to a basic understanding. They shared a common enemy for now: Augustus.

A key clattered in the lock and the cell door swung open. Aimee stood in the gap, peering down with a neutral expression. Her green dress looked faded and tatty on closer inspection. A rifle pointed over her shoulder in the direction of Charlie’s face.

“Augustus told me that you two have previously met. I’m surprised you haven’t torn each other apart,” she said.

“What would be the point of that?” Charlie said. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend. I don’t suppose that job offer’s still open?”

Charlie didn’t expect any favors from Aimee after killing her champion, but she was clearly here for something. He’d grasp any opportunity that meant getting out of Augustus’ clutches and escaping this damned prison.

“You’re a dangerous man, Charlie Jackson. Augustus was right to call you a doom bringer.”

Aimee glanced around the quiet courtyard and stepped inside the cell—close enough for Charlie to attack. The croatoan guard remained out of striking distance, its weapon trained.

“I’m surprised Augustus allows visitors,” Charlie said.

The two aliens started to have a ticking conversation. Aimee knelt opposite him. “Augustus doesn’t know I’m here. He’s been summoned to chamber and will be tied up all morning. Unity holds its weekly committee meetings today. It’s his first one since he decided to live here permanently.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because of you, the wheels have been set in motion to destroy our planet. Did you think about the consequences when you brought down those ships?”

“Earth was being destroyed. We would have all died in the terraforming, if the croatoans didn’t kill us first. I’d say my group saved it.”

Aimee bitterly laughed. “You’re so naïve. Do you think the Croatoan Empire consisted of those two ships and the farms? They won’t let anyone get away with bringing down a colony and a terraform ship.”

He’d considered the scale of consequences, but speculation took second priority. Focus had been channeled into stamping out the immediate danger of the localized aliens and terraforming process.

“How do you know what they’ll do about it? If they destroy the planet, they’ll be destroying thousands of aliens who are still here,” Charlie said.

“We recovered Hagellan from the first escape pod. He’s just told me what to expect after recovering his galactic tracker.”

Charlie shrugged. “Hagellan? Who the fuck is that, and why should I care?”

“Hagellan ran the Earth program—he was the head of the croatoan council for this planet. There’s a precedent for when things like this happen. All croatoans involved in the operation are seen as guilty as the planet’s inhabitants. The Grand Council does not tolerate failure. They will send a planet destroyer to obliterate Earth. We’re not the first species that they’ve done this to.”

Her nonchalant delivery of the news confused Charlie. Aimee didn’t betray a flicker of emotion and waited for him to respond. “Are you serious?”

“They will smash us into a billion pieces.”

“Why are you telling me? Even if this is real—how the hell do I know you’re telling the truth? It’s not like you’ve done much to earn my trust since you took me from the escape pod. If it’s such a big deal, why can’t Hagellan do anything about it? He’s the head alien, ain’t he?”

“It is real, whether you want to believe or not. But are you willing to take the risk that I’m lying? Hagellan knows a way to stop it. Croatoan ships get to Earth by using a transport gate on a colonized planet in a neighboring galaxy. It’s not croatoan technology. If we destroy the gate, their ships won’t have the range to reach us. We need your help—and expertise.”

“What the hell do you expect me to do about it?”

“We require another bomb like the one you used to destroy the gate,” Aimee said. She leaned closer and touched Charlie’s shoulder. “We can do this, together. But I must warn you. This is a one-way mission. Once the gate is destroyed, there is no way to come back.”

“You want me to take a bomb? How do you propose getting to the gate? We don’t have the means to fly, never mind reach another galaxy.”

“Hagellan has a team of engineers working on an old grounded invasion craft. Their plan is to salvage parts from other downed ships. He thinks some of the internal infrastructure might still be intact. Once they have it working, the craft will fly to the transport area and signal the gate, ready to jump across space.”

“Why can’t one of them take a bomb if I decide to help?”

“This is your payment. The price of freedom. The planet has a similar atmosphere, and you can live out your life in peace.”

Charlie frowned. “You said the croatoans colonized it. What’s to stop them destroying that planet?”

“I don’t know those details. Only that we will be safe. You can discuss it with Hagellan when you meet him.”

“Why can’t his engineers make a bomb?”

Aimee sighed. “You smashed their local capability. Hagellan doesn’t think they can reproduce the kind of power you created. He only has vehicle engineers and those that stayed back in Unity—they just don’t have the expertise. Those that did were killed during the crash of the two ships.”

The irony of the situation dawned on Charlie. The very people who organized the killing of his family, friends and millions of others around the planet were now asking for his assistance. Wanting him to sacrifice himself for their freedom. He felt a sudden surge of anger. “Do you really expect me to help after what they did?” Charlie pointed at the two aliens. “They can die along with us. At least I’ll die having the comfort of knowing the creatures who terrorized Earth will be roasted.”

Aimee stood and took a step back. She glared at Charlie with her piercing blue eyes. “If you refuse to help, you will die in the arena. Augustus may kill you first. He’s already told me that he plans to have your head on a spike displayed outside the tavern.”

By helping the local croatoans—assuming all this wasn’t bullshit—he would at least ensure Denver and the others’ survival. But the thought of working with Hagellan sickened him. Mike would have to be part of the proposed plan. Charlie knew he’d been working on a spare bomb in case the first one malfunctioned. Charlie didn’t want to risk exposing his old friend to the danger of being around aliens or Augustus, but he couldn’t let everyone die. He needed time to think things over. The revelations were too big to come up with a snap decision.

“Will you accept the mission, or do you want to be hacked to death by him?” Aimee said, pointing at Baliska.

“I’ve beaten it once already, so that doesn’t scare me. I need some time. How long have I got?”

“I’ll be back in two hours. If you decide to help, you’ll leave this place with me. If you don’t, well…”

Charlie stood and brushed himself down. “Where does Augustus fit into all of this?”

Aimee rolled her eyes. The mention of Augustus seemed to irritate her. “He doesn’t know about the planet destroyer or that Hagellan survived. Augustus is a schemer and is more trouble than he’s worth. But he kept quiet about this place. Hagellan is furious that Augustus never informed him about Unity. We can’t trust him to be a part of our plan.”

“Why don’t you just kill him?”

“Augustus has his uses. He knows about administration and is gaining popularity because of his ludus. We need to be inclusive here, which means putting up with him—for now. If I went around killing everyone I didn’t like, our society would quickly fall apart.”

“If I agree, and I haven’t decided yet, I assume you wouldn’t let me out of your sight. What’s to stop him sending a couple of goons after me?”

Aimee swished her hand as if brushing away a fly. “I run this town. If I say you’re not to be touched, you won’t be.”

She walked out of the cell.

“Wait,” Charlie said. “Can you bring me some root?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said over her shoulder.

The door slammed shut. Charlie crouched and scraped two circles in the dirt, denoting two planets. He moved his finger from one to the other and drew a cross through the second. Baliska seemed to understand. It reached over and scraped a cross through the first.

He sat back against the wall with his head in his hands. It didn’t matter which way Charlie looked at Aimee’s suggestion. If he refused her offer, anyone left alive who he loved or cared for would end up being destroyed.

Chapter 11

DENVER SIPPED the hot tea from a metal cup. The campfire crackled, sending glowing sparks spiraling up through the cool morning air. His backside and legs were getting cold from sitting on a fallen tree, its log still damp from the morning dew.

The alien hunter tied to the tree stared on silently, blinking its large black eyes. Like Venrick, this one wore the adapted breathing system with the portable tanks of root-air on its back.

“Good job, Khan,” Denver said after he swallowed the bitter but flavorsome tea. “You’ll have to teach me the recipe. Where did you learn it?”

Khan smiled at the compliment and looked away awkwardly. He was still getting used to being in constant company, having been out here on his own for years.

“I just picked it up, trying out different leaves and combinations until something didn’t taste like dirt,” Khan said, shrugging away his skills.

“Who taught you how to do all this?” Denver said, indicating the fire and general camp setup.

“I found a few books with some pages intact in a burned-out library. That and plenty of experimentation. I had a lot of time on my hands.”

Although they had only stopped for a short while, Khan had created a number of cooking utensils carved from branches, created an efficient fire, and set up a lightweight shelter that protected them from rain and, most importantly, being spotted from above if a croatoan were to fly over.

Layla and Maria were preparing four rabbits Khan had caught at the far end of the camp, using a large flat boulder to prep them for cooking.

Although they brought ration packs and water, it made sense to make use of what was around in the woods while they rested up for a moment.

After Denver had shot the alien, he lashed its hands and legs together and, using a branch system, dragged his quarry back to camp for interrogation.

Throughout the two hours of questioning, it had remained quiet, just clicking softly in response.

Layla had dressed its leg wound, hoping that it would realize it wasn’t in any direct danger and would open up, but after endless attempts at connecting with it, it remained obstinately quiet.

It didn’t even have any means of communications to its tribe or whatever group it was from. From its adapted army fatigues, it was clear to Denver and the others that at some point in its time it had mixed with humans.

“Croatoan hunters, soldiers, or engineers have shown no ability to craft clothes or adapt human materials,” Layla had said when Denver first brought it back.

Finishing his tea, Denver patted Khan on the shoulder. “Thanks for the brew. That hit the spot.”

Khan winked at him. The kid had a very small stash of wild root that he had kept for emergencies and put a little into Denver’s tea after seeing how tired he was after dragging the alien a few K’s back to camp.

“I’m just going to the ladies’ restroom,” Layla said to Denver as he approached. “Could you finish up for me?” She pointed to an unskinned rabbit on the boulder.

“Sure.”

Layla lingered her gaze on him for a moment, words forming on her lips but then melting into a quick smile as she left the camp and headed into the trees.

Denver watched her go, wondering what was on her mind.

Probably concerned about Gregor and Venrick.

They hadn’t been in touch via the comms and still hadn’t returned. Denver hoped they had killed each other.

They didn’t need Venrick to know there was a settlement up ahead, and it was likely that’s where Charlie was.

All this waiting around made him anxious to get on, but with catching the hunter, it made Denver cautious. He wanted some intel first. If he was to save his dad, he needed to know what he was up against.

It stood nearly a foot taller than Denver, but wasn’t as imposing as the one he fought in Manhattan.

This one didn’t have the same kind of musculature. Considering how easy it was for Denver to take down, he knew it wasn’t as well trained either.

“You’re no hunter, are you? I saw your kind on a video, fighting with humans. I know you understand what I’m saying. I see the recognition in your eyes. Your body language gives you away. You think we’ll just let you go? I know you know where those pods are and where the person in the pod went.”

The hunter clicked in response and did that thing with its eyes that Denver recognized from Venrick. The damn thing was amused. Cocky. Arrogant. All very human of it, Denver thought.

“Is he still alive? The one that escaped from the pod?”

No response. Not even a click.

That at least told Denver something: that the thing was withholding.

“I know he is. I saw the smoke in the sky. You’ve got a settlement a few kilometers north of here, haven’t you?”

No response.

“You have others like you waiting for you to return, don’t you? What will they do when they find you dead, eh? Will they care? We’re going regardless of what you tell us, and when I find your family, I won’t spare them like I have with you.”

The creature’s eyes narrowed this time, and a deep rumbling click came from deep in its throat.

Denver smiled. “You understand that, at least. Tell me what I want to know. Tell me about the pod survivor and we’ll take you back home personally. Keep you safe. We can be reasonable about this.”

No response.

Denver thought about the blade on his belt. One cut of the air tubes would encourage the bastard, but Layla had pleaded with Denver not to do anything drastic, convinced that there could be another way to handle this.

Heeding her advice, Denver kept this questioning cat and mouse up for another ten minutes when he decided he had had enough and was going to go get Charlie regardless of what awaited him. That’s when he heard a commotion from the camp.

He dashed back to Khan, Maria and Layla.

They had already gathered behind the trunks, pistols and rifles at the ready. Denver pulled his rifle from behind his back and crouched down with the barrel pointed in the direction of the footsteps.

Through the trees he saw the silhouette of Gregor.

He placed his finger on the trigger, feeling the tension, wondering if he could justify his killing as a mistake.

Before he made up his mind, the crime lord burst through the trees, Venrick’s tanks in one hand, a smoking cigar made from leaves and root paste in the other.

His eyes were wide and dilated. A stupid grin stretched across his face. He threw the root tanks to the ground, knocking over a pot of boiling water.

“For God’s sake, Gregor, what the hell?” Layla said.

“You wanna shoot me, eh, kid?” Gregor said to Denver. “Go for it. You won’t hit me anyway. Go on, I fucking dare you. One shot free.”

Denver paused for a moment, bringing his finger back to the trigger, but Layla stepped in the way, causing him to raise the rifle clear and free. He stood up and joined the others.

“Where’s the alien?” Khan asked as he looked at the tanks. It was pretty damned obvious.

“Yes, Gregor, where is she?” Layla asked, getting close to him. “You killed her, didn’t you? You couldn’t keep your damned hands off her for one moment, could you! She was important to us, to finding Charlie.”

Sneering, Gregor looked past Layla at Denver. “I shouldn’t be the only one you’re pissed at. Little Den here ain’t so innocent. Isn’t that right, Jackson Jr?”

Layla turned to Denver. “What’s he talking about?”

“Nothing. Look at him, the fool’s off his face on root. We can’t trust a damned word he says.”

“Gregor!” Layla said. “Tell me what happened. What did you do to her?”

Turning on Layla, pointing the glowing end of his cigar toward her, he shouted back, “You want to preserve the fucking aliens again, eh? What side you on, Layla? One minute you’re helping the bastards farm humans, the next you’re rebelling against them, and now you’re back defending them. You should be siding with us, damnit.”

As he jabbed the cigar in her direction, the glowing tip struck her in the face, burning her just below her eye. She screamed and turned away, clutching the burn with her hands.

Denver exploded forward.

He dropped the rifle and pulled his right arm back, ready to deliver a right hook to Gregor’s face.

The older man, high on root, saw it coming, though, and managed to sidestep out of the way. He bundled Maria over as he dodged Denver’s attack. Khan reached out to help Maria out of the way as the two men tangled and wrestled to the ground.

Gregor managed to get the upper hand, driving Denver’s back onto the tanks. The impact winded the younger man as Gregor reached for his head and tried to push him into the fire.

The heat burned Denver’s face as he fought against Gregor’s root-enhanced strength. His eyes felt like they were melting in the heat. Gregor screamed with effort, but Denver wasn’t yet done.

Feeling stronger from drinking Khan’s tea, he managed to twist away, breaking the older man’s grip.

Denver slipped out from beneath, got to his feet, and lashed out a kick to the Armenian’s exposed ribs. Gregor curled into a ball with the impact but held onto Denver’s foot and twisted, trying to snap his ankle.

Grabbing his knife from his belt, Denver fell onto Gregor, bringing the point to his throat. But Khan had grabbed him by the shoulders as Layla and Maria tried to hold Gregor down.

“Stop it!” Layla screamed.

“What did you do with Venrick?” Khan asked.

“Venrick?” the alien said, finally speaking. The words stopped everyone as they all turned toward it.

Denver let Khan lift him off Gregor.

Stalking closer, Denver approached the alien. “You’ve got something to say now, eh?”

“Venrick… my… sister.”

Gregor grabbed the knife from Denver’s hand and brought it to the alien’s throat where the air tubes entered its system. “You better start speaking. Tell us everything you know unless you want to join your sister in whatever Godforsaken afterlife you scumbags believe in.”

Under Gregor’s continued threats, the alien told them everything they wanted.

After twenty minutes of questioning, Gregor turned to the others.

“That’s how you get information from these bastards. Pack up; we’ve got a house party to go to. Oh, and, Den, thanks for the blade. I think I’ll keep this for when we meet up with your old man.”

Khan and Layla grabbed him before he could react, but he just sneered at Gregor, satisfied to leave his comeuppance for another day.

At the very least, they knew Charlie was still alive and where the aliens kept him.

“I’ll enjoy ending your miserable life,” Denver said.

“Likewise, Junior.”

With that, Denver turned his back and prepared to leave.

He’d given everyone enough time to rest and do things their way. From this point on, it was his show regardless of who wanted to go with him.

Chapter 12

TWO HOURS PASSED. Charlie peered out of the cell, hoping Aimee would return. He decided to go with her and at least hear Hagellan out. Since she left, he couldn’t get the image of Earth exploding and shattering out of his head. The alternative appeared bleak, but Aimee probably knew it and guessed he’d figure it out too. Augustus would find out about her visit as soon as he got back from his meetings. Things might advance at a swift rate from there, and not in Charlie’s favor. He’d be dragged to the arena or murdered by Augustus’ cronies. If that happened, there would be no bomb, no second chance.

Somebody thumped the gate three times. A guard slid across a large iron bolt, pushed the gate ajar and looked through the gap. Aimee hustled past him, wearing a full-length, brown monk’s robe with a black woven rope belt secured around her waist. A croatoan followed her, rifle slung, carrying a bundle of brown clothing.

“Open the cell,” she said.

The guard rapidly nodded, jogged over and twisted a key in the lock. Charlie edged back as the guard shoved open the door.

Aimee stood at the entrance. “Have you made your decision?”

“I’ll speak to Hagellan. But I need some guarantees. My son and friends—”

“They are not in Unity; I can’t give you any guarantees on them. Use whatever resources you need. We’re all in the same fight.” She waved the guard forward. It dumped a robe and belt next to Charlie’s feet. “Put these on. Quickly.”

Charlie picked up the damp, heavy robe. “I thought you ran this town? Who or what are you hiding from?”

“It’s more for Hagellan’s protection. Some of the older croatoans are wary of any senior officer that comes to Unity. His integration will be gradual. There’s also Augustus. I need to explain to him that he’s slipped a place down in the pecking order. I suspect he won’t like it.”

“No shit. He only likes power and causing pain.”

He slipped the robe over his head. It had a musty smell that reminded him of time spent with Pippa. They had gone away for a weekend to evaluate a dig site in 2012. Charlie had left wet clothes in the washing machine to fester for three days. When they got back, the clothes smelled exactly the same as the robe he shuffled over his body. Pippa laughed and said it was his usual odor.

These small connections kept Charlie grounded, reinforcing exactly what he lost, thanks to the aliens and their charlatan human helpers.

“We need to go,” Aimee said. “When I return, I’m taking Baliska as my new champion. You can stay with Hagellan or return and fight him.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the converted barracks at the bottom of the invasion tunnel. There’s a croatoan temple. Most humans don’t go down there, and nearly all croatoans stopped worshipping a few years ago. It’s safe.”

Charlie pointed at Baliska. “You can bring him with us. Besides you, he’s the only other friend I’ve got around here.”

He hated himself for saying it, but after hours of drawing in the dirt, they’d struck an alliance. Baliska loudly clicked and held out a gloved hand when Charlie scrawled a man in a mask and punched it with his fist.

Aimee eyed both of them with a look of suspicion. She briefly left the cell and spoke with the croatoan outside before calling to the guard, “Release the prisoners into my custody.”

Charlie walked out of the cell into the morning sunshine bathing the courtyard. He wondered if Augustus left him out of manacles because he wanted Charlie to fight, taunt or kill Baliska. Whatever the reason, the crazy old fucker wouldn’t be deciding his fate for the moment.

A guard scuttled into the cell, and Charlie heard the clanking of chains. Shortly after, Baliska’s helmet scraped on the underside of the door as it stooped outside in its dusty graphite uniform. The giant croatoan stood in front of Aimee, gently ticking. It flexed its arms and turned to the other alien who accompanied her to the ludus.

After a brief conversation in their mother tongue, the smaller alien pulled out its thigh sword and handed it to Baliska. It swished the blade through the air, practicing two swings before turning to face Charlie and Aimee.

Charlie tensed. A moment of truth arrived for their flimsy pact.

Baliska stood for a couple of seconds, towering over them, and then slid the sword into the scabbard attached to its thigh.

It took a brown robe from the other croatoan and held it up. The thing would never fit. Baliska tore it down one side, as easy as if it were made out of paper, and then extravagantly wafted the robe around its wide shoulders before placing the hood over its helmet.

Aimee raised her hood over the top of her head. “It will do for now.” She turned to the red-faced guard. “You can tell Augustus that Charlie Jackson is under my control.”

He pulled the gate open. “Don’t expect him to be happy about this.”

Aimee ignored him and headed toward the cramped streets of Unity.

“You seem to trust the aliens,” Charlie said, moving alongside her.

“Most of them are sons and daughters of the conscripts sent to far-flung planets to carry out a dirty job. Unity is their home. They have no loyalty to their supposed empire.”

“Jesus, I didn’t know they’d been breeding here. What about Baliska? It’s no stranded son or daughter.”

“He, Jackson, is pure croatoan blood, but has a relative here.” She smiled at Charlie. “I’m taking you to meet him.”

“Hallagen? I take it Augustus doesn’t know?”

“Augustus probably doesn’t care. He thinks Hallagen’s dead. When you and I chatted earlier today, Baliska told my temporary protection that he respects you as a human warrior. He asked to be freed to help in any way he can. Baliska knows what the Grand Council will be planning—he’s seen it all before.”

They continued along a side street leading around the edge of town. To their left was a long row of smartly constructed pens filled with sheep, pigs and cows looking healthier than Charlie had seen in the last twenty years. Beyond the animals, crops wavered on the distant steps cut into the basin’s side. Small rickety wooden houses, glorified sheds with washed clothing hanging off the frames, lined the right side. The place stank of shit.

“Did you get me some root?” Charlie said.

She produced a fresh orange piece from underneath her robe. “Take this. There’s plenty more where that came from—if you continue to cooperate.”

Charlie didn’t hesitate. He crammed it into his mouth and chewed hard in order to get the juices flowing down his throat, injecting life into his tired limbs. He’d dismissed escaping after thinking of the planet destroyer heading toward Earth, but he still didn’t trust any of these people or aliens.

The minute he sniffed bullshit or the plan looked like failing, he’d run, get away, and spend his final time on Earth under his terms.

Aimee gestured to her left, and they approached the sinkhole, or attack tunnel as she called it. The dull silver nose cone of a croatoan attack vessel rose from the chasm, slumped to one side, covered in a thin layer of dirt. A gap the size of a door had been cut into the bottom of the giant cone at ground level.

Charlie thought back to when he saw his first one, when he dangled at the bottom of a rope in a sinkhole near Roanoke Sound. It came from directly below him, smoothly rising out of a cloud of electricity-filled smoke. He managed to scramble up the rope and run, along with the rest of the people, before it sent out a pulse jarring through his body and killing anything electronic in the area as the croatoan soldiers spilled out to take control. Shock and awe. Nobody was prepared.

“Don’t be frightened. They mean you no harm,” Aimee said.

She entered the vessel and disappeared to the left. Charlie took a deep breath and followed. Inside, he immediately looked down. In the center, a hundred-meter drop to the bottom of the structure. Several torches were burning at the bottom, providing dull lighting for the off-white interior. A two-meter-wide shallow spiraled platform curled around the edge all the way down.

Aimee didn’t wait and started her descent. The platform’s coarse surface scraped against Charlie’s boots, providing decent grip. As he made his way down, his eyes became used to the light.

Seats ran around the wall, hundreds if not thousands of them, with a raised bar above each, probably used for securing croatoan soldiers as they rose to the surface, like they were on a theme park ride. Below one of the seats, a rusting alien rifle and dusty helmet were secured to the floor with a black plastic strap.

Charlie imagined what it was like thirty years ago. Rumbling upwards, crammed with armed aliens, ready to attack. It sent a chill down his spine.

Only Baliska followed and passed Charlie halfway down. It ran a gloved hand along the wall, touching and feeling various devices, seats and bars. Its clicks increasingly echoed through the vessel as they went deeper.

Near the bottom, two people in brown robes were waiting by the torches. Aimee hurried round the last two circuits of the ship, jumped from the platform, and approached them.

Charlie reached the lower end of the vessel and noticed a jagged edge where the bottom had been cut away. He leapt down the remaining meter drop and landed in a crouching position. Peering around the side of the hulk, he noticed the lower ends of the platform extended out until it disappeared into the Earth. It must have risen like a corkscrew.

“They’re expecting us. Come this way,” Aimee said.

Baliska walked with her through a torchlit cave. Charlie glanced at the two humans Aimee had been talking to and froze.

He instantly recognized one of them. Ben. He grabbed him by the shoulder. “Ben? I thought you were dead. What are you doing here? Where are the others?”

Ben wrestled with Charlie’s arm. “I don’t know who you are. Get the hell off me.”

Aimee turned and strode back. “What are you doing? This is no time to start a fight. Let go of him.”

Charlie kept a tight grip on Ben’s robe and pulled him close. “I’m not letting him go until he tells me what happened to my son and friends.”

“He’s not the Ben you know. This one’s been with us for twenty years,” Aimee said.

“This one? Bullshit. He was with us a month ago. I never forget a face.” Charlie raised his fist. “Tell me now or I’ll beat the living crap out of you.”

Ben leaned away and raised a hand over his face. He shook as he cowered.

“Who is this guy? Aimee, please,” Ben said.

Aimee pulled Charlie’s arm away. “He’s a harvester clone. This is not the Ben you know. There’s hundreds of his type on Earth.”

Charlie didn’t want to believe it. It ripped away the glimmering hope of finding out what happened at the farm after he left in the shuttle. If Denver survived.

Charlie looked for recognition in this Ben’s eyes, but found none.

“It’s the truth,” Aimee said. “I swear on my own life. Let me explain once we’ve met Hagellan. We don’t have time for this.”

Charlie shoved Ben away, and he scuttled into a dark corner.

“Let me see the other one,” Charlie said, pointing at the other person in a robe who had retreated behind the torches.

“Take off your hood,” Aimee said.

The man slowly peeled it back around his shoulders. Charlie squinted through the flames. Ethan. The young man he’d seen getting his head blown off in Manhattan by Baliska.

“I don’t understand. I’ve seen other crews. They’re not all the same,” Charlie said.

“I’ve been told there’s five different versions of a crew. All replicated and deployed to each farm so no harvesters working an area will have duplicated personnel onboard, in case they meet each other or need to transfer a crew member.”

Charlie bit his lip and shook his head. By seeing the vessel and clones, he had found out more in the last five minutes than the last five years. It made him hate the croatoans even more.

“Come now. We need to get back to Unity before midday,” Aimee said.

She continued through the torchlit cave toward a bright opening. Strange carvings spread around the cave’s wall. Images of croatoans, symbols, one of a ship over Earth and an alien helmet with stars around it.

Aimee led Baliska and Charlie into a tall cavernous area. It wasn’t naturally created; large horizontal scrapes lined the ceiling and walls. A blue carpet led along the center of the smooth rock floor to three chairs at the end. The middle of which looked like a throne. Croatoan containers stacked around the side of the room in neat piles of three. Like the ones Charlie had seen shuttles bring down to a farm when observing through trees. He slowly gazed around the room, open-mouthed. All of this going on underneath the world’s feet while people worried about paying bills…

“This place used to be one of their barracks. There’s a whole cave system down here, with supplies that would last you hundreds of lifetimes,” Aimee said.

Clicks echoed at the end of the room. Baliska walked away and met another large croatoan by the throne, this one wearing tubes up its nostrils, revealing its ugly reptilian face. They held their hands toward each other and touched.

“Is that Hagellan?” Charlie said.

“Yes. He has hundreds of sons. Baliska is one of them.”

Charlie watched as both continued to press their hands against each other while engaging in staccato conversation. Eventually Hagellan sat on the throne and his son perched by his side on a smaller chair.

“Come forward,” Baliska croaked in a rough voice.

“It speaks English?” Charlie whispered.

“He speaks English. It’s not unusual. He’s been around this planet centuries longer than you,” Aimee said.

She hurried along the blue carpet and stopped five yards short of the throne. Charlie stopped a couple of yards behind. He wanted to at least give himself a chance of escape, to run if things turned nasty. Not that he expected to get away.

“You are the human that brought down my ship,” Hagellan said. “You also nearly killed my son.”

“What would you do in my shoes? You can’t expect to invade a place and not come across resistance.”

Hagellan laughed. “You are right, Aimee. He is naïve.”

“Can we discuss the plan?” Aimee said. “We don’t have much time.”

“No. Wait a damned minute,” Charlie said. “We aren’t the ones trying to take out a civilization. What’s so naïve about fighting back? I bet you weren’t laughing when your ship plunged to Earth.”

Hagellan leaned forward, his leather-like blue uniform creaking around his body. “I’ve watched your planet for many centuries. You’re no different to the rest of the galaxy.”

“You’ll have to explain that one to me,” Charlie said.

Aimee turned and glared at him. “We have not come here for history lessons—”

“Let me explain to Charlie Jackson. It might shake him out of his provincial beliefs. Your planet is but a smaller version of what’s happening in the wider universe. On Earth, throughout the centuries, rival factions have fought for territory and resources. Stamping over each other to gain power and possessions. Warfare drives technology, but you are not at the level of advancement where you can take the fight into deep space.”

“You’re using wars on Earth to justify your invasion? Where are all the other aliens if what you say is true?” Charlie said.

Hagellan scratched his head and grunted. “In universal terms, Earth is a backwater, a tiny irrelevant speck in a faraway galaxy. More powerful forces constantly battle for superiority. Earth has so far gone unscathed because of its remote location. Until we captured the transport gate, it wasn’t worth bothering with; you were not a threat but have rich land for farming.”

Charlie scoffed. “Rich land for farming? Is that the real reason you came here?”

“I don’t mean to patronize you, Jackson, but you need to understand the scale and power that you’re facing. Twenty other planets have resisted and managed to bring down a croatoan ship. All twenty were destroyed within two of your months. The empire’s network spans three hundred planets. They don’t have the patience to give second chances. You know about our race now; they won’t leave you to plan revenge.”

“Now you want me to save your ass because you screwed up,” Charlie said. Rage bubbled up inside him. Despite the threat, the ugly bastard in front of him was the alien who commanded the attack. He gave the orders that led to the death of so many people close to Charlie—and of the wider world.

“I can understand your anger,” Hagellan said. “But it’s not just me you will be saving. Millions of humans still roam the planet. I can get a craft working with my team. We need your team to build a bomb and help deploy it.”

Charlie couldn’t hold the thin veneer of civility any longer. “And all of you alien scumbags live happily ever after on Earth while I suffer a lonely death on a faraway planet. You can have my answer now. Fu—”

Aimee cut in. “Don’t do this, Charlie. It’s the only way out for all of us.”

“We need coordination to save our planet. Please, stop and think before opening your mouth again,” Hagellan said. “Let me show you something.”

It grabbed a black tablet from behind the throne, flicked up a chunky antenna on the side of it, and motioned to the screen. A green hologram rose from the tablet, showing a map of planets and stars. Tiny red spheres spread around them, with a code below each.

“What the hell is that?” Charlie said.

“A croatoan galactic tracker.” It pointed to the left edge. “This is the destroyer’s last reported decision. It will reach Tredeya in five days.”

Charlie shrugged. “Could be bullshit.”

“You stupid human.”

Charlie took a couple of paces forward. Baliska rose from its chair in response. Aimee quickly moved between them. “Baliska, accompany Charlie back to the cells inside my residence. We need to give him more time to think—away from Augustus.”

Hagellan stood. “Don’t make a mistake that you’ll regret for the rest of your short life.” He turned to Aimee. “I want his answer by nightfall.”

Chapter 13

AUGUSTUS PUSHED a sliver of ham through the hole in his mask—anything to take his mind off the inane drivel of the committee meeting. All morning he’d sat around a table in Aimee’s main chamber, listening to cretins discussing trivialities. He glanced back at his Doctore lurking by the entrance. He acknowledged Augustus with a slow blink.

One of the council members, Paul, who wouldn’t shut up, passed yet another piece of paper around the room, plastered in his scruffy handwriting. “Next item on the agenda is rebalancing trade due to recent increases and shortages of items.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Augustus stood up. “Just send me the meeting minutes. I haven’t got time to sit around discussing the value of milk.”

“This is your first meeting,” Paul said, leaning back in his chair. He looked over his half-eye spectacles. The four others nodded their approval. “You need to be aware of all issues that impact on Unity. Aimee instructed me that you were to stay for the duration.”

Augustus flopped back down and groaned. “Carry on. But make it snappy. We really should have junior members to decide on such pointless matters.”

Paul cleared his throat in an obnoxious way, as if demanding silence, although others could hardly get a word in. “Our harvest is becoming more successful. Stores are full of root, wheat, and barley. Livestock remains steady, although we’re not getting a sufficient yield from the breeding program. My first proposal is doubling the amount of crop required in exchange—”

Augustus blocked out Paul’s voice and swirled his wine. He could only concentrate on events happening outside the meeting. Aimee might already be dead. As soon as word filtered through, he could end the pointless debate and take control of the town.

“Augustus, do you agree?” Paul said.

“Agree with what?”

The officious fool ruffled his paper and frowned. “My proposal about balancing the cost of food.” Paul had a huge dose of self-importance. A strange thing to see from a greasy-haired cretin dressed in a filthy old shirt. To be an effective leader, you had to at least look the part. “Yes, whatever. Next.”

“You could at least pretend you want to be here,” the woman next to Paul said. Augustus had already forgotten her name, but it didn’t matter.

“We still haven’t assessed the impact of clothing and tools compared to crops and meat,” Paul said. “It’s crucial that we keep a balanced economy.”

Augustus sat up in his chair and straightened his mask. “Please, continue with this important work. I’m all ears.”

“Maybe we could move on to the next item on the agenda,” Paul said. “We would appreciate your input into the discussion. The local militia suffered losses while recovering the pods from the croatoan ship. Your pod included.”

“I’ve already thanked Aimee for that. She gave the order, not you.”

An awkward silence followed his response. The committee members leered at him and scribbled notes.

“We’re thinking of expanding our recruitment area to beef up numbers. In the last years, we only searched in surrounding areas, careful not to encroach on colonized land.”

Augustus cackled. “Colonized land? What do you think this is? There’s going to be plenty of humans and croatoans without homes after Jackson pulled his little stunt. We’ll be able to press-gang hundreds if we want.”

“The idea isn’t to press-gang,” the woman said. “We will offer them a place to live, work, and provide food, safety and a community.”

Augustus leaned forward. He could swallow playing the game with these people up to a point while he waited, but they were starting to cross the line in terms of respect. He refused to let pious peasants run rings around him. “What do you know about organizing an army? Do you have any idea of what is currently available in terms of resources? What’s your military background?”

Paul opened his mouth to speak, but Augustus raised his finger toward him. “Two thousand farms exist worldwide. Seventy thousand croatoans on the ground, ten thousand harvesters with over fifty thousand crew. This is the resource we need to tap as a first priority.”

“We can’t travel worldwide,” Paul said. “Why are they the best option?”

Augustus rolled his eyes. Trying to discuss matters with people who clearly operated on a lower level was as painful as pulling his own teeth out. “The croatoans have nothing. No ship, no shuttle runs, no guidance from me. We give them direction. The same goes for the brainwashed harvester crews. The livestock are thick as pig shit, but we can train them, give them easy jobs. I can tell none of you have run as much as a damned whorehouse before.”

“None of us have lost one either,” the woman said.

A couple of the committee stifled chuckles. Little did they realize that little insolent comment followed by their reaction had just guaranteed their public executions. The woman would look good on a crucifix in front of the ludus. Paul deserved to be stoned to death in the arena, tied to a pole facing Augustus’ chair. The rest would be hung on the edge of town. Their bodies left to rot, serving as a warning for what happens to insubordinate citizens. It worked before; Augustus would make it work again.

“There are still millions of humans alive, whether that’s as former livestock or survivors in the forests and broken cities,” Augustus said. “These people have no appetite to mix with croatoans. It’ll be a harder sell to convince them.”

Paul pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and scribbled some notes. “I’ll speak to Aimee about your suggestions. We’ll move on to discussing the cult.”

“You mean the people who live down the hole?” Augustus said. “Now, this is something I’m interested in. What’s your proposal?”

A thin, balding man at the end of the table, who had so far barely spoken, interjected. “They requested more fresh supplies last week. With our improved productivity, I forward a motion that we give them what they want.”

“Do we have any objections to the motion?” Paul said.

Augustus thumped his fist on the table. “Yes. I have a fucking objection. What do they give to Unity? Do you even know what they’re doing down there? I certainly don’t. They could be planning an attack. I say we take action.”

Paul smiled in a patronizing way. Augustus clenched his dagger under the table. “They’ve been here for years and caused no problems. We happily coexist. That’s what Unity is all about.”

“The croatoans lived under ground for thousands of years, but that didn’t stop them from rising and ruining this planet,” Augustus said. “We need to snuff this cult out before they start gaining influence in the town. Send down the militia. It’s the only solution.”

Augustus had passed them off as crackpots and losers until he found out about Aimee’s clandestine visits. One of his spies would investigate tonight and find out the details of the grubby little underground secret. They’d be dealt with once he successfully imposed martial law in Unity.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about how Unity operates,” the woman said. “Perhaps we can take a break from town affairs and spend a few minutes to go through our ethos?”

“I’ve been visiting here for years,” Augustus said as he stood and walked to the entrance. “I know what this place is all about. And don’t forget, its very survival is down to me, and me alone. Talk all you want, I’m done here.” He turned to leave. Two croatoans stood outside, blocking his path. “Get out of my way.”

“They won’t let us go until we finish town business,” Paul said. “Come back and sit down. The faster we get through this, the quicker we can all leave.”

Augustus gritted his teeth. They were keeping him like a prisoner to go through a list of pointless tripe. He resisted the temptation to order his Doctore to attack. Things could get messy with aliens outside. He reluctantly sat down with a sigh.

“Next on the agenda is sanitation,” Paul said. “We currently have no planned systems in place, and if we’re to improve hygiene standards in Unity, we need to start thinking longer term about the infrastructure.”

Augustus drank from his goblet and sat back. He decided to keep his mouth closed and wait it out. Besides, Aimee would be dead soon. Quickly followed by these pathetic amateur politicians and, of course, Charlie Jackson.

Chapter 14

HAVING LEFT Khan back with Maria and Layla, Gregor and Denver took the shackled alien on a walk through the woods until they approached the edge of the tree line, after following the croatoan’s hand signals for directions.

They moved with slow and deliberate footsteps so as not to snap a twig or get caught in a trap.

The alien had guided them through the woods for over an hour; all the while Gregor had to remain in control of his desire to send it to whatever afterlife it believed in.

But of course, the group wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, all because they wanted to find Charlie.

For Gregor, though, he couldn’t care less; he was just interested in finding the aliens’ settlement so he could arrange for its eradication.

The others might want to take their time, build things up, but if there was one thing he had learned from the alien’s first uprising, it was that they weren’t to be underestimated, and if there was an opportunity to get rid of them, it had to be taken right there and then at any cost.

Delaying things would only give them time, and time was their greatest weapon, having lain in wait for thousands of years in their pods and war machines.

Gregor wouldn’t let that happen if he could help it.

He’d been in plenty of turf wars over the years to know you don’t give your enemy a moment’s rest or a chance to recover.

You drive them out, killing as many as possible.

A dead enemy is your friend.

With the effects of the root still fresh in his blood, Gregor stepped beyond Denver and pushed his way through the tightly packed pines, using his croatoan rifle to ease the branches away and clear his view.

Under the midday sun, he saw a huge field of fresh root. Like an orange blanket, it stretched for at least a kilometer in every direction.

The sun dazzled him initially, but as his eyes adapted to the sudden brightness, he saw beyond the crop a number of ramshackle, wooden towers. At least three on this side. The hazy sky obscured what might be beyond the rising land in front of him.

Must be sentry towers, he thought.

Through the scope on his rifle, he noted they were constructed with repurposed pallets, old sheets of plywood, and what looked like corrugated metal roofing material.

Interestingly, though, the bottoms of the towers extended below ground level, indicating that there would likely be more buildings there out of sight.

He turned back into the trees. “Feels like a trap to me. If we go on foot, we’ll be seen long before we get there. I told you we should have taken the bikes.”

Denver brushed past him to look for himself while the alien stared on, blinking its stupid dumb eyes.

“You think we’re going to walk straight into your little settlement without some security?” Gregor said to it, not expecting a response.

Denver stepped back into the woods. “I’m going in. You can stay behind if you want, but I’m not waiting any longer.”

“Fine, kid, do whatever you want. Don’t expect me to come save your sorry ass. But perhaps it’s worth us coming up with at least some kind of strategy. We have collateral to use,” he said, nodding toward the alien.

“Kill it, I don’t care,” Denver said. “Tell the others I’ll be back before it’s dark.”

With that, Denver spun on his heel and left the security of the woods.

Gregor picked up the rope, untied it from the tree, and dragged the alien back to the others.

He decided they could babysit while Gregor planned his assault on the settlement.

On the way back, the alien spoke, stopping Gregor in his tracks, making him spin round. “What did you say?”

“You… kill Venrick.”

Gregor sighed. “What of it?”

“Sister.”

“Yeah? Good. I hope it hurts. Do you know how many of my friends and family died because of you bastards? Hundreds of them. Even my wife. You think I give a rat’s ass about you and your sister? I won’t be happy until every last one of you is rotting in the ground.”

“No,” the alien said, narrowing its eyes as it struggled to manipulate its mouth to orate English words.

Gregor got a hint of frustration from it as though it couldn’t communicate its thoughts properly. He was about to turn away and continue his trek when it finally found the words.

“Sister, me. Different. I kill no humans. Lost… commu… communi…”

“Community?” Gregor added. The alien nodded. “You’re from a lost community, is that what you’re saying? And your sister wasn’t?”

The creature bobbed its head and flickered its eyelids, indicating he had it right.

“So? I still don’t see how I should care.”

“No kill human. Live with human.”

It raised its restrained arms, the ropes tied tightly around its wrists, and gestured to itself and then, looking back to Denver’s location, said, “Human and… us. Community.” It whistle-clicked the last syllable, unable to accurately reproduce the sound, but it was clear to Gregor what it was saying: humans and croatoans living together in a lost community.

Given that Venrick was part of the invading force and a farm worker, it seemed that there were two distinct groups of aliens.

Which explained the battle, but it still didn’t explain why or how they were now living with humans or how they split off from the core group.

“How were you lost?” Gregor asked, trying to illustrate the groups splitting by placing his hands together, then pulling them apart and indicating one to the alien.

“Meglain,” it said, pointing to itself. “I, Meglain.”

“Good for you, Meglain. So, what happened? How did you become separate from the main group?”

Meglain took a moment to digest and think about the question.

Although he wasn’t exactly fluent, he did seem to have a higher than average level of understanding and intelligence compared to the other aliens that Gregor had worked with.

Most of the time, they rarely did anything to learn or expand their knowledge. They just carried out whatever task had been assigned to them. This one, and presumably the rest of its community, was independent.

“I sit?” Meglain asked, pointing to a tree stump.

“Sure.” Gregor gave him some slack so that he could sit down.

The alien folded his backward knees as he sank to the tree trunk.

Keeping his rifle trained on Meglain, Gregor used his free hand to wrap the rope around the alien twice before tying it off around a nearby pine tree.

Checking the knot was sturdy, Gregor walked back to stand opposite. He leaned against a tree and kept his gun aimed. Though the damned thing was talking now, a little extra persuasion wouldn’t hurt.

“You’re sitting, now start talking.”

Looking out toward the tree line, Meglain’s gaze focused on something far away as he started talking in his strange staccato voice. “Early days,” it began, always searching for the right translation, “we came up with others. We fought and… split from group. Human army drove us there.”

He extended a gnarled finger to the settlement.

Gregor thought back to his maps of the farms.

His territory was on a latitude that cut east-west through New York at its northernmost edge. Other than Freetown, further north into Canada—and that wasn’t activated—he knew of no farm facilities this far north.

They had already passed Toronto and Newmarket. Canada and the northern latitudes of the globe weren’t on the radar for cultivation for at least another fifteen years, the ground not yet ripe enough for large-scale root farming.

Although it seemed from that field beyond that they had done a decent job by hand to get things growing.

“How long have you been split?” Gregor asked.

Meglain did something so human it caught Gregor off guard. The thing shrugged with a very clear ‘I don’t know’ expression. It made him wonder if what he was saying was true after all.

Even though he was no anthropologist, Gregor could tell the difference between Meglain and Venrick—the latter hadn’t shown any such human-like traits as her brother.

“Before Ice?” Gregor asked.

It nodded, half-closing its lids.

Gregor felt like he was playing a child’s guessing game.

“During Ice?”

“Yes. All time,” Meglain responded. “Human and us. Together.”

“As a community,” Gregor filled in. “I get it. How many?”

The shrug. It was apparent the alien hadn’t quite mastered the concept of communicating numbers, but that was okay. With Denver being foolhardy, they’d likely soon find out.

Watching Meglain closely, Gregor got one of Mike’s communicators out of his jacket pocket and requested an update from Denver.

No response.

“Denver, come in. It’s Gregor. What do you see?”

Still nothing.

“Gregor? It’s Layla. What’s happening? Where’s Denver?”

He smiled at the tinge of panic to Layla’s voice. Seemed she cared for him more than she was letting on.

“Little Denny boy decided to go for a walk. We’ve spotted the settlement. I’m on my way back so we can make plans, especially as now we’re getting somewhere with Mr. Talkative here. Over.”

“You can explain more on our way back,” Gregor said. “Play things right, Meglain, and you might just survive this.”

Gregor untethered the alien and pushed it forward through the trees, toward the others. He thought about their next move. It depended on what happened with Denver. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Charlie’s little boy came to a final end.

Gregor could quite happily work around that particular result.

CRAWLING FORWARD on his elbows and knees like his dad had shown him, Denver remained deeply hidden within the three-foot-tall root crop.

The smell made his heart pound and sweat pour from him. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to stop his progress to the settlement and dig up and consume a massive chunk of root. The muscles in his arms and legs grew heavy and fatigued with the day’s efforts.

Fighting with Gregor didn’t help either.

He’d have to do something about him at some point. It was becoming an increasingly distracting problem.

And the way he tried to manipulate Denver with the supply of root only made it clear Gregor had no place in this new society.

Once a leech, always a leech.

Still, the thought of finding Charlie alive kept him moving forward, pushing through the alien vegetation. The long purple base to the leafy stem resembled rhubarb, but as the tip continued up, purple changed to orange, making it seem like a stick on fire from a distance.

The leaves had tiny curled hairs that worked like hooks, snagging against his clothes with every movement. It was how the plant attracted and retained microbes and small insects in the air for an energy supply.

He’d make quicker progress trying to swim through sand, but it remained a preferable approach than being obvious about it and walking straight into trouble. He’d leave the reckless bullshit to Gregor.

A further twenty minutes later he dared to lift his head and the riflescope above the crop.

Just a hundred meters away now, he spied on the two closest sentry towers.

They resembled pictures of medieval towers with their wooden tree trunk infrastructure.

From his position he noticed great wide steps cut into what looked like a large canyon. The steps went all the way down, below his vision.

More root and other vegetables thrived growing on these steps, and in among them, with both hand tools and much smaller versions of croatoan harvesters, he spotted a mix of human and alien workers.

The more he panned round, the more he saw a populated township.

Dozens of buildings and dwellings arranged in streets, all made from wood and sheet material, gave the place a rustic look.

Moving in closer, he magnified the scope and started to scan the faces of the various people, human and alien, busying themselves with varied tasks, in the hope of seeing his father.

He couldn’t. If they did have him here, Denver doubted he’d be a free man.

But in the east end of the settlement, he saw a trio of people dressed from head to foot in roughly made brown robes.

The hoods obscured their faces and the length hid their feet, giving them a strange floating quality as they kept to the shadows and moved through the narrow alleyways, disappearing and then reappearing in view.

Something about the way they walked, cautious yet with a steely confidence, caught his imagination.

Who were they? Where were they going?

He tracked them for a minute or so until they came out of one narrow street and headed into an alley where he couldn’t see them. He panned to where he thought they may come out and didn’t see them.

On that side, though, leaning up against the wall of a dwelling of some kind, was a small band of thuggish-looking humans. They wore tatty clothes and carried rudimentary weapons: clubs and what looked like handmade knives.

For a moment he felt like shouting out to the robed people in warning, but as he lifted his scope again, he heard a heavy, solid footstep behind him, quickly followed by an urgent click and then a blinding pain on the back of his head as he slumped forward into the dirt, slipping into unconsciousness.

Chapter 15

BALISKA SHADOWED CHARLIE, occasionally shoving him in the back as they ascended the vessel’s staircase. Charlie thought about grabbing one of the few rifles still attached below the seats, but dismissed the idea as an unnecessary risk. They were probably left with good reason and would have been taken by now if they still worked. Charlie remembered the strength and weight of Baliska from their previous fight in the forest. Attempting to throw it off the platform might mean him going in the same direction.

Rounding the last three circuits before reaching ground level, Charlie tried to rationalize the guilt gnawing at his mind.

If what Hagellan said was true, it meant that his actions had triggered the deployment of a destroyer, but also put a stop to the terraforming. He caused the current mess, but only by stopping the previous threat. Either way he looked at it, the responsibility to assist was his.

Aimee disappeared through the gap at the top. Charlie followed, exiting the vessel into the midday sun. Aimee’s smaller croatoan guard appeared by his side and nudged his rifle sideways, prompting Charlie to move.

“You need to swallow your pride, Jackson,” Aimee said. “How many people do you think have spoken to Hagellan like that and lived to tell the tale?”

“Do you seriously believe I was motivated by pride? Did you even witness our recent history?”

She walked alongside Charlie and grasped his arm, pulling him away from the thoroughfare. “We need to keep to the back streets and alleys. Remember what I said about protecting Hagellan.”

“How could I forget? You want me to save his ass for the cost of mine. I’ll ask again, did you witness recent history? Because if you did, you should have more understanding.”

Aimee tutted and brushed her long silky brown hair over her shoulder. “I’ve witnessed more history than you’ll ever know. Plantations in the New World, prerevolution France and the Ottoman Empire near the height of its powers. They put me in stasis, then transferred me to the vessel you’ve just seen. Since coming back into the world, I’ve worked hard to form the safe community you see.”

“Very impressive. But I’m more concerned about the future.”

Aimee dug her nails into Charlie’s bicep. “If you are, you’ll help with the plan.”

Charlie sighed. Aimee had no idea about his current mental battle. He knew she spoke the truth, and the right course of action seemed obvious. But she hadn’t spent years fighting aliens or lost loved ones during the attack. He just couldn’t bring himself to agree with their proposal. Not yet.

Aimee dropped back, and the smaller croatoan bounced with a loping gait to his side. Charlie pointed to a painted sign over the entrance of a bar. “No croatoans. Are you living in unity or denial?”

“Fool,” the alien croaked.

The alien prompted Charlie left. They cut down a narrow back alley barely more than a meter wide. Houses backed around the edge, giving the place a dirty claustrophobic feel. A few buckets filled with human waste sat outside rear entrances.

A few animal hides hung across the alley, drying in the sun. Charlie ducked and swiped his way underneath one. Ten meters in front of him, a man with a gray beard sat on the steps outside a property. He glanced at Charlie and straightened.

The man slowly reached by his side. Something about him didn’t seem right. The look in his eye, his cautious movement… Perhaps he wasn’t used to strangers walking down his alley. Behind him, Aimee and Baliska brushed the hide to one side and approached.

Charlie glimpsed movement behind them before the hide dropped. Somebody exited a house and pressed against a wall. He crouched down to get a better look. Two sets of feet coming up the alley.

“What are you doing?” Aimee said.

The croatoan jabbed its rifle into Charlie’s side. “Move.”

“We’re being followed.”

“Now,” an unfamiliar voice shouted.

The hide flew to one side and two men appeared just a few meters away. One with a short sword, the other held a baseball bat with nails hammered through the end.

Footsteps slapped across the dirt behind him. Charlie jumped back against a wall. The man with a gray beard leapt at the smaller croatoan and plunged a hunting knife into its eye before quickly sawing the tubes running from its nose with the serrated edge of his blade.

The alien clutched its throat, wheezed, and sank to its knees.

The man pointed his knife at Charlie. “You. Monk. Run. We only want the woman.”

Charlie had to make a quick decision. He had his chance to escape. Unity would probably hunt him, but he had evaded his enemy for years. He could find Denver, the others. The image of Earth exploding in a huge ball of flames flashed through his mind. Charlie had a responsibility, whether he liked it or not.

He kept focused on the attacker and hunched. The old man stood opposite Charlie in an open-legged stance, rocking from side to side, exchanging his weight from one foot to the other, and circling his knife.

Baliska roared behind him. Charlie heard the swish of the alien’s sword. It thudded against something wooden, like an axe burying into a tree stump.

“You’ve got no dog in this hunt,” the old man said to Charlie. “I’ll give you two seconds to move.”

Aimee scuttled behind Charlie. Baliska forced the other two men back down the alley with looping, rapid swings of his sword.

Charlie reached for a metal bucket of waste by a door and grabbed the handle. “I’ll give you two seconds to run.”

“It’s your funeral,” the old man replied. He lunged forward, thrusting the knife toward Charlie’s chest.

Charlie swerved to his left and threw the contents of the bucket in the man’s face, splattering him with waste.

The old man frantically wiped at his eyes. Charlie backhanded the bucket into the side of the man’s head, knocking him to the side.

Baliska had successfully beaten one man back and hacked in his direction. The other lay in the alley with a deep wound in his neck. Charlie positioned himself between Aimee and the old man again. “Give it up. You’re not going to win this.”

The old man edged back. His hunting knife shook in his hand. Charlie raised the bucket over his head and stepped forward.

“Kill him, Charlie,” Aimee said, her voice cold.

Charlie hesitated.

The old man took the opportunity to run. He stumbled along the alley, banging into walls as he groggily fled. At the end of the alley he turned left and disappeared.

Aimee sniffed. “Forget about him. Let him run. I’ll have him hunted down like a dog.”

Baliska dragged two corpses up the alley by their necks. Its sword was back in the thigh scabbard. Blood dribbled from the top, along its suit. It dumped the bodies by Aimee’s feet and wiped its gloves on the side of a house. Charlie threw his bucket to one side. Both victims looked like preinvasion survivors and residents of Unity judging by their crudely manufactured shirts.

Aimee smiled. “Well done, my champion.” She turned to Charlie. “I always knew you were a good man, Charlie Jackson. I assume by your actions that we’re fighting on the same side?”

“Don’t be so sure,” Charlie said.

“I’ll be keeping you in my cells until you make a final decision. It’s for your own protection. You’ll be fed and watered.”

“You make me sound like a dog. But I’d rather be there than the ludus. Do you get attacked often?”

“This is the first time in years. I think I know who planned it, but I need confirmation before acting. To keep the peace in Unity, we must have evidence to convict.”

“You don’t need evidence to throw strangers into the arena.”

“Strangers are not citizens of Unity, but they have a choice. The rules of the modern cities you remember have vanished, and you have to adapt.”

“No shit. Is your number one suspect Augustus?”

Aimee turned to Baliska. “When we get back, take Charlie to the cells. Ask one of the guards in my courtyard to show you the way.”

All three walked back to Aimee’s residence together. Charlie didn’t feel under threat despite Baliska having the rifle over its shoulder. He felt a strange connection with the creature. From a desperate fight in the forest a month ago to sharing a cell and fighting together… strange times.

Aimee quickened her pace around the side of town, perhaps conscious that another attack might take place. They passed the pens and rickety houses again. This time, a few people tended the animals. All shot casual glances at the three of them as they walked by. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least for Unity.

The main gate of Aimee’s residence creaked open as the three of them approached. A bald man dressed in filthy khaki shorts burst out, throwing up puffs of dust from the ground as he staggered straight toward them, waving a black tablet in the air.

Baliska rapidly clicked and reached for its sword. Aimee held an arm across the alien, nudging it back. “He’s one of our coordinators. Unless we’re attacked like before, wait for my order.”

Charlie wondered if Baliska could speak English or just understand it. It seemed to be reacting to Aimee’s commands, but didn’t really show any signs of recognition in the cell. Perhaps it felt like Charlie. They were forced together in an inconvenient marriage due to circumstance. Charlie’s only two vows were to not to try to kill it, and to serve up justice to Augustus.

The man stopped short of Aimee and thrust his tablet forward. “One of the patrol…” He gasped for air. “They… they…”

“Calm down, catch your breath, and tell me,” Aimee said.

The man gasped for air and squinted. “One of the patrols in the field is acting strangely. They haven’t reported back, and their position has barely moved in the last hour or two. Do you want me to send part of the northern ring to assist?”

He jabbed his finger against the screen showing a map of the surrounding area, circled with moving dots, apart from the one that he indicated. Charlie had forgotten about the tracking beads, but using them to assist in Unity’s defense made sense if the croatoans weren’t bothered by it.

“Dead, captured or asleep on duty?” Aimee said.

The man swallowed hard. “We don’t know. He’s the only one in zone four. We thought we’d give him a chance to come back.”

“Coordinate a team and scramble the hover-bikes. If it’s a threat, we need to crush it.”

Chapter 16

MIKE STRAUSS YAWNED as he sank into the old armchair Layla had brought to his office. Situated in the engineering department of Freetown, Mike and his wife had free rein over a group of fifteen eager young students—men and women from the various farms that had either previous engineering skills or showed some proficiency for the craft during their time working under the croatoans’ influence.

Tiredness lurked at the fringes of every muscle and, of course, his brain, which now that he was into his seventies was beginning to slow and lose stamina. He let his body relax into the chair, and he reached over to a small side table, crafted from the pinewood of the nearby forest, and gripped the mug of steaming green tea.

Mai’s perfect blend, his wife called it. She, along with Khan and some of the other trackers, had identified a blend of plants and leaves that when mulched and dried made for a surprisingly pleasant flavor.

It was made even sweeter for the added drop of rum from his own reserves—which sadly were running lower than he anticipated. While he and Mai were still in Manhattan, working in the basement of his and Charlie’s old workplace, Quartanary Productions, they had ventured out into the ruins of the city and managed to salvage a few dozen bottles of choice beverages.

Even diluting it and keeping it to a few drops a day, they’d got through it quicker than they realized, but then Mike rationalized it away, thinking that due to his insistence on not taking the root and thus ageing like a normal human, that he’d likely meet his end before he would take the last sip of rum.

He still believed that despite being down to just three bottles.

It was now a turtle racing a tortoise: rum or life, which would run out first?

Not being the sort to dwell on such matters, he took a deep gulp of the tea and exhaled with satisfaction as the hot soothing drink warmed his belly. The clock on the wall of his office ticked and tocked, reminding him that his lunch break would soon be over and he’d have to return to the job at hand.

Not that his students were paying much attention today. The news of Charlie’s possible survival had quickly got around soon after Layla, Denver, and the others had left. It sent a ripple of excitement and distraction throughout the facility.

Mike couldn’t blame them. Charlie was a legend, living or not, for what he had done. Even Mike and Mai were treated like some kind of rebellion heroes, when all they did was solve an engineering problem.

Watching the time run down, signaling the end of his break, he fussed with the myriad piles of paper towering over his desk and floor. Bits of croatoan technology pulled from the wreckages of hover-bikes and harvesters littered the office, turning it into some kind of alien scrap yard, yet for all the criticism he received because of his so-called chaotic ways, he knew where everything was and could get to it in an instant.

That’s just how he and Mai liked to work.

Everything everywhere and available.

No mucking about hunting through drawers and cabinets, or moving from one room to another like his students preferred. They’d been brought up on the farm under the croatoan idea of organization and knew nothing better—until now—but getting them to change their ways was proving harder than either he or Mai first realized. Their minds weren’t so malleable anymore, and it took them a great deal of time to teach them about human engineering history and what could or couldn’t be done with materials and technology at hand.

Most of them weren’t even born before the apocalypse, so they had no real idea about large-scale infrastructure, architecture, bridge building, or smaller stuff like vehicle design and engine mechanics.

Still, some were brighter than others and had shown promise—especially with the alien tech. It felt odd to him that they were more comfortable working on that than they were human technology.

The door to his office flew open, sending the piles of paper flying, sheets flapping about the densely packed room like large confetti.

“Come in,” Mike said, not hiding the sarcasm.

“Mr. Strauss, I—”

“Evangeline, how many times? Call me Mike. What’s up? You look flustered.”

The woman, in her late twenties, wore her blonde hair down to her shoulders. It flew in all directions, obscuring her soft Italian features. The collar to her white lab coat was up, and the tails flapped around her jeans. Perspiration covered her forehead and she panted as if she had been running.

“Come quick,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you. It worked!”

“The bead?” Mike asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, your idea was right.”

Of course it was right. He’d only been working on it since the day dear Pippa brought it into the office all those years ago.

MIKE STRODE across the workshop and closed down the bulletproof glass door of the six-foot-tall cabinet and locked the latch.

Within the cabinet, sitting on a single shelf, was one of the croatoan blue beads. When the aliens had deserted the farms to go north, they had made sure that all the humans left behind had their beads removed.

Not only did it keep them same from any potential hidden alien threat, but it also gave Mike, Evangeline, and the others plenty of samples to test his theories. It had taken two weeks of trial and error and tweaking of his prototype, but if what his assistant said was true, they had finally got it right.

“Okay, stand back,” Mike said to Evangeline, bringing her to the rear of the room where the workbenches lined the walls. They were some twenty feet away from what he called the bomb cabinet. The glass of which showed hundreds of scratches and abrasions from his various experiments over the weeks.

It was designed to withhold the blast of half a pound of C4 so would be more than enough protection for this experiment.

“I did as you suggested,” Evangeline said, handing him the pistol as she took it out of a box on the workbench. Much like Mike’s personal office, the surface of the bench was overflowing with tools and parts. “The croatoan battery is wired to your specification, but I stripped away some of the damping material.”

“Huh,” Mike said as he weighed the pistol in his hand, admiring her work. The weapon itself resembled the familiar triangular, matte-black alien pistol, but with a few extra modifications. At the end of the barrel, a six-inch-diameter dish focused a highly charged, low-frequency wave generated from a modified croatoan energy cell. Using an amplification circuit that Mike and Mai had spent the last few decades perfecting, the beam focused on the resonant frequencies of the beads.

He originally got the idea after dismantling one of their tracking devices. The circuitry would generate a low-powered beam that would fire in a wide arc, searching for a return response from the tracking bead. But without sufficient power, his weapon couldn’t work.

There was one benefit of having people like Evangeline, just twenty-seven years old, brought up on the croatoan farm and working with their engineers: she knew about their power cells.

On the side of the pistol, a dial indicated three settings. Evangeline had set it to full power, which would dump the charge in the power cell within just a few seconds. Not ideal, but if the effect worked, it was something they could probably work on and improve the efficiency of the power transfer.

The grip of the pistol bulged to fit his palm where they had modified the original gun’s chassis to accommodate the larger cell. Wires ran from the grip, along the barrel, and finally into the contacts of the tiny dish. Four thin rods extended to join at a point three inches beyond the dish. This aiming arrangement would help focus the beam.

Mike would have preferred to have it arc like the alien tracking device, but to send a strong enough signal they had to really focus it down. Again, it was just a matter of working on developing a more powerful energy source.

He raised the pistol, stretching out his arms to aim it at the bead behind the glass. “Okay,” Mike said. “Stand back. I’m firing in one, two, three…”

The pull on the trigger activated the power dump, sending the full energy allocation through its circuitry and then through the focusing rods. For a second nothing seemed to happen beyond the wires glowing and the pistol grip growing hot with the sudden discharge.

But then a cloud of dark smoke billowed thickly behind the glass. Mike kept the trigger pressed, draining the last dregs of the battery.

The bead exploded with a loud crack, making Mike jump. The glass window shuddered with the impact, and fragments of the bead smashed against the surface, adding to the network of chips, scratches and gouges.

A smile crept on to Mike’s lips as he waited a few moments before moving forward to investigate. Once satisfied that the effects of the weapon were done, he opened the latch on the window, opening it a crack. The heady stench of smoke came out. It mixed with a metallic oily smell: the melted remnants of the alien tech. Pieces of blue bead littered the cabinet on all sides. Nothing of the bead remained intact.

Turning to Evangeline, he widened his smile and fought the urge to rush to her and hug her close with the satisfaction of a successful test. He and Mai had worked on this for so long now. He couldn’t wait to share the good news with her when she returned from her tutoring duties.

“It’s good, no?” Evangeline said, returning Mike’s smile as she moved a stray lock of hair from her face.

“It is,” Mike responded, looking down at the gun in his hand. “It’s perfect. With some further testing and some improvements, I think we could roll this out to everyone—especially to those in the farms in the south who are dealing with those scumbag aliens.”

“If only we had these earlier, we could have maybe stopped—”

Mike stepped forward to her and placed the pistol on the large heavy desk in a rare empty spot. “Listen,” he said, cutting off her words. “There was nothing anyone could have done. They came too quickly. They had planned it for thousands of years as we were evolving—they saw it all: the technology, the rise and fall of empires and cultures, our wars, and our complete and utter failure to ever learn from our mistakes. That’s how they got us so quickly.”

Evangeline looked away, hiding her embarrassment as her cheeks reddened. He didn’t mean to embarrass her; she wasn’t even alive when it all happened, and she had no real concept of what it was like. None of these kids do, and Mike had to remind himself of that before he went off on one.

There was simply no way they could truly understand. It would be like modern civilization trying to understand how ancient cultures worked. Sure, we had artifacts and artworks that depicted how things were, and even some documented material, but we would never truly know. There was too much distance.

And this was the case now.

“No one really talks about it. How it happened, I mean. You talk of learning from mistakes, is there something we, right now, can learn from what happened when the aliens took over? What if they try it again? How can we be sure there aren’t more of them in the Earth’s crust waiting to come up for a second attempt? And if they do, can we stop them—maybe this is a start?” She pointed to the gun.

Mike nodded as he thought of his response. He didn’t believe there were any more still underground. With the way Charlie had brought down the two ships, he would have expected the aliens to have mounted a retaliatory attack by now.

“We don’t talk about it because there’s so few of us left, and not many people want to know. But to your other question, yes, these guns will help—to a degree. With the ability to overload the beads they all carry inside of them, we’ll be able to pop their heads like an overripe melon, but if they come at us in great numbers, we’ll need something else. These are really good for one-to-one. We need something bigger.”

Looking sheepish, Evangeline fidgeted from one foot to the other and avoided his gaze before eventually saying, “I… erm… was in your office earlier looking for some parts when I… found your designs. For the bomb. Do you really think it’s possible?”

At first, Mike wanted to explode at the intrusion of his privacy, but the hopeful look on her face reminded him of when he first met Mai during the ice age. Evangeline had that same infectious curiosity—something that proved rare among the post-apoc-born people.

Patting her hand, Mike said, “My sweet girl, if I didn’t think it possible, I wouldn’t still be here working today. But we’re not at that level yet. We need more parts, more tech, and to learn the alien science. It will come in time, and that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? I need people like you to carry on with my ideas long after I’ve bitten the dust.”

The young engineer blushed fully as her shoulders eased with relief. “I’ll do my best,” she said. “In the meantime, will you tell me how it all happened—the attack, I mean. How they managed to overwhelm us in such a short amount of time.”

This is what Mike wanted to hear. Hardly any of her generation truly wanted to know, being so wrapped up in their time in the sun that they didn’t want to look back into the shadows of time. If he were to have a successor, then yes, Evangeline would need to know everything—but not today.

An unmistakable rumble from one of the gigantic harvesters made the walls vibrate and the tools rattle on their hooks. Mike moved to the window that overlooked the courtyard. “It’ll have to wait for now,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a new project.”

The harvester stopped, taking up almost the entire courtyard and blocking out the sun. A door a few levels up opened and the tiny figure of Mai, dressed in her usual gray overalls, stepped out onto the ladders. She descended slowly, step by step, as her three-person crew followed behind. When she touched down on the gravel, she turned to the facility and saw Mike standing at the window.

She had a wide grin on her face as she waved at him.

He knew she had found something interesting, he could see it in her very body language as she quickly scampered across the courtyard to the facility’s entrance. Mike turned and left the workshop, eager to find out what Mai had found. Evangeline followed closely behind.

Chapter 17

MARIA ACCEPTED a cup of tea from Khan and blew the steam away. The sweet scent of herbs and plants cleared her head and made her shiver. Gooseflesh rippled on her bare arms. She clutched the cup tighter, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning forward closer to the campfire.

Khan and Layla sat opposite. They checked through the contents of the gear, making sure their weapons were in place and all other supplies were appropriately stored away.

“I’m not sure we should leave just yet,” Maria said. “We should wait for Gregor to return before making any plans.”

“We’re not making plans,” Khan said, giving her a kind smile. “Just making sure we can move quickly if we need to. Everything will be all right.”

Maria sipped her hot tea. She tried to be optimistic these days, but since they’d found the pods and now these aliens, it felt like she was right back there at day one again when she and the others first left the harvester—or generation ship as they had thought of it. That sense of panic, fear and confusion remained in the past, but essences of it started to flutter about the edges of her consciousness like the hiding of a lie. Not having any programed tasks to carry out or a schedule that she had to stick to like before bred a horrible feeling of being lost.

Layla must have seen the concern on her face. She finished packing her backpack and came around the fire to sit next to her. Khan remained on the other side, but like Maria, he leaned into the fire. Warming his hands.

Despite the bright sunshine beyond the canopy, the trees insulated the woods, keeping it cool. Without trekking through the dense growth, it seemed everyone was starting to feel the cold.

“He’ll be fine,” Layla said. “You don’t have to worry so much.”

“Oh? I’m not worried about Gregor. He’ll do whatever he wants.”

Layla shook her head. “I meant Denver.”

A heat, not from the fire, warmed her face. She’d totally forgotten about Denver. How could she forget about him?

“Sorry,” Maria said. “I was just deep in thought and misunderstood. I’m just not handling this whole situation too well. I thought—before the revelation about the pods—that things were getting settled, that we were finding our way. But now…”

Layla put her arm across Maria’s shoulder and gave her a quick hug. “We’ll still find our way, Maria. You just need to have a little faith.”

“It’s the not knowing how things will turn out that worries me.”

“There’s just, I don’t know. I’m used to things being more… linear, to use one of Mike’s words. I had tasks, and I knew what I was doing back on the harvester.”

“But you had no freedom. No choice,” Khan said. “Out here, we’ve got it all to ourselves mostly.”

“I’m not like you, Khan. I can’t just live off the land like you and be on my own. I’m too used to being with a tight-knit group of people. It just feels like our group is fracturing.”

“Evolving,” Khan added. “That’s the worst thing about humans. They’re too adaptable, always changing and evolving from one generation to the next.”

Layla screwed up her face. “What? How do you arrive at that?” she said, with a hint of incredulity to her voice. “That we evolve and adapt is the reason why we’re still here. Otherwise we would have all perished in the ice age.”

“The croatoans don’t evolve,” Khan said. “They just wait, always staying the same, remaining focused on what they’re good at. Crocodiles and sharks too. Both of those have been around since the dinosaurs and have barely changed. When you have a good design, it makes sense to stick to it.”

“What about snakes?” Layla said. “They’ve evolved to adapt to almost every climate the world over. If they didn’t evolve, they’d likely not have survived for as long as they have.”

Khan took a sip of his tea and thought about her point. “For humans,” he said, steam billowing from his mouth, “they evolved to forget who and what they were. It’s how the croatoans managed to nearly wipe us all out. We were too focused internally and not paying enough attention to the signs out there.”

“Look,” Maria said. “All this doesn’t change anything, does it? Evolve, adapt or not, it doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is that Charlie could be alive and we have a rogue community of aliens and humans to deal with. We have to manage the threat.”

“Do we?” Khan said. “This is partly what I’m talking about. Though don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to come along to help, but at some point humanity has to come to terms with the fact that it’s a flawed species, seeing wars and conflict ahead of an alternative approach.”

“And what would that be?” Layla asked. Though from her expression, Maria could see she’d heard this argument plenty of times before.

“Coexist. Live and let live.”

“You’re unreal,” Layla said. “Were you even around when the aliens first came up? They weren’t exactly bringing chocolates and sweets with them in an act of peace.”

“Maybe not,” Khan said. “But they’d spent tens of thousands of years observing us. You have to wonder what they learned about us during all that time.”

“Guys, let’s not argue. This situation is bad enough already without us bickering over stuff in the past,” Maria said. She stood and poured the tea onto the ground and walked off, wanting to get some space before tensions got any higher.

She stepped past the fire and Khan and headed for the trees. She got to a few meters before the small camp finished and the dense trees started when the sound of twig and branch displacement made her stop in her tracks.

The alien they had caught earlier came through first. Ropes and shackles around its wrists and ankles led back into the gloom—until Gregor appeared. He grinned wide when he saw Maria.

“Ah, how sweet. A welcoming committee.”

Great, that’s all she needed—another instigator. “Where’s Denver?” she asked, trying to absolve the guilt of forgetting about him earlier.

“Fuck knows,” Gregor said. “But our friend here decided to start talking. We’ve got plans to make.”

A LONG, slow hour passed. Maria stood with her back against a tree, not wanting to be within the group right now, with Gregor staring at her at every possible opportunity. His leering grin made her skin crawl now that Layla had explained the truth about Gregor and he’d failed to convince her with regards to his position as an elder.

The farther she could be away from him, the better. Even more so when he was crowing about his achievements with the alien and the possible demise of Denver. The radio silenced bothered her greatly.

Even if Denver had gone off on his own, he wouldn’t stay in complete silence like this just for the sake of it. At the very least he would keep in touch with Layla. She’d tried the radio every few minutes since Gregor got back and received no answer.

“I’m telling you,” Gregor said, pointing a finger at Layla, “if we act now and stick to the plan, we’ll be able to take out key positions of the settlement. Meglain here would be perfect bait for this. They have a community now. These aliens aren’t just mindless resources, they have a free will and a desire for survival—we can use that to our advantage.”

Khan remained passive throughout Gregor’s frenzied plan-making and grand ideas of overwhelming a settlement. It was as if he was trying to convince himself it was doable, perhaps remembering his old days when he used to have power and influence.

But at this precise moment, Maria saw a sad old man trying to relive his youth at the expense of everyone else. Maybe Khan had a point about humanity? Being so new to the world outside of the harvester, Maria didn’t have the history like Layla to disprove his hypothesis.

It put her in a strange situation as she looked upon the others from both a metaphorical and literal outside position. Who were these people, really? Who were humans, and what did they stand for? She couldn’t imagine they were all like Gregor, or even all like Layla, for that matter.

From Mike to Denver to Charlie and Layla, everyone she had come across so far were so driven, so sure of themselves—until Khan. She questioned her role in all this. Was she really a part of this group? At times she felt she had more in common with the croatoans than the humans, despite her actual biological race.

Gregor stood up and kicked dirt onto the fire. “Right, everyone, get your gear ready, and check your weapons. We move out in five.”

Was that a smile she saw on Meglain’s face? It was hard to tell, but Maria was sure she saw the alien’s expression changed for a moment. It looked away into the woods before slowly raising its head to stare above.

Maria traced his gaze up.

She saw them before she heard them. And she heard them too late.

A group of five hover-bikes flew overhead. Gregor, Layla and Khan jumped up, but it was too late to do anything. The bikes descended like stones, moving agilely under the controls of a mixed group of human and croatoans. Within seconds, they were surrounded. Gregor struggled to reach his rifle propped up by a tree.

Two croatoans wearing rags and denims fired over his head with their triangular pistols. The rounds splintered the trunk, making Gregor freeze on the spot. He raised his hands and turned around with a sneer on his face.

“No one move,” a female human said. She held a long spearlike weapon. A metal prong on the end crackled with electricity. Eight others, mixed species, circled them, aiming their weapons. Two young men untied Meglain and checked him over. They said something to each other using words Maria didn’t understand.

“In the middle,” a croatoan behind her said, pressing a rifle barrel against her back.

Gregor and the others were encouraged into the middle of the circle until they were standing back to back.

“Well?” Gregor said to the woman with the crackling spear. “What now, eh? Gonna butcher us like you did the others?”

“No,” she said. “We’re taking you to speak with Aimee. You’ve kidnapped one of our kind. You’ve some explaining to do. Take them away,” she said.

“Wait,” Maria cried out. “We can explain. Let’s talk about this.”

The barrel pushed harder into her spine. The woman, a blonde with piercing green eyes and wearing a patched-up set of army fatigues, stepped to her. “You should have thought about that before you sent a spy. Say another word and you all die right here, right now.”

Maria pressed her lips together and tried to stop herself from shaking with fear.

“Tie ’em up and take ’em,” the blonde said. “Shoot ’em if they speak again.”

With that, the group reversed the roles on them. Maria and the others became the captured and shackled as they were led onto the hover-bikes, their legs cuffed to steel rods on the sides of the bikes and their hands tied down to small handlebars, pinning them in place.

Maria strained her neck to look to her right to see Layla. Layla gave her an encouraging smile, but it didn’t help, Maria could still see the fear in her eyes. Her legs shook as she gripped the bike tight. The rider in front fired the engines, and they lifted up into the air with a sudden jolt. Her stomach knotted with the sudden movement. She closed her eyes and held on as they sped off toward the settlement. Maria thought this was likely it. She doubted they would keep them alive if the video of that battle was anything to go by.

She tried to make peace with the situation, that her life was rapidly coming to an end, but she couldn’t do it. She wanted to live. She wanted to survive, and that’s when she realized that it was this thinking that made her human—and vulnerable.

And she didn’t like it.

Chapter 18

THE SWELLING on the back of Denver’s head throbbed and made him feel sick. He looked around the prison cell in which he was thrown. For what seemed like an hour he’d been left there to stew about how stupid he was in letting someone come up behind him like that.

He wondered if it wasn’t because of the lack of root dulling his senses, taking the edge off his mind. He sat back on the filthy mattress, leaning his back against the cold stone. The walls were rough-hewn lumps piled on top of each other to make a room no larger than three meters in any direction.

Raw, damp dirt lay beneath his feet. He coughed, the stench of carrion wafting through the bars of the door from somewhere off down the corridor. The groans of other prisoners echoed down the narrow passage.

At least he wasn’t the only one here. Maybe one of the other cells contained his father. Looking at the door, he wished he still had his weapons on him. The bastards had even found the bush knife strapped to his calf. With that, he could have hacked away the wooden frame and door and got to the hinges, but with nothing but his clothes and bare hands, he was stuck.

Checking the mattress and the dark corners of the room, Denver sought anything at all that could prove useful, but he came up blank. Nothing but dirt and worms and the frayed fragments of someone’s old clothes.

They probably died in here, he thought.

Through the cracks where the wooden beams of the ceiling were crudely cemented into the stone walls, a beam of light filtered through, shining against the iron bars within the door.

No way of telling what the exact time was or how long he had been out. Could have been an hour, could’ve been a day. Without the root in his system, the unconsciousness mixed with his general tiredness could have lasted a lot longer than usual.

Either way, it didn’t help him out much.

Standing to stretch his legs and help clear his head, he paced the small cell, walking off the cramp that had set in to his calves and thighs. The swelling on the back of his head felt like a tennis ball.

Whoever it was, human or croatoan, really went to town with the blow.

Remembering the others, he searched the pockets of his fatigues in vain to find the communicator, but as was expected, they, whoever his captors were, had already taken it. That probably spelled danger to Layla and the others if they gave anything away over the comm line before they realized who was on the other end.

But nothing he could do about that.

At least they had Gregor with them. As despicable as he was, he afforded them a certain level of protection. Assuming he hadn’t got them to do anything stupid like storm the settlement.

Of course! The settlement… Denver moved to the far end of the cell and, on tiptoes, lifted his face to the crack. Although the aperture only gave him a narrow angle of view, he could see the rooftops of other buildings and in the distance a building on top of a landmass.

Beyond that, and surrounding his view, he saw the steps cut into the high sides of the town. He wondered if this wasn’t once a quarry or a lake given the bowl shape of it with the high sides. A shadow cut the beam of light. A man, or woman perhaps, in robes walked across his vision. He made to shout out, but something about it made him stop. Something familiar…

The way they walked and held themselves prickled at the edge of his recognition, but with his head throbbing with pain he couldn’t quite place it. He did, however, recall seeing the group of robed people through his scope before he was knocked out, but that wasn’t what was ringing bells for him, there was something more fundamental with their body language that screamed at him to remember.

He’d have to leave it for when his head cleared a little.

Whenever that might be. His captors hadn’t even provided him with any water or food. Even an interrogation would be better than nothing. At least then he’d have an opportunity to gather some information on what was happening.

Frustrated, he strode across the cell and battered the flats of his fists against the door and bellowed through the bars, “Hey, anyone out there? What the hell is this? You want to just leave me here for nothing? Hey! Answer me, you bastards.”

No response apart from a derisive howl from what sounded like a croatoan somewhere at the end of the passageway. He carried on yelling until, finally, his throat became sore. He turned his back, resigned to rotting in the cell with no answers, when a metallic noise rattled from the darkness.

A screech of a hinge sounded, followed by soft footsteps and the jangle of keys. Weak light glowed in the corridor and grew brighter as it came closer. A silhouette of a heavyset human from behind the light blocked out Denver’s view completely.

“Stand back. Don’t try anything, or it will be your last action,” came the voice, deep and gravelly. Definitely a male human with an accent he couldn’t quite make out due to its almost tonal neutrality.

Denver did as he was asked and stepped back, but bounced on his haunches and balled his fists, ready to attack the person as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

The door opened.

Denver tensed, ready to pounce.

A barrel of a gun pressed against his chest, freezing him in place.

“Turn around,” the voice commanded. “You say a thing and I empty this magazine into you, do you understand?”

“I understand,” Denver said, turning around slowly. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“Shut up,” the voice said. “You’ll know everything later if you don’t do anything stupid. Hands behind your back and get on your knees.”

For a brief moment, Denver considered hitting a crouch and spinning, driving into the guard, but he couldn’t be entirely sure he didn’t have backup. Not wanting to risk anything, he did as he suggested. His time would come; he just needed to be patient and wait it out.

A pair of cold iron shackles bound his wrists. The guard pulled a sack over his head, obscuring his vision. It stank of rotting vegetables and sweat. How many other prisoners had this thing been stuck on? How many people’s last breaths had coated the inside of the material? However many there were, Denver didn’t intend to add his to them.

“Get up. We’re going for a walk. Same rules apply. You do anything stupid, I gun you down. Pretty easy rules to follow unless you’re a suicidal maniac. Are you?”

“I wasn’t,” Denver said. “Can’t guarantee anything now, though. Where are we going?”

No response, just the press of the barrel into the back of his head. He gritted his teeth and leaned forward, imagining the violence he would enact on this asshole if and when he got his chance. He stood up and waited for further instruction. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder and aimed him toward the door.

“You just keep walking. I’ll tell you when to stop,” the voice said.

Denver gingerly stepped forward, trying to get his balance. He initially made to dart away, but he soon realized that his shackles were tethered to a chain. The guard yanked him back as a subtle reminder.

“Go on,” the guard said, and Denver did as he was told, stepping forward, trying to analyze this location from the surface of the ground. So far all he could tell was that he was still in the prison with its soft dirt floor. After a few minutes of doors opening and closing, he felt chilled air on his hands. His clothes flapped against his skin as a gentle wind breezed against him.

Through the sackcloth, the lightness of day bled through, but he couldn’t make out any detail. The surface underfoot had changed to gravel. And then back to dirt, but harder this time, compacted like a well-trodden path.

Probing him in the back with the gun barrel, the guard urged Denver on through a number of twisting, turning roads and pathways until finally they came to a section of stone steps. One by one, Denver climbed. He counted twenty-three steps in total as they reached the top.

“Wait,” the voice said. The chain rattled as the guard moved out from behind him and knocked on a door a few meters away. It creaked open and the sound of hushed voices followed. A tug on the chain made Denver stumble forward, but he managed to regain his balance as he followed the unsubtle direction inside to a larger building. He was pulled further in and made to kneel.

“Take it off,” a female voice said.

The hood came off with a single movement.

Denver found himself kneeling in the middle of a room in front of a raised platform. Sitting on a chair, drinking wine and looking at him as though he were some kind of hunting trophy, a woman smiled at him. She looked up beyond him and nodded an order.

The guard dropped the chain and exited the room. By the time Denver turned his head, the guard had already left and closed the door. Turning back to the woman, Denver stood up and thought about rushing her with a shoulder charge, but her serenity and body language told him she wasn’t a threat—yet.

“Who are you?” Denver asked.

“Call me Aimee,” she responded, turning in her chair to face him directly. “I’m sorry that we’ve had to meet like this. Usually we don’t take outsiders prisoner, but you were spying on us, and quite heavily armed. You have to understand that I take the safety of my people seriously.”

“And who are your people exactly? And where the hell am I?”

Aimee stood and held her arms wide and aloft. “You, my intriguing spy, are in Unity. A safe settlement built by humans and croatoans alike. My people have lived here, quite separately and happily, for generations. When we were cut off from the main fighting before the ice age started, we, that is humans and croatoans, realized we didn’t need to fight each other when we could live together.”

Denver curled his lip in a sneer at the thought of any alien helping humans to survive. He had to admit, though, that she was incredibly sincere in her words, but then he had met many a psycho who truly believed their own bullshit. He rattled the shackles. “Are you going to let me go? What is it you want from me?”

“That depends on you.”

“How so?”

Aimee sat back down and crossed her legs as she sipped from her wineglass. Denver noticed the table had recently hosted a feast of sorts. Plates of bread and vegetables and meat adorned the surface among the candlesticks.

“If you answer my questions truthfully, I’ll let you go—if you want to, that is.”

Denver noticed the sly smile on her face. She was clearly hiding something.

“What does that mean? If I want to?”

“I’ll have an offer for you that you might well take,” Aimee said, placing the wineglass back and standing up from the chair. She paced the room as she continued. “But let’s start with some basics, shall we? What’s your name, and where are you from?”

“Denver, from around.”

“Around, eh? You seem well equipped for coming from ‘around.’ Who’s on the other end of your communication device?”

Denver didn’t answer.

Aimee smiled and inclined her head to him. “I understand. So, Denver, what were you doing spying on us?”

“Just having a look. I’m curious like that.”

“So you didn’t happen to come across a croatoan on your travels?”

“I see them occasionally,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Aimee sighed and turned to him. “Okay, let’s stop all this nonsense, shall we? Baliska, release him from the shackles.”

From behind him the shadows shifted and a large croatoan figure stepped out and loomed over Denver. It unclasped the shackles and sidestepped away. Denver turned to face it and thought he was looking at a ghost.

Could that be… was that…

“You know him?” Aimee said, but Denver wasn’t sure who she was talking to.

The croatoan leaned forward and snarled.

It was him! The bastard hunter from Manhattan… but Charlie had killed him, how… Denver noticed the healed wound across its body. Somehow, it had survived. Denver balled his fists and took up a defensive stance.

Baliska did the same. The two squared up to each other. Even with Denver’s height he had to look up to see into the creature’s eyes. The stared at each other, both flaring their nostrils, waiting for the other to back down.

The situation ended when Denver heard a crackle of energy from behind him.

“You two, calm down; otherwise you’re both going back to your cells.”

Denver turned his head. Aimee held a pole with a black box on the end. Two extended prongs crackled with an arc of electricity. She wielded it like a spear. “Baliska, back off,” she ordered.

Reluctantly, the croatoan nodded its head slightly and did as she commanded, slinking back into the shadows to the side of the room. Stepping forward, Aimee brought the makeshift spear up to Denver’s chest. “You know him?” she asked, pointing her head to the alien.

“Yeah, kinda. We have history. I thought my father had killed it.”

“Him,” Aimee corrected. “He has a name. Who is your father?”

“The guy who defeated… him, and took down the bastards’ ship. The guy who your lot here took from the escape pods after you slaughtered the other aliens. How did that sit with your croatoan population?”

Aimee backed off and a confused expression came over her face. “Wait… Charlie Jackson is your father?”

“Yes,” Denver said. “That’s why I was spying on this place. I came to bring him home.”

“He was responsible for bringing down the alien ships?”

“Damn right he was.”

“This changes everything. Baliska, fetch Charlie Jackson and bring him here, immediately.”

DENVER STOOD from his chair and stared in surprise as the door opened and his dad walked in, escorted by Baliska. He rushed toward him, not caring about the alien or what Aimee would do, and hugged his dad tight. Charlie wrapped his arms around Denver and lifted him up.

They stared at each other, both clearly not believing they had been reunited, especially in these circumstances. The alien skulked around the table, where it sat with its great arms crossed over its chest, like some kind of sentinel waiting to do Aimee’s bidding.

“Please,” Aimee said to them both, “come and sit. We’ve much to discuss.”

Ignoring her, Denver released his father and stepped back to get a good look at him. “You’re looking a bit beat up, but you’re still here, still breathing.”

“Takes more than one of Mike’s bombs to end me, son. Besides, I knew I was gonna miss this place. It’s great to see you again. I never thought I would… not with, well, let’s not get carried away here. You’re safe, I’m safe, that’s all that matters. How are the others?”

Aimee cleared her throat. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Speed is of the essence.”

Before Charlie could answer, the door flew open, smashing against the stone wall. Augustus, flanked by two thuggish men armed with small scythes, stormed in.

“I demand to know what’s happening,” Augustus said.

Charlie, Denver and Baliska stood up from the table and prepared for a fight.

Chapter 19

AIMEE SMILED AT AUGUSTUS. He returned a glare and straightened his mask.

The lying whore had escaped his assassination attempt. His team from the local tavern screwed up. Worse still, she probably had assistance from his stolen property, Jackson and Baliska. Both stood at the far end of the table in Aimee’s chamber, ready for action. Another fool, tall with red hair, completed the cabal of snakes.

He clenched both fists. He raised his quivering right hand toward Aimee and extended a bony finger. “I demand to know what’s going on. Who gave you permission to take my prisoners?”

Aimee let out a long sigh. “Your prisoners, Augustus? This is my town. I own every prisoner. You’re only welcome as long as you understand that.”

He leaned forward on the table. “Jackson is my property.”

“We’re not in ancient Rome, and your mother ship is gone,” she said, looking down her nose. If they were alone in the room, he wouldn’t think twice about slitting the bitch’s throat. “Unity has no slaves, only prisoners.”

Aimee backed away and stood behind the two men and large creature at the end of the room. Baliska hopped a couple of steps forward. Jackson scowled at Augustus. They would pay for this contempt.

“Who’s the freak?” the man with the red hair asked Charlie.

Augustus smashed his fist on the table and pointed at the newcomer. “Who is this cretin?”

“I’m Denver Jackson. Who are you?”

“Jackson… you must be Charlie’s bastard.” Feeling betrayed and out of the loop, he couldn’t contain a sudden surge of extra anger.

He picked up a wine cup and threw it against the wall.

Orange wine splashed everywhere as the goblet bounced off and landed by his feet. “His son!? Why wasn’t I informed of his presence?”

The conniving went way deeper than Augustus expected. These people would pay with their lives.

Charlie put his arm around Denver. “Son, meet Augustus. A supposed Roman emperor, chief croatoan ass kisser and loser of empires.”

Augustus thought about picking up a china plate and throwing it at Charlie’s face, but decided against it. He brought muscle with him, no need to get his hands dirty by fighting the peasants. “Is he really your son, Charlie? Gregor told me he’s a bastard. The red hair leads me to believe that lazy piece of shit told the truth.”

Denver made to launch forward, but Charlie held him back.

“You’re testing my patience,” Aimee said. “Do you know anything about an attack on me this morning?”

Augustus sneered. She had already tested his patience to its limit. “I can think of at least a hundred people who would like you dead. You may not realize it, but you’re not as universally liked as you think you are, nor half as clever. The underclass listen to me. I keep them content instead of letting them revolt.”

Aimee’s brow furrowed. “How is that even possible? You’ve only lived here for a few weeks. Before that, you were just an occasional visitor. Most have never even mentioned your name. I think you’re letting your ego get to you again.”

He may have exaggerated his position, but he would convince more of the population of her meddling and duplicity.

After the failed attempt on her life, he needed more time and leverage.

Charlie Jackson would do for now. If she had any respect for ancient law, Aimee would not resist. “I’m taking my prisoners back to their cells. You know it’s my right to do so.”

Aimee said, “If you want them so much, I will allow you to fight for them in the arena. You versus Charlie or Baliska.”

If she had any noble blood, she would fight him in the arena. Her suggestion proved her low breeding.

Augustus snapped his fingers and pointed at Charlie. “Take him back to the ludus. He’s my property, and I claim him back.”

His two guards moved forward, either side of Augustus, their sickles raised.

“This is your final warning,” Aimee said. “How dare you come in here with armed men and threaten my authority, especially after your little stunt earlier.”

“You threaten authority by dismissing tradition and respect. Do the right thing and make me an offer for your new ally. Until then, he remains under my control.”

Both Jacksons picked up pieces of cutlery from the table and hunched in anticipation. Baliska reached for his thigh.

“Grab him,” Augustus said.

His men slowly approached Charlie.

“Baliska, now,” Aimee said.

Baliska drew his sword from his thigh and leapt forward, raising the blade. Augustus fumbled under his robe for his dagger while backing away.

Doctore lifted his sickle to meet the blow. The weapons clanked against each other. Baliska reacted first, taking another quick swing before Augustus’ man could raise his weapon. The sword buried deep into the side of his neck and he fell sideways.

Doctore briefly gurgled and twitched while a dark red pool quickly formed around his top half.

One of the ludus guards staggered back and looked at Augustus with a blood-freckled face and fear in his eyes. “What now?”

Baliska advanced.

Augustus pushed the guard forward and fell back. His heel caught the bottom of his own robe and he lost his balance. He gasped for air after his back slammed against the stone surface.

The dagger slipped from his hand and skidded away.

The guard cowered behind his sickle as Baliska hacked at his leg. He screamed, dropped his weapon, and crumpled to the floor, clutching his calf. The alien strode over to him, held up its sword with both hands, and thrust it down into his chest, killing him instantly.

“Enough,” Aimee shouted. Baliska returned to his position behind her.

Augustus scrambled to his feet and repositioned his mask. He edged in the direction of the entrance. “I never meant for this to happen. The weapons were just for show. I gave my men strict orders not to use their weapons. This wasn’t my fault.”

“Baliska, take Augustus to the courtyard cells,” Aimee said. “I’m sick of hearing his bullshit.”

Augustus stood up straight. No matter what happened, he vowed to keep his dignity. “There’s no need for this. Think of what I’ve done for Unity. I protected it. I’ve provided entertainment. What has Charlie Jackson ever done?”

Aimee encouraged Baliska forward with a casual wave of her hand. “He’s going to do more than you ever could. You’ll appear in the arena tomorrow against three croatoan harvester drivers. They came in fresh today.”

The alien bounded over and grabbed Augustus by the shoulder. He briefly struggled against the revolting beast until a glove clamped around his other shoulder, holding him firmly in a vice-like grip.

“If you aimed to humiliate me, it’s worked,” Augustus said, still hoping he could talk his way out of it. “Can we put an end to this silliness?”

“Do you mind if I walk with them to the cells?” Charlie said. “I’ve got a bit of unfinished business with him.”

“Be my guest,” Aimee said.

Baliska ripped Augustus off his feet and dragged him out of the room. He couldn’t believe how they treated him. The oldest surviving member of the human race, a former emperor, no less!

If he got out of this in one piece, Aimee, the Jacksons and Baliska would end up in several pieces and tossed into the garbage dump behind his ludus.

As his feet scraped along the stone, one of his sandals fell off.

Charlie, strutting close behind, picked it up and smiled down at him. “What was it you said? Did you really think you’d get the better of me?”

Augustus attempted to spit through the mouth hole in his mask. “They’ll see you for exactly what you are, and I’ll be waiting. Birds will peck out—”

Aimee and Denver left her chamber and followed along the corridor.

Baliska dragged him into the courtyard.

The croatoans on the rampart looked down and clicked with excitement. A man opened a door to one of Aimee’s cells. Baliska shoved Augustus toward it.

“Wait,” Charlie said. “Put him on his knees.”

The creature forced him down. He winced after his knees buckled and slammed against the cobbles. Charlie approached in front of him and held out his sandal. “Here’s your sandal back.”

For a terrible moment, Augustus thought the bastard would inflict the humiliation on him that he carried out during their first meeting in Unity. He slipped the sandal around his foot, nodded and said through gritted teeth, “Thank you, I suppose.”

“I haven’t finished yet,” Charlie said. He dropped to one knee and started unlacing his boot.

Augustus looked at Aimee. “You can’t let him do this. You can’t.”

She raised an eyebrow and flapped a paper fan in front of her face.

Charlie took off his boot. A gut-wrenching odor attacked Augustus’ nostrils, like sickly sweet garbage, coming from the fetid sock. He tried to recoil away, but Baliska wedged his body against his back.

Charlie stood and turned to Aimee. “May I?”

“Be my guest,” she said.

He grinned and raised his boot. “Hold him steady.”

“Please, you can’t do this to me. I—”

Jackson swiped his boot across Augustus’ jaw. A bolt of pain spread across his face, but more worryingly, his mask split down the middle. He could no longer see as the eyepieces dropped to either side.

Charlie ripped the mask away and inspected it. His bastard son stood behind him, watching with indifference. Charlie threw it against the cobbles and stamped his other boot on it, smashing it to pieces.

Augustus lowered his head. A tear of anger and frustration hung from his eye and dropped to the cobblestone ground. The humiliation was complete. He let out a deep breath. “Take me to the cell. I’ve had enough.”

“Raise your head,” Aimee said.

Augustus groaned. “Don’t you think I’ve had enough degradation for one day? You can have more fun watching me in the arena tomorrow.”

Aimee lifted his chin with two fingers. “I give every citizen of Unity a second chance. You still might have your uses yet.”

“I can’t believe you’re—” Charlie started to say.

Aimee raised her hand, stopping him in his tracks. “You play by my rules. You’ll be under house arrest at your ludus for the foreseeable future until I decide what role you’re to play—if any. In the meantime, one more screw-up, one bad report, anything, and I’ll have you executed. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Augustus said, feeling relief wash over him. “I’m sorry for any misunderstanding.”

“Have the guards escort him to his ludus,” she said to Baliska.

The extraterrestrial oaf released his grip.

Augustus rolled his shoulders and went to cover his face with his hands, but stopped. He didn’t want to show any signs of weakness, now he had another chance. He defiantly gazed around the courtyard. Nobody reacted.

“Take Charlie and Denver to Augustus’ cabin on the third step. That’s their new home. I want a permanent watch on their door,” Aimee said to a guard.

“We don’t need one,” Charlie Jackson said.

“It’s not just for your benefit. I need to know if you run. There’s too much at stake.”

“We don’t run,” the bastard son said.

“Be ready for our meeting tomorrow,” Aimee said. “We’ve a lot to go through.”

The main gate swung open and the Jacksons left with the guard. Jackson senior glanced back at Augustus as he walked away. His time would come.

Taking his cabin just rubbed salt into his wounds. Charlie Jackson sleeping in his bed, eating his supplies. “I’d put two guards outside. You can’t trust them.”

Aimee spun to face him. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Your new home is the ludus, and you’re lucky I’m even giving you that. Get out of my sight.”

She flounced away like a peacock. Baliska followed without question, transformed from hunter to pathetic lapdog in the space of a day.

Augustus wondered about the meeting tomorrow. He needed to know exactly what the Jacksons and Aimee were planning.

Once he knew, he could act accordingly.

For the moment, he had a house arrest to circumvent.

Chapter 20

GREGOR SCOWLED at the two croatoan and three human guards who had led him, Layla, Khan and Maria through the town to an open square in front of what he assumed was the head honcho’s residence.

The shackles on his wrist and ankles bit into his skin.

Ignoring the moans of the others, he squinted in the afternoon light and noticed a scuffle outside the large building in front of him.

“What’s going on?” Gregor said to a female human guard by his side.

“Unity business,” she said. “That’s Aimee. She runs the place. I’m sure she’ll be here to deal with you lot shortly.”

“And what’s that mean?” Layla said, shuffling forward until a grizzled-looking croatoan stepped in her way and placed his hand on her shoulder to prevent her from leaving the group.

Gregor thought about trying to escape, but the guards had them surrounded and had taken their weapons.

They’d even taken his concealed combat knife.

No real option now but to just wait for an opportunity. In the meantime, he scanned the community, noting how it seemed to have gone back to medieval times.

Within the twisting and turning run of brick and stone dwellings, he saw blacksmiths, carpenters, and even a seamstress making and adapting clothes for human and alien alike.

Farmers tilled the steps surrounding the place, gathering root as well as more familiar vegetables. They even had their own farm—with actual cows and sheep as opposed to human cattle.

He had to give them at least some credit for coexisting like this and making a new life for themselves away from the croatoans’ influence on the root farms to the south.

Still, the thought of working and living with the aliens in such a collaborative way made his skin crawl. Although not as much as the sight of Augustus.

At first he couldn’t believe it was him.

Up the steps and out the front of the building, he saw him led away by a couple of guards. He was holding his deformed face as if he had been struck.

They caught each other’s gaze. Augustus pointed to Gregor and said something to the other group of people just out of Gregor’s view.

“They’re coming now,” a guard said.

“Who?” Layla asked.

“Aimee. She’ll deal with this situation.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” Gregor asked, lifting both of his arms and pointing his shackled hands toward Augustus.

“He’s a council member,” the woman guard said.

Gregor couldn’t believe it. He must have only been in this place for a few weeks, having been in one of the escape pods, and already he was involved in running the damn place.

Although given the look on his mangled face, it seemed there was some difference of opinion going on.

Despite that, a woman, backed up by a large croatoan who looked familiar, joined Augustus and came down the steps to stand in front of the group.

She certainly had a noble, or perhaps royal, air to her with the way she stood with her head up and shoulders back.

Augustus still looked like a self-important prick as always, although without his mask his usual air of authority was somewhat diminished.

Sneering, Augustus addressed Gregor first. “I should have known you’d come sniffing around at some point. You always were a little rat.”

Gregor spat at his feet. “At least I don’t look like I’ve been chewed by one.” Turning to Aimee, he added, “You do know who and what this freak is, right? You should have had him killed when your force butchered the other aliens.”

Augustus just smiled and ignored the taunt, turning his attentions to Layla. “Nice to see you survived, Layla. We could use someone with your skills here.”

“Go to hell,” Layla retorted.

“Please,” Aimee said, holding her hands up, “there’s no need for hostility here.”

“Then why treat us like prisoners,” Maria added as Khan just looked on with his passive but focused expression.

“You’re not prisoners,” Aimee said. “But we had to take careful measures. We guard our safety and privacy here at Unity greatly. Which brings me to today’s business.”

“Before you start,” Layla said, “I want to know if you found anyone else, a young man, tall—”

“Don’t worry,” Augustus said, cutting her off. “Your precious Denver—and Charlie—are quite safe, though perhaps not for much longer.”

“Enough,” Aimee said. The huge familiar alien stepped closer to Augustus, cutting him off and making him shrink away with a leery eye on his guard.

Then it came to Gregor. He remembered where he had seen the alien before. “You’re the freak that attacked us in the town hall,” he said, pointing to the alien. “We thought you were dead. Charlie said he’d killed you.”

“His name is Baliska,” Augustus said. “And no, clearly, your little hero Charlie failed, just as he failed killing me.”

“Yeah, shame that,” Gregor said.

“Okay,” Aimee said, raising her voice. “Enough. Here’s the deal. You’re welcome to stay, but if so, you need to work. If you leave and we find you snooping around again, the penalty will be death.”

“You can’t trust him,” Augustus said, indicating Gregor. “He and this group were the ones who helped Charlie Jackson to do what he did. You can’t just let them go. I won’t allow it.”

“Oh, won’t you?” Aimee said with a laugh. “You’re under arrest, or did you forget that already?”

Augustus ignored her and said, “Execution. Snuff out the threat now.”

Aimee seemed to think on this idea for a moment. “Get on your knees and swear allegiance to Unity and you’ll be able to make the choice of working with us or leaving and never coming back,” she said to the group.

Layla and Maria looked at each other and shrugged. Khan fell to his knees almost instantly, sickening Gregor with his lack of backbone.

“Well?” Layla said, catching Gregor’s eye.

Ignoring her, Gregor spoke directly to Aimee. “I will never kneel to the likes of you. Screw you and your town of inbreds and crossbreeds. I’ll see to it that this place burns to the ground like the damned alien ships.”

Layla and Maria sighed.

Without showing her irritation, Aimee simply said, “Fine. Augustus, you can have some company under your house arrest. Consider this one your pet. Now get out of my sight, both of you.”

Baliska seized Augustus by the shoulders and pushed him away from the steps and toward the maze of streets. A human and two croatoans pulled Gregor away from the others and dragged him kicking and screaming in the same direction.

Gregor yelled a string of obscenities at Aimee and struggled to escape, but the aliens and humans were too strong for him.

His heart pounded with a furious, impotent rage. But after a moment of realization, he just let them drag him away as he watched Layla and Maria drop to one knee.

“Cowards!” he yelled. “Treacherous cowards!”

The guards hauled him through the streets until he could no longer see the others.

Five minutes more struggle and he found himself taken through a dark basement-like room and thrown into what looked like an office. Two of the guards shackled him with manacles before Augustus was thrown into the room also.

“What?” Gregor asked. “He doesn’t get manacles?”

Augustus and one of the human guards smiled before the guard closed and locked the door.

“He’s one of mine,” Augustus said, nodding to the door. “You don’t think I wouldn’t have a contingency, do you?”

MARIA LOOKED up from her kneeled position at this woman who seemed to hold all the power in this town. Aimee approached her and Layla.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “for the way things had to happen just then. We’ve worked hard to build this sanctuary and coexist. I’m sure you can understand my desire for it to remain a safe and secure place for its residents.”

“I can,” Maria said.

“Please, both of you stand; we can work something out,” Aimee said, indicating for the two of them to stand.

Khan behind them also stood and remained quiet, observing the scene around him. Maria wondered what he was thinking.

Since they were captured, he’d barely said a word, making Maria think that he was having second thoughts about allying himself with Maria, Layla and the others. He never really seemed to gel with the group.

“So what now?” Layla prompted.

“For newcomers, I always give them two choices,” Aimee said. “You’re welcome to stay with us and take up a job. We’ll discuss your skills and what you can offer, and we’ll find you a place within our home. If that doesn’t appeal, then I’m afraid we don’t tolerate tourists. You’ll be escorted away and will not be welcomed back in the future. We value our safety here highly.”

Maria didn’t need to be reminded of that after seeing the video of the battle with the other croatoans.

The Unity fighters defended themselves with a rabid fervor.

Maria turned to Layla. “I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to stay.”

“Me neither,” Layla said, adding, “but a part of me is fascinated by this place. The dynamics between the humans and croatoans is something I’d love to study, but I understand the situation.”

“But what about Charlie and Denver?” Maria said to Aimee. “The men who—”

“I know who they are,” Aimee replied. “They’ve… decided to stay for a while. They’re helping me, well, all of us, with an engineering problem. They’re perfectly safe, I can assure you.”

“I want to see them before we leave,” Layla added with a steely tone to her voice. “I’m sure you can understand my concern for my friends.”

Aimee inclined her head in agreement.

She turned to a pair of croatoan guards behind the group and requested that they escort Maria and Layla to Charlie and Denver’s new accommodation.

Before they were taken away, Aimee added, “Perhaps once you’ve spoken to your friends, you will change your mind about your decision and decide to stay after all.”

Maria just nodded, sure she didn’t want to stay, but now intrigued as to what she had promised Charlie and Denver. She couldn’t imagine those two being happy to stay behind in a town full of aliens. They’d shown no liking of them in the past, nor was tolerance high on their agenda.

Layla looked equally confused as they were led away. She shot Maria a quizzical look. Maria just shrugged her shoulders.

As the aliens led them across the settlement, Maria looked back to see Khan step close to Aimee. “I wonder what he’s decided?”

“I’m sure we’ll find out,” Layla replied. “He’s difficult to read.”

“Perhaps he’s just spent too much time surviving on his own. This might be strange for him.”

“Perhaps,” Layla said.

They fell quiet and continued their march through the narrow streets, heading for a series of shanty huts perched on the steps of the settlement’s high sides.

KHAN WAITED until Maria and Layla were out of earshot.

He stepped forward to Aimee. Two human guards and a remaining alien gathered around him, protecting their leader, but she waved them off and encouraged him closer.

“You heard the offer,” she said.

“I did.”

“And what’s your answer? Do you want to stay with us or leave us?”

“It depends,” Khan said, leaning a little closer. “It depends on what jobs you have. I have a unique set of skills that I’ve trained over the years as I’ve survived in the woods, watching all this fighting going on, avoiding the attentions of both human and alien alike. If I stay, I don’t want to be a farmer or a blacksmith or some other dull job.”

Aimee raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So what is it you would like to do for us here?”

“For you,” he corrected. “It seems to me a woman in your position is likely to have a number of enemies. All human colonies have people with differing ideas. That can cause a number of resentments and plots.”

“I’m well stocked in the protection area,” she said.

“I’m not talking specifically about protection,” Khan said. “I’m talking about offense. You must have opposition or detractors who you would like to see… neutralized. I can do that. I have a way of going unseen. It’s surprising how much information one is privy too when people only see an average man.”

Leaning in closer and bringing her voice down so only Khan could hear, she said, “You’re hired. You start work this evening. I have an objective for you.”

“Very well,” Khan said with a smile on his face.

Chapter 21

THICK GRAY CLOUDS conspired to smudge away most of the sky’s orange tint.

A rumble of thunder cracked overhead. Charlie stood under Augustus’ cabin porch, hands on hips, and surveyed the rooftops of Unity.

For the first time in weeks, rain started to fall. A good sign the planet was starting its recovery from the croatoans’ early stages of terraforming .

From the elevated position of the third step, he could see the whole town: the arena where he fought, the ludus, Aimee’s imposing residence, and the maze of scruffy houses and workshops crowding around the main dirt road.

Charlie gazed at the croatoan vessel poking out of the sinkhole between the steps and the town and thought about the plan. He felt responsible. Not for this vile hybrid place, but for the remaining human survivors and the planet destroyer perhaps already on course for Earth with orders for its destruction.

He had sacrificed himself once and felt this was a kind of a blessing. He had another chance to help his people, his planet.

Denver leaned on a wooden fence surrounding the porch. He stared toward the crops and root on the opposite steps with a look of disbelief.

“Where are the others? Are they okay?” Charlie said.

“They should be at a safe distance. I might slip away tonight to warn them off, and yeah, Gregor survived.”

“That’s a shame about Gregor, but they’ll figure something out. We need to stay here for now. If we try to leave, we’ll have to fight our way out. We can’t destabilize things as they are right now.”

“I know,” Denver said with resignation in his voice. Charlie could tell he was holding something back. Growing up, Charlie hadn’t really taught him how to express his emotions—mostly because Charlie couldn’t do that either. When he found Pippa’s body, her head smashed with a rock, he retreated within himself because if he let out what he felt, he knew he would crumble, and he had to be strong, for Denver, Mike, Mai, and the other survivors from that time.

It didn’t stop him from hurting inside, though. Didn’t stop him from wanting to confide in someone that even he, the great survivor Charlie Jackson, was tired and scared.

Charlie sidled up to his side and gripped his shoulder, squeezing understanding and love into him, knowing the kid was hurting and scared but too stubborn to show it.

Denver gave Charlie a quick nod and a smile, and suddenly the hurt on his face was no longer buried deep somewhere inside. “I still can’t believe we’re going in one of their ships. Are you sure Aimee’s telling the truth?” Denver said, changing the unspoken subject.

“I’m almost certain. Hagellan, the creature who ran the Earth program, gave her the information—”

Denver’s features twisted into a grimace. “Seriously? We should kill him for what he’s done. Why are you even considering helping?”

Charlie sighed. “Don’t think I haven’t been tempted, son. But bigger things are at stake. It appears that the croatoan standard mode of operation for troublesome planets is to annihilate them. If the alien bastard is lying and tries to contact its fleet or whatever, remember, we’ll be the ones with the bomb. We just watch our backs. I don’t trust them, but we can’t risk not doing it.”

“You’re right. There’s no way we can trust them alone with a working craft and a bomb,” Denver said. “We have to go—even if it is some kind of trap.”

Denver’s quick logic impressed Charlie. Charlie had wrestled with the decision, letting history cloud his own judgment, but Denver saw it as instantly black or white. Charlie wondered if complacency had slipped into his own thinking. Stripping all emotion out of the decision made the choice obvious. Den had a knack of doing that—but was that healthy? Sometimes decisions needed that nuance, the third choice from the gray area. Although in this situation, he and his son were on the same page. He just hoped the others, wherever they were, would understand.

The rain pelted down, drumming loudly against the porch roof and forming puddles on the muddy ground outside. The guard who accompanied them dropped his root cigarette and twisted it into the mud with his boot. He turned and approached the cabin.

Charlie lowered his voice. “Don’t talk about this to anyone. Not even the guard. There’s division in this town, and we don’t know who might take an exception.”

The guard thumped up the three wooden steps leading to the porch and stood facing Charlie. He ruffled his mousy hair and wiped his hands on his dark blue woolly sweater. “I saw your fight in the arena. Nice move. He wasn’t expecting that.”

“Fight in the arena?” Denver said, looking slightly confused.

“Long story, son. I’ll tell you later,” Charlie replied. He turned to the guard. “You mean it wasn’t expecting that?”

The guard gripped his rifle, still slung, as if in warning. “Listen, old man. We’re an integrated community. If you know of anything better out there, with food, water and security, why don’t you tell me? Because I sure as shit haven’t seen anything else. In this town the aliens are he and she, not it. There’s mutual respect here.”

Charlie stepped forward. “If you call me old man again, you’ll be picking up your teeth with a broken arm. Now, let’s do this the civil way, shall we, since you’re all about respect. I’m Charlie Jackson, and this is my son, Denver. What’s your name, boy?”

“Ryan, and I’m not a boy,” he said, eyeing Charlie up and down for a brief moment before his grip relaxed away from his rifle. “Is it true about the alien ships, that they were gonna change Earth’s atmosphere? One of the guys at the tavern reckons Augustus made it up for dramatic effect.”

The mention of Augustus made Charlie’s skin crawl. “It’s true about the ships, and Augustus was well involved, trying to change our planet and kill every human, including you. If your town wants long-term security, you should make killing that bastard your number one priority.”

“Most of the town hates him.” Ryan shrugged. “But he pays people off with stuff that we don’t have access to. Preinvasion alcohol, equipment brought from the south, books, stuff like that.”

“He’s just scavenging on a hover-bike. You can find that stuff in most of the cities,” Denver said. “There’s a lot out there—it’s a big world outside of this place.”

“I’ve never been out of Unity,” Ryan said with a hint of melancholy.

“What about your parents?” Charlie said. “Didn’t they teach you anything?”

Ryan shook his head. “They died when I was young. A cholera outbreak wiped out fifty percent of Unity in its early days when we were first cut off from all the fighting.”

Charlie tried to imagine Ryan’s mentality. Everything here would seem normal. The arena, ghosts from the past, running the town and croatoans. Charlie’s old world would be like an alien world to him. Ryan had never surfed the net, played on a computer, or spoke on a cell. His idea of working technology would be hover-bikes, tracking beads, and that damned alien rifle he slung over his shoulder, rather than the broken old parts of Charlie’s former world.

A metal wind chime attached to the porch’s roof tinkled in the growing wind.

“I’m starving. Are you two coming in?” Charlie said.

“My orders are to stay outside,” Ryan said “You could always bring me something… if that’s okay? We’re on rations these days while the council agrees on new crop yields.”

“Suit yourself,” Denver said. “I’ll see if I can rustle you up a hot drink.”

Denver disappeared inside, and Charlie followed him into the living area. The place smelled like a rabbit hutch.

“There’s a kitchen here,” Denver said, wandering through an open entrance to his right. An old brown leather couch sat in the middle of the room, with a glass table in front of it. On the table, surrounded by dry orange rings, lay an open encyclopedia.

Charlie flicked through the pages covering the Roman Empire.

Entire sections had been crossed out, with revisions neatly written along the margin—no doubt Augustus’ work. Charlie smiled. “What an idiot.”

To his left, a cream mask hung on the wall—Augustus’ spare. Charlie walked over a threadbare Persian rug partially covering the room’s exposed floorboards and took the mask off a nail. Disgusted with it, he moved to the open door and tossed the mask out like a Frisbee. Ryan glanced at him and then at the mask spinning through the air. It shattered after crashing into the back of the house on the first step.

Denver called from the kitchen, “We’re in business in here.”

Ignoring Ryan’s confused expression, Charlie strode back into the house and joined Denver. The kitchen consisted of a stainless steel sink and drainer with cupboards below. Tatty cardboard boxes were stacked at the end of the room, along with five large water cooler tanks. They brought back memories of the ones in his office. Of how he and Pippa used to stand around it, chatting, Charlie trying to keep a cool line between casual work colleagues, good friends, and potential lovers—and failing; Mike laughing at his latest gaff as Pippa ordered him back to work with a smirk on her face.

It didn’t even feel like a lifetime ago. It felt like an eternity. Was he even that person anymore, deep down? He didn’t recognize himself in these memories, the carefree thrill-seeker… there was little joy and humor and excitement in his life now. He had dedicated so much of his time and mental energies to survival that he had forgot who he was.

Denver sat amongst the emptied contents of a box on the floor, surrounded by plastic bags of dried pasta, rusting cans with no labels, and an open box of tea bags. He leaned over a camping stove, heating a pot of water. “See if you can find any mugs, Dad. There’s none here.”

“Will do,” Charlie said. He turned and headed for an entrance on the other side of the living area. Inside, he swelled with pride. Denver survived and got on with the immediate jobs at hand without whining or asking questions. The boy was the toughest son of a gun he’d ever known—including his old Guard buddies.

Which brought him to his current issue: the mission.

Charlie wanted to speak again with Hagellan, get more details about this gate world. If the supposed ‘one-way trip’ turned out to be a suicide mission, he’d go alone. However, if the planet proved livable for humans or a glimmer of hope existed for a return to Earth, he couldn’t deny his son a second time. Charlie knew Den wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer after last time.

He opened the blinds and window in Augustus’ bedroom.

Three purple robes hung on a rail in the corner. Below them were two pairs of cream leather sandals.

On the other side of a scruffily made bed, a cardboard box with a faded picture of a microwave oven on the side captured Charlie’s interest. He rushed over to confirm the contents. It was stuffed to the brim with refined root—at least a few months’ supply.

Charlie picked it up and hurried back to the kitchen, dumping it next to Denver. “Forget the tea bags,” he said with a wide grin. “We’ve got something a little stronger.”

“Now you’re talking!” Denver picked out four generously sized pieces and dropped them into the pot of bubbling water.

Ryan poked his head around the door. “There’s two women heading this way, neither are local.”

Denver jumped to his feet and ran for the door, bumping into Charlie as he hurried past. Charlie quickly followed him out and watched Denver scramble down the porch’s steps and run across to meet the approaching visitors.

A guard from Aimee’s residence led Maria and Layla toward the cabin. Denver stopped short of Layla for a moment before they embraced. She closed her eyes tightly as she gave him an enthusiastic hug.

Layla opened her eyes and smiled at Charlie. He could see the look of relief in her face. Maria fidgeted with her sleeve and looked away until Denver wrapped his young powerful arms around her, pulling her into the hug.

Charlie smiled at the sight.

It seemed Denver had started building relationships. He often wondered if his son would ever meet a woman and fall in love, and worried it may never happen in this world. Although, if Charlie had to pick a partner for Den, it wouldn’t be Layla, a woman over twenty years his senior, who used to work on a farm.

But love works in mysterious ways, and it wasn’t for him to question.

He put his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the happy group.

Maria saw Charlie first and gave him a generous smile. “I couldn’t believe it when we first saw you on the video. How did you survive?”

She gave Charlie a running hug, nearly knocking him back. He felt awkward but closed his arms around her and gently squeezed. “Takes more than an exploding mother ship to kill me. How have you been? Have you got used to your new life?”

“I’m… getting there slowly. I’ve been helping Layla turn things around with the farms, helping other people. We all came looking for you as soon as we found out.”

“You shouldn’t have risked yourself,” Charlie said. “But, thank you, it means a lot to me.” He extended a hand to Layla, feeling like there was too much of a barrier, too much of a connection with Gregor for him to embrace her as Denver had.

She took his hand courteously. “Nice to see you alive, Charlie.”

A crack of thunder broke up the get-together as the rain continued to lash down. “We’ve got some root tea boiling inside. Let’s get out of the rain. We’ve got some dire business to discuss.”

CHARLIE BROUGHT four goblets of tea to the others sitting around the table.

“Denver said this place belonged to Augustus,” Layla said.

“Yeah, apparently so. Though it seems he’s been relegated to house arrest at his ludus.”

“Is he a problem?” Maria asked.

“You could say that,” Charlie said with a laugh. “I fought with him on the mother ship—Layla can attest to his egomania. He’s definitely a threat, whatever we decide to do next.”

“Gregor acted like a dick when we spoke to Aimee,” Layla said. “She let Augustus take him prisoner.”

“Good,” Charlie and Denver said at the same time before they laughed together. “He won’t exactly be missed.”

Charlie still wasn’t convinced about Gregor’s innocence in the death of Pippa—when he had found her body, Gregor was the first one on the scene, looking ruffled with a scratch on his face as though he had been in a struggle.

The next day, he and the rest of his Armenian gang fled south.

Charlie could put their differences aside to stop the terraforming, but going forward—there was no need for scum like him.

Denver shifted uneasily on his knees and scratched the back of his neck. He looked away from both women.

Maria reached out for him. “What is it, Den? What’s the matter?”

“We need you both to go,” he said. “It’s not safe for you two here.”

Maria said, “Wait, are you staying?”

“What exactly is this place?” Layla said. “What’s happened?”

Charlie knelt by the table. “I’ll keep this brief, as it’s complicated right now. If Aimee is to be believed, because of my actions, a croatoan ship, a planet destroyer, is heading for Earth. We need you to leave immediately and bring back Mike. Tell him we need another bomb. If they’re telling the truth, and I have to be honest, right now I see no reason for them to lie about this, then we’re in serious trouble, and I need to act.”

Both women stared at him for a few seconds before Layla spoke. “Wait, what? You want to take a bomb on a ship that has the ability to destroy a planet, that isn’t even here yet? What the hell…”

“There’s a transport gate on an alien planet,” Charlie added. “We need to destroy that gate. Without it the croatoan ships don’t have the ability to get here. We’ll be safe for the foreseeable future. Some local croatoans are trying to fix a craft for us to transport the bomb. It’s a one-way mission.”

“And we’re both going,” Denver said.

“Local croatoans, a planet with a transport gate, you’re insane,” Layla said. “You believe all this? Where’s all this coming from, Aimee, Augustus?”

“Hagellan,” Charlie said. The name had a neutralizing effect on Layla. Her mouth hung open and she flopped back on the couch.

“So, you know this creature?” Denver asked.

“Augustus mentioned Hagellan a couple of times, usually when threatening us. The main council didn’t interact with me and those like me in stasis; that privilege was left to Augustus. Is Hagellan here?”

“Yeah, he’s overseeing this crashed ship’s repairs and planning the mission, apparently,” Denver said.

“What about this other planet? Does one-way mission mean suicide mission?” Maria asked, her face pale.

“We’ll find out when we meet him tomorrow,” Charlie said.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie, why can’t the goddamned aliens just—”

“Layla,” Charlie said, raising his voice. “We could talk for hours about this, but it won’t help. I’ve considered every angle. You need to trust me on this. Take Maria and bring back Mike. Tell him we need a bomb. I simply can’t take the risk of them lying or telling the truth. If they’re setting me up, then fine, but if not and I choose to do nothing, then it won’t just be me that loses out.”

Maria gazed into her goblet, sloshing her tea round in a circular motion. Denver leaned forward and held her wrist. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head and sighed. “I hardly understood a word of what you were discussing. In Freetown, I had purpose and felt like I made a difference. I’m out of my depth here.”

“Which is why we want you to go back. All we ask is you bring Mike to us; we don’t want to get you in any deeper,” Denver said, his voice low and caring.

“Thank you,” she said, “I’m sorry I’m of no more use. I’m better at Freetown, helping those people rebuild their lives—kind of how I’m trying to rebuild mine.”

Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Another good person screwed up by the croatoans. The moment Maria had a glimmer of hope and aspiration, after spending most of her existence as a slave, the aliens threatened to violently rip it away. But staying at Freetown would be best for her. He didn’t want her bumping into a clone of herself—the poor girl had enough confusion to deal with already.

“You’re making the right decision,” Charlie said. “Go back and do some good. Layla, I think you should do the same.”

Layla stood and walked to Denver’s side. She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so, Charlie. If he’s going, I’m going. I won’t let you both do this without me—and I won’t take no for an answer.”

Denver looked up to her. She rested her hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him. Layla had made a pleasing transformation since being a croatoan patsy—though whether she could be completely trusted, only time would tell.

“It all depends on what Hagellan has got to say,” Charlie said. “We can’t make any concrete plans until we’ve got all the facts. If there’s no chance of coming back, not even a glimmer, and we can’t survive on the planet, then neither of you are going.”

Denver sprang up and started to say something.

Charlie cut him off. “My word is final. You two,” he said, pointing to Maria and Layla, “can you please return to Freetown and bring Mike to us? The quicker we get moving on this, the better.”

In the tense silence, Maria and Layla both nodded their agreement.

“Good. Hopefully this will all work out.”

Hopefully.

Chapter 22

AUGUSTUS PACED AROUND HIS OFFICE, fuming about being under house arrest.

An armed guard remained outside the door and two more outside the ludus. But what Aimee didn’t know was that particular guard by the door was one of Augustus’ trusted spies.

He thought about his future strategy. He needed to move quickly.

After the two incompetent idiots failed him in Aimee’s chamber, she allowed him to be humiliated. He had more class in his little toe than that self-important whore. He wouldn’t make her go through the same indignity, though; a swift death would be more appropriate.

Gregor sat on a bench opposite his desk and fumbled with the manacles attached around his wrists. Augustus squatted in a chair behind his maple desk and tipped a terracotta jug filled with root wine into his metal cup.

His need for it had become greater since losing the ability to take the root intravenously. He took a large mouthful and gazed at his useless former employee, who pointlessly struggled with the secured bolt.

“You’re wasting your time,” Augustus said. “Stop messing around and let me concentrate for a minute.”

He sliced the end of a pencil with his dagger, shaving off thin strips of wood until he produced a sharp point of lead, and began sketching a map of Unity on a mottled piece of paper.

Gregor’s chains continued to clink.

Augustus applied more pressure as he drew Aimee’s residence.

The pencil lead snapped.

“Jupiter’s cock! Be still, you fucking cretin,” Augustus shouted.

“If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with,” Gregor said with a stern expression of defiance that made Augustus remember why he’d recruited him all those years ago in Vladikavkaz.

Gregor’s gang had put up stiff resistance against the croatoan onslaught, and he’d run a section of the city like his own little empire. He’d proved effective at keeping discipline on a farm, but ended up being useless with anything more complicated, like managing harvester quotas or attempting to crush Jackson.

However, Gregor hated Jackson even more so than Augustus. He would use that—channel the imbecilic oaf to do his bidding.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Augustus said. “That evil bitch wants you to fight in the arena, but I can spare you. How do you feel about joining my team again?”

Gregor sniffed, cleared his throat, and spat on the floor. “You’re forgetting that you ordered my execution, you mutated freak.”

Augustus winced at the jibe, now suddenly self-conscious about the burns and scars on his face. At least he had a spare mask in his cabin.

Despite his desire to not care, he thought about getting the mask later. “There’s no need to get personal. I didn’t give the order.”

“Bullshit,” Gregor said. He looked around the sparse, whitewashed walls of the ludus office and cackled. “How the mighty have fallen. From running over two thousand farms to being stuck in a shitty little office, under the thumb of a woman in a frilly dress.”

Augustus clenched his dagger and stood up before relaxing back in his chair. There was no need for a giant stag to lock horns with an insect like Gregor. “I am under no thumb, especially not Aimee Rivery’s, or whatever she calls herself nowadays. I can make you or break you. The decision is yours. Do you want to work for me or fight a monster in the arena?”

Gregor narrowed his eyes. “Why don’t you just go fu—”

The guard knocked on the office door four times, slow and deliberate—the signal that one of his spies had news.

“One moment,” Augustus said.

He sprang up and shuffled to the door. He opened it ajar, peeping out of the gap. The barwoman stood next to Augustus’ guard. He nodded at him, and she handed him a rolled-up piece of paper. “Your report on the cult. You might want to read it straight away.”

“Thank you. Have a guard give you a leg of ham. You can also choose an item from my storeroom.”

He closed the door and returned to his chair. Every time he’d visited Unity before Jackson wrecked the ships, Augustus would bring items along with him and stockpile them in the storeroom.

Things like shampoo, knives, cutlery sets and coffee. Usually confiscated from workers on farms. Normal items in the previous world, but now few and far between in Unity and excellent for bribing purposes.

“You have people delivering reports?” Gregor said.

Augustus sat back and unrolled the paper. “I’m a lot more powerful than you probably realize. A house arrest won’t stop me. Unity owes its very existence…”

He leaned toward the paper. Read through the text again. Squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. He took a deep breath and mentally counted to five.

Hagellan was alive! Hiding underground and conspiring with Aimee! She kept it all a secret. They were both probably planning against him.

Augustus screwed the paper into a tight ball and crushed it in his fist.

“The backstabbing whore,” he muttered under his breath.

“Not good news I take it?” Gregor said.

Augustus roared, reached under the desk, and flipped it over. Root wine splashed over the floor. The jug smashed on the stone surface, shattering into pieces. His cup bounced with a clink and rolled, stopping by Gregor’s feet. The spiteful gangster kicked it away.

“I’m going to watch vultures feed on Aimee’s rotting corpse!”

He kicked his chair with the bottom of his sandal. It slammed against the wall.

Gregor’s eyes shot to the dagger. Augustus leapt around the table and picked it up. He pressed it to the gangster’s cheek with just enough force to draw blood. “Thinking of using this against me? Do not mock me or I’ll slice your throat from ear to ear.”

Gregor leaned away from the knife, looking at Augustus from the corner of his beady eye. “We want the same thing. What do I get in return for helping you?”

Augustus took a few deep breaths and smoothed his robe. He scraped his chair across the room and positioned it in front of Gregor. Not close enough to be in the filthy rogue’s reach. “I keep you out of the arena, and you work for me.”

“Not good enough,” Gregor said. “If I help you, I want to control the supply of root in Unity and have my own gang. If we’re taking over, we’ll do it properly.”

Augustus maintained eye contact while considering the suggestion.

With root fields being burned, it would become a precious commodity. Although the steps running around the left-hand side of the basin provided Unity a plentiful supply—for now.

Croatoans would die without it; humans would suffer due to the lack of any proper health care or medicines. If he controlled the root supply, he controlled the population of both species.

“You maintained discipline well on the farm,” Augustus said. “I could see you doing the same here after we’ve taken the town. You could act as my number two, making sure people are brought into line and the root supply is managed efficiently.”

“And when you get sick of me again? How do I know I can trust you?”

“I’ll have my guard remove those manacles right away if you agree to one condition.”

“Which is?”

“There’s a large croatoan living underground, close to here, called Hagellan. Find the exact location and ascertain what’s being planned behind my back. After you furnish me with those details, I want you to kill him.”

The gangster broke eye contact and slowly nodded. “I can do that. What about the others?”

“You mean the Jackson group?” Augustus flipped the desk back on all fours and perched on the edge. He had a flashback to Jackson hitting him in the face and stamping on his mask. “They will end up being collateral damage. Does that bother you? I know you were with them in one of their farm complexes. I need to know if they’re going to be an issue for you.”

Gregor relaxed against the wall and grunted. “Fuck ’em. I don’t care.”

Augustus smiled. It was proving easier to recruit him for the second time. Though he still didn’t trust him. Gregor would need to earn Augustus’ trust like everyone else. With pain and sacrifice.

“Fine,” Augustus said. “But you will need more than a blade to kill Hagellan.”

He opened a drawer in his desk and removed a wooden box. He flipped the lid and checked the contents inside. The two vials were still intact, full of chemicals that he had stolen while living on the mother ship.

The croatoan council had used these for executing only the most powerful of croatoans who committed a crime against their race, or in the case of Hagellan, wiping out the opposition who threatened his position within the hierarchy.

The older aliens, like Hagellan, were far too old and ancient to simply be killed by a flesh wound. Their physiology would easily cope and adapt, but a shot of this poison, or whatever it was, brought them a swift death.

The guard called from outside, “Do you need help in there?”

“Give me a minute.”

“What’s this?” Gregor asked. “A new kind of drug?”

“An accurate observation. You can’t take him out with conventional weapons. At least, not easily. He’s a pure-blood croatoan and thus extremely difficult to kill. He’ll be on top of you before you know it. We have to be sure he dies from your first attack.”

“What do you suggest?”

Augustus gently tapped the tube on the table and smiled. “They use this stuff for executions. When a pure blood steps out of line. An injection anywhere in the body is fatal.”

“Will covering a blade and stabbing him work?”

“Should do,” Augustus said. He fumbled in the drawer and placed a syringe on the table. “Or you can use this. Either way’s good with me. He doesn’t know who you are. You shouldn’t have a problem getting close. I have a disguise for you.”

“I’ll approach as a friend and kill him.”

Augustus smiled. “Et tu, Brute.”

“Pardon?”

He closed his desk drawer and sighed. “Just another incorrect quote from history. Don’t worry about it.”

Gregor wasn’t worried. He felt butterflies of excitement.

“Guard, I need your help,” Augustus said.

“Yes, Augustus?” the swarthy man said after entering the office.

“Do you still have that friend at the tavern? The one who was handy in the arena.”

“Yes. He’ll be there now,” the guard said.

“Do you think he’ll make an attempt on Aimee if we pay him enough?”

“He’d kill his own mother for a joint of beef and refined root.”

“Go and make the offer. I just hope he’s better than the ones I hired.”

“He’s never let us down before.”

“Good. Release Gregor from his manacles and speak with your friend.”

The guard did as he was told and left the office, locking the door behind him in order to keep Augustus’ cover up.

“Seems you’ve got quite a little network here,” Gregor said, rubbing his wrists and ankles.

“It’s called being a natural leader.” He handed over the box of syringes.

Gregor reached out and took them.

“You will be my tool of vengeance and justice. You will bathe in the blood of my enemies and rise with me as we remake this world in my vision. But know this. I will not tolerate failure. For now, my guard will get you out of here and will give you directions to Hagellan’s hideout. This is your chance to be someone.”

Gregor smiled and followed the guard who had entered the room.

“We’ll go out the secret exit. Just be quiet and follow me,” he said to Gregor.

Chapter 23

FOR THE FIRST time in as long as he could remember, Mike heard birdsong from beyond the farm facility. In the past, he’d hear a single bird whistling a solo, but a chorus joined the individual this time.

He leaned back in his repaired Adirondack lounger and took a sip of tea and rum as the cool evening breeze brought the scent of pinesap. The air no longer had that metallic tang of the root in it.

For a moment, with Mai sitting by his side, both enjoying the silence and stillness, he felt like the world was getting back to normal. But the colossal harvester parked just out of view in the courtyard reminded him just how different things were.

Even the revelation that Charlie was still alive didn’t change matters. If anything, it added to their woes. There was no way they could leave them out there with those others. Everyone owed Charlie a debt of gratitude for what he did. Sighing, and realizing he had ruined his own moment of relaxation, he leaned over to his wife lounging next to him.

“Mai,” he began.

“I know,” she said without opening her eyes. “We should get to work. It’s been all of what… five minutes? We can’t laze around all day, love.” A smile crept onto her thin lips. She turned to face him, opening her eyes, the wrinkles gathering by their edges.

“Aye, we ought to get back to it. We don’t want to be accused of slacking when Charlie’s out there, needing our help.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Mai said, sitting up and throwing her legs over the side of the lounger. Her farm uniform, in gray and orange, hung loose on her frame. “We’re old; we’re not like the others. We won’t be any use to them working ourselves into exhaustion.”

“You’re right, as ever, my love,” Mike said, returning the smile.

He knew he was truly blessed to have found Mai during the ice age. They had hit it off immediately. She had an infectious curiosity and sharp mind that attracted Mike like iron filings to a magnet. Without her, he doubted he would have survived this long.

Mai stood and held out her hand to him. “Come on. Let’s get back to analyzing that video I found in the harvester.”

Taking her hand, Mike stood and brought her in for a hug. He couldn’t help but admire her spirit. The harvester they had found was of an old design. Only Mai had noticed that when she and her group of engineer students came upon it abandoned in one of the northern harvesting territories.

On initial inspection it appeared similar to all the other harvesters, but Mai had spotted that some of the construction and layout had a different design. When they entered and checked the computers for power, she knew instantly that this one was an old design. Whereas all the others had alien encryption on the systems that so far Mike and the others hadn’t been able to crack, this one didn’t. Mai got into the system and managed to access the solid state drives.

The drives stored petabytes of data and information on the harvester’s operations. Everything from maintenance reports to harvesting quotas and GPS locations, but that wasn’t all. Mai had found hours upon hours of video footage both from the external cameras and the internal ones used to monitor the staff inside.

After copying over the data, they wanted to wait for it to be backed up before they started to analyze the video.

Mike and Mai gathered their flasks and cups and turned back toward the Freetown lab. Before they could reach the doors, they turned at the sudden cessation of bird song. The whine of a hover-bike’s engine soon followed. Squinting into the low evening sun, Mike held his hand above his eyes to see who was coming. Mai’s body stiffened beside him. He pulled her close as they waited for the bike to come into view.

The hover-bike descended into the clearing from above the tree line in a graceful arc. There were two people on there. Was that…? Mike’s eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, but he recognized the driver and rider.

“Layla, Maria!” he called. “You have news?”

The two women waved back as they got off the bike and hurried over to him, their hair wild and swept back. The two of them looked like they’d been dragged backwards through a hedge. He couldn’t tell if they were scared or excited, but they rushed over and eventually, gathering her breath, Layla informed them of what had happened. For a full ten minutes, she and Maria told him about Gregor, Denver, Khan, the aliens, the town, Aimee, and finally the mission.

A tense hush descended among the group as Mike fell quiet after hearing the news. It was so much to take in; not because of it being surprising—nothing really surprised him anymore, but the fact they had come so far and Charlie had done so well to survive that he was not committed to this one-way trip to God knows where.

“He’s a brave boy,” Mai said, her face neutral.

She had come to love Charlie almost like a son, having never had a child of her own. When he took the bomb and took out the aliens, Mike had consoled her for weeks. With the news that he survived the event, she had brightened immeasurably, and now this.

“So what exactly happens now?” Mike asked.

“Let’s go inside to your lab,” Layla said, “where we can talk privately. We need to start making plans.”

Mike didn’t like the grim expression on her face. It never meant anything good.

“And we’ve got something to show you that might be of interest to Charlie if he’s going to one of their worlds,” Mai said.

Mike opened the door and held it open as Mai, Maria, and Layla headed inside. Mike ignored the nervous feeling in his guts.

MIKE CLEARED some space in his and Mai’s lab and pulled a pair of stools out from beneath his workbench. The bench’s surface was littered with parts, mechanical and electrical, and numerous sheets of paper with his notes scrawled on with scratchy biros. Of all the stationary to have survived the apocalypse, it had to be crappy gel biros. What he would do for a decent, working fountain pen…

The computer screen was covered in dust. Mai must have noticed Maria’s and Layla’s expressions and grabbed a rag to wipe it clean. One of the solid state drives from the harvester lay by the side of the screen, a convoluted set of cables connecting the two devices. The drive itself resembled a power brick—solid, black and incased in the alien polymer material.

“Before we get to the details of Charlie and Denver’s new mission,” Mike said, “I think you ought to see this. It might prove useful, or at least help prepare them for what they might encounter on the alien world.”

“Where did you get this?” Maria asked.

Mai pointed out the window to the harvester. “It’s an older model than we usually find. The system was easier to hack into. We’ve found all kinds of information.”

“Like what?” Layla said, leaning forward as Mike fussed with the cables.

“It appears that this particular harvester has quite the travel history,” Mai said. “From the data we managed to pull, we found at least a dozen unique locations. I can’t tell what or where they are, as they use a croatoan system of identification, but one thing that is clear is that most of those locations are from planets in our solar system.”

“We were hoping you could help us decode the identification system,” Mike said to Layla. While she worked at the farm with Gregor, she had picked up a good amount of the croatoan language and writing. “But that can wait, for now. Let’s watch a movie.”

Mike finished connecting the drive and the screen. Using his custom-made operating system, he entered a series of commands that would decode and play the film clips he and Mai had taken off the drive earlier.

“Sorry we don’t have any popcorn,” Mai said as she switched off the lights and joined the others, sitting on a free stool. Mike finished his setup and sat beside Mai as the first video clip played.

It was from the external camera situated on the front of the harvester. Mike and Mai hadn’t yet been able to transpose the audio tracks, so in silence they watched a trembling image as the harvester ploughed through a dirt track.

At first, it would be easy to think it was taken on Earth, but as the video continued to play, Mike watched Layla and Maria lean closer to the screen and their eyes widen as they saw it for the first time: three moons in the sky. In a triangular pattern, they dominated the horizon.

Each moon was a different size; the one closest to the planet had clear markings on it.

“A base of some kind,” Mai added.

“We zoomed in and noticed a regularity to the shapes. It seems like some large infrastructure was built there. Given the scale and shape, they resemble the design cues of the farm facilities, making us believe that that particular moon is host to a considerable croatoan infrastructure.”

The two women nodded and remained silent as they continued to watch the footage.

FROM THE EDGE of the frame, shadows shifted at the line of large alien vegetation. Almost prehistoric-looking palms stood what must have been hundreds of feet tall. Their trunks sprouted numerous spiked woody branches. The shadows continued to shift as the camera began to pan the horizon, finally coming to a stop on the left side of the frame.

It zoomed in and held steady, the harvester apparently having stopped. From within the tall, alien trees, a group of five figures exited.

Maria and Layla gasped.

The figures, at Mike’s estimation, stood approximately twenty feet tall. Although bipedal, they hunched over and used their massively muscled upper limbs to propel them forward, not unlike a great ape.

Their heads were triangular and heavily scaled. In the blue atmosphere of the planet the aliens’ scales and body fur appeared to be purple with gray accents. As a group they stopped just outside the edge of the trees and lifted their strange heads into the sky. They trembled and raised their arms.

“I think they’re howling or something similar,” Mai said. “We’re working on the audio track encoding and will confirm at a later date.”

“It’s… incredible,” Maria said.

“Truly,” Layla replied. “It’s not like it’s surprising; the croatoans have done the same on our planet, and we’ve come to terms with them being aliens to us, but to see another world, another species… that’s just… I’m lost for words.”

“You weren’t the only one,” Mike said. “It took me a good few minutes to compose my thoughts.”

“The most amazing thing, though, is that this is just one location of many. We don’t know where it is yet, but it seems we’re not unique in our treatment by the croatoans; they’ve done this to hundreds of other planets,” Mai said.

“Also worth noting,” Mike added, “is how close to Earth this place is. It seems that the croatoans have identified a criteria not just for their harvesting, but also planets that support life, with an atmosphere not too dissimilar to Earth’s.”

“So you’re saying the croatoans have done the very thing we’ve been trying for so long?” Layla added.

“Yup,” Mai said. “But this is just the start. We’ve got a lot of video to filter through, but we’ll compile the most interesting footage and put in a drive with a portable player for you to take back to Charlie and Denver in case any of it will help them prepare for their mission.”

As the footage turned to black, Mike switched off the system and leaned against the workbench to face Maria and Layla. He recognized the look of wonder and fear in their eyes. It was quite the experience to see proof of a new alien world, let alone a species. Sure, it wasn’t especially new after the croatoans rose up, but it confirmed something humankind has searched for hundreds of years for: that there are many Earth-like planets out there populated by intelligent species.

And like those species, they had one thing in common.

The damned croatoans.

Destroying their gate world wouldn’t just keep Earth safe, but if that’s what the bastards use to travel throughout the galaxy to other planets, then perhaps they could help keep other species safe from their voracious root appetite.

“So,” Maria said, clearly anxious about something, “about this mission. We didn’t quite tell you everything.”

“Oh?” Mike said, crossing his arms across his chest. “What else is there?”

Maria hesitated, unable to find the words. Layla stepped in, placing her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder as if to absolve her of the guilt. “Basically, we need you and Mai. They have a ship in Unity, but it’s damaged. When they first rose up and joined the fight, they were cut off just before the ice age after suffering huge losses to their engineers and leaders. The remaining aliens worked with the humans and thus settled Unity. Over time as they lost people during the ice age, they also lost the knowledge of their ship.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Mai said.

“Go on,” Mike said.

Taking a breath, Layla continued. “When the pods landed, they captured the council members from the mother ship: only one survived. One they call Hagellan. Quite the head honcho, by all accounts. Now, he knows what’s wrong with the ship and how to fly it and engage the jump engine back to the gate world, but…”

“But he needs someone to get the parts necessary and help fix it?” Mike finished for her, clearly seeing where this was going.

“Yes,” Maria said. “But that’s not quite all.”

Mai rolled her eyes, losing her patience. “Just get on with it, girl. What is it you want from us?”

Maria seemed to shrink away from Mai’s tone. Despite her age, Mai could be quiet fierce, not that she meant it personally; she just wasn’t one for wasting time. People of his and Mai’s age didn’t have the time to waste with nonsense.

“It’s Charlie,” Maria said. “He’s agreed to the mission, but he doesn’t trust them and wants a backup plan. He wants you to build him another bomb in case they try anything once they’re airborne.”

Mike looked to his wife. It was like looking in a mirror sometimes. Her eyes glinted and a smile stretched on her lips. At the same time, they said, “Count us in.”

“And as it happens, we had already started on another,” Mai said. “We like contingencies.”

“We can have it ready within a few days,” Mike said.

“They sent us to bring you back to them tonight,” Layla said. “Hagellan wants to speak with you personally to help get the engineering team set up and to brief you on the parts he needs from the wreckage of the others ships.”

“It’s okay,” Mai said before Mike could protest. “You go with them, love, and I’ll stay behind to finish the bomb. Our time is short; it makes sense for us to use it as best we can.”

Of course she would say that. It’s one of the qualities he had come to love about her. She would always see the logical path even if it meant personal pain. Since they met, they’d never spent a single day apart. Even now, the thought of leaving her behind while he went with the others gripped him with a paralyzing fear. But he knew she was right. If what Layla was saying was true and he could help, then he couldn’t say no, even if it meant spending time apart from Mai.

Time he would never get back, and time that could be his last.

“Okay,” Mike said reluctantly, keeping his eyes locked with Mai’s. “I’ll go. Give me an hour or so first; I need to make plans.”

“Sure,” Layla said, standing and urging Maria to follow her. “We’ll fetch you at 1900.”

Mike just nodded to her as they left the lab. He approached Mai and brought her in close for a hug.

“I’d rather not leave you behind,” he said, whispering into her ear.

“I know, but they need you. And you’ll be fine. It’s just an engineering problem. You’ll be back here in no time.”

Mike wasn’t so sure. He didn’t trust the croatoans as far as he could throw them. Working on their behalf felt like a betrayal of everything they had done to survive, but if Charlie needed him, then he couldn’t say no, especially after the sacrifice the boy was prepared to make for them before.

For now, though, he would enjoy Mai’s company until he had to go, knowing this might be the last time he saw her. He hugged her tight and tried not to suggest they run off together. The world was bigger than them. Sacrifices had to be made.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too. Now, let’s go over the final plans for the bomb. There’s a few snags I’d like to put past you before you head off.”

“Always the practical one,” Mike said, releasing his hug.

“One of us has to be,” she said with her mischievous grin.

Chapter 24

SHADOWS MOVED IN UNNATURAL WAYS, catching Denver’s attention as he himself stood shrouded in the darkness that haunted the corners of the room.

For an hour or more Denver had paced the living area of their new, guarded abode. From his position, he watched through the plastic-sheet windows out into Unity from approximately halfway up the steps carved into the basin of the drained lake.

Charlie snored from the other room, the tiredness caused by days of struggle and uncertainty expressed in the sound of a man who probably hadn’t slept as deeply for weeks. Even when they were in one of their shelters, Charlie always slept light, alert, and ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Just like Denver. Which was why, as the sun came up to the east of the settlement, and the low-raking light cast its shadows, Denver spotted deliberately concealed movement; someone was stalking through the shacks and light-constructed dwellings. From one alley to another, this robed figure wove a maze-like pattern of progress, double-backing on themselves, checking for followers, but always heading to the north of the basin—to Charlie and Denver’s new prison by another name.

Definitely human, he thought, spying them through the window from his dark corner. The robes reminded him of the people he saw when observing from the root field. The swollen lump on the back of his head throbbed a reminder. This time, he kept his back to the wall of the chalet.

Warm light, fractured by tall pines on Unity’s perimeter, gave the living room more character than it deserved. Built from old reclaimed sheets of plywood, the interior wasn’t exactly plush. With no soft furnishings or furniture beyond a wooden bench and a rickety table, the place felt more like a cell than it did a home.

The human guards outside didn’t give it that homely feel either. They were relieved by a new shift three or so hours ago in the predawn. For someone who said she trusted and needed Denver and Charlie, this Aimee woman certainly had a funny way of showing it.

A dripping tap was at the end of the open-plan room. A basin, made from a bucket fixed to a wooden cabinet, echoed with each drop from the hosepipe. It snaked its way out of the chalet to a water tank he had spotted on the roof that caught and stored rainwater.

The stale taste was still in Denver’s mouth. They had assured him it was filtered, but he had tasted fresher from the root-infested rivers and brooks he and his dad frequented.

At least those had some active root compound in them.

Denver’s muscles protested with tiredness as he slid closer to the window for a closer look. His body ached to their bones. Root withdrawal. Layla would be so pleased for him, but he just felt like a weak puppy. Like Pip. That was the reason he took care of her. The runt of the litter, she didn’t get what she needed from her mother—she needed Denver.

And now, apparently, so did the world—if Aimee were to be believed.

This time, however, if there was a sacrifice to be made, then his dad wouldn’t have to do it alone. Denver was more than happy to accompany him. Layla aside, he felt no real connection with anyone else to stay behind.

There were the three M’s of course: Maria, Mike and Mai, but he knew they would be fine without him. He liked them, thought of them as a kind of extended family, but they weren’t close to him like his dad—or Layla, but even then, he wondered if he was just imagining things with her…

Not really the time to think about all that, he chided himself, sliding back into the gloom so the guards outside by the door didn’t notice him.

The figure had climbed the fifteen steps up to this current level. Its brown hood appeared above the edge of the step. Crude stairs were carved into the rock, allowing farmers and dwellers alike to easily ascend and descend between levels. A few seconds later the figure approached the guards. From the movement and silhouette he guessed it was a young woman. She held each hand in the opposite sleeve, reminding him of pictures of monks he’d once seen in a magazine.

The guards, two human men with severe buzz cuts and tatty army uniforms patched with a seemingly random collection of fabrics, approached her but without pulling their truncheons from their belt loops.

They must be expecting her.

Their bodies obscured the woman’s face and their voices were too low to hear, but after a few moments, they stood aside and let her approach the door. Denver couldn’t see her from this position, as the window was a couple of meters to the door’s left. Before the robed woman could try the handle, Denver dashed low under the window and across to the right wall beside the door.

A squeak of metal followed a rattle. The handle turned, hinges protested, and then the door opened, flooding the cell-like living quarters with the warm glow of morning. The silhouette of the visitor stretched out to fill the angular shaft of light on the bare wooden floor.

She waited, perhaps sensing Denver was there, behind the door, crouching, waiting, his breath held in his lungs with anticipation. The voices of the guards blew in on the breeze, words that were unimportant, jocular. A laugh or two followed, preceding a pair of footsteps creating barely audible thuds on the floor.

When the figure closed the door behind her, Denver launched forward. He grabbed her by the arms, pinning them to her body, and pushed her back across the living room until her back hit the wall separating the sleeping quarters.

She gapsed with the impact. Denver continued to press with his arms outstretched. “Who are you?” he said with a low growl, not wanting to alert the guards and hoping she wouldn’t scream.

“Let go,” she whimpered.

Denver released her right arm but only to push her hood back and reveal her identity. He staggered back, confused. Words tripped on his lips before he finally got a grip of himself.

“Maria? What the hell are you doing? How did you get past…” He trailed off as a blank expression stared at him, clearly not understanding something. “What? What is it? Maria, talk to me.”

She turned away from him as a shadow moved out from the sleeping quarters.

“Leave her, son; that’s not Maria,” Charlie said.

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Come,” she said, tugging at his arm. “We need to talk in there. I’ll explain everything.”

“Do as she says,” Charlie said. “It’s a wild story, but it’ll make sense.” Charlie gripped his son by the shoulder and urged him away from the woman. She slipped out, smiling nervously at Charlie, and headed into the sleeping quarters. His dad led him in after her.

Once inside, they closed the door and the woman explained who she was.

“I don’t believe it,” Denver said. Clones! How could he even know if ‘his’ Maria was even the same one he initially met? “This is fucked up. Are you even still called Maria?”

She nodded, her cheeks blushing. The poor woman looked scared out of her wits. He realized he was looming over her, his body tense. He relaxed his shoulders and stood back, trying to be less intimidating. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I get it,” she said, reaching out for him and patting him on the arm in an awkward means of friendship. “I’ve known I’m a clone from the day I was activated. They told me everything. It must be confusing for you, but please, let me assure you I’m here to help—and very much my own person.”

Denver shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “This world gets more bizarre by the day, but hey, it’s not as weird as aliens coming to use the planet as a giant drug farm, so sure, I’ll go with it. But why are you here? Is it to do with the plan?”

Charlie remained quiet as Clone-Maria brought Denver up to speed on Charlie’s interaction with Hagellan and the general plan.

“What does he want with us now?” Charlie said.

Stepping closer to both men and lowering her voice, she said in hushed tones, “He’s happy you two have agreed to help. He said he understood how difficult a decision it was for you considering what your people have gone through.”

The way she said it made Denver want to correct her to include her within that statement but realized she was as much croatoan as she was human in mind if not body. Charlie snorted with derision, but Denver remained quiet. He nodded to urge her to continue.

“He’s liaised with a number of our engineers.”

‘Our’ wasn’t lost on Denver—it was clear who this clone’s loyalties were with.

She continued, “Lord Hagellan wants to speak with you, go over the plan. He has new information for you and wants to meet you.” She pointedly looked at Denver. “In the spirit of peace and cooperation.”

Both Charlie and Denver laughed at that.

Bad enough she referred to the turtle-looking bastard as a lord, but hilarious to think he could get away with the bullshit of peace and cooperation.

“Where was that when he and his generals nearly wiped out our race?” Denver asked.

“I… erm…” Clone-Maria looked away.

“Son, leave it,” Charlie said. “She doesn’t know all about that.”

“When were you activated?” Denver asked.

It appeared that was a sore subject. Clone-Maria sat down on the bed and scowled. “That’s not really important right now. I’m here as an emissary to—”

“Lord Hagellan,” Charlie filled in. “We get it, girl. We’ll go. But I hope he doesn’t expect us to do cartwheels and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the campfire. Let me make this clear—we are not his kind’s friends. Never were, never will be.”

“We’re closer than you think,” she said.

“And how would you know?” Denver said, keeping his tone respectful. He admired her for coming here and didn’t see any point in escalating an argument.

She tapped the side of her head. “We all have it in here—parcels of croatoan knowledge. We weren’t cloned just for working in the harvesters.”

“Oh?” Charlie said, raising an eyebrow. “What else?”

“My group are, as I said, emissaries, but we hold within us the church edicts. We observe the rituals of the Elder Gods—the first croatoans to establish a home world and the revered Mother and Father.”

“Their idea of creation, eh?” Charlie said.

It appeared to Denver that this was at least something he could recognize as something they had in common: religion and belief in a supernatural origin story. From what Denver had read, it made absolutely no sense at all. All throughout the ice age he saw people of varied faiths praying, ritualizing, and praising God.

They all perished.

If there was a god, an Elder or not, it seemed his or her line was busy.

“No,” Clone-Maria said, standing up, “not their idea—the truth. Within every one of us we carry the DNA of those original mothers and fathers.”

“Us?” Denver shook his head. “You’re human, genetically and fundamentally. Your DNA is no different to ours. You’re not one of them. They use you like a tool to do their bidding—just like they used humans in their farm facilities. Just how much free will do you clones actually have?”

He thought about his Maria—did she also have this so-called knowledge in her mind just waiting to be ‘activated’? How much of Maria was the Maria he had come to know, and how much was some preprogrammed meat-puppet?

Clone-Maria ignored his questions. “Are you coming with me or not?” she said as she pushed her way between the two men. “I wouldn’t say no if I were you. Lord Hagellan is a fair leader but not one to cross.”

“A little too late for that,” Charlie said. “I kind of messed up his plans a bit.”

“I heard,” she said. “You’re quite the hero.”

Denver couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere. Either way he didn’t like this clone one bit. Didn’t trust her. But then that wasn’t surprising since she considered herself one of them.

His curiosity won out over any resistance. “We going, then, Dad?” he asked.

“Yeah, son. Let’s go see what the old bastard is planning.”

From within her robes, Clone-Maria produced two carbon-copy outfits. She handed one to each of them. “We go out the back. Stay close and keep your hoods up. I’ll take you through the tunnel system so as not to be seen, but don’t remove your hoods until we’re in Lord Hagellan’s room—we can’t be too careful these days.”

“What do you mean?” Denver asked.

“Nothing major. Just a few… integration problems. We can talk on the way. Come on.”

With that, Clone-Maria opened a closet door and depressed a hidden button. A panel came loose to reveal a carved opening that led to a tunnel within the actual rock of the lake walls. A series of unlit candles in carved nooks led the way down the dark aperture. The clone stepped inside and encouraged them to follow.

Denver really wished he still had his rifle. All he had for a weapon was a shank he had made from an old spoon found in the kitchenette area. It wasn’t perfect, but at a push, it’d take out someone’s eye and buy him time.

“After you,” Charlie said, urging his son forward. “It’ll be all right.”

“I don’t believe that,” Denver said as he stepped in. “But there’s only one way to know for sure, right?”

THE JOURNEY through the tunnels had taken at the very least half an hour. All the while Clone-Maria fielded his questions in the most vague ways. It seemed to him she was more of a robot in spirit than a free-minded clone.

At least his Maria had opinions and emotions.

Eventually they arrived at Hagellan’s room deep within the ground. Back to the beginning, Denver thought. The irony of fixing up one of their ships for them to rise up from out of the ground wasn’t lost on him.

Stepping through the doorway, Charlie stepped to the left while Denver stepped to the right—almost as though they were preparing to flank a target. Habits die hard, it seemed. But for all Denver knew, Hagellan would one day be a target.

The alien in question stepped out from a small antechamber and sat down on its grand throne. The damned thing looked even uglier than the regular reptilian bastards. Age wasn’t kind to this one. It seemed ingesting root compounds would only do so much.

“You came,” he said, clicking with the alien staccato sound Denver had got so used to hearing, usually from the shadows or camouflaged as he took one out with his rifle. He dipped his head and closed his eyes. Layla had told Denver this was a peaceful sign of respect.

Denver did not give one shit. Neither did Charlie. Both of them stood, their arms crossed, waiting for it to get on with it. When Hagellan brought his head back up, he spoke something in croatoan, and Clone-Maria bowed before leaving. She touched Denver on the elbow and whispered, “Thank you for trusting me.”

He didn’t have time to respond as she scuffled off into the tunnels.

“First question,” Charlie said. “How do you expect us to go to a planet when we haven’t got space suits?”

“The atmosphere is similar to here. It’s easier for us to use our apparatus on the ships because we can’t make you a suit. We have little more than two days, and I need to talk about the plan.”

“I get the urgency,” Charlie said, easing up a little. “The plan seemed pretty clear-cut to me. I get Mike over here to work with your engineers, fix up your ship, then go blow the shit out of one of your jump gates. What else is there to discuss?”

“The team,” Hagellan replied, rasping out the words. “This ship was designed for surveillance—it doesn’t have a large capacity.”

Denver was taken aback by its ability to speak perfect English. But given the damned thing was ancient, it wasn’t entirely surprising. And it showed just how much interest they took in human affairs while they waited. The thought gave Denver a cold shiver. To think that the human race had been spied upon by these entities for thousands of years… how much influence had they had on history?

The question blurted out before he knew what he was saying. “How much did you lot meddle with human affairs while you waited to slaughter us?”

The room fell quiet. Hagellan did the eye-close thing and then focused on Denver solely. “Almost zero interaction. Apart from taking a few opportunities to… acquire certain resources for the cause. I won’t even dare apologize for what we did. Firstly, it was the plan and the Elder Gods dictate our course of action, and secondly, it wouldn’t bring back those you lost.”

“And likewise, don’t ever expect us to apologize for those of yours we took,” Charlie said. “And what did you mean, acquire resources? Are you referring to that fool Augustus and Aimee?”

“Among others, yes,” Hagellan said.

“Wait, how many of these people did you take, and how the hell did you keep them alive until now—don’t say the root, because although it has some effects on us, I know for a fact no one could live that long on it,” Denver said.

Charlie gave him a quizzical look at the last sentence. Denver would have to get him up to speed about Layla’s research on the root, but he knew his father wouldn’t like it.

“It’s not important right now,” Hagellan said, addressing Denver’s question. “We’ll have time during the trip to discuss Earth matters. Right now, we need to address a more immediate question.”

“And that is?” Charlie asked.

“The ship holds six. Four of those positions are accounted for. We need to decide who makes up the final two.”

Denver assumed he, Charlie, and Hagellan made up three. “Who’s the fourth?”

“Baliska,” Hagellan responded. “In the spirit of peace and cooperation, I’d suggest we keep the team split evenly human and croatoan. Who is your third choice?”

Charlie and Denver came together.

“Who do you think?” Denver said, whispering. “Gregor and Augustus can go to hell. Mike and Mai are too old and we can’t split them up. One of Layla or Maria?”

Scratching his chin, Charlie seemed to think on it. “Layla would be best. She knows these fuckers well from her time studying them.”

“That’s a fair point,” Denver said. “But on the other hand, Maria is a clone—what if she has the croatoan knowledge hidden away that could be activated. Wouldn’t that be of great importance to us? Imagine the advantage we would have.”

“But we don’t know what we’re flying into on this gate world of theirs—and this activation thing might not be something we can do, if Maria would be at all happy to even contemplate it.”

Denver sighed and realized he was viewing Maria in the same way as the croatoans viewed most of humanity—as tools and resources. “Okay, Layla it is—if she wants to go.”

He didn’t really like the idea. He would have preferred for her to stay behind where it was safer. But it would be her choice, not his.

Turning to face Hagellan, Charlie said, “We’ve someone in mind for our third choice. What about you? Who are you taking along on this merry little jaunt of ours?”

“I will decide in due time. For now, though, I wanted to share with you information given to me by my junior engineers about the state of the ship and what is required to repair it. They have given me a list of parts needed. When your engineer friend arrives, I’d like for you to present him with this. We don’t have the skills here to complete the project. If we’re to get to the gate world, we’re going to need to work—”

“Peace and cooperation,” Denver said, cutting him off. “We get it.”

Charlie took the datapad of information from the alien. For a blink of an eye with each of them holding one end of the pad, Denver expected a confrontation to take place, as they paused, each not willing to give in to the other.

Finally, Hagellan let go and Charlie took the pad.

“We’ll be in touch,” Charlie said, leading Denver out of the tunnel as Hagellan stared on impassively. When they got into the tunnels Denver noticed one of the emissaries in their robes skulking away into the shadows as though they had been just outside, listening in.

Something about the way they moved bothered Denver. It was familiar, and not at all like how he’d seen the other robed figures moving, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He put it down to the effects of root-withdrawal and followed his father up through the tunnels as they headed back to their chalet.

Chapter 25

GREGOR, wearing a long robe to disguise himself, dashed along a muddy street, following Augustus’ directions to the croatoans’ underground entrance.

He was to scout out the area and make sure that Hagellan was indeed where the spy’s report suggested. Once located, Gregor could plan for his assassination.

An attack ship poked out of a sinkhole on the edge of town.

Two peasant men approached in the opposite direction. He pulled the robe’s hood further over his face, looked down, and squeezed the handle of his concealed dagger. People in town didn’t know him yet, and an unfamiliar face might arouse suspicion.

Looking at the houses and dirty workshops, he realized the potential of Unity. It had the feel of his village just outside Yerevan, where he was raised on a pig farm.

From there, he rose to lead his gang in the city from nothing. They called him Pig Boy when he first arrived.

A few severed tongues put an end to that nickname. Here, he already had an advantage in the form of Augustus. As much as Gregor hated the man, he had given him a chance to run something again, and to get revenge on the croatoans.

“Morning,” one of the men said, his breath vapor visible in the chilly morning air. Gregor grunted a response and stepped to the other side of the road.

“One of the weird cultists,” he heard the other one say as they continued past without issue.

Once clear of the cluttered, dung-filled urban area, Gregor stopped and stared through the increasing dawn light at the root growing along the lower steps of the basin.

There was tons of the stuff, half of it ready to harvest.

He’d need twenty men to police an area that size. They would have to start growing it in a smaller protected space and keep the seeds locked away.

Create more demand and control the supply. Back to the good old days.

No more running around, putting up with Denver and his smug ideals. Once powerful enough, Augustus wouldn’t control him either. Others had made the mistake of thinking Gregor would be satisfied with scraps off the table.

He smiled to himself and headed for the sinkhole.

Gregor ducked behind a small sheep pen after hearing faint voices. He squinted through a gap in the planks. People headed to the entrance of the croatoan ship. Three of them: two tall and one small.

One had the recognizable strut of Charlie Jackson. Denver walked by his side. The other was dressed in a robe. Possibly Maria. They must be in cahoots with the croatoans.

This was too good to be true.

It seemed everything had come full circle, and it played perfectly into Gregor’s hands. He would lead the resistance and end up owning a town for his troubles.

They slipped through a small door in the side of the vessel.

Gregor waited, needing to give them a head start before following and finding out exactly what those shit-rats were up to.

A hundred feet above him, a hover-bike sliced through the air. Probably an early morning patrol. He watched it slow and drift down into the main building in town. The home of Aimee. Her time was coming.

He checked his watch again. Three minutes. Enough of a head start.

Gregor tried to move carefully through the squelching mud. Augustus told him that his disguise would work like a charm. He’d find out soon enough.

The interior of the vessel appeared pitch black from outside. A few wisps of smoke curled out of the entrance. Gregor poked his head in the gap and looked down.

Light radiated from the bottom. A fire. Gregor smelled burning wood and heard a faint crackle. The footsteps were louder, clanking down a spiral ramp. Three dark shapes appeared around the light and disappeared off to one side.

He followed, creeping down the circular structure. Soft footsteps. Not the carefree stomping of the Jacksons. Gregor wondered just how comfortable they were with the croatoans.

The last three feet required a small jump, away from the fire. Gregor landed with a soft crunch onto the gravelly surface and swiftly moved into the shadows.

Pressing his back against the cold stone wall, he inched his way along.

Whispers echoed around the cave. Distant voices. Weak light shone through the main tunnel. He sneaked in that direction, not quite seeing the end.

Footsteps approached and they came around a sharp turn. Like him, they were dressed in a robe. Gregor decided to change tactics and act natural. No point in trying to stay hidden now. He bent down to tie his bootlace.

The person, a male, shuffled past him. Gregor watched him turn left through a smaller side tunnel. He could be a source of information if Gregor couldn’t establish what the Jacksons were planning with the aliens.

Moving on, Gregor reached the end of the cave. It opened up into a larger cavern. Two flaming torches lit up his target: the bloated figure of Hagellan sitting on a throne. The Jacksons stood in front of it. They may as well have gotten down and licked its boots.

Gregor strained to hear their words.

The alien spoke English with surprising skill and articulation. They talked about a mission. Blowing up a jump gate. Fixing a craft, taking a mixed crew, and some shit about peace and harmony. Also saying that they just had a few days left. It seems things were on a tight deadline.

After a few more minutes, the conversation abruptly stopped and the Jacksons turned in unison. Gregor dashed back into the main tunnel and started walking.

The last thing he wanted was for them to see him before he delivered his information to Augustus. He would demand proper weapons—guns, grenades, and men.

He continued to stalk the shadows. The Jacksons were behind him, their boots thumping against the ground only a few meters to his rear. They must have been moving quickly for some reason.

Gregor remembered the robed man and found the side entrance. He decided to move out of the Jacksons’ path and go get himself some more information on Hagellan and the operation going on down here.

He ducked through the gap and scraped his shoulder against a sharp piece of overhanging rock. He winced and sucked a breath through his teeth. The Jacksons didn’t follow.

The tunnel led to a small chamber. In the middle, a chunky candle sat burning on a three-legged stool. The robed man sat on a wooden bed to the left, thumbing through a book.

Gregor entered the chamber. The man glanced up. “Welcome, brother. What can I do for you?”

Ben. The Judas from the harvester! The others told Gregor he had died at the farm during their attack before Charlie detonated his bomb. They must have sneaked him here—the treacherous pig. Which also meant they probably already knew about this place. That’s why the Jacksons were so comfortable with the alien. They were double agents and in on all of this from the start!

Gregor grabbed the candle from the stool and lurched forward.

Ben dropped his book and flinched away. “What are you doing?”

Gregor pushed him back on the bed and knelt on his chest, pinning him to the mattress. “Well, well, well. Look who has risen from the dead…” Ben struggled against Gregor’s leg. He increased the downward force. “It’s time you and me had another chat.”

He gasped as Gregor’s knee slipped up to his chin. “I’ve never seen you before.”

Gregor reached down and grabbed Ben’s mouth, clamping it shut. “This might encourage you to talk.”

He pulled up Ben’s wrist and held the candle below it. Ben tried to thrash free, but Gregor’s grip held him in place. Nobody would hear his muffled screams. “I’m going to let go of you now. If you shout, I will do this to you for hours. Do you understand?”

Ben mumbled something, nodded, and took a few rapid breaths.

“Start talking.”

“I don’t know who you are. Honestly.”

Remembering Ben’s former history as Charlie’s spy, Gregor felt a sudden surge of anger. “You’re going to continue denying it?”

“Seriously. I don’t know you—”

Gregor clamped his hands around Ben’s throat and squeezed with as much force as he could muster.

Spittle sprayed into Ben’s reddening face through the gaps in Gregor’s clenched rotten teeth. He dropped the candle to the dirt floor and pulled out the dagger.

This would have to be quick.

He didn’t want to get caught down here and needed to get back to the ludus with the new information—but he’d have enough time for a little fun.

GREGOR THUMPED his fist against the ludus gate. A small hatch swung open, and Augustus’ spy appeared in the gap and led him through.

Augustus turned a black prism around in his hands and appeared deep in thought. “Did you do the deed? The guard said you have information for me?”

“No, the Jacksons were there. Talking with Hagellan. The freak was sitting on a damned throne.”

Augustus snorted. “That’s about right. Delusions of grandeur. Thought he’d rule the galaxy, you know? How little he truly knows.”

Gregor shrugged and started to tell him about what he had heard during the conversation, and what little information he could get out of that Ben lookalike.

“They talked about a jump gate?” Augustus said as he listened, all the while running his fingers over his little prism stone, presumably some good luck charm from Roman times.

“Something about a mission to blow up a jump gate in a repaired ship. The rest was just some bullshit about peace and cooperation.”

Augustus sat back in his chair. “You know what this is, Gregor? All this talk of other worlds and jump gates?”

“Why don’t you enlighten me?”

“It’s a trap. They’ll take the Jacksons up and drop them out of the sky. Revenge for their antics. They want every capable person out of the way so they can take me and my supporters out.”

“What do you want me to do now?”

“Hagellan still needs to die, but I need to decide on the right time. But it’ll be soon, Gregor, soon.”

Chapter 26

DENVER RECLINED into the chair and sipped at the steaming mug of tea as Charlie paced back and forth across the living room of the cabin.

“What’s up?” Denver asked.

Charlie stopped and turned to face his son. His face taut with tension. “I just don’t trust Hagellan. Who the hell is he going to put in as his third choice? If it’s Augustus…”

“I don’t know, I just can’t see Hagellan taking him along. The guy’s a liability, from what you’ve been telling me. And it’s not like he’s going down well with the locals if what Ryan is saying is true.”

Charlie scratched at the straggly stubble on his chin. “That’s a fair point. But I hate having to have faith in these alien bastards. It’s such a risk to believe them like this.”

Denver stood and faced his father. “What’s the alternative? Disbelieve them, stay here, and then what? What if there is a chance that they’re telling the truth about this destroyer ship? Could you, or I, for that matter, live with ourselves knowing we had a chance to do something and didn’t take it?”

Smiling, Charlie shook his head. “You’re a good kid. You’ve grown a lot, you know, since I left. I think it did you good to be without me for a while.”

“I don’t know about that. I’d rather you hadn’t had to go.”

“Still, the time brought you closer to Layla and the others. Much better to have other people to talk to than your crazy old man.”

Denver laughed and sipped his tea. “You ain’t crazy. It’s this whole world that is.”

“Well, if Hagellan can be trusted, it seems we’ll be having the opportunity to try out a new world. And you know, I have to be honest, that does appeal to me. I’m intrigued to see what this other place is like, see exactly how the alien bastards live.”

“Will we even be able to breathe there?”

“They’ve got us breathing apparatus. The atmosphere isn’t too different to Earth,” Charlie said. “The croatoans aren’t dissimilar to us in regards to what kind of planets they can survive on. Apparently, all their planets are Earthlike to some degree or another.”

“That makes sense, I suppose. Want a brew?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Denver thought about the challenges they would face as he headed into the kitchen. Even if they could destroy this jump gate or whatever it was and stop the destroyer—and other ships—from coming to Earth, what of the gate world itself? They’d be trapped there with a destroyer, presumably full of croatoans, not to mention the aliens on the planet already. They’d likely be fugitives—even if Hagellan didn’t conspire to kill them after the deed was done.

Unless he killed Hagellan first.

And Baliska.

He’d talk with Mike about taking some other concealed weapons along for the ride. If he had the opportunity, he’d have to take it.

When Denver returned to the living room with a fresh mug of tea, Charlie approached the window and placed his palm over his eyes to block out the glare from the afternoon sun.

“What is it?” Denver asked.

Charlie turned and grinned before opening the door. “It’s them; Mike and the others are here.”

Denver placed the tea on the table and rushed to the door. Down the three tiers and in the courtyard area he watched as an adapted harvester and three hover-bikes landed. Mike and Mai got out of the harvester and whirled around, taking in the sight of Unity with their usual curious expressions of wonder and awe.

Ryan, their guard, had made his way down the steps toward them. When he got to them, he turned and pointed up at the cabin. Denver and Charlie waved down at the others. Layla, Maria, Mike and Mai set off, escorted by Ryan, and joined the others in the cabin.

As they all made their greetings, Charlie and Mike and Mai were especially pleased to see each other. They arranged the furniture around the small table so that everyone could sit down as they discussed the plans and what was needed.

“So this is what they need, eh?” Mike said, scanning the datapad of parts and blueprints Hagellan had given to them. He read the details, humming and nodding his head as he took in the information. “As alien as they are, their power sources still work with our known physics, and it’s quite self-explanatory why this ship of theirs won’t work.”

“It might need calibration, assuming we can recover the parts from the wreckage,” Charlie added.

“They’re providing some of their junior engineers to help,” Denver said.

“Good, good,” Mike responded as he tapped a finger against his lips, thinking over what was required.

As he and Charlie got further into the discussions of how the repairs to the Unity ship would happen, Denver caught Maria staring at him. He got up and joined her and Layla on a beaten-up old sofa. “You okay?” Denver asked.

“Yeah, just nervous about all of this,” Maria said. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

Denver looked to Layla. She gave him the tiniest of nods. “Okay,” he said, “let me give you the tour of the place.” He stood and held his hand out for Maria. She took it and helped herself up. She carried a shoulder bag as Denver led her into the bedroom. Closing the door behind him and leaning against it, he bent down to Maria and whispered, “What is it?”

She lifted the bag from her shoulder, placing it on the floor. From within she pulled out a modified croatoan pistol and pushed it to Denver. “Here, Mike wanted you or Charlie to have this,” she said with barely a whisper.

“What is it?”

“It overpowers the alien beads—blows them up. It works in short range and has to be directed, but he assures me if you need to kill a croatoan quickly, this will do the job.”

Denver weighed it in his hands. It appeared as though Mike had lightened it, as it felt at least half the weight of a regular pistol. But then, the barrel had a small dish shape on the end, so it appeared there was no need for a magazine. “Thanks,” he said, hiding it under the bed, covering it over with a blanket.

Maria remained in place, poised but seemingly unable to get whatever it was off her chest.

“Was there something else?”

Maria sighed. “I don’t know. It’s this whole thing. It just feels so… overwhelming. Mike and Mai discovered some video from an old harvester. It showed another planet being harvested. There are hundreds of them out there—all branched off from this gate world. It just seems this mission isn’t just about Earth anymore, you know? I can’t help but think of all those other worlds that would benefit if the croatoans couldn’t get there anymore.”

Denver saw the weight of her argument press upon her and heard it in her voice. This extra news, to him, only made him more motivated to do all he could.

“I understand,” Denver said. “But you don’t have to worry. We’ll do the best we can.”

“It’s not just that,” Maria said, coming closer to him.

“It’s what, then?”

“I want to help, but I just feel so useless. I don’t feel like I belong anymore. I don’t even know who I am… there’s these clones, you see, and I—”

“I know,” Denver said, hugging her. She clutched him tight and buried her face into his chest. From over her shoulder he saw the closet door open a few inches and the face of Maria’s clone, the one in the robes, look out. Denver shook his head slightly and mouthed, “go.”

The clone stepped back into the shadows and closed the door.

“I ought to get back to the others,” Maria said. “You do what you have to do,” she said, looking to where he had stashed the weapon.

“I will. I appreciate it, really.”

Denver opened the door to let her out and followed her into the living room. A couple of small croatoans, the engineers working for Hagellan, had arrived. Ryan stood guard by the door, his hands on his rifle as the group discussed the plans.

“So what’s next?” Denver asked.

Mike stood up and clutched the datapad and a number of loose sheets of paper. “A road trip,” he said.

“We’re heading out to get the parts,” Charlie added. He eyed the croatoans with suspicion. These were a pair of small engineer types. Perhaps because of their size, and maybe because of their role, they didn’t generate the same levels of hate, and Mike seemed to be getting on well with them, swapping notes and discussing engineering ideas.

“Make sure our place stays empty, would you, Ryan?” Denver said. “I’ve grown quite comfortable here and wouldn’t want people coming and going.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Right then, let’s go,” Charlie said. “We’ve got a wreckage to plunder.”

“I’ll be right there,” Denver said. “I’ll just grab a book for the journey.”

He headed back into the room, concerned the Maria clone might have snuck in, but when he checked, the weapon was still there. Packing it beneath an old T-shirt he had found in one of the drawers, he hid the weapon at the bottom of his backpack. Although they took his rifle and other weapons when they caught him spying, they did give him back his backpack and general supplies.

Not feeling confident about leaving the weapon behind, he put his backpack on and left the room, wondering just how long, or frequently, the Maria clone had spied on them.

Denver joined the others outside, climbing into the back of the adapted harvester. He sat next to Layla and Maria, who had agreed to come along to help with the search. Charlie sat up front with Mike and the two alien engineers.

The engine roared and the harvester vibrated as they pulled out of the courtyard and headed for the ramp that led out of Unity’s basin. Denver was pleased to have left his house-prison, but he worried what the clone was up to.

Either way, he would find out, and he was now armed.

Chapter 27

AUGUSTUS FINISHED ANNOTATING another history book with his corrections and sat back in his chair. Sighing, he reached out for a goblet of wine. He needed something to take the edge off his growing anxiety.

Although Gregor seemed loyal and appeared to be satisfied to carry out his new task, Augustus had been on Earth long enough to know that treachery and cowardice were the two halves of many men’s hearts.

The only factor that guaranteed a degree of virtuousness was the promise of power and the belief in a higher creation. The latter, however, had diminished greatly in humanity’s consideration.

Extraterrestrials blew apart many of the religions and myths, leaving humankind wandering in the darkness of their own unexplained existence. Which for Augustus presented an opportunity. Those seeking answers to questions that had none would accept anything with the right delivery of rhetoric.

All it took was for someone to grasp the fate of humankind in his fist and mold it in his vision. All it took was an emperor with strength and the vision to lead humanity once more to cultural and technological new heights. A new republic inclusive of all those who sought the answers that he could deliver would start right here in Unity.

It would just take a little time.

Augustus was used to waiting.

Thanks to the croatoans’ technology and root compound, he had learned to cheat fate of its whims. He would defy the memory of the dead gods and be Earth’s immortal leader.

Unlike the aliens, however, he would not hide in stasis underground for thousands of years, waiting for the moment.

Carpe diem.

The time was now. Once Hagellan was out of the picture, he would unite the disparate groups within the settlement and drive out any dissenters to his rule—including their ally Aimee Rivery.

He could not afford any threads of subversion to remain in his new world to take hold and undermine him.

He drank deeply from the goblet. The wine tasted unrefined and agricultural. Nothing like the superior grapes from Italy and France when he was in Rome, but he wasn’t a man to hanker too much for the past.

The past remained a vacuum of potential.

Memories were but an illusion of things that may or may not have existed in reality. One only had to read the history books that had survived to see how time distorts reality. No, the past held no answers for him. It held no guidance in a world changed far beyond the imagination of anyone from that era.

He looked forward only.

Without the council managing resources on the ground, the remaining croatoans would soon learn independent thought, just as those within Unity had.

But they would still look for direction.

They weren’t bred for agency; they were bred as tools for their superiors to use to achieve their goals. Just as Augustus would use them to achieve his.

With no croatoan ground army left on the planet after they had left before the ice age, there was nothing or no one who could stop him once he had enough resources, once he had collected enough tools.

Having survived that little irritant, Charlie Jackson’s bomb, Augustus knew he had to seize this opportunity.

Free of the croatoan council’s domination, the potential for molding the world to his vision came to him as though it were a gift from the gods he once worshipped.

By now, he knew Jupiter wasn’t a deity, but a discounted destination many miles away in the solar system. None of those celestial bodies truly mattered anymore. They were just one handful of spinning rocks in a universe of infinite numbers.

Earth, however, was the prized gem.

Augustus finished the last of the wine and opened another book that had been salvaged from a destroyed library in one of the nearby towns.

This one was advertised as a ‘science fiction’ novel. He retrieved the scratchy pen and prepared to make his annotations. When he became emperor, the first thing he would do would be to train scribes to rewrite the history books so they were correct, and write fiction that furthered his vision.

Manipulation presented as entertainment was humankind’s greatest discovery, and he was not fool enough to ignore its uses.

Fewer than five pages into this turgid tale of star travelers, Augustus sat up in surprise as one of his spies from the ludus burst in, breathing heavily and attempting to say something.

“What is it?” August snapped, closing the book and standing up. He leaned forward on the desk to peer down at the boy.

“I… saw… Baliska coming this… way.” The boy pointed out of the side window of Augustus’ office.

“When?”

“A… minute or so ago… sir.”

“Stall him. And if you get a chance, kill him.”

The boy just nodded, his eyes wide.

“Actually, no, you won’t stand a chance. Cause a distraction so I can escape. They won’t be expecting me to attack.”

The boy just blinked, trying to get his breath.

“Well, go, then!” Augustus said, shooing the boy out of his office. When he left, Augustus slid the latch across the door and dashed behind the desk. He retrieved one of the croatoans’ pistols from a drawer and waited.

Five minutes later an explosion roared out from the back of the ludus compound. Good!

The boy opened the door and stepped inside. “Baliska’s down, the place is in chaos, go!” He ushered Augustus out and led him through a narrow, twisting corridor and down some steps. A secret passage was hidden behind a locked door resembling a storeroom.

“You did well,” Augustus said. “Lock up behind me.”

The boy nodded and followed the order.

With Baliska out of the picture, that left Aimee vulnerable up there in her manse.

Pulling the hood of his robe over his head to shadow his face, Augustus made his way through the maze of dirt roads and alleys, following a route he had devised that would allow him to reach her stronghold without being seen until he was at the door.

A teenage girl sprang out from a dark doorway of a decrepit shelter, forcing Augustus to sidestep a puddle of crap, and he reached out for her shoulders to stop himself from tripping over.

“Watch where you’re going,” he snapped.

The girl recoiled and stepped back, her face twisting with revulsion.

He reached up and touched his face, forgetting that he no longer wore the mask. He sneered at the girl until she ran off crying. Yes, little girl, you run from monsters, but it will do you no good.

Pulling his hood lower, he set off at a quicker pace, hiding the pistol within the folds of his robe. A few minutes later, his heart rate quickening with effort and anticipation of his next move, he arrived at the doors of Aimee’s stronghold.

A human guard stepped out from the door.

Augustus struck from the shadows.

The single strike on the back of the guard’s head with the solid alien pistol knocked him out with ease. Augustus snuck a look around him. The town was busy as usual. Everyone hurried about their chores.

Above him, two bored aliens leaned over the ramparts, looking down into the town on either side of the stronghold. Neither saw him from their position.

Satisfied he was clear, Augustus dragged the unconscious guard beneath the arch. He opened the heavy doors and stepped into the dark, candlelit interior, hand firmly on the pistol’s grip.

He stayed in the shadows for a moment for his vision to adapt to the drastic differences of light.

The stale air inside carried a chill, due to the thick stone walls, and a pleasant scent of burning incense. The dining area was empty, as was the main meeting hall.

Like a trained dog, he followed the scent of incense, skulking silently through the shadows until he came to Aimee’s bedroom.

Through a gap between the door and the frame, he saw her standing with her back to the door as she put on a dress.

She stopped for a brief moment, her muscles tightening.

Did she know? Could she tell he waited there like a reaper come to claim her soul? Not taking any chances, he barged through the door and dashed across the stone floor.

Aimee spun round, holding her dress to her chest, her eyes wide with surprise and no little revulsion.

Augustus raised his pistol, the barrel just inches from her face.

“Not so confident of your position now, are you, Madam Rivery?”

“What… what is this? What are you playing at?” Aimee looked to the corners of the room.

Augustus didn’t follow her gaze, knowing her enforcers were not here to save her this time.

The rumor among the dissenters within Unity was that Aimee had never had a single person in her bed in all the time she’d been here.

“Your role in this little tragedy has come to an end,” Augustus said. “Don’t feel disappointed, sweet child, this was inevitable. Those in power always become targets—which given your time with the Ottomans, if the books are to be believed, you knew full well.”

Aimee dropped her hands to her sides. Her dress faltered but stayed on. She sighed. “You’re right, of course, Emperor. You would know this firsthand, having lost two empires now.”

“And yet here I am,” he said, sneering, “on the cusp of my third. This is nothing personal; remember that as you take your last breath.”

“You think you’ll be able to rule Unity?” Aimee laughed. “You know nothing about these people. I know all about you and your plans. You think you can hide secrets here? For a former emperor, you still haven’t learned the most valuable of all lessons.”

“Oh? I’ve learned your secrets,” Augustus said, placing his finger on the trigger. “I’ve learned all about you and Hagellan and your pathetic little plans. Didn’t include me in that revelation, did you? You thought you could keep me in the dark and manipulate me? No, I’m afraid not. Your time here is over.”

Before Augustus could pull the trigger, a dark shape darted from his left.

He didn’t get a good look before something solid struck him on the side of the head. He dropped the pistol and fell to the ground. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Chapter 28

CHARLIE GAZED out of the harvester’s front window as they rumbled toward the crash site. He had long since gotten bored of watching the croatoan engineer smoothly operating the vehicle. Mike maintained a keen interest, scribbling notes on a pad and talking under his breath. They crossed a parched root field and crashed through woodland with surprising ease.

He wondered if these two aliens thought they shared something in common with him, besides their impending doom at the hands of a planet destroyer. Both croatoans dressed in handmade cotton trousers and sweaters and had tubes running from their nostrils to their backpacks. He would only put up with them for the sake of necessity.

Charlie had a new issue with them. They stank of a mix between rotten fish and cat shit. Hardly a crime, but it was the first time he had been in an enclosed space with them for any extended period of time and received a strong blast of the odor. More than once he searched for a button that might be an electric window. Wishful thinking.

The croatoan co-driver caught his attention. It swished a glove across a shiny panel. A bright blue screen burst into life.

It extended a finger toward a cluster of red dots. “Signals.”

“You mean more croatoans?” Mike asked.

“Yes.”

Charlie leaned forward for a closer look. “Are they at the ship? How many?”

“Twenty. Yes.”

The Unity-raised driver spoke better English. One of the reasons it came along. It also knew croatoan tactics and culture. “They will have sentries in circular formation. Outer defense ring. Not many. We proceed on foot.”

“Why have they returned to the wreck?” Mike said.

“Familiar,” the co-driver said.

Charlie glanced out of the window again. A faint shape appeared on the horizon, unclear through the haze. The harvester juddered to a halt.

Doors on both sides of the harvester’s cabin punched open with a pneumatic hiss. “Looks like you’ve made the choice for us,” Charlie said.

“On foot,” the driver said.

Charlie clambered down the ladder and watched Mike unsteadily grunt his way after him. “You’re getting a bit old for this.”

Mike looked over his shoulder. “My body is a naturally created temple, Charlie. It’ll all catch up with you one day.”

Charlie didn’t want to imagine what kind of state he would be in without a supply of root. He’d suffered for a short period after his capture, and Mike was right. He’d felt every twinge of a body that had been worked hard for three decades way beyond its natural ability. Packing the repaired ship with a healthy supply would be a priority. He had no idea of how long they’d be away, or what trouble would be waiting for them.

The rest of the squad exited the back. They walked around the side and circled the group at the front. They numbered seven oddly dressed croatoans, Charlie, Mike, Denver and both Marias.

Denver wandered up with his rifle over his shoulder. “What’s the plan, Dad?”

“It’s over there.” Charlie pointed over the trees, no longer able to see the shape from their current position. “We proceed on foot. There’s twenty croatoans around it.”

“Twenty against twelve,” Denver said. “I like those odds.”

Mike stepped between them. “We’re outnumbered. Are you sure about this?”

“We’ve been outnumbered for years,” Charlie said. “Besides, we’ve come to fight. They might be a bunch of those little surveyors or drivers. Stay behind me and you’ll be fine.”

Clone-Maria tugged at Denver’s arm. “I didn’t come to fight.”

Denver whispered to her, giving her assurances. Charlie felt sure she would be in good hands with Denver looking out for the newbies.

The croatoans grabbed alien rifles from a side compartment of the harvester. The driver approached Charlie. “I will lead. When the ship crashed, it left a wake of debris and destruction. We will—”

At first Charlie put the pause down to the croatoan trying to think of the right word to use, until he heard a distant whine.

It grew louder. Closer. An approaching hover-bike.

Trees rustled ahead of them with the downdraft.

“Take cover,” Charlie shouted.

The group split, humans and aliens scattering in all directions. Charlie shouldered his rifle, aimed skyward, and noticed two aliens in his peripheral vision doing the same.

A hover-bike thrust over them. Charlie fired. Croatoan rifles snapped to his side. A shot thumped into the forest floor, just to his right, creating a spray of mud and pine needles.

He peered through a gap in the trees. The hover-bike banked around and approached for a second run, approaching at pace, ridden by two croatoan riders.

The forest filled with the bangs and snaps of hybrid gunfire. A tracer round slammed into the rear rider and it gripped its chest. Great shot by Denver.

Charlie repositioned himself around the trunk, aimed and fired.

The bike slowed. Its engine cut in and out. It plunged nose first toward their general location, plowing through branches above Charlie’s head.

Red engine coolant spilled around him.

Somebody screamed. Human.

Charlie spun at the same time as the bike crashed into the forest, smashing between trees and dropping around forty meters away.

Two Unity croatoans bounced from their locations to the downed bike and fired at the other aliens from point-blank range.

Denver jumped through the undergrowth. Six Unity croatoans surrounded the bike, excitedly clicking.

Charlie turned to Mike. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine. You realize this means they can probably track our group, as we located them?”

“Good point,” Charlie said, patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

He weaved through the trees, bounding toward the group. Maria backed away from the wreckage with her hand over her mouth. She propped against a tree and vomited. Denver looked at Charlie and shook his head.

“What is it?” Charlie said.

A croatoan pointed to the front of the wreckage.

Charlie barged between two aliens to get a better view. Mike pounded up behind them and said, “Oh my God.”

The front half of Clone-Maria, dressed in her brown robe, protruded from beneath the hover-bike wreckage. A Unity croatoan lay next to her, tubes snapped from its face, skin shriveled.

Charlie knelt down and closed Clone-Maria’s eyes. He shut his eyes for a few seconds and swallowed hard. A life spent under oppression had ended.

Behind him, real Maria sobbed. Denver put his arm around her. The croatoans stood in a line, clutching their rifles against their chests. The driver, who seemed to assume the role of their leader, said, “Kill them all.”

Mike sighed. “They don’t waste any time.”

“They’re right,” Charlie said. “If they know we’re here, others might come. We can’t give them a chance to properly organize.”

“Approach through debris field,” the driver said. “Change angle of attack.”

“Will they be expecting us to approach from here?” Mike said.

“Croatoans like to take threats head-on,” the driver croaked. “Will be lining up forces in this direction.”

That gave Charlie an idea. “If they funnel toward the perceived threat, and it makes sense thinking about previous skirmishes, let’s flank them by heading in that direction and double back.”

The aliens didn’t reply.

Denver led Maria back to the group and said, “I’ll move in from here. Draw them in this direction. You attack from the side when they’re not expecting it.”

The driver turned to his group and clicked. One replied, “Will work if you see a sentry first and he communicates to the others.”

“Cunning human,” an alien in a tatty croatoan uniform said.

Denver rolled his eyes and reloaded his magazine. Maria knelt next to her body double and attempted to cover her face, using pine needles scooped from the ground.

Charlie said to the driver, “Which way to the debris field?”

It pointed to the right.

“Okay, let’s move out.” He turned to Denver. “We’ll be on your right flank and will stay back until we hear gunfire. Don’t get too close.”

Maria sniffed and wiped her cheeks. “We should give her some dignity.”

Charlie lowered his rifle and stooped next to Maria. “Dignity left us in 2014. Remember the human casualties from the initial invasion, piled into a sinkhole?”

Denver reached under Maria’s arm and hauled her up. “Come with me. We can’t wait to be attacked. We’ll help her later.”

The driver moved off with the remaining five croatoans in an extended line. Charlie exchanged a knowing glance with Denver before following. They understood each other perfectly. Good luck, see you on the other side.

“Stay behind me, Mike. We need you alive,” Charlie said.

Mike smiled, although it lacked his usual enthusiasm. “It’s nice to be wanted at my age.”

AFTER TWENTY MINUTES of picking their way through the undergrowth, a bright light streamed into the trees ahead.

Charlie kept glancing to his left, checking to ensure they didn’t get too far away from Denver, otherwise the plan would prove pointless. In the distance, his son darted between trees, making swift progress.

Charlie paused as he reached the edge of a giant, six-hundred-meter-wide gouge through the forest. Trees flattened in the same direction, interspersed with twisted pieces of metal. Shattered white plastic and other mangled parts of the ship spread across the debris field.

He looked to his left and lowered his rifle and gasped. The cluttered debris trail led half a mile to the downed ship. The rough, dark gray, semi-circular shape punched into the clear blue sky hundreds of feet above the trees at a forty-five-degree angle.

“We move along the edge. Come,” the driver said.

Charlie nodded and turned to Mike. “Not a bad team effort.”

Mike stared open-mouthed at the carnage. He dabbed his brow with a folded white handkerchief. “Seeing it like this…”

“You’ll get a closer look. Come on.”

The lead croatoan returned to just under the canopy and bounced toward the ship. Once the eight of them fanned out over a distance of one hundred meters, they stopped and turned back to face the forest, waiting and watching.

Dark figures moved between the trees, heading toward their former location in the unnatural croatoan way.

“Stay here, Mike.”

“I can help—”

A shot rang out through the forest.

Alien rifles started to snap.

Charlie trusted his son would fire at range before the aliens were on top of him. He looked along the line. All eyes were on him. Charlie took control and crisply indicated forward with a flat hand.

Mike tried to stand. Charlie gripped his shoulder and eased him back down. “Stay. This isn’t your part of the plan.”

The group, minus Mike, collectively advanced. The sound of enemy fire masked their movement.

The enemy croatoans ducked behind trees and took potshots in Denver’s direction. He returned fire and provided a good enough distraction.

Charlie reached within fifty meters before the first alien noticed him. Too late for that one. Charlie’s round smashed through its visor, and it fell to the ground with a twist, dropping its rifle and clutching its throat.

He counted another nine, all in standard uniform. Fired at the closest. Orange vapor hissed from its pack after taking a hit. Charlie’s next round sparked off an armor plate on its uniform, but the thing was already on its way to the ground. He pumped another round into the helmet, just to make sure.

The Unity croatoans screamed and charged, initially surprising Charlie. They ran at speed, bouncing directly at the enemy, firing from their hips.

They must have surprised the aliens attacking Denver. They collectively turned and froze. The Unity croatoans showed little mercy. They fired relentlessly, dropping their opponents, howling, and swarming individuals until the forest fell silent. They collected weapons and piled them in a small clearing.

It was over in a flash.

Charlie scrambled up to the group. They surrounded one of the ship’s croatoans that had taken a hit in the stomach area. It whimpered and tried to shuffle away.

“Need to make sure,” the driver said. It picked up a rock and smashed it into the casualty’s visor.

Other Unity croatoans followed suit. Like a medieval army slitting throats on a battlefield. Charlie had never seen them act like this before and felt pleased they were on his side. If the standard guard acted with such coordinated ferocity, his and Denver’s effort would have probably been extinguished a long time ago.

MIKE MOVED through the forest and joined Charlie. He mopped his brow again and muttered while taking in the scene. Denver appeared from the other direction, vigilantly aiming from side to side, Maria trailing behind him.

“Only small ones now,” the driver said.

“Excuse me?” Charlie said.

“Surveyors. Drivers. Processors. No threat. Only had nine guard signals. All dead.”

“What about the defensive formation?”

“Converged.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s talking about?” Denver said.

“It’s saying that we’ve done the hard work. They form a defensive ring and gather toward any threat,” Charlie said. He turned to the driver. “Isn’t that right?”

It raised a digit, more like a talon than a thumb. Probably a gesture it learned in Unity. Charlie tried not to feel repulsed.

Denver approached the driver. “Two of you bring the harvester up and meet us at the base of the ship. I’m sure that thing can get close enough.”

The driver clicked instructions to a couple of his team.

THE SHIP CAST a large shadow over the forest as they approached. They were close; Charlie saw it through the trees. The aliens wanted to go via the debris field and collect anything useful. Charlie refused. Aliens might be able to hop through it with ease, but it would have taken a human all day to tackle the large chunks of ship mixed with smashed trunks and branches.

Maria walked alongside Charlie as Denver scouted ahead. He refused to take a diversionary role again on this mission. Her shoulders slumped and she gazed into the distance.

“You okay, Maria?”

“I don’t belong here. None of this…”

“You’re gonna have to explain. We all belong here.”

“I don’t feel like a real person.”

“Don’t be silly,” Charlie said, although he could see her logic. “You’re as real as Den or me.”

“Do you have a Charlie clone? Imagine seeing another Charlie killed in front of you.”

Charlie vaulted over a large metal beam wedged between two trees and held his hand out to Maria. “Never thought of it like that. At least there’s only one of you now.”

She clambered over and dropped to the other side. “There’s probably hundreds of me. I don’t want to go through this anymore. I can’t offer anything.”

“From what I hear, you’ve already offered a lot. Helping Layla on the farm, coming all the way to Unity with Den. Don’t undersell yourself. None of us find this easy.”

“I mean it, Charlie. I feel useless. Not real.”

Charlie shook his head. “We can talk about this back at Unity. You’ve had a lot to take in recently. I don’t blame you for having doubts.”

She stared over Charlie’s shoulder. He took a few steps ahead of her and gazed at the ship. A section at the bottom peeled to one side, like it had been sliced open by a large can opener. Inside was a scruffy mesh of twisted wreckage. Sparks fizzed from a swinging cable, hanging over the open section. The main hull of the ship rose into the sky, formerly smooth, now dented, charred and imposing.

Denver returned from the front. “It looks all clear.”

“Take the driver back and bring the harvester while the techies do their thing. Every minute we waste, that destroyer gets closer.”

They both instinctively ducked as the structure trembled and groaned like a giant foghorn.

Charlie turned to Mike. “It’s all yours.”

Chapter 29

AUGUSTUS’ HEAD THROBBED. He vomited onto the floor. A pair of hands grabbed him by the robe and pulled him. His arms were trapped behind his back. Blinking his vision clear, he saw Aimee stand over him, a pair of iron shackles in her hand.

She tossed them and they clattered against the stone floor next to him.

“For all your years, you still haven’t gained control of your temper,” Aimee said. “You don’t think things through enough, Augustus, but you know that, don’t you. You didn’t think enough about the Goths, and you didn’t think enough about Charlie Jackson. Your arrogance and hubris will always be your doom.”

Augustus spat at her and tried to wrench his arms free, but whoever it was behind him—definitely human by the feel of their hands—yanked his arms further back, making his spine and shoulders crack. He yelled out and dropped his head.

“What do you want?” he said, spittle flying from his mouth. “You want to kill me? Get on with it, then, bitch.”

“Kill you? Perhaps, but seeing as we no longer have Charlie Jackson as a main draw, we are light on special entertainment. I think, all things considered, the people of Unity deserve to behold the last Roman as he fights in the arena. It’s fitting, don’t you think?”

Despite the life-extending stasis procedures of the croatoans and his root use, it was clear to anyone that his days of combat were over. He hadn’t fought since the last days of the empire. But faced with the alternative of being killed right here and now, he would take the chance—there could be an opportunity to escape before he had to fight for survival. He still had the loyalty of a number of humans working in the ludus and other aspects of the arena to call upon.

“I will accept,” Augustus said. “I will show you and your fucking peasants what I’m capable of.”

“I’m sure you will, Augustus, I’m sure you will.” She then referred to the person behind him. “Shackle him, Khan.” She picked up the croatoan pistol and aimed it at Augustus’ head as this Khan person let go of his hands and picked up the shackles. “You move an inch, and I won’t hesitate for a moment to deprive Unity of seeing the last Roman in action. You understand me?”

“Perfectly.”

Khan, a dark-eyed, passive-faced man, stepped round to face Augustus, but didn’t look up at him. He bent down and began to place the shackles around Augustus’ ankles. The thought of kicking the young man in the face crossed his mind, but he knew Aimee would kill him there and then if he tried.

He’d seen that focused look on her face before—at the arena. Despite her appearances to the contrary, she was as bloodthirsty as any warlord Augustus had met, including those in the croatoan council during the uprising.

You’d look at the remaining aliens now and wonder how they took over the planet so quickly. Meek and bred to follow orders, they had little agency or thoughts of their own, but the combat species were an entirely different beast.

They travelled from planet to planet, wiping out resistances and laying the groundwork for a council-controlled mother ship to oversee the farming and terraforming.

Compared to them, Khan and Aimee were sickly kittens.

But even a sickly kitten with a weapon was something to be wary of.

“I assume I’ll be facing Baliska in the arena?” Augustus said as he shuffled slightly, making sure Khan couldn’t yet attach the shackles. A noise from outside had caught Augustus’ ear—a brief sound of struggle and the squeak of a rusted hinge. From Aimee’s position near her crackling fire, it didn’t seem as if she had heard it, and Khan was too busy trying to work out how the arcane mechanism of the shackles worked.

“Stay still,” Aimee said, stepping forward. “And yes, you’ll be facing Baliska… among others.”

Augustus smiled. “Not a fair fight, then?”

“You don’t deserve one.”

“That makes two of us.”

“A little late for threats,” Aimee said.

Khan finally unlocked the shackles and placed the iron rings over Augustus’ left ankle. Augustus kicked out, catching the young man in the throat and knocking him over as the former emperor dived to his right.

The door to Aimee’s room burst open. Gregor and three human thugs piled in, catching Aimee off guard. Her shot went high and wide. Gregor saw Khan on the floor with the shackles.

“Kill him!” Augustus screamed. Gregor raised his croatoan-made rifle and fired once into Khan’s ribs, sending him flat against the floor with a screech. Before Aimee could recover, the thugs had pulled their pistols—a combination of croatoan and human weapons—and pointed them at the Unity leader.

Gregor stepped forward, looked around to assess the situation, and spoke to Augustus. “I talked with your little helper at the ludus. Thought you might need a hand.”

For a moment, Augustus believed the ex-farm manager would see this as an opportunity to seize power for himself and rid this world of Augustus, but he turned back to Aimee, ignoring the emperor.

He stepped forward. Aimee stepped back. She looked over his shoulder. At first, Augustus, from his position to the right-hand side of the room, thought she was simply looking at Khan or the three thugs, but a large shadow entered, quickly followed by the bulky, threatening shape of Baliska.

The large hunter drove his sword into the first thug’s back, killing him instantly. His mate next to him turned only to have a dagger thrust into his throat. He fell to the ground, gurgling.

Gregor and the remaining thug turned and fired, but Baliska was already on the move, ducking and rolling down the left side of the room. As he came back up to his feet, he pulled an angular croatoan pistol from a compartment in his black armor and fired twice. The remaining thug’s head snapped back on the first shot and broke apart on the second.

Gregor fired twice. The first directed at Aimee, the second at Baliska. Aimee twitched out of the way, just missing the shot, but she dropped her pistol to the ground between her and Gregor.

Augustus considered trying to make a grab for it, but when Baliska launched himself at Gregor, knocking the rifle from his hands and driving him down to the floor, Augustus climbed to his feet and snuck out the door as the melee continued and all attention was on the fight in the now-crowded room.

Once he slipped outside, he took a quick look back.

Aimee dodged Gregor’s thrashing legs as she tried to wrestle free of the large croatoan. She slipped and fell to the ground, cracking her head against the corner of her bed. Baliska reared up and delivered two mighty punches to Gregor’s chest, knocking the fight out of him.

Before they realized he had left, Augustus sprinted down the short corridor to the dining hall and turned right into a small archway that led to a tunnel he knew would take him out through the back of the stronghold.

The sound of rushing feet from a steel staircase on the other side of the dining room told him those guarding the ramparts had heard the commotion and were now on their way to deal with the aftermath.

Augustus made sure he wouldn’t be around when they arrived.

Through the twisting tunnel he ran, dodging low as the access became ever tighter. Eventually, scraping through, he kicked open a wooden covering and opened the iron gate. He stepped out into the morning air. The smell of roasting bacon and the sounds of the town waking up gave him the cover to sprint to the steps at the rear of the basin.

With no guards on the ramparts, and unable to be seen by the observation towers due to being blocked by the stronghold, Augustus commandeered Aimee’s personal hover-bike and sped off deep into the canopy.

There would be no arena fighting for him. No more diplomacy or patience.

There would be only war.

He would retreat for now, regroup, and return with force to take Unity for himself under his sole rule.

He’d put Aimee’s head on a pike first as a warning to others.

GREGOR COUGHED up blood and squirmed beneath Baliska’s great bulk. The alien sat back onto his gut, pinning him in place. It snarled at Gregor, exposing its teeth. Aimee had found a pistol and was checking on Khan. Gregor knew his time was coming to an end.

With Augustus abandoning him—even though Gregor had taken a risk to come here—he knew he had but one option left.

“I give up,” Gregor said, relaxing. “I submit, or whatever it is you lot understand. I’m done; it’s over. I’m in your custody.”

Baliska growled at him and grabbed his throat with one of its massive paws. Aimee appeared by the alien’s side and placed a hand on its shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said. Let him live—for now. We have bigger things to worry about.”

She turned to a group of four aliens who’d rushed in. “Augustus has escaped; we need to find him. I want you to split up, organize two scouting parties. Go. Make sure he’s found. Use deadly force if you have to. I’m tired of taking the slow approach with him.”

Baliska eased the pressure on Gregor’s throat and stood up, turning to Aimee for directions. Gregor, anticipating such a move, grabbed the syringes of poison from a protective case in his pocket, and jabbed through the tough scaly hide of the alien, plunging the full complement of poison into the damned thing’s bloodstream.

The alien howled and bent its head back. It extended its arms as its muscles began to contract against its will. But then it seemed to gain control. It bent down and lifted Gregor by the throat, squeezing his windpipe, making him choke.

Kicking with everything he had, Gregor started to panic. Had Augustus tricked him? Was the poison ineffective? Had he known this and hoped Gregor would die at Hagellan’s hands?

Stars and splotches of colors appeared in his vision as he strained for breath. Tension left his body and he started to close his eyes, fighting the oncoming unconsciousness.

But the alien’s grip weakened.

Gregor heaved in a deep breath, refilling his burning lungs, bringing both pain and much-needed oxygen. He fell to his feet, collapsing against the wall. Aimee looked on in horror as Baliska staggered back, clutching its chest. Like a great redwood, the beast fell, hitting the deck with a thud.

Its arms flopped uselessly by its sides.

Nothing moved. Its chest did not rise. There was no sound from its breathing apparatus. It worked!

Aimee knelt to the alien as she screamed, “No!”

Taking the opportunity, Gregor staggered to the door but jumped back when another pair of guards entered. Human this time. A grizzled-looking woman lifted a gun to his head.

Before Gregor could say anything he felt two sharp points stab into his spine. A bolt of electricity shocked him to the ground, where he lay shaking with muscle spasms as the electricity held him in place. Eventually, Aimee relented. Blood dripped from Gregor’s nose and mouth. Every limb ached with pain.

“Take this bastard to the cells,” Aimee ordered the guards.

Gregor could do nothing to stop them. He had no energy and no control of his limbs. He mumbled something, trying to insult Aimee, but she just watched on as the guards lifted him up.

Stepping forward close to him, Aimee slapped him hard in the face. “You’ll pay for this, newcomer. In Augustus’ place, you’ll fight this afternoon in the arena. But trust me, it won’t be a fight. It’ll be a slaughter. Get him out of my sight and fetch some cleaners to clear this mess,” Aimee said, indicating the blood and bodies in her room.

As they dragged Gregor away, he saw her wipe a tear from her eye. How could she cry over the aliens? If he were to be slaughtered, he’d make sure he’d take out as many as he could before he went.

This place was an abomination.

Hell, the whole world was now.

The thought of leaving it and joining his family in whatever afterlife, if there was such a thing, awaited him brought him a sense of comfort.

He was looking forward to the arena. He was ready to leave this world; he couldn’t change it on his own, and if humans wanted to coexist with the bastards that enslaved them, then more fool them.

They were welcome to reap what they sowed.

Chapter 30

MIKE’S old back creaked and generally protested his foolhardy maneuvers through the wreckage of the mother ship.

With no time for him to recover a sense of calm after the short battle, his chest heaved under the effort of clambering over twisted hunks of metal and ducking through caved-in tunnels constructed with ship detritus.

The two small aliens led him through, their scaly hands supporting him as he struggled to maintain his balance in the dark of the wreckage. The smallest one, that he had decided to refer to as Blinky due to his rapid blinking when he was thinking about stuff or being spoken to, stopped in a narrow section.

Using his flashlight, Mike swept the tight confines. Blinky and the taller one, whom Mike had decided would be Grumpy on account of his surly shoulder shrugging, pressed against his legs as they struggled to fit.

Blue flashes lit up sections of the ship from somewhere further into the wreckage. A hum permeated the place and was joined by the smell of ozone and something earthy yet metallic.

“What is it?” Mike prompted, wondering why Blinky didn’t go through the hole in the dark. It looked like a doorway had collapsed and the floor of the level above sunk down to join this one, creating a triangular, narrow entry.

Blinky blinked.

Grumpy shrugged.

“Well?” Mike said, pushing forward to see what the fuss was. He twisted sideways and stepped through the confining space as Grumpy eased out of the way. Mike ducked down to Blinky’s level and looked through the small hole into a hallway beyond.

“Oh,” Mike said when he saw the problem.

The hallway must have stretched some five meters long and a couple wide. The roof had caved in at various sections. A group of six aliens, small, like Blinky and Grumpy, lay dead in a heap, the infrastructure having crushed and pierced them to death.

This was the source of the strange smell.

Their corpses were rotting, yet no flies buzzed.

Mike stepped back and placed his hand on Blinky’s shoulder.

In another time he would have shuddered with revulsion, but watching the small alien’s face twist into sadness and seeing the first lot of bodies inside only reminded Mike of what it felt like to lose a loved one.

He remembered seeing the bodies of those who worked on the Roanoke dig site, and later, upon returning to Manhattan, the office workers who had perished in the first raids when the EMPs and the ground force swept through North America, with their chemical and cold fusion bombs.

Despite everything, these small aliens, born long after the initial invasion, were no more to blame for what happened than modern-day Germans were for the Holocaust.

But it didn’t make it any easier.

Sure, he could sympathize. But even now, with Blinky’s obvious sadness, Mike still couldn’t fully trust them.

He still didn’t even think Hagellan was necessarily telling them the truth.

But if Charlie could get onto the ship, and if Mai completed her work on the bomb, then at least they would have some insurance.

Grumpy stepped up behind Blinky and lit up the hallway with his own flashlight. He made a grunting noise followed by a series of clicks and whistles. Blinky nodded and slipped forward, leaving Mike’s hand to drop by his side.

It seemed neither species were entirely comfortable with this setup.

Despite that, the two engineers continued to lead Mike through the wreckage.

As he squeezed and pushed himself through narrow corridors and crouched beneath broken crossbeams, Mike couldn’t but help focus on the details.

He wanted to stop and examine everything, but knew the clock was ticking.

Alien metals, new elements, technology that came from an ideology so different to humans, it all appealed to his sense of wonder and a desire to learn.

Just what secrets could he uncover if he had more time to analyze the pink-glowing lights within the crushed, transparent cabinet. Rings of these lights thrummed quietly up and down a tube, creating an effect that Mike couldn’t discern.

Could be a power supply; could be a processor of sorts, who knew?

The walls of the ship were made from a multilayered honeycomb of what looked like woven tungsten.

Through his journey into the center of the wreckage, heading for the central power unit where the parts Hagellan required were to be found, he saw more of this construction.

In places it had held firm, supporting a number of levels above. In other places it had collapsed into what he guessed were planned crumple zones, for the walls and ceilings had rarely crashed into areas of mechanical significance.

Given the number of bodies in the ship’s wreckage—much lower than he anticipated, it seemed the alien engineers had developed a ship that could withstand a lot of damage before it killed those inside—or at least those that were important.

“Hey, wait up,” Mike called.

They led him into a small dark room.

A sliver of a doorway, on its side to his left, indicated where they’d gone, but Mike stepped forward cautiously.

Each footstep made the structure creak and groan under his weight.

It shifted violently as he neared the doorway, forcing him to throw out his arms in front of him as the momentum pushed him forward. He struck the doorframe with his shoulder; the impact made him wince and suck in his breath. He collapsed to the floor, dropping his flashlight. It fell through a gap into a level below.

Smoke drifted up through a holed section, carrying the stench of burning oil of some kind. He coughed and reached to grip the doorframe of the narrow entry point and hauled himself to his feet.

The low roof collapsed behind him, pinning him to the wall.

“Help!” Mike called out, pressing his face through the half-meter-wide gap.

A pair of shadows moved out of sight.

“Hey, I’m stuck. Help me!”

No response.

The skin on his neck and face prickled with the dawning that they’d abandoned him. Had they led him here on purpose?

The smoke continued to fill the tiny space, making his lungs burn with every breath.

More creaking and rending of metal screeched just beyond the fallen ceiling that pressed Mike against the wall. It sounded like the whole thing would collapse on him, entombing him in alien metal. And he couldn’t even reach his radio, his arms pressed through the gap and the radio crushed behind him, attached to his belt.

Spots began to flash in his vision.

His tight chest made it difficult to breathe, and even then, with each lungful of inhalation, he brought with it the cloying, choking smoke.

“Fuck,” he whispered, closing his eyes as he tried in vain to push back and make some room for himself.

He didn’t know how long he remained in that position, having given up hope he would get out. He thought of Mai and the time they’d spent together. He thought of Charlie and Pippa and their time during the ice age. He saw her face, bright and smiling even though they lived through hell.

A welling-up of grief and sadness made him cough and thrash out his hand through the gap.

He touched something, recoiled his hand and opened his eyes.

“Blinky… help me,” he said as the small engineer looked up at him with wide eyes. For a moment the useless thing just stood there watching, but then, as though finally getting the situation, turned and waved Grumpy back while he ducked out of view. He returned with a pole and passed the end through the bottom of the narrow doorway. He and Grumpy pulled on the other end while Mike leaned his shoulder into the door in an attempt to help.

Nothing budged, despite their efforts.

From just behind the fallen ceiling piece a loud crash came, and the whole ship rocked, jolting the structure. It proved to be useful, however, as with another pull on the pole, the two engineers shifted the door open another foot.

Mike screamed out as he pushed with all he had, driving his shoulder into the door. Something in the mechanism gave, and it finally sprang open, sending Mike crashing forward to the floor with the momentum of his efforts.

The two aliens dropped the pole and dragged him forward.

He spun over just in time to see the door smash closed, just inches from crushing his ankles.

With their help, he managed to stand and regain his balance.

“Thanks, little guys,” Mike said.

They did their blinking and inclined their heads, clicking to each other in short bursts.

With no more exchange of pleasantries, they turned their backs and headed off, consulting a small screen attached to their wrists. They were reading Hagellan’s directions of how to reach the main engine bay’s maintenance section.

Through a dozen more tunnels and levels, twists and tight turns, Mike felt every year of his age in his bones and muscles.

Sweat dripped from his face, and he breathed heavily, wishing he hadn’t volunteered to come along.

Because the engineers were born in Unity, they hadn’t been trained in the proper way of the aliens brought over from their home planet or ones born on the ship. In truth, they weren’t even engineers, Mike just used that term to classify them due to their smaller size compared to the soldiers and the larger still hunters.

With their claw-like hands, they didn’t have the delicate dexterity of humans, especially as they weren’t trained to use the croatoan tools like the original engineers who had perished in the crash and subsequent battles.

Mike’s own tool kit hung around his front in a makeshift sling.

He had no idea if what he had brought would be enough for the task at hand, but if Charlie needed this part to get the ship airborne and stop the threat—if it were real—then Mike would do his best to deal with the situation.

The two aliens stopped in a dark passageway in front of a sheer surface at least two meters high with a meter-high gap at the top.

“Through there?” Mike said, pointing to the gap.

Blink, blink, nod.

Grumpy showed him his screen. A high-res image of a corridor leading to the maintenance room corresponded to what they were looking at now, only this was on an angle and the obstacle in the way appeared to have fallen through the ceiling, blocking access to the tunnel.

“I’ll lift you up,” Mike said, pointing to them and raising his arms.

Blink, blink, nod.

“Right then. Blinky, you first.”

Mike approached cautiously and held back his revulsion as he grabbed the four-foot-tall alien by the waist and lifted it up until it reached out its hands and dragged itself into the gap. “Now you, Grumpy.”

Mike repeated the movement.

Lifting the aliens reminded him of lifting Denver as a toddler when Charlie first brought him back to their shelter in the cave system. This was just before Pippa was killed. Despite everything they had lost at the time, having Denver with them renewed their hope and desire to carry on, if not for themselves, then for the next generation.

And Mike realized this was exactly the same situation.

He wasn’t doing this just for the immediate threat, but to help ensure the safety of the next generation.

Turning his attention back to the obstacle, Mike scanned the surface and found a number of foot and handholds where railings and other pieces of infrastructure had been ripped off this particular bulkhead or whatever purpose it had served in its original location.

He climbed until his head poked up into the darkness.

Muscles screaming, he reached a hand into the darkness in order to find something to pull himself up with but found nothing and began to slip. “Shit, shit…”

The two engineers peered above again, each one grabbing his hand.

Despite being tiny, they had enough strength to stop him from falling and helped to drag him up.

They managed to crouch in the narrow gap, but Mike had to stay on his arms and knees and shuffle through the darkness as they led, their screens bathing the tight passage with blue light.

Another twenty or so meters later and Mike found himself dropping out of the passage into the center of the maintenance room.

Clean, off-white, smooth surfaces surrounded the three-meter-square room. The walls must have been strengthened, as the ceiling, just a few centimeters above Mike’s head, hadn’t collapsed.

Blinky showed Mike the screen.

A diagram showed that the part they needed was behind one of the wall panels. Mike located it and reached forward with his arm to open the panel, but quickly pulled it back as something touched his skin and sizzled with a burn.

“Jesus, what the…”

A sizzling noise came from all around him. He looked up.

Through holes in the ceiling, a clear, acidic liquid dripped into pools on the floor. The two aliens backed off. “Oh, this is just great.”

The liquid, fuel or some kind of coolant, Mike guessed, was burning through the metal. The spot on his skin continued to burn.

Just great. If it wasn’t hard enough to get here, he now had to extricate a delicate part while avoiding multiple streams of acid.

“Well, best I get on with it, then, eh? Don’t look like you two care to help out much…” He shook his head and pulled the sling around his chest. He fished out a flat-tipped screwdriver and leaned carefully forward to the panel.

A stray drip bounced off the edge of his shoe, instantly melting through the leather and making him wince.

“Goddammit.”

Making himself as small as possible, he pried the panel open.

“Is this it?” Mike called out, pointing to a glowing green cylinder the size of a soda can. Wires and tubes connected to a lid on its top.

Blinky clicked his affirmation.

There didn’t appear to be any obvious way of removing it without damaging the metal cap that took the wires and tubes.

Taking a small multimeter, Mike checked it. The voltage and current were off the scale. Have to be careful with this baby, he thought.

As Mike thought how best to remove the device without breaking it, a terrible crack boomed from above him. He managed to duck out of the way as a crossbeam gave way and fell down. It struck Grumpy on the head, knocking him to the ground.

Mike couldn’t move away in time, frightened of stepping into the acid stream. The beam fell onto his ankle, trapping him in place.

The new hole above, with metal sheeting pointing down, funneled more acid into the tight room.

Mike looked away as a pool of it splashed onto the unmoving form of Grumpy.

He hated that he felt something for the poor bastard, but…

“Hey, where are you going?” Blinky had climbed the beam and disappeared back out of the passage into the gloom. “Come back here, you little…”

Damn this bullshit!

Mike tried his leg, but the beam was too heavy across his foot and ankle. It had probably broken it, if the pain was anything to go by.

With the acid filling the room with bitter, sharp fumes, Mike had no other option but to get to work. If he couldn’t get out of here and someone came for him after he had died, at least he’d get the part out of the system for them.

Fishing through his sling of tools, Mike took a shallow breath and set to work, all the while the sizzling of the dead croatoan’s body reminded him what awaited him if he didn’t get free.

Chapter 31

MIKE YELLED WITH TRIUMPH; the part came free and he hadn’t shocked himself with the full power of a piece of alien tech. Score one for Mike, but the sizzling of the acid had grown in volume.

The stench of hot metal and liquidized alien corpse made him want to retch.

Keeping his cool, Mike placed the part safely into a fabric wrap in the sling around his chest. Job one done; now how the hell to get out? He tried his ankle, but any movement sent a piercing stab of pain up his leg, and it remained well and truly stuck beneath the metal beam.

Looking over his shoulder, Mike saw that the acid had pooled in the far corner. He doubted it’d be long before whatever it was had filled to such an extent that it’d cover the entire floor and burn through his leg.

Might be one way out, he thought grimly.

He bent down carefully and tried to heave the beam up, gripping it by the edges, but it was too heavy for him to move. Then it occurred to him… of course, the radio! He pulled it free of the belt pouch and pressed the transmitter button, bringing the receiver to his lips… nothing. No squelch, no sound, not even static. He shook it and heard parts rattle inside. The case had cracked when he got trapped earlier.

“Seriously? Can I catch at least one damned break today?”

The mother ship rattled as something struck the hull, sending a loud booming noise throughout. It came again, this time making him reach out to grab the panel in order to keep his balance.

Two more booms and the shaking of the hull and he realized what it was: gunfire. There must have been reinforcements turn up.

Debris and fragments of metal sheeting fell through the hole above as the onslaught continued. Mike gritted his teeth and heaved again, trying to free his left leg. The pain gripped his throat. His body tried to shut down in order to deal with the agony. But still the beam wouldn’t budge.

“Help!” Mike yelled at the top of his voice, hoping someone would hear, but with the sound of another battle going on outside, he doubted it, and if that damned alien hadn’t betrayed him and ran off, he might be able to help.

Seeing his friend crushed with the beam was probably the last straw.

This was why no one should trust the aliens—even the ones that appeared friendly. Integrated into Unity or not, this proved they cared not one bit about humanity.

Slumping against the wall, he resigned himself once again that this was perhaps his last action.

But like last time, the shadows from the access point shifted, and there was Blinky, crawling out of the narrow space and carrying… what was that? A pole.

“Hey,” Mike said, pointing to his leg. “Help me? I have the part. We need to go before the ceiling caves in.”

Blinky blinked, taking in the scene. A sad expression came over his face when he looked upon his fallen friend. But as quickly as the look came, it faded away, replaced by one that Mike thought was determination.

The little alien scrambled off the ledge, being careful not to stand in a pool of acid or walk into one of the falling streams. He dragged a piece of debris, a meter cubed or so, and used it as a pivot for the two-meter-long pole. Jamming it into a space beneath the beam, the alien heaved.

At first it didn’t budge.

Mike secured the part, bent down, and helped to lift the beam as Blinky pushed down on the lever. The beam shifted. A rush of hope and relief flooded Mike as he pulled his leg out. He shouted with triumph, but it was clear the ankle was badly sprained, if not broken. He could barely put his weight on it.

“Go,” Blinky said, pointing to the exit. “We go.”

“Yeah, we do, thanks, little guy.”

Using the pole as a walking stick to take the weight off his leg, Mike and Blinky made their way back through the maze of the wreckage. This time, Mike didn’t take much notice of the alien tech, the materials, or even the dead.

With the ship creaking and groaning, pieces falling, and fires raging, all that mattered was getting out alive.

Together, they helped each other through tight corridors and up and over obstacles. A good fifteen minutes later, Mike saw an exit point to the outside. The sounds of gunfire had stopped.

Walking out of the shipwreck, Mike squinted against the noon sun. Maria and Charlie rushed over to him, propping him up. The little alien just scampered for the harvester. At least they managed to bring it over and he wouldn’t have to walk back through the forest. Mike noticed three croatoan fighters tied up outside of the shipwreck. Denver stood over them, pointing his alien rifle down.

“Bit of extra resistance?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, something like that,” Charlie said. “What happened to your leg?”

“Ankle got trapped under a beam. Grumpy didn’t make it, but Blinky, surprisingly, saved the day. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be standing here now.”

Charlie looked back at the alien climbing inside the harvester.

“Gives us some hope, eh?” Mike added as Charlie and Maria helped him toward the vehicle.

“What do you mean?” Maria asked.

“That they could potentially be trusted.”

Denver overheard and shook his head. “Like these, you mean?”

“I don’t know, buddy, all I know is that Blinky saved my ass. He didn’t have to. He could have taken the part from me and left me to die in there like his pal.”

“You got the part okay?” Charlie asked.

Mike nodded to the sling around his chest. “It was right where Hagellan said it was. But man, inside that place… if I had some time… Mai would have a field day with the tech in there.”

“Not enough time,” Charlie said. “We’re heading back right away.”

Denver backed away from the three croatoan fighters as Maria and Charlie helped Mike into the back of the harvester. Once inside, Mike took a seat and Maria fetched a first-aid box from a locker within the vehicle. She moved about the place with ease, having grown up in one very similar. She attended to his wounds and wrapped his ankle with a bandage.

“Thanks,” Mike said.

“The painkillers should kick in, in a few minutes. It’s badly swollen, but it doesn’t feel broken.”

“I have him to thank for that.” Mike nodded in the direction of Blinky. The alien sat on his own in a dark corner of the harvester’s mess area. He stared out of a small porthole toward the three fighters.

“What about them?” Mike said. “Shouldn’t we take them with us? Let Unity deal with them?”

“No,” Charlie said. “They stay with the wreck.”

Mike saw that rigid determination in his eye again. There was no talking him out of it. And Mike had to remember just what these aliens did. Sure, Blinky helped him out, but they were still the race that nearly wiped out all of humanity. One small gesture of kindness could never make up for that.

But still—with so little left, for both sides, and a common threat, at some point a line in the sand had to be drawn. But Mike knew Charlie—and Denver—could never do that in their hearts. They’d been too damaged. Suffered too much.

The harvester’s engines came online, and the great vehicle shuddered and shook. They headed back toward Unity, their bounty safely secured.

“Light them up,” Charlie said.

He and Denver stood at the rear of the vehicle, watching out of a window.

Maria squeezed Mike’s hand and gave him an expression of wanting him to do something or say something for those croatoans left behind. Mike shook his head. It was too late for them now.

Denver pressed the button on the remote trigger.

Two explosions roared out, sending a huge ball of flame into the sky. Pieces of shipwreck rained down among the black smoke. Within the smoke, a huge fire burned.

Maria looked away, unable to watch the croatoans.

A tense silence developed in the mess area. Denver and Charlie joined the others.

“It had to be done,” Charlie said.

Maria turned her back and said nothing.

Chapter 32

AUGUSTUS FEARED the worst as he approached a third farm on the western side of the continent. Smoke belched from a breeding warehouse, and flames licked the edges of its roof. His search for a functioning operation had so far been unsuccessful. The previous two were ransacked and deserted, although this one was still surrounded by flourishing fields of root.

He slowed the hover-bike, drifted over a fenced paddock toward the back of a meat processing unit, and cupped his hand over his nose. Human bodies in an advanced state of decomposition scattered around the grassed area, mostly livestock.

A gust of wind blew from east to west. Something moved on the ground in front of him. He abruptly brought the bike to a halt and hung over a building.

Smoke cleared from the central main square. Two croatoans stood next to six hover-bikes parked in a formal line along the middle. One raised its rifle toward Augustus. Another one bounced out of a barracks building.

He held up and arm and waved, accidentally nudging the bike into a tilt with his other hand. Feeling unsteady, Augustus quickly gripped the handlebars, steadied the bike, and twisted it toward them. He never did like these weird machines. Life was so much simpler during his time as emperor, more streamlined, although he could take the credit for that.

The croatoan lowered its weapon, and all three creatures watched Augustus make his descent. He lowered to the dirt square and peered around. The barracks, production, engineering and surveying buildings looked intact.

The surveyor building’s door creaked open. A gray-haired woman, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit, squinted through the light smoke toward him. Zoe. The performance improvement manager he’d recruited thirty years ago in one of the ubiquitous concrete jungles spread along the eastern coast. A reliable worker who never questioned his authority.

She took two paces forward. “Is that you, Augustus?”

He turned and shielded his face with his robe. Half because the smoke stung his eyes, half because he still felt embarrassed about losing his mask. “It’s me. What the hell happened here?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing. Come inside. The croatoans are going to put out the fire after they’ve finished chasing off another attack.”

“Bit of a slaughter in the paddocks?”

“The croatoans panicked after we lost comms, and killed the livestock. We were attacked this morning, again.” She pointed to the warehouse crackling with flames. “And they torched it. We killed most and are sweeping the forest for any others.”

The team sounded organized and still had fight in them. A good thing if he was to serve a generous portion of future justice to Unity. Augustus removed the robe from his face, turned to Zoe and smiled, flashing his yellow teeth. She opened her mouth and took a step back.

He strode across to the surveyor building, the one that childish fool Gregor used to call the chocolate factory, as purposefully as his old limbs would allow. “I’m here to discuss reorganization and future strategy. Open the door.”

Zoe’s expression softened, as if a wave of relief had just washed over her. She pressed against the handle, and Augustus entered into the gloom.

Eight surveyors and a driver sat around a large pile of root at the back of the building. Not the slick operation that this building used to be. Normally, they busied themselves around the front table, checking samples, punching things into their computers, and studying readings. He didn’t blame them for sheltering; the arena proved how useless they were at fighting.

“Take a seat. I’ll bring you some wine,” Zoe said.

Augustus perched behind a small desk in one of the side offices. He pulled the black prism from his chest and rolled it in his fingers. There was no chance that Hagellan poisoned this place. The fat toad sounded too busy trying to achieve the impossible with a bunch of dregs.

Zoe placed a plastic cup of orange wine in front of him and sat opposite.

He took three large gulps and groaned at the tingly feeling in his extremities. “As you may be aware, the ships went down four weeks ago—”

“An alien came here three weeks ago and told us. It went to join a larger force in the south.”

Augustus raised his eyebrows. “Larger force? Any idea of the exact location?”

She shook her head. “No. But we planned to leave in a couple of days. Supplies are running out, and the attacks are coming more frequently. They want to secure a large area of root, create a stronghold, and wait for instruction from the council.”

His pulse quickened. That council member could be him. He could pick up a readymade army and conquer Unity.

The doors flew open and two croatoan guards hopped into the building. They headed straight for the office and stood at the door. One, with human blood spattered on its visor, excitedly clicked and held its weapon forward. Not aiming at Augustus, but loosely enough in his direction to unnerve him. They were all probably in a state of total confusion.

“Augustus,” it croaked.

He rose from the chair and straightened his robe. An air of authority would be needed to pull things into shape, and only one man on the planet could do it. He turned to Zoe. “Do either of these speak English?”

“Not very well. One of the surveyors does.”

“It can act as my translator. Assemble the team around the table. I need to address the group.”

Augustus didn’t want anything to get lost in his message. His croatoan was basic. Zoe disappeared through the door, and he heard her barking instructions outside.

He moved to the front of the building, found a sturdy chair next to the front table, and stood on top of it. The surveyors and driver surrounded him in a semicircle. Three more guards entered, and the five of them stood behind the rest. Zoe joined the end of the line with a scruffy urchin dressed in filthy blue jeans and vest and sporting an unkempt beard. Sixteen witnesses in all would hear a speech that would signal the beginning of an empire. One that would travel through the centuries as a watershed moment.

The small surveyor waddled forward and stood next to his chair.

Augustus cleared his throat. “Ladies, gentlemen and croatoans. A town in the north threatens our very existence. They want all resources for themselves and will kill us all to make their dreams come true.”

He paused and the surveyor translated. The warehouse echoed with quiet clicks. The urchin whispered something to Zoe.

“They place humans and croatoans in an arena to fight for their own entertainment,” he continued. “Species isn’t important. They only crave seeing yellow or red blood spilled on the dirt.”

The surveyor clicked more rapidly, waving a gloved hand above its helmet.

“With the ships gone, we have to rebuild with what we have. Create a society where we can live together without the fear of attack. A society with law and order, where crimes will not go unpunished. To do this, we must head south, gather an army, and destroy the danger in the north.”

After the translation, the guards talked amongst themselves for a brief moment before looking back at Augustus. He peered along the line of helmets, smiling, nodding his head. “You are the chosen few. The ones that will be remembered in history books. If a croatoan ship returns, they will thank us. If one doesn’t, we will create a new golden era for this planet.”

The little surveyor relayed the final part of his great speech. One alien at the end of the line replied. Augustus leaned down. “What did he say?”

“They’re with you,” the surveyor said.

Augustus took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and smiled. “We have no time to waste. Prepare for travel.”

He jumped from his chair and headed for the pile of root. The wheels were set in motion. Unity would be crushed, and no pompous old woman or ragtag force would stop his well-drilled army.

Chapter 33

DENVER YAWNED. Golden morning light warmed his eyelids. He turned over and rolled into the warm body of… he opened his eyes.

Maria?

Of course. She’d stayed here when they had returned from the shipwreck.

Temporary amnesia faded. Memories, obscured by sleep and nebulous dreams, sharpened into focus.

They were in their shack on the hills of Unity. Beside his bed was the dark case containing the bomb they’d picked up from Mai late yesterday evening.

Muted snoring susurrated through the thin walls. He knew that particular sleep-song belonged to his dad—the soundtrack of fatigue and a day’s good work.

Maria’s breathing came in steady lapping tides, warming his shoulder. She had her knees up to her chest, her arms around the sagging pillow.

A stray lock of hair had fallen across her face and flittered with each exhalation.

The filtered glow of the room brought vitality to her face.

For such a long time she had appeared, on the surface, to be at peace.

Lately, over the last few weeks, she had seemed to be struggling with some inner torment.

Denver had tried a few times to ask her what was going on, but she wouldn’t open up, and he didn’t have the words or skill to pick that particular lock.

Because she had just gotten on with things, he supposed they had all taken for granted how well she was coping.

Beneath the exterior of strength, there lay an insidious weakness. He reached a hand over to draw the hair from her face.

She stirred and brought her hand up touching Denver’s. She opened her eyes lazily and froze as their gazes locked onto each other.

Her body stiffened. She eased away. “Oh, hey,” she said. “Um, morning.”

Denver pulled his hand away and sat up in the bed, letting the blanket fall. Maria clutched it to her body.

“I’m sorry,” Denver said. “I didn’t mean to wake you… I just, well, how are you feeling?”

Maria yawned. “Weird… I need to talk to you. It’s about Hagellan. He can’t be trusted.”

A sharp rap on the door interrupted them. “Come on, kiddos, we got work to do.”

“Be right there, Dad,” said Denver. Then to Maria: “Sorry, we’ll talk, let’s just get this out of the way first.”

“Okay,” Maria said. “But it’s important.”

MIKE AND CHARLIE sat around the rickety coffee table, the salvaged parts spread out on the surface. A croatoan engineer garbled in broken English as it and Mike discussed the next stage of the operation.

Maria stepped out from behind Denver and greeted the others, the veneer of calm now fully in place. A practiced phenotype designed to act as camouflage.

Charlie gave Denver a knowing look with a micro-expression raise of his eyebrow. Denver shook his head a few millimeters, indicating that, no, he didn’t sleep with Maria. He caught a hint of disappointment in his father’s face. Denver wasn’t stupid; he knew his dad would prefer him to be with Maria instead of Layla, but right now, that issue wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

Mike stood and gathered the parts. “So this is it. If these work as well as my new friend here thinks, we should be good to go later today.”

“We go,” the alien said, tugging on Mike’s sleeve.

“We’ll catch up with your progress later,” Charlie said, striding across the room and opening the door for him. The guard outside gave a curt nod.

“Okay,” Mike said, looking weary as though he’d been up all night going through the installation process with his alien counterpart. “Proof is in the pudding and all that. Let’s hope all this works out.”

“With you on the case, Mike, I have no doubt,” Denver said, clapping the man he thought of as his uncle on the shoulder. If anyone had the ability to do this, it was Mike. Growing up, Denver had seen him do some spectacular things with the remnants of human technology and engineering.

The alien stepped outside, and Mike followed, carrying the bundle of parts. The guard escorted them. Denver watched from the open door as they descended the steps and headed for Hagellan’s craft. Apparently they’d towed it to Unity with a harvester last night. They weren’t messing around either.

Aimee approached from the direction of town, flanked by two shotgun-wielding croatoans.

“Great, what’s this?” Denver said.

Charlie stepped in front of him and met Aimee before she reached the porch.

“We got the parts,” Charlie said. “And the bomb. All is going to plan.”

“Good to hear,” Aimee replied, stopping a few feet away. Her guards hung back and covered their flanks and rear, their body language showing a high level of alertness. “I need to speak with you for a moment, in private.”

“I take it this is non-negotiable.”

“Quite.”

Charlie hesitated for a moment before Aimee stepped forward and gripped his arm with her elegant hand. “It’s okay, nothing serious, but I do need you to come with me for a moment. You’ll be back on the job in no time, I promise.”

Charlie turned back to face Denver in the doorway.

“You two okay staying here for a while?”

“Sure,” Denver said. It’d give him and Maria time to talk after all. “But I’ll come find you if you’re not back soon.”

He aimed that at Aimee as a warning. She inclined her head as if to understand the threat.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Charlie said. “I’ll see you kids later.”

Aimee turned and encouraged Charlie to her side. The two guards led them away.

Denver knew she and the guards wouldn’t know he was carrying a pistol in a lower back holster, or that he had two knives below his trousers strapped around his calves.

Once they were out of sight among the sprawl of the town, Denver closed the door behind him and sat opposite Maria.

She had a pot of root tea on the table and filled two mugs. She handed one to Denver with a smile.

“Thanks, I could really do with this with the exertion yesterday,” Denver said, knowing how lame that sounded, but needing a way into the conversation without being his usual blunt self.

The two of them sipped the root tea for a moment, sharing an easy silence as the root helped calm them, rejuvenating their tired muscles.

“So,” Maria said, looking down into her now-empty mug. “I think I know who I’m cloned from.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been having flashbacks for the last few days, and dreams… so real I thought none of this was real and the dreams were my actual reality. With meeting another clone, I think it’s shaken something loose up here.” She tapped her head.

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s all connected. We’re connected, through time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Roanoke,” she said. “I was there.”

“You what?”

Maria leaned forward, placing the mug on the table. “The real Maria, the one I’m cloned from, was there at Roanoke—and the aliens.”

“One thing at a time, tell me what you’ve seen.”

ROANOKE, 1589

MARIA LIFTED her skirts and stepped over a muddy puddle. The heat in this infernal place was thick and humid, making her sweat uncomfortably. The dense trees made it hard going. Up ahead, Franklin and Edgar slashed at the trees with their machetes, beating a path through the woods.

Behind her, she could just about see the mast of their ship, now wrecked against the rocks of the island.

With the local Croatoan tribe of Indians forcing them from their garrison, they had little choice but to carry on north. The plan was to meet and seek sanctuary with the rival Chowanoke tribe, offering their knowledge of the Old World in return for safety.

If only Walter Raleigh’s imbecilic friend John White had returned with more men and supplies when he had promised, they could have avoided all this.

If the earlier colonists hadn’t antagonized the local tribes over a missing silver cup, then negotiations of cohabitation could have been an option. One cannot sack and burn a village and not expect reprisals.

Now there was only certain death or become a slave to the Croatoan Indians if their appeal to the Chowanoke leader failed, which it seemed certain to do.

Only one hundred and fifteen of Maria’s fellow colonists were left to fend off the tribes. Hungry and under resourced, they were unable to resist.

This New World was not worth the blood and sacrifice. She regretted ever having agreed to come here. All the promises of wealth and riches were now nothing more than lies.

Maria stepped forward into the clearing to join Franklin and Edgar.

“I see smoke,” Franklin said, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. His dark hair was slick with sweat and humidity. He’d removed his shirt. His muscles looked knotted between his bones.

They were getting weaker. She had seen it herself, her ribs showing through her sagging skin. Potatoes and the odd crab caught on the coast were not enough to sustain them since the destruction of their colony.

Those who weren’t killed by the tribes had agreed to integrate.

As slaves.

But Maria’s best friend, Elizabeth, had escaped, telling her tales of devil worship and satanic beasts. The rest of the colonists were taken away to Roanoke Island, across the sound.

Sometimes, at night, Maria heard screams and cries on the wind and couldn’t entirely rationalize them as coming from the local fauna or the tribespeople.

“This is madness,” Maria said. “No good can come of this. We should seek a place far from here, seek out a trader or privateer and get word back to England.”

“It’s far too late for that now,” Edgar said, his jowls wobbling. His fever was getting worse. Hair slicked against his face, which had taken on a grave pallor.

“Someone’s coming,” Franklin said, backing away.

Across the clearing the trees were swaying.

Footsteps and snapping branches came from all around them.

“The Croatoans,” Maria said. “They must have found Elizabeth’s body and tracked us here.”

Spinning around with panic, Maria realized they were trapped, entirely surrounded and no way out. This was it, then—the end of this infernal adventure. Despite her heart racing, a part of her welcomed this. It had been such a struggle for so long. White wasn’t returning. Raleigh had forsaken them.

Ahead of the clearing, the trees parted and four figures stepped out.

“The devils!” Maria screamed when she saw them.

They weren’t human. The figures walked upright but with satyr legs. Their faces were large and resembled turtles. They made strange clicking noises and were armed with weapons that only vaguely resembled dueling pistols, only much larger and carried with two arms.

Before Maria could run, a pair of strong hands grabbed her from behind.

Franklin and Edgar too were caught, and no amount of screaming or thrashing could dissuade the beasts from dragging them away.

MARIA WIPED the tears from her eyes and sat back on the sofa. Denver moved to sit next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not you, even if you have the memories.”

“They… did things to them. Once they were taken to Roanoke Island,” Maria said, gathering her composure. “The tribespeople known as the Croatoans were just simple Indians. They didn’t understand what was happening. They thought the aliens were gods.”

“At least we now know what happened to all those poor colonists,” Denver said. “My dad will want to know this.”

“Of course,” Maria said, “I want him to know all this. There were a dozen of us colonists strapped to their operating tables, their engineers prodding and testing us, pumping us full of drugs.”

Maria leaned into Denver, resting her face against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her. “I promise,” he said. “They’ll pay for everything they’ve done.”

“You can’t trust them,” Maria said. “No matter what they say or try to prove, they cannot be trusted. They’re evil, Den, truly.”

“Which is all the more reason I have to see this through.”

He had the bomb and he had his dad. Whatever plan Hagellan had in mind, they were two factors that would be beyond his reckoning.

Maria looked up at him. “Promise me you’ll come back. Somehow… just come back.”

He couldn’t mean it, as he didn’t believe he would be coming back, but he promised anyway, wanting to give her something to believe in. They sat there together in each other’s arms as they waited for Charlie’s return and the start of the end.

Chapter 34

AIMEE WALKED by Charlie’s side. She moved gracefully along the main dirt road through Unity, her green silk dress gently flapping in the cool breeze.

Two miserable-looking men guarded their flanks, carrying bolt-action rifles with wooden stocks.

The stalls lining the main route were a hive of activity, just like when he was first dragged through by his neck.

Aimee gently grabbed his arm and pulled him to the left. “We’re going to the arena. This way.”

She led him around the thick stone wall that surrounded and protected her residence, toward the concrete-constructed stadium.

A few people and croatoans stood around a stall outside, trading items for cooked meat. The faint buzz of a crowd noise drifted over.

Charlie frowned. “What the hell’s going on? I’m not interested in seeing your entertainment.” He had other things to worry about, like the ship’s preparation. All this was just getting in the way of the plans, but at least Mike was there handling things.

“You might be when you see who’s fighting.”

“And who might that be?”

“Your treacherous friend Gregor. He came to attack me and killed Baliska. He’s also the reason Augustus escaped.”

Charlie stopped.

Unity had its own strange laws and practices, but he wouldn’t be a party to them. As much as he hated Gregor, and still suspected him of killing Pippa, he did help bring down the mother and terraform ships and was one of only a few pre-apocalypse survivors left on the ground.

“Let me talk to him. I’ll tell him to leave and never return,” Charlie said, not quite believing that he was standing up for Gregor. “He deserves a chance.”

Aimee let out a deep breath. “How many chances does that man need? I have already given him one that he didn’t deserve, and look how he repaid me? He has fallen foul of our laws and will be judged in the arena.”

“Just do this favor for me, please?”

“You can’t stop it, Charlie. This is one of the most serious offences we have seen in Unity. People have been put to death for far less. What kind of message do you think I will be sending out if I give him clemency?”

She raised her dress a couple of inches and splashed through a shallow muddy puddle. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his temples.

The gangster’s actions had sealed his fate, and Charlie couldn’t risk his life and compromise the mission by trying anything heroically and pointlessly stupid. He sighed and resigned himself to the fact that this was the world he now lived in, but he wouldn’t be one of the bawling voyeurs on the arena steps.

He just wanted to get it over with and then help with the ship.

A guard jabbed his muzzle into Charlie’s shoulder. “This isn’t an invite you can refuse. Pass on what you see to the other new arrivals. Let them know the price of disloyalty.”

Aimee turned and gestured him forward. “It’s politics. The town will see that you and your friends are with me and not aligned to his actions.”

Charlie slammed his heel into the wall, shook his head, and followed Aimee toward the bloodthirsty congregation.

GREGOR’S EYES FLUTTERED OPEN. Cold water dripped from his head, joining the dry specks of his own blood on the stone floor. A guard stood over him, holding a metal bucket. The bastard laughed and threw it into the corner of the cell.

He grabbed a clump of Gregor’s hair and ripped his head back. “Showtime in three minutes. Say your prayers, fuck-face.”

Gregor gathered the little saliva he had and spat. The guard grimaced and wiped his cheek. He leaned forward and swung his fist into Gregor’s ribs.

Inwardly, his whole body bloomed with pain. He sucked in a breath and coughed out spittle and blood. He refused to show signs of pain and smiled. “That the best you’ve got?”

Another guard entered and aimed a double-barreled shotgun at his face. The sound of a crowd cheering echoed along the corridor. He had seen the fighting area while being dragged to the cell.

They would not be entertained at his expense. He refused to go out on the terms of this shitty town.

Bucket guard unfastened his manacles and shoved him against the wall.

The other jerked his shotgun toward the arena. “You fuck around and I’ll blow your head off. This way.”

A sharp pain shot through Gregor’s right thigh as he tried to walk. He dropped to one knee, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. They would not get to see him like this.

He steadily rose, trying to push away the agony, and walked slowly toward the entrance of the fighting area, but couldn’t hide his limp.

Bucket guard followed. “Looks like he’s shit himself.”

The other laughed.

If Gregor got out of this alive, he would mash both of their faces with a jackhammer and have a great deal of pleasure doing it.

He reached the gate and clung to the bars. He didn’t have much energy left, and the effects of his last shot of root had evaporated a couple of hours ago.

One uniformed croatoan lay on the sandy surface outside. Another stood above it, holding a spear. Yellow blood dripped off the pointed head. It thrust the weapon down into its opponent’s chest, sending the crowd into a pleased rapture.

Two men appeared and carried the dead alien away. The winner looked up. Its cobalt blue visor glinted in the sun. The crowd fell silent, and a high-pitched voice addressed the alien before a guard led it away to a ripple of applause.

A broadsword and buckler landed at Gregor’s feet. He shook his head and looked outside.

Something sharp poked in his back. “Pick it up.”

Gregor looked to his side. “Fuck you.”

A boot slammed into his bad leg. He sank to the ground, hissed through his teeth, and clutched his thigh.

“I said, pick it up.”

Gregor grabbed the sword and spun. The blade sliced through the air and clanked against the stone wall to his side.

Both guards had retreated several yards. One aimed the shotgun at his face.

Bucket laughed. “You must think we were born yesterday?”

Gregor jabbed a finger at him. “When I get out of this, I promise you one thing—”

A bolt screeched along its latch. The gate behind him yawned open.

“You’re up next,” a croaky voice said. “Come out nice and slow and face Aimee.”

Gregor kept his focus on the two internal guards. Both needed to be taught a lesson.

Powerful hands grabbed both of his shoulders and dragged him back, threw him down on the filthy surface and dropped the sword next to him.

He scrambled to a crouch, shielded his eyes from the sun, and looked around.

Hundreds of people and aliens stood on steps above a wall surrounding the fighting surface. Watching him. Aimee sat on a high chair in a sectioned-off area. She casually wafted a fan in front of her face.

Charlie Jackson sat next to her. He looked away when Gregor attempted eye contact. Coward.

A squat man dressed in a brown jumpsuit rose from his chair. The crowd’s buzz of anticipation fell silent.

Gregor used the sword to haul himself up. He limped to below the sectioned-off area and pointed the tip of the blade at Aimee, then Charlie. “You’re next, bitch. Then you, Judas Jackson. I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear.”

The collective gasp that followed provided some small comfort. Aimee covered her face with the fan; Jackson continued to look away. Gregor considered throwing the sword at him. How could he sit there and watch him being butchered by an alien?

“People of Unity,” the squat man said, “for thirty years our town has been a beating heart of human and croatoan peace and friendship. We have become the shining beacon in this dark world.”

Gregor laughed as loudly as he could. Defiance welled up inside him. They would not dictate proceedings. “You idiots.”

The squat man turned to Aimee. She relaxed back in her chair and casually gestured for him to continue.

“This man wanted to kill our leader and destroy Unity. He does Augustus the traitor’s bidding. We will crush our foes to maintain our freedom.”

A quiet round of applause and clicks followed.

If they wanted a show, Gregor would give them one. He pointed his sword at Charlie. “Did I ever tell you how much I enjoyed strangling your beloved Pippa?”

Charlie’s head snapped around, and he focused on Gregor.

Gregor smiled. “That’s right. Now I’ve got your attention. I squeezed the life out of her with my bare hands and loved every minute of it. You should have seen her face.”

Jackson’s face contorted into a grimace, and he bolted up from his chair.

CHARLIE FELT a surge of anger and balled his fists. Gregor confirmed what he’d suspected for nearly three decades. He’d killed Charlie’s ray of light, Pippa.

The woman who had nurtured him at Quatenary Productions all those years ago and survived with him during the early part of the invasion.

He’d found her dead in a cave, with marks around her neck, leaving him alone and heartbroken until he found Denver. Gregor’s gang had already hooked up with the aliens, although they didn’t tell Charlie back then. They’d pretended to be survivors until their farm had been constructed. Gregor had been the prime suspect. He’d constantly had his eye on Pippa.

Charlie swiped the fan away from Aimee’s face. Two guards stepped toward him and aimed at point-blank range. “Let me fight him to get both of us justice.”

“I’m not risking the mission. You stay here and watch. We’ve brought out a retired champion to deal with Gregor. He hasn’t got a chance.”

“No, he’s mine.” Charlie’s body trembled, and he took a couple of breaths. “Screw the mission.” The others would just have to wait a short while for him. A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.

Before Aimee could respond, he leapt across to the edge of the viewing platform, slid down the rough wall to the fighting area, and briefly dangled to weigh up the size of the drop.

Two yards.

Charlie’s boots thudded against the dirt, and he turned to face Gregor.

“Guards, guards!” he heard Aimee shout.

Gregor limped toward him, using the sword as a walking stick. “We always knew it would come to this, Charlie. Get armed and let’s do it.”

Charlie scowled at him. “I always knew it. You piece of shit.”

The internal gate creaked open and two men ran out. One aimed at Gregor; the other reached within five yards of Charlie. “You need to come with me.”

“Tell your boss that all bets are off unless she lets me do this.”

The guard jerked his rifle toward the gate. “Get moving or I shoot.”

Charlie groaned. “If you shoot, you’ll end up in here fighting a turtle. I’m too important to your boss.”

“Move your ass. Now.”

“No,” Charlie said and firmly waved him away.

The guard glanced up at Aimee and returned through the gate. A hushed silence filled the arena, only punctuated with an occasional cough or click.

He eyeballed Gregor again. Blood crusted the gangster’s light blue shirt, and he winced with every movement. They must have given him a beating in the cells, and he would also be starved of root.

“About time you showed balls again,” Gregor said.

Charlie narrowed his eyes. “You bastard.”

He remembered Pippa running into their office, bursting with excitement about finding a strange blue bead. Nothing would take the smile off her face. He thought he would spend the rest of his life with her. Gregor took her away.

“Very well,” Aimee called down. “You have your wish, but don’t be surprised if we shoot him.”

A guard next to her threw down a broadsword. It spun in the air and landed in the dirt with a thump, close to Charlie’s boots. He picked it up in a two-handed grip and raised it in front of his chest. The thing felt heavy but manageable, especially against a man in Gregor’s state.

Gregor screwed up his face and held his sword above his head. “Come on, then.”

Charlie growled, ran at him and swung. Gregor brought his sword forward to fend off the blow, and their blades clanked together. Charlie pulled back for another swing. Gregor staggered back and clutched his thigh.

Seeing Charlie advance, he raised his sword in a one-handed grip to deflect the blow again. That wouldn’t be good enough this time.

Charlie’s thrust rammed Gregor’s sword into the side of his own head. He snarled and dropped to one knee. Blood ran from a deep cut on the side of his head. The crowd roared.

The sword fell out of Gregor’s shaking hand. He squinted at Charlie through bloodshot eyes. “Don’t entertain them. Finish it.”

For a brief moment, Charlie felt sorry for him. Those thoughts were quickly pushed aside by an image of Pippa’s cold body in that cave.

“This is for Pippa,” Charlie said.

He tightened his grip, lunged forward, and thrust the blade through Gregor’s chest.

Gregor gasped and stared into Charlie’s eyes. A thick stream of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

Charlie pulled the blade free and crouched in front of him. “Why did you do it, Gregor?”

“I’m… glad it was… you,” he said in a quiet voice.

Charlie frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He coughed, blood rolling down his chin. “Didn’t want it to be those…”

“It was you. I know it. You didn’t say those things to avoid being killed by an alien.” But Charlie saw the truth in Gregor’s eyes and knew then that he hadn’t killed Pippa. All this was just to get him to be the one to end his life.

Gregor smiled, blood glistening in the cracks of his rotten teeth. His eyes glazed over, and he lifelessly slumped to his side.

Charlie looked up to the silenced crowd and roared with anguish.

Chapter 35

MIKE WIPED sweat from his face and tightened the restraining bolt with one last push on the wrench. He leaned up, squinting with the pain in his ankle and back.

To quote Danny Glover, he was most definitely getting too old for this shit.

Despite the warm evening sun outside, the light didn’t filter this deep into Hagellan’s craft.

Low blue lights glowed from small strips overhead. This area, the engine management control room, was barely a hundred square feet.

With the company of two of the small engineers and their equipment to fit the parts, the room soon became difficult to maneuver within.

Behind him, the two aliens were busy diagnosing the electrical system. Through broken English they had explained that the new parts they had recovered from the mother ship needed calibrating to work with this craft’s different capacity requirements.

Although he couldn’t access the engines directly, Mike had seen parts of it through the conduits and access panels while replacing the damaged parts. The aliens weren’t too keen on explaining their tech and avoided most of his questions, but he made out that the power source was some kind of antimatter material.

To him, and most of humanity, that was one of the Holy Grails of power supply, yet despite being within his grasp, he had no opportunity to study it further. But then, he thought about the mother ship. If this craft did work and Hagellan and the others left, he’d decided he would go back to the shipwreck and do some more technological archeology.

Aside from the power supply, he had ascertained the engine was fitted with a hyperdrive component allowing it to ‘jump.’ Although he was told this was only small distances, their idea of small was vastly different to his own.

The planet with the jump gate was still over ten light-years away. Or three parsecs. Given that using a regular nuclear-fuelled power source would take approximately twenty thousand years to get to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, the location of this planet was over twice the distance.

Given the size of the craft, just twenty meters long and shaped like a dart, the antimatter power source must have an incredible power-to-size ratio.

This would give them just one jump, however.

And as far as he could understand the alien’s explanation, the engine created a temporary quantum bridge allowing almost instantaneous travel through the field of quantum-entangled particles to the planet.

They would effectively be travelling through time.

Which, of course, made him realize that if they were to return in the same manner, they would actually return before they set off. The paradox itched at the back of his mind. Somehow the aliens had found a way to counter this. Perhaps the quantum bridge somehow avoided the time issue by doing something with dimensions.

Whatever the case, he’d have plenty of time to research this once this mission was up and running.

“We go, now,” one of the engineers said, lifting up its tablet-like device and heading for the ladder that led up out of the maintenance room. “All fixed.”

“Are you sure?” Mike asked.

The alien blinked and held up the tablet to show him a set of graphs. “Acceptable tolerances. New parts calibrated.”

“That’s good to hear,” Mike said. “What now?”

“Test flight.”

MIKE HID his revulsion of Hagellan as the elder alien shuffled his mass into the open bridge by climbing up the ladder. The alien leader sat in the large chair situated in the center of the bridge and brought together the straps.

Mike was in a seat next him and facing upwards as though he were lying on his back due to the craft’s upright position within the earth, the nose of it pointing up at an eighty-degree angle. Behind him, strapped into a pair of upright stools, the two engineering aliens gripped their tablets.

Hagellan turned to face Mike, wearing an expression Mike thought was mirth. “Ready, human?” Hagellan said.

“As I’ll ever be. Though I don’t know why you insisted on me being here. I don’t know your tech or how to fly this thing.”

“Consider it a gift,” Hagellan said. “A free demonstration of our technology.”

“Right.” Mike didn’t know if he was being sincere or mocking him. “There’s just one question I have, this planet, Tredeya, what’s the atmosphere like? Also, how are Charlie, Denver, and Layla to breathe on the way there?”

“We have full atmospheric simulations on this craft,” he said. “And air tanks to last six months for four humans. The atmosphere on the planet is close to that of Earth’s, so that like my kind here, humans will only need a small apparatus to modify the air. They won’t be the first humans we have taken to Tredeya.”

Mike wanted to know a little more about that revelation, but Hagellan clicked at the engineers, and the conversation was over.

A central podium rose out of the floor in front of Hagellan, and overhead blue strip lights switched on, bathing the bridge in cool blue light.

A rumble flowed through the ship and up through Mike’s legs and arms that clutched at the seat. Mike was never a fan of flying on commercial aircraft, much less an antimatter-powered quantum alien ship.

Still, a part of him, his unending curiosity, reached beyond the primal fear that prickled at the back of his neck and the cold sinking feeling in his guts. He had to remind himself that he was in a position that no other human before had been in.

Putting aside his feelings of the aliens for a moment and focusing on the small details, Mike determined he’d record as much as possible for Charlie and Denver’s benefit.

The rumble continued to shudder through the hull. A high-pitched whine, coming from somewhere deep in the ship, joined the low bass notes. Together, these two tones combined to form the soundtrack of an alien propulsion system that made the hairs on Mike’s arms stand on end and goose bumps break out on his skin.

Hagellan ran his gnarled hand over the podium.

A holographic control cube popped up and displayed a series of alien glyphs and symbols that Mike didn’t recognize.

“What are you doing?” Mike asked.

“Sending the jump gate a message,” Hagellan said, his voice low and rumbling, the sound of which matched the warble of the engine.

“What kind of message?”

“Docking procedure. To ensure it hasn’t been compromised yet.”

“How long will it take to get a response?”

“Thirty of your human minutes. Via the tachyon transmitter.”

Hagellan reverted his attention to the holocube and manipulated the symbols before pressing what Mike considered as a kind of send button. The cube flashed once, and the display changed, showing a 3D landscape, presumably of the surrounding area.

The two aliens behind Mike chattered something, and a five-meter or so wraparound screen at the front of the bridge switched on, showing an ultra-high-definition image of the sky.

After further manipulation of the holocube, the image split into three. The central panel displayed a frontal view, and the two on either side displayed the view from port and starboard. Hagellan adjusted the magnification and grunted. He brought both of his hands to the holocube, hovering his palms over its surface like some kind of alien magician.

And then they were moving.

Slowly at first, the craft easing up from its buried position. Dirt and rubble clattered down the sides of the dart-shaped ship as it continued to rise, inch by inch.

“Well?” Mike said, raising his voice over the sound. “All’s working well with the new parts?”

“You’ve done well,” Hagellan said with a nodding gesture.

He manipulated the controls, and the ship shuddered as though some kind of secondary engine kicked in. It rose faster now, and through the screens, Mike saw the township of Unity slink away, the horizon dropping below the view so that the pink and orange evening sky filled the displays.

His guts flip-flopped, reminding him of days at the carnival as a teenager, experiencing rides that would have never passed health and safety checks. But that was part of the thrill. They knew they were dangerous, but the thrill was too much to ignore.

Despite his feelings about the aliens and this mission as a whole, a smile spread across his face. First because of a job done well, and second because this was just so damned awesome. He was flying in a bona fide alien ship.

The ship leveled off to a horizontal position. An altimeter on the screen indicated they were three hundred meters off the ground, clear of trees or obstacles.

Hagellan made a sharp thrusting maneuver with his hands.

And the craft shot forward like a bullet from a gun.

Mike’s body compressed with the sudden change in g-force. He gritted his jaw and clutched the arms of his chair until his knuckles were white. It felt like someone was trying to push his organs out through his back.

And it kept speeding up until Mike grunted with pain.

Hagellan looked over, his massively muscled neck coping with the force as though it wasn’t there. The look in its eye sent a chill up Mike’s spine and reminded him once more that these creatures were just so utterly alien. It looked at Mike as though he was an experimental mouse.

Mike’s eyes grew wide, and blood dripped from his nose. He gurgled, trying to form words to tell the bastard creature to slow down. A sharp pain in his brain started out as a small ball behind his forehead, and soon black and red shapes appeared in his vision.

When he thought he was about to pass out, Hagellan turned away and eased back on the throttle to a slow coast. Mike slumped forward in his chair and instantly vomited and coughed up blood.

“Your species is weak,” Hagellan said, but with no tone of accusation, rather an objective observation.

Mike wiped his mouth and nose and waited a moment to compose himself. He breathed hard for a minute until his heart stopped trying to claw its way out of his chest. When the adrenaline wore off, he looked up wearily to Hagellan.

“You bastard. You brought me here to test me like some goddamned lab rat.”

“We needed to know for sure. You survived. This bodes well.”

“And if I didn’t?”

Hagellan didn’t respond and turned away.

Mike looked up at the screens. Outside he saw vast tracks of ocean.

“Where are we? How fast did we just travel?”

“We travelled five hundred and fifty-three of your human miles in five of your seconds. Now we return.”

“Wait,” Mike said, shocked at the numbers and wanting to prepare himself, but it was too late. Hagellan flipped the craft nose over tail and barrel rolled on its axis until they were pointing the other way, almost as if defying the laws of momentum.

Mike couldn’t handle it a second time. Before they were fully leveled out, he passed out in his chair, the blur of the world on the displays the last thing he saw.

When he came around, the craft was cruising low over a dense patch of forest.

“You’re still alive?” Hagellan said.

“I guess so,” Mike said, squinting against the light and the throbbing in his head. For a brief moment he had forgotten where he was, but the display screens brought it all back.

Hagellan grunted and returned his attentions to the control, sending the craft down through a wide clearing in the trees until they were flying over Unity. Once they reached the edge of the dried-out lake basin, he spun the craft and lowered it.

But the landing didn’t go quite to plan. The craft seemed to lose its balance and rocked to and fro and finally hit the ground hard, sending up a shudder that jolted Mike’s spine and clattered his teeth together.

“Soft landing much?” he said, rubbing his jaw. “What the hell was that?”

A stream of data flowed down the central screen.

The two aliens approached Hagellan, and they all huddled around the tablet and scanned the screen.

“What’s wrong? Did the new parts fail?”

“Small calibration issue,” Hagellan said. “It will delay us, unfortunately.”

“We’ve still got time for that, though, right?”

Now Mike could definitely tell the alien was worried. There was no hiding that even on an unfamiliar face. Seeing concern in something so ancient and powerful brought a new kind of unease to Mike. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The jump gate,” Hagellan said. “We received a response.”

“And? Are your friends there? Are we too late?”

“Worse,” Hagellan said. “The gate is compromised. I only received emergency codes, which are sent automatically from the system.”

“Compromised? How exactly? What does this mean for the mission?”

“It means we have no time to waste. We have to go now. Get your friends; we leave within the hour.”

Chapter 36

HIGH ON THE east side of town, a cool wind nipped at the edges of Denver’s ears. He pulled up the collar of his coat and trudged through the field until he finally saw his father. Charlie was standing with his back to Denver. Maria and Layla flanked him, their heads bent low.

A small mound of dirt lay at their feet. Charlie leaned against a shovel, sweat creating a sheen on his stubbled face. He wore a tired expression like one of the many old buildings that had crumbled and become a gray artifact in the undergrowth.

“What happened?” Denver asked after a while, keeping his voice low so as not to break the somber mood.

Charlie grunt-sighed. “It’s Gregor.”

“Oh,” Denver said. A mix of emotions battled for supremacy. Relief, joy, justice, a hint of remorse. But mostly an acceptance that the world was lighter of one less psychopathic nut-job. “How’d it happen.”

Maria looked up at him with neutral eyes. “Charlie, in the arena,” she said, conveying little emotion. Layla had barely looked up at Denver. He wanted to go to her, but she seemed focused on Gregor’s shallow grave, her body tense and bent over.

Denver wondered if she did have more feelings for Gregor than she had previously let on. They certainly had history together on the farm, and before. Despite her misgivings of him, Denver could understand that she might, underneath it all, have some feelings of grief.

“You killed him?” Denver asked his father.

“Yeah. I had little choice. He wanted it.”

“And you didn’t? After everything he’s done. After what he did to—”

“He didn’t,” Charlie said, turning to his son. “I saw it in his eyes at the end. It wasn’t him. He used it to make me end him. His time was coming, whether it was from my hand or one of Aimee’s pets. He goaded me, but in that final moment, I saw the truth in him. He didn’t kill Pippa.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain.”

Denver looked down at the shallow grave with a new vision. All this time, Gregor had been like the bogeyman. All those years when Denver and Charlie were raiding against the farm and the croatoans, all that time surviving out in the wilderness, Denver had pictured Gregor as this great evil. Charlie’s nemesis.

Denver’s nemesis.

And yet, now, he was just another body in the ground. Another victim of the new world, the new struggle.

“We were more alike than I realized,” Charlie said.

“No,” Layla interjected, her first words since Denver had arrived. “You two were nothing alike. So what, he wasn’t your great enemy that you thought, but he had few redeeming qualities, and he won’t be missed.”

“He did help us take down the mother ship,” Charlie reminded her.

“And he also perpetuated enslaving humans on the farm for cattle,” Maria shot back.

“As did I,” Layla said. “What this shows us is that none of us are perfect. We’re a terribly flawed species, our own worst enemy. If there’s one thing the croatoans have shown us, it’s that we’re not terribly different to them. We’re all just animals doing our best to survive.”

The group fell silent. Denver tried to pay at least some respect to Gregor for the good things he did, but knew deep down, he was different, he was not a friend of humanity, despite him helping out against the aliens toward the end. One good deed doesn’t make up for a lifetime of evil.

“We need to go,” Denver said after a few minutes. “I’ve come to deliver a message from Mike. We’re leaving within the hour. There’s something wrong at the jump gate on Tredeya. Hagellan isn’t receiving the right kind of return message, and he’s lost track of the destroyer.”

“The old ship is ready to go?” Charlie asked, his voice grave.

“Yeah, you didn’t see it?”

“I did, looks good. I just hope it’s as good as it looks.”

“Time will tell,” Denver said. “And if not… there’s always the bomb.”

Maria made a small choking noise at that and looked up at Denver.

They shared a brief but intense expression before Layla caught Denver’s eye. He felt like a boy being caught stealing. He looked away from Maria and tried to smile, but Layla was already turning away.

She had seen the truth of it.

Denver wanted to go to her, assure her that he still felt the same for her, despite never really communicating what he did feel; that wasn’t something he’d ever really had the words for. He found it all so unnecessary, especially at this time, in these circumstances. It was a complication, too, for him when he didn’t understand what he felt or how to act on it. He was always just his own man, surviving in the wilderness, hunting with his father.

A part of him wished he could go back to that time. Go back to stalking deer or rabbits with his dog, eating by the fire at night, planning their next sabotage on the harvesters. Their life was simple then, their goals clear.

He knew he should go after Layla, but he remained where he stood, and that was really all he needed to know where his feelings lay.

“We shouldn’t wait around,” she said over her shoulder. “The mission’s too important for trivialities.”

Denver knew she was talking about him and Maria and cringed inside. He stepped over to the younger woman and reached out for her arm. “I’m sorry,” Denver said, “I didn’t mean for there to be any animosity between you two,” knowing that he was the target of some of that animosity now also.

Maria locked eyes with him and smiled gently. “It’s okay. We’ll figure something out when you come back.”

“If I come back,” Denver said.

“When, son,” Charlie added. “When. We’ll find a way. Now come on, there’s a job to be done. Maria, I’d like you to keep an eye on Mike and Mai while we’re gone. Make sure they don’t get up to anything stupid. Mike’s got that old glint in his eye again with all this new tech. I don’t want the old fool blowing himself up.”

“I’ll watch out for him,” Maria said with a smile. They turned their back on Gregor’s grave, having paid him the respects he probably didn’t deserve, and headed down the great steps of the basin towards the waiting dart of a ship, its pointed nose peeking out from behind a falling down old hut.

Charlie let Maria go ahead and he turned to Denver. “You know, as odd as it sounds, in some ways, I’m going to miss the crazy bastard,” he said, nodding his head back toward the grave.

“I understand,” Denver said. “But we’ve got new enemies now.”

“Talking of which, apparently Augustus has done a runner and skipped town. Hopefully that’ll be the last we see of him.”

“Just the croatoans to deal with now, and we’ll finally be able to retire in peace,” Denver said, watching Maria in front of him walk carefully down the steps. An image of him and her sharing a life bloomed very briefly in his mind until the sight of Hagellan’s repaired ship looming up as they rounded the hut extinguished it with the realities of the situation.

Mike and two small engineers were loading equipment onto the ship. Denver noticed the case containing the bomb in Mike’s hand. Hagellan was standing at the top of a loading ramp within the craft, directing operations. He saw Charlie and Denver arrive, and raised one of his ancient, gnarled hands in greeting.

He almost looked like an ally. But Denver wasn’t ruling anything out.

“I’ll go ahead and get settled,” Charlie said. “You say your goodbyes.” He inclined his head quickly in Maria’s direction before heading off to join Mike and the others loading the ship.

“So,” Maria said, standing by the side of the ramp, shadowed by the large dart-shaped hull. “This is it.”

“Yeah,” Denver said, moving from one foot to the other and trying to decide what to do with his hands. “I’m not good at this kind of thing,” he finally said.

“It’s okay. I understand. I wanted to thank you for listening to me earlier and not judging me. But I want you to remember it.” She hushed her voice. “He can’t be trusted.” Her eyes shifted up to look at Hagellan at the top of the ramp.

“I know, I’ll keep a close eye on him and will do whatever’s necessary.”

“I can trust you on that,” she said, moving closer to him. She stood just a few inches away now. He could smell her perfume, a bottle she had found back at the farm. It had a light, almost fruity scent. With her body close to his, she reached into a pocket of her jacket and pulled out a leather pouch the size of her palm. She placed it into his coat pocket.

“Just in case you need it, for injuries or something,” she said.

“What is it?” Denver asked, almost whispering now, sharing the conspiratorial moment.

“Refined root from the farm. It’s stronger than the usual stuff. Something I’ve been working on. If things get difficult or you get hurt, it’ll help.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate it, though I hope not to use it.”

“Me too.”

They both stood there, inches from each other, wanting but not giving in. Until Denver leaned down and took her into a hug, pulling her in tight. “I will see you again,” he said close to her ear. “I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she replied with a smile in her voice.

“Okay, I ought to go,” Denver said, reluctantly releasing her from his embrace. “I’m not good at goodbyes.”

“Then don’t say it,” she said. “Let’s leave it at ‘see you later.’”

“Okay.” Denver hesitated and finally turned away and headed for the ramp. Layla stood at the top, her face reddened. She must have been watching the entire thing. She turned away and headed inside. Denver shook his head. That’s all he needed. This was why he’d always kept his emotions to himself.

Ignoring her ire, he reached the top of the ramp and turned to wave to Maria, but she was already gone, her form now small at the end of a narrow road. He watched her as she disappeared into the town and vowed that whatever happened, he’d return.

Chapter 37

CHARLIE PAUSED at the ship’s graphite-colored ramp. He considered whether this could be a trap. The moment they took off, Denver, Layla and he would be choked to death as the inside of the ship transformed to a croatoan-friendly atmosphere.

Mike edged out of the entrance, wearing a faded lime and brown striped sweater. He smoothed his shaggy gray hair away from his face. “You looked troubled, buddy?”

“You sure we’re okay on this thing?” Charlie said and looked along the length of the twenty-meter-long, cobalt blue vessel.

“I can’t give you one-hundred-percent confirmation, but I survived the test flight. Hagellan knows what he’s doing. Just make sure you keep an eye on him.”

Charlie had seen plenty of supply shuttles and croatoan fighters, but not one like this until it blasted over Unity earlier today. “What do they use these for?”

“High-level reconnaissance, like a spy plane. Hagellan told me they didn’t deploy many here. They’re mainly used for more densely populated planets.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows. “More densely populated than here?”

“Indeed. The mind boggles.” Mike held out a small black rectangle with an antennae protruding from the top. “The bomb is radio controlled. Hit the left switch to prime it, the right to let it rip. It’s got a mile range. If you have problems, there’s a manual detonation switch behind a guard on the casing.”

“I hope we don’t need the last option. Where’s the bomb?”

“Follow me. I’ll show you.”

Mike waddled back up the ramp and turned left after entering.

Charlie followed him into the gloom and up a ladder into the cockpit. A row of four basic-looking stools, with harnesses dangling above them, wrapped around the back of the cockpit. Two larger chairs, most likely for the pilots, were positioned in the middle of the cockpit. The windows were all shielded, but a light blue strip of lighting ran around the upper part of the area, providing ambient light. The thick air carried a croatoan fishy odor.

“Looks pretty basic in here,” Charlie said.

Mike smiled. “Just wait ’til you get going, amigo. You’ll be blown away.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Mike stooped and grunted. He reached under the stool on the far right and patted a black case. “Make sure you take this seat. You’ll be right on top of it.”

“How long have I got after flicking the switches?”

“Two seconds. I figured you needed a quick option.”

Smart planning from Mike. If things went downhill rapidly, Charlie didn’t want to give anyone a chance to deactivate the bomb.

Footsteps banged against the metal floor below, and the stair rungs clinked as somebody ascended. Hagellan’s bulbous head poked through the hatch. “Time to say goodbye to your friends. I’ll prepare for launch.”

It climbed into the cockpit and strapped itself into one of the pilot chairs.

Mike shuffled past Charlie and descended. He looked down the hatch at his old friend wheezing to the bottom. Over three decades and he hadn’t let him down once. Always carried out the work with a smile.

Mike glanced up. “You coming or what?”

“I’ve never been one for goodbyes. You know that. Just tell them I’ll be back.”

Mike leaned around the door and looked back up. “Aimee’s here. You should say farewell to Mai at least?”

Aimee meant nothing to Charlie. Mai did, but he’d said all he wanted to say to people on the ground. “You haven’t seen the last of me, Mike. Count on it.”

Mike smiled and shook his head. He climbed a few rungs up and extended his hand. Charlie leaned down and gave it a firm shake. “I don’t doubt it. You’re like a cat with nine lives,” Mike said.

A whirring noise distracted Charlie, and he looked over his shoulder. A podium smoothly rose from the floor in front of Hagellan, and high-definition screens around the cockpit flickered into life.

He glanced back down at Mike. “Looks like the show’s on the road. Tell the others to get their asses up here.”

Mike stared up at Charlie but didn’t say a word. He wiped his left eye. This was one of the reasons Charlie hated the farewells. Outside, this was probably happening on a larger scale. Two croatoans in gleaming uniforms nudged against Mike. One pointed to the ladder and clicked.

“Keep yourself out of trouble, Mike,” Charlie said.

Mike squeezed between the two aliens and peered up from the doorway. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, lowered his head, and slipped back through the entrance.

The two aliens, visors glinting in the thin blue light, climbed the ladder. Charlie went back to his stool and tried to work out the harness.

“You would have made a good croatoan,” Hagellan said.

“And you would have made a good suitcase,” Charlie replied. The mere suggestion disgusted him and also told him that Hagellan didn’t have a clue about human thought process.

The first alien joined Hagellan by the controls and strapped itself in. The other approached Charlie and went to sit on the stool next to him.

Charlie pushed it away. “Sorry. That one’s reserved for Denver.”

It maintained its position and tried to sit down again. Hagellan let out a few rapid clicks, and all three aliens made a strange grunting noise. Were they laughing at him? Charlie wished he had a translation device. The croatoan in front of him shuffled across to the far stool, fastened its harness, and turned to look at him.

A green holographic cube appeared above the podium. Hagellan maneuvered it around and tapped its gloved hand against some of the symbols. The screens fizzed and cleared to show a brilliant two-hundred-and-seventy-degree view of the sky. The engines rumbled into life, and Charlie felt his whole body vibrate.

Denver appeared through the hatch. “What the hell is that?” He stared at the cube and glanced across to Charlie.

“Must be how he controls the thing. Everyone okay outside?”

Denver heaved himself up and sat next to Charlie. “I thought you might not come back out. Seemed to put Aimee’s nose out of joint.”

“Does she expect me to kiss her feet?”

“She said we were welcome back if we found a way home from Tredeya.”

Layla climbed through the hatch and looked at the final free stool between Denver and the croatoan.

“Thought I’d save you the seat next to the turtle,” Charlie said.

“Whatever, Charlie,” Layla said.

She gave Denver a disapproving look. He shrugged and gestured to the stool. “Looks like we’re going any minute now. Better buckle up.”

The engine noise grew louder. The ship shuddered. Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie saw Layla grasp Denver’s hand.

Hagellan twisted in his chair. “Now we go.”

It spun the holocube around and pressed several symbols. Charlie looked at the high-definition display on his right, showing a starboard view of outside. The ship jerked, like a plane hitting a spot of turbulence, and lifted from the ground. Seconds later, it picked up speed and powered toward the sky.

The g-force pinned Charlie in his seat. He watched through the window. Unity became a speck on the landscape.

As they climbed higher and higher, he viewed more of the continent. Huge areas of dark brown smoke covered hundreds of square miles. Hopefully where the remaining population had started burning the root fields. He still needed it to remain agile, but wouldn’t mourn its passing if it meant a planet clear of croatoans.

The ship violently rocked.

“Preparing to leave the atmosphere,” Hagellan said. “I’ll engage the jump drive to activate as soon as we get through.”

The rocking grew fierce. Charlie felt like he was inside a tennis ball being dragged quickly through a sack of stones. The force pulled his cheeks back, and a bolt of pain shot through his skull.

Denver and Layla both had their eyes tightly shut and clung to their harnesses.

Outside he could see the curvature of the Earth.

The planet looked like a giant blue and green marble smeared with thin light orange streaks. Charlie had seen footage from space and pictures on the Internet, but he never dreamed he would be here. He never wanted to be here. But now, he had to be here.

Just as he thought the ship would break up, for no other reason than their size compared to the violence of their ride, the rocking quickly subsided, replaced with a feeling of weightlessness and near silence, apart from the moaning engines.

Denver comforted Layla. The ordeal looked like it had nearly broken her.

“Still no communication with the gate on Tredeya, but systems are working,” Hagellan said. It clicked a few times, probably relaying the situation to its two cohorts.

“What does that mean?” Charlie said.

“We still go if you are ready?”

“What does it feel like?” Denver said.

Hagellan fiddled with the cube and held a stumpy thick finger over a circular symbol. “You won’t feel a thing. We’ll be there in five seconds.”

Charlie nodded. “Go for it.”

Hagellan swiped its finger across the button, and the holocube flashed three times.

A blinding flash of light filled the cockpit, accompanied with an almighty bang, like somebody had just thrown in a thunderflash grenade the size of a garbage can.

Chapter 38

AUGUSTUS LEANED BACK in the chair and closed his eyes, wallowing in the feeling of a root high as the compound replenished his body and cured his aches and pains.

While he enjoyed the numb feeling, his thoughts entered a kind of meditative state, allowing him to put into logical place the events of the last month and all of their ramifications.

A smile stretched across his face as he thought about the time at Unity.

For a moment, he had got caught up in their pathetic games, nearly lost oversight.

Despite Charlie Jackson’s attempts, Augustus was still here, still on plan, albeit in a more circuitous route than he had intended.

While the remaining croatoans were rounded up, thinking they were going to be part of a glorious colonization and defeat of their enemies to the north, he would have time to go back to his original orders.

His original plan.

With the original allies.

A laugh escaped from him now as he thought back to all the time he had spent with Hagellan and the council, learning their secrets, gaining their trust. At no point had they ever known. Pride washed over him at a job done well. Painting himself as this loyal but bumbling ex-emperor had worked perfectly.

The croatoans had proved as easy to manipulate as humans.

Just like his real masters said they would be.

His right hand reached to the three-inch-tall, black prism-shaped object in his pocket. He leaned forward, the smile easing from his face. With object in hand, he stood up and locked the door. From the window he saw Zoe busying about the paddocks, organizing the ranks of croatoans. How easy it had been to inspire confidence.

That was one of the croatoans major flaws: without their strong council leadership, the average alien had little mind of its own and little conviction. Which, of course, made them good drones, good fodder.

And easily defeatable with the right approach.

With his Rambo-esque antics, Charlie Jackson had actually done Augustus a favor by killing all but one of the council in the explosion. Although there were more councils presiding over other planets and other galactic territories, this one had the most to lose, the oldest members, and Earth was the most prized of all of their colonies.

The only downside to Charlie’s premature actions was that Earth hadn’t been terraformed. But for Augustus’ masters, that was but a minor issue.

The intel he had recovered was of more use.

Augustus closed the blinds, bringing the room into darkness. He sat behind the desk and placed the prism on the top and squeezed the sides until it clicked. A small motor inside whirred. The point of the prism rose up half an inch, exposing a shimmering crystal-like cube inside.

A beam of light came from the crystal, creating a holographic keyboard with alien characters on the keys upon the wooden surface of the desk.

From the drawer, Augustus removed one of the farm’s communication radios. Although the croatoan system was down, it would still transmit, and the signals weren’t intended for an earthly recipient anyway.

Augustus tuned the radio to the given frequency and placed the transceiver next to the prism device. The transceiver crackled as the prism paired to its electronics. The creators of the prism had told him that a true life force existed inside, hence why it could connect to almost any electronic device. The damned thing was intelligent.

Given what he had seen in those early days, he didn’t doubt it.

The hairs on his arms and neck tingled as he brought his hands to the keys. It had been so many years since he had last done this. They had been waiting for him as they had done for hundreds of years before. Every time Hagellan took him out of stasis for education, he’d connect and send a report.

The scale of his masters’ plan blew his mind.

Their foresight planned thousands of years ahead, and so far, from what he had learned, they had never failed.

Even now, their prediction of the council’s demise on Earth had come true. Though he doubted they realized it would come from a single man called Charlie Jackson, but somehow, they had divined it with their algorithms and knew the Order of Things, even if they did not know the specifics.

And here Augustus was, in the middle of it all, part of the Order of Things.

Part of their algorithms and plans.

He tapped out the initiating sequence and waited. A minute later the crystal turned to a royal purple, reminding him of his imperial robes back in the day. A cone of holographic purple light flickered up from above the device, creating an inverse pyramid about a meter tall.

Lines of binary code flowed down the new display until a new form appeared.

His handler.

Drone 21.

These aliens, who called themselves the Scion, were a great binary hive mind, as much as Augustus could work out. He had first ‘met’ Drone 21 when Hagellan had first taken Augustus into the fold. The Scion had an inside croatoan agent working for them, and it was that agent who had handed Augustus the prism, and thus handed over his responsibility. It was Augustus’ job to end that particular agent’s life, having come to the end of his designated algorithm.

Drone 21 had promised the Augustus’ algorithm had no end.

That he would be until the end of time. If he did as they requested.

“Agent 3982, you have a report?” Drone 21 said.

“I do. I have the schematics and data you wanted. I’m uploading now.”

“No need, 3982, I’m transferring now.”

The crystal cube flickered as the data on the device was uploaded to Drone 21’s consciousness.

A few seconds later the holograph of the binary image stopped flickering. An almost-human-looking face turned its attention to Augustus. “You’ve done well, as the Order of Things had predicted,” it said. “Do you have additional information?”

“Indeed,” Augustus said. He summarized Jackson’s escapades and the events at Unity, finishing up with Hagellan’s plans to get to the jump gate.

“We will handle the destroyer,” Drone 21 said, “and Hagellan’s allies.”

“What are my new orders?” Augustus asked.

“Continue with your current plans. Extinguish the threat at Unity and await our arrival. If the Order of Things change, we’ll send you updated information.”

“And…” Augustus was going to ask about his future, his rewards, their promise to give him Earth entirely, but the image on the holographic display had already gone, and the crystal grew dark, cutting off both display and projected keyboard. With a whir, the top of the prism lowered and it became a trinket once more.

A knock came from the door.

Augustus pocketed the prism and picked up the radio.

“Yes?” he called.

The door opened and Zoe entered the room. Her eyes squinted as she looked around. “I thought you were talking to someone.”

He held up the radio. “Just giving orders to a nearby farm. There are a few survivors there,” he said. “What’s the status of those out there?”

“Inspired, sir. United. You’ve brought us all new purpose. With your leadership, we’re confident we can handle the threat you spoke of.”

“That’s good, Zoe. You’ll make a good officer.”

He smiled, not hiding away his face, enjoying how uncomfortable it made her.

Soon, it wouldn’t be his inspiration that would hold people in line. It would be fear.

In the Order of Things, Earth would be his.

Chapter 39

THROUGH BLURRED VISION, Charlie watched Hagellan manipulate the holocube.

The pain in his ears felt like he was twelve feet underwater and hadn’t equalized. A second loud bang and flash of light ripped through the cabin. He squeezed his eyes shut. A high-pitched tone whistled in his ears.

The ship’s engines thrusted, and the sensation of flying in atmospheric conditions returned. Charlie rubbed his face as his splitting headache quickly receded. He glanced at the high-definition starboard screen and gasped.

A setting sun peeped over a dark gray jagged mountain range, which stretched into the distance. The foothills were covered in dense green and pink foliage. Croatoan root grew on the long thin plain at the bottom of the hills.

The ship banked to its left, giving Charlie a sweeping view as it turned. Cone-shaped volcanos and mountains dominated the geography. Root grew on undulating hills and the few flat areas. From what he could see, they managed to farm around thirty percent of the land. The sky had an instantly recognizable orange tinge.

“Jesus Christ,” Denver said over his shoulder. “We made it.”

Layla gazed out of the opposite window and shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

“This is Tredeya. We land near the gate,” Hagellan said.

Charlie reached under his seat and brushed his hand over the bomb. As interesting as this place may be, he hadn’t come for a sightseeing visit. “You made contact with your force yet?”

“No contact. But I am picking up activity on the other side of the range. The location of our barracks.”

“Wouldn’t you expect there to be somebody at the gate?”

“Yes, but I haven’t been here in two thousand years. Things change. Your own history should tell you that.”

“How long have we got ’til the destroyer arrives?” Denver said.

“One of your hours. We need to be quick.”

The ship continued to turn full circle. Charlie got his first view of the gate.

A huge, thick stone circle reached a mile into the sky. Two luminous green rings flashed around the inside. A series of small, cream-colored buildings perched on a small ridge to its left.

“What did they use it for, until you showed up?” Charlie said.

Hagellan unbuckled and turned in his seat. “The Tredeyans used it to explore the galaxy. They are manipulators rather than fighters. You may call them politicians.”

“Until you got your grubby hands on it and came to destroy us,” Denver said.

“They regularly came to your planet and perhaps influenced a great number of things. How do you think we got the coordinates?” Hagellan retorted.

“Do you expect us to believe that?” Layla said.

“I read their logs, inside that building.” He gestured to the closest windowless structure. “There are many things you don’t know. We will have time to talk after destroying the gate.”

Hagellan turned back to the holocube. The ship slowed and lowered toward a flat brown strip of land bathed in the shadow of the mountains. It landed with a bump, and the three croatoans talked to each other in their mother tongue.

Denver gave Charlie a nervous look and fished his rifle from below his stool. “What do you think they’re saying?”

Charlie leaned next to his ear. “Be ready for anything.”

“We landed behind this hill to give the ship protection from the blast,” Hagellan said. “It would be foolish to land by the gate.”

Charlie unfastened his harness. “Let’s get this over with. Are you sure it’s safe for us to go out?”

“Atmosphere as expected. Temperature good. Wear your tanks and mask and you’ll acclimatize. The gravity is a close to that of Earth, but you may feel heavier for a while until your muscles adapt,” Hagellan said. “We go now.”

Charlie, Denver, and Layla pulled their small facemasks on. Charlie took a deep breath of the air. It tasted stale and thick. It had root extract within it, which he was thankful for. He didn’t doubt he would need the strength and vitality.

A rumbling came from below. The ship’s door punched out and slid open. A warm draft rushed into the cockpit. Hagellan told Mike that the croatoans targeted planets in what human astronomers called the Goldilocks Zone. They were the most conducive for farming root. The temperature and atmosphere didn’t feel alien, which only aided Charlie’s tense mood.

Hagellan spoke to his two alien brethren. They grabbed rifles from a rack above the stools and clambered down the hatch at surprising speed. “We secure the immediate area.”

Charlie slid out the bomb. Denver helped him sling it over his shoulder. The thing weighed over a hundred pounds.

Layla continued to be mesmerized by her surroundings and gazed open-mouthed at the scenery outside.

The holocube compressed to a small green dot and vanished. The podium lowered back into the floor of the cockpit. Hagellan turned to the hatch. “Follow me. You plant the bomb in the first building. That’s where the technology controls the gate.”

“What if a local force is inside and tries to stop us?” Layla said.

Hagellan grunted. “I am a council member. If any are there, they will be minions.”

Its leathery uniform squeaked as Hagellan squeezed through the hatch and disappeared.

“You ready, Dad?” Denver said.

Charlie admired how easily Den took this in his stride. Maybe it was because he had only ever witnessed a post-invasion world, battling advanced technology and aliens. Nothing seemed to faze him.

“Go for it.”

A TRICKLE of sweat rolled down Charlie’s temple. Hagellan and the other two croatoans had bounced to the top of the sixty-foot dirt hill and surveyed beyond.

The gate towered above them in the distance.

Charlie peered down at a clump of lime-coloured flowers poking out of the dirt and back across the root-covered plain toward the mountain range. The sun had set behind one of the jagged summits, and light began to fade. Charlie wondered how long their days and nights lasted, and if he would ever see a sunrise again.

He trudged up the hill, feeling like weights had been strapped to his legs. Every step he took, his foot slid back down a few inches in the fine surface. Halfway to the top, Charlie stopped and rested his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.

“Slightly different atmosphere here, Charlie,” Layla said through their connected intercom embedded into their facemasks.

“Tell me about it.”

“You want me to take a turn carrying the bomb?” Denver said.

Charlie waved him away. “You carry on, Son. Don’t worry about me, my old legs have got strength in them yet.”

He took a deep breath and grunted out the last thirty feet.

Hagellan looked toward the small cluster of cream buildings to the left of the gate. All five of them were square in appearance, about the size of an average bungalow, with a metallic door facing the gate.

“That’s it?” Charlie said.

“The walls are thick to protect from Tredeyan storms,” Hagellan said. “They can be fierce compared to your weather systems.”

The croatoan moved down the hill with ease, flanked by his two, smaller allies.

“Are we going back to their barracks?” Denver said, motioning his head to the three aliens. They stood by the metallic blue entrance door to the closest building and gaped up.

“When that destroyer turns up, there’s gonna be some pissed-off Croatoans,” Charlie said. “We should keep our distance until Hagellan comes up with a plan to get us back home.”

“Thought this was a one-way mission?”

“Probably will be when they find out we’ve destroyed the gate, Son. Do you want to be around when they show up?”

“No, but I think we need to know a bit more about this place before parting ways. Could be all kinds of weird shit in those foothills.”

“I think we need to trust him,” Layla said. “Without Hagellan, we’ve got no transport and no clue about this place. He’s probably going to be in a lot more trouble than us.”

It grated on Charlie that Layla started to refer to the creatures as “he” and “she.” It gave them a personal feel that they didn’t deserve. “Let’s hear what it’s got to say after we’ve completed our mission. I’ve got a funny feeling that Hagellan won’t be so friendly after we bomb that building.”

She crouched and brushed her hand against a yellow plant. It looked like a type of coral Charlie had seen when scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef.

“Fascinating,” she said.

“Come,” Hagellan croaked.

Charlie skidded down the side of the hill after it.

Hagellan removed a glove and swept a chubby finger across a shiny charcoal panel next to the door. Two electronic beats came from behind it, and the door hissed open.

Charlie followed Hagellan into a single room roughly six by six meters. Along the right-hand side, behind a transparent panel, soft blue lights winked in different areas, providing ambient light.

The closest relatable thing Charlie had seen was the bank of servers in the Quartanary Productions server room. This looked far more advanced, however. A console with five evenly spaced screens wrapped around the rest of the room. Unrecognizable light blue data streamed on two screens. Another had a strange logo, like the Egyptian ‘H’ hieroglyphic.

“Put your bomb there,” Hagellan said and pointed to the transparent panel.

Charlie slung it off his back and placed it down. He felt no remorse about blowing this thing up. As amazing as it might be, the gate led the croatoans directly to Earth. It had to be destroyed.

Hagellan grunted in approval. Charlie had a great opportunity to make the tortoise-headed freak talk. He took the remote control from his thigh pocket and held his thumbs on the two switches. “We need to talk about what happens after I flick these.”

“Gate is destroyed.”

“I think you know what I’m talking about. What happens to us?”

“We go to barracks. Destroyer will be sent away.”

“I don’t buy it. You’re gonna be in serious trouble for helping to do this. Start being honest or we both die, here and now.”

“I go home and face council. Die with honor. You hide and find Tredeyans. They might help you.”

“Why didn’t you say this before?”

“Does it matter? Earth will be safe.”

Charlie thought about Hagellan’s question. It didn’t matter.

Their lives were nothing compared to freeing Earth from the threat of total destruction. Not being truthful about its own fate just seemed odd. He didn’t give a shit that Hagellan signed its own death warrant. Its role in the mission did not cancel out the billions of deaths on its gnarled hands.

“Let’s get behind that hill and finish this,” Charlie said.

Denver poked his head through the door. “Everything okay in here?”

“Fine, Son. We’re ready to go.”

He imagined Denver’s reaction to the ridiculous hope of finding, communicating and working with an unknown species. Layla would probably get a kick out of it.

The group trudged back over the hill and rested against the opposite bank. Charlie raised the control’s antenna. “After three?”

Nobody said a word. Denver nodded, pressed his back against the dirt, and covered his ears. Layla wrapped her arms around her head.

“Three. Two. One.”

He flicked both switches down. An ugly brown centipede-like insect scuttled across the dirt by his boots.

Nothing happened.

“Bomb not work?” Hagellan said.

Charlie flicked the switches up and down. Still nothing.

“Maybe it’s the radio waves here?” Layla said.

“Damn it!” Charlie said, throwing the trigger to the ground. He shaped to move back toward the building.

“Dad,” Denver said, “you’re not manually detonating that thing. I won’t allow it.”

An earsplitting boom echoed overhead. The three croatoans clicked in frantic conversation.

“What the hell was that?” Charlie said, looking up.

A yellow cloud formed high in the darkening blue sky. Small at first, in seconds it stretched at least three miles wide and thundered with bolts of electricity.

“This one of the storms you talked about?” Denver said.

“No. Is there another way to explode bomb?” Hagellan said.

“Manual switch,” Charlie said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sky. The cloud swirled and lowered toward the other side of the mountain range.

“Tell now. Need now. Now,” Hagellan said, more animated than Charlie had ever seen before. He even looked… scared?

Denver stared open-mouthed at the sky.

“Is that the destroyer?” Charlie said.

“No. Bomb. Now! We’re running out of time!”

There was clear panic in its voice now. Something clearly worrying was happening overhead.

“There’s a button on the side of the case, under a black protection plate,” Charlie said.

Hagellan clicked to the closest croatoan. They touched gloves, and it ran over the hill.

“He will push your button,” Hagellan said.

“What the hell is happening?” Denver said.

Charlie stared over Hagellan’s shoulder. The point of a large black prism rumbled through the cloud. A foghorn-like blast shuddered through his ears. It continued to descend, growing in size as cloud swirled around it. It must have been at least a hundred times larger than an Egyptian pyramid.

The ground shook below Charlie’s boots.

He grabbed Layla and pulled her to the dirt as an explosion on the other side of the hill ripped through the air. Dust sprayed the group. A large funnel of smoke belched into the sky. Debris thudded against the dirt around them.

Charlie crawled to the top of the hill. He needed to confirm the gate’s destruction. Whatever that black thing was, he didn’t want it heading to Earth.

He squinted through the dust at the shattered ruins of the control building. The bomb had worked, but the blast was barely audible among the terrible drone coming from the prism in the sky.

Good old Mike and Mai had worked their magic again. But who or what was that thing in the sky? He peered to the sky again. The dust cleared, revealing an enormous black prism suspended over the mountains.

Small specks streamed out of it, like bees around a hive.

Explosions echoed along the valley below, the sound hitting Charlie in the chest.

Charlie staggered down the hill. The group clustered together. Denver wiped dust from his hair. Layla gaped up and pressed her hand against her forehead.

“Move from ship,” Hagellan said, pointing to the descending prism.

That was a ship? Shit.

It got to its feet and headed for an area of undergrowth to their left. Charlie sprinted after it. Denver grabbed Layla’s arm and followed.

Charlie grabbed a handful of Hagellan’s suit and managed to slow it down. “You need to start talking. If that’s not the destroyer, what is it?”

“Scion ship. Destroyer no more if that here.”

“Scion? What are you talking about?” Denver said.

“Croatoan enemy. If you thought us bad, Scion five times worse.”

“That’s just wonderful,” Charlie said.

He followed Hagellan, not knowing what else to do, and pushed his way through the big leafs dangling from plants that towered over his head.

The two aliens stopped in a small clearing. Charlie, Denver and Layla crouched next to a small pink shrub.

“What do we do now?” Denver said.

“God knows,” Charlie said. They were way out of their depth and now faced a new enemy. “Hagellan, any bright ideas?”

A whining sound grew louder. A small black craft, sleek and fast, roared overhead. An explosion boomed on the other side of the undergrowth, and fire shot into the sky.

“Quick, before it returns” Hagellan said. “We must find Tredeyan underground system.”

Charlie’s instinct told him that if he couldn’t fight an alien, then running was the only course of action. As he and the others sprinted after Hagelllan, pushing through the alien flora, a sickly dread weighed heavily in his stomach.

Earth was safe—for now, but they now faced a new enemy.

The shadow-black prism hung in the air like a malevolent icon, promising a dire future for Charlie, Denver, and Layla. Charlie gritted his teeth, pulled Denver and Layla further into the alien landscape.

If he had to fight again to get home, he couldn’t have wished for anyone more loyal and capable as Denver. Charlie looked into his son’s eyes.

“We’ll win,” Denver said. “We always win.”

CRITICAL STRIKE

BOOK 3

Chapter 1

CHARLIE DIDN’T LIKE to dwell on past nightmares the croatoans brought to Earth, or dream about a better future. He concentrated his energy on things he could change in the present.

Being stranded on an alien planet, under attack from an opposition force, and running low on air gave him all the focus he needed.

At least people on Earth would know they were safe. Hagellan had left his ship tracker in the caves below Unity. One of the croatoans would confirm to Aimee and Mike that the destroyer wasn’t approaching.

Layla and Denver crouched in the dense undergrowth by his side. Light rapidly faded around them after Tredeya’s sun dipped behind the mountain range. Bright red specks swarmed around the scion mother ship, a black prism that hung above the planet, blotting out a large section of the unrecognizable constellations in the star-studded sky.

Peering through a gap in the canopy at their destroyed ship, the glow of fire reflected off Charlie’s visor. A swallow-shaped scion fighter, sleek and black, did the damage. Its engines whined as it banked around the alley and headed back toward the group.

Charlie turned to the three croatoans that accompanied them to Tredeya. “Got any bright ideas?”

“Need to get underground,” Hagellan said.

“You’ve been here before. Lead the way,” Denver said.

Continuous explosions echoed in the distance, creating flashes of light silhouetting the rugged skyline.

“Won’t the tredeyans kill you?” Charlie said.

“No,” Hagellan said. “Follow me. Safe underground.”

“You colonized their planet and destroyed the gate. Why wouldn’t they?”

“Things are not as simple as you think.”

Hagellan turned and clicked at the remaining croatoan guard. It slung its rifle, slid a standard-issue sword with circular holes running along the center out of its thigh scabbard, and hacked a path through the leaves and branches.

Charlie gestured Denver and Layla forward and brought up the rear, keeping his finger on the trigger of his rifle. Croatoans deserved no trust.

They headed in the opposite direction of the damaged gate, between tightly packed floret-shaped trees.

Damp pink ferns covered the ground, soaking Charlie’s boots and the lower part of his cargo pants as he waded through them. Although the sun had set, he couldn’t feel a noticable temperature drop.

A scion fighter screamed over the canopy, rustling the small leaves on the trees. Charlie ducked. A dark thumb-sized insect with four chunky legs dropped on his shoulder. He swept it off and continued forward.

The croatoan guard climbed an incline, plowing through the ferns, swinging its sword in robotic fashion at the dense undergrowth ahead. A shadow moved to Charlie’s right. He turned and aimed but couldn’t detect any signs of movement in the gloom. Any creature would be difficult to hear above the thundering noise of distant battle.

Trees and plants thinned as the group gained altitude and the ground turned to shale and rock. Charlie kept a steady rate of breathing. The supply of root helped, and they were growing it here, but he was painfully aware that they had a limited supply of oxygen.

Hagellan stopped at the summit. He ducked down and watched Layla, Denver, and Charlie approach. The guard sheathed its sword, aimed its rifle skyward, and tracked the distant scion fighter. The circular red glow from the aircraft’s rear engine faded as it maintained a course away from the group.

Charlie crouched next to Hagellan and scanned the area.

They were on the edge of a hundred-meter-wide plateau that dropped away on the other side to a deep valley. In the far distance, a thin orange glow lit the horizon. Another sun was rising on the opposite side of the planet. Behind, flames licked around the charred skeleton of their ship and the shell of the building that controlled the gate.

The ground vibrated below Charlie’s boots. Small stones danced around the plateau’s surface.

“What the hell’s happening?” Layla said.

“Defenses,” Hagellan said. “Tunnel on other side of hill.”

“Why are you waiting?” Denver said.

He stood to advance, but Hagellan held its arm across his chest. “Stop.”

Denver’s hand twitched on his rifle and he glanced across. Charlie shrugged. They were on an alien world, and so far, Hagellan hadn’t strayed from the plan. It was probably their best chance of survival against suffocation and an unknown enemy.

A continuous deep mechanical hum came from the center of the plateau. A thirty-meter gap appeared. Throwing up a faint shaft of artificial light, the gap smoothly opened to form a square.

The metallic V-shaped head of a croatoan pulse cannon rose out of the space.

Charlie instantly recognized the design—the same as the ones mounted on supply shuttles that had made regular trips from the mother ship to the farms spread across Earth—until he blew the mother ship out of the sky.

This version was at least five times larger and attached to a platform that banged into place, filling the gap.

“Now we move,” Hagellan said.

Charlie thought back to Hagellan’s earlier comment about things not being as simple as he thought. They were heading for a tredeyan underground network, and a croatoan pulse cannon had just appeared from below. The attempted colonization of Earth never allowed for known networks, and the only defenses were against humans.

“What kind of relationship do you have with the tredeyans?” Charlie asked.

“Worst of friends. Scion forced us together. They are a machine of death.”

Denver scoffed through the intercom attached to his mask. “They sound exactly like you. Good to know you’re not the universal bully.”

“Idiot,” Hagellan croaked. “They are not life like you or me. The scion are self-replicating entities that consumed all life on their own planet. Croatoans, as you call us, are trying to stop them conquering the galaxy.”

“We might have sympathy if you didn’t try to turn humanity into trays of silver slop,” Layla added.

“It’s all about scale and resources. If you have something they want, they will either take it by force or treaty. It depends on the calculations they make. Tredeya has something they want that can’t be bargained for.”

“Which is?” Layla said.

“It doesn’t matter at the moment. We need to get below the protective electromagnetic shield.” Hagellan raised a gloved finger to the black prism hanging in the brightening sky. “Their ship came to stop the croatoan destroyer. This isn’t a full-scale invasion.”

“How do you know?” Charlie said.

“They regularly test for weakness and deploy probes on the surface to extend their grid. After the ship leaves, the probes will be located and destroyed.”

The ten-meter-high pulse cannon dropped to a forty-five-degree angle, spun, and pointed over Charlie’s head. A light blue bolt shot from the muzzle after an electronic thump. It zipped through the sky toward the scion ship, joining around thirty others fired from other locations on the planet’s surface.

When interrogating a captured driver three years ago, Charlie found out that the cannons fired a concentrated bolt of fusion plasma. Even the small ones proved to be devastating weapons on Earth. They had serious stopping power and provided the most powerful threat after the main body of croatoan soldiers left.

The cannon adjusted its angle to the left and fired again. Hagellan and the guard raced across the plateau.

Charlie nodded at the other two and followed. His boots crunched against loose terracotta-colored scree as they rounded the cannon.

Booms echoed in the sky when they reached the opposite side, but he didn’t turn back to look. A scion fighter raced over a mountain at least a mile away and headed for their location. A bright blue projectile fired from under its right wing and streaked toward the cannon, leaving an arc of vapor behind it.

Denver and Layla slid down the edge and ducked behind two trees.

Charlie sprinted after them and scrambled through the pink ferns. His left foot snagged against something and he flew forward, skidding against the alien foliage on the damp ground.

A loud explosion ripped through the air. Dust and small stones rained through the forest, peppering Charlie’s back. He glanced over his shoulder.

Flames and black smoke towered into the sky.

“Keep moving,” Denver said.

He grabbed Layla’s arm and dragged her up. It never ceased to surprise Charlie how easily Denver adapted to every situation. He guessed it was because his son didn’t carry the baggage of knowing his preinvasion world, where most people had it relatively easy.

Hagellan and the guard stepped from behind a boulder and continued down the side of the hill.

The scion fighter’s engine noise changed from a deep roar to a higher whine. Charlie spotted it between the trees, hovering fifty meters to their left. A bright blue light punched from its underside, through the canopy. It moved around the area in an erratic fashion. The croatoan guard headed to the right, putting further distance between itself and the beam.

“Is it searching for us?” Layla said breathlessly through the intercom.

“Searching for anything,” Hagellan said.

Denver paused, leaned against a tree and viewed the fighter through his sights. “If that thing gets any closer, we fire.”

“You got it,” Charlie said.

“No,” Hagellan said. “Don’t attract it.”

“I’m not talking about attracting it. If it finds us, I’d rather get in the first punch.”

“Only talk if necessary. It might detect our communication system.”

Charlie hated the fact that the two croatoans could hear every word he said to Denver on their mask comms, but this time it proved an advantage. He was big enough to swallow his pride over Hagellan’s knowledge of the threat they faced.

The guard pulled out its sword and hacked at the dense undergrowth on the lower part of the slope. The scion ship continued to whine overhead, but its beam became less visible as natural light stretched across the horizon, giving the sky back its orange tint.

Hagellan stopped at the edge of the canopy and gestured between two trees. “The entrance is over there. We have no cover so need to be fast.”

A two-hundred-meter-long field, covered in root, led to a small hill ahead. The smoldering remains of a pulse cannon sat on top of it. A small alien-made structure, like the cream buildings by the gate, nestled between trees at the bottom.

“Ready when you—” Denver said.

Trees only a few meters behind them rocked against the force of the scion ship’s thrust. Heat burned the back of Charlie’s neck as everything brightened around them. He glanced up. A dazzling light in the sky focused down on their position.

“Spread out and run for the entrance,” Hagellan said.

Charlie darted to his right and charged across the root field.

The stubby orange shoots of an early crop squashed easily against the firm ground under Charlie’s boots. In his peripheral vision, Denver and Layla took the direct path, straight for the building.

Hagellan and the guard broke left, bounding much faster than any human could manage, but taking a wider route.

A gust of warm wind brushed past Charlie. He looked back. The fighter descended to the ground and settled halfway across the root field. A red laser shot from just below its sharp front end and focused on the croatoan guard.

Denver and Layla reached the building first and fiddled with the black pad by the side of a metallic gray door. Hagellan pushed them both out of the way and pressed his hand against it.

Charlie cut across and hugged the edge of the small building.

The croatoan guard moved in the opposite direction and threw its rifle to the ground. The fighter’s laser beam continued to track around its torso and helmet.

Charlie grabbed Hagellan’s stocky shoulder. “What the hell is your pal doing?”

“And why isn’t the fighter firing?” Denver said.

“The scion calculate everything. A single guard running away without a rifle doesn’t carry a threat. A pulse cannon gets an immediate response.”

Two electronic beeps sounded above the door and a green light winked. More croatoan engineering, Charlie thought.

It smoothly slid open, revealing a light brown corridor carved out of solid rock. A noise like a muffled drum echoed through the valley. Dirt flew from the field in even spacings of five meters toward the guard as the fighter’s gun on its left wing strafed the ground. The guard took a hit to the center of its back and slumped to its knees. A second burst smashed through its helmet and it fell on its side.

“Inside. Quickly,” Hagellan said.

The group dashed inside the corridor. Charlie entered with trepidation, but whatever they were going to meet inside couldn’t be as bad as the thing that hunted them outside. They had no choice.

Hagellan held its glove against the internal pad for the door. The fighter’s laser swept across the root field and came to a rest on Denver’s chest.

Chapter 2

DENVER DOVE to his left and rolled against the coarse, rock floor. The scion fighter’s gun rattled, thundering projectiles against the thick metallic door as it slammed shut.

A quiet electric hum replaced the outside noise.

Charlie held out a hand and hauled Denver to his feet.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Better the devil you know,” Charlie said with a sly glance at Hagellan.

Layla ran her hand along the smooth limestone-colored walls and gazed down the three-meter-wide slope that disappeared into the distance.

A thin strip of bright yellow lighting ran along the ceiling. Solid silver grills dotted the left-hand wall at regular intervals. Denver shouldered his rifle and peered through one, seeing a dark square shaft behind it, presumably for ventilation.

“Follow me to the central area,” Hagellan said.

The croatoan’s dull charcoal uniform creaked as he turned and headed down the tunnel. Denver resisted the urge to shoot him in the back of the head.

Since landing, he’d wanted to say many things to Charlie and Layla that weren’t for the alien’s gnarled earholes. Part of their success on Earth was coming up with clearly communicated plans to achieve their objectives. Everybody could be trusted to carry out a role. Hagellan couldn’t be trusted to know their next moves.

“Hagellan,” Layla said, “what did the tredeyans do when they visited Earth?”

“Collected resources until they had enough. They haven’t visited for hundreds of your years because they figured out a way to produce them themselves.”

“What resources?” Charlie asked.

“We all see things in different ways. What a croatoan might find useful for one thing, a tredeyan will find another purpose.”

“That’s as clear as mud.”

“You will see.”

They continued down until the tunnel split into four directions. Hagellan trudged through the left passageway. Denver purposefully stayed out of the conversation to remain on his highest level of alertness. A single moment of careless chat could cost them their lives. He’d seen people drop their guard and pay for it more times than he cared to remember.

Hagellan rounded a bend in the tunnel, but Charlie and Layla stopped and sprang back. Charlie held up two fingers, indicating company.

Denver hugged the wall and edged forward to peer round the bend.

Two stocky aliens, around five feet tall and dressed in dark purple body armor of interlocking metallic plates, stood on either side of a thick metal door. Both had semitranslucent ivory skin on their faces, no visible hair, and dark beady eyes that flittered as if surveying every dark corner at once. They held stubby black carbine rifles against their chests.

One of them gargled something to Hagellan, sounding more human than croatoan, but still unrecognizable as a distinct language. Hagellan clicked a reply and the door groaned open with a low metal screech that echoed along the tunnel.

“Come this way,” Hagellan said through the intercom. “They are two tredeyan wardens. You have no need to fear them.”

Denver glanced back at Charlie and Layla. They were committed to following, no matter how weird things looked. Going back outside to face the scion fighter wasn’t on the agenda, and they needed oxygen.

“I’ve got your back,” Charlie said. “We haven’t got a choice.”

A muffled explosion boomed overhead and the ground shuddered.

Denver instinctively ducked.

Hagellan and the tredeyans stood firm, showing no signs of distress, as though they were used to coming under fire from an alien bombardment. He knew that croatoans did react when they thought they were in imminent danger; he’d seen it countless times in their body language on Earth.

“We need to move,” Hagellan said.

Denver kept his rifle by his side and advanced. He squeezed the grip, ready to raise and shoot if required. The situation didn’t feel dangerous, but he had no frame of reference for trusting tredeyans.

Hagellan led them between the two aliens. One turned to look at Denver as he passed. It blinked, making a wet peeling sound as its eyelids closed and opened. The dull armor plates around each limb and torso looked too ungainly to be practical, but when the alien shoved the door to widen the gap, an electric whir came from the elbow area.

Servo-assisted power suits, he thought. Interesting tech.

One of the tredeyans followed inside as the door closed. Four thick metallic bolts, at the top and bottom of the frame, electronically snapped into rings, securing it.

At the end of a short, ten-meter-long tunnel, Hagellan slipped off a glove and palmed a pad attached to the wall. A black sheet of glass at the end smoothly slid open with a quiet hiss, making Layla gasp over the intercom.

Beyond Hagellan was a huge cavernous space buzzing with activity.

Denver and the others walked in and glanced around the large square area. It was at least fifty meters across and twenty meters high. And all carved out of solid rock.

A few hundred tredeyans stood in front of circular green screens positioned on a workbench that ran around the perimeter of the cavern. They tapped on pads in front of them, acting oblivious to the humans’ presence. They wore gray three-quarter-length trousers and nothing on their torsos, which were semitranslucent ivory in color, exposing the dark shapes of their internal organs.

Their beady eyes flickered from their pads to the screens as they chattered and clicked to each other. To Denver, they resembled biped insects but with almost humanlike faces—if their eyes weren’t so far apart and their noses weren’t actually just small breathing holes covered with a layer of chitinous material.

High-definition screens attached to the walls displayed streams from different parts of the planet. Most focused on scion fighters and the black prism glinting in the sky. Denver got a chill in his bones when he saw it up close. The thing just looked so… wrong. So… alien.

“Ugly,” Charlie said through the intercom, breaking Denver’s thoughts away from the prism.

“They think the same about you,” Hagellan said.

Denver’s hand twitched on his rifle again. What he would give to plug the bastard right there and then. But he resisted—they needed air and supplies first.

“This is one of the command centers and staging posts,” Hagellan said. “They control drones, weapons, and communicate with the other defenses.”

“They don’t seem bothered we’re here,” Layla said.

“You are with me.”

“What about blowing the gate?” Charlie said.

“They stopped using it a long time ago. Only croatoan ships transport through it since we took control of the planet.”

“Control? I thought you were allies?” Layla said.

“We are. You can’t begin to understand the geopolitics of my people’s empire. But you’re wasting time with petty questions. Follow me to the staging area. I’ll introduce you to the commander of zone four.”

Denver moved alongside Hagellan as he passed a row of tredeyans surrounding a central screen. One glanced over its greasy shoulder. Denver looked away, wanting to avoid eye contact, and followed Hagellan toward an entrance on the far side of the room.

“Is there another way back to Earth?” Denver asked.

“No,” Hagellan said, snapping his response before leading them beyond the command center.

A natural cavern lay on the other side of the command center. A straight path cut through the rocks. Bright lights were attached high on the brown walls, just before the roof arched at a height of forty meters.

Numerous tunnels of varying size led off to the left and right.

Denver counted at least fifty as they headed toward a loud collection of mechanical noises at the far end of the path. He wondered where they might lead and if any would provide an escape route if required.

Most of the tunnels were shrouded in darkness or disappeared around bends, but he spotted signs of life along one of them. He stopped and peered into the gloom, spotting an area packed with small green cages. A tredeyan leaned in front of one and held what looked like a piece of meat on a metal spike through the bars.

“Come,” Hagellan urged.

Charlie nudged Denver and he followed his dad, tracing Hagellan’s footsteps.

Layla kept pace with Denver, occasionally glancing aside to him, her face trying to communicate something more complex than her expression. Denver could guess what she was thinking but couldn’t respond, not while they were here, underground, with god knows what.

As they neared the end, the path twisted round to the left. Denver stopped and took a deep breath. The cavern opened up and the path descended into a two kilometer or so wide bowl-shaped area.

Four shallow levels packed with hundreds of alien machines, crafts and vehicles ran down to a parade ground at the bottom. At least five thousand troops in tredeyan armor lined up in formation, watching strange icons flash on a large blue holographic map of the planet. Information streamed below it.

“Jesus Christ,” Charlie said.

Layla pressed her hand against her forehead. “You can say that again. This is nuts… crazy. I can’t believe we’re seeing all this… I mean, it’s just started to hit home where we are, what we’re seeing.”

Being born during an alien invasion, Denver grew up with the concept of aliens as normal. For him, this wasn’t so shocking. It stood to reason for him that there were more in space, which meant more danger for the human race. Charlie once showed him around the crumbling remains of the Metlife stadium while giving a lesson about their former culture. The idea of watching competitive sport seemed abstract to him, even a little pointless compared to what he had devoted his life to.

He scanned the cavern, looking for sources of imminent danger.

A platform raised a graphite-colored aircraft to the upper level of the bowl. Two bipeds, the size of humans, in dark blue uniforms and helmets with mirrored visors, sat in the domed cockpit of the V-shaped craft.

The ship looked built for combat with its numerous gun turrets and sharp angles. It reminded him a little of the US stealth fighters he had seen crashed into the woods.

The platform twisted and the light blue rear engines roared. Natural light washed the craft, coming from a wide rectangular entrance near the roof of the cavern.

“Wait here,” Hagellan said. “We might have trouble. I’ll talk with them.”

“Talk to who?” Denver said.

Hagellan pointed toward the left edge of the cavern. “We have other company.”

Three croatoan hunters stood by their distinctive cobalt blue fighter craft. The sight of them made Denver sick to his stomach as he thought of Baliska.

The fighter rose from the platform and hovered in the air for a couple of seconds before accelerating forward and zipping out of the gap. Its engine’s roar reverberated along the launch tunnel as the natural light disappeared beneath a motorized canopy.

A hundred or so of the troops on the parade ground filed out of a tunnel on ground level. Hagellan made it to the bottom of the ramp and approached the three hunters.

“Are you watching this?” Denver said.

“Like a hawk,” Charlie said.

“This is unbelievable,” Layla said. “Look down there.”

She pointed down to the second ramp. A hover-bike in the style of a catamaran spiraled into the air and headed for the launch tunnel. A tredeyan driver sat at the front and controlled it using a bright touch screen. Another stood behind the turret of a mounted pulse cannon.

“Run,” Hagellan croaked through the intercom.

“What?” Denver said.

Two of the hunters sprang at Hagellan and hauled him to the ground.

“Run for the tunnels. Keep heading up—”

The feed cut to static. Denver looked at Charlie and back down toward the croatoans. The remaining hunter, dressed in meshed gray body armor, peered up and drew its sword.

“I think Hagellan meant get the hell out of here,” Layla said.

“No shit,” Denver said. “Let’s move!”

Charlie unslung his rifle. “Follow me.”

Denver checked his oxygen reading. They had one hour left and were now on the run in an alien cavern system. Not good. Not good at all. He sprinted after Charlie and Layla as they headed for the nearest tunnel.

They disappeared through its dark entrance. Denver turned to check behind before following the other two. The croatoan hunter tore around the corner.

Denver backed into the darkness, avoiding being spotted. “Come on, get going. It’s right outside looking for us.”

“I’m taking it nice and slow,” Charlie said. “Who knows what we’ll bump into?”

They rounded a dogleg. At the end of the tunnel a small glow of white light spilled out of a room. Charlie ran forward, leaned against the wall and looked around the corner. “Looks like a lab. There’s an entrance on the other side.”

“Go for it,” Layla said.

The noise of metal scraping on rock screeched from behind them. Denver knew the hunter must have seen him. He aimed into the darkness and backed away, following Charlie and Layla into the brightly lit lab area. Vials and measuring instruments cluttered the metal tables.

Charlie swept an opaque piece of plastic to one side and entered a carved stone corridor. Layla held the sheet back to allow Denver to back safely in. They turned and ran into darkness, their hurried footsteps slapping against the smooth surface.

Glass shattered against the floor in the lab. The damned hunter was right on their trail now. Charlie skidded to a halt at the end of the rough-hewn tunnel.

Layla screamed, her voice high-pitched and full of panic as an alien shriek pierced the air. A muscly tentacle lashed out from the shadows, knocking Denver’s rifle out of his hand. A black, stealthy form slithered across the wall. Denver turned to face the enemy and staggered back at the sight of it as it prepared to attack.

Chapter 3

SPARKS ARCED through the cold frigid air like a rainbow of fire. Each ember sizzled against the workshop’s stone floor made frosty by the chilled exhalations of autumn.

The grinder screamed its satisfaction while smoothing off the sharp edges of Augustus’ new steel mask. The croatoan engineer had proved to be surprisingly artistic in its creation.

Augustus had only given him a rough sketch of what he wanted, but the little alien took the task personally and embellished the design with dramatic eyebrows, deep cheekbones and a breathing grille hidden beneath cruel lips.

The idea initially was to polish the steel to a high chrome-like gleam, but standing there in the workshop, Augustus liked the tarnished texture. Each sweep of the grinder added a streak of tightly woven scratches.

“I like it,” Augustus said with a smile. He ran a fingertip down the scarred side of his face, tracing the labyrinth of smooth tissue, each one a reminder of his past—and his future.

The scars were prophecy.

He had, against all odds, and known laws of biology, endured through the ages. This new mask represented the next stage of his twisting tale.

Augustus the conqueror would return once more. Despite the failures and losses, he knew he was on the right path.

When one was a god, the fates were in your favor, and time became an abstract construct to play with as a child might play with wooden blocks.

The croatoan engineer shut off the grinder, the electric motor winding down with a whine. The mask, held in the vice at an angle, glowed beneath the orange overhead lamp as though it were freshly cast in the very fires of creation.

Augustus stepped forward and released the mask from the vice. He held it there, in both hands, admiring the brutal visage the engineer had crafted upon its surface.

“You’ve done well,” Augustus said.

“Thank you… I hope you like my interp—” the alien cut off, unable to articulate the human words correctly. But at least he was learning.

“Interpretation is the word you’re looking for,” Augustus offered, receiving a nod from the alien. “You’ve come a long way. Just like me. Without Hagellan and the council ruling you, I trust you’ll become a valued member of new society.”

The alien, whose name Augustus still hadn’t bothered to learn how to pronounce, just blinked its beady eyes, indicating it had understood.

Although it didn’t have the vocabulary, or even the thought pattern to communicate fully, it had learned to think for itself. This proved to Augustus that with the remaining croatoans under his influence, the taking of Unity would be just a matter of time.

Revenge, like all worthy artistic endeavors, was something to savor, plan, and execute with a willingness to destroy all that had come before.

The world was clay to mold in his vision.

He pictured Aimee’s flayed, limp body, skewered atop a wooden pike.

Keeping that image in mind, he placed the mask over his face and adjusted the leather strap behind his head. The heat from the worked steel threatened to burn his skin, but the scar tissue, long dead to feeling, kept the pain at bay. A shuddering breath escaped his lips and traveled through the mouth grille.

Every cell in his body tingled as he dropped his hands and looked through the eyes of the mask. It was as if he were seeing through a different veil. He pictured the future—the fall of Unity, the rise of his new empire.

A laugh gurgled from his throat and he stepped out of the small workshop into a larger hangar. This building was the farm facilities’ shuttle bay. Plastic tarps flapped with the blow of the wind; the large hangar doors were open and overlooked miles of neglected farmland.

As he stepped toward the shuttle being repaired, he didn’t feel the cool air creep against his calves like days of old. No need for robes anymore. He dressed in one of the human soldier’s fatigues. It suited his new role: that of conqueror, general… emperor.

“How go the repairs?” he asked.

A middle-aged woman with grease smeared across her face ducked out from beneath a raised panel. She motioned with a spanner. “I’m nearly done, sir. The engine is in good condition and the engineers have reprogrammed the OS. The shuttle has full autonomy now and is interlinked with the other farms. We’ll be testing the full range of comms within the hour.”

“Good. Let me know as soon as the communication network to the other shuttles is fully established. I’d like to address our new pilots.”

The woman nodded her head with respect and dived back under the panel and into the interior of the croatoan shuttle. A pair of alien engineers shuffled around inside toward the cockpit. They held glowing screens in their stubby fingers, chattering away in their staccato language.

Augustus was pleased with what he heard; they were excited about uniting the other croatoans from the desperate farms.

Over the last few days, he had worked hard on galvanizing the displaced aliens. Their numbers had swelled to over three thousand and counting. The message traveled far that Augustus had created a new home for the aliens, a new purpose.

He got the idea from Aimee and her work with Unity.

Seeing how easily humans and croatoans could work together if given a singular focus made him realize it didn’t need to be an all-or-nothing proposition; neither species needed to be exclusive.

The one thing he had learned about both species is that they needed a haven and a leader. Although humans were by far more autonomous and treacherous, he had many centuries of experience to draw upon to keep them in line.

With that thought, he turned away from the shuttle and stepped out of the hangar into the cold gray afternoon light. He turned to his right and walked past the gaggle of buildings until he came to the square.

The sight of Zoe, also dressed in fatigues, standing atop a makeshift stage, brought a smile to his face. She bellowed out a training drill to the hundreds of croatoan and human soldiers all standing in grid formation.

Zoe must have realized he was watching; she ordered the troops to stand to attention and turned her back to them to approach Augustus. She saluted him and clicked her heels together.

“I’ve an update on the other farms, sir.”

“Go ahead,” Augustus said.

“We’ve got five of them on side; their troops and shuttles are en route as I speak. They’ll be here before nightfall.”

“Numbers?”

“Eight shuttles, twenty working harvesters, fifteen hover-bikes, two and a half thousand troops, and enough weaponry to create an infantry battalion of five hundred.”

“I’m impressed,” Augustus said, resting his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with an expression of reverie and pride. She couldn’t hold his gaze for long and dipped her chin. It was probably the fearsome sight of his new mask, but he liked to think it was something else—he’d seen the way she had looked at him during the previous few days.

Power generated its own kind of attraction, he had learned. Regardless of his face, his stature and character had a gravity that few could match. He considered taking her as his bedmate.

She had a fire in her belly that he knew he would find between her thighs. He had known many women like her before. The stronger they were, the more passionate… and also the more easily influenced and manipulated.

The strong always wanted more power.

And as a god, he always had more to give, to deal…

“Thank you,” Zoe eventually croaked. “I appreciate this opportunity you’ve given to me… to all of us. We were so confused before, but now we have purpose. I just want to make sure you know that we’re all thankful, grateful for your leadership.”

Augustus squeezed her shoulder as he closed his eyes, letting her obvious flattery wash over him as though they were genuine compliments.

Even lies feel good if you let them.

“Together we’re stronger,” he said, unclasping his grip on her shoulder. He liked how she bit her lip to avoid showing the pain. This one would tolerate a great deal, he thought. Yes, she would be a fine bedmate… “Come visit me in my office when you’re finished with the drills. I have something I want to give you.”

She opened her mouth to speak, her bottom lip was red and swollen with the bite, but before she had a chance to say anything, he spun away and headed toward the now-empty breeding lab.

Inside, he had set up a secure, private office. He had just one more task to complete before he could relax for the day. He gripped the prism that hung on a chain around his neck and felt it buzz faintly like a dying moth, but the thing on the end was very much the opposite. The scion had news on Charlie and Denver.

Augustus had waited to hear the news, extending his fantasy like a child refusing to open a wrapped gift. The anticipation was glorious in its own right, but with his army falling into place, there was no time left to wait.

He needed to know if the trap had sprung and caught its prey.

HOW THE SCION truly worked he would never know. He wasn’t even sure how they existed without a physical form, but it was of no concern to him; he had seen enough in his lifetime to know that out there, beyond the moon and the sun, were billions of things humanity would never see or understand.

All he cared about was carving out a section of the cosmos for his own. And working with the scion fitted into the plan.

Augustus locked the office door and sat at his desk, the surface of which contained dozens of books that he was in various stages of correcting. He placed the prism on the surface and activated it, creating a beam of light that drew a holographic keyboard.

This time he didn’t need to use one of the radios to transmit the signal and connect to the scion server. His handler, Drone 21, had instructed him on how to hardcode the prism’s communication crystal to the farm’s transceivers.

Within seconds of tapping out his unique passcode, a purple holographic cone appeared above the crystal, giving the dark room a rich tint. Augustus shivered as he thought about the prism and how it was actually conscious. It contained a living entity that the scion used to connect to their great binary hive mind.

Drone 21 didn’t bother to construct a humanlike face on the cone this time. Instead, Augustus was greeted with a neutral voice he had come to know well over the years.

“Agent 3982, you wish to know the status of your algorithm?”

“Yes,” Augustus said. The idea of an algorithm never ceased to intrigue him. The scion believed life was just a set of rules—a problem-solving program that met particular conditions, and that life could be coded and manipulated as though it were a math problem. “But not just mine… I was promised news on others.”

“The Jacksons.”

“Indeed.”

A stream of code flooded the display too fast for Augustus to make out. The scion often did this to inform him that they were thinking on the problem, sending data across the galaxy to their server farms to analyze the probability factors.

“The Jackson function will meet its terminus in the near future. The probability is undeniable. As for you, Agent 3982, you are entering an uncertain phase that even the Order of Things cannot dictate.”

Augustus coughed, clearing a dry patch on the back of his throat. He wanted to press his handler further; this was a different answer than he had previously been given—the promise that Earth would be his, that his algorithm would know no end.

“The future has changed?” Augustus finally asked.

“It’s mutable. Your kind would say you’re at a crossroads. Defeat Unity, Agent 3982, and your algorithm will continue as promised. Fail… and the Order of Things cannot predict your fate.”

The cone disappeared, the crystal turned dark, and the prism was once more a trinket. Sweat beaded behind Augustus’ mask. Up until now he hadn’t doubted his success. With the scion’s promise behind him, the thought of defeat had never entered his mind… but now…

He stood up and flipped the table, sending the books flying and crashing around the room. Zoe gave her identifying knock.

“Come in!”

The door crept open and Zoe stepped inside. She had removed her hair tie and wore her locks draped over her shoulders. She looked around the room with fear in her eyes.

Augustus removed his mask. “Lock the door.”

Chapter 4

CHARLIE SHOULDERED his rifle and searched the darkness for the owner of that dreaded shriek. A light flickered overhead, providing a brief exposure of a lean four-legged creature, at least six feet long. Two tentacles writhed on its scaly green back. Bones were piled on the floor next to its black front talons.

It resembled a Komodo dragon with weapons. The sight of it made the hairs on Charlie’s neck tingle as he raised his rifle.

The creature screamed. Its left tentacle whipped through the air, cracking rigid between Charlie and Layla, who managed to duck out of the way of the attack.

With Denver’s rifle on the floor and the hunter closing in, Charlie didn’t waste another second and fired. His muzzle flashed with a three-round burst, sending the creature scuttling back into the shadows.

A boom echoed around the cavern. The ground shook. Scion bombs were the least of their worries right now. The overhead light flickered again. A rainbow of varied alien blood smeared the walls.

Denver skidded to the ground and retrieved his rifle. He rolled and fired as a tentacle lashed his leg, dragging him toward the beast.

Charlie aimed over Denver’s prone position and fired another three-round burst, this time at the encroaching figure of the croatoan hunter. With satisfaction, Charlie saw the hunter spin to the side with a grunt and collapse to one knee.

Denver fired twice at a position above him. The tentacle loosened and he scrambled to his feet, joining Charlie and Layla.

“You okay, son?”

“I think so… I’ll look later.”

“Quick, there’s a tunnel to the right,” Layla said. “This way.”

She grabbed Charlie’s shoulder and pulled him into the gloom. Denver’s erratic footsteps followed. It sounded like his son was dragging his leg. That wasn’t good. Charlie hoped he hadn’t broken it. When the adrenaline wore off, they’d know more.

“Keep going, son,” Charlie urged as he followed Layla through the narrow tunnel. It led to a dimly lit wide space. Small white lights ran along the roof like raised sidewalk markers as far as the eye could see. Shafts of light stabbed into the darkness from hundreds of entrances at either side.

Denver limped past and scanned the area with his rifle. His cargo pants had a six-inch bloodstained rip around his left calf.

Rapid footsteps pattered through the tunnel behind them.

“Take cover here,” Denver said, wincing as he jogged over to a metallic box on their left. He crouched behind it and aimed at the tunnel entrance.

Layla and Charlie joined him, sliding behind the alien machinery.

Charlie leaned his rifle over the warm humming box. Layla extended her pistol in both hands. The komodo-like creature with the twin tentacles ran out of the entrance and climbed the opposite wall some twenty meters from them.

“Hold your fire unless it comes for us,” Denver said. “The hunter’s close by; I’m sure of it.”

The creature snapped its head in their direction. Its tentacles unfurled and swayed in a hypnotic cobra-like fashion.

“I already hate this place,” Denver growled.

A glinting sword thrust through the entrance and the hunter bounded out, yellow blood spotting his arm where Charlie had hit him earlier. Charlie detected movement to his left. Something stood in one of the tunnels further into the cavern and watched on from the shadows, but didn’t appear to move. Charlie returned his attention to their immediate threat.

The hunter rushed forward and Charlie was about to fire when the creature lurking on the wall behind it leapt down and dragged the hunter to the ground, wrapping its tentacles around the croatoan’s neck and waist.

The hunter let out a loud grunt and dropped the sword. It punched the creature in the chest. The second tentacle wrapped tighter around the hunter’s neck as they struggled in a deadly embrace.

Before any of them had a chance to fire into the wrestling match going on in front of them, a raspy voiced called out from the shadows of the tunnel to their left.

“Come here,” it said. “If you want to live.”

Charlie and the others looked at each other with their eyebrows raised.

“I mean you know harm,” the tredeyan said again, waving them away from their position and toward the tunnel entrance.

That was when Charlie realized the voice was coming over their intercom. Denver realized too. “How did it get into our intercom?”

“Come before another hunter arrives,” the tredeyan said, more urgently this time as it looked over at the creature slowly strangling the croatoan to death.

“What about that thing in front of us?” Denver said.

“Do not worry for now, come quick.”

With options severely limited, Charlie decided they had little choice, even if it was a trap. He didn’t want to hang around and waste ammo when they might need it later. He stood and carefully crept away from the area around the entrance, toward the tunnels. Denver and Layla followed, both keeping an aim on the creature. It shook its head and tore out a section of the hunter’s bowels.

Layla’s foot crunched against a piece of rock. The creature looked up and bared its teeth. It stooped low and extended its tentacles. All three of them were out in the open and the creature prowled forward.

The tredeyan ran ahead of them and burbled something. The creature’s features softened. It turned back, coiled a tentacle around the hunter’s neck and dragged its limp body back through the dark tunnel, leaving a trail of croatoan blood on the ground.

Charlie turned to the tredeyan. “What the hell is that thing?”

“A clusp. They guard some entrances and will attack if you are not tredeyan. Like your guard dog.”

Denver grunted. “Huh, some dog.”

“The croatoans let you keep them here?” Layla said.

“They are not allowed in our private areas, but it often happens. Some go hunting and pay the price. I am Vingo. Follow me.”

The alien, whose gender Charlie couldn’t make out, turned and headed back to the tunnel where it first appeared. Charlie shook his head, trying to get over the bizarre turn of events since they’d arrived at the gate. He just wanted five minutes of peace and safety to take stock and figure out what the hell to do next—they had just forty minutes of air left. After that… well, he didn’t want to think about that.

VINGO SMOOTHLY STEPPED along in his quietly whirring suit and led them through a wide carved-out hallway. Small rooms lined either side. Each looked sterile, with a bed, workbench, screen and speaker attached to the wall. Not untypical of any barrack rooms Charlie had seen throughout the years. Several were occupied, but only a couple of the tredeyans looked up when the group passed.

“I thought you lot would be pissed off about the gate?” Charlie said.

“You did us a favor,” Vingo said. “It might stop the croatoans coming to our planet.”

“What kind of alliance do you actually have?” Layla asked.

“As the ancient species, they believe they are the guardians of the universe. That means taking what technology and resources they want to maintain control. We had the gate and negotiated access. Earth was a root and food resource for them.”

“Why even bother coming to our planet?” Denver said. “Seems like a lot of effort.”

“They have limited space on their homeworlds and need to expand. I suppose their belief system helps justify their actions. It’s not easy to explain.”

Vingo ushered them into what looked like a warehouse of sorts with solid dividing walls stretching up to the ceiling that split the space into eight football-field-sized sections. Hundreds of empty armored suits stood in neat rows of twenty in the first compartment. Opposite, thousands of different-shaped small arms were mounted on metal frames with ammunition boxes below.

Gurgling and raspy shouts echoed around the spacious chamber.

“How is your English so good?” Layla said.

“I was part of the integration team that brought humans to Tredeya. We took from one area to keep a common language in place.”

“Why did you do that?” Denver said.

“The human decision-making process and ability to change is second to none. You’re a valuable resource… to many of the galaxy’s various factions.”

“What made you think we were there for the taking?” Charlie said, hiding his irritation about the alien’s apparent flippancy over kidnapping his own flesh and blood.

“It’s a question of development and requirements. Think about your own planet and you will see a microcosm of the universe.”

Charlie shook his head. “Do you understand the word bullshit, by any chance?”

The tredeyan nodded and its nostrils closed and opened. “Regional areas develop at different rates, whether that’s intra- or interplanetary. The stronger usually take from the weak. Some claim it’s a divine right, others that they are doing it for the sake of enhancement. Whatever the reason, it matches the requirements.”

“So what exactly did you do with the people you took?” Layla said.

“There’s more of your kind in the universe than on Earth. We expanded your race. I spent a long time at one of our outposts with a team of fifty humans. We work well together.”

“Are we expected to believe this was all a selfless act?”

“I never claimed it was. The human-adapted suits are near the back. This way. You’ll need them, as your air is running low.”

They passed rows of purple body armor to a section of navy blue suits with helmets propped on the top of each one. Charlie remembered the crew of the fighter in the staging area and wondered if humans born in space, brought up in alien cultures, would even acknowledge or view him as the same species.

The suits had a knife attached to the chest and a small black screen on the right forearm. Vingo activated three and checked the data display. “Suit up. We’re leaving this place.”

“Are we now? And where do you think you’re taking us?” Denver said, sweat beading on his face. Charlie saw that he was leaning his weight on his good leg. His leg no longer bled, but it looked bumpy beneath the fabric of his cargo pants.

“To my village. I can keep you safe. We have systems to produce oxygen and you can eat our food.”

“Why are you doing this for us?” Layla said, not hiding her suspicion.

Vingo pressed the pad on the closest suit. It split down the left and wound half open with an electric grind. “I want to make sure my family are safe. You can help me get there. We are going to pose as a patrol. Work together, yes? Or, you can always stay and fight your way out of the tunnels full of clusps. Your choice.”

This sounded more like a personal mission rather than clandestine help from the tredeyans behind the backs of the croatoans. Charlie was flying blind since he’d arrived on this godforsaken planet; they had little choice. With Hagellan out of action for whatever reason and his warning to run, along with a lack of oxygen, and Denver’s leg… staying would be suicide.

“Wait,” Charlie said, grabbing the tredeyan. “My boy got injured by that clusp of yours. Do you know medicine?”

The alien turned to look at Denver and lifted the leg of his pants.

Layla gasped. The flesh had turned black and in the middle of it all was white puss seeping from a wound. The blood had coagulated.

“Not too bad,” the tredeyan said, his little black eyes focusing with sharp movements as he knelt to inspect the leg. “You’ll lose the leg, of course, but it could have been far worse. Hold for one moment. The rest of you, suit up now.”

Charlie and Layla just stood there in shock. Lose his leg? Charlie was about to say something when Denver held up his hand. “Don’t. Let’s just see this through; then we’ll figure something out.”

Layla’s eyes welled with tears, but she choked them back. She made to step toward him, but Vingo appeared carrying a small graphite case. He flipped the lid and took out a metal cylinder.

“What’s that?” Denver said, pulling his leg back.

“Antivenom. It’ll stop the clusp’s toxins from infecting the rest of your body and reducing your brain to mulch. It’s your choice if you’d prefer I didn’t administer it?”

“For the record, Vingo, I fucking hate your planet and everything on it.”

“That makes two of us,” Vingo replied as he jabbed the cylinder into Denver’s leg, just above the wound.

Denver sucked in his breath and went stiff before breathing out and relaxing. “Okay, that stuff’s good,” he said, swaying.

Charlie steadied his son. “Are you all right?”

Denver looked at his leg then back to Charlie and Layla. “I… think so. The pain is numbed and I kind of feel… gooey.”

“The chemical is binding to the venom proteins. You’ll feel suboptimal for a few units.”

“Units?” Layla said.

“You call them hours,” Vingo said. “Now hurry, I can answer questions on the way. The hunters will be here soon.”

“What about our weapons?” Denver said.

“I’ll give you something better. You may keep your own if you wish, but I don’t know how effective they’ll be in our atmosphere,” Vingo said. He connected a thick flexible tube from each helmet to a pack on the back of the suits and checked the readings on the wrist pads. “You need to put on the helmets first. Just place it over your head and wait a short time.”

Charlie’s pulse quickened, but he realized they had nothing to lose. He took a few deep breaths, released the oxygen system’s shoulder straps, and ripped off the mask. Vingo passed him the helmet and placed it over his head. Two clamps gently rose against Charlie’s jawbone, securing his head in place. A soft rubberlike material sucked against his neck, forming a seal.

Everything outside took on a darker tinge. A luminous green digital display appeared at the bottom left of the visor and the temperature cooled around Charlie’s face. He’d read about astronauts having HUDs, but none were as advanced as the busy display before his eyes, although he couldn’t understand a single symbol or measurement.

Taking a deep breath, Charlie filled his lungs with air, but couldn’t detect any root in the supply. It was growing outside, so he’d just have to go back to eating it to get his hit, especially as it seemed food of any kind wasn’t on the menu for the foreseeable future.

Vingo held his stocky arm out toward the open suit. “The water compartments in the back plates are full and should last two days if you drink steadily. Climb in, please.”

Confident that Denver could provide cover, Charlie slipped into the gap of the suit and leaned against the soft rear section.

Vingo pressed the suit’s arm-pad several times. It closed around Charlie’s body and both pieces clamped together. A soft lining inflated around his body, filling up the loose space. The helmet and armor jerked together, followed by a hollow click.

The thing felt too light to be useful. Charlie raised his hand and his arm shot in the air. Denver half-smiled and picked up a helmet. He and Layla followed the same procedure.

“The shell has pressure pads,” Vingo said after placing on his purple helmet. His raspy voice came through in crystal-clear tones. “You only need soft movements to power the mechanism. I’ve configured the helmets on our own secure network so we can talk without fear.”

Layla moved forward. After a few awkward steps, she moved freely and picked up her gun. “This is amazing. Unbelievable.”

Denver raised the gauntlet, flexed its fingers and turned the hand in front of his face. “Are they good in combat?”

“Good in unarmed combat and protection from small weapons at medium and long distance. My village is in range of the wireless reactor. We should have no problems with power.”

“You power these things with wireless energy?” Charlie asked.

“We power most things with it. It’s nothing new. Test your movements naturally. We have to go.”

Charlie fought the temptation to move like a robot, or a man in a metal case, and walked forward. He couldn’t believe how easily he could move as the balled joints around the knees, ankles and elbows spun to precision with every move. He only felt a slight restriction around his hips.

“What are the readings on the visor?” Layla said.

“I’ll explain later. Follow me,” Vingo said and headed for the weapons compartment.

The tredeyan slung a black pouch over his purple armor and headed toward the opposite side of the warehouse.

Optimism initially flowed through Charlie as he followed. They’d found immediate safety and had a plan. He resisted communicating his relief. Hagellan’s words on the trip to Tredeya ran through his head. Tredeyans are politicians, not fighters. Vingo openly admitted that they kidnapped humans for their own gain. Something told him that this mission was a lot more than just a trek to a village.

Chapter 5

THE UNDERGROUND WORKSHOP seemed quiet given the circumstances, Mike thought.

Next to him, Mai worked with a croatoan engineer who called himself Gib. Neither made much noise as they busied themselves with soldering irons, connecting wires and transistors to a remodeled radio unit.

They were both hunched over a workbench.

Mai wore a pair of magnifying goggles and leaned close to her work. Wires and radio parts were strewn across the surface of the bench.

The smell of the burning solder and flux brought back happy memories for Mike—memories of him and Mai building and repairing devices over the years.

Looking at her now from his stool, he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have her when so many people had to survive on their own. He leaned back and rubbed a knot from his shoulders. The quiet and the lack of news were making him more tense than usual.

Since the others had left for Tredeya, Mike and his new team had set up a workshop in Hagellan’s old place. Throughout that time, the place had buzzed with frantic activity. Gib, who spoke excellent English, having grown up in Unity, had put himself in charge of the communications team.

They had monitored the tachyon transceiver for any messages from Tredeya, but as yet, only one had reached them: that the croatoan destroyer was, ironically, destroyed, along with the gate. No news yet from Charlie, Denver, or Layla about their chances of returning, or any sign that they were still alive.

Earth, for now at least, was safe from interstellar menaces, but Mike still hated the thought of never seeing his friends again. It didn’t matter that he knew their chances of returning were slim; what mattered was that there was at least a chance, no matter how remote. The longer it went without word, however, the shorter those odds became and the closer Mike would have to come to dealing with the hard truth.

Regardless of what was happening on Tredeya, Mike knew it wasn’t the time to mope about being morose and useless.

Augustus was still out there—up to something.

A croatoan scout had reported an increase of shuttle activity from some of the farms to the south and east—hence the work on the radio. They needed more intelligence.

“How’s it going, my love?” Mike said, sitting up from his stool and approaching his wife. He pressed his hand against her back and leaned in to kiss her gently on the cheek.

“Careful, you’ll burn yourself,” Mai replied, swatting him away with affection that hadn’t dulled in all these years. Her eyes twinkled in the fluorescent light of the workshop as she looked up at him.

The smoke from the soldering iron coiled in a tight vortex before fading into the flow of air that permeated the cave system, along with the tangy metallic stink of burning flux.

“It’s nearly ready, wouldn’t you say so, Gib?”

The croatoan grunted a clear affirmative as he soldered what looked to be the final wire into place. He sat back and removed the goggles from his turtle-like face. Though they didn’t smile as much, the Unity-born croatoans had learned to make a gesture with their face that was as close to a smile as they were going to get.

“Radio requires calibration,” he said, pointing to an alien crystal emanating from the center of the circuit board.

“And how do we do that?” Mai asked.

“I have very special part. Rare and incredibly valuable.” Gib made his alien-smile again and reached into a pocket on his leather waistcoat.

Mike nodded in silent appreciation of the new garment—it was made by a croatoan and human couple within Unity. Using leather from scavenged clothes, they made these for the engineers. Over twenty pockets, loops and webbing made them supremely useful for carrying tools and parts.

Mike and Mai were so impressed with the design they had commissioned a matching pair for themselves.

“What is it?” Mike asked, wondering what new piece of alien technology he was going to learn about. If there was one positive of this whole terrible episode, it was learning about the alien tech. Mike just wished, with all his heart, the croatoans and humans could have tried a peaceful approach first rather than going straight to war, and ultimately defeat for everyone.

So much loss for so little gain.

“I show you,” Gib said. He brought his scaly hand out of the pocket, the mysterious item enclosed within his grip. “Behold!” Gib opened his hand and dropped the part onto the workbench.

Mike and Mai leaned forward eagerly to see what it was.

“Wait,” Mike said, picking it up. “This is it?”

Gib blinked, indicating it was.

“But… but this is just a plastic knob. What’s so amazing about this? How do you use it to calibrate?” He wondered if it was some kind of special polymer that worked with tachyon waves.

“I show,” Gib said, taking the part from Mike.

The alien leaned over the circuit board and clipped the plastic knob onto a standard-looking potentiometer—the usual kind found on most radios.

Mai burst out laughing when Gib turned the knob and the sound of radio static came from a speaker lying in amongst the debris of items.

Mike didn’t get it, so focused on what was so special.

“It is just a joke,” Gib said. “You not like joke?”

“I did,” Mai said. “You had us going for a moment there. You look confused, dear,” Mai said to Mike. “It’s a joke… the special calibration part is just a tuning knob.”

“Oh! I get it now,” Mike said, forcing a smile.

Gib seemed to understand that he wasn’t really in the mood for levity. He turned away and clicked the radio off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you looked sad. I hoped I might help make you laugh. I’m trying to work on my knowledge of human mood. My friend has been helping me with language and humor. He called this a misdirection joke. It was funny because it set an expectation that was different from the reality.”

Patting Gib on the arm, Mike nodded. “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just… I find it hard to laugh right now.”

“Okay, I understand. We continue to work.”

Gib turned his attentions back to the radio, but in truth there was little to do. Mike felt bad about upsetting him and moved back to his stool. Before he got settled, the echo of footsteps caught his attention.

He spun round to look past Hagellan’s throne, where the entranceway had been carved. Long shadows crept across the floor of the tunnel system. The shadows belonged to humans. Mike stood, wondering if someone was bringing news.

Ryan, the young guard who was stationed outside Charlie and Denver’s accommodation, entered the workshop. Aimee followed, wearing a low-key set of military fatigues.

“Did you hear from them? Is there news from Tredeya?”

“I’m afraid not,” Aimee said.

Mike sat back on the stool, deflated.

“What can we do for you?” Mai asked.

Aimee stepped further into the workshop and inspected the workbench. Ryan, with a rifle over his shoulder, waited behind her like a loyal pup.

“I just wanted to bring you all some supplies. I know you’ve been working hard on getting the radio up and running again, and thought you could do with something to eat.”

Ryan shrugged a pack off his back and brought it over to the workbench, dispensing its contents to any spare space he could find. Beef sandwiches and plastic tubs of stew soon made Mike’s stomach rumble.

“Thanks,” he said. “We appreciate it. We’ve made good progress, actually. The radio works, but we’ve not scanned any frequencies yet.”

“Then perhaps I’ve arrived at the right time,” Aimee said, reaching into a small bag attached to the belt around her waist. She handed a palm-sized black object to Gib. “One of our scouts found this. It’s from the wreckage of a hover-bike that belonged to one of the southern farms.”

Gib took the object and held it below the bench-top lamp.

“Perfect,” she said. “It’s the bike’s communication computer. From this we can get into the farm’s network.”

Aimee smiled with the news, her eyes crinkling at the edges. Despite all the years she had been kept in stasis and the anti-aging effects of the root, Mike could still tell from her eyes just how old she was. She had a sadness there that reflected his own. It was something that came from age, perhaps with the knowledge that no matter how bad things get, there’s always more loss to deal with. It’s the never-ending flipside to the lifecycle.

“Once inside,” Mai said, “we can use the radio to scan their frequencies. If what your scout saw is what we think, then it’ll help us figure out just what Augustus is up to.”

“Nothing good, that’s for sure,” Ryan said. “The man is raving mad. All the time I stood outside his chalet I would hear him ranting to himself about his empire and his plans.”

“Aye, he’s mad all right,” Mike said. “But history has shown us some of the maddest people manage to do incredible things. That kind of vision, as sick as it is, attracts loyal support.”

Aimee cocked an eyebrow.

“Not that I’m suggesting you’re like that,” Mike quickly added. “I’m referring to Augustus. With the humans and croatoans scattered and leaderless in the other farms, it wouldn’t be that difficult for Augustus to unite them.”

Gib connected the communication device to one of his croatoan computers and with surprising dexterity tapped in lines of code. After a few moments, he sat back from the computer screen and looked up at Aimee. “Their network needs more security to keep me out.”

“You’re in?” Aimee asked.

Gib nodded.

Mai and Mike looked at each other and shared a smile.

“So we have their encryption key and frequency?” Mike asked.

“Let us see,” Gib replied, hooking up the bike’s transceiver to the radio. A moment later he stood up, stepping away from the workbench. He looked at Mike. “You test?”

“Thanks.” He took Gib’s place, giving him a kind smile for the honor of being the one to test the radio. Mike turned the knob and a crackle came through the speaker. He slowly dialed the knob clockwise until the crackle turned into a series of clicks and grunts.

“That’s them!” Gib said. “The other croatoans from the farms.”

Mike listened but couldn’t make out the words.

“They’re talking in code,” Gib added, dashing around Mai in order to find a pad and a pen from the rubble strewn on the workbench.

As the radio continue to play out the croatoans’ language, Gib noted down on the pad what they were saying.

He dropped his pen on the table and handed the pad to Aimee. Mike didn’t like the look on Gibs’ face; it resembled fear too much.

Aimee read the pad and sighed.

“It’s as we feared. He’s coming for us… with force.”

Chapter 6

RAPID FOOTSTEPS ECHOED through the cavern. Layla glanced at the others in the group. Two croatoans ran through a gap in an adjacent corridor with rifles raised. Neither alien noticed them, but it appeared they were looking for something as they retraced their steps a few moments later.

“Are they searching for us?” Charlie said.

“No,” Vingo said. “But if they find you, I can’t predict the outcome. Follow me. We need to move.”

Layla followed Vingo and Charlie as they headed up a stone tunnel toward an exit from the caverns. The suit made movement effortless, once she had gotten used to it. Denver powered along by her side, inspecting the tredeyan rifle. They’d all decided to take one, mainly due to the amount of available ammunition.

Four spare magazines, containing rounds with a liquid propellant in a transparent casing, were magnetically attached to indents on both hips of their suits.

Vingo had given them a crash course on the rifle’s main functions. According to Denver and Charlie, it turned out to be fairly standard for an automatic weapon.

For Layla, it was about as alien and advanced a weapon as she’d ever handled. Unlike human weapons, this one featured a red crosshair that automatically appeared in her visor when she raised the rifle, and it followed the sights as she swept it about.

The rifle, like the tredeyans, was stocky and short, and she hoped both were reliable and trustworthy.

Every twenty seconds Layla glanced back, half expecting two angry croatoans to storm up the tunnel and start shooting.

“The scion are in many places,” Vingo said and stopped by a smooth black panel next to a door. “Report anything that you think looks suspicious.”

“Any clues what we should be looking for?” Denver said. “That’s nice and vague. We’ve seen the fighters. That’s about it.”

“They’ll likely be machines on the ground. I’ll verify.”

“We’re going to be relying on you,” Charlie said, stepping closer to the alien. “Lead the way and we’ll provide cover, but think of screwing us over… well, let’s just say I’m sick of being used by aliens.”

Vingo blinked and dropped his chest in a quick movement indicating he understood.

“You okay, Den?” Layla said, checking on Denver, concerned over his leg injury. He gave her a reassuring nod, helping decrease the hopeless feeling while being chased by the clusp and hunter, with oxygen running low. Vingo provided hope—assuming he could be trusted. She didn’t forget what Hagellan had said to them about the tredeyans: they were politicians, and if they were anything like the ones back home, she didn’t expect the best. “What do these scion actually want?” she said.

“They demanded full access to our systems,” Vingo said. “It’s the same for every planet. If you don’t comply, they attempt to take it by force.”

“What’s the motivation?” Denver said.

“The scion want some lost information. I don’t know exactly what, and it will also mean nothing to you. They will stop at nothing to get it.”

“That’s a merciless way of obtaining something you might not even know about,” Charlie said.

“They think somebody is hiding it from them. Planets under croatoan influence are being targeted. They are the ancient species, so I think the scion concluded that they must have it. That brings both of our species into their quest.”

Vingo pressed the panel. A green light winked above the dull metallic door. All raised their rifles and the electronics in the suits droned in unison. The door punched open.

Bright stars spread across the midnight blue sky. The view through Layla’s visor automatically brightened, providing an excellent enhanced view of the dark landscape. A few of the rocks stood out on the field of brown scree in front of them.

Vingo led the way. They moved in an extended line, heading for a light green hill. A plume of dark gray smoke rose behind it. Aircraft lights zipped across the sky as sporadic explosions rumbled in the distance.

Layla turned and gazed at the black prism in the sky. It had gained altitude since she last saw it and only a few small craft buzzed around its pointed base. It was hopefully a sign that they were scaling down the attack, leaving the group an uneventful trip to Vingo’s village. She laughed to herself at that ridiculous notion. Like anything would be uneventful ever again. The idea of spending time at the tredeyan village excited her, but not as much as getting safely home and not having to feel like the equivalent of being strapped to an ocean floor, surrounded by sharks, with air rapidly running out.

A charcoal-colored tredeyan fighter whined overhead. It banked to the left, headed for the silhouette of a volcano, and released a missile from its wing. Seconds later, the ground shuddered below Layla’s suit, a tower of fire belched into the sky, followed by a loud boom in close proximity.

Charlie ducked to one knee and swept the area with his rifle. “What kind of forces do the scion deploy on the ground? Do they have any missiles like that?”

The explosion glinted against Vingo’s visor as he turned back. “They attempt to leave transmitters and probes. We have to destroy them quickly before they spread.”

“How long do they carry out these probing raids?” Layla said.

“This is no raid. It’s an invasion.”

Denver and Layla quickened their pace to draw alongside the tredeyan, who continued to trudge up a hill. “Hagellan said this was a scouting mission. Is it likely to succeed?” Denver said.

“We are picking up activity all over the planet. I knew this when I said I could save you. There is a good chance Tredeya will fall.”

“And if you do?” Charlie said. “Where does that leave us?”

“We have places in our village that have survived many invasions. The scion will not purge us completely.”

Charlie glanced at Layla, who shook her head. She had no idea what the impact might be. Relating the situation to Earth during previous conflicts was her only frame of reference. Villages were easy targets for invading forces.

Vingo picked up a winding dirt path between small bushes and zigzagged toward the ridgeline.

“Why don’t you give them what they want if they’re going to leave after?” Denver said.

“The croatoans and our command won’t allow it. They think once the scion have access to their networks, the universe will fall. Machines will replace life.”

The thought sent a chill down Layla’s spine, although Vingo’s version of life probably didn’t include plants and animals, only the species who ruled each planet. Vingo trudged to the top of the ridgeline and crouched. Layla joined him and looked down into a light green valley peppered with rocks and circular dark green bushes.

A group of fifty tredeyan ground troops moved under the cover of starlight, darting from tree to rock at the bottom of the slope. White-hot flashes burst from their muzzles and the hollow crackle of alien gunfire echoed in the valley. They headed for a six-meter-high square black machine hovering above the ground among a lone cluster of trees. A rod came from its under-section and planted in the ground.

“The scion mech’s trying to break past our shield and hack into our lines,” Vingo said, almost with a resignation of the inevitable. “We need to find cover and wait for things to quieten down.”

“Let’s get the hell away from here,” Denver said.

“The mech might detect our movement. Wait for a moment.”

The troops halted fifty meters short and continued firing. One held a bulky piece of equipment on their shoulder, broke cover, and fired. A blue bolt shot along the ground and exploded against the mech’s side. Smoke drifted into the air. A double-barreled gun on the mech’s side rose on a circular arm and fired. Light blue bolts sliced through the air like tracer rounds and ripped out large chunks of ground around the tredeyans. They scrambled for cover behind rocks.

A scion fighter appeared over the horizon and headed for the position. Its engines screamed as it descended and approached at low level. Three spherical pods dropped from its underside into the valley and it roared over the group’s heads.

The pods burst in the air before they hit the ground, throwing out a cloud of glowing red vapor that spread in all directions, shrouding the valley’s surface.

When it cleared thirty seconds later, half of the troops were down, large sections of their suits degraded by the orb’s load. A beam of light shot from the front of the mech and searched the ground for targets. It advanced, rotating in the air and firing bolts, meeting little resistance as it neared the first bodies of its opponents.

“I want to be as far away from that thing as possible,” Charlie said.

Denver edged away from the ridge. He raised an arm, and his gauntlet clanked against Layla’s shoulder plate. She smiled through the visor at him, appreciating the gesture. She wondered if he shook with fear inside his suit as much as she did.

“This way,” Vingo said. “I’ll take you to a temple in the forest.”

THE GROUP CUT right and descended into a dark ravine. The suit auto-corrected when Layla thought she’d lose her balance. The visor’s night vision enhanced further, giving their surroundings a green tinge, creating a sharp edge around the fauna and rocks that littered the slopes.

Layla resisted the temptation to grab the trunk of one of the squat trees or the thick stems of the oversized pink ferns as they cut their way toward the sound of flowing water. Her confidence grew when she realized the sure-footedness of the suit in adverse terrain.

A shallow stream ran along the bottom, gushing over smooth rocks. Vingo splashed through the middle of it, crunching over the pebbled bed, away from the sound of gunfire.

The sparse steep hills on either side of the stream dropped until dense undergrowth covered either side. The forest ahead appeared to be an impassable dark mess of trees, vines and plants.

“How’s your leg, son?” Charlie said.

“I’ll live. The suit helps,” Denver said, although Layla could hear the strain in his voice. “Are there any wild clusps living in the forest?”

“Yes,” Vingo said, “but it’s unlikely they’ll attack four of us with weapons.”

Charlie just grunted and kept his rifle held high.

As Layla closed on the edge of the canopy, her visor switched to infragreen vision, giving her a clear view through the forest. Small rodent-like creatures with long snouts huddled around a group of spiny yellow plants. When Vingo waded toward them, they scattered deeper into the undergrowth.

“These helmets are amazing,” she said, viewing other small creatures shuffling around the forest floor.

Denver paused and scanned the immediate area. “I need to take one of these back to Earth.”

“You don’t have a wireless reactor or filters,” Vingo said in a matter-of-fact kind of way. “They also require regular maintenance from skilled engineers.”

Nobody replied. Layla knew it wasn’t the time to discuss cultural differences.

The stream thinned to a crack in the ground as Vingo cut to his right. He thrashed through ten meters of clustered spade-shaped leaves with his rifle. Charlie followed, sweeping them out of the way. They snapped back against Layla’s suit and visor, but the power in her arms and legs allowed easy passage.

On the other side, a winding beaten path cut through the forest. Vingo trudged along it, sweeping his rifle from left to right.

“Over there,” Charlie said, jabbing his weapon to his left.

Denver spun and aimed. A clusp tracked them twenty meters away in the forest. It stopped. Its two muscly tentacles writhed on its back.

“Ignore it,” Vingo said. “One followed us when we entered the forest.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Layla said.

“It wasn’t important; it would be a needless fight. They’re not dull-witted creatures. It’s probably just tracking us, making sure we don’t threaten its young.”

She thought it was, especially after seeing what the creature could do once close. The creepy rumbling noise it made sent a shiver down her spine.

“We should kill it now so it doesn’t pose a threat later,” Denver said.

“Save your ammunition for when you need it,” Vingo said.

Denver sighed through the comms system. Layla surveyed other parts of the undergrowth in case other beasts were circling.

Charlie kept his aim on the clusp and moved off. Layla knew he wouldn’t pause if the thing got within striking distance. She couldn’t take her eyes off it either. It continued to shadow them but never got any closer, like a hyena stalking wildebeest, waiting for a weak one to detach from the herd.

The track split in two directions. Vingo headed left. The unrecognizable luminous green data at the bottom of the visor kept changing.

“What are the visor measurements?” Layla said.

“The one in the corner measures your filter life,” Vingo said. “You only need to worry when it gets down to one unit.”

“I’m at four bars,” Charlie said. “Are you sure it’ll last two days?”

“Yes. The one next to it measures calibration. Each section of the circle is a part of your suit. Let me know if one turns red.”

“What about the symbols?” Denver said.

“Our coordinates on the planet. It means nothing to you, but I can teach you back at the village.”

“Why not teach us now?” Layla asked.

“We haven’t got time,” Vingo said and gazed up.

A lone scion fighter, with its distinctive blue rear engine, powered over the track, rustling the canopy leaves on either side of them. Small insects dropped out of the trees and scurried back up the trunks.

Vingo led them into a fifty-meter-wide clearing.

Layla’s visor switched back to the regular night vision. A round stone building with a domed roof sat in the middle. If it had been painted in stripes, it would’ve looked like a prehistoric circus tent. “What is it?” she asked.

“This is the temple of Tangus,” Vingo said. “She is our god of creation.”

“How many do you worship?”

“Thirty, and there’s a temple dedicated to each around the planet.”

A crack of light seeped from the middle of two solid wooden doors. Vingo paused and peered through his sights.

Charlie aimed at the door. “I take it you know the owner?”

“I heard a croatoan priest moved in, but I don’t know them personally. We stopped going to the temples after the croatoans came. We didn’t agree with their views on existence.”

“You expect the priest to welcome us with open arms?” Denver said.

“The priests are duty bound to provide shelter.”

A metal clank came from inside the temple, followed by a whirring like an electric drill. Vingo slowly advanced. Denver moved to his left, Layla covered his right, and Charlie swept the undergrowth, ensuring a clusp couldn’t spring a surprise attack.

“That doesn’t exactly sound like the regular activities of a priest,” Denver said.

“Wait,” Vingo said. “Let me look. It sounds like a…” He eased the metal door open with his rifle’s muzzle.

A black prism hovered over a table in the center of the gloomy temple, surrounded by circular benches on the outer area. It rotated in the air, firing white and red lasers down at an electronic device that appeared to be building in size.

Layla froze, concerned that even the slightest movement might attract the prism’s attention away from whatever it was currently doing.

“Everything all right in there?” Charlie said.

“What the hell—” Denver said.

Vingo fired a burst. Tredeyan rounds sparked off the sloped edges of the prism and ricocheted around the temple. Layla pulled her trigger. The rifle kicked against her shoulder and she felt its judder through her gauntlets.

Sky blue lights flashed around the midsection of the prism. The lasers stopped and it shot to the side of the room.

Denver hunched around Vingo and fired. Dust puffed off the wall around the scion machine as the rounds hit a decorative painting of a large tredeyan in a golden robe.

“What’s it doing?” Layla said as the prism circled around the far end of the temple and headed back toward them.

“It’s calculating what it should do next, based on our appearance. Prepare yourself,” Vingo said.

“How do we beat something like this?” Denver said.

“Cause enough damage, if we can.”

A small blue bolt shot from its base, passing straight between Layla and Denver in the blink of an eye and zipping into the forest over Charlie’s shoulder.

Layla and Denver fired again, but their rounds had no visible effect. Vingo jumped between them, knocking them out of the way as he rushed away from the entrance.

The prism’s rotations increased. A halo of white light appeared above it, brightening the rings of wooden benches crammed into the temple.

A piercing whistle blasted through the intercom, sending pain shooting through Layla’s ears. She grabbed either side of her helmet. Her focused blurred and she felt her grip weakening around her rifle.

Chapter 7

DREAMS WERE NOT the seeds of one’s own imagination but the confused signals of the gods. At least this was what Augustus believed.

He yawned and rolled off his bunk, standing up with a stretch of his arms over his head. His back cricked satisfyingly. He turned to the small bedside table and removed a root pill from the drawer, downing it without water.

While he waited for the active ingredient to hit his bloodstream, he thought back to his earlier daydream.

Shortly after seeing to Zoe, he fell into a slumber. At first his dreams were the usual replaying of the day’s events: his conversation with his scion handler, Zoe on her hands and knees, but more importantly the remembering of a thought that had crossed his mind earlier in the day before; it disappeared as soon as it arrived.

This thought was about the scion and their purpose.

Since Augustus had taken over from the insider croatoan agent—this was when he was back on the mother ship with Hagellan and the council—he had always wondered what the scion’s true mission was.

He didn’t believe they wanted him to take over Unity, and essentially Earth, just for the entertainment factor of it. Although he had to admit that since gathering his forces and connecting with the other farms, he was certainly finding a lot to be entertained by.

Not least was Zoe. She really was quite a remarkable woman. Her pain, and pleasure, tolerance was admirably high. She reminded him of a previous concubine from back in his Roman days.

Back then, though, the women would break all too easily, but Zoe was bred from hardier stock. Perhaps she was more like him than he first realized.

She had certainly seemed to ingratiate herself into his thoughts.

Augustus smiled and sat back down on the bunk; the sheets smelled of her sweat and musk, conjuring the image of her naked body in his mind.

But now wasn’t the time to give in to animal urges.

He turned his thoughts back to the scion: what was it they were truly after? He knew they had been battling with the Croatoan Empire for millennia all throughout the galaxy. The previous agent had told him just a few details: that they were searching for their creator and it had something to do with humans, hence why the croatoan agent was turned against his race, and now Augustus had taken up the mantle.

But why humans? he thought.

What was it about his species that was of such interest to them? The scion had been around for longer than humanity—at least those on Earth—and had grown to such a formidable size they now truly threatened the largest empire the galaxy had ever seen: the croatoans.

When two huge entities like that clash, the ripples change the future—and Augustus didn’t want to get caught in the riptide. He wanted to be in a position to ride the wave, conquer it.

As far as he was concerned, once Unity was taken and the scion gave him his promise, he would be the custodian for the humans, and then he could negotiate with the scion for more information.

He had learned even as a small child that you keep your enemies closer than your friends, and you get to know them better than you know yourself.

When it came to the scion, though, there was no real understanding of them in his current situation. Information was permitted to him only when they saw fit.

That would need to change.

His thoughts were disturbed by the sounds of two shuttles landing in the square outside of his personal building. He turned to glance out of the window and watched as two large farm shuttles settled on the landing strip.

Once grounded, their passenger ramps lowered and a group of two men and three women stepped out and approached Zoe. In the darkness of the shuttles, hundreds of humans and croatoans sat, waiting.

Troops… reinforcements.

My army, Augustus thought, the sight bringing a smile to his face.

Zoe walked across the square with purpose, tying her hair into a tight bun. When she approached the others, they shared handshakes and motioned to the shuttles. Zoe nodded her approval and turned her back.

Augustus fitted his mask and left his room. A short corridor led out into the square. Still dressed in his fatigues, he strode across the ground toward the group with all the posture his position deserved.

This particular farm’s croatoan and human troops saw him and quickly stepped into rigid formation, their previous chatter silencing instantly. It seemed they were learning quickly. He enjoyed the effect he had on others; no doubt his new mask and choice of uniform only added to that impression.

“Augustus,” Zoe said, saluting with the respect of someone who hadn’t just learned his most intimate desires, “the reinforcements have arrived.”

Anyone else would receive a derogatory comment about observing the obvious, but for her he just nodded and turned his attention to the new entourage. An older woman with a rich complexion and huge eyes stepped forward, her lithe hand held out toward him.

“Good evening, Augustus; it’s a pleasure to meet you. Please, let me introduce myself and my allies.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m Umbuwe, the coordinator for Farm 153. We were the first to heed your call and organize ourselves. I must say, it was like a call from heaven. Things were getting difficult for a time… but then you called, galvanized us, and gave us a common mission.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Augustus said, willing himself to be patient and let all the polite customs proceed. It wouldn’t stop him moving forward with more pressing plans. Umbuwe introduced the other farm coordinators. He didn’t bother to remember their names.

“So,” Augustus said, cutting off some blather from one of the coordinators: a young man who looked no older than twenty-five and who appeared to be having trouble growing a beard. “You’re here. We’re together, united. I will command us to a better future. Without the threat of the croatoan council, we’re free to colonize and settle—as soon as we eradicate our immediate threat: Unity.”

Augustus spent the next ten minutes educating the coordinators on Unity’s numbers, resources and levels of technology.

The young man’s face stretched in a smile as he said, “With you leading us, Augustus, how can we not fail?”

Although he liked the sentiment, his sycophancy just didn’t do it for him as it would coming from Zoe. Still, he took in the spirit as befitting his role and nodded his head.

“Umbuwe, I’m putting you in charge of the two shuttles. From now on, you’re the line of command to your troops, answerable to me. Zoe, likewise, you’re in charge of this group.” He pointed to the battalions of humans and croatoans on the square.

Both women saluted him stiffly.

“We set out in three hours. In the meantime, you two will come with me and I’ll explain how the attack will happen, but before that, Zoe, I need you to do something for me. Umbuwe, you’re to stay and watch.”

Zoe’s eyebrows came together as she asked a silent question. Augustus gripped her shoulder and led her away from the entourage until they were standing in front of their troop formation.

“Among this group are ten traitors,” Augustus said. “We can’t afford to have any seeds of dissention.”

“Of course not, sir. That would simply be… unacceptable. Do you know who they are?”

Augustus stepped forward and walked down the front line of the formation, peering at each individual. Some held his eye, others looked away, but neither were an indication of guilt, for he knew there were no traitors among this group.

Once he had walked the length of the formation, staring into the eyes of twenty men, women, and croatoans, he followed his footsteps back to where Zoe stood.

“I do,” he said. “But it’s immaterial.”

“Oh? I don’t understand,” Zoe said.

Umbuwe and the other coordinators were watching with curiosity and—with what Augustus had hoped for—fear.

“We need to set an expectation,” Augustus said. “We need to show everyone what’s at stake. Without that motivation, when the fight gets tough, our forces will crumble. They’re not used to combat. They’re used to working on administrative orders around the farm. We need to reach to that animal inside that will claw, spit, and thrash to survive.”

“I understand,” Zoe said, her voice displaying a slight tremble.

This was good, Augustus thought. He needed the officers and coordinators to feel the same fear and animal fury as the others. He needed them to know that their lives were at stake as much as those on the ground and in the trenches.

This was his mistake when he was Roman Emperor: those at the top had grown soft and weak and were too secure in their positions. It clouded their judgment, made them choose the easier, safer choice, even if it meant defeat for the empire.

He wouldn’t let that happen again.

Turning to the waiting formation of troops, he noted their apparent nervousness by the way they fidgeted and looked to each other. Augustus suppressed a grin as the thought about a group of meerkats suddenly realizing they had a hyena in their midst.

Addressing them, Augustus stepped forward and projected his voice so that it echoed across the square, rebounding off the small buildings surrounding them. “I want ten volunteers, right this moment.”

At first nothing happened, but then slowly a few croatoans stepped out. He knew they’d be the first; they just didn’t understand what was going on without the direction of the council. The humans were warier.

“I want the volunteers, right now,” August repeated. “If not, I’ll choose at random.”

When none stepped forward after a few seconds, Augustus pointed out ten random human soldiers. “Line up in front of the formation.”

The soldiers jogged out of the ranks and stood shoulder to shoulder, ten meters in front. Zoe and Augustus moved behind them. Augustus removed the pistol from his hip holster and handed it to her.

“Execute them,” he said. “We teach the lesson now so we don’t have to in the future. There’s no discussion on this.” He didn’t even wait for her response. He turned his back and walked toward his private room.

Most of the selected soldiers protested, but with each step he heard the crack of the pistol and one less voice questioning his decision. By the time he reached his building, ten shots later, there were no more dissenting voices.

The entire place took on a deathly silence.

He turned to survey the scene. Zoe stood over the bodies, holding the smoking pistol to one side. She looked up at him, no expression on her face. Augustus nodded once to her and then addressed the entourage.

“All of you, including Zoe, are to see me in my room in five minutes as soon as you’ve cleared the bodies. We’ve plans to make.”

When he received nothing but salutes, he smiled behind his mask and stepped into his building, knowing that he had learned from his mistakes and that knowledge was indeed power. He had this army exactly where he wanted it.

Unity would fall, of that he had no doubt.

Chapter 8

DENVER DUCKED to his left between two solid benches at the front of the temple. He winced in agony as the high-pitched tone continued to blast through the intercom.

Layla crashed to the ground next to him. The strip light inside her helmet illuminated her panic-stricken face.

A bead of sweat rolled down Denver’s temple. He had fought aliens all of his life, but nothing like the scion.

The prism remained in position. It seemed to float with an assured arrogance on the other side of the temple while inflicting torturous pain. The rifles had proven useless and Denver racked his brains for a plan.

White bolts spat from the halo above the prism and peppered the walls around the temple. Stone chips pinged off Denver’s and Layla’s suits.

Two tredeyan rifles fired outside. Denver guessed Charlie positioned himself by the door to assist in the fight. Vingo had also retreated outside.

Denver took a deep breath, raised his rifle and fired a full magazine. The halo vanished and the prism’s rotation slowed as twenty rounds slammed into its solid rectangular body. Thin white wisps of smoke and yellow spark fizzed from its underside and shot across the floor.

“Are you okay?” Charlie said.

“I think I’ve damaged it,” Denver said. “Give it hell.”

“You got it.”

The temple descended into a murky gloom apart from a single white beam that shone against the wall above their heads. Denver and Layla edged along the back of the bench away from its focus. His helmet automatically switched to night vision and he peered through a gap in the seating. The prism had closed in on them and a circular light shone from its midsection.

A bolt flashed over Denver’s head and punctured a six-inch hole in the wall behind him. The building shuddered and dust dropped from the ceiling. He grabbed a magazine from the magnetic holding position on his hip and reloaded.

The prism whirred closer. Denver looked across to Layla. “It’s now or never. Let’s unload on the damned thing.”

She nodded and raised her rifle toward the top of the bench. They couldn’t simply hold their position against this type of enemy. Waiting and hoping it would retreat would prove fatal judging by the intent it had already shown.

Denver sprang up. “Now.”

He positioned the target in his visor at the beam’s source. Layla fired on automatic and sprayed it with tredeyan metal.

The blue lights on the prism flickered. It slowly descended, attempted to rise again for a moment but fell almost immediately.

Charlie rolled into the temple and ducked left. He glanced across to Denver and Layla, raised his rifle and fired.

Denver stood for a better view. The scion had landed in a space at the center of the temple.

A blue beam shot from the machine and focused on his visor. Denver squinted when it moved from one of his eyes to the other. He ducked back down again, guessing the thing was taking aim at his face. Charlie advanced forward and fired repeatedly.

Electric snaps echoed around the walls. The temple fell silent. A thin veil of smoke filled the air.

“I think I’ve done it,” Charlie said.

Edging out into an aisle, Denver noticed all the lights on the prism were out. It sat there like an inanimate object, but that wouldn’t be enough for him to drop his guard. He moved to Charlie’s side while keeping the scion machine in his sights.

Layla followed, her short shallow breathing audible through the intercom. Denver turned back. “Are you all right?”

She smiled and touched the arm of his suit. “I’ll be okay.”

Feeling his face flush, he looked away. “Better check to see if we really killed that thing.”

“Cover me,” Charlie said. He took slow deliberate steps toward the prism while maintaining his aim, and kicked it. It didn’t move. “I don’t think we’ll be getting any more trouble from this one.”

“You should’ve seen it,” Denver said. “Lasers and bolts all over the place.”

“If the mech’s a bigger, badder version of this,” Layla said. “I’d say the tredeyans have got their hands full.”

She knelt next to the prism and clanked the back of her gauntlet against its glossy sloped side. Denver didn’t want to touch it. He wanted to get away from it, in case it exploded into pieces.

Charlie shook his head. “There’s some crazy shit going down here. I don’t see how—”

Footsteps thudded up the steps. Denver twisted to the entrance and prepared to fire.

Vingo’s helmet appeared through the door and he looked around. “Is everybody okay?”

“We are, no thanks to you,” Denver said. “Where did you go?”

“I guarded outside to make sure no clusps took advantage of our plight. The rifle fire might have attracted many.”

“Bullshit,” Charlie said. “You weren’t bothered about them stalking us a while ago. You bottled it.”

Denver suspected Vingo saved them in the caverns to be his bodyguards on his quest to get back to his own village through a war zone. As soon as the shooting started, he disappeared like a fart in the wind. It wasn’t a problem. They suited each other’s needs. At least they knew he couldn’t be relied on when the shit hit the fan.

Vingo approached the prism, tapped his forearm pad and scanned it over the top of the machine. “It’s a worker drone. You’ve corrupted the collective.”

“Which means?” Layla said.

“When acting remotely, like this one, they have to assemble their own core power for movement and communications. If you damage the artificial intelligence controlling this, you can irreversibly corrupt them.”

“Remotely from what?” Charlie said. “The prism in the sky? Is that ship a huge version of the thing we just killed?”

“No. They don’t assemble to anywhere near that size. The croatoans told us that the scion build ships with labor and materials from other planets.”

“Do the other planets give them full access to their systems and records?” Layla said.

“Yes, and now they peacefully trade with the scion.”

“Why couldn’t you do that? Seems odd that you choose potential destruction over a new overlord.”

“The croatoans won’t allow us because we have links to their systems. Optax, for example, a mining planet, is independent. They have formidable ground defenses to protect themselves and set up a safe zone around their planet. If a ship enters without its weapons disarmed, it’s the last action it will take.”

“Do the scion have any of your humans working for them?” Charlie said.

“Not to my knowledge, but it’s possible. They may have taken them from other planets.”

“When we have time to spare,” Layla said. “I’d like to know more about how you managed the humans, the numbers and where they are.”

“I can give you information, but some things are beyond tredeyan knowledge.”

Layla was bound to ask that question some point, but this was the wrong time to be going down a rat-hole.

“Forget about that for now,” Denver said. “Let’s move the prism out of here. We need to stay focused on the current situation.”

“He’s right,” Charlie said. “What if a couple of its angry brothers and sisters turn up?”

“Moving it into the forest should be good enough for the moment,” Vingo said. “I expected a fighter to hit the temple, but it looks like we destroyed it in time.”

“We?” Charlie asked.

Denver picked up the object the prism was working on when they first entered the temple, a shiny black open case. Inside it, dull gray components were attached to a transparent circuit board. Colored lines interconnected each one to other parts. “What’s this?”

“It’s a transceiver,” Vingo said. “They place them to have full planetary coverage for their ground force.”

Charlie raised his left gauntlet above it and clenched his fist. “I suppose we better smash it up.”

“No need. It’s incomplete.”

Denver heard quiet clicking between Charlie’s and Vingo’s words. He went to raise a finger to his lips, but his gauntlet bounced off his visor. Layla smiled at him, until she read his serious expression.

He thought his action was a mix of natural instinct and a reflection on just how good the suits were. In Tredeya’s atmosphere, he moved better with the suit on and had gotten used to it during the last couple of hours. Regardless of the reason, he recognized the distinct noise of a croatoan in close proximity.

“Keep quiet for a minute,” Denver said.

The group paused to listen. It was more of a silent flapping noise than a conversational croatoan click. The type Denver only heard when up close and dirty during a fight.

Layla pointed at a waist-high wooden door to their left.

Vingo, true to form, took a step back. Charlie put his gauntlet behind his back and ushered him forward. “You better speak to whoever is behind that door, because the only talking I usually do to croatoans is with my rifle.”

“It’s a small storeroom that’s been empty for years.”

“Something’s in there. Go on.”

Without wanting to take any chances after the experience with the hunter in the caverns, Denver gestured Layla behind a bench and aimed over it. Hagellan may have helped them, but he couldn’t speak for the rest of their damned empire. It would be naïve to think that bringing down a mother ship and destroying their jump gate would go unnoticed.

Charlie knelt to the side of Vingo. He shuffled toward the door and called out in gargled croaks without a response. He tried a few raspy clicks. The door creaked open.

A croatoan the size of a typical six-foot guard, wearing a blue robe, sat curled up in the small space. A silver tube ran around the center of its head, covering the nostril holes. No doubt a hi-tech breathing apparatus. It clicked a long response to Vingo.

Vingo replied and the croatoan crawled out of its cramped hiding place.

“What did it say?” Denver said.

“She asked if she was in danger, and says she hid here when the scion probe approached the temple.”

Charlie scoffed. “She? That creature?”

Vingo turned to face him. “Please don’t be disrespectful.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you think you are the special race and the rest of us are just creatures?”

“I never said that.”

“Male and female genders are not uncommon in the universe. Many are a lot more advanced than Earth, and nearly all have different—”

“They invaded our planet,” Denver said, not being able to resist cutting in at the apparent lecture. “We didn’t want to personalize them during our fight. They were our enemy. Simple as that.”

The croatoan clicked behind Vingo. He turned and listened.

“She says we can stay here for as long as we want,” Vingo said.

“Don’t you need to get to your village?” Layla said.

“The sun rises in less than a unit. We can rest here and wait for nightfall.”

Denver stood and walked over to Vingo, thinking it was time to get things straight between them. “What’s your real story?”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“I think you do. That’s why you saved us, isn’t it, to provide protection on your way home? We’re nothing but your bloody meat shields!”

“We have common goals. You’re free to leave and go where you wish if your association with me is so difficult.”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “We both want to survive, but the difference is we can’t get home.”

“A possibility exists if you help me,” Vingo said.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Denver said.

“Believe what you want. I don’t have anything to lose by not showing you a way back to Earth.”

Layla gasped through the intercom. Denver glanced back. Her open-mouthed expression curled into a smile. He wanted to feel the same excitement but couldn’t. The more time he spent with Vingo, the less he trusted him.

Chapter 9

MARIA SLUMPED against the small table and inhaled the black coffee, hoping the bitter scent would chase away the clone memories of her forebear.

Ever since she had those first flashbacks to the Roanoke era, her dreams and thoughts had been invaded by flashes of the terrible things the croatoan invaders had performed on her… well, self.

She looked up at the window in the small Freetown office. Dawn had just broken, bathing the landscape in a warm yellow glow that wasn’t quite strong enough to banish the cold gray of a frosty autumnal morning. The coffee burned her mouth and throat, but she didn’t care; pain was a reminder that although she was a clone she still had feelings—still had her own life.

Outside of the converted office building that Freetown used as a break room, voices and footsteps belonging to both humans and croatoans echoed through the corridor.

They were all getting ready to depart Freetown and join Unity.

Like her clone mother, it seemed Maria had to leave the only place she had considered home for some promised colony of safety. But she had seen the way of life in Unity and it wasn’t all roses and hugs.

But then without Layla and Denver, what did she have to stay around for?

The others within Freetown seemed to go about their business as though nothing had happened, as though their sacrifice was just some small thing to acknowledge and then move on.

The very fact that any of them were able to wake up and breathe should have highlighted that their sacrifice had been worth it and had brought them freedom and life. And yet, all anyone could talk about was what role they would fill in Unity.

Maria, though, had other ideas.

She wasn’t going to go to Unity. She couldn’t face confronting more of her clones. If her residual memories of her original self were anything to go by, she didn’t want to have to talk about them with the others—assuming they had the same vivid dreams about being captured and experimented on by croatoan scientists.

What if Maria was the only one?

What would that mean?

She downed the rest of the coffee. The hot liquid burned her throat and stomach, making her gasp. After a while the pain diminished, as it always did. She stood and approached the window, pressing her palms against it.

One of the harvesters stood just across the square. The thing was huge and bulky, but strangely comforting. She had spent all her formative years there working with her crew, thinking they were doing some noble deed for all of humankind. A generation ship built to take colonists to some faraway planet was a cruel delusion perpetrated by the croatoans.

In some weird way, she was actually more croatoan than human—at least in her mind. They had created her, imprinted the knowledge they had wanted her to know to carry out a specific role.

Did they also program her mind to look back on those times, look onto that harvester with a sense of sadness and longing? Ever since Charlie and Denver had ‘freed’ her from its confines she had never felt settled.

She didn’t belong in this world; she knew that.

She was an accident, a mistake. One of those small things that even the calculating croatoan council didn’t account for, or even if they did, they didn’t care about the results.

So what now? she thought. If Unity wasn’t to be her next location and Freetown was deserted, where should she go? What should she do?

Perhaps that was a question all humans had, she wondered, thinking about children and teenagers, especially those in Unity. If they weren’t pushed into something by their elders or guided by their parents, how would they know what to do with their lives?

What was the purpose of being alive? At least on the harvester she had a role. So what if it was a lie. Isn’t all of reality a lie?

The door to the break room opened. A man—a clone of Ben—entered.

Maria had renamed him Jason on account of being unable to see him as the real Ben… or at least her version of the Ben clone. He had taken to the name willingly when Layla and the others reintegrated him to Freetown after they had freed him from an abandoned harvester.

“How do you do it?” Maria asked, turning to face him.

Jason smiled at her and zipped up his farm-issue suit. The collar was frayed and tatty and the front was stained with orange smudges: spills from the root juice some of the Freetowners had started to make.

“Be so devilishly handsome, you mean?”

Yeah, that was Jason. Ben was more reserved.

Although she missed Ben, Jason was still a likeable person. Since she returned to Freetown she’d spent most of her time with Jason, talking about Tredeya, the croatoans, and what it all meant.

“Hell knows,” Jason had said in response to those questions. He knew he was a clone and knew he didn’t have the answers but seemed quite content to continue to exist without knowing.

“You’re not so bad on the eye, I’ll give you that,” Maria said, feeling her mood lift and the barest of smiles creeping onto her lips. “But I mean, how can you be so calm, so… I don’t know the word for it. Grounded, I suppose? All this craziness going on, the truth of who and what we are. It’s just…”

“Crazy as fuck?”

“Yeah,” Maria said with a hearty laugh. Jason was good at releasing tension, bringing levity to her introspection.

Jason poured himself a cup of ‘instant’ coffee and swallowed a mouthful, twisting his face in disgust. “I’ll never get used to this crap,” he said. “I’d rather drink the slop the aliens gave us on the harvester.”

“You know that was pulped people, right?”

Jason shrugged again and smirked. “People are tasty… I guess that’s why the croatoans came here. Root and tasty human flesh.”

“Ew, that makes us cannibals. You do realize that?”

“Yeah, Layla explained it to me. I don’t see the problem. We’re all just genetic material. No different to eating animals. But before you barf all over me, let me answer your question.” He took another sip of the coffee and casually sat on the edge of the table.

Maria leaned against the window, letting the cool glass touch her neck.

“From my short experience and the things I’ve observed since my release from the harvester, I believe there is no purpose. We’re just here through a combination of factors that none of us can truly understand. We’re all just motes of dust floating in a cloud of chaos. Only, when you gather enough dust, it forms a ball; when the ball gets big enough, the trajectory changes, it creates a path and hides chaos, creating an illusion of a route, a journey. But we’re not heading anywhere for anything other than destruction. We’re already dead. We are entropy in motion.”

“And that thought actually makes you happy? It’s sounds awful.”

“Think about it this way,” he said, placing the cup on the table. “If we are all just dust motes of chaos and cannot control or change anything, then why try? Why not just be happy for what we are and go with the motion? Be reactive instead of active. Some would say it’s giving up, but I would say it’s giving in to freedom, giving in to the way of the universe.”

Maria took in his words and thought them over.

She had to admit, he had a point.

The idea of just not worrying about anything anymore did appeal. Reacting to life as opposed to trying to direct it seemed like a logical answer to an existence where an individual had so little control.

Turning back to look at the harvester, she said in a small, resigned voice, “I miss it, you know? The schedule, the task, the certainty of it… hell, even the safety. As long as we did the procedures, we were safe. Layla said to me the harvester was like a womb—you know, where human babies come from when they’re not cloned in vats by croatoans.”

“I have no idea about that,” Jason said. “But I do understand the sentiment. I too miss life in the harvester. For me it wasn’t just the certainty of our job, it was the camaraderie. Out here, there are so many people to remember, not to mention the croatoans… it’s too busy. The chaos outside here is frankly tiring—which is why I sleep so much,” he added, his eyes creasing at the edges.

Two women in Freetown overalls crossed the square to a building that Mike and Mai had set up as their workshop. Maria could hear their faint voices carrying on the calm wind.

Behind them, the intact harvester remained in Maria’s focus. Without turning around she said, “Why don’t we just go? Take the harvester and leave this all behind?”

She heard Jason’s response between slurps from his coffee mug. “Sure, why not? Want to go now?”

And so Maria agreed without thinking about it.

Embrace the chaos, she thought.

MARIA DIDN’T FIND it difficult packing her items to leave. With everyone else preparing to depart for Unity, her activities raised no questions.

Maria met Jason at the front of the building. He was leaning against the wall outside of the glass doors; his hair tousled by the wind. He dragged on a root cigarette and breathed out a gaseous cloud of orange tint.

“You haven’t packed anything,” Maria said, noticing he didn’t carry a bag of items like she did.

“Don’t need anything else,” he said, patting his chest pocket, “when I have my rootsticks and good company.” He winked at Maria and flicked the charred end of the cigarette to the floor. A small ember fizzled on the frosted gravel.

He stepped closer and kissed Maria full on the lips, taking her utterly by surprise. Her body stiffened and for the briefest of moments she thought back to when Gregor was trying to ‘mate’ with her. But unlike Gregor, Jason didn’t disgust her and she found herself leaning into his body, relaxing her shoulders and returning the kiss.

They broke away and gasped for breath.

“Okay,” Maria said, her head dizzy. “That was unexpected.”

“Of course,” Jason replied with that charming smirk of his. “It’s all chaos, right? Shall we go before the others realize we’re not getting on the shuttle to Unity?”

Feeling better than she had at almost any other time since Charlie and Denver had taken her out of her previous life, she put her arm through Jason’s and walked with him across the square toward the harvester—toward her future: one with no purpose or reason, just a life to be lived and to do with whatever whim took her.

They reached halfway when a shadow blotted out the sun. Thinking it was just a cloud, Maria continued on her path. Something hot and wet splashed against the side of her face.

Jason suddenly became very heavy and she thought he had tripped, but when she looked round, she saw with horror that half of his head was missing, the skull smashed out toward the back.

Maria removed her arm. His body slumped to the ground. She wiped her cheek and stared at the blood smeared across her hand. The whine of croatoan engines filled the air, rapidly increasing in volume. She looked up and saw three shuttles and a dozen hover-bikes descending toward the square.

In the open door of one of the shuttles, a woman in army fatigues aimed a croatoan rifle at Jason’s limp body.

Maria dashed out of the way as a projectile struck Jason’s stomach. She screamed, dropped her bag and ran to the side, her heart kicking at her chest with every step. None of this made sense; her mind whirled with a mixture of trying to understand and getting to cover.

The two women who entered the workshop earlier came rushing out into the square toward Maria.

Before she had time to warn them, two croatoans on hover-bikes strafed a line of fire across their path, cutting them down instantly into a bloody mess. Maria skidded to a halt and changed direction, heading back for the main building, hoping to get down the side of it and get the building between her and the attackers.

She had no luck, though; the whole of Freetown seemed to have rushed out, presumably thinking the shuttles were for them.

“Get back inside,” Maria screamed, waving her hands.

Her voice wasn’t audible over the sound of gunfire and the whine of engines.

The mass of people panicked and ran in all directions. They hadn’t had time to organize themselves when the shuttles landed and hundreds of armed humans and croatoans flooded out, killing all those before them.

Maria sprinted to the corner of the building. As she slid round on the gravel, she tripped, cracking her head against the gray, alien concrete of the wall. She hit the ground hard, her head spinning with the impact.

She placed her hands over her ears, unable to stand the screams and the gunfire. Tears streaked down her face. What had happened? Why this? Why now? She was so close to leaving. Just her and Jason… but it seemed Chaos had other ideas.

A shadow appeared around the corner of the building. In amongst the din of war she made out the crunch of feet on gravel. When she looked up and wiped the tears and blood from her eyes, she saw a familiar figure that made her tremble with fear. She tried to back up, but fear paralyzed her.

“Ah, you’re the Maria, aren’t you?” Augustus said.

He adjusted an awful metal mask on his face. He wore no robe and sandals this time, preferring to wear an army uniform. A cruelly curved dagger hung on his belt. On the opposite side he wore a holster containing one of the croatoan laser pistols. He took the latter and pointed it at Maria’s forehead.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Augustus said with no hint of sorrow in his voice. If anything, it was amusement that played on his words. “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t personal.”

“You sick bastard,” Maria spat, finally able to find her voice. “Why all this? What did anyone here do to you?”

“Oh, nothing, but I didn’t want to take the risk they would, and besides, my force needed a little warming up before the real show. I was hoping to find you, though, so it’s quite fortuitous for us to meet so easily like this.”

“I want nothing to do with you! Kill me if you want, I don’t care anymore.”

Augustus crouched down until he was looking directly in her eyes.

“You really don’t, do you?” he said, pressing the pistol against her skull. “I could pull this trigger and turn your brains into superheated steam and you’d actually be relieved for it.” He shook his head. “It’s a terrible business this cloning. I told the croatoans at the time that it wasn’t right, but I guess my stock wasn’t high enough for me to be listened to. That’s about to change.”

To Maria’s surprise and disappointment, Augustus withdrew the pistol and replaced it back into his holster. He stood up and held his hand out to her.

“Why don’t you come with me? You never did fit in around here, did you? And Unity didn’t want you around either. I could do with some more female company. You’ll keep Zoe on her toes, that’s for sure.”

At first she thought about slapping his hand away and telling him to go to hell, but he did have a point: she didn’t fit in around here, or anywhere. Seeing her friend Jason just end like that… well, wasn’t that the point of his theory? One can’t really do anything. What will be will be.

Be reactive, she thought, hearing his words.

Maria grasped his hand and he helped her to her feet. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Augustus gently wiped her face clean. “There, that’s much better. I can see your pretty face again.”

She could see his eyes narrow behind that awful mask of his. He was enjoying this, enjoying her.

With her heart rate coming down slightly, she composed herself and asked, “Why all this? What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” he said, clearly amused. “Isn’t that obvious? I’m going to rule the world—again.”

“But why? I mean, what’s the point?”

Augustus turned his back to her and started to walk to the edge of the building, toward the square, when he said, “Because I can. Come with me, or not, your choice.”

Because I can…

Could she?

Before Augustus disappeared around the corner, Maria decided.

“Wait,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”

Chapter 10

LAYLA STOOD up and tried to walk off her anxiety. She knew Charlie and Denver were probably as stressed and out of sorts as she, but they didn’t show it, so she tried not to either. They had to remain a strong group.

It seemed terribly important right then for everyone to keep their shit together in the face of the most bizarre of experiences.

The alternative was to lose it and let the craziness crawl to the forefront, bubbles in champagne racing to the surface. Only this wasn’t the kind of craziness that would be fun. No disinhibiting giddiness here: just sheer terror and mind-bending psychosis from which none of them would likely recover.

The Tredeyan sun filtered through the dust- and grime-covered windows of the temple. It seemed strange to her to be in a temple and not see the stained-glass facsimiles of Jesus or other religious scenes.

This particular temple didn’t put much stock into religious semiotics.

The windows were undecorated, made from a clear material that resembled glass but she couldn’t be sure. On their trek across, Layla noted a range of materials from soil to sand and other silica-based particulate. It wouldn’t be so strange to be on an alien planet and see familiar materials such as glass.

Through her knowledge of the croatoans, she knew other planets in the galaxy that harbored life weren’t so different in their makeup. And therefore the technological progress-trees were often similar.

Glass, steel, graphene, silicon, and even wood weren’t exclusive to Earth or human technological evolution.

“Are you okay?” Denver asked quietly over the intercom, although there was little need. Old habits are reluctant to leave when they find a home, she supposed.

Layla walked back to the group of bodies and sat with her legs crossed. “I’m… holding it together, for now,” she said, glad the suit Vingo had given her hid the tremble in her hands. The suit’s system seemed to realize that jittering wasn’t actual movement and the cushioned seal soaked up the vibrations.

“We will get home,” Denver said with not a scintilla of doubt in his words.

“That’s what I love about you,” she said, making the double meaning obvious. “Rightly or wrongly, you’re without doubt the most optimistic man I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks,” he said, breaking eye contact and looking out through the main entrance of the temple. A shaft of yellow-pink light stained the dark floor. In as long as it takes for lightning to strike, she thought she might have imagined all of this and was in fact back on Earth, such was the similarity of the light.

It reminded her of a time when she was with her parents in Italy. They were visiting Vatican City, sitting in one of the vestibules early one morning when the sunlight rose and spilled into the ancient building.

“I’m scared, Den,” Layla finally said, feeling like she had just let a fragment of insanity breach the surface and join the great atmosphere of mental anxiety that surrounded her like a thick fog.

“I know, but we’ll get through this.”

“I hope so. I can’t lose you, or Charlie.”

She cringed slightly at the naked veracity of her words.

Denver’s gloved hand touched hers. They locked eyes through visors.

“I know I’m not exactly Shakespeare when it comes to sharing my thoughts and feelings,” Denver said. “I have so many… emotions that I don’t really know how to express. All my life I just survived from day to day and I never had time to read or learn this stuff. But I do want you to know that though I may not find the words, I do have feelings, and I do feel that we have a future. I’ll fight for that, at least.”

“That’s as poetic as anything I’ve heard, so you’re not doing so bad.”

He was such a beautiful man, she thought, staring at his earnest, rugged face. He put the point on the arrow when he talked about survival. Even though Charlie had survived more life-threatening situations than a herd of cats, there was something in Denver that only amplified that drive.

Having never known what their world was like before the invasion meant that he knew nothing else other than clinging to life. He was pure, innocent, and ruthless in his desire to continue to exist regardless of the situation put before him.

She thought that if she were to throw her lot in with someone, there was no one better to do it with than Denver.

He was an evolutionist’s ideal creature. As close as it got to a sure bet.

“How are you doing for water?” Denver asked.

Layla checked her internal HUD and saw that the water level in her suit was at fifty percent. According to the small smattering of numbers, it appeared that would last her a Tredeyan day and a half. She told Denver.

“That’s about the same as mine. I think we should fill up with the priest’s supply. I don’t know how long we’ll be trekking for, and we don’t want to regret not getting the water when we had the chance.”

“I agree.”

The two stood and quietly and carefully stepped into a small unremarkable room where the priest had stored food and water supplies. They were in dull gray containers that looked as though they were made from a kind of graphite composite.

Using the supplied hoses and filling ports, they got their water levels up to full capacity. “It’s like filling a car with petrol,” Layla said with a smile as she took the hose from Denver’s refill port: a small hole just above the small of his back.

They shared a smile and a nervous laugh as they finished up.

“I don’t know about you,” Denver said, “but even with everything that’s gone on, I’m not feeling very tired.”

“Me neither. It’s the fear and anxiety. I still feel like I’m buzzing on adrenalin.”

A click came over the intercom and then Charlie’s voice. “Hey, you two, where are you? I just woke up and you’ve gone!”

“Easy, Dad,” Denver said. “We’re just getting water. We’ll be right there. I can still see you through the door. What are you doing awake?”

“Taking my watch so you can get some sleep.”

Layla and Denver joined Charlie in the main area of the temple.

“We’re not tired,” Denver said.

“So? Sit down and rest.”

Layla really wasn’t in the mood to sit around and do nothing, not when there was an alien planet right outside the door.

With the sun up, this might be one of their last chances to get a good look at the planet and really see what it was like.

She looked at Denver, then to Charlie. “I’m going to go out for a quick walk, and before you say anything, I won’t be going far, just a few laps around the temple to burn off some of this anxiety and get a look at the place without Vingo pressing the pace.”

“I’ll join you,” Denver said. “We’re on the intercom so you know we won’t be getting in trouble.”

“What’s the range of our comms, Vingo?” Charlie said.

Vingo looked at Charlie but didn’t respond.

“I’ll keep checking in,” Denver said. “We’ll be okay.”

“Fine, take your rifles,” Charlie said. “If you see anything, get your asses back here right away. I doubt it’s just the scion we have to worry about.”

The thought of that machine made Layla’s skin crawl and for a moment she considered staying inside, but her curiosity won and she headed out. Even if it was just for a minute, she knew it’d help her relax, and besides, it would get her away from the still form of that damned machine for a while.

A FEW LAPS around the temple did indeed help quash her nervousness. With Denver by her side, rifle at the ready, she could really take in the building’s architecture, wonder about their construction methods, and make a mental note of the landscape in which the temple stood like a dark beacon. The circular structure was made out of carved light brown blocks. Small squares of thinner layered rock, like slate but in thicker plates, covered the domed roof.

“It’s actually quite a beautiful planet, in its own way,” Layla said, turning to lean against the stone of the temple and looking out to the forest and mountains that stretched into the sky beyond. The sun shone through gaps in the canopy, brightening an array of pink, purple and yellow plants on the ground between the floret-shaped lime green trees.

“If the trees and plants weren’t as huge and oddly shaped,” Denver added, “it wouldn’t be too different to Earth. Sure, the grass is more yellow and there’s a distinct lack of birds and instincts, but the soil and the rocks and the hills, even that stream cutting between those stone ledges, don’t really look… alien.”

“That’s because they’re not,” Layla said. “Not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is an exoplanet.” When Denver looked at her blankly she carried on. “A planet most like Earth. Before the croatoans invaded and took over, NASA had a program that searched the sky for other planets like Earth: those that were in the so-called Goldilocks zone.”

“The what?”

“A distance from a sun that was neither too hot nor too cold to prevent life. Like Earth, this planet orbits the sun at a distance that means we’re not getting cooked by heat and radiation or being frozen to death, like the croatoan-induced ice age. You know how difficult that was for most people to get through.”

“I see,” Denver said. “So what’s the chance of there being more of these exoplanets?”

“The percentage is small, but given the billions and billions of star systems, mathematically there are innumerable planets within a Goldilocks zone that could be perfect for life to form and thrive.

“Some people think it’s a good thing that there’s other life out there, but I’m not so sure. Seems to me, these aliens are worse than us. Would probably be better if we were the only ones.

“Anthropologically speaking, I agree, but there is something compelling about studying life forms other than ours. It might bring us some answers to our existence and the reasons why.” Layla ended her train of thought with a sigh.

She reminded herself this wasn’t a field experiment, but survival.

“Look, a scion ship,” Denver said. He pointed the tip of his rifle to their right and up into the sky. Behind a gathering of wispy purple clouds, the undeniable dark diamond shape split the sky silently as though it were an apparition.

They both froze and stepped back into the shadow of the temple.

Layla moved the rifle from around her back and crooked the butt into her shoulder. The suit had a special dimpled section that allowed the rifle to fit snugly and with a great deal of support. A single pivot point allowed free movement while aiming. It seemed these tredeyans had thought of everything with these suits, which made her wonder just how long they had been kidnapping and using humans for.

She held her breath as the black diamond in the sky drew closer.

Denver mentioned it to his father and all became still as it approached.

The scion ship passed high overhead, its course unchanging.

Layla let out a breath. “It’s gone,” she said. “Probably heading for the main command control given its direction.”

Somewhere in the distance, she heard the whump of plasma cannons and then the high-pitched zap of lasers. It appeared that the fight had started again. It made sense given that the tredeyans were a nocturnal race.

But there were still the croatoans… She didn’t know how many in number they were on this planet. It seemed like the scions weren’t taking any chances, regardless.

Before she could suggest they return to the others, something glinted through a formation of standings stones fifty meters to the north of their location. She waited before telling Denver and spied through the rifle’s scope.

“What is it?” Denver said, an edge to his voice. He had already sensed something with her movement. Nothing seemed to get by him when he was on alert like this. It made her feel safe with him.

Layla scanned through the cracks in the white standing stones as they crisscrossed each other at a variety of angles. The formation didn’t look like a tredeyan-made area. Rather, it looked like the results of a miniature plate movement, the rock splintering up like twenty-foot-high baby mountains, all craggy and sharp and wild.

A bright light flickered through one of the gaps again.

“There’s a light or something over there in that formation of rocks,” she said.

Denver instantly crouched and raised his rifle. A second later: “I see it. Follow me; stay behind.”

She ignored him and stepped out, preferring to advance by his side.

A burst of static noise hissed in Layla’s intercom. She looked across to Denver.

“Probably local interference,” Denver said.

The two of them stepped forward slowly and deliberately, drawing their rifles in wide sweeping arcs as they approached.

Soft grass and dirt sank beneath Layla’s every footstep. Just a few meters away from the miniature mountain range, her foot sank into the ground, collapsing into a hole, bringing a bolt of surprise. Her stomach lurched and her right leg staggered forward in reaction to retain her balance.

She fell to her knee and dropped the rifle to the ground, her hands flinging out ahead of her to prevent her from smacking her visor against the rocky surface. She caught her breath, looked down, and saw that her leg had indeed collapsed through the surface into a kind of burrow.

“A little help,” she asked, looking up at Denver, but his body was alert, crouched, and he continued to stalk forward to the rocks.

Layla grumbled and pulled herself free, retrieving her rifle and catching up with Denver. They stepped between two of the taller, more vertical stones. They were the color of white marble—pure and without defect.

“What is it?” she whispered again, feeling her hands tremble against the stock and handhold of the rifle.

“I… don’t know,” Denver said. He stood now in the middle of the stone formation. They were arranged in a rough circle some ten meters in diameter. Toward the rear of one side, a larger structure stood, encrusted with creeping blue and green vegetation. Around its base, yellow grass resembling straw grew to a meter high, obscuring a plinth of some kind.

“That’s not natural,” Layla said, stalking closer to the object.

“Tredeyan made?” Denver guessed. “It looks ancient.”

While Denver remained alert, his rifle in position sweeping the area, Layla moved closer to the object. Ovoid in shape, it stood at least three meters high and two wide with an ornately carved rim made from some dull black metal.

Using her free hand, Layla moved the tall grass aside to reveal the plinth beneath. Alien symbols were carved with an exact edge. She had no idea what the words meant, but whatever this thing was, it didn’t appear as if anyone had used or visited it in eons.

However, that was a guess on her part. She couldn’t be exactly sure of its heritage as things could age and weather differently here, not to mention the vegetation could grow in an entirely different way. What looked like hundreds of years of wear and tear and decades of moss and other growth could be a year’s worth for all she truly knew.

“I think this is actually a step,” she said, smoothing her hand across the plinth and noticing how it led to the large oval atop it. It reminded her a little of a large mirror she had growing up. If you’d removed the glass, it would look similar to this structure, albeit smaller.

Remembering that brought to mind the idea that perhaps this was designed for people to walk up to, and then walk through. Perhaps it was some kind of religious ritual? It’d make sense given it was only about fifty strides from the temple.

“I don’t see the light,” Denver said. “Probably just a weird reflection. We ought to get back.”

“You’re probably right, but one second, just let me look what’s behind this, I want to see if there’s another step to back up a theory of what it is.”

Layla stood up from her crouch and stepped to the side of the structure but soon fell back as a scion prism came floating up out of the tall grass to hover just an arm’s length away from her face.

Layla screamed, staggered back, and her suit clanked against a rough stone.

The floating black prism, the size of a football, hovered above her and spun on its axis. The top half rose from the rest of it by a centimeter, exposing a glowing blue strip.

“Denver!” Layla shouted as the strip began to hum and vibrate.

A green laser dot danced across her chest until it rested over her heart. She screamed again and closed her eyes, bracing herself against the plasma blast that was about to follow.

Chapter 11

THE SOUNDS of gunfire within Freetown finally came to an end, birthing a still silence that made Augustus smile behind his mask.

He hoped taking Unity would be as routine, though knew that under Aimee’s command, they would at least put up more of a fight instead of surrendering like submissive dogs.

The idea of coming to Freetown turned out to be a good decision.

They’d recruited more troops, gathered root, medical supplies, and even weapons from a ramshackle workshop that Augustus knew belonged to the creator of the bomb that downed the croatoan mother ship: Charlie’s old associate, Mike.

In the cool room of Layla’s old office, Augustus leaned forward on the desk, looking across the white-walled space to Maria, who sat on a leather sofa. She tried to look calm, collected, her legs crossed and her arms folded in her lap.

The tremble in her shoulders told Augustus everything he needed to know: she was scared of him. Good.

“So… what now?” Maria asked, darting her eyes first to Augustus, then away to some mysterious other point within the room.

Augustus waited to respond, enjoying her discomfort. He glanced around and tried to imagine Layla working in here. It had her hallmarks all over it; bland, empty space, with a singular purpose: study. No character or flair.

That was the problem with the sciences, he thought—too objective, too analytical. He’d never met a scientist he liked. Not to say that religious types were much better with their equally dull-witted outlook on life and their hokey faith.

Augustus viewed himself as completely impartial to life and its theories. Whatever was the truth was none of his business. All he knew was that while he still breathed, there were places to conquer, people to mold to his whims.

What was life if not but a grand game?

He asked that of Maria, making her jump with the sudden, unexpected question. She looked down at her hands and picked at the fabric stretched over her knees.

“I… don’t know,” she said, dropping her head.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you, having been created for a purpose that you now have no reason to fulfill. You must spend a lot of time wondering why?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Maria said, raising her chin and looking Augustus squarely in the eye, daring to challenge him. Perhaps this one had hope yet.

“No. I don’t. I’ve never asked myself why. I’ve always asked myself, why not?” Augustus stood and stretched his legs. He was getting tired and needed time to himself to enjoy one of his root cigars, but he wasn’t done here yet. He stepped forward, standing over Maria, letting his shadow devour her.

“I can give you the purpose you crave,” he said, holding out his hand.

Maria hesitated, but eventually held out her hand and took his. He decided against making a show of his domination over her with a tight grip—he’d already established that. Instead, he caressed her soft, warm hand, comforting her.

Lowering the register of his voice and giving her his best practiced sincere face, he said, “There is no reason why in this life. There is no guidebook, no direction. We live in chaos and have to embrace it. What I’m offering you is a safe zone where you can just be, without wondering why. You can just act and enjoy the grand game, knowing that nothing we do matters to the universe. We make it matter to us. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Tears glistened in Maria’s wide eyes. Her nostrils flared and she visibly shook. He continued to hold her hand and rubbed the back of it with his other, encapsulating hers in his completely.

“I would,” she finally said, giving in to a sob.

Augustus went in for the metaphorical kill, pulling her close to his body, and wrapped his arms around her. She clung to him and sobbed into the crook of his shoulder. He rubbed her back and whispered comforting words into her ears before finally saying, “Tell me everything you know about Mike and Mai.”

THE TRACKER LED his croatoan ally through the woods, both of them stalking Freetown like a fox hunting a rabbit. He noted that the short burst of gunfire had stopped. He didn’t expect it to put up much resistance, sadly. There were good people there, but they just didn’t have time to react any quicker.

Khan reached the edge of the trees and kneeled at the base of a redwood. The woods were hushed as though the remaining animals had decided to keep quiet so as not to risk Augustus’ wrath.

The only movement he could detect was the soft, deliberate footfalls of his partner. Khan looked over his shoulder and nodded toward a tree opposite him. The alien, like Khan, wore one of Unity’s handmade ghillie suits. The shadow the croatoan cast, however, was significantly larger than Khan’s.

Baliska spoke little English, but he knew enough to understand Khan’s general intent and questions.

“Bal, how you doing?” Khan asked.

“Grrr,” Baliska said, which was his shorthand for ‘great.’

Khan had to give it to the big hunter; he was as durable as any living thing Khan had ever seen before. Baliska had now effectively died twice; once at the hand of Charlie Jackson and the other time by Gregor, the latter using Augustus’ poison. They didn’t count on it having an expiration date, however. Baliska’s immune system had shut him down for twelve straight hours in order to expunge the poison.

A full course of root transfusion had seen the hunter up and running again within a day.

Khan, however, wasn’t so lucky. He took a shot to the ribs during the fight at Aimee’s. The wound still plagued him with soreness and restricted movement. With a combination of recovered drugs from nearby hospitals and special application of the croatoan root, he managed to heal enough to do this mission, though he could feel himself getting increasingly more tired. Still, they were here now; they just had one more thing to do before they could retreat.

Looking toward Freetown, the sun nearly setting, casting the place in monochrome tones of dusk, Khan noticed the workshop building was on fire. In the main square, three shuttles stood with a handful of humans and croatoans huddled around one.

Dozens of bodies lay strewn across the complex. Khan shook his head. Such a waste of good people.

He brought his backpack around to his feet and checked inside for his bombs. Three croatoan plasma bombs were packed in it, ready to drop and go. Baliska carried four others on a belt around his muscular waist.

Both of them carried carbine rifles slung over their backs. Khan had a bandolier across his chest containing a mix of smoke and EMP grenades. He tested their fit to make sure they would come loose when he tugged on them.

All seemed in place.

He turned to Baliska. “Ready, big guy?”

“Yeah,” Baliska growled, his eyes narrow and focused on causing maximum destruction. Khan detected a hint of alien glee in those eyes of his.

“We hit ’em hard and fast, take out one of their shuttles and as many troops as possible before heading for the hover-bikes on the other side of the complex. If we get separated or one of us is killed, we don’t stop, you understand? We must return to Unity. The scout will be here soon with the false information I fed him. That means Augustus will be eager to leave as soon as possible. The margins will be tight, but the plan will work if we don’t fuck up.”

Baliska just blinked at him as though he were an idiot. Of course the hunter knew what was at stake and the order of the plan. Through a translator, it was he who had devised the strategy.

The hunter held out his large fist. Khan bumped his against it.

“We go,” Baliska said, spinning out from behind the redwood trunk and sprinting across the square in long, loping strides, his shifting form virtually invisible in the dusk.

When Baliska dropped the first bomb near two of Augustus’ hover-bikes, Khan sprinted toward the square ahead of him in an arcing run that took him around to the left, following the edge of the woods.

By the time Khan pulled the smoke grenade and threw it across the square to obscure the view of anyone in and around the main complex, Baliska’s first bomb exploded with a thundering crack, sending the hover-bikes flying into the woods with a ball of flame.

The boom echoed around the open square.

Men and croatoans dashed in all directions. Baliska withdrew his sword and cut down half a dozen of them as they wandered about, not knowing what to do in the panic.

Khan used the panic to his advantage and planted two of the bombs from his pack at the base of one of the shuttles.

He set the timer and sprinted back to the line of trees.

Using an adapted radio Mai had made for them, Khan warned Baliska and he watched as the shifting, stealthy form of his ally sprinted past the shuttle toward a gaggle of aliens trying to free their weapons from their holsters.

Putting his hands over his ears, Khan watched as the bombs went off with a sound like god himself had cracked the sky in two. The shuttle buckled, the panels bulging from the bottom upwards. The roof splintered up before the entire craft flew ten feet in the air as it split apart into a hundred smaller, burning fragments.

The bodies of those inside slumped to the ground, charred and smoking. Some twitched before becoming still.

Stage one complete, Khan pulled the carbine rifle around from his back and stormed into the square.

The heat of the flames seared his flesh and made his eyes water, but he just focused on Baliska’s swirling form as his sword cut through human and croatoan flesh as though they were made of nothing more than dried twigs.

Two men burst out from one of the other shuttles and fired their pistols at Khan.

One shut buzzed by his ear, making him twitch away.

Another struck the ground near his foot.

He stumbled and rolled forward, but controlled his momentum and came out of the roll onto his knees, where he drew his rifle up and emptied half a magazine in an arcing spray, cutting down the two men in a volley of hollow-point rounds.

“To the bikes,” Khan said over the intercom, receiving a grunt in reply.

The young tracker reoriented his position and headed to the east of the complex for a copse of trees. Buried under leaves were a pair of bikes that Denver had stashed for emergencies.

The main square was a scene of smoke and fire and utter carnage: just what Aimee wanted. The smell of roasting flesh made Khan want to gag as he ran across the square, following Baliska’s large shape.

Khan caught up to him and pointed through the trees. They just reached the tree line when Khan fell face-first into the gravel ground, his right leg giving way underneath him. His heart lurched and he spun over onto his back, not sure what had happened.

He took a breath and screamed when the pain hit him. “I’ve been shot,” he cried between clenched teeth. His leg pulsated as though it too were on fire within the thigh muscle.

“No time,” Baliska growled, tossing his carbine over his back. He loped back to Khan, reached down, picked him up, and slung him over his shoulder. “Don’t die yet,” Baliska barked with his raspy voice.

Khan’s vision swam as the hunter carried Khan to the hover-bikes. Baliska found them easily enough with Khan’s directions. Within minutes, Khan found himself strapped to the back of a hover-bike and ascending through the trees until they broke out of the canopy and headed north to Unity. Baliska hunched over the controls and gunned the engine to maximum.

“We did it,” Khan whispered into his intercom, all the while squeezing his eyes closed due to the burning pain in his leg. He held his hand tightly against the wound, warm blood oozing out. “We need to stop somewhere… My wound… needs dressing.”

“Hold on,” Baliska said as he looked for a safe place to land.

Regardless of the pain now, it would just be one more wound to add to the one on his ribs that even now was hurting again, the applied root poultice having exhausted its active ingredient.

Khan didn’t care, though. The adrenalin and high of a successful mission helped him look beyond the pain. Aimee would be pleased with him, that’s for sure. Maybe then, she would truly see his worth to her.

Maybe.

Chapter 12

DENVER SCREAMED Layla’s name as the scion prism hovered above her, the green targeting laser finding its target: her heart.

Letting instinct flood through him, he raised the rifle and fired off a full burst of automatic fire while letting out a primal roar. Each round just bounced off the prism, but the impact was enough to knock it back, the laser leaving Layla’s body.

She rolled out of the way and raised her rifle. They were facing each other now. Layla looked into his eyes before shifting her gaze beyond him. She backed away. “We’re surrounded by them.”

Denver spun round just as a pair of clusps slithered out of the long grass. Two more came out from just beyond his vision.

“Fire!” Denver yelled, engaging a new magazine into his rifle and holding the trigger, aiming at the two clusps to either side of him. They were trying to flank him—or herd him… either way, the fuckers were working together.

His spray of projectiles caught one of the clusps in its rear leg, but it didn’t stop the beast as it padded forward on massively muscled forepaws. Its tentacles whipped forward, knocking the rifle from his hand. He pulled himself back to avoid being caught, but the clusp on the other side moved quickly, wrapping its pair of tentacles around his legs.

Layla yelled amid a burst of fire. An animal screech told him that she had at least got one, but then when he spun, trying to free himself from the strong grip of his clusp, he saw the largest of the group pounce on Layla. Its weight knocked her to the ground.

He heard the breath knocked from her lungs. The clusp snapped its jaws at her helmet, but its teeth just scraped against the strengthened polymer.

“Get it off me!” Layla screamed, flailing her arms.

Denver hit the ground as the clusps’ strength outmuscled the servos of his power suit. He punched his fist into the ground and grabbed a hold of some thick roots, trying to stop himself from being dragged away.

“Shit, the scion’s back,” Layla said between heavy pants. Her efforts to hold off the clusp’s attack were quickly sapping her energy.

Denver remembered the knife tucked into a compartment on his chest. As the two clusps continued to pull against him, he used his free hand to retrieve the blade.

On his front, however, he couldn’t reach behind him, so he had to let go of the thick root in order to spin over. As he did so, he shot forward under the tension of his attackers’ efforts, but he was on his back now and he slashed forward, cutting into the tentacle. The thing was pure muscle and it took him three more determined shanks before he managed to cut through the scaly hide.

The animal screeched with pain and stiffened its tentacle, spraying poison all over Denver’s power suit. Fuelled by the small success, Denver gritted his teeth and used his remaining energy to cut through the other clusp’s tentacle.

It too retreated, wanting to protect its limb rather than fight to the death, but the two beasts weren’t giving up just yet. They lowered their heads and stalked forward just as he regained his feet.

He turned to help Layla, but the scion prism hovered just in front of his head.

The glowing blue line around its surface grew brighter until Denver had to hold his hand in front of his visor to block the blinding light. With a series of whumps the prism’s glowing light ebbed to a dull pulsating beat.

The smell of cooking meat wafted through his external sensors.

Through a cloud of smoke, he saw the clusps laying still… dead.

“Layla!” Denver rushed forward to her prone form. He kneeled over her and placed his gloved hands on the chest of her suit. He shook her and cleared the blood and dust from her visor.

She blinked up at him. “What the fuck happened?”

The answer came from the scion prism. It floated down, hovering just a meter above them. A thin green laser shined down onto Denver and made its way up to his visor. He tried to close his eyes, but the laser struck his right iris and he became still, unable to move, as the prism seemed to scan him.

As soon as it started, the laser shut off, the prism spun on its axis and sped off behind a distant hill.

“Den, are you okay? Can you hear me?” Layla’s voice was hoarse over the intercom. “Den!”

He looked down at her, finally able to move. His throat was dry and his words croaked out. “I… can hear you…”

“What did it do? Are you okay?”

He checked himself over to make sure he was actually alive and this wasn’t some weird post-death dream. The bodies of four dead clusps, still steaming from being superheated with lasers, confirmed he was still alive, and more bizarrely, they were saved by the scion.

Denver’s entire body ached as he leaned down and helped Layla to her feet. They retrieved their rifles and staggered away from the scene of death and the strange structure. With the scion prism nowhere to be seen, Denver said, “We should get back to the temple… shit, wait… Dad? You there? You should have heard all that; where are you? Dad?”

No response.

“Of course,” Layla said, realizing too. “We’re on the same channel; he should have heard everything. Charlie? You copy? Charlie!”

“Damn it… back to the temple right now.”

With a renewed hit of adrenaline, Denver sprinted back toward the temple, and right into the path of the largest clusp he had seen yet. He assumed it was the parent of the ones that the scion killed.

“Oh, just fuck off!” Denver yelled, raising his rifle and emptying the magazine into the beast’s face as its tentacles tried to whip out. Layla also opened fire, cutting through the scaly hide of the whipping limbs.

With the magazine empty, Denver grabbed his knife and launched at the creature that, despite taking over sixty rounds, was still thrashing for its life. Denver collided with it full force, yet its squat, powerful hind legs dug into the ground. It was like running into a tank.

The suit absorbed most of the impact. He used the momentum to run the nine-inch blade right into the beast’s throat. The blade pierced a soft part of its hide and plunged in with satisfaction.

The clusp hissed and tried to bite Denver, but its jaws were too weak to get a grip on his arm. Denver pulled down with all his strength and the suit’s capacity, dragging the blade down its throat, cutting the creature in two.

A host of organs fell out of its split neck and the damned thing finally collapsed.

Layla helped Denver to his feet as they continued on to the temple. They both slid through the front door into the main area only to discover the place utterly empty save for the scion machine.

“Dad!” Denver yelled, the sound from his external speakers reverberating off the temple’s walls. Both he and Layla rushed further in and searched every nook and room. But it was no good.

Charlie was gone—along with Vingo and the priest.

Chapter 13

CHARLIE STRUGGLED in his suit but couldn’t move an inch. He gazed up at the clear orange-tinted sky. A tredeyan and scion fighter roared overhead, engaged in a dogfight of rapid low-level twists and turns.

The scion craft fired what appeared to be a heat-seeking missile. Its vapor trail looped around and it struck the underside of its target. The tredeyan fighter’s red engines cut. It veered into the side of a sunlit mountain and exploded in a ball of flames.

Blue scion engines dominated higher in the sky and streaked across Charlie’s restricted view in an arrow formation. From the brief snapshots of fighting since leaving the caverns, the tredeyans seemed to be losing their planet.

Vingo lay motionless next to him, on the back of a hover catamaran.

Both were strapped to a mesh deck between the two dull metal supports with thick red cable. They were piloted away from the forest, just above rocky ground, bumping through the turbulent air. Charlie thought back to how he ended up here, working out where the priest might have gone wrong, giving him a way out.

The croatoan had snuck up on him while he was watching the door for any scion or other threats. She had attached some kind of device to his arm-pad, which paralyzed the suit’s system. Charlie only managed a quick gasp before Denver’s and Layla’s voices cut from the intercom. The digits in his visor flickered and his suit froze rigid. Thankfully air still flowed into the helmet, telling him she clearly wanted him alive—for whatever reason that might be.

With Charlie paralyzed, she had ripped off Vingo’s helmet tube and gassed him from a small silver canister. He couldn’t put up much of a fight, immediately passing out, crumpling into an unconscious, or perhaps dead, heap.

He could still see the croatoan priest’s foul spit covering his visor, a simple gesture of her disdain and hatred for him.

The way Charlie ended up in this situation made him fear the worst. Perhaps the priest was a spy from the croatoan council, and he would face their justice.

He clenched his teeth and tried to raise his arms. The once comforting feeling of the internal inflated shell sapped his energy as he fought to find something, anything that would get him moving again.

Denver and Layla provided the only crumb of comfort. He knew they wouldn’t rest until finding out his fate. But as the catamaran covered more distance away from the temple at a fast smooth whine, the chances seemed less likely.

After what he had assumed was a good hour or so of travel, the craft slowed and tilted to the right. It swept around the edge of a vertical cliff face and passed over pumice-littered black volcanic sand. A light blue croatoan shuttle, with only a hint of its former cobalt exterior, sat at the bottom of a crevice. Its side ramp extended out, but he couldn’t see any aliens around.

Sunlight turned to darkness as they entered the mouth of a large cave and the catamaran bumped to the ground, skidding to a stop on the soft sandy surface. Waves crashed against a shoreline to his right.

Metal gates screeched open and the croatoan clicked a few times. A tredeyan replied and footsteps closed in. Charlie could only see the ceiling and Vingo, still unconscious or dead.

Two tredeyans, without helmets, climbed onto the back of the craft and stood over him. They were both dressed in faded purple robes with black belts fastened around the waist. One slipped a knife out of his belt and worked on the cables strapped around Charlie’s suit. The other leaned toward him, positioning his semitranslucent face six inches from his helmet. His breath condensed on the exterior of the visor, joining the dried smears of the priest’s saliva.

After freeing the cables, they rolled him off the side. He bumped visor-first to the ground. The landing felt heavy, but the internal shell protected him from an impact injury.

They raised both of his legs and dragged him across the sand for several meters, scraping onto solid rock. The feeling of uselessness grated on him, building into an impotent fury. He tried to calm himself, keep his breathing ordered and his mind alert. That he was still alive told him he would be presented with a chance at some point.

A number of hands grabbed the side of his suit and flipped him onto his back. Two solid metal poles rose immediately to his right. One of the tredeyans wiped Charlie’s visor, peering in at him with no emotion present.

They lifted him to a standing position and he tilted back a few inches. He guessed they had him on something similar to a luggage trolley. The tredeyan gripped both poles on either side of him with its greasy-looking hands. The croatoan priest and another scruffily dressed tredeyan pushed Vingo off the side of the catamaran and pulled him out of view.

The trolley wheels squeaked and juddered along uneven stone as they headed toward a dull gray metal barrier deeper inside the cave. A solid door screamed on its hinges and swung open, revealing a slim seven-foot-tall alien in angular dark green body armor. It waved the tredeyans along with its leathery mitten. Charlie hadn’t seen the square helmet with a midnight blue visor before.

Spotlights beamed down from the top of the roughly carved tunnel. He squinted against their glare and tried to recognize the route they were taking. If he did manage to escape, and it seemed unlikely, he didn’t want to run into a clusp down a dark passage. The tredeyan guard behind the metal door would be enough to cope with.

Vingo’s trolley wheeled past him. The priest grunted and shoved, picking up speed down a slight incline. The ceiling opened up to a large cavern and the area filled with wails, cries, and mixed alien chatter.

Two clusps guarded either side of the entrance. Both jumped forward and chains around their necks twanged rigid. The one on the left lashed out a tentacle that flicked the edge of Charlie’s chest plate. The tredeyan shouted at them and they both retreated to a pile of unrecognizable organic matter.

Dark gray metal bars ran around the edge of the wide space divided into forty cells. Only half were occupied, mostly with naked tredeyans. Some sat on the spartan stone with their heads down, seemingly resigned to their fate. Others pushed their faces between the bars and shouted at a group of blue-robed tredeyans who surrounded a wooden table in the middle of the cavern. A hunter-sized croatoan in graphite armor stood amongst them and turned to glare at Charlie.

A tredeyan from the central group approached and held a raspy conversation with Charlie’s chaperone. It fingered a tablet, peered around the cavern and pointed to a cell at the far end.

Charlie was wheeled past the group and the central table. They drank transparent beakers of root wine and pointed to different locations on a holographic cube. It wasn’t just a map of Tredeya. The croatoan ran his gloved finger between two planets.

A bar dropped from the HUD filter measurement. The tredeyan tipped Charlie out of his trolley and his suit crashed against the back of the cell wall. The priest dumped Vingo in the sitting position, slammed the cell door shut and peered at Charlie through the bars.

She returned to the table, and another croatoan handed her two full sacks.

“Vingo,” Charlie said, keeping his voice low.

His helmet twitched.

“Vingo. Wake up.”

A small cream-colored alien with deep blue eyes, dressed in sackcloth, waddled across and croaked something through the bars of the adjacent cell. It poked its three spindly fingers through toward Charlie.

Footsteps slapped across the cavern. A croatoan from the central table must have seen it. The little alien shot back into the opposite corner of its cell. The croatoan ripped open the door and thrust its heavy boot into the smaller alien’s chest. It dropped to the dirt and whined.

“Typical croatoan behavior,” Charlie said, unable to conceal his contempt.

The croatoan ignored him and returned to the conversation around the table.

A thought struck him. It was the first time he felt sympathy for an alien. Charlie never experienced it killing or watching harvester drivers or surveyors dying on Earth. They would often be tormented and kicked around by the guards or hunters. Back then they were all just the same—an invading force that murdered and oppressed humanity.

Vingo raised his helmet. “Charlie, I’m sorry.”

“Can you move?”

Vingo got to his feet and glanced around the cavern before turning to Charlie. “They have my villagers too. It’s all over.”

Charlie struggled to move again, but it was no use. “What’s all over? Who are they?”

“Slavers. If we’re lucky, we’ll spend the rest of our lives on a mining planet. Our quest on Tredeya ends here.”

“It doesn’t end until I say so,” Charlie said. He wasn’t ready to give up and let the slavers ship him off to a distant planet. Death was preferable over a life as an alien slave. Rage bubbled inside. If he was going down, some of them were going with him. “Can you remove this thing on my arm? We’re not surrendering to anyone.”

“If the croatoan sees me do it, he’ll kill me. He has a different motivation for capturing us.”

“Which is?”

“He works for the croatoan council and tracks betrayers and terrorists.”

“Is he hunting me or you?” Charlie said, curious about Vingo’s choice of words. “You don’t seem like the terrorist type.”

“I am trying to secure information to gather allies. The situation is complex, but my work makes me a target.”

“Are you telling me you’re a traitor?”

“Would you class yourself as a traitor if the work involved ridding Earth of the croatoans? Galactic politics are beyond your comprehension.”

Charlie suspected Vingo was up to something, but it didn’t matter at the moment. The immediate priority was to engineer a chance to escape. “Whatever. Just do as I say and we have a chance.”

Vingo’s eyelids fluttered over his black beady eyes. “We will die.”

“If we die, we die trying. Now take it off.”

A tredeyan approached their cell, holding forward a rod. Electricity crackled between the two prongs at the end of it.

Charlie bucked in his suit. “Vingo, take the damned thing off my arm.”

The cell door swung open.

Chapter 14

GUNFIRE CRACKLED OUTSIDE. Augustus bolted up, threw his bearskin blanket to one side and reached across for his radio.

A loud explosion shook the rafters in his bedroom. The camp was under attack. Augustus jumped off his bed, hastily dressed, and ran through the compound until he burst out of the doors into the night.

Contorted bodies of the dead and injured lay around the square. Fires blazed and crackled in three different locations, lighting up the night sky. Croatoans and humans dashed around like headless chickens. One pointlessly carried half a bucket of water toward a flaming charred shuttle.

Augustus balled his fists and seethed. Unity had gotten the jump on him. It had to be them, which meant his scout who reported their lackadaisical state earlier today was wrong. The scout had been compromised.

He took a deep breath and considered his options as all around him panic and chaos ensued. Now was the time to keep his cool. Show his neophyte soldiers his leadership. This attack would be a good lesson to them. They needed hardening to allow courage to grow.

Zoe staggered toward him with a blackened face. She hunched down, placing her hands on her knees, and took a few deep breaths. He remained silent, waiting for her to take the initiative.

“There were two of them, sir,” Zoe eventually said, wheezing between every few words. “One human, one croatoan. They attacked two hover-bikes, our guards and bombed a shuttle.”

Augustus clenched his teeth. Two, against his army! “Show me.”

Maria peered around the breeding lab door. He gestured her over. The information she provided earlier on Mike was next to useless, but being flanked by two women while carrying out an inspection of the damage would foster the right kind of image: one of power and control.

Maria scurried over and bowed her head. “What do you want, Augustus?”

“What do I want?” Augustus let out a sarcastic laugh. She couldn’t comprehend what he desired. The height of her ambition was to be ruled. How could he expect her to understand he wanted the world. “I would like you to accompany me while I survey the damage.”

“Um, okay, sure,” Maria said and shuffled to his side.

Zoe glanced across and narrowed her eyes. He enjoyed her jealous streak, but would keep an eye on her to make sure it didn’t turn physical. Maria was a useful pawn in his game of chess. The Jacksons were finished, but he wondered how Mike and Mai would react when he had her on her knees outside Unity, with a knife against her delicate throat.

“If you’ll follow me, sir,” Zoe said. “They took us by surprise.”

“Who was responsible for posting the sentinels?” Augustus said.

“Excuse me?”

“Guards, sentries, don’t you know anything?”

Zoe looked back toward the square and fidgeted with the buttons on her camouflage jacket.

“I saw Zoe placing them earlier,” Maria said.

Zoe snapped her head back and grimaced at Maria.

Augustus liked both responses, but it wasn’t time to humiliate his senior officer. “Who is your second in command?”

“It’s a croatoan called Triplan. He’s placing out fresh guards to give us better protection.”

He thought for a moment. “Have Triplan and the scout arrested, and erect two crucifixes in front of the surveyors’ warehouse.”

“Are you sure?” Zoe said. “Triplan’s one of the better croatoans.”

Augustus stepped toward her and leaned down, placing his mask inches from her face. “Am I sure?”

“Yes… of course… right away,” she stuttered.

“Good.”

Augustus thrust his elbow out toward Maria in invitation. She glanced at him with fear in her eyes and gently linked arms, wrapping her dainty fingers around his wrist. This would be punishment enough for Zoe. Triplan would pay for her incompetence. She would answer later.

Zoe approached the site of the first fire. Croatoans had beaten it out with blankets from the storeroom and stood around the charred remains of the two hover-bikes.

Losing transport was a blow, but as long as he still had some, it only meant that more of the army would have to travel on foot. That would teach them to be on their guard all of the time. Augustus learned this the hard way at the battle of Adrianople, when the Visigoth cavalry made a surprise arrival and split his ranks, leading to the ultimate defeat of his army.

“What about the other two fires?” Augustus said. “I saw a man carrying some water toward the shuttle bay. You’re not telling me we’ve lost them?”

“Not all of them,” Zoe said and led them to the open hangar.

Augustus quickened his pace and yanked Maria along. She stumbled in the dirt. “Careful, my dear. We don’t need any more casualties tonight.”

She remained silent and wiped her hair away from her face.

Fire licked around the roof of the closest shuttle. Electric sparks shot from the cockpit and engine. Relief washed over Augustus when he saw that the raid only managed to damage a single craft. They still needed them for rapid troop transport, high-level reconnaissance of Unity, and his transport.

“Do we have any other losses?” he said.

“We’ve just started treating the casualties in the middle of the square,” Zoe said. “There’s plenty of supplies here, so we’re doing the best we can to save them.”

Medicine had made wondrous advancements during Augustus’ time on the mother ship. What used to kill a person could now be treated with tablets, to an extent.

Despite how clever the modern humans thought they were, just before the invasion, they still hadn’t found a cure for a metaphorical knife in the back. Aimee gave him that, and he would cure the pain by returning the compliment with a physical version.

One of Zoe’s commanders approached them. Augustus gave her a stern look. The man carried a strange white pistol with a silver disc around the front.

“Do you have something to report?” Zoe said.

“I found this in the old workshop. I didn’t think anything of it, until I pulled the trigger.”

The response piqued Augustus’ interest. He thought it was nothing more than a child’s toy. “What happened?”

“The alien next to me… He just dropped to the floor, clutching his support system.”

Zoe squinted at the pistol. “Is he dead?”

“Showed all the signs of suffocation. I couldn’t do anything for him.”

Augustus leaned forward and snatched it out of his hand. “Thank you. Get back to your duties.”

The man looked at Zoe, who nodded. He jogged away.

“That’s one of Mike’s prototypes,” Maria said.

Augustus crushed her arm between his bicep and forearm. “Is it now? You never told me about his exotic guns.”

She winced and tried to pull away. “It’s the only one he had. I think he called it a directed energy weapon. It targets the life support control system. That’s all I know.”

“It’s a little more than you told me earlier.” Augustus turned to Zoe. “Take me to see the casualties.”

Zoe returned to the square. Open medical packs were littered around four humans and eight croatoans, each receiving individual assistance from a member of their own species. It made sense to Augustus, but at some point in the future, they’d have to learn how to patch each other up in the field.

He walked to the nearest croatoan. A shuttle pilot crouched by his leg and wrapped a bandage around a calf wound. Augustus tapped her on the shoulder. “Stand to one side.”

The pilot glanced up, her face barely visible through her tinted visor, and clicked a few times.

“She says she hasn’t finished treating him,” Zoe said.

“Tell her to move to one side,” Augustus said. “I need to carry out a test.”

Zoe’s eyes widened. “You’re not thinking about using—”

“Just think of it as putting down a wounded animal,” Augustus said, and waved her to one side with the pistol. “I need to see it working myself, as part of my assessment. I can’t take the word of a grunt.”

She lowered her head, took a deep breath and turned away. The depth of feeling she displayed for the wounded croatoan didn’t surprise Augustus. Zoe had no concept of strategy. If this gun worked, the chances were that Mike and Mai had built more and would use them against his army. This brought a new dimension.

After securing a bandage, the pilot headed back toward the shuttle bay. Augustus aimed at the injured croatoan’s helmet. It clicked and scrambled a couple of meters, unable to stand. He took a stride forward and pulled the trigger.

The pistol kicked back in his hand and made a yawning noise. He held it in position for a few seconds, just to make sure, then dropped to one knee and closely observed. The croatoan reached around and gloved the back of its own helmet. Its skin crinkled and condensation built on the inside of its visor. Seconds later its body went limp. Maria gasped and cupped a hand over her mouth.

A shot of adrenalin surged through Augustus. He couldn’t believe how easily and effectively the thing worked. He kicked the croatoan’s leg to make sure it was dead.

Zoe looked from the croatoan to Augustus. “Do you need to test it again, sir?”

“No. Arrest Triplan and Kevin. Erect two crucifixes in the square and nail them down. Call a parade in thirty minutes. I expect them ready to be hoisted after my speech.”

He let go of Maria’s arm. “You can help her. It seems like you both get along.”

Zoe crossed the square, followed by Maria. She called out to a group of aliens around the hover-bikes, and they grabbed their rifles.

Augustus had a lot to consider after firing the weapon, and needed the quiet of his office to decide on the best way to proceed.

DULCE ET DECORUM est pro patria mori—a Roman phrase which when translated into English meant it is sweet and right to die for your country. Augustus always thought the translation lost the true meaning. It would be sweet and right for the army to die for him, and that’s exactly what a lot of them would do when they invaded Unity, but it was all a question of timing.

Two options were available. Wait, and train his incompetent force into a more deadly killing machine. That would risk Unity building up its defenses, leaving Mike and Mai time to create more of the pistols. They would be aware of his location after their raiding party returned to base, and would ramp up their operations.

The second option would be to attack as soon as possible. This would only give Unity a short space of time to react to the news of their impending doom. Thinking back to how Aimee ran the place like a backwater slum, they wouldn’t get a lot done in the time it would take to reach the outskirts of the godforsaken place. His army wouldn’t be well trained, and the casualties might be heavy, but ten thousand to two thousand made it a ratio of five to one. Augustus could afford to lose six thousand and still rule the place with good numbers.

Zoe gave her signature knock at the door. “I’ve got the army formed up and the crucifixes are ready.”

“Thank you, Zoe,” August said, feeling in a slightly more generous mood, now his mind was made up. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Jackson and his entourage would be rotting on an alien planet. The universe would be a better place after being cleansed of the unholy trinity. The father, the son and the scientific bore. Augustus resisted the urge to activate the prism and find out. Instead, he would make his final decision known to his army.

He straightened his mask and robes in the mirror and left his office.

Croatoans and humans were formed up in smart rows of fifty, covering most of the farm’s central square. A hundred flickering torches surrounded them, casting shadows of strength on the warehouse walls. Augustus strode along the gap in the middle of them to the front.

Two crucifixes lay on the ground at the front of his parade. A man and a croatoan had been nailed to them with earth spikes the surveyors used to use for testing. Blood dripped from their hands and feet. Seven soldiers stood behind each, ready to hoist each wooden beam into its posthole on his command.

Augustus turned to the vast array of expectant faces. “Tonight has shown you what our enemies want to do with us. Even now, as we mourn our losses this evening, plans are being made in Unity to wipe us off the face of the planet.”

Augustus paused and swept his hand across the humans and aliens. “You are the ones who will turn Earth into the Promised Land. I consider you all my brothers. We will not stand idly by and let them destroy the last chance we have for a peaceful civilization. Where we choose enlightenment, they choose darkness. We strive for freedom, they crave oppression. We move tonight and will strike a decisive blow. It starts with two Unity spies I found tonight.”

He held both arms aloft. “Victory will be ours.”

The soldiers cheered and clicked. Augustus glanced over his shoulder and nodded. Both crucifixes were raised on either side of him. They thumped into their postholes.

His army’s enthusiasm drowned out the screams and clicks of the fools that failed him. He would show less mercy to Aimee, Mike, and the rest of the northern upstarts.

They would regret the day they defied the last true Roman.

Chapter 15

DENVER STOOD in the middle of the temple, every muscle twitching as his rage smoldered and grew. He let out a piercing scream and lifted part of the scion prism, launching it across the temple. It smashed through a filthy window with a clatter.

Standing behind him, Layla rested a hand on his shoulder and through their intercom said, “Den, listen to me. Charlie’s resourceful, dogged. Let’s just be calm, think about this rationally.”

Rational! How could he be rational when they were stuck on an alien planet with diminishing resources and threats seemingly at every turn, not to mention a goddamn invasion going on by a species that could seemingly change form at will?

No, this was not the time to be rational.

“It’s all fucked,” Denver said, stepping away from her and kicking out at a wooden bench.

It toppled backward and thumped against the stone floor.

He switched his focus to the room in which they had first encountered the croatoan priest.

Crimson light bled through the shattered window as the sun was setting. The slice of red brightened the temple’s dark interior and illuminated the detail on the floor that caught Denver’s eye.

“Do you see that?” He stalked closer and crouched onto his haunches. Layla joined him.

“What?” she said.

Denver slung his rifle over his back and pointed to a pair of faint tracks in the dark monochrome of the floor’s stone slab. “Drag marks,” he said.

“I think you’re right.”

Layla stood up, leaned her back against the wall and dragged her heel against the slab, producing exactly the same kind of mark.

The image grew in Denver’s mind of his dad being grabbed and dragged backwards into the room.

But how? Charlie was strong for a human anyway, let alone a strong human in an power-assisted suit. He just didn’t believe his dad could be so easily overwhelmed like that.

With his head bowed and eyes focused on the small details of the drag marks, Denver followed them like his beloved dog, Pip, and entered the room. The place was empty. “They’ve taken the food and water supplies,” he said as Layla swept around the room.

She came to a stop at the east wall and looked back at him. The small glowing lights within the suit’s helmet lit up her face, showing her forehead wrinkled. “There’s a door open here,” she said. “There’s no way we would have seen it before; it looks just like part of the wall.”

Denver stepped over and investigated. She was right. He pushed the door open further, revealing a short tunnel a few meters long. At the end, the burning sunset cast a sheet of golden blood into an exit.

On the dirt ground in this narrow tunnel, the drag marks were clear, and they weren’t just Charlie’s. Denver suspected they were Vingo’s, the feet marks too small for a croatoan. Hatred bubbled up inside him as he sprinted down the tunnel and out of the exit, coming out to the rear of the temple.

“It was that damned priest,” Denver growled. “I should have known! How could we have trusted that… thing? When I get my hands on that…”

“Here,” Layla said, stepping ahead of him and crouching to the dirt ground, her visor reflecting the dying sun’s last, weak rays. “Scorch marks. Probably some kind of track from a hover-bike or something similar.”

In the distance, Denver heard the calls of clusps and the howls of some other creature. It wouldn’t be safe for them without Vingo’s guidance, but they had little choice. “We follow,” he said, scanning the suit’s HUD to check the measurements. His filter measurement had reduced to almost half. But that meant he still had time to find Charlie.

“Can I grab one of your spare magazines,” Denver asked, realizing he was out.

Layla unclipped a spare from her suit and passed it to him. He clipped it in and chambered a round.

Denver drew his rifle to the front, fitting the last of his magazines and stalked forward into the deepening darkness, finger on the trigger, night vision assisting him while he tracked the scorched marks that burned a black scar through the monochrome landscape.

“I’ve got your back,” Layla said, following a few steps behind and covering his flanks and rear. “Have faith, Den; we’ll find him.”

Denver grunted his appreciation and stepped over a section of rubble.

The scratches and yowls of clusps and other creatures moving about in the dark increased, giving the planet a truly weird and unfamiliar soundscape.

“We really are no longer in Kansas,” Layla whispered.

“Kansas?” Denver asked.

“Just an old thing from an old film.”

“Did it end well, this film?”

“Yeah, they just clicked their heels together and managed to get home.”

“That would be useful.”

“You’d need red slippers.”

“Power suit boots no good, then?” Denver said dryly as he started to ascend a small mound of rock.

“Maybe eventually,” Layla said with a lack of enthusiasm or hope.

Dull brown grass and spiky shrubs covered the stone in thick bunches, the edges of which showed the scorch marks, but they were beginning to be more and more difficult to find. Still, since they had followed the tracks, Denver had realized they were heading in a single direction with little deviation.

Without any tracks, as long as they remained on the same trajectory, he hoped they would find something, some clue to his dad’s whereabouts.

The planet was in complete darkness a Tredeyan unit later, which Denver had worked out to be about an hour and a half of Earth time. Dense smoke and cloud obscured any starlight.

“We should camp here until we have more light,” Denver said. “I’d rather fight in daylight.”

“Agreed,” Layla said.

They climbed up a steep section of rock until they were sitting atop a small hill, overlooking the surrounding barren lands to their left and a dense wooded section to their right, the features of both now dark shadows on a black background.

Below them, Denver noticed movement—low, deliberate stealthy movement—then the hiss of a clusp. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and sighted through the scope, activating the green night-vision filter.

Words caught in his throat as something the shape and size of a manta ray slid out from a shadow and wrapped its leathery form around a mid-sized clusp. The creature’s membranes enveloped the cusp completely, dampening its cries. Within seconds the clusp was still and the black creature undulated. My god, Denver thought, the thing was… absorbing its prey.

Whispering, although his external speaker wasn’t even on, he said, “We do not move and do not sleep until the sun comes up. We sit back-to-back, rifles ready. You understand?”

“I hear you,” Layla said, the back of her suit already pressed against his. “What did you see?”

“You don’t want to know.”

So they sat there, together, two humans on a distant planet while its wildlife devoured itself beneath them, a war in the sky and on the land, and a fight for survival for all concerned—just another day in Denver Jackson’s cursed life.

FOR THREE TREDEYAN UNITS, equal to four and half Earth hours, Denver and Layla had rotated a schedule of thirty minutes rest and thirty minutes lookout via their night-vision scopes.

Denver took over from Layla and let her snooze. He scanned the landscape with his scope, looking out for any potential threat. Although they were elevated, and thus potentially exposed, most of the creatures on the planet seemed to stay on the ground, or under the land.

He’d seen only a couple of birdlike animals, their forms silhouetted against the flashes of war in the sky. That had only increased in activity, although thankfully further out so it sounded like distant thunder with the lightning flashes of destruction coming seconds before.

At one point he thought he had seen a small group of three bipedal creatures clambering over a distant formation of rocks and down to the shore of a lake, but as they approached the water, they didn’t stop but kept going until they were no longer visible. There was something peaceful and graceful about them, Denver thought, which made a nice change from what he had seen earlier with that black… thing devouring the clusp.

As he was thinking how oddly peaceful it was up on these rocks with Layla beside him and the stars clear between thin clouds—the dust of war—movement on the horizon caught his attention.

He zoomed the scope in and brightened the night vision until he saw a light glowing and becoming larger.

Was there noise too?

He turned up the volume on his external mics. Yes, it was the sound of a hover engine, and identical to the ones he had heard in the command center when the tredeyan forces were preparing for battle.

Tracking the movement for a full minute or more, the object had sharpened until he could clearly see that it was a catamaran and contained a single driver: the croatoan priest.

“Layla, we’ve got company,” he whispered over his intercom so as not to startle her.

“Eh?” she said, her voice drowsy and confused.

“The priest, she’s coming this way on one of their catamarans.”

Layla was fully alert then, sitting up from her slouched position and kneeling next to Denver. They both leaned up against a rock in front of them, where Denver had his elbows rested to support the rifle.

Layla brought hers around from her back and looked through the scope. “That’s definitely her,” she said. “I’d recognize that ugly face anywhere; even among croatoans, she’s an especially foul-looking specimen.”

Denver smirked and continued to watch the priest draw nearer in the dark. The movement scattered animals across the rocky and dusty surface. Larger forms that Denver couldn’t make out burrowed quickly beneath the ground.

The way the engine impacted the surface beneath told Denver it was more than likely the source of the tracks they were following: a single anti-g field was difficult to confuse with any other kind of track.

When the craft was less than a hundred meters away, Denver saw a number of straps flapping wildly on the netting between the catamaran’s hull sections. Attached to one of the straps was a small pouch that Denver recognized as belonging to Vingo.

“It was her,” Denver growled. “The beast took Dad and Vingo.”

Layla was mid-question when Denver’s finger pulled the trigger.

Denver fired once, sending a slug into the low windshield of the vehicle.

The priest jerked the controls and slid the catamaran to a stop. She looked up and around, presumably thinking she got shot from a scion ship in the air, but the battle had moved away.

“I’m going down. Cover me,” Denver said, vaulting over the rock in front of him and sliding down the slope of the mount until his feet struck the ground. He detected movement off to his right side from behind a copse of spiny gray bushes but ignored it and sprinted toward the catamaran.

Two gunshots fired out from behind him, then another two. He didn’t look around, knowing Layla was on the case, taking down whatever thought it had a chance of a snack.

“You’re clear,” Layla said. “I’m right behind you.”

The power-assisted suit helped Denver close the distance quickly. Within seconds he was jumping toward the catamaran, the rifle held out in front of him. As he sailed over the priest, he fired once, catching her in the gnarled shoulder. She cried out and collapsed with a twist into the front cockpit.

Denver landed on the rear bench seat with a heavy thump, but the suit cushioned the impact. He spun round and saw Layla closing in, her rifled trained on the priest as she sat up and mewled something unpleasant in her native language. Denver picked up his rifle and brought it over the priest’s head until the barrel was under her chin. He pulled back, choking her, pinning her in place.

Layla leaned in and angrily spoke in pidgin croatoan. Denver barely recognized the words, but the priest sure did; she spat at Layla and thrashed beneath Denver’s hold, but he just held firm and squeezed tighter until she could no longer talk.

“What did you say?” Denver asked.

“I told her we’re going to kill her if she doesn’t tell us what happened to Charlie. She told us to die in a particular way of her kind.”

“Shoot her in the leg and ask her again,” Denver said.

Without hesitation, Layla leaned the rifle over the low, now-broken windshield and fired once into the croatoan’s thick leg. The thing yowled and tried to grab Denver’s face with its stubby arms, but she couldn’t reach far enough back.

“Ask her again,” Denver said.

Layla did and got the same reaction as before.

Denver swore. This was wasting too much time. He was thinking about what to do when a stealthy shape slithered from the darkness behind Layla. He let go of the rifle around the priest’s throat, brought it up to his chest and fired a three-round burst as he screamed, “Layla, behind you!”

The priest took her chance and vaulted over the windshield, but the wounds to her shoulder and leg stopped her from clearing it. She clattered into Layla, knocking her to one side, and they both hit the dirt.

In a split second, the black membrane form, the same as the one he had seen before, enveloped the priest, muffling her screams.

Layla gasped as she scrambled away from it, kicking up dust and stones. Denver fired again into the writhing mass; the flash from the barrel lit it up, showing the shape of the priest stretching against the unnatural form.

Layla rose to her knees and they both fired into the mess, emptying their respective magazines. When the smoke settled, the form no longer moved.

Leaping off the catamaran, Denver pulled the blade from the socket on the side of the suit and buried it into the hide of the hideous black creature. Up close, it didn’t resemble a manta ray as much as he first thought.

The initial shape was all the two creatures had in common. This one had thousands of razor-like teeth, black and shadowy like its body. It flopped over, dead, its corpse cut into shreds by the rifle fire.

So too was the croatoan priest, and with her still form the chance for Denver to get the truth about his dad’s whereabouts bled out onto the alien planet’s dusty ground. Denver collapsed to his knees and roared as he pummeled his fist into the croatoan’s corpse.

DENVER HAD BARELY SPOKEN a word during the entire journey. Layla had figured out the basic controls of the catamaran, having recognized that it was actually croatoan technology and not tredeyan, and therefore somewhat similar to the craft they had brought to Earth. For another hour they had journeyed in the opposite direction to that of the priest, using the night-vision scopes on their rifles to stay on track.

It was undeniable that the catamaran was indeed the vehicle that created the marks on the ground that led away from the temple. Layla had also confirmed Denver’s suspicion—that the pouch was one that had belonged to Vingo.

And so they drove into the night, beneath the skies where even now the scion and tredeyan-croatoan craft fought in a ceaseless battle. The constant rumbles of gunfire and missile blasts had dulled to a permanent roar in Denver’s ears, even with the sound dampening of the suit’s microphones.

At least the vehicle kept any other creatures at bay as they travelled across the rocky, barren ground. Occasionally they would navigate through small wooded areas of sparse, spindly trees with triangular leaves. Despite looking out for them, Denver never did catch sight of those other strange bipeds he saw going into the lake.

The ride became bumpy, jarring Denver in his seat. He leaned across to Layla to ask if everything was okay when suddenly the ground disappeared, the front end of the catamaran nose-dived, hurtling them down a steep slope into darkness.

Layla screamed as the momentum of the catamaran’s fall toppled her out of the vehicle, sending her crashing off into the distance, disappearing into the thick shadows of a steep valley.

Chapter 16

VINGO BACKED AWAY to the opposite corner of the cell and turned to face the wall. Charlie thought a yellow streak of cowardice ran deep inside him.

Charlie glared at the tredeyan slaver who stood at the open door. He could tell it was a female due to the prominent clavicle muscles absent from Vingo and the others he’d observed at the command center.

The slaver pointed the electro-stick toward him and said something in tredeyan.

“What’s she saying?” Charlie said.

“She said if you look at the croatoan like that again, you’ll be fed to the clusps. They don’t have time for impertinence.”

“Tell her to come in here and say that to me.”

The slaver’s beady flickering eyes focused on him and she jabbed the prod forward, just missing him by an inch. Charlie wasn’t bothered by her threats; he’d had enough of them after the invasion of Earth.

Vingo remained silent. The cell door slammed shut. She shouted something through the bars and moved back to the central table.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Charlie said. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life as a slave?”

“We cherish life. My destiny is the mines or execution on a croatoan homeworld.”

“You make your own destiny. It’s time to grow a pair.”

Vingo turned to face Charlie. His faced seemed to droop behind his tinted visor. “My time is up. I failed to deliver the secure data and can’t fight the slavers.”

“There’s always a way to fight,” Charlie said but wondered about the depth of Vingo’s deceit. “What exactly have you done?”

“I stole some secure data from the command center. If I have technology to trade to an enemy of the croatoans, they will accept my group.”

“You’re trading with the scion?”

“No. There’s a growing force on the edge of the galaxy called the Amalgam. They’re not strong enough to fight at the moment, but if we can provide them with technical designs, they can increase their power.”

“How do you know they won’t be just like the croatoans?”

“Their whole ethos is based around liberty. It’s too late for us, though. When they wheeled me past the group in the middle of the cavern, I heard them talking about an evacuation.”

“Evacuating where?”

“Senpra. The mining planet,” Vingo said. “The only tredeyans who think we can win this war are in the main command center. If we don’t fight, we answer to the croatoan high council.”

Most tredeyans seemed resigned to losing their homeworld. If they surrendered to the scion and gave them what they wanted, a croatoan destroyer would probably come and obliterate the planet. They chose to avoid that and fight, which pretty much guaranteed the same thing based on the evidence outside.

Denver, Layla and Charlie had made themselves bigger targets by accepting Vingo’s assistance. Charlie couldn’t get upset about the fact. If it wasn’t for the tredeyan, they would probably be lying dead in a cavern or being digested in a clusp’s gut. The dishonesty grated on him, but that was a minor irrelevance considering their plight.

THE BIG UGLY croatoan in a faded gray soldier’s uniform, with the distinctive armor plating attached, bounded over to the next cell. It grabbed the small cream-colored alien by its head and dragged it back to the middle of the cavern.

It threw the alien against the ground and the two tredeyan slavers, in filthy blue robes, aimed their graphite rifles at its face. The female, who seemed to be in charge of the operation, zapped it on the head with her prod. The small alien squealed and wrapped its arms around its face. The group rasped and clicked and appeared to be enjoying it.

“Bastards,” Charlie said. “What are they doing?”

“They’re testing him to see if he’s capable of working in the mines. If he doesn’t meet the requirements, he’ll be pulped into clusp food.”

Charlie took a deep breath and continued to observe. If he had no chance of escape, passing the test would at least buy him some time. The longer he stayed alive, the more chance Denver and Layla would find the location. He trusted his son’s skills as a tracker, even on an alien world.

The female slaver ran a device up and down the cowering prisoner and glared at the screen. The croatoan dropped a large piece of metal in front of him and the group stood back.

Wrapping his spindly arms around the metal, the little alien attempted to lift it, without success. He hopped around, trying from different angles, grunting and squealing, but it didn’t move an inch.

Aliens in the other cells moved to the bars and watched. A few tredeyans, stripped naked, stared over to Charlie’s cell. Vingo ignored them, most likely feeling ashamed. The croatoan drew its thigh sword, raised it high in the air, and swept it down, hacking into the small alien’s shoulder. He dropped to the ground and received three more scything blows to the face and chest.

One of the tredeyan slavers grabbed the dead alien’s limp arm and dragged him over to the closest clusp. It wrapped a tentacle around the alien’s legs, raised it in the air, and sank its saliva-drenched teeth into the exposed chest wound.

For supposedly advanced races, they acted like savages. Charlie considered if the scion knew about this too, and were only doing what humans might, if they had the resources. The juxtaposition of the pulse cannons and slaver cavern seemed odd.

The female tredeyan approached their cell and shouted through the bars.

“It’s my turn,” Vingo said. “Good luck, Charlie.”

“Wait. Take this thing off my suit.”

“I don’t have the correct tool. Pass the test and I might see you later.”

Vingo walked to the cell door. The female opened it up, led him out with the prod, and slammed it behind her. She rested her black soulless eyes on Charlie for a few seconds before shoving Vingo toward the central table.

She provided proof that some tredyans didn’t lack gumption. Vingo proved to be a coward, but this cold-hearted hag thought nothing of butchery and slavery.

The two tredeyan slavers, who Charlie worked out were the henchmen of the female, surrounded Vingo, grabbed his right arm, and fingered his pad.

His armored suit opened with an electronic whine and he stepped out of it, revealing his semitranslucent body. He wore only a pair of the three-quarter-length trousers, like the command center workers they saw after they first entered the main caverns.

They scanned him with the same device. The croatoan slid the rock toward him with its boot. Tredeyans in cells rattled their bars. Rasps and gurgles echoed around the cavern. Charlie guessed they were shouting encouragement.

Vingo leaned down, gripped the metal and his eyes squeezed shut. He shakily raised it to his chest and staggered back a couple of paces. The group stood silently around him in a semicircle.

His legs quivered as he tried to reposition his grip. The metal crashed to the floor with a thump and Vingo lowered his head.

Silence replaced the cacophony of alien shouts.

The croatoan raised its glinting bloodstained sword.

The female slaver let out a long hissing rasp and stood in front of it. She turned and said something to her henchmen. They grabbed Vingo by both arms and led him to a larger cell near the door. His ankles were placed in shackles, connecting him to three other tredeyans.

It seemed he scraped through the test, although Charlie couldn’t decide if that was a good thing. Death was preferable to life under an alien whip.

The two henchmen turned and headed for the cells. The aliens inside them backed away from the bars, but Charlie could see they were heading directly for him.

If they wanted him to carry out the same test, it would mean taking the device off his arm and allowing bodily freedom. The slavers would find out that humans weren’t shrinking violets like Vingo.

One of the henchmen reached around the back of his suit. He heard a click and something being loosened. It went for his pad and pressed around the magnetic device with its bony maggot-like finger.

Charlie’s pulse quickened and he tensed. The tredeyan had a dagger on his belt and his rifle hung loosely around his back. The other stood at the open entrance of the cell and aimed at him.

The suit split open with a high grind, and both henchmen retreated a few meters outside and trained their rifles on him.

The prisoners and the slavers focused on Charlie’s cell. They treated him with more caution, which was disappointing.

The only way he could move any distance away from his suit, and survive, was if they unfastened his air filtration system. That’s what the tredeyan must have been doing behind his back.

Edging to the side, Charlie felt the weight of the pack gently pulling down against the back of his helmet. At least it was still attached and weighed a lot less than he thought.

Charlie grimaced and moved further to his right, acclimatizing back to natural movement. His left knee buckled and the realization dawned on him that he’d been hours without root and would be weak without the aid of the electronic armor, especially given the stronger gravity of the planet.

One of the henchmen jabbed its rifle toward the central table with a grunt.

Charlie composed himself, not wanting to show signs of weakness, and advanced. Stabbing cramps shot through his calves. He pumped his fingers and flexed his muscles, attempting to quickly reorientate his body.

The henchmen stood three meters to either side and shadowed him to the table.

All four aliens standing around it stopped what they were doing. The holographic map flicked off and they turned to face him. The croatoan drew its sword and the female tredeyan opened her mouth, flashing a set of teeth that looked like a witch doctor’s necklace.

“It’s the first time one of you have come here without our assistance,” she said.

“Pleasure to be here,” Charlie said. “You know how to roll out the red carpet.”

“Do you think you’re the only race that understands sarcasm? You show surprising arrogance, human, considering the state of your own planet.”

“I could say the same for this place, or didn’t you notice the scion taking over out there?”

She gestured the croatoan to lower its sword and turned back to Charlie. “You have made up my mind. I will not be baited into killing you. Death is too good for your kind. Slavery it is. Take comfort in the fact that every time you smash a rock, you can imagine my face.”

“Do you really think I’m going to work as a slave?” Charlie said, spitting at her feet.

“I don’t care what you think. Once I get my price, you will answer to your new owners. If I were you, I’d keep my head down and do as you were told.”

She rasped to the two henchmen. One pushed Charlie in the back, the other covered him. They shoved him toward the cell by the entrance containing Vingo and three other tredeyans.

Charlie doubted he would’ve passed the test, glancing at the lump of metal as he passed it. Vingo glanced over and blinked as he watched him approach. He couldn’t be relied upon for an escape attempt, but they still had to get to the shuttle. That would be his last chance.

Without any spare shackles left on the chain, the henchman wrapped a cable around Charlie’s neck, tightening it until he coughed. The other end was fastened around Vingo’s waist.

The female tredeyan had a conversation with the croatoan. It picked up a rifle from the table and approached the closest cell containing a small alien, aimed and fired. The alien flew back against the wall and collapsed to the floor.

It moved to the next cell and did the same thing. It seemed for the purposes of brevity, the slavers had streamlined their method. They collected electronic items and weapons off the table while the croatoan finished its work.

Screams and rattles filled the cavern as the aliens in the cells panicked and struggled with the bars. Below their noise, the sound of a shuttle’s engines firing up drifted through the cave.

Vingo looked over his shoulder. “Time for us to leave this world.”

Chapter 17

MIKE WOKE to the echo of multiple footsteps descending the spiral ramp inside the attack ship toward the workshop. He bolted up from his slumped position over the workbench. Sweat dripped from his forehead, the sleeve of his red and yellow striped sweater made damp at the cuffs where he had laid his head.

He checked his watch—an old Casio digital. “Five AM,” he croaked, clearing the dust of the underground workshop from his throat. Weak lamplight, casting a warm orange glow from the end of the wooden bench, helped him search through the pile of electronic parts until he found his flask of water.

The cool, clean liquid hydrated the parched portion of his throat, bringing quick relief. The water helped to wake him up. He stood, stretched the cricks from his back and yawned deeply.

Other than the glow of the floor lamp there was little other light in the workshop. Mike and Mai had worked through the night on their new weapon: a glorified radio transmitter tuned to the croatoan communication frequencies. With the help from their new friend, they had ascertained that via a strong enough signal embedded with the correct encryption codes, they could send instructions to Augustus’ troops’ breathing apparatus.

Without the equipment to convert the air to a croatoan-friendly compound, they would soon suffocate and die.

Mike’s stomach growled, eager for food. The rumbling noise woke Mai, who like him, had slept the night slumped over the workshop. They had both done that many times over the years, working on weapons and repairing equipment to help Charlie and the others to survive—and fight back.

“Morning, my love,” Mike said, sitting back down on his stool and running his hand through Mai’s short dark hair.

Mai stifled a yawn behind her agile hand and smiled at him, her eyes still half-closed and bleary. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Just gone five.”

“My back’s killing me. I’m getting too old for this.” She let out a light chuckle. It had been a running joke with the both of them for years and was one of the many things that Mike loved about her. Despite whatever situation they were in, she was always able to maintain the humor. ‘We’re dead when we lose all humor,’ she had once said. Mike couldn’t agree any more.

“So,” Mai said, stretching her arms over her head and looking at the finished device on the workbench, “today we test it.”

“Yep. I’ve had Ryan take some croatoan packs out into the clearing so we can test it at the appropriate range. This should tell us if we’re geniuses or hacks.”

“Hacks, my dear, always hacks.”

Mai stood up from her stool and kissed Mike on the cheek. “But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have some genius in that mad old brain of yours.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

“I know.”

Mike handed the flask to his soul mate and began to pack up the batteries and other supplies needed to test the new transmitter. The device itself was only the size of a Rubik’s Cube, but with the croatoan tech inside, it had enough power to send a microwave signal across the expanse of the clearing to the south of Unity—if it worked.

Given the power requirements and the batteries at hand, they had enough juice for at least four blasts, including the test.

“I’m looking forward to getting out into the open air again,” Mai said, shrugging her slight frame into a gray woolen coat. “Feels like we’ve been down in this horrible little dungeon for years.”

“I’ve grown quite fond of it,” Mike replied, slinging the gym bag of gear over his shoulder.

“I thought you might. You were the same back in the ice cave. I think you were the only one to be disappointed when the world thawed and we could finally leave that godforsaken dark hole.”

Mike smiled at her jibe, remembering the first time they had met in the cave.

At the height of the ice age—brought about by the croatoans’ terraforming machines—so many of the survivors perished, but with Charlie and two dozen others, they had sought out a place to live. No one realized how long they would be there for, but Mike had made that cave as much of a home as any he had lived in.

Mai had lost her parents just a few days before she and a couple of her neighbors had stumbled across the cave and the small community within. They had hit it off right away—Mai’s first reaction upon seeing him was to point and laugh at his terrible sweater.

She had told him later that that was the first time she had laughed since the croatoans ended everything.

“What are you grinning at?” Mai asked as she did up the buttons on her coat.

“Just a memory.”

“Oh?”

“When we first met, your first response was to laugh at me.”

“With you, dear, not at you. But I remember it like it was yesterday. I had never seen anyone so at one with himself and the situation. You just exuded calm and a sense of adventure. Given the amount of grief around at the time, you stood out like a beacon.”

“That’d be the bright orange sweater,” Mike said with a wink.

“Where’s our little capable friend?” Mai asked, turning around to look at the makeshift bed in the corner of the workshop. The small bed was empty, the covers ruffled and pushed to one side.

“Gib said last night as we were finishing up that he was going to spend the night with his family. I think the radio reception of Augustus’ group brought a dose of reality to him.”

“It feels so wrong to have pity for them.”

“I know, but I try to remember that they weren’t part of the invasion; they’re as much victims of their own race as we are. It’d be like blaming all Germans for the Nazis. Those born after the conflict can’t be judged the same as their forebears.”

“Not many people with our experience could have that view,” Mai said. “It’s difficult to forget what their fellow croatoans did to this planet.”

“I do understand, my love, but we have to trust them.”

Two pairs of footsteps echoed from the hallway outside the workshop until Ryan and Aimee stepped inside, their shadows casting obtusely across the rough-hewn floor. Aimee was wearing a pair of jeans and a plain black sweater—all rather utilitarian for her, Mike thought. Ryan, as ever, wore his fatigues.

Both of them had shadows and bags under their eyes.

“Hi,” Mai said. “You two look as tired as we feel.”

“It’s not been an easy night,” Aimee said, rubbing her eyes with her right hand.

Mike noticed a slight tremble—she’d been dosing up on the root, which wasn’t entirely surprising given the threat to the town. She had to remain alert and functioning as the leader of this small community.

“Any news?” Ryan said, nodding his head in the direction of the bag over Mike’s shoulder. Ryan and Aimee both had an eager, almost hopeful expression on their faces that reminded Mike of Denver’s dog, Pip, when she would sit at his feet waiting for a tidbit of food.

He missed that dog. He hoped she was okay. But like Denver, she was a single-minded and highly capable animal. Wherever she might have run off to, Mike didn’t doubt she was surviving—just like Charlie and Denver.

Ryan coughed, bringing Mike back to the present. “With Gib’s help we got the device complete sometime early this morning,” Mike added. “We were just going out to test it—it may need calibrating or tweaking.”

Aimee’s face seemed to lose a shade more color.

“What’s wrong?” Mai asked, not missing a thing.

Aimee fidgeted and looked to the floor for a moment before focusing back on Mike and Mai. “It’s Augustus—he’s closer than we expected. Khan and Baliska returned a few hours ago with information on his forces. Although they’re not organized, they’re more numerous than we first anticipated.”

Mike sighed, feeling the muscles in the back of his neck tighten with the stress. “So what you’re saying is that we really need to hurry because that bastard will be on us at any moment?”

“That’s about right,” Ryan added, patting a bulky form in the pocket of his cargo trousers. “I was up listening to their radio communications—or the ones before their scout returned to them. Khan and Baliska couldn’t get to them in time. It seems they’ve either found an alternative means of communication or have scrambled the frequency. It’s just dead air now. We don’t know their movements.”

Aimee cut in, adding to Ryan’s report. “Although Khan and Baliska managed to inflict a number of casualties and take out one of their shuttles, they still have a sizeable force and we have to expect an attack at any moment.”

“That’s just great,” Mike said. “Well, it just means we better stop standing around gossiping and get on with the test before that psycho turns up and spoils our day.”

Mike shifted the bag higher on to his shoulder and made to move out of the dim workshop. Aimee and Ryan didn’t move, blocking his exit. He looked up at them and sensed from their tense body language there was something else.

Mai was no slouch in her observations either as she asked, “What else is wrong?”

“It’s… Maria,” Aimee said. “Khan saw her in the Freetown complex.”

Mike’s jaw tensed. “What’s that bastard done to her?”

“Nothing from what Khan could see. She was seemingly there of her own free will. He saw her walking into your workshop building with another member of Augustus’ army.”

“Was she hurt?” Mai asked.

“Not that Khan could notice, but who knows what Augustus has in mind,” Aimee said. “She could be used…” Aimee tailed off, but Mike knew exactly what she was hinting at. Augustus would use anything he could to get his own way. He just hoped for Maria’s sake that she was savvy enough to avoid him because Mike had no doubt he would torture her for information or use her as a pawn in the battle if it came to it… or worse.

“I understand,” Mike said. “All the more reason to test this out right away.”

Without waiting any longer, Mike, along with Mai, sidestepped around Aimee and Ryan and headed for the surface.

Although Maria was a confused, troubled woman, he had grown to like her in the short time she had been with them at Freetown. She just needed time to come to terms with her new life and the fact that she was a clone. Deep down, Mike knew she was a kindhearted woman and it pained him to see her so… interstitial.

“I’m sure she’ll be okay,” Mai said, as they continued to climb the steps up to the surface and into the light of a new day, a new dawn—as long as the microwave weapon worked, otherwise this might be the last morning he and the rest of Unity would see.

THE CHILL WIND whipped through Mike’s sweater, making him shiver as he stalked up the steps of Unity’s steep sides.

Mai had remained at the bottom to save her energy. They kept in touch via a short-range two-way radio they had salvaged from a nearby town.

As he climbed ever closer to the ridgetop where the swaying fields of root crop waited, he felt like the entire town was watching him with bated breath and expectant hearts. The pressure, he was sure, was not good for him. His chest tightened with each step, but he carried on until he finally reached his destination.

Some of the Unity engineers had erected a staging platform for the weapon: a wooden plinth two meters high. A set of steps, adapted from a crashed aircraft, led up to this plinth. Mike climbed up and let out a long breath as he finally reached his zenith. The platform, however, didn’t stop there.

The engineers had built a wooden tower some three meters high, upon which was attached the directional dish that would be used to aim and fire the concentrated beam of microwaves.

Mike recognized the dish as one of the US Army’s own take on a microwave weapon. Matte green in color and hexagonal in shape, the dish was once used to pacify protestors.

How awful that now seemed, Mike thought as he placed his bag of equipment onto the platform. How could humanity have been so cruel to its own people? If they only knew what was coming, then perhaps human life would have been held in higher regard. Though a nagging doubt in the back of his mind told him that was still unlikely. It’s not as if the teachings of religion and art from ancient civilizations had any effect.

“How are you doing up there?” Mai asked, her voice crackling over the two-way radio.

Mike reached up to his lapel where he had it attached. Pressing the button, he said, “I got here in one piece; the engineers have done a good job on the platform. I’m just connecting up now. I’ll report back in five, over.”

With the ripe scent of root wafting on the cold breeze, Mike rubbed his hands together and got to work connecting the device to the batteries and the dish. He had to admire the combination of human and croatoan tech and ingenuity. If only the croatoans had come to them peacefully. They could have perhaps worked together for the benefit of both races—or at least to avoid wholesale slaughter of the majority of one species.

The hate filled him as it always did when he thought about what could have been. With the memories of finding that blue bead and the excitement it brought, Mike attached the final wire to the dish and flicked on the power switch.

The device hummed to life and two green LEDs flashed, indicating that all was as it should be; the first light confirmed the device was receiving power and the second confirmed connection to the dish.

“The first two checks are good. Over,” Mike said into his radio.

“That’s great to hear,” Mai replied, then her voice cut off to be replaced by Aimee’s. “Good job, Mike, we’re all very proud of what you, Mai, and Gib have done. Are you ready for the test? Over.”

Mike stood at the edge of the wooden platform and looked across the root field until he saw the pair of croatoan breathing packs held up on wooden poles fifty feet apart and about a hundred meters away. If they had done their work properly, then the microwave blast would overload the apparatus’ electronics, damaging them beyond repair.

The croatoans in Unity had long ditched the interconnected systems and had built smaller, mechanical units. Although they weren’t as sophisticated as the electronic ones, they did the job and weren’t reliant on power beyond their own breathing. It was all done with filters.

Those still on the farms, now part of Augustus’ united group, did not have the time or abilities to build a new system—and why would they when they thought they were in charge and faced no threat?

“Mike?” Mai prompted. “Are you there? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, sorry, I was just thinking… no matter, I’m firing the test right now. Over.” He stepped back to the small square device and held the chrome switch between his fingers. This was it…

His body trembled with a mix of fear and excitement just like it used to when he was on the verge of an archeological discovery or some kind of engineering breakthrough. He wasted no more time and flipped the switch.

The green LEDs blinked out to be replaced with a pulsating red one next to the firing switch on the device’s aluminum surface. The air around him hummed as the device dumped a massive amount of energy into the dish in the form of encrypted microwaves.

The red LED blinked out and the strange sensation stopped. “It fired,” Mike said excitedly. “I’m just going to confirm the apparatus is no longer working. Over.”

“Be careful,” Mai said.

“I always am,” he replied. He must have said that a million times over the years as he and Mai worked on their various projects.

As fast as his old legs could carry him, Mike stepped off the platform and strode through the pungent field of root crop toward the two breathing packs. Each step added to his anxiety. He felt sick as he reached the first one. He almost didn’t want to know the answer, but he had an entire town waiting on him, so he wasted no time and removed the multimeter from his trouser pocket and placed the prongs into the breathing apparatus’ power conduit.

With the second one attached, he held his breath and closed his eyes as he muttered prayers to the gods of electronics. When he opened his eyes and stared down at the instrument display, his heart sank.

It was reading perfectly normal! The microwave blast hadn’t blown the workings as hoped. A sheen of sweat rose on his face and neck. His legs shook, but he tried to remain calm and tested again. The result came back the same.

Okay, try the other one, he thought, quickly dashing over to the second machine. It too was still fully operational.

It had failed.

He had failed.

Mike fell to one knee and hung his head, the night’s efforts finally catching up with him. He pounded the compacted hard ground with his fist and yelled an incoherent word, just to let out the frustration and rage.

All that work, and for nothing!

He reached for the radio and pressed the button, but the words wouldn’t come. An entire town was hoping for good news, that the weapon would work and they would have a strong defense against Augustus.

Before he could say anything, he heard a sudden crack of tree limbs. He spun round and saw the tops of the trees at the edge of the wooded area shake as yet more branches snapped.

Then he saw them: two hover-bikes bursting out of the woods, driven by a pair of armored croatoan drivers.

With his finger still pressed on the radio’s transmitter button, Mike shouted, “They’re here!” and scrambled to his feet, running with any remaining energy he had left to get back to the safety of Unity, but the hover-bikes were gaining on him, the whine of their engines splitting the air.

Then they fired.

Chapter 18

AFTER EXECUTING the remaining aliens in the individual cells, the croatoan bounty hunter, along with most of the slavers, left for the shuttle. The remaining three blue-robed tredeyans dragged dead aliens from their cells and piled them up in front of the two chained-up clusps. They guarded the mouth of the cavern and hungrily glared at the surviving prisoners, preferring living meat to their recently delivered meals.

Sweat trickled down Charlie’s back as the humidity of the planet’s atmosphere clung to his skin. A warm breeze blew through the cave, providing minor relief. Already feeling thirsty and weak, it would soon get to the stage where he would be as useless as Vingo.

Taking long deep breaths, he summoned as much energy as possible.

One of the three slavers opened the door, grabbed the lead tredeyan by his neck, and dragged him forward.

All three shackled tredeyans shuffled obediently toward the exit. The cable around Charlie’s neck tightened and he jerked forward. One of the guards led the prisoners, the other two flanked them, armed with rifles, as they filed out.

“Vingo,” he whispered. “This is our last chance. Work with me here.”

The slaver on the right spun and gargled. Vingo’s shoulders slouched. He ignored Charlie’s request.

Both clusps stooped on all fours and gave low hollow growls while their eyes darted along the line. One flicked a tentacle at the front prisoner, whipping him across the face. The slaver picked up a rock, threw it at the creature, and shouted. The rock thumped against the crumbling wall behind it, making the creature retreat to its pile of corpses.

Electric lights buzzed overhead, providing thin light as they proceeded forward. Charlie flexed his muscles and muttered under his breath as he went along. The timing had to be perfect if he wanted to avoid ending up in a clusp’s gut.

The open metal door at the solid barrier, protecting the route to the main cavern, led to darkness. Stars twinkled in the distant sky. The rangy alien in green armor had vanished and it appeared they were the last to leave the place, before the scion gained full control of the planet and accessed all areas.

One of the slavers walked just ahead of Vingo to the right. Charlie quickened his pace, making the cable slack and drop to the floor.

“Listen to me,” Charlie said, keeping his voice low. “Move to your right when I say.”

Vingo ignored him again, adding another layer of frustration.

The prisoners shuffled through the metal gate and would reach the cave’s mouth in full view of the shuttle in a matter of seconds.

A loose fist-sized rock lay just off the roughly cut path. Both slavers on either side remained focused to their front. Charlie stooped down and grabbed it.

The cave thinned to around four meters wide—the perfect opportunity to cause a little mayhem and confusion.

Charlie paused, letting the cable around his neck become taut.

It pulled tight as the tredeyans continued forward.

Vingo turned to look over his shoulder.

Charlie sprang forward three paces, hunched down, and thrust his shoulder into the middle of Vingo’s back. The alien wheezed, toppled forward, and fell into the slaver on the right-hand side. Both staggered and hit the wall.

The cable jerked Charlie forward. He raised the rock, and using the pace of the forward momentum for extra power, smashed it against the side of the slaver’s head.

Dark purple blood pulsed from the deep wound. The slaver fell to all fours before collapsing on his side. Vingo turned to face Charlie and repeatedly blinked with what Charlie assumed was fear or confusion.

Footsteps scuffled on the ground behind him, but he didn’t have time to look, he knew the other two slavers would react. His main focus was the rifle slung around the injured slaver.

Charlie ducked down and dragged it from under his quivering body. He twisted on one knee and swept his newly acquired rifle across the cave.

A muzzle flashed, brightening the dimly lit cave. Rounds smacked against the wall above Charlie’s head. Dust and small pieces of rock sprayed against the back of his helmet and shoulders.

Vingo and the two other tredeyan prisoners ducked, inadvertently providing Charlie cover. One of the slavers crouched behind them, only two meters away. He held his rifle over the prisoners’ heads in a one-handed grip and fired a loose burst high into the ceiling. Multiple ricochets echoed through the air. The other slaver retreated behind a large boulder, showing a similar level of guts to Vingo.

Vingo rasped, clutched his left arm, and dropped to the ground, dragging Charlie’s neck to one side by the cable.

Keeping his cool, Charlie quickly repositioned himself in the prone firing position to make himself a smaller target.

The slaver behind the boulder raised his head. Charlie fired a burst at it. Blood spattered against the wall behind and the slaver fell to the side. Only one left to go, who continued to use the prisoners as a shield.

Charlie feared others would hear the commotion outside and soon come flooding in. They needed to be ready to defeat the croatoan, the alien in the green armor and the rest of the slavers.

The remaining armed slaver wrapped his arm around the prisoner at the front of the shackled line and aimed around him.

Shooting through the prisoner was an option, but he would be transformed into a dead weight until they could free the restraints, meaning they’d be sitting ducks when the crew of the shuttle realized what was going on, if they couldn’t do it quickly.

Instead, Charlie fired three times between the prisoner’s legs. One of the rounds hit the slaver’s ankle. He collapsed with a twist and let out a high-pitched scream. Charlie leaped forward and fired at his face, finishing the immediate job.

If the shuttle’s engines obscured the sound of rifle fire, they had a small window to escape. Being caught in a tight section of the cave would be a turkey shoot for an armed group outside. Charlie spun his back to Vingo. “Untie the cable.”

Vingo picked at it with his uninjured arm. Another prisoner came to help and the cable dropped by Charlie’s feet.

“Do you all understand English?” Charlie said.

“I can translate,” Vingo said. “What do you want me to say?”

“Do we have an escape route to the right of the cave?”

“It’s rocky ground leading around the coast.”

“We have to move now. Free your shackles. Two of you grab the slavers’ rifles.”

Vingo turned and spoke to the other two prisoners. They bashed rocks against a locking pin in the circular metal joints of each other’s shackles and freed them after a few meaty blows.

The two tredeyan prisoners Charlie didn’t know picked up the rifles. Vingo slid a knife out of the first casualty’s belt and held it in front of his face. Charlie hoped the realization had sunk in that they didn’t have a choice now, after three slavers lay dead around them.

Gesturing them forward, he edged to the mouth of the cave. A beam at the front of the shuttle cast light across the black volcanic sand. He glanced to his right at a cluster of jagged rocks. Good terrain for putting distance between themselves and the remaining slavers. Hopefully they would be more interested in preserving their own lives, rather than getting involved in a firefight.

“Head for the rocks,” Charlie said and waved them forward.

The three tredeyans scampered out. Charlie followed and backed away from the shuttle, keeping his aim on the side ramp.

A slaver walked down it and looked toward the mouth of the cave. He took a few steps forward and glanced around.

Charlie fired two aimed shots, careful to preserve ammo. The slaver clutched his chest and crumpled headfirst off the side.

The tredeyan prisoners scrambled behind the rocks. Charlie followed, skidding by their side and observing the shuttle for signs of movement.

A white shaft of light punched through the darkness from a square assembly mounted on the shuttle’s roof. It swept across the rocky ground, brightening the area around their hiding place.

The tredeyans and Charlie ducked. He couldn’t see a pulse cannon on top of the shuttle, but only had a view of the front end of the craft.

It was only a matter of time before the slavers would be either forced to assault them, or decide it wasn’t worth it and leave.

Charlie hoped for the latter, but things never worked as he wanted. The alien in green body armor sprinted out of the side of the shuttle, dove behind rocks and focused a thin red beam on their position.

“You were right, Charlie—” Vingo said.

A hollow pop split the air. Charlie glanced up. A projectile fizzed into the dark sky and arced down toward them. Vingo and the other two prisoners pressed themselves against the sand. A loud explosion boomed in front of their cover. Fire and sand shot in the air.

Through the decreasing flames, five slavers split in different directions and projectiles peppered the rocks and ground around them.

Charlie grabbed the tredeyan prisoner who crouched by his side, clutching the captured rifle, and shook him. “Get up and fire the damned thing.”

Dark figures moved from rock to rock on either flank while rifle fire kept Charlie and the three tredeyans pinned down. He knew they would be quickly overrun and killed if the tredeyans didn’t start to fight back.

Taking a deep breath, Charlie leaned around the rock and hoped they had enough ammunition, and luck.

Chapter 19

AN EXPLOSION ERUPTED a few meters behind Denver’s position, the sound reverberating off his helmet as though he had been struck by Thor’s hammer.

The force pushed him back into the seat of the catamaran, bringing with it the realization that the craft had struck the ground of the valley and embedded the front of its twin hull into the black, volcanic sand, upending the rear so that the vehicle was lying at a steep angle.

Only his left arm, trapped between the door and open window of the catamaran, stopped him from falling over the smashed windshield and crashing to the ground. Denver’s arm freed. The suit’s servos whined as he hauled himself upright, placing his feet against the dash panel and then clambering up the netted section until he could fling one leg over the rear of the vehicle.

He shook his head, trying to clear his blurred vision.

Another explosion, only marginally less powerful, lit up his surroundings as a cloud of sand and dirt launched into the air and rained back down. In that brief scintilla of light, he managed to see from the corner of his eye what at first glance resembled a croatoan harvester, the outline of which remained visible on the inside of his eyelids even as the flame-yellow nova of the explosion dissipated into the inky black night sky.

A deep rumble, made louder by the vibrations travelling up through the dead priest’s transport, shook Denver from his perched position. The harvester-like machine lurched forward and stopped some fifty meters away from him.

Twin headlights, shining out sharp slices of pale blue light, cut through the darkness and showed him that they had crashed into a valley. High walls on either side of the hundred or so meter expanse rose up to the sky, showing him just how far they had fallen.

As the croatoan vehicle continued to scan the landscape with its antennae-searchlight beams, Denver scanned the vista for any sign of Layla. He knew she was still alive; her breathing came over the intercom in short shallow undulations.

He suspected, given the regularity of her breathing, that she was unconscious somewhere. That ignited a flicker of hope, even as the croatoan’s searchlights arced around to his location.

Flinging his legs over the side of the catamaran, he braced himself for the fall as he hit the ground and rolled with the momentum. The suit dampened the impact, enabling him to get to his feet and dash behind a section of a destroyed scion ship lying between a sheer rock formation and the catamaran.

The matte-black angular fighter had clearly been shot down some time recently, given the heat still coming from its single engine and the smoke that rose from an ugly wound in the side of the fuselage.

Looking at the size of the hole and the splintered metal surface around it, he guessed the fighter had fallen victim to the croatoans’ massive plasma-gun platform—the thing parked just half a football field away from him.

Although it shared a few similarities with the machines the croatoans had brought to Earth, it looked to him to be an upgraded or more powerful version. The cannon barrel extended out from a circular base at the top of the roof.

A pair of the small driver croatoans were sitting behind an armored glass panel at the front, the low interior blue light giving them a ghostly hue in the pitch blackness of their surroundings.

Coming from overhead, a deep subsonic growl grabbed his attention.

One of the huge scion ships was descending from the clouds.

Half a dozen of the smaller, triangular-shaped fighters launched from bays within the larger craft’s four pyramidal sides and headed off to the east, disappearing behind the valley’s tall walls to Denver’s left. Their low altitude meant that light from their engines showed him the deep ridges of where the catamaran had gone over the edge and gouged into the side of the valley wall before coming to a jolting rest.

To his right, shrouded in darkness, the croatoan gun platform roared into action. The barrel started to move, following the sweeping path of its searchlights—right into Denver’s path.

Through his blurred night vision, he spotted a trio of hunters drop down from the side of the hulking, square machine. They carried heavy, wide-bore automatic weapons, a bandolier of ammo hanging over their right shoulders. Over the din of the machine, Denver made out an increasingly high-pitched whine—hover engines.

He spun round, facing south, looking down the valley. From a darker patch that just looked like a large hole in the wall, at least two hundred meters away, four hover-bikes shot out into the war zone of the valley.

Before Denver had a chance to run for extra cover within the barren, rocky valley, one of the hunters opened a volley of auto fire in his direction. A series of wide-caliber shells pounded into the carcass of the downed scion fighter. Sparks and debris lit up the air around him, and he was running, strafing to his left, going northwards down the valley as stones and dust kicked up behind him.

His pulse pounded as he leapt over boulders, desperate to stay one step ahead of the croatoan hunter’s fire. And then there was the plasma cannon… and, hovering above him like the Sword of Damocles, the scion prism, which seemed unusually quiet… until the sky cracked and it seemed like the universe itself was splitting apart to reveal the swirling blue mists of creation beyond the tear. From that awe-inspiring wound, a directed bolt of lightning the width of the valley and the thickness of an insect’s wings struck down, slicing the croatoan’s heavy weapon’s platform in two as though it were made of nothing more than cardboard.

Denver, his attention on the scion prism and the blue mist that surrounded and obscured its base, struck his boot on a low boulder and crashed onto his chest.

He didn’t have time to tense in the suit and the impact rattled him within his shell.

Swearing with the pain of the jolt, he spun over on to his back to take a deep breath when he saw the shadow go over him, created by the croatoans’ hover-bikes. Like the birds he used to watch fly over the clearing back home, the bikes rolled and dived, but unlike the birds of Denver’s memory, they did not make it safely into the woods.

Denver just laid there in among the black sand of the valley’s floor, staring up into the cracked sky, mesmerized by the crackling blue energy, the likes of which he’d never seen before and had no words to describe.

Once, twice, four times, the ribbon of lightning slashed outward, cutting through the croatoans’ hover-bikes in much the same easy, almost carefree manner as it had the cannon platform.

The heavy fire of the croatoan hunters belched out. Their shifting, phasing forms swarmed over the wreckage of the gun platform, aiming their weapons at the scion ship above them.

A laugh started to bubble up inside Denver’s throat. “You fools!” he shouted, almost delirious with panic and humor. How could their weapons possibly damage something so advanced, so… massive?

But it didn’t stop the hunters, their need for vengeance and honor driving them to fire everything they had at their enemy. To Denver’s surprise, black fragments of hull started to peel away from the giant prism and crash down into the valley like flaming meteorites.

One piece, at least twice as large as he, smashed into the ground a few meters to his left. He heard a scream over his intercom, the slight sound almost drowned out by the thundering fire around him.

From the hole in the valley wall, another gun platform rumbled out. This time, it wasted no time in aiming its colossal barrel at the scion prism. Two ground-shaking pulses thrummed out, sending vibrations through his suit and scrambling the visor’s imaging systems.

Dark red bolts of superheated energy slammed into the prism, rocking it violently. My god, Denver thought, they were winning. The croatoans were defeating the scion.

For some reason he found this to be a particularly disturbing thought as though he were on the scion side. What was it about them that seemed to draw his admiration and feelings of understanding? For a moment, he viewed them as an ally, but he dismissed that, finally getting to his feet, as a counteraction to the hatred he had for the croatoans.

On and on the thunder roared as increasingly more parts of the scion ship came clattering to the surface. It flashed out its laser beam, but it was weaker, narrower, and missed its target as the great pyramid listed to the side.

“Denver!” a voice over his intercom shouted.

She hit him before he had a chance to turn around. They both slammed into the rocky, sandy surface as a stream of heavy shells from one of the hunters flew overhead, slamming into the side of the valley wall, blasting great chunks of rock and debris over their heads.

“Layla, that you?” Denver asked. He tried to move out from under the weight on him as yet more firing flew overhead. His reactions felt slow as though someone had just turned up the gravity on his suit.

“Come on, we need to run, now,” Layla said, grabbing his arm and dragging him to his feet.

They sprinted toward their catamaran. A blast of croataon weapons had knocked it loose, sending it hovering sideways along the valley on its twin engines.

Following Layla’s lead, Denver raced across the ground, most of it now on fire with burning fragments of hardware and debris. The scion ship was now lowering, its blue lasers becoming increasingly weaker, but not weak enough for the hunters to call off the attack.

Layla had vaulted over the side of the catamaran and took the driver’s controls. Denver looked over his shoulder just in time to see two of the hunters raising a large rocket launcher onto their shoulders.

“Move!” Layla yelled.

Smoke billowed out from behind the rocket launcher and Denver tried to reach the catamaran. A falling piece of debris struck his hip plate and he staggered to his left.

The collision jarred Denver’s suit mechanism and he couldn’t move inside the suit for a moment as the servos failed to respond. He panicked and thrashed, only to meet solid, unyielding resistance.

This is it, he thought. My time is up.

From the reflection in his visor, he saw the croatoan hunters adjust their aim on the rocket launcher. He kept his eyes open, wishing to burn the image of his murderers into his cold dead eyes so he would know them in the afterlife—if there were such a thing.

The scion ship became dark. All of its lights shut off, sending the valley into a deeper black. The bottom part of the ship, some hundred or so meters tall, broke away from the main bulk and didn’t just fall to the ground—it launched.

The scion projectile launched faster than the hunters could get their aim and fire their rocket.

Their bodies were speared by the point as it slammed into the ground with the force of an earthquake. The crash sent a wave through the valley floor, a rolling rippled crest of dust and rocks flying outward.

The wave slammed into Denver, pushing him into the air. The impact reactivated the servos in his suit. He adjusted himself, reached out for the catamaran, and managed to grip the outside edge of the craft’s cockpit.

His momentum sent his legs and hips slamming into the side, but he locked his hands and rode the wave as further ripples continued to buck the catamaran.

“Go!” Denver shouted.

With the hunters dead, they had a route out, but there was still the second croatoan gun platform to contend with.

For now it seemed preoccupied with the final piece of the scion ship barely hanging in the air, slipping over on to its side like a massive seafaring ship taking on water and being dragged below the surface.

Layla punched the throttle on the catamaran. The engine warbled to life, raising the craft off the ground with its anti-g drive. “Go north through the wreckage!” Denver yelled as he hauled himself into the cockpit.

“I’m on it. Hold on.”

Layla pushed the catamaran’s engines to their full capacity and they shot like a dart from their position as they weaved in and out of the wreckage of war. The croatoans’ pulse cannon boomed into the remaining part of the scion ship.

Eventually they managed to weave their way through the worst of the debris and out into a clearing of the valley. A hundred meters away it ramped up and banked to the right. “It’s a road,” Denver said. “Follow it; it might take us back to that damned priest’s tracks.”

“Will do,” Layla said, piloting the craft with surprising skill. When they were clear of the valley and heading into a wooded section, Layla slowed down until they came to a stop. She leaned down and looked into his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Denver checked himself over. The stats on his visor told him he had lost some air and water, but there were no major mechanical malfunctions. But his mind, though… he wasn’t entirely sure what happened back there.

“I’m… in one piece,” he said. “What happened to you?”

“I just fell down the valley wall and bumped my head. I was out for a moment, but I’m all right. I’ll just need to rest at some point. I thought you were…”

“Dead? Yeah, me too… I know this sounds crazy, but I think…” He tailed off, his thoughts now suddenly ridiculous when put into words.

“Go on, what is it?”

“I think the scion were helping us.”

Layla didn’t say anything, just stared ahead. He wondered what she was thinking about. Was she assessing his level of sanity? Before he had time to ask her, a crackling static came over the intercom.

Layla spun to face him. “Is that?”

Denver listened to the static. Mixed in with the white noise was a voice, the words not quite clear, but the voice was unmistakable.

“Dad?” Denver said. “Is that you?”

No response, just shouting and the sounds of distant fire.

“Through the woods,” Denver said, pointing toward the sound of the fighting. “It’s Dad; he’s there!”

A smile crept across Layla’s face as she gunned the engines and flew toward the gunfire. Denver reached over to the back of the catamaran and grabbed hold of the priest’s rifle, loading a magazine and preparing for another fight, this time with renewed energy and hatred for the croatoan scum. Earth or Tredeya, he didn’t care, he wouldn’t stop until those bastards were no longer a threat.

And deep down, he felt some kind of desire… a desire for vengeance at the destruction of the scion prism.

Chapter 20

MIKE TURNED, staggered back toward the basin, and glanced over his shoulder. The snap of croatoan rifles split the air. The riders of both hover-bikes paused above the edge of the forest, steadied their black beasts and fired.

Mai’s head appeared above the step leading to Unity. He flapped his right hand, motioning her to get down.

Projectiles whistled past and threw up lumps of dirt and root. Mike’s right boot snagged between two thick stems of the flourishing crop and he crashed against the ground.

Pain coursed through Mike’s right shoulder after it took the brunt of the impact. Turning on his front, he expected to see the bikes hovering above him, ready to deliver their coup de grace.

Both remained in the same position. Four more whined into view, smoothly fanning out in an extended line. Mike fumbled around his belt and clipped off his handheld radio. “Enemy over the forest. I repeat, enemy over the forest.”

Mai extended a hand toward him and mouthed something. She disappeared below the top step cut into the ground around the edge of the drained lake, to provide solid foundations for the better houses in the city.

Mike didn’t blame her for running. He wanted her to be safe. It would be a pointless sacrifice if they both died in the field.

Already out of breath, and ignoring the twinges in his chest, Mike scrambled to his feet and squelched through the root field, expecting to be killed at any moment. He never thought he’d be the first casualty in the battle for Unity. If his plan had worked, they wouldn’t even be facing one. As it stood, because of the failure, they were at the mercy of Augustus and his advancing army.

A tweak would probably correct his new weapon. Mike was sure he had the fundamentals in place and all he needed was time. He looked over his shoulder again at the force that would deny him that chance.

One hover-bike thrust forward over the root field, directly at him. He planted the radio to his mouth. “Please. Come quickly.”

Mike internally kicked himself for not requesting a protective guard to carry out the field trials and ending up in this situation. With an attack on the horizon he should have known. He was the inventor who worked behind closed doors and had no idea about combat strategy beyond the video games he played forty years ago.

The heat of a projectile flashed past Mike’s ear and hit the dirt in front of him. His boot slipped in the loose soil and he dropped to all fours, gasping for breath. The hover-bike swept around in a wide arc and came for a second run.

In the distance, Unity’s own bikes punched into the air above Aimee’s residence. A few small figures ran from between the houses toward the field. Neither would reach him in time. The enemy’s engines rose in volume and the croatoan rider aimed a rifle down.

Mike closed his eyes and bowed his head. The alien wouldn’t miss a second time. He thought about some of the things he and his friends had been through to this point. The years living in a New York basement with Mai, supplying Charlie and Denver. Creating the bomb to bring down the mother and terraforming ships.

It led them to the brink of peace, but Augustus intended to snatch defeat from the jaws of human victory. Mike wasn’t a man of violence, but would drop his beliefs to give the old Roman a kick in the nuts.

The approaching engine stuttered and cut to silence, leaving only the distant whine of the other enemy and approaching Unity vehicles. Mike glanced up at the clear blue sky.

The stalled bike twisted on its side and veered down. It crashed nose first into the field. A shower of mud sprayed forward and splattered against Mike’s face and body. The croatoan rider flipped over the handlebars and cartwheeled through the air, landing on his helmet just five meters away.

Six Unity bikes, with their helmetless croatoan riders, powered over the field. The croatoan from the fallen bike lay face down with a rifle strapped to its back, not moving a muscle. Mike took a deep breath, scrambled to his feet and ran.

Two heads appeared above the edge of the basin.

Mai frantically gestured him forward.

Gib held up one of his prototype weapons, a thin metal tube with a trigger at the bottom of it. He knew the workings of hover-bikes and harvesters better than most and had created targeted radio frequency pulses to confuse the electronics within them, causing their engines to cut. They were due to trial it later, but Mike had no complaints about the results of Gib’s spontaneous pilot test. He felt like kissing his scaly little assistant.

Rifle fire crackled behind him. The Unity croatoans had reached Augustus’ vanguard and an aerial battle commenced. Ten of the city’s ground troops poured over the side of the basin, a mix of human and alien, and advanced forward in pairs, carrying out a controlled firing maneuver toward the enemy.

No longer able to run, Mike slowed and wiped his brow. His lungs burned and his heart thumped against his chest. If Unity could manage to hold the attack at bay for a short time, his small team would have a chance to refine the failed weapon.

Reaching the edge of the steep slope that ran down to the buildings on the first step, Mike smiled down at Mai and Gib. “I’m glad to see one of us can get it right.”

Gib blinked and the corner of his mouth twisted down. “Tested with family this morning. Weapon works.”

“You saved my life.”

“Get yourself down here,” Mai snapped. “You’re too old to be running around.”

The firing ceased.

Mike turned to look.

Two of the attackers’ bikes were down; the other three hovered in the air above the trees, without their riders. The Unity force surrounded the bodies on the ground and inspected them.

They had little time to waste and he wanted to get straight back to the workshop. “We need to get moving—”

Mai cupped her cheeks and her eyes widened. “Look out!”

Mike spun around. The croatoan from the stalled bike had raised itself from the mud. It pointed its rifle at him and fired.

A searing pain shot through his elbow. The force of the projectile threw him forward, down the steep slope between Mai and Gib.

Mai screamed.

Mike tried to grab something to slow his tumble but couldn’t gain any traction. He tucked in his injured elbow as he gathered pace toward a log cabin, spinning out of control and bashing against small rocks.

Clenching his teeth to fight against the pain, Mike braced himself for impact. His back slammed against the cabin wall and the world above him faded to black.

Chapter 21

AUGUSTUS STOOD amongst densely packed pines, two miles from Unity. The morning sun still hadn’t burned off a thin layer of mist that hugged the forest floor. He placed his hands on his hips and gazed at the clear blue sky through the sparse canopy.

The advanced scout group had still not returned from their reconnaissance mission. He deployed them to establish the strength of Unity’s defenses on all sides of the basin. They were ten minutes late.

Footsteps thumped along the needle-covered ground. Augustus looked over his shoulder. Zoe jogged up the track and slid to a halt, invading his personal space. “Sir, we’re all formed up and ready to move on your command.”

“Any news on the scout group?”

“Nothing yet. They might be here in a few minutes. Better late than never.”

He stepped toward her and crushed her toes under his boot. “Say that last line again.”

“Better late than never. It’s just a saying. I don’t…”

“Would your execution be better late than never?” He applied more downward pressure. “Why did you modern people make up weak phrases to excuse bad behavior?”

Zoe squeezed her eyes shut and gasped. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You’re hurting me.”

Augustus released his boot and patted her on the shoulder. “History will soon be ours to write. Part of it will be purging these pithy accoutrements that disguise ineptitude.”

“Yes, sir,” Zoe said, although her confused facial expression left Augustus in little doubt that she didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. “What are your orders?”

“I’m going back to the shuttle to check on the status of the scout group. You will receive my orders shortly.”

Zoe nodded, turned, and jogged away, impeded by a slight limp. Painful reminders didn’t last as long or do the same kind of damage as psychological ones, but they were ideal for short-term motivation.

Three of the croatoan shuttle team were monitoring the movements of the hover-bikes. They were supposed to report to him if the scout group were a minute late, and the reason why. They didn’t. Somebody had to pay for not providing Augustus with a situation report. He couldn’t stand for incompetence this close to achieving his master plan.

As much as Augustus disliked field punishment, more would be required. The two crucifixions didn’t have the desired effect of frightening everyone into line. This time, the guilty person or alien would suffer the same fate as Saint Marcus, the Bishop of Arethusa.

Augustus imagined the guilty party being stripped naked. Screaming in agony as they were stabbed all over with pencils and quills, smeared with honey, and hung in a basket for bees and wasps to devour. That would get his message across.

The camp was set up in an old barracks next to the forest. Augustus swept aside the decaying chain-link fence and headed for the crumbling concrete parade square. His shuttles had landed in the center of it. The soldiers occupied the ramshackle single-story buildings and makeshift tents around them. Nobody attempted to breach their defensive ring last night. He personally saw to the planning, now they were in touching distance of the snake’s lair.

Zoe and three other commanders stood in front of their respective troop formation at the far left side of the square. His cavalry of one hundred hover-bikes sat in a single row along the opposite end.

Today would be the day that the tyranny of Unity ended and Augustus would establish a new golden era for Earth. He was well aware that sometimes to create, one must first destroy. He couldn’t get Aimee’s smug face out of his mind. She smashed his mask and humiliated him. Crows would feast on her corpse.

Augustus smiled to himself and headed for the shuttle. The buzz of conversation in the air died down. The army’s anticipation of his orders sent a tingle down his spine.

One last check in the sky confirmed no hover-bikes were in the distance. He trudged up the ramp and entered the side of the shuttle.

A pungent stench of rotten fish and garbage hung in the air. Despite spending centuries with the croatoans, he still hadn’t quite gotten used to it. Not even a scrubbing brush and scented oil could remove it.

Two croatoans and one human peered at a map on the front HD screen.

Augustus bashed the carved globe on the end of his golden baton against the metallic internal wall. “Update me.”

The man’s head snapped around. His panic-stricken face didn’t bode well. “We’ve lost contact, sir.”

“Lost contact?”

“We’ll reverse the recording and show you.”

One of the croatoans thumbed a black control pad. The screen flickered and showed six red dots.

“These are the bikes leaving for Unity forty minutes ago,” the man said, pointing to the map. “They approached from the south in a cluster formation.”

The red dots moved up the map in a tight circle. Seconds later, they split and vanished from the screen.

“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is?” Augustus said.

“They took evasive action and formed into a combat line. We haven’t had a response since.”

Augustus squeezed the baton in his hand in an attempt to remain composed. It had to be Mike, Mai, and their new weapons. Nothing else would take six bikes out in one hit. This only increased the urgency in his mind. Unity couldn’t cover the whole of its perimeter. What he needed was a diversionary attack to draw their strength away from the main thrust.

“Do you want us to keep monitoring, sir?” the man said.

“Why didn’t you report this to me?” Augustus said. “I asked to be informed the moment anything suspicious happened. This is more than that, wouldn’t you say?”

“It could have been a technical glitch. I was just about to come and see you,” the man said. Augustus moved toward him and he raised a hand in front of his face. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

Both croatoans turned to look at Augustus. He didn’t want to show himself losing control in front of his army, but he had the cover of the shuttle.

“Do these two understand English?”

“Yes,” the man said as his hand pathetically trembled. “If you speak slowly.”

Augustus looked between both aliens. “Hold him down and make sure he can’t move.”

They grabbed a shoulder each and dragged the man to the ground. He grunted and attempted to resist, but a human would never beat two croatoans for strength, and his face slammed against the rough charcoal floor.

He turned his head to one side. “Give me another chance. I promise I won’t let you down.”

Another chance might be granted if people were watching. Augustus could show himself to be merciful. Unfortunately for this man, he didn’t have that luxury. “If I excuse you of disciplinary measures, what happens when the army finds out? They’ll see me as weak. I can’t afford that to happen.”

The man squirmed a few inches under the croatoans’ heavy restraint. Augustus knelt by his side, raised his baton, and thrust it down against his head. It connected with a dull crunch.

The man’s arms relaxed.

It was years since he’d done dirty work like this, and the intoxicating feeling was almost as good as a goblet of root wine.

Augustus brought the baton down five more times, delivering repeated heavy blows. Blood spattered against his mask, but there wouldn’t be any need to clean it. It helped with his warrior leader image and would soon be joined by the yellow and red stains of the Unity hybrid mongrels.

“Back to your positions,” Augustus snapped at the aliens. “I need you primed and ready to take off.”

Both released their grip and returned to their seats.

“Dump his body over the forest,” Augustus said. “We’re moving out in ten minutes.”

SACRIFICE WAS the way of the world. Augustus approached his soldiers and knew that some would give their lives today.

He’d made many sacrifices of his own to reach this moment—agreeing to help the croatoans with their integration program, defecting to the scion, who would soon sweep all before them. The biggest of all was positioning himself as leader and walking a tightrope between the two species. His reward, however, was in touching distance.

Zoe glanced up at his mask and took a sharp intake of breath. “Are you okay, sir?”

“Of course I am. I want you to immediately take two thousand troops to the western end of the basin and launch a flanking maneuver. Hold your position just short of the built-up area and draw them out.”

“Where are you attacking from?”

“I’ll lead a general advance directly at the town from the south, once you have their attention. Make sure you stay in radio contact and report any enemy movements. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. You can count on me.”

Augustus smiled. He knew he could, but her team would take the heaviest casualties after Unity reacted to the threat. His feelings for Zoe had waned since their initial rutting, but he would make sure she was remembered in history as one of his brave commanders.

“I’ll give you forty minutes to get into position. Confirm any counteractions and attack immediately.”

Zoe controlled the human contingent of Augustus’ army. They were more expendable in terms of resources. Croatoans numbered far less on the planet, but they could operate the more sophisticated resources he had at his disposal, and couldn’t be replaced as easily.

Maria stood at the end of the front rank. She bowed her head when Augustus fixed his glare on her. The possibility remained that she could be used as leverage. Once they saw the overwhelming force they faced and came to negotiate with him.

“One last task before you go,” Augustus said to Zoe, keeping his voice low, knowing that she’d enjoy it. “Restrain Maria and have a croatoan bring her to me.”

“With pleasure,” Zoe said. She turned away and spoke with another commander.

An alien from the rear rank of his group division bounded around the back of the humans and pulled chrome rigid cuffs from his hip compartment.

Maria spun around, saw the alien approach, and backed away. “I’m with you, Augustus. You don’t need to do this.”

“I’m sure you are,” Augustus said. “But I intend to maximize your presence.”

The croatoan wrapped her in a tight one-armed hug. Maria struggled, slapped a hand on its visor, but couldn’t stop the cuffs being crushed around her wrists.

Augustus moved toward her while the croatoan kept her in a tight hold. “Let’s see how your friends in Unity react when your life’s in danger.”

Maria dropped to her knees. “Please. I’m on your side. I can speak to them for you. Tell them what will happen if they don’t leave.”

“Leave?” Augustus laughed. “There’s only going to be one side in an hour, and you’ll find out that you chose the right one.”

Zoe’s piercing voice echoed around the square, barking orders to her division. They marched away through a gap in the buildings toward their destiny. Augustus stood in front of the remaining army with Maria at his boots. “Men, women, and croatoans, the time has come to start our advance. Your actions today will be legendary in the future centuries. Grab history with both hands, and together, nobody can stop us.”

Augustus turned, walked forward, and raised an arm.

All one hundred hover-bikes raised twenty meters in the air and twisted to face north. The shuttle’s engines roared, blasting out a rush of warm air through the mouth and eyeholes of his mask. Thousands of boots crunched on the cracked concrete behind him.

Their next stop was Unity.

Chapter 22

ALIEN ROUNDS CONTINUED to pin Charlie and the three other prisoners behind a large jagged rock. Red streaks zipped over their position. Muzzles flashed from different angles around them. So far, none of the slavers had made a sprint across open ground, telling Charlie that they did value the preservation of their own lives.

A hollow pop sounded between the metallic bursts from the slavers’ rifles. Sand rained over Charlie and a tunnel of fire belched into the air behind him. The mortar-like weapon’s shells were getting closer. A direct hit would end it.

One of the tredeyan prisoners slumped to the ground. Vingo turned him over and ran his hand along a deep gash in his chest. He’d been taken out by some hot shrapnel, and if they didn’t address the issue, they would all go the same way.

The problem was having enough time to locate the position without Charlie getting a bullet drilled into his skull. He edged toward Vingo and the other remaining tredeyan prisoner and paused to catch his breath. Every movement without the suit sapped his energy in the heavy atmosphere.

“You two, listen in,” Charlie said. Vingo continued to lean over the dead prisoner. Charlie grabbed his greasy shoulder. “Pay attention or we all die.”

Vingo turned to face him. The other tredeyan sat with his back to the rock, clutching the captured rifle, murmuring to himself. Under pressure, they displayed a more human side to their behavior, and Charlie understood they were sandwiched between the croatoans and the scion, but now was the time to show some guts.

“Give me covering fire,” Charlie shouted over the incessant crackle. “I need to take out whoever is firing the mortar.”

“Mortar?” Vingo asked.

“That thing that’s about to blow the shit out of us. Both of you aim over the rocks and sweep the ground ahead.”

By sending rounds in the direction of the slavers, Charlie hoped to get their heads down for a moment. He knew the alien in green armor fired the shells. When it broke cover, that was his moment.

Vingo picked up the rifle and they all crouched behind the rock. He babbled in tredeyan to the other prisoner and turned to Charlie. “We’re ready. Say when.”

“Now!”

Both tredeyans sprang up and fired their weapons in an arc from the cave on the left to the open rocky ground on the right. Two rounds sparked off the shuttle nestled in a crevice at the bottom of the cliff face directly in front of them.

A moment of silence followed. Charlie rolled to the side and peered down his sights, waiting for signs of movement behind the cluster of rocks surrounding them.

It was a classic but effective move that he knew well. Anyone can fire accurately down a range, but facing a person who shoots back tends to unnerve a lot of people, and aliens, it seemed.

Two figures darted between rocks to his right. Charlie’s captured rifle wasn’t calibrated with the helmet. He peered down a sight on top of the smooth metal forestock and curled his finger around the trigger.

They hugged the edge of the cliff and advanced toward the battleground. Their suits were the same design as his. Human-adapted tredeyan armor. It had to be Denver and Layla.

Excitement surged inside. Charlie had his doubts about ever seeing them again, but he never should have. For the last ten years, whenever the shit hit the fan, he could always rely on Denver. “Den, Layla, is that you?”

More rounds pinged off the rock next to Charlie, spraying sand against his visor. He rolled back to cover. Denver and Layla’s arrival distracted him from the plan, but it was a good distraction. When they attacked from the side, they would have the slavers in their own pincer movement.

“Charlie!” Layla said through the intercom. “Where are you?”

Relief washed over him. “I’m behind a large rock to your left. Six to eight enemy directly ahead.”

“I can see their direction of fire,” Denver said. “I’ve got four with their backs to me from here. That should even it up.”

“I’ll wait for your move.”

An ominous hollow pop sounded ahead.

Seconds later an explosion ripped through the air, directly to Charlie’s left.

The remaining tredeyan prisoner let out a gargled scream and collapsed. Vingo dropped his rifle and clutched his leg. Blood ran between his chunky fingers. His already injured left arm hung limply by his side.

Incoming fire continued to hit and whizz past the rock, although the rate had dropped considerably.

Charlie grabbed the dead tredeyan’s rifle and released the magazine block off the side. All rounds were spent on the previous covering fire. He checked his own and still had a few left, but a visual inspection of the top didn’t tell him how many.

“Get ready,” Denver said, followed by a static hiss.

Single shots rang out in quick succession. Denver and Layla taking aim and making every one count. Charlie broke cover again.

A slaver had readjusted his position to the new threat, allowing Charlie a view of his left torso. He fired twice and the figure slumped.

“Two down,” Denver said.

“One down,” Layla said.

“One down,” Charlie said.

The shuttle’s engines roared. A cloud of sand and stone-filled dust blasted from underneath, shrouding the area. Charlie’s night vision blurred.

Dull muzzle flashes appeared in different spots, becoming increasingly fainter.

“They’re withdrawing,” Denver said.

Charlie heard the distinctive sound of his and Layla’s rifles fire again.

“We got one more,” Denver said. “Two made it to the shuttle.”

“Does it have a cannon on the roof?” Charlie said. “I couldn’t see when they brought me here.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Layla said.

Vingo shuffled by Charlie’s side. “You saved my life.”

“It’s not over yet.”

Denver and Layla ran through the gloom, powering over the black volcanic sand a lot faster than any human could manage without the assistance of an armored suit. Charlie waved a hand over the top of the rock. They altered direction slightly, headed over and crouched by his side.

Layla looked around Charlie at Vingo and the two dead tredeyans. “Looks like you’ve had an interesting time.”

The relief in her voice matched Denver’s facial expression and Charlie’s internal feeling.

“What happened to the rest of your armor?” Denver said.

“They took it,” Charlie said and peered over the rock at the shuttle. “I can live without it, as long as we can change our filters and refill the water with a mix of root.”

“Who the hell are they?” Layla said.

Charlie ignored the question. The shuttle rose ten meters in the air. Its engine noise changed to a higher pitch and it thrust forward.

Hot air blasted down from its six pink rings as it flew overhead. The shuttle banked to the right and headed around the coast, disappearing around a cliff while gaining altitude.

Nobody spoke. Charlie waited, wanting to confirm the thing wouldn’t turn back and take a shot at them, if it had the capability. He would in their shoes.

It flew above the distant cliffs and headed for the stars. The rings brightened and it shot up at a greater speed.

A scion fighter roared along the coast, pointed its nose up and went to intercept. A missile deployed from under its wing and streaked toward the shuttle.

An explosion boomed overhead. It was impossible to tell if the fighter scored a hit because of the shuttle’s rapid ascent, but Charlie hoped so. The crew deserved it.

The sounds of the last frantic minutes were replaced with waves crashing against the shoreline and distant rumbles as the battle for Tredeya continued.

“Are you going to answer my question?” Layla said.

“Yeah, follow me. I’m getting my suit back and have two things to kill,” Charlie said. Vingo remained kneeling next to the two dead tredeyans. “That includes you too. Get your ass moving. ”

Vingo limped alongside Layla and she glanced at his wounds. “Are you okay?”

“I got hit, but I’ll live.”

Charlie entered the cave. The overhead lighting flickered on and off. He stepped over the bodies of the three dead slavers and continued forward.

“Your doing, I take it?” Denver said as he followed behind. “How did you end up here?”

“That supposed priest paralyzed my suit. Slavers were going to sell me for labor on another planet.”

“Christ,” Layla said. “Their planet’s falling, and they’re still trying to make a profit?”

Charlie grunted. “Seems like greed stretches beyond Earth.”

“It’s not like that,” Vingo said, his voice stuttery and higher than before. “Slavers are outside our society. They are a mix of species. Our command tolerates them because they’re only supposed to capture deserters or criminals. It saves on resources if we don’t have prisoners to manage.”

“Why did they take you?” Denver said.

Vingo looked away and hobbled toward the cavern containing the cells.

“Hey! Why did they take you?” Denver repeated with a hint of anger in his voice.

“I had another reason for being in the command center,” Vingo said. “I was…” He looked around nervously, his beady eyes twitching before his body slumped with what Charlie thought was a sigh. “I was taking something.”

“Don’t look to me for sympathy,” Charlie prompted. “You need to explain yourself to Den and Layla.”

“All you need to know is that I’m leaving this place, this war. There’s other options for people with my skills.”

“Like trading whatever it is you took with the scion?” Layla said.

“No. They will have control of our systems eventually and wouldn’t deal with me. There’s an alliance, another faction bordering on the Hezlan systems, another player in this war.”

“Got a name, this faction?” Denver asked.

“They’re called the Amalgam, on account of the number of races involved, people who are casualties of the war, people and races who no longer want to be victims to either side.”

Charlie grunted and shook his head. He found Vingo increasingly pathetic. “Tell them about trying to buy your way in.”

“I had to offer something. When we first tracked a scion ship entering our solar system, I decided we needed a survival plan. Tredeya can defend against most threats, but not this one.”

“That’s just great,” Denver said. “You made us even more of a target.”

“It doesn’t change our situation. We have a ship we can escape on once I have what we need.”

“Can your ship—” Layla stopped abruptly and took two steps back.

Shadows moved around the cavern opening.

The two clusps that guarded the entrance leaped into the cave. They strained against their chains and snarled. Both sets of tentacles writhed in the air, ready to strike when in range of a victim.

Denver dropped to one knee and shouldered his rifle. Charlie stood in front of him. “I’ve wanted to do this since I first met the first damned thing.”

Both clusps hunched down and growled. Charlie moved forward. One whipped a tentacle forward. It snapped rigid a meter in front of his face.

Charlie took a deep breath, looked through his sights, and pulled the trigger. His round punctured a hole through the left clusp’s head. Green spatter marks plastered the wall behind it. He wasted no time in downing the other creature.

Turning back to the group, Charlie asked, “Did you happen to see the priest on your way here?”

“You don’t need to worry about her,” Denver said.

Charlie gave him a knowing nod. “I understand. Good job, son.”

Vingo tugged on Charlie’s cuff. “If you take me to my village, I can provide filters, water, and food.”

“What about your ship?” Denver said. “We can’t survive here forever and need a way home. Especially if scion mechs are roaming the land.”

“My ship doesn’t have the range,” Vingo said. “But there might be another way.”

“Which is?” Layla said.

“Take me to my village and I’ll tell you.”

“Bullshit,” Charlie said, unable to control his anger. “We’ve saved your ass on more than one occasion. Stop laying breadcrumbs and tell us now, or forget your escort.”

“Take me home or forget ever reaching yours,” Vingo retorted, suddenly finding some backbone. A political race indeed, Charlie thought.

They had little choice, though. Information was in short supply, and Charlie, Denver and Layla had to grab any chance they could get their hands on.

Charlie shook his head. “How did you guys get here?”

“We’ve got the catamaran waiting outside,” Layla said.

“Fine then. Vingo, lead the way to your village; then we’ll talk about how you’re going to get us home… otherwise… well, let’s just say that the Amalgam will have to settle for receiving your corpse.”

Vingo helped Charlie into his suit before putting his own back on.

Denver led them out of the prison toward the stolen craft.

THE CATAMARAN HUMMED through the air, leaving a cloudy trail of sand behind it. Vingo sat next to Layla at the controls, directing her along the coastline toward his village. Gazing out to sea as the first signs of dawn appeared in the sky, Charlie thought it looked like Earth, until the distant black prism came into view—a symbol of the tredeyans’ doom, hovering high in the sky. They must have had the same helpless feeling as him during the initial croatoan assault on Earth.

“Do you think we can trust him?” Denver said.

“Vingo? I don’t know, but we haven’t got any better ideas.”

“I can hear you,” Vingo rasped through the intercom.

“I know you can,” Denver said and turned toward him. “But I’m past caring about that.”

Small white bolts shot from the bottom of the black prism toward the surface. Explosions brightened the royal blue sky. The battle had raged for hours so far, and Charlie wondered what key parts of infrastructure were left.

“Vingo, what happens if we lose the wireless power?” Charlie said.

“I don’t think the scion will destroy the power. They will want quick access to our networks and databases.”

“But if they do,” Denver said, picking up on Charlie’s concern, “what happens to our suits and breathing systems?”

“You don’t need to worry. They have enough battery life to comfortably reach my village. We have recharging facilities and spares.”

Denver shot Charlie a suspicious glance. Charlie also found it hard to believe a word he said. Vingo’s ever-evolving story made sure of that.

Layla steered off the coast and cruised up the side of a hill. Grass swayed beneath them as they powered to the top. The catamaran must have had an altitude sensor because it always maintained a steady height of five meters above the ground.

“Nearly there,” Vingo said and leaned forward in anticipation.

THE CATAMARAN SWEPT over the brow and headed down. A square space had been cleared at the bottom. In the middle sat a charred skeleton of a ship. Layla slowed as they reached it and they gently bumped against the dirt.

Vingo jumped off and hobbled toward it. He gazed at two burned corpses on the ground and rubbed his hand along the twisted frame.

“Doesn’t look like a village to me,” Denver said.

“I take it that’s his escape screwed?” Layla said.

Charlie hopped off the side, pleased to have power-assisted movement in the heavy atmosphere again. He approached Vingo while surveying the scene.

The forty-meter remains listed into a large crater by the side of it. Most likely a direct hit from the scion prism. Charlie spotted two more twisted figures in the blackened internal wreckage.

“Where’s your village?” Charlie said.

Vingo slowly turned and dropped a burned piece of debris. “There is no village.”

Taking a deep breath, Charlie fought the urge to punch him in the face. Right from the start, up until the cave, Vingo claimed it as his motivation and played them along. The bargain he was attempting to strike with the Amalgam didn’t seem a bad thing to hide, it sounded like he was trying to look after his people. Now the people didn’t actually exist, it changed everything.

Charlie stepped toward him.

“Get back. Now,” Denver shouted, piercing Charlie’s ear.

A dark shadow crept over the makeshift landing strip. A twenty-meter-high croatoan war mech, with thick robotic legs, a sleek black angular body in proportion and a cannon on each side, stood on the opposite hill. A laser shot from the top of it and swept across the ground between Charlie, Vingo and the catamaran.

“Why the fuck is that shooting at us?” Charlie yelled. “I thought you and the turtles were tight?”

Vingo ran past him and into the catamaran, firing up the engines. “I’m a traitor, remember; they don’t take kindly to that behavior. Are you coming or staying?”

Charlie, Denver, and Layla jumped into the moving catamaran as Vingo swung it around and headed back down toward the sea as cannon fire flew over their heads.

Chapter 23

THE COLD AFTERNOON AIR, wafting through an open window, made the skin on Mike’s exposed arms goose bump. He shivered and moaned as he moved up from his chair, pushing up with his good arm, the other now in a sling after Mai had removed the bullet and treated the wound with the now-familiar root poultice.

He checked his watch; it was four hours since the advanced party of croatoans had attacked. The pain in his elbow still throbbed when he tried to move his arm. The painkilling properties of the root, along with a supply of codeine Unity had salvaged from a nearby hospital, had given him enough pain suppression. He wanted to get on with the job at hand.

Mai entered the small room at the rear of Aimee’s residence. When Mike fell from his wounds, they brought him here to treat him while Unity’s defense force destroyed the advance attackers.

“Any news?” Mike said. He was waiting for Aimee’s response to his failure.

“Khan and Baliska returned from their scouting,” Mai said, sitting beside him on the bed and placing the palm of her hand against his shoulder with light tenderness.

“What did they say?”

“Augustus’ forces are less than an hour away.”

“And the radio weapon?” Mike asked, resisting a painful cringe at the answer. He felt bad for leaving Mai to deal with his failure. He had assured Aimee and the others at Unity that they would have the radio weapon working in time and staked his reputation on it—which now lay in tatters, like Unity’s chances of survival.

“I tried to diagnose what went wrong, but it all seems fine to me. The connections are solid, the power source is perfectly fine, and the dish responds to other stimulation.”

Mike used his free hand to scratch his nose. “Okay… it’s got to be something simple, then. The design makes sense, the parts are good, and the wiring as you say is fine, so what could it be? Must be a bug in a part somewhere in the chain. We need to start right from the beginning…” He sighed at the thought.

“There isn’t time,” Mai said. “Aimee is working with Ryan and the others to get fighters into defensive positions. Khan and Baliska managed to take out a couple of Augustus’ scouts, but… I think this might be it.” Mai dropped her head onto his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his neck.

“Damn it, Mai, we’ve survived worse than this. I’m not giving up now. Think of what Charlie, Denver, and Layla have done for us. We can’t just stand back and let this place go down, least of all to someone like Augustus.”

He hugged her back with his good arm, wincing as he reached round. He kissed her on the head and stood up from the bed, swaying slightly, still groggy from his wound and the medication. “I’ve an idea,” he said. “I need your help, though, to get back up to the platform.”

WITH MAI and Gib’s help, Mike got to the top of the town and clambered up to the platform in order to inspect the hardware again. The sun was dipping down behind the pines to the west of their position, casting long shadows across the clearing and lush root field.

It wouldn’t stay lush for long, though, not once the battle commenced. The orange field would soon be red. He just hoped most of it would belong to Augustus and his cobbled-together army.

“Okay,” Mike said, shuffling down to the small square device, multimeter in hand. “Gib, you reconnect the power supply, and Mai, my love, can you check the readings in the dish.”

Both nodded and moved into position as Mike prized the lid off the device showing the alien transformer inside. It looked like an old cotton reel but made of a highly magnetic material that generated a seemingly impossible amount of wattage for such a small device.

From that, the charge powered the microwave transmitter.

Mike switched on the device and like before got the green light. He checked the contacts and made sure the energy was flowing through the device. “We’re all good here,” Gib said, monitoring a tablet connected to the croatoan batteries.

“Here too,” Mai said. “I’m getting a current.”

“Right,” Mike said, kneeling closer and sighing as his back clicked. He switched on the flashlight attached to a band around his head to illuminate the insides of the device in the ever-dwindling daylight.

With the sun down, the wind seemed to increase, bringing with it a chill that whined and whistled through the tree branches, each baleful note making Mike think of the hover-bikes. He kept looking back across the field to make sure there weren’t actually a group of bikes about to bear down on him.

The image from earlier blazed bright in his mind. He closed his eyes and steadied himself with his good hand.

“Are you okay, love?” Mai asked, bending to him and placing her hand on his shoulder.

Mike forced a smile. “I’m fine, just a bit tired from the drugs.”

He knew Mai wouldn’t believe that; the root was a potent stimulant and would give him all the energy and alertness he needed. But what it wouldn’t do was erase memories or the fear of being a sitting duck while the croatoan hover-bike riders bore down on him.

“I think I can make some modifications,” he said, looking back at the device. The power coupling from the transformer to the microwave transmitter was set to allow only a certain amount of power through, so as not to overload the individual parts. He thought that perhaps if he opened the gate all the way to let the full load in, that could help push enough power into the transmitter, and thus into the dish.

Explaining his strategy to Gib and Mai, they both nodded and agreed that it sounded like a sensible option. With time running out and no other obvious fix, Mike got to work disassembling the coupling so as to readjust its settings.

“The Unity defense personnel are really digging in,” Mai said from her position just above Mike. The sounds of hover-bikes, some old harvesters and marching feet conjured their own image as sweat started to break out on his forehead.

“Mai, I can’t do this one-handed. Can you remove the coupling for me while I handle the wiring?”

“Sure.”

Like a thousand times before, they both got to work, their hands agile and seemingly working of their own accord, supplementing each other’s skills rather than getting in the way. It always made him smile how in-sync they were, but today he couldn’t find the energy to smile as the time clicked down.

As he adjusted the coupling, he took a look around, seeing Unity preparing for Augustus’ onslaught. The thought of the battle brought back lots of old memories of when the croatoans first came out of the ground.

The sheer indifference with which they slaughtered anything that moved made him feel sick, as it usually did. How ironic, he thought, that here he was, helping to defend a city made up of more croatoans than humans, and beside him, one of them, Gib, was lending a hand.

“That should do it,” Mike said, adjusting the throughput capacity of the coupling. “Help me reinstall it and we can give it another test. How’s the battery capacity, Gib? Did my first test take much out?”

The croatoan engineer consulted his tablet and shook his head, a gesture he had learned from the humans in Unity. “Not much. Plenty for at least three more full capacity…” He couldn’t find the words and mimed it with throwing his arms out toward the woods.

“Bursts?” Mai prompted, getting an affirmative from the small alien.

“With any luck, that’s all we need,” Mike said, finally standing up and stretching his old, sore back. During his fall he had landed on his spine heavily, bruising most of his back and left ribs.

The radio around Mai’s neck crackled with Aimee’s voice. “How are you guys doing up there? Any good news? Over.”

“We think we might have found a solution,” Mai said. “We’re just putting it back together and preparing for another test.”

“Make it quick,” Aimee said. “We’ve spotted two shuttles and a dozen hover-bikes on the horizon. They’ll be here any moment. We really need this weapon of yours up and running if we’re to have any chance.”

Mike closed his eyes at the sound of the desperation and panic in Aimee’s voice. He didn’t blame her. For years they had lived here in peace without any outside involvement, and now they were perhaps just hours away from extinction. He knew exactly how that felt and wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemies… human enemies at least. The croatoans could burn in hell for all he cared.

He snapped the lid to the device back on and reconnected the cables to the power source and the dish. He flicked the first switch and got the green light again telling him it was all connected and ready to go.

“Right, let’s give this another run, shall we?” Mike said, hovering his trembling fingers over the switch.

At first nothing happened when he flicked the switch. Mai and Gib stood at the rear of the platform, watching on. Mike stepped back and traced his mind through the process, wondering if he had forgotten to connect something.

Gib stepped forward to stand beside him. “Problem?” he asked.

The red LED light on the device turned green. Before Mike could move him out of the way, the lid on the device blew clear of the chassis and the transformer glowed red, then exploded.

The burst of fire and electrical power struck the batteries, igniting them until one of them exploded too. Gib screamed, clutching his face as he fell back. Mike dived out of the way, dragging Mai to the base of the platform as he expected the rest of the batteries to go up.

But after a few long seconds, there were no more explosions, just the acrid stench of cooked electronics and boiled battery acid.

Gib lay motionless on the platform floor. His face was badly burned and the skin around his neck and shoulder bubbled. His breathing apparatus had stopped working and he lay still, his chest no longer rising and falling.

Crawling over to him, Mike checked his pulse… and didn’t find one.

Gib was dead… as was the device.

“Everything all right up there? Over,” Aimee said over the radio.

With a shaking hand, Mike took the radio from a shell-shocked Mai and replied, “No, we’re not okay… I don’t think we’ll ever be okay.”

Chapter 24

WITH THE SUN starting to rise behind them, the light cracking over the top of the hill, a dark shadow split the yellow line as the monstrous croatoan mech breached the horizon and made its way over the hill.

Vingo hissed a string of what Denver assumed were expletives given the tone in which they were given. The tredeyan looked over his shoulder and veered the catamaran across the rocky shoreline, the engines kicking up a spray of pebbles and shells behind in its wake.

“It’s going to shoot,” Denver said. “Do something!”

Vingo gunned the catamaran to maximum power and arced around the edge of the shoreline, sending up a rooster tail of white water spray. Denver slipped into Charlie and Layla on the bench seat, but they all held on as Vingo’s driving became increasingly more erratic.

The first blast from the mech boomed and a fraction later a fountain of water exploded just behind and to the right of them; the waves from the blast sprayed up and over the catamaran, drenching them.

“That was too fucking close,” Charlie said. “You really must have done something bad to piss the croatoans off.”

“Explain later… if we survive,” Vingo said, pulling back on the controls so that the craft increased to its maximum height of ten meters off the ground. They flew over a copse of trees that lurched toward the water like great animals bending down to drink.

Denver spotted a number of slithering, dark shapes beneath the shadowed canopy. Their forms slipped into the sea, rippling its surface. Vingo turned toward the sun and dropped the altitude until they were obscured from the mech’s view by the trees.

Half a kilometer to their left, a cliff side rose up almost completely at ninety degrees to the shoreline. Cut through the cliff was a chasm that looked entirely too narrow to take them, but Vingo steered toward it as they continue to pick up speed.

“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Layla said, clutching onto Denver’s arm with her gauntlet. Charlie, next to him, gripped the side of the cockpit with a grimace on his face, as another blast struck just above their position, knocking down a huge chunk of stone.

It echoed with each impact as it tumbled down the cliff face. Vingo managed to easily swerve around it, which brought them within a straight run for the chasm. Even with the lights on, Denver couldn’t make out any details in the dark shadowy gap.

“Where are we going?” Denver asked.

“Away from the mech,” Vingo replied, still not giving anything away.

They flew with great speed into the chasm. Vingo hadn’t quite got his approach lined up and the left edge of the catamaran slid along the rough-hewn sides, sending vibrations through the hull and creating an awful screeching sound.

A few adjustments and the panicked tredeyan found the right space between the two cliff sides. Denver just hoped it wouldn’t narrow any time soon. At this rate, they’d have no way of avoiding it. Once they were inside, the whine of the engine echoed around the split in the cliff, making it sound like they were deep inside a cave.

Rushing water below them frothed around rocks and splashed up in squalls of white water as the tributary narrowed. Thankfully the gap between each face of the cliff remained the same distance apart, making Denver realize that it was probably made this way by the tredeyans to filter some of the water into other parts of the planet’s surface.

Layla seemed to be thinking the same thing when she asked, “Where does the water go?”

“Underground, into water-pumping stations. Hold on, we’re coming to a difficult branch. Where’s the mech?”

Denver and Charlie looked behind them. At first it seemed they had avoided it, but when Denver lifted his head to look up to the sky, a massive shadow blotted out the tall, thin gap of sun.

“The bastard’s still on us,” Denver said. “Above us, on the other right cliff—”

The sudden lurching bank to the left cut off his words. He slid into Layla and they both crashed into Vingo. The catamaran flew out of a narrow gap at the end of the cliff, the base of its hull scraping against the rough stone.

Their momentum took them out over a cascading waterfall.

“Jump!” Vingo yelled as the craft fell away from them.

A blast exploded at the rear of their position, crumbling more rock into the rapid white water. The blast caught the rear of the catamaran, flipping it stern over bow. Denver, Charlie, and Layla suddenly became victims of gravity and descended into the waterfall.

Denver tried to grab Layla, but the force of the water knocked him sideways. He crashed into an outcrop, jarring his outstretched arm and sending him cartwheeling out into the rushing rapid below.

He just caught sight of Charlie and Vingo splashing into the water and their helmets bobbing along. When Denver hit the water, he automatically held his breath out of habit, forgetting that the environmental suit provided his air.

The sound muffled, though, as his external mics picked up the crashing of the water. He tried to reach for the control panel on his arm to switch the mics off, but the force of the water was too strong even for the suit’s servo-assistance.

“Layla!” he yelled. “Charlie?”

No answer, just gurgling noises and another blast coming from somewhere up ahead. His body struck a rock, but the impact was lessened by the dampening within the suit. The shock of the direction change still made him wince.

His head rose briefly out of the water. He was facing back toward the cliffs now shrinking behind him as though they were nothing more than small rocky outcroppings. The croatoan mech turned and headed back to the east, its shape silhouetted by the rising sun. It either assumed they were dead in the blast, or that they would soon be dead, which didn’t fill him with much confidence as the raging water continued to drag him away to god knows where.

DENVER LOST track of how long he had floated before he came to a stop. For a while he knew he had fallen asleep, exhausted by the constant flood of adrenalin in his body. His muscles were sore and cramped and the water and air provided by the suit made his mouth dry and crack at the corners.

He became aware that his body was slumped up against something solid and stationary. “Hello?” he said. “Anyone hear me?”

No answer. Where the hell were they? They couldn’t be that far out of range. The alternative was too much to bear. They’d come all this way, survived for this long, he couldn’t handle it if they had died during a bit of a swim.

“Talk to me, dammit!” he yelled, letting the unfamiliar feelings of fear and panic go with a single exhalation. “If you can hear me, just stay where you are, make some noise or movement, I’ll come find you.”

Denver gritted his teeth and forced his body to move up. He discovered he had hit a rock and stuck there as the speed and power of the rapid had dulled to what now looked like a barely moving brook. The sun had risen above the now-distant cliffs, shining brightly down onto his position.

He was in an open area with fields to his right beyond a steep bank some five or so meters high. To his left was a shallow sloped cliff face rising up in a gentle arc. Large-winged creatures flew lazily over his position, circling far above. He got the distinct impression they were looking at him as a potential meal.

He searched around him for a gun, but he had lost that during the fall. All he had on him was the combat knife attached to the suit. He pulled it free with his right hand and kept it ready to use.

Making his way to the narrow shoreline beneath the shallow cliff, he saw dark shadows swimming in the water. He stopped and crouched down, looking into the water. The visor’s polarizing filter automatically kicked in, removing the flashing reflections from the surface, giving him an almost x-ray vision into the water.

The shadows were three times as long as an average human man and twice as wide. Now that he looked closer, he spotted that there were at least a dozen of them moving like snakes through the water.

Denver stepped back quietly away from the water, not wanting to get their attention. Even with the suit, he didn’t fancy his chances against a school of alien snake-sharks or whatever hideous creature they were.

Trudging along the shore, Denver kept talking, hoping one of the others on his frequency would reply. He must have walked for at least an hour. His limbs were growing tired and his chest tightened with every breath. He really need to rest, eat, and recuperate. Even his athletic, fit body couldn’t handle too much of the exertions that they’d had to go through since they got here.

He let his mind wander as he trudged on until he came to a makeshift dam that stopped the flow of the water. The shadows of the water predators reached it and swam around in circles for a moment before heading back. He realized then that they must have been tracking him—what else could have followed him that he hadn’t had the awareness to notice.

This was not like him; he prided himself on being a great hunter back home, but then he had to admit that he wasn’t exactly in a familiar environment, and he was so tired he could just collapse where he stood and let the local wildlife crack open his suit like a tin of spam.

Even the thought of biting into a lump of spam made his mouth water.

With a grim smile he knew it was bad when he craved that muck.

Come on, Den, get a grip, he thought, urging himself to carry on.

He reached the dam. The top was ridged into what looked like a walkway. With no other way to go, he crossed it, walking carefully, making sure the structure, made from some kind of gray material, wasn’t about to send him into the hungry mouths of the snake-shark things.

It held, and he came to the other side.

His heart sank when he climbed the bank to see that before him was just a barren scrubland of short, spiky grass. There wasn’t even any sign of war here, just an absolute nothingness.

Unable to face the prospect of trekking across kilometers of empty land, he turned east and decided to walk back the way he came, but on the other side in case he had missed something along the way. He travelled, in a daze, for about half an hour until his vision became too blurry to trust.

Exhaustion took its toll and he gave in, finding a small outcrop to hide under. He curled into the shadows and let his body rest, all the while mumbling into his mic until he could no longer do even that.

Chapter 25

LAYLA HAD to resist the temptation to push Vingo into the water and let the creatures in there devour him. Constant moaning about the sun and the need to camp… all the while Denver remained missing. That little tredeyan fucker clearly didn’t understand humans as much as he thought.

For three long hours they had made their way back to the tributary after filtering off into a different route than the one she had seen Denver get carried away on. Vingo told them they needed to camp, rest, but how could they without Denver?

She had told Vingo it was time he did what they said for a change, and he would just have to deal with the sunlight for a while. The alien had a visor, after all; it wasn’t as if he were outside, exposed and baking beneath the strong star.

They slogged on down the shoreline, Vingo stopping every few meters to gather some kind of fruit into a storage sack he had within one of his suit’s pockets. At least the treacherous shit had shown them how to refill their suit’s water supply manually.

And she had to admit that the water did taste great. Fresh and with a slight hint of mint that made her throat and belly tingle. It was oddly comforting. She at first thought it had some essence of the croatoan root within it, but Vingo had dismissed that, saying the water on Tredeya, unlike Earth, did not have any salt content and that the plants that grew within it enriched it with minerals and vitamins.

She laughed to herself, thinking that if humans colonized Tredeya, one of the big corporations would ‘own’ the water and sell it back to the people at a ridiculous cost as they extolled its numerous virtues.

But her meandering thoughts didn’t last long when she saw Charlie break into a jog. He moved quickly down the shoreline, jumping over rock formations.

“What is it?” Layla asked.

“Denver,” Charlie replied, stopping and bending down.

Layla joined him and looked at what he held in his hand. “His combat knife.”

“This isn’t good,” Charlie said. “Denver wouldn’t just drop his only weapon like this. He can’t be in good shape.”

Vingo wasn’t responding. He just kept foraging at the water’s edge and moving along slowly, inspecting the various shrubs and flora that grew on the bank. The sight of him so relaxed while Denver was missing brought murderous thoughts to her mind. She could just go to him now, overpower him…

“Wait,” she said, spinning back round to join Charlie. “There, on the ground.”

Charlie brushed the grass aside. “Tracks,” he said.

The two of them set off, tracing the footprints on the muddy bank. The steps weren’t clearly imprinted and slid into one another. She pictured Denver tired or wounded, dragging his feet as he continued on.

She knew he was probably looking for them. When they had crashed out of the catamaran, she saw him hit a rapid and speed off until they lost sight of him. She figured that the crash had broken the intercom system.

Engaging her external speakers, she called out, “Den! Are you around?”

As she expected, there was no response.

Keeping up with Charlie was no mean feat, but she pushed herself onwards.

“Here,” Charlie said.

He stopped and bent down. “Vingo, what the hell is this?”

To Layla it looked like a cross between a shark and an eel. Must have been about four meters long and with a thick, wide body with a sleek torpedo shape. Its tail had a wide fin on the back. Its head was larger than a human’s and twice as long with a wide jaw, in which was set a triple row of back-curving teeth.

The side of its right flank was crudely cut open and the flesh jagged and torn. Inky black-red blood had pooled around it, staining the yellow and pale-green grass.

Vingo joined the others and placed his sack of berries and strange-looking fruit on the ground. Kneeling, he inspected the creature. “In your language, the closest pronunciation would be a ‘skertch.’ It’s a predator fish. We saw them earlier, remember? The shadows in the water. Their skin is… how would you say it? Changing in the light?”

“Photochromic?” Layla prompted.

Vingo gave his version of a shrug and nodded.

“Probably like our chameleons,” Layla mused. “I’m assuming it’s not natural to find one out of the water like this and in this condition? Although given what Denver and I saw last night, I wouldn’t put it past this planet to have some other fucked-up predator lurking about.”

“Not in sun,” Vingo said. “Not here.”

“Then what?” Charlie said.

“Only one species I’ve known to take on a skertch,” Vingo said with what Layla thought was a smirk on his face. It was hard to tell given the smoothness and subtle curves of his nose and mouth. His beady black eyes rarely gave anything away either, but perhaps it was just the tone of his voice. She couldn’t tell if it was mockery or a faux admiration.

“Well?” she asked. “What would have done this?” Not that she needed Vingo to say, she had a pretty damn good guess herself.

“It’s the foolhardy work of a human,” Vingo said, pointing one of his digits at the wound in the side of the beast. “Rough job, barbaric you would say.”

Charlie launched at Vingo then and smashed an arcing haymaker into the alien’s helmet. It didn’t crack under the impact, but Charlie’s strike did knock the alien to the ground with a heavy thud. Charlie quickly mounted him, pinning Vingo’s arms with one hand while he brought the knifepoint to a gasket joint between the helmet and the chest piece of the alien’s suit.

“You say that again, you little fucker, and I’ll show you barbaric. We saved your worthless life! You dare insult my people and me again and you’ll be the one we find with its guts ripped. You understand that, don’t you?”

Vingo’s body went limp, his pale face seemed to grow even paler behind the slightly shadowed visor. Layla thought about stopping Charlie, but frankly she found the whole novelty of being on an alien planet had worn off and she cared not if Vingo lived or died. It wasn’t as if he’d helped them much anyway.

Charlie struck Vingo again, his gauntlet clanging against the suit uselessly. He stood up, throwing the knife into a tree with an explosion of fury. It struck the branch with a twanging noise.

“Who are you throwing knives at, old man?” A voice spoke from the shadow of the tree, amplified by external speakers.

“Denver!” Layla said.

NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, Layla regretted the necessity of wearing the bulky suit. She wanted nothing more than to shed her metal exoskeleton and grab Denver, sink herself into him and relish in his breathing, live body.

She shook her head as they all sat around a fire deep within an outcrop beneath a tree. The roots snaked down the sides of the dirt cave, holding the walls together, providing a small space for the four of them to huddle in around the fire.

She smiled, staring at him from across the fire. “How do you do it, Den?” she asked. “When I think you’re gone, here you are, living like bloody Tarzan as though it were the most natural thing in the world? And,” she added, nodding to the skertch corpse on the bank outside of the cave, “how the hell did you catch that thing without being dragged away?”

Denver blushed behind his visor and looked down at his hands before meeting her eyes again and shrugging. “I wanted to stay alive to find you guys,” he said, still talking over the external speakers due to his broken comm. Vingo was busy in the back of the cave, trying to fix the small module.

It was good for him to be out of the way. With the way Charlie acted, she didn’t doubt that things could boil over again and Vingo would soon join the dead skertch on the Jackson’s list of tredeyan kills.

“I’m proud of you, son,” Charlie said. “For coming for me, for surviving. I couldn’t have done this trip without you.”

“I don’t want to give up so easily,” Denver said. “There must be a way off this damned rock.”

Layla heard Vingo mutter something under his breath, the words muffled and incoherent over the comms. She assumed he was still bitter about Charlie’s attack and let him get on with his task. He had, to his credit, showed them how to prepare the fruit he had picked.

The small apple-like fruits were surprisingly good when roasted, having a kind of cinnamon taste. Layla could already feel some energy coming back to her exhausted body as she fed another piece through the feeding hatch—a small airlock system built into the helmets that allowed solid food to pass through.

The other option, Vingo had suggested, was to pulp them and put them into the suit’s liquidized food delivery system, but after a few days of that she wanted to experience solid food again.

“I’ve learned one thing while you guys were away,” Denver said. “Skertch tastes like utter crap.” He laughed, lifting the mood.

“It’s also venomous to humans,” Vingo said casually, still sitting with his back to them in the darkened shadows of the cave. “You’re lucky you didn’t start cutting into its venom sacs further into its body.”

“Good to know,” Denver said. “Though that might have been something to have told us before you took us for that little joyride over the water.”

“I’m sorry,” Vingo said.

For the first time, Layla sensed he did actually mean it, and not just in reference to the skertch info. The alien shuffled around to face them. Charlie tensed and reached his hand down to his hip where his knife was held.

Vingo saw the movement and stopped, but held out his hand toward Denver, who sat with his back to the side of the cave. “Your comm module,” Vingo said. “Fixed. Just had some loose connections… from the impact.”

Denver took it and plugged it back into the socket on the rear of his helmet. He switched over to internal comms, turning off the speakers.

“Can you all here me?” he asked.

A chorus of ‘yes’ replied.

“Good,” Charlie said. “At least we can talk without attracting god knows what other freakish animal is lurking out there.”

“There’s nothing else here,” Vingo said. “Not until the sun sets. We’re safe for now. Though the bleens might visit soon.”

“And what are they,” Charlie said. “Fifty-limbed, hook-mouthed bat dragons?”

Vingo blinked his dark eyes, only visible in the darkness due to their glossy surface reflecting the flames of the campfire. “They eat dead things. Will come for the skertch. Harmless to us.”

“Easy now, Vingo, that’s two pieces of good news you’ve given us,” Charlie said. “Whether it’s the truth is a different matter, right? Is honesty a concept with your species?”

“Yes,” Vingo said. “But it’s not linear, not binary like you humans perceive it. Truth to us holds many different aspects, some of which are more useful than others for a given moment.”

“Sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to me,” Denver said. “Hagellan was right what he said about your kind; you’re all politicians. We used to have people like you in our society too before your croatoan pals came and killed them all.”

“That’s the best thing the croatoans ever did,” Charlie said. “First the corrupt spineless politicians, then the lawyers, and after that celebrities, then everyone else. As much as I hate the croatoans, it was difficult to argue against their logic.”

Layla winced. Her parents had been involved in politics and she knew they weren’t all bad, but now wasn’t exactly the time to start a philosophical argument.

“So what now?” she said. “Now we’re all in one piece, have food and water, what’s next? My suit says that if I breathe normally, I’ve got about a single Tredeyan day before I suffocate to death.”

“Same here,” Charlie said, “though a little shorter.”

“Three-quarters of a day here until my filter’s done,” Denver added.

All three looked to Vingo.

“Well, traitor? What now, eh?” Charlie prompted. “Your people are dead, your ride off this fucking awful rock is destroyed, and the scion are taking over if the cessation of fire is what I think it is. We’re going to suffocate to death shortly, so you’ll no longer have bodyguards and meat shields to protect you. Tell me, what’s your plan B. I’m sure your kind can work something else out, right?”

“It is,” Vingo said. “We’re prized throughout the varied galactic factions for our problem-solving skills and ability to plan.”

“That sounds just peachy,” Layla said. “Perhaps you could enlighten us on your next course of action—one that preferably includes us, as you do kind of owe us.”

“I know,” Vingo said, slumping further into the shadows. He sounded tired, dejected. For the tiniest moment Layla felt sorry for him. It must have been hard to find his people killed and his ship destroyed. But like the croatoans, it was difficult to have full sympathy for a race that used humans as nothing more than disposable tools and resources—even if humans had been doing that to themselves for centuries.

The alien went still, his head slightly cocked.

A low keening voice came over the intercom.

“What is it?” Denver asked.

After a long, quiet pause, Vingo said, “The final warning signal… they’re dead… they’re all dead. The scion have taken the command center. We’re defeated. It’s… all over.”

Chapter 26

MIKE RUSHED through the workshop to join Mai. He dumped the burned-out parts of the weapon onto the workbench. Aimee and Ryan were on his heels and entered the room before he even had time to settle.

“I need a progress report,” she said. “Augustus’ troops are coming onto our flank; they’ve already broken through the woods.”

“Don’t you think we’re working as fast as we can? And I don’t know if you noticed, or cared, but I lost a friend today!”

Mai dropped her head and whispered something before lifting her head to look at Mike. She had tears in hers. “It’s our fault Gib’s dead,” Mai said with a soft voice.

“No, it wasn’t,” Mike said, rounding on Aimee and jabbing a finger at her with his good arm. “It’s yours. You push and push and push, not caring about how difficult this task is, how little time we had. If you just got off our backs and let us work, we could have figured it out.”

Ryan stepped forward between Mike and Aimee. But Mike just leaned back against the workbench. It was just his anger at his own failure and of losing Gib that came out with his accusations.

Aimee’s face was glistening with sweat. He knew she didn’t have it easy either, being the one at the top. The people of Unity looked to her for direction and right now things were going as wrong as they possibly could.

“I’m sorry,” Mike finally said, bringing the volume of his voice down. He rubbed his face with his hand. “I tried, I really did. I wanted the weapon to work as much as you did, but we just didn’t have enough time to test—”

“And you still don’t,” Aimee said, raising her eyebrows and giving an expression of beseeching hope. “But we do need you, we need your device to work… and as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long we can hold them off.”

A scared young woman, one of the Maria clones, entered the chamber. “Aimee, they’re at the woods; what do we do? The troops are waiting for your orders. The long rangers are preparing to keep the bikes at bay and our own riders are heading out to pick them off at the edges, but they’ll swarm us.”

Aimee’s eye twitched as she clutched her fist and shook her head. “I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance,” she muttered, then to the clone, “Tell the defense team to prepare to engage. We need to bog them down, buy some time.”

The clone’s face paled as she understood the implication.

Mike felt the pressure increase on his shoulders and Mai gasped at Aimee’s orders. It would mean that human and croatoans alike would die to buy them time. The longer they took, the more would perish.

“This isn’t fair,” Mike said. “You can’t put their deaths on us!”

“He’s right,” Mai added. “You can’t send those poor people out there to get slaughtered. What if we can’t fix the weapon? Then what?”

Aimee composed herself, her face growing hard and cold. “Then we all die. We need that weapon and as fast as possible. And yes, people will die all the time you’re figuring it out, but that’s the way it’s got to be. If you want Unity to stand, then you need to get it working. You know we don’t have the numbers or the weapons to hold on. Now let’s not waste any time. Get to work.”

Before Mike had a chance to say anything else, Aimee, along with Ryan and the clone, left the chamber, Aimee’s words still echoing around the space.

Mai leaned forward on the workbench and grabbed the burned-out device. She picked up a pair of pliers with her hand that visibly shook. Mike sat next to her and sorted through the pile of spares and parts strewn about the place.

“We can do it,” Mike said, reaching out to grip his soul mate by the shoulder.

“I… don’t think I…”

“There must be a way,” he said. “Let’s replace the transformer and see where I went wrong.”

“We,” Mai said. “It’s always we. Help me with this,” Mai said, prizing the burned fragments of the transformer from the chassis. “Ignore everything else, my love. It’s just you and me in our workshop, working together. We can do this.”

For the next fifteen minutes, in a tense silence before the storm, they worked together as a team, rebuilding the device. Along the way, Mike had spotted a few errors from before and fixed them. They were simple and he doubted they were the cause of the malfunction.

The part Gib was working on wasn’t grounded properly in the circuit, causing a potentially dangerous feedback loop. That error had been compounded by his own mistake of not matching the transformer and the transmitter’s power.

Mai soldered in some components to equalize the distribution. Mike also decided to use a transmitter from a different radio system, one that handled a wider range of frequencies. He hoped that by going wider, and including a component to sweep across the range, that they’d cover all their bases. It meant lower power overall, and it was a safer bet it would work. But the cost would be less range.

Aimee staggered into the cavern, her face pinched and tight with stress.

“We need that thing now!”

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Mike said.

“It’s not fast enough, dammit!”

Mike noticed the sweat from Mai’s forehead drip to the workbench and her hands now shaking violently. “Leave us to it,” Mike snapped.

“No,” Aimee replied, stepping toward the workbench. “I can’t leave without it. Tell me, what’s the issue, when will it be ready?”

Mai’s hand suddenly became still and she dropped the device to the bench’s surface. She clutched her chest and looked round at Mike with wide eyes full of fear. She struggled to take a breath as she stood up from her stool. She reached out a hand to Mike, but her body tensed and she collapsed before Mike could reach for her.

Mai hit the ground, her right hand clutching her left arm, her face taking on a gray pallor.

Mike pushed Aimee out of the way, kicked the stool across the workshop and fell to Mai’s side.

“Mai!” he screamed.

Chapter 27

CHARLIE SAT with his back against the smooth dirt wall of the makeshift shelter beneath the overhanging tree. The river snaked down the yellow grass valley to a shimmering light blue lake. A rock formation towered over the opposite end, surrounded by undulating hills with clusters of small metallic buildings on each.

Vingo sat to Charlie’s right. He gazed toward the small settlements and fiddled with his arm-pad. Denver and Layla lay flat on their backs behind them, catching up with some well-deserved rest.

Charlie’s limbs ached and he felt every inch his age. He sipped water from his refilled system and waited for the mashed root he slipped inside the container to take effect. Within a minute his extremities tingled and the lactic-acid pain in his limbs eased.

The only positive he could take from the croatoan invasion of Earth, besides Denver, was the root. It allowed him to carry on the fight for nearly three decades. It still didn’t buy a single one of them a shred of gratitude. It would be like forgiving the Nazis for wearing smart Hugo Boss uniforms.

A rectangular black shuttle rose from a valley toward the west. It carried out a half rotation and headed for the atmosphere, in the opposite direction of the black prism, leaving a double vapor trail in its wake.

Charlie couldn’t see the main scion ship from their position under the tree, but it was impossible not to feel its presence as bolts continued to pepper Tredeya’s surface, even though the war was already won.

Vingo’s helmet twisted as he followed the shuttle’s trajectory. A scion fighter zipped over a mountain, its engine roaring in the sky. It fired a missile. A small bright blue dot streaked through the air and exploded on impact. Burning pieces of debris shot from the shuttle.

The shuttle arced down and plummeted to the ground at terminal velocity. Vingo bowed his head and grunted.

“It’s time me and you had a conversation,” Charlie said.

“We’ve already had a conversation,” Vingo replied.

Charlie scraped toward him on his backside and narrowed his eyes. “Why did that mech come after us? It seems like a strange priority considering the scion presence.”

“I’ve already told you. I gathered information for the Amalgam. Croatoans fear the scion, but the Amalgam are also a concern after two colony rebellions.”

“You can stop playing games with me. I don’t give a shit about cosmic politics, I only care about my son and Layla surviving, and getting home. You need to start coming up with some answers. You owe us.”

Vingo blinked repeatedly. Charlie glared at him, waiting for a response. He’d had enough of the tredeyan’s bullshit. The previous punches were only a drop in the ocean compared to what he would do to him if he didn’t start talking.

“I may have a solution that will meet both of our needs,” Vingo said and pointed toward the distant hills. “Our capital city, Gauruss, is just over there. I can get you new air filters, supplies, and perhaps a chance to make it back to Earth.”

“A chance?” Charlie said, feeling like they’d already been here before. The false promises, like dangled carrots, leading them to achieve Vingo’s own objectives. “I don’t trust you. The moment our air runs out is the moment I empty my magazine through your visor. Do you understand?”

“I understand, but please listen. If we can gain entry to the storage vaults, I can access the master system and find the location of a micro-gate.”

“A micro-gate?”

“The rumor is that we created a compact solution. The gate you destroyed was a first-generation design. The locations are a closely guarded secret—if they even exist. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only option I can offer.”

Charlie frowned. “You expect us to believe this, don’t you? You know we have little choice, but I swear, Vingo, the moment I suspect you’re up to something, I will gut you like the fish out there. Don’t even pretend you’re being selfless, by the way, because I don’t buy it for a second.”

“If you help me into the vaults, I can gather more technical specifications and communicate with the Amalgam. If I have enough to offer, it might convince them to come and collect me. As things stand, this is our only option, for both of us.”

At least Vingo was being more open about his motivations. If he wanted to survive, and his actions suggested he did, then perhaps there was a small chance he was telling the truth about the micro-gate. Either way, it wasn’t as if they had a lot of options open to them.

Three black scion mechs, square in shape and the size of a regular house, floated up a distant hill toward a group of eight buildings at the top. They hovered above them and red lasers shot from their undersides, blasting each building in turn until they burst into flames.

Charlie hated not having a plan, but they were flying blind without local knowledge. The thought of Denver and Layla suffocating on Tredeya was insufferable after all they’d been through. As much as it grated him, once again they would have to follow Vingo’s direction.

“We’ll take you to the vaults,” Charlie said. “But fuck us over and you won’t see tomorrow.”

“You don’t need to threaten me. I’ve lost my group, my ship, and only have one option left. You are in the same situation. We can work together to achieve a satisfactory conclusion.”

The political speak made Charlie clench his fists.

Vingo glanced down and edged back.

“We can always go back to the command center and get filters,” Charlie said. “I remember seeing at least another thirty human suits.”

“It’s under scion control. You will die. But it’s your choice if you want to risk it.”

Charlie turned away from Vingo. A pair of scion fighters passed overhead and split in different directions. The confusion created by the invasion probably helped them survive to this point, but that alone wasn’t enough.

With the tech on display from both species, a way home didn’t seem unrealistic, but Charlie struggled to believe Vingo’s claims about a micro-gate. He wondered if there was a way to speak with the scion. They had a common enemy in the croatoans, after all, and as far as he could tell they didn’t have a beef with humans from Earth… but then the very idea of siding with an alien species made the bile in his guts churn.

Everybody had a motivation for going into battle and Charlie would side with the devil to get everyone safely home.

“Did you hear all of that, Den?” Charlie said.

“Every word,” Denver replied. “It’s time to move.”

Chapter 28

THE DESCENDING early evening sun continued to warm Augustus’ mask. Distant gunfire crackled to his right. Zoe’s flanking move had started.

He turned to view his army spread around a clearing in a pine forest a mile from Unity, eagerly waiting for his command to advance. The timing had to be right.

“Enemy advancing,” Zoe said over the radio. “Two hundred… no, three hundred heading toward us. Twenty bikes.”

“Hold your position and fight to the last man, woman, and croatoan.”

“Roger, out.”

Augustus felt a surge of irritation. Subordinates didn’t end conversations with him. He always had the final say.

Most of the Unity force had been drawn in to the flanking move. They couldn’t simply hold against Zoe’s numbers and hope for an attritional siege. It wasn’t in their nature and would also guarantee defeat. He knew they had to attack.

Destiny presented itself on a silver platter. It was time to make good on his promise to the scion and reclaim the world once again.

This time there would be no mistakes. Augustus turned to face his army and raised an arm. A hush descended around the clearing. “Do not let fear overcome your place in history. Battle is the most beautiful thing in the world. We cleanse all that is wrong. Bravery is the best form of defense. Tonight we will celebrate the dawn of a new world, forged in our blood and sense of duty.”

Augustus paused and glanced around the troops while the croatoan commanders translated for the aliens who didn’t understand. A low vibrating sound rose from the ranks—the collective noise of alien satisfaction.

“Whoever brings me the body of Aimee Rivery will earn a seat on the council,” Augustus shouted. He turned and pointed in the direction of Unity. “Advance!”

Collective clicking filled the air, like a thousand raindrops hitting a glass roof.

The army was already aware of his battle plan. Soldiers were to assault the eastern end, the opposite direction to Zoe’s force. Hover-bikes would supply air support. They would charge through the city, burning the rickety buildings, killing anything showing signs of resistance, and corralling the rest of the citizens into the arena. He would give them a choice once there. Join the new empire or face immediate execution.

It didn’t need to be intricate. Augustus could afford plenty of collateral damage and still remain the global superpower. With victory came immortality, however the scion managed to do it.

Each croatoan commander led his division through the pine forest. Augustus straddled a hover-bike and thrust into the air. He needed a high-level view of the battle, in case a change of strategy was required.

The hover-bike cavalry took to the sky and headed east, on a wide sweeping course that would bring them over Unity at the same time the soldiers attacked.

Maria was secured in a shuttle, ready to use as leverage if required.

Tears of pride welled in the corner of Augustus’ eyes. The sight took him back over sixteen centuries to his last big battle. Today would ensure that Adrianople would be finally crushed into the dirt. All texts destroyed, talk of it punishable by death. His decisive failure would be forgotten by future generations, who would celebrate him as a brave leader and liberator.

Trees rustled ahead as the army made quick progress. Augustus made sure he kept a safe distance from the front ranks but close enough to remain visible. He remembered reading about the battle of Hastings in 1066. Confusion set in the Norman ranks when a rumor spread that William was dead. Augustus didn’t have time for confusion. William the Bastard removed his helmet and regrouped his army to seize the day. Augustus wouldn’t make the same mistake. Besides, nobody in his army had a mask.

The hover-bikes to his right returned from their outward sweep, telling him they were close. Croatoan rifles snapped below. Augustus smiled as his army swatted the Unity sentinels away like irritating flies.

Heavy gunfire continued to the west. Augustus raised his radio. “Status update, Zoe.”

“Zoe’s dead,” a man replied. “We’re holding firm and depleting their forces.”

“Keep fighting. Your name will be heralded by our future sons and daughters. Out.”

Augustus couldn’t remember his name, but it was the kind of inspirational quote that drove men forward. Zoe’s death wasn’t a surprise. He felt comfortable in the knowledge that she’d played her part in his master plan. More of her type would soon be flocking to his cause, and he could take his pick.

Two shuttles blasted into the sky above him, entering a holding pattern above Unity. They were ready to use the pulse cannons, or to deliver Maria.

Desperate reports would be reaching Aimee now, if she were still alive. Augustus enjoyed picturing her panic-stricken face. The sinking feeling that her forces were deployed and struggling to hold part of his force, and it wasn’t even the main body. He expected she would commit suicide. Death instead of dishonor.

The setting sun cast a watery glow across a root field ahead. The basin lay just beyond it. Even if Unity’s hover-bikes remained, they would be no match for his cavalry, which powered across the sky in an arrow formation.

Hundreds of his croatoan soldiers broke through the trees and charged across the field. Some paused to fire. They met with little resistance.

Twenty residents leaned over the edge of the basin and fired their antique weapons. They killed several croatoans but were overrun by the sheer weight of numbers and were quickly slaughtered.

Augustus navigated his bike around to the switchback trail that dropped from the eastern end to the foot of the drained lake.

Soldiers climbed and toppled down the five steps cut into the sides. Some threw grenades into the houses and waited for people or aliens to exit, before disappearing inside. Light flashed from some of the dark windows as weapons discharged.

A body of two hundred aliens ran down the trail below him and swarmed toward the city. Augustus peered along the main cobbled road. Tightly packed market stalls and wooden houses surrounded either side, leading to Aimee’s towering stone residence in the distance. Three sections of the rampart glinted, but she wouldn’t have the resources to hold his army at bay.

Hundreds more of the army descended and entered the town. A small group cut away, headed for the initial invasion ship still poking out of its sinkhole.

Flames licked around the roofs of the nearest buildings. People screamed above the rattle of the guns. Augustus’ soldiers dragged humans into the street by their hair. It seemed they didn’t afford the same luxury to the Unity aliens. Augustus didn’t blame them. By all accounts, any who encountered the helmetless citizens also met with death.

Confident everything was going as expected, Augustus navigated his bike forward and drifted over the edge of the buildings.

GUNFIRE GRADUALLY EASED at the far end of the basin. Augustus watched his flanking forces charge the remnants of Unity’s army, who crowded behind two destroyed hover-bikes. Twenty fell during the advance, but the defenders were no match in terms of numbers. By forcing a battle of attrition, there was only one logical conclusion.

“Victory is complete in the west,” a man said over the radio. “What are your instructions?”

Augustus clipped his radio off his breast pocket. “Kill the enemy battlefield casualties. Take any prisoners to the arena. We’ll join up with you after taking the main building.”

The tavern came into view along a muddy street. Augustus remembered having to deal with normal people in there, after being denied a rank that suited him. He hovered five meters above it, slung a rifle off his back and aimed at the door.

A croatoan soldier shouldered it open and threw a silver grenade inside. The explosion blew out the thin glass windows and Augustus’ bike rocked in the air.

Nobody came out of the entrance. The same croatoan threw a second red-colored grenade and flames belched out of the door and windows.

Fire quickly consumed the tavern. Augustus stayed for a minute to watch its wooden beams blacken and crackle.

Every street he observed after gaining height over the city had one of his soldiers shooting, taking prisoners, or burning buildings. An adage spanning back centuries, even before Augustus’ birth, said if you want peace, prepare for war. He found it wise compared to vacuous modern phrases, and followed it. Unity’s army was no match. They wanted peace and prepared for it.

Thick black smoke puffed into the sky from multiple locations, creating a dark gray cloud above the city. It drifted away on the gentle evening breeze, creating a signal to any remote observer that things were changing.

In the distance, lines of scruffy citizens were being harried through the open gates of the arena. Augustus decided to check his ludus to give the army time to clear the town before assaulting the main prize, Aimee’s residence. He thrust higher in the sky to get a bird’s-eye view of the area.

A long line of his soldiers headed up the basin from the west, only around two hundred deployed from the two thousand, which was more than he thought would survive. Twenty unarmed humans and aliens walked thirty meters ahead of them at gunpoint. It was wise not to give them a chance of reform. They’d already taken up arms against him. Augustus couldn’t risk an early rebellion brewing. They would make for good entertainment when he recommenced the gladiatorial games.

The ludus still appeared intact. A croatoan soldier left his former office and peered into each of the cells in the square courtyard outside. He didn’t mind the terrible wooden buildings in the city being burned to the ground, but wanted to keep the better parts of the infrastructure.

A plume of fire shot in the air, followed by a hollow boom. Smoke rose from the front of Aimee’s residence. When it cleared, both front gates were inwardly hanging. Soldiers poured through the gap.

Augustus licked his lips, turned and headed for them. Smoke invaded his nostrils and his eyes watered, but they were minor distractions compared to clinching the moment of victory. He drifted to the muddy ground outside the high stone walls and the bike squelched to a rest.

Soldiers from both ends of the basin met around residence walls. A few broke away to help escort struggling prisoners to the arena. Augustus walked through the gates and glanced around.

Five aliens in hybrid clothing lay on the floor and ramparts. The skeleton crew left behind after most left to join the defense. A croatoan soldier appeared from the dark doorway. “Clear inside, sir.”

Augustus frowned. “She isn’t here?”

“Only staff. We’re taking them to the arena.”

Six people dressed in filthy jeans, robes, and sweaters filed around the reporting croatoan and were led at sword point out of the gates.

Augustus wanted to see for himself and wasn’t in the mood for taking chances. He raised his rifle and entered the main building.

Aimee couldn’t be allowed to become a myth. Alleged historians speculated about the mystery and false stories about his own demise. They were all wrong, and he didn’t want the same thing building up for her.

Future scribes would describe Aimee as a treacherous witch whose head went on display after losing against his freedom fighters.

Torches lighting the stone corridor had reduced to little more than a flicker. Last time he came here the place felt warm, lived in, decadent. Today it was much darker, and a cold draft brushed against him as he proceeded to Aimee’s chamber, or throne room, as she would have people believe.

The thought of her sitting smugly on her wooden Glastonbury chair made Augustus spit at the ground. Saliva dangled from the mouth hole in his mask. He wiped it away with his forearm.

Swinging his rifle into the chamber, Augustus glanced inside.

The eight torches placed around the walls, like the ones in the corridor, were also on their last legs. Small flames created dancing shadows across the ceiling and cast a weak glow around the room—a nice metaphor for Aimee’s time as Unity’s ruler. She was about to be extinguished if she wasn’t already.

A Persian rug stretched across the raised stone platform. Aimee’s wooden chair, with a green velvet cushion on top, sat in the middle of it.

This was the place where she judged so many people, under the protection of brutish hunters. Augustus wondered if she ever once looked in a mirror and judged herself. He had self-awareness. The man born to lead Earth needed it to remain humble.

Unable to control himself, Augustus ran to the chair, grabbed it by the front legs and smashed it against the wall. It buckled and the backrest splintered.

Augustus smashed it again and again until the structure collapsed and he was left holding two pieces of wood. The right piece had a sharpened end where it split away from the seat. He knelt down and stabbed it into the cushion.

Aimee still had to be located. He unclipped his radio. “All stations. Have you sighted Aimee Rivery yet?”

Nobody responded.

“All stations. Have you seen Rivery?”

The radio crackled. “No sign yet. I’ll send two of my men back to check the bodies at the western end.”

“Thank you. Out.”

It remained possible that she was hiding, watching proceedings from a safe distance and planning revenge. Augustus switched his radio to the shuttle channel. “Bring Maria down to the central residence.”

A CROATOAN PILOT shoved Maria through the gates, her wrists still secured by the alien restraints. She peered at the Unity casualties littered around the courtyard, caught sight of Augustus and froze.

The pilot shoved her in the back and she staggered forward.

“It’s time to see if any of these people really care about you,” Augustus said and grabbed her forearm. “This way, please.”

Augustus dragged her to a set of stone stairs that led up the rampart. She tripped on the second and fell to her knees.

“You’ve won,” she said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “What do you want from me?”

Tightening his grip on her trembling arm, Augustus pulled her up. “I haven’t won until Aimee’s headless corpse hangs above the gates. Get moving.”

A croatoan slumped at the top of the twenty steps. Augustus leaned down and ripped the two tubes out of his nose to make sure. The alien’s skin crinkled and sucked against his enlarged cheekbones and bulbous eyes. Nobody would be taking him by surprise on this battlefield.

Maria hopped over the dead alien. Augustus pushed her against the waist-high wall. From this area of the rampart they had a good view of the burning city and the forests to the north and south.

Augustus ripped Maria’s hair back, slid a dagger out of his belt and held it across her throat. She gasped and struggled but was far too weak for a warrior like him. He glared around the surrounding area.

“Aimee Rivery,” Augustus shouted above the crackling fires in the city. “I have one of your little bitches here. If you don’t show yourself in two minutes, I’ll slit her throat.”

A trickle of blood ran down Maria’s neck as he increased the pressure of the blade against it.

Chapter 29

MIKE CRADLED Mai in his arms. Her breathing was shallow and her complexion had taken on a waxy quality. Why did this have to happen to her?

Why now?

Of all the times, this was when he needed her the most. He couldn’t lose her now, not while Unity was falling. The fighting was just above them now, the screams, the gunfire… all of it not a good sign. He heard Ryan’s voice yelling orders to the main defense, but Mike knew they had suffered badly.

The radio sat on the bench, broadcasting the news from those up on the surface. “I don’t know what to do,” Mike said to Mai.

Her weak hand gripped his wrist and squeezed. She spoke with words lacking energy. Breathy, almost incorporeal, she said, “You must finish the job.”

“I have to get you to safety,” Mike replied. “To the medical center.”

“It’s too late for me.”

“No, it’s never too late!”

The radio squelched with static before Ryan’s voice cut through. “Fall back. We’re overrun. Augustus has attacked from the opposite side; we’re finished. Aimee’s dead! Run! Run for safety.”

More static crackled after the sounds of gunfire in the background.

Mike slumped back against the bench’s leg. “It’s over,” he said, dropping his head to his chest. “Augustus has won…”

“No,” Mai said, shaking him by the shoulder. “Leave me here. Take the device. It’s almost done.”

Before Mike had a chance to protest, Augustus’ gloating voice bellowed out over the city’s PA system. Every word made Mike cringe and boil inside with rage.

“I’m getting you out of here,” Mike said.

He stood, pulling Mai up with him, cradling her in his arms, even though his damaged elbow screamed with agony. He didn’t care how much it hurt, it wouldn’t be comparable to the pain of losing Mai if he stayed around here to get shot like the others. Unity had fallen, despite his best attempts. Like all the other places, there came a time when you had to leave, find somewhere else to stay safe for a while.

“Where are we going?” Mai said. Her voice had become so faint he could barely make out the words.

“I don’t know,” Mike replied, “somewhere safe… far from here.”

He turned toward the exit and stepped through.

Ryan sped around the corner of the narrow hallway and nearly barged into them. Mike took a step back as Ryan squeezed into the main chamber. His face and torso were covered in dark blood staining his green shirt until it looked black.

“The weapon!” he said, panting, his eyes desperate. “Did you fix it? Please, we’ve no more time, they’re… oh my god, they’re already here. I’m so sorry, I—”

Sounds of heavy footsteps filled the cavern. Two armored croatoans and two men carrying rifles entered the hallway and gunned down Ryan with twin blasts of their guns. Ryan’s body shuddered half a dozen times before slumping to the ground like a slab of meat.

Mai moaned in Mike’s arms. He stepped back on shaking legs as the croatoans entered the room. They pointed their rifles at Mike. He closed his eyes, waiting for the sound of gunfire, all the while holding onto Mai and picturing the first time they had met, how beautiful she was and how smart. And that smile… that laugh.

“I love you,” Mike whispered.

“Put the woman down,” one of the human guards said. “You’re coming with us, whether that’s dead or alive is up to you.”

Mike opened his eyes and tried to remain calm. The human was just a young man, but his face was spattered with blood, giving him a cruel aspect. Augustus had clearly done a great job of brainwashing this one.

But, seeing a chance to live for a moment longer, he carefully placed Mai down on a stool. “She’s ill,” he said. “She needs help. It’s her heart…”

“Shut the fuck up and move,” the man said. “You say another word and you’ll both die right here, you understand?”

Mike nodded.

“You can say goodbye to your wife; then you’re coming with us.” The man nodded to the croatoans to leave the room. Their thick shadows covered the ground of the workshop as the lights from the hallway continued to flicker.

Mike and Mai had nowhere to go. He turned to her, trying to think of the words, but none would come. How could he say goodbye to someone he’d been with for so long? She was his life.

The croatoans sped off to search other areas of the underground system, leaving the human guard. He gazed around the workshop and shook his head.

“Don’t speak,” Mai whispered. She winced as she reached over and grabbed the device, then handed it to Mike as she kept an eye on the guard.

Mike took it and folded it in the excess of his baggy sweater. He bent down and kissed her tenderly. “You’re my everything,” he said. “I will come back for you.”

“Use the weapon,” she whispered into his ear. “It has one charge in the capacitor.”

“That’s it,” the man barked, switching his focus back on them and grabbing Mike by the shoulder. He pulled the older man out of the cavern. Mike kept looking at Mai. She just smiled at him and mouthed the words ‘Use it.’

The guards dragged Mike up to the surface and through the burning wreckage of the town. All around him houses burned, people lay in the street, their limbs or faces bloodied and bruised, many of them not moving. He didn’t doubt he would join them soon.

Somewhere among the dead was Aimee. Mike felt a twinge of regret for her. Another one, like Augustus, who was taken out of their time and put into stasis by the croatoans, used as a pawn as though Earth was nothing more than a global game of chess, only the difference was, at least chess had the option for a noble win.

Augustus was so far from nobility that Mike palled at the idea that Augustus was once a Roman Emperor. What hell that must have been to live through, he thought, as the guards continued to drag him through the streets toward the arena.

Around two hundred of the surviving Unity residents clustered together on the fighting surface. Mostly women and children, with a few younger men amongst them. Hundreds of croatoans in the charcoal guard and hunter uniforms lined the viewing steps above them. Humans too, mostly dressed in the dark blue farm coveralls. All carried standard-issue alien rifles and aimed down at the crowd.

Mike felt a lump in his throat after glancing at tear-drenched faces and hearing the wails of desperation. This wasn’t supposed to be how it all ended.

On a sectioned-off part of the viewing steps, in an area designed to hold dignitaries alongside Aimee, Mike saw Augustus standing with his hands held high, shouting orders at twenty croatoans directly below him. They turned and began the process of shackling the survivors as though they were nothing more than cattle. The scene gave Mike a horrific flashback to when he first saw an alien farm in operation.

But then that was the croatoan way, after all. Augustus hadn’t fallen far from that tree. He had learned more from Hagellan than he would perhaps liked to have admitted. The human guard shoved Mike to the front of the citizens and left to join a small group of soldiers by the entrance gate.

Two croatoan guards held Mike by the shoulders. He still had use of one hand and placed it under his sweater, palming the cubed device. He felt along the top of it until his thumb rested on the switch. This time, the device only had one. With the power stored in the single capacitor, the whole operation was now much simpler. With no dish to use or battery supply to send the signal all the way across the battlefield, it had become more of a close combat weapon.

After a few moments, Augustus exited through a gate to the fighting surface and approached Mike with the swagger of someone who knew he had got his way. Mike spat at his feet, making him draw up short.

“Well now,” Augustus said, with a smug tone to his voice. “That’s no way to greet your new emperor, especially a benevolent and forgiving one such as I. Why, as I was speaking with Maria earlier on, she gave me the great idea that I might spare your life. You’re quite a useful man, by all accounts, and I could always use people with skills like yours.”

The guard brought Maria out, a rope tied around her neck, and dragged her to Augustus’ feet. He kicked the back of her legs until she fell to the ground, her knees thudding against the bloodstained dirt. But she didn’t call out; she just shut her eyes and took the pain, not wanting to give Augustus the satisfaction.

The so-called emperor took the rope from the guard and yanked Maria until she coughed and gasped, clutching the restraint with her fingers in an attempt to create some breathing space.

“She’s been very useful,” Augustus said. “But frankly, she doesn’t have your skills, Mike. Here’s the deal. Your life for hers. You agree to work with me and this young confused clone here can go free. If not, well, then she dies as does your dear Mai. I hear she’s having a few problems right now. I could help with that… or not, it’s really up to you.”

Maria looked up at Mike, no emotion on her face, just a sad resignation that it had all come to this. She looked away and bowed her head between her shoulders.

“Tick tock, Mike, we don’t have all day.”

Augustus withdrew a dagger and held it to Maria’s throat. Mike could tell the sick bastard was smiling behind that hideous mask of his, his eyes scrunched behind the dark holes.

“Wait,” Mike said, staying the man’s hand. “Don’t kill her, I’ll… work for you. I’ll do what you want, but you have to help my Mai.”

Augustus shrugged as he stood up straight, taking the dagger away from Maria’s throat. “That can be arranged. But first, a token of our partnership, a gesture to show the people here that we can forge a new way of life here, under my rule.”

Augustus held out his free hand and waited for Mike to shake it.

Mai’s last words came to him. The device felt heavy in his hand beneath the folds of the sweater. The whole planet seemed to crowd in on him, a heavy silence drowning out everything but his pulse.

He reached out his hand, the device in his palm. He clapped it against Augustus’ hand and wrapped his fingers tight. Augustus at first tried to resist, but Mike held on, staring the failed emperor in the eyes, watching as they grew wider and wider.

“Your time didn’t even get started, fucker,” Mike said, pressing the switch on the device.

Chapter 30

MARIA TOOK advantage of Augustus’ moment of distraction and edged away from him. Each time he held the knife to her throat and used her as bait, the slice became deeper.

Mike stood opposite Augustus with a look of defiance. He swept one of his prototype weapons around in a circular motion, pointing it at the hundreds of uniformed croatoans and a scattering of humans from Augustus’ army, who stood on the arena’s viewing steps.

Augustus turned to three hunters by his left side. “Seize him. I will not stand for this!”

The closest hunter dropped to his knees. He thrust his charcoal leathery gloves around the back of his helmet and let out a long extended croak.

The next fell forward, reached in an attempt to maintain balance and grabbed hold of the hunter already on his knees. They both toppled over the side of the wall, fell three meters, and crashed against the dirt in the fighting area. Unity civilians gasped and backed away, forming a semicircle around them. The last of the three hunters dropped like a falling tree, its visor splintering as it slammed against the concrete steps and a hiss of root-filled air escaped from its helmet.

Mike continued to thrust the weapon to his front and sweep the area. On the opposite side of the arena, aliens grabbed for their packs. Some crumpled backward, others collapsed forward and rolled off the side of the wall like the hunters. The croatoan, who led Maria around like a dog, fell at her feet and writhed, lashing out its legs. Maria’s eyes widened and she jumped back as the alien tried to grab her ankle.

This was similar to the experiment Augustus carried out on the injured alien after the evening raid. Mike must have perfected a new weapon on a powerful scale. The grunts and staccato clicks that filled the air stopped. Nearly all the croatoans lay dead. Several twitched but quickly relaxed in death.

Augustus’ eyes darted around the steps and the arena’s fighting area. Ninety-five percent of his army had fallen in a matter of seconds. The gold baton dropped from his hand, clanking against the ground. Maria watched as his trembling hands clenched into fists and his arms locked rigid by his sides.

Maria made eye contact with Mike. He gave her a firm nod and lowered his weapon. Four Unity citizens darted for the dead hunters, grabbed their rifles, and slid their swords out of their thigh scabbards.

Others saw them and followed suit, claiming rifles from the croatoans who had suffocated and fallen.

A couple of hundred former farm workers in Augustus’ army remained standing, spread thinly around the upper section of the steps. A few raised their weapons. Most turned and ran, losing their previous bravery now that the numerical advantage had swung in the opposite direction.

Multiple snaps of croatoan rifle fire split the air. Unity civilians sensed this was their moment and roared. The ones with swords ran from the now unguarded entrance gates.

Maria knew she had to get away and find shelter until the dust settled. She was frightened that the people of Unity would see her as guilty by association to Augustus. Rifle projectiles hissed up from the arena. The remnants of the army were being killed or had already fled.

An injured farm worker fell to the dirt. Civilians clustered around him. A sword in the center of the throng rose and fell. His screams quickly died out.

Augustus ducked and headed for the rear steps in a crouching run.

Maria dropped to one knee and slid a sword out of her dead handler’s suit. She followed Augustus down a set of stone steps to the rear of the structure, but planned to head in the opposite direction as soon as they were clear.

Outside, a few of the army sprinted across the basin, with civilians in hot pursuit. Others ran through the smoke-filled charred remains of the town. If they held themselves together and organized, they probably would’ve still clung on to victory, but they panicked and spread out. Maria doubted they would get far. Unity would hunt them and settle scores.

Augustus turned right and headed for a path that zigzagged up the five steps surrounding the basin. To Maria’s left, armed civilians poured out of the arena’s main gate. She had no choice but to follow Augustus, head for the forest and lose him there.

Root grew around the first two steps. Augustus reached down and ripped a few strands of the crop free. He charged up the incline and disappeared around the side of a small metallic warehouse.

Maria glanced over her shoulder. They weren’t being followed. She decided to hide in one of the houses of the fourth level. As soon as she spotted Mike, he could give her a pass and remove the bindings around her wrists.

Reaching thirty meters in elevation above Unity, Maria paused for breath.

Augustus stepped from behind the building and pulled a dagger from his belt. “I thought it was you who followed me. At least you’ll get what you deserve.”

Maria backed away a couple of steps. “I won’t tell anyone I’ve seen you. Please.”

“You’re pathetic,” Augustus said and straightened his mask with his spare hand. “I hold you responsible for today. You knew about Mike’s weapon and didn’t tell me. I’ll return with an army and slaughter the old man, but I’m not leaving without giving you a proper goodbye.”

He thrust the knife toward Maria’s chest. She stumbled back, lost her balance and tripped.

Augustus’ momentum carried him forward. He growled and raised the dagger above his head.

Maria flipped her sword up vertically.

The sword punctured Augustus’ fatigues and pierced his chest. He gasped, dropping his dagger. It thumped against the dirt next to Maria’s head.

A thin stream of blood dribbled from his mask’s mouth hole and pattered against Maria’s cheek. Augustus wheezed and attempted to grab the blade but slid further down it as his own weight drove it deeper. The tip of the sword appeared out of his back as he slumped to the side.

Scrambling to her feet, Maria wiped the blood off her face with her cuff. Augustus lay on his side, held out an arm and murmured something. She thought about all of the things he’d put her through: her life on the harvester, friends killed, threatened at knifepoint.

Anger and hatred welled up inside her. She never thought much about revenge, assuming it was beyond her capabilities as a lost clone, split between two warring factions.

Augustus went to unstrap his mask with his quivering bloodstained hand. Maria knelt beside him, knowing she would never get a better chance to put the past behind her. She grabbed the rough hilt of the croatoan sword, clenched her teeth and twisted.

Two people shouted at her from below and charged up the steps. Maria glanced over her shoulder and saw two Unity civilians approach. She twisted again. Augustus let out a deep scream. His arm fell by his side, his body shuddered and he let out a final deep breath.

One of the men, a young carpenter from the city, reached her and peered down. “Is that who I think it is?”

Maria nodded, unbuckled his mask, and flipped it to one side, revealing his scarred face and vacant eyes. She spotted a small black prism on a thin gold chain around his neck, grabbed it, and ripped it free.

The prism vibrated in her hand. Maria jumped up and stared at the object in her palm. It appeared to be some kind of alien tech, but none she recognized as a croatoan design. She decided she’d offer it to Mike as a gesture of peace, along with the news that Augustus was finally dead. Both gesture and news would surely bring a smile to his face.

Chapter 31

DENVER WOKE WITH A START, sitting up and trying to remember where he was. The place around him was cold and dark. Beyond the entrance he could see the moving water rippling with blue and red lights—the overhead ships’ engines.

He drew a mouthful of water from his suit’s supply and let the cool liquid ease the dryness from his throat. His head was thumping, presumably through dehydration and exertion, but a sensation started to tingle at the edges of his fingers and toes.

Root.

He remembered then; during the day, they had harvested some root and tredeyan fruit. As he eased the tiredness from his limbs, he started to feel more alert, awake, and thankfully, energetic. The rest had clearly done him good.

“Anyone awake?” he whispered over the comms.

“I am,” Vingo said. “I’ve been keeping watch.”

“You need to lead us to those filter systems or we’re all dead.”

“Don’t worry. I know Charlie will kill me if I don’t get you fresh air.”

A low glow from Vingo’s helmet showed his location toward the front of their makeshift shelter. The fire had burned down to embers. Denver scrambled forward to join the alien, making sure he didn’t make too much noise so as to wake Layla and his dad. He didn’t doubt they needed the rest and recuperation as much as he.

“All safe out there?” Denver asked, feeling awkward talking to Vingo. He knew him to be a liar and a traitor, yet there was still that hope that he could help them. With no other real choices, Denver thought it best to at least get along with him, draw some information out. If they were going to be double-crossed, it made sense to get the measure of the tredeyan.

“Where is your family?” Denver asked, sitting next to Vingo at the entrance of their cave. “If your kind have families, that is.”

“We do. Mine are dead.”

“Sorry about that,” Denver said, half meaning it. He knew enough about loss to know that even someone like Vingo wouldn’t find it an easy proposition.

“We should move,” the alien said. “The war is dying down. The scion will consolidate their domination and get to work with their search. I already heard their network of energy probes coming online.”

“What’s this city like?” Denver asked. “I mean, do you have residential and commercial buildings there? Shops, that kind of thing? What sort of economy do you have?”

“Every planet in the galaxy is different,” Vingo said, softening his voice as though appreciating Denver’s interest. Denver suspected they’d get more from him this way than threatening him.

“Go on,” Denver prompted. “I’m interested. I know we’ve not had a lot of time or opportunity to talk about this kind of stuff, but now Earth is connected to all this, I would like to know more about how it’s all set up. We’ve gone from thinking the croatoans were the only other species out there to learning there’s a galactic conflict going on.”

“I can see how that might be difficult for you.”

“Not difficult, just… interesting.”

“So our economy on this planet is done via a caste system of privileges. At birth, every tredeyan is analyzed to see what their genetic makeup will be more applicable to. They’re assigned a role and a set of privileges. Of course, those born from the higher families benefit from a skewed assessment in their favor.”

Denver wanted to say that sounded entirely unfair, but from what his dad had told him of Earth’s culture before the war, it wasn’t entirely different. There were always glass ceilings and levels of status that some could not cross.

“How do you trade with other species and planets,” Denver asked, “if you don’t use money here?”

“Depends on where in the galaxy you go and with whom you’re trading. You’ll soon learn this, I’m sure. A favor can often go further than any monetary compensation.”

Vingo lingered a knowing look at Denver, being entirely unsubtle about his point. Denver just smiled and nodded as though he understood in order to build a bridge of trust between them, even if Denver knew Vingo would wait for his chance to double-cross them.

“How much air do you have?” Vingo asked.

Denver looked at the small readout on his visor’s HUD. “About five TUs.”

“That should be fine. It’ll take one and a half to reach the capital city. We’ll be able to restock your suits there… if the supplies haven’t been taken or looted.”

“What do you mean?” Denver asked. “Are you suggesting there are humans here who would be needing those supplies?”

Vingo blinked his eyes, a gesture Denver had learned from the croatoans that meant ‘yes.’

“You better not be talking about slaves,” Charlie said from behind them, his voice thick with the croak of tiredness.

“No, not slaves. I’ll explain more later. Let’s not waste your air arguing over something that won’t help us stay alive. We need to move now. Once in the outskirts of the city, we’ll find transport and head for the vaults. If fortune is on our side, it’ll work out as we intend.”

“I can’t say fortune has favored us much so far,” Charlie said. “I’ll put my faith in guns. Which reminds me, how are we doing for ammo?”

“I lost my rifle,” Denver said. “I just have a knife.”

“I have two magazines on me,” Vingo said.

“Three here, grabbed from the others back at the prison,” Charlie said. “Rifle’s taken a few knocks, though, so I don’t know how useful it’ll be.”

“Layla?” Denver said. “Are you awake?”

She groaned and rolled over in the darkness. “Just a few more minutes,” she mumbled, sounding like a small child pleading with her parents to let her stay in the warm embrace of slumber for a while longer.

Charlie moved over to her and checked her suit. “Two here,” Charlie said.

“If we go now and be careful, we might not even need the weapons,” Vingo said.

“We’ll see about that,” Charlie replied.

“Layla, come on. We’ve got to,” Denver said, placing his gauntlet on her shoulder, shaking her gently and rousing her from sleep. Her face looked so peaceful behind her visor. He just stared at her for a while, words he couldn’t express refusing to come to him.

“Den?” Layla said, finally opening her eyes to look up at him. “What time is it?”

“Time to move.”

“Where are we?”

She sat up and saw Vingo staring at her from the entrance. She grimaced as the realization set in. “God,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought we were… well, not here.”

Helping her to her feet, Denver put his arm around her shoulder and led her out of the shelter, saying, “We’ll get home. There’s always a way. We always win… somehow.”

“Come,” Vingo said, leading them out of the shelter and onto the dark shoreline. “If we’re quick and quiet, we’ll be at the vaults with plenty of time to spare.”

IN JUST OVER a TU and a half, they crested the hill and looked down at the capital city. Illuminated by a moon and starlight, Denver saw that half of the city was cut into a low mountain overlooking a dark lake. The rest was a sprawl of squat buildings, indicating the vast network underground.

In the distance, a number of scion mechs hovered through the streets and valleys, firing their lasers with surgical precision at specific targets. Strewn throughout the wide streets and surrounding areas, smoking, flaming hulks of croatoan and tredeyan military vehicles lay dying.

Denver spotted half a dozen destroyed scion craft among the wreckage. It was clearly a bitter-fought battle that even now seemed to be ongoing, albeit in a more controlled, inevitable fashion.

“Get down,” Vingo said, indicating to a stone wall at the top of the hill.

Denver and the others did as they were told and ducked down into the shadows. Vingo raised slowly and peered down into the city with the rifle scope.

“Most of it is deserted,” he said. “They got out.”

“Who?” Layla asked.

“The government officials and the higher ranking citizens. There, see?”

Denver and the others crept up to peer over the edge of the wall.

From two of the large mansion-like buildings cut into the mountain, a pair of ships took off and headed west, directly away from the city, their engines kicking in as soon as they were at the right altitude.

“What are they?” Charlie said.

“Escape craft. Only the most privileged have them.”

“Why don’t we take one?” Denver said.

“We won’t need it. See that scion ship on the horizon? We’re going there. Besides, it’s not likely any will be available. They would have left as soon as they could. Those that didn’t leave in time are probably dead.”

“That’s just great,” Charlie said.

“Over there.” Vingo pointed to a dark structure in front of the lake. “A supply station. It looks mostly intact.”

Only it wasn’t intact.

They reached the single-story building that resembled a concrete bunker. It lay on the edge of the lake with a dozen others, seemingly rising out of the ground like square gravestones. Vingo approached the first door and pushed it open. It wouldn’t budge. They all gave it a push and realized it had been blasted off one of its hinges and dug into the hard surface of the floor. Through a gap Denver managed to peer inside and saw that it was empty, the shelves bare.

“Fuck,” he said. “That was a waste of air.”

Vingo had moved onto another part of the building, testing the door. This one opened and Denver’s hopes rose. Charlie and Layla entered the room with Vingo, and by the time Denver joined them, he heard Charlie’s disappointment over the comms.

“Great, suffocation it is, then,” he said.

“We still have time,” Vingo said.

“Where to next?”

“There’s a building down there with a ground vehicle in the port. We can use that to get closer to the capital’s vault. It’ll provide protection and speed, and it might have a supply of air in it for the previous owner’s drivers.

“They used humans as drivers?” Charlie said.

“Among other tasks,” Vingo replied. “Come, before the scion are finished and decide to sweep the area.”

The sounds of war seem to increase beyond the ridge of mountains, and Denver wondered what would be waiting for them once they secured a vehicle. Whatever it was, he preferred to be working toward some plan rather than waiting around until death claimed them. If he had to die, he’d rather die fighting.

Chapter 32

MIKE COULDN’T HELP but feel as though there were something poetic about the way the dawn light bathed Unity in a red hue. So much blood on both sides had been shed during the brief but brutal fight.

As he lurched through the streets, stepping around individuals helping to clear the bodies or nurse the injured, he winced with every bump of his elbow, but continued on toward the field hospital that had been hastily erected to help the injured as best they could. Mai was there, but he didn’t know if she had survived the night.

After the battle was over, he had heard about Maria’s heroics in defeating Augustus. He had made his way back to the workshop to check on Mai, to tell her that the modifications to the device had worked, and that it was all over. He found the place empty.

Ryan’s body had been taken too.

From asking around in somewhat of a panic, he had learned Mai was taken to the temporary hospital, but the person whom he had asked couldn’t tell him if she were alive or dead.

He helped a pair of elderly women into a house as they carried a young man, his arm in a sling and packed with root. “Did you see Mai?” Mike asked the young man, explaining who she was, but he didn’t need to; everyone in Unity knew who Mai was, especially after the success of the weapon.

“She’s there,” he said. “I saw her being brought in on a stretcher. Go down the road and turn at the remains of the tavern, you’ll see the hospital tent. Good luck. I hope she’s okay,” the boy said, sweat from the pain of his injuries glistening on his face.

Mike thanked him and followed the directions.

Unity still smelled of smoke and burning flesh, despite the fires being put out many hours ago. He suspected the stench would cling to the place for some time to come yet, a reminder of their struggles and their losses.

As he reached the tavern, its remains still smoldering and cracking as timbers beneath the pile of wreckage retained the heat of the fire, he did indeed spot the tall tent of the hospital. It reminded him of a circus tent from his childhood.

He pushed that old memory aside and stepped forward.

A line of human and croatoan traffic crossed his path, making him pull up to a stop. The remaining survivors of Augustus’ army were shackled and chained and led across the street toward the ludus.

“What’s to happen to them?” Mike asked the lead man, a member of the Unity council he recognized but whose name he couldn’t recall.

The old man with white hair turned to face Mike and bowed. “Jail until we’ve decided. We’re having a council meeting later today to help organize the aftermath.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry about Mai,” he said. “We owe both of you a debt of gratitude for what you did. Without your help…” He looked around at the utter destruction of Unity’s buildings and then back to the line of dejected-looking men and women. “Without your help, it would have been us in chains.”

“Thank you… have you seen her?”

The white-haired man shook his head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t. I just heard… well, pay no mind to rumors.”

“What rumors?” Mike asked, his heart now thudding against his chest. It was all sounding as if Mai had died given the way he was speaking, but a part of Mike couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.

“It’s not really my place to say. I know this is difficult, but I just don’t know the facts and I don’t believe in spreading gossip. I’ll get this lot out of your way and you can head over to the hospital. I hope it all works out for you.”

Clutching his elbow as the painkillers continued to wear off, Mike opened his mouth to speak, but he was too late, the man was already moving, taking the line of farm workers with him. A few of them looked up at Mike with what looked like pity in their faces. Others were full of sorrow and regret.

He couldn’t entirely blame them. He doubted they had much choice but to do what Augustus had wanted of them. He was as cruel as anyone or anything Mike had seen, but still, despite that, he looked on these people with a boiling hate inside him.

If it wasn’t for them, he and Mai wouldn’t have been under pressure to get the weapon working and she wouldn’t have…

No, he thought, he couldn’t say it, wouldn’t believe it until he saw her for himself.

All the time he didn’t know for sure, he had hope within him.

It took just a few more minutes to reach the hospital. He waited outside for a moment before finally gaining the strength to open the flap door and enter. The place was larger than it looked on the outside. Hundreds of makeshift beds were created from canvas and other materials stretched across crude frames made from wood and metal poles, all parts of salvage Unity had stockpiled from their scavenging expeditions.

One of the human nurses, bent over a croatoan engineer, looked up and saw Mike. He finished bandaging the small alien and approached Mike. “How are you?” the man said, looking at Mike’s elbow.

“It’s okay, just hurts a bit.”

“I just wanted to thank you for what you and Mai did. We all do, we’ve spoken about nothing else since your heroics.”

It seemed like everyone within the hospital tent looked his way then, all sharing the same expression of gratitude.

“Um… thanks, it’s the least we could do,” he said, flustered and not sure how to cope with the focus on him. He lowered his voice to the nurse. “Where is Mai?”

“This way,” the man said, his face now solemn.

The expression hit Mike, made his legs feel weak, but he remained as strong as he could and followed the young man through the tent and beyond a second set of fabric doors.

“She’s over there,” the man said, pointing to a bed on the right.

A sheet lay over her frail body. Mike couldn’t see any movement. His throat went dry and he heard voices and sounds as though he were in a fishbowl filled with cotton wool. Like a zombie, his limbs seemingly moving by their own volition, he moved to Mai’s bed, his good arm reaching out to grab the sheet.

His hand shook, but he pressed on, pulling the sheet back to Mai’s shoulders.

She was lying on her side, her face away from him.

Mike fell to his knees and slumped against the low bed, his hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice finally cracking as the tears started to well up. “I didn’t want to leave you. I wanted to be with you until… I’m sorry, Mai. I love you so much, I hope you knew that before…”

He closed his eyes and bowed his head, resting his forehead against her shoulder, unable to continue on. A wave of grief welled up inside him and he fought to keep it down, afraid it would come out in an unending torrent of anguish.

“You silly old fool,” a voice said, making him open his eyes and lean back. He looked around, thinking one of the nurses or assistants were speaking to him, but the voice came again.

“I’m not dead yet. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“Mai?” Mike asked, bringing his attention back to her body.

Mai shuffled her body over until she was facing him, a pained grin on her face.

“It was only a minor heart attack. I’m tougher than that.”

“Oh god, I thought you were… oh Mai, I’m so relieved… no one would tell me what happened. I thought I had left you to die.”

“Nope, still around and still kicking. You’ll get my foot up your ass soon too if you don’t stop blubbing. Get a grip, my love, I’m fine. I just need to take things easy for a while. I’ll be up and about in no time.”

Mike laughed, letting out the built-up tension in great guffaws. He leaned down and hugged her, her weak arms clasping around his neck.

“We did it,” she whispered in his ear. “We beat that bastard.”

“It was all you,” Mike said. “Those last modifications were genius. You saved us, Mai.”

They just continued to hug, not wanting to let each other go until Mike sensed a hush come over the hospital. He heard the footsteps of a few people approaching. He let Mai go and they both turned toward the door.

The flaps opened and four men entered, carrying a stretcher between them. Aimee’s body, burned and bloodied, lay on top. Everyone watched in silence as her body was taken through to the rear and placed on the floor, next to a long line of sixty linen body bags filled with Unity corpses that hadn’t been buried yet. A group of men and croatoans, who were tagging the bags, nodded at those who left Aimee with them.

“That poor woman,” Mai finally said. “She led with such bravery.”

“Aye, it’s a real shame. Didn’t have an easy life by all accounts,” Mike said.

The four stretcher-bearers nodded with respect to Mai and Mike as they left, but the flaps didn’t close behind them. The nurse who showed Mike through held them open so the others could see through.

Those who could stand did so, and those who couldn’t sat up in their beds.

Together, they all gave Mike and Mai applause, many shouting their thanks and giving their respects for the help.

The nurse then said a few words about Aimee. The tent hushed again out of respect. Mike and Mai stayed silent as two women dressed in Unity council tunics addressed the hospital.

Mike zoned out after a while as they talked about Aimee’s goals for Unity and how she saw the society. They explained that they would lead the council until they could arrange for elections, but for now, they would continue to run things as Aimee had done in the past.

After they had finished and left, there was one more visitor who stepped through to join Mai and Mike.

“Maria, my girl!” Mai said. “So you’re quite the hero, I hear.”

Maria shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her hands clasped in front of her. “I don’t know about that, I just tried to survive. Look, I wanted to speak with you two, to say sorry… Augustus, he made me tell…”

Mike stood, his old knees cracking, and held her by the arm. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, you hear me? We all knew what he was like. He would have got what he wanted out of you one way or another. I’m just happy you’re safe now.”

“I concur,” Mai said. “He was a madman. God knows what he would have done to you. It all worked out in the end, and you got to kill the bastard, so your name will be long held in regard here, I’m sure. Don’t diminish your actions, girl.”

Maria’s face blushed and she stammered, not sure what to say when she seemed to suddenly remember something. She opened her palms and showed an object to Mike and Mai.

“I don’t know why I took this,” she said. “But in the heat of the moment I saw it on him and thought it might be something useful. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and it… well, it seems to have some kind of internal energy.”

She handed the prism to Mike.

He rolled it over in his hand, feeling the light vibrations coming from its warm, metal surface.

“How interesting,” he said.

He lowered it for Mai to have a look.

She sat up in her bed and took it from Mike’s hand. “Hmm, I think a trip to the workshop is in order.”

Chapter 33

CHARLIE WATCHED Vingo limp toward some steps cut into the ground. Dim lights lined green-tinged transparent glass on the walls leading down to a set of double red doors at the bottom. He paused at the top of them and encouraged everyone forward with a wave.

“Where the hell does this lead?” Charlie said. “You’re not taking us to meet more clusps?”

“We need to go through the house to reach its transport deck.”

“Won’t the owner be a little angry?” Layla said.

“Their shuttle is missing. The house will be empty.”

Denver turned, peering through his sights at their surroundings. Charlie spotted a few tredeyans moving around vehicles on brightly lit external transport decks. The decks lined the edge of a cliff that dropped away to the sea. Metal walkways sloped into the cliff, connecting the thirty-meter-wide platforms to dry land. He wondered why the owners kept the lights on with the scion air assault still in full flow, although the large prism had floated to a distant part of the star-filled sky to continue its bombardment.

“Do you know who lives here?” Denver said.

“A high-ranking tredeyan. Their houses are cut into the cliff and have the best views. The rest of us live in villages or the barracks in the cavern systems.”

Vingo climbed down the stairs and pushed the door open. A shaft of artificial light brightened the stairwell.

Charlie immediately followed him inside, pleased that they got themselves out of view, but he remained cautious. A scared tredeyan might be waiting around any corner with a loaded rifle, or one of those damned prisms might have floated in.

The space opened up into a large corridor with smooth cream walls. Five small glass cases were screwed at eye level on either side, with dried flowers and plants inside. The décor took Charlie by surprise. So far, all he’d seen was functionality around the defense, a slaver cavern and pulse cannons on strategic hilltop positions. He guessed Layla would be in her element if they had time to poke around. A vehicle was priority number one, to reach the vaults, so he had no intention of giving her the opportunity.

Denver closed the entrance door and made straight for a rack containing a tredeyan rifle. He grabbed it and checked the magazine. Charlie kept his rifle shouldered and stayed close to Vingo. The corridor opened up into a softly lit circular space, which he guessed was a living area. High-resolution screens were fixed against a wall in a sunken square area in the middle of the room, in front of an L-shaped bench. Two small helmets sat on the end of it.

“Do you get to watch much television?” Charlie said.

“I don’t understand,” Vingo said.

“The screens down there. What do you use them for?”

“Communication and work. The helmets are for the children to take virtual reality training.”

Frosted glass doors led off in three directions. Directly ahead, in the direction of the transport pad, and to the left and right.

“I don’t believe it,” Layla said.

Charlie twisted in her direction. She stood in front of a plastic display case and pressed her gauntlet against it. Denver walked over and joined her.

“What is it?” Charlie said.

“Artifacts from Earth.” Layla turned to Vingo. “Do you have anything like this?”

“I don’t have a sufficient level in our chain of command. These objects are taken from humans we integrated to supply our outposts. They had no need for possessions. We supply everything they need.”

“Where are the outposts?” Denver said.

“A long way from Tredeya. The ones alive don’t know about you, and Earth doesn’t know about them. I think it’s much simpler this way. Humans have strong personal connections that can compromise behavior.”

“You said supply,” Layla said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Create other humans. Your lifespan is short. The only way to keep a constant supply is by reproducing.”

“You’re breeding us?” Charlie said, casting his mind back to the warehouses on Earth where aliens kept pregnant women. “You’re no better than the croatoans.”

Vingo blinked and hobbled over to the display case. “We don’t need to encourage humans to breed. Each one has a purpose for their life, whether that’s guarding territory, flying or fighting. Most are happy working in different parts of the universe.”

“You sell them?” Denver said.

“We did in times of peace. Not now. We require all of the resources to stay alive. After our planet has fallen, all we’ll be left with is our smaller outposts.”

“Which I assume the scion will be visiting in the near future?”

“It’s reasonable to come to that conclusion,” Vingo said.

The thought of his species being used, brainwashed even, into someone else’s fight grated on Charlie, mainly because there wasn’t a single thing that they could do about it. Nobody on Earth had the technology to search and recover the ancestors of kidnapped men and women. The humans in space might not even want to return if they were indoctrinated into an alien culture from an early age.

Charlie gazed at the contents of the display cabinet. The left half contained alien objects. A silver disc with luminous edges, two transparent blue teeth and a chrome pipe that looked like a musical instrument. The right half contained artifacts from Earth. A wooden comb with several teeth missing, a dagger with a boar’s head in a leather scabbard, iron buckles, and a pendant with three lions engraved on it.

Most of the human objects looked medieval, although in better condition than anything his old team dug up at Quaternary Productions all those years ago. It made him think of Mike, and how excited he used to get when an unfamiliar object came to the finds tent. They didn’t realize at the time how much of a simple life they had.

If people were taken centuries ago to fight about the galaxy, they’d have no idea of Earth’s advances and recent decline.

“Grab me a bag, Vingo,” Charlie said.

“What are you doing?” Vingo said. “You can’t take anything from here. A senior officer owns this house.”

Charlie smashed his gauntlet against the cabinet and the clear protective sheet shattered. He reached inside and scooped up the contents. “If we make it back to Earth, I know a man who’ll love this.”

“That’s theft,” Vingo said. “The security feed will have a recording of your actions.”

“I don’t give a shit. Your allies stole my planet.”

“Besides, we’re gonna steal his transport and you’ll be on the feed too,” Denver said.

Vingo grunted and disappeared through the door on the left of the room. He returned with a small green sack. Charlie stuffed in his newly acquired hoard and slung it over his shoulder. He imagined Mike’s face as he poured the contents in front of him.

A low rumbling explosion outside snapped Charlie out of a brief moment of wonder. The filter display in his visor clicked down to its final notch. “Lead the way, Vingo. We haven’t got long.”

Vingo opened a door leading to a metallic tunnel and they clanked toward the transport pad outside. Charlie’s stomach fluttered when he looked out of the long thin window to his right. They were a hundred meters above the sea, which crashed against rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Thick metal girders curved from the bottom of the pad into the rock face just below them.

A dark oval-shaped craft sat on the right-hand side, roughly the size of a car but on four square blocks instead of wheels. Charlie hadn’t seen transport like this before, but realized that he’d only seen invasion and colonization vehicles, and this was probably a civilian ride.

Denver and Layla stood together on the edge of the platform, gazing at the distant skyline. The scion fighter presence had diminished in this area and it had been hours since Charlie saw anything tredeyan in the sky.

Vingo sat in one of the two front seats, secured a rubber strap around the upper part of his suit and wrapped his gauntlet around two shiny rods on the dashboard. Charlie stepped in and glanced at the controls. A light red hologram appeared on the glass shelf in front of them, showing a 3D outline of the vehicle with measurements alongside.

Like most tech he’d seen from the croatoans and tredeyans, it was nondescript until it burst into life, far exceeding anything on Earth.

Layla and Denver sat behind them on a soft leathery bench and fastened their straps. A wise move considering the thing didn’t have any doors. A quick tilt would throw them overboard.

The engines hummed and increased in pitch. They rose unsteadily to a height of three meters above the pad.

“It might be bumpy because of the updraft. We’ll be over land soon,” Vingo said.

Charlie secured his strap. “Go for it.”

Vingo eased the rods in opposite directions. They gained height and thrust forward. Charlie took a deep breath as wind rushed around his suit. This vehicle made the catamaran feel like riding on the back of a snail in comparison.

Bumping along in minor turbulence, Vingo swept to his left and headed along the right-hand side of the village. The ground below passed by in a blur. Ahead, a few lights dotted the dark horizon below the clear night sky.

Charlie braced himself for the possible carnage of their main city. They’d heard a lot of explosions since arriving. The vaults were located there, and the scion were after information.

The group needed to go there to have a chance of survival, but he was also aware that they might be flying straight into a battleground.

VINGO STUCK to the valleys and snaked between hills. Flames and smoke belched from infrastructure spread around the summits. Charlie guessed they were destroyed pulse cannons or other defensive buildings. From what he had seen of the scion attack, they systematically destroyed any threats without ceremony.

A glow rose up from behind a ridge directly in front of them.

“The city’s behind it,” Vingo said, briefly taking a gauntlet off the control rod and indicating to his front.

“Is it all underground?” Denver said.

“The vaults and urban command center are,” Vingo said. “But the entrance areas and administration buildings are on ground level. I’ll land away from the main area and we can proceed on foot.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Layla said.

Charlie would’ve credited the suggestion with smart strategic thinking, considering they didn’t know the state of the place. But Vingo had done everything for himself so far, so his decision was probably based on self-preservation.

Another lie or misdirection would lead to a swift end for the tredeyan. Charlie decided that Vingo had no more chances to burn. If they only found the information in the vault that would be traded with the Amalgam, and no filters, that would be the end of Vingo, and probably Denver, Layla and himself shortly after.

The vehicle slowed and drifted over the ridge. The central part of the city was two miles wide, designed in a grid system of single-story buildings on well-lit roads. A good sign that they still had electricity. Small clusters of lights from other buildings sprawled into the distance.

After seeing the city and the previous village with the nice house, Charlie eventually got a sense that a civilization lived on Tredeya. Before that, the dangerous caverns around the command center and the slavers’ cave seemed slightly out of step with the technology on display.

Halfway down the slope, Vingo directed the vehicle behind a copse of trees and they bumped to the ground. “We can access the underground system from the edge of the city.”

“You better hurry,” Layla said. “A flashing light’s just appeared on my visor display.”

“You still have half a unit. We have enough time.”

“No more bullshit from you,” Denver said, in tune with Charlie’s previous thoughts. “I’m gonna be right behind you every step of the way. Take us to the filters first.”

Both rods retreated into the dashboard. The hologram reduced to a single red spot and vanished. Vingo gargled and felt his leg when he stood. Charlie struggled to feel any sympathy as the tredeyan trudged toward the edge of the city, moaning through the intercom.

Along one of the distant streets, croatoan soldiers walked along either side of a vehicle the size of a harvester, with a swiveling turret on the top. Several of the buildings along their route were reduced to rubble.

Thanks to Vingo’s bargaining with another species, bumping into that procession would mean serious trouble. Charlie found it slightly ironic that they’d probably be left alone, mistaken for human soldiers in an alien force, if they appeared without the tredeyan. They still needed him, though.

The group descended toward the edge of the city. Vingo paused behind the first building they reached.

A beam of light punched through the air and shone on different parts of the hill. The sound of a croatoan engine grew louder.

Denver crouched alongside Vingo. “Are they looking for you?”

“I don’t know their instructions.”

“Cut the crap,” Layla said. “If they see you, what will happen?”

“They’ll kill me.”

Charlie groaned. “Where’s the entrance?”

“We need to wait for them to pass,” Vingo said. “It’s on the same road.”

The beam of light continued to dance around the hill. It focused on the copse of trees where they parked.

A red bolt zipped overhead and slammed into their vehicle. A hundred meters to their left, croatoan soldiers ran from the edge of the city toward the burning wreckage. The harvester’s engine groaned and cut.

“You need to find a route, Vingo,” Charlie said and glanced at the croatoans darting through the grass toward the copse. “I know when that lot mean business.”

“Follow me,” Vingo said.

A light on Charlie’s visor display winked. He didn’t need to broadcast the fact. Layla was a couple of minutes ahead in terms of the end point.

Vingo palmed a black panel outside a small, square cream building. The door clunked and smoothly slid to one side.

“If this isn’t the entrance, where does it go?” Denver asked.

“We can reach the vault through our natural waste system,” Vingo said. “Be careful of anything that moves.”

“What kind of extra risk are we talking about?” Layla said.

“Not significant.”

From what they had already faced, Charlie imagined it couldn’t get much worse. The bigger risk would be staying outside, being killed by the croatoans hunting Vingo or suffocating to death. Whatever was down there surely couldn’t be as bad.

Chapter 34

MIKE SAT at his tool-scarred workshop bench and rolled the small black prism in his fingers. He readjusted his LED headlamp and the beam reflected off its smooth sides. This reminded him of when Pippa first brought the strange blue bead to their office thirty years ago. Nobody guessed what it was or could’ve predicted what was about to happen. He wondered if the prism would have any similar significance.

Mai brought three steaming mugs of herbal tea over, pushed one across to Maria and sat next to Mike. “What do you think it is?”

Mike shrugged. “I don’t know, but it vibrated twice in the last ten minutes.”

“It can’t be anything good, coming from Augustus,” Maria said.

“How’s your elbow?” Mai said and gently caressed his sling. “Don’t push yourself and do some permanent damage.”

“We’re all permanently damaged.” Mike groaned and took a sip of his sweet fragrant tea. “Sorry. I’m not great company today.”

She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and gave him a comforting smile. “You’re alive. That’s all that matters. And you saved Unity.”

“What’s left of it. You’re still alive, and that’s the most important thing to me.”

Gib’s leather waistcoat hung on a spare stool to Mike’s left. He would miss the little genius and vowed to never forget that he saved his life. The place felt less alive without his presence. Gib was always curious about human technology and attempted to integrate as much as possible, helping to create tech to bring about peace.

Every time Mike made a new friend since leaving the basement in New York, they were taken away. Gib, Ryan, and Aimee joined the list of his old friends who were missing in action on an alien planet.

Mike leaned over and switched on the radio scanner, paranoid that another attack might come and finish Unity off. He wouldn’t put it past Augustus to have a backup plan, even though the old emperor was confirmed dead.

The remaining population were convinced that the threat was over and had started clearing away the charred remains of two-thirds of the town. It was a miracle that some of the buildings survived considering the raging inferno that took hold during the attack.

The prism buzzed in his fingers, stronger than the previous vibrations. Mike dropped it on the bench and stared down as it inched across the surface. Mai hunched forward and squinted down. Maria rocked back on her stool, clearly not as curious.

“It’s doing something, Mike. Where’s the power coming from?” Mai said.

A small purple beam shot out of the top and spread into a cone, casting a glow against both of their faces. A holographic keyboard appeared on the bench in front of the prism.

“What the hell?” Mike said.

Mai jerked back and knocked her cup off the bench. It smashed to pieces across the floor. Both of them ignored it and stared open-mouthed as the shape of a three-dimensional elongated head with a human face appeared inside the cone. Its dark eyes focused on them.

“I am Drone 21. Please provide a status update on Agent 3982, Flavius Julius Valens Augustus.”

Mike attempted to speak but only managed a grunt. He cleaned the lenses of his glasses on his cuff and put them on. Mai’s bottom lip quivered and she clasped her hands together.

“I sense alarm,” Drone 21 said. “Do not be afraid. I have seen you in the thoughts of others and know you to be a good people. Can you confirm that Agent 3982’s algorithm has expired?”

The hairs on the back of Mike’s neck stood. He couldn’t believe the tech he was seeing and its claims of knowing them. Part of him wanted to run, but the strong curious streak that ran deep inside him made him stay. “Do you mean Augustus?”

“I believe he used that name,” Drone 21 said. The image flickered and a line of digital interference partially obscured the face. “Please confirm his status.”

Maria stuttered. Mike glanced across, held out his palm to stop her talking, and quickly shook his head.

“Why should we tell you?” Mai asked. “He’s your agent and tried to kill us all.”

Mike had no idea what they were dealing with yet, although the prism had come from around Augustus’ neck.

“I am not your enemy,” Drone 21 said. “I am here to offer you an exchange. I can only do that once I’m aware of the full facts.”

“Exchange of what exactly?” Mike said. “You’ll forgive us for being slightly confused?”

The face vanished. An image of Denver and Layla, dressed in armored suits amongst alien foliage, flashed around the edge of the cone. The image moved, showing a two-second clip of them retreating. Both Mike and Mai took a sharp intake of breath.

“They’re alive!” Maria said.

The image cut away and the face appeared again. “Your friends on Tredeya for information. Now please confirm my question. You have little time to decide.”

“You know their location?” Mai said and gripped Mike’s arm tighter. He winced as pain shot through his injured elbow. “Charlie, Denver and Layla are alive and you can bring them back?”

“We will have access to Earth soon. This is the final time I will ask you. Provide a status update.”

“He’s dead,” Mike blurted and took a couple of seconds to compose himself. He folded his shaking left hand under his sling. “Augustus died during the attack on Unity. I’ve seen his body. What information do you want in return?”

“Thank you. Agent 3982 will be erased from memory. Our proposition is for you to provide full access to your information systems. Your three friends are still alive and we have acquired the specifications to create a transportation method.”

Mai edged closer to his side and gripped the arm of his faded lime green sweater. “We don’t have anything to hide. Who are you?”

“Your question is not relevant to the current negotiation. We calculate the exchange is possible if you engage immediately. Beyond that, the prediction is less certain.”

“You can have what you want,” Mike said. The only information systems left were cobbled-together croatoan ones. After electricity failed nearly three decades ago, all known human systems were down and rotting away. The picture of Denver and Layla, coupled with the tech he faced, told him he had nothing to lose and a lot to gain. “Tell me what I need to do?”

“Stay exactly where you are,” Drone 21 said. “Make sure any equipment and documents Hagellan left remain untouched. We will coordinate the rest when we arrive.”

“If you’re not croatoan, how do we know you won’t invade us?” Mai said.

“We have no desire to destroy your world and only seek information.”

“What kind of information?” Mike said.

“That is an unanswerable question. Do we have an agreement?”

“At least tell us who you are?” Maria said.

“We are the scion. By accepting the offer, you will become our agents.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Mike said. He only usually took risks with his inventions and had no idea who he was dealing with, but any chance to get his friends back home was worth a shot. “When can we expect to hear—”

The cone and beam of light vanished, leaving the small black prism on the table. Mike reached forward and prodded it with his finger. “Unbelievable.”

“What does being an agent mean?” Maria asked.

Mai grabbed Mike’s hand and peered into his eyes. “What have we just done?”

“Exactly what Charlie would’ve in our shoes. We’ve taken a gamble to save our friends.”

Chapter 35

DENVER DUCKED from the blast of Vingo’s rifle.

The alien shot the electronic lock mechanism on the inside of the sewer’s blast door. The shell exploded the device and parts ricocheted in Denver’s direction, flying over his head.

“You crazy bastard,” Denver said, gripping his rifle tighter and considering shooting that little shit right there and then. Vingo wore a smirk on his face, or at least that’s what Denver thought it was. Who knew what an alien species regarded as politicians were actually thinking behind their mask.

“Croatoans won’t have enough firepower to get through the blast doors now,” Vingo said. “Not with the scion patrolling outside. We’re free to head to the vault.”

“How do we even know this leads to the vault?” Layla said.

Denver and Charlie switched on their external lights and looked down the black tunnel. The smooth walls betrayed no threat. It looked like any other sewer that one might find on Earth. A five-inch-deep mulch of watery shit sloshed over their feet. Overhead, great ventilation fans spun slowly, extracting what Denver assumed would be harmful pockets of gas.

“It’s up to you to trust me,” Vingo said.

“Aren’t you getting braver now?” Charlie added.

“What else do you want me to say? I’m not going to beg you to follow me. If you wish to stay behind and suffocate, I won’t shed a tear for you. My mission is almost impossible anyway. With your help, you can probably help me claw back a few percentage points, but nothing that guarantees success. I don’t see why I have to keep justifying my actions to you. I’m offering you a chance off this rock. You can keep questioning me and using up your air, or you can follow me and help yourselves.”

Vingo didn’t even look at them as he sloshed forward into the tunnels.

Denver stayed his dad’s arm. “Not yet,” Denver said.

Vingo made what he thought was a chuckling sound. It was all Denver could do not to follow his dad’s cue and shoot the little bastard in the back. Denver didn’t like the change in his demeanor one bit. But still, there was no option left but to follow. At least the treacherous swine was in front of them.

They slogged through a few kilometers of shit without incident, despite the dark ripples that followed them. At one point Denver caught sight of an eel-like creature swimming through the sludge by his side. Dark red eyes reflected back at him in the gloom. It opened its slit mouth to display a row of tiny, but sharp-looking, teeth.

“What the hell are these things?” Layla asked, kicking out at one as it wrapped itself around her left ankle and tried to snap its small jaws through the metal of her suit without much luck. It didn’t even have the strength to scratch the surface.

“Unwanted pets,” Vingo said.

“Why the hell would anyone want that thing as a pet?” Charlie asked, remaining close to Vingo, who was setting an increasingly faster pace.

“There was a phase a few years ago when they were popular as combat pets. Our young would grow and train them for tournaments, but that soon died out and they were disposed of into the sewers. They have proved to be highly adaptable… and they provide a useful job, breaking down the solids they consume.

“I think I might be sick,” Layla said.

“Try to conserve your air if you are,” Vingo said. There was an edge now to his voice that Denver really didn’t care for. He had become sly, brave. The weak act and promise of cooperation seemed to have disappeared.

They said nothing else, taking Vingo’s advice to heart as they continued their trek through the filth until eventually they reached a large circular blast door. Their lights reflected back off it, showing that it was made of a polished metal. An access panel about thirty-centimeters-square was on the wall beside the hatch. It had a series of holographic buttons hovering over its surface.

Below them, gathered into the corners of the sludge, were a dozen more of the toothed eels. They writhed together as snakes might.

“Breeding,” Vingo said as if already knowing Denver’s question. Vingo shot down at them twice, obliterating them with two blasts of his rifle.

“That was unnecessary,” Denver said. “They weren’t doing anything to you.”

Vingo huffed and turned his attention to the panel. “This is it,” he said. “Time to see if my contact was as treacherous as me.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie said. “I thought you knew your way into this place.”

“Me? No, I have no idea. All I know is that a rogue Amalgam agent supplied me with some codes. I don’t know if they work or not. They probably don’t, considering the reputation of this agent. You think I’m bad… this guy’s reputation is known across most of the tredeyan-ruled systems.”

“If it wasn’t clear by now,” Charlie growled. “I really hate you a great deal.”

“Of course you do; you’re human,” Vingo said. “Now, you three stand by the door and prepare to enter as I punch in the codes.”

“You want us to go first?” Denver said. “Like hell. You tell us the codes and you can go first seeing as you’re so desperate to join the Amalgam.”

“No, it doesn’t work like that. You have about one unit of air left. You won’t make it back out of the sewers. You’ll die in here, and when your suits degrade in the acidic sludge, you’ll become food. I can enter these vaults with or without you, it doesn’t matter to me now. “You helped me get here; that’s all I wanted.”

“What about the micro-gate?” Layla said.

“Oh, that’s still a real possibility, so if you want to get off this planet, I suggest you do as I say and go first when the vault door opens.”

“What kind of security does this place have?” Charlie asked.

Vingo shrugged. “No one knows. The Amalgam agent got the codes from a card game involving one of the capital’s matriarchs. That’s as close as anyone other than the governors have got. Even this sewer is usually protected, but given the war with the scion, I guess we got lucky.”

“Luck, huh?” Charlie said, stepping forward to the side of the hatch. “I’ve never felt less lucky in my life, and that’s saying something.”

“Let’s not waste any more time,” Denver said. “Vingo, enter the damned codes and let’s get this over with.”

Denver joined Layla and Charlie by the door. They stood to its sides, the sewer too narrow to let them stand completely free of the opening. While Denver and Layla stared ahead, Charlie focused his attention on Vingo while wearing his ‘murder face.’ Denver just hoped his dad could hold it together long enough for them to figure a way out of this mess. A dead Vingo would be no good if they needed something to trade or beat information from.

“Here we go,” Vingo said, stretching out his hand and tapping in a complicated-looking pattern of codes. Denver crouched when a high-pitched beep came from the control panel. The blue holographic display flashed red.

“Shit, that can’t be good,” Layla said.

“Wait,” Vingo ordered, entering yet more codes.

The red flashing turned to a dark purple color and a hiss of air came from around the large circular hatch in front of them. The thing started to turn ever so slowly; the sound of servos whirred inside. Denver quickly glanced over at Vingo, who had his rifle raised at the door.

“Quiet,” Vingo whispered.

The hatch stopped turning after it traveled a complete revolution. It then moved toward them before folding down like a ramp. Green light flooded from a tunnel before them as the door finished its movement.

“Well, look at that,” Vingo said. “The rogue was trustworthy after all. Perhaps that’s a lesson for us all, eh?” He looked at Charlie with an expressionless face before adding, “Go on, then; get inside. You don’t have the time to stand there breathing away your lives.”

Denver stepped forward and entered the tunnel first, eager to get this charade over with. If they were going to suffocate to death, he’d rather do it knowing exactly what Vingo was up to and what the hell was in this place.

The tunnel was wide enough for both Denver and Charlie to move forward. Layla brought up the rear with Vingo wedged between them. She shared a look with Denver that told him she would gun the alien down if he tried anything.

“So where are we heading?” Denver whispered over the comms, stepping as carefully as he could over the solid surface. It seemed to be a kind of smooth granite. His suit clanked with each step, making him wince with the echoes of their movement. It reminded him of a mausoleum he had once spent a night in. The rock seemed to have its own weird acoustics.

“This is one of the escape routes for the information arbiters.”

“Who are they when they’re at home?” Layla asked.

“This isn’t their home,” Vingo replied, not getting the turn of phrase, but continued, “They’re the ones who catalogue the sum of the tredeyan intelligence. It’s here, where our servers are, and our AIs that look for patterns in the data. It’s the arbiter’s job to interpret the findings as well as catalogue useful information. This vault goes back five hundred millennia.”

They reached the end of the corridor and turned ninety degrees to the left. Denver stopped and held up his hand, indicating for Layla and Vingo to halt. “Dad, you hear that?” he whispered.

“Sounds like… what the… is that?”

“Croatoan,” Denver said. “You know anything about this, Vingo?”

“No… approach with caution; we’re coming to one of the server analysis rooms. I can hear… there’s something else up ahead. We need to get to that room.”

“Fine,” Charlie said, inspecting his rifle. “Load up; shoot anything that moves in there. Follow my lead.”

Charlie stepped forward in a half-crouch. Denver stuck by his dad after glancing back to make sure Layla was okay. She looked as determined as his dad and filled Denver with pride. If they were going to assault a hyper-important vault on an alien planet during a war with super-advanced aliens, he wouldn’t want to do it without Layla and his dad by his side.

Before Denver brought his attention back to the white light at the end of the tunnel, he saw Layla mouth the words, ‘I love you.’ He responded in kind, flashing her a confident smile, and returned his focus to the room.

As they approached quietly, rifles at the ready, Denver started to feel something buzz around his mind. At first he thought it was static on his comms, but when he asked the others, none of them detected anything.

It was almost as if he could sense…

He didn’t get a chance to warn the others as a man-sized scion prism floated out of the white light and entered the tunnel. Another appeared behind them, making Vingo yell out with a kind of screeching panic.

The two prisms steadied themselves. Their cones raised half an inch to expose their glowing blue insides… their lasers. Denver closed his eyes, bracing himself for the impact, but instead he heard a voice say, “Put down your weapons, and enter the room. You might still live yet.”

“Did anyone else hear that?” Denver asked over the comms.

Vingo was gibbering something in his alien tongue and raised his rifle toward the prism in front. The scion machine snapped a thin, narrow beam of light between Denver’s and Charlie’s heads, striking Vingo in the chest.

He stiffened immediately and shook within his suit. He collapsed forward, dropping his rifle to the hard surface.

“Enter the room,” the neutral voice, neither male nor female, ordered again.

“Of course,” Charlie said, stepping forward, but still holding his rifle to his side, the barrel pointing down to the floor.

Denver turned to Layla and helped her step over Vingo’s prone form. The second prism behind them seemed to tilt when it got close to Denver. Man and machine regarded each other. Denver felt that strange buzzing sensation in his head again. The second prism moved forward until it hovered over Vingo’s body. A ghostly white field emanated from its base, lifting the tredeyan off the floor.

“Please, into the room,” this second prism said, specifically to Denver.

Denver nodded and turned, following the others into the white light of the server analysis room, feeling strangely secure despite his initial fear and uncertainty.

The lights within the ten-meter-square room dimmed as they entered. It had golden walls that shimmered against the light cast down by an overhead glow panel. A narrow holoscreen no more than about thirty centimeters in height stretched around the walls at a little lower than chest level.

Data in a script he didn’t recognize flowed around these screens. Two more prisms, smaller this time, like the one he and Layla had encountered outside of the temple, hovered in front of the screens, shining their pale blue lights onto the surface. Denver presumed they were scanning for information, much like the other one did around the statue.

When he brought his eyes to the center of the room, he saw the source of the croatoan sounds. Bound by thick metallic cuffs around his wrists and ankles, the scarred form of Hagellan lay stretched out. The scion who had lifted Vingo dumped his body to the rear of the room onto the glossy black granite floor and returned to hover above Hagellan.

The old croatoan managed to lift his head and thrashed when he saw Charlie, Denver, and Layla.

Blood dripped from his mouth and sprayed out into the air when he called out.

“What’s the meaning of this? What are they doing here?” he croaked, sounding more afraid than Denver had ever heard any croatoan. It pleased him, seeing the ex-council member in such a humiliating and weak condition.

“Well, well, well,” Charlie said, with a smile on his face. “Looks like you’re in a bit of trouble there, old friend.”

Hagellan tried to spit at Charlie, but the spray just dripped uselessly down his thick neck and pooled onto the granite floor. The scion prism above him extended out that ghostly white field that had previously lifted Vingo. This time it didn’t lift, but pressed, forcing Hagellan’s throat to the ground, cutting off his words.

The other prism hovered between Charlie and Hagellan.

“Humans,” it said in that neutral voice, “your mission is over.”

“Mission?” Denver asked. “The only mission we’re on is to get air and survive this goddamned planet. What’s any of this got to do with us?”

Vingo came to and hobbled to his feet. He swayed and clanked against the wall. His eyes grew wide when he saw where he was. He spun to face the holoscreen and reached into a compartment on his suit leg.

The scion didn’t seem bothered and were silent as everyone watched Vingo take what Denver thought was a recording. The tredeyan spun round and flicked his gaze across the occupants of the room, a kind of confusion coming over his face.

He didn’t hesitate, though; he made for the way they had come in. Denver raised his rifle and was about to shoot the fleeing alien when the scion prism knocked Denver to the floor and pressed him down with a force that made it difficult for him to breathe, even with the protection of the suit.

“Let him go, you fucking machine,” Charlie said, firing a burst of fire at the prism. The bullets ricocheted off the armored surface and embedded into the gold walls with heavy thuds that reverberated around the surface.

One of the rounds had pierced the tough hide on Hagellan’s chest, making the beast wail out and thrash more within his shackles. The prism holding Denver glowed brightly as a bolt of laser fired from it, striking down Vingo with a single blast, the tredeyan’s body cauterizing before it even hit the floor.

The neutral voice from the scion spoke up. “Stop, it’s over now.”

The force on Denver’s throat eased and lifted him to his feet.

“Humans, you are Charlie, Denver and Layla,” the scion prism to the left said. The one in front of Denver remained silent, its blue glowing strip had dulled to a softly pulsing gray. “It’s time you knew the truth. We will get you air and supplies, but first, you’re to receive an explanation.”

“Don’t believe anything they have to say,” Hagellan croaked out. “They’re damned liars, just like the tredeyans!”

Denver was expecting the croatoan’s throat to be crushed again, but the scion prism ignored him. Instead, the cone extended further up before flipping back. A holographic projection of a humanlike face extended up and regarded them with hollow eyes.

“I am Drone 451, the coordinator of this encounter. If you have questions, ask them. We have just a few of your Earth minutes before we have to leave.”

“What happens then?” Layla asked.

“This vault will be no more.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Tell me, what the hell is Hagellan doing here, and why are you torturing him? Not that that bothers me much.”

The face turned to Charlie. “Hagellan was a scion agent… until he cut his algorithm short. He defected back to his race shortly before the invasion of your planet, taking with him artifacts that we had assigned a great deal of resources to procure. That’s why he came back here.”

“Wait,” Denver said. “We came back to destroy the gate to stop the croatoan ship… Hagellan showed it to us. It was going to use the tredeyan gate to jump to Earth.”

The face shook from side to side. “That was a lie. He wanted to destroy the gate to stop us from getting to Earth and reclaiming the lost artifact that he stole from us. He is a traitor to us and his own kind. His plan was to join the Amalgam after his failure on Earth.”

“Like Vingo,” Layla said, looking at his corpse.

“So what about the micro-gate?” Denver asked.

“There is no such thing,” Drone 451 said. “There is only one gate, the one Hagellan had you damage.”

Denver picked up on the language immediately. “Damage? So it’s not destroyed?”

“We currently have our architects fixing it—this”—the holographic display extended an arm to point at the data on the screens—“is what Vingo was hoping to trade; the technical specifications of the gate.”

“You can’t trust them!” Hagellan said, trying to appeal to Charlie directly. “They’re worse than us; they don’t care about your life, your planet. All they want is—”

Denver winced at the sudden burst of gunfire.

A swirl of smoke trailed away from the barrel of Charlie’s rifle as Hagellan’s head exploded under the power of the tredeyan firearm. Shreds of croatoan hide scattered around the room, bouncing off the golden walls. The beast’s yellow blood and dark purple brains splattered against the back wall as pieces of bone and cartilage clattered against the floor.

Hagellan’s great body continued to thrash for a few seconds after until eventually his limbs became still.

“Damn, that felt good,” Charlie said. He turned to Drone 451. “Frankly, I don’t care if what you’re saying is the truth or not. We’re going to die if we don’t get air in the next quarter of a unit. If you have air, then we need it now. After that, we can talk.” He kept the rifle poised in his hands, aimed partly toward the scion drone.

The drone’s blue stripe flashed twice and the smaller ones in front of the screen of data hovered around the group and disappeared through another door behind Denver that he hadn’t spotted originally.

“Follow us,” Drone 451 said. “We have much to discuss.”

Leaving the remains of Hagellan and Vingo behind, Denver followed the scion along with Charlie and Layla, all three of them sharing a ‘what the fuck?’ expression.

Chapter 36

LAYLA WOKE ON A SOFT BED, stretched and yawned. A cool draft pumped from a chrome vent in the roof, providing air in the pressurized barrack block. These sparse white rooms attached to the command center were used by humans when serving on Tredeya. It came as no surprise that Vingo didn’t tell them about the area. She wondered if he spoke a word of truth during their whole time together.

The partially split dark blue armor stood at the end of the bed with her helmet propped on top of it and a tredeyan rifle slung over the shoulder. The last two days were the strangest in Layla’s life, but she could see light at the end of the tunnel.

Sleep came easily after being transported back by the scion prisms, who provided clean filters for their suits and promised no harm would come to them. Drone 451 showed them a video of a shocked-looking Mike, Mai and Maria and told them they were safe and Augustus perished in the battle for Unity.

Layla activated a screen at the end of her bed and looked at the still image of their faces again. The drones refused to give more information until they spoke to an agent called Doslin.

It was a relief that the city survived the attack and all three of them lived through it. She found Augustus’ death the most unbelievable. The man was an eternal survivor and seemed to get away with everything he did. Layla assumed he would be a thorn in her side until her dying days.

Reflecting on her post-invasion life, it was the first time she felt real pride about her role in society. It wasn’t like reintegrating human livestock back into civilized life. That was just repairing the damage that she played a part in creating. Augustus forced her, under the threat of death, to work on a farm. Her path for survival involved self-preservation at the expense of others. Those days were over.

Together with Charlie and Denver, they put their lives on the line for Earth.

A female tredeyan, dressed in a peach-colored robe, knocked on the transparent glass door. Layla thumbed the panel by the side of her bed and the door hissed open.

“I am Doslin,” she said. “Follow me to the observation deck.”

“Do I need to put my suit on?”

“No. It’s safe for you to breathe. Please, this way. I will reunite you with your friends.”

“You breathe our air?”

“It’s purer than Tredeya’s. I wouldn’t advise you to try the opposite.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

Doslin led Layla up two flights of stone steps to a dull gray corridor. The caverns looked barely recognizable after a good six hours sleep and a lower threat level. The scion had taken full control, and only their agents were allowed access. Instead of seeing the passages as dark, alien and intimidating, expecting a threat around every corner, Layla took some time to peer in every room and murky corner. She doubted she’d get a chance to see a world like this again.

In one room, two black prisms hovered next to a bank of glass boxes with circuitry and boards inside. Three slaughtered clusps were piled in another. Electronic pads were attached to the smoothly carved walls at regular intervals, some had views to other parts of the cavern system on their screens, others provided security access to sturdy metal doors. None required wiring because of their wireless energy solution. Layla wondered if they could take some of the tech back to Earth for Mike to reverse engineer.

“What do you know about humans?” Layla said.

“I’ve met them here and on one of our mineral planets. I like them.”

“Is that where you learned our language?”

“We learn it as children, along with croatoan since their colonization of our planet. We despise their presence.”

“How does working with the scion help?” Layla said.

“If it means ridding our species of the croatoans, I’m prepared to do it.”

Layla frowned and shook her head. “The scion attacked you and have taken over parts of your planet. Is that what you were working toward? How is that any better than living under croatoan rule?”

“Charlie and Denver asked the same questions. I will provide you all with an overview.”

They passed through an automatic set of double doors to a thirty-meter-wide room. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out over the immediate landscape. Charlie and Denver stood in front of it, gazing outside and chatting.

Denver turned and smiled. “Nice to see you’re awake.”

“Learned anything new?” Charlie said.

“Not really. Our host says we’ve been asking the same questions. I guess it’s time for us to hear it.”

Charlie grabbed a cup from a polished stone table and handed it to Layla. “Here’s something to toast the death of Augustus.”

“I’ve just been thinking about that. Gregor would be pleased.”

“Screw him,” Denver said. “I want to know if we’ve got a way back.”

Layla peered over his shoulder. The remains of the gate towered over the forest outside. The two edges of the broken ring glinted in the sun and seemed to be expanding toward each other. Mechs floated on either side of it and fired lasers. Other small black square objects moved smoothly up and down the internal side.

“They should have it finished in a unit,” Doslin said. “You can be on the ship if you agree to our terms.”

Charlie stepped toward her. “Are you serious? We’ve been messed around since arriving. I can’t take another false promise.”

Doslin held her stumpy translucent fingers toward a granite bench. “Take a seat and I will explain.”

Layla sat between Charlie and Denver. Doslin knelt in front of them. “Tredeya and Earth are both parts of a Galactic struggle between two force—”

“I kinda guessed that,” Charlie said. “What’s that got to do with us?”

“You need to see the full picture. The croatoans colonized hundreds of planets in the universe. Earth or Tredeya are not exceptions. Croatoans see it as their right as one of the oldest species, and use our resources for their expanding population.”

“Vingo hinted toward that,” Denver said. “Where do the scion come in?”

“They are on a quest to find their purpose and believe that the information they need is spread around the universe, including Earth.”

“They’re going to invade us?” Layla said.

“No. Mike has agreed to give them access to Hagellan’s devices and any other system they choose. If you give them what they want, they are happy to let you live peaceful lives and will leave a ship in the solar system for protection against the croatoans.”

Charlie grunted. “And that’s why they’re standing on the croatoans’ toes.”

“What do you mean?” Doslin said.

“The scion are liberating any colonized planet that goes along with their request. It sounds like your command made a huge mistake.”

“You’re correct, and it’s also the reason Tredaya has finally fallen today. Our commanders followed croatoan instructions to the letter.” Doslin bowed her head. “They thought being attacked by the scion was better than facing a croatoan planet destroyer. That is a risk any rebelling planet faces.”

“Have the croatoans managed to get past the scion defenses yet?”

“I’ve only heard rumors about two distant colonies. I believe you call it a myth, but the croatoans use these stories as a threat.”

“What about the Amalgam?” Layla said. “Vingo was trying to gather information to trade with them.”

“They are not a major force yet, but they’re growing in strength and have entered our galaxy. It’s the perfect time to rise because croatoan resources are stretched to the limit, trying to stop the scion advance.”

“Who’s winning?” Charlie said.

“Nobody wins,” Doslin replied, her blinks becoming rapid. “This has gone on longer than humans have been on Earth. I believe the scion expansion is unstoppable, but the croatoans are determined.”

“What happens if the information they’re looking for doesn’t exist?” Denver said.

“They will continue looking. This is their purpose until they find out the reason for their creation.”

Charlie stood and sighed. He peered out the window toward the gate. “Enough of the history lesson. You said there are terms?”

“If they are agreed to, you can return to Earth through the repaired gate, and a scion ship will protect your solar system from future croatoan invasion. Mike has agreed to his part of the proposition.”

“Are you sure they won’t turn on us?” Denver said.

Doslin shuffled toward him. “That is not a concern you alone must address. Please accompany me to another room.”

Denver raised his eyebrows. “Me?”

She reached inside her robe, produced a small black prism and held it toward Denver. “Take this and follow me.”

“Wait for just one second. We do things together or not—” Charlie said.

“He comes with me now,” Doslin snapped. “Everything has a price.”

Doslin stood and pressed the prism into Denver’s hand. Layla looked across to him. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll let you know everything that happens. If this is how they want to play it, so be it.”

Denver took the prism and held it in front of his face. Doslin walked toward a door at the left-hand side of the observation area. Denver followed and paused to glance back at the bench.

Layla feared this wouldn’t be as straightforward as the scion agent explained. Doslin’s final three words spun in her mind. She hoped the price didn’t involve losing Denver.

Chapter 37

DENVER INHALED the fresh air generated from the atmosphere units of the small room. They had even managed to equalize the gravity so it felt like being back on Earth again. His muscles eased away the lingering cramp with each step into the room.

“Please, rest; take a seat,” Doslin said, indicating with an elegant gesture of her thin hand a sofa that resembled a large hotdog sign he had once seen on the streets of New York among the debris of collapsed buildings.

He sat down on what would have been the bun and rested his back against the ‘sausage.’ The design was surprisingly comfortable, the foam supportive as it conformed to his shape.

The room was carpeted with what looked like an organic material of woven long stems, making a light striped pattern. It was soft underfoot and gave off a light fragrance of mint mixed with cinnamon.

Like the previous room, this one had a large window that looked out onto the gate’s repair; the huge spines that made up the rings were quickly taking shape. If he blinked, he would miss some growth, some mutable effect. The scion machines were swarming it like ants, and the gate itself seemed to animate before his very eyes.

“That’s incredible,” he said, mostly to himself.

Doslin stood with her back to him, her hands crossed behind the small of her back. She inclined her head forward. “They’re a unique race, that’s for sure,” she said in a neutral tone.

“You don’t seem impressed. I suppose you’ve seen so much that these things no longer hold any wonder for you.”

Doslin turned to face him. “I think it’s time you listened to your handler. She’ll be able to explain far better than I can.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here. Why am I being separated like this?”

“They’re interested in you. The scion, that is. Did you not wonder why they hadn’t killed you when they had numerous opportunities?”

“Of course I did, I’m not that witless. By interest, do you mean they want to… what, inspect me or something? If this is going to get weird, then we’re going to have trouble.”

“Please, it’s nothing like that; you can relax here,” Doslin said, her voice becoming lighter, friendlier. Unlike Vingo, she was far subtler and convincing, which is why he supposed she was working for the scion and Vingo lay dead in a vault that was likely now a pile of very old rubble.

“So what is it?”

“Place the prism on the table here and we’ll get started.” She pressed a button on a small control pad Denver hadn’t previously noticed attached to her forearm. A glass surface the size of a regular coffee table floated down from the ceiling and hovered half a meter off the floor just in front of him.

Following Doslin’s instructions, Denver leaned forward and placed the miniature scion artifact onto the table’s surface. It whirred and the cone lifted up. In a repeat of what he saw in the vault, the cone flipped back and a holographic image appeared above the prism.

He recognized the construction. “Drone 451?” Denver asked.

“You remembered,” the scion handler said as a statement. “That’s an encouraging start.”

“To what?”

Doslin stepped away into the shadows of the room as the lights dimmed. Drone 451’s light-blue holographic display glowed brighter in the gloom. When Denver turned away to look at Doslin again, he couldn’t see her, though he heard no door open and detected no movement of air.

Impressive, he thought. He could see why she was an agent.

Sure it was a shade darker in the room, but not that dark. Not to his trained eyes anyway.

“To your new role, Denver Jackson. You’ve been assigned agent status, code number 6001. We’ve analyzed your algorithm, and it interests us greatly.”

“Whoa, wait a minute there, buddy, agent status? Algorithms? What are you talking about?”

“A simple deal. Your help on a short-term mission for the future safety of your planet.”

Denver sighed and leaned forward. “You’re starting to sound like Vingo. What is it with you aliens and your deals? Sure, you gave us air and a safe place to sleep, but now you want what exactly?”

“Your algorithm dictates much progress in our aims. We would rather cooperate with you for mutual benefit than increase the odds that our progress will be delayed. The war with the croatoans is a complex affair and has already put us back an estimated fifty thousand Earth years. A minor issue in the grand scheme, but the Order of Things has sent you to us, and by our calculations, you’ll help us to our goals significantly quicker than without.”

Denver sat back and thought about what this being was saying. They obviously wanted him badly, which gave him some bargaining power… depending on what they wanted him to do.

“Listen, are you familiar with our term ‘put all the cards on the table’?”

The drone flickered briefly before affirming.

“Then let’s do that right now, shall we? I appreciate your other drones not killing me, I really do, and I appreciate you guys bringing us back here and attempting to rebuild the gate, but I know so little about you and your kind. Who are you, for example? Do you have a consciousness? Are you an individual or just a software program?”

“Would it matter to our negotiations whether I have a consciousness or not?” it replied.

“I suppose not, but you’re not exactly being forthcoming with details here. Tell me what you are, what you and your kind want, and what your plans are for me. You mentioned the Order of Things… what is that and how does it factor into my working with you as an agent?”

“Unlike many, you ask the right questions,” Drone 451 replied. The holographic image changed to a flat screen. On the screen a stream of code flowed too fast for Denver to understand or recognize any individual characters. “This is the Order of Things as it stands now. It is much changed since you arrived on Tredeya. It is the underlying programmatic expression of the chaos that exists in all things. Our intelligences mine it for information, seeking patterns. We build algorithms to fix complex programs and compute outcomes.”

“That’s… interesting, I suppose, but I’ve never really used computers, so excuse me if I’m not blown away. Are you suggesting you guys can tell the future?”

“No,” the drone said. “We can infer from it. And that’s where you come in. One of our algorithmists saw your pattern in the Order of Things and we knew that you would be important to us regarding one of our long-running missions.”

Denver cocked his head as the screen changed to show a small blue planet surrounded by darkness and a single sun. There were no other planets or moons on the image and so few stars that he couldn’t make out any recognizable constellations, which told him it could only be one thing. “That’s not Earth, is it, even though it looks like it at first glance?”

“You’re correct, although you could look upon it as the first Earth.”

“First… you’re saying there’s multiple Earths?”

“Of a kind, yes. Humans currently inhabit three hundred and fifty-nine planets with similar properties to the first Earth. Yours is classified as number ninety-seven.”

“Okay, that’s… kind of mind-bending, but then I suppose everything is at the moment. I’ll be sure to process this all at some point. So what’s special about this first Earth, and where do I come in?”

“You’re going to find it for us,” Drone 451 said.

“Oh, am I?” Denver wanted to laugh at first. The absurdity of this whole scenario suddenly hit him in the chest. “Is this like some kind of weird test? You know I’m just a guy from Earth ninety-seven, right? I know nothing of the galaxy. I think you lot would be better suited to find this planet than me.”

“But you’re human,” the drone responded as though that answered everything. “For the mission we have in mind, we need you. Doslin, please provide Agent 6001 with the printed mission brief.”

The holographic display shut down. The cone clasped down onto the prism and the room’s lights slowly came back up to their previous illumination. Denver felt as if he had just awoken from a dream.

Doslin appeared by his side. He hadn’t even seen or sensed her move. She held out a folded piece of white card. “Your mission brief. You’re to press your thumb against the box to accept.”

“You all seem so sure that I will just go along with this madness.”

Doslin gave him the slightest smile. “The scion are… persuasive. Now please, read the brief. Then we can return to your father and Layla. There is still much to discuss before the gate is fully operational.”

Denver took the card and sat back in the sofa. He realized he was smiling, still thinking all this was some weird elaborate game, but when he opened the card and started to read, his smile dropped and he leaned forward. The card shook slightly in his grip. He twisted his head to stare up at Doslin. “This isn’t bullshit, is it?”

“The scion might be many things, but when they offer agent status, bullshit is not in their mode of operation. I can assure you of that.”

“Right,” Denver said, turning back to the briefing. He paused for a second, his thumb hovering over the small chip embedded into the card. And then he pressed his thumb down. A small tickle of electricity excited his skin.

Doslin took the mission briefing from him and held out her hand.

“Welcome to the scion, Agent 6001.”

Chapter 38

CHARLIE PEERED through the glass of the observation room. A large scion prism had floated to the surface and stopped over a flat strip of land. A ramp dropped from its underside.

Hundreds of tredeyans and croatoans were being escorted aboard by a row of hovering jet-black mechs. He felt little sympathy after his experiences with both species. At least they probably weren’t being turned into trays of silver slop.

Scion fighters still patrolled the sky, although they only made sweeping runs around the ship and none fired during the time Charlie observed their movements.

Half an hour had passed since Denver left the room. Layla paced around behind him, fidgeting and mumbling to herself.

“Get yourself over here and relax,” Charlie said.

She stood by his shoulder and looked at the fully formed gate. “What do you think they’re saying to him?”

“No idea, but worrying about it isn’t going to change anything. We’ll find out when he comes back.”

“If he’s coming back.”

Charlie wrapped his arm around her. “You should know Denver by now. He’ll be back.”

A loud crack echoed to their right. From their position, only the top half of the gate was visible. A solid shimmering blue surface filled the giant circular structure, like a piece of suspended water. Green waves rippled across it as the strip of light running around the perimeter flashed. The green strip remained solid after ten blinks, turning the internal space to aquamarine.

The ground shook below Charlie’s boots, accompanied by a low rumbling sound. Layla gasped and pressed her hand against the vibrating glass. Stones danced around on the ground directly outside.

“Looks like they’ve got it working,” Layla said.

Charlie shook his head. “That’s insane. Hard to believe we came through it.”

A black tip punctured the surface inside the gate. Electricity fizzed around it. A large black prism smoothly glided through, filling three-quarters of the area.

It continued forward over the trees toward the command center. Charlie took a couple of steps back, maintaining a fixed gaze on the ship. It stopped over an area covered in yellow grass peppered with orange wild-growing root. The croatoans must have used a different version of it on Tredeya. The ones on Earth didn’t spread seeds.

Dust puffed from below the prism and showered the observation window. Through the haze, a graphite ramp, with blue lights running along each side, lowered twenty meters to the ground.

“Do you trust them?” Layla said.

“I’m prepared to trust anyone who’s fighting the croatoans. If they make good on their promise to defend our solar system, I’m all for it.”

“It’s hard to believe this could all finally be over.”

Charlie shrugged. “It ain’t over ’til we get back to Earth.”

The door clicked open behind them and he spun around. Doslin walked toward them. Denver followed with the black prism fastened around his neck.

Charlie attempted to read the expression on his face. Denver looked sheepishly away, which wasn’t a good sign.

“That is your transport back to Earth,” Doslin said. “Terms have been agreed and the scion are content. They are preparing an environment chamber and you need to be ready to board in ten minutes.”

“What’s happening?” Layla said and grabbed Denver’s arm. He stared outside at the scion ship and the top of the crackling gate. “Answer me. What terms did you agree to with them?”

Denver puffed his cheeks and fished a piece of card out of his back pocket. “You two best sit down for what I’m about to tell you.”

“It’s us you’re talking to,” Charlie said and remained standing. Being told to sit down for news was never a good thing. Especially when it involved his son. “Why do I get the feeling there’s a catch to all of this?”

“The agreement benefits your planet,” Doslin said. “Denver can supply the details. I have to go and brief another agent.”

She turned, lifted either side of her peach robe and shuffled out of the room.

Denver sat on the bench. Charlie and Layla both stood over him. He looked up and took a deep breath. “I need to carry out a mission for them to fulfill their agreement.”

“A mission?” Charlie said and felt anger bubble up inside. “What kind of thing are we talking about?

“I need to find a lost human planet for them. Our original one.”

Layla shook her head. “What the hell are you talking about? How do you even begin to attempt that? I don’t—”

Her voice cracked. She bit her finger and bowed her head.

“What kind of shit have they been spinning you? Original one?” Charlie said.

“We’re one of the oldest species in the galaxy,” Denver said in a rational tone. He’d obviously bought into the idea. “When Vingo told us we were spread around the universe, he forgot to mention that we inhabit three hundred and fifty-nine planets. Earth, the one we’re from, is apparently number ninety-seven, according to the Drone.”

“Even if that were true…” Charlie said, although he’d long dropped the notion of seeing anything as farfetched. “Why you, and how are you supposed to help?”

“The drone mentioned something about an algorithm and that I’m human. It didn’t expand beyond that. When I complete the mission, we’ll all be safe and I come home. The scion are providing me with the resources I need.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Layla said. “They could be sending you on an impossible mission. To your death…”

She wiped a tear from her cheek and sniffed. Charlie knew Layla had feelings for Denver, but she broke down quickly. He simmered internally. “I’m coming with you. I’m not allowing you to go on your own.”

Denver sighed and shook his head. “It’s a one-man mission. That’s the deal. Humans created the scion. We’re inextricably linked. Hagellan and a few other croatoans had some artifacts, other parts of information are hidden around the galaxy. They believe the answer they’re looking for is on the first Earth.”

Layla sat next to him and placed her hand on his knee. “You can’t do it. This is crazy!”

“Crazy?” Denver said. “Look around you and tell me what isn’t? By doing this I keep Earth safe. They even think they might find clues in caves below Unity. That’s why Mike agreed to the proposition too. This works out good for all of us.”

“Doesn’t work out good for you,” Charlie said and sat on the other side of him. He understood that Denver agreed to the request in order to keep everyone safe, but they always did things together. “I want to speak to the Drone.”

“Forget it,” Denver said. “I’m happy doing the mission. What use will I be on Earth in peacetime? I spent my whole life fighting aliens. You two know what a settled world looks like. I have no idea and might not even fit in.”

“Why not give it a chance?” Layla said. “I thought we might…”

“Have a future?” Denver said. “As much as I love you…” His cheeks flushed and he gazed at his boots. “My future is elsewhere. I’ve got no intention of failing and I will be back.”

Layla turned away, cupped her face, and sobbed.

Charlie slowly nodded, understanding the motivation and reasoning behind his son’s decision. As much as he didn’t like it, he would’ve done the same thing. Denver returned his gesture of acceptance.

Denver took it on the chin when Charlie decided to take a bomb up to the mother ship. As much as Charlie hated it, he had to afford his son the same latitude. The decision was based on the survival and safety of the remaining humans on Earth.

“You know if you don’t come back, I will personally hunt you down?” Charlie said.

“I’m counting on it,” Denver said and cracked a smile. “I didn’t even explore the possibility of refusing. Doesn’t take a genius to work out what might happen.”

Layla stood and walked away. She drank her cup of water and stared at a row of five prisms that floated down the ramp of the scion ship.

Charlie hadn’t spent half as much time with her as Denver, but he liked Layla. Bonds forged in adversity were often the strongest. He understood her mood and felt the same way internally, but Denver needed support from this point forward, until he headed off on his mission to find the first Earth.

The door on the opposite side of the room opened. Doslin stood in the gap. “Are you ready to go?”

“Never been more ready to get off this shithole,” Charlie said.

“You need to put your suits back on until you reach the prepared area in the ship. The scion will instruct you from there.”

Denver linked his arm with Layla’s, gently encouraged her away from the window, and they all followed Doslin. Although Charlie never said the words out loud, he never expected to reach this moment, whatever the circumstances.

Chapter 39

MIKE AND MAI were interrupted from a quiet cuddle with the cracking of the sky and a rumble that shook the ground, giving Mike a flashback to when those damned croatoans came up from beneath the earth.

At first he thought this was another one of Augustus’ plans. Perhaps he had found another stock of croatoan destroyers still embedded in the planet’s interior. But when a shadow blotted out the sun of their chalet, he grunted. “What the hell is that now?” he said.

Mai unwrapped her arms from him and sat up with a wince. She was still recovering and was under strict orders to take it easy, but then Mike had never seen anyone give Mai an order that she would follow unless it was her idea.

The two of them leaned forward and heaved up from the comfy surface of the sofa and staggered, helping each other’s frail, beat-up bodies to the window.

The glass in the frame rattled as lightning and storm clouds gathered.

A gale blew against the window, bringing with it a shower of rain and dust.

“I don’t bloody believe it,” Mai said, turning to Mike. “After all this time, this struggle, all the victories and sacrifices, we now get hit with the apocalypse.”

“That thing is no group of horsemen,” Mike said.

They shared a smile and turned their attentions backed to the window.

As startling as it was, Mike already recognized the shape as the black sharp corner edged below the thick cloud cover.

“It’s our holographic friends,” Mike said.

“I wasn’t expecting them so quick,” Mai replied. “At least they’re punctual. That’s got to be a good sign, right?”

Mike shrugged. “I’m not so sure, Mussolini apparently was great at making sure the trains ran on time and look what happened there.”

“What is it with evil fascists and punctuality, anyway?” Mai asked.

“Small matters for small minds, my love.”

“Let’s hope this lot have bigger minds than the croatoans and our old friend Augustus.”

“I’m sure they do,” Mike replied. “They hired us, after all. Does that not show impeccable and distinguished taste?”

They both chuckled, mostly with nervous energy, but Mike had always loved Mai for her ability to add levity to almost any situation. She firmly believed that solemnity was a wasted emotion, that it added nothing, served nothing, and sucked one’s life away.

In the darkest of situations, she believed, humor was what would get you through, make sure you didn’t give up, and most important of all, remind you that you’re human and not just a manifestation of your circumstances.

“It’s landing out in the root field,” Mike said as the gigantic black prism, larger than any Egyptian pyramid, descended from the sky. The root field below it didn’t even move as it continued to land. “No thrusters,” he said.

“Must be antigravity tech,” Mai replied, picking up a pair of old binoculars from the table and returning to the window. “It’s an impressive structure all right. It has an intricate texture on its surface that almost repels light, giving it a matte finish. There’s some blue laser-like strips at certain points. Impressive. It’s like a massive scale version of that one you used to speak with Drone 21.”

“At least we know it’s definitely scion,” Mike said.

Outside, the rest of Unity, or at least those that could still walk, had left their houses and other buildings and started to scale the great steps of the basin to get a closer look at the new arrival.

“That’s got to be their ride,” Mai said, referring to Charlie, Denver, and Layla.

“Hopefully. I’d rather see it with my own eyes, though. Are you up for a stroll?”

When Mike turned away from the window, Mai was already hobbling to the door, putting her coat on and reaching for a walking stick Mike had found for her. She reached for the door handle and turned to Mike. “Well? You going to stand there all day, old man?”

With the help of a couple of Unity soldiers, Mike and Mai made it to the top of the basin. The huge scion ship had landed and was now surrounded by the remaining people of Unity. They all fidgeted nervously, waiting…

Even though, through the new council, Mike had explained his conversation with Drone 21, there was naturally a great deal of skepticism and fear. Who could blame them? The past few months had been one long struggle. He understood their concern over what else might be coming for them.

Hell, even as he approached the crowd around the prism ship, he couldn’t be entirely sure. Although his new handler answered most of his questions and seemed open to his inquiries, as well as showing him video footage of his friends, he realized he was dealing with some extremely sophisticated tech and this could all be a trick.

But given the options, what else could they do?

If this scion were as powerful as they seemed and had fixed the gate of their own accord, then it’s not as if those left on Earth would be in position to put up much of a fight.

“Something’s opening,” Mai said, still peering through her binoculars.

The base of the prism, hovering a few meters off the ground, emitted a low rumble. A blue line of laser light flickered once before a large square section on the side facing them slid open to show a nondescript interior of gray and white walls.

Then, backlit by the blue light, three silhouettes approached.

Mike’s heart thudded against his chest. He worried about Mai; would this be too much strain for her after her minor heart attack? He pulled her close to him. Her arm went around his waist and they held each other, silent in anticipation as the three figures approached the edge.

A ramp from beneath the base slid out to connect with the ground before changing shape to create a set of steps. Mike’s eyes grew wide as he watched the metallic surface seem to change shape almost at will.

“Did you see that?” Mike said.

“I’m not blind yet,” Mai replied. “Look, it’s them!”

Mai was right. Now they weren’t backlit by the craft’s interior lights, Mike saw the tired, but undeniable forms of Charlie, Denver, and Layla.

The crowd around them almost didn’t know how to respond.

Charlie stepped forward and put his hand up, hushing the crowd to a silence.

“Hagellan is dead!” he shouted.

The crowd erupted with cheers.

“The croatoans are no longer a threat to Earth!” Charlie added.

The crowd yelled again, clapping and cheering, some crying with relief.

On it went, for at least five minutes, Charlie, Layla, and Denver filling the crowd in on their adventures and who and what the scion were and what their role would be. When they had finished with their brief, Charlie shouted, “Where’s Mike and Mai?”

“Maria?” Denver asked.

“Over here,” Maria yelled from the right edge of the crowd, which split to allow her through. She headed toward Denver and hugged him before Layla joined in a group hug.

Charlie didn’t wait, he just waded through the crowd toward Mike and Mai after someone had turned around to point them out. When he came through, Mai launched on him, grabbing by the shoulders and kissing his face. “You stupid man! Don’t you ever leave us again, you hear?”

“She’s happy you’re back, old friend,” Mike said with a wide grin. Charlie looked awful, though. He seemed to have aged a decade and looked gaunt. There was a shadow behind his eyes that told Mike he had gone through a rough time. He’d no doubt talk about it sometime late at night as they shared a drink. But Mike knew enough not to press him. Charlie wasn’t really the sharing type.

Mike thrust out a hand. “Welcome back, Charlie.”

Charlie shook it enthusiastically before nodding to the miniature prism around his neck. “I see you’ve already got acquainted with our new friends.”

“Aye, if they are friends?” Mike said, quirking an eyebrow.

“I guess that remains to be seen,” Charlie said, “but I think we can trust them… Denver’s… well, he’ll explain everything. Right now, I could murder a cup of root wine.”

Later that evening, after everyone had dispersed back to their homes, the council members of Unity met to discuss the next stage of plans. Mike was beyond curious about the whole situation. Charlie told him the scion would be looking out for Earth. A prism named Drone 21 made plans with Mike to recover some lost artifacts that Hagellan had stashed.

Mike finally felt at ease with the world.

He couldn’t believe what Denver had told him, how the scion were actually a human creation. It blew his mind and reminded him why he became an archaeologist all those years ago. He wanted to find out how humanity came about, and why, if that was a question that had an answer.

With the scion helping, they could perhaps, once and for all, learn each other’s origins and reason for being. He would muse over that question for some time, he knew. Why did the other, far more ancient humans create the scion?

Had they seen into the future somehow? Seen that working together, other humans and the scion could forge an alliance and increase their odds of survival against the multitude of alien species across the universe?

“I’m going tomorrow evening,” Denver said, standing up in the chalet.

“Already?” Maria said. “It’s too soon.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have a choice. I agreed to help and it can’t wait. Besides, the sooner I leave and complete this mission, the sooner I can return. You guys have got so much to do without me. So many new plans. A new start! I wouldn’t even know what to do. I have to do this.”

Both Layla and Maria had tried to change his mind, ask if there was some other way, but there wasn’t. Mike could see it in Denver’s eyes. He didn’t just want to do it for the deal with the scion; he wanted to do it for himself. He needed this. This was who he was.

As they continued to banter back and forth, delaying Denver from getting some well-earned rest, a scratching noise came from the door to the chalet. Mike looked round, a dread settling in his stomach… what the hell was that?

Denver was already on it. He grabbed a rifle from the weapon rack on the wall and pressed his finger to his lip to indicate silence, then stepped toward the door until he stood beside it.

He chambered a round, aimed the weapon, and opened the door.

A sharp bark caught his attention and he immediately aimed the rifle away.

“Pip!” he said, kneeling down as his long-lost dog bounded up to him, wagging her tail and licking his face, all the while shaking and whimpering.

“She’s back!” Mai said.

“I wondered where she’d got to,” Mike added as he stepped over to Denver and made a fuss of the dog.

Denver stood up, lifting the dog to his chest. With a kick, he closed the door and returned to the others.

“I suppose the scion won’t have room for a dog,” he said as Pip went from person to person, sniffing them, her tail constantly wagging. To Mike’s eyes, she looked in good condition. She must have survived all this time in the woods, hunting for rabbits and other small creatures.

Mai looked up to Mike with a smile. “I guess we’re back together after all,” she said.

Charlie broke away from the reunion to join Mike and Mai. “I almost forgot,” he said, bringing out a small satchel that he had brought back with him from Tredeya. “Mike, Mai, since I was on vacation, I thought I should bring you back some souvenirs.”

Mike’s eyes grew wide as Charlie emptied the satchel onto the desk, spilling dozens of trinkets and old items onto the surface, some human, some alien, all of them precious. Mike leaned in, unable to speak as he picked up one object after another.

“I… don’t believe this,” he said. “Some of these things are just myths, thought not to actually exist. They’re… priceless. How?”

Charlie shrugged. “Some rich tredeyan bastard’s curio cabinet. Apparently the tredeyans have a thing for kidnapping and theft. Thought you might get a kick out of them.”

For the next few hours, they discussed the objects, Tredeya, the scion, all the while knowing it would soon be too late for Denver to delay his departure any longer, but Mike just focused on the moment, enjoying having his friends back and in one piece as he pondered on what the future might hold for Denver, and those on Earth.

Whatever it held, Mike knew one thing: he was invigorated unlike any other time in his life as he returned to the role he had before the croatoans arrived: archeologist.

Chapter 40

CHARLIE STOOD in the middle of a root field on the edge of Unity’s basin and shielded his eyes from the setting sun. He left Mike’s chalet early to visit Gregor’s grave and to take a look at the scion ship that would be transporting Denver away.

It appeared much like the fighters that pounded Tredeya. Sleek and black, in the shape of a swallow with circular engines at the back. This kind of technology gave him confidence that one day his son would return.

Denver, Layla, Mike, Mai, Maria and a black prism crossed the field. Pip bounded around them and barked at the scion drone. The drone maintained its steady course next to Mike’s head. They hadn’t stopped talking since meeting and discussing plans around the future development of Earth and the search for artifacts.

The souvenirs from Tredeya reignited Mike’s passion for archeology and he threw his weight behind assisting in the search for scion artifacts stolen by the croatoans.

Charlie scanned the scorch-marked remains of the city and thought about his future role in society. He decided to kick the root habit tomorrow and see out his days in the local militia. If they needed him, he would rise again, but he suspected his fighting days were over.

“We thought we’d lost you,” Denver said.

“Just inspecting your ride,” Charlie said and slapped the side of the ship, although the truth was that he hated long goodbyes.

Denver felt the same, but Charlie knew he couldn’t avoid taking part. Maria and Layla both had feelings for him, but had accepted his decision. Mike and Mai wouldn’t let him go quietly either. They were like his adopted uncle and aunt and fussed over him in the cavern, stuffing gadgets into his pockets and asking to be kept updated. The drone told them to expect no communications until the first Earth was found, as anything before that might compromise the mission.

Pip sprinted over to Charlie. He knelt down and stroked her. She jumped up and enthusiastically licked his face. Denver hugged each person in turn, holding short conversations, promising they hadn’t seen the last of him and he’d be back before they knew it.

Approaching Charlie by the side of the ship’s ramp, Denver extended his hand.

Charlie shook it and they exchanged a firm nod.

Nothing needed to be said. They talked the mission dry during their return from Tredeya. Even Layla accepted it was the right thing to do. Charlie knew Denver would want to board at this point and get on with it. His mind didn’t need to be clouded with emotional statements.

Denver turned and gazed at the surrounding area. Maria and Layla both had tears in their eyes. Mike cuddled Mai and she buried her face in the armpit of his brown and yellow striped sweater.

The ship’s engines rumbled to life, throwing out red heat haze. Denver trudged up the ramp and didn’t look back. The ramp folded into the starboard side of the ship and its solid metal door slid down.

Charlie backed away to join the rest of the group. The ship’s engines tilted down and grew in sound. Sunshine reflected off the dark tinted window in front of the cockpit. The ship thrust into the air and shot forward, banking around Unity in a matter of seconds and heading upward, roaring through the sky.

A chilly wind blew across the field. Everyone silently watched as the engine’s blue glow disappeared, leaving a thin trail of vapor behind.

MIKE AND MAI sat opposite Charlie, Maria, and Layla at Aimee’s dining table. The prism balanced at the far end, emitting a purple cone of light with a holographic face inside.

Charlie lit a root cigar and took a deep drag, enjoying the feeling it gave him for one last time. He puffed a smoke ring into the air, enjoying a feeling of freedom that he hadn’t experienced in thirty years.

Steam drifted from Mike and Mai’s herbal tea. Layla and Maria decided to drown their sorrows with root wine.

“How’s your elbow?” Charlie said to Mike.

“The scion are repairing it tomorrow with nanomachines. They wanted to put me under for the operation, but I insisted on having a numbing injection to watch the process.”

Mai rolled her eyes, raised a hand and gave him a mock slap on his shoulder. After hearing about her poor health, Charlie was pleased to see her about on her feet. They really were the post-apocalyptic odd couple, but Charlie would have them no other way.

“We’re project managing the infrastructure rebuild next week,” Mai said. “The scion are sending down a million worker drones to build wireless electricity, housing, sanitary sewers and networked communications.”

“Don’t forget the technology school,” Mike added. “We’re going to build the best city the world has ever seen and teach others how to replicate it.”

The hologram nodded. “Replication builds strength. We will also attempt to recover old data. This will be mutually beneficial in terms of our quest and your restoration.”

Charlie couldn’t help feeling impressed. Most of the preinvasion data would be useless now. Governments had fallen, armies were destroyed, and the population decimated. Dirty little secrets, old plans, and classified databases were useless to the current world.

Croatoans stripped the planet’s dignity and they had nothing to hide. The scion gave them a chance to increase their standard of living under protection, in exchange for searching for information that had little consequence to the population, as far as he could see.

“Maria and I are continuing with our reintegration work,” Layla said. “There’s thousands of humans who need our help. Mike’s making it a priority to build accommodations to house former captives. The scion are already reconfiguring some of the farms as education centers.”

“Ten are nearly completed,” the hologram said in a neutral voice.

“I’m heading to Freetown tomorrow to oversee it,” Maria said. “They’re giving Khan, Baliska and me a demonstration of how to use the computers.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” Charlie said, taking a drag of his cigar. He hadn’t taken part in the planning since arriving back on Earth, preferring to spend time in Augustus’ old cabin, unwinding and reading through some of the bizarre revisions the old emperor had planned for his new version of history. “You don’t need a grouchy old man like me getting in the way.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” Maria said. “You can’t just disappear into the sunset.”

Mike laughed. “If you think Charlie Jackson will do that, you’ve had too much wine.”

“I’ll still be around. Don’t you worry about that,” Charlie said.

Candlelight glowed against Maria’s smiling face. This was the happiest Charlie had seen her since the harvester liberation over two months ago. She could look forward to living her natural life, free of tyranny. They all could.

The cigar was only half finished, but Charlie had smoked enough. Now the root was nonessential, the sour metallic flavor tasted even more disgusting. He stubbed it out in the chamber’s newly acquired ashtray, carefully making sure none of the hot embers dropped through the eye and mouth holes of the metal mask.

“I need some fresh air,” Charlie said and stretched his arms. “I’ll leave you guys to your planning.”

“Leaving us already?” Mike asked. “We’re talking about vehicles next.”

“I’m sure it’ll be thrilling, but Pip needs a walk.”

Charlie pushed back his chair, waved Pip from her basket, and headed for the exit. The group continued to enthusiastically chat about their plans, but he wanted a few moments alone to think about Denver.

The surviving population was crammed into the structures still left standing. Weak artificial light poured through windows of the wooden houses as Charlie walked to the edge of the city.

He climbed the switchbacks at the end of the basin and overlooked the town, wanting to keep the image in his mind of where they had come from after the new city was established.

Those who were lost over the last three decades needed to be remembered. It would keep everyone’s feet planted firmly on the ground in the face of a new technological revolution. Charlie let out a deep breath when picturing Pippa’s smile after she entered the office thirty years ago, with a blue bead from the Roanoke dig.

A black prism drifted across the star-filled sky—a human creation from centuries ago on another planet, providing protection and advancement for Earth. Denver was probably already aboard, making plans and familiarizing himself with the scion weapons and early stages of the plan.

Charlie’s days of adventure were over. He let out a deep breath, dropped to one knee and put his arm around Pip. He was glad that he played a part in freeing Earth from oppression and could hold his head up high. As far as he was concerned, his job was complete.

It was time for the next generation to take up the mantle.

A shiver of pride ran through Charlie’s body at the thought of Denver and his mission. Together they helped saved the fate of the world. His son would now do it on a universal scale.

Pip whined.

“Don’t worry, girl. He’ll be back. I guarantee it. He’s a Jackson. We always win in the end.”

The End

To be notified of future books, sign-up here:

Newsletter - http://eepurl.com/UtlZD

Thanks for Reading

Thank you for reading the Critical Trilogy. If you would like to be notified of future Wearmouth & Barnes books, you can sign-up to our newsletter below or visit our website for more details.

Website: http://www.vastfrontiersbooks.com

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/UtlZD

Copyright

First Published in 2014–2015 by Vast Frontiers Ltd

Copyright Colin F. Barnes & Darren Wearmouth

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Version 1.1

Content

Darren Wearmouth
Colin F. Barnes
THE CRITICAL TRILOGY

CRITICAL DAWN BOOK 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

CRITICAL PATH BOOK 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

CRITICAL STRIKE BOOK 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Thanks for Reading

Copyright