Finally the battle ended. They stood over the corpses of grays—Marco, Addy, and two marines, one with a missing arm.
"Come on, charge!" Addy shouted, racing deeper into the saucer.
They ran.
As they raced down the corridor, more grays burst out ahead of them. The soldiers fired their guns. Blasts tore through the creatures. Marco took a bolt to the thigh, screamed, and limped onward, firing his railgun, tearing through the enemy. The grays were everywhere. They scuttled along the walls. They leaped down from the ceiling. Their mouths opened to howl, revealing teeth like needles. One gray leaped onto Addy and bit, tearing through her shoulder, and Marco ripped the creature off and riddled it with bullets.
They ran onward, plowing through the enemy until they reached the saucer's bridge.
Two grays stood in the round, dark chamber, working at control panels. A screen revealed a view of the battle outside. Kaji was burning, flailing her last arm. Saucers had attached to the mecha like leeches, and grays were already boarding her.
One of the gray pilots turned away from his control panel. He leaped toward the invaders.
Marco put a bullet through the creature's head.
The second gray froze, hands hovering over his control panel. He hissed, hatred twisting his face.
"I . . . surrender . . ."
Addy raised her gun.
"Wait." Marco pulled her gun down. "We need him alive. If he behaves, at least." He walked toward the gray and pressed the barrel of his gun against the creature's bulbous head. "You'll behave. Take us down to Earth. Now! One wrong move and I spray your brains over the controls."
At the doorway, a marine collapsed, bleeding profusely from the stump of his missing arm. His friend began applying a tourniquet. Addy stood by Marco, bleeding from her shoulder, panting, her eyes still hard, showing no pain. Outside, the battle still raged.
"Now!" Marco shouted, jabbing the gray's head with his barrel.
The creature sneered and began to fly the saucer.
They left their formation of saucers and headed through the swarm toward Earth. The other saucers parted to let them pass.
Behind them, a massive explosion tore through space.
Shrapnel flew.
Fire raged.
Chunks of metal rained down toward Earth. One was Kaji's head.
The great mecha was gone.
Marco stared in horror.
Of two mechas and four hundred marines, they were all that remained: him, Addy, and two other soldiers in a commandeered saucer, one of them gravely wounded.
They were the last hope of humanity.
"What else is new," Marco muttered to himself.
With the mechas destroyed, the battle was dying down. Through the viewport, Marco saw roaming squads of saucers seek out surviving marines. A handful of human soldiers still floated through space in their suits. Marco watched, grimacing, as the lasers took them out. Each death stabbed him. Each death was to give him life.
You will not have died in vain, he swore.
At his side, Addy clenched her fists. Her eyes hardened. Her jaw tightened. She was watching them die.
Some saucers remained around the wreckage of the mechas—at least the parts that had not yet crashed to the planet. But most of the saucers were now flying back to Earth.
"Keep us flying nice and steady, buddy," Marco said, keeping his muzzle on the gray's head. "You're going to take us straight to the pyramid. You just breathe wrong and I blow out your brains. Capiche?"
The gray glared at him, silent.
Addy added her muzzle too, poking the creature's bloated, wrinkled head. "Got it, you ball sack with eyes?"
The gray sneered. A deep, grumbling laughter bubbled up from him.
"So much pain awaits you . . . The Oracle knows you're coming." He coughed a laugh. "I will gladly take you to him. To your eternal misery."
"Less talking, more flying," Marco said. "Go on. Fly!"
They headed down toward Earth, flying among thousands of other saucers. They left behind the wreckage: a few chunks of mechas, hundreds of shattered saucers, and the corpses of marines. On the floor of the commandeered saucer, the marine with the missing arm had passed out. His comrade was still kneeling above him.
Four soldiers against an empire, Marco thought. One of us dying.
Addy placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
"We've faced worse odds," she said with a crooked smile.
He nodded.
We did. And we still won. And I lost nearly all my friends. He looked at Addy. She smiled at him. I can't lose you too.
He returned his gaze to the viewport, watching Earth grow nearer. Soon the dark planet encompassed his entire field of vision. Africa and Europe were closer now, squeezing a canal of polluted water. With the oceans black with soot, Marco could barely distinguish water from land. The smog covered everything. It was a world painted in charcoal and burnt browns. A dead world. A blackened Earth.
And there, in the Middle East—a patch of lights.
A city.
The homeland of the grays.
In its center—the pyramid.
We're close, Marco thought. We're so close. He's down there. The Oracle. The Seer. The Tick-Tock King.
He stared at the city below.
An image flashed through his mind.
A hideous creature, hanging by cables within a ring of crystals. A creature with skin sewn over its empty eye sockets. With a leering, drooling jaw full of fangs. With a hundred claws, reaching out. A creature cackling. Waiting. Whispering.
Marco . . . I see you . . .
He grimaced.
He fell to his knees.
"Poet!" Addy knelt by him and helped him up. "Poet, what's wrong?"
He stood, wobbling, and rubbed his eyes. "Nothing. I . . . I'm fine."
The gray pilot laughed.
Addy spun back toward the gray and jabbed his temple with her barrel. "Shut the fuck up, baldy, and keep flying. Laugh one more time and bullets meet brain."
They flew closer. They dipped into the atmosphere with a rattle and fountain of fire. Dark clouds filled the air. No, not clouds. This was smog. A veil of smoke and foul gasses enveloped Earth. It was like flying over a coal refinery. There was no blue to the sky, no green to the land below. Everywhere was gray and black and rusty brown.
As they were flying down to the city, a monitor on the bridge crackled to life.
Addy and Marco ducked, hiding under a metal slab.
From his hiding place, Marco could see a hideous visage appear on the screen. It was a gray, skin wrinkly and splotchy. A scar ran across the creature's face, digging across one empty eye socket. The gray barked a few words in a guttural language. The saucer's pilot answered, then looked back. He grinned down at Marco and Addy.
"He wants to know why I've left my squadron," the gray hissed. His grin widened, and saliva dripped from his fangs.
"Your squadron was destroyed in the battle," Marco whispered. "You request to land in the city starport."
The gray hissed at Marco, a sound halfway between disdainful sneer and mocking snort. He looked back at the gray on the monitor. He spoke a few words in his harsh tongue. The scarred gray on the monitor answered, voice growing louder, lips peeling back to reveal his teeth.
The pilot turned back toward the crouching Marco and Addy.
"He wants to know why I have a pair of humans visible on my security camera."
Addy fired her railgun.
The bullet tore through the pilot's head and shattered the monitor. The scarred gray vanished in a fountain of shards.
"Shit pilot anyway," Addy said. "He didn't offer us peanuts."
Marco cursed and leaped forward. The saucer tilted, then began to plunge downward. Marco shoved the dead pilot out of his seat and grabbed the controls.
Below them, several saucers were soaring toward them, lights flashing.
"Addy, the cannons!" he shouted.
"Where?" sh
e cried.
He pointed. "There! Those controls!"
Addy leaped into a seat and hit buttons. Laser blasts flew out from the saucer's cannons, slamming into the ships ahead.
The ships fired back.
Blasts hit their saucer.
They swerved, careened, and tumbled down through the air.
"Poet, damn it, fly straight!" Addy shouted.
"I'm trying! Keep firing!"
They spun madly through the sky. The other saucers circled around them, vanishing and reappearing through the smog. Sirens blared. More blasts hit them. They jolted, and cracks raced across the bridge. Fire burned in the corridor behind them.
"Poet!"
He yanked the yoke with all his strength. He managed to steady their flight. He could no longer see the city below. They shot forth. He didn't know which direction they were moving. The smog obscured everything.
An enemy saucer appeared out of the smog. Addy fired, scoring a direct hit. The shuttle exploded, and they shot through the shrapnel. But more saucers were still chasing them. Another blast hit them. They tumbled downward. Marco yanked on the controls. He managed to steady their flight. They dipped out from smog and saw mountains dangerously close below.
"Poet, there are still five saucers behind us!" Addy shouted.
"Keep fir—"
Blasts hit them.
They dipped.
They stormed toward a mountaintop, spewing smoke. Addy screamed. Marco pulled the controls, and they veered to the left. They skimmed the mountainside. Stones cascaded. The side of their saucer tore open, and foul air streamed into the ship. They coughed.
"Poet, fly us higher! Fly! Into the smog!"
She was firing madly. She took out another saucer. More kept pursuing.
Marco stared ahead, sneering, struggling to gain altitude. He managed to rise, to reach toward the smoggy clouds.
Two saucers emerged from the smoke.
Lasers blasted.
The bridge shattered. Fires blazed. The ceiling tore open, and smoke filled the commandeered saucer.
They dived down, wreathed in smoke.
Marco and Addy screamed.
They glanced off one saucer, careened, and hit a mountainside. They tumbled downward. Their engines blazed.
"Addy, down!"
He grabbed her. They stormed toward a valley. They flattened themselves on the floor, shut the visors on their helmets, and covered their heads. Marco had a sudden vision of them as children, huddling in a bomb shelter, gas masks on.
They hit the ground.
The cosmos itself seemed to shatter.
Every shard of Marco's being screamed with pain.
Fire washed over him.
Metal beams crashed onto him.
In the devastation, he reached out and gripped Addy's hand.
He was a child in the snow, his mother dead.
He was a youth growing up in the war, hiding in bomb shelters.
He was soldier, huddling in a tent, a helmet wobbling on his head, a rifle slung across his back, just a kid, his uniform too large, the war too big.
He was languishing in Haven, rotting away in his cell.
He lay in devastation. Maybe dying. Maybe already dead.
But she was with him.
As always—through all his despair, through darkness and light, through fire and rain, she was there. Addy.
And in the ruin of this saucer in a nightmarish future, her hand tightened around his.
Addy. She was alive.
Marco grimaced and pushed against the rubble trapping him. It weighed him down. He groaned and shoved with all his might, knocking back a beam and section of bulkhead. His spacesuit was armored, built to withstand bullets. Without it, he would have been a red smear on the floor.
He pulled wreckage off Addy. She lay on the floor, moaning.
"Ugh, Poet, I feel like an elephant fell on me."
"Now you know how I always feel when you sit on my lap," Marco said.
He helped her to her feet. They stood inside the saucer's smashed bridge. Electrical cables sputtered. Scattered fires burned. Through the shattered roof they could see the smoggy sky.
They checked on the two marines. Both lay dead. The marine with the missing arm had died from blood loss, it seemed. His friend lay with a metal rod piercing his visor and skull.
"Fallen warriors," Addy said and lowered her head. "Heroes."
Marco lowered his head too. For a moment they both stood in silence.
Guttural voices interrupted their silence.
Marco spun around, then ducked and pulled Addy down.
Through the cracked hull, they could see them. Grays were walking across the landscape toward them.
Marco gestured silently. He and Addy crept toward the dead marines, stripped them of ammo and grenades, then pulled the dead bodies toward the saucer's smashed controls. The grays were speaking louder now, moving closer.
Marco and Addy slunk out of the smashed cockpit. They walked at a crouch. The land was dark, and they wore black, and they had trained for years to move in silence. They made their way across a rocky landscape. They still wore their visors down, breathing through their oxygen tanks, not daring to breathe this smoky air.
They found a boulder in the shadows. They knelt behind it and gazed back at the crashed saucer.
Marco was shocked by the damage. There was barely anything left, just a pile of debris. His and Addy's graphene spacesuits were wonders of technology.
A group of grays reached the smashed saucer. Even in the darkness, they needed no flashlights. With their large eyes, even these shadows probably seemed as bright as day to them.
The grays spent a while in the wreckage, lifting chunks of metal, poking, prodding. When they found the two dead marines, they cackled and spoke gruffly in their language. One gray tore the leg off a soldier. The others leaned in, ripped into the marines' torsos, and pulled out the organs. And they began to feed.
"Sick fucks," Addy whispered. She raised her railgun.
Marco hushed her and pulled her gun down. They crouched lower behind the boulder, hiding. But they could still hear the grays eating—crunching, chewing, slurping.
"They're cannibals," Addy whispered.
Marco shook his head. "We're just animals to them. Keep quiet."
They waited behind the boulder until the sounds of feasting ended. Thankfully the ground here was solid stone; they had left no footprints. When Marco glanced around the boulder again, he saw the grays departing.
"They'll be back soon with a salvage crew, I reckon," Marco whispered. "We better get far from this wreck."
"How far are we from the city, do you reckon?" She poked him in the ribs. "Cowboy."
He gazed back at the wreckage. He sighed. "We were flying fast. And we were high in the atmosphere, on the edge of space, when they chased us off course. Addy, we could be hundreds of kilometers away from the pyramid."
Her mouth dropped open. "Fuck me. Hundreds of kilometers off course?" She looked around her. "Are you telling me we have to walk hundreds of kilometers? With no food or water? That could take . . ."
"In this terrain?" Marco sighed. "Weeks."
She clutched her head with both hands. "This is fucked, Poet. This is fucked! We'll die of dehydration or hunger before we reach the pyramid. And God knows how many grays are in our way."
Marco shrugged. "Probably not many. After all, it's hundreds of kilometers of desolate wasteland, bereft of all sustenance or hope, where none could expect to survive. We're lucky."
"You're lucky I don't pound you in the face," Addy muttered. "All right! Fuck it. Come on. Let's walk. When I get hungry, if I can't find a Hot Dog Shack, I'm eating you."
It seemed hopeless. It seemed like a slow death. Perhaps it would be more merciful to place their guns to their heads and pull the triggers.
But they had always lived on the edge of hopelessness. They had always lived in despair.
They walked across the badlands und
er a sky of smog, leaving the wreckage behind. Ahead, the desolation spread to the horizon.
CHAPTER TEN
Lailani stood in the ruins of an ancient church, shaving her head.
Other soldiers filled the church, this shell of old bricks in Jerusalem. They cleaned their guns, climbed crumbling stairs to the belfry, slept in corners, ate battle rations, prepared to kill, waited to die. Lailani wore secondhand battle fatigues, the olive-green fabric frayed at the hems. She stood in front of a dented bronze mirror. She ran the electric razor over her head, and her black locks fell around her boots.
When finally her work was done, she spent a moment gazing at herself in the mirror. She was going to turn thirty in only a few days, but she still looked like a teenager. She looked like the old Lailani. The girl who had joined the Human Defense Force at eighteen, scars on her wrists. That little girl, four foot ten and full of piss and vinegar, eager to slay the scum. Ahead in the mirror, that girl stared back. War paint on her cheeks. Her almond-shaped eyes hard. Her hair buzzed down to stubble. Among the smallest soldiers in the army, not even a hundred pounds, but fierce. Always fierce.
And yet . . . No.
She was not the same girl.
Tattoos of her favorite flowers now covered her scars, softening her. She wore new insignia: three brass circles on each shoulder, denoting her a captain, a leader, no longer a mere private.
And her eyes—yes, they were different too. Still hard. Still fierce. But there was new wisdom to them. New ghosts.
And new softness.
Here was no longer the suicidal girl who had known nothing but the shantytown. Here was a woman who had loved and lost. Who had made dear friends. Who loved so much. At eighteen, she had wanted to die in battle, a glorious suicide. She had hated life. Now, nearly thirty, she loved life and loved humanity so much her heart felt full to bursting.
"Mistress, why are you crying?"
HOBBS moved through the church toward her. His footsteps thundered, and his metal body clanked. The robot stood over seven feet tall, dwarfing even the mightiest human soldier. The others moved back before him, gazing up and muttering about the metal beast. Following the robot loped Epimetheus, Lailani's loyal Doberman. The dog too was imposing; he was larger than Lailani, and his muscles rippled, and his jaws looked like they could rip off a man's arm. Yet Lailani knew that both HOBBS and Epimetheus were gentle giants—gentle, at least, among those they loved.
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