“Back us off, Dorian. I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing when it blows.”
“Yes, Commander.” My mate’s voice was all business, but the collar let me know the truth. He was relieved to be taking me farther away from danger. We drifted back, Dorian using the ship’s thrusters to push us gently away from the net without triggering any possible detection systems.
But we weren’t out of the proverbial woods yet, not even close.
Bruvan and his team made it to their shuttle, and he gave Izak orders to get them back to a safe distance.
They had just broken away from the net as we watched when the first ion blast hit the other shuttle in its right rear engine. Above us, like a giant wall of awakening monsters, the network of mines appeared out of nowhere, abandoning their cloaking to attack the small ship. The network of mines didn’t explode, but fired massive ion cannons the size of our freighters.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“Get out of there, Izak!” Dorian yelled, but it was too late. A second blast hit their left engine shell. Then a third struck their hull.
The main communication line opened and Commander Karter’s voice roared through the speaker in my helmet. “Get back here. Now. We’re under attack from the rear. A full armada of Hive vessels. All ships return to defend the fleet.”
“By the gods, they’ve got us cornered.” Dorian turned in the pilot’s chair to look at me. “We’re trapped. The entire battlegroup is trapped.”
“Seth’s out there somewhere,” I said aloud, more to myself than anyone else. Of course, he was out there. Everyone in the battlegroup was out there. And would die.
Angh leaned forward, over my shoulder, watching as Izak’s shuttle spun out of control away from the net, back toward the fleet. “An armada. We’ll never survive that many ships. They’ll completely destroy us all.”
“No, they won’t.” I knew it with a certainty that made my teeth ache with cold. “They don’t want to destroy us.” The Hive had no intention of destroying anything. They wanted Drones. More Soldiers. More organic material to integrate into their system. They were like cannibals, and they never got full.
“No!” Angh’s roar was deafening in the small space, and I stood, looking at him, waiting for him to calm down. I knew what we had to do. I could feel it in my bones.
“You done, warlord?”
Dorian’s head snapped to me, suspicion and anger fighting a war within him. I had no doubt he was confused by my calm, the certainty I felt. But if anyone on this ship understood what I needed to do, it would be the beast in front of me. He could hear them, too.
All four warriors turned their complete attention on me but I didn’t panic. It was like an out-of-body experience. I felt…nothing.
“Warlord Anghar and I are going to put on external armor and slip through that net to the other side. The mines are placed at intervals. He and I can hear their communication links, so they should be easy to avoid.” I looked up at Angh, who listened intently, his huge eyes blinking slowly as he registered what I was saying. “Once we are on the other side, we’ll track down the master control node and approach it using the jet pods.”
“Destroy their mother,” said Angh. He was already reaching for the special armor attachments that would allow us to go outside the shuttle, into the cold blackness of empty space.
“We’ll load up with explosives, track the motherboard controlling the entire net, and blow it up. Once the net goes down, Commander Karter can escape the Hive attack with the rest of the battlegroup.”
“You don’t know where this mother control pod is,” said one of the Prillon warriors. I hadn’t learned his named, or his friend’s. “If you wander too far on the other side of the net, or fail to take it down, we won’t be able to reach you.”
The other Prillon looked at Angh, then held my gaze. “If you are trapped on the other side, the fuel pods will not be enough to get you back to the ship.”
Every word they said was true, but this had to be done. We couldn’t lose the entire battlegroup. All those people. Five thousand of them. And not just warriors, but kids. I looked up at the beast. “That a problem for you, Angh?”
He held my gaze. We both knew what was at stake. “No, my lady. It is not.”
I turned to Dorian before he could explode with the emotions I felt building inside him. “No one else can do this, Dorian. We’re the only ones who can hear it. It’s going to be invisible, shielded, just like the others were. If we don’t find it and destroy it, the entire battlegroup will be taken. Integrated. Even the children. This entire sector will fall. We protect six planets, Dorian. Billions of lives. We have to try.”
Dorian didn’t argue, simply pulled me into his arms and squeezed. “You better come back to me, mate.”
“I will.” I had to. It was possible I already carried a child, and that child would not be born into the Hive. Integrated from birth. The baby’s fragile mind and body destroyed.
I’d rather die.
The Prillon warriors stepped back and to the side so Angh and I could reach the special armor we needed to propel ourselves through space.
We suited up as fast as we could, the warriors each checking and double checking our suits for us as we slipped into them for this battle.
Dorian handed Angh a bag full of explosives.
“I need one, too. Just in case.”
Behind me, a Prillon warrior handed me a similar bag. I groaned as I lifted the straps over my shoulders. It had to weigh at least sixty pounds. But once we were drifting in space, weight would mean nothing.
“Ready?” Dorian shouted from the pilot’s seat.
“Ready,” I shouted back. Angh and I stepped back into the small decompression area at the rear of the ship. We had to stand close, the space was small. The big warlord’s hand reached for a heavy line about six feet long and pulled it from the wall to hook us together at the waist. We might drift, but we’d do it together.
The door slid into place, separating us from the rest of the shuttle. I reached up and placed my palm flat on the glass in front of us. Dorian lifted his hand to mine on the other side of the panel.
“I love you, Dorian.”
The words were the last I said before the rear of the craft opened and Angh and I were ejected into deep space.
Chapter 13
Seth
* * *
“ReCon 3, come in. This is the Karter.”
I leaned over my pilot’s shoulder as he pressed the communication switch. “ReCon 3. Mills here.”
“Captain, this is the Karter. We are under attack. The battlegroup is trapped between the net and a Hive armada. Your orders are to rescue the I.C. team from shuttle 547 and return to the Karter immediately for battle orders.”
“Fuck me.” Trinity stood to my right. Jack behind her.
“An armada? How many Hive ships is that?” Jack asked.
“Too fucking many. Get that I.C. team back here. Karter out.”
The line went dead and the shock of our situation moved through my team like a ripple over a still pond. These were battle-hardened troops. Experienced, both on Earth and out here in space. We’d never even heard of a Hive attack of this scale.
“Well, let’s go rescue the spooks and get our asses back to the Karter, people.” I leaned down and patted my pilot on the shoulder. “What do we have on the scanners?”
“Two stealth class shuttles. 546 has lost both engines and is drifting.”
“Lost both engines? How the hell did that happen?” I peered at the screen and identified the small ship. Sure enough, the back end of the shuttle looked like it had been the main course at a charcoal bar-b-que.
“That looks like ion cannon fire,” Trinity said.
“Yeah, but from where?” Jack asked.
There was nothing in front of us but empty space, but we’d all heard, in our briefing before takeoff about the invisible net, about the freighter that blew up. So I knew something was out there. I�
�d never felt like space had a personality or presence of its own. It always felt empty to me. Like…nothing. But now, staring out into the darkness, I would swear I felt something more. Menace.
“Get some grappling hooks onto that shuttle and let’s pull her in. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” I lifted my head and tilted my chin to the side so my whole team would hear. “Helmets on, people. Full lock. We could lose pressure at any time.”
I pulled my helmet on my head and made sure the locks were airtight, the hissing sound of the helmet seal reassuring as something caught my attention floating across the screen. I pointed. “What is that?”
The pilot messed with his controls, but the co-pilot answered. “That’s shuttle 539. Stealth model, sir. Her engines are operating at full capacity.”
Chills raced over my flesh as we got closer until suddenly, Dorian’s emotions flooded me, nearly bringing me to my knees. Dorian was on this ship. And he was holding on by a thread. Something was very, very wrong. “Hail that shuttle. Now.”
The pilot did so, and sure enough, Dorian’s voice answered the call. I didn’t bother with formalities. The emotions bombarding me told me too much already.
“Where is she, Dorian? What’s wrong?”
Dorian quickly recapped the mission, the argument between our mate and Commander Bruvan, Bruvan’s decision to blow up one of the hubs of the net, and the fact that my mate was, at this very moment, strapped to an Atlan and floating in space on the other side of that net with no way back but the fuel canisters strapped to her back.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. How could you let her go?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. He’d had no choice. Neither of us did. She was a commander. A warrior. We either loved her the way she was, or we walked away.
And that was not happening.
“Forget that, Dorian. I know you had no choice.”
Dorian’s chuckle was reassuring, but held no mirth. “You’re right about that. Just like you have to go save Izak and everyone else on that shuttle and leave Chloe to me.”
I wanted to leave Bruvan to rot, but that wasn’t an option either. And Izak was a damn fine pilot. A good warrior. I had to go. “Damn it. I want constant reports, Dorian.”
He understood. I knew he did, because the concern for our mate flooded both of us at the moment. And immediately after that emotional tidal wave passed, both of us hardened our resolve. Duty. We would do what we had to. For Chloe. For everyone. We were soldiers and we had a job to do.
“You know what I know, Seth. After you connect to the other shuttle, you might want to keep your ReCon team close for a couple extra minutes. In case we have to go after her.”
“Copy that.” The pilot closed the comm and I turned to my team. “Let’s go save the asshole who put my mate’s life in danger.”
Trinity grinned at me. “You thinking it’s time for another demotion, Captain?” She referred to the last time I’d had a problem with another ReCon captain’s orders. That jerk from Earth had cost me two men and wrecked my ship, all because he refused to break off pursuit of a Hive Scout vessel. And that after we’d just saved his ass from an Integration team. He’d been hours away from being one of the Hive himself.
I understood his rage at the time. But when he took command of my ship and got us all into a battle we couldn’t win? Well, my fist found his nose when we made it back alive. After that punch, I’d been a lieutenant for about three months. But his nose was still crooked and he couldn’t look me in the eye.
Totally worth it.
“Absolutely.” I grinned back.
Chloe
* * *
Space was cold. That was my main thought as Angh and I drifted closer and closer to the buzzing network of explosives trapping our people for the Hive attack. Not just cold, bone numbing, silent cold. Like you were lost. Nowhere. Utterly and completely alone.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, Dorian’s resolve flooded me through the collar and I knew I wasn’t really alone and never would be again. I had my mates now. They were connected to me. They were mine. And if I ever wanted to see them again, feel their touch, kiss them…well, I had to live. Which meant I had to stop the freak-out and focus on what I was doing.
Angh tugged on the line connecting us until we faced each other and he wrapped his arms around me. “We have to be small.”
“I understand.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, or as much of it as I could, and held on. It wasn’t intimate in the traditional sense, not with enough armor and explosives between us to blow up a small moon, but it was intimate in another way.
We could both hear the mother calling, the nexus of the net, that thing which was connected to the Hive mind. We were, in a way, one with the Hive. And in that, we understood each other, too.
“We’re close to the net. Don’t move,” Angh instructed as he used his fuel pods to navigate us through the space between two Hive mines. It hummed around us as we drifted by, crackling with energy like the sparks of static I used to get when I forgot fabric softener and had to pull my fuzzy sweaters out of the dryer.
Except I knew it wasn’t static cling, and if it zapped us, we’d be dead.
The gap between Hive mines was almost like floating through a short tunnel. Soon, we emerged on the other side, the hum of the net much quieter, but the pull of the master control hub loud. Too loud. It was everywhere. And nowhere.
Angh released me when we were clear and we drifted, side by side, both of us scanning the area, looking for our target.
“I don’t see anything. Do you?” I asked.
“No, but I can feel it.”
“Me too.” Our communication seemed to be disabled on this side of the net. I could no longer hear any chatter between Dorian and the other ships. It was just me and the beast. “Let’s keep drifting for a few minutes. Try to listen.”
His grunt of agreement was enough and we floated farther away from the shuttle, from the net, from the battle taking place behind us. The wall of Hive mines seemed to mute it all. I could see flashes of light, explosions and ion blasters firing, but it was all behind a haze.
I was about to suggest we go back when I heard it, the low-level thrum I’d heard before. I twisted and yanked on the line connecting me to Angh. “There. Did you hear that?”
“Yes. It is just ahead of us.”
He was right. I could feel it, too.
As if summoned, suddenly it was there. Black as tar and shaped like a strange oblong egg at least ten times the size of our shuttle, the Hive master control hub floated like a ghost in the darkness.
It was completely smooth. No nooks or crannies. No handles or doors or exhaust pipes. It was level and even as black marble. “Angh, did we bring enough…stuff?” I didn’t want to use the word explosive just in case the Hive was somehow listening.
“I do not know, my lady.” We exchanged a look and moved closer to the object. I was very sure the thing was unmanned. This was an automated system, an artificial intelligence controlled remotely by the Hive. God only knew how long this thing had been out here. Days? Months? Years?
When we were close enough to touch it, I reached into my bag and pulled out the first set of explosives, quickly attaching it to the side. They’d all been set for five minutes. When we placed the last one, or hit the main switch, the countdown would begin.
Still connected, we floated along the outside of the thing, making sure to place explosives everywhere we could reach. I ignored the battle I knew raged behind us. If we didn’t take this thing down, we wouldn’t just lose a few fighters and freighters, we’d lose everyone.
We’d completed a circle around the object and stopped at its apex where Angh noticed the first visible difference in the smooth exterior. He pointed to a hub that looked like a communication antenna, crystal and silver, the buzzing in my head intensified as we drew closer. “I shall place my last piece there.”
I nodded and double-checked my bag. Empty. “Okay. I’m out.”
We drifted c
loser. I bobbed around like a kite in the wind at the end of the connection as Angh used his fuel pod to pull us both toward the top of the orb. He reached into his back, drew out the final explosive, and attached it to ship, just below the crystal protruding from the tip. I shuddered with relief as the explosive locked on and a light in my helmet went red, indicating the countdown had begun.
Angh’s smile looked more like a snarl as he lifted his hands from the orb and braced his legs beneath him to push us both away.
A jolt of blue lightning rose from the floating Hive hub, up his legs, encompassing his entire body. He looked like Frankenstein’s Monster being brought to life.
“Angh!” I yanked on the connection between us, igniting my jet pod to separate him from the orb, pulling him behind me, dead weight, as we moved farther away. I didn’t care what direction we were going, only that we were getting away from the huge-ass Hive control center.
And the massive number of explosives that were going to go off in a matter of minutes.
“Angh. Can you hear me?” My heart pounded so loudly in my ears I nearly missed his soft moan. “Angh. Wake up. Warlord, shake it off. We have to get out of here.”
His hands moved and I sighed with relief. To my surprise, he unhooked me from the cord that connected us and pushed me away from him, back toward the net, and our ship. “Go, my lady. Get out of here.”
“No. I’m not leaving you.”
His voice sounded tired. “That blue light. It did something. My fuel pods are almost empty. I can’t make it back. But you can. Go. Go now. Go to your mates. I am nothing. Leave me.”
“No. God dammit, Angh. You are not going all noble on me.” But it wasn’t completely noble. He was right. The blast from the Hive orb had fried his fuel pods, and we were a long, long way from the shuttle. I might be able to make it back on my own. But dragging a beast? I wasn’t sure.
“Go. Return to your mates.”
“No.” I got closer and he shoved at me with his arms, trying to force me to abandon him. “God dammit, Angh. Hold still. I’m not leaving you, and that’s an order.”
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