Yet like that buffalo charging through bees, they got stung.
The scavenger ships, winged and beaked like vultures, attacked from all sides. Their metallic landing gear, extending like talons, slammed into the Minotaur's hull. Steel beaks bit them, bending, twisting, sawing through the carrier. Alarms blared and the ship rattled madly as they charged forth.
"We're losing air pressure on deck 4A!" an officer shouted.
"Seal it off!" Petty said. "Keep moving forward." He narrowed his eyes, staring ahead. "We're almost there."
The starship graveyard sprawled ahead. Petty could see the massive vessels—some larger even than the Minotaur—floating in the darkness. A handful of salvage shuttles, protected by the Minotaur's cannons and the fighting Firebirds, managed to reach one dead warship. They attached to it like barnacles, and technicians emerged in spacesuits, clung to the dead hull, and—
A harpy ship stormed forth and slammed into the human technicians, crushing them against the larger, listing vessel.
Petty clenched his fists. Only a handful of salvage shuttles still remained. If they couldn't get to those azoth crystals . . .
"All Firebirds, move to fly around the dead warships," Petty commanded. "Keep those harpies off our technicians! We must—"
The bridge jolted so madly Petty swayed and nearly fell.
Smoke billowed.
Alarms shrieked.
"Sir, deck 15A is breached!" an officer cried. "We're being boarded!"
"Seal it off!" Petty barked.
"Sealed, sir, but it's too late. I'm getting reports of enemy combatants already in decks 15B, 15C, 15D . . ."
Petty grunted. Deck 15D was directly below the bridge.
He could hear them. Through the floor. Monstrous screams. Humans shouting. Guns blazing.
Petty turned toward his android. "Osiris, you have the bridge. Security, with me."
As he marched off the bridge, Petty drew his pistol. Soldiers were racing down the corridor. The sounds grew louder. Gunfire rang and creatures shrieked. Petty walked down a staircase, aiming his gun ahead. His security officers walked behind him.
He stepped onto deck 15D to find human corpses—what remained of them, at least—smeared across the floor and walls.
The harpies were here, and they were feasting.
They were ugly bastards. Petty hadn't seen them in years, not since the Scum War. They hadn't grown any prettier. The harpies weren't much larger than humans, but their legs ended with talons large enough to engulf a bulldog. Their brown wings dripped oil, and scales coated their torsos. Worst of all were their faces: bloated, veined, and oozing from open sores. Their jaws were powerful, built to rip open corpses and feast on the rotting innards. Their bulging white eyes blazed with fury. The creatures were intelligent enough to cobble together starships using stolen tech, but they had never developed a language. They screeched wordlessly at Petty, infuriated that he should disturb their meal.
"God, the stench of them," muttered one of Petty's soldiers.
Petty had smelled them years ago and had never forgotten it. Harpies made corpses smell like rose gardens.
The harpies were scavengers, not hunters, and they tended to shy away from battles, preferring to arrive only after the violence had ended. But disturb their meal and they would fight with a fury few in the galaxy could rival.
The creatures lunged themselves at Petty and his men, stretching out those massive talons, their wings beating and scattering droplets of oil.
Petty and his men opened fire.
You couldn't open fire on most modern starfighter carriers, not without piercing the hull. But the Minotaur had been built with hostile boarders in mind. Her bulkheads were designed not only to withstand bullets but to capture them, preventing shards from ricocheting and killing your comrades. Petty and his soldiers let rip. Their bullets plowed into the harpies, tearing through scaly bodies, feathered wings, and bloated faces.
Several harpies fell dead, leaking black blood. Others flew over their fallen comrades, withstanding the hailstorm of bullets, and slammed into the humans.
Talons ripped one man's face in half. Another harpy disemboweled a soldier, cackling as the organs spilled. One of the aliens crashed into Petty, wings flapping madly. The beak snapped in a fury. Petty gripped the creature's neck, crushing its windpipe, struggling to shove it away. He tried to fire with his other hand, but his pistol was out of bullets. Even in his sixties, Petty was still strong. But this beast outweighed him, and its beak kept snapping, moving closer and closer with every heartbeat.
And his heart was pounding now. Aching. A heart weakened by the attack two years ago. Sweat drenched Petty. The harpy managed to move its beak closer, slicing through Petty's uniform, through the skin on his shoulder.
Pain pounding through him, Petty swung his gun. He pistol-whipped the harpy, and the creature squealed. Petty kicked it back, grabbed another magazine, and slammed it into his gun.
The harpy leaped back toward him.
Petty's bullet found the back of its throat.
The alien crashed into him, dead, and Petty shoved the creature off with a grunt.
Around him, his fellow soldiers fired more bullets, killing the last of the invaders. Blood, guts, and corpses filled the deck.
Petty took a step, grunted, and gripped his chest.
A grimace twisted his face.
A young soldier raced toward him. "Sir, are you—"
"I'm fine." Petty waved the man off. "Return to your station."
Bleeding from his shoulder, his heart beating against his ribs, Petty made his way back to the bridge. His officers gasped to see their commander coated in both red and black blood.
"Sir, do you need a med—" Osiris began.
"Status!" Petty barked.
"The harpies are falling back, sir," said the android. "Our Firebirds are figuring out their flight patterns and giving them a pounding. The scavengers are scattering, sir. Should we give chase?"
Petty shook his head. "No. Let the bastards run. How many salvage crews remain?"
"Fifteen salvage shuttles with full crews aboard, sir."
Petty grunted and stared out the viewport. His heart sank. The enemy was retreating, but the human fleet had suffered horrible losses. Dozens of dead Firebirds had joined the starship graveyard. Dammit! Petty needed them. His fleet had already been reduced to a mere handful, and now—
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
"We still have Firebirds who need azoth crystals," he said. "Get the salvage crews working around the clock. Get me those crystals! Install them in every Firebird that can still fly. We have no more than twenty-four hours here, then we leave. I want full patrols as we work, with our current warp engines primed and ready to engage within an instant. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!" Osiris said.
Petty all but crashed into the commander's seat. His legs ached, his heart still pounded, and his shoulder kept bleeding. He still hadn't caught his breath.
I'm too old for this, he thought.
As it turned out, they had only nine hours.
After nine hours, with a hundred and three azoth crystals salvaged, the alarms blared again.
"Ravagers coming in fast!" shouted his communication officer. "ETA six minutes!"
Petty leaped to his feet. "All salvage crews, back into your shuttles! Gather around the warships! No time to dock. All Firebirds, warp formation—now!"
The smaller vessels raced through space, not even bothering to land in the hangars, just getting close enough to get sucked into a warp bubble.
With seven seconds to spare, the human fleet engaged their warp engines.
They flew through curved spacetime, traveling millions of kilometers per second.
A hundred and three azoth crystals. Crystals to let Firebirds curve spacetime, to destroy ravagers. Petty took a raspy breath. It better be enough for Mars.
As a medic stitched up his shoulder, Petty gazed out the porthole.
They emerged from warped space beyond the heliosphere, hiding in the darkness from the enemy fleet. Here they could lick their wounds, install the crystals, and prepare to fight again.
Fifty thousand souls on Mars, Petty thought. Fifty thousand we can still save.
He knew he was running out of time. If he survived Mars, President Katson would insist they flee across the galaxy, start the human species from scratch on some distant world beyond the marauders' grip. But Petty still hoped, dreamed, prayed.
"Bring back that Ghost Fleet, friends." He placed his hand on the porthole. "Bring me back ten thousand alien starships, and we'll fight together." He pulled his hand back and formed a fist. "And we will win."
CHAPTER FIVE
The forest was cold and shadowy and full of whispers.
Addy walked silently, crossbow in hand, following the hart's trail. She had been tracking the deer for hours now, moving farther and farther from her camp, crossing forested hills and icy streams. Her prey was growing weary, slowing down, his trail easy to track in the snow, leading Addy through the wild. For so long, she had been hunted. Now she was the huntress, hungry, relentless, a predator of the forest.
It was a vast wilderness, lush with life even in winter. Here was the last, the largest true wilderness on the continent. Even before the scum invasion almost sixty years ago, few humans had ever ventured this far north. Even back then, Canada's population had just huddled along the border, only a few adventurers daring to explore the vastness of their northern hinterlands.
Now, with towns and cities in ruins across the globe, it was here in the north, here in this tangled wilderness, that Addy and her fellow rebels had found freedom.
"Ten thousand warriors," she whispered. "Armed. Tough. Survivors. Ten thousand scattered across hundreds of camps. The last free humans."
She had left the Ark last month, feeling too trapped in its darkness, a prisoner between the rusty walls. Here, up north, there was space for her to breathe. There was room for hundreds of bases, some housing only ten rebels, some over a hundred. Some with mothers and children and elders. Others mostly soldiers. Caves. Tents. Bunkers. They had no single point of failure, no single headquarters the marauders could destroy. They were dispersed across the wilderness. While the rest of their race cried out in agony, trapped in the slaughterhouses, here the last free humans hunted, fished, survived . . . and planned their vengeance.
There!
Addy saw movement ahead.
It was hard to be sure. In this thick forest, even with the leaves fallen, an antler looked like a branch, a hoof like a root, a patch of fur like a pile of dry leaves. Addy stood behind an oak, then peered around the trunk, eyes narrowed, toward a cluster of icy maples.
She waited, still.
The tracks stretched through the snow. The animal did not move again. The buck was tired from the hunt, from his hunger. He was slowing down, making mistakes.
Addy turned around the oak slowly, crossbow held before her.
She took a step.
The buck bolted out from the maples. He raced across a ridge, moving between birch saplings toward the safety of a copse of pines, their leaves still thick and green.
Addy loosed a quarrel.
She missed.
With a curse, she ran onto the ridge. She saw the animal making to the pines. Within seconds, he would disappear among them.
She loaded another arrow.
The buck vanished between the branches.
Addy fired again.
From behind the trees, she heard a cry—the animal hit. She heard a thump—the deer falling.
Addy licked her lips. "Dinner."
She took no delight in killing animals. She had gone hunting with Jethro sometimes in her youth, and he had taught her to respect her prey, to hunt for food, never for pleasure. Tonight this deer would feed her, Jethro, Steve, and the others who shared their cave.
A crackling sounded among the pines ahead. The branches creaked. The deer was probably still alive, bleeding out. He would not get far. Addy advanced toward the pines, prepared to deliver the killing shot, when—
She gasped.
The severed head of the deer, its skull sliced open and the brain removed, flew toward her.
An instant later, a marauder burst out from the trees, shattering branches.
Addy stumbled backward, heart thrashing. The massive alien leaped toward her, claws lashing, jaws snapping, the deer crushed between its teeth. Addy shouted, scrambled to load another quarrel, but was too slow.
She fell into the snow and rolled. The claws slammed down, slicing her hair, nearly cracking her skull. She tumbled downhill, hit an oak, and groaned.
The marauder vaulted toward her, jaws open wide, shrieking.
Addy grabbed the pistol from her boot, aimed, and fired.
Her bullet slammed into the open mouth, barely fazing the creature. She stumbled aside, and the marauder slammed into the oak, cracking the bole. Addy spun back toward it, firing. Bullets hit the creature's head, bouncing off harmlessly. A claw lashed, hit her gun, and knocked it from her hand.
Fuck!
That left her assault rifle, but it was slung across her back and unloaded. She would only need three seconds to load and fire. She didn't even have one. The jaws snapped at her, and she shoved her crossbow into the marauder's mouth, trying to distract the alien, then yanked her hand back. The jaws snapped shut, shattering her weapon.
Addy ran. It was faster than her. She stumbled downhill, and she saw it below: a frozen stream. She raced with all her speed, the marauder roaring behind her, its claws lashing, missing her by centimeters.
She hurled herself toward the riverbed. Addy had spent her life on the ice. Even without skates, she ran across the frozen surface.
The marauder leaped onto the ice behind her . . . and began to slip.
It was a creature adapted to life in a warm, misty forest. It could climb trees with the best of them, cross great distances on the ground, and explore space in the bellies of its females. On the ice, its six legs floundered, shooting out in all directions, an almost comical sight.
Addy raised her assault rifle, slammed a magazine into it, yanked back on the cocking handle, and aimed.
"Don't fuck with Canada," she said.
Bullets rang out.
They slammed into the marauder, hitting its eyes.
Addy gasped. She hadn't even pulled the trigger yet. Not her bullets!
A man was standing in the cover of the pines, firing at the marauder.
"He's mine!" Addy shouted. "Damn it!"
She stepped closer to the screeching beast. Three of its eyes were already gone. Addy fired a bullet into its last eye. The marauder fell dead onto the ice.
Addy spun toward the pines. "See? Mine! You don't claim that kill. Step out here! Steve, is that you?"
The man stepped out from the trees. No, he was much shorter than Steve—shorter than her too. A thin man with spiky black hair, a gaunt face, and crooked teeth. He carried a string of rabbits across his shoulders, and he moved on two prosthetic legs.
"Hi, Maple," he said.
She gaped at him. She remembered.
"Pinky," she said.
* * * * *
He gave her a thin smile, his crooked teeth pressing against his lips.
"Nobody's called me Pinky in years."
Addy aimed her rifle at him. "Give me one good reason not to shoot you in the balls." She glanced down at his prosthetic legs. "If you even have any balls left."
Pinky nodded. His voice was as raspy as ever. "I deserve that after the shit I pulled. Will you believe I'm sorry now? That I'm no longer that fucking asshole I was at boot camp?"
Addy took a step closer to the small soldier. He still wore his military jacket. Three chevrons, the insignia of a sergeant, were stitched onto the sleeves. Damn, they had made him a sergeant? Who had he blackmailed?
Addy spat. "I don't buy that shit. Once an asshole, always an asshole. I should put a bullet t
hrough your ugly face. You made our lives miserable at basic."
He lit a cigarette. "I know. I remember." He barked a laugh. "Yeah, I was a bastard all right, full of piss and fire. God, the shit I pulled!" He grew solemn. "Everything changed at the end, though. When the scum attacked our base. When they ripped off my legs and ate them as I screamed. When you and Poet saved my life."
"Poet saved your life," Addy said. "Not my idea. I just drove the fucking sand tiger. If I knew it was you, I'd have let the scum eat the rest."
"And yet you helped save me," Pinky said. "Well, most of me, at least. Would have been nice to have you show up a few minutes earlier and save the legs too. But hey, I do still have my balls, and they're the most important part of me." He grinned, revealing those crooked teeth. "Hey, kill me now if you like. But you'll be undoing a good deed you and Poet did."
Addy grumbled and lowered her rifle. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Came to join the Resistance," Pinky said. "What else?"
She turned away from him. She looked at the bloody hill she had raced down. "Fuck. That damn marauder tore the deer apart. Bits of it everywhere. Spent hours hunting it. Now there's barely enough left to make a cocktail sausage."
"I shot a deer myself," Pinky said. "Mine's still in one piece. Got it right behind those trees. I'll share the meat."
She glared at him. "I don't need your charity." But her stomach growled.
"Not charity," he said. "Just making myself useful. We'll all share the meat. I'm staying in your camp. Already introduced myself to your buddies there."
Addy groaned. "This day is getting better all the time." She began trudging through the snow. "Try to keep up on those rusty robot legs of yours."
As they walked back toward the camp, Pinky told her his story. After the battle of Fort Djemila, he had spent a couple months in the hospital, learning to walk on his prosthetic legs. When the invasion of Abaddon began, he had insisted on shipping out.
"I marched right into my commander's office," Pinky said. "I refused to leave. I said I would fight on these prosthetic legs, or they could toss me into the brig for the rest of the war." He barked a laugh. "Good thing for me, they needed a few million troops. So they shipped me out too, metal legs and all. I never did anything heroic like you and Poet and Tiny. Oh, I heard the stories. We all did. How you killed that fucking scum emperor. But I was there on Abaddon's surface, fighting with the grunts. Killed me a few of the buggers." He pulled up his sleeve, revealing star tattoos, denoting his kills. "I went home proud. And that's where they fucked me over good. It's after the war that you're screwed."
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