"I have Lieutenant Ben-Ari," he said, smiling thinly. "I'm not sure I have free will."
Osiris's eyes widened. She emitted a harsh, loud, cackling laughter. Marco cringed and jumped again. The sound was nearly demonic, and it died as fast as it had started.
"A joke," said Osiris. "I enjoy humor. I have a joke. Why do they keep building new cemeteries? Because people are dying to get in." She emitted another quick, hysterical laugh, then instantly grew serious again. "Did that amuse you?"
Marco nodded. "Yes. I think I better get going now. I need to prepare for landing on Corpus."
He rose and took a step away, but Osiris grabbed his wrist. Her hand tightened—painfully. "Marco, they are all dead."
He shuddered, looking at her. Osiris still sat on the pew, staring into his eyes.
"Who?"
"All of them," said Osiris. "The colonists on Corpus. They died to get in. They died to find if they have gods. But there are no gods in space. There is only the scum." She released him. "Do you want to hear another joke? A bird was sick. It got the flew. It's funny if you read it."
Marco left the chapel, and as he was walking down the corridor, he heard Osiris's laughter echoing behind him, shrill, too loud, dying at once.
He returned to his bunk, but Lailani still wasn't there, nor was the rest of his squad. Alone in the chamber, Marco prepared for war. He shaved. He polished his boots. He pulled on his combat vest and filled the pouches with magazines of bullets. He filled his canteen. He hung his flashlight, his bayonet, and three grenades from his belt. He smeared war paint on his face—patches of black and dark green, hiding everything but his eyes. Finally he put on his helmet and tightened the strap. The helmet was scratched, flaking, and its previous owner had written "Les Kill" on its front with a permanent marker, "Born to Die" on its back. Why did they keep building new cemeteries? Because people were dying to get in. A bird got sick. It had the flew.
"I hope it got tweetment," Marco said.
Osiris's voice rang out of the speakers. "Fifteen minutes to Corpus. All troops report to shuttle bay. This is Code Red. All troops report to shuttle bay. Fifteen minutes to deployment."
There was no joke this time, but perhaps this whole mission, this whole war, this whole experiment of naked apes rising from the muck and venturing into darkness was a joke. They were dying to get in.
He found the shuttle bay with ten minutes to spare. It was a massive hangar in the bottom of the ship, its towering windows revealing a view of space. Spacetime was still warped, all streams of color and streaks of stars. Four shuttles—heavy armored vehicles with exhaust pipes large enough to crawl into—stood by the closed hangar doors.
The entire Latona Company, two hundred soldiers, was already here, standing before the shuttles, organized into four platoons. The STC soldiers no longer wore their fine, navy blue uniforms with the brass cuff links. They now wore dark combat uniforms, camouflaged with patches of gray and black, and war paint covered their faces. They held heavy assault rifles, even larger and heavier than T57s; Marco didn't recognize the make. When first seeing these soldiers of Space Territorial Command, Marco had thought them too polished, too pampered to truly fight in a war. Now they looked like brutal warriors, heavy with magazines and grenades.
Marco approached his own platoon. They still wore their drab fatigues from Earth, but war paint now covered their faces too, black and dark green. Lieutenant Ben-Ari stood at their lead, and Sergeant Singh stood by her side, a helmet hiding his turban. Kemi was there too, but she wouldn't meet Marco's gaze. The platoon's grunts stood in formations, organized into three squads. Marco joined his own squad, which Corporal Diaz—his same corporal from basic training—commanded. He was thankful to finally see Lailani. She had already chosen a fireteam of three, joining Beast and a soldier with flaming red hair they had nicknamed Torch. Only one fireteam still needed a third member; Marco went and joined Addy and Elvis.
"Five minutes to arrival," Osiris said. The android stood at the head of the company by Captain Petty, counting down the minutes, then the seconds. "Three. Two. One."
Space unbent around them. Marco inhaled sharply and clutched his gun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The soldiers stood in the hangar, staring out the viewport as the warp drives disengaged.
Again, distances seemed to expand and contract, the dimensions to shift. Marco suddenly felt very small, only a few inches tall, then felt as if he were standing under the shuttles nearby. The walls moved closer, then farther away, and he felt like he was floating. He couldn't focus on anything. Through the viewports, he saw the streams of color and light take form, spacetime unbending, smoothing out into a three-dimensional grid. Again, as he had back in his bunk, Marco had the strange sensation of being outside the ship, floating in space, or maybe that space was here inside with him.
Finally reality sorted itself out. The stars became dots again. They were back in regular spacetime.
The viewports here were twenty feet tall. It felt almost like standing in space itself. A gas giant filled nearly the entire view, swirling, coiling, crimson and bright red and burnt orange, a bloated blood drop floating through space. It seemed almost organic, almost a living organism, the way its surface kept churning, and Marco could almost imagine it grumbling, gurgling, digesting its innards of stone. He recognized the planet from the hologram: Indrani, twice the size of Jupiter back home.
A moon came into view, orbiting the gas giant. From here, even in direct sunlight, the moon was dark charcoal. It was as large as Mars, but floating before the gas giant it seemed small as a tennis ball, as if Marco could just reach out and grab it. The moon grew larger as the Miyari approached, now flying on its thruster engines. Soon the gas giant took up the entire viewport, and then the dark moon grew, finally eclipsing the red planet. Marco saw craters, canyons, mountains, a rocky dead world. He saw no sign of the scum—no purple lights, no pods streaking down to the surface, no bloated enemy ships in orbit. The moon seemed lifeless.
Yet from this moon springs life, Marco thought. Here was a major mine of azoth. Some called it the dirt, others called it stardust. The crystals that could bend spacetime, that let humanity fly to the stars, that let the HDF fight the scum on the frontier. Without azoth, humanity was alone, confined to the solar system, even their fastest nuclear engines requiring centuries to reach the stars. This mine was a doorway to the cosmos.
"Five minutes to orbit," Osiris said. "Approaching Corpus City."
Marco stared out the viewport. He thought he could just make out the city below, a network of roads and buildings on the surface.
"There are no lights," he whispered. "Why are there no lights?"
"It's daytime, dummy," Addy said. "The planet surface is just naturally black."
"Maybe," Marco said.
"Platoons, into your shuttles," said Captain Petty. "Four minutes to launch."
"Kick some asses!" Addy shouted, earning a stern look from her sergeant. She ran into one shuttle. The other soldiers all began to enter their own shuttles, and the moon grew closer and closer. Across the hangar, soldiers were crying out for war, guns and grenades clanking as they ran up ramps into the shuttles. Shadows fell across the hangar as the rocky moon covered the viewports, hiding the stars.
Marco stood for just a moment, staring outside at Corpus. Still he saw no signs of life on the surface, only that dark city, and the more he looked, the more it seemed to him that the city lay in ruins.
You're down there, he thought. The scolopendra titania. The scum.
His old dream returned to him, the dream where he stood on a desolate landscape, thousands of scum racing toward him. Had he dreamed of this place? Of Corpus?
"Into the shuttle, Emery!" Corporal Diaz said. Only a handful of soldiers still remained in the hangar. "Come on, soldier."
Marco nodded, inhaled deeply, and steeled himself. He took a step toward the shuttle . . . then froze. He stared outside.
Through the viewport, he
saw it. Just a hint. A glimmer, the bending of light . . . and then they emerged.
Alarms blared across the ship and lights flared.
"Scum!" Marco shouted.
The scum ships emerged from behind the moon, streaming across space at terrifying speed. They blazed like comets, balls of black and deep purple, irregular, veined, organic and burning, leaving trails of red flame. Marco stood, frozen, staring as the inferno blazed toward him. Three of them. Five more emerging from beyond the horizon. Searing light flooding the hangar. In the chapel, he had told Osiris he didn't believe in gods, but here were gods, here were deities of vengeance, here was fury and scorn from the dark depths beyond the firmaments.
"Emery, down!" somebody shouted, and hands grabbed him, and with blazing light and roaring fire and shrieking air, the scum ships slammed into the Miyari and the cosmos burned.
Flames roared across the hangar. Chunks of metal flew. A soldier ran and fire gripped him. A hurling bolt pierced another man. A shuttle tried to rise, engines bathing the hangar floor with fire.
"Open the hangar!" rose a voice. "Open the doors!"
Through the viewport Marco saw another scum ship—lumpy, veined, purple. It shot forth, wreathed in flame, and slammed into the Miyari. The wall cracked, shattered, tore open. Air gushed out from the ship. Marco fell. The world spun around him. He reached out, scrambling for purchase, grabbed a man, scampered along the floor. He hit the side of a shuttle with a thud. Soldiers screamed and a shuttle hovered in the hangar, and the doors were opening, but the Miyari spun, spun, fell, rose, hurled through darkness, and the moon was there, gone, there, gone, spinning, and Beta Ceti shone, blinding them, then vanished, shone again, and the red giant rose. The air screamed. Marco couldn't breathe. The pods slammed into the ship, and cannons fired.
"Out, out!" somebody cried, and a shuttle rose, roared forward, engines blasting out fire, roasting men behind them. The shuttle burst out into space, shattering the hangar doors, and began to descend toward the moon, only for a scum vessel to slam into it. Both shuttle and pod exploded, sending out shards of metal and silica and tongues of fire. Marco's ears rang. He could hear only the ringing. He was back in the desert. He couldn't breathe. He clung with one hand to a wall, struggling to breathe the fading air. Soldiers slid along the floor around him, spilling into space, screams swallowed by silence.
A scum pod rolled into the Miyari's shattered hangar, cracked open, and the centipedes emerged.
The ship spun madly, emerging from light to darkness, light to darkness, blazing sunlight, blackness of space, and with every flash of light the centipedes were closer, racing across the hangar floor, twice the size of men, mandibles reaching out, glimmering black.
Clinging to a bent pipe with one hand, Marco raised his gun.
Air flowed across him, fleeing the ship.
The scum clattered toward him.
A shuttle managed to leave the bay.
Marco fired his gun.
Bullets rang out, slamming into a scum that leaped toward him. The creature fell back, screeching, and the air caught it, tore it outside, and it tumbled through space. Fire was raging across the Miyari. They pitched downward, hovered for a second, almost peaceful, gliding like a leaf on the wind, then plunged with incredible force down toward the moon.
Another scum leaped.
Marco fired his gun again. Bullets shattered the creature, and its venomous blood splattered.
Flames raged as the Miyari—built to only fly through space, not land on any moon or planet—entered the atmosphere of Corpus.
They fell, engines sputtering, through chunks of screaming metal, through corpses, through flailing scum, through fire and rain and steam. Solar panels tore off and careened through the sky.
They plunged down through beams of light and trails of blood.
Marco crawled across the hangar. He pulled himself through a doorway. He tried to catch a screaming soldier, but their fingers slipped apart, and the woman flew through the open hangar doors and vanished into the fire. Marco slammed the hangar door shut, muffling the roaring wind and screams.
He crawled through a crumbling, twisting corridor, fire outside, fire within. He crawled toward a viewport, and he saw red skies. He saw the sky bleed. He saw the gas giant Indrani outside, dripping red, grumbling, coiling, filling his vision, and it was a god. It was a true god, condemning them, wrathful. Why did they keep building cemeteries? Because people were dying to get in. Because a bird caught the flew and it's funny if you read it. Because they were plunging down toward an inferno and he had never even reached the frontier. He had never held Lailani again. He had never finished his book. He had never come home.
Outside the sky cracked and fell, and they fell with it.
Fire.
Stones.
Engines roaring and somebody shouting, and denting walls, and then a howl. A howl that tore through the ship. A howl that tore through the moon. A howl of impact, of shattering steel, of cracking viewports, of dying species. Everywhere—shards of rock and dust and pipes spewing steam. Marco fell and the ship, the moon, the cosmos itself fell atop him, burying him. They slid across stone and hopped and rose and finally plunged into a dark, still, dead place.
CHAPTER NINE
Buzz.
Everywhere, insects. Buzzing in the forest.
Hummmmm.
In the distance, engines. Trains. Shadows racing between the trees.
Men with masks. Men with masks ran between the trees, hunting. A deer ran by Ben-Ari, a bullet in its flank, snorting, leaking blood, vanishing into darkness. Children crawled, cadaverous, skin draped over bones, and she hid in the boughs of a tree, so thin, so hurt, her gun in her hand, hunting them. Hunting the men with masks. Hunting in darkness. The trains roared by, cattle cars, screams within, and chimneys pumping out smoke and skin and soap and secrets.
She stood in the cities, watching the world burn, watching the towers crumble, watching the millions of ships descend from the sky. Watching the world crack open.
Rattles. Rattles filled the forest. Rattlesnakes in the desert. Scorpions in the desert. She was in the desert, so far from home, commanding, firing her gun at the creatures that crawled on many legs, and the sun burned her.
She opened her eyes.
Buzz.
A shattered part of some machine sprayed sparks.
Hummmm . . .
A piston still moved in the wreckage, spurting sparks. Ben-Ari blinked. The sky was red. The sky bled. Nothing but swirling, gurgling red and pus-yellow above like the ulcerous insides of a giant's stomach.
"Who by fire," she whispered. "Who by water." Old words she had read long ago.
She rose to her feet, wobbled, and pressed her hand against a wall, surprised to find there was still a wall. She was outside a shuttle. She had been inside the shuttle when falling from the sky. She limped across rocky ground, head spinning, and gazed upon ruin.
"By God," Ben-Ari whispered.
The HDFS Miyari lay on the surface of Corpus, its hull cracked, its engine three hundred yards away, still glowing. One shuttle lay behind the engine, another on a rocky hill. The other two shuttles were nowhere in sight. The scum, if any had survived the fall from the sky, were gone.
Slowly, around her, the others began to rise. Soldiers pulled themselves out from the wrecked shuttles. They limped out from the Miyari's hangar. They moaned on the ground, some clutching broken limbs. Some lay still.
Ben-Ari tightened her lips. She got to work.
She limped, walked, then ran toward the Miyari. She pulled out the wounded. She found a few of her troops wandering the landscape, confused, some sooty, some bloody. Addy Linden walked around with blank eyes. Beast sat on a rock, looking around in shock.
"Ravens Platoon!" Ben-Ari called out. "Ravens, to me!"
She had boarded the Miyari with forty-nine soldiers. Many were now missing. She breathed a sigh of relief to see Sergeant Singh among them. Her platoon sergeant was clutching a wounded arm b
ut still very much alive, still very much a comfort to her. When he saw her, he stood at attention and saluted. Throwing protocol to the wind, Ben-Ari embraced him, and he wrapped his arms around her. Ben-Ari had only been a commissioned officer for a year. Throughout that year, Singh—lower ranking but several years older, far wiser—had been her pillar, her guide.
She pulled away from him, gazing at her platoon. "Private Linden," she said to Addy, then turned toward Elvis. "Private Ray." She motioned for Beast. "Private Mikhailov. The three of you—patrol the crash site. Report to me if you detect any enemy movements. Then keep watch from that hill, that one, and that one."
The three privates nodded and left the platoon.
Ben-Ari pointed at two other soldiers—little Lailani, clutching her gun, and the taller Kemi, gazing around in shock. "Private de la Rosa. Cadet Abasi. You two come with me. We go into the Miyari. We'll seek more survivors inside." She turned toward Singh. "Sergeant, lead the others into the shuttles and across the landscape. Seek survivors there. Give medical attention to the wounded. We meet back here."
Across the site, the other three platoons—all of them STC soldiers in black combat gear—were organizing their own patrols and searches. Many lay wounded. Others lay dead. One officer and three medics were clearing out space for a field hospital, and already two soldiers were carrying a wounded comrade on a litter.
Ben-Ari, Lailani, and Kemi walked toward the Miyari. They stepped into the hangar, and Ben-Ari grimaced to see a scum claw still thrusting out from a wall.
Blood stained those walls. There were no corpses.
"Marco," Kemi whispered, eyes damp. "Marco! Marco, can you hear me?"
"Keep it together, Abasi," Ben-Ari said, though her own insides roiled. Ben-Ari cared for, even admired, Marco Emery—perhaps more than any other private under her command. She knew that Marco had not wanted this mission. She had coerced him into joining, had seen something in the soft, reflective boy—something strong, a deeper strength than many gruff warriors possessed. He lacked the physical size and bravado of some troops, but she had seen a resolve in him, one she recognized in herself.
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