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  It focused two of its six eyes on a length of ground that looked narrow and unlike either the blades of grass on either side or the branches of the trees it would climb to infect or feed. The thick trunk of ground/tree moved with deliberate effort that triggered another urge.

  Inside the creature’s not fully mutated throat it convulsed. The elastic tissues that controlled the bladder and flow of more pulsated and spasmed. The skitterer/slaver wanted to spray the odd moving earth, as if it were alive and suitable for breeding. But . . . this had no smell, no sign of life, no taste or warmth. It made no noise that its mind could hear.

  Its throat spasmed again from reflex, causing its head to snap forward. Were it older, blue fluid would’ve sprayed out on the moving earth. Its masters hadn’t given it enough of the gift of more to spread their kind. The skitterer hadn’t earned the right to breed yet. The insect needed to grow much larger first. It needed more.

  Neurons fired in a way they’d never fired before as it watched the glint of sunlight bounce off the glossy black surface of something in or on the moving ground. Evolution on a manic scale spun up, and its brain created new pathways faster than the humans would’ve believed was possible. The end result was the creature forming a thought. A complete, rational thought above the base animal it had been even just seconds before. It thought to seek a parent, and tell it all about what it saw.

  The urge to find one its masters became crushing, overwhelming, entirely consuming and it ran. It put all eight legs to the earth of its world and sought out the scent on the air from one of its masters.

  Its master would know what to do about the strange land. All the small bug had to do was dance the message. Maybe then it would be given more. Maybe that would be enough.

  It didn’t have to go far to find an overseer.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  No man’s land, planet of Selva

  1 October 163 GA

  “Stay low,” Dustin said from his belly as he slid a knee up along his side through the increasingly tall grass. He felt the sharp edges of the foliage try to cut at the hard plate of his armor and he brushed them aside. It seemed even the grass on Selva had turned against them today. His first leg planted, he moved his right arm up, then his left leg, then his left arm in a controlled and deliberate low crawl. Five meters to his left Ping-Pong did the same, and to his right Waren did, too. They were nearly invisible, having reached a patch of scorch-free grass. Before the weary men reached the cover of the forest, there was still another hundred meters to go. Dustin knew that each meter would feel like a marathon.

  The radio traffic on the general channels had gone black. Every second they crawled away, the chances that the other marines and scientists would survive plunged. But they had to help themselves first. Someone had to survive. Someone had to regroup. Dustin felt so alone, even with his brothers at his side. He made a fist and tried to stop his fingers from shaking.

  His suit’s faceplate alerted him to movement at their seven o’clock, in the direction of Stahl and the army of things killing their friends. The tiny directional microphones mounted in the FEM armor worked remarkably well as a simplified radar system and right now his suit told him something approached. With a twitch of his eyelid, he told his armor’s electronics suite to relay the information to Waren and Ping-Pong. They slowed their crawl and readied their firearms.

  Dustin’s suit piped in the heavy, punching noises of larg insectoid feet and, just underneath that, a rapid chattering of much tinier feet. The sound brought him back to being buried under dirt as the Selvan monsters ran overhead. The image of the mantis-like face of the creatures behind it threatened to make him panic. His hitched breath made his body shake as he fought away the false vision in his eyes.

  “Dustin?...” Waren whispered, staying still. “Dustin,” he whispered again with more urgency.

  Dustin closed his eyes but the world refused to disappear into welcoming blackness. His memory of Lionel being shredded by a swarm of alien creatures remained in vivid color. He felt the pressure of their tiny feet pressing around him, heard the tiny ticks of his lieutenant’s blood splattering against his helmet over and over as they picked away at his eyes, cheeks and lips. He heard Lionel’s screams of pain and the gurgling that came from somewhere deep in his throat as he gagged on spit and blood.

  Something cold and hard grew in the base of his belly. He’d been struck still by the fear of something that happened before, but wasn’t happening now.

  Dustin forced a rapid series of images of happier times into his consciousness. He remembered playing cards on Beagle before they landed. He recalled training on Ares, humanitarian missions on Pacifica. He recalled late nights drinking with Ping-Pong, and long ruck marches with Waren where they told each other everything there was to know about where they were from, and who they were. He saw laughter. He saw strength. He saw friends and family.

  He drove away his fear with those memories, and felt the dread melt until it was a sliver he could ignore.

  Dustin rolled over and sat up, bringing his rail gun to a firing position in the grass between his legs.

  Ten meters back where his suit told him it would be, he saw one of the large spitters stalking them. It reared its wide, eye-covered head back as his own head poked above the grass that had concealed their movements. In his view plate he watched as his aiming icon matched up with his rifle’s position, landing on the throat of the slaver.

  He thumbed his weapon free and depressed the trigger. The rifle vibrated and magnetically propelled a fléchette round out of its heavy barrel. The ultra-fast missile pierced the neck of the alien beast on the precise spot he aimed at.

  Rail gun projectiles had little to no impact value. They would never hit someone hard enough to knock them backwards. The lethal ammunition they fired existed to be laser accurate at long ranges and provide unparalleled penetration value. Penetrate it did.

  The dart screamed through the hard carapace and gelatinous flesh on the near side of the slaver. The far side of the giant insect’s hard shell exterior made little effort to stop or even slow the dart as it exited. Dustin watched as a massive plume of blue and green goo flew into the air behind the monster, coating the grass. He exhaled and felt the remainder of his icicle fall away.

  “Eat that you fucking asshat.”

  He had taken control back, if only for a moment.

  The slaver flung its four arms into the air. Its longer upper arms tipped with sharp claws clutched at the hole punched in its throat and seized tight to stem the blue fluid it had spread so willingly earlier in the fight. Its mass of unblinking eyes flicked and wobbled around as its body spun in pain-frenzied circles.

  “It feels pain! Light it up. Kill it quick.” Steve and Waren rolled onto their backs and sat up the same way he had. Dustin watched in his view plate as their firing icons found tender joints and large expanses of real estate where vital organs might lie. He fired his own weapon at the creature’s triangular head as they fired multiple coughing rounds to match. Most of the shots hit.

  Two more rounds from each of their guns later, the massive brown and red insect collapsed, streaming the thick green slime that passed for its blood into the remnants of the grass. Mixed into the mess was a thin vein of the blue fluid that reaped so much havoc on life.

  In the distance beyond, the marines watched as hundreds of insects poured over the smoking and ruined wreckage of Stahl. Catapulters stomped tents and other soft structures, and screams came a moment later. Skitterers stabbed at those who tried to run, or fight. Slavers picked at the weak and malleable flesh of the humans who survived the onslaught. They vomited their curse with impunity, beginning the process to create more of their kind. Men and women screamed as the change tore them apart and made them anew. Their faces were melted off by the blue fluid, revealing skulls that had been turned red and black, and misshapen jaws filled with sharp teeth. Their exposed skin changed color and consistency to the hard shell and dark colors of the insects’
. He watched as the remaining human flesh puckered and reddened where it met the shell, infected and irritated by the change brought on by the alien invasion.

  Then,the worst moment of all, as the newly-formed creaturestore at their former friends until they yielded to the blue evil their new masters brought to bear. A taste they acquired quickly, and sought out. It was wildfire.

  “God help us,” Steve said.

  “I don’t think God made the trip to Selva, Ping-Pong,” Dustin said.

  “Keep moving?” Waren offered, then rolled onto his stomach.

  Before he could answer Waren, Dustin looked back at the field they had crawled through. His eyes roamed over the craters where catapulters threw boulders and where Punisher One’s cannon had vaporized attackers. He watched as a skitterer bounding from their position toward the melee that raged in the settlement. He tried to shut out the carnage and focus on the movements of the single beast that seemingly was arriving late.

  The skitterer reached the edge of the battle where one of the master insects stood, hunched over a young male marine who tried to shield his face. The slaver ignored the small bug and spat on the marine. Dustin couldn’t hear his screams of pain but he saw his body writhe, and that told him too much. Task accomplished, the slaver turned to the little bug, and the tiny messenger began a strange dance.

  Bees dance. Bees dance to tell other bees where to find pollen.

  “We’re pollen,” Dustin said.

  “What did you say?” Ping-Pong asked as he crawled with Waren.

  “Run. Run as fast as you can, go!”

  Dustin got to his feet faster than his aching joints wanted him to and sprinted toward the trees through the blasted and burnt last stand of the men of Selva.

  Waren and Steve–confused but obedient–got up and took off, running as fast as they could in their armor.

  Dustin imagined the slaver insect looking away from the smaller bug’s dance and seeing him and his friends running away at full tilt. He imagined the slaver alerting the servant species all around it, then taking off after them. He ran as fast as his legs would allow. The men were almost at the tree line. Almost to enough cover to trick them into feeling safer. He pushed his legs beyond what he thought was safe, or even possible. Fear redefined the edges of possible.

  A plastic barrel flew overhead and bounced off the ground just in front of them.

  “Holy fuck, they’re throwing shit at us,” Waren said between breaths. “I told you they would throw shit at us.”

  “Run. Just fucking run.”

  Dustin leaped over the rolling barrel and a large stone. A giant piece of metal rocketed overhead and speared into the ground.

  “I am going to kill every bug I see from now on,” Ping-Pong sputtered.

  “Amen,” Dustin said as they crashed through the low foliage at the edge of the forest. Dustin cut to the side and put a large tree to his back and kept running. His friends did the same and within a moment they felt a rain of massive objects smash into the trees behind them. Their mad dash had bought some cover. Dustin risked a look back.

  Several of the slavers led two of the lumbering enforcers across the battlefield. Behind them on the edge of Stahl, catapulters launched industrial debris over their heads at the marines. At the feet of the encroaching slavers was a carpet of the tiny skitterers and all of them were heading their way. They would be in the forest and upon them in seconds.

  It’s a classic infantry advance performed under supporting artillery fire. Insane.

  The men ran quickly through the thick undergrowth, jumping over fallen trees, rocks and detritus.

  “To the water?” Ping-Pong asked.

  Dustin looked around in the forest as they ran, searching out a place they could either escape into, or attempt a last stand. Something hard and fortified, or at a minimum high ground. The thumping feet of their pursuers grew louder by the second.

  As he ran, a small insect the size of Dustin’s thumb sprang off the top of a rich green leaf at waist height and stuck to the slimy trunk of one of the gargantuan mushroom-towers a few meters away. Using long legs like climbing picks it made its way up the side of the growth with ease, despite the greasy green sap on the tree. Ten meters up the mushroom Dustin saw an abrupt line where the sap stopped flowing. Just above that he saw hundreds of tiny animals clustered, watching as the pitiful visitors to their planet lived out their last minutes.

  They think they’re safe. No, they know their safe. That slime on the side of the tree . . . We gotta get above that slime. “Grapples. Get up the mushrooms.”

  Dustin reached without looking into a hard case mounted on his left hip. A grappling hook attachment for his rail gun came out in his hand and he locked it into place in front of his weapon’s fore grip with a click. His suit told him he had fifty meters of cable in the grappler, and enough power in his rifle’s battery to launch the hook.

  He aimed his reticle above the sap line of the tree and fired at the woody side of the mushroom tower. The grapple attachment shot out a small projectile at a few hundred meters per second. A line of incredibly strong cable trailed behind it. The hook pierced the mushroom and found solid purchase. Dustin snapped the stock of the rail gun into a small hook at his waist and gripped the rifle hard in both hands. He activated the winch.

  The forest floor fell away as the line went taught and a sudden surge of adrenaline and exultation came over him as he flew through the air.

  He smashed into the side of the mushroom. He lost his air and felt a million points of dull pain where he knew he’d find bruises if he lived long enough to take his armor off. He clung with all his strength to the rifle that had spun up the cable and brought him to the grappling hook thirty meters up the mushroom tower.

  A moment later two grappling hooks thunked into the tree on opposite sides of him. Waren and Ping-Pong’s grunts of pain were audible without the comms system in his helmet.

  “Oh that was terrible. Stupid Dustin. Awful,” Steve said with great effort.

  Dustin didn’t respond. He looked over his shoulder as he held his weight up against the tree using only his hands. The augmented strength of his armor coupled with the lighter gravity gave him extra stamina that might keep him and his friends alive. than he’d appreciated.

  Down on the ground below, the slavers peeled from the chase. They had given up without even attempting the tree. The skitterers followed suit, circling and turning around, heading back through the dense forest to Stahl where riper, lower hanging fruit waited. One of the rock bugs did the same, but the other didn’t. It plodded forward to the mushroom tower’s base. The dim beast tilted its armored head up in their direction with a primal intelligence, and blatant desire.

  It cocked its massive arm back and punched the base of the tree with the same power that shredded an Armadillo tank tread. They barely felt the impact through the enormous tree trunk. Dustin watched as the rock bug reeled back in pain. Acrid smoke billowed out from its fist. The animal gesticulated wildly, trying to make the pain in its limb abate to no avail. It punched at smaller trees and bushes, then the ground over and over, trying to find some solace from the agony.

  The giant bully staggered away, beating everything in its path with its good fist as it made its own escape from what hurt it.

  Dustin reached down with one hand and ran a finger through the thick substance that coated the bottom of the tree. Tiny pores in the wood oozed the coating in a steady, slow trickle. The gel had the color of wet moss, or algae, and the same slimy consistency. It did nothing to his glove.

  “Holy shit, man. Good call,” Waren said as he watched the lumbering monster flee.

  “What the fuck just happened? Why did it explode and shit? Now what?” Ping-Pong asked.

  “I have no idea what just happened. But we’re alive, hanging to side of a huge ass tree on a planet filled with things that are trying to kill us. Let’s see what’s at the top. We can start there. We know they’re flat above the canopy, right?” Dustin s
aid.

  “Roger that Vigilant Two,” Waren said.

  “You shouldn’t use that handle anymore,” Steve said solemnly.

  “Why?” Waren asked. “He’s Vigilant Two. Lionel’s second.”

  “Lionel is gone. There is no Vigilant One anymore. Dustin, what’s your call sign going to be?”

  “I don’t wanna pick one now, there’s better shit to do,” Dustin said.

  “Dustin. It’s S.O.P. for you to use your own call sign. Lionel would want you to. I know you have one ready. We all do. He wouldn’t want you leading us on a second rate name,” Steve said with great seriousness.

  Dustin almost said the call sign he’d obsessed over for months, then stopped. Another name came to mind. Something more fitting, given the events of the day. “Fine. Call me Vindicator One.”

  The marines were silent.

  “Let’s get to the top.”

  Dustin reached for the grapple reload on his hip.

  “Roger that, Vindicator One,” Waren said, and followed suit.

  Steve clapped Dustin on the shoulder. “Righteous, brother.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Atop a mushroom tower, Dampier Peninsula forest, planet of Selva

  2 October 163 GA

  The screams died out by sunset the following day. Steve, Dustin and Waren heard only the rare, low moans from people who had either been sprayed by the slavers and were suffering through the pain of the change, or from a slow death. At least now, with the sun setting once more, they would be spared the temptation to watch their former friends die, or become monsters. The helplessness crushed them.