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  “I’ll be fine, Captain. Thank you.”

  Dustin sat on a stool in front of Dr. Castellano, affixing the carapace armor legging over his wounded thigh. The pressure relieved the dull throb in his damaged muscles, but it did nothing to fill the void where the rotten flesh had been carved away.

  “Stimulants are amazing, but you’re not ready. I know you feel better, but too much stress on the tissues and you’ll get tearing, and bleeding. Not to mention what the effects of Selvan microbes could be doing to you. I need to observe you.”

  Dustin stood, eliminating her physical presence. “Please. I hear you. I know what you’re saying. You are right and you are smart, but I need to get food to Steve. I need to find Waren and handle him before he does something more drastic than shooting me. I’ve been sitting too long.”

  Anna huffed. “You’re going to kill yourself. Don’t make me pull rank.”

  Dustin picked his helmet up off the lab counter and tucked it under his arm. At his side, Phillip handed him his rail gun. Micah and Margaret watched from nearby. Dustin looked at the ranking officer on Selva with tired eyes. He didn’t want this fight.

  “I’m serious, Dustin. I will order you back to bed. These marines will make you do it, too.”

  “With respect, you are a noncombatant officer. As it pertains to combat operations, I am the ranking marine on Selva. You can inform me. You can make suggestions as to what you need to manage the affairs of Stahl militarily, but I will make the decisions when it comes to fighting. I will then report to you about what I’ve chosen to do. I’m sorry. I know you want what’s best, but you also haven’t stepped outside into the world we are stuck on. I will be okay. I have muscle stims, antibiotics, painkillers, water and food and, most important, this rifle, right here.”

  Anna rolled her eyes, furious.

  “Get out of here before she hits you with a tranquilizer dart,” Phillip said. “Or a frying pan if she can find one.”

  “Yeah, Phillip. Look, Anna, thank you. I’ll be back soon. I’ll get the cases of food moved back here in a few minutes. Micah, you have four shots with that tube-gun you made?”

  “Da,” Micah said, back into his Russian mode. “And that’s it. All we have for materials has been used. We can shoot bol’she ne nado.”

  “English, Micah. Shit,” Dustin said with a chuckle.

  “No more. We can shoot the bombs bol’she ne nado,” he replied, feigning frustration.

  “Alright then. Everyone, be ready, I’ll be running out and dragging the case back to the corner airlock door here. Steve is watching from the tree and he’ll be in touch if I start getting swarmed. If that happens, all you marines need to start making noise over at the medical habitat. We’ll monkey in the middle these assholes all night so I can move around.”

  “This is insanity,” Anna said, walking away.

  “In insane times, do insane things. Speaking of which, I’m climbing out the roof. You guys ready?”

  Dustin slipped on his helmet and activated the seal tight around his collar. The readouts and data feed blinked as the power kicked on. Fresh air streamed in. Dustin used his good leg and stepped up on a stool, then up on the counter just below the hatch. His bad leg flared in pain, and he did his best to hide it. Behind him Anna made faces at his struggle.

  Micah climbed atop the counter beside Dustin, and readied the luminescent shell launcher by sliding one of the jars filled with chemicals down its barrel. The cutting-edge science of the musket had returned.

  “Steve, you reading me?”

  “Five by five, brother. Good to have you back,” Ping-Pong replied.

  “Glad to be back. Are we clear to fire a round?” Dustin asked.

  “All clear. A few small bugs near you but none of the big ones. Handful of the half-humans milling about. Fire away and I’ll call you safe to leave.”

  “Go ahead, Micah,” Dustin said.

  The biologist punched the code on the ceiling pad that unlocked the thick roof hatch. He pushed up the door and slid the barrel out into the night air. On the floor below, Margaret sprayed something from a compressed container into the tail chamber of the pipeand stepped away. Balashov put the lighter to the side of the cannon, and the gun whoomphed.

  “Shell hit. Fire is starting,” Steve said, sounding drained and tired. “Movement heading toward it. Not many though. I don’t know if the fires from last time killed a bunch or what, but there isn’t much motion.”

  “Holding,” Dustin said.

  Through the slit in the open hatch the light of a green flame burned in the distance. Seconds slipped by.

  “Alright, go. There’s a good sized crowd now.”

  Dustin pushed the door up and grabbed the frame with both hands. He pulled his weight up with his arms, bolstered by the suit’s strength assist system, and he disappeared into the night.

  “He’s gonna get himself killed,” Anna said.

  “Maybe, but he’s going to do it trying to save our lives.”

  Chapter Fifty

  The ruins of Stahl, planet of Selva

  25 October 163 GA

  Dustin moved in a half crouch, staying low and taking short, deliberate steps. He scanned a few meters ahead every few seconds to ensure he wouldn’t trip over debris, then returned his attention to the sounds of the monsters celebrating at the colony’s far edge. He had almost reached the three food cases Waren had dropped, to

  To save Dustin from the creature that tried to rip him apart. The cases had come apart and had fallen in disarray on the ground. Dustin knelt, bending his good leg under,and lifted one case, then the other. He walked to the third case that fell further away, grabbed the handle, and lifted. But the lid swung open, and the case dragged over far too easily.

  Dustin pulled open the food trunk.The inside was bereft of food. Only shadows filled it now.

  “That motherfucker,” Dustin said out loud.

  “What?” Steve asked.

  “Waren got to the food and emptied one of the bins we grabbed. He took a third of the shit. Dammit. Selfish prick.”

  “Are you kidding me? Man, I didn’t see anything. He must’ve been real damn sneaky to get by me,” Steve asserted, almost as an apology.

  “Not your fault. He’s trained just as well to avoid being seen as you are to observe. If anyone could slip by one of us, it’d be one of us.” Dustin picked the empty container up and moved it to the side of one of the habitats so it was out of the way.

  “Still. My fuck up. Now someone will go hungry.”

  “We’re already hungry,” Dustin said. “Still, there are two cases. That’s a lot of full bellies.”

  Dustin opened a container and pulled out several handfuls of self-cooking meal packs, meal replacement bars, and nutritional supplements. He put the packages in his shoulder bag. Then, he picked up the two bins and carried them on his hobbling leg back to the science lab. He put them down in the dark, and slinked away as Micah’s cannon lobbed another green projectile into the night.

  “Still clear near you,” Steve said.

  “Oscar mike, heading in your direction. I’m going to slow crawl back in case Waren’s got eyes-on.”

  “Roger.”

  Dustin jogged as fast as his weakened leg would allow. When he reached the last line of defenses of Stahl, he dropped to his stomach–relieved to be off his feet–and began the crawl back across the destroyed field toward the jungle peninsula where Steve remained, up and away.

  Dawn approached–or, in the case of Dustin Cline, the far edge of forever. He had spent the night on his stomach, moving from one depression in the ground to the next, remaining flat against the earth to avoid a well-placed rail gun round from Waren’s weapon. He didn’t know if Waren was nearby, but the idea of his former best friend putting his body in the crosshairs and pulling the trigger made Dustin move with extra precision and care.

  He defended against the cramps, the thirst, the soreness, the stinging sweat burning at his eyes, and the boredom by thinkin
g of Melody, and the baby inside her. By now, her belly would be much larger, and that thought comforted the tired and wounded man.

  Thoughts of what it meant to be a father didn’t stop the sun from rising.

  “Dustin, you’re a short run to the trees and time is not on your side,” Steve said. “Get moving man. Get up. Waren’s nowhere to be found and he’s not dumb enough to stay close to try and put us down. Just run. There are slavers moving toward this side of the settlement and if they see you move, you’re a goner.”

  “Alright, Ping-Pong. Call me clear when I can stand.”

  “Go now, run as fast as you can.”

  Dustin took off at a low, loping run but a night passed without painkillers and the surge of pain from getting to his feet made him nearly topple.

  He heard a barely audible whizzing sound, followed by a crisp snap in the air and his suit flashed a warning: PROJECTILE FIRED

  “That son of a bitch.”

  The warning flashed again, but he heard nothing. Another round had come his way.

  “Waren’s here and shooting at me!”

  “I’m looking, I can’t see him,” Steve said, agitated.

  Dustin imagined Steve in the tree house scanning every possible place in the world for Waren’s rifle barrel, or something to shoot at to help his friend.

  Dustin crawled triple time and at great expense. He batted down the lush green foliage in the dawn light and scurried as flat as he could manage toward the safety of the trees. Every movement of his leg caused more pain to tear up and down his body. He felt the encroaching darkness of his mind wanting to check out with every centimeter crossed, but he pushed on.

  A noisy thump followed by a crackling sizzle came in the distance and Dustin rolled onto his back. A neon red flare soared into the sky. He traced the streamer of propellant back to a tiny knoll covered in broad-leafed plants a half kilometer away to the east near the edge of Stahl.

  The red flare reached its zenith and deployed a flame that hung like the Devil’s North Star in the sky. Monsters at the edge of the settlement turned, and watched it descend downward toward Dustin’s position.

  “Oh no,” Dustin said, and rolled over.

  “It’s Waren . . . ”

  Dustin got back to his feet just as the monsters bolted toward the flare. Three of the spitting leaders came, rushing alongside a score of the tinier, sharper bugs. Two of the mammoth rock beasts were quickly left behind in the stampede but right there in the midst of the fray were enough of the mutant humans to beat Dustin to death if they reached him.

  He shouldered his rifle and fired four shots in rapid succession into the mass of approaching death. Something fell and was trampled. He turned and ran into the jungle as they came for him. His suit told him Steve fired far above to break up their charge, but he knew the tiny fléchette rounds wouldn’t be enough to stop them all.

  Dustin choked down the rage of betrayal. He ran, oblivious to the damage he was doing to his leg. He leapt over stones, over fallen trees and past startled creatures that had no idea a tide of murder rose in their direction. He spotted Steve’s tree, and ran to the safety it represented. He already had his grappling hook mounted and ready. He just needed to get close enough to fire it above the coating of slime at the base of the mushroom tree and trigger the motor so he could fly up and away.

  Getting awfully sick of running away all the time.

  In the darkness of the jungle he saw a spray of thick blue fluid hit a flat leaf near him. The spitters were getting closer, and they knew he was a living thing.

  Dustin lifted the muzzle of his rifle and pulled the trigger to fire his grapple.

  The trigger clicked–and nothing happened. His suit flashed him another death sentence: GRAPPLE SYSTEM MALFUNCTION: SEE AN ARMORER

  Whatever Dustin had left for a stomach buried itself in the ground where the rest of his body would soon join it. He spun and faced his doom, backing up and firing like a mad man into the monsters’ faces, chests, and swinging claws.

  “Fuck it. So be it. Melody I love you. Take care of our baby.”

  A feeling of joy overcame him; a glorious sensation of relief that the struggle would soon be over. Here–now–he would face these demons and either he would weather their storm, or be swept away. No matter the end, he would finally stand and fight. He would have his warrior’s death, earned most gloriously.

  One more hero without a happy ending.

  He went through an entire magazine, ejected it and slapped a second in before his back hit the thick, viscous siding of the mammoth fungal tree. His body stuck but he twisted his shoulders as he fired and tore free. The thick goop clung to his backside, coating his armor like a gel.

  The slavers halted their advance as he fired, and a moment later the tinier bugs did, too. Incredibly, the native monsters of Selva made space, and created a wide circle around him. The mutated humans pressed forward, unaware of why their masters stopped.

  Dustin squeezed the trigger, aimed again, and fired again, dropping his former human friends one after another until the survivors of his wrath were upon him, and his rifle usable only as a club.

  Dustin punched a female civilian in what was left of her face, shattering her eye socket and knocking out several teeth. Her mouth-fangs clicked and she hissed as she fell backwards to the ground, concussed.

  A blow rocked Dustin’s helmet, and spun him against the tree. A dozen more blows rained down on him, some from fists, some from claws, others from mutated limbs. His armor held as he struck back, using his priceless, ancient weapon as a shield and mace, but soon he would tire, and his gear would fail. His suit’s screen flashed warning after warning about impending compromises that each, on its own, would spell his doom.

  He bellowed, and shoved with all his might against them, knocking most of them back. He caught a breath just before one of the human things ran back at him, clawed fists swinging, mouth spraying blue foam. Dustin swung a powerful roundhouse at the twisted and malformed marine’s face.

  The knuckles of his armor smashed the rabid man’s head in at the temple, and sent him to the ground. The wound he’d left in the man’s head sizzled and malformed. The crushed shell and alien flesh melted away deep into the man’s brain, then gave off a tiny stream of what looked like smoke.

  But it wasn’t smoke.

  The semi-humans stopped and watched as one of their kind died from something they had never seen before. Something inside their primitive brain remnants told them what happened before their eyes was bad.

  Dustin jumped. He reached back and grabbed a handful of the green slime on the side of the tree and flung it at a wide-chested marine with arms that looked like segmented crab limbs. The fungus struck his neck and slid down his bare chest, coating his olive skin and his red-flecked black shell. The slime did nothing to his human flesh, but when it reached the carapace, catastrophic change occurred. The shell melted and softened, hissing forth a hundred streams of wispy spores. The shell came loose under the bloody fringes of the human flesh, and fell to the mossy ground like broken eggshell, covered in a rapid growing skin of brown and green fuzz–organic material the same color as the tree trunk the slime came from.

  Dustin grabbed another handful of green sludge off the tree and threw it at one of the slavers backing away. The goop missed, but the slaver screamed a shrill noise and scampered back, avoiding the touch of the poison.

  “Oh now it’s on!”

  Dustin dropped his rifle. He grabbed two handfuls of the green mucus and smeared it over his chest and arms. He scraped two more thick blobs and readied his hands. He turned and faced the last few humans who hadn’t realized that their doom was at hand.

  “Dustin, what’s going on down there?”

  “Wait one. I am about to kick some ass,” Dustin said, and dove forward.

  The joy of giving up fled, replaced by something different.

  Glee filled him. Unrepentant and murderous glee. He became a battering ram. A battering ram covered
in slick, low friction gel that came free on his victims easily. A battering ram that swung wild fists and kicked out with legs that forgot they were hurt and weak. A battering ram that not only beat its opponents violently, but one that got inside them, burning them, changing them, dispatching them.

  For once on Selva, the monsters screamed.

  Chapter Fifty-One

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

  26 October 163 GA

  Dustin didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.

  Using the mushroom tree’s self-defense mechanism, he had won a victory over the planet’s monsters for the first time. The sludge somehow reacted to the slavers and their offspring violently, melting away their flesh, and growing some kind of fungus or mold in its place. The goop worked like organic grenades on the creatures.

  Using Steve’s grapple, Dustin got to the top of the tree, exhausted from the battle, his multitude of injuries and the climb, and immediately embraced Ping-Pong.

  “Holy shit, dude. I thought you were fucking done,” Ping-Pong said as he squeezed Dustin’s slime-covered body.

  “You’re telling me,” Dustin squeaked back. “I need to rest. I’m smoked fierce.”

  “Yeah man. Yeah,” Steve said, helping Dustin to his damp bedroll, down to the hard mushroom roof, and under the silver thermal blanket.

  He’d never felt more comfortable laying on a hard, wet surface. Oblivion welcomed him.

  When he came to, the heat of the Selvan day had boiled up to nearly intolerable levels. Steve had taken the armor off him and he awoke wearing just his skivvies, socks, and a fresh bandage around his perforated thigh. He sat up and saw his leg wound had wept a good deal of blood. Dustin grabbed a nearby canteen and downed a mouthful of warm water.

  Ping-Pong lay on his stomach nearby, scouring the terrain of distant Stahl and the east side of the settlement for signs of Waren. He rolled over and looked at Dustin, then smiled.

  “You are a crazy bastard, Vindicator One,” he said.