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  “Crew of Titan. This is Pioneer 3. You are cleared for emergency launch for a Selvan rescue and resupply mission. May you have a safe journey.”

  The voice cut out. The rogue crew of Titan cheered as one.

  Their odyssey into the void had begun.

  Far, far ahead of them a tiny world covered in blue and green waited.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  The ruins of Stahl, planet of Selva

  8 December 163 GA

  Minutes crept into hours. Hours dragged into days, and days slogged into weeks. Moving around became dangerous not only because of the insects, but because the heat could cook the hair off the top of your head, and crisp the skin beneath it just as fast.

  The insects seemed not to mind.

  Dustin and Steve spent the dark hours of the night gathering and storing containers of the slime, then carrying them to the medical habitat and the science lab so each location had a store of the protective stuff. During their perilous midnight jaunts through the overrun Stahl, they had taken the time to search each sealed unit for survivors, and found nothing but starved, dehydrated husks of friends and colleagues.

  They had who they had until the fleet returned in February, months away.

  To ensure that enough food would be on hand, Dustin worked with a few marines to bring the Armadillo APC back on line to transport a small number of the hydroponics tubs to the two units. Under the watchful eye of Margaret Ford, they began to grow edibles, and she calculated with glee that they would not starve. She couldn’t speak to whether or not they’d survive the presence of the locals.

  Every so often, one of the grasshopper creatures would roam through the thick grasses of the nearby plains. The malformed giants stood out like nightmarish monsters from Pacifican horror movies, ready to eat cities whole and grind apart civilizations. But they never did. They ate grasses by the armload, and wandered about at the end of invisible leashes, waiting for the call of the spitters.

  Theo and his followers could be seen at the very edge of the world, deep in the Rasima plains at the feet of the inland hills. One or two of the mutants would crest a hill, or peer out from around the thick trunk of a lone tree to look out at the town they’d once called home. But they never came closer than that. Dustin knew they didn’t intend to leave, but to stay close.

  And just out of sight of the few humans in Stahl, the loyal skitterers dug and dug, burrowing under the science habitat to create a home for their masters. One of them stopped–confused–when it dug down and found something hard, and straight. Something their kind had never found in the earth before. Not stone, not wood. Not Selva.

  So with sharp, curious claws it dug again. It scraped and clawed around the strange thing in the ground, and hour by hour exposed more of the tunnel bracing that connected the two human strongholds.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  On a course through space heading toward the planet of Selva, TOF Titan

  11 December, 163 GA

  “Dr. Maine, now.”

  Melody floated behind the doctor. He pored over screen after screen of complex mathematical equations, looking for an error.

  “I need to be sure,” the old man said, running his arthritic finger across a line of text on the display. “I am concerned we are traveling too fast. There can be no doubt.”

  “Herbert. You have done this math a hundred times. Trust yourself. We trust you. We have to power everything down. We’re dangerously close to the magnetics.”

  He huffed. “Yes, I suppose. I guess we will find out if we are off-course or traveling far too fast when we come out of the field. Dead men walking.”

  Maine undid the clasp on his chest and allowed the restraints to drift away. He lifted out of his seat with a gentle push and grabbed a ceiling-mounted rail in his thin white fingers.

  “Exactly. Either it works, or it doesn’t. Either way we’re fried if we don’t power down. Hustle back to the sanctum and grab whatever you need. No delays.”

  Melody pushed him on the rump, and sent him on his way.

  Melody drifted over to the pilot console that had become her workspace during their two weeks in space. She sat to the right of Dan, and a blind person could see the difference in their work areas. His powered-down console had a mirror-sheen of cleanliness, and hers looked greasy and smudged. She had tiny bits of food stuck to the smooth glass. Her cravings for snacks had led her to sneaking bites of food during her shifts on the bridge. The long hours sitting in the chair passed slowly, and her need to graze meant she had little choice. Leah had chided her multiple times for the bad habit, but there was little in the way of rules for pregnant pilots and their gestational needs. In more ways than one, Melody was a trailblazer.

  She brushed the crumbs away to float in space, and began to shut Titan down. Each graceful and deliberate movement of her fingers put a process into hibernation. Tertiary systems went off first, and she waited to ensure that everything continued on as normal. She downed a swig of blended vegetables out of a packet and put the foil pouch in her flight suit’s breast pocket. When she was sure everything had proceeded with the least important processes of the ship, she powered down the secondary systems. One child tucked in at a time.

  The ship groaned in protest, a whale in the depths of the darkest waters that sensed the ebbs and flows of alien currents. She patted her console affectionately. Calm down, girl. Nothing wrong. Just letting you nap while the universe tries to scare us away. Just close your eyes . . . And dream. We’ll wake up at another world, safe and sound.

  She tapped on the ship-wide paging system.

  “Titan crew, we are about to power down. Ship-wide life support is going offline in less than a minute, and we will be on emergency lighting. It’s gonna get dark immediately, and hot not long after that. Please make sure you all have your personal lights with you, and are on the way to the hibernation tank. We will seal the hatch in five minutes.”

  She killed the transmission, and floated in the air above her seat. She looked out the bridge windows into the vastness of nothing ahead of them. The automatic tinting of the glass had activated to smother the incandescent light of the sun. She’d grown accustomed to the orange orb in her field of view but now, in the silence of the bridge in the moments before it all went dark to survive the invisible storms . . . the sun looked beautiful. A glowing gem that had invited them forward, beckoning them to a future humanity had only imagined. Somewhere hidden in the orbit of that star toward was Selva, and the father of her child. Her hand dropped down to her rounding belly.

  I get it. I totally get why they left Earth with an uncertain future in the void ahead. Ha. All for the life and prosperity of someone you haven’t met yet.

  The intercom hissed alive. “Melody, headcount is complete. Put my baby to bed and head on back.”

  “On my way, Captain.”

  A few more taps on the screen, dialing down of knobs, and a program routine initiated, the ship’s lights turned down, and the already silent space somehow grew quieter. The gentle hiss of the air recirculation system died away, and the hum of the drives at the aft of the ship went with it.

  Sure that the ship was well on its way to becoming an inert projectile soaring through space, Melody pushed away from her seat.toward She clicked on the small light attached to her headset. Using the same worn rails pilots and crew had used for centuries, she pulled herself along with one hand, each tug sending her several meters down the central artery of Titan. Her other hand remained on her stomach. She passed through hatch after hatch, stopping to seal each one.

  Soon after, she reached the large cargo hold. In the center was the reinforced Frankenstein monster they’d built to survive the storms. Their home for the next 10 days. She sealed the final door behind her, and pulled herself along the rope across the emptiness of the hold. A friendly face came around the hatch edge and waved at her.

  “All is well?” Andy asked her, smiling and extending a hand.

  She reached out and took it.
His grasp was firm, but gentle. Safe.

  “Yep. Once we shut the door . . . It’s all good.”

  She saw the rest of the crew. They looked vibrant, excited at the prospects of their journey. They chatted and laughed. Explorers on the edge of another new frontier. None of them have really accepted the idea that we’re all going to be breathing each other’s farts for two weeks. Laugh it up, people. In seven days we’ll be clawing at this thing’s hull to get some fresher air and peace and quiet.

  Leah’s head appeared just inside the inner airlock. “Thanks for coming. We were about to shut you two out.”

  “Hey! Not cool,” Andy said as he pulled the outer door closed and spun the handle. “I was here the whole time.”

  “Not you, idiot. Melody and her spawn. You brought everything you need?”

  “Yeah. I put all my stuff in here when my shift started.”

  Melody turned and faced Andy. If she could shake the reality of being inside a steel and ceramic tank in a ship soaring through space, she would be like an angel floating in the clouds.

  “Flight Sergeant Morris, the bad news is that you have officially missed your family vacation. The good news is that you are on the cusp of visiting an alien world, and making history. And with Captain Kingsman’s permission, you may close her down.”

  Her little speech got the attention of the crew. Marines and technicians, Herbert Maine and all turned and watched as a grinning Andy pulled the interior door closed. He spun the wheel at its center, locking the hatch in place. Andy floated over to a simple button-based panel near the exit and hit a switch, cycling the air and pressurizing their reinforced space against the heat and radiation that would try to invade them and their technology during their time in the dark.

  No one said anything as they passed through the void.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The ruins of Stahl, planet of Selva

  17 December 163 GA

  The smallest of the mutated insects were a formidable army when assembled in large enough numbers. One alone could do little to advance the will of their masters, but when their masters dangled the blue carrot of evolution in front of their many eyes, whole cities were built and destroyed.

  Fearful of the dread thing that moved through their midst, the slaves had dug their masters’ new home in the ground at a frenzied pace. A mouthful of soil at a time, no more than a few scrapes at the earth before running away to hide. They knew the walking tree was death; it smelled of death, it looked like death, and where it put its feet, it left traces of death in its wake. Too many of their kind had been careless walking in the thing’s footsteps and put one of their own feet onto the green murder. Such a slow way to expire. Hours of agony as the tree took root and grew inside their bodies until exploding outward.

  The creatures had only to see such a death once or twice before learning to tread carefully when the murder walked among the hard shelled places they now called home. Moving about simplified when the biggest master was killed and the family made of the new two-legged creatures left to strike out on their own. As it had always been, each colony needed its own space.

  But they dug and they dug. Devoid of anything beyond the need to please their leaders and get more of their gift, they took earth away time and again to get below one of the hard places to create a sanctuary for when the skies went black. When the world went silent for its sleep.

  With sharp claws they had dug around the hard and angular thing they had found deep in the ground, using it as a wall to lead down to the cool and safe depths. Somehow the colony of creatures they’d attacked and eaten/bred with had dug down themselves, though with what the monsters didn’t know. The soft fleshed creatures had no claws until they were grown for them with the gift. They had made their own hard tunnels that made small noises. Shuffling and creaking sounds that made the bug’s stomachs rumble.

  As the skies grew darker with each passing night, instinct older than the seas told them the silent times came. Frightened of failing their masters they danced and cried for help. They begged for sharper claws, bigger mouths and stronger arms to make a home large and deep enough for the colony to hide..

  In their wisdom, the spitters roused the hulks with the stony backs and sent them to break apart the strange structure under the ground. That would give them more space to endure the silent time. To show their approval the masters gave each of the digging creatures a few drops of their gift, and the painful change it brought on was joyous. Several of the tiny creatures broke apart and grew new arms as a tangible portent of what their leaders needed done. The will of those with the power to change couldn’t be denied.

  The skitterers danced on their new feet, and they dug with their new talons while they waited for the slumbering beasts made of half stone and their massive arms to come to their aid.

  Instinct made the spitters call out further into the world to reach the largest of their minions. Many kilometers distant in the plains, the enormous giants heard the call, and they began to make their way home.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The tunnel connecting the two remaining safe zones, town of Stahl, planet of Selva

  22 December 163 GA

  “Captain,” the dirty marine welcomed Anna to the shadowed and cramped center of the tunnel running between the two human strongholds. They had shored up the rough dirt walls of the tunnel with stronger beams made of medical crutches, unused IV poles and planks brought in by Dustin. All of it was held together by printed resin bolts and nails made with their medical 3D fabricator. Human ingenuity at work.

  “Corporal Dodge,” she replied as she sat on her haunches in the passage. “To what do I owe the pleasure of hanging out under three meters of ground with you?”

  “Well, Captain . . . That’s just it. I don’t think it’s three meters of ground anymore. Look.”

  H pushed up against a flat plate of steel they’d taken from an interior wall to serve as part of the tunnel’s roof. The metal bowed upwards and let loose a hollow, ponging vibration.

  “Is there . . . nothing on top of that anymore?”

  “I don’t think so. There are a few spots in the tunnel where we have gaps. Some of the marines are saying they can see pips of sunlight. I had one of my guys hold up down here during the day earlier, and he confirmed it. He also swears he heard digging noises. Small noises, like spoons.”

  “Are the monsters digging down to get to our tunnel?”

  “I mean, I have no idea. But we have to assume that they’re digging down, and they’ve reached our tunnel.”

  “Crap. Alright, let’s start making a plan to split all our supplies up between the habitats and shut the tunnel down. We can’t risk losing both of our safe spaces because the tunnel is compromised. Moving around outside isn’t as dangerous with the tree slime. We’ll make do.”

  “Roger that.”

  Dodge pushed upwards on another sheet of repurposed metal, testing its strength. The metal didn’t have a chance to spring back before havoc erupted above it. Something collapsed–something smashed–the roof and hammered his upper body into the earthen floor. His chest was annihilated,, and his head hung off, lifeless and open-eyed. His jaw opened and closed as frayed and mangled nerves tried to make sense of what happened. The thick, dark limb that crushed him retreated into the open space above the marine’s corpse.

  Anna screamed and launched her body away from the horror. She crawled on her elbows, dragging her ass, kicking away with the heel of her boots as small life forms dropped through the hole and onto the marine’s body. They turned and looked at her in the darkness with too many hungry, fanatical eyes.

  On hands and knees, Anna propelled herself until she could gather her balance to run while bent over. Behind her, the pursuers came, and she knew they were faster. The column of light streaming down from the opening into her medical hab was her salvation.

  “Shut the tunnel! Shut the tunnel! We have bugs in the tunnel!”

  Anna stood to her full height. As
fast as her feet and hands could manage, she climbed the ladder into the hab. The metal plinked and clanged as her heels and toes ricocheted crazily. Suddenly, a sharp, piercing stab lanced through her right calf, and her foot went stiff. She lifted her leg and felt a heavy weight attached. One of the tiny skitterers was hanging from her bleeding leg, its long arm claw piercing the muscle below the back of her knee. It looked up to her with malice in its many eyes and reared back its three free arms to pierce her again and again.

  “Head down.”

  Phillip stood inside the medical habitat, holding one of the marine carbines. He had the barrel pointed down the tunnel over her head at the horror attached to her. She tucked her head into the rungs of the ladder and went still.

  The rifle fired. Inside the cramped space the single round sounded like a giant hitting the roof of the unit with a hammer the size of tree. She felt a violent jerk at her leg, and a tiny spike of pain but then the weight hanging off her damaged limb ceased. Phillip reached down to her, aiming the rifle over her shoulder like a pistol if something else should follow. She took his hand and pulled herself onto the floor of the medical facility, her ears ringing. As she climbed away from the hatch, Phillip fired again, then once more.. Around her, a dozen marines scrambled about, grabbing their carbines and chest armor, readying themselves for the war that had crawled up and into their laps.

  “Shut the access! They’re in the tunnel. Someone tell the lab, fast.”

  Anna pulled up her uniform slacks to look at her pierced leg. A stream of blood ran from a puckered wound that still had the black insect leg embedded deep inside. A thick run of yellowish green alien blood oozed from the dismembered limb and trickled over her exposed flesh, contaminating the wound.

  Beside her, Phillip fired another salvo of shots into the depths of the tunnel then shut the hatch with a thunderous bang. A small skitterer trying to get inside the hab split in half from the force of the door. What remained of its upper body tried to escape deeper into the hospital, but one of the marines brought down a heel on it, ending its assault with a greasy crunch.