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  Melody’s hand drifted down to her round belly.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  The ruins of Stahl, planet of Selva

  27 December 163 GA

  Dustin felt the crooked floor shake as he paced among the fearful scientists and marines. The day was coming to an end, and the time had come to make a break for safety.

  On their backs and in their hands were bags of supplies. Some wielded makeshift weapons they had cobbled together to beat away the inevitable assault they’d experience during their exodus. As he passed each of them in turn, he tied off loose clothing and tucked in straps. He made sure to make eye contact with every person and reassure them. They looked strong when he held their gaze, but when he looked away, their fear crept back. He approached Micah and Margaret last.

  “Just run. Run as fast as you can, as far as you can. There’s a marine on the tree with a rail gun that will provide cover. The other marines will meet us at the tree line. We have rifles. We’ll make it.”

  “Some of us will die,” Margaret said, looking at one of her scientists hefting a chair leg that had a scalpel attached to it with tape. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five, and he looked half that.

  “Some of us have already died,” Micah said, looking at Dustin.

  “And in the end, we’re all going to die anyway,” Dustin said.

  They opened the airlock door with the manual crank after powering down the habitat’s generator. The crank made less noise than the hydraulics.

  “Stay within the marines, and be careful if you swing a weapon. Don’t hit one of us,” Dustin said. “Come out when I call it clear.”

  Dustin led the way into the wilds of the overrun Stahl and immediately encountered the ravenous horde of skitterers. They ran about, frenzied and wild. Several of the massive, mutated beetles clung to the side of nearby buildings and skewed their alien heads at him. He didn’t wait to see what they’d do, or if they’d run. He lit them up, one and all, with his rifle, liquefying them and punching holes through whatever they stood in front of. When the coast was clear, he turned back. His charges waited in the false safety of the lab container.

  “Run!”

  They were afraid, but they were not cowards. They ran.

  As they fled toward the distant peninsula and the safety of its forest, Dustin turned his attention to the looming wall of the giant catapulter bug that stood over the hole in the ground behind the lab. It hadn’t yet noticed the tiny pack of humans running at its feet. The other monsters below it still rummaged about, climbing over one another in a strange dance to dig deep, carry away dark soil, or to keep watch for threats as they made their new home.

  One of the slavers peered around the corner of the habitat with its cluster of black, soulless eyes. Dustin froze as it assessed, judged the human activity, and squawked out a screeching hiss that alerted the entire colony. As Dustin shouldered his rifle to blow its face off, the monster sprayed a stream of its blue mutagen into the crowd.

  Too late to stop the attack, he double tapped two missiles into its face, wrecking the creature’s chances at a future, but the damage had been done. Several of the lab technicians and marines were hit with the blue splash and they were succumbing to the mutation.

  Dustin didn’t have enough of the green protective slime to give everyone a coating. Their demand outstripped the tree’s ability to produce. He had smeared a thin layer on the people he could, and kept one jar in reserve to use as a projectile. The men and women who put their trust in him screamed in agony from the muscle and bone-breaking evolution ripping them apart. The five afflicted by the mutagen dropped to the ground, grabbing at the viscous blue saliva that rewrote their DNA. They scraped at their flesh with fingernails and weapons, smearing it over a greater area, speeding their demise. Nothing could help them now.

  Those who were not hit abandoned the idea of helping and ran faster. Some cried, some screamed, and some kept their wits and slashed at the skitterers who were coming to destroy and feast on them.

  Dustin turned and put his front sight on the chest of a dying marine he’d talked to minutes earlier. He came from Ares, too, two towns over, on the other side of the mine. They’d laughed about swimming in the same quarry, and eating at the same bad restaurants. As Dustin put his finger on the trigger, a foreign voice bellowed from behind.

  “STOP!”

  Dustin spun in place and put his front sight on the speaker’s chest. His jaw dropped.

  Theo Wendell stood ten meters distant at the forefront of a squad-sized element of mutated humans. He’d grown larger. Taller again by a head, and he still wore a crown of bony spikes. Under the scraps of his tattered uniform, Dustin could see that his flesh had darkened further and hardened into a thick shell covering that resembled Dustin’s plate armor. His hands no longer had four fingers and a thumb; the ring and pinky fingers had fused into a hooked claw the size of a dagger. His mouth was different, too, more angular and protruding, almost snout-like, filled with small, gnarled teeth and an abundance of tongues that sat in wait to do something alien.

  But with all his changes . . . his eyes were still human.

  “Theo?”

  Theo nodded, and the creatures at his back shuffled their feet. Some were far stranger than their leader, but they were human enough still to obey him.

  “Are you . . . in there?”

  With effort, Theo nodded. His many tongues and teeth moved in concert, and emitted a strange form of speech.

  “I am . . . returning.”

  “You’re not a fucking zombie?”

  As Dustin stared in wonderment, the group he was supposed to be escorting fled with monsters in pursuit. The massive catapulter above would catch on in a moment, surely. He had to join them quickly or more could die.

  “No longer. Some of us are . . . returning.”

  “Are you going to hurt us?”

  Theo shook his head in an exaggerated way. The tendrils hanging from his face waved like kelp in an ocean current.

  “No. Help.”

  “Help?”

  Static began to hiss in Dustin’s ear. He ignored it as a massive dark shadow loomed over them, the catapulter finally taking notice of the irritating human presence. Dustin would be smashed into the ground if he didn’t move.

  “We came to help,” Theo said.

  Static hissed in Dustin’s ear as he watched Theo. “We could use help, thank you.”

  “No shooting us.”

  Theo pointed at his chest and the others at his back. “Cousins. Now watch.”

  Theo turned away from Dustin and issued a stream of sounds. Some words came in English, intermingled with hisses and clicks from his changed anatomy. The sounds were largely unintelligible to Dustin, but the semi-humans understood. The hissing static grew louder in Dustin’s ear, and he heard a faint female voice hidden behind the veil of white noise.

  Theo’s people switched on in a feral way. They dropped low like predators on the prowl, and sprang into action, following their leader. Using their powerful mutated claws, they climbed to the roofs of the buildings and launched themselves up into the air. One by one, they latched themselves to the legs of the giant that approached. With their claws and fangs they found seams in the creature’s carapace, and they bit and dug deep. Shell cracked and splintered like wood torn in a storm, and the monster reeled in pain. Dustin watched as Theo punched holes in its torso, using each as a step and handhold to climb his way to the monster’s back. Then, he cocked his hooked fist and punched down into the creature’s body over and over, smashing and tearing a hole large enough to crawl into, which he did. His torso disappeared first, then his legs, and he was gone. The monster’s enormous girth froze solid a moment later, and then tipped to the side as its legs failed. The beast’s shield-sized eyes flicked about in hollow ticks, and then it fell to the ground. The changed humans tearing it apart leapt to safety as the massive carcass collapsed into the side of the medical habitat with a deafening boom, crumpling it. The catapult
er burst apart at its seams, issuing forth a flood of gooey innards that ran across the ground.

  In thirty seconds the mutated humans had brought down the beast without so much as a bruise.

  “Holy shit.”

  Dustin turned and bolted, sensing the opportunity they had bought him. The hissing in his helmet kicked in again.

  “–Stahl Colony–”

  “Who is on this channel? Captain Castellano?”

  “Dustin?”

  A very familiar voice replied through the interference. Dustin felt his stomach do a barrel roll of despair and joy.

  “Melody?”

  Dustin bolted around a corner toward the open field between Stahl and the jungle. Thirty meters ahead he saw the last of the survivors running. One was obliterated into a gory splash by a rock bug’s punch as they passed a gap between habitats. Dustin darted away.

  “Dustin! I’m so glad! What’s wrong with the communications? We tried to hail the command center but no one is responding. Is everything okay? Do you know Waren is a terrorist? You need to arrest him immediately, or shoot him in the face.”

  “What the hell are you doing here so early? Jesus it’s not safe. You need to leave. You can’t land. Do you have any fucking bombs?,”

  Dustin sprinted away from an increasingly large number of pursuers. He’d picked up two skitterers and now a slaver.

  “Bombs? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve been overrun by an indigenous hive of fucking monsters. They’ve killed most of us, and we’re fighting to stay alive. They’ve colonized Stahl and we’re living in the peninsula forest. Do you have anything that can wipe out large amounts of shit?”

  Dustin jumped over a row of toppled trash containers and spun. He shot five rapid rounds into the mass of angry monsters behind him and ran again. He took delight in hearing their squeals of pain and suffering.

  “Sgt. Cline, this is Capt. Kingsman. Who is in charge down there?”

  “Capt. Castellano. I’m in charge of combat ops. Do you have bombs? Time is a factor here. We need help.”

  “We have the standard issue Lake Maker but there’s no way we could drop it. I need confirmation that what you’re saying is happening. Right now you sound like a crazy person. I need to speak to Captain Castellano.”

  “She’s on laser comms only. Top of a tree on the peninsula. Still waiting on that bomb.”

  Dustin ran a wide circle around the stampeding rock bug. On its many short legs it ran to cut him off and kill him with its massive arms. Using his rail gun like a pistol, he fired several rounds, staggering it and buying himself space. He knew he couldn’t outrun it, and he probably didn’t have enough ammo to kill it.

  “We’re on approach, we’ll have visual in a minute. I hope you’re right about this,” Captain Kingsman said.

  “Never been more right. Melody, how are you, how’s the baby? Tell me you’re okay.” He kept running.

  “I am doing really well, Dustin,” she said, her voice filled with fright. “The baby is well. Looking forward to seeing you and having the doctor check us over once we land.”

  “Yeah I’d like that. Look, you drop that bomb no matter what. Destroy Stahl. The colony is lost. Bombing it will give the people in the jungle a chance. Most of us are clear. It’s all good. Tell my kid I love them. You’ll be a great mom. I love you.”

  Melody’s voice broke. “Dustin we aren’t dropping a bomb on you, or the colony. We came here to help because we knew Waren was a terrorist. He blew up one of the transorbitals, and he tried to blow up more. We came to help you. I didn’t make this trip to drop a bomb on my husband.”

  “Don’t drop it right on top of me. Go a little to the side. A bit north.”

  He heard the approaching starship above. The freighter’s engines kicked out a throaty rumble that shook the ground and sky. He felt the stampede of the bugs at his back abate. They feared the monster in the sky.

  “Oh my . . . Dustin.”

  Titan was close enough now that the crew could see the horror they’d missed. The wreckage. The corpses. The monsters covering everything.

  “Melody, I love you. Capt. Kingsman, if you want to help us, drop warheads on foreheads and the sooner the better. We can build another colony, if we want to.”

  Dustin saw the rock bug turn and look to the sky at the massive cylinder of Titan hanging above. It approached like an omen of death, a truly alien presence that transcended their simple existence and, somehow, the monsters knew to hide. They fled back to their hole in the ground, scampering as fast as their many legs could.

  “Roger that. I confirm. Warhead away in thirty seconds. Put some real estate between you and the blast zone, Sergeant.”

  Titan lifted itself higher into the atmosphere, creating space to survive the blast force of the bomb it was about to drop.

  Dustin was already running as fast as he could go. His lungs ached and his legs burned but he tried his best to push.

  I can’t die like this. I didn’t survive it all to die at the last second. I need to escape. For Melody. For my baby. For Lionel. For Steve. For Theo, and for Remy. Phillip and Lima.

  “Payload away. Five seconds to impact.”

  Dustin counted five seconds as he willed his body to do the impossible.

  The dim light of evening went white. If the sun itself had teleported to the center of Stahl, the light at Dustin’s back could not have been brighter. Barely a fraction of a second later Dustin felt a shockwave throw him violently up into the air and forward. As he flew through the air he saw the edges on the leaves of the trees in the jungle ahead turn brown, then black, then burst into flame.

  His body somersaulted and in the crazy spin he saw a mushroom cloud rising from where humanity had set foot on Selva.

  Then the world went black, and he had his peace at last, if only for a moment.

  Epilogue

  Dampier Peninsula forest, planet of Selva

  1 January 164 GA

  “Enough about my broken back, Anna. The stims have the bones setting, and I should take it easy. I got it. Tell me about my baby.”

  Dustin lay on a blanket at the foot of the massive mushroom tree. He held Melody’s hand, then reached over to her rounded tummy and beamed with pride. He ignored the pain.

  “I don’t have any medical equipment, Dustin. But, from what I can tell the baby and mother are healthy and safe. I can’t tell you anything about what it’ll be like to have a kid here on Selva. There’s no way of knowing.”

  “There’s no way of knowing how anyone’s life will go,” Melody replied. “But we keep pressing on.”

  Around them, the fresh crew that arrived aboard Titan helped the beleaguered that had survived the time of monsters on Selva. Grievous injuries and psychological trauma were the rule of the day, but the mood felt exuberant, and positive. People were resilient. Dustin felt proud again. He looked at his wife, and the feeling grew.

  “We don’t have long until the fleet returns right?” Anna asked.

  “We brought lots of supplies, too. We should be okay unless those things return,” Melody answered.

  “I think we’re okay. I think they’re like ant colonies. We found one of their civilizations here on the peninsula, and I think we wiped it out. I bet they have competing colonies all over, but right here, right now . . . we’re safe. Safe at least until the nearest colony realizes this real estate is up for grabs,” Dustin said.

  “What if you’re wrong?” Anna asked. “What do we do then?”

  “We’ll work that problem when we get to it,” Melody said.

  Dustin looked at his wife and appreciated her. “I was just going to say that.”

  “Of course you were. It’s the smart thing to say. Lay down, your back is broken. And you’re skinny. Frail.”

  That got a laugh out of him, followed by a wince.

  “Did you see the hole in the ground that bomb left?” Dustin asked her, taking Melody’s hand again. “We could land Titan in it. It’s practical
ly a moat. We turned this peninsula into an island. I don’t think those things can swim, and if we shore up the defenses . . . I think we’re all set. All set enough to make a proper stand if it happens again.”

  “Sir,” an approaching marine said. “There’s something you need to see.”

  “Can you bring it to me? I’ve got a bit of a broken-back thing going on. Is it bad?”

  “I don’t know. There are . . . people at the blast crater. But not people-people. Mutants. They’re just . . . standing there. Looking into the forest this way.”

  “Big black guy look like he’s in charge?”

  “If you mean Lt. Wendell, then yes. He’s there.”

  “Honey, will you help me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anna, before you say anything . . . just don’t. I know.”

  Anna sighed.

  As the marine described, standing on the opposite side of the crater were a dozen of the semi-humans. Center of their number was Theo Wendell. Some stood hunched, others tall and proud, some with an extra arm and some with reverse-jointed legs. Some could barely pass as having once been human , but nevertheless, they stood together, and they waited.

  Micah and Melody each had one of Dustin’s arms around their necks. His weight rested on their shoulders, but they carried him forward without complaint. They led him to the edge of the ocean where the crater and the ocean water met. Frothy waves cascaded up and over the lip of the sand where the blasts had been washed away and into the enormous depression in the ground made by the bomb. Deep inland, opposite the ocean, the small stream flooded into the new depression, mixing ocean and fresh water. As advertised, the bomb had made a lake where Stahl had once been.

  Moving to match them Theo Wendell led his minions to the water where the two groups met at flowing Selvan sea. The sounds of the world soothed.

  “I wanted to say thank you for your help the other day. We wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for you. Thank you,” Dustin said.