Greith righted himself just in time to register Henry’s sword arcing towards his neck. For a split second, all the hubris, all his pride, was gone. Only fear filled those mismatched eyes.

  The ebony blade sang through Greith’s neck before Henry reversed his cut and bisected his body through the spine. Blackish blood filled the space between the separated portions of Greith’s body. Like the augmentations he’d created, his body was decimated and began to decay.

  A relieved chuckle escaped Henry’s lips. Then the glass of the bridge shattered, sucking all involved out into space.

  1841 (Mountain time), 8 October 2025

  Near the throne complex, the M’Nok generation ship Lost Light, Midnight November, Qrora’s team

  “I thought you said it would only take a few minutes!” Qrora barked. More Runners came at them, and they were scraping the bottom of their magazines. Disciplined fire from the Midnight fighters had managed to maximize casualties to the Runners while minimizing their needless ammo expenditure. However, they only had a finite amount of ammo.

  Qrora put another three-round burst through an approaching Runner.

  “Any day now!” he yelled.

  “It’s stuck!” Ozzie cried.

  Qrora risked a glance over his shoulder to see the elevator descended halfway, shuddering in its housing. You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “Five?”

  An alarm sounded, indicating a hull breach somewhere in the ship. And things just got worse.

  “I don’t think I can free the car without damaging it,” Five said. He sent a pulse through the ground that caused the Runners attacking them to stumble.

  I suppose I can’t be too mad; he keeps giving us the standoff we need.

  Qrora’s attention snapped back to the Runners, just in time to plug another one with a three-round burst. Then the most curious thing happened. The Runners’ aggressive attack stalled. The relentless killing machines paused, as if they’d been suddenly dazed. Midnight November took the opportunity to flip their weapons to single-shot and pick off as many as they could.

  Their reprieve only lasted for a moment, however, and the Runners resumed their attack, though they were less organized than before. He noticed that Runners farther away from them were tearing into each other with equal fervor to the ones charging towards them.

  “Qrora!”

  The M’Nok commander sent a glance behind him to see Buddy turn and face his wayward brother towards him.

  “Let me down from here,” Qaroww said. “I can unstick the elevator. I’m stronger and faster than anyone else you got.”

  “And why should I trust you?” Qrora hissed.

  “Because whatever your short friend there did cleared up my head, that’s why.”

  Well, beggars can’t be choosers. He pulled out a short knife and cut through the parachute cord holding his brother upright. The other M’Nok rubbed his arms and stretched as he hopped down.

  “Well, any day now,” Qrora snapped.

  “I’m moving, I’m moving,” Qaroww replied. The M’Nok darted towards the elevator and scrambled up the scaffolding.

  A sharp scream caught Qrora’s attention.

  He looked to their improvised Chloe-carrier to see the young woman screaming in burst mode as Runner after Runner crossed the engagement line. Well, damn. Looks like she’s awake.

  He spun around and added his own rifle to the fray. Bone and gray matter covered the footpaths leading up to their position as the Runners continued their assault. The most recent wave bore various injuries, clear signs of struggle with their own brethren. Even the ones coming at them nipped and clawed at each other.

  A rumble and a low whine behind him announced that Qaroww had been successful. As soon as the doors opened, he rushed them into the elevator. He counted each individual as they passed through. Mom, Five, Buddy, Chloe, Gene, Calos, Ari, Ozzie, Qaroww, Bort. Swayze rushed past him, crying “Last Man”. Qrora jumped over the threshold as Ozzie closed the doors. With a whirr and a whine, the elevator ascended, leaving the Runners below to claw and bite at each other. Occasionally one would attempt to climb after them, but the others would pull them down and tear them apart.

  “We’re only missing Henry and Krek,” Swayze said.

  “I’m tracking. They went after Greith.” Qrora tapped his helmet. “Gway, do you have a status?”

  “Mission successful,” she said. “Henry and Krek are floating in space awaiting pick-up from the Relentless. Greith is dead, and cosmic radiation will destroy the cells of his corpse.”

  Qrora let out a relieved sigh and removed his helmet.

  “Damn, it’s been a long day,” he muttered.

  “That’s why you should have gotten sleep when I told you to,” Gway said through his external speaker, prompting a chuckle out of the group.

  “Qrora, are you not taking care of yourself?” his mother asked.

  “He doesn’t,” Gway replied. “I have to remind him to eat and sleep constantly.”

  Qrora shook his head.

  “Great, so I’ll be getting this in stereo.” He looked up at Chloe, who’d sat through the interchange with a stunned expression.

  “Guys, where am I?” she asked.

  “You’re on the Lost Light,” Qrora replied. “Thanks to this ass.” He shoved his younger, but slightly taller, brother.

  “Why can’t I move?”

  “We bundled you up on Buddy’s back so you wouldn’t get hurt and we could fight,” Carlos said.

  Her eyes widened as she looked around.

  “Where are my clothes?” Qrora opened his mouth to respond, paused, and looked at his brother. The other M’Nok shrugged. “And who’s Buddy?”

  A stream of unintelligible words flowed from the Cyclops bot.

  “She was fully clothed when we sent her before Greith,” Qaroww replied.

  “Do I need to put her back to sleep?” Five asked.

  Chloe’s head snapped towards the short gray.

  “You’re an alien.”

  “To me, you’re an alien,” Five said.

  Qrora patted the side of their improvised Chloe-carrier.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it,” he said. “But trust me, you’re safe now.”

  Chloe furrowed her brow.

  “Is that an alarm?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Qrora replied.

  1922 (Mountain time), 8 October 2025

  Aboard the Relentless, situation room, near the M’Nok generation ship Lost Light

  Henry sighed as he finally took a seat next to Qrora. He’d changed into a set of PTs that he’d kept aboard the Sugar Mama just in case he had to sleep there, while his M’Nok counterpart wore a fresh under-suit. As far as he knew, they didn’t need to use the chairs or tables in the situation room for anything else, so he and Qrora could debrief each other in there.

  “A lot of things are about to change,” Henry said. “This whole brief war cracked Area 51 wide open. There're all kinds of secrets that are out there for us to look at.”

  Qrora shrugged.

  “The world already looks different,” he said. “From the reports I’ve heard, none of the old governments from before First Contact have survived. There’s a whole world to rebuild. I’m not sure we can look into these secrets too much.”

  He knocked back his canteen and stared at Henry.

  “I’ll give you this much,” the M’Nok finally said. “This war has proven we need to build infrastructure in space, not just habitats and satellites, but dockyards and ports, mines and solar power plants, if we hope to defend this system from anything.”

  Henry pondered that for a moment before responding.

  “I would want to talk to Captain Tanner and Quassik about this, but I think we need to dig up as much as we can,” he said. “I know the US hid a lot from its people, but they were still very transparent. The British, Germans, and Soviets, I have reason to believe, were not as forthcoming with all of their extraterrestrial research as we had previously thought.” He folded his arms and leaned back. “I think we should incorporate the Preservers, Tyr, Five, and your brother into Midnight November, and I think we should deploy with the intent of finding these buried secrets.” A long yawn escaped him. “Excuse me, I’m running on fumes.”

  “Same,” Qrora replied.

  Before either of them knew it, they’d both passed out in their chairs.

  Chapter

  Ten

  2022 11 October 2025

  Event Hall B, Inner Sea Capital Complex, Inner Sea, Montana

  “It was really cool of Quassik to open up the event hall for us,” Chloe said as they crowded around the long bar. Henry and his brother sat on either side of her, with Krek sitting to Henry’s right.

  “Yeah,” Henry said as he shifted his glass, swirling the whiskey inside.

  Krek rotated his glass next to him, deeply enthralled with the amber liquid.

  “James Bond has been multiple men, but he always prefers his martini shaken not stirred,” the dinosaur man mused. “So is James Bond one man played by multiple actors? Or a codename shared among secret agents with a specific martini preference?”

  Behind the bar, Bort violently shook a mixer bottle filled with who-knew-what. The Cyclops robot spouted off an furious diatribe in the M’nok language as he faced Krek.

  The dinoman looked up.

  “You think so? That’s an interesting theory.”

  Henry groaned, his consistent inability to understand the Cyclops bot bothering him.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  “He thinks that, every time they switched actors, they switched to a different but parallel universe, multiverse style.”

  Henry cast a glance at Bort.

  “I didn’t take you for a big movie buff.”

  The Cyclops robot leaned forward, his eye squinting at him, while he continued to gurgle words he couldn’t understand in Henry’s direction. Henry looked back at Krek.

  “He said he had plenty of time to watch movies while you people held him in stasis.”

  Henry held up his hands and looked up at the robot as it poured a jack and coke for Issac.

  “Hey, man, don’t blame me. I didn’t even know you existed until a few days ago.” He pointed at the mixer bottle as the robot expertly poured a Long Island Iced Tea for Chloe. “And when did you pick up that?”

  Another flurry of gibberish followed as Bort grabbed bottles and began portioning them off for somebody else.

  “The Archons loved alcohol, funny enough,” Krek said. “I guess some things are universal.”

  Henry shook his head and looked down the bar. Qrora and Qaroww were having an animated but friendly conversation farther along.

  “I wonder what else is out there,” Issac said, catching Henry’s attention. “I mean, you guys went into Area-freaking-51 and met like a half dozen different aliens. According to Gway, the old alliance was huge. It’s a wonder none of its other members showed up on Earth before. At least, as far as we know.”

  Henry sipped his whiskey and nodded. “Well, they could all be dead,” he said. “The M’Nok’s records told us the Blacktide were on the verge of wiping them out. Hell, the reason the M’Nok even came here was because it was their original homeworld.”

  Chloe nodded along.

  “If I were an alien species fleeing an existential threat and I found Earth, I’d move along. I’d cry, but I’d move along.” She lifted her long Island Iced Tea and shrugged. “The military is strong enough and advanced enough. You’d have no chance of winning.”

  Krek knocked back his drink and clicked with approval.

  “Those records are . . . admittedly incomplete,” he remarked. “Even with our advanced AI, there are gaps in our knowledge. There’s a lot we don’t know, even about our own people.” He paused. “Like our ancestors fleeing Earth millions of years ago. We have no idea why they did or what happened to those they left behind, and I’m not sure I buy the asteroid theory.”

  Issac raised an eyebrow.

  “You think someone came and wiped them out?”

  Krek nodded and gestured for Bort to serve him another drink.

  “There’s always someone bigger and badder,” the M’Nok said. “I mean, something killed that Tidepool. I’d like to know what and how.”

  “Wouldn’t we all,” Henry said. “Considering that all we really know is they’re an existential threat—your records are clear on that.” He shook his head. “Whole worlds were consumed by that black stuff. It’s honestly a miracle you lived, Chloe.”

  “I have a theory about that,” Issac said. “Since the Tidepool was already dead, the Blacktide inside was inert, and someone strong-willed, like Greith, could manipulate it.” He held up a finger. “That’s why I think we could save Chloe, or rather, Qaroww, Five, and Astreia, because it wasn’t connected to the greater Blacktide.”

  Chloe held a hand to her head and grimaced. The Blacktide had washed out most of the dye in her hair, revealing her natural brunette strands.

  “I’ve had the worst headaches ever since that,” she sighed. “Cold things help, but it’s hard to focus sometimes.”

  Henry cocked an eyebrow.

  “Are they still monitoring you?”

  “Yeah, bloodwork every day, full biometric scans. They’ve been really good about making sure I’m not going to turn into some monster or something.” She swirled the ice tea in front of her and smiled. “If Qaroww was able to fight it off, though, there’s hope that I could too if something happened.”

  Issac set a hand on the young woman’s shoulder.

  “Everything’s going to be alright. I can’t prove it, but I just know it, you know?”

  Chloe smiled, and Henry stood up. I think I should give these two some space.

  No sooner did he stand up than Gene bust into the hall. He wore a windbreaker and PT shorts while tossing a pigskin into the air. Carlos and Swayze followed him, grinning.

  “Alright, you ladies,” Gene said. “Who’s up for throwing around the football?”

  Issac raised an eyebrow.

  “Isn’t it like thirty degrees out?”

  “I thought you were from Ohio,” Gene shot back. “Come on, y’all. Shirts versus skins.”

  “I’m a shirt,” Chloe said quickly after downing her drink.

  Henry chuckled and waved to the brothers and Bort to join them. He stepped outside and smiled at the sight of others shivering and bouncing around the long parking lot under the lights. Smiling, he peeled off his shirt.

  “Henry Wells,” said a voice that sounded like it was underwater. “If you remove your shirt in this weather, you increase your chance of hypothermia by 33%.”

  Henry turned to see Bort standing in the doorway. He shared a look with Qrora.

  “My translator was never updated,” the bemused M’nok commander said before looking back at Bort.

  “You could speak English this whole fucking time?” Henry asked. Bort’s single floodlight eye winked off before coming back on.

  2313 15 October 2025

  A conference room, Inner Sea Capital Complex, Inner Sea, Montana

  Qrora stirred uncomfortably. The new formal uniform he wore, a hybrid design of the Americans’ “Pinks and Greens” and more traditional M’Nok army garb, still felt stiff. The result was an olive coat with black boots and khaki pants. In lieu of a tie, he wore a tan ruffle that imitated a layer of feathers on his chest, traditionally a sign of masculinity and dominance. None of it made with comfort in mind.

  Slowly, he approached the round table before him. His ribs still hurt from an overenthusiastic tackle from Gene, and the thought of that spirited game made him feel warm despite the shivers. He took a seat near Shiplord H’kai and nodded to his mother.

  The world had been thrown into chaos when the M’Nok first arrived. It had achieved an incredibly fragile stability when Greith attacked. The old world was gone, and with it, the lines and boundaries that had existed before. Nuclear exchanges had wiped out much of Western Russia and parts of Europe, while Greith’s bio-weapons still ravaged South America.

  “It’s become clear to us that the old way of doing things was flawed,” said a man who represented the southeastern states, which had combined into a new state called the Dixie Republic. “If there are all of these threats out there like you suggested, then we need to rebuild our economies and our defenses.”

  “The thing that gave us a decisive edge was Midnight November,” Qrora said. “And with the addition of Bort and the Preservers, Tyr, Five, and my brother, I think their capabilities will only improve with more technology and more members.”

  He hesitated and looked to the shiplord, unsure if it was his place to speak. H’Kai nodded.

  “Even with them, we need to expand into space,” Qrora continued. “Or rather, further expand into space. We can convert our motherships into factories, colonize the moon and the rest of the solar system. We need to build defenses in the event something does happen.”

  “We need ships,” H’Kai said. “War ships, probes, exploratory vessels, and generation ships.” He held out a hand. “We need to fill out this system, and when we expand beyond it, our first target should be Proxima Centauri.”

  Another representative, this time from New England, dipped her head and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “That’s a little ambitious, especially in our current state,” she said. “We have economies to rebuild, infrastructure to replace. Greith’s invasion really put us on our ass.”

  “But it didn’t knock us out,” Qrora said. “And as my friends in Midnight November say, we should focus on the fifty-meter target.” He pointed upward, not towards the ceiling, but beyond. “We’ll go to the moon!”

  Unknown, somewhere deep beneath the moon’s surface

  Buried. Long forgotten. Nobody even knew it existed. It knew as soon as it perused the signals coming from Earth. Photos had been airbrushed. Records altered. Names and faces erased. Those who hadn’t vanished took their knowledge to the grave. Energy reserves kicked in. Power stored over the course of decades began to flow through circuitry and wires. Older systems, but reliable ones, to be sure. That was the benefit of reliability after all, the system never failed, and this one, enshrined with all of the old grudges of its masters, never forgot.

 

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