35

Colonel White ordered his artillery units, scattered across Arlington National Cemetery in defensive positions near the Pentagon, to prepare to fire. The heavy machines clanked as they repositioned to face northeast. The motorized 155-mm howitzers could deliver an artillery shell at a distance of more than 24 kilometers with pinpoint accuracy. They’d need that accuracy now.

The thirty-five Paladin units had left a trail of shredded grass and dirt behind them through the manicured mall, like fingers raked through the ground. They were stationary now as each four-man crew slammed home their shells. Each unit could fire as many as three rounds in fifteen seconds. White, parked a few dozen feet behind the cluster of Paladins in an armored Humvee, wondered if they’d get fifteen seconds before the mrill drones returned. The aliens had destroyed more than a dozen of his units in a strafing run minutes earlier; thankfully a handful of the Chinese drones had chased them off. The smoking, splintered hulks still dotted the landscape like fresh gravestones.

Medical units had poured out of the Pentagon to search for survivors, though the mrill weaponry had ensured that there were none. The medics were pulling what was left of the bodies from the vehicles and laying them on the churned meadow of the cemetery, the dead above resting on the dead below. Surprisingly, the mrill seemed not to have recognized the significance of the Pentagon itself, and the massive building stayed untouched.

“Twenty-four seconds to mark,” White said into his headset, trying to ignore the procession of bodies being laid out behind his diminished unit.

The men had been well drilled and most were veterans of the recent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whatever the nature of the enemy they were facing and the friends they had already lost and were likely still to lose, they knew their jobs. The “First West Virginia,” as the National Guard unit was known, had a history dating back to the American Revolution and was the ancestor of parts of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment.

The fire teams plugged in the coordinates and White scanned the sky for a last check of incoming mrill drones. Radar just seemed to draw them in, so it had been shut down. For all the technology packed into the Paladin, the team was mostly driving and shooting blind. He hoped the coordinates were accurate.

“Four seconds to mark,” White said into his mic.

Three mrill drones dropped out of the clouds about half a mile away and raced toward the artillery team. White gripped the dashboard, and the driver next to him tensed.

“Fire!”

The thirty-five barrels erupted in a drumroll, rocking each machine back on its treads.

White knew the men were reloading already, but the drones were here, and their green bolts walked up the green grass, pulling it apart, then ripping open the heavily armored Paladins. Four were obliterated instantly. A pair of antiaircraft guns, modified Phalanx 20 mm Gatling guns, hastily deployed in the Pentagon parking lot, opened fire, sending a stream of shells into the sky to bring down the drones. The military had been forced to shelve its surface-to-air missiles, as they simply could not get a radar lock or track a heat signature from the alien ships. That meant the soldiers were firing the massive Phalanx machine guns manually, tracking the drones visually on a high-resolution camera and firing the gun using a joystick control in a small shed hardwired to the gun emplacements about fifty feet away.

The Phalanx guns, originally designed to track and destroy incoming anti-ship missiles for the navy, packed a massive punch. Visually tracking the mrill drones was an almost impossible task, though, and the fire teams could only hope to distract the mrill long enough for the Paladins to fire off another volley or two.

One of the Phalanx guns raked directly across the hull of a mrill drone in a fantastically lucky hit. The explosive rounds tap-danced across the exotic armor, unable to penetrate the hull, but knocking the ship off course. Now all three drones turned toward the Phalanx guns. The Paladins fired another volley, a rolling thunderclap. One of the drones swooped across the field of fire at that exact moment and was hit by an artillery shells. This round, a 155 mm, high-explosive shell designed for tearing apart tanks, buildings, and infantry packed more than enough force to puncture the ship. A blinding explosion filled the sky, putting the still-struggling sun to shame, and the drone was yanked sideways. A jagged hunk was torn from its hull, and the wounded machine spiraled into the ground, furrowing into the soft dirt. The other drones, ignoring their downed companion, methodically raked the Phalanx emplacements, destroying them in moments.

But they’d done their job. The Paladin artillery units rocked on their heels one more time, hurling explosive shells at the mrill forces on the ground for a third time. White ordered the units to disperse. He harbored no illusions about escaping, but knew the additional time it took the drones to hunt them down represented a few more seconds that Shepherd could use to attack the mrill infantry. Maybe just enough time.

The drones, hovering in midair and glistening in the full sun, spun on their axis like no earthly aircraft White had ever seen. Their gun barrels hung low, and the bellies of the ships glowed a faint blue through the crisscrossing metallic structure. At least White thought it looked metallic. Just one more mystery to take to my grave, he thought without bitterness as the weapons swung to target his vehicle.

Then a massive sound, like a giant stomping his foot, filled the air. Crump, crump, crump. The AC-130 had arrived and was pounding the mrill infantry. White could see the fireballs and mushrooms of smoke to the northeast. He could feel the vibrations through the ground. The drones hesitated for a moment, then rose and zoomed off to the confrontation. Before they could rise thirty feet off the ground, a pair of green bolts sizzled through the sky from the south and lanced the two drones, blowing them apart. Two of the Chinese drones whistled through the air, their supersonic booms doing nothing to subdue the wild, ragged cheers of the soldiers on the ground.

White grinned, then roared.

“Keep firing, dammit. Everything you’ve got.”

The artillery crews turned back to their work with savage joy.

White turned to his lieutenant.

“Don’t know if we’ll make it to supper, but we’ll make damn sure these bastards don’t either.”

Lieutenant Daniel Fish smiled.

“I’m still full from breakfast, sir. I’d rather be working.”

McPherson Square had almost literally been turned upside down.

The small plot, less than two acres of formerly tranquil grass and trees, park benches, and a statue of its Civil War namesake, looked now like the tortured surface of some volcanic, primordial planet. Jagged craters were formed, destroyed, and reformed as explosives and artillery mingled with the electric green crackle of mrill and brin weaponry. The air was a choking brew of dust, ash, and smoke, and splotches of fire dotted the uneven terrain. The buildings surrounding the square looked like the shattered faces of drunken barflies who’d somehow ended up in a ring with a heavyweight boxer. Chunks of masonry dripped from the mangled structures and shattered on the ground, adding to the noise, haze, and chaos. Soldiers fired haphazardly from the rubble on the south side of the square at the scattered mrill, the space too choked for any kind of vehicle to enter, while the AC-130 gunship above pounded the enemy infantry with bombs and 30 mm shells.

Ben slipped through the whirlwind, continuing to fire. He danced across the precarious rubble and bounded over the jagged craters in the ground. A building loomed ahead, and he scaled it in three giant vertical leaps, his feet and hands finding purchase on window ledges and fire escapes. He poured green fire into the shrinking body of the mrill force, picking them off one by one.

The three remaining mrill ground troops and the two remaining robots had been bunched up, concentrating their fire to plow through the last cluster of buildings between them and the cannon on the White House lawn. The battering ram had disintegrated as their numbers dwindled. The enemy troops and robots dispersed, fanning out like arms on a rake. The soldiers in the square tried to keep them in their sights, but the mrill troops vanished, activating their cloaking systems.

Ben’s jamming signal had originally disabled their cloaking tech, but the mrill on the ground had finally managed to overpower his signal—at least for a moment. He knew they couldn’t fire while invisible, as nearly all the nanomachines in their bodies had to be retasked to maintaining the visual illusion. The mrill would disappear, move to a new position, reappear for a second or two to fire, and then move on. The robots weren’t equipped with the cloaking technology and weren’t quite as mobile as the mrill foot soldiers, though what they lacked in stealth they made up for in armor, and bullets zinged harmlessly off their hides as they marched forward, red eyes glowing.

The AC-130 gunship overhead went silent. The robots were getting too close to the soldiers’ positions. The robots seemed impenetrable and the mrill troops were impossible to track.

But Ben could see the mrill, or could at least see the heat signatures of their rifles.

He spotted the infrared blur of one of the weapons racing up the side of a crumpled building, where the mrill fighter would have an open line of fire into a squad of soldiers. He ordered his own nanobots to direct most of their resources to reestablishing the jamming signal. It meant losing his own ability to turn invisible, but he had no choice. He couldn’t let those soldiers die while he could do something about it.

He turned and slung his rifle onto the roof of the building across the street, a 55-foot shot put. The clattering sound of it landing on the cement roof was lost in the roar of the battle, and he needed to be as nimble as possible. Even before the rifle landed, he launched himself up the side of the building. He bounded dozens of feet at a time, his feet finding slim edges, his hands growing thin adhesive pads similar to those on a gecko’s toes. He couldn’t dangle from a flat wall by just his hands, but the sticky pads allowed him to momentarily cling to the rough surface as his feet found purchase and propelled him further. It was, despite the furor, exhilarating.

Ben hauled himself over the cornice and landed on the balls of his feet on the dirty roof. He retrieved his rifle and crept to the edge of the rooftop. The scene below almost defied belief. A jagged ravine ran from the northeast, where the mrill had originally landed, down to the square. The charred, blackened trench was littered with bodies, mostly human, some mrill, as well as chunks of crushed and shredded civilian and military vehicles. The scar cut straight through buildings, and mangled wires spit sparks through the tangles of crumbled masonry, twisted steel rebar, and mutilated furniture that sagged out from the vivisected structures. Fires burned everywhere. A blackened fire truck, torn in half, its red and blue strobe lights still spinning lazily, had been abandoned at one street corner. No firefighters were in sight. Can’t blame them. It was an active battlefield and the mrill would kill them as promptly as they did the soldiers. Maybe they already had.

To the southwest, now just a stone’s throw away, the White House was still pristine, but the lawn was stuffed with soldiers and marines. The defensive cannon bathed them in crimson light every time it fired, making them look like scurrying ants in a puddle of blood. The stench of burning plastic and flesh filled the air. Ben was momentarily paralyzed at the horror of it all. If this isn’t what hell looks like, then the devil needs to take some notes.

Ben could see a ring of troops and armor closing in from a few miles away. They wouldn’t get here in time to engage the last few mrill before they reached the White House lawn. Fighter jets streaked across the sky, pursued by the last few mrill drones over the city. He knew the bulk of the force was still above the planet, tangling with Eddie and Nick. The cannon, less than half a mile away, continued to pump out concussive bolts of energy. Ben sensed that the battle above was slipping away.

He ingested all this information in less than half a second. His jamming signal took over, the remaining mrill became visible, and Ben fired. Two of the three remaining mrill soldiers went down before the last zeroed in on his position and returned fire, along with the two robots. He tumbled back from the edge of the roof as their shots punched into the building, ripping out concrete. Even with Ben out of visual range, they continued to fire into the wounded building and he realized they intended to demolish it and crush him in the debris.

He rolled backward, away from the edge of the disintegrating building, as wads of masonry hurtled in all directions. The structure was collapsing beneath him. He swung his left hand out to grab onto an exposed girder while his right hand flipped his rifle onto his back, where his internal nanomachines grabbed it in a magnetic embrace. The building looked like Swiss cheese, with more holes being punched open every second. The floors below were collapsing into a growing bonfire fueled by chairs, papers, and desks, while the bitter smell of burnt plastic filled the air. A “Hang in there, baby!” motivational poster of a cat dangling from a rope swung on its hook, came loose, and somersaulted down into the flames.

“Sorry, kitty,” Ben said, feeling the girder in his hand begin to come loose.

He started to pull himself up until one of the energy blasts sliced across his left shoulder. He cried out and lost his grip, falling. He landed with a thud on the sharp edge of a desk perched on a chunk of the floor below that was still intact and felt several thick shards of glass puncture his back. He rolled to the floor, groaning, trying to move to the rear of the building as it continued to collapse around him. Had to get out of here. He staggered to his feet just as another energy blast cut through his right thigh. He fell again, and a massive section of ceiling slammed into his head, driving him to the floor. His body was already repairing itself, but there was no time to wait.

Off the ground, dazed, leaving a thick trail of blood. Almost to the window, his right leg dragging. Flames engulfed him from the rear, the heat burning his skin. He threw himself at the window with all his strength, feeling the damaged muscles in his leg and shoulder tear further.

He struck the glass at the same moment as the fireball. He was only three stories off the ground, but it gave him enough time to realize he was going to land on a small iron fence on the ground below. As the firelight twinkled through the fragments of spinning glass, Ben tried to twist his body to avoid impaling his head on the iron spikes. His lower body crashed into the fence, his nanomachines trying to harden his skin against the impact even as they struggled to repair his other wounds. The spikes didn’t completely penetrate his body, but Ben felt them slice deep. The building finally gave up, like a dizzy child wobbling off a merry-go-round, and came down with a whoosh. Gray air and gnarled fragments of debris sprayed out like a shotgun blast. A chunk of meat was ripped from the back of Ben’s right leg, the protective nanomachines overwhelmed, and he stifled a scream while smaller fragments peppered his back and shoulder. He pulled himself to his feet using the last remaining fragments of the fence that were still standing. His vision dimmed and he slipped to one knee, forcing himself back up.

Ben hopped on his good left leg as he turned and pulled his rifle from his back, which seemed undamaged. He sensed the last soldier and two robots working their way through the rubble. He was suddenly back in New Mexico, on that absurd moonlit night when this had all started. He was back in Pakistan. He was back in Afghanistan, Iraq, and every other warzone he’d ever gone to. He was back in boot camp. Nothing ever changed. There was always another war, another battle, another fight. What was it Santayana had said? Only the dead have seen the end of war. Ben wasn’t so sure. If there was a hell, or at least a place more hellish than Earth, then surely the eternal punishment for all dead soldiers was eternal war, a never-ending battlefield where the dead were endlessly stitched up, resurrected, and shoved back into combat.

He could sense, in the brief lull, the waning struggle above the atmosphere. Nick and Eddie were not doing well. The enemy’s numbers were simply too great. Their last charge had almost failed, and the Chinese drones were being plucked like feathers on a goose.

The trooper and robots rushed over the rubble of the collapsed building, firing as they charged. Ben, his leg already knitting up, rolled sideways, returning fire, his machines uninterested in his despair. One of the robots slipped in the loose debris and a concrete slab shifted and slid down onto its leg. The slab pinned the robot down for just a moment, long enough for Ben to draw a bead and fire, obliterating its upper body. The explosion knocked the other robot sideways, but it recovered in midair and landed neatly on the side of an exposed segment of shredded concrete and steel rebar, clinging to the mangled metal with its metallic claws, its eyes glowing red. But again, that was just enough time for Ben, who fired two shots into its body. The machine blew apart like Legos.

The last mrill soldier had momentarily disappeared in the dust, but Ben spotted it with his upgraded eyes. The mrill still seemed to not fully appreciate that this human was as capable as they were. The arrogance struck him again, and Ben wondered if they had never truly encountered a similarly advanced and equally warlike species. He looked for one last shot to end this battle.

Just as his finger curled around the trigger, the briefest flicker of a gray dart plunged into the thirty feet of jagged terrain between Ben and the mrill soldier and exploded. In the fraction of a second before both combatants were hurled from their feet, Ben realized that the AC-130 must have dropped a GBU-39 bomb out of an excess of enthusiasm. Known as a “Small Diameter Bomb,” the weapon was designed to focus the destruction in a limited area and minimize collateral damage. That was not much consolation if you were inside the impact area of the 206-pound warhead, he realized in that moment. The light from the blast was the first thing to hit Ben, he noticed in almost slow motion. The shockwave and debris then hit next, almost simultaneously, at the speed of sound. Ben felt his eyeballs flatten under the pressure and his skin quivered and flapped before the nanomachines were able to link together and harden. Even with the protection, the force of the detonation still lifted the human and mrill off their feet with ease, like dandelion seeds in the breeze.

As Ben looped through the air, his mind slowing down, he realized he was traveling in a predictable and calculable arc. Simple Newtonian physics.

And he still had his rifle.

Particles of concrete, fragments of steel, bits of paper, dirt, and a thousand other unidentifiable pieces of debris all moved through the air with him like dancers at a waltz. They slid and spun as the universe demanded, the already diminishing force of the explosion and the relentless tug of gravity prescribing their paths with precision. Ben knew he was being driven back toward the spikes of the iron fence and wondered if his tiring body would be able to fully protect him. Probably not.

He brought his rifle to his shoulder, his body about fifteen off the ground, flying backward at about thirty feet per second. He sighted down the barrel, between his feet, waiting for a spinning planetoid of asphalt to clear his view. Time barely seemed to exist anymore, and his senses felt amped even beyond what they’d been before. If he concentrated hard enough, Ben felt like he could count the molecules in the air. The chunk of what had previously been a parking space rotated as it moved through its brief trajectory, ancient clots of gum dotting its surface. A quarter was embedded in one of the pink blobs, and George Washington seemed to nod as he spun, unable to tell a lie.

A thousandth of a second later, the pavement and the former president slid out of the way, and Ben finally had a clear line of sight to his enemy.

The mrill soldier had apparently noticed the same opportunity and was bringing its weapon up as well. Through a thin corridor in the dust and the flame, the two faced each other down the long barrels of their guns. Ben smiled. For one of them, this battle was blessedly over. The faintest puzzled look passed over the face of the mrill soldier at the sight of Ben’s smirk, and they both fired. The beams crossed in the thick cloud of dust and smoke, vaporizing particles of concrete and debris. As the bursts of energy passed within inches of each other, they interacted briefly; sizzling bolts of electricity arcing from one beam to the other for the barest fraction of a second. The two beams went their separate ways, leaving swirls of superheated gas behind them. Each fighter was struck by the other’s shot and, with that, time seemed to notice the two soldiers again and sent them crashing down out of their slow dances and slamming them into the ground.

Ben landed in a jumble on the ground and cried out, a deep cut burning the side of his torso. Instinctively, he tried to sit up to examine the wound, but his nanomachines had immobilized him from the neck down to minimize additional injury so they could try and seal the gash. He sensed it wasn’t a sure thing. The beam had gone deep. He turned his head to the right, the only movement he could make, and saw the mrill spread on the ground. Ben’s shot had hit him directly in the chest, punching a hole straight through. Green blood trickled from the alien’s mouth. It looked over at Ben, its fingers twitched, and then it was still.

Ben looked up and realized thick, heavy clouds had moved in. The sun was gone. He could hear fires raging everywhere. There were sirens in every direction. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers were dead.

But it wasn’t over.

“Ben, you still there?” Rickert’s voice filled his head.

“For the moment,” Ben replied. “We got ’em all on the ground, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Hold on.”

Ben, who had been following only peripherally the battle above the planet, connected fully to Nick’s and Eddie’s internal computer systems. The gloom from the gathering rain clouds was replaced by the black of space and the pinprick of a million stars and the fury of the alien armada.

Nick and Eddie sensed the link, and Ben could feel their relentless determination but also their quiet acknowledgment that they were fighting a battle they could not win.

“Hey boss, welcome to the main event,” Eddie chirped.

“Yeah, we’ve got them right where we want them,” Nick said, racing beneath the tangled structure of the mrill mothership, firing at anything that looked like critical machinery. A small swarm of Chinese drones covered his attack run, but the mrill drones and defensive weapons on their ship picked them off methodically. Plus, the shots on the mothership seemed to have no effect. Nick and Eddie’s scanners couldn’t penetrate the shielding around the ship, so they had no idea where they should be targeting their attack. They were essentially firing blind.

“We’ve hit it at least two dozen times, from every angle, but they’re fixing it as fast as we tear it apart, and we’re not sure where the weak points are or even if there are any weak points,” Eddie said. “Our drone fleet is about gone. We’ve seen them launch seven additional troop dropships, and so far we’ve managed to destroy them before they get past us. But I—wait, hold on”—Eddie took three quick shots—“I get the feeling they’re just waiting to finish smearing us before sending in the real reinforcements.”

Ben grunted in pain as his nanobots pulled another piece of his torn flesh together.

“We got all the ones down here, but just barely. And if they land anywhere else, where I can’t help out, we’re done,” Ben said. “And not sure how much help I’d be if they landed five feet away right now. I’m leaking pretty good.”

A Chinese drone on Nick’s starboard side blew apart and he angled off to avoid being vaporized himself.

“I don’t suppose the Chinese are sending us any more presents,” he wondered.

“Afraid not,” Ben said. “General, you got any good news we don’t know about?”

Rickert sighed.

“No. We still don’t know if the president and SecDef survived the attack on NORAD. We’ve got no reinforcements to send up. Comms are spotty, but it looks like most of the world is in various stages of either civil unrest or complete social collapse. Half the world seems to be fleeing from the cities and the other half fleeing into them. Just . . . just chaos. It’s not surprising, but we couldn’t send in more ground reinforcements to DC because every highway is clogged. We’re airlifting in a marine battalion to the area, but it’s just messy as hell. I’m not sure what they’ll do when they get there, but everyone’s flying off half-cocked. The VP has disappeared. Don’t know if he’s been killed or just in hiding. I guess I’m pretty much in charge, for whatever that’s worth.”

Ben felt his nanomachines return some control to his muscles as his body began to heal. He pushed himself up on one elbow as it began to rain. Soldiers—human soldiers—were now picking their way forward through the rubble, rifles raised. He sat up completely and waved them over. Their rifles swiveled to face him, then lowered as the men recognized him and began running over.

Ben turned his attention back to the skies above, the smoking, subdued streets of DC disappearing from his vision, replaced by the fury of battle at all angles. Attacks and retreats unfolded above and below, at every speed, the ships firing and dodging and regrouping too fast for any normal human brain to grasp, much less direct.

Any purely human technology guided by a purely human pilot would have been destroyed in an instant. This was the last line of defense now . . . and Ben knew what had to happen.

He’d known for a while, suspected since the first moment he’d stood in the cold New Mexican desert and understood what the invaders wanted. A sacrifice was required—a blood sacrifice. But not his own. Ben’s punishment would be the fulfillment of Abraham’s nightmare, murdering the one closest to him at the command of a mysterious, otherworldly entity. Unlike Isaac, though, there would be no reprieve. The vision would become the reality. He had not been able to save his father. That failure, that weakness, had now led him inexorably to this moment where he must cast his brother over the side, as well, into the uncaring void.

Nick and Eddie sensed the situation before Ben could articulate it. Their wireless link made it almost impossible for one to conceal anything from the other two.

“You don’t need to give the order, boss,” Nick said. “We’ll take care of it.”

“Yes, I do,” Ben responded without hesitation.

“What order?” Rickert asked. “What’s going on?”

Ben calculated in a moment which of the two men was in a better position to carry out the final strike.

“Nick,” Ben said. He could feel raindrops pattering his face while his eyes stared into the beautiful vacuum two hundred thousand miles above. “I need you to fly your ship into the mrill mothership and activate your self-destruct and detonate your nuke. I’d tell you to fire your Tomahawk, but it’s simply not precise enough.”

“Aye aye, Lieutenant,” Nick said without hesitation.

“Eddie, withdraw about two hundred klicks and observe. If they shoot Nick down before he can get close enough, it will be up to you,” Ben continued.

“Copy that.”

“Wait,” Rickert said. “Don’t the drones have self-destruct mechanisms?”

“Yes, but they’re not powerful enough. We need to blow the warhead on the Tomahawk as well, and the drones aren’t armed with those.”

Ben and Eddie linked their minds to Nick. From here on out, whatever he felt, they’d feel. Whatever he thought, they’d share. They were all one mind from this point forward.

Nick could finally see all the things Ben had been holding back. All the memories—a lifetime of them—filled him in a momentary flash. Over all of them lurked the memory of the struggle on the boat. Nick thought he could see it clearer than perhaps Ben ever had, without the tangled knot of guilt and fear and deep shame that had wrapped itself around Ben’s mind.

The water is smooth as liquid glass as they leave the harbor. No clouds. No birds. Just sea and sky and a rising red sun at their backs. Such a setting was perhaps more ominous in the days of sailing ships, but it is perfect weather for a diesel-powered craft. The catch is plentiful, and the ship soon is slung low on the water, weighted down by good fortune. They eat fistfuls of hard biscuits and crumbly cheddar as fast as they can, enjoying the hard and simple work beneath the warm sun. As they putter through the dark blue water, the father shows his son how to mend the nets, read the sonar, work the pumps. Only when the last slip of land slinks from view behind them does the flat air begin to fold. A small breeze and a gray cloud chugging over the western horizon, slow and fat. Plenty of time to finish the catch.

“Should we go back now, Dad?”

The man seems unsure, perhaps weighing the racing clouds against the responsibilities and debts the child can barely understand. He pulls his tattered Giants cap, the orange SF logo now faded, up and down on his head, sweat glinting in the retreating sun.

“One more catch. Hold is almost full. Easiest hunt we’ve had in months.”

They drop the nets one more time, as the tall and deep cumulonimbus clouds get faster and blacker. The boy sees the man whip his gaze back and forth between sea and sky, a jittery cigarette sending up a jagged distress signal.

“Okay, that’s enough. Pull up the lines.”

The whine of the electric motor as the full, squirming nets are brought up, the last load of yellowfins are dumped in the hold. A rumble of thunder from no more than a mile or two to the west, Neptune clearing his throat. The man races to the cabin and pulls on the throttle. As they turn the boat back to the east, to home, the engine stalls; a clog in the fuel line.

A minor thing on any other day. The storm, almost sensing the handicap, rushes in, boxing its fists around the crippled ship. It spins and rolls on the growing waves. The boy can hear the dead-eyed, slippery tuna shifting and sloshing in the hold as he struggles with his lifejacket. The father lets go of his handhold to help the boy. The ship is now just debris carried at the whim of the frothing water. A mountainous wave crashes down, nearly rolling the ship, and the father tumbles overboard, twisted in a heavy fishing net. The boy cries out as the father grabs the wood railing with his one free arm, the other bound in the net. The boy skids and stumbles across the lurching deck, slamming hard against the railing. He bounces up, grabs his father’s arm, and pulls with all his strength, green rubber boots squeaking for purchase. He leans back, pitting his slender body against the entire amused weight of the ocean. He can’t even see his father’s face. His grip is slipping. His boots are inching forward. A metal cleat is just inches away. If he can get his father’s hand around that, then maybe attach the hook from the electric winch to the twisted net, he could . . .

The water surges and heaves, a bull tossing its rider, and his father is gone without a sound, slipping away.

The boy screams, crunches again against the railing, and yells for his father. The thick nets are an anchor, though, and there is nothing to see but a faded cap swirling in a small whirlpool. The ocean spray slaps at the boy’s face—he can taste the salt—and the rain washes it away. He keeps yelling, but the storm drowns him out. When the sea finally quiets down, the boy is too hoarse to make a sound. He tries to fix the fuel line, but salt water has soaked the engine. Constance drifts and bakes in the hot sun in the emptied sky. The dead fish in the hold stink. The entire ship is a floating coffin, with one small boy stubbornly still alive. He sips from a bottle of water and devours the few biscuits that weren’t liquidated. He does not touch the fish.

Eventually, he is found, if not saved.

Nick felt all this in an instant.

That was an accident, Nick sent back. And what I’m doing now is a choice. My choice. You are not responsible for what happened then, or what’s happening now. I am choosing this path. This is not your guilt to carry.

For a moment, Ben resisted the offer. But it wasn’t really an offer. It was a command, a revelation, and it would not be denied. His emotional defenses, a fortress of ice, dissolved beneath the blazing heat and light of Nick’s words. Ben felt brief panic at releasing so much, surrendering so much of what he had become. If he was no longer bound by this grief, this guilt, what was he?

Then relief.

He was free.

Free to do what needed to be done, and to save all those he still could. Maybe not everyone. But he would save all he could, mourn the ones he could not, and keep moving. Those who died protecting and serving the ones they loved would no longer be his burden. They would be his inspiration.

Nick felt these revelations wash over Ben as completely as if they had been his own. Ben deserved this peace. But Nick didn’t have any time left to sit around discussing. Not if he wanted to make his own choice count.

Nick swirled the remaining drones around him like a cloak. They crisscrossed around him, firing as they moved, trying to distract and confuse the mrill fighters. The swarm rushed the mrill ship. Drones were picked off, the fifty or so ships diminishing quickly. Nick closed fast on the mothership, programming his craft to initiate the self-immolation moments before it struck the hull. Once the four-second countdown was started, there would be no turning back, no maneuvering. It was a one-shot opportunity.

Nick thought back on his childhood, peaceful and happy. No major traumas, only the standard pains and regrets. His final year of high school, when he’d mentioned that he was thinking of joining the Navy and trying out for the SEALs, his dad had taken him out for a drive in their old but well-maintained pickup truck. They’d wandered aimlessly for an hour or so, Nick, always quiet and pensive, letting his dad take his time. He finally told Nick that his mother was probably going to cry a bit, hell, that he might cry a bit, too. But not to let that stop him. That wasn’t why they were crying. They were proud of him. That Nick was about to grow up fast, faster than most men his age, who seemed determined to stay boys as long as possible. Most people ran away from the world, and Nick was running toward it. That was good, something to be proud of. Just be careful. Now let’s stop and get gas before it goes up another nickel because your dad spent a week running his mouth.

Nick watched the swirl of color outside his cockpit and realized he’d known himself for a long time. He was ready. He hoped his parents wouldn’t cry too much again. He accelerated toward the mothership.

I’ll carry your memories for you, Ben said in a mental telegram. I’ll keep those alive for you.

Thank you, my friend. You can shut down our link, if you’d like, he replied to Ben.

No. I’m with you all the way.

Me too, Eddie thought.

Without another word, Nick charged in with Ben and Eddie looking over his shoulder. The Chinese drones huddled tight, firing straight ahead, cutting a path straight toward the spiky mrill ship. Six seconds out.

Nick took a deep breath and let out all his regret. Everything else he’d envisioned for his life, he let it go.

Ben felt those dreams fall on his shoulders. The girl Nick had loved privately, Trisha, a short girl with long braids, who told jokes and loved spicy food and midnight movies. A half-repaired motorcycle, parts strewn in a garage around tools and oil spots and tattered user manuals. A not-yet-conceived child, the hope of a child, a fierce love waiting to be unleashed, a boy or girl to be introduced to Grampa and Gramma. Nick let it all fall away and Ben picked it up, feeling his friend’s memories as if they were his own. Not guilt. Just the memories and dreams of a friend who did not deserve death but had chosen it so that others might live.

Four seconds out. Nick activated the self-destruct and long tendrils of pure energy snaked out of the ship’s engine; the vessel began to vibrate with the impending reaction. The cockpit filled with light, and he watched as the mothership loomed ahead. All of its guns were now firing at his ship, but it was still shielded by the last of the ally drones. The mrill drones had also converged on his position. Shots rained down from every direction and began to pick through the gaps in the drone shield around his ship, but the blasts were now absorbed by the energy bubble growing around the ship. Ben felt the ion blasts and the raindrops pelt him simultaneously. The storm was everywhere. Nick, connected to Ben across two hundred thousand miles, felt it too. A bolt of lightning and cannon blast of thunder filled the skies over Washington as Nick’s ship reached its crescendo.

Everything was white.

Everything was destroyed.

His ship erupted like a like a new star being born, a furious sphere that engulfed everything in its path. The reaction fed on the mrill ship, growing and expanding. Ben felt his connection with Nick snap. He almost cried out with the pain as the explosive reaction continued, indifferent to his anguish.

The mothership tried to fire its engines, to open a cut in space and escape. Ben, through Eddie, saw a gaping, jagged portal open, and through it glimpsed for a moment a yellow, stormy planet, a random escape point somewhere in the universe that the desperate mrill had punched in. The ship tried to move toward the portal, but the explosion from Nick’s ship had done too much damage. The mothership’s engine tore itself apart, sending a flash of purple flames darting out into the vacuum. The stern of the ship disintegrated, and with that the portal collapsed. The ship was wrenched in half and Ben could now hear the pained, panicked screams of the mrill crew spilling over across frequencies. For a moment, the sound was everywhere, although another signal, impossible to decipher, seemed to be hidden in the cacophony. Then the ship bulged outward and detonated, a shockwave expanding in all directions that obliterated the last of the mrill drones and attack ships. All the voices were silenced.

Eddie, who had cruised out of range of the explosion, sat steady in the void.

Then he slowly turned his ship around and headed back toward Earth.