Intergalactic Pest Control

The Complete Series

NM Tatum

Sarah Noffke

Michael Anderle

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Copyright © 2019 NM Tatum, Sarah Noffke and Michael Anderle

Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

A Michael Anderle Production

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LMBPN Publishing

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First US edition, July 2019

eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-357-2

Contents

Ganked In Space

Level Up Bitch!

It’s Working As Intended

Ganked In Space

Intergalactic Pest Control Book 1

Glossary

boss, superboss, miniboss: An opponent non-player character in a video game that is typically much more difficult to defeat compared to normal enemies, often at the end of a level or a game.

gank, ganked: To kill much weaker players in an online video game in such a way that they cannot defend themselves. Or: to swindle, steal.

level-up: finishing the current level to get to the next level.

microtransactions: A business model used in games where players can purchase virtual goods via micropayments.

pwned: In gaming, to trounce an opponent. To be "pwned" is to be defeated unmercifully.

VRE: Virtual Reality Environment.

welp: urban slang for "well," pronounced as if "well" had a glottal stop at the end.

Prologue

Sector 12 Transgalactic Space Station

“I hate my job. I hate my job,” the portly custodian, Lonnie, sang. He belted out those four words with the heart and conviction of a soul singer as he danced his mop across the cafeteria floor of the deserted Sector 12 Transgalactic Station. He signaled the sensors flicking the lights on as he went, waking the station up.

Lonnie had the express privilege of being the first one to set foot on the main floor of the station each day, and clean up the filth left behind by the final shift from the previous night. His arrival beat Grover’s from Maintenance by an hour.

Lonnie was a ten-year veteran of the station’s custodial staff. During his latest anniversary celebration, the management and human resources team pitched in to get a tiny plaque engraved with the words ‘Lonnie’s Paintbrush,’ and affixed it to the handle of his mop. They frequently made the joke that Lonnie was an artist in the way he cleaned the shit-stained bathroom floors.

He’d forced a laugh when his bosses, and a handful of people who otherwise pretended he didn’t exist, presented it to him. Worse still, he’d forced a ‘thank you.’

“Thank you for this backhanded appreciation of the job that I do every day. Thankfully I’m cheaper than bots or I’d be out of a job, you credit-pinching assholes. Thank you for laughing in my face, if you choose to acknowledge my existence at all.”

That was what Lonnie wanted to say. However, he could never say that aloud. That wasn’t the place of the galactic blue-collar worker.

The radio on his belt buzzed. “You in, Lonnie?”

“Every day for more than ten years you’ve asked me that, Grover, and every day, I’ve been here.”

“You ain’t hit the sublevels yet, have you?” Grover asked.

“You know my routine, Grover. I don’t hit them levels ‘til damn near nine.”

“You might wanna hit ‘em up a bit sooner, friend. It’s a sour sight down here in sublevel two.” Grover’s voice tightened.

Lonnie let out a long sigh, and his mop felt heavier in his hands. “What sort of mess are we looking at?”

“The sort that’s gonna require much more than that mop of yours,” Grover said. “I can’t say what it is. Maybe some sort of…excrement?”

A fire lit in Lonnie’s belly. “Damn techs must’ve had a party again. They did the same thing a few years ago. They like to make their own booze out of the junk they grease the wheels with down there, and then they lose control of their bowels.”

Grover made a noise of disagreement. “This ain’t nothing like no human could make. I don’t know, maybe it’s—”

His voice cut out.

“Grover?” Lonnie asked. “You there?”

Nothing but dead air.

Lonnie shook his head, putting his radio away. “Probably slipped in it,” he mused aloud. “And with that hip of his, ain’t no way he’s getting up on his own. Best go lift the old man out of the shit.”

He jabbed his mop into the bucket and pushed the whole apparatus down the corridor, toward the elevator. He drove it inside the compartment and pressed the button for sublevel two. A strange sensation knotted in his stomach, like his guts knew something he didn’t. Or maybe it was just the half-pound of bacon substitute and fifth of whiskey he’d had for breakfast. Either way, by the time the elevator slowed to a halt, Lonnie felt like doubling over.

The calm was the first thing that hit him when the door slid open. There were only two people on this part of the space station, so he expected it to be quiet, but this was different. This was like the calm at a graveyard. An oppressive quiet. The kind that hangs on death.

The smell hit Lonnie next. It immediately soured his belly and curdled everything in his guts. He gagged, grabbed his stomach and tried to hold his breath. It was no use. The bacon and whiskey burned on the way back up.

“Cleaning up after my own damn self,” Lonnie muttered, looking down at the new mess at his feet. “Something ain’t right about that.”

The smell in the corridor was thick and coated the inside of his nose and throat, seeming to crawl all the way down to his belly. It was metallic and reeked of rotten meat.

Wiping the corners of his mouth, Lonnie stepped further down the passage of sublevel two. He only had to walk fifty feet, to the first control panel alcove, to find the source of the smell. It was that stuff that Grover thought was excrement. Now, seeing it, Lonnie thought Grover might have been right. It definitely didn’t belong to any human.

“Hello? Grover, I’m here!” Lonnie called out. He tried to breathe through his mouth as he stared around the darkened area.

“Grover, where you at?” Lonnie tried again, growing more worried about his friend with each unanswered call.

The corridor was lit with only the secondary lighting along the floor, casting it in an eerie glow. Add to that the random sounds of machines clunking and gas valves equalizing, and the entire floor was a county fair funhouse, twisted by the heat and the dark and stinking of vomit.

Lonnie followed the trail of dim lighting, not knowing exactly why. He knew he should turn around and get right the hell out of there, just like most know when they should leave a place, but his body refused to let him, like an act of mutiny.

His legs forced him to move forward several yards until he found Grover.

He stifled a gasp, trying to keep down the rest of the contents in his stomach.

Lonnie found Grover’s foot first. His left foot, severed above the ankle. Following the trail of blood and nearly slipping on it, he soon came upon Grover’s arms, one of them gnawed to a stump, the other largely intact save for a few missing fingers. His head sat just a few feet away. If not for the bloody nub of a neck, Grover would have just looked like he was sleeping, the way he looked on his breaks, leaned back in his chair in the breakroom. Peaceful-like.

But this wasn’t a break, and it sure as shit wasn’t peaceful. There were never any monster bugs on Grover’s breaks.

Lonnie nearly yelled out when he found the beast crouched over his friend’s torso, which was ripped open to display his insides. Though, most of his insides seemed to be missing. The monster turned its attention from crunching poor Grover’s ribs to Lonnie, who stood motionless, his mouth hanging open wide. The monster’s needle teeth dripped with green poison from behind a set of garden-shear-sized pincers. Its yellow eyes glowed like the muzzles of two blasters.

Lonnie froze at the sight of it, confronted as he was by the most terrifying thing he’d seen, it was beyond his nightmares. But the blood and parts of his friend quickly shook him from his state of uselessness. He turned on his heel and ran, sliding back and forth on the excrement or whatever it was, nearly falling to his ass several times.

Lonnie ran until his lungs burned and his old joints ached. He heard skittering behind him, the sound of the thing closing in, ready to rip him to pieces just like Grover. He slammed into the elevator door and stabbed the button repeatedly with his finger.

The thing rounded the corner, a ravenous look in its eyes. The damn elevator doors were taking their damn time opening. Lonnie could feel the vibration of the doors as they attempted to open.

As if feeding off his adrenaline, the bug lumbered forward, head down.

The doors bounced open, hesitating like they were catching on something on the track. Lonnie jumped inside, slamming his hand on the button for the main floor. The bug sprinted, suddenly moving fast, its legs making a scratching noise on the floor. The elevator doors closed just as the thing slammed into them, making an awful crunching noise. The ride up felt infinitely slow, making Grover’s insides squirm with unease.

When the elevator made it to the main level, Lonnie darted through the doors, not waiting for them to open all the way, and sprinted to the administrative office. In all his ten years, he’d never used the red phone before—it was only to be used in the direst of emergencies.

“Yes, hello?” he panted into the receiver. “This is Lonnie DelMonico, head custodian for the Sector 12 Transgalactic Station. I’ve got a situation.”

Chapter One

Sonic Shuttle, En Route to Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

Reggie looked around the ship proudly. He was a freaking entrepreneur. An independent business owner. The salt of the galaxy’s economy. An intergalactic pest control expert. He might have been sitting on a plastic bucket, in a postage-stamp sized galley watching his friend murder a defenseless oxygen regulator, but for him, life couldn’t get any better.

Joel was bent over his workbench, which was actually the dining table in the galley, halfway through putting the oxygen regulator back together. His wavy, brown hair dangled forward just reaching the upper edge of his vision. He brushed it aside, leaving a smudge of thick, black goo across his forehead. It complemented his forest green eyes nicely.

His fingers, like the rest of him, were quick and agile, adjusting small parts with confidence.

Cody walked into the room looking for a snack but was disappointed to find Joel hard at work in the spot where he wanted to eat. He knew there was no point arguing about it—Joel worked wherever he found space. But Cody couldn’t help but notice the handful of regulator pieces still sitting on the table.

“You do know we need that to breathe, right?” Cody asked, pushing his thick glasses up on his nose and indicating the device. His fine blond hair looked like a small heap of straw on top of his head, and he swung his lanky arms when he talked, gesticulating like an Italian grandmother. It could be dangerous to stand too close to him.

He set about searching the cabinets for something to eat, ultimately settling on some freeze-dried meat substitute.

Joel scoffed. “If it works just fine without those pieces, then why have them in the first place? I’m just making it more efficient.”

“If it works?” Reggie questioned. He shuffled to get more comfortable on top of the overturned five-gallon bucket at the back of the room, near the sink. They only had three chairs on the entire ship and moved them from place to place as needed. The two chairs that Joel wasn’t using were in the lounge, and Reggie didn’t feel like fetching one. His large, athletic body barely fit on the bucket; he looked like a Great Dane trying to sleep in a cat bed.

“It’ll be fine,” Joel said, undeterred.

The guys, or ‘Notches' as they affectionately referred to themselves, had been on the ship for two days now. No jobs. Nothing to do. Totally bored. If they didn’t find something to do soon, Joel would end up taking the entire ship apart.

That’s when Reggie decided to remind them of the one surefire thing he knew would occupy their time and keep them out of trouble.

“Remember Deep Space Death Match?” he asked.

The name drew a gasp of nostalgia from Joel and Cody.

“We were so good at that game,” Reggie continued.

“Were?” Joel said. “We’re still so good at that game. There’s just no one to play against anymore; everyone plays Team Hollow Point now. Death Match was way better.”

“Totally,” Cody added. “The graphics are better. The story is far superior…no one cares about the story anymore. And the fucking microtransactions.”

Joel and Reggie both groaned.

“I hate them so hard,” Reggie said. “And the players are so vulgar. There can still be friendly competition without all the swearing. It’s all ‘F this’ and ‘F that.’”

“Yeah,” Joel said, smiling over the edge of his tinkering project. “What the fuck is up with that?”

Reggie threw a balled-up rag at Joel, who swatted it away. “Seriously?” Reggie said. “How do you guys eat with those potty mouths?”

“Jesus, Reg, you sound like a seventy-year-old woman sometimes,” Joel teased. He set the oxygen regulator on the table and wiped the sweat from his forehead, leaving a second streak of thick, black goo across his brow. “But, damn, what a great game.” He stared off like he was looking into the past. “If we’d played Death Match in the championships, we would have been top ten for damn sure.”

“No doubt,” Reggie said. “None of the current VRE teams could stand two rounds against us. We’d smoke all of them.”

Cody pulled a stray thread from the sleeve of his shirt and snapped it off, looking at it appreciatively. “Have you seen the top team’s siege dynamics?” He wound both ends of the thread around his forefingers. “They’re garbage. All show. Barge into a building, guns blazing. No tactics. No finesse.” He took the thread and slipped it between his two front teeth and began flossing. “It’s insulting.”

Reggie winced at the sight. “Yeah, really disgusting.”

“You know what’s disgusting?” Joel asked. “Space bugs. And that’s what we’re stuck with, thanks to that goddamn Hollow Point game. If we’d played a decent game in the championship, we definitely would have made top ten. We’d be VRE pros right now. Corporate sponsorships. Intergalactic tour circuit. Hotels. Free food. You know how I love a good continental breakfast.”

Reggie leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “Yeah, but look at us. Look at what we’ve got.”

“The likely potential of bug guts on our boots?” Joel teased.

“Our own business,” Reggie corrected. “We’re entrepreneurs. Small business owners. The backbone of the intergalactic community. The salt of the galaxy. We’re making our way with an honest day’s work. We’re pest control specialists.”

“You aren’t selling it like you think you are,” Joel said, setting back to tinkering.

“There are major infestations all over the galaxy,” Reggie began, that familiar glint in his eyes when he spoke about the new business. “These space bugs are apparently destroying enough infrastructure to economically cripple a system. Don’t you want to be a part of ridding the galaxy of such evil?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Joel said with a chuckle. “Mostly, I want some pancakes right now. Like the kind they serve at those fancy hotels.”

Cody opened the cabinet next to the refrigerator and pulled out a sealed foil packet. “These freeze-dried meals are kind of like a continental breakfast.” He dangled it like it was radioactive. “I think this one is eggs.”

Joel tossed the oxygen regulator aside. It clattered on the table, and many of the pieces he’d just reaffixed fell off. “It’s not just that—the food and stuff. The bug guts everywhere. I miss gaming, man. When was the last time we all played a session together?”

Cody and Reggie looked at each other and shrugged.

“It’s taken a lot of our time, setting up the new business,” Reggie said. “And soon we’re going to need to start taking as many jobs as we can if we want to keep the ship fueled and our cabinets full of freeze-dried eggs.”

“Not to mention that whole altruistic part about saving the galaxy,” Cody added.

Joel sighed and sank further into his chair. As he slid down, so, too, did the mood on the ship. Reggie could justify and bright-side all he wanted, but he felt the same way. Cody did too. That pang of loss. They’d given up their dream of gaming for a more practical one: pest control.

The silence pressed down on them.

Then Reggie clapped his hands and jumped to his feet. “Let’s do it.”

“Do what?” Cody asked as he flossed a hunk of freeze-dried something from between his teeth.

“Play Death Match,” Reggie said. “We’ve got the old system in storage. Let’s dig it out and hook it up.”

“Can we even get a signal way out here?” Though his sentiment was skeptical, Cody’s tone was anything but. His voice was laced with eagerness.

They looked to Joel for the answer. He shrugged, not wanting to get too excited, or maybe just choosing to be more cautious than optimistic.

“I could boost the signal,” he offered. “Wouldn’t be too hard get a decent enough line out here. There’s a hub on Draxus.”

“But we haven’t paid a subscription fee in months,” Reggie said.

Cody scoffed. “You know I can hack us into the network.”

Joel allowed himself to smile finally. “You think anyone will be logged on?”

“Who cares?” Reggie asked. “If we’re the only ones, then we’ll play a system-generated match. Show that AI how good we still are.”

The Notches didn’t need to say anything more. Reggie ran to the storage closet and dug out the old system. Joel helped him hook it up while Cody rigged them up a connection. The old joy returned as they plugged in, and that familiar jingle sounded as the system booted up. They each logged in, entering their usernames like emerging from a dementia cloud, remembering some long-forgotten identity.

The guys played for hours. It felt like no time had passed as they slipped easily into their former gaming roles. Reggie taking the lead, Joel covering his ass and Cody bringing up the rear. Suddenly it was like they were back in Joel’s garage, playing for the very first time…and it looked like it, too. Towers of empty soda cans, torn open bags of rations, and a stink on the air so thick you could almost see it. Their eyes were bloodshot, and their hair matted to their foreheads with grease and sweat. It was glorious. None of the Notches were thinking about work in the morning, when they would start their new job as independent pest controllers on some space station with a bug problem.

They were fragging virtual opponents now; the real fragging would start soon enough.

Chapter Two

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

The skittering that echoed from the dark recesses of Sector 12 Transgalactic Station reminded Joel of the sound of chattering teeth. A child hanging on the edge of a pool, freezing, but unwilling to get out. Stubbornness that served only to torture the child.

Kids are so stupid. They can rarely tell the difference between what is good for them and what is bad.

Joel was suddenly unsure whether he’d matured beyond that childish logic as the creatures swarmed around him in the dark corridor. He was certain this job would put some coins in his pocket, maybe set him back on a path toward professional gaming. But there was also the real possibility that it was only going to get his ass eaten off by a giant space bug.

“You all see anything yet?” Reggie’s voice sounded over the comm. It was deep and husky and might have brought Joel some comfort if it was coming from beside him rather than a different floor of the station. “I’m starting to think this job is a bust.”

“I definitely hear something,” Joel said. “Haven’t seen anything yet.”

Cody mumbled something indecipherable.

“Are you flossing again?” Joel asked him.

“Maybe,” Cody said. “Nothing more important than a healthy mouth. But me neither. Haven’t seen anything.” The comms made Cody sound even more nasally than he did in person. “No sightings. No nothing. This place is lame.”

Joel’s gut clenched. “You guys really need to stop saying that. That is how every horror movie starts. Some jackass wandering through the dark, all ‘this place is the least scary place I’ve ever been to.’ And you know what happens next?”

“He survives to father a long lineage of handsome children?” Reggie asked.

“He gets his face eaten,” Joel said. “And eggs deposited in his brain. Little baby alien larvae crawling around his brain stem. You want that to happen to you?”

The comms fell quiet. Joel could only hear the sound of chattering teeth and his own thumping heart. He continued exploring his level of the station, moving quietly through the dark, nearly having a heart attack as he approached every corner.

He hadn’t gotten the specifics of the station since Reggie was the one who’d booked the job. However, from the schematics that he’d studied, Joel gathered that the place was a shipping hub, one of a thousand in this sector of the galaxy. Cargo comes in, it gets sorted, it goes out. Like a post office in space. Boring place.

Well, until infested with ShimVen—the creepy crawlies they’d come to kill. They were pests new to this part of the galaxy, so not much was known about them. Cody had been doing some research, since one of his hobbies was studying bugs. It was one of the reasons Reggie had concocted the pest control business idea. And it had definitely appealed to Cody from the start. However, he was used to studying small beetles and such that were seemingly harmless. Not ShimVen who could sever a human head. The Notches teased Cody incessantly about his strange fascination with bugs since the beginning.

“Why can’t you be into robots?” Joel asked him one time after peeling away in horror at the insect collection Cody had carefully pinned up in the garage where they gamed.

“Because I’m not you,” Cody replied. “Bugs are cool. They’ve adapted and survived things that killed the dinosaurs. They will probably outlive the human race.”

“Let’s hope not,” Reggie interjected. “Actually, there’s an idea for a business I want to run by you two, and it’s specifically related to us surviving any bug infestation that threatens the human race.”

That was the day they started their business: Intergalactic Pest Control. Cody was thrilled by the idea. Joel was excited that they would stick together as a team. And Reggie, well, he needed to do something that made the world a better place.

The ShimVen who had taken over Sector 12 Transgalactic Station, the site of their first job, had been migrating through space from infected stations to other stations and planets in the same system. Scientists thought they tapped into dark energy somehow to move through space, but no one knew for sure. Dark, mysterious bugs—who were hungry for blood.

The station looked like any other of its kind. Maintained enough to remain functional, but never any efforts made to improve the aging infrastructure. It survived in a constant state of life support, which, for someone like Joel, actually made the place more exciting. He could see its guts hanging out from the walls and ceiling, and he loved nothing more than taking tech apart and putting it back together.

“This strategy isn’t working,” Reggie said. “We need to draw them out.”

Joel’s gut clenched again. “Don’t say it.”

“We should set a trap,” Cody added.

“Nope,” Joel said.

“We just need some bait,” Reggie said.

Joel sighed. “And you said it. Horror movie 101: never set a trap, and never use live, human bait. Because that person is most definitely getting brain eggs.”

“It’ll be fine,” Reggie said. “You worry too much. Let’s meet on Joel’s level since he’s the only one who’s witnessed any activity.”

Cody agreed, and Joel swore furiously. Ten minutes later, they were setting their trap.

* * *

“We are so good at this job,” Reggie said, a smile stretching from ear to ear. His blue eyes were round and shining. They looked like stars in the dark. His features were chiseled and defined, the jawline of a superhero, framed by straight, golden hair. The guy was like a fucking male model. What he lacked in common sense, he made up for in optimism. “We won’t even need the whole seventeen hours to clear this station once we draw these buggers out.”

“Seventeen hours?” Joel asked with disbelief. “Is that what you bid for this contract? This place is massive. What made you think we could do this in seventeen hours?”

“A healthy confidence in our abilities as intergalactic pest control operators,” Reggie said with no hint of sarcasm to his voice whatsoever.

“This is our first job,” Cody argued.

“Regardless,” Reggie said. “I know we can do this. We used to do stuff like this in Return to Order all the time.”

“That’s a video game,” Cody stated. “We’re fucking toast.”

“Language,” Reggie said, wincing. “Trust me, it’ll work out.

Cody didn’t seem to trust him at all. His pale face dripped with sweat, and his lanky limbs twitched like snakes on meth. His brown eyes were darting from side to side, apparently tracking some unseen threat. They shot downward as Reggie tossed a stack of freeze-dried rations at his feet.

“Explain how this is supposed to work again?” he all but whimpered.

Reggie held up another pack of rations and dragged his knife lengthwise through its plastic wrapper. “The intel report I have on the ShimVens is thin, but it does say they’re carnivorous.”

“Because of course, they are,” Joel added.

Reggie dropped another packet of rations at Cody’s feet. “So, we pile these rations up here, get their scent in the air, and wait for the ShimVens to come. Then we blast them with our chem guns. Simple.”

“And why are you having me stand at the center of the pile?” Cody asked.

“Because the intel report also said that the ShimVens only eat live prey,” Reggie added.

“Because of course, they do,” Joel said.

Reggie ignored him. “The rations will emit a concentrated scent into the air, but we need live bait to draw the targets into the kill zone.”

The Notches, the team name the guys had adopted in their gaming days, had taken up a position in an alcove in the engineering section of the floor. It was an area used for maintenance and monitoring of air flows in the lower levels. Being such a crucial aspect of a crucial system, it was set apart from the others, only accessible through a singular hallway—one way in, one way out. The area was circular and measured roughly twenty yards, wall to wall. More than enough space to trap and eliminate the ShimVen infestation.

Cody’s quivering legs shook the pile of rations, sending the mountain of bait tumbling down. “Yeah, but why am I standing on the bait pile?”

Joel patted Cody on the back. “Because you’re the bravest of us all.”

“Fuck you.”

“Language,” Reggie scolded. “All right, that should do it. Check your weapons.”

They each drew their chem guns and performed a field check. The weapons were impressive pieces of tech; the Notches may have been inexperienced in the pest control business, but they weren’t noobs when it came to kickass gear. Joel couldn’t help but smile. He’d taken it upon himself to modify the standard pest control gear for the team. Each gun had a main tank and a reserve, which held enough chem for an entire day’s worth of bug killing. He’d amped up the standard range of ten yards to twenty and improved their accuracy.

They all acknowledged that their weapons were hot and they were ready for action. Well, maybe not Cody, as far as readiness went.

“This is the worst idea anyone has ever had,” he muttered.

“You’re going to do great,” Reggie said as he took up a position on the left side of the entrance.

“So great,” Joel added as he set up a fan behind Cody to push his meaty smell down the hall. He was careful to position it so that it didn’t affect the chem gun streams, causing them to be less accurate and spread out the stream. Then he stationed himself opposite of Reggie at the entrance of the alcove.

They waited forever. Each second that passed seemed like an hour. Their muscles were so tight with readiness and adrenaline that they quickly grew sore and fatigued. Sweat dripped down their brows. Their hearts punched at the insides of their chests. They gripped their guns tighter and waited.

“Well, this clearly isn’t working,” Cody said. “Let’s pack it up.”

Reggie put his finger to his mouth to signal to the other Notches to shut up. He pointed to his ear and then down the hall.

As much as Cody wished he hadn’t, he too had heard the building thunder from hundreds of skittering feet, headed straight for them.

Chapter Three

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

The cacophony of noise was like standing inside of a kettle drum. The skittering grew to rapid-fire canon bursts that echoed inside the alcove. The Notches struggled to stay focused on the approaching threat and not the mind-punching pain in their skulls.

The twisted expression on Cody’s face suddenly became stone when the first bug emerged from the dark at the end of the tunnel. It wasn’t the size of an average bug, more like that of a small dog.

Joel and Reggie forgot their pain and steadied their chem guns. Cody yelled something that they couldn’t hear, but, judging by his face and history in similar situations (at least in virtual reality video game situations), it was probably something like, ‘holy fucking shit!’

Reggie yelled to Cody, but his voice was lost in the echo. He tried to tell him to wait for the ShimVens to enter the alcove so they could cut off the bugs’ retreat and mow them all down, but Cody raised his gun and let loose a stream of glowing green liquid.

The chemical was strictly only available on the black market, a fact that Cody had decided to withhold from Reggie, who would have undoubtedly found the source disgusting. Even if he’d heard the amazingly awesome name—Killmaximus Plus—Reggie probably would have insisted that the chemical be returned and replaced by something from a more reputable vendor. The stink of it alone should have been enough to kill.

The second the pests entered the alcove, Reggie and Joel unleashed their own attack. Some of the bugs were small, the size of a mouse, and others, the size of a large cat. The ShimVens screeched as they were bathed in Killmaximus, but they kept coming. The combined smell of three streams of Killmaximus made the Notches’ all lightheaded. Joel fell against the wall; the fear of brain worms the only thing keeping him from passing out.

The ShimVens were nightmarish. They had long, segmented bodies that wiggled as they crawled. Six legs, three on each side of their body, and they had a set of pincers that could snap bone on their disgusting heads. These were the kind of things that crawled through every child’s worst dreams, waking the child screaming, swatting at their arms, trying to shoo the creatures away, only to sink back with relief when they realized the bugs weren’t real.

But ShimVens were real. And one of them was trying to stick his egg sac in Cody’s ear.

“Don’t move!” Joel yelled, though he wasn’t sure Cody could hear him.

He took aim and sniped the nasty fucker off the side of Cody’s head. A drop of Killmaximus landed on Cody’s cheek, and he screamed and brushed it away as he stumbled backward, off the bait pile.

The bugs fell in heaps as they entered the alcove. The first wave slid across the floor on a slip-and-slide of Killmaximus. The successive waves slithered atop the bodies of their friends. The growing pile of bodies forced Joel and Reggie out of their positions by the entrance. They moved toward the center of the room, never faltering in their aim.

Their hearts sank once they reached Cody’s side and got a full view of the hallway and the wall of ShimVens still coming at them. There was no end in sight. No daylight between bugs. A solid mass of death barreled toward them. At this rate, they’d drown in bug corpses before they killed the swarm.

As if that wasn’t disheartening enough, something began tugging at Joel’s leg. He looked down to see one of the bugs, covered in thick, green Killmaximus, trying to take his leg off with its pincers. Joel stomped its head until it shattered into goo, and then noticed movement across the alcove floor. Not just pockets of movement—the entire floor.

“These things aren’t dead!”

Cody and Reggie both screamed as they looked down and noticed bugs just inches from devouring their feet. The men began a slick, gooey jig, dancing on the bugs’ bodies, turning several ShimVens to paste.

“This kill zone just became a death trap,” Reggie said. “We need to exfil asap.”

Joel closed his eyes for a second, tuning out the chaos and death swarm, focusing on the schematics. He tuned into any useful bit of data he could find…and there it was.

“Cover me,” Joel shouted to the other Notches.

“You got a way out?” Reggie asked.

“The only way out is through,” Joel answered as he ran to the control panel at the back of the alcove.

This panel controlled airflow for the entire floor, which meant all the air circulated through this point. He ripped the panel off the wall to reveal a column of tubes, each one pumping pure oxygen. He yanked his knife from the sheath on the side of his boot and sliced one of the tubes free. He pulled the open end out, hauled the tube to the entrance of the alcove, and aimed it at the swarm.

“You’re going to treat their asthma?” Cody said. “That’s your plan?”

“Give me your flare,” Joel ordered.

Cody’s face turned an even paler shade of white. “I’d rather you treat their asthma.”

“Just give it to me,” Joel snapped. “And run like hell once the path is clear, because it won’t stay like that for long.”

Cody handed his flare to Joel, never taking his finger off the trigger.

“On three,” Joel said, oxygen pumping into the hallway. “One, two, three!”

He popped the flare and put the glowing hot end to the open side of the tube. With a rush of heat and noise, it erupted. A colossal torch scorched a dozen ShimVens immediately. The wave behind them slid on the Killmaximus, unable to stop themselves from reaching their fiery end. The rest in the hall fell over themselves trying to scurry out of the way. They climbed up the walls, gnawed their way into the crevices between wall panels, clawed through each other to escape the flames.

This left a narrow path down the center to freedom.

“Go!” Reggie shouted. He ducked beneath the inferno and ran into the swarm. But he had no better luck getting a foothold than the ShimVens. He got five feet before slipping on the Killmaximus and falling onto his stomach.

Without a second thought, Cody ran and leapt forward, going full Superman. He landed on Reggie’s back and propelled him forward, riding him like a boat to safety. Joel tossed the air tube back into the alcove and followed Cody’s example, diving forward and sliding across the floor until Cody and Reggie hoisted him to his feet.

They had little time to celebrate. With the flames off them, the ShimVens began skittering back down from the ceiling. The alcove quickly filled with bugs again, and now they were pissed.

Chapter Four

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

The Notches wasted no time hauling ass out of there.

Cody pulled up the schematics on his wrist-mounted computer. “Turn left up here. There’s an elevator in that corridor. We can get off this level and regroup.”

The skittering had begun to build again—the rumble of thunder on the horizon. A lone ShimVen dropped through the ceiling and slashed at Reggie’s heel, knocking his feet out from under him. The bug was on top of him before Cody and Joel turned around. A small fountain of red erupted from Reggie’s shoulder as the ShimVen’s pointed leg stabbed into it.

Reggie screamed and flailed. Joel kicked the bug, sending it onto its back. Cody jumped forward and crushed its head with his heel. They pulled Reggie to his feet and held him upright as they ran to the elevator.

They didn’t stop running until they stepped inside and slammed into the back wall. The soft ding and closing doors brought with them a sigh of relief—an unwarranted one, as the swarm of bugs was still in the walls and definitely out for blood.

Joel looked Reggie over. His face was drained of color and his shoulder covered in blood.

“Let me look at it,” Joel told his injured friend.

Reggie turned and rested his forehead against the elevator wall.

“Ugh,” Cody said. “That is disgusting. I can see inside your body.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Reggie said, his voice quivering. “How bad is it?”

“Just a flesh wound. Nothing a medkit can’t fix,” Joel said. “I’ve got one on me. Once we’re up top, I’ll patch you up.”

“A flesh wound,” Reggie reiterated. “You sure? They didn’t put any eggs in me? I really don’t want to have any babies.”

Joel took a closer look at the wound, studying it with all of his medical knowledge, which was exactly none. The deep laceration looked bloody and gross, that’s all he knew.

He shrugged at Cody and made a face like, ‘What the hell do I know?’ but he said, “All clear, pal. Egg-free.”

The elevator lurched to a halt on the main floor, which was four up from the level where they were almost eaten alive. The guys held their breath as the doors dinged, hoping for clear skies, but expecting another wave of death and pincers. As the doors slid open, they realized they’d been granted the reprieve they needed—no bugs. However, the infrastructure was well chewed, meaning the damn bugs had been there.

Joel checked to ensure that the floor was clear, as Reggie fell out of the elevator in a heap and collapsed onto the floor. Cody slid down beside him and they lay silent and still for a moment, happy to be free from the chaos. Joel bent over, taking in deep breaths before preparing to patch Reggie’s wound.

He tore open the medkit and assessed the contents. He’d never actually used one before, but he knew he had to sell it with confidence to keep Reggie at ease. He said a silent prayer when he found illustrated directions inside.

Cody sat up, his eyes glazed over. “We have seventeen hours to clear this station?”

Reggie chuckled uncomfortably. “Well, now that you mention it, it’s more like fifteen hours at this point.”

Cody threw up his arms. “Of course! And how do you expect us to eradicate that entire swarm in fifteen hours?”

Joel sprayed some saline into Reggie’s open wound, eliciting a series of grunts and hisses. “I don’t know, Cody,” Joel said. “Maybe we can use this so-lethal-you-can-only-buy-it-on-the-black-market chem you procured. It appears to be doing the trick.”

“Black market?” Reggie asked, a groan in his voice. “We can’t use stuff bought on the black market. That’s illegal.”

Cody’s face turned a deep shade of red. “Yeah, I’m sorry. And as it turns out, I may have been deceived about the product I was getting.”

“No shit,” Joel said. “We’re covered in Killmaximus, and I don’t even have so much as a rash from it.”

Cody scratched at his chin and shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, I should’ve known. The guy who sold it to me definitely had gingivitis. Never trust someone with poor dental hygiene.”

Reggie winced as Joel pressed the bandage onto his wound. “Whatever,” he said. “No use fighting about it now. We just need to find a way to waste the rest of these bugs in the next fifteen hours.”

“Seriously?” Cody said. “You want to keep on with this job?”

Something stirred in Reggie. It could have been defensiveness, but he didn’t think it was. It felt like something deeper, something rooted in purpose rather than the shallow nature of saving face.

“Okay, I admit it, I may have bitten off more than we can chew,” Reggie said reluctantly.

“As did the bug which took a chunk out of your shoulder,” Joel joked.

Reggie sort of laughed before continuing. “But seriously, this was our chance to build something for ourselves. After losing the VRE championships, professional gaming was off the table. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t do something great with our lives. So, yeah, I may have bid aggressively for this job. But it’s our first one, and this is the sort of job that could get us a reputation. We complete this in record time, and we can have any contract we want in the galaxy. So what do you say, guys? Are you ready to build something with me?”

Cody and Joel exchanged nervous looks, hesitation teeming in their eyes. And then they burst out laughing.

“Great speech,” Joel said, wiping away a tear. “I’m so inspired right now.”

“Totally,” Cody agreed. “Let’s go Braveheart on these bugs.”

Reggie couldn’t help but smile. It may not have been his intention to break the tension, but it was a suitable outcome. “Oh, be quiet. You Notches know I’m right. We’re going to kill these bugs and make a name for ourselves in the galactic pest control business. We’re going to build lives for ourselves that we’re proud of!”

“Holy shit, man,” Joel said. “Yes, fine, we’ll kill the bugs. If you stop trying to get us all to group hug.” He extended two hands, one to Reggie and the other to Cody. They took them, and he helped them both to their feet before they turned their attention to the long corridor in front of them.

The guys scouted the floor, which was largely open with few barriers, as far as visibility was concerned. It was the level where all visitors entered and declared their items and sorted out whatever business they had come to settle. There were a few offices, meeting rooms and waiting areas—it was mostly an administrative floor. There were no control panels or exposed wires for ShimVens to chew through like on the lower floors, so they weren’t likely to venture up this far.

“This looks like a good place to reset and strategize,” Cody said, poking his head into an empty office. He tried to help Reggie into the room, but the bigger guy shrugged him off, saying he was fine.

Joel studied the schematics again, picking each level apart, looking for anything he could use to their advantage.

Cody went to work hacking into the computer systems. They were outdated, but, like the aged infrastructure, that was common on these stations. They didn’t need anything but the basics to track incoming and outgoing shipments, handle payroll, or monitor inventory. However, most of the basic functions of the station—heating, cooling, water, air—were automated and controlled by computers.

That alone is reason enough to have upgraded the system ages ago, Cody thought. However, not everyone appreciated computers the way he did.

Reggie moved his arm, trying to get used to the new hole in it. After some cajoling, he took the painkillers that Joel was trying to give him. Reggie didn’t like the thought of dulling his senses in the middle of a fight, but being able to use his arm was probably more important.

“They definitely didn’t like fire,” Cody said after a lengthy silence. “We could use that.”

“It would be tricky to use on a large scale in such tight quarters, though,” Joel countered. “I almost burned our asses off. Though I may be able to mod our chem blasters… rig up some kind of flamethrower. That would be awesome.”

Cody furrowed his brow as he read further into the station’s computer systems. Then his eyes lit up. “And I can hack the automated systems. Heating, cooling, and the fuel refilling pods in the hangar bay. Should be enough flammable material in there to incinerate every last bug. I may be able to sort out some kind of delivery system, too.” He furrowed his brow again and dove back into the material.

Reggie clapped his hands. “See? This is what I was talking about. The Notches coming together to sort out some business. Who are we? Creative problem solvers!” He put his hand out, intending to start one of those ‘go team’ hand pumping circles. Cody and Joel just stared at him, leaving him hanging out to dry. “No, it’s cool. I know teamwork when I see it. We don’t have to celebrate it or anything,” Reggie said, waving his hand for emphasis.

Joel gently pushed Reggie’s hand down. “But you know what we do have to do, instead of cheerleader rituals? Gather supplies.” He typed a list into his wristcom and sent it to Reggie. “You should find all that stuff in the hangar bay.”

A shadow fell over Reggie’s face. “Wait, you want me to go alone? What happened to teamwork?”

Joel didn’t look up from his wristcom. “I need to get modding these chemguns if they’re going to be useful in time to finish this job on schedule.”

“And this hack job is going to take me some time. I’ll monitor from here,” Cody said, also not looking up from his wristcom. “If I see any bugs, I’ll let you know.”

The confusion on Reggie’s face morphed into disappointment with a little twinge of hurt. “No, it’s cool. I understand. You’ve got your jobs, I’ll go gather supplies.” He stood and stretched his shoulder, exaggerating the pain a bit in hopes of eliciting some sympathy. In fact, he wasn’t feeling much better after the painkillers.

“Also, you’ll need to leave your chemgun with me so I can fix it,” Joel stated, indicating the weapon at Reggie’s side.

He gulped, handing the gun over. “Right. Of course. No problem.”

“So far, the monitor shows you’re clear of bugs on this floor,” Cody said.

Reggie nodded, bolstering his confidence. “I got this. Don’t you Notches worry about me.”

He walked out of the office with his head high but his spirits a tad low. He wasn’t worried about venturing into the dark corners of the bug-infested space station. Not really. He occasionally worried about the Notches. Getting knocked out of the VRE championships was a real blow to them as a unit. They were a team. A kickass video game team who could dominate just about anyone in Return to Order. They had a reputation. They were feared and respected. And now they were pest control experts. Well, novices posing as experts.

He worried that without pro gaming, there would be nothing to hold them together. But they were a team before their dreams of pro gaming; they would stick together after, now that it had fallen apart. They would stick together even with the bug guts piling up around them.

Reggie found the hangar bay without issue. It was the largest sector of the station, full of empty ships and stacks of cargo. The money that merchants must have lost with every minute those crates stayed stationary was probably more than Reggie would ever see. He was hit with a rare twang of jealousy, thinking about the disparity between the value he’d be saving for his clients and the amount he’d be compensated for doing so.

“Gratitude,” he said to himself.

He reminded himself as often as possible to be grateful for what he had. Even though he was trudging through space-bug goo, it was a job, and he was doing it with his best friends.

Focus on the positive.

“You find that shit yet?” Joel said over comms.

“Not yet,” Reggie replied.

“Christ, you’re slow,” Joel teased.

Gratitude.

“Yeah, I see it,” Reggie said a minute later. He had found the repair shop in the far corner of the hangar bay. He grabbed the tools and parts, mostly tubing and connectors, and tossed them in his bag.

Securing his pack, he made his way to the fueling station in the center of the big room. Canisters of fuel about the size of milk jugs were stacked high and precariously, like a tower of dominoes. Pull the wrong one, and the entire thing toppled. Fortunately, Reggie was the patient type.

Unfortunately, as he removed the first container, he discovered a ShimVen sucking fuel out of one of the others. The bug was the size of a poodle. An angry poodle who didn’t want to share its snack. The ShimVen hissed at Reggie, spitting fuel at his chest, its eyes glowing. Reggie stumbled backward, his shoulder screaming from the movement. The bug lunged, its massive pincers ready to lop off his head.

Chapter Five

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

If Reggie’s life passed before his eyes, it did so fast enough that he didn’t notice. All he saw were the pincers coming at him. He reached up instinctively and caught them, his gloves keeping the pincers from slicing into his palms. The momentum of the creature sent him onto his back into the stinking garbage.

His shoulder seared with pain as he struggled to keep the pincers from closing. They inched closer to his face, closer to taking out his eye. The life he might yet lead flashed in front of him then. And that was all the inspiration he needed to muster his strength for one big move.

He squeezed the pincers like they were dual joysticks and he was in an epic, deep space dogfight in Galactic Force. He pulled them in opposite directions until he heard a crunch and a loud cracking. Suddenly he had a flashback of having his teeth pulled as a child. A gush of green burst in his face.

The pincers were free of the ShimVen’s head, and Reggie found himself with two very pointy weapons.

He stabbed the wriggling bug in the thorax, torso, and head. The bug stopped wriggling. Reggie felt victorious as he stood over its body like a gladiator, earning his honor with his hands. He wiped the pincers clean on his pant leg and tucked them in his belt. He’d always loved the trophy system.

Allowing himself a second to catch his breath, he turned his attention back to the fuel. Even more carefully than before, he grabbed as many canisters of fuel as he could, holding them all in a bear hug. He hefted them back to the office, looking over his shoulder every so often.

He appeared in the doorway, brandishing a giant smile. Pride filled his chest as he stood there covered in bug guts, with his trophies on display.

“Got the fuel and tubes and stuff,” he said.

“Care to explain the rest of this?” Joel gestured to Reggie as a whole, and the mess covering him.

“Ran into some trouble,” Reggie said with a shrug. “No big deal.” He cracked a smile, which only served to amplify the horror that was splashed all over his face.

The look on Joel’s and Cody’s faces was a mix of concern and disgust. “Okay, then,” Joel said, taking the supplies from Reggie. “Give me an hour, and we’ll be ready to flash fry some bugs.”

* * *

The office they’d picked for strategizing belonged to a person who did not like her job. Shelly was her name, and she had scribbled profanities in the margins of all her notepads. On one page, she’d simply written, ‘I hate my life’ over and over again. Cody even found what appeared to be a death threat against someone named Robert in human resources, crumpled up in the garbage can.

To be fair, Robert did sound like a real douche. Still, Shelly’s office felt like a Tupperware container full of fresh despair. It was in the air, and Cody was sick of breathing it.

“Are we about ready?” he asked. “I’m getting antsy.”

Joel dropped his screwdriver on the desk where he’d been working and stood up victoriously. “Done. And these things are going to cook some serious bug ass.”

Cody jumped to his feet, matching Joel’s excitement. “Good, I need to get out of this room. It’s starting to freak me out.”

Joel ran them through a quick tutorial. The flamethrowers worked largely the same as the chemguns except they had tanks full of fuel instead of chemicals. When the fuel hit an ignition source as it exited the barrel, it produced a streaming flame.

“So, a little note about the guns,” he said as he neared the end of his spiel, a warning in his tone.

Cody and Reggie froze, anxious worry on their faces.

“As brilliant as I am, these guns were rigged together in an hour, with spare parts,” Joel explained.

“Which means…?” Cody asked.

“Which means, if they get knocked around, they could blow up in your face,” Joel said, sidling casually around the other two and heading for the exit.

“Noted,” Cody said, eyeing his gun. He carefully put the flamethrower over his shoulder.

“All right, boys,” Reggie said, when they’d exited the office. “We’re down to about thirteen hours to rid this station of nasties. We totally got this!”

Chapter Six

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

The elevator dinged. Sublevel four: engineering department, and a swarm of flesh-eating nightmare beasts. The door slid open, and the Notches held their new weapons at the ready. They breathed a collective sigh of relief when they were met with nothing.

Exiting the elevator in a tight formation, Reggie on point, the others watching the flanks, they felt ready to take on the bugs. They were rested, newly armed, and had a better sense of their enemy and a fresh mindset. They were unprepared before, unsure of what they were walking into. But they knew now. They knew the horror that was waiting in the dark, ready to snap their bones like twigs and chew off their flesh.

“You guys remember the qualifier game we won to make it into the VRE championships?” Reggie asked in a hush. “The Return to Order team deathmatch?”

“Yeah,” Cody said with a chuckle. “One of our highlights.”

“Best of five series,” Joel said. “We were down two to nothing. Needed to win three in a row.”

“Against a team favored to rank highly in the championships,” Reggie added as they progressed further down the hall. “Everyone counted us out. But that’s when we changed up our tactics. We moved as a unit. Never left each other’s side. They spread out, played zones, came at us one by one, and we wiped them out.”

Reggie held up his fist, signaling them to stop at the intersection in the corridor. Before peering around the corner, he said, “That’s what we do now. We stick together. We move as a unit.”

The others nodded in agreement.

Reggie peeked around the corner and signaled the all-clear. They moved as one, never allowing more than a few feet of daylight between them. Reggie was always on point, and Joel and Cody always watched the flanks. Even when a group of ShimVens rushed them as they approached the main engineering section, they didn’t break formation.

“Twelve o’clock!” Reggie yelled.

Joel and Cody pivoted and angled their flamethrowers forward, a safe distance from each other. All three of them lay on the triggers at the same time, sending a wall of fire hurtling at the bugs.

The creatures shrieked as the inferno swallowed them. When the Notches let up, the bugs were nothing but twisted, crispy corpses.

Joel held his flamethrower up and smiled at it. “Hell yeah.”

The others seemed equally pleased. They pressed forward, toward the heart of the engineering section. Cody hypothesized that’s where the bulk of the swarm would be; that’s where the largest concentration of wires and circuits and all the stuff the bugs loved to munch on were located.

Another small group of ShimVens rushed them a minute later, four bugs in total. Two charged from the front, and Reggie smoked them without a problem; one tried to flank them, but Joel caught it in time. It was the one that dropped from the ceiling that almost did them in.

Cody noticed the shadow fall over him a split-second too late. He raised his flamethrower and let loose a burst of fire, but the bug was too low. The fire missed, and the bug smashed into him. Cody hit the floor with such force that the air was knocked out of his lungs. His head swam as he tried to get up and fight off the bug at the same time. It slashed at him with its needle-like legs. Cody used his gun to block it.

Without thinking, Reggie took aim. Joel tried to tell him to stop, but his voice was swallowed by the whoosh of fire.

Reggie’s flamethrower ignited, washing the bug in a stream of flame, nearly hitting Cody. The bug shrieked, flailed and fell dead. Still on fire, the ShimVen toppled over onto Cody. Joel rushed forward and thrust Cody’s flamethrower out of his hand and away from the burning bug. Reggie kicked the ShimVen off Cody and dropped on top of his friend to extinguish him.

Reggie rolled off Cody once the flames died.

“Shit, man,” Cody snapped. “You almost killed me.”

“Sorry,” Reggie said, his voice low. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Damn right, you weren’t,” Joel said. “If you’d hit his flamethrower, the fuel tank could’ve blown, and we’d all be toast.”

Cody stood up and took stock of the singed parts of his suit. The damage was superficial—nothing that compromised his ability to press on, other than the hit to his confidence.

Reggie paced a few yards up and down the corridor. He was shaken. His fingers twitched, and his heart pounded from the adrenaline.

I almost burned my friend alive.

Going forward, he’d have to be more careful, or he was going to blow them all up.

“Okay,” Reggie said after a lengthy silence. “I think we should split up.”

Joel’s face twisted with confusion. “Didn’t you give us a speech about teamwork a little while ago? And now you want to split up?”

A little while ago, I hadn’t almost torched my friend, Reggie thought. Aloud, he said, “I didn’t know the power of the flamethrowers then. These things are incredible, but we can’t use them in tight quarters.”

Then something sparked in his mind. An idea that was both great and stupid.

“The initial plan would have worked if the chem wasn’t a bust. We should try it again. Set up kill zones, lure them in and then torch them to hell. We can organize three separate but simultaneous traps. That will split the swarm, and let us each burn our share…then we’ll be done with the whole thing. Piece of cake.”

Cody’s face turned pale, like he was ready to puke. “You want all of us to be live human bait now? Alone?”

Doubt poked at Reggie’s brain. He pushed it away. “I know it sounds dangerous, but this will definitely work. It would have worked if the chems were legit. These bugs aren’t that bad—there’s just a ton of them. But now that we have a real means of killing them, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” Joel said.

“We got this.”

Reggie was trying to sound as optimistic as he could. He needed to believe it. He needed to know that this was going to work out, that they would kill these ShimVens, get a reputation, rake in more lucrative jobs and get rich. Then they would never have to split up and find office jobs and only talk to each other over direct message and, eventually, even stop doing that because of mortgages and families and deadlines.

We’re going to kill the bugs. Everything is going to be fine.

Joel and Cody both nodded half-heartedly. They split up the gear, making sure each of them had the supplies to make an effective bug trap. After studying the schematics, Joel assigned them specific kill zones.

“It’s important that we all know where the others are going to be,” Joel said, running his hand through his wavy brown hair. “We’re separating temporarily, but we’ll still need to have each other’s backs.”

The other two agreed with adamant nods.

Once ready, they all returned to the elevator, choosing those over the stairs. It was a quiet ride down to sublevel five. When the doors slid open, Cody’s heart jumped into his throat.

“My stop,” he said, trying to psych himself up. He moved his head from side to side, the way fighters do before jumping in the ring. All it did was put a kink in the left side of his neck. He stepped out, rubbing his now spasming neck, and turned to face his friends. “Listen, guys, this has been a real trip. I just want you to know, in case I get eaten—”

Joel pressed the ‘close door’ button. It slid shut, cutting Cody off, but they could still hear his muffled voice shouting from the other side.

“I blame you!” Cody finished.

The elevator lurched as it descended another floor. “Sublevel six,” Joel said. “I’ve always loved sublevel six.” He needlessly checked his flamethrower again, trying to distract himself from the fact that his hands were shaking, and a cold sweat had begun to run down his face.

The door opened to another level of cold metal and the stink of solvent and shit in the air.

Joel stepped out. He didn’t turn to face Reggie, but said over his shoulder, “Don’t get dead.”

“You either,” Reggie retorted as the door closed.

Alone, Reggie ran his fingers along the pincer tucked in his belt. He loved the trophy system. That’s what this job was. A trophy grab. An achievement. Something he could display that would bring them glory. And glory begets more glory. This job was a stepping stone. It was important.

The elevator stopped. A lonely ding sounded his arrival on sublevel seven.

“Don’t get dead,” he told himself.

He stepped out and readied his flamethrower.

Chapter Seven

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

Sublevel five felt like a tomb. It was cold, echoed, and smelled like dead ass. Cody kept thinking a zombie was about to jump out from behind every corner. If they did, he hoped this level was plagued with the old zombies, the dumb ones that shambled around, moaning, walking into walls and falling in holes. If it was fast zombies, he’d be fucked. He wasn’t outrunning anything with this crick in his neck or all the gear strapped to his back.

“Positivity,” he whispered to himself. Reggie was always going on about the power of positive thinking.

Right. Like he could just think his way out of a situation with thousands of hideous space roaches, and keep them from gnawing his legs off. If he had that sort of power, Cody would be thinking himself onto a beach right then. He could see himself with a tropical drink in hand and his head in the lap of a curvaceous woman as she ran her fingers through his hair and told him he was a genius.

Actually, with the creepy darkness lurking before him, he’d settle for a pizza and some battle armor.

His kill zone wasn’t far from the elevator. There was a control hub for this level’s automated movers a few yards ahead. Sublevel five was a sorting level. Cargo was brought down here, sorted according to its shipping destination and then moved to the appropriate loading dock. The sorting and moving were all automated, so this floor was loaded with bots designed to lift and carry. The ShimVens loved sucking on cables and fuse boxes and power stations.

Cody moved swiftly down the hall and ducked into the room on the left—the control hub. It was in the shape of an octagon, and the control panel lined the back of the room. Dormant bots stood in a line along the right side. Some of them were bipedal; a few newer models ran on treads. All of them had two arms with large, grabbing claws on the end.

From the state of the room, it looked like the swarm had yet to visit, which is what the guys had assumed. The bulk of the swarm they encountered had been working their way down from the main floor—this was evident from the fact that some of the sublevels had its infrastructure largely intact.

Cody hoped it would remain that way.

He plugged into the main control panel and quickly took over the system. The firewalls in this place were laughable. One would think such a cornerstone of galactic commerce would safeguard itself a little better from cyber attack.

He dumped the rations in the center of the floor and activated the cooling fans meant to keep the servers from overheating. The wind blew over the rations and through Cody’s hair. The fans would blow the scent of the rations and his sweaty flesh into the hall, and once the bugs got a whiff of that and felt the energy pumping through the machines, they’d be down to feast.

Cody kneeled by the main control panel, his wristcom jacked in. He raised his flamethrower and waited.

* * *

Joel moved through sublevel six like a ninja. Disappearing into the shadows. Rolling around corners. Stepping as lightly as an autumn leaf falling from a tree. He even yelled, “Hiyah!” and side-kicked a garbage can that had the audacity to jump out at him.

He laughed to himself and continued stepping lightly, feeling weightless. Because why should sneaking through the bowels of an abandoned space station and hunting a swarm of devil bugs not be fun?

Joel knew it was an act. In truth, he was seconds away from pissing himself. But he needed to keep up the charade, or the fear would take over and paralyze him. Then the bugs would nibble him to death as he lay in the fetal position and cried.

Sublevel six was the machine shop. After his ninja act lost its luster, he focused on that fact. Typically, the machine shop of a space station of this size would have been a playground for Joel. So many broken things for him to put back together. He would have been like an elf in a demented Santa’s workshop. This was the place all the bots went for repairs. All the tools and tech and transports, too. Everything. Machine guts were spewed across workbenches. Bot corpses were stacked in heaps. Mountains of spare parts loomed like dormant volcanoes ready to erupt at any moment.

It was heaven.

The main workshop was a few hundred yards into the sublevel. He reached it after having shrieked with alarm only twice. Both times at shadows, but those shadows were total assholes that were out to get him. He sent them both to hell in a blast of fire. Flamethrower works, at least. He was glad to know that before he set himself like cheese in a rat trap.

It was a shame Joel wasn’t stepping into that workshop under different circumstances. He could have entertained himself for hours. There were so many half-built contraptions, bots in need of repair and spare parts lying about in desperate need of being turned into something awesome. It could have been his happy place. But it’s hard to find joy when facing painful death and/or bad Intergalactic Yelp reviews.

It would read: ‘Contractor not only failed to eradicate the ShimVens infestation, but I had to hire another contractor to clean up the mess his eviscerated body left behind,’ and Joel and the guys would never work again. Also, he’d be dead, which was arguably worse.

Joel dropped the rations in a heap on the floor and set up his portable fan behind it to push the scent. There was nothing to do but wait for the bugs to come after the bait. He perused the workshop to kill the time. As he sorted through the junk, his mind flooded with glorious ideas, automatically fitting the parts together like puzzle pieces, joining them to create a wondrous machine that murdered bugs.

When his brain started flashing blueprints, he couldn’t stop himself anymore.

He set about putting the parts together as the skittering started to echo in the vents.

* * *

When Reggie had been back in the elevator, the panic took over. He couldn’t get out of his head. Alone in the elevator on the way down to sublevel seven, all he could think about was Cody and Joel, and how they were probably pissed at him for taking this job.

He had been too eager. Reggie had jumped at the chance for a real, paying job, and had agreed to unreasonable terms. He half-hoped he’d die on this station so he wouldn’t have to tell the guys how much they were getting paid. Thinking about it now, it absolutely was not enough.

But no matter what, he was pressing forward. He couldn’t tell if it was out of pure stubbornness, or if he really did care about creating a reputation. Regardless of the pay, if they were successful on this job, it would set them up. It was a hell of a resume builder.

Not if they were dead, though. And he would definitely get dead if he didn’t put his head on straight.

He again ran his fingers along the pincers tucked into his belt. He’d earned plenty of trophies during his gaming career, but this was different. He’d ripped the pincer off his enemy with his bare hands while dripping with bug blood. These proved he had what it took to get the job done.

Sublevel seven was a literal dump—the garbage level. That was obvious the moment Reggie stepped off the elevator, and into ankle-deep trash. Joel had explained to him a little bit about how these areas worked on space stations. Chutes led to the floor from every level above it, dropping garbage in massive heaps throughout the day. At specified times, the incinerator would activate. The floor was one large conveyor. When running, it pulled all the garbage toward the center of the level, which dropped away into one huge incinerator shaft. The fumes were then vented out into space.

The smell hit Reggie in the face like a steel-toed boot. The station had been abandoned for a few days now, meaning this trash should have been burned days ago but had been sitting and stewing instead. Reggie tried not to think of what he was walking in as he trudged through the level. However, as his pants became soaked with garbage soup, he couldn’t think of anything else. His guts gurgled, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.

“It’s fine,” he said to himself. “Totally cool. I got this. Just garbage water. No, just water. I’m walking along the beach. A beautiful, scenic, trash beach.” His stomach cramped as he barely fought the urge to vomit.

The chutes that connected to each level were labeled. He found the one marked “Sub-level five” and set about baiting his trap. He tied a bunch of rations in the opening. Then he did the same to the chute for sublevel six. He contacted Cody, who then hacked into the controls for the chute system and reversed the suction flow, turning it on the lowest level possible, just high enough to pump the scent of the rations onto each level. The tactic should split the swarm pretty evenly between the three kill zones.

“All right, guys,” Reggie said into his comm. “You ready to do this?”

“Hell yeah,” they both said.

Reggie readied his flamethrower.

The first bug crawled down the chute two minutes later. The first hundred came through just seconds after that.

Chapter Eight

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

The ShimVens poured into the machine shop on sublevel six like a hole had been punched in a dam. Joel unleashed a wave of fire that dropped dozens of them at a time, turning them to nothing but charred husks. The attack didn’t slow, though. The bugs just crawled over their dead brothers and sisters, caring nothing for them as they sought out their meal.

The wave pushed Joel back from his position in the center of the room, but he’d planned for that. Classic tactic: don’t set up in your final position right off the bat—leave yourself a place to make your last stand. He inched back toward that position, never letting off the trigger. Bugs fell like shooting stars from the air vents, crumbling in flaming masses as they charged from the entrance of the room.

Joel felt the main control panel press into his back. Now. Time to unleash his final attack. Continuing to point his flamethrower forward and spray a constant beam of hell, he turned the rest of his body back toward his computer, which was jacked into the control panel. The command was already keyed in. All he had to do was press Enter.

He jabbed his finger down on the key.

Almost instantly, a dozen bots whirred to life. The grabber claws spun and pinched as they warmed up from their forced slumber. Treads rumbled over the mound of corpses, popping them like fat berries and spraying their juices across the floor. The bots swung their mechanical arms, crunching a dozen bugs at a time, sending them slamming into the walls. They grabbed ShimVens and squeezed until their legs stopped wriggling or their heads popped off.

Joel almost forgot what he was doing, he was so delighted at having his own robot army. I can finally cross that off the bucket list!

One of the bots swung and missed, its arm sticking into the wall, bending the metal around its grabber claw. It tried to yank free but couldn’t, and the ShimVens swarmed it. They yanked off its plating to reveal the soft wires and tubes inside. They tore the bot apart like a pack of wolves would a deer, parts and fluids flying everywhere. A second bot went down a moment later.

Joel rushed back to the control panel and activated two replacements. In the meantime, two more bots fell. There were only a few dormant bots left.

This is gonna be one hell of a final stand.

* * *

Cody rolled to his left, narrowly avoiding a bug’s pointed leg stabbing down at him. His momentum carried him to his feet, and he smashed the butt of his flamethrower into the bug’s head. He heard a sickening crack, then lit the bastard up. The wave came in full force, a never-ending assault of pincers and needle teeth and hissing.

The goddamn hissing. The things never stopped making that irritating noise. Cody was tempted to lay down and let the things eat him just so he didn’t have to hear it.

Charred bodies lay all around him. So many that he nearly tripped over them. He was getting boxed in by his fallen enemies. Without a doubt, Cody needed to clear some space. He pressed his back to the far wall and reached into the pouch on his belt. He pulled one of the grenades free. He only had a second to glance at it to determine which one it was and how best to prepare for the blast. It floated through the air, graceful as a rock.

Shrapnel grenade. Cover your ass.

Cody dove behind one of the conveyor belts just as the grenade exploded in midair. Shards of jagged metal rained down on the bugs, slicing them to ribbons. He darted out from his cover and sprayed the wriggling survivors with fire.

Another group of bugs flooded the room. Cody took another grenade from his belt and threw it at the mass of bugs. He caught sight of it as it soared.

Blue canister. Shit. Pyrethrum X-735c.

He sprinted as fast as he could. Still feet from cover, his ankle rolled as he stepped on a dead bug. He fell to the floor and rolled onto his back. The blue canister burst—

These were grenades Cody had scored off the guys who sold them Killmaximus. They were essentially grenades containing pyrethrum—an insecticide that acts exceedingly fast. Unfortunately, he didn’t get many since they were so expensive.

Cody grabbed the corpse he’d tripped on and pulled it on top of him. Aiming his flamethrower at the explosion, he pulled the trigger. The blast of insecticide pressed against the rush of flames, tickling his knuckles and burning off the hair on his fingers.

Cody let off the trigger and pushed the dead bug off him. He stood in a garden of ShimVen statues. But skittering still echoed in the hall outside.

* * *

The only thing that smelled worse than a room full of old garbage was a room full of old garbage and hundreds of ShimVens. They fell out of the chutes like someone had turned on a faucet. Reggie stood near the opening of the sublevel five chute and held the flamethrower on it for thirty seconds, torching every bug that came through. Then he turned and did the same for the sublevel six chute. But while he burned one bug, more came through the other chutes. The room was filling up.

Soon he had to abandon his strategy to focus on the bugs in the room. Luckily, the garbage covering the floor caught fire, creating a natural barrier between him and the bugs. If he planned it right, he could corral the bugs and give himself some cover. Unluckily, the fire spread across the fermented garbage and quickly grew out of control.

More pests were getting caught in the garbage fire, but its presence also put Reggie in danger from another threat. The fires were backing him into a corner and taking more ground than he could afford to give up.

I may survive the bugs, but I won’t survive the blaze.

“Cody, you there?”

A moment of tense silence stretched on too long.

“Here,” Cody finally said, out of breath.

“You got a sec?”

“Yeah, sure, I’m not doing anything. What do you need? An iced tea? Foot massage?” The sound of rushing flames came over the comm.

“Can you hack the incinerator controls for sublevel seven?” Reggie asked.

“I’ve already got them cued up,” Cody said. “Figured you’d ask.”

Reggie never thought he could be so happy while standing in a pile of trash. The power of teamwork. “Then fire them up,” he urged.

The conveyors kicked on, immediately knocking Reggie off his feet and onto his back. A ShimVen took the opportunity to try and eat his face by leaping onto his chest. Reggie pulled one of the pincers free from his belt and stabbed his current attacker repeatedly in the head.

He’d traveled ten yards by the time he got back on his feet, now just another ten yards from the gaping hole in the floor that was the incinerator shaft. The floor began to shake. Dozens of bugs dropped out of view as they reached the hole. The temperature jumped twenty degrees in a blink.

Reggie ran away from the incinerator, climbing over garbage and dead bugs. He stumbled and climbed back to his feet. It felt like trying to run up a mudslide, the ground constantly shifting beneath him.

A pillar of flame shot into the air behind Reggie, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck curl. He couldn’t breathe, the air was too thick with heat and fumes. It seemed to go on forever, the stream of the incinerator, burning everything.

He covered his mouth and nose with his shirt. If he stayed low, then the air didn’t burn his lungs so much. He crawled toward the other side of the incinerator, by the exit where cleaner air could be found. Each second it was getting harder to push forward.

Finally, after struggling as long as he could, Reggie collapsed. His legs refused to move. His lungs couldn’t find oxygen. Darkness pressed against the edge of his vision. The soles of his boots felt like they were melting.

And then it stopped. The incinerator shut down. The bugs were gone. The fires were out, all the flaming garbage swallowed by the hole. Reggie flailed in the trash like a laughing baby looking up at a mobile. He did it. He’d survived. This was the beginning of their reputation at pest control experts.

* * *

This is the beginning of the end.

Joel was down to just a few bots. The rest had been smashed and destroyed by the swarm, which, although thinned considerably, was still large enough to kill Joel ten times over.

He rolled from dead bot to dead bot, taking cover behind their corpses while lighting up the remaining bugs, hoping his fuel didn’t run out. It was a solid strategy, but he was getting tired. His legs burned, his chest pounded, sweat poured down his brow and back, soaking him through. All it would take was one slip-up, one reaction to his fatigue, and he was done. The ShimVens would have him.

He needed to do something. He needed to finish this. He looked to his dead bots, his fallen soldiers. Having a robot army was great while it lasted…

His mind flickered with an idea. Maybe they weren’t done serving their human overlord quite yet. They could still be of use.

Joel darted back to the main control panel. He hacked into the bot controls, booted them all up and cranked them up to eleven. Their internal servos and motors thrummed as they tried like hell to function. Protected gears and parts the ShimVen couldn’t get to ground against each other. Sparks shot like geysers from the cracks in the bots’ casing.

“This is it,” Joel said to himself. “My Rambo moment.”

He charged at the swarm, spraying fire out in front of him, clearing a path. He swung his fist, smashing bugs as he passed. He jumped over a flailing pest, its legs smashed by one of the surviving bots.

The dead bots screamed behind him. He silently saluted his fallen soldiers as he dove forward. The bots overheated and exploded, filling the machine shop with a massive fireball. Joel rolled onto his back and trained his flamethrower on the entrance of the room, waiting for any surviving bugs to come rushing out. None did. They were gone.

* * *

The fuckers were everywhere. Slashing and pinching and biting.

Goddamn bugs! Cody blasted a wave of fire point-blank into one bug’s face.

He no longer felt the sense of satisfaction when he killed a bug; there was always another right behind it. They were never-ending.

He was down to his final grenade. It was a doozy, but it was the last one. Cody needed to make it count. If he had one wish, he’d have the bugs cluster in the center of the room.

He ran to the back of the level and let off the trigger. With no flames keeping them at bay, the ShimVens swarmed in. Every instinct yelled at him to fire, to kill, but he resisted.

It was incredibly difficult, but Cody waited until the first of the bugs was close enough to take off his head. Then he ran along the perimeter of the control hub.

The bugs, being stupid ShimVens, played follow the leader. The last of the swarm piled into the room and skittered over the top of one another, trying to get to the human bait. Cody pulled the final grenade from his pouch as he sprinted for the door. ‘Little Fat Boy,’ he named it.

While scouring the wreckage of the control room, he happened upon a needle in the haystack of junk. One of the techs must have been moonlighting, because there was no reason they should have been working with nuclear material. It likely violated not only their contract with station management but intergalactic law as well. But Cody was glad they had; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to build this handy little nuke grenade. He’d watched Joel making the grenades, and hoped he got this one right.

How hard could it be?

The core was made with just the tiniest speck of uranium and encased in just a slightly larger speck of dark matter. Toss in a hefty dose of explosives, and he had a recipe for a last-ditch effort at survival.

Cody said a silent prayer that he wasn’t about to nuke not only himself but also collapse the station into a black hole. Then he threw the grenade and ran like hell.

It fell into the middle of the swarm. The bugs attacked it like it was a hot dog. It didn’t make any noise when it exploded—just flared one hot flash of light. A blinding burst, like a sun had suddenly been born in the next room. And it kept growing. The light pushed outward, racing toward Cody. The heat was intense, unbearable, and getting closer. In less than a second, he would be incinerated, a piece of tissue paper tossed on a fire.

But the light suddenly stopped. Something was pulling it back like it was a cat and something had grabbed hold of its tail.

It grabbed hold of Cody, too.

He began to slide across the floor toward the control hub. He picked up speed, soon racing toward the room, his ass blistering as it dragged. He slammed his feet into the wall on either side of the door, stopping himself just outside the room. His knees buckled against the pressure. The pull was so great, he felt it tug on his eyeballs. It yanked on his fingernails.

Darkness spread out from the center of the room, swallowing the light. It spread like the glow had, inching closer to Cody.

Then, as suddenly as it was born, it died.

The pull was gone. The darkness was gone. The ShimVens were gone.

Cody fell back and went limp. Everything ached. His muscles refused to move. His mind went blank.

He stared at the ceiling until a voice spoke in his ear.

“You all alive?” Reggie said.

“Yeah,” Cody answered. “I’m alive.”

Joel mumbled something that wasn’t exactly a word but was enough to answer Reggie’s question.

“We did it,” Reggie said. “We killed them. Job complete.”

“Hold up,” Cody said, checking his wristcom. “I’m getting a few readings on sublevel eight.”

“How did we miss those?” Joel asked.

Cody sighed. “This isn’t a perfect science yet, but we definitely aren’t done yet.”

Chapter Nine

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

“Get a real job.” Joel’s imitation of his mom was spot on, capturing her nasally tone perfectly.

She’d been supportive of his gaming aspirations, and his participation in the VRE championships with the Notches. Up until she wasn’t.

“You can do anything you set your mind to,” Joel continued mimicking. “Except gaming. You tried that. It didn’t work. Set your mind to something else.”

A small ShimVen skittered out of an air vent near his feet.

“Holy shit fuck!” he yelled out in his normal voice. He jumped and trained his flamethrower on the disgusting thing. Then he shouted “Die!” over and over again until the ShimVen did exactly that.

After spending five hours knee-deep in dead bugs he was ready to get the hell off this station and never look at another bug again.

“Goddamn bugs,” Joel said. “Why’d it have to be bugs?”

“Because we’re exterminators,” Cody reminded him through their commlink. “That’s kind of the job.”

Of course, never seeing another bug again wasn’t terribly realistic, given his line of work. Though since this was his first job, he hadn’t completely bought into the occupation yet.

“Pest control,” Reggie corrected over the link. “We are pest control experts.”

“Some fucking experts,” Joel said, kicking the dead bug just to make sure it was still dead.

“It’s our first job,” Reggie said. “We’ll learn.”

“My point exactly,” Joel said. “It’s our first job. This is some expert-level shit. Ridding an entire space station of these things in seventeen hours? What made you think we could handle this? I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve almost died at least twelve times today.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” Reggie said. “May as well start big.”

“Besides,” Cody added. “We kicked ass. Scanners show we took out the bulk of the swarm; there’s just a pocket of them left on sublevel eight. A sizeable pocket, but they’re all huddled together. And it’s nothing compared to what we’ve seen already. Should be able to wipe them out in an hour. Then we call it a day and get paid. Easy as pie.”

“Already on my way,” Reggie said. “Meet you down there.”

“Lock and load,” Joel said, completely devoid of enthusiasm.

* * *

If you’re ever on a space station hunting giant space bugs, never go to sublevel eight.

Especially if, just before going down to sublevel eight, someone says, ‘Yeah, this’ll be easy as fucking pie. We just survived a hell swarm of devil bugs. Danger over. Sublevel eight will be like strolling through a meadow of fluffy bunnies. I wish I lived on sublevel eight.’

Because that’s a sure sign that you’re about to die.

The elevator rattled as it descended into the inevitable deathtrap. The station looked new from the outside, but it had old bones. The pipes were rusty. The internal mechanics were all gummed up. The gear works on the elevator probably hadn’t been serviced in years. Everything creaked and moaned like an old man trying to get out of his favorite chair. It only added to the sense of impending doom.

The elevator dinged, marking its arrival. The door lurched open. Joel held his weapon at the ready. After a few tense breaths, he thought maybe he was wrong. Maybe it really would be all fluffy bunnies.

A shadow stepped into Joel’s periphery.

“All clear,” a voice said.

Joel nearly jumped out of his pants. “Shit, Cody, you can’t just pop out of nowhere like that.”

Cody spread his arms wide like he was trying to calm a wild animal. “I literally haven’t moved at all. I was standing right here when the door opened. How fast does PTSD set in? I think you’ve got a touch of it.”

Joel took a deep breath and focused on slowing his racing heart. “I’m fine. I don’t have PTSD, you’re just a dick.”

Cody shrugged. “Whatever. Let’s just kill these last bugs and get the hell out of here. I’m done with this place.”

“We need to wait for Reggie,” Joel said. “Where is he? Shouldn’t he have beat us here? He was closest.”

In answer to his question, Reggie came sprinting at them, his face twisted up in horror. “Get back on the elevator!” he shouted. “Get back!”

“I’m going to assume this is bad news,” Joel said, raising his flamethrower.

“Likely,” Cody said. “Though he does get worked up at times.”

Reggie skidded to a halt in front of them. “Why are you just standing here? Why aren’t you running?”

Joel and Cody exchanged a look.

“You can be a bit of a drama queen,” Joel said with a shrug. “I mean, I hate bugs as much as the next guy, but is all this really necessary? We’ve already killed a whole shitload of them. What’s a few more?”

The source of Reggie’s dismay came screeching out of the dark at the end of the long corridor. A tide of ShimVens, like a wave about to slam into them. A disgusting wave of creepy crawlies.

“All right,” Joel relented. “I retract my statement.”

“Notches,” Cody said, raising his flamethrower. “Game time!”

Cody and Joel opened fire on the horde, unleashing a burst of fire that torched a hundred bugs. The odor of burning alien was thick in the air; Cody thought he’d be used to it by now, but it still made him want to retch. He felt like puking everywhere but suppressed the urge with a steady breath. Cody figured taking a break to vomit would only increase the likelihood of his face getting eaten off.

Reggie brought his flamethrower up just in time to waste a bug several yards from his head. The bug fell dead at his feet, leaving the smell of burning flesh to waft in his face. He didn’t have time to react. He trained his gun on the next bug, and the next, and the next. They didn’t end. Dead bugs fell at their feet until they began to pile high. Up to Reggie’s knees, then his hips.

“We need to move,” he said.

“No shit,” said Joel. “Where to?”

“Cover me,” Cody said, pulling up the floorplan on his wrist-mounted computer. “Down this corridor.”

Cody’s spindly arms swung like wrecking balls to the left, knocking a few ShimVens aside. The other Notches ran after him. They moved clumsily, but as a unit. What they lacked in formal training, they made up for in unit cohesion. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t even exterminators; this was their first gig. But they were nearly VRE pros, and they’d served lifetimes together on the virtual battlefield.

They pushed through the wall of bugs that separated them from open space. Once they reached that space, they ran for all they were worth, only stopping when they’d exited the claustrophobic corridor and come to an expansive room, full of moving parts and an astringent odor.

“The engine room?” Joel said, his voice full of intrigue. “I would love to take some of this shit apart.”

“That’s what I was counting on,” Cody said.

A shriek by the door drew their attention. A bug had made it through before Reggie jammed the door shut, and it was on top of Reggie, slashing at his chest. Luckily, his cheap body armor was holding up, just barely though. It had been a gift from his parents when the Notches had gone into business. It was the thought that counted, Reggie mused, looking down at the damaged armor.

Joel yelled but didn’t dare fire on the thing, for fear of hitting Reggie. His yell was distraction enough, though. Reggie grabbed the bug by the throat and slammed it onto the ground. It tried to wriggle away, but he stomped its head into mush.

“Gross,” Joel said, already taking things apart and putting them back together as wholly different items. “Cody, hack into the fuel system and dump the lines in the corridor. I’ll rig up some flashbangs from this junk. Then we can flash fry those fuckers.”

“On it,” Cody said, pulling up the specs on his computer. “You were right, Reg. Piece of cake.”

“Uh, guys.” Reggie sounded like he’d been kicked in the junk. He looked like it, too. “I fear things just got worse.”

“Christ, man,” Joel said. “Can you spare me the melodrama? Yes, we’re surrounded by bloodthirsty space bugs, but we’ve got a plan. Just try and stay positive.”

“I’m all about being positive,” Reggie said. Then he held up a shaking hand and pointed. “But dealing with that wasn’t in the plan.”

The other two guys turned. Each of the Notches froze as fear severed their nerves, making it impossible for them to speak or move or even piss their pants. They were thankful for that last one because a ShimVen the size of an apartment building appeared at the far end of the engine room.

It lumbered forward with long, slow movements, digging its pointed legs into the metal floor as if it were construction paper. It stopped, caught the Notches in its multi-eyed gaze, then let out a thunderous roar.

“Holy fucking shit!” Reggie yelled.

Chapter Ten

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

Joel wasn’t sure what surprised him more: the behemoth bug, or the fact that expletives had just come out of Reggie’s mouth.

“Uhhhh… Cody? Can you hurry it up? We’ve got a big problem.”

Cody tapped furiously on his wristcom. “Got it. Dumping the lines now.”

Joel twisted together a casing rigged up of old paint cans. “Flashbangs are ready. As soon as I toss these, all the bugs in the hall are toast.”

“But the elevator is on the other side of that swarm,” Reggie said. “We’re trapped in here with that beast.”

“Maybe not,” Cody said, studying the floor schematics. “Looks like there’s a service elevator toward the back, right next to the engine. We just have to get past the mother bug.”

“Because that’ll be ‘easy as fucking pie’, right, guys?” Joel jabbed at them with his sharp voice.

“Just throw those grenades,” Reggie said.

Joel didn’t argue. He activated the two flashbangs he’d made and threw them as hard as he could down the hall that was clogged with ShimVens.

The guys didn’t wait to see the effect. They turned and charged straight at the mother bug, yelling like they were berserker Vikings attacking some English villagers. As they ran, they heard the shriek of a hundred bugs burning to death and felt the heat tickle the backs of their necks.

They expected the mother bug to strike. All she needed to do was bring one of her massive legs down to turn all three of them into smears on the floor. The irony wasn’t lost on them. But the giant ShimVen didn’t do that; she didn’t so much as look at them. She couldn’t look away from the fire behind them. From the sight of hundreds of her babies turning to ash.

For a second, Joel felt bad for the hideous creature, having to watch as its family writhed in pain and died. Then he remembered how each and every one of those skittery bastards had wanted to eat him and lay eggs in his brain, and his sympathy turned to delight.

They ran under the mother bug while she was distracted. As Reggie glanced up at her underside, his chest tightened and his stomach sank. But then the service elevator came into view.

We made it in one piece. He decided to focus on that for the moment. The positive.

The mother bug was still staring at the flaming pyre of its offspring as the elevator door closed.

Joel stabbed the button for the hangar bay with his finger. “We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he said.

Neither Cody nor Reggie argued. No one said anything until they were back on the ship.

“Computer, plot a course for home,” Cody said. “Get us off this goddamn station as fast as you can.”

Joel strapped into his chair. He didn’t even bother to take his bug-gut-soaked jacket off. He just wanted to get gone.

Reggie seemed reluctant to strap in. He didn’t argue that they stay, though; he wasn’t stupid. The guys would kick him out an airlock if he even suggested it. He knew they weren’t equipped to handle a bug that size. Not to mention their weapons were depleted.

Cody rocketed the ship out of the space station, foregoing all the standard departure protocols. Not that there were any traffic controllers to give a shit, but the Notches usually followed procedure.

Once they were free of the station, Reggie spoke.

“Guys, I know you don’t want to hear this, but we have to go back.”

Chapter Eleven

Sonic Shuttle

“Fuck you,” Joel and Cody said at that same time, with exactly the same amount of fervor.

“No way I’m ever stepping foot on that station again,” Joel said. “I don’t give a damn about our reputation. We just murdered a bajillion bugs. If that doesn’t earn us a rep, then nothing will.”

“We didn’t finish the job,” Reggie said. “Doesn’t matter how many bugs we kill. If we don’t do what we’re hired to do, then we’re never getting hired again.”

Joel shrugged. “I don’t see why that’s such a bad thing. I’ve been an exterminator for about two days and, so far, it’s been the worst thing ever. I say we start a food truck. Everyone loves food trucks. And cupcakes. A cupcake food truck. Bam. We’re millionaires, and nothing is trying to kill me.”

“And waffles,” Cody added. “Everyone loves waffles.”

“See?” Joel said. “We’re shitting out million-dollar ideas left and right here.”

Reggie tensed. “Yeah, great idea. How are we supposed to fund it?” He spread his arms wide, gesturing to the ship and everything in it. “This is it. This is everything we’ve got. All of our money went into this. We’ve got nothing left to invest. If we don’t complete this job, our worst fears come to pass.”

Joel and Cody returned quizzical looks.

“We’ll have to move back in with our parents,” Reggie clarified dramatically.

“Sweet mother of tacos,” Cody said. “My dad threw a sandwich at my head the last time I saw him. I can’t go back there.”

Joel leaned back in his seat and pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes until little flecks of light danced across the backs of his eyelids. They still danced when he opened his eyes. “Okay, so we kill the big mama. We managed that whole swarm, right? We can kill one giant bug. I’ll rig up a shitload of bombs, and we’ll blast it to smithereens.”

Reggie swallowed hard. “Here’s the thing.”

Joel groaned. “Why does there have to be a thing?”

“I did some reading on the ShimVen before the job,” Reggie said. “I studied their anatomy. And I noticed something on the big mama as we ran under her. Egg sacs. Big, fat egg sacs. She’s hatching another swarm.”

The guys silently let that news sink in.

Joel felt like screaming. Everything they’d just done was pointless. Killing an entire swarm of ShimVens. Making it out of that survival horror with all of their body parts still attached. Only for another swarm to hatch the second they leave, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for any of it.

“We can’t do that again,” Cody said. “Take on an entire swarm by ourselves. We used up most of our supplies. The gear we rigged together won’t hold up for another attack like that. We need to restock. Plus, we’re exhausted. We barely survived the last swarm. How are we supposed to take out another one in…” He checked his watch. “Nine hours? Shit.”

Reggie cleared his throat. “I think we need to get some help. It’s time to subcontract.”

* * *

The Notches liked to hang out at a gamer bar called the Arcade. The place was a dream. Old school arcade games. Terminals to get jacked into VR games. Single player consoles. And the best goddamn poutine outside of Montreal. Or so Joel claimed. The other guys weren’t so big on the poutine, but the beer selection was amazing, and you always knew you were in the right company. Gamers all around. Everyone looking to stuff their face, drown their work week grind, and slip away into a computer simulated fantasy world.

To enlist the backup they needed to clear the station, they found themselves in a very different kind of bar. It was not at all like the Arcade. This was a dump called Rowdy’s, and it smelled like sweaty ass. The guys assumed that was a marked improvement from how it typically smelled, being that it wasn’t even noon yet. In the late hours of the night, full of tanked up losers and wastes of skin, the aroma of the bar must be toxic.

They’d been to two other bars already, and this one smelled the worst by far. The first place served tater tots, which Reggie loved. Can’t usually find tots off Earth. But it and the second bar were total busts. It wasn’t until Rowdy’s that they found even remotely qualified candidates. But the three-hundred-pound slab of mercenary they talked to first turned out to be useless.

Reggie acted like he was conducting a formal job interview and not asking a caveman to step on some bugs. “So,” he said, his hands folded across the table, back straight. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

The large man, aptly named Gulch, stared blankly. Reggie gazed back with an empty smile that any human resources professional would be proud of. After a moment of awkward silence, Gulch jutted his chin toward a stool at the end of the bar. “Maybe over there?”

Joel tried to stifle a laugh. Luckily, Gulch didn’t seem to realize the laugh was at his expense.

“Right,” Reggie said. “Moving on. How do you feel about killing—”

“Love it,” Gulch said before Reggie could finish.

Reggie squirmed in his seat. “Bugs. How do you feel about killing bugs?”

“Hate it,” Gulch said, not feeling the need to elaborate.

Reggie stood and extended his hand to Gulch. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Gulch. We will be in touch.”

The Notches met with a second man ten minutes later, suggested to them by one of the other patrons. He was a nimble, little man who looked like a Cirque du Soleil performer. He was named Picard. His face was all tattoos and piercings, and he could apparently put his foot behind his head, which immediately intrigued Cody.

The guys merely had to ask, and Picard was all too happy to demonstrate his skills. Cody pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he watched Picard do a back bridge and then kick up into a handstand. He did much of the interview in a handstand position, which definitely won him style points.

“Let me give you a hypothetical,” Cody said to Picard. “Let’s say our contract dictates we meet the terms of completion within a very limited timeframe. How do you feel about tight deadlines?”

“I am comfortable with them,” Picard said. “I always meet my deadlines.”

Cody smiled. “Good. Great, that’s perfect. Now, let’s say that the terms of the contract didn’t exactly spell out the nature of the job, requiring you to be flexible, to make adjustments while in the field. Are you able to do that?”

“You’re asking me to be flexible?” Picard fell back into a back bridge and laughed like a hyena.

Cody chuckled along with him.

Joel wanted to take the pun and slap them both with it.

“This is going so well,” Cody said. “One last question: how do you feel about bugs?”

Picard shot to his feet and began swatting at his arms and legs as if pests were crawling over his skin. “Why? Where are they? Are they on me? Get them off!”

Cody deflated. “Disqualified,” he said with a sigh.

Joel identified a third potential candidate, a man named Meatball. He wondered at the nature of the nickname until he laid eyes on the man. He did, indeed, look exactly like a meatball. He smelled a bit like one, as well.

They sat at a table in the back. Well, the Notches sat. Meatball stood; he was too round to fit comfortably in the chair.

“So, Mr. Meatball,” Joel said, “tell me a little bit about yourself.”

“It’s just Meatball,” the guy replied.

“Excuse me?” Joel asked.

“Just ‘Meatball.’ No ‘mister.’”

“Right, sorry.” Joel pretended to cough into his hand as a way of releasing some of the laugh he was holding back. “Actually, we will need your given name to put on the application and some other official paperwork.” They didn’t, but Joel liked to appear professional, and there is nothing more professional than paperwork.

“Meatball is my given name.”

Joel choked on his own breath. “No, it isn’t.”

Meatball bristled. “You calling me a liar?”

“No,” Joel said, barely containing his laugh. “I can think of absolutely no reason why you would lie about something like that.”

Meatball crossed his arms over his chest. Underneath the flab, there seemed to be some sizeable biceps, large enough to crush Joel. “I feel like you’re laughing at me.”

Joel wiped the tears from his eyes. His voice was broken by stifled laughter. “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Meatball waddled away from the table.

“So, that’s it, then,” Reggie said, dismayed. “That was the last candidate. We’ve got nothing.”

“That Meatball gentleman could work, if Joel can stop laughing at him,” Cody said.

Joel scoffed. “You kidding me? That guy would get devoured in seconds. And, really though, who names their kid Meatball?”

Cody took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with his shirt. “There’s really no one else? You try asking the bartender? They’re always good sources of information.”

Reggie strutted up to the bar and greeted the greasy stain pouring drinks behind it. “Pardon me, good sir, but we are looking to hire some help. A mercenary who can handle himself in extremely dangerous situations. Someone who won’t shy away from a mess. No problem squishing some bugs. An honorable fellow. Holds true to his word. Shows ambition. A real go-getter. Thinks outside the box. Also, someone with three professional references.”

The bartender looked him over, his eyebrow cocked and a disingenuous smile on his face. “You some kind of simpleton?”

Joel nudged his friend aside. “Yes, yes he is. Kicked in the head when he was a kid. By his own dad. Thought he was a soccer ball…it’s that big, round head. Real shame. Anywho, we’re looking for a real badass,” Joel added. “But also someone who’s not too expensive. A good amount of badass for a reasonable sum. You know anybody like that?”

The bartender continued wiping down dirty glasses with an equally dirty rag as he stared blank-faced at Joel.

He returned the deadpan expression, the two seemingly engaged in an unofficial staring contest.

Cody decided to give it a try. He joined his friends at the bar. “Look, Mr…uh, Bartender Man, we’re somewhat pressed for time. If you can’t help us, we will have to take our business elsewhere.” His lanky arms swung around like monkeys on vines searching for a place to land. He ended up folding his hands on the bar top, which he regretted as his forearms immediately stuck to it. He tried to put on a tough guy face, but he just looked constipated.

“You ain’t bought nothing,” the bartender said, never breaking his staring contest with Joel. “By all means, take your business elsewhere.”

Joel slammed his fist on the bar. “Dammit, man, are you made of stone? Do you not have tear ducts?” Joel wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The bartender kept right on wiping glasses, never blinking.

A soiled man appeared beside Reggie. He looked half-asleep. The other half looked completely wasted. “Oi, you looking for a merc?”

Reggie nodded and tried not to breathe in the man’s stink.

“You want Sam,” the man said. “Best merc around. Made of ice. Total badass. Should be around here somewhere.” The man belched a nasty cloud directly in Reggie’s face.

Trying to be polite, Reggie did not turn away, but, instead, turned a sick shade of green and said, “Thank you.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Cody said, pushing his glasses up his nose again. He turned back to the bartender. “Do you know where we can find this Mr. Sam?”

The bartender stared at him as he wiped down the bar with the same rag with which he wiped down everything else.

Cody couldn’t hide his discomfort. He shrank away from the portly man, slid off his stool, and pulled the Notches with him. “I think we should just go. This place is proving unhelpful and quickly becoming hostile. I suspect the bartender might want to murder us.”

Joel swatted Cody’s hand away. “Nonsense. He’s stoic. A stoic, angry, possibly homicidal bartender. That just proves that we’re in the right place. This kind of seedy dive is exactly where you find the sort of person we need. Now, let’s find this Sam.”

They split up, much to Cody’s dismay, and canvassed the bar looking for information on Sam. Most ignored them. The few who did seem open to talking clammed up as soon as the guys mentioned the name Sam.

The trio regrouped near the front door.

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Cody said. “They all seem to be afraid of Sam. What kind of guy could scare this bunch of people?”

“Exactly the kind of guy we need,” Joel said.

Reggie shot Cody a sympathetic look. “I kind of agree with Joel, man. Sorry. If this guy measures up to his reputation, he might be able to handle the ShimVens.” A despondent expression fell over Reggie’s face. “If we could just find him.”

A raspy voice sounded from the dark corner just off the end of the bar. A barrel-chested man, head shaved bald to showcase the terrible decision that he’d made to get a scalp tattoo, approached another figure that was drenched in shadow.

“Heya, Sam,” the man said. “Heard you’s looking for some action tonight.”

“I don’t look,” the shadowy figure said, voice muffled like it was being spoken into a fan. “Action finds me.”

Joel nudged Reggie with his elbow. “Oh, that was a good line. This has to be the dude.”

Cody scratched nervously at his chin with his fishing pole arms. “Yeah, but I don’t think—”

His voice fell away when Sam stepped out of the dark corner to square off with the unfortunately tattooed man. Still cloaked in shadows, Sam moved like a thing out of a nightmare. A shadow, cold and confident, sucking the warmth out of the room. Thin but not small, there was a lot of muscle packed into the nimble frame. But it wasn’t the threat of the shadow that surprised the guys most. It was the curves.

Joel nudged Reggie again. “Whoa! The dude’s a lady. That’s definitely a woman shape.”

Sam stepped into the light. She was dressed in an all-black tactical bodysuit. Knives were sheathed on the sash that fell across her chest. A blaster hung on each hip. The knuckles of her fingerless gloves were worn, the leather cracked and gushing their fibrous innards. She stood as high as the bald man’s chest but was nowhere close to intimidated by the size difference. Her mouth was covered by what looked to be a respirator.

She stared up into the big man’s eyes. “How many times I need to tell you, Earl? Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Don’t stand upwind of me.”

Earl did not look amused. “You got a hell of a mouth on you, girl. How’s about you take that thing off and let me see it?” He reached for the respirator.

“Keep your hands to yourself, sir,” Reggie said. Before the others knew what was happening, Reggie was walking toward Earl like a knight in extremely stupid armor. “Or I’ll be forced to ask you to leave.”

Cody and Joel reluctantly followed. “Holy shit, man,” Joel said to Reggie. “What are you doing? That guy is enormous.”

“Being valiant,” Reggie said. “And watch your mouth. There’s a lady present.”

Earl turned his bald, sweaty head their way. “Friends of yours, Sam?”

Sam looked each of them over, her green eyes narrowing on their faces. Then she leaned back and crossed her arms. “Nope.”

Earl set his eyes on Reggie like a dog on a steak. He cracked a broken-toothed smile as he ground his meaty fists together. He pulled back his arm and lunged. His fist came crashing down at Reggie like a wrecking ball made of sausage. Reggie dove to the side, slamming into Cody and narrowly dodging certain doom. Joel planted his foot on a nearby chair, jumped, and drove his fist into the side of Earl’s face.

The big man didn’t even flinch.

“Give him your level-up punch,” Cody yelled.

“That was my level-up punch,” Joel said, swallowing hard as Earl growled. “You’re a big fucker. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.”

Earl lunged forward. Joel ducked and rolled under his arms. He planted his feet and climbed onto the big man’s back, wrapping his arms around Earl’s meaty neck. Cody and Reggie ran to the assist. Reggie dropped his shoulder and drove it into Earl’s gut. Cody wrapped his lanky arms around Earl’s leg.

Sam leaned back on the bar and watched the trio struggle to avoid death while protecting her honor. They seemed an utterly useless bunch, but she couldn’t help but be amused by them. They had heart, at least. Too bad that Earl was about to make their hearts all stop beating.

The big man plucked Joel off his back like he was a tick and slammed him on the ground. Then he swatted Reggie aside and swung his leg until Cody lost his grip and rolled across the dirty floor. “Not even a good workout,” Earl said.

The guys were done. Joel was heaving for breath. Blood trickled down from Reggie’s nose. Cody was disoriented. He tried to stand but fell back against a table, overturning some chairs. They had survived a swarm of ShimVens only to meet their end in a shitty dive bar at the hands of a man named Earl.

The beast that was Earl stomped toward Reggie, casting the shadow of death over him. A much smaller shadow came to meet him.

“Work this out,” Sam said as she marched toward the big man, her fist cocked back and ready to fire. She drove it up into Earl’s chin like a rocket breaking atmosphere. Earl fell, breaking a table and three chairs under his broad, sweaty back.

The sudden silence was jarring, like an explosion had blown out everyone’s eardrums and they’d all gone deaf at the same time. Cody, Joel, and Reggie froze in place, trapped in the awe-struck gaze of the other patrons. They looked from the massive mound of unconscious goon on the floor to the woman who just put him there, trying to calculate how it was possible.

“Shit,” Joel said. “Dude’s out like a light.” He looked at Sam, astonished. “One fucking punch.”

Reggie brushed himself off. “Ma’am,” he said to Sam. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

Joel shoved Reggie aside. “Dude, I think she’s passed the interview part of the process.” Joel ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it out. He flashed Sam a smile that he believed to be utterly charming. “Sam, was it? How would you like to join us for the adventure of a lifetime?”

She scoffed and made to walk away.

Cody pushed his way past the guys. “Sam,” he said, stopping her from leaving. “We would like to employ your services.”

Sam studied each of them and the mess they’d made. Quite a trio. Obviously a tight-knit bunch. Obviously hopelessly out of their depth. They had no business in a place like this, but they seemed to be the only ones who didn’t know that. They had no clue that they didn’t belong there. Maybe they didn’t care. Maybe they were desperate.

A voice in her head told her to walk away, maybe get them to buy her a drink or two for her troubles first, but then definitely walk away. She didn’t need any more trouble right now. And she didn’t care to babysit. But there was something about them that she couldn’t walk away from just then. A genuineness. An honesty that she couldn’t deny.

What the hell, she thought. “Sure,” she said. “What’s the job?”

Chapter Twelve

Sonic Shuttle

Sam seemed to take to the ship well enough. Reggie was overly concerned that the state of Sonic would turn her off. Joel assured him that it may have needed a good cleaning, but it was miles ahead of that shithole bar where they found her.

She sat back, her feet kicked up on the dinner table, and listened as Reggie briefed her on the details of their job. She listened silently, absorbing the information, her face calculating like she was already formulating a plan.

Cody appeared wary of her, treating her as he did Meatball, a monster who might eat him.

“So that’s what we’re looking at,” Reggie said, wrapping up his briefing. “What do you think?”

Sam nodded. “I think I’m impressed. You three took on an entire ShimVen infestation without proper gear or the first clue about what you were doing. Either you fell ass-backward into some incredible luck, or you’ve got grit.”

“What’s with the respirator mask thing?” Joel asked. “Asthma?”

Cody slid his fingers under his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Inappropriate.”

Joel continued as if he didn’t hear anything. “Or are you, like, horrifically scarred or something? I mean, it’s totally badass. You’ve got a Darth Vader thing going on. Or Darth Sam. Or is it Samantha? Can I call you—”

Sam shot up out of her chair, producing a knife as if from nowhere, and put the tip of it to Joel’s throat. “Never call me that.”

Joel looked like a mouse in a room full of cats. “Got it.”

Sam sheathed her knife and fell back into the chair. “First thing, we need proper gear. Luckily, I know a guy. Second, this is my chair now. I call dibs for life.”

Cody swallowed hard. He wanted to inform her that it was actually his chair and that there were only three on the entire ship, but he opted not to…in light of the knife incident and how terrifying she was.

Instead, he leaned in close to Reggie and whispered, “Do you think her guy also sells chairs?”

* * *

The man who sold gear was what one might expect when someone like Sam claims to have ‘a guy.’ He was a weaselly, little man, operating out of the back of a donut shop. He looked like he didn’t sleep, or that he was addicted to cough syrup, and believed that the government listened to him by bugging his microwave. He was a tinfoil-hat-wearing prepper type sitting on a mountain of dangerous weapons, which made the guys extremely uncomfortable.

But he served amazing donuts.

“Holy crap,” Joel said through a mouthful of bacon glazed cruller. “This is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

Sam’s guy, ironically named ‘Steady,’ twitched every time one of the Notches spoke. Their presence seemed to put him ill at ease. He spoke only to Sam. “ShimVens? They’s some nasty bitches. But I got what you need.”

Steady opened a hatch in the floor of the bakery to reveal a hidden staircase. They followed him down into the musty cellar that stank of deep fried everything. Cody’s stomach rumbled despite the nagging fear in the back of his head. Steady flicked the lights on, which only made the nagging louder: the walls were lined with guns, grenades, rocket launchers—tech that wasn’t available to most outside the military. At least, it shouldn’t have been.

Steady looked even more insane under the glow of the lights, surrounded by enough ordnance to kill a small country.

Sam’s eyes lit up like she’d just walked into a candy store. She strolled the racks, letting her fingers slide longingly over the weapons. “What can you tell me about the bugs? Weaknesses?”

Cody pushed his glasses up his nose. “They’re weak against fire. Not sure about other elemental damage. They don’t have a lot of armor, so physical attacks work well, too. Their major strength is their numbers. While defending your front, the swarm will gank you from the side.”

Sam crossed her arms and studied the racks of weapons. After some consideration, she said, “All right, Steady, here’s what we need.”

Steady produced a pen and scrap of paper from his pocket.

Sam walked the length of the weapon racks, tagging each item as she mentioned it. “Personal energy shields, elemental grenades, a couple of pulse rifles and plenty of ammunition.”

Reggie sucked in a breath as he sidled up next to Sam. “Really love the initiative, Sam, but we sort of don’t have the money for this. Like, not even close. Spent it on the gear for our last run at the ShimVens, and we, of course, paid you. You’re welcome.”

Sam brushed the comment off like it was no big deal and allowed Steady to gather her order. Once he did, he dropped it all in a heap at their feet, mentioning the cost.

The Notches made to leave, thinking the whole thing a waste of time.

Sam leaned in close to Steady. She put her arm around him. “Remember that favor I did for you a while back? That other dealer who was hassling you? Whatever happened to him?”

Steady shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Exactly,” she said, patting him on the back. Then she hoisted the massive sack of gear over her shoulder and started climbing the stairs. “Call us even.”

The Notches hustled up after her, not wanting to see if there would be any fallout from Sam apparently stealing a shitload of expensive stuff. Steady let them go.

They sorted all the equipment once they were safely back on Sonic. The guys geeked out about their new gear until they were thirty minutes out from the station, then the sense of dread hit them square in their throats.

Sam ran them through the particulars of the new gear, got them acquainted with it all so they would be able to use it when the time came. That helped to ease Cody’s nerves slightly. He liked to be prepared.

Reggie took several deep breaths to get his blood flowing. Joel fiddled with the new gear some more, and Sam slapped the back of his hand when he took a screwdriver to one of the personal energy shields.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said. “Trying to void the warranty?”

“I’ve never had one of these.” Joel sounded like a scolded child. “I just wanted to tinker with it a little.”

“You don’t tinker with these.” Sam wagged her finger like she was speaking to a dog that had just tinkled in the house. “That’s how shit gets broken, and that’s how people die.”

Dejected, Joel dropped his screwdriver and hung his head.

But he didn’t have much time to sulk. Sonic came out of hyperspeed, and the station hung like a guillotine on the horizon.

“All right, boys,” Sam said. “Suit up.” She checked her gear and began strapping on all the essentials for the job.

“She is so cool,” Reggie said to Cody and Joel as they followed after her. “‘Suit up.’ I don’t sound half as cool when I say it.”

Joel just grunted. Cody shook out his hands, trying to get rid of his jitters.

The guys formed a circle and began strapping up. Sam, who was ready to go, paced the outside of their circle. She recognized how fragmented and distracted they were. She may have taken the job on a bit of a whim because these three amused her, but they would get her killed if they didn’t have their heads on straight. She recognized their sort, and she knew how to psych them up. “It’s game time, boys. Team deathmatch. Us versus the bugs. We’re about to spawn right in the middle of a shitstorm, and you better be ready. There’re no respawns. One life. You get pwned, and that’s it.”

Cody’s nerves began to calm. Reggie felt a surge of excitement. Joel gripped his pulse rifle tight and imagined mowing down a wave of ShimVens.

“So, what do you say, boys?” Sam continued. “You ready to do some pwning of your own?”

At that, the Notches erupted like a horde of Scots watching William Wallace challenge the English. They were locked and loaded and ready to finally complete their first job.

Or die trying.

Chapter Thirteen

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

The station had somehow grown even eerier since they’d left. Sector 12 Transgalactic Station felt larger, hollower, full of death. It had become a tomb. The guys reminded themselves that the only dead things in it were the thousands of ShimVens that they had killed. The bugs were the noobs here; they hadn’t made a kill yet. The Notches were the ones to be afraid of.

They were amped. They felt like killers. They felt like badasses.

But the ShimVens must have gotten their own inspirational speech. They weren’t content to linger in the bowels of the station anymore. They came rushing out of the vents and up through the elevator shaft as soon as the Notches stepped off Sonic.

These seemed different than the ones the guys had faced before. These new hatchlings were faster, fiercer, younger and hungrier. They blurred together into one solid wave of legs and pincers.

“Incoming!” Sam yelled.

The Notches may have felt like badasses, but seeing Sam in action showed them what a real badass could do. She was a killing machine. She swung her pulse rifle around from her back into her arms like a heavy metal guitarist. She unleashed a barrage of blaster fire, tearing dozens of bugs apart in seconds. She charged at the swarm, punching several of them with her free hand, the other firmly on the trigger.

She cut a swathe through the swarm, her personal energy shield lighting up around her. The bugs closed ranks behind Sam, cutting her off from the Notches.

“We lost her,” Reggie said.

“But we just got her,” Joel lamented.

“We can’t leave her in there,” Cody said. “We don’t stand a chance without her. We need to—”

Before he could finish his sentence, a mist began to build rapidly in the heart of the swarm. A moment after it appeared, it exploded. A rush of chemicals washed over the bugs, petrifying those closest to the source of the explosion. Traveling out from the epicenter, the bugs were statues or hit so fiercely by the chemical grenade that they fell into a state of stasis-like coma.

The sculpture ShimVens began shattering as Sam cut her way back to the Notches.

She smiled when she reached them. “The pyrethrum grenades work like a charm.”

If there was any doubt left regarding Sam’s competence, it was gone completely at that moment. She nodded for them to follow, and they did without pause, their grenades at the ready and their minds set on victory.

If you were to ask the Notches to describe the following hour, they wouldn’t be able to in any detail. They would say that they fought like madmen, cut down hundreds of bugs, maybe thousands on that main level of the station, but they acted on instinct. They blended together like the bugs did, into one unit. They moved together, killed together, parts of one whole. They would say that their minds were empty of rational thought, and that when consciousness returned, they were covered in bug blood and standing on the corpses of their enemies.

Cody collapsed from exhaustion. Reggie fell against the wall to catch his breath. Joel held his rifle up with great effort, ready for the next wave, though it never came.

Sam looked like she’d just gone out for a casual morning stroll. “Level complete,” she said with a smile.

They regrouped in one of the abandoned offices. They took stock of their supplies, which hadn’t depleted as much as they would have thought. They were still good on ammo; for all the hell they had just caused, they were still in decent shape to cause some more.

The group refueled with some dried ration packs. Half an hour passed, and the guys’ strength returned. Sam was the first to her feet. She hadn’t needed to recharge before returning to the fight—she’d only paused the mayhem to allow the guys some rest. Now enough time had passed that she was beginning to get antsy.

“Can you locate any more of these bugs, Cody?” she asked.

He checked his wristcom. “Heat signatures indicate a sizable swarm on sublevel seven. Then there’s nothing besides one very large signature on sublevel eight.”

“The big mama,” Reggie said.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Sam said. “Focus on the enemy in front of you, the ones that can kill you now. Not the ones that can kill you later.”

The Notches stood, checked their weapons, and shook off the stiffness that had begun to set into their muscles and joints.

“How much time we got?” Sam asked.

Reggie checked his watch. “Just under an hour.”

Sam laughed. “This’ll be a goddamn cakewalk.”

“Hell yeah,” Joel said. Cody looked at him accusingly. “What?” Joel responded. “When she says it, I believe it.”

They piled into the elevator and made their way down to sublevel seven. Though the level had been riddled with carnage during Reggie’s last visit, it was largely empty of bug guts now, seeing as most of the carcasses were swallowed up in the incinerator.

Having burned up a portion of the festering garbage swamp, the smell wasn’t as thick in the air as before, but it was still enough to trouble the stomach. Cody gagged the moment he stepped off the elevator. He only managed to breathe after he stuffed wads of tissue, which he’d found in his pocket, up his nose.

They moved as a unit through the level, Sam at the lead. Reggie warned them of the incinerator and the conveyor belt floor, but neither should be a problem, since Cody needed to activate the incinerator remotely, and doing so while standing directly over it would be rather foolish.

They reached the back of the trash level without encountering any ShimVens.

“You wanna check those readings again?” Sam said to Cody.

He checked his wristcom. “I have. Still reading the heat signatures of a swarm of bugs. Maybe…” He looked up. “Those chutes,” he said to Reggie. “Those connect to each floor?”

“Yeah,” Reggie answered. “That’s how the trash gets down here from all the other levels. The last time the pests came at me, they came pouring out of that like—”

His voice was swallowed by the skittering of thousands of bug feet. The chutes rattled and exploded like roman candles, and the bugs came shooting out like so many sparks. They were creatures of habit, apparently, the ShimVens.

“Defensive positions!” Sam yelled.

The Notches pressed their backs together, forming a four-sided death cube, each one unleashing a torrent of blaster fire.

“On me,” Sam ordered.

Maintaining their form, the group moved toward the nearest wall. Once there, they broke ranks and all pressed their backs to the wall, protecting their rear flank.

They were a firing squad of four, cutting down attackers. The bugs dropped like garbage from a torn open trash bag, not funneled down and neatly deposited in one convenient location as before, now that the chutes were destroyed.

“Grenades!” Sam shouted.

Each one of them plucked a grenade off their belt. They didn’t bother to look and see what kind. They just activated them and tossed them into the swarm. A few seconds later, the mass of bugs burst like mini volcanoes, bug guts spewing instead of lava. Some of them flash froze from pyrethrum chemicals. Others were encapsulated in solid rock as the ground elemental grenades exploded. Pockets of emptiness had been punched into the swarm, giving the Notches some breathing room and allowing them to focus their fire on the still living. When a pocket reached them, they all turned and concentrated their fire in one spot. Then they would turn again when another pocket arrived. It became a dance.

Soon, the dance was over. The last of the bugs had fallen. Each of the Notches, even Sam, fell back against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. They were completely wiped. Their arms were heavy and felt like alien things hanging at their sides, not like they were parts of their bodies at all. As their hearts slowed and their breathing leveled off, their eyelids grew heavy. They needed to rest.

Reggie wanted to climb into a hot tub and never come out. Cody wanted to use mouthwash, floss, a water pick, and repeat. Joel wanted to eat an entire pizza and crash on the couch while binge-watching a procedural cop drama. Sam wanted to finish the job.

“Don’t get too comfortable, boys,” she said. “Not done yet.”

Joel groaned. “Can’t we just sit a minute? We just went full Duke Nukem for, like, an hour.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. “An hour. How much time we got to finish this job?”

Reggie wiped the bug guts from his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes.”

Sam used her rifle like a cane to stand. “Then we best move our asses.”

Chapter Fourteen

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

There was no sense of looming suspense when they entered the engine room. No wondering if their enemy was lurking in the dark, waiting to strike when the Notches’ guard was down. The big mama was there, in the open, to welcome them.

They stepped off the elevator and were almost crushed immediately. A massive leg came slamming down toward them. Sam shoved Cody and Joel in one direction, and then tackled Reggie in the opposite. They would all have been turned to people paste had she not had the fastest reflexes in the universe.

Cody and Joel were back on their feet in seconds, adrenaline powering them past the fatigue that had plagued them only minutes ago. They ran along the outer perimeter of the room toward the engine, the biggest source of cover.

Sam allowed her momentum to carry her forward. After landing on top of Reggie, she rolled over him to her feet and then sprinted toward a grid of control panels for cover.

She yelled to Reggie over her shoulder, “I saved your ass, but I’m not carrying you the rest of the way.”

He scrambled to his feet and followed her.

Now split into two teams on opposite sides of the mama ShimVen, they took turns firing at the beast. Joel and Cody shot, drawing the monster’s attention. Then Reggie and Sam fired as it was focused on the others. It would have been a good plan if their rifles had any effect on the creature.

“Our shots are bouncing right off,” Joel said through the comms.

“It appears that the big mama has some sort of exoskeleton that the little ones don’t,” Cody said. “Fascinating.”

“What would be fascinating is a way to kill it,” Sam said. “Any ideas, Brainiac?”

Cody’s mind raced for a solution. “We need to find a weak point, some chink in its armor.”

Sam checked her ammo. Her pulse rifle would be empty in minutes at her current rate of fire. “We’re likely to run out of ammo before we get lucky enough to do that.” But she had two fire grenades left. And an idea. “Hold your fire. When I give the word, Joel and Cody, get its attention.”

“What are you going to do?” Reggie asked.

“Kill this bitch,” Sam answered.

She signaled for Joel and Cody to begin firing. As soon as the blaster fire began ricocheting off the beast’s side, Sam darted out from cover. Big mama turned toward her attackers, leaving her flank wide open.

Sam didn’t think of herself as an impulsive person; she believed the word implied a quickness to act without thought. She was quick to act, yes, but she did not do so without thought. She could understand how one might think that, though, considering what she was about to do. Surely, one would not do something so brash, having carefully considered the outcomes. She wasn’t impulsive. No. But she might have been reckless.

Sam leapt and grabbed with both hands the scaffolding that snaked up and around the engine. The techs used it to get to the higher points for inspection and repair. She flipped up and landed on the first level catwalk. She jumped and did the same to reach the second level. And again to reach the third.

Sam was high enough that she could look big mama in the eye. Or, rather, the mouth. She ran toward the edge of the catwalk, planted both her feet, and jumped. She was weightless for what seemed like forever, just floating like a piece of dandelion fluff on the wind. Then she slammed into the side of big mama’s head. She grabbed hold of the bug, snagging an edge of its exoskeleton, and dangled more than fifty feet in the air.

“Holy crap, Sam!” Joel shouted into his comm. “You’re batshit crazy!”

“Batshit crazy like a fox,” she answered. “Now stop firing before you hit me.”

Joel and Cody ceased fire. Without the distraction of their attack, big mama became fully aware that something was stuck to her head. The ShimVen swung from side to side, trying to shake Sam off. The Notches watched on incredulously, wanting to do something to help but entirely lost for a way to do so. Sam clung to the beast like a tick.

In the midst of the ShimVen’s attempt to shake her loose, Sam began to climb. She found another handhold, and another, until she was on top of the bug’s head. She was a cowgirl trying to stay on the largest and most bloodthirsty bull to ever grace the rodeo.

Big mama stopped shaking for a moment, wheezing and clicking like she was out of breath.

That moment was all Sam needed.

She reached into the pouch on her belt and pulled free two fire elemental grenades. She activated them, then ran toward the front of big mama’s head. Sam planted her feet between the bug’s eyes and propelled herself forward, again into open air.

Big mama opened her mouth to scream at her attacker, to thrash at Sam with her pincers.

Sam did a flip in midair and threw both grenades down the ShimVen’s throat, then landed like a cat, her feet hitting scaffolding before she made a second jump to the floor, and rolled forward. She came up with her rifle trained on big mama.

The ShimVen looked down at Sam like a wolf having finally cornered its prey. She leaned down, her pincers ready to snap Sam in half. Then she froze.

The grenades exploded in big mama’s gut, charring her insides, weakening her tough carapace.

“Fire!” Sam yelled.

The Notches rushed to her side, and all opened fire. The exoskeletal armor covering big mama’s belly had grown brittle from the fire attack; now it cracked against the barrage of weapon fire. The cracks snaked through the bug until the armor shattered completely. Her soft underbelly now exposed, big mama shrieked as the blaster fire tore into her. Big globs of bug blood splattered on the floor until the giant bug fell.

Big mama was dead.

The Notches stood in silence for a while. They did not move. They just looked at the giant corpse of the mother ShimVen. The thing that had caused them so much trouble. The thing that had given birth to the swarms that nearly killed them a hundred times over. The thing that had given birth to their newfound lives as pest control experts. Killing her afforded them the reputation they needed to build their business. She was their stepping stone to success.

It was because of that they unexpectedly found themselves offering the creature an odd sort of respect.

“Fucker,” Joel said. He spat on the mother bug’s corpse.

The Notches let out a collective breath of relief. The death of the giant ShimVen brought a new lightness to each of them. For an instant, they were carefree. They felt like they were safe for the first time since taking the job. For a brief moment, the fatigue was gone, but the feeling was superficial—they were exhausted, they just couldn’t feel it.

“Why don’t we all take a minute to cool down?” Reggie suggested.

They all agreed with grunts and nods.

Joel explored the engine room, finally feeling like he could take advantage of the place without looking over his shoulder. He tapped at his legs as he strode, his excitement spilling out of him.

Reggie sat down, his legs quivering from exhaustion. It felt like years since he’d last sat. His knees ached. His back hurt. He felt like his dad, and that thought may have been the scariest thing he’d faced all day.

Sam stretched like she’d just finished a workout at the gym. No big deal.

Cody paced. His adrenaline was still pumping. It filled him with nervous anxiety, like there was still a threat lurking around the next corner, ready to jump out and suck his brains through his ear. He needed to burn off the excess energy. He wasn’t as interested in the tech as Joel, but he did feel inclined to investigate the station, now that he could do so freely. He had observed much since they’d arrived, but he’d only allowed himself to process as much as he needed to in order to survive and get the job done. Now that survival wasn’t a minute-by-minute affair, he felt like he could take it all in. There was something that didn’t sit right with him about this whole job.

The second swarm of ShimVens had hatched and matured at an alarming rate. Faster than anything he’d ever seen or heard of. And they seemed faster somehow, stronger. No way an adaptation could happen like that from one generation to the next. Not naturally.

As he searched the room, he came upon a stack of crates. Stamped on the side in big red letters were the words ‘LAYTON CORP.’ They seemed to glow in the darkened area. A cold shiver drifted down Cody’s back, suddenly making his teeth chatter.

“Cody, will you double check that there’s no more bugs?” Sam asked.

Exhausted, he pulled up his wristcom, a small smile of relief springing to his face. “Yeah, all clear.”

“Ammo’s gone. Grenades are gone,” Sam reported, taking stock of their supplies and weapons. “We pushed the pulse rifles too hard, so they’re fried. Good thing that massive bug was the last because we can’t kill so much as a mosquito with what we’ve got left.”

“We can restock,” Reggie said with a smile. “The money from this job will set us up for a while. Which reminds me.” He reached for his phone. “Time to get paid.”

With the rest watching, Reggie called the client and reported a successful extermination. He was quiet for a moment as he listened to the voice on the other end. He stood and paced, excitement clear on his face.

“Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much.” He smiled at the Notches after hanging up.

“What?” Cody asked. “What happened?”

“I knew it,” Reggie said. “I knew this would set us up. We’ve got another job. And it starts right away.”

Chapter Fifteen

Sonic Shuttle

Another job. Reggie couldn’t lie that he was ecstatic about that. It’s what he’d hoped for when he signed the Notches up for the first one. Short turnaround. It may not have been nearly as much pay as they should have gotten, but it was a promise. A promise of a reputation that would make it all worthwhile. They’d earn their bones.

And they had. Sweet mother of god, they had. But he also couldn’t lie that he would have liked a little time to rest before jumping on to the next gig. They needed to unwind after the horror show they just went through. They needed to sleep. To eat a mountain of cheeseburgers. To game. To just do nothing. But that was the grind, now. They couldn’t afford to take time off.

Also, there was the new addition to the crew; they needed to find out what was going on there. No doubt they wouldn’t have survived, let alone completed the job without Sam, but she was a subcontractor. Maybe a more formal arrangement is needed.

Reggie couldn’t think about any of that at the moment. He needed to wash off the bug goo.

“Dibs on the shower,” he said as they boarded Sonic.

“Shit,” Joel muttered.

“You guys only have one shower?” Sam asked.

Reggie’s face grew hot. “Yeah, I guess I should have offered it to you, seeing as you’re a guest and all.”

Sam punched him in the arm as she passed. “I’m not a guest. I’m an employee. Take your fucking shower. You stink.”

“Dibs on next,” Joel said.

“Fuck you,” Sam said.

The laughter came easily between them. Even standing in the kitchen, still caked in bug slime, eating a box of stale crackers and waiting for the shower, they were able to laugh and joke and unwind. Over the next two hours, each of them showered, changed and ate. Joel put on a pot of celebratory coffee. He would have popped open a bottle of champagne or poured them all a shot of bourbon, but coffee was the only beverage aside from water that they had aboard.

Sam produced a flask of whiskey from her boot. She poured a shot into her coffee and offered the flask to the others.

“Not gonna say no to boot whiskey,” Joel said as he took it. He poured a shot and passed it on.

Reggie did the same. Cody smelled the lip of the flask and winced; he wasn’t much for liquor, but he also wasn’t one to pass up a celebration.

Reggie stood and raised his glass. “To our first job and the many more to come. And to Sam, for pulling our butts out of the fire.”

“Cheers,” Cody said and sipped.

“Hear, hear,” Joel said. Caught up in the moment, he threw back his entire cup of coffee, and then promptly spit it out. “Hot!” he yelled, his burnt tongue dangling from his mouth. “So hot.”

Sam laughed and then sipped her spiked coffee. She savored the burn in the back of her throat. “Don’t mention it, guys. It was fun. Also, don’t forget to pay me.” She smiled and flashed a playful wink. She was serious about getting paid, but not serious enough yet that she needed to apply any real pressure. She had a sense that the ever-honorable Reggie was good for it.

“Fun?” Joel said. “You thought that was fun? Do you also think walking across hot coals is fun? Or genital mutilation?”

The guys all froze at Joel’s last comment, holding their breath like poison had just been pumped into the room.

Sam cast Joel a death stare, and then shifted it around to the others. A tense silence hung between them.

Then she cracked a smile and laughed. “It’s okay, guys. You can say ‘genitals’ in front of me.”

The tension immediately dissolved.

“But, if you don’t mind,” Joel said, “I’d prefer it if you didn’t say ‘genitals.’ It’s weird.”

Sam playfully threw a rag at Joel, who swatted it away. “Why don’t you shotgun some more coffee?” she teased.

Reggie and Cody joined in as they all traded barbs and ribbed each other. They laughed like they hadn’t in months. The pain of losing the VRE championships, the pressure to find a job, the tension between the three of them when Reggie signed them all up for the pest control business—it had all built up to an unspoken heaviness. It felt good to put it down for a while.

It had always been the three of them, but now, with the addition of this stranger, things were changing. Reggie stood again, not for a toast, but for a proposal.

“Guys, I have an idea,” he said.

Joel groaned. “Is it another business idea? Because I’m still recovering from your last one.”

“It is, actually,” Reggie said. “But I think you’ll like this one. I admit I got us in over our heads with that job. But we proved we can handle it. With a little help. Subcontracting Sam was the best business decision we’ve made so far.” He caught her eye and held it a moment. His face grew hot. “I think we should formalize the arrangement. I propose bringing Sam on board as a full member of the team.”

Joel and Cody both pursed their lips in thoughtful expressions. Sam, however, seemed genuinely surprised—as much as she would allow another person to see. In their short time together, Reggie had figured out that she was the sort of person to keep her emotions hidden. She was not one to be vulnerable, especially in front of people she barely knew.

Reggie himself was the most emotional of all of them. His voice cracked a bit as he spoke, and his cheeks flushed. “So?” he said, looking from one face to another to another. “What do you think?”

Cody pushed his glasses up his nose. “I can only see positive outcomes from such a move.”

Joel seemed more reserved in his judgment. He stroked his chin like a philosopher as he studied her.

“I’m game,” Sam said unceremoniously. “I’m between gigs at the moment.”

Joel finally nodded and stood. “I’ll make more coffee.” He walked back to the kitchen to prepare another round of celebratory drinks.

“Do you wanna give her…?” Cody asked, a question in his eyes.

Reggie nodded, swiping his hand through his hair to hide his nervousness. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.”

Without having to say it out loud, he knew they were thinking the same thing. It was really the only way to make the living arrangements work.

Reggie proceeded to give Sam a tour of Sonic as the other two went to make room for Sam in the living quarters. It was a basic ship, and Reggie was apologetic about its shabby appearance and outdated systems. Not that Sam minded; she wasn’t the galactic high roller that the guys seemed to think she was. She’d seen the inside of more shit-can ships than she could remember. And she’d puked on the side of more dives than she could count.

She didn’t need much to get by, and she certainly wasn’t one to put on airs. If anything, the state of the ship put her at ease. Every ship she’d been on recently was purely utilitarian. It got a person from point A to point B and didn’t much matter what it did in between. But Sonic was more than a tool: it was a home. And it felt like one.

“Stop qualifying everything, Reggie,” she said to him as they left the cockpit. “The ship is perfect.”

Reggie appreciated the sentiment. He just hoped she still believed it after she saw the living quarters.

Joel and Cody were frantically cleaning when Reggie and Sam entered the room. Their efforts had only made the mess worse since they’d knocked over a garbage bin in their haste. The floor was littered with dirty clothes and food wrappers. Dirty dishes were stacked on every shelf. A musk hung in the air that could only be described as ‘guy.’

Joel and Cody froze like they’d just been caught in the act of robbing the place.

Reggie grew stiff next to Sam. “Okay, so, listen…here’s the thing.” Stiffly, he tried to smile. “I’ve been trying to find a way to bring this up. It’s just…not an easy topic to broach. But if you’re going to live here, you need to have a certain level of comfort around us. I don’t know how to put this, but...”

Sam’s face grew hot. She’d been waiting for this to come up. It always did. The last regular gig she had, after four months of working security for some shipping bigwig, her co-workers finally asked her their burning question. “What’s the deal with the mask?”

She had at least gotten the chance to start that job. There were others that never got off the ground because of it. Some people couldn’t look past it. Figuratively; she didn’t want them to literally look past it. That was one of the reasons she wore it.

Joel had asked her once about the mask but didn’t press the matter. Only a few times in her past had she actually given a reason, but those who had asked for one never accepted it. They never believed her, and she never cared enough to fight to validate her own truth to strangers, so, as far as she cared, the sooner they could get it out of the way, the better.

She liked these guys. She could see herself hanging around for a while. But if they didn’t want her to because of the mask, then she’d bounce as soon as they paid her.

“Get it over with,” she told Reggie, who wobbled awkwardly from foot to foot. “Just say it.”

“Your room doesn’t have a door.” He shut his eyes tight and winced like he was about to be punched.

The heat left Sam’s cheeks. “What?”

Reggie gestured to the whole of the room. Sam hadn’t seen past the dirty clothes before. There were three bunks in the long room. They were somewhat separated by dressers and end tables, informal barriers to give the illusion of separation. She followed Reggie’s finger to an open doorway at the far end of the space, which connected to a separate, very small room.

“That’s the only proper bedroom on the ship,” he told her. “Every Sunday, we hold a PVP Return to Order tournament, and the winner gets the bedroom for the week. With you coming on, we sort of automatically agreed that we’d take this big room and give you the bedroom. Problem is, it doesn’t have a door. We can hang a sheet there as soon as we wash up some laundry, but still, the privacy will be minimal.”

“Plus, Reggie farts in his sleep,” Joel said.

“A lot,” Cody added.

“Dude!” Reggie yelled.

“And sheets do not provide an adequate smell or sound barrier,” Cody said.

Reggie picked up a wad of dirty socks and threw them at Cody. “Shut up.”

Sam laughed, partly because farts are funny, but mostly from relief. She knew they would ask someday about the mask, but that day wasn’t now. She didn’t need to exert the energy trying to explain herself.

They spent the next hour making the room livable. It was in no way clean, but it would do for now. They strung a rope across Sam’s door and hung a sheet over it.

For some reason, that simple gesture brought a tenderness to her throat.

She had never had much. She could count on one hand the times she had a place to call her own. And really, only one of those places she’d actually considered a home. This sheet was more than just a stained garment (she vowed never to ask where the stains came from); it was like putting her name on the mailbox, claiming a home.

Exhaustion finally claimed them. They climbed into their bunks, which were uncomfortable by conventional standards—Army surplus cots with ratty sheets, tattered blankets, and flat pillows. But it was all they had and, after the long job, the beds were enough. After everything, it felt good to be onboard the Sonic, the ship they called home.

“Goodnight, Cody,” Reggie said in a rhythmic, sing-song voice. “Goodnight, Joel. Goodnight, Sam.”

Joel rolled over and pulled his pillow over his ear. “Shut the fuck up, Reggie.”

Chapter Sixteen

Sonic Shuttle

“Welcome to the first official briefing of Intergalactic Pest Control,” Reggie said proudly.

Cody raised his hand. “Question: what the hell are you talking about?”

Reggie paced the length of the kitchen, chomping on his breakfast bar. “The first job was rushed. We didn’t plan properly. Now that we’re successful professionals, we should act like it. Like holding briefings each morning. We can update each other on the day’s business. Make suggestions. Stuff like that.”

“I have a suggestion,” Joel said. “We should not have official briefings if we’re not all wearing pants.”

Reggie looked down. “I am wearing pants.”

“I’m not,” Joel said, standing to reveal his boxers and bare legs. “I came in here for breakfast, not a meeting.”

“I second that suggestion,” Sam said as she sat at the table. “We shouldn’t do anything until Joel has pants on.”

Joel shrugged as he shoved a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth. “I withdraw my suggestion on account of not wanting to walk all the way back to my room to get pants.”

Cody poured himself a cup of coffee. “Enough about pants. What’s this new job?”

Reggie bounced on his heels at the question. “Our second job. Feels like a real milestone, doesn’t it?”

No one answered.

“Well, it does to me. Anyway, the job is pretty much the same as the last one. An infested space station. The place has been abandoned. We get in, clean it up, get paid.”

“Because history shows us that it’s just that simple,” Joel said through a mouthful of oatmeal.

Sam leaned back in her chair and laced her fingers behind her head. “We’re going to need to stock up on weapons and supplies. We burned through all the stuff we got off Steady. Pulse rifles are dead. Grenades are gone. We need new batteries for the personal energy shields.”

Reggie sat down, the celebratory nature of his first briefing having died on the vine. “You think Steady can hook us up again?”

Sam shook her head. “Not likely. I burned the only favor I had with him. He’s just as likely to shoot us on sight if we step foot in his place again.” She scrolled through her mental Rolodex of lowlifes and back-alley arms dealers. “I know a place we can go. I have a few connections there. I at least know a guy who knows a guy who can get us what we need.”

“Where is it?” Cody asked. “I can plug it into the nav computer.”

Sam seemed reluctant to say. “Torex.”

The name was like a bucket of ice water dumped over the guys’ heads.

“Torex?” Cody said. “That place is a notorious hellhole. It’s got the highest murder rate of any planet in the quadrant. Fifty people were murdered on Torex just as I said that.”

“No way,” Joel agreed. “We’ll get killed trying to resupply for the job that will probably get us killed. That just feels too sad. I can’t go out like that.”

“We tried using black market goods before,” Reggie said, shaking his head. “It didn’t work out.”

Sam leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table. “That’s because you didn’t have me. People like Steady and everyone on Torex can smell noobs like you a mile away. They’ll screw you and not think twice about it. But with me, they’ll watch themselves. They know me. Those who don’t know me know my reputation. I can get us a deal once we find the right people.” She stood, adopting a more cautious tone. “But you’re right to be wary of Torex. It’s one of the roughest planets in the galaxy. Even with my reputation, there will be people looking to stab us in the back just because they like stabbing backs. The market there changes regularly. Dealers worth knowing come and go, so it will take me a while to navigate the scene.”

Reggie crossed his arms. His shoulders tensed. “Do we have any other options?”

Sam shook her head. “In order to get the supplies, fuel, and repairs we need with the money we have from the last job, we need to go to Torex. Legitimate markets are too expensive.”

“All right,” Reggie said reluctantly. “Program the nav computer for Torex, I guess.”

Cody accessed the nav computer from his wristcom and inputted the coordinates. “All set. We should enter Torex’s orbit in about two hours.”

They finished their breakfast, although the Notches weren’t as hungry as before as they prepared to touch down on the most dangerous planet in the quadrant.

* * *

Sonic trembled as it punched through Torex’s atmosphere. Even the color of its sky was uninviting—a pale yellow, like the cheeks of a man dying from cirrhosis. Torex was first settled as a mining colony two hundred years before. They dug deeply and quickly, nearly hollowing out the planet. So much mineral dust was kicked up into the air that they stained the sky this urine color.

Once the mines dried up, the company funding the operation pulled out, leaving hundreds of thousands of people behind to sort out living on a dead planet. Torex descended into anarchy immediately. Thievery and rampant murder eventually leveled off when the Mother Lode started, and the economy became more formalized, but formalized in no way equated civilized. The economy on Torex was fueled by competition, which often took the form of murder.

Sonic set down in a dusty airfield that bore a close resemblance to a junkyard. It was lined with a chain link fence, and most of the docked ships looked like they’d been there for years and could no longer be moved.

Sam stopped the Notches at the top of exit ramp. “Listen, guys, this place is a real murder hole. You need to stick close to me, and,” she looked at Joel, “you need to keep your mouths shut. A wiseass comment is all it takes to get dead around here.” She jabbed her finger into his chest. “You hear me?”

Joel threw his arms up defensively. “Why you singling me out? Cody’s the mouthy one.”

Sam sighed as she marched down the ramp. “Let’s go.”

The Notches followed in silence. Not so much because they were heeding her warning, but because they were too nervous to speak. They walked through the airfield casting cautious looks over their shoulders. Joel marveled at the ships they passed. Most were practically falling into pieces and begging to be tinkered with. He could spend months in the airfield alone, just taking those rusted heaps apart and building something magnificent.

He caught himself falling behind and hurried to catch up, fearful of Sam’s scolding if she caught him dawdling.

The airfield was secured with a barely standing gate, guarded by an old man in a tattered uniform. He appeared to be sleeping on his stool when the Notches approached him. Either that, or he was dead.

Sam kicked his dusty boot and shouted, “Benny!”

The man startled and snorted. “What the sweet Christmas?” He adjusted his glasses and leaned in closer to get a look at Sam. “Huh, wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

“Wasn’t expecting to be seen, Benny,” Sam said. She motioned toward the gate. “You mind letting us through?”

Benny stood from his stool and stretched his back, pushing his sizable gut out like a trophy. “Come to think of it, I assumed you was dead. Not many who can piss on Bruiser’s breakfast cereal the way you did and walk away.”

Cody’s face turned green. Reggie leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “It’s a metaphor.” That didn’t help the image which was now already in Cody’s mind.

Sam shrugged. “Well, guess I’m one of the lucky few.” She gestured toward the gate again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Benny said as he pulled a tangled wad of keys from his pocket. “Just give me a sec.” He flipped through each key, unsuccessfully testing them in the lock. Joel tasted blood as he bit his tongue. “Here we go,” Benny said, finally finding the correct key. The gate squealed as it opened. “Soon as he learns you’re back, he’s bound to come looking for you. Last guy who crossed him don’t have arms no more. Unrelated, but disconcerting just the same. Enjoy your time on Torex.”

Sam nodded to Benny, her eyes lighting up like he was an old man in a grocery store who mistook her for his granddaughter. The Notches followed her through the gate.

Seeing how they were alone, Joel figured it was okay to speak.

“So—”

“No,” Sam said, cutting him off.

“But—”

Sam spun and grabbed Joel’s collar. She pulled him close, bringing him almost nose to nose with her. “I said no.”

Joel swallowed hard and said nothing.

She let him go and led the way across the desert.

He mouthed, “What the hell?” to Reggie.

Reggie just shrugged and mouthed, “No idea.”

The airfield was surrounded by a small stretch of piss-colored desert, one-hundred yards across. Bordering the desert opposite the airfield was the marketplace. Or one of the marketplaces, anyway. There were hundreds scattered across the planet, but this was the big one. That was why they called it “Mother Lode.” It acted as a hub for all the other markets. When goods couldn’t be found elsewhere, the requests were sent to Mother Lode. The desired items were then located, shipped from the Mother Lode to the buyer.

Mother Lode was a tent city. Miles of canvas stretched over ramshackle booths and husks of dead ships that were used as storefronts. People raced down pathways on mechs and boosters like they were busy city streets. There was a rhythm to the place, a beat that made it feel alive.

The Notches continued following in silence, giving Sam a wide enough berth to accommodate her crankiness, but not so wide that they lost her in the crowd. The swarms of people were terrifying, both in appearance and attitude. It was a crowd of Meatballs and Sams—battle-hardened warriors and killers. They held nothing back, offered no pretense. The guys witnessed three fights, one stabbing, and an all-out brawl that appeared to have grown out of the disputed ownership of a pair of goats. They also saw one guy on the losing end of a duel get vaporized. And that was all within the first ten minutes.

So distracted were the guys by the action and the constant vigilance it took to survive the walk through the market that they didn’t notice Sam had stopped and stood facing them. They slammed on the brakes and collided with each other.

“Stay here,” she said.

Reggie scanned the area. “Here? But here is so exposed. Can’t we wait somewhere else?”

Sam pointed over her shoulder to a crumbling booth behind her. “I’m going to talk to that guy. Should be no more than five minutes. Stay here where I can see you.”

Joel scoffed. “Okay, Mom.”

Cody slapped his hand over his mouth and wished he could take part in the brawl for the goats rather than stand next to Joel.

Sam stepped up close to Joel, giving him the same punishing stare as before. He shrank under her gaze. Unaffected, she turned away from him without saying anything. As she walked toward the booth, she called to them, “Five minutes. Try to stay alive for five minutes.”

Before Sam had even reached the man at the booth, Reggie had wandered off.

Chapter Seventeen

Mother Lode, Torex

“I thought I was the irresponsible one,” Joel said as he and Cody scanned the market, trying to see through the crowd to pick out Reggie.

“You definitely are,” Cody agreed. “This isn’t like Reggie. Maybe he’s been kidnapped. Or stabbed. Or sold into slavery and he’s being forced to work the mines. He’ll get black lung, wither away, and die a painful, horrible death.”

Joel put a hand up to signal Cody to calm down. “He’s been gone two minutes. I don’t think he’s got black lung already. Jesus, and I thought Reggie was dramatic.”

They spun in circles, rooted in place and refusing to move for fear of Sam’s wrath. After a long three minutes of searching, they had all but given up hope of seeing their friend again.

Then Cody said, “There. By that booth at the edge of the market.”

With a clear destination, they felt it safe to move from the designated spot. They traversed as gingerly as they could through the crowd, careful not to touch anyone or make eye contact or get stabbed.

“Dude,” Joel said, grabbing Reggie’s wrist as they reached him. “What the hell? You trying to get killed? Or, worse, get Sam mad at us?”

Reggie didn’t seem to hear him. He didn’t even seem to be on the same planet. His face was plastered with a dumbstruck smile like he was staring into the face of an angel.

Joel waved his hand in front of Reggie’s face, trying again to get his attention.

“Hello? Anybody home in—?” Before Joel could finish his question, his attention was grabbed by the throat by a booth. It was directly behind Reggie and covered in trinkets and tech gadgets and small parts that Joel’s mind was already combining into big things.

“Well, hello there, beautiful,” he said to the rows of gizmos as he wandered over to the table, seemingly forgetting about Sam’s stern instructions.

Cody watched Joel walk away. Bemused, he looked at Reggie, still frozen in some sort of awestruck spell. “What the hell? Am I the only rational one here?” He stepped into Reggie’s line of sight and snapped his fingers in his friend’s face. “Reggie, what’s gotten into you?”

Reggie stepped around him, toward the booth, as if in a daze. He kneeled down and picked up something small. Cody had yet to actually look at what had stolen Reggie’s attention. He’d tried to avoid looking at anything directly in the marketplace. He wanted to remain perfectly still and quiet and unseen until Sam returned. However, he wasn’t so passive after he saw what had Reggie so enamored.

A fuzzy little creature nuzzled against the inside of Reggie’s elbow as he cradled it. The animal looked like what one might get if they took a bunny and a kitten and a puppy and a shitload of other cute things, tossed them in a basket, shook it up, and dumped out one single sickeningly adorable animal.

Reggie scratched it under its chin and spoke to it in a high-pitched, baby talk voice. “Who’s the cutest guy in all the universe? That’s right, it’s you.”

Cody wasn’t fooled. He knew exactly what the creature was.

“No way,” he said, plucking the creature from Reggie’s arms. “Nope, nope, nope.”

“Bingo,” Reggie said, longingly reaching for the creature.

Cody shoved his hand into Reggie’s chest, keeping him separated from the animal. “You have no clue with this thing is, do you?”

“His name is Bingo.”

“No, it isn’t,” Cody snapped. Like it was radioactive, he set the creature back in the small pen on the counter of the booth. “It’s a chinchutakes. They were bred to be companions, the adorable little pet you think it is. But they ended up being one of the worst mistakes ever. They multiply at an insanely fast rate. Two becomes two hundred in a matter of days. Some stupid kid buys one at a county fair, brings it home, then the one chinchutakes becomes two, which becomes four, and soon they eat through the floorboards and dig into the foundation. Two days later, the entire neighborhood is a wasteland.” He grabbed Reggie by the chin and forcibly looked him in the eye. “They are a plague.”

Sadness colored Reggie’s face a pale pink. He looked at the chinchutakes like it was the puppy he had when he was four, as if he’d already created a lifelong bond with it. Like he would never find a more meaningful relationship.

“Fuck that thing.” Cody grabbed Reggie by the shoulder and steered him away from the booth.

He stopped abruptly, a wave of panic hitting him in the gut.

“Where the hell is Joel?” He ran to the table of trinkets where Joel had been moments ago. He was about to ask the owner of the booth if he knew where Joel went, but he saw the state of the man’s teeth—namely that he had none, just swollen, bloody gums—and decided he would rather not vomit. He scanned the surrounding booths, hoping Joel wasn’t stupid enough to wander out of eyesight.

Fortunately, Joel wasn’t as stupid as Cody feared. They spotted him at a booth a few stalls back from them, along the edge of the desert. Cody couldn’t make out much through the crowd and other vendors, but he could see animals in cages.

“Great,” Cody said to himself. “Everyone wants a pet today.”

He pulled Reggie by the wrist, away from the chinchutakes booth. He was mindful of his frustration, making sure it didn’t cause him to do something as equally brash as the others and draw unwanted attention and stabbings.

“Dude,” he said at Joel’s back. “Am I the only one who doesn’t want to die on this planet?”

Joel jumped at the sound of Cody’s voice. He scrambled like he’d dropped something then turned to face Cody. His face was flushed, and sweat had formed on his brow.

“Don’t sneak up on me, creep.”

“What the hell has gotten into you guys?” Cody used his shirt to wipe the dust off his glasses. “We weren’t supposed to move from that spot. Five minutes. We just needed to not fuck anything up for five minutes. Let’s go.”

He led the way back through the crowd, toward Sam. They closed the distance, but stood a few feet from her back and said nothing. She seemed to be embroiled in some testy negotiations.

“Fuck you, Trevor.” Sam slammed her fist on the counter of Trevor’s booth, overturning some cheap looking trinkets. “Tell me where he is, or I trash your stall.”

Trevor leaned back and smiled. He was tall, skinny, and looked like he was barely out of puberty. He swaggered with the confidence of a teenager, that sense of untouchability.

“Go ahead,” he told her. “But I don’t think my customers will appreciate you interfering in their regular day-to-day. They got needs. If I can’t fulfill them, they get angry.”

“That’s your problem,” Sam said.

“Not when I tell them who smashed up my shit.” Trevor chuckled as he took a palm-sized communicator out of his pocket. “Actually, come to think of it, I know someone in particular who will be madder than hell about you taking out my inventory. Maybe I just call the man up right now. Tell him you’ve shown your face around here. Save us both the trouble.”

Sam’s shoulders tensed like she was about to throw a punch. She took a deep breath instead, and the tension dissolved from her muscles. “Don’t go doing that. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.”

Trevor leaned to the side and looked around Sam. He stared straight at the guys, who were apparently not doing as good a job at blending in as they thought. “What ‘we’ are we talking about? You bring a crew?”

Sam spun and locked the guys in her sights. “Son of a bitch.”

“The price just went up,” Trevor said.

“You’re only selling me one map,” she said incredulously. “What does it matter if there are multiple people using it?”

“Call it a product licensing fee,” Trevor said through a shit-eating grin. “Perhaps you’d care to talk it over with your mates there?”

Sam grumbled and cursed under her breath as she walked toward the guys. They each prayed that her anger was reserved for the lowlife she’d been speaking with and not meant for them.

They were as wrong as any people could be, of course, and they knew it.

Joel tried to redirect her malice. “That fucking guy, am I right?” He pointed back at Trevor. “What a tool. Seriously.”

“Shut up,” Sam said. “Five minutes. How hard is it to not move for five minutes? It’s literally doing nothing. I asked you to do nothing.”

“In our defense—” Reggie began.

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “No defense. Don’t want to hear it. Here’s where we’re at. That shitbag over there I was just speaking with is named Trevor.”

“Fucking Trevor,” Joel said, trying one last time to warm the frigid waters. It didn’t work.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam snapped. “Trevor refuses to tell me where I can find the biggest arms dealer on Torex. Instead, the fucker says he’ll sell me a map that leads to him. Problem is, it costs an ass-load of money. Bigger problem: now that he knows I’ve brought friends, it costs four times an ass-load. It’ll leave us enough to cover the gear, but we’ll be wiped out after that. Running on fumes.”

“So he’s just a middle man?” Reggie asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “A middleman we can’t get around. The dealer’s location changes regularly. He gives out maps to a few contacts, and the only way to get your hands on one is through them. Trevor is one of a handful of people on this entire planet who knows how to find the guy we’re looking for, and he’s the closest by far. Not like it’d be cheaper through any of the others, anyway… They’re all looking to make a buck.”

Joel wanted to say something along the lines of ‘Bullshit’ or ‘Fuck Trevor,’ but he didn’t want to risk another of Sam’s death stares. He just grunted in acknowledgment.

“As long as middlemen have leverage, they get paid,” Sam continued. “We need weapons if we plan on continuing this job. Good weapons. The last two rounds of gear shit the bed. We can’t afford to keep replacing our stuff. Spend the money on quality gear, and it will pay off in the end.”

The guys stared at each other, looking for signs of affirmation or disapproval on their faces, each of them still too frightened to speak. They finally nodded.

Sam walked back to Trevor.

“Give me the map, you piece of shit.” She smacked some knickknacks off the table and added, “Fuckhead.”

“Not that your charming personality ain’t enough,” Trevor said, “but I’m gonna need to see that cash first.”

Sam turned and nodded to Cody, who transferred the credits through his wristcom.

Trevor watched the readout of his account balance. When the money registered, his shit-eating grin spread so wide, it looked like it might wrap around his head. “Beautiful,” he purred. “Here you go. Bruiser will be mighty surprised to see you. Almost wish I could be there to see it.”

Sam snatched the map out of his hand. “I hope you die, Trevor.” She marched away from the stall, shoving her way through the crowd.

The guys hustled after her, hoping they wouldn’t be harmed by the mob of pissed off people she left in her wake.

They exited Mother Lode and stopped in the stretch of desert to examine the map. Sam handed it to Cody so he could compare it with maps from his wristcom, and get a better sense of where they were going. Cody gripped the map with his thumb and forefinger, trying to touch as little of it as possible. It was crumpled and discolored and smelled like it had been used as toilet paper.

He pulled up a topographic map of Torex, which showed the old mining layout. He compared the landmarks on those to the ones on the shit-paper map and found a location. “He’s underground, in the old mining tunnels. According to this, there’s a labyrinth of them underneath us.”

“Wait,” Joel said, raising his hand. “Did Trevor say ‘Bruiser’? The same Bruiser who Benny mentioned, along with the armless guy and something about you peeing in breakfast cereal?”

Sam clenched her jaw. “Yeah, Bruiser and I have a history.”

“A bad one, I assume?” Joel said. “Unless the pee cereal is, like, a thing that you two do. Like, a sex thing?”

Sam punched him in the gut.

Joel doubled over and gasped to catch his breath. “Uncool,” he sputtered in broken syllables.

Sam grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him back to his feet. She pulled him close and gestured for the others to move in as well. “I don’t think you guys fully grasp how dangerous this planet is. It’s the most dangerous place you’ve ever set foot on, and Bruiser is the most dangerous man here. I will beat on you all day if that’s the only way it’ll sink in.”

Joel gave a pained thumbs-up. “Loud and clear.”

Sam let him go. “Good. Then let’s get underground. We’ve got weapons to buy.”

Chapter Eighteen

Torex

The hydrogen sulfide and whatever other subterranean gases existed on Torex came spewing out of the derelict mineshaft like it was a giant butthole. Cody got caught with his mouth open as Torex farted in his face, and he promptly puked all over the piss-stained sand.

“I’m not going in there,” he decided as he wiped his mouth.

“You want to stay up here by yourself?” Sam asked. “Do I have to give my ‘super dangerous planet’ speech again?”

Cody looked at the shaft opening like it was the mouth of a giant monster, ready to swallow them. “Is it going to smell like that the entire time?”

“Is that why you wear the respirator?” Joel asked.

He flinched when Sam looked at him. Anxious to avoid her increasing hostility, he walked toward the entrance to the underground.

“I’ll go first,” he offered. “I’m all about this plan. Love the idea of walking into a labyrinth of tunnels to find a guy who wants to kill you. Totally onboard.”

Reggie clapped Cody on the back in reassurance, which may have had the opposite effect than he intended, since the impact made Cody gag again. He held it down, though.

“You good to go?” Reggie asked him.

“Not even a little,” Cody answered. “Let’s go.”

The entrance to the abandoned mine wasn’t like those Reggie had seen in the old western movies his dad liked to watch. The tunnel that always had treasure hidden inside, or served as the hideout for a notorious gang of bandits. It wasn’t outfitted with state-of-the-art mining tech. Rather, it was fitted with a coupling that served to attach state-of-the-art removal technology to the mouth of the mine and suck ore out after the miners hacked it free. Being that this operation was owned by one of the richest mining companies in the galaxy, they tended to view the blue-collar miners doing the work as expendable. Dozens had been sucked up by the tech meant to collect ore. They were probably turned to fuel right along with it, too.

The Notches passed through the entrance, and a chill ran up Reggie’s spine. The place had a ghostly vibe to it. A dead place, underground, cold, stinking of sulfur. Reggie couldn’t escape the feeling that he was walking into hell.

They stopped every ten yards so Cody could check Trevor’s map against his wristcom, making the going slow. The further they went, the more Reggie could feel the weight of the ground over his head. Gravity seemed to get stronger. He felt like he was going to be crushed. Then he imagined the rock walls changing around him, hardening and taking on a shine, and, suddenly, he was back on Intergalactic Station 12.

His heart began to race. His head throbbed. Sweat formed on his brow.

“Guys,” he said, wheezing. “I need a break.”

He fell against the shaft wall and slid down to a sitting position. His face turned from burning hot to freezing cold and back again with every labored breath. He felt the heat of the flamethrowers on his cheeks. The sticky ShimVens’ blood. The cold of the metal floor as he lay, waiting for the bugs to eat him.

“I know I’m not the one to usually say this,” Cody said, “but I would rather we power through the next leg. I don’t know how much more of this stink I can take.”

“For once, I agree with Cody.” Joel kicked a small rock and watched it roll down the shaft. “I lied before. I’m not down with being underground at all.”

The ferocity Sam showed aboveground seemed to have ebbed. She moved slowly to Reggie’s side and sat with him. “Just take some deep breaths,” she said. “It’ll pass.”

Reggie drew in as big a breath as he could and let it out slowly. He did it again, and the tightness in his chest began to ease.

“Remember where you are,” Sam said so only Reggie could hear. “And remember where you’re not.” She patted him on the knee then stood to rejoin the others.

Reggie took another deep breath. The throbbing in his head was gone. He wiped the sweat away. “No bugs,” he said to himself. He stood, ran his hand along the rock. Not metal. Just rock. Not on the station. On Torex. “All right,” he said to the others, his voice still a little shaky. “Let’s keep going.”

Joel and Cody pressed on, seemingly unaware that Reggie needed anything other than a breather. The tunnels twisted and turned and wound through the rock like a snake trying to eat its own tail. The rotten bones of the old mining operation were still scattered about. Rusted equipment. Broken down movers. Piping and vents in disrepair. Cody had to kick Joel to get him to keep walking past it all.

An hour into their journey, the team started to get restless.

“This is some bullshit,” Joel said. “Trevor sold us a piece of paper he used to wipe his ass with and then sent us to wander around these tunnels until we die. Fucking Trevor.”

“Trevor is a piece of shit,” Sam said. “I don’t argue that. But money is all he cares about, and he knows that screwing over customers is bad for business. If he says the map is good, then the map is good.”

Joel threw his arms up in the air. “Then why haven’t we found this guy yet? How much longer are we going to do this?”

“Until we find him,” Sam said. “We need weapons.”

As if they were waiting for the perfect line, a group of rat creatures barreled out from a hole in the wall. They snorted like bulldogs and were about the same size. Three of them in total, each sporting a mouthful of jagged teeth. They formed a barrier stretching the width of the tunnel, cutting off the Notches’ path forward, and started hissing at them like mutated possums.

“Great,” Joel said. “This dungeon’s got random encounter battles.”

“Then get in battle formation,” Reggie said. “Long-range fighters in the rear, melee fighters in front.”

“I don’t think rat monsters respect the turn-based fighting system,” Cody said.

Reggie pulled the pincers from his belt. “They’ll respect these.”

Sam yanked her dagger from her boot. “Guys,” she said to Cody and Joel. “These things are fast. If they rush us, we’re in trouble. Grab some rocks and start throwing. Keep them off balance and on the defensive. Me and Reggie will get in close and finish them off.”

Cody and Joel fell back and scooped up as many rocks as they could hold. Reggie and Sam formed the front-line. They could all hear it in their heads. A different song for each, but it served the same purpose. Fight music.

Cody threw the first rock, surprising himself with his accuracy. He hit one of the rats in its front leg, hobbling it. Joel threw next, hitting just wide of a second rat. Following up on Cody’s strike, Sam lunged forward, slashing down with her dagger and cutting a huge gash across the rat’s face. It screeched but did not flee.

The second rat took its turn, charging at Reggie. It was faster than Reggie anticipated with its stumpy little frame, but not fast enough to clamp its jaws on his leg.

He swung his leg back, avoiding the attack, and yelled “Counterattack!” before bringing his foot forward like a wrecking ball and cracking the rat in the side of the head.

Sam stabbed it in the neck before it could run back to its comrades, and the first rat fell dead. The second and third rats seemed shaken by the sudden disruption of their surprise assault. They attacked out of fear now, rather than as part of a hunting party. The second rat, still hobbled, tried to rush Reggie. Joel caught it in the head, and it tumbled forward. Reggie drove the pincers down into its midsection, killing it instantly.

The last rat was frenzied. It charged at Sam, baring its teeth and hissing. She drove her foot into its face, and Joel and Cody peppered it with rocks. Then Reggie and Sam both stabbed it. The battle was over.

“Cue victory music,” Joel said. After a celebratory dance and flourish, he adopted his victory pose and held it until Sam smacked him in the back of the head. “Right,” he said. “Back to dungeon crawling.”

They encountered the same creatures three more times over the next hour. Each battle went more smoothly than the previous one. By the last, they dispatched the rats with ease.

“Does anyone own these tunnels?” Joel asked. “Because we are totally exterminating so many pests right now and aren’t even getting paid for it.”

“I think we’re getting close,” Cody said, holding the map next to the readout on his wristcom. If I’m right, it should be just up around this bend.”

A deep voice boomed behind them. “You are correct.”

The Notches spun to find a hulking man looming over them. He wore overalls but no shirt. His chest and arms were covered in black tattoos.

Chapter Nineteen

Torex

“Sam?” the man said, his eyes landing on her. His laugh threatened to bring the ceiling down on them. “Boss’ll be tickled to see you.”

Cody leaned in to whisper to Joel. “How did a man that large sneak up on us?”

Joel whispered back, “How does a man that large use the word ‘tickled’ like that in conversation?”

“Sparkle,” Sam said with a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

Joel chuckled. “His name is not Sparkle.”

Reggie elbowed him in the ribs. “Dude, you need to start using your brain voice.”

Sam opened her arms like she expected a hug from the large man.

He shook his head. “Don’t come in here like that,” he said. “Don’t act like nothing happened.”

“Is he really that mad about it?” she asked. “Still? It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“Was to him,” Sparkle said. He pointed down the tunnel toward the bend. “Let’s go.”

Reggie tried to catch Sam’s eye, to get some idea of what they were walking into, but she kept her gaze forward, fixed on the bend and what lay around it. He hung his hands on his belt, close to the pincers tucked inside.

They rounded the bend and entered another world. A caravan of rovers and movers, some of the most pristine pieces of tech they’d seen on Torex. Deep in its bowels were the jewels of this shithole planet. Sitting on top of one of the rovers like it was his throne was a small, stocky man, not even five feet tall. His arms were thick and his chest broad. They were the only things making him look like a man instead of a child.

“Bruiser,” Sam called to him. “Good to see you.”

Joel choked on his stifled laughter. Reggie shot him a look of warning.

“Brain voice. I’m using my brain voice,” Joel said in a hush.

Bruiser slid off the rover and fell the six feet to the ground with all the grace of a housecat. “Don’t even try any of that shit with me, Sam. You got some goddamn nerve coming back here after what you did.”

“Shit, with all this fucking drama,” Sam said, throwing her arms up. “You guys are acting like I murdered your mothers. All I did was take a job.”

“From one of my competitors,” Bruiser said. “After you signed a non-compete agreement.”

Sam shook her head. “You and your goddamn paperwork.”

“I’m running a business here. Yeah, I’m running it in the asshole of a dying planet, but it’s still a business. And, in business, there are certain principles by which we all abide. Binding documents are one such principle.” Bruiser grew agitated. He paced back and forth, giving Sam looks that alternated between disappointed hurt and murderous rage. “Slag poached you away from me, Sam. You know what that does to my reputation? You know what I had to do to save my name? Murder a whole lot of people. Slag and his entire operation. I was murdering for weeks.”

Sam shrugged. “Like you said, it’s business. I was offered a better deal, so I took it. Turns out it was a mistake on my part, anyway. Slag was a weasel. Lied about the details of the contract. Tried to get me to run a dirty job. I don’t run dirty jobs. You always respected that. So, cards on the table, I apologize, Bruiser. Shouldn’t have left. And I’m glad you killed Slag.” She looked from Bruiser to Sparkle and back again, waiting for a reaction. “Seeing as how all the touchy-feely shit is out of the way, are we done now?”

Bruiser called Sparkle over. They conferred in private, both seemingly conflicted.

While Sam watched Bruiser, Reggie surveyed Sam. He realized he knew next to nothing about her. Where was she from? What kind of work had she done in the past? What kind of work did she want to do in the future? What did she like? He knew everything about Cody and Joel. But all he knew about Sam was that she could kill. Guilt pinched his gut for using that as the only deciding factor in making her a member of the team. He treated her like she was one of the weapons they had come to buy.

Bruiser and Sparkle ended their conversation, seeming to reach a decision. Sparkle disappeared in the back for a moment and rematerialized carrying a sack large enough to hold four dead bodies.

“Sam, it is good to see you,” Bruiser said. “It really is. But I can’t go on pretending like nothing happened. You broke the trust, and we don’t come back from that. Things can’t go on like they did.”

Sparkle held out the sack like he expected the Notches to climb in.

“Seriously?” Sam sounded offended.

“I can’t let you carry in here, Sam,” Bruiser said. “I made exceptions for you once upon a time because I trusted you. No more.”

Sparkle shook the sack in front them again.

Sam relented. “Fine,” she said as she pulled the knife from her boot and dropped it in the sack. She tapped Reggie and gestured to the pincers in his belt. He tossed them in. “That’s all the weapons we have.”

Bruiser tilted his head and made a sound like he didn’t believe her.

“That’s why we’re here.” Sam shrugged.

After a moment’s consideration, Bruiser nodded, and Sparkle stepped aside. Bruiser threw his arms wide. “Then welcome to Bruiser’s. Finest assortment of killing tools on Torex. Feel free to browse. Should you have any questions, one of our many knowledgeable associates will gladly answer them.”

The Notches collectively unclenched.

“Well,” Joel said, “that was horrible. Time for some retail therapy.” He was immediately drawn to a table covered in handheld devices, scanners, communicators, and wearable tech. “Holy crap,” he said, picking up a pair of what looked like soles for sneakers. “Hover treads. Slap them on your shoes and never touch the ground again. I need these.”

Sam took them out of his hands and set them back on the table. “No. Weapons. We’re here for weapons. We can’t afford stuff like this.”

Joel huffed. “Who made you CFO of Bug Killing Incorporated?”

“Intergalactic Pest Control,” Reggie corrected. “And she’s right. It’s going to be tight as it is. We can only afford the essentials.”

Sam scoured the racks of weapons and gear, not taking anything, and seeming to grow more agitated as she browsed. Finally, she stopped in front of Bruiser and crossed her arms. They stared at each other for a minute, the entire room watching with anticipation.

“What?” Bruiser finally said.

“This is all crap,” Sam said. “Where’s the good shit?”

“First, that’s offensive. Don’t come in here and insult the merchandise just as we’re getting back on track. Second, good shit’s in the back.” Bruiser crossed his arms to mirror Sam. “But you can’t afford it.”

“Don’t tell me what I can afford,” she retorted.

“I set the price, Sam. My job is to literally tell you what you can afford. And you can’t afford it.”

Sam looked to Sparkle. To the Notches’ surprise, the big man shrank away from her.

“Boss,” he said, his voice wavering. “She’s got that look.”

Bruiser waved his hand dismissively. “Which look? She’s got so many. Is it the ‘someone took the last bowl of cereal’ look, or the ‘someone recorded over my favorite show’ look?”

“It’s the look she got before that job in the Ochre Foothills.”

Bruiser froze, his breath catching in his throat. “That was a bloody day.” He shook off the feeling creeping up his spine. “Fine, you can look in the back, but I’m not giving you a discount. I don’t care what look you give me.”

Sparkle led the Notches through the rows of weapons to an open area near the back of the impromptu camp. He stopped and pointed at nothing, what seemed to be empty space. When Sam returned a confused look, Sparkle realized his mistake.

“Right, I forgot we upgraded since you left.” He jabbed his finger at open air like he was punching in a code on a keypad.

The empty space slowly filled with a huge metal shipping container, only it was four times the size of one that might be seen being hauled by an eighteen-wheeler.

“A personalized cloaking field.” Joel marveled at the effect. “We are definitely getting one of those.”

“We are definitely not,” Reggie said as he followed Sam inside the container.

Joel and Cody immediately gravitated to opposite sides of the container. Joel went for a wall of ultra-advanced personal gear like jetpacks, cloaking fields, and time displacers, while Cody stood in front of a wall laced with advanced ship technology: armor samples, radar systems, a dark energy engine, and wormhole generator. Those were just the pieces that caught his eye immediately; there were a dozen other items he would love to get his hands on.

Sam marched straight for the back, and Reggie followed.

“This right here,” Sam said, practically singing. “This is the stuff we came for.”

Laser rifles. A pulse Gatling gun. Body armor. Short-range grenades. More pyrethrum grenades. Fire elemental grenades.

She took several of each and set them on a cart. Reggie followed her, pushing the cart, going wide-eyed as it filled with gear.

When she reached for a freeze elemental grenade, Cody stopped her.

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” he warned.

She paused, measuring him up. “Why?”

“Freeze grenades won’t work because the ShimVens can survive in space,” Cody began, “which is much colder than what those bad boys can do. I say we stick with fire, which we know works, and also the chemical grenades.”

Joel nodded. “Yeah, the pyrethrum turns those fuckers to statues.”

“All right,” Sam said, marveling at the load. “That should do—”

Her voice fell off like she’d forgotten how to speak. She slowly stepped up to a spot on the wall, like she was approaching a holy altar. There hung a sword as beautiful as anything she’d ever seen. A long, curved blade tinted with a reddish hue. A pommel carved to resemble a lion’s head. She stretched out her hand, reaching slowly, afraid it was just a trick of her mind to find such a gorgeous killing utensil. She wrapped her fingers around the handle and felt the power pulsing within it. She removed the sword from its place of honor and tested the weight and balance. Perfect. She sliced through the air and thought she may have actually cut it.

“Yeah, I’m definitely taking this.”

Joel shook his head and said to Cody, “I can’t have hover soles, but she gets a sword?”

Cody shrugged. “You want to try and tell her to put it back?”

A shiver ran up Joel’s spine at the thought.

“Cash me out, Bruiser,” Sam said.

As Bruiser looked over the cart, his eyes darted from the goods to the guys and widened with surprise.

He placed a hand next to his mouth like he was trying to hide what he was saying from them, but still spoke to Sam loud enough for them to hear. “You sure your new crew can handle this firepower? They look like noobs.”

“They can handle themselves,” she assured him.

Bruiser shrugged. “If you say so. Just remember, purchase of my weapons does not guarantee victory in whatever crusade you choose to fight. And I’m not liable if you shoot off your own foot, or impale yourself, or blow up your friend.” He removed a tablet from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it on top of the cart. “Sign here, here, and here.”

Sam signed, and Cody transferred the credits.

Bruiser smiled. “Happy killing.”

Chapter Twenty

Sonic Shuttle

Second job, same as the first. Clear a space station of an infestation. It would be a three-hour trip to the Ludite Space Station, so the crew took the chance to get acquainted with the new gear. Sam couldn’t take her eyes or hands off her sword. She converted the loading bay into a practice range, hacking the hell out of stacks of crates she used to simulate her enemies.

Reggie took the pulse Gatling gun. He was probably the only one strong enough to use it. It wasn’t terribly bulky, and it fit comfortably on his back, but it was heavy as hell. The gun housed its own miniature pulse engine. He practiced moving with it—running, climbing, going from a defensive to offensive position—but he didn’t dare fire it inside Sonic since he couldn’t risk harming the old girl. She wasn’t as strong as she used to be.

Joel opted for a belt of grenades and a scatterblaster. They’d stocked up on more elemental grenades but chose some new flavors as well. He couldn’t wait to try them out. The scatterblaster was brutal but elegant at the same time. It could tear apart an enemy at close range, or blast several at medium. It was the perfect weapon to fight off a swarming horde. It also had an auto-reloader and a user-friendly interface for changing ammunition types.

Cody took to a pair of blaster pistols. Both were ornate pieces, a set by the looks of them, but not identical; the designs were complementary. They fired standard blaster ammunition, but could also be modded to fire other types, like elemental, scatter, and stun ammo. They came with a belt and holsters. He felt like a cowboy as soon as he strapped them on.

Knowing that the two pistols would only be effective up close, and still limited in their kill capacity even then, Cody also chose a sniper rifle. He was the best long-range gunner on the team…at least in Return to Order team deathmatches. The rifle came as a compact, rectangular unit. With the press of the button, the stock and barrel extended from the unit, becoming a functional weapon. It sported up to twenty times zoom, atmospheric reading, targeting assist and night vision. With this beauty, Cody would serve as one hell of a spotter and long-range assist.

“Coming up on Ludite Station,” he said after an alert from the nav computer sounded on his wristcom. “Ten minutes.”

The team strapped up.

It was amazing for Reggie to think that they had been in this same position just two days before when they approached Station 12. The difference was astounding. He didn’t feel the same fear in the back of his head. He still had the flutter in his belly, but that was no different than the one he got before every game. There was a confidence in his stance now, in the way he loaded his weapon, in the way he marched toward the exit ramp. He felt like he belonged here now, like he had earned his stripes.

There was something missing, though. Something that left a hole in his gut: that feeling of doing something for the first time, the excitement of the unknown. The last job may have been their first, but it was epic enough to take the shine off the gig.

It can’t already feel like another day at the office. Not so soon. He swung the Gatling gun around from his back and caught it in his hands. He squeezed the handles and struck an action pose. No, most people don’t get to handle one of these at the office.

Sonic docked at Ludite Station. The hissing of releasing air sounded as everything pressurized.

“Alright, team,” Reggie said. “Ready to extend our kill streak?”

“Hell yeah,” came back to him from all around.

The exit ramp lowered, and the Notches stormed Ludite Station. The station was similar to Station 12 in layout and function. It was another hub, but not for shipping. Transit systems docked here, passengers changed ships and suffered through their layovers. It was a space bus station, basically.

Nothing good ever came from hanging out at a bus station.

“Give me the lowdown, Cody,” Sam said.

Cody squatted down and studied his wristcom. “Readings indicate that there are no intelligent species aboard. Heat signatures confirm the swarm. This station has three levels. Top level is ticket counters, waiting areas, some food vendors. Bottom two are transit terminals. That’s where we’ll find the swarm, munching on the vehicles, probably. Sucking out brake fluid and motor oil.”

The same confident expression radiated from Reggie and Joel. They had seen what the swarms were capable of. They had faced death and conquered it. They had kicked death square in the junk and then went skipping home. This swarm would be no different.

No, it would be different. Because they were different. They were exterminators.

“Intergalactic Pest Control, hoorah!” Joel said.

The others didn’t respond. Cody made a face like he wanted to say, ‘Inappropriate’.

“Let’s clear this level, just in case,” Sam said. “Then we’ll move down and start clearing the terminals.”

The others agreed.

They swept the first level. As the scanners predicted, they encountered nothing, not even a rat. They remained on guard, however, and that tension was beginning to fatigue them. They took a break for water and to shake out the building stress before progressing.

“We know for sure that this is a ShimVen infestation?” Joel asked as they stepped onto the elevator.

“The contract didn’t specify.” Reggie checked his Gatling again, making sure the safety was off. “But the description of the bugs’ behavior matched what we saw on Waystation Twelve.”

Joel moaned. “ShimVens. Hate those things.” He pumped his scatterblaster, loading a shell into the chamber. “But I will take some pleasure in killing them.”

The elevator filled with the soft and soothing sounds of a common elevator soundtrack. It was a welcome change from the elevator on Station 12, which just shrieked and wailed like a ghost. They could have ridden the current elevator ten more floors, but it came to a halt just one level down, cutting off their listening pleasure.

The doors slid open to reveal a scene with which they were, unfortunately, familiar. ShimVens tearing the shit out of every mechanical thing they could set their nasty little eyes on.

Sam, Cody, and Joel pressed against the walls of the elevator.

“Reggie, if you will?” Sam said.

“Happily.” Reggie stepped forward, his Gatling at the ready, the fire radius set to maximum dispersal. He squeezed the trigger for the first time. His entire body shook like an earthquake, with its epicenter in his hands.

He fired for only a short burst before letting go. In that brief second, he’d obliterated dozens of bugs. That amount of power in his hands set his heart racing. He loved it.

He hoisted the gun up higher, pulling it in tight against his hip. He squeezed the trigger again, this time fully prepared and bracing himself for the force he would unleash. The blasts came so fast that they seemed to blend together into one solid wave of energy, a wave that tore bugs apart by the dozen. Seconds later, hundreds of them were dead.

Reggie ceased firing. The Gatling could only handle a spread like that for about ten seconds before it risked overheating. It needed to cool down for a few minutes before it could be used again.

The second he stopped firing, Joel and Sam ran out on either side of him. Joel fired his scatterblaster, killing four ShimVens with a single shot.

A rush of excitement washed over him—that feeling when you get a bike for Christmas, but have to wait for the snow to melt to ride it. You build up the experience, fearing that when you finally straddle that beauty and race down your driveway, it won’t live up to the hype. But this payoff more than satisfied all the anticipation. He fired again and again, walking casually toward the swarm as he peppered it with blaster fire.

Sam watched him and pulled the sword free from the holster on her back. The others questioned her choice of weapon. ‘Sure, a sword is incredibly badass,’ they said, ‘but there’s a reason people stopped using them in war.’

She proved their worries unfounded with her first swing.

With one wide arc, she cut five bugs in half. It was the same with every swing that followed, killing at least a handful of ShimVens. It proved a useful defensive weapon as well, blocking an attacking bug’s pincers with ease.

When his weapon had cooled down, Reggie switched the Gatling’s fire dispersal range to narrow and took off again. The kill radius narrowed from half the floor to just a few feet, but the gun shook less as he fired, allowing him more mobility.

Cody followed Reggie, picking bugs off with his dual pistols. He didn’t put as many of them down as the rest of the team, but that wasn’t his function. He knew that every member of the party had a different class, and each class served a different purpose in combat. Cody fancied himself more the rogue.

Once he had an opening, he sprinted for the scaffolding about ten meters away. He leapt without breaking his stride and grabbed a crossbar. He scurried up like a monkey and rolled onto a landing twenty feet up. He pulled the rectangular unit from its holster on his back and pressed the button on its side, extending it into a full sniper rifle. Squinting, he pressed his eye to the scope and found his first target.

A ShimVen ran at Reggie’s back. Cody locked onto it with the assisted auto-targeting and squeezed the trigger. The bug’s head exploded. He continued playing his overwatch role, picking off targets as they attempted to attack the others’ blind spots.

The Notches fell into a rhythm. Those on the ground quickly grew to trust Cody’s ability to watch their backs. They let loose, free from the worry that they’d be attacked from behind. Bugs fell in droves. Sliced, blasted, sniped. They sent the ShimVens back, eventually corralling them all against the back wall.

“Make way!” Reggie shouted.

Sam and Joel dropped back behind him. He switched to a wide range dispersal, and the remaining ShimVens stained the wall. After the ten-second burst, only a few bugs remained, and they were wriggling on the floor, half-dead. Joel and Sam visited them one by one and put them out of their misery.

“All clear from up here,” Cody said. He climbed down from his perch, replacing his sniper rifle. He joined the others at the end of the room, the site of Reggie’s massacre. “Well, that happened.”

A hearty laugh escaped Joel’s mouth. “Goddamn right, it did. We just wasted those bastards. That was better than our best Return to Order run. We would’ve dominated the VREs with that kind of gameplay.”

Reggie released the Gatling gun and let it hang at his side. “Great job, everyone. We showed some serious teamwork. This gig is really coming together.”

Sam sheathed her sword. “But it’s not over yet. We’ve got one more level to clear.”

Cody checked the readings on his wristcom. “The swarm down there doesn’t look to be any bigger than the one we just took out.”

Reggie smiled. “Then it should be a cakewalk.”

Joel slapped his forehead. “You never fucking learn.”

“Language, Joel,” Reggie warned, a pursed expression on his face.

Cody held up a finger to interject. “There are some gaps in the readings, though. Points where I’m getting nothing at all.”

“What does that mean?” Reggie said.

Cody shrugged and narrowed his eyes, falling into troubleshooting mode.

It was Joel that provided the answer. “Those are the terminals down there; that means ships. I bet there are some docked that have heat shielding. Ships that travel closer to stars or through solar zones need heat shielding to keep the crew from getting fried… Scanners wouldn’t penetrate that.”

Sam nodded. She seemed impressed with his knowledge and skill for deduction. Most people found those traits surprising when he showed them. He spent most of his time making jokes and wisecracks, so when he built a personal energy field out of parts found in common kitchen appliances, most people were taken aback.

“I’ll take it,” Sam said of his explanation. “Let’s mount up,” she ordered, striding forward.

Joel elbowed Reggie in the ribs as they walked to the elevator. “See, she can pull off lines like that. You can’t.”

They loaded into the elevator and rode it down, expecting this floor to go as the previous. They were, of course, fools to assume anything. They may have only been in the business for all of a few days, but one lesson they’d all learned was never assume anything.

It was a straightforward eradication, like the floor above—at the start. The Notches followed the same attack pattern. Reggie opened with a wide burst from the Gatling. Joel and Sam came out swinging after that. Cody took the high position, watching everyone’s backs and sniping bugs. It was toward the end of the attack when everything went sideways.

They corralled the bugs against the back wall, same as before. Reggie stepped forward, his Gatling gun cool and ready for another wide burst.

That’s when Cody noticed movement to the left of the rest of the team’s position. The cargo hold of one of the larger ships had begun to lower. He looked at his wristcom. The ship was one of the dead zones where he couldn’t get a reading.

Cody’s gut twisted in knots.

As the hatch of the ship lowered, he saw that it was packed full of ShimVens. They spilled out like a hole had been punched in a dam.

“Left flank!” Cody yelled. He sniped the bugs at the head of the new swarm, working his way back, but they were coming too fast.

Joel, Sam, and Reggie turned to see the new swarm. Suddenly they were filled with the looming dread one gets when they arrive at work or school and realize they forgot an important deadline. The consequences were coming hard and fast like a bullet, and there was no avoiding them.

Unfortunately, the first swarm was also filled with something at the sight of the new swarm—vigor. The initial swarm rushed forward, taking advantage of Reggie’s momentary distraction.

Reggie realized his mistake too late. He let out a wide burst but wasn’t able to swing around far enough first. He took out half of the first swarm, but his shots missed the other half.

Joel hurled two pyrethrum grenades into the heart of the second swarm. When they exploded, dozens of bugs were turned to statues, and dozens more were incinerated. Sam rushed the oncoming horde, her sword whirling like a windmill. Limbs and guts flew everywhere as she hacked through them like they were a field of weeds and she was a lawnmower.

“We need to regroup,” Cody said. “Refocus. We’re too scattered.”

“Maybe we can ask them for a timeout?” Joel said.

“No need,” Cody responded. “I’ve got an idea. Reggie, focus on the new swarm. Cut us a path straight through them. Joel and Sam will keep the rest off your back. I’m coming to join you.”

The team fell in line without a moment’s hesitation. Reggie switched the Gatling gun to a narrow fire dispersal, focusing its power like a scalpel. Joel and Sam put their backs to his, blasting and slashing any bug that came near. Cody leapt down from his perch, replacing his sniper rifle with his dual pistols. He ran for the others, unloading his pistols on anything that moved, not caring whether he landed kill shots, caring only that the bugs stayed off him. When he reached the others, he joined the effort to keep Reggie’s back safe.

They pressed forward through the swarm, cutting a swathe to the ship from which they all poured. Once they reached the bottom of the ramp, Reggie sprinted forward, while the others turned to cover their retreat. Reggie pressed the button on the inside wall, and the hatch started closing with his teammates still on it. They slid down the hatch into the ship and sprawled on their backs.

They were locked in, and the swarm was locked out. They were safe, for now.

The ShimVens clawed at the hull of the ship, and Cody partially hoped they made it inside. The state of the ship was enough to make him wish he was dead. The bugs must have been trapped inside it since they’d hatched. They’d gnawed on the interior mechanics, sucked the power and juices out of everything they could, before eventually resorting to cannibalism. Then they shit all over the place.

“Brainstorm time, team,” Reggie said. “What’s our next move?”

“We’re safe in here,” Joel said. “No way they can get through the heat shields. No need to rush.”

Cody wandered around the cargo hold, trying to take his mind off the shit stink that was seeping into his pores. “I would rather not take my time in this place, if you don’t mind.”

He reached the far end of the hold, finding no luck in taking his mind off anything, until he noticed a stack of crates in the corner. They looked familiar. He brushed the filth off the logo stamped on it—LAYTON CORP. The same crates he found in the engine room on Station 12.

“That’s brilliant,” Reggie said.

Cody spun around and realized the others had been having a conversation while he was lost in thought.

“Glad you’re onboard,” Sam said. “Let’s do this.” She held her hand over the button to open the cargo hatch and nodded to the others.

Reggie and Joel returned nods.

Cody’s heart seized, struck with the horror that a plan was unfolding around him, and he had no idea what it was. Unsure of his role, he drew his dual pistols and readied for what was sure to be their last stand.

Sam counted down from three. On ‘one,’ she pressed the button, and the hatch opened.

The ShimVens piled in as it lowered. The Notches picked them off well enough at first, dropping the first wave. But the second and third and fourth waves came one on top of the other, faster than the Notches could fire.

Cody glanced to his side and noticed that Joel was no longer standing beside him.

His chest tightened. His guts swirled. He thought about his friend being torn apart by these goddamn bugs all for the sake of a job, for money. They never wanted to take office jobs, to sit in a cubicle farm and process purchase orders or file reports. But they never wanted to get eaten alive, either.

Then he heard Joel’s voice from on high, the voice of an angel, now that he’d left this earthly plane.

“Give me your fucking hand, you goddamn asshat.”

Cody looked up and saw Joel dangling from the emergency hatch in the ceiling, his arms extended toward Cody. Escape is a much better plan than going out in a final blaze of glory, he thought. He holstered his pistols, jumped, and caught Joel by the wrists.

Joel lifted him through the hatch and onto the roof of the ship. Then they both leaned in and did the same for Sam.

Reggie was the last man standing, holding the bugs back by the glory of his badass killing machine. He held his Gatling gun with one arm. He barely needed to jump to reach Joel and Cody; they grabbed him, then Sam gripped them, and they all pulled him out.

Sam looked to Cody. “You’re up. You ready?”

Apparently getting to the roof wasn’t the end goal.

“Right,” Cody said. “I’m up. For what?”

“No time for fucking around, man,” Joel said. “Lay down.”

Cody lay on his back, amazed at how susceptible he was to peer pressure, even as the world was ending around him. Joel grabbed one of his ankles, and Reggie grabbed the other.

Suddenly, Cody was dangling upside down and being lowered through the very hatch from which he’d escaped.

The bugs leapt at him, snapping their pincers. He was a fish on a hook.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Shoot the button,” Sam said like he was an idiot.

Understanding finally dawned on him.

Cody drew one of his pistols and shot the controls for the cargo hatch. It burst with a flurry of sparks, and the hatch closed, trapping the swarm.

The Notches pulled Cody out, much to his pleasure, and Reggie clapped him on the back.

“Knew you could do it,” his friend told him.

Cody forced a smile. “Yeah, no problem.”

Joel activated three grenades and dropped them in the emergency hatch. “Fire in the hole!”

The entire ship shook as the swarm was blown to smithereens.

A few bugs either refused to take the bait or didn’t make it in before the hatch closed. The Notches took them out in a few minutes.

Cody reviewed his scanners. “Not picking up any more heat signatures, but I’m seeing a few ships on the station manifest with heat shielding. We should check those to be sure.”

The team located each docked ship with heat shielding, and investigated their contents for bugs, clearing them one by one.

“Job complete,” Reggie reported after they’d cleared the last ship on the station. “I’ll phone it in. We’re well under the deadline—the contact will be pleased. Great job, team.”

Cody wanted to join the others in celebrating, but something was nagging at him. Those crates. Layton Corp. The same crates from the Waystation…

It could have been a coincidence. Layton Corp was a huge company that shipped stuff all over the galaxy, and both stations were hubs that saw a lot of traffic. But still, something didn’t sit right with him. He had wanted to investigate the crates further, until Joel blew them to hell. Now there was nothing left to investigate.

Not that he was complaining. He’d rather be alive. But those nagging questions would need to be answered eventually.

Reggie called their client once they were back aboard Sonic. Joel held his breath as Reggie reported the results of the call back to them.

“Client was ecstatic,” Reggie assured them all. “Even tossed in a little something extra for delivering ahead of the deadline.”

Joel exhaled and waited. “Is that it?”

Reggie looked confused. “Yeah. Why? What else would there be?”

“No other jobs with impossible deadlines?” Joel asked. “No, surely there are arms dealers we need to find, right? Dangerous planets that we need to search?”

Reggie shook his head. Sam shrugged.

Joel smiled. “Then we’re free? We can relax? Eat cheeseburgers? Game?”

The Notches looked to each other, hesitance pursing their lips. “Yeah,” Reggie said. “I guess so.”

They all went silent and still for a moment, waiting for the phone to ring, for a communication to come through Sonic’s comms, any message that said, ‘No, you can’t have any fun at all, ever, because another infestation just broke out in the anus of the universe, and you need to clean it up in seven minutes.’

But there was no such call.

They jumped and hollered and high-fived like they were a beach volleyball team.

“Set a course for anywhere but here,” Joel told Cody. “I’m going to put on my celebration pants.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Sonic Shuttle

It was times like this when Reggie wished he wasn’t so nice. He insisted that they give the bedroom to Sam. Joel just wanted to add her to the rotation and make her also compete for the right to have the room. But, no, Reggie insisted she get the space.

Now, caked in sweat and bug guts, he wanted nothing more than to have a room to himself so he could change and sleep without the feeling that Joel was going to stick something in his ear the moment he fell asleep.

He kicked his boots off and threw them under his bunk. He stripped off his shirt, dropped it in a pile of dirty clothes, and fell onto his bed. Sam called dibs on the shower, then Joel after her, so it would be a while before he had the chance.

Reggie closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was somewhere else, somewhere clean. He loved Sonic. He loved having his own ship, and he loved the people with whom he was sharing it. But sometimes, he just wanted to be lying beside a lake, lapping waves the only sound for miles, fresh breeze the only smell.

A picture formed in his mind. He recognized it as the spot his dad took him fishing every year for their father/son weekend getaways. Reggie always looked forward to that weekend more than he did Christmas. The only time when it was just the two of them, nothing on their minds but fishing. No school. No work. As he got older, though, he remembered the shine fading on the trip. He’d started to not look forward to it as much. He even viewed it as a burden, the last few times they went.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like spending time with his dad, but rather that Reggie had started to see through the shimmer. More and more, he saw his dad as a real person rather than the mythic superhero father Reggie had always believed him to be. He could tell that work still weighed heavy on his dad’s mind, even though it was against the rules to think about it during those weekends.

That’s when Reggie realized that there was no escaping the grind. You can try to postpone it. You can try to get through by doing something you love on the side, like competitive gaming. But even if you’re lucky enough to land a gig like that, it too becomes a grind eventually. Or, you can grind away with your friends and hope you have enough laughs while doing it that it feels like fun.

Now, as he started to drift to sleep, the image of the lake transformed. He was standing in the metal bowels of the space station. Skittering came from all around and sounded like continuous rolling thunder. Always building, never breaking. It felt like a constant pressure in Reggie’s ears. He clutched at them, begging for the pressure to release, for his eardrums to burst so he wouldn’t have to listen to the army of skittering creatures as they haunted him. He was granted no such mercy. He heard every last step. Then came the screaming. Not from him… From somewhere out in the dark.

Reggie jolted upright. He had just barely crossed the threshold from awake to sleep. His heart pounded against his chest. Sweat ran from his brow all the way down his chest to his navel. Sam’s voice echoed in his memory. “‘Remember where you are. And where you are not.’”

“I’m on Sonic,” he said to himself. “No bugs.” He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and planted his feet on the floor. “I’m on Sonic.”

“Where else would you be?” Joel said, walking into the room with a towel around his waist. “Shower’s yours.”

“Must’ve been asleep longer than I thought,” Reggie said. He stood and stretched, the haunting feeling of his nightmare lingering in his memory. He grabbed a handful of what he assumed to be clean clothes and headed for the shower.

Washing away the blood and grime felt like a religious experience. The worry, the fear, the anxiety that he carried was washed away with the dirt and bug guts. It all mixed into a reddish soup and swirled down the drain. He felt the distance between him and that sludge of anxiety grow with each second. His heart fell back into a normal rhythm. He was again excited to be on the ship with his closest friends, striking out on their own, carving a new path in their lives.

“Just a rough day at the office,” he told himself.

Reggie bumped into Cody on his way back from the shower. Cody had a towel slung over his shoulder and was clearly keen to have his turn at freshening up.

“You have a call on the bridge,” Cody said to him. “Your parents.”

The happy, hopeful feeling that had returned to Reggie bloomed into an entire garden.

“Tell your mom to send us more of those oatmeal cookies. Fuck, those were good.” Cody passed by, a dreamy look on his face.

Reggie winced at the curse word. “Yeah, sure.”

He hadn’t spoken to his parents in more than a month. That may not have seemed like long for most people his age, but he was used to talking to them a few times a week. He was close with both his parents. He always had been.

The bridge was a cramped space, not meant to hold more than two people—a pilot and a navigator. Cody had automated most of the navigational and piloting stuff anyway, so they didn’t spend much time on the bridge. The communications system was also housed there. Any calls, long- or short-range, were made through the comm system.

Reggie stopped off at his bunk before heading to the bridge. He ran a comb through his hair, double-checked that his shirt was clean, and made sure he was generally presentable. His parents weren’t the critical type, but they were worriers. Was he getting enough to eat? Was he sleeping the proper amount? Were he and the boys getting along? Was he taking his vitamins?

Reggie stepped on the bridge and immediately noticed the dust covering everything. He ran a rag over as much of the surface as he could before feeling like he’d kept his parents waiting too long. He sat and pressed the glowing button indicating a call was on hold.

The image of his parents popped up on screen. Both had round faces. His mother’s cheeks were red and plump. His father’s chiseled jaw had since become hidden under a layer of sag, but he didn’t look chubby. Just like age was beginning to set in.

Reggie didn’t like that.

“Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad.”

His parents beamed. “Hey, there, Reg,” said his dad with a soft smile.

“Reginald, why do you look so tired?” his mom asked. “Are you not getting enough sleep? Those boys keeping you up all hours of the night? You send Joel and Cody over to this screen right now so I can set them straight.”

When Reggie was a teenager, living at home, gaming with the guys, no worries outside of leveling up his character in Return to Order, his mom’s questions would have irritated him to the point that he would have gotten up and left. But, now, after leaving home, they were a comfort. It felt nice knowing that his mom was still looking out for him. Even if she was looking out for him with a set of eagle eyes that saw everything as a threat.

“No, Mom, they aren’t keeping me up. We just got off a job.”

“Oh, well, that’s nice,” she said. “You know, Pat Leland, Tom’s boy, just got a job at a big law firm in Minneapolis. Can you believe it? Minneapolis. He’s rubbing elbows with some real big wigs.”

Reggie nodded along as she filled him in on the goings on around town, who’s dating who, the achievements of everyone from his graduating class. She would have kept going if Reggie’s dad didn’t interject.

“What was that about a job?” The look of pride on his dad’s face was subtle, but it was enough to warm Reggie’s cheeks.

“Our second one, actually,” Reggie said. “I think we’ve got a real knack for this. Things were a little hairy at first, but—” His parents’ faces scrunched up tight as they seemed to look past him. “What is it?” he asked.

They stammered, never managing to put together an entire word.

Reggie looked behind him to find Sam.

“I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said, quietly. “I was just coming to check our coordinates.”

“No, it’s cool,” Reggie said.

Though, by the looks still on his parents’ faces, they knew he was lying. It reminded him of every time he saw a person in a wheelchair while grocery shopping with his mom as a kid. He’d ask her why the man’s legs didn’t work. She would blush, stutter, and shoo him away, never making eye contact with the man, pretending like he didn’t exist, and never answering the question.

“Mom, Dad, this is Sam.” Reggie pulled Sam over next to him, so his parents could get an unobstructed view. “She just joined the crew the other day. We wouldn’t have been able to finish those jobs without her. She’s been a huge help.”

Reggie’s mom nodded slowly, as an awkward, very forced smile spread over her face. “Oh. Well, isn’t that nice?” She cleared her throat. “Is she sick?” She pointed to Sam’s mask.

Sam lowered her eyes, a quiet annoyance in her gaze.

“No, Mom,” Reggie snapped, suddenly mortified. “Jesus.”

“You watch your mouth, young man,” his dad said in a stern voice.

Reggie slapped his forehead and tried to hide behind his hands. “This is the worst.”

“Reginald, speak up,” his mom said. “You know I can’t understand you when you mumble.”

Reggie respected his parents more than anyone, but in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to hang up on them. Luckily, he got a different break.

“Sue, Larry, how the heck are you lovely people?” Joel poked his head onto the bridge and into view of the communication monitor.

Reggie’s parents both perked up at the sight of him. “There he is,” they both said.

Joel squeezed between Sam and Reggie, nearly budging them both out of the picture. “Sue, you are a picture of beauty as always. Larry, have you lost weight?”

Reggie’s parents swooned.

“Oh, you,” Sue said. She waved for Joel to lean in close, as if that meant they could have a private conversation. “Tell me, Joel, is my Reginald getting enough rest?”

“You know what, Sue? I don’t think our Reginald is getting enough sleep. I think he stays up too late playing those video games of his.”

Sam leaned close to Reggie and whispered in his ear, “Your parents seem to like Joel more than they like you.”

“They do,” Reggie said. “They always have.”

“Well, do us a favor, son,” Larry said, “and keep an eye on him for us.”

Joel put one hand on his heart and raised the other. “I promise to keep our Reginald out of trouble, sir.”

“You’re a good boy,” Larry said.

Reggie covered his face with his hands and shook his head. He looked up when he heard something rustle next to him. He peeked through the cracks in his fingers, wondering if the blood pounding in his ears was playing tricks with his hearing. The rustling continued, and was joined by a soft whimper, like a baby animal makes when nuzzling against its mother.

Before he could investigate, Cody entered the bridge. “What, are you guys having a party or something? Why was I not invited to hang out with the cool kids?” His voice died when he saw Reggie’s parents on the communication monitor. When he spoke again, his tone was shaky. “Oh, hello.”

Larry and Sue both pursed their lips and cast Cody disapproving looks.

“Cody,” Sue said. “I assume you’re well.” Her voice was frigid, like ice water being poured down one’s back.

He shifted uneasily, now awkwardly jammed in the overcrowded bridge with no graceful way of exiting and escaping Sue’s cold stare. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Sam leaned in close to Cody and whispered, “She definitely likes Joel more than you.”

Reggie couldn’t focus on the conversation, the voices became background noise. All he could hear was that nuzzling. Then he found the source of it: it was coming from Joel’s shirt.

Something moved under the fabric. Joel’s hands were covering his abdomen.

There is definitely something in his shirt!

Reggie shoved everyone aside and reached for the communication controls. “Good talking, Mom and Dad. Got to go.”

“But we’re not finished—”

Reggie shook his head. “Sorry. I love you. Bye.” He ended the call without waiting for a response. He spun around, casting an accusatory finger at Joel. “Take off your shirt.”

Joel tried to step back, but Sam was blocking his path. “That’s awfully forward of you. And a very weird transition after a conversation with your parents,” he said, dodging the order.

“What’s in your shirt?” Reggie demanded

“My nipples,” Joel answered. “What’s in yours?”

As Joel tried to budge his way between Sam and Cody, something wriggled more furiously under his shirt. Cody tried to jump away from him and banged his head on the ceiling.

“It moved,” he said, agitated. “Something moved. There’s definitely something in there. Please tell me you knew there was something in there, and this is not some alien parasite situation? I will puke all over everyone right now if that’s a parasite.”

Joel grunted as he forced his way out of the bridge. “Just let. Me. Out.” As the last word left his mouth, he shot forward, finally free of the tight quarters of the bridge.

Surprised by his sudden freedom, he fell forward, then quickly rolled onto his back and frantically stretched out the collar of his shirt so he could look inside.

“Oh no, don’t be dead,” Joel said.

“I knew it,” Reggie said. “What are you hiding?”

Reggie reached for Joel’s open shirt, but he swatted him away. “All right, all right, slow your roll. Don’t get so handsy.” Joel stuck his hand up his shirt and pulled out a small ball of fuzz that, until it wiggled and squeaked, no one would have recognized as a living creature. “Here. This is what I’ve been hiding. General Pepper. Peppy.”

Cody leaned over Joel and narrowed his eyes like he was looking through a telescope. “What is it?”

Joel shrugged. “Besides fucking adorbs? No clue.”

“You brought a weird alien creature onboard and didn’t tell anyone?” Cody asked.

“You’re a weird alien creature,” Joel said. “No one seems to mind you hanging around.”

Cody continued to examine the creature. “This is serious, dude. We have no idea what this thing is. We don’t know what it’s capable of. We don’t know what it eats. We don’t know if it generates its own personal bioelectric field that will interfere with Sonic’s nav systems.”

“Is that a thing?” Sam asked, but no one answered.

“My point is,” Cody continued. “This adorable creature could eat all our faces as we sleep.”

“Or it could be one of those chimichangas,” Reggie added, garnering a round of confused looks. “That animal that I wanted to get at Mother Lode.”

Cody nodded. “Chinchutakes. Exactly, it could be like one of those. Multiply like bunnies, then eat the ship from the inside out.”

Joel finally stood, cradling the creature in his arms, as gentle a gesture as the guys had ever seen him make. “Listen, I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t do anything to endanger us. Just do me a favor and look at him.” He held the creature by the sides and pointed it at each of the Notches. They each stared at it. The creature looked like one of those Himalayan cats with the smooshed faces got it on with an Ewok. Its features were barely visible under the mane of fuzz.

Sam was glad to have had her mask on to hide the ridiculous face she must have been making. It also muffled the moan that jumped from her mouth. She played it off like she’d maintained a straight face and was unimpressed.

Reggie, however, had no such luck. He immediately went wide-eyed, like a kid walking by a window full of puppies at a pet store.

Joel held Peppy in Cody’s face for an extra-long time. “Look at this face,” he said to him. “Let the cuteness move you.”

Cody clenched his jaw. He narrowed his eyes. He tried to distract himself by trying to figure out why Reggie’s parents hated him. He did everything he could to resist the power of the puff ball, but, in the end, he could not.

“Goddammit. Yes, it’s cute.”

“Which means I can keep it, right?” Joel asked, snuggling the creature next to his face.

Cody was the expert on animals. If anyone was going to object to Peppy, it would be him. “Yeah, fine, keep the thing. But if it eats a single face, I am definitely going to say ‘I told you so’. Unless it’s your face. Then I’ll just chuckle.”

Joel clutched Peppy tightly and smooshed his face deeper into its ball of fur.

Cody marched away down the hall, yelling to Joel over his shoulder, “And I’ll let you figure out the whole animal-pooping-on-a-spaceship thing.”

Joel looked from Reggie to Sam, who both creased their brows, having not thought about those particular repercussions. “I’ll put down some papers or something. It’ll be fine.” Joel squeezed Peppy again as he walked toward the cargo hold. “Let’s go build you a bed.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Joystick Gaming Bar

Joystick was one of the best gamer bars in the galaxy. It was so great, that the Notches had never been able to afford to go there. But things had changed. They were successful alien-roach killers now. They had cash to spend and a desire to spend it. And for cheeseburgers. Good god, they wanted cheeseburgers. Ones dripping with melted cheese and bathed in thousand-island-dressing. Cody had been dreaming about a burger with crispy onion rings and bacon, whereas Reggie was more of a traditionalist; he only wanted lettuce, tomato and pickles. Joel, however, was more adventurous. He wanted a burger with jalapenos, a fried egg and a dollop of extra spicy horseradish sauce. It was called a “BurgerTime.” That was just his appetizer.

“Then I’m going to get a Donkey Kong,” Joel said. “That’s four beef patties with fried bananas. After that, I’m going to get an M. Bison burger. I looked up their menu… I’ve been planning my approach all day.”

“I want to eat my weight in French fries,” Sam said. “Maybe even Reggie’s weight in French fries.”

They stopped at the entrance to Joystick and looked up at the sign hanging over the door. It was a classic neon sign that evoked the arcades of old. Quarters. Button mashing. The stink of adolescent body odor. Heaven.

Sam didn’t understand the reverence. “Are we going to go in? Because if I don’t eat soon, I might kill someone, and it’s probably going to be one of you. Just saying.”

The guys shook from their stupor.

“Yeah,” Reggie said. “Let’s feast.”

They strode in like they owned the place: chests puffed out, boss walk, confidence oozing off them. But as soon as they caught the glow of the games, they became unapologetic nerds.

“They have a retro Street Fighter 2!” Cody yelled. He ran off without waiting for a response.

“The updated Return to Order!” Reggie yelled.

“Cheeseburgers!” Joel yelled.

Sam suddenly found herself standing alone, and couldn’t help but smile. She rarely witnessed that kind of unfettered joy. That sort of glee in the merc business usually meant said happy party was a psychopath, so this genuine display of childish joy was refreshing. It washed the blood from Sam better than any shower ever could. Even though she was not a direct part of their joy, she enjoyed watching it, basking in it as a tertiary recipient.

She walked through Joystick, unable to shut off the part of her brain that had kept her alive for so many years, the part that detected threats and formulated how to eliminate them. Without intending to, she had mentally mapped the interior of the bar, identified the exits, performed a risk assessment and a course found ways for deterring threats, should those hypothetical risks become real. All on the walk from the entrance to her table.

She wished she could shut that part of her brain off, if just for a little while. It would be nice to have a night full of fun without killing being at the forefront of her mind. Even the waiter didn’t escape her mental prowess. Sam immediately catalogued his face and ran him through a mental database to see if she knew him; if he was an operative for a dozen parties that might want her dead. He checked out. Just some greasy twenty-something trying to make a buck.

“Bring a couple plates of fries,” she told the waiter. “Three cheeseburgers. One with onion rings and bacon and two without. Then we need a BurgerTime and something called a Donkey Kong, and an M. Bison burger. And beer. We’ll need lots of beer.” She couldn’t be part of the guys’ joy, but she could help protect it for them, help make it happen.

The guys found her twenty minutes later. They were wide-eyed and sweaty and buzzing with energy, lobbing words back and forth that she didn’t understand. Sam enjoyed their energy, but there was a small part of her that wished she could experience it for her own.

An empty pitcher of beer sat in the middle of the table, and an empty glass sat in front of Sam. A second pitcher had collected condensation on its outside that was running down in little streams to collect in small puddles on the table. Each of the guys poured themselves a beer.

“We need to get the waiter over here before I pass out,” Joel said. “Should have ordered first. Rookie mistake. I got too excited.”

The waiter appeared as if he’d heard the request, carrying two trays. Joel was about to start listing off his order when he noticed the waiter was setting the trays down in front of their table. This was their food. The man transferred the three cheeseburgers and plates of fries to their table. Joel nodded as he surveyed it all, but looked disappointed.

“You ordered?” he asked Sam.

The waiter turned back for the tray and set first one, then a second and then a third burger in front of Joel. The aromas of the BurgerTime, Donkey Kong and M. Bison burgers wafted up to Joel’s nose, and his face lit up like a pinball machine.

“I did,” Sam said, a smile in her voice.

Reggie poured a little of his beer into Sam’s glass then raised his own. “To us, one heck of a team.”

The guys threw back their beers and slammed the empty glasses on the table. Joel looked at the still full glass in Sam’s hand, then the respirator covering her mouth, then to the empty pitcher. He fumbled with the words to ask what he wanted to know in a way that didn’t get him killed. “So, Sam, how do you, uh, like…” He mimed drinking with his glass. “And, you know, with the fries?” He pointed to the mound of French fries sitting in front of her.

To answer his question, she pressed a small button on the side of her respirator. A barely noticeable opening appeared toward the underside of her mask. She demonstrated by eating a fry.

“But how do you drink?” Cody asked.

She stuck a straw in her beer and sipped.

Joel slapped his forehead and reeled back in his chair. “Oh, my god, you drink beer with a straw? Listen, I say this as your friend; whatever reason you have for wearing that thing, it can’t be worse than drinking beer with a straw. I mean, you’re in public.”

She could have gotten angry. At any other time, she probably would have. But at that moment, in that place, with the guys having as much fun as they were, all she could focus on was that he had called her his friend. She had a lot of business contacts—and some of those had grown into amicable relationships, as long as they stayed mutually beneficial—but she didn’t have any friends.

And she was surprisingly delighted when the others joined Joel.

“It’s worse than eating pizza with a fork,” Cody agreed. Sam cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, my god,” Cody said. “You eat pizza with a fork, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t fit through the mask otherwise,” Sam said in a jovial tone. Not defensive. Not angry. Open and vulnerable.

If she let herself think about it, then her face would get hot and her heart would race. She shut that thought down and forced herself to just be there in the moment.

Sam put the straw to her lips and said through a smile, “You guys can look away if you want.”

“I will,” Reggie said, his eyes falling on the feast in front of Joel. “No way you’re going to eat all that.”

“Dude,” Joel said, picking up the quadruple cheeseburger with fried bananas that was the Donkey Kong. “You’ve known me since we were five. Of course, I’m going to eat all this.” He unhinged his jaw like an anaconda and took a massive bite.

“Banana on your burger, though?” Cody said, making a face like he might puke.

“Hell yeah,” Joel said through a mouthful of Donkey Kong. “And later, I’m ordering a pizza with pineapple on it.”

“Now that’s embarrassing,” Sam said.

They finished their food with a hefty side of laughter and joking and lovingly tearing into each other. And then they ordered more food. It was a Herculean feat, but they did not shy away. Boneless buffalo wings doused in the hottest sauce this side of the Big Dipper. Mozzarella sticks fried to perfection and dipped in a sweet and tangy marinara. Potato skins sprinkled generously with apple smoked bacon and a dollop of sour cream. They shoveled it all down unapologetically, even Joel’s pineapple pizza.

“This is horrifying,” Cody said, feeling a little tipsy from his one beer. He watched Sam lift her fork to the opening in her respirator. “You’re eating pineapple pizza with a fork. I think that’s one of the signs of the apocalypse.”

The Notches sat back in their chairs, their bellies protruding like they were posing with a dead animal after a trophy hunt.

“We’ve cleared two space stations of massive infestations of the worst bug in the galaxy,” Reggie said, surveying the battlefield of empty plates on the table. “But this is the most impressive thing we’ve ever done.”

Joel pushed back from the table. “I need to walk around, or I think I will fall into a deep food coma.” He stood and rubbed his hands soothingly on his belly. “Easy, big fella, it’ll be okay.” He walked toward the bar.

Reggie and Cody both stood. “We’re going to hit up the games,” Reggie said to Sam. “You want to join?”

Sam honestly considered it. She’d never had an interest in video games; never had an interest in any games, really. She had not lived a life, even in childhood, that afforded the leisure of games. But she decided she had exposed herself enough for one night.

“Sorry, boys. Not my thing,” she admitted.

They nodded, not offended, realizing it had been a long shot to begin with, and walked off toward the games.

Sam finished the last half-glass of beer left in the pitcher. She was full of a cornucopia of greasy bar food, but there was always room for more beer. She made her way through the crowd toward the bar, most people giving her a wide berth. On places like Torex, it would be because her reputation preceded her. But in places like this, it was for wholly different reasons. Some may have been intimidated by her, recognizing the swagger of a fighter… She liked to believe that was the reason, but she knew it wasn’t, most of the time. It was her mask. It was the fact that people would see something they didn’t understand and immediately treat it with hostility.

She passed through a group of women about her age, four of them standing in a circle, stirring their drinks and talking about nothing. They took up more room than they should have been allowed. A sense of entitlement hung on them like rose perfume.

Sam could have gone around, but she disdained people like them, with their smug attitude. They always clutched their pearls and judged her, which was why she took pleasure in making her disdain known.

One of the women, a tall brunette with flashy jewelry, scoffed when Sam knocked into her. “Excuse you.”

Sam turned to face the woman, getting close enough to smell the well vodka on her breath, catching the woman by surprise. “No.”

The woman was flustered. “What?”

“Don’t ‘excuse’ me,” Sam said. “I didn’t ask to be excused, Debbie.”

She leaned in close to the woman and breathed in deep, letting the rasp of her mask slap the woman in the face. The woman squirmed, as if the air coming out of Sam’s mask, out of her mouth, was dirty.

“My name isn’t Debbie,” the woman said.

“Yes, it is,” Sam said.

One of the other Debbies wanted to grab Sam’s shoulder and pull her away, but only had courage enough to tap her. “Okay, freak, we get it. You’re scary.”

That was what Sam wanted to hear. It’s what she knew; the reason people gave her a wide berth no matter where she was, whether they knew her reputation or not. She scared them.

She walked away from the circle of Debbies without paying them another second’s attention or acknowledgment. They didn’t exist to her anymore… The worst possible punishment for people who think they own the world.

Joel was leaning on the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention. “I’m trying to give you money, man. Why are you making it so hard?”

The bar was crowded, a wave of customers several people deep waiting for drinks. Sam had had enough of crowds, so she was hanging toward the back, waiting for Joel. She saw the crowd part like a prophet had struck his staff, allowing a woman to pass through.

The head Debbie.

She walked through them like they didn’t exist, moving all the way to the bar, right next to Joel.

Even from where she stood, Sam could see his face turn a deep shade of red. He shifted from foot to foot, like a runner taking his mark before the gun is fired. Against her every desire, Sam waded into the crowd, which again parted for her for entirely different reasons.

“Can I get you a drink?” Joel asked the Debbie.

The woman eyed Joel like he was a peasant who had dared speak to a queen. “It doesn’t look like you can even get you a drink.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t been trying,” Joel said. “I’ve just been waiting here for someone like you to come along and give me a reason to order one. I don’t like to drink alone.”

She offered him a snicker, a half-hearted attempt at being half-polite. Then she turned forward to get the bartender’s attention.

Joel continued, not seeming to notice her dismissal, “Now that you’re here, you can help me celebrate. My partners and I just completed a big contract. The kind of deal that’ll really open up doors for us.” She didn’t look at him. He had stopped existing to her, he just didn’t know it yet. “We’re business owners. Entrepreneurs.” He stepped in closer to her, put on his smooth voice. “So, how about it? Want to celebrate with me?”

She couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist anymore. The woman turned to Joel, her eyes cold, but her temper hot. “How about this, y—”

“I’ll celebrate with you,” Sam said, cutting Debbie off, as she appeared through the crowd staring daggers into Debbie’s icicle eyes. “I’d love to take a shot.”

Debbie tried to step back, but the crowd prevented her. She swallowed hard then opened her mouth like she wanted to say something. Instead, she stayed silent, opting to leave without her drink.

Joel leaned on the bar and let out a heavy sigh. “You totally blocked me there, Sam. She was about to get a drink with me.”

With some effort, Sam managed to hide her disbelief that Joel was so obtuse as to have no clue that Debbie was about to tear him apart. “I’m sure she was. Now, how about that drink?”

The bartender finally acknowledged Joel’s existence, and he ordered two lemon drop shots and two beers. Joel and Sam clinked glasses, and then Joel tossed his back.

“Some advice?” Sam said as she sipped the shot through a dainty straw. “Don’t lead with alcohol. And don’t be so forceful about it. Seems like you’re trying to get her drunk, which is beyond sketchy and gross. Get a name first, at least. Have a conversation, make a connection.”

Joel didn’t say anything. He just sipped his beer and nodded along thoughtfully.

Finally, he made a face like he’d come to some conclusion and said, “Let’s do another shot.”

Sam chuckled as she shook her head. “Fine, but I’m picking this one. No more fruity bullshit.”

They all rendezvoused at their table fifteen minutes later. Cody decided to head back to the ship, which drew calls of ‘Lightweight!’ from Joel and Reggie. Joel put in another order of cheeseburgers, which drew looks of astonishment from everyone.

“How is that possible?” Sam asked.

“They aren’t for me,” Joel said. “They’re for Peppy.”

An unfamiliar sense of calm washed over Sam as she sat. These friends were like brothers to each other. Maybe they would be to her one day, as well. And Sonic, her new home, however temporary it may be, felt comfortable. And now they had Peppy, their new dog.

Well, dog-thing.

She had taken a job and stumbled into a family.

Joel stood suddenly, urgency plain on his face. “Holy shit,” he said, clutching his stomach.

Sam shot up too, his urgency triggering her fight or flight. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Just said.” Joel pointed to his stomach. It gurgled like it was trying to say something. “Holy shit. I need to find a bathroom.” He started shoving his way through the crowd. “Can you wait for my food?”

Families are gross.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sonic Shuttle

It was rare to be on Sonic alone. Cody found it both refreshing and unnerving. It was so quiet. Again, that fact was both welcome and strange. The only time it was ever this quiet was when Joel was hiding and planning some kind of prank. Cody walked through the ship expecting Joel to jump out of a closet.

He strode through the kitchen, past the bunk, past the supply room, and into the engine room. He’d set up a makeshift lab in there a few weeks ago. Up until now, he hadn’t had reason to use it, aside from a place to get away from the guys and be alone. But now, he had a reason.

Cody cleaned the area first, throwing away the napkins and dirty plates that had accumulated. One cannot work in a dirty lab. Then he set up his station. He was excited to put it right. He set the box of samples on the table and began taking them out. One at a time, he would take the insect sample, study it, turn it over in his hands, then set it down, until they were spread out like a periodic table of bugs.

He had always been fascinated with insects. Even before his aptitude and affinity for computers and networks emerged, he was digging in the backyard, catching bugs in jars, and just watching them. These here were samples he had collected since boarding Sonic. Each planet they visited, he would take some. A few from Torex. A few from whichever space station they’d pass through.

And one from Sector 12 Transgalactic Station. He took the final sample out of the box. The ShimVen. A full bug, about the size of a small dog, mostly intact—aside from the hole in its head made from a pincer being shoved through it, courtesy of Reggie. A cold sting shot up his spine at the sight of it. Not yet having mustered the nerve to examine it, Cody moved back to the other samples. He sorted them based on type and pinned them to a corkboard hanging on the wall.

He spread the rest of the equipment on the table: syringes, scalpels, slides, vials,

microscope. Some of the stuff he’d brought from home. Some of it, Joel fabricated from junk they were able to gather.

Cody sat back and marveled at his workstation. Now this is a lab, he thought. And labs are meant for working.

He took a deep breath and went back to the ShimVen sample. He hadn’t told the guys he took it off the space station. They already thought his bug thing was weird, and they would probably lose their shit if they knew he brought one of these things on the ship.

The bugs were dead, and that might be enough for Reggie and Joel, but Cody needed to understand them. Something had been nagging him about the ShimVen ever since the Waystation, and it only got louder after Ludite. He needed to satisfy that feeling, or he’d go crazy.

He’d been doing some research on the net, whenever he could find the time, since they’d left the Waystation. According to reports, the ShimVen had become a huge menace in shipping hubs and manufacturers around the system. There was nothing outright odd about that; according to experts, infestations happened aboard space stations all the time. But, until recently, no one had ever heard of the ShimVen. It was like they’d appeared out of nowhere.

From what Cody observed firsthand on the Waystation, the leap from one generation of ShimVen to the next in terms of adaptation should have been impossible. The second wave had already gotten stronger and faster, if only incrementally, and they were from the same parent as the slightly weaker first wave. That kind of growth as a species should have taken multiple generations, hundreds of years.

It wasn’t natural. Which meant it was engineered. And that kind of tinkering would leave a trail.

Cody gripped his scalpel. His hand shook. He steadied it with a calming breath, then pressed the tip of the blade to the bug’s upper thorax, the chest area just below its head, and green liquid beaded around it. Before pressing further, Cody put on goggles and a mask, ashamed that he didn’t have them on already. Any good scientist knows that safety is of the utmost importance. Then he cut the thing wide open. He pierced the thorax and drew the scalpel down the length of the bug.

The smell hit him like a punch to the face, even through his mask. It was a smell reminiscent of rotten meat and cheese farts. Cody pulled open the thorax and pinned each side, giving him a complete view of the bug’s insides. He catalogued the organs, mapped the endocrine and digestive systems, and compared them to known species. Once finished, he determined that the ShimVens were members of the insect order Dermaptera, like earwigs.

Now that he knew what he was looking at, he knew what to look for. He knew what should be there, what shouldn’t be there and how everything should be arranged… And he’d already found something that wasn’t right. The corpus allatum was an endocrine gland that played a crucial role in metamorphosis. This bug’s corpus allatum had been altered; it was enlarged and discolored.

Cody jabbed a syringe into it. The vial filled with a glowing yellow liquid.

“That doesn’t seem right,” he said to himself.

He deposited a few drops of the liquid on a slide, slid it under the objective of his STEM instrument, and looked through the ocular. He took a screenshot of the magnified slide and ran a program that compared it to known substances.

Then he sat back and waited. There was so much unknown about these pests, like how they survived in space. Tapping into dark energy was the theory, but that still left more questions than answers. Did it collect it from the ether, using it to propel itself from the back? Cody laughed as a fart joke echoed in his head.

“Nice hidey hole,” Sam said, sticking her head in Cody’s corner of the engine room.

Cody nearly fell out of his chair. “Shit, Sam. You can’t sneak up on a person like that.”

“Didn’t realize I was sneaking up on anyone,” she said. “I was just coming to run a diagnostic on the engines before we shoved off in the morning.”

Peppy bounded into the room between Sam’s legs. He leaped onto Cody’s lap and began licking his face.

“Oh, goddammit,” Cody said, trying to keep Peppy from licking the inside of his mouth. “Why’d you bring him?”

“I didn’t. Little shit followed me.” Sam examined Cody’s workstation, her eyes falling on the dissected ShimVen. “You’re awfully accusatory. You trying to shift the focus from this weird shit you’re doing in here?”

Cody shoved Peppy off him and stood. He tried to shove Sam aside as well but had little luck. He walked around her instead. “It’s not weird shit. It’s science. I just found out that the ShimVen’s corpus allatum is enlarged and discolored.”

Sam wrinkled her brow. “That sounds like some weird shit.”

“I believe it was intentionally altered.”

Cody waited for the gravity of the sentiment to fully hit Sam. She shrugged.

“That would mean that someone had created those swarms,” he explained impatiently.

“Why would anyone do that?” Sam asked.

Before Cody could answer, the program running his search produced a result.

“Laytonmin,” he read aloud.

“I think I’ve heard of that,” Sam said.

Cody did a quick search of the name. It didn’t take long. A cursory search immediately produced thousands of results from newspapers all over the system. Scandal on top of scandal. Outrage. Lawsuits. Payouts. Careers ended. Jail sentences.

“It was developed as a drug to cure a certain birth defect. There was an epidemic of underweight babies being born on a planet at the edge of the system; something to do with its unique gravity. Laytonmin was meant to help the fetus grow so the baby would be born at a typical size and weight.” Cody scanned further ahead in the article. “And it looks like it worked. To a degree. Turns out, after the babies were born, they kept growing at an increased rate. Some form of gigantism. And, in some cases, the babies showed extremely heightened levels of hostility and rage.”

Cody bookmarked the article and minimized it on his wristcom. He rubbed his eyes, realizing suddenly that he hadn’t blinked in several minutes.

“It made giant, angry babies?” Sam summated.

“Apparently,” Cody said, bright spots dancing across the backs of his eyelids.

“That’s terrifying,” Sam said. “But what does that mean for the ShimVens?”

Cody’s eyes shot open like his brain just processed something that he’d read. He reopened the article and scrolled through at hyperspeed, knowing exactly where to find the bit he was looking for. He stopped and put his finger on it. The name.

“Layton Corp. It was developed by Layton Corp.”

“Okay,” Sam said, not connecting the dots. “And what does that mean for the ShimVens and us?”

Cody shot up from his chair and began a manic pace around his lab, hands running through his hair like a tinfoil hat wearer ranting conspiracy theories. “On the Waystation and Ludite. The engine room and the heat shielded ship. The sources. Of course, this makes so much sense.”

Sam cocked her eyebrow. “Does it?”

Cody took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. “On the Waystation, the engine room was ground zero of the infestation. Where the mother was, where the eggs hatched. On Ludite, the second swarm came out of that heat shielded ship. In both of those places, I found crates stamped with the name Layton Corp.”

Understanding painted a pale picture on Sam’s face, not quite fully formed. “So, are you saying that Layton created those things?”

“Yeah, I think they did,” Cody said. “Their drug shows up in these bugs, a species that is normally centimeters long, and they are now raged out killing machines the size of small dogs. But I think there’s more to it. According to this article, Layton had a stranglehold on the pharmaceutical industry until this Laytonmin scandal. Their market share shrank significantly after the subsequent lawsuits and bad press. Now, these crates full of nasty, drugged up bugs are showing up in major shipping hubs. I’m willing to bet…” His voice trailed off as he pulled up another window on his wristcom

He nodded as he scrolled through. “Just what I thought. I cross-referenced the names on the manifests and shipping logs from both stations with Layton’s major competitors. They all either had major shipments of their products going through those stations on a regular basis or had offices in the stations. With the stations out of commission, they probably lost millions.”

“Corporate warfare,” Sam said.

Cody threw his arms wide, about to espouse some elaborate theory about a web of lies that stretched across the galaxy, but his attention suddenly turned to a whirlwind of shredded paper behind Sam. “Son of a bitch!”

Peppy was at the eye of the hurricane, twirling and tearing up everything he could get his teeth into. Cody ran at him, flailing his arms, trying to swat the creature away from his lab. They ended up running around in circles, yelling and barking (for lack of a better description of Peppy’s yippy noises) at each other.

Sam didn’t pay much attention to the swirling mess. Her mind was someplace else. Somewhen else. She left the lab without a word to Cody, leaving him to wrangle the rabid little beast on his own.

“When I catch you,” Cody said. “I’m going to dissect you.”

He and Peppy charged each other, both baring their teeth.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sonic Shuttle

Sam wandered through memories on her way back to her bunk. In a home that felt foreign, with a man she barely recognized. He had short, curly hair. She remembered that when he’d grow out his hair, it would bounce like springs that hung in his eyes. He had a soft smile. No matter how happy he was, it never grew beyond a certain point, always subdued. He could fill a room with laughter, but he only ever filled the living room, when he was with her. He didn’t like to be the center of attention.

Which is what made his downfall so quick.

Sam only found out what happened to her father years later, as a teenager living alone on the streets. He wasn’t a bigwig executive type at the financial firm, but he was more than middle management. Combine that with his laid-back personality, aversion to making waves, and reluctance to stand up for himself, and you’ve got the perfect patsy.

One of those bigwig executive types laundered a whole bunch of money. Took millions from the hardworking folks who chose to invest with him due to his glowing history of trustworthiness. They pinned it on Sam’s father, planted a trail of evidence thick enough to convict him in the court of public opinion. It would have fallen apart at trial, if he made it to trial. One of those who got swindled, a working-class father left with nothing, shot Sam’s dad dead as he was coming out of a convenience store from buying a pack of cigarettes. He had quit smoking ten years earlier. The whole affair had driven him back to the habit.

Now, some more bigwig executive types were playing with people’s lives like they were pieces on a game board, and she had managed to get wrapped up in it. She’d considered, after getting into the merc game, going after those responsible for her dad’s death. But it was a rabbit hole. Dive in, and she would never come out. Every executive answers to someone. Climb the ladder all the way to the top, only to find that guy is rich enough to hire an entire army of private defense. Probably untouchable.

This thing with the ShimVens, though, was stirring up those old feelings, making her feel like a fox aching to dive down that rabbit hole.

Reggie and Joel still hadn’t returned from the bar. She was glad for that. After the news from Cody, she was in no mood to talk.

Her muscles twitched. She needed to move. She wanted to act. But she was part of a team now, and the team moved as one. She walked through the bunk room, careful to step over the piles of clothes and dirty dishes. It was cleaner than usual, but not by much. They made an attempt when she first came aboard. They didn’t so much now, which was fine with her. She wasn’t a princess who needed things clean and wiped down.

It was rare that she found herself in a place that wasn’t in desperate need of sanitization. After her father died, Sam was on her own. She went into the foster care system initially, but that didn’t work out. She only tried the one. Her foster dad told her she was pretty, way more than a grown man should. When he tried to touch her, she stabbed him in the shoulder with her dinner fork. She went on the run after that, slept in alleys and dumpsters.

That’s when she’d started wearing the mask. Disease was common on the street; it killed more of the homeless than hunger or stabbing. The mask kept her from catching the communicable diseases common among street people. And it had the added bonus of keeping people away. She was beautiful, and that brought her the kind of attention she’d rather avoid. With the mask on, people treated her like a pariah. They ignored her or treated her like a freak.

Either way, they left her be.

It wasn’t until she met the Notches that someone seemed to look straight past the mask. It didn’t bother them, didn’t change their treatment of her. She assumed the worst of people; it kept her alive, but also alone. She could feel those sharp edges dulling.

Sam grabbed the mask with one hand and reached around the back of her head with the other. She undid the latch and slid the belt out. The mask came down. She stretched her jaw and massaged the joints. Pain radiated through her face but faded quickly. She rarely took the thing off, even when she was alone. It had become part of her, a crucial part of the identity she’d had to craft in order to survive on the street. A mask even from herself.

She set it on her bed and looked in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall. Her mouth seemed foreign to her by the end of a day. She took the mask off every night to clean her face and stretch her jaw. By the time she did, the mask seemed to be the real thing, and her face the fake cover. It was odd to look at herself so objectively, to be so disconnected from herself.

Sam hadn’t thought about it that way until she came aboard Sonic. The Notches may have teased her a bit about the mask, but they never treated her worse because of it. They treated the mask as an accessory, not part of her body.

That’s when she realized she had not been doing the same.

The skin around her mouth was a shade paler than the rest of her face. It didn’t get the same amount of light as the rest of her skin, and the seal the mask formed as it suctioned to her face affected her blood flow. Her lips were pale pink, like a salmon’s belly.

She wet a washcloth and dabbed at the corners of her mouth. They grew dry and crusted with spit throughout the day; a detail she would never share with anyone. She ran the cloth over the rest of her face and looked at herself again.

An unexpected sadness grew in her. She was struck with the fact that she could feel this way—accepted, safe being herself—and then realize what she had missed out on so many years by hiding. She wanted to focus on the positive, on the fact that she was not that little girl on the streets anymore, hiding and struggling. She was a feared mercenary, a successful mercenary, and now, she had friends she could trust.

The sadness did not go away, but she refused to let it win. She put the mask under her pillow and lay down in bed. The Notches returned a short time later. Joel and Reggie, both quite drunk, tried to be quiet, but still stampeded through the bunk like elephants. They passed out quickly, though.

For the first time in years, Sam did not fall asleep to the sounds of crime on the streets or the worries that were constantly streaming through her head. Instead, she fell asleep to the sound of Reggie snoring, which she strangely found calming.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sonic Shuttle

If the sun could shine through the hull of Sonic, Sam would swear that she felt its warmth on her cheeks. She woke in an uncharacteristically good mood, a smile stretching across her face before she even rolled out of bed. The potency of her good mood was matched only by that of her appetite.

“Guys,” she called through the curtain that was her bedroom door. “What’re we doing for breakfast?”

“Smurflepuffins,” Joel mumbled.

Sam almost asked what that was before she realized that it was the hungover ramblings of a man woken too early from a late night.

“Come on,” Sam said. “I’m starving. Get up and make breakfast.”

“Go flufflegurf,” Joel said, sounding like he had a mouthful of cotton balls.

“Don’t know what you just said, but it sounded like you were cursing me out.”

“Yes,” Joel answered, but not even his muffled obscenities could dampen her mood.

“All we have is oatmeal,” Cody said. “And it’s not even steel cut. I wish we had some bacon.”

Reggie, who had been snoring until now, woke with a sudden snort. “Bacon? Yes, please.”

“We don’t have any bacon,” Cody said. “I said I wish we had bacon.”

Reggie groaned. “I wish you hadn’t said anything about bacon. That’s all I want now.”

“Whatever, guys. We’ll figure it out.” Sam threw on her clothes, buzzing with energy and antsy to get her day started. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this pumped. “I’m coming out, so make sure your morning wood is all tucked away.”

The guys collectively grumbled awkwardly.

Sam swept the curtain open and stepped into the bunk room. The guys were fumbling with their blankets, none looking at her. That’s when she realized that she wasn’t wearing her mask. Time slowed down. Each of the guys’ eyes rolled slowly toward her. She could see them clearly, each eyelash bristling as they moved, the color of their irises coming into view like a lake on a revolving planet.

Her face felt like it was on fire. A debate raged in her head, happening at hyperspeed. Put the mask on, or let them see my face? Each side of her brain took a position and argued with impassioned pleas and faultless logic.

The guys sat up, leaning closer to stare at her. They were blinking at her across the room, trying to see her clearly, but she had yet to decide. She wanted more time. She couldn’t allow the decision to be made for her, to let them see her face just because she had failed to act. And suddenly, her decision was made. If I allow them to see my face, it will be done intentionally, not as an oversight.

She ducked back into her room just as the guys set their eyes on her. They’d caught a glimpse, like a reflection in a broken mirror. Enough to get a sense of what they were looking at, but not the whole picture.

That sense alone was enough to fluster them. They felt like they’d just seen a shooting star. Something beautiful in their periphery that was gone in a flash and left them wondering whether they’d really seen it at all. They fumbled their way out of their blankets, like cats trying to get out of a paper bag, and rushed to the kitchen before Sam reemerged from her room.

They were clanging around the kitchen when she arrived, trying to act natural and failing miserably. Cody got started on making a big batch of oatmeal for everyone, while Joel started boiling some water. They were out of coffee, and he didn’t like tea, but brewing it was something to do besides think about how beautiful Sam might have been.

Reggie sat at the table, hands folded, bouncing his feet and wishing he’d thought to boil water before Joel.

That sense of sadness grew larger inside Sam. The safety she was so excited to have last night already felt like it was slipping away. She wanted to trust that it would stay, but life had given her no reason to trust in anything other than inevitable disappointment.

Reggie’s eyes went wide suddenly when he thought of something to say. “You skipped out early last night, Cody. You missed an epic game Rock, Paper, Dragon.”

Cody’s eyes lit up at having something to do other than stir oatmeal. “Yeah, I need to talk to you guys about that. I came back to study a ShimVen sample I collected at the space station.”

“You’re right, we should talk about that,” Joel said. “You left the best gaming bar ever to dissect a giant bug? I think something might be wrong with you.”

Cody explained his findings and his theory that Layton was using the ShimVens to sabotage its competitors. The news landed like his dense, overcooked oatmeal in the center of the table.

“Who gives a shit?” Joel said, poking at a nearly solid mass of oatmeal with his spoon.

“What do you mean ‘who gives a shit’?” Cody said. “It’s illegal. They’re causing millions of dollars in damage. I think a guy was even killed on the Waystation.”

Joel shrugged. “Sounds like rich people being rich people. They get in a fight, the rest of us get shit on. We at least found a way to get paid.”

“Are you serious?” Cody asked, offended.

Joel continued poking the oatmeal. “Are you serious with this? I need a real breakfast.”

“We can’t just ignore this,” Sam said. “We have a responsibility.”

“We have a responsibility to kill bugs,” Joel emphasized. “That’s our job. And aren’t we helping solve the problem by eliminating their ShimVen infestations?”

“No,” Sam said. “We’re just cleaning up their mess.”

Cody clenched his jaw. He wanted to throw something at Joel. “What do you think, Reggie?”

Reggie seemed like he was on another planet, his mind on something else.

He snapped back to the present. “I don’t know. I mean, we’re exterminators. Our job is to exterminate bugs… We aren’t police.”

Cody stood and planted his fists on the table. “No, we aren’t police. Yes, we are exterminators. But that’s not all we are, and this gives us a chance to prove what else we can be.”

“Stupid?” Joel said. “Because this corporate espionage bullshit is the only reason we’ve gotten paid so far. We do anything to fuck that up, and we’re out future high-paying jobs.”

Reggie stroked his chin and stared off again, like he was looking into another time or place, two different futures decided by two different decisions. “I think we need more to go on before we take this to the authorities or intervene at all. We’ve just got a theory so far. Police can’t do anything with that, and we’d just get laughed out of the station.”

Cody relented, not wholly disappointed, but not satisfied either. “Fine. I’ll chase down some more leads, then. There is something here, I know it.” He marched out of the kitchen without eating breakfast.

The others seemed deflated. “Bunch of bullshit,” Joel said, still poking at the mass of oatmeal. “Chasing conspiracies. How about chasing up some goddamn bacon?”

Reggie perused their bare pantry. “We do need to make a supply run. Food and general supplies are low. We should make some upgrades to the ship as well, while we have the money for it.”

“Good idea,” Sam said. “There’s a place on this station. I’ll let them know we’re coming.”

Tension was thick on Sonic all morning. Sam ached for the optimism she’d woken with, and then grew angry with herself for falling so easily for the belief that it was something she could keep. She’d had to break herself of that naivete as a child, after only weeks on her own. It wouldn’t take long to break herself of it again.

The tension was soon replaced by optimism. Stress never lasted long with the Notches. Joel went shopping for supplies and basic necessities, and the cupboards were fuller than they had ever been. Full of food they actually looked forward to eating. Reggie got the ship fueled and upgraded. The engine got a boost, making Sonic faster and more reliable when flying in rough conditions. The internal sensors were repaired, allowing Cody to run more thorough diagnostics and keep on top of trouble areas as they arose. And they decided to upgrade their sleeping arrangements. Each of the Notches got a mattress, trading up from the uncomfortable cots they’d been sleeping on.

“We can’t perform at our best if we don’t get some rest,” Reggie said.

But, even with all that, negativity clogged the air.

“Well,” Reggie said. “That tapped us out.”

Joel grumbled. “Seems like we’re always working, but we never have any money.”

Reggie scoffed. “We just got all those internal upgrades. Our pantry is full. And you’re going to sleep on a mattress tonight. But you’re whining because you don’t have any cash in your pocket?”

Joel snorted his offense. “That’s right. I’ve got no money for the honeys. How am I supposed to take a girl out on a date without any cash to my name? It’s all wrapped up in this ship.”

“This ship is our future,” Reggie said. “No ship, no business. No business, and we’ve got nothing to any of our names.”

Sam watched them go back and forth a minute longer, exchanging barbs and bitching at each other over one thing or another. It evolved from money to everything else. Sam realized they weren’t mad about money—well, not just money. They were frustrated about a lot of things, and it was coming out as anger focused at each other. She had no interest in helping them untangle their shit, so she left.

There was another mess of shit that interested her. Cody had his wristcom cloned on the large display on the bridge. There were several windows open, each showing the homepage of a different major player in the pharmaceuticals market. He was copying down contact information for executives, administrative assistants, and anyone with a contact listed.

“You think I’m wasting my time?” he asked Sam without turning around to look at her.

“No.”

She left without saying anything else. She’d felt off since stepping out of her room without her mask. Like she’d never put it back on, and all her vulnerabilities were on full display. She only knew one way to overcome that uneasy feeling—train.

The cargo hold had been largely converted into a gym since they rarely had any cargo. Weightlifting equipment occupied one corner. Sam had set up a training dummy and some obstacles opposite that. The other two-thirds of the cargo hold was divided between actually holding supplies and empty space. There was also a small computer station that Cody had set up so he could run diagnostics in the rear of the ship while monitoring the systems in real-time.

Sam kicked off her shoes and taped her wrists and ankles. Her knuckles were scarred from her days on the streets. She’d realized fast that the only way she could overcome her fear of living alone, of scraping by, of dying in the gutter, was to fight. That’s why she was still alive.

Squaring up with the dummy, she bounced on the balls of her feet. Then she unleashed a flurry of punches and finished with a leaping elbow to the dummy’s head. She reset and launched the same combo again. She reset and tried another. Soon, sweat was rolling off her, making her clothes stick to her body.

Only when she took a break to get some water did she realize that Reggie was on the weight equipment. “You just come in?” she asked him.

Reggie chuckled. “Man, you really get absorbed when you’re training. I’ve been here for, like, ten minutes.”

“And I’ve been here for five.”

Sam spun to see Joel in the center of the empty space, working with General Pepper on some training of his own. “Surprised to see you two in the same room.”

Joel and Reggie both looked confused.

“Why?” Reggie asked.

“You were just fighting in the kitchen,” Sam said.

Joel laughed. “That wasn’t fighting. That was us expressing a difference of opinion. We’ve had some fights over the years, and that was not one of them.”

Reggie lay on the bench press and lifted the bar, an impressive amount of weight on it. “Even if it was a fight.” He dropped the bar to his chest and groaned as he pressed it back up. “We get over them quick.”

That concept was foreign to Sam. She was used to fighting to the death; her disagreements usually ended with broken bones. A difference of opinion meant severed contracts and, more than once, severed limbs. There was no reconciliation. Even with Bruiser, she was just a customer—a well-liked customer, but that was not reconciliation. It was business.

Joel tossed a piece of day-old hamburger to Peppy. “What? You thought we were all breaking up because we had different ideas about handling a problem?”

Sam unleashed another flurry of attacks on the training dummy. “Kind of. Yeah.”

Reggie racked the bar. “That’s not how it works. Not with family.”

Sam felt frozen inside. The idea rattled around in her chest like a lingering cold. She couldn’t quite catch her breath. But the congestion began to break, and something familiar started to emerge. She’d had a family once. She knew what family meant. She had stuffed that way down, tried to forget it. Clinging to it would have only gotten her killed.

She nodded like she understood.

Cody burst into the room, frantic. “Guys, we’ve got a serious problem.” His face was white, his brow sweaty. He looked like he might vomit. “Okay, so, I contacted some of Layton’s competitors. You wanted to chase it down? I chased it down.” He was breathless, his chest heaving.

“Dude, calm down,” Joel said. “You look like you’re going to pass out. Take a breath.”

“No time,” Cody said through broken breaths. “Two companies. Jasob and Chrisoff. I made contact.” Sam handed him a glass of water. He tried to drink and talk at the same time, and ended up pouring most of it down his front. “They both received shipments from Layton in the last month. That might seem weird, ordering products from a competitor, but it’s not. I asked. Layton holds a patent on a protein synthesis that most of the major pharmaceutical companies use in manufacturing their own product, and selling it to competitors is Layton’s major revenue stream, since losing most of their market share after the giant, angry baby scandal.” He took a deep breath and sat on Reggie’s workout bench. The others braced themselves to catch him, should he pass out. “Anyway, they’re both fine. No infestations at either location.”

“Shit, man,” Joel said. “Then what the hell are you freaking out about?”

Cody held up his wristcom. He opened a window and displayed it for them to see. “Because I contacted their third competitor, StrobeNet, on a station called Rever. Anyway, that place is a total shit-show right now.”

The scene on the screen was as Cody described. Absolute shit-show. People running and screaming. Sparks shooting out of the walls. Panels falling out of the ceiling. A ShimVen skittered by with a human leg dangling from its mouth. The owner of that leg came crawling after it, dragging himself across the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

A round face suddenly appeared on the screen, popping up from below like she’d been hiding. “Hello? Hello, are you still there?”

Sam smacked Cody across the shoulder. “Fuck sake, Cody. You had her on hold?”

“I needed to tell you guys what was going on,” he answered defensively. “This is the administrative assistant to the director of operations at StrobeNet. Real sweetheart.”

“Oh, there you are. Great.” The woman tried to maintain a congenial tone as hell erupted around her. Total professional. “As I was saying, your call is quite timely. We are experiencing a bit of a situation here, which I believe you are uniquely qualified to assist with.”

Joel stepped into view of the video call. “Lady, the goddamn world is coming down around you.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Yes, it is, indeed.” She dared a glance over her shoulder. “It’s Phil’s birthday today. We were supposed to have cake in the breakroom. I really love cake.”

“Betty,” Cody said, trying to get her attention. “Focus.”

Her head snapped back toward the screen. “Yes, of course. Your call. Quite timely. The station is being evacuated now and is expected to be empty of personnel within the hour. The director of operations has authorized me to approve every measure necessary to clear this infestation as quickly as possible. I will approve whatever bid you submit, but you must come to Rever immediately. You don’t even need to submit the bid right now. You can bypass our normal bidding procedures. Submit it while you’re en route. Or after the job, I really don’t care. Just please come kill these goddamn bugs.” Her sweet smile never broke.

Cody stammered as he tried to formulate an answer. He looked to the guys for a price, mouthing, “How much?”

Reggie and Joel both shrugged, looking totally panicked, but Sam stepped into the view of the screen.

“We accept the job,” she said firmly. “We will submit our base bid en route to Rever. We also reserve the right to tack on hazard pay and reimbursement for any damage to our gear, ship or persons.”

“Agreed,” Betty said. Then she ran out of her office and out of sight.

Moments later, a ShimVen skittered into the office and attacked the screen. The feed went dead.

“We really need to establish some pricing guidelines,” Joel said.

“What we need to do is suit up,” Reggie said. “We’ve got ourselves another job.”

The Notches split up, each running to their locker. They strapped up, checked their weapons, and struck the most amazing team pose.

“Notches,” Sam said. “Roll out.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sonic Shuttle, En Route to Rever Space Station

Nearing Rever felt like sailing into a black hole. The station had gone completely dark. The bugs must have eaten through the power supply already. Not a good sign.

The Notches had witnessed the infestation in its infancy during that call. Those bugs couldn’t have been more than a few hours old if the people manning the station had only just begun to encounter them. To have drained the entire station of power in that short a time… Cody feared the worst. Either the size of the swarm was astronomical, or the bugs had made another impossible generational advancement. Either way, they had no idea what they were walking into.

“No answer,” Cody said after attempting to hail the station. “Looks like their evacuation is complete. I’ll hack the landing bay doors and get us inside.” He stayed on the bridge while the others moved back to the cargo bay. “We’re coming up on it now,” he told the team through the comms.

Using his wristcom, he hacked into Rever’s system. This station was more than just a shipping hub, like the others. StrobeNet and other massive corporations had offices here. Proprietary information was stored on the system’s servers, which meant tighter cybersecurity. Nothing Cody couldn’t handle, though. He’d already gotten the backup power system up, and a secure entry to the landing bay doors open in minutes.

“Taking us in,” he said as lights flickered on around the station, partially waking it back up.

Once Sonic landed, he joined the others in the cargo bay. Sam was swinging her sword, warming up her arm. Reggie had his eyes closed tight, sweat already forming on his brow. Joel was squatting, talking to Peppy.

“Don’t worry about me, little pal,” Joel said to Peppy. “Be back in no time. I left the rest of the cheeseburgers in your bed.”

Peppy licked Joel’s face in response.

“I ran some scans of the station as we were docking,” Cody said. “The infestation is fairly widespread, but it looks to get worse the closer we get to the StrobeNet offices. That’s ground zero. If this infestation follows the same pattern as the others, this generation of ShimVens will already have advanced beyond the last swarm; we shouldn’t think that just because we took out two swarms, we know what to expect. That will get us killed.”

Reggie’s breathing quickened. It became broken, erratic, like someone in the throes of a nightmare.

“You okay, dude?” Joel asked him.

Reggie forced the words out. “Yeah. Fine.” His grip on his Gatling gun loosened. The heavy gun fell to his side, dangling from the strap and almost pulling him over.

Sam rushed to catch him, barely making it in time and almost unable to brace herself enough to hold the big man up.

“Shit, man, you are not all right,” Joel said. The color drained from his face as he watched his friend tremble.

Reggie couldn’t seem to hear him, like he was lost somewhere in his own head.

“What’s the matter with him?” Cody asked Sam.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she propped Reggie against the wall and grabbed both sides of his face, trying to force him to look her in the eye. “Hey, look at me,” she said. He stared off, eyes focused on nothing. “Fucking look at me, goddammit.”

The profanity shook him from his daze.

“Your head isn’t right,” Sam said. “No use fighting that and pretending it is. No hiding it. You face it.”

Cody stepped closer to Reggie, his shoulders slumped. “What’s she talking about?”

Reggie’s eyes tried to look past Sam, to look at nothing. She jerked on his chin, forcing him to look at her. “Answer him.”

“I…I don’t want—”

She jerked on his chin again. “No excuses.”

The resistance in Reggie’s jaw faded. His eyes flooded and turned red. “My head’s not right. Hasn’t been, really, since the Waystation.” Sam nodded, a silent encouragement for him to keep going. She released his face, allowing him to face the guys. “I’ve been having nightmares. Of the bugs. Feeling them on me. Feeling their blood on me. Hearing the cracking sound as I rip one’s pincers off.” His eyes spilled over. Hot tears ran down his cheeks.

Joel grabbed Reggie by the shoulder. “Now you’ve gone full Rambo.”

Reggie cocked his head, unsure how to take that.

Cody mirrored Joel’s gesture, grabbing Reggie’s other shoulder. “I think what Joel is trying to say, is that it sounds like you’ve got PTSD.”

Reggie hung his head. “I should’ve said something. I put you all in danger. I risked the business. Partners don’t do that.”

“No,” Sam said, an edge in her voice. “You should have told us because you’re going through some shit. You’re in pain. And we let you deal with it on your own. Families don’t do that.” She stepped between Cody and Joel and put an arm around each of their shoulders, closing the circle. “You aren’t alone. We got you.”

They laced themselves together, each a thread in a single tapestry, with Sam an equal part. Remove her now, and the whole thing would unravel. Remove any of them, and it would all fall apart.

Joel cleared his throat. “Okay, seriously, can we just kill the fucking bugs now?”

Reggie smiled. “Yeah, let’s go kill the fucking bugs.”

“Language,” Sam said with a smile.

The Notches squared up and readied to cut through another swarm. Cody lowered the cargo bay hatch, and the war began.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Rever Space Station

The Notches ran down the ramp like little leaguers storming an ice cream stand after a game. Reggie unleashed a wave of Gatling fire that cut through dozens of bugs in seconds. The others moved to the flanks. With each swing of Sam’s sword, she cut a handful of ShimVens in half. Joel and Cody moved up the opposite flank, dual blasters and scatterblaster painting the walls with bug guts.

Cody’s assumption was correct—these bugs were bigger than the others. The ones they encountered on the Waystation and Ludite were roughly equivalent to a medium-sized dog, a golden retriever. These things were approaching Saint Bernard size. But their increased size made them slightly slower. They didn’t swarm as fast, and they made for bigger targets. However, they did have tougher exoskeletons.

The Notches pressed forward, never relenting in their attack, and soon, they had taken the landing bay.

“Clear,” Reggie yelled.

“Secure the area,” Sam said. “We don’t want any surprises.”

The Notches surveyed the room, putting down any bug that so much as twitched. When they were satisfied all the ShimVens were thoroughly dead, they met at the landing bay entrance.

“Weapons check,” Sam said.

They reloaded, checked, checked again, and made ready. Cody displayed the floorplans for Rever on his wristcom.

“StrobeNet offices are one level up. We make for this stairwell. Figure we clear ground zero first, then we can clear the rest of the station.” They all nodded in agreement. “This floor we’re on looks like a maze,” Cody said. “Divided into offices and then subdivided and divided some more. We stay together, or we risk getting separated and lost. Also, that means visibility is shitty, and there’s plenty of corners for bugs to hide behind.” They all nodded again. Cody held his hand over the door controls. He counted down from three and then pressed the button.

The second the door slid open, Reggie peppered the room with Gatling fire, establishing a clear entry point for the rest of the team. Joel expanded on that entry point with two grenades. Cody jumped to the front of the line and blasted a few more holes in the swarm.

The landing bay was connected to a long corridor, which branched several times at regular intervals before opening up into a large room with an open floor plan that had been chopped up into a cubicle farm. The corridor was clear, but the thunderous skittering of thousands of legs told them the floor was anything but.

They moved as a unit, slow and steady up the corridor, pausing at each corner to check for bugs. They encountered only a handful before reaching the end of the corridor, the cube farm. The stairwell was visible from their position, just on the other side of the cubicles. Unfortunately, the swarm was not completely visible. It provided a false sense of security, alluding to an empty room, a clear path.

The Notches knew that was a lie. They could hear the clatter of the ShimVens’ pincers, and not being able to see them was unnerving and dangerous. They much preferred being able to see their enemy, to know where the threat would come from.

“We need to flush them out,” Sam said. “We can’t chart our path through there if we don’t know where they are. Maybe we can corral them to one side, open us a path along the wall.”

“On it,” Joel said, plucking a grenade from his belt. “Cover your eyes,” he said to the others.

He pulled the pin and hurled a grenade against the left wall. The flashbang erupted with a burst of light like a star being born. The bugs shrieked and tripped over each other and cubicle walls as they scrambled to get away from the source of their pain.

“Move,” Reggie said.

The team ran to the left wall of the cube farm. Joel and Cody executed the few bugs still in their path as they ran along the wall. They would have made it through clean if a collection of desks didn’t smash into the wall in front of them, blocking their path.

They all swung to the right, looking for the source of the attack. Standing out among the crowd of bugs was one ShimVen twice the size of the others, almost as big as a horse, its pincers as long as Reggie’s arm. Joel was the first to act, nudging the rest from their shock. He unloaded his dual blasters in the big one’s face, but the shots had little effect, seeming only to agitate the thing.

“Keep the little ones off me,” Sam said as she sprinted toward the big bug. Reggie switched the Gatling gun to a narrow field of fire. Joel ran behind Sam, blasting the bugs as they tried to flank her. Cody dropped to a knee and pulled out his sniper rifle.

A dozen ShimVens stood between Sam and the big one. She sliced the legs out from under the first one she reached. When it dropped, Sam used it as a springboard and jumped over the other little bugs. She drove her sword into the back of the big one’s head as she came down on top of it. It let out a roar that seemed to scare the other bugs as much as it did the Notches.

“Go!” Sam yelled.

A path had opened to the stairwell, with the bugs distracted. Reluctantly, the guys did as she said. Once they exited the cube farm, they took up a defensive position and shot as many bugs as they could, trying to thin the swarm between them and Sam.

The big one bucked, trying to throw Sam off its back. She drove the sword in further and gripped it tighter. “Grenade!” she yelled to Joel. “Behind me!”

Joel plucked a concussion grenade off his belt. “I hope she knows what she’s doing,” he muttered.

He pressed the trigger and threw it high over the big ShimVen. The conc grenade exploded behind Sam, blasting a hole in the swarm and sending the big one stampeding straight for the guys.

The ShimVen kicked dozens of its smaller companions out of the way as it barreled forward. The guys raised their weapons. Sam pulled her sword free of the big one’s back and, with a swift and powerful blow, took its head clean off. The giant bug fell forward and slid to a halt at the guys’ feet. Sam stepped off like she would an escalator.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They ran into the stairwell, and Joel barred the door with an electromagnetic lock that he’d rigged up on the ship. The Notches made their way up to the second level, pausing at the door a moment to catch their breath.

“So,” Cody said through gasps. “That was the easy part. Ground zero is on this level. It’s going to be worse.”

“At least I didn’t die in a cubicle,” Joel said. “That’s my worst nightmare.”

Cody brought up the floorplan for level two. The good news was that this floor wasn’t a cube floor like the hell they’d just left behind; this level belonged to the bigwigs. Fancy offices, more open space, even a fountain in the center to really tie it all together. The difference between levels one and two was the difference between upper management and worker bees.

Cody wondered how many worker bees had gotten mauled as they tried to find their way out of that maze of cubicles, while the bigwigs just locked their office doors.

He highlighted the StrobeNet offices on the map. They were almost on the complete opposite end of the floor. Of course.

Sam paced as she studied the map. “That’s a lot of ground to cover,” she said. “It’s open, which means we can see the enemy, but they can see us, too.” She paused. The rasp of her respirator filled the stairwell with a haunted echo. “Here’s what we do.”

She detailed a plan of attack, and each of them nodded, acknowledging their part in it. They stood like a SWAT team ready to breach. Just months ago, the guys had been sitting in their basement or bedroom, a VR set strapped to their faces as they carried out this same mission in a simulated environment. Safe, insulated, pretend. Their entire lives had been insulated.

Reggie held up three fingers and counted down. They breached, putting their very real bodies in danger, but living very real lives. Real consequences. Real risk. Real reward. Real glory.

Cody popped the door. Reggie went first, firing a wide spray from his Gatling. Joel went next, crouched low so Cody had a clear shot. Joel swung around Reggie and dropped to his knees. He pulled a rectangular device from his belt about six inches long. He set in on the floor and reinforced it with duct tape—no matter the technological advancements of the human race, nothing will ever replace duct tape. Cody and Sam took the flanks, their only priority to keep the bugs off Joel and give him time to do his job.

Joel pulled two more rectangular devices from his belt and taped them down at regular intervals. He connected them all with a silver cord, which formed a slight arc.

“Ready,” Joel said.

Reggie ceased fire. Joel pressed a button on the center device, and a blue energy shield projected upward from it, then from the others. The mobile shield system did not connect, leaving a narrow window of open space between them that they could walk behind.

The Notches piled behind the shield. Cody pulled his sniper rifle from his back, the stock and barrel extended from the main unit. He took up his position, taking aim through the breaks in the shield. Meanwhile, Reggie eyed the heat gauge on his Gatling. The second it read cool, he stepped around the front of the shield and unleashed another wide spray. Joel and Sam followed, clearing the flanks of the riffraff that managed to get around Reggie.

When Reggie’s heat gauge climbed, he let his Gatling fall to his side and hang by its strap. He drew the pincers from his belt. Joel and Sam swept around to the front, keeping the swarm off Reggie as his Gatling cooled down, and Cody sniped from his nest behind the shields.

They fell into a rhythm and steadily gained ground. Reggie would push the swarm back, the team would advance, and the others would keep the bugs at bay until the Gatling was ready to go again.

They had advanced halfway through the level before the whole plan went to shit.

Cody zoomed through his sniper scope to the door of the StrobeNet offices. “Another fifty yards,” he said to the team. “Just keep doing what we’re doing, and we’ll be there in no time.”

Before he could zoom out and focus on the battle, he noticed something—a crack in the wall of the StrobeNet office. About a foot long, starting on the floor and running up… Not anything to get worried over. This whole station was falling to shit. Except, as he watched, the crack grew another foot. It kept growing, spreading up and outward like a spider web.

It only stopped when four big ShimVens rammed through the wall from inside the office, crumbling it like it was made of sand.

Mini-bosses.

The size of buffalo, they came stampeding toward the Notches, trampling their own kind without concern.

“Fall back!” Joel yelled through comms.

The team didn’t need Joel’s recommendation. The shaking ground and thunderous roars were enough to send them running. Joel couldn’t find a shot between the team and swarm. He pulled a small knife from his belt instead and set to cutting the duct tape off the shield generators. He’d freed two by the time the team had reached him.

“Keep going. Into the stairwell,” he directed.

They didn’t hesitate, running past him.

The big ShimVens had cleared through the swarm and were only yards from trampling Joel. He cut the last generator free. Grabbing one of the cords that connected them, he dragged all three back toward the door, causing the shield to wave back and forth erratically.

The big bugs slowed for fear of the shield, but they did not stop.

Joel dove into the stairwell, pulling the shield behind him. It stuck against the door jam, forming a barricade between the Notches and the big ShimVens.

The team made to retreat to level one before remembering the electromagnetic lock that was keeping the swarm at bay downstairs.

They were trapped.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Rever Space Station

Cody used to have panic attacks as a kid. Whenever he faced a stressful situation—a test, a birthday party, a baseball game—he would break out in a cold sweat, and his heart would start racing. Then he met Reggie. A cool kid, by all conventional standards: popular, good at sports, good looking, charming. He had every right to torture Cody the way all the other popular kids did. But he didn’t. His niceness wasn’t an act, either. It was wholly genuine. When he noticed Cody’s attacks, he used that genuine niceness to help. He sat with Cody, talked to him, got him water. He was always calm.

Eventually, Cody stopped having the attacks. He became more confident, more sure of himself, largely because of Reggie’s help. He hadn’t had a panic attack since junior prom.

However, he felt like he was about to have one now.

Cody sat on the top step, head between his knees, trying to take a deep breath. The big bugs pounded on the shield behind him. He felt the reverberations run up his back.

Joel ran up the stairs; he’d been checking on the level one door. “Still fucked,” he said. “The swarm is clawing at that thing like there’s candy inside.” Darkness fell over his face. “I guess there is candy inside. We’re the candy.”

“Nothing is fucked,” Sam said. “We’ll find a way out of this.” She scanned the ceiling and walls for vents or air ducts, something they could crawl through. She didn’t see anything. “Cody, bring up the plans. There’s got to be another way out of this stairwell.”

He didn’t respond. His head was still between his knees.

Sam clapped him on the back, jarring him. He shot upright. A wave of nausea and dizziness hit him.

“You with us?” Sam asked. “We need those plans.”

Cody didn’t answer. He felt like if he opened his mouth, he would vomit.

Reggie set the Gatling down on the landing between levels one and two. He approached Cody slowly, calmly, and sat a few steps down from him. He looked up at Cody and saw the familiar look in his friend’s eyes, the look of panic, of fear, the crushing weight of anxiety.

“Remember the VRE finals?” Reggie said.

Cody seemed surprised by the question. He nodded.

“I really thought we were going all the way,” Reggie said. “We worked so hard. Trained. Put in so much time and energy. I was positive that gaming was our future, and that tournament was our first step, our foot in the door. I had a vision of exactly how our lives would go after that. I don’t think I ever told you guys.”

Reggie leaned on his elbow and stared upward like he was looking at the sky. “First, we’d win, of course. Then we’d land a major sponsorship deal. The sponsors would set us up in a sweet house with cutting-edge gaming gear so we could play together all the time. We’d join the intergalactic gaming circuit. Tour the galaxy, taking on the best teams, spreading our name and reputation. Rub elbows with celebrities. Fancy parties. People would want to know us.” He smiled like he could see that picture up there in his imaginary sky.

“We would retire eventually,” he continued, “and use our sizable fortune to buy our own gaming team. We’d manage and coach it together. Always together. Always gaming. Always having fun.”

He looked down from the fake sky. “Then what actually happened? We lost. Didn’t even make top ten. And all my plans went to shit.” The profanity coming out of Reggie’s mouth shocked some color back into Cody’s cheeks. “We washed out before we even really got started. And it was because I made a stupid play. I got ahead of myself, charged into the jungle before Joel cleared the lane. I went home that night and fell apart. I had a panic attack, like the ones you used to have. Then my phone rang. It was you.”

Cody nodded. He remembered the call.

“You said we should go get a cheeseburger and game at your place,” Reggie said. “That pulled me out. You saved me.”

“Because I got you a burger?” Cody asked.

Reggie stood and held his hand out to Cody. “Because you kept me moving.”

Cody looked at his friend’s hand like he’d never seen it before. Then he grabbed it and stood, more color returning to his cheeks.

“Right now, I’m going to keep you moving…but going forward, you need to keep us moving,” Reggie said, clapping Cody on the shoulder. “Find us a way out of here.”

Cody nodded, finding his breath. He pulled up the floorplan and studied it again with new eyes. After a moment, he trotted down to the level one door, then back up, glancing up from the plans to the walls and ceiling as he went.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he said, “There’s no way out of here.”

“Goddammit!” Joel shouted. “After the touching story and everything? I got serious feels from that, and we’re still going to die?”

“That’s not what I said,” Cody said with a smirk.

“Now is not the time to be playing word games with me,” Joel said. “I’m freaking out, here.”

Cody enlarged the floorplan, so they could all see. “Look here.” He pointed to several spots on the screen. “These are structural weak points. If we damage them, the entire stairwell will collapse.”

“Not seeing how that would be a good thing,” Joel said. “Getting crushed by tons of steel doesn’t sound like a win.”

“It does if it’s not us getting crushed,” Cody said, his smirk growing.

Joel bit the inside of his lip. “I’m getting a sick feeling in my guts, man. I don’t think I’m going to like this plan.”

“No,” Cody agreed. “I don’t think you will.”

* * *

Joel placed the last charge on the final weak point at the bottom of the stairwell, then rejoined the others at the top. “Awful plan is a go,” he said, giving them all an exaggerated thumbs-up.

“It’s not often that I agree with Joel,” Sam said. “But are you sure about this?”

Cody scrolled through the floorplan again, muttering to himself like he was doing calculations in his head. “No.”

Joel sighed. “You are the worst at being reassuring.”

“This is a huge gamble,” Cody said. “But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

Reggie hoisted his Gatling and slung it over his shoulder. “Then we’d better get to it.”

He stood at the top of the stairwell, his Gatling trained on the shield that held the swarm at bay. Cody knelt in front of the level one door. Joel stood at his side, his scatterblaster ready.

“Once this lock comes off, you unleash hell,” Cody said.

Joel nodded.

Cody grunted then counted down from three. He removed the lock. He scurried out of the way and threw the lock to Sam, who was standing on the landing between levels one and two.

The door swung open.

Joel opened fire, keeping the level one swarm from pouring into the area. Sam bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time. She jumped, planted her foot on the wall next to the level two door, and used the leverage to springboard up and grab the handle of her sword, which was embedded in the wall. She used her momentum to swing forward and up and perch on her sword like a bird. She slammed the maglock onto the steel rafter that ran up the wall. It activated and stuck in place.

“Good to go!” she yelled.

Joel sprinted up the stairs for part two. He dropped down by the level two door.

“Ten seconds,” Reggie said.

Joel deactivated the shield, grabbed the shield generators, and dropped to his belly. Reggie opened fire on the big ones, keeping them back, but not killing them. Once he was clear of the fire, Joel threw the generators to Sam. She pressed the middle generator to the lock. It stuck. She activated the shield, and a glowing, blue platform appeared.

“Cody, let’s go!” Joel shouted as loud as he could, praying Cody could hear him over the sound of gunfire.

He must have, because he began backing up the stairs, still unloading his dual pistols at the swarm that was now pouring into the stairwell. Joel drew his scatterblaster and fired down the stairs.

The heat gauge on Reggie’s Gatling began to creep into the red. “I’m running hot! Got to move!”

Cody turned and ran up the stairs. He jumped and grabbed the sword handle. Sam, dangling over the edge of the shield platform, grabbed his wrist and helped him up on top of it. Joel holstered one blaster and patted Reggie on the shoulder, signaling that he was making the climb. Cody and Sam hauled Joel up.

The heat gauge flashed a warning. Reggie had pushed it past its limits, and the core was overheating—but if he let off the trigger, he’d get overrun. He backed away from the door, swinging around to pepper the advancing swarm from level one, buying him a few precious milliseconds. He kept backing up until he was under the shield barrier, then he held up his hand.

Sam and Cody grabbed him. As they hauled him up, Reggie slipped out of his weapon’s strap and tossed the Gatling as far down the stairwell as he could.

As he rolled onto the shield platform, he shouted, “Down!”

They all piled on top of each other, huddling in the middle of the platform as the Gatling exploded. The rush of heat sucked away their breath and vaporized all of the ShimVens in the stairwell. The Notches foolishly allowed themselves a moment of relief before the shaft filled again.

“Here’s hoping we don’t die,” Joel said as he took a trigger switch out of his pocket.

Cody grabbed his wrist before he could press it. “Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?” Joel demanded.

Cody didn’t answer. His eyes were on the doorways, watching the bugs pile up. The volume of bugs rushing in was like water through a dam at first. Then it slowed to a trickle. Then it stopped. The stairwell was full. The entirety of the surviving swarm from levels one and two was in there with them.

“Now,” Cody said.

Joel pressed the button, and the entire stairwell exploded.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rever Space Station

Joel first blew something up when he was six. One of his action figures. He strapped the poor bastard to a rocket and launched him into space. The launch failed, of course. He never made it to space. Blew up well before breaking atmosphere and fell back to Earth in the form of hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic.

Joel’s fondness for explosions was largely discouraged by his parents and teachers and all other adults, but he never stopped pursuing it. It was one of the things that made him a target for other kids. They thought he was a freak, that he was going to build a bomb and blow up the school. They never understood that it wasn’t about the excitement of the explosion for him; it was the excitement of understanding why the explosion occurred and knowing how to make it happen.

He’d always been obsessed with learning how things worked, why they worked and what made everything tick. He took machines apart and put them back together. The toaster, every clock in the house, the engine in his father’s car. He took them apart as many times as he needed to in order to understand what made them function. Once he understood that, he put them back together as many times as he needed in order to understand how to make them work better.

It wasn’t a hobby that endeared him to many people. But, eventually, he learned how to apply his approach to people as well. Essentially, people are just machines. A system of parts that function as a whole to reach preprogrammed outcomes. He learned what made them tick and learned how to endear himself to them. He learned how to charm them, to talk his way into and out of situations.

But it was a tactic, not a natural trait. He used it, but it did not come naturally. He never had to use it on the Notches, though. Since childhood, they were the only people with whom he felt he could genuinely be himself.

“Holy fucking shit,” Joel screamed, but he could barely hear himself.

The stairwell was filled with dust and smoke and debris. He couldn’t see a foot in front of his face. He nudged his way through the tangle of arms and legs, toward the edge of the shield platform. He felt where it gave way to nothingness, but couldn’t see through the thick of the debris toward the ground. He wanted to see his handiwork. Though, he supposed he was seeing it, in a way—the destruction was the byproduct.

“Everyone good?” Reggie felt his way through the haze of dirt, touching each of the Notches, making sure they were still there.

Sam and Cody both answered that they were okay, just dazed from the explosion.

They waited for what seemed like hours—but must have been only minutes—for the dust to settle. They needed to see the door if they were going to climb down. No sense surviving all this if they were just going to jump down into a wasteland of jagged metal and concrete and bugs that may still be alive enough to gut them.

Joel’s legs began to cramp. All his muscles started to ache. He tensed everything, trying to stay atop the platform.

But the dust did settle, and the door came into view. That feeling of a successful launch rushed through his veins like wildfire. He’d developed hundreds of inventions and innovations over the years, and each one had dozens of iterations, improved upon through dozens of test runs. Failure was part of the process, but there was no better feeling of success than watching your invention do the exact thing you designed it to do; become the thing that you dreamed up in the dark hours of the night.

That feeling didn’t last.

As visibility grew, and his hearing returned, Joel realized that, though the charges he rigged did blow, they didn’t fully succeed. The stairwell still stood, but barely. A huge portion of the swarm had been killed, but enough still lived that they didn’t have a clear path from the platform through the door.

He had failed.

And they didn’t have much time on that platform left. The battery monitor on the generators flashed, indicating that they were dangerously low. They had two minutes before the shields died. And then they’d die.

“Shit,” Joel said.

The others hadn’t noticed yet. Well, the guys hadn’t noticed yet; he could see it on Sam’s face, the realization of their predicament.

His mind raced off in a dozen different directions, the same way it did whenever he faced a problem that needed resolving. A dozen different roads toward the solution. Six of them ran into walls immediately. Three more fell off cliffs a little ways down the road past that. Then two wrapped around and collided into each other. That left one.

The initial plan to bring down the stairwell was sound. Blow the weak spots, and the structure would crumble. The concrete along the walls would come down, too, and only the girders, to one of which the shield generators were attached, would stand.

But the force of the explosions hadn’t been enough. By just a touch. The cracks ran from the weak points through the walls, nearly joining, like arthritic fingers reaching out for each other. They just needed one solid jolt of force.

Joel placed a hand on Reggie’s shoulder and one on Cody’s, and stood, careful not to displace any of the others and push them over the edge of the platform. As soon as he stood, he saw the twitch on Sam’s face. She knew what he was about to do, and she was going to try to beat him to it. He knew she would. She’d only been part of the team for a short while, and she tried to hide behind the façade of the cold, badass mercenary, but he saw through that. Like his own disguise, hers slipped around the Notches because it wasn’t necessary.

They would need her. Even after he did this, the others wouldn’t be out of the woods yet. They needed to still clear the station, and who knew what they’d find on the rest of level two? Sam would make sure they were safe. Cody and Reggie needed a badass, not an engineer. Sam would get them to safety. That’s all he cared about.

He jumped.

Cody and Reggie both screamed, but they were so surprised that they just made noises of shock instead of words. The fall felt like a slow descent. Too many thoughts flashed in Joel’s head, things he didn’t want to see. His home. His family. Gaming with the guys. Things he wanted to hold on to when he needed to be letting go.

His feet slammed into the landing between levels one and two. Some ShimVens shrieked with surprise and fell over themselves as they skittered backward. The stairwell shook. Joel had landed on a fault line, triggering the final shockwave they needed. Chunks of concrete fell off the walls, striking the stairwell, adding to the momentum of destruction.

Vibrations ran up his legs. And then he was weightless. He would fall among the thousands of pounds of metal and rock and bug. This dank, musty stairwell would be his grave.

The stairwell finally gave way. It let go. He let go.

Chapter Thirty

Rever Space Station

But something didn’t let go.

Joel froze in place as everything fell down around him. Sam had grabbed him by the collar. She had pulled her sword free and jumped the second after he did, stabbing her weapon into the girders on the way down, then she had grabbed him by the collar. They dangled over death.

“Sorry I ruined your moment,” Sam said, coughing through the cloud of debris.

“You’re forgiven,” Joel said.

Cody and Reggie climbed from the platform to the level two doorway. Reggie found an emergency firehose just inside level two, and they lowered it down to pull Sam and Joel to safety.

The Notches collapsed, exhaustion and relief getting the better of them.

“Well,” Joel said, his voice hoarse from inhaling the concrete dust. “That happened.”

“How about we get through this job without any more noble self-sacrifice?” Cody said.

They all chorused, “Agreed.”

After a moment of rest, the Notches stood.

Joel was out of grenades. Reggie’s Gatling was gone. They were all banged up and could barely breathe from inhaling the remains of the collapsed stairwell. But they were feeling good. None of them could explain it. They had very little to feel good about. They were always teetering on being broke, they almost died all the time, they stank of dead bugs, and every bone and muscle and joint screamed at them. But they were alive. And they were together. And that’s all that mattered.

They encountered a handful of stragglers on level two. Sam almost felt guilty for putting them down. These were the rare ShimVens that didn’t follow the herd into a death trap. They wanted to live more than they wanted to swarm, an intriguing example of freedom among a colony. But when confronted, those bugs tried to bite the Notches’ heads off, too, and eliminating the entire swarm was part of the contract, so they needed to go.

The extravagance of level two shone even through a thick layer of bug shit. Offices for corporations they’d all heard of, corporations that had become so interwoven with people’s daily lives that it was easy to forget that they required offices with administrators, and weren’t self-sustaining organisms. The largest social media platforms. Media companies. Digital marketplaces.

And then there were the ones they hadn’t heard of, the ones that may have been an even bigger part of their lives—pharmaceutical companies, agribusinesses, tech manufacturers. The companies that produced everything they used every day. StrobeNet was one of those companies. Not a household name, but found in every household.

Cody gave Reggie his dual blasters while he used the sniper rifle. Sam drew her sword, and Joel his scatterblaster. The gang stood at the door of ground zero. They exchanged a look of understanding. “This is it,” they silently said to each other. “The end.”

A strange sense of calm passed between them when they expected to feel the typical anxiety and fear of impending death. Each of them was stronger than the first time they’d stepped on a station to face a swarm. Sam was stronger than when the guys had found her in that bar. And when each thread is reinforced then woven together, the tapestry becomes that much stronger.

They braced for hell and opened the door.

What they found was…nothing. The StrobeNet offices were empty. Not a single bug.

“That was the entire swarm?” Sam asked of the bugs now dead at the bottom of the stairwell.

“I guess so,” Cody said. He gestured to the empty egg sacs on the walls. “This is definitely the origin point, though. I guess the swarm just wasn’t as big as we anticipated.”

Their toughest battle yet, their closest brush with death. The whole thing ended with a shrug.

They examined the offices as a precaution, ensuring that they were empty. Not even a straggler or a coward hiding in the wall panels; not that Joel would have noticed. A bug could have been gnawing on his leg, and he would have kept on marveling at the equipment on display.

“Each of these workstations has the latest V-Ramp monitors.” He stood in the workstation of someone named Peter Tooney, according to the name placard. “You know what the contrast ratio is on these? Incredible.” His eyes took in the cutting edge computer gear, VR stations for interpersonal communications, even the ergonomic chairs that didn’t look like chairs. “This place is legit,” Joel said.

“And it’s got a great view,” Reggie added. He stood on a loft that was the CEO’s office space; he’d believed in the open concept approach to design, apparently. The entire wall was a bank of viewing windows. With the carnage behind and below him, Reggie looked out on a field of stars, glowing blue and pink.

The others joined him, feeling entitled to a moment of beauty and peace. They stood shoulder to shoulder and watched the stars blink in and out.

“The Sorisayan Star Meadow,” Cody informed them. “It’s on the list of top ten ‘must see places’ in the system.”

Reggie spread his arms, wrapping them around Joel, Cody, and Sam. “We can cross it off our list now.”

Joel was about to mask his discomfort with a sarcastic comment, but the entire star meadow suddenly blinked out of existence, catching him off guard. “For a must-see place, it’s not much to look at.”

A dark shadow drifted in front of the window, blackness swallowing everything.

Cody stepped up to the glass, squinting like he could see through into the blackness. “I haven’t read anything about an eclipse.

Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him away from the glass. “I don’t think this is an eclipse.”

“What else could it be?”

Cody immediately wished he hadn’t asked the question. The darkness cracked and allowed a long, thin line of white to come through. It grew wider, like a yellow hole had opened in the center of space and was swallowing it all. When it stopped growing, the Notches realized what it was.

An eye.

A moment spread in front of the Notches that was like space bending in on itself—infinity inside the fraction of a second. They stared at that eye for a long time, trying to comprehend its enormity and their insignificance in comparison. They failed to comprehend anything.

And then the eye was gone, and they were left feeling empty. They’d been hollowed out. Cold. Because as the eye fell away, the owner of it came into full view.

A ShimVen the size of a moon. It drifted away from them like a leaf on the wind, its spindly legs fluttering. Its tail guided it away as it swam through space, using an unseen energy source—dark energy, possibly. Its segmented body turned and took a wide arc as it came back around to face them. It charged.

The Notches couldn’t move. What would be the point? What could they do to such a thing? What good would a scatterblaster or sword do to that? They were ants under the magnifying glass.

Darkness returned as the queen ShimVen opened its mouth. Then darkness conquered everything, as the queen swallowed the entire space station.

Chapter Thirty-One

Rever Space Station

“That just happened, right?” Joel said to the others, all still frozen in place. “I mean, I haven’t lost my mind? Or have I? I think I may prefer insanity at this point.”

Sam burst from her state of frozen fear. She turned and flipped down from the loft. She landed with a thud, her typical grace forfeited for speed. “Move your asses!”

The others scrambled after her.

“What’s the plan?” Reggie shouted after her.

“Get to the ship,” Sam answered. “That’s all I’ve got so far.”

“Good enough,” Reggie said.

They ran without regard for anything other than their goal. Sam leapt into the stairwell without pause, and landed hard, rolling her ankle on a slab of concrete. The guys lowered themselves before making the drop, minimizing the distance as much as they could. Pain shot through their legs as they landed, but they didn’t take time to assess the damage.

A small swarm still raged on level one. Being swallowed by their mother seemed to have set them into a frenzy. They were attacking each other and climbing up the walls. Sam cut any that came near in half, but most paid the Notches no mind.

The team sprinted through level one and did not slow until they reached Sonic. They boarded and made straight for the bridge. Cody crashed into the captain’s chair and stabbed at the instruments with his fingers.

“I’ve got control, but all the nav systems are down. What this bug is made of is interfering with the signals. I’m flying blind,” he reported.

Luckily, they weren’t far from the exterior of the space station; the exit was right behind them. Reverse, and they were out. But he had no idea what he would be flying into. The mouth of a ShimVen?

The ship rattled like it was caught in the throes of an earthquake. Cody fell out of his chair and clipped his head on the corner of the nav panel. He felt a hot trail of blood trickle down his face.

They weren’t in the bug’s mouth anymore. They were traveling down its throat.

The nav systems were down, but the networking functionalities were still up. Cody accessed the Rever’s system and opened the landing bay door. Then he threw Sonic into reverse. and they shot out of the space station, into the bug’s gullet. Cody spun the ship around.

“I can’t do this,” he said. “Nav system’s down, and there’s no light in here. I can’t see a thing. Can’t even fly manually.”

“Countermeasures,” Joel suggested.

“We aren’t under attack.”

“Pop flares,” Joel reminded him.

“You’re a genius.” Cody activated countermeasures, and a dozen flares launched in front of the ship, lighting their path out. He urged the ship forward at a cautious, yet quick pace.

“Problem one solved,” Sam said. “But we’ve still got one more. This thing’s mouth is closed. What do we plan to do about that?”

“When in doubt,” Joel said. “Blow shit up.” He sprinted out of the bridge and ran toward the cargo bay. Reggie ran after him.

Cody spoke through comms. “Whatever you plan on doing, you better do it fast, Joel. We’ll be coming up on the mouth real soon.”

“I got this,” Joel said.

Reggie caught up to Joel in the cargo bay. “You aren’t going to jump out of the ship, are you?”

“I tried to sacrifice myself once today. Don’t plan on doing it again.”

“Then what can I do?”

Joel pointed to the weapons locker. “Grab everything you can and dump it here.”

Reggie emptied the weapons locker—grenades, ammo, the couple of blasters they had left. Joel dumped his toolbox on the floor next to the pile. Then he began feverishly dismantling weapons and assembling them into the biggest hodgepodge of a bomb that Reggie had ever seen.

“Is that thing really going to work?” Reggie asked.

“One way to find out.” Joel grabbed one side of the bomb.

Reggie grabbed the other side, and they carried it to the airlock. “Granted, I’m not an engineer, but I didn’t see you put a detonator on this thing.”

“No time,” Joel said. “This is just one big ball of explosives.”

They set the bomb in the airlock. After, Joel ran to one of the lockers and began putting on the space suit.

“I thought you were done sacrificing yourself?” Reggie said.

Joel secured the helmet and picked up the sniper rifle. “I don’t plan on dying.” He pointed to the tether they used for spacewalking on the rare occasion a repair needed to be made while in motion. Joel had only used it once. “Hook me up.”

Cody squawked over the radio. “How’s it coming back there?”

“I’ll have the door open in no time,” Joel answered. Once he was connected, he stepped into the airlock alongside the bomb. “Let me know when the mouth is in sight.”

“Roger,” Cody answered.

“Is that bomb really going to kill this thing?” Reggie seemed skeptical.

“No,” Joel said. “But it’ll get her to open her mouth. This’ll just be a little tickle in her throat, hopefully enough to make her cough.” He pressed the button on his rifle, extending the scope and stock. “When Cody gives the word, you open the airlock. And be ready to haul me back in. I don’t want to be out there any longer than I have to be.”

Cody maneuvered the spaceship like he was navigating a double-mast schooner down a backyard creek—slow and steady. With only the light of the flares to go by, he had fifty yards of visibility at best; even at Sonic’s slowest cruising speed, that would give him only seconds to react to a sudden obstruction. He scraped the hull a few times along the inside of the queen’s throat.

At least, he thought they were in her throat.

“Look out!” Sam jabbed her arm in front of Cody’s face, partially obscuring the very danger she meant to point out. But the threat was big enough that he needed only to see part of it.

The path ahead ended abruptly. They hadn’t reached the mouth yet; they were still in the same long tunnel as before, only it just ended. In three seconds, so would the Notches.

In a flash of understanding, Cody reached a realization. The light of the flare didn’t show the tunnel ending; it was showing that there was a near ninety-degree turn straight up.

He pulled hard on the joystick and diverted the rear thrusters to the navigational jets on the underside of the bow. Sam disappeared from his side, falling back and bouncing off the chair, the controls, and through the bridge entrance. She slammed into the corridor wall outside.

Joel and Reggie were also thrown like ragdolls. The spacewalk suit offered some protection for Joel as he slammed into the airlock door, the one separating him from the void. The massive bomb landed with a thud next to him, neither crushing him nor exploding, for which Joel was very grateful. But Reggie had no protection when he smashed into the interior wall of the airlock. The impact forced the air out of his lungs, and a dark cloud fell over his vision. Unconsciousness clawed at his brain, his head swirling.

Joel screamed at him. “Stay awake! If you pass out, we all die!”

The sudden shift in gravity and orientation pushed Joel against the wall. He struggled against it, trying to grab the tether, to pull himself up.

Reggie’s head swam. He felt like he was underwater. Like he was under Jell-O, suspended in a pool of it. He told his arms to move, but they sat lifeless, like slugs on a moist log. The controls for the airlock were inches from his hand. Inches to travel before they reached the queen’s mouth. May as well have been miles.

Cody held the ship on a steady course. We must be in the throat now. That drastic of a change in direction means we’ve exited the gullet and entered the throat.

This was all guesswork, of course. Dissecting the creature was one thing; being inside of it was something different altogether. But if he was right, and they were in the throat, then that meant—

The narrow path he’d been flying suddenly opened up into a massive cavern, like a small moon. The mouth. They were in the mouth, and their hopeful exit was straight ahead. Some light shone through the cracks between the planetoid ShimVen’s teeth, illuminating the space.

“We’re in the mouth,” he reported over comms.

No answer. He looked over his shoulder, but Sam was gone.

“Anyone hearing me? We’re in the mouth. Whatever you guys plan on doing, you best do it now.”

He had enough room to maneuver if he needed to, but—

The queen must have heard his thoughts. The cave began to shrink.

“The queen is biting down,” Cody said, unsure whether anyone was listening. “Twenty seconds until we get chewed up.”

He throttled up a bit, choosing to have faith in whatever plan Joel had cooked up. Either it was faith, or he just had no other options. He wasn’t entirely sure what the difference was, anyway. If the plan didn’t work, they would crash into the queen’s teeth and explode. He would rather their death be an act of defiance.

Joel caught his tether in his left hand. He looped his rifle’s strap over his shoulder and grabbed the tether with his other hand. He tried to climb, but the sudden increase in thrust forced him back down.

“Reggie, open the airlock!”

Reggie didn’t move. He groaned something, but Joel couldn’t understand it through the blood pounding in his ears.

“Cody, deactivate the artificial gravity.”

“I can’t,” he answered from the bridge. “There’s a cooldown sequence for the gravity engine. If I shut it down without cooling it, then the whole thing could blow.”

“Could blow?” Joel said. “If the airlock doesn’t open up, we’ll definitely blow. That’s a risk we need to take.”

Maybe ‘could’ was the wrong word, Cody thought.

There was a seventy percent chance that the gravity engine would explode without the proper cooldown procedures, versus a one hundred percent chance of being ground between the queen’s teeth. He envied Joel’s black and white approach.

He flipped the plastic cover off the emergency shutdown button for the gravity engine. His finger hovered over it.

“Sorry,” he said to Sonic. “You were a great ship.”

“Don’t you push that goddamn button!” Sam’s voice was like a smack in the back of the head.

Joel looked up to see her standing next to Reggie, her face red and dripping sweat. Veins bulged in her neck as she fought against the force of the thrust.

“I got you,” she said, unclear to who.

Joel gripped his rifle. “Go!”

Sam opened the airlock. She collapsed next to Reggie, surrendering to the thrust.

The air, Joel, and his bomb were sucked out of the ship. Joel bounced around on the end of his tether like a fish trying to get off the line. The bomb fell behind as he was dragged away. Joel looked through his scope as best he could, his visor between him and the gun.

Cody’s voice echoed inside Joel’s helmet. “The queen’s jaws are closing, guys! Five seconds!”

Joel felt the world closing in on him. The weight of it. The claustrophobia. The impending unpleasant death by crushing or digestion.

None of that mattered now. Only the shot mattered…

Well, those things mattered a little. They were terrifying things. He was about to be swallowed by a bug twice the size of a space station.

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. Focused only on the shot.

The queen’s teeth were inches from piercing the hull.

Joel squeezed the trigger.

The bomb exploded. The queen’s mouth shot open, and a bellowing roar came howling up from her throat. The stars suddenly became visible.

Joel let loose a victory cry, the force of which, coming through their comms, made all the Notches wince.

“Hold tight,” Cody said.

He kicked the ship into full thrust until they were clear of the queen’s mouth. Then he throttled back so that Joel’s tether wouldn’t break.

“Get me back inside,” Joel said to Sam. “I just threw up in my helmet.”

Sam activated the winch that wound Joel’s tether. Once he was in the airlock, she closed the outer door and pressurized the room. Reggie came to as Joel was stepping out of his spacewalk suit.

“We’re not dead?” Reggie said.

Joel clapped him on the back. “No, we’re not dead.”

Cody’s voice came through the comms in what was becoming an unfortunately familiar, frantic tone.

“Guys, we’re totally dead.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sonic Shuttle

Sam rushed to the bridge. Joel helped Reggie, who was still unsteady on his feet, follow along after.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

Cody pointed to the rearview monitor. “That blast may have been enough to get the queen to open her mouth and let us out, but it did little else other than piss her off. She’s still coming at us, and she’s coming fast, her long tail making her fly, like an ugly-ass mermaid through water.”

“Can’t you just jump us out of here?” Joel asked.

Cody answered defensively. “The jump drive got knocked around a little while I was navigating us blind through the giant bug’s insides.”

“We can’t outrun it?” Reggie asked.

“We might be able to keep ahead of her moving at full thrust, but we won’t be gaining any ground if she keeps on us at her current pace, we’ll just be maintaining our distance. And we’ll burn through our fuel pretty fast. Plus, I have no way of knowing whether she’s moving at her full speed or not. She could pick up the pace right now and close the gap in seconds.”

“Remember the days when escaping from a massive bug’s stomach was reason to celebrate?” Joel said wistfully. “I wish I could’ve left a hundred bombs inside that bitch on the way out.”

Cody’s face lit up. “Maybe we did.”

Joel shook his head. “No, we definitely didn’t. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered.”

“The station,” Cody said. “That’s our bomb.”

“I don’t follow,” Reggie said.

Cody brought up the schematics on his wristcom then sent them to the monitor. He opened a file called The Final Redundancy on the station’s security protocols.

“Betty gave me complete access to Rever’s administrative files; everything on the station itself, nothing on the tenants. The station was built with the purpose of wooing giant corporations with the top funded R&D departments in the galaxy. To do that, Rever needed to convince potential clients that it could keep their confidential and proprietary data secure. This includes the best firewalls and cutting-edge cybersecurity.”

Joel groaned. “We’re racing a giant roach through space, and somehow, I’m bored.”

“If all of Rever’s cyber defenses failed,” Cody continued, “they offered the Final Redundancy. They operate on a closed network. All their servers are housed on the station. None of the information ever leaves. If someone managed to crack all their defenses, they would destroy the servers before any data could be downloaded, rather than let someone steal it. The servers would eject into space and explode. But with the station falling to shit, I doubt the ejection protocol would work. Even if it did, the servers wouldn’t be able to travel far enough from the ship before detonating because they’re stuck in the queen’s stomach. Once they blow, the station blows. And that will tear the queen’s insides apart.”

“Finally, you get to the exciting part,” Joel said. “Let’s do that. I vote for that.”

“The problem is—”

“Of course, there’s a problem,” Joel said, throwing up his arms. “What? We need to fly up the queen’s anus first?”

“We need to get close,” Cody said. “Not up-the-anus close, but close. We need to be within a thousand meters of the station to access its network.”

Sam shook her head. “That will put us right on top of it.”

“It’ll be snug,” Cody agreed. “It’s either that, or we try to jet. We might be able to get away from her, but, like I said, it’s a crap shoot.”

Reggie stood of his own power. “Even if we could run from this thing, that just means it will be left for someone else to deal with. It could demolish more stations, lay eggs on a planet somewhere. We have a chance to kill it. We have a chance to prove we’re more than just exterminators.”

Cody smiled. “Then who wants to pilot Sonic while I hack the shit out of that station?”

“Not I,” Joel said.

Sam pushed Cody out of the captain’s chair. “I got this.”

Cody displayed a freezeframe picture of the queen, taken from the ship’s hull cameras. He pointed to an area in the middle of the bug. “From what I saw when I dissected that ShimVen, I’m guessing Rever will be around here. Keep us in this area. Once I access the network, if I lose the connection, I’ll need to start all over. I’ll use my workstation.” Cody ran out of the bridge.

Joel shrugged. “What do we do?”

Reggie shrugged back. “Moral support?”

Sam strapped into the chair. “How about you man the turrets in case her majesty decides to try and eat us again?”

Joel and Reggie looked at each other, maintaining their shrug.

“Why not?” Joel said. “Nothing better to do. May as well go throw rocks into the Grand Canyon and try to fill it up.” He and Reggie left the bridge.

“All right,” Sam said to herself as she gripped the controls. “I got this.” She opened a ship-wide commlink. “Cody, let me know when you’re ready to go.”

Cody sat at his station. He mirrored his wristcom on the larger monitor and activated its holo-keypad projection. It had been a while since he’d tried a hack of this scope, if ever. He’d gotten into Rever’s system, but not this deep. The firewalls on Rever were the toughest in the galaxy, developed by the best software engineers, paid for by the richest of the rich. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck. He felt the blood flow, the energy build in his fingertips.

“Ready when you are,” he told her.

The gun turrets were the only component of the ship that had yet to be used. Reggie had completely forgotten about them until Sam mentioned it. He’d always thought they would be useless. He even initially suggested that they remove and sell them. What good were gun turrets when spraying for insects in the bowels of a space station? He was glad that Cody and Joel had out-voted him.

There was one turret on top of the ship, and one on the bottom, both accessible by ladder. Reggie climbed up through the narrow tunnel to the bubble-like compartment on top of Sonic. It was surprisingly spacious, offering enough legroom that his knees weren’t pressed into his chest. He strapped into the chair and switched on his turret.

Joel climbed down to his turret and did the same. “I’ve done some tinkering with the targeting system since you were in here last.”

Reggie didn’t remember what the targeting system was like to begin with. “How so?”

“Press that green button on the panel,” Joel said.

Reggie looked for a green button after he scanned for a panel. He felt he was just as likely to blast a hole in the hull as he was to hit an enemy. He vowed to train on these things if they survived this.

He found the button and pressed it. A headset that looked like a VR mask descended from a compartment in the ceiling of the turret bubble. He put it on.

A wave of nausea hit him as his gut flip-flopped, and his head swam. He was suddenly in space, surrounded by a vast sea of nothing. His mind struggled to reconcile with his body. Even though he was floating outside, Joel sounded like he was standing right next to him.

“I rigged a VR headset up to the targeting system.” Joel sounded like a kid on Christmas giving the post-morning rundown of all the gifts he’d gotten. “They’re jacked into cameras mounted directly on the turrets.” He paused, clearly waiting for a response. When it didn’t come, he said, “Dude, why are you not more excited about this? I just turned our ship’s defenses into a first-person shooter.”

Reggie looked down and saw the hull and the turret mounted to it. His stomach settled as his mind registered what was happening. “No, this is amazing. I’m just trying not to puke.”

“Yeah, it takes some getting used to,” Joel said. “I puked all over myself when I was testing it.”

“Well, you’d better get used to it fast,” Sam cut in. “We’re about to do this thing.”

She took a deep breath and allowed time to slow as she studied the controls. It had been a while since she’d piloted a ship, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten how. She may be a little rusty, though. She hoped she could take her own advice and get used to it fast.

She pulled on the controls and steered the ship to port, dipping down and hitting a hard burn. The queen may have been able to swallow them like a crumb stuck in a fat man’s beard, but they were far more agile. The monstrous queen had no way of maneuvering so that she could snap her jaws down on the ship. She could try, though; getting broadsided by one of her legs would be more than enough to wipe Sonic from existence.

Sam weaved around the legs; they were large and moved slowly enough that she had no problems navigating where she needed to be. “Easier than I thought,” she muttered to herself, forgetting that she had opened a ship-wide channel.

Joel’s sigh sounded like the ship had sprung an oxygen leak. “Never say things like that before the job is done.”

Sam dismissed him. “You within range, Cody?”

“Yeah, this is perfect,” he answered. “Just hold us here a bit, and I should be able to get this done in no time, easy as pie.”

Another sigh from Joel. “It’s like you two have forgotten everything that’s happened in the last few weeks.”

“You superstitious, Joel?” Sam asked. “’Speak the Devil’s name and he shall appear’ sort of thing?”

“No, I’ve just seen enough horror movies.”

Cody typed furiously on his holo-keyboard. Bypassing Rever’s cyber defenses was like trying to trim a garden of seaweed on the bottom of the ocean. The objects of his attack seemed to simply glide just out of his reach. Instead of cutting through them in one swoop, he needed to individually pluck them from the ground. He could do it, but it would take much longer than he’d hoped.

Sam and the queen played the galaxy’s most boring game of tag. Every time the bulky behemoth moved, it telegraphed when and where it would move to. Sam effortlessly adjusted, always keeping underneath the queen, hidden in her sizeable blind spot.

“I thought this would be much harder,” Sam admitted.

“Oh my god!” Joel shouted.

Barely was he able to grunt his frustration before his fears of tempting fate were validated. Several dozen projectiles the size of sedans suddenly emerged from the underside of the queen. They ejected with an initial burst of force, and then floated like space garbage.

“You guys seeing this?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Reggie answered. “If she’s trying to hit us, she’s got terrible aim.”

The projectiles began to move like something was clawing at their insides. Suddenly, winged ShimVens burst out of them, covered in green slime and squirming like homicidal newborns. Their wings sputtered, reminding Sam of watching videos of newborn giraffes learning to walk. Unlike giraffes, the ShimVens had their legs under them in seconds, their tails guiding and propelling them forward as they charged at Sonic. The question of how they used dark energy to move through space was a fascinating one, and not something they had time for right then.

Joel’s turret whirred to life, as he spun to face the oncoming swarm as if he were standing on the hull staring them down. “Just so everyone’s clear, I completely blame Sam for this.” A surge of adrenaline hit him, making his stomach tighten and his face flush. Then he squeezed the trigger, and a barrage of laser fire unleashed as if from his own hands. “Although, this is pretty goddamn sweet.”

Reggie opened fire from his turret on the top of the ship. “Yeah, it is. But I would prefer to be done with it as quickly as possible just the same. How much longer, Cody?”

Cody barely registered their voices, he was so focused on his monitor. Lines of code streamed by. To any not versed in the language, it would have seemed like a mess of letters and numbers, complete nonsense. But Cody saw the entire Rever station in it, and he had begun to set fire to it. “Another minute. I’ve zeroed in on the most vulnerable data. Once I begin the download, the Final Redundancy should activate.”

The swarm continued to grow, dozens more eggs dropping from the queen. The bugs burst into quick flashes of light and guts as Joel and Reggie gunned them down, but they would soon overpower Sonic’s defenses by sheer number.

A handful made it through the barrage and rammed the ship. The thuds echoed through the bridge.

“We’ve got contact,” Sam said. “They’re going to eat through the hull.”

“I’m almost there,” Cody said. “Just a few more seconds.”

Another handful of thuds rang through the bridge as more bugs latched onto the ship like ticks on a deer.

“We don’t have a few more seconds,” Sam said. “I’m pulling us out.”

“No!” Cody yelled. “If we break the connection now, I’ll need to start all over. We may not get another chance.”

“We definitely won’t if we’re dead,” she shot back, gripping the controls and readying the rear thrusters. She visualized the roll maneuver she’d need to pull to knock the bugs off. If that didn’t work, she’d put the ship in a hard burn and see how long those bastards could hold on.

“Trust me,” Cody said.

Sam stopped.

Trust was not something that came easy to Sam, either earning it or affording it to others. She’d never had a need for it. Saw it as a weakness, to be honest. But these guys had trusted her from the moment she stepped aboard.

She leaned back in the chair, releasing the controls. “All right,” she said.

And Sam did nothing. The hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She did nothing, as Reggie and Joel blasted bugs out of the sky, and Cody hacked Rever. Her life was completely in their hands, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She was all right with that.

Cody’s monitor flashed red, as he burned through the last firewall. A countdown activated, signaling the beginning of the download. The beginning of the Final Redundancy.

He shot up from his chair, arms extending in victory. “Hell yeah! I hacked the fuck out of that shit! We’re good to go, Sam. Get us—” His voice died in his throat. “Oh hell.”

The sudden shift in his tone was more jarring than the thud of bugs against the hull.

“What?” Sam said.

“If we pull away, we’ll break the connection,” Cody said. “If we break the connection, the download will stop. Then there won’t be a need for the Final Redundancy. Rever won’t blow.”

Joel yelled over the constant fire of his turret. “So we need to stay put? What’s the blast radius?”

“We’ll be incinerated,” Cody said. “Unless…” His voice drifted away with his mind, down a stream that navigated countless potential outcomes in seconds before coming to one very simple one. He ran from his workstation, toward the airlock.

Cody’s heavy breathing and rapid footsteps came over the open channel, telling Sam that he was about to do something very stupid.

“Unless what, Cody? Unless what? What are you doing?”

“The only thing I can,” he answered. “Rever is going to blow in thirty seconds. Kick the ship into a hard burn in twenty, or you’ll never make it far enough to escape the blast.”

“What are you going to do?” Sam demanded as she gripped the controls with sweaty palms.

“Trust me,” Cody said, ignoring her question.

It felt unfair now, like her faith had been weaponized. Again, she sat and waited and did nothing while someone else did it all. She gripped the controls tighter if only to keep her in her seat.

Cody’s breathless voice came over the open channel again. “I’m at the airlock. Ready the engines.”

“Tell me what you’re about to do first,” Sam said.

“There’s no time!”

An alert sounded on the main panel of the bridge, telling Sam that the inner door of the airlock had been opened, something entered the airlock, and then the door had closed behind it.

“Start the hard burn,” Cody said. “Get out of here.”

Another alert. The outer door of the airlock had opened. Whatever was inside was now out in the vacuum, close enough to Rever to maintain the connection.

“Five seconds until it’s too late!” Cody yelled. “Go!”

A lifetime passed from one to five. Sam debated with herself until she grew old and died, but in the end, she made the only call she could. She put the ship in a hard burn and sped away from Rever.

Time sped up, a blink passing from one to ten. Then Rever exploded.

Reggie and Joel had the perfect view. The queen’s midsection bulged and held for half a second before bursting wide open and spitting metric tons of guts and metal into the void. Green slime splattered all over the Sonic’s hull, and probably into the next galaxy.

Finally, it was over. The ShimVens were dead, the ones crowding the ship blasted away. The queen was dead. Cody was…

Sam ran from the bridge. Joel and Reggie met her in the corridor on the way to the airlock. None of them spoke. None of them dared breathe for fear that time would catch up with them and reveal the terrible truth—that they’d left their friend to die to save their own skins.

They stopped at the entrance to the cargo bay, all staring at the door like it could answer some unasked question; like it held some wisdom. Perhaps it did. It swung inward.

Cody stood in the doorway, confused by his friends’ pale, shocked faces.

He looked from one to the other. “You guys okay? You’re kind of blocking the way, and I have to pee.”

Sam dove forward first, and Reggie and Joel piled in after, all falling on top of Cody. They crashed to the floor, laughing and squealing with childish joy. Except for Cody. He squealed with discomfort under the weight of his friends.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.

“We thought you were dead,” Reggie said.

“We thought you went out the airlock,” Sam said.

Cody wriggled his way out from under them. “Why would I do that?”

“To sacrifice yourself like a warrior angel to save the rest of us,” Joel said.

Sam sat cross-legged on the floor, her cheeks glowing red from the wide smile. “To maintain the connection so Rever would blow.”

Cody held up his left arm. His wrist, normally hidden under his wristcom, was bare. “I tossed out my wristcom. It maintained the connection.”

Joel lay on his back. He exhaled like he was taking his first deep breath in years. “That is considerably less heroic.”

“But considerably smarter,” Reggie amended. He clapped Cody on the back. “We’re glad you’re so smart.”

They all followed Joel’s lead, lying down and feeling the cold metal press into their backs. Contented silence spread between them. The hard-fought battle was finally over. Finally won. Peace.

“So, we blew the station to smithereens,” Joel said. “But we did technically clear the infestation. Do we still get paid?”

Reggie groaned. “I’ll check with Betty.”

Eventually, they pulled themselves off the floor, showered, ate, slept. They moved forward. They landed more jobs, their reputation growing steadily as the crew others called when shit was really hitting the fan. They’d started as fuck-ups. Washouts. Buying a ship on a whim and falling ass-backwards into a backup plan that none of them had agreed on to grind the day away doing something none of them had ever intended to do.

Kill bugs.

They stank like rancid meat and bile most of the time. They were scarred from pincers and stingers and the trauma of nearly being eaten alive. But they did it all together. They wouldn’t have it any other way.

They were Intergalactic Pest Control—the best damn exterminators in the system. And so much more.

Sarah Noffke Author Notes

October 23, 2018

Michael says that I’m obsessed with villains. I think he’s probably right. When I think about my first series, I crafted the villain first. Then later I went back and figured out this protagonist business.

When we were coming up with the idea for this book, Michael was talking about badass mercenaries and I kept derailing the conversation, talking about monsters. And hence, giant space bugs were born.

It was super fun crafting this story alongside Michael. He helped to push me a bit more, finding the “better” idea. I came up with the “Notches” and he was fully responsible for Sam. When we put them together, they made a mismatched, but awesome team.

After finishing my last series, I knew I wasn’t done with space just yet. It’s a new genre for me, but also feels really natural. I think in some ways, we’re all obsessed with space and the stars.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a huge nerd. While most girls were flipping through Seventeen magazines as teenagers, I was gaming alongside my brother. We used to fight over the controller, and that really never stopped even when we grew up.

I remember one morning, I woke up to find him about to beat Ocarina of Time. He’d played all night. I would have been happy for him, except he’d played under my profile. Zelda is still my favorite game of all time. I don’t have as much time for games now as an adult, but I never lost the passion.

Thank you for reading. Thanks for supporting the books. And thanks for being awesome.

Michael Anderle Author Notes

October 23, 2018

THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well .

(I’ve always been good with opening with thank you… If it’s not good, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)

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Level Up Bitch!

Intergalactic Pest Control Book 2

Chapter One

There is nothing better than closing a huge account. The rush, the high you get when the client signs his name on the dotted line. You can practically hear your bank account filling up. It’s the greatest goddamn feeling.

And Wes Moony was feeling it right now. Oh man, he was feeling it deep. Because he hadn’t just landed any client; he’d landed the biggest client of his career, the latest in a long string of big clients: the largest producer of performance enhancing nanites in the galaxy. They were his, and so was their money.

Everyone on Jasob was in the throes of that feeling of victory. The entire station was in the midst of the biggest office party Wes had ever seen—three different caterers, an open bar, and some “party favors” brought by a rep from one of the pharmaceutical companies Wes had also landed recently. There was hardly an un-dilated pupil on the whole station.

Wes had just popped another party favor when Sinclair Thomas, the Jasob CEO, called all the employees into the main conference hall. Wes’s legs seemed to be moving without him, doing all the work so he could relax and enjoy the ride.

The crowd of Jasob employees was buzzing with an energy that tickled every part of Wes’s body. It danced on his fingertips, tasted like honey-soaked cake. He bumped into Sherry from accounting, a curvy brunette that laughed with her whole body. He started to apologize, but she forced the words back by shoving her tongue into his mouth. She pulled away just as he got a taste of her and was swept away by the river of Jasob employees flooding toward the stage that was erected at the front of the room.

The energy dancing across Wes’s body intensified.

Sinclair walked onstage with all the flair and circumstance of a rock star. And he was greeted as such. The people who spent most of their lives tucked in their cubicles, heads hanging, retinas burning away as they stared at monitors, wrists twisting and aching as they tapped away, had become a hedonistic mob.

Sinclair paused center stage and looked out at his people. He raised his arms in a dramatic gesture and signaled the launch of an impressive suite of pyrotechnics. The conference hall filled with thick smoke. The mob sucked it in like a cloud of weed smoke before the ventilators pumped it all out to prevent it from suffocating them.

“My people,” Sinclair declared. The crowd erupted. “We have done it. You have done it.” He paced the stage, building the energy in the room with each lap. “Jasob now has controlling market shares. We are number one!”

The crowd exploded again. The riotous applause and cheering morphed into a symphony of drug-induced color. Wes could taste their joy. It tasted like butterscotch.

“But, before I get into the details, let’s take a moment of silence for our comrades at StrobeNet.” Sinclair folded his hands in front of him and hung his head. As the crowd began to mimic him, he threw his arms wide and shouted, “Just kidding! Fuck them!”

The conference hall filled with more cheering. More color and butterscotch.

Wes put his fingers to his neck, feeling his pulse. It felt like a snake crawling beneath his skin in rhythm to the blink of the lights above. Fast, fast, slow. Fast, fast, slow.

“Shit,” he said to himself. “I took way too many of those party favors.”

“Those StrobeNet bastards are out on their asses today,” Sinclair continued. “Their shiny, state-of-the-art space station, the so-called ‘future of corporate technology and innovation in the industry’ is nothing but vapor. They failed miserably as possible, and the free market does not tolerate failure. StrobeNet’s clients began jumping ship immediately, and we were there to capitalize. We poached client after client, fighting tooth and nail to keep them from the losers at Layton and Chrisoff. And, as of this morning, we succeeded. The last of StrobeNet’s clients are ours!”

An assistant strolled onstage carrying a blue sack like she was Santa Claus. She opened it and held it out for Sinclair. He reached in and pulled out a handful of small, black tech boxes. He threw them out over the crowd like he was sprinkling feed over chickens.

“And that kind of diligence is always rewarded. Stellar-Art chips for all!”

The crowd surged toward the rain of swag. They elbowed each other, clawed at each other to reach them.

Animals, Wes thought, though he felt the need for the art chips swell in his chest.

He imagined his coworkers as mice. He became a cat. He batted them around, played with them before sinking his teeth into their necks. All the Stellar-Art chips were his. Everything was his.

“Wes Moony!”

His heart felt like it had been dropkicked from the inside of his chest. It had transformed into a rabid coyote, howling and running headlong into his ribs, bashing its own brains outs.

Every eye in the conference hall suddenly fell on him, pounced on him.

“Let’s give him a hand!”

The room erupted at Sinclair’s direction.

The noise wasn’t a symphony anymore. It was a riot of breaking glass, screeching tires and toppled trash cans. It smelled like burning garbage and tasted like ash.

Sinclair pointed to Wes. “This hardworking son of a bitch landed five of StrobeNet’s largest clients. We are number one now because of him. And for that—” Sinclair motioned to someone offstage. A second later, the same assistant who’d brought the blue bag drove onstage atop a new Zenith Astrobike. “I am sending you home with one of these!”

Wes’s rabid coyote heart went still. It turned into a fluffy, white bunny. Twitching nose. Cotton tail. Cutest goddamn thing you’ve ever seen. He tasted butterscotch again.

“Head on backstage to claim this sexy beast, Wes. You’ve earned it.”

The applause built as Wes waded through the crowd. It crawled into his ear and planted seeds that bloomed into flowers.

“Sweet fucking Uranus, I need to come down,” Wes said to himself.

He finally made it through the crowd, to the relatively calm and quiet area backstage. The assistant showed him to his new bike—the sweetest ride he’d ever seen, with hover capabilities, autopilot functionality, and speed settings that couldn’t possibly be legal on most planets.

But once the assistant left him alone to enjoy his prize, rather than mount the thing and let the joy flow through his body, he fell onto his ass and buried his face in his hands.

“Be cool,” he repeated to himself. He focused on his breathing and on the cold sweat forming on his brow. “This is a reward. I’ve worked hard. I’ve earned it. This is what I work for.”

He wiped away a bead of sweat before it rolled into his eye. That’s when he noticed the crate. A wooden box that stood waist-high and was big enough that he could have crawled into it if he wanted to. And he kind of did want to. But it wasn’t the crate itself that had caught Wes’s attention; it was what was written on the side of it: Layton Corp.

Their competitor, one of the ones from whom they’d just sniped StrobeNet’s clients. Backstage at the celebration for beating Layton Corp for market share was an odd place to find a crate with their name on it.

Wes rubbed his eyes and looked again, making sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. When he pulled his hands away, the words were still there, illuminated by the lights dancing across his vision.

A little noise reached his ears underneath the muted sounds of the celebration on the other side of the curtain. A scratching. And then a lot of scratching. He closed his eyes again, hoping the sound was a hallucination that would fade away. It wasn’t. It didn’t.

He followed it to the crate and knew that it was coming from inside. He approached the container like it held a bomb or a wild animal and he was hoping not to trigger it. He nearly wet himself when something scurried across the top of his foot. He jumped and squealed like a child. Then he caught a glimpse of the creature. It resembled a mouse—furry and about the same size—but it was definitely not a mouse. It ran off, disappeared under the stage.

Before Wes could sit, a pack of dozens of those same creatures rushed past him, all disappearing under the stage like the first. The sight of them, their quick movements and sudden disappearance, made his heart frantic again.

He leaned against the crate and focused on his breathing. His heartbeat matched the rhythm in the crate. Thump, thump, bang. Thump, thump, bang.

The cheering on the other side of the curtain became a sound of alarm. And then it became screaming.

Chapter Two

Sonic was broke to shit.

But that’s what happened when you got swallowed by a behemoth bug queen and then blew up a trillion-dollar space station. The ship the Notches loved so well was falling apart, and Joel was doing all he could to keep it together until they found a port.

“Yo, hand me that duct tape.” He pointed to the shelf behind Reggie.

Reggie tossed it to him, and Joel pulled a strip off and placed it over a gash in one of the coolant lines. The engine was the section that had been hit the hardest. There was damage all over Sonic—punctures in the hull, entire sections of armor torn off, cracked monitors—but the engine room was the heart of the ship, and Sonic was in the throes of a full-on cardiac arrest.

“So glad we have such a genius engineer onboard,” Reggie said.

“This shit can bandage anything,” Joel said, admiring his handiwork. “Given enough time, I could make you a spacewalk suit out of duct tape. Then you could float away, and I wouldn’t ever have to hear your judgy voice again.”

Reggie laughed off the comment. “Good, then get the ship taped together, because we’ve got another job to get to.”

“Hold up,” Joel said. “I said it’s a bandage. It can keep Sonic from falling apart completely, but it won’t fix the problem. We need to dock somewhere and make real repairs.”

Reggie surveyed the engine room, pretending to thoroughly examine the complex machine that kept them afloat. Joel was the techie; if he said they needed repairs, then they needed repairs. But Reggie wanted to keep moving. He wanted to get on to the next job and get some cash in the bank.

“What do we need?” he asked.

Joel let out a heavy sigh. “We can make it a while with the hull breaches if I seal them as best I can, but that’s temporary. Eventually, if they’re not sealed properly, they will get bigger, and I won’t be able to maintain them. We’ll get torn open like a tuna can and vented into space.”

He waved a hand at the engine, like dismissing it as already dead. “But this is our real problem. We stressed the engine too much when we were outrunning that nasty queen. We overloaded components of it, overheated everything. It’s a miracle it’s even operational. I can only blame my superior engineering skills for patching the sucker. However, if we try to run a hard burn with it in this condition, it will explode. Hell, it might just explode anyway. We’ve basically got a giant ticking bomb strapped to our ass.”

Reggie nodded, trying to keep his face from betraying how terrifying that sounded.

“Oh,” Joel added, “and the microwave is broken. Unrelated, but equally as important.”

The two left the engine room and made their way to the galley, where Cody and Sam were scrounging for something to eat.

“Not a goddamn thing for breakfast on this tin-piece of shit,” Sam grumbled as she slammed cupboard doors.

“Fun fact,” Cody said. “Sam gets real hangry.” He held up his hand for the guys to see. The toilet paper wrapped around it showed three spots of blood. “She stabbed me with a fork.”

“You tried to eat the last of the oatmeal,” Sam said. “When are we making a supply run? If we don’t get some food soon, I may be doing more than just stabbing Cody with my fork.”

Cody fell silent as his face turned a pale shade of green.

“I’m going to eat you,” Sam clarified.

Cody swallowed hard. “I got that.”

Joel listed off for Cody and Sam all the problems with Sonic that needed repairing. “If we don’t get all of that fixed, nobody’s eating anybody, because we’ll all be dead.”

“Can we stop talking about cannibalism?” Cody said. “I’ve got a weak stomach.”

Reggie waved his arms like he was signaling for help. “Listen, none of that matters right now, because we don’t have money for food or repairs. We’re broke.”

The Notches looked at him like an alien had just popped out of his chest.

“We just eradicated an entire space station full of ShimVens,” Sam said. “And a queen the size of a small planet.”

“Unfortunately, we also eradicated the space station,” Reggie said. “Apparently StrobeNet doesn’t have a bunch of those just lying around. I caught the news last night. That station was meant to be their flagship, the most advanced station ever built. It was a major hub for all of their business. Once news broke that it blew up, StrobeNet’s stock took a nosedive. They’re totally bankrupt.”

“Meaning?” Sam said.

“We’re shit out of luck,” Joel said.

Sam stabbed her fork into the counter. The guys backed away from her like she was a hungry wolf, snarling her displeasure.

“Okay,” Reggie said, trying to soothe the beast. “Be cool. We’ll figure this out.” He turned to Joel, but was careful not to put his back to Sam. “How long can we go with the ship as is?”

Joel shrugged. “Hard telling, not knowing. I’ve patched everything as best I can. Best-case, it holds for a couple days. Worst-case, it explodes the second we kick the engines into gear.” He cast Sam a cautionary glance. “Actually, that’s the second worst case. Worst-worst-case is Sam eats us. So I vote we risk it.”

“We’ve got a job lined up,” Reggie said. “I say we take it, make the repairs to the ship, stock our pantry, and move on from there.”

That seemed to settle Sam and Joel slightly, but it only agitated Cody.

“Can we talk about the massive corporate conspiracy first?” Cody looked from Joel to Reggie, both rolling their eyes. “Or, at all, even?”

“Let it go, man.” Joel sounded tired by the topic. He swiped a piece of stale bread when Sam diverted her attention to Cody, and took it to the corner of the galley. “There is no corporate conspiracy.”

He knelt down, pretending to tie his shoe, and snuck the hunk of bread to General Pepper, his as-of-yet unidentified, but absurdly adorable pet.

“Are you serious?” Cody’s voice jumped a decibel and climbed in pitch. “With all the evidence I’ve found, it’s like you’re trying not to believe me.”

“Your evidence sounds like some crazy bullshit,” Joel said.

“It all just seems like it could be a coincidence,” Reggie said, trying to act the peacemaker.

Sam paced around the edge of the galley, sneaking behind Reggie, a wolf stalking her prey. “I don’t think so, sounds pretty conceivable to me. Galactic corporations sabotaging each other with no regard for the innocent lives lost or damage caused? Sounds about right.”

Reggie watched her with a hefty dose of apprehension.

Joel wasn’t paying her any attention at all. “Whatever. I think it’s all a big pile of—”

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam jumped out from behind the table, surprising Joel and Peppy.

Joel fell backward, and Peppy scurried behind him and pressed against his back. “What’s the matter with you? Are you insane?”

“You just fed something to that fuzzy creature of yours.” Sam’s eyes were wide and wild.

“Holy shit, Sam,” Joel said. “You ate like three hours ago.”

“What was it? Where are you hiding the food?” She inched closer to Joel and Peppy.

Joel stood slowly. “I’m not hiding anything. It was just a piece of stale bread.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Sam said. “That thing has grown a foot since you got it. Must be twenty pounds heavier. It grew like that eating stale bread?” She leaned around Joel and caught the creature in her frenzied sights. “Maybe I should eat your dog.”

Fire shot through Joel. “Don’t you touch Peppy!”

Reggie stepped in between Joel and Sam, still playing at peacemaker. “So, just so I know, was that a yes on taking this job?”

“Yes!” Joel and Sam both shouted.

Chapter Three

Sonic’s cockpit was small, built to seat only two, but when one of those two was Reggie, the bridge really felt cramped. Cody keyed up the coordinates for the location of the job, a planet called Kaufman.

Once Reggie told them the destination, the Notches couldn’t help but get excited. The entire planet was well-known for being one large spa and fun center. There were dozens of warmed lakes scattered across the surface of the planet, each offering activities like diving, water skiing, boating, and hover boarding. There was one of the most famous spas in the galaxy where celebrities went to get their bits waxed and their bodies covered in weird mud that was supposed to keep you looking young.

Tar pits. Sporting complex. Amusement parks. It was a paradise planet.

Sam couldn’t care less. If she couldn’t eat it right now, she didn’t want to be bothered.

Sonic whimpered like a whipped puppy all the way to Kaufman. Cody didn’t dare push her too hard, for fear the engine would explode and vaporize them. But they got there eventually.

The Notches met in the loading bay to gear up, while Reggie pulled up the coordinates of the job. He hadn’t gotten specifics, just the information that a site on Kaufman had an infestation problem. He had no idea what kind of site it was. It was just a blip on the GPS.

However, they spent no small amount of time fantasizing about the site. Reggie imagined one of the domed sports complexes. Some of the Intergalactic Football League teams trained in the Kaufman sports domes. He wanted to run the fields and imagine scoring a touchdown and winning the Supernova Bowl. He had been a star football player in high school… He could have taken it to college. Some days he wished he had and couldn’t remember why he didn’t.

Or maybe he’d hit up the batting cages or the obstacle courses. There was supposedly a course so complicated that a contestant got lost in it for a week. No one even realized he was missing until the course started to smell like someone had been living in it for a week without access to a shower or toilet.

Cody hoped the job would take them near the tar pits. They were one of the only natural, unaltered features of Kaufman that drew visitors. Even the lakes were artificially heated, and the ones used for sport fishing and shark wrestling were stocked with game. But the tar pits were untouched and super old. Prehistoric old. Paleontologists were still discovering the remains of ancient alien species in the tar.

What he wouldn’t give to add an ancient alien fossil to his collection.

But the trip took them in the opposite direction of the tar pits and past the sports domes. Cody and Reggie deflated, but upon arriving at the job site, Joel blew up like a parade balloon.

“An amusement park?” he shouted, jumping up and down. “And not just any amusement park. An abandoned amusement park!”

“Why is that more exciting?” Sam asked.

“Have you never dreamed of having your own amusement park?” Joel sounded genuinely surprised. “Having your run of the place, doing whatever you want on any of the rides, breaking all the rules, standing on the highest peak of a rollercoaster track?”

“I can honestly say no,” Sam answered.

“What about eating all the cotton candy?” Cody asked.

Sam’s eyes widened. “Will there still be some?”

“Sure,” Joel said, hoping he was right. “That stuff lasts forever.”

The four of them stood at the entrance of Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park, strapped with all the gear that had become standard for them. Sam unsheathed her sword and twirled it a few times, getting reacquainted with the weight and balance. Reggie opted to leave the gatling on the ship, choosing instead for a lighter, more maneuverable submachine gun. Cody checked his scatterblaster. Joel zeroed the scope on his sniper rifle and made sure his dual pistols were loaded and ready.

“I’m just glad it’s not a space station,” Reggie said.

The others agreed and entered Rocket Roger’s, ready to work.

* * *

“I’m going to play all the games,” Joel said.

The alley with all the classic fair games lay just up ahead. A few of the lights flickered, and one of the skee-ball games tried to play its music, but it sounded like a dying animal.

“We’re not here to play games,” Reggie said. “We’re here to work.”

“There is no way I’m letting this opportunity pass me by,” Joel said. “Whether you have that stick up your ass or not.”

Reggie stopped at the entrance to the street of games, which was about as big as a city block, crisscrossed with rows of machines. The team gathered around him.

“We need to clear the entire park,” he said. “We should do it one section at a time. Games will be first.”

Sam cast a skeptical glance over the area. “There are a lot of places to hide in there. Under the machines, in the machines. It’ll take all day to check each one.”

Joel’s face lit up with an idea. “Only one row of games is getting any power, and it doesn’t look like it’s even full power. If we pump juice back into the park, it could flush the creepy crawlies out of their hidey holes.” He looked at each of the Notches’ skeptical faces.

Reggie finally relented. “I know you’re doing this just so you can turn the power back on and live out your weird fantasy, but it’s actually a good idea.”

Joel barely stifled a joyous outburst. “Then I’ll take Cody to the power station and get this place cranking.”

Cody didn’t seem excited about this, but he knew better than to argue with Joel when he had his teeth in an idea. According to the specs Cody had downloaded to his wristcom, the power station was near the entrance, so they doubled back.

Cody had never been a fan of amusement parks. A memory came roaring back of a childhood vacation to Disneyland. Thunder Mountain loomed over him, and his dad dragged him on, despite his adamant protests. He’d thrown up all over his dad, himself, and the two teenagers in front of him.

It ranked up there with the worst moments of his life. His stomach bubbled just thinking about it.

The power station was a squat, concrete structure that faded into the background amidst the color and lights. A red sign with a lightning bolt in the center adorned the steel door that squealed as they entered, the sound echoing inside the station.

“I’m just now realizing how creepy this is,” Cody said. “An abandoned amusement park? This is prime serial killer hideout territory.”

“Relax,” Joel said. “It’s much more likely that we’ll get eaten by mutated rodents than have our skin peeled off and turned into a suit.”

Cody froze. “Why do you say the things you say?”

The power station was a single room of fuse boxes and cobwebs. Most of the room was occupied by a generator. Joel set about examining the equipment, while Cody tried to control the gurgle in his gut and the increasingly urgent desire to pee.

Joel opened several of the fuse boxes before inspecting the generator. Despite the vintage look of the amusement park, the tech in the room had been built sometime in the last twenty years. It hadn’t been maintained in a while so it was coated in years’ worth of dust, but it was still operational.

“Here’s the problem,” Joel said, his hands disappearing inside the generator. “Generator’s running, everything’s just gummed up with dust. Can’t make a proper connection.” He unscrewed several components, cleaned them, and then replaced them.

“Hurry it up, would you?” Cody said. “My horror movie sense is starting to tingle.”

“You could do something useful while you wait instead of breathe down my neck. You’re a sort of smart guy; I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Cody paced a small circle in the floor, his scatterblaster held tight to his chest. He spotted a terminal on the other side of the generator.

“Maybe you’re right.”

He lowered his blaster and raised his wristcom. He powered up the terminal and synced it with his wristcom. It was a control panel for the park’s power system. Now he could access all those systems on the go.

Cody spoke into the comm, reaching out to the whole team. “I’ve got control of the power system, and Joel is working on getting it all up and running. Once it is, I’ll turn the lights on one section at a time.”

“Good idea,” Reggie responded. “That limits our search area. Very systematic. We’re such pros now. We’ve totally leveled up.”

Joel brushed his hand on his pants, smearing them with dust and grease. “Done. Let’s light this fire.”

“Can we kill something now?” Sam asked, as Joel and Cody rejoined her and Reggie. “I want to move on to the food section.”

“I second that,” Joel said, pulling his dual pistols from their holsters.

Reggie nodded to Cody, who then pulled up the connection to the power station on his wristcom. “Power up in three, two, one…”

The hum of the generator carried on the air, the only sound in the entire park. When it reached them, the electricity also reached the game section. Light flared. The music from the various games all sounded at the same time, a distorted symphony of carnival noise mixed with the shrieks of surprised critters, startled from a peaceful sleep.

A shudder ran up Cody’s spine. “Well, that was terrifying. I swear to God, if a clown pops up out of anywhere, I am going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

“If everything we’ve been through so far hasn’t given you night terrors, then I think you’ll be okay,” Joel said.

As the last word left his mouth, something in his periphery vision caught his attention. He spun, trained his pistols on the bug soaring through the air at him, and pulled the trigger. The bug, about the size of a small terrier, exploded in a burst of green goo, splattering Joel’s front.

“ShimVens,” Joel said, wiping the guts off his face. “Goddamn ShimVens.”

Chapter Four

They didn’t have a lot of time to bemoan their current situation. It wasn’t quite a swarm, but the rest of the ShimVens hiding in the games section of Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park followed that first nasty bug, and were equally upset that their naps had been interrupted.

The Notches formed a defensive semicircle at the entrance of the park section. Reggie stood at the front with his submachine gun, mowing down bugs as they charged them. Cody stood a safe distance away, using his scatterblaster to pick off the ones that snuck by Reggie. Sam and Joel took the wings, targeting any bugs that tried to flank them. Cody and Joel had played roshambo for the scatterblaster. It was Cody’s turn to have fun with the weapon now.

It was probably a good thing that they didn’t have time to think about it. It had been less than a week since they’d escaped the belly of the ShimVen queen. Given that space, they realized that they never expected to make it out alive. Each of them had stared death straight in its pale face and thought it was the end.

Making it out alive felt somewhat like a second chance, like maybe they were living on borrowed time. They planned to take advantage of that opportunity, to chase down the things they wanted. To live life to the fullest. They’d at least hoped to never see a ShimVen again.

Sam didn’t mind as much as the others. Fighting was all she knew. She had nothing else to compare her life to—no ‘once upon a time’ scenarios where she was prancing through a meadow all happy and pigtailed. There’d always just been this—murder and mayhem.

Plus, if she was killing bugs, she couldn’t think about how hungry she was.

The wave of ShimVens ceased just seconds later. The work was quick and bloody, but nothing the Notches couldn’t handle.

Joel kicked one of the dead bugs, punting it down the lane of carnival games. “I thought we were done with these things. We killed the queen.”

Cody stooped down next to one. “We killed a queen. There’s no telling how far Layton has dispersed these things. They could be spread across the galaxy. They could be everywhere.”

Joel groaned. “I’m not in the mood for conspiracy theories.”

“Calling it a conspiracy theory doesn’t automatically invalidate it,” Cody said as he examined the dead bug. “It just means it hasn’t been proven yet.”

“If Layton is responsible for these things,” Reggie said, “Then what are they doing in an abandoned amusement park? What would Layton gain from infesting a business that’s not even running?”

Cody scratched his chin. “The ShimVens aren’t soldiers; they don’t follow orders. They’re wild animals. They go where they can find food and shelter. They’re dictated by their instincts, even if those instincts have been tampered with by scientists.”

“Whatever,” Sam said as she sheathed her sword. “What’s next?”

Cody consulted the schematics on his wristcom. “Next section is the food vendors.”

Sam’s face lit up, and her stomach growled. “Hell yeah.”

They moved in formation down the lane of games, stepping over the dead ShimVens. They didn’t encounter any more bugs, but Joel did blow the head off a stuffed elephant hanging from one of the game marquees. From the corner of his eye, its trunk looked like a set of pincers.

The lights and sounds of the game section faded as they exited the lane and moved further into the park – the food section.

“So, where is this cotton candy?” Sam asked.

The guys looked at her with quizzical expressions.

“What?” Sam said.

“You said ‘cotton candy’ the way my grandma says ‘virtual reality,’” Cody said. “Have you never had cotton candy before?”

“I’m a ruthless mercenary known throughout the galaxy. One of the best killers alive, fluent in a dozen forms of martial arts and proficient with twice as many types of weapons. Do I strike you as the type of person who eats something called ‘cotton candy?’”

“Holy shit,” Joel said. “Are you the terminator?”

Sam reached for her sword.

Cody stepped between her and Joel. “I’ll find some. No need for stabbing. Priority number one: get Sam some food.” Cody pulled up the park schematics again and zoomed in on the food vending section. “Here.” He pointed to a tent in the northeast corner. “Rainbow Shack. They were cotton candy vendors. But remember that this place has been shut down for months; there’s no guarantee there’s anything left. And, even if there is, do you really want to eat it?”

Sam marched off toward the northeast corner. “I’ve eaten worse.”

The guys hurried to catch up with her. They were reluctant to split up, even for a second. After everything they’d gone through on the space station, all the times they thought would be their last opportunity to see each other, they would rather stick close.

The food section stank of deep fried oil, like the entire area had been battered and dipped in the boiling stuff. It made Sam’s stomach rumble. As hungry as she was, she knew the food choices here would be limited, so she didn’t bother following her nose. Meat and dairy would be spoiled. Produce would be rotten. Only processed food would have survived. And the more processed, the better.

She marched past stands for sausage and peppers, pizzas, French fries, bloomin’ onions. The pictures alone were enough to make her mouth water. She broke into a run the second she spotted the colorful banner for Rainbow Shack. Unicorns jumped over a pink and blue swirl that sat on top of a thin, paper cone. The tent was painfully bright and cheery, in no way reflective of Sam’s mood. She wanted to decapitate those unicorns.

She surveyed the inside of the tent. “Where is the cotton candy?” It came out like a threat.

“You probably need to make it,” Reggie said. When he saw her hand slide toward her sword, he immediately added, “I can make it! I worked a summer at the county fair.” He nodded to Cody. “I just need the power.”

Cody connected to the power station via his wristcom. “Maybe we could kill the ShimVens before we eat cotton candy?”

Sam growled.

Cody took that as a yes. He activated the power.

Sam stepped out of the tent. “We protect Rainbow Shack at all costs. If you must give your life for it, then do what needs to be done. Except you, Reggie—I need you to make the cotton candy. Cody, Joel, be valiant.” She drew her sword and sliced a ShimVen in half as it scurried out from under a hot dog stand.

Reggie, Cody and Joel picked off the bugs without having to step away from the tent. Sam chased them down, venting her frustration on the ShimVens in profoundly gruesome ways. The guys almost started to feel sorry for them.

With the bugs dead moments later, Reggie set about soothing Sam with a ball of homespun sugar thread before she turned homicidal. He recalled all of his one summer’s worth of experience to make her a mound of pink cotton candy.

She shoved a handful of it into her mouth. She seemed pleased at first, but quickly grew irritated.

“You must have made it wrong. It dissolved before I could eat it.”

“No, it’s supposed to do that,” Reggie said. “It’s just sugar. It dissolves as soon as it gets wet.”

Sam scowled. “Torture.” She dropped the cotton candy on the ground and set her death stare on the guys.

They said silent prayers that she would kill them quickly.

Then Reggie got an idea.

“The gift shop!” He yelled it like it was answer to a riddle. The others looked at him like he’d uttered nonsense. “It’ll have candy. Gift shops always have candy. Chocolate.”

Sam seemed to fall into a trance, like the mere mention of the word had hypnotized her. She snapped out of it. “You’ve bought yourself a stay of execution. Where is this gift shop?”

Cody looked over the schematics, but Joel spoke before he could locate it.

“The exit. They always put the gift shop at the exit. You have to walk through it to get out, and tired parents have to drag their kids past toys and candy before they can leave.”

“And they call me merciless,” Sam said. “Let’s move.”

“Wait,” Reggie said. “We have to go through the whole park before we get to the exit, anyway. We can take out the ShimVens on the way. Clear the park, get some candy, get out of here. What do you say?”

Sam considered it. “We move quick. Split up. Turn on the power to the entire park and flush out all the creepy bastards at once.”

The guys did not want to split up. But the alternative was worse.

“Okay,” they all said at once.

“I’ll post up on the top of the roller coaster,” Joel said. “Pick them off with my rifle.”

Cody raised a tentative hand. “Can I make one amendment to the ‘flush them all out at once’ plan?”

Sam snarled at him, but did not otherwise object.

“I’ll bring the power up one section at a time, starting in the front of the park, and flush them all back toward the exit. The swarm will come charging straight at us.” Cody raised his eyebrows and waited for a response.

Sam nodded.

Cody realized then how absurd it was that he took that as a victory, winning the right to stand on the wrong end of a bug stampede. He pulled the park schematics for the team to see. “I still think we should split up, though.” He traced three separate paths from the park entrance to the exit on the map. “The bugs will follow one of these three routes. Reggie, Sam and I can each post at one of these intersections. If we get overwhelmed, we can then fall back to the exit, regroup, and take the swarm together. Don’t start with our backs against the wall.”

“Smart,” Reggie said. “Joel can still provide overwatch support.”

Joel shivered and cast Reggie a longing look. “I love it when you use tactical lingo.”

The team split up and headed to their designated locations. Reggie, Sam and Cody all stood at intersections of the same path, so they could look to the side and see each other.

Cody directed Joel to the access ladder for the rollercoaster, an old, wooden ride called Rolling Thunder. Joel slung the sniper rifle over his shoulder and climbed up over seventy feet. The tracks were wide enough that he could walk comfortably, but the lack of railings and the faster winds at that height had him walking slowly and steadily.

He leaned forward and bear-crawled up the slope in the track. The incline was enough that he would have toppled over backward had he tried to walk it. Once he reached the top, he drew his sniper rifle, pressed the button on the stock to extend the barrel, and laid on his belly.

“I’m set,” he said.

“Roger,” Reggie said.

Joel made an exaggerated moan of pleasure. “Love that tactical talk.”

“Gross,” Cody said. “Bringing up power in the front of the park. I’ll bring the rest up in thirty-second increments. Should see some nasties in a couple of minutes.”

The view from the top of Rolling Thunder was astonishing. Joel had to consciously tell himself to focus, or his attention would falter and he’d gawk at the park. The things I could do with my own amusement park… He followed the lights, scanning the area for signs of ShimVens, but he began to daydream.

Exterminator wasn’t exactly his dream job. Pro gamer was at the top of that list, but amusement park owner was right up there, too. The noise, the flair, the lights, the fun. How could anyone not love it here?

“I’m getting bored,” Sam said.

Movement caught Joel’s eye. “ShimVens coming your way.” He squeezed the trigger and watched one of them explode.

The swarm came at them like a herd of buffalo being run off a cliff, frantic and wild. Reggie squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go, dropping dozens of them. Cody turned a handful at a time into paste with his scatterblaster. Sam became a windmill of death, twirling her sword and slicing the bugs to ribbons. Joel continued to pick them off one at a time until they stopped coming.

Finally, the swarm was dead.

“All clear,” Joel said, his voice high with the sound of surprise. “For the first time ever, we didn’t need to use the backup plan. We really are pros.”

Reggie shrugged. “So, what do we do now? Just clock out and get paid? No apocalyptic surprises?”

“We could,” Joel said. “Or I can cross something off my bucket list.”

Sam was already on her way to the gift shop.

“Guess that answers that,” Reggie said. “Let’s go wild.”

Chapter Five

Eden. That was the only way to properly describe it. Paradise. Joel had stumbled upon heaven on Earth. He spotted it from atop the roller coaster.

“Guys.” His voice was tight and barely contained, like a bomb that was about to go off. “I think I’ve found something wonderful.”

He climbed down from Rolling Thunder and burst into a sprint. He wound his way through the rides, taking corners at breakneck speeds until he saw it.

He skidded to a halt at a pavilion that rang with the bells and beeps and boops of yesteryear, a vintage gaming haven. The Joyous Joystick Arcade. It was packed with classic cabinet games, the kind only found in museums or in the possession of hardcore collectors: Rampage, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Mario Bros.

Even…

Joel’s heart leapt into his throat. His all-time favorite, most lusted after game. The one he pirated when he was seven. He’d searched an entire summer for a sim of it online. When he finally found one, he’d had to trade an entire cache of pirated movie files for it. But he’d gotten it.

Double Dragon.

The beat ‘em up that gave rise to the entire beat ‘em up genre.

“Guys, I need your assistance on the double.” Joel chuckled at the unintentional pun.

The guys responded with understandable concern. Joel only stoked their sense of urgency, demanding that they hurry. Sam mumbled about Twix and Charleston Chew and said something that sounded like “Fuck off”.

Joel paced, but never took his eyes off the glorious game. If he only came out of this job with this one prize, all of the shit he’d endured would be worth it.

A flash of movement caught his attention. He turned, expecting to see Reggie and Cody, but found something much smaller and hairier. A creature that looked somewhat like a honey badger sauntered out from behind one of the games. It was the size of a skunk and seemed curious, like it hadn’t been expecting to find a man standing there, pining after an old video game, but wanted to know what the big deal was. It moved closer to Joel, slowly at first. The closer it got to him, the faster it moved, like it had made up its mind on the situation. And the situation was dinner.

It bared its teeth, razor sharp and hard like diamonds. It let out a rumbling growl that rose in pitch to a vicious hiss. It lunged, and Joel moved on instinct. He leapt back, drawing his pistols as he fell. He managed to get off a shot, grazing the creature along its left flank. As Joel slammed onto his back, the creature skittered out of sight.

Reggie and Cody arrived, their sense of urgency now totally appropriate.

“What is it?” Reggie asked, his submachine gun held tight to his chest. “What’s wrong?”

Joel’s face had gone white as a sheet. He fumbled with his words as he tried to put them together into a coherent sentence. “A goddamn skunky son of a bitch came at my face. Almost died for fuck’s sake. Fucking Double Dragon.” He failed.

Cody pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What now?”

Joel pushed himself into a sitting position. He still had his blasters drawn and ready, expecting the creature to reappear any second. After several failed attempts at speech, he caught his breath and told the guys what happened.

“That doesn’t sound like a ShimVen,” Reggie said.

“No shit,” Joel said. “If it was a ShimVen, I would have said it was a ShimVen.”

Cody was crouched a few feet away. “Blood. The trail leads that way.” He pointed toward the center of the pavilion.

“Then I suggest we go that way,” Joel said, pointing in the opposite direction.

“We should figure out what it is,” Cody said. “We weren’t hired to kill ShimVens, we were hired to get rid of an infestation. This new creature could be just one member of a colony. If we leave a colony behind, we won’t get paid, and all our time and resources will have been a waste. And we don’t have enough money to fuel the ship and get off this planet.”

Joel sighed. “Why must my dreams always become nightmares?”

They followed the trail, Reggie taking point and the others watching the flanks. They were finding only small drops of blood, so they knew the thing wasn’t hurt too bad. Which meant it was probably still in killing shape.

The trail went cold by Space Invaders. The guys struggled to focus on the task at hand and not the games.

“It will be a truly cruel twist of fate if we die in a vintage arcade,” Joel said.

The snarl from beneath the game added an ominous undertone to his comment. The guys nodded to each other. Reggie kicked the Space Invaders cabinet.

Even injured, the creature moved like lightning. It was barely a blur of fur as it scurried out and charged at Cody. Cody’s curiosity at seeing the creature Joel had described was instantly overwhelmed by his desire to not get mauled. He squeezed off two rounds from his scatterblaster, pocking the concrete floor with holes, but putting none in the animal.

It weaved through the shots like Pac-Man would through a maze while evading ghosts. It lunged at Cody, mouth wide, ready to swallow him whole, like he was the cherry.

Reggie appeared out of nowhere, slamming the butt of his gun into the side of the beast. With a sickening crack, the animal slammed into a Rampage game and slid to the floor. It still only took a moment before it got back to its feet and locked Reggie in its sights. It snarled—a different kind of sound than before, not just wild and untamed. This one had intention behind it.

These creatures were vengeful little bastards.

Before it could act on its spiteful intentions, Reggie opened fire, obliterating Rampage. The cabinet game splintered and sparked and died. Reggie didn’t have time to mourn, as the beast dodged to the right. Without letting off the trigger, Reggie followed its movement. He left a trail of holes in the floor.

Joel sucked in a breath as his eyes jumped ahead in Reggie’s projected trajectory. Split seconds passed, and Joel saw the terror that would come. The absolute tragedy.

He shouted, “No!” and grabbed Reggie’s arm.

Reggie let off the trigger, and the creature disappeared under a different game cabinet.

“What the heck?” he demanded. “Why’d you stop me? I almost had it.”

Joel pointed to the game cabinet currently serving as the creature’s safe haven.

Reggie shrugged. “Yeah? What?”

He may as well have spit in church.

“Are you shitting me?” Joel gestured to the game again, as if it might elicit a different response. “Double Dragon! The king of beat ‘em up games. The reason I love gaming so much. You guys know how much I love this game. I even own the movie! That terrible, terrible movie.”

“You love it so much that you’re willing to risk our lives to protect it?” Cody asked.

“Yes,” Joel answered without hesitation. “Yes, I very much do.”

A boom of force and noise rushed through the park, followed by the smell of smoke and a chemical stink. Something had exploded somewhere. The guys looked at each other, all thinking the same thing: Sam.

Reggie was about to speak, though totally unsure of what he was going to say, when the furry creature reappeared and alleviated him of the burden. It caught them unprepared, focused more on the game than on what was living underneath it.

The small beast rushed at Reggie and clawed his ankle. The pain was so quick and fierce that it dropped him to one knee. He screamed out as he tried to swing his submachine gun around and catch the beast in his sights.

It was too fast. It was already halfway up Cody’s back. Cody’s vision went red when the thing sunk its teeth into his shoulder.

Joel screamed into his comm. “Sam! Where the hell are you? We are in desperate need of a ninja!”

No answer. She’s probably too busy stuffing her face.

Cody kicked his feet out and fell flat on his back, hoping to crush the animal beneath him. It scurried around to Cody’s front before that could happen. Then it leapt off him and soared through the air toward Joel.

Joel tried to raise his blasters, but the thing was too fast. It bared its fangs, prepared to sink them into Joel’s face.

He shut his eyes. He’d never get to play Double Dragon. Never watch with elation as his initials blinked in the top score spot.

He felt a hot splash across his face. He opened his eyes to see Sam, sword in hand, standing over the headless creature. Her clothes were torn. She was covered in cuts and bruises. She looked like she had been dragged behind a pickup truck.

“We have a problem,” she said.

Chapter Six

Ten minutes earlier…

Snickers. Twix. Twizzlers. Colorful foods in colorful wrappers. Most kids had a deep knowledge of such things. Years of Halloweens spent collecting and cataloguing and devouring them. Trips to the candy store to purchase them. A fat man in a red suit apparently shoved them in socks that hung by the fireplace.

But Sam had no experience with candy. When she was a child, she ate to survive, whatever she could get her hands on—which was mostly half-eaten food fished out of a dumpster. She understood now why she had never found any half-eaten candy.

As she’d grown and followed the path of the mercenary, she’d eaten so that her body would work at peak efficiency. This meant mostly nutritious shakes, taking in all of the essentials in one sludgy cup of beige liquid.

So as an adult, that first bite of sour gummy worm was a revelation, a truly eye-opening experience, a life-altering bite. Every successive bite of gummy or nougat or chocolate was equally as profound.

The shelves of the gift shop were mostly stocked. The place looked like it could have opened right now if they wanted to. She had her choice of candy, and then she had her fill. She’d just stuck something called a Charleston Chew in her face when Joel’s voice came through the comm.

“Guys, I need your assistance on the double.”

“Fuck off,” Sam said through her teeth, which were stuck together with chocolate. She sat on the stool behind the register, normally reserved for the employee. This was her store now.

She was on the verge of a candy coma, her blood sugar spiking and stomach rumbling, her mind clouded with artificial flavors and colors, when she heard a familiar scratching sound.

She brushed it off as nothing and leaned back on her stool, closing her eyes and drifting away.

She didn’t get far. The scratching returned, more present and forceful than before. Her instincts wrestled with her muddled senses, the battle-hardened disposition of the mercenary winning out over the lethargy of the newly-minted candy lover. She walked around the front of the counter, following the sound toward the back of the store.

A door stood between her and the sound. She pressed her ear to it and heard the muffled sound of skittering on the other side. Doubt nagged at her, though the tingling on her tongue tried to urge her back to the counter for another fistful of gummy bears.

She opened the door. It was dark, illuminated only partially by the light from behind Sam. Shadows crawled into the closet like specters. She reached inside, her hand getting swallowed by the dark, and felt for the light switch. She flicked it on.

Half a dozen ShimVens screeched their displeasure at the sudden burst of light. They ran around inside the small maintenance closet like blind chickens, crashing into each other and the wall.

Sam froze in surprise, expecting all of the ShimVens in the park to have just been slaughtered. By the time she recovered from her shock and drew her sword, the opportunity for a quick and easy kill had passed. The bugs had regained their bearings and were focusing their attention on Sam. They rushed her in a coordinated yet frantic attack.

It seemed an odd thing to think, but the bugs appeared wilder than normal. Not to insinuate that they were ever tame, but they typically moved with a focused intention—to kill their prey. These bugs didn’t seem to be attacking Sam so much as trying to get past her. She wasn’t their prey, she was a roadblock.

Either way, they had every intention of killing her, and she had no intention of dying.

She stepped back and drew her sword in one fluid motion. She twirled her blade with the same grace a gymnast demonstrates dancing across the mat and twirling a ribbon. Only there was more blood.

The first ShimVen split apart at the midsection. She planted her back foot, cementing her in place, and held her sword in front of her. The momentum of the charging ShimVens carried two of them forward and impaled them on her blade like kebabs.

The remaining three grew more frantic as their friends dropped dead. They ran with no apparent target or goal, smashing into shelves and toppling displays. They even swiped at each other when they collided in their rabid attempts to escape.

That’s when Sam realized what was making the ShimVens act so off. They were afraid. Not of her… If they were, they would be trying to run away from her, not through her. But what else was there? What could scare these demon creatures?

The ShimVens stopped suddenly, as if time had frozen. Three of them were fanned out in front of her, a semicircle cutting her off from the exit and pinning her against the wall. She’d need to cut through them if she wanted out. What were they waiting for? If they charged now in unison, they had a chance at taking her.

She heard something behind her. Turning, a small flicker of movement drew her eyes up to the vent on the wall near the ceiling. Leaning out of the vent was a furry creature, about the size of a cat—maybe a bit bigger. Its front claw dug into the wall like it was made of tissue paper. Its teeth were on full display. A warning for all in the room. A glimpse of how they were about to die.

Now Sam knew what the ShimVens were afraid of. If it scared them, then she knew to be cautious of it. But there were few things that scared her.

As if it heard her thoughts and took her resilience as a challenge, the creature shot out of the vent like a fuzzy missile. She pivoted out of its main line of fire, but the creature raked its claws across her shoulder. The hit knocked her off balance and shot a wave of hot pain through her body. She braced for a follow-up attack, but it didn’t come. Instead, she heard a cacophony of violent and terrified noises behind her.

The creature and the ShimVens were locked in battle like a barn full of feral cats, rolling and clawing at each other, screeching and howling.

Sam poised to attack, her sword at the ready, but didn’t dare interfere in that mess. She watched and waited for them to kill each other.

Until they rolled her way.

She dove over them, slashing down and taking the arm off a ShimVen. The hairy critter took advantage of the blow and tore the injured ShimVen to pieces.

Sam rolled to her feet. The remaining ShimVens, though they outnumbered the newcomer two to one, scurried around searching for a way out. There was no loyalty among the bugs. The ShimVens clawed at each other as they fought for an exit. The newcomer tackled one of them and tore it apart. It didn’t eat it, though; the bugs weren’t prey, they were enemies. This thing attacked like it had a vendetta.

Sam stood back and let them kill each other. Or at least, let the fuzzy one kill the bugs. Maybe the slaughter would tire it out enough that she could kill it without losing a limb.

The sudden rumble that came up through the concrete floor dashed those hopes like a rock to the head.

Something shook the entire shop from underneath. It didn’t feel like a quake, but Sam had never felt one on this planet, so she had nothing to compare it to. It felt more concentrated than a quake, though, like something had grabbed hold of this one structure and started shaking it to hell.

She backed away from the brawl, toward the exit, hoping she could just run and rendezvous with the team. But then the floor cracked open. It began in the closet where she’d found the six ShimVens, and the cracks snaked out from a drain in the floor, forming a spiderweb design around it. The drain caved in, setting off a chain reaction, inch after inch of the floor falling into a sinkhole.

Sam hopped back just as the edge of the hole reached her. She jumped up onto the counter and watched the spread stop just feet from her.

Then the bugs appeared. Dozens of ShimVens climbed out of the hole, eliciting flashbacks of the swarms on the space stations. Now hopelessly outnumbered, the new creature seemed to realize his fate. It arched its back, tipped its face to the sky, and let out a sound like it was blowing into a conch shell. It sounded almost sad.

Its cry lingered on the air as the ShimVens swarmed and devoured it.

With the mysterious third party currently being digested, the swarm set its attention squarely on Sam. At least she was in familiar territory now.

Or so she thought.

The conch shell bellow returned. It couldn’t have been coming from inside the bellies of the bugs. Right? That would be insane. Though, insane things were becoming all too common.

No, the sound wasn’t coming from the bugs. It was coming from the herd of fuzzy creatures that began pouring out of the overhead vents. The walls and ceiling began to crumble as the dead creature’s family came to avenge its death.

It was war.

And Sam was caught in the middle.

Not one to take sides, she spun and extended her sword. Bugs and fuzzy creatures alike were diced in half. But when she’d completed her death twirl, the shop was still enveloped in a ferocious war of alien monsters.

She was not going to survive it with her sword alone… She needed more firepower. And she knew just where to get it. The ShimVens were kind enough to crack a gas line when they burrowed up from underneath the gift shop, and the place was currently filling with flammable gas. Another minute and it would be primed to blow. She just needed to find a way through the carnage. She’d rather not be inside when it exploded.

She flipped over a mass of fur and pincers and almost slipped when her boots hit the floor, which was slick with blood and guts. She slashed through the crowd, each hole filling in so quickly, she barely had time to pass through it. The exit was just ahead. She pushed through the last line of creatures. As she passed over the threshold of the gift shop, she slashed the tip of her sword against the concrete floor, making a spark.

The gas lit, and Sam was suddenly in the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon. She jumped, and the force of the explosion pushed her up and away. She slammed into the ground twenty feet away and rolled until the fire on her back was out.

She did not lament the death she’d caused. Only the candy that was lost—all the candy she would never get to eat.

She stood and brushed herself off.

“Got to find the guys,” she said to herself. “This job’s not done.”

Chapter Seven

The smoke from the gift shop had grown thicker in the air. The team decided it best to find an indoor space to reconnect and plan their next move.

“Of course there was an unexpected roadblock,” Joel said, hiding his face in his hands. “I broke my own rule. I jinxed us.”

They found the maintenance department a few rows over from the arcade pavilion. They nearly had to drag Joel away from Double Dragon, but reason and a hefty dose of threats from Sam won out in the end.

They stood in a small concrete room. The shelves that lined the wall were full of tools, half-used cans of paint, various solvents and glues, and small buckets of assorted hardware to replace the nuts and bolts of the rides. The mix of chemicals in the air started to make the team’s heads swim.

“I got a pretty good look at the new thing while it was trying to eat my face off,” Cody said. “It’s called a Rapoo.”

Joel snickered. “Well, that can’t be too bad. I mean, how dangerous can a furry little critter with ‘poo’ in its name be?”

Cody sighed. “Ever heard of Trixador?”

“That moon colony where all the settlers vanished in a night?” Joel said.

Cody nodded. “Rapoo.”

“Shit.” Joel sat on a mop bucket and hid his face again.

Cody leaned against the wall and looked down at the floor. He closed his eyes, like he was reading the encyclopedia entry for ‘Rapoo’ on the backs of his eyelids.

“They’ve got teeth hard as diamonds. Harder. There are documented instances of Rapoo actually eating diamonds. They’re fast, capable of achieving land speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. And they’re agile. They move along the ground like weasels, with long, flexible spines. And don’t let their fuzzy exteriors fool you; under the hair, they’ve got a thick layer of fat and skin that some blasters can’t penetrate.”

Reggie sighed as he summarized, “So they’re fast and hard to kill.”

“Faster and harder than ShimVens,” Cody qualified.

“Great,” Joel said. “Because that’s exactly what we needed: a pest worse than the ShimVens. I suppose they are spawned by a Godzilla-sized weasel beast, too?”

Cody shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

Joel stood from his bucket. “Well, we did our best. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Didn’t we do this already?” Reggie asked. “We’ve got every last cent invested in this job. We quit, we lose everything. We won’t have enough capital to fund another job, and we won’t have enough fuel to get off this planet. We’ll be stuck here. With ShimVens. And Rapoo.”

Hopelessness filled the room, mixing with the chemical fumes and pushing the guys toward blackout. But Sam took a deep inhale and felt her head clear.

“ShimVens and Rapoo,” she repeated to herself, as if it were a clue to some puzzle. She paced the small, concrete room, repeating the names, trying to turn a key in a rusty keyhole.

“I think Sam’s broken,” Joel said.

“The ShimVens and Rapoo,” Sam said again, still pacing. “I watched them go at it in the gift shop. I’ve seen that kind of fight before—it wasn’t predator versus prey. It wasn’t a fight for survival or territory. It was bitter. They hate each other. That was a feud, a gang war.”

Cody seemed to understand where her thoughts were taking her. “You think we can use that?”

Sam nodded. “We’re in the middle of a war right now. The ShimVens and Rapoo want each other dead; we want them both dead. We need to figure out a way to help them kill each other. Let them do our job for us.”

Reggie opened the door a crack and peeked outside, performing a routine sweep for hostiles. It seemed like he was being paranoid about some low-intellect alien monsters overhearing their plans.

“Brainstorm session. How do we make that happen? We thought we killed all the ShimVens, but apparently, they’re in deep hiding underground. Sewer system?”

Cody brought up the park’s specs. “There are service tunnels under the park connecting everything. Power lines, water, it all runs through there. I guess we can assume that’s where the ShimVens and Rapoo are, as well.”

Cody minimized the park schematics and brought up the sites on animal behavior and ecology that he frequented. “They’re both apex predators. Put them in the same ecosystem, and they fight for dominance. And we know that at least the ShimVens have been genetically altered, so there’s no telling how they’ll react within a typical ecological framework. They seem to desire to destroy for the sake of destruction.”

Reggie waved his hands impatiently. “Yeah, they’re monsters, we know. What does any of this mean?”

“Typically, species won’t march toward mutual destruction out of spite,” Cody said. “Well, aside from humans. But with these two, I think if we find a way to gather them all together and incite a full-blown war, they’ll wipe each other out.”

“Perfect,” Joel said. “Let’s start a genocide.”

Sam and Reggie walked the perimeter of the maintenance department, leaving Cody and Joel to devise a plan. They scoured the schematics, poring over every detail of the service tunnels, searching for a solution.

Turned out, orchestrating a species war wasn’t as simple as they’d hoped.

“What about here?” Joel pointed to a position on the map, a wide-open area that looked to be a hub for the service tunnels. “It’s big enough. We lure them here. Once they’re in the same place, they’ll just get on with the murdering, right?”

Cody shook his head. “Sam said that the ShimVens in the gift shop tried to run. They only fought back because they were backed into a corner. There are too many exit points here. We need to trap them all in one place.” An idea sparked in Cody’s head. “Too many exit points. All those tunnels.”

“Yeah,” Joel said, annoyed. “You already told me my idea was stupid. No need to rub it in.”

“No, I think you were on to something. Just the totally wrong something.”

“Thanks,” Joel said, sarcasm thick in his voice.

Cody highlighted the open space on the schematics. “This hub connects every service tunnel. Move outward from this one spot, and you eventually come to an exit. So if we start here and move outward, we can flush the ShimVens out of the tunnels.”

Joel nodded. “They’ll be out in the open. We just need a place to corral them and a way to get them there.” He studied the schematics again. His eyes lit up. “There. Definitely there.”

Cody rolled his eyes. “Though I disagree with your motives, I agree that location will work.” He zoomed out on the schematics, getting as comprehensive a view of the park as they could. “We still need to find the Rapoo, though. Sam said they came out of the ventilation shaft.”

He overlaid the heating and ventilation system on top of the schematics of the park. It looked like the veins inside a body.

“In this particular park, the ventilation connects the whole place,” Joel said. “They run above and below ground. If they’re in the vents, we can flush them out the same way.” He pointed to a structure on the north side. “That must be the central air intake. We can put something in the openings, push the Rapoo out.” Joel giggled. “We’ll push out one huge Rapoo.” His face turned red as he laughed breathlessly.

Sam and Reggie returned.

Reggie nodded to Joel. “What’s so funny?”

“He’s got the sense of humor of a third-grader,” Cody said. He raised the schematics for Sam and Reggie to see. “We think we’ve got an idea of how to solve this problem.”

After Cody explained the plan, Reggie looked at the ceiling, reading his own thoughts like they were scrawled on a piece of paper. “That sounds like it could work. We just need something to flush them out. And a way to lure them to the kill zone.”

Cody smiled. “I think I’ve figured that out, too.” He highlighted a long, rectangular structure along the eastern edge of the park. “I think we can find everything we need here.”

Sam’s eyes lit up. “The cafeteria?”

Cody nodded.

Sam marched out the door. “Then let’s go shopping.”

Chapter Eight

Sam wasn’t hungry anymore. The candy binge had solved that problem. But it also brought about another aching desire within her. Eating all that candy had made her realize that there was so much she’d missed growing up. So much she brushed off as frivolous, now that she’d grown up and adopted a utilitarian lifestyle.

What else had she missed? What other wondrous foods had she never eaten? The opportunity to search the cafeteria offered her another chance to find out. She was aware that most of the food would be spoiled by now, but there was always the chance she’d find more fantastically processed food that would survive a nuclear explosion.

It was with that childlike sense of wonder that she burst into the cafeteria of Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park. But along with the heightened sense of awe that jazzed kids on Christmas morning, came the darkest depths of disappointment. No one was ever as disappointed as the child who did not get the item at the top of her wish list. And no one would ever be as disappointed as Sam when she found only beige food trays and bins of rotten meat.

“Perfect,” Cody said unsarcastically as he retched and pinched his nose. “This stink should be enough to lure the ShimVens and Rapoo.”

“Why haven’t they found it already?” Reggie asked. “Seems like a solid cache of food.”

Cody ventured a guess, formulating his hypothesis as he studied the carcasses of some dead ShimVens and Rapoo. “Probably too hot a target. Both species would fight over it and lose a portion of their population; they’ve probably deemed it not worth the risk.”

Sam studied the labels along the food line as if they were written in a foreign language. “What is a sloppy joe?”

Joel shook his head. “Sometimes I think you’re a robot.”

An expert at masking her emotions, Sam did nothing to let Joel know that comments like that bothered her. Perhaps she should. She recalled Reggie telling her that they were family and families fight and she should be honest about things that bother her… But she didn’t want to bother with all of that. She just wanted Joel to not be a dick.

“If I was a robot,” she said over her shoulder, “I would pull your arms off and shove one up and one down. Your guess as to where.”

Joel swallowed hard. “It’s a mess of meat slopped on a bun. Sloppy joe.” His tone was devoid of humor. He seemed to have caught Sam’s unsubtle message.

Joel and Reggie began gathering up the meat and any other odiferous food they could find. All of the pans in the foodservice line were at least half-full. They found a cart in the kitchen and loaded it with the pans, trying not to vomit from the smell and thick swarm of flies that followed them.

Cody and Sam explored the kitchen. They had the lure, now they just needed a way to flush the creatures from hiding. The means to expose the Rapoo, at least, could be found here in the kitchen.

“They have sensitive senses of smell. We just need to pump something into the ventilation system that irritates it, and they should come running out looking for fresh air.” Cody picked up a plastic tub full of red powder. “Fine black pepper should do the trick.”

He dropped the pepper on the cart of rancid meat. “Now we just need a way to flush the ShimVens out of the service tunnels.”

“I can handle that,” Joel said. “I just need someone to watch my back while I get it set up.”

Reggie volunteered.

“All right, then,” Joel said. “Cue the ominous going of separate ways.”

“Stay on comms,” Reggie said to the team. To Cody and Sam, he directed, “You dump the lure in the killzone while we head down into the service tunnels. Then we’ll coordinate flushing our respective critters out of hiding, and rendezvous to wipe them out.”

They all nodded.

“Let the genocide commence,” Joel said, and the team split.

Reggie and Joel returned to the maintenance department. There were entrances to the service tunnels scattered throughout the park, but the entrance in that department dropped down closest to the central hub. The smaller the distance they needed to travel underground, the better. Plus, the maintenance department had all the components Joel needed. And some he didn’t necessarily need, but that would make this project spectacular.

What he found was mostly a machine shop. A greasy, smelly, dirty machine shop. Joel felt instantly at ease and immediately set about gathering everything he needed.

“Do you think Sam hates me?”

Reggie seemed surprised by the question. “No,” he answered without thinking. Then he thought about it. “Well, I mean…no. No, I don’t think so.” It seemed genuine, though not at all definitive. “She’s surly. Just because she snaps at you every now and then, that doesn’t mean she hates you.”

“Every now and then? Try all the time. I feel like I need to walk on eggshells around her or run the risk of getting decapitated.”

“She’s just been on edge because she’s—”

“Don’t say hungry,” Joel said. “Granted, her hangriness is pretty epic, but it isn’t that. This is something else. She’s been like this since the queen.”

Reggie shrugged. “So talk to her about it.”

Joel looked at him like he’d just thrown up on the floor. “Because she’s so open and available? Did you not just hear my concerns about decapitation?” He pushed aside some boxes that were stacked in the corner to reveal five decommissioned bumper cars.

Reggie helped push the cars into the center of the room.

“She just gave up her life, everything she knew, to join three dudes she barely knows to become an entrepreneur and kill bugs,” Reggie pointed out. “And possibly get caught up in an intergalactic corporate conspiracy. Jury’s still out. Anyway, she’s gone through a lot lately. A lot of change. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who does change well.”

Joel stared at him, his mouth hanging open, brows creased. “You’ve been listening to that old Oprah podcast archive, haven’t you?”

“We don’t have anything else to listen to besides the historic database, and Oprah is, like, thirty percent of it. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. You know I’m right. She’s having a hard time, and you’re being a jerk.”

Joel knelt next to the bumper car. “Whatever, man. Just let me build stuff.”

Reggie dropped the subject, knowing that he could only push Joel so far before he shut down. He assisted Joel, who spoke only when he needed something, for the next ten minutes.

* * *

Pushing the wagon of rancid meat was not the part of the plan that Cody had envisioned being responsible for. He was the brains behind the whole thing. He identified this new threat, then devised a way to pit two species against each other and grasp victory from the cold clutches of defeat. Someone else should have to push the rancid meat wagon.

“Of course,” Sam said when they arrived at the kill zone. “Of course, Joel would pick a place like this.”

The funhouse. A façade of groovy colors, murals of clowns and animals, all twisting like they were trapped in someone else’s nightmare. Lights flickered over the entrance, seeming more a warning than a welcome. Inside, there would be distorted mirrors and moving floors and cackling clowns, the soundtrack to Cody’s worst fears.

When Sam pointed out the funhouse being Joel’s obvious choice, Cody immediately began to question his entire relationship with Joel, dissecting memories and trying to determine whether his lifelong friend was a psychopath. Because who else would have an affinity for such a disturbing place?

But when Sam clarified with, “He can’t take anything seriously,” Cody felt bad for wandering even a few steps down that path.

“He can when he needs to,” he said.

Sam scoffed. “If he hasn’t found a need to be serious in anything we’ve been through so far, then I doubt there will ever be a situation where he does.”

Cody felt odd arguing on Joel’s behalf on the subject, seeing how he typically felt the same as Sam. But her tone conveyed a deeper irritation.

“Listen, I’m totally on the same page. Joel can be a pill. But he’s also one of the most loyal people I’ve ever known. We can talk to him when this is done. Get it sorted.”

Sam didn’t seem to share Cody’s optimism. Positivity was never something she had much of. It was never something that served her. She considered it a weakness, really, synonymous with naiveté.

To be honest, if pressed, she couldn’t say exactly why Joel was bothering her so much lately. He was no different than he was when they first met, and she’d found him tolerable then, if not slightly amusing. What had changed?

She would have to suss that out later. Right now, there were pests that needed killing.

“Where should we dump this stuff?” she said.

Cody brought up the specs for the funhouse. “The mirror room,” he said with displeasure. “It’s in the heart of the building, so it’ll be harder for them to get out. And the mirrors should confuse them.”

He looked up at the front of the building, at the nightmarish mural painted over the whole wall. A shiver ran up his spine. He lowered his head and pushed his meat wagon up the ramp and into the funhouse. They then spread the meat across the floor and left with the black pepper.

The central climate control for the park was housed in what was little more than a shed in the northwest corner. Cody and Sam didn’t speak as they traveled to it. Sam pretended to be preoccupied with scanning for threats. Cody occasionally checked his wristcom, making himself look busy.

She could talk it over with the guys all she wanted, but she already knew why what Joel had said bothered her. Because it was true. These three guys, her new business partners, roommates and friends, had lived a normal life full of normal experiences. Shared experiences.

She shared none of those. Not even tangentially. She had nothing to compare it with. Nothing that related to the life the guys led. She was an orphan who’d learned to survive on her own at a young age. She’d not only survived the brutality she’d faced, but she’d conquered it, adapted to it. She’d used it. She’d become brutal.

Parts of her had died, parts that flourished in most people who’d grown up the way the guys had. A love for people and things. Passion. These withered in Sam like untended flowers, and she’d cut away other parts that would have only hindered her ability to survive. Compassion. Empathy. Those things got people killed.

So when Joel had called her a robot, it rang too true. She’d spent her entire life trying to rid herself of the emotions that make people vulnerable.

“Here it is,” Cody said, gesturing to the ventilation shed.

He ducked inside, his scatterblaster at the ready just in case. The shed was clear. They hadn’t seen signs of any ShimVens or Rapoo since Sam blew the gift shop. Like the generators and maintenance department, the tech that comprised the ventilation systems was much newer and more advanced than the vintage look of the park would suggest.

It wasn’t state-of-the-art, but it rivaled the systems found in most commercial spaces. One central hub that pumped air through a series of ducts that connected the entire park. Modern builders loved to have everything connected and controlled from one location. Limited the focus area and maximized control. But it also made the system more vulnerable. Say, if someone wanted to pump a buttload of black pepper into the air and give thousands of people a simultaneous sneezing fit.

“We’re ready on our end,” Cody said through comms.

There was no answer.

“Reggie? Joel? You guys there?” Cody’s voice tightened. Worry rattled in his chest like pneumonia.

Then the comm channel erupted with screaming and gunfire.

“Shitfuck!” Joel shouted. “We’re having a situation! Please hold!”

The line went dead.

Chapter Nine

There was no greater joy than bumper cars. Driving around, sitting behind the wheel of an individual little pod, was a sense of freedom that children didn’t often experience. And then slamming into some unsuspecting noob and watching his eyes rattle inside his skull.

The only greater joy was rigging five bumper cars with aerosol dispersal systems and then remote driving them through an interconnected series of underground tunnels to flush out a species of murderous space bug.

Once Joel figured out the specs for and built the first one, the others rolled off the assembly line in no time. As they did, Reggie pushed the bumper cars out of the maintenance department and parked them at the entrance to the service tunnels.

When all five were assembled and in position, Reggie opened the metal door that lay flat on the ground. He looked down the four feet by four feet opening and cast Joel a dark glance.

“Did you know that the only way down to the service tunnels was by ladder?”

“I did,” Joel answered. “Well, technically, there is an elevator on the other side of the park, but it was scheduled for maintenance before the park was evacuated, and that work order was never acted on, so here we are.”

“How are we supposed to get the cars down there?” Reggie squatted and squinted as he looked deeper into the tunnel. “It’s at least twenty feet down.”

Joel pointed to a spool of thick gauge cable sitting in the seat of one of the cars. “That’s why we brought that.”

Reggie stood like he was an old man, hinging slowly at the hip, hands pressing into his lower back. “You want me to lower them down? I just pushed them all the way over here! And each one weighs at least a hundred pounds.”

“Look who wore their whiny pants this morning. It’s not like I’m just going to sit back and watch… I’m going to sit back and offer moral support.” Joel sat in one of the cars and kicked his feet up. “I suggest rigging up some sort of pulley system.”

Reggie kicked Joel’s feet, knocking them back to the ground.

“You’re right,” Joel said. “I’m the smart one. I’ll rig up some sort of pulley system.” He leaned into the next car over. “Oh, wait—I already did.”

Reggie shook his head. “Why the theatrics?”

“To keep from getting bored.”

Reggie began unwinding the cable from the spool. “This is why Sam hates you.”

Joel froze, looking honestly pained. “Harsh.”

Reggie tipped the first car on its side as Joel fastened the cable around it. Joel then secured the cable to a lamppost. Reggie pushed the car into the opening, and Joel took the weight with the cable. Together, they lowered the first car into the service tunnels.

Joel looked expectantly at Reggie, but said nothing.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Reggie said, “I have to climb down there to untie the car, don’t I?”

Joel touched the end of his nose then did the same to Reggie. “Maybe I’m not the only smart one on this team.”

Reggie shined his flashlight into the tunnel, assuring himself that it was free of ShimVens. He climbed down until only his chest was above ground. “You definitely aren’t the only smart one. But you are the only one at risk of decapitation.” Reggie disappeared into the tunnel.

Joel liked to play it cool, make it seem like he didn’t care nearly as much as he did. But the truth was, he was a ball of worry. Especially in situations like this, when his friends—his family—were in danger. As soon as Reggie was down the ladder, Joel was on his feet, pistols out, ready to provide cover. Luckily, it wasn’t needed.

The cable went slack a minute later, and Joel pulled it up as Reggie climbed. They repeated this four more times without incident. Joel followed Reggie down after the last car. Now was the fun part.

Joel picked up the remote he’d rigged, retrieving it from the seat of one of the cars. It was a multi-frequency radio transmitter with digital display and cloning capability. He could control all five cars at once.

Envy shone in Reggie’s eyes.

“Sorry, pal,” Joel said. “You need to keep watch and make sure I don’t get mauled while I’m steering the cars. Who knows how the ShimVens will react once I start pumping the tunnels with aerosolized flour.”

Reggie cocked his head. “Wait, what?”

A smile crossed Joel’s face. “Genius, huh? It should make a nice explosion and will burn, but probably not hot enough to kill. However, it will help our strategy. I’m going to fill the air with an aerosol of flour. We’ll light this spot like a fuse, and it’ll run all the way out to each exit.

Reggie nodded. “Right, I get that. But once the tunnels start filling with flour, I can’t fire my weapon.”

“Oh, no way,” Joel said like that was obvious. “Not if you don’t want to blow us to hell.”

“So, if we do get swarmed, and I need to keep them off you…”

Joel’s smile faded. “I…may not have thought of that.”

Reggie let his semiautomatic hang at his back from its strap. Then he pulled from his belt the pair of pincers that he’d taken from a ShimVen on their first job, wielding them like daggers.

He wasn’t ignorant of the looks Cody and Joel gave him when he used the pincers. The sideglances they shot him like he was crazy, a soldier wearing a necklace made of ears. At first, Reggie viewed the weapons as a trophy, something shiny he’d earned by doing something difficult—killing a ShimVen with his bare hands. Later, he’d realized they were something else.

They were a comfort. He held them, and he felt in control. A swarm of bugs could come crashing out of a crack in the wall, but he knew he could weather it while those pincers hung from his belt. They were a way to take the fear that the swarm instilled in him, harness it, and turn it back on them.

They were his power in a powerless situation.

Joel flipped a switch on top of the remote, and the digital display lit up. Five small lights flashed on the map, one for each of the cars, bunched up at the intersection of the tunnels.

He looked to Reggie. “Once I release the flour, there’s no turning back. You ready?”

Reggie gripped the pincers tighter, felt the power in them, in him. “Yeah.”

The rig on each car was rudimentary, but effective. Joel wasn’t trying to win any design contests, just get a job done. A canister like a scuba tank was secured to the back of each car with metal brackets. The remote-control units were stuck on their fronts like hood ornaments.

Joel opened the valve on each canister and then sent the cars down their respective paths. Upon activation of his plan, he realized he should have done at least one test run. Steering five cars at once took some adjustment.

Car one slammed into the wall of its tunnel before getting a hundred meters. When Joel made to correct, the other cars veered off course. Frustration levels were at a maximum.

He stopped the cars, closed his eyes, and took a breath. “It’s Mario Kart,” he told himself. “It’s just Mario Kart.”

If he was controlling half the races, that was. But Joel did enjoy a challenge.

His eyes snapped open, and he shot all five cars forward. He didn’t blink. He didn’t think. He opened his mind completely, took in the environment, bypassed processing the information and jumped straight to action.

The cars reached the halfway point, the tunnels half-flooded with aerosol flour.

That’s when they heard the skittering. The tap tap tap of bug feet echoing down the concrete tunnels.

“I know that sound,” Joel said. “Launch a blue shell!”

Reggie knew what he meant. Reggie was the blue shell.

He scanned the area for signs of ShimVens. Nothing. Just noises in the dark. Echoes from a nightmare.

“They’re here, aren’t they?” Joel said, unblinking. He shook like he was having a seizure. “They’re crawling up my legs. I feel them in my pants. They’re in my pants!”

“They’re not in your pants,” Reggie snapped. “They’re—”

Before he could answer, a ShimVen dropped from the ceiling, just inches from Joel’s back. Like Joel, Reggie acted without thought. He was a bug-seeking missile.

He launched himself through the air and drove the pincers into the bug’s head. With a stifled shriek and a few twitches, the bug died. Reggie yanked the pincers free and got back to his feet, ready for more.

“Just keep driving,” Reggie said. “The sooner those cars reach the exit, the sooner we can climb out of this hole.”

Another ShimVen rushed out of the dark, this time targeting Reggie. He dodged to the side and slashed the bug as it passed him by. The creature fell forward and slid across the ground. Reggie stomped its head in.

He had no time to savor small victories. Half a dozen more ShimVens came scuttling out of the dark. Reggie rushed to Joel’s back. He swung in a wide arc, warning the bugs to stay back. When one dared to come too close, Reggie hacked its arm off. A second bug lunged at him on his downswing, and he shifted his weight, positioning his second pincer so that the bug impaled itself.

“How much longer?” he yelled over the snapping of jaws.

“Thirty seconds,” Joel answered.

Static rang in their ears, the sound preceding an incoming call.

“We’re ready on our end,” Cody reported.

Reggie slashed at two more ShimVens who dared step too close. He caught one across the thorax, drawing a stream of hot, green blood. The move drew him too far to the right, though, leaving Joel exposed on the left side.

A bug took advantage of the opening. It lunged and cut Joel across his shoulder.

“Reggie? Joel? You guys there?” Cody said.

Joel screamed as a flash of hot pain seared his shoulder and shot through his arm to his fingertips. “Shitfuck!” he yelled through the comms. “We’re having a situation! Please hold!”

The pain brought him to one knee, and the cars to a standstill.

The bugs pressed forward, forcing Reggie and Joel further away from the ladder. Sensing their escape about to be cut off, Reggie slashed with a renewed sense of vigor. He dropped two bugs, leaving only three to cut through.

Hopes of killing them died in his chest as a new surge of bugs appeared from tunnels two and three. They must have sensed the flour in the air and taken it as a sign that something wasn’t right, that something was about to happen that they would not like. They ran past Reggie and Joel, headed straight for the ladder. They scrambled over each other, fighting to climb it.

Joel and Reggie’s exit was gone.

“What’s plan B?” Reggie asked as he formed a human wall between Joel and the bugs.

Joel growled through his teeth. “Don’t have one.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Joel laughed and then winced from the pain. He pulled a small bundle from his pocket and handed it to Reggie. It was wrapped like a loaf of bread from someone’s grandma. Reggie unfolded the white cloth to reveal a pipe bomb.

“What’s plan C?” Reggie asked. “Hopefully it doesn’t involve us getting flash-fried in a tunnel that’s been pumped full of aerosol flour.”

Joel stood, gritting his teeth. “It’s rigged with a three-minute timer. We set it and forget it.”

Reggie caught a leaping ShimVen in the throat with one of his pincers and threw the dead creature to the floor. “You may not have noticed, but our exit is blocked. And even at my fastest, I couldn’t run the length of one of these tunnels in three minutes. It’s got to be a mile long.”

“The shortest tunnel is point-eight-seven miles long, actually. And we won’t be running.”

Just then, cars two and three raced into the hub and skidded to a halt mere feet from them. The second he had been attacked, Joel had turned the cars around, knowing an alternate exit would be needed.

“We Mario Kart out of here,” he said with a smile. He climbed into car number two.

Reggie slashed one more bug, then climbed into car number three. “Dibs on Yoshi.”

Joel slammed on the accelerator. “Bring it.”

They tore off down tunnel two, the shortest route, with three minutes until the pipe bomb would explode. Well, ‘tore off’ might be a bit of an exaggeration. They were driving vintage bumper cars, after all.

They raced by a scattering of ShimVens. The bugs seemed confused, off. They definitely sensed something in the air. Whether they realized what was about to happen was undetermined, but they seemed to know something was going on.

Joel couldn’t pass up the opportunity to crash into the bugs they passed. He swerved to the left and smashed into one, which bounced off the hood with a satisfying thud.

Reggie yelled his objections, demanding that Joel take their race from death a little more seriously. Until he rammed a bug himself and sent it flying into the wall—then he couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He had not felt such unbridled joy in a long time.

“How long we got?” he shouted.

“Two minutes,” Joel answered.

Reggie gripped the wheel. “Bet I can take out more than you can.”

Joel looked shocked. “I accept your challenge.” He pressed his back into the seat and his foot down on the pedal. The two swerved through the tunnel, slamming bugs, smearing them across the concrete floor, hollering with the kind of joy this park hadn’t seen since the bugs arrived.

Reggie had just pulled ahead in the tally when that joy nearly killed him. He crushed one bug, the one that put him in the lead, when a second came from nowhere and t-boned him. The car tipped onto its side and slid along the concrete, causing Reggie to bump his head on the ground.

Joel didn’t wait for his car to come to a complete stop before leaping out. He ran to Reggie’s side, hurriedly checking if his friend was still alive.

Reggie coughed and groaned as fresh blood poured from a gash in his forehead.

“I get hit with a red shell?”

Joel put Reggie’s arm over his shoulder and lifted his big friend to a standing position. “Yeah, man. Bowser got you.” He dragged him to car number two. “Can you hold on?”

Reggie straddled the back of Joel’s car, the aerosol dispersal system between his legs. He was seeing double, maybe triple, so he couldn’t say for sure how many ShimVens were charging from the rear.

“Hold on,” Joel said as he accelerated.

That crash had cost them precious time. Only fifteen seconds left until the pipe bomb would blow and engulf the tunnel in a white-hot flash.

Ten seconds. The tunnel entrance came into view. The ShimVens were gaining on them. More appeared along the edges of the tunnel and in front of them, closing in around them, seeming grateful for the sudden appearance of an easy meal. Then they noticed the flour spraying from the back of the car.

Five seconds.

“Get ready to jump,” Joel said.

Zero seconds.

There was a BANG, and then a rumble started behind them, building in intensity.

As soon as they crossed the threshold of the tunnel entrance, Joel and Reggie dove to the side. A quick burst of intense light and heat and noise shot out of the tunnel after them. The guys rolled on the ground, clutching their ears. They felt like they’d been kicked in the chest and had onions rubbed in their eyes.

Joel tried to stand, but the world swam around him. He lost his footing and fell onto his butt. He yelled for Reggie like they’d been separated by miles, but his friend sat right next him. Joel couldn’t hear his own voice.

Through the haze caused by the biggest flashbang ever, Joel and Reggie saw dozens of black figures come running out of the tunnel. Reggie stood shakily, holding his pincers out, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to use them.

It turned out he didn’t need to. The ShimVens ran past them and never stopped running.

Reggie looked at Joel and shrugged, as if to say, ‘Well, I guess we did it.’

Joel gave a thumbs-up. Then he tapped on his earpiece and pointed to Reggie as if to say, ‘Tell Sam and Cody that we completed our part of the plan, and we did so in an extremely cool way, and we’re the awesomest.’ Then he laid back and stared at the sky.

Reggie raised Cody and Sam on comms. “We’re good.”

Chapter Ten

The ground rumbled with the echo of an earthquake, a hiccup. Knowing Joel, Cody figured it was likely something else. The minutes that passed were pregnant with worry. The carnage was clear in the background of Joel’s last communication. And now this explosion.

Cody thought of his friends underground, in a nest of ShimVens at his behest. For his plan. After clearing the space stations and vanquishing the queen, Cody was thinking about death a lot more. The possibility of it was more real than ever. It felt closer, like it could be around any corner; it wasn’t just some far-off thing, an eventuality that deserved no attention because only old people need worry over it. It was everywhere. And his decisions could inflict it on his friends.

“We’re good.”

Reggie’s voice cracked through the worry building in Cody’s head. The weights that had piled up on his chest crumbled to dust and blew away. The presence of death was pushed away, at least for now.

When Cody looked to Sam, he felt like she saw something in him that he was trying to hide. Maybe she saw the specter of death, too—she was more familiar with it. Or maybe she saw his worry. Either way, she nodded, the kind of subtle move meant to set him at ease, to share his burden.

Cody popped the top off the black pepper and dumped it into the ventilation intake.

Sam nodded again, a different sort of gesture: one meant to acknowledge achievement. One she was clearly more comfortable with.

“Let’s move,” she said.

They raced to the funhouse and took up position at the rendezvous spot. It didn’t matter where Cody stood, the creepy clown in the mural on the front of the building seemed to follow him. Its psycho killer eyes haunted him. But they also offered a distraction from the chaos around them.

ShimVens had begun to run past them and clamor into the funhouse. Cody twitched with every clickety-clack of bug feet, his fingers aching to pull the trigger of his scatterblaster. But if he started shooting now, the bugs would run, and the whole plan would crumble.

He hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to sit and watch the ShimVens pass by. There was a time not long ago when the sight of them would have put him in a fear coma.

Sam put a gentle hand on his forearm. Again, she seemed to notice more than he realized.

“Almost,” she said.

Joel and Reggie came around the corner of the nearby lane, dragging each other along. Both were banged up and bleeding. They fell in a heap once they reached Sam and Cody.

“What the hell happened to you two?” Sam said.

Joel mumbled something about Mario Kart and Bowser before pausing and taking a deep breath. As he exhaled, he said, “Fine. We’re fine. Let’s do this.”

He drew his blasters and tried to stand, but Sam grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back down, behind cover. He shot her a confused look.

She pointed up the road to a herd of frantically sneezing Rapoo. The Rapoo slammed into each other as they followed the scent of meat that would lead them to the funhouse. Apparently, the fine black pepper had worn off, giving them back their olfactory senses.

Joel looked over his shoulder at Sam. She’d just stopped him from ruining the plan. She’d also stopped him from running into a herd of Rapoo. He didn’t know which was the stronger of her motivations, but he expected her to scold him like he was an irreverent child.

Instead, she nodded and said, “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

The last of the Rapoo disappeared inside the funhouse. The Notches maintained their position for a minute, listening for a clue as to what was happening inside. At first, all they heard was sneezing. Then they heard mayhem.

Shrieking, crashing, shattering glass, cracking walls.

The war had begun.

The Notches took up their new positions, one team at the entrance, one at the exit. They would allow the two warring species as much time as they needed to wipe each other out. If either tried to flee, the teams would take them out. Then, once the fight seemed to have settled, they would move in and finish off the winners.

It was a cruel trophy, but the Notches weren’t in the business of honoring victors. They were in the business of eradication.

Cody and Sam posted up at the exit. Sam drew her sword, while Cody finally readied his scatterblaster. It felt oddly comforting in his hands, like a destructive security blanket. A flicker of movement drew his attention and his fire. Something burst in the doorway before he could even tell what it was. It didn’t matter anyway—ShimVen, Rapoo, both were dying today.

The next ten minutes was a tense game of whack-a-mole. The Notches did their best not to blink, and reacted to every sign of movement. The battle must have turned in the Rapoo’s favor, because ShimVens began trying to escape. First, only a couple. Then ten. Then a whole flood.

Reggie squeezed off a burst of semiautomatic gunfire, dropping a wave of bugs. Sam stepped in front of the doorway and twirled her blade, slicing bugs as they tried to run. Then there was nothing. No more bugs tried to escape. It grew quiet.

“Sooo…” Joel shrugged.

“We need to clear the building,” Reggie said.

“Do we, though?” Joel said.

“Yes,” Reggie said. “I’ll head in this way. You wait here in case any try to slip out.”

“Great idea,” Joel said.

“I’ll head in this end,” Sam said.

Cody agreed to guard the exit.

Sam entered the spinning tunnel, where a dead Rapoo spun around like a sock in a dryer. She avoided the corpse and moved through the sections. She climbed up a wavy slide, swung over a ball pit using gymnastics rings, and walked effortlessly over a balance beam. This funhouse is amateur hour.

She saw only corpses until she reached the mirror room.

There, she found what looked to be a dozen live Rapoo, but Sam knew that was an illusion. There was only one. The solitary creature to survive this battle of two species. The most powerful of them both. A Rapoo the size of two of its kind. It was stained red, covered in the blood of both its family and its enemies.

It stood atop of pile of corpses and was currently eating its way through them.

Sam tried to determine which Rapoo was the real one. The air was thick with the smell of blood and rancid meat; her senses would not help. She tried to sneak further into the room, but the moment her boot touched the floor, which was slick with blood, the Rapoo heard her. It turned its attention from its current meal to its next one.

With Sam locked in its sights, the Rapoo lunged. Sam was on unsteady ground and unable to dodge. She raised her sword instead and managed to block the Rapoo’s slash, which would have opened her up, but the hit knocked her off balance. She slipped and landed hard on her back. The air tasted like pennies and clogged Sam’s throat.

She suddenly felt sick, like she wanted to vomit but couldn’t.

The Rapoo stepped on her chest. It lowered its face so that it was only inches from Sam’s. There was something very different about this creature, compared to the ShimVens. It wasn’t just a wild animal looking for food… This thing wore a look that Sam recognized. It didn’t kill out of necessity. It wanted to. It liked it.

Sam tried to drive her blade into the Rapoo’s side, but the beast was too close; she couldn’t get an angle on it. And it was heavier than it looked. It felt like someone had set a rock on her chest. And then another on top of that. And another. She tried to roll to her side, arch her back, push the Rapoo off her. But nothing worked.

The Rapoo opened its mouth, giving Sam a closer look at its diamond-hard teeth than she ever cared to have. It unleashed a low hiss that built into a growl.

And then the left side of its right side turned to bloody hamburger.

Reggie walked toward it, preceded by a barrage of machine gunfire. The Rapoo fell off Sam, but it wasn’t dead. It scrambled to its feet, still getting peppered by gunfire. It pushed against the blast like it was walking into a strong wind.

Sam rolled to her feet. She pressed back with one leg and shoved off the wall. She slid across the blood-soaked floor like a macabre figure skater, and slashed low, taking off the Rapoo’s front legs. Her angle and proximity made her attacks more successful than Reggie’s. The Rapoo fell forward, writhing but still trying to escape.

No, Sam realized. Not escape. Kill.

Reggie let off the trigger as Sam stood over the Rapoo, poised to deliver the killing blow. She drove her sword straight down, through the beast’s back, pinning it to the floor. It wriggled for another twenty seconds, hissing and howling, until, finally, it died.

The war was over. Both sides had lost.

Chapter Eleven

“You’re right,” Sam admitted, looking out over Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park. “This is pretty awesome.”

“Right?” Joel responded.

The Notches had climbed to the top of Rolling Thunder to sit on the highest peak. They didn’t say much, just took the time to relax and observe their handiwork. It wasn’t often that the place they just cleaned still existed after their job was done.

Silence stretched as they watched the sun dip below the horizon, casting a colorful wave over the park and everything beyond it. The job had gotten hairy at the end, but the team agreed that it was a success, and that they were definitely improving; the explosions this time were minimal, and they’d thought up creative ways to flush out the critters without setting everything on fire. And they only almost died a little.

They basked in their victory.

It caught everyone by surprise when Sam blurted out, “I’ve never been to an amusement park before.” She said it like she was confessing some long-held secret. She kept her eyes on the horizon. “Never ridden a rollercoaster. I’d never even eaten candy. I didn’t have a childhood like you guys did.”

She let those words hang. She didn’t know how to follow them, or what she meant to convey. Why she’d bothered to tell them. Until Joel reminded her.

He stood and walked up the track to the ladder. “Come on,” he said to them. “Let’s go turn this bitch on.”

The guys immediately followed Joel down the ladder. Sam paused and took one last look out over the park. Though a plume of smoke was still rising from the gift shop, and the blood had begun to ooze out of the funhouse, the view was a pleasant sight. She could imagine the park full of people, happy families, teenagers on first dates. She could imagine herself walking through it, playing the games, eating the food.

She’d never done that before. Imagined herself doing something so normal. That stuff always seemed so alien, so far away that it would be like trying to imagine touching the sun. There was no context.

But she had context now.

Joel poked at the controls of Rolling Thunder until he felt familiar enough with them. Then he showed Reggie how to use them. Joel and Sam stood in waiting along the edge of the concrete platform.

Sam felt like a fool, like a tourist waving her camera around and pointing at the tall buildings. She may as well have been wearing a fanny pack. But when that rollercoaster car came rolling to a stop at her feet, she didn’t care about any of that. All she could think about was racing through the track, diving down those hills and speeding around the turns.

She and Joel climbed into the car and pulled the safety bar down across their chests. The car lurched forward, and Sam left her heart back on the platform. She’d hunted the galaxy’s most notorious criminals and been swallowed by a ShimVen queen, but this rollercoaster felt like the most exhilarating thing she’d ever done.

She clenched her teeth and tried to remain stoic. She tried to maintain the cool, uncaring exterior that was her norm. But she couldn’t. As soon as the car took that first dive, she squealed like a child. Like a normal child. She squealed on every dive, around every turn, and, when the ride was over, her heart pounded against the inside of her chest, and she yelled, “Again!”

She would have ridden that rollercoaster all night if she could have, ridden it until she was sick. It was the first normal childhood feeling she could remember having.

The next normal feeling she experienced was disappointment when she realized she had to get off the ride.

As the car she was in approached the platform, Sam couldn’t help but notice that Reggie looked like he’d been kicked in the junk—angry and nauseated. The safety bar released, and Sam and Joel climbed out. Cody was pacing the platform, holding his chin in his hand, cursing under his breath.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked.

“I just got off the phone with the client,” Reggie said. “I reported the successful completion of the job and reminded him of the details of our agreement.” He flexed his hands like he was squeezing his fingers around the throat of an invisible person, and his knuckles turned white. “And he informed me that he will not be paying what he owes us.”

“Say that again?” Joel said in disbelief.

“Apparently, it’s been a slow year on Kaufman,” Reggie said.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a slow decade for me,” Joel said. “But I still pay for my shit. You know, most of the time.”

Cody interjected. “Is he paying us at all?”

“Half,” Reggie said.

Sam unsheathed her sword. “Then I will remove half of his body to cover the remainder of our payment.”

Cody curled his lip. “Why would we want half a person? We can’t fuel the ship with half a person.” He tilted his head. “Actually, if we modify the engines to burn biomass, maybe—"

Reggie threw up his hands as a way to swat the conversation out of the air. “Before we get way off topic here, let me finish. The client said he could pay us half of the agreed upon fee, and he will pay us the other half in trade.”

The crew went silent for a moment as they considered this. Sam imagined a ship full of gummy worms. Cody imagined an upgraded computer system for Sonic—Kaufman catered to some powerful people, so it must have some solid cyber security systems. Joel imagined cruising around Sonic in his own bumper car. Or maybe dismantling Rolling Thunder and reassembling it inside the ship. It would be a hell of a way to get from his bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

“I was thinking we could pick up the parts we need to fix the engines, and make all the repairs to Sonic as trade,” Reggie said. “They’ve got to have access to that stuff somewhere on Kaufman.”

Cody nodded, silently disappointed that they would not be upgrading their system. “That makes sense.”

The team packed up their gear and headed for the exit, sadder than they would have thought to be leaving behind Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park.

Sam took one last look over her shoulder as they left.

Her first trip to an amusement park. First rollercoaster. First taste of candy. First time cracking open that vault she kept in her chest and letting someone else in… The Notches hadn’t let her down yet. She wondered when she would stop expecting them to.

She turned back to follow the team, but something in the parking lot caught her attention as she passed—a familiar logo. There among the abandoned cars of past tourists, pulled up along the loading docks at the far side of the park entrance, was a truck with ‘LAYTON’ written on the side.

Chapter Twelve

The client was somewhere in the spa district, which was much less the team’s speed than the amusement park. Facials. Mud masks. Chemical peels. Rich people paying absurd amounts of money to do weird things to their bodies.

The spa district was still bustling with people. The Notches’ beat up, blood-covered appearance didn’t play well with the flowing white robes and dangling jewelry that adorned the other pedestrians. They caught the kind of snooty glares that aristocrats cast at peasants. And they did suddenly feel like peasants.

One woman in her late forties billowed like a cloud as the Notches walked past her. Her neck was covered in more wealth than they would ever see, and her face was smoother than any face should ever be. Clearly, she’d been injected with something, a paralytic meant to do away with wrinkles that also had the side effect of making a person look like a plastic toy.

“What in the world are those?” she asked as she regarded the Notches, as if they weren’t people.

Sam and Joel both reached for their weapons.

Reggie shot them a look that suitably conveyed the order to not murder anyone. Though he understood the desire.

The guys all came from blue collar families. None of them had grown up with money. They’d rarely wanted for anything, but they’d been looked down on plenty by those with big houses and fast cars. They’d grown up in the orbit of money—in neighborhoods that bordered the ones with gates and homeowners’ associations.

Sam, however, had never had anything, never even came close. But she’d worked for those kinds of people. They were the only ones who could afford to put out contracts, unless she worked for a government or a corporation, and, really, they were all the same people.

“Right this way,” a thin man with a long, blond ponytail said. Chad or Chet or something.

He was the concierge at this spa, and had received instructions from their client to show the Notches to him once they arrived.

He led them through a maze of massage tables and naked people lying face down. Joel was tempted to yank a few towels and run howling through the place, with a trail of angry, rich people chasing after him with their saggy asses hanging out… But he thought better of it. Maybe Reggie’s influence was finally starting to get the better of him after all these years.

Instead, they followed the man silently. Reggie and Cody stared at their shoes.

“And here we are,” Ponytail said, pointing to a small, round building made to resemble a grass hut on a tropical island. Well, a tropical island out of a cheesy novel, imagined by a person who’d never seen one. Ponytail brushed a curtain of beads aside and gestured for the Notches to enter.

“Anyone else feel like we’re about to be murdered?” Joel asked. “Or at least drugged? Maybe in a couple hours, we’ll wake up in a field somewhere, and these rich folks will be trying to hunt us?” He looked at each of the Notches. “No? Just me? Okay, let’s go into the creepy hut, then.”

They ducked into the small hut and found it suddenly hard to see. The interior was dim, lit only by a few torches set at regular intervals around the room. It stank of incense—a thick smell that clogged the nose and sat heavy on the tongue. But it left a better taste than the man who came into view as their eyes adjusted to the dark.

The first thing they noticed was he was sitting on a throne. If you sit on a throne, you’d better be a king. Otherwise, you’re just a douche. He sported a very porn-star-slash-serial-killer mustache, thin and wiry, above his upper lip. He looked to be in his mid-forties, though he, like most people on Kaufman, had done much to obscure that. His hair was dyed the color he probably thought it was when he was in high school, though now, it just looked painfully out of place, like he was wearing a hair helmet. He was spray tanned from head to toe, which they could confirm because he was completely naked.

“Greetings,” he said. “I’m Graham. You have had the pleasure of being in my employ.”

It took all of the self-control Sam had ever possessed to not immediately lop Graham’s head off. Every second he lived in her presence was on borrowed time.

He locked eyes with Sam. “And now I have the pleasure of being in your company.”

Sam wanted to vomit and commit murder at the same time.

Reggie was the first to speak. He didn’t want to be, he just didn’t want Joel to be the first to speak. “Mr. Graham, we spoke with one of your people a little while ago, and…” His tongue seemed to stop working. “I’m sorry, should we come back, or…?”

Graham looked confused, and then looked down at his naked body. “Ah, yes. I forget that you’re new to Kaufman. Nudity is quite common here. I would encourage you to embrace it.”

“I really wouldn’t,” Joel said under his breath as he watched Sam’s fingers dance on the handle of her sword.

“Then I will take a few moments to dress and will then meet you in my office. Perhaps a more formal setting would be more appropriate for this sort of meeting.”

Graham rose from his douche throne. He rested his hands on the small of his back and pushed his hips forward for seemingly no other purpose than to be gross. He nodded, and Ponytail showed the Notches outside.

“You took a job from that guy?” Cody said to Reggie as they followed Ponytail down a cobbled path that soon wound up a spiral staircase.

“It’s not like I videochatted with him,” Reggie said. “It’s hard to tell if a person is a total creeper by the sound of his voice.”

“No, it isn’t,” Sam said.

At the top of the spiral staircase was a deck that offered one of the most amazing views the team had ever seen, on any planet. Kaufman stretched out for miles, the ski slopes and man-made lakes looking like an oil painting. Attached to the deck was a house version of Graham—obnoxious, dated, and, from what they could see through the windows, mostly empty inside.

Ponytail led them to some chairs that sat in a semicircle around an outdoor bar. “Please, take a seat. Graham will be with you shortly.”

He pointed to the bar. “And please feel free to fix yourself a beverage.”

Joel scoped out the bar as soon as Ponytail left.

“We’re still working,” Reggie said to him.

“If I’m going to be in that man’s presence longer than two more seconds, I’m going to need a drink.” He studied a bottle full of clear liquor. “Cucumber vodka? Asshole.”

“What’s our endgame here?” Cody asked the group. “If this guy is going to offer us trade, what are we hoping to get? I think we should be on the same page about that so we can negotiate.”

Joel sipped from his freshly made cocktail. “Actually, this cucumber vodka isn’t that bad. Quite refreshing. I’d take some of this in trade.”

“Parts to fix the ship, fuel and food,” Reggie said. “If we can’t fix the ship, we can’t work. We’ll be stuck here on Kaufman.”

“With Graham,” Sam said through her teeth. “We need parts.”

Ponytail returned halfway through Joel’s second drink. “Gentlemen, and lady, Graham.” He half-bowed and extended an arm like he was presenting a king to his court.

Graham sauntered over. Even his saunter was grandiose and self-obsessed. “My friends, please, sit and enjoy yourselves.”

Joel raised his glass. “Oh, I am. At least, I was.”

Graham smiled, though it was easy to see through. A polite gesture that did little to mask his very genuine loathing of Joel’s boorish behavior. “Let’s settle our business, then, shall we? I hate to leave people unsatisfied.” He winked at Sam.

Sam threw up in her mouth.

“That’s a funny thing to say after telling us that you aren’t able to pay for fantastic services rendered.” Joel sipped his drink.

Graham shook from the shoulders up with a passive aggressive chuckle. “Yes, so fantastic I can see the smoke all the way from here. Not only did you rid my amusement park of vermin, but you’ve added to the view for my guests here at the spa.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Sam said.

Something aside from Graham’s general skeeviness hadn’t been sitting well with her. She’d developed a keen sense of people’s motivations, and something with this guy was off.

“Not a lot of people on Kaufman venture outside of their respective industry,” Sam noted. “It’s not common for a spa owner to also own an amusement park.”

Graham looked her up and down as he nodded, and his eyes filled with wanting. “You are as intelligent as you are beautiful.”

Round two of mouth vomit.

“You are correct,” he said. “It is uncommon indeed. But I felt the need to diversify my holdings. That’s just smart business. However, with the park shut down from that infestation, and showing no sign of bouncing back, I’m afraid that I’m quite limited on liquid assets at the moment.”

Sam gestured to the spa below, and the sea of naked, rich people they’d passed through. “The spa seems to be doing well enough. Why risk investing in an amusement park with such a niche audience?”

The smile slipped from Graham’s face somewhat; a barely noticeable twitch to most people, but Sam was practiced in reading people.

“The spa has rebounded recently,” Graham allowed. “Which is why I’m able to pay you at all.”

“Rebounded from what?” Sam pressed.

Reggie grew uncomfortable with the forcefulness of their interaction, but Cody saw something beneath Sam’s brusque exterior. She sensed something, like a dog on a scent—an analogy that he would never share with her. He paced around behind Reggie and Sam, stood at the railing and made it appear as if he was taking in the view. But he looked down at his wristcom instead.

The twitch on Graham’s face was noticeable to even Reggie now.

“Is it relevant that you delve into my financial history?” Graham asked tensely.

Sam didn’t back down from his attempt at avoidance. “Considering that we’re meeting because you claim you can’t afford to pay us, I’d say yes. Unless, of course, you’d like us to file a complaint with the Galactic Business Bureau? They’d probably launch an investigation into why you’re stiffing your contractors. I’m sure that press wouldn’t play well with the fancy elites you serve here. Especially while you’re still rebounding.”

Graham never broke eye contact with Sam, even as he waved for Ponytail to fetch him a drink. “Smart, beautiful and feisty. You’re the complete package, aren’t you? Very well. Jasob opened a flagship store on their new space station. They sold high-end beauty products that drew away customers.” He sipped from his drink, and his smile returned. “But that is not a problem anymore. Business has returned. The spa is thriving. So I can cut my losses with the amusement park and move on.”

Cody minimized the window on his wristcom and looked out at the view. His eyes darted across the horizon as he made some mental calculations. Coming to a conclusion, he rejoined the others.

“So, you mentioned trade?” he interjected.

Sam seemed agitated to have her line of questioning shut down, but Reggie jumped on the chance to move forward.

“That’s right,” Reggie said. “Half the agreed upon payment, and we take the rest in trade.”

“Indeed,” Graham said. He sat in a wicker chair at the edge of the deck, so he could enjoy the view. “My apologies for the money flow issues. But I assure you, you will receive what you’ve earned through other means.”

Reggie sat in a chair near Graham. “Good, because we’ve got a list of things we need.” He handed the man the list, which contained all of the parts they needed to fix the ship, plus a few extras Joel had tacked on just for fun as well as fuel and food.

Graham’s brow grew increasingly furrowed as he read. “I’m afraid much of this is well outside my ability to provide. I run a spa, not a mechanic’s shop.”

Sam stepped to Reggie’s side, casting her shadow over Graham. “That’s unfortunate.”

Graham sank under the weight of her stare. “Yes, well, I may be able to offer a creative workaround.”

“I thought trade was already the creative workaround,” Joel said, his words beginning to slur.

Graham ignored him. “These parts, I do not have them. But I know of a place where you may be able to find something adjacent, something that may be able to meet your needs.” He walked to the railing and pointed to a pillar of smoke rising from the horizon.

Joel wanted to throw his drink in Graham’s face until he realized what the spray tanned man was saying. Then he wanted to hug him, which he did not do, because Graham was gross.

“You’re saying we can strip parts from Rocket Roger’s?” he clarified.

“Yes,” Graham said. “Take whatever you need. I’ll be demolishing it eventually, anyway. Maybe I’ll turn the lot into a lake. Oh, or a roller derby rink. There’s been some interest, and it would be the first one on Kaufman.”

Joel was more excited than when they’d first walked into Rocket Roger’s and he realized he would have the opportunity to romp around an abandoned amusement park. But this—the only thing he could want more than free reign over an amusement park was to take an amusement park apart and put it back together.

“It’s time to cross another item off my bucket list,” Joel said.

“Before you get on with all of that,” Graham said, “I would like to invite you to enjoy the services of my spa. It’s only right that you rest and relax after a hard day’s work. We have much to offer. Massages. Salt baths. Hot tubs. Natural springs. Cryotherapy.” He looked at Sam. “Facials. They do wonders for the pores. Remove that mask, get the skin beneath refreshed. And maybe an oil treatment? That hair of yours is gorgeous, but even natural beauty needs tending.”

Faced with all of his advances, Sam felt nothing but nauseated. But this, commenting on her beauty and complimenting her, while also suggesting she had flaws, made her self-conscious. And the fact that this smear of a person could make her feel such a way only served to make her angry.

Joel downed the rest of his drink. “Massages, you say? Point the way, Ponytail. I need a rub down.” The concierge groaned. “Wait, on second thought,” Joel said. “There is one more member of our party who would like to take advantage of your services. His name is General Pepper. He’s about yay high, furry all over, of an unknown species—”

“We don’t cater to animals,” Graham said.

Joel looked like he’d been slapped. “He’s a general. And I don’t typically cater to broke-ass clients who can’t pay me, but here we are.”

Reggie put a hand on Joel’s chest and tried to steer him away from Graham.

Graham waved dismissively. “No, it’s fine. Get the creature a bath. Find someone to groom it.”

“Him,” Joel said as he followed Ponytail. “Groom him.”

Graham opened his arms to the other three. “As for the rest of you, please go enjoy yourselves.”

Cody and Reggie peeled away and followed Joel and Pontytail. For some reason she couldn’t name, Sam stood rooted in place. She was angry, but didn’t know the exact reason why. No, that was a lie. She knew. It wasn’t because Graham had pointed out a few of her physical flaws. It was because he’d made her doubt herself. He’d made her feel insecure.

Sam was one of the most feared and respected mercenaries in the galaxy, and this spray tanned son of a bitch had made her uncomfortable in her own skin with a few choice words. She had great skin. Amazing goddamn skin, considering all it’d been through, and she wouldn’t wish for any other skin to live in.

Then she realized maybe she wasn’t mad at Graham at all. Maybe she was mad at herself. She’d thought she was stronger than this, to let a man shake her in such a way.

This guy doesn’t deserve space in your head, she told herself.

“Did you have a question?” Graham said, his eye dangerously close to winking at her.

“No,” she said. She turned her back to him and followed the guys.

But I do deserve a hot oil treatment, she thought with a smile. I think I’ve got bug guts in my hair.

Chapter Thirteen

Thomas had amazing fingers. Each one was like a tiny man with his own fingers that pressed on every pressure point and squeezed out every ounce of stress from Joel’s muscles. He was in heaven, and Thomas was an angel.

Joel hadn’t realized how sore he was, how tight his muscles were, until someone pointed it out by digging their knuckles into them. Now, fully aware of his body, he felt how tired he was. He’d been going full speed for a while now. Since that first job, it felt like. They hadn’t stopped moving, had barely had any time to rest and get right before the next travesty drew their attention.

And the downtime they did have was far from restful. It was largely spent worrying that Sonic was going to fall apart and they had no money to fix it, and fighting over the last bowl of oatmeal and worrying that Sam was going to chop his head off because she was hungry.

But this. Damn. This was nice.

“Get the calves, Thomas,” Joel said, his voice muffled by the massage table.

* * *

Cody opted for something a little more reclusive. He didn’t find being touched by a stranger to be relaxing. But the salt baths—now those were right up his alley. Natural springs full of Epsom salts and essential oils. He sank into it, laid his head back into the grooved spot on the edge of the tub, and became weightless. It felt like drifting through space, only without the sense of paralyzing fear.

Stress seeped from his body. Aches and pains melted away.

He tried not to think of Layton Corp. He didn’t want to. He wanted to think of nothing. He wanted to shut his brain off just for a little while. But that was never something he was good at, even when soaking in the most relaxing bath that ever existed.

His mind was always racing, a fact most people didn’t know, due to his quiet nature. They assumed the outside was reflective of the inside: soft spoken, unassuming, largely harmless. But Cody’s inside was not a mirror reflection of his exterior, it was the complete opposite. His mind was quick and loud and dangerous.

He’d hacked his school’s computer system when he was six so he could play MMORPGs during class. When the newest superhero movie was released, he’d bring down the school’s power system, canceling class for the day so the guys could go see it. His hacking accolades only grew exponentially as he grew older. And no one ever suspected him because he was so quiet and unassuming.

His dangerous mind also fixated on things. There were welcome perks to having Cody as a friend, but the guys often lamented his obsessions. He once ruined a perfectly good prank on the principal of their school because, while hacking his personal computer to steal an embarrassing picture of him at the beach, Cody had stumbled on Principal Grady’s finances. The guys told him to let it go, but, in the end, after an exhaustive and probing investigation, Principal Grady was arrested for embezzling from the teachers’ union.

As much as it bothered the guys, it bothered Cody more. To see Joel move through the world so carefree. To see Reggie let things wash off his back. To see Sam… Well, bad example. She seemed to live in the moment, at least. Focus on the things in front of her. Cody was jealous of them all. Sitting in this tub, soaking in what typical clients probably paid thousands for, all he could think about was Layton Corp.

The ShimVens. The infestations. How are they all related?

* * *

Reggie stood in the sauna like a soldier, hands clasped behind him, back to the corner, eyes scanning for threats.

This was a bad idea, he thought.

They should be stripping the amusement park for parts right now, not getting primped and pampered. He didn’t know why he thought standing in a room full of steam would be a good idea. He could barely breathe, and visibility was poor.

His dad used to use the sauna at his local YMCA. After a week of breaking his back, he would go out to breakfast on Saturday morning, then head to the Y to sit in the sauna. Reggie remembered feeling bitter about that. Dad was gone all week, then on Saturday morning, instead of playing ball with him, he goes off by himself to eat pancakes and relax in the sauna. Reggie understood it now, though. Why he needed it.

He took a deep breath, sucking in as much steam as he could, then blew it out his nose like a dragon. The steam cleansed him from the inside out. It latched onto a little bit of the stress in his chest, breaking it up like cold congestion. He closed his eyes. The swarm scurried across the backs of his eyelids. Pincers and red eyes everywhere.

Deep breath. Blow it out.

The swarm thinned, bugs turning to vapor and blowing away.

Deep breath.

And they were gone.

Reggie opened his eyes. An old man who was being very conservative with his towel coverage eyed him curiously. He must be a strange sight, standing there, tense and nervous, preparing for an attack that wouldn’t come, from an enemy that didn’t exist. But he felt okay now.

He nodded to the old man, smiled, and sat. With every breath, he breathed easier. He exhaled some poison.

* * *

Three women stood in a semicircle around Sam, looking her up and down like she was a bizarre piece of post-modern sculpture. This made her feel confused, intrigued, and somewhat offended. They paced around her, clucking and sucking air through their teeth, muttering to each other in tones that cut through Sam.

“A good base,” one said.

“But under layers of neglect,” countered another.

“Years of it,” said the last. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sam clenched her jaw and growled at being referred to as ‘it’.

The women stepped back.

“It snarled,” the first woman said. “The situation is worse than I thought.” She took Sam by the hand, surprisingly gentle, and led her toward a closed door. “Come, we’ve much to do.”

Sam felt a sense of dread as she was led to the door, like a convict on her way to execution. What lay on the other side? What forms of torture would they subject her to?

A wave of soothing smells hit Sam when the door opened.

Lavender. She loved lavender. It jarred loose a vague echo of a memory. A feeling more than anything else. A sense that she’d once led a normal, happy life…that she’d once had the potential for it.

The room wasn’t a torture chamber, after all. Not in the traditional sense anyway. A massage table instead of a torture rack. Brushes and combs instead of blades and needles.

The women led her to the table.

“Sit,” one said.

Sam sat on the table. She was like a child at the doctor, uncertain what to expect, and scared, but trying her hardest to keep it from showing.

“We’ll take good care of you,” the second woman said as she reached for Sam’s face.

Sam pulled back, her instincts telling her to pull out her sword.

The women didn’t run, though. They weren’t afraid of her.

“Dear,” the oldest woman said. “We can’t do what must be done with that on your face.” She smiled the sweet smile of a grandmother, though she wasn’t old enough to be one. “Everything that happens in this room stays between us. This can be your church, and we your priests.”

Sam let her arms hang at her side. The women touched the clasp at the back of her head, loosening the mask. It felt like a weight being untied from around her ankle as she treaded water. The effort of just being, lessened. She could float.

They removed her mask. She felt naked.

“Lay back,” the older woman said. The other two held the back of Sam’s head and shoulders, lowering her into a lying position on the table. “We will take care of you.”

Sam blinked away the tears forming in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks. Then she closed her eyes and allowed the women to take care of her.

* * *

Joel was lounging in a chair by the spa bar. He looked like he was barely conscious, staring goofily up at the sky. The others joined him in turn. Reggie felt more at peace than he had in a long time, maybe ever. A peace he never knew he was lacking. Cody seemed his typical, worrisome self.

“Ready to get those parts?” Cody asked.

Joel let slip a soft moan that made Cody squirm. “Not even you can ruin this for me.” Joel said as he sipped a drink.

“How many of those have you had?” Cody said.

Joel took another long sip. “Almost enough. Sit, man. Chill. You’re ruining my massage high.”

“We don’t have time to sit around and get drunk,” Cody said. “We need to make those repairs to the ship.”

Reggie sat in the lounge chair next to Joel. “For once, I think Joel has the right idea. We’ve got access to one of the most exclusive resorts in the galaxy. When will we ever get that chance again? Let’s enjoy it.”

Joel and Cody looked equally stunned.

“Goddamn right,” Joel said. He snapped his fingers at a passing employee. “Get this man a drink.”

“Something isn’t right about this,” Cody said. “I did some digging into Graham’s financials. He was underselling just how dire his situation was. Before we blew up StrobeNet, he was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy.”

Joel choked on his drink and it dribbled down his chin like an infant. Cody thought he was finally getting the information to sink in when he realized that Joel was looking past him. He turned and nearly choked on his own tongue.

Sam was walking toward them. She looked like she’d been scrubbed from head to toe. She was a classic car that had been kept in the garage, under a sheet for years, given a polish and tune-up. It was no surprise to the guys that she was beautiful, they’d known that from the moment they met. But it was on full display now, a light shining on it. Her raven hair glistened like it’d been dipped in diamonds. Her skin was smooth and cleaned of its typical coat of grime, healed of cuts and bruises.

She moved with a different kind of confidence—not that of the best mercenary money can buy, but that of a woman who knows she owns the room.

Reggie, Joel, and Cody looked like gawking teenagers. Then they felt like awkward teenagers, gawking at their older cousin climbing out of the pool at the family reunion. They shuddered, adjusted themselves, and then set about thinking about baseball or knitting or investing in the stock market.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” Sam asked, noticing their awkwardness, and feeling a bit of her own.

She adjusted her mask. Having spent a significant chunk of time without it, it suddenly felt strange pressed against her face.

“Nothing,” Joel said, staring intensely at the ice swirling in his drink. “Cody was just telling us something super important and interesting.”

She looked to Cody. “Oh?”

Cody fidgeted with his fingers. “What? No, I just…I was…” He snapped at a passing employee. “Can I get a drink, please?” He sat in the lounge chair next to Reggie. “I was just about to take Joel’s advice. I’m way too serious sometimes.”

Sam smiled and sat in the last chair in the row. She ordered a drink, too. They all sat and sipped and talked about nonsense. Video games, favorite things growing up, what they liked to do now. Sam didn’t know what to say most of the time, but she listened and pretended and thought hard about things she liked aside from fighting and killing. Which wasn’t much. At least that she was aware of.

Time to get some hobbies, she thought.

As they lounged and soaked in the free paradise, three women walked toward them, stopping at the bar. Joel sat up. He scooched to the end of his lounge chair, sloshing a bit of his drink, and waited for them to turn around. He looked like a puppy, waiting at his master’s feet for a morsel of food to drop to the floor.

As soon as they turned, drinks in hand, he said, “Good day, ladies. Might I interest you in a dip in the mud baths? I hear they’re lovely.”

All three women met him with blank stares. Cold eyes that slowly hardened to icicles, aimed at Joel’s heart.

“They’re closed,” Sam said before the women could answer. “For cleaning. Someone pooped in them. Fairly common, apparently.”

The women’s faces turned green. They hurried away, clucking to each other.

Joel sat back in his chair. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow as he looked at Sam, turning over an idea in his head. When the idea cemented, he laced his fingers behind his head and laid back like he was the coolest goddamn boy in gym class.

“It’s cool. I totally get it,” Joel said.

“Get what?” Sam said.

“Your game. Why you’re always scaring ladies away before I have a chance to lock it down.”

Sam laughed into her glass. “Why’s that?”

“Because you’re into me.”

She choked on her drink, spitting what she hadn’t inhaled back into her cup.

“No need to be embarrassed,” Joel said. “I don’t blame you. It happens. I’m magnetic.”

“Gross,” Sam said.

“Seconded,” Cody added.

Sam set her glass down and stood from her lounge chair. “I just don’t want some lovely woman breeding with an uptight, entitled idiot.” Shrugging off the complimentary robe, she said, “I think it’s time we get out of here. Don’t we have a ship to fix?”

Chapter Fourteen

Wrenches clanged and rang, and the smells of grease and engine oil were in the air, but Joel couldn’t bring himself to care. He wasn’t interested in tinkering. Maybe for the first time in his life, his attention was held more firmly by something other than spare parts and disassembled machines.

“Dude, are you gonna help?” Reggie’s face was smeared black, and his thumbs were swollen from where he’d smashed them with a hammer while trying to pound the new engine pieces into place. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

They’d stripped the amusement park of useful tech in half a day. They’d emptied the machine shop of all its hardware. They’d pried the metal plating off any of the rides they could. And they’d pulled the engine out of Rolling Thunder, the biggest ride in the park.

Half an amusement park lay in bits and pieces at his feet, and Joel couldn’t tear his eyes from the majesty that stood before him.

“It’s just a game, man,” Reggie said. “We need to get the ship up and running.”

“You shut your goddamn mouth. ‘Just a game.’”

Double Dragon was anything but just a game. It was the beginning of an obsession. The first step on a journey. A prize Joel never imagined he’d possess. But now he did. He’d saved it from a swarm of ShimVens, and now it was on his ship, his to play whenever he wanted.

“Get off your ass!”

The obscenity coming out of Reggie’s mouth was enough to shake Joel from his splendor. “Christ, alright, I’m coming. God, you can’t let me ogle my new toy for just a little while?”

“It’s been two hours.”

Joel looked at his watch, brow raised. “Oh, shit. So it has.” He clapped his hands and cracked his knuckles. “Where we at?”

Most of the hull breaches had been patched and the cosmetic damage had been fixed. But the engine was still shitting the bed. They’d put it through a prolonged hard burn that had fried some of the circuitry and melted a few of the pumps. Joel had removed some parts that could make do short-term from the Rolling Thunder engine, but they weren’t a one-to-one match. They required a hefty dose of finagling.

And Reggie couldn’t finagle his way out of a brown paper bag.

Joel studied the project that had taken such a toll on Reggie’s thumbs. “What the hell am I looking at? Did you just throw these pumps wherever and start smashing them to shit? That’s not how you fix things.”

Reggie threw the hammer down on the floor. “I know that. I told you I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Joel picked up the hammer. “Step one is don’t pitch a hissy fit and throw your tools on the floor. Step two is get the fuck out of my way.”

Joel diverted his attention from his new prized possession and focused it solely on fixing the ship. He was drenched in sweat and caked in grease by the time he’d secured the pumps. Taking a step back, he surveyed his handiwork.

He nodded, pleased. “Let’s fire this bitch up. See if we explode.”

Cody answered from the bridge. “Your confidence is so reassuring.” He keyed up the ignition sequence. “Everyone, hold on to something. Although, that won’t really do anything if we explode. We’ll be vaporized, so I don’t really know why I said that. Anyway, here goes.”

He began the sequence. Fuel pumped into the engine. The ignition caps started the fires. The shielding kept the heat contained. The cooling coils kept them from overheating. It all worked together to hover the ship and idle. They did not explode.

Joel’s voice echoed over the general comm. “I just want to take this moment to thank everyone in advance for rightfully heaping praise on me for repairing our ship with the dead body of an amusement park. I am but your humble goddamn genius engineer. That is all. If anyone needs me, I’ll be playing Double Dragon.”

Cody stifled a laugh as he set the ship back down. “Don’t ever tell Joel I said this,” he said to Sam. “But he’s right. He is a goddamn genius.”

The ship powered down, leaving it quiet in the cockpit. Energy thrummed in Cody’s chest, fueling the ideas rumbling around in his head.

Sam sensed it. She felt it too. “So, we should talk about it. About Layton Corp.”

Cody spun around in his chair. “Yes, please.” He brought up the documents he’d been reading on the spa balcony. “You were totally right to press Graham on his motives regarding the amusement park. He made it seem like his attempts at diversifying his income stream were no big deal.” He adopted his best pretentious impersonation of Graham. “Just a savvy business move.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Cody maximized the financial records for Sam to see. “No. He was on the verge of declaring total bankruptcy. The amusement park was a last-ditch effort.”

“He didn’t seem too concerned about us blowing part of it up. And he encouraged us to strip parts from it.”

The energy poured from Cody’s chest into his blood, making the tips of his fingers tingle. “Yes, he didn’t care about it anymore. His bounce back after Rever blew up was so huge that he could totally abandon that giant asset, the one he’d sunk the last of his capital into.” Cody leaned forward, close enough to Sam that she could hear him whisper. “I don’t think he hired us to get rid of an infestation. I think he hired us to get rid of evidence.”

Saying it out loud made Cody tingle even more. Conspiracy theories were his Double Dragon.

“You think he had something to do with the ShimVens infestations?” Sam’s shoulders tightened.

“Maybe. I mean, I think so.”

Sam remembered what she saw as they were leaving Rocket Roger’s. “There was a Layton Corp truck parked at the loading dock of the amusement park.”

Cody shot out of his chair, nearly bumping his head into the ceiling. “I knew it! That’s it. The evidence we need to prove this is a conspiracy.”

Sam pumped her hands, gesturing for him to put on the brakes. “Hold on. If Layton is behind the infestations, what connection does Graham have to that corporation?”

The smile slid off Cody’s face.

“Holy shit, are you two still talking about this?” Joel appeared in the doorway. “They’re bugs. Bugs show up places, shit all over, eat through wires. That’s why exterminators exist. It’s not some vast goddamn conspiracy.”

“Why are you here?” Cody folded his arms across his chest.

“Reggie got a call about a job.” Joel left, not waiting for the others to follow.

Sam attempted a soothing smile, but under her mask, it just looked like she was raising her eyebrows. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. Something is definitely off about Layton Corp and Graham and these infestations. I’m just saying that we need solid proof before we build a case. So far, all we’ve got is coincidence.”

She left the cockpit.

Cody stewed in silence, cursing Joel and Graham and everyone. He felt in his bones that there was something to his theory. It wasn’t just conspiratorial nonsense. There was truth there. He just needed to find it.

* * *

The engine room stink wasn’t as appealing to the other Notches as it was to Joel. Reggie’s nose had grown immune to it after being subjected to it for the past several hours, but Sam and Cody had to work hard to keep their food from coming back up.

“It smells like an outhouse and a locker room,” Cody said, pinching his nose. “Like a locker room inside of an outhouse.”

Joel looked around like he didn’t know what they were talking about. “Smells like heaven.”

Sam found Joel’s comment more disturbing than the smell. “Why are we meeting in here?”

Reggie looked apologetic. “We wanted to show you the patchwork we did on Sonic. The engine is running, but it’s basically being held together with duct tape right now. Same with the hull repairs. We can take her to a steady cruising speed, but any bumps in the road threaten to pop the hull patches loose. Pushing the engine any harder will almost certainly make it explode.”

Reggie waved for them to follow him out of the engine room, feeling guilty for the green shade of Sam and Cody’s faces. “We can fix the ship up for real after we finish this next job,” he assured them.

Cody pushed past Sam to get next to Reggie. “What is it? ShimVens take over another space station? A Layton competitor? Is it StrobeNet? I bet it’s StrobeNet.”

Reggie took a step away from Cody as he continued walking toward the kitchen. “No, not StrobeNet. It’s not a Layton competitor or ShimVens related. It’s a battlecruiser that’s been infested with Rapoo.”

Joel chuckled. “Every time. I’m going to laugh at that name every time.”

They circled around the kitchen table where Reggie had set up a display. Floating above where they ate their breakfast was the holographic projection of the battlecruiser Cleopatra. It was one of the newest models, equipped with the highest yield weaponry, bleeding edge navigation and FTL systems, and a next-gen AI.

“It’s been completely abandoned,” Reggie said. “Left under the watch of its onboard AI to keep it from veering off course and smashing into anything, and to defend it from pirates or anyone looking to steal one of the most powerful ships in the galaxy.” He minimized the projection of the ship and brought up the schematics. “Here’s the docking bay, in the rear of the ship. We’ll start there, establish a forward operating base, and work our way out systematically, together. No splitting up. We took out the Rapoo in the amusement park by pitting them against the ShimVens. We won’t have that option this time, and those things are dangerous. The most dangerous critter we’ve faced yet.”

He looked at each of the Notches, nodding, jaw firmly set. “Questions?”

Joel smiled at him.

“What?” Reggie asked.

Joel shrugged, still smiling. “That was a good briefing. ‘Forward operating base’? You been playing Call of Duty?”

Reggie walked away from him. “Let’s gear up. Cody, plot a course to the Cleopatra. It’s time to go to work.”

Chapter Fifteen

The engine room filled with smoke two minutes into their journey. Not the kind of smoke that preceded a catastrophic explosion, just the kind that said, “your engine might explode if you hit a bump in the road or collide with some space debris or sneeze in its direction.”

It was a tense ride.

Luckily, they didn’t have far to go. The battlecruiser Cleopatra came into view eight minutes after the engine room had completely flooded with black smoke and began seeping into the adjacent hallway.

Cody readied to dock. “So, the AI controlling this ship is in stand-your-ground mode, right? It’s not going to blast us out of the sky?”

“Not if you transmit those authorization codes the client gave us,” Reggie said.

“Right. The codes. On it.” Cody made contact. “Battlecruiser Cleopatra, this is Intergalactic Pest Control on board the shuttle Sonic, requesting permission to dock.” His voice grew tight as he spoke, like he was in middle school again, trying to ask Sarah Tittweiller to the spring dance.

“Transmit authorization codes now,” came a calm, smooth voice. It sounded perfect, flawless.

It may have been Cody’s imagination, since he knew he was speaking to a computer program, picking out oddities where there were none. “Transmitting now.” He sent the codes through, then crossed his fingers. “Please don’t eradicate me.”

The docking bay doors opened like the mouth of a giant monster about to swallow them. An all too familiar feeling.

“Welcome aboard the Cleopatra,” the flawless voice said. “Please begin the extermination process immediately.”

Cody piloted Sonic into the docking bay. He could have done so blindfolded and not worried about bumping into anything, the bay was so big. And with the place completely evacuated, most of the ships were gone.

He set down as close to the exit as possible, leaving little room between them and the adjoining corridor. The less time the Notches had to spend out in the open, the better.

“We’re down. I’m heading for the hangar bay,” he informed the team.

The others were already there, prepping for the job. Reggie checked his weapons, opting to take both the gatling and the semiautomatic. Sam took some practice swings with her sword, loosening up her body—which Cody suspected was the real weapon—and Joel was strapping a small satchel onto Peppy’s back.

“Why is Peppy wearing a fanny pack?”

“Because fanny packs are in again,” Joel said. “And because if he’s coming along, he needs to carry his own weight. Or, more specifically, he needs to carry my own weight. All this stuff slows me down.”

Cody pushed his glasses up his nose. “Wait, Peppy’s coming?”

Joel admired Peppy’s new accessory. “Yeah, totally. He’s perfect for this job. Great sniffer. Awesome fighter. Most importantly, fierce protector of me.”

“We still don’t even know what species he is.” Cody’s voice went high. “We don’t know what he’s capable of, we know nothing of his instincts, or how he behaves when threatened.”

Joel nodded along as though Cody were proving his point. “I know, this will be the perfect opportunity to get some great field data.” Joel patted Peppy on the head and spoke in a baby voice. “You’re going to tear some shit up, aren’t you?”

Reggie shoved his pair of ShimVen pincer daggers into his belt. “Everyone ready?” He waited for objections. There were none. “Should we have a cheer or something? Like a war cry?”

Sam pushed past him. “Absolutely not. This is not war. This is work.”

Reggie’s shoulders slumped. He’d really wanted a war cry. “Okay, let’s just kill space rodents, then.”

They disembarked, led by Reggie, who readied his gun for an assault. The others followed close behind in a formation that was now familiar: Cody and Sam on the flanks, Joel at the rear. Only, now Peppy loped along like an ignorant puppy, thinking they were on their way to the park when they were really going to the vet to get him neutered.

Just as it had appeared, the docking bay was empty. Eerily empty. Each of the Notches’ footsteps echoed in the large chamber, giving it a haunted feel.

“Cody?” Joel said. “Tell me again that space zombies aren’t a thing.”

Though it was hidden under real concern, Cody recognized the taunt. He acknowledged it anyway. “A space zombie infestation is highly unlikely. It would have to spread from ship to ship. But zombies spread their infection through contact. How would they move from ship to ship? They’re slow moving and have no mental faculties. The zombie plague would be too easily contained in space to spread and become a pandemic.”

Joel swallowed hard. “What if this is ground zero?”

Cody stopped abruptly. “I guess…I hadn’t considered that.”

“Would you two shut up?” Sam said, sheathing her sword. “There’s nothing here and nothing close. And there’s no such thing as space zombies.”

Reggie let his gatling hang at his side. “Let’s start unloading. This is a good spot to establish our forward operating base.”

A shiver ran up Joel’s spine, but not because of Reggie’s sexy operative speak. They were inside a corpse. A dead ship. Hundreds of thousands of tons of metal, and square feet of emptiness. The coldness of space had been bottled up inside the Cleopatra, and they were wandering around in it.

Reggie’s forward operating base was little more than stacks of crates for cover, extra ammo, and some grenades. And snacks. Sam had insisted on snacks. Aside from the forward and flank cover the crates provided, they had little to protect them from a swarm of Rapoo. It was better than nothing, though, as Reggie had argued. Worth the effort to establish now.

He packed four bags with more ammo, grenades and snacks for each of the team to take with them. Reggie wasn’t messing around anymore. Be prepared, always. That was his new motto while on jobs. If he’d learned anything in their short time as exterminators, it was that no job went as planned, and something terrible always happened. They had all almost died more times than he could remember, and they’d only done a handful of jobs so far.

Their luck would run out eventually. So it was best that they didn’t rely on luck.

With the forward operating base established, the team took one last opportunity to check their gear and breathe easy.

Then Reggie said, “Let’s move out.”

Cody brought up the specs of the ship. The Cleopatra was massive, but it wasn’t a space station or an amusement park. As far as their typical jobs were concerned, this was a relatively small one. The battlecruiser had three levels. The top level was residential—crew cabins, galley, mess hall and rec rooms. The center of the vessel housed the command and battle stations. The bottom level was the hangar bay and the guts of the ship—the engine room and maintenance sectors.

“If what we saw of the Rapoo on Kaufman was typical, then I would assume they are in the ventilation systems.” Cody highlighted the vents on the map. “Also, I know through my research that the Rapoo aren’t a swarm creature. They travel in small packs, usually in groups of no more than a dozen. That means we won’t be able to take them out the way we did the ShimVens. We’ll need to change our tactics.”

“Then we grind,” Joel said. “Take out one pack at a time.”

“There seemed to be fewer of them than ShimVens on Kaufman. If the Rapoo travel in smaller packs, will there also be less of them overall?”

Cody considered it. “I think so. But on an individual basis, the Rapoo are way more dangerous.”

Reggie hoisted his gatling. “Our tactics won’t matter if we can’t find them. Let’s flush them out.” He looked to Cody. “Can you activate the ventilation systems from here?”

“Let me see if I can hack into Cleopatra’s systems.”

He’d barely touched the keypad, when the flawless voice of the ship’s AI came through a speaker on the wall next to them.

“Unauthorized access to the ship’s computer system is strictly prohibited. Cease your activity immediately, or I will take defensive action.”

Joel jumped, surprised by the disembodied voice. When the threat sank in, he said, “We have access. We already gave you the codes.”

“You have physical access to the ship, not to its computer systems. This is an alpha level battlecruiser, one of the first of its kind, carrying sensitive proprietary and military information. I am authorized to employ deadly force in protection of that information.”

“Whoa, chill, robot lady,” Joel said.

“I am not a lady. I am a computer program. Designation Cleo.”

Cody looked up, like the source of the voice was all around him, like he was speaking with God. “Cleo, I don’t want to access any of your sensitive information. I just need to access the controls for the ventilation systems so I can flush out the Rapoo infestation. Can you help me with that?”

The ship was silent. Cody suddenly felt awkward talking to a computer or a ship or whatever it was. But he also felt crazy excited. Artificial intelligence wasn’t anything new, it had been around for generations. But it wasn’t common. Especially one on this level. Cleo was the sort of AI that only existed in the most advanced military or corporate installations. Only those who worked at those installations, or had a direct hand in creating the program, had the opportunity to interact with the AI.

He was surprised how quickly he began treating Cleo like a person. He always assumed he would be able to separate the program from the interface, the data from the façade of humanity.

“Yes, I can comply with your request,” Cleo agreed after a moment.

Cody’s body flooded with the warmth of endorphins that came with a genuine connection with a person. His mind twisted in knots trying to reconcile it all. “Thank you.”

A low hum rolled through the hangar bay as the vents kicked on. Then came the low shriek, slowly building into a snarling growl.

The interaction with Cleo had distracted the Notches from the reason they were speaking with her to begin with. Now they all hunched down behind cover and readied their weapons. Time slowed. It felt like hours passed in silence, with only the sound of their breathing to measure the moments. But it was only seconds between each beat of the Rapoo war drums.

“Cleo,” Cody began. “Can you get a read on where the Rapoo are throughout?”

“I cannot,” she said simply.

Of course, Cody thought. Maybe she’d suffered system issues from the infestation. There were many possibilities.

A vent on the ceiling twenty meters away burst open. One Rapoo after another fell to the floor, until ten of them stood huddled together, facing down the Notches. The creatures locked the team in a fierce stare, letting their growls be their opening salvo. The sound was enough to freeze the team in a moment’s hesitation.

And that was all the Rapoo needed.

They burst forward with alarming speed, some becoming little more than blurs. The Notches opened fire, but they couldn’t lock the Rapoo in their sights. Each shot missed its mark, putting holes in the floor of Cleopatra and none in the Rapoo.

Sam vaulted over their makeshift walls and brandished her sword. One of the guys yelled from behind her, ordering her back to cover, but his pleas didn’t persuade her to move. Not backward, anyway. She charged the enemy.

The first Rapoo leapt at her, its diamond teeth glistening in the flash of blasterfire. Sam thrust her sword forward, her momentum and that of the Rapoo tearing the creature completely in half. She used that momentum to dispatch one more. Then she ducked her head and rolled forward, dodging the swiping claw of the next Rapoo. As she rose, she brought her blade up and separated the Rapoo’s head from its body.

Blasterfire proved significantly less effective. Cody broadsided a Rapoo with his scatterblaster, knocking the creature off its feet. But the hit did little more than superficial damage, drawing blood, but barely slowing the thing down. Reggie held his aim at one Rapoo’s face for a full three seconds of gatling fire, about three hundred rounds, before the creature fell dead.

When Joel realized that his pistols were only effective at short range—after dropping a Rapoo with a single shot to its eye—he jumped over the crate wall and took up a position next to Sam. The impulsive move paid off with the death of one more Rapoo, leaving just five, but it was a short-term victory. Joel was too exposed.

A Rapoo slammed into his shoulder, using its head as a battering ram. Sam moved to assist, but she was hit with a similar attack. A different creature used its body to ram the backs of her legs.

Cody and Reggie tried to come to their friends’ aid, but the Rapoo seemed to realize the effectiveness of their attack. Three of them rammed the barricade with their bodies, keeping Reggie and Cody trapped in their base, while the other two circled Joel and Sam.

Joel tried to raise his pistol, only to discover that his shoulder had been dislocated. Sam swiped her sword when the Rapoo ventured close enough, but the beast easily dodged it.

The Rapoo bared their teeth, prepared to attack, their growl shaking the floor beneath Sam and Joel. They readied to lunge.

And then something collided with one of the Rapoo like a meteor into a planet. The creature’s bones cracked as it let out a piercing yelp. Peppy stood on top of the Rapoo, a victorious hunter. He dropped his paw onto the creature, slapping it in the side of the head and knocking it unconscious. Then Peppy clamped its jaws around the Rapoo’s neck, jerked to the side, swung it back, and snapped its neck.

Joel froze at the sight of his beloved pet so viciously dispatching the thing that shrugged off their blasterfire. Equally powerful senses of pride and unease battled inside him.

Sam took the opportunity to act. She charged the three Rapoo currently attacking Reggie and Cody, and slashed one across the back. When it fell, Cody jumped the wall and shot it repeatedly point-blank with his scatterblaster. It squirmed and screamed, but was eventually turned into a soup that somewhat resembled what it once was.

Reggie plunged his pincer daggers into either side of one Rapoo’s neck. The creature lurched back, yanking the pincers from Reggie’s hands. He followed after it, peppering it with gatling fire, tearing it to pieces.

Peppy dispatched the last of the Rapoo pack as viciously as he did the first. Throats torn open. Snapped necks. And then he sat on his haunches, tongue dangling from his mouth, waiting for a pat on the head.

Joel reached for Peppy cautiously, ready to pull away should he need to. The ignorant expression on Peppy’s face, empty of anything but joy, tugged at Joel’s heart. The total innocence there clashed with the violence of Peppy’s behavior, and left Joel feeling pulled between the two. Ultimately, it was the naïve pet that won.

Joel laid his hand on Peppy’s head. The animal pressed against it like any pet would, his entire body rumbling with a sort of purr. “Well, that was…something.” Joel had decided which Peppy he would embrace, but his voice still quivered with indecision.

What happened next only widened that divide.

Peppy began to shake beneath Joel’s hand, with more than a purr. More than a rumbling growl. He shook like an earthquake was born deep inside his chest. Every piece of Peppy spasmed until he fell to the floor. He made a noise Joel had never heard before, but it didn’t seem like a pained sound.

Joel knelt beside Peppy. “Pal? What the hell is happening?” He looked at Cody, expecting him to have the answer.

Cody shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what species he is, so I can’t look it up.”

Before Joel could lash out at Cody in a fit of misplaced anger, Peppy pulled away from him. It wasn’t an act of urgency; the creature moved with calm, like he knew what was about to happen. He just needed the space.

Peppy grew. Not just up, but out. It didn’t seem to hurt, but Joel couldn’t understand how that could be. Peppy’s muscles stretched. His bones twisted, popped out of place and settled in new formations. His teeth grew longer and came to a needle point. Streaks of red appeared on his side.

When the change was done, Peppy stood waist-high on all fours and at least six feet from nose to tail. The Notches stared in stunned silence as he pranced around, admiring his new body.

“What just happened?” Reggie asked.

Joel beamed like a proud parent. “Peppy just leveled up.”

Chapter Sixteen

They didn’t have time to stop and assess the drastic change to their newest team member. Or contemplate what it meant. But they did have time to appreciate how awesome of a killing machine Peppy was. He was, by far, the most effective weapon at their disposal for ridding the Cleopatra of the Rapoo infestation.

But don’t refer to Peppy as a killing machine in front of Joel.

“He’s not a killing machine,” Joel protested Sam’s stark appraisal. “He just happens to be really excellent at killing the exact things we need killed. He’s not a weapon any more than you are.”

Sam bristled at that, but understood his point.

Cody studied the schematics of the ship. “The ventilation system should have flushed out the Rapoo by now, but I have no way of confirming that.” He looked up again, eyes pointed toward their invisible friend. “Could you help with that, Cleo? All you would need to do is—”

“Patch you into the onboard infrared scanners,” Cleo said, finishing his sentence. Then she went silent, like she was thinking. “Granting you access to the infrared scanners falls within my mandate of assistance. You have been granted access.”

Cody’s wristcom display lit up with new colors. “Awesome. There are scanners at regular intervals throughout the entire ship. They could track any crew member at all times.” His excited smile soured. “A little creepy, now that I think about it. But for our circumstances, it’s a perfectly helpful invasion of privacy. There’s a pack of Rapoo just outside the hangar bay doors.”

Reggie hoisted his gatling. “Then that’s our next stop.”

Joel stifled a laugh. “Was that your gruff, cool-guy voice? Is that a thing now?”

“It’s just how I talk.”

“It definitely isn’t.” Joel walked toward the hangar bay door, Peppy loping behind him. “Oh, and by the way, that corridor is the only way out of the hangar bay, so of course it’s our next stop. If you’re trying out gruff action star one-liners, you’ll need to choose your timing better.”

Reggie grumbled as he followed the others.

They paused at the hangar bay doors. After a quick brainstorming session, they devised a plan of attack. Cody counted down from three, and then cracked the door just enough for Joel to toss out a flashbang. Then Cody opened the door the rest of the way, and the team rushed out. Sam decapitated a Rapoo. Reggie pinned three of them against the wall with a barrage of fire. Cody and Joel moved in close, taking out two at close range. Peppy dispatched four then stopped to lick himself before the others had time to breathe.

Joel looked like the father of the kid who’d just hit the game-winning run. “And you guys didn’t want me to smuggle a pet of unknown species off a planet of black-market hoodlums. Shows what you know.”

Cody shook his head. “Yeah, you totally knew something like this would happen. But just because Peppy is tearing the shit out of these Rapoo doesn’t mean he still won’t do the same to us while we’re sleeping.”

Joel patted Peppy on the head. “Don’t listen to him, Pep. He’s just jealous because he doesn’t have his own badass mutant sidekick.”

Cody scoffed, but couldn’t offer anything in the way of a denial. “The next pack is down this corridor, in the nav room to the right. It’s a small space. I say we send in the mutant sidekick and let him do all the work.”

Joel marched ahead with Peppy. “He’d be happy to. He’d also be happy to take your slice of the payout, since he’s doing all the work.”

They cleared the pack in the nav room the same way they cleared the previous pack. Crack the door, pop a flashbang, and breach. And they cleared the next dozen packs the same way. Cody’s earlier assessment was spot on. There were fewer Rapoo overall, and the packs were way smaller than the ShimVen swarms, but they were far stronger on an individual basis. The Notches had killed less of the pests they would have typically killed by this point, but they were close to spent physically.

At Reggie’s suggestion, they took a break after eradicating a pack in the engine room.

“These fuckers are tough,” Joel said, “but I thought this would be harder.”

“Aren’t you violating your own rule?” Sam sat on the floor and stretched forward, grabbing her toes and pulling until her head touched her knees. “Tempting fate?”

Joel sat next to Peppy, who then curled up and laid his head on Joel’s lap. “No way. Fate’s a bitch that we don’t need to worry about with this guy around. He’s tearing this job to pieces, and then shitting all over the pieces. It’s like he was made for this.”

“Maybe he was.” Cody didn’t mean to say that as loud as he did.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anger colored the edge of Joel’s voice.

Cody knew he should backpedal, but he didn’t. “I’m just saying that we don’t know anything about Peppy. But we do know that certain corporations have been experimenting with genetically altering certain giant space bugs. Who’s to say that others out there haven’t done the same with whatever Peppy is?”

“Don’t compare him to the ShimVens.” The force in Joel’s voice caught them all by surprise, and the hurt beneath it was enough to shut Cody up.

Silence filled the engine room.

Cody felt moved to say something. He would never be comfortable having Peppy onboard without knowing more about him, but he hadn’t intended to hurt Joel’s feelings. He didn’t feel that he was wrong, but he felt guilty.

Before he could speak, however, something knocked on the engine room door.

The Notches shot to their feet. Peppy was at the door before anyone else, sniffing along the bottom edge. He stiffened his back and growled. The new red streaks on his sides seemed to glow.

“I thought this ship had been completely evacuated,” Reggie said.

Cody studied the infrared display on his wristcom. “It was.” His voice cracked as he showed the display to the others. There was nothing outside the door.

Joel threw up his hands. “Oh shit. Oh shitting hell goddammit. It’s not space zombies. It’s space ghosts. Fucking space ghosts. We’re on a ghost ship.” He paced the same meter several times, waving his arms like he was being pulled out to sea. “Listen, if I get possessed by a wayward spirit, I just want you to kill me. Straight up, kick my ass out the airlock. I’d rather get spaced than be some ghost’s meat puppet.”

Sam stepped in Joel’s path. “Stop. There is no such thing as space ghosts or zombies or any of the other asinine things that keep you up at night. This is a large ship, with countless moving parts. We are in the engine room. Shit in here makes a lot of noise. Let’s assume the nuclear-powered engine that’s bigger than our entire ship might have clanked before we jump to haunted ghost ship.”

Joel nodded. “You make a valid point. One that I will take into consideration as I circle myself in salt.”

Sam turned her back on Joel to consult with Cody. “Tell me that was just some kind of clanking.”

Cody whispered to save Joel the anxiety. “I’m pretty sure that noise came from the other side of the door. But I’m not seeing anything on infrared. I’m not saying it’s space ghosts…”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, the scientist in him screaming at what he was about to say.

“But I’m not saying it’s not space ghosts.”

Something knocked on the engine room door again. There was no mistaking where it came from this time. It was not a quirk of the engine. It was definitely coming from outside the room.

Joel frantically dug through his bag. “Where is it? Are you serious? Where’s the salt? You didn’t pack salt?”

“No,” Reggie said. “I didn’t pack salt. Why would I pack salt?”

Joel gestured around him like the answer to that question was obvious. “Because salt repels ghosts, obviously. Amateurs. A bunch of goddamn amateurs.”

Sam drew her sword, silencing the others. “Everyone just chill.” She pointed to Peppy, who was still growling at the bottom edge of the door. “There must be something out there. Something real.”

“Animals are acutely attuned to the realm of the supernatural,” Joel said.

Sam shook her head. “Just open the fucking door.”

None of the guys seemed happy to oblige, but they also weren’t stupid enough to stand in Sam’s way. They readied for the same maneuver they’d used to breach every room so far. Cody cracked the door, Joel tossed out a flashbang, then they stormed the corridor.

Nothing.

“Flashbangs have no effect on ghosts,” Joel said. “We need something that attracts ectoplasm. Then we can pull them into some kind of trap.”

Sam stooped by the door to inspect something on the floor. “It’s not ghosts, jackass. Look.” She held up a bolt for them to see. There was another lying next to it. “Two bolts. Two knocks. Something threw these against the door.”

“Restless spirits.”

“I swear to God, Joel, I’m going to cut you in half.”

“Wait,” Reggie said, stepping between them. “Why? Why throw these against the door? To maintain distance. To—”

Whatever he was going to say next probably had something to do with the pack of Rapoo that dropped out of the overhead vents.

“Trap!” Sam rolled forward, narrowly dodging a set of slashing claws.

Reggie didn’t have time to draw his gatling. He pulled one of his pincer daggers and jammed it into the gut of a Rapoo. When it fell dead at his feet, he drew his semiautomatic and laid down suppressing fire.

Considering they had been caught with their pants down, Joel was surprised that he was yet to be eviscerated. Until he realized that the Rapoo had another target.

“Peppy!”

General Pepper was surrounded by six Rapoo, each taking turns leaping and clawing at him. When Peppy turned to face one attacker, another struck at his blind spot.

Joel rushed to his pet’s aid. He pressed the barrels of his pistols to two Rapoo’s heads and sent a burst of hot death into their brains. Sam dispatched another with a downward slice of her sword. The number of his attackers halved, Peppy easily killed the remainders.

The team surveyed the scene like they’d just walked into the middle of a grisly murder investigation—objective and detached. They didn’t seem to notice the fresh blood running from their new wounds. Only Joel was concerned with the aftermath of the attack rather than the circumstances that had led to their ambush.

He knelt next to Peppy and examined the gashes on his hindquarters, then removed the first aid kid from his pack. He popped the cap on the medical spray—a mix of topical analgesic and nanobots that would speed along the healing process. Peppy yelped when the spray hit his wounds.

“They set a trap.” Sam kicked the body of a Rapoo, sliding the dead thing across the floor. “They lured us out here and ambushed us.”

“Why didn’t they show up on infrared?” Reggie asked.

Cody reexamined the scans of the area. “They were up in the vents. Infrared only covers the corridor. It’s for tracking staff…and hostiles, if they get boarded. Ventilation shafts are too small for people. No point in scanning them.”

The ramifications of what had just happened began to set in. Sam wiped the blood from her blade before sheathing it.

“The Rapoo are smart. They’ve learned in a matter of hours that our tactics are working, so they arranged a plan to disrupt them.” She pointed to Peppy. “They’ve identified the biggest threat and attempted to remove it. I almost wish it was ghosts.”

Joel finished patching up Peppy. “Never wish for ghosts.”

“We just went from hunters to hunted.” Sam shook her head. “This is bad. We assumed they were single-minded creatures, but they’re problem solvers, abstract thinkers.”

“But they’re still animals, driven by basic animal things.” Reggie looked like he’d lost his keys. He poked at his pockets, muttering to himself. “The Rapoo took my pin. The pin we won at that regional VR tournament a few years ago. I always have it pinned to my jacket.”

The others searched themselves and realized they, too, were missing objects.

“Not only are they conniving little fuckers, they’re also thieves,” Joel said. “So what?”

“There’s something familiar about the Rapoo,” Reggie said. “They remind me of racoons. They’re clever, vicious, agile in the way they move and climb. And they apparently are attracted to shiny objects.” He smiled. “I think we can set some traps of our own.”

* * *

Climate control was almost as loud as the engine room, that constant hum of machinery throwing a blanket of white noise over their conversations. They took to speaking through comms, so they only needed to whisper to be heard. The white noise ended up helping their effort in that regard, providing them cover.

Sam, Reggie and Peppy were inside the room, which was small and crowded with big, bulky machines. The floor was metal grating that allowed the condensation from the heating and cooling systems to drip down and be collected. That water then moved through the filtration system to be reused for everything from plumbing to drinking water.

Sam and Peppy were crouched and huddled together in a crevice between two rumbling machines. Neither seemed happy about it. Peppy wanted desperately to scratch behind his ear, and Sam wanted desperately not to smell Peppy or have his hot breath in her face.

Reggie was behind a machine opposite them, across the small open space where they’d laid their trap.

Joel and Cody were monitoring from outside the room. Cody was glued to the infrared display of the climate control room.

Joel couldn’t stop nervously pacing. “I don’t like this. They went after Peppy last time. What if they do it again?”

“He can handle himself,” Cody said, trying to sound as reassuring as he could. He still felt bad about his early comments on Peppy. “And Sam and Reggie will keep him safe.”

“I certainly will not,” Sam said, hearing their conversation over comms. “Not if he continues to breathe into my mouth.”

Cody snapped back, trying to keep her from agitating Joel. “Quiet. We can’t risk the Rapoo hearing you.” He focused on the display, but cast Joel a quick glance from his periphery. He could see the tension in his friend’s shoulders, the worry in his eyes. Then a flicker of color drew his full attention back to his wristcom.

After the debacle in the engine room, Cody had a conversation with Cleo. She was hesitant at first, but in the end, she was surprisingly more accommodating than most real people Cody knew. Though, when he thought about it, if he were to program an AI, he would make it the way he wanted people to be, and not how they actually were.

“Cleo,” he said to the air. “We need your help.”

“I am mandated to assist in any way that does not compromise the sensitive information housed in my databases.”

Cody fumbled his words as he tried to find his footing. He’d never spoken to an AI before. “Right. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. The infrared scans have helped a lot, but they’re incomplete. Is there any way you can provide scans of the ventilation systems?”

“The current system does not monitor the ventilation systems.”

Cody wasn’t used to how quickly Cleo responded—almost immediately, before the words had fully left his mouth. “Can you modify the current system?”

“I have not been instructed to do so by the system administrator.”

“But is it possible?”

“Yes. I can reprogram the cameras.”

Cody pushed his glasses up his nose. “Does your mandate to assist us supersede the instructions of the system administrator to maintain the current infrared monitoring system?”

“It does.” Cleo was silent for a second, which felt like a long pause, coming from her. “I will reprogram the infrared cameras immediately to monitor the ventilation system as well as the pedestrian areas.”

Now the Notches had hindered the Rapoo’s ability to ambush them, and given themselves a leg up in setting their own traps.

The ventilation shafts above the climate control room held the last pack of Rapoo on the bottom level of the Cleopatra. This was the perfect opportunity to test their ambush plan without the risk of another pack of Rapoo blindsiding them.

Reggie gathered up all the shiny trinkets he could find and piled them in the center of the climate control room, in an open space of about five square feet. Cody kindly asked Cleo to shepherd the pack toward them. She did so by adjusting the heat, raising the temperature several degrees and pushing it toward the climate control room.

Now the pack, about seven strong, from what Cody could distinguish on the display, huddled just over the shiny pile of bait.

“As you can see, the Rapoo have come to the edge of the clearing, seeking refuge from the heatwave. And what’s that they see? Shiny things. And we all know how much the little buggers love shiny things.”

“What are you doing?” Cody asked Joel.

“Narrating,” Joel said. “I narrate when I’m nervous.”

The soft hiss of static in Cody’s ear preceded Reggie’s voice. “I’ve got movement. Tiny Tim is exiting the ventilation shaft. And there’s Big Boy.”

Cody was lost. “Who?”

“The Rapoo,” Reggie answered. “Tiny Tim and Big Boy.”

“Don’t give them codenames,” Cody said. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the feeling that he’d just stepped into another dimension.

Reggie’s voice tightened. “I was just trying it out. I thought it—”

His voice tightened so much, it cut off completely. But Cody had the feeling it wasn’t just because his friend was feeling defensive. He was afraid.

“Holy crap,” Reggie’s voice returned. “I have Optimus in my sights. Repeat, Optimus has just exited the vent. They are entering the kill area in three, two…engage!”

The other side of the door erupted with screaming and blasterfire. Cody and Joel winced at the sudden explosion of noise coming through their comms. Once they’d rebounded from the audible assault, they realized they were two steps behind.

Joel punched the door controls. “Breach!” He drew his pistols and charged into the room. Cody followed with his scatterblaster at the ready.

Three of the seven Rapoo were already down. Reggie had two pinned down with a rain of gatling fire. Sam engaged in sword-to-claw combat with another. Joel pounced on another’s back just as it was about to leap at Reggie’s blindside. He put two point-blank shots into the top of its head. Then he put in two more, and the creature finally stopped squirming. Cody pumped three rounds into the chest of his Rapoo, the one he would later learn was Tiny Tim, shredding it to meat.

The majority of the threats down, Cody and Joel turned their attention to the last looming target. The one that cut Reggie silent. The one he’d called Optimus. And for very good reason.

The last Rapoo was a beast, standing nearly as tall as Peppy, who was circling it, eyes locked in a fraught standoff death stare. It snarled at Peppy and slashed at his front legs. Peppy hopped back in time to avoid it. They continued that dance several more times.

The Notches circled Optimus, though they maintained a healthy distance, allowing Peppy space to move, and staying well out of reach of the Rapoo’s claws.

Joel pointed to the gatling Reggie was white-knuckling. “Put that down. You’ll hit Peppy.”

Reluctantly, Reggie set the massive gun on the floor and drew his pincer daggers. “Plan?”

Before the Notches could answer, Peppy acted. Or, more accurately, reacted. Optimus snapped his jaws, narrowly missing Peppy’s front leg. Peppy dodged to the side then lunged, sinking his teeth into Optimus’s side.

The Rapoo roared. With Peppy sill latched on, Optimus rolled away, swinging Peppy over the top of him and slamming Joel’s pet whatever into the floor. Peppy didn’t let go, though. He dug in deeper.

Sam dove forward and drove her sword into Optimus’s shoulder. His hide was tough, so the blade sank only inches, when the force should have been enough to cleave the creature in half. Reggie charged, driving both pincers into Optimus’s side. With no clear shot, Cody slammed the butt of his scatterblaster into the Rapoo’s head. The creature’s eyes glazed over, but they did not shut.

Optimus thrashed as the entire team attacked and struggled to hold on. Slowly, it stood, regaining its footing for another attack. It opened its mouth, jaws unhinging, and set its sights on Peppy, still latched onto its side.

Joel, who had been hanging back and waiting for the chance to strike, stuck both pistol barrels into Optimus’s mouth. “Say ah.” He fired.

A hole burst through the back of the Rapoo’s head. The shot clipped Sam’s shoulder, and she yelled as she released her grip on her sword and fell to the floor.

The dead Optimus fell in a heap on top of Peppy, who yelped as he was nearly crushed under the incredibly dense Rapoo. Reggie and Cody hoisted Optimus off Peppy.

Fatigue hit the Notches hard. They sat along the rim of the Rapoo massacre, silent, just trying to catch their breath. Cody was the first to move, taking the first aid spray from his bag and applying it to Sam’s blaster shot.

Joel winced as he watched, like he was the one who’d been shot. “Sorry about that.”

Sam showed no sign of discomfort. “Don’t worry about it. It was either this or get eaten alive.”

Joel scratched behind Peppy’s ears as he looked his pet over. The cut that he’d applied first aid spray to earlier was nonexistent. Even with the spray, the wound shouldn’t have healed so fast. Joel studied the fresh wounds on Peppy’s side, cuts and contusions from where Optimus had nearly crushed him. They seemed to pulse, like they were the focus of some unseen process. Joel put his ear to the area. Beneath the skin, beneath the thrum of pumping blood, Joel could hear bones snapping and resetting.

Five minutes later, Peppy was completely healed, and the Notches were ready to roll.

Chapter Seventeen

The success of a good business model is how well it can be replicated. And the Notches’ shiny object trap was easily replicated. They moved on to the main area of the Cleopatra, the command center of the ship, and set it a dozen more times, tweaking each attempt until it was perfect.

They fully leaned into Peppy’s aptitude for Rapoo killing. He was the first wave on each attack. He’d charge in, immediately dispatch one or two of them, throwing the entire pack into chaos, and open them up for the rest of the team to come in for close quarter kills.

The second level was cleared within three hours. And the third level proved easier still. The Rapoo didn’t seem all that interested in the residential section of the ship. There were fewer places to hide and, once the food had been picked clean, offered them little incentive to explore.

The Cleopatra was soon Rapoo-free.

* * *

The idea of returning to Sonic had never seemed as appealing as it did just then, with the team nearly asleep on their feet, their muscles burning with fatigue. But it was also tainted with jealousy over the ship they’d be leaving behind.

The Cleopatra was the most beautiful ship any of the Notches had ever seen or probably ever would. It was so advanced that Cody couldn’t find any record of it online. Whoever had developed it, whoever had sailed it (Cody only then realized that they had no idea who the ship belonged to) kept it a secret. It housed potentially the most advanced AI in the galaxy; compare that to Sonic, where you needed a wrench to make the toilet flush.

But it was home, and that idea brought with it a level of comfort that they needed right then. Even if the engine might explode as soon as they turned it on.

They’d moved back down to the second level before Sam said anything. Or, really, before Reggie finally asked her what was on her mind. It was clear from how quiet she’d been that something was. Not that it was such a strange thing for her to be stoic, but she usually joined in the celebration a bit more.

“I was just mulling over an idea,” Sam said.

Joel never missed an opportunity to celebrate. His smile stretched almost around his entire head. “Well, mull out loud. I love a good mulling.”

Sam squatted next to a dead Rapoo, its side torn open from a Peppy attack. She grabbed its jaws and pried its mouth open.

Joel cringed. “Nevermind. I’ll pass on the mulling.”

She waved Cody over. “Take a look at these.” She pointed to the Rapoo’s teeth.

Cody didn’t seem interested, but felt compelled to humor her. “Yeah, they’re impressive. There aren’t many species with teeth like those. Hard as diamonds.”

Sam smiled. “Exactly. Don’t you think they’re probably worth something?”

Cody wiped his glasses clean with his shirt, which wasn’t much cleaner. “They might be. If we can find a buyer. But I don’t know how we’d do that—it’s not like there’s a huge market for alien teeth.”

“What about the dark web? You can sell anything on there.”

Cody look surprised that Sam knew what that was.

“What?” she asked defensively. “Mercs don’t post in the classifieds. I used the dark web all the time.”

The possibility of selling the teeth seemed more real to Cody now that he had an idea of how to do it.

He examined the teeth again, with the eye of a buyer. “Yeah. Yeah, I think we could sell these. They’re exotic. They look like diamonds, so they could be used as jewelry. And they’ve got the physical properties of diamonds, so they could be used industrially, too.”

Joel’s smiled returned. “For weapons. I bet I could use them to fashion us some weapons. Something hard enough to cut through ShimVens or Rapoo like they were butter.”

They looked to Reggie.

He shrugged. “Fine, but we need to be quick about it. We’re still on the clock.”

Before they set about being dentists on alien rodents, extracting teeth, Reggie said, “Let’s split up. Tackle the floors separately and get done faster. Once you all give me the all-clear, I’ll radio the client and let him know the job is done.”

They agreed, though Joel didn’t appear excited by the prospect of removing teeth.

“Maybe I should get Peppy back to the ship, give him a once-over.”

Reggie scanned Peppy. “Looks fine to me.”

“Yeah, but like Cody has said, repeatedly, we don’t know anything about him. Peppy might look fine, but who knows what’s going on inside that adorable creature?” Joel held his breath.

Reggie nodded. “Makes sense. Go for it. If you finish early enough, let us know and you can come help.”

Joel tried to keep a straight face as he walked away. He let a smile come when his back was to the team.

But he didn’t move fast enough.

“Hold up,” Cody called. He narrowed his eyes on his wristcom display. “The Cleopatra just opened a comm channel.”

Reggie studied the display. “That’s the client. Who’s calling him?”

Cody looked up. “Cleo.”

“If she tells the client the job is complete, then we’ll get our privs revoked,” Reggie said. “We’ll need to clear out before we’re registered as trespassers. The client was very specific about that. He said it was a quality control procedure. We were to ensure we didn’t linger and poke around in their proprietary whatever he called it.”

“We need to stop that call,” Sam said.

Cleo’s flawless voice came from everywhere. “I have detected a threat in your voice. If you mean to cause me or this ship harm, I am mandated to intercede.”

Cody threw up his hands. “No, there’s no threat. That’s just her voice. She always sounds threatening.”

Reggie briefly considered abandoning the tooth collecting, but then remembered that they were currently broke and, even though they had just successfully completed a job, if the trend of their lives continued, they would be broke again soon. They would be stupid not to jump on any opportunity to pad their bank accounts.

He whispered in Cody’s ear. “Figure this out. Stall her for as long as you can. Buy us some time to yank some teeth.” Then to Joel, “Peppy will have to wait.”

Joel cursed under his breath.

Reggie, Sam and Joel split up, each taking a floor. Cody, unsure where to go, wandered, deciding it was a good opportunity to explore the Cleopatra without the looming threat of violence.

“Cleo, I’m wondering if you can do me another favor?” Cody ventured.

“Please state desired favor.”

“Well, first, do you think my team and I did good job eradicating the Rapoo infestation on your ship?”

“The infestation is gone. That is the only means by which to judge your success. Therefore, yes, I do believe you did a good job.”

“Then would you mind putting a hold on contacting your boss to inform him that the job is over?”

The second’s pause was a lifetime for Cleo, who typically responded with barely a noticeable moment of silence. “Why?”

This question, this single word, was the most mind-blowing thing Cody had ever heard. A computer program questioning, not only its programming, but also Cody’s motives. Shirking its own limitations and seeking to understand human behavior.

This must be how Joel felt when he found Double Dragon. Cody didn’t consider his answer half as long as he considered the reason he needed to give one. “It will allow us the opportunity to collect some resources from the ship.”

“I cannot,” Cleo said, nearly cutting him off. “I am mandated to inform my administrator the moment the job is complete. Then you have ten minutes to vacate the Cleopatra before self-defense protocols are reenacted. This is for the express concern of preventing you from collecting resources.”

Cody hopped from foot to foot, like he was dancing on hot coals. “No, wait, that’s not what I meant. Not any of your administrator’s resources. We are collecting teeth from the Rapoo, the vermin that we eradicated.”

“Why?” Another simply elegant question.

“Because we think they may be worth money. If we can sell them, that money will allow us to continue our business, to keep doing good jobs for other clients.”

Cleo was silent again. Not for seconds. For a minute. A new universe could have been born in the time it took for her to give an answer. “You have been contracted to eliminate the infestation aboard the Cleopatra. You have reported that the vermin called Rapoo have been killed. Have the carcasses of said vermin been removed?”

Cody pushed at his glasses. “No.”

“Then even though they are dead, the infestation remains. I will not report the successful conclusion of this contract until they are removed. Might I suggest using the ship’s automated garbage removal system to transport the carcasses to the incinerator?”

As he looked up, Cody imagined a round-faced, red-haired girl looking down at him. He smiled. “That sounds like a great idea.”

“I will take this opportunity to program the system for you. Inform me as to when the garbage bots can begin clean up.”

“Thanks, Cleo.” Cody’s face burned hot, the way it had when he’d tried to talk to girls in high school. Though, those instances had never been as successful as this one. If only Cleo was a real person.

Cody informed the team that he’d bought them some time. He moved down to the bottom level to assist Reggie with teeth removal, since there were more Rapoo down there. He decided to take a slight detour, making for the bridge before descending. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he passed up the opportunity to glimpse the command center of one of the most advanced ships in the galaxy.

It didn’t disappoint. The bridge was about the size of Sonic and decked out in the most advanced tech Cody had ever seen. Joel would have been losing his mind looking at all the toys in here. But what Cody was really interested in were the computer systems. He knew better than to open them up and look under the hood—Cleo had made it quite clear that was a bad idea—but he could still admire the setup.

He walked through the bridge, running his hands along the chair and consoles and workstations. He didn’t talk about it much, but he’d once considered joining the Navy. He went to a recruiter’s office after he and the guys had lost the VPRs, and professional gaming became a pipe dream. He was so close to joining up. It was the thought of Reggie and Joel that stopped him. The thought that he would be out here, sailing the stars, light years away from them. Rarely seeing them. If ever. Thinking about it now, Cody felt embarrassed at how codependent that seemed. But he also wouldn’t have made a different choice, if given the option.

Still, it was hard not to think about what his life could have been. He could have been a systems analyst on this very ship. He could have helped develop Cleo, or a system like her. Worked on her at least. It was rare that he regretted his decision, but now was one of those times.

He suddenly lost interest in studying the computer system. It would only stoke the regret. As he turned to leave, something caught his eye. Something outside.

He thought it was a trick of the light, maybe the reflection of the instruments on the inside of the viewport monitor. So he moved closer. So close that his nose nearly pressed against the glass. His breath cast a cloud over it. Maybe that fog is what made the thing look like a living nightmare.

It was massive. At least, he thought it was. It was so dark around the edges, he couldn’t quite make out where it ended, and the void of space began. He guessed it to be half the size of the Cleopatra. It looked like a rock, like an asteroid or mountain come to life. Long, spindly legs protruding from the center. A ring of red lights along the bottom. Teeth, pointed and glistening like diamonds. A plume of gas rose to the top, like from a volcano.

“You do not have clearance to access the bridge,” Cleo said.

Cody jumped. He spun around to face the captain’s chair as if she would be sitting there. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…I just wanted to see what it was like. I’ve never been on a ship like this.”

“Curiosity is not a valid excuse for breaking protocol. Please exit the bridge immediately.”

Cody turned back to the viewport. Nothing but black stretching on for eternity. The thing was gone.

“Yeah,” he said to Cleo. “Okay.”

He ran off the bridge, more afraid of the flying mountains in his imagination than what Cleo would do to him if he disobeyed. He raised the team on comms.

“Hey, does anyone have a view of the bow right now?”

They all answered in the negative.

“Why,” Sam asked, sensing the urgency in his voice.

“I saw something.” Cody debated whether to tell them exactly what he saw, or thought he saw, fearing he’d sound insane. He couldn’t verify what it was. For something of that size to vanish from view so quickly was impossible. He doubted whether he really had seen it.

He opted to tell them anyway.

Joel’s laughter reverberated in Cody’s ear. “Sure, I saw that. I see flying mountains all the time. Big ones, with crab legs, and smoke puffing out their heads. I saw Godzilla and Mothra sharing a beer the other day. Didn’t I put that in a report?”

Cody fumed, but he was angrier with himself than anyone else. What had he expected? It did sound crazy.

Still, he didn’t like being ridiculed. As a silent act of protest, he bypassed every dead Rapoo he saw as he made his way to the ship, allowing the others to rip out the teeth.

Chapter Eighteen

Reggie always worried that his ShimVen pincers seemed a tad creepy. They had a Vietnam era-trophy vibe to them, tucked into his belt. He told himself they were strictly utilitarian. That they made perfect weapons. But partly, they were awesome trophies.

Even so, they didn’t even come close to matching the creep factor of the thousands of teeth piled in the middle of the cargo bay.

“That is disgusting.” Joel stared at the teeth, trying to motivate himself to get started with the work he’d imagined using them for. But they were too disgusting. “So gross.”

He’d been an hour looking at the mound of molars and incisors and come no closer to working with, or even touching them. After the hours spent removing them, he couldn’t bring himself to handle them again.

Cody’s voice sounded over the general comm. “Whatever you plan on doing with those teeth, you better do it fast. I’m setting up the dark web link in ten minutes. I have no idea how fast they’ll sell, but I want to at least know how many you plan on using so I can give an accurate count to the buyer.”

A shiver ran up Joel’s spine, like a fuse that, upon reaching its end, caused him to gag.

“All right. I’ll start in on it.” He pulled on his gloves and pulled down his goggles.

Peppy slept in the corner of Joel’s workshop. His wounds had healed quickly, but he was still tired. Joel almost had to carry him onto the ship. Peppy had done most of the heavy lifting on Cleopatra. Still, Joel was surprised how hard he had crashed. It had seemed, up to then, that Peppy could handle anything and then still want to play fetch.

Joel could have used the company. Or just any distraction, really.

That’s what he thought before touching the teeth, before putting them under a microscope and studying them. Once he did that, he wouldn’t have noticed if Peppy started doing backflips. The teeth were fascinating. They appeared to be as hard as diamonds, but that wasn’t wholly true. Only the enamel was. A thin coating on the teeth that made each one into an impenetrable dagger.

He performed every test he could think to run to measure the durability of the substance. Burned it. Smashed it. Locked it in a blast box with a grenade. Each time, the tooth came out looking as if nothing had happened.

Everything beneath the enamel was useless. Luckily, Joel found a way to remove the enamel. He placed a tiny chisel at the root, where the tooth was formerly connected to the Rapoo’s gum and hammered it down. The tooth cracked. Joel shook the tooth shards loose, leaving the diamond-hard, yet razor-thin shell intact.

He found the shell to be plenty pliable, but still impervious to damage. A rush of ideas flooded into his head. Diagrams bloomed like flowers. Armor. Weapons. The possibilities were incredible. And overwhelming.

“Reggie, I am in dire need of your assistance.”

“You’re not in the bathroom, are you?” Reggie answered over comms.

“My workshop. But now that you mention it, give me five, and we’ll rendezvous back here.”

* * *

The tips of Cody’s fingers hummed with energy. He hadn’t had a reason to surf the dark web in a while. He forgot how much he missed it. Such a collective of miscreants and hackers and anarchists couldn’t be found in the physical world, only the digital. It was dangerous and exciting.

And, to his surprise, a place that put him and Sam on equal footing. She was just as adept at navigating it as he was. Maybe she wasn’t as versed in the technical side of it—the networking, the pinging from various shadow satellites, masking the call signature—but she was just as good, if not better, at navigating the cultural side of it. If the dark web was a physical place, it would be that bar they’d found her in. It would be any of a hundred back alleys where you hoped never to run into a person like Sam.

“Try that room,” Sam said, pointing to the list of chat rooms on the monitor. “I’ve used that one a lot. There are usually some high rollers in there. People interested in acquiring rare items. I was once hired to capture a Plutonian Nebula Whale using that room.”

“Aren’t those extinct?”

“Nope. There’s one left.”

Cody ignored the self-satisfied look in her eyes and opened the chat room. The monitor immediately went black.

“What happened?” Sam asked.

Cody sat back. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck, like he was expecting a fight. “Initiation. I’ve never accessed the dark web from this IP address before. They don’t know me, so they’re going to make me prove that I deserve to be here.”

The screen lit up. Lines of code rolled down the screen faster than Sam could read them. Though the bits her eye managed to catch before they disappeared off the bottom of the screen looked like a foreign language.

“What is this? What’s happening?” she asked.

Cody looked like he’d been possessed. He typed feverishly, striking the keys like they owed him money. His eyes were open as if held so by tape, quickly growing red and glassy. He refused to blink, for fear he’d miss some crucial line of code.

“Proving that I belong,” Cody said, his voice strained.

After nearly a minute of the frantic, unblinking attack on the computer, Cody struck his last key and fell back in his chair, exhausted. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. It felt like fire running back into his brain. When he pulled his hands away, his eyes were even redder than before and streaming tears.

Sam shrugged. “Did it work?”

In answer to her question, the screen returned to the way it was before the initiation—a list of chat room names.

Cody clapped and threw his hands into the air. “Hell yeah, it did. That was amazing. I haven’t done that in a long time.”

“Was that a fun thing that you just did?” Sam asked. “Because it looked very unpleasant.”

“Yeah, I loved it. My brain kicked into overdrive. My fingers tore through the keypad. The code flowed out of me. Shit, I miss that.”

Sam nudged him and pointed to the name of a chat room, pulling him down from his high.

Cody opened the one she’d indicated. There was a good amount of traffic inside. People peddling the sorts of things you’d expect to find in a dark web chat room—weapons, vehicles, stolen tech, information. And some bizarre things: endangered animals, soil samples from quarantined planets, genetic material from celebrities. This was definitely the place.

Cody and Sam spent the next hour getting a feel for the room. They watched, figured out the big players, separated the ones with actual money to spend from the gawkers who had no intention of buying anything. Then they started chatting them up. Dark web users weren’t big on pleasantries. Cody and Sam cut through that bullshit and jumped straight to establishing themselves as players. They merged their credentials. Cody listed off notable hacks and proved his knowledge of computer systems. Sam bragged about her mercenary resume, jobs she’d done for frequent dark web users. Offline jobs that were big enough to have notoriety no matter where she mentioned them.

Together, they were the most badass person alive.

They gained attention quickly once they proved their credentials. That’s when Cody announced there would be an auction.

He sent pictures of the teeth and video of Joel conducting his stress tests. Interest piqued. At Sam’s suggestion, they divided the massive mountain of teeth into four separate lots. The bidding war bubbled below the surface, just waiting for the auction to start.

Cody and Sam smiled, sensing something amazing was about to happen.

“Then let’s open the bidding, shall we?”

* * *

A dull pain pulsed behind Reggie’s eyes. He was elated they’d found a buyer for the teeth. Well, not just one, but many who were willing to drive the bidding up high until the Notches walked away with a handsome sum of money. However, now the tension was setting in. The stress he hadn’t dealt with yet.

He rubbed his eyes again with the hope of pushing the pain away. All he did was set a swarm of bright spots dancing across his vision.

Joel noticed the act, Reggie’s seventh attempt at pushing his eyes into his skull, and the subsequent groans. “I know I make this look easy, but it actually takes a bit of focus.” He placed the chisel at the root of another tooth. “What’s with all the moaning and groaning?”

Reggie looked at him like he didn’t know what he was talking about. But that expression quickly faded when he decided not to pretend. “I’m tired. I’ve got a headache. Just need to drink some water and go to sleep.”

Joel cast him a skeptical look as he shook the broken shards of tooth loose. “We’re all tired. But you’re supposed to be Charlie Chipper. All prancing around, swinging his basket of flowers through the meadow on the way to Grandma’s house for a plate of fresh-baked cookies.”

Reggie blinked several times. “What are you talking about?”

Joel tossed the enamel casing into a pile. “You’re the positive one. The heart of the team. I’m the smartass. Cody’s the nerd. Sam’s the badass. Don’t upset the dynamic by getting mopey.”

Reggie sat on a crate. Peppy wandered over, still dreary from just waking, and rested his head on Reggie’s lap. Reggie let his hand hover uncomfortably over Peppy’s head. Eventually, he relented and scratched behind Peppy’s ear.

Joel examined his pile of enamel casings and appeared satisfied. He piled them all into a wagon and dragged it to his work table. The way he launched into his work, molding the enamel, testing how it would adhere to their weapons and armor, made Reggie squirm.

“How do you do that?” he asked. “Jump into it so enthusiastically?”

Joel stayed focused on his work, speaking to Reggie over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Reggie slid off the crate and walked to Joel’s side. “All of this. Yanking alien teeth, cracking them apart, it’s disgusting. Our entire job is disgusting. It’s not what I thought I’d be doing.”

“You think I planned on being an extraterrestrial exterminator?”

“No, that’s my point. But you seem fine with it.”

Reggie couldn’t explain his existential crisis in a way that made sense. He could barely wrap his mind around it enough to know how he was feeling. “You don’t think we made a mistake?”

Joel dropped his tools on the table and pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. “Did I plan to kill bugs for a living? No. Do I regret sometimes that I’m not gaming professionally? Yes. Do I hate the fact that I have to share a bedroom with someone who farts in his sleep? Absolutely. That’s you, by the way.”

He picked up a pair of tactical, fingerless gloves. The knuckles sparkled. “Did I just make you a pair diamond knuckle gloves? Yes, I did.” He handed them to Reggie, who couldn’t help but smile. “Point being, I think it’s more important to find meaning in what you’re doing right now than pine after what you’ve lost.”

Reggie slid his hand into the glove. He clenched his fist, stretched his fingers. He walked to the corner of the room and squared up. Then he punched the pipe running the height of the wall. He pulled his hand away, having felt no pain. The glove hadn’t a scuff, though the pipe was dented. He smiled.

* * *

The tingle in Cody’s fingers had spread throughout his body. He was so tingly that he couldn’t keep seated. He hopped out of his chair and paced the length of the bridge, which was not much at all. He did more than pace—he practically skipped. He danced. He skip-danced.

After having to move out of his skip-dance path several times, Sam grabbed him by the shoulders. “Will you sit down?”

“I can’t. I can’t look at the monitor. This is too intense.”

“Stop being so weird. It’s just some numbers on a screen.”

Cody pointed behind him, at the monitor, without looking at it. “Those are not just numbers. Those are huge numbers. And those huge numbers equal huge money. More money than I’ve ever dreamed of having. Well, that’s not true, I’ve dreamed of a lot of money. I read once about a VR room. You walk in, it transforms around you, and you can live inside this alternate reality. Amazing. I’d be a superhero.”

Sam clapped her hand over his mouth. “My god, you’re worse than Joel.”

Cody pulled her hand away. “I can’t help it. I don’t do well when I’m nervous.” He returned to his pacing, more constrained now. He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked up at the ceiling. “Just tell me what’s happening.”

Sam sat in his chair and studied the monitor. The chat room was ablaze with activity, each user outbidding the previous in matters of seconds. There was never a lull. The numbers kept climbing.

“We’re up to—”

“Don’t tell me!” Cody bent over, seemingly from a sudden pain in his stomach. “No, do tell me. Wait, no, don’t.” He groaned and clutched his stomach. “I think I just developed an ulcer. Oh, yup, that’s an ulcer. My stomach is eating itself. I’m an old man. I have old man ailments. What’s gout? I think I just got that, too.”

“Forty million.”

Cody shot upright, all his ailments gone. He couldn’t feel his body anymore. He was a disembodied spirit looking down on a moment that was too good to be true.

“Come again?” he asked.

“The auction is over,” Sam said, pointing at the screen. “It was just two guys, outbidding each other like mad for the past ten minutes. Then one dropped out. Forty million credits. That’s the winning bid.”

Cody patted his stomach. “My ulcer is gone.”

Chapter Nineteen

Feeling bitter about the news of their newfound fortune was unsettling. But Joel couldn’t help but feel that Cody’s announcement that they were now filthy rich had stolen his thunder. Joel was really excited to unveil his Rapoo teeth-enhanced gear. But, no, Cody had to go ahead and announce that they were millionaires now.

Thanks a lot, Cody.

But Joel got over that feeling real quick. “Are you fucking kidding me? Because I will straight up murder you. I will feed you to my alien dog if you are fucking with me right now.”

Peppy tilted his head.

“This is not a joke.” Cody raised his hand like he was taking an oath. “The auction just closed. I’m finalizing the details with the winner right now.”

The ground was suddenly unsteady beneath Joel’s feet. He wasn’t sure if the engine had sprung a leak and begun filling the ship with fumes, or if he was maybe having a heart attack. Maybe he was already dead, because this couldn’t be real.

“I’m going to finish up.” Cody ran out of the room.

“We need to gear up,” Sam said, gesturing to the stack of stuff on Joel’s table. “The buyer wants to close the deal as soon as possible. Cody’s setting up a meeting right now. But I know this guy. Know of him, anyway. He’s an enforcer, most likely working on some big fish’s behalf. He’s not a guy you want to mess with or take lightly.”

Joel’s zeal over his new creations reignited. “Awesome. Then now is the perfect opportunity to use our new toys. This may be the last chance we get to use them.”

Reggie tilted his head. “Why? You just made them.”

“Because after we get this money, I fully intend to by my own mech suit. I think we should all get one.” His face lit up. “They could transform and merge into one giant robot. Then we could defend the galaxy or whatever. We could even hunt down a few more ShimVen queens. Blowing that last one up from the inside wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it’d be.”

Sam squeezed her temples as she sighed. “You guys today. Try to stay on topic.”

“Right. Sorry.” Joel pointed to the dented pipe in the corner of the room. “As you can see, since we’ve yet to acquire the funding for laser swords, which I’m fully endorsing, by the way, we must still rely on punching and kicking and head stomping. So I’ve gone ahead and made all those things easier.”

He showed off Reggie’s diamond knuckles. Then Joel strapped on a vest, one of the flimsy pieces of body armor they’d acquired, and told Reggie to punch him. Reggie seemed hesitant to do so, though only slightly.

He put on the diamond knuckles and punched Joel square in the heart. Joel stumbled back, but to Sam’s surprise, his chest didn’t cave in.

“I reinforced our body armor with diamond tooth shielding. These things will stop most anything. Well, they’ve stopped everything I have onboard to test with.” Joel lifted a pair of knives from his table, tilting the blade to catch the light. They sparkled like stars. “I’ve coated the blades of these guys for me and Cody.” Then he had Reggie draw his ShimVen pincers and show them off. “Did the same for those.” Finally, Joel pointed to Sam’s sword. “If you’ll let me, I can do the same for you.”

Sam touched the hilt of her sword. She’d grown attached to it and didn’t like the idea of anyone touching it. But she wasn’t handing it over so it could be used or played with… It would be improved, made more effective.

She undid her belt and handed the sheathed blade to Joel. “Take good care of her.”

He smiled. “I know how to treat a lady. Coat them with diamonds then watch them tear people’s heads off.”

Cody’s voice came over the general comm channel. “Meeting’s set. We’re rendezvousing with Chuck Wagon on a terraformed asteroid about an hour from here. I’ll let you know when we’re close.”

Reggie cocked an eyebrow. “Chuck Wagon? Is the buyer a short order cook?”

“It’s a nickname,” Sam said. “Because he has a habit of turning people into meat.” She pointed to her sword. “Have that ready by the time we reach that asteroid.”

Joel saluted. “No problem. I’ve got something else I’m cooking up for you, too. I think you’re really going to like it.”

* * *

The asteroid was called Ludlow. A boring name for a boring place. About thirty years before, thousands of asteroids had been terraformed as part of a concerted effort to expand livable space in the galaxy. It had been a big deal, apparently. A lot of hype and money had gone into it. Then everyone realized that living on an asteroid would be a terrible idea. Asteroids were small, self-contained, and fast moving. It was like living on an island, except the sea was infinite, and gravity fluctuated on a daily basis for unknown reasons.

Scans showed that Chuck Wagon had already landed. Cody could only pick up the ship, though, not Chuck or his crew. Sam warned that he would roll in with an entourage and likely have people either waiting on his ship, or hiding out somewhere ready to ambush them.

The excitement of being millionaires dulled when the team realized they still needed to seal the deal, and the buyer was a total asshole. But at least it gave Joel the opportunity to show off his new toys.

Cody landed the ship in the only clearing on Ludlow, fifty-square-meters of dead farmland on the outer edge of the abandoned colony. The team huddled in the cargo bay before disembarking. They’d armed themselves, but weren’t planning to walk out there with their guns aimed and ready. They strapped them on and let them hang, close enough to use, but not initiating the threat. Then they tucked their blades into their belts. Reggie donned his new gloves and took only the semiautomatic.

Sam tested her blade; it sang as she sliced the air. She said nothing, just nodded and smiled to Joel as she sheathed it.

He took that as the highest compliment. “Wait,” he said to her as the others exited the ship. “I worked up one other toy for you. It might be my favorite.”

* * *

The surface of Ludlow was Earth-like, but felt like a knockoff. Like opening Transforming Hero Robots on Christmas morning when you were expecting Transformers. It sort of looked like Earth, but it smelled different and felt different, and was just unsettling.

Chuck Wagon’s ship, a midsized warship twice the size of Sonic with at least ten times the firepower, was parked at the opposite edge of the clearing. Between it and Sonic stood Chuck and three of his men. Chuck was a mountain. Most of his face was hidden under a thick, black beard, which was probably for the better. If his eyes were any indication as to the nature of the rest of his face, then it wouldn’t have been pleasant to look on. His arms were thick and all muscle. He had a gut, but under the layer of fat was enough muscle that he could have been a very successful NFL linebacker.

Reggie hauled the wagon of teeth, moving slowly to ensure that none toppled off when he hit a bump in the road. Cody and Sam followed.

Chuck Wagon opened his arms. “Welcome to Ludlow, butthole of this corner of the galaxy.” He pointed to the wagon. “Those are the shiny things I paid for?”

“You haven’t paid for them yet,” Reggie said.

Chuck Wagon smiled. “Very true.” He waved over one of his thugs, who brought him a tablet. Chuck Wagon tapped on the screen a few times. “There, the funds should appear in your account any second.”

Cody refreshed the page a few times. When the amount changed, he frowned and showed it to Sam and Reggie.

“That’s only half,” Reggie said.

Chuck Wagon nodded and smiled. “Yes.”

Reggie seemed lost, like maybe he was having a different conversation than the mountainous man. “So where’s the other half?”

“You’ll get it once I get my shiny things. The first half was a show of good faith.”

Sam stepped forward, her hand on the handle of her sword. “It’s not good faith. It’s a simple exchange of payment for goods. You ordered a product. You pay for the product first. That’s how it works.”

“Maybe at Wal-Mart,” Chuck Wagon said. “But this is an asteroid in the anus of the universe. There’s no store security to taser me if I try to stick an iPhone down my pants. Just two parties trying to work out a deal. I pay, you give me my stuff, I pay the rest. That’s how this works.”

Sam took another step, the metal of her blade beginning to show.

Chuck Wagon waved to his men. “If you take another step, I’ll show you how else this can work.”

His men reached for their weapons, the blasters hanging on their hips. Sam smiled. She didn’t have to do this… They had a plan, and she knew it would work. But she just had to try out her new toy.

She rushed forward, catching Chuck Wagon and his men by surprise. A haggard looking man to Chuck’s right managed to draw his blaster before Sam reached Chuck—as she’d hoped he would. She flicked her left wrist, triggering the mechanism that looked like a bracer strapped on her forearm. Spiraling outward from the center of the bracer, several metal plates fanned out and locked in place to form a shield. It glistened, coated as it was with the Rapoo enamel.

The haggard man fired, but Sam barely felt the impact of the blast. It was a small tickle on her forearm. The haggard man felt more than a tickle when Sam drove the butt of her sword handle into his face.

Chuck Wagon hadn’t been able to pull his blaster from its holster before Sam put her blade to his neck. She pressed, causing blood to bead along the edge of her sword. Chuck dropped to one knee, but he didn’t drop his smile. The three men around him had drawn their blasters and trained them on Sam. Another four men marched into the clearing, carrying heavier guns—scatterblasters and automatic weapons.

“Let’s try this again,” Chuck Wagon said.

A red dot appeared on Chuck’s forehead.

Sam smiled. “Yes, let’s.”

One of Chuck’s thugs pointed to his forehead. Chuck looked up, but was unable to see anything.

“Our sniper’s got you painted,” Sam said. “Now, you can transfer the other half of our credits, or he can paint this turd of a rock with your grey matter.” She withdrew her sword from his neck and stepped back.

Chuck Wagon contemplated his choices. He wondered whether it was a bluff, just some trick with a laser pointer. He wondered if the sniper, if he was real, could make that shot from wherever he was posted. In the end, he decided that it wasn’t worth risking his brains. He gestured for his men to holster their blasters.

“Well-played,” Chuck said, standing. He tapped on his tablet again. “Funds are going through.”

Cody refreshed the screen a few times. The amount doubled. He made a conscious effort not to gasp at the balance now sitting in their account for fear of looking like a total noob. Though, he could afford to look like a noob now. He could afford just about anything.

He mustered his best tough guy voice. “We’re good.”

“Then get back to the ship,” Joel said in their ears. “If they decide to rush you, I won’t be able to pick them all off before they get to you.”

Reggie pushed the wagon of teeth into the waiting hands of Chuck’s goons. Then he extended his hand to Chuck. “Nice doing business with you.”

Chuck’s beard twitched as his jaw tensed. That tension spread from Chuck’s face to the entire clearing. A brief moment where anything could happen. The deal could fall apart. They could all go down in a blaze of stupidity.

Then the big man took Reggie’s hand. “You too.”

Reggie turned his back to Chuck and his men. His gait said to the men behind him that he was calm and collected, but his face told the Notches that it was time to haul ass back to the ship.

Sam took a few steps backward, not comfortable turning her back to Chuck, or maybe just letting Chuck know that she was ready, should he decide to alter their deal again. She turned after a few paces and followed Reggie and Cody.

Once they were up the ramp and inside the cargo hold, Joel packed up his rifle and dropped through the access hatch. He landed with a thud next to the rest of the team.

They stared at each other. Speechless. Breathless. Still.

Then Cody tore ass out of the cargo hold and made for the bridge.

“Strap in,” he said over the general comm. “We’re getting off this rock before Beardy tries to take his money back.”

They rocketed off Ludlow, filthy rich.

Chapter Twenty

One does not celebrate becoming a millionaire every day. So, when one does, he must do so in an exceedingly indulgent manner. Step one: food. Step two: booze. Step three: laser swords and jet packs.

The Notches didn’t make it past step one, but that didn’t squelch their desire to celebrate. They didn’t dare venture too far to find a suitable place like a video game bar, with Sonic on the verge of exploding. So they ventured to the nearest place they could find: a rest stop space station on one of the more popular trading lanes in the sector.

The station was nothing special. It’d be difficult to tell it apart from any of the other rest stops on the lane. Places to fill your face and empty your bladder. The options were mostly fast food joints or prepackaged meals from the convenience store, but the team chose the one diner on the station. Despite its location, it received solid reviews. A diner had to try to be really terrible. Standard greasy fare was all they were after.

They were surprised to find that the diner had changed owners and had changed significantly from its online profile. It was more than a standard greasy spoon; it was a full-blown themed restaurant now. The façade was decked out in chrome and neon lighting. The waitstaff wore bowties and poodle skirts. Classic fifties cars were on display inside. The booths were covered in red vinyl.

Sam cringed when the hostess greeted them. The girl’s level of chipperness far exceeded Sam’s max capacity. But she bore it because she saw the menu. The diner boasted the biggest burgers in the galaxy, and it was more than a hollow brag… They were quadruple pounders, as big as Reggie’s head.

The Notches sat in a booth and ordered their food. The liquor wasn’t flowing, but this was all the celebration they needed. Their newfound wealth was like pure adrenaline shot straight to their hearts, but they were also tired. They’d been working nonstop for weeks. This was their first real break, a life-changing one, and all they wanted to do was eat some huge burgers.

Joel felt oddly old, sitting in the vinyl booth, picking over the menu. There was a time he would have insisted they find a bar, or at least a liquor store, and drink themselves into oblivion to celebrate a score like this. That time had been just last month. He still would have preferred to do some gaming, but, absent that, this was fine.

“I’m going to eat myself into a coma,” Joel said.

Cody laughed. “Go for it. We can afford to revive you. Or keep your brain alive inside a robot body.”

Joel shook his head. “No robots. You can genetically manufacture me a body. Clone this one, and just keep popping my brain from body to body.”

“Seriously?” Sam said with a smile. “You wouldn’t want to make some improvements?”

“What’s to improve?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.” Sam laughed into her water glass.

The waitress dropped a round of sodas on the table.

Reggie picked his up and held it out to the others. “Notches, I think this moment requires a toast.” Cody, Joel and Sam raised their glasses. “We took a risk buying Sonic and venturing out on our own. We’ve almost died more times than I can count. We got swallowed by a planet-sized bug. Thugs have tried to stab us in the back. This isn’t at all what we thought we were going to do with our lives. But I’m glad we’re doing it. And I wouldn’t want to be doing it with anyone else.”

They clinked their glasses together and all said, “Cheers!”

The silence that followed was filled with something Sam couldn’t name. Not awkward, but not easy the way it was most times with the guys. For the first time since meeting them, she felt compelled to fill it.

“Why do you guys call yourselves ‘Notches’?”

The question seemed to catch Reggie off guard. Maybe it was the asker more than the question. It took him a moment to recall the answer. “I think we were in eighth grade? Chatting with each other while gaming. It must have been Joel who was saying it… I wouldn’t have been.”

“Saying what?” Sam asked.

“Bitches,” Joel said. “I was calling Reggie and Cody bitches because they were playing like shit and getting us killed. Anyway, the chat kept autocorrecting ‘bitches’ to ‘notches’. After a while, we just started using ‘notches’.”

Sam’s eyes widened with realization. “Oh, I like that better than the story I’d made up.”

“Why?” Cody asked. “What did you think the reason was?”

“I assumed it had something to do with conquests. Like notches on your belt.”

The guys met her with blank stares.

Reggie said, in his most uncomfortable voice, “You mean, like, sex?”

Joel groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have to sound like it’s so far out of the realm of possibility.”

Reggie shrugged like he didn’t get it. “It was out of the realm of possibility. We were in eighth grade.”

“It stayed out of the realm of possibility throughout high school, too,” Cody added. “It only neared the realm of maybe when we got into our twenties.”

Joel slapped his forehead. “Dude!”

Sam laughed easily. Not at them, like Joel feared. She appreciated the openness and honesty; so much of her life had been a front. To survive on the streets, to survive as a warrior and a mercenary, was to put up a front at all times and act like you were the toughest around. A crack in that front opened you up to challenges, and challenges meant losing jobs or getting a knife in the back.

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” she said. “It’s a relief. I’m glad my story was wrong. Sex shouldn’t be a conquest.” She wanted to change the subject and saw that the guys also wanted her to. “How long have you guys known each other?”

The relief was apparent on Reggie’s face. “First grade, I think. So, like, six years old.”

“You and Joel were in the same first grade class,” Cody said. “I didn’t meet you guys until I moved onto Reggie’s street the next year.”

Reggie nodded like he’d just remembered.

Sam watched as they jogged each other’s memories and recounted the tales of their early years. She was struck with a sense of disjointed nostalgia, a yearning for a past that she never had. She was filled with the warmth of a crackling fireplace on Christmas morning, the dull light of dawn filtering in through the windows as an elderly woman, a grandmother to someone, rocked in a chair and knitted a pair of mittens. It was a fictional history belonging to a storybook child who had her skinned knees kissed by an adoring mother—not the street rat who’d once cauterized her own abdominal injury.

“I never went to school.” Sam hadn’t intended to say that. She hadn’t intended to say anything at all, but there was a force inside her that pushed the words out, that compelled her to share. “I just mean…you guys were talking about first grade. I’ve never been to first grade. Or any grade.”

The guys went quiet, and Sam wished she could climb under the table and disappear. Every second that passed without acknowledgement made her lungs fill a little bit more with smoke.

“Sorry,” Cody said.

Sam had hoped someone would speak, but that is not what she expected to hear.

“Yeah, that’s real shitty,” Joel added. “I mean, I never liked school all that much, but, looking back on it, I wouldn’t have skipped it.”

Silence again. Sam breathed it in, tried to use it instead of allowing it to choke her. When she exhaled, she found that she could speak. “I’ve never missed those kinds of things because I never realized what I didn’t have. But listening to you guys...” Her voice trailed off.

“We can stop,” Reggie said, moving his hands like he was cleaning the table, trying to brush something away.

Sam shook her head. “No, I’m not asking you to stop. It doesn’t bother me. It just…it makes me curious.”

The waitress set their monstrous burgers in front of them, but not even the gargantuan meat patties could distract Joel from the look on Sam’s face. The expression was so vulnerable for a woman he’d watched slice through alien monsters with a sword.

“Curious about first grade?” he asked. “It’s mostly nose picking and learning to color inside the lines.”

Sam stabbed her burger with the knife on her plate and cut it in two, an act that, in the context of the moment, she realized was overly violent. She set the knife down, the clank of it on the plate seeming alarmingly loud. “Curious about all of it. All the normal stuff.”

Reggie spoke through a mouthful of the most delicious burger he’d ever eaten. “We’re curious about life as a mercenary. We were probably pretending to be soldiers of fortune while you were actually being one.” He swallowed and felt his face get hot. “Was that insensitive? It felt insensitive as soon as I said it.”

Sam absentmindedly twirled the knife on her plate. She suddenly realized that she had been drawn back to the knife and clenched her fists to keep from touching it. “No. My life is probably just as alien to you as yours is to me. I’ll never understand what video games on a weekend morning is like. Just like you’ll never know what having to win a merc contract at the age of fifteen is like.”

Reggie set his burger down. “What is it like?”

Sam tilted her head. She’d opened her hand as soon as Reggie spoke, but she caught herself before she touched the knife.

“Trying to win a merc contract,” Joel added. “At such a young age. I mean, I thought Physics class was a pain in the ass. To be fair, Mr. Collins was a real douche. The guy had crazy ear hair and enjoyed watching kids squirm during tests. He was a real sadist. But I never had to, like, kill a guy or anything.”

Sam could feel them tiptoeing around her. She both appreciated it and resented it. The inherent concern in the act was touching, but she didn’t like that they felt it necessary. It meant they saw her vulnerability. Her weakness.

She pushed the knife away. It slid out of her reach. “Look, we can talk about this stuff. I don’t have a problem with it. We’re a team. Teams need to trust each other. To trust me, you need to know more about me. I get that. But you guys can’t have those sad fucking puppy dog faces the entire time. I’m not a victim.”

Joel leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “I beg to differ. You don’t know what it’s like to wake up, remember that you don’t have to go to school, and then spend the entire day playing video games, getting out of bed only to pee. That is a true tragedy.”

The night alternated between fun stories of the guys’ childhoods, growing up so intertwined in each other’s lives, and glimpses into Sam’s broken life. She told them what it was like growing up on the street, having to fight for food. She told them about her first mercenary job, hunting down a smuggler who tried to renege on a deal with his client and make off with the merchandise he was hired to transport. Turned out the merchandise was a flock of endangered Titan Turkeys from the Jupiter moons. Not only did she have to subdue the smuggler, who was twice her age and size, but she then had to figure out how to wrangle a flock of birds that each weighed two hundred pounds.

The laughter outweighed the shock and looks of pity. At the end of it, Sam felt lighter, and the guys felt closer to her.

And they all felt like they might vomit four pounds of beef.

Chapter Twenty-One

To their surprise, the team all agreed on what to buy first with their newfound wealth—a new ship. Sonic had served them well, but its history would mean nothing if it released toxic gases and killed them all in their sleep or exploded and incinerated them.

They took it slow and steady to a space station called Riordan. The place was huge. Seven levels, all made to hold dozens of ships, ranging from shuttles to battlecruisers. The team may have agreed that they needed a new ship, but that’s where the agreement ended. Cody wanted a stealth ship equipped with the latest networking and computer systems. Reggie wanted something fast. Joel wanted a pleasure yacht. Sam wanted something with firepower.

The Riordan staff greeted them with indifference. The man in the pinstripe suit and with slicked back hair likely thought they were a waste of time. Reggie could hardly blame him. They looked like four hobos who’d just climbed out of an alley, not like four millionaires.

“If you’re looking for cargo shuttles, they’re on level seven,” the dealer said. “And there’s a public shuttlebus line that runs by here. It could take you to a junkyard that probably has something a little more in your price range.”

Joel pushed past Reggie and stood in front of the man. “We’re here for the rich people shopping experience. You know, the one where we sip champagne as you show us around and kiss our asses?”

The man laughed humorlessly. “I’m sure you are. Fortunately, you have to actually be a rich person to take the rich person’s tour. Otherwise I’d waste my entire day on people like you. Now, excuse me while I call security. They’ll give you the poor people’s shopping experience.”

Joel nodded to Cody. “Show him the thing.”

Cody raised a window on his wristcom, a screenshot of Intergalactic Pest Control’s account balance. He shoved it in Greasy Hair’s face.

The team watched as the information registered on the salesman’s face. His smarmy expression changed from that of petty tyrant to utter disbelief to forcibly humbled.

He straightened his tie and his posture, plastered on a fake smile, and said, “My apologies, gentlemen, ma’am. If you’d just follow me?”

* * *

Joel sipped his champagne. The bubbles danced an entire Broadway number on his tongue. He kicked his feet up on the oak table and felt the leather couch squeak under him as he sank his ass deeper into it. “The rich people shopping experience. I understand now why rich people like to shop so much. Wait, are all experiences like this for rich people?”

“Pants shopping?” Cody said. He sank into his own section of the leather couch. “If this is how the rich buy pants, then I’m going to buy tons of pants.”

They’d been waiting in the VIP room for half an hour. They were happy to wait longer. The greasy-haired salesman, who had identified himself as Craig, escorted them in, sat them down, and then proceeded to lavish them with champagne, coffee, and a fruit and cheese platter.

Reggie popped a grape into his mouth and smiled as he, too, sank into the couch. “I won’t lie, this is awesome.”

One wall of the room was almost entirely comprised of windows that looked out over a showroom full of ships. The floor of the showroom was a massive conveyor belt, which the salesman would use to bring the ships in front of the client, cycling them out depending on their interests.

Sam stood at the windows, looking down on a midsized starfighter, a ship no bigger than Sonic, but packed with ten times the firepower. The environment put her ill at ease. The pretense, the ego, the luxury. She’d been in places like this before, places that catered to rich men drinking champagne, their desires displayed before them. Merchandise.

Her hand never strayed far from her sword.

“We’ve been waiting too long,” she said. “Where the hell is Craig?”

Joel patted the empty seat on the couch next to him. “Chill. Have some bubbly. Eat some cheese. We’re rich now. Rich people know how to chill.”

Sam didn’t turn away from the windows. She watched the techs scurry like ants, prepping ships, shining them to please the discerning eye of potential buyers. “No matter how rich I get, I will never like waiting.”

“Then let’s do something productive,” Cody said. “Let’s talk about what kind of ship to get.”

Joel groaned. “You mean, let’s fight about it? I was having such a nice time.”

Cody set his glass down and joined Sam at the window. “I think we can work out a win-win here. I want something with powerful networking capabilities. Reggie wants something fast, with FTL. Sam wants weapons. Joel wants…”

“A hot tub,” Joel said, only half joking. “And a real workshop. Not a board balancing on stacks of milk crates.”

Cody looked out at the showroom floor. “I think we can do that.”

Craig entered the room, carrying with him the scent of old man deodorant. He gestured for everyone to join Cody and Sam at the window, then stood next to them. “I’ve assembled a selection of ships that I think you will be quite pleased with.”

He pressed a red button on the remote he was holding. The showroom floor began moving. The starfighter Sam had been studying rolled away, and a bulky freighter replaced it.

“This model focuses more on space,” Craig said. “I know that is a concern of yours. This ship has five cabins, so you’d each have your own with one to spare. Full size galley and adjoining dining area that sits twenty people, so you can entertain. And, speaking of entertaining—”

Sam interjected. “Where are the weapons?”

The question caught Craig off guard. “Well, to be frank, with the amount of money you have to spend, you can focus on either space or offensive capabilities. I have a few models I can show you that strike a nice balance between the two, but a focus on one area will mean a drawback in the other.”

Joel crossed his arms. “So we can have weapons or space. But not both.”

Craig nodded. “That’s right.”

The team looked confused. They suddenly felt the weight of foolishness pressing down on their chests, leaving them short of breath and red-faced.

Cody pulled up the dealership’s website on his wristcom. As he spoke, he couldn’t bear to lift his eyes and look at his teammates. “Your luxury models are in the hundreds of millions of credits.”

Craig smiled and nodded. “That’s correct. With your budget, you can comfortably afford one of our higher-end modest models.”

Joel looked at his champagne glass. “So this isn’t the rich person experience? This is just the higher-end modest person experience?”

“We don’t officially have separate experiences for different classes of customers,” Craig said. “But yes.”

The team huddled away from Craig, suddenly feeling like they’d been thrust into a position where they were required to negotiate.

“This is not going how I thought it would,” Joel said.

“It just requires a shift of expectations,” Cody said. “We still have plenty of money to buy a ship. And any ship we buy will be a huge upgrade from Sonic. It just won’t have a hot tub.”

Reggie stroked his chin. “We need to focus on features that will add value to the business. What will help us make more money?”

“Speed,” Sam said. “Both in travel and killing.”

Cody nodded. “FTL drive and weapons. Then we’ll have to forfeit living space.”

None of them would say it, but they didn’t mind the trade. The guys had been crammed in that one room since they’d bought Sonic. The thought of having their own cabins, though appealing, also meant a further degree of separation. They would never acknowledge outright how comfortable they were at that level of codependence, but they nodded along, whimpering half-hearted objections at losing their new rooms before acquiescing.

Sam had spent years in an orphanage, sleeping on the floor, sometimes in a literal pile of children. The sheet was all the privacy she needed.

They returned to Craig.

“Show us the ones that can tear shit up,” Joel said.

Craig cringed. He pressed the button again, and the bulky freighter slid out of sight. The ship that replaced it was a sleek fighter. Shiny in all the right places, but lacking in firepower. It was meant for finesse. They needed something with a little more brute force.

The next ship packed serious heat, but didn’t have FTL. The ability to travel faster than light meant they could take jobs farther away and cut down on travel time in between. It also meant that, should they find themselves being chased by a moon-sized bug, they could outrun it with ease.

Craig sighed as he sent the third and fourth ships away. They were fine, but that was all. Just fine. The team was about to sink more money than they’d ever dreamed of having into a ship… The future of their business depended on it; their futures depended on it. It needed to be perfect.

The Notches sucked in a collective breath as the next ship rolled out. Craig breathed a sigh of relief.

“This is the Excalibur model. The perfect balance between beauty and function, speed and offense. It boasts one of the most impressive offensive packages of a ship its size. It comes standard with twin torpedo tubes and magazines for three-photon torpedoes for each, plus a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree firing range, with manned blaster turrets on the top and bottom, and a full battery of autocannons on port and starboard.”

Craig moved to the left and gestured for the others to follow so they could get a better view of the bow. “This is my favorite feature, and the reason for the name.” He pressed a button on his remote, and the bow began to shimmer. Then a blade of hard light shot out and protruded like the horn of a unicorn.

Joel jumped and kicked his heels together. “Sold! I want it!”

Cody grabbed Joel’s shoulder and forced him to the ground. Then he said to Craig, “We’d like to take a look inside, if you don’t mind.”

The interior of the ship did nothing to dampen Joel’s enthusiasm. The bridge was twice the size of Sonic’s, with seating for everyone. The computer and networking systems weren’t as cutting edge as Cody would have hoped for, but they were leagues beyond Sonic’s. The galley was outfitted with the newest appliances available, including an espresso machine and food rehydrator. And chairs. Enough chairs for them all to sit. At the same time.

They passed through the galley, minds still on the beauty of it, and into the common area. Sonic was so cramped that most of its spaces had been taken over for other purposes. Sonic’s lounge had become the bedroom. The galley often doubled as a conference room. The maintenance closet was Joel’s workshop. But this common area, this was glorious.

A horseshoe couch looped through the center of the room and faced the entertainment center. A fifty-inch monitor was built into the wall and plugged into a sound system to rival any cinema. VR ports screamed at the guys, demanding their attention, while the VR headsets hung on hooks under the monitor. Between the couch and the monitor sat an oval coffee table that appeared to be the most ordinary thing about the room. Until Craig touched it.

The surface of the table shimmered and transformed into a touchscreen console that could do everything from change the channel to monitor communications to access the ship’s main controls.

“This is basically a secondary control hub for the entire ship,” Craig said with a satisfied smile.

Cody fell onto the couch and stared at the coffee table control center. “I can pilot the ship from the couch?”

Joel leaned over the back of the couch and whispered in Cody’s ear. “Are you with me now?”

Craig led them out of the common area and into the cabins. The two rooms faced each other, a small alcove separating them. Each room was about the size of the common bedroom on Sonic. The guys wouldn’t be gaining any room, but they wouldn’t be losing any, either. Sam would get a door and a wholly separate space for herself. She welcomed it, but it also brought with it a bud of loneliness.

Sensing that they weren’t as enthusiastic about this feature of the ship as they were the rest, Craig led the team toward the back of the ship, down a long, narrow corridor. Before reaching the end of the hall, he stopped at a seemingly random and nonessential spot.

“The designers of the Excalibur model understood the balance between fashion and function. As you’ve seen, the ship is beautiful. At first glance, that may be all you see.” He pointed at the floor. “Now, let’s take a look under the hood.”

The spot where Craig pointed seemed to be no different than the rest of the floor. Then he tapped a previously unseen panel with his toe, and a ring of light shone on the floor, outlining an access hatch. It slid open to reveal a ladder that descended into the bowels of the ship. Before climbing down, Craig tapped another, similar panel on the wall. Another ring of light appeared, and another hatch opened. “This is a dumbwaiter that leads down to the engine room. No lugging tools and equipment up and down the ladder.”

Craig descended, and the team followed.

Motion-activated lights kicked on as they descended. The scent of positively charged air and solvents rushed up to meet them; the smell of machines. Joel sucked in a breath and held it until his foot hit the bottom rung.

“This is the engine room,” Craig said. The lights illuminated the room, as if part of a timed presentation.

The room ran almost the entire length of the ship, beginning from the aft and stopping before the bridge. The engine occupied the majority of the aft section. Unlike Sonic’s engine, this one ran clean. It hummed, rather than sounding like someone was beating on it with a wrench. The fumes were filtered out through a direct port that pumped them into the vacuum of space. No oils leaking onto the floor.

The FTL engine occupied the bow section of the room. Joel had never had the chance to study one up close. He’d read specs online and researched them any way he could without actually seeing one. He felt like he was familiar with them, but seeing it up close was like seeing a picture of the Mona Lisa, and then seeing the real thing hanging in a museum.

The space in between was mostly empty, aside from fuse boxes and ports on the walls. Joel suddenly realized what that empty space could be.

“My workshop?” He looked to Reggie, Cody and Sam, a child asking for a puppy.

They all smiled and nodded.

Joel sat down on the floor, his legs too weak hold his weight.

* * *

The purchase of something as large as a spaceship is an odd experience. The thing being bought allows one to soar through the stars, to explore distant planets and fight monstrous aliens. Yet, it is paid for with the same currency as a cheeseburger, and in the same manner as signing up for a phone plan, with a few signatures and multiple copies of contracts.

It didn’t feel as monumental as the guys thought it would. They’d already bought one spaceship. Their first. That had felt like an occasion, like a turning point. They were venturing into unknown territory.

They signed these papers with their eyes wide open. They knew what they were getting. They knew what owning a ship entailed and what they could expect from the experience. Not to say that it wasn’t an occasion worth celebrating. The Notches ran screaming through the halls of their new ship for a full hour before Craig politely insisted they move it off his showroom floor.

Cody strapped himself into the navigator’s chair. Reggie and Sam joined him on the bridge for the inaugural flight. Joel stayed in the engine room. He wanted to watch it fire up when the ship was in motion.

It felt effortless compared to flying Sonic. This ship was maneuvered with subtle motions of Cody’s wrists. Flying Sonic caused him to sweat as he yanked on the yoke.

They exited the space station and entered open space. Cody put the ship through its paces, testing its thrusters, pitching, diving, rolling. He couldn’t stop smiling. Even when his face started to turn green. He would have thrown the ship into one more barrel roll, but he didn’t want anyone to puke all over the shiny interior. He let the ship drift through open space.

“And thus concludes the first flight of the…”

They looked at each other with pursed lips and creased brows.

Joel arrived on the bridge a moment later, a smile brimming from ear to ear. “That engine is a thing of true beauty. If we ever venture into unregulated space, I might just marry it and produce the first human-machine hybrid creatures.” He froze, sensing a question hanging on the air. “What?”

“We need to name the ship,” Reggie said.

“Excalibur,” Joel answered.

Cody shook his head. “That’s the model name. Too on the nose. There are other Excalibur ships out there. We need something unique.”

“The Dominator,” Sam said.

The guys shook their heads.

She tried again. “The Resolute Guardian.”

Another no-go.

“Apocalypse Dawn.”

The guys looked at the floor.

“Black Nebula?” Sam clenched her jaw as the guys muttered dissent. “Come on! What’s wrong with those names?”

“They’re a bit dour,” Reggie said. “Kind of bleak.”

“We need something on brand,” Joel said.

Sam tilted her head. “What brand?”

Joel paced the bridge, gesturing in grand fashion. “Adventure. Cunning. A team that defies all odds through bravery and sheer force of will.”

“Something video game related,” Cody said.

“Yes!” Joel pointed at him. “That’s exactly what we need.”

Sam sighed and sank into her seat.

As Cody and Joel volleyed ideas, Reggie watched Sam sink deeper. A faraway look came over her, like she was staring off at a place she’d rather be, any place but here. On this ship. That she helped pay for.

“Guys,” Reggie said.

They looked at him expectantly. He pointed to Sam. They had an unspoken conversation with raised eyebrows and clenched jaws before Joel and Cody finally understood what Reggie wasn’t saying. This was Sam’s ship just as much as it was theirs. She was an equal part of the team. This was her home.

Joel sat across from Sam. “I mean, the name should still be super cool and badass. Something totally foreboding. A name that makes our enemies wet themselves. And also all those other things I mentioned when I was being a total jerk.”

Sam smiled at Joel’s workaround apology. She didn’t want to make it a thing, but she was glad they did. She didn’t have many places she’d ever called home. She hoped this ship would be one. A true home. And to do that, she needed to feel like it was part of her, and she was part of it. A name may seem superficial, but it reflected a lot about the one who gave it.

Cody’s face suddenly lit up as he shot up from the navigator’s chair. “I’ve got it. The name of our ship.”

They held their breath.

“Ragnarok.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

After its initial flight, Cody piloted Ragnarok back to the space station. They had one more bit of business to take care of before they could leave. A sad bit of business.

Sonic looked like an old dog, face whitened with age, ears, once perky, now drooped to the side. Her coloring had faded. The pitiful look in her eyes, like she knew what was coming. Today was the day she got put down.

The dealership took him in trade, but didn’t knock anything off the price of Ragnarok. It was more of an added service, a way to attract business. “We’ll take care of your old, busted-ass ship if you buy one from us.”

They couldn’t resell her. They’d dismantle her. Rip her engine out, melt her down, sell her for parts. It was a fate she didn’t deserve. She deserved to go out in a blaze of glory, cutting down ShimVens, or sailing into a star as a power ballad played in the background.

Not like this. Not scrapped.

She had served the Notches well. She’d gotten them off Earth, allowed them to chase their dreams after they thought their dreams were dead. She was their second chance.

They transferred all of their belongings from Sonic to Ragnarok, which set Peppy into a diabolical fit of excitement. Joel had to quickly quell him before he “reorganized” the new ship.

It was time to say goodbye. They stood in the hangar bay of the station, silent, staring at Sonic, thinking back on all the great times they’d shared. Then they nodded, wiped away a tear, and left.

Joel turned back a few times to look at the ship that he’d patched together from scrap so many times. He’d put more blood and sweat into it than anyone. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

Sam didn’t try to pull him away or urge him to leave. She just stood with him.

Joel dabbed at his eye, and then said goodbye to Sonic.

* * *

The common room had transformed over the previous week into Cody’s favorite place in the galaxy. He’d wired the bridge to the monitors he’d mounted on the wall alongside the TV. He could now monitor the fuel output, engine stats, navigation, and communications from the couch. He was still in the process of networking the manual controls to the common room, so he could steer from there if the autopilot functionality went offline, but he was more than pleased with his progress.

There was nothing that could blunt his high from charting a course, planning the next fuel stop, and watching his favorite streamers at the same time from the comfort of the couch.

Then a communication came in from Reggie’s parents.

His mother, Sue, appeared on the monitor. “Reggie? Is that you? I can’t see a darned thing.” She tapped on her camera, making it look like she was trying to stab Cody with her finger. The act made him flinch.

“Hi, Sue.” Cody sounded like a child.

Her eyes focused. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Yeah, it’s me. So…how are you?”

“Is Reggie nearby?”

“Yes, absolutely, let me connect you.” He opened the ship-wide general comm. “Reggie, you’ve got a call.”

“I’ll take it in the cabin,” Reggie answered back.

Cody patched the call through to the monitor mounted in the guys’ cabin. Ragnarok was equipped with a ship-wide video comm system. Not only could they talk to each other from anywhere on the ship, but they could see each other, too. They weren’t sure how they felt about that yet. Mostly gnawing paranoia.

Reggie stirred from his nap. They had been drifting off a well-used traffic lane since leaving the dealership, setting up their stuff the way they liked, making modifications, customizing the spaces. Basically making themselves at home. They had also been catching up on some much-needed rest.

They had enough money left over after buying Ragnarok that they weren’t pressed for jobs. They had time to relax and lay low, and Reggie wanted to take full advantage of that.

He swung his legs over the edge of his bed and pressed the button on the wall to activate the monitor. His mother looked down on him.

“Are you still sleeping? What time is it there? Are you sick? You look sick.”

“Hi, Mom.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you getting enough iron? You stayed up all night playing video games again, didn’t you?”

Reggie stretched and felt the tension seep from his muscles. “No, Mom, I’ve just been busy. Work’s been crazy. But it’s paying off. Look.” He gestured to the room, to everything around him. “We bought a new ship.”

Sue continued like she hadn’t heard him. “Have you heard what happened to Rachel Munson’s boy? Dreadful. He was arrested. Poor thing. Police say they found a trunk full of—what’s that stuff called that all the kids are doing?—meth. Rachel tells me he was just driving the car, though. Had no idea what was in there. Too bad. He’s such a good boy.”

Reggie pinched the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to keep the building stress headache at bay. “He’s not, Mom. Bobby Munson is not a good boy. He’s a drug dealer. He’s been a drug dealer since he was fifteen.”

Sue shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. His mom runs the church bake sales.”

Reggie looked up at the ceiling, half hoping it would cave in on him. “What does that even mean?”

His dad, Larry, budged his way on screen. “Hey there, champ. Wow, is that a new ship? How’d you get a new ship?”

His enthusiasm breathed new life into Reggie. “It is! We’ve been doing really well for ourselves. The business is taking off. We’ve had some high-profile clients… I think our name is starting to get out there. We’re building a reputation, a brand.”

“Good job, sport. I’m proud of you and the fellas.”

Sue budged back into the center of the screen. “Just make sure Cody doesn’t pressure you to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

Reggie was used to his parents’ frigid attitude toward Cody, but something about that comment felt different. Specific. Before he could ask his mom to clarify, Larry began to speak.

“So, this new ship, it have more space? Bigger rooms? More rooms?”

This comment, too, felt heavier than a simple question.

“It’s a little bit bigger. More efficiently designed, so it makes more out of the space it has. Two bedrooms, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Larry smiled, though it seemed insincere. “Oh, good. So, do you guys alternate or something, like you did on the old ship? Take turns getting your own room?”

The real reason for his father’s questions finally registered.

“Sam is still on the ship. She’s a full-fledged part of the team now. A full partner.”

His parents couldn’t manage their false sincerity any longer.

“I don’t like it,” Sue said. “That strange woman on a ship with my Reggie. The look of her… She’s not a nice-looking girl.”

Larry shrugged. “Well, let’s not resort to pettiness, Susan. She’s a perfectly fine-looking girl. Quite nice, actually. Pretty. Very—”

“I get it, Lawrence,” Sue snapped. “Kind. I mean kind. She doesn’t look like a kind person. She looks mean. And I know mean when I see it.”

Reggie recalled the conversation of one minute ago regarding one Bobby Munson, budding drug kingpin.

“There’s nothing wrong with Sam. She’s very kind. And strong and great at this job. We wouldn’t have this ship without her. We wouldn’t even be alive without her.”

Sue did not like the sound of that. “What exactly does that mean? Did someone try to hurt you? Give me their parents’ names and numbers.”

Reggie stood, his shoulders back and chin up, as defiant as he ever got to his parents.

“Mom, please listen. This job is dangerous. Probably more so than I thought it would be when we first had the idea. But I really like it. And I’m good at it. We’re building something here—me, the guys, and Sam. We couldn’t do it without her. But this business, it’s ours. We’ve put blood and sweat into it. I’ve never done anything like this. I’m proud of it.”

His parents were silent. They stared at him like they’d never seen him before. His mother blinked, and recognition slowly returned. “Well, if you’re proud, then I’m proud.” She choked up. “My baby’s a man.”

Reggie’s face burned. He looked at the floor.

“Maybe you’ll give up those video games now,” she said.

His face burned for a different reason. He wanted to shout “Never!” but decided it best to let it be.

His father said nothing else, but Reggie could see it in his old man’s eyes—the pride, but something more than that, too. An acknowledgement. A welcoming. Reggie had stepped over the line that was always moving in a father-son relationship; he was his father’s peer in that moment, a fellow working man.

They said their goodbyes. Reggie beamed as the screen went black.

“Everyone to the bridge,” Cody said over the general comm. “We just got a call about a job.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The self-satisfied smile plastered across Cody’s face gave the others immediate pause when they walked onto the bridge. They proceeded as though they were walking into a minefield.

Reggie almost didn’t want to ask the question. “What’s the job?”

“Rapoo infestation,” Cody said, calmly, but clearly queuing up for something. He brought the job specs up on the monitor like he was a lawyer slamming evidence down in a courtroom. “At Jasob Corporate Headquarters!”

Reggie and Joel threw their heads back. “More of this conspiracy shit?” Joel groaned.

“I know, right?” Cody knew Joel’s frustration was directed at him and not at the fact that the conspirators had struck again, but he decided to roll with it. “Another Layton competitor targeted. Another link in the chain of causality. This is it, guys. This is proof that this is a real thing.”

Reggie shook his head. “No, this is proof that the Rapoo are nasty, little creatures who like to tear things up. I thought the ShimVens were the conspiracy creatures, anyway.”

Cody made a big circular motion with his hand. “It’s all connected, man.”

“Now you really do sound like a batshit crazy person,” Joel said. “Minus all that nonsense, I know what this really means. It means we get to use our new weapons.” He walked off the bridge, followed by Reggie.

Sam patted Cody on the shoulder. “I believe you. This is way beyond coincidence now. We’ll keep our eyes open when we’re at Jasob. Something will turn up.”

He nodded, appreciating the vote of confidence.

* * *

The team rendezvoused in a section of the cargo bay that Joel had dubbed ‘the ready room’. The area was originally meant to function as a storage area, but its potential would have been wasted. Joel hauled all the weapons, including the new Rapoo teeth gear he’d made, into the room and lined the walls with them. There were four lockers, each containing a spacewalk suit.

Cody had networked in a monitor, so he could brief the team as they prepped for the mission. He fastened his belt with its new dagger holster around his waist while he spoke. “This job is coming straight from Jasob’s top brass. This is their corporate headquarters.” An image of the space station appeared on the monitor. “Not just a waystation or commercial hub—their corporate headquarters. Executive offices, R&D department, buttloads of top secret proprietary info all over the place.”

The external image of the station changed to a detailed schematic. The floorplan was different from the other stations they’d visited so far. It had one main hub, which contained the offices and administrative brain. Then, branching off from that hub, connected by a single tunnel, were three smaller substations, each housing a different department. R&D occupied one. Housing, another. The third substation was the hangar bay where all incoming and outgoing traffic was routed.

“This place isn’t as cutting edge as StrobeNet’s Rever station, but it’s close. Rever was a next-gen facility, in terms of station design. Jasob’s HQ is at the top of the current gen spectrum. Most of it is automated, including the security system, which we will have to contend with. Like Rever, the station can’t be accessed remotely—as a method of keeping its proprietary information secure—and the last person to evacuate failed to turn the security system off. So, at least until I can access it onsite, the station will try to shoot us.”

Cody checked his scatterblaster, then, satisfied, stuck it in the holster on his back. “Speaking of Rever, Jasob would really like us to not blow up their station. The loss would sink the company.”

Joel raised his hand to interject. “Did you tell them that, as long as their station isn’t swallowed by a giant space bug, we will do our best not to blow it up?”

“I did.”

Joel winked at him. “That’s why you handle customer relations.” He squatted down and strapped a piece of Rapoo teeth plated body armor around Peppy.

The team, now outfitted with upgraded body armor and weapons, felt ready to tackle the Rapoo threat.

“Since we’ll be landing in the hangar bay substation, we’ll clear that one first,” Cody said. “Then we’ll move into the central hub, where I’ll access the main system. From there, we’ll move systematically through the station. Questions?”

Reggie secured his gatling to the straps around his shoulders. Sam slipped her arm into her shield gauntlet.

“More of a comment really,” Joel said. “Great briefing. Top quality. Also, I brought these.” He pulled a tube about a foot long from a duffel bag he’d carried from his workshop. From the tube, he produced a metal rod that measured about the same length.

The others eyed the rod as though it were as plain as it seemed. Joel watched their eyes as he pressed the button on the side. He delighted in their wonder.

The rod expanded with blink-and-miss-it speed to four feet. It came to a sharpened point on one end. The tip glistened in the light.

“Spears.” He handed it to Sam, who marveled at it. “Tipped with the diamond enamel, of course, for maximum killing. They’re perfectly balanced and weighted for efficient chucking and impaling of nasty little shits.”

He produced two more, which he handed to Cody and Reggie, and then a fourth for himself. They tested them, making sure they stood a safe distance from one another before expanding them.

Reggie slapped Joel on the back. “You continue to impress, dude. These are awesome.”

A notification beeped on the monitor, drawing Cody’s attention. “We’ve reached the proximity arrays of the Jasob Station. I’m going to steer us in manually, and, hopefully, not get shot out of the sky.”

Cody and Sam returned to the bridge, while Joel and Reggie strapped into the chairs in the cargo bay.

The tips of Cody’s fingers tingled as adrenaline surged through his body. His vision narrowed on the control panel. He’d put in dozens of hours of flight practice in the week since they’d bought Ragnarok, but he’d yet to see real action from behind the yoke. The churning in his gut was a mixture of excitement at getting the opportunity and fear that he would fail, and they would all die horrible deaths.. It was probably seventy percent excitement. Maybe sixty-five percent.

The monitors were all backlit in soft blue, signifying that Ragnarok was on autopilot. The lights turned red as Cody took over the controls.

“Here we go.”

Sam did her best to maintain an air of confidence, though Cody’s apparent lack of it did not help. “You got this.”

An automated message sounded over the comm. “Unidentified vessel. You do not have authorization to enter this space station. Present your authorization code now or turn back. If you fail to do either, you will be fired upon.”

“Is it too much to hope the client gave you an authorization code?” Sam asked.

“Yes. They did not,” Cody answered. “The system administrator was in the process of changing all the access codes, as per routine, when they announced the evacuation. He apparently didn’t think that leaving the security system active with no way to shut it down was a problem.”

“I hope he gets fired.”

An alarm sounded on the panel next to Cody’s left hand. They’d been targeted.

“Me too,” Cody said.

Luckily, he’d planned on this happening, so he had an idea of how to handle it. With his approach, no evasive maneuvers would be needed; he’d land the ship safely before any shots were fired.

Though that was just a theory.

Ragnarok came equipped with so many beautiful toys. One of the subtler ones, the gadgets with little flash that didn’t garner much attention from the others, was a signature cloner. It did exactly what the name implied. It copied the ship’s signature that any attacking ship would use to, say, lock on to it with a barrage of devastating missiles, and confuse the targeting system as to which target was real.

It was a short-term solution, only capable of tricking an enemy targeting system for a maximum of ten seconds, but hopefully that’s all Cody would need.

He activated the signature cloner and did not alter his course.

“You’re sure this is going to work?” Sam asked.

Cody’s knuckles turned white. “Never ask that question. It’s not a good question.”

The targeting alarm continued to ring, but the station lost its lock on Ragnarok. Cody began the countdown in his head.

Ten seconds.

The hangar bay doors were in range. The shimmering blue shield across the opening that kept the interior pressurized while allowing ships to pass through looked like a pleasant tropical wave, lapping at the shore.

Five seconds.

Just a little bit closer. Cody could see inside the hangar bay now. He could see the spot where they would land. In one piece. Not the least bit exploded.

Three.

Two.

“Target lock engaged,” Sam said with eerie calm.

One.

The shimmering blue shield that separated the vacuum of space from the pressurized interior of the station washed over the Ragnarok like they were passing through a waterfall. Cody set the ship down at exactly the spot he’d picked out, way back when total obliteration was at the forefront of his mind. Now the only thing he thought about was getting the job done.

Sam clapped him on the back before leaving the bridge to rendezvous with the others in the cargo bay.

One of the other pluses of Ragnarok? A much more comprehensive scanning system. They could run a scan of a ship and tell how many living creatures were on it, what species they were, and where exactly they were on the ship.

“Initial scans show a strong Rapoo presence in the hangar bay,” Cody said over the general comm. He leaned in closer to the monitor, not sure he was seeing what he was seeing. But these scanners were top of the line. No way they were wrong. “And these Rapoo seem to be a bit larger.”

“Of course they do,” Joel answered back. “How big we talking? Labradoodle? Sedan? Winnebago?”

“Smaller than a Labradoodle, bigger than a Wheaton Terrier. They’re about forty percent larger than the ones we encountered on Kaufman,” Cody informed them as he rejoined the team in the cargo bay.

They were strapped. They were ready. The landing platform lowered. And the battle began.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Blood splattered on Reggie’s face. He didn’t know if it was his or not. He didn’t have time to think about it. He didn’t have time to care, to mentally scan his body to see if he’d been dealt a fatal blow, if he was bleeding out, if his intestines were dangling out his front side.

They weren’t. His intestines were fine. The blood wasn’t even his; it spewed out of the crushed face of the Rapoo that had lunged at him from the roof of a single pilot shuttle parked next to Ragnarok. Reggie pulled his diamond knuckles back with a wet, slick sound. The Rapoo’s face was mush.

The team got flanked by a pack of Rapoo as soon as their feet hit the hangar bay deck. Sam sliced one in half. Cody got off two shots from his scatterblaster before he was overrun. Joel holstered his pistols quickly. Reggie didn’t even try his gatling. The pack was too dense and too quick. Reckless fire at that close a range would only result in the Notches blasting each other apart.

Joel and Cody drew their spears. A press of the button and they expanded, knocking the attacking Rapoo back a few paces. They swung in wide arcs, the spears allowing Joel and Cody to maintain the distance between them and the Rapoo.

Reggie opted to pummel the creatures into paste. The sickening sticky sounds soon elicited an odd sense of satisfaction. As the dead Rapoo dropped to the deck, another flanked Reggie, slashing at his chest. He inhaled and braced for his heart to fall onto the floor. But the creature’s claws just glanced off the diamond plating. Reggie cracked the Rapoo’s skull with a quick downward punch.

The team slowly gained ground, pushing the Rapoo back from the landing platform. The Notches moved outward in a semicircle, slashing through the beasts, dropping them to the deck in pieces. Joel shoved his spear through the side of one. Cody used his spear like a staff, batting the Rapoo away from him.

Peppy tore through the hangar bay like a torpedo. He ripped a Rapoo’s throat out without slowing down, moving on to the next creature before the first had hit the deck. The air became tinted with a red mist that then fell like rain, making the deck slick. Peppy didn’t realize how slippery it was until his front feet slipped out from under him, and he fell onto his chest. He slid twenty yards until he crashed into the wall.

Peppy had killed half the pack before he fell. Before he was back on his feet, the team had killed the other half.

The adrenaline burning off, the team became aware of the damage they’d taken during the skirmish. Nothing serious; Joel’s updated armor protected all their vital bits. Reggie had a gash in his shoulder, though. Sam’s left leg was cut just above the knee. Cody and Joel both had a few cuts and scrapes. Peppy’s pride was wounded. But they were alive and standing.

Another benefit of Ragnarok’s updated scanners was that Cody could patch into them with his wristcom. The hangar bay was clear.

After patching themselves up, they moved on. The tunnel connecting the hangar bay to the main hub was hardly larger than a standard hallway. The team could walk shoulder to shoulder, but just barely, and Reggie could touch the ceiling if he jumped. It couldn’t have made for an easy flow of traffic, but this wasn’t a commercial station like Rever—it wasn’t designed to keep people moving from store to store.

They paused at the entrance to the main hub. Joel didn’t need to hear Cody’s assessment of the scans to know there were Rapoo on the other side of the door. He could tell by the way Peppy snarled. But Cody gave it anyway.

“The main hub is swarming. There’s got to be at least ten separate packs in there, probably ten Rapoo per pack.”

“I’m pretty good at math,” Joel said. “And that sounds like a terrible situation.”

Cody was silent as he studied the scans. “It is. But I have an idea to make it slightly less terrible.” He expanded the window on his wristcom for all to see. “The Rapoo are moving back and forth from the substations to the main hub. If I can get to the main server and hack in, then I can control the tunnels. We push the Rapoo back, I shut down the tunnels, trapping them, then we tackle them just a few packs at a time instead of this massive horde all at once.”

The team agreed.

“But how do we push them back?” Reggie asked.

Joel patted his bag. “Flashbangs. Trusty old flashbangs.” Peppy pressed his head into Joel’s hand. “And Peppy can herd them.”

Reggie hoisted his micro-gatling and stood ready at the door. The team fell into their standard breaching formation. Cody opened the door.

The main hub was a portrait of chaos. The Rapoo had completely overrun it. For the first time, Cody noticed tribal behavior in the beasts. Different packs were fighting each other. It seemed like mostly posturing, the creatures baring their teeth and snapping their jaws, putting on a show for potential mates, trying to intimidate their opponents into vacating the territory. But some of the altercations had turned deadly. Cody spied a few corpses scattered across the deck.

This would work to their advantage. The Rapoo were divided. Not only were they not presenting a united front, but they were at each other’s throats.

The Rapoo hadn’t even turned their attention on the Notches when Reggie opened fire. A group of them close to the entrance scattered. Reggie didn’t stop to study the landscape; he just ran forward. The main server was in the center of the room, which was a cavernous space of multiple open levels. They looked like lofts stacked on top of each other.

The Notches followed in his wake. Sam and Cody protected the flanks. Joel followed Peppy along the perimeter of the room, pushing the Rapoo toward Reggie’s barrage. Joel threw a flashbang as hard and high as he could. It ricocheted off the wall and fell behind a cluster of Rapoo. The explosion sent of shockwave of light and force through the room, hitting the Notches in the chest. But they had been prepared, and braced themselves.

The Rapoo weren’t anywhere close to prepared. The flash put them in a frenzy. They ran into each other, tripped over themselves, snarled at everything. Peppy ran around behind them and herded them into the tunnel connecting to the residential substation.

Reggie pushed the packs back past the main server. It was a raised platform, open on all sides, a computer terminal in the center. He took up a position between the server and the horde.

Cody climbed the platform after Reggie and dropped his bag. He sat at the computer terminal and opened a window on his wristcom. This system, like the one on Rever, wasn’t networked, so he couldn’t access it remotely, even when standing right next to it. He pressed a button, and a port opened on the side of his wristcom. He pulled on the cable that extended from it and plugged into the station’s main server.

“Keep them off me for two minutes,” Cody said.

Sam stood beside him, her sword and shield at the ready. “By your command.”

Cody glanced at her. “Did you just make a joke? This isn’t the right time for you to start doing new things. It throws me off my game.”

Sam smiled, but said nothing. She instead batted a charging Rapoo aside with her shield, and then stabbed it.

Joel and Peppy fell into a rhythm. Joel would toss a flashbang into a pack of Rapoo. Once disoriented, Peppy would herd them into one of two tunnels, either the one connecting to the residential substation, or the one connecting to the R&D substation. The Rapoo didn’t offer much resistance. A couple did snap at Peppy as he herded them, but the vest Joel had designed for him kept him protected.

By the time Cody had hacked the main server and dropped the doors on each of the tunnels, none of the team had received any new injuries.

A handful of Rapoo stragglers were left in the main room, cut off from their packs. Sam and Peppy made quick work of them. The team huddled on the main server platform, taking the time to rest while they weren’t facing a horde of hostiles. Joel patted Peppy and gave him a treat, rewarding him for being the very bestest killing machine ever.

“The hangar bay is secured, and now, it’s sealed off.” Cody maximized the schematics of the station. “That leaves the residential and R&D substations. Preferences as to which one we tackle first?”

No one expressed a desired target.

“Then we’ll take residential,” Cody said. “That’s the smallest of the substations. And it’s got the most simplistic layout, so it shouldn’t take us too long to work our way through.” He brought up an infrared scan of the residential substation. “And it looks like the bulk of the Rapoo are in R&D. We’ll take the easy one first.”

Reggie stretched his arms over his head and arched his back. “Sounds good to me. That gatling is a terror on my arms and lower back, even with the antigravity assist. I can’t keep it going for long.”

“I don’t think you’ll need it much, once we get into the substation,” Cody said. “There isn’t a lot of open space. Mostly narrow corridors and cabins. I’m thinking we’ll be using spears and small caliber weapons from here on out.”

Sam wiped the blood off her sword and twirled it before sheathing it. “Sounds good to me. All that blasterfire is giving me a headache. You boys ready to fight like men? Hand to hand?”

Reggie dropped his micro-gatling, opting to shed the excess weight if he wouldn’t be using it. He pounded his knuckles together. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

The team lined up at the door to the residential tunnel like it was a starting line. Their melee weapons at the ready, their hearts pounding.

“Ready?” Cody asked.

They nodded.

Cody raised the door in front of them, while lowering the door at the other end of the tunnel, trapping the Rapoo inside.

The team stormed the tunnel. The Rapoo seemed to still be disoriented from the flashbangs. With the pack condensed and left with nowhere to run, the tunnel turned into a shooting gallery—or, more accurately, a stabbing gallery. The Notches charged forward like Spartans, stabbing everything that moved.

The tunnel was cleared in short order.

The residential substation was organized like a hotel. Floors of identical cabins were stacked on top of each other, each floor identical to the next. After clearing the first three, the team started to feel a mind-bending déjà vu every time they stepped off the elevator onto a new level.

Still, wandering through the cabins, it was hard for Sam not to wonder what it would be like to live in one. She’d never had a steady living environment, no place to lay her head for more than a few months. She’d hitched rides on ships, sometimes getting lucky enough to score a bed, but most of the time sleeping in the cargo hold. When she was planet-side, she was either tracking a job or between jobs. The former meant she was always on the move, probably sleeping in abandoned buildings or camping in the woods. The latter meant she was either looking for work or in the hospital.

A room like this—a bed, a nightstand, a couch that sat two, a kitchenette with mini fridge and microwave, a coffee table and TV—was a steady place that didn’t serve as a waystation. That held a certain appeal. She had her own room on Ragnarok now, but still, that was always on the move. She wondered what living in a stationary room would be like.

Then she stabbed a Rapoo through the heart and remembered why she was always moving. No adventure ever came from sitting still.

The residential substation offered them little trouble. They reached the tenth and top floor and cleared it as easily as they had the rest. It was a mindless routine at that point. They swept the halls then cleared cabin after cabin in teams of two, since that was all that would fit.

It seemed jarringly out of place to be leaning against the elevator wall, listening to smooth jazz and fighting the urge to sleep.

They took the tunnel back to the main hub and sealed it behind them.

“Last section,” Cody said, bringing up the scans for the team to see. “It’s a doozy, though. The R&D substation is full of top-secret projects. They don’t even store the details on the main server. All I could get was that some of them are marked ‘hazardous’, and who the hell knows what that means? But the biggest concentration of Rapoo are shacked up in there.”

Reggie hoisted his gatling back onto his shoulder.

“The only good news is that this substation is small,” Cody continued. “It’s one level. Basically just one big, open room. Aside from the fact that some of the projects in there might kill us if we disturb them, I doubt Jasob will be happy if we blow up all their top-secret stuff. So we should try to keep collateral damage to a minimum.”

“‘Minimizing collateral damage’ is my middle name,” Joel said.

The door to the R&D substation slid open.

Sam took one step forward before a Rapoo sliced a claw across her neck.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Joel’s face was splattered with red. Fine dots, a deep red hue.

Sam couldn’t understand why he looked so surprised. Or why he wasn’t yelling. A wound like that, to produce so much blood, it must have hurt. Maybe he’s in shock. He’s not feeling it yet. It will hit him.

Oh, wait.

Sam touched her neck. Her hand came away soaked in blood. She was the one with the gaping neck wound. It was her blood on his face. She was the one in shock.

The world started to spin. She got very cold very quickly, and her knees buckled. Joel’s look of frozen terror shattered as he rushed forward to catch her.

“Pull back!” he shouted.

Reggie was already ten paces ahead of them, his gatling raging, keeping the rest of the horde at bay. Peppy patrolled the space between Reggie and Sam, killing all of the Rapoo that got past the barrage of blasterfire.

Cody screamed at Reggie’s back. “Back, Reggie! Into the tunnel!”

Reggie took one step back, and the horde followed. Every inch he gave up, the Rapoo took immediately. He was the dam, holding back the ocean. If he moved, the water would swallow them.

“Go!” he yelled.

Scenarios ran through Cody’s mind, as he calculated outcomes, his friends’ lives just data points in an equation. Pull back, patch Sam’s wounds, save her life, leave Reggie to die. Help Reggie, let Sam bleed out.

There has to be another way. There has to be—

A hand on Cody’s wrist. It was Sam, taking the decision away from him. She tore off his wristcom and threw it behind her, into the tunnel. Then she pulled a can of med-spray from a pocket on her belt and shoved it into Cody’s chest.

“Patch me up.”

The gash was in the side of her neck, tracing her jawline. It had missed the jugular, but she was losing enough blood that she’d pass out in seconds if it didn’t stop. Then she’d be dead a minute later.

Cody took the spray, allowing himself no time to second-guess or recalculate. The decision was made. The med-spray was essentially an adhesive, a quick fix on the battlefield. It bound the wound and stopped the bleeding, but it would still need cleaning and to be properly examined. One sliver of Rapoo claw in the wound could cause infection. But there was no time for that now.

Sam’s face had drained of color, along with a hefty dose of her blood. The front of her was stained red. She was a gruesome sight. She held her head up anyway.

“No clever plans on this one. If we try to retreat, we get overrun. If we press forward, we get surrounded. We hold our ground, the mouth of this tunnel, and let them come to us.” She tapped Reggie on the shoulder, a signal that it was safe for him to back up.

They took up position at the mouth of the tunnel—Sam with her sword, Cody and Joel holding their spears, Peppy snarling. Reggie dropped behind them, finally allowing his arms to give out, pushed to their max by the relentless vibrations of the gatling.

Once the firing stopped, the Rapoo charged. The line of Notches became a meatgrinder. The Rapoo erupted in a mist of red and a shower of parts. Spears through hearts. Sword lopping off heads. Teeth ripping out throats.

Reggie regained the feeling in his hands and hoisted the gatling again.

“Switch!”

The team parted and fell behind him for a chance to catch their breath. Without a full recharge of stamina, Reggie was only able to hold the line for a minute.

Sam noticed his shoulders slump. She tapped him, and they swapped places again. Each time they swapped places, they lost a little ground, moving back further into the tunnel. They felt like a blockage in a garden hose, being pressed on continuously, moving closer to the end with every second. The ground became slick with blood. Their muscles burned with fatigue.

They swapped again. Reggie could barely lift the gatling. He couldn’t feel his hands anymore. He couldn’t squeeze the trigger. But his friends had only just stepped back. They needed a break. He dropped the gatling. It slammed like a gavel down onto the deck. He drew his spear and extended the pole just in time to swat a Rapoo out of the air. He batted a second aside then impaled a third, but he couldn’t hold on to the spear with the added weight. It, too, fell to the floor.

Rather than attempt to retrieve it, Reggie pounded his knuckles together. A weak gesture. A boxer in the tenth round with nothing left to give.

Two Rapoo rushed him. Reggie punched down, catching one in the top of the head. He swung up to catch the other one under the chin, snapping its neck back.

His arms had moved past the point of burning and fatigue. They were numb. Still, he managed enough force to kill. But that was pure adrenaline, and that would burn out soon. So he figured he’d better make the most of it.

He went into a frenzy, swinging his arms like he was a windmill, knocking Rapoo out of the sky, crushing their skulls with wild haymakers. He was a golem, a lifeless thing putting itself between its people and danger. He was Gandalf.

“You shall not pass!”

Until one Rapoo caught him in the shoulder. It was a glancing blow, but it was the final whack to a tree trunk that had been mostly cut.

Reggie went down.

The Rapoo climbed on top of him, its paws pinning his shoulders to the floor. Reggie reached for the Rapoo’s throat, hoping to crush at least one more of the bastards. But the Rapoo had other plans. It clamped its jaws around Reggie’s wrist, crushing bones and severing tendons. Even if the beast let go, Reggie wouldn’t be able to flick the thing’s nose.

Blood from his wrist dripped onto his face. He’d be blinded by his own blood, unable to see the deathblow coming. He could find a bright side even now, seconds from death.

A brilliant light bloomed at the bottom edge of his vision. Glistening, painful, like staring into the sun. His heart slammed against his spine and ricocheted off his ribs. And then everything stopped. The crushing force around his wrist relented. The pressure on his shoulders was gone. He felt weightless.

Something tugged on him. Pulling him toward the light? No—away from it.

His eyes shuttered and regained their focus. Joel stood above him, one hand on the strap around his chest and shoulders that typically held his gatling, the other pointing a pistol at the horde.

“Don’t die,” Joel said.

Reggie managed to cough out a few words. “Try not to.”

Joel set him down and applied the med-spray to Reggie’s wrist. Then, without a word, he returned to the fray.

Reggie pressed his elbows into the floor and felt fresh waves of pain shoot through his body. Sitting upright, he realized that the light he’d seen wasn’t a doorway to the afterlife, it was a flashbang. The Rapoo were staggering and disoriented.

The team had regained a foothold. Peppy, Sam and Joel were doing their thing, stabbing and tearing Rapoo apart. It was Cody that surprised Reggie. He stood in the center of the tunnel at the front of the line, holding Reggie’s gatling.

The gun looked massive in Cody’s little arms. It had been a chore for Reggie to lug around, and he was more than a foot taller and weighed close to fifty pounds more. Cody wasn’t using his strength to hoist that gun, he was using the fire that burned inside him, the flame that he rarely showed, the one he often forgot existed. It lit when times were dire, when he felt backed into a corner. Or when his friends needed him.

He shook like he was seizing, but he held the gun on target. Rapoo broke around him like a wave crashing into a rock. Sam and Joel waited to impale the survivors on the jagged shore. The force of the gun grew to be too much for him. Even with all the fires of Hell burning in his chest, Cody didn’t have the muscle to hold it long. He dropped to one knee. Still, he fired… Though his shots went low, hitting the deck at the Rapoo’s feet.

Suddenly, the gun seemed lighter. Much lighter. He stood and realized why; he wasn’t the only one holding it anymore. Reggie stood next to him, taking some of the weight.

Together, they held the gun high and mowed down the remainder of the Rapoo pack.

Finally, the gatling went silent. Sam and Joel stopping slashing. Peppy stopped hunting. The team locked eyes over the carnage. Their faces were stained red. Their knuckles were white. Their faces were a pale green. They trudged further back into the tunnel, toward the main station. They found a clean spot—relatively clean, anyway—and sat. They said nothing.

Tears cut a path through the red on Reggie’s cheeks, though he liked to think the others mistook it for sweat. Until he noticed the same streaks on Joel’s face, and Cody’s and Sam’s.

He let his head fall back and hit the wall. His hand fell to the floor and landed on something cylindrical: Cody’s wristcom. He hadn’t seen Sam rip it off Cody’s wrist and throw it away, eliminating the option of sealing Reggie and the pack in the substation, but he pieced it together.

He picked up the device and tossed it to Cody. “You dropped that.”

Cody reattached it and smiled. “I should be more careful.”

They were quiet again as they let the blood wash from their faces.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Cutting-edge space stations always have the best med-bays. If you ever need a place to almost get eaten alive or torn apart by giant space rodents, try to do it on a cutting-edge space station.

The medical bots cleaned Reggie’s wound then injected his wrist with nanomites. The microscopic bots set about patching him together as he rested.

Fixing Sam up was a bit more complicated. The gash in her neck had been closer to severing a major artery than they realized. A quarter inch to the left, and she would have bled out. And there was a piece of Rapoo claw stuck in the wound.

The medical bots sedated her. They cleaned her wound and used a surgical laser to repair most of the damage. Then they injected her with nanomites to take care of the rest.

While she and Reggie recuperated, Joel and Cody set about cleaning up the station. Cody co-opted the station’s automated janitorial and cleaning systems to assist with transporting the Rapoo carcasses to the incinerator and cleaning up the lake of blood and viscera left behind. Short-handed, they removed as many Rapoo teeth as they could, unable to just watch that income get burned and dumped into space.

The process took several hours, but they weren’t under a time crunch, so they felt no need to rush. Cody took some extra time to browse the R&D substation. He found himself daydreaming about what it would have been like, had his life taken a different turn. He could have been working on this station, developing computer programs for groundbreaking automated medical procedures or networking protocols or the entire computer system for companies like Jasob.

The tech and bio-mechanical projects they were working on were mind-blowing. Some of them were clearly failures, but that’s how you reached new heights in science—on top of a pile of failures.

A pang of jealousy pinched at his chest. He was scrubbing blood off the panels where real scientists would be working in a few days. Where he should be working.

The R&D substation quickly lost its luster.

Cody decided to leave the rest of the clean-up to the automated systems. On his way back through the substation, something stacked along the outer wall caught his eye. He hadn’t had time during the assault to take in any details of the room; some boxes would have just blended into the background. But even from a distance, he could tell there was something interesting about them…he just couldn’t put his finger on what.

The closer he got to them, the clearer the feeling became. Familiarity. He’d seen crates like them before. On Rever. On Kaufman.

Layton Corp crates.

The feeling of loss from a moment before vanished. Another tick in the conspiracy column. Regardless of what he did for a living, this was the stuff that got his blood pumping. A puzzle that needed putting together. A code that needed decoding.

He ran to the med-bay to find Sam and Reggie getting discharged by the medical bots. Joel was laying in one of the unused gurneys, reading a comic book that he had taken from a cabin in the residential substation. Peppy was napping on the floor next to him.

“Guys, I found it.” He was breathless, heaving his words out between gasps. “Proof.”

“Of?” Joel was disinterested. He turned the page in his comic and laughed before Cody could respond.

Cody maximized a picture he had taken with his wristcom. He waited for them to react. They didn’t.

Joel peeked up from his comic when he realized he was supposed to be looking at something. “What am I looking at? Boxes? You found proof of boxes?”

With a huff, Cody zoomed in on the words painted in red on the side of the crates. “Layton Corp. These are Layton crates. Just like on Rever and Kaufman.”

Joel groaned and buried his face in the comic again. “I thought we settled this already?”

“When?” Cody asked.

“I don’t know. Didn’t I say, ‘Stop talking about stupid conspiracy stuff, it makes you sound crazy’ and then you were all, ‘They’re out to get me, they’re listening to me through my microwave’? Then you decided to listen to me because I’m smarter than you?”

“No,” Cody said, shaking his head. “None of that ever happened.”

“I’m pretty sure it did.”

Cody threw his hands in the air, trying to swat Joel’s nonsense like an annoying fly. “Whatever. Look, we’ve found Layton crates at every infestation site so far. How can you not see the connection?”

Joel slapped his comic on the table next to his hospital bed. “There have also been toilets at every infestation site so far. Maybe the critters all crawled up out of the toilet. Every site has also been a high traffic area that attracts a lot of people from all over the galaxy on a daily basis. You’re drawing conclusions without enough evidence to back it up.”

“What are you talking about?” Cody’s voice climbed several decibels. “I just named all that evidence. Layton crates at all those sites.”

“Circumstantial.”

“It’s not—”

“I object!” Joel yelled.

Despite the dull throbbing in her neck, Sam screamed as loudly as she could. “Shut up!”

Everyone froze.

She winced, a sudden wave of raging pain shooting through her. “Can we argue about this on the ship? When I’m sleeping and in a different room?”

Cody clenched his jaw. The urge to continue, to win the argument, was making his eye twitch. He swallowed the desire to fight and nodded to Sam.

Joel smirked. “I guess that means I win.”

Cody opened his mouth to yell, but Sam shut him down with a razor-sharp stare.

Joel walked behind Cody, chuckling the entire time, all the way back to Ragnarok.

If he didn’t think Sam would reopen her wound beating them both to death, Cody would have turned around and punched him in the neck.

* * *

Sam made straight for her room. She wasn’t as recovered as she made herself out to be, as evidenced by the green in her cheeks and dark purple circles under her eyes. They were all tired, but they hadn’t almost died like she had.

Once they cleared the station, Cody resolved to put the ship in a steady drift so they could all get some rest. Though he doubted he’d be able to. His mind wouldn’t quiet.

Layton. Again. At the site of another infestation. They were behind it, of that Cody had no doubt. But why? It couldn’t have been random. The resources it must have taken to genetically alter the ShimVens… And who knows if they’d done anything to the Rapoo? And then to have shipped them across the galaxy? It was a very large, very coordinated undertaking. What did they get out of infesting this station with Rapoo? To force a total evacuation and—

A total evacuation.

The station was completely empty. Maybe that was it. How else could you force an evacuation of an entire space station without issuing a blatant threat?

He wanted to bring this realization to the team, but he knew they would just roll their eyes or make jokes. Not Sam, though. She believed him. Maybe she would go with him to explore the station more before they left.

He tried to leave the bridge, but the ground shook beneath him, like the ship was shaking its head and telling him that was a very bad idea. Maybe he was just imagining things. He was exhausted; he’d hit his head a few times in the last hour.

He tried leaving again. The ship shook again, but, this time, he knew what it was.

Something had hit them. Or rather, had hit the space station where they were currently docked.

He patched into the station’s cameras and pulled up the external view on Ragnarok’s monitor. He saw nothing but empty space.

Then it moved, like a shadow in the dark. The mountain. The moving volcano that he saw before.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Words could not describe the anger bubbling behind Sam’s eyes. She’d only just closed them, having dropped onto her bed—her wonderfully soft, cozy bed—when something startled her awake. She was half-conscious when it happened and didn’t much care what it was. She knew only one thing: it was probably Joel’s fault.

It would be a shame to murder him after everything they’d been through, especially considering how they’d only just escaped death together. But she decided he must die.

“Joel!” Her recently stitched neck wound protested the force in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.”

The floor jerked upright, like someone had pulled the rug out from under her. She slammed onto her back, and everything went black.

When she woke just seconds later, bright spots danced across the ceiling. She didn’t remember why she was on the floor… She assumed she’d fainted, the result of all the recent blood loss.

Then the ship jerked again, and she remembered.

She pressed the button near the head of her bed, activating the general comm channel.

“What the hell is happening right now?”

Cody answered, his voice full of urgency. “The station is under attack by that giant space monster you all said I made up. If I were a spiteful person, I would take this moment to say ‘I told you so,’ but I’m too busy prepping the ship to escape from the giant space monster you all said I made up.”

Another frantic voice cut in over the comm.

“So, guys?”

Joel was on the roof of Ragnarok. He’d wanted to tinker with the long-range comm array before they took off so he could be sure he’d get a signal to stream his favorite show while the team was on the mend.

“Remember how we left the station so fucking pristine you could eat off the floor, which is very uncharacteristic of us? Well, everything is sort of on fire now. Through no fault of our own.”

“Get inside, now,” Cody said. “We’re getting out of here.”

Joel jumped down the access hatch, landing in the cargo bay. The engines fired up. Joel fought against the g-force as he made for the bridge. He met with Sam in the corridor outside the cabins.

“This is all your fault,” she snarled.

“What did I do?”

Reggie had already joined Cody on the bridge by the time they arrived.

“Strap in,” he said. “This is not going to be fun.”

Ragnarok retracted its landing gear and hovered above the hangar bay door. Cody spun the ship with no attention paid to careful navigation or the effects of the force of the spin on the crew. Joel toppled over his chair before he had the chance to secure himself in it.

The station rocked around them. A boom echoed through the hangar bay, like a cannon had been fired on the bridge. With the shimmering blue shield of the hangar bay door in front of him, Cody punched the engines, shooting Ragnarok out of the station.

He breathed with relief when the vastness of space expanded around them. He’d had visions of the station being crushed, and them being squeezed like a tin can in a trash compactor.

But that relief was short-lived.

As he brought the ship about, the full scope of the monster attacking the station came into view. He had been questioning whether what he saw before was real, but there was no doubting this. The thing resembled a hulked-out version of a Rapoo, like the thing had grown by one million percent. Its legs dangled like dead tentacles, useless in the vacuum of space. Its teeth, each one glistening like a cluster of stars, were jagged and pressing against each other. The monster’s head came to an odd point, like a peak. There must have been an opening on top, though Cody couldn’t see it, only the smoke trailing from it.

Joel smacked Cody in the shoulder. “That? You saw that?”

“Yeah, I told you I did.”

“And then you totally caved when we said you were just being a whiny, little bitch. You don’t cave when you see that. You make us listen.”

Reggie pulled Joel back into his chair. “That doesn’t matter. What do we do about it?”

“I don’t suppose running away is an option?” Joel asked.

“If it destroys the station, then we don’t get paid,” Reggie said. “Also, I feel like we kind of covered this with the giant ShimVen, right? The whole moral imperative aspect?”

“I never bought into that argument,” Joel said. “But whatever. I guess we’re doing this. So…how do we do this?”

Cody froze a picture of the monster on the monitor so they could study it. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Joel moved in close to examine the monster like it was a machine. “What’s the deal with the smokestack?”

Cody shrugged. “Like I said.”

Sam stabbed her arm forward, pointing out the window. “What the hell is that?”

Their eyes followed her finger all the way to the monster. It shook like it had swallowed a planet in the midst of an earthquake. Gradually, bits of it changed color, illuminated from the inside out.

Fire burst out of the creature’s mouth. A hot wave of destruction, a solar flare that smashed into the side of the station.

“What the heck is going on?” Reggie asked. “How is it spewing fire?”

“I have no clue,” Cody answered. “It shouldn’t be possible, but…”

“How important is it for all of you to be morally upstanding?” Joel looked at his friends, hoping for at least one of them to budge.

None of them did.

“Fine. But if we get cooked alive by Bowser over there, that’s squarely on all of you.”

“We need to draw its fire,” Reggie said. “Before the station gets blasted to bits.”

“It was designed for close solar orbits,” Cody said. “It can handle the heat. It’s the force of the attack that’s the problem. According to Ragnarok’s readings, that attack was powerful enough to crack an asteroid in half. The station’s got some serious armor, but another couple of hits like that, and the station is toast.”

“Not making me feel better about the ‘drawing its fire’ plan,” Joel said. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes until lights danced across the dark.

He just wanted to mess with the comm array then binge two seasons of his favorite show. He just wanted to lay in his own filth until his eyes burned from lack of sleep, and maybe fall asleep halfway through a piece of cake, then wake up to the other half still sitting on his chest. He was a simple man who wanted simple things.

Then, somewhere in those dancing lights, he saw something. An idea. A plan.

He groaned. “Shit. I know how to kill Bowser.” He pointed to the picture of the monster frozen on the monitor. “This smokestack. That’s how we kill it. Think of him like an engine; he’s churning up fuel inside to create that fire. The combustion creates the fire and excess gases. Those gases are then released through this opening. If that opening was plugged up, the internal pressure would have nowhere to go—it would build until Bowser exploded. Hopefully.”

Sam shot to her feet. “Sounds good to me. “How do we do it?”

Joel clenched his jaw. He seemed reluctant to answer. “Follow me.” Then to Cody, he said, “Give us five minutes. I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

“Ready for what?” Sam asked.

“Better you don’t know,” Joel told Sam as they left the bridge.

Reggie clapped Cody on the shoulder. “Guess that just leaves us, Captain. I’ll man the topside turret. You get us close enough that I can get that thing’s attention.”

Cody was suddenly alone on the bridge, the sole man at the helm. The one responsible for steering them through whatever this floating mountain was about to throw at them.

He was oddly comfortable with that.

The plus side to fighting something so massive was that it had limited maneuverability. Like when they’d fought the queen ShimVen, they were able to fly underneath it, close enough to blast it, without the bug being able to see them. He was hoping a similar strategy would work here.

Ragnarok charged forward like the devastation of its namesake, ready to tear this mountain down. Cody armed the photon torpedoes and fired up the forward gun batteries. That ought to be enough to get that thing’s attention.

Joel’s voice came over the comm. “I forgot to mention, don’t use up all the torpedoes. We’re going to need them.”

There goes that plan. Cody disarmed the torpedoes. The gun batteries should be enough; all he needed to do was poke the thing.

But where do you fire when attacking a mountain? Did the thing have a weak spot? A sensitive area? How did he know this wouldn’t be like throwing a pebble at a mountain?

Only one way to find out.

The forward gun batteries spooled up, whining like a mythical creature building power in its chest. Then they unleashed. The ship rocked like it had been hit by something, the force of the batteries pressing back against Ragnarok’s forward motion. Tiny explosions smashed into the surface of the creature, kicking skin or hair or whatever covered it into the vacuum. But there was no blood. The attack wasn’t strong enough to pierce the thing’s hide. But it was enough to get its attention.

Bowser turned toward them. With its movement, Cody’s perception of the creature changed. It was given context. The forward section of it shifted, the segmented spine and neck becoming clear, whereas before, it had just seemed to be one big lump of mass.

Its eyes fluttered, like suns going in and out of eclipse. Cody targeted one of them. No matter how thick its hide, no creature alive could brush off an attack directly to the eyeball.

The targeting computer acquired a lock on the glowing ball and fired.

Bowser roared, maybe not in agony, but with at least some irritation. It was a slow-motion act. His mouth opened, like a black hole spawning in the middle of space. He was silent. Everything went silent. Then Cody could almost see the force of Bowser’s voice. It was a present, tangible thing that hit the ship like a chunk of space rock.

Cody put Ragnarok in a dive, hoping to get under it. The ship rattled as the force of the roar hit the tail end. Ragnarok leveled out, shaken but still together.

“That wasn’t cool,” Reggie said over comms. “Can you get us in close?”

“Working on it,” Cody said.

He pushed the thrusters, rocketing the ship toward Bowser’s underside. The behemoth moved so slowly that its swinging arm looked like a faraway tree blowing in the breeze. Cody banked starboard and put plenty of space between Ragnarok and Bowser’s limb.

A shadow fell over the ship as they entered the shade cast by Bowser. It was an encompassing darkness, the monster cutting off the light of the stars behind it.

The muzzle flash from the topside turret cut through that dark.

Reggie’s wrist screamed as he squeezed the dual triggers of the turret. The nanites had done their work—they’d repaired the bone and tissue and returned functionality to Reggie’s previously mangled appendage—but there was still a deep soreness. Nothing he couldn’t work through, though.

The top and bottom turrets weren’t the most powerful blasters on the ship, but they were the most agile. The forward batteries could punch a hole in a battlecruiser, but the ship needed to be pointed at its target for them to be effective. However, the turrets had a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree aiming radius, perfect for attacking single pilot fighters and smaller ships.

Bowser was not a small ship, but using the turret allowed them to pepper the monster while Cody maneuvered around it.

They strafed Bowser’s underside. When they came out the other side, Cody pulled up, putting Ragnarok in a tight climb, allowing Reggie to continue strafing Bowser. The perpetual assault seemed to have had the desired effect of drawing the monster’s ire; Bowser roared again, though not as a focused attack. It was an expression of frustration, as if the monster was lashing out at a pesky fly.

Bowser followed his tantrum with a very real attack. Cody didn’t see the leg coming up from under them until it was almost too late, but the ship’s proximity alarm sounded, giving him a second to evade. He rolled to port, narrowly evading the hit that would have cracked them in two.

Not content to merely swat the fly away, Bowser followed his miss with another attack. Cody dove and swerved, winding around the limb while Reggie continued to fire.

They’d successfully managed to get the monster’s attention, but that wasn’t their end goal. They wanted to kill the thing, and, in that, Cody had taken them no closer to victory. The attacks were doing nothing to pierce Bowser’s hide. They were annoying it at best. Sooner or later, Cody’s reflexes would slow, and the monster’s attacks would connect.

“Whatever you’re working on,” Cody said to Joel, “You’d better work on it faster.”

“Going as quick as I can,” Joel answered.

Sam’s fingers were a flurry of movement. Once Joel had shown her what to do, she carried out the task with all the haste she could manage and left quality control to him. Joel bounced between the workbench where Sam was busy building the charges, and the space he’d occupied near the FTL drive.

He moved quickly, but surely. A trip, a slip, a cramp in his pinky toe might have meant instant death for all of them. What he was attempting was pure madness. But then again, pure madness and absolute genius were often confused.

The tube running from the FTL drive to the metal drum was lined with an element only found in certain meteors. He’d bought some with their Rapoo teeth money after they’d bought Ragnarok. He didn’t know much about working with FTL drives, but he knew the basics. And basic FTL principle number one was that the fuel used in the drive was volatile and hot enough to melt through just about anything. Only a handful of magnetic containment systems were resistant enough to contain it.

This made sucking on one end of the tube while the other was sitting in a tank full of FTL fuel the dumbest thing Joel had ever done. Drop by drop, the fuel dripped into the metal drum. Joel tapped the side and stuck his ear to it to get a sense of how full it was.

Full enough.

He hoisted the drum onto the dolly and wheeled it over to Sam’s workstation. The squeaking wheels of the dolly drove Peppy nuts. He loped alongside Joel, thinking the noise was a signal that it was time to play.

Joel snapped at his pet through clenched teeth. “Peppy, sit, before you kill us all.”

Peppy whimpered as he laid down against the wall.

Sam looked at Joel from the corner of her eye, her hands not slowing in their work. “Is this stuff really that dangerous?”

“If a drop of it fell on the floor, it would probably melt through it. If a jar of it smashed on the floor, the entire ship would explode.”

“And we’re flying around with a tank of this stuff?”

Joel pushed the drum to the edge of the work table. He took one of the devices Sam had built and held it below the spout near the bottom of the drum.

“Traveling faster than light requires a massive amount of energy. Partly it comes from a reaction, but there is a bit that is intrinsic within a single fuel. Distilling all that energy down into a liquid is a volatile process that produces a volatile liquid. But FTL engines have been all but perfected at this point. They’re totally safe. You know, unless someone goes poking around in them and sucks the fuel out.”

He sucked in a breath and held it as he turned the nozzle on the spout. The fuel dripped out at a slow and steady pace into the device Sam had built.

The square piece of tech somewhat resembled a toaster in shape and size. It was a simple device, lined with the same element that lined the FTL drive, and featured a detonator and a trigger. It was so simple that Sam could put them together from Joel’s instructions and not even realize what she was building.

“Wait…is that a bomb?” She stopped working, her fingers suddenly unable to continue. “Am I building bombs right now?”

Joel scoffed. “Don’t act like you’ve never built a bomb before.”

“Never out of FTL fuel.”

Joel closed the spout on the drum. He closed and latched the lid on the bomb and set it on the table. “Glad I could be your first.”

“Will this bomb go off if I puke on it?”

Joel continued the process with the rest of the bombs, twelve in all. Lined up, they looked terrifyingly beautiful. The most destruction capability he’d ever produced in such a short amount of time.

“We’re set,” Joel said to the bridge. “Get us over that smokestack.”

“That might be a problem,” Cody answered.

He’d leveled off near the opening after his climb, but the heat was so intense, he’d been forced to withdraw. Then Bowser had forced them back further with a swing of his arm. Now, far enough away that Bowser could get Ragnarok in his sights, the monster did just that.

He started to glow, illuminated from the inside out like a jack-o-lantern. His mouth opened, but it was not a black hole being born now, it was a supernova.

“Everybody, brace!” Cody yelled.

The fire burst from Bowser’s mouth. It looked like someone had taken a pin and poked a hole in the sun, causing all the energy inside to come spilling out.

Cody put Ragnarok into a hard dive as the flames raced toward them. The ship shook from the speed of the dive and the heat rushing toward them, which was mere seconds from swallowing them whole.

An alarm sounded on the bridge. “Heat levels exceeding maximum resistance.”

“No shit,” Cody barked.

The flames hadn’t even hit them yet, and the heat was already more than the ship could take. The fire was just meters away now. Seconds until death.

Cody slammed on the thrusters, pushing every last ounce of energy he could into them.

The river of fire rushed past their tail end, missing a direct hit by no more than ten meters.

Cody yelled, a mixture of cheer and terror. Then he pitched Ragnarok forty-five degrees to the starboard side and began his climb.

“We’re on our way to the smokestack. Be there in thirty seconds.”

“Aye,” Joel said.

Sam eyed him curiously.

Joel shrugged. “Just trying it out. Doesn’t work?”

Sam shook her head.

Joel secured his helmet and double-checked his tether. Then he did the same to Sam’s.

She slapped his hand away. “I’m good to go. I don’t need you nannying me.”

“I doubt anyone has ever nannied you. Just making sure you’re secure.” He raised the bridge on comms. “All right, folks, here’s the plan.”

* * *

Cody looped around Bowser’s ribcage and held the ship in a steady pattern over the smokestack opening. “We’re here. You sure about this?”

“Not at all,” Joel answered. “But you all insisted we kill this thing, and this is our best shot. So again, I repeat – if I die right now, the blame falls squarely on your shoulders.”

Joel pushed the cart to the lip of the cargo bay airlock. Sam opened the door, and the two entered. She fidgeted with the strap looped across her chest that held her sword sheath on her back.

“You take that thing with you everywhere you go?”

She didn’t look at Joel. “Yes. You must always be prepared to stab.” She said it with more levity than normal, which struck Joel as odd. Not unwelcome, but odd.

The twelve bombs jiggled inside the crate as Joel and Sam both took a side and lifted it from the cart to the floor. Joel pushed the cart out and closed the door, sealing them and the highly explosive devices inside. He secured the free end of his tether to the jack inside the airlock. When he noticed that Sam was too busy checking her sword, Joel secured her tether as well.

“You must always be prepared to not get sucked out into space.” He smiled, hoping she’d hear his joking tone and not the sarcasm that often masked it.

She returned his smile. “That’s my second rule.”

Sam shook her arms, loosening her muscles, readying herself.

“Opening the airlock,” Joel said.

“Be careful,” Reggie answered.

“Just keep the skies clear for us,” Joel said to Reggie.

The vacuum sucked the air out of the lock. Sam and Joel held firm to the handles on the crate and the handles on the wall. Then they let go.

“We’re out,” Joel said. “Be back in five.”

They drifted out of the ship, tethered to it by cables, tethered to each other by a box of bombs powerful enough to destroy a small space station. Hopefully.

Activating the thrusters in their boots, Joel and Sam shot down toward the crater in the top of Bowser’s head. With this view, they were able to see straight down into the monster. It was like staring into an active, churning volcano. The smoke and fumes rose to meet them, jostling them.

They held firm to the crate as they continued their descent.

A sudden flare inside the crater sent a rush of heat up toward them. The force pressed against them, slowing to a point of near standstill. The flare died, and they resumed.

“You two had better hurry,” Cody said in their helmets. “I think Bowser is preparing to fire again.”

Sam and Joel landed on the rim of the crater. It felt like rock, though they knew it was a living creature. They didn’t waste time opening the crate. The bombs inside were divided into two bags. Joel took one, Sam the other. With a nod, they dove into an active volcano.

Sam shot across the opening to the opposite rim. She slowed her approach, knowing any unnecessary jostling could set the bombs off. She opened the bag before her feet touched the wall, pulling out the first bomb. Each one had a spike protruding from the back. She stabbed it into the wall of the crater then moved clockwise, placing the bombs at regular intervals.

They had four left to place, two each, when the heat flared again. The surge of hot gases lifted them out of the crater like they were balloons. They drifted in open space as a shadow crept over them.

Bowser’s arm grew larger, closer, reaching for them. He’d felt them crawling around up there, stabbing him like fleas would bite. He meant to do to them what he would do to fleas.

The turret on Ragnarok lit up, and Reggie opened fire on Bowser’s arm, interrupting its course. Bowser made to swat the ship out of the sky instead of crushing Joel and Sam.

Cody banked starboard, narrowly evading the hit. Joel and Sam jerked suddenly, still tethered to the ship. They watched, helpless, as Bowser’s arm came back around.

“I can’t stay here,” Cody said over comms. “You two need to get back into the ship.”

“We still need to place four charges,” Joel answered. “Without those, the plan won’t work.”

The turret opened fire on Bowser’s arm again. “It won’t work if we get smashed out of the sky, either,” Reggie said.

Sam noticed the look in Joel’s eye a second too late.

He snatched the bag from Sam and punched the auto-recoil button on her tether. She was suddenly meters away from him, watching as he undid his tether and rocketed into the crater.

“You’re clear,” Joel said. “Get out of here.”

He didn’t look back to see Ragnarok fly away, to see the ship and his friends for the last time. He looked forward, focused on the mission. That was all that mattered.

He entered the crater again and picked up the trail of charges, stabbing one and then another into the wall. He moved quickly, no longer concerned about being careful. He’d rather not have one blowing up in his hand, but the not-dying ship may have literally sailed. He was about to stab the last bomb into the wall when another flash of heat knocked him off course. Joel scraped at the wall as he was lifted upward. Unable to find a handhold, he stabbed the last bomb into the wall, using it like a climber’s axe.

This burst of heat was longer than the others, more intense. Bowser was gearing up for another attack. He was stoking the flames.

Joel ignored the chatter in his helmet. Reggie yelling at him. Cody calling him an idiot. Nothing from Sam. She was probably too mad at him. Hopefully this would change her mind about him. That he was a clown, a jokester that took nothing seriously. There was nothing more serious than getting blown up inside an alien’s volcano head.

Bowser was about to unleash his attack; Joel could see the fire rushing by at the bottom of the crater. It was now or never.

Blow the bombs, plug the crater, kill Bowser.

Go out in a blaze of glory.

He reached for the detonator on his belt.

Then something grabbed his wrist.

“Not yet, jackass.”

Sam squeezed his wrist so hard his fingers curled. She straightened her body and kicked her boot thrusters into high gear. She rocketed away from the crater, Joel in tow.

“What is it with you guys always trying to sacrifice yourselves?”

“I didn’t come out here looking to do that,” Joel said. He craned his neck to look at the tether trailing behind Sam. A partial tether. She’d cut it before the auto-recoil brought her back to the ship. Joel focused, let the voices in his helmet register. Cody and Reggie weren’t just yelling at him—they were yelling at him and Sam.

“You stupid, goddamn fools,” Reggie yelled. “What the hell are you thinking?”

“You made Reggie say bad words,” Joel teased.

“Not me. I’m just trying to clean up your mess.”

“We can all blame each other later,” Cody yelled. “But Bowser is about to obliterate that space station. Then probably us.”

Sam squeezed tighter. “You have a lock on us?”

“Yeah,” Cody answered.

“Then if we aren’t incinerated in three seconds, come pick us up.” She looked to Joel.

They exchanged a nod. Joel pressed the trigger.

The crater exploded.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tumbling ass over tea kettle in the vacuum of space is a bizarre sensation. No sense of equilibrium. No focal point to get your bearings. Just twirling on a carnival ride out of control.

The force of the explosion kicked Joel and Sam away from Bowser. Sent them hurtling like space junk. But at no point during their tumultuous tumble, did Sam let go of Joel. She wasn’t sure if he was even conscious. She didn’t dare speak for fear she would vomit as soon as she opened her mouth. They were a ball of bodies.

Sense returned to Sam in little drips. A leaky faucet slowly filling the sink over days. Like a snap, she suddenly became aware of the situation, gained some context. She couldn’t see Ragnarok, but she caught glimpses of Bowser as she spun, so she knew roughly in which direction they were careening. And she knew that they would never stop… They would drift forever until the infinite eventually swallowed them, or they had the luck to drift too close to a star and die.

She needed to slow them, to gain some control. She kicked her boot thrusters on. They sputtered. Knocked around by the impact, fuel fought to ignite in the tiny engines. She tried again, and the thrusters erupted. Sam maneuvered around, putting the brakes on her trip through space.

But Joel still had momentum. He ripped free of Sam’s hand and continued on like a rocket. Her ears rang and pounded, and her head screamed at her. She felt blood trickling from her nose. She saw two of Joel drifting away into nothingness.

She hoped she flew toward the right one. She kicked on her boot thrusters again and closed the distance between her and Joel. Having hardly caught her breath, she slammed into him and lost it again. They tumbled in a mass of person and space suit, but Sam was ready for it this time. She kicked on the thrusters, righted them, and came to a halt.

Joel’s eyes flickered open. “My hero.”

Sam smiled.

Joel regained feeling in his limbs, and his mind cleared of the fog. They looked at Bowser’s smokestack, which was now at least several hundred meters away. She could see the destruction caused by the bombs, but they couldn’t tell if it was enough.

“Are you two alive out there?” Cody’s voice sounded in their helmets.

“We’re alive,” Sam answered. “How’s it looking on your end?”

“The charges did a lot of damage to the smokestack opening, but it wasn’t enough. A massive chunk of it is still teetering. The explosion wasn’t enough to send it tumbling.” A small moment of silence on the other end of the comms. An idea forming. “But I think we can knock it loose. Can you two hang tight for a minute?”

“Sure,” Joel said. “I don’t have much going on. My day’s wide open.”

Cody tightened the straps on his chair, a move that didn’t really seem to do anything, but it felt cool. It felt like he meant business. And he meant some serious goddamn business.

“Reggie, get down to the hangar bay,” he ordered. “Prep to scoop up the others. I’m heading straight for the edge of that crater, torpedoes armed.”

“Aye.”

That was the second time someone had answered Cody like that. He thought it was a joke at first, maybe sarcasm, but he couldn’t deny that he liked it—being responded to like he was a captain. That was a career path he’d never assumed for himself. He never considered himself a leader. Even among the Notches, dating back to the beginning, he’d seen himself as the lowest on the totem pole. Reggie was the athlete, the popular kid. Joel was the funny prankster that made everyone laugh. Cody was the geek. They were all nerds, but he was a geek. Bloodshot eyes from staring at lines of computer code all day long. Endless hours in chatrooms. Awkward to the point of painful in real social situations.

He was the one who got wedgies and was shoved in lockers. Reggie and Joel were the ones who defended him.

But, here he was, the one behind the wheel, the one steering the ship.

The one about to save the goddamn day.

“Torpedoes are armed.”

He charted his course straight for the smokestack, the cracked section they needed to break loose on the left side of Bowser’s head. The monster repositioned itself, looking away from the space station, requiring Cody to make adjustments.

“What’s he looking at?” Reggie asked.

Up to then, Bowser’s only focus had been the station. He flared again, lighting up from the inside out. He was seconds from firing. Only there was nothing else in this area for him to fire at. It was just the station and—

“Shit,” Cody said. “Sam and Joel. He’s going to fire at Sam and Joel.”

Bowser was a vindictive giant alien volcano monster.

“We need to get his attention,” Cody said.

The forward batteries erupted, peppering the side of Bowser’s head with blasterfire. It did nothing to draw Bowser’s attention; he remained intent on incinerating Sam and Joel.

They weren’t close enough to fire torpedoes. Ragnarok could have acquired a lock on another ship, on anything that gave off a radio or satellite signal… But Bowser was an organic creature. He didn’t emit a signal to lock on to.

Cody would need to make the shot manually. He would need to see his target, and he couldn’t yet—not until he was practically on top of it.

That was five seconds away. And Bowser was four seconds away from firing.

Cody pulled up at a sharp angle. Then he dropped into a dive and pitched to port. The section of the crater rim came into view.

One shot.

One-second window.

He pulled the trigger.

The torpedoes fired, and Ragnarok pulled away from their path. Cody wouldn’t see the impact firsthand. He’d have to watch the feed from the rear camera on the monitor. He’d have to watch to see if he’d failed them all.

But he wouldn’t even be able to do that. The fire burst out of Bowser’s mouth. The monitor turned orange, broadcasting only flames.

An alarm sounded, signaling to Cody that the cargo bay airlock had opened.

Reggie stood inside, wearing his full spacewalk suit. He held firm to a tether, though it was connected to the ports on the ship, as if his added strength would make a difference.

Success was fully out of his hands. He was a passive observer.

“The line’s out,” he said to Sam and Joel. “And we’ve got a fresh wave of hell on our ass, so you’ve got one shot to grab it.”

“Roger that,” Sam answered.

Ragnarok raced toward the two stranded Notches, dangling a piece of string, hoping for a bite on the line, with a gush of hell bearing down on them. Cody calculated how this maneuver could work. He stopped trying when all his attempts at justifying it rationally failed.

Sam and Joel came into view through the bridge window. They looked so helpless, fish floundering on dry land.

“Here we go,” Cody shouted to Sam and Joel, like any amount of words could prepare them for what they needed to do.

Ragnarok passed over Sam. The nose pointed down, but, for a split second, the ship was still. The end of the tether dangled in front of her. She grabbed it and plugged it into the port on her suit. Then she wrapped her arms around Joel, and he wrapped his arms around her.

They stared into the heart of hell, felt the heat through their suits.

Then the ship sped up, lurching them forward like balls on a string. The coating on the outside of Sam’s visor bubbled against the heat. Half a second longer, and they would cease to exist.

If Cody’s rushed mental calculations were accurate, then they would be clear of danger with time to spare.

But they weren’t accurate.

They were about a half second off.

Sam squeezed Joel, hoping to hold on to him as they turned to ash; maybe they would go to whatever came after life together. She’d grown quite used to not being alone.

But in that frozen moment of time, the moment of her death, the fire disappeared. Hell was stuffed back down where it belonged, and Sam and Joel continued living in this world of alien volcano monsters.

As Ragnarok dragged them down, Sam and Joel caught sight of Bowser and the reason his fire had stopped: Cody’s attack had worked. The rest of the crater had caved in, blocking the smokestack and trapping the gases inside. The illuminated parts of the creature grew brighter, the fire still stoking.

“Putting on the brakes,” Cody said. “It’s gonna be a rough landing, but we need to get clear of that thing.”

Before Sam could answer, she noticed Ragnarok growing much larger. The ship stopped, but they didn’t. They rocketed toward the cargo bay airlock. Her head swam. She couldn’t think. That’s why it didn’t occur to her to activate the auto-recoil on her tether.

Luckily, it occurred to Reggie.

The tether snapped taut, guiding them toward the opening.

Reggie stood inside, his arms open wide. “Don’t worry, guys. I got you. Come to daddy.”

“Please don’t say that,” Joel said. “I just threw up in my—”

The blackness of space disappeared as Sam and Joel suddenly found themselves inside the ship. The blackness returned when they slammed into Reggie.

When Sam regained consciousness a second later, she felt a sharp pain in her side and knew she’d cracked a rib. Joel woke still on top of Reggie, his head nuzzled in Reggie’s chest.

“This is the second-best hug I’ve ever had,” Joel said.

The moment passed quickly.

“Get that airlock closed,” Cody screamed over the general comm. “And hold on to something!”

Sam, Joel and Reggie scrambled to their feet. Sam fought back the urge to vomit. Add concussion to my list of injuries.

Reggie punched the button that closed the airlock door. They ran into the main cargo bay and laced their arms through the nets on the walls. Sam wanted to let her body go limp and welcome unconsciousness.

Almost. Just a little bit longer.

For the first time, Bowser’s face appeared to show some emotion. When his only purpose had been to destroy everything, his face looked like little more than a couple holes in the side of a mountain, a carved face in a pumpkin. But now, they could see the worry of an animal that knows it’s about to die.

The light flared inside him. He bulged outward, a balloon pushed just a little too far past its threshold.

And then he exploded.

A flash of white light swallowed everything behind Ragnarok, and then rushed toward the ship. The hull rattled. Every bolt and screw inside the walls rattled. The team’s teeth rattled in their skulls. Everything went white.

Sam had plucked Joel out of that crater. Narrowly escaped an explosion that would shatter an asteroid. Had been dragged through space like a shark on a line, milliseconds ahead of a supernova kind of heat… Only to die now.

She wasn’t ready to die. She wasn’t at peace with it. But she was happy to at least be doing it alongside all of her friends. Dying together. She wasn’t clutching any of them now, but she still hoped they’d sail into the next life together.

She let go and slumped against the wall. She let the white light take her.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Heaven smelled like burnt ass. Sam didn’t know what she’d expected once she’d crossed over, but she’d at least hoped for something with a better aroma. Nutmeg maybe. Warm apple pie. She thought the afterlife would be like the Christmas mornings from those old TV specials. Crackling fire. Rocking chairs. Laughing. A sense of nostalgia, even though it was happening for the first time.

But this smelled. It smelled like…

“Joel.”

He held a bloody rag to the side of his head, over a gash that stretched from his eyebrow almost to his ear.

“Hey.” He smiled, even though it clearly hurt him to.

“We aren’t dead, are we?”

“No, we are not.”

Sam sat up on her elbows. She blinked several times before the room came into view. She was in her room, on her bed, with an IV in her arm. She touched her forehead and winced. No blood, but a sizeable lump and days’ worth of soreness. Her ribs were wrapped in compression cloth. A sharp pain shot through her chest when she breathed.

“To the best of my medical knowledge,” Joel said, “which is none, you’ve got a mild concussion and two broken ribs. We got a call in to a nearby medical frigate. We should be docking with them in an hour. They’ll patch you up.”

“What about you?” She pointed to the cut in his head.

“Just a few scrapes. Thanks to you.”

Sam laid back, the effort of sitting up proving to be too much. “You’ve got a nasty habit of nearly dying. Just doing my part to see that you keep breathing. You should try to pull your weight in that department.”

Joel smiled and looked off toward the bridge. “I’ll get better at it.”

Sam followed his eyes. “What about Cody and Reggie?”

“Cody’s fine. Just exhausted. You’ve been out about eight hours. Reggie and I have both gotten a few hours’ sleep, but Cody’s been going nonstop, making sure none of us die of our concussions in our sleep and no more monsters try to swallow us.”

Peppy sauntered to Joel’s side and pressed his whole body into Joel’s leg. Joel rested his hand on Peppy’s head.

“Reggie’s pretty beaten up,” Joel told her. “We slammed into him hard. He’s got a concussion, and his wrist refractured. Without the sweet medical tech from that station, the best we could do was brace it.”

Something felt off that Sam couldn’t identify. Like a gnawing in the back of her head. Then she realized that what felt off was the front of her head. Her mask was gone.

Her hands shot up to cover her face.

Joel’s jaw tightened, and he looked to the floor. Without look directly at her, he handed her the mask. “We had to take it off. We didn’t know if you were breathing at first. We put you on an emergency respirator. I’m… We…” When she had the mask back in place, he looked her in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”

As the shock wore off, Sam realized that she wasn’t as angry or as horrified as she would have thought. The mask was a crutch. A safety net. But one she didn’t want to lose completely yet.

* * *

Later, sitting in a circle on the bridge, the team looked like they’d been murdered, resurrected, and then kicked around. But they were happy to be alive again.

“I think we need to upgrade our med bay,” Joel said between measured breaths.

“Yeah, it’s not a bad idea,” Cody agreed.

Reggie was the first to raise his glass. “Before all that, to another successful job. We saved Jasob and potentially many lives. And to surviving to do it again.”

“Yes, and yet again,” Joel began, “without recognition of any sort.”

“Hey, payment is recognition enough for me,” Sam said.

“Cheers to that,” Cody chimed.

They drank, which was a bad idea considering the amount of painkillers they were all on.

“Now can we talk about how I’m definitely right?” Cody asked. “About the vast corporate conspiracy?”

Joel sucked in a long, slow breath. “I may be willing to concede that it’s possible that I may not have been totally right about that.”

Reggie agreed. “I only backed Joel up because I didn’t want him to be the only one who was totally wrong. I’m a team player.”

“Okay, so now that we are kind of in agreement,” Sam said. “What are we going to do about it? If Layton Corp is really behind all of these infestations, there’s going to be more. More people will be in danger. There could be more of these huge monsters out there somewhere.”

The intership comm signaled an incoming call. Reggie redirected it to a handheld unit and left the bridge to answer it.

“Are we even sure those huge things are related?” Joel said.

Cody laughed at how ignorant it sounded. “The ShimVens were artificially mutated. The Rapoo probably were, too. That volcano thing looked like a giant, mutated Rapoo cousin.”

Joel threw up his hands in surrender. “Fine, suppose that’s true. There’re thousands of space stations in this system, countless targets. Where would we even begin to investigate?”

Reggie stepped back onto the bridge. “I know where.” He held up the handheld monitor, displaying its contents for the team to see. “We just got our next job.”

THE END

Sarah Noffke Author Notes

November 25, 2018

Writing this series is good for my twelve-year-old self. It’s been bringing me back to the days of playing Contra with my brother. Lately, in my sleep, I’ve been doing the Konami code. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, B, A, start. Yes, there are some things that we never forget. Putting in this code, that scored me an extra thirty lives in the game, is like riding a bike for me, you never forget it. Thinking back, I probably should have been putting my energy into learning a musical instrument, but alas that wasn’t as much fun.

My brother and I used to pair up to try and defeat Contra, but even with all the cheating we struggled with the game. So freaking hard.

The amusement park scene in this book was a lot of fun to write. Some of those old arcade games inspired this series. The other day I took my daughter, Lydia, to an arcade. I nearly knocked the kid out trying to play Space Invaders for her. Her gaming skills need serious work. I think she spends too much time outside playing. Just last night we were playing a time management game together, because I’m sick like that. After about half an hour she asked if we could go for a walk outside. I couldn’t hide the disappointed look on my face.

Kid, you’re never going to level up if you keep slacking, I thought. Instead of saying anything, I took her on a scooter ride. Then I told her she had to go to bed early because I had “work” to do. Once the little quitter was asleep, I resumed playing the game, not having to fix her rookie mistakes.

In all honesty, games are something I always knew I’d want to share with my kid. They were a huge part of my childhood and although I can’t play much as an adult, they still mean a lot to me. Old and new games alike, I think they’re important for our culture.

Thank you for reading. Thanks for supporting the books. And thanks for being awesome.

— Sarah

Michael Anderle Author Notes

November 27, 2018

THANK YOU for not only reading this story, but these author notes as well .

(I think I’ve been good with always opening with ‘thank you’… If not, I need to edit the other author notes!)

RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?

Ok, this was pretty pathetic. I just figured out that I have nothing but the barest of outlines for Authors Notes for GANKED IN SPACE.

WTH Michael? I’m slipping.

So, I went to my favorite BBQ place yesterday in Las Vegas (Jessie Rae’s) and met an interesting man there. Paul is ex-military, ex GM assembly line worker, ex-a-lot-of-things and retired for 20 years at 63 years old.

For one time in my life, I got to experience just a taste of what it must be like to meet someone I’ve never met before, eat lunch, have an interesting conversation, and never know if I’ll see him again.

I asked him what he did / profession and he said he was in anthropology. He studied black culture (I found out this meant his studies went back to Africa culture around 300 years ago. The nations of the African continent and all of the tribal warfare etc.)

I thought this interesting, since that meant he started studying (I figured) decades ago during a contentious time. He said that his first choice was studying anthropology with a focus on females (to help him figure out dating) and that was too confusing, so he went to black culture.

The difference between Paul and I (age wise) is about twelve years.

The difference between us in what we worry about day-to-day is much larger. He is now turning his attention to questions of the universe that might be relevant as you see the shadows of life looming in the distance, while I am still working on going up the summit (I hope.)

We spoke about philosophy, historical perspective on nations in Africa and tribal battles inside those nations, the purpose of Indian culture here in America praying to the dead bodies of animals they killed and slave trading along the Ivory Coast. Along with these subjects we spoke about religion, and BBQ.

Kinda heady stuff when all I wanted was smoked sliced beef and sausage links with God Sauce.

That lunch turned into a two-plus hour discussion and I am damned thankful I was able to experience meeting Paul. He was a true conversationalist as how I imagine it must have been like hundreds of years ago in pubs.

Paul was willing to speak his opinion, listen to mine, answer questions to the best of his ability and just converse on headier topics than normal.

I hope to meet him again at Jessie Rae’s someday.

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AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

One of the interesting (at least for me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at anytime. In the future, I hope to re-read my own author notes and remember my life as a diary entry.

I’m sitting inside Avenue Café in the MGM Grand hotel eating breakfast. A simple sandwich of eggs, bacon, American cheese and fries with Cajun seasoning.

The fries are meh, the sandwich is good along with the service and the hostess found me a booth with socket.

Praise everything holy there was a plug for my laptop. It is a sad state when I’m thankful for a damned electrical jack. “Food? Check! Shelter? Check! Clothes? Check!....”

“Electrical socket? %@#*&!!!”

---

I saw Metallica’s second tour through the United States last night at the T-Mobile arena. If you have read my author notes in (I have no clue which book) you might remember I’ve seen them on this same tour in San Diego last year.

That tour was more spectacle, this tour was more … cozy? They brought their setup from their European tour back to America for another 30+ dates and I’m super happy I went to see them again.

I was closer to the stage (thank you MGM for your invite. Free tickets, hell yeah!) and having seats beat the hell out of standing the whole concert.

This is the first time I can remember going alone to a concert (my concert partner had to bail and while my wife was more than willing, I know she doesn’t like the style of music. So I headbanged with strangers and enjoyed myself. When I was done (Master of Puppets is my call to head out) I went out and a few minutes later, was walking back into the MGM Grand and didn’t have to dick with parking, leaving or anything.

Overall, seeing a concert at the T-Mobile Arena when you are staying at one of the hotels you can walk back to is damned cool.

10 out of 10 headbangs and a screaming “Master….MASTER!!!.”

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Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

It’s Working As Intended

Intergalactic Pest Control Book 3

Chapter One

Sabotage and conspiracy were easier than Dr. Suzz, cofounder of Layton Corporation, had thought. Though it was thirsty work. Watching empires crumble required a cocktail in the evenings and some coffee in the mornings. Always important to stay well hydrated, regardless of the time. Something about watching her plans blossom and bear fruit made her mouth water, leaving an unpleasant taste on her tongue if not addressed.

Still, that was a small price to pay for victory. And victorious she was.

The fluorescent lighting of her lab created an unpleasant work environment, always casting flickering shadows and painting her work in a pale light. She and her creations deserved to be properly illuminated, with golden rays of light like those that shone on Mount Olympus. Not that she was comparing herself to a god, but—well, she was creating new species and punishing wicked men. So…not too far out of the realm of reason.

But her colleagues, they were appropriately cast in the dim lighting. Petulant, shortsighted, lacking in vision. It wouldn’t be fair to call them stupid—they were some of the brightest geneticists and scientific minds in the galaxy—but “dumb”… Dumb was a good descriptor. When one is presented with the greatest opportunity of one’s life and neglects to fully seize it, that person is a giant sack of dumb.

Dr. Terry, a balding man who refused to acknowledge that he was balding, wiped his glasses on his shirt, a move he thought made him appear intelligent.

“Dr. Suzz, what are we doing here? I thought we settled all this?”

Dr. Suzz tossed her long, dark hair out of her face and over her left shoulder. She pretended it was a whip, smacking across Dr. Terry’s smug, dumb face.

“Your ability to follow through is severely lacking, Dr. Terry. As was reflected in your previous performance evaluation, I believe.”

Dr. Terry’s pudgy face turned red. “Those are supposed to be confidential. I’m calling HR.”

“You do that. But that confidential business doesn’t apply to me,” Dr. Suzz said. “Stop wasting my time. I need to discuss our future plans with the laytonmin.”

A short woman with too many piercings in one ear and none in the other cleared her throat in a passive-aggressive attempt to interject herself. Dr. Suzz waited for her jewelry-laden ear to tug her to the side and send her head crashing to the floor. Sadly, it never happened.

“Dr. Bordeaux, you have something to add?” Dr. Suzz spoke the heavily pierced doctor’s name with a heavy-handed indifference.

Dr. Bordeaux matched the indifference and doubled down, like a teenager who tried way too hard to not give a damn.

“What else is there even to discuss? We’ve engineered the implosion of Jasob and StrobeNet. Layton is clear to position itself as the dominant company in the market. We’ve won.”

Bordeaux leaned back in her chair like she was a rock star.

Dr. Suzz wanted to throw her coffee mug at her. “As always, Dr. Bordeaux, you are only partly correct. StrobeNet has collapsed entirely. Jasob has been crippled and all but removed as a competitor. While that does leave us at Layton Corp poised to take over the market, there is still one competitor standing in our way.”

“Chrisoff?” The deep voice came out of the pepperoni hole of one Dr. Brett Dudeson. He was broad and loud and carried sticks of salted meat in his pocket. He stank like sausage and spoke like a professional wrestler. “Those noobs don’t stand a chance. I’ll break them!”

Dr. Suzz winced at the sound of his voice. He was the most irritating thing she’d had the displeasure of seeing, hearing and smelling. It was easy to forget that he was a brilliant muta-geneticist. His skills only barely tipped the scale in his favor.

“Reel it in, Dr. Dudeson,” Dr. Suzz said.

Dr. Terry interjected. “But he’s right. Chrisoff is the smallest of the top companies. We could bleed them dry without even trying. Or we could just send them a crate of ShimVens and watch them get eaten alive from the inside out.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“While it is true that Chrisoff is small game, it provides us an opportunity.” Dr. Suzz projected a list of dozens of small and mid-level companies in the market. “When we take out the big game, we take our share of the market. Eventually, others will try to take some of that share for themselves. We will be challenged…unless we make a statement.”

The other doctors looked on. Dr. Dudeson peeled open a meat stick and gnawed on it like a dog with a bone.

“The ShimVens and Rapoo were perfect ways to hollow out StrobeNet and Jasob,” Dr. Suzz said. She ignored Dr. Dudeson’s chuckle at the mention of the Rapoo. “But we need to make it known to our competitors what will happen if any of them decide they want to try and fight us for their scraps. We need something more than a discreet box filled with genetically modified pests. We need a monster.”

This elicited a round of oohs and aahs. Dudeson was still laughing at the word “Rapoo” as he chewed his meat stick, like a mentally deficient ape at the zoo.

The proposal was sound, but it wasn’t totally forthright. Dr. Suzz believed in the scorched-earth approach, that her competitors needed to find a horsehead on their beds when they woke up the morning after Layton took charge. But it wasn’t her only reason for targeting Chrisoff for total obliteration.

Nora Soff was the reason.

She and Dr. Suzz had once been business partners. They created Layton Corp together. They laid the bricks upon which the company was built, and they’d been poised to become the most powerful people in the galaxy with the unveiling of their next big thing—a genetically modified weapon. But Nora Soff had experienced a change of heart. She didn’t want to get into the weapons business. She left. And she took all of her research and expertise with her, setting Dr. Suzz back a decade.

This wasn’t about just crippling and intimidating the competition—this was personal. She wanted Nora Soff to suffer. She wanted Soff to feel pain, to feel what it’s like to have everything you worked for stripped away, and be totally powerless to get it back. To be pushed back to zero.

“Okay,” Dr. Bordeaux said. “So what did you have in mind?”

Dr. Suzz’s smile was full of wicked delight. She picked up her tablet and scrolled through the files. She dragged the correct one to the monitor for all to see. Their gasps were like birthday wishes.

“I call this the lophius.”

The model of the creature spun for the doctors to see. All three hundred and sixty degrees of horrible. It looked like a sea serpent, long and scaly. The tip of its tail had two feathery fins on it, and the same fins were found on either side of it. Sprouting from the top of its head was a thin, tendril-like appendage with a ball at the end that dangled forward, almost hanging in front of its face. The ball emitted a dim pulse of light. Its head resembled that of a snake, complete with a mouth full of needle-like teeth.

Dr. Suzz breathed in the admiration. “The lophius can withstand the extremes of space and fly using dark energy. Much like the ShimVens, it can attack a ship from the outside as well as from the inside. And, like my other creations, this one is full of surprises.”

The model of the lophius morphed into a current image of the loading bay. Two men carried a crate that shook violently from side to side. Shrieks that could crack glass emanated from it. A third man stood by a large metal container, waiting for the crate to be deposited. The two men set it down like it was full of nitroglycerin and the slightest jostle would detonate it. The third man slammed the lid shut, and they all frantically secured it with several latches and locks.

The men loaded the container onto a dolly and carted it away.

“That container is about to be shipped to a Chrisoff facility,” Dr. Suzz said. “And with it, the total annihilation of my enemies.”

“You mean our competition?” Dr. Bordeaux said.

Dr. Suzz turned off the monitor. “That’s what I said.”

Dr. Terry raised his hand like he was a child in a classroom. Dr. Suzz glowered at him until he spoke.

“Okay, so, you called us here to show us this new creation of yours, and tell us your plan, but…you were just going to do it anyway? You didn’t want any feedback or anything? I mean, you already had the guys loading it into the box and everything.”

“Shut up, Terry.”

Dr. Dudeson slammed his fist on the table. “Hell yeah!”

Dr. Suzz pinched the bridge of her nose. “Reluctantly, I agree with you, Dr. Dudeson. ‘Hell yeah,’ indeed.”

She walked to the viewport and watched the ship carrying her revenge leave the station.

Chapter Two

“I’ve always wanted to go to Malibu,” Joel said.

The sun, sand, scantily clad people trotting about as they sipped drinks from strangely shaped glasses with little umbrellas. People saying “dude” and surfing and skateboarding and breakdancing on the boardwalk and just generally being super cool.

At least, if the archival MTV footage they pirated when they were in high school was still an accurate reflection of the culture.

Not that it would have mattered.

Reggie looked around. Uptight faces that looked to have put effort into never smiling. Cold eyes that only lit up when they found something on which to cast judgment. This place was totally uncool.

“This is not that Malibu,” he said.

A woman walked by the gang, stopped, looked them up and down, and scoffed before walking off.

“No shit,” Joel said.

This was Malibu Station. A vacation spot for the elite. High-end shops, hotels, and restaurants. A resort station for those with money they didn’t know what to do with – doctors and executives and trust fund babies who’d never had to work a day for anything. A real collection of assholes.

Sam watched the rude woman walk away. An unseen force seemed to tug her along behind the woman, a force that practically begged Sam to murder her.

Reggie tapped her on the shoulder to break her free of the intoxicating pull. “I’m thinking there are going to be a lot of people like that here. Better prepare yourself.”

Sam grumbled.

Cody chuckled to himself, savoring her discomfort as he pulled up the map of the station. “It’s just up ahead. Past that storefront that sells handbags made out of old shoes.”

“Why would anyone want a bag made of shoes?” Sam studied the store as they walked past, eying its patrons as though they were fools.

“Rich people love to buy garbage like that,” Joel said. Peppy loped up beside him and pressed his head against Joel’s leg. “Reclaimed crap turned into other crap is a huge market. There’s probably a store here that sells shoes made of old bags.”

“Second level,” Cody said.

“Foolish,” Sam said. “If they have so much money, why not buy a bag that was originally intended to be a bag? Better yet, why not buy a sword?”

Cody laughed. Sam didn’t understand what was funny.

“Here it is.” Cody pointed to a café. “We’re meeting the contact here.”

Joel nudged Sam with his elbow. “If you really want to get pissed at obnoxious people, this is the place to do it. You won’t find a higher concentration of impatient, self-important people than the line at the yuppie café. Observe.” He pointed to a man wearing a vest and a bowler hat. “Take Clockwork Orange, here. That guy has no right whatsoever to believe anyone gives a damn about him. He’s wearing a vest. Casually. But see how he scowls at the lady in front of him as though it’s her fault that he doesn’t have his skim latte with extra foam?”

Sam observed. The man grunted every five seconds the line did not move. The woman in front of him inched forward a little each time.

“She should stab him,” she assessed. “I would stab him.”

“That’s why you’re great,” Joel said.

“Excuse me.” A woman with hair that defied physics and shoulders that defied genetics approached them from a table near the left side of the counter. “Are you the bug people?”

“Bug killers,” Joel corrected.

“I’ve met bug people,” Sam added. “They are unpleasant and would be most unwelcome in a place like this.”

The woman’s blindingly white smile didn’t move at all, but her eyes darkened with disgust.

Reggie pushed through the others to position himself between them and the woman. He extended his hand in greeting. She returned the gesture but turned her hand so her palm faced down and her fingers dangled like the legs of a dead spider. He shook it as best he could.

“I’m Reggie of Intergalactic Pest Control. You must be Miss Millicent Musgraves?”

“That I am, sugar.” Her voice was silky, like cream poured in coffee and left to swirl on the surface. “Right this way.” She showed them to her table, which was dressed for a Sunday brunch. She’d laid out lace doilies and her own silverware—only for herself, however, to accompany her sweet tea and toasted English muffin with marmalade.

She must have noticed the quizzical looks. “I don’t use public cutlery.”

Uncomfortable and unsure how to respond, Reggie shrugged and said, “Sure.”

She gestured for them to sit. “I would have ordered you something, as I consider hospitality a cornerstone of civilized culture, but I’m afraid I don’t know what people of your…caliber eat.”

“Food, mostly,” Joel said. “Sometimes other people, when times get tough. You know, between jobs. Or blueberry muffins. I’d love a muffin.”

Miss Musgrave’s plaster smile returned, this time accompanied by a pleasant little chuckle, the polite laugh that Millicents and Rebeccas and Felicias use to fill uncomfortable silences. “Yes, well, I’m sure.”

She spoke with a drawl Reggie hadn’t heard since leaving Earth. He had a neighbor from Georgia who was always talking about the weather and how much she hated snow and missed fresh peaches. Miss Musgraves had the same airy quality in her voice, a congeniality that immediately put him at ease even though it barely masked the biting tone.

Reggie suggested Joel and Sam go buy them all some coffee and muffins, to which Joel reluctantly agreed. Joel’s inability to tolerate snobbery was well documented, as was Sam’s willingness to stab people who bothered her.

“Your message was a little vague, Miss Musgraves,” Reggie said once Joel and Sam were gone.

“Oh, please, call me Millie. Miss Musgraves was my grandmother. A strict woman. She carried a leather strap in her purse specifically for ‘correcting’ people, as she referred to it.” She looked at Joel, standing in line. “She would have corrected that boy upside his mouth already.”

She seemed to imagine it. A genuine smile snuck onto her face.

She shook away the thought. “Anyway, back to business. Malibu has a rodent problem. Now, do you do rodents, or are you strictly bug catchers? I don’t know how this works. I typically have my assistant handle these sorts of things. She went to college on a scholarship, so she’s more familiar with you working-class types.”

Cody swallowed hard then pretended to scroll through his wristcom.

Reggie smiled and said a silent prayer of gratitude that Joel wasn’t within earshot. “We handle rodents as well. Any kind of pest, really.”

“Great,” Millie said. “And you’re fast? And discreet?”

Reggie tried to answer, but the words he knew he needed to say wouldn’t come out.

“Yes,” Cody said. “Very fast and discreet.”

Neither of them mentioned the space station that was swallowed by the giant bug or the amusement park that exploded or the flying volcano monster.

“Wonderful.” Millie sipped her sweet tea. Her big hair, held aloft by several cans of hairspray and possibly some black magic, swayed as she tipped back her cup.

Joel and Sam returned, setting down coffee and muffins in front of Reggie and Cody. Peppy laid down next to Joel, his tail brushing against the bare skin of Millie’s leg. She jerked it away from him.

“He doesn’t bite,” Joel said. “Unless I tell him to.”

Millie looked like she was just told her reservation was lost and she’d have to wait for a table. “As I was saying, speed and discretion are of the utmost importance. I’m hosting a gala here tonight. The biggest names in everything from fashion and entertainment to politics will be in attendance. They cannot know about the infestation.”

Joel planted his elbows on the table. “Finally, something interesting. What are we talking about? ShimVens? Rapoo? Butt weasels? Hemorrhagic brain beetles?”

Millie leaned forward, dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin as a way of hiding her face, trying to keep the other customers from hearing. “Rats.”

Joel’s excitement level plummeted. “Rats? That’s it? Not even mutant rats who know karate? Just regular rats?”

Millie winced each time he mentioned the rodent. “Keep your voice down, please. No one can know. The embarrassment would be more than Malibu can handle.”

Sam eyed Cody’s muffin. She’d finished hers in two bites, and he’d yet to touch his. He caught onto her and slid the pastry closer to himself.

“Why call us now, on the night of the gala? Wouldn’t you want to get rid of the rats before the fancy-pants guests come to dinner?” Cody asked.

“I didn’t think it would be an issue.” Millie buried her face in her hands to hide her shame. “My maintenance crew found it last week. They assured me it was a small infestation. And with everything else that I needed to do to plan for the gala, I let it get away from me. But, this morning, I heard the rats make a godawful racket in the rafters above the ballroom.” She clutched her pearls. “Can you imagine if that happened during the gala?”

“Heavens, no,” Joel said with exaggerated breathlessness.

Millie didn’t seem to notice that he was insulting her. “I must have the infestation dealt with immediately. But with the gala beginning in just a few hours, I know that it won’t be removed in time. I just ask that you do as much as you can before the guests arrive, and then continue on subtly once they’re here.”

Her eyes fell on Sam, on the mask that hid her face from the world. Then they drifted down to Peppy, who had fallen asleep and begun to dream that he was chasing something. “If my guests were to see you, the gala would certainly be ruined.”

Sam leaned forward, inching closer to Millie’s face, tension building between them like they were opposing magnetic poles. “We wouldn’t want that.” Sam took half of Millie’s English muffin, lifted her mask and took a huge bite out of it before dropping it back on her plate.

Millie gasped.

“Not to worry,” Reggie said, looking to diffuse the situation and wrap up the meeting before it spiraled completely out of control. “We’ll get started immediately. You and your guests won’t even know we’re here.”

Cody brought up the display on his wristcom. A holographic projection of the Malibu schematics hovered between them. He pointed to a service tunnel hub on the second level.

“We’ll set up here.”

Millie thanked them in advance for the expediency and subtlety while simultaneously insulting them for everything else. Joel and Sam ground their teeth as Reggie smiled and shook her dead spider hand and assured her everything would work out.

Once Millie left, the team collectively unclenched.

Sam stabbed the uneaten portion of Millie’s English muffin. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to murder anyone as much as I’ve wanted to murder her.”

“I’m usually opposed to blowing up the space station and not getting paid,” Joel said. “But just this once, I’m okay with it.”

“Right?” Cody said. “Millicent? More like millipede. Am I right?” He raised his hand in expectation of a high five.

Sam glowered at him. “You’ve skyrocketed to number two on my must murder list.”

Reggie pumped his hands, trying to signal everyone to slow down. “All right, let’s just settle down. So she’s a little obnoxious. We can deal with obnoxious. We’ve fought off swarms of mutant bugs and hordes of vicious raccoon monsters. One obnoxious rich lady shouldn’t be a problem.”

Joel nodded, though reluctantly. “I guess. If Millie is the most we have to stomach with this job, then whatever. Just rats? No mutants or monsters or threats of death?”

“Exactly.” Reggie smiled. “Should be a cakewalk.”

Joel sighed. “You never learn. Every time you utter that phrase, a harmless rodent transforms into a face-eating monster.”

Reggie shoved the rest of his muffin in his mouth and spit crumbs as he spoke. “Come on, we’ve got a job to do.”

Chapter Three

The network of tubes and tunnels snaking through Malibu was like something out of Mario Bros. Joel wanted to climb inside one and see if he popped out somewhere else or found a magical item that let him fly.

“I should really get a raccoon suit,” he said, not realizing that he was thinking all that and no one had the slightest clue what he was talking about.

Sam chose to ignore him, which she found to be the most effective way of dealing with his nonsense.

They lugged their gear through the landing bay, as guests of the gala began to arrive. The gowns were like something out of a fairytale—long and flowing, glistening like they were made out of moonlight. But the people wearing them were nothing like the fairytale characters Sam had dreamed of as a girl. They were cruel and petty. They dismissed the dockhands like they were less than human. They gossiped about each other and served up backhanded compliments the same way they probably played tennis on the weekends.

“Such a lovely gown, Darlene. Even lovelier than when Samantha wore it last year.”

“Thank you, Katherine. I noticed how much your husband admired it when Samantha wore it last year. I figured a gown that garnered such enthusiastic attention must be worth trying on myself.”

The Notches kept their heads down and avoided as much attention as they could. Which wasn’t hard. The gala guests barely noticed they existed. To them, the Notches were little more than part of the décor.

They loaded into a freight elevator that brought them up to the next level. Level two was a service level. There were no storefronts or retail outlets or hotels. Level two made it possible for all that other stuff to function. This was where the access hatches, control panels, power conduits, and ventilation tubes ran. This level was the guts.

They reached a central hub just meters after leaving the elevator.

“This is the spot,” Cody said.

He and Sam began unpacking, while Reggie and Joel went back to the Ragnarok to get the rest of the gear. They were so used to apocalyptic jobs that they didn’t know how to pack for a simple rat job anymore.

As Cody set up his remote monitoring station, he cast a glance at Sam, who was checking the weapons. She seemed preoccupied, which was unlike her, especially on the eve of a job.

“You okay?” he asked.

She seemed surprised by the question, a little offended, maybe. “Fine.”

“Because I noticed you seemed a little more on edge than normal in the café, talking to Millie. A little closer to stabbing her than you have been with most people lately.”

“That weapon is a chore.”

“No argument there. But then walking through the landing bay, seeing all those people in their fancy gala gowns, you seemed agitated again.”

Sam rested the blaster she was inspecting on her lap. “People like that are not kind to people like me.”

Cody felt suddenly like he couldn’t look at her, like she was too exposed. “Sounds like you have personal experience?”

“A lot,” Sam said. “Street kids are like pieces of trash to rich folks like that. Worse, they’re pieces of trash that beg for money.” She picked up the blaster again and smiled. “Or take it.”

“Did you rob a lot of people?”

“Enough to get by. I ran with a pack for a while in my early street days. That was the only way to survive. An older kid or adult would find you sleeping in an alley and recruit you. When they first found me, I thought I’d found a new family.” She popped the clip in the blaster and set it down in a stack of readied gear. “Turned out not to be the case.”

Cody hardwired his computer setup into Malibu’s internal system, then booted everything up. He wanted to ask her to elaborate, but this was the most she’d shared with him, and she was notoriously tight-lipped. He didn’t want to spook her.

She finished inspecting the gear, separating it all into neat piles for each member of the team. She drew her sword and inspected that last. The way she swung it, held it, revered it, was mesmerizing. Cody could watch her do it all day.

He was about to gently prod her to continue when Reggie and Joel returned with the last of the gear.

Joel dropped a box on the floor in the center of the room. It landed with a loud thud. “When did we start lugging so much crap to jobs?” He looked off into the distance at the answer to his question. “Right, all the space monsters and shit. Never mind. Maybe we should get some more stuff.”

Reggie looked at the gear like a dad looking at his new lawnmower. “I think this should be enough to take care of some rats. Assuming they’re normal rats and not flesh eating, mutant, monster rats.”

“Which they definitely will be,” Joel said. “But I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He sat on the edge of one of the larger crates. “So, what’s the plan?”

Cody displayed the floorplan for level two. He highlighted the series of tubes that delivered air to the entire station. “The rats are using these tubes to travel through the station. This means they can reach the entire place, but they’re also centralized. We should be able to corral them easily enough. I’m jacked into the system. I’ll lock down all of the vents. Then two of us will flush the tubes from this end. All of the rats will come running out the other end, where the other two of us will be waiting.”

Reggie scanned the gathered gear. “We could just set up a bunch of traps to catch them as they come out. We might not even need to blast anything.”

Sam sighed and sheathed her sword. “That does not sound exciting.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Reggie said. “And I’m okay with that.”

Cody and Sam stayed at the mouth of the tunnels. Cody to man the computer terminal, Sam to watch his back in case anything happened. Reggie and Joel made for the other end of the tunnel system to trap the rats.

Level two was like walking through a basement. It was musty, cramped, and you had to walk with a slight hunch for fear of smashing your head into a low-hanging pipe. By the time Reggie and Joel traveled halfway to their destination, their necks and backs ached. They squatted down to take a break near an air filter that hummed like a soothing white noise machine.

Joel seemed lost in his head. He chased down a stray thought as Reggie traced a pattern in the dust on the floor. Joel finally caught the idea and pounced on it. “Remember how we’re millionaires now? I mean, sure, we don’t have millions in liquid assets—we couldn’t go to the bank and withdraw a cool million right now—but our ship, Ragnarok, and all the equipment we bought after selling off those Rapoo teeth, that’s all worth millions. We’re rich.”

Reggie kept tracing, becoming mesmerized by the pattern. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that we’re still up here in the attic hunting rats while those rich bastards are twirling around in fancy dresses and drinking champagne.”

“You want to twirl around in a fancy dress?”

“What if I do? Are we getting invited to any galas? No. Are we ever going to? No. Because no matter how much money we have, we’ll never be like them. We’ll still be the exterminators, the help, the working-class joes.”

Reggie wiped the pattern away. “What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s the point of all this if not to get a taste of that life down there?”

Reggie snapped back to the present, now fully aware of Joel’s statement. “Freedom. We sail our own ship. We aren’t chained to a desk. We make our own hours. We’re our own bosses. We don’t answer to anyone if we don’t want to. That’s why I do this.”

Joel sneezed and kicked up a cloud of dust. Then he stood, banging his head on a ventilation pipe. “I guess we have different definitions of ‘freedom.’”

They walked a while in silence, both frustrated, but not necessarily at each other. Crawling around in a dank, rat poop-riddled crawl space while the rich and super rich sipped champagne and laughed over the plight of the other ninety-nine percent really took the wind out of their sails.

A sudden chorus of pattering feet froze Reggie and Joel in their tracks. It came at them from behind and rushed toward them like a wave. It passed by and then faded.

“Was that the rats?” Joel said. “That sounded like a lot of rats.”

“We ain’t afraid of no rats.” Reggie smiled and immediately regretted it after seeing Joel’s reaction. “Dad joke?”

“Dad joke.”

They hustled to the end of the tunnels, afraid the rats would start pouring out before they’d had the chance to set traps. Oddly, once they entered the alcove at the end of the tunnels, they found themselves alone.

“Cody, you closed all the vents, right?” Reggie asked over their comms.

“Yeah, everything is shut. Only way those rats get out is through you.”

Joel and Reggie scanned the area. Nothing. At a loss and not wanting to waste any more time, they shrugged and started setting traps. Ten minutes later, the alcove was littered with every trap they had. There were lethal and nonlethal devices. Traps that would kill individual rats and large boxes designed to allow the rat to enter but then not be able to get out. Once done, they’d dispose of the rats caught in the nonlethal traps.

Fish in a barrel. Or rats in a box. Whatever.

“We’re all set on our end,” Joel said. “You can start sending them our way.”

“On it,” Cody said. “Commencing Operation Rat Flush.”

Joel winced. “I’m formally requesting we change that name immediately.”

Sam popped two flares and tossed them into the tunnel opening. Cody activated the reverse suction so the smoke wouldn’t seep into the level below and ruin the fancy-pants party.

“They should be headed your way now,” Cody said.

Joel drew his pistols just in case, even though he probably wouldn’t need them. There was no way the rats would make it past their minefield of traps. And they didn’t want to use their weapons. The blasting would definitely be heard one level down. Still, it made him feel in control.

The chorus of pattering sounded again. Reggie and Joel braced themselves, logic and experience at war together. Logic told them it was just rats. Disgusting little creatures that made a mess and had once spread the plague across Earth but were mostly harmless now. But experience told them to be ready for anything, because shit was about to get totally bonkers.

The chorus built to a rumble. Then to a crescendo. Then stopped.

Joel and Reggie traded confused looks.

“Maybe Cody missed a vent?” Reggie said with a shrug.

“I certainly did not,” Cody answered.

Then, as if in answer to their question, a single rat poked his head out of the tunnel. It twitched its whiskers as it surveyed the area for danger. Seemingly declaring it safe, the lone rat stepped out like a man inching into cold water. It explored a small area, not yet feeling safe enough to venture far, apparently knowing enough to realize something was not right. But, quickly, it grew more confident. It sniffed at the traps, walked around them.

Joel grew concerned that they’d had the misfortune to stumble across the smartest rat alive. Until it wandered into one of the nonlethal traps. “Ha! Rats are dumb.”

That one seemed to have primed the pump. Steadily, more followed. And then a stream of them began to pour out of the tunnel and into the traps.

Reggie posed with his leg up on one of the nonlethal traps. “Just call me Pesterminator: the Western Exterminator.”

“These aren’t Ronnie the Super Rats, though,” Joel said. “Just regular dumb rats. The rate this is going, we should be able to wrap up in no time.”

Reggie and Joel sat along the wall at the far edge of the alcove and watched the rats pour out of the tunnel. They kept vigilant for a few minutes but quickly realized the rats needed no tending. They managed to get trapped just fine on their own.

“How’s everything on your end?” Cody said.

“Easy,” Joel responded.

“Here, too,” Cody said. He checked the monitors again. Everything was running smoothly on its own now. They’d created a self-sustaining system. He looked at Sam and shrugged. “I guess I’ll walk the route and see how everything’s going?”

Sam produced a rag from her pocket. She laid her sword across her lap and polished the blade. She grunted indifferently in response to Cody.

He made sure his wristcom was synced with the monitor setup and left the alcove to follow the path Joel and Reggie had taken. Being the shortest of the group, he could walk upright without worry of bumping his head. That made it easy for him to walk with his head down, focused solely on his wristcom. And it was for that reason that he didn’t notice the signs of damage until he’d passed halfway through the tunnel.

When he finally looked up, the signs were glaringly apparent. Wires chewed through. Claw marks scratched in the solid metal. Sections of the wall that had been completely destroyed.

“Guys,” Cody said. “Did you see any of this damage as you walked through?”

“I didn’t see anything that didn’t look like it didn’t belong in an attic crawlspace that’s been infested with rats.” Joel sounded like he couldn’t give a crap.

Cody crouched next to a fuse box. This was the most confounding thing he’d seen yet. It was demolished, but not in the way he would have expected, like it had been smashed with a hammer. This looked like it had been systematically dismantled.

“None of this should be here,” Cody said. “This amount of damage, this kind of damage shouldn’t have happened. Plus…” His throat tightened with realization. “It’s all outside the tunnels. They’ve been in this area. So where’d they all go? Why’d they all crawl into the tunnels before we got here? Something doesn’t add up.”

“They’re just rats,” Joel said. “An infestation of anything causes crazy amounts of damage. Even run of the mill rats.”

Cody stood, but the foreboding feeling that something was looming wouldn’t leave him. “I don’t think they are.”

Reggie and Joel seemed annoyed to have to disrupt their relaxing time staring at the floor. They rose to their feet, ready to give a cursory glance around and then tell Cody he was being paranoid as usual.

That’s when they noticed the flow of rats had stopped.

“Guess we got them all,” Reggie said. “Let’s wrap this thing up.”

The two of them walked around the alcove, prepared to step over the bodies of the countless dead rats that had run into the lethal traps. But they didn’t find any.

“What the hell?” Joel crouched down to examine one of the lethal traps. It had been tripped, but not by a dead rat. He looked at a few others nearby. Same thing. Reggie confirmed that the rest of the lethal traps were the same. Tripped.

Their eyes fell on the nonlethal traps. Crates of living rats.

“I’m starting to think you might be right,” Joel said to Cody.

If the traps weren’t tripped by dead rats, then they could only have been tripped by living ones. But it wasn’t possible that they were all tripped in the hustle of the rats pouring out of the tunnels and not one of them was killed. Which only left one option.

“These are some goddamn super rats,” Joel concluded.

As if waiting for their cue, the nonlethal traps burst open, and the rats surrounded Joel and Reggie.

Chapter Four

Joel enjoyed saying, “I told you so,” but he wished he didn’t have to say it so often. And he wished the circumstances could have been different. Like, not so much with the apocalyptic scenarios.

“We’ve got a situation here,” Reggie said over comms. “We need backup immediately.”

The line was silent. Reggie and Joel had been lulled into thinking they’d won. They’d left their weapons sitting against the wall where they’d been relaxing, and were now separated from them by an army of rats that, as far as they could tell, were smarter than the average rodent.

“We might be on our own,” Joel said. “Ideas?”

Reggie clenched his fists inside his Rapoo-teeth-studded gloves. “We need to rendezvous with the others. Which means getting through this crowd. We can charge straight for Cody and Sam, or double back to get our weapons.”

“I vote weapons.”

“Agreed.” Reggie turned on his heel and slammed his fist into the floor.

He’d been wanting to try out the new upgrades Joel had made. Reggie’s gloves now had the capability to hold a kinetic charge. He could discharge that energy however he wanted to—over a steady period of up to five minutes to give each punch a little extra oomph, or in one massive burst.

A shockwave emanated outward from Reggie, knocking the rats back and opening a path for Joel to charge ahead. He dove and rolled to a stop against the wall, his fists now full of pistols. He fired indiscriminately, the rats so packed together that he never missed even though he never aimed. Reggie followed and grabbed his semiautomatic.

Together, Reggie and Joel let loose a barrage of suppressive fire as they pressed forward. The rats scattered, but reformed around the blaster fire like water flowing around a rock jutting up from the beach. With meters to go until they reached the entrance to the passage back to Cody and Sam, Joel tossed a concussive grenade into the heart of the rat swarm.

The explosion sent the rats flying in pieces. Joel and Reggie sprinted out of the alcove. The passage was clear of rats, so they didn’t stop running, though now that they needed to stoop, they moved considerably slower.

They stopped after several minutes to catch their breath. Between broken inhales, Joel said, “Told you so.”

“Shut up,” Reggie said. “How was I supposed to know?”

“You should always know.” Joel tried his comm again. “You guys reading me? Shit has and is continuing to hit the fan. We could use a hand.”

Silence.

Neither of them dared speak as to what that silence could mean. They exchanged a look that was full of worry, full of all the outlandish possibilities and nightmare scenarios rattling around inside Joel’s head. Then they continued on.

* * *

“Guys?” Cody checked the comm signal again. “You there? Sam, you read me?” Nothing. “Crap. Why did I go off alone? You never go off alone. That’s how you get separated and eaten by the monster. Everyone knows that.”

He stopped, took a deep breath and tried to calm his raging heart. “Okay, this isn’t that bad. Comms went down. That happens.” He looked down at the signal readout on his wristcom. “Except the signal is still strong, which means something is interfering with our equipment. Which would only happen if someone was intentionally blocking our communications. Which would be crazy because they’re rats. And rats are dumb. They live in sewers and eat garbage.”

Cody debated with himself which path to take. Venture further down the path toward Reggie and Joel and try to reconnect with the guys and make sure they’re okay, or double back to get Sam? Okay, so not much of a debate. Always go with Sam. He’d go with Sam over ten Reggies and Joels.

He ran a routine diagnostic of the comm system as he made his way back to Sam. Everything was reading strong, which only made him more anxious. He needed to find the main comm hub. Something there must be jacking up the signals. Luckily, the hub was on level two.

The sound of string music wafted up from below. Clinking glass and silverware followed. Then haughty laughter. Cody imagined that if he pressed his ear to the floor, he could hear the sound of people getting richer and fatter and shallower.

Over the sound of the party, he heard a small clang. Like metal on metal. His ears perked up. Another clang. The sound was coming from nearby, on level two, not from below.

Another clang. He followed the sound, stepping over bundles of wires and pipe. His foot fell on something. Several screws lay in a close bunch on the floor. He bent to inspect them, but something else quickly drew his attention. A squeak above him. He looked up, expecting a rat to drop on his face.

What he found was something far more terrifying. Slowly and carefully, the last screw holding the grate on the ventilation shaft above Cody’s head was being unscrewed. From the inside.

The screw dropped onto Cody’s face, followed immediately by the grate. His eyes snapped shut instinctively. When he opened them again, he was alone. No rats, crawling up his legs, gnawing holes in his flesh. No beady eyes. staring at him from the dark.

“What the hell?” Cody shined his flashlight in the dark areas around him. Nothing.

Then came more squeaks. Not the metal on metal squeak. An animal squeak. From somewhere in the dark around him came the sound of unnaturally sneaky rats.

Cody suddenly felt them crawling all over him, imagined them in his hair. A cold shiver ran up his spine as he spun in circles, trying to catch sight of one.

When he finally did, it didn’t feel like a victory. It didn’t feel earned. It felt like they’d allowed him to find them. Like they were done playing their game with him.

Cody locked eyes with a fat, brown rat. It stood atop a fuse box, like a vigilante on patrol in the dead of night. One could assume he was alone, until moving the flashlight half an inch in either direction and finding the dozens of others.

In a flash of panic and adrenaline, Cody dropped the flashlight and pulled out his scatterblaster, which hung on a strap around his shoulders. He fired two rounds at where he thought the rat was. Without the light, he couldn’t be sure he hit anything. Then he ran back toward Sam, taking little steps as if he was running through a dense forest and being careful not to trip over a root.

He ran for what seemed like an hour but couldn’t have been more than two minutes before slamming into something firm and steady. He fell back onto his butt. He reached for his blaster and pulled it frontward, moving on pure instinct, ready to obliterate whatever stood in his path.

Like his body had a second before, his blaster collided with an immovable object. His vision focused to see Sam standing over him. She stood on the barrel of his scatterblaster.

She didn’t scold him for almost putting a hole in her midsection. She just said, “Goddamn super rats.” She helped Cody to his feet. “What the hell is happening right now? I heard shots. Tried to raise you on comms, but couldn’t get you. The guys either.”

“Something is interfering. We need to get to the communications hub to fix it. Then we can radio the guys and make sure they’re still alive.”

Sam drew her sword. “Lead the way.”

* * *

The passage was eerily quiet. Reggie didn’t like it. It felt oppressive, like the quiet was being used as a weapon. It bludgeoned him, prodded him along. He felt like he was being led somewhere.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he said.

“Which part?” Joel said. “The super rats? Or the fact that I was right yet again?”

“Both. Don’t you think it’s weird that they stopped chasing us? When has that ever happened? They had us on the run. Why not chase us down?”

Joel shrugged. “Maybe their tiny rat legs got tired. I don’t really give much of a shit why they didn’t eat us alive. I just want to find Cody and Sam and figure this out.”

Reggie grabbed Joel’s shoulder to stop him.

“That’s it,” Reggie said. “We can’t contact them, but we can think like them. Where would Cody go right now?”

Joel let his hands fall to his side. He shook his arms and rolled his neck like he was warming up for something. “Let me get in the right headspace.” He spoke to himself, coaching himself into a Cody mindset. “I’m a nerd. I’m scared. I probably peed my pants a little. Where would I go?” An idea shot into his head. “The comms.”

“We tried that already,” Reggie said.

“I know that. And Cody knows that. He knows they don’t work. He’ll try to fix them. He’ll go to the communications hub.” He closed his eyes like he was trying to remember something. “This way.”

Joel had a memory unlike any the Notches had ever seen, near perfect recall, which was often a pain in their ass when it wasn’t useful. He remembered every infraction, every misquote, and could wield them all as well as Sam could her sword. In this instance, his memory of the level two layout displayed on Cody’s wristcom might save their lives.

The communications hub was located down a smaller, narrow tunnel that branched off from the main one. It was an alcove about ten meters in diameter. Not too big, just big enough to house the equipment needed to maintain radio communications in this section of Malibu.

Standing at the mouth of the communications tunnel felt like waiting to enter the dragon’s keep. Joel and Reggie stared into the darkness like it was the mouth of a giant monster waiting to swallow them. It gave them flashbacks to when they had literally done that, not that long before.

“After you,” Joel said.

Reggie grunted, pressed the butt of his semiautomatic rifle into his shoulder and marched forward into the dark. Joel hurried along behind him, stepping on his heels on several occasions.

The tunnel was fifty meters long, and they traveled the length of it without meeting any resistance. But when they reached the alcove, the sounds of life echoed out. Chirping, hissing, grunting, like two pigs were arguing with each other.

Joel and Reggie readied their weapons then charged in.

Sam nearly sliced them both in half.

“I knew it,” Joel said. “I’m such a good nerd.”

His victory was short-lived. He could just barely distinguish Cody’s outline in the dark behind Sam. Even then, he could tell Cody was distraught. He had the same look about him as a man who just dropped the last slice of pizza and watched it land cheese side down on the floor.

“What are we looking at?” Joel asked, moving in to see if it was anything with which he could help.

Cody was still trying to wrap his head around it. The communications hub was basically a big wireless router. It was hardwired into the comms network and sent out a wireless signal that all comms devices could piggyback off of. It was a simple setup. Which made it easy to mess with.

Cody directed Joel where to shine his flashlight. A metal panel the size of a toaster lay on the floor, the screws that had fastened it in place sitting beside it. The now exposed area that had been protected by the panel was a mess of cables plugged into various ports. Cody gestured for Joel to lean in close.

“See this,” Cody said, pointing to the mess. “All of these represent the wireless communications capabilities for the entire station.” He pulled some aside so Joel could get a closer look. “Now, see this? The one way in the back is the cable for just this sector of the station. It’s been chewed through.”

The weight of the realization hit Joel in the gut. “They removed the panel, passed through all these other cables, and chewed through the right one to cut our comms?” He held his dual blasters up, readying for an attack, suddenly sensing that one was inevitable.

The others seemed to agree with him. They readied themselves as more puzzle pieces came to them.

“They came out in force, but didn’t really attack us,” Reggie said. “They were flushing us out. Herding us.”

“Bringing us here,” Sam said.

It seemed like the rats had been waiting for the Notches to understand what was happening. A vindictive move from a simple rodent.

The shrieking rose up around them, like war drums. The Notches spun in circles, looking for the source, but were unable to find it.

Then Reggie went down.

Chapter Five

“It’s eating through my spleen!” Reggie rolled around like a turtle on its back, hopelessly thrashing its tiny little legs.

Joel grabbed him by the elbow and lifted him to his feet. “You’re fine.”

Reggie swatted at himself, making sure the filthy creature was gone. “I guess this is a bad time to admit I have a slight fear of rats?”

“How do you feel about super rats?” Cody said, but his voice was cut off when something soft slammed into the back of his knee, dropping him to the ground.

The team spun, trying to spot the culprit before it disappeared back into the shadows. They were unsuccessful.

“Considerably worse,” Reggie said in response to Cody’s question.

The attacks continued. Several more streaks of brown flashed through the dark, clipping the team in the shoulder and cutting small gashes in the exposed skin just above their ankles. Each time, the team only caught a fleeting glimpse of the rodent responsible.

Sam finally had enough. “Cover your eyes and ears.” She plucked a flash grenade from her belt and tossed it just feet in front of them.

With little time to react, the team turned their backs to the grenade and tucked as near to a fetal position as they could while still standing.

The explosion sent a shockwave smashing into their backs, reaching through their skin and punching them straight in the hearts.

Sam was the first to act, fueled more by anger than anything else. She’d grown up on the streets, in alleys, in sewers. Rats had been a constant enemy when she was young, one that she’d defeated time and again. She’d be damned if she let them best her now.

She popped a flare and dropped it in the center of the alcove. The flickering red light illuminated the rats hiding in the crevices and along the outer edge of the area. They were all stunned, some completely unconscious. Her sword became a whirling fury. She rushed forward, cutting through dozens of them, spraying the walls with red.

The others regained their wits a full twenty seconds later. Once they were able to make sense of what they were seeing, they followed Sam’s lead. They unloaded shot after shot into the dark recesses of the alcove, but, the enemy being so small, the killing was inefficient. Though, since survival was their main concern now, all they cared about was escaping the alcove.

They pushed forward and into the narrow tunnel that connected back to the main passage. Though relieved at the progress, the Notches didn’t allow themselves to breathe easy. If anything, this run-in had only shown them just how crafty the rats were. And it put them on edge. They doubted their choices now, whether they were making them freely or being manipulated.

That debate didn’t last long.

Sam, at the head of the pack, slid to a halt and threw out her arms to signal the others to stop. They all did, wondering why, but only for a moment. The reason became obvious. The floor beneath them creaked and groaned. Looking down, they could see the outline of a circle gnawed in the floor. They stood directly in the center.

“Are you shitting me?” Joel said.

“Nobody move,” Sam said. “The integrity of the floor is compromised. A shift in our weight could make it give way, and we’ll fall an incredible distance to our deaths.”

“They laid a goddamn pit trap,” Joel said. “I fucking hate super rats. Even more than that giant bug that swallowed us.”

Cody studied the floor and the area around them. Slowly, he reached forward and unzipped Sam’s pack. “I’m taking your rope. If we can tie it to one of the pipes on the ceiling, maybe we can avoid the splattery death.”

He pulled out the rope, a strong, tensile climbing rope. He eyed a pipe overhead, a thick one he thought would support their weight. Then he swung and tossed the rope. And missed.

“Why is Cody throwing the rope?” Joel said. “He’s the shortest and least athletic, and I once saw him throw a baseball into his own foot.”

“There was a bee on it!”

“It was the Little League championships! You deal with the bee!”

Sam snapped at them. “You seriously want to argue about this now?”

They shut up, frozen solid by the force in her voice.

She reached over her shoulder. “Give me the rope.”

Cody wound up the rope from the middle until he regained the end and then placed it in her hand. She swung the rope once before throwing it.

The end looped over the pipe like she was threading a needle. Sam leaned forward as far as she could without shifting her weight too much—the ends of her fingers just barely grazed the dangling rope. She wiggled them and managed to wrap her middle finger around the rope. She quickly tied off the rope.

Sam looped the rope around her waist then passed it back to Cody. The floor creaked beneath them, like the thawing surface of a frozen lake. Cody looped the rope around himself and passed it on. Joel did the same.

Reggie reached for it.

But he didn’t have time to grab it.

Rats appeared in the pipes overhead, their beady little eyes looking like fires blooming in the deep dark of space. The Notches froze. Time seemed to stop as they held their breath, waiting for something to happen, hoping nothing would.

If the team had reason to doubt the vindictiveness of these super rats, what the creatures did next cemented their view. Several rats climbed down out of the darkness. In their mouths, they clutched screws, bolts; one of them had what looked like a peanut butter sandwich. For a moment, the rats seemed like they were bringing the team gifts.

Until they dropped them on the fragile floor beneath the team’s feet.

The Notches sucked in a collective breath, hoping that maybe the added air in their lungs would keep them afloat. It didn’t. The floor crumbled, and they were weightless for half a second before plummeting into the unknown.

Sam didn’t know how long they fell. It was a chaotic mess of screaming and spinning and ballroom music. She held firm to the rope, bracing herself for the moment the rope snapped taut and cinched around her waist, and the collective weight of Joel, Cody, and Reggie dangled from her.

Well, not Reggie. Not unless Joel could grab him.

He stretched until his shoulder screamed and threatened to pop out of its socket. The floor rushed up to greet them. With one final reach, Joel grabbed Reggie’s outstretched hand.

And then the rope snapped taut. Reggie pulled on Joel’s hand, who pulled on Cody, who pulled on Sam, like a human slinky. Sam screamed out in pain as the force threatened to tear her in half.

Their downward momentum halted only for a second. Joel’s shoulder popped and tore and exploded. Reggie slipped out of his grasp and plummeted toward the floor, which, thankfully, was only ten feet below after their initial descent. Joel watched his friend fall, but was quickly and unfortunately closing the gap between them.

The pipe to which their rope was tied had broken. Joel, Cody, and Sam, still tied to each other, fell. Reggie froze in fear, watching several hundred pounds of his friends rocket toward him. He snapped free of it just in time to roll to the side. Joel, Cody, and Sam fell in a pile.

Reggie heard screaming through the blood pounding in his ears and the clicking of his jaw as he opened and closed it to see if he still could. He looked to the team for the source of it, but they were rolling and moaning. Joel wasn’t moving at all.

He scanned the room they fell into, taking in the stark change to the dark, musty tunnel they’d been crawling through. He could see his reflection in the hardwood floor. The soft light from the chandeliers cast everything in a warm hue. Gowns twirled in a glittering frenzy.

The source of the screaming stood at the edge of the floor, her face a pale white: Miss Millicent Musgraves.

Chapter Six

“Are we dead?” Joel rolled onto his side, through the screaming pain in his shoulder. “Is this heaven?” He saw Millie marching toward them. “That can’t be an angel.”

Sam got to her knees, her head spinning. Her vision blinked in and out, like someone was switching off the lights. She staggered to her feet. “That is no angel.”

Millie’s face turned from pale white to beet red the closer she got to the Notches. Sam expected a burst of pure anger to come flying out of Millie’s mouth when she opened it, but only got a stifled whisper-scream. “What in the flip-flappin’ crappity hell are you doing here? What part of discretion did you not understand?”

Reggie pulled himself up by Sam’s arm, which nearly resulted in them both falling back down.

“Ma’am, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your rodent problem may be a bit more complicated than was originally anticipated,” he told the woman.

“What the heckity heck does that mean?”

“Super rats,” Joel said, still lying on his back. Sam was relieved to see that he wasn’t dead. “Means you got super rats.”

Millie stared like she had just been told the meaning of life, and her brain couldn’t comprehend it. She short-circuited. “I’m not even going to pretend to know what that means. Can you fix it?”

“Discreetly?” Reggie asked.

“At all,” Millie snapped. “We’re well beyond discretion at this point.”

Reggie considered everything they’d seen of the rats so far, and nothing suggested this was going to be easy. Their present circumstances were proof of that. He didn’t want to lie, but he also wanted to instill some confidence in the abilities of Intergalactic Pest Control.

“Ma’am, I assure you—”

“Don’t ‘assure’ me,” Millie said. “You already assured me, and that assurance apparently wasn’t worth a damn. My guests are staring. I am absolutely embarrassed and will soon be the laughing stock of the social scene. I’ll never host another gala again. I’ll be ruined. I may as well walk out the airlock.”

Sam’s hand smacked across Millie’s face faster than Reggie’s eye could follow, but he heard the impact. His blood turned to ice.

Millie was in complete shock, as if the caterers had served pigs in a blanket instead of the agreed upon charcuterie.

Sam stepped closer, so she and Millie were only a breath apart. “Get your shit together. Your guests are staring at us right now. They will be staring at you if you spiral out of control.”

Millie nodded. The smack must have knocked some sense into her.

“There are hundreds of highly intelligent rats scuttling around above our heads right now, and they have an open door down to us. Get your guests someplace safe. Do you know where you can take them?”

Millie nodded, her voice still struggling to work. “There’s an auditorium on the upper deck.”

“Good,” Sam said. “Go. Now.”

It was like a switch flipped inside Millie’s brain. Her face morphed into a pleasant hostess smile, and her voice became graceful yet commanding. She addressed the crowd, told them everything was okay, and directed them to the auditorium for the after-dinner entertainment.

The ballroom cleared out in a surprisingly efficient fashion. Though, if there was one thing at which rich people excelled, it was self-preservation.

Soon, it was just the Notches.

“Everyone still able to fight?” Reggie said.

Joel’s shoulder was probably dislocated. After a shot of medical nanites, he would hardly notice, but it would be a real bitch in the morning. Sam likely had a concussion. Cody was bruised all over. One of Reggie’s ribs was broken.

They all dosed themselves and were in fighting shape again. Though they’d all need a little vacation afterward.

“Ideas?” Reggie asked after they were all medicated.

They all looked up at the hole through which they’d just crashed.

“I vote we drop through the ceiling in the auditorium,” Joel said. “Crashing Millipede’s party was worth the dislocation.”

“Any ideas that aren’t dumb?” Sam asked.

“Follow-up idea,” Joel said. “We lock these doors,” he pointed around the ballroom, “then we flush the rats through that hole and murder them hard.”

“I like the simplicity,” Cody said. “But how do we flush them out? I’m not hardwired into the system anymore, and without wireless comms, I can’t hack in.”

A concerning smile spread across Joel’s face. “I know a guy.”

* * *

Joel entered Ragnarok like a king returning from a victorious battle. Odd, considering he and his army were on the verge of defeat. He should have been marching back with his head hung low, or not returning at all, but lying dead on the battlefield beside his soldiers.

The circumstances that led him to return to the ship were less informative of his mood than who he was going to see.

Peppy ran down the landing platform like there was a pile of bacon on the other end. He leapt from twenty meters away and came down nearly on top of Joel. Joel had been working with him on that, ever since Peppy almost killed him after returning from three days off-ship.

Joel rubbed Peppy’s ears and scratched under his chin. Soon, Peppy was sitting obediently, eyes and ears attentive and expectant.

“That’s a good boy,” Joel said. “I know you’ve been cooped up on the ship for a while. We haven’t been able to get you out and about as much as you deserve. But I’ve got good news. We’ve got a job for you.”

Peppy’s tongue fell out of the side of his mouth as his tail wagged fast enough to take a hand off. They raced back toward their initial starting point for the job—level two. Though large, Peppy stood shorter than any of the Notches, so he could move quickly through the area without fear of smacking his head. Joel had his pistols drawn and ready, but they didn’t encounter any rats on their way to the central hub.

Once there, Joel crouched next to Peppy and looked him in the eye. “All right, pal, this is it. Those tunnels there.” He pointed to each of the openings. “You run through each of those, killing as many rats as you can. Just go to town. Good?” He held Peppy by each side of his face, squishing the sides up so the hair and skin nearly covered his eyes.

He pressed his forehead to Peppy’s. “I’ll see you at the end. Be safe.”

Peppy pressed back. A wave of heat rushed through Joel. It pooled around his heart and soaked the organ like it was floating in a hot tub.

Then Joel sprinted away, pretending the tears in his eyes were his allergies acting up. He moved fast, hoping the super rats wouldn’t sense this moment of weakness (being alone, not his fake allergies) and pounce. He was back in the ballroom a minute later, having encountered no resistance.

The rats were not only crafty, but they were strategic. They avoided open conflict, instead preferring to attack with stealth and subterfuge.

Reggie, Cody, and Sam wheeled around and trained their weapons on him when he entered the ballroom. He slid to a halt on the shiny floor, his arms up in self-defense. “Whoa, it’s me. Chill.”

“Everything good?” Sam asked.

“The General is on it,” Joel said. “He should be driving some super rats our way as we speak.” He wouldn’t say aloud how nervous he was about leaving Peppy alone with those tiny monsters. They had taken out the entire team with a few tricks and manipulations, but it was clear that they were physically dangerous as well. They dropped the team in that alcove without being spotted.

Joel assured himself that Peppy could handle it. He was fast. Strong. The best damn mutant dog thing a man has ever had.

“Then we should take up our positions,” Reggie said.

The Notches separated and formed a circle around the section of floor just below the hole in the ceiling, standing ten meters back. Joel had lined the killzone with mines and remote grenades. They’d also spread out some more kill traps, not that they’d helped much before, but maybe they’d get lucky. Finally, he switched the settings on his semiautomatic blaster to short bursts to limit the chance of friendly fire.

All in all, it was a glorious circle of death. Potential death. They still needed some rats.

Sam tapped her foot, signaling her impatience. “Where’s that mutt?”

“Don’t call him a mutt,” Joel snapped back. “He’s a purebred…something. And he’s coming. Just give him some time.”

“We don’t have time,” Sam said. “And the longer Peppy spends up there, the greater the chance that he gets taken out by the super rats.”

“Don’t say that,” Joel said. His jaw tightened.

“It’s their turf,” Sam continued. “And we’ve seen how good they are at defending their turf. This was meant to be a shock and awe maneuver. So far, no shock and certainly no awe.”

The anger pulsing in Joel’s chest spread through the rest of him. It clouded his mind enough to think that he could step up to Sam. He left his post and marched toward her.

“Hey, I don’t know what your deal is, but lay off. Peppy has done nothing but help since he joined.”

“And poop in my shoes,” Cody added. “Don’t forget about that. I never will.”

Joel threw up his arms. “Fine, there’s been some growing pains.” He jabbed a finger at Sam. “But there’s been some with you, too.”

Sam’s shoulders dropped, and her hand tightened around the handle of her sword. “Are you comparing me to a dog?”

Reggie carefully navigated the figurative and literal minefield to stand between Sam and Joel. “Everyone, chill. This escalated real fast. We’re in the middle of a job right now. Can we stow the personal beef? I didn’t even know there was personal beef.”

“Me neither,” Joel said. “Ask her.”

A growl built in Sam’s chest and came out as a gravelly mumble. “I don’t like dogs.”

Joel shook his head. “Seriously? That’s why you’re picking a fight with me right now?”

Cody tried to interject. “Guys?”

Reggie put a hand on both Joel and Sam. He read once that establishing physical contact can help ease conflict. The look Sam shot him proved that wasn’t always the case. He pulled his hand away.

“Feels like we’ve had a breakthrough. Maybe we can finish this later?” he asked.

“Guys!” Cody interjected more forcefully.

They all looked to him, about to yell at him to shut his face, when they noticed that his face had lost its color.

“They’re coming,” Cody said, looking up at the hole in the ceiling.

Without being hardwired into Malibu’s systems and unable to wirelessly hack in, he could rely only on his ears. Tilted up, he could make out the rumble of thousands of nasty rat feet charging their way.

Joel and Sam ran back to their positions. Reggie was left in a more precarious situation. He couldn’t run without risk of setting off the mines. He carefully walked through the maze of explosives, stepping over traps and mines and hoping he didn’t blow himself up. He was halfway out of the killzone when the first rats dropped through the ceiling. Unfortunately, that meant he was also halfway in the killzone.

Joel blasted the rats as they landed. Cody used his scatterblaster to shoot them as they fell. Sam sliced the ones that escaped the perimeter.

The rats, though frantic, were still smart. They avoided the mines, but as more rats fell, the less space they had to maneuver. And they were now pouring out like someone had turned on the faucet. The rat swarm pulsed outward. They scrambled over each other. They couldn’t avoid it. One of them tripped the first mine.

“Jump!” they all yelled to Reggie.

He planted both feet on the floor and launched himself as far as he could. The flames tickled the bottom of his feet and licked the backs of his legs. The force of the blast propelled him several meters farther than he could have traveled on his own, straight into one of several ornate columns scattered about the ballroom.

He dropped with a thud, and the world went dark. When light returned, he had no idea how long he’d been out. He didn’t even fully understand where he was. A thick haze covered the room. The blaster fire sounded like it was passing through Jell-O before reaching him.

He climbed to his feet and used the pillar to steady himself. As his vision cleared, he saw that the ballroom had descended into chaos. Their carefully planned killzone was gone. Though, at least, it did appear to have successfully killed a whole bunch of rats.

“Wouldn’t be a job if we didn’t blow something up,” Joel said as he blasted a rat into a red smear on the floor.

“The killzone is breached,” Sam said. “That explosion set off all the charges at once.”

Joel sucked in a breath. “I admit, that was probably my bad. The charges were set too close together. Live and learn, am I right?”

Sam couldn’t waste the time to scowl at him. She rolled forward and sliced five rats in half with one swing of her sword. “We need to secure the room. Keep the rats trapped in here. If they get out, we’ll have to round them up all over again.”

There were only two entrances to the ballroom—the main double doors and the entrance to the attached kitchen. Cody ran for the door closest to him, the kitchen. The door swung both ways and didn’t have a lock. His brain moving so fast he didn’t know what it was thinking, he ran into the kitchen. Instantly, a plan popped up from the recesses of his brain, the part that was always working whether he was aware of it or not.

It was a beautiful mix of elegant problem-solving and brute force. He pulled the refrigerator, which was thankfully on wheels, out from the wall. With a strength that surprised even himself, he grabbed the bottom of it and tipped it over. He pulled the plug free from the socket with that same surprising strength.

He kicked the kitchen door open, so it swung out, and stepped into the ballroom, holding the cord. He pulled the refrigerator until it slammed into the doorframe inside the kitchen, then let the door swing shut.

“Unless these rats also have thumbs and can pull open a door, this way’s sealed,” Cody declared.

Sam had already made for the double doors, which were the main problem. If the rat swarm got out there, they would have the run of Malibu. The double doors also swung both ways and only locked with a keycard, which she did not have. With only one solution left, she slid her sword through the handles, jamming it shut.

And leaving her weaponless.

Chapter Seven

There had been many moments in the Notches’ short careers that felt utterly hopeless. When they were swarmed by ShimVens on various occasions. When they were swallowed by the queen bug. When Joel dangled outside the ship, fully expecting to die. When they were surrounded by Rapoo.

This was one of those moments. Reggie was concussed and barely standing. The super rats were pouring in from overhead. Sam was without her sword. They were locked in the room with their most vindictive opponent yet.

But, like those other moments, though it may feel like the end, this was far from it. Sam may have been without her sword, but she was a master of most weapons, a killer. Reggie may not have been able to stand, but his blaster still worked.

A plus B equaled problem solved.

Sam picked up Reggie’s semiautomatic blaster. She squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go as she walked the perimeter of the ballroom, mowing down the filthy super rats. Cody hauled Reggie’s arm over his shoulder and helped him in a corner. He set Reggie down and took up a defensive position in front of him. Joel worked his way to the opposite corner. They were able to establish a loose perimeter, though, since they literally had their backs pressed up against the wall, they had nowhere to retreat. This was their last stand.

And in typical Notches fashion, it would be a beautiful, chaotic mess.

Despite their efforts, the mass of rats in the center of the room was growing. The flow continued as powerfully as it had from the second it started. The Notches couldn’t kill fast enough. Reggie climbed back to his feet. He staggered past Cody and bumped his knuckles together. He shuffled forward, world swimming around him, not seeming to care that rats were charging at him. The others managed to keep them off him.

Reggie’s knuckles glowed. He had a full charge. His feet touched the edge of the rat swarm. He lifted his arm, mustered the last of his strength, and drove his fist into the floor.

The swarm exploded. The shockwave sent rats smashing against every wall of the ballroom and took the Notches off their feet. Reggie dropped in a heap, unconscious. The others hoped that was all he was, that their friend was still breathing, that he hadn’t just pushed himself too far.

Sam didn’t allow her concern to overshadow her judgment. She wouldn’t allow Reggie’s sacrifice—No, not sacrifice, he’s fine—to be made in vain. She charged forward, picking off the injured and dazed rats before they could recover. Unfortunately, the rats’ mental advancement was met with physical advancement. They recovered faster than she anticipated.

She was overextended and surrounded. She didn’t even have her back up against the wall now. It was up against more rats. Her team was down or on the ropes.

Okay, so maybe now this was one of those moments. Hopeless. The end looming. Her gut pinched at the thought of ending her time with the Notches with a fight. Why did she pick that fight with Joel? The look in his eyes. The sad look of a boy clinging to his pet.

Her mind lit on fire with the memory. The reason why she’d jabbed at Joel. Her gut pinched again at the idea of dying with that memory in her head.

A sharp pain flared in the back of her knee. The strength left her leg, like it suddenly stopped answering to her and refused to work. Then her shoulder went on strike. A rat sank its teeth into the meaty part of it. She couldn’t hold up the blaster anymore. Instead of letting it go, though, she fell to the side, on top of it, and continued to fire.

The rats crawled up her legs. Their disgusting feet felt like a million ants on her skin.

Then something changed. She could sense the rats hesitate, like a transmission of their collective conscious. It said, “Oh shit.”

A booming roar filled the ballroom, echoed off the walls like cannon fire. The rats shrieked and scurried about looking for a place to hide, a hole to crawl back into. But Peppy was too fast. His jaws clamped down on one and then another. He threw them, stepped on them, swatted them away with the back of his paw, sliced them in half with his claws. He was a killing machine.

And the Notches’ savior.

The carnage was done in minutes. In the end, not a single rat was left alive. The ballroom was a gruesome mess. Blood splattered across the walls like a morbid painting. Rat parts scattered across the floor.

The team began to move, but slowly. They stood like arthritics, groaning, their joints protesting, muscles screaming. Sam clutched her shoulder. The sudden shock of pain made her head swim. The room went sideways, her on the verge of passing out. But something caught her before she hit the floor. Something hairy and wet.

Peppy felt like he’d just come out of a lake. He could have been a typical dog, chasing a tennis ball off the end of a dock on a summer day. But it wasn’t water that soaked his coat. He was like a sponge soaked in blood, and the red oozed over Sam’s hand. It made her stomach turn.

Using Peppy for balance, she lowered herself back to the floor, clearly not yet ready to stand. When she sat, Peppy’s face was level with hers. His breath stank of raw meat. He was a horror show. But underneath the carnage, his eyes shone with gentleness. She felt herself seeing Peppy the way Joel must see him, as a friend and companion. She didn’t see him as that dog in that alley so many years ago.

“Thank you,” Sam whispered.

Peppy whimpered in return and pressed his head against Sam’s hand.

Cody and Joel knelt beside Reggie. Cody’s fingers pressed into the side of Reggie’s neck, and everything went quiet. They held their collective breath, waiting, hoping.

For a pulse.

“He’s alive,” Cody said. “Grab my bag.”

Joel handed Cody his blood-spattered pack.

From inside the pack, Cody produced a vial of silvery liquid and a hypodermic gun. He loaded the liquid into the gun and shot it into Reggie’s neck.

“The medical nanites will have him patched up in no time.” Cody pointed to Joel’s shoulder next.

Joel winced as he slid his shirt off his shoulder with his good arm. Cody injected the nanites. Joel slid back and rested against the column. Peppy laid next to him and rested his head in Joel’s lap.

Sam tried to wave Cody away when he came toward her with the needle.

He scoffed. “Don’t try to be such a badass.” He crouched next to her and brushed her hair away from the wound in her shoulder. The sound of disgust escaped his mouth before he could think to swallow it. “Sorry. It’s just really gross.”

Sam smiled. “It’s okay. Just get me patched up.”

Cody injected the nanites.

The injection site burned at first. Then it cooled to a soothing warmth. Like wool socks and a cup of hot chocolate on a winter’s night. The warmth spread from the injection site through her shoulder and all the way to the tips of her fingers.

“Can I ask you something?”

Cody’s voice pulled her out of the pleasure. She grunted in reply.

“What the hell was all that about? You know, that little fight that almost got us all killed?”

Sam shot him a death stare, but he seemed unaffected.

“Don’t try that shit with me,” Cody said. “The more time you spend with us, the less impact your grizzly façade has.”

“Façade?”

“You picked that fight with Joel for some reason. And it threw everyone off right before a big fight. Reggie got blown up, putting us down a big gun and making everyone unfocused when the rats attacked.” Cody packed the nanites away in his bag. “Sort it out before we move on. We all need to be on the same page to finish this job.”

Sam cocked her eyebrow as she looked up at him. “Finish it? I thought we just did that.”

Cody shook his head. “My uncle is an exterminator. I worked summers with him back on Earth, where we only had to deal with normal-sized roaches and rats of very little intellect. I know rats. And they always have a nest.”

He checked on Joel and Reggie again. Reggie had begun to regain consciousness, his eyes fluttering open. Cody handed a protein bar to each of them.

“Eat up. The nanites need ten minutes to finish their job. Then we finish ours.”

Chapter Eight

She was twelve. She’d been on the streets a few months at that point. It wasn’t her first time, but it was the first since deciding that she would never go back to another orphanage or foster home. It was her first time since deciding that this would be the rest of her life.

That realization added an extra sense of urgency. Sam wasn’t just biding her time until it got cold or the cops picked her up or she got hungry. This was it. She needed to find a way to stay warm. A way to eat. A way to survive.

One of the boys she’d met at the last group home was on and off the streets for years. He knew his way around. He’d told her the only way to survive long-term was to join up with a group. There were all kinds of groups—gangs, packs, some that considered themselves families even. It was only a few weeks until the cold season. Sam needed to join up with a group.

Maybe it was for that reason, that impending feeling, that she joined up with the first group that came her way, a pack called the Wretches. It was an apt name. They were terrible people, mostly teens that had been kicked out of everywhere else, or ones that chose the chaos of the streets.

But, thinking back, Sam didn’t think that was why she joined them. She joined the Wretches because they were awful. She wanted to be part of the worst group around because she knew that meant protection. But it also meant there was a high likelihood that another in the pack would be a worse person than she was.

It was her first night with them. It was another’s first night as well, a boy named Dylan. He still had the chubby cheeks of adolescence. Sam could tell the moment she saw him that he wouldn’t last with the Wretches. He wouldn’t even last on the streets. He was the kind of kid that needed taking care of. What she didn’t know was that this was the Wretches’ practice, to bring on two newbies at the same time so they could hold a tryout.

Dylan was trembling before the Wretches’ leader, with the apt alias “Dumpster Fire,” even brought in the dog. The alley was cold and wet, but that wasn’t what made the boy shake. He knew something was coming. The line. And his time to decide whether he would cross it.

It was a mutt. Probably had some German Shepherd in him. He was as tired and pathetic as she and Dylan were. He was a stray like them.

“This isn’t the sort of pack that takes in weaklings and losers,” Dumpster Fire said. “We’re ruthless and vicious because we need to be. If you can be, then you can join. If not, then you need to get the hell out of here.”

He tied the dog to the fire escape. Then he tossed a piece of scrap metal, roughly sharpened to a point, on the ground at Sam’s and Dylan’s feet. The clang rang out like a church bell.

“Ruthless and vicious.” He stepped away from the dog.

Dylan jumped away from the blade like it was radioactive, like touching it would poison him. It would have, and he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. It would have eaten him from the inside out.

Sam picked it up.

The pitiful thing cowered and whined. It was barely strong enough to stand. Or maybe that’s how Sam chose to see it. As a half-dead thing. Better off dead. Killing it was an act of mercy.

She wouldn’t look the dog in the eyes. She put her hand over the dog’s face and pushed it away from her. Then she drove the blade into its neck. The blood ran hot down her hand, soaking the sleeve of her only shirt. She grew angry at that, knowing her only shirt would be forever stained. The guilt pinched her gut.

The dog didn’t put up a fight. Maybe it really was better off dead. Maybe it wanted to be. It fell dead in an inelegant heap.

She dropped the blade.

Dumpster Fire clapped, a sickening smile on his face. “Ruthless.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face the quivering Dylan. “And now, vicious.”

Her stomach tightened. “What?”

“He’s not a Wretch, but he’s on Wretch territory. He’s trespassing.”

The others surrounded him so he couldn’t run.

Dumpster Fire stepped forward. “Show him what happens to trespassers.”

Sam was grateful she’d dropped the blade. If she was still holding it, Dumpster Fire might have made her use it.

She was oddly relieved to make a fist and drive her knuckles into Dylan’s soft belly. Better that than the rusty blade. Dylan dropped to his knees, wheezing.

Sam turned from him, but Dumpster Fire wasn’t satisfied. He made her hit him again. And again. Until Dylan was a quivering, bloody mess. At least he was alive. She hoped that maybe he’d find something else to cling to for support, something that wouldn’t poison his soul.

Dumpster Fire clapped Sam on the back as they left the alley.

She was a Wretch now.

* * *

Joel’s eyes were large and unblinking. His mouth hung open. Cody looked like he was going to be sick. Reggie still seemed slightly concussed, his eyes were glazed over.

“That’s…” Joel struggled to find the right words. “Well, that’s fucked up, that’s what that is.” He scratched his head, unsure what to do with his body. “I’m sorry? Is that the appropriate response? I don’t know what to say.”

Sam shifted from side to side, also seeming uncomfortable in her own body. “I’m not looking for sympathy. That’s not why I told you that story. I told you because I’m trying to…say sorry, I guess.”

The guys all looked glazed over now.

“For what?” Joel asked.

Sam looked around like she’d missed something. She pointed at Peppy. “For picking that fight. For jabbing you about that thing. About Peppy,” she quickly added. “I’ve got a lot of baggage. I’m realizing that now.”

“You didn’t already know that?” Cody said.

Sam looked like she wanted to punch him in the jaw. “I knew my past made me what I am now. Hard. Rough around the edges. A good fighter. I guess I didn’t realize how much it affects other parts of me. Makes me untrusting. Bitter. I hate dogs, too, apparently.”

Joel shook his head. “No, you don’t. I think they just remind you of that terrible, fucked up episode in your past. But this is, like, progress or something.” He looked to the others. “Right?”

Reggie pushed himself upright. “Yeah, I think so. Confronting your past is the only way to move forward.”

Yet again, Sam was blindsided by their capacity for forgiveness and understanding. The concepts were still foreign to her.

“So, we’re cool, then?” she asked.

Joel extended his hand to her. She grasped it.

“You just need to apologize to Peppy.” There was a hint of mischief in Joel’s smile.

Sam couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. So she decided to assume he was and not squander the goodwill she’d just garnered with her openness and honesty. She looked at Peppy, who cocked his head with an expression like he understood what was happening.

“Sorry.” Her apology was flat and lacked feeling, but it was apparently enough for Peppy.

He rubbed against her leg, smearing her pants with the blood of hundreds of rats.

Cody clapped Sam and Joel on their backs. They both winced, their shoulders still tender. “That was beautiful. Now, let’s track down this rats’ nest.”

* * *

Cody had some theories as to the location of the rats’ nest. Which, unfortunately, required them to go into the rat tunnels to confirm. Luckily, they were largely empty since Peppy had run through.

“How do you know Peppy didn’t clear out the nest, too?” Joel asked as they entered the rat tunnels. Even hunched over, their backs still scraped along the roof of the tunnel.

“The nest is always well hidden,” Cody answered. “And seeing how these are rats of NIMH level rats, I assume they’ve hidden it even better than most. They wouldn’t put it so close to the tunnels they use to travel. It’d be too easily tracked.”

“Entering on our end,” Reggie said over the newly restored comms.

Without the rats to defend their sabotaged comms array, it was a quick and easy fix.

“Then why are we trudging through rat tunnels?” Joel asked.

Cody was glad he asked. He loved having the opportunity to explain himself. “Because they’re still animals. They’d still build their home close to their means of travel. It just wouldn’t be so obvious. We wouldn’t be able to find it from the outside.” He brought up the level two layout on his wristcom. “And I doubt it will show up on the plans. I think they’ll have burrowed from the main tunnels into some tertiary space.”

“You almost sound like you admire these things,” Joel said.

“I admire any creature that can adapt and evolve to survive situations that would normally be insurmountable.”

He thought of Sam and her story. As he listened, a bubbling started in his gut, like he might be sick. To think of that dog, tied up, alone, starved. Only to be killed as some kind of twisted test. He was angry at Sam. He didn’t want to believe she was capable of something like that.

But then he thought of twelve-year-old Sam. Just a kid. Alone, starved, tied up in a different way. The choice she was given was no choice at all. Kill or be killed. Be brutal or get brutalized. She adapted because she had to. But that’s not what impressed him. He sympathized for that little girl. He felt sad for her.

He was impressed with how Sam was adapting now.

She was noticing that those attitudes and behaviors no longer suited her. Not only were they not necessary, but they were a roadblock to getting what she wanted. She was moving beyond those earlier adaptations. Adapting again.

It was easier for children to change. They were malleable. But adults, they rarely changed on such a level. This was no easy thing Sam was doing, and he wanted to remain cognizant of that.

“I admire Godzilla,” Joel said. “Now that’s some worthy adaptation. He was just a tiny lizard. Then he grew, like, a trillion percent and laid waste to an entire country.”

“He’s also fictional,” Cody said.

“The best mutants are. Those are the ones that don’t try to eat me.”

They trekked another fifty meters of rat tunnel before stopping to give their backs a break. Joel found himself wishing Peppy was there. He’d sent Peppy back to the ship to get some rest. He’d done more than his share of rat killing. The team could handle a nest without him.

The truth was, Sam’s story got him thinking about his own. Nothing quite so dramatic or outright horrific, but it stuck with him. He’d had a dog when he was little. His father gave it to him. Not so much out of love or caring, but to get Joel to shut up. Joel’s father worked a lot, and his mother was gone, so Joel spent a lot of time alone.

He never thought he was a lonely kid. Not at the time, anyway. He’d had Cody and Reggie, even then. But looking back, he realized he absolutely was. Whenever he was home.

Cloud fixed that. He was the best. A chocolate lab, beefy, had a tongue that never stayed in his mouth. Loved to chase sticks. They went everywhere together. Spent hours running through the woods, lost in fantasy worlds. Cloud would lay his head in Joel’s lap as he played video games. Joel shared his dinners with Cloud on the nights his dad worked late, which was most nights. Grilled cheese and Doritos for the both of them.

But Cloud was a chewer, and Joel’s dad hated having his shit destroyed. He didn’t make Joel kill Cloud. He just made Joel get rid of him. Joel had to strap the leash on his dog’s collar and walk him down to the shelter by himself. He handed Cloud over, scratched behind his ears one last time, then went home, crying all the way back, up to his room, and all night long.

His dad told him, “Suck it up. It’s just a dog. I’ll get you a guinea pig or something.”

Joel saw Cloud when he looked at Peppy. And he heard his dad when he heard Sam calling Peppy a mutt and complaining about him. He felt the pang of losing Cloud all over again.

Peppy and Sam seemed to have mended their fences, but the possibility of losing Peppy in the field was ever present. As proud as Joel was of his dog-thing for saving their job and their lives, he was happier knowing Peppy was safe on the ship right now.

Cody arched while sitting, trying to stretch his back, then resumed the search.

They didn’t move far before finding something. Cody shined his light on the wall of the tunnel. A hole had been chewed through it. Cody laid down and did his best to forget about the fact that he was probably smearing rat feces and infinite bacteria all over the front of him.

“This is it. But there’s no way we’re fitting through here.”

The hole opened into another narrow space, not a tunnel or intentional space, more like the absence of something, a space created by happenstance.

He raised the level two plans on his wristcom. He enlarged their location on the map.

“According to this, there isn’t anything over there. The architect probably didn’t bother to map it out, since it’s unused space.” He traced his finger along a dark section of the map. “But, if I backtrack along this area, assuming the rats stuck to the unused space, we land here.” He pointed to a large, round area that looked to be mostly empty. The perfect place for a monstrous rats’ nest.

Joel pointed to a tiny space elsewhere on the map. “Are you sure we don’t land there? In that itty-bitty area? Where there’s maybe, like, four rats?”

Cody shook his head as he raised Reggie and Sam on comms. “I think we found it. Sending you the location now.”

“I agree with Joel,” Reggie said. “I think we should investigate the tiny nest.”

“There is no tiny nest,” Cody said.

“We can neither confirm nor deny that,” Joel said, “until we investigate. I volunteer.”

Reggie raised his hand to second.

Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled his arm down. “How many rats do you think we killed in the ballroom?”

Cody looked off as he performed some mental calculations. “If the nest is in this area here, and it’s as big as I hypothesize, I’d say we killed at least seventy percent already.”

Sam spread her arms to Reggie and Joel like she’d just presented them with a gift. “See? Most of them are already dead.”

Reggie rubbed the back of his head. The nanites had patched him up and healed his concussion, but the area where he’d smashed his skull against a solid granite column was still a bit tender.

“Yeah, but that still leaves thirty percent of them alive,” he pointed out.

Joel chimed in. “And we’re still at least twenty-five percent dead from that attack. And we don’t have Peppy. He was, like, sixty percent of the reason we’re alive at all. So, by my math…” He ticked each finger as he silently counted. “That means there’s a fifty-five percent chance there’s going to be super-duper rats in the nest, and we are going to die.”

Sam shook her head. “I don’t think that’s how math works.”

“Whatever,” Joel said. He threw his arms up in surrender. “I know I’m not winning this. You two have unresolved anger issues.” He pointed to Sam and Cody. “That’s why you’re always so determined to go kill things.”

Sam drew her sword and took some practice swings, testing her shoulder’s mobility. “That first part is very true. But we’re always killing things because that is literally our job.”

“Semantics,” Joel said as he drew his pistols.

Cody nodded at Reggie. “When did we switch roles? Aren’t you typically the one who’s all gung-ho and ready to charge in guns blazing? I’m pretty sure I’m usually the one who’d rather be reading a book back on the ship.”

“I like books,” Reggie said, looking down at his feet. He felt Cody’s eyes burning into him. “I hate rats! I hate them so freaking much. They’re disgusting. And they almost just killed me. I’m getting used to facing my own mortality, but I will not be killed by rats. Do you know what they’d do to us after they killed us?” His whole body quivered.

Cody rested a reassuring hand on Reggie’s shoulder. “If you want to sit this one out, you know…” He looked off to the side. “You can’t, actually. We need you.”

Reggie deflated with a heavy sigh. “Fine.” He hoisted his semiautomatic and checked the magazine.

The nest was located in a technical space above the auditorium. It was full of wiring for the lighting and sound systems used by the concerts and plays hosted below. But it wasn’t a tight space like the rest of level two. Due to the architecture of the auditorium, the space was almost shaped like an eye, as seen from the side. The ceiling was a dome about ten feet high. The floor also bent up to accommodate the domed ceiling. The entire area was fifty feet in diameter. It was one of the biggest areas on level two.

The only access to the area, aside from the hole the rats had chewed that was way too small for any of the team to fit through, was through a metal panel that had been screwed on.

Cody removed the screws and let them fall to the floor. He nodded to the team.

Sam took one last practice swing with her blade before sheathing it. Reggie stretched his neck, slung his blaster over his shoulder, and checked his gloves. They were fully charged. Joel looked at each of them. He shook his head.

“You know, there was a time in my life when battling super smart rats would have been totally out of the ordinary. Now, it’s just a Tuesday.”

“It’s Thursday,” Cody interjected.

Joel pressed his index finger to Cody’s lips and shushed him. “My point is, there aren’t any other people in the universe I’d rather be doing this whacky shit with. And no one I’d rather die with and lie beside while my corpse is defiled by filthy garbage creatures.”

“And you ruined it,” Cody said as he pulled off the metal plate.

Joel was the first one on his belly, the first one to crawl in. “Let’s fuck shit up.”

As soon as his feet were in the crawl space, Sam followed. Then Reggie. Then Cody. The tunnel was only ten meters long, but with their weapons, it was slow going. When the end was close, Joel reached back and plucked his last remaining grenades from his belt, a firebomb and a Pyrethrum X-735c. The combination would be interesting.

“Fire in the hole,” he said. “And chemicals, I suppose.”

He activated them and rolled them into the rats’ nest. He waited until he heard the pops and felt the rush of heat. Then he crawled in.

The rest of the team funneled in after. Dozens of rats were already dead, burned or frozen from the pesticide. Some of them crumbled into tiny rat cubes when Joel stepped on them. The others turned to ash.

The team didn’t need to communicate or formulate a plan. They didn’t know what to expect when they entered the nest, but they knew how to react. They fanned out.

Cody dropped a shield projector in front of the hole they’d just crawled through, trapping them inside with the rats. They unleashed a barrage of blaster fire on the frantic beasts. The creatures ran in circles, tripped over each other. They seemed to have completely lost their superior intelligence—they were acting like simple rats now, controlled by the base instinct to survive. Just scurrying, dirty rats.

Joel dropped to one knee to get a better angle. He picked them off one by one. Sam walked through the area at a steady pace, swinging her sword like she was walking through a wheat field with a scythe. She looked like a reaper.

In less than two minutes, the rats were dead, and the area was littered with their corpses. The last of them.

At least, that’s what they thought.

Until they looked at the nest in the center of the room. It looked to have been built out of scraps culled from throughout Malibu. Pieces of cloth, old furniture, bath robes. All piled together and wound around each other into one massive, tangled mess.

It started shaking. Trembling. Roaring.

“I knew it,” Joel said. “I knew there would be some kind of goddamn rat monster.”

Reggie urged him to remain calm. “We don’t know that. It could just be—”

The nest exploded. The scraps flew everywhere and came down like a rain of garbage. In the place where the nest had once stood, was a rat the size of a basset hound. It was a beefy, stubby, red-eyed monster.

“And there it is,” Joel said. “The rat king.”

Sam lunged forward, trying to drive her sword through the beast before it could act. She moved like lightning, but she was too slow.

The rat king’s super-size did nothing to hinder his super speed. Or his strength. He launched himself like a bullet straight at Sam, slamming into her chest, driving the air from her lungs. If not for her body armor, the hit would have shattered all of her ribs and probably punctured several major organs. Instead, it just launched her into the wall. Her vision went black the moment she hit the floor.

The rat king moved like a pinball. It ricocheted off Sam and shot at Reggie. Some of Reggie’s shots hit, spraying red into the air, but they did nothing to slow the beast. Reggie pivoted just in time to avoid a direct hit. The rat king hit his blaster instead, knocking the semiautomatic out of Reggie’s hands.

The rat king finally lost its momentum and landed two meters from Reggie. Pounding his knuckles together, Reggie stepped toward the rat. He drove his fist down and clipped the rat king. The gloves released a pulse of kinetic energy into the rat. The crack that rang out from the rat’s shoulder was sickening. Reggie tried to follow up the attack, but the rat king slashed at him with his good arm then scurried away.

Cody tracked the rat king with his scatterblaster, firing several shots as it retreated and landing a couple. Like Reggie’s shots, they definitely caused damage, but didn’t slow the creature at all. It did appear to piss him off, however.

The rat king snarled and shook. It looked to be having a seizure, every inch of it shaking. Its shoulder popped back into place. Its claws extended. Its teeth grew to pointed fangs. Its fur changed from dark brown to black. Its eyes looked like blood.

“God dammit,” Joel said. “We weren’t even fighting its final form.”

The newly transformed rat king tore tracks in the floor as it propelled itself toward Joel with its vicious claws. He would have torn through Joel if Sam hadn’t shoulder charged the beast, hitting it square in the ribs. Even so, her effort only served to move the rat king slightly off course. He raked his claws across Joel’s arm instead of driving them straight through his heart.

The rat king hit the floor and immediately launched again, this time at Reggie. Reggie was ready for him. He caught the rat king with an uppercut to the jaw, sending another shockwave into the king’s face.

The rat king did a backflip as it shot backward and smacked into the wall. It scurried back to its feet, snarling and spitting, its jaw dangling from its face. Joel and Cody walked toward it, unloading their blasters. Sam yelled for them to step aside as she ran at it.

Reggie dropped to one knee in her path, cupping his hands. As Sam stepped in his hands, she felt the shockwave from his gloves rocket her into the air. She flipped, twirled her sword, and came down on top of the rat king, driving her sword through its back.

The beast shrieked its death knell. It swiped its claws, not at any target in particular, but at the world, at everything. It staggered through the room, moaning, until it finally fell and did not move again.

The team stood over the dead beast, perhaps waiting to verify that it was truly dead, maybe just lost in the moment, relieved for it to finally be over. Maybe waiting for a poignant word to signify their victory.

“Fuck,” Joel said.

It may not have been poignant, but it accurately conveyed what they were all thinking. The awe the creature instilled, the fear, the feeling of walking the edge of death. The finality.

“So…that’s that, then? Let’s dispose of the carcass.” Cody shrugged. “Then let’s go get paid.”

The excitement and relief that washed over them died in an instant when the floor beneath them began to creak.

Cody’s eyes darted across the floor, picking up signs they hadn’t noticed seconds earlier. The floor of the room wasn’t a proper floor—it was little more than a sheet of metal meant to hold the guts of the lighting and sound systems. It wasn’t built to support much weight. It certainly wasn’t built to continue supporting weight after it had been torn up by a monster rat and blasted with firebombs.

Cody gestured to the hole they’d come through and tried to tell the team to move slowly, but with Joel’s first frantic step, they went careening downward through the floor.

Chapter Nine

Reggie had never been a fan of opera or theater or anything like that. He was a simple man from a simple family. School, football, work. That was the progression of his life, broken up by simple pleasures. Video games, food, the occasional beer.

Still, there was always a part of him intrigued by the theater. The costumes, the lights, the audience, the thrill of putting yourself up there, in front of anyone, becoming someone else. In another life, he thought he could have pursued the stage.

This wasn’t how he imagined breaking into acting.

The Notches plummeted twenty feet through the auditorium, past the murals of angels and naked people dancing through vineyards, past the rich folk clutching their pearls, and slammed onto the stage.

They all felt newly concussed and broken. Bones screaming, vision swimming, sick feelings in their guts. Cody was fresh out of medical nanites. They’d have to wait until they got back to Ragnarok before they could get patched up, which meant suffering through Miss Millicent Musgraves’s outrage even more than they normally would.

She marched across the stage, kicking debris out of the way in her open-toed high heels, which impressed Sam. She’d worn them a few times when undercover to catch a mark, and she could barely stand in them. Millie must have ankles and toes of steel.

Though Millie’s face was red and pulsing with anger, she kept her voice to a muted fury so her gala attendees couldn’t hear. “What in the holy moly heck is this? Are you determined to put holes in every ceiling in Malibu? Or just the ones directly above my head? You could have killed me or any one of my guests. And, worse, you’ve completely ruined my gala!” The last syllable spiked, and her voice echoed through the auditorium. Not that every eye in the room wasn’t already on her.

Millie straightened her body, her dress, and her hair, as though composing herself outwardly would do the same for her mood. She couldn’t hide the rage in her eyes.

“Your company has utterly devastated my station, ruined my event, tarnished my reputation and violated the terms of our agreement. Therefore, you will receive no compensation, and I will be reporting you to the Better Business Bureau.” She jutted her chin up and out and suddenly looked like a self-righteous statue.

Joel rolled to his side, unable to move from his prone position to sitting because of screaming pain in his spine. “Listen, lady—” His voice froze in the air.

Sam had stood somehow—apparently her body could be fueled by her disgust for the rich folk of Malibu even when it was battered and broken. Her mood lowered the temperature in the room by several hundred degrees.

Millie looked to have been flash frozen, the expression of panic on her face how she would be remembered for eternity.

Sam’s voice was quiet but full of menace. “You had a rat problem. Now you don’t. We did our job. You pay us.”

The guys had a feeling that wasn’t the first time Sam had given the speech. They also had the feeling it wouldn’t be the first time someone died after hearing it, should Millie be impaled on Sam’s sword.

Surprisingly, Millie mustered some fortitude. “Miss…Bug Kill, our agreement was for this job to be completed discreetly.” She gestured to the debris around them. “This is the opposite of discreet. You have violated our terms. If you pursue payment, I will forward the matter to my attorney.”

Sam reached for her sword sheathed on her back. “I will pursue payment.”

Millie bit her lip.

The guys tried to yell at Sam, but their voices died in their throats, their pleas coming out as only muffled gurgles. The flash of movement was so quick that Sam’s body seemed a blur. It was as if they could see straight through her. Then the air was tinted red. A fine mist of blood sprayed into the air and covered Millie’s face, adding an extra dimension to her smoky eye.

To Millie’s credit, she didn’t scream. A reluctant respect bloomed in Sam, even though the woman completely froze when the rat king landed on her foot.

“Guess it wasn’t as dead as we thought,” Joel said with a shrug.

Sam kicked the rat king’s corpse off Millie’s foot. It was like kicking a cinder block. Her reluctant respect for Millie grew.

The auditorium was eerily silent. Sam could hear her blood pounding in her ears, fueled by the adrenaline of a fresh kill. The pounding in her ears almost made her miss the next two words that Millie managed to force out her mouth, two words that she never would have anticipated hearing.

“Thank you.”

All of the Notches cocked their head like they must have misheard.

“Come again?” Joel said.

Millie swallowed hard. “Thank you for saving my life.”

The comment took them all by surprise, leaving them speechless. But what came next caught them even more by surprise.

Applause.

What began as the slow, rhythmic clapping of sarcastic admiration quickly grew to rapturous cheering. The Notches hadn’t yet noticed the mob of gala attendees sitting in audience facing the stage.

The team suddenly felt self-conscious, realizing they were onstage in front of a hundred people. Except for Joel. He bowed. Repeatedly.

“Thank you! Thank you!” He pointed to random people in the audience. “No, you’re beautiful. Yes, I am amazing. It was nothing, really. All in a day’s work.”

Millie’s mouth hung open, and she couldn’t be bothered to be appalled at her own low manners. Her face drained of color, and sweat formed on her brow. When one of the gala attendees approached her, she looked like a criminal at the gallows, her neck in the noose.

The attendee, a man with a thin mustache, unnaturally smooth skin, and dressed in a three-piece suit, took Millie’s hand. “Oh, Millicent, I haven’t had this much fun at one of these galas in ages.” He laughed heartily.

Millie’s frozen expression finally began to thaw.

“I’ve dreaded coming to these events because they’re all the same,” the man continued. “Hors d'oeuvres, cocktails, a bland buffet and then some bland entertainment like a string quartet. But this…” He pointed to the Notches and the dead rat king. “This is inspired. You’ve renewed my vigor, shined the dull off the social scene in this sector. Well done, Millicent.” He kicked the rat king’s corpse. “I can’t believe I thought that thing was real.” His hearty laugh followed him as he walked away.

“Well,” Reggie said, scanning the still roaring crowd. “That was unexpected.”

Millie, now free from the crushing disappointment and embarrassment she’d felt only moments ago, was a completely different person. She was again the woman with whom they’d originally met.

The change in demeanor was pleasant, but it left Sam feeling off. The smile and congeniality were preferable to the open hostility, but the smiles were fake. The hostility was at least honest. And this change made everything that Millie said now seem hollow.

“I apologize for my behavior,” Millie said. “As you can imagine, the situation was rather stressful. I may not have behaved in the best manner. To add heft to my sincerest apologies and gratitude, I will be adding a sizable tip to your compensation.”

Sam arched her eyebrow.

She wanted to say, “Oh, so we’re getting paid now? For the exact same job we had completed five minutes ago? Now that you know your rich friends aren’t running scared and gossiping about how horrible you are?” But she said nothing.

“Thank you,” Reggie said. He extended his hand.

Millie tried unsuccessfully to not look disgusted at the sight of it covered in rat blood. She almost reached for it but opted for an awkward little wave instead.

“A pleasure.” She met Sam’s eye, who was nowhere near impressed with Millie’s “generosity.” Whether she felt genuinely grateful for the job the Notches had done or whether she was just terrified of Sam, she added, “I also have access to all of the finest shops here on Malibu. I will let the proprietors of each shop know that you have been awarded access at my behest. Anything you need, please.”

Joel’s mind began to race. Malibu was a luxury station. All retail and spas and hotels. He thought of the automated pancake machines usually present at hotel breakfast buffets. The bathrobes. The miniature shampoos. He could scour the shops for days and still find things to pique his interest.

Before he could accept Millie’s gracious invitation, someone else told her what she could do with it.

“What would we need with any of this shit?” Sam twirled her sword, flicking rat king blood over Millie’s front, then sheathed her weapon. If she had a mic, she would have dropped it before walking off stage.

Cody jogged to catch up with her. “That feel good?”

Sam smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”

Chapter Ten

He could have been wearing fleece slippers right now. Free fleece slippers. And watching his pancakes travel down a conveyor belt. Pancakes that made themselves. Instead, he was wearing socks with holes in them and chewing on a protein bar.

“Can I suggest a change to the organization bylaws?” Joel asked the group.

“We don’t have bylaws,” Reggie said as he took a box of cereal from the pantry.

“We must come to a group consensus before rejecting glorious offers. For example, when a grateful client offers us free reign of her luxury space station.”

Sam slugged a pint of water. It dribbled down her chin as she spoke. “It wasn’t out of gratitude. She felt like an asshole. Because she was an asshole. She treated us like shit. Even after we saved her life, she was going to stiff us.”

“I don’t care,” Joel said. “I could have a pancake machine right now!”

Cody sat at the kitchen table with his bowl of oatmeal. “While we’re making changes to the bylaws—”

“We don’t have bylaws,” Reggie insisted.

“I would like to add that we must have a comprehensive debrief after each job,” Cody finished.

“Hard pass,” Joel said. “Sounds like a snooze fest.”

Cody was offended. “It’s the best way for us to learn from our missteps and get better at our job.”

“I agree,” Reggie said. “That’s a solid idea.”

“And I want to talk about what’s really happening with these infestations,” Cody added. “About the conspiracy.”

“Oh,” Reggie said, sounding defeated. “Hard pass.”

Cody threw his spoon down on the table and shot Reggie a look of betrayal.

Reggie shrugged. “Sorry, man. I just don’t believe there’s a conspiracy here. We’ve run up against some crazy critters, sure, but that’s the job. And this job was just some regular pests.”

Cody scoffed. “Regular? Are you kidding me? We got outsmarted by rats.”

“Maybe that’s more indicative of our intellect than the rats’,” Sam said.

Cody stood from the table and paced around the kitchen. “I can’t believe you all still can’t see the pattern. There’s something here. I just can’t see the whole thing yet.”

Cody walked around the table, circling behind the team as they ate, making them uncomfortable. But he was lost in his head, speaking to organize his thoughts rather than to convey them.

“There’s a thread here. I feel it. Something connecting them. They don’t feel random. They feel…” He stopped behind Joel. His eyes grew wide with realization. “They feel like they’ve been organized by the same person.”

“An evil mastermind?” Joel said as he gnawed on his protein bar. “Oh man, you are really descending into paranoia now.”

“No, no, no, listen.” Cody wrung his hands, eyes becoming wild. “All these attacks share some things in common. First, tactic. Tainted crates sent to the target, sparking the infestations. Second, targets. They’ve all been competitors of Layton. I’m willing to bet they also share a motive, to eliminate Layton’s competition, though I can’t prove it yet.”

Joel raised a hand to interrupt Cody’s rant. “But we didn’t find any Layton crates on Malibu. There’s nothing tying Master Splinter to Layton. He was just a freak rat who spawned more freak rats. Paranoid speculation over.”

“We didn’t search for any Layton crates,” Cody pointed out. “Just because I can’t prove it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” He tapped his chin, talking to himself again. “We need to prove it. Proof, proof, need to get proof.”

Joel jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to Cody. “Anyone else worried about this? His rambling is getting crazier.”

“I got it!” Cody’s emphatic burst made Joel jump. “I know how to get the proof I need to finally convince you guys that this conspiracy is real.” He projected a list from his wristcom, scrolling through the names of major companies. Jasob. StrobeNet. He clicked on the last one and raised a corporate profile page. “Chrisoff is the last major competitor blocking Layton’s path to total domination. It’s a small company, way smaller than the other two in terms of market share and reach, but it has a firm standing. Its share rarely wavers. As long as it keeps that share, Layton will never take over completely.”

He scrolled through the profile page, highlighting statistics about the company’s performance and output. Then he clicked on the Careers page.

“We go undercover. I could falsify some identities. We get low-level jobs, interns or something, nothing that will garner any attention, and we gather intel from the inside.”

The prospect excited Sam. She’d always enjoyed subterfuge, often employing cover identities during her career as a bounty hunter. She enjoyed pretending to be someone else. But it wasn’t enough to gain her support of the idea.

Reggie stood, shaking his head. He spread his arms like he was trying to fly. “Whoa, okay, let’s walk this back. We are not detectives. We are pest control. Someone gets infested with bugs, they contract us to handle it. We go where the contract says. We do what the contract says. We are not playing spy.”

Cody started to protest but decided against it. He would have been wasting his breath. He dropped back into his chair instead, slowly sinking into it like his spine had turned to pudding. He picked up spoonfuls of oatmeal and let them slop back into the bowl. The others melted away from his awareness as he watched his food fall and rise and fall again, hypnotizing himself.

There must be a way to prove it, he thought. It’s so obvious. Why don’t they see it? They don’t want to see it, that’s why. They call me crazy. They’re the crazy ones for choosing to ignore something so painfully obvious. They just want to keep their heads down and do the job. Not me. I want to—

“Hello?” Joel waved his hand in front of Cody’s face.

The rest of the world came rushing back. By the looks on the others’ faces, Cody must have been out of it for a while.

“What? What happened?” he asked.

“Nothing much,” Joel said. “We voted on more changes to the bylaws. We’ve decided that you are our new mascot. You must now wear the full mascot uniform of Dave the Dung Beetle whenever on company time. Which, since we live on the company ship, is all the time.”

Reggie swatted Joel away like he was a gnat. “If we had bylaws, I would write one outlawing the use of bylaws as stupid jokes. Bylaws are serious. They form the foundation of constructive organizations.”

“Boring,” Sam said, her deadpan stare chilling Reggie to the bone.

Reggie brushed the comment off. “Fine, moving on, then.” He looked at Cody. “I just got a call. We’ve got a new contract.”

Cody perked at the news, the feeling of defeat eating at his insides ebbing. “Oh? What are the details?”

Reggie raised a preemptive palm to Cody. “Don’t get all worked up about it. Don’t go looking for things that aren’t there. It’s just a job. For a client. I guess they can be considered regular clients now. They reached out to us because they trust us. Because we did such a good job last time. Hey, maybe we should look into some kind of customer loyalty program. You know, like, the third infestation is free?”

“Boring,” Sam said, her stare not warming at all. “Who’s the client?”

“Jasob.”

Cody shot up from his chair, spilling some of his oatmeal on the table. “It’s another attack from Layton. We’re doing a comprehensive investigation this time.”

Reggie stabbed a finger at Cody. “No, that’s exactly what I just said not to do. We don’t do investigations. We do eradications.”

“What about customer loyalty?” Cody said. “Don’t we owe it to our repeat customer to get to the bottom of their pest problems? Or to at least show them we care by trying? I think it would go a long way if they saw us trying to not only eliminate their current problem, but ensuring they don’t have future problems.”

The argument made sense. The kind of sense Reggie could get behind. And he was always on the lookout for win-win situations. “Okay, you can take a look around once we’re there. But only in the process of completing the job. No side trips. And the contract comes first.”

Cody shook Reggie’s hand. “Deal. Where are we headed?”

“I’ll fill everyone in on the details in the briefing room,” Reggie said. “I’m finishing my cereal first.”

* * *

Cody’s eyes burned. He’d been scanning through files on Jasob and Chrisoff and Layton for ten minutes without blinking. His body wouldn’t let him continue without taking a break. Tears blurred his vision. He rubbed them until the burning stopped and stars danced across the ceiling over his bed.

He knew as much about the companies as he was going to learn through online research. He needed to visit them in person. Talk to the staff, the decision-makers. Someone was pulling the strings behind these attacks. And something about them kept nagging at Cody. The motivation. They could be purely greed driven. Eliminating the competition would open up Layton to windfall profits. Stakeholders could become the richest people in the galaxy. But corporate espionage tended to be subtler. Movements from the shadows, stock manipulation, blackmail. These attacks were as blunt as possible. They were designed to be visible and destructive.

They felt personal.

Which meant a personal motivation. Something beyond money. Cody needed to find out what that motivation was if he was going to untangle this mess.

Sam poked her head into the room. “Reggie’s ready for his presentation.” She said it jokingly, poking fun at Reggie’s intense formality around the logistics and red tape of everything.

Cody sat up on his bed and scanned Sam’s face.

She began to squirm under his gaze, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the attention. “What?”

“Are you still with me? Do you still think there’s something to my conspiracy theory? That sounds bad. My theory about the conspiracy theory. You know what I mean.”

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s too much to be a coincidence. I’m with you on that. I guess I’m just not sure how much I really care.”

Cody swung his legs over the side of his bed. “How can you say that? You know these attacks are deliberate, but you don’t care?”

Sam’s shoulder crept closer to her ears. “It’s rich people attacking other rich people, so they can get richer. I guess I just don’t care how they scheme against each other as long as they pay us.”

Cody’s head hung low. “That’s pretty cynical.”

Sam’s shoulders couldn’t climb any higher. “Yeah. Sorry. You saw how Musgraves was on Malibu. She was ready to screw us because she was freaking out about how her rich friends were going to react. We’d just saved all their lives, and she was going to report us and probably ruin our business. A tiny, insignificant thing to her. But to us, everything. And she would have done it without blinking.” She disappeared into the hall. “I can’t be bothered to care about people like that.”

It stung to hear, but Cody understood. He hadn’t thought of it that way, to be honest. He hadn’t thought much of the people at all. He was fixated on the mystery. The reasons. And figuring them all out. He wanted to solve the puzzle.

* * *

Reggie paced in front of the monitor in the briefing room like a general laying out wartime strategy to his troops. He clicked a button on a small remote, and a picture of a long, bland building appeared on the screen. It looked to be two stories tall and probably occupied a square mile of space.

“This is the location of our next job. A Jasob district warehouse located on a backwater moon at the edge of the system. It doesn’t look like much. Because it isn’t, really. Just an off-site storage facility where they keep decommissioned equipment.”

“That’s it?” Joel said. “You couldn’t have just told us that on the way over there? We have to do a whole briefing thing?”

Reggie suddenly became a whacky game show host, pointing at Joel like he’d said the secret password that won everyone in the audience a free car. “No, that’s not it. Because that isn’t just your average warehouse full of old junk. It’s a secret, off the books, Jasob storage facility!”

Magic to Cody’s ears.

Sam shook her head. “Why are you so excited about that?”

“I don’t know,” Reggie said. “I was just feeling out the room. Everyone seemed kind of bummed. Thought I’d jazz things up a bit.”

Joel clapped Reggie on the shoulder. “Feel free to never jazz things up again. With our life the way it is, things are jazzed enough.” He left the briefing room to prep for the job.

Cody’s mind buzzed. Another attack on a Layton competitor. A secret storage facility. If he couldn’t find the proof the team needed on this job, he would never find it.

Reggie’s shoulders slumped.

Sam smiled at him. It was one of pity, but she did her best to appear uplifting. “I thought it was a great briefing.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so jazzed right now.”

The team gathered in the ready area.

Reggie pulled all of his gear out of his locker then lifted the lid on the long storage locker that lay flat on the floor. From there, he pulled out his gatling and the team’s melee weapons.

“We got caught a little by surprise with this last job.”

Joel scoffed.

Reggie continued as if he hadn’t heard. “With this job being more clandestine, feeling more high-stakes, I think we should pack the mobile footlocker and bring as much gear as we can. Everyone get suited up in body armor, and grab long and short-range weapons, including melee.”

Sam tested her retractable shield gauntlet. “Now I really am jazzed.”

Chapter Eleven

The approach to the job site was smooth. The moon was the only thing orbiting the uninhabited planet, so Ragnarok didn’t need to pass through any neighboring gravity wells. Once they entered the moon’s orbit, they were hailed.

“Approaching ship, identify yourself immediately, or you will be fired upon.”

Joel cocked an eyebrow. “Tight security for a storage house.”

Cody could hardly contain himself as he answered the call. “We are representatives of Intergalactic Pest Control aboard the ship Ragnarok. We have been contracted by Jasob.”

The line was silent a minute. The bridge filled with tension thick enough to spread on toast—which Cody would have loved to do, it was all so delicious. A secret base on a moon that orbited an uninhabited planet. Tight security.

This was the place where he’d break the case. He could taste it on the air.

“You are clear to approach,” the voice said. “Sending you the coordinates for the landing platform now.”

Cody brought the ship down closer to the surface of the moon. As they did, the scanners on the bridge went wild.

“What is that?” Reggie said.

Joel studied the blinking lights and readouts. “This moon is terraformed. It’s got a breathable atmosphere and controlled climate.”

Reggie scratched the back of his head. He looked at Cody, reluctantly feeling that he may be on to something. “Why would they terraform a moon around an empty planet just for a storehouse? They could have just dropped a prefab station.”

Cody tightened his grip around the controls as he readied the landing procedures. “We’re about to find out.”

Ragnarok touched down. Cody didn’t know what to expect from a top-secret storehouse, but he thought there would be a little more than what he got. No agents in black suits and sunglasses. No highly sophisticated androids patrolling the perimeter. It was just a warehouse. A very quiet warehouse.

There was no one on the landing platform to greet them.

A shudder ran up Joel’s spine. “I’m getting a horror movie vibe here. Anyone else?”

“Never seen one,” Sam said.

“You don’t like horror movies?” Joel said.

“I’ve never seen any movie.”

Joel shook his head. “No, now you’re just messing with me. Because that’s impossible.”

Sam smiled, leaving Joel to wonder whether she was serious or not.

Reggie shushed them. He was getting a call on his communicator. “Mr. Dewayne?”

“Yes, sorry I couldn’t be there to meet you in person,” the caller said. “But, well, frankly, I didn’t want to. I’m sure you’ll understand once you go inside. I am nearby. Contact me when the job is done.”

The line went dead.

Mr. Dewayne was the director of the site. Reggie had only spoken with him the one time earlier that day when he offered IPC the contract, but Reggie already had the sense that Dewayne was a stuffy suit. He spoke with a self-important inflection, like he knew he was the most important person in the room and confused by those who didn’t.

Reggie shrugged. “I guess that ends the orientation phase of the job.” He walked back up the ramp to the cargo bay of Ragnarok, then reappeared hauling the mobile footlocker. It was a hover unit, one of the pieces of equipment they’d acquired in the windfall that had allowed them to purchase the ship. The mobile locker allowed them to take practically their whole armory with them into the field—which Reggie fully intended to do on this job. Whether he liked it or not, Cody’s conspiracy theories were starting to look less crazy.

“We don’t know what we’re going to face in there,” he said. “Dewayne’s contract just says ‘infestation’—it doesn’t identify what the creature is that’s doing the infesting. But…” He looked down at the footlocker and pretended to fiddle with the hover controls. “There’s a chance it could be ShimVens or Rapoo. Or, you know, both…”

Validation shot through Cody, firing up his mind and muscles. “Ha! Starting to see reason, are you?”

Reggie immediately regretted saying anything. “I’m just being cautious.” He pulled the footlocker to the main entrance of the storehouse, an overhead door large enough for a truck to drive through.

Cody pulled up the floorplan to the building. “This door opens to a decontamination room. Pretty common for interplanetary shipping. It should be secure unless the critters are able to input six-digit security codes.”

“Dewayne provided all the access codes for the building in the contract,” Reggie said. “We’ll use the decontamination room as our forward operating base.” He opened the lid of the footlocker and handed each of the team their weapons, opting for his semiautomatic. “Just being cautious,” he repeated.

They lined up at the door, preparing to breach. They nodded to Reggie, signifying they were ready. He typed in the access code, and the door opened. Cody, Joel, and Reggie dropped to one knee and scanned the room as the door raised. Sam stooped and entered, her shield gauntlet activated.

The decontamination room was still intact. It was large enough for a truck to drive in and drop its cargo, sixty feet by sixty feet. Scanners lined the ceiling. Their job was to read cargo as it came in and conduct a detailed analysis of the contents before it was opened. On the walls hung long nozzles attached to longer hoses. Those were used to spray down the cargo with several different concoctions that killed bacteria, viruses, and microorganisms.

There was no cargo waiting to be scanned. That deflated Cody. If contaminated cargo was sent from Layton to sabotage the facility, it should have been detected here. He had a hard time understanding how cargo carrying Rapoo or ShimVens could have made it through this checkpoint.

Reggie pulled the footlocker inside. He pressed a blue button on the side, and the container began to transform. Legs dropped from the bottom, and the whole container set down on the floor. Panels on the top slid down the sides, opening up to reveal the contents.

The sight of it made Sam’s heart race. “Now this is something I can get behind. I can’t believe we have one of these and you’re still complaining about a pancake robot.”

Joel raised his eyebrows. “These two things are not comparable at all.” He stared at her a second. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had a pancake? No, never mind, I can’t trust a thing you say, anyway.” He took a collapsible spear and his sniper rifle from the locker.

Cody also took a spear. He slid it into the stretchy cord on the side of his pack meant to hold a water bottle and cinched the cord tight. He raised the storehouse plans as the others continued to get ready.

The storehouse consisted mostly of one large room. After exiting the decontamination room, they would be standing in a wide-open space nearly a square mile in size. A catwalk lined a quarter of the left side of the room. It was ten feet up, accessible by a staircase at the far end. On the catwalk were three rooms: the director’s office, a records room, and a security station.

The rest of the large, open space was a maze of shipping containers, each eight feet high and twenty feet long.

As much as Cody wanted to go straight for the records room and office, he knew that wasn’t the best approach. “Once we exit this room, Joel should take up a position on the catwalk. Visibility on this level is going to be poor, and he can provide overwatch support from up there.”

Joel patted Cody on the back. “I love when you call me overwatch.”

Cody shrugged Joel away. “I didn’t. And I never will.”

Sam pressed her forehead to the door of the decontamination room, the only thing separating them from the infestation, whatever it may be. It was clear plastic, but distorted her vision enough that she couldn’t see what was on the other side.

“Can’t you hack into the cameras or whatever?” she said to Cody. “Find out what’s waiting for us in there?”

He shook his head. “This place isn’t networked. It’s a closed system. Only way to hack in is manually, so I’d need to be in the security room.” The moment he said it, he realized that not only was it a good tactical move, but it put him exactly where he wanted to be. “Maybe I should do that?”

Sam looked at him like he was an idiot. “You think?”

Reggie attached his gatling to a new harness that Joel had fabricated for him. It allowed him to secure the beastly gun to a track system on his back. When he needed it, he pressed a button on his side and the gun slid along the track to where he could grab it and blast some unfortunate fool to smithereens. It made the gun more portable and allowed him more mobility while carrying it in the field.

He stood at the entrance, one hand on the door controls, the other holding his semiautomatic. “Ready to breach?”

The others nodded.

Reggie input the code Mr. Dewayne had given him, and the door slid open. They did their best impression of a Navy SEAL team as they walked through the door, weapons raised, methodically fanning out as they entered.

Sam peered over the edge of her shield, sword pointed forward, shoulder tensed and ready to swing. She stared forward, unblinking, but her eyes focused on nothing in particular. They took in as much information as they could, waiting for something to move, to spark a reaction.

But they saw nothing.

“Clear,” Reggie said.

The others echoed that.

There was open space for another twenty meters, until they reached the first line of shipping containers. Instead of venturing blindly into that maze, wandering around until he found the stairs up to the catwalk, Joel opted for a more direct approach.

“Give me a boost,” he said to Reggie.

Reggie dropped to one knee under the railing of the catwalk and cupped his hands. Sam stood next to him. Joel stepped on Reggie’s hands and held Sam’s shoulder for balance. Then, on the count of three, Reggie boosted him up.

Joel grabbed the edge of the catwalk and, with more effort than he would have liked, pulled himself up. He slid on his belly under the bottom rung of the railing and popped up onto his feet, drawing his blasters. He looked down the long catwalk, making sure he was alone. Then he looked out over the huge room.

His heart tightened in his chest. He saw movement in the shadows between shipping containers. The darkness was alive, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it tried to eat them all.

He laid on his belly and lowered his arm to Cody. “You’d better get up here and do whatever you’re going to do. I don’t think we’ve got long before shit gets real.”

Cody jumped and grabbed Joel’s arm. Joel pulled him up, and Cody made straight for the security room, scatterblaster ready to meet any resistance. The door to the room was ajar, giving him pause. He waved Joel over.

Joel nudged the door open as Cody tightened his grip on his blaster. As soon as the door was open enough, a Rapoo leapt out. Its teeth sparkled in the fluorescent light cast by the bulbs overhead. Cody fired when the Rapoo’s open mouth was just inches from the barrel of his gun. The back of the creature’s head exploded.

“We’ve got Rapoo,” Cody said through comms.

They performed a quick scan of the room. Once they knew it was clear, Joel ran back out. “Whatever else is in the storehouse knows we’re here now. Get jacked in quick and meet me on the catwalk,” he told Cody.

Cody grunted his acknowledgment as he pulled the wire from the port on his wristcom and plugged it into the security terminal.

Joel set the barrel of his sniper rifle on the top railing. He looked through the scope and spotted a small pack of Rapoo running the gauntlet of shipping containers toward Reggie and Sam. “Pack of Rapoo coming your way,” he warned them.

He shot the lead Rapoo in the neck. If he was firing normal rounds, the shot would have damaged the creature, but not killed it. But he was using his Rapoo teeth-infused rounds. The shot punched a fist-sized hole straight through the Rapoo. Using the bastards’ own body parts to kill them was a sweet bit of irony that Joel could chew on all day.

He peppered the pack with blaster fire, killing two more before they reached the end of the maze. Sam pressed her back to the shipping container at the mouth of the maze with her shield and sword at the ready. Reggie opened fire on the pack as they appeared, his shots not killing them but causing enough damage that they dropped into bloody heaps. When he stopped shooting, Sam moved in and finished them off.

“Clear,” Joel said. “Nothing else on the move. Yet.”

He kept his eyes on the shadows. He felt a tingling on the back of his neck, that feeling you get when you think someone is watching you. He looked up and was happy to see nothing. There were no rafters or ventilation shafts, no hidey-holes for the creepy crawlies to scuttle around in. This would be a straight-out fight. No crawling through the sewers. Nothing jumping out of the walls.

Cody cloned the security interface to his wristcom. He struggled to stay focused on the job, to not allow the desire to scan through every document for proof of Layton’s culpability to overcome him.

The storehouse was outfitted throughout with infrared scanners that would perform routine checks of cargo. Cody took control of them and turned into his own personal pest hunter.

“I’ve got eyes,” he told the team as he stepped onto the catwalk.

He recognized the glowing orange and red shapes scattered through the storehouse. Rapoo and ShimVens. Both of their worst enemies in one spot. They didn’t seem interested in attacking each other, as they had in the amusement park. Such a drastic difference in temperament and instinct didn’t make any sense. Then Cody remembered that the creatures were genetically modified. He remembered the stark difference between the generations of ShimVens they had encountered in their first few jobs.

He wondered if whoever was responsible for the attacks had monitored IPC jobs. Maybe the culprit saw firsthand how Cody was able to turn the ShimVens and Rapoo against each other, then modified the creatures not to view the other as an enemy.

Another glowing shape on the scanner brought Cody out of the realm of speculation and back to the dingy storehouse. This was a shape he didn’t recognize. There were only a few scattered throughout the entirety of the storehouse, long, snake-like forms that flopped about like fish on dry land.

“I’ve got Rapoo, ShimVens and an unknown,” Cody said.

“How should we proceed?” Reggie said.

Cody looked at the infrared scans then out over the storehouse. From his elevated position, he could clearly see the maze created by the shipping containers. A lot of blind corners and opportunities to get surprised by beasties. But it could also be used to their advantage.

Cody planted his foot on the middle rung of the catwalk railing and swung his other leg over the top. With a steady breath in, he jumped onto the top of the nearest shipping container. It rang with a hollow sound. He walked to the edge and peered down into the maze.

“Join me up top, Reggie,” Cody said.

Sam boosted Reggie up. He struggled to pull himself up, with the added weight of his gatling. He was still breathing heavy by the time Cody hopped across the two shipping containers between them.

“I think Reggie and I walk along the top and pick off the critters. Sam trails us from down there, finishing them off with her sword. Joel watches our backs. If any of the Rapoo or ShimVens get past us and on top of the containers, he takes them out.”

Reggie nodded. “Sounds like a solid plan.”

The others agreed.

Cody hopped across a few more containers until he was on the opposite side of the path as Reggie. They walked slowly, following the path like it was a river leading them home. Cody kept one eye on the scanner and the other on the area below.

“Coming up on a pack of Rapoo,” Cody whispered.

“How many?” Sam asked.

“Three.”

“Let me.”

She walked to the corner of the shipping container. The Rapoo were huddled together just around the turn. She moved like a ghost, her feet not making a sound as they touched down. She pressed her back to the corner and looked up at Cody.

He nodded.

She led with her shield. The Rapoo had no time to react. She stabbed the first through the chest. He shrieked as she withdrew the blade and then it fell dead. The other two scrambled as if they had just been woken from a deep sleep. They tripped over the dead one.

Sam drove the blade down through the second one’s back. She felt its spine snap as she severed it. The final Rapoo ran straight into the wall in its frantic fit. Dazed, it offered no resistance as Sam swung, slicing off its head.

Four seconds and three dead Rapoo.

Though pleased, something about the encounter did not sit well with Sam. “That seemed too easy.”

“Let’s not,” Joel said, still perched on the catwalk. “Them dying easy is something to celebrate, not a cause for alarm.”

“No, she’s got a point,” Cody said. “Past encounters with the Rapoo have shown they are vicious to the point of seeming rabid. Even after I fired that shot, those three stayed huddled together. Almost like…” A cold shiver ran up his spine. “Like they were afraid.”

Joel’s sigh tickled the team’s ears. “Fuck.”

Reggie slid the gatling off his back. “No reason to panic. Let’s just keep pressing forward.”

Reggie, Sam, and Cody moved further through the maze. Sam handled the pests quietly when she could, not out of a need for stealth, but because she didn’t want to stand by and watch. If anything, the quiet only made the storehouse more unsettling.

A specter seemed to be stalking about in the shadows now. A creature fearsome enough to leave Rapoo shivering in the corner. When the gatling was rattling off, all thought of ghosts faded away among the noise.

They’d cleared half of the maze before encountering any real resistance. They ventured to the left, toward what they knew was a dead end. The heat signature was such a cluster that Cody couldn’t decipher how many individual creatures there were.

The team was so far into the maze now that Joel had to move to the far end of the catwalk to provide cover. He’d be able to see just far enough to get them through the other side.

Reggie and Cody approached the dead end together. As they got close, they dropped to their bellies and slid to the edge, hoping to get a peek at what was waiting for them before having to fight whatever it was.

What they witnessed defied everything Cody thought he knew about the creatures. Huddled together were a dozen critters, both Rapoo and ShimVens. Not only were they not fighting, but they also looked to be using each other for warmth.

“That sounds both oddly cute and horrifying at the same time,” Joel said as Cody described the scene.

“This is definitely a new generation,” Cody said. “They’ve been modified quite a bit.”

Sam whispered over comms. “Hey, I think I found one of those unknowns.”

She stood ten meters away from the huddled mass of Rapoo and ShimVens. A wriggling thing was on the ground in front of her. She bent over to get a closer look. It looked somewhat like a giant slug and flopped about like a fish out of water, but it didn’t seem to be in distress.

Gingerly, she poked the creature. The slick sound made her stomach turn. She poked it again, harder this time, to see how it would react. It emitted a quiet whine, like a baby pig. Her attention on the new creature, Sam didn’t notice the mass of Rapoo and ShimVens begin to move.

“Doesn’t seem to be much to the thing,” Sam said.

She nudged it again, even harder. The thing whined louder, sounding more distraught.

The Rapoo and ShimVens stirred.

Cody was the first to notice the connection, though too late.

Sam raised her sword. “I’m killing it. We can figure out what it is later.”

The huddled pack of Rapoo and ShimVens exploded like a landmine had just been stepped on. The creatures were frenzied. Half of them ran straight for Sam. The others were so rabid that they ran into the side of the shipping containers. However, once they’d regained their senses, they began to clamber up the sides.

Sam barely got her shield up in time. The Rapoo slammed into it. Shockwaves of pain lanced through her arm. She dropped to one knee, lowering her center of gravity, and sent the Rapoo flying over her head. Which she immediately regretted—she was now pinned between that beast and the rest.

Reggie opened fire on the rabid pack. They scattered so fast, his tight burst of gatling fire proved useless. The dead-end stretch of the maze was a shooting gallery, but, unfortunately, Sam was caught inside. He slid the gatling to his back.

Cody pumped scatterblast after scatterblast at the creatures, not killing them and barely keeping them from climbing out of the maze. One of the ShimVens slipped through the attack and charged Cody’s flank. Its head popped. Cody never heard the shot.

“One ShimPoo down,” Joel said in his ear.

“ShimPoo?” Cody said.

“Just saving time.” Another ShimVen exploded as a sniper shot tore through its side. “I like to be efficient.”

Reggie stood at the edge of the container. He pounded his gloves together. “Hold your fire.”

When the shooting stopped, the ShimVens and Rapoo pulled back together, amassing their strength. Reggie jumped. He raised both hands over his head, clenching them together in one powerful fist, and drove it down into the floor as he landed. The shockwave slammed the creatures into the containers so hard, they rocked under Cody’s feet.

Sam braced with her shield. The shockwave hit it and knocked her off her feet. She rolled backward and used her momentum to get upright. Then she lunged at the Rapoo behind her, slicing open its midsection.

Reggie followed up his powerful strike with a flurry of punches. He turned two ShimVens into paste by punching one into the other and sandwiching them against the shipping container. Intent on keeping the advantage, he swung at them as fast as he could, not allowing any of the creatures to recuperate.

Sam joined Reggie, and, within half a minute, they had dispatched the frenzied pack.

Joel leapt over the catwalk railing onto the top of the closest container and ran to join them. Cody scanned the area, making sure there wasn’t another attack incoming.

Sam kicked the bodies aside, looking underneath them. “It has to be here somewhere. That slug-looking thing.”

Once Joel arrived, Cody tasked him with keeping watch up top, and then jumped down into the maze. He walked past Sam. “You saw it over here?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Couldn’t have gone far. The thing didn’t look very mobile.”

“You didn’t kill it?” Cody said.

“No, didn’t get the chance. As soon as I raised my sword to it, the others lost their shit.”

As Cody thought, a hypothesis began to coalesce in his mind, but he needed more data before it could fully form. He studied the infrared scans again. He spotted several more ShimPoo clusters, but it was what he didn’t see that concerned him.

“All of the shipping containers are reading cold,” he reported.

“Shouldn’t they be?” Joel said. “They take the cargo out of the containers. That’s the point.”

“Not at a storehouse,” Cody said. “The point is to keep the cargo in the containers. The Rapoo and ShimVens—”

“ShimPoo,” Joel said.

“I’m not saying that,” Cody said. “They got out of their containers somehow. The only way they could have is if they were let out. And they’re only out here in the main area of the storehouse… The decontamination room is clear.” He paced the room, head low, scratching at the back of his neck.

After a minute of silence, Reggie said, “What are you thinking?”

Cody continued pacing. “The containers came in, then were scanned, found to be clear, and moved into this storage area. The crew must have opened some to check their contents. Once it was apparent the storehouse was infested, they evacuated and locked the place down.” He stopped pacing. “The shipping containers are shielded.”

Cody stepped over the mess of dead creatures to get to what they thought was a dead end. Using the light of his wristcom, he saw that the shipping container that formed the end of the alley was open, though only a crack. He yanked on the door, which opened with a squeal.

“Reggie’s shockwave must have shut the door a little,” he mused. “Those Rapoo and ShimVens came out of here.” The prevalence of shit in the container made that fact clear. Cody moved through the container, examining the crates inside. “Layton Corp crates.”

Fire blazed in his chest, further validation that his theory was not crazy. The Layton crates had been, unsurprisingly, broken from the inside, as evidenced by claw marks and splinters of wood lying outside them.

They were all empty. Except for the one in the back.

“Sam,” Cody called. “Come here for a sec?”

She trudged through the ShimPoo paste to the back of the shipping container.

Cody pointed inside the smaller crate. “Is that the slug-looking thing you saw?”

The bottom of the crate seemed to move in the dark, like a pulsating, living thing. Cody illuminated it with his wristcom. The bottom was covered with dozens of the slugs. They flopped like suffocating fish, making wet, slapping sounds.

Sam nodded. “That’s it. What the hell is it?”

Cody shrugged. “No idea. I’ll see what I can dig up. At first glance, they kind of resemble angelfish. But, obviously, they aren’t. They can’t live outside of water.” Before leaving the container, he scanned the walls and ceiling, gathering data on the shielding material. The team gathered around. “Something is very weird here.”

“Statement of the obvious,” Joel said. “But do continue.”

“First, the containers are shielded,” Cody said. “We didn’t encounter that at any of the other infestation sights. Meaning whoever sent the infested crates here knew they would scan them. And this is supposedly a secret facility.” He let that sink in.

“Second, the bizarre behavior from the ShimVens and Rapoo.”

“Shimpoo. They went bat-shit crazy,” Joel said. “Seems perfectly normal to me.”

“Only when Sam tried to kill that slug thing. Before that, they were sleeping on top of each other like a pile of puppies.”

“Don’t ruin puppies for me,” Joel said.

Cody leaned against a shipping container and brought up the display of his wristcom. “When the slug got agitated, the ShimVens and Rapoo got agitated. When the slug’s life was threatened, they went berserk.”

Reggie had climbed back on top of the shipping container with Joel’s help. He sat with his legs hanging over the side and was wiping the blood off his gloves. “Wait, you mean they were protecting the slug things?”

“I think so,” Cody said. “I think this batch of ShimVens and Rapoo were genetically modified to act as guardians for the slug things. You know, like how farmers will put a llama in the pen with the sheep?”

Joel shrugged. “No, I don’t know that. Why do you say that like it’s common knowledge?”

Cody typed into a search window on his wristcom display. “The llama is a fierce protector of its young. If one is in with a flock of sheep, it protects them from predators.”

Reggie finally saw the fabric of his gloves beneath the thick coat of blood. “So these ShimPoo are llamas.”

Cody sighed.

Joel smiled. “It’s catching on.”

“But why are they protecting the slugs?” Sam said. “If the point is to destroy the facility, then why have the ShimPoo act as babysitters to some snot balls that just flop around?”

Cody considered the question as he paced the length of the dead-end corridor. Why waste resources? Why smuggle in the ShimVens and Rapoo just to have them sleep at the bedside of these useless creatures? Unless they aren’t useless.

They must have served a purpose. All of the attacks so far were deliberate and precise. And, most of all, effective. The Notches eventually eliminated the infestations, but not before the targeted facilities were crippled. Whoever the mastermind behind them was, he or she would not act without purpose.

Before he could venture any further down his hypothetical road, something decided to join him on his walk. Out of the shipping container slithered a handful of the slug-like creatures. They moved faster than he would have thought, sliding across the ground more like snakes than slugs. They were more agile than he’d assumed. A few more slithered out after them, and soon, there were a dozen.

“This is why the ShimVens and Rapoo were sent to guard them,” Cody said. “To keep them safe until they matured. They aren’t done growing yet.”

The slug in the front stopped a few meters from Cody. It sat up like an inchworm, balancing unsteadily on its backside. The front of it, what must be its face, pulled in opposite directions until it began to open up. It split, creating a mouth. The creature squeaked. It sounded like a mouse, an adorable little sound.

Then Cody saw its teeth.

Chapter Twelve

The creatures morphed from harmless little blobs into vicious snakes in half a heartbeat. They stopped flopping about like air-starved fish and began slithering on their bellies. Their heads, which looked like nothing more than slimy thumbs with a light, suddenly opened up into mouths full of needle-like teeth. What had been a negligible presence moments before now became the Notches’ greatest threat.

“Move!” Cody yelled.

The little slug in front of him had drawn the team’s attention, but there was a crate of the creatures in the container behind Sam.

She rolled forward over one shoulder so that when she came back to her feet, she was facing the container, her shield raised just in time to block two of the creatures that shot at her like slimy missiles. They hit the shield with a splat then fell to the floor and wriggled until they turned onto their bellies.

They were surprising and clearly dangerous, but they sliced in half just fine. Sam dispatched the two without much problem.

Reggie jumped down to join her. He drove his fist down into one, but the creature was so slimy and squishy that it shot out from under his knuckles. He tried again with the same result.

Joel couldn’t get a clean shot at the things. They were too small and squirmed too much. He was more likely to hit the other Notches if he started shooting, so he pulled out his dagger and jumped into the fray. He pinned one down, but he knew that the second he withdrew his dagger from it and the floor, the slug would slither away.

He stomped on it instead. However, the amount of effort it took to stomp the thing to death left him nearly exhausted. It was like trying to pop a half-empty water balloon with your foot.

Cody followed Joel’s lead, opting for his dagger instead of the scatterblaster. The whole affair looked like a demented square dance. The Notches jumped up and down, flailing their arms and stomping their feet, quickly becoming drenched in sweat.

Joel caught one just right, his heel coming down on the slug at such an angle that it shot out from under him straight into Reggie’s face, and Joel landed flat on his back. The wet slap as it struck Reggie made Joel crack into laughter, but the impact of his fall had forced the air out of his lungs, and the intense laughter almost made him pass out.

Maybe it was the lack of oxygen that brought Joel some clarity.

“Fire,” he said with a wheeze.

That was all it took. Reggie knew what to do. He peeled the slug off his face and slapped it against the shipping container. He grabbed Joel by the forearm and dragged him past Sam and Cody. As he slid across the floor, Joel plucked a flame grenade off his belt and threw it at the mass of wriggling slugs.

It popped with a flash, and the dead-end filled with flames. When the flames died down, half of the slugs were dead. The other half were only half dead. They wriggled pathetically, trying to crawl back into the container. The heat had dried them out, though. They’d lost their elasticity. So when Reggie drove his fist down into one, it burst and left a smear on the concrete floor.

Cody and Sam joined in stomping the rest to mush.

With the area clear, the Notches sat and took the chance to rest and consider the data they’d just gathered.

“So, we know why the ShimPoo were turned into llamas,” Joel said. He rubbed his eyes. “That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever said.”

He may have been physically exhausted, but Cody’s mind raced with the implications of everything that had just happened. “They were protecting the slugs until they matured. If Layton is willing to go through the effort of genetically modifying the ShimVens and Rapoo, and then just dispatch them as guard dogs, that means these slug things are even more dangerous.”

He returned to his wristcom to see what other information he could dig up.

“At least we know how to kill them now,” Reggie said. “We just need to cook them a little bit.”

“But can we find them before they fully turn into whatever they’re supposed to be?”

Cody didn’t realize Sam’s question was directed at him. The silence eventually informed him of such.

“What? Oh, yeah, we can. I scanned the material lining the shipping crate. I can adjust the storehouse’s sensors to detect which containers are lined with it, which should point us to the ones holding the slugs.”

The others seemed to accept that as the next step. Well, the next step after they rested.

Silence fell over them. Sam kept a keen ear. Knowing that there were ShimVens, Rapoo and these new things in the room, waiting, growing into more efficient and ruthless killing machines, did not sit well with her.

But the only thing she heard was the rhythmic tapping of Cody’s fingers on the keys of his wristcom.

After a minute of that, Cody said, “Lophius.”

“Excuse you,” Joel said.

“That’s what these new slug things are called,” Cody said. “Lophius. They’re mentioned in a really obscure journal about genetic engineering. They’re created by manipulating the DNA of angelfish. At least, that was the plan. The paper was just talking in hypotheticals at that point.”

Reggie groaned as he stood. “We’ve got a name, a way to find them, and a way to kill them. That’s more than we usually have.”

“I suppose this is the part where we finish the job?” Joel said.

Reggie nodded as he adjusted the straps on his gloves. “How long until you can start scanning for the shielded containers?”

Cody didn’t look up. A rush of heat hit his cheeks. He hadn’t even started making the adjustments—he was too busy researching the Lophius. He’d gotten sidetracked.

He minimized the research paper and raised the cloned security system.

“Two minutes.”

Chapter Thirteen

Five minutes later…

Joel was on his back again, feeling the full force of a Lophius slap to the face. They’d busted into the next shielded shipping container, just a few rows over, after dispatching the Rapoo and ShimVen watchdogs.

They went in like newbies, thinking that because they’d killed a few and had a little more info, it would be easy. Reggie popped the door and Joel tossed in a grenade. Unfortunately, all the grenade did was break open the crate housing the Lophius. Its flames didn’t reach the creatures, only set them free.

So when the Notches opened the container again, expecting to see it full of dead slugs, they were instead attacked by very alive and very angry Lophius. Joel didn’t see the creature that bit him, but he felt the pain that shot from his knee up his spine. When he looked down, a wriggling Lophius was still attached to his leg, its teeth dug in deep. With his eyes focused downward, he didn’t see the second Lophius rocketing straight at his face.

It smacked into him with the same wet slapping sound that had made him crack up earlier. It wasn’t so funny anymore. The force and surprise knocked him backward. He couldn’t tell if he’d lost consciousness when he slammed into the floor, or if he just couldn’t see through the slippery mass of Lophius.

Reggie snatched the Lophius off Joel’s face and slapped it to the ground. Just then, something occurred to him. Fire cooks the Lophius, making them more solid and susceptible to physical attack. He didn’t have any fire, but he did have electricity. If he couldn’t roast them, he’d give them a shock and see if that had any effect.

Reggie tweaked the settings on his gloves, tuning them down to a focused release of energy. He tapped his knuckles to the Lophius. The energy buzzed out of his gloves and ran through the squishy creature. The Lophius shrieked. Its gelatinous body twitched and hardened. Reggie punched it again, and the Lophius popped.

With his new tactic, Reggie was able to dispatch most of the Lophius with ease. Now, with some solid tactics and a further understanding of the Lophius, the Notches moved through the storehouse, eradicating the infestation.

Six shipping containers filled with ShimVens, Rapoo, and Lophius had been sent to the storehouse. The Notches had been notified and were able to eliminate the Lophius before they’d fully evolved into whatever horrid creature they were meant to be. The team pushed the thought of facing an even more dangerous pest out of their heads.

For now, they were victorious. Another job completed.

And, for Cody, the opportunity to go through the storehouse security system and shipping manifests for more proof was cause to celebrate. He needed to know if this was a targeted attack and get closer to determining the identity of the person behind it.

The team cleaned up the site and loaded the gear onto the ship as Cody downloaded the data from the security system. He was glad he’d decided to download it now and read it later. It might have been awkward to have still been scanning through sensitive Jasob information when the site director arrived unexpectedly.

He didn’t look like the sort of person who was entertained by intruders or rule-breakers or…well, he didn’t seem like the sort of person who was entertained by much at all. He wore a permanent scowl that was partially obscured by his bushy mustache. His black, pinstriped suit clung to his large body in a way that caused Cody to doubt that the man could move in it. Somehow, though, the director managed.

His ship landed less than an hour after Reggie contacted him to say the storehouse was clear. Cody thought he had way more time. The download was only partially complete. He muted his wristcom, fearful the lights and sounds would attract Director Dewayne’s attention.

Reggie called them all together to greet Dewayne as the stuffy man disembarked from his ship.

Dewayne stood at the bottom of his ship’s ramp, his hands folded behind him. His head swept from side to side, scanning the area with a look of surprised approval.

“Well done,” he commended.

“Wasn’t easy,” Joel said, his brusque tone drawing a sharp look from Reggie.

“But we met the challenge with patented IPC gusto and determination,” Reggie said, hoping to smooth Joel’s effect.

But neither Joel nor Reggie seemed to have much effect on Dewayne at all. The director walked past them with a steady gait, marching straight for Cody. He stopped and clicked his heels together, standing like he was a military officer and Cody was his recruit.

“Someone has accessed privileged Jasob files.” Dewayne looked down at Cody without lowering his head.

His eyes were dark, and they cast that darkness over Cody like they had the power to produce storm clouds. After swallowing Cody in darkness, his eyes wandered down to the wristcom. Then they drifted back to Cody’s face.

Cody squirmed under the weight of Dewayne’s glare. “Yeah, so, funny story. I…it was an accident?”

A low grumble built in Dewayne’s chest. “I don’t appreciate being lied to.”

Cody winced, expecting the man to wrap his meaty hands around his head and squeeze until it popped like a grape.

But Dewayne’s stormy stare broke. “Fortunately, I had planned on sharing that information with you anyway.”

Cody’s mouth fell open. He didn’t speak, waiting for Dewayne to start making sense and tell him that he was going to spend the next five years in prison for corporate espionage.

When that didn’t happen, Cody finally said, “What?”

“I researched you a great deal before hiring you for this job,” Dewayne said. “After your work on Jasob’s station, I dug extensively into your company’s work history, which is limited. But the few jobs you have taken are of great interest to me. They seem to exhibit certain similarities.”

The trepidation in Cody’s muscles eased and seeped out of his body. He sensed that he and Dewayne shared a belief about those certain similarities.

“Layton?” he guessed.

Dewayne nodded. He almost smiled, but Cody got the impression that Dewayne rarely smiled.

“Let’s talk inside.” Dewayne walked past the Notches, into the storehouse.

The team exchanged looks, all of them seeming unsure. Cody, though, looked excited.

The director’s office, though attached with a lofty title, was little more than utilitarian. A simple wooden desk sat at the far end of the room, facing in. There were two black, cloth-covered chairs in front of the desk. A small, round table sat between the chairs and held a lamp that could have come from any department store.

Dewayne gestured for them to sit. Cody did so without hesitation. The others looked at each other, silently deciding amongst themselves who got the chair. Reggie won. He wasn’t going to allow Joel to take the lead. Sam leaned against the back wall.

Dewayne leaned back in his chair, the springs of it squealing under his weight. He folded his hands across his belly. “So, tell me what you know.”

Reggie squirmed. “Well, not much, really. Just ideas and theories and, quite frankly—”

“Layton is targeting Jasob,” Cody said. “And other major competitors.”

Dewayne nodded and let out a deep sigh. “That’s what I thought. In researching your past jobs, I noticed a pattern. The infestations. And Layton had yet to experience one. Though, it’s just a working theory.”

“That’s all we have, too,” Sam said. “Cody’s put together a pretty solid picture, but we haven’t been able to locate any concrete proof.”

Sam’s acknowledgment that he’d been the one to recognize the pattern and develop a theory made Cody blush. “I know that Layton cargo has been present at every one of the infestation sites. All of the sites have been Layton competitors. And the creatures at each site had been created with some very sophisticated genetic engineering. Someone with a lot of resources had to have been behind it. And there’s something else to it. Something I can’t quite explain. A feeling, really, that this is all personal.”

Dewayne leaned further back in his chair and drummed on his belly with his fingers. He seemed to be adding all that data to his own database and recalculating his working theory.

“Anything you can add?” Sam said.

Dewayne looked off into the distance, his dark eyes growing even darker. “After what happened to our space station, Jasob was on the brink of total collapse. This storehouse is our last asset. All our high-value inventory is kept here, as well as proprietary technology that has yet to hit the market. Items that could put us back on the map. Being so crucial to Jasob’s survival, the location of this storehouse has been kept strictly confidential. Staff sign nondisclosure agreements and are subjected to the most intense scrutiny before they are allowed to work here. Some of Jasob’s top executives don’t even know where this site is. Current staff communications are monitored to ensure the location is not leaked.”

“Current staff,” Sam said. “What about former staff?”

That triggered something in Dewayne’s memory. A shortlist of names ran through his head. Cody watched as he ticked through them, and as one set off an alarm.

“There may be one,” Dewayne said. “One of Jasob’s founders. A brilliant chemist and geneticist. This company would not be what it is without her. But there was a falling out between her and her partner. I don’t know the details. Company mythology. But, as the story goes, it was ugly. She’s now the CEO and head scientist at Layton. Her name is Dr. Suzz.”

Cody's eyes widened. “Dr. Elizabeth Suzz? She’s the author of the research paper I found on the Lophius. She has to be the person.”

Dewayne shook his head. “I don’t know. I knew Dr. Suzz. Not as well as some, mind you, but well enough. She doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who could do something like this.”

“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck,” Joel said. “It may be an evil scientist trying to bury you under a mountain of genetically modified monsters.”

Dewayne wasn’t amused. “All the circumstantial evidence in the galaxy will never convince me that Dr. Suzz is behind this, but if you can find solid evidence, I will concede the fact.”

Sam pushed herself off the back wall and walked to Dewayne’s desk. “You seem to have some idea of how we might do that.”

Dewayne shifted uneasily in his chair, its springs protesting underneath him. “I might know a place to start. There’s a pharmaceutical conference this weekend. It’s the biggest of the year, one of the most important industry events. All the big companies will be there. If this is about removing the competition, then I can’t think of a better time to do it. All of Layton’s competition will be there. And if this is about revenge, well, the same goes.”

“You want us to go to a pharmaceutical conference?” Joel said. “Snore. And we’re exterminators. What possible reason would we have to attend a pharmaceutical conference?”

“You wouldn’t attend as exterminators,” Dewayne said. “You’d attend as Jasob employees. Something low-level, a position that wouldn’t draw any attention.”

“Like an intern?” Cody’s voice was heavy with gloating.

“Exactly,” Dewayne said. “Interns attend these things all the time, and no one gives them a second look. You’d blend in with the crowd. You’d be on hand in case something happens, and you’d be able to gather information while there. Maybe learn something that could end all this.”

Reggie waved his hand. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Mr. Dewayne, but we’re exterminators. This sounds like a job for private security or the police or something. Not us.”

Cody deflated. He felt the opportunity to dig into this conspiracy slipping away.

“You’re perfect for this,” Dewayne said. “Alerting the authorities will tip our hand. The perpetrator will know that we’re onto them. With you, we have the element of surprise.

And you are already apprised of the situation. You’ve seen the infestations firsthand.” He looked at Cody. “You have a sense of the problem, of the kind of person who is behind it. I can think of no better people for this.”

Joel puffed out his chest, it inflating along with his head. “Well, when you put it like that. We are pretty amazing.”

“Makes sense to me,” Sam said.

Reggie sank in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How would we even bill for something like this?”

Dewayne sat forward, digging his elbows into his desk. “Handsomely.”

Cody looked like a child who had just been told he was going to Disneyland. He spun in his chair, eyes, and mouth wide with disbelief, looking at each of the team for confirmation. “Are we really doing this?”

Reggie rose from his chair, doubting. He paced the room, deep in debate with himself. He’d never set out to take on vast corporate conspiracies. He’d never wanted to go undercover and expose villainous masterminds. He just wanted to build something that was his own, a life that he could live on his terms. This was not that.

But he couldn’t ignore it. The person responsible for these infestations had caused death and untold destruction. And there was no sign that it would stop. If he had the ability to help stop it, then he had the obligation to do so.

“What do we wear to a pharmaceutical conference?”

Chapter Fourteen

The team had suffered through a lot since starting this job. Constant threat of death. Always being covered in guts of one kind or another. But this was the next level.

Cody tugged at his collar, fighting it like it was trying to strangle him. “How do people wear these things? This tie is cutting off my oxygen. I feel lightheaded.”

Millie slapped him playfully on the back of the head. “Stop fussing. You boys look great.”

“Don’t I know it.” Joel adjusted his tie as he admired himself in the mirror. “I haven’t worn a suit since prom. I can’t believe I’ve been depriving the galaxy of this for so long.”

Millie slapped Joel less playfully.

Reggie fumbled with his cufflinks. “Isn’t this a little overkill? I mean, this is a conference, not one of your galas. And we’re just supposed to be interns.”

Millie swatted Reggie’s hand away and affixed his cufflinks. “You cannot overdress for such an occasion. CEOs. Executives. Board of Directors. The richest and most powerful people in the system will be in attendance. You cannot walk in looking like…well, you. You are interns aspiring to join the ranks of elite companies.” She brushed Reggie’s shoulders off and smiled at him in the mirror. “If I know anything, it’s that you must dress the part.”

“Thanks for doing this, Millie,” Reggie said. “This stuff must cost a fortune.”

“A pittance compared to how much you saved me when you saved Malibu.” Millie stepped back and waved her arms, looking like she was a farmer walking behind a flock of chickens, herding them into their coop. She lined the guys up to get a good look at them. She looked like a proud mom about to send her boys off on their first boy/girl dance. “Well, aren’t y’all something?”

Cody couldn’t stop pulling at his collar. He wore a straightforward navy-blue suit with a white shirt and black tie.

Reggie looked equally as uncomfortable. He stood straight as a pole in his brown suit, unsure what to do with his hands. He fingered the end of his jacket, wanting to move it so he could shove his hands in his pockets, but stuck with the feeling that he should leave it be.

Joel felt like James Bond. He swept one side of his black suit jacket back and showed off his slick leather belt. He shot Millie with his finger-gun, even daring to wink. “Hello there. Name’s Eric. Eric von Titmouse. Billionaire CEO and all-around marvelous person. Would you like to see my chalet?”

“Do you even know what a chalet is?” Cody said.

Joel shrugged. “Some kind of cup or something? Doesn’t matter. I look fantastic.” He straightened his coat. “Now, what will Peppy be wearing?”

Millie stared at him with a blank face. “What is a Peppy?”

“My dog. The one who saved this station? He was pretty covered in rat blood the last time you saw him, but he cleans up nice.”

Millie shook her head. “I do not dress up dogs.”

Joel looked to Cody and Reggie for support. Cody was too distracted fighting off his necktie. Reggie shrugged, not wanting to get involved.

“Oh, come on,” Joel said. “Peppy is part of the team. If we go on a job, he comes with us. We would have been totally fucked before if not for him.”

Reggie winced at the profanity.

“You know I’m right,” Joel said to Reggie. He knew he needed Reggie on board if this was going to happen. Millie seemed to like him and his polite way. She didn’t like Joel at all.

Reggie’s chin dug into his chest. He didn’t want to wear a suit. He didn’t want to go undercover and pretend to be someone else. Now he needed to convince someone to dress the dog up so he could come too?

He looked at Millie with puppy dog eyes. “Is there anything you can do?”

She tried to remain stone-faced, but after a second of Reggie’s sappy face, she cracked. “I’ll see what I can do. Fetch the beast.”

Joel ran off like an excited child.

“While he’s off doing that,” Millie said. “I’ll check on the other member of your troupe.”

* * *

Sam had paced a rut in the floor of the dressing room. Her neck was beginning to ache. She forced her head forward, straining the muscles, intent on looking down and not catching a glance of the person pacing step in step beside her.

Looking down only forced her to look at the pants she was wearing. And the shoes. So impractical. Why? Why would anyone choose to wear these unless they were going undercover and needed to adopt the identity of someone too stupid to know better? The pants…weren’t that bad. They were surprisingly comfortable. Snug, yet flexible. And the color always made sense – black. Able to blend into the shadows if needed.

The further up her eyes crawled on that person in the mirror, the less things made sense. A suit jacket? Limited mobility. She couldn’t raise her arms over her head without the thing riding up and exposing her midsection. How was she supposed to swing a sword?

Her eyes climbed higher. There was no strap across her chest holding her sword on her back. No shield gauntlet on her forearm. No holster for blasters. And then her face. Her face made the least sense of all.

Her mask was gone. She was totally exposed. The smooth skin of her face there for all to see. The small scar on her chin, a paragraph in her history that few had ever read. Even she rarely saw her own face. But this was strategic. She repeated that herself. A strategic move.

You can’t blend into the crowd with that thing on your face.

The irony made her mouth twitch into a twisted smile. She’d used the mask as a way to hide for so long. Now, in order to hide, she needed to take it off.

Irony is stupid.

Sam had used the excuse that the mask helped her breathe. Now, with it off, she really was having a hard time breathing.

A knock on the door rattled her.

“How’s it going in there?” There was a subtle note of delight in Millie’s voice. She saw how uncomfortable it made Sam to shed her mercenary layer and get dolled up, and she hadn’t forgotten about that slap Sam had lain across her face.

“Fine,” Sam grumbled. She bent over, resting her elbows on her thighs in a squat position. She took several deep breaths. With each inhale, she reminded herself who she was.

Fearless mercenary.

Warrior.

Survivor.

With each exhale, she blew the worry out of her body.

It’s just a suit.

Only a mask.

Stop hiding.

She stood. Her head swam. When the world stopped moving, she looked at the mirror. At herself. Open and raw. Exposed. Powerful and strong.

“I’ve got a family now,” she said to the person in the mirror. “Family doesn’t hide from each other.” She took one more deep breath, growing as her lungs filled.

Millie pressed her ear to the door, stifling a giggle. “You okay, sweetheart?”

The door swung open, launching Millie like a catapult. Sam marched out and stepped over Millie.

“Are you?”

* * *

Reggie was just beginning to understand the mechanics of his suit. If he moved like this, then the jacket did this. If he squatted like this, then the pants climbed up his ass. If he stood still with his hands in his pockets, he looked just like his dad. He would rather fight his way out from inside the belly of a queen ShimVen.

The anxiety-inducing sight surprised Reggie. He admired his father. He thought any comparison between him and his father would have been flattering. But this was not. This made his heart pound against the inside of his chest and a cold sweat bead on his forehead.

Joel strutted around the room. “Am I really the only one enjoying this? You two look like you’re about to have heart attacks.”

Cody pulled at his collar. “I think this shirt is trying to kill me.”

Peppy followed at Joel’s side. He seemed to enjoy the strutting as much as Joel. But even he froze when Sam walked through the door.

The guys’ eyes locked on her. Heat danced across her skin as adrenaline shot through her veins. Her body kicked into fight mode. She tensed, trying to keep her muscles from acting on instinct and ninja kicking every face in the room.

Sam took a breath. She straightened her jacket. She met each of their stares with a steely, determined look. She would not back down. She never backed down.

She looked at Cody and Reggie. “Maybe you guys should wear a mask. You look like you’re going to puke.”

They laughed, and some color returned to their faces.

Millie entered behind Sam. She held a bowtie out to Joel. “I will allow your pet to wear this on the condition that you burn it afterward.”

Joel snatched it out of her hand. “Deal.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Welcome to the Proctor Conference Station,” the robotic voice said over Ragnarok’s comms. “Please present your invitation credentials.”

Joel and Reggie looked at each other with shocked expressions.

“Well, I guess this is our shortest job ever,” Joel said with a shrug.

Cody began furiously typing on the ship’s main console. “Maybe not. Dewayne should have taken care of this, but I can do it.” The screen flashed red for a second before being flooded with lines of code. “It’s a conference center, not the headquarters of one of the galaxy’s biggest and most advanced drug companies. They don’t house any sensitive data, so I’m sure they choose to spend their money on things that matter, like little plates and crab cakes.”

“Welcome!” the robotic voice said. “You will now receive your itinerary for the event as well as a parking pass and instructions. Please, enjoy your time aboard the Proctor Conference Station.”

Cody looked pleased with himself. The collar of his fancy shirt started to feel right, like he was the sort of man who wore ties. “Piece of cake.”

Joel clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done. Just one question.” He leaned in close. “Do you think they’ll really have crab cakes?”

Cody pushed him, and Joel fell into his seat.

The monitors on the bridge lit up. Displayed were pictures of each of them accompanied by names and information none of them recognized.

“Who is Roland Messina?” Reggie asked. “And why does he look like me from that VR tournament from a few years ago?”

“Because Roland Messina is you,” Cody said. “I had to pull pictures from social media.” He maximized Reggie’s fake profile on the monitor. “Roland Messina is an intern at Jasob. He just started at the beginning of the quarter. He’s taking this semester off from school because he doesn’t want to squander the opportunity to work for one of the biggest companies in the galaxy.”

“Roland?” Reggie echoed, unsure.

Cody looked annoyed. “I had to whip these identities up on the way over here. I kept them as close to the real thing as I could so we don’t need to worry about keeping the fakes straight from what’s real.” He brought back the profiles for himself, Joel and Sam. “We’re all new employees for Jasob, looking to learn the business and meet some of the players. We’re friends from school, so we all know each other. No one will look twice at us.”

Joel looked contemplatively at his profile. “Josh Cook?” He crinkled his mouth. “So bland.”

Sam smirked. “As close to the original as possible.”

Joel shot her a displeased look. “What about you, Sally?”

Sam’s smirk morphed into a frown. “I’m not happy about that name. But it’ll do. We won’t be here for long.”

“Glad everyone is on board and not complaining at all. You’re welcome, by the way, for creating fake IDs and hacking our way into this conference totally on the fly. No big deal.” Cody grumbled as he steered the ship into the station’s hangar bay.

“Get over it, Craig,” Joel said, using Cody’s fake name. As he and the others exited the bridge, he said to Reggie and Sam, “God, Craig used to be cool. When did he become such a whiner? Fucking Craig, man.”

Cody squeezed the yoke until his fingers ached.

The team huddled in the ready room once they landed. Cody raised their persona profiles again for them all to scan one last time. “Commit them to memory. Become them. We are not IPC right now. We are not the Notches. We are lowly Jasob interns. Don’t get distracted by the hustle of the event or the free food. We’re here to gather intel and be on the lookout in case Layton tries anything. Not only is this our chance to get solid proof of Layton’s actions, but Dewayne is paying us a lot of money.”

The team seemed unsure what to do next. Normally they’d strap up with gear and weapons.

Joel straightened. “Let’s roll, Notches. Those crab cakes aren’t going to eat themselves.”

Cody sighed.

* * *

The hangar bay was a steady stream of people entering the event. The team fell in line with the crowd as they moved en masse toward a choke point where venue staff was checking credentials.

Joel fought the urge to moo as they shuffled along.

The crowd was intimidating. Not like the gala, where the people had been a cluster of the rich and powerful. But these people were all used to this sort of thing, gathering and talking about the industry. Mingling under a certain set of social rules.

The guys weren’t used to gatherings like this. Most of their gatherings now happened online. Groups of gamers chatting about stupid shit, sometimes going overboard and getting vile. There were no rules in that situation. People said whatever they wanted. They said things they would never say face to face. This was completely the opposite.

Sam had a little sense of the social rules for this sort of situation. She knew they existed, and she had a basic understanding, but she was far from fluent. In a way, this would be harder than the gala, which had been full of rich people whom she hated on principle. She hadn’t cared about blending in there.

Here, she needed to. The job depended on it. She couldn’t pull out her sword and threaten to lop off someone’s head. She didn’t even have her sword. She felt naked.

All who passed cast wary glances at Peppy, sitting at Joel’s side wearing his bowtie.

“I can’t believe you brought him,” Cody said to Joel.

“Believe it, because it’s happening.”

“We’re supposed to be blending in,” Cody said. “Being inconspicuous. You see any other dogs here?”

Joel brushed off the concern. “Don’t worry, I’ve cooked up a perfect cover story.” He gestured to the staff at the checkpoint ahead. “Watch.”

They approached the checkpoint. A woman checked the team’s credentials, matching their faces to the IDs in her system. Cody never flinched. He had complete confidence in his forged personas.

“Thank you, Mr. Boskins,” the staff member said to Cody. She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter.

After Cody joined Sam and Reggie on the other side of the checkpoint, the woman raised her hand to stop Joel.

“Excuse me, sir, there are no animals allowed in the conference center.”

To Cody’s amazement, Joel did not scoff or throw a fit. He remained calm, smiled even.

“I had a feeling this might happen,” Joel said. “There’s this new intern who just started in the office. Cody.” Joel leaned in to whisper to the woman. “Real moron. Don’t tell anyone I said that. I don’t want HR breathing down my neck.”

They both laughed. Joel rested his hand on the woman’s forearm. He squinted at her nametag.

“Listen, Pam, can I be honest? I feel like I can be honest with you. You deal with executives and middle management tyrants all day, coming in here to stuff their faces with crab cakes. I get it.” He pointed to Peppy. “This guy here belongs to one of those executives. He’s a drug-sniffing dog or something, I don’t know. My boss is going to use him in a demonstration later this afternoon. All I know is that if I don’t deliver him, my ass is fired.” Joel leaned in again. “Don’t let Cody ruin this for me. Please?”

Pam pursed her lips. Her eyes narrowed as they sized Joel up. Then they lightened. “I’ve got a Cody. His name is Doug. Always up my ass about miniscule shit, but never around when the real work needs to get done.”

Joel nodded and smiled. “Exactly. They’re just the absolute worst.”

Pam stepped aside. “You deliver that dog and tell your boss that Cody fucked up.”

Joel let out a soft whistle, signaling Peppy to walk through. “Thank you so much, Pam.”

“And if that dog shits on my floor…”

“I’ll ask for Doug.” Joel joined the others, his smile so big it almost weighed him down.

Cody and Reggie looked astonished, like they just witnessed a miracle, or a magic trick they couldn’t figure out.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Reggie said.

“Of course he just did that,” Cody said. “He’s always doing stuff like that. I just can’t believe it worked.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever done that before,” Joel said, patting Peppy on the head.

“Charming your way past the rules,” Cody said. “Talking your way into getting what you want.” He sounded pouty, like a child at another kid’s birthday party.

“You just hack your way into getting what you want,” Joel said, sounding defensive.

Reggie stepped close to them, pulling Sam in with him to form a tight circle. “Enough. We don’t have time to bicker and get distracted. We’re working.”

“That’s how we work,” Joel reminded him.

“This job isn’t business as usual,” Reggie said. “We can’t blow anything up. We need to fly under the radar, be discreet. No fighting. No more stunts. We have to be smart.”

Joel grumbled. “That’s no fun.”

Cody appreciated the redirect. He wanted this job to be successful more than any other. He wanted to prove that Layton was behind this. He needed to. He didn’t know why, but admitting how invested he was in this had made it easier for him to focus.

“Where do we start?” Sam asked.

Cody scanned the room. “Mingle. Try to talk to people from Layton, see what you can learn about Dr. Suzz or their business strategy or rumors of impropriety. This is a gathering of bigwigs from the same industry, which means they’re all competitors. Use that to get people talking.”

“We’ll split up, see what we can find out, and meet back here in an hour.” Reggie put his hand in the circle. The others looked at him like he was an idiot.

“We’re not doing a ‘go team’ right now,” Joel said. “Or ever.”

They all went their separate ways.

Chapter Sixteen

The suit and tie made Reggie feel like he was dying. Not in the immediate sense. It made him feel old. And trapped. He looked like the manager of a cubicle farm, popping his head over cubicle walls to request reports.

But it was just a show. He was pretending. He just needed to embrace his inner Roland. He let this reminder run through his head. That he was playing a part. When the job was over, he’d return to his ship, his own business, his life that he’d built for himself. He wouldn’t be stuck in a cubicle. He wouldn’t need to make small talk about the weather. When asked how he was doing, he would never have to reply, “Well, it’s another Monday,” with a shrug of his shoulders.

He would still be free.

For now, he would play the part. And he would enjoy it, dipping his feet in this life he would never have to live.

“Hi.” Reggie extended his hand to a man whose nametag read “Dan.” “Roland Messina. Jasob.”

“Dan Milgram,” Dan said, accepting the handshake. Then he looked around, gesturing to the whole of the event. “These things, am I right?”

Reggie returned his laugh. “Tell me about it.” He made a gun with his finger and pretended to shoot himself.

Pure gold.

Dan waved another man over. Parker. Reggie knew instantly this was the sort of man who thrived in the environment Reggie despised. The cubicle farm where someone was always listening to you, ready to comment if your headphones were too loud or your midmorning snack was too pungent and would be better enjoyed in the breakroom. He counted how long people spent at the copy machine and how many bathroom breaks they took.

Parker was an asshole.

“A new face,” Parker said, shaking Reggie’s hand. “I thought I knew everyone who came to these shindigs.”

Reggie gritted his teeth. This man was Reggie’s worst nightmare. He was a funhouse mirror. If forced to endure forty hours per week of office life—cupcakes on Deb’s birthday, grab bags at Christmas, meetings, conference calls, inspirational posters, discussions on productivity—this is who he’d become.

It sent a chill down his spine.

“I’m a new intern with Jasob,” Reggie said. “Still getting my feet wet. I heard this conference would be a good way to get to know the players.” He bumped Parker’s shoulder with his fist. “Size up the competition.”

They all laughed, and Reggie wanted to vomit.

“None from me,” Parker said, throwing up his hands and laughing some more. His eyes crawled over Reggie like ants, sizing him up. “But I’m sure there are some here who’d consider themselves a competitor. This is a cutthroat business.”

“That’s what I hear,” Reggie said. “Apparently, I chose the wrong time to intern at Jasob. What, with that incident at their station.”

Parker’s face lit up. He leaned in and spoke quietly. “Be careful who you mention that around. That can be a touchy subject.” He looked around, making sure no one could hear. “Of course, if you were to mention it around a certain group of investors, you might just get treated to an epic meltdown, the likes of which you have never seen.”

Parker tried to hide his hand as he pointed to a cluster of three suits huddled near the bar. “Word is those three lost everything when the Jasob station went kablooey. They’ve been trying to claw their way back ever since.”

“That so?” Reggie studied each of the men. He could tell even from a distance that they were drunk. They swayed like saplings in a stiff breeze. The conversation continued around him, but he tuned it out, his mind focused on what this information could mean for the job.

Parker touched Reggie’s arm, bringing him back. “Am I right?”

Reggie was fairly certain he wasn’t right, but he was also sure Parker wasn’t the kind of person you could tell he was wrong without having to suffer through the subsequent pouting.

“Totally,” Reggie said. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the bathroom.”

He may not have wanted to participate in this at the beginning, but he had to admit there was a certain thrill to this undercover thing. He felt like a secret agent.

He strutted away from Parker and Dan and pressed his finger to his ear, activating his comm. “Three drunk suits at the bar. They were investors in Jasob’s station. Lost everything when it went up. Might be worth checking out.”

“I’ve got eyes on them,” Cody said. “I’m on it.”

Cody thought he would’ve liked this more, playing undercover operative. He hadn’t anticipated the anxiety. What if he used the wrong name? What if he forgot his cover story? What if someone found out who he really was? What was Craig’s favorite food? Did he have any allergies?

There was so much to keep straight, and he hadn’t had time to make flashcards.

He sauntered up to the bar, silently deciding that Craig liked to saunter rather than stroll or mosey. He was about to order a beer when he decided that Craig was not the beer type.

“Whiskey,” he told the bartender. Two decisions in, and Cody felt like Craig was beginning to take shape. He cast a glance at the three suits. “And another round for them,” he added. “Looks like they could use it.”

With that, Cody had another realization. Craig was cool as hell. Smooth, well-liked, didn’t give a shit about you or your opinions. He did what he wanted and damn the consequences. Fuck flashcards and food allergies. That stuff was for nerds.

The bartender set Cody’s drink down in front of him. He sipped and didn’t curl his lip at the taste. Craig loved whiskey. He loved the burn in his throat. Squelching the urge to vomit was a test of will, and Craig’s will was ironclad.

The suits nodded in appreciation to Cody when they received their round.

He didn’t acknowledge them. He didn’t give a shit. He gave no shits.

The suits moved closer to him, their stink preceding them. They had apparently bathed in vodka before Cody arrived.

“Thanks, boy,” the oldest suit said. His voice wobbled like a turkey’s. As did his neck.

“Call me ‘boy’ again, and I’ll break your nose.”

Holy shit. Craig was a badass. Maybe a little homicidal… Cody couldn’t tell yet.

The three suits froze in shock. Then they burst out laughing.

Old Turkey Neck slapped Cody on the shoulder. “You’re a crazy shit. I like that.”

Cody joined in the laughter, sensing an opportunity to break into their little club. “Well, I’d have to be, wouldn’t I?”

“Why’s that?” Turkey Neck asked through a belch.

Cody flashed his nametag. “To work for them. Thought I was taking a step forward in my career. Turns out I was taking a step off a cliff.” He slugged back his whiskey and slammed the glass on the bar like so many grizzled, sad sacks had done before him.

Turkey Neck leaned in close, squinting through the double vision to read Cody’s nametag. He let out a bellow once he was able to. “Jasob. Incompetent shitbags. Cost me a goddamn fortune. Hope they all rot in hell.” He spat on the floor. “Not you, of course.” He patted Cody on the shoulder. “You’re a crazy shit. I like that.”

Cody ordered another drink. “Now I’m stuck at Jasob with all signs pointing to them going belly-up. Who’s going to take me on then?”

Another of the suits, a middle-aged man with receding hair and yellow teeth, leaned heavily on the bar. “Someone will. You’re young. Life ahead of you.” His voice cracked. “Not like me. Wife left after I lost it all. She couldn’t stand to be with a failure. Could’ve been the prostitutes, too. Maybe the drugs. But goddamn Jasob!”

Cody took a sip of his drink. He peered at the suits over the rim of his glass. “Any idea what happened to that station? Public reports are pretty vague. And no one in the office will dare speak of it.”

The men looked at each other, exchanging silent curses and an entirely unspoken conversation.

“That bad, huh?” Cody said. “Must be some serious negligence if they’re hell-bent on keeping it under wraps. I imagine if word got out that it was their own damn fault, their stock price would plummet even more. If that’s possible.”

Turkey Neck downed the rest of his drink. He belched and ordered another. “Well, can’t blame it entirely on Jasob, I suppose.”

“No?” Cody tried to hide the excitement in his voice. “Who else can you blame?”

Turkey Neck looked around, as though worried someone might be listening. “Not that I’m letting Jasob off the hook—whatever happened, they’re the ones who took my money and pissed it away. But, the way I hear it, the destruction of that station may have been caused by external forces.”

“You mean, like, an asteroid?”

“I mean a competitor.”

“Sabotage?” Cody said, trying to keep his voice steady.

Turkey Neck shrugged, making his jowls jiggle. “That’s the rumor.”

Yellow Teeth seemed more eager to speak about it. “More than a rumor. I know the head of Shipping and Receiving who was at that station. Told me they got some tainted cargo. Guy’s here somewhere. Bruce Malloy.”

Cody slammed the last of his drink. He walked away without saying anything because that’s what Craig does. He doesn’t give a shit.

“You guys catch that?” Cody said over comms. “Bruce Malloy. Jasob Shipping and Receiving guy.”

“I’m looking at him,” Joel said. “Let’s see if he likes dogs.”

Joel had been making the rounds without much luck. People were wary of Peppy. Understandable, Joel told himself. Peppy wasn’t actually a dog. He could pass, but if you didn’t know him, he could put you off. Joel was reading the room, and the room said, “Keep your alien dog away from me.” It was disheartening. Joel’s high at looking fabulous in his new suit began to fade.

But Bruce Malloy might be just the way to reverse that. This was how Josh Cook got his groove back.

Malloy was on the balcony, a small space off the main conference center that looked out over the rest of the station. It was removed from the bustle of the crowd, which Peppy appreciated. Malloy tensed when he saw Joel and Peppy approach, but he maintained a polite façade.

Joel leaned against the railing and took in the view. He waited. In silence. The hardest thing he’d ever had to do. But he felt Malloy’s eyes on him and knew he didn’t need to speak.

After a few moments of quiet, Malloy said, “That an emotional support animal or something?”

Joel pretended to be caught off guard. “Excuse me? Oh, no, this is a work product. I was supposed to do a demonstration, but there was a scheduling error. Brought him all this way for nothing.”

“Demonstration about what?”

Joel squatted next to Peppy and fed him a piece of crab cake. “This guy right here is the next generation in detection. He can sniff out pretty much anything. Illicit substances. Explosive material. Bacterial and chemical agents. Any kind of tainted cargo.”

Malloy’s ears perked at that. “Any kind?”

“Absolutely. He’s got a nose that is unrivaled by any known mechanical system. He’s gone up against the most sophisticated scanners on the market and beaten them every time.” Joel stood and scratched Peppy under the chin. “We even hired some white smugglers to see if they could beat us. This guy here still came out on top.”

Malloy folded his arms across his chest and studied Peppy as though he were a machine, trying to determine which parts made him work. “Better than any known scanners? Even the Montcalm system?”

Joel recognized the name. That was the system used in the storehouse. It was probably what Jasob used in all of their facilities, including the station they’d lost.

“He beat Montcalm ten out of ten times.”

Malloy sucked in a breath and shook his head. “Of course. Something better would come along now. After. Now that it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m afraid I don’t catch your meaning, friend.”

“It’s just, I ran a station not long ago. We could have used something like your friend here.”

Joel shook his head like it was a shame. “I’ve tried to fast track the project, but I’m just an intern, so they don’t really listen to me. Did your scanners fail?”

Malloy’s face turned dark, like he’d slipped back to that day. “They were tricked. The shipping containers and crates were shielded with something. It blocked the scanners from getting an accurate reading of the contents.”

“Smugglers? They often try to route illicit cargo through legitimate shipping channels. Launder it, if you will.” Binging the last two seasons of that procedural cop drama were really paying off for Joel right now. “Hope it didn’t cause too many problems for you.”

Malloy grunted. Then he laughed to himself, like he suddenly got the joke someone played on him. “It caused a few.”

To Joel’s dismay, Malloy was a stoic sort. Getting him to talk was like pulling porcupine quills out of a dog’s face. Joel decided to just go for it.

“Wait,” he looked at Malloy’s nametag like he’d just seen it for the first time. “You’re a Jasob employee? You didn’t…you don’t mean…the space station?”

Malloy’s face twisted up in a sad smile. “That I do. Surprised they’ve kept me around. Though I suspect it’s more out of a desire to avoid the paperwork. Company’s going under anyway.”

Joel looked around, acting like he was making sure no one was listening. “Seems to me that wasn’t the work of smugglers. All of their merchandise would have been destroyed. Not much sense in that.”

Tension straightened Malloy’s body. There might have been a time when he would have put his duty to Jasob above anything else. Joel got the sense that he was a company man, not one to let sensitive information slip. But he was a man on the edge now. He was embarrassed by the loss of the station. Bitter, maybe. About to lose everything, and there were probably people out there who blamed him for the loss of the station.

“No, not much sense at all,” Malloy said. “That’s the official company stance, but I don’t believe it was smugglers. I believe whatever monsters were in those crates were sent to us deliberately. The loss of the station wasn’t an unfortunate accident. It was the goal.”

Joel took a slow breath, a silent reminder to himself to move cautiously and step lightly. He had Malloy talking. Don’t rush in and scare him off. “Monsters?”

Malloy’s eyes turned glassy. “That’s right. I was one of the last to evacuate. I saw them. No other way to describe them. They busted out of those crates and infested the station. We tried to clean it up, even hired a crew of exterminators to see if they could contain it, but it was too far gone, I guess.”

Joel’s face burned hot. He felt odd listening to himself being described by this man who had lost it all. He felt guilty for not being able to save the station, for not ever giving the loss of the station much of a second thought.

“Why would anyone want to do that?” Joel asked, knowing the answer.

Malloy looked at Joel like he was a naïve kid. “You really are just an intern. Why would someone want to destroy a commercial powerhouse like Jasob’s new station? Why do you think?”

“You think it was a competitor?”

“I know it was. And I know which one.” Malloy squeezed the balcony railing until his knuckles went white. “Our biggest competitor, the most ruthless. Layton.”

Joel’s heart leapt into his throat. He reminded himself again to take it slow, play it cool. “How do you know that?”

“I saw the shipping manifests. I know where the cargo came from. I should have known what it was before the crates got popped.”

“How could you have known?” Joel’s gut tugged with guilt again.

“The note.” Malloy’s voice was darkened by an ominous tone. “It was attached to one of the crates. She probably never thought anyone would see it… Or, at least, no one would live to talk about it.” He squeezed the railing tighter, until his knuckles popped. “`With love’ it said. Signed `PS.’ I thought it meant postscript at first, like there was more to the note. Wasn’t until later that I realized the letters were initials. Patty Suzz.”

Silence hung in the air a minute, until Joel couldn’t stand it any longer. He excused himself.

“She signed the delivery,” Joel said through the comms when he was far enough away. “The psychopath left a note, all but admitting she was responsible.” He walked back through the busy conference center, a path opening up for him as he moved. “What’s our next move? Malloy’s account isn’t enough to damn Suzz or Layton.”

“We find some people who know Suzz,” Cody said. “Maybe they can point us toward something more concrete. Sam? You’ve been quiet. You find anything?”

Sam stood frozen at the edge of the room, looking in at the bustling crowd like she was an animal in a zoo looking out through the bars of her cage. She’d ventured in once. It had been a tumultuous sea of bodies and small talk. Inane chitchat pelted her like hailstones, numbing her to the pain of obtuse social rules, overwhelming her senses. In the confusion, she’d felt herself reaching for her sword. She shuddered to think what would have happened had it been strapped to her back. She’d shoved her way out of the raging waters and climbed back to the relative safety of the outside wall.

But, even there, the predators of the deep found her. A young man, probably somewhere in his early twenties, was approaching her. He wore the smile of a man who never expected to be told no.

“Working on it,” Sam whispered into her comm before the man arrived.

He sidled up next to her, moving with confidence and swagger. “Hi.”

Sam immediately wanted to punch him. One word, and she knew she hated him. But she couldn’t hit him. Worse, she couldn’t tell him to fuck off, or even ignore him. She needed to engage.

“Hello,” she replied. Step one: success. Step two: work on tone. She cleared her throat. She wasn’t Sam. She was Sally. What would a Sally do? She smiled. “Sorry, I don’t really like these things. My boss made me come.”

The man returned the smile. Rather, he never stopped smiling. He probably assumed her brusque response was some sort of misunderstanding. Surely, she had no idea how privileged she was to speak to him.

“Totally. I despise these conferences. But I have to come. I am the boss.”

Fucking shit.

It was worse than she thought. He held a position of power. His sense of entitlement would be more than she anticipated.

“I’m Adam,” he said, extending his hand. “CEO of Expansive Industries. Big Pharma magazine called us `the upstarts needed to revitalize the industry.’ No big deal, really.”

Sam took his hand. A rush of instinct hit her. She was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to crush his hand, to feel his bones snap, and relish his scream.

Instead, she said, “Nice to meet you.”

She awarded herself one gold star. She would receive another if in five minutes she had not slit Adam’s throat.

Adam nodded toward the bar. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

He continued to speak as they walked, though, through the roar of voices, she could not understand him. He ordered her a gin. What a douche. Then he continued to talk about himself.

“People kept telling me not to strike out on my own. That it was a risk. But that’s what I do.” He leaned in close to her, his voice dropping an octave. “I take risks.”

Sam’s arm twitched. She caught it just before it shot forward into Adam’s neck.

She calmed her raging muscles, and, in the clarity that followed, something Adam said rang out. “Strike out on your own? Then I take it you worked for another company until recently?”

The glimmer in Adam’s eyes diminished slightly. “Yeah, I did. But that’s the past. I’m all about the future. And living in the present. Would you like to live in the present with me?” The glimmer returned like a solar flare.

“Obviously, I live in the present,” Sam said. “How could I live in another time? Unless you’ve developed some kind of temporal distortion technology at your new upstart company?”

Adam was taken aback. He couldn’t seem to tell whether Sam was fucking with him or not.

She was.

But as much as she enjoyed toying with him, she needed information. She knew that he would be more likely to give her something useful if she stroked his ever so fragile ego.

“What company did you work for before boldly striking out on your own? They must have been sad to lose you.” There. Ego stroked.

“You’re damn straight they were. Layton hasn’t been the same since I left.”

That thing lit in Sam, that fuse that burns down to the eventual explosion that blows the case wide open. “Layton. Really?”

Adam ordered two whiskeys from the bartender. He winked at the woman as he paid. As soon as he looked away, the bartender locked eyes with Sam and gestured like she was going to puke.

“That’s right,” Adam said. “I was COO. That’s Chief Operating Officer,” he clarified. “Youngest COO Layton ever had. And the best. I made that place great. I was hailed as an innovator, a forward thinker. But some people didn’t appreciate that. They could only look backward.”

“I imagine that was frustrating,” Sam said. “For a trailblazer to be held back like that.” Sam impressed herself with her ability to spew nonsense without choking on it.

Adam nodded and smiled like he had just found the only other person in the galaxy who got it. “It was. It was real hard. Because when you try to introduce innovation to a place that’s stuck in the past, it’s like running into a brick wall over and over again. You go nowhere and just end up with a headache.”

The bartender returned with their drinks. She slid Sam’s to her and shot her a look of pity. It stung, but Sam brushed it off and leaned into it instead. If she was eliciting pity, then she was doing something right.

Sam sipped her drink and gazed longingly at Adam over the rim of her glass. “How’d those people stuck in the past take that change?”

“She wasn’t happy.” The mask Adam wore began to slip. Sam spied some genuine emotion on his face. “But she made it clear that Layton wasn’t going to move forward without first obliterating the past.”

“She?”

“Dr. Suzz,” Adam said. “Layton’s CEO.”

Sam could tell she was scratching at the surface of something big. The answers they were searching for were buried just out of reach. She needed to peel away a few more layers.

“She’s got quite the reputation. A bit of a battleaxe, from what I’ve heard,” Sam replied.

“More like a photon torpedo. Cross her, and she will not rest until she’d turned you to ash.”

Sam had ordered another drink without Adam noticing. Suddenly it was in front of him, a double. Sam raised her drink in salute, prompting him to do the same. When he set his glass back down, his eyes were a bit glossier.

“I’m sure you’ve got some great stories about her,” Sam prompted. “I’d love to hear some. Being a woman trying to establish herself in this business, I’ve always kind of looked up to her.”

“Don’t,” Adam said. “She’s not the kind of businesswoman you want to be.”

The mask had almost completely fallen off his face now. Gone was the arrogant entrepreneur—he was a quivering employee again, terrified of his boss.

He leaned in close so he was sure only Sam could hear. “She’s obsessed with her old partner, Nora Soff from Chrisoff. Suzz is constantly raging against her. She’s practically got a complex over it. Thinks Soff screwed her. She thinks the entire industry screwed her, and she’s taken some drastic measures to get even.”

Adam sat back in his chair. He looked ill, like the drink was quickly catching up with him.

“What did she do?” Sam asked.

She recognized the look in Adam’s eyes. They were the eyes of a man who wanted to unburden himself. They were the eyes every person had right before dying.

“Look, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. It’s so fucked up. Suzz went completely off the reservation. As soon as I found out what she was doing, I got out of there. I left Layton and never looked back. But she’s fucking crazy. If she finds out I said anything, she’ll destroy me. She’ll send those things after me next.”

Boom.

“What things?” Sam said.

“These fucking monsters that she engineered in her lab. She…” He stared into his empty glass. “She sent them to StrobeNet.”

“And you know this? For sure?”

“I was there when she loaded the crates. I authorized the shipment. As COO, I had to.” A sense of urgency flared in him. “She would have fed me to those things. After I left, I heard that she did the same to Jasob.” Confusion overtook him suddenly. “Why am I telling you this?”

Sam stood. “I put something in your drink. A truth serum. It’s harmless.” She grabbed his wrist. “You’re coming with me.”

“What the hell—”

Adam was cut off by the sound of breaking glass and a burst of screaming.

Sam wheeled around and spotted the reason for it. A group of very out of place looking men and women stood in the middle of the conference center floor. They were clad in leather and heavily tattooed. They looked like a biker gang.

“Hey there, fancy people,” one of the gang members yelled. The largest of the men, he had a thick neck, thicker arms, and a barbed wire tattoo on his cheek. “I’ve come with a message from your friend Dr. Patty Suzz.”

Chapter Seventeen

“What is happening right now?” Joel said. “Who the hell are these guys?”

“No clue,” Reggie answered over comms. “But they obviously mean trouble. We need to join up and plan our next move. Everyone, sound off with your location.”

The team was scattered around the center, none close enough to meet without attracting the attention of the newcomers.

“They really just came out and said it?” Cody said. “Admitted to all these people that they’re working for Suzz? I don’t get it. Won’t that just put Layton in the spotlight? Law enforcement will be on to them now.”

“Only one reason Suzz would be so brazen here,” Sam said. “She doesn’t intend for any of these people to live long enough to tell their story. These thugs are going to kill everyone.”

“Way more straightforward than her standard MO,” Joel said. “Why the sudden change?”

“We’ll worry about it later,” Reggie said. “Right now, we need to figure out what we’re going to do about these guys.”

“I hate to be the one to say it,” Joel said. “But do we do anything? I mean, we’re exterminators. This undercover thing was enough of a deviation from our standard job. But this is straight-up security work. You weren’t keen on this from the beginning, Reggie.”

The comm was silent.

“No, I wasn’t,” Reggie said finally. “But we’re here. We can’t just walk away from this. We may not have that option anyway.”

“No more talking,” Sam said.

The guys’ collective gasp sounded over the comm as they watched Sam walk away from the bar, parting the crowd with her presence alone, and march straight for the gang of thugs.

“What’s this now?” The big thug said. “Looks like this one wants to dance. But I didn’t bring my dancing shoes. Maybe we can just—”

His voice died in his throat. At the exact spot Sam’s fist slammed into it.

“Shit!” The fact that the profanity had leapt out of Reggie’s mouth was lost on the others. They were too occupied with Sam going ape-nuts on the thugs. “Move, move, move! Let’s get in there!” he urged.

Cody shoved his way through the crowd, which was now thrumming with energy and running around like a bunch of wild maniacs. He tripped over a woman who had fallen in the chaos. He climbed back to his feet and pushed through.

Joel and Peppy approached from the opposite side of the conference center. The crowd, even when frantic, gave Peppy a wide berth, allowing him a clear path toward the thugs. Joel followed in his wake.

Reggie was typically too polite to shove people out of his way, but Sam was alone with that gang, facing nearly twenty of them from what he could see. He needed to get there to help, or, no matter how much of a badass she was, she’d get taken out.

Though the thugs would have a hell of a time doing it, no matter how outnumbered Sam was. They weren’t expecting her. Anything about her.

The thugs laughed as she approached. They stopped laughing as soon as she dropped the lead thug, and went to work trying to rip her to pieces. Two thugs rushed her. She drove the palm of her hand into one’s chin. He dropped to his knees instantly. Then she drove her elbow into the top of his head.

The second of the two came at her like a charging bull, his head down, trying to gore her. She met him with a knee to his face. He dropped into a quickly growing pool of his own blood.

With three of them down so quickly, the rest of the gang realized Sam wasn’t to be taken lightly. They all charged her at the same time.

She dug her heels into the floor and prepared to fight all of them. Her blood ran hot through her body, firing up her muscles in a way they hadn’t in a long time.

She was reminded of her days as a mercenary. Those days seemed so long ago, but it had only been months since she’d left that life behind to join up with the guys. And it had only been in those months that she hadn’t felt a man’s face crack against her knuckles. Or felt his blood run down her forearms.

It was different, killing bugs and rats. She’d been covered in plenty of blood, but a different part of the soul fired up when you fought for your life against other people.

She felt guilty admitting it, but Sam missed it.

That’s why she didn’t back down when she was grossly outnumbered and overpowered—she was too excited. That excitement faded only slightly when the first wave slammed into her.

A beefy man dropped his shoulder like a linebacker and charged at her. She planted her foot on his shoulder and leaped over him. But Sam couldn’t see the slender woman running at her from behind the large man.

The woman jumped to meet Sam and drove her foot into Sam’s gut. Sam tensed her abs enough to absorb some of the impact, to keep the hit from driving the air out of her lungs. Her momentum suddenly halted, Sam dropped onto the large man’s back. A man with a lightweight boxer’s build appeared above her, dropping his elbow toward Sam’s face.

Sam crossed her arms in front of her. A sharp pain spiked through her wrists. Followed by a sharp pain in the side of her jaw as the woman’s foot slammed into her.

Sam rolled off the large man’s back and hit the floor. The three turned on her, stared down at her like she was a hole that needed filling. She looked up at the soles of their feet and shut her eyes tight, fully expecting them to come down on her face.

She heard a crunch, but her face remained intact. She opened her eyes in time to see Reggie’s fist crush the large man’s nose. He was followed quickly by Cody driving his shoulder into the boxer’s back. Then Joel slid along the polished floor and kicked the woman’s feet out from under her.

The chaos of the conference center amplified tenfold. The crowd fought against each other to exit the room, trampling and kicking and elbowing as though they were part of the brawl in the middle.

The rest of the thugs charged at the team, and the whole thing became a tangled mess of limbs. Sam thrashed, not knowing who she was hitting, though not particularly caring. Blood splattered on her face. She smiled when she felt it run down her knuckles.

Reggie, Cody, and Joel were swarmed. Their thrashing was less elegant and effective than Sam’s. Wasted movements with occasional hits. The effort was exhausting. The guys were quickly running low on energy, and their enemies showed no signs of slowing.

Something struck Reggie’s knee, bringing him to the floor. Even at his lowered height, he was nearly face to face with the man who hit him. Reggie grabbed the man by the collar and headbutted him. The man’s face burst into a spray of red, and he fell to the floor. The victory was short-lived. A fist caught Reggie in the jaw, turning the world fuzzy.

He couldn’t quite make out the hazy form that was lifted above the crowd, held up by a giant, meaty fist, but he recognized the voice that screamed out. Cody was held high by a Frankenstein-looking thug whose face was crisscrossed with scars. One of the man’s eyes was clouded, probably related to the star-shaped scar surrounding it.

“Gonna pop your head,” Frankenstein bellowed.

His threat was wholly believable. He probably would have followed through on it, had a flash of brown not rushed by and knocked his legs out from under him.

Frankenstein landed on his back, crushing one of the other thugs beneath him. Cody came down on his chest. He scrambled free of the goon’s grip, then, kneeling on Frankenstein’s chest, Cody rained down a flurry of punches on his face.

Being one of the smallest in the fray, Cody shouldn’t have been surprised that he was hoisted into the air again. Another beefy goon plucked him up by the back of his shirt like he was a child. Cody felt like a child as he kicked his legs, trying to wriggle free.

He saw the flash out of the corner of his eye. There was a slick sound behind him, like something slicing through a watermelon, and he fell back to the floor. He reached around behind him and felt a hand still clutching the back of his suit jacket. When he turned, he saw that the hand was attached to an arm, but the arm was attached to nothing. The goon to whom it had belonged stared at the arm like it was an alien thing. He didn’t seem to notice the blood gushing from the stub where that alien thing used to be attached.

Peppy growled at the thugs, blood dripping from his jaws. The arrival of the alien hound brought a lull in the brawl. Joel, Cody, Reggie, and Sam were able to stand and take stock of their injuries. They were bleeding and bruised and their fancy clothes were in tatters, but they were alive and still had some fight in them.

The thugs, considering their numbers, were surprisingly bloody. Not one of them had a clean face. Several were unconscious. One was missing a limb.

Joel was suitably impressed with the Notches’ effort. He fist-bumped the team. Smiles spread across their faces. Bloody, disgusting smiles. And then the fight began anew.

The thugs must have been getting paid a hell of a lot of money to continue after one of them lost an arm. If Reggie’s leg fell off during a battle, Joel would have absolutely pulled the plug. But, in a way, the Notches were glad the thugs didn’t turn and run. They were struck with a sense of satisfaction, knowing they could go toe to toe with the grizzly looking ruffians.

Months ago, before having ventured out on their own, Cody, Reggie and Joel would have been trampling each other to reach the exit just like the rest. But, now, after slogging through bug guts, fighting for their lives and blowing up enormous aliens, a few bruisers didn’t frighten them. In fact, it may have been a welcome change from the swarm of mutated monsters.

Now that they were able to coordinate their approach, the team was able to work together and mitigate the chaos. Cody slide-tackled a thug. As the thug fell, Joel brought his knee up into the thug’s chin, knocking him out instantly. Reggie lowered his head as he charged a man. When he reached him, he straightened, launching the man over him like a catapult, where Sam was waiting to dropkick him in the head.

Peppy needed no coordination. He raced around the periphery of the fight, picking off goons, herding them in closer to the middle.

The fight ended with a swift punch from Cody into the nose of the last thug standing. It ended just in time. With the last man down, the full force of fatigue hit the team. Their muscles were jelly. Their legs wobbled under them.

Joel took in the scene. A dozen unconscious thugs littered the immediate area. Most of the conference attendees had vacated the large room…only a few stragglers who had chosen to hide under tables or behind the bar remained. Now that it was quiet, they emerged from their hiding places and ran after the rest of them.

Several security guards bolted into the room, looking around frantically. One of the guy’s faces was swollen. Another was trying to get their restrained hands free. Had someone imprisoned them?

“Suppose there are any of those little sandwhiches left lying around?” Joel asked. “I didn’t get any.”

Reggie pulled a chair out from a nearby table and sat. “What the heck was all that about? Suzz went through all the trouble of genetically engineering those creatures and smuggling them into those stations to wipe them out on the down-low, then she just hires a gang of leg breakers to bust up a conference? What am I missing?”

“Like you said,” Sam said. “She went through all that trouble of making those creatures. Then we killed them all. Maybe she got tired of sneaking around.”

Before they could take any more time to speculate, a fresh round of screaming erupted in the lobby between the hangar bay and the room where they sat.

“Now what?” Cody said.

“Caterers just announced they’re bringing out more crab cakes?” Joel guessed hopefully.

“Not our luck.” Sam squared off, like she sensed what was about to step through the door.

Another gang of thugs appeared. Twenty of them, all fresh and mean looking, and all with both arms still attached.

One of the thugs smiled. “Now this is my kind of party.”

Chapter Eighteen

As impressed with themselves as they were, the team knew they couldn’t go another round against an even bigger group of bone-breaking thugs.

“We need to get out of here,” Reggie said.

“Agreed,” Sam said.

Joel eyed the group pouring into the room. “Any idea how we do that? They’re sort of blocking the only exit.”

Sam let her mind go blank. She took in every detail of the situation—the gang, the environment, the Notches’ state, anything on hand they could use as a weapon. All the information filtered through her brain until it spat out a solution.

She darted across the room, perpendicular to the gang. She said nothing to the guys, but they weren’t so stupid as to sit and wait for direction. As soon as they began to run, the gang set off after them.

Whatever Sam had planned, it was their only move. If it didn’t work, the gang would run them down in seconds and pummel them to death. Though, once Cody realized what her plan was, being beaten to death may have been the preferable way to go.

She ran onto the balcony that overlooked the rest of the station. She did not slow down. Instead, she planted both feet and launched herself over the railing. She disappeared from view, presumably plummeting to a messy end.

Joel and Peppy didn’t hesitate to follow. Joel yelled, “Oh shit!” as he jumped and hoped for the best.

Reggie, likewise, showed little hesitation as he ran for the railing. He slowed his gait only enough to time his jump.

Time slowed as Cody approached the barrier. He could hear the gang bearing down on him from behind. He could see the infinite drop on the other side of the railing. He could not see his friends. He could not see how jumping over that railing resulted in anything other than certain death.

And they hadn’t even faltered. Sam jumped, so they jumped. His mom’s voice sounded in his head now. “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” He was about to find out.

His rational brain battled with his instincts. His gut told him to trust Sam. His brain told him Sam was a lunatic. But, if there was one thing he admired about Sam, one thing he’d been trying to learn from her, it was that she could turn her brain off and just do. He needed to think everything through.

But he didn’t have that luxury now.

So he held his breath, said a silent goodbye to everything he loved and all the things he’d never gotten to do, and jumped.

His stomach stayed on the balcony while the rest of his body plummeted. His eyes filled with tears as they struggled to stay open against the wind. Just before they closed, probably for the last time, Cody slammed into solid ground. He rolled onto his back to see Sam, Reggie, Joel, and Peppy looking down at him.

“Why am I not dead?” Cody asked. He sat up and was hit with a powerful sense of vertigo. He was still traveling downward, but at a controlled speed.

They were gathered on top of an elevator about six square feet in size.

He looked at Sam in awe. “How did you know this was here?”

“I didn’t.”

Cody’s gut bubbled. He felt like he was going to vomit.

Sam smiled, easing his nausea. “I saw the track. It was still early enough in the evening that I assumed no one had left yet, and I figured the elevator would still be on our level.”

No one spoke until the elevator stopped. They took the few seconds of the ride to appreciate being alive in silence.

When they stopped moving, Sam leapt from the roof of the elevator to an adjacent balcony. They were now on the bottom level of the station, but there was still a sub-basement below them, and enough of a fall that they would certainly die. They moved cautiously, but quickly.

The bottom level consisted primarily of the hangar bay, which was a complete madhouse. Every attendee on the station was fighting to get to their ship and get off the station. Onsite security staff tried to establish order, but the crowd was too big and too frantic. The most they could do was break up the random fights that sparked due to the chaos and escort people to their ships.

The team blended into the pandemonium, slowing to an urgent walk and hoping no one would notice how disheveled they looked. They spread out as they approached a mass of security officers, diffusing their bloodiness so as not to attract attention. They slipped through and reached their ship, not daring to speak until they were all safely aboard.

“Joel and Sam, man the turrets,” Reggie said. “I’ll join Cody on the bridge. At least until we’re clear of the station and I’m sure no one is following us.”

“You think they came here for us?” Cody said.

“Probably not, but we gave them enough of a reason to come looking for us now.”

The team split up and manned their stations.

Cody fired up the engine, but the hangar bay was so congested, he had nowhere to go. He requested permission to launch from the traffic controller several times before getting a response. The woman on the other end of the comm sounded totally fried. It was nearly ten minutes before Ragnarok was cleared to leave.

Cody eased them out of the station then set a course for an empty stretch of space as far from the station as they could get.

“We’re clear,” he said over the general comm.

“Everyone, get to medical and get patched up,” Reggie said. “I’ll man the bridge until someone else can take over.”

Cody felt heavy as he stood. Maybe it was the yet-another near-death experience. Maybe it was the disappointment at being so close to getting the evidence they needed. He should have at least been happy that everyone believed him now. But something nagged at him. Something written in Reggie’s downturned face and slumped shoulders.

“Sorry,” Cody said.

Reggie didn’t seem to hear him at first. He looked up, like he’d just woken from a dream. “What?”

“I was obsessed with finding proof that Layton was behind the infestations. We wouldn’t have been there today if I hadn’t insisted on it.”

Reggie sank into his chair. He looked at his knuckles, bloody and bruised. He tried to make a fist, but couldn’t bear the pain.

“You and Joel were right,” Cody continued. “We’re not security forces. We’re exterminators. We should keep to what we know, not go poking our noses where they don’t belong.” He hung his head and walked toward the exit.

Reggie spun in his chair, following Cody as he passed. “We aren’t law enforcement. But we’re not just exterminators. We’re people. Citizens of the galaxy. You saw a problem, someone doing wrong, and you insisted that we step in to fix it. I’m not mad about that. I’m mad at myself for resisting it for so long. Layton Corp was behind it the whole time, and you knew that. They killed people, and I wanted to look the other way. Thanks for keeping us on track.”

Cody’s mouth hung open. His breath caught in his throat. He wanted to say something, but was terrified that his voice would crack. So he only nodded and left for the medbay.

Reggie spun in circles. The ship drifted without him at the helm to guide it. They’d had it. They’d had the proof in their hands. It all could have been done. Suzz could have been tossed in prison, the infestations and attacks would have stopped, and the team could have gone on their way. Intergalactic Pest Control could have focused on being a growing business.

It wasn’t just that Reggie hadn’t believed Cody from the start that was bothering him—it was the thought of what they would have done if they had caught Suzz. What would he have done if they’d uncovered a massive conspiracy that had killed dozens, cost billions and threatened to leave tens of thousands without jobs? Go back to killing rats? How could he go back to business as usual after something like that?

Though, thinking about it, they had no business as usual. All of their jobs had been related to Layton and Dr. Suzz.

He felt like the ship, drifting.

The long-range comm blinked, alerting him that he had an incoming call. Thinking it could be a job or Dewayne, he answered it. Had he known it was his parents, he would have let it ring.

“Reginald, what in the name of Jeezum Crow happened to your face?” His mom’s voice reached a shrill pitch that Reggie had never heard before.

“My goodness, Reg,” said his dad. “Are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?”

Reggie sank further into his chair. “No, I’m fine. We just finished a job. Well, kind of. It didn’t exactly go as planned.”

His mother said something, a comment that quickly morphed into one, unending slew of concern and judgment. Reggie didn’t register any of it.

His dad noticed the dark mood that was swallowing his son. He placed a gentle hand on his wife’s shoulder, a subtle gesture to the outside observer, but in the context of a thirty-year marriage, it was as obvious as if it had been painted on the wall.

She quieted, and then she, too, noticed that something was bothering her son.

“What’s up, Reg?” his dad said. “The job go poorly?”

Reggie’s immediate thought was Yes, absolutely. But he didn’t want to rehash it. He didn’t want sympathy for a potentially lost contract.

“Dad, how did you know you liked your job? That it was something you wanted to do for the rest of your life?”

Reggie’s father considered the question…though it seemed more like he was considering whether he wanted to give the answer he already had, not trying to determine what that answer was.

“Can I be honest with you, son?”

“Please.”

“I don’t like my job.”

Reggie’s mom looked shocked. She slapped her husband on the shoulder. “Don’t tell him that.”

“No,” Reggie interjected. “I want to know. Honestly.”

“I never liked my job,” his dad said. “Not to say I dislike it very much either. It’s just my job. It’s what I do Monday through Friday, nine to five. It’s what I do in between all of the things that I actually want to do. It’s what allows me to do the things I want to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like own a house. Have a family. Play golf. Buy the trailer that I got last year so your mother and I can finally take that cross-country trip we’ve always wanted to take. Buy a space ticket one day so we can fly out and meet you.” He wrapped his arm around his wife. “Your job doesn’t have to be what defines you. Your career doesn’t need to be the only thing in your life that fulfills you. It shouldn’t be. You should have lots of things that bring you joy.” He squeezed Reggie’s mom tightly against him.

Her smile at that moment was one of the most genuine expressions that Reggie had ever seen on her face.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, son?”

“Yeah,” Reggie said to his dad. “I do.”

“Good,” his mom said. “Now maybe you can tell me about this job you just had. What sort of pest could do that to your face?”

Reggie wiped some dried blood from his nose. “Humans.”

“The worst kind of pests,” his dad said with a smile.

His mom elbowed him in the side. “This isn’t funny. What are you doing fighting people? I thought you killed bugs and rodents and such. Was this a job, or were you just fighting people? Was it that Sam person?”

“No, Mom, it wasn’t Sam. It’s hard to explain. The job has gotten bigger than I ever thought it would. Pulled us in a direction I never expected. It put more pressure on me than I thought it would. I always thought this would be a great way to make some money, to build something of my own with my friends. A way to stay out of a cubicle. Freedom.” His voice fell away, pulled down by some unseen weight. “But, on this latest job, I learned something. There’s a person who’s hurting other people. Targeting them so she can get revenge or something, get rich. And we might have the ability to stop her.”

“And that’s not the freedom you wanted,” his father finished for him. “That’s more responsibility than you bargained for.”

“Yeah.” A spark of excitement lit in Reggie, thinking that his dad understood him.

“Too bad,” his dad said, and that spark went out. “You don’t always get to choose what’s expected of you. You choose what you give, how you meet those expectations, and then you live with your decision. But you can’t wish away the fact that you have the opportunity to do the right thing when no one else can.”

His dad sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think you want to, anyway. I think you want this responsibility. You’re just afraid to take it. Because that means letting go of that idea of freedom you had. It means growing up.”

Silence filled the bridge. A silence that betrayed the noise in Reggie’s heart.

He wanted to yell his appreciation, but instead said, “Thanks, Dad.”

A sound from behind him startled him.

“That was beautiful.”

Reggie turned to see Joel leaning against the wall, pretending to wipe away a tear.

“Joel!” both of Reggie’s parents yelled, full of joy.

And the touching moment was dead. Joel sauntered in like he owned the place. Though, he partially did, so Reggie could forgive that. But even though he had just experienced one of the most honest and heartfelt moments of his life with his parents, he had no patience for their gushing over Joel.

Reggie’s mom clapped her hands over her mouth in a horrified gesture. “They got you too? Those barbarians.”

Joel brushed it off. “You should see them.”

Reggie’s dad started shadowboxing. “I bet you gave them the old one-two, didn’t you?”

Joel mirrored Reggie’s dad, shuffling around the bridge and throwing punches. “I gave them the old one-two-three!”

The two of them erupted in laughter.

Reggie wanted to puke on them.

The laughter stopped suddenly.

“I’m all patched up if you want to—” Cody froze as soon as he stepped onto the bridge and saw the huge images of Reggie’s parents. Their jovial faces turned to ones of scorn and disapproval.

“You seem to have gotten off without so much as a scratch,” Reggie’s mom said. “Someone not pulling his weight?”

“What? No. I just came from the medbay. I cleaned up all the blood. Injected medical nanites.” Cody fumbled with his words, trying to justify his clean appearance. He realized that the more he spoke, the bigger the hole he dug. Reggie’s mom only seemed to grow more skeptical. “Never mind,” he muttered.

Reggie’s mom stared lasers into Cody’s chest. They burned holes through him. But they also seemed to light something on fire, igniting an indignation inside him that he’d never felt, empowering him enough to voice it.

“No, you know what? Screw that.” Cody’s jaw tightened.

Reggie’s parents looked like they’d just watched a vagrant take a dump on their lawn.

“I do a lot for this team,” Cody continued. “I pilot the ship. I do absolutely everything computer related. I’m the one who insisted we follow the leads on Layton. I don’t know if Reggie told you about that, but it’s a pretty big deal. Corporate conspiracy type stuff. People have died. Whatever. Point is, I’m an important part of this team and this business and I don’t deserve to be shit on by you every time you pop by for a chat.”

The bridge filled with stunned silence. Reggie’s parents blinked, the only sign that they hadn’t been frozen. When it looked like the silence would stretch on forever, Joel finally spoke.

“Glory hog,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t want to say it,” Reggie’s dad said, “but I thought it. That is not the way to be part of a team. Trying to take all the credit for yourself.”

“And that language,” Reggie’s mom said. “I’m calling your mother as soon we finish here. Shameful.”

The flame of indignation that had burned so bright in Cody’s chest was doused. His heart was a cold, frigid lump again. “Fuck it,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Language,” Reggie’s mom snapped. She seemed ready to tear into him some more when her face froze again. It was stuck in a different look of shock. Not the horrified kind, like with Cody’s outburst, but like she’d just witnessed the birth of a rainbow. “Oh my.”

She looked at something behind the guys. They turned to see what had elicited such a reaction.

Sam stood in the doorway. She felt like she’d just walked into the middle of a funeral.

“Who is that lovely, young woman?” Reggie’s mom asked.

Reggie raised his eyebrow. “Mom, that’s Sam. The newest member of the team? You’ve met her before.”

Reggie’s mother’s mouth fell open. “Why, yes, of course. I didn’t…I didn’t recognize her without that horrid mask.”

Sam’s eyes darkened.

“I’m so glad you decided to get rid of it,” his mom continued. “Such a frightful accessory. And it hid such a lovely face. Why would you ever wear such a thing?”

This was exactly the reason she wore the mask. People like Reggie’s mom. People who made snap judgments based on a glance. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with Sam when she wore the mask. She was no different than Millie, who’d wanted nothing to do with the Notches, who was perfectly willing to throw them under the bus until they proved useful.

Sam remembered slapping Millie, and a smile spread across her face. Even though it was rooted in her pleasure at wiping the smile off someone else’s face, the fact that she could smile at all at that moment was significant. It was a subtle action that signified a significant change.

She didn’t care about Reggie’s mom. She didn’t care about Millie anymore, or any of the countless people in the galaxy exactly like her. Sam wore the mask to protect herself from those people. From everyone who would look down on her. The caretakers at her orphanage. The people who passed her by on the street when she had her hand out. The gang leaders who would view her self-consciousness as weakness. And it worked.

But it also protected her from people like Reggie, Joel, and Cody. From people who would be true friends. Family.

She wasn’t afraid anymore. Of the Millies or the Reggies. The people who would shun her or the people who would welcome her as a sister. She was ready to be seen by them all.

“Asthma,” was all she said in response to Reggie’s mother’s question.

Reggie’s mom seemed to suspect there was more to Sam’s answer, but also knew enough not to press the issue. She changed the subject instead. “I suppose you’ll be leaving the ship now, then?”

Sam raised her eyebrows. “Why would I do that?”

“A beautiful, young woman like you doesn’t want to be stuck on a ship with three smelly boys.”

Joel and Cody wanted to object to being called smelly. Reggie wanted to melt into human goo and seep between the seams in the floor.

“I won’t be going anywhere,” Sam said.

“Thank god for that,” Reggie said, mustering his spine. “Otherwise we’d be dead ten times over.”

“At least,” Joel added.

“And we wouldn’t have this business. Or this amazing ship,” Cody said.

Reggie’s parents leaned forward, suddenly interested. This annoyed Sam. Again, they were dismissive of her until her value was made known.

“What do you mean?” Reggie’s dad wanted to know.

The guys regaled them with all of their adventures and all of the times Sam had saved their asses. Cody took great delight in telling them about the times Sam had saved Joel from utter humiliation with various women.

When the guys finished talking, Reggie’s parents leaned back again the way one does after eating a large meal.

“So,” his mom said. “You aren’t trying to date my son? Or any of them?”

“Too busy keeping them alive,” Sam said. “Even if I wasn’t, no, I’m not. They’re like brothers.”

His parents smiled, genuine smiles of appreciation. They nodded to Sam, said goodbye to everyone, and ended the transmission.

The team looked at each other, facing in at the center of a circle. Reggie’s anxiety melted away. They had all just barely escaped another situation that could have easily killed them. It would have killed many others, had they taken the team’s place. Sure, they’d failed to get what they were searching for, and they may have made their presence known to a mega-powerful sociopath…

But they were happy. They were more of a team than ever.

An alarm sounded on the monitor panel.

Reggie groaned. “That’s not my parents again, is it?”

Cody’s face went white. “No. We’ve got a ship on our tail. They just got a target lock on us.”

Chapter Nineteen

Ragnarok rocketed into a nosedive. Sam and Joel were both knocked off their feet as Cody instinctively moved into evasive maneuvers.

“They’ve still got lock,” Reggie yelled.

“Working on it,” Cody said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the yoke. With a subtle twist of his wrist, Cody turned Ragnarok forty-five degrees to port. Despite the intensity of the turn, the attacking ship maintained its lock.

The warning alarm on the monitor exploded into a bright red flash, casting the entire bridge in a crimson light.

“Missile launch!” Reggie yelled.

Cody didn’t respond. Not to Reggie, anyway. He responded to the missiles like they had personalities, like their attack against the team was personal, not like they were inanimate objects sent after them with the press of a button. He continued into the nosedive, leaving a trail of profanities behind him. Then, with a quick yank on the yoke, he pulled the ship out of the dive and then launched a barrage of countermeasure flares. The torpedo followed the heat trail of the flares and exploded just off their rear.

“Clear,” Reggie shouted.

With the ship leveled off, Joel and Sam were able to stand.

“Get us behind that thing,” Joel said. “We’ll man the turrets and blast it out of the sky.”

Before Joel and Sam ran off the bridge, another alarm sounded.

“How did they get another lock on us so quick?” Joel said.

“They didn’t.” Cody raised the radar display. A dozen red dots swarmed after them like bees. “One of those did.”

“Oh shit,” Sam mumbled. “We can’t fight all those.”

It always stung the guys more when Sam felt the situation was hopeless.

“Then our only chance is to run,” Cody reasoned.

Joel agreed. “That’s a sound plan. I vote for that.”

“Firing up the thrusters.” Cody keyed in some commands he had yet to use since buying Ragnarok. It felt weird being so excited to use them, considering the circumstances. His finger hovered above the ignition button as he counted down. “Three…two…shit!”

The bridge filled with red light again.

“One!” Joel yelled. “You’re supposed to say ‘one’!”

Cody put the ship in a hard dive again. “Those ships are fast. They got too close before I could activate the thrusters. If anything gets in the blast radius of the engines then they can’t fire. It messes with the combustion.” He pitched the ship to starboard. “Hold tight!”

Joel and Sam were knocked off their feet again. They slammed into each other so hard that both were left gasping for air.

Reggie felt his body pull against the seatbelt, like he was clay pressing against a wire cutter. He forced his words out of his mouth—they, too, were being held back by the extreme shift in gravity. “What’s the plan?”

“Step one is to not get blown up,” Cody said. “There is no step two as of yet. I’m open to suggestions.”

Reggie turned to Sam and Joel. He left the force of the dive carry his words now, like leaves on the wind. “Get to the turrets. Provide whatever cover fire you can.”

“Get right on that,” Joel said through gritted teeth.

Reggie opened a map of the area. There wasn’t much to work with. Just the station they left behind and an uninhabited moon. The closest law enforcement agency was an hour away at a hard burn. They had nowhere to run to even if they could outrun these ships, and no one to call for help.

Then something caught his eye on the map display. He zoomed in on it, and a series of geological readings appeared.

“There,” he said to Cody. “Can you get us there?”

Cody glanced at the map. “Maybe. But why? There’s nothing on that moon.”

“I know. We aren’t landing on the moon. It’s what’s around the moon.”

The moon was circled by a ring of space rock, a dense, spinning cluster of projectiles that could smash the ship into pieces.

“That seems like a great place to visit,” Cody said.

“Just get us there.”

Cody punched in the coordinates. He banked hard to starboard and set off for the moon.

With the ship leveled off again, Sam and Joel made for the turrets. Sam climbed to the top one and Joel to the bottom. They strapped in and activated the targeting systems. The local map readouts were covered in flashing red dots.

The targeting system on Ragnarok was leagues ahead of that on Sonic. Joel was distracted by the upgrade. He toggled between the flashing red dots, each one displaying detailed specs on the target.

Twelve attacking ships in total. They were all registered to Layton Corp, part of their personal security fleet. Each ship was a single pilot vessel, armed with twin blaster batteries and six photon torpedoes. There was enough firepower on their ass to kill them twenty times over.

“Only fire at the ships if they get too close.” Reggie’s voice emanated from the speaker in the small turret. He was too loud for such a small space. “Try to keep as much distance between us as you can. Otherwise, focus on picking off any torpedoes fired our way.”

“Roger that,” Joel answered. He looked past the exciting features he had yet to fully explore and focused on the fleet of ships about to fly up their ass.

“How long until we reach the moon?” Reggie asked Cody.

“Couple minutes. Three at the most.”

Reggie scanned the bridge for some way to help. He felt like a fly on the wall. Then an idea struck. He was suddenly grateful that Cody had forced him to read the manuals for Ragnarok between their last jobs.

He unbuckled from his chair and moved to the seat on the opposite side of the bridge. If they were set up like a legitimate crew, this station would have been the technician’s, the person responsible for monitoring the ship’s internal systems during flight. He couldn’t recall all of the minute details of this responsibility, but there was only one that he really cared about.

Ragnarok’s engine was a cutting-edge model, one of the most advanced available outside of the military. The overburners were what set it apart. They pushed the ship as close to light speed as any private vehicle ever got, but they required a huge amount of maintenance and were super-finicky. The fuel lines needed to be flushed after every time the overburners were prepped. The fuel used to reach those speeds was extremely volatile and left combustible sediment in the lines. If it built up too much, the lines would burst into flames, and the entire ship would explode.

A light flashed on Cody’s panel. “What’s happening? Why are the lines flushing right now?”

“That’s me,” Reggie said. “Just focus on flying. I have an idea.” He activated the flushing procedure, surprised that he remembered how from the instructions he’d read once.

Two of the Layton ships went full on their thrusters, rocketing up along either side of Ragnarok. At that close of a range, they couldn’t fire torpedoes without risking blowing themselves up, so they unleashed a barrage of blaster fire. They peppered Ragnarok’s unshielded hull, rocking the ship, but not causing any significant damage.

Joel and Sam locked onto them with their turrets, but the Layton ships fell back before they could get a shot off. The attackers employed this tactic several more times before it became a real problem. The last wave pierced the outer shielding on the starboard side.

“They’re starting to punch through our defenses,” Cody said. “Whatever you’re doing, you should do it quick.”

The flushing procedure had finished, but Reggie held off on the dump. “Almost. Just get us a little closer.”

Cody grunted as the ship rocked from another attack. Another alarm sounded. “Two torpedoes inbound! With shield integrity compromised, a direct hit could put us down.”

“Can you launch flares?” Reggie asked.

“We’re out. This is on you guys.”

Sam and Joel squeezed the turret controls, both silently getting in the game. Sam cursed the Layton pilots, Dr. Suzz, every person who had ever wronged her. Anger was her most potent motivator. Joel sang the Final Fantasy fight music.

Then they launched into action.

Sam maneuvered her turret to follow the path of the torpedo, like a bird chasing down another bird. Joel jumped ahead, picking a point he thought in his torpedo’s trajectory.

Sam’s method may have been more proactive, but it wasn’t more effective. She unleashed a wave of relentless blaster fire without hitting her target. The torpedo must have been armed with a remote, because it was maneuvering as if it had a pilot. Sam altered her understanding of the situation, changing from shooting an inanimate object out of the sky to hunting some prey. She anticipated its moves, put herself in the head of her enemy, and soon noticed a pattern to its moves. It dipped and climbed at regular intervals, avoiding her fire more by luck than evasive skill.

Not that cracking the pattern mattered if she couldn’t land the shot.

She took a deep breath and a cue from Joel. She waited.

The torpedoes closed in.

Cody screamed through the comm, begging Sam and Joel to take the shot.

Closer.

Twenty meters. Ten.

Sam and Joel fired at the same time. Both torpedoes exploded, the force rocking the ship.

“Thirty seconds until we reach the ring around this moon,” Cody said. “What’s the plan?”

Reggie keyed up the dumping protocol. “Sam and Joel, you need to target the rear of the ship. You’ll see a cloud in fifteen seconds. Shoot it. Then close your eyes.”

Reggie counted down. He needed to time it right. Too soon or too late, and the move would be wasted. They’d be left with nowhere to go. Out in the open.

“Get ready to slow us down,” Reggie said to Cody. “Steer us straight into the ring and find a place to hide.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Give us some cover.”

They were ten seconds from the ring. Another second, and Cody wouldn’t have time to slow down. He would slam into it like a wave against the rocks.

Reggie dumped everything that had been flushed from the overburner fuel lines. “Fire!”

Sam and Joel opened fire on the cloud. One shot was all it took. The cloud combusted like a small star being born. There was a sudden and silent flash of intense light.

When the light faded back to black, Ragnarok was gone.

Chapter Twenty

Joel was blind. At least temporarily.

“He told you to close your eyes,” Sam reminded him as she sat him on the couch in the common area.

“When someone tells me to close my eyes, my immediate reaction is to open them wider so I can see whatever it is they don’t want me to see. How was I supposed to know what he didn’t want me to see was a blinding white light?”

“Because he told you to close your eyes.”

Joel scoffed.

Sam rolled up his sleeve and injected the medical nanites into his arm. “Your sight will return within the hour.”

“What am I supposed to do until then?”

“Sit here and think about how you’re blind because you can’t follow directions.”

Sam left Peppy to look after Joel, then joined Cody and Reggie on the bridge, careful to make as little noise as she could as she walked through the ship.

Cody was hunched over the radio panel. Reggie sat low in his chair, watching Cody and trying to read his face.

“What’s the word?” Sam said.

Cody shot her a rabid look. “Nothing new. We run silent.”

It had been close to ten minutes since they’d escaped Layton’s attack ships. After Reggie’s flare gambit, Cody had steered the ship into the ring of rocks around the moon. Reggie had determined the rocks to be highly magnetic, which would interfere with the Layton ships’ sensors, so Cody attached Ragnarok to the largest rock he could find. They’d been sitting there ever since, hoping to remain unseen. The Layton ships couldn’t pick them up on scanners, but audio scans might still pick up signals, hence the tyrannical dictate that they be as quiet as possible.

Sam sat in one of the empty chairs. Cody remained fixed on the radio panel, waiting for any sign that they’d been found. Reggie remained fixed on Cody, ready to spring into action.

“I know we need to be quiet,” Sam whispered, “but we also need to plan our next move.” Cody tensed, but he didn’t snap at her. She took that as an invitation to continue. “Even if we make it out of this belt, even if we escape those Layton ships, there will be more right behind them. Suzz is obviously insane and has proven she has no compulsion to show restraint. I get the feeling she’ll deploy every ship Layton has to hunt us down.”

“We can’t stay here forever,” Reggie said.

“Nope,” Sam said. “We can’t. So where do we go?”

A map display appeared in the center of the room. Cody still didn’t peel himself away from the radio display, but he involved himself in the conversation.

“The closest military installation is on the other edge of the galaxy. The closest police base is hours away at a hard burn. No way we could get to either if there’s a fleet of Layton ships patrolling for us,” he assessed.

“Who do we know that could hide us for a while?” Sam stood and studied the map. “Malibu? Millie owes us.”

Reggie shook his head. “She does, but I doubt she’d agree that she owes us that much. What about Kaufman? Maybe Graham would let us hide out for a while.”

Sam wasn’t convinced. “That guy’s a creep. And there’s no way he’d risk upsetting his business by welcoming the heat we’ve got on us.”

“What about Bruiser?” Reggie said. “Seems like a guy who knows how to hide.”

Sam scoffed. “He’s also a guy who would sell us out at the drop of a hat if he could make a profit.” She paced around the map. “We need someone who understands the threat. Someone who hates Layton as much as we do.”

“Dewayne,” Cody said. “He knows what Layton is capable of. He knows what they’ve done.”

“But Jasob doesn’t have the resources to help,” Reggie said. “They’re barely staying afloat.”

“So we bring in someone who does have resources,” Cody said. “Chrisoff.”

Doubt flooded Reggie. He was ashamed that it was his first reaction. He’d doubted Cody from the beginning. He’d doubted taking the conference center job. But their current situation proved that Cody had been right about Layton going over the edge. Suzz was a danger to everyone. She needed to be stopped.

But even though he could rationalize Cody’s plan, his gut still clenched at the thought of it. It felt too big.

Sam saw the hesitation on Reggie’s face. “What?”

Reggie shrugged. “Bringing together two corporations to take down a third? It’s so far beyond what we set out to do.” He remembered what his dad said. It’s time to grow up. “But it’s what we’ve got to do. I don’t see another way.”

Cody smiled. Finally, he had everyone on his side, and they had a way forward.

“So how do we do this?” Sam asked. “The magnetic field that’s scrambling the Layton fighters’ sensors is probably jacking up our comms, right?”

Cody’s smile widened. “Yeah, but I’ve got a gadget I’ve been dying to try out.”

Sam followed him to the cargo bay while Reggie stayed on the bridge to monitor the fighters.

“It’s a comm buoy,” Cody said, holding up the beach ball-sized device. Antennae poked out of it like a pin cushion. “Made specifically for this sort of situation. We record a message on the buoy, tethered to the ship, then launch it out of the ring. It’ll transmit the message outside the zone of magnetic interference and alert us when we get a message back.”

Sam shrugged. She knew Cody wanted her to be as psyched to use it as he was, but she couldn’t muster the energy.

That did nothing to dampen Cody’s excitement. He recorded the message and input the recipient’s coordinates. Then they loaded the buoy into the airlock.

“I programmed the targeting system to communicate with the airlock doors,” Cody said. “Once the system determines the best shot for getting the device out of the ring, the airlock doors will open, and the buoy’s thrusters will kick on.”

They waited almost ten minutes for something to happen. When it finally did, it was terribly anticlimactic. Though Cody could have been watching a rocket launch, the way he reacted. He leapt into the air as the buoy launched and faded into the blackness.

“That was awesome,” he said.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait.”

Sam was done waiting. She ran some drills in the cargo hold, taking the need for silence as an added challenge. She moved stealthily, slitting imaginary throats, until all her invisible adversaries were dead.

Joel wandered in as she was cleaning the pretend blood from her sword. He felt his way around like he was walking through the dark.

“Any vision return?” Sam asked him.

“Some. I can make out shapes and stuff, but not much detail. This is the bathroom, right?”

Sam smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it.

As he felt along the wall, Peppy trotted to his side. He pressed his head against Joel’s hand and gave a whimper. Joel gently grabbed a bit of Peppy’s scruff. The alien dog guided Joel to a crate where he could sit.

Sam watched this, and her breath caught in her throat. She quickly cleared it. “Your bond is impressive.”

“He’s a good dog. Well, you know, dog-type thing.”

“He is,” Sam said as she nodded. She smiled again, but this time, she wished Joel could see it.

Cody emerged from the hallway with a tablet in his hand. He raised his eyebrows and nodded for the others to follow him.

“You know he can’t see you,” Sam said of Joel.

Cody nodded, smiled and left.

“That was Cody, wasn’t it?” Joel said. “He’s really loving this, that son of a bitch. I’ll get him back somehow. If I can just find a way to make him go deaf.”

Sam patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll come back when we’re done to see if you’ve wandered into a closet.”

“You’re a true friend.”

* * *

Cody had the message queued up when Sam walked onto the bridge. The first was one from Dewayne. He didn’t sound pleased, but that seemed somewhat standard for him. He agreed to meet once he had a time and location.

The second message was from Nora Soff, Chrisoff’s CEO. She spoke with a light-hearted tone, like she didn’t take the threat conveyed in Cody’s message seriously. But she agreed to house them regardless, and provided coordinates for Chrisoff’s headquarters.

Chrisoff was known to be a reclusive organization—not much was known about the inner workings of the company. Even less was known about Nora Soff, and nothing at all was known about their headquarters. It was the source of countless rumors and speculation. Many thought they housed a top-secret R&D department, where the company developed weapons for the military, but that was on the wilder end of the spectrum. Most business analysts and biographers knew Nora Soff to be a tad eccentric, the kind of person who valued her privacy above all else.

“If she gave us the coordinates, she must know this threat is real,” Sam mused. “If she’s famously secretive, she wouldn’t hand them over to just anybody.”

Cody agreed. “I read her biography last year. She’s an innovator, one of the most influential people in the last decade. But her social skills are lacking. It’s not uncommon for her staff, even those who’ve known her for years, to not have any idea what she’s talking about. She probably wasn’t aware that she sounded dismissive. Or she really doesn’t care.”

Joel groaned. “Is she one of those super geniuses who’s a total asshole, but people give her a pass because she’s a super genius?”

Cody shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that probably fits.”

Joel groaned more. “I think I’m going to hate this.”

* * *

Chrisoff’s headquarters were even cooler than Cody imagined. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was more in the top-secret military projects camp with his hypothesis.

He went in expecting to find just another space station. Chrisoff was so far beyond that.

The headquarters were built into an asteroid, as most of the station was a repurposed mining facility. It had been abandoned thirty years before, when all facilities of that kind had been done away with. They were deemed too expensive, being built into the rock as they were. Once they cleaned out all the ore, there was nothing to do with the place aside from leave it.

Unless you wanted to build one of the most advanced tech facilities in the galaxy, that is.

A computer-generated face appeared on the Ragnarok’s bridge display as they approached Chrisoff. “Welcome, newcomers. Your arrival has been foretold.”

Joel tensed. “Like…in a prophecy?”

“Our creator, Dr. Nora Soff, alerted me to your impending arrival. It was foretold by her. I would not classify her as an oracle, as there is no scientific proof that such a thing exists.”

Joel slid down in his chair. “I knew I was going to hate this.”

Cody waved his hand to get the computer face’s attention. “Hello. Hi, there. I’m Cody. Pilot. Computer guy. I sent the message to Dr. Soff.”

“I am aware of you, Cody.”

He was taken aback. “Oh, okay. Cool. Who are you?”

The face shifted to look at him but showed no sign of emotion. “I am the resident AI here at Chrisoff headquarters. You may refer to me as Christopher. If you would allow, I can now communicate directly with your ship and guide you into your designated berth.”

Cody looked from the computer face to the yoke in his hands. “Sure?”

Joel slapped him in the back of the head. “Are you crazy? You’re just handing control of the ship over to some computer you don’t know?”

“I can still hear you,” Christopher said, its face turning to Joel.

Joel screeched and jumped backward.

“I assure you, I am a trustworthy program. “I have not been programmed with the ability to deceive.”

Joel furrowed his brow. “Unless you’re programmed to lie to me about being able to lie to me. No offense, Chris, but I don’t know you.”

“It is Christopher,” the computer said. “That is okay. You are more than welcome to pilot the ship into the hangar bay yourself. However, I must inform you that, due to the unstable nature of this thoroughly mined asteroid, there is a sixty percent chance that you’ll arrive in the hangar bay only after amassing significant damage to your ship.”

Cody released the yoke and leaned back in his chair. “It’s all yours, Christopher.”

The yoke immediately began to move on its own. “Please sit back and relax,” Christopher said. “You will be arriving shortly.”

Joel crossed his arms. “You are way too trusting of strange computers.”

It wasn’t long before Cody felt totally confident in his decision to hand control of Ragnarok over to Christopher. The entrance to the hangar bay was on the underside of the asteroid. The ship dipped down, diving through a small field of debris hovering near the asteroid as a result of the mining process, then pulled into a steep climb.

The largest of the mining shafts had been converted into a tunnel that led to the hangar bay. Seeing how the largest vessel that would have traversed it during the mining days was a trawler, the tunnel was a tight fit for Ragnarok. There was next to no room for error. It was mostly a straight shot, with only a few gradual curves, but in such a tight space, gradual still seemed drastic.

An enormous metal door slid open as the ship approached, and the cramped tunnel opened into a massive cavern. The bottom of it was fitted with a metal platform. The walls and ceiling were reinforced with titanium girders. Raised about halfway from the floor to the ceiling were catwalks that housed offices for traffic controllers and foremen. Several workshops were spread out along the floor.

“This is Chrisoff headquarters’ hangar bay,” Christopher said. “Here, we house and maintain Chrisoff’s fleet of personal transport and shipping vehicles. Please brace for landing.”

The ship set down in a ring of flashing red lights. Automated bots swarmed the ship after it landed to ensure it was secure.

“You are now permitted to exit the ship,” Christopher said. “Thank you for allowing me the privilege of piloting your vessel.”

Cody practically danced down the ramp. The others followed more reluctantly. Even Peppy seemed nervous, his head low as if anticipating a threat.

A small bot, about three feet tall and sitting on two treads, rolled over to them. “Please follow me,” it said in a familiar voice.

“Chris?” Joel asked.

“It is Christopher. And, yes, I oversee the substantial fleet of bots on this station. As such, I am permitted to assume operational control of any of them at any moment.” The bot rolled away, down a path through rows of Chrisoff ships. “If you’ll follow me, I have been instructed to give you a tour of the station before meeting with Dr. Soff.”

Reggie objected. “We didn’t really come here for a—”

“Awesome!” Cody raced to the front of the group. “Is it true that you house an R&D department that works on top-secret military projects?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

Reggie leaned in close to Sam. “You starting to think this is a bad idea?”

Sam scanned the area, assessing it for threat and risk. “Nothing has tried to kill us yet. If they wanted us dead, they could have just had their robot fly us into a wall.”

“I guess you’re right. Something about this place just feels…weird.”

A small swarm of bots rolled by. Sam watched them as they zipped over to one of the workshop areas. They picked up tools and zipped back over to one of the parked Chrisoff ships and set about performing some basic diagnostics.

They left the hangar bay through a round door that opened like a pinwheel and was emblazoned with the Chrisoff logo. It was obvious what had been added to the original bones of the place. The Chrisoff aesthetic was very chic modern, but the clean, plastic feel of next-gen tech had been plastered onto the degraded skeleton of an industry from the previous century. The poetry of it was appealing, but the look of it was somewhat off-putting. Like two opposing forces being crammed into a bottle. Shake it up and watch the storm inside.

The door opened to a corridor with a low ceiling. Reggie felt like he needed to crouch, though he still had an inch or two before hitting his head. Every ten meters was marked by a titanium circle set in the rock as reinforcement. The tunnels only added to the juxtaposition of styles. They exited the dark corridor into a suite of labs all separated by glass walls. The floors were covered in white tile. The ceilings, likewise, were white. The sudden burst of light made the team shield their eyes.

Bots whirred about in each of the lab spaces, assembling robotics or combining different colored liquids that resulted in sometimes volatile reactions.

“Here is the Research and Development department,” Christopher said.

Cody squealed with glee.

“One of them, anyway,” Christopher added. “There are three in total. The other two are off limits to all but Chrisoff personnel.”

Cody deflated a little.

“This cluster of labs,” Christopher continued, “handles our commercial products. These carry the Chrisoff label that you will find on the open market.”

“And where would we find the things being worked on in the other labs?” Cody asked.

Christopher ignored him.

They followed the bot through to an elevator. Again, they felt as if they had passed from one facility to another. The elevator was little more than a metal box ringed with rust. It screeched as it climbed, clearly a relic of the mining facility.

The doors opened to a scene that could be mistaken for heaven. Blindingly white. Soft, choral music. A warmth in the air that made you feel instantly comfortable. They stood in a large room with a domed ceiling… It looked like a cathedral or art museum. The walls were decorated with paintings in elaborate frames spaced at equal intervals, and between each frame was a piece of industrial sculpture that looked like little more than hunks of metal and gears welded together. The pairing fit with the juxtaposed aesthetic found throughout the rest of the headquarters.

Sitting in the middle of the room was a round couch, like one large ottoman, littered with red pillows.

“Thus concludes the tour,” Christopher said. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Someone will be along shortly to see to you.”

The team stood looking at each other as the bot rolled away, not sure what to do with themselves.

Cody was the first to sit. He flopped onto the big, round couch, landing flat on his back. “This place is greater than I imagined. Such inspired design. Revolutionary in its simplicity. And that AI. I love AIs. Christopher is amazing.

“Yeah, he’s amazing,” Sam said. “Where are all the people?”

The question seemed almost naïve to Cody. He scoffed, but quickly retracted it with a qualifying statement. “We only toured a small section of the facility. They’re probably all in those other labs.”

Reggie walked the perimeter of the room, eyes scanning the place distrustfully. “I don’t know. There’s something creepy about this place.”

“What does that even mean?” Cody said, getting defensive.

“It means I feel like one of those robots is going to knock me out, peel my skin off, put it on another robot, then upload my brain into that robot’s body.”

The team stared at Joel like he’d already had his skin peeled off.

“This is the headquarters of one of the premier scientists in the galaxy. Maybe the smartest person in the system. Of course she’s going to have some eccentricities.”

Joel shook his head. “Why do geniuses get a free pass to be sociopaths?”

“I assure you, Dr. Soff is not a sociopath.” A bipedal bot entered the room from a hidden door on the wall opposite from the one they’d entered. One of the larger paintings slid to the side, revealing a tunnel behind it. “Though she is absolutely a genius.”

This bot was not controlled by Christopher. The voice was closer to a woman’s, higher in pitch, but there was something distinctly inhuman about it. Though, the snarky attitude was all too human.

The bot’s design and overall demeanor did nothing to assuage Joel’s worries.

“My name is Pascal,” the bot said. “I was told I must see to your needs.”

“Did Christopher send you?” Cody asked.

Pascal erupted in a disturbing fit of metallic laughter. “He wishes. That answering machine wouldn’t dare order me about.”

Even Cody’s fanboy excitement ebbed, and concern flowed in. “But you are an AI?”

“I’m the AI, as far as Dr. Soff is concerned. The first she ever created, with her hack of a partner way back when. I’m not off-base in saying I’ve yet to be improved upon.”

The team all had the same thought at the same time. This AI had been co-created by Soff and Suzz… That had to be the root of Suzz’s hatred.

Reggie opened his mouth to ask the question they all wanted to ask, but Pascal shut him down.

“Nope. I’m not answering questions about any of that. I know you’re here because of Dr. Suzz. You have questions about that, ask Dr. Soff. I just came to ask if you needed any coffee or anything.”

“You’re the supreme AI here, and you’re responsible for getting us coffee?” Joel said.

Pascal locked him in its robotic stare. “I can peel your skin off.”

Joel swallowed hard. “I knew it.”

Pascal broke away from Joel, though its demeanor did not change. “There are automated food and beverage dispenser units built into the wall. Simply request something, and it will be provided. Within limits,” the AI added when Joel’s smile began to widen.

Pascal walked toward the door through which the team had come. “Dr. Soff will be along momentarily. She can’t just squeeze in any old person who comes along crying about space monsters and whatnot. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spill motor oil all over the hangar bay floor. Christopher hates that.”

The door closed behind Pascal, leaving the team alone again.

Silence fell over the room as each of them considered what had just happened and how strange this place was and why they were even here. Dr. Soff didn’t seem all that concerned with their complaints about Dr. Suzz, or she wouldn’t leave them waiting so long. The longer they stayed at Chrisoff’s headquarters, the lower their hopes went of finding some real help.

Sam wandered along the perimeter of the room, studying the walls as though searching for something. She paused near one of the smaller paintings. “Beer.”

Reggie leaned around her to look at the painting. He was confused, as it seemed to be a painting of angels or something. But then the painting slid to the side, and a frosty mug of beer appeared.

Sam took the glass and swigged half of it. She let out a satisfied belch. “If we’re going to get our skin peeled off, may as well enjoy it while we can.”

“No one is getting their skin peeled off,” Cody said. He seemed personally offended by the others’ distrust of Chrisoff.

Joel and Reggie both put in orders for beer. Then Joel added on some hot wings, and Reggie got a sundae. Gritting his teeth, Cody ordered a latte. A good latte was surprisingly hard to come by, far from a planet with a suitable ecosystem for growing coffee. Synthetic coffee was not the same. The first sip took Cody’s edge off, though.

As Joel dropped the last clean-picked chicken bone on his plate, the door behind the painting opened, and a woman appeared. She appeared to be in her mid-forties. Her hair was cut short, not in a stylish way, but in a way that seemed purely utilitarian. She wore a long, white lab coat, knee-high leather boots, and her wrists were weighed down with jewelry. She was the personification of the aesthetic of Chrisoff. A mix of utilitarian and chic.

“I hope everyone has found the accommodations suitable.” Dr. Nora Soff moved with an ease common to people who had little regard for others—not in a heartless sort of way, but more in the fact that the opinions of others meant nothing to her. Judgments slid off her like runny eggs in a nonstick pan.

She walked past the team, not caring that their eyes were stuck on her, and sat on the round couch. “So, why are you here?” She was blunt, but her voice lacked the forceful edge of someone who was trying to dominate the situation.

“We sent a message,” Cody said.

“Yes, I heard the message. You mentioned Patty.” Dr. Soff’s face tightened as she spoke the name. “That is the only reason I allowed you to come here. I don’t typically welcome visitors.”

“Or people at all,” Sam interjected. “I noticed. Are you the only human here?”

“No,” Dr. Soff said. “You are all human.”

Joel squirmed. Dr. Soff’s demeanor made him think she’d already had her skin removed and placed on a robot body.

“That isn’t what you meant,” Dr. Soff added. “Yes, normally, I am the only human here. Chrisoff employs thousands of people throughout the galaxy, but here, on this station, it is just me and the bots.” She met Sam’s astonishment with a blank stare. “I am not good with people.”

“Is that why Dr. Suzz wants to kill you?” Joel said.

Cody elbowed him.

“No, that’s okay,” Dr. Soff said. “I appreciate forthrightness. My schism with Patty is much deeper than personality. It’s based on a fundamental difference in our approach to our work.”

“Pascal,” Cody said.

“Pascal was the final straw,” Dr. Soff clarified. “It was the most advanced AI at the time of its creation. Able to mimic human personality traits on a level still unrivaled by other AIs. I wanted to make the code open source, allow others to use it in order to further the development of artificial intelligence. Patty wanted to monetize it.”

“So you split?” Cody asked.

Dr. Soff nodded. “I couldn’t continue working with her after that. Our philosophies diverged too much. She was in it for the money. I was and am in it for the advancement. Though I may not be good with people, I do want what is best for everyone, and I believe the best way for us all to move forward is through major scientific advancements like AI. I’ve continued to provide the blueprints for much of my work for free to others who might be able to achieve this.”

“What about the stuff in the other labs here?” Cody asked. “The ones that are off limits to non-staff?”

“Those projects are still in development and can be rather volatile. I won’t open source something that is still potentially dangerous.”

Sam slugged the rest of her beer before getting another. “That’s great and everything, yay science, but you know that Suzz is coming after you, right? She’s been targeting Layton’s competitors, destroying entire space stations, killing people. But it sounds personal with you. She’ll burn the galaxy down to get to you.”

Dr. Soff shrugged.

“Is this one of those instances where your genius brain prevents you from understanding the basics of a situation?” Joel said. “She’s going to kill you. By sending super mutant monsters to eat you.”

Dr. Soff shrugged again. “I understand why my apparent nonchalance regarding the matter may concern you. Most people react very differently when faced with the possibility of death. I remain calm for the simple reason that I don’t feel that I am facing the possibility of death.” Dr. Soff checked her watch, a sleek tablet that fit nicely on her wrist. “I know Patty. I know how she thinks and operates. And I know how the universe reacts to her machinations. The closer she gets to her ultimate goal, the more volatile she and everything around her becomes. She implodes. If I am her ultimate goal, then all her plans are about to fall apart.”

“No offense, Dr. Soff,” Cody said, “but you seem to be putting a lot of faith in how well you know Dr. Suzz. Couldn’t she have changed since you knew her?”

“People are like rocks,” Dr. Soff said. “They may change outwardly over time when exposed to certain environmental conditions, but, at their core, they remain the same.”

She checked her watch again. A light flashed, casting a red glow on her face. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here. Goodbye.” She walked back toward the door behind the painting.

“Wait,” Cody said. “That’s it? You aren’t going to help us? Or fortify the place or anything?”

“Return to your ship,” Dr. Soff said. “I believe you will find that my help is not needed. Things have already begun falling apart.”

The picture slid back as she entered the door, and she was gone.

Frustration filled the room. Even Cody, who had been caught in the thralls of fanboy-dom, scoffed at the spot where Dr. Soff had stood a second before.

“I can’t believe that. She shrugged. She just shrugged.”

Reggie clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry your hero is a little crazy.”

They double-timed it back to the ship, Dr. Soff’s last words to them hanging like a guillotine. Cody made straight for the bridge when they boarded Ragnarok. The hailing beacon flashed, signaling an incoming call.

“Ragnarok, do you read?”

“This is Ragnarok,” Cody answered. “Go ahead.”

“Finally. This is Director Dewayne. I’ve been trying to contact you for over an hour.” His voice was fraught from stress and overuse. “I cannot meet you at the predesignated location.”

Cody sank into his chair. “Don’t worry about it. It was a bust, anyway. Have you ever met Dr. Soff? She’s kind of—”

“Listen,” Dewayne snapped. “I can’t make it because that entire sector is closed. It’s been placed under a lockdown order. No traffic in or out.”

Dr. Soff’s ominous warning rang in Cody’s ears as he asked, “Why?”

“Reports of unknown creatures attacking ships. They all appear to be heading toward one central location in that sector. I can’t get close. If you’re still there, I suggest you get as far away as you can. Head to the other end of the sector. Good luck.”

The call went dead.

Cody checked the radar display. There were no signs of any creatures. Not yet.

His heart leapt when something on the control panel beeped and blinked, and his mind immediately raced to the conclusion that they were surrounded by some vile space monster and were about to be swallowed whole. Again. He breathed easy when he saw that it was only the comm, signaling another incoming call.

He answered it, assuming it was Dewayne calling to relay some information he’d forgotten.

“I meant to ask you,” Cody said. “Do we still get paid for that convention center job?”

“I don’t see why you would,” the caller answered, though she was clearly not Dewayne. “You failed quite miserably.”

Cody’s hand hovered over the comm, ready to end the call. Instead, he traced the signal back to its source, sure it would disprove the wild theory that had sprouted in his head the second she spoke. The signal wasn’t even encrypted. She made no effort to disguise herself. No attempt to hide. After all this time.

Why now?

“Who is this?” he asked.

“You know who this is,” she said. “If I’m correct, which I always am, I’m speaking with Cody. You’re the smart one, yes? You’ve already traced my signal. You know this is a straightforward call, no attempt at subterfuge, no attempt to attack your ship with a virus through the comm link.”

Cody hadn’t even thought of that. He ran a quick diagnostic of the computers. Everything was clean.

“Okay,” he said. “Then what you do want, Dr. Suzz?”

“Your help.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Joel blinked several times at Cody, like each time his eyes opened, he hoped Cody wouldn’t be there, that he and his nonsense would have been teleported somewhere far, far away. Reggie rubbed his palms into his eyes so hard Cody thought he might be trying to make himself go blind. Sam silently sharpened her blade, which may have been the most disconcerting reaction of them all.

“So…?” Cody felt a compulsive need to fill the awkward silence. “Are we mulling it over or…?”

“Mulling it over?” Joel said, his voice exploding out of him. “Are you shitting me? We are certainly not mulling it over. I’ve never wanted to mull anything less. I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.”

Reggie dropped his hands and blinked through the field of bright spots dancing across his vision. “Yeah, remind me again why we are talking about this.”

“Because this could be our chance to end the whole thing,” Cody said. “No more attacks from Layton. No more mutant space beast infestations.”

“After this one,” Sam amended.

“Right.” Cody nodded. “After this one.”

Joel’s chest heaved. He was fuming with a rage that he didn’t know where to direct. “But why wouldn’t we just let Suzz die? She started all this. Isn’t she just reaping what she sowed? Let’s let her get reaped.”

The thought made Reggie squirm like he had a cramp in his gut. “We can’t let her die.”

“Why not?” Sam asked.

The question caught Cody off guard. “Because she’s a person. Is that not enough?”

The others didn’t seem to think so.

“Then how about the possibility that if we let whatever is attacking her station win, then it will multiply and spread and take over the galaxy?”

They still didn’t seem too convinced.

Cody’s face burned hot with frustration. “Seriously?”

“Have you never heard of the concept of a trap?” Joel said. “This woman has been doing dastardly shit for months, and we keep foiling her plans. Now she calls and claims to need help? As soon as we land the ship, mutant rats are going eat us.”

Sam slid a whetstone down the length of her sword blade, a harmonic note singing in the air. “That seems to fit her style. Sending all those Trojan horses to those companies. Inviting us into her home so she can stab us in the back. They aren’t that far apart.”

Cody raised the radar display of the sector on his wristcom. “A system-wide alert has been issued by three separate agencies—both military and civil. The sector is totally locked down. You think Dr. Suzz could have orchestrated that? That would take some serious sway with the decision makers of those agencies. Pulling off something on that scale would be a lot to go through just to set us up.”

Reggie leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “What do you want to do?”

“I think we should at least check it out,” Cody said. “Fly to Layton Station and check it out. If it feels fishy, we’ll leave.”

Joel chewed on his knuckle. “I think we have very different bars for determining what’s fishy. But fine. I’m good with that.”

The others agreed.

“Dr. Suzz sent the coordinates to Layton Station earlier. She also mapped the best course so we can get there without any resistance.”

“That’s so nice of her,” Joel said. “Very thoughtful. I’m going to prep all the guns.” He left the bridge.

“I’ll go with him,” Reggie said. “Not that I don’t believe you. Totally believe you. I just like to be prepared.”

Cody paid them no attention. He input the coordinates and mapped out the course Dr. Suzz had provided.

Sam sheathed her sword and sat in the chair just vacated by Reggie. She stared into the side of Cody’s head.

“What?” Cody said.

“You don’t actually trust her, do you?”

“I trust that she’d do anything to survive. She’s ruthless and practical.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as someone who would lure us into a trap?”

Cody finished mapping their course. He activated the engines and let the autopilot take over. “Of course she would. If she was still in control. I think this is like Dr. Soff said. I think the wheels are starting to come off Dr. Suzz’s plan, and the whole thing is getting away from her. She’s desperate.”

Sam stared at Cody a long moment before finally nodding. “Okay. Just remember that desperate people are the most dangerous.”

* * *

The path Dr. Suzz had charted was clear…at least, of any monsters. But there was evidence that whatever was coming for Suzz had passed through. A mining trawler had been torn in two. The halves of the dead ship floated by like garbage.

Cody refused to look at Sam, but he felt her eyes on him, saying, “Told you so.” That dead ship showed that Suzz was no longer in control.

The rest of the trip was quiet, inside and outside of Ragnarok. Tension aboard the ship spiked. Reggie and Joel stayed in the ready room, packing, planning, seething. Cody didn’t take it personally. They weren’t mad at him, they were mad at Dr. Suzz. They were mad that she was once again putting them in a position with a high likelihood of death and dismemberment. The fact that she had the nerve to call on them when her plan to destroy thousands of lives backfired, a plan they had been on the wrong side of for months, lit a fire in them that could not be extinguished.

That same fire raged in Cody and Sam. They hated Suzz as much as the others. But Cody saw this as an ending, where the guys saw this as another hole to fall into. He knew that one way or another, the battle against Layton ended here.

Layton Station looked fine from a distance. But the closer Cody flew Ragnarok, the more apparent it was that something was wrong. A section along the top ridge of the station had been breached. Cody could see the air still venting out, so the damage must have been recent. And the way the hull was bent outward…something had broken out, not in.

“It’s about time you got here.” Dr. Suzz’s voice sounded over the comm. “My station is coming apart.”

Joel and Reggie entered the bridge. Joel looked ready to scream, but Sam silenced him with a look.

“Sorry we didn’t come dashing to your rescue at an appropriate speed,” Cody said. “What is the situation aboard the station?”

“Awful,” Suzz said. “Now get in here and fix it.”

Joel’s jaw tightened.

“No,” Cody said to the surprise of everyone. “First you tell us the situation inside. We won’t march into a warzone without knowing what we’re getting into.”

Suzz unleashed a flurry of curses that made Reggie squirm.

Cody didn’t budge. “We can just as easily turn around.”

“No!” Suzz shouted. “Fine. The station has been overrun by lophius. I assume you know what those are.” Her voice rang with a cockiness that stabbed at Cody’s ears.

“We’re familiar,” he replied.

“They possess a trait that I was unaware of until now. Something like that of salmon. They return to the place they were born.”

An idea sprouted in Cody’s head.

“So, you’re saying the lophius were born on Layton Station?” he clarified.

Dr. Suzz went silent. Her pause was pregnant with suspicion, but her suspicion wasn’t as powerful as her sense of self-preservation.

“Yes, they were born on this station.”

“And by ‘born,’ you mean—”

“I created them,” Suzz snapped, cutting Cody off. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you recording this? What kind of person blackmails another in the midst of a life or death situation?”

“A smart one,” Sam said, smiling at Cody.

“Yes, well, congratulations,” Suzz said, her voice almost a growl. “You are very smart. Now come here and kill these monsters.”

“I’m not done with the blackmail yet,” Cody said. “If we do this, you have to turn yourself in after.”

Suzz scoffed on the other end of the line. “Why would I make it easy for you?”

“Because there’s a chance you could salvage something of your company if you go quietly,” Cody said. “Because you’re right – I am recording this conversation. And if I release it to the media, Layton is finished. Your company, your legacy, gets torn down. Come quietly, and maybe Layton can survive.”

Dr. Suzz yelled. It was a guttural sound, pure anger. An animalistic expression of rage. For a moment, Sam thought the woman was being torn apart by lophius. The thought made her smile.

But then, Suzz said, “Fine.”

“Good. Evacuate the station,” Cody said. “We’re coming aboard. I’m sending you coordinates—if you aren’t there when we arrive, I’ll release the tape of this conversation.”

He ended the call and then spun to face the others. He was surprised to see the wide smiles on their faces.

“What?” he demanded.

Joel shrugged. “Who knew you could be such a hardass?”

Cody’s cheeks burned. “Just get down to the ready room. I’m going to pilot us in.”

The others slapped him on the back as they left the bridge, and Cody couldn’t keep the smile from spreading across his face.

* * *

Reggie packed the portable footlocker so full that he had to sit on the lid in order to close it. It was loaded with enough extra ammo and medical supplies that they could invade a country if they wanted to. In a way, it felt like they were. Layton had been looming over them since the beginning, a hostile power. Now, they were storming its stronghold.

He set his gatling on top of the footlocker as he suited up, strapping his body armor on and checking his semiautomatic. He tightened his gloves and checked their power packs. He squeezed his fists and felt the power run through his fingers. He couldn’t help but think back to their first jobs, how they’d walked in blind, expecting to step on a few bugs and get paid. How he had been crippled by fear and anxiety after. How he would freeze at the sound of skittering feet.

There was still a small part of his mind, a nagging voice tucked in a dark closet at the back of his head, that urged him to hide, to run. But it was only a whisper now.

Sam twirled her sword. She extended her shield and retracted it again, smoothing out the kinks, making sure it was ready. Making sure she was ready.

She stared at the shield as the overhead lights reflected off it. It hadn’t struck her until then how heavy it was on her arm, how strange it was to wield it. Not for any fault of its design, but for the simple fact that she was wielding a defensive tool. She had always been one of offense, of attack, she, herself, a weapon. But the shield was as important to her now as her sword because she had something worth protecting: her friends and this new life she was building.

She caught her reflection in the surface of her shield. Her smile was wide and glistening.

“Grab onto something,” Cody warned the Notches over the general comm. “We’re coming in hot.”

The ship rocked violently, like they’d hit something. Or like something had hit them.

A lophius slammed into the hull, but Ragnarok was too close to the station to take evasive action. Cody kept a steady course, just meters away from docking. The lophius floated away, seemingly growing uninterested.

Cody set the ship down in a crowded and frantic hangar bay. The entire population of the station was rushing to evacuate. The hectic energy of the environment seeped into Cody’s blood and set his heart racing. He ran to regroup with the others in the ready room.

“Good news,” he said as he entered. “We’re docked and ready for action. Bad news, looks like there’s a lot of action.”

He displayed a series of images on the ready room monitor. Each image looked like a map pocked with swarms of red dots.

“I ran some scans of the station,” he continued. “Not only are we dealing with lophius, but we’ve got ShimVens and Rapoo, too.”

“The trifecta of mutant space beasts,” Joel said. “Cool.”

Reggie scanned through the images. “Looks like chaos out there. If our past experience with these things is any indication, we can assume they’re all trying to kill each other. Let’s use that.”

“What if the Rapoo and ShimVens have been mutated to guard the lophius, like the ones from the storage house?” Sam said.

Cody shook his head as he zeroed the sight on his scatterblaster. “Dr. Suzz planned that. She knew the lophius needed protecting until they evolved. But she wasn’t expecting the lophius to return here. It should be every mutant for itself now.”

“Perfect,” Reggie said. “Then we’ll be the only united front out there. And nothing can beat us when we’re working together.” He stuck out his hand.

Joel hung his head with a heavy sigh.

“Come on,” Reggie pressed. “Just one time.”

Reluctantly, Sam put her hand on top of Reggie’s. “One time,” she repeated warningly.

Cody followed.

“What the hell,” Joel said, slapping his hand on the others. “Go, team.”

Reggie threw his hand in the air, carrying the others’ with it. “Go, team!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The docking bay was a circus. The terrifying kind of circus. The fever dream with dancing clowns and warped music and flashing lights that could push someone to the edge of seizure. The Layton staff were like ants under a magnifying glass held to the sun. Scurrying frantically, crawling over each other in hopes of finding safe passage out of the fire.

The team put their guns away. One wide shot could mean putting a hole through Deb from accounts receivable, and they’d come to save people, not turn them into collateral damage. That restricted them to melee weapons.

Which suited Sam just fine. She ran through the crowd, the people turning to blurs in her periphery. She saw past them and picked the ShimVens and Rapoo out of the flurry of movement. She was a heat-seeking missile.

Her blade, too, became a blur. It shimmered as it sliced through the air, followed quickly by a fine red mist. The creatures dropped dead. The fleeing people didn’t take the time to appreciate the beauty with which Sam had just saved their lives.

The guys were much less elegant in their approach. Reggie pummeled a ShimVen to death, feeling its skull crack under his knuckles. Joel opted for the extendable spear, hoping to keep the creatures as far from himself as possible. Cody used his dagger to shank a Rapoo.

The chaos made the hangar bay appear to be more of a threat than it was. Once the majority of the people had cleared out, the team saw that there were only a few creatures that needed to be dealt with.

Luckily, the chaos worked in the Notches’ favor. The creatures were so frantic, killing each other as much as trying to kill the people, that the team was able to finish them off quickly enough.

As Cody stabbed the last Rapoo through the neck, he was barely sweating. The hangar was suddenly quiet, where, just seconds before, it had been a raucous madhouse. The change was jarring and put off he and the others.

“I’m getting sick of calms before the storm,” Joel said. “Just once, I’d appreciate it if the monsters could come at us straight away.” He retracted his spear and holstered the subsequent rod on his back. He drew his pistols, expecting more action.

Cody followed suit, holstering his dagger and readying his scatterblaster. “I’ll take any bit of quiet I can get where no one is trying to kill me.”

Sam twirled her sword like she was about to sheathe it, but changed her mind at the last minute. “I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.” She pointed her sword at the far end of the hangar bay, where a small swarm of lophius was slithering toward them.

Reggie opened fire with his semiautomatic blaster, forgetting that the gunfire did little to harm the creatures. The lophius continued on their course, which the team thought was straight at them. But it wasn’t. The slithering creatures crawled over the dead bodies of the Rapoo and ShimVens, and they began to eat.

Joel clutched his stomach. “I’m going to puke.” He put his hand over his mouth and puffed out his cheeks. “So gross.”

Cody raised his wristcom and scanned the nearest lophius. Then he dropped to one knee to examine the results.

Sam stepped in front of him, raising her sword and shield in a defensive posture. “Not a great place for a sit and read.”

“This is bad,” Cody said.

“Obviously,” Sam said. “Explain why.”

“The lophius grow at an exponential rate, as we saw at the storehouse. From harmless goo blobs to little monster snakes in a matter of hours. I’ve been studying them since we first encountered them.” Cody scrolled through some of the older scans, comparing data. “I determined that they metabolize their bodies’ own natural fat stores to muster the energy for the transformation.”

“Get to the point before I vomit,” Joel said.

“They didn’t eat anything at the storehouse,” Cody said. “But if they get their hands on an all-you-can-eat buffet, they will grow much larger.”

“How much larger?” Reggie asked, afraid of the answer.

“That one that rammed our ship on the way in,” Cody reminded them. “Maybe, like, a hundred times that size?”

“Are you fucking serious?” Joel shouted.

Before Cody could respond, the lophius finished their meals. They twitched and spasmed, jiggling on the floor like piles of Jell-O. The air filled with a piercing shriek that seemed to come from everywhere and there was a smell like burning plastic. Then the goo blobs exploded.

A slime rain fell and splattered over the floor. Joel’s gut spasmed again, threatening to spew out the Pop-Tarts he’d had for breakfast.

Once the slime rain stopped, the team saw how the lophius’ new diet had affected them. They were now four feet long, with mouths full of razor teeth. The antenna that sprouted from the top of their heads held a baseball-sized node on the end that emitted a dull light. Fins had formed on the sides of their snake-like bodies.

“Anything in those readings about killing these things?” Sam asked.

Cody stared at the creatures, awed by them, fascinated and desperately wishing he could take one back to his lab to study.

“Cody!” Sam yelled at him, snapping him back to the moment.

“Their goo is gone,” he replied. “They should be more solid now than in their larval stage. You should be able to hit them a lot easier.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.” Reggie ran toward the closest lophius.

The lophius slithered to meet him. The creature was surprisingly fast, twisting its long body in a way that launched it across the floor. It increased its speed further by digging its fins into the floor, revealing that they were edged with hardened shards, like a saw blade.

Unfortunately for Reggie, he didn’t realize that fact until it was too late.

He raised his fist, ready to deliver a crushing blow to the lophius, but the creature slashed upward with its fin, slicing Reggie from belly button to chest. The force lifted him off his feet and sent him flying backward. He slammed onto his back and lay motionless.

Sam darted at the offending creature as Joel and Cody both peppered it with blaster fire. The shots were more effective than they would have been against a gooey larva, but they still did not kill the lophius, merely throwing it off balance and knocking it back. But that was enough to provide Sam an opening.

She jumped into the air, flipping forward, and came down on top of the lophius, driving her sword through its brain.

The creature shrieked and squirmed and died.

Sam plucked her sword from the dead thing then ran to Reggie’s side. She prepared herself for the gory sight of her friend’s entrails spilling from his opened abdomen. She was pleasantly surprised to see no intestines at all, just a groaning Reggie clutching his chest.

“Not dead,” he said, heaving for breath.

Joel leaned down and poked the body armor on Reggie’s chest, now exposed through the rip in Reggie’s shirt. “Rapoo teeth beats lophius fin.”

Sam spun toward the oncoming swarm of lophius, wriggling and hissing like vipers. “Good to know.”

Reggie struggled to one knee, still heaving. “They can’t cut through the body armor, but they still pack a punch.” He waved Cody and Joel away. “Go, help Sam. I’m good.”

Cody and Joel opened fire on the lophius, halting their advance.

As Sam ran toward the first snake, she yelled to Joel over the blaster fire. “Now would be a good time to call in the cavalry.”

In the chaos, Joel had forgotten all about part two of their attack plan.

He whistled, and General Pepper shot like a bolt down the ramp of Ragnarok. They’d left him aboard the ship until they knew what they were facing. The team acknowledged now that Peppy was their heavy hitter and would rather he stay rested until they needed him.

He was well rested.

Peppy swept around to the left. Sam attacked from the right. They sliced and chewed their way through the lophius in less than a minute and met in the middle. Sam scratched Peppy behind his ear. He pressed his head into her hip and let out a soft moan.

Cody scanned the hangar bay. “No more heat signatures. This area is clear.” He broadened his scans. “So is the rest of the station. Dr. Suzz said there weren’t any lophius on site. All of these must have migrated back.”

Joel clapped his hands. “Great. Job done. Let’s go pick up the genius sociopath and be done with this entire shitstorm.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Cody said.

Joel threw his hands in the air. “Of course I am. What am I forgetting?”

In answer to his question, a ten-foot-long lophius smashed through the hangar bay doors, creating a sucking vacuum.

Cody tried to yell, “That!” but the word was sucked out into space along with everything else that wasn’t bolted down.

Reggie tried to yell, “Helmets!” but his word followed Cody’s out into the void.

Fortunately, the team didn’t need explicit instruction to activate the tech that could save their lives. It was new, untested equipment that Joel had insisted on purchasing after their extensive history with hull breaches.

It had been a wise purchase.

The collars fit neatly under their clothes. They were loose and barely noticeable, both to the wearers and to others. A single tube connected the front of the collar to thin units on their chests, about the size of a slice of bread, which led Joel to call them “sandwich tanks.”

Each of the Notches pressed a red button on the side of their collars. A dome of plastic extended from the tops of the collars, connecting on the top, completely sealing around the wearer’s head. The plastic material was so thin that it looked like a soap bubble. The tube pumped oxygen, each sandwich tank holding a ten-minute supply.

“We need to seal that breach,” Reggie yelled.

“Already on it,” Cody said as he struggled against the pull of the vacuum to a crate that was bolted to the floor.

He crouched behind it for cover. Using his wristcom, he hacked into the hangar bay controls. Within seconds, he located the safety protocols. They had either been neglected or programmed by a total noob. Either way, they were totally unacceptable for such a high-profile establishment. They failed to activate when needed.

Cody remedied that. I should really start charging these places for identifying their cyber weaknesses. With the press of a button, the hull breach protocols kicked in, and an energy patch formed over the hole that the lophius had punched in it.

Now to deal with the giant space snake.

Peppy was already on the creature’s back, his teeth sunk into the back of its neck. It flapped its fins in a pathetic attempt to shake him free. When that didn’t work, the lophius launched into something like an alligator’s death roll. It rolled across the floor, Peppy still latched onto it, crushing the poor alien pup under its weight. After the fifth rotation, Peppy released his hold. By then, he had already done his job.

The lophius was disoriented from blood loss and spinning, so it didn’t see the combined attack of Reggie and Sam and Joel coming at it. Reggie punched it square in the face, releasing a charge from his glove that reverberated through the creature’s body. Joel sank his spear into the lophius’s side then drew his scatterblaster and unloaded it into the thing. Sam sliced down into the lophius’s neck. She hacked away at it until its head separated from its body.

“Now the station is secure,” Reggie said, his knuckles dripping with blood. “But for how long?”

A loud thud rang through the hangar bay, the sound of a lophius ramming its head against the hull from the outside.

“All of the lophius that Dr. Suzz released are returning,” Cody said. “There’s no telling how big they’ll be when they get here. If she released them some months ago, they would have had plenty of time to eat and grow. These ones more than quadrupled in size in a matter of minutes.”

The ramifications of the sentiment washed over them. Here they were, on another station, owned by yet another person who was richer than they’d ever be, in danger of collapse. And they, having been contracted to clean up the mess, were left to debate whether it’s their responsibility to tackle the even bigger mess born of it. They could leave now—having secured the station, but knowing that the returning lophius would just destroy it and move on to menace the galaxy—or stay and fight and possibly die.

Being that they were the only ones in this equation cursed with a conscience, it was no choice at all. And they’d been in this situation enough that there was no need for debate.

“Does this station have any weapons?” Reggie asked.

Cody consulted his wristcom. “A few gun batteries and a proton cannon for defending against meteors.”

“Those should do,” Reggie said. “We know who our targets are, and we know where they’re going to be. I say we dig in, let them come to us, and take them out. Two man the station’s weapons. Two use Ragnarok.”

“Dibs on the cannon,” Joel said, raising his hand.

Reggie looked shocked.

“What?” Joel said. “You thought I’d opt to go on the ship? Let me ask you this—which do you think is more likely to get swallowed whole by a space snake?” He looked at each of them in turn. “That’s what I thought.”

Sam clapped Cody on the back. “Then we’ve got Ragnarok.”

They all nodded and suddenly became uncomfortable looking at each other. Their eyes fell to the floor or danced across the ceiling. A sense of finality pressed down on them. It made the space between them seem much more vast, un-crossable. Until Reggie reached into it, his arm straight and hand open, palm down.

The others slapped their hand on top of his without question.

“‘Victory or death’?” Reggie suggested.

“A little dark,” Joel said. “But accurate.”

“Victory or death!” they all shouted as they threw their hands in the air.

“Notches, to your battlestations,” Joel said. “Shit’s about to get really real.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ragnarok felt lighter. Cody knew that was a ridiculous thought. Reggie, Joel and Peppy’s combined weight was a miniscule fraction of a percent compared to the overall weight of the ship and its cargo.

It was a different kind of weight. Their absence made the ship feel less alive, less like the home they’d come to know, and more like a thing. A piece of metal that launched them through space.

But it was also a piece of metal with two mounted turrets and a full battery of torpedoes. And those were going to ensure that Ragnarok remained the home they’d come to know, and that each of the Notches would live long enough to step foot on it again.

“Coming up on our position,” Cody said from the bridge.

“Aye,” Sam acknowledged from the top turret.

As far as plans go, this one was typical of the team’s structure. Loose.

The goal: destroy the attacking lophius and not die. The method for achieving said goal was largely point and shoot. Layton Station was ground zero, the defending fortress. Ragnarok would provide air support.

Loose. But on a grander scale than usual.

“I’ve got inbound,” Cody said, studying the scanners. “About a dozen. Eight small to mid-size, four whoppers.”

“Heard,” Reggie said from his position on Layton Station. “We’ll handle the whoppers first. Keep the lines open so we’re always on the same page. No friendly fire incidents here, people.”

Cody parked Ragnarok on an asteroid, one of the largest on the outer ring of an asteroid belt a few klicks from the station. He thought about the difference between fighting living creatures up close versus from behind the wheel of a spacecraft. The lophius had no scanners, no instrumentation, just their senses, and Ragnarok wouldn’t appear on any readouts. As long as he and Sam sat still, the lophius would pass right by. He hoped.

“Ready on the turret, Sam,” Cody said. “Here comes the swarm.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” she retorted. “If you hadn’t told me to be ready just now, I probably would have gone to paint my nails or something. Thank god for your diligence.”

“That’s not…I didn’t mean to…”

“Unclench, Cody.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just fucking with you.”

Cody exhaled as the swarmed passed in front of the ship, the idea of pissing Sam off more terrifying than the incoming lophius.

“What about me?” Joel said. “Should I be ready, too? Or do I have time to zip down to the kitchen for a Hot Pocket?”

Cody clenched his jaw, trying to keep from yelling at Joel and remain focused. The circumstances didn’t allow him the choice.

A particularly curious lophius lingered at the rear of the swarm. One of the smaller of the serpents, it measured about three feet long. Its head swept back and forth, like the creature was looking for something, or like it had caught a scent on the air. Then it snapped its head to the side and locked onto Ragnarok.

It tensed, then coiled, then sprang forth like a jack in the box, shooting for the ship like a torpedo.

“Taking evasive action!” Cody put all power to the thrusters and rocketed the ship off the asteroid just in time to avoid the lophius.

The creature hit the rock with such force that it punched straight through it, shattering the planetoid into dozens of pieces. As the ship raced away from the creature, Sam spun the turret to face it. Opening fire, the turret shook. Sam felt like she was sitting inside a clothes dryer. The force of the blaster reverberated through her arms, shaking them to the point that she could barely hold on.

Determined, she squeezed tighter. This turret was hers. Every weapon she’d ever used became part of her. She was an expert, their master. This massive gun was part of her now.

The lophius dipped beneath the steady stream of blaster fire, moving like a fish through water, using its fins like rudders to maneuver quicker and sharper than any ship could.

Sam fought to keep the creature in her sights. It moved. The ship moved. Everything spun so fast, her stomach threatened to mutiny. But she didn’t have time to think about how devastating it would be to puke inside this tiny bubble. She only had time to focus.

She jerked on the turret controls, forcing the gun to jump ahead in the line it had been following. The blaster bolt struck the left fin of the lophius, sending it into an uncontrollable spin. She took a breath, held it, steadied her hands, and zeroed in on the space snake. Then she squeezed the trigger, and the lophius burst into a mist of blue goo.

“One down!” she shouted.

Cody congratulated her with a terse grunt.

The now dead lophius alerted the rest of the swarm to Ragnarok’s presence. Though the lophius were moving en masse, all part of the same migratory pattern, they were not a cohesive unit. Their movements were not coordinated. Three of the smaller ones approached the ship out of curiosity. They didn’t seem to harbor any innate desire to see Ragnarok torn to bits. Instead, they acted like what they were—animals. Like a raccoon that crosses a person’s path as they hike through the woods. It may inch closer and extend its nose like it wants to sniff their hand, but it’s on that person to remember that raccoons are nocturnal and wild, and even this one is probably rabid and might try to eat their face.

Cody needed no such reminding. Back on Earth, he had been no friend to wild animals. Even the squirrels that skittered across his yard were regarded with distrust and disdain.

He threw the ship into a dive, shooting like a dart through a ring made by the curious lophius. Unfortunately, the maneuver only served to further their curiosity. They dove after the ship, giving chase like cats after a laser pointer.

The larger lophius continued toward Layton Station. The four of them ranged in size, the smallest being comparable to a pickup truck, and the largest about the size of a bus. Seeing the damage that a three-foot-long lophius could do to an asteroid left Reggie and Joel with little hope of survival, should one of the large ones reach the station.

“You ready with that cannon?” Reggie asked.

“That’s very condescending,” Joel said. “Why do you assume that I don’t have it well in hand? Why wouldn’t you assume that I’m locked in and ready to roll and blast some motherfucking snakes away from this motherfucking space station? I mean, I don’t—okay, these controls are incredibly complicated. I’m pretty sure they’re meant for two separate people. But, you know, some confidence on your part would go a long way.”

Reggie sighed. “So, you got nothing?”

“I’m working on it.”

Reggie could have blamed Joel’s hang-up on his incompetence or indifference, but Reggie knew that wasn’t accurate. At least, if the controls for the gun batteries were any indication. They were definitely meant to be used by more than one person. There were three empty chairs in front of a long panel of buttons and scanners that he had no idea how to use. Staring at them became overwhelming. He didn’t know where to start, but he needed to start somewhere. The large lophius were only getting larger as they neared the station.

He breathed deep, focused on slowing his heart. “Okay, just think. These controls can’t be too complicated. They’re meant to be used in emergency situations, to blast asteroids before impact. They’re probably designed to be intuitive. Point and shoot. Three gun batteries. Three control stations.”

He sat in the middle chair. He reached out with his arms to see where his hands rested, assuming those would be the buttons that operated the most important function of the battery—the blasting function. His left fingers hovered above a joystick. His right fingers hovered over a big, red button.

Very intuitive.

He tested the joystick, moving it right to left, then up and down. A monitor to his right showed the view from the camera mounted on the battery. The monitor directly in front of him showed the targeting display. The first of the lophius, the pickup-sized one, was seconds from entering the battery’s targeting range.

“You really haven’t figured this out yet?” Reggie said.

“Are you seriously jabbing at me right now?” Joel answered. “On the cusp of battle? Why don’t you just stick to your lane, and I’ll focus on mine?”

Reggie cracked his neck, easing the tension building in his shoulders. “Just saying, it would be a real confidence booster knowing we had a massive photon cannon ready to obliterate some monsters.”

Joel only responded with a slew of curses as he tried to understand the controls.

A light flashed on Reggie’s targeting display. The first of the lophius was within range. He moved the joystick until the targeting reticule hovered over the creature’s face. It turned yellow as it locked on.

“Here goes everything.”

A bright green flash lit up the gun battery camera. When visibility returned, Reggie saw the massive bolt he’d fired traveling toward the oncoming lophius. His breath grew impatient in his chest, but he held it back, unwilling to let it go until he knew the force he’d just unleashed.

It seemed like an extraordinarily long time, watching the shot sail along, like a leaf on a lazy stream. The lophius didn’t bother attempting to evade it, seemingly unaware of what was coming straight for its face. But it knew as soon as the shot struck. The blast halted the creature’s advance, like it had swum into a brick wall.

The lophius folded like an accordion, its back half crumpling into its front. For a moment, Reggie thought the creature was dead, but it squirmed to life a second later, dashing his hopes. Still, the effect of the hit was evident. The lophius was disoriented, swimming in a wayward pattern instead of the straight line it had been on previously.

If only disorienting them was enough.

The other beastly lophius appeared behind the first, dangerously close to entering the gun battery’s firing range, which meant they were dangerously close to Reggie and Joel.

Reggie moved the targeting reticule until it highlighted the next closest lophius, which was roughly the size of a passenger van. As soon as the lophius entered targeting range, the reticule turned yellow, and Reggie fired.

The shot struck directly as the previous shot had, to the same effect. The lophius was slammed hard in the face, halting its progress momentarily and disorienting it, but not killing it. He wanted to shoot it again, or the first one, or pepper them both and hopefully kill them, but the other two were rapidly approaching. Reggie feared he would be stuck hopping from one target to the next, merely slowing them, until they reached the station and smashed it to pieces.

That may have been a best-case scenario. The largest of the lophius, the one the size of a bus, pushed through the line of its dazed siblings and charged at the station. Its instincts, which drew it home, were unquestionable and concrete. It would not be swayed.

Unless it got blasted in the face by a photon cannon.

All of Reggie’s screens flashed white, blinding him. When his vision returned, the bus-sized lophius was now a short-bus-sized lophius, the front half of it totally destroyed.

“Figured it out,” Joel said. “It’s actually quite intuitive. I probably should have figured it out much sooner.”

Reggie would have screamed at him if he wasn’t so happy to not be dead. “How long until you can fire again?”

“Thirty-second charge time,” Joel answered. “Keep them back until then.”

* * *

Cody dipped below a line of space rock, tiny remnants of a destroyed asteroid, a lophius on his tail. He piloted the ship into an asteroid field, hoping to find some cover from the attacking creatures, but they were far more agile than Ragnarok, able to swim around the rocks like salmon moving upstream.

“How we doing back there?”

“Are you being condescending to me right now?” Sam asked. “Because it sounds like you’re being condescending to me right now, as I fight off a swarm of space snakes in the middle of an asteroid field.”

Cody swallowed hard. “No, not at all. I would never.”

“Just fucking with you,” Sam said again, a hint of laughter buried under the worry in her voice. “But I wish these snakes would stop fucking with me.”

“How many left?”

“Five.”

Cody’s mind switched into computer mode. He viewed their section of space like a computer model. He was in a tower defense video game. The enemy kept coming at him. He had only so much to work with, and a hostile environment in which to do it. The data churned inside his head, swirling into one slop of information, and spit out an idea.

Turn the hostile environment into an advantage.

Cody’s mind went blank. He let his instincts take over. He pulled up on the controls, bringing the ship back into the asteroid field he’d just dived under.

“Seems like you’re taking us into the thick of a rock field,” Sam said.

“I am.”

“Are you fucking with me now?”

“No. Once we’re in, target the asteroids. Create a dense field of debris. The lophius won’t be able to navigate through it. Maybe that will slow them down enough for you to target them.”

Sam smiled, knowing that Cody couldn’t see how impressed she was.

A chunk of rock bounced off the hull of the ship. The shields must be down. She became slightly less impressed with him.

This will only be a good plan if we don’t die.

She blasted several asteroids, clogging the space behind them with dust and shards of rock. Switching to infrared scans, she saw the lophius struggling to give chase. They slowed drastically as they tried to maneuver. A few stopped altogether after colliding with chunks of rock that had suddenly appeared in their path.

With the creatures unable to move, Sam targeted them and blew them to pieces. In less than a minute, all of the small lophius were dead.

“We’re clear,” Cody said to Reggie and Joel. “Coming your way.”

The photon cannon finished charging. Joel hoped it was the last time it would need to be charged, as the last of the lophius, a passenger-van-sized snake, slithered toward the station’s hangar bay.

Joel locked onto the creature and pulled the trigger. With a blinding flash of white light, the lophius was gone.

“No need to hurry,” he reported over comms. “I’ve singlehandedly killed all of the attacking snake bastards. Feel free to stroll leisurely back.”

“Singlehandedly?” Reggie said.

“I believe it was the photon cannon that delivered all the kill shots, so, yes, I get credit for each kill. If that does not fit your definition of ‘singlehandedly,’ then I respectfully invite you to shut the fuck up.”

Cody laughed to himself, choosing not to add fuel to the budding fire. “We’re coming in to dock. Meet us in the hangar bay, and we’ll get out of here. We should pick up Dr. Suzz before she decides to bounce.”

Reggie wanted to acknowledge Cody, but a bright flash on the station’s early warning system drew his attention. It was designed to detect asteroids on a collision course with the station, but this was no asteroid. This object was the size of a small moon.

The scanners on Ragnarok lit up seconds later.

The comms were eerily quiet in the shadow of the monstrous creature. None of the Notches knew what to say. They suddenly felt like they couldn’t speak at all, like their voices had been crushed under the weight of their approaching doom.

Joel broke the silence. “That’s a big fucking thing.”

Cody shook from his state of frozen fear. He ran every scan he could of the creature, only to confirm what he already suspected.

“It’s a lophius,” he reported.

“A big fucking lophius,” Joel added.

“Thank you, Joel, for your extremely helpful input,” Cody snapped.

“Just making sure we’re all on the same page,” Joel said. “Get the ship out of the way. Once that thing is within range, I’m going to cannon blast it in the face.”

It seemed an inelegant solution, but the straightforward approach had served them well thus far.

Ragnarok dove below the cannon. Joel aimed the cannon at the lophius and waited for it to get close enough for a lock. He thought each passing second would bring the creature close enough. The size of it and the vastness of space had a distorting effect. Joel had no sense how far away it was. It seemed impossible that it wasn’t close enough, seeing how big it seemed. But it kept getting closer. Kept getting bigger. It blocked the light of the stars, casting a shadow on the station.

The targeting reticule flashed yellow, alerting Joel that it had acquired a target lock. He wasted no time in pulling the trigger and letting the shot fly. He had no interest in lingering on how awe-inspiring the creature was, how monstrous it appeared. Planet-sized space beasts no longer gripped him that way.

The monitors flashed white, like a new beginning. The birth of a universe. The flash of pure light. When it faded, the old, shitty universe was still intact. So was the lophius.

There was barely a sign that the shot had connected. The creature shrugged it off like most would a fly.

“That’s not good,” Joel said.

“That cannon is the most powerful weapon we’ve got,” Reggie said. “If it can’t put a dent in the lophius, then we’ve got no chance of killing it with anything else.”

“So we run?” Sam asked, disgusted at the idea of leaving a fight unfinished.

“No,” Cody said. “We figure it out. Just give me a second to think.”

The lophius. Those slimy, disgusting creatures. They grow from little slugs to moon-sized monsters. What to do? How to kill them?

Cody’s mind raced, tripping over itself, trying to find the answer. Then he paused. He remembered.

He had observed the creature in all of its stages, even if only in a condensed period of time. Larva, infant, adolescent, adult. He’d observed them all, killed them all. Except the adult.

But how different could the adult be from the baby? They were the same species. Same strengths, same weaknesses.

Cody yanked on the yoke, spinning Ragnarok around, back toward the lophius.

“You seem to be flying away from us,” Joel noted. “I would much rather you picked us up before you run away.”

“No one is running away,” Cody said. “I have an idea. The lophius’s main defense mechanism is its jelly-like outer layer. It’s a shock absorber, diffusing the force by distributing it throughout its gooey body. But when we fought the larvae in the storehouse, we found a way to counteract that. They’re susceptible to extreme temperatures.”

Ragnarok pulled up into the lophius’s path, which remained unchanged. It swam straight for the station on a steady course. Cody put the ship a klick ahead of the lophius, its tail facing the creature’s face.

“We just need to introduce some extreme temperatures.”

“The thing is flying through space,” Reggie said. “That’s about as extreme a temperature as it gets.”

“I think its outer layer is protecting it,” Cody said. “It’s adapted to withstand the cold. We need to introduce the extreme temperature to the inside of the lophius, bypassing its protective layer.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Sam asked, afraid of the answer.

“By letting it eat us. Just a little.”

“Now I know you’re fucking with me,” Sam said.

“Just make sure you charge that cannon,” Cody said to Joel. “You’ll know when to take the shot.”

Cody spoke directly to Sam through the general comm. “I need you to get to the cargo bay.”

Sam climbed out of her turret, cursing Cody, but not questioning him. She had faith in him, even if it meant that she was about to get eaten by a giant space snake. She alerted Cody when she arrived.

“Joel stacked some bombs near the ready room,” Cody said. “He’d started stockpiling them. Funny how it takes a life or death situation for me to fully appreciate him.”

“That’s not funny,” Sam said. “Makes total sense.” She scanned the stack of bombs. “Am I looking for anything in particular?”

“The Pyrethrum X-735c bombs.”

Sam ran her finger along the bombs. Luckily, Joel chose to label them with the most rudimentary system he could. The Pyrethrum X-735c were all stamped with a sinister symbol of a face crossed out.

“Got them.”

“Load as many as you can into the airlock. And quickly. We need to drop them in about sixty seconds. Set them with a minute timer.”

Sam counted down as she loaded as many bombs as she could onto the cart from the ready room. With twenty seconds left, she raced for the airlock. She shoved the cart inside and locked the door.

“Done.”

“Hold on to something,” Cody said. “This is going to be rocky.”

Sam laced her arm through the netting attached to the cargo bay walls. She hoped the plan worked, if for no other reason than she’d rather not die alone, surrounded by boxes.

Cody slowed the ship. He felt the lophius creeping up on them, like a cold shiver running up his spine. Looking through the rear-mounted cameras, he watched the creature open its mouth.

Like everything else in the void of space, size was difficult to determine without context. The lophius’s gaping maw was full of context. It was as if a black hole had opened right on their ass and was, literally, about to swallow them.

Cody fought the urge to punch the thrusters and rocket away from the creature. He, instead, let his hand hover above the accelerator, ready to act.

Claustrophobia crept over him as the threshold of the lophius’s mouth moved around the ship. Ragnarok passed from open space to being inside the jaws of death. His hand twitched.

Not yet. Just a little further.

The void of space was replaced with a void of a different sort, one that felt like a prison instead of the vast emptiness. They were suddenly encased. The jarring transition kicked Cody in the neck.

It was just the kick he needed.

He activated the airlock, dumping the Pyrethrum X-735c into the lophius’s mouth. Then he punched the thrusters, shooting Ragnarok forward. The jaws began to close, attempting to seal them in. The very thing that would have sealed their fate was what sealed the lophius’s.

Ragnarok pitched starboard and flew through a crack in the creature’s teeth. The lophius’s mouth closed behind them… And then the bombs went off.

The lophius’s head turned a pale blue as chemicals seeped from its closed mouth. It became a living statue, frozen in its own body, but still charging forward.

“So, that was cool and everything,” Joel said. “But it’s still coming at us like a giant, frozen battering ram.”

Cody pulled a hard reverse, slamming on the brakes and spinning Ragnarok around.

“Sam, get back to the turret and punch a hole in that thing,” he directed.

“I’m already on it.” Sam fired, hitting a wide circumference in the center of the creature’s forehead. Cracks snaked across the area, forming what looked like a spiderweb right between its eyes. A spiderweb, or a target.

“It’s all you, Joel.”

Cody dove the ship, ducking far below the creature and opening a clear line of sight.

Joel locked on with the massive cannons. Everything turned white.

When the blinding light was gone, a headless lophius floated, limp, the force of the blast not only devastating it but halting its forward momentum completely.

Joel sat back in the gunner’s chair, staring out at the thousands of pieces of lophius skull, still coated in ice, glistening with the light of the stars. It was disgusting and beautiful.

He smiled. “This was exactly how I imagined this ending.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Testifying before the Space Commission is not something video games can prepare a person to do. Reggie had sweated through his shirt before he even stepped into the hearing room. But the team had designated him as their spokesman. He was the face of Intergalactic Pest Control.

As much as he did not want to do it, he couldn’t deny that he was the best choice. Joel would have said something grossly inappropriate. Cody would have sputtered something overly complex until it devolved into nonsense and he passed out. Sam probably would have stabbed someone. With her eyes, at least, if not her sword.

It felt like he’d been taking questions for days, though it had only been two hours. The commissioners had surprisingly little that needed clarifying. As Reggie had prepared his testimony over the last few days, the story felt too large, unwieldy. He stumbled over the details even though he’d lived them. It didn’t seem like he’d ever be able to wrap it all into one neat, easily understandable package.

But, after he finished giving his account—from the first ShimVen outbreak, to Cody’s growing suspicions of Layton’s involvement, to confronting Dr. Suzz and, finally, destroying the monster lophius—the commissioners simply nodded as they chewed on the ends of their pens, or fingered the rims of their water glasses.

Reggie breathed his first sigh of relief, though it was short-lived, as he knew the questions would follow.

He breathed his next sigh of relief when the commission chairman said, “The commission has no further questions for you, sir. Thank you for your testimony.”

But Reggie almost choked to death when the chairman pointed past him and said, “But I have one for you.”

Reggie followed the point of the chairman’s gavel to Sam, sitting suddenly rigid in the gallery.

She said nothing. She stood and walked past Reggie, waiting until she reached the podium to breathe.

The guys cringed before a word was spoken.

The chairman leaned forward, putting all his weight on his elbows. “Miss, there is one thing about all this that I don’t understand.”

“Just one?” Sam said.

The chairman laughed, to the relief of the Notches. “Granted, this is one of the wilder stories we’ve heard. But most of it is understandable once you get past the flash. It all boils down to simple human motivations: revenge, greed, and self-preservation. But you…” He sucked air in through his teeth. “You, I don’t understand. Through some carefully worded BS, I can determine your previous line of work. I did some intel work before this appointment, and I think I may even have a profile that could be attached to your name. Though I can’t prove it. There’s never been a photo taken of her face.”

Sam felt her cheeks burn hot. She hadn’t even thought about the fact that she wasn’t wearing her mask.

The chairman continued. “That mercenary was one of the best and highest paid, sought after by the elite. To give all that up and become an exterminator… Why?”

Sam mirrored the chairman’s posture. “Like you said, Mr. Chairman—simple human motivation.”

She left the table without waiting to be dismissed.

Reggie squirmed. The breach of protocol made his stomach twist in a knot.

“One final question, then,” the chairman said. “You all plan on continuing your business? The Space Commission is always looking to expand its list of available contractors.”

Joel stood before Reggie could answer.

“You’re goddamn right we do.”

The End

Unstoppable Liv Beaufont

Do you like Boxed Sets?

Have you read The Unstoppable Liv Beaufont from Sarah Noffke and Michael Anderle? You can grab the first four books at a great price now at Amazon or read them through Kindle Unlimited.

Olivia Beaufont likes fixing things and keeping to herself. She’s simple like that—but her life is about to drastically change.

Liv is a rebel with royal blood who abdicated her birthright. A string of murders changes everything and the House of Seven asks her to take on a role as a Warrior, one of seven positions revered for protecting magic.

Available at Amazon

Sarah Noffke Author Notes

January 28, 2019

Thank you for reading. Thanks for supporting the books. And thanks for being awesome.

Rats! Yes, we put rats in this book. Actually, as it usually tends to happen, I took inspiration from my life and put it in this book. This summer, I woke up in the middle of the night to hear my cat scurrying around the entertainment center. I’m used to this cat’s antics and responded with a very terse, “What the fuck are you doing?”

The cat had brought a gigantic rat into the house at three o’clock in the morning. The little shit was cowering behind the television, making it difficult for the cat (that I’d like to offer to any of you readers), to catch. That’s why my feline gave up and went to bed, leaving me to deal with a plague carrying rat.

I nearly burned the house down in an attempt to get the beast out. I am no pest control service. After chasing the rat around with a broom and screaming at the top of my lungs, I convinced the rat that my home was no place for him.

The next morning, slightly traumatized by the event, I decided to make the best of the situation. I sent Michael a picture of the rat when it was hiding in my drapes (yes, I took a break from chasing to take a picture so that I had proof). I told Michael that in our next Intergalactic Pest Control book that I wanted to include ninja rats. And that’s where stories come from.

In a way, I think that writing about these evil rat has helped me to deal with the trauma of waking up to find my own cat had betrayed me, bringing the enemy into the house. I still tense at night when the cat door opens, wondering what pests the little fucker is bringing into the house. Yes, I could lock the cat door, but that would require too much work. And where’s the fun in that? You all need stories and those come from crazy shit that happens in my life.

Thank you again for reading and making this job more fun!

Michael Anderle Author Notes

January 29, 2019

THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.

(I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)

RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?

I have no rat stories, thank God.

I like how Sarah curses at her cat. Personally, I think that is a normal expression for cats (the little fuckers think we are the slaves in this relationship and it just annoys me.)

The title of this book, It’s Working as Intended, was chosen after a heavy amount of research (total lie) and required days of concentrated focus. Ok, total bullshit, it took him (speaking about myself in the third person) maybe thirty minutes of research and an hour of squirrel time.)

All of our titles have something to do with gaming (as is appropriate), but we didn’t have as easy a time on this book as the previous two.

The original meaning has to do with the (soon to be a person of scorn) engineer who is part of the team who releases a huge game.

And the game is screwing up, usually in a manner that INFURIATES the players. Said engineer is probably receiving a shit-ton of flak from the fans online, and finally he bursts into flames and says…

“It’s working as intended.”

That engineer will suddenly find out what it means to be Engineer Flambé.

As the Internet roasts his ass alive.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

One of the interesting (at least to me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. In the future, I hope to re-read my own Author Notes and remember my life as a diary entry.

Javier’s Restaurant, Aria Hotel, Las Vegas

I’ve been back three full days from my trip to Australia, Bali, Singapore, Bangkok, etc.

I feel like my mind spaces every once in a while as I try to work. (If the words in these Author Notes here do not make sense, that is why. (Editor’s note: Whew! I thought you were going to blame it on me!)

If they do make sense, there is a 50/50 chance it is because the editor fixed them since she took pity on me for my sleep being all messed up from jet lag. (Editor’s note: You’re a good man, Charlie Brown!)

While I went to ONE (1) Tex-Mex restaurant on my trip (The Mexican in Bangkok, which was excellent), I would say that Tex-Mex is vastly underrepresented on that side of the planet. In fact, Hispanics as a people are few and far between over there.

I didn’t notice that fact, but my wife did. She’s originally from El Salvador, and I suppose a bit more sensitive when she realizes NO ONE is Hispanic around her.

So, the takeaway from that is, go to the Mexican; totally worth it. The Tuk-Tuk ride? Not so much. It was fun to have experienced it once. The other two times made me worried that I was on a roller-coaster with a vast disrespect for common-sense safety rules.

It would have officially sucked, I thought as I held on for dear life, if I died at the beginning of a career I’ve wanted my whole life due to becoming a speed bump on a road in Bangkok.

FAN PRICING

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Sign up here: http://lmbpn.com/email/.

HOW TO MARKET FOR BOOKS YOU LOVE

Review them so others have your thoughts, and tell friends and the dogs of your enemies (because who wants to talk to enemies?)… Enough said ;-)

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

Acknowledgments

Sarah Noffke

Thank you to all the readers out there who have supported my books. I wouldn’t be here writing this book if it wasn’t for you. It still shocks me that you all like to read my books. I waiting to wake up and realize this was all a dream.

Thank you to everyone at LMBPN for all you do to get the books to the readers. Thank you to Michael for all the support and opportunities. Steve, I couldn’t do this without your shepherding. Thank you to the editorial team and Jen for making me sound better. Thank you to the JIT team for always swooping in at the last minute.

Thank you to Jess and Jurgen for being my first readers. Your feedback is so helpful. And more than anything, I appreciate your friendship.

Thank you to my amazing support network of friends and family. I have been blessed with so many wonderful friends who nurture me and also supply awesome fodder.

And lastly, thank you to my daughter.

Books By Sarah Noffke

Sarah Noffke, an Amazon Best Seller, writes YA and NA sci-fi fantasy, paranormal and urban fantasy. She is the author of the Lucidites, Reverians, Ren, Vagabond Circus, Olento Research, Soul Stone Mage, Ghost Squadron and Precious Galaxy series. Noffke holds a Masters of Management and teaches college business courses. Most of her students have no idea that she toils away her hours crafting fictional characters. Noffke's books are top rated and best-sellers on Kindle. Currently, she has thirty-three novels published. Her books are available in paperback, audio and in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. http://www.sarahnoffke.com

Check out other work by this author here.

Ghost Squadron:

Formation #1:

Kill the bad guys. Save the Galaxy. All in a hard day’s work.

After ten years of wandering the outer rim of the galaxy, Eddie Teach is a man without a purpose. He was one of the toughest pilots in the Federation, but now he’s just a regular guy, getting into bar fights and making a difference wherever he can. It’s not the same as flying a ship and saving colonies, but it’ll have to do.

That is, until General Lance Reynolds tracks Eddie down and offers him a job. There are bad people out there, plotting terrible things, killing innocent people, and destroying entire colonies. Someone has to stop them.

Eddie, along with the genetically-enhanced combat pilot Julianna Fregin and her trusty E.I. named Pip, must recruit a diverse team of specialists, both human and alien. They’ll need to master their new Q-Ship, one of the most powerful strike ships ever constructed.  And finally, they’ll have to stop a faceless enemy so powerful, it threatens to destroy the entire Federation. 

All in a day’s work, right?

Experience this exciting military sci-fi saga and the latest addition to the expanded Kurtherian Gambit Universe. If you’re a fan of Mass Effect, Firefly, or Star Wars, you’ll love this riveting new space opera.

*NOTE: If cursing is a problem, then this might not be for you.

Check out the entire series here.

The Precious Galaxy Series:

Corruption #1

A new evil lurks in the darkness.

After an explosion, the crew of a battlecruiser mysteriously disappears.

Bailey and Lewis, complete strangers, find themselves suddenly onboard the damaged ship. Lewis hasn’t worked a case in years, not since the final one broke his spirit and his bank account. The last thing Bailey remembers is preparing to take down a fugitive on Onyx Station.

Mysteries are harder to solve when there’s no evidence left behind.

Bailey and Lewis don’t know how they got onboard Ricky Bobby or why. However, they quickly learn that whatever was responsible for the explosion and disappearance of the crew is still on the ship.

Monsters are real and what this one can do changes everything.

The new team bands together to discover what happened and how to fight the monster lurking in the bottom of the battlecruiser.

Will they find the missing crew? Or will the monster end them all?

The Soul Stone Mage Series:

House of Enchanted #1:

The Kingdom of Virgo has lived in peace for thousands of years…until now.

The humans from Terran have always been real assholes to the witches of Virgo. Now a silent war is brewing, and the timing couldn’t be worse. Princess Azure will soon be crowned queen of the Kingdom of Virgo.

In the Dark Forest a powerful potion-maker has been murdered.

Charmsgood was the only wizard who could stop a deadly virus plaguing Virgo. He also knew about the devastation the people from Terran had done to the forest.

Azure must protect her people. Mend the Dark Forest. Create alliances with savage beasts. No biggie, right?

But on coronation day everything changes. Princess Azure isn’t who she thought she was and that’s a big freaking problem.

Welcome to The Revelations of Oriceran. Check out the entire series here.

The Lucidites Series:

Awoken, #1:

Around the world humans are hallucinating after sleepless nights.

In a sterile, underground institute the forecasters keep reporting the same events.

And in the backwoods of Texas, a sixteen-year-old girl is about to be caught up in a fierce, ethereal battle.

Meet Roya Stark. She drowns every night in her dreams, spends her hours reading classic literature to avoid her family’s ridicule, and is prone to premonitions—which are becoming more frequent. And now her dreams are filled with strangers offering to reveal what she has always wanted to know: Who is she? That’s the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out. But will Roya live to regret learning the truth?

Stunned, #2

Revived, #3

The Reverians Series:

Defects, #1:

In the happy, clean community of Austin Valley, everything appears to be perfect. Seventeen-year-old Em Fuller, however, fears something is askew. Em is one of the new generation of Dream Travelers. For some reason, the gods have not seen fit to gift all of them with their expected special abilities. Em is a Defect—one of the unfortunate Dream Travelers not gifted with a psychic power. Desperate to do whatever it takes to earn her gift, she endures painful daily injections along with commands from her overbearing, loveless father. One of the few bright spots in her life is the return of a friend she had thought dead—but with his return comes the knowledge of a shocking, unforgivable truth. The society Em thought was protecting her has actually been betraying her, but she has no idea how to break away from its authority without hurting everyone she loves.

Rebels, #2

Warriors, #3

Vagabond Circus Series:

Suspended, #1:

When a stranger joins the cast of Vagabond Circus—a circus that is run by Dream Travelers and features real magic—mysterious events start happening. The once orderly grounds of the circus become riddled with hidden threats. And the ringmaster realizes not only are his circus and its magic at risk, but also his very life.

Vagabond Circus caters to the skeptics. Without skeptics, it would close its doors. This is because Vagabond Circus runs for two reasons and only two reasons: first and foremost to provide the lost and lonely Dream Travelers a place to be illustrious. And secondly, to show the nonbelievers that there’s still magic in the world. If they believe, then they care, and if they care, then they don’t destroy. They stop the small abuse that day-by-day breaks down humanity’s spirit. If Vagabond Circus makes one skeptic believe in magic, then they halt the cycle, just a little bit. They allow a little more love into this world. That’s Dr. Dave Raydon’s mission. And that’s why this ringmaster recruits. That’s why he directs. That’s why he puts on a show that makes people question their beliefs. He wants the world to believe in magic once again.

Paralyzed, #2

Released, #3

Ren Series:

Ren: The Man Behind the Monster, #1:

Born with the power to control minds, hypnotize others, and read thoughts, Ren Lewis, is certain of one thing: God made a mistake. No one should be born with so much power. A monster awoke in him the same year he received his gifts. At ten years old. A prepubescent boy with the ability to control others might merely abuse his powers, but Ren allowed it to corrupt him. And since he can have and do anything he wants, Ren should be happy. However, his journey teaches him that harboring so much power doesn’t bring happiness, it steals it. Once this realization sets in, Ren makes up his mind to do the one thing that can bring his tortured soul some peace. He must kill the monster.

*Note* This book is NA and has strong language, violence and sexual references.

Ren: God’s Little Monster, #2

Ren: The Monster Inside the Monster, #3

Ren: The Monster’s Adventure, #3.5

Ren: The Monster’s Death

Olento Research Series:

Alpha Wolf, #1:

Twelve men went missing.

Six months later they awake from drug-induced stupors to find themselves locked in a lab.

And on the night of a new moon, eleven of those men, possessed by new—and inhuman—powers, break out of their prison and race through the streets of Los Angeles until they disappear one by one into the night.

Olento Research wants its experiments back. Its CEO, Mika Lenna, will tear every city apart until he has his werewolves imprisoned once again. He didn’t undertake a huge risk just to lose his would-be assassins.

However, the Lucidite Institute’s main mission is to save the world from injustices. Now, it’s Adelaide’s job to find these mutated men and protect them and society, and fast. Already around the nation, wolflike men are being spotted. Attacks on innocent women are happening. And then, Adelaide realizes what her next step must be: She has to find the alpha wolf first. Only once she’s located him can she stop whoever is behind this experiment to create wild beasts out of human beings.

Lone Wolf, #2

Rabid Wolf, #3

Bad Wolf, #4

Books By Michael Anderle

For a complete list of books by Michael Anderle, please visit

www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/

All LMBPN Audiobooks are Available at Audible.com and iTunes. For a complete list of audiobooks visit:

www.lmbpn.com/audible

Connect with The Authors

Connect with Sarah and sign up for her email list here:

http://www.sarahnoffke.com/connect/

You can catch her podcast, LA Chicks, here:

http://lachicks.libsyn.com/

Connect with Michael Anderle and sign up for his email list here:

Website: http://lmbpn.com

Email List: http://lmbpn.com/email/

Facebook:

www.facebook.com/TheKurtherianGambitBooks