Rhodes ignited his boosters, dove deep into the heart of the city, and dodged between buildings getting closer to the coordinates on The Grid. He still didn’t pick up any sign of Dietz or Coulter.

  The ongoing battle had pulverized this part of town to rubble, but the battle wasn’t here anymore.

  Rhodes kept a close watch on The Grid to make sure no Masks ground troops came near him. He didn’t want any Legion platoons coming near him, either.

  The invasion ships held off, too. The Strikers obeyed his orders by cycling around and around the city. They flew anywhere but over Rhodes’s position.

  The invasion ships kept trying to intercept the Strikers, but the rest of the battalion flew far enough apart from each other. The Masks couldn’t pinpoint more than one of them at a time.

  This left the invasion ships vulnerable to Ravager attack. Rhodes had this part of the city to himself.

  He slowed on approach to the place where Dietz and Coulter went down. Trying to find them in the rubble would be nearly impossible without some electronic signal coming from their implants.

  Rhodes didn’t know how losing power would affect anyone from Battalion 1. No one knew how anything would affect Battalion 1. The project was so experimental. No one could predict anything.

  He landed on a mountain of debris ten feet from where Dietz and Coulter should have fallen. Rhodes looked around at a whole lot of nothing.

  He stepped on broken pieces of Masks tangled up with the twisted human remains. The Grid adjusted to Rhodes’s every move and read the mounds underfoot. None of the bodies belonged to Dietz or Coulter.

  Rhodes stumbled over the uneven surface. What did he really hope to find down here?

  He adjusted The Grid to check for any shape that might match a Striker, but he didn’t pick up anything like that, either.

  “How long do you want to keep looking?” Fisher asked. “We should probably go look for Lauer before the Masks get wind that we’re down here.”

  Rhodes nodded. He didn’t want to admit just how hopeless this search was.

  Now he saw it firsthand. Dietz and Coulter couldn’t be alive down here. No one could be.

  He started to turn away when The Grid in front of him changed. A dog face appeared on the interface right next to Fisher.

  The dog didn’t have a body. The grid lines that made up the face kept shifting, stretching, and adjusting. “Captain Rhodes!” the dog exclaimed. “Thank heaven you’re here! You have to help us!”

  “Murphy! Where the hell are you?” Rhodes looked around again. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”

  “Zen and I have been masking our location to hide from the Masks. We’re under the debris.”

  “Are Baron and Aries with you?” Rhodes asked.

  “Dietz and Coulter are hiding inside Aries. Baron is next to us. We all took damage and we couldn’t get into the atmosphere. We used The Grid to burrow under the debris so the Masks wouldn’t find us.”

  “Never mind about that. Just show me where you are. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  Murphy did something to The Grid and he, Dietz, Coulter, Zen, Aries, and Baron all materialized on The Grid out of nowhere. They were almost directly underneath where Rhodes was standing.

  Rhodes gulped when he saw how bad the situation was. Dietz’s life signs fluctuated dangerously. Zen was malfunctioning and kept jittering in The Grid.

  He tried to talk to Rhodes, but only a scratchy sound came out. Part of Coulter’s chest implant had gotten crushed.

  He was barely hanging on, but Murphy was still fully operational and functioning normally.

  Neither of the Striker SAMs appeared on the interface. Neither Striker had any power at all.

  Neither of them had a Striker shape anymore, either. They must have used the last of their power to alter their grid lines to get into this hiding place before they both shut down.

  Rhodes scrambled over to them and used his laser to carve his way through the rubble. He signaled the location to the rest of the battalion, but he ordered everyone to stay clear.

  He melted a bunch of twisted metal fragments away and exposed Baron’s roof. Multiple fusion blasts had caved in the fuselage.

  Murphy kept showing Rhodes everything under the mounds of trash covering the two Strikers and the two men.

  Rhodes went to work clearing the crap away from Aries next. Rhodes dreaded what he would find when he got the cockpit open. It was a miracle the two men survived for three days down here.

  Rhodes checked their life sign readings a few more times, but he didn’t see anything that gave him any hope.

  “Just hold on a little longer,” he panted. “We’ll get you out and back on board the Ero. You did great staying hidden this long.”

  “It wasn’t hard,” Murphy told him. “Coulter has been delirious from the drug withdrawals and Dietz has been unconscious almost the entire time.”

  Rhodes didn’t answer. He got off easy spending his withdrawal period in a conversion cycle on board the Ero.

  Dietz and Coulter must have been living a nightmare all this time—and that was saying nothing about what Murphy must have been going through.

  Rhodes concentrated all his effort on clearing the debris away from Aries’s cockpit. Rhodes passed his hand across the glass and saw Dietz and Coulter for the first time.

  They looked as bad in real life as they did in The Grid. Rhodes didn’t like the idea of taking them out of here. He didn’t want to move them at all, but he had to.

  He modified his hand into a prying tool and wrenched open the cockpit. “Thank you so much for coming for us, Captain,” Murphy exclaimed. “I feared the worst.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “We have to get you back to the Ero right away.” Rhodes interfaced with the rest of the battalion. “Come down here, Rio. I need you to lift off Dietz and Coulter. The rest of you stay airborne and keep the invasion ships away.”

  “What about you?” Fisher asked.

  “I’m going after Lauer. He could be hiding somewhere, too.”

  “What do you want to do about the Aries and Baron?” Oakes asked. “You said we wouldn’t leave anyone behind. They could fall into the Masks’ hands if we leave without them.”

  “That will be for the Legion brass to decide. Ravagers would have to lift the Strikers out of here. At least we know now where they are.”

  Coulter uncurled himself from his hiding place. He could support his weight, but he didn’t look up to make eye contact with Rhodes. Coulter kept his head down and turned aside.

  “Is he malfunctioning?” Rhodes asked Murphy.

  “He’s still in withdrawals. He won’t talk to me or look at me. He’s semi-catatonic, but his brainwaves are all reading as normal. I’ve been trying to help him, but it seems like the best way to help him is to just leave him alone.”

  Rhodes made the most cursory assessment of Coulter’s injuries. Rhodes wouldn’t be able to do anything to fix the damage to Coulter’s implants. Only Drs. Osborne and Trudeau could do that.

  Rio’s engines howled across the landscape. The Striker looped around a few buildings in the distance before he made sure the coast was clear.

  Rhodes had to support Coulter. He stumbled a few times and leaned on Rhodes. Rhodes walked Coulter a few yards away from Aries and then lowered Coulter against one of the rubble piles.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Eddie,” Rhodes murmured. “We found you. We’re gonna take you back to the Ero. You’re safe now. You’re free from the Masks. Everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Murphy replied.

  “Keep an eye on him while I get Dietz out. Come on in and pick up Coulter, Rio.”

  Rhodes didn’t watch Rio descend between the mountains of debris. The Striker extended its landing gear to set down in front of Coulter.

  Rhodes bent over Aries’s cockpit. Rhodes didn’t see any external damage to Dietz’s implants or his organic tissue.

  That didn’t mean anything, though. The organic side of his face looked like he was already dead. The skin had gone ashen grey and waxy around his lips.

  His one organic eye hovered a third of the way open. The eyelid no longer looked like real human skin and a milky white film covered the eye. Dietz was barely breathing.

  Rhodes instinctively turned to Zen for answers, but the SAM couldn’t communicate with Rhodes, either.

  Dietz’s life sign readings told Rhodes only too plainly how precarious the situation was. Dietz had to get off the planet right now. He might not even survive even if he did get off the planet.

  Rhodes bent all the way over to pick up Dietz, but Rhodes couldn’t reach him from up here. Rhodes changed his grid lines, stretched his arms into two long, jointed tentacles, and scooped up Dietz as gently as he could.

  Dietz’s body flopped and his limbs all drooped down when Rhodes picked him up. Dietz’s head lolled back and his mouth fell open. Damn, he looked bad!

  “I’m trying to interface with Zen,” Fisher announced. “I don’t think Zen is malfunctioning. Dietz’s condition is causing Zen to act like this. If we can stabilize Dietz, Zen should come back online.”

  Rhodes stood up and carried Dietz over to where Coulter lay. Rio was just touching down when a boom startled Rhodes into looking up.

  He had a split second to see an invasion ship zooming straight for him. Blasts of fusion fire pounded the city below as the ship soared overhead.

  Rhodes ducked and barely kept his grip on Dietz. Rhodes might have thought the invasion ship was coming after him and his friends, but it wasn’t.

  A second later, a Ravager followed the invasion ship and drove it farther away. The Ravager bombarded the invasion ship with dozens of volleys. The Ravager’s gunfire pelted off the invasion ship’s hull and deflected to the ground.

  Rhodes tried to cover Dietz with his body, but a second later, another invasion ship thundered into view from the western horizon.

  This one definitely slowed and circled over Rhodes’s position. The battalion’s implants attracted the Masks with an irresistible pull.

  The second invasion ship fired on the mound next to Coulter. He curled into a fetal ball, turned his head away, and huddled against the rubble for protection, but it couldn’t protect him.

  Rhodes sprang up. “Take Dietz and Coulter, Rio! Get them out of here!”

  Rio popped his cockpit cover again. Rhodes transformed his arms again to pick up Dietz to put him into the seat.

  At that moment, an almighty blast of fusion fire hit Rio from the side, smacked the Striker away, and slammed him into a different mound.

  Rhodes lost sight of Rio in the confusion. Rhodes lost sight of everything in the confusion—everything except Dietz.

  Rhodes wrapped his snake arms around Dietz and held on for dear life. Rhodes couldn’t lose this one man—not after everything Rhodes went through to find Dietz.

  Rhodes lunged out of the way to avoid another shot of fusion fire, but it struck Rio again.

  The third blast knocked the Striker even farther away from Rhodes. He couldn’t get anywhere near Rio.

  Rhodes reacted without thinking, morphed his grid lines into eight flexible arms, and dropped on four of them to support himself.

  He snatched Dietz and Coulter with his other four arms and took off into the city at high speed. He didn’t care about anything other than getting away from the invasion ship’s gunfire.

  He did care about Rio, but Rhodes couldn’t help his Striker now.

  Rhodes interfaced with him, but Rio was already gunning his engines and launching into the atmosphere to flee from the invasion ship, too. Good. Rhodes didn’t want Rio anywhere in danger right now.

  Murphy’s voice broke through Rhodes’s fog. “Find a place to hide, Captain! I can conceal us so the Masks won’t be able to detect us.”

  Rhodes floundered back to his senses and adjusted his course to head west. “Lauer is out here somewhere. We have to find him.”

  “I know where he is. I’ll show you, but it will be harder for you to rescue three injured men than two.”

  “Don’t confuse me with details, pal,” Rhodes muttered. “Just make sure the Masks don’t recapture us.”

  “There.” Murphy showed Rhodes a destroyed building a few blocks away. “Hide in there.”

  Rhodes darted under the torn structure. The giant metal dome roof had partially collapsed. It formed a hollow protected on all sides by metal.

  Rhodes scuttled inside and lowered Dietz and Coulter onto the floor. Dietz’s body sank onto the ground. He was barely alive at all.

  Coulter retreated against the wall, pulled his knees to his chest, and turned his face away so he wouldn’t make eye contact with Rhodes.

  “It’s okay, Eddie,” Rhodes murmured. “You’re free now. You never have to go back to the Masks. The battalion will come and get us. You’re going to be okay.”

  Of course Coulter didn’t answer. Rhodes didn’t expect him to.

  Rhodes didn’t blame Coulter for going all fetal and catatonic. God only knew what he and Dietz had been going through these last three days.

  Murphy watched Coulter with that deep understanding gaze Rhodes had come to expect from Fisher. Murphy must have been pulling out all the stops to help Coulter, but without effect.

  “Are you sure we’re concealed here?” Rhodes asked.

  “Interface with the other Strikers. They can scan the surface. They’ll tell you if they can detect you. If they can’t, the Masks can’t detect us, either.”

  It only took Rhodes a few seconds to interface with the rest of the battalion. Their Grids didn’t pick up any sign of Rhodes’s location.

  “Stay in touch with us, Sir,” Rhinehart told him. “We can’t help you if we can’t see you.”

  “Don’t help me. Keep out of the way. The best way you can help me is by keeping yourselves safe.”

  “We’ll have to come down eventually to pick you up,” Thackery pointed out.

  “We won’t do that until it’s safe.” Rhodes checked The Grid. “Show me where Lauer is, Murphy.”

  Murphy brought up what he said was Lauer’s location on The Grid. Of course Rhodes didn’t see a damn thing over there.

  “This is not the way to run an operation,” he muttered to himself.

  “I wish I could be more help, Captain, but I assure you he is there.”

  “You mean he was there. He might have gone down there, but if he’s concealing himself somehow, he could be anywhere. He could have moved.”

  “You’re right, of course, Captain. I wish I could go with you to help you find him.”

  “Stay here.” Rhodes checked himself. Murphy couldn’t go anywhere. “Keep an eye on Dietz and Coulter for me. If anything goes wrong, call in the Strikers to lift you off—but don’t do it unless it’s an absolute emergency.”

  “Isn’t Dietz’s condition emergency enough?” Fisher asked.

  “His condition will be a hell of a lot worse if the Strikers get shot down.” Rhodes stood up. “I’m going to get Lauer. Stay here.”

  Rhodes cast one last fleeting glance at his subordinates and the surroundings. Nothing had changed in the last five minutes.

  He ducked out of their hiding place and set off at a fast walk across the devastated landscape. He had to get as far away from Dietz and Coulter as possible before someone spotted him.

  End of Chapter 2.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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