Rhodes threw his leg over the bench and sat down at the table in Koenig’s eatery. Thackery, Rhinehart, Fisher, Coulter, Murphy, Rocky, Dietz, Lauer, Van, and Oakes were already armpit-deep in their meal.

  Rhodes helped himself to the food. Wild sat across the room with his back to everyone. Dash was nowhere in sight.

  Zen sat with his friends in another corner of the room. He pretended not to know anyone at Rhodes’s table.

  Rhodes allowed himself to glance around at everyone while they ate. Which of them remembered? Did the Masks wipe their memories already? Would he be able to count on any of them—any of them at all?

  None of them looked back at him to give him a clue that they might be thinking the same thing. Were they thinking the same thing about him—that all his talk meant nothing because the Masks would just make him forget?

  It didn’t matter because the battalion wasn’t going anywhere—not for a while. He might as well settle into life at Stonebridge and enjoy it for as long as it lasted.

  He bent over his plate. That thought barely finished crossing his mind before a deep boom went off somewhere outside. Everyone looked up.

  “What was that?” Thackery husked.

  Four more explosions went off in rapid succession. Cutlery rattled on the tabletop and the dishes clinked.

  Rhodes almost kicked the bench over trying to get away from the table. Everyone else in the building sprang to their feet and rushed the door to get outside.

  They ran into a scene of mayhem. Rockets arced down from the sky and exploded all over Stonebridge. Houses detonated with people inside them. More projectiles hit the road, blasted it to pieces, and sent clouds of dirt and sod flying everywhere.

  Rhodes yelled to his people. “Come on!” and took off running eastward along the road. The bombardment came from that direction.

  He collided with dozens of townspeople coming from there. None of them happened to notice Rhodes and his people changing back to their original appearance. They could see and feel their implants now.

  Rhodes didn’t notice it, either. He’d been crashing back and forth between The Grid and the real world so rapidly and so often. He barely thought anything about it now.

  He bumped into Rhinehart coming the other way. Rhodes couldn’t make any headway with so many people running around.

  He ignited his boosters and launched above the crowd. He could see better here.

  The Grid gave him a clear view of the assault and the battle unfolding. The minute he got airborne, Stonebridge vanished.

  The battalion wound up outside a completely different city. Rhodes and his people launched from the same Masks ship that carried them around everywhere.

  The Masks had already penetrated inside this city. They fought street to street against Legion soldiers. Dusters and Predators circled above the streets and targeted the Masks ground troops from directly above.

  Most of the largest buildings remained standing. They stopped the Masks’ invasion ships from descending that far.

  They had to hover above the city and bombard everything from above. It gave the Legion only a slight advantage.

  Rhodes didn’t think twice. He took off flying his fastest for the city to join the conflict. He had to turn the tide in the Masks’ favor.

  Fisher and the other SAMs appeared on The Grid the moment the battalion stepped out of Koenig’s eatery. “The Legion command is still in orbit,” Fisher told Rhodes. “We can’t retreat to the Legion side by falling back to the rear. We’ll have to come up with some other plan.”

  Rhodes opened his mouth to ask why in the name of hell he would want to retreat to the Legion side. He didn’t get a chance to make a sound before he remembered everything.

  “Interface with the Legion Ravagers. See if the Ero is in orbit or anywhere nearby,” Rhodes ordered. “We can fall back to the ship or maybe our Strikes can come and get us.”

  “Good idea,” Fisher replied. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lauer snapped.

  “We’re Legion soldiers, Lieutenant,” Rhodes replied. “We’ve been the Masks’ prisoners all this time. Stonebridge is nothing but a prison to keep us pacified and cooperative. Your families—your real families—are out there in the Treaty of Aemon Cluster. The Masks used The Grid to create Stonebridge to get us to attack our own people and put our families in danger. We’re breaking out and going back to the Legion where we belong.”

  “You mean…..” Thackery glanced toward the city. Explosions flared between its many buildings. “It will be like the lab there. It will be torturous. Are we really doing that?”

  “This is bullshit,” Coulter countered. “Stonebridge is our home. The Legion is trying to destroy it. We all saw that. We saw the Legion bombard Stonebridge. It’s our job to defend it.”

  “Where is Stonebridge, then?” Rhodes waved at The Grid around him. “We just left Stonebridge a few seconds ago. We should still be able to see it if it’s within bombardment range.”

  “It doesn’t matter because we’re loyal to the Masks,” Dash chimed in. “We couldn’t turn against our own and that’s the Masks.”

  Oakes rounded on him. “You knew about this? You knew the Masks were pulling the wool over our eyes? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “They pulled the wool over your eyes,” Dash replied. “It worked out in the end. You fought for the Masks against our enemies. That’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s my function to make sure you do it.”

  “You bastard!” Oakes hissed. “You son of a bitch!”

  “It doesn’t matter because we’re here and we’re going over to the Legion.”

  “Like hell we will,” Coulter countered.

  Rhodes opened his mouth to say something else, but right then, The Grid blipped to show him a Legion platoon pinned down by Masks ground forces.

  The Masks drove the platoon into a corner between two buildings. A third building had collapsed behind the platoon’s position to box in the soldiers.

  The Masks blocked the only exit. They would wipe out the platoon if someone didn’t help those soldiers.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Rhodes couldn’t let this happen—not again. “Come on!” he yelled. “We gotta go now!” He took off flying for the trapped platoon.

  “The Ero is orbit!” Fisher reported. “Rio was telling the truth. The Legion has been searching for us.”

  “Get the Strikers down here. They can take any members of the battalion who don’t go willingly. They’ll come to their senses as soon as they interface with their SAMs.”

  “Rio, Elio, and Titan are on their way now. Zion is coming in fast. The others are launching.”

  “How long before they get here?” Rhodes cast a backward glance at his subordinates.

  Only Oakes and Dietz followed Rhodes toward the city.

  Coulter and Thackery hung back. Rhinehart hesitated. Rhodes heard Rocky talking to him, but Rhodes couldn’t hear them as the noise of gunfire got louder coming from the city streets.

  He turned his attention to the trapped platoon. It was the 156th—Oakes’s old platoon. Rhodes couldn’t have planned this better.

  He swooped around one building and dove down on top of the platoon facing outward toward the advancing Masks.

  He got into that position and realized he could do more damage if he hit the Masks from behind. That would be the best way to draw the Masks away from the platoon.

  He circled the other side of the building and leveled his guns at the Masks. Before he could fire, a laser flickered across his line of sight. It came from his left, but it didn’t hit him.

  He spun around to defend himself and came face to face with Oakes aiming his weapon at Rhodes’s head.

  Oakes aimed his weapon at Rhodes’s head, but Oakes also fought his own arm to rip his weapon away from Rhodes’s head.

  The interface showed Oakes and Dash struggling against each other in The Grid. Dash wrapped his grid lines around Oakes’s body, manipulated him where Dash wanted him to go, and Dash fired Oakes’s weapons at Rhodes and at the 156th.

  Oakes roared curses at his SAM and jerked himself right and left trying in every possible way to stop Dash from targeting.

  “YOU SON OF A BITCH!!” Oakes bellowed. “I’LL KILL YOU!!”

  Dash snarled in matched ferocity and overpowered Oakes easily.

  Rhodes raised his weapon to fire, but he didn’t want to hit Oakes. Oakes was the only available target. Rhodes couldn’t defeat Dash.

  “Use your grid lines!” Fisher ordered. “You can break Dash’s hold on Oakes.”

  Rhodes nodded at nothing. Of course. Why didn’t he think of that?

  He didn’t get a chance to do anything before the rest of the battalion showed up. The firefight between the Masks and the platoon escalated, but Rhodes couldn’t pay attention to them.

  Rhinehart, Thackery, Coulter, Dietz, Lauer, and Fuentes soared between the buildings. Rhodes froze at the sight of his own people. He didn’t know what to expect from any of them.

  How did it happen that, of everyone present, he trusted Dietz the most? Rhodes doubted everyone else.

  Rhodes couldn’t even rely on Dietz—not with Zen around. He might take control of Dietz the way Dash took control of Oakes.

  The Masks didn’t have to control the battalion anymore. They controlled themselves. They had become their own worst enemies. They and their SAMs stopped the battalion from escaping more effectively than the Masks ever could.

  The SAMs watching from The Grid never looked more menacing. Rhodes didn’t trust any of them except Wild.

  One SAM out of eight and one battalion member out of eight—it didn’t offer very good odds.

  At that moment, before Rhodes could make up his mind what to do, a Masks invasion ship swooped overhead and fired at a nearby building—one of the buildings blocking in the 156th Platoon.

  The building detonated, but only the top twenty floors exploded. The part closer to the ground remained intact and continued to keep the platoon trapped.

  Rhodes sailed out of the way to avoid flying debris, and just as fast, a Legion Ravager fired at the invasion ship.

  An explosion went off on the ship’s side and then a deafening boom pounded the air all around Rhodes.

  He felt himself falling, but he didn’t lose consciousness. He had no trouble swiveling his boosters toward the ground and slowing his descent to land on the ground.

  He touched down behind the Masks about to wipe out the 156th. The rest of the battalion landed around him. Everyone appeared to be unhurt.

  He turned his weapons to fire on the Masks the way he planned. Without warning, another swarm of Legion soldiers flooded through the streets.

  They swept around the buildings from somewhere Rhodes didn’t see. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to what the Legion forces were doing. He’d been too preoccupied both with the 156th and with his own people.

  These new platoons rushed around both buildings to close the Masks from the outside. The Masks had to turn away from the 156th to defend themselves.

  Rhodes and his people got caught in the middle, but before another deadly firefight could break out, a dozen soldiers charged between Rhodes and the next building.

  The platoon maneuvered the battalion out of the way, pushed Rhodes and his people against a wall, and the platoon engaged with the Masks right there in front of Rhodes’s face.

  He stared in amazement as the 249th platoon forced its way deeper into the bottleneck and pushed the battalion farther out of the way. Was it even possible that a bunch of rank-and-file soldiers were the ones saving the battalion right now?

  One man fought his way level with Rhodes, glanced over, and recognized him. It was Lieutenant Justin Turley.

  “Captain Rhodes!” Turley bellowed over the noise. “Captain—the Legion has been looking everywhere for you!”

  Turley had to go back to shooting at the Masks. The sight of his friend coming to the rescue snapped Rhodes out of his shock. He sprang forward to join the platoon and turned his weapons on the Masks.

  Rhodes fired his scourge guns. The 156th added their fire from the other side and the two platoons brought the Masks down in a few minutes.

  Turley stood up on his tiptoes, spun his index finger around over his head, and yelled to his men. “Circle the building and make sure no more of them are hanging around!” He turned to Rhodes. “You fall back with us, Captain! We’ll return you to the Legion.”

  “Our Strikers are coming in now,” Rhodes replied. “They should be able to give you support as long as we’re……”

  He glanced at his people. Oakes, Rhinehart, and Dietz had all moved into the platoon packed between the buildings. The three men fought alongside the platoon.

  Now Oakes broke away, rushed into the 156th, and strode man to man shaking hands with everyone and even hugging some of them.

  Thackery, Fuentes, Lauer, and Coulter stood where they were and stared at Rhodes and Turley talking to each other.

  Fuentes went into another spasm of agony. Coulter stared at the ground.

  “Now do you see?” Rhodes asked. “Do you remember now?”

  Lauer recovered first and stepped forward. “You’re right, Captain. I didn’t remember before, but I do now.”

  “Forget it. We’re falling back as soon as our Strikers come in.”

  Rio interfaced with Rhodes right at that moment. “We’re five minutes out, Captain. Hold your position.”

  Some of the 249th came back just then to report to Turley. “The area is secure—for now. The other platoons are pinned down in different parts of the city.”

  Turley raised his voice again. “Reeves! Where’s Reeves?! Get on the horn and get us some new orders. Find out where the brass wants us to go next. If we don’t hear from them by the time the Strikers come in, we’ll just go hunting and see what we can find.”

  He shot Rhodes a grin and went back to organizing his men. Rhodes took that opportunity to finish checking his own people.

  “What if something happens?” Coulter asked. “What if the Masks hack us again before we get out of here?”

  “The Strikers will interface with us and take us anyway,” Rhodes replied.

  He tried to make his voice sound steady and determined, but Coulter’s question nagged at Rhodes’s mind. Every passing minute increased the likelihood that something would go wrong.

  He traced the Strikers’ progress on The Grid. They dropped into the city burning up the miles to intercept the battalion.

  The eight Strikers interfaced with Rhodes and his subordinates….and then he heard the Strikers’ engines shrieking overhead. They were coming. The nightmare was over.

  They made it a mile from the battalion’s position before a jet of fusion fire erupted across the landscape. The first wicked shot hit Enoch, Oakes’s Striker.

  The group scattered and had to circle back. “Get off the ground!” Rhodes ordered. “Rendezvous with the Strikers!”

  He launched, but not fast enough before ten invasion ships moved in to drive the Strikers away.

  One of the invasion ships opened its hatch. Rhodes couldn’t tell if it was the same ship the Masks had been using to hold the battalion. It didn’t matter.

  He saw the Masks about to recapture him. He fired his boosters and raced across the sky trying to catch up with Rio.

  “The Masks are trying to retake us, Rio!” Rhodes hollered. “You have to take us on board now!”

  “I’m coming, Captain! I’m on my way!”

  The rest of the Strikers split apart. Each ship went after a different member of the battalion, but at that moment, an unstoppable force snatched Rhodes out of midair.

  He jerked and struggled against whatever invisible power held him. “NO!!” he roared. “NO!!”

  Nothing could break that grip. Rio rushed straight for him, but the ship couldn’t get here quick enough.

  Rhodes rose through the air getting closer to the invasion ship’s hatch. Before he even got there, he slammed back into the lab where he stood locked into his conversion station suffering all same the tortured agony as before.

  End of Chapter 31.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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