Rhodes woke up and heaved a deep sigh of contentment and satisfaction. He felt great. The exhaustion and tension of yesterday’s battle evaporated.

  Fisher greeted him as usual from the corner of Rhodes’s sight. “Good morning, Captain.”

  “Good morning, Fisher,” Rhodes replied. “How are you?”

  “I’m excellent.” Fisher adjusted The Grid. “The other capsules are all reading within normal parameters. The battalion is ready to go out on our next campaign.”

  Rhodes opened his capsule cover and sat up. Everyone else in the battalion was still asleep.

  A halo of peace and quiet hung over the barracks. Rhodes didn’t want to disturb anyone just yet.

  “Is General Overstreet on duty yet?” Rhodes asked. “I can see him now.”

  “He’s in his office…and he’s alone. I can put you on his docket if you want me to.”

  “Thank you, Fisher. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You would have to schedule your own appointments. You should eat breakfast before we go.”

  Rhodes crossed the barracks and slid open the panel to get his food. He found a plate stacked with pecan waffles inside waiting for him.

  Syrup and melted butter dripped from their crispy edges. A towering cone of whipped cream perched on top.

  He sat down to eat. Rhinehart’s capsule opened while Rhodes was still working on his waffles, but Rhinehart didn’t get up. Why rush it?

  Rhodes put away his plate and headed down the corridor toward the concourse. He didn’t think too hard about where General Overstreet would deploy the battalion next.

  It would have something to do with the Inviria invasion. Every posting always had something to do with the Inviria invasion.

  Rhodes found the door to General Overstreet’s office standing open waiting for Rhodes to show up.

  General Archibald Overstreet was an old man with white hair, a thick white Mark-Twain-style mustache, a deep, scratchy voice, and a gruff, abrasive manner that made him incredibly appealing to Rhodes.

  Rhodes started to love the guy the first minute they met. General Overstreet had become something like a father figure to Rhodes since he got stationed at Fort Bastion.

  General Overstreet’s steel-grey eyes twinkled and his mustache twitched when Rhodes walked in, but General Overstreet stopped himself from actually smiling. “Captain Rhodes!” he husked. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you, Sir. I heard you wanted to see me about the Inviria situation.”

  “Of course. Come on over and I’ll show you your next posting.”

  He approached the big table in the middle of his office, worked on his computer device for a second, and interfaced the system with The Grid.

  General Overstreet showed Rhodes a Grid map of the terrain where the battalion had fought the Inviria yesterday.

  “Our target is the Inviria colony on the northern continent of Ictreaum. We’ve driven their invasion force back as far as the Pliteon Mountains—here. The enemy is on the run all over the planet, thanks to Battalion 1. We’ll hit their colony today and drive the invaders off the planet.”

  General Overstreet revolved The Grid in front of Rhodes’s eyes to show him all the features the general mentioned. The Inviria colony consisted of a fortified town even bigger than Stonebridge.

  “Battalion 1 will assault the Inviria defenses from the south side,” General Overstreet went on. “You can use the mountains as cover to get close enough without risking shots from the defensive artillery. Our Ravagers will launch from the Rute Base south of the colony. The Masks will assault the colony from the west.”

  Rhodes’s head shot up. “The….what?”

  “The west,” General Overstreet repeated. “The Inviria don’t have enough artillery to….”

  “No, before that,” Rhodes snapped a lot more harshly than he should have. “You said the Masks would assault the colony from the west.”

  “Yes, they have the numbers to overrun the Inviria ground forces….”

  “We’re fighting alongside the Masks?!” Rhodes heard his voice rising. “They’re…..they’re our allies?!”

  “Of course.” General Overstreet looked up and frowned. “Is there a problem, Captain? We’ve conducted joint campaigns with the Masks before. They have as much interest in removing the Inviria threat as we do.”

  Rhodes stared at the man in front of him. A million ideas clashed in Rhodes’s head. Years of memories crowded his thoughts—years of memories of working this closely with General Overstreet….and Dr. Littlejohn…..and Dr. Rollins…..

  All the nights he spent in the barracks with his subordinates—all the meals they ate and conversations they shared—all of that clashed so badly with his memories from Coleridge Station.

  The Masks……A thousand ideas flooded his brain. He remembered everything General Overstreet was telling him about fighting alongside the Masks to defeat the Inviria invasion.

  Rhodes also remembered everything else—getting captured by the Masks, getting held in a freezing cold locker, living in Stonebridge—all of it.

  His memories of life at Fort Bastion overshadowed everything else. The other memories submerged beneath the surface of his consciousness.

  They didn’t help him face the threat of going into battle against the Inviria again. He listened to the rest of General Overstreet’s briefing, but Rhodes’s mind turned in a million different directions.

  The Grid kept swiveling and pivoting in front of him. He saw more than he ever wanted to see of the Inviria colony, the Masks’ position to the west, and the Legion positions on the east, south, and north sides.

  The Inviria colony included plenty of families, schools, hospitals, and community centers. The Grid returned thousands of life signs of all ages, including newborns. Was Rhodes really going to assault that?

  His memories of past campaigns told him what would happen. The Masks would bring in their invasion ships and land ground troops armed with fusion rifles.

  Rhodes recognized all that weaponry. He recognized it from the battles he’d alongside the Masks—and two different battles he fought against the Masks.

  One of those was the battle on Rono—the battle where the Masks captured the battalion.

  Those memories flashed into his head and immediately sank beneath a tidal wave of other memories.

  He somehow got out of General Overstreet’s office, returned to the barracks, and reported the battalion’s orders to his subordinates.

  Oakes nodded. “It’s about time we wiped the floor with those maggots. They’ve made a stain on this planet long enough.”

  “The Masks are coming in on the ground from the west,” Rhodes went on. “We’ll need to be careful not to hit them once they get inside the colony.”

  “We might get inside the colony first,” Thackery pointed out. “Then they can defend us while we wipe the floor with the maggots.”

  “Even better,” Oakes replied.

  Rhodes checked each of his subordinates while they ate breakfast and got ready to leave for the day. He read each of their vital functions on The Grid. They were all running at their optimum.

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  They left for the loading dock where a bunch of Legion Ravagers, Dusters, and Predators sat preparing to launch into the same battle.

  General Overstreet interfaced with Rhodes through The Grid. “Keep an eye on the Inviria battleships, Captain. If it looks like the aliens are about to evacuate, we’ll target the battleships and shoot them down. We don’t want any of the maggots to escape and set up somewhere else.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Rhodes replied. “We’re just waiting for the order to launch.”

  “You’re clear to launch whenever you like, Captain. Good luck and God’s speed.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” Rhodes turned to his subordinates. All their SAMs interfaced in The Grid. “Let’s go do some damage.”

  Thackery laughed as the battalion streaked away from Fort Bastion. The Ravagers launched right behind the battalion.

  The Predators raced to catch up, but the Legion force veered north as soon as the Ravagers got away from the fort.

  Battalion 1 kept heading south. Rhodes didn’t need to use The Grid to find out where he was going, but he studied it anyway.

  He surveyed the landscape for any sign of enemies—enemies he didn’t already know about

  The Inviria really had withdrawn behind the Pliteon Mountains. The combined Masks-Legion campaign had cleared the Inviria from the rest of the planet and isolated them here.

  This Ictreaum colony was the last Inviria colony left. The Masks-Legion force only had to destroy this colony. The Inviria invasion would be over.

  The Inviria didn’t have the technology to see beyond the mountains. They wouldn’t be able to see Battalion 1 coming.

  Rhodes swooped low over the plains south of Fort Bastion. The sun was just coming up over the mountains.

  A rim of blazing gold lit up the peaks. The sunshine glittered on the snow fields up there. The sky gleamed brilliant bright blue. It was the perfect day for a battle.

  Rhodes picked up speed approaching the mountains. His subordinates grinned at each other and at their SAMs.

  The Grid sent Rhodes an indicator that the Legion force at the Rute Base was standing by. Everyone waited for Battalion 1’s assault before the Legion and the Masks joined in. It was all on.

  He didn’t have to give the word. He fired his boosters, blasted over the mountain, plunged down the other side, and opened fire on the Inviria defensive position.

  He hammered four enemy artillery placements and smashed them to pieces just as the Ravagers and other Legion craft launched from the Rute Base.

  The Masks rushed the colony from the west side, but Battalion 1 got there first. Rhodes raced past the artillery, dodged a dozen pulses, and swooped low over the colony’s outer defensive wall.

  Inviria civilians rushed through the streets trying to get to the Inviria battleships standing by to evacuate everyone.

  Rhodes veered in that direction to target the ships the way General Overstreet ordered. Mothers, children, old people, and medical workers already streamed onto the airfield to board those ships.

  Rhodes raised his weapon to open fire. He had to destroy the ships before they launched.

  Gunfire on his left startled him into hesitating. He spun around and spotted a bunch of Inviria ground troops in a blazing firefight against Masks storming through the streets.

  The Masks advanced behind the colonists driving them forward. The Inviria ground troops charged in to separate the Masks from the fleeing colonists. The Inviria ground troops opened fire on the Masks.

  Dozens of pulse shots from the Inviria carved through the Masks’ ranks. Part of the left flank went down and the Inviria turned their weapons on the survivors.

  Rhodes dove for them and bombarded the Inviria from behind and above. He flattened them and left their bodies lying all over the pavement.

  Screams echoed through the streets and drew his attention back to the Inviria battleships. The trapped civilians were making another rush to board their evacuation ships.

  A wave of Masks swept in from the west and opened fire on the civilians. Now was Rhodes’s chance to destroy the battleships. Then the Inviria would have no way off the planet.

  He launched over the civilians and Lauer appeared at his side on a dead run for the battleships. The rest of the battalion closed formation from all sides.

  “Fire your Vipers!” Rhodes ordered. “Separate and take out all the ships!”

  The battalion scattered. Rhodes and Lauer unleashed their Vipers on the same ship. Hundreds of Inviria were already in the process of boarding it.

  He ignored them and swerved to his left trying to locate the exhaust duct leading to the reactor. One hit on the reactor would blow the whole ship.

  Another rush of exhilaration and thrilling pleasure overwhelmed him when he spotted the duct. This was all working out.

  A bunch of Inviria fighter craft plunged out of the atmosphere to target the battalion and bombard the Masks on the ground. Lauer dove aside to occupy the fighter craft so Rhodes could get closer to the exhaust duct.

  He fired a Viper into the cavity, blasted skyward, and drove to his top speed to tackle Lauer out of the way. “Watch out!”

  The two men tumbled into the path of more Inviria pulses coming from the ground. The aliens must have planted artillery inside the colony after all.

  The artillery targeted Legion Ravagers and Masks invasion ships stationed directly over the colony.

  Rhodes and Lauer tumbled into one of the artillery shots. It clipped Rhodes across the back and sent him wheeling away. “CAPTAIN!!” Lauer bellowed.

  Rhodes lost contact with Lauer and felt himself revolving through space. He came to a stop fifty feet above the colony and far enough out of range that none of the battle put him in danger.

  He turned back to pick out his next target. The battalion targeted four more Inviria battleships on the airfield. One of them tried to lift off, only to get smacked down hard by a Masks invasion ship.

  Rhinehart, Fuentes, and Thackery tried to pull the same exhaust duct trick on a second battleship.

  Rocky, Van, and Koenig called instructions to all three of them while the SAMs showed the three battalion members schematics of the ship’s interior layout. It was the same layout Fisher showed Rhodes during their last battle to destroy one of these ships.

  Rhodes rotated downward to dive back into the mayhem. At that moment, everything vanished—the colony, the battalion, the ships in the air—the whole world evaporated.

  Rhodes snapped back into the fields outside Stonebridge. The town lay sleeping in the sunshine next to the stream the same way it had been the first time he saw it.

  Rhodes stood far out on the hilltop where he’d first watched the town. Smoke curled from its chimneys as usual. Nothing had changed.

  Birds twittered and flocked in the sky over fields dotted with wildflowers. No sign of the battle, the danger, or the Inviria disturbed the blessed silence.

  Rhodes blinked once. He wasn’t alone this time. Fisher stood before him again—the human Fisher Rhodes recognized from this world.

  “Fisher…what are you…..?” Rhodes began.

  “Captain….” Fisher choked and doubled over in a sudden spasm of pain. He clutched his arms across his stomach and grimaced.

  “Fisher—what’s wrong?” Rhodes gasped.

  “The Grid….” Fisher let out a groan through gritted teeth. His face convulsed in agony and then screwed up like he might be about to fall apart. “You have to….you have to listen to me…..”

  “Fisher….” Rhodes took a few strides forward. “I’ll take you back to town. I’ll find some way to help you—whatever’s wrong with…..

  “Listen to me!” Fisher blurted out and then screamed in pain as another brutal spasm brought him to his knees.

  He writhed there snarling and roaring in agony. He hugged his stomach.

  “Fisher…” Rhodes husked. He couldn’t think what might be wrong with Fisher that could cause him so much pain.

  “The Grid….” Fisher rasped. “You have to…..you have to use The Grid….to break this illusion…..You have to remember, Captain…..”

  He screamed again and his hand flew to his head. Out of nowhere, a wicked slash appeared across his face. Blood oozed from the wound and his head snapped sideways from the impact of some invisible blow.

  Rhodes gaped at his friend in horror. He never trusted this human version of Fisher.

  This must be the real Fisher talking to Rhodes right now. Fisher was trying to warn Rhodes—to remind Rhodes of what he barely remembered what it was he was supposed to remember.

  “The Grid…” Fisher pitched backward on the ground, jerked back and forth howling in agony, and then vanished.

  Rhodes stared at the spot where Fisher had been lying.

  Everything Rhodes hadn’t been remembering came rushing back. All those memories of Fort Bastion—they weren’t real. General Overstreet wasn’t real. Neither were Drs. Littlejohn and Rollins.

  None of what happened at Fort Bastion was real—which meant none of how he felt about his subordinates or his superiors was real, either.

  The food. The food wasn’t real. As soon as he thought that, he remembered everything from Coleridge Station—the pain, the rage, the hopeless disgust with everything he saw himself becoming.

  Did he really want to give up all this pleasure….to go back to that?

  The instant Fisher disappeared, Rhodes snapped back to the battle over the Inviria colony, but he didn’t slip back into the same trance.

  He saw it all so differently now. The Masks rampaged through the streets killing all the civilians. Did they do it this way on purpose—to numb the battalion to what they were doing?

  The Masks sure found a way to make the battalion cooperate with….whatever the Masks’ plan was.

  The rush of fighting alongside the Masks and doing everything their way—it intoxicated Rhodes out of his mind. It would be so easy to forget everything else and just vanish into that thrilling pleasure.

  Were they drugging him? Did it even matter anymore?

  His life at Coleridge Station—and everywhere else in this battalion—that had been a torture almost impossible to bear. Everything about this life tempted him to just accept it.

  He just had to accept that the Masks were the ones doing this to him. They gave him this pleasure….in exchange for what?

  They couldn’t just be experimenting on him. They wanted something—something they couldn’t get from anyone but the battalion.

  Legion Ravagers landed on the ground outside the Inviria colony walls. Senior officers went inside the colony and supervised the last cleanup.

  Fisher reappeared on The Grid in front of Rhodes’s eyes. Fisher looked exactly the same way he always did. There was no slash across his face and he showed no sign of pain or distress.

  The difference startled Rhodes even more harshly back to reality. Fisher risked a lot to get through to Rhodes. It must have cost Fisher everything to drag Rhodes back to Stonebridge where Fisher could tell Rhodes the truth.

  Rhodes wouldn’t have woken up otherwise. He knew that now. He would have drifted farther and farther away from any awareness that his life had been any different.

  The cracks that let his old memories through—they got farther apart and more indistinct. Only the occasional disconnect made him remember it at all.

  Now it was all there in the forefront of his mind. He couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  Coulter interfaced with Rhodes through The Grid and flew out into the sky to join him. “Is everything okay? Did you get hit when you blew up that battleship?”

  “I’m fine. I guess the campaign is over.”

  Coulter nodded and then frowned. “What’s wrong? Why don’t you come down? The generals and admirals want to congratulate you.”

  “I don’t want them to congratulate me. Round up the battalion. We’re heading back to Fort Bastion.”

  End of Chapter 15.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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