Rhodes checked The Grid. “The aliens are covering a lot of territory,” Lauer remarked behind Rhodes’s back.

  “They sure are moving fast,” Oakes agreed. “We need aircraft to strafe them and reduce their numbers. That’s the only way to slow them down.”

  Rhodes squinted at The Grid. “Dusters and Predators should already be over there. Why isn’t the Legion moving in?”

  “I don’t see any regular Legion forces at all,” Rhinehart pointed out. “It just looks like Masks to me—Masks against the aliens.”

  “Did General Overstreet say what species the aliens are?” Dash asked.

  “He didn’t say,” Fisher replied. “He just said they were aliens.”

  “Can we get a closer look at them?” Thackery asked.

  “You can get all the closer look you want by flying over there and fighting them,” Rhinehart replied. “That’s what we’re supposed to do anyway.”

  “So we’re going alone—as usual?” Dietz asked.

  “We aren’t going alone,” Rhodes replied. “The Masks are already over there taking heavy losses fighting them. If we can turn the tide, we’ll do it.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Coulter asked.

  “Nothing,” Rhodes replied. “Let’s go.”

  The battalion took off from the Fort Bastion loading dock. They were the only ones who did. Four Ravagers sat at the dock taking on cargo. They didn’t move to get involved in this battle.

  Rhodes surveyed The Grid on his way there. The landscape north of Fort Bastion flattened out. The battalion left the mountains behind, crossed a desert of cinders, and approached a wasteland of wrecked cities in the distance.

  Heavy smoke clouds blocked out the sky and cast the countryside into shadow. Explosions flashed in the darkness up ahead. They showed the battalion exactly where to go.

  Thousands of Masks battled on the ground against a smaller but much better-armed alien army. The enemy had positioned some kind of plasma accelerator in a few remaining buildings strategically oriented around the battlefield.

  These plasma weapons could target the Masks with pinpoint accuracy and fired in rapid bursts. Dozens of shots erupted from each accelerator with each shot.

  The plasma forked, separated, and took out large swaths of the Masks’ troops with each shot.

  The Masks sent countless troops against these aliens, but no one could get near enough to the enemy’s position even to see which aliens they were fighting.

  Rhodes maneuvered the battalion to the south and approached the battlefield from behind the Masks.

  He tried to decide how to attack these aliens, but their weapons made the battle zone too dangerous.

  Neither the battalion nor the Masks could get inside the city, much less close enough to the alien positions to take out one of those guns.

  “How do you want to do this?!” Coulter yelled over the noise.

  “Any suggestions?” Rhodes asked.

  “We can’t hit them head on,” Lauer pointed out. “That would be suicide.”

  “That leaves the sides and the back,” Rhinehart replied. “What about splitting the battalion, sending some of us in from the sides to draw their fire, and then sending the rest in behind to hit the buildings? We take down the buildings—we take down the guns. Right?”

  Rhodes glanced around at the rest of the battalion. “Anybody have a problem with that?”

  “It beats flying straight to our deaths,” Thackery remarked.

  “Which is what we would be doing if we attacked any other way,” Oakes added.

  “What about sneaking in the old-fashioned way?” Fuentes suggested. “They never have to see us coming.”

  “We’ll do both,” Rhodes decided. “We’ll create a diversion to draw their fire away from the Masks. When the aliens shoot at us, we’ll drop into The Grid and get inside the buildings before they realize what we’re doing.”

  “Sounds good,” Thackery replied.

  “Let’s do it.” Rhodes took off and headed back into the open wasteland. “Coulter and Rhinehart—with me. Dietz, Lauer, and Thackery—take the west side. Oakes and Fuentes—take the east.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Oakes replied and the battalion split up.

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  They flew far out into the darkness before they headed back north to come toward the city from the alien side of the battle.

  Rhodes still didn’t put much stock in this plan, but like Thackery said, it was better than flying straight into enemy gunfire.

  The battalion’s three flanks closed on the city and succeeded better than they wanted to at drawing the aliens’ gunfire. Multiple positions in multiple buildings spotted the battalion coming.

  The accelerators swerved outward and plasma crackled through the air. One shot came dangerously close to pulverizing Rhinehart.

  “Hey!” he roared.

  “Get into The Grid!” Rhodes ordered. “We can avoid them much better that way.”

  He didn’t wait for the other two to obey him. Rhodes shifted his grid lines, stretched them, and morphed into a thin sheet of some shadowy substance.

  The grid lines kept twisting, stretching, melting, and changing the shapes of the squares between them.

  The aliens fired four more brutal plasma shots in his direction. The sheet contorted in a twisted line of bizarre shapes, angled between the many forks of plasma, and kept right on going.

  Coulter first changed himself into a springy kind of bounding creature. It vaulted over the plasma shot, dropped, and switched into a long, narrow, fast-flying fighter craft.

  The plasma beam only had to adjust its trajectory by a few inches to hit him. It sent him toppling head over heel and out of control. He wheeled through the air and started falling straight into the plasma beam.

  Rhodes kept on flying too fast to intervene. He couldn’t stop Coulter from falling to his death.

  At the last second, Coulter changed again. He transformed himself into another metal ball. It struck the plasma beam and the energy reacted with the ball’s metal surface.

  It propelled him skyward, but only for a minute before he started to drop. The ball landed on the beam, but this time, it landed a few miles closer to the city.

  The ball kept bouncing, ricocheting, and sailing off the same plasma beam the aliens used to try to destroy Coulter. Every shot carried him closer to their accelerator positions.

  At the first sign of trouble, Rhinehart dove for the ground, turned into an armored land vehicle, burned through the city streets, and plowed his nose through piles of rubble and other destroyed vehicles.

  The aliens rotated their accelerators downward to shoot at him. Each time they did this, the vehicle plowed underground, dug up a furrow of dirt and broken bricks, and kept on going no matter what the aliens did.

  They tried dozens of times to hit him, but he pulled the same trick each time. The instant they turned their weapons away to target Rhodes or Coulter, Rhinehart blasted back onto the surface where he could move faster.

  The aliens unloaded on the three men, but pretty soon, the aliens had to divert their fire to continue hammering the Masks.

  Then the other two flanks of the battalion moved in and divided the aliens’ fire even more. They couldn’t shoot at everyone at the same time.

  Rhodes took a chance and changed into a Striker. He didn’t have to dodge enemy gunfire anymore. He could fly faster like this.

  Coulter couldn’t travel as a ball without the aliens’ plasma shots. He changed into a Striker, too, and a second later, Rhinehart joined them. The three Strikers gunned their engines in a dead sprint for the city.

  The aliens fired a few warning shots at the three men, but the aliens couldn’t keep up their defense like this. Rhodes and his men avoided those shots easily, blasted past the first buildings, and the three Strikers split apart to soar to different parts of the city.

  Another surge of excitement and adrenaline took over Rhodes’s mind. He lived for this shit. Just a few more miles and he would unload on the enemy positions.

  He wheeled hard to his left and targeted a building with five accelerators stationed on different floors.

  The accelerators gave the Masks hell and then turned their gunfire on Thackery, Dietz, and Lauer.

  The first shot erupted between the three of them and they all changed into something different. Rhodes didn’t see what the three of them were doing.

  The Grid took over his awareness. The lines covered buildings, piles of debris and wrecked ships, and twisted frames of structures all around him.

  The black squares between the grid lines kept adjusting and elongating as the landscape changed around him. The Grid made the building transparent. Rhodes could see the accelerators’ exact locations.

  He locked his Vipers on two accelerators. He would blow those and the resulting explosion would take out the rest of the building.

  He interfaced with Thackery to warn his subordinates to keep away from that building.

  At that moment, a colossal smash hit him between the shoulder blades—or it would have if he’d been the shape of a man.

  The shot caught him between his wings, jerked him out of thin air, and slammed him into the building with unbelievable force. The blow stunned him and he tasted blood in his mouth.

  He woke up lying on the ground somewhere in the city. The battle was still going on. Plasma eruptions lit up the darkness.

  Strikers hurtled back and forth across the sky overhead, but he didn’t see them getting any closer to the enemy positions.

  The battalion didn’t seem to be making any headway toward destroying the accelerators. The alien guns kept spouting plasma shots at the Masks in the distance.

  If the battalion got too close, the aliens fired at the battalion and made everyone retreat or at least divert. No one in the battalion could get close enough to the buildings to stop the onslaught.

  Rhodes tried to stand up and a wave of sickening cold knocked him back down. He groaned, but he couldn’t even raise his hand to touch his head.

  He fought to breathe. “Fisher…..”

  “I’m here, Captain,” Fisher replied from his usual position at the corner of Rhodes’s vision. “Don’t try to sit up. You took damage to your stabilizer processes.”

  “I have to….” Rhodes tried one more time. He managed to push himself up with one hand, but the pain in his body almost made him pass out again.

  He wavered there in a sitting position and struggled to clear the fog out of his brain. He stared up at the battle going on. It didn’t get any better nor did it automatically go the battalion’s way.

  A dozen disjointed thoughts and ideas rushed into his mind. He hadn’t felt this kind of pain and desperation since the Masks sent him to Stonebridge.

  This pain—this gut-turning cold in his stomach—it reminded him too much of his former life—his life at Coleridge Station and in the battalion’s first campaigns on Ohait and Thaklia.

  In front of his eyes, one of the alien positions unloaded a vicious series of shots from their accelerators.

  The bombardment smashed the Masks ground troops who were trying to penetrate into the city streets.

  The barrage leveled hundreds of Masks in one pass. They all fell. The glow from their eye slits faded out and the machines lay still and cold on the ground.

  “Fisher….” Rhodes husked. “This…..this isn’t The Grid.”

  “I know, Captain,” Fisher murmured. “This is real. The Masks sent us into a real battle and we’re all in danger. I don’t see any way the Masks can get us out of it.”

  End of Chapter 18.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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