Captain Corban Rhodes adjusted the grid lines surrounding his Striker’s cockpit. The Grid gave him a full 360° view of the battlefield below him.

  Aemon Legion Platoons fought street to street through the devastated landscape. Mechanized Masks ground troops assaulted the platoons, forced them to fall back, and the platoons diverted to other streets and neighborhoods trying to gain ground against the Masks.

  Masks invasion ships and Legion Ravagers fought tooth and nail in the atmosphere over what was left of the city.

  Rhodes had to dodge one barrage of fusion charges after another pelting back and forth across his Striker’s bow.

  Two faces hovered in The Grid in front of him. “I’m scanning The Grid for any sign of implants, but nothing’s coming up,” Fisher told him. “There are too many destroyed Masks down there. They must be disguising the implants.”

  “We don’t even know if Coulter, Dietz, and Lauer are still on the planet,” Rhodes replied. “The Masks could have recaptured them, taken them on board an invasion ship, and removed them from the field.”

  “Then they’ll be impossible to find,” Rio pointed out. “We wouldn’t be able to track which ship they’re on. We would just have to wait until the Masks deploy the men in battle. Then we would be able to find them and hopefully retrieve them the same way we found you.”

  “That isn’t good enough,” Rhodes replied. “The three of them have already been stranded for three days. If the Masks had them, we would know by now.”

  “Then how are we going to find them?” Fisher asked.

  Rhodes made one last sweep of The Grid, but he didn’t see anything Fisher and Rio didn’t already tell him about.

  The Grid offered a detailed layout of the city, the battle, and everyone involved in it. The Grid returned biometric information on the Legion soldiers fighting in the platoons.

  The Grid also read the electronic components of the Masks’ machine bodies, their energy readings, and even some of their neural patterns.

  Rhodes had seen all those readings before. They were identical to the readings he should have been seeing from Battalion 1’s implants.

  He plummeted past another air battle between Ravagers and invasion ships. Both sides fired at him, but Rio flew too fast.

  Rhodes sailed clear, dropped low over the city, and wove between a few ruined buildings. Their charred frames stuck up over mountains of rubble, dead bodies, and Masks blown to pieces.

  Rhodes searched The Grid again and again. He never found any trace of Corporal Eddie Coulter, Sergeant Jairo Dietz, or Lieutenant Heath Lauer.

  Rhodes didn’t see any sign of their Strikers, Elio, Enoch, and Baron, either.

  “Lauer won’t be with the others,” Fisher pointed out. “He was miles away when we went down.”

  “We don’t know when he went down,” Rio countered.

  “You didn’t see what happened to Coulter and Dietz?” Rhodes asked. “They were with you when you picked me up.”

  “Rio took too much damage when he got hit,” Fisher replied. “He wouldn’t have recorded anything that happened to Coulter and Dietz.”

  Rhodes interfaced with the rest of the battalion. Lieutenant Dane Rhinehart, Lieutenant Ted Oakes, Corporal Rudy Fuentes, and Alyssa Thackery flew in formation around and behind Rhodes.

  The other Strikers had to veer away from gunfire and around buildings. Their interface spread The Grid all the way to the edge of town, but they still didn’t find anything.

  “How did you get separated from Lauer?” Rhodes asked Oakes.

  “We drove the Masks as far as the edge of town,” Oakes replied. “We waited until they started loading onto their invasion ships and retreating out into the countryside. Then we pulled away to rendezvous with the Ero like you told us to. That’s when the invasion ships turned on us and hit Lauer.”

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  “Did you see where he went down?”

  “It was every man for himself,” Rhinehart replied. “We had to scatter. I think he got hit over there.”

  Rhinehart indicated a spot at the far northwest corner of the Grid. It was nowhere near where the three men had been bombarding the Masks ground troops.

  “There’s nothing there now,” Thackery pointed out. “The Masks must be hiding their signal. We would be able to see them otherwise.”

  “Not necessarily,” Fisher countered. “I can think of a few other explanations for why we wouldn’t detect any sign of the three missing men.”

  “What other explanations are there?” she asked.

  “For a start, all three of them might have lost power,” Fisher told her. “They could be blending in with the debris of destroyed Mask parts. The Masks would be able to conceal all three of them in completely different parts of the city.”

  “They did it to me,” she pointed out.

  “They did it to you in one spot. They did it to you and an invasion ship that happened to be directly above you. Then the captain flew into range and the same thing happened to him. The field continued to suppress The Grid for both of you as long as you stayed together and close enough for the Masks to maintain it. The field collapsed once you both got far enough away.”

  “That’s an interesting theory, but it doesn’t help us find Coulter, Dietz, and Lauer,” Rhinehart interrupted. “How can we find them if they’re blending in with a bunch of destroyed Masks parts? The longer they stay on this planet, the more likely they are to get recaptured.”

  “I have an idea,” Rhodes chimed in. “Roll back the sequence of events from when you first picked me up.”

  Rhodes and the rest of the battalion had to fly around in the skies over the battlefield to keep out of the Ravagers’ way.

  The Masks definitely noticed the battalion in the area. The invasion ships kept breaking away from the battle to come after the Striker group.

  Rhodes and his subordinates understood by now not to engage with the invasion ships or even get close to them.

  The invasion ships could hit targets a long way off. One hit would bring down a Striker. Then the battalion would be looking for another stranded person in this wasteland.

  Fisher brought up the sequence of events on The Grid. Rhodes watched Dietz and Coulter descend in their Strikers, Aries and Baron. The two ships stood guard while Rio picked up Rhodes.

  The three ships started to lift off the ground. Aries and Baron flanked Rio to give him cover.

  Then three more invasion ships swooped in and attacked the Strikers. The invasion ships’ gunfire flattened Rio to the ground and the Striker took heavy damage.

  He barely managed to get away, but not before Rhodes got severely injured. The readings got scrambled. Rhodes couldn’t see much about how it all happened.

  By the time Rio soared clear into the atmosphere to rendezvous with the Ravager Ero, Dietz and Coulter were gone.

  The same playback showed Oakes and Rhinehart on approach to the Ravager, too. Lauer was nowhere in sight.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Rhodes muttered. “Interface with the Ero, Fisher.”

  “What will that tell you?” Rio asked.

  “The Ravagers would have recorded everything that happened during the battle. The Ero must have seen where the three Strikers went down.”

  “I sure hope you’re right,” Oakes murmured. “I hate to think of them injured and stranded—especially if they don’t have power.”

  “They could be dead already,” Thackery pointed out. “We could be looking for three dead bodies.”

  Rhodes didn’t dignify that with an answer. Even if Coulter, Dietz, and Lauer were dead, Rhodes had to find out one way or the other. He couldn’t just leave them behind.

  Fisher brought up another replay sequence from the Ero. He was right. The Ravager had been stationed in orbit through the whole battle.

  The ship recorded Dietz and Coulter flying in opposite directions to get away from the invasion ship’s gunfire.

  Rio’s crash drew the invasion ships’ attention away from Dietz and Coulter long enough for the two Strikers to get clear.

  They circled the city in opposite directions. The air battle between the invasion ships and the Ravagers prevented Dietz and Coulter from gaining altitude to return to the Ero.

  They met back up on the other side of town—the northern side. Oakes and Rhinehart were already gone. So was Lauer.

  Dietz and Coulter wouldn’t have seen Lauer after he went down. They wouldn’t realize they were anywhere near him.

  Then another four invasion ships attacked Dietz and Coulter from the north. These must have been the same invasion ships that lifted off the Masks ground troops—the troops Oakes, Lauer, and Rhinehart worked so hard to drive out of town.

  The invasion ships knocked Dietz and Coulter out of the sky, too. They and their Strikers lost power and they vanished off the Ero’s scans.

  Rhodes pinpointed the exact spot where the two Strikers went down. Then he rolled back more footage of the attack against Oakes, Lauer, and Rhinehart.

  “No way!” Thackery breathed. “Dietz and Coulter are less than half a mile away from Lauer!”

  “I’m going down there to get them,” Rhodes announced. “The rest of you stay airborne.”

  “We’ll stand guard, Captain,” Oakes told him. “We won’t let the invasion ships come after you.”

  “Don’t stand guard,” Rhodes ordered. “Draw them away. They’re more interested in capturing all of you. If you stay here, you’ll only wind up getting into another fight trying to defend me. Protect yourselves. That’s more important. You can lead the invasion ships away from me while you’re at it. Open the cockpit, Rio.”

  Rio sighed. “I’m getting really tired of those words.”

  The cockpit popped and Rhodes launched out into the smoky atmosphere over the city. It wasn’t even a city anymore. The ongoing battle had reduced it to another wasteland of destroyed buildings, twisted ship parts, and mangled bodies.

  He activated The Grid and plotted a course to the spot where Dietz and Coulter went down. Rhodes would have to find them first. Then, if he got lucky, he would be able to go after Lauer.

  End of Chapter 1.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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