• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She was losing her grip on him, and a bullet had found her side, just pumped in there like it belonged, took more energy out of her.

Clarence had just about managed to put his pistol to her head to get her off of him, when she tripped him.

And the Flood washed over him, over her.

Found them.

Suddenly they were pulled back. A sensation of flight, then. A blessed numbness and strange alertness. Looking up for a moment to see that she’d done it—that Henry and Lopez, framed by the doorway, firing away, were far enough away to close the door on both them and the Flood. Yeah, they were shooting her and Clarence, but they didn’t mean any harm. They would never mean her any harm.

Clarence writhed in the embrace of what looked like part of Simmons, screaming, “Don’t let them take me!” It was too late for that. She wanted to say, “Relax, Clarence. You’ve got my back,” but her mouth didn’t work quite right. Don’t want to wake up. Not now. Not for this sad party.

Last thing she remembered: Lopez’s face clenched in concentration, standing in Henry’s shadow, as Henry fired point-blank into the Flood and into her. Thought she saw Lopez raising an arm in a gesture of good-bye.

Tried to hold onto that image as the Flood repurposed her.

>Lopez, 1624 hours

Lopez, tired as hell, blinked, and . . .

Henry roared, deep and eternally Covenant, and next to the discord of the Flood, something welcome and familiar to Lopez’s ears. He fired into the mob that had taken Benti, ammunition spent in an instant. Hurled the rifle hard enough to knock an infected prisoner off its feet. Raised his cricket bat. Lopez opened fire, taking no specific aim. A glance at her ammo counter.

“Benti!” Brought back only to be taken away.

The ammo counter ran down.

“Clarence!”

All her beads gone. All her kids gone.

She couldn’t see them in the throng anymore. Couldn’t pick them out. Couldn’t spare . . . anyone. A handful of infection forms scuttled across the ceiling. She lifted her sights. Shot them as they launched at Henry. Small pops. Puffs of green powder.

She dropped and Henry swung his bat, smashing an infection form she hadn’t seen away from her. She rolled back into the airlock. Slapped the controls as Henry joined her, beating away at a transformed Elite. Beating it into a green froth before the airlock sealed.

With infection forms on the inside.

She twisted, firing a crazy line around the airlock, chasing the zoomy little maggots. Had no swearwords left to use on them. One popped. Two popped. Henry pushed her aside. Swung his bat. Four popped. Punched the last so hard against the wall the panel dented, green sludge on his fist. He reeled back from the puff of spores, waving them from his face.

Safe.

They looked at each other. The small room thundered with the pounding at the door.

The ship’s PA crackled again.

“Shiva armed. Targeting lasers online. Initiating launch sequence in forty-five seconds—”

The airlock door dented inward, and both flinched, taking a step away from it. A step toward the last pod. Henry was big. There was only room for one. This alien, this enemy, had carried Benti to safety. On this ship of messed-up humans.

Finally understood how this was all going to go down. Some little backwater side action, maybe a footnote in some ONI operative’s field report.

And beyond the door, something bigger and badder than all of them.

It’s a big, bad universe, Sergeant.

Henry’s four jaws flexed. Lopez narrowed her eyes. Put her finger on the trigger. Noticed Henry’s grip on the cricket bat tighten.

Covenant aren’t the worst of it.

No.

But they were pretty damn hideous.

“Sorry, Henry,” she said, “but there’s only one pod.”

She pulled the trigger.

Click.

No ammo.

Lobbed the last curse she had in her, and hefted the rifle like a club.

“. . . thirty seconds—”

The Covenant Elite snarled, jaws spread, and raised his bat.

And they went at it.

ICON

________________

ICON Soldiers forged from youth to serve as tools of war—weapons