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  She grabbed my helmet in her three-fingered grip, trying to rip my helmet off my head.

  My heart pounded in my chest as adrenaline flooded my system and I held onto the steering wheel with my right hand as I tried to fend off the Rung with my left. I jerked my head back and forth to avoid the Rung’s grip while keeping my eyes on the road in front of us, still swerving around to circumvent boulders.

  Tong was going to be of little to no use. It wasn’t like he could turn his Blood Shot in my direction and try to fire on the infected Rung, even if he wanted to. He was too busy trying to keep the infected who were still launching themselves at us off our predators. Not to mention the fact that he was bound to hit us if he tried to intervene.

  Another smack on the hood of our vehicle and a human infected grabbed on tight. This one was a grown man with the trademark black pools for eyes. A river of ebony liquid sludge came from his mouth and he clung to the vehicle like a parasite.

  I continued to fight the infected Rung who was still trying to get a grip my helmet. She twisted this way and that as I attempted to throw her off and it was all I could to keep us from slamming into one of the canyon walls.

  A second later, we jerked hard to the right as she finally managed to rip off my helmet. It fell onto the seat next to me. Cold wind blasted me in the face and, although refreshing, was not really what I wanted at this point. The infected grabbed for the steering wheel. For a second, I thought we were goners as she gained a grip on the handle with her right hand.

  Before she could swing it one way or the other, Sulk suddenly stirred to action. Moving his body to the side, he struck out with his thick tail, batting her hand away. Another swift strike loosened her hold and sent the alien spinning into the darkness.

  The other infected on the hood obscured my view of the canyon road in front of me. He pulled himself up over the windshield, his obsidian eyes fixed on mine. Unlike the infected who had been ripping at my helmet, I had time to deal with this one.

  My left hand still on the wheel, I reached for the Judge with my right. I laid into the infected with my weapon, hammering him with three steel rods to the chest, followed by a couple to the head for good measure.

  Black blood splattered across the predator and whooshed through the air around us. The infected let go of the windshield, falling to the ground with a satisfying plop. A second later, he was lost behind us in the night.

  “We have got to get out of here!” John roared over the comms. “Almost there!”

  Then I saw it. Ahead of us, only a few hundred meters off, I could make out the downward sloping ends of the mountain and the end of the canyon.

  Legion must have realized we were about to make our escape, so he made a last-ditch effort to disable our team. More rocks slammed down on us. I took a shot to the skull that opened a gash in my head. Pain exploded and blood dripped into my vision, turning it a haze of red. Then another rock hit my left shoulder and it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my collar bone.

  A second later, we were out of the canyon and headed into open terrain. The screams of thousands of angry throats lifted into the air. I looked in my rearview mirror to see John just about to exit the canyon himself. His predator was smoking from the front. Somehow, the hood had been ripped off. Sparks ignited a small fire that soon engulfed the engine.

  I watched in horror as the predator buckled and flipped end over end as though it had hit something. I slammed on the brakes of my predator without thinking and yanked us into a hard U-turn straight back to the upended predator.

  “Stacy! John! Lou!” I yelled out loud in a panic. Without access to my helmet, I had only my voice to communicate.

  Luckily for me, Tong had seen what happened. He was also asking them if they were all right over the comm unit.

  “Can you hear us?” Tong shouted. “Please respond.”

  Nothing.

  I screeched to a stop beside the smoking predator and searched nearby but couldn’t see any bodies, which meant they had either been thrown from the predator or were trapped underneath.

  “Tong, keep us covered,” I yelled as I prepared to jump out.

  Sulk chattered something awful, yanking at his cuffs and looking at me intently.

  I didn’t need Tong to understand Sulk wanted to help. As far as I was concerned, he had already proved his worth by saving me from the infected Rung that had latched onto my helmet. Without a second thought, I released him from his cuffs.

  Tong didn’t bother arguing. He was already scanning the area for infected.

  My best guess was that we had a few minutes before the infected were able to find a safe way down from the canyon walls and assault our position.

  I ran over to the smoking predator, dropping to all fours to get a look underneath the vehicle. John was coughing, trying to crawl out from under it. Lou was upside down, still buckled in his seat. He wasn’t moving. His neck was positioned at an awkward angle. Stacy was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” John coughed, motioning to Lou. “Get him out. Help him.”

  Sulk was small enough to crawl through the driver’s side and under the upside-down predator. He unbuckled Lou and grabbed him under the shoulders with care.

  I helped as soon as Sulk pulled him far enough out. Together, we dragged Lou out behind John.

  As much as I wanted to find Stacy, I knew something was very wrong with Lou. His body was heavy and limp in my hands, not responsive.

  We laid him on his back as carefully as we could.

  “Lou, Lou, can you hear me?” I asked, gently removing his helmet.

  Lou’s face was pale. Blood spurted copiously from his mouth, and he gave off a weak, wet cough.

  “You remember who you are,” Lou said so faintly I could barely make out the words.

  His head was twisted to the right side of his shoulders in a way I had never seen before. Dark bruising was already starting around his neck and shoulder. I knew deep down things didn’t look good for him.

  “Lou, we’ll be okay,” I said, refusing to accept the obvious. “We’re going to get you back. You don’t give up. You hear me? You don’t give up! You’re not allowed to, not after all that fate and destiny stuff you’re always talking about.”

  Stacy appeared out of the darkness from wherever she had been thrown in the accident, limping gingerly. Thankfully, it seemed her armor had saved her from the worst of the fall when she was thrown from the predator.

  “Lou,” Stacy said, approaching him as quickly as her injured leg would permit. She removed her own helmet and sank to her knees beside him. She grabbed Lou’s hand in her own. She recognized death when she saw it. We had all seen enough of it to know what it looked like. “Lou, we’re here for you. You’re not alone.”

  “You…will save them,” Lou said, looking into the night sky above. “You two…will save this planet. We are all here…for a reason.”

  The finality in his voice was enough to give my anger pause. My mouth was dry. A lump formed in my throat, rendering me unable to speak. With that, Lou let out a long draw of breath, and he was gone.

  We sat there a few seconds in silence with the smoking predator behind us still burning from the hood. Distant screams in the night told us our spare time, time to say goodbye to our friend and examine wounds of the others in the wreck, was up.

  “We have to go.” Stacy was the first to speak. “We’ll come back for his body. He’s past Legion being able to infect him now. We’ll give him the burial he deserves later, but right now we have to go or his death will be meaningless.”

  I rose to my feet, feeling so much anger burn in my chest I was ready to make a final stand against Legion right there and then. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was angry, grieving, and in pain from this loss.

  John pulled off his own helmet. Tears filled his eyes, shimmering like tiny pools in the light of the many stars.

  “What do you want from us?!” John shouted at the screaming infected. “Y
ou want to take everything? Is that what you want? You want to kill or infect us all and be alone again?”

  John pulled the Judge from his hip. He began firing wildly into the night.

  “Put your weapon down,” Stacy said firmly and loudly over John’s fire. “All that anger you feel? Bottle it up and get ready to use it the next time we come face to face with Legion. Right now, what you’re doing isn’t helping anyone.”

  I had a moment with Lou, maybe the last moment we would ever have together. I looked down at my friend, the man with the faith and beliefs I didn’t quite understand but whom I felt privileged to know. The man I might have never known if we hadn’t crash landed on this god forsaken planet.

  “I’m not going to let you down,” I said, closing his unseeing eyes with the tips of my fingers. “I’m going to make this count. I promise you. I’ll make this count.”

  “Move!” Stacy shoved John toward the one working predator. “Now, Dean! On your feet!”

  “Let’s go,” I said, helping her bully John backward.

  It was clear John was still stunned, maybe even concussed from the accident, but I couldn’t tell and there was no time to check him.

  The howls of the infected behind us continued to grow in volume. They couldn’t be more than a half kilometer off and were closing in quickly.

  Sulk followed us as we all piled into the single working predator. I confirmed what I already knew by the sounds of the screams. They were coming, there were many, and they would be here in minutes.

  Stacy slammed herself into the passenger side seat with Sulk in the middle and me in the driver’s seat. John and Tong squeezed into the back with the Blood Shot.

  We were off a second later, the wheels spinning to life underneath us.

  “Not far now,” Tong said as Sulk clicked something unintelligible. “Safety is close.”

  We drove through the night like a heavy burden had been placed on our shoulders. Death was a possibility we all accepted and realized, but to see it so close and alive in the form of this nasty virus that spread to its heart’s content was something different altogether.

  As we moved into the darkness, the screams behind us faded. I followed Sulk’s direction to the underground Rung base that we all hoped was still a secret and not under siege by Legion.

  Time held no real meaning. For the moment, we were safe. No tiny symbols of infected showed in our HUD. We were left by the living nightmares that followed us, only to be hounded by the cerebral torment of losing our good friend.

  Night broke into day as the twin suns rose over the horizon, showing us a sea of sand, a landscape we had yet to see on the planet of Genesis. The sky turned a bright pink and then orange, a beautiful sight on a tragic day. I couldn’t help but wonder what Lou would have thought of it.

  More clicking emitted from Sulk.

  “We’re here,” Tong said, interpreting for the Rung.

  “Here, where?” Stacy asked, looking around at the barren landscape that was mostly sand dunes and the sporadic weed bushes that refused to die.

  Sulk hopped out of the predator before I could stop him. He ran in front of us, his tail swaying back and forth, so I eased off the power. We came to a stop as he made for a strangely shaped rock in the desert.

  Actually, it was more out of place than strange. The rock looked as if it were shaped in the form of a kind of twisted cylinder.

  Sulk knelt beside it and pressed his hands in a specific pattern on the rock. A moment later, the thing beeped.

  Sulk motioned for us to follow, clicking away nonstop in his alien dialect. The sandy ground to his right began to part as a hidden entrance was revealed.

  “I don’t speak their language, but I think we’re here,” Stacy said.

  I had to agree, but where was “here?”

  10

  The hidden entrance was one I was sure to never have found, nor did I think I could ever find it again. I could have passed by the rock a dozen times and not given it a second glance.

  The ground beside Sulk parted with a slight rumble and a small cloud of dust, clearing the sandy floor as two hidden pieces separated. A step down revealed a metal platform large enough for the predator to sit on.

  “He says we must hurry,” Tong said. “It seems Legion has not found this hidden entrance, but if he sees us here, it will be obvious.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, easing the predator forward. I moved onto the steel elevator.

  Sulk stood on the platform, going to his hands and knees. Once more, he pressed the ground in a specific series of motions.

  A second later, the elevator hummed to life and began to lower us underground. The walls on either side of our circular elevator were lined with bright blue lights.

  The sky overhead was soon blocked out altogether as the entrance closed silently.

  “Well, if this was a trap,” John said from his spot in the rear, “they have really got us now.” It appeared John’s shock was fading from the accident and I was gratified to see that he most likely was not suffering from a brain injury.

  “To escape Legion only to be caught with our pants up amongst the Rung.” Tong nodded in agreement. “It would be a sad way to end this story indeed.”

  “I think you mean ‘pants down,’” I corrected Tong.

  “What?” Tong asked in confusion.

  “The saying is ‘caught with your pants down,’ not up,” I said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Tong shook his head with a raised hairless eyebrow. “Why would my pants be down?”

  “Who taught you that anyway?” Stacy asked, her head on a swivel.

  “I heard it from a colonist,” Tong said, blinking rapidly. “I shall ask Iris when we get back.”

  I let Tong work out his game plan for getting to the bottom of the saying. We had no time for semantics at the moment. The elevator’s smooth motion began to slow and I wondered what was down here. We had to be ten maybe twelve stories underground by now.

  The Rung didn’t mess around when it came to building their bunkers. If Legion didn’t know where this place was or how to find the entrance, there would never be a way for him to dig this deep, no matter how many infected with shovels he had.

  The platform came to a halt in front of a pair of massive double doors.

  Sulk clicked and hissed off another series of sounds that sounded like he was insulting us, if I didn’t know better.

  “He will do the talking,” Tong translated. “Do not lift your weapons or show aggression. Let him explain everything to his people. They will welcome us.”

  “Weapons down but at the ready,” Stacy ordered.

  I took my Judge from its holster. Holding the grip of the weapon, I hid it below the dash. From their vantage point, the Rung would only be able to see me from the chest up and not the weapon I held.

  The doors in front of us hissed and slid open from the middle. Bright white light illuminated the chamber, nearly blinding us. A small army of Rung with weapons of their own formed two rows, one kneeling and the other standing right behind them. All of their weapons were trained on us.

  I was surprised to see so much coordination amongst their weapons and uniforms. Their rifles were long with a curved piece of steel on the bottom like a half moon bayonet.

  Though each of the Rung sported black uniforms with high collars, they varied in appearance. Some had enhanced goggles, which made their eyes appear bulged behind them, or metal hands or feet or both. Others wore metal helmets. I couldn’t tell if they were connected to their head or they wore them on their skull. Even a few metallic tails swung back and forth. I knew from experience that when this extra appendage was used to maximum effect it hurt like hell.

  There had to be forty of the Rung, maybe more, that greeted us.

  Sulk didn’t waste any time with pleasantries or formal introductions. He threw out his hands, going to work on communicating with his people.

  “Tell them to lower their weapons,” John growled. “I di
dn’t come all this way to see Lou die and have our supposed allies shoot us down.” I seconded that sentiment by nodding along with his words.

  “Easy, John,” Stacy warned. “Give him a second.”

  Sulk rattled off another sentence to his fellow aliens.

  A husky female voice from somewhere in the room answered him then gave what sounded like a command of her own.

  Immediately, the Rung pointing their weapons at us lowered their rifles. Those who had been kneeling stood up, and as one parted their ranks to let someone through.

  A rather tall Rung walked into view. Long eyelashes and dark purple hair on her head made her easily identifiable as female. I didn’t even know Rung were capable of growing hair until now, upgrades and augmentation to their DNA no doubt.

  She studied us up and down before nodding in greeting to Sulk. Around her neck was a thick necklace, and some kind of data chip rested on her sternum. She walked over to me, looking at me sideways.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said in hesitant yet very understandable English.

  My mouth dropped open before looking to Stacy for confirmation she had heard it too and I wasn’t going crazy.

  “How do you speak our language?” Stacy asked, as dumbfounded as I was. “How is that even possible?”

  The female Rung tapped the chip on her sternum with a smile, or at least I thought the minute change in her facial expression was a smile.

  “When we realized we were going to ally with you,” she began, “we also needed a way to communicate. Our best and brightest have been working on this piece of technology day and night.”

  I turned in my seat to look back at an astounded Tong. “How come you guys couldn’t do this?”

  Tong gave me a scowl in return.

  “My name is Dama,” the female Rung said with a tight head nod. “Thank you for coming. You can holster your weapons. You are our guests and allies.”

  “Oh right,” I said, hastily pushing the Judge back into the holster at the side of my hip.

  Dama nodded to Stacy and John in turn before heading over to Tong.

  The Remboshi still stood at the rear of the predator on the Blood Shot. He looked down at Dama uncertainly.