Rhodes came to his senses and choked down bile burning his throat. He hadn’t felt this bad since he first woke up at Coleridge Station.

  His whole body ached. He tried to roll over and collapsed groaning on the ground.

  Smoke stung his nostrils….and another smell made him sick. It was the smell of human bodies—a lot of them.

  He pried his head off the ground and blinked soot out of his eyes to look around. The smoke cleared just enough for him to get a view of the dim landscape.

  So much ash and crap floated in the air that it cast the battlefield into shadow. Only the faintest glimmers of daylight shone through the clouds.

  It had been night when that Ravager exploded right next to Rhodes. Now it was daytime, but he didn’t see any sign that the Legion was still here. He didn’t even know which planet he was on.

  The wreckage of the battle lay all around him. Thousands of bodies spilled out of destroyed Legion vessels and a few Masks invasion ships.

  All those crashed ships raised their scorched hulks above mounds of bodies. This was so much worse than any battle against the Emal.

  Most of the destruction the Emal caused had been buildings and other infrastructure. The bodies and torn body parts in those hellscapes had been minimal compared to the destruction of property and structures.

  Rhodes couldn’t even tell where the bodies ended and the wrecked ships began. They all seemed to merge into something so horrible he couldn’t even think about it.—but he had to. He was stuck out here.

  He forced himself onto his knees and used The Grid to look around. Fisher hovered there in the corner of Rhodes’s vision, but the SAM kept glitching on and off.

  Fisher tried more than once to talk to Rhodes, but no sound came out of Fisher’s mouth.

  He didn’t see any people—or any Masks or even any ships belonging to either side. Was he the only person left alive out here?

  He wasn’t. The Grid showed him a few failing life signs of wounded soldiers stranded in the landscape. None of them was healthy enough to survive for long. Most weren’t even conscious.

  He widened The Grid. None of the Legion Ravagers remained. The Legion had no plans to come back for these people.

  Did the Masks plan to come back for Rhodes? He didn’t know where his subordinates were or even if they survived the battle.

  He had to crawl toward one of the burned hulls to support himself so he could stand up.

  He wobbled there scanning the surroundings. It really was as bad as it seemed—if not worse.

  He glanced up at the mountains where the Legion had been holding their defensive line. Columns of smoke billowed from behind the highest peaks. Did the Masks destroy the command dome—and everything else back there?

  Rhodes might be able to climb those mountains and find out. He had no choice if the Masks left him behind.

  At least he would make it back to the Legion and tell everyone what happened. If the battalion was still in Masks custody, he might be able to do something to help get them free.

  He pushed himself away from the charred frame of a Duster to set off heading toward those mountains. He stumbled over bodies underfoot. He had to climb over them. He was still more than three hundred yards from the edge of the battlefield.

  He made it ten feet before a disembodied hand grabbed his ankle and made him pitch onto his face.

  He looked around and saw the lower half of a human forearm sticking out of the pile of bodies.

  The hand clutched him and wouldn’t let him go. He panicked and kicked it away before the hand strained once, wilted, and didn’t move again.

  Rhodes plastered his back to another mound of bodies and stared at the thing. It didn’t look human, but it must be.

  Some soldier under that pile must have grabbed Rhodes. The soldier probably needed help, but Rhodes couldn’t bring himself to go over there.

  He would have to dig through bodies to find the guy. Even then, the soldier wouldn’t be healthy enough to save. No one around here was.

  Rhodes shuddered and forced himself to sit up. He had to think.

  Actually, he just had to get off the battlefield and onto solid ground. As soon as he got up into the mountains—away from these bodies—he would be able to move more easily.

  The sick, horrified feeling in his middle didn’t go away. He had to struggle just to keep his sanity.

  The sight of all these bodies revolted him. He fought the urge to do something terrible to himself so he wouldn’t have to deal with this whole nightmarish situation.

  The bodies didn’t make him feel that way. In that moment, he realized why he felt so terrible. He wasn’t connected to the Masks anymore.

  Whatever they did to the battalion to keep them sedated and cooperative—it wasn’t happening anymore.

  Rhodes was in the real world now. This disgust and horror—this was nothing more than what he’d been feeling since he first woke up at Coleridge Station.

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  Losing the Masks’ connection made this feeling a thousand times worse. Maybe they really were drugging him and he was going through withdrawals. He wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

  He turned away from the hand, but he cast one backward glance to make sure it didn’t come after him.

  It didn’t. It didn’t move again. The soldier attached to it must be finally dead. Lucky him.

  Rhodes got to his feet again, stumbled over some more bodies, and lurched across the battlefield. He didn’t know if he might be closer to one edge or the other. He might have to cross more of it going this way.

  He didn’t care as long as he headed for the mountains. The Legion was up there—or they were. Any hope he might still have of finding someone to help him was up there.

  He made it as far as one of the crashed Ravagers before he heard the sound of aircraft engines coming closer.

  He dove behind the Ravager, flattened his back against its hull, and held his breath trying to make himself invisible.

  He could have used the Grid to make himself truly invisible or at least gone underground, but he didn’t think of that. He huddled there fighting down panic. Whatever the Masks did to him left his nerves frazzled and his brain sluggish.

  The physical pain made all of that a thousand times worse. Every inch of his implants tore his flesh apart. He might have been able to come to some grudging acceptance of his implants before.

  Now the sensation bordered on madness. The overwhelming need to tear his implants out by their roots became unbearable, but he already knew where that led.

  The sound got closer. It passed back and forth across the battlefield. Some aircraft was out there searching for something.

  He clamped his eyes shut and swallowed hard. Were the Masks coming back to get him? What would he do then? He wouldn’t be able to do anything.

  The Masks took control of the battalion’s implants during that battle. The Masks controlled the battalion to stop them from escaping and to force Rhodes and his subordinates to fight their own platoons.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised. The Masks had done it before. Why did he think he stood a snowball’s chance in hell of escaping from these things?

  He gasped for breath until, without warning, another face popped up on The Grid in front of him. “Captain? Are you hiding from me?”

  Rhodes’s eyes snapped open, but he didn’t need to open them to see Rio, his Striker SAM.

  The ship pivoted in place in front of Rhodes and set down on the stacks of bodies. The ship looked as glossy and undamaged as ever. Grid lines covered its exterior.

  Rio laughed at Rhodes in his cheery way, but he got serious when he saw Fisher. “This is not good.”

  “Rio….” Rhodes husked. “Where did you….How did you……” Rhodes looked around. “Are you the only one here?”

  “The Ero is in orbit, Captain,” Rio replied and furrowed his brow at Fisher. “He’s malfunctioning. I’ll have to correct that.”

  Rio extended his grid lines toward Fisher. The lines surrounded Fisher’s head and he suddenly switched back on.

  He stopped glitching and his voice worked again. “Oh, thank you!” he gasped. “That was awful.” Now it was his turn to look around. “This is awful!”

  “Did the rest of the battalion make it out?” Rhodes asked. “Did they make it back to the Legion?”

  “I’m afraid not, Captain,” Rio replied. “All your subordinates are still prisoners of the Masks. You are the only one still out here.”

  Rhodes collapsed back against the Ravager. He couldn’t fall apart right now.

  “You aren’t malfunctioning, but you’re experiencing a physical pain response and an emotional pain response,” Fisher announced. “Rio will interface with you to correct the imbalance.”

  “No, I won’t,” Rio countered.

  Fisher spun around. “You have to! You can’t leave him like this! I mean—look at him!”

  “His blood chemistry is completely off. None of his neurochemicals are reading at normal levels….and I’m detecting heavy concentrations of Epliothil, Kreandian, and Plianor in his blood. I won’t be able to correct that.”

  Fisher gasped. “My God! This is disastrous!”

  Rio turned his normally cheery face to Rhodes. Rhodes had never seen Rio so serious. “The Masks have been drugging you, Captain. I’m sorry. I can’t correct this. You just have to live with it.”

  Rhodes gulped again. He already knew that. He didn’t ask what Epliothil, Kreandian, and Plianor were. He already had a pretty good idea.

  The Striker’s cockpit cover popped. “Get on board, Captain,” Rio told him. “I’m taking you back to the Ero. Dr. Osborne will know what to do about this. Even if he doesn’t, you can stay in a conversion cycle until your body metabolizes the drugs.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to go through another orientation process.” Fisher sighed. “This is the last thing we need.”

  “The last thing we need is to mount a rescue operation to get the rest of the battalion back,” Rhodes pointed out.

  “At least we know where they are,” Rio told him. “The Legion is monitoring their whereabouts.”

  Rhodes’s head shot up. “They are? How?”

  “How do you think I found you? The Legion has been searching every battle zone all over the Treaty of Aemon Cluster for any sign of you and the battalion. The Legion tracked the rest of the battalion off the battlefield. They’re on a Masks ship on the other side of this planet. We can launch an assault on the Masks and get your subordinates back.”

  “Who knows what condition they’ll be in when we do get them back,” Fisher muttered.

  “It doesn’t matter. We just have to get them back.” Rhodes scrambled to his feet. He couldn’t wait to get inside Rio’s cockpit.

  Rhodes took a few steps toward the ship, and for no particular reason, he checked The Grid to make sure no one came around to threaten him or his SAMs.

  He froze when he saw a single Masks invasion ship dropping through the atmosphere. It headed straight for him.

  “Shut down all power, Rio!” Rhodes whispered. “Hurry!”

  “What’s wrong, Captain?”

  “Just do it. Shut down all power and don’t turn it back on until I’m gone. Understand? I have to lead the Masks away from you. We can’t run the risk of them capturing you, too.”

  “But I’m supposed to take you with me!” Rio exclaimed.

  “You wouldn’t be able to fight an invasion ship. Just do it. Stay here and pretend to be a pile of debris.”

  “That should be easy for you,” Fisher chimed in and made Rio laugh, but his usually cheery smile drained away when the enemy vessel got closer.

  “I hate to leave you behind, Captain,” he murmured.

  “Just do it, Rio,” Rhodes hissed. “If you make it out of here, you’ll be able to come back for me and the battalion another day. You won’t be able to do that if the Masks destroy or capture you. We can’t let that happen.”

  Rhodes couldn’t wait any longer. He took off walking across the battlefield as fast as he could.

  He barely turned his back on Rio before the SAM vanished off the interface. Rhodes watched all power die to the Striker. It didn’t vanish off The Grid. He could still see its outline among the other wreckage.

  The Masks wouldn’t be looking for Rio. They would only be looking for Rhodes.

  He kept marching over the piles of bodies until the enemy ship hovered right on top of him. It started to open its hatch.

  He spotted the edge of the battlefield ahead. It ended right at the base of the mountains.

  He took off running for that clear patch of ground. The Masks ship veered to keep up with him and dropped lower to position its hatch directly above him.

  He flung himself off the battlefield, hit a rock cliff at the base of the mountain, and spun around to open fire on the enemy vessel.

  Rhodes’s scourge gun went off once, but he didn’t hit the hatch. He tried to destroy it to stop the enemy ship from taking him on board, but the shot ricocheted off the hull right next to the hatch.

  He tried one more time to fire, but before he could do it, some unseen force gripped him all over. He froze. He couldn’t shoot.

  The next minute another warm, blissful wave of happiness, contentment, and pure delight flooded him. That feeling wiped out everything, including his memory of everything that just happened.

  End of Chapter 25.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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