Rhodes set off walking through The Grid. The other soldiers of Battalion 1 followed him.

Lauer caught up with him and murmured in Rhodes’s ear. “I got a bad feeling about this, Sir.”

“I’m sure it’s no worse than the feeling I have about this,” Rhodes muttered back. “This whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“It looks to me like it already happened. We lost Gannon. Who’s next?”

“They’re sending us into battle soon,” Rhodes replied. “We’ll all be next.”

“At least Fuentes seems to be holding it together.”

Rhodes didn’t turn around to see what Fuentes was doing. Rhodes could hear well enough without turning around.

Fuentes wasn’t crying or flying into a rage or trying to destroy himself. That was a massive improvement. Rhodes didn’t care about anything else.

None of the others did any of those things, either. Rhodes knew better than to hope it would stay this way. It wouldn’t, but he could be grateful for small mercies as long as they lasted.

“What are we looking at, Captain?” Oakes asked behind Rhodes’s back. “This is just more Grid, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Rhodes replied. “Okay. Here we go. Try to keep up.”

He started running. The rest of the group ran with him, and in a second, the grid lines stretched upward to form a landscape.

It started as another valley with softly rolling hills, trees, and a stream at the bottom winding through fields.

The soldiers kept up with no problem. They stared around them at everything. Rhodes picked up the pace and the surrounding hills jutted higher.

The grid lines bent upward into cone-shaped volcanoes puffing smoke into a hazy, red-orange atmosphere.

“Stay sharp!” Rhodes called behind him. “The enemy should start shooting at us any…..”

He barely got the words out before a flicker of lasers spouted from the slope of the nearest volcano.

In seconds, more gunfire blasted from every hillside and bombarded the battalion. Rhodes turned one way, then another, and fired his scourge guns at the mountainsides.

When that failed, he switched to thermal cannons, but the laser fire coming from the slopes overcame the battalion in no time.

His soldiers reacted just as fast, wheeled outward, and unloaded. They targeted the source of the lasers, but nothing interrupted the enemy assault.

A laser sliced across the valley bottom, hit Henshaw, and carved across her chest implant. She screamed and toppled to the ground, but Rhodes didn’t see any damage to her armor.

The interface gave Rhodes a view of all the SAMs talking to, instructing, and feeding targeting and terrain information to each soldier.

“The Grid is showing fortifications five miles up the valley!” Fisher yelled in Rhodes’s ear. “We can take cover there!”

“What’s the objective?” Rhodes asked.

“The system only says you have to defeat the aliens and bring peace to the valley.”

“That’s impossible!” Rhodes countered.

“Just get the battalion to the fortifications!” Fisher told him. “We can’t stay out here exposed like this!”

Rhodes could see that for himself. He fired his scourge guns at the laser positions again, but he couldn’t even tell if he hit them.

“Follow me!” he roared to his people. “Use your boosters and follow me!”

He fired his boosters and took off soaring up the valley. Fisher adjusted Rhodes’s Grid view of the landscape so Rhodes could see where they were going.

The valley snaked between the volcanoes to a fortified base out of sight. Laser positions surrounded the base, but at least the group would find shelter there.

The others copied him, ignited their boosters, and the battalion zoomed up the valley dodging lasers right and left.

The battalion had to fly through a hail of enemy gunfire to get around the first corner. One of the shots hit Oakes and he slammed down on the ground.

“Keep going!” Rhodes ordered. “Lauer—show them where to go!”

Lauer took off with the others right on his tail. Rhodes doubled back and pulled Oakes off the ground, but he didn’t seem to be hurt, either.

He staggered a few times when Rhodes picked up him, but Oakes could support his own weight.

Rhodes held onto him to steady him. “Come on, Lieutenant!”

“Captain…” Oakes croaked and stumbled again.

Rhodes turned around to look into Oakes’s one good eye. That eye kept drifting half shut.

“Look out, Captain!” Fisher yelled.

Rhodes barely had a chance to realize what Fisher was warning him about before a smash of fusion fire pounded the hillside right next to Rhodes’s position.

Rhodes fired his boosters without thinking and took off into the air dragging Oakes with him. Oakes hung onto him just as tight.

Rhodes didn’t have time to check if Oakes was okay. Rhodes released two of his Vipers and hit two different laser positions on his way up the valley.

Both positions exploded and Rhodes flew past them to catch up with the battalion. He got there just as Lauer led everyone down to the base.

The enemy bombardment escalated as soon as Rhodes and his people took cover behind the fortifications.

“Now what do we do?!” Thackery hollered. “We can’t get out of here!”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Rhodes hid behind a heavy concrete barricade and turned his attention to Oakes. “Fisher—can you interface with Dash?”

“I am interfacing with him, Captain.”

“I don’t detect any malfunction, Captain,” Dash replied. “Lieutenant Oakes only seems to be dazed.”

“I’m all right,” Oakes husked. “Just give me a second.”

Rhodes made one last survey of Oakes’s body. All his implants appeared undamaged.

Rhodes couldn’t spend any more time on this. He squinted up at the hillsides all around him.

“The bombardment is getting hotter,” Rhinehart pointed out. “They know we’re hiding down here.”

“Fisher—show me a layout of this valley—a bigger layout.”

Fisher adjusted The Grid again. Rhodes measured the strength and positions of the alien laser points that were so busy bombarding the intruders.

“That’s amazing!” Henshaw breathed. “You can do that?!”

“Your SAMs can do it, too.” Rhodes pointed at a dot on the map. “What is that?”

“That’s the aliens’ power station.” Fisher changed the map layout to show red lines snaking all over the hillsides. “These are the power lines carrying power to the laser positions.”

“That’s it. That’s the objective,” Rhodes murmured. “We take out the power, we take out the guns. The valley will be peaceful.”

“How do we do that?” Coulter asked. “That power station is more than forty miles away with laser positions all the way.”

“We use The Grid,” Rhodes replied.

“How?” Rhinehart asked. “We’re already in The Grid.”

“The Grid is in us, too. We can use The Grid to change our shapes and the configurations of our weapons. We need to modify ourselves to overcome all these obstacles.”

Dietz frowned. “How do we do that?”

“Like this,” Lauer interrupted and changed himself.

The grid lines covering him altered their shape. They changed him into a cylindrical spacecraft with scourge guns sticking out all over him.

He launched off the ground, soared over the fortifications, and his weapons erupted shooting in all directions.

He whirled in midair for a second and then two cannons on his outer housing fired Viper missiles at four laser positions.

They exploded and he dropped back down behind the fortifications. The grid lines morphed to change him back into a man.

He shrugged at Dietz. “Like that.”

“Oh, hell no!” Coulter muttered. “Hell no!”

“How did you figure out how to do that?!” Thackery demanded. “Captain Rhodes never showed us how to do that!”

“He mentioned it before,” Lauer replied. “I figured it out…..after Gannon. His grid lines changed shape.”

“We’ll need to change into something armored to get through all that laser fire,” Rhodes suggested. “We should combine our defenses and our firepower. We might make a bigger more obvious target, but…..”

“They already know where we are,” Lauer pointed out. “They’re already targeting us.”

“Exactly. We’ll need to use speed, too—and we’ll need to use our Vipers on the power station itself.”

“We won’t be able to use our Vipers before that, then,” Rhinehart pointed out. “We’ll have to use other weapons to clear these laser points and keep our Vipers in reserve.”

“We can use as many Vipers as we want to,” Rhodes told him. “We don’t need to reload anything.”

Everyone spun around to stare at him. “We don’t?”

“We have unlimited ammo and power.” Rhodes shut his eyes and raised his hand. “It’s complicated and I don’t have time to explain it right now. Just take out as many positions as you can and keep moving.”

“So what shape do we take?” Henshaw asked.

“Get creative,” Rhodes told her. “We’ll connect up and keep moving until we get to the power station. Is everybody ready? Are you ready, Oakes?”

Oakes nodded. “Yes, Sir. Count me in.”

“Let’s go.”

Rhodes peeked over his fortification. He couldn’t see anything out there—nothing he hadn’t already seen.

Lasers pelted from the enemy’s hillside positions. Fusion blasts bombarded the fortifications and made everyone dive for cover.

“GO!!” Rhodes bellowed and took off into the air. He didn’t know what he would do until he got out there.

He altered his grid lines and changed into one of Lauer’s spinning spacecraft, but that didn’t get Rhodes any closer to the power station.

His soldiers rocketed out from behind the fortifications just as fast. They took longer to work out how to manipulate The Grid and what to turn into.

Henshaw surprised everyone by figuring it out first. She somersaulted head over heel, plummeted back down toward the valley floor, hit the ground, and changed into something like a compact armored vehicle.

Her weapons stuck out from both sides and unloaded on enemy targets, but she didn’t stay there.

Her armored sides extended down to the ground and protected mechanized wheels under her housing. She took off up the valley plowing a path through the war zone.

“Everybody down on the ground!” Rhodes called to the others. “Link up with Henshaw! Form a chain!”

He dove for her, slammed into the ground full force, and his grid lines mutated to match Henshaw’s shape.

He motored up behind her taking dozens of hits all over his outer armor. He unleashed one Viper missile after another to smash the laser points, but he didn’t try too hard to hit them.

He had to work to catch up with her. She made much better progress than he expected. She outpaced him.

The rest of the battalion burned up behind Rhodes. His people took different shapes trying to manipulate The Grid as fast as possible.

Lauer, Fuentes, and Thackery caught up with Rhodes first. His grid lines morphed in front of his face to form a coupling and he locked onto a matching coupling on Henshaw’s back end.

Lauer, Fuentes, and Thackery locked up with him and all five of them took off snaking through the valley.

“Take over, Captain!” Henshaw yelled over the noise of pounding gunfire. “I don’t know where I’m going!”

“Stay where you are! Keon will show you where to go! Rhinehart—come on!”

Rhinehart had the most trouble manipulating his grid lines. He changed rapidly from a Legion tank to some kind of fighter plane to a creature Rhodes didn’t recognize.

Brutal enemy gunfire bombarded each shape. None of those configurations protected Rhinehart well enough.

Rocky had changed his appearance again. He looked more like a prehistoric horse and he changed his voice again to make it higher.

Rhodes heard Rocky yelling instructions and encouragement to Rhinehart, but Rhodes couldn’t make out the words over all the noise.

Oakes and Dietz caught up with the rest of the train, coupled onto its back end, and Rhinehart fell farther behind.

Coulter got separated from the group, too, but not because he couldn’t use the grid lines.

He changed into an identical armored vehicle, but when he got close enough to couple with Oakes, a seeker missile corkscrewed out of the hillsides and smashed down on top of Coulter.

“Coulter!” Rhodes called, but he got no answer. “The rest of you keep on going! I’ll catch up with you!”

“Don’t break the train!” Lauer told him. “You could get lost out here!”

“Couple up with Henshaw as soon as I break free!” Rhodes ordered. “We aren’t leaving anybody behind. I might be able to help Rhinehart if I….”

Rhodes broke off when Rhinehart veered. He was nowhere near close enough to connect with the rest of the group. Every mistaken transformation slowed him down.

The delay worked in his favor after all. It put him in the one most strategic position to help Coulter.

The explosion that hit Coulter bowled him farther away from the train. He tumbled down another slope toward the stream running through the valley.

Rhinehart swerved. The outer appearance of his face, hair, and implants vanished and his body turned black with nothing but the green grid lines crisscrossing every part of him.

He transformed instantly into a Legion Predator craft, fired his boosters, and blasted across the landscape.

He extended some kind of hook from his underside, snatched Coulter off the ground, and rocketed into the atmosphere carrying Coulter with him.

Rhodes lost sight of them, and the next second, Henshaw burned around another hill. The power station came in sight—and something else.

Whoever these aliens were supposed to be, they mounted a better defense than Rhodes expected. Twenty-five heavily armored Destructor crawlers blocked the battalion from getting anywhere near the power station.

The Destructors charged away from the power station to assault the battalion. Henshaw was driving too fast to stop.

“Where the hell did they come from?!” Lauer roared. “They weren’t on the map before!”

“They weren’t here before!” Wild told him. “The Grid modified itself to increase the difficulty.”

“Scatter!” Rhodes order. “Everyone—get airborne and assault the station from the air. Go!”

He broke away from Henshaw in the front and Lauer behind him. Rhodes fired his boosters and copied Rhinehart to become a Predator fighter craft.

Rhodes took off into the atmosphere and gained altitude to get above the enemy laser positions.

He barely cleared the tallest volcanos before he met Rhinehart and Coulter coming back down to meet him.

Coulter must have been fine because he transformed himself into a Predator, too. He and Rhinehart pelted past Rhodes and unleashed their Vipers on the power station.

The rest of the battalion changed into Predators, too, but Rhinehart and Coulter got the jump on everyone.

By the time Rhodes turned around to target the power station, Rhinehart and Coulter were already bombarding it to oblivion.

An explosion went off inside the structure and the whole thing detonated with a colossal boom.

End of Chapter 17.