Rhodes dropped into The Grid.

Dietz, Lauer, Oakes, and Henshaw banked their Strikers into a steep dive and plummeted toward the ground. Rhodes couldn’t take the time to check that they knew what to do.

The grid lines crisscrossed the mountains all around him and then they covered him.

He twisted them into different shapes and transformed himself into a tiny fighting vehicle with jointed limbs. All his people did exactly the same thing.

Rhodes’s legs propelled him off the ground and he landed on one of the few remaining intact sections of the mountain cliff. He bounded straight up it to the top and vaulted over the other side.

Gunfire blasted down below as the Emal closed with the platoons. Dusters and Predators swooped in to help reinforce the platoons only for the ships to get hit by enemy lasers and go down on the shelf.

Rhodes couldn’t look at that anymore. He dove over the other side of the mountain, sprang off rocks and sharp jagged ledges, and plunged into the Emal swarm from the other side of the breach.

He didn’t stop there. He stepped on plenty of aliens working his way deeper inside the breach. He had to find its center, but he couldn’t see well enough to tell where he was.

He started to adjust The Grid to show him a layout of the surrounding terrain, but at that moment, the Emal turned on him.

Thousands of them had been trying to break through to assault the platoons on the shelf. So many Emal already packed the breach that they had to wait there. Hundreds of aliens stood in the Gap just waiting and doing nothing.

Rhodes’s arrival caused such a disturbance that all those armed aliens spun around to block his path. Whispers rippled through the horde and hundreds of laser rifles swiveled in his direction.

The Emal numbers blocked him from going any further, but he didn’t want to go any further. This might not be the exact center of the breach the way he planned, but it didn’t matter in the end.

Enough Emal turned around and attacked him. He stayed in this form and used his many limbs against theirs. They plastered him with laser fire, but he used The Grid to thicken his armor to deflect their shots.

He unloaded on them with every weapon in his arsenal, but he relied mostly on his scourge guns. He blasted outward as fast as he could, but he couldn’t hold off so many aliens. He didn’t want to.

They swarmed around him, over him, and piled on top of him. He flailed in all directions to knock them off, but they only sent more Emal from everywhere to overwhelm him.

They buried him under a mountain of bodies, but he never stopped fighting. He would never stop.

Oakes and Lauer pulled in behind him and the Emal buried them, too. The Grid showed Rhodes the rest of the battalion fighting all down the Gap. Thousands of Emal swarmed in to subdue the battalion.

Word must have spread to the shelf that someone was trying to break through from behind. The Emal surged back through the breach exactly the way Rhodes hoped they would.

The platoons took advantage of the Emal’s temporary retreat. The Legion charged the Gap to push the Emal farther back, but the Emal were already falling back fast enough on their own.

“Get in touch with Captain Ackerman on the Ero!” Rhodes told Fisher. “Get the Ravagers down on the shelf now!”

“They’re coming in!” Fisher hollered back. “We won’t be able to slacken our assault to get to the Ravagers in time! We’re stranded here!”

“To hell with that!” Rhodes countered. “Keep an eye on The Grid! Make sure enough Emal are attacking us to keep the shelf clear!”

“It’s clear! Just keep up your assault! Don’t let them overwhelm you!”

Rhodes was already getting overwhelmed, but he couldn’t let the Emal get any ideas about going back to the shelf.

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Hundreds of them were still out there locked in a death struggle against the Legion. The platoons fought their way forward and the Emal set up another battleline across the breach.

That left a hundred yards of open shelf behind the Legion position for the Ravagers to touch down. The Ero came in first. The others hesitated longer.

Lasers erupted out of the Emal ranks to bombard the ship. The Ero staggered and hesitated fifty feet off the ground.

Rhodes couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t miss this chance to evacuate the platoons while they had their chance.

He didn’t know what he would do until it happened. Something went off inside him and he let out a deep thump from somewhere inside his chest. It must have come from his fusion generator.

The concussion hit the ground and blasted outward to all the Emal surrounding him. The shockwave leveled dozens of Emal and took down the aliens shooting at the Ero.

A dozen aliens toppled. The others spun away and turned their gunfire on the battalion instead.

That one instant of reprieve gave the ship the space it needed to touch down. Legion soldiers from all three platoons charged on board, but they couldn’t all fit on one ship.

Another three Ravagers descended onto the shelf and the platoons pulled the rest of the way back. The Emal who had been attacking the battalion saw the Legion soldiers getting away.

Rhodes’s distraction failed and the Emal turned back to the shelf. “Launch into the atmosphere and defend those platoons!” he ordered. “Block the Gap from the other side! We’ll do what we can from here!”

“Yes, Sir,” Lauer called back and he blasted into the air.

Henshaw, Dietz, and Oakes followed him. Their Strikers wheeled over the mountain range, swooped low closer to the Ravagers, and dropped down to the ground.

The four Strikers formed ranks with their short wings almost touching. All four ships unloaded on the Emal to drive them away from the Ravagers.

More soldiers raced on board from all over the shelf. They got stuck there, too, and had to wait for their comrades to board first.

The Ravagers opened fire on the Gap and stray gunfire hammered Rhodes’s position. “We can’t stay here much longer!” Fisher yelled.

“We’ll stay as long as we can!” Rhodes replied. “Every alien fighting us is one less alien going after the platoons!”

A scream echoed through the interface from somewhere. “Henshaw is down!” Koenig called. “The Emal are taking down Fuentes, too!”

Rhodes checked The Grid to find out where his people were, but he couldn’t get to them with so many Emal climbing all over him. He couldn’t even move.

He fired his boosters and blasted dozens of them off. He changed the shape of his head to punch through the crowd, but he only made it as far as Fuentes before the Emal caught Rhodes and dragged him down.

He unloaded his guns in all directions, but he couldn’t see the sky anymore. Too many Emal packed on top of him.

None of them seemed to be going after the Ravagers anymore. The Ero launched into the atmosphere. The other Ravagers waited a little longer before they blasted off, too.

They evacuated the last Legion soldiers and left the battalion on the ground under mountains of aliens.

Rhodes tried one last time to activate The Grid to change his own shape. He changed rapidly from one configuration to another, but nothing worked.

He started to relax into the inevitable when, without warning, another signal came through The Grid from somewhere.

He barely had time to look at it before Oakes and Lauer came streaking in at blinding speed.

They flew wide apart from each other firing their lasers to each side. They staggered their formation just enough so they didn’t hit each other.

They cut a massive swath through the Emal horde and leveled hundreds in the first pass.

“Get down!” Fisher roared.

Rhodes flattened himself to the ground. He tried to transform to make himself even flatter, but he didn’t get a chance to access The Grid before the two ships blasted over his head.

They leveled the Emal who had been attacking him and kept on going. “Get on board, Sir!” Henshaw yelled from somewhere.

“Huh?” Rhodes looked around.

He didn’t understand what she meant until he saw Dietz swooping in to pick him up.

A few stray Emal got to their feet. They still held their laser rifles.

“I still have boosters!” Rhodes called. “Get Rhinehart and the others off the planet. I’ll take care of myself.”

“You got it, Sir.” Dietz peeled away and headed for Coulter.

Oakes and Lauer fired into the atmosphere and circled the battlefield for another pass. They took out the remaining Emal just as Rhodes activated his boosters and launched into the air.

Dietz picked up Coulter. Henshaw got Rhinehart. Both Strikers stayed in the atmosphere to stand guard while Oakes and Lauer picked up Thackery and Fuentes.

“Where are we going, Sir?” Oakes asked.

Rhodes scanned the battlefield one last time. The Ravagers that lifted the three platoons off the shelf were nowhere in sight.

More Ravagers launched from the beach evacuating the Legion personnel. More platoons fell back from the front lines and boarded their ships just as the aliens swarmed over the mountaintops.

“It doesn’t look like we’re deploying anywhere else,” Lauer muttered. “Not on this planet anyway.”

“Rendezvous with the Ero,” Rhodes ordered. “We aren’t going anywhere until we get some new orders.”

“What about our Strikers?” Rhinehart asked. “I don’t like leaving Zion behind.”

Rhodes glanced down at the shelf. Rio was still down there….and he was still online. He was the only Striker SAM still active down there.

Rhodes didn’t want to leave Rio, either, but Rhodes couldn’t go back down there with the dense mob of Emal surrounding the ship.

He would need a full Ravager to take Rio and the other Strikers off the planet. All the available Ravagers were already loaded to the breaking point with soldiers.

“Rendezvous with the Ero,” he ordered again. “We’ll have to deal with that another time. We can’t get our Strikers back now.”

End of Chapter 29.