Rhodes clambered through the hole in the barracks wall and glanced right and left down the Coleridge Station corridors.

He didn’t have to wonder where Fuentes was. Sections of destroyed walls, injured people, and the sounds of screams led the way to the left.

Oakes caught up with Rhodes in the corridor. They took off running in that direction with a dozen soldiers on their tails.

“Where is he going?” Rhodes asked Oakes.

“How should I know?” Oakes countered.

“Did something happen in the barracks before I showed up?”

“Nothing you didn’t already see,” Oakes replied. “I was worried Rhinehart, Coulter, or Dietz might put Rudy in danger, so I stood guard to protect him.”

Rhodes glanced over at Oakes. Everything else about him seemed to be functioning normally.

“Did you malfunction?” Rhodes asked.

Oakes raised his eyebrow. “Which time?”

“Now. Why are the rest of them malfunctioning and not you?”

Oakes shrugged. “Who the hell knows why any of this is happening? Did you malfunction?”

“Which time?” Rhodes asked.

Oakes snorted. “Got it.”

The two men faced front to follow Fuentes’s track. It burst through more walls and left people trampled and cowering in fear along the way.

Rhodes climbed through a few more breaches before he spotted Fuentes ahead. He was crossing the concourse to the other side of the station.

“He’s heading for the loading dock!” Rhodes waved to the soldiers. “Get around in front of him and head him off. It looks like he’s trying to escape from the station!”

The soldiers split up, raced down two different side wings, and left Oakes and Rhodes to run on alone.

Rhodes tried not to notice the soldiers finally leaving him alone. If he wanted to escape from Coleridge Station, now would be the perfect time to do it. Everyone was preoccupied with Fuentes.

Rhodes didn’t want to escape from Coleridge Station. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He had nowhere left in the known universe to go.

No one was out there waiting for him to come back—not like this. His family would have been more horrified to see him alive than they were to hear about his death in combat.

Oakes and Rhodes burst onto the loading dock and spotted Fuentes a hundred yards down the platform.

A bunch of transport freight craft, Dusters, and a few random Predators lined one side of the dock.

A single Ravager sat parked on the other side. It had its engines running as it prepared to launch.

Fuentes stood in the middle of the platform. His body convulsed in all directions before he managed to lurch one painful step closer to the Ravager.

Rhodes took a step forward. How dangerous was Fuentes? What was he even doing here?

At that moment, the interface switched on and Van’s fuzzy, feline face appeared on The Grid right next to Fisher.

She twisted her grid lines all around Fuentes’s body, restrained his arms against his sides, and wrapped the lines around and around his legs to stop him from moving.

He struggled with all his might, snapped a few lines, and took one more step before she wrestled him back under control.

Rhodes couldn’t figure out how she activated the interface. It was supposed to be offline, but she did it somehow.

“Help me, Captain!” she rasped. “Rudy is trying to kill himself!”

Rhodes opened his mouth to ask how Fuentes planned to kill himself with a full-sized Ravager, but Rhodes didn’t get the words out.

Fuentes gave one more violent jerk, tried again to take another step, and toppled onto his side. He couldn’t raise his arms to break his fall.

He landed hard on the platform and his metal housing made an echoing crash through the loading dock.

Rhodes and Oakes charged forward to get to him in time, but the instant they started running, Fuentes overcame his SAM’s best efforts.

He roared in fury, tore his limbs out of the grid lines, and took off at high speed heading for the Ravager.

The engines thundered louder as the ship fired up to lift off the planet.

Fuentes activated The Grid. The lines spread all over him and he changed shape.

Van made one last heroic effort to stop him and failed. He morphed into one of the many-jointed creatures the battalion used on Sulia, bounded across the platform in a split second, and soared onto the ship’s upper hull right above the engines.

He landed there and transformed back into a man. He turned around, straightened up, and a peaceful smile spread over his face.

The Ravager’s engine noise throbbed off the dock walls with the noise of thunder. The ship would launch any second now.

Fuentes only had to jump off at the moment of launch. The engine wash venting from the exhaust manifold would incinerate him instantly. It would all be over.

Van kept the interface active through the whole disaster. Her lines kept snaking around Fuentes’s body trying to wrench him away from the manifold. Her efforts only made him smile more broadly. She couldn’t control him.

Rhodes considered for a second if he shouldn’t change into some vehicle or creature to jump up there. He should be the one to talk Rudy down, but Rhodes didn’t do that.

He’d been telling his people from day one that he wouldn’t hold it against them if they chose this route. Who was he to stop Fuentes from ending his miserable life? Rhodes really wished he could end his own.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Oakes didn’t move, either. The engines fired and the soldiers fell back.

The ship lifted off the dock and Fuentes spread his arms to jump. The engines exploded in twin jets of fire. He sprang off the hull and started to fall toward the flames just as the engines ignited to full power.

At that moment, a blinding streak blasted across the loading dock, zoomed between Fuentes and the manifolds, and snatched him out of thin air.

Rhodes barely had time to register one of the battalion’s Strikers whizzing past. Rhodes blinked….and there was Fuentes locked inside the cockpit.

The Striker circled and landed in front of Rhodes. Fuentes went ballistic, pounded the cockpit cover with his fists, and when that failed, he attacked his own face with his fingernails.

His mouth opened in a wordless roar of agony and hopeless despair. How many more times would Rhodes see that expression before this whole nightmare came to an end?

Fuentes dug his fingernails around the edge of his facial implant. He bellowed again and started to pull when a powerful thump went off inside the cockpit.

Fuentes collapsed into the seat, unconscious. Van disappeared off the interface. Rhodes didn’t even get a chance to thank her for at least trying to save Fuentes.

The Ravager gunned its engines, rocketed off the loading dock, and climbed away into space. It left a heavy silence behind it.

Rhodes stared at Fuentes lying in the cockpit with his eyes closed. Was he really better off alive if he wanted so badly to end it?

Right then, Rio appeared on the interface next to Fisher. Rio smiled just as cheerily as ever. Not even this could dampen his mood.

“I got here as soon as I could, Captain.” The SAM cocked his head in concentration. “Fuentes’s vital signs are stable. He’s functioning normally again.”

Rhodes sighed. “Thank you, Rio. You saved his life.”

“Van interfaced with Teo and asked us to come and get Fuentes. I was the closest, so I came.”

“We need to take him back to the lab,” Rhodes replied. “Put him down and I’ll take him from here. You can go back downstairs with the other Strikers. I really appreciate your help, Rio.”

“Of course, Captain. It’s good to have you back.”

“I wish I could say the same thing, pal. Thank you. I’ll take Fuentes from here.”

Rio’s grid lines changed. They became flexible and almost liquid. They parted and lowered Fuentes’s unconscious body onto the dock platform before the ship reformed into a Striker.

The ship took off and Rio vanished off the interface. Rhodes stared down at Fuentes for a minute before Rhodes decided what to do with him.

The kindest thing to do would be to put Fuentes down right now. He would never wake up or have to deal with the aftermath of this latest catastrophe.

Rhodes would never be able to do that. He knew that now. He wouldn’t stand in the way of one of his subordinates taking the only way out left to them, but he wouldn’t do it for them.

If dying meant that much to Fuentes—or any of them—he had to do it himself.

Too bad Van and the other SAMs overcame the interface and called in the Strikers in time to save Fuentes.

Fisher understood now why Rhodes would want to end it. The other SAMs obviously didn’t agree. Why should they? They wanted to live. Rhodes couldn’t blame them for that, either.

The Strikers would be the hardest to convince. They spent their time in the landing bay downstairs.

Fisher and the battalion’s personal SAMs spent their time riding around inside these people’s heads. Of course they understood better, but Van wasn’t ready to go there.

Rhodes couldn’t know what went on between Fuentes and Van. He obviously hadn’t come to the same understanding with her that Rhodes came to with Fisher.

Would Fisher try to stop Rhodes from ending his life? They never really had that conversation except for when Fisher said he understood.

Rhodes sighed, picked up Fuentes, and carried him back to Neiland’s lab. No one was here. Osborne and Trudeau were still in the barracks doing God only knew what with Thackery and Henshaw.

Rhodes dreaded going back there. He didn’t want to watch his whole party go down in flames.

He laid Fuentes in the capsule, locked the kid into the prongs, and shut the cover. Rhodes adjusted the controls to put Fuentes into an indefinite conversion cycle.

He wouldn’t wake up until the doctors deliberately adjusted the cycle back to the way it was and woke him up on purpose.

Maybe they wouldn’t wake him up at all. Maybe they would leave him like this—forever. Would that really be so bad?

Rhodes turned away and found Oakes standing there watching him. Oakes stared down at Fuentes for a long time, too.

Then Oakes’s eyes flicked to the control panel. He saw.

The two men shared a moment of deep eye contact before they both left the lab. They didn’t talk all the way back to the barracks.

They walked into a scene almost worse than the one they left. Every other member of the battalion lay unconscious on the floor—Thackery, Henshaw, Dietz, Lauer, Rhinehart, and Coulter.

Drs. Osborne and Trudeau went from one person to the next checking everything on their devices.

“What happened?” Rhodes gasped when he walked in. “Are they….?”

“They were becoming dangerous—to themselves and each other,” Trudeau replied. “Dietz and Coulter started arguing again and then they started shoving. Coulter slammed Dietz’s head against the wall. Rhinehart started trying to destroy Lauer’s capsule while Lauer was still trying to destroy it himself. They would have started fighting….so we decided to shut them all down.”

“What about Thackery and Henshaw?” Rhodes asked. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Their SAMs were dysregulating their vital systems, so we shut down the two SAMs. Thackery’s and Henshaw’s systems are working fine as long as we keep the SAMs offline. We’ll take all of them back to the lab until we can readjust all of them.”

“What about…..?” Rhodes and Oakes exchanged another glance. They were the last two left.

Rhinehart and Lauer had destroyed all the capsules in the barracks. The two of them had reduced the place to a wasteland of wrecked electronic components all over the floor.

“I’ll send two new capsules down for you and Oakes,” Osborne replied. “You have nothing to worry about. You two can stay here.”

Rhodes glanced over at Oakes. Oakes glanced over at Rhodes. The words, You have nothing to worry about, meant exactly nothing right now.

The two men had everything to worry about. How long could they stay in these barracks before one of them suffered another nightmare malfunction?

One of them could kill the other. No one would be able to do anything about it.

The Legion soldiers seemed to have the same idea. They returned to the barracks and stood guard over Rhodes and Oakes as if the whole battalion was still here.

A bunch of technicians came down from the lab and carried the rest of the battalion away. The crowd filed out of the room and left Rhodes and Oakes alone with their guards.

The soldiers faded into the wallpaper. Rhodes and Oakes were alone together—as alone as they possibly could be.

“So…..what do you feel like doing?” Rhodes asked.

Without moving or saying a word, Oakes switched on the interface between himself, Rhodes, Fisher, and Dash. Oakes and Rhodes looked back and forth between the two SAMs.

“Is everything all right, Captain?” Dash asked.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Rhodes replied.

Oakes headed back to the table—the table Thackery where had been sitting when Rhodes first showed up. It was the only table still standing. It was the only stick of furniture left in the whole barracks.

Oakes slung his leg over it, sat down, and pulled toward him a pencil and a piece of paper lying there.

“What are you working on?” Rhodes asked. “Are you writing a book or something?”

“I thought I’d try drawing the way you do.” Oakes passed his pencil across the page. “I don’t seem to be able to get the hang of it—not like you do.”

“It just takes practice.” Rhodes looked over his shoulder and then sat down. “Do you want me to give you some pointers?”

“Naw, I don’t feel like it.” Oakes pushed the paper away and made a face. “I don’t feel like doing anything.”

“Do you want to play The Ship, The Captain, and The Crew?”

Oakes shrugged. He refused to make eye contact. “I guess we have nothing else to do.”

“I’m sure they’ll send us another terminal before long.”

The words barely got out of Rhodes’s mouth before a cleaning crew entered the barracks. They started sweeping up the mess, throwing away all the twisted scraps of destroyed capsules, and then some technicians wheeled in two more for Rhodes and Oakes to use in their next conversion cycle.

“I guess we’re a battalion of two now,” Rhodes pointed out.

“Until something else goes wrong with one of us,” Oakes muttered. “It would really be ironic if the whole program ended like this—with all of us malfunctioning, going offline, or ending it one after the other. You gotta wonder how long it would take these jokers to take the hint and stop trying.”

Rhodes didn’t answer. He got the dice off the bookshelf. For some unknown reason, Rhinehart had left the bookshelf intact. He didn’t try to destroy that or any of the books on it.

Rhodes rolled and jotted down his score on the paper Oakes had been using. Oakes rolled. He didn’t even bother to score his turn. Rhodes did it for him and went again.

“I really wish I could,” Oakes muttered under his breath. “I keep telling myself to do it. I just don’t do it, though. I don’t know why.”

Rhodes didn’t ask what Oakes meant. Rhodes already knew because he’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

End of Chapter 10.