Rhodes dropped into The Grid. He and his subordinates all looked around at each other, but mostly they kept casting sidelong glances at Fuentes.

He’d stayed interfaced with the battalion for the rest of the day the way Rhodes ordered him to. Rhodes couldn’t find anything to criticize in Fuentes’s behavior—apart from the fact that he didn’t talk, make eye contact, or stop glaring at everyone.

The only person he didn’t glare at was Van. True to her word, he completely ignored her as though she was never there.

He showed more signs of hearing the other SAMs. He occasionally stopped working on the terminal long enough to listen to their conversation. He didn’t participate in it.

He steadfastly refused to acknowledge whenever Van spoke to anyone. He went out of his way to erase her from his awareness.

His behavior became more disturbing as the day wore on, but the rest of the battalion also got used to it.

Everyone adjusted to it, talked more, and Rhinehart went back to joking about Dr. Watson.

Some of the SAMs even got involved in fleshing out this whole shadow life Dr. Watson was living behind the scenes when he wasn’t conducting psych evaluations on Legion soldiers.

The SAMs’ voices and laughter made Fuentes stiffen. He shot brutal glares at anyone whose voice or laughter interrupted his work, but he never unclamped his mouth to tell them to tone it down.

Everyone in the battalion watched him like a hawk all day long, but that was nothing compared to now.

Rhodes had been using his interface with Fuentes for hours to check that Fuentes’s weapons system really was online. All his Grid targeting systems were working normally, too. He was fully operational and ready for battle—against someone.

Rhodes didn’t like going anywhere with an armed Fuentes, but at least they were only going into The Grid and not a real battle. That would come later—provided Fuentes actually managed to function in this training session today.

Rhodes couldn’t decide if he wanted Fuentes to fail or not. Failing would mean either getting himself shot, shooting one of his comrades, or sabotaging the training session some other way.

Fuentes succeeding would mean the battalion would deploy sooner—back to the Emal wars with real weapons, real explosions, and real people dying.

Rhodes brought up a Grid schematic of his own weapons systems and checked that everything was online the way it should be. Then he did the same thing with everyone else present.

Why did he even bother to check? He’d already checked his subordinates multiple times each. They did the same thing to him and all their comrades.

The nine soldiers exchanged one last glance and Rhodes nodded. “Let’s move out.”

He fired his boosters and took off through The Grid. He already knew where it would take him.

All these training sessions focused on the Emal wars now. The brass wouldn’t send the battalion anywhere else—not until Rhodes and his people mastered this.

He checked on Fuentes on the way. He flew on one side of the battalion just as though he really was a part of this group.

The landscape turned back into a devastated wasteland just like the last one. The battalion might even have flown into exactly the same scenario for all Rhodes could tell.

Legion Ravagers loomed in the dark, smoky sky not far away. Explosions came from the battle line where the platoons faced off against another horde of Emal armed with laser rifles.

Base ships fired massive laser cannons from out in the dark countryside. Those cannons all aimed up into the atmosphere to target the Ravagers.

“What’s the objective?” Rhodes asked Fisher.

“The Emal have already conquered the planet. They’re getting ready to jump to the next planet in the same solar system. The Legion is only trying to stop them from leaving.”

“How’s that working out?” Lauer muttered.

“It isn’t working out because the Legion can’t even get close to the Emal base ships,” Fisher replied. “These Emal are defending their comrades’ retreat to the base ships. The hordes are loading up and launching. Our objective is to stop them.”

“What—all of them?” Rhinehart snapped. “That would be impossible.” He checked The Grid of the surrounding terrain. “There must be a thousand base ships all over the planet.”

“One thousand three hundred and seventy-five,” Fisher clipped. “Our objective is only to stop this one.” He surrounded the base ship in question with a red circle on the map.

“Why that one?” Thackery asked. “It looks like all the others.”

“The Grid is reading human life signs on board. The Emal have taken captives.”

“Now I know this is just a training session,” Oakes muttered. “The Emal don’t take captives—not human ones anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter because that’s our objective,” Rhodes replied. “We just have to stop them from leaving the planet.”

“We have to stop them from leaving the planet without killing the captives in the process,” Fisher corrected.

“That complicates things,” Lauer pointed out. “We can’t just bomb the base ship into oblivion.”

“The only way to destroy the base ship is to shoot it from underneath after it launches,” Rhodes went on.

“How does that help us?” Thackery asked.

“We don’t want to shoot it from underneath because that would destroy it,” Henshaw pointed out.

“We don’t even want to let it launch,” Coulter added. “It would be astronomically harder to rescue the hostages once the ship got airborne.”

“We aren’t going to do any of that,” Rhodes decided. “We aren’t going to destroy the ship and we aren’t going to let it launch.”

“What are we going to do?” Dietz asked. “How else can we accomplish the objective?”

“We’re going inside the ship the way the Strikers rescued us. You can land on the ship, Rudy. You tore into an Emal base ship on Ohait. You can do it again this time. The rest of us will defend you and give you cover.”

Fuentes only growled, “Yes, Sir.”

“As soon as he opens a hole big enough, Rhinehart and Lauer will drop down and join him. Rhinehart, you’re the biggest and the strongest. Use your grid lines to make yourself into a ship big enough to carry the hostages away. Lauer will change into a spider the way Elio did. You’ll go inside the ship, carry out the hostages to board Rhinehart’s ship, and finish off any Emal that try to stop you.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Lauer let out a sick chuckle. “I like this plan.”

“Let’s go,” Rhodes ordered and fired his boosters to fly faster.

He swooped over the landscape and the battalion closed on the base ship in question. The training session had been programmed to anticipate the battalion’s arrival.

That base ship and a few other nearby vessels turned their laser cannons on the group.

Rhodes used his grid lines to transform himself into a long, thin, arrow missile plummeting out of the atmosphere.

He had to morph, whip, and swerve around giant laser shots pelting all around him. The others scattered, used The Grid to take different shapes, and then reconverged on the target ship.

Fuentes didn’t change at all—not until he got to the ship itself. He relied on speed, pivoted his feet downward at the last possible second, and slammed down on the ship’s upper hull.

He transformed his hands and forearms into two rotating drums dotted with spikes. They whirled in a blur and he started shredding the hull to smithereens.

The rest of the battalion surrounded him. Rhodes swiveled backward to aim his weapons outward at the Emal hordes.

They closed on the base ships trying to board so they could jump the planet. All those Emal unloaded on the battalion.

The aliens swarmed the base ship faster and thicker than ever to stop the battalion from freeing the hostages.

Lasers flickered out of the night bombarding the battalion from all sides. “Half of you change into reflective surfaces!” Rhodes ordered. “Form a shield around Fuentes!”

Thackery, Dietz, Coulter, and Henshaw stretched their grid lines, curved them outward in a big swooping arc, and backed up to Rhodes, Oakes, Lauer, and Rhinehart.

The eight of them surrounded Fuentes at the very center. Lasers bounced off the shields, but the impact still drove the four friends backward with brutal force.

Rhodes, Oakes, Lauer, and Rhinehart had to brace the four shields to keep a space big enough for Fuentes to work.

Those laser shots boomed against the shields every time the Emal opened fire. Rhodes stuck his scourge gun between the shields to plaster the enemy.

He didn’t need to aim. Too many Emal surrounded the base ship and closed tighter from all sides.

He ducked behind Coulter, jammed his shoulder hard against the shield from behind, and took dozens of pounding hits on the surface.

Rhodes had to drill his feet and legs into the ship’s hull as hard as he could to stop the endless barrage from knocking him over.

Murphy shrieked in Rhodes’s ear. “We can’t take much more of this! If one of the base ships hits us, we’re finished!”

The screech of Fuentes’s drums on the ship’s hull drowned out the deafening roar of laser fire coming from all directions.

He bent over his work grimacing from the effort. Rhodes still didn’t see anything wrong with Fuentes’s behavior. He gave it all he had.

He strained every fiber to grind his way through the hull. Lasers flew all around his head. He barely glanced up long enough to release his Vipers on the surrounding horde.

The other SAMs called a constant stream of information, advice, and orders to everyone in the battalion. Van did the same thing.

“The hull is four inches thick!” she called. “We’re halfway through! The Emal crew is arming to defend the breach! They know we’re coming!”

“Locate the hostages!” Rhodes ordered. “Lauer—once you get inside, you can shoot out the ship from the inside and bring Rhinehart closer to the hostages’ location!”

“One inch to go!” Van reported.

“Get down there!” Rhodes told Lauer and Rhinehart. “Get the hostages out!”

Lauer sprang out from behind Dietz. Dietz had been shielding Lauer. Now Dietz changed back into a man and hunkered for shelter behind Coulter and Thackery.

Fuentes tore through the last shreds of plate steel, changed his drums to jointed spider arms, and tore the hull open to make the hole wider.

Lauer plunged through the breach and vanished inside. Fuentes abandoned the hole in a split second, vaulted over to the rest of the group, and unloaded on the Emal.

He swiped his thermal cannons back and forth to level hundreds of aliens. He roared at them in fury and unloaded countless Vipers.

Rhodes took one look at The Grid to see Lauer storming through the ship’s interior.

The Emal crew waiting for him inside hammered him with lasers, but he only changed himself into another reflective surface.

His scourge guns mowed all the aliens down before he changed into the kind of spider form Elio used to rescue the battalion.

Rhinehart stayed on the ship’s outer hull. He kept gunning for doomsday while Rocky monitored Lauer’s progress through The Grid. “He found the hostages, but they’re locked in! He can’t get them out by himself!”

“Rhinehart—help him!” Rhodes ordered. “Use your lasers to cut through!”

Rhinehart yelled something back. Rhodes didn’t catch it before a fresh wave of Emal surged out of the night to overrun the battalion.

Another base ship somewhere out in the darkness fired at the group, hit Coulter, and his grid lines shattered right in front of Rhodes.

The lines sprang apart and reformed into a Striker. “We gotta get out of here, Sir!” Coulter hollered. “We can draw them away! They might not know Lauer is inside!”

Rhodes didn’t want to believe that, but the battalion couldn’t stay here. “Follow Coulter!” Rhodes ordered and he launched as a Striker, too.

Emal lasers turned upward to follow the battalion away from the target ship, but Rhinehart stayed behind. He fired his weapons into the base ship’s hull.

The light attracted the Emal’s attention. The battalion couldn’t lure the aliens away as long as Rhinehart stayed there.

The Emal started to turn back to target Rhinehart, but at that moment, a punishing laser shot punctured the base ship from the inside. The gunshot came perilously close to hitting Rhinehart.

Then the laser swiveled away from him and carved another big hole through the hull.

The section dropped inward to reveal another breach big enough for a Duster to descend inside.

Rhinehart launched himself off the hull, transformed in a split second, and disappeared beneath the ship’s outer skin.

Rhodes lost sight of him for a second. The Grid gave Rhodes a clear view of Lauer loading the hostages onto the Duster.

Rhodes had to turn back to the battle. The Emal closed tighter around the base ship. They did their best to ignore the Strikers except when the Strikers bombarded the horde from overhead.

More lasers pounded Rhodes’s underside. He had to fly away in wild patterns to divert from the aliens shooting at him.

He lost track of what everyone else was doing—until he spotted another Striker bombing straight for him.

He took a split second to recognize Fuentes. Rhodes tightened his grip on his weapons. If Fuentes took this opportunity to make an attempt on Rhodes’s life, Rhodes would just have to respond in kind.

“Behind you, Captain!” Fisher called and Fuentes opened fire at the same instant.

Twin Vipers detached from Fuentes’s back, shrieked on either side of Rhodes, and flew straight into the path of base ship laser cannon fire that would have destroyed Rhodes from behind.

The explosion knocked Rhodes out of the way and Fuentes kept on bombing past him heading for the base ship that fired that shot.

Rhodes tumbled sideways, but he was alive and unhurt—thanks to Fuentes. Fuentes didn’t even stick around long enough for Rhodes to thank him.

Another voice punctured Rhodes’s battle fog. “I got them!” Rhinehart called. “I got the hostages! Pull out and climb for the atmosphere!”

The Duster rocketed out of the hull breach and the fiery vapor trail burned a path through the night heading for orbit.

Lauer exploded out of the ship a second later, flew on Rhinehart’s tail, and defended him all the way.

The rest of the battalion pulled away to follow—all except Fuentes.

Rhodes had another flash of horror that Fuentes really planned to kill himself right now when the battalion just accomplished its objective.

He didn’t kill himself, though. He dove at nose-bleed speed for the planet’s surface, compressed his grid lines into a long snake, stabbed into the ground, and took off whipping and slithering for the original target ship.

He pulled the same maneuver the battalion pulled on Sulia, burrowed under the base ship, and fired his Vipers directly into its underside.

He didn’t stick around long enough for the resulting explosion to put him in danger. He burst out the other side, blasted out of the ground, and took off into the atmosphere at incredible speed.

He didn’t change back into a person right away. He stayed as a whip, snaked between cannon shots from other base ships, and eventually fired his boosters to catch up with the battalion.

The base ship detonated in a fire ball that lit up the night. It flashed down there on the planet….and then the darkness of space surrounded the battalion.

Green grid lines appeared in place of the stars and everyone reappeared in the training room where they started.

The battalion all surrounded Fuentes laughing and extending their hands to pat him on the back.

“That was outstanding!” Rhinehart exclaimed. “Did you see the way he unloaded those Vipers? He saved your ass, Captain!”

Rhodes smiled at them all. “I know he did.”

The others turned back to Fuentes. “Did you see the way that base ship went up?” Coulter gloated. “You put those suckers in the ground, boy!”

Fuentes lashed out and knocked their hands away. He did it so suddenly and so viciously that he startled everyone into falling silent.

He glared at them all as murderously as ever, clamped his lips together in rage, and stormed out of the training room.

He left the interface active, though. He headed back to the barracks alone and left everyone else standing there staring at each other in stunned shock.

End of Chapter 21.