The Aemon Legion platoons on the Kuestrian Ridge couldn’t stand up to the machine invaders’ firepower. The Ravagers kept up a constant seeker bombardment on the ground troops, but the invasion ships posed a much bigger threat.

The Ravagers had no choice but to turn their weapons on the invasion ships, but the invaders outnumbered the Legion by a mile.

The invaders had no problem tying up the Ravagers, driving them away from the ridge, and sending out extra ships to target platoons still on the ground behind the ridgeline.

Rhodes couldn’t watch anymore. He concentrated his attention on his subordinates and the platoons nearest him.

The machine ground troops left no Emal alive on the battlefield. In a few minutes, the invasion ships destroyed enough Ravagers for the invaders to go back and finish off the Emal base ships, too.

All life signs vanished off The Grid all the way north. The Emal had conquered that part of the planet. Now not a single Emal remained alive out there.

One lone signal blipped onto The Grid under mountains of dead aliens. It was Fuentes.

He’d also transformed himself into a shield. He had already been underneath the Emal horde when the invaders attacked. He just had to stay that way until they cleared the area.

Rhodes interfaced with him. “You okay, Rudy?”

“Yes, Sir,” Fuentes growled. “These rotten aliens stink when they die.”

“Just stay where you are—all of you. None of us is going anywhere for a while.”

“You mean don’t stick my head up there so those things can blow it off?” Lauer muttered. “Thanks. I wasn’t planning to.”

“Who the hell are those people, Sir?” Turley husked.

“They aren’t people,” Oakes told him. “They’re machines.”

“So what are they doing here?” Dietz asked.

“Invading the Treaty of Aemon Cluster, obviously,” Captain Vernick chimed in from farther down the line.

Rhodes made one more check of the soldiers nearest him. He knew them all from the 249th. A few of them had suffered minor injuries during the battle. He couldn’t take the time to see if any of them were dead out there.

Rhodes tried to interface with Murphy, Keon, and Rocky. Rhodes finally got hold of Rocky. “Are you and Rhinehart okay?” Rhodes asked. “I can’t even see you on The Grid. There are too many wounded Emal in the way.”

“Dane has a head injury, but it’s minor,” Rocky replied. “That’s why we were off the interface. He just regained consciousness.”

“Can any of you see Henshaw or Coulter?” Rhodes asked.

“I can see Coulter from here,” Thackery replied. “He’s ten feet away from me and he’s unconscious, too, but his vital signs and brainwave patterns are reading as normal.”

“That’s strange. Murphy should be online.”

“How long do you want us to stay here?” Vernick asked again. “You can assess the situation so much better than we can.”

“The invaders are driving the Legion off the planet,” Rhodes replied. “The invasion ships are lifting into orbit to reengage with the Legion fleet. They’ll clear off soon and then we can get out from under these bodies.”

“We won’t be able to call in any Ravagers to lift us off,” Lauer pointed out. “Not without those assholes shooting us down.”

“We should stick around and defend the platoons in case the invaders come back,” Rhodes replied. “We might not be able to do much, but the invaders must already know we’re here. They would be able to pick up our life signs as well as we can pick up our own.”

“Coulter’s waking up, Captain,” Thackery interrupted.

She highlighted Coulter’s location on The Grid. Rhodes finally picked up Coulter’s life signs in a sea of Emal.

He squirmed under his own pile of dead bodies before he regained consciousness enough to interface with the rest of the battalion.

“How are you feeling, Corporal?” Rhodes asked.

Coulter groaned, twisted onto his side, and curled into a ball. He lay there in silence for a second before Murphy came back online.

The SAM looked around at the landscape covered in Emal bodies. “This is not good.”

“We’re trapped here for the time being,” Rhodes told him. “How bad are Coulter’s injuries?”

Murphy swiveled his face sideways in the interface. “He has a concussion from a blow to the head, but it isn’t severe. I’m not picking up any other injuries.”

“You two stay where you are. We’re waiting for the invaders to clear off the planet. It might take a while for the Legion to send a Ravager to collect us.”

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“Dr. Osborne made it sound like they would send a Ravager right away anytime we needed one,” Oakes pointed out.

“Those invasion ships would destroy the Ero For certain if it came in now.”

“What about us?” Vernick asked. “I’m sure the Legion values you people a hell of a lot more than it values us.”

“You can lift off on the Ero as soon as it makes it through the atmosphere. The battle is moving away from the planet. We can all get up now.”

Rhodes straightened up, rearranged his grid lines, and changed back into a person.

He had to peel himself off the trapped platoons and shove all the dead Emal off the pile before he could get to his feet.

Even then, everyone stumbled to catch their balance on the uneven mounds of body parts.

Rhodes scanned the area again. “I’m still not showing any sign of Henshaw. I’m going to find her.”

He fired his boosters, lifted over the bodies, and floated down ten feet south of the last platoon soldiers. Henshaw went down over here somewhere.

He scanned The Grid for her implants and found her lying under a dozen Emal. He pushed them out of the way and turned Henshaw over.

She’d sustained a fusion shot to her cranial implant. It didn’t repair itself. She really needed to get back to the Ero and Dr. Osborne, but Rhodes couldn’t do anything about that.

He checked on Rhinehart next, but Rocky continued to assure Rhodes that Rhinehart wasn’t seriously injured even though he was still unconscious.

Rhodes straightened up and glanced around. The remaining base ships lay smoking in the distance with countless dead Emal hanging out of the wreckage.

A few columns of fire dotted the ridgetop where Ravagers went down. Rhodes located the command dome on The Grid. Enemy bombardment had caved in its roof.

Rhodes didn’t pick up a single human life sign up there—not even a wounded one. The battalion and the 249th were all alone on this planet.

“Captain….” Lieutenant Upshaw murmured from a few feet away. “Look.”

Rhodes turned around and crossed the mounds to where Upshaw stood looking down at some metal fragments at his feet.

Rhodes went over there and found himself staring down at the remains of one of the machine things.

A Ravagers’ seeker missiles had torn the machine apart, but enough of it remained intact for Rhodes to see how it was constructed.

Its outer metal housing had a smooth, swooping look that encased a jumble of wires, cables, and conduits. Rods connected the neck to the iron mask head.

The thing had fallen twisted over onto its side. Sparks of electricity blinked and crackled inside the torn metal of its upper body.

Rhodes squatted down, turned the thing over, and grasped its helmet to look at it head on. No light came from its eye slit. The thing had completely shut down when it got hit.

“What is it?” Upshaw asked.

Rhodes opened his mouth to say he didn’t know what it was or where it came from.

At that moment, the grid lines of his hands and arms changed….except that they didn’t change.

Grid lines spread over the robot’s mask….except that they didn’t spread from Rhodes’s hands. He would have extended his grid lines over it to measure it, study it, and scan it for any useful information.

These grid lines didn’t come from him. They came from the robot’s mask.

They spread around the head and started to morph. What would have been squares between the lines changed their shape and reformed into something more animated—something like a composite of animals, human, and geometric shapes.

The helmet repositioned its squares and lines into a face, but instead of eyes, a single metallic slit stared up at Rhodes from the ground.

He yelled out in surprise, dropped the head in a split second, and yanked his hands away, but it was too late. He’d already seen too much.

The machine crashed back on the ground, but the grid lines didn’t go away. They kept migrating over the thing’s head, changing its shape into a bunch of different composites with different expressions, each one as lifeless as the others.

Rhodes gaped at the thing in mounting horror. He could barely husk out, “No!”

“This can’t be!” Fisher exclaimed. “It can’t be!”

“Be quiet!” Rhodes snapped and spun away so he wouldn’t see the machine anymore. “We have to figure out what to do.”

“It’s obvious what we have to do!” Fisher’s voice started to rise. “We have to get out of here now!!”

“Will you be quiet?!” Rhodes practically bellowed and wrestled his voice under control. “Stay calm.”

“Calm!” Fisher blurted out. “You want me to stay calm?! Did you just see….?”

“I saw it, okay, Fisher?!” Rhodes roared. “I saw it. Now be quiet before you…”

“What’s going on?” Oakes asked.

Rhodes floundered to regain his composure. What could he say?

He took a deep breath, but he still found himself shaking. He couldn’t get the sight of that thing out of his mind. “Contact Captain Ackerman. See where the Ero is and when the ship will be able to come and evacuate us.”

“What about the rest of them?” Fisher asked.

“We aren’t taking the rest of them, Fisher!” Rhodes barked. “Use your head. They’re our enemies. They just attacked the Legion and tried to kill us.”

“We can’t leave them behind,” Fisher insisted. “They’re our…..”

“SHUT UP, FISHER!!” Rhodes bellowed.

“The rest of who?” Oakes asked. “We can’t leave who behind? We already said we’d lift off the platoons.”

“He means the machines,” Wild interjected. “He means these robot things.”

“You can’t be serious!” Oakes countered. “We aren’t taking them anywhere.”

“They’re SAMs!” Fisher blurted out. “They’re all SAMs! They’re an army of SAMs! Don’t you see the similarity between their technology and your implants?”

“But how….” Thackery began.

“I don’t know how, but we can’t leave them behind!” Fisher turned to Rhodes. “Captain……”

Rhodes clamped his jaws shut. “Fisher….I swear to Christ….if you don’t shut up…..I’m going to have to do something drastic. Keep quiet and don’t say another word or I swear I’ll……”

He broke off. He couldn’t think of anything bad enough to threaten Fisher with.

Rhodes had a hard enough time processing what he’d just seen. These invading robots couldn’t be SAMs….but they were. He’d just seen them with his own eyes.

That machine used the grid lines to change its shape. It had to be a SAM.

Rhodes didn’t want to admit it, but these machines really were using the same technology as the battalion’s implants. He couldn’t ignore it, now that Fisher pointed it out—to everyone.

Rhodes glanced around him in desperation. Torn, destroyed remains of these robots lay all over the battlefield.

“If they’re SAMs, then we have to protect them,” Dash pointed out. “We’re programmed to defend each other with our lives.”

“We are NOT defending them—with anything,” Oakes snapped. “They’re our enemies. I don’t give a shit what technology they’re using.”

“But the Legion developed the SAMs technology,” Thackery pointed out. “These robots turned on the Legion. Those invasion ships are out in space fighting the Legion fleet right now. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t explain it,” Dash replied. “I only know we can’t fight these machines—not if they’re our own kind.”

“They aren’t your own kind,” Oakes snapped. “They aren’t the SAMs of converted Legion soldiers—or whatever the hell you want to call them. You SAMs are all attached to living people. You aren’t independent robots acting against the people who created you.”

“Excuse me, Captain,” Rocky interrupted. “Dane is coming around.”

End of Chapter 25.