Battalion 1 unloaded on the trapped Legion platoons. The battalion worked side by side with the Masks to wipe out every soldier still alive on the field.

Rhodes took one look around the battlefield. Rhinehart kept trying to shoot himself in the head. The Mask that took over Rocky used its grid lines to fight Rhinehart’s weapons away from him and target them somewhere else.

“You go after Rocky, Fisher!” Rhodes ordered.

“You got it!” Fisher replied.

Rhodes charged across the battlefield, collided with Rhinehart, and grappled Rhinehart’s scourge gun away from his head again.

Rhinehart’s size made it near impossible to restrain him. Rhodes never would have succeeded without Fisher’s help.

Rhodes slammed Rhinehart down on his back and yanked the gun away just as the grid lines tried to point it at Rhodes himself.

Fisher stretched his grid lines toward Rocky. The two SAMs tangled their grid lines together in a confused jumble, but Fisher didn’t have any better success in freeing Rocky from the Mask than Rhodes did.

Rhinehart bellowed in rage trying to fight his own grid lines. Rhodes strapped his lines around Rhinehart’s body to pull his arm to the ground. He wouldn’t be able to shoot anything there.

Rhodes dove on top of Rhinehart, got in his face, and roared over Rhinehart’s enraged bellows. “Go into The Grid, Lieutenant! You have to shoot at Rocky inside The Grid!”

Rhinehart either didn’t hear or didn’t understand.

“You’ll have to do it, Captain!” Fisher called.

“Hold him down for me!” Rhodes ordered. “I can’t hold him! He’s too strong!”

Rhinehart gave another tortured roar, heaved off the ground, and almost threw Rhodes off.

Fisher retracted his lines from Rocky and wound them around and around Rhinehart’s body trying to stop him from shooting at anything, including himself and Rhodes.

Rhodes couldn’t wait any longer. He dropped into The Grid, but the Masks must have learned by now what Rhodes wanted to do.

He jumped forward to grab Rocky, but the SAM dodged to one side. Rhodes grabbed again and again, but he couldn’t get hold of Rocky.

Rhodes didn’t dare to fire his Vipers in here. Rocky would only avoid them.

“The Strikers, Captain!” Fisher yelled. “You have to call in the Strikers!”

Rhodes only thought about it for a split second before he interfaced with Rio. The Strikers were all still on the ground on Deizo.

Rio materialized on The Grid next to Fisher. “I’m on my way, Captain!” Rio exclaimed. “Just hold on!”

“Bring all the SAMs!” Rhodes ordered. “We need help out here!”

“We’re coming!” Zion chimed in.

Rhodes had to concentrate on fighting Rhinehart again as the Mask made one more brutal attempt to fire on the platoons.

Rhodes kept his head down and counted down the seconds until the Strikers got here.

Lauer had managed to work his way in front of Dietz and Fuentes. Dietz and Fuentes tried to shoot at the platoons, but Lauer got in their path.

He couldn’t control his weapons, not even to kill himself. He stopped his two comrades from targeting the platoons simply by getting in their way.

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Fuentes raised his weapon to shoot at Thackery. At that moment, Oakes jerked his scourge gun away from shooting at the platoons. His weapon went off and he hit Fuentes from the side.

The blast smashed Fuentes in the shoulder and flattened him. Dietz spun around and aimed his gun at Oakes, but something stopped Dietz from returning fire.

Thackery and Coulter battled each other not far away. Neither of them had time to shoot at the platoons. The two comrades were too busy shooting at each other.

Rhodes couldn’t tell from here how much the Masks controlled either of them. Coulter and Thackery bared their teeth at each other, roared in fury, and they kept dodging each other’s shots, diving out of the way, and landing in a crouch somewhere else to shoot again.

Rhinehart took all Rhodes’s strength just to hold him down. He kept trying to raise his weapon. Rhodes didn’t know or care what Rhinehart was trying to aim at.

Rhodes checked The Grid. The Strikers were just entering the atmosphere on a dead run for the battalion’s position.

He couldn’t fathom what the Strikes would do once they got here. He didn’t see how anyone could salvage this disaster.

He shut his eyes and focused his last scrap of strength on restraining Rhinehart until the Strikers got here.

Rhodes would call it a win if he saved even one of his people from the Masks taking complete control over them.

The Strikers bombed out of the high cloud, screeched across the landscape coming in fast, and howled overhead, but they didn’t fire on the Masks.

In the quiet privacy of his own mind, Rhodes watched the eight Striker SAMs flash onto The Grid. Their grid lines coiled around their wings and fuselages….and then shot out at lightning speed.

They didn’t hit the Masks—or even anyone from the battalion. Those lines swirled around the Strikers, darted through the air, and hit the SAMs that had changed into Masks.

Those lines penetrated each Mask face so much deeper than Rhodes ever could—deeper than a Viper. The lines twined together with each person’s Grid and tore the Mask faces to shreds.

The other seven SAMs blinked back onto The Grid and the battalion reacted instantly. Everyone turned their weapons on the Masks—the real Masks.

Rhinehart sprang to his feet and threw Rhodes off. Both men unloaded on the Masks to drive them away from the platoons. It might already be too late.

Rhodes fired his scourge gun and released dozens of Vipers in rapid succession. He blasted as many Masks to pieces as he could hit. When that didn’t kill them fast enough, he let the grid lines transform his fingertips into lasers.

Lasers flashed from all his fingers, sliced the Masks to pieces, and left their body parts littered all over the hillsides.

Their consciousness didn’t go away, though. He felt them still trying to interface with Fisher—and all the SAMs.

The Strikers came racing back for another pass, and this time, they bombarded the Masks’ position with punishing fire.

Dozens of scourge gun blasts erupted from Rio’s wings. They punched into the ground running from one side of the battlefield to the other.

Those blasts detonated Masks, exploded their armor apart, and left swaths of mechanized bodies leading away across the valley.

Rhodes stalked down the last Masks. He let his fury off its chain and all his murderous bloodlust poured out at them.

He would kill them all. He would kill every last one of them for what they did to him, Fisher, and everyone else.

The Masks responded to the Strikers’ arrival just as instantly. The moment the Strikers released the SAMs and changed them back, the Masks broke off fighting the platoons and turned all their firepower on the battalion.

Dozens of Masks rushed in on Rhodes and his people. Fusion blasts hammered Rhodes from all sides, but that sudden assault only brought the Masks closer inside his laser range.

He whirled from one side to the other bellowing his challenge at them. “Come on!” he roared. “Come on!”

They kept on coming until, without warning, a devastating flash burst in front of his eyes. He didn’t see what caused it or even where it came from.

He fought the Masks one minute with dozens of them falling under his lasers. The next moment, he lay flat on his back staring up at the clear blue sky.

His connection to The Grid showed him the whole battlefield for miles around. Hundreds or thousands of destroyed Masks, dead soldiers, and demolished Ravagers dotted the planet’s surface.

The Grid picked out his subordinates lying unconscious among the dead bodies. None of the battalion moved.

Each of them stared up at the sky without blinking, but The Grid returned their life sign readings. Everyone in the battalion was still alive and conscious. They were only stunned just like Rhodes.

He didn’t see any living soldiers or even any Masks still standing. The Grid didn’t return any life signs for anyone other than the eight battalion members lying among the dead.

Rhodes didn’t see any SAMs, either. Fisher was gone and so were all the other SAMs. Everything else about The Grid looked normal.

Rhodes couldn’t move. He could only lie here and stare straight in front of him while one of the Masks’ invasion ships descended over the battalion from the high clouds.

He studied its spiky exterior. He would probably never get another chance to see one of them up close.

It descended right on top of him and opened some kind of hatch in its underside. Blinding white-yellow light poured from inside. He couldn’t even blink to protect his eyes.

Some force picked him up and lifted him toward that hatch. He watched through The Grid as the same ship picked up each of his subordinates, carried them inside that ship, and then the hatch closed with all of them on board.

End of Book 2.

Book 3 starting on Wednesday. Stay tuned.