Eric nodded and continued back, making his way through the narrow spaces between crates until he found where his EXO-13 was locked down. The now-battered machine had seen a lot of action over the last few weeks, and he wanted to do one more check before taking it into combat again.

It was nothing compared to his fighter, of course, but he’d gotten attached to the awkward-looking piece of mobile armor since the President and his advisors cut it loose and sent it to New York for him. Eric pulled himself into the cockpit and fired up the computer, running onboard self-checks while he physically examined the hydraulics and power cell levels.

It was the sort of pre-battle routine that kept him calm while leading a fighter wing and, to an extent, commanding the Odyssey. There was a time for aggression, but that time was during the fight and not before it. He was focused tightly on what he was doing, enough so that Eric missed the approaching footsteps.

“So how bad is it?”

He looked up to see Lyssa there, eyes on him from a couple of meters below. He sighed, not really wanting to get into it, as much because he didn’t know the answer as anything else, but spoke up anyway.

“Bad,” he grunted.

Okay, so he just barely spoke up.

Lyssa snorted in response, rolling her eyes. “I think I caught that much myself. Are we going to make it to New Mexico?”

“We’ve got a wing of fighters covering our path,” Eric said. “We’ll make it to our destination. I’m just worried that the whole point is moot now, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“Because what good does it do to wipe out the ships in orbit with these”—he gestured to the crates of shells they were standing among—“if they’ve already dropped every last damned ground drone they have?”

She paled. “You think that’s what they did?”

Eric rubbed his face, but nodded tiredly. “Yeah. I think that’s what they did. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I can’t prove it, but that’s my bet.”

“Why would they do that? Why now?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Eric admitted. “There are a few possibilities. The most likely is that we now have the possibility of reinforcements, but it could also be that they’ve been testing our defenses until this point and now they know enough to launch their endgame.”

“Reinforcements?” Lyssa asked, trying to focus on hope rather than the twisted knot in her gut from his other words.

Eric nodded. “Seven starships entered the system and contacted the President. They’re of Priminae build . . . that, and the Enterprise.”

Her heart sank. “Seven?”

Seven ships couldn’t hope to stand against what she knew was up there. It was just impossible.

Eric, however, smiled.