“Who the hell was that?” Tate asked.

“I don’t know. Some nutcase named Weston with a sci-fi rifle. He wants bullets.”

“Did you tell him we’re a tank platoon?” Tate asked, confused. “Wait. Weston? Eric Weston?”

“Yeah. A jarhead. Why?”

“Jesus, sir, that’s the captain of the Odyssey. Don’t you watch the news?”

“You mean the ship that just scattered its pieces all over the city we’re in?” Garibaldi asked sarcastically. “I know the name, but what are the odds . . .”

The screen he was looking at came back with the confirmation of the man’s ID, making him break off in consternation as he read the file.

“Well, shit.”

“What is it?”

Garibaldi sighed, reached up, and unsealed the hatch again without speaking. He pulled himself up and looked around until he spotted the man in armor again.

“Munitions truck is five blocks east,” he said. “I’ll tell them you’re coming.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t mention it,” Garibaldi said sourly. “Ever.”

He dropped back into the tank and resealed the hatch.

This time I’m leaving it that way.

Lyssa scowled when Weston finally turned up again. “So?”

“Five blocks east. Come on.”

The city was eerily quiet as they walked, a silence that was punctuated by distant rumbling that could have been anything from thunder to artillery fire. She rather suspected that it was the latter more than the former, unfortunately.

It wasn’t that the city was empty. She spotted figures peeking out from the windows as they moved down the street. New Yorkers weren’t the easiest people in the world to freak out, but it seemed that a bona fide alien invasion was going to do the job. She’d been walking the streets of the city for most of her life, almost five years as a cop, and she’d never seen the likes of what she was seeing now.

Not even after a major hurricane had flooded the streets and forced New Yorkers to flee to higher ground did the city look and feel remotely like it did just then.

“People are scared,” she said softly.

“Good.” Weston grunted. “They need to be scared. These things are nightmares walking. Don’t ever think otherwise. Just one of them could tear this entire planet out from underneath us.”

She looked at him like he was more than a little crazy. “Come on.”

“They’re replicators, Lyssa. One breeds ten, ten breed a hundred, and in a month they’ll eat their way down to the mantle of the planet and the Earth will start to break up as the tidal gravity of the moon starts tearing it apart. Make no mistake, Lyssa. We have to destroy them to the last, or they’ll destroy us. To the last.”

She just stared for a long moment as they walked, uncertain whether he was serious or not. The helmet he wore made it hard to read the man, just as his armor made body language almost indecipherable.