A hail of gunfire was looking good, but he wasn’t alone—and he wasn’t making that call for someone else.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “They’ve got us cornered. They’re going to drive us up the slope into the ash. We could stay ahead of them for a while, but now it’s really just a matter of time.”

Milla was still for a moment. He couldn’t see much body language through her suit from where he was crouched, but Steph imagined her thoughts easily enough. Most of the same things he was thinking, maybe with a little more optimism.

“So . . . we surrender?” she asked finally.

Or maybe she had a hell of a lot more optimism. He surely wasn’t thinking that.

He’d prefer to end it on the surface of the moon, not clean perhaps, but better than the tender mercies of prison guards. He glanced over at Milla and grimaced under his oxygen mask, indecision eating at him.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay, we’ll . . .”

His and Milla’s radios crackled to life on the common channel.

“Eagle One, do you copy?”

Steph bolted almost upright, nearly exposing himself. “Odysseus Control? Eagle Actual speaking. We’re under fire on the . . . um, planet-facing side of a volcano on the inner moon. Do you copy?”

“Roger, Eagle Actual. Odysseus is entering orbit of the moon. Marine landers are preparing to launch. Squawk for location fix.”

“Roger, squawk out,” Steph responded, thumbing the control to send a heavy signal across the band, something more easily trackable than the pulsed comm.

“Receiving. Locating. Locked. Marines inbound.”

Steph slumped in place, letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

“Roger that. We’ll keep them occupied if we can,” he said. “Glad you could join the party.”

A new voice entered the conversation, one Steph knew well.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Stephanos.”

Steph chuckled. “Welcome to my moon, Raziel. It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but the view is to die for.”

“Let’s hope not.”

►►►

PC Parasite Five

► Subaltern Penae twisted around as the alarms roared in his ears. “What is it?”

“Proximity alarms, Subaltern! Mass detection, approaching at high velocity!”

“Missiles?”

The scanner tech shook his head. “Not on intersect course. Close, but it’s going to miss us.”

“Give me a visual!” snapped Penae.

“Calculating speed, trajectory . . . on screen!”

Penae stared for a few seconds longer than he probably should have before he managed to comment.

“What the abyss is that thing?” he mumbled.

It was a small craft, clearly not a missile, but of no configuration he’d ever seen in his entire career in the Empire. It was also coming in incredibly hot. Frankly, the ship looked like it was going to slam into the surface.

Suicide attack that missed?

The idea seemed ludicrous, but he’d experienced odder phenomena in his years.

“Subaltern, it’s decelerating hard!”