Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2)

watched with bated breath as Maya began to shape. As before, the goddess gestured and swayed as she sang. He wasn’t sure, but Jon felt that the song was going longer than before and felt a splinter of doubt begin to bury itself in his gray matter. He was just about to say something to Maya, like a sane paramedic halting the frantic and futile resuscitation attempts of someone driven by emotion, when a small patch of air in front of Maya began to warble and shimmer.
A blink of an eye later, Maya ended her song with a long note, which cut off abruptly, and the shimmering spot in the air snapped open to reveal a porthole-like window to the Underground garden.
“It worked!” Carbine shouted.
Maya turned around and treated Jon to a triumphant smile.
Gotta make the small victories count, he thought and returned her smile with one of his own.
“No time to waste,” Lucy announced. “Here!” she said, offering her lady the message-bearing square of metal.
“Right! I didn’t shape it to stay open for very long. That would have taken a lot more Strange.” Maya took the square and turned, slowly walking up to the portal, getting as close as possible to it without touching it.
“For luck!” she announced, and with a snap of her wrist, carefully aimed the message through the dimensional window. The square sailed through open air like a ninja’s shuriken, disappearing from their vicinity and landing somewhere on the other side.
“There. We’ll check back in with them later and try to establish a scheduled time to communicate face to face,” Maya said, nodding to herself. Then, stepping back, she waved her arm dismissively, closing the portal until all traces of it were gone and only the desert scrub remained.
“So now what?” Carbine asked the group.
“I guess we play it by ear. Start heading out as soon as Ratt’s okay and see what we see. If we get in a bind, like, come to an ocean, perhaps, then we regroup,” Jon said, and everyone nodded. In the back of his mind, he knew that meant going the long way around said ocean—if such a long way even existed.
After a bit of awkward silence, Jon and Lucy worked together first to build shelter, if not for a sense of security, then to at least keep the sun off Ratt, which even in the late winter was relentless in this part of the world, wherever that may be.
Ratt remained in his supernatural sleep with Maya watching over him, while Carbine joined Jon and Lucy in their quest for anything of value that might have survived the crash.
They worked until sundown, finally calling it quits when they could no longer see what garbage was versus what was valuable. Lucy wanted to continue, being able to see in the dark, while Carbine had started to suggest that she take a break. Jon placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder and advised, “Let her go. She needs to be alone for a bit.” Lucy was a very effective warrior and excelled at combat, but she couldn’t shield her real self from Jon now. Her metal shell protected her from trauma and damage, from blade and bullet, but was transparent when it came to hiding her fears. Jon knew by now that her tough act was just that.
When Jon and Carbine returned to the lean-to, they found that Maya had built a small fire. It was comforting, as the desert night was beginning to grow cold. They gave her a report of what they had managed to salvage so far: some food, very little of their camping equipment, a hatchet, and their sleeping bags had escaped unscathed; the two Hoppers they had brought had been demolished, but they’d managed to find Carbine’s railgun, salvaged from the Mini-Mech he had used during the Battle of Home. They’d even found most of its ammo, the drums scattered across the sandy dirt. While excited that the weapon was found intact, Carbine lamented the fact that he wouldn’t be able to use it, the recoil of such a weapon being too much for his human frame to bear.
The greatest disappointment had been the discovery of all four ATVs; crunched, mangled, and deconstructed in every way. They’d also found a wide assortment of bits that they could only assume belonged to the machine shop that Ratt had loaded on board. Jon had found his hammer as well as Carbine’s pistol. The rest of what they had packed was lost to them, though they discussed searching for anything else, even broken stuff that might be of value to them, in the morning.
The three of them sat in the dirt around Ratt’s sleeping form. Maya gratefully accepted a bottle of water that Jon had found and used it to dampen a bit of cloth—Jon guessed it used to be a seat cushion cover—and dabbed Ratt’s forehead with it. She tended to him with the detail and care of a geisha in a tea ceremony, while Jon watched, and Carbine stirred the embers of their fire with a bit of sturdy stick.
Jon had not grown up camping—had never “grown up” in any way other than the rigors of an endless boot camp, with drills replacing childhood, State replacing family—and so he had never really sat around a fire before, under the starlight canopy, and smelled the rich, musky, primordial scent of wood smoke. He liked it; he liked it a lot. There was something about it that was as ancient, natural, and right as the goddess that sat across from him. He was mesmerized both by the gentle curves of her cheekbones and eyes and the dancing lights and shadows that played across them. A flush of blood filled his cheeks as he recalled their spontaneous kiss earlier. Should he bring it up to her later, in private? What was he thinking? Even if they were beginning to develop feelings for each other, Jon was her guardian, her servant. Furthermore, he