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

were lost in the roar, and he flinched as a second smoke-man descended on him from above.
Just as it had before, the smoke seemed to strike a plate of glass and spread out before Carbine's face, streaming around him like a river split around a boulder. Carbine recovered from the surprise attack when he realized that the thing could not harm him, but he knew that Jon was not as fortunate. Even through the haze of the whirling smoke, he could see the very image of Jon begin to fade and become slightly transparent as if he were slowly being erased from reality.
Of course, he thought to himself, they are the white blood cells of this place. They mean to erase us!
His mind was frantic. He tried not to panic, but what to do? Carbine knew he couldn’t fight it. Maybe I can cut it off from its source?
Carbine’s intense gaze followed the smoke trail from his friend to the breach in the ship. The scream of the storm was still ringing in his ears as incessantly as the wail of an alarm klaxon, but he steeled his mind against it and focused on how to save Jon.
Carbine searched the cabin for something to cover the tear in the hull through which the smoke poured, but came up empty. Without so much as a silent Banzai!, he jumped toward the breach and used his body itself as the dividing barrier, hastily reasoning that if the shield around his body could repel the smoke, then perhaps he could sever the umbilical by flopping on top of it.
His aim was perfect. He pushed off from the chair he had been anchored to, landing belly first directly on top of the smoke creature’s umbilicus. The repelling qualities of the shield neatly cut the flow of smoke into two. He smashed through it into the floor of the cabin, and then deftly jammed his knife into the floor to prevent himself from bouncing all the way back. As soon as he recovered from the jolt, he rolled toward the breach, pushing with one hand and maintaining his death-grip on the knife handle with the other. He ended up on his back with his side slightly pressed against the wall.
Try as he might, he could not keep himself still or firmly pressed against the hull to prevent the Wardens from continuing to pour into the cabin. The zero-gravity, coupled with his awkward, feeble purchase and the need to maintain his hold on the knife proved to be too much.
He bounced back and forth between sealing the hull with his body and floating away. He bobbled. Worse still, the tornado that held Jon in its grip of erasure maintained itself autonomously; separation from the storm at large had not slowed it one bit. Jon continued to fade.
Although no one noticed, Lucy’s hands had stopped their hectic pulling, punching, and plugging, and shot out to take the ship's controls. Her eyes rolled back from white to their normal forward position as her awareness returned from within itself to the world outside.
The very same instant her slender but strong hands clutched the controls, the cabin lights came back on. Maya’s head spun toward the cockpit, and her eyes lit up with hope and nervous excitement. Lucy had done it. Power returned to the listless ship.
“Look for the Drop! Look for the opening!” Maya cried over the tumultuous chaos.
Lucy didn’t so much as glance back. She set her jaw and pushed on the sticks, her thumbs simultaneously flicking the thrust.
Carbine lurched up so hard from the pitch of the ship that he nearly lost hold of his knife; Maya’s eyes seemed to bulge as she strained against the safety harness; however, the incoming smoke and the tornado with Jon in its clutches seemed completely unaffected by the sudden change of inertia.
Lucy plunged the ship through the bardo-storm at max speed, pushing down and pulling left on the controls, sending it into a sharp turn. Her face wore an expression of coolness. Despite her seemingly aloof demeanor, Carbine knew she was astute enough to know that they were in trouble—real trouble. Maya’s shields wouldn’t last forever, and even if they could, the Wardens would simply erase the ship instead of the people, damning them to float in this no-place forever.
The ship banked hard and fast, though it was nearly impossible to gauge speed when flying through the endless rolling clouds. Only the rapidity with which the ghost faces flashed by the viewport window gave any indication of how fast they were moving.
“I don’t see an opening anywhere!” Lucy yelled over the din, a hint of feverish panic in her normally cool voice.
Please let it still be open, Maya silently prayed as she shifted her frantic gaze back and forth from the viewport to Jon, who, with every passing second, looked more and more like a ghost himself. It positively killed her to watch him fade and do nothing, but there was nothing she could do. She knew that more surely than anyone else here. Unbuckling herself from her chair wouldn’t help anything at all… and then it hit her, what Carbine had done. Her shield repelled the smoke. Filled with desperate purpose, she tore at the buckle restraining her and fixed to leap toward Jon.
Freeing herself with a flick of her wrist, Maya slipped out from between the shoulder restraints and threw herself into the tornado. The smoke parted like water around a boat. There was almost no impact when her body collided with what remained of Jon’s.
If only I had managed to shape my Strange before the spirit got ahold of Jon, I could’ve protected him as well!
She wrapped her arms around Jon, like hugging a cloud, as she continued along her trajectory and slammed into the fuselage.
The jolt caused her to exclaim in pain, twisting her body, though she did not release her hold on the wisp that was Jon.
Her face remained scrunched up, but her