“Hey Dusty, how’s the sky look?” I asked as I wandered onto the bridge.

  “It hasn’t changed from when you asked an hour ago,” the bear sighed. “Or any of the previous dozen times you asked me.”

  “I’m just making sure…” I said. “The carrier is a lot slower than I’d like, and if those pods manage to land outside of our expected area of engagement, we could get a couple thirties running loose. Not exactly an ideal situation.”

  “I know, you told me that last time,” Dusty mumbled. He flipped a switch on his console, and a hologram displaying the orbital tracking map flared to life above it.

  I stared at the image, at the hundreds of asteroids and Antithesis pods that were just starting to make planetfall, and frowned. After all the effort the Antithesis had made to throw a moon at the Earth, I would have expected them to do something tricky. Either attempt to regather the scattered Antithesis into a single mass, like they had during the early superweapon strikes, or at least coordinate their scattered forces.

  That didn’t seem to be happening, though. After spending a couple weeks outrunning the Samurai fleet that pursued them all the way from Mars, it was almost like the Antithesis had given up.

  “Nyx, are these calculations still accurate?” I asked.

  The Family’s supercomputers are recalculating the trajectory of all Antithesis pods hundreds of times a second. If you want me to provide you with some independent calculations, you’ll have to purchase the catalogs and equipment required. You know that.

  “I do…” I groaned, running a hand down my face. I took a moment to collect my thoughts before looking up at the hologram again. “Alright, let me ask you something else. In your experience, if the Antithesis arranged an orbital assault of this magnitude, would they normally be this passive?”

  Nyx was quiet for a moment.

  No, no, they wouldn’t. With the amount of time they had to prepare and the amount of biomass packed into that moon, they probably would have birthed some sort of unique apex creature to manage the swarm and lead the assault. Something smart enough to coordinate the assault.

  “I don’t see much coordination here,” I mumbled. “Just a mess of shit falling from the sky.”

  It’s possible the apex form was hit by one of the superweapon attacks and killed. That would explain the complete lack of coordination.

  “I guess that’s possible, but I’ve never been that lucky,” I grumbled as the first stage of debris flashed red, indicating that it had hit the atmosphere. “Well, no going back now.”

  [Deadbeat, Heavy, it’s time. Take your forces and start patrolling the drop zones,] I ordered through the bear’s command and control network. [Remember to keep a distance until the pods finally touch down; I don’t want to lose one of you to the orbital impact.]

  [Don’t worry, we’ll remember,] Deadbeat replied.

  [And Bob… no trying to jump out early. You’re tough, but I don’t think that even you would survive taking a housesized hunk of rock and flesh to the face. Not when it’s hurled from orbit,] I added.

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  [I probably could!] the big bear immediately replied.

  [Even if you could, I don’t want you to try! You’re there to smash aliens, not test your resilience. It might take you an extra thirty seconds to get into combat, but no getting out until Deadbeat tells you. Got it?] I growled.

  [Fine…] Bob moaned. [No meteors to the face.]

  [Good boy,] I said, before glancing back at the hologram. [The pods should hit within the hour, so get out there, everyone. Good hunting!]

  [Thanks, boss, see you soon!] Bob replied happily.

  I shook my head and disconnected from the network. The deck under my feet vibrated as forty vehicles simultaneously took off and screamed out of the hangar bay. They formed up into two columns and shot off in opposite directions.

  “Spooky, how far are we from our final position?” I shouted over my shoulder.

  “We’ll be directly between the two landing sites in five minutes, at which point we’ll gain altitude until we can provide fire support to either team. Final ETA, ten minutes,” the grey bear in an old-school army long coat and officer’s cap replied.

  “Good,” I muttered. “I want to be ready for any sort of problem.”

  “Uhhh… Commander?” Dusty called. “You might want to see this.”

  I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, so I took a moment to steel myself before turning around. “What is it?”

  Dusty just pointed at the hologram. I stared at the global map for several seconds before I realized what he was referring to. The pods that I was planning to intercept had new landing sites further south. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if the globe didn’t have the borders of Cascadia on it to compare to. As I watched, the landing sites moved again, slowly creeping southward.

  “How many drop sites are changing?” I asked quietly.

  “Almost every single Antithesis pod has deployed some sort of wing to either slow their momentum or change their trajectory,” Dusty reported.

  “Of course they did!” I hissed. “Waited until the last moment to fuck with our deployment. Is there any pattern to the changes?”

  “I… uhhhhh…” Dusty sputtered.

  “Connect to the Frogs, get them to perform analysis, and give them the combined processing power of all our standby forces,” I ordered. “I assume the Family is performing a similar analysis, but I don’t want to wait for their updates. Concentrate on any of the Antithesis that are passing over or around those two moderate pods.”

  Dusty nodded, and a second later the command network was filled with noise. I tried to ignore the mass of data, which sounded more like white noise than actual data to me, but it was hard to completely shut it out. My head started to throb.

  Then, all of a sudden, the noise cut off. I raised my eyes to the display and watched as dozens, hundreds of trajectories started to converge.

  “What town is that?” I asked, pointing at the tiny dot at the edge of the mass of Antithesis drop zones.

  “Great Falls, it’s a corporate Steel town,” Dusty replied quietly.

  “They’re about to have a really bad day…” I muttered.

  “Uhhh… yeah, and it’s probably going to be even worse than you realize,” Dusty said. He punched a couple keys on the console, and almost all the trajectories disappeared, except one. “This is the colossal mass that was expected to land on the east coast. The Family had created an entire task force to deal with it.”

  “Fuck…” I hissed. “FUCK! Dusty, get on the horn to the Family and give them a copy of our data. They probably already came up with the same results, but the sooner we get people moving, the better. Spooky, how far are we from Grand Falls?”

  The grey bear scratched his chin. “We could probably make it in an hour and a half if we really pushed the engines.”

  “Then push them as hard as you can,” I replied, before sinking into my own head.

  [Heads up everyone, the situation has changed drastically,” I declared over the network. [Not only have the drop zones changed, but they’ve converged with several hundred hundred more.]

  [Beg your pardon?] Heavy asked.

  [Looks like the Antithesis had something up their metaphorical sleeves after all. A large percentage of the pods from the Pacific Northwest are now all coming down in the same place. The real problem is there’s a small town not far from the landing zone, and unless we do something, they’ll be overrun before anyone else can react. I want everyone to rally around Great Falls and protect it long enough for Bear Force One and other samurai reinforcements to arrive,] I explained. [Bandit, the strike teams aren’t going to be enough. I need you to gather whatever forces we have remaining on the carrier, and send them ahead.]

  [How many Antithesis are you expecting?] Heavy asked.

  [Too many. The strike teams were sent out to deal with two pods containing either Twenties or Thirties, now those forces are going to be combined with hundreds of smaller pods, along with the mass. I’m not going to lie… depending on what comes out of that thing, we might not be able to hold,] I said.

  [We’ll hold til the end!] Bob declared.

  [Just hold until Bear Force One arrives,] I said. [We’ll re-evaluate then. Good luck all, we’re probably going to need it.]

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