“Yeah, I agree it’s a good idea, but I’m still gonna have to check it with the skipper.” Lieutenant Michael Phillips slammed the fuselage access panel shut with one hand, his radio held to his ear with the other. “I’ll let you know. Out.”

“What was that all about?” Hank pulled himself from beneath the helicopter. He was covered head to toe in grease and transmission fluid. They’d spent all night repairing the grounded Seahawk, and neither had slept in close to twenty-four hours. Their only break, impotently watching their mothership engage in a desperate battle.

And not being able to do a damn thing about it.

They’d been relegated to little more than frustrated spectators when they should have been in the middle of the fight, giving Osiris hell.

“Bautista got in touch and wants us to do a recon job for him.” Phillips opened the cockpit door and flung the radio onto the padded seat. “He wants to lift and go see how close the swarm front is to Anchorage.”

Hank gave a long exhalation and ruffled his matted hair. “Good plan but, if what we’re hearing about those beasts is right, then do we want to take this hanger queen close to ’em?”

“Well, what else are we good for?” Phillips said bitterly as he wiped his tired eyes, leaving a streak of dirt on his face. He squinted in the dawn light as he looked inland. “Look, it’s a shit job when we should be sticking it to the Osiris, but someone’s got to do it.”


The vast bulk of Atlantica streamed past the window. She truly dwarfed the Ignatius. In fact, her massive frame would eclipse one of the Gerald R Ford supercarriers which dominated the seas of her time.

Not that Slater would trade her Arleigh Burke class destroyer for either carrier or cruise ship. She loved her agile, lethal ship. To captain a bigger ship, perhaps one of the ageing Ticonderoga class cruisers or the ultra-modern Zumwalt class in the fleet, meant she would have been locked into nothing more glamorous than escorting a task group. But the Arleigh Burkes? They were dispatched for all kinds of missions independently. They were the mainstay of the US Navy, and for a very good reason. They could take out any threat, whether that be on land, sea, air, or even in space.

Except, it seemed, the Osiris. And except what was coming for them overland.

“Yes, Lieutenant. Recon mission authorized as soon as you’re happy your bird is fixed.” She pulled the headset from her head and placed it on her console. Information was power, after all. And she needed information about the swarm. And she was only going to get that by someone going to have a look.

She bit her lip, and added more things to her very extensive mental to-do list.

A crewman walked toward her, tools still gripped in his fatigue-shaking grimy hands.

“Guss,” she acknowledged him with a nod and an attempt at a welcoming smile. “What’s the status on the forward pump room?”