Excerpt

"Oh no," Marie breathed.

"Verrater!" somebody bellowed. "Verrater inbound!"

Marie cast a glance at her own assigned engine, down at the far end of the hangar. There was no way she was crawling in there like this. The skirt was too long, too voluminous, to allow for any kind of movement in the harness.

Cursing under her breath, she bolted instead for the stairs leading up to the personnel level. The gravity wasn't quite low enough here for her to jump to the platform in one leap, but she did take the stairs three at a time, sprinting as fast as her trailing skirt would allow. Making the top, she wound the garment's train around her arm and ran.

Up here, people were streaming out of the barracks rooms and common areas. She very nearly was knocked over a few times, and it was only a chance grab that kept her from being trampled.

"Major?" she panted, looking up at her rescuer.

"Stahlbaum?" her commander said, a little breathless himself. "Didn't recognize you dressed like that. You're running in the wrong direction."

She waved down her body. "I cannot pilot in this dress, sir."

He nodded. Once. Tight. "Go," he said, and helped propel her down the hall.

Her own room was a mere four doors away. Tumbling in, Marie kicked at the door, not bothering to check if it actually shut behind her or not. She fumbled with the complicated fastenings on her dress until she finally tore the thing off.

It took her a mere thirty seconds to drag her drive uniform back on, but her hands were shaking as she shoved her feet back into her boots. The light in her quarters was at full power, but behind her small wardrobe locker's door, shadows were gathering. Shadows that should not have been there. Twisting, writhing, searching for purchase.

Marie had seen this before. Once. Only once. But once had been enough. Winter back home, not so harsh, not so brilliant, snow dirty on the streets outside her family's grand brownstone and the lights bright inside.

Bright until they weren't.

She fought down the old fear and got the final buckles locked on her boots.

Just as she was getting back up, a huge collision shook the entire vessel. Some kind of weapons strike, Marie thought wildly, and jerked her door open again. She threw herself out, unstable in the low gravity. A little further down the hall was the second stairwell. She could jump down and make for—

Marie only barely caught herself from flying out into open space.

The hallway in front of her had been sheared away. Half of the drop-hangar was just gone. Something like black smoke, but far worse, steamed from the melted edges of metal, and she recoiled from touching it.

For a moment, she stared out into the night, across the spaceport to the cliffs. She could see nothing beyond that. There was a storm coming, snow whipping up in mad flurries, sailing past her down the hall. A storm, a storm, a blizzard that would block the light and…

Her engine was gone. That thought broke through. Her engine was gone.

Marie was still trying to make sense of that when she heard it.

A chittering sound.

That terrible chittering sound that vibrated one's very soul. That spoke to some fear, programmed into the human species' DNA. A chittering, chattering, screaming sound.

It had been like this last time too. Running to her mother for comfort, asking what was going on as—

Tearing herself away from the sight in front of her, from old memories, Marie started running again, back the way she had come. The going was easier now. The hallway was deserted.

The klaxons were still sounding, but the lights were dying, the shadows growing. Little things like hands reached out for her, but she was too swift. She ran directly for the platform and, gritting her teeth, threw herself over the edge.

The eleven-meter drop was enough for gravity to sink its teeth into her. Marie hit the deck wrong, almost twisting her ankle and slamming down hard. If she had attempted it on a gravity-normal world, both legs would have shattered. As it was, she groaned with pain but got back up, turning to make for her engine.

From the white of the storm, from the torn end of the hangar craft, a massive energy lash flashed, dark and deadly. It rent the deck, sending another shock wave through the craft.

And then Marie got her first glimpse of the enemy.

A rat emerged from the storm. A giant chittering rat, running on all fours, the height of a man at its shoulders. One. Two. Then many. They were not true copies of the old terrestrial vermin but mockeries, twisted and warped, with fur like smoke and red, baleful eyes.

Marines were rushing in now, none of them properly armored, two of them somehow still dragging one of the ground-based energy cannons with them. They were all firing as they advanced, energy rifles only, brilliant white-blue fire tearing into the verrater advance. Where the bolts connected, they vaporized the dark-furred shapes.

Something, still out there in the darkness, screamed its fury. The energy lash struck again. More of the hangar ceiling caved in. More lights died. Twilight fell in the bay.

The Marines were yelling now, attempting to coordinate fire, trying to get the cannon operational. More people were rushing in. Men and women in tech and support uniforms, in civilian attire, half-dressed and lacking even the most rudimentary of their cold weather gear. Anyone on the ground who could raise a weapon was flooding out.

Everyone knew what came next.

They were forming a line down the hangar bay, firing at everything that moved, trying to buy the Marines time.

Every single one of them knew what came next.

Marie stared at the rushing horde for a moment, her mind lost in another time, another place. Another storm. Another dark night. The old streets of her homeworld, the lamps on their poles and the lights in the windows of homes going out one by one. She had seen it, seen one out the window, before her mother dragged her away, before her mother told her to—

"If you can fight, do it!"

It was Danzig, the man she had been arguing with earlier, running past her to join the gun crews.

Shaking herself, Marie felt the cold-hot certainty of rage fill her again. She reached for her energy pistol, but in her haste, she had failed to grab her sidearm. She was a pilot without a machine, a soldier without a gun. She was—

Not useless.

Marie turned.

The Koenig-class engine was still there.

At the line, the energy cannon finally whined awake.

Later, Marie wouldn't remember how long it took her to cross the bay to reach the solitary engine. She wouldn't remember how she managed to scale the chassis or get the cockpit open. She felt as if she were lost in some dream.

But climb it she did, open it she did, and as soon as she settled into the seat—even before she could touch the controls, it seemed—Krak came alive around her.

"Right," she muttered, feeling the fusion drive thrum awake. "Let's get these demons."