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  "Done."

  "Are we sure about this plan?" Perez asked.

  Souza scratched at her arm. She appeared to be running through the data in her head. "We could stay on the ship and survive for years from the onboard supplies. I would have to spend every day trying to crack the master code on the primary drive, and there'd be no guarantee it would ever work. If we use this life pod and drift to Mars or the nearest ship, we can warrant the message with our lives. Who knows if the first life pod will make it?"

  "Always reassuring, aren't you, Officer."

  "You know what I mean," she said, slapping him on the shoulder with a smile. Her smile soon faded. "Fox might have killed these aliens, but I'm willing to bet there are more of them around. Which brings me to my next point."

  "What's that?"

  Souza reached over and pointed to the storage compartment on his arm. Perez brought his hand up to the built-in pocket and activated a small lid. It opened to reveal the device he had been storing away. He pulled it out and handed it to her.

  She held up the tiny drive with gloved hands. "This thing. Whatever it is, Aksyonov happily risked the lives of everyone on board three MAF ships to get a chance to hold it in his hands."

  Perez shook his head. "Crazy bastard killed us all. And for what? Some weird object."

  Souza placed the drive down and pulled out a small handheld device. "Let's see what all the fuss was about."

  "What have you got there?" Perez asked, twisting his brow.

  "This is basically a portable mineral scanner. I want to know what this device is made of." She ran her scanner over the drive, casting a red laser line down the length of the object until a beep emitted. Souza brought the scanner closer to her face and ran her eyes over its display.

  "Just as I thought: unknown compound."

  "Unknown? Wouldn't that suggest ... "

  "Yep. This device is made of a substance not found in our solar system. It has to belong to these aliens. Of course, I could never confirm this without extensive lab work and testing."

  Perez sat back as a few thoughts ran through his head. "Let's say it is alien tech. The DSE commander stumbles across this thing and contacts Aksyonov. Your CSO rushes out here hoping to latch onto the greatest scientific discovery and ends up facing an alien invasion instead."

  "Sure seems that way," Souza said.

  "So do you think the aliens were trying to get this thing back?"

  "I doubt it. You found it without looking, and they didn't chase us down the second we left the ship. I imagine this device might have triggered their initial arrival like a beacon or a warning alarm. Maybe they've been watching us for a long time or waiting for intelligent life to find this device."

  "That's a lot of guesses," Perez said. "But after today, I believe anything is possible. I guess we'll never know."

  Souza handed the drive back to him. "Keep it in your suit for now. We'll worry about what to do with alien tech once we decide our next move."

  "We've already decided," Perez said, pointing to the life pod. He let out a puff of air. "It's too risky to wait it out here. The message might never make it. We will be jeopardizing more than our lives if those aliens are still out there."

  Souza closed the service panel outside the two-person life pod and stared him in the eyes. "Hopefully Fox blew them all up. Frankly, I don't know whether we should thank him or call him an idiot for that stunt he pulled."

  Perez chuckled a little. "Yeah, his plan was something else." He rubbed at his forehead as a wave of fatigue set in from the day of chaos. He thought his squad was being sent on a milk run to babysit a bunch of lost scientists. Never in his life did he imagine coming across intelligent life from another planet. He also never thought that intelligent life would go on to slay his entire squad before his eyes.

  "Are you okay?" Souza asked, placing her hand on his wrist.

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Just everything is starting to come together, you know? Like after something crazy happens, and you finally have time to think about it, the experience becomes real in your mind."

  "I understand," she said as her face twisted up. She fought back against some bubbling emotions but leaned over and fell into his chest. Perez received her hug. It was the perfect moment for him to let out a few tears of his own as he thought about the men and women he had served with for years. They all died in a flash.

  Pulling Souza away from his chest, Perez wiped away some tears and said, "Okay, enough feeling sorry for ourselves. We have to get out of here and warn the rest of humanity we are not alone."

  She nodded her head and dried her eyes. "We can do this. This warning is getting out there, one way or another. I'm ready when you are."

  Perez gave her a smile and said, "Let's do this."

  Souza opened the door to the life pod and pressed a few buttons to initiate the two individual stasis pods within the tiny shuttle. She had already input their destination and calculated the quickest way to the Martian relay without running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere.

  "Take off your armor and lie down here. Once I activate the system, you will be lowered into the pod and placed in a deep coma via a chemical injection."

  Perez let out a groan. "I remember this from training. Never thought I'd need to use one."

  "Same. I also never thought I'd need to activate and setup two pods, let alone one. I guess these last few days have been nothing but a series of firsts for the both of us."

  Perez nodded at her and undid his armor one section at a time. As more thoughts of fallen soldiers hit his mind, he began to feel grateful to be alive. He swore to himself he would honor their memories and visit their families if he made it back to Mars.

  With his armor off and stored away along with his rifle and sidearm, Perez was ready for the biggest sleep of his life. During training, he remembered a vital statistic about the life pods: one in ten people couldn't survive longer than a week in the suspended state. Those odds didn't bother him. Every mission he'd ever been a part of had a lower survival rate, especially this one. What gave him the greatest pause was the thought of going to sleep and never waking up.

  "Ready?" Souza asked. She had stripped off down to her MAF fatigues.

  "Yeah. Let's get this over with." Perez stepped forward into the pod when an alert blasted into the small shuttle. "What did I do?"

  "Nothing. This is something else. Come on; we need to head to the bridge, now. This is serious."

  He climbed back out and grabbed out his rifle from storage, unsure what use it would even be. Souza had charged too far ahead for him to catch up, so he proceeded with a slow jog as he inspected his weapon.

  When he reached the bridge, every screen of the comprehensive array focused on one object from multiple perspectives. Perez couldn't decipher the images before him. Souza stood back a few paces from the nearest console speechless with both hands holding her mouth.

  "This can't be happening," she chanted. "This isn't real."

  "What is that thing?"

  She turned to face Perez with twitching eyes. "The aliens. There's more of them, and they're heading toward Mars and Earth."

  Perez let his rifle slip out of his hands to the polished floor of the ship. "But that ship must be bigger than the entire Martian fleet put together."

  She nodded. "According to the system, this ship is at least the size of ten MAF battlecarriers. And that's not all; there's three of them."

  He stumbled over to the nearest chair and fell into the seat in defeat. His eyes glanced up at the large cylinder covered in an intricate array of beams and triangular shaped plating. The first ship of three dominated the area, making the Invictus pale into insignificance.

  With a shaky voice, Perez turned to Souza and asked the one question plaguing his mind: "How long until they reach Mars?"

  She shook her head. "No idea, but according to this, they're accelerating faster than the Invictus at full burn."

  The massive beast of a ship continued past the science vess
el only to be followed by another giant alien craft. They were on a path no one could halt. No warning would come for humanity in time. The two civilized worlds would be forced to face an unstoppable rolling storm.

  "Why aren't they attacking us?" Souza asked.

  Perez stood from the chair as a realization hit his mind. "They're not blasting us out of the sky because they don't see us as a credible threat. Humanity is about to be wiped out of existence by a species who thinks we are nothing more than a slight inconvenience."

  The second ship rolled by unhindered, as did the third. Souza and Perez watched the array as the three ships headed directly for their homes to kill their friends and family.

  Souza stepped up frantically to a console and began tapping and entering commands faster than Perez had ever seen. "There has to be a way to get past the jammer. Maybe once they leave the area."

  He hurried over and grabbed her wrist. "It's over. Those ships will arrive at Mars and Earth before the fastest signal we could ever produce."

  "We have to try. This can't be it."

  He shook his head. "Let it go. We've done everything we can. All we can hope now is for our militaries to stop the greatest threat our species has ever faced."

  Her fingers hovered over the console, desperate to give out commands and control the situation. After a minute, they fell to her sides. Souza dropped to the floor, collapsing under the weight of the knowledge the two of them now shared. The burden of humanity's last moments was theirs to hold until the end.

  Perez stared at the three ships as they faded into the vastness of space. If he ever found his way back home, he swore he would fight the aliens with whatever weapons he could muster.

  "It's not over, yet," he whispered to himself. "You bastards haven't seen what we're really made of."

  The story continues in Reclaim (Reclaim Trilogy, Book One)

  Click here to read the first book in the series:

  jascorch.com/reclaim

  AFTERWORD

  Thank you for taking the time to read React. I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the Reclaim trilogy.

  If you enjoyed reading this free novella, please spread the word by telling your fellow readers. This will help others discover my work and get my name out there.

  J.A. Scorch

  jascorch.com

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