The following days of travel were surprisingly largely uneventful. It seemed as if the word had gotten out to the local population of predators that the Pioneers were not to be trifled with. What fish they saw mostly tried to avoid them, and the Pioneers had no reason to pursue. They pushed forward day and night, traveling over a thousand kilometers daily and closing in on their target. Even with the relentless pace, the Pioneers rested intermittently, keeping themselves in peak combat shape and regularly growing in power.

  One thing that did bother Daniel was the change in the water. It shifted in color from blue to a light rust red, the light taking on an orange coloration beneath the waves. This color change was accompanied by a sudden silence in the water below them, an eerie quiet only permeated by the soft hum of their machines. Traveling in waters like these for days on end played havoc with everyone’s nerves, their eyes wide as they constantly searched for lurking threats. The squad was grateful to be finally closing in on the target.

  Once they closed within 100 kilometers, Lieutenant Korta turned to Daniel and Reggie, saying, “Soldiers. Scouting report.”

  Daniel had been leery of using Oculus Mundi too often, as it was expensive to use at high power. Korta had demanded it regularly, without concern for resource management. It wasn’t because the commander was trying to be obnoxious, this time at least. Korta had legitimate concerns that there might be some lurking threats out there. It was just that Daniel would be much less able to deal with those threats if he blew his battery on scouting. He’d avoided that by limiting the range to a 100-kilometer radius. Now, Daniel turned the power back up again. The closer they were to their destination, the more valuable a wide-ranging report would be. He typed in the command and watched.

  “…Report, soldiers! What do you see?” The lieutenant had noticed that both soldiers paused for a while after sending out the signal. Daniel was the first to turn and look his commander dead in the eye: “Enemies, sir. I see enemies closing in on our position.”

  …

  A few days earlier, on a tiny, nondescript sandbar in the middle of the ocean, a rift was born to the sound of shifting reality. Edged in crimson and blacker than the deepest abyss, the portal stood stark against the sheer white sand. After a few moments, a small army of figures steadily slunk through it.

  It was a gang of nightmares. The least of them all was the gang of Greater Thralls. These two-eyed, wire-muscled freaks had pointed elbows, long ivory teeth, and three midnight black claws tipping each appendage. Coal dark skin stretched taut over their skeletal frames; bodies built for running down prey with explosive speed. The twin purple lights of their eyes shone with uncanny energy, their faces predatory and elongated. Prehensile tongues flickered back and forth with pent-up energy as these creatures crept through the portal and looked around excitedly. There were forty in total.

  Amongst this mob was another, greater abomination. The Thrall Commanders looked like a supersized version of their lesser cousins, packing on more muscle and another 30 cm in height. Their trio of yellow eyes symbolized class superiority, while a pair of leathery wings on their backs marked them as something more than crudely empowered versions of their Epsilon counterparts. They were four in number.

  The last figure to stride through this portal was immediately made way for. The large fighters hastily scrabbled away and bowed in deference as a smaller figure stepped onto the sandy shore. Where the Greater Thralls were the size of a large man and the Commanders were larger still, this new creature was no taller than 165 centimeters. It was positively diminutive by the standards of the Kharnidd enforcers. Furthermore, it wasn’t particularly muscular. In fact, its body and skin were paranormally smooth, like a recently paved road. Though its proportions were more humanlike than the others, no one would mistake this thing for homo sapiens. Its skin was the same voidlike black as its fellows, and it was totally androgenous. Its arms were uncannily long and thin, even while its legs were a normal length and size. The six fingers on each hand were tipped with sharp, triangular fingernails, and all six of its toes were structured the same way. It also had a relatively short neck, its head perched close to its shoulders. But most disturbing of all was that head.

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  It was large. Not so huge as to be comical, but enough that a human onlooker would feel it was slightly out of proportion. Its mouth was a bit too wide, flashing straight teeth with long and deadly-looking canines. The upper part of its face was strangely bony and straight-edged. It appeared as if a rectangular mask had been fastened tightly to the front of an already morphed skull, then slightly bent down the center so that it could stick more closely to either side. Except this rectangular bone wasn’t a full rectangle, as the corners of the top extended to form dual triangles, separated by a divot down the center. The face possessed no nose, but it did have four angry-looking emerald eyes, stuck into the facial bone and humming with latent power.

  Hars’Nocrot stared out over the waters, discontent boiling in Its veins. This cleanup job was an irritating errand, forced upon it by that fool Gru’Kothor when It had been too lazy to finish things Itself. To make matters worse, few Kharnidd Evolved to deal with water and other more viscous mediums. They preferred air and land missions, and the few that did specialize in sea combat were needed elsewhere. Hars had been forced to scavenge from the most common of its kind to complete this mission, in between handling Its other priorities. It had only now gotten around to handling this chore.

  With a flex of an arm, both It and the 40 Lesser Thralls were surrounded by emerald light. They rose into the sky and began flying southwest, followed by the Thrall Commanders, who flew under their own power with their wings. They made their way to the crash site at a brisk pace, but Hars’Nocrot saw no reason to rush. Any human retrieval parties should still be further away, assuming they were planning any at all. And if they did decide to come?

  More’s the pity for them.

  …

  Emily Sillica brushed the ocean floor with her expanded senses. She couldn’t identify any details, but she’d be able to find what mattered. Her power traded detail for range, the scouting Capacity capable of surveying a wide location in search of a specific target. She could choose what it looked for but needed an energy signature as a reference beforehand. Command had given her the Codex energy signatures of several Pioneers who’d fallen when the ship crashed. There was no guarantee they were all dead, of course, but it was Republic policy to assume that crashes like these left no survivors. The Imperium felt the same way.

  Alive or not, she’d first found the signal of one of these Codices on the ocean floor, directly east of them, several days ago. They’d been moving toward that location ever since. She used it again now to verify its exact position: “Sergeant. Confirm you have a visual on the target.”

  The voice of her CO shook her concentration, and Emily tried not to frown in irritation as she fought to hold her focus. Luckily, she found the signal soon after his comment. It shone like a small blue beacon deep below them, hundreds of kilometers to the east. Exactly where she’d felt it in the first place. Emily dropped her ability and turned to face her commander.

  An anointed son of the patrician class, Lieutenant Albori’s aquiline features and cuttingly sharp jaw were all in style within the Republic’s upper classes. His dark red hair was accented with orange highlights, setting him apart even further from the common man. His jet-black eyes were also unnatural, and they examined her with an impatient, unsettling force. Emily was surrounded by men and women with very similar characteristics, members of Albori’s immediate family or other allies who’d adopted their look. She was set apart from them with softer, gentler-looking features. Sea green eyes with dark black hair tied up into a bun made her look like a relatively normal, if rather attractive, woman. She addressed her superior, Pneumonic Enhancement allowing her to breathe and speak naturally underwater just as they did: “Confirmed. Target is approximately 175 kilometers east and 35 kilometers deep.”

  “Excellent. Squad, move out.”

  They did as ordered, zooming to their target at a rapid clip. The closer they grew, the worse Emily’s mood became. She didn’t need this op. She didn’t need the money. Yet she’d been dragged into this whole fiasco. All for one reason. One person. If she could’ve sighed without attracting irritation or suspicion, she would have.

  The site around the crashed ship was bound to become a battlefield, an enormous risk she’d no real incentive to take. That said, failure to find the ship would come with its own punishments. She’d been damned if she did, damned if she didn’t, and had chosen the lesser of two evils. Stars willing, she’d be able to stay out of the way of the murderhobos and psychos trying to kill each other for money and intergalactic pride.

  Not that she had a good track record of that.