Galtero’s first mecha, that he had purchased directly from the RAC store with all the glee he had felt at getting his first bicycle when he had been a young boy, had been twice as tall as his house. This wasn’t saying much, as his house had been just one more shack among many of the flavelas. But he’d taken the skills to not only pilot it, but upgrade it as well.

And then he’d sold it back to the store and gotten a bigger one, and a bigger one, until he’d had to construct his own makeshift factory as his skills outstripped what was available in the RAC store. There were more powerful machines, alloys, upgrades, and weapons, but they were far too expensive and not really worth it when he could make something almost as good. Not as good as what Gary was making, but not bad.

He’d been confident in the powers of his mecha until he had fought the train in the Bahamas. That had been a wake-up call. Then Alien Alpha, which he probably could have killed solo had it not had such powerful regeneration and been so close to a city.

And now this. Now a whole damn asteroid of millions of aliens, speeding toward them.

Cooper had called Gary when their menu comms had stopped working, and Galtero had been patched through within his cockpit.

“It’s definitely speeding up,” Galtero said when Gary appeared on a screen nearby. The cockpit of his mecha, which Galtero had named Kuat, was located in the upper chest, behind thick layers of nigh-impenetrable armor and thin layers of forcefields. Kuat was almost as big as one of the battle satellites, which was itself over fifteen stories tall and wider than a city block. Kuat had a huge number of armaments including antimatter missiles, energy blades, rapid-fire lasers, and the orbital lance. All of Kuat’s arms and armor had the latest tech he, and Gary’s factory, could produce.

And again, Galtero felt like it still wasn’t enough.

“What’s the ETA?” Gary asked.

“Under eight hours now. Its speed is starting to level off. It isn’t slowing but it isn’t going much faster either,” Galtero said.

“So we’ve only lost four or five hours. Not great, but we’ll make do,” Gary said. “I’m more concerned about how they hell they’re interrupting menu communication signals. And whatever that thing in the center of the asteroid is.”

“Yeah that looks pretty bad,” Galtero said.

“I’m having Huang send some reinforcements. We’re also working on making public announcements to any of the remaining hosts on Earth who still have not come forward. Apparently ten more willing hosts that are signing up with the EU, and there’s another five in Australia and New Zealand.”

“Yeah, Australia!” Cooper said from the communication room in the satellite. “Though why it took ‘em this fuckin’ long kinda pisses me off. I’m not even a host and I’m putting my ass out there.”

“Fifteen isn’t very much though, and if they weren’t present at some of the bigger battles and have been in hiding this entire time, they’re probably pretty low-level,” Galtero said.

“I’m hearing the highest they have is in the 40s,” Gary said.

“Hell,” Cooper said. “Though I can’t really complain. I’m basically at level 1.”

“Yeah but you’re wearing a suit made by a level 90+ and kitted out from high tiers of the RAC store,” Gary said. “But even if their skills are a bit lacking, they’ve been willing to contribute their RAC purchases. We were planning on having some extra ships around Earth, but it sounds like you all might need some more help sooner than we expected. I’m putting in a request to divert some of our resources to you guys. Are there any other hosts up there with you?”

“Yeah. Guy from Germany, some lady from Iceland. They’re on the other end of the defensive line though, and I’m just realizing they might have been trying to reach us over the menu comms if they’ve even noticed a problem,” Galtero said.

“I’ll fly over and check!” Cooper said, and the light of his suit flashed as it rocketed him away from the satellite and into the void.

“You boys just hang tight. Help’s on the way. And remember, if shit hits the fan, you get out of there. Fall back to the Lunar Base. We’re fully prepared for the aliens to breach the outer defenses so it’s not worth your lives. Just do your best and then show them your ass,” Gary said.

“My ass?” Galtero asked.

“It means run away,” Gary said.

“Ah, yes. Will do.”

“Good luck. Call if anything changes,” Gary replied, and then the comm screen went dark.

Galtero glanced up and looked at the huge display that served as the cockpit’s “window.” Brody was floating by, listlessly spinning in the cold vacuum. The shark still had the basic shape of a human, but his limbs had lengthened and taken on fin-like extensions along the forearms and calves, and his tail had grown into a vast thresher-esque shape. He wore his usual Cooper-inspired attire: sandals, a buttoned short-sleeve shirt that was open, and a pair of color trunks. The only addition was a bubble-shaped helmet that allowed his voice to carry.

“Well?” Brody asked. Their menu communications apparently worked fine over the short distance, but got cut off somewhere past the satellite.

“We just need to wait for now. Gary is sending more drones and maybe some automated ships to help. But we’re not supposed to hold if things get bad,” Galtero replied.

“Ah, that’s no fun,” Brody said and glanced at the distant maw of the approaching asteroid. “Still…might be the smart thing.”

“Yeah,” Galtero replied. He swallowed and he settled back into the plush chair of the pilot’s seat and waited.

Cooper came back just over an hour later to report that the German and Icelandic hosts were fine, just experiencing the same menu communication problem they were. In that time, Galtero also noticed that the light around him and Brody had taken on a distinct reddish tint. Closer to pink, maybe, but definitely there. He and Brody discovered than if they were more than a couple miles apart, their menu comms no longer worked.

“What is that shit?” Brody asked as he stared at the wavering crimson corona around the asteroid. It was still thousands upon thousands of miles away, but it loomed larger than Galtero had expected, even at this distance.

“Nothing good. It doesn’t stop us from using our menus aside from the comms and the live map data. But RAC store purchases and points still work fine,” Galtero said.

“You tried them out?” Cooper asked.

“Yeah. Spent a point on my reaction time skill, went through like always, felt the little increase. Bought some cheap food off the RAC store and it appeared in front of me like always,” Galtero replied.

“Damn weird, yeah?” Cooper said. Galtero didn’t reply.

All he wanted was to be back home, back in the sun and the oddly comforting humidity. But if he wasn’t here, if he didn’t do his part, his home might not be there in a few days.

“Just make sure you’re ready for anything,” Galtero said.

And then all they could do was wait.

The reinforcements still hadn’t arrived by the time the first aliens showed up. Galtero’s scanners told him the asteroid was still nearly an hour from crossing the defensive line, but the aliens themselves had sent a vanguard.

Brody was the first to see them.

“We got company boys!” he almost roared, excitement evident in his tone.

“Shit,” Cooper said.

Galtero hadn’t seen anything and Kuat’s scanners hadn’t detected anything either. No heat, nothing sizable, nothing that emitted any kind of energy signature. But when Galtero zoomed in, he saw a faint flicker in the black emptiness before him, and then hundreds, perhaps thousands of aliens became visible all at once, less than a mile away. It was as if a vast cloak had been covering all of them and was now removed, exposing their nightmarish forms all at once.

Kuat’s scanners lit up, identifying the largest target at once. It was an Alpha-sized creature, a jellyfish-esque balloon of wavering pale gray flesh, covered in eyes and ending in sinuous barbed tentacles that looked no thicker than hair at this distance, but were likely thicker than steel cables. The other aliens were no less terrifying: a spinning vortex of rotating golden wheels surrounded by green fire, a spindly creature longer than a football field that resembled a stretched out praying mantis with extra faces where its eyes should be, a whale-like that a transparent gut that showed it crawling with embryonic life, and more. More than Galtero could count and more than Kuat could accurately keep track of.

“Launching defense drones, firing missile bombardment and orbital lance. Stay clear!” Galtero said. Kuat was instantly surrounded by a dozen tiny mechanical orbs that launched from its chassis, and surrounded it in a shield of hardlight. They were also programmed to fire short-range, powerful lasers at anything that came within a hundred feet of the mecha.

Galtero withdrew the two pieces of the orbital lance from the sides of the mecha. Separate, they both acted as powerful energy rifles. But when latched together, they unfolded into something that more closely looked like an old fashioned knight’s lance that crackled with white and blue motes of light. On Earth, it hummed, but in space, it was silent as it charged. A sphere of blue and white light formed at its end, condensed, then exploded into an enormous beam of destructive energy that cleaved through the advancing wave.

“You got seventeen aliens with that and went up three levels!” his lime-green AI with a head like the top of a palm tree told him in Portuguese. Galtero swore.

He had hit dozens of the aliens with that attack, including the giant jellyfish-thing. But most of them were merely wounded. And those that were injured were either healing themselves or being tended to by other aliens. The jellyfish thing was knocked back and a chunk of bigger than a house had been entirely obliterated. It focused several of its hundreds of eyes on Galtero, and all of them glowed bright and angry and red.

“Damn!” Galtero swore and diverted almost all of Kuat’s power to the shields.

Hundreds of red beams of light lashed out from the jellyfish-thing and struck Kuat’s shields an instant later. The cockpit shook and the lights and HUDs flickered as energy was taken from available systems to reinforce the shields. One of the beams got through the hardlight shield and impacted on the outer layer of armor and exploded. Galtero grit his teeth and checked Kuat’s status screen. The top three layers of armor on the left shoulder had been slagged, but everything was functional and the hardlight shield would be back online in thirty seconds. The orbital lance would be ready for firing again in a minute, three minutes if he wanted to split it apart and use the smaller energy rifles.

Instead Galtero fired volley after volley of missiles into the oncoming alien horde, and was rewarded with more kill notifications from his AI.

The combat satellite wasn’t idle during Galtero’s volley. Its hexagonal doors opened and spewed out countless numbers of mechanical drones, each of which was the size of a helicopter and carrying enough ordinance to turn most major cities into craters. The anti-matter cannons on the sides of the satellites opened fire, their internal targeting systems avoiding Galtero, Brody, and Cooper as they fired.

“Yeah! C’mon you dickheads!” Cooper shouted and unleashed wide beams of yellow energy from his hands as panels on his suit’s sides and shoulders opened to fire micro-missiles. An alien that looked like a limousine-sized tapeworm but with a mouth surrounded by human hands slithered toward Cooper and caught a huge blast of energy down its gullet. It burst apart and Cooper cheered as he focused on another target.

Brody seemed to be enjoying himself, and Galtero did a double-take to see that the shark had grown exponentially. Galtero wasn’t entirely clear on Brody’s skills, except that his body adapted to different environments and outside stimulus. Apparently that involved growing a lot, or some other skill. When an alien struck Brody in the side with a monstrous tentacle that glowed with radiant green light, Brody snarled at it even as his body swelled. He was now half the size of Galtero’s mecha, or roughly ten stories tall, and he’d long since outgrown his clothes and helmet. He bit into the tentacled alien and shredded it with ease.

Another alien blasted Brody in the side with twin beams of hot plasma, and the Shark’s eyes glowed with matching energy, and fired at a third alien which was torn apart. He then reached out with one massive hand and crushed the plasma alien even as his tail crackled with electric energy and swept a swathe through a crowd of other attackers.

They were doing well, but Galtero had to remind himself that millions of aliens were still approaching. He caught a flash of light far in the distance.

“One satellite down,” Galtero said and confirmed it on his scanners.

“Bastards are persistent!” Cooper said as he rocketed through the chest of an alien covered in an emerald exoskeleton. “When do we fall back?”

“The asteroid is still about thirty minutes out. We fall back and let the satellites deal with it in fifteen minutes,” Galtero said. “Or until the aliens get too thick. But so far…I think we can manage, whittle them down a little.”

Since Brody had outgrown his helmet (and everything else), the shark couldn’t respond verbally, but they were still close enough for menu comms and the shark managed a nod of acknowledgment. Galtero’s orbital lance was ready once more and he fired it, taking down the huge jellyfish and sending the scraps of its body away into burning chunks.

They wouldn’t be able to seriously damage the asteroid, but the satellites self-destruct mechanisms would hurt it, and in the meantime, they could cut down on the aliens and level themselves up for the final attack.

That was when the asteroid changed again. Galtero only saw it briefly: that dark well of nothingness at its center shifted, swelled and then contracted. It was still far away, but something came out of it faster than Galtero could follow. It was a line, blacker than space, but not only that. It was of a color Galtero had never seen before. Black but darker, but still with pigment. It was closest to red, or purple, but also neither of those.

Kuat’s sensor lit up, warning him of some kind of unknown energy. The beam of colored void shot past him and struck a flashing, darting point of light: Cooper.

Brody saw it, spun around, mouth agape in a silent scream as the beam struck his friend. It dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, and Cooper was left floating in space, within his power armor.

“Cooper!” Galtero shouted over the conventional comms. “Cooper are you okay!”

“What?” Cooper asked.”What’s happening?”

“You were hit!” Galtero said as he dodged an attack from a slew of giant claws and retaliated with a salvo of rapid laser fire. “Your suit looks undamaged. Are you okay?”

“No…I don’t…I can’t move this thing,” Cooper said.

“Did it drain the energy?” Galtero asked.

“No I just…I can’t remember. I don’t know what this thing is. It’s…clothes? How do I move?” Cooper demanded, hysteria creeping into his voice.

That was when the name the Engineer had given for the aliens popped into Galtero’s head.

Gnosiphage.

Knowledge eater.

Cooper had been zooming around fighting multiple targets with ease seconds before, and now he didn’t even know the name of the armor he was wearing.

“I’ll get you! Brody, we need to retreat and get back to——”

Galtero started to fly directly at Cooper, but the Australian was still far away. Too far to reach before a flock of small but ferocious aliens descended on him and began to drill into his armor with metallic beaks. Possibly a trivial issue for Cooper moments before, but now, it was enough.

“Cooper!” Galtero yelled just as Cooper started to scream. His armor flashed and then exploded with him inside as the tiny flock of aliens hit some sort of power core or energy storage. Cooper’s scream ended with the flash of light and the explosion that was sucked inward by the vacuum of space. Brody surged toward the flock of aliens, but they were quick, and moved with a central intelligence that allowed them to scatter and reform.

“Brody!” Galtero shouted over the menu comms as he typed out a message just to be sure the shark could hear him. “We have to get out of here now! If that thing hits either of us we’re done!”

Brody ignored him and continued to thrash in mindless fury at the nearby aliens. The pit at the center of the asteroid surged again, readying itself for another strike.

Galtero flew toward Brody as fast as he could and sent his giant mecha crashing into the shark and pulling it away. The beam of alien color sliced through the spot where the shark had been a split second before. It struck the leg of Galtero’s mecha, but the status screen showed that there were no issues or problems, and Galtero himself felt fine. No memory or skill loss.

Galtero tackling Brody seemed to be enough to shake the shark out of his fury.

“He’s gone, Brody. I’m sorry, but we can’t stay. It’s too dangerous right now, and we have to tell the others,” Galtero said. Brody gave a longing look to the space Cooper had been in mere moments ago, his dark eyes pained, and then began to shrink down. Galtero had Kuat cradle Brody closer as he fled the scene at full speed, leaving the satellite behind to handle the alien hordes.