Earth

Antarctica, 80 miles West of Gary’s factory

1 day After Willis’s Destruction

T-minus 8 hours until alien contact

“Get out of here penguins! It’s dangerous!” Pan said and waved his claws at the waddling animals. They regarded him with blank expressions, and several of them wandered toward him and craned their heads forward. “Bernard, help me! You’re good with animals!”

Pan turned to the partner he had been assigned: Bernard. Bernard was from South Africa, which was comparatively close to where Pan had been born. Closer than Antarctica, anyway. Pan liked Bernard. He laughed a lot, like Brody and Cooper, but he seemed more mellow, like Samaira. And he always had those special animals around him, and they were nice.

“I’m good with elementals, lil’ guy, not animals,” Bernard said. Currently he was surrounded by a menagerie of creatures that would have frightened Pan had Bernard not already told him they were perfectly safe and friendly. One of them was like a giant turtle, but bigger than a house, and covered in crystalline outcroppings. Pan could sense its affinity for the Earth with his dominion, Bones of the Mountain, and was even able to communicate with the giant elemental a bit.

Another elemental was in the shape of a sleek lizard as long as a bus and covered in glimmering orange and red scales. Pan thought Anya would have liked it, since it breathed fire and vomited up lava. There was a bird almost as big as a plane that crackled with blue surges of electricity and had black storm clouds pour out of its beak when it wished, and a number of others each as large and imposing as the last.

Pan, Bernard, and his squad of elemental companions were all sharing space inside a small outpost, alongside thirty of Pan’s golem warriors. He’d summoned them from deep beneath the ice, and they were made out of rock and dirt so dark it was almost black. They were all inside the hangar, which was currently open as they waited for their third team member to arrive.

That’s when the penguins had wandered in.

Pan didn’t want them getting hurt.

Too many people had been hurt already.

Gary had sat down with him last night and explained it to him.

Cooper was gone.

Li Qiu was gone.

Brody was hurt.

Renn was gone.

And, worst of all, Anya was gone.

The big rock from the sky had been blasted to pieces, thanks to Li Qiu and the defending hosts on the moon. But Lunar Base Prime had been overrun shortly after and everybody had been forced to retreat to Earth. Lunar Prime had self-destructed, leaving a new, enormous crater in the lunar surface, but taking hundreds of thousands of aliens with it.

Samaira and the other surviving hosts had made it back, but only barely, and all of them had been exhausted. Pan had seen Bernard in the medical bay shortly before they had left for one of the outposts. He’d been next to the other South African Host, Amahle, who was his special friend or something like that. He had told Pan he would be okay now that she was back, but Pan’s nose told him Bernard had the sharp, acidic smell of fear about him.

Pan had tried to console Bernard while they’d stood guard, directly below one of the defensive satellites miles above. He’d offered him ants and hugs and exciting stories about curling up for hours while scary things happened, but Bernard hadn’t seemed interested.

And even after everything, the aliens were still coming. They didn’t have their big sky rock, the one Brody said had made Cooper forget things, but there were still a lot of aliens.

A lot.

Gary said about one-point-two million aliens remained. Pan didn’t understand that number. He stopped being able to understand numbers after one-hundred. There were just too many of them. Gary had said a million was more than one hundred hundreds, and Pan had started to understand. A little.

Well, not really, but he knew it was very, very bad and that there were very, very many aliens. That was enough to make him smell the acidic fear scent on himself.

“Hmm, looks like it’s getting started up there,” Bernard said as he stood at the edge of the hangar and glanced upward. Pan looked up and squinted but didn’t see anything. His eyes were so bad, and his nose was no good at this distance.

“What is it?” Pan asked.

“Lights, explosions, waaa-aay out there. Looks like the advance wave of aliens has arrived at the final defensive line,” Bernard replied.

“Oh no! No! That’s way too soon! Gary said it would be more hours!” Pan said and waddled in a circle. Several of the penguins nearby fell into step behind him, flapping their flippers.

“It’s not the main force, just the early birds,” Bernard said. His voice was calm, and this soothed Pan. A little. “Amahle said the ones that showed up at the moon base first were pretty weak. The defensive satellites and such should be able to handle them. And if not, there’s a small fleet of ships and several dozen hosts up there to back them up.”

“Do you think they’re really going to come here? There’s nothing out here but ice and penguins!” Pan said.

“And Gary’s factory,” Bernard added. “Based on what Alpha made Dr. Immonen do, I’d say it’s probably a prime target. And now that they don’t have their damned rock, they’ll need to go after individual targets. It isn’t enough to just make contact with Earth now. Even if all one million of the damn things make it onto the surface, it’s no guarantee of a win. Gary’s still making ships and drones and guns to kill anything that isn’t a local lifeform. So try not to be such a bangbroek okay?”

Bernard smiled at Pan and gave him a pat on his shoulder.

“What’s a Bangbr…Bang…thing?” Pan asked.

“Like a scaredy-cat.”

“I don’t think I like cats. A lion tried to eat me once when I was little.”

“I know, Pan. You told me this one before. You curled in a ball and stayed that way for six hours.”

“It was scary! And now…no amount of curling is gonna fix this. They…they got Cooper. And Anya!” Pan said and his voice trembled. Bernard looked down at the pangolin and frowned. He got down on one knee and put his hand on Pan’s shoulder. Pan moved forward and hugged Bernard and the man’s elementals leaned in to make sure he wasn’t hurting their summoner. Bernard seemed a little surprised at the hug, but patted Pan on the back after a moment and returned it.

“Hey, you just take it easy, yeah? All we need you to do is throw up some walls, send your dirty boys there out to run interference, and I’ll handle the rest. Well, my guys will handle it. I’ll probably be hiding with you, so I’ll need you to watch out for me, right?”

Pan sniffled. “O-okay,” he said.

“Look, I know you’re sad about Cooper. I met the guy a few times and he was definitely all right. It’s sad he’s gone, but it just means we need to make these aliens pay even more for what they did. As for Anya…well…I’ve ony said a few words in passing to her a few times, but I’ve seen her fight more. Up close and on the TV. I’m not gonna believe she’s dead until I see the damn body myself. So don’t give up hope, okay? I’m gonna need you.”

“Okay,” Pan said again and nodded. He thought of Anya, of how she always went out first, came back last, how strong she had looked in Hawaii, how she’d been there for him, helped him out of the zoo, made him smart, made him brave…well, braver than he had been before.

“Plus, we’ve got a whole squad of drones and Exterminators here to help us out, some cannons, and if our third member ever shows up, we’ll be all set,” Bernard said as he stood up. “And hey, maybe these penguins will want to help out. Don’t ya fellas? Wanna give us a flipper or two?”

The penguins regarded Bernard with placid curiosity, then meandered away.

“Ah, screw ‘em,” Bernard said and waved a hand at them. Pan caught sight of something glinting in the distance, beyond the penguins, just above the horizon. “About damn time. If it wasn’t for the satellites we’d be up to our balls in aliens by now, probably.”

A Gothic carriage pulled by skeletal horses flew down from the sky and pulled to a stop inside the hangar. The door opened and Pan recognized the shadowy figure of Mona, Renn’s special friend. She’d always looked happy before, despite doing scary things like summoning dead people. But now she looked half-dead herself: her eyes sunken, her cheeks hollow, her sea-foam green hair limp. The shadows from within the carriage gathered around her, like a sentient cloak, and shielded her from the light.

“Go. Do what you said you would,” Mona said to a passenger who emerged. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man clad in reddish-brown leather armor, and wore deep crimson pants and a hood that hid his face entirely. His armored hands and forearms were covered in tiny blades, and his fingers were tipped with wickedly sharp-looking hooks. Kan had only seen this man in-person once or twice before.

Kan.

Pan’s nose twitched as he smelled blood. It was a primal, frightening, serious smell. It was a smell that told Pan death was near. It clung to Kan more than the shadows did to Mona and Pan backed away a few steps behind one of his golems. But then he thought of what Bernard had said. If he wanted to be brave when the aliens arrived, he’d need to start practicing now.

“He’s dead,” Kan said to Mona as he exited the carriage. “The agreement is void.”

“No, he isn’t. Our menus confirmed his life-signs,” Mona replied.

“They confirmed Li-Qiu’s too. She is dead. So is Renn,” Kan said. Mona glared at the man and the shadows condensed around her further, save for poisonous green light from her eyes.

“I’d have felt it. He’s alive, and he’s coming back. In the meantime, I'll be at Gary's factory providing primary defense. Harrison and his demons are in China guarding Huang's droid production facilities. You will stay here and do your fucking job or I’ll add you to my ranks,” Mona said and then the carriage door slammed shut. The grim vehicle took off at speed, and vanished into the distance.

“Glad you could finally make it,” Bernard said. Pan looked the other human up and down, twitched his nose at the blood scent again, and frowned. This was going to be scarier than he thought.