The city of Conway was edged by a three-meter-high stone wall. It was archaic and largely useless on its own, but it gave maintenance teams a structure to maintain and city officials a line at which they could post adventurous types with automatic firearms to keep the beasts at bay. Beyond the wall were towering trees, the biggest of which blocked out the sun.

The group took refuge in an old convenience store and recharging station, most of which had already been looted. The sun was setting and Jack had decided it was the best building in which to set up camp. To Coop’s eyes, it wasn’t the most defensive position, but it had access to running water, toilets, microwaves, and a scattering of junk food.

Coop finished scraping the blood from himself as thoroughly as he could with his sword. The metal absorbed the blood like an enthusiastic sponge. He sat on the sidewalk across from the convenience store, back to the cinderblock wall of a maintenance garage. A blister throbbed on his left heel, but he couldn’t take off his boot to care for it. He couldn’t even rub at it though his boot. Instead, he sat with his left foot out, his right knee up, and his forehead resting on the butt of his sword, tip of the sheath against the pavement.

Coop couldn’t close his eyes, so he couldn’t shut out the stimuli yammering for his attention. He tried to meditate, to focus on nothing, but could hear Dr. Ark’s critical voice in his head. He wished he had a gun he could take apart.

After a while, the quiet humming of the sword drifted into his mind. She hummed an old tune he knew only from entertainment broadcasts specializing in esoterica. It was an absent sort of tune, repetitive, off key, and just the distraction he needed from the aches of his body in the confines of his armor. It was soothing. He pressed his forehead a little harder against the butt of the sword.

His HUD warned him someone approached. The neutral yellow dot stopped nearby. Coop had expected Lieutenant Azor. Instead he saw Kamala’s worn combat boots and faded blue jeans at the edge of his field of vision.

“All right if I sit here?”

Coop grunted and shrugged, not bothering to lift his head.

Kamala sat, back to the wall and looked straight ahead at the convenience store.

“That was seriously badass. I thought you were just some low-rent, spooky ‘borg, but you’re the real deal, aren’t you?”

Coop shrugged again.

“I’m trying to pay you a compliment, man. You probably saved our lives.”

Coop nodded. Without gear, the refugees stood much less of a chance traveling through the wilds of Gaia IV.

“Just doing my duty.” Coop cringed at his own corniness.

“Duty?” Kamala scoffed. “You a soldier boy? I didn’t think they made soldiers like you.”

Coop would have bit his tongue if he could. He shook his head. “I just mean... I’m good at precisely one thing. If I can use that to help folks who need it... well, then, good.”

Kamala snorted but nodded. “All right. Well, I just wanted to say I shouldn’t have been so hard on you and your girlfriend earlier. But it pays to be cautious, you know?”

Coop nodded and grunted.

“I’ll let you get back to... whatever it is you’re doing.” Kamala pushed himself to his feet with a grunt and a scrape and slouched off.

Coop’s HUD flashed a warning as it detected a blade up Kamala’s right sleeve. It marked him red, a hostile, but Coop switched it back to yellow. It was impressive Kamala had managed to keep the blade hidden from Coop’s HUD this far.

The sun set and the street lights flickered on, those still functioning. His HUD adjusted to low-light vision.

Another yellow dot approached. This time it was Lieutenant Azor. She stopped in front of him. Coop took his forehead off the butt of his sword to look up at her. He rested the sword against his right shoulder. He was feeling better, but that blister against his left heel still throbbed. He pushed his heel into the pavement, trying get the sole of the boot to push against the blister, but it was no good.

“I smoothed things over with the Petersons.”

“Who?”

“Jack and Mary Peterson. They’re the ones leading this group.” Lieutenant Azor’s expression shifted, concerned.

“Ah.” Coop nodded. “Was there a problem?”

“They would have preferred to deal with those men less violently. I tried to point out they were literal highway robbers, that we stand little chance of success without gear, but they insisted they could have come to a peaceful solution.”

Coop grunted.

Lieutenant Azor nodded. “Agreed, sir.” Then she blushed. “I mean, uncle. Uncle Coop.” She sighed and cleared her throat. “Also there’s the situation with your sword. Making that man shrivel up… it was disconcerting. To them. I managed to convince them it must have been a Gaian disease. Makes more sense than…”

Coop didn’t respond.

“Anyway. Do you want to come inside? It supposed to get chilly tonight.”

“I don’t get cold.”

“Oh. Well, you don’t want to sleep out here, do you?”

“I don’t sleep either. I’ll recharge.” He nodded at the recharging station. It was meant for vehicles, but the port in his back could adjust to just about any connection.

“I see. I don’t suppose I could tempt you with bad coffee and human companionship?”

Coop chuckled. It was a nice feeling. “I cannot imbibe. The helmet doesn’t come off. All my energy comes from charging stations.”

Lieutenant Azor looked uncomfortable. “Right. I knew that. All right. Well. When you’re done charging, you’re welcome to come in anyway.”

“I appreciate that, Jennifer. Thank you.”

She went inside, and Coop turned his attention to the charging station. He was at 94%, which was likely plenty to fulfill the mission, but he liked to charge fully whenever he could.

The station was meant for recharging vehicles. There was no pod to support his body. For all that Coop disliked that the charging pod in his bunk casting him into disembodied ramblings, charging up while fully aware was achingly uncomfortable. Damn near painful.

He set his sword aside, took a charging cable from its hook and felt around his lower back for the port. The charging cable for vehicles was three or four centimeters wide, about twice as wide as the port in his back, but as he put the cable to the port, he felt the port iris open to accommodate. As soon as the cable touched his port, his whole body tensed, his fists clenched, his HUD fuzzed and glitched. His body went rigid as phantom sparks lanced up and down his limbs.

The power indicator in the corner of his vision glowed and filled at a steady rate. Coop focused on the numbers, trying not to grunt, wince, or flinch as the power flooded his system. He held out, still and stoic, until the indicator read 100%.

After charging, when the refugees making camp in the convenience store were still and sleeping, Coop plunged his sword into the chests of the remaining bodies. She preferred fresh blood, but didn’t say no to the offering. With the bodies drained and dry, he picked up the remains, mostly bones, and placed them outside the wall.

• • •

Coop stood well back from the door of the convenience store, watching from inside as a Redeye behemoth sniffed around the site of his fight with the guerillas in the light of pre-dawn. His HUD told him it was 04:52.

The Redeye behemoth was a large species of hexapod. This one was nearly seven meters tall at the shoulder, making it average for her species. Its great head bristled with rough, flexible whiskers, a pair of tusks arched down from its upper jaw, its nostrils flared. The behemoth had an extraordinarily sensitive nose, navigating the world largely through its sense of smell. Its small eyes were bright red, almost seeming to glow, which is why Dr. Ark had given them the name she had. Its hide was thick but flexible. The large, lumbering beast looked like it couldn’t maneuver well, but it was surprisingly adroit, especially for its size.

Coop’s HUD told him when one of the refugees arose and approached. It was Jack Peterson, surprisingly quiet for a big man with a factory series manufacturing robotic arm. His HUD marked Jack as hostile. Coop took a moment to mark Jack as “unique” in his HUD. The dot flickered and settled on yellow. It was a feature for marking team members. Coop seldom used it, but he was sick of his HUD seeing Jack as a threat just because of his cybernetic enhancement.

“I suppose even a guy like you couldn’t kill a beast like that,” Jack said, voice quiet.

Coop shrugged. “Its eyes are a notable weak point. The trouble is getting close.”

Jack cleared his throat. They stood together quietly, watching the beast nose the ground where Coop had killed the guerillas. It whuffed and snorted, sending dust and debris flying.

“You’re not a bouncer, are you?” Jack said.

Coop didn’t say anything. In his experience, allowing others to do the talking was easier, allowing them to come to the conclusion they wanted without input from him.

“I understand,” Jack continued. “We’re all just trying to survive. But the way you handled those men yesterday... I served a tour. I know a well-trained operative when I see one.”

Coop shifted. Jack could interpret it as a nod or a shrug or whatever.

“I guess what I’m saying is... thank you. My time in the military made me abhor violence, but Gaia is a violent world.”

“I’m not sure it is.” Coop winced at his own voice. He’d wanted to let Jack draw his own conclusions, but he also wanted to stand up for Gaia IV. “It’s a wild world. It operates on rules humans aren’t used to, for all that we’ve lived here for nearly a hundred and fifty years. Take this behemoth, for example. She’s hungry. She smells blood and is looking for breakfast. We’re in her territory, but so long as we stay in here, we’re not worth the trouble of eating. The beasts of Gaia IV are territorial, aggressive, and omnivorous. But they’re not violent, at least, not in a malicious way. They’re not mean.”

The behemoth lumbered down the street, further into the city.

Jack let out a breath. “We should get going soon. We’re supposed to meet the Gaia Beast today.”

“Today? That’s pretty quick.”

Jack nodded. “We got lucky that she’s nearby. My contact says we can meet the introduction team at 14:30 today, or thereabouts. I’ve got a point marked on my map, but GPS doesn’t work as well outside cities and established roads. I suppose you know that already.” He held up his tablet for emphasis.

Coop nodded. “Let’s give the behemoth a little more time to wander on, just to be safe.”

• • •

The trudge through the woods wasn’t much different than the trudge through the city. Coop let his HUD observe and map their surroundings, set his body to plod, and tried not to let the tedium get to him. Jack led their weary band, frequently referring to his tablet. They had plenty of time to get to the meeting point, but like Jack had said, being outside human-made infrastructure, traversing the wilds, was always difficult and frequently dangerous. Even if Jack’s tablet could get a steady signal, there was the fact that most of the wilds hadn’t been definitively mapped and frequently changed thanks to oftentimes volatile weather.

Lieutenant Azor walked next to him. She didn’t bother trying to talk to him. He was grateful that he wouldn’t be expected to keep up a conversation.

They took several breaks. Coop would have preferred they not take any because every time they stopped whatever part of his body had decided it ached today would throb and he’d have no goal or movement to distract him.

When they took their second break at 07:23, it was a cramp high on his right side, where his upper right arm and lower right arm met. Coop’s torso was, proportionally, longer than a regular human’s. His upper arms were positioned in the expected way, but his lower arms were positioned slightly behind, giving him a collection of joints in his back no else had. The cramp was between the shoulder of his lower right arm and the armpit of his upper right arm.

He stood a little away from the group and did his best to stretch it out. It would have helped, he thought, to know what his skeletal structure was, whether or not he had actual muscles, but the armor of his Mk. 009 body resisted medical examination. He didn’t know how to go about stretching that unique part of his anatomy, so it was always a bit of an awkward experiment, raising and lowering limbs.

“Uncle Coop?”

Coop straightened and tried not to look embarrassed. Lieutenant Azor stood nearby, not quite at attention.

“Jessica.” He’d have cleared his throat if he could.

“Is something wrong?”

Coop shook his head. “It’s just a muscle cramp.”

Lieutenant Azor cocked her head. “I... a what? I thought your body was...” She trailed off and blushed, looking embarrassed. “Can’t you run a diagnostic? Your onboard computer should know if there’s a problem, right?”

Coop focused on his HUD and directed a full-body diagnostic. A diagram of his body appeared in yellow light in his vision. Nothing was noted as damaged, incorrect, or in any way problematic.

“It says I’m fine.”

“But you’re not,” said Lieutenant Azor.

Coop stared at her. He’d never told anyone about the aches and pains of being trapped in the Mk. 009. It was the most advanced suit of power armor ever designed and made him the greatest warrior in the UPSF. But Lieutenant Azor’s look made him squirm.

“It’s just a cramp.”

She shook her head. “Commander...” She looked around, but no one seemed to have heard. “Uncle Coop, I’ve read your file. I know that the only part of your body to survive is your brain.”

Coop put his lower hands behind his back and crossed his upper arms. The ache in his shoulders spread to his neck and threatened a headache. Now that she’d said it, Coop had the inkling he’d known that, but forgotten.

“And if you can’t feel the cold, I wonder how you can feel a muscle cramp. Wouldn’t it just... show up in your diagnostic?”

Coop had no answer, so he said nothing.

“I wonder if you’re having a psychosomatic reaction—“

“Enough.” He kept his voice pitched low. Lieutenant Azor stiffened but did not salute. “You’re my lawyer, not my doctor, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Coop was surprised to find he appreciated her concern, but he didn’t know how to say it without inviting more conversation.

Jack called to the group. “Let’s wrap it up folks, we need to get going again.”

Coop winced. Shouting in the wilds was a good way to attract unwanted attention. He let his HUD stretch through the immediate surroundings. So far, it hadn’t detected anything but avens, insects, and tree mammals, none of which were big enough to pose a threat to a group their size. Coop hoped the presence of a Redeye behemoth had scared off anything else big enough to qualify as a threat.

“I did have another question if I could, um, Uncle.”

Coop strode toward the rest of the group. Lieutenant Azor followed.

“Sure,” said Coop.

“Will charging be a problem out here? I doubt there are any recharging stations in the wilds. Or on the Gaia Beast.”

“I doubt it. My body holds a charge for two weeks at full activity, a couple months if I take it easy. If we’re at the turtle by the end of the day, that’ll give me plenty of time to take care of Daddy and order an extraction.”

“Right. Good to know.”

They took a break again at 8:12, 9:32, 10:57, and 12:03. Coop tried not to let his irritation show, a benefit of having a faceplate rather than an actual face.

• • •

They reached the meeting point with just over an hour to spare. Jack called a halt and shared the news. There was ragged but enthusiastic applause. Coop winced. But he couldn’t deny a flicker of elation. They’d achieved their goal with no more trouble than blistered heels and unnecessary rest breaks. The group spread out, rations were shared, blankets were spread and the refugees of Conway City relaxed like a spring stretched too far too long.

Allowing the sensors of his cybernetic armor to pick up information and feed it to his HUD was a passive activity. Coop examined their surroundings.

The trees this deep in the forest were massive and stood tens of meters apart. Their branches spread like crossbeams, supporting a canopy of leaves and needles that provided a biome for small avens mammals, lizards and insects to thrive. Because of the trees, it was difficult to see landmarks. There was no sign to Coop’s senses that a giant turtle was less than an hour away.

After a few minutes, Coop realized it was too quiet.

He gripped his sword in alarm and cast his gaze around the clearing. His passive sensors could pick up all sorts of stimuli, but they tended to miss a lack of stimuli. The arboreal ecosystem of the woods should have been alive with chitters and chirps, growls and squawks, flutters and scampers. But other than the refugees, it was silent.

“Uncle Coop? You look... on edge.” Lieutenant Azor said. “More so. Than usual.”

“We’re being hunted.” He glanced at his power indicator. 99%.

“There’s nothing—“

“Now!” Coop snapped. “Jack! Everyone rally at Jack.”

The refugees looked at him, startled form their impromptu revels. Even Lieutenant Azor seemed taken aback.

Jack stood from where he sat against a tree. “Something wrong?”

The canopy shivered and shook around them. Trees groaned. Coop engaged the claws over his upper fists, the sound of their emergence a quick, grating scrape, and pulled his sword from her sheath. He held the blade in a low, two-handed stance with his lower hands, his upper arms spread wide.

A beast dropped from the canopy, a great gorilla-like creature with shaggy, matted fur and a protruding, tusked snout. It was a hulking brute, even in its hunched stance, and the fists of both hands and feet were so thickly callused as to be studded with stone. It was a Rocknuckle gorillanoid, a hyper aggressive beast that traveled in packs.

The beast landed next to a young pair of refugees, startling them, pulling a scream from the young man. And before anyone could react, it backhanded the young man across the clearing, grabbed the young woman, and leapt back into the canopy. Her screams cut off abruptly and Coop knew the Rocknuckle gorillanoid would feast.

Both neutral yellow dots representing the couple flickered out in Coop’s HUD.

“To Jack!” he shouted again, and made good on his command by running for the man who lead the refugees. Jack stood with his wife at the base of one of the large trees. Lieutenant Azor came with him. Only a few of the others hurried for the pair. Everyone else remained frozen in stunned panic.

Another of the beasts dropped from the canopy, right on top of a lone man. The man crumpled, twitched, and died, his yellow dot blinking out in Coop’s HUD. Before Coop could even think of changing course and engaging the beast, it grabbed the broken body and leapt back into the canopy.

Coop cursed General Ashpholt’s name for insisting he leave all his firearms at the base. The hide of a Rocknuckle gorillanoid was thick enough to be proof against most slugs, but the shredder slugs would have at least bloodied the beasts. As it was, if none of them were within sword’s reach, he was useless against them.

With shouts and screams, the rest of the refugees finally scrambled to follow Coop’s command. On the one hand, grouping the refugees in one spot might make it easier for the beasts to surround them. On the other, it would put any beast that attacked within easier reach of Coop.

With one thought, he cast his gaze into the canopy, letting his HUD sense the movement of the thick tangle of leaves and branches, trying to calculate where the next beast would drop. With another, he prepped his jumpack, the bladder of the Kitewing condor inflating within his torso.

There wasn’t time to let his HUD plot a jump course. When the next Rocknuckle gorillanoid dropped from the canopy, reaching for a knot of fleeing people, Coop leapt at a shallow angle, bringing the sword forward.

Her song soared, resonating in his mind like a vibrating crystal, bringing his computer-enhanced senses into sharp relief.

Coop barreled into the beast like bit of reckless scattershot. He struck with his claws, and though they found some purchase, the thick, matted fur of the beast was surprisingly effective armor. Nevertheless, the claws held tight, allowing him to stay attached to the beast even as it staggered back from his blow, even as it tried to throw him free.

He plunged his sword tip-first where the beast’s neck met its shoulder, past the clavicle. He remembered a bit of Dr. Ark’s notes, that its ribcage was like iron mesh. Even so, Coop had yet to find the material his sword could not breach. He let her song shiver through him as she drank greedily at the blood of the beast.

As it staggered and shriveled and fell to the forest floor, Coop looked around at more shouts from the refugees. He found Jack at the fore of the group, bracing against the ground, using his mechanical arm to grapple with another gorillanoid. And with their only other combatant so occupied, Coop’s HUD recognized a scattering of the beasts preparing to drop at their flanks, picking off distracted stragglers.

He tried to pull the sword from her victim, but she wasn’t finished and would not be swayed. She preferred beast blood over human. There was a variety to it, and she’d never tasted Rocknukcle gorillanoid.

The refugee group was about to be hit on its flanks, and without his firearms he was out of range. He considered the biological weapons he could spray from the nozzles of his underwrists, but they tended to splash and the gorillanoids would be close to the refugees. Even so, he prepped them as a last resource. He selected the saliva of the Icespitter mink as it froze more than it splashed.

He cursed Ashpholt again.

The first of the flanking gorillanoids dropped from the canopy. Coop pulled hard again. She was nearly finished, the desiccated corpse beginning to crumble, but she shivered in a kind of growl, a warning.

And yet she budged.

Coop could not run near as fast as a jumpack would carry him, but the jumpack was still cooling down. He couldn’t activate it again for another 23 seconds, which would be far too late. To spray it with ice, he would have to fire across the group. He could not stop the beast from killing another refugee.

Instead, he focused on where the second and third would fall.

He released the sword with one hand to point his underwrist where he expected the second to drop.

A gunshot cracked at his concentration, his HUD screamed a warning, flagging a refugee red. Kamala had Scorpion-class pistol in hand, a weapon Coop’s HUD hadn’t detected. Kamala held the light weapon in two hands, stance wide, like a cop at a shooting range. The Scorpion only carried basic slugs. They’d barely penetrate a gorillianoid’s fur, much less skin and bones. But he’d drawn the attention of the first to drop and the beast, unexpectedly, staggered.

Coop scrabbled for his focus.

His HUD told him the next gorillanoid was about to drop. The nozzles were prepped and he finally pulled the sword free of her victim with his left as he pointed the nozzle on the underwrist of his right. As the beast landed, he doused it in mink saliva, which crackled and cracked, its mist turning to hail droplets pinging to the forest floor. The beast was frozen where it stood. Rocknuckle gorillanoids ran hot, and the freezing cold might not kill it, but surely it would suffocate before the saliva thawed.

More of the girllanoids dropped from the canopy. Kamala continued to fire careful, precise shots. The gorillanoid he’d first targeted slumped to its backside and Coops HUD put a sickly green halo upon it, indicated it had been poisoned. Perhaps the illness that had tinged Kamala’s skin purple had also made him venomous. Illness of Gaia IV did that sometimes.

Coop’s HUD told him his jumpack was prepped. It hadn’t completed a trajectory calculation, so he knew his jump would be imprecise, nonetheless he engaged it and launched himself in a low arc at the beast Jack was losing a wrestling match to. He swung with the sword and her edge bit at the beast’s forelimb, just below the elbow, taking it clean off. He crashed into it at an angle and caromed in the general direction he’d meant, to intercept where the next gorillanoid, his HUD predicted would drop. He grazed Jack with his shoulder and hoped he hadn’t hit the man too hard, then tumbled ass over crown into the frozen gorillanoid, breaking through the frozen mass with a shattering like thick glass and frozen hamburger.

The predicted gorillanoid dropped on top of him.

His HUD fritzed and fuzzed and flashed a deep, angry red. He’d been hurt. His vision slipped and swam but he could see he was flat on his back, gorillanoid atop him, rocknuckled fists raised to crush him.

Coop took a full moment to focus his thoughts to initiate the telekinetic shield of the Quietgaze simian. He felt it flicker into being just before the beast’s fists struck. The field shattered in motes of violet like delicate petals before a typhoon.

His HUD flashed red again.

The Cypress Power Armor Mk. 009 was a sophisticated blend of computerized machine and Gaian beast parts. It was enormously durable. But it would not stand up against too many more blows like that.

The beast raised its fists again.

Coop brought his sword to bear, resting that thick, barbed, cross-hatched pommel firm against where his breastbone would have been. The exoskeleton of the Armored mantis was much more durable than any human breastbone and he hoped it would be proof against the coming blow. He wrapped all four hands around the handle of the sword. He would have closed his eyes had he the option. Instead, he could only watch as the beast brought its fists down again in a full bodied swing and, in so doing, its chest within reach of the tip of her blade.

She twisted as she slid between the meshed ribcage of the gorillanoid, finding the path of least resistance through the muscles of its chest, seeking its heart, a furious drumbeat promising thick, wild, hot blood. The twisting was enough to rip her from his grasp, her barbed handle tearing from the behemoth-hide palms of his gloves.

The beast reared back when it realized it’d been pierced, aborting its blow, catching him only a glancing strike. It roared, plucking at the blade, but she worked her way deeper, and Coop knew from her song when she found its heart.

It was a struggle to get to his feet. He could hear his sword humming gently as she drank. With a staggering gait, he made his way to the fore of the group of refugees, now packed tightly behind Jack, collective back to one of the massive trees.

He looked about, letting his HUD take stock even as it tried to force his body to rest and heal. The only gorillanoids it could find were poisoned, injured, dead, or dying. They’d lost seven refugees. From a military point of view, the losses were acceptable against so formidable a foe, but they stung.

Coop had only a moment’s warning before another gorillanoid dropped from the canopy. Its body was thickly muscled. Its fur was so thickly matted as to resembled ironage scalemail. The knuckles of its forehands were craggy and tore the ground as she galumphed toward him. Coop knew, from Dr. Ark’s studies, that sexual dimorphism amongst Rocknuckle gorillanoids was subtle at best, but that the females who grew old grew far larger than the males.

And she was massive.

Coop stood up straight and spread his arms wide to make himself look as big as possible, knowing he was dwarfed by her. He took the moment necessary to engage his telekinetic shield, but it flickered in his HUD and failed. He’d have to wait for his armor to heal before he had access to it again.

She stopped short, bent to face him, and whuffed: a sort of snort, a sort of question.

“We don’t want a fight,” Coop said, hoping she’d take his meaning.

She hooted, deep and grumbling. He thought maybe she was laughing at him. Coop knew he wasn’t up to any more fighting and was fairly certain she knew it too. But her pack had suffered losses, so maybe she’d leave them be and seek weaker prey.

The gorillanoid cocked her head, flared her nostrils, and looked just faintly to the side. Coop’s HUD detected a faint tremble in the earth, a slow, plodding rhythm. Footsteps, he realized, and hoped it was the turtle they were waiting for.

The gorillanoid narrowed her eyes.

Then, faster than his overtaxed HUD could respond to, she backhanded him, her rocknuckles cracking against his armor, and sent him flying into the bole of the nearest tree.