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Escape Hatch

I

The mass of alien tentacles writhed over the side of the Earth Planetary Navy destroyer. When the Far Horizon’s Admiral Bruce Haldane saw the vicious things crash onto the deck and scatter in all directions, he knew the battle was lost. There was no stopping the swarm of Sluggos.

Rough seas rocked the destroyer, but the grim crew who manned the guns against the worm-things were not worried about getting seasick.

The enormous cluster of alien creatures also attacked from beneath the surface, hammering the Far Horizon’s armored hull. The thunderous clang was even louder than the explosive artillery. How could something so soft and squishy sound so loud? he wondered, then stalked along the deck, a weapon in each hand as he shot the swarming slugs. Each creature exploded with a disgusting splat of oozing protoplasm. The ship’s crew were running up and down the open deck, wading through smashed Sluggos, but the things kept coming from below.

Unstoppable.

Each alien was the length and thickness of Haldane’s forearm, looking like a beige banana slug with teeth. The Sluggos combined and moved in concert, wrapping their wormlike bodies together to form a larger organism. Thousands of Sluggos braided into a giant tentacle that rose up from the rough seas to wrap around the destroyer, and then dissolved into countless ravenous components again. The Sluggos squirmed forward, mouths chomping. They were blind, but they were hungry, and there were so many of them that the doomed crew had no place to hide.

Admiral Haldane was grim, but he drove back his panic. As their leader, he had to focus on the fight. His crew was yelling, some clearly fearful because they had just begun to realize they were all going to die. They didn’t have an escape hatch. Knowing he could give his all and still live to fight another day let Haldane concentrate on the crisis and do what was necessary, without being crippled by fear of his own mortality.

“Keep shooting! By God, there’s no shortage of targets!”

The lower decks had been infested, and evacuating sailors had come out into the open. One of the nearby seamen, his dungarees splotched with yellow-green ichor and bright red blood, fired his sidearm until it was empty, then snatched another still-hot weapon from the hands of a dying seaman on the deck. The wounded seaman’s abdomen had been ripped open, and his guts spilled out like another swarm of Sluggos. Without pause, the desperate seaman continued firing, each bullet exploding one—or more—of the squirming aliens.

“Aye, sir. It’s not a shortage of targets we’re worried about, Admiral,” he shouted over his shoulder. “It’s running out of ammo.”

Haldane kept firing his own sidearm, not even making a dent in the invasion. He shouted back, hoping he sounded encouraging, “According to the weapons locker manifest, we should have ten thousand rounds aboard the Far Horizon.” The number sounded impressive, objectively, but not in comparison to the million hungry Sluggos swarming over the destroyer. He had opened the armory and distributed weapons as widely and as swiftly as possible, to the Marines as well as to any other sailor with fingers and thumbs.

Everyone aboard would be alien food before long. Haldane felt sorry for them, but he’d make sure they got a nice memorial ceremony back in La Diego.

After humanity had ventured away from Earth and set up fledgling colonies on the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt, nobody ever guessed that an alien invasion would target Earth’s oceans. The invaders had landed in the Pacific, emerged from their interstellar spaceships, and began swarming through the seas.

The slimy creatures moved like a gigantic school of fish, thousands of separate pieces that formed a sentient community organism—an incomprehensible alien creature that managed to build starships, travel across space, to plunge into Earth’s oceans, where they reproduced at a furious pace—whether by fission, or breeding, or eggs, no one knew—and swiftly became a terrible hazard.

They attacked ships, sinking commercial freighters, cruise liners, fishing vessels. The Earth Planetary Navy was little more than a token force, peacekeepers and emergency responders. It had been a long time since battle fleets went on a full-scale war footing. Now, the EPN went on the hunt, combing the waters in search of the enemy.

Sonar could detect the large clusters of Sluggos, which then vanished with each pulse and re-formed elsewhere. Admiral Haldane had already led two preliminary engagements, each one disastrous. He was about to make it three for three.

Reaching this point in the South Pacific, the suspected location of the original Sluggo starships, the Far Horizon had dropped dozens of depth pulsers hoping to destroy the underwater alien base. The explosions had been wonderful, creating rooster-tails of water like massive geysers. The shock waves should have ruined any Sluggo structures on the ocean floor.

The excitement was short-lived, though. The individual aliens had combined into a monstrous body, countless squirming components adding together like cells. Then the community organism rose up like the most twisted nightmare of any sailors’ legend and attacked the Far Horizon.

The shapeless beast shifted and rearranged its bodily blueprint, first engulfing the destroyer with tentacles and then smashing onto the deck in a huge flat mass like a manta, which then dissolved into an overwhelming slimy army of individual Sluggos that could attack—and devour.

Constant gunfire continued to ring out, and even ten thousand rounds didn’t last very long. When the crew ran out of ammo, they used metal pipes, tools, even small storage pods to smash the things. Someone had rigged a flamethrower and jetted fire that fried the wormlike aliens. When their protoplasm boiled, they exploded, but the Sluggos did not feel pain or fear, and more of them came forward. One young seaman thrashed as a dozen of the worm-things chewed into the meat of his thighs and calves, then tunneled through his chest. He kept screaming until one crawled down his throat.

Other seamen had better luck with fire extinguishers, driving the Sluggos away, briefly, but there was no place to hide. Each extinguisher ran out within minutes, and the crew used the empty tanks to smash more Sluggos.

“Turn the heavy-caliber guns down,” Haldane yelled. “Fire into the water!”

“But, sir, that’ll do nothing!”

“It’ll make some big explosions,” he shouted back. That was something at least.

At central fire control, weapons officers tilted the large-bore guns down, and the guns roared, but even the heavy shells did little more than stir up the Sluggos in the water. In response, a huge pseudopod composed of braided Sluggos lurched up, wavered in the air just long enough for Haldane to estimate the tens of thousands of hungry creatures that comprised it, then it dissociated in midair, creating a rain of hungry Sluggos that fell onto the Far Horizon.

Haldane had found shelter under the bridge wing, but he watched the crew get slaughtered. He had emptied both of his sidearms and he had no other defenses but his bare hands and his bootheels. The squirming aliens came at him like an unstoppable invertebrate tide.…

No one in the EPN had had more direct experience with the Sluggos than Admiral Bruce Haldane. He had studied their movements firsthand in three engagements now, seen how they attacked. He made mental notes. Even though he didn’t understand what he saw, his knowledge was irreplaceable. If Earth was going to win this war against the undersea invasion, he had to survive.

The overburdened destroyer was groaning, listing to starboard, clearly taking on water from belowdecks. The pounding Sluggos had chewed and torn through the lower hull and were even now swarming through the breach, infesting the ship even faster than seawater could fill it. Damage control crews had been devoured as they rushed to respond. The destroyer was going down.

As he backed against the bulkhead, he watched hundreds of Sluggos burst through the hatches, huge maggots writhing up the ladders and spilling onto the deck. Even with the din of gunfire, explosions, and shouts, Haldane could hear them moving around in the compartments below, feasting.

Then they came toward him.

Most of the Far Horizon’s crew had been slaughtered already, but Haldane stood straight and proud, facing the alien enemy. He owed it to the brave men and women who perished here. He would stay until the very last as the hordes of fleshy bodies and chewing mouths squirmed toward him. He kicked at the Sluggos, but more and more came.

The admiral raised his voice and announced to anyone left on deck who might be able to hear him, “I want to thank you all for your service. Your lives will not be lost in vain.”

As the Sluggos swarmed over him, Haldane reached behind his head and hit the transfer pendant embedded at the base of his skull. His escape hatch.

He was going to miss this body, which had served him well for the past six weeks, but he gave little thought to the volunteer seaman who would transfer with him at the last moment. If Admiral Haldane timed it right, the volunteer would feel only a few seconds of pain as the Sluggos devoured him.

It was what the volunteer had signed up for. He was just cannon fodder, and he had played the odds. Haldane couldn’t even remember his name. Now it was time for the man to do his duty so that the valuable, experienced naval admiral could live to fight another day.

Haldane felt the alien jaws rip into his flesh. The pain was horrific, and he was glad to be out of that body.

II

When Paulson Kenz picked up his mail, he expected to find bills, junk mailers, delinquent notices on his student loan, even another eviction threat because his low-paying job didn’t earn him enough to pay the rent and eat both in the same week.

The urgent draft notice, however, was far worse than any stack of bills or legal notices.

Paulson stared at the official envelope for a long time. Some of his friends in equally dire financial straits had talked about joining the military, but in the same distant way that they might talk about travelling to the Moon or signing up for a stint at one of the asteroid colonies.

Paulson knew he wasn’t military material by any stretch of the imagination. A recruitment officer should take one look at his scrawny figure and muscles that could at best be described as “bookish,” and laugh out loud before telling him to find a job as an accountant or librarian.

But libraries weren’t hiring these days, and Paulson had no aptitude for accounting. With the increasing attacks by the alien Sluggos, however, the Earth Planetary Navy wasn’t so picky.

His dismissive parents always told Paulson he was going nowhere, and now he had arrived—at nowhere. But now, as he held the EPN summons in his hand, he felt a chill. He would much rather be going nowhere than into the planetary navy. Only the most desperate of military forces would take a bottom-of-the-barrel recruit like him, and if the EPN was that desperate then the human race was in dire straits indeed.

Retreating into his small apartment, he thought about calling his friends or his parents, but he didn’t think his voice was stable enough for conversation. The draft notice allowed for no appeal. He needed to think about this, but the more Paulson considered his fate, the more terrified he became. He had been aware of the horrific alien invaders that attacked helpless vessels in the Pacific, but since he lived in a farming city in the Midwest, with little local industry, automated agriculture, nothing to attract tourists, and very few job prospects, Paulson hadn’t paid much attention to the Sluggos.

The notice commanded him to report to the training facility at the La Diego Naval Yards within three days.

The draft summons was legally binding and intimidating. The fine print said that any prior employment or contractual obligations were henceforth superseded. Payments and debts would be put on hold until the end of his EPN service.

Paulson read pages of instructions, a list of what to pack, and a helpful pamphlet on ways to prepare for this “exciting new phase” of his life. He fixated on a paragraph that advised him in the strongest possible terms to prepare a detailed Last Will and Testament before departing for the training facility. “Don’t leave your family and loved ones with estate entanglements. Do the last brave thing in the event that you are unable to return home. A sailor in the Earth Planetary Navy must be prepared.”

“I’ll be prepared to die at sea,” Paulson muttered. He didn’t even know how to swim, but he supposed that wouldn’t matter. If he fell overboard into a sea roiling with voracious Sluggos, treading water wasn’t going to be much help.

Sitting alone in his apartment, glad that he had managed to get the power turned back on, he activated his entertainment and information screens to watch the news, which suddenly seemed relevant to him. A terrible nautical engagement and complete defeat had just occurred five hundred miles off the coast of Hawaii. Paulson felt physically ill as he saw the frantic jittery footage of creatures that seemed to be equal parts teeth and slime. The Sluggos swarmed across the deck of the destroyer that had engaged the alien infestation. Crewmen snarling, yelling in pain, sprays of blood, a tentacle the size of a redwood tree crashing down onto the Far Horizon, collapsing the bridge deck and communication mast and cutting off the transmission.

On the report, a tall young man with haunted-looking eyes wore a pristine white officer’s uniform, his chest bedecked with so many medals and decorations that he had trouble standing up straight. He stood at a podium addressing hundreds of uniformed sailors who stood at attention. Hundreds of media reporters directed their imagers in the officer’s direction.

“I am Admiral Bruce Haldane,” he said, “and I recently survived the Far Horizon engagement. I’ve faced the Sluggos three times now, and I’ve watched them destroy brave sailors, wreck civilian ships as well as military vessels. I am convinced there can be no negotiating with these creatures.”

Paulson thought he seemed arrogant.

“With my experience and insights, I promise to do my best to develop an effective strategy to defeat these alien monsters. No more sailors need to shed blood into the sea. I am humbled by the sacrifice of all those who died on the Far Horizon, as well as the volunteer who formerly inhabited this body.” Haldane touched his own shoulders and chest, as if to reassure himself of where and who he was. “That man gave his life so I could stand before you today and vow my revenge against the aliens. Thanks to him, I can lead the EPN’s retaliatory strike and wipe out those squirming bastards once and for all!”

Admiral Haldane raised a fist, but his movements were jerky and uncertain, as if he hadn’t quite adjusted to his new body. It seemed to fit him like a stiff pair of new boots.

The crowd cheered regardless, and the media imagers captured the drawn and determined expressions on the sailors’ faces as they vowed to avenge their fallen comrades.

Looking at the crowd of EPN seamen, Paulson could not picture himself as one of them, no matter what the draft notice said. He felt as if he had swallowed a hand grenade, and it was still in his stomach, ticking down the last few seconds. He couldn’t run, couldn’t escape the summons. He was DNA imprinted, and he had been chosen by a flawed lottery system: no exceptions. And he certainly couldn’t argue that he was too valuable in civilian life.

He liked to read and ponder but had never found the ambition to acquire a philosophy degree (which, in itself, would not have led to a lucrative career). He was healthy enough, but only due to biological good fortune; he wasn’t overweight, thanks to a natural metabolism. But he was sweating now, as if he had just run a marathon. Paulson didn’t have many loose ends to tie up in his life, because he didn’t have much of a life.

He had to figure out some way to get to the La Diego base. Because budgets were tight, and all finances had to be devoted to constructing new Navy warships and weapons against the Sluggos, Paulson Kenz had to pay his own way to the last place on Earth he wanted to go.

The naval training center was aswarm with new recruits, herded about by junior officers as if they were a separated mass of Sluggos in human form. The chatter of conversation in the giant intake hangar was deafening; announcements over loudspeakers were garbled and incomprehensible. The background noise seemed to increase each time important instructions were given. Paulson expected this routine would have been more organized under normal times, but the EPN was undergoing quite an upheaval as they increased their ranks tenfold in response to the invasion.

Paulson stood among other recruits, some of them shiny-eyed and eager, jabbering with nervous enthusiasm. They pounded one another on the back, laughing and trying to outdo any braggadocio from their comrades. Paulson knew about such attitudes: patriotic young men and women ready to go off and kick some enemy butt. Most often that didn’t turn out as planned. Some came home in body bags, others were lost forever. And the ones who did return were haunted for the rest of their lives.

Oddly, with so many disorganized people and so much chaos, the bureaucratic machinery hummed smoothly. Everyone flashed ID access cards and passed through human inventory kiosks into gigantic hangars where lines queued up, snaking around pedestals. Personnel Specialists studied each person that flowed into the larger base.

Paulson was confused and anxious, but he followed the person ahead of him, and he listened to instructions. When yeoman ran a quick gaze over him, studied his ID chip, then sent him into corpsman scan lines, he cooperated. He tried to keep his expression meek (which wasn’t difficult at all). The intake officers studied the records displayed on their screens, narrowed their eyes, and frowned at him, then directed Paulson into a different line. Each time he met with more skepticism, was directed into a smaller line. He could tell he was being winnowed out.

They took blood samples and urine samples; they breathalyzed him; they performed a digital rectal examination, then a dental examination (mercifully changing gloves in between). They fitted a mesh hood around his scalp and took a brain scan. They gave him vision tests, and then they clucked at all the results.

One nurse who looked as if she had retired from a Valkyrie squad loomed over him, knitting her eyebrows together. She turned to the yeoman at her side and spoke loudly enough to be sure Paulson heard her, “I thought we hit the bottom of the barrel last week.”

“Sorry,” Paulson said. “If you’d like to excuse me from service, I’ll understand.”

The Valkyrie-nurse gave him such an intense glare that his scrotal sac shriveled to the size of a prune, even though he had already been thoroughly checked for hernias.

“No one’s excused,” she said. “If nothing else, you’ll do as cannon fodder.”

III

Day by day, Admiral Bruce Haldane was growing accustomed to the new body, and he certainly had no time to waste. Fortunately, the volunteer had kept himself in good shape. The body was adequate, with a good frame, well-toned muscles. He was even handsome, in a way. Haldane was growing accustomed to what he saw in the mirror. Instead of being startled, he took the time to study his features, the dark hair, heavy eyebrows, the boyish expression of an innocent young recruit who had seen little horror in his life. But Haldane’s eyes looked out from the face, and he had seen enough of war in the last few months.

Previously, his career had been soft and dull, but the Sluggos changed all that.

The volunteer’s name had been Aaron Shelty, a seaman-apprentice who seemed a perfectly reasonable recruit for the Earth Planetary Navy, but he must have been a coward, because he refused to sign up for actual combat duty. Too many people have grown as soft as the Sluggos, Haldane thought.

After the mind transfer, Haldane had glanced through Shelty’s dossier, looking at his grades, his performance in basic training. Everything seemed normal. Haldane couldn’t understand why the man would sign up as cannon fodder. Shelty had left behind a fiancée, but she was young and pretty; she would find someone else before long. Shelty had parents and a sister, and they would all receive a compassionate and carefully-worded letter thanking them for Mr. Shelty’s sacrifice aboard the Far Horizon. Haldane certainly appreciated the gesture, otherwise he would have died aboard the destroyer rather than his replacement.

It must have seemed like a good bargain when young Shelty had signed up for the program. The young man had gambled—whether through laziness or cowardice Haldane didn’t know—that nothing would happen to Admiral Haldane. And the gamble had backfired on Shelty.

But Haldane benefited, and therefore the EPN benefited, and therefore the human race benefited. The admiral was alive, and he still had his expertise. The Earth Navy could count on him.

Yes, he was glad for Aaron Shelty’s sacrifice, but was that sacrifice any more dramatic or extraordinary than that of all those seamen who had died, devoured or crushed under the onslaught of the alien slugs? Haldane didn’t think so. Every person needed to do his or her duty, and Haldane needed to do his, even if it meant he had to swap bodies at the last minute and let the old body die on the battlefield. The war depended on him, and so it was worth the hassle.

Haldane looked in the mirror again, ran his fingers through the dark hair, made different expressions as he practiced the movement of his facial muscles. Yes, this body would do. Maybe he’d even pay a visit to Shelty’s pretty fiancée. Now wouldn’t that be a surprise!

But he didn’t have time for that. There was a war on. After all the alien creatures were wiped out, however …

Unless something terrible happened again to him on the battlefield.

This time, the shock of the body transfer hadn’t been as dramatic as when his original body was killed, when he’d been forced in that awful last second of indecision to push the transfer button on the implanted pendant, to give up his actual physical form, the one that had emerged from his mother’s womb, the one he’d lived with all his life. But during the explosions, the firefight, and the horrific swarming Sluggos, after watching so many uniformed men and women torn to pieces around him, the decision hadn’t been so difficult after all.

New body, same old job. He was back at EPN Headquarters in the La Diego main base, briefing world leaders, requesting new ships, more armaments, more depth pulsers, and an expanded fleet to attack the Sluggos.

As he drove in that morning, two Marines had tried to stop him at the outer gate. Though he had a new ID, the system had not updated his fingerprints, photographs, and DNA scans. Haldane made three increasingly angry calls until revised credentials were transmitted back to the guard shack.

After the Far Horizon tragedy, he had delivered his grand speech in this new body. Didn’t they recognize him? Everyone on Earth should have seen the images of how the destroyer had been torn apart and sunk, all hands lost. How could these Marines not recognize Admiral Haldane’s new body? He hated to be reminded that he wasn’t as famous as he believed himself to be. Earth itself was under attack! Why wasn’t every human being glued to their media and entertainment screens? Didn’t they know that the fate of their planet was at stake?

After the fiasco at the guard shack, he finally made it to his office. As he entered, he still met the questioning stares, the double-takes from his staff as they tried to readjust to his new appearance. The admiral’s uniform had been altered, but the rank insignia and nameplate were transferred over, same as before. Haldane was still himself, with his demeanor, his facial expressions. They would have to get used to it.

He sat behind his large desk and called up the day’s intel reports of aerial flyovers and deep-water scans. His chief of staff, Ms. Tenn, entered the office and stood before his desk, running her eyes up and down his face and uniform. “I have your calendar, sir. If there’s anything you need, please let me know.”

“I need concentration time to reassess these images. Is there full documentation regarding new intel on the Sluggos? I need to plan our next strategy. There’s some piece missing, and because I have the most experience, I’m the one to find it.”

“It’s all here, sir.” Tenn leaned over the desk to activate Haldane’s screen, calling up the messages he needed and spreading them out so he could sort and review them in whatever order he chose.

She brought him his usual bitter black coffee, but when he took a sip, it tasted strange. “Are you using a different blend, Lieutenant? Or does the brewer need cleaning?”

“No, Admiral. Same as always.”

“Taste it.”

He pushed the cup toward her, and she dutifully took a sip. “Tastes awful, sir, just like always.”

Haldane shook his head. “Must be these new taste buds. Bring me a variety of coffees, lattes, cappuccinos, espressos. I need to sample them until I find one that tastes right on Aaron Shelty’s tongue. Can’t do my work without caffeine.”

“Certainly, Admiral.” She departed.

Haldane took another gulp of the bitter brew, struggled to swallow it, then pushed the cup away. That wouldn’t do at all, and the inconvenience was troublesome. He’d have to compile a more detailed dossier about the next volunteer waiting in the wings. Shelty had passed all the required tests and his brain scan had been a match for Haldane’s, but no one had thought to ask about his favorite foods or drinks. The admiral made a note of that.

On the screen, he called up the new messages. The Sluggos were damned difficult to locate under the water, but they were such a huge mass, millions of them writhing together, spreading out, moving like a gigantic school of fish. Each time sonar bursts tried to pinpoint the location of the main mass, the swarm faded away and reappeared elsewhere. As soon as the mass of Sluggos was spotted, attack aircraft would drop explosives, which would kill a lot of fish and individual Sluggos—thus the military scientists had plenty of specimens, but very few answers. Even after the most horrendous explosions, though, the main Sluggo body would reappear and continue to attack.

All the EPN efforts thus far had only pissed off the squirming invaders, but Haldane wasn’t going to use that as an excuse to relent. Even ineffective explosions were far superior—from a PR standpoint if nothing else—to letting the Sluggos do whatever they liked. The aliens had not proven to be good neighbors.

As humans expanded into the solar system, no one found any evidence of ancient Martian races or prehistoric Venusians, no Selenites under the craters of the Moon, no civilizations under the ice sheets of Europa, no bizarre creatures drifting among the asteroids.

No one knew where the Sluggos came from. Their ships were detected at the edge of the solar system by bored teams of asteroid mappers, but no one noticed their speed or incoming trajectory until the invaders had almost reached Earth orbit. Though the human military scrambled, the metallic teardrop ships hammered into the atmosphere like shotgun pellets and plunged into the Pacific Ocean.

Ships were dispatched to the area to see if they could find wreckage of the alien vessels, while news pundits demanded rescue efforts. Subs and diving bells went down to the crashed ships to save the benevolent alien visitors before they drowned. (Even then, Admiral Haldane knew it was a brash notion to assume that any alien visitor would breathe air instead of water.)

Considering the size of the alien ships, they should have been easy to find even in the deep water, but sonar detected nothing. The vessels seemed to have vaporized on impact.

The first attack struck a far-ranging Japanese whaler, the Dragon Pearl. The terrified crew transmitted images and distress signals, wailing for help as squirming conglomerate tentacles rose out of the water to smash the decks. After the initial horror subsided, Haldane thought that the scenes reminded him of a clip from a bad low-budget Japanese giant monster movie, some horrific rubber behemoth rising from the sea to toss about a toy model of a boat.

But the destruction of the Dragon Pearl was real, the Sluggos were real, and the alien mass had attacked other cargo ships, an oil tanker (causing great consternation among environmentalists who insisted that the resultant spill was a greater threat to Earth than the alien invasion), and even a large cruise ship—all passengers and crew slaughtered on formal night. Recovered surveillance cameras showed frantic, swanky passengers trying to flee in their fancy tuxedos or slinky cocktail gowns and high heels.

Admiral Haldane had led the first unsuccessful responses against the aliens, embarrassed because he couldn’t even find the Sluggos. When he finally did locate the enemy, they had destroyed his ship, killed his crew, and forced him to evacuate into a different body.

But he was the first one to notice that the Sluggos were pulling some equipment down into the water after destroying the ships, as if they meant to use the components, metals, antennae, even some of the weapons pieces.

The Far Horizon had been the Earth Planetary Navy’s most heavily armed destroyer, and that too had been utterly destroyed, but Haldane did not feel defeated. He was back again in a new body, and he would continue to fight—although if he continued to die during engagements against the enemy, it would look bad on his record.

Ms. Tenn returned carrying a tray with seven cups of various coffee drinks. “I brought you a variety of options, sir. One of these should do.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said, then had a horrible thought. “God, I hope Shelty wasn’t a tea drinker.” He decided to be methodical about his testing. He closed all the records displayed on his screen. He would review them later.

Haldane fingered the implanted pendant at the base of his skull. Sooner or later he would go out on another brutal engagement. He couldn’t put this off. “Ms. Tenn, I want you to go through recruiting records so we can prepare for the worst-case scenario. This body is certainly adequate, but there’s no telling what might happen to me. Find me a new volunteer.”

IV

Boot camp was hell—and Paulson meant that literally, as well as figuratively. (Yes, he did know the proper usage of the term.)

Throughout his life, Paulson was always the last person picked for any team sports activity. He played a good game of archaic chess, but no one considered that a “sport,” despite his protestations. Any activity that required coordination, speed, strength, or other physical prowess was not his forte. He had done a good job as a statistician, however. When he suggested that he be considered for such a role in the EPN, the training officer simply scowled at Paulson as if he were a form of nematode even lower than the Sluggos.

Because the alien invasion was now of immediate relevance to him, Paulson wanted to spend every spare minute scouring information about the alien invaders infesting Earth’s oceans, but that plan quickly went out the porthole. All day long, the training officer tortured the recruits, forced them to do appalling exercises, tested their endurance. He did his best to kill every single trainee through exhaustion, screaming muscles, and cardiac failure before they had a chance to confront their first Sluggo.

Paulson struggled to memorize the rank system of the Earth Planetary Navy—no, EPN called it a rating system, just to make it more confusing, he supposed. He struggled to understand who outranked (or was it outrated?) whom. As a practical matter, it made no difference, since as a seaman-recruit, Paulson Kenz was lower than absolutely everyone. Even among the trainees who had been inducted on the same day, Paulson’s performance set him apart—and beneath them all.

Inside the gigantic hangars, the recruits marched in ranks, drilling like robots, following nonsensical orders—moving back and forth, side to side, and around in circles, as if that sort of regimented pageantry would impress the alien hordes.

Paulson was in the lowest pay grade, but had no opportunity to spend what he earned. He was too sore, too exhausted, and too miserable to read in the evenings. He felt nauseated, so he couldn’t even eat the ill-seasoned chow they fed recruits. It seemed a sort of irony—perhaps intentional, perhaps a coincidence—that they had to eat seafood for every meal. Paulson plunged a fork into his fish sticks with a vengeance, as if attacking a surrogate Sluggo.

His fellow recruits sat together, growling as they watched footage of the carnivorous slug creatures massacring Earth Navy ships. Some of the pale recruits whimpered in terror and recorded desperate messages for their sweethearts, but Paulson was simply too weary, wrung-out, and broken. He didn’t know how he would get through another day.

If he ever did face a mass of Sluggos, he would be too bruised, battered, and weary even to lift a sidearm.

The next day was worse, and so was the day after that. The training officer was trying to toughen them up. The recruits practiced in the shooting range, trying to bull’s-eye holographic Sluggos and receiving points for each kill. Paulson proved to be a poor marksman in every respect, although his score improved when they gave him scattershot guns. Paulson fired so many pellets in so many directions that he couldn’t help but hit some of the aliens.

“You’re lucky,” the training officer said. “If the Sluggos attack, there’ll be so many of them even you’ll be able to cause some damage.”

Paulson shuddered. Yes, that made him feel very lucky indeed.

Some of the recruits called the storm tank fun—the psychopathic recruits, as far as Paulson was concerned. The training tank simulated a storm-swept sea, cold churning waves complete with whitecaps. The recruits were thrown into the tank and told to struggle their way to a rescue buoy. Once they reached the buoy, they had to key in a safety code and solve some sort of puzzle before they could be retrieved from the freezing water and blowing winds.

Paulson could barely keep himself above the surface, flailing his hands, going under, inhaling water and then coughing it up. Simulated rain splashed his face so he couldn’t see, but he felt stinging ice crystals. He shivered uncontrollably. He kicked his feet and tried to swim, but his sodden uniform was heavy and dragged him down. He could make out the other sailors reaching the rescue buoy, completing their tasks, and being yanked out by hover slings. Paulson couldn’t do it, though. He went under, struggled back to the surface for a deep breath, and saw that he was drifting farther from the buoy. Even if he made it, he certainly couldn’t remember the safety code. At the moment, he couldn’t even remember his name.

He drowned during the exercise, one of three failures in the group.

But they revived him, and Paulson rolled over onto his hands and knees, retching onto the deck. He was still wet, freezing, miserable. All his muscles ached. His mouth tasted like vomit and seawater.

The training officer stood there, arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head. “Even a turd knows how to float. You’re dumber than a turd. A complete and utter disgrace.”

Paulson wasn’t going to argue. He sucked a lungful of air and croaked, “I wouldn’t want to do anything halfway, Sarge. Glad I’m not only a partial disgrace.”

The training officer was not amused. On his pad he called up Paulson’s records, then frowned to spot a fresh set of urgent high-priority orders.

“I’m just not cut out to be a seaman, sir,” Paulson said.

The training officer roared, “Don’t call me ‘sir’! You don’t deserve to call me ‘sir,’ turd!”

“Sorry,” Paulson said. “It’s all so confusing.”

The training officer turned the pad around, showing Paulson’s brain scan and a high-priority request from Admiral Bruce Haldane himself. “You see that, turd? You’re a match—for better or worse, though I don’t know why the admiral would accept someone like you. I can’t force this decision on you, but I can offer to transfer you.”

“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t, turd. You don’t need to know. But here’s something you actually can do—I suggest you take it.”

When he met Admiral Haldane, Paulson recognized the man who had delivered the speech honoring the sacrifice of those who had lost their lives on the Far Horizon. In earlier media glimpses, Paulson had also seen images of Admiral Haldane’s previous incarnation. This new version seemed younger, taller, less salty, but the hard expression was the same, as was the swagger of his movements … and of course the nameplate on his chest beneath all the medals.

Haldane did not seem to be impressed. “You’re the volunteer.”

“Seaman-recruit Paulson Kenz, sir.” He saluted, then hesitated, considered his words, and realized that ‘sir’ was indeed appropriate in this circumstance.

“You realize what you’re being asked to do, seaman?”

“No, sir. No one’s briefed me at all.”

Haldane shot a glare at his chief of staff, a female officer who stood looking as prim as a mannequin in a department store window. “Sorry, Admiral, he must have slipped through the cracks. Seaman Kenz, you are being offered a chance to be Admiral Haldane’s next alternate-in-waiting. We would like to install an interchange conduit at the base of your skull, which is linked to an identical one in the admiral’s head.”

Haldane turned, showed Paulson the implanted disc at the base of his skull.

“The admiral has a great deal of direct experience and innate knowledge about our enemy, about the tactics used by and against them. Such knowledge cannot be lost, nor can it be replaced. Therefore, the Earth Planetary Navy has developed extraordinary measures to preserve that brain trust—and you will help us do it.”

“You mean, I’m going to become cannon fodder?” Paulson said.

“That is an inaccurate term,” Haldane said. “The Sluggos don’t use cannons.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Paulson asked. “If you get in trouble, then I’ll die, right?”

“That’s a big ‘if,’ seaman. Until recently, I lived my entire life without dying, and I’ve learned a great deal with each successive engagement against the enemy. I believe we come closer to finding the key to their ultimate defeat with each encounter.”

“In the meantime,” Tenn interrupted, “you will be excused from any dangerous duty, any further training, any military drills. You’ll have a comfortable existence. You’ll be given quarters, food, and very few responsibilities. It’s a cushy job, Seaman Kenz. You wait to be called up and hope you won’t be. If you agree to be the admiral’s alternate-in-waiting, then that will be your only duty for the duration of your contracted service.”

Haldane seemed annoyed at the situation. “In other words, you just sit around and read or play games, although you’re expected to keep yourself in shape.” He raised his arms, flexed his muscles. “The previous owner of this body did a good job, and we’ll count on the same from you. Are you willing to take the gamble? You’re my escape hatch so I can live to fight another day.” He paused, added a greater threat to his tone. “Your other alternative is to go back to boot camp and be put on the next ship, where you’ll face an engagement of the Sluggos. In person.”

Paulson swallowed hard. He’d seen the images of the Far Horizon massacre, listened to the howling crew, saw the chomping teeth of the Sluggos. He had watched how the aliens moved in eerie concert, forming a gigantic organism that was far more ferocious than the sum of its parts.

The decision wasn’t hard for him.

“I accept, sir. It’s a gamble, but it’s really my only option. If I get out there facing those things as me, I know I won’t survive.” Paulson fingered the back of his head, felt the smooth hardness of his skull. He supposed the surgery was going to hurt. “I’ll take my chances with you.”

V

It came from beneath the sea.

The next time the mass of Sluggos appeared, they did not prey upon navy ships patrolling the open seas; rather, the new conglomerate monster rose up out of Pearl Harbor and attacked land for the first time.

Tour boats and naval patrol ships spotted the incoming surge, but no one understood what was happening at first. Hundreds of thousands of Sluggos swam in individually like the world’s entire population of eels meeting in Hawaii for a convention. The arm-length creatures glided in under the surface, choking the channels, filling the harbor.

Tourist boats were buffeted by the swarms of soft shapes with sharp teeth. Naval destroyers, missile cruisers, fast frigates, and even a huge old battleship were brought to bear. General Quarters sounded and the crew raced to their stations. The dockyards were put on high alert.

The squirming wormlike things choked the harbor, but that was just a start. The Sluggo bodies coalesced, braiding together, building up like pieces in a gigantic wriggly mosaic sculpture—until a huge and hideous monster rose out of the sea.

Rushing down to the harbor from his satellite headquarters office, Admiral Haldane screamed for fishing boats and salvage cutters to string nets that would stop the numerous individual Sluggos from joining one another, but it was too late. The things became a gigantic mound of squirming flesh, as if a mad artist had made a nightmare sculpture out of living maggots. The Sluggo mass extruded pseudopods and began smashing any vessel in the harbor.

Admiral Haldane had been sent to Oahu, not for a tropical vacation but to organize the EPN Pacific Fleet’s plan to dispatch numerous search-and-destroy subs that would find the Sluggos. Unfortunately, the alien monsters decided to be found right there on the Earth Navy’s doorstep.

Pearl Harbor was full of navy ships, tourist boats, and cargo barges hauling goods in lightweight crates for launch at the Honolulu Spaceport. Like a child playing with toys in a bathtub, the conglomerate Sluggo monster crawled over vessels and pushed them under the water, crushing their hulls and sinking them. Other pseudopods snatched desirable equipment and whisked it away beneath the surface.

Admiral Haldane dispatched fighter jets loaded with missiles. As the giant monster hulked its way on top of the floating museum battleships and onto shore, the roaring jets launched missiles that blasted the huge monster, dispersing it into countless squirming Sluggos that sprayed in all directions. But the monstrous mass shuffled and reorganized itself somewhere else, heading toward the rocket launch area of the spaceport.

Haldane didn’t like this one bit. “Let’s try napalm. We must have some left over.”

Tenn called up summaries on her datapad. “None of the new formula is weaponized yet, sir, but there may be some old leftovers in storage.”

“Never let anything go to waste,” Haldane said. “We might as well use it up.”

“There’s plenty of fuel spilled on the water from all those damaged ships, sir. Igniting that could be effective as well.”

“Good idea. Let’s do both.”

The EPN battleships launched huge sprays of missiles, and the sky became a messy finger-painting of smoke, mostly from damaged structures, exploding naval ships, even one crashed jet when the Sluggo-beast had thrashed an unexpectedly whip-thin and long tentacle into the air to snatch and crush the plane, before hurling it onto the deck of a snorkeling cruise boat just being loaded with a senior citizens’ tour group.

The Sluggos moved like an enormous blob, rising up to capsize cutters. Large-caliber artillery guns hammered away at the mass, destroying thousands of individual Sluggos, but the overall monster did not seem affected.

“Open the weapons lockers,” Haldane yelled. “Distribute weapons to anyone who won’t turn and run. Rifles, shrapnel pulsers, peashooters—I don’t care.”

“We may have a shortage of peashooters sir,” Tenn said.

“That was a joke, Lieutenant.”

“Very funny, sir.”

Haldane thought this might be a war of attrition: humanity just needed to kill off enough of the individual Sluggos, which were easily destroyed. But the supply of squirming aliens seemed inexhaustible.

Out in the harbor, a group of sailors were making a last stand with rifles and hand grenades. No one could understand how all those little maggot things could work together to create a single massive and apparently intelligent organism. They kept tearing apart ships, stealing components. Haldane knew the aliens had built starships that had carried them to Earth from some other solar system.

But how did these silly little worms know what to do when they were linked together? A million humans certainly couldn’t cooperate like that. Often it was hard to get three people to agree.

More light bombers roared overhead, dropping explosives, including cannisters of old napalm. The intensely hot flames from the jellied gasoline crisped the outer layers of squirming worms. They blackened and fell away, but new Sluggos boiled up to take their places. More and more Sluggos streamed into the harbor from the open sea, adding themselves to the monster’s bulky conglomerate body. Even after so many individual aliens were destroyed, the overall bulk swelled.

The pseudopods extended outward, moving the mass away from the naval ships to the reserved spaceport area. The Sluggos snatched tall gantries and pulled rocket shuttles and girder structures down off the launch pads. The squirming creatures dragged those components into the water of the harbor.

Haldane shouted orders because he was expected to, but no one could hear him in the deafening noise. The oddest part was that the giant alien monster moved in silence. It simply created havoc without adding any extraterrestrial commentary.

Haldane considered calling in a nuclear strike. Oahu was beautiful, but there were other islands in the Pacific. And if it took such an extreme measure to get rid of the Sluggos once and for all, despite the loss of the entire population, including himself …

He had grown fond of his new body from Aaron Shelty and didn’t want to use the escape hatch too soon, especially now that he had seen the alternative-in-waiting, the scrawny slip of a man named Paulson Kenz. But Haldane couldn’t think of himself at a time like this.

The tentacles broke the keel of an aircraft carrier that had entered the harbor, and that was enough to force Haldane’s decision. He was really getting upset now. Yes, he had to call in a nuclear strike for the good of humanity.

Before he could issue the order, though, a slimy tentacle burst out of the water right at the shore’s edge and swept all of them aside, including Admiral Haldane. He found himself flying through the air, flailing. Another series of explosions roared nearby.

He shouldn’t have waited! He grabbed for the back of his head, trying to find the transfer pendant. Others were sailing through the air near him, screaming, bloody, broken.

There! He found the pendant. Emergency transfer with the volunteer—

But then Haldane slammed into the side of a boat house, splintering the shingles. The pain was brief, the unconsciousness swift.

This time, he doubted he would live to fight another day.…

He awoke in the medevac hovercopter along with a dozen other broken and bleeding casualties. Haldane felt as if someone had made kindling of his ribs and spine. A corpsman hunched over him, poking and prodding until he got the proper response to his question of “Does that hurt?” Other doctors tended the wounded.

“I see by your insignia that you’re an admiral,” said the corpsman.

“I am, dammit!” As much blood came out as words. He could tell this was bad. He tried to lift his hands, but his arms were strapped down. “Help me. I’m Admiral Bruce Haldane. I need to activate my exchange pendant.”

“Sorry, sir, I can’t let you move. There could be internal damage.”

Haldane was appalled. The corpsman didn’t understand what was going on here. “I don’t care about my injuries! Before I die, I need to transfer.” He began coughing again and felt the warm blood on his lips.

“Good news for you, then, sir—you’re not going to die. Just rest easy. You suffered some broken ribs, a shattered clavicle, probably a severe concussion. But our deep scans show no obvious internal bleeding. We just want to be careful.”

“So I’m going to … recover?” Haldane said. That shouldn’t have been disappointing.

“Looks like it. We’ll patch you up.” The corpsman looked shell-shocked; his expression was gray. “You’re one of the lucky ones. Over fifty percent fatality rate from the monster attack. They’ll be a long time counting up the casualties. I think …” He shook his head. “… I think Pearl Harbor is gone. Half of Honolulu is gone. Fires are raging. The Sluggos sank most of our fleet, destroyed the spaceport, then they withdrew.”

“Is there any good news?” Haldane asked.

“I just told it to you. The Sluggos departed, slithering back into the ocean. That’s the best news you’ll hear.”

“Oh.”

“That, and the fact that you’re going to live. Should be enough good news for the day, right, sir?”

The corpsman shot him full of sedative. As he sank down, Admiral Haldane knew he would be a long-time healing, which was upsetting. Thankfully he could keep this body, even though it was going to hurt like hell when he woke up. At least he wouldn’t be a 90-pound weakling.

VI

Even with the tension that was always in the back of Paulson’s mind, his daily duties here—as in, no useful duties whatsoever, only busy work so the EPN could feel confident in their investment—certainly beat basic training. Instead of being aboard a ship hunting for voracious alien monsters, his duty station was a giant rec room.

The surgery to install the transfer pendant was as unpleasant as he’d feared: having a hole drilled in the back of his head, a sensor plug and transmitter installed with a million self-seeking wires plunging into his brain, where it found the core of personality and memories. The exchange conduit would tear out, record, and transmit everything that was Paulson Kenz, then re-upload the very being of Admiral Bruce Haldane—in the event that circumstances warranted it. Paulson kept his fingers crossed and hoped.

Paulson had healed up after the quick coagulant slather, and the pain meds had been nice until they ran out (budget cuts, with all the best stuff reserved for any EPN soldiers wounded in combat).

There were fifteen other volunteers inside the guarded recreation hall. They were forced to remain in the La Diego base, but it wasn’t so bad. All fifteen of them had the exchange conduit installed in their heads, tethered to other command officers or political leaders who were deemed too valuable to lose.

Two volunteers played ping-pong, but neither was very good at it. One man, who had already put on fifteen pounds, placed orders from the galley and ate all day long. Paulson knew the food was not at all tasty, but at least the quantity was comforting. Just this afternoon, though, a dietician had come in, to take control over the man’s eating habits, and advise (as well as enforce) nutritious meals. “You are required to take care of your body,” the dietician said in a decidedly threatening voice, “in case it should be needed.”

The volunteers seemed to have a free ride, but they were obligated to take care of themselves. Although they, as individuals, weren’t important, their bodies were considered vital to planetary defense, and the navy had made a considerable investment in them. Some volunteers took the task seriously and worked out in the fitness center, lifting weights, jogging on the treadmill. Paulson did the required calisthenics, but he had never seen the purpose in picking up heavy things and putting them back down again, or running on a piece of equipment that went nowhere.

He remembered how his parents had told him he was going nowhere, that he spent too much time reading, paying little attention to practical things. They had been right, according to their own definitions. Now, they were probably proud of him for being a part of the brave Earth Planetary Navy. If he were called upon to provide the mortal escape hatch for Admiral Haldane, they would be pleased as punch to tell their neighbors about how their good-for-nothing son had become a war hero.

Paulson didn’t feel particularly brave. Any heroic end on his part would be completely out of his hands. Most of his fellow volunteers had resigned themselves to an imminent and unpleasant demise, grabbing as much life as they could in the meantime, playing games, horsing around, sleeping in. Several had written up a petition demanding access to a military-approved escort service, and that request was currently working its way up the chain of command.

Paulson was the only one who cared about the war against the Sluggos, and about increasing his chances for survival, as well as the rest of humanity’s, in a worst-case scenario. Because he was cerebrally paired with Admiral Haldane, he requested access to the briefings on the invasion and records of prior Sluggo attacks, in hopes of teasing out any vulnerabilities. He studied news reports, although the most detailed, and most gruesome, footage was missing.

He requested additional intel, including the full classified reports, but since he was just a seaman-recruit, with the lowest possible security clearance, his request was summarily denied. So he submitted an appeal, documenting that he was the functional physical equivalent of Admiral Haldane, that his body—and therefore the structure of his brain—would be used by the leader of the Earth Planetary Navy. Therefore, any information might be beneficial, should the admiral be forced to swap bodies with him. Paulson also pointed out that if the admiral ever did activate the transfer protocol, Paulson himself would be rapidly devoured by aliens, and therefore all secrets would be safe.

The yeoman, who was harried and overworked, didn’t entirely understand the nuances of the argument, but rather than risk annoying the real Admiral Haldane, he bumped the request up the chain. Somehow, it got approved. Accidentally, Paulson supposed.

In the rec hall/prison, he spent hours poring over the records, watching the movements of the Sluggos through the water during the rare times they were tracked. But whenever sonar rigs tried to track the large conglomeration, the entire mass vanished like a puff of smoke. Maybe they just dissociated into a million little worms again, invisible to sonar traces.

The EPN knew about where the alien invaders lived beneath the Pacific, a broad, general area where their starships must have landed. Supposedly, that was where their base might be.

He studied biological reports of the creatures. Many Sluggo specimens had been dissected, individual nematode-like things that had very little physical structure. Each Sluggo was just a sac with a few rudimentary organs, a digestive system, and a mouth with sharp teeth, but no eyes or other obvious sensory apparatus, not even a brain, just a small nerve cluster.

It made no sense that these things could combine into some gigantic entity that obviously had a structure and a purpose and was presumably intelligent. The Sluggos used tools, they built machinery, constructed spacecraft, and flew interstellar distances. Not bad for a bunch of hungry worms.

In the specimen tanks or dissection trays, they didn’t look any more sophisticated than extraterrestrial leeches. When Sluggos moved en masse in the water, they looked like a gigantic school of fish, somehow moving with one mind. He shook his head.

Then the pendant at the base of his skull began to tingle.

The rec hall around him fuzzed. The ringing in his ears grew as loud as church bells, and he wavered. Other volunteers in the rec hall looked up, sensing something amiss.

“It’s happening!”

This was too soon! He wasn’t ready. No one had even told him Admiral Haldane was going out to fight with the Sluggos. It would have been nice to have a little more warning.

He felt as if his soul were rushing down a wind tunnel. He left his body, yelling—but without making any sound.

And when he woke up he was somewhere else, inside a different body. And he screamed in agony. He felt shattered bones, torn muscles, a bashed head, nerves that clamored about all the bodily damage. He tried to open his eyes, but he was surrounded by white blurs, moving faces. Doctors? If he was going to die, he wished he could at least stomp on one or two Sluggos first.

Then the pain was too much, and he faded into unconsciousness.

He awoke to find his own face staring down at him.

Paulson recognized himself, saw the body at the bedside—am I really that scrawny?—but realized that the eyes were different. Then the pain hit him again, so he wished he hadn’t woken up. The agony was somewhat diminished from before, and he was a little foggier. He could feel painkillers like slimy, wet velvet working through his mind and body, but he could also feel the physical damage. He knew this body was mangled.

This wasn’t his body in the first place … so many things didn’t feel right. Meanwhile, Paulson watched his own body pacing back and forth in the infirmary room, studying the medical equipment and monitors that provided a discordant symphony of bleeps. His own face turned toward him, and in all his life of looking at himself in a mirror, he had never seen his expression show such disapproval before.

And his reflected image had never talked back to him, either. “Good to see that you’re awake. I need to explain the situation, and then be off to a briefing.” His voice sounded funny.

Paulson croaked in a rough voice, “You’re not dead.” This had to be Admiral Haldane. The vocal cords weren’t his own, and the tone sounded wrong in his head. His throat was sore—he must have been yelling or screaming before the swap.

“I was badly injured during the battle of Pearl Harbor. I thought I was a goner there for a while, and I almost used the transfer during the worst part, but I got walloped before I had the chance.”

Paulson’s body shrugged. Admiral Haldane touched his new shoulders, felt the bones there, encircled his wrist with thumb and forefinger. He clucked. “You really need to take better care of yourself, Kenz. Put on a few pounds, preferably muscle.”

“I’ll leave that up to you now, sir,” Paulson said.

“This transfer is just temporary while that body heals,” Haldane retorted. “The doctors said I was going to live, but the recovery would be hard and painful. I don’t have time for that bullshit—there’s a war on. And then I thought, what do I have you for? Now, you just lie there and heal. It’s the least you can do in service to your country and your planet.”

Haldane leaned over the infirmary bed and prodded the bandages in Paulson’s side. Paulson gasped, nearly fainted from the rush of pain that exploded through him. Haldane continued. “A few broken ribs, lots of bruises, stitches in a half-dozen places. Oh, and they removed your spleen, but you can do without that. When was the last time you used your spleen?”

“Never noticed it before, sir,” Paulson said, trying to be stoic.

“The medics are pumping you full of accelerated cell growth. Your body’s got so many bruises all over that your skin has natural camouflage. But that’ll heal. The bones will heal. The physical therapy is going to be rough, but you can handle it. I don’t have time—I have meetings.”

Paulson lay back and just felt the aches piled upon aches. He had dreaded being called upon to transfer with the admiral, but this, he supposed, was the best realistic scenario. He was still alive. He could lie here and recover in the admiral’s place, as he asked.

And whenever the fuzzy painkillers wore off, maybe the EPN would even provide him with a reading library so he could catch up on some of the books he’d meant to read.

“Be quick about it healing,” Admiral Haldane said, before turning around. “I’ll want that body back again as soon as you’ve fixed it.”

VII

Something about the scrawny body of Paulson Kenz inspired disrespect despite the medals and rank insignia on the uniform. Kenz was bookish, shy, the sort of person who simply begged to have beach sand kicked in his face by a bully of even modest proportions.

The more days Admiral Haldane lived inside the other body, the more he noticed the subtle attitude shifts toward him.

When the admiral entered the La Diego base headquarters, he carried his revised ID and temporary access cards, with Paulson’s fingerprints and retina map transferred over to his diagnostics records. It was just a temporary situation, though, since he expected to swap back to his preferred body as soon as the damaged one was healed in sick bay.

Previously, Admiral Haldane’s very presence had inspired instant deference, but in Paulson’s body he had to work at it. As he marched down the passageway, a pair of junior officers strolled by, engrossed in conversation and paying little attention to him. Annoyed, Haldane placed himself directly in their path so that they were forced to look up and notice his insignia and name badge. They scrambled to give the proper salute accompanied by hasty apologies.

Haldane walked on, not entirely satisfied. War was all about sacrifices, he supposed. He could endure this one.

It wasn’t just the fact that he felt physically weak, that he grew winded after climbing only five flights of stairs, that simple acts such as opening a pickle jar or carrying a box of classified printouts to the shredder were more difficult. He didn’t like the way he looked when he took a shower, couldn’t imagine suavely trying to pick up a woman in a bar or, even more embarrassing, taking her home where he would have to make bedroom excuses: “This isn’t really my natural body. My normal endowment is much more impressive.” He could already imagine the seen-it-all-before looks of skepticism.…

He was still trying to get his office in order, breaking in a new chief of staff, since his adjutant Ms. Tenn had been inconveniently killed during the Sluggo attack on Pearl Harbor. Her death had caused innumerable problems.

In his office, the interim replacement had brought him the morning coffee, a cinnamon cappuccino which, after thorough testing, was what Haldane and Ms. Tenn had determined best suited his Aaron Shelty taste buds. He gave a grunt of thanks and sipped the coffee as he sat down—but it tasted awful. He had forgotten. Paulson Kenz’s body preferred something else entirely. Haldane growled in his throat and drank the cinnamon cappuccino anyway, forcing it down because he simply didn’t want to bother to get it done right.

He had work to do and a world to save.

The morning’s reports made the day seem much brighter. He studied the new images and grinned, then he immediately called together his highest-level advisors.

The briefing room was full of high-ranking EPN officers, prominent politicians, and even businessmen in charge of massive amounts of funding—all the important people who could make the proper decisions without the delay of red tape. The secure conference room felt like a cave; the original design had been to evoke the comfortable camaraderie of an exclusive gentlemen’s club.

“Gentlemen,” Haldane said, before nodding toward the lone female in the room, “and ma’am. We have wonderful and fascinating intelligence—our reconnaissance has finally borne fruit!” In his ears, Kenz’s voice sounded squeaky.

The lights in the briefing room dimmed further as he displayed images on the wall screens.

“With the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Sluggos showed their real intent. They are going to infest our oceans, then swallow up our islands, then devour our coastlines. Who knows, they may even chew canals wide enough to bring them all the way to Kansas. And as you well know”—he narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze across them—“we have no naval bases in Kansas.”

He saw the determined faces around the room nodding gravely. An unnamed man in a business suit folded his hands and leaned forward. “You’ve already convinced us, Admiral. No one disputes the magnitude of the alien threat. Our shipyards and weapons factories, our naval construction operations have been blossoming like weeds. Just tell us what you can do, and we’ll give you everything you need.”

Haldane smiled. Throughout his EPN career, his ideas had been met with reluctance and resistance, thanks to narrow-minded individuals and the web of red tape they spun. Now, Admiral Haldane had everything he could possibly ask for. All he had to do was ask. Even in his scrawny body, these advisors looked to him, respected him, understood the weight of experience and wisdom he brought to these discussions.

Among the inner circle gathered here, he knew that at least six of them had transfer circuits implanted, because they were deemed to be powerful and influential enough to be classed as irreplaceable. They had their own escape hatch volunteers.

“I have faced the Sluggos several times in person, at the cost of two previous bodies and damage to a third. I’ve looked them in the eyes … well, at least in the slimy membranes. I have watched men and women die all around me, and I’ve felt myself die. I know what it’s like. I was aboard the Far Horizon until its last moments. I was there at Pearl Harbor. And I’ll be there again at our final engagement.”

He changed the images on the screens to show blurry sonar readings. “After the attack on Hawaii, the Sluggos withdrew with many vital spaceport components, dragging them beneath the sea. We’ve been trying to find their secret base. A fleet of fast mapping survey ships cruised over the surface, covering thousands of square miles of open sea. They were ready to map every inch of the damned Pacific if they needed to. And this is what they found.”

He zoomed in. The sonar trace showed the gigantic mass of Sluggos that had formed the conglomerate monster. The echo was bigger than a hundred giant squids as it moved along the ocean floor. The first image of the huge alien mass was sharp, the second was fuzzed and blurry.

“With the third sonar ping,” Haldane continued, “the Sluggo mass had vanished—as usual. But this time it’s different, because we found where those creatures go to bed.”

The sonar trace showed the ocean floor, a low-resolution image that nevertheless revealed a city of permanent undersea structures, a hodgepodge assembled from wreckage the creatures had stolen.

“Knowing where to look, we dropped off submersible microcameras, self-guiding imagers that dove down to the coordinates. They were small enough to remain unnoticed—for a time.”

Haldane displayed crisp video feeds as the submersible cameras dove to where the invaders had built their submerged fortress. At such a depth, the water was dark and murky; activating bright lights to penetrate the gloom, the microcameras revealed bizarre free-form sculptures, towers and domes that were welded together with mud and coral. The structures incorporated the wreckage of ship hulls, including the bridge tower of the Far Horizon, along with sunken wrecks dragged hundreds of miles from Oahu.

The buildings themselves, however, seemed to squirm. As the microcameras flitted closer, they revealed that the walls were also built out of Sluggos. The wormlike creatures piled up like soft flexible bricks, many of them dead, others dissolving and oozing into organic cement. Gantry structures stolen from the Honolulu spaceport served as frameworks, and individual Sluggos crawled up the girders, wrapping around them like putty.

“Unfortunately, the lights the cameras used to obtain these images attracted attention,” Haldane said.

The images on the conference room screens switched to static one at a time. The last microcamera zoomed in on one of the eel-like creatures swimming toward it, its mouth gaping wide until it swallowed the camera, which valiantly transmitted a last few images of the alien digestive sac until the acid destroyed it.

Haldane crossed his arms over the many medals on his now-scrawny chest. “So there you have it, gentlemen.” He nodded to the woman again, “And ma’am. We pinpointed their base. We know where they’re lurking.” It felt good to grin. “We have a large expeditionary sub being converted into a battle vessel. It was originally designed to complete a full sonar map of the ocean floor, but now we have more important work for it.”

The man in the business suit nodded. “Ah, the Prospector. We funded that. One of our subsidiaries is developing domed underwater housing as condo time-shares, and we were going to lay claim to all that undeveloped real estate. We’re having trouble selling shares, thanks to the Sluggo infestation.”

Haldane nodded. “We know sonar does little good to track them, but we can arm the Prospector to the teeth. It’s got a reinforced hull and expanded magazines to accommodate more than fifty torpedoes. I’ll find a determined crew. We’ll be ready to make our final assault within a week. I intend to lead the expedition myself and blow the living slime out of those Sluggos!” He smiled. “If I have your permission.”

They gave him their exuberant approval, but the lone woman asked, “Why wait a week if we know where the Sluggos are now?”

“It’ll take that long to get ready, ma’am. We have to give this our best shot.”

Admiral Haldane had an ulterior motive. In a week, the infirmary would release his other body. Paulson Kenz had finished the basic healing process, and he was completing the final physical therapy schedules.

If he was going to defeat the alien invaders once and for all, Haldane certainly didn’t want to be wearing this scrawny body for the history books.

VIII

After all the snide comments and complaints Admiral Haldane had made about Paulson’s original weakling form, the young seaman-recruit wished the admiral had been more careful with this one. If Haldane hadn’t let himself get so smashed up or killed—twice in fact—then Paulson wouldn’t have to spend his days here in the infirmary being tortured by a Spanish Inquisition of physical therapists who used enhanced healing therapies and supercharged hormones that pummeled his muscles and bones until they knitted themselves together—or else.

The physical therapists had a bedside manner more appropriate for the Marquis de Sade than Florence Nightingale, and Paulson was very quickly convinced that he wanted to be released from their clutches as soon as possible. He longed to be back in the rec room hall again with nothing to do except study reports on the Sluggos.

Even here in sick bay, however, as soon as he grew strong enough, Paulson called up all available images of the Honolulu attack. Because so many vacationers spent time in Hawaii, most of the footage had been confiscated from homemade tourist videos. Paulson watched the rampaging conglomerate monster that had destroyed the ships in the harbor, the spaceport, the buildings on the shoreline.

He was more interested in poring over clips taken prior to the assembly of the Sluggo monster. He watched how the myriad organisms drew together like some kind of group mind, how the individual worm-things assembled into a much larger and adaptable body that reorganized itself according to circumstances. The Sluggo organism was clearly intelligent en masse, though the individual creatures showed only the most rudimentary brain activity. After the harbor attack and ransacking the ships and spaceport, some of the retreating Sluggos had maintained enough physical integrity to haul off the wreckage they desired, while the rest of the creatures dissolved like a mist of maggots.

Even if sonar couldn’t track the massed alien organism underwater, fast ships could have followed the sunken ships and the spaceport gantries as the Sluggos hauled them away. But with Pearl Harbor, the EPN base, the waterfront, and the spaceport destroyed, no one managed to think that far ahead.

Paulson walked on a treadmill, limbering up his legs. He still felt lingering broken-glass pain in his ribs and shoulder. His numerous bruises had turned an alarming bouquet of colors, but the flesh tone was returning. The therapists often studied his body, finding patterns and designs in the discolorations. One even exclaimed that he saw the face of the Virgin Mary there. Paulson thought he was joking, but the man’s voice held no sarcasm or humor whatsoever.

During the treadmill work, he sweated heavily and his pulse raced. He was ready to drop, but the therapists egged him on and threatened him. Paulson was surprised when they didn’t enhance his sessions with a bullwhip just to keep him moving. After weeks of physical therapy, he began to long for the days of boot camp, which had been miserable enough, but at least he’d been able to sleep at night.

On the other hand, if he hadn’t signed on to the escape hatch program, he would have been doomed to go out and fight the alien monsters. He probably would be a statistic from Pearl Harbor. In most ways, being dead was worse than physical therapy.

According to the doctors’ estimates, given additional enhanced jolts of healing chemicals, in a few days he would swap back into his own body and return to the rec hall with all the other transfer volunteers. And wait.

Admiral Haldane appeared in the therapy center just as Paulson stumbled off the treadmill and the therapists yanked the monitor electrodes from his scalp and chest.

The admiral regarded him with obvious impatience.

“Hurry up and finish healing, Seaman Kenz. The clock is ticking, and I want that body back. I’m due to head into battle again, and I’d rather face the Sluggos wearing that”—he jabbed a finger toward Paulson’s borrowed body—“than this.”

“Healing as fast as I can, sir.”

“He’ll be ready on time, Admiral,” said the physical therapist who had seen the Virgin Mary in his bruise patterns. “I’ll give him a double maximum dose tonight.”

Haldane seemed to consider Paulson as little more than a piece of equipment; he paid attention to the medical specialists instead. “And have you scheduled the cranial reset surgery yet?” He tapped the pendant on the back of his head—Paulson’s own head—and glanced at Paulson, who stood panting and sweating beside the treadmill.

“Cranial surgery again, sir?” Paulson said. “I didn’t agree to that.”

“Yes, you did,” Haldane said. “It’s in the fine print. The transfer conduit is set for one-way transmission only, one-time use. It has to be that way, if you think about it. After I evacuate from a critical last-stand situation, I can’t have my volunteer just hit the pendant again and reset.”

Paulson ran his fingers along the small disc on the back of his head. “So now that we’ve transferred, we can’t just switch back?”

“We’ll just pop out the device and put in another one,” said one of the medical techs. “Easy as replacing an eyeball. Piece of cake.”

“You’ll be happy to get your own body back, Seaman Kenz,” said Haldane, “and I’ll certainly be glad to have that one. We located the main undersea base where the Sluggos are building their fortress, and I’ll be taking an expeditionary sub there rigged as a battleship with plenty of megatorpedoes and missiles. It’ll be glorious!”

Paulson decided it was time to share what he had gleaned from his research on the aliens. “Sir, I’ve been studying the enemy behavior. The Sluggos seem to be a group organism, collectively intelligent but individually not much. The Sluggos are just like cells, bound together by some kind of telepathy. They cooperate, bond with synergy, and—”

“Yes, yes, very nice, Seaman Kenz,” said Haldane. “With all the megatorps loaded aboard the Prospector, we’ll blow the Sluggos to hell and level their undersea base. The ruins will be the next best tourist attraction since Atlantis.”

IX

They didn’t have time for a proper commissioning cruise aboard the Prospector. The crew would get accustomed to their battle sub, and he would get reacquainted with this body, by the time they reached the coordinates of the sunken alien base.

Admiral Haldane touched the sore spot in the back of his skull where the transfer conduit had been replaced. His freshly healed body still ached; he could feel the lingering remnants of bruises, and his bones twinged when he moved the wrong way. Nevertheless, it felt good to be out of that weakling form. These aches and pains were a good sort of hurt, like after a heavy workout. In the body of Paulson Kenz, his tired soreness just felt like hopeless surrender.

In the week since the discovery of the alien undersea base, the Sluggos had remained quiet, though aircraft and high-resolution satellites made several tentacle sightings.

Admiral Haldane was the EPN’s highest-ranking officer and he insisted on commanding this mission, but he had never served aboard a sub before, so he let the actual captain, XO, navigator, and weapons officer do their jobs without interference. Normally, an admiral with Haldane’s clout and experience would never have been risked on such a dangerous mission—and at least half the Prospector’s crew was convinced this would be a one-way trip. Admiral Haldane, though, intended to face the squirming enemy one last time. He wanted to see them all splattered into plankton-sized pieces.

The Prospector needed his background and experience during what was sure to be intense fighting. He knew the sub’s crew might panic at the wrong moment, so he had to lead them with his proven abilities. Besides, he always had his escape hatch.

During the long and tedious voyage, Haldane spent much of his time on the bridge, watching the screens. The navigator sent sonar bursts, but the waters remained clear. He called for numerous drills and targeting simulations, loading and unloading torpedoes. The admiral also worked out in the sub’s makeshift exercise area, limbering his restored body and working through the last aches and pains.

When the Prospector reached the coordinates of the Sluggo base, the sub, the crew, and Admiral Haldane’s body were ready for action.

“We’ll strike fast, and repeatedly,” he said over the horn from the command deck, glancing over at the captain and XO. “Like ninjas. One megatorp after another after another. You all saw the size of that monster that attacked Pearl Harbor. I’d say twenty megatorps should be sufficient, and that leaves thirty more to obliterate the base.” He waited for the resounding cheer, then glanced at the captain. “Captain, prepare your firing pattern.”

The captain snapped, “Weps, Fire Control, you have your orders.”

When they approached the target, the sonar technicians sent out pings to map the alien structures ahead. For an instant he saw a shadow of the monstrous conglomerate creature, but it disappeared by the time of the second burst.

In the blurred sonar images, he saw the huge alien structures, which seemed significantly larger than what the microcameras had recorded a week ago. Some of the towers appeared to be falling, the domes collapsing.

“That sonar resolution really sucks,” he said.

“We’re close enough that we can see with our own eyes, Admiral,” said the XO. “Lighting it up now.”

Haldane smiled with pride at the efficient crew. “Captain, I’ll turn operations over to you. Handle all the details, please.”

The sub’s brilliant lights stabbed into the deep, dark water, illuminating the bizarre alien fortress. Around them, the water was aswarm with millions of the squirming eels, but the gigantic conglomerate monster was not in sight. The dismantled ship hulls and spaceport gantries stood on the sea floor—and they were slowly toppling down. The base seemed to be falling apart by itself.

Everyone stared at the startling images, momentarily frozen. Haldane roared, “What are you waiting for? Fire control, launch megatorps!”

The crew had been tense and waiting, with hair-trigger fingers. The first megatorpedoes soared out like javelins on a tail of foam. The weapons crew was already loading the second volley even before the first had hit.

Haldane muttered to himself, “This is going to be good.”

The torpedoes arrowed straight on target and struck the Sluggo base with glorious detonations. Haldane caught his breath as bright shock waves blossomed like an explosive cluster of flowers. The sonar techs switched off their ears before the close-range blasts rang out, and thunder reverberated through the Prospector’s hull. Haldane was caught off guard, but the rest of the crew hunkered down at their stations. Fire control shouted a succession of orders.

As admiral, he wanted to be in control and direct all activity, but the others reacted so quickly without him, like a well-oiled machine. Within seconds, another volley of megatorps was away. This would be a constant punishing brawl, and the squirming aliens didn’t have a chance.

Explosions wrecked the undersea structures. The broken hulls and gantry frameworks were already toppling, but then he saw a flurry, as if the megatorps had startled a flock of carrion birds. Individual Sluggos boiled up from the patchwork structures by the thousands—tens of thousands.

Haldane realized that all those huddled invertebrates had been holding the base together, like living building blocks. Sluggos had covered the scrap components, but the explosions had stirred up all those creatures, which now abandoned the structures and swarmed toward the sub like angry hornets from hundreds of disturbed nests.

Contradictory orders echoed throughout the Prospector. Haldane intended to give some kind of brilliant insight that would allow the crew to make a wise and instantaneous response, but the best he could vocalize was, “Uh-oh. Keep firing megatorps.”

The weapons officer yelled, and the crew aft in the torpedo room kept frantically loading volley after volley into the launch tubes like a fire brigade. Explosions hammered the crumbling alien base, but the uncertain and scattered cloud of free-swimming Sluggos simply swirled around. Then the swarm came toward the sub like an angry school of fish.

“Keep firing!” Haldane yelled, as if the crew needed any encouragement.

Countless writhing shapes formed a cloud that congealed around the Prospector. The squirming bodies in the swarm wove together, fastening one body to another, and another conglomerate alien creature formed itself like a giant fist around the battle sub.

The last three megatorps launched but became caught in the thick amorphous mass. The detonations were like sledge hammers, pounding the Prospector’s hull, throwing the crew to the deck. Haldane lost his balance and slammed into a control station, knocking the sonar tech aside. He climbed to his feet, shaking his head. On the main screens, they saw all the water go dark as the mass closed in.

“All megatorps gone, sir,” said the captain. He looked sickened.

“Already? This is not possible!” Haldane said. “Fifty megatorps struck their targets! We destroyed the alien base!”

Nobody argued with him. The fire control and weapons officers knew the explosions had caused damage, but the huge squirming mass of Sluggos just reformed into a giant and powerful mass of angry flesh.

The Prospector groaned and shrieked as even the reinforced armor was bent beyond its tolerances. The intercom was filled with shouts.

“Watertight doors closing! Breach on Deck Five!” the XO yelled.

The battle sub lurched, and the deck tilted at an angle. The huge alien creature had grabbed the hull and was squeezing and shaking the Prospector as if it were nothing more than a toy.

“Another hull breach on Deck Three, Admiral,” the XO yelled. “Water’s coming in.”

“And so are the Sluggos!”

The Prospector’s captain gave him a beseeching look. “You’ve faced the Sluggos before, sir. In your experience, how should we fight off this thing? We need you to tell us.”

Haldane didn’t know, but he was aware that he had to escape. The sub would collapse any minute, and someone had to return with a full report to the main EPN base. Humanity would count on him to debrief his fellow admirals. With each engagement, Admiral Haldane learned more and more, and now he had to tell someone that even megatorps didn’t work.

“Even failed missions can be instructive,” he said, making sure he sounded brave. “But we have to keep fighting until the last possible second. Full ahead. Can we use our engines? Maybe we can break free of this slimy mass.”

The captain gave the order while shaking his head. The engineer yelled through the horn. “The Sluggos are caught in the propellers. This vessel is frozen and shut down, and our reactor’s at 110%. Any more of an overload and it’s going to go critical—fifteen minutes, max.”

Haldane thought fifteen minutes sounded highly optimistic. “If the reactor goes critical, maybe that’ll take out these things. We all have to be brave right now.” Their bravery, of course, would manifest differently from his own.

“Sluggos inside the sub!” yelled someone from the torpedo room. “They broke the hatches, pushed their way through the tubes! We’re taking on water—water and Sluggos. Compartment’s filling up!”

Haldane wanted more details, but the torpedo officer spent too much time screaming and so wasn’t very helpful. More damage reports came from other decks. “Thousands of Sluggos are aboard!”

Haldane thought of the wriggling forms, slithering along the decks like carnivorous maggots, attacking anything that moved. The Prospector’s hull groaned and lurched again. The captain and XO looked at each other, expressions white.

Haldane was amazed at how swiftly the invading Sluggos reached the command deck. He had faced these awful things before, had seen the horde wipe out Pearl Harbor, and seen them take down the Far Horizon, had felt them squirming over his body and sinking fangs into his flesh in the seconds before he activated the escape hatch transfer.

Knowing there was nothing to do and no point in delaying, Haldane faced the bridge crew. This was their last stand. They were out of weapons; alien invaders had breached the hull. Without question, the Prospector was doomed.

Haldane accepted the inevitable. Although he wasn’t looking forward to escaping into the scrawny body of seaman-recruit Paulson Kenz, he knew that even a weakling form was better than a dead one.

“Thank you for your service and bravery, crewmen. Your deaths will not be in vain. I shall deliver the story of your brave final battle, your last stand for humanity.”

The weapons officer gaped at him. “You’re just bugging out!”

The XO glowered. “He’s saving his own skin.”

Haldane lifted his chin. “I’m living to fight another day. It’s the only way Earth will defeat these monsters.”

Twenty of the squirming, sharp-fanged Sluggos lurched onto the bridge, and several crewmen yelled in terror. Haldane touched the transfer pendant in the base of his skull.

As reality faded around him, he was indeed proud of the Prospector’s crew. He saw their faces … but for some reason, they didn’t seem particularly glad to know that he, at least, would survive.

X

When Paulson Kenz felt the wrenching inside his head and found himself whisked back into Admiral Haldane’s surrogate body, he knew the poop had hit the fan—industrial-sized cargo load of poop.

Struggling with disorientation, he found himself on the command deck of the battle sub that had gone to attack the Sluggo undersea base. It was a shocking transition from his comfortable padded chair in the rec hall, where he’d been studying reports of the mission, looking at the parameters of the Prospector.

He had gone over the list of added weapons, the reinforced hull, the fifty megatorpedoes loaded aboard. From what he suspected about the alien biology, Paulson was skeptical that explosive kinetic weapons would solve the problem at all. But Admiral Haldane had not demonstrated much ability to think outside the box.

He would assume he had enough firepower to level the alien base, then return to cheers and parades. The problem was, blasting the Sluggo monster to pieces wouldn’t help, because it was already in pieces. The alien swarm was fundamentally composed of countless individual units bound together by some kind of common telepathy.

Admiral Haldane had not been interested in hearing any suggestions from a scrawny piece of cannon fodder, though.

Knowing the sub intended to engage the invaders’ base, Paulson had watched the meager intel as it came in, preparing himself for the worst, since the admiral’s previous engagements had not turned out well—especially not for the “escape hatch” volunteers. The waiting was maddening.

The other volunteers in the rec room amused themselves by playing ping-pong or engaging in interactive games. None of them bothered to become friends, sure that any one of them could be called to duty and dispatched at any time.

Paulson could feel them looking at him with pity. Admiral Haldane’s track record, and his recklessness (which Haldane tried to characterize as bravery), was no secret. Right now, he was leading his battle sub to the monstrous horde. Paulson hoped for the best, but he didn’t get his wish.

This time, when the conduit in his head activated, he knew exactly what was going on—and he was ready.

He braced himself during the transition, and when he gazed out through a different set of eyes, this time he wasn’t in a safe sick bay, nor was he being evac’d from a battlefield.

Instead, he saw several slithering, eel-like creatures with round hungry-mouths and white diamond-like teeth. They squirmed forward along the deck, bursting onto the bridge, or command deck, or whatever it was called on a submarine. The alarms were deafening, as were the shouts of the Prospector’s crew. Uniformed men and women made their last stand and fought the Sluggos, stomping and hammering, using any possible weapon. The sub’s captain had a handgun and shot into the soft masses, and they exploded like snot-filled water balloons. Some bullets whanged and ricocheted off the bulkheads, making the other crewmen duck.

Through the main port, Paulson saw only a solid writhing mass of interlinked Sluggo bodies, as if someone had placed the worm aliens into a trash compactor and smashed them up against the Prospector.

Paulson only had a second to assess the situation. More Sluggos slid through the hatch onto the bridge; twenty were already making their way to the controls. Two bloodied seamen threw themselves against the bulkhead door, ramming their shoulders and pushing the heavy metal hatch into its jamb, slicing two Sluggos in half.

The captain, the XO, the weapons officer, the fire-control officer, the sonar tech—all of them were completely disregarding Paulson. He had an idea, but he needed their help, and their attention. “Captain, give me a situation report,” he barked, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

The startled captain turned to look at him. “You’re not the admiral—you’re just cannon fodder.”

“We’re all cannon fodder, but I’m wearing the uniform. I’ve got the rank, I have the authority … and I have an idea. What’s our weapons situation? Tell me what’s happened and where we are.”

“We’re up a creek without a paddle,” the XO cried. “Megatorps gone, and our hull is completely engulfed by Sluggos. At least four hull breaches, and the aliens are swarming through all the decks.”

The engineering officer wiped sweat from her forehead. “Structural failure imminent, sir. Catastrophic hull collapse in three minutes.” Her voice was hoarse. “Or less.”

“I predicted the megatorpedoes would be ineffective,” he said.

“I wish you’d been in the admiral’s body before we got in this mess, then,” the captain said.

Paulson didn’t want to argue. “Do we still have sonar?”

The sonar tech climbed back to his feet, held onto the anchored chair. “Sonar didn’t do any good, sir.”

Paulson believed they’d been misinterpreting the results. The Sluggo monster didn’t know how to become invisible to the sonar pings; rather, the massive organism had actually broken apart and then recoalesced.

“I want a sonar burst, the loudest boom you can make, Mr. Lieutenant—Ensign … sorry, I don’t know your rank.”

“My rate,” said the sonar tech.

“Does the sonar work or not?” Paulson snapped. From the design specs, he knew the Prospector had been built as a survey vessel, with a full complement of sonar mapping gear.

“We can send out a ping as loud as bad rap music coming from a car stereo.”

“Then let’s hope it sounds as annoying as that.”

As the sonar tech scrambled with his controls, Paulson yelled to the communications officer, “Send a message throughout the ship … the sub, or whatever. Close all compartment doors, seal off the bulkheads. We need to separate the clusters of Sluggos.” He had noticed that after the crew sealed the door to the bridge deck, the individual worm creatures were less lively, more disoriented, and without a driving goal. “We need to divide and conquer. The Sluggos are a conglomerate organism. If you separate the pieces, the pieces are no longer intelligent.”

The sonar tech removed his ears. “Here we go.” He activated a loud pulse that thrummed out. The response was immediate and startling.

The Sluggo mass surrounding the Prospector shivered and broke apart like flies taking flight from a pile of manure. At the main port, Paulson saw hundreds of the things peel off from where they’d been compacted against the view port, and they scattered away from the sub. Even the Sluggos inside the command deck were dazed from the sonar blast, which gave other crew enough time to stomp on them and pop their body sacs.

“Another ping! Keep it up!” Paulson shouted.

The tech stared wide-eyed at the controls. “Did you see that?”

Paulson ran over and grabbed him. “Keep pinging! The sonar disrupts whatever binds them together into a collective organism. It may be our only chance!”

The tech launched another loud boom, and most of the remaining Sluggos drifted away from the sub’s hull like flakes of dandruff.

“I can keep pinging all day!” the tech yelled excitedly.

“You may have to do that. Call the engine room—see if that freed our propellers so we can get the heck out of here.”

“They’re called screws, sir,” said the engineer.

The reactor room called up to the bridge. “We’re free—and the reactor’s running at peak. I’m going to burn off some of our excess by setting off at top speed.”

While studying so many reports, Paulson had tried to determine what held the Sluggos together like a million brain cells in a single coordinated organism. Now he was grinning. “Keep hitting them with sonar blasts, and they won’t give us any more trouble. Our pulses are scrambling the single intelligent creature into countless unintelligent cells. They won’t be able to reassemble into anything big enough to threaten us.”

Now that the main port was clear, Paulson could see the ocean around him. He saw the wreckage strewn on the sea floor, the components and debris the Sluggos had used as a structural framework. The megatorps had indeed destroyed the base at least, but if the big structures were held together by conglomerated Sluggos, the aliens could just rebuild as soon as the individual worm-things settled down. By then, though, the Prospector would be far away. So long as the sonar pulses kept scrambling the Sluggo mass, the sub could move unimpeded.

Another sonar boom resounded through the water. The sea around them was a boiling swarm, but the scrambled creatures didn’t attack the sub. Inside, the crew were rapidly dispatching the Sluggos one at a time.

“Blow all ballast,” Paulson ordered in his loudest command voice, then turned to the captain and whispered, “That’s the best way to get us to the surface, isn’t it?”

The sub’s captain turned to look at him with a dawning respect. “Indeed, Admiral. I’ll take it from here, sir. You’ve already saved the day.”

“You may have saved the human race,” the XO added.

The captain ordered, “Put us on the ceiling!” He nodded at Paulson. “You might want to hold onto something.”

Soon, the Prospector breached the surface like a humpback whale. It was a short but exciting ride, and for the first time Paulson felt excited about being part of the Earth Planetary Navy. On the scope, the seas were peaceful and Sluggo-free.

“Our comm systems are damaged,” the XO said. “Can’t send anybody the good news until we make repairs.”

“Then we have to get back to port and report,” Paulson said, glad to be getting out of this with his skin intact. “We’re going to live to fight another day.”

XI

From the main press podium at the La Diego Earth Navy base, Admiral Bruce Haldane wore his formal uniform again, the one that had been re-re-tailored to fit Paulson Kenz’s scrawny body. It was his body now, a permanent swap now that the Prospector had been lost. But he could always upgrade. He had already sent out a call to the recruitment offices and among the current sailors. Thanks to the Sluggo threat, new recruits were being drafted by the tens of thousands, processed as quickly as was bureaucratically possible. Certainly, with so many choices available, there must be someone better qualified than this wet-noodle bookworm.

Still, the escape hatch had worked, and Haldane was relieved to be safe again. He vowed to carry on the fight for Earth.…

As soon as he had transferred out of his body aboard the battle sub, he found himself in the recreation hall along with the other lazy slobs who took the easy way out, all those young men who were too afraid to face down the voracious Sluggos as Haldane had done—several times.

Settling into the bookworm’s body, he brushed himself off, glared at the rest of the volunteers, and marched to the guarded door, demanding to be taken to base headquarters. Medical monitors would have picked up the transfer signal, so they would come to investigate before long, but he needed to meet with the advisory board, issue his report, and add his new information to the growing backlog of data. Someday, his experiences might allow teams of human geniuses to discover some small weakness in the aliens.

And he also had to make his announcement, putting forth a brave face for the people of Earth.

At first, the guards didn’t want to let him out of the rec hall/prison. They looked at Paulson’s scrawny body and regarded him with skepticism.

“I am Admiral Haldane, I tell you! Let me loose, I have to make my report.”

The guards raised their eyebrows. “Sure, you are. And you expect us to just release you without confirmation?”

“I’m me, dammit! That’s all the confirmation you should need.” Haldane realized that he would have to correct this flaw in the system.

One of the other volunteers looked up from a suspended game of ping-pong. “That one’s been acting awfully strange. Could be an adverse reaction to the conduit surgery.”

The others nodded. “I wouldn’t believe him.”

These cowardly slackers didn’t respect him! “This is nonsense!” Haldane shouted at the guard. “I outrank you. I’m your admiral!”

“I heard him talking,” said another volunteer. “He said he was going to escape and find a black-market surgeon who would pop out a plug for a fee.”

The lazy bastards were setting him up! Haldane was furious.

Finally, a signal from medical command informed the guards that Haldane’s transfer protocol had been activated, and that the escape hatch swap had been successful. He gave an annoyed huff toward the slovenly volunteers who thought it was all a joke, then he stormed out. This was an emergency, not a minute to lose!

Ever since the Prospector’s launch, all of Earth was waiting to hear the news. They expected to learn that the invaders had been annihilated, their base destroyed, and any other Sluggos from the Sluggo planet would see that the Earth Planetary Navy was nothing to mess around with.

When he delivered his speech in his weakling body, though—not the one that had departed aboard the battle sub—he could see dismay ripple through the crowd. They’d already figured out that the mission had failed, that the Sluggos were still a threat … and they assumed that the Prospector had been lost with all hands. That much was obvious, because otherwise the admiral would never have used his last-ditch escape plan.

The captain of the submarine would have gone down with his ship, as expected, but a war hero like Bruce Haldane had survived to rouse the troops, to inspire the populace and honor the sacrifices of those who had fallen in battle, as well as to advise the EPN’s tactical experts.

Standing at the podium, he activated the loudspeaker systems. His words pounded out across the gathered crowd. “You may not recognize me, but I am Admiral Bruce Haldane. And I have just come from the embattled submarine Prospector. With fifty megatorpedoes, we wrought terrible damage to the alien base, but the Sluggo retaliation was swift and overwhelming. They engulfed the sub, and I … I regret the loss of all hands.”

He cleared his throat. “A list of all names will be made available to you in subsequent press packets.” He lifted his chin and kept his tone stoic. “However, even failures are instructive. We believed that a megatorp bombardment was our best possible hope, but now we’ll just have to try something else. Maybe undersea nuclear saturation. It’s worth a try.”

He drew a breath. “Let us pause for a moment of silence to honor all those who sacrificed themselves aboard the Prospector.” He closed his eyes, bowed his head—and then an actual signal from the Prospector spoiled the moment.

The excited announcement broke through on the loudspeakers. The media reporters were abuzz. The battle sub had survived after all, had surfaced intact and was now making its way at best speed back to land!

Admiral Haldane straightened his cap, squared his shoulders, and forced a smile. “Oh … well, then. This is wonderful news.”

XII

An escort of EPN destroyers met the Prospector as it approached the La Diego harbor. People gathered on public docks to welcome the victorious vessel with remarkable fanfare. The cheers from the crowd were deafening.

When Admiral Haldane went to greet them as part of a formal reception party, he was all smiles and pride.

In the days it had taken the battle sub to return, the Prospector’s crew had become heroes. No further Sluggo attacks or even sightings had been reported. The sub’s captain had transmitted that they had only escaped by using the “sonar defense suggestion” of “Admiral Kenz” to great success, and they believed they had found a way to eliminate the alien invaders once and for all.

“Admiral Kenz” indeed! Haldane fumed inwardly.

As the Prospector docked and Admiral Haldane stepped out to greet them, the captain and the XO disembarked with an altogether too smug looking seaman-recruit Paulson Kenz. The sailors looked battered and bruised, their uniforms tattered. Haldane thought their disheveled appearance was strictly for dramatic effect, because even after the Sluggos had swarmed through the decks, the officers and crew must have had a clean change of clothes aboard.

Haldane said, “I’m so pleased you all made it.” He waited for the sub’s captain to salute, and the man did so, but reluctantly, keeping his eyes fixated on the admiral’s insignia rather than his face. “We welcome your return home, and we look forward to your report about the end of the engagement.”

The XO blurted out, “Our report will include how you abandoned us, Admiral Haldane—how you took us into danger with reckless disregard for the lives of the Prospector’s officers and crew.”

Haldane was shocked. “I led an attack that had a reasonable probability of success, but it didn’t work. Such are the fortunes of war.”

“Excuse me,” said the sub’s captain, “but Admiral Kenz said he advised against your method from the outset, but you refused to listen to his advice.”

“His advice?” Haldane spluttered. “Admiral Kenz? He’s just a recruit, cannon fodder! I’m the real admiral!”

“As far as I’m concerned, you relinquished that title when you abandoned the ship and crew.” The captain cleared his throat. “Sir.”

“I was required to survive,” Haldane said. “I waited until the last possible moment, when there was no hope for survival. I saw no other way.”

“And yet …” The XO nodded at Paulson Kenz. “After you fled for your life, this untried seaman-recruit assessed the situation, solved the problem, saved all our lives, and defeated the Sluggos—in about two minutes. I believe that’s called a battlefield promotion, sir.”

With a sinking sensation in his gut, Haldane realized that all of this was being recorded and transmitted live.

In the familiar strong and handsome body, Paulson Kenz said, “I’ve even worked out a way that we can use continuous sonar for complete victory. You see, each pulse scrambles the Sluggo hive mind, breaks it apart. If we bring in numerous subs and keep hammering them with sonar so that the individual creatures cannot recoalesce, then we can use nets or tanks as a harvesting system. If we winnow down the individual Sluggos so that no more than a hundred or so can gather in any single place, the group intelligence won’t come back. Divide and conquer. It may take time, but we can simply whittle them away until there are no more Sluggos left.”

“Thank you for that interesting suggestion, recruit.” Haldane put all the scorn he could possibly muster into his voice. “We’ll have our experts take it under advisement. For now, it’s best if we initiate the transfer protocol again, swap back so you can have your original body, and I’ll make my announcements and appearances in—”

Paulson raised his head. “Sorry, sir, but as you informed me, it’s a one-way transfer protocol. We’ll have to reinstall and surgically reset the conduits, but there’s no time to go through that now. I need to present my findings to the command advisory board. There’s a war on, you know.”

The captain and the XO ignored Haldane and looked at Kenz. “What are your orders, Admiral?”

Paulson looked flustered. “Well, we need the submarine fixed up and cleaned, for one thing. Then we have to discuss how to implement my sonar strategy so we get rid of the Sluggos.”

“I demand my body back!” Haldane said.

Paulson plucked at his sleeve. “I don’t believe this is your original body any more than that one is. Meanwhile, you can spend time in the recreation hall with the other cannon fodder volunteers. You should have plenty of time to write a personal letter of sympathy to the families of each of those seamen who died during the attack on the Prospector … and on the Far Horizon … for starters.”

“But you’re just a … a nobody!” cried Haldane.

The sub’s captain said, “We believe Admiral Kenz has valuable insights and irreplaceable knowledge and experience. The EPN could not afford to lose him, so he must be preserved at all costs.”

“Yes,” the XO added, “it would be a grave threat to the human race if Admiral Kenz were to be lost in combat. I’m sure the escape hatch conduits can be adjusted. You can wait with the other volunteers.” He narrowed his eyes and gave Haldane a withering look. “Don’t worry, you’ll be called to do your duty, if needed.”

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