Lucky signaled for Dabs to stay back with Anna before he charged forward to join Malby and Jiang. He was just a couple steps away from the doorway where the firing had come from when Rocky gave him a visual feed from one of the drones that had just entered it.

Then it went dead.

He spun around instantly. “Back!” he shouted.

Lucky watched as Malby’s eyes grew comically large. Lucky didn’t need to look back to know what was happening.

The handful of Marine drones were ripped to shreds by the sustained firepower of more than a dozen larger onboard defensive drones slowly pouring out into the hallway.

“Back!” Lucky repeated, this time in the face of Dabs and Anna, who had already gotten the message and were turned around, going the other way down the hallway.

Malby and Jiang were backing away, firing as they did so. Once Lucky was sure that Anna was moving away, he turned and joined them.

Dena was neither running away nor really helping. She was more of an interested spectator. If she had a weapon, she wasn’t using it.

Thanks, April, he thought, for the really useful new team member.

The only thing probably saving them was the narrowness of the doorway the new drones were trying to come through. Even with their advanced coordination, they had to come out of the door practically in single file, their girth just too much for the space.

But they could still come out four at a time, stacked on top of each other.

“How the hell many were in there?” Malby shouted.

“How should I know?” Lucky snapped. “I didn’t really take a count!”

The number of drones coming out of the doorway started to thin out, then abruptly stopped. “There’s your answer—” Lucky started to say.

But then something much larger was forcing itself through the doorway. It was hard to see what it was at this distance; it looked like a big cookie on its side. And then Lucky realized that the reason it looked that way was because of how it had to maneuver itself through the doorway.

“What the hell?” Malby said.