The War for Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 4)

by Daniel Arenson

  I will kill everyone in my way. She crawled over the dead alien. Because that is what I do. And that scares me more than all the horrors in these caves.

  And as she crawled onward, tears flowed down her cheeks. Tears she allowed herself only in the darkness.

  Someday we will save Earth, she thought. Someday a generation will rise that will be good, and soft, and kind. A generation with clean hands. So let my hands be bloody. Let my soul be torn. For them.

  The tunnel twisted and turned. Whenever it branched off, Rowan paused and felt the vibrations, listened to the Harmonians whisper inside her. She chose a path and moved onward, deeper.

  They must have crawled for hours before the tunnel finally opened up into a wide cavern.

  Rowan paused at the entrance. Other marines gathered around her, flashlights casting back the shadows. The room was the size of a movie theater. Discarded basilisk scales, bones, and skulls littered the floor.

  Human skulls, Rowan realized, struggling not to gag.

  "There's nobody here," Bay said, taking a step forward. "We must have killed them all."

  Rowan grabbed him. She pulled him back.

  "It's here," she whispered. "The evil I sensed."

  She heard a few soldiers muttering behind her, even scoffing.

  "She sounds like a damn weaver," a sergeant said.

  Rowan spun back toward the man. She glared. "A weaver saved our lives multiple times. And if Coral weren't recovering on the ship, she'd sense the same." Rowan looked back into the cavern, and her voice dropped. "It's here."

  Holding Lullaby with both hands, she took a step into the chamber. A platoon of marines followed, fanning out, fingers on their triggers. The soldiers stood in the center of the room, back to back, pointing their guns outward in a ring.

  Rowan saw another tunnel across the chamber. It seemed to plunge deeper into shadows. Rowan could hear sounds from below—groans, whimpers, a muffled scream.

  "The prisoners are down there," she said.

  Bay began to walk toward the far tunnel. "Let's go get them."

  Again, Rowan grabbed him. "Wait. Something is wrong. Something is—"

  A drop splashed onto the ground before her. It sizzled.

  Rowan looked up and inhaled sharply.

  Bay followed her gaze and cursed.

  It was there. Clinging to the ceiling. Drooling. Watching them.

  It was a massive basilisk, the largest Rowan had ever seen. Five serpentine heads grew from the beast, each large enough to swallow Rowan whole. Ten eyes stared at Rowan, filled with scorn and hunger.

  Rowan opened fire.

  The creature dropped onto the marines, crushing several. Rowan managed to scamper back, dodging the scaly body. By God, the beast was huge. Its barely fit the chamber. The creature reared, five heads howling, and spat sizzling liquid.

  A glob hit Rowan. It began to burn through her armor.

  "Acid!" she screamed, ripping off the armored plates.

  Another spray hit a marine to her left. The venom disintegrated the man's visor and burned his face, melting the skin. The corporal fell, pawing at his dissolving face, screaming. Several more marines fell. Their flashlights went dark, and shadows claimed the chamber.

  Rowan screamed too—a scream of terror and hatred. She fired again. The surviving marines fired with her. Bullets slammed into the hydra, bouncing off its scales. The creature shrieked, reared, and attacked again.

  This time the monster swooped in to bite. Five jaws opened wide. Bullets could not stop them. One mouth closed around a sergeant, lifted him, guzzled him down. Another jaw tore the legs off a man, leaving him screaming, clutching at the stumps. Rowan fired again and again, hitting the hydra's heads, but her bullets were useless. The creature didn't even have eyes to shoot.

  "What the hell is that thing?" Bay shouted, reloading his gun.

  "A hydra!" Rowan cried.

  "A what?"

  "A hydra, you know, like from D&D!" Rowan shouted.

  "Rowan, what the hell are you talking about?"

  "Never mind, Bay! Just kill it!"

  Venom sprayed. Rowan leaped back, cursing. The acid sizzled on the floor, consuming bones and skulls. She fired again, hitting a reptilian head, doing it no harm. The hydra swung its tail, plowing through five marines, sending them flying through the room. More jets of venom melted armor. More jaws cut men open.

  A fresh squad of marines raced into the chamber, then a third. Bullets filled the room. The hydra still lashed and bit, tearing them apart. Whenever a soldier tried to reach the far tunnel, acid or fangs found him.

  "Bullets won't work!" Rowan shouted. "Soldiers—use your grenades!"

  "We can't in an enclosed chamber!" Bay said. He cursed as venom sprayed his arm. He tore off the sizzling armor plate.

  "We have no choice." Rowan grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin. "Hey, asshole!" With her other hand, she fired Lullaby at a head. "Catch!"

  The Hydra lunged toward her, jaw opening wide.

  Rowan tossed the grenade into its mouth, then hit the ground and covered her head.

  An explosion filled the chamber, deafening. Shrapnel, blood, scales, and gobbets of flesh pattered around Rowan.

  When she rose again, one of the hydra's heads was gone. Nothing but a spurting stump remained.

  The other four heads had paused their assault. They twitched and mewled.

  "Did we defeat it?" Bay whispered.

  Rowan tilted her head. "Did we defeat it?"

  "I helped," he insisted.

  The marines all stared, guns raised, waiting for the hydra to fall.

  The stump began to bubble. A blister rose there, ballooning, filling with yellow liquid. Rowan nearly gagged.

  "It has a giant zit!" Bay said.

  Rowan watched, horror dawning on her. "That's no zit."

  The blister grew teeth. Then scales. Before her eyes, it turned into a new head.

  The hydra roared from all five mouths—and attacked again.

  "We have to run!" cried a corporal. "We can't kill it!"

  "Stand your ground, soldiers!" Rowan shouted. "Stand your ground and fight!"

  Ignoring Rowan, the corporal tried to flee—only for the hydra to grab the woman, to rip her apart. Rowan stared with horror. She nearly vomited.

  Have I led us all here to die? she thought.

  She stared at the regrown head. Its scaly face stared back, laughing.

  A creature one cannot kill, she thought. A hydra.

  She had heard of hydras before, and not just from D&D. They featured prominently in human mythology. Knights would cut off their heads, but the heads regrew time after time. Rowan had read about them in the Earthstone, seen them in old movies, and—

  She gasped. She remembered.

  "Fire," she whispered.

  A head lunged at her again, jaws snapping. Rowan sneered, hurled another grenade, and leaped back.

  The grenade burst, shattering the head.

  This time Rowan didn't wait. She unstrapped the jetpack from her back, held it before her, and ignited the engine.

  A spray of flame spurted from the exhaust port. The fire bathed the hydra's shattered head.

  The blast sent Rowan flying. She slammed against the wall, cried out, and turned off her jetpack.

  She slid to the ground, groaning, her back aching. She stared at the hydra.

  Its stump sizzled, still burning. She waited, gun raised. The head did not regrow.

  "Fire!" Rowan shouted. "Tear off its heads and cauterize the stumps!"

  Her marines opened fire. Some fired bullets at the hydra's necks, finally tearing through the ligaments. Other soldiers launched grenades into the open jaws. Severed heads thumped to the ground. More blisters rose on the stumps, attempted to grow new heads.

  And the fire blazed.

  The flaming streams washed over the stumps, popping the blisters, sealing the wounds.

  The mighty hydra fell. Its five headless necks thumped onto the floor and
rose no more.

  Rowan fell to her knees, trembling. Wounds covered her. She took a few long moments to breathe. The Harmonians rose inside her, soft and warm. She saw them in her wounds, glowing blue, mending her. But they were working overtime lately. Rowan could feel their weariness, and her wounds barely closed.

  If I work them any harder, they're likely to go on strike, Rowan thought. Sorry, little fellas. I promise to give you a few days off eventually.

  She looked around her at her fallen friends, and a chill washed her.

  So many had died.

  Rowan swallowed her horror, struggling not to vomit again.

  Horror later. Grief later. Fight now.

  Rowan took a deep breath, hardened her heart, and walked across the chamber. Her boots sluiced through blood and crunched bones.

  Somewhere deep in her memory, she was curled up in the ducts, watching Monty Python movies with Fillister, laughing.

  She stepped over the melted corpse of a friend.

  In her mind, she was trembling behind a vent, so scared of life outside.

  She kicked aside a severed hydra head.

  She was the girl in the ducts. Wriggling around to K-Pop. Watching The Lord of the Rings over and over again.

  She was a woman in hell, a smoking gun in her hand, blood covering her. Walking deeper into the shadows.

  Rowan reached the far passageway, walked down a sloping tunnel, and reached a vast chamber, a hall the size of a soccer field.

  Thousands of humans were here, bound in chains.

  Rowan stared, trembling, rage and pity battling within her.

  Bay stepped into the room behind her. He froze and made a small choking sound.

  "By Ra," he whispered.

  Hundreds of the human prisoners had been nailed to the walls. Their bellies had been slit open, filled with snake eggs. Many other humans hung from the ceiling, their legs amputated. The limbs were feeding young snakes in a nearby pit. The thousands of other humans stood crammed together, manacled, awaiting their fate as hosts for eggs or food for serpents.

  Rowan's fists shook.

  "I hate them," she whispered, and tears filled her eyes. "I hate those damn snakes. I hate them so much."

  Several basilisks were here, guarding the prisoners. They turned toward the marines and hissed.

  Rowan and Bay opened fire, quickly taking them out. The creatures thumped down, peppered with bullets.

  One of the basilisks managed to crawl closer, head split open. He stared up at Rowan, missing an eye, and laughed.

  "If we cannot have them," the basilisk hissed, "nobody can."

  He coughed and gagged, vomiting a small metal sphere. It glowed and ticked.

  Rowan stared in horror.

  A bomb. Not a mere grenade but a starship-busting high explosive, built for ripping through graphene shields.

  It was powerful enough to bring the caves crashing down.

  "Run!" Bay cried.

  But Rowan couldn't flee. Couldn't leave the bomb here with thousands of prisoners.

  She grabbed the sphere.

  She ran with it.

  "Rowan!" Bay cried after her.

  She ignored him. She raced up the tunnel, shoving her way past marines, and back into the chamber of bones.

  The bomb began to vibrate in her hand.

  Rowan leaped toward the hydra's corpse. She stared at it—a beast with bulletproof scales.

  She shoved the bomb into one of the severed necks, pushing it into the mushy flesh, burying it as deep as her arm would go.

  She pulled her arm free and ran.

  She had reached the passageway when the bomb burst.

  The shock wave tossed Rowan into the tunnel and shoved her forward like a bullet down a barrel.

  Fire raged against her feet. If not for her armored spacesuit, the blast would have broken every bone in her body. The sound waves washed over her, cracking her helmet. Dust rose everywhere. The caves trembled, stones fell, and cracks raced across the walls.

  And then—it was over.

  The dust settled.

  Rowan crawled back into the chamber of bones. The hydra was splattered on the walls. Its scales had dug deep into the stone. The beast had saved the caves.

  Rowan returned to Bay and the others below. She looked at the thousands of chained human prisoners. People who had survived years of war. Who just wanted to fly to Earth. Who had been imprisoned here for the sin of trying to find their way home.

  "Let's get these people into our ships," Rowan said. "We're going back to Earth."

  And if anyone gets in our way, I will kill them, Rowan thought as she climbed back to the surface. I will kill them all. If I must, I will burn this galaxy down, even if Earth is the only planet left. Tears flowed down her cheeks. We are done hiding. For centuries, we humans were prey. Now we will be predators.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They lay on a beach. Two castaways. Fallen from the sky.

  Everything hurt.

  Everything was light.

  Tom gazed at the sky.

  Confusion filled him. He was a young man, back on a grassy world, and his sheep grazed around him. He was a youth, scared, shoved into battle. He was lying in a cave, surviving in a forest of rot. He was on the mountains of Earth, playing his song.

  He blinked.

  Pain. Everything was pain. A twisting pain under a haze of slumber.

  "Tom?" A soft voice beside him. A woman's voice.

  His wife? Was his wife back? It had been a dream. Only a nightmare. He had dreamed that giant scorpions, beasts the size of horses, had captured them. Had skinned his wife alive. Had tossed her and her unborn child into the fire. But she was here, in his bed, calling him.

  "Tom!" She shook him. "Wake up, Tom. Are you all right?"

  He blinked. The pain was sharper now. He struggled to sit up, winced, and lay back down.

  No, he was not lying in a bed. Not on a grassy hill. He was on a sandy beach.

  "We fell from the sky," he whispered.

  He looked at the woman beside him. A woman with tanned skin. With large dark eyes. With curly brown hair.

  Leona.

  Colonel Leona Ben-Ari. His commanding officer. His friend.

  The memories flooded back into Tom. The past years of war. The battle in space. The raft they had built and their fall from space.

  "We survived," Tom said, looking around in wonder. "We fell from the sky—and survived."

  "Barely," Leona said. "Thank Ra for a good jetpack and a solid suit of armor. Tom." She touched his cheek. "Are you all right? How many fingers do you see?"

  He blinked at her hand. "A couple dozen." He blinked again and rubbed his temples. "I'm all right. Just got the wind knocked out of me. I've had worse." He looked around him. "So this is Oridia Gamma, huh?"

  Leona shrugged. "That or we died and went to heaven. Looks more like heaven to me."

  She wasn't kidding. As a Peacekeeper, Tom had traveled across the galaxy. Most planets were hellholes. They were searing deserts, or frozen wastelands, or hives of poverty, violence, and decay. Here was a rare island paradise in the cosmic ocean. The sand was soft and white, the water deep blue. Bioluminescent algae gleamed on the waves and shore. Seashells speckled the sand, deep blue trimmed with gold. A ring system arched across the sky, pale silver, and beyond it shone a white gas giant, ten times the size of the moon from Earth.

  Tom tested the water. It was fresh, not a grain of salt to be found. He and Leona drank deeply. The cool water filled them with new vigor. Tom felt as if he had eaten a full meal. The pain in his wounds faded, and strength returned to his limbs.

  "Is this place real?" Tom said when his thirst was quenched. "It looks like something from a fairy tale. Where is the dust? The grime? The rust and rot?"

  "This is a virgin world," Leona said. "Give it time. Somebody will discover it sooner or later. They'll fight over it, burn the plants and animals, then build casinos and brothels. Smog will fill the sky, hiding those
beautiful rings."

  Tom grinned. "Look at us. Saved from almost certain death, lying on the most beautiful beach in the universe—and we find reasons to moan."

  Leona smiled back, but her smile soon faltered. She lowered her head. "Tom. Our ship . . . it's gone. Less than a year from now, the Galactic Council will redraw the map of the Milky Way. We were supposed to spend this year lobbying for humanity." She looked around her. "It's beautiful. But how can we fight for Earth from here?"

  Tom rose to his feet. His head spun, and his legs felt weak, but he could stand, even take a step. He walked along the beach and found metal shards. The raft they had built had fallen apart during atmospheric entry. If not for their jumpsuits, Tom and Leona would have fared no better. But the azoth crystal was still there, enclosed within its metal heart.

  Tom lifted the small, precious object.

  "We have an azoth crystal," he said. "A way to travel the galaxy."

  Leona stood up too. She wobbled, and Tom helped steady her.

  "But no spaceship," Leona said. "No way to even reach space, let alone travel through it. Our jetpacks can't breach the atmosphere. Even if they could—we can't fly solo for more than a day or two. Tom, we're stranded here."

  A thought rose in Tom's mind, unbidden.

  Good!

  Hadn't he fought enough? Tom had been fighting all his life. For years as a Peacekeeper. For years as a rebel. For the past horrible, blood-soaked days as a soldier of Earth. He had lost everything to the wars—all his loved ones, his innocence, his soul. Did he not deserve this? Was this not a gift from above? A place to rest, to heal, to live out whatever life he still had? A paradise beach with healing water, with a beautiful woman at his side?

  I'm forty-five years old, he thought. And I feel like I'm seventy. And I'm tired of fighting.

  But he pushed those thoughts aside.

  Instead, he thought of Ayumi.

  Of the precious girl who had fled Morbus Gulock. The girl he had taken under his wing. The girl who had become like a daughter to him. The girl who had sacrificed her life to save humanity.

  You gave your life for Earth, Tom thought. But also for me. So that I could return home. I will never stop fighting for Earth, Ayumi. For your memory. Your death was not in vain, and generations will sing your praise.