by James Rosone
“They murdered everyone, Captain Royce—I mean, Brian. They did make a distinction when it came to the children, though. If a child looked like it was under the age of six tennals, then the Zodarks separated them from their parents, oftentimes killing the adults right in front of them.
“The children…were carted off to their shuttles to be taken up to the larger ships. I think the Zodarks must have thought we were dead or would die soon as they did nothing to cut off our access to the colony below or simply blow us up. Perhaps they wanted us to watch, knowing there was nothing we could do to stop them. For the rest of the day, we watched on the monitors as marauding groups of Zodarks moved from one habitat or section of the colony to another, butchering people with their blades and their blasters. In some instances, we saw them ripping people apart with their talons. As my staff turned on their home cameras to check on their families and spread a warning to just hide, we realized we were too late in many cases to warn them.”
The woman who had been crying in the arms of one of the men stood up defiantly, with tears still streaming down her face. “When we saw the attack begin on the colony below, I attempted to contact my husband to warn him of what was about to happen. By the time I was able to get our own coms situation on the station repaired so we could talk to the surface, the Zodarks had already arrived and were causing chaos,” she recounted.
The woman paused for just a second, then steeled herself to continue sharing her story. “Once I was able to access the cameras in our housing unit, groups of Zodarks were busting down the doors to people’s homes and going inside. What I saw…” The woman moved her hand to cover her mouth as another woman stood up next to her, comforting her. “I saw those animals eating my husband alive, joking and laughing with each other as they cut his stomach open and ate bits of him while he screamed for mercy. I had to listen to my Isiah, tears streaming down his cheeks, plead for them to just kill him to end the pain,” she said, her burning hatred for the Zodarks evident in her voice.
Even Captain Royce, as battle-hardened as he was, felt his stomach churning at this point.
“He must have sensed I was watching him on the cameras or that the event was being recorded, because before he died, he told me to avenge him and save our children. When it dawned on the Zodarks that our children must still be in the house, they tore the place apart until they found them in our hidden safe room. They took our four children and showed them their father, ripped apart and dead. They told them that this is what happens to those who defy them, who dare to challenge them. Then they took my babies to a transport apparently filled with children.
“That was nearly a tannal ago. I haven’t seen or heard from my children since then.”
Belshazzar stood up and hugged the woman briefly before turning to face the soldiers standing before him. “As you can see, it has been very tough on our people here. It took their fleet several days to travel from this colony to Hortuna and then Sumer, where they repeated the process. I have no idea what has happened to Sumer. When our communications relay was destroyed, we lost all communications with the capital and everyone on Sumer. Then we lost communications with Hortuna. The last transmission I received from them was from my fellow station manager over there. He told me the Zodarks were on a rampaging killing spree unlike anything he’d ever seen or heard of. He also told me that just like here, they were taking all the children with them.”
Royce and the other Earth soldiers sat there in stunned silence. They had heard and even seen the atrocities the Zodarks had inflicted on others during the many campaigns they had fought, but still, hearing stories like this always reminded them of why there could be no peace with these insidious animals.
“Belshazzar, has your group been trapped on this part of the station since the attack began?” Royce asked.
The man nodded. “Unfortunately, we have. When you made your appearance, we were actually down to our last few weeks’ worth of food. We still have the ability to create water, but after scavenging the station, we have essentially run out of food options. But, Brian, you still haven’t answered my original question. What brought your people to our system? You have saved our lives.”
Royce took a deep breath in as he prepared to give their side of the story of why they were here. “When we liberated the prisoners on Clovis, we learned about your star system and your planet Sumer. We freed nearly five hundred Sumerians on the planet, who have gone on to tell us much about your people and planet as well as the Zodarks. Several years after our victory in the Rhea system, where Clovis lies, we sent a small scouting ship to your system. It spent several days observing the activities in your system and learning what it could about the Zodark presence. Our scout then traveled down the stargate chain to visit the other planets along this dead-end system. It was during this scouting expedition that an elder race known as the Altairians first made contact with us.
“We were brought into a new alliance, and from there, we spent the next eight years fighting alongside them, defeating the Zodarks and some of the other species that fight with them,” Royce explained. “My team and I were sent here to Sumer to establish an intelligence-gathering operation. Our political and military leaders had determined we should remove the Zodarks permanently from our system and then move to liberate the remaining systems down this dead-end star system chain. There are six other systems with a total of eight habitable planets and moons within them. Some are occupied by other humans, while the others appear not to be inhabited.”
He paused for a second while they appeared to take in what he was telling them. “Our team was going to infiltrate your capital and assess your people to see if they would side with the Zodarks or look to us as liberators when the time came. That was until we saw what had happened here and opted to stop and investigate.”
Belshazzar asked, “Were your people planning to invade our system?”
Royce tilted his head slightly as he replied, “I suppose that’s one way to put it. We thought of ourselves more as liberators, coming to free your people from the Zodarks, than as a conquering army. Our hope was to bring your people into the fold of the Republic, our human-led alliance. We would look to integrate your people, economy, and system into our effort to defeat the Zodarks as we liberate more human-populated worlds from these beasts.”
The older Sumerian nodded in approval, as did everyone else. “I am not sure what kind of condition the rest of the system is in right now,” he said. “For all I know, the other colonies and the capital may be in flames, or they may be doing fine, just under a heavier Zodark presence. We have not had contact with anyone for many months. What I can tell you with certainty is whatever is left of our people on the planet below would likely view you as liberators, saviors sent to save us from these animals.”
For the next hour, they spoke more about what might lie down on the surface. Try as they might, they were unable to reestablish their communications link with the colony on the planet. For his part, Royce called over to their sister ship, the O’Brien, and had them compile what they had learned up to this point and send a com drone back to the fleet to let them know that their primary mission had changed.
The Sumerians used what little power the station had left to get the hangar bay operational. Both of the Nighthawks were able to fly in and land. They couldn’t fit everyone in either spacecraft, so they opted to leave most of them on the station with additional food and water along with some medical supplies.
When the Sumerians asked about security in case more Zodark soldiers showed up, the Earthers introduced them to the C100 combat Synths. They would leave four of them behind, with strict orders to protect the remaining survivors. Belshazzar and one other survivor from the station would travel with Royce and his team in their Nighthawk while ten others would travel in the other Nighthawk.
********
Once everyone was secured, they headed down to the planet and the colony there. Having the proper access codes, Belshazzar was able to get the hanga
r doors to open so they could land inside the facility. When they left the ships, they searched for additional survivors. For the next day, they saw nothing but death. Everywhere they turned they saw countless bodies. The Zodarks had been meticulous in their slaughter.
By the end of the first day, they hadn’t encountered any survivors—that wasn’t to say there weren’t any, they just hadn’t been able to find any during their limited time on the surface. Captain Royce was determined to get back on track with their mission. They needed to check on Hortuna and then Sumer and see if the Zodarks had committed a genocide of the Sumerian people, or if there still might be survivors. He was praying there were survivors. The Sumerians used to number somewhere around twelve billion people spread across three planets and two moons in their system.
As they traveled to Hortuna, Royce ordered the pilots to go active with all their sensors—there was no reason to act stealthy at this point. They needed answers.
With their active sensors going, they started getting a much better picture of the system. The space elevators that used to operate over two of the moons, Hortuna, and Sumer, were all silent. Where there had once been hundreds of shuttles, transports, and ferries moving about the system, now there was nothing—nothing but the scattered wrecks of countless spacecraft.
When they eventually neared Hortuna, it became apparent that the place had been utterly destroyed. The starbase that had been near the planet was nothing more than debris, chunks of what had once been a large structure. The space elevator had been completely destroyed, with the orbital platform falling back into the planet’s atmosphere.
There were huge scorch marks where cities had once stood. Without going to the planet directly, they couldn’t search for survivors, and Royce and his team just weren’t equipped for that kind of mission. After being on station for a couple of hours, they opted to head to Sumer, dreading what they’d likely find.
As they approached the capital planet of the Sumerian people, Captain Royce thought it reminded him of New Eden or Intus. From out in space, the planet looked beautiful—at least until it started to come into better focus. That was when they started to see the damage on the surface.
Hadad poked his head into the pilot’s section of the ship. It was the first time he’d seen his home planet in more than twenty years.
Royce watched a tidal wave of emotions roll across the man’s face. He’d finally come home, with the real possibility of seeing his family. Then his eyes registered the scorch marks on the surface and his entire countenance and demeanor changed.
He turned to Brian, tears running down his face. “Is it possible my family could still be alive down there?”
Royce didn’t know what to say. He felt himself starting to get choked up with emotions. Hadad was a friend. To see the man hurting like this pulled at his heartstrings.
Royce bit his lower lip as he tried to respond but stopped so he could choke back his own emotions. He was Special Forces; he wasn’t supposed to cry. He reached over and placed a hand on Hadad’s shoulder. “I’m not sure. It’s possible. But I promise you this—we’ll sure as hell find out.”
From the Authors
Miranda and I hope you’ve enjoyed this book. If you’d like to continue the action of the Rise of the Republic Series, you can preorder your copy of Into the Chaos by clicking on the following link; we anticipate that book four will be coming out in the beginning of the summer. In the meantime, you can tear into our newest military thriller series—preorder Volume One of The Monroe Doctrine by clicking here.
If you like to listen to audiobooks, we have several that have recently been produced. All five books of the Falling Empire Series are now available in audio format, along with the six books of the Red Storm Series, and our entire World War III series. Interview with a Terrorist and Traitors Within, which are currently standalone books, are also available for your listening pleasure.
If you would like to stay up to date on new releases and receive emails about any special pricing deals we may make available, please sign up for our email distribution list. Simply go to https://www.frontlinepublishinginc.com/ and sign up.
As a bonus, if you sign up for our mailing list, you will receive a dossier for the Rise of the Republic Series. It contains artwork of the ships we’ve written about, as well as their pertinent stats. It will really help make the series come to life for you as you continue reading.
As independent authors, reviews are very important to us and make a huge difference to other prospective readers. If you enjoyed this book, we humbly ask you to write up a positive review on Amazon and Goodreads. We sincerely appreciate each person that takes the time to write one.
We have really valued connecting with our readers via social media, especially on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/RosoneandWatson/. Sometimes we ask for help from our readers as we write future books—we love to draw upon all your different areas of expertise. We also have a group of beta readers who get to look at the books before they are officially published and help us fine-tune last-minute adjustments. If you would like to be a part of this team, please go to our author website, https://www.frontlinepublishinginc.com/, and send us a message through the “Contact” tab. You can also follow us on Twitter: @jamesrosone and @AuthorMirandaW. We look forward to hearing from you.
You may also enjoy some of our other works. A full list can be found below:
Nonfiction:
Iraq Memoir 2006–2007 Troop Surge
Interview with a Terrorist (link to audiobook here)
Fiction:
The Monroe Doctrine Series
Volume One (available for preorder, estimated release November 30, 2020)
Volume Two (available for preorder, estimated release date March 20, 2021)
Volume Three (release date TBD)
Rise of the Republic Series
Into the Stars
Into the Battle
Into the War
Into the Chaos (available for preorder, estimated release date)
Falling Empires Series
Rigged (link to audiobook here)
Peacekeepers (link to audiobook here)
Invasion (link to audiobook here)
Vengeance (link to audiobook here)
Retribution (audiobook currently in production)
Red Storm Series
Battlefield Ukraine (link to audiobook here)
Battlefield Korea (link to audiobook here)
Battlefield Taiwan (link to audiobook here)
Battlefield Pacific (link to audiobook here)
Battlefield Russia (link to audiobook here)
Battlefield China (link to audiobook here)
Michael Stone Series
Traitors Within (link to audiobook here)
World War III Series
Prelude to World War III: The Rise of the Islamic Republic and the Rebirth of America (link to audiobook here)
Operation Red Dragon and the Unthinkable (link to audiobook here)
Operation Red Dawn and the Siege of Europe (link to audiobook here)
Cyber Warfare and the New World Order (link to audiobook here)
Children’s Books:
My Daddy has PTSD
My Mommy has PTSD
Abbreviation Key
AG1Army Group One
AG2Army Group Two
AARAfter-Action Report
AIArtificial Intelligence
ASAPAs Soon As Possible
C100Combat Synths
C-FOCommander, Flight Operations
CHUContainerized Housing Unit
COCommanding Officer
DARPADefense Advanced Research Projects Agency
EVAExtravehicular Activity (suits made for being outside a spaceship)
EWOElectronic Warfare Officer
FIDForeign Internal Defense
FOBForward Operating Base
FOBBITDuty stuck at the FOB (reference to how the Hobbits stayed in the Shire)
FRAGOFragmentary
Order
FTLFaster-than-light
G2Intelligence Officer
GEGalactic Empire
GOGaelic Outpost
HAHOHigh-Altitude, High-Opening
HALOHigh-Altitude, Low-Opening (jumps intended for stealth)
HUDHeads-Up Display
IFVInfantry Fighting Vehicle
IRRInactive Ready Reserve
JSOCJoint Special Operations Command
KIAKilled in Action
LTLieutenant
MOSMars Orbital Station
MPDMagnetoplasmadynamic
MREMeals Ready to Eat
NASNon-aligned Space
NCONoncommissioned Officer
NLNeurolink
NOSZodark admiral or senior military commander
OABOrbital Assault Battalion
OADOrbital Assault Division
ORDOrbital Ranger Division
PAPublic Address
PSYOPSPsychological Operations
QRFQuick Reaction Force
R&DResearch and Development
RARepublic Army
RASRepublic Army Soldier
RDRepublic Dollar
RTORadio Telephone Operator
RVRecreational Vehicle
S1Personnel Officer
S3Operations Officer
S4Supply
SAWSquad Automatic Weapon
SFSpecial Forces
SFGSpecial Forces Group
SOCOMSpecial Operations Command
SOFSpecial Operations Forces
SOPStandard Operating Procedures
SWSand and Water (missiles)
VIPVery Important Person
WIAWounded in Action
XOExecutive Officer
