"All right, Exodus Fleet!" Rowan said, transmitting her voice to the other ships. "Follow my lead. We're going home. Godspeed!"
She flipped a switch, engaging her azoth drive. Around her, the other warships did the same. Their engines glowed purple—the color of the azoth crystals inside. Spacetime began to warp around them, engulfing the flotilla. The shuttles had no warp engines. They would share the warp bubble the larger vessels were generating.
The bubble formed, enveloping the fleet.
Rowan pushed down the throttle.
The stars streaked around her, and she blasted forth, flying faster than light. The other warships flew with her, still forming a perfect ring, protecting the shuttles.
Within only seconds, they traversed the distance between Pluto and Earth—a journey that would normally take years.
The ships disengaged their warp drives. They popped back into reality in Earth's orbit.
For half a heartbeat, Rowan stared in silent shock.
Dear God.
She had never seen such a horror.
Earth was burning. Entire forests—gone. Mountains—shattered. The sky—a storm of smoke. Myriads of enemy warships were orbiting the world. Most were the scaly, undulating ships of the basilisks. But thousands had come from other species, hellbent on human extermination. There were fleshy podships of fungus. Spiky ships of jagged iron. Blobby ships like floating bubbles of flesh. Boxy ships of dark metal, lined with cannons. An entire coalition was here—species who hated humanity, who had united to fight, to finish the job the scorpions had begun.
Before them, Rowan—with her mere twenty warships—felt very small.
The war seemed hopeless.
Before Coral had died, the weaver would open portals to the edge of Earth's sky—a mere hundred kilometers above the surface, closer than any warp drive could go. That had allowed the Exodus Fleet to sneak past the alien warships, which orbited Earth several thousand kilometers out.
But Coral was dead—a pain that still tore at Rowan. They had no more portals. The Exodus Fleet had only azoth engines now, useless near a gravity well. Rowan's fleet had emerged seven thousand kilometers above Earth, the closest their azoth crystals would take them.
It was close on the cosmic scale. But not close enough. Not enough to bypass the blockade.
Between Rowan and Earth flew thousands of enemy warships, bombarding everything in sight.
And those ships noticed her.
At once, hundreds of Rattlers turned toward the small Exodus Fleet.
"Emet?" Rowan said into her comm, voice shaky.
"I've got your back," he said.
And then Rowan saw them.
The missiles rising from below.
Two hundred missiles, launched from different locations across the Western Hemisphere—all soaring into space, forming a tunnel of death.
"To Earth!" Rowan cried. "Now!"
She shoved down her thruster and plunged toward the alien blockade.
The rest of her fleet—warships on the perimeter, shuttles in the center—charged with her.
Below them, Emet's missiles hit enemy ships and exploded in a ring of fire.
Rowan, leading the charge, plunged through the explosions like a circus lion through a flaming hoop.
The other Exodus ships followed, shielded within this tunnel of fire. They swooped toward the atmosphere.
Enemy ships came flying at them. Their weapons fired. Lasers from the Rattlers. Shells, torpedoes, spores, and fleshy blobs from the other alien ships.
Rowan screamed and fired the Byzantium's port and starboard cannons. Her heat-seeking lures flew out and slammed into the incoming torpedoes. Explosions rocked space. Behind her, the other Exodus warships were targeting the incoming fire too, shielding the shuttles between them.
Alien lasers flashed, but they hit mirrors installed on Rowan's ships, then bounced back toward the enemy. Several torpedoes followed the lasers. One slammed into the Byzantium, denting the hull, nearly driving Rowan off course. She screamed and gripped the yoke. Another torpedo tore through a warship behind her, breaching the hull.
But the Exodus Fleet kept plunging through the sea of enemy warships, streaking toward the sky.
From below, Emet fired another volley.
These missiles too rose in a ring, their tails forming a cylinder of smoke. The warheads slammed into enemy ships. A halo of fire blazed. The Exodus Fleet plunged through a second ring of explosions.
One enemy torpedo zigzagged, bypassing both Earth's artillery fire and Rowan's protective ring of warships.
Rowan shouted a useless warning.
Nearby, a shuttle exploded, killing the fifty refugees aboard.
Rowan cringed. But she kept flying. She still had forty-nine shuttles. They kept racing toward Earth.
A third artillery volley rose from below. A fourth. A fifth. Soon Emet was firing nonstop, raising ring after ring of missiles, forming a corridor of smoke and fire.
And he was holding back the enemy.
The Exodus Fleet kept racing down this tunnel. It felt like flying down another one of Coral's wormholes. Leading the charge, Rowan plunged toward the atmosphere.
And they made it.
They were in the mesosphere!
This was as far as the Byzantium could fly. The frigate could not operate in atmosphere. Rowan spun her ship around, flicked on her afterburner, and rose back into space. The other human warships did the same.
The shuttles continued diving through the sky, speeding toward the surface. For the next few minutes, they would have no warships guarding them. But Emet was still below, covering the shuttles with artillery fire. And he would be waiting to greet the refugees when they touched down.
Now the hard part began.
Rowan's Byzantium and her fellow warships hovered on the edge of space. They waited for the shuttles to return, empty and ready for more refugees. Rowan would need many more rounds of refugee smuggling to bring her survivors home.
The shuttles only required four minutes to reach the surface. Two minutes for the passengers to leap out. Four minutes for the empty shuttles to return to space. Ten minutes total, that was all.
It might as well have been forever.
Every second of this agonizing eternity, the enemy punished them.
The Exodus Fleet kept blasting out fire, taking out enemy torpedoes. Earth kept firing artillery, forming a protective ring around the fleet. But every minute, more enemy warships approached. More added their firepower.
A torpedo made it through the shell.
The HDFS Verona, a corvette flying near Rowan, exploded. Its crew screamed before the comm link died.
And then, finally—the shuttles were back.
"Go, go!" Rowan shouted.
They flew upward, charging through the enemy warships, heading toward open space. The Byzantium barreled into a Rattler, ripping through the enemy warship, scattering armored scales. The fire kept coming. They kept charging.
They were barely far enough from Earth's gravity well. It would have to do.
The Exodus warships engaged their azoth crystals.
And they blasted off at warp speed.
Seconds later, they were flying around Pluto again. Back with the rest of the Exodus Fleet—including the Porter.
Rowan slumped into her seat, trembling, panting.
She called up Bay, who was flying in his warship nearby.
"We lost one corvette and one shuttle," she said, voice shaky. "But we delivered nearly twenty-five hundred humans to Earth. We can do this."
"You're doing great, babe," Bay said. "Ready for another round?"
She nodded and kissed him through the monitor. "I'm ready. Love you, Pancake."
He kissed her back. "Love ya, hobbit."
They began loading up the shuttles again. They were down to forty-nine shuttles. But that was enough to cram in another twenty-five hundred refugees.
Emet fed her new coordinates.
And the
y flew back to Earth.
Again the ring of missiles rose from below—this time halfway around the world. Again the Exodus Fleet stormed down the corridor of fire, holding off the enemy with shields and shells.
They lost two shuttles this time. A hundred refugees—gone.
But over two thousand made it to Earth. And Rowan flew back to Pluto, her warships battered and bruised but ready for more.
The evacuation of the Porter continued for three days and nights. Rowan fought through it, not even pausing to sleep. She led every mission from aboard the Byzantium. They flew to Earth. They opened fire—from above and below. They sent the shuttles streaking down to the surface, filled with refugees, then up again, empty and ready for more.
They lost ships.
They lost lives.
With every run, at least one shuttle fell. Sometimes the enemy took out two or three shuttles at a time. Several warships shattered.
But the Exodus Fleet kept fighting. When Earth began to run low on artillery, Rowan escalated her own firepower. Now she used nuclear weapons, which she hurled forth from warped space, allowing them to explode and clear the orbit before she emerged from her warp bubble.
When too few shuttles remained, they enlisted more, converting ten Firebirds into makeshift shuttles that could squeeze in several children each. And they flew another mission.
"Bring me ten thousand," Emet had told her three days ago. Some of Earth's generals had thought this overly optimistic. They had expected perhaps a few hundred lives to be saved.
When the mission ended, the Exodus Fleet had evacuated ninety thousand refugees.
A full ninety percent of the Porter's refugees.
On any other day, Rowan knew, the loss of ten thousand lives would be a devastating blow. A horror. A massacre. An unspeakable tragedy.
But this day, May 7th, Earth celebrated a miracle.
Rowan and Bay had joined the last shuttle to Earth, leaving the Exodus Fleet under the command of others. Hunkering in the tunnels below Port Addison, Rowan wanted nothing more than to collapse and sleep. But she forced herself to stay awake. To listen to President Ben-Ari speak. He spoke to the crowds in the bunkers of Earth, but he broadcast his words to the stars.
"To all the children of Earth—those who fight here on our world, those who fight in space, and those who are still lost in the darkness, seeking their way home. The great war for Earth, our War of Independence, has entered a new phase—one of great danger but also of great promise and hope. Over the past three days, our brave pilots and artillerymen have carried out the Miracle of the Porter. With true grit and determination, and with great sacrifice of lives, they brought home ninety thousand humans. Ninety thousand who had suffered the horrors of the scorpion gulocks, only to find themselves caught in the invasion of the cruel basilisks. On Earth, their struggle continues. But now they fight on the soil of their home. Now they fight with humans who stand tall and proud, defending their ancestral homeworld, and they will never again cower in exile.
"Yet as we celebrate the Miracle of the Porter, we remember that five million humans, maybe six, are still lost across the galaxy. They too seek a way home. I vow to you: We will not rest until every last man, woman, and child who seeks a home on Earth stands beneath our blue sky!
"The war will be long. Perhaps it will last for many years. Here on Earth, our brave soldiers face odds that seem nearly insurmountable. The enemy armies are vast. They are cruel. They are everywhere. We are few in number. We have few weapons. Few ships. But one thing we have that the enemy does not: the human spirit. We are humans fighting for our homeworld. With heads high. With courageous hearts. We face our enemies with a determination that shocks them. That will see them driven from our homeworld. The aliens outnumber us a hundred to one. So every human must fight a hundred times harder! From what I witnessed during the Miracle of the Porter, to claim that our fighting spirit is a hundred times greater does us a disservice.
"Today, there is no distinction between civilians and soldiers, warriors and refugees. We are all soldiers now. The entire human species is now an army. Every man, woman, and child—you are all fighting this war. And I am proud of every one of you.
"We will fight our enemies underground in the tunnels we dug. We will fight them on the oceans of our world and in the charred remains of our forests. We will fight them in our once-blue skies that they have filled with smoke and fire. We will fight them in orbit, where we have already destroyed many of their starships. And we will not hesitate to strike them even in the depths of space—even on the soil of Sskarsses itself, homeworld of the basilisks. So long as our enemies attack, no place will be safe for them.
"I vow to you, humanity. We will defend our world! We will fight with a determination and strength such as the galaxy has never seen. We will not hesitate even to give our lives for Earth. The night is dark, but our courage is bright. We will fight on. For our freedom, for humanity, and for our blessed and beautiful home."
The president's speech ended.
Rowan stumbled to a dark corner and lay down on a blanket. Bay joined her, and she cuddled against him. In this bunker full of refugees, here beneath the surface of Earth, they finally slept.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Human Hunter was the grimiest, sleaziest bar Leona had ever been to. And that was saying something.
Several hairy, tusked aliens sat at a bar, hooting at a dancing alien who was seductively shaving her fur. Two diminutive creatures, covered in warts and spikes, were fighting inside a dangling cage. A group of rowdy, bearded aliens with stony skin were watching the fight, roaring between gulps of grog. A bloated animal hung from a chain, as large as a cow but limbless, wriggling as it bled from sliced arteries. Reptilian aliens lay beneath the dying beast, jaws open, catching the dripping blood. In the corner, a towering alien in metal armor shouted something about bad drugs, then ripped the wing off a feathery drug dealer. The musicians on stage stopped at the sight, laughed, then played on.
Yep, Leona thought, it's a shithole.
Leona knew that the bar's name—The Human Hunter—didn't refer to some human in plaid, hunting deer in the forest. It referred to hunting humans, a popular pastime in these parts.
Across the galaxy, it was common to name things after humans. Pest's Blood was a popular stew in the Deruvian sector. Pest referring to humans, of course. The Human Cabal was a bestselling novel in the Sagittarius Arm, selling billions of copies a year. It contained conspiracy theories about a secret human network dedicated to brainwashing alien children. There was Human's Ear, a venomous plant in the Centaurus sector, the bane of many planets. Ape's Curse, a wasting disease that afflicted many space stations. And of course, Kill All Humans, a popular band that sold albums across the galaxy.
Leona supposed The Human Hunter wasn't that bad, all things considered.
She stood in the corner, wrapped in a cloak and hood. Her three human companions stood with her, similarly concealed. Not that they needed much of a disguise. The bar was shadowy, half its lamps smashed, and smoke from a dozen hookahs filled the common room.
"Hey, lobos." A squat creature lolloped toward the humans. "Lobos. You sell smoke sticks? You sell?"
Leona shook her head. "No smoke sticks."
The creature pawed at Leona's pockets with a grubby hand. "Smoke sticks? Lobo, you sell?"
Leona groaned and tossed the creature a few scryls—the crystal skulls of insects, used as currency in most seedy bars like this.
"Go buy yourself some grog."
The alien snorted, but he kept the scryls, trundling off in a huff. The stocky little critter approached another group in a shadowy corner and tossed the scryls at them. "Lobos. Lobos, smoke sticks. You sell?"
Leaning against the wall beside Leona, Ramses groaned. "When can we leave this place? This sin hive is no place for a pharaoh." He brushed his cloak, pants, and pointy goatee, the shuddered. "I swear I'm catching fleas."
"Aurora still needs a few hours to repair her
starship," Leona said. "Try to relax. Want me to buy you some grog?"
Ramses grimaced. "Grog? Heavens no. The grog in this place is a sure-fire way of getting a tapeworm."
Leona watched a few drunken patrons get into a fistfight, then pass out halfway through and begin to snore.
"Actually, I doubt anything can survive inside this grog," she said. "Probably not even tardigrades, and I read those little muckers can survive a nuclear blast."
"Perfect," Ramses said. "A drink that can kill tardigrades. Sounds like just what my stomach lining needs." He looked around. "Maybe they serve coffee. I don't see a waiter."
Leona pointed at the towering, spiky alien that stood behind the bar, a brute with fangs like katanas and fists like anvils. He was busy pounding those fists into a drunkard's head, rumbling about bad credit.
"I think you order from that dude," Leona said.
Ramses cringed. "I'll stick to secondhand smoke."
Najila, another member of their party, stepped forward. The young woman looked around with wide eyes. She had been born in Egypt, one of the Gaeans, a tribe of humans who had never left Earth. Two thousand years ago, the Hydrian Empire—a race of evil squids—had destroyed Earth, butchering billions. A few humans had managed to flee, and they had spent eighty generations in space, Earth but a memory. But the Gaeans had remained. All this time, they had hidden on Earth. They had survived. They had never known the stars.
Until now.
Until only days ago, Najila had never seen space. Ramses had picked her up in his starship, had taken her to the stars, had shown her to the Galactic Council—proof that humanity had evolved on Earth.
It hadn't helped. The Council had still awarded Earth to the basilisks. But Najila got her taste of the cosmos. For days now, traveling among the stars, the Gaean gaped with eyes like saucers. Leona had seen a thousand alien bars like this. To Najila, it was all new.
"You had to live in places like this for two thousand years?" Najila shuddered. "No wonder you've been so desperate to come home."
Tom Shepherd, the fourth member of their group, spoke in a low voice. "There are worse places than this in space."
The Song of Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 5) Page 4
