by Matt Thomas
Contents
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Final Page
Copyright © 2018 Matthew Thomas
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9908824-1-1
Cover Design by Bukovero Cover Design
*****
De Oppresso Liber.
CHAPTER ONE
The dark comforted him. Familiar from so many times before, it wrapped its way around him, blocking out everything about to happen. He could have been in the dark anywhere, at any time. It gave him rare peace and solitude, enough to stay focused.
He should have felt fear. For a long time, he had wondered if he could still fear his own death. Not how some fictional superhuman stood straight-backed in the face of overwhelming doom, but in that broken way a human who had only barely survived so often, who had seen countless others die so quickly, that he more often wondered if he got to live another moment than he thought he might die.
Then the dark disappeared, returning him to the present. The lights turned on, red and muted. An armored man or woman, he couldn’t tell, walked down the line, slapping everyone on the shoulder and unshackling them from their seats. A gloved hand reached out and yanked Bryan Howe to his feet. The figure shouted something and shoved them all into a rough line.
The doors parted. Points of light streamed in. Stars, perfect, without interference of air or glass. He focused on them as long as he could. Bryan knew he would never see stars like that again.
The view tilted sharply, and suddenly the planet appeared. His planet, burning beneath him without smoke and without fire. The blue and white and green and brown obscured the smoldering blackness that had swept across its surface in his youth, decades before. In all his dreams of coming home, in none had he come home like this.
The gentle curve separated the ground from space. Altitude and speed conspired to taint his perspective. Everything seemed so peaceful down there no matter the violence about to happen. The illusion served as an inconvenient reminder of his one-way trip.
The figure standing in front of him conveyed nothing, the reflection in its helmet projecting Bryan’s image back at him. The black uniform glowed in the red light flooding the chamber. Its head tilted for a moment, and then the figure flashed an open palm inches away from Bryan’s face. His grip tightened around the metal bar holding him in place. Awkwardly, Bryan turned around. Behind him, further from the void, he counted eleven more people, each with one hand gripping the railing above, flashing an open palm with the other. His gaze lingered back, sizing up each figure, most with shoulders drooped, head hanging down and bouncing loosely with each shudder of the ship. He imagined their obscured faces, wondering how many felt what he felt. The helmeted man immediately behind him bore a logo on his chest, two crossed arrows behind a human skull engulfed in flames. Beneath it, a set of numbers and a slogan: “8222 First To Kill.”
Further behind him, four long, black boxes could have been coffins packaged for delivery. One head, two figures back, caught Bryan’s gaze, and nodded vigorously. He didn’t have to see the sadistic grin behind the mask to know it was there.
The interior began to flicker, drawing his attention to the scene directly in front of him. Plasma simmered outside, rapidly coming to a full boil. The view of the planet disappeared behind the red, yellow, and orange as flames began to crawl in through the hole in the ship, lapping against the bulkhead leaving charred marks. The rolling turbulence hypnotized Bryan. He felt his small amount of anxiety, regret, fear, and hope melt away in the fire only a few feet from his face in a dynamic Rorschach test. Each flash or sputter of the flames detached him further. His home lived beyond those flames, memories of a time not under threat, buried so far back he barely recalled them. Bryan thought of quiet dinners with his wife, and the few calm mornings spent sipping coffee and reading the news before she woke up. He remembered his girls barreling out of their room at the first sound he made, no matter how late he returned home. Those moments would never happen again.
As much as the fire brought peace, the fire itself was violent, as violent as his adult life had been. He’d earned his place on the back of that ship through killing, and now he reaped the consequences.
Others in his position might have prayed. Some would have become paralyzed with fear. He knew he could do nothing at that point to change his fate. He didn’t fight it.
The figure before him held up a single finger. The fire outside began to fade, replacing the blackened orange once again with the black, blue, and white of a planet drifting through space. As the view outside calmed, so did the ride.
The figure pinched the air, forming a C with its forefinger and thumb. Bryan’s heart jumped in his throat, but he steeled himself, preventing any sign of his internal struggle from leaking to the outside world.
The gravity holding him down gave way, he felt lighter as his body tossed around, twisting his harms as they desperately held onto the handle jutting from the ceiling. The view pitched again, and suddenly the planet filled everything before him.
The red light flickered out, and a green light flashed on.
The figure reached for Bryan’s arm, but he knocked it away with one hand.
Without having anything left to fear, without emotions he could no longer feel, without apprehension or pride or hesitation, Bryan charged forward off of the ramp and flung himself forward.
CHAPTER TWO
Officers and NCOs shuffled around on the operations center floor. Feet were kicked up on the long metal tables running the width of the room. Hardly anyone wore a uniform, at least not a complete one. Sweatshirts and hats typically topped-off fatigue pants that ended in comfortable shoes instead of issued boots. Technically speaking, everyone should have looked like Xander, in a relatively clean and complete uniform, with hair cut short and a fresh shave. Not that anyone around him cared. Not while they watched the screens hanging overhead and listened to the radios piled underneath the center table.
On one screen, to his left, a crisp, color image showed a bunch of figures moving around atop a steep plateau, a village sprawling out from its base. On the other, a grainy, black-and-white image showed what looked only like forest surrounding a field. To the untra
ined eye, it looked like nothing, but Xander and everyone else in that OPCEN knew that image was special. Along one side, a panel showed several windows with words and acronyms scrolling by as messages came through in text.
The radio crackled, much more roughly than typical, but that was to be expected. Everyone in the crowded OPCEN stared at the radio operator as the message came through.
“Serpent Eight-Two, Beast Two-Two, radio check, over.”
“There it is.” Someone muttered behind Xander.
Master Sergeant Popov, a man as cracked and worn as his fake leather chair, picked up the radio receiver. “Beast Two-Two, Serpent Eight-Two has you Lima Charley. How me, over?” His rattled off the words mechanically.
“Beast Two-Two has you the same. Be advised Beast Two-Two is Kickoff, time: now. Over.”
A few people in the room clapped and others cheered approvingly. Lieutenant Colonel Berne yelled at everyone to be quiet. The Chief of Operations owned the room. His short stature and slight build took nothing away from his commanding presence. The stern woman sitting silently next to him may have commanded the Joint Special Task Force, but Berne drove it.
“Roger, Serpent Eight-Two copies Kickoff, time: now. Good hunting. Over.”
“Beast Two-Two out.”
Now everyone applauded loudly, until, the Chief of Operations yelled again. “Shut the fuck up! Beast Two-Two is on the ground, and that’s fucking awesome, but we’ve also got Beast One-Five on Castor and will probably TIC-up any minute. We need to focus.”
Everyone quieted down, but remained in the room staring at the blurry screen. The CHOPs pointed at Xander. “Xander, you’re dressed, can you tell Admiral Sykora?”
“Yes, sir. I’m headed over there to brief him on Gemini.”
“Thanks.”
Xander turned down the short hallway that lead to the only exit from their section of the command ship. The lift he found there took him up two decks to the pinnacle of the warship. Nearly three decades ago, Columbia represented the height of human military power. Even the Ahai had, after much convincing, agreed to install one of their small-scale wormhole generators. Ephemeris Engineering designed Columbia to turn the tide of the Corporate War. Then the Hetarek arrived.
Within days, the illusion that humanity had power disappeared.
Columbia’s first voyage, still unfinished, had been a mad scramble to evacuate humans from their home system. Over the years, the flagship became a unwieldy conglomeration of modules. Each time the Free Human Council decided another function was critical, this ship grew another series of compartments. On one hand, there was no continuity between compartments. On the other hand, it meant that the Task Force could run its special operations out of isolated decks with minimal interference.
The doors slid open on the lift. Xander found a different world, one were everyone wore perfect uniforms and walked with crisp precision. Juniors referred to seniors as “sir” or “ma’am” and uttered phrases like “aye aye.” On that side of the lift, Xander was in the real fleet.
The lift dumped him out just outside of the joint operations center, a much larger version of the dark room he had just left, filled with over-sized monitors and men and women who stared at them like crystal balls. Xander, fortunately, avoided going on the floor of the JOC and turned down the corridor towards the wardroom. Almost immediately, he saw the Admiral on his way to the same briefing. “Admiral, Beast Two-Two just called kickoff.”
The admiral, who was nearly a foot shorter than Xander, turned and looked up at him. Xander couldn’t help but stare back down at the row of stars on the man’s lapel that must have intimidated many staff officers. Either the years of dealing with men of rank, or the constant mental fog left behind after spending most of his adult life in combat kept Xander from being similarly intimidated. “Major Gretter, it’s good to see you.”
“And you, sir.” Xander said, unsure as to whether the Admiral had heard him. They both stopped just outside the wardroom. Through the open door, Xander saw other officers, nearly all superior to him, standing at attention around the table. They expected the admiral to step in and formally start their briefing. Instead, the admiral asked Xander questions.
“You have good two-way with them?”
Xander nodded.
“With, what, a QEC-Five?” He asked, referring to a quantum communications relay device capable of instantaneously and securely transmitting between two paired devices anywhere in the universe.
“Yes, sir.”
“So you’re hearing from them real-time. No delay.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Once they get their feet under them, what’s their next step?”
“First Down, sir.”
“Which is what?”
“It’s when they’ve successfully linked up with their contact, Code-name Helen, on the ground.”
The admiral cocked his head and leaned forward, still ignoring the rest of his staff. “No shit, Major Gretter, how soon until the Hetarek know we’re there?”
Xander shrugged. “They’ll know when they TIC up, sir. There’s limited active resistance, and the Hetarek must be tracking that pretty well. But if the team gets into enough of a gunfight, the Hetarek are going to know it’s us and not just a bunch of locals rebelling.”
The admiral pursed his lips and nodded. Only then did he acknowledge the assembled men still standing at attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the admiral began after the door had been shut and he had motioned for everyone to sit. “Major Gretter here has told me that, for the first time in twenty-three years, we have boots-on-ground on Earth.”
The room erupted in applause. Xander worried about how many in that room needed to be privy to that information. It was common knowledge that the current strategy was to gain a position to retake Earth. Knowledge that they were close to executing the return of humanity, however, was highly classified.
Finally, Admiral Sykora allowed everyone to sit. Xander took his seat behind a placard at the foot of the table that read “Special Operations.”
“This operation,” the admiral continued, gesturing as the briefing on the screens in front of him. “Is another phase in that plan. But I’m not going to give the execute command unless everyone is on board. Ops?”
The admiral’s senior operations officer read off of his prepared briefing. “Admiral, this is the conditions check for Operation Gemini Two. The mission objective to is liberate the Hetarek internment camps on Castor and Pollux. Execution will occur in four phases. Phase one occurs when the fleet jumps to Castor and Pollux. Phase two occurs when gunships engage the Hetarek fleet and station orbiting the two planets and a fighter sweep clears a path to Castor. Phase three is the liberation of Castor, which is the more populated and heavily defended, to be assaulted by drop ships. Phase four is the liberation of Pollux, also assaulted by drop ships. Once phase four is complete, the fleet will establish a defensive perimeter around the twin planets.”
“So, hopefully, by day’s-end we’ll not only have set foot on Earth but also be the first human mission to the Twins in two hundred years.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Major Gretter, what’s on the ground right now?”
Xander spoke up. “Sir, we have Beast One-Five on the ground at Castor. They’ve been there for about two weeks, but we assess the Hetarek think it is just organic resistance. We have not seen any unusual chatter or reinforcements in the area.”
“What kind of resistance are they going to have on the ground?”
“Sir, we assess the enemy most dangerous course of action to be that they hold their position on top of the plateau and use that position to both defend against drop ships and potentially to destroy their own work camp. They have heavy weaponry up there and we’ve seen from other engagements that they are willing to destroy their own facility in order to kill as many humans as possible as a deterrent. The most likely course of
action is that they will focus on defending their own positions and attempt to evacuate. The Hetarek have been on Castor and Pollux for thirty years, longer than they’ve been on Earth. Their infrastructure is robust, as are their defenses. But they’re complacent. Beast One-Five has had minimal difficulty up to to this point. If Beast One-Five can seize the positions on top of the plateau with some element of surprise, we assess that the Hetarek will choose to evacuate in the short term and mass a counterattack after they’ve fled the system.”
“And that process is going to take several weeks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are we still relying on the Ahai jumpships?”
“Yes, admiral.” The chief quartermaster replied.
“I’m not crazy about that idea.”
“Sir, we’ve only got enough power on Columbia’s wormhole drive to get a handful of ships through.” The quartermaster explained. “We’re jumping simultaneously with approximately three times the number of ships we’ve used in previous operations. We can’t do it without the Ahai.”
“I understand why we’re doing it, but I’m still not crazy about it.”
The admiral’s chief of operations leaned in and whispered something in his ear, almost certainly telling the Admiral that this assault was practice for the liberation of Earth. They’d need the Ahai to retake their home planet. This was as good a time as any to rehearse working together.
“I’m not crazy about that, either.” The admiral said for the benefit of the room.
Xander cleared his throat. “Admiral, from my conversations with the Ahai they fully understand the importance of this mission. It feeds into their belief in benefiting their Collective. They’ll follow-through.”
The admiral let out a sigh. “I guess we’ve relied on them for a couple of decades now. And we don’t have much of a choice.”
“There is that, sir.”
“What’s the status on the assault ships?”
“They’re loaded and ready to depart.”
“Spacecraft?”
