by SD Tanner
TYRANNY
(BOMBARDIER TRILOGY)
SD TANNER
Tyranny
Copyright © SD Tanner 2016
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by law.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Dedicated to Mousey
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE: Dogs of War (Tank)
CHAPTER TWO: Dog fight (Ark Three)
CHAPTER THREE: Boogeyman (Ark Three)
CHAPTER FOUR: Bad to the bone (Ark Three)
CHAPTER FIVE: Puppet master (Tank)
CHAPTER SIX: Clone drone (Dunk Three)
CHAPTER SEVEN: A future told (Ark Three)
CHAPTER EIGHT: Enemy mine (Ark Three)
CHAPTER NINE: Tiny minds (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TEN: The lucky prince (Ark Three)
CHAPTER ELEVEN: No place to call home (Granger)
CHAPTER TWELVE: We be Gods (Ark Three)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Enemy of mine (Dunk Three)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Friends in low places (Ark Three)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Hiding in plain sight (Tank)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Death leads the way (Ark Three)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Dead man running (Granger)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Drones (Ark Three)
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Clones or clowns? (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY: Not born of woman (Dunk Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The little death (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Nowhere left to run (Granger)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Smart critter (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Reluctant rebel (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Missing link (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Lost in space (Ark Three)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Silver bullet (Ark Three)
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
This story is primarily told through Ark Three, but please see the character name in the Chapter heading to know which person is narrating.
For other books by SD Tanner, please check out the Hunter Wars series, Hunter Wars Series, the Navigator series, Navigator Series, and our standalone scifi thriller, Time to Die, Time to Die.
PROLOGUE
My name is Arkansas Three. I was born in the year one hundred and eighty after the great battle to save earth.
My grandparents, Ark and Lexie, led the Navigators to defend our planet from the alien attack. After we won, they became Bombardiers, disappearing in space while searching for the enemy that had nearly wiped out mankind.
I am destined to become the next leader of the Bombardiers, the transformed humans solely created to hunt and destroy the enemy aliens.
My future is known. I will die in battle, but before I do, I will lead others to kill.
CHAPTER ONE: Dogs of War (Tank)
Tank’s thickset exoskeleton was wedged into the control seat in the center of the Battle Command Pod. Technically, he didn’t need the liquid based armor he was wearing. It only made his enormous shoulders and solid thighs even broader, which was why the chair was slightly too small for him. Sighing to himself, he stared through the walls of the living ship at the shape hovering in space.
It wasn’t fair. No man should live for two hundred and fifteen years. As a transformed human and Bombardier, he’d already survived the four wives who’d given him twenty-two children. He was the oldest living person on earth and only he remembered the world before the aliens attacked. Although his mind worked as well as it ever had, he’d lost track of how many grandchildren he could call his own. Not that it mattered, they all lived on earth and he wasn’t allowed to spend much time there.
Bombardiers were dangerous and not by a small amount. With their transformed cells, they were stronger, faster and able to see more than a human. Unlike the living cells adapted to become ships and workers, the Bombardiers retained their intelligence and independence. They were the forward army, defending earth against the enemy aliens that had nearly destroyed them a hundred and eighty years earlier. Once they’d defeated the aliens, Dunk had stolen their technology, making it his own. Although he now slept in a cryogenics chamber, suspended in time while they found a cure for extreme old age, his clones ruled in his place.
“What do you think, Tank?” The Bombardier on his left asked.
Forced into space, endlessly searching for an enemy alien they hadn’t seen since the attack, he commanded the four Bombardiers on the living battleship. Each had once been human, only now they looked much as he did. Their internal organs were only needed to provide enough oxygen and nutrients to support their brain, so they’d shrunk to fraction of their original size. Mostly they were made of a dense material that was virtually indestructible. Even if they were damaged, providing their brain and organs weren’t hit, they could regenerate their exoskeleton.
It wasn’t only their strength that made them superior. Their eyes were also modified, meaning they could read various spectrums up to ten miles away. Walls presented no barrier to their sight, so he could see the outline of the black ship directly in front of theirs.
“I think it’s the enemy.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Pissing me off.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Not much.”
The unevenly shaped hull of a black vessel blended into the darkness of space, but it was alive just as their ship was. Ever since Dunk had stolen the alien technology, they’d been able to transform living cells, forcing them to become something they could control. The alien ship in front of him was another transformed living creature being used as something it was never designed to be.
Earth’s space fleet was lean. The leader of the United Guild and clone of the original man, Dunk Two, only ever allowed two thousand Bombardiers to exist at any point in time. Given they usually disappeared somewhere in space within ten years, humans were regularly transformed to maintain their numbers. People fought hard to join the ranks of the Bombardiers. It was a badge of honor to have one in the family and it came with a lifetime of privileges. He was one of the first, transformed immediately after they’d nearly lost earth, and he still missed his old squad. Living for so long was getting on his very last nerve, not that with his hardened body he had many left.
Awkwardly adjusting his position in the undersized chair, he ordered, “Move left.”
Their own living battleship was created from the cells of many species including dogs. Designed to travel through space, it was shaped like a rectangular box, filled with tubes and pods like the one he was sitting in. Rail guns, laser cannons and armor had been bolted to the exterior. They carried only enough food and air to cover their basic needs. Few areas of the ship had gravity, and with so little light, they lived in a murky darkness. Being alive, their ship could self-heal, just as they could. It also understood simple commands and like a well-trained dog, it would do as it was asked.
The ship jagged to his left, traveling a thousand miles in ten seconds.
The black lump in front of them copie
d their move, continuing to hover near them.
“Pull back.”
The ship complied and the lump followed.
“Advance.”
When the ship moved forward, the lump seemed to hesitate before it retreated.
Another of the four Bombardiers asked, “Why are we playing Simon says?”
It was a very good question. Whatever it was, it was screwing with them. Before he could issue his next order, the black lump shuddered and sharpened forty-foot long spikes exploded from all of its sides. In a matter of seconds, it had transformed from a harmless lump into a deadly weapon. Rapidly increasing its speed, it hurtled towards them.
“It’s gonna ram us! Evasive maneuvers!”
Their battleship jolted backwards while pulling sharply to the left, throwing him against the side of the tiny command chair. Gritting his teeth inside of his Neanderthal shaped jaw, he said irritably, “Wake up the Navigators.”
CHAPTER TWO: Dog fight (Ark Three)
Hacking and spluttering, Ark Three’s eyes ran with tears. His chest heaved and a twisting stream of glistening fluid ran from his mouth, adding to the wetness on the floor beneath his bare feet. With a shaking hand, he wiped the sticky goo from his eyes, running his calloused palm down his face until it formed a glob at the end of his chin. Still stuck inside of the glass tube, a low red light was flashing, indicating there was an emergency and he’d been pulled from stasis early. The glass surrounding him began sinking into the floor. Feeling cold and slippery as he ran his hand across it, he hoped to see a Bombardier who could tell him what was going on.
Once all of the goo had drained through the network of holes in the floor, and the glass tube had disappeared, his view of the tiny Navigator living quarters sharpened. It was thirty feet by twenty feet, a small pod of safety in what was an otherwise hostile environment. Their Navigator gear was hanging inside of wide crevices in the walls, and with their helmets perched above the heavy armor, all they needed were the operators. Next to him, three men and a woman were stepping from their tubes, equally as naked as he was.
In a voice still thick with the goo that had filled his lungs, Samson asked, “What’s happening?”
Grabbing a towel from a rack bolted to the wall, he began to wipe away the sticky mess, paying close attention to the folds in his skin. The goo turned to dust fairly quickly, becoming itchy as all hell. To leave the living quarters they would need to be fully dressed in their gear, and under the three layers made up of sensors, hydraulics and armor, it was difficult to scratch anything.
“I don’t know,” he replied, while he reached for his communications headset. Plugging it into his ear, he said, “Ark Three is on the grid.”
“Nice of you to join us.”
Without his visor, he didn’t have visuals meaning he couldn’t see the speaker, but he knew the man’s voice well. “Tank, what’s going on?”
“We have company.”
Although most of the ship didn’t have gravity, the Navigator living quarters did. Most of the time gravity was a good thing, but when the ship suddenly flipped, he found himself flying through the air and landing on what should have been the ceiling.
Feeling his shoulder thump into the brown colored surface, he muttered, “What the…?”
“Gear up now. I want you in the BCP ASAP.”
The stasis room was designed to accommodate three-dimensional movement, and it quickly righted itself until he was standing on the floor. Using his palm print to release his Navigator gear from the magnetized pegs it hung from, he pulled out his sensor layer, quickly rolling it along his legs and securing it at his waist. Tank was forever testing him to gear up in one minute, so out of habit he counted the seconds. Next to him, his handpicked squad were doing the same. Having had every orifice filled with goo until his pores were swamped, his body felt bloated and his skin was tight. The goo was really a lifeform that fed their body oxygen and nutrients, while holding their heart rate below one beat per five minutes. In this state, their brains would fall into a form of coma, only awakening when the goo was ordered to leave.
The last thing he did was check the Smith & Wesson 340PD inside of the specially built flap in the armor on his forearm. It had belonged to his grandfather, but he’d fitted the gun onto an extendable arm that propelled it into his hand within half a second. It was strictly a weapon of last resort, but as his lucky piece he never went anywhere without it.
With his helmet on, the walls of the ship disappeared and his vision was overlapped by bright green horizontal and vertical lines, indicating what he could walk through and what he couldn’t. Their visors were computer controlled, providing them with a wide range of spectrums to see the world, so their sight was similar to that of a Bombardier. Able to see for up to five miles, it took training to know how to manage the viewing distance and spectrums. With the hydraulics giving them additional strength, and armor able to withstand ballistic weapons, they were the human army working with the Bombardiers to defend earth.
Now only able to hear and see through the computer in his helmet, he confirmed his squad were on the military communications grid. “Sound off.”
“Samson is on the grid.”
“Lace is on the grid.”
“Cardiff is on the grid.”
“Mex is on the grid.”
Once they plugged into the grid then, providing they were still within range, Ark Command could monitor their chat. The large space command center was a sluggish beast that moved to match their control of the planets nearest earth. Chief Commander Casey was head of the Navigators, and one day he would lead the Bombardiers, but Dunk Two pulled the strings on both armies.
Unhappy with many of Dunk Two’s decisions, he didn’t have time to worry about the politics of their situation. “Move out.”
Created from a medley of living cells the ship was really a form of life. It didn’t breathe exactly, but it absorbed energy through its skin. Filled with tube like corridors to move from one section to the next, a slit in the wall would split apart and then reseal itself. Without their gear, the walls of the ship were warm to the touch, so sliding through them felt up close and personal.
Outside of the small area of gravity his body, which weighed over three hundred pounds in armor, floated from the floor. The tube was five feet wide and using his arms, he jettisoned himself along the corridor. The Battle Control Pod, or BCP for short, was also known as the B-crap to anyone who spent any time in it. It was really only a small open area buried deep inside the belly of the ship. Home to the Bombardiers who piloted the craft while the Navigators slept in stasis, it was used to control all of the weapons and sensors.
Pushing his body through another slit in the wall, gravity clutched at him and his feet clunked clumsily onto the floor. Tank was squashed into the main command chair in the middle of the room and surrounded by four more Bombardiers. Their visors allowed them to share images so they didn’t need the screens that were mounted on every wall. Tank had fired small visibility pods into space and they were relaying the scenes around them from every angle. Each one displayed a different image of the large black object floating a hundred thousand miles from them in space.
Their mission was to find the enemy aliens that had seeded earth with their DNA millions of years ago. One hundred and eighty years earlier, on an unspoken command, the enemy had used their seeded DNA to transform half of the earth’s population into spider-like creatures. The spiders, or critters as they were called, killed most of the people and turned others into newborns. Nobody knew for sure, but Dunk had believed the newborns were supposed to become host bodies for the enemy aliens. It was the arrival of two spaceships hovering over Albuquerque and New York that had galvanized the last of the survivors to throw a Hail Mary to save the human race. If it hadn’t been for the Navigator gear then they would have lost the war. As it was, they’d barely won, losing ninety-eight percent of the world’s population in the battle. Under Dunk’s leadership, the surviving army of Navigato
rs used the alien technology to transform into Bombardiers, and began scouring space looking for the enemy.
Eyeing the screens, he asked, “What is it?”
“I dunno,” Tank replied.
With space being such a big place, they’d never run into an alien ship before, so finding one was a big deal. “Is it attacking us?”
“It’s hunting.”
“What does Ark Command say?”
At the mention of their name, a voice came through his earpiece. “The visibility pods are sending images. It doesn’t look like a machine.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s probably made from transformed cells.”
That was how their enemy made anything, which meant the ship wasn’t their friend. “Doesn’t that make it enemy?”
Tank spun in his chair until he was facing him. Using his standard vision so that he could see his face, he studied his mentor’s baldhead and hardened features with their solid green eyes. Although his face was largely expressionless, his eyes glinted with what he thought was a wicked stare.
“You’re the future leader of the Bombardiers, so what do you want to do?”
He was Arkansas the Third, the grandson of the man credited with winning the war on earth against the aliens. His grandfather had gone onto lead the Bombardiers into space, disappearing without a trace somewhere in the universe with his grandmother, Lexie. In theory, a Bombardier could live for hundreds of years, but they rarely did. Usually they were lost in space within ten years, presumed dead, but no one really knew what happened to them. To improve communications, Ark Command and the space stations were now able to move around the areas they controlled. Hunting for their enemy and taking over the universe might have looked simple on paper, but it was really a slow process of transforming cells into ships, building weapons and training troops.
Flicking his eyes past Tank, he studied the screen displaying the black, spiky hulk that was pursuing them. It didn’t look like a spaceship, but more like a lump of black coal with lethally sharp forty-foot spikes. Easily keeping pace with them, both ships were hurtling through space playing a mad game of chase. If one of the spikes penetrated their hull, the ship could seal a single breach, but he didn’t rate their chances if the alien dug in deep and continued to tear at it.
