Cherubim
War Angel Book 2
by
David Hallquist
PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books
Copyright © 2021 David Hallquist
All Rights Reserved
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Get the free Four Horsemen prelude story “Shattered Crucible”
and discover other titles by Chris Kennedy Publishing at:
http://chriskennedypublishing.com/
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Cover by J Caleb Design
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
About the Author
Excerpt from Book One of the Abner Fortis, ISMC
Excerpt from Book One of the Lunar Free State
Excerpt from Book One of the Chimera Company
Excerpt from Book One of Murphy’s Lawless
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Prologue
Absolute darkness is all around me, as utter and total as the time before the universe. There is no sensation at all: no sight, no sound, no touch, not even the subtle impression of my own heartbeat. Am I dead? My memories are dim, fading, as if running away from me in the absolute night, leaving me utterly alone. My name, my memories, everything I am…is fading away into the void.
NO! Don’t leave me! With my memories fading away, I’m utterly alone in the night.
Except I’m not alone; there’s something out here in the darkness.
Fear. An icy, piercing terror spikes right though me. I want to gasp and scream, except I have no voice, no body, or self. Pain follows, red and angry, raging through me like hot lava, the despair, utter loss, and failure eating away at my very being. The relentless assault makes me want to collapse and shrink down, to utterly give in and let it dissolve me completely.
Instead, I fight back against it with every bit of determination I’ve got left.
I remember now. This is my old enemy—the Saturn virus.
I’ve beaten it before; I can do it again. I fight against it with everything I have, struggling up through the utter black sea toward the distant memory of light and warmth above. I can feel the icy blackness giving way as a distant light becomes apparent and grows closer…closer…
Access primary memory…
Weapons tentacles lash at me, armed with cutting implements, claws, and beam projectors. They’ve torn through the hull of my exo-frame and reach for me in the confined space of the cockpit. Through the rent in the hull, glowing red compound camera eyes glare in from an armored black carapace. Everything is burnt out on my frame, so I struggle with the manual controls of my giant robotic exo-frame, trying to crush my enemy before it can eviscerate me.
I remember this…I fought one of the Saturnine cyborgs in the asteroid belt. The thing had given me the Saturn virus—a cyber-mnemonic and nanotech combined weapon that overrode my own cybernetic systems and almost killed me. This thing had also invaded the asteroid colony of Eros with a nanotechnology virus that had turned people into rampaging zombies. They still need to pay for this…for what Saturn did to Eros and so many other worlds…
Something else is coming to me…
FLASH!
A wave of thermonuclear detonations washes across space, blasting away all sight with a torrent of raging photons. When it clears, I’m flying with my squadron between the warring worlds of Terra and Luna. Our exo-frames are glowing red hot and trailing clouds of vaporized ablative armor as we fire away desperately at the endless targets around us. The whirling blue stars of ship drives and missiles dance all around us, as we fly directly between the eclipse of the Earth and her Moon.
This was…the Battle of Terra. Saturn was backing the State of Terra, and Jupiter was backing the Lunar Republic. So when the Terrans launched an attack on our Lunar allies, we had to respond. With our Jovian technology, so much more advanced than Terra’s, we thought it would be an easy fight. We were wrong…
I remember…
The endless thunder of rail guns firing on full auto echoes around me. Thousands of trans-sonic darts hammer at us from all directions, pounding against our armored frames like deadly rain. The thunder of the guns can’t override the cries of pain coming over the radio from the injured and dying. We’re clustered together in the dark, smoky, subterranean tunnels and galleries as enemy fire rakes at us from side tunnels and balconies on the high arching walls far above. Smoke and flames are everywhere, partly obscuring the scale of the horror around me.
This was from when we attacked one of the Terran arcologies. It was a nightmare. The Terrans just kept coming in wave after wave. They fought with incredible, even suicidal, bravery. I still kind of admire them for it. I wish I could have stopped it all, and somehow made them realize they were being manipulated by their state and by Saturn; that what they were fighting for would eventually destroy them all. Instead, I’d had to cut down some of the bravest men I’d met. It was a tragedy…
Another tragedy came to mind…
The Martian moon of Phobos glows in otherworldly colors as the positron beams strike it. The surface and reinforced weapons emplacements melt and dissolve under the relentless energies hitting them. Then, the swarm of antimatter missiles hit. The brilliant white flashes fade and reveal the tumbling, glowing ruin of radioactive rocks and boulders where the moon used to be.
I remember being in the officers’ mess aboard the Marshall Weston when Phobos died. The sense of shock and disbelief is burned into my brain forever. Thousands of Jovian personnel wiped out, among them some of my best friends from the Academy. All blown out of space by Saturnine treachery. I’ll never forget…
Then there was…
Raging thermonuclear detonations light up space above Mars, outdoing the lesser and more numerous plasma detonations all around us. The blue stars of spacecraft, missiles, and drones are everywhere, dodging and weaving desperately. The fleets of Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus battle for supremacy over the angry red planet below.
We were all fighting the wrong enemy.
The real enemy rose from the surface of Mars that day. The alien vessel was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before and possessed technology we could barely comprehend. It was not only strange and terrifying…it was hostile. It burned through the combined fleets of the solar system’s greatest powers with contemptuous ease. Somehow, someway, we survived, but a smaller alien ship escaped the solar system that day.
The evidence of this new threat led to a pause in the fighting between the three great superpowers. That, and the fact that we’d all fought to a brutal stand-still.
That peace won’t last forever, though. We’ll fight again: Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus. In the meantime, we’ll need to build up and get ready for the next fight.
Initialize…
Raise consciousness level…
/> Bring sensory apparatus online…
I see an operating room. White wall-screens border the antiseptic chamber, filled with scrolling medical text. Above, there’s a transparent section of wall, where doctors in medical scrubs are looking in and directing everything. Silver spherical robots hover here and there, with a variety of tools, probes, and cutting implements extended from various arms. On the curved exterior of one of the bots I can make out the reflection of a body lying on a table.
It’s a Jovian male, obvious from the massive build and high-G heavy musculature. The blue skin looks like the anti-radiation treatment the Jovian naval personnel have. The chest cavity is spread open wide, exposing the moving heart and lungs. The top of the skull is also open, exposing the brain inside. The whole inside of the body and brain are laced with fine shiny wiring, and various modules of different sorts are visible here and there.
I recognize the body.
It’s me.
“Are you awake?” a voice asks.
“Yes,” I reply, my voice dry and cracked, sounding hollow in the room.
“Your name?”
“Lieutenant Michael Vance, Squadron Leader in the Jovian Republic Aerospace Exo-Frame Naval Force, also known as the Angels. Serial Number—”
“Thank you, Lt. Vance,” the voice replies. “We’re just checking your speech centers and memory while we work. Please follow the dot with your eyes.”
I tear my eyes away from the gruesome reflection before me and focus on a white dot glowing on the ceiling. I track it as it moves, darts, and whirls. It changes color, pulses, and varies in brightness, from blazing all the way down to barely visible. It zooms in up to my nose, and out way past the ceiling to vast distances, and tries to blur in and out of focus. I track it despite everything it does.
“Thank you,” the voice says. “Now, could you please move your left arm?”
I do so.
“Very good.”
“Doctor,” I manage, “show me what’s happening to my body. I want to see.”
“We don’t want to cause any anxiety—”
Too late for that. “Do it. Please.”
The ceiling screen shows me what I look like now. Frankly, I’ve looked better.
Every part of me seems to be open at the same time, with swarms of tiny silver medical bots poking, prodding, cutting, and stitching. Wires and cybernetic implants are everywhere I can see. Transparent holographic displays also helpfully point out all the machines in me now, and the ones going in to replace them.
I’m getting an upgrade from the Jovian Navy.
Everyone on Jupiter has some cybernetic implants, of course, just to deal with the crushing gravity of the sky cities and possible radiation hazards. Then there’s all the nanotech, to promote healing, and protect against infection and cell mutation. Everyone in the Jovian Navy also gets a set of implants and augmentation necessary to do our job. Exo-frame pilots, like myself, also get additional augments to help us control our exo-frames and deal with the higher G-forces involved. Then come the combat upgrades we get that are similar to the Jovian Marines.
Everything is going to have to be changed.
First, the Saturn virus that overwhelmed my previous systems also hurt a lot of other people. The new upgrades listed here should make that impossible. Hopefully. There’s also the issue of wear and tear; the self-repair nanites in me can only do so much for so long, and they’ve had to deal with enemy infiltration programs and ionizing radiation. So, even though they’re still working, it’s time to get them replaced.
More importantly, I’m going to need the next level of pilot augmentation to be able to handle my new exo-frame. The Cherubim-class Angel exo-frame can pull twice the Gs my old frame did, so my bones, musculature, respiratory, and cardiovascular systems are all getting an overhaul.
I’m also getting way more powerful computer augmentation to deal with the powerful AI in those frames. I’ll need to be able to think and react at speeds close to an AI, so I’m an Angel pilot, not just a passenger. The new systems in me are nearly AI themselves, with redundant backup cores to help deal with any failures and intrusions.
There are all the other improvements, too: subdermal armor, improved radiation resistance, and of course, multi-spectrum optics and other improved senses, as well as the full independent life-support system that goes way beyond the oxygen cell I used to have. Basically, I can survive in deep space without a spacesuit—for a while, at least.
I continue to follow the orders from my surgeon, making sure I’m undamaged and everything is integrating properly. Horrifying as it all is to look at, there’s no pain at all. That’s OK. I know the pain will come later, as I go through the fitness and therapy that comes after such a procedure, where I’ll actually feel the new implants growing slowly into final position inside my body over the next few days. They’ll need to acclimate to me, and I’ll have to get used to them.
The good news is, I’ll get to spend some time at home as I recover.
Home…it’s been a while.
The world grows fuzzy as the doctors put me under again.
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Chapter 1
Home Among the Clouds
I awake with a gasp, staring up at the darkness.
Next to me in bed, my wife Lauren stirs. She lays her arm across me, anchoring me in reality, and bringing me back from the infinite void of my nightmare. Now, here in my bedroom, I can hear her, feel her warmth. After escaping a vision of cybernetic hell, this is heaven.
“The same dream?” Lauren asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
“I thought the dreams would go away…will they?” she asks, concern apparent in her voice.
“Maybe,” I answer her honestly. I might lie to the docs about this, but not to my other half. “Maybe they’ll go away, and maybe they won’t. I’m better at dealing with it, though, and I expect I’ll get better in the future.”
“You going to be OK?” she asks again.
I take a deep breath as I think about it. “Yes,” I can answer confidently. “They hurt me out there…badly. Still, I survived. It’s like a scar, but one you can’t see. Maybe it’ll go away, and maybe it won’t, but either way, I survived it.”
She turns on the lights.
The curving walls of our bedroom glow a soft gold around our bed. Curving windows become transparent, letting in the morning sunlight and showing the cloudscape of Jupiter in all its striking splendor.
Her soft curves and heart-shaped face are the best thing to see in the morning, though. She could have chosen almost anyone, yet she chose me. She chose an Angel pilot whose job is to climb into an exo-frame and hurtle into combat, and then do it all over again. Maybe we’re both crazy.
The wedding had been amazing. Sure, it was a small, local affair, just friends and family, and paid for by whatever we could all scrape together. Still, it had been the high point of the year since getting back home to Jupiter.
There wasn’t much time to celebrate, though. There was the endless instruction, training, and simulation time to get ready for the new Cherubim frame, as well as the recovery from the surgery I’d needed to be able to pilot one and survive. Still, I got to spend most of that time on base, though that would soon change…
“You’re going back out there again, aren’t you?” she asks.
“Yeah, it’s my job,” I answer. “The Republic needs qualified pilots to defend everyone. If I don’t do it, someone less qualified will have to go out there instead. I’d be asking someone else to go out there and maybe die, keeping you all safe, when I should be the one out there fighting for you. That’s…something I just can’t do.”
“Are you worrying about facing the Saturnine again?” she asks.
“Anyone with a brain would be worried,” I answer honestly. “I’ll never forget what they did to me and my friends in the service. The armistice probably won’t last forever, either. Sooner or later, they’ll try something again. That’s why we’ve got t
o all be ready.”
“Good,” she states flatly.
“Huh?”
“I married a combat pilot—an Angel,” she answers. “I know you could get injured, or even killed. I hate the thought, but I understand it. The only thing I could never understand is if they broke your spirit. Don’t ever let that happen…because you wouldn’t be the man I love anymore.” Her eyes shine fiercely in the morning light.
“Honestly, Lauren, you might be scarier than the Saturnine.”
“Don’t you ever forget it.”
I’m ready to go flying now.
The cybernetic augmentation needed to pilot one of the new frames has all tested out. I’ve gotten physically fit enough to handle combat piloting after all the extensive surgeries. My anti-radiation nanotech has fully grown in, turning my skin the regulation “Navy-Blue,” famous throughout the solar system. I’ve logged so much simulator time and read so many documents that it’s all second nature to me. Now, in my new armored anti-G flight suit, I get to meet my new frame in person for the first time.
The Cherub fills most of the launch hangar.
Cherubim, often called “Cherubs,” are sometimes depicted as smiling little babies with feathery wings—cute, friendly, and harmless. The old ideas, however, were that these beings were a composite of the most fearsome creatures known: lion, bull, eagle, and, of course, man. These were the awesome celestial guardians and warriors, terrifying and deadly in aspect. It’s these that the Cherubim-class Angel exo-frames are named after.
The Cherub before me in the hangar is a towering 10-meter-tall metal monster. It utterly dwarfs me, even in my flight power armor. Vaguely humanoid, it features powerful, retractable claws on all appendages, though the forearms can also function as hands. The four variable configuration wings are currently retracted, but the hundreds of flight control vanes that each cover a maneuvering thruster are visible. The overall form suggests a powerful, predatory build of power and fluid grace, like old Earth’s great cats or eagles. It’s not as if the designers deliberately set out to make it look as intimidating as possible; rather, the same physics that dictated the shape necessary for power and speed are at work here. It looks dangerous because the brain can tell that it is dangerous.
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